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From what I've heard, the Valyard was really an entity that came from the Doctor. Something to do with what "Happened" in between his 12th and 13th life.
However, like with everyone else. His future can be changed. There's no telling on what kind of person he'll turn into. Basically, he needs to keep good people around him. Just someone to keep the Doctor from going into the deep end. Donna is right. He needs someone to stop him on things.

I hope so. Like was stated, this was a possible future which may be changed. I have noticed that the show is starting to play this angle out. That the Doctor is sort of changing into not quite an evil personality, but definately checking out the roadmap.

I for one am hoping the show continues along this line, and explores the Doctor's darker side, but we don't make the complete 180. A season of the Doctor going the way of the Master would be bad and not something I want to see (IMHO), but the Doctor being haunted by these thoughts which could have lead up to the Valeyard, could make some interesting plots for later.

As a previous poster pointed out, as Donna said the Doctor needs someone to occasionally stop him. I'd like to see that explored. I'd be open to a few episodes where the Doctor does start to go out of line, but maybe a companion can draw him back to the good he does in the universe.

Thanks for your responses!

Sorry to double post, but the subject of how much the Valeyard storyline annoyed me has been preying on my mind.



Here're some roadmaps. Some ways to make the Doctor morally alarming.

Between them, the TV series, novels, comics and audios have told all the following stories in great depth and from many angles.



Doc7:
This is a story about a man who sees too much. Who sees everything. All the universe and everyone in it, laid out before him like the familiar metaphorical chessboard. A man who, having seen that universe, cannot rest until he's made it perfect.

Being constantly aware of the big picture, how much can he value the lives of the little pieces (the things we'd call 'people') that comprise it? And what's the point of any of it if he doesn't?

How does he choose the 'good' course of action with that much perspective? And how do we, as readers and viewers, begin to even understand when he has and when he hasn't?

That's scary.




Doc8:
This is story about a man who throws himself into Life with such passion and abandon that he gets lost in it.

Blown by life's winds and washed along on its tides. So eager to surrender to beauty and experience that he can be buffeted in any direction by forces external to himself. Zagreus. Faction Paradox. Anyone with an agenda sees this guy coming.

He's a wonderful man, but he's just not safe. All the power and potency of the Doctor, but so warmly open to the world that he's unspeakably open to its influence. His every action he may mean for the best, but who knows what is meant by those others who taken advantage of his vivacity in order to direct those actions.

He's a innocent person, but then a loaded gun is an innocent object. Point it in the wrong direction, someone's gonna get hurt.

That's scary.




Doc9:
This is a story about a man so scarred by his experiences he can no longer trust himself.

In 1972 Terrance Dicks wrote that the Doctor was "never cowardly and never cruel" and that's since become the mantra of the character. This is the story of what happens when the Doctor lives through things he belives he never should have survived while everything died around him, trapping him in isolation while freeing him from the oppositional terms in which he defined himself.

This is a Doctor whose life and whose losses have taken him to a point where he no longer has to be the Doctor.

The Doctor is never cowardly and never cruel. But everything the Doctor defined himself against is dead, and perhaps 'the Doctor' died with it. What we're left with is a man who will find himself left capable of being both cowardly or cruel and find himself forced to choose which of the two it must be.

That's scary.



Doc10:
This is a story about a lonely god.

Heaven is empty. Everything that determined meaning in the universe is gone. Except, thinks the god, for me.

Considering himself to be all that's left capable of determining right from wrong, the Doctor will tell you when you're wrong. Once. One warning, then he'll take you down. No second chances. That's the kind of man he is.

For the first time in all his lives, the Doctor is certain about morality.
Morality is what he tells you it is.

That's scary.
That's so very much scarier than all of the others that it's not even funny.






Anyway, those are stories that various forms of Doctor Who have told using the Doctor's moral ambiguity. They've been rich, rewarding and have added depth and complexity to the series while retaining its fundamental optimisim.

It put it to you all that this is very different to what Trial of a Timelord offered us:

The pantomime villain we call the Valeyard is EVIL because he wears black and talks all melodrama and because we say he is. The smug, arrogant, thuggish murderer we call the Doctor is GOOD because he is the hero and because we say he is. The end.

It's scary that anyone thought to insult our intelligence with this.

Meaningless and inconsistent abstractions are a very poor subsitute for stories about people and about choices. Blathering on about 'distillations of someone's dark side' is just about good enough for the poetry of young goths or for the lowest form of superhero comic, but it's a very poor substitute for what Doctor Who managed once Cartmel, Cornell and Davies came along.

It's managed stories that have looked into the abyss and seen that what's going on down there isn't moustache-twirling. Stories that've gone so far beyond "He's good just because we're telling you he's the hero, and he's bad just because we're telling you he's the villain".

To me it's inconceiveable that the Valeyard is part of the Doctor's future. Everything simplistic, boring and childish he represents is just the worst of Doctor Who's past.

@ Richard:
When was it ever stated that the CIA created the Valeyard? It's more likely to have been the High Council themselves who did this if anyone did, wanting rid of the Doctor. And if the CIA had decided to pull an in-between self out of time to use as a prosecutor against the Doctor in the courtroom, why would they choose a "distillation of [the Doctor's] every dark impulse" (not sure that's a fully exact quote, but I think it's fairly close)? The Doctor works for the CIA (even if not willingly), so working to destroy him would be ridiculous. He's their perfect scapegoat to send off to do their dirty work without getting personally involved.
What's to say the Valeyard was even deliberately created? Some other circumstances might have caused him to appear, like the Watcher in Logopolis, but unlike the Watcher he is not content to return to the Doctor as a whole--he is determined NOT to go on and allow the last regeneration to occur and become the final incarnation of the Doctor; he wants to become a separate entity with his own regenerations. It isn't that a future self of the Doctor will be pure evil, it's that something has drawn all that is dark in the Doctor out into this being, and it needs to return to him as he finishes his final regeneration.

The Celestial Intervention Agency. Time Lords who wanted to intervene in the universe. Since Time Lords don't do that kind of thing, they started using the Doctor, sending him places to do their work whether he wanted to or not. He got really ticked off when they jerked him around like that.

redface Sorry. I've got audio/novel continuity so firmly hammered into my head that I can't even remember anymore whether or not something's been established on screen!

My posts should come with some sort of disclaimer.

Ah, but the Valeyard wasn't, strictly speaking, out to destroy the Doctor, was he? He was after the Doctor's remaining regenerations, so we're talking more about the Doctor being replaced.

And it's far from ridiculous to think that the CIA might want their agent 'upgraded' into someone firmly in thier debt and without all those annoying morals.

For example, if it had been the Valeyard that the CIA had sent to Skaro, there'd have been none of that "Do I have the right?" business and they'd have got their desired result faster than you can say 'pre-emptive genocide'.

The Valeyard would be no more trustworthy an agent than the Master would. He would follow their plans only if it suited his own interests. And a being that has nothing but dark impulses is hardly likely to have any concept of loyalty, so he'd more likely be even more eager and ruthless than the Doctor in seeking to be out from under their thumb.