K is for... K'anpo

 

An ancient Tibetan lama encountered by the Third Doctor at a meditation centre in Buckinghamshire. He was assisted by a younger acolyte named Cho-Je. Mike Yates spent some time at the centre following his departure from UNIT, and he brought in journalist Sarah Jane Smith when he believed there might be some activity which would be of interest to the Doctor. Some fellow guests were holding secret ceremonies, and during one of these they summoned up a huge spider. This had actually been transported from the planet Metebelis III. Its ruler wanted a blue crystal which the Doctor had removed from that planet centuries before.

When the Doctor met K'anpo, he found him strangely familiar. It transpired that he was an old teacher of his from Gallifrey. K'anpo had turned his back on the society of Time Lords but had used psychic powers to leave Gallifrey, rather than travel by TARDIS. The Doctor had previously told Jo Grant about an early encounter with K'anpo when he had been a boy.

K'anpo allowed the Doctor to see that his greed for knowledge now threatened the universe, and that he alone must undo the harm he had caused in taking the crystal. After the Doctor set off to return it, K'anpo was attacked by spider-possessed guests. As he was nearing the end of his current incarnation he regenerated - taking on the likeness of Cho-Je. The younger monk had been a projection of his future self the whole time.

Played by: George Cormack, Kevin Lindsay (Cho-Je). Appearances: Planet of the Spiders (1974).

• The story which the Doctor tells Jo in The Time Monster does not specifically name K'anpo, but the two gurus can only be one and the same. 
• In Shada the Doctor mentions a space-time mystic from the Quantocks who once taught him. This can't be K'anpo - the Quantock hills being too far from Mortimer, where the meditation centre is located, and the fact that Tom Baker changed the scripted line from an alien place called Qualoctin to the Quantocks.
• Barry Letts co-wrote, directed and produced this story, and he was acting as Executive Producer when Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison, so presumably the idea of the Watcher came from him - someone who is a physical projection of the future incarnation as Cho-Je had been. It is a concept that has never been repeated in any other regeneration.
• Cormack had coincidentally featured in The Time Monster, as King Dalios of Atlantis. Lindsay was between his two appearances as Sontaran warriors, Linx and Styre.