The Doctor

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There has been more than one Doctor in the WildStorm Universe. There have been Doctors since the very beginning of human thought. There can only be one at a time and each one is stronger than the last. When one becomes a Doctor he becomes a shaman charged with the protection of the planet. The two Doctors that have been members of The Authority are Jeroen Thornedike (deceased) and Habib Ben Hassan (current Doctor).

The Doctor

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First Appearance: Stormwatch

, Change or Die #48

The first doctor was a member of a superhero group called ‘The Changers’, led by ‘The High’. This group of heroes operated on the same principal as The Authority, that there should be a better world. Unfortunately ‘The Changers’ weren’t as heroic as The Authority and often viewed as ‘Anti-Heroes’.

Many of The Doctor’s feats were chaotic and anarchistic in nature, though it could be viewed that everything he did was for the right cause, just in the wrong way. These feats included drugging the entirety of London with the hallucinogen DMT (Dimethyltryptamine, a powerful hallucinogenic mind altering drug with properties including intense hallucinations, euphoria and perceived extensions of reality )

The Doctor was finally killed by a hammer strike deep sanction missile with a payload of Biological Acid. After his death, The Doctor is often seen in the Garden of Ancestral Memory, where the Doctor (Jeroen) frequently goes to receive guidance from the previous doctors. He is the Doctor most seen in The Garden along with previous Doctor’s such as Jesus, Albert Einstein, Newton and others.

Jeroen Thorndike

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Origin

Jeroen was living the American dream, by the age of twelve he was multimedia millionaire and an internet billionaire by twenty. His life was perfect; unfortunately the stress of leading a company of that magnitude left him with a bedwetting problem for two years until he was admitted to a psychiatric home shortly after his twenty first birthday.

After eighteen months in the psychiatric hospital he donated his considerable assets to charity and tried to live a normal life, believing that the stress would go away if he could just be a normal person. Buying a flat in the red light district of Amsterdam Jeroen tried to relax and be normal, the stress was still there though, some days it takes him up to twenty minutes to get up the courage to leave his flat and buy his cigarettes in the morning.

All this changed when he was ‘gifted’ the powers of the ‘ultimate shaman’, when they first gave him his ‘powers’ he flatly refused, though the more vehemently he refused the more they were convinced that they had found the right person to shoulder the responsibility. Not accepting his powers, Jeroen spent the next few months playing sonic the hedgehog and shooting heroin. He’s possibly the most powerful post-human on the planet at this point in time, but flatly refuses to admit he even has post-human abilities.

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This all changed when Jenny Sparks came to him and asked him to join her new team, The Authority

Convinced they were mad for even considering him, Jeroen demanded to know how they even found him.

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Jenny Sparks to Jeroen.

In typical Jeroen fashion, he flatly refused to join the team and teleported Jenny Sparksand Swift from his flat to the nearest airport, though keeping the fifteen embassy tip cigarettes Jenny Sparks was carrying in her pocket.

For some reason Jenny felt that it was important for Jeroen to join the team, she felt that there had to be seven members to The Authority, though she couldn’t say why.

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Swift and Jenny Sparks discussing Jeroen.

Flatly refusing to accept Jeroen’s refusal to join the team, Jenny headed back to Amsterdam to try to recruit him again, this time finding him in an ‘Adult Video Store’.

Seeing her again, Jeroen again ran from his responsibility, something he is well known for later on. Jenny Sparks this time came prepared, pulling a gun she told him to accept his responsibility and act like ‘The Doctor’ he was.

Jeroen again laughed this off. Saying that she never changes, ‘wearing a cape or a flak jacket, colonel sparks? You’re all just bossy militaristic reptiles at heart.’ Jenny just smiled and turned the gun on herself and shot herself in the head.

Finally tapping into his powers, Jeroen healed her, taking an entire year of the planets ecosystem lifespan in the process. This act finally got rid of his ‘stage fright’ and he finally ‘graduated’ into his full powers.

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Life

The first time we meet the doctor is in the ‘The Authority’ storyline ‘The Circle’ where he is turning a group of enemies into birds.

Jeroen is in control of power unthinkable to the rest of the team, he can move outside of three dimensional space and is in complete control of all types of energy and matter, saying this though he is still suffering from his old problems and frequently turns to drugs and alcohol to get him through the day.

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When he joined The Authority, he wasn’t the first Doctor to ‘walk with a pantheon’, other ‘Doctors’ before him have joined groups and used their powers as he did, though he was the first to operate on a fully global scale publicly.

At first the doctor is still accustoming to his powers, and using them on a large scale wipes him out, first creating a feeling of euphoria before crashing his system and rendering unconscious. This affect is only short term though and he quickly adjusts to the amount of power he has in his system now.

During the series ‘Shiftships’, Jeroen displays more power than anyone thought he had before, holding the entire country of Italy in place from space while the rest of the world revolves around it. Effectively destroying the country, while the population is thrown from ‘Earth’ into space.

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Jeroen is one of the few people alive that actually recognised the death of Jenny Sparks for what it was, and while the rest of the team were mourning for her he actually confronted Jack Hawksmoor on Jenny’s grave and told him about Jenny Quantum. Jeroen is more caring than most people realise, though this side of him is often hidden by the drug abuse.

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During the storyline ‘Earth Inferno’ Jeroen overdosed on heroin just before he was needed the most. The Earth itself started a ‘war’ against humanity. Claiming the earth to be ‘sentient’ the renegade doctor told The Midnighterthat after the damage the humanity had caused to the earth, when the spores from the moon fell to earth and began terraforming the planet back to its original habitat (The Authority: Outer Dark), the Earth blamed humanity and declared war on them. Warming up for battle the earth caused electromagnetic storms and flash floods over major cities, effectively killing one hundredth of the world’s population on two strikes, all of this was just the warm up though to the main event, when the earth would reverse its magnetic poles and kill every human on the planet.

Realising the doctor was the only one who could possibly negotiate a peace treaty with the earth; the Midnighter transferred some of his blood into the unconscious doctor, reasoning that his blood was just as deadly as every other part of his body. Midnighter’s blood should unblock the opiate receptors in his brain that were damaged by the overdose; this is equated to ‘Bruce Lee fighting an octogenarian’.

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At this point the only person who can save the world is the ‘Renegade Doctor' (see Other Doctors), who demands an hour where he would have ‘The Doctors’ power’s restored to him in exchange for ceasing all hostilities between the Earth and the human race.

Realising they have no choice, The Authority agree. After moving the entire human race from the planet into neighbouring dimensions, The Doctor transfers his powers to The Renegade Doctor who uses them to fight The Authority on a level no one has ever seen before.

This is the first time we are shown what ‘The Doctor’ is fully capable of. Four dimensional travel, existence in a vacuum, immunity to all the powers The Authority throw at him, reforming his entire body after is it blown apart... at one point he even says that he is capable of eating the sun.

Eventually The Renegade Doctor is defeated, not by The Authority but be his own conscience. Jeroen was ‘The Ultimate Doctor’, who was the sum of the previous doctors and sympathised with every creature in existence.

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Being completely enlightened for the first time in his life, The Renegade Doctor finally felt all the pain and suffering he caused and fell to his knees muttering that ‘It was all absolutely unforgivable’. At which point the powers were transferred back to Jeroen and Apollo took the opportunity to kill The Renegade Doctor.

Jeroen has had sexual relations with at least one of the female members of the team (Angela Spica: the second Engineerthough it was hinted that he had sexual relations with Jenny Sparks and Shen Li-min ( Swift ) as well.

Death

Jeroen was killed by a drug overdose administered by Rose Tattoo, and planned by Henry Bendix. Upon his death The Doctors powers were immediately transferred to the new doctor, Habib Ben Hassan.

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Habib Ben Hassan

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First Appearance: The Authority Revolution #9

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Habib received the powers of The Doctor after Jeroen was killed by Rose Tattoo. Habib was a Palestinian suicide bomber that was about to kill himself when he came into his powers. Not much is known about the new Doctor, other than within the first week of him receiving his powers he ‘brokered’ a middle east peace treaty in one day that actually stands a change of working.

Since then he was imprisoned by Henry Bendix in a cell on The The Carrier where his powers were muted. He was freed by Jenny Quantum and joined in the battle against Henry Bendix, Rose Tattoo and (a mind controlled) Midnighter. Habib turned Rose Tattoo from the Spirit of Murder to the Spirit of Life and helped the team beat Bendix and free Midnighter. He is currently with the rest of The Authority in a universe with no super powered beings.

Other Doctors

Renegade Doc

The Renegade Doctor was an evil man who had once had all the powers of The Doctor. For crimes against humanity, he was stripped of his powers and sent to a prison at the beginning of time. (He was only able to be caught because after killing untold numbers of people one night, he decided to drink all the wine in existence.) From prison, he was somehow able to set in motion events that threatened the present day. He told The Authority that he would only fix things if the powers of The Doctor were returned to him for one hour. Jeroen, to save the world, gave the powers back. He fix the problems he had caused but attacked the Authority. He was easily beating them all and was doing things than Jeroen had never shown the others (he even went back in time and raped The Engineer when she was a child). He was only stopped when the full powers of The Doctor hit him. (He had been getting it back little by little.) When he got all the powers, he was weakened when his mental link to everyone on the planet was restored. As soon as his mind connected with everyone else's, he was so sorry for his crimes. That didn't stop The Authority from killing him though. After he was dead, Jeroen got his powers back.

Powers

Each Doctor has the combined knowledge and abilities of all the Doctors before him and the power to alter reality as long as he can imagine what he wants to do in "poetic terms". The Renegade Doctor described how his powers worked by saying that all he had to do was "draw a detailed picture in his mind" of what he wanted and it would happen. According to the previous Doctors that Jeroen has talked to, there seems to be no limit to what he could do. He could de-create the universe from the Big Bang to the end of time or stretch one moment to infinity if he wanted. There's a reason he generally doesn't use his powers on that kind of scale though. His powers come from the Earth and very powerful acts of magic can be harmful to the planet(for example, he brought the immortal Jenny Sparks back to life at the cost of one year of the planet's life), so while the Doctor can do anything, he rarely uses his powers to their full potential. His relationship with the Earth is more than just the planet supplying him with power. He can feel how it feels and has a deep connection with it that is spiritual, emotional, mental and possibly physical. When Jeroen first became Doctor he complained to the previous Doctors that he had a pain in his heart and one of them told him, "The world now turns where your heart used to sit. A certain amount of pain is to be expected." Anyone with the power of the Doctor receives 15 new senses which, among other, unnamed things, allows them to not only connect with the planet, but with its people as well. At least one of the senses has something to do with an altered perception of how time flows, allowing for its manipulation, the ability to travel through it in more than one direction, move outside of it, and function at speeds different than the world around the Doctor. Doctors can also go to a place called the Garden of Ancestral Memory where they can talk to their predecessors.