The seventeenth season of Doctor Who was cut short by a labor strike, and the final serial was never completed. However, the scenes that were done reveal some interesting details about Time Lord history, and I have included it here for that reason. The season also introduced a new actress in the role of Romana and featured another battle with the Daleks.
From “Destiny of the Daleks”
The Doctor is working on K-9 when Romana comes in looking like Princess Astra of Atrios and announces that she is regenerating. The Doctor objects, saying she can’t go around wearing someone else’s form. Romana changes her appearance a few times to make a point, but finally settles on her first choice. She then apes the Doctor’s attire by donning a pink frock coat and exceedingly long white scarf. Apparently, there is a brief state of flux when a Gallifreyan regenerates, allowing them to choose their appearance. However, since the Doctor is usually injured or unconscious when he regenerates, his appearance must be determined either randomly or by his subconscious mind. There is no reason given as to why she felt it necessary to regenerate. Romana seems unusually wimpy and terrorized when captured by the Daleks, which may be due to post-regenerative mental imbalance.
The randomizer attached to the TARDIS navigation control takes the Doctor and Romana to Skaro, where they become embroiled in the war between the Daleks and an android race called the Movellans. The Daleks have returned to their home planet and tunneled into the ruins of the ancient Kaled city in search of their dormant creator, Davros, whom they hope will give them an advantage over their enemy. After many centuries of suspended animation, Davros revives when discovered by the Doctor and Romana. However, both taskforces are destroyed and Davros is cryogenically frozen to be taken to stand trial for his crimes.
From “City of Death”
The Doctor and Romana converse at a Parisian café.
The Doctor: I think there’s something the matter with time. Didn’t you feel it?
Romana: Just a twinge. I didn’t like it.
The Doctor: Yes. Must be because I’ve crossed the time field so often. No one there seemed to notice anything. You and I exist in a special relationship to time, you know. Perpetual outsiders…
Romana: Don’t be so portentous.
The Doctor: What do you make of that, then?
Romana: Well, at least on Gallifrey we can capture a good likeness. Computers can draw.
The Doctor: What? Computer pictures? You sit in Paris and talk of computer pictures? Listen, I’ll take you somewhere and show you some real paintings painted by real people!
Romana: What about the time slip?
The Doctor: Never mind about the time slip. We’re on holiday.
While in the Louvre, Romana tells Dugan that she’s 125 years old. They are trying to stop the Mona Lisa from being stolen by the last member of the Jaggaroth race, marooned on Earth four hundred million years ago, shards of his being scattered throughout time when his spaceship exploded. He claims to have guided every major advancement since the dawn of history in order to build a time machine to go back and prevent his race from becoming extinct. However, the explosion of his warp drive was the catalyst that brought about life on Earth, and the Doctor and Romana must prevent him from changing history.
From “The Creature From the Pit”
While cleaning out one of the storerooms, Romana finds an emergency transceiver, which the Doctor had disconnected to avoid being summoned by the Time Lords, presumably when he first left Gallifrey. When Romana plugs it back in, the TARDIS materializes on the planet Chloris, drawn there by a distress signal transmitted by an imprisoned Tythonian ambassador. To prevent a neutron star from colliding with Chloris’ sun, the Doctor uses a gravity tractor beam generated by the TARDIS. The Doctor then helps negotiate a trading agreement between the Chlorisians and the Tythonians.
From “Nightmare of Eden”
The TARDIS materializes aboard a passenger space liner in the year 2116. Emerging from hyperspace, the ship has collided with a small survey craft, and the Doctor passes himself off as an insurance adjuster. The Doctor discovers the ship is carrying quantities of vraxoin, a very dangerous drug. Also aboard is a scientist with his machine that converts animals into electromagnetic signals stored inside it. The interphasic collision allows some of the animals to escape. The scientist and the survey craft pilot are the drug smugglers, and the Doctor sees that they are arrested.
From “Horns of Nimon”
While the Doctor is tinkering with the ship’s systems, the TARDIS is caught in a gravity well in space and nearly collides with a spaceship also trapped there. During their escape, the Doctor and Romana become separated, she being taken aboard the spaceship to the planet Skonnos. The Doctor follows in the TARDIS and, upon arriving in the Skonnon capital, learns that Romana has been sent into a labyrinth as a sacrifice to a creature called the Nimon. In truth, the Nimon is preparing the way for an invasion force of his own kind to overrun the planet, but the Doctor destroys their transporter device.
From “Shada”
Visiting Cambridge University, the Doctor bumps into a porter named Wilkin, who mentions the Doctor received an honorary degree there in the year 1960, and that he had also visited the school in 1964 and 1955. The Doctor says he was also there in 1958 in a different body, to Wilkin’s befuddlement. The Doctor and Romana have come in response to a signal from Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord who has been teaching at Cambridge University for the last 300 years. He had brought a book with him from Gallifrey for study which he hopes the Doctor will now return for him. However, the book has gone missing.
The Doctor: “On some nights, New York is as hot as Bangkok.” I’ve read that.
Romana: Saul Bellow.
The Doctor: “Once upon a time…” Read that. Ah! “And in the great days of Rassilon, five great principles were laid down. Can you remember what they were, my children?”
Romana: It’s just a Gallifreyan nursery book.
The Doctor: I know, I know.
Romana: I had it when I was a time tot.
The Doctor: Yes, it’s very good.
Professor Chronotis: Oh, that’s just a memento, not the right book at all. Where is it? Is this the one? No. Oh, dear. I know it’s here somewhere.
The Doctor: Professor, how many books did you bring back, for heaven’s sake?
Professor Chronotis: Just the odd two or seven. But there was only one that was in any way…
The Doctor: Dangerous?
Romana: What does it look like? What’s it called?
Professor Chronotis: The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey.
The Doctor: The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey?
Professor Chronotis: Yes. Red book, about five by seven.
The Doctor: Professor, how did you get that book out of the Panopticon Archives?
Professor Chronotis: Well, what I did, you see, was I just took it.
The Doctor: Took it?
Professor Chronotis: Yes. There’s no one interested in ancient history on Gallifrey any longer, and I thought that certain things would be safer with me.
The Doctor: And were they?
Professor Chronotis: Yes, in principle.
The Doctor: Excuse me, delicate matter, Professor, slightly. That book dates back to the days of Rassilon!
Professor Chronotis: Does it? Yes, indeed --
The Doctor: It’s one of the Artefacts!
Professor Chronotis: Is it indeed?
The Doctor: Professor, you know that perfectly well. Rassilon had powers and secrets that even we don’t fully understand! You’ve no idea what might have been hidden in that book!
Professor Chronotis: Well, there’s no chance of anyone else understanding it then, is there?
The Doctor: I only hope you’re right. But we’d better find it. Romana?
Romana: Yes?
The Doctor: Little red book!
Romana: Five by seven!
Professor Chronotis: Could be green…
The Doctor and Romana search for the book in vain.
The Doctor: There’s no sign of The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey.
Romana: Do you really think it’s important?
The Doctor: Of course, it’s one of the Artefacts!
Romana: Other than its historical value?
The Doctor: Yes! Each of the Artefacts was imbued with stupendous power. I mean, most of them have been lost by now, but the powers remain. And the rituals.
Romana: I just mouthed the words like everyone else.
The Doctor: What words?
Romana: At the Time Academy induction ceremony. You know, “I swear to protect the Ancient Law of Gallifrey with all my might and main and will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts.”
The Doctor: Yes, pompous lot. All words and no actions.
Romana: Well, that’s not true. What about Salyavin?
The Doctor: Salyavin? Oh, yes. He was a boyhood hero of mine.
Romana: Really, Doctor? A great criminal, your hero?
The Doctor: Well, a criminal, yes. But he had such style! Such flair! Such --
Romana: Panache?
The Doctor: Yes. A bit like me in that respect.
Romana: Did you ever meet him?
The Doctor: I certainly did not!
Romana: All right.
The Doctor: He was in prison before I was born!
Romana: Where?
The Doctor: Do you know, I can’t remember!
The Doctor finally finds the book in a graduate student’s laboratory, but loses it to an alien named Skagra. In the book is the key to finding the ancient Time Lord prison planet Shada, where Skagra hopes to find Salyavin, who had a unique ability to project his mind into other minds. However, Salyavin had escaped long ago and hid himself under the guise of Professor Chronotis. Wanting his escape to be undetected, Salyavin had used his powers to erase all memory of Shada from the Time Lords’ minds and stole the book as well. Once Skagra is defeated, the Doctor decides to let Salyavin live out the rest of his life in Cambridge, as he has long since reached his final regeneration.
Next Season
Tuesday
Monday
Doctor Who Notes 16
The stories in the sixteenth season of Doctor Who were all part of an overarching storyline in which the Doctor and his new assistant Romana searched throughout time and space for segments of a powerful artifact called the Key to Time. The story added to the cosmology of the series by introducing the Guardians, quasi-mystical beings whose power is superior to the Time Lords. Also, the presence of Romana, a “Time Lady” from the Doctor’s home planet, allowed some interesting details of the Doctor’s biography to be revealed.
From “The Ribos Operation”
The Doctor has just decided to take a long holiday when the TARDIS is seized by the White Guardian, who tells the Doctor he requires his assistance in tracking down the six segments of the legendary Key to Time so that they can be reassembled in order to use its power to restore the balance of the forces of the universe. The White Guardian warns the Doctor of the threat posed by the Black Guardian, who wants the Key to Time for his own evil purposes. The White Guardian also provides the Doctor with an assistant, a young Gallifreyan woman whom the Doctor nicknames Romana.
Romana: My name is Romanadvoratrelundar.
The Doctor: I’m so sorry about that. Is there anything we can do?
Romana: The President of the Supreme Council sent me. I was told to give you this.
The Doctor: What’s this?
Romana: According to my instructions, it’s the core to the Key to Time. Very exciting, isn’t it?
The Doctor: Yes, I suppose it must be, for someone as young and inexperienced as you are.
Romana: I may be inexperienced, but I did graduate from the Academy with a triple-first.
The Doctor: I suppose you think we should be impressed by that, too?
Romana: Well, it’s better than scraping through with 51% at the second attempt.
The Doctor: That information is confidential! That president-- I should have thrown him to the Sontarans when I had the chance!
When the core is linked to the main console, the TARDIS materializes on the planet Ribos, where they find the first segment disguised among the local crown jewels. Romana mentions that she is nearly 140 years old. She says the Doctor is 759, but he admits to only 756.
Lady Romanadvoratrelundar was apparently unaware of the involvement of the Guardians when seemingly chosen by the Lord President of the High Council of the Time Lords to assist the Doctor in reassembling the Key to Time. While possessing a great deal of book-learning, she is woefully inexperienced to the ways of the world. She tells the Doctor she was “willing to be impressed” until meeting him, implying the Doctor has something of a reputation among his people. She seems eager to prove herself, probably feeling greatly honored to leave Gallifrey for such an important mission, mentioning she might write her thesis on the Doctor’s psychological maladjustments. Her attitude changes as she experiences life outside the shelter of Time Lord society, though, and after going through her first regeneration, she loses interest in returning to Gallifrey at all, choosing instead to live in E-Space and follow the Doctor’s example of getting involved, using information stored in K-9’s memory banks to build a TARDIS of her very own.
From “The Pirate Planet”
Romana is reading the flight manual as the Doctor prepares to take them to the second segment of the Key to Time. She mentions that vintage vessels like the Type 40 were an optional course at the Academy that she didn’t bother with.
Romana: Doctor, what about the synchronic feedback checking circuit?
The Doctor: What about it?
Romana: Aren’t you going to set it?
The Doctor: No, no, no, I never bother about that. Complete waste of time.
Romana: According to the manual, it’s essential.
The Doctor: Listen, have you any idea how long I’ve been operating this TARDIS?
Romana: Five hundred and twenty-three years.
The Doctor: Right -- ! Is it really that long? My, how time flies.
Romana: Hasn’t it. And the multi-loop stabiliser?
The Doctor: What?
Romana: The multi-loop stabiliser. It says here, “On any capsule, it will be impossible to effect a smooth materialisation without first activating the multi-loop stabiliser.”
The Doctor: Absolute rubbish!
The TARDIS tries to materialize on the barren planet Calufrax, but instead lands on Zanak, which has itself materialized around Calufrax in order to plunder its mineralogical resources. The Doctor, Romana, and K-9 defeat the pirates only to learn that the entire planet of Calufrax is the second segment of the Key to Time.
If the Doctor is, in fact, 759 years old and has been operating the TARDIS for 523 years, then he must have been 236 years old when he and Susan first left Gallifrey. The two of them apparently led a fugitive life for an undetermined amount of time until the Doctor was able to hide the Hand of Omega on Earth. The Time Lords seemed to lose interest in him for a while after that.
From “The Stones of Blood”
The Doctor decides to tell Romana the whole story behind their mission after the White Guardian warns them again to beware of the Black Guardian. The Doctor believes the White Guardian assumed the form of the Lord President in order to contact Romana, so the Time Lords may not even know about their mission. The locator directs the TARDIS to Earth, where they find an ancient stone circle and get mixed up with druidic cultists and the alien fugitive from justice whom they worship. This alien had stolen a powerful object from her home planet and used it to set herself up as a goddess on ancient Earth, an object which proves to be the third segment of the Key to Time.
From “The Androids of Tara”
When the TARDIS materializes on the planet Tara, the Doctor decides he’s going to take a day off while Romana finds the fourth segment of the Key to Time. Romana says she has checked their records and found a suitable Taran outfit in the wardrobe room, which she seems to have organized. She soon finds the fourth segment, only to get mixed up in the political machinations of a local nobleman who wishes to use Romana’s remarkable resemblance to Princess Strella in his bid to seize the throne. The Doctor falls in with the rightful heir, who plans to use an android double to outwit his enemies.
From “The Power of Kroll”
The TARDIS materializes on the third moon of Delta Magna, a swampy world where tensions run high between the native population and a chemical refinery run by Earth colonists. The natives worship a giant squid called Kroll, which was a normal squid until swallowing the fifth segment of the Key to Time. While being stretched to death on a primitive rack, the Doctor vocalizes a high-pitched tone that shatters a window, allowing rain to fall on his bonds, rendering them elastic.
From “The Armageddon Factor”
As the TARDIS materializes on the planet Atrios, the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 worry that the Black Guardian may finally show his hand. The planet is engaged in nuclear war with the neighboring planet Zeos. The Doctor is taken prisoner by a mysterious figure calling himself the Shadow, who demands the Doctor surrender the five segments of the Key to Time locked inside the TARDIS.
The Shadow: I have waited so long, even another thousand years would be nothing for me. But you -- I have watched you in your jackdaw meanderings. I know you, and I know there is a want of patience in your nature.
The Shadow has created an automated war computer on Zeos to make sure the war continues. In order to stop the computer from blowing up both planets in a final gambit, the Doctor manufactures a temporary sixth segment and uses the Key to Time to create a three-second time loop. However, as the artificial segment degrades, the time loop stretches. The Doctor tracks down the Shadow, who reveals that he serves the Black Guardian. The Shadow imprisons the Doctor, where he meets a fellow prisoner, Drax, who is himself a “fallen” Time Lord and an old school chum of the Doctor’s, who’s been living as a sort of intergalactic handyman. Drax at first calls the Doctor by his academy nickname of “Theta Sigma.” Five years previously, Drax unwittingly helped the Shadow build the Zeon war computer before being taken prisoner.
The Doctor: Drax, I don’t want to pry, but where did you acquire this peculiar vocabulary?
Drax: Brixton, wudn’t it?
The Doctor: Brixton?
Drax: Brixton. London. Earth.
The Doctor: I’ve been to Earth.
Drax: Well, me transport broke down -- hyperbolics, as usual -- and I was investigatin’ certain possibilities with regard to replacements… I got done, didn’t I? Ten years I got. Well, I had to learn the lingo, didn’t I, to survive. Why, is there something funny about the way I talk?
The Doctor: No, no, it’s very colourful. Very demotic.
Drax: Well, thanks, Theet.
The Doctor: Doctor.
The Doctor, Romana, K-9, and Drax escape from the Shadow with all six segments, the sixth of which was Princess Astra of Atrios herself. A missile attack destroys the Shadow and his spaceship, his punishment for failing the Black Guardian being death. Drax sees opportunity rebuilding war damage on both planets and departs, leaving the Doctor and Romana to deal with the completed Key to Time. Disguised as the White Guardian, the Black Guardian tries to convince the Doctor to surrender the Key to Time, but the Doctor sees through the deception when the Guardian shows little concern for the fate of Princess Astra. The Doctor breaks the core rod and the six segments once again scatter throughout space and time. The Black Guardian vows to destroy the Doctor, necessitating that the TARDIS guidance system be fitted with a randomizer, which prevents even the Doctor from knowing where they’re headed next.
Next Season
From “The Ribos Operation”
The Doctor has just decided to take a long holiday when the TARDIS is seized by the White Guardian, who tells the Doctor he requires his assistance in tracking down the six segments of the legendary Key to Time so that they can be reassembled in order to use its power to restore the balance of the forces of the universe. The White Guardian warns the Doctor of the threat posed by the Black Guardian, who wants the Key to Time for his own evil purposes. The White Guardian also provides the Doctor with an assistant, a young Gallifreyan woman whom the Doctor nicknames Romana.
Romana: My name is Romanadvoratrelundar.
The Doctor: I’m so sorry about that. Is there anything we can do?
Romana: The President of the Supreme Council sent me. I was told to give you this.
The Doctor: What’s this?
Romana: According to my instructions, it’s the core to the Key to Time. Very exciting, isn’t it?
The Doctor: Yes, I suppose it must be, for someone as young and inexperienced as you are.
Romana: I may be inexperienced, but I did graduate from the Academy with a triple-first.
The Doctor: I suppose you think we should be impressed by that, too?
Romana: Well, it’s better than scraping through with 51% at the second attempt.
The Doctor: That information is confidential! That president-- I should have thrown him to the Sontarans when I had the chance!
When the core is linked to the main console, the TARDIS materializes on the planet Ribos, where they find the first segment disguised among the local crown jewels. Romana mentions that she is nearly 140 years old. She says the Doctor is 759, but he admits to only 756.
Lady Romanadvoratrelundar was apparently unaware of the involvement of the Guardians when seemingly chosen by the Lord President of the High Council of the Time Lords to assist the Doctor in reassembling the Key to Time. While possessing a great deal of book-learning, she is woefully inexperienced to the ways of the world. She tells the Doctor she was “willing to be impressed” until meeting him, implying the Doctor has something of a reputation among his people. She seems eager to prove herself, probably feeling greatly honored to leave Gallifrey for such an important mission, mentioning she might write her thesis on the Doctor’s psychological maladjustments. Her attitude changes as she experiences life outside the shelter of Time Lord society, though, and after going through her first regeneration, she loses interest in returning to Gallifrey at all, choosing instead to live in E-Space and follow the Doctor’s example of getting involved, using information stored in K-9’s memory banks to build a TARDIS of her very own.
From “The Pirate Planet”
Romana is reading the flight manual as the Doctor prepares to take them to the second segment of the Key to Time. She mentions that vintage vessels like the Type 40 were an optional course at the Academy that she didn’t bother with.
Romana: Doctor, what about the synchronic feedback checking circuit?
The Doctor: What about it?
Romana: Aren’t you going to set it?
The Doctor: No, no, no, I never bother about that. Complete waste of time.
Romana: According to the manual, it’s essential.
The Doctor: Listen, have you any idea how long I’ve been operating this TARDIS?
Romana: Five hundred and twenty-three years.
The Doctor: Right -- ! Is it really that long? My, how time flies.
Romana: Hasn’t it. And the multi-loop stabiliser?
The Doctor: What?
Romana: The multi-loop stabiliser. It says here, “On any capsule, it will be impossible to effect a smooth materialisation without first activating the multi-loop stabiliser.”
The Doctor: Absolute rubbish!
The TARDIS tries to materialize on the barren planet Calufrax, but instead lands on Zanak, which has itself materialized around Calufrax in order to plunder its mineralogical resources. The Doctor, Romana, and K-9 defeat the pirates only to learn that the entire planet of Calufrax is the second segment of the Key to Time.
If the Doctor is, in fact, 759 years old and has been operating the TARDIS for 523 years, then he must have been 236 years old when he and Susan first left Gallifrey. The two of them apparently led a fugitive life for an undetermined amount of time until the Doctor was able to hide the Hand of Omega on Earth. The Time Lords seemed to lose interest in him for a while after that.
From “The Stones of Blood”
The Doctor decides to tell Romana the whole story behind their mission after the White Guardian warns them again to beware of the Black Guardian. The Doctor believes the White Guardian assumed the form of the Lord President in order to contact Romana, so the Time Lords may not even know about their mission. The locator directs the TARDIS to Earth, where they find an ancient stone circle and get mixed up with druidic cultists and the alien fugitive from justice whom they worship. This alien had stolen a powerful object from her home planet and used it to set herself up as a goddess on ancient Earth, an object which proves to be the third segment of the Key to Time.
From “The Androids of Tara”
When the TARDIS materializes on the planet Tara, the Doctor decides he’s going to take a day off while Romana finds the fourth segment of the Key to Time. Romana says she has checked their records and found a suitable Taran outfit in the wardrobe room, which she seems to have organized. She soon finds the fourth segment, only to get mixed up in the political machinations of a local nobleman who wishes to use Romana’s remarkable resemblance to Princess Strella in his bid to seize the throne. The Doctor falls in with the rightful heir, who plans to use an android double to outwit his enemies.
From “The Power of Kroll”
The TARDIS materializes on the third moon of Delta Magna, a swampy world where tensions run high between the native population and a chemical refinery run by Earth colonists. The natives worship a giant squid called Kroll, which was a normal squid until swallowing the fifth segment of the Key to Time. While being stretched to death on a primitive rack, the Doctor vocalizes a high-pitched tone that shatters a window, allowing rain to fall on his bonds, rendering them elastic.
From “The Armageddon Factor”
As the TARDIS materializes on the planet Atrios, the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 worry that the Black Guardian may finally show his hand. The planet is engaged in nuclear war with the neighboring planet Zeos. The Doctor is taken prisoner by a mysterious figure calling himself the Shadow, who demands the Doctor surrender the five segments of the Key to Time locked inside the TARDIS.
The Shadow: I have waited so long, even another thousand years would be nothing for me. But you -- I have watched you in your jackdaw meanderings. I know you, and I know there is a want of patience in your nature.
The Shadow has created an automated war computer on Zeos to make sure the war continues. In order to stop the computer from blowing up both planets in a final gambit, the Doctor manufactures a temporary sixth segment and uses the Key to Time to create a three-second time loop. However, as the artificial segment degrades, the time loop stretches. The Doctor tracks down the Shadow, who reveals that he serves the Black Guardian. The Shadow imprisons the Doctor, where he meets a fellow prisoner, Drax, who is himself a “fallen” Time Lord and an old school chum of the Doctor’s, who’s been living as a sort of intergalactic handyman. Drax at first calls the Doctor by his academy nickname of “Theta Sigma.” Five years previously, Drax unwittingly helped the Shadow build the Zeon war computer before being taken prisoner.
The Doctor: Drax, I don’t want to pry, but where did you acquire this peculiar vocabulary?
Drax: Brixton, wudn’t it?
The Doctor: Brixton?
Drax: Brixton. London. Earth.
The Doctor: I’ve been to Earth.
Drax: Well, me transport broke down -- hyperbolics, as usual -- and I was investigatin’ certain possibilities with regard to replacements… I got done, didn’t I? Ten years I got. Well, I had to learn the lingo, didn’t I, to survive. Why, is there something funny about the way I talk?
The Doctor: No, no, it’s very colourful. Very demotic.
Drax: Well, thanks, Theet.
The Doctor: Doctor.
The Doctor, Romana, K-9, and Drax escape from the Shadow with all six segments, the sixth of which was Princess Astra of Atrios herself. A missile attack destroys the Shadow and his spaceship, his punishment for failing the Black Guardian being death. Drax sees opportunity rebuilding war damage on both planets and departs, leaving the Doctor and Romana to deal with the completed Key to Time. Disguised as the White Guardian, the Black Guardian tries to convince the Doctor to surrender the Key to Time, but the Doctor sees through the deception when the Guardian shows little concern for the fate of Princess Astra. The Doctor breaks the core rod and the six segments once again scatter throughout space and time. The Black Guardian vows to destroy the Doctor, necessitating that the TARDIS guidance system be fitted with a randomizer, which prevents even the Doctor from knowing where they’re headed next.
Next Season
Friday
Doctor Who Notes 15
In season fifteen of Doctor Who, the Doctor acquired a little robot dog, called K-9, that proved to be very popular with viewers. Concurrently, the show moved away from the “gothic horror” format to more light-hearted science-fiction, seeing also a return of the original design of the TARDIS console room. Over the course of the season, much is revealed about Time Lord history, culminating in a return to Gallifrey for the finale and another look at their society and politics. This story also provides the first extensive tour through various areas of the TARDIS beyond the console room.
From “Horror of Fang Rock”
Attempting to take Leela to Brighton Beach near the turn of the 20th century, the Doctor finds they have materialized instead on remote Fang Rock, where he sees a lighthouse without a light despite being shrouded in heavy fog. Investigating, they discover the lighthouse is under siege by a Rutan scout who crashed there while surveying Earth for its strategic use in their never-ending war against the Sontarans. Although they kill the alien and drive off the Rutan fleet, only the Doctor and Leela leave Fang Rock alive.
From “The Invisible Enemy”
The Doctor decides they should move back into the main console room.
Leela: We’ve never been in here before!
The Doctor: You’ve never been in here before.
Leela: What is it?
The Doctor: Number two control room. Been closed for redecoration. I don’t like the colour.
Leela: White isn’t a colour!
The Doctor: That’s the trouble with computers -- always thinking in black and white. No aquamarines, no blues, no imagination.
Leela: Have we stopped?
The Doctor: No, we haven’t stopped.
Leela: Have we materialized?
The Doctor: Yes.
Leela: Where?
The Doctor: Solar system, between Jupiter and Saturn. About 5000 AD. 5000 AD -- we’re still in the time of your ancestors.
Leela: Ancestors?
The Doctor: Yes, that was the year of the Great Breakout.
Leela: The great what?
The Doctor: When your forefathers went leapfrogging across the solar system on their way to the stars. The asteroid belt’s probably teeming with them now, new frontiersmen, pioneers, waiting to spread across the galaxy like a tidal wave… or a disease.
Leela: Why a disease? I thought you liked humanity.
The Doctor: Oh, I do, I do. Some of my best friends are humans. When they get together in great numbers, other life forms sometimes suffer.
The TARDIS picks up a distress call from a base on Titan. En route to the moon, the TARDIS passes through a space-borne organism that implants its nucleus within the Doctor, which then takes control of his body. Fighting for control, the Doctor moves the TARDIS to a hospital built inside an asteroid, where he meets a Professor Marius and his robot dog, K-9. With the Doctor’s help, Professor Marius creates temporary replications of the Doctor and Leela, who are then reduced to microscopic size and injected inside the Doctor’s brain to seek out the nucleus of the space virus.
The Doctor: Mine’s much more complex. Left and right sides, working in unison via these specialised neural ganglia, thus combining data storage and retrieval with logical inputs and the intuitive leap. And here -- are you listening to me?
Leela: Yes, Doctor.
The Doctor: That is a reflex link, whereby I can tune myself into the Time Lord intelligentsia, a thousand super-brains in one.
Leela: Why don’t you do it now?
The Doctor: What? Oh, well, I lost that particular faculty when they kicked me out -- oh, look!
Using the same process, the nucleus is enlarged to macroscopic size by the mind-controlled scientists. The TARDIS returns to Titan so the Doctor, Leela, and K-9 can stop it from breeding itself an army of conquest. Once the swarm is destroyed, Professor Marius gives K-9 to the Doctor as a parting gift.
K-9 was originally created at the Bi-Al Foundation located in the solar system’s asteroid belt at the end of the fiftieth century. After being given to the Doctor, K-9 served him well until he decided to remain on Gallifrey with Leela. However, the Doctor had built a second K-9 for himself, probably a vast improvement over the original, though the Doctor never stopped tinkering with his systems. When this K-9 was damaged at the dimensional gateway, he was forced to remain in E-Space with Romana, where they built a TARDIS of their own and traveled the other universe together. At some point, the Doctor built a third K-9, which he delivered to his old friend Sarah Jane Smith on Earth. After helping her defeat an evil cult in 1981, this K-9 was seen warning Sarah Jane of danger before she was kidnapped by Borusa via the time-scoop.
From “Image of the Fendahl”
When the TARDIS detects the operation of a sonic time scanner on Earth in 1977, the Doctor and Leela investigate. Coming to a remote manor house within a haunted woods, the Doctor discovers a woman momentarily beset by two large slug-like creatures.
Colby: What was it?
The Doctor: They looked like embryo fendahleen to me.
Colby: Embryo what?
The Doctor: Embryo fendahleen, a creature from my own mythology. It’s supposed to have perished when the fifth planet broke up. At least, so they say.
Colby: A creature from mythology? Do you know what you’re talking about?
The Doctor: Well, you saw it. If it survived twelve million years, its energy reserves must be enormous!
Colby: Twelve million? Why did you say twelve million?
The Doctor: What? Well, about twelve million. That’s when the fifth planet broke up.
From “Horror of Fang Rock”
Attempting to take Leela to Brighton Beach near the turn of the 20th century, the Doctor finds they have materialized instead on remote Fang Rock, where he sees a lighthouse without a light despite being shrouded in heavy fog. Investigating, they discover the lighthouse is under siege by a Rutan scout who crashed there while surveying Earth for its strategic use in their never-ending war against the Sontarans. Although they kill the alien and drive off the Rutan fleet, only the Doctor and Leela leave Fang Rock alive.
From “The Invisible Enemy”
The Doctor decides they should move back into the main console room.
Leela: We’ve never been in here before!
The Doctor: You’ve never been in here before.
Leela: What is it?
The Doctor: Number two control room. Been closed for redecoration. I don’t like the colour.
Leela: White isn’t a colour!
The Doctor: That’s the trouble with computers -- always thinking in black and white. No aquamarines, no blues, no imagination.
Leela: Have we stopped?
The Doctor: No, we haven’t stopped.
Leela: Have we materialized?
The Doctor: Yes.
Leela: Where?
The Doctor: Solar system, between Jupiter and Saturn. About 5000 AD. 5000 AD -- we’re still in the time of your ancestors.
Leela: Ancestors?
The Doctor: Yes, that was the year of the Great Breakout.
Leela: The great what?
The Doctor: When your forefathers went leapfrogging across the solar system on their way to the stars. The asteroid belt’s probably teeming with them now, new frontiersmen, pioneers, waiting to spread across the galaxy like a tidal wave… or a disease.
Leela: Why a disease? I thought you liked humanity.
The Doctor: Oh, I do, I do. Some of my best friends are humans. When they get together in great numbers, other life forms sometimes suffer.
The TARDIS picks up a distress call from a base on Titan. En route to the moon, the TARDIS passes through a space-borne organism that implants its nucleus within the Doctor, which then takes control of his body. Fighting for control, the Doctor moves the TARDIS to a hospital built inside an asteroid, where he meets a Professor Marius and his robot dog, K-9. With the Doctor’s help, Professor Marius creates temporary replications of the Doctor and Leela, who are then reduced to microscopic size and injected inside the Doctor’s brain to seek out the nucleus of the space virus.
The Doctor: Mine’s much more complex. Left and right sides, working in unison via these specialised neural ganglia, thus combining data storage and retrieval with logical inputs and the intuitive leap. And here -- are you listening to me?
Leela: Yes, Doctor.
The Doctor: That is a reflex link, whereby I can tune myself into the Time Lord intelligentsia, a thousand super-brains in one.
Leela: Why don’t you do it now?
The Doctor: What? Oh, well, I lost that particular faculty when they kicked me out -- oh, look!
Using the same process, the nucleus is enlarged to macroscopic size by the mind-controlled scientists. The TARDIS returns to Titan so the Doctor, Leela, and K-9 can stop it from breeding itself an army of conquest. Once the swarm is destroyed, Professor Marius gives K-9 to the Doctor as a parting gift.
K-9 was originally created at the Bi-Al Foundation located in the solar system’s asteroid belt at the end of the fiftieth century. After being given to the Doctor, K-9 served him well until he decided to remain on Gallifrey with Leela. However, the Doctor had built a second K-9 for himself, probably a vast improvement over the original, though the Doctor never stopped tinkering with his systems. When this K-9 was damaged at the dimensional gateway, he was forced to remain in E-Space with Romana, where they built a TARDIS of their own and traveled the other universe together. At some point, the Doctor built a third K-9, which he delivered to his old friend Sarah Jane Smith on Earth. After helping her defeat an evil cult in 1981, this K-9 was seen warning Sarah Jane of danger before she was kidnapped by Borusa via the time-scoop.
From “Image of the Fendahl”
When the TARDIS detects the operation of a sonic time scanner on Earth in 1977, the Doctor and Leela investigate. Coming to a remote manor house within a haunted woods, the Doctor discovers a woman momentarily beset by two large slug-like creatures.
Colby: What was it?
The Doctor: They looked like embryo fendahleen to me.
Colby: Embryo what?
The Doctor: Embryo fendahleen, a creature from my own mythology. It’s supposed to have perished when the fifth planet broke up. At least, so they say.
Colby: A creature from mythology? Do you know what you’re talking about?
The Doctor: Well, you saw it. If it survived twelve million years, its energy reserves must be enormous!
Colby: Twelve million? Why did you say twelve million?
The Doctor: What? Well, about twelve million. That’s when the fifth planet broke up.
* * *
The Doctor: Well, telepathy and precognition are normal in anyone whose childhood was spent near a time fissure like the one in the wood.
Jack: He’s as bad as she is. What’s a time fissure?
The Doctor: A weakness in the fabric of space and time. Every haunted place has one, doesn’t it? That’s why they’re haunted, it’s a time distortion.
The Doctor discovers that the fifth planet, the Fendahl’s place of origin, has been placed within a time loop, a feat possible only for the Time Lords. The Fendahl is a creature that consumes the life force, and appears in the mythologies of both Earth and Gallifrey as a gestalt creature with twelve aspects around a focal point.
The Doctor: In other words, the Fendahl. Then the Time Lords decided to destroy the entire planet and hid the fact from posterity. They’re not supposed to do that sort of thing, you know.
The focal point of the Fendahl’s power is an ancient human skull, which the Doctor steals away as the creature tries to reform. He decides to drop the skull into a supernova, thereby destroying it.
From “The Sun Makers”
When the main console’s central column jams, the TARDIS materializes atop and Earth colony on Pluto in the far distant future, where the Doctor, Leela, and K-9 get mixed up in toppling the oppressive government. The Doctor once again proves himself an accomplished hypnotist and safecracker. The colony is run as a ruthless business by a Usurian conglomerate. After fomenting a successful revolution, the Doctor encourages the workers to resettle the Earth.
From “Underworld”
To escape from a coalescing nebula on the edge of the universe, the TARDIS materializes aboard an ancient Minyon patrol ship. The sound the TARDIS makes is identified by the ship’s bridge crew as a relative dimension stabilizer in materialization phase. The Doctor is intrigued to discover the ship is of Minyon origin, since that world was destroyed a hundred thousand years ago on the other side of the universe.
The Doctor: It’s what happened on Minyos that led to our policy of non-intervention.
Leela: Oh?
The Doctor: Yes. Well, the Minyons thought of us as gods, you see, which was all very flattering and we were new at space-time exploration, so we thought we could help. Gave them medical and scientific aid, better communications, better weapons…
Leela: What happened?
The Doctor: Kicked us out at gunpoint. Then they went to war with each other, learned how to split the atom, discovered the toothbrush, and finally split the planet.
Leela: So this ship must have got away before the planet was destroyed.
The Doctor: Yes.
Leela: But that was a hundred thousand years ago! Nobody lives for a hundred thousand years… do they?
The crew has been artificially regenerating for a hundred millennia while they search for another ship, the P-7E, which contained the genetic material necessary to populate a new world after the destruction of Minyos. They finally find the ship at the core of a new planet formed within the nebula. Over the millennia, the P-7E’s onboard computer has developed megalomania and has enslaved the descendants of the original crew. The Doctor once again practices his own explosive brand of social engineering. Rescuing the slaves, the ship continues on to settle Minyos II.
From “The Invasion of Time”
After landing on a Vardan spacecraft, the Doctor conspires with the aliens to invade Gallifrey. When the approach of the TARDIS to its home planet is detected, Castellan Kelner decides to put the planetary defenses on amber alert. As soon as the TARDIS materializes in the Panopticon, the Doctor and Leela are immediately arrested by Commander Andred, head of the Chancellery Guard. The Doctor’s behavior is unusually erratic. He bursts into the office of Chancellor Borusa and makes an announcement.
The Doctor: I am here to claim my legal right! I claim the inheritance of Rassilon! I claim the titles, honour, duty, and obedience of all colleges! I claim the Presidency of the Council of Time Lords!
The Doctor and Borusa then confer privately within the chancellor’s office.
The Doctor: Borusa, before you go, another lesson.
Borusa: On what particular subject?
The Doctor: The Constitution.
Borusa: You had that at your fingertips the last time we met.
The Doctor: Yes, and if I hadn’t, you would have killed me.
Borusa: Not I. The then chancellor.
The Doctor: Oh, yes. Did you just assume his office?
Borusa: The Council ratified my appointment.
The Doctor: Without a president, the Council can ratify nothing!
Borusa: There was no president! And the president-elect was… elsewhere.
The Doctor: Yes, but my point is -- BORUSA! You haven’t been given leave to depart yet!
Borusa: And until you have been confirmed and inducted as president, I do not need your leave to do anything.
The Doctor: The ceremony must take place at once.
Borusa: As soon as poss --
The Doctor: AT ONCE!
The Doctor moves into the President’s quarters, but demands that lead panels be installed on the walls, floor, ceiling, and doors. Then he and Borusa go over the details of the induction ceremony.
Borusa: The Matrix is the sum total. Everything. All the information that has ever been stored, all the information that can be stored. The imprints of personalities of hundreds of Time Lords and their presidents -- their elected presidents -- that will become available to you. It will become a part of you as you become a part of it.
The Doctor: Yes, that’s what I thought.
Borusa: But you know this already. Once before you have entered into the Amplified Panatropic Computer.
The Doctor: Yes. I didn’t much care for it, either.
Borusa: The APC net is only a small part of the Matrix.
The induction ceremony proceeds with much pomp and circumstance as the Doctor is presented with the Sash of Rassilon and the Rod of Rassilon, and is charged with seeking the Great Key of Rassilon. However, as soon as he is linked to the Matrix via a coronet, the Doctor collapses into a catatonic state. The Surgeon General sees that the Doctor is removed to the chancellery. Immediately upon regaining consciousness, the Doctor orders that Leela be expelled from the Citadel, but she escapes from the guards.
Borusa: What exactly are you playing at… Excellency?
The Doctor: Playing at, Lord Chancellor?
Borusa: You know very well what I mean.
The Doctor: I’d like a little more respect from you, if you don’t mind.
Borusa: I thought that was a quality you didn’t admire.
The Doctor: Ah, but that was before -- ! I would have thought you of all people knew me better than that.
Borusa: Well, you could never deceive me when you were my student at the Academy. You haven’t changed and neither have I. But this is rather more than a student prank, isn’t it?
The Doctor: Believe me, Lord Borusa, I’ve never been more serious in any of my lives. While Leela remains free in the Citadel, we are in danger.
Borusa: Isn’t that a little melodramatic, even for your vivid imagination?
The Doctor: No!
Borusa has the Doctor locked in the office, but he escapes through a back door after deducing that the voice-print code phrase is “There’s nothing more useless than a lock with a voice-print.” The Doctor retreats into the TARDIS to confer with K-9, telling the robot he’s discovered the security control room is directly under the Panopticon area 3-0. Outside, Commander Andred mentions that the old Type 40 time capsules have a complex trimonic locking device. Leela, meanwhile, stumbles into Space Traffic Control, where she meets a rather bored young woman named Rodan.
Rodan: There’s a force-field between you and me. Between me and everyone. Don’t you know this is one of the highest security-rated rooms in the Citadel?
Leela: I did not know.
Rodan: You must be that alien everyone’s looking for.
Leela: I am Leela.
Rodan: I am called Rodan. And please put that thing away, you could hurt yourself.
Leela: The Doctor’s always saying…. Why do you not tell them I am here?
Rodan: Why bother? That’s their affair.
Leela: That’s whose affair?
Rodan: The guards and the Time Lords. All the boring people. Do you know I’ve passed the seventh grade and I’m nothing more than a glorified traffic guard?
Leela: Then you are a guard!
Rodan: Do stop cavorting about like that. It’s really so undignified.
Rodan detects a space armada approaching, but assures Leela that nothing can penetrate the transduction barrier, which the Doctor sends K-9 to disable. The Doctor calls a meeting of the High Council and introduces the Vardan invaders, who are energy-based beings broadcasting themselves to Gallifrey. The Doctor orders the Time Lords to submit. Then the Doctor and Borusa retire to the newly redecorated office of the president, where the lead paneling shields them from the Vardan’s telepathy, allowing the Doctor to finally reveal his true intentions. His erratic behavior was a ploy to shield his mind from the Vardans by filling it with non-sequiturs. Rodan leaves her post to join Leela as they escape into the wilderness outside the Citadel, just as the Doctor intended. They are intercepted by a band of back-to-nature outcasts, where Rodan realizes she’s gotten in over her head. Then, the Doctor and K-9 retreat again to the TARDIS to try to trace the Vardans’ planet of origin. They are joined there by Commander Andred.
The Doctor: K-9, I’m going to have to play along with them again.
Andred: What are you going to do?
The Doctor: I’m going to dismantle the force-field around Gallifrey.
Andred: What?
The Doctor: It’s the only was to convince them that we’re really co-operating.
Andred: But that could blow us all to pieces!
The Doctor: Yes.
Andred: You can’t do that!
The Doctor: I can’t, but Rassilon can.
Andred: Yes -- Rassilon’s dead!
The Doctor: Yes.
Andred: Aeons ago.
The Doctor: That’s right. But his mind lives on in the APC net. I’m part of that net now. Rassilon built the force-field, maybe he can dismantle it.
The Doctor successfully opens a rift in the quantum force field, allowing the Vardans to materialize in their natural humanoid shape. Meanwhile, Leela organizes the tribalists into a raiding party. With the Vardans fully materialized, K-9 is able to lock onto the precise coordinates of their home planet and jam the signal, thereby repulsing the invasion. The celebration is short-lived, however, when they discover the Vardans were merely pawns of the Sontarans, who have landed an army of conquest on Gallifrey. The Doctor convinces Borusa to reveal the location of the Great Key of Rassilon.
The Doctor: Rassilon was a wily old bird. No president without the Great Key can have absolute power, correct? So to protect the Time Lords from dictatorship, he gave the Key into the hands of the chancellor.
Borusa: None of this is in the Matrix.
The Doctor: I know, I’ve been there, you haven’t. There’s no record in the Matrix of any president knowing the whereabouts of the Great Key. So who does? Not the Castellan, he’s just a jumped-up guard. But who guards the guards?
Borusa: The chancellor.
The Doctor: Yes. And I’ll kill you before I let that key fall into the hands of the Sontarans.
Borusa: That will not be necessary. You are the first president since Rassilon to hold the Great Key.
The Doctor, Leela, K-9, Borusa, Andred, and Rodan find sanctuary within the TARDIS where Rodan is able to close the rift in the quantum force-field. However, with the Castellan’s help, the Sontaran shock troops are able to board the TARDIS. The Doctor and the others attempt to lose them in the labyrinthine corridors, storage compartments, indoor gardens, workshops, stairwells, a swimming pool complex, sickbay, holographic art gallery, et cetera. Under hypnosis and following K-9’s instructions, Rodan constructs a de-mat gun powered by the Great Key.
The Doctor: Is that why the Key remained hidden for so long? I could rule the universe with this, Chancellor.
Borusa: Is that what you want? Destroy that gun. Destroy all knowledge of it! It’ll throw us back to the darkest age!
The Doctor takes the de-mat gun and returns to the Panopticon, where he finds the Sontaran commander about to detonate a grenade to destroy the Matrix, Gallifrey, the Time Lords, even the galaxy itself in order to achieve victory. The grenade goes off as the Doctor fires the de-mat gun, which dematerializes the explosion as it unfolds, the Sontaran, and finally the gun itself. The shock causes the Doctor to lose his memory of recent events. Gallifrey safe at last, the Doctor readies to leave, only to find Leela intent on staying, having fallen in love with Andred. K-9 also elects to remain on Gallifrey with Leela. After dematerializing, the Doctor brings into the control room a large cardboard box labeled “K9 M II.”
It is uncertain what sort of life Leela would make for herself on Gallifrey, though she would probably spend a great deal of time outside the Citadel with the tribalists, probably joined by Andred, since he is apparently later replaced by Commander Maxil. Despite his collusion with both the Vardans and the Sontarans, Castellan Kelner is allowed to retain his position, perhaps because, as the Doctor said, every oligarchy gets the castellan it deserves. He is eventually slain in Borusa’s final grab at ultimate power. For her actions above and beyond the call of duty, Rodan was almost certainly promoted out of her duties at Space Traffic Control. Borusa is apparently inducted as Lord President immediately after these events, and will regenerate before meeting the Doctor again. The office of chancellor is then filled by Thalia. What eventually becomes of the original K-9 is unknown.
Next Season
Jack: He’s as bad as she is. What’s a time fissure?
The Doctor: A weakness in the fabric of space and time. Every haunted place has one, doesn’t it? That’s why they’re haunted, it’s a time distortion.
The Doctor discovers that the fifth planet, the Fendahl’s place of origin, has been placed within a time loop, a feat possible only for the Time Lords. The Fendahl is a creature that consumes the life force, and appears in the mythologies of both Earth and Gallifrey as a gestalt creature with twelve aspects around a focal point.
The Doctor: In other words, the Fendahl. Then the Time Lords decided to destroy the entire planet and hid the fact from posterity. They’re not supposed to do that sort of thing, you know.
The focal point of the Fendahl’s power is an ancient human skull, which the Doctor steals away as the creature tries to reform. He decides to drop the skull into a supernova, thereby destroying it.
From “The Sun Makers”
When the main console’s central column jams, the TARDIS materializes atop and Earth colony on Pluto in the far distant future, where the Doctor, Leela, and K-9 get mixed up in toppling the oppressive government. The Doctor once again proves himself an accomplished hypnotist and safecracker. The colony is run as a ruthless business by a Usurian conglomerate. After fomenting a successful revolution, the Doctor encourages the workers to resettle the Earth.
From “Underworld”
To escape from a coalescing nebula on the edge of the universe, the TARDIS materializes aboard an ancient Minyon patrol ship. The sound the TARDIS makes is identified by the ship’s bridge crew as a relative dimension stabilizer in materialization phase. The Doctor is intrigued to discover the ship is of Minyon origin, since that world was destroyed a hundred thousand years ago on the other side of the universe.
The Doctor: It’s what happened on Minyos that led to our policy of non-intervention.
Leela: Oh?
The Doctor: Yes. Well, the Minyons thought of us as gods, you see, which was all very flattering and we were new at space-time exploration, so we thought we could help. Gave them medical and scientific aid, better communications, better weapons…
Leela: What happened?
The Doctor: Kicked us out at gunpoint. Then they went to war with each other, learned how to split the atom, discovered the toothbrush, and finally split the planet.
Leela: So this ship must have got away before the planet was destroyed.
The Doctor: Yes.
Leela: But that was a hundred thousand years ago! Nobody lives for a hundred thousand years… do they?
The crew has been artificially regenerating for a hundred millennia while they search for another ship, the P-7E, which contained the genetic material necessary to populate a new world after the destruction of Minyos. They finally find the ship at the core of a new planet formed within the nebula. Over the millennia, the P-7E’s onboard computer has developed megalomania and has enslaved the descendants of the original crew. The Doctor once again practices his own explosive brand of social engineering. Rescuing the slaves, the ship continues on to settle Minyos II.
From “The Invasion of Time”
After landing on a Vardan spacecraft, the Doctor conspires with the aliens to invade Gallifrey. When the approach of the TARDIS to its home planet is detected, Castellan Kelner decides to put the planetary defenses on amber alert. As soon as the TARDIS materializes in the Panopticon, the Doctor and Leela are immediately arrested by Commander Andred, head of the Chancellery Guard. The Doctor’s behavior is unusually erratic. He bursts into the office of Chancellor Borusa and makes an announcement.
The Doctor: I am here to claim my legal right! I claim the inheritance of Rassilon! I claim the titles, honour, duty, and obedience of all colleges! I claim the Presidency of the Council of Time Lords!
The Doctor and Borusa then confer privately within the chancellor’s office.
The Doctor: Borusa, before you go, another lesson.
Borusa: On what particular subject?
The Doctor: The Constitution.
Borusa: You had that at your fingertips the last time we met.
The Doctor: Yes, and if I hadn’t, you would have killed me.
Borusa: Not I. The then chancellor.
The Doctor: Oh, yes. Did you just assume his office?
Borusa: The Council ratified my appointment.
The Doctor: Without a president, the Council can ratify nothing!
Borusa: There was no president! And the president-elect was… elsewhere.
The Doctor: Yes, but my point is -- BORUSA! You haven’t been given leave to depart yet!
Borusa: And until you have been confirmed and inducted as president, I do not need your leave to do anything.
The Doctor: The ceremony must take place at once.
Borusa: As soon as poss --
The Doctor: AT ONCE!
The Doctor moves into the President’s quarters, but demands that lead panels be installed on the walls, floor, ceiling, and doors. Then he and Borusa go over the details of the induction ceremony.
Borusa: The Matrix is the sum total. Everything. All the information that has ever been stored, all the information that can be stored. The imprints of personalities of hundreds of Time Lords and their presidents -- their elected presidents -- that will become available to you. It will become a part of you as you become a part of it.
The Doctor: Yes, that’s what I thought.
Borusa: But you know this already. Once before you have entered into the Amplified Panatropic Computer.
The Doctor: Yes. I didn’t much care for it, either.
Borusa: The APC net is only a small part of the Matrix.
The induction ceremony proceeds with much pomp and circumstance as the Doctor is presented with the Sash of Rassilon and the Rod of Rassilon, and is charged with seeking the Great Key of Rassilon. However, as soon as he is linked to the Matrix via a coronet, the Doctor collapses into a catatonic state. The Surgeon General sees that the Doctor is removed to the chancellery. Immediately upon regaining consciousness, the Doctor orders that Leela be expelled from the Citadel, but she escapes from the guards.
Borusa: What exactly are you playing at… Excellency?
The Doctor: Playing at, Lord Chancellor?
Borusa: You know very well what I mean.
The Doctor: I’d like a little more respect from you, if you don’t mind.
Borusa: I thought that was a quality you didn’t admire.
The Doctor: Ah, but that was before -- ! I would have thought you of all people knew me better than that.
Borusa: Well, you could never deceive me when you were my student at the Academy. You haven’t changed and neither have I. But this is rather more than a student prank, isn’t it?
The Doctor: Believe me, Lord Borusa, I’ve never been more serious in any of my lives. While Leela remains free in the Citadel, we are in danger.
Borusa: Isn’t that a little melodramatic, even for your vivid imagination?
The Doctor: No!
Borusa has the Doctor locked in the office, but he escapes through a back door after deducing that the voice-print code phrase is “There’s nothing more useless than a lock with a voice-print.” The Doctor retreats into the TARDIS to confer with K-9, telling the robot he’s discovered the security control room is directly under the Panopticon area 3-0. Outside, Commander Andred mentions that the old Type 40 time capsules have a complex trimonic locking device. Leela, meanwhile, stumbles into Space Traffic Control, where she meets a rather bored young woman named Rodan.
Rodan: There’s a force-field between you and me. Between me and everyone. Don’t you know this is one of the highest security-rated rooms in the Citadel?
Leela: I did not know.
Rodan: You must be that alien everyone’s looking for.
Leela: I am Leela.
Rodan: I am called Rodan. And please put that thing away, you could hurt yourself.
Leela: The Doctor’s always saying…. Why do you not tell them I am here?
Rodan: Why bother? That’s their affair.
Leela: That’s whose affair?
Rodan: The guards and the Time Lords. All the boring people. Do you know I’ve passed the seventh grade and I’m nothing more than a glorified traffic guard?
Leela: Then you are a guard!
Rodan: Do stop cavorting about like that. It’s really so undignified.
Rodan detects a space armada approaching, but assures Leela that nothing can penetrate the transduction barrier, which the Doctor sends K-9 to disable. The Doctor calls a meeting of the High Council and introduces the Vardan invaders, who are energy-based beings broadcasting themselves to Gallifrey. The Doctor orders the Time Lords to submit. Then the Doctor and Borusa retire to the newly redecorated office of the president, where the lead paneling shields them from the Vardan’s telepathy, allowing the Doctor to finally reveal his true intentions. His erratic behavior was a ploy to shield his mind from the Vardans by filling it with non-sequiturs. Rodan leaves her post to join Leela as they escape into the wilderness outside the Citadel, just as the Doctor intended. They are intercepted by a band of back-to-nature outcasts, where Rodan realizes she’s gotten in over her head. Then, the Doctor and K-9 retreat again to the TARDIS to try to trace the Vardans’ planet of origin. They are joined there by Commander Andred.
The Doctor: K-9, I’m going to have to play along with them again.
Andred: What are you going to do?
The Doctor: I’m going to dismantle the force-field around Gallifrey.
Andred: What?
The Doctor: It’s the only was to convince them that we’re really co-operating.
Andred: But that could blow us all to pieces!
The Doctor: Yes.
Andred: You can’t do that!
The Doctor: I can’t, but Rassilon can.
Andred: Yes -- Rassilon’s dead!
The Doctor: Yes.
Andred: Aeons ago.
The Doctor: That’s right. But his mind lives on in the APC net. I’m part of that net now. Rassilon built the force-field, maybe he can dismantle it.
The Doctor successfully opens a rift in the quantum force field, allowing the Vardans to materialize in their natural humanoid shape. Meanwhile, Leela organizes the tribalists into a raiding party. With the Vardans fully materialized, K-9 is able to lock onto the precise coordinates of their home planet and jam the signal, thereby repulsing the invasion. The celebration is short-lived, however, when they discover the Vardans were merely pawns of the Sontarans, who have landed an army of conquest on Gallifrey. The Doctor convinces Borusa to reveal the location of the Great Key of Rassilon.
The Doctor: Rassilon was a wily old bird. No president without the Great Key can have absolute power, correct? So to protect the Time Lords from dictatorship, he gave the Key into the hands of the chancellor.
Borusa: None of this is in the Matrix.
The Doctor: I know, I’ve been there, you haven’t. There’s no record in the Matrix of any president knowing the whereabouts of the Great Key. So who does? Not the Castellan, he’s just a jumped-up guard. But who guards the guards?
Borusa: The chancellor.
The Doctor: Yes. And I’ll kill you before I let that key fall into the hands of the Sontarans.
Borusa: That will not be necessary. You are the first president since Rassilon to hold the Great Key.
The Doctor, Leela, K-9, Borusa, Andred, and Rodan find sanctuary within the TARDIS where Rodan is able to close the rift in the quantum force-field. However, with the Castellan’s help, the Sontaran shock troops are able to board the TARDIS. The Doctor and the others attempt to lose them in the labyrinthine corridors, storage compartments, indoor gardens, workshops, stairwells, a swimming pool complex, sickbay, holographic art gallery, et cetera. Under hypnosis and following K-9’s instructions, Rodan constructs a de-mat gun powered by the Great Key.
The Doctor: Is that why the Key remained hidden for so long? I could rule the universe with this, Chancellor.
Borusa: Is that what you want? Destroy that gun. Destroy all knowledge of it! It’ll throw us back to the darkest age!
The Doctor takes the de-mat gun and returns to the Panopticon, where he finds the Sontaran commander about to detonate a grenade to destroy the Matrix, Gallifrey, the Time Lords, even the galaxy itself in order to achieve victory. The grenade goes off as the Doctor fires the de-mat gun, which dematerializes the explosion as it unfolds, the Sontaran, and finally the gun itself. The shock causes the Doctor to lose his memory of recent events. Gallifrey safe at last, the Doctor readies to leave, only to find Leela intent on staying, having fallen in love with Andred. K-9 also elects to remain on Gallifrey with Leela. After dematerializing, the Doctor brings into the control room a large cardboard box labeled “K9 M II.”
It is uncertain what sort of life Leela would make for herself on Gallifrey, though she would probably spend a great deal of time outside the Citadel with the tribalists, probably joined by Andred, since he is apparently later replaced by Commander Maxil. Despite his collusion with both the Vardans and the Sontarans, Castellan Kelner is allowed to retain his position, perhaps because, as the Doctor said, every oligarchy gets the castellan it deserves. He is eventually slain in Borusa’s final grab at ultimate power. For her actions above and beyond the call of duty, Rodan was almost certainly promoted out of her duties at Space Traffic Control. Borusa is apparently inducted as Lord President immediately after these events, and will regenerate before meeting the Doctor again. The office of chancellor is then filled by Thalia. What eventually becomes of the original K-9 is unknown.
Next Season
Thursday
Doctor Who Notes 14
Season fourteen of Doctor Who saw the departure of Sarah Jane Smith and the introduction of new companion Leela, a scantily-clad warrior woman from a savage tribe, as the producers continued to experiment with a “gothic horror” style. In between was the first story to really explore the Doctor’s own society on his home planet of Gallifrey, and which also reintroduced the Master as a desiccated corpse-like monster. A great deal of information on Time Lord history, as well as the Doctor’s own past, was revealed in the process. The season also introduced a radical redesign of the TARDIS control room to mirror the new gothic atmosphere.
From “The Masque of Mandragora”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane are wandering the inner corridors of the TARDIS when Sarah Jane opens the door to the dark-paneled secondary control room.
Sarah Jane: Oh, this looks good!
The Doctor: What? Oh, yes. Yes, it is good. Do you know, this is the second control room. You know, I can run the TARDIS just as easily from here as I could from the old one. Come to think of it, this was the old one.
Sarah Jane: That looks like a shaving mirror.
The Doctor: Yes, it is.
The Doctor powers up the control room in time to discover they are about to be sucked into the Mandragora Helix, an energy vortex in space within which lives a race of non-corporeal sentient beings. The TARDIS materializes briefly at the center of the helix, where the ship is penetrated by some helix energy. They next thing they know, they have rematerialized in late 15th century Italy, where the helix energy leaves the ship and makes contact with a cult that worships the pagan god Demnos. Escaping from the wicked count’s men, the Doctor mentions that he learned swordfighting from a captain in Cleopatra’s bodyguard. They are soon all recaptured and locked in the dungeon.
Sarah Jane: I really tried to kill you?
The Doctor: You were only doing what you were ordered, what I expected.
Sarah Jane: But how did you know I’d been drugged?
The Doctor: Well, I’ve taken you to some strange places before and you’ve never asked how you understood the local language. It’s a Time Lord’s gift I allow you to share. But tonight when you asked how you understood Italian, I realised your mind had been taken over.
The cult members have been absorbing the Mandragora energy, which they use to besiege the palace, in which is a gathering of all the most learned men of the day along with their royal patrons, including the Doctor’s friend Leonardo da Vinci. The Mandragora intelligence plans to cut short the Renaissance to prevent the human race from ever achieving space travel and infringing on their territory. The Doctor drains off the energy and foils the evil plot, but says the Mandragora will be ready to try again by the end of the 20th century.
From “The Hand of Fear”
The TARDIS accidentally materializes in a British quarry just as they are blasting. The Doctor and Sarah Jane are buried in the rubble, where she discovers a 150 million year old silicon-based hand. At the local hospital, Sarah Jane’s mind is taken over by the consciousness of Eldrad, the hand’s owner, who wants to regenerate his body by absorbing massive amounts of radiation. They travel to a nearby nuclear power plant, where the Doctor frees her from the alien mind-control. To penetrate her amnesia, the Doctor easily hypnotizes Sarah Jane. Eldrad grows a new body based on Sarah Jane’s and demonstrates further telepathic powers by reading the Doctor’s mind.
Eldrad: As a Time Lord, you are pledged to uphold the laws of time and to prevent alien aggression!
The Doctor: Only when such aggression is deemed to threaten the indigenous population, I think that’s how it goes.
Sarah Jane is a bit miffed when the Doctor agrees to take Eldrad back to his home planet of Kastria aboard the TARDIS. Eldrad sets the coordinates, but the ride is too rough for the Doctor’s comfort.
The Doctor: All we want is your co-operation. If you’ve mis-set those co-ordinates, symbolic resonance will occur in the trachoid time crystal, and if that happens, there’s no chance of us landing anywhere, ever!
Upon reaching Kastria, the Doctor and Sarah Jane learn Eldrad’s true nature once he assumes his true form. Learning that his world is long dead, Eldrad decides to conquer the Earth, but the Doctor and Sarah Jane cause him to fall into a bottomless pit.
Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor receives a telepathic summons back to Gallifrey -- alone. He resets the coordinates for South Croyden, Sarah Jane’s home town. Upon materialization, they say their goodbyes and Sarah Jane disembarks, presumably to resume her career as a journalist. Some years later, Sarah Jane receives a gift from the Doctor, a robot dog called K-9 that helps her defeat a ring of rural devil worshippers. Sarah Jane does make it to Gallifrey eventually, kidnapped by Lord Borusa, where she helps the third Doctor reach the tomb of Rassilon and meets three of the Doctor’s other incarnations. She undoubtedly went on to have a successful career as a journalist and writer, perhaps of “science fiction.”
From “The Deadly Assassin”
En route to Gallifrey, the Doctor is overcome by a premonition of a presidential assassination. When the TARDIS materializes within the communications tower for the capitol on Gallifrey, Castellan Spandrell checks the exitonic computer bank and discovers that the old Type 40 is stolen property and orders the occupant arrested. During the Doctor’s escape, a guard is killed by a staser blast fired by a shadowy figure, for which the Doctor is blamed. Coordinator Engin informs the Castellan that the Doctor’s exile to Earth was remitted by the C.I.A. -- the Celestial Intervention Agency -- arousing the Castellan’s suspicions that the Doctor is a secret agent. The Doctor learns that the Time Lords are convening for the President of the High Council to step down and to announce his successor. It is, therefore, a time of political instability. The guards find a note from the Doctor addressed to the Castellan.
Castellan: And he signed it with the Pyrdonian seal!
Engin: Apparently he is or was at one time a member of that noble chapter.
Castellan: How can you tell?
Engin: Well, the bio-data extracts of Time Lords are colour-coded according to chapter.
Castellan: I didn’t know that.
Engin: No? Well, your duties usually involve you with more plebeian classes, don’t they, Castellan?
Castellan: A Pyrdonian renegade, eh? I have to refer this to Chancellor Goth.
The Doctor sneaks back into the TARDIS, where he patches into a local news broadcast.
Roncible: Around me in the high galleries of the Panopticon, already the Time Lords are gathering, donning seldom-worn robes with their colourful collar insignia: scarlet and orange for the Pyrdonians, the green of the Arcalians, the heliotrope of the Patraxes, and so on…. In a moment, I hope to talk to Cardinal Borusa, the leader of the Pyrdonian chapter, the chapter that has produced more Time Lord presidents than all other chapters together…
Borusa recognizes Roncible “the fatuous,” as the Doctor calls him, as a former student of his at Pyrdon Academy. Roncible congratulates Borusa on his elevation to cardinal. Chancellor Goth orders the TARDIS transducted to a museum within the Capitol, where the Doctor finds some robes to disguise himself.
Entering the Panopticon as the ceremony begins, the Doctor races to the balcony to prevent the assassination, only to apparently take up the gun and murder the President himself. The Doctor is arrested and Chancellor Goth declares a constitutional crisis, as the president died without naming his successor. Goth wants a speedy trial, but the Castellan is unconvinced that the Doctor hasn’t been framed. To buy some time to clear his name, the Doctor invokes Article XVII of the Constitution and offers himself as a candidate for the presidency. The Doctor then demonstrates to the Castellan that he was on the balcony trying to stun the true assassin, a member of the High Council who had drawn a staser in the crowd, but misaligned sights caused the shot to go awry and strike the wall.
During the investigation, they discover a technician’s body, a victim of the tissue-compression eliminator. The Doctor realizes that he is being framed by none other than his old arch-enemy the Master, who is making his final challenge. In his secret lair, the Master reveals to his co-conspirator that it is his burning hatred for the Doctor and the Time Lords that allows him to endure the pain of his ravaged state, propelled by his need to see the Doctor die in shame and dishonor and the Time Lords destroyed before he dies.
In the computer center, Coordinator Engin discovers there is no record in the Time Lord databanks of the Master, as the Doctor suspected. Although the Castellan and Engin are dubious, the Doctor is convinced the Master destroyed all record of his own existence the first chance he got.
The Doctor: You think this stuff is sophisticated? There are worlds out there where this kind of equipment would be considered prehistoric junk!
Castellan: What is the Master like in mathematics?
The Doctor: He’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant! He’s almost up to my standard. What’s that?
Engin: The APC control.
The Doctor: APC?
Engin: Amplified Panatropic Computations.
The Doctor: Brain cells.
Engin: Yes, trillions of electrochemical cells in a continuous matrix. The cells are the repository of departed Time Lords. At the moment of death, an electrical scan is made of the brain pattern and the millions of impulses are immediately transferred to --
The Doctor: I understand the theory. What’s the function?
Engin: To monitor life in the Capitol. We use all this combined knowledge and experience to predict future developments.
The Doctor: Ah. Like the assassination of a president.
Engin: For some reason, that was not foreseen.
The Doctor: Oh, yes, it was foreseen, Engin, it was foreseen by me! How very clever! This time he’s surpassed himself!
Castellan: What are you talking about?
The Doctor: Well, don’t you see what he’s done? We Time Lords are telepathic! That’s simply a brain storage system! He intercepted its forecast that the president was to be assassinated and beamed it into my mind!
Believing he can find the Master within the Matrix, the Doctor is hooked up to the APC control and enters its psychic world of illusions. When the Doctor’s mental self is nearly killed, his body momentarily ceases functioning, causing Engin to remark that his brain must have an unusually high level of archon energy. The Master has taken control of the Matrix, controlling the illusions through the mind of his pawn, Chancellor Goth, who is connected to the net from the Master’s secret lair. Discovering the hideout, the Doctor learns from the dying Goth that he had cut a deal with the Master, who had reached the end of his final regeneration: Goth would be made President of the High Council if he brought the Master back to Gallifrey, but he underestimated the Master’s mind-control powers. They discover the Master’s horrific body, apparently dead, and the Castellan makes a full report to Cardinal Borusa.
Borusa: The story is not acceptable. This is a very difficult, very delicate position. We must adjust the truth.
Engin: In what way, Cardinal?
Borusa: In a way that will maintain public confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. How many people have seen this “Master” since his death?
Castellan: Apart from ourselves, Hilred and the two guards who took the body to the Panopticon Vault.
Borusa: Then we shall rely on their silence. We shall change the appearance of the corpse, Castellan. We all know the posthumous effect of a staser bolt. Within the hour, the body will be charred beyond recognition. Our story is going to be that the Master arrived in Gallifrey to assassinate the president secretly. Before he could escape, Chancellor Goth tracked him down and killed him, unfortunately perishing himself in the exchange of fire. Now that’s much better. I can believe that.
Engin: You’re making Goth a hero?
Borusa: If heroes don’t exist, it is necessary to invent them. Good for public morale.
Engin: And the Doctor’s part in all this?
Borusa: Best forgotten. Of course, Doctor, the charge against you will be dropped.
The Doctor: How kind.
Borusa: Conditional on your leaving Gallifrey tonight.
The Doctor: Somehow, Cardinal, I don’t want to stay.
Borusa: Good. I believe you know something of the Master’s past?
The Doctor: We’ve bumped into each other from time to time.
Borusa: Then before you leave, you can assist Co-ordinator Engin to compile a new biog of him. It doesn’t have to be entirely accurate.
The Doctor: Like Time Lord history.
Borusa: A few facts, Co-ordinator, will lend it verisimilitude. We cannot make the Master into a public enemy if there is no data on him.
Engin: I can have an authentic-seeming extract ready by morning, Cardinal.
Borusa: I’ll leave that to you, then. Later, Castellan, we must take another look at data security. We cannot have Time Lord D.E.’s simply vanishing from the record.
Castellan: I agree, sir.
Borusa: Well, I think that’s all. You’ll attend immediately to the cosmetic treatment?
Castellan: Sorry?
Borusa: The body, Castellan.
The Doctor: “Only in mathematics will we find truth.”
Engin: What?
The Doctor: Borusa used to say that during my time at the Academy. And now he’s setting out to prove it.
While compiling the new data extract on the Master, the Doctor convinces Engin to play a transgram of ancient Gallifreyan history, hoping to learn why the Master was so interested in the presidency. He believes it has something to do with the ceremonial objects the president holds, relics from the old time.
Transgram recording: And Rassilon journeyed into the Black Void with a great fleet. Within the Void, no light would shine, and nothing of that outer nature continue in being except that which existed within the Sash of Rassilon. Now Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony, which balances all things, that they may neither flux nor wither nor change their state in any measure. And he caused the Eye to be brought to the world of Gallifrey wherein he sealed this beneficence with the Great Key. Then the people rejoiced --
The Master revives within the Panopticon Vault, where the Lord President’s body lies in state. He takes the Sash of Rassilon and traps the Doctor inside the vault as he goes to collect the Great Key, which the President carries as a sort of scepter.
Engin: It’s only of symbolic value anyway.
The Doctor: Engin, that sash is a technological masterpiece! It protects its wearer from being sucked into a parallel universe. All he needs now is the Great Key and he can regenerate himself and release a force that will obliterate this entire stellar system!
Engin: You really mean it?
The Doctor: Well, of course I mean it! Don’t you realise what Rassilon did? What the Eye of Harmony is? Remember, “that which balances all things.” It can only be the nucleus of a black hole!
Castellan: But the Eye of Harmony is a myth! It no longer exists!
The Doctor: A myth? Spandrell, all the power of the Time Lords devolves from it! “Neither flux nor wither nor change their state!” Rassilon stabilised all the elements of a black hole and set them in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of the planet! If the Master interferes, it’ll be the end not only of this world, but a hundred other worlds too!
The Doctor manages to stop the Master just in time, as his tampering with the Eye of Harmony causes earthquakes and destruction, leaving half the city in ruins, untold damage, and countless lives lost, according to Borusa. However, the Doctor speculates that there was a good deal of power coming from the Eye of Harmony while they fought, and wearing the Sash of Rassilon would help the Master convert that energy enough to allow him continued existence. Sure enough, the Master is spotted entering his TARDIS and dematerializing while the transduction barrier is lowered for the Doctor’s departure.
Apparently, it was the Master who contacted the Doctor when the TARDIS was on Kastria and summoned him back to their home planet, as the Doctor’s arrival was a surprise to the Time Lords. It was probably Goth’s presence within the Matrix that generated the premonition of a random event like a presidential assassination in the first place, since he and the Master were already planning the crime. The Time Lords seemed to know little of the Doctor at this point, and even his former classmate Roncible didn’t recognize him, suggesting the Doctor had not yet become famous among his people, which probably followed this adventure, despite Borusa’s attempts at cover-up. There seemed a good deal of tension between Cardinal Borusa and Castellan Spandrell, which may be one reason there was a new Castellan upon the Doctor’s next visit. By that time, Borusa had assumed the office of chancellor, perhaps because, having declared himself a presidential candidate in an election that became uncontested upon Goth’s death, the Doctor was then considered president-elect under Gallifreyan law, despite his absence, thus preventing Borusa from assuming the presidency himself. The catastrophe that followed the Master’s tampering with the Eye of Harmony undoubtedly had a profound and lasting effect on Gallifreyan society, but it is unclear what the “official” story was and how many of the Time Lords even knew the real story. However, it seems the High Council kept a closer watch on the Doctor and the Master’s activities following their disastrous homecoming.
From “The Face of Evil”
The Doctor arrives alone on a world where a primitive tribe recognizes him as “The Evil One.” Rescued from death by a young outcast named Leela, he discovers his own likeness carved into the side of a mountain. The Doctor realizes that he has found a world suffering the consequences of his own actions. On a previous visit, he attempted to help an Earth expeditionary force repair their computer, but did not erase his mind-print from the databanks, which caused the computer to develop a “split personality” and go mad. The computer then arranged for the descendants of the explorers to develop in two distinct societies: the survey team as a primitive tribe in the jungle, the technicians as a psionically gifted cult within the ship itself. The Doctor succeeds in wiping his mind-print from the computer, restoring it to normal operation. However, the two cultures must now learn to live together.
Leela was cast out of the tribe of the Sevateem as a heretic. Her father was killed trying to win her a pardon through a primitive test of skill. However, upon meeting the Doctor in the jungle, she was convinced she had met the devil himself, although she came to see beyond her cultural limitations. When she was poisoned by a deadly janis thorn, the Doctor found an antidote and saved her life, which may be the basis of her loyalty to him, and part of why she decided to go with him when he left her world. Leela tries very hard to learn all she can from the Doctor during their travels, although she struggles to rein in her more deadly instincts. She eventually finds a new home of Gallifrey, of all places, when she discovers the wilderness-loving Shobogans, who had opted out of Time Lord society, and falls in love with Andred, captain of the Chancellery Guard.
From “The Robots of Death”
The Doctor and Leela converse aboard the TARDIS.
The Doctor: To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable… only unexplained.
Leela: So explain to me how this TARDIS is larger on the inside than the out.
The Doctor: All right, I’ll show you. It’s because the insides and outsides are not in the same dimension. Which box is larger?
Leela: That one.
The Doctor: Now which is larger?
Leela: That one!
The Doctor: But it looks smaller!
Leela: Well, that’s because it’s further away.
The Doctor: Exactly. If you could keep that exactly that distance away and have it here, the large one would fit inside the small one.
Leela: That’s silly.
The Doctor: That’s transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery.
From “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”
Visiting Victorian London, the Doctor and Leela encounter a mad scientist from the 51st century posing as the ancient Chinese god Weng-Chiang, who is using a Chinese crime syndicate to aid him in locating his time capsule, a failed experiment in harnessing zigma energy, which he used to escape from World War VI. He finally succumbs to total cellular collapse brought on by the zigma beam, and the Doctor renders his time capsule permanently inoperative.
Next Season
From “The Masque of Mandragora”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane are wandering the inner corridors of the TARDIS when Sarah Jane opens the door to the dark-paneled secondary control room.
Sarah Jane: Oh, this looks good!
The Doctor: What? Oh, yes. Yes, it is good. Do you know, this is the second control room. You know, I can run the TARDIS just as easily from here as I could from the old one. Come to think of it, this was the old one.
Sarah Jane: That looks like a shaving mirror.
The Doctor: Yes, it is.
The Doctor powers up the control room in time to discover they are about to be sucked into the Mandragora Helix, an energy vortex in space within which lives a race of non-corporeal sentient beings. The TARDIS materializes briefly at the center of the helix, where the ship is penetrated by some helix energy. They next thing they know, they have rematerialized in late 15th century Italy, where the helix energy leaves the ship and makes contact with a cult that worships the pagan god Demnos. Escaping from the wicked count’s men, the Doctor mentions that he learned swordfighting from a captain in Cleopatra’s bodyguard. They are soon all recaptured and locked in the dungeon.
Sarah Jane: I really tried to kill you?
The Doctor: You were only doing what you were ordered, what I expected.
Sarah Jane: But how did you know I’d been drugged?
The Doctor: Well, I’ve taken you to some strange places before and you’ve never asked how you understood the local language. It’s a Time Lord’s gift I allow you to share. But tonight when you asked how you understood Italian, I realised your mind had been taken over.
The cult members have been absorbing the Mandragora energy, which they use to besiege the palace, in which is a gathering of all the most learned men of the day along with their royal patrons, including the Doctor’s friend Leonardo da Vinci. The Mandragora intelligence plans to cut short the Renaissance to prevent the human race from ever achieving space travel and infringing on their territory. The Doctor drains off the energy and foils the evil plot, but says the Mandragora will be ready to try again by the end of the 20th century.
From “The Hand of Fear”
The TARDIS accidentally materializes in a British quarry just as they are blasting. The Doctor and Sarah Jane are buried in the rubble, where she discovers a 150 million year old silicon-based hand. At the local hospital, Sarah Jane’s mind is taken over by the consciousness of Eldrad, the hand’s owner, who wants to regenerate his body by absorbing massive amounts of radiation. They travel to a nearby nuclear power plant, where the Doctor frees her from the alien mind-control. To penetrate her amnesia, the Doctor easily hypnotizes Sarah Jane. Eldrad grows a new body based on Sarah Jane’s and demonstrates further telepathic powers by reading the Doctor’s mind.
Eldrad: As a Time Lord, you are pledged to uphold the laws of time and to prevent alien aggression!
The Doctor: Only when such aggression is deemed to threaten the indigenous population, I think that’s how it goes.
Sarah Jane is a bit miffed when the Doctor agrees to take Eldrad back to his home planet of Kastria aboard the TARDIS. Eldrad sets the coordinates, but the ride is too rough for the Doctor’s comfort.
The Doctor: All we want is your co-operation. If you’ve mis-set those co-ordinates, symbolic resonance will occur in the trachoid time crystal, and if that happens, there’s no chance of us landing anywhere, ever!
Upon reaching Kastria, the Doctor and Sarah Jane learn Eldrad’s true nature once he assumes his true form. Learning that his world is long dead, Eldrad decides to conquer the Earth, but the Doctor and Sarah Jane cause him to fall into a bottomless pit.
Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor receives a telepathic summons back to Gallifrey -- alone. He resets the coordinates for South Croyden, Sarah Jane’s home town. Upon materialization, they say their goodbyes and Sarah Jane disembarks, presumably to resume her career as a journalist. Some years later, Sarah Jane receives a gift from the Doctor, a robot dog called K-9 that helps her defeat a ring of rural devil worshippers. Sarah Jane does make it to Gallifrey eventually, kidnapped by Lord Borusa, where she helps the third Doctor reach the tomb of Rassilon and meets three of the Doctor’s other incarnations. She undoubtedly went on to have a successful career as a journalist and writer, perhaps of “science fiction.”
From “The Deadly Assassin”
En route to Gallifrey, the Doctor is overcome by a premonition of a presidential assassination. When the TARDIS materializes within the communications tower for the capitol on Gallifrey, Castellan Spandrell checks the exitonic computer bank and discovers that the old Type 40 is stolen property and orders the occupant arrested. During the Doctor’s escape, a guard is killed by a staser blast fired by a shadowy figure, for which the Doctor is blamed. Coordinator Engin informs the Castellan that the Doctor’s exile to Earth was remitted by the C.I.A. -- the Celestial Intervention Agency -- arousing the Castellan’s suspicions that the Doctor is a secret agent. The Doctor learns that the Time Lords are convening for the President of the High Council to step down and to announce his successor. It is, therefore, a time of political instability. The guards find a note from the Doctor addressed to the Castellan.
Castellan: And he signed it with the Pyrdonian seal!
Engin: Apparently he is or was at one time a member of that noble chapter.
Castellan: How can you tell?
Engin: Well, the bio-data extracts of Time Lords are colour-coded according to chapter.
Castellan: I didn’t know that.
Engin: No? Well, your duties usually involve you with more plebeian classes, don’t they, Castellan?
Castellan: A Pyrdonian renegade, eh? I have to refer this to Chancellor Goth.
The Doctor sneaks back into the TARDIS, where he patches into a local news broadcast.
Roncible: Around me in the high galleries of the Panopticon, already the Time Lords are gathering, donning seldom-worn robes with their colourful collar insignia: scarlet and orange for the Pyrdonians, the green of the Arcalians, the heliotrope of the Patraxes, and so on…. In a moment, I hope to talk to Cardinal Borusa, the leader of the Pyrdonian chapter, the chapter that has produced more Time Lord presidents than all other chapters together…
Borusa recognizes Roncible “the fatuous,” as the Doctor calls him, as a former student of his at Pyrdon Academy. Roncible congratulates Borusa on his elevation to cardinal. Chancellor Goth orders the TARDIS transducted to a museum within the Capitol, where the Doctor finds some robes to disguise himself.
Entering the Panopticon as the ceremony begins, the Doctor races to the balcony to prevent the assassination, only to apparently take up the gun and murder the President himself. The Doctor is arrested and Chancellor Goth declares a constitutional crisis, as the president died without naming his successor. Goth wants a speedy trial, but the Castellan is unconvinced that the Doctor hasn’t been framed. To buy some time to clear his name, the Doctor invokes Article XVII of the Constitution and offers himself as a candidate for the presidency. The Doctor then demonstrates to the Castellan that he was on the balcony trying to stun the true assassin, a member of the High Council who had drawn a staser in the crowd, but misaligned sights caused the shot to go awry and strike the wall.
During the investigation, they discover a technician’s body, a victim of the tissue-compression eliminator. The Doctor realizes that he is being framed by none other than his old arch-enemy the Master, who is making his final challenge. In his secret lair, the Master reveals to his co-conspirator that it is his burning hatred for the Doctor and the Time Lords that allows him to endure the pain of his ravaged state, propelled by his need to see the Doctor die in shame and dishonor and the Time Lords destroyed before he dies.
In the computer center, Coordinator Engin discovers there is no record in the Time Lord databanks of the Master, as the Doctor suspected. Although the Castellan and Engin are dubious, the Doctor is convinced the Master destroyed all record of his own existence the first chance he got.
The Doctor: You think this stuff is sophisticated? There are worlds out there where this kind of equipment would be considered prehistoric junk!
Castellan: What is the Master like in mathematics?
The Doctor: He’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant! He’s almost up to my standard. What’s that?
Engin: The APC control.
The Doctor: APC?
Engin: Amplified Panatropic Computations.
The Doctor: Brain cells.
Engin: Yes, trillions of electrochemical cells in a continuous matrix. The cells are the repository of departed Time Lords. At the moment of death, an electrical scan is made of the brain pattern and the millions of impulses are immediately transferred to --
The Doctor: I understand the theory. What’s the function?
Engin: To monitor life in the Capitol. We use all this combined knowledge and experience to predict future developments.
The Doctor: Ah. Like the assassination of a president.
Engin: For some reason, that was not foreseen.
The Doctor: Oh, yes, it was foreseen, Engin, it was foreseen by me! How very clever! This time he’s surpassed himself!
Castellan: What are you talking about?
The Doctor: Well, don’t you see what he’s done? We Time Lords are telepathic! That’s simply a brain storage system! He intercepted its forecast that the president was to be assassinated and beamed it into my mind!
Believing he can find the Master within the Matrix, the Doctor is hooked up to the APC control and enters its psychic world of illusions. When the Doctor’s mental self is nearly killed, his body momentarily ceases functioning, causing Engin to remark that his brain must have an unusually high level of archon energy. The Master has taken control of the Matrix, controlling the illusions through the mind of his pawn, Chancellor Goth, who is connected to the net from the Master’s secret lair. Discovering the hideout, the Doctor learns from the dying Goth that he had cut a deal with the Master, who had reached the end of his final regeneration: Goth would be made President of the High Council if he brought the Master back to Gallifrey, but he underestimated the Master’s mind-control powers. They discover the Master’s horrific body, apparently dead, and the Castellan makes a full report to Cardinal Borusa.
Borusa: The story is not acceptable. This is a very difficult, very delicate position. We must adjust the truth.
Engin: In what way, Cardinal?
Borusa: In a way that will maintain public confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. How many people have seen this “Master” since his death?
Castellan: Apart from ourselves, Hilred and the two guards who took the body to the Panopticon Vault.
Borusa: Then we shall rely on their silence. We shall change the appearance of the corpse, Castellan. We all know the posthumous effect of a staser bolt. Within the hour, the body will be charred beyond recognition. Our story is going to be that the Master arrived in Gallifrey to assassinate the president secretly. Before he could escape, Chancellor Goth tracked him down and killed him, unfortunately perishing himself in the exchange of fire. Now that’s much better. I can believe that.
Engin: You’re making Goth a hero?
Borusa: If heroes don’t exist, it is necessary to invent them. Good for public morale.
Engin: And the Doctor’s part in all this?
Borusa: Best forgotten. Of course, Doctor, the charge against you will be dropped.
The Doctor: How kind.
Borusa: Conditional on your leaving Gallifrey tonight.
The Doctor: Somehow, Cardinal, I don’t want to stay.
Borusa: Good. I believe you know something of the Master’s past?
The Doctor: We’ve bumped into each other from time to time.
Borusa: Then before you leave, you can assist Co-ordinator Engin to compile a new biog of him. It doesn’t have to be entirely accurate.
The Doctor: Like Time Lord history.
Borusa: A few facts, Co-ordinator, will lend it verisimilitude. We cannot make the Master into a public enemy if there is no data on him.
Engin: I can have an authentic-seeming extract ready by morning, Cardinal.
Borusa: I’ll leave that to you, then. Later, Castellan, we must take another look at data security. We cannot have Time Lord D.E.’s simply vanishing from the record.
Castellan: I agree, sir.
Borusa: Well, I think that’s all. You’ll attend immediately to the cosmetic treatment?
Castellan: Sorry?
Borusa: The body, Castellan.
The Doctor: “Only in mathematics will we find truth.”
Engin: What?
The Doctor: Borusa used to say that during my time at the Academy. And now he’s setting out to prove it.
While compiling the new data extract on the Master, the Doctor convinces Engin to play a transgram of ancient Gallifreyan history, hoping to learn why the Master was so interested in the presidency. He believes it has something to do with the ceremonial objects the president holds, relics from the old time.
Transgram recording: And Rassilon journeyed into the Black Void with a great fleet. Within the Void, no light would shine, and nothing of that outer nature continue in being except that which existed within the Sash of Rassilon. Now Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony, which balances all things, that they may neither flux nor wither nor change their state in any measure. And he caused the Eye to be brought to the world of Gallifrey wherein he sealed this beneficence with the Great Key. Then the people rejoiced --
The Master revives within the Panopticon Vault, where the Lord President’s body lies in state. He takes the Sash of Rassilon and traps the Doctor inside the vault as he goes to collect the Great Key, which the President carries as a sort of scepter.
Engin: It’s only of symbolic value anyway.
The Doctor: Engin, that sash is a technological masterpiece! It protects its wearer from being sucked into a parallel universe. All he needs now is the Great Key and he can regenerate himself and release a force that will obliterate this entire stellar system!
Engin: You really mean it?
The Doctor: Well, of course I mean it! Don’t you realise what Rassilon did? What the Eye of Harmony is? Remember, “that which balances all things.” It can only be the nucleus of a black hole!
Castellan: But the Eye of Harmony is a myth! It no longer exists!
The Doctor: A myth? Spandrell, all the power of the Time Lords devolves from it! “Neither flux nor wither nor change their state!” Rassilon stabilised all the elements of a black hole and set them in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of the planet! If the Master interferes, it’ll be the end not only of this world, but a hundred other worlds too!
The Doctor manages to stop the Master just in time, as his tampering with the Eye of Harmony causes earthquakes and destruction, leaving half the city in ruins, untold damage, and countless lives lost, according to Borusa. However, the Doctor speculates that there was a good deal of power coming from the Eye of Harmony while they fought, and wearing the Sash of Rassilon would help the Master convert that energy enough to allow him continued existence. Sure enough, the Master is spotted entering his TARDIS and dematerializing while the transduction barrier is lowered for the Doctor’s departure.
Apparently, it was the Master who contacted the Doctor when the TARDIS was on Kastria and summoned him back to their home planet, as the Doctor’s arrival was a surprise to the Time Lords. It was probably Goth’s presence within the Matrix that generated the premonition of a random event like a presidential assassination in the first place, since he and the Master were already planning the crime. The Time Lords seemed to know little of the Doctor at this point, and even his former classmate Roncible didn’t recognize him, suggesting the Doctor had not yet become famous among his people, which probably followed this adventure, despite Borusa’s attempts at cover-up. There seemed a good deal of tension between Cardinal Borusa and Castellan Spandrell, which may be one reason there was a new Castellan upon the Doctor’s next visit. By that time, Borusa had assumed the office of chancellor, perhaps because, having declared himself a presidential candidate in an election that became uncontested upon Goth’s death, the Doctor was then considered president-elect under Gallifreyan law, despite his absence, thus preventing Borusa from assuming the presidency himself. The catastrophe that followed the Master’s tampering with the Eye of Harmony undoubtedly had a profound and lasting effect on Gallifreyan society, but it is unclear what the “official” story was and how many of the Time Lords even knew the real story. However, it seems the High Council kept a closer watch on the Doctor and the Master’s activities following their disastrous homecoming.
From “The Face of Evil”
The Doctor arrives alone on a world where a primitive tribe recognizes him as “The Evil One.” Rescued from death by a young outcast named Leela, he discovers his own likeness carved into the side of a mountain. The Doctor realizes that he has found a world suffering the consequences of his own actions. On a previous visit, he attempted to help an Earth expeditionary force repair their computer, but did not erase his mind-print from the databanks, which caused the computer to develop a “split personality” and go mad. The computer then arranged for the descendants of the explorers to develop in two distinct societies: the survey team as a primitive tribe in the jungle, the technicians as a psionically gifted cult within the ship itself. The Doctor succeeds in wiping his mind-print from the computer, restoring it to normal operation. However, the two cultures must now learn to live together.
Leela was cast out of the tribe of the Sevateem as a heretic. Her father was killed trying to win her a pardon through a primitive test of skill. However, upon meeting the Doctor in the jungle, she was convinced she had met the devil himself, although she came to see beyond her cultural limitations. When she was poisoned by a deadly janis thorn, the Doctor found an antidote and saved her life, which may be the basis of her loyalty to him, and part of why she decided to go with him when he left her world. Leela tries very hard to learn all she can from the Doctor during their travels, although she struggles to rein in her more deadly instincts. She eventually finds a new home of Gallifrey, of all places, when she discovers the wilderness-loving Shobogans, who had opted out of Time Lord society, and falls in love with Andred, captain of the Chancellery Guard.
From “The Robots of Death”
The Doctor and Leela converse aboard the TARDIS.
The Doctor: To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable… only unexplained.
Leela: So explain to me how this TARDIS is larger on the inside than the out.
The Doctor: All right, I’ll show you. It’s because the insides and outsides are not in the same dimension. Which box is larger?
Leela: That one.
The Doctor: Now which is larger?
Leela: That one!
The Doctor: But it looks smaller!
Leela: Well, that’s because it’s further away.
The Doctor: Exactly. If you could keep that exactly that distance away and have it here, the large one would fit inside the small one.
Leela: That’s silly.
The Doctor: That’s transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery.
From “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”
Visiting Victorian London, the Doctor and Leela encounter a mad scientist from the 51st century posing as the ancient Chinese god Weng-Chiang, who is using a Chinese crime syndicate to aid him in locating his time capsule, a failed experiment in harnessing zigma energy, which he used to escape from World War VI. He finally succumbs to total cellular collapse brought on by the zigma beam, and the Doctor renders his time capsule permanently inoperative.
Next Season
Wednesday
Doctor Who Notes 13
With the thirteenth season of Doctor Who, the show began to explore a more “gothic horror” atmosphere, and also sought a balance between UNIT stories and outer-space adventure. Though Sarah Jane remained throughout, Harry Sullivan drifted away from the Doctor, appearing in only two non-consecutive stories. New facts about Time Lord history were revealed, in a story which also introduced an intriguing mystery about the Doctor’s past.
From “Terror of the Zygons”
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart uses a device the Doctor calls a psionic beam to summon the TARDIS to Scotland, where UNIT is investigating the mysterious destruction of several off-shore oil rigs, so that the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan can assist. They discover it is the handiwork of alien Zygons, trying to make Earth their new home after their own planet was destroyed by a solar explosion. The Doctor discovers the Loch Ness Monster is a cyborg creature under the Zygons’ control. Once all the Zygons have been killed, the Doctor and Sarah Jane leave in the TARDIS, intending to go to London. Harry, however, elects to remain behind with the Brigadier. It would seem the rest of the Zygon diaspora would continue en route to Earth, a journey of several hundred years.
From “Planet of Evil”
Rather than London, the TARDIS materializes in outer space some 30,000 years in the future. Picking up a distress call, it materializes on planet Zeta Minor, which the Doctor and Sarah Jane discover holds an interface between our universe and the antithetical anti-matter universe. The balance of the interface has been upset by a mineralogical expedition, but the Doctor is able to restore the balance and avert catastrophe.
From “Pyramids of Mars”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane converse within the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane: Hey, Doctor! Doctor, look what I found!
The Doctor: Hello, Vicki.
Sarah Jane: What?
The Doctor: Where did you get that dress?
Sarah Jane: I just told you, I found it back there in the wardrobe. Why, don’t you like it?
The Doctor: Yes. Yes, I always did. Victoria wore it. She travelled with me for a time.
Sarah Jane: Well, as long as Albert didn’t wear it. Oh, come on, Doctor. That’s worth a smile, surely. What’s the matter? You should be glad to be going home!
The Doctor: The Earth isn’t my home, Sarah. I’m a Time Lord.
Sarah Jane: Oh, I know you’re a Time Lord.
The Doctor: You don’t understand the implications. I’m not a human being. I walk in eternity.
Sarah Jane: What’s that supposed to mean?
The Doctor: It means I’ve lived for something like 750 years...
Sarah Jane: Well, you’ll soon be middle-aged.
The Doctor: Yes! It’s about time I found something better to do than run round after the Brigadier.
Sarah Jane: Oh, come on, if you’re tired of being UNIT’s scientific advisor, you can always resign!
The TARDIS suddenly lurches as the relative continuum stabilizer fails. They materialize on the site of UNIT headquarters, but seven decades too early. In 1911, it is the house of an Egyptologist, and they discover menacing mummies wandering the grounds. They also detect a radio signal emanating from the planet Mars. The Egyptologist has fallen under the influence of Sutekh, a member of the alien Osiran race, who were worshipped as gods by the ancient Egyptians. Sutekh plans to escape entombment on Earth by destroying the pyramid of Horus, his brother and enemy, located on Mars. The Doctor barely manages to stop Sutekh in time, causing the mansion to burn to the ground in the process.
From “The Android Invasion”
When the TARDIS materializes in a field, the Doctor believes they are on Earth, since oak trees don’t grow anywhere else in the galaxy, but he mentions the TARDIS is way overdue for its 500-year servicing. Witnessing a UNIT soldier walk over a cliff leads the Doctor and Sarah Jane to find a large pod. Though it looks familiar to the Doctor, he curses his memory for getting terrible, saying 300 years ago, he’d have recognized it like a shot. They come upon a deserted English village which is actually a mock-up used to plan a Kraal invasion of Earth. The Doctor gives Sarah Jane the TARDIS key before they split up. Back at the ship, she puts the key in the lock, but is distracted. The empty TARDIS dematerializes. Later, at the site with an android Sarah Jane, the Doctor realizes what happened.
The Doctor: You haven’t lost it. You never had it. Sarah came here, turned the key in the lock and cancelled the pause-control. The TARDIS continued on its set co-ordinates back to Earth.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane stow away on the Kraal’s rocket ship back to Earth and then join the androids in the advance party. However, they each have an android duplicate as well. The Doctor manages to jam the androids’ circuits and foil the invasion plot. Apparently tiring of his role as UNIT’s scientific advisor, the Doctor leaves again without even waiting for the Brigadier to return from Geneva, but presumably he said good-bye to Sergeant Benton and Harry Sullivan.
From “The Brain of Morbius”
The Doctor is furious when the TARDIS is commandeered by the Time Lords and brought to the planet Karn, where lives a secret sisterhood who tend a flame that produces a life-extending elixir. However, the flame seems to be dying.
Maren: The secret of the life elixir is known only to our Sisterhood and the High Council of the Time Lords. Since the time of the stones, we have shared the elixir with them. But now there is none to share. The few vials that are left I have kept for ourselves. But for months I have felt that the Time Lords would come to rob us of these last precious drops.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane stumble upon the laboratory of mad scientist Mehendri Solon, an earthman from the future whom the Doctor knows by his academic reputation, who is trying to engineer a new body for Morbius, a war criminal banished from Gallifrey. Solon decides he must have the Doctor’s head for his creature, but the unconscious Doctor is spirited away by the mystical power of the Sisterhood of Karn, who believe he has been sent to steal the elixir.
Ohica: Morbius was executed for leading the rebellion. His body was placed in a dispersal chamber and atomised to the nine corners of the universe.
The Doctor: I know that. But I tell you, Maren, just for a second, before I passed out, his mind touched mine. I felt his burning hatred and anguish. Morbius is alive!
Maren: I suppose you think raising these old fears can somehow help you, but I was present at his execution! Morbius is dead, Doctor, and you will join him very shortly!
Somehow, Morbius and Solon were able to outwit the Time Lords, and Morbius’ brain was removed from his body before his atomization. Solon then connected the brain up to a life-support system through which Morbius could still communicate while he worked to create a new body for brain-transplantation. Solon makes a deal with the Sisterhood to deliver the escaped Doctor in exchange for his head. However, when Morbius learns that the Doctor is a Time Lord, he refuses to wait and demands Solon put the brain into an artificial head attached to a patchwork body, but the desperate measures drive Morbius to the brink of total madness. The Doctor challenges Morbius to a mind-bending contest, a sort of telepathic wrestling match. A psychic image appears between them of the Doctor, pushed back through his regenerations by the mental power of Morbius. Strangely, beyond the Doctor’s first persona is a succession of other, unfamiliar faces. Morbius shouts, “How far, Doctor? How long have you lived? Back, back to your beginning!” The Doctor collapses and Morbius leaves the laboratory, only to be driven over a cliff by the Sisterhood. Maren then sacrifices herself to provide the Doctor with enough elixir to survive. The Doctor leaves the Sisterhood, now under Ohica’s leadership, with the means to keep the fire burning brightly.
Morbius was apparently once the leader of the High Council of the Time Lords, but became a ruthless tyrant with a band of fanatical followers. He formed a personal army of “riffraff and mercenaries, the scum of the universe” and laid waste to several planets. When he wiped out the civilization on Karn in an attempt to gain control over the Elixir of Life, however, the Time Lords came to the aid of their ancient allies, the mystical Sisterhood. Maren believes the Time Lords acted only out of self-interest. Morbius was sentenced to be executed, but he hatched a plan with the earthman Solon, living on Karn at the time of his trial, to escape death. The secret of the elixir revealed, the Sisterhood went into hiding and destroyed any passing spacecraft, turning Karn into a spaceship graveyard. The Doctor tells Maren that the Time Lords use the elixir only in times of acute regenerative crisis, so as not to fall into the trap of immortality, and he extracts from them a promise not to down any more passing ships.
From “The Seeds of Doom”
When a scientific expedition unearths a strange plant pod deep in the Antarctic ice, the Doctor is once again called in as UNIT’s scientific advisor. He and Sarah Jane travel to the bottom of the world, where the Doctor doesn’t bother to bundle up any more than usual, even while outside at night. The Doctor realizes an alien Krynoid, a sort of interstellar man-eating vegetable, is trying to overrun the Earth. The pod is brought back to England by a mad plant fancier, but with the help of UNIT’s arsenal, the Doctor is able to blow the giant intelligent weed to smithereens. The Doctor decides that he and Sarah Jane should take a holiday to Cassiopeia.
Next Season
From “Terror of the Zygons”
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart uses a device the Doctor calls a psionic beam to summon the TARDIS to Scotland, where UNIT is investigating the mysterious destruction of several off-shore oil rigs, so that the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan can assist. They discover it is the handiwork of alien Zygons, trying to make Earth their new home after their own planet was destroyed by a solar explosion. The Doctor discovers the Loch Ness Monster is a cyborg creature under the Zygons’ control. Once all the Zygons have been killed, the Doctor and Sarah Jane leave in the TARDIS, intending to go to London. Harry, however, elects to remain behind with the Brigadier. It would seem the rest of the Zygon diaspora would continue en route to Earth, a journey of several hundred years.
From “Planet of Evil”
Rather than London, the TARDIS materializes in outer space some 30,000 years in the future. Picking up a distress call, it materializes on planet Zeta Minor, which the Doctor and Sarah Jane discover holds an interface between our universe and the antithetical anti-matter universe. The balance of the interface has been upset by a mineralogical expedition, but the Doctor is able to restore the balance and avert catastrophe.
From “Pyramids of Mars”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane converse within the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane: Hey, Doctor! Doctor, look what I found!
The Doctor: Hello, Vicki.
Sarah Jane: What?
The Doctor: Where did you get that dress?
Sarah Jane: I just told you, I found it back there in the wardrobe. Why, don’t you like it?
The Doctor: Yes. Yes, I always did. Victoria wore it. She travelled with me for a time.
Sarah Jane: Well, as long as Albert didn’t wear it. Oh, come on, Doctor. That’s worth a smile, surely. What’s the matter? You should be glad to be going home!
The Doctor: The Earth isn’t my home, Sarah. I’m a Time Lord.
Sarah Jane: Oh, I know you’re a Time Lord.
The Doctor: You don’t understand the implications. I’m not a human being. I walk in eternity.
Sarah Jane: What’s that supposed to mean?
The Doctor: It means I’ve lived for something like 750 years...
Sarah Jane: Well, you’ll soon be middle-aged.
The Doctor: Yes! It’s about time I found something better to do than run round after the Brigadier.
Sarah Jane: Oh, come on, if you’re tired of being UNIT’s scientific advisor, you can always resign!
The TARDIS suddenly lurches as the relative continuum stabilizer fails. They materialize on the site of UNIT headquarters, but seven decades too early. In 1911, it is the house of an Egyptologist, and they discover menacing mummies wandering the grounds. They also detect a radio signal emanating from the planet Mars. The Egyptologist has fallen under the influence of Sutekh, a member of the alien Osiran race, who were worshipped as gods by the ancient Egyptians. Sutekh plans to escape entombment on Earth by destroying the pyramid of Horus, his brother and enemy, located on Mars. The Doctor barely manages to stop Sutekh in time, causing the mansion to burn to the ground in the process.
From “The Android Invasion”
When the TARDIS materializes in a field, the Doctor believes they are on Earth, since oak trees don’t grow anywhere else in the galaxy, but he mentions the TARDIS is way overdue for its 500-year servicing. Witnessing a UNIT soldier walk over a cliff leads the Doctor and Sarah Jane to find a large pod. Though it looks familiar to the Doctor, he curses his memory for getting terrible, saying 300 years ago, he’d have recognized it like a shot. They come upon a deserted English village which is actually a mock-up used to plan a Kraal invasion of Earth. The Doctor gives Sarah Jane the TARDIS key before they split up. Back at the ship, she puts the key in the lock, but is distracted. The empty TARDIS dematerializes. Later, at the site with an android Sarah Jane, the Doctor realizes what happened.
The Doctor: You haven’t lost it. You never had it. Sarah came here, turned the key in the lock and cancelled the pause-control. The TARDIS continued on its set co-ordinates back to Earth.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane stow away on the Kraal’s rocket ship back to Earth and then join the androids in the advance party. However, they each have an android duplicate as well. The Doctor manages to jam the androids’ circuits and foil the invasion plot. Apparently tiring of his role as UNIT’s scientific advisor, the Doctor leaves again without even waiting for the Brigadier to return from Geneva, but presumably he said good-bye to Sergeant Benton and Harry Sullivan.
From “The Brain of Morbius”
The Doctor is furious when the TARDIS is commandeered by the Time Lords and brought to the planet Karn, where lives a secret sisterhood who tend a flame that produces a life-extending elixir. However, the flame seems to be dying.
Maren: The secret of the life elixir is known only to our Sisterhood and the High Council of the Time Lords. Since the time of the stones, we have shared the elixir with them. But now there is none to share. The few vials that are left I have kept for ourselves. But for months I have felt that the Time Lords would come to rob us of these last precious drops.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane stumble upon the laboratory of mad scientist Mehendri Solon, an earthman from the future whom the Doctor knows by his academic reputation, who is trying to engineer a new body for Morbius, a war criminal banished from Gallifrey. Solon decides he must have the Doctor’s head for his creature, but the unconscious Doctor is spirited away by the mystical power of the Sisterhood of Karn, who believe he has been sent to steal the elixir.
Ohica: Morbius was executed for leading the rebellion. His body was placed in a dispersal chamber and atomised to the nine corners of the universe.
The Doctor: I know that. But I tell you, Maren, just for a second, before I passed out, his mind touched mine. I felt his burning hatred and anguish. Morbius is alive!
Maren: I suppose you think raising these old fears can somehow help you, but I was present at his execution! Morbius is dead, Doctor, and you will join him very shortly!
Somehow, Morbius and Solon were able to outwit the Time Lords, and Morbius’ brain was removed from his body before his atomization. Solon then connected the brain up to a life-support system through which Morbius could still communicate while he worked to create a new body for brain-transplantation. Solon makes a deal with the Sisterhood to deliver the escaped Doctor in exchange for his head. However, when Morbius learns that the Doctor is a Time Lord, he refuses to wait and demands Solon put the brain into an artificial head attached to a patchwork body, but the desperate measures drive Morbius to the brink of total madness. The Doctor challenges Morbius to a mind-bending contest, a sort of telepathic wrestling match. A psychic image appears between them of the Doctor, pushed back through his regenerations by the mental power of Morbius. Strangely, beyond the Doctor’s first persona is a succession of other, unfamiliar faces. Morbius shouts, “How far, Doctor? How long have you lived? Back, back to your beginning!” The Doctor collapses and Morbius leaves the laboratory, only to be driven over a cliff by the Sisterhood. Maren then sacrifices herself to provide the Doctor with enough elixir to survive. The Doctor leaves the Sisterhood, now under Ohica’s leadership, with the means to keep the fire burning brightly.
Morbius was apparently once the leader of the High Council of the Time Lords, but became a ruthless tyrant with a band of fanatical followers. He formed a personal army of “riffraff and mercenaries, the scum of the universe” and laid waste to several planets. When he wiped out the civilization on Karn in an attempt to gain control over the Elixir of Life, however, the Time Lords came to the aid of their ancient allies, the mystical Sisterhood. Maren believes the Time Lords acted only out of self-interest. Morbius was sentenced to be executed, but he hatched a plan with the earthman Solon, living on Karn at the time of his trial, to escape death. The secret of the elixir revealed, the Sisterhood went into hiding and destroyed any passing spacecraft, turning Karn into a spaceship graveyard. The Doctor tells Maren that the Time Lords use the elixir only in times of acute regenerative crisis, so as not to fall into the trap of immortality, and he extracts from them a promise not to down any more passing ships.
From “The Seeds of Doom”
When a scientific expedition unearths a strange plant pod deep in the Antarctic ice, the Doctor is once again called in as UNIT’s scientific advisor. He and Sarah Jane travel to the bottom of the world, where the Doctor doesn’t bother to bundle up any more than usual, even while outside at night. The Doctor realizes an alien Krynoid, a sort of interstellar man-eating vegetable, is trying to overrun the Earth. The pod is brought back to England by a mad plant fancier, but with the help of UNIT’s arsenal, the Doctor is able to blow the giant intelligent weed to smithereens. The Doctor decides that he and Sarah Jane should take a holiday to Cassiopeia.
Next Season
Tuesday
Doctor Who Notes 12
Season twelve of Doctor Who saw the introduction of Tom Baker in the lead role, who would prove to be the longest-serving and generally most popular Doctor, in a series of interconnected stories. It began on familiar ground with a contemporary UNIT story, then moved on to bring back the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Sontarans, as the producers began to really mine the resources of the “Doctor Who universe” that had grown up over the preceding decade. The Doctor and Sarah Jane were also joined by a new companion, Harry Sullivan.
From “Robot”
Following his regeneration, the discombobulated Doctor can think only of leaving in the TARDIS as soon as possible. After overcoming UNIT’s medical officer, Lieutenant Harry Sullivan, the Doctor is prevented from disappearing only by some fast talking by Sarah Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Once he recognizes them again, he is intrigued by reports of thefts of components for a top-secret weapon. After choosing a new set of clothes, the Doctor deduces that the crimes were committed by a large robot. Sarah Jane discovers just such a machine at Think Tank, a scientific consortium that turns out to be a cover for the reactionary Scientific Reform Society’s plot to take over the world. When the villains hole up in their underground bunker, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the door. After the plot is foiled and the robot is destroyed, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and an unwitting Harry depart in the TARDIS, leaving Bessie to be mothballed by the Brigadier.
Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan was attached to UNIT from the Royal Navy as a medical officer and, when called upon to treat the regenerated Doctor, found himself on a roller-coaster of adventures, which he managed to take in his stride despite some bumbling when out of his depth. Once back on Earth, Harry decided to steer clear of the TARDIS, seeing the Doctor again only when he and Sarah Jane turned up at the Space Defence Station where UNIT was operating.
From “The Ark in Space”
The Doctor was planning a trip to the moon until Harry fumbled with the helmic regulator, taking them to an orbiting satellite 11,000 years in the future. While trying to deactivate an automatic guard, the Doctor’s scarf is singed, prompting him to remark that it was made for him by Madame Nostradamus, a “witty little knitter.” They discover the station was built in the 30th century and is now a vast cryogenic repository used to escape Earth’s devastation by solar flares. The station has been infested by the insectoid Wirrn, who want the Earth for themselves. The alien creatures are destroyed in the station’s transport ship. With the ship destroyed and the humans resuscitated, resettlement of the Earth depends on the station’s transmit system, which has developed a fault. The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry transmit down to the Earth to correct the problem, leaving the TARDIS aboard the ark.
From “The Sontaran Experiment”
After a slightly spotty materialization, the Doctor sets about repairing the transmit receptors. Sarah Jane and Harry go for a walk and they are soon separated. They fall into the hands of some marooned astronauts from an Earth colony that pre-dates the space station. The astronauts were led into a trap by the Sontaran Field-Major Styre, whose intention is to conduct experiments on the humans in preparation for the seizing of the Earth for its strategic use in their never-ending war with the Rutans.
Harry: Doctor, I thought you were both dead!
The Doctor: Not me. Piece of the synestic locking mechanism from Nerva’s rocket. Popped it in my pocket.
Harry: Fortuitous.
The Doctor: Foresight. You never know when these bits and pieces will come in handy. Never throw anything away, Harry. Where’s my 500-year diary? I remember jotting some notes on the Sontarans. It’s a mistake to clutter one’s pockets, Harry.
Harry: Yes, Doctor.
The Doctor challenges Styre to single combat in order to tire him out, forcing him to return to his sabotaged ship to re-energize. Styre is killed and the ship explodes. The Doctor uses Styre’s remote communication gear to turn back the Sontaran fleet. With the space station personnel ready to disembark, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry enter the transmit beam and dematerialize.
From “Genesis of the Daleks.”
The Doctor finds himself not aboard Space Station Nerva, but in a desolate landscape.
Time Lord: Ah. Welcome, Doctor.
The Doctor: What’s going on? Don’t you realise how dangerous it is to intercept a transmat beam?
Time Lord: Oh, come now, Doctor, not with our techniques. We Time Lords transcended such simple mechanical devices when the universe was less than half its present size.
The Doctor: Look, whatever I’ve done for you in the past, I’ve more than made up for. I will not tolerate this continual interference in my life!
Time Lord: Continual? We pride ourselves we seldom interfere in the affairs of others.
The Doctor: Except mine!
Time Lord: You, Doctor, are a special case. You enjoy the freedom we allow you. In return, occasionally -- not continually -- we ask you to do something for us.
The Doctor: I won’t do it. Whatever it is, I refuse!
Time Lord: Daleks!
The Doctor: Daleks? Tell me more.
Time Lord: We foresee a time when they will have destroyed all other life-forms and become the dominant creature in the universe.
The Doctor: That’s possible. Tell on.
Time Lord: We’d like to return you to Skaro at a point in time before the Daleks evolved.
The Doctor: Do you mean avert their creation?
Time Lord: Or affect their genetic development so they evolve into less aggressive creatures.
The Doctor: That’s feasible.
Time Lord: Alternatively, if you learn enough about their very beginnings, you might discover some inherent weakness.
The Doctor: All right. Just one more time.
Time Lord: You’ll do it?
The Doctor: Yes. If you’ll let me have the space-time co-ordinates, I’ll set the TARDIS for Skaro.
Time Lord: There’s no need for that, Doctor. You’re here. This is Skaro.
The Doctor: What?
Time Lord: We thought it would save time if we assumed your agreement.
The Doctor: What’s this?
Time Lord: A time ring. It will return you to the TARDIS when you’ve finished here. There’s just one thing.
The Doctor: What’s that?
Time Lord: Be careful not to lose it. That time ring is your lifeline. Good luck, Doctor.
The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry find themselves caught up in a thousand-year war between the Kaled and the Thal peoples. The Doctor soon meets Davros, chief scientist of the Kaled people and creator of the Daleks. Davros provides the Thals with the capacity to annihilate the Kaled race before unleashing his new Dalek army on the Thals. The last surviving Kaleds are exterminated when the Daleks turn on their creator and declare their independence. The Doctor and the Thal survivors manage to entomb the Daleks in an underground bunker after destroying the incubator room. Davros is hit by a Dalek death ray, but the life-support system in his chair probably saves him from death. Feeling his mission sufficiently accomplished, the Doctor activates the time ring and he, Sarah Jane, and Harry depart from Skaro.
From “Revenge of the Cybermen”
The time ring brings the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry back to Space Station Nerva, but the TARDIS is conspicuously absent.
The Doctor: Well, it probably hasn’t arrived yet. We’re a little early.
Harry: Hasn’t arrived yet?
The Doctor: No, you see, the TARDIS is drifting back through time, Harry. We’ll just have to wait for it to turn up.
The travelers have arrived thousands of years before Earth’s evacuation, when the space station is used as a beacon warning ships of a moon newly captured by Jupiter’s gravity. The moon is Voga, the planet of gold, and Nerva has fallen into the middle of a war between the Vogans and the Cybermen. The Doctor is able to turn the Cybermen’s weapons against them and they are destroyed aboard their ship. The TARDIS finally materializes and, while setting the drift compensators, the Doctor finds he has been summoned back to 20th century Earth by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
Next Season
From “Robot”
Following his regeneration, the discombobulated Doctor can think only of leaving in the TARDIS as soon as possible. After overcoming UNIT’s medical officer, Lieutenant Harry Sullivan, the Doctor is prevented from disappearing only by some fast talking by Sarah Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Once he recognizes them again, he is intrigued by reports of thefts of components for a top-secret weapon. After choosing a new set of clothes, the Doctor deduces that the crimes were committed by a large robot. Sarah Jane discovers just such a machine at Think Tank, a scientific consortium that turns out to be a cover for the reactionary Scientific Reform Society’s plot to take over the world. When the villains hole up in their underground bunker, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the door. After the plot is foiled and the robot is destroyed, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and an unwitting Harry depart in the TARDIS, leaving Bessie to be mothballed by the Brigadier.
Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan was attached to UNIT from the Royal Navy as a medical officer and, when called upon to treat the regenerated Doctor, found himself on a roller-coaster of adventures, which he managed to take in his stride despite some bumbling when out of his depth. Once back on Earth, Harry decided to steer clear of the TARDIS, seeing the Doctor again only when he and Sarah Jane turned up at the Space Defence Station where UNIT was operating.
From “The Ark in Space”
The Doctor was planning a trip to the moon until Harry fumbled with the helmic regulator, taking them to an orbiting satellite 11,000 years in the future. While trying to deactivate an automatic guard, the Doctor’s scarf is singed, prompting him to remark that it was made for him by Madame Nostradamus, a “witty little knitter.” They discover the station was built in the 30th century and is now a vast cryogenic repository used to escape Earth’s devastation by solar flares. The station has been infested by the insectoid Wirrn, who want the Earth for themselves. The alien creatures are destroyed in the station’s transport ship. With the ship destroyed and the humans resuscitated, resettlement of the Earth depends on the station’s transmit system, which has developed a fault. The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry transmit down to the Earth to correct the problem, leaving the TARDIS aboard the ark.
From “The Sontaran Experiment”
After a slightly spotty materialization, the Doctor sets about repairing the transmit receptors. Sarah Jane and Harry go for a walk and they are soon separated. They fall into the hands of some marooned astronauts from an Earth colony that pre-dates the space station. The astronauts were led into a trap by the Sontaran Field-Major Styre, whose intention is to conduct experiments on the humans in preparation for the seizing of the Earth for its strategic use in their never-ending war with the Rutans.
Harry: Doctor, I thought you were both dead!
The Doctor: Not me. Piece of the synestic locking mechanism from Nerva’s rocket. Popped it in my pocket.
Harry: Fortuitous.
The Doctor: Foresight. You never know when these bits and pieces will come in handy. Never throw anything away, Harry. Where’s my 500-year diary? I remember jotting some notes on the Sontarans. It’s a mistake to clutter one’s pockets, Harry.
Harry: Yes, Doctor.
The Doctor challenges Styre to single combat in order to tire him out, forcing him to return to his sabotaged ship to re-energize. Styre is killed and the ship explodes. The Doctor uses Styre’s remote communication gear to turn back the Sontaran fleet. With the space station personnel ready to disembark, the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry enter the transmit beam and dematerialize.
From “Genesis of the Daleks.”
The Doctor finds himself not aboard Space Station Nerva, but in a desolate landscape.
Time Lord: Ah. Welcome, Doctor.
The Doctor: What’s going on? Don’t you realise how dangerous it is to intercept a transmat beam?
Time Lord: Oh, come now, Doctor, not with our techniques. We Time Lords transcended such simple mechanical devices when the universe was less than half its present size.
The Doctor: Look, whatever I’ve done for you in the past, I’ve more than made up for. I will not tolerate this continual interference in my life!
Time Lord: Continual? We pride ourselves we seldom interfere in the affairs of others.
The Doctor: Except mine!
Time Lord: You, Doctor, are a special case. You enjoy the freedom we allow you. In return, occasionally -- not continually -- we ask you to do something for us.
The Doctor: I won’t do it. Whatever it is, I refuse!
Time Lord: Daleks!
The Doctor: Daleks? Tell me more.
Time Lord: We foresee a time when they will have destroyed all other life-forms and become the dominant creature in the universe.
The Doctor: That’s possible. Tell on.
Time Lord: We’d like to return you to Skaro at a point in time before the Daleks evolved.
The Doctor: Do you mean avert their creation?
Time Lord: Or affect their genetic development so they evolve into less aggressive creatures.
The Doctor: That’s feasible.
Time Lord: Alternatively, if you learn enough about their very beginnings, you might discover some inherent weakness.
The Doctor: All right. Just one more time.
Time Lord: You’ll do it?
The Doctor: Yes. If you’ll let me have the space-time co-ordinates, I’ll set the TARDIS for Skaro.
Time Lord: There’s no need for that, Doctor. You’re here. This is Skaro.
The Doctor: What?
Time Lord: We thought it would save time if we assumed your agreement.
The Doctor: What’s this?
Time Lord: A time ring. It will return you to the TARDIS when you’ve finished here. There’s just one thing.
The Doctor: What’s that?
Time Lord: Be careful not to lose it. That time ring is your lifeline. Good luck, Doctor.
The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry find themselves caught up in a thousand-year war between the Kaled and the Thal peoples. The Doctor soon meets Davros, chief scientist of the Kaled people and creator of the Daleks. Davros provides the Thals with the capacity to annihilate the Kaled race before unleashing his new Dalek army on the Thals. The last surviving Kaleds are exterminated when the Daleks turn on their creator and declare their independence. The Doctor and the Thal survivors manage to entomb the Daleks in an underground bunker after destroying the incubator room. Davros is hit by a Dalek death ray, but the life-support system in his chair probably saves him from death. Feeling his mission sufficiently accomplished, the Doctor activates the time ring and he, Sarah Jane, and Harry depart from Skaro.
From “Revenge of the Cybermen”
The time ring brings the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry back to Space Station Nerva, but the TARDIS is conspicuously absent.
The Doctor: Well, it probably hasn’t arrived yet. We’re a little early.
Harry: Hasn’t arrived yet?
The Doctor: No, you see, the TARDIS is drifting back through time, Harry. We’ll just have to wait for it to turn up.
The travelers have arrived thousands of years before Earth’s evacuation, when the space station is used as a beacon warning ships of a moon newly captured by Jupiter’s gravity. The moon is Voga, the planet of gold, and Nerva has fallen into the middle of a war between the Vogans and the Cybermen. The Doctor is able to turn the Cybermen’s weapons against them and they are destroyed aboard their ship. The TARDIS finally materializes and, while setting the drift compensators, the Doctor finds he has been summoned back to 20th century Earth by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
Next Season
Monday
Doctor Who Notes 11
The eleventh season of Doctor Who saw the end of Jon Pertwee’s tenure on the show, and introduced long-running companion Sarah Jane Smith. The Brigadier and the men of UNIT continued to play a large role in the stories, and more was revealed about the Doctor’s youth, building on the information revealed last season. Also, the Doctor’s home planet finally received a name.
From “The Time Warrior”
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart calls in the Doctor when several noted scientists vanish without a trace. The Brigadier has brought together the government’s remaining top scientists in a single complex, where the Doctor meets the young journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who is posing as her virologist aunt. When another scientist disappears, the Doctor traces the transmat beam back to the early middle ages. He follows in the TARDIS only to find that Sarah Jane has stowed away, and discovers the kidnappings are the work of a marooned Sontaran soldier attempting to repair his spacecraft. When the Doctor reveals to him that he is a Time Lord, attempting some intimidation, Commander Linx speculates that Gallifrey would never withstand a Sontaran invasion. At this point in time, Earth apparently has no strategic use in the war between the Sontarans and the Rutans. Linx is killed and the Doctor takes Sarah Jane back to the 1970s.
Sarah Jane Smith was working as a freelance journalist when she used her aunt’s credentials to infiltrate a UNIT operation in search of a story. Stumbling into the TARDIS, she suddenly found herself embroiled in the Doctor’s adventures. It took Sarah Jane some time to settle in to life as a time-traveler and to get used to meeting strange-looking aliens. But the Doctor seemed to very much enjoy her company, and they traveled together for many years, through his third regeneration, before finally parting company as he was about to make his first return to his home planet of Gallifrey.
From “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane return to 1973 only to find London has been evacuated, due to the sudden appearance of several dinosaurs shortly after they left, according to the Brigadier. To save Sarah Jane from being evacuated with all the other civilians, the Doctor announces that she is his new assistant. The crisis has been caused by a high-level conspiracy to use a scientist’s experiments to erase the last few million years of history and begin human society again. All concerned are shocked to learn that UNIT captain Mike Yates is part of the conspiracy. Although the scientist is able to begin the experiment, the Doctor proves immune to the time-field’s effects and is able to put a stop to it. Later, the Brigadier says that Captain Yates will be put on extended sick leave and given the chance to resign quietly. The Doctor then attempts to persuade Sarah Jane to join him on an excursion to Floriana in the TARDIS.
From “Death to the Daleks”
En route to Floriana, the TARDIS is pulled off course and “crash lands” on the barren planet Exxilon, its systems completely drained of power. The Doctor uses a hand crank to open the door manually. He and Sarah Jane find a marooned Earth military expedition and a contingent of Daleks who have both come to Exxilon in search of a rare chemical each needs for its own purposes. The Daleks recognize the Doctor as their ancient enemy. To find the source of the power disruption, the Doctor enters an enormous temple, wherein he must pass a series of automated intelligence tests. The Doctor reaches the center of the temple and disables its ancient systems while the human soldiers destroy the Dalek taskforce.
From “The Monster of Peladon”
The Doctor plans a return trip to Peladon, but arrives 50 years later than intended, when the society is embroiled in a Federation war, causing unrest among the lower classes. The Doctor and Sarah Jane quickly get mixed up in local politics, but the people of Peladon unite when a cadre of Ice Warriors arrive and impose martial law. Foiling the Ice Warriors’ scheme brings an end to the war and Sarah Jane seems quite proud of what she and the Doctor accomplished.
From “Planet of the Spiders”
Some time later, in March 1974, the Doctor has been conducting an investigation into psychic phenomena and brings a true clairvoyant, Professor Clegg, to his lab at UNIT headquarters, where he and the Brigadier receive a package from Jo Grant in South America -- the blue crystal from Metebelis III. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane has been working for Metropolitan magazine and she receives a tip from Mike Yates about strange goings-on at a Buddhist retreat where he has been trying to sort himself out after being cashiered out of UNIT. When Clegg looks into the crystal, his mental powers go out of control, allowing a giant spider to materialize in the Buddhist retreat. Clegg is killed by the psychic shock. The spider has come from Metebelis III to retrieve the crystal. To find out what happened, the Doctor also stares into the crystal.
The Brigadier: Never mind the dratted coffee! What about the spiders?
The Doctor: Spiders?
The Brigadier: The ones in the crystal!
The Doctor: Oh yes. You know, Brigadier, when I was a young man, there was an old hermit who lived halfway up a mountain just behind our house. I spent some of the finest hours of my life with that old man.
The Brigadier: What are you talking about?
The Doctor: It was from him I first learnt how to look into my mind.
The Brigadier: The crystal, Doctor!
The Doctor: That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Brigadier. When I looked into that crystal, all I could see was the face of my old teacher.
The crystal is stolen by one of the villains from the monastery, who has merged with the spider creature. They teleport back to Metebelis III, accidentally taking Sarah Jane with them.
The Doctor: Well, there’s only one thing for me to do, Mike. I’ve got to get after her. To Metebelis III.
Yates: In the TARDIS?
The Doctor: Yes, of course.
Yates: But how can you be sure you’ll get there?
The Doctor: Well, the TARDIS may be a little erratic, I’ll admit. After all, she is getting on a bit. But Metebelis III is the one planet I can be absolutely certain of reaching. You see, I wired the co-ordinates into the programmer.
Yates: Yes, but Doctor, a planet’s a big place!
The Doctor: Yes, well, I always leave the actual landing to the TARDIS herself. She’s no fool, you know.
Yates: You speak as if she were alive!
The Doctor: Yes. Yes, I do, don’t I?
Once there, the Doctor and Sarah Jane learn that an Earth colonizing expedition crashed on Metebelis III, whereupon some spiders from the ship were exposed to the native blue crystals which caused them to become large and intelligent. They soon enslaved the surviving humans. Four hundred years later, the spiders intend to invade Earth and conquer it for themselves. However, the invasion must wait until the crystal is off Earth so it cannot be used against them. A spider merges with Sarah Jane before she and the Doctor take the TARDIS back to the monastery, where they meet the mysterious abbot, K’anpo, who seems very familiar to the Doctor.
The Doctor: I know who you are now!
K’anpo: You were always a little slow on the uptake, my boy.
The Doctor: It’s been a long, long time.
Sarah Jane: You know each other?
The Doctor: Oh, yes. He was my teacher My… my guru, if you like. In another time, another place…
K’anpo: Another life.
Sarah Jane: Oh no, don’t tell me you’re a Time Lord, too!
K’anpo: I am. But the discipline they serve was not for me.
The Doctor: No, nor for me.
K’anpo: I wouldn’t have chosen your alternative. To borrow a TARDIS was a little naughty, to say the least.
The Doctor: Yes, well, I had to get away; I hadn’t your power.
K’anpo: Indeed. I regenerated and came to Earth, to Tibet.
Sarah Jane: Regenerated?
The Doctor: Yes. When a Time Lord’s body wears out, he regenerates, becomes new.
K’anpo: That is why we can live such a long time.
K’anpo helps the Doctor realize that he must return the crystal even though doing so means certain death, for the radiation deep in the Cave of Crystal where the leader of the spiders dwells will be more than his body can withstand. The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS for Metebelis III, and K’anpo survives the spiders’ final assault by regenerating. The Doctor descends into the radioactive Cave of Crystal, where the Great One proves to be a spider of gigantic proportions with a terminal case of megalomania. Despite the cellular damage, the Doctor makes it back to the TARDIS. Three weeks after disappearing, he rematerializes in his lab at UNIT headquarters. He collapses to the floor in front of Sarah Jane and the Brigadier. As the Doctor slips into unconsciousness, K’anpo appears as a psychic projection and gives the Doctor’s cells “a little push” before vanishing again, thereby setting in motion the Doctor’s third regeneration.
Next Season
From “The Time Warrior”
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart calls in the Doctor when several noted scientists vanish without a trace. The Brigadier has brought together the government’s remaining top scientists in a single complex, where the Doctor meets the young journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who is posing as her virologist aunt. When another scientist disappears, the Doctor traces the transmat beam back to the early middle ages. He follows in the TARDIS only to find that Sarah Jane has stowed away, and discovers the kidnappings are the work of a marooned Sontaran soldier attempting to repair his spacecraft. When the Doctor reveals to him that he is a Time Lord, attempting some intimidation, Commander Linx speculates that Gallifrey would never withstand a Sontaran invasion. At this point in time, Earth apparently has no strategic use in the war between the Sontarans and the Rutans. Linx is killed and the Doctor takes Sarah Jane back to the 1970s.
Sarah Jane Smith was working as a freelance journalist when she used her aunt’s credentials to infiltrate a UNIT operation in search of a story. Stumbling into the TARDIS, she suddenly found herself embroiled in the Doctor’s adventures. It took Sarah Jane some time to settle in to life as a time-traveler and to get used to meeting strange-looking aliens. But the Doctor seemed to very much enjoy her company, and they traveled together for many years, through his third regeneration, before finally parting company as he was about to make his first return to his home planet of Gallifrey.
From “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”
The Doctor and Sarah Jane return to 1973 only to find London has been evacuated, due to the sudden appearance of several dinosaurs shortly after they left, according to the Brigadier. To save Sarah Jane from being evacuated with all the other civilians, the Doctor announces that she is his new assistant. The crisis has been caused by a high-level conspiracy to use a scientist’s experiments to erase the last few million years of history and begin human society again. All concerned are shocked to learn that UNIT captain Mike Yates is part of the conspiracy. Although the scientist is able to begin the experiment, the Doctor proves immune to the time-field’s effects and is able to put a stop to it. Later, the Brigadier says that Captain Yates will be put on extended sick leave and given the chance to resign quietly. The Doctor then attempts to persuade Sarah Jane to join him on an excursion to Floriana in the TARDIS.
From “Death to the Daleks”
En route to Floriana, the TARDIS is pulled off course and “crash lands” on the barren planet Exxilon, its systems completely drained of power. The Doctor uses a hand crank to open the door manually. He and Sarah Jane find a marooned Earth military expedition and a contingent of Daleks who have both come to Exxilon in search of a rare chemical each needs for its own purposes. The Daleks recognize the Doctor as their ancient enemy. To find the source of the power disruption, the Doctor enters an enormous temple, wherein he must pass a series of automated intelligence tests. The Doctor reaches the center of the temple and disables its ancient systems while the human soldiers destroy the Dalek taskforce.
From “The Monster of Peladon”
The Doctor plans a return trip to Peladon, but arrives 50 years later than intended, when the society is embroiled in a Federation war, causing unrest among the lower classes. The Doctor and Sarah Jane quickly get mixed up in local politics, but the people of Peladon unite when a cadre of Ice Warriors arrive and impose martial law. Foiling the Ice Warriors’ scheme brings an end to the war and Sarah Jane seems quite proud of what she and the Doctor accomplished.
From “Planet of the Spiders”
Some time later, in March 1974, the Doctor has been conducting an investigation into psychic phenomena and brings a true clairvoyant, Professor Clegg, to his lab at UNIT headquarters, where he and the Brigadier receive a package from Jo Grant in South America -- the blue crystal from Metebelis III. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane has been working for Metropolitan magazine and she receives a tip from Mike Yates about strange goings-on at a Buddhist retreat where he has been trying to sort himself out after being cashiered out of UNIT. When Clegg looks into the crystal, his mental powers go out of control, allowing a giant spider to materialize in the Buddhist retreat. Clegg is killed by the psychic shock. The spider has come from Metebelis III to retrieve the crystal. To find out what happened, the Doctor also stares into the crystal.
The Brigadier: Never mind the dratted coffee! What about the spiders?
The Doctor: Spiders?
The Brigadier: The ones in the crystal!
The Doctor: Oh yes. You know, Brigadier, when I was a young man, there was an old hermit who lived halfway up a mountain just behind our house. I spent some of the finest hours of my life with that old man.
The Brigadier: What are you talking about?
The Doctor: It was from him I first learnt how to look into my mind.
The Brigadier: The crystal, Doctor!
The Doctor: That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Brigadier. When I looked into that crystal, all I could see was the face of my old teacher.
The crystal is stolen by one of the villains from the monastery, who has merged with the spider creature. They teleport back to Metebelis III, accidentally taking Sarah Jane with them.
The Doctor: Well, there’s only one thing for me to do, Mike. I’ve got to get after her. To Metebelis III.
Yates: In the TARDIS?
The Doctor: Yes, of course.
Yates: But how can you be sure you’ll get there?
The Doctor: Well, the TARDIS may be a little erratic, I’ll admit. After all, she is getting on a bit. But Metebelis III is the one planet I can be absolutely certain of reaching. You see, I wired the co-ordinates into the programmer.
Yates: Yes, but Doctor, a planet’s a big place!
The Doctor: Yes, well, I always leave the actual landing to the TARDIS herself. She’s no fool, you know.
Yates: You speak as if she were alive!
The Doctor: Yes. Yes, I do, don’t I?
Once there, the Doctor and Sarah Jane learn that an Earth colonizing expedition crashed on Metebelis III, whereupon some spiders from the ship were exposed to the native blue crystals which caused them to become large and intelligent. They soon enslaved the surviving humans. Four hundred years later, the spiders intend to invade Earth and conquer it for themselves. However, the invasion must wait until the crystal is off Earth so it cannot be used against them. A spider merges with Sarah Jane before she and the Doctor take the TARDIS back to the monastery, where they meet the mysterious abbot, K’anpo, who seems very familiar to the Doctor.
The Doctor: I know who you are now!
K’anpo: You were always a little slow on the uptake, my boy.
The Doctor: It’s been a long, long time.
Sarah Jane: You know each other?
The Doctor: Oh, yes. He was my teacher My… my guru, if you like. In another time, another place…
K’anpo: Another life.
Sarah Jane: Oh no, don’t tell me you’re a Time Lord, too!
K’anpo: I am. But the discipline they serve was not for me.
The Doctor: No, nor for me.
K’anpo: I wouldn’t have chosen your alternative. To borrow a TARDIS was a little naughty, to say the least.
The Doctor: Yes, well, I had to get away; I hadn’t your power.
K’anpo: Indeed. I regenerated and came to Earth, to Tibet.
Sarah Jane: Regenerated?
The Doctor: Yes. When a Time Lord’s body wears out, he regenerates, becomes new.
K’anpo: That is why we can live such a long time.
K’anpo helps the Doctor realize that he must return the crystal even though doing so means certain death, for the radiation deep in the Cave of Crystal where the leader of the spiders dwells will be more than his body can withstand. The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS for Metebelis III, and K’anpo survives the spiders’ final assault by regenerating. The Doctor descends into the radioactive Cave of Crystal, where the Great One proves to be a spider of gigantic proportions with a terminal case of megalomania. Despite the cellular damage, the Doctor makes it back to the TARDIS. Three weeks after disappearing, he rematerializes in his lab at UNIT headquarters. He collapses to the floor in front of Sarah Jane and the Brigadier. As the Doctor slips into unconsciousness, K’anpo appears as a psychic projection and gives the Doctor’s cells “a little push” before vanishing again, thereby setting in motion the Doctor’s third regeneration.
Next Season
Friday
Doctor Who Notes 10
Season ten of Doctor Who kicks off with the first anniversary special, in which the first two Doctors return to join the third in an adventure that reveals much about Time Lord history. Following this story, the Doctor’s exile is rescinded, and he is free to roam time and space once more. Then, the Master and the Daleks team up to menace the Doctor, in what would turn out to be Roger Delgado’s final appearance in the series.
From “The Three Doctors”
The Doctor is brought evidence of a superluminal energy beam directed at Earth, along which has traveled a strange matter / antimatter goo. When several monsters attack UNIT headquarters to get the Doctor, he and Jo Grant take refuge in the disabled TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to contact the Time Lords for help. Meanwhile, the Time Lords have discovered the energy beam originates from within a black hole that is quickly draining away all power from the Time Lords, disabling them.
Chancellor: Are you telling me we’re up against an adversary -- a force equal to our own?
President: Equal and opposite to our own!
Chancellor: A force which inhabits a universe where by definition even we cannot exist?
President: Yes, a force in the universe of antimatter!
Chancellor: But that’s too terrible to contemplate! Someone must go and help the Doctor!
President: I agree, but no one can be spared, Your Excellency. Everyone is needed to combat the energy drain.
Chancellor: Are you saying we can’t help him?
President: Yes, I am. But perhaps he can help himself. Show me the Doctor’s time stream, the section for his earlier self, before he changed his form.
Chancellor: You cannot allow him to cross his own time-stream! Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the First Law of Time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves!
President: I am aware of that, Your Excellency. But this is an emergency.
Chancellor: But you can’t!
President: Your Excellency, I have to!
Chancellor: Be it on your own head!
In the TARDIS, a recorder suddenly appears on the main console, which the Doctor says looks strangely familiar. Suddenly, his previous incarnation materializes, explaining that the Time Lords were able to lift him from his present and deposit him into his own future. The two Doctors begin squabbling immediately, so the Time Lords summon up his first incarnation to keep them in line, but he becomes trapped in a time eddy and can only appear on the TARDIS viewscreen. The goo transports the third Doctor and Jo to a planet within a singularity in the antimatter universe. As the second Doctor tries to fill in the incredulous Brigadier Lethhridge-Stewart, the goo becomes agitated again, causing them to retreat back into the TARDIS. It is the first time inside for both the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. The second Doctor offers them some jellybabies. Meanwhile, the third Doctor learns the identity of his kidnapper -- Omega, the legendary Time Lord the Doctor thought dead.
Omega: Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect.
The Doctor: You knew your mission was dangerous.
Omega: Dangerous, yes. But I completed it! And I did not expect to be abandoned! Many thousands of years ago when I left our planet, all this was then a star, until I arranged its detonation!
The Doctor: You were the solar engineer. It was your duty.
Omega: It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself!
The Doctor: Well, you succeeded. And are revered for it.
Omega: Revered? Here? I was abandoned!
The Doctor: Histories say you were lost in the super-nova.
Omega: I was sacrificed to that super-nova! I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!
The Doctor: No, not forgotten. All my life I’ve known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero!
Omega: A hero? I should have been a god!
Omega demonstrates that in the singularity, he can manipulate reality with his mind, which allowed him to survive and create the matter / antimatter goo that enables the Doctor, Jo, and the others to exist in the antimatter universe.
The Doctor: How do I fit into this picture?
Omega: There are some things that even I cannot do, not alone. And at this point in my plans, I need the help of a brother Time Lord.
The Doctor: Oh, I see.
Omega: And it pleases me to use you against them.
The goo then transports the whole of UNIT headquarters through the black hole, and the second Doctor is also brought before Omega, who deduces that they are both the same person. Omega intends for the Doctors to take over maintaining the energy beam so that he can escape, but the Doctors discover that Omega’s physical form has dissolved completely, and that he can now exist only within the singularity. The second Doctor finds his recorder had slipped into the TARDIS force-field generator, and is therefore still composed of matter. When Omega disrupts the field, the atoms annihilate each other, destroying the singularity and sending all the matter back to its point of origin. The black hole collapses and Omega is once again lost. The first two Doctors are returned to their respective points in the time stream, and the third Doctor receives a gift from the Time Lords.
The Doctor: The Time Lords -- they’ve sent me a new dematerialisation circuit! And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they’ve all come back! They’ve forgiven me … they’ve given me back my freedom!
From “Carnival of Monsters”
Attempting to take Jo on a trip to Metebelis III, the Doctor finds the TARDIS has materialized instead on Inter Minor, within a device that contains miniaturized alien environments.
The Doctor: As a matter of fact, I had a great deal to do with the banning of these miniscopes.
Jo: You did?
The Doctor: Yes, I did. I managed to persuade the High Council of the Time Lords that they were an offence against the dignity of sentient life forms.
Jo: But I thought the Time Lords never interfered.
The Doctor: Well, they don’t as a rule. But frankly, I made such a nuisance of myself -- well, they banned the things.
Jo: But if these scope things were banned, how come we’re inside one?
The Doctor: I don’t know. Officially, they were all called in and destroyed.
From “Frontier in Space”
After leaving Inter Minor, the TARDIS nearly has a hyperspace collision with a 26th century space freighter, but manages to materialize on board just in time. The Doctor and Jo find themselves in the middle of a plot by the Master to start a war between the Earth and Draconian space empires. The Master is employing the Ogrons as his henchmen and turns out to be in league with the Daleks, who plan to invade the Milky Way galaxy in the aftermath of the war. Although he asked for only the Earth, the Master intended to double-cross the Daleks and seize total power for himself. The Doctor and Jo escape the Master’s clutches in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor is wounded by the Master’s ray gun. The Doctor sends a telepathic message to the Time Lords, asking them to send the TARDIS after the Dalek task force. His scheme collapsing, the Master also escapes, not to encounter the Doctor again until their disastrous homecoming.
From “Planet of the Daleks”
The Doctor collapses and falls into a deep coma as a result of his injuries. When the TARDIS finally materializes, Jo goes out to look for help. The Doctor then comes round, only to find the TARDIS doors jammed and the oxygen supply depleted. He is rescued by a group of Thals from Skaro, on an interstellar expedition to the planet Spiridon. The Thals mention their ancient legend of the Doctor and his three companions who once helped them escape the Daleks. Now, a Dalek army has come to Spiridon to learn the secret of invisibility, having subjugated the natives by using germ warfare, and are marshaling their forces for the invasion of the Milky Way galaxy. However, the Doctor buries the Dalek army in an ice floe.
From “The Green Death”
At UNIT headquarters, Jo is having a quick breakfast while the Doctor tinkers with components from the TARDIS.
Jo: Is that the dematerialisation circuit?
The Doctor: No, no. No more trouble there, thank goodness. I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like. I’ve got absolute control over her.
Jo: Now the Time Lords have forgiven you.
The Doctor: Yes, exactly.
Jo: Well, what is it then?
The Doctor: What, this? This is the space-time co-ordinate programmer. The wretched thing’s nearly worn out. That’s the trouble with the TARDIS, she’s getting on a bit, you know, Jo.
Jo: Momummennememmergobbumebbumebbusbee!
The Doctor: Look, must you?
Jo: I’m sorry, it’s my breakfast. I said no wonder we never got to Metebelis III.
The Doctor: There’s precious little protein in an apple, you know. Protein’s the thing for breakfast, Jo.
Jo: Eggs and bacon? Yuck!
The Doctor: That’s where we’re going to next.
Jo: Where are we going?
The Doctor: Metebelis III. The TARDIS can’t miss this time. I’ll actually wire the coordinates into the programmer.
News of a mysterious death at Global Chemicals in Wales leads the Brigadier to ask the Doctor and Jo to assist the investigation. Jo intends to help a group led by Professor Clifford Jones, which opposes Global Chemicals. The Doctor, however, insists on going to Metebelis III, and the three of them go their separate ways. Metebelis III turns out to be a nightmarish experience, but the Doctor manages to pocket a blue crystal. He then joins the Brigadier in Wales, where they find a mine infested with giant maggots. As the UNIT troops arrive in force, the Doctor realizes that Jo is falling in love with Professor Jones. He also discovers that Global Chemicals is run by a sentient computer that has enslaved the human employees, and that the blue crystal can overcome the mental conditioning. The computer thus destroyed, Professor Jones and Jo announce their plans to be married and go on an expedition to the Amazon Jungle. The Doctor gives Jo the crystal from Metebelis III as a wedding gift.
Next Season
From “The Three Doctors”
The Doctor is brought evidence of a superluminal energy beam directed at Earth, along which has traveled a strange matter / antimatter goo. When several monsters attack UNIT headquarters to get the Doctor, he and Jo Grant take refuge in the disabled TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to contact the Time Lords for help. Meanwhile, the Time Lords have discovered the energy beam originates from within a black hole that is quickly draining away all power from the Time Lords, disabling them.
Chancellor: Are you telling me we’re up against an adversary -- a force equal to our own?
President: Equal and opposite to our own!
Chancellor: A force which inhabits a universe where by definition even we cannot exist?
President: Yes, a force in the universe of antimatter!
Chancellor: But that’s too terrible to contemplate! Someone must go and help the Doctor!
President: I agree, but no one can be spared, Your Excellency. Everyone is needed to combat the energy drain.
Chancellor: Are you saying we can’t help him?
President: Yes, I am. But perhaps he can help himself. Show me the Doctor’s time stream, the section for his earlier self, before he changed his form.
Chancellor: You cannot allow him to cross his own time-stream! Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the First Law of Time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves!
President: I am aware of that, Your Excellency. But this is an emergency.
Chancellor: But you can’t!
President: Your Excellency, I have to!
Chancellor: Be it on your own head!
In the TARDIS, a recorder suddenly appears on the main console, which the Doctor says looks strangely familiar. Suddenly, his previous incarnation materializes, explaining that the Time Lords were able to lift him from his present and deposit him into his own future. The two Doctors begin squabbling immediately, so the Time Lords summon up his first incarnation to keep them in line, but he becomes trapped in a time eddy and can only appear on the TARDIS viewscreen. The goo transports the third Doctor and Jo to a planet within a singularity in the antimatter universe. As the second Doctor tries to fill in the incredulous Brigadier Lethhridge-Stewart, the goo becomes agitated again, causing them to retreat back into the TARDIS. It is the first time inside for both the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. The second Doctor offers them some jellybabies. Meanwhile, the third Doctor learns the identity of his kidnapper -- Omega, the legendary Time Lord the Doctor thought dead.
Omega: Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect.
The Doctor: You knew your mission was dangerous.
Omega: Dangerous, yes. But I completed it! And I did not expect to be abandoned! Many thousands of years ago when I left our planet, all this was then a star, until I arranged its detonation!
The Doctor: You were the solar engineer. It was your duty.
Omega: It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself!
The Doctor: Well, you succeeded. And are revered for it.
Omega: Revered? Here? I was abandoned!
The Doctor: Histories say you were lost in the super-nova.
Omega: I was sacrificed to that super-nova! I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!
The Doctor: No, not forgotten. All my life I’ve known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero!
Omega: A hero? I should have been a god!
Omega demonstrates that in the singularity, he can manipulate reality with his mind, which allowed him to survive and create the matter / antimatter goo that enables the Doctor, Jo, and the others to exist in the antimatter universe.
The Doctor: How do I fit into this picture?
Omega: There are some things that even I cannot do, not alone. And at this point in my plans, I need the help of a brother Time Lord.
The Doctor: Oh, I see.
Omega: And it pleases me to use you against them.
The goo then transports the whole of UNIT headquarters through the black hole, and the second Doctor is also brought before Omega, who deduces that they are both the same person. Omega intends for the Doctors to take over maintaining the energy beam so that he can escape, but the Doctors discover that Omega’s physical form has dissolved completely, and that he can now exist only within the singularity. The second Doctor finds his recorder had slipped into the TARDIS force-field generator, and is therefore still composed of matter. When Omega disrupts the field, the atoms annihilate each other, destroying the singularity and sending all the matter back to its point of origin. The black hole collapses and Omega is once again lost. The first two Doctors are returned to their respective points in the time stream, and the third Doctor receives a gift from the Time Lords.
The Doctor: The Time Lords -- they’ve sent me a new dematerialisation circuit! And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they’ve all come back! They’ve forgiven me … they’ve given me back my freedom!
From “Carnival of Monsters”
Attempting to take Jo on a trip to Metebelis III, the Doctor finds the TARDIS has materialized instead on Inter Minor, within a device that contains miniaturized alien environments.
The Doctor: As a matter of fact, I had a great deal to do with the banning of these miniscopes.
Jo: You did?
The Doctor: Yes, I did. I managed to persuade the High Council of the Time Lords that they were an offence against the dignity of sentient life forms.
Jo: But I thought the Time Lords never interfered.
The Doctor: Well, they don’t as a rule. But frankly, I made such a nuisance of myself -- well, they banned the things.
Jo: But if these scope things were banned, how come we’re inside one?
The Doctor: I don’t know. Officially, they were all called in and destroyed.
From “Frontier in Space”
After leaving Inter Minor, the TARDIS nearly has a hyperspace collision with a 26th century space freighter, but manages to materialize on board just in time. The Doctor and Jo find themselves in the middle of a plot by the Master to start a war between the Earth and Draconian space empires. The Master is employing the Ogrons as his henchmen and turns out to be in league with the Daleks, who plan to invade the Milky Way galaxy in the aftermath of the war. Although he asked for only the Earth, the Master intended to double-cross the Daleks and seize total power for himself. The Doctor and Jo escape the Master’s clutches in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor is wounded by the Master’s ray gun. The Doctor sends a telepathic message to the Time Lords, asking them to send the TARDIS after the Dalek task force. His scheme collapsing, the Master also escapes, not to encounter the Doctor again until their disastrous homecoming.
From “Planet of the Daleks”
The Doctor collapses and falls into a deep coma as a result of his injuries. When the TARDIS finally materializes, Jo goes out to look for help. The Doctor then comes round, only to find the TARDIS doors jammed and the oxygen supply depleted. He is rescued by a group of Thals from Skaro, on an interstellar expedition to the planet Spiridon. The Thals mention their ancient legend of the Doctor and his three companions who once helped them escape the Daleks. Now, a Dalek army has come to Spiridon to learn the secret of invisibility, having subjugated the natives by using germ warfare, and are marshaling their forces for the invasion of the Milky Way galaxy. However, the Doctor buries the Dalek army in an ice floe.
From “The Green Death”
At UNIT headquarters, Jo is having a quick breakfast while the Doctor tinkers with components from the TARDIS.
Jo: Is that the dematerialisation circuit?
The Doctor: No, no. No more trouble there, thank goodness. I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like. I’ve got absolute control over her.
Jo: Now the Time Lords have forgiven you.
The Doctor: Yes, exactly.
Jo: Well, what is it then?
The Doctor: What, this? This is the space-time co-ordinate programmer. The wretched thing’s nearly worn out. That’s the trouble with the TARDIS, she’s getting on a bit, you know, Jo.
Jo: Momummennememmergobbumebbumebbusbee!
The Doctor: Look, must you?
Jo: I’m sorry, it’s my breakfast. I said no wonder we never got to Metebelis III.
The Doctor: There’s precious little protein in an apple, you know. Protein’s the thing for breakfast, Jo.
Jo: Eggs and bacon? Yuck!
The Doctor: That’s where we’re going to next.
Jo: Where are we going?
The Doctor: Metebelis III. The TARDIS can’t miss this time. I’ll actually wire the coordinates into the programmer.
News of a mysterious death at Global Chemicals in Wales leads the Brigadier to ask the Doctor and Jo to assist the investigation. Jo intends to help a group led by Professor Clifford Jones, which opposes Global Chemicals. The Doctor, however, insists on going to Metebelis III, and the three of them go their separate ways. Metebelis III turns out to be a nightmarish experience, but the Doctor manages to pocket a blue crystal. He then joins the Brigadier in Wales, where they find a mine infested with giant maggots. As the UNIT troops arrive in force, the Doctor realizes that Jo is falling in love with Professor Jones. He also discovers that Global Chemicals is run by a sentient computer that has enslaved the human employees, and that the blue crystal can overcome the mental conditioning. The computer thus destroyed, Professor Jones and Jo announce their plans to be married and go on an expedition to the Amazon Jungle. The Doctor gives Jo the crystal from Metebelis III as a wedding gift.
Next Season
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