Neo Who ideas

[mr friendly guy]

I had some Doctor who ideas jotted down, over the years I've adjusted things as I thought of them and generally came up with what I thought was a good summary for 4 seasons. Then a few months ago ransomware infected my computer and my idea was almost lost forever. Fortunately I had just upgraded my hard drive from a 3 TB to 8 TB one, so the old drive had most of my files including some of my fiction ideas. I've since have purchased a second hard drive to back up, but this experience got me thinking. I could have lost all these nice ideas I had, so I am going to post them on SD.net so hopefully if shit every happens again, the ideas would be around somewhere. I know some people enjoyed my stories before and some of my ideas, so I am just going to post it.

***************************************************************************************************************
Doctor who idea
Season 1 – The Time Lords Return
Season 2 – The War in Heaven
Season 3 – Reality War
Season 4 – War of the future

Season one

Deals with a mysterious force which is destroying time travel races, more so than even the Time Lords did. This requires the Doctor to bring back the Time Lords


Notable episodes

a. Grand round / Barbarians at the gate

The Doctor uncovers a mysterious virus called DARS (Depthnirk Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which has caused the Earth colony of New Haven to be isolated from the rest of the Earth Empire. The first episode of this occurred in the city of Depthnirk, hence the name.

The Doctor visits the hospital grand round which showcases evidence that DARS is a nano machine, which can reproduce, flow against bloodflow.

The Doctor points out that such a machine could simply block the coronary vessels causing heart attacks, or blocks cerebral arteries causing strokes or blocking pulmonary vessels causing pulmonary embolus. Thus the people deploying it don’t know how it works, or it has another purpose, almost like its searching for something.

Further investigations reveal that the people affected are those that have transplanted organs using a new “Shen” method of organ creation, which is cheaper then existing organ synthesis methods. Along the way he meets an interracial couple (Mr and Mrs Smith) who hold anti alien views including hanging up posters reminiscent of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of blood” speech, but with aliens instead of Africans. Maximum irony points here.

It turns out that Mrs Smith is a Rutan who has replaced the original (but with the original’s memory), although her daughter Lydia from a previous marriage is human of course. DARS is created by the Sontarans to hunt down Rutans. The Shen method of course involves Rutan genetics (since they are shapeshifters, the technology involves shapeshifting a piece of Rutan tissue into the required organ). Losing their war with the Sontarans the Rutans have hidden on the colony of New Haven. The Shen method is just a way for them to gain resources via trade with the humans.

In the end one of the humans manages to use the Sontarans own nanomachines against them by causing them to block the blood flow to vital organs. Note the Sontarans have high tech armour like the ones which allow them to resist K-9’s blasts (“Invasion of time”) and gives them an edge against the humans.

At the end of the episode Mr Smith becomes less xenophobic. Meanwhile mysterious voices note that the Doctor has not detected them. They note that Lydia has promise and having glanced her future. They speculate that bringing her into the fold will rejuvenate us.

b. Murder on the salvage ship / The Armageddon ship

The Doctor receives a distress call in an area of the universe with predominant dark matter. Struggling to navigate through the dark matter, he comes across a giant Earth salvage ship. Due to sabotage the ship was only able to send out a distress signal before its running on auxiliary power.

It turns out that crew members have been murdered and the Doctor’s appearance gives them a scapegoat. However the theory “The Doctor did it” is proven false when more crew members are murdered while the Doctor is imprisoned. The Doctor offers to help, but the crew are very vague about what they are salvaging, especially once they let slip the size of the salvage ship (almost like it was carrying the cargo internally to prevent scans revealing the cargo, as opposed to using a tractor beam and dragging it along).

As one crew member Parsons turns out to the murderer, he himself is murdered. It looks like several crew members have been murdering each other and the Doctor suspects an alien presence that can possess humanoids, a presence he has felt before.

A confrontation with the alien entity reveals that he is known as anPsionivore, and that they were created as a psychic weapon for a war long ago, and functions the same way biological weapons do. Infected one person then spreading. The alien then proceeds to take over the Doctor. However having been possessed by one on the planet Midnight (New Series season 4 episode 10) and having 2 regenerations to work on how to fight this, the Doctor manages to expel the entity into the TARDIS telepathic circuits, which he promptly removes and vows to send into a black hole. Afterwards the remaining crew members work to restore power to the ship.

At the end of the first episode he then realises that this entity is responsible for killing, but while mind linked he never got a sense that the creature was responsible for the sabotage. Meaning there is another one on board. As the power comes on he finally discovers what the humans were attempting to salvage. A Dalek saucer ship from the Time War


Demanding to know what is going on, the Doctor is surprised when the salvage ship distress call has also been answered by Lydia Smith (from Grand round / Barbarians at the gate). The humans are using an indigenous technology which allows them to navigate in dark matter due to technobabble subspace blah blah, and no one else has thought of this because subspace travel is more slower than hyperspace which most races use, yet alone the time travel the TL use. It turns out that Earth has abandoned some of their colonies, and New Haven is fighting a war against raids by the Sycorax. To counteract that, the humans launch counter raids hidden in areas which large amounts of dark matter, where the Sycorax cannot see them. Despite this, the technologically superior Sycorax has the advantage, but the salvaged Dalek ship will turn the tide.

The Doctor is horrified by this plan and even more shocked when Lydia’s engineers manage to repair the weapon system and they test it be blowing up a Jupiter size planet (just shows you how tough Gallifrey was).

Investigations of the Dalek ship revealed evidence that the Daleks killed each other, likely from the Psionivore. But who has such technology? The Time Lords never did, or at least none the Doctor was aware of.

There is a surviving Psionivore and this one can possess circuits and machinery and hide in architecture, not just humans. With the Dalek Saucer now more functional after Lydia’s engineers partially repair it, it moves the saucer to target a world which used to be a Dalek holding, but now is settled by <insert alien race here whose population outnumbers the humans of New Haven several times over>. The Doctor manages to stop the ship, but despite Lydia’s pleas refuses to simply eject the Psionivore, he destroys the Dalek Saucer.

Lydia cries that the Doctor has doomed her people.

At the end Lydia is approached by a mysterious masked figure who has disabled all her security. He informs her that he has observed how she has led her people against great odds to fight the Sycorax. He is impressed by some of their innovations including the dark matter scans and the multiple missile launching platforms (where the humans missile spam their inferior missiles against Sycorax ships).

Lydia can only mentioned with a bitter laugh that amateurs think tactics, professionals think strategy and masters think logistics, the things taught to human generals for all the good it did her. The figure asks Lydia to join them as her skills will be an asset. As a joke Lydia sarcastically agrees if the figure gives them the weapons to defeat the Sycorax.

To her surprise the figure mentions that “this is not our culture to share our technology, but we were created because some realise the old ways were not sufficient. We will consider it.”


c. Time Wave / The utilitarian dilemma

The TARDIS detects a time wave and seeks to investigate. He finds a planet just outside the waves wake and finds human refugees fleeing the Sycorax. Then the wave hits and suddenly it is humans celebrating the defeat of the Sycorax.

Investigating further he finds that a company Celestis Holdings, has manufactured technology which allows the humans to triumph over the Sycorax. Including Minyan “fission grenades” (those from Underworld which was rated at 1 GT for each hand held grenade), portable pacifiers (Underworld) and whole host of goodies built by human tech, but based on several different alien species weaponry.

The Doctor discovers that two Time Agents Ruha and Gulliver are also investigating. This time line should not have come to pass. History records a tragedy as the Sycorax wins. After some posturing the Time Agents agree to work with the Doctor but Gulliver is mysteriously recalled.

Pooling their resources they break into Celestis holdings and find that the CEO is none other than Lydia. Lydia explains that their archeologists discovered this “collection,” of alien artefacts.

Unconvinced the Doctor manages to uncover a paradox machine (made with human tech) which allows this alternate time line to continue. But what is the paradox it seeks to prevent? Is it just this timeline or another paradox? Suddenly Ruha points a weapon at the Doctor. However the Doctor points out he has deactivated the weapon with his MODIFIED sonic screwdriver, and then proceeds to deactivate her disguise revealing a humanoid figure but with hair which looks like scales. He explains that her chameleon technology is impressive. It uses Quantum Mnemonics which the Time Lords were researching before the outbreak of the Time War, which is more impressive than the TARDIS own block transfer computations. However since he is familiar with the concept he managed to rig a counter.

He then asks if Ruha did kill Gulliver, however she denies it. He really was recalled making her job easier. The Doctor wants to destroy the Paradox machine, however Ruha points out that if he does so, billions of humans who now live, will be killed by the Sycorax. That is several times more than the number of Sycorax killed before the Sycorax surrendered under the current time line.

The Doctor is trapped by the Utilitarian dilemma. Given time the paradox machine will make the current time line the dominant one. Thus taking away the only other reason for stopping the current time line. History. If history is changed there will not be a consequence to time itself because the paradox machine can prevent a historical change of this size.

In the end the Doctor vows that this isn’t over and warns the Celestis there is a price to be paid for tampering with time. Out of earshot Ruha’s master mentions, “yes, we know all too well and we are willing to pay.”

Unbeknownst to Ruha, the Doctor has sabotage a lot of Celestis Holding’s temporal tech aside from the paradox machine and wiped their computers clean in the belief he will delay their mastery of such technology.

At the end of the episode we see Lydia having a romantic dinner with her partner, the last she will ever have. She then joins Ruha and another mysterious masked figure. They explain they will need to make genetic alternations to her to work their technology which Lydia agrees to without hesitation.

Thus the second paradox is revealed. If the humans were winning, Lydia would never join the Celestis in the first place, but if the Celestis changed history and made the humans win, Lydia would lose her original reason for joining the Celestis. The figure intones some ominous words.

“Rise Lydia of the House of Smith. Shed away your old life and become one of us. Become a Time Lord of Celestia.”

The Celestis

The Celestis was the Time Lord’s equivalent to the Cult of Skaro. They were tasked with thinking in ways unlike how Time Lords think to allow them to better win the war. Led by Drax (“The Armageddon Factor) a group of 50 Time Lords form the Celestis. However their numbers are greater due to the presence of servitor races.

While sharing common goals with the Time Lords such as “regulating” time travel, in many ways the Celestis are what the Time Lords are not.

The Time Lords dress in pomp, the Celestis wear battle armour. The Time Lords show their faces, the Celestis wear masks. Where the Time Lords have non aggression pacts but no allies, the Celestis have genetically uplifted a raceto be their servitors. The Time Lords tax the Navarinos (Delta and the Bannermen) to regulate time travel, the Celestis would prefer to destroy their capability altogether if not outright genocide. The Time Lords use wonder weapons, like deus ex machine. The Celestis use biological weapons or similar ilk and focus on “tactics, strategy and logistics,” as well as technology. The Time Lords keep their Homeworld in the same star system, the Celestis have mobile orbitals. The Time Lords recruit only from Gallifreyans, the Celestis are willing to recruit from other races.

A simplistic way of looking at it, is that the Time Lords would fight a war like the Indirans, the Celestis would fight it like the Culture.

As a result of their isolation from Gallifrey, they have developed some interesting technology.

1. Psionivore
As mentioned this psionic lifeform can possess mechanical and living structures, feed on their energy and compel them to perform actions against their will.

Was deployed as a test against a Dalek saucer. Inspired by Lawrence Miles Anarchitects, but since Miles holds the IP rights to those…

2. Cloaked time travel
TARDISes normally travel in the vortex, the Celestis TARDISes travel in Eternity. Eternity of course was the realm the Eternals live in. First mentioned in the classical story “Enlightenment” the Eternals live in the larger realm of Eternity, while we mere mortals or Ephemerals live in the smaller realm of time.

I have thus invented a new cosmology. Think of a tree branch and all smaller branches from it as time and alternate time lines. Imagine that branch floating on the ocean. The gap between the branches is the Great void (mentioned in the source books as the space between universe). Below the branch (ie the ocean) is Eternity.

Or to think of it another way, imagine a ship on the ocean. It can travel in two dimensions. That is time. However a submersible can travel also under the ocean. This larger area underneath is Eternity.

This way the Celestis time ships are undetectable via conventional means until they dematerialise. They travel outside of time (and the Vortex) and then reappear in time at the point they desire.

3. Mentalis weapon platforms

Fires a miniature TARDIS armed with bombs which dematerialises on or near a ship and then explodes. The weapons platform itself is located in Eternity, which makes it hard to actually detect, yet alone hit.

Given the range of TARDISes (eg the Doctor travelled from Earth to the edge of the universe in a few minutes in the classic episode “Planet of Evil”) the weapons range is wank.

The idea is a combination from Drax and Lydia (based on her own missile launchers).

4. Celestis battle armour
Inside one, a Celestis can take out several Daleks, armed with their portable D-mat guns. The armour produces force fields capable of resisting quite high energy output.

Their masks give them advance sensors. Portable Time Rings (Genesis of the Daleks) allows the Celestis to make quite far time jumps.

5. TARDISes

Modern day TARDISes have an “organic” aspect (thanks RTD). They seem to be grown. However older TARDISes appear to be mechanical, and the Celestis focus on building their TARDISEs like this, using Quantum Mechanics than Block Transfer computations. As a general rule their TARDISes are hardier and resistant to the tech that the Daleks use to render the Doctor’s TARDIS like “Wood.”

The Celestis TARDIS are sentient. They communicate with their pilots via holographic projection, think Andromeda Ascendant. They however are autonomous and can communicate with each other and carry out instruction. This was created because the Celestis realised they will never have the numbers to pilot all those TARDISes and they were not willing to clone themselves.

Divided into battle TARDISes and the more powerful war TARDISes.

6. Darkmatter extractor

Taking the logistics and industry argument to the extreme.

4.9% of the universe is normal matter, while 26.8% is dark matter.

Using Lydia’s technology to navigate through dark matter clusters, the Celestishide inside areas of dark matter. The extractor uses a black hole, consumes dark matter and then using technology known since Omega the energy consumed is converted into baryonic matter (Castrovalva reveals the TARDIS can convert its rooms into energy if required). For every few TARDISes produced, the extractor tends to produce another one of itself, so the process increases exponentially.

Combine with the ability to time travel, the Celestis literally parked the extractor sometime in the past so it starts work early. By the time of the Fourth Time War the Celestis have literally created tens of billions of TARDISes via this method. This outnumbers the 10 million Dalek ships left over at the start of their final assault on Gallifrey.

The idea is purely Lydia’s.

The Celestis choose not to alter the results of the Time Lord Dalek war because it would be too large a change despite having the resources to make a difference.

7. Servitors race

Ruha belongs to this group. The Celestis prefer not to risk themselves due to their low numbers.

8. Necromancy via nano machines

Think of Chula nanogenes (The Empty Child) on steroids.

d. Attack of the Celestis / The Fourth Time war

The Church of the Mainframe and the Time agents manage to track down the Doctor and request his help. Someone is killing their agents, while time ships have disappeared without trace. Research centres into time travel have been destroyed, the published research has been scoured from computer records. Moreover a mysterious force (Celestis servitor races) is attacking the world of Terserus system. The Alliance is holding out for now.

At this stage the Doctor has no proof of the Celestis involvement, although he does let it slip that he is familiar with them and that Ruha had infiltrated the time agents.

The Doctor is chosen to help not just for his skills, but because the enemy appears to be using Time Lord technology. Fearing that the Celestis have somehow salvaged Time Lord tech (at this point he doesn’t know the Celestis are Time Lord descendents), he agrees to investigate. Gulliver makes a reappearance having been promoted since the Doctor last saw him in Time Wave. Gulliver is in charge of the investigation.

Their investigations lead to the planet Dronid where there is evidence of some left over Time Lord tech. He is soon joined by the combined fleets of the Church, the Time agents, and the Shadow Proclamation joins him despite his attempt to elude them. They start landing troops. Note the new “clone army” of the Church.

The end of the episode shows a flashback of Ruha killing Gulliver, thus we know that the Gulliver we see is an imposter.
Suddenly the fleet is attacked by Mentalis weapons platform. Explosives are dematerialised within the ships themselves and detonated creating a temporal lock which not only destroys the ship, but prevents time travel around the area.

The Fleet counters by using the same technology in “Day of the Doctor” which prevents the explosives from dematerialising. The Celestis attempt to compensate but Lydia who is commanding mentions that its pointless as the fleet would have escaped by then. She instead orders the missiles to fly at relativistic speeds and dematerialise just at the edge of their “anti dematerialisation field”. The impact still destroys ships due to the intense kinetic energy of the missiles.

The Doctor counters when he finds out that the ships have dual shielding (ie it has two layers). So he suggests the outer shield be extended to the edge of the “anti dematerialisation field” in the direction of the missiles. Once the missiles impact on the shield they will explode and destroy the first shield, however due to the inverse square rule (ie the blasts weaken by the inverse of the distance to target squared) the blasts should weaken by the time they hit the second shield and the ships will survive.

Lydia then counters by ordering the missiles to appear from multiple directions.

The fleet manages to escape licking its wounds, with the ground troops abandoned. Both Lydia and the Doctor feel that they have “lost,” the encounter.The Doctor remarks that the solution to the “anti dematerialisation field” was relatively “low tech.”

The Doctor explains to the fleet he suspected Gulliver was an imposter so that’s why he didn’t want the fleet to follow him in case it turns out to be a trap. It turns out that while Gulliver’s ship was one of the surviving vessels, Gulliver is nowhere to be found.

The Doctor manages to capture one of the missiles using the TARDIS tractor beam before the fleet withdrew, and from that manages to track the energy signature to the Celestis, since he is familiar with Time Lord technology.

Finding the Celestis, his TARDIS is tractor beamed (“Trial of a Time Lord”) into their secret base located in an area of dark matter. He is surprised that the Celestis want him to join their organisation and they explain their origin as Time Lords who were tasked with finding a way to win the war and to think outside the box. They escaped into the Great Void and then discovered how to travel in Eternity as well as the Vortex. They literally invented cloaked time travel, where the TARDIS can only be detected at the point of materialisation. However to their dismay they find the Time Lords vanished when they return, and various “upstart” races trying to prevent the Time Lords returning “The Time of the Doctor.” On reflection they decided it would be better if they were in charge.

The conversation however is partially a feint so that he is away while the Celestis spring their next move.

During the conversation the Doctor finds out that while there is Time Lord tech on Dronid, the Celestis planted it. No more than children’s toys. He also finds out that the attack of Terserus is to bleed out the alliance, similar to what the Germans did in Verdun. While the Alliance avoided total disaster at Dronid, at Terserus the Celestis will make their move, as the Alliance expends more and more resources to defend Terserus convinced its important to the enemy.

The Doctor then meets the first and only other non Gallifreyan member of the Celestis. A Gallifreyan / Carrionite hybrid named Rodan.

She explains that the Celestis encountered her mother’s people when they fled into the Great Void. Rodan is connected to a device that enhances the range of her power. Via a wormhole and a severed arm of one of the clone troopers she activates her powers killing all the troopers on Terserus. Then with Celestis nanomachines she reanimates the arm which translates into all the troopers being reanimated and under the Celestis control. They make short work of the other ground forces and hack into their computers, allowing the Celestis to know the location of the all the Alliance’s secret base. Using the Mentalis platform they take out the bases.


The Celestis once again offer the Doctor a chance to join them. He however materialises the TARDIS despite the Celestis attempt to hold it. He has repaired the shields it carried in the Time War “Engines of War,” and this allows him to break the tractor beam. There is an impasse while the Celestis bring weapons to breach the TARDIS including a demat gun.

At the end of the episode the Celestis reveal their ultimate resource. The Dark Matter extractor. We then zoom out the Doctor’s location and see thousands of TARDISes being constructed from the dark matter. Then zoom out again and we find this area is just a part of a larger whole (just one of thousands). Zoom out again and ad nauseum until we get the picture that the Celestis have lots of ships. The war has only begun.


e. The Time Lords Return

The Doctor dematerialises before the Celestis can bring the Demat gun to bear on the TARDIS. A few TARDISes are sent after him, however he manages to elude some of them by travelling through time reminiscent of his attempts to elude the Time Lords in War Games. In an attempt to elude the others he travels sideways in time, even though without the Time Lords its now dangerous. This allows him to escape those that follow him as they cannot navigate so well sideways in time. Only one war TARDIS remains and that tries to Time Ram him (“The Time Monster.”) However the TARDIS comes alive and engages it in telepathic combat “The Doctor’s wife.” The TARDIS wins and the Doctor traps the enemy TARDISes AI inside the telepathic circuits.

There have been Gallifrey sightings the same way there have been Elvis sightings. In desperation the Doctor tracks them down until he finds a weakness in space time. There he finds the Time Lords. Of course since I had this idea he did find the Time Lords until in a subsequent episode. I will just have the Time Lords moved elsewhere after the Doctor’s last encounter for protection.


************************************************************

The Time Lords in the time of their exile have also developed some interesting technology.

1. Self replicating Reality mines – taken from the novel Sky Pirates (which called it a reality bomb, which in turn is the same name as Davros wonder weapon), reality mines essentially send out a false distress signal and lures a time ship “nearby” where it promptly explodes. The Time Lords have made some changes to this which allows the mines to lock onto an enemy ship.

Not quite the wonder weapon, but a simplistic one to help offset Dalek numerical superiority. Works well when combine with sky trenches.

If one is destroyed its neighbours draws energy from the Eye of Harmony or whatever source is available and creates another one.

2. Cloaked time travel
During their exile from the main universe, the Time Lords explored numerous time lines. As a result they can avoid detection by travelling to an alternate time line, finding the right point and then travelling sideways back to our time line. The weakness is that they could be detected by a foe in that alternate time line.

3. Probability engine
Based on the same device in the novel “Engines of war,” it imposes an alternate time line onto reality. However these are weaker versions and can only cover a smaller area.

4. TARDISes

Since RTD mentioned that TARDISes can be grown, the Time Lords have focussed on the “organic” or growing TARDIS technology, using block transfer computations.

Divided into battle TARDISes and the more powerful war TARDISes.

5. Space collapse

Isolates an sector in an miniature universe and then collapses it. Essentially traps it into a giant TARDIS and then collapses it since the inside of a TARDIS is another universe. Can destroy TARDISes, entire fleets with this device.

****************************************************************

Meanwhile the Celestis through a combination of numbers and superior technology have demolished most of the alliances fleet. Their robotic agents are tasked with rendering the time active powers unable to be temporal powers ever again, although they can still transverse space.

To the Doctor’s surprise the Celestis propose an alliance with the Time Lords to regulate time, with House Celestia being added to the Great Houses of the Time Lords, and that as Time Lords they should return to Gallifreyan society. Things are further complicated when the High Council agrees. Romana leads a faction which seeks to exert control on the Celestis, but even she recognises the advantages of having the Celestis join with Gallifrey. The compromise will lead to the Time Lords agreeing with the Celestis plan for regulating time travel.

This leads to an ill advise assault on the Time Lords by the other temporal powers in a bid to stop them joining forces, which fails.

All seems lost however the Doctor manages to convince the AI of the enemy TARDIS. It agrees to speak of the other TARDISes, because having communicated with the Doctor’s TARDIS he now admires the fact the Doctor is a champion of life.

The AI manages to convince most of the TARDISes to not destroy the other time active races. Faced with a rebellion of their own creations, the Celestis relent and sign a treaty ending the war. However there will be changes.

f. Minisode

This essential deals with the fallout of the Fourth Time War.

The story centres on the Doctor trying to convince the Sisterhood on Karn to rejoin Gallifreyan society. It’s a sort of an information dump where he outlines that Gallifrey needs more voices to balance out the influence of the Celestis. To make his argument he recaps the current political situation. We should see images of the Celestis TARDISes making short work of the alliances ships.

The current political situation is such - The Celestis have rejoined the Time Lords as one of the Great Houses. The Time Lords will act as the police, while the Celestis acts as the military. Time travel is once again restricted. No other race but those that are currently time active can be allowed to gain it (sort of like how the world’s nuclear powers don’t like other nations developing that capability).

Given the devastation the Celestis have wrecked on the others, Gallifreyan hegemony is all but assured. The only race at the present that could potentially oppose them are the Daleks, and even then, even with the Sephiroth galaxy they can’t match the Celestis industrial capabilities. Especially since with Time Lord help, the Celestis can now plant a dark matter extractor in alternate time lines as well.

The “twist” is that there will be two endings filmed. One where the Sisterhood agrees to join, and the other where they do not. Viewers will get to vote on the outcome. The alternative ending will only be available as an extra on the DVDs.

[mr friendly guy]

Season two

Inspired by the “War in Heaven” storyline by BBC books which turned to shit with the Ancestor Cell

The premise is that a new time travelling force from the future travels back in the past to prepare a war against a god in the future, a war they are losing in the original time line, but they hope to be able to change by altering history. This “Enemy” is actually futuristic humans, and their mysterious enemy is the big bad of season 4.

The Enemy will wear masks or have robots who they speak through (as not to risk themselves), so its not obvious of their identity and it should be a tease with clues.

Note – in the original BBC storyline, Lawrence Miles did plan to reveal who the Enemy was, although IIRC they were supposed to be from the future. It was thought that being humans was too obvious as an identity even though it is mentioned that the Enemy did use Earth as a base sometime. AFAIK Miles has never told anyone who he planned them to be. BBC then had the Enemy revealed to be the Ancestor Cell, which is soooo stupid.

Note to differentiate the tech of the Enemy from Time Lords (since the Enemy was not well described) I have taken some creative liberties. For one, their time vessels open a “chronal gate” rather than dematerialise to enter the vortex. These chronogates somehow are difficult to detect unless in close vicinity and also can be adjusted to emit anti time to buffet enemy time ships. If they do use the anti time weapon they become easy to detect. Think of their ships like Vorlons in B5 opening jumpgates, while TL and Celestis are like Shadows (who phase into hyperspace). They don’t appear to travel in the vortex (since their enemy from the future can monitor it), instead they use advance versions of time corridors (Timelash, Resurrection of the Daleks) which they enter via the chronal gate and even through “mirror gates”, making it hard for the Time Lords to track them.

Note – while the Celestis use a dark matter extractor, the Enemy uses the Mad mind of Bophemeral (Quantum archangel) like computer with block transfer computations allowing them to churn out shitloads of ships, but not as much as the Celestis and Time Lords combined. Eventually numbers will tell.

They also have The City of the Saved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_the_Saved although I am deliberately changing the origin from Miles faction paradox thing. Instead the city manages to “back up” humans (and other sentients) who have been died or been erased from time. Something the TL can also do with their existing technology. However it only has one innovation which makes the difference. That is an ability to scan time in more detail than the TL giving the Enemy a tactical advantage, albeit one offset by TL and Celestis cloaking time travel tech. Because it can scan time in such detail, its computers store the information and remembers the details of a sentient’s life, including memory, experience, molecular structure etc, so even if they are erased, it simply recreates them. Its powered by drawing upon the Lux Aeterna http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Lux_Aeterna which is the food source of the Chronovores (Quantum Archangel) and is a place even the Time Lords cannot touch. Because the city is outside of time, it still remembers these people. This allows the Enemy to replenish their losses.

The other technological advantage the enemy has is zero time (faction paradox book of war). Essentially when you time travel to alter a battle, the other side does it as well. Eventually every microsecond will be filled up with events until there is really no time left. So the Enemy had a technology to “add time.” Yeah Lawrence Miles has some “out there” ideas. But good ones.

They also have anti time weapons which sort of reverse ages something and can be quite destructive, even killing the “god like” beings in Doctor Who.

Notable episodes

Death of a TARDIS (first episode)

This story is definitely a homage to the novel Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles where the Doctor finds his corpse from the future is on auction.

The TARDIS is drawn to a mysterious planet despite the Doctor’s attempt to pilot her to a holiday destination. The mystery deepens when the TARDIS detects numerous vessels from potentially hostile alien races including Daleks, Cybermen, Sontorans etc.

It turns out that they are all bidding for a prize. The prize is a war TARDIS, but not one that had the design of any TARDIS in the time war with the Daleks nor of current Time Lord or Celestis make. To the Doctor’s shock he recognises it as his TARDIS even though its exterior and interior different. The TARDIS has many adjustments made to it such that its become become a war machine. Although damaged, it still managed to communicate with the Doctor’s current TARDIS.

Among the bidders is a Time Lord agent named Sardon (name comes from the novel World game) and to the Doctor’s shock he is a Time Lord from the future and is crossing their time line, something forbidden except in dire emergencies.

What the auctioneers do not tell the bidders is that the war TARDIS is “haunted,” and that attempts to stay in have led to sentients dying. Some Sontorans break into the war TARDIS to hijack it, but they become mad and kill each other after accusing each other of being Rutan spies. The auctioneers then clean up the mess. The reason they are selling the TARDIS is due a combination of it being haunted and they fact they cannot crack its databanks nor reverse engineer its technology.

The Doctor and Sardon break in and also start feeling the madness. Sardon attacks the Doctor, but in a Pertwee moment, the Doctor overcomes Sardon. However the madness is not going away. He realises that the TARDIS is infested with malfunctioning psionivore as a last line of defense to prevent people stealing its technology. This psionivore is one the Doctor cannot beat by himself. In desperately he mind links with the future TARDIS and then via the telepathic circuits to his current one, but they are still not able to win. However the current TARDIS reaches into time and allows him to mind link with his past incarnations. Their combined mental strength with the current Doctor’s skill in psychic combat destroys the psionivore utterly.

Adjusting the TARDIS’s dimensional circuits, they shrink it down so it can be carried (Logopolis) and the two Time Lords prepare to take it back to Sardon’s TARDIS. The future TARDIS is too far damaged to be able to move under its own power.

Once inside Sardon’s TARDIS the Doctor calls Sardon to give up the game. Sardon ask how the Doctor knew he wasn’t a Time Lord as his disguise can even fool Time Lords in the future with their psychic detection of each other.

The Doctor points out that Sardon did not know how he defeated the psionivore. Going on the Doctor explains that he mind linked with the future TARDIS and now knows a little bit about the war. Insert information dump, however we find out
-> The Time Lords are losing to an Enemy from somewhere. Even with the Celestis help they are slowing giving “ground” or giving up sectors of time and space to the Enemy.
-> They can disguise themselves as Time Lords fooling even other Time Lords.

However the Doctor was being especially vigilant after that bout of information so he suspected Sardon. He could not tell Sardon was not a Time Lord, but he could tell that Sardon’s “TARDIS” isn’t a TARDIS once he entered it due to the symbiotic relationship Time Lords had to their machines. At this point Sardon congratulates him and says that we knew of the TL symbiotic relationship with their machines, but not the extent.

Sardon states he will now have to destroy the Doctor and is unconcerned. He has killed Time Lords before including the real Sardon and here in his time ship, he is supreme. The Doctor however notes that Sardon is not a telepath, but somehow he could fake being one, perhaps an implant in his skull. Sardon shrugs and ask what of it. To which the Doctor replies that you have no idea if I am simultaneously engaged in a telepathic conversation right now do you. At which point a look of shock crosses Sardon’s face. That’s right the Doctor says. Using the TARDIS telepathic circuits (he holds up the shrunken TARDIS) I have sent an offer to the Daleks. Your technology is more superior according to the TARDIS data banks on the war, so they are coming to get it. Just then the ship is rocked by an explosion as the Daleks attack, allowing the Doctor to escape.

Sardon however is not easily stymied. His ship blasts the Daleks and realising the Doctor will escape he uses his ship to open a giant chrono gate while its still on the planet even though it would mean his death. “Winds” of anti time buffet the area and the planet starts tearing itself apart. However the Doctor manages to get inside his TARDIS but the disruption from the chrono gate prevents him dematerialising. Realising what he must do he opens up the eye of harmony in the future TARDIS (the 1996 movie) and the effects due to technobabble blah blah counteract the chronogate.


Disturbed by this development the Doctor returns to Gallifrey to report to the High Council even though his relationship with them is not on the best of terms.The Time Lords now find their ability to scan parallel time lines blocked. It could be some temporal phenomena they don’t understand, or the first sign of war by a time active enemy.


First Strike

The Time Lords request the Doctor check up on one of their researchers Reina who has gone missing. Sensing more to this, the Doctor uncharacteristically agrees. Note Reina means queen in Spanish. Hmm clue here.

Reina was last seen on the planet Ashkellia (the novel Tomb of Valdemar) and on landing on it, the Doctor finds it’s a resort world which is different from its turbulent history in the novel. Think of it like Risa but for DW. Among it are aliens of numerous races. It’s a neutral planet. The Doctor is joined by a female human named Promethea (her mother named her after Prometheus, the titan who gave humans fire) who is very flirtatious much to the Doctor’s annoyance. Among the legends of the world is that Valdemar, a great being of power was entombed on this world and she has come looking for it, being an amateur archaeologist, although the Doctor dismisses her as but a treasure hunter at best.

However Promethea does know her way around Ashkellia so the Doctor agrees to have her guide him while he searches for Reina. Eventually they do find the Tomb of Valdemar and Reina. The tomb is or was protected by the Guardians, beings entrusted so Valdemar will never wake up. Reina is torturing them when she experiments on them. She wants to tap Valdemar’s power for the Time Lords, since Valdemar was the most powerful of the Great old ones.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Old_One

Yes, DW took Lovecraftian monsters and made it part of their mythos. Note, Marvel also did that with the cancerverse. Must be off patent or something. Anyway, back to the story.

The Doctor realises that Reina is the Rani, reconstituted by the Time Lords just like the Master. Rani means queen in an Hindi, so Reina meaning queen in Spanish….

Reina says, not quite like the Rani. She has the Rani’s knowledge, but the Time Lords implanted in her loyalty to Gallifrey. Sadly the Doctor notes she still has the Rani’s sense of morality, or rather lack of it.


The Doctor warns Reina that they risk waking Valdemar. He tells her that Valdemar was the most powerful of the Great Old ones, beings who from the universe before this one. He has encountered Valdemar before (the novel Tomb of Valdemar) much to Reina’s surprise. Despite this Reina insists due to technobabble blah blah she can drain Valdemar’s power. He will become a power source.


The Doctor manages to stop Reina’s mad scheme. Reina detects some type of chronal signal, and it turns out to have come from Promethea, using a technology humans should not have. She explains that she was paid to do this and she doesn’t know who. However she lets slips on questioning that they hire numerous agents from various races, not just her.

They soon arrive. Its the Enemy. The Time Lords thought the Great Old ones could not die, being from the universe that came before they somehow gained powers in this one. Their “science” of quantum mnemonics allowed them to rewrite the laws of the current universe with the laws of previous ones. Thought more powerful than block transfer computations. However the Enemy prove them wrong. They bombard the entire world of Ashkellia with anti-time (a concept the Time Lords consider hypothetical but with no empirical evidence to support its existence), and this kills Valdemar, but also reduces Ashkellia and everyone on it to dust in the process.

The Doctor barely escapes in his TARDIS (he notes that TL shielding protects somewhat from anti time), taking the captured Reina with him. A fleet of battle and war TARDISes descend and engages the enemy time ships. Despite being outnumbered the Enemy vessels inflict heavy losses on the Time Lord fleet using chronogates, which can rip apart TARDISes and the technobabble disturbance makes it harder to navigate in space and time. However reinforcements from the Celestis arrive and sheer weight of numbers allows them to destroy an equivalent number of Enemy vessels before they flee via a chronogate.

Epilogue

We see a city which the screen displays the name – The city of the Saved

The Enemy high council convenes. They discuss Valdemar’s death but there is still more Great old ones that need killing.

A male voice says, you have viewed the Doctor via a servant, what do you think of this Time Lord?

The woman replies – He is more than a Time Lord. A reference to the Sylvestor McCoy story “Rememberance of the Daleks.”



The Tapestry of Time

A man who has been cursed travels to return the artefact he has looted. Already several members of his expedition has died from the “curse.” It turns out the tomb he looted all those years ago was an Osirian, however on re-entering he wakes up the Osirian there. But aren’t the Osirians extinct?

By coincidence the Doctor ends up here. Long story short, the Doctor manages to defeat the Osirian however he is immediately recalled to Gallifrey who accuse him of damaging the web of time beyond repair.

When the Doctor queries how, the Time Lords point out that extinct species or ones which never existed due to the Time Lords time wars have returned. The Osirians (Pyramids of Mars), the Nimon (Horns of Nimon), the Racnoss (the Runaway bride), Crialans (a race of telepathic bacteria which the TL defeated in a time war according to EU sources) and a host of other unnamed races they TL wiped out from time have now returned. The web of time is shattered because of this, meaning that history is now way more mutable, ie easier to change.

The Doctor realises that this is another salvo in the war. The Enemy means to change history on a grand scale. Not just a few worlds saved, a race becomes more technologically advance faster, no they must be planning to change history on a universal scale and the Web of time which anchors history and makes it harder to change was getting in the way. So they somehow shattered it by bringing back first one of the Time Lord’s enemies, then another and another until it shattered.

The Time Lords mention they are holding their own for now, but they have taken immense loses and they still do not know where the Enemy comes from, but they believe they hail from an alternative time line.

Epilogue

The city of the saved – we see these resurrected races being greeted by the Enemy who tells them in no uncertain terms that you now serve us. When the Nimon and Osirians object they suddenly fall down in pain. The Enemy speaker simply says that the Time Lords are not the only one who masterpsionivore technology and we were not foolish enough to resurrect you just so you can rebel. Now who wants to kill some Time Lords?


The dastardly Mr Dark / King of Toys

The first scene shows an armoured man (one of the Enemy) being tortured, his armour being stripped off. Soon the torturer moves to remove the mask..thenthe camera pans out.

**********************************************

The TARDIS responds to a distress call from another Time Lord vessel which is harassed by Enemy time ships. In desperation the Doctor advises them to use the device which allows the TARDISes to escape outside of time itself (The Mind Robber). However to their surprise the Enemy time ships follow but they find their power drained (not completely) and low on power, unable to escape the forcefield this world suddenly puts up.

The new world is hostile and the two sides agree to work with each other. The Enemy wear armour and masks. When they die, it seems their armour self destructs to prevent autopsy of the body. Also the armour prevents attempts to scan them even by the sonic screwdriver or TARDISes.

It turns out the TARDIS running the distress call is captained by an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, ie the Time Lord intelligence, hence why he was intercepted. The agent, Torvald (from the Gallifrey audios) tries to send out a new distress signal through the forcefield and hopes it will be intercepted.

The group at met by a man calling himself Mr Dark (as he will not give his real name) and he informs that he has been trapped here. The place appears to be sentient and it forces them to play these “games”. More and more of the Enemy are killed but the Doctor and Torvald (who is trained for espionage stuff) continues to survive. Finally at the end of the episode the Doctor confronts Mr Dark and reveals that he is the Celestial Toymaker

Exposed the Toymaker shapeshifts and explains that he managed to escape from when the Doctor imprisoned him (The Nightmare fair). However the conversation is interrupted as more Enemy time ships arrive.

More and more Enemy time ships arrive throughout the episode for the Toymaker to play with. The Doctor and Torvald meet Millennia the Time Lady who is imprisoned by the Toymaker (a figure from the Doctor’s past who he thought he freed onto death when he defeated the Toymaker in the novel Divided Loyalties).

Eventually the Doctor figures out that Torvald sent a distress call, not to the TL, but to the Enemy hoping that they would be captured by the Toymaker. Since the Toymaker lives outside of time, they cannot alter the history of this place. On inspecting the distress signal, the Doctor is shocked to recognise its origins – it is the same code he gave UNIT to call him.

Torvald also explains that Time Lord intelligence has tried this trick before since breaking the Enemy’s signals and estimate tens of thousands of Enemy ships have been captured by the other extradimensional beings, eg the Gods of Ragnorak (The Greatest show in the galaxy). However this is the first time they have encountered the Celestial Toymaker. So far no Time Lords have been captured by these extradimensional beings.Torvald had set the fake distress signal around the Toymaker’s domain and periodically moved to check if any Enemy had been captured when they attacked him and the Doctor came to rescue him.

The Doctor realises that they are being forced by the Toymaker to play a game involving physical as well as mental challenges. Games of outdoor survival, fighting beasts etc.While both TL are quite smart, they aren’t physically powerful enough to weather all the challenges. The only way to win is to change the rules. It turns out Torvald has some psionivores in his TARDIS which he planned to use, but the Doctor convinces him to let him use them instead. The Doctor reprograms one, one which will give the Toymaker a conscience.

Using it against the Toymaker the ancient being finally realises what a douchebag he has been, and does not want to inflict suffering on them anymore. He also cannot stand the boredom so he will destroy himself by willing himself out of existence. He lets out how he tortured the Enemy, ripping off their armour and making them bleed, but even they did not deserve this. He advises the Doctor to go first. All the Enemy pilots have already been killed off screen including by torture, so when the Doctor asks him to let them go as well the Toymaker replies, you two are the only survivors.

Just then the ground rocks. It turns out the Enemy time vessels plan to pull the Toymaker’s realm out into normal space and then hurl it into the Great Void, the space between universes (a trick which occurred in the novel the Taking of Planet 5). The Doctor asks the Toymaker who is the Enemy (since he kind of tortured them, he might know), but in response the Toymaker teleports him to outside his TARDIS.

The TARDISes barely escape but the Enemy time vessels are not so lucky. They do not know the Toymaker was ending himself so they are destroyed by the explosion signalling the realm’s death.

The Doctor speculates whether the Toymaker could end himself, since he is supposedly immortal. And if he is dead, will another simply take his place. This is left ambiguous as to whether he died or someone will replace him so that future writers have leeway if they wanted to use the character.

The Doomsday probe

Inspired partly by the novel Interference by Lawrence Miles, ie in the sense there is a doomsday probe and they want to target Earth.
********************************************************

Shocked by his discovery that the Enemy’s distress call is similar to the code he gave UNIT, the Doctor investigates Earth. The TL believe the Enemy has scavenged and assimilated technology from other races, for example the Enemy is using some powerful Osirian tech which they have improved.

However as chance will have it, UEIT (united earth intelligence task force) from the future (22 nd century)has called him. To their surprise the current Doctor shows up. The Doctor speculates this must be a side effect of the war with the Enemy that these signals get mixed up.

It turns out Earth space is being visited by aliens, a ginormous probe has entered the edge of Earth declared territory and Earth needs the Doctor to investigate along with a spaceship they have. On the surface the TARDIS translates the language of the probe to give its purpose – ie it destroys civilisations before they have a chance to become too technologically advance so they cannot threaten the probe’s creators. This of course is a sinister explanation for the fermi paradox. However the Doctor knows this language even if he can only read a few words of it. He studied it in the Gallifreyan academy and the race is or was extinct before humans even evolved. In other words its highly likely the databanks of the probe are filled with fake data to hide whoever’s involvement.

Looking deeper the Doctor infers the probe has been travelling a long time (ie millions of years) by looking at its records of star charts and comparing it to his own knowledge. Certainly when the probe set of this alien race was still around. It is on a course for Earth. However what is puzzling is that it has destroyed no alien races at all. Almost as if Earth was its only target and the claim of destroying races to prevent a threat to the probe’s creators a way to cover up who really controls the probe. This leads to how the creators knew about humans all those years ago before humans even evolved. Either its creators knew the future, or they were time travellers. But why would time travellers destroy Earth in such a manner? Surely they could simply time travel to any point in Earth’s history and wipe it out, and history will forget. The only reason is that this time active race must be fighting a peer competitor who can also time travel and detect enemy movements.

Now suspicious the Doctor checks for signs of time travel but there is none, at least none when the probe’s computer first came online. However the starting location was at a time and space known to be patrolled by Celestis TARDISes and an area where the Enemy has not penetrated yet. Desperate the Doctor looks for definitive proof of TL involvement, but only finds circumstantial evidence.


For example he discovers its weapon systems, which fires some type of entropy technobabble blah blah weapon. While undoubtedly built using that race’s technology, they did not have such mastery of temporal dynamics. The weapon is designed to not only destroy something, but to make it hazardous for time travel. It would be like Rome nuking Carthage.


The Doctor now has a sneaking suspicious that the probe is of Time Lord origin and its mission is to destroy the Earth. Shocked the Doctor realises that if the Enemy has stolen tech from humans, then by destroying some alien civilisations before the Enemy could steal the tech, the Time Lords may be able to retard their technological development giving them an edge. Its not like the Time Lords have not fucked over humanity before (Trial of a Time Lord). This is desperate as the TL still have not worked out the Enemy’s origins, while the Doctor is aware they had to constantly defend their time line from more than a million attempts to alter history by the Enemy.

The Doctor manages to sabotage the device, however he finds out the probe’s makers have sent another one. He speculates TL parked the Doomsday device in the past, and let it travelled through space. While the TL have cloaked time travel, the Enemy will detect the TARDIS the moment it renters the vortex. So they sent this probe drifting in the past, perhaps using some primitive time corridor technology which is less effective but also might be something the Enemy won’t be looking for. However as it turns out the Enemy is aware of this and manages to intercept the second probe, albeit with lost of several ships, which they cannot undo due to technobabble entropy technobabble blah blah weapon the probe uses.

However the Enemy also leaves an agent to protect Earth and in a homage of Matt Smith’s words “This planet is protected,” the agent repeats the same line to the Doctor using Matt Smith’s mannerisms. The agent is called the “Surgeon” and mentions that he is a machine based on an ancient hero from the Enemy’s past. Hmm, clue there. Because the Doctor also protects Earth, he will have a truce with the Doctor, but only within the confines of this solar system. The Doctor agrees.

The Doctor confronts the High Council. Both the TL and Celestis deny authorising such a desperate move and ridicules the Doctor for providing only circumstantial evidence.

Its mentioned by the Time Lords that even from the Doctor’s perspective its only been one year since the war started, the Time Lords have travelled back in time so many times that from their perspective, the war has been going on for at least 1000 years. They chastise the Doctor for being so critical even as they try to placate him by saying that this operation was not authorised even if someone from Gallifrey did it.


In the end the Celestial Intervention Agency is called to account and surprisingly everyone admits to the move. The High Council censure the Celestial Intervention Agency. When the Doctor leaves the Celestial Intervention Agency intelligence officer states that he was instructed to admit to the crime to placate the Doctor, as he is too important to become an enemy and is more useful as an ally.

The episode is deliberately left ambiguous as to whether the High Council really authorised it and the Time Lord intelligence used as a scapegoat or did TL intelligence act on their own, or even if it was the Time Lords who sent the probe (well they did, but I haven’t decided who authorised it).



War of the Future

The TARDIS is attacked by an Enemy vessel even though the Doctor is sort of neutral in the war. Managing to fake his destruction, the Enemy vessel leaves. The Doctor manages to follow an Enemy time vessel to their point of origin through their chronogate. This in turns leads to giant gate which he manages to overhear on the TARDIS comm being referred to as the staging point. The gate opens and chronogate and more ships come through. The Doctor manages to sneak through to the other end.

It turns out the Enemy do not come from an alternative time line as the TL thought (ie why did they not detect them), they came instead from the far future, too far for even a TARDIS to travel under normal circumstances (Frontios). Too far even for an Enemy time vessel without the staging point gate.

The Enemy didn’t just take knowledge from humans, they are humans from the future (Miranda time line from Lance Parkin’s novel). They also take tech from other races. They have been at war for a bit longer than a thousand years and they are gradually losing.

Thus they decide to flee back in time. In thiswar they are losing with the being known as Chaos and his /her /it’s lieutenants, the Great Old Ones (hence why they targeted Valdemar in “First Strike.” Even with the addition of the “Armies of light,” (the Satan pit/The impossible planet) they are still losing to Chaos.Preparations are almost complete to bring their entire fleet back in time, but to travel such “distance back in time” requires great efforts. Note a TARDIS struggles to travel this far into the future.

In this future place the Doctor sees Promethea (from the episode First strike), or at least a monitor showing her speech extolling the war to continue. He learns that she is a member of their equivalent to the Time Lord high council.

The Doctor manages to escape back into the present with some of the Enemy’s technology for the Time Lords to study.Including zero time, which gave the Enemy a strategic advantage in changing time.

In the End we see the Doctor break the fourth wall and says to the camera, did I do the right thing not telling them who the Enemy is? The Time Lords already tried to destroy humans when they found out the Enemy used human technology. How would they react if they found out the Enemy are humans?

City of the saved

The Time Lords approach the Doctor to follow a fleet assaulting a temporal choke point and learn what he can about the Enemy. They know the Enemy guards this point well so it must be strategically important to them. Reluctantly the Doctor agrees and makes preparations. He agrees because history is being fucked so much by this time war, now called The War in Heaven and he must try to end this.

The assault is only a partial success. The fleet of Celestis and Time Lord ships with aid from some of the other time active races which are now in alliance with Gallifrey (previous season) manage to breach the Enemy defences and comes across a giant city on a piece of land floating in space, in a pocket dimension. This is the city of the saved. Note we should see a whole shit load of TL and Celestis weapons being brought to bear.


The war TARDIS the Doctor is on is forced to land, and as the Doctor escapes..there is blackness. It turns out the Doctor has been captured.

The Doctor and fellow Time Lords are stripped naked and searched. Then replicators give him some clothes. While his fellow TL are humiliated the Doctor is selected for special attention by a female Enemy of their High Council equivalent. She is disappointed that the Doctor was so easy to capture. The man who is credited by the Time Lords for stealing our technology (War of the future), the man who defeated one of our best agents (Death of a TARDIS).

The Doctor manages to surprise her by saying that he knows who she is. What she is. That she is Promethea or whatever she calls herself and that the Enemy are humans from the future. Promethea takes off her mask. However she tells him he is more resourceful than she thought, but still a disappointment. The Doctor tells her as a human, she should be aware that it is not over until the fat lady sings, and he doesn’t see any fat people here.

Promethea states she does not understand the idiom, so the Doctor tells her that he is still full of surprises which she dismisses. She does tell him that the Time Lord intelligence use torture on their agents, so the High Council will return the favour. The Doctor tells her torture doesn’t work you know. However the Enemy wants this to send a message, that they will break the Time Lord’s best agent. So the Doctor is tortured before being put in a prison with the other Time Lords.

In prison Doctor manages to trick the video feed with a sonic screwdriver which has just appeared in his hand. When the other prisoners ask where he was keeping that, he replies “You do not want to know,” in a homage to Captain Jack. The Doctor then produces others sonic screwdrivers and ask them to keep it handy.

The Doctor is brought before the Enemy high council along with their servitor races such as the Nimon, Osirians etc. He is handcuffed. After the usual Doctor Who banter the Doctor suddenly breaks the handcuffs much to the astonishment of the Enemy. How? The Doctor replies that he learnt it from Houdini.

The Nimon blast him but the Doctor shrugs it off then in a comedic moment breaks the Nimon’s horns and starts punching him in the face while saying “remember I said I was still full of surprises, well consider yourself surprised”. The Osirians try to attack him but find that they cannot find his central nervous system. “Well the family always did say I wasn’t that smart and might struggle in the academy” (a reference to the line from the farm in NuWho). The Osirians however use their power to put him a forcefield, and to their shock the Doctor starts moving against the forcefield, so more Osirians and Nimon add their power until the Doctor can’t move.

“Ok, go get them” the Doctor says. Suddenly black mist comes out of the Doctor’s mouth and coalesces into a female form who kisses the Osirian. He /she ages until only dust remains. The shouts of Chronivore occur (The Time Monster) and the Doctor says that “old Chronos owes me a few favours, after I did him or her from the Master. Chronos never did settle for a non binary gender. “More chronivores appear and make short work of the Osirians and Nimons.

The chronivores attack the Enemy high council but a forcefield is placed in front of them and the chronivores change to easier targets.

The chronivores tell the Doctor that they can sense the Lux Aeterna here. The source of their food. “Yeah you told me that when they were trying to torture me”, the Doctor replies. “Must be their power source.”

Basically the Doctor is one man army. He defeats the Crialans who has possessed TL prisoners by releasing the nucleus of the swarm (the Invisible enemy) and let the two sentient pathogens fight it out. He defeats the Racnoss with a wave of his hand and hurls it away. “Inverse tractor beam,” he says. At this point the Enemy high council has transmatted out.

Finally the Doctor finds the power source of the city of the saved, which is drawing upon the Lux Aetema. Plunging his hands in he screams “ouch,” and starts glowing as he absorbs the energy. Earlier he instructed another prisoner to gather everyone, and now armed with the sonic screwdriver they escape. The Doctor tells them to “get inside him”, much to the puzzlement of the Time Lord.

“Oh I forgot.” Suddenly the Doctor starts morphing into the familiar blue box of the TARDIS and the door swings open. “Hurry,” The Doctor shouts, “This modified chameleon circuit and extra power boosters aren’t exactly compatible with the old type 40s and its going to give any minute.”

So now we find out the Doctor was really his TARDIS disguised, a trick the Master also used (Keeper of Traken). The Chronivores were hiding in the TARDIS. They killed the Osirians by aging them, the same trick the Doctor used against Sutekh the destroyer (Pyramid of Mars). Quickly we see all TL prisoners and the Chronivores enter the TARDIS.

“Now for the final trick. It worked against the Axons (Claws of Axos).” So saying the Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS along with the city of the saved. “Come on, just a bit more power,” and the Doctor does it. He puts the City of the Saved in a time loop. Soon Celestis TARDISes will arrive to guard it and prevent the Enemy from freeing it.

Epilogue 1

A planet is shown and listed as the planet of the sick. Among its population is people who have incurable diseases. The Doctor lands there and speaks to a person possessed by the Nucleus of the swarm. Remember our agreement he warns. The possessed person agrees to only take over those who are willing. The Doctor warns them he will be watching.

Epilogue 2

Its revealed the Enemy high council has escaped. They note that without the city of the save the Time Lords will now out produce them, and quantity has its own quality. Promethea also notes she underestimated the Doctor, but there is no bitterness, only admiration in her voice. Could he be the hero who protected our ancestors all those times and was rewarded with scorn by those he protected? The mysterious “Lonely God,” whose identity now lost to history.

Even if he is, he is our enemy now. Another council member replies. This is but a setback in a longer war. Once we manage to bring all our fleet back, even the Time Lords will fall.

As long as the staging point remains in our possession another replies ominously.


The universe in a bottle

Inspired by the Bernice Summerfield spin off story Dead Romance

“It is the arrogance of heroes to think they can save everyone. For every triumph there must be a tragedy.”
- Unnamed Narrator of this episode.

The Doctor ends up in a steam punk Earth. It should be obvious that this isn’t our earth. It turns out lots of people have been murdered in a Jack the ripper style killing. However unlike Bloody Jack, its not confined to just women. Both genders have been murdered and subjected to surgical procedures. The Doctor notes that its like the killer was searching for something in the corpse.


The Doctor teams up with a detective investigating the murder and the killer turns out to be a Time Lord agent Chris Cwej, and the murdered people are Enemy agents.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Chris_Cwej

However the detective turns out to be an Enemy agent and imprisons both of them. Subjecting Cwej to a mind probe he learns that this alternative time line is one where the TL and Daleks destroyed each other including the Doctor in the final battle. Thus a perfect place for our Time Lords to retreat if ever defeated and to build up their strength again.

Cwej reveals that the TL are planning a big move here very soon.

The detective then puts the Doctor in a simulation and forces him to role play as the Time Lords to see what he would do. In one simulation he deploys the Armageddon Sapphire to destroy the universe rather than let the Enemy have it (Alternative timeline seen in Quantum Archangel). In another the TL retreat to this timeline as he deploys the moment and destroys the Enemy.

The Enemy confer and decide even if the Doctor is wrong, they will attack this timeline and destroy the TL resources and then return back to the proper universe.

“So the Doctor plays his part.” At this point we see the narrator’s identity revealed as Drax. We see him holding in his hand a bottle showing the events as they occur. The narrator then explains the existence of the bottle.



it’s a universe in a bottle. The Time Lords split a time line and hope to absorb the energy from new time line like how the chronovores and the weeping angels do. The bottle itself is a TARDIS of sorts. They control certain aspects of the universe, for example its easy to get in, but no so to get out.

Once enough Enemy ships enter, the TL start the collapse of the universe. Both the Doctor and the Enemy realise what is going on, and that this universe is not a refuge, it’s a trap.

In a sad moment the Doctor realises he cannot save everyone and instead he uses the TARDIS as a refugee ship to escape while the Enemy ships die with no way to alter time, since that universe no longer exists. There is a scene where the Celestis ask whether they should let the Doctor escape, and Drax answers yes, he is my old friend after all.

To the shock of the Doctor both the TL and Celestis are ecstatic at the victory. All it cost them was untold number of lives. They took out a large number of Enemy vessels. They are confident now all that is required is a final push to defeat the Enemy.

History never ends

The final battle ends with a combined Time Lord and Celestis victory. However the Enemy still has one final trick. A doomsday device which will initiate a new big bang (Quantum archangel). Not all the Enemy agrees with the plan.

A Time Lord initial strike is quite successful. Learning from their initial defeats assaulting the city of the saved and also from the Doctor of the staging point gate, they target that first. As more TARDISes enter, victory is in sight.


The female Enemy (Promethea) who the Doctor meets in “City of the Saved,” tries to stop it as the device takes time to assemble (as the Enemy does not keep it all in one spot as even they feared its power), but she fails, but not before she lets out a distress signal to the Doctor. Note as to why the Enemy did not use the doomsday device in the future, we should state that they only built it on the past as part of a strategy against the future enemy named Chaos.

The Doctor manages to stop the doomsday device as the Enemy falls.

In this episode we learn the full plans of the Enemy. Basically they were going to do like the Xeelee (but even more ambitious), go back in time, conquer the whole universe so that everyone is now working towards countering Chaos and with more time to improve their technology they can beat Chaos. However the Time Lords stopped that idea.

The Doctor manages to convince the Time Lords that those of the Enemy who defected should not be executed but imprisoned on Shada pending interrogation. The TL agree as they are keen to study the Enemy’s technology. On removing the Enemy’s masks, they are indeed humans. However Promethea tells the Time Lords the reason they came back in time to impose universal order was because they are losing the War of the Future and the same enemy will now threaten them.

However the Time Lords scoff at this since the war is not supposed to start until in the far future. Plenty of time for them to analyse the situation and come up with countermeasures. However Promethea warns them that there are some of the Enemy who believe time travelling will cause the war to start early (with no explanation until season four).

Epilogue 1

The Doctor meets “The Surgeon” from the previous storyline. The Surgeon mutters that you Time Lords won didn’t you? The Doctor only nods. The Surgeon begs the Doctor to always protect Earth and the Doctor tells the Surgeon he always has and always will. The Surgeon then self destructs.

Epilogue 2

We see a viewscreen in a place not revealed to the viewer. We only catch a glimpse of the hand of the person watching the viewscreen. However we see lots and lots of ships massing. “So it begins, another war of realities.”

[mr friendly guy]

Season three

Omega returns to warn the Time Lords of a reality war. An invasion from another universe amicable to our own.

Notable episodes

Slave ship

The Doctor ends up on a planet which was the last known location of a mysterious ship from E-space. But he is not the only one investigating. A combine Time Lord and other temporal powers task force also seeks this ship. It turns out due to loopholes in the peace treaty between the Time Lords and other temporal powers, the Time Lords police time travel in this universe. However despite being able to travel through time this ship originated in E-space. With strictly speaking no legal ruling on this, all sides agree to send forces to investigate and they have forced it away from the Vortex and onto this planet.

It turns out that the ship in question is a slave ship, powered by captured Tharils (aliens from the classic episode “Warrior’s Gate.”). The church of the mainframe is hoping this ship will have technology they can use against the Time Lords. However the ship itself is fleeing its own universe and doesn’t have much in the way of technology, at least compared to Time Lord, Celestis and the futuristic human tech. The Slavers do reveal that they are the masters of baryonic matter in their universe, pretty much controlling almost all the baryonic matter resources.

The Doctor manages to stop the slavers and free the Tharils who are granted amnesty in this universe. The slavers warn him about the “Shadow people”, beings of dark matter who now dominate E-space and tell him that more of them have entered this universe to escape the Shadow People.Once the Slavers had entire armies of dyson spheres and ringworlds. Despite continually changing history, the Slavers are no match for the Shadow People whose entire fleets outmass the baryonic universe several times over.

The Alpha state

Lydia (from season one) informs the Doctor of a strange probe which has entered our universe and wants him to investigate because it landed on her home planet. Now that she has been made a member of the Celestis, she is forbidden to have any contact with her previous life, but she still holds affection for her people. The TL suspect this is a probe from the Exo space time continuum.

The Doctor agrees. He tracks the lifeform which has escaped from the probe and discovers that it has taken some samples of the Shen method of organ transplant (from Neo seasons episode Grand round / Barbarians at the gate) and is building himself not just organs, but a new body. He manages to get a look at the molecular structure of what the alien was trying to build, and knows all too well who has this structure. Himself.

The Doctor now knows who he is dealing with. Omega. The renegade Gallifreyan tried this trick in the classic episode Arc of Infinity.

The Doctor manages to destroy Omega’s body (using a variation of the Sontaron nano weapons), but a dying Omega chides him as foolish. He warns the Doctor that he only entered the universe to warn the Time Lords that not since the war with the Vampires of E-space (State of Decay) have they faced another reality war. A new force is massing to invade our universe. He was going to offer the Time Lords help as his scanning technology could spy on the aliens, in return for being made a member of the council. Omega appears to die before he can tell the Doctor more.


Wizards and Warlocks
The Doctor lands on a world which the TARDIS does not recognise. Moreover its populated by numerous beings including humans, Draconians and even the Marshmen from E-space. The world appears to be pre industrial with mages, rangers and the classic D & D tropes.

Shortly after landing mysterious figures cause the TARDIS to disappear.

Despite denying the existence of magic the Doctor is confronted with mages who chant bullshit and somehow interacts with the physical world. The Doctor points out that such forces were destroyed by the Time Lords after Rassilon’s “intuitive revolution.” As the mystery deepens he encounters a former mage who has lost his powers known as…Greenwood (after the creator of the forgotten realms).

It turns out Greenwood is raving, but in his ravings he may have a point. Greenwood believes that adventurers are possessed by the “Players of games,” for the entertainment of the players. Sometimes people die, sometimes discarded. He was discarded but remembered being possessed. The Doctor figures out why. Greenwood is a latent telepath.

The Doctor does a usual kill the monsters, rescue the princess type of adventure but figures out who the Player of games are. They are Eternals (classic episode Enlightenment) who fled the universe during the time war between the Time Lords and the Daleks. This world is in a pocket dimension. The magic works because the Eternals with their matter manipulating powers create the effects. That’s why Greenwood no longer has any powers despite still remembering the words to the spells. The Eternals choose not to create the effects.

The Doctor chides the Eternals for being for cavalier with the lives of those they play with. They naturally dismiss his concern. However the Doctor offers them a better game. Inside his TARDIS. Intrigued the Eternals agree. Inside the TARDIS the Doctor creates his own world for the Eternals to play against (see Invasion of Time where he creates entire rooms). The Eternals easily overcome the TARDIS challenges until they arrive at the heart of the TARDIS. Here the Doctor opens up the heart even though the energies shorten the life of his current incarnation. Exposed to the Vortex the Eternals become mortal.

“You who live in the larger realm of eternity, now feel what’s its like to live in the smaller realm of time.” This was similar to the DW comic :Univited Guest where the Doctor uses the Vortex to render the Eternals mortal.

Now mortal the power of the Eternals weaken and are no longer able to maintain the “magic” of the world which leaves it in economic chaos. The Doctor calls upon the Time Lords to return the inhabitants to their respective place in time and space with memory wipes. The Marshmen are allowed to stay on this world since the Time Lords warn him its hazardous to try and travel to E-space given the presence of the the Shadow People.


Note – the fact that Marshmen from E-space are here is a clue that the Eternals also fled to E-space.



Devil’s advocate

A charged vacuum emboitment (CVE) appears and takes the Doctor into E-space. This is no accident as the Doctor eventually finds out that the Shadow People want him there. During the episode he encounters another slaver ship and manages to free the Tharils, but the ship itself is captured by the Shadow People.

Here is the origin of the Shadow People and their leader is… Biroc (Warrior’s gate)

Biroc is a tharil and explains that despite Romana’s efforts (she stayed in E-space at the end of Warrior’s gate before re-entering her universe) to help free them from slavery it only met with limited success. Then one day he encountered an Eternal fleeing from the Doctor’s universe. He convinced the Eternal that he could ease its boredom with a war. The Eternal used its powers of matter manipulation to create the first Shadow People with Biroc as their leader. The Eternal would never have thought of creating such a thing, but Biroc’s imagination and thirst for vengeance gave him all the idea he needed. The beauty was, the first Shadow Person could replicate itself, so even when the Eternal eventually did get bored of the war and stopped empowering the first shadow person (thus causing it to fade away), the descendants still live. Thus the first shadow person was born and transported to a very early point in E-space history by Biroc.

E-space is in many ways similar to our universe. Most of the matter is dark matter. No matter how many times the Slavers try to change history, there will always be more dark matter than baryonic matter. Its like a chess game, where one side starts off with two thirds of the pieces missing. Even if this side could redo the moves numerous times, they will still lose because the other side just has so many more pieces.

The Doctor tries to convince Biroc that he can free the Tharils that escape his universe, but there is no need to kill the slavers or even to invade N-space. Biroc then brings one the freed Tharils and ask her, what should they do with the Slavers. She indicates they should kill them, and to the Doctor’s horror Biroc executes the slavers. He tells the Doctor, “this is our answer.”

Biroc tells the Doctor they know of 50 slaver ships that escaped into N-space. The Time Lords have 50 years to bring them back to E-space for punishment and to bring their slaves back. Otherwise the Shadow People will invade to find the Slavers themselves.

The Doctor is allowed to leave to tell the Time Lords this, but not before warning Biroc this will only lead to more conflict, more tragedy.


Enmity ends

Desperate to gain a tactical advantage over the numerous fleets of the Shadow People, the Doctor agrees to lead a Time Lord mission into Omega’s universe to see if they can spy on them. Since Omega’s entry, the Time Lords have studied the chronometric blah blah technobabble method Omega used to enter the universe and are confident they can reverse engineer a chronogate to allow the team to enter Omega’s universe of antimatter. Using some technobabble device they also change the Time Lords so that they can interact with antimatter without exploding, just like how Omega’s original device did (The Three Doctors).

What they find is a nightmare world. Without Omega (who was presumed dead in the episode the Alpha state) the world looks like its dying. However there are still traps left there. The team attempt to reach Omega’s castle (The Three Doctors). Along the way various Time Lords are killed. Each time the injured time lord attempts to regenerate but despite the release of Artron energy, and the special FX showing a change in face, the Time Lord ultimately dies. The Doctor speculates its because of the different rules of this universe.

Finally only the Doctor and a Time Lord agent named Vael makes it to the castle but another trap triggers and injures Vael. Vael tries to regenerate and this time is successful but barely. The Doctor speculates it could be because Vael is still in his first incarnation, so he may have more artron energy stored up.

In any event the Doctor uncovers Omega’s scanners which are way ahead of anything the Time Lords have. Omega has been spying on numerous universes including E-space. The Doctor realises there is a way to stop the Shadow People.

Omega once drained the power from the Eye of Harmony (The three doctors). Omega can spy on E-space, but the Time Lords knew how to enter E-space. Combining the technology the Doctor drains dark energy from the Exo space time continuum.

E-space works sort of like our universe. Dark energy pushes out matter, and matter being matter, would attract each other. Without dark energy, matter in E-space would draw closer and cause the universe to collapse. In a few million years. However with time travel, the Doctor could create the black hole which drains the energy a few billion years earlier. Negotiating with Biroc, the Shadow People agree not to invade the universe but in exchange the Time Lords must free his people and return them to E-space even if they want to stay in N-space. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.

As Vael is about to leave the Doctor points out that its strange you survived when the other Time Lords die, isn’t it Omega. Revealed the ancient Gallifreyan states that he has now possessed the dead body of Vael and wants to escape back to N-space. When Omega sent his consciousness out earlier (Alpha stage) he left a portion of his consciousness here, or else this universe will collapse without a Time Lord maintaining it. Now that the Doctor is here….

The Doctor points out he could stop Omega leaving and Omega asks, will you? The Doctor tells him no. Our enmity ends here today Omega. Grateful Omega leaves and states he has no idea what he will do as he spent all that time thinking of ways to escape. He might even become a champion of life like the Doctor.

As the episode ends, the Doctor is stuck in Omega’s universe becoming its new Sentry, forever looking out for threats to our universe.

Sentry

This is the Doctor light episode.

Basically without the Doctor there is evil in the universe without a champion to oppose him. Lydia observes this. She is forbidden to interfere and the Time Lords are more interested in constructing devices to protect the universe from invasion by E-space and other universes.

So she secretly assembles the Doctor’s companions to fight a particular evil, but despite their best efforts they fail. Realising there is only one thing for it. Someone must take the Doctor’s place in Omega’s universe. That someone will be her.

It turns out the Doctor has been in Omega’s universe for 1963 years (the year DW was first broadcast). However in this universe he is more physically fit than ever and has not aged even for a Time Lord.

Lydia takes the Doctor’s place and tells him that she will convince Gallifrey to send someone to replace her every few hundred years.

The Doctor escapes and in a few minutes beats the bad guys. We should show a montage of various villains the Doctor has defeated over the years in celebration of his ability to beat the bad guys.



Interlude – during the end of some episodes we will see a mysterious cloaked figure with a rod like device. He touches an object which then changes to a crystal. Fans of the classic series will know this is the Key to Time. One of the snippets will show the cloaked figure actually killing living beings, who then change into a segment. He manages to convince the sixth segment to shed its humanoid guise (like Princess Astra did in Armageddon factor). The final snippet will show the figure assembling the 6 segments and then putting another device on top of it.

“Come forth, take sentience.” He cries. A figure appears which looks like the figure the Doctor glimpsed in the far future. The foe the futuristic humans were fighting.

“What shall we call it,” the figure asks.

The Black Guardian steps out and says “Chaos.”

“Let the universe be at war,” the cloaked figure says.

Season four

The big bad is a sentient time line created by the Black Guardian. He is the foe of the futuristic humans who the Time Lords dubbed the Enemy (neo season 2). However his timeline is started early rather than in the far farfar future due to the time travel attempts of the humans.

Since everyone likes to introduce a Mary Sue, I will do so as well. Sort of.
Notable episodes

Doctor Dark/TheLady in Red

Inspired by the Alternate history cycle of DW Virgin books of which included novels like Left handed hummingbird, blood heat, dimension riders etc.

The Doctor ends up in an alternative time line where he is the ruler of Earth. Note this could either be the current incarnation or an earlier one, giving an excuse to bring back Tenant, Ecclestone or Matt Smith.

We see the Doctor land on Draconia (Frontier in space) where the Draconian empire is being annexed by Earth, led by himself.

In this timeline the Doctor successfully wiped out the Daleks in “Genesis of the Daleks”, defeated Omega in “The Three Doctors,” and did not become president (Deadly Assassin). The result of this divergent events is that the Time Lords allowed the Doctor to do whatever he wants within the region of space which includes Earth. The Dark Doctor has become ruler of Earth.

The Dark Doctor has given Earth advanced technology and eventually plans to take on the Time Lords. Among his technology is modified Kettlewell alloy for ships (Robot) which absorbs energy, minyos projectile weapons (Underworld, where a handheld device is rated at 1GT), singularity bombs (actually humans invented this in one of the 2 nd doctor novels) and they use matter / anti matter reactions within the Time Vortex where the rules of physics are different (in the vortex E equals MC cubed, not squared, as per the episode the Time Monster).

The Doctor manages to save some Draconian personnel before Draconia is destroyed by numerous missile strikes. Infiltrating Earth using his regeneration abilities to fool the scanners that he is human (the novel Origin Sin) the Doctor discovers the secret weapons the DD plan to use against the Time Lords. It is a DW equivalent of Gridfire, which opens up a CVE into both hyperspace and subspace and let the energy flow out, hopefully powerful enough to even overpower Gallifrey’s quantum forcefield (which is slightly less powerful in this timeline without a war against the Daleks). The Doctor sends a message to the Time Lords in this universe and Earth is time looped. The Doctor barely manages to escape in his TARDIS. At the end of the episode we see to the Doctor’s surprise the time loop breaks.


Shocked the Doctor again confronts his doppleganger and discovers the second secret weapon his double plans to use. A captured chronovore by the name of Hestia who manifests as a lady dressed in blood red clothes. Note in the Virgin novels the renegade TL the Mad Monk used a captured chronovore called Artemis. It was Hestia who broke Earth out of the Time Loop. It is through her that the DD plans to counter the Time Lords chronal powers. With Gallifrey not mobilised for war he may have a chance. Soon a fleet of Earth ships, the largest ever gathered is mobilised to attack Gallifrey.


The Doctor uses some of the old equations to bind Chronos (The Time Monster) against Hestia but to his shock does not work. The DD mentions cryptically that Hestia is more than just a chronovore. In desperation the Doctor tries to time ram the DD’s TARDIS, but that is stopped by Hestia. He rigs the TARDIS to explode releasing vast amounts of atron energy, which hurts Hestia, but only manages to slow her down.

In a final gambit the Doctor jury rigs what’s left of his TARDIS using Celestis technology to travel into Eternity. Chronovores feed on the smaller realm of time, but not on the larger realm of eternity. He materialises his TARDIS around Hesita and takes her into Eternity where she has no power, gambling that this should stop her. A sound idea given that the TL in this timeline don’t have the Celestis technology to travel in Eternity.

To his surprise she grows more powerful. And here lies his unexpected victory. Hestia is an unwitting slave to the DD bound up by use of his unique technology.

Its revealed that Omega in this timeline planned to defeat the Time Lords by creating an army of transcendentals including Eternals, Chronovores etc instead of draining their energy like ours.He also invented the hyperspace/subspace cannon the DD planned to use. The DD pretended to ally with Omega and then betrayed him. He subsequently took all of Omega’s technology and managed to improve it. However unlike other Chronovores Hestia can feed on the energies within Eternity and as a result manages to break the DD’s control, although it costs her greatly. Hestia manages to defeat the DD by aging him beyond numerous regenerations.

Now leaderless Earth selects a new leader, however the Doctor takes away their secret weapon against Gallifrey, the hyperspace/subspace cannon. Without it, Earth decides to stay where it is. Back in N-space, Hestia is weaken, the Doctor refusing to take her back into Eternity for fear of what she may become. Hestia becomes the new companion with limited chronovore powers.

The Great Old ones

Lovecraftian galore.With inspiration from this thread.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 4&t=165196


The first stage of the futuristic time war begins. Promethea (neo season 2) warns the Time Lords as numerous spatial anomalies appear. These are pocket universes start merging with our own. Such phenomena is known to the Time Lords, eg the Celestial toymaker, the land of fiction (The Mind Robber) and the realm of the Gods of Ragnorak (The Greatest show in the galaxy). However this is the first time they have intruded and in a fuck you moment to physics, the rules of reality in the area is changed as the two universes compete for dominance. Promethea tells the TL this is how the futuristic war began. By the freeing of the Great Old ones who lived in the universe before this one.


The Doctor, Hestia and Promethea confronts one such anomaly. The Time Lords and Celestis attempt to stop it by a combination of using anti time like against Valdemar (First strike) or separating the pocket universe and dumping it into the great void. Promethea needs a perception filter to prevent her going mad when viewing the Great Old one as humans were not meant to see such things. However Chronovores and Time Lords need no such device.


For some reason anti time doesn’t work against these realms as the moment they cross into the pocket universe, it ceases to exist as physics works differently. While time exists, anti time does not. The Great Old ones has had um, time to adjust to this form of attack. All the TL can do is stop the pocket universes expanding as attempts to break them off fail. Promethea says this was how the war began in their time. First the armies of Chaos will break out from these spatial anomalies.

The Great Old one the Doctor’s team confront is known as Cthulhu. Ta da. They enter the spatial anomaly and discover a Lovecraftian world where worshippers of Cthulhu want to sacrifice them to wake a sleeping Cthulhu. The Doctor learns that the power of Chaos is waking the Great Old ones.

Finally escaping from the sacrifices the Doctor opens the singularity inside the TARDIS linking to the Eye of Harmony. Within the vicinity of the black hole time dilation occurs. This pretty much keeps Cthulhu out of the picture and as a result, this spatial anomaly starts closing. Fortunately with Hestia’s chronovore powers they manage to shrug off the time dilation effects and with the Doctor’s and Hestia’s energy they power up the TARDIS and pilot her back to a waiting Time Lord fleet for repairs.

They learn from Promethea that Cthulhu was one of the weakest of the Great Old Ones. Attempts to send probes into the other spatial anomalies have largely failed. While the Doctor managed to close his, only 3 others have been separated and ejected into the great void. The Time Lords however have stopped the others growing and are cordoning off the anomalies from universal traffic.This is only round one.

Note from the novel Interference part 2 we see that Time Lord seals are designed to make the great old ones go into spasm, something about how their neurosystems work, so the Time Lords set up giant seals around the anomalies.


Immortal’s Children

One of the spatial anomalies is growing again despite the Time Lord’s attempts to shrink it. The Doctor arrives and finds a thriving community of telepaths. It seems that time flows differently here, while only months have passed in our universe, millions has passed here. The Time Lord attack on this anomaly may have stopped it from growing in our universe, but in this universe its effects was profound. It made the Great Old One living here (Yog – Sothoth) fall into a deep sleep.

Millions of years pass, and the inhabitants have evolved to develop sentience, culture and telepathic powers. They are aware of the sleeping one and use their powers to keep him drowsy. Moreover they discover a way to tap its power while asleep and as a result, their entire energy usage is based on the energy from the Great Old one. Another benefit is immortality.

The Doctor points out the old one can’t be sleeping if this anomaly is growing again in our universe, but the community rebuffs his claim. Hestia privately says to the Doctor, for our universe to live, theirs may have to die, and they cannot be more than a few billion on this world.

As it turns out, the Great Old One is indeed waking up. Because someone is disrupting the telepathic signal to keep it asleep using a psionic disruptor (The Pirate Planet). One of the telepaths named Anderas has made contact with Chaos and wants to end the existence. His motivation is that he was one of telepaths not born immortal, but was made immortal when they discovered how to tap into the Great Old One’s power. Anderas’s children had died and he considered it a tragedy for a parent to outlive his children. Since becoming immortal he has tried to take his own life, and for his troubles was locked up in the asylum for periods of time. With the psionic disruptor working, the Great Old One will wake and Anderas will finally know peace.

The Doctor rushes and disables all the psionic disruptors but its too late. The Great Old One is rousing. Hestia’s warning has indeed come to pass. With a difficult choice, the Doctor initiates the final sanction, in a copy of Rassilon’s mad plan. He travels back in time of this world, alters history again and again. Time is like a rubber band. Stretch it too much and it breaks (Attack of the Cybermen). Doing this the Doctor causes the pocket universe to unravel.

The Doctor and Hestia manage to escape. However in the TARDIS its revealed that using the TARDIS souped up telepathic circuits, he has managed to back up all the memories of the telepaths and given them a virtual existence. He will just find a world to put the computer which will store all their lives there. No one dies today. Amazing as it sounds, Rassilon’s mad plan actually saved people.

Epilogue 1

We see Anderas in the virtual world ritualistically ending his life with poison.

Chaos in the ranks

One of the spatial anomalies starts growing again and the Doctor is sent to investigate. At this point its already revealed that numerous ships have come out of anomalies and the Time Lords are fighting a holding action.

This world belongs to the Great Old One Nyarlathotep whose world is expanding as more Chaos ships are entering. However all is not well. It seems Nyarlathotep has his own motivations and his priest (cloaked figure we see talking to the Black Guardian in season 3) is keeping Chaos ships there.

Chaos herself visits, however the Priest is unimpressed. He points out that she is a creation of the Guardians who came into being when this universe did. The Great Old Ones survived the destruction of their universe, the one that came before. Nyarlathotepmet their equivalent of Guardians and Time Lords from the old universe and you do not match them. Not here. Where the laws of physics are from that of the previous universe.

There is an ensuing battle between Chaos and the Priest. Taking advantage of this, the Doctor opens the heart of the TARDIS and lets Hestia absorbs power from the vortex. She then releases it against the two combatants. Suddenly she draws upon power from Eternity, something chronovores shouldn’t be able to do. Meanwhile the Doctor uses the hyperspace/subspace cannon from the previous story and blasts the grounded Chaos ships, who do not have shields up since they are in dock.

They manage to escape the destruction of this world.

Epilogue 1
The Time Lords and Celestis are working on making a weapon duplicating Hestia’s powers. It will open a CVE into the vortex and another one into Eternity to release vast destructive energies. They plan to use this against the other spatial anomalies. To make certain they will also combine it with the Dark Doctor’s cannon from the alternate timeline. This quadspace cannon will be the finest weapon yet.

Epilogue 2
We see a conversation between the Black and White Guardians. The white light of the White Guardian looks dim, but he dismisses the “concern” of his fellow Guardian telling him that others will recharge my power for me (Enlightenment). He then notes the Black Guardian has a set back. We see Chaos surrounded by a healing cacoon. The Black Guardian notes that while his champion is injured, she will recover, which is more than he can say for the White Guardian who does not have one. “But I do,” the White Guardian replies cryptically.

Hestia

This episode deals with the origin of Hestia.

Hestia has a nightmare which she cannot wake up from and it appears to be an attack from Chaos. Plugging her essence into the Time Lord Matrix the Doctor attempts to rouse her by entering the Matrix with her. The world of the Matrix is damn strange. He appears to body jump into earlier incarnations relieving past events.

One such event was witnessing the war between the Carrionites and Hervokens which the Eternals ended.With his help. But such an event did not happen.

Another event was the signing of the accord between the Chronovores and Eternals. The Doctor realises he is seeing things from the perspective of the Dark Doctor, his evil alternate universe doppleganger. It seems like our Doctor, the DD was once a champion of life.

He sees the mating of the Eternal Death with the chronovore Kronos to produce Hestia, and how his doppleganger was entrusted with keeping her safe. Note there is a similar event in the novel Quantum Archangel.

During these events the Doctor confronts a figure who he recognises as the White Guardian. He has been manipulating these events to create his own champion. With the power of a chronovore Hestia can feed on time and draw upon the vortex. With the powers of an Eternal, she can draw upon power from Eterntiy. The perfect champion against the Black Guardian’s.

At the end of the episode the Doctor manages to rouse Hestia, but telepathic communication has been made with Chaos. Its threatening to infect the Matrix. Fortunately the Time Lords manage to isolate infected parts and eject it, however Chaos now knows Hestia is the White Guardian’s champion, just as Hestia now knows who and what she is.


Final gambit

Noting that Chaos is weakened in pocket dimensions where the rules of physics are different, the Doctor lures Chaos into the next best thing the Time Lords have. Omega’s universe of anti matter.

Haven’t thought through exactly all that happens, but at the end of the day they revert Chaos back to the Key to Time and the Doctor scatters the segments throughout the universe.

Hestia ascends to be the Guardian of Time with the Doctor as her champion.

Without Chaos, the Time Lords make short work of the Chaos ships.

We see the futuristic humans being made a new house of Gallifrey. The Doctor is deemed to have his own house. Of one. For now.

However the Doctor still has to deal with a vengeful Black Guardian. Now the rules of the Guardians are
a. The White Guardian exists to spread order in the universe, the Black Guardian exists to spread chaos (old source book from the 80s)

b. They will cease to exist when the universe no longer needs them (old source book from the 80s)

c. One will exist as long as the other does (Enlightenment)

Thus the only way for them to cease is if the universe ends.

The Doctor thus threatens the Black Guardian with final sanction. He will use the City of the Saved to back up every life form in the universe from the Time Lords to the lowliest bacteria, and use block transfer computations to recreate it in another universe. Thus only will the Guardians die.

However his bluff is called. In the end the Doctor wins by trapping him in the Celestial Toymaker’s old pocket universe, where the Black Guardian is free to spread Chaos all he likes, away from our universe.

[jackyboy]

Great story !