Flip-Flop
…just then, the “other” Doctor and Melanie arrive on the human colony planet Puxatornee, discovering that the alien Slithergees have all but taken over, using humans are seeing-eye dogs and servants, and even edging human traditions, history and beliefs out of the humans’ own teachings by way of claiming rampant anti-Slithergee discrimination. Two terrorists, Stewart and Reed, are out to restore the balance and put the humans in charge again, and when they discover that the Doctor and Mel are time travelers, they force the TARDIS crew at gunpoint to take them back in time to change history. But the history they bring about is one where the Slithergees were refused permission to settle in the Puxatornee system, resulting in a war that left the planet permanently contaminated. Stewart and Reed are killed, and the Doctor makes a hasty exit, worried about encountering his and Mel’s counterparts from the divergent timeline that has been created. Just then, the “other” Doctor and Melanie arrive on the doomed planet Puxatornee, where two soldiers, Stewart and Reed, wish to change history so the human-Slithergee war never fatally polluted Puxatornee. When they discover that the Doctor and Mel are time travelers, they force the TARDIS crew at gunpoint to take them back in time to prevent these events. But the history they bring about is one where the Slithergees were granted permission to settle and slowly took over. Stewart and Reed are killed, and the Doctor makes a hasty exit, worried about encountering his and Mel’s counterparts from the divergent timeline that has been created…
written by Jonathan Morris
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), Richard Gibson (Mitchell(, Daniel Hogarth (Slithergee voices), Trevor Littledale (Potter), Francis Magee (Stewart), Trevor Martin (Professor Capra), Pamela Miles (Bailey), Audrey Schoellhammer (Reed)
Timeline: between Bang-Bang-A-Boom! and Dragonfire
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
During his trial, the Doctor struggles with the Valeyard and becomes trapped in the Matrix as Melanie watches in horror – and the other Time Lords, including a newly elected Lord President, watch with distant interest and no desire to interfere. Mel insists on trying to rescue the Doctor, but finds no interest from the Time Lords, who plan to watch the unfurling of the Doctor’s history with detached curiosity should the Valeyard win. And indeed the Valeyard does win, but he doesn’t limit himself to the Matrix – and he doesn’t stop with killing the Doctor. The Valeyard interferes with time and destroys Gallifrey itself, and even goes back and kills the fourth Doctor en route to Logopolis. That act begins to unravel the Valeyard’s own history, however – and in trying to go back and restore his past timeline as the Doctor, he may destroy the web of time itself.
Martin Bannister, in 1961, was voted one of the Times‘ ten most promising young writers for his innovative stage plays. But he tried to venture into television, and was recruited for a new BBC science fiction program called Doctor Who. Despite his extraordinary efforts to define the show’s characters, themes and parameters, Martin watched as Doctor Who made it as far as one failed pilot episode before being abandoned by the BBC. Now, 40 years later, Martin is confined to a nursing home, subjected to unsettling visits by his adult son, who’s still bitter that Martin divorced his mother when he was only six. Martin isn’t sure what is the truth and what isn’t from what his son tells him, and this isn’t the only place he’s having problems with reality – he imagines a burgeoning romance with a nurse, he imagines that he’s being tapped to write the celebratory 40th anniversary comeback of Doctor Who (but why celebrate a show that was never made?), and he imagines that he is the Doctor, that most mysterious traveler in time and space. Will Martin Bannister trade his unpromising reality for an unrealized fantasy?
The Doctor stumbles upon a plot to revive Davros, thought to be long dead, but this time the Daleks aren’t behind it. This attempt to tap into Davros’ evil genius is a purely commercial concern, funded by a shady Earth corporation whose CEO wants Davros to work for him. Horrified by the implications of this, the Doctor counters with an offer to provide his own services in exchange for keeping Davros under lock and key. The company’s chief executive, realizing that he has two geniuses on his hands, instead strikes a bargain that both parties find even more terrifying – he will hire the Doctor and Davros, and they will share lab and office space. But what the corporation wants is someone who’s not afraid to set ethics aside for the sake of profit – and the Doctor soon becomes ripe for termination. Or, if Davros has his way, extermination.
Trapped by the Time Lords and tried for the crime of interfering in history, the Doctor is scheduled to be exiled to Earth – but he escapes into his TARDIS and leaves Gallifrey. Not that this really does him much good, as he winds up trapped on Earth anyway. A few incarnations later, the Doctor’s situation has become even more unsettling – he has not only changed bodies, but changed gender as well. Without her TARDIS, the Doctor becomes bored, listless, and – with the help of two friends she makes on a job she takes to eke out a meager existence – perhaps just a little bit alcoholic. Or perhaps a lot – the Doctor begins to see and hear her previous (male) incarnation, warning her of alien invasions and labyrinthine plots against modern-day Earth. When the Time Lords send two agents to track the Doctor down and bring her back to justice (though they don’t know that the Doctor is now a woman), the only thing standing between the Doctor and her doom is an increasing reliance on the bottle. When it comes right down to it, which oblivion will the Doctor choose?