Real Time
The Doctor answers a summons for help from Earth. An archaeological dig on the planet Chronos has produced unexpected results, including the loss of at least two entire dig teams. The last transmission from the second team lost included an anguished warning about Cybermen. With Evelyn in tow, the Doctor joins the third expedition of the unusually advanced ruins on Chronos, and discovers a horrifying Cyberman plan to gain mastery over time travel. Will any of the other team members, including Evelyn, escape Cyber-conversion into mindless drones? Can the Doctor unravel the mystery of the unstoppable temporal shockwaves emanating from the ruins? And does team member Goddard, an expert on Cybermen assigned to the team, have too much knowledge of the silver giants – perhaps gained first-hand?
written by Gary Russell
directed by Gary Russell
music by Alistair LockCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Maggie Stables (Evelyn), Nicholas Briggs (Professor Osborn), Robert Curbishley (President), Jane Goddard (Doctor Nicola Savage), Andrew Hair (Fantham), Richard Herring (Taylor Renchard), William Johnston (Lieutenant Krueger), Stewart Lee (Ryan Carey), Alistair Lock (Hoyer), Christopher Scott (Administrator David Isherwood), Yee Jee Tso (Doctor Reece Goddard), Mark Wright (Dean)
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The TARDIS makes a rough landing in what appears to be modern-day England, though a rip in the fabric of time traumatizes the Doctor by showing him events that he doesn’t remember – a bloody war. As he and Evelyn explore, they discover that they’ve somehow landed on an alternate Earth whose “English Empire” is about to celebrate a jubilee in recognition of their defeat of a Dalek invasion force in 1903 – a victory they attribute entirely to the Doctor, a figure they know as a military hero who led them in battle against the Daleks, while history records that the Doctor’s companion Evelyn was a casualty of that carnage. The highlight of the 100th anniversary celebration will be the very public execution of an unarmed Dalek, kept alive in captivity all these years. This time, are the Daleks the downtrodden underclass, waiting for the Doctor to free them from the tyrannical reign of the all-conquering, merciless human race?
Evelyn pays a visit to a student of hers named Sally, arriving quite unbidden to tell her the tale of a recent adventure she and the Doctor experienced on the high seas – a tale of pirates, treasure, daring deeds, and terrible tragedies. Indeed, by invading Sally’s home to foist the story upon her, the Doctor and Evelyn are trying to avert another tragedy – but Evelyn worries that even that may be impossible when, during the recounting of their waterlogged adventure, the Doctor decides it would be better to tell the story in song.
The Doctor returns to Norway, where he and Evelyn are eager to catch up with Cassie, who they left to fend for herself – away from other humans – after their horrific encounter with Nimrod, the Forge, and Project Twilight. The Doctor believes he has created a cure for the vampire virus that infected Cassie, and he even finds her soon enough – only to discover that she is now in Nimrod’s employ. Nimrod has been waiting close to Cassie, knowing that the Doctor would return to help her. Nimrod has obtained some top secret information regarding the Doctor, including UNIT records of his past regenerations – an ability Nimrod wants to study and harness for himself, even if it means forcing the Doctor to regenerate by torturing him. Evelyn, in the meantime, brings Cassie back to her senses and together they rescue the Doctor from Nimrod’s hideous experiment. As the three of them make a desperate dash to the TARDIS, which Nimrod has also brought to the Forge, Nimrod guns Cassie down…
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.
The Doctor emerges from his trial a changed man – and a very melancholy one. Seeking a bit of refuge to contemplate recent events, he happens upon Bianca’s, an exclusive nightclub in World War II-era Berlin, but even as he tries to relax, he notices that things may not be as they appear. Worse yet, even as he tries to piece together what’s going on, Iris Wildthyme staggers into Bianca’s as well, shattering any hope the Doctor may have had of discreetly investigating the mystery.
The Doctor and Evelyn arrive in Scotland, and the Doctor quickly deduces that they’ve arrived at the time of the infamous string of grave robberies attributed to Burke & Hare. But things are not as they should be – the Doctor begins to notice that certain things are out of place, and certain elements of history are not as they should be. The time travelers quickly find out why history seems to be playing out differently than recorded: they’re not the only ones there with a TARDIS.
A diversion in the time vortex throws the TARDIS off course, toward a rough landing on a distant backwater world. The Doctor steps out of the doors and almost immediately blacks out. When he comes to, he is stunned to find that he is being tended to by Peri, who he hasn’t seen since the ill-timed intervention of the Time Lords whisked him away for his trial and left her helpless – 19 years ago in her personal history. She escaped her situation and obtained a spacecraft, but it crash-landed here months ago. She also claims that the Doctor was found unconscious after falling off of a mountain ledge. To make matters worse, the TARDIS has been confiscated by the local religious leader, who has placed it in the village temple and claims it is the vessel of the villagers’ goddess. When the Doctor finally gains access to that temple – normally denied to those not instructed in the local faith – he’s horrified to see that the TARDIS’ outer shell has been critically damaged, leaking chronon radiation and causing deadly time distortions. The only way the Doctor may be able to save this society – and Peri – is to give up his travels and set the TARDIS to self-destruct…assuming the villagers will let him.
An attack on a space cruiser they’re visiting forces the Doctor and Melanie to evacuate by any means necessary. Mel manages to make her way to an escape pod, which takes her to a research colony on the planet Lethe. The Doctor and the TARDIS, however, are captured by the Daleks, who offer to send the Doctor to Lethe too…so long as he reports back on what their creator, Davros, is doing there. When the Doctor arrives, he finds that Davros has managed to conceal his appearance and is calling himself Professor Vaso – and worse yet, he has unearthed specimens of one of the Daleks’ worst enemies, the Mechonoids. Davros has quietly set up self-replication facilities for the Mechonoids, aware of their potential for battling the Daleks, claiming that he hopes to atone for his past by ridding the universe of his creations. But even with this claim of a noble mission, the Doctor sees Davros up to his old tricks, leaving a trail of death in his wake. But when the Doctor fulfills his end of the bargain and alerts the Daleks, who still want to capture Davros and try him for crimes against them, things only get worse, with an entire colony of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of a new Dalek-Mechonoid war.
The Doctor and Melanie arrive at the National Foundation for Scientific Research just prior to a public ceremony marking the Foundation’s 100th anniversary. Mel’s eccentric uncle, John Hallam, is not just a member of the Foundation but actually lives on the grounds. During the ceremony, involving the burial of a time capsule, it is discovered that something else has already been buried there. When the Doctor and Hallam examine the object, it causes an explosion in another one of the Foundation’s laboratories – one where a rather bored Melanie is reading through Hallam’s records of their family history. Melanie is missing when the Doctor and Hallam try to come to her aid, and the Doctor strongly suspects that the mysterious object has catapulted her back in time. He also thinks that her time journey may have been directed by her thoughts at the time, so the TARDIS homes in on the sprawling Hallam estate in 1782. That leaves only a few rather significant problems: in Melanie’s timeline, six months have passed since her arrival, and in that time, she has been heavily drugged by a family doctor who feels that her ramblings about being from the future are a sign of dementia. Worse yet, with no sign of rescue from that future, Mel has started to believe that she is who her ancestor, Henry Hallam, tells her she is: his future wife, and therefore her own ancestor.
Curious about the Doctor’s frequent mentions of how traveling with Evelyn Smythe calmed him down, Melanie talks him into paying her a visit. Three years after the invasion of Vilag, Evelyn – who left the Doctor’s company some time ago – is now married to Rossiter, who heads up the new global government. But all is not well even in the wake of the invasion of which the Doctor and Evelyn tried to warn everyone on their earlier visit; the leftover alien technology has become a subject of intense controversy, with Evelyn heading up an effort to have it studied and exploited for the benefits it could bring. The most vocal opponent of this viewpoint is Rossiter’s daughter, Sophia, who leads a faction that wants the alien technology destroyed. But mere moments after the Doctor and Melanie appear at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack, it appears that some of Sophia’s opponents are more prepared to take action than others. When the first shots ring out, the Doctor and Evelyn both think it’s an attempt on Rossiter’s life, but when the Doctor rushes to help Rossiter, Evelyn and Melanie are kidnapped. The Doctor and Rossiter set out to track them down and rescue them, and find that the Doctor’s companions, past and present, aren’t the only ones who need help.
Suffering from a serious case of moping, the Doctor reluctantly gives in to Evelyn’s insistence that he needs a vacation…in somplace like Brighton. The TARDIS manages to take them there, in the year 1936, but things are already taking a dark turn when the Doctor overhears a young couple talking about strange noises from the water. The Doctor encounters Professor Talbot, a secretive man who, according to local legend, hasn’t been seen in 15 years. The Doctor instantly senses something horribly wrong with Talbot – he’s doing the bidding of some sort of alien consciousness, while also trying to swindle the being. But the Doctor discovers that he’s facing a power that has the ability to control nearly anyone’s mind – even Evelyn’s, and even his own.
Aboard an Earth Empire carrier ship, an ace fighter jock is spooked when he hears a bell that he knows doesn’t belong to the 22nd century. Infuriated, his commanding officer has him pulled from flight rotation, at roughly the same time that the TARDIS materializes in her ship’s cargo bay. The Doctor, too, has heard the bell, but he has a better idea of where one might expect to hear that sound: on a passenger train in the 1950s, not at the edge of the solar system in 2197. When the Doctor admits that this realization terrifies him, Evelyn is concerned, and when the time travelers are caught investigating the ship, they’re held responsible for the increasing number of instances in which a member of the crew has nearly gone mad after hearing the bell. A mysterious door appears in the hold, a door which should lead directly into space without even so much as an airlock…and yet it doesn’t. As more of the carrier’s crew hear the bell, they are compelled to seek out the door and step through it, vanishing without a trace. The ship’s captain is prepared to summarily execute the Doctor, believing he is responsible for what must surely be an alien act of sabotage. But who’s behind the door, and who’s ringing the bell? And what ties this 22nd century crisis to a train in the 20th?
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to Baltimore, 1984 – four months since, as far as her family and friends know, Peri disappeared without a trace at Lanzarote. Far from being a happy reunion, Peri’s arrival coincides with the apparent murder of Anthony Chambers, her best friend’s father. Peri discovers that her friends and her mother aren’t exactly overjoyed to see her. The Doctor becomes interested in Chambers’ death, and when he discovers the Cybermen are behind the incident, he wonders why they’ve targeted one man. Even when the Doctor thinks he’s close to solving the mystery, it’s putting Peri, her mother and her friends into mortal danger.