The Crimes Of Thomas Brewster
A peaceful visit to early 21st century London becomes less restful for the Doctor and Evelyn when they find themselves pursued by robotic insects with deadly homing instincts. Help comes from an unlikely ally within the police, D.I. Patricia Menzies, pursuing a criminal investigation well outside her home jurisdiction in Manchester. The Doctor has never met Menzies before, but she knows him well, and keeps silent about their past meetings (which take place in his future). Total strangers or not, though, she does need his help in ending the crminal activities of a mysterious gang operating in London. The Doctor and Evelyn quickly find out that the trail leads to a criminal known as the Doctor – described as a fair-haired young man in Edwardian clothes. Though the sixth Doctor is troubled by the thought that another of his incarnations is acting criminally, he follows the clues until he finds out who the other Doctor is: his unethical former companion, Thomas Brewster. Acting as “the Doctor”, Brewster is trying to restore his ability to time travel, and has done a deal with a species from another world. Naturally, what Brewster has failed to take into account is that he himself has been double-crossed by the aliens, who wish to wipe out the human race and take Earth for themselves.
written by Jonathan Morris
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Howard CarterCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Maggie Stables (Dr. Evelyn Smythe), John Pickard (Thomas Brewster), Anna Hope (DI Menzies), David Troughton (Raymond Gallagher), Ashley Kumar (Jared), Lisa Greenwood (Philippa), Duncan Wisbey (Sergeant Bradshaw), Helen Goldwyn (Terravore Queen)
Notes: This adventure definitively places the sixth Doctor’s short string of adventures with Charley Pollard, a shipwrecked former companion of his eighth incarnation, after his travels with Evelyn (and obviously before his travels with Melanie). To familiarize herself with time paradoxes, Menzies has “watched the first ten minutes of The Time Traveler’s Wife“, a movie adaptation of book that many fans believe inspired the tenth and eleventh Doctors’ out-of-chronological-order relationship with River Song in TV Doctor Who.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green