Episode 4
Reet and Thomas follow Marcie to get a peek at an operation said to be an archaeological site. The woman running the operation, Miss Pendragon, is unconcerned with their presence; with her seemingly Aryan army of young people, Miss Pendragon is obsessed with releasing a behemoth of Celtic legend. Of particular importance to her is her young protege, Luke, who has no archaeological experience, but was hired because of his naturally blonde hair and his lack of birthmarks or deformities. Miss Maitland’s class is invited to make a field trip to the dig site, and Thomas and Reet follow Marcie again, much to their teacher’s dismay. An explosion at the dig site quickly changes the dynamic: the students are ushered away (though Marcie and Thomas manage to hide away and remain hidden at the dig site), and Luke’s arm is broken, leading Miss Pendragon to declare him “useless.” Now in need of a “perfect” blonde-haired boy to take Luke’s place, Miss Pendragon is delighted to find that Thomas is still on her premises.
written by Russell T. Davies
directed by Colin Cant
music by David FergusonCast: Martina Berne (Inga), Ben Chandler (Thomas), Brigit Forsyth (Miss Maitland), Victoria Lambert (Marcie), Jacqueline Pearce (Miss Pendragon), Stephen Tredre (Luke), Kate Winslet (Reet)
Notes: Russell T. Davies’ recycling bin is in evidence here – the idea of a “perfect child” named Luke, to be employed as a human vessel for a vast, otherworldly intelligence, resurfaces in the pilot episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures and that show’s Luke character.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
written by Russell T. Davies
written by Russell T. Davies
Seven years after the massacre of his crewmates and the death of Blake on Gauda Prime, Kerr Avon comes out of seclusion to hear a proposition from an anti-Federation rebel named Lydon on a distant, unnamed world. Lydon has contacted Elise, Avon’s sometime-lover, to try to get Avon involved in an attempt to raid a shipment of Federation gold. Avon is skeptical of how Lydon hopes to help the resistance movement with what is essentially an interplanetary train robbery, and upon hearing Lydon’s plan he’s even more incredulous. But Avon still has an ace up his sleeve – he consults Orac to help him devise a more cohesive plan of action. Before any of those plans can be put into practice, Federation troops converge on Avon, Elise and the others, mounting a strike so precise that they must be getting information from Elise, her strong-arm cohort Kelso, or Lydon. Again, Avon comes to believe that the person he wanted to trust most has betrayed him, and he kills Elise. But this time, his actions and even his contingency plans have been anticipated by Federation psychostrategists, and Avon is captured and brought to Servalan, who has reclaimed her seat of power. But as part of her strategy to remain in power, Servalan has decided she needs enemies to keep the Federation distracted, and she intends for Avon to keep the resistance movement alive…even if it means that the man Avon is now will cease to exist. 
An unusually vivid nightmare gives Avon a horrifying preview of Servalan’s latest scheme. Using a jewel of alien origin, she can inflict her will upon others in a very limited fashion. A sudden escape from a Federation interceptor leaves Scorpio’s newly-installed stardrive drained. Since the stardrive’s advanced power cells can only be procured from a Federation installation, Avon decides to strike Servalan’s current hiding place, the planet Feron, where she is researching the origins and potential power of her new weapon. Avon and Vila eavesdrop in hiding as a scientist reveals the crystal’s secrets (and then condemns himself to a premature death by admitting that he knows that Servalan isn’t “Commissioner Sleer”). From that moment, the race is on to find a jeweled diadem whose telekinetic and telepathic properties would give its wearer more than enough power to topple the Federation. But when Avon learns that an even more powerful crown, of which the diadem is only a part, could give him the ability to rule the entire galaxy… why stop with just the Federation?
Avon hatches a risky plan to take over the planet Syndexia, the last remaining source of the hyperdrive fuel substance called Syndeton. But the already delicate plot is unraveled when Vila gets drunk in a bar on another planet and mentions Syndexia as the crew’s next destination. Vila is only barely rescued by the others as a Federation squadron moves in. Thanks to Vila’s carelessness, Servalan is alerted to Avon’s next destination, yet he presses on. Avon’s concern with Syndexia is not just with the coup to be gained by taking over the supply of Syndeton, either – in so doing, he intends to overthrow Madame Gaskia, Syndexia’s ruler, who once betrayed Avon to the Federation long before he joined Blake. Servalan is interested not only in the power to be harvested from Syndeton, but from its potential as a mind-controlling substance as well, an ability she tests by taking over Tarrant. Before long, the chase is on to find Dr. Rossum, a missing Federation scientist whose research into Syndeton could unlock its dangerous mind-control abilities. Scorpio’s crew finds Rossum first, but at the last minute, Avon insists on conceding this battle to Servalan – and the spoils could be control over every life form in the galaxy.
In the present day, the Doctor and Ace arrive in a London gripped by fear. Terrorists seem to be going to extreme lengths to rid Britain of the ultra-right-wing New Britannia party and its Parliamentary candidate, Sherilyn Harper. The Doctor unceremoniously bursts in on Mick Thompson’s political talk radio show to make contact with a man named Walter who, with an accomplice who is now institutionalized, attempted to assassinate Harper and barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by…something. The Doctor postulates that the deadly entity is a non-corporeal creature which incites fear among its victims – and then feeds off that fear, often leaving the victims traumatized for life. Walter says that he can hear this creature in the voice of Sherilyn Harper, but as the crisis worsens and the streets become even more infested with terrorists – some of whom are not political agitators, but hired guns – it becomes apparent that the Fearmonger could be using anyone as its host… even, as Ace comes to believe, the Doctor himself.
The planet Santiny is overrun by a massive invasion by a Canisian fleet. Even suicide runs don’t prevent the Canisians, as their leader, General Tannis, seems to be able to forsee every possible tactic. Almost as if in answer to the prayers of the survivors on Santiny, the TARDIS arrives, and the Doctor and his blue-skinned companion Antimony emerge to begin helping Santiny’s resistance movement. Meanwhile, Ace – planted in a strategic position by the Doctor – has been rescued by a Time Lord named Casmus, who begins training her for the next step in her own evolution. Elsewhere, a group of Time Lords called the Fraction, dedicated to interference in time on the side of good, begin falling one by one to a stealthy killer. Finally, the string of deaths draws the Doctor’s attention away from the Canisian problem, and also gets the attention of Casmus. On Gallifrey, Casmus accelerates Ace’s training, speeding her evolution into a new breed of Time Lord. Time is running out, as Tannis is also revealed to be a Time Lord who is using his conquests to disguise his identity. But will Ace learn to use her powers for good soon enough to confront Tannis, or will the Doctor – having witnessed Antimony’s death at the general’s hands – be forced to use his Time Lord powers to a degree that will not only kill Tannis but himself as well?
Two years after Hilda Winters’ attempt on her life, Sarah suddenly finds herself relieved of the obligation to testify about the incident – Winters herself is murdered while awaiting trial. Josh, still overprotective of Sarah, marks the occasion with a bitter “good riddance,” but when a letter from Winters arrives – apparently written before, and yet predicting, her death – Sarah is spooked. When Sarah shows up for a yearly rendezvous with her fellow former TARDIS traveler Harry Sullivan, Harry doesn’t show, but a man claiming to be his stepbrother, Will Sullivan, shows up instead. Due to leave for a 13-month stay at an Antarctic research base (which, coincidentally, happens to have been funded by Sarah herself with the money she inherited from her late Aunt Lavinia), Will is also looking for Harry. Sarah’s friend Natalie has moved on to become a research assistant to a prominent forensic scientist, though an excavation into a crypt that should contain a body thousands of years old turns out to hold the body of a very recent murder victim, and Nat herself becomes a suspect. When Sarah and Josh go to visit her in Italy, Sarah discovers that the Book of Tomorrows mentioned in Hilda Winters’ posthumously delivered letter is very real – and it belongs to a secret order that believes Sarah herself is playing her part in an ancient prophecy. And one member of that order wishes to help Sarah complete her prophetic role by killing her.
Two months after her brush with death in Italy, Sarah is still recuperating from being shot, and planning to pay the Morgan expedition in Antarctica (and Will Sullivan) a visit. Josh insists on going with her, not quite trusting how conveniently a close relative of an old friend has insinuated himself into Sarah’s life. When they arrive there, however, all is not well – Will is sporting a black eye, tensions are running high among the small team at the isolated Antarctic base, and it seems that Sarah can’t get a straight answer to any straight questions. She begins to worry that another Krynoid seed pod has been found, but something else is happening behind the scenes – something deadly, and something that has a connection to the secret order whose members tried to murder Sarah in Italy.
After returning from another brush with death in Antarctica, Sarah, Josh and Will pry into a research company with ties to Hilda Winters – and to the secret society that has twice tried to kill Sarah. Protests fill the streets outside the company’s research center, where Josh finds his environmentalist friend Maude worried about her daughter, who managed to get inside the building but never returned. Will uses his medical credentials to gain access to the center, only to discover that he is expected. Sir Donald Wakefield, a terminally ill multimillionaire who has made recent news headlines by planning to be on the first passenger flight into space, contacts Sarah and reveals that he heads up another faction of the secret society, and warns her that one of her closest friends has orders to kill her. When the society’s more violent faction starts a countdown to the release of a deadly bio-engineered plague, they name their price for stopping the outbreak: Sarah must lay down her life willingly.
In the distant future, the tyrannical Federation decides to do away with its most persistent opponent: freedom fighter Roj Blake. Blake is sentenced to exile on the prison colony planet Cygnus Alpha after a conveniently quick trial convicts him on false charges that he molested several children. Aboard the prison ship London en route to Cygnus Alpha, Blake meets fellow prisoners Jenna Stannis, a hard-bitten smuggler, and cynical computer expert Kerr Avon. When they’re enlisted as skilled cannon fodder for a mission to salvage an enormous alien spacecraft, the three prisoners take the opportunity to make an escape attempt. The Federation officer overseeing the prisoners, Mezen, is trapped aboard the alien ship with them. Blake decides to recruit more crew memebrs from the remaining prisoners ferried to Cygnus Alpha by the London, but he finds them under a different iron fist there, as prisoners already living there have set up their own strict society, ruling by the fear of God. Only two of the prisoners, master thief Vila Restal and convicted killer Oleg Gan, opt to join Blake’s crew. Across the galaxy, in the seat of power on Earth, Space Commander Travis – who hunted Blake before his capture by the Federation – warns the newly-promoted Supreme Commander Servalan that Blake is more of a threat than the Federation’s strategists think he is.
