Three’s A Crowd
After her ordeal in Tibet, Erimem is uncertain of whether she wishes to continue traveling with the Doctor and Peri. The TARDIS arrives on Space Station Medusa, orbiting over a distant world that is the home to Earth Colony Phoenix. Protected from the inhospitable surface of the planet by their artificial habitats, the colonists live and work in isolated quarters, travel only by transmat, and virtually never share space with each other. After she and Peri find what appears to be a nest of enormous eggs, Erimem accidentally activates a transmat port and finds herself beamed to Earth Colony Phoenix, into the quarters of a man who has never met another human being in his adult life. The Doctor and Peri are taken by an android to meet the leader of the Phoenix colony, who insists that nothing is wrong – even though Peri later learns that the colony, capable of supporting thousands, is down to only 16 people. Soon, the Doctor learns the grisly truth: a species of aliens known as the Khellians is also lurking on both the colony and the station, and has slowly harvested the human population for food until the colonists are nearly extinct.
written by Colin Brake
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Caroline Morris (Erimem), Deborah Watling (Auntie), Richard Gauntlett (General Makra’Thon), Charles Pemberton (Butler), Lucy Beresford (Bellip), Richard Unwin (Vidler), Daniel Hogarth (Laroq), Sara Carver (Khellian Queen)
Notes: Deborah Watling played Victoria Waterfield, who traveled with the second Doctor and Jamie, in from 1967 to 1968. The transmat sounds, if they’re not the actual original effects, seem to be an homage to the teleport sound effects from Blake’s 7.
Timeline: after The Roof Of The World and before The Council Of Nicaea
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Tired of the constant political backstabbing that seems to be evolving into the more literal variety, Leela tells Romana she wants to leave Gallifrey. Romana agrees, taking her to a secure retreat on the planet Davidia so they can talk over what’s bothering Leela. While they make some headway in understanding each other, the peace on Davidia is shattered by the unexpected arrival of a TARDIS. Its sole occupant is burned beyond recognition, his hands are broken, and he is missing his tongue, and worse yet, when Romana calls Braxiatel on Gallifrey to check on the ID of the TARDIS, the Cardinal learns that the vehicle is still on Gallifrey – this TARDIS comes from the Time Lords’ future. When Romana talks about forcing the man to regenerate, Leela can only see it as more evidence that she’ll never be able to understand the Time Lords. Romana also wants to try to access the man’s thoughts via the Matrix, but given the threat of Pandora, the disembodied voice which promised that Romana would become the Imperiatrix of Gallifrey, Romana is barred from using the Matrix lest Pandora spread throughout Gallifrey’s systems. The retreat may offer an alternative way of viewing the TARDIS pilot’s thoughts, though after seeing those thoughts, Romana and Leela may wish they had let him die.
Mel is alarmed when the TARDIS materializes without the Doctor at the controls. After leaving her on Earth briefly to take care of unspecified business, he has vanished without a trace, leaving her a holographic message in the TARDIS instructing her to follow his trail to the Klyst Institute, a grim-looking mental hospital. Rather than risk trying to fly the TARDIS herself, Mel enlists the reluctant help of a rough-and-tumble cabbie who helps her as she breaks into the Institute. There, she finds the Doctor – but his mind is gone, and he speaks in almost nonsensical phrases. Mel and her new friend try to escape with the Doctor, but they find that the Institute is no longer on Earth, having transported itself to an asteroid in an instant. The Institute also seems to be bigger inside than out, and other aliens (and humans) have been captured for horrific mind-transfer experiments. Are Time Lords operating in secret on Earth? And if so, are they renegades like the Doctor…or something darker interference in human history going on with the Time Lords’ full knowledge?
The body of the mutilated Time Lord from Davidia is returned to Gallifrey in stasis – and in complete secrecy – for further study. Romana and Braxiatel discover that the experiment of opening Gallifrey’s doors to other temporal superpowers may have unintended consequences; one of Braxiatel’s alien students is caught trying to poison Gallifrey’s water supply in the name of the Free Time movement. Complicating matters even more is the fact that he’s caught by Andred, who is still on the run after having broken out of his imprisonment. The question of whether or not Romana will appoint Braxiatel to be the new Chancellor of the High Council is at the heart of Inquisitor Darkel’s latest political power grab, as she plays all sides against the middle and finds her most willing (if unwitting) ally in the naive Castellan Wynter. By preying on his fear that his inexperience will cut his reign short, Darkel convinces him to unleash the Pandora creature, which K-9 had managed to corner in a data partition in the Matrix. But in so doing, Wynter discovers in the most horrible way that the mutilated body from Davidia is himself – but even his attempts to deny Pandora a body and mind to inhabit will prove unsuccessful, as she seeks a victim who now sits in an even higher office.
The Doctor, Peri and Erimem arrive to witness the Roman Empire’s first attempt to determine the people’s choice of an official religious belief. But Erimem is deeply offended when she sees that persecution and tyranny are interfering in the process – the will of the people may, in fact, never see the light of day. She vouches her support for Arius in an open session of the council, enraging the Emperor Constantine and putting Peri and the Doctor’s lives in danger. The Doctor warns Erimem against trying to reshape history to suit her beliefs and her sense of justice, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. After all, to Erimem, the 4th century A.D. is in her distant future, and she doesn’t have to live with its past.
In the Time Lord Academy, unrest grows as more non-Gallifreyan students are expelled following an attempt by a student with Free Time ties to poison the Time Lords’ water supply. The situation is made worse by Braxiatel’s disappearance from Gallifrey, and many of the students feel they’re being singled out because of their race without any regard to academic performance or actual evidence that they have terrorist ties. In the Academy archives, Romana uses K-9 to consult with what’s left of the entity known as Pandora; with its past and present aspects having found a host in the exiled Braxiatel, what remains of Pandora can only advise Romana vaguely on future matters. Pandora continues to predict that Romana will institute a totalitarian government on Gallifrey, installing herself as the Time Lords’ Imperiatrix during a bloody civil war. And when Inquisitor Darkel, with the cooperation of CIA Coordinator Narvin, makes a brazen grab for the presidency, it begins to look like Pandora’s predictions are inevitable.
Greeted by Davros and the Daleks after their escape from the Divergent universe, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz are separated from each other. Davros is suffering from a split personality as he begins to lose himself in the identity of the Emperor Dalek. Charley and C’rizz flee the Daleks with members of a local resistance cell, but they too are separated from each other; Charley joins up with a woman who talks frequently about how her daughter was killed by the Daleks, while C’rizz ends up on the run from the Daleks with a young woman who could very well be that daughter. But the Doctor discovers that she could also be a former TARDIS traveler – even though he has no memory of her. And worse yet, Charley finds out that this planet, the new Dalek homeworld, is also known as Earth – and that its resistance movement is run by the Daleks themselves.
General Karen Brett is hailed as a hero on the return from her latest campaign in humanity’s war against its own android creations, but she only reluctantly accepts the accolades. She makes a public appearance with President Levinson, whose policies and war plan she disagrees with – she feels he isn’t taking an aggressive enough stance with the androids. During the meeting, a silver-clad figure teleports into the White House, assassinates the President, promises Brett that she will become the new President, and then vanishes again. She does indeed ascend to the Presidency, but she finds that once in office, even she can’t turn the tide of the war. She discovers a deeply buried secret project, code-named Scorpius, which Levinson made every attempt to erase from existence, even to conceal it from any successors to the presidency. She’s able to find out very little, but she finds out enough – Scorpius is somehow tied to the silver giant who gunned down Levinson in cold blood, and it could change humanity’s fortunes in the war. In fact, it could change humanity forever…
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.
A radio broadcast unfolds live on the disant Colony 34, recounting the day’s events, including another in a string of terrorist bombings. The incumbent leader, Premier Leo Jaeger, denounces the violence, promises further crackdowns in the name of security, and openly accuses his opponents, the Freedom & Democracy Party, of being behind the attacks. The FDP’s new leader, known only as the Doctor, has a different story to tell: he criticizes the bombings, but also claims that Jaeger is trying to divert attention away from the upcoming elections that the FDP has forced through legal channels – elections that have been delayed for five years. Other news broadcasts profile the “Rebel Queen,” a young woman calling herself Ace who says she’s leading the resistance, and a bewildered paramedic named Hex who stumbles onto a secret during a live broadcast – a secret which could get Live 34 shut down by the government.
Commander Liam Barnaby, the commander in chief of all Earth forces, doesn’t like being left out of the loop – but he discovers that Paul Hunt, a mysterious figure with ties to Scorpius who predicted Karen Brett’s rise to the presidency before her predecessor was assassinated, has edged him out as the President’s closest advisor. Worse yet, when Barnaby decides to dig deeper, he finds that Hunt has covered his tracks well, even ordering some of Barnaby’s own people in the military to make it difficult for anyone to investigate him. Barnaby traces Hunt’s residence to a woman named Samantha, but after he questions her about Hunt’s background, Barnaby is called to account for his investigation by President Brett herself. That confrontation leads him to the inevitable conclusion that his military career is about to be ended for him, but when Cybermen come after him, Barnaby’s life may become as short as his career. Samantha helps him, and then reveals the truth: she’s an enemy android on a deep-cover assignment, and her mission has changed. Instead of destroying humanity, she’s trying to find a way to keep humanity from destroying itself – but she and Barnaby find that it may be too late. The Cyber conversions have begun in earnest on Earth.