Orbis
Lucie has resumed her boring, pre-time-travel life in Blackpool; after all, there’s no way anyone the Doctor could’ve survived his battle with Morbius on Karn. But the Headhunter seems to disagree, strongly enough that she appears at Lucie’s door and shoots her. The Headhunter also has the TARDIS in her possession, and with Lucie aboard, sets the timeship on a course for the planet Orbis – a world where she says the Doctor is very much alive. Lucie finds the Doctor living among the Celtans, a jellyfish-like-race which exists in an uneasy truce with the warlike Molluscari…and she also finds that the Doctor has spent six centuries here and has completely forgotten her. Despite this, Lucie tries to help him save the Celtans from a new Molluscari attack. And in the background, the Headhunter is playing all sides against the middle, regardless of how many lives will be lost as a result.
written by Alan Barnes and Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Andy HardwickCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos)
Notes: The “time bullets” used by the Headhunter seem to have a similar effect to the slow-motion gunshot wound suffered by Gwen in the Torchwood episode They Keep Killing Suzie. The Doctor admits here that he’s lost track of his own age, and in any case he’s guilty of rounding it up or down to account for relativistic time, which is a handy throwaway explanation for why the tenth Doctor is only 900 years old, while the seventh Doctor – in his first adventure – was 953 years old, and the third Doctor was “over a thousand years old”.
Timeline: after The Vengeance Of Morbius and before Hothouse
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor and Lucie are undercover, having arrived on a drought-stricken future Earth where former music star Alex Marlowe is using his wealth and influence to lead a radical environmentalist movement that has increasingly become associated with violent protests and acts. Lucie has wormed her way into Marlowe’s organization, while the Doctor poses as a member of the World Ecology Bureau for a surprise inspection. What the Doctor discovers at Marlowe’s facility is horrifying: Krynoid seed pods have been acquired and genetically re-engineered. Marlowe is aware of the Krynoid’s killer instincts to consume all nearby life, and hopes that the Doctor will help him continue his experiments to create, among other things, a rainforest that can “fight back.” To ensure the Doctor’s cooperation, Marlowe decides that Lucie should be the next human to “volunteer” to be infected by one of his genetically altered Krynoid seed pods. Unfortunately for Earth, however, Marlowe’s attempts to change the Krynoids becomes a battle against nature that he can’t win.
The Doctor and Lucie arrive in Germany in 1827, just in time to find the wreckage of a coach, its passengers wounded or dead and its horses literally torn to pieces. One of the passengers is dazed, but not actually hurt; this man is introduced as Baron Teufel, obviously a lucky survivor of whatever happened. Naturally, the local constabulary believes that the Doctor and Lucie are the most likely suspects, though the Baron blames the incident on the legendary beast of Orlok, a piece of local folklore. As the Doctor tries to get to the bottom of the attack, which clearly shows signs of a power beyond current human technology, Lucie teams up with a particularly bright philosophy student and does some investigating of her own. The Doctor finds a lab loaded with technology beyond the 19th century, and discovers the Baron is behind it… and the Baron also somehow knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord.
The Doctor and Lucie find themselves in immediate danger when the TARDIS lands aboard a human warship in the distant future; not only does the bedraggled crew find the newcomers supicious, but the ship is under attack by Wirrn. Having encountered them before, the Doctor is able to lend a hand, but it’s too late: the ship is critically damaged, and the time travelers have to don space suits to abandon ship – and hope that the TARDIS will make its way to the planet below with the wreckage of the ship. On the planet, a thriving Wirrn colony awaits its new prey, but the Doctor suspects that there’s more to this conflict than meets the eye. Left on her own with a wounded admiral and a paranoid, trigger-happy soldier, Lucie is about to discover if she’s learned enough from the Doctor to keep herself alive.
Various companions of the Doctor recount their adventures with him. Professor Bernice Summerfield recalls her second adventure with the Doctor’s eighth incarnation, while the redoubtable (and irrepressible) Fitz Kreiner looks back on an adventure in which he had to become the hero of the hour. Comic-collecting companion Izzy tries to use time travel to add an elusive back issue to her comic collection, with disastrous results, and finally, much later in his own timeline, a grievously wounded Doctor arrives on the doorstep of an august gathering of 19th century literary luminaries. But since many of them are noted for writing early horror fiction, will they nurse him back to health… or consider him a freak upon whom to run their own macabre experiments?
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to Paris for a night on the town, but turbulence in the time vortex alters the date of their arrival, and the two time travelers beome separated in Nazi-occupied wartime Paris. The Doctor draws the attention of the Gestapo patrols, while Lucie is forced to begin her career on the theatre stage run by the eccentric – and very, very non-human – family Baroque. These goatlike creatures have the technology to disguise themselves as humans, but why hide at the epicenter of one of human history’s most violent conflicts? And why must their grotesque show go on each night, climaxing with the grisly death of one of their own? In the meantime, the Doctor is accused by the Nazis of being an enemy spy with a top-secret aircraft capable of disguising itself. The Doctor finds this notion amusing, until he realizes that he can’t locate the TARDIS either…
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a space city which, according to the TARDIS sensors, is devoid of life. That doesn’t mean it’s completely uninhabited, however – the time travelers are quickly cornered by a band of marauding robots. A barrier separates the two, allowing Lucie to escape to safety, while the Doctor has to talk his way out of danger with a little help from his sonic screwdriver and a helpful cleaning robot who hasn’t joined his savage brethren. Lucie finds herself in the company of the Assemblers, a band of elder robots so pacifistic that they’re in constant danger from the Cannibalists, the all-consuming robots who see any other robot or life form as a source of spare parts. In the middle of the seemingly endless conflict between these two groups are Servo, a meek maintenance droid who simply wants to carry on the work of tending to the city’s needs, and Minerva, an access point for the city itself who could grant immense power to anyone, even to the point of resetting the entire system. Soon, the race is on to see who can control Minerva and rule the city… and the Doctor isn’t sure that either group has earned that power.
The Doctor and Lucie visit Earth a few years into Lucie’s future, at a time when a new religion called the Eightfold Truth has gained a foothold in Britain. The Doctor goes to assist scientists with a space probe that has mysteriously gone silent, while Lucie goes shopping and encounters her old nemesis, Karen, last seen with the Headhunter. Karen has joined the Eightfold Truth and says it has turned her life around, and at her urging, Lucie goes along to meet the other members of the Truth… and with the help of a blue crystal, they somehow make Lucie “realize” that her travels with the Doctor have been aimless, without purpose, and perhaps even part of a larger, sinister plan on the Doctor’s part. She turns her back on the Time Lord, though he’s not aware of the Eightfold Truth until he sees a TV interview with a journalist who hopes her new book will expose the movement as a cult built on a fraud. Gradually, the Doctor realizes that there’s a link between the Eightfold Truth and the failed space probe – and it’s only then that he discovers that Lucie has joined the Truth. Within that religious movement, an alien presence is gathering the power it will need to take over Earth… an old enemy who is working for an even older enemy of the Doctor, setting a trap for humanity and its constant defender.
The giant spiders of Metebelis 3 have made their presence known as the power behind the Eightfold Truth, and the Queen of the spiders has taken possession of Lucie’s body. Lucie’s mind is still there, though, and she battles the Queen for control. The Doctor gathers an unlikely group of helpers, including Karen and the deposed leader of the Eightfold Truth, to strike back at the spiders and help the hypnotized masses regain their minds. In the process of fighting for control of her mind, Lucie learns key parts of the Queen’s plan to dominate Earth and then the entire universe, and soon she becomes the only weapon the Doctor has in the fight to free humanity.
20 years after the Daleks were driven off of 22nd century Earth, Susan Campbell still lives among humans. Her human husband has long since died, leaving her to raise her son Alex in a world that had grown paranoid, fearful of another alien invasion. Susan is outspoken in her opposition to the anti-alien Earth United movement… of which Alex is a member. The Doctor arrives to check up on his granddaughter, and finds that humanity has reverted to a Luddite mentality, destroying technology and working to avoid any contact with alien life. Susan has called upon an alien race to render aid to humanity, without consulting what passes for the planet’s government. But Earth United’s tendrils reach inside the government, and there are plans afoot to use Alex against his activist mother. The friendly aliens turn out to be the first wave of another invasion, which plays right into Earth United’s hands… but how much credibility will Alex Campbell have among his xenophobic friends when his great-grandfather and his mother are revealed to be from another world?
Having survived the adventure with the spiders of Metebelis 3, Lucie is ready for normalcy: Christmas at home with her family in Blackpool, including her Aunty Pat. The Doctor is surprised to see that Aunty Pat – actually the Zygon warlord Hagoth – has aged considerably, the result of a Zygon disease. But something is amiss: the TARDIS has landed in 2008, and Lucie is still at her home, not yet having begun her travels with the Doctor. A mysterious driver in a yellow car stalks the time travelers, and then finally strikes: Lucie ends up the victim of a hit-and-run, hospitalized and in a coma – but someone else is in her head with her, trying to rob her of her will to live… someone who’s there because Hagoth has made a critical error in judgement.
A classified ad is placed, seeking qualified applicants for companions to a traveler in time and space. The Doctor arrives for the final interviews, finding four people with wildly varying personalities and skills. When a crisis unfolds at a gathering of scientists, the Doctor’s potential new companions have their work cut out for them – and so does the Doctor himself, for he wasn’t the one who placed the ad to begin with.
The TARDIS – with some assistance from a mysterious cat who resets the coordinates – brings the Doctor and his new companion Tamsin to Nevermore, a world of poison mists and robotic ravens with an affinity for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But the Doctor once knew it as Corinth Minor, and so did the Time Lords, shortly before they took drastic measures to alter the planet’s fate. Now Nevermore is home to a war criminal convicted of genocide, a small group of people tasked with overseeing her imprisonment, and now two time travelers whose arrival coincides with the sudden appearance of a deadly creature. Every event on Nevermore seems to take its cues from the works of Poe, but if the Doctor and Tamsin can’t find and stop whatever is bent on eliminating the planet’s small population, the result will be worse than Poe’s darkest imaginings.
The TARDIS is dragged off course to the year 1006, a year in which no one on Earth should have technology capable of doing so. The Doctor and Tamsin find themselves near the Abbey of Kells, a site from which, according to history, the Book of Kells is about to be stolen. The Doctor and Tamsin immediately find signs that something is amiss: the remains of a vortisaur are found in the abbey, and murderous plots are overheard nearby. Worse yet, technology that shouldn’t exist on Earth for at a millennium is hidden away in the abbey’s secret passages. The Doctor realizes that they’re very near the point at which history records the theft of the Book of Kells, so he’s convinced that another time traveler is here to take the legendary religious artifact. While he does find another time traveler – and a familiar one at that – the true fate of the Book of Kells just isn’t that simple…
The Doctor and Tamsin arrive in a human-built museum on Deimos, the largest of Mars’ two moons, and the site of a frozen enclave of the now-extinct