Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
At this time, Muriel Frost was in a relationship with a scientist called Nick - both of them were unhappy.
[972]
= c 2003 - “Final Genesis”
[973]
The seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace arrived in a parallel universe where humans worked side by side with Silurians, and Colonel Frost served with the United Races Intelligence Command (URIC). The Silurian scientist Mortakk had created human-Silurian hybrids called Chimeras, and sent them to attack URIC. The Doctor defeated Mortakk.
c 2003 (summer) - Zygon: When Being You Isn’t Enough
[974]
The Zygon Kritakh was briefly rendered unconscious while undercover as a young man named Mike Kirkwood... and afterwards believed he
was
Kirkwood, who was experiencing dreams of being a Zygon. Kritakh’s second, Torlakh, took the form of Robert Calhoun - a criminal who had killed about half a dozen women in the Edinburgh area. Torlakh/Calhoun endowed Kirkwood’s therapist - Dr. Lauren Anderson - with Zygon essence to make her a shapechanger, hoping that she would better empathise with Kritakh’s condition and restore his identity. Kirkwood and Anderson were in a relationship and resisted Torlakh’s plans, so Torlakh staged a massacre at St Kitts Hospital while wearing Anderson’s form. Anderson faked her death by killing Torlakh, then departed for a new life with Kirkwood.
2003 (August) - The Shadow of the Scourge
[975]
The Pinehill Crest Hotel was host to the unfortunate triple-booking of a presentation of a temporal accelerator, a demonstration of spiritual channelling and a cross-stitch convention. The seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny stopped the Scourge from manifesting into our universe.
(=) 2003 - Jubilee
[976]
The sixth Doctor and Evelyn discovered that their thwarting a Dalek invasion in 1903 had given rise to an English Empire. The two of them were widely regarded as heroes, and Nelson’s Column had been rebuilt to depict the Doctor dressed as an English stormtrooper. The British and American populates were strictly kept apart to protect British genetic purity. The Daleks were heavily merchandised, and their defeat was told in movies such as
Daleks: The Ultimate Adventure!
, starring Plenty O’Toole as Evelyn “Hot Lips” Smythe. Use of contractions was outlawed.
The President of the English Empire, Nigel Rochester, scheduled the Empire’s jubilee celebration to include the public execution of the sole surviving Dalek from the 1903 attack. However, the Dalek secretly killed the Doctor’s temporal duplicate, who had been a prisoner in the Tower for a hundred years.
The timelines of 1903 and 2003 began meshing together, and the Dalek invasion of 1903 started to unfold in the latter era. The Doctor convinced the “jubilee” Dalek that if the Daleks succeeded in their attempt to destroy all other life forms, they could only then turn on each other until a single Dalek remained, purposeless and insane. Logically, success would mean the Dalek race’s destruction. The Dalek concurred and connected itself to the Dalek command net, transmitting a message that the Daleks could only survive by dying. The entire Dalek invasion force self-destructed, which retroactively averted the 1903 assault.
Remnants of the cancelled timeline remained in the restored history. Nigel Rochester, visiting the Tower of London as a tourist, briefly recognised the Doctor and thanked him for his help in the aberrant history. The English Empire’s atrocities subtly lived on in the history and the dreams of the English people.
2003 (30th-31st October) - Daemons: Daemos Rising
[977]
The Sodality - a group of revolutionaries who had grabbed power in a potential future by using the Daemons’ science - reached back and compelled Captain Douglas Cavendish, who had been discharged from UNIT following the mid-nineties Yeti visitation, to summon a Daemon. Sodality hoped to shackle the Daemon as a means of controlling this time zone, but Cavendish and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart bore witness as a Daemon named Matso was summoned - and then rejected Sodality’s claim on its power.
c 2003 (November) - Falls the Shadow
[978]
Professor Jeremy Winterdawn and his team at Shadowfell House had experimented for five years with the “Thascales Theorem”, and their research indicated that applied quantum physics was a possibility. Winterdawn experimented with the metahedron to the grey man’s Cathedral, but in doing so caused damage to the universe. The beautiful humanoids Gabriel and Tanith were thereby created as expressions of the universe’s pain; they were creatures of pure sadism, who wanted to use Cathedral’s power to harm every living being. Winterdawn died from a heart attack. The grey man summoned the seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice to help, and the Doctor used the TARDIS to put the metahedron inside Cathedral, creating a closed environment that saved the universe as Cathedral succumbed to entropy. Ace killed Gabriel and Tanith after the grey man cut them off from the universe’s suffering, rendering them powerless. The grey man departed, eager to explore the universe.
2003 (12th December) - Catch-1782
[979]
The sixth Doctor and Mel arrived in Berkshire at the invitation of Mel’s uncle, John Hallam, to attend the 100th anniversary celebration of the National Foundation for Scientific Research, UK. Hallam had constructed a cylinder from a unique alloy provided by a space agency, but the interaction of the TARDIS and chrono-atoms within the cylinder threw Melanie two hundred and twenty-two years back in time. The Doctor and Hallam pursued her in the TARDIS.
2004
The “Vivaldi inheritance” of 2004 demonstrated a means of establishing the truth through paper documentation.
[980]
The Doctor visited Cuba.
[981]
Policewoman Gwen Cooper assisted with the recovery of a child abandoned in a courtyard; the child survived, and was fostered.
[982]
As arranged in 1957, the Time Lord Louis collected Johannes Rausch on the day before his death. They travelled to a Gallifreyan CIA Institute, where Rausch took part in an experiment to transfer TARDIS sentiences
[983]
Paul Langer walked out on his family, including his son Clyde, and ran off to Germany with his sister-in-law Mel. Clyde handled his father’s departure so badly, he got into trouble and was expelled.
[984]
Hex thought until he was six that his grandmother was his mum.
[985]
2004 - Sometime Never
[986]
The scientist Ernest Fleetward stood on the brink of inventing a form of unbreakable crystal that would greatly advance mankind’s development. Fleetward had set about reconstructing a crystal human skeleton, unaware that it was the Council of Eight leader Octan, lost to the Time Vortex in 1588. Octan himself travelled through time to prevent Fleetward’s efforts from impacting history and cast the skeleton into the Time Vortex, failing to realise that he was re-obliterating his own body.
The eighth Doctor convinced Fleetward to adopt the nephews of Richard III, who were saved from their historical fate.
Anji started dating Greg in the summer.
[987]
On June 8, 2004, Ian Chesterton was very keen to see a transit of Venus - he’d missed the previous such event, back in 1770, by just a few months.
[988]
Ben Jackson and Polly Wright were now married. Polly and Ian Chesterton were separately Timescooped into the Death Zone on Gallifrey, and returned home after aiding the fifth Doctor.
[989]
2004 (18th July) - Project: Lazarus
[990]
The Forge, located on Dartmoor beneath an abandoned asylum, had begun collecting dead alien life forms and technology on Earth. Its agents captured a stranded, blue skinned alien capable of exuding a slime that killed on contact; Nimrod dubbed the alien’s race as the “Huldran”. The Forge took into custody the Huldran’s spacecraft, which could generate spatial gateways. The sixth Doctor and Evelyn briefly encountered the Forge, causing the Forge to procure a sample of the Doctor’s blood. A clone of the Doctor was created to assist their endeavours.
Nimrod killed Cassandra Schofield when she betrayed him to help the Doctor and Evelyn.
2004 (July) - The Tomorrow Windows
[991]
The “selfish memes” seeded on behalf of Martin culminated on various planets. The planet Shardybarn was eradicated when the Low Priest Jadrack the Pitiful triggered several nuclear bombs, hoping that his god would perform a miracle and stop the disaster. On Valuensis, a misunderstanding made the Gabaks and Aztales annihilate one another with doomsday devices. On Estebol, malevolent cars began to possess their drivers and the people withered due to extreme pollution.
To combat this self-destructive trend, the billionaire philanthropist Charlton Mackerel set up Tomorrow Window exhibits on various planets. The Tomorrow Windows allowed the indigenous populations to glimpse their future and hopefully amend their behaviour. Martin sought to ruin Mackerel’s exhibits. In June 2004, Martin eradicated the Tate Modern - and a Tomorrow Windows exhibit there - with an electron bomb.
The eighth Doctor aided Mackerel by seeking out the original Tomorrow Windows builder, Astrabel Zar. Electrical beings named the Ceccecs, working for Martin, destroyed the belt of moon-sized Astral Flowers in an attempt to kill Zar, but the Doctor and Zar escaped.
A “selfish meme” on the planet Minuea made the populace do nothing as their moon slowly moved toward a collision with their planet. The Doctor used a Tomorrow Window to make the people see the benefit of using a missile to stop the catastrophe, and thereby saved the planet.
The aged Zar returned to Gadrahadron to tell his younger self, fifty years in the past, how to make the Tomorrow Windows. Martin discovered this and killed Zar. The repentant actor Prubert Gatridge and Martin died in mutual combat. Fitz, Trix and Mackerel ensured that the younger Zar learned the Tomorrow Windows secret.
Mackerel’s Tomorrow Windows exhibits continued, granting planets with selfish memes a second chance. The Doctor determined that Martin never completed his work on Earth, and that humanity developed selfish memes independent of him.
The Doctor was by now an old friend of Ken Livingstone, the current Mayor of London.
c 2004 - TW: Trace Memory
[992]
As a young doctor, Owen Harper met the time-jumping Michael Bellini.
2004 - TW: Fragments
[993]
Toshiko Sato worked for the Lodmoor Research Facility, a division of the Ministry of Defence. Toshiko’s mother was kidnapped, and her abductors forced Toshiko to steal blueprints for a sonic modulator that could emit powerful sonic waves. UNIT captured those involved, imprisoned Toshiko for treason in a detention facility and withdrew her rights as a citizen. Captain Jack had Toshiko’s record wiped clean, in exchange for her agreeing to work for Torchwood for five years.
c 2004 - The Sleep of Reason
[994]
Mausolus House had been replaced by the Retreat, a more modernised asylum. Caroline “Laska” Darnell, the great-great-granddaughter of one of Dr. Christie’s patients, came into possession of the Sholem-Luz dog-tooth pendant. The pendant again infected an Irish wolfhound with the Sholem-Luz essence, and the infernal hound set about trying to germinate Sholem-Luz seeds through time and space. The eighth Doctor, aided by Fitz and Trix, lured the creature into a time corridor to 1903. Afterwards, the husband of a Retreat medical officer found Laska’s pendant, which possibly still contained the Sholem-Luz taint.
c 2004 - The Algebra of Ice
[995]
In another universe, an alien gestalt composed of mathematical equations sought to drain energy from outside realities into its own. The gestalt contacted the genocidal Sheridan Brett in our universe, hoping to use human mathematicians to further its plans. The seventh Doctor, accompanied by Ace, confronted the gestalt on a mathematical level and resolved the creature into zero.
c 2004 (October) - The City of the Dead
[996]
The eighth Doctor visited New Orleans to identify a bone charm he had found in the TARDIS. He determined that the charm could summon a water elemental, and left for 1980 to investigate such an occurrence. This journey made the charm retroactively appear in the TARDIS for the Doctor to find in the first place.
Upon returning, the Doctor found that the wife of resident Vernon Flood was a bound water elemental. The Doctor freed Mrs Flood from her human form and she returned to her own dimension, causing Vernon to drown. Her elemental son, bound in 1980, had become the crippled museum owner Thales. The ritualist Jonas Rust attempted to absorb Thales to attain great power, but an emptiness that Rust summoned - the Void - wound up consuming him. Thales was liberated from his human body and reunited with his mother.