Doctor Who: Lesson of Freedom

Doctor Who: Lesson of Freedom

By Todd Dias

Imprisonment is a hard thing for anyone to accept. And if you had once the power to travel to any place in the Universe, to any given period in its history, you would see a forced life of exile on the “slow path”, one place one time period, day in day out, as just that: imprisonment. This is where we find the Doctor, hard at work under the TARDIS console humming the theme from Beethoven’s 3^rd Symphony “Eroica”, trying desperately to find a way to regain control of the TARDIS.

Jo Grant entered the TARDIS gingerly with a tray of food. She still was not used to the transition of dimensions between outsides and insides. She brought the tray to a counter on the far wall and set it down. She observed the Doctor hard at work with strange devices and scribbled notes in chaotic array. Never had Jo seen someone so devoted to one’s labour, a genius at work.

“Doctor, I brought you some tea and biscuits.”

“No thanks, Jo.”

“Doctor, you’ve been working on this day and night since we got back from Uxarieus. Don’t you think you ought to take a break?”

“Well, I….I suppose now is as good a time to take a rest seeing as how I am almost done.” He got up, dusted himself off, and poured himself some tea. He then sat down on the couch in the living area. Jo came and sat beside him.

“Doctor, may I ask you personal question?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t you like Earth in the 20^th Century?”

“Of course I do, Jo.”

”Then, why are you so desperate to leave?”

“It isn’t easy to explain. I have spent a considerable number of years traveling to many worlds and civilizations, fought evil and made friends with a variety of beings. In all of this I had freedom, Jo. Now I am on the beck and call of the Time Lords. And what’s worse there is evil that goes on unchecked while I sit here. It simply isn’t fair that the Master can come and go as he pleases while I am condemned to such restriction.” The Doctor was hot with dark emotion at this so Jo tried to get him to resume rationality.

“Doctor, you’ve told me many times that only a child demands that the world be fair.”

“You’re right, Jo. All the same it is a matter of freedom. Now I must get on with it…,” Jo gave him a look of admonition, “…after I’ve had my tea, of course.”

When Jo felt she could trust to the Doctor to keep to his agreed upon break, she left to check up on the Brigadier. Things had been slow at UNIT HQ. The Master being off-world helped minimize the level of malignant extraterrestrial activity on Earth. Maybe the Doctor is right to feel angry, thought Jo. There was no love lost between Jo and Master certainly and the Doctor was needed so many places besides Earth. She returned to the TARDIS after the briefing with the Brigadier to find the Doctor had finished his tinkering.

“Ah, Jo, are you up for a short test flight?”

“You’ve got it working, then?”

“More or less. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The Doctor had had the dematerialization codes blocked from his memory but he was able to derive the information from the TARDIS instruments. Though he was still unable to fix the actual dematerialization circuit he could compensate by creating the right effect by reversing the polarity of one or two of the drives. He threw a few switches and the TARDIS dematerialized without a hitch.

“It works Jo!”

“You didn’t think it would?”

“I was merely prepared for the fact that it wouldn’t.”

TARDIS wasn’t in flight long. It rematerialized in just under three minutes by Jo’s watch. She commented on the brevity of the flight but the Doctor assured her that he hadn’t intended on taking her very far. Indeed when he switched on the scanner they saw they were still in the Doctor’s lab.

“We haven’t moved.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Jo. Remember the TARDIS moves not just in three dimensions but in several, not the least of which is time.”

Even as they crossed the dimensional threshold to the outside of the TARDIS, the Doctor’s sensitivity to temporal-spatiality told him something was wrong. Jo didn’t need to be a Time Lord to get the sense of something being wrong either. All her intuition needed was a look at the subtle expression of concern on the Doctor’s face.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?”

“I think I might have made a grave error.”

As he said this Jo saw that there was something amiss visually with their surroundings. The walls of the Doctor’s lab seemed to have a wavy aesthetic, like the horizon on a hot day. The Doctor’s sense of danger was growing. Just then the Brigadier entered the room. Jo greeted him but he seemed not to hear. He looked very cross. He was looking for the Doctor no doubt. He was saying something but they couldn’t quite hear him, as if he was speaking underwater. As he was angrily leaving the room, Jo stepped before him to try and stop him and to her terror he went right through her like a ghost.

“Doctor! Doctor, did you see that!! He walked right threw me…”

“It’s alright, Jo.” He did his best to calm down the spooked Jo. She came to her wits sooner than most. Being a member of UNIT, not to mention having traveled with the Doctor, made her nerves strong to the paranormal. Still it was quite a shock.

“What’s going on?” she asked upon recovering some more composure. “Why couldn’t he see or hear us?”

“We must be out of sync with this point in time. We’re in the cracks between moments. This could be incredibly dangerous. We’d better get out of here.”

“Doctor!! My legs they feel like jelly!”

The Doctor too felt as though he was swimming in gelatin. The dimension they had found themselves in was incredibly unstable. They were in a transitional moment in space-time which was about to collapse. The Doctor and Jo struggle their hardest to get inside the TARDIS which kept the collapse at bay but to escape they would need to dematerialize in a hurry. The Doctor used his sonic-screwdriver to reverse the polarity of his makeshift dematerialization circuit and prayed he could get them home.

The TARDIS materialized in the Doctor’s lab. This time the Doctor was sure they were where/when they were supposed to be. He was even pleased to have the Brigadier arrive to tell him the three of them were to attend a conference in Geneva, the kind the Doctor abhorred. Jo zeroed in on this.

“Still want to rush away, Doctor?”

“Rush, no. I’ve learned that one can accomplish very little constructive through desperation. I will have my freedom, Jo, but it will come with patience. By being intemperate in my resolve to leave I have been a slave to that compulsion, and thus the freedom I wish to gain is ironically lost. I must bide my time and enjoy my stay on Earth, even if I have to endure the insufferable fool, the Brigadier.”

“I heard that, Doctor.”

Doctor Who: The Rani’s Gambit

Doctor Who: The Rani’s Gambit

By Todd Dias

I was sure I set the coordinates for Earth, intending to take Leela on another educational visit. I mentioned in passing Genghis Khan and she expressed a strong desire to meet a warrior of such a high degree. I had my reservations but thought why not. After all I did sort of owe her for taking her to Victorian England. I should have realized you can take the Savateem Warrior out of her habitat, but you can’t take the Savateem Warrior out of Leela. K-9 was experiencing trouble with his mobile unit, so I was in the middle of repairing him when we arrived.

The TARDIS materialized in the heart of a kind of fortress. I was puzzled but this was nothing compared to my reaction at discovering just how far off target we were.

“Ogros relative date 3218!? What?! How can that be?”

“Probability that you made an error: 67%, Master.”

“Leela, tell your smart-alec tin pet that when I want his opinion I will ask for it!”

“Apologies, Master.”

“Ogros relative date 3218? Where have I heard that before?”

“Perhaps you have been here before, Doctor,” Leela postulated.

“Yes, possibly,” I murmured absent-mindedly. “Who’s up for a good wa- err ahh constitutional? Sorry K-9 I promise I’ll have you up and about as soon as we’re done with this lot. ” Leela was game to satisfy my curiosity. Poor K-9 was too but I promised to make it up to him.

We walked very cautiously down a corridor. There was something troubling me about all this, but it was so vague I hadn’t a clue what it was. Leela seemed to sense that I was ill at ease, but adopted a hunter’s stance as if stalking her prey. Soon things would begin to fall into place.

Round the corner came two Ogrons dragging a struggling third. I motioned to Leela for to follow them. They entered a room that from the outside looked to be a kind of laboratory. Then I heard a familiar female voice say:” Put him in the chair. Fool! Restrain him! There. Now switch on!” There was a blood-curdling scream the kind that even after centuries of battling evil you’re never quite prepared for.

“Now you have seen for yourselves the effectiveness of my method,” She said to an unknown party. Unknown but I had my suspicions. As I expected there came in an equally familiar metallic voice: “YOUR METHODS ARE SATISFACTORY. “

I hazarded a closer look to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough there were two Daleks in the lab with none other than the Supreme Dalek, in all his black-gold glory, on a video screen. More to the point I recognized the visage and the mind of the female in question. She said in reply to the Dalek Supreme: “Then you will give me what was promised?”

“WE SHALL.”

I motioned to Leela to follow me out of there in a hurry. Once we got to a place of relative security the questions came pouring out of Leela.

“Who were those metal creatures and what were they doing to those ape-people, and who was that woman?”

“In order: the ‘metal creatures’ were Daleks, some of my worst enemies. They were with the help of that woman conditioning the Ogron or ape-people as you called them.”

“Conditioning?”

“Turning into slaves.”

“But who was that woman?”

“One of my people. The Rani.”

“What are we going to do?” Leela asked this believing this was just another fight against evil. I was sorry to disappoint her.

“We will do nothing.”

“But these creatures are your sworn enemy and this Rani is a traitor to your tribe for dealing with them.”

“Would that it were that simple. It’s a question of the Laws of Time. Relative to me this has already happened, and therefore I cannot interfere.”

“Relative? I do not understand.”

“Let me explain. You see that rock over there by the wall. To it, the wall is close, but to us the wall is far away.”

“So?”

“So time is like that too. It is dependent upon how you experience it. To the Daleks and Ogrons this is happening for the first time, but to me it has already happened. I have already been a part of this time stream. To interfere would be to change history...my own history at that. This is forbidden.”

“But the Rani…”

“She’s a wild card but it makes no difference.”

“Doctor it is not like you to shy away from battle.”

“I’m not. We’ll just have to adjust our strategy that’s all.”

I pulled out my pocket TARDIS tracker. I built it to help me find the TARDIS after the time I materialized the TARDIS in a large Labyrinth. (It took me four days to find it again with only jelly babies to eat. I was very nearly put off.) I didn’t see why I couldn’t use it to find another TARDIS.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to bug the Rani’s TARDIS.”

“Bug?”

“Put a device in her TARDIS so we can follow her where she goes after this.”

“Oh. OH”

“You see I haven’t given up the fight yet.”

“I am sorry for doubting you, Doctor.”

“Well it’s easy to do when you don’t see all the cards”

“Cards?”

“A lesson for another time. Let’s go.”

Finding the Rani’s TARDIS wasn’t difficult but we met with a slight challenge: an Ogron on guard to the room housing her TARDIS. Leela wanted to do things her way but I insisted on non-violent methods. I approached the Ogron.

“Ah, just the chap. I was just wondering if you could tell me the time. Well you see I have a very important appointment to keep and as you can see my watch is broken.”

I pulled out my mother’s watch very slowly getting the Ogron’s focus. I reached out with my mind and swung the chain hypnotically.

“Can you hear me Ogron?”

“I…hear you”

“Good. Listen to me very carefully you are in a deep state of hypnosis. When I snap my fingers you will go into a deep sleep. When and only when, I snap my fingers again you will awake with no memory of having ever seen me. Have you heard?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” SNAP. Into a deep sleep he went.

I told Leela to keep watch. The Rani was taking no chances as the door to the room with her TARDIS was locked. Fortunately I always have my sonic screwdriver. Pressing on the handle sent sonic vibrations into the highly complex lock, undoing it. “Haha, good old sonic screwdriver.” I went into her TARDIS opening it with my own key, and wasted no time planting the device, and got out. I relocked the door with my sonuc screwdriver. Leela and I walk ed away from there, when we were out of sight, but not out of the hearing range of the Ogron, I snapped my fingers. We moved quickly back to my TARDIS and entered the void waiting for the Rani to make her move.

I programmed the TARDIS to home in on the device and made sure to give myself enough distance. I wanted to catch her in the act. Soon her TARDIS moved and I was on it. We materialized on Metoshir IV with a humanoid population of foragers. I shuddered to think of what evil the Rani could commit on a relatively innocent world. Leela and I moved with stealth. We spotted the Rani setting up equipment. By the looks of I thought it looked like all the mechanisms needed to create an atmosphere bomb, used in biological warfare. I told Leela to wait for me to give her the signal to act. She followed but kept a ways back as agreed. The Rani was looking through a scope, with a canister in her hands.

“Well now, this is a treat, Ushas…or what was it you call yourself?…ahh yes…The Rani.”

“Doctor. To what do I owe the pleasure? Shouldn’t you be off interfering in the affairs of some greater ‘evil’ like the Daleks, Cybermen, or that fool, The Master rather than annoy me with another lecture on morality?”

“Funny you should mention the Daleks. I should have recognized your handiwork in the Ogrons all those years ago.”

The Rani just gave me a blank glare.

“Quite ingenious reducing an aggressive race to docile servitude without negating their effectiveness for war. Really quite amazing.

The Rani continued to stone wall me. So I cut to the chase.

“What were you doing it for hmmm? What did the Daleks give you?”

“What makes you think they gave me anything?”

“You never did anything without some kind of gain to your unethical experiments.”

“Ethics has no relevance to scientific endeavour, Doctor. It only gets in the way.

“I beg to differ!”

“Of course you do but what is a pacifist like you going to do to stop me? You never could before.”

“Ohh haha…This time is different.” I came in closer and whispered: “This time I’m not alone.” I nodded to Leela who took the Rani from behind.

“Now answer the Doctor’s questions or I will stick this janus thorn in your heart.”

I took the canister from her and waited for her to answer.

“They gave me a rare biochemical, a byproduct of their production process. The fools didn’t realize I could create a virus that can cause mutations similar to their own. I could create a race subservient to me and then no one could oppose my experimentation.”

“I’ve heard that kind of talk before, Rani. It is the rhetoric of failure. Now tell me how to destroy it or I might improvise my own way.” I started to juggle it. I could see the fear in her eyes when she said: “You fool it is highly contagious!”

“Then tell me how to destroy it.”

She acquiesced, giving me the full chemical breakdown. But as I was writing it down Leela was distracted and the Rani stuck the janus thorn in Leela’s arm making a getaway. I quickly put the canister in my pocket and carried Leela to the TARDIS where I synthesized the antidote both for the poison and for the virus once Leela was taken care of.

“I’m sorry Doctor.”

“There’s no need, but I do hope that you’ve learned a valuable lesson about the use of janus thorns.”

“I have but I allowed the enemy to get away. That is unforgivable.”

“Not really. I had no means of detaining her anyway. In any event we’ve stopped her from using that nasty bit of work on those people and I couldn’t have done it without you. This calls for celebration, does it not, K-9?”

“Affirmative, master.”

“The forests of Esend are just the place for a good fishing expedition. Or hunting if you prefer but NO janus thorns!!”