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Doctor Who and the Tides of Time

DOCTOR WHO AND THE TIDES OF TIME
A Doctor Who story for GALLIFREY BBS by CHARLES MARTIN
This story is legally ©1988 by Charles Martin. Reprint permission is
granted provided this notice accompanies all copies. No attempt is made
to supercede copyrights held by the BBC.

*CHAPTER ONE*

"The time has come," the Doctor said, "to talk of many things ..."
"The light in my room's out of whack, and have ye seen my rings?,"
said Jamie, bursting into the TARDIS control room. The Doctor, startled by
the unexpected interruption, promptly banged his head on the underside of
the drive mechanism, which he had been lying underneath trying to spot a
fault in the dimensional vector plotter. It was this fault, he suspected,
that always threw the TARDIS two or three quadrants (in both Time and
Space) away from his programmed coordinates.
"OW! Oh, my word! Jamie McCrimmon, you semi-evolved Scot, just
look what you've done!" he said as he scrambled out from under the
octagonal console.
"Oh ... er, sorry Doctor," said Jamie sheepishly. The Doctor, at
this point in his lives, was not a physically intimidating person, but
his presence nonetheless commanded a certain indefinable authority. Short
and frumpy with mussed black hair, and a two-sizes-too-big tailcoat with
hastily-arranged hankie and bowtie that often seemed as though they were
trying to envelop him, he seemed a man forever preoccupied.
"Hmph, well, yes," he said, rubbing his head still as though to
drive the point home, "Well nevermind about that, what's this about the
lights in your room?"
The incident forgotten, the Doctor turned his mind, in which the
accumulated wisdom of the Universe lay, to helping Jamie understand the
concept of a light bulb.

*********************

"The peace talks continue to go well," said the spokesman, reading
from a prepared statement into a Transmat Camera to the trillions of
beings whose lives were so fundamentally affected. These people, scattered
as they were throughout the nine planets of the Third Zone, were sick
of death, sick of war, sick of living under the threat of the Daleks and
the Cybermen and who-knows-what other malevolent races out there who were
just biding their time, waiting to enslave them, sick of fighting amongst
themselves. At this point in their history, they were still free. But for
how much longer?
Inside the top-security building, the talks were in fact coming to
a close.
"Then it is agreed by all of us," said the Androgum representative.
"An unconditional end to all hostilities by the nine planets?"
"We have agreed to disagree," said the Spiridonian minister of
interplanetary affairs, "and set aside our various disputes ..."
"For the time being," interrupted the Sval warlord. "... in order
to concentrate on our common protection. Our existence as non-aligned
races is very clearly threatened. "
"After the viscious and unprovoked massacre that occured on our
joint scientific space station," piped up Arus Castanin, the leader of the
Drettin people in his most weighty and forceful tones, "it is clear that
the people of the Third Zone are under the greatest direct threat to their
lives and freedom that we have faced since the last Dalek sweep of this
part of the Galaxy. We have united to concentrate our combined strength
to once and for all rid ourselves of the meddling interference ... of the
Time Lords of Gallifrey! "
"Good," smiled the Androgum. "Let us eat."

DOCTOR WHO and the TIDES OF TIME
A DOCTOR WHO story for GALLIFREY BBS by CHARLES MARTIN
This story is legally ©1988 by Charles Martin.
Reprint permission is granted provided this notice accompanies all copies.
No attempt is made to supercede copyrights held by the BBC.


? CHAPTER TWO ?

"The brutal destruction of our joint space station, the murder of
hundreds of the finest research scientists in the Cosmos, and the arrogant
denial of the obviously-guilty Time Lords leaves us no choice," read the
spokesman into the Transmat Camera for immediate broadcast via Tri-D
throughout the nine planets of the Third Zone.
"As there is no higher authority than the High Council on Gallifrey,
there is no way for us to resolve this matter diplomatically. After all, who
will judge the judges?"
"However, we are determined to avenge the lives of the dedicated men,
women and beings aboard that doomed scientific outpost, and restore honor to
our quadrant of the galaxy," he continued. "The Third Zone has been pushed
around and taken for granted for too long. In light of all this, we hereby
do declare war upon the people of Gallifrey, the High Council and all Time
Lords."

The news that the ever-arguing governments of the Third Zone had
united against the Time Lords caused considerable hubbub thoughout the
civilised Cosmos. The High Council continued to deny that it was responsible
for the massacre aboard the science station, although evidence aboard the
station was publicised to show that the Time Lords had indeed tried to stop
the scientists Kartz and Reimer from proceeding with their time-travel
experiments. Everyone on board the station at the time was killed, save
three staffers: one Drettin and two Androgums, who were listed as missing,
presumed dead.

The Third Zone prepared for war and readied it's soldiers.
The Time Lords, although sympathetic to the anger of the Third Zone,
were not the slightest bit worried about the possibility of invasion. No-one
had (or ever could) pass through the Transduction Barrier without their
permission. This, along with their extended life-span and their virtual
monopoly on the secret of time travel, had provided them with superiority
over all other races and species in the Universe. The High Council, in a
rare show of unity, had unanimously voted to just let the Third Zone bang
it's collective head against the Barrier until the whole thing blew over.
This was, unfortunately, the typical High Council solution to
almost every disagreement with another government.

?????????????

"There, that's got it!" smiled the Doctor, adjusting the shade back
on the lamp in Jamie's room. He wiped his brow with his ever-present
hankerchief and smiled proudly at his accomplishment, which was having
changed a light bulb he had put in Jamie's room to help the young Scot
practice his newly-taught skill of reading. For a man for whom time
mechanics and cosmic mysteries were part and parcel of daily existance,
the Doctor, more so than even other members of his own race, seemed most
happy when engaged in the uncomplicated activities of life. Changing a
light bulb, catching a really large Gumblejack, reading a good book or
playing a ripping good game of cricket ... these were the things he really
enjoyed. But there never seemed to be enough time ...

"Aye, that's better." agreed Jamie. "Now I kin get back to readin'
this crazy story about m'home town."

"What's crazy about it?" asked the Doctor indignantly, as though
it were he who wrote it.

"Well, so far it's sayin' that Bonnie Prince Charlie lost the war, when it
's not even over, and there's no' enough -"

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor had spotted the book in
question lying on Jamie's desk. A 1997 copy of A History of the Jacobite
Uprisings! Where on Gallifrey had Jamie come across that book, of all of
them? "Er, well, I'm sure it's probably a work of fiction then, wouldn't
you say? I mean it must seem so to you, wouldn't it?" The Doctor had to get
that book away from Jamie before he read any further and gained foreknowledge
of his and the whole McCrimmon clan's future!

"Aye, but -"

"Obviously a cheap attempt at sensationalism, playing on your
emotions and all that," said the Doctor, maneouvreing around till he was
between the desk and Jamie, "a load of superficial poppycock, I'm sure
you'll agree." He had now clasped his hands behind his back, grabbed the
book and deposited it whole into one of the myriad of pockets in the rear
of his tailcoat.

"Well, if you say so, I -"

"Well, now that that's settled, I really must get back to the TARDIS
controls. I think I've got our little problem licked."

"Tha's about as likely as th' chance that what you weren't up to
something just now," Jamie called as the Doctor hurried down the hall.

?????????????

"Commander! There's a movement on the Time Scanner!" The guard was
nervous, frightened. He had seen combat before " indeed, the interplanetary
wars of the Third Zone had kept him a soldier for over 6 years - and he was
only 19. But this - this was the big time. The nine planets versus the Time
Lords! The sheer arrogance of it made him re-up.

"Grenig! You say you have movement!"

"On screen 7 - feeding it to you now!"

Arus Castanin studied the incoming signal. The Time Scanner, salvaged
from the ruins of Kartz and Reimer's lab, allowed one to view incoming vessels
moving in Space, Hyperspace, and in Time itself. The signal blurred and fazed,
but remained steady long enough for it to be very clearly seen: an obvious
Gallifreyan TARDIS - Type 40 by the look of it - very poorly given a bluish
boxy shape. Could it be? thought Castanin to himself. Were the Time Lords
actually about to call the Third Zone's bluff?

"Attention all fighter units!" Castanin barked into his comm
unit. "An incoming trans-dimensional object is approaching! It's probably an
old time machine on a preset course, possibly a Time Bomb! Upon
materialisation, it must be destroyed! Repeat: Blast it out of the sky!"

"No, it's no good," said the Doctor. "I'll never be able to examine
this vector plotter in a decent light while the ship is still moving. I'll
just pop into continginous time for a few moments and take it off the -"

As he was adjusting the controls, the TARDIS was wracked by an
enormous explosion.

DOCTOR WHO and the TIDES OF TIME
A Doctor Who story for GALLIFREY BBS by CHARLES MARTIN
This story is legally ©1988 by Charles Martin.
Reprint permission is granted provided this notice accompanies all copies.
No attempt is made to supersede copyrights held by the BBC.

??? CHAPTER THREE ???

The force of the explosion sent the Doctor tripping back over
himself onto the floor of the violently shaking TARDIS. He grabbed the
nearby hat rack just as it tumbled over, and quickly whisked it round in
hopes of using the top half as a hook to latch onto something from the
controls of the ship. The hooks of the rack found their mark and grabbed
the open panel the Doctor had been working on. As the ship was now tilted
at a dizzying angle, it took all the Doctor's strength to pull himself up
the rack to the control panel. He knew that whatever had attacked them
would do so again momentarily.

"Must - dematerialise -", he muttered as vertigo began to set in.
His fingers played expertly across the switches and knobs without his
even being able to see them. Put the gravity to rights, that's it, he
thought to himself. The ship slowly steadied and the Doctor jumped to
his feet and jammed the intercom button. "Jamie! Stay where you are and
don't move!" he barked. He guessed but did not know that Jamie was in
fact knocked unconscious by the blast. The monitor screen showed a blue
bolt approaching rapidly. The Doctor ran through the process of
dematerialisation faster than he ever had before. The TARDIS's circuits,
still shaken by the initial explosion, could not react fast enough and
caught part of the second blast before leaving the continuum. The ship
reeled again, throwing the Doctor away from the panel but corrected
itself with a sickening sound and steadied.

"Hmmm - I wonder - oh my stars, Jamie!", cried the Doctor, moving
from rapid analysis of theories behind the attack to sudden concern for
his companion. He grabbed a first aid kit and flew down the myriad
corridors of his TARDIS towards Jamie's room.

?????????????

"The Gallifreyan missile has been destroyed," the monitor said
simply. Grenig turned and cast a worried eye on Castanin. "Commander," he
said softly, "it could have been a diplomatic missive."

"Nonsense!" barked Castanin. "They would have used normal
channels for that type of communication. It was a missile or bomb or
something! They probably don't realise that we have the Time Scanner and
could see it coming! All Praise that we did have it!" He turned to face
the soldiers gathered around them in the Communication Center. "ALL
PRAISE!" he shouted.

"ALL PRAISE!" they yelled back and returned to their work.

"You just keep those eagle eyes of yours glued to that Time
Screen," growled Castanin to Grenig under his breath, "I've got to go and
talk to the War Minister."

?????????????

The Doctor adjusted the ice pack on Jamie's head as the young
Scot winced. "OW! Och, whazzat'd hit us?" he cried between yelps of pain
as the Doctor applied the anesthetic. "I'm afraid I don't know, my boy,"
said the Doctor, "but I intend to find out as soon as I've repaired a
few circuits here and there. Now you rest up and I'll call you when
I've found a safe spot for us to land on." As he left Jamie's room, the
Doctor's brow furrowed in concentration. He replaced the medical kit,
and upon reaching the control room rummaged quickly through the massive
books of the Time-Line to trace the history they were now in. Strangely
he could find little on this period of time or this zone of space, and
what little there was was largely contradictory. "Typical," he muttered,
slamming the books shut. "A reference to the Third Zone here, a massacre
there - then revisions and footnotes as long as an Arcturan Seasnake.
Bah," he harumphed grumpily, "I'll just have to settle this myself."

?????????????

"The first blow in our glorious revolution has been struck!"
screamed the Propaganda Undersecretary with religious fervor into the
Tri-D camera, and looking around at the capacity crowd in the Labourer's
Hall. "We have shown the so-called Time Lords that their omnipotence is
but a myth that the combined might of the Third Zone can easily crush!"

A massive cheer went up among the thousands in attendance, mostly
Drettin in race but with more than a few Androgums strategically placed in
the crowd to stir up emotion.

A few kilometres away, the Drettin commander, Arus Castanin, was
briefing the War Minister on the same situation. "By now the Spiridonian,
Sval, Varosian and Androgum rulers will have been formally notified of
the attack and its successful thwarting," he said.

"Then the time is now," replied the minister, "to mount an invasion
of Gallifrey itself."

The colour left Castanin's face. "Wh - with all due respect your
Lordship," he stammered, "the TARDIS attack was merely an opening volley.
The Time Lords - world itself is rumoured to be impregnable, due to a
Transduction Barrier. Is it wise to order such a suicide mission?"

"A mission it is, Castanin, but suicide it is not," said
the minister, his eyes glinting and an evil grin struggling to suppress
itself coming to his face. "What is your security clearance, Commander?"

Castanin felt a shock go through his system. "Why - 90, of
course," he replied, and managed to work in a note of indignity at even
having been asked towards the end of his utterance.

"You've just been raised to 100," said the minister, "because I
am about to show you the secret of our winning this war." He touched a
button on his desk. A panel to his right side slid open, revealing a
glass window beyond which two men in lab coats were working at a feverish
pitch in a bizarre laboratory that bewildered even the former science
major Castanin.

"Allow me to introduce you to our secret weapons," intoned the
minister with obvious glee. "The scientists Kartz and Reimer."

DOCTOR WHO and the TIDES OF TIME
A Doctor Who story for GALLIFREY BBS by CHARLES MARTIN
This story is legally ©1988 by Charles Martin.
Reprint permission is granted provided this notice accompanies all copies.
No attempt is made to supercede copyrights held by the BBC.

??? A LITTLE HISTORY FOR OUR READERS ???
(for those of you who have never read/seen THE TWO DOCTORS)
Prior to the beginning of this adventure, the Second Doctor and
Jamie had been involved in an adventure with the Sixth Doctor and Peri
involving the Space Station J7 and the Doctor's friend Joinson Dastari, a
Drettin scientist from the Third Zone. The Second Doctor was on a mission
for the Time Lords to persuade Dastari to stop experiments by his scientists
Kartz and Reimer that were damaging the fabric of time. Before the resolution
of that argument could occur, the Sontarans invaded and massacred everyone on
the station, kidnapping the Doctor and Dastari. Dastari was later
double-crossed by his own creation, an Androgum T.A. named Chessene, who
was in league with the Sontarans. In the ensuing panic, the Doctor seems
to have forgotten that the space station was left to appear as though the
Time Lords had been behind the massacre. For more information about
references in the story, ask your Whovian friends or read The Two Doctors
by Robert Holmes. And now -

??? CHAPTER FOUR ???

"But - but -" sputtered the Drettin commander, Arus Castanin, "surely
Kartz and Reimer were killed aboard J7 along with everyone else in the
massacre?"

"No," countered the War Minister. "They happened to have transmatted
over just before dinner to brief me on their work when the massacre took
place. A lucky coincidence, to be sure, but one which we intend to take full
advantage of!"

"Then the Kartz-Reimer Module -?" asked the commander hopefully. He
knew that if the Module had survived the attack, the Third Zone would have
close to a fully-operational time machine with which they could do battle
with the Time Lords on their own level.

"Missing," said the War Minister with a note of bitterness in his
voice. "We must assume those Gallifreyan swine killed all those people
simply to get their hands on it! Oh, there have been rumours of the Time
Lords becoming involved in other planets' affairs before - but never
anything on this scale. Still, they must want the secret of time travel all
to themselves very badly to commit such atrocities!"

He moved around his desk to face Castanin and pointed to the window
and the lab beyond. "Kartz and Reimer have already informed me that it would
take too long for them to fabricate another Module, so I have had them turn
over all the blueprints to our shipyards to see if they can build them a bit
more swiftly," the War Minister said. Then, drawing close to Castanin, he
almost whispered in a conspiritorial tone as he told the commander, "I have
instead given them the last piece of the puzzle to work on. If they are
successful -" he turned and stole a glance at the lab-coated pair working
in isolation just beyond the soundproof glass, "it will spell the end of the
Time Lords."

? ????????????? ?

"Why don't we jist leave th' crazies to shoot a' each other and go
someplace else?" asked Jamie as the Doctor wrestled with the equations
that would give him the coordinates to materialise the TARDIS in what he
hoped would be a less dangerous environment near the site of their previous
attack.

"The crazies were nae - they weren't shooting at one another, they
were shooting specifically at us," the Doctor replied, rather grumpily Jamie
thought, without looking up from the center of the Time Rotor. He raced
around to the other side of the console and began wiping switches off with
the tattered kerchief he kept in his breast pocket
and then expertly
entered figures into the console computer, pausing occasionally to look
upwards and count something out on his fingers.

"Oh, well, if it's us they don't like then of course tha's a bonnie
good reason to go jumpin' back to them," said Jamie sarcastically. "After
all, it's nae fair not to give 'em another crack at it. Honestly, Doctor,
where's th' sense in that?"

"How did they know we were going to be there, hmmm?" snapped the
Doctor, coming back around the console to confront Jamie. "How do we know
that we were the intended targets, hmmm? And why should the nine planets
of the Third Zone
want to harm us, anyway? Unless - unless -" Suddenly
lost in thought, the Doctor raced back to the far end of the control room
and retrieved the books dealing with the Time-Line he had discarded moments
ago. He sped through the tables and indexes with superhuman speed, mumbling
something about the past being the present, which only confused Jamie
more.

"Unless - what?" he asked.

"Of course!" cried the Doctor, slamming the book shut with a force
that sent a cloud of dust upwards. He tossed the ancient book, a tome that
would have been priceless to any history-conscious sentient being,
carelessly aside and raced back to the console. He turned a switch and the
viewscreen flickered into life.

Jamie winced at the sight before him, the now-dead hulk of the space
station he had nearly lost his own life in not so long ago. "What in
Lucifer's name are we doin' back here? I never want to see those cursed
castles in th' sky agin," he declared angrily, reaching over to turn the
viewscreen off.

The Doctor rapped his knuckles with his open hand. "Of course we're
here - it all makes sense now!" he cried.

"T' ye maybe," said Jamie, nursing his knuckles.

"So that's why the books -" he broke off and turned the viewscreen
off to explain to his companion. "When you left the station with my later
self, Jamie -" the Doctor paused to place his hands some distance in front
of his midsection to indicate girth wearing an unpleasant expression, "you
and I - he - forgot that the massacre the Sontarans had engineered was made
to look as though - er, my people - had been behind it, so -"

"-so the people that owned the station have discovered wha' happened
by now an' are thinkin' you and your lot are responsible!"

"Exactly," sighed the Doctor. "And seeing as how I was on a mission for
the High Council when this happened, they're probably expecting me to put it
all right again." He sighed again, and his brow furrowed. "Well, that
certainly explains why they shot at us," he half-mumbled.

"Is tha' what the books have to say out it?" asked Jamie.

"Hmm? No, no - there's nothing there for me to read about it in there,
you see, because most of the events haven't happened yet, and those volumes
are temporaly treated to only reflect past history as it is relative to the
TARDIS's current position in the space-time continuum."

"Aye, I thought as much." said Jamie, looking over the books
confidently.

The Doctor shot the young Scotsman a look but continued. "And so it
seems I shall have to make yet another trip to Drettin," he said resignedly,
restting the controls.

"I thought you said that that castle beastie were called J7," protested
Jamie.

"It is," replied the Doctor, "but there's no-one there now. I shall have
to explain the situation directly to the High Coordinators of the Third Zone
Council on Drettin, I'm afraid." He turned to study a bank of flashing
lights to his right. "Now what was the name of that capital city?"

"Ye mean you're just going to walk right in and tell them tha' your lot
wasn't responsible an' tha' the potato-heads were?"

"They're called Sontarans, Jamie," smiled the Doctor, "and that's
exactly what I mean to do. Don't worry about a thing."

"I've got a bad feeling abou' this," mumbled the Scotsman to himself.

? ????????????? ?

The War Room of the Third Zone Council Centre in the Drettin capital
city of Halmarneh was not the most elaborately decorated of affairs. Located
some 1,500 metres underground, directly below the General Assembly Hall, it
looked as though it had been hastily constructed during some previous nuclear
scare, with its sloppy brickwork and absense of paint or carpeting. Cots
were attached to the walls near the back, and desks and glass maps of the
various planets and the space between them were scattered around the room
haphazardly. A glowing bank of detection monitors lined one wall, and the
war computers' random blinking, coupled with the smoke and general business
of the room at the moment, cemented the impression of organized confusion
and flurried activity.

Arus Castanin waded into the thick of it, giving new orders to some
and directing refreshed troops to relieve those who had been on too long.
He grabbed a stick of chewy nutrient supplement from a passing food cart
and made his way to the hologram desk, where the glass maps could be
re-viewed in three dimensions. For most planets such equipment was
standard, but the poverty-stricken Third Zone had been forced to scratch
by with outdated and old-fashioned techniques and technology. He could see
the desk just a few feet away. Suddenly, however, he could no longer, for
directly into his path had materialised a Type 40 TARDIS.




 
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