Posted inFiction Television

“Only Human” by Gareth Roberts (2005) — Doctor Who

Synopsis

A “dirty” rip in time and a Nean­derthal in 21st Cen­tu­ry Lon­don. That’s enough to draw the Doc­tor’s atten­tion. How­ev­er, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er he came from, the Doc­tor can’t get Das the Nean­derthal back to his own time with­out the effects of time trav­el killing him, so the Doc­tor enlists Cap­tain Jack Hark­ness to mind him for a month to accli­mate him to the 21st Cen­tu­ry while the Doc­tor and Rose inves­ti­gate the past, only to find a par­ty of sci­en­tists from the future exper­i­ment­ing on human­i­ty’s ancestors.

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Posted inFiction Television

“The Last of the Gaderene” by Mark Gatiss (2000) — Doctor Who

Synopsis

Some­thing mys­te­ri­ous is hap­pen­ing with mys­te­ri­ous peo­ple mys­te­ri­ous­ly at a near­by aban­doned air­field, which is the cov­er for an impend­ing alien inva­sion. Already the aliens have tak­en pos­ses­sion of sev­er­al Very Impor­tant Peo­ple at the Defense Min­istry to smooth oth­er every­thing and are hunt­ing for the Lost MacGuf­fin in order to begin the inva­sion. For­tu­nate­ly some­one was old friends with the Brigadier and knew just how to bypass secu­ri­ty to con­tact him direct­ly. The Brig, of course, sends the Doc­tor, after he gets back from a lit­tle side trip that has noth­ing to do with the main sto­ry, and soon every­thing turns into (pseu­do) Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse! with vil­lagers get­ting implant­ed with alien embryos to con­trol them to hold off the UNIT troops until the actu­al inva­sion begins. All is saved when a WW II Spit­fire air­plane dives into the tele­por­ta­tion beam and halts the inva­sion permanently.

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Posted inFiction Television

“The Harvest of Time” by Alastair Reynolds (2013) — Doctor Who

Synopsis

Mys­te­ri­ous events involv­ing dis­ap­pear­ing oil rigs and a secret Defense Min­istry project attract UNIT’s atten­tion, espe­cial­ly when the Mas­ter’s involve­ment becomes appar­ent. The Mas­ter is being used as a con­sul­tant by a Min­istry of Defense com­mu­ni­ca­tions project but in real­i­ty he is using them to broad­cast a tachy­on res­cue sig­nal to his past and future selves. How­ev­er, the rapa­cious alien race of the Sild inter­cept the sig­nal and use it to pluck var­i­ous incar­na­tions of the Mas­ter out of time, start­ing to erase him from exis­tence. Then the alien inva­sion begins, whose object is to cap­ture the Mas­ter him­self as the Mas­ter Stroke of their Mas­ter Plan of cre­at­ing the Mas­ter Com­put­er, built of all the incar­na­tions of the Mas­ter they were col­lect­ing. 1 They don’t find him, thanks to the inter­fer­ence of the Doc­tor who came to res­cue him, which only leads to the aliens cap­tur­ing him any­way in the far-flung future. But that is exact­ly what the Mas­ter wants, because the Mas­ter is in con­trol of the com­put­er, not the Sild, as they discover.

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