Artifacts from an alternative universe where Doctor Who was successfully revived on US TV in 1996
6×05 The Impossible Astronaut: After months of searching, the Doctor finally has a lead on Melody Pond and Harmony Lake. The chase will take them back and forth across thirty years of the space race and lead them to a child who shouldn’t exist.
6×04 The Ones Who Walk Away: The Galactic Federation is on the verge of collapse as the “Earth for Earth” movement is pushing to end the alliance. The only thing that could rally the planets of the Federation to unite is the threat of a common enemy. But the unthinkable has happened: the implacable, unstoppable, relentless enemy… is suing for peace.
6×03 The Poison Sky: Six months after the devastating defeat at Demon’s Run, Sammy summons the Doctor back to Earth. But she’s not the only one who’s been looking for him. The Unified Intelligence Taskforce needs their old scientific adviser back to see if the pollution-controlling ATMOS system is really too good to be true.
6×02 A Good Man Goes to War: “Good men don’t have rules. Pray you never find out why I have so many.” With Melody and the monks in retreat, the Doctor’s thoughts turn to revenge. When the Doctor gives in to his rage, the cost may be more than anyone could anticipate.
6×01 Demon’s Run: Sammy Lake’s daughter has been kidnapped by a mysterious enemy from the future. What is her agenda, and how far will the Doctor go to get her back?
Breaking sequence here because this past weekend, we learned of the loss of Terrance Dicks, long-time Doctor Who writer and editor. He had some bad spots. That sort of unabashed Britishness that leans into things like pro-colonialist readings and gender politics that mostly consisted of, “feminists are bitchy”. But he was prolific and he was a serviceable writer with a gift for effectively condensing two to six hours of television into about a hundred and twenty-seven pages, and there’s multiple generations of geeky people (mostly men, admittedly) for whom his prose, just through the sheer volume of it, was a gateway to reading speculative fiction. I was one of them. He’s not my favorite author. In fact, his writing left very little specific impression on me at all, but it’s entirely possible that he’s the single author I have read the most total books by. So rest in peace, you young-old man with an open face. You will be missed.
Time Ram – Explosive destruction of two or more TARDISes which occurs if they attempt to occupy exactly the same location in space-time. Time ram was a danger whenever one timeship attempted to materialize inside another [OS: Logopolis]. Jo Grant initiated a time ram against The Master‘s TARDIS to prevent him escaping from Atlantis, but they were saved by Kronos [OS: The Time Monster]. The Doctor would later attempt to use a time ram against Magnus Greel [MA: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang], The Nine [BF: Relative Time], Bianca [BF: The Wormery], and the Timewyrm [NA: Timewyrm: Genesys]. Varnax attempted to destroy the Doctor by ramming the TARDIS with his ship, the Jonah. The Doctor exploited Varnax’s three-dimensional thinking to cause him to ram himself instead [US: The Mark of Varnax]. Varnax was able to avoid complete destruction by performing a temporal inversion. The Doctor later performed a time ram on the Master’s TARDIS to close a Warp Shunt. Both TARDISes were destroyed, though the Doctor retained a Seed Crystal from his TARDIS when he escaped by using the Master’s recall device to teleport himself to the Morthrai colony ship [US: The Final Problem]. The Master escaped by using the Sword of Rassilon, though it was lost in the process [TDA: Death in Heaven].
2×11 January 30, 1998
DINOSAURS IN NEW ORLEANS (Serial 20, Episode 3)
Setting: New Orleans, Louisiana, Near-Future
Regular Cast: Hugh Laurie (The Doctor), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Lizzie Thompson)
Guest Starring: Paul Eckstein (Voskar), Bruce Harwood (Swift), Jonathan Frakes (Blackwood), Ted Raimi (Dr. French)
Plot: The Doctor almost succeeds in calming the giganotosaurus, but the national guard arrives and fires on it, enraging the creature. The oil platform survivors are cornered, but the dinosaur vanishes before it can attack. Blackwood passes along information from his superiors about recent dinosaur sightings which started around the time contact with the platform was lost, the giganotosaurus being the first one too big to be covered up. He assumes the dinosaurs are related to the therasapiens, but the Doctor can not square the dinosaurs’ ability to appear and disappear with therasapien technology. Swift backs the Doctor and calls in a scientific consultant to assist, wishing to atone for his actions on the platform. The Doctor and Lizzie are chased by a pack of velocirators, which also vanish after mildly injuring Dr. French. This time, the Doctor senses a temporal disturbance and asks Swift to have the TARDIS brought over from the platform so he can use its instruments. As the dinosaur appearances become more frequent, Blackwood prepares to have the city evacuated. Plotting the dinosaur appearances on a map reveals a pattern centered around a building owned by the oil company. Swift attempts to contact his employers for access, but the evacuation has jammed the phone lines. When Blackwood and the Doctor attempt to break in, the giganotosaurus reappears. Meanwhile, Swift’s men are unable to locate the TARDIS on the platform, but in reporting this to Lizzie, they let slip that they’ve previously handled a number of other deliveries of high-tech equipment from the platform to Dr. French’s company on Swift’s orders. When she sneaks into his lab to confront French, she is confronted by Voskar, who shoots her with his weapon.
Vampire Lords – A race of creatures who fed on the blood of sentient beings. The Vampire Lords claimed to have been nearly exterminated by the Time Lords in the distant past [US: Lords of Blood], however, this account conflates the Vampire Lords with the Great Vampires, an older, non-humanoid race. In fact, the Vampire Lords were a chimeric species created by the Great Vampires as a servant race by combining their own biodata with that of humanoid species [TDA: Vampyre Science]. One example of this process was done by the King Vampire to create the Three Who Rule from the crew of the Earth ship Hydrax [OS: State of Decay]. Vampire Lords could convert other humanoids into vampires by feeding on them [NA: Blood Harvest]. According to one legend, Rassilon was bitten by the King Vampire and became a Vampire Lord himself [MA: Goth Opera]. Vampires were extremely resilient and could be killed only by decapitation, destruction of the heart, or prolonged exposure to the sunlight of their homeworld. Vampire Lords were quantum entangled with their progeny. When a Vampire Lord died, any other vampires it had created within the planet’s current lunar cycle would revert to their natural, non-vampiric form [US: Lords of Blood]. Vampire Lords lacked the Rassilon Imprimatur, and suffered serious physical damage from time travel [US: Human Nature]. The Forge recovered a sample of Great Vampire DNA and were able to create a new race of Vampire Lords [BF: Project: Twilight, Project: Valhalla]