The Custodians
Across Britain, millions of kids fall victim to a popular massively-multiplayer virtual reality game, whose headsets first render their victim “players” comatose and then begins to mutate them with alien DNA. Never one to fall for trends, Starkey remains unaffected, and he and K-9, along with Inspector Turner, pay a visit to the game’s makers. There, they find a powerful telepathic being is behind the addictive game – and that the creature has seized control with the full knowledge of some of Turner’s cohorts at the Department in a bid for total mind control of the population. But even the Department can’t control this intruder.
written by Shayne Armstrong & S.P. Krause
directed by James Bogle
music by Christopher ElvesGuest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Jared Robinsen (Thorne), Dash Kruck (John: The Custodian), Josh Norbido (CCPC), Jason McNamara (CCPC), Dane Paltman (CCPC), Tarek Beheiry (Etydien)
LogBook entry by Earl Green
The TARDIS is sucked into the business end of an interstellar whaling ship, whose crew hunts for space whales known as Megaptera. The Doctor, not a fan of space whaling, immediately blusters his way aboard the ship, posing as a safety inspector, though this ruse isn’t very long-lived. When Peri is infected by contact with an alien creature aboard the ship, it looks like she might not be long-lived either, until the Doctor intervenes. Then, piloting the TARDIS into the belly of the whale itself, the Doctor is shocked to discover that living within the belly of the endangered beast is an entire society which itself might be wiped out, leaving the Time Lord with the responsibility to save more than just the whales.
Trying to reacquaint Jamie with travel in the TARDIS, the Doctor promises to take his old friend to the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary. But the timeship lands in the cargo hold of a very different ship – the Titanic, on her own maiden voyage. The Doctor realizes that time is running out to return to the TARDIS and leave, but suddenly the cargo hold seems to have vanished, and every door aboard the Titanic opens onto nothing but a steel plate. A man claiming to be Titanic’s first officer believes the Doctor and Jamie to be saboteurs from a rival shipping company, while a bored passenger finds the notion of stowaways exciting – but these two seem to be the only two people aboard. Everything changes suddenly, and the Doctor and Jamie are aboard the doomed steamship Titan. The same two people from the Titanic are also there, but they have very different personas. The Titan’s wreck happens on schedule, leaving the Doctor stranded on an iceberg and Jamie trapped in the hold of the sinking ship. A futuristic submarine rescues Jamie and the Titan’s young lady passenger, and Jamie persuades its captain to rescue the Doctor as well. The Doctor is shocked to discover that he’s been rescued by none other than the legendary (and fictional) Captain Nemo. And then things really get strange.
Notes: Guest star Bill Nighy – whose name was not shown in the end credits of the episode – was, at one time, considered the hot contender for the role of the Doctor when the series’ return was still in pre-production (in fact, 
Notes: This episode is based on a comic by the same name that appeared in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine, originally centered around the 
Notes: This marks the first time Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans have all shared the screen in anything other than a flashback (if one wishes to count flashbacks, however, the first time would have been during the flashbacks experienced by the fourth Doctor at the end of part 4 of 
The Doctor’s worst fears are confirmed when he and Jamie are accosted by white robots: they are once again trapped in the Land of Fiction, where fictional characters come to life, but very real damage can be inflicted on visitors fromo outside Fiction. The Artful Dodger comes to the time travelers’ aid, but only when they encounter this character’s cohort do they realize who the real enemy is: Oliver Twist has been converted by Cybermen. The metal giants, trapped in the Land of Fiction by an intelligence that has yet to reveal itself, are laying siege to this dimension and converting the characters inhabiting it. Alice in Wonderland and Dracula have been drafted into service as soldiers, and Captain Nemo and the Nautilus are joining in the fight when it’s convenient to them. But none of them are fighting to defend any kind of real space. Another of the Doctor’s former companions – Zoe – appears and reveals that she is behind the Cyber-war over the Land of Fiction. But when she tells the Doctor how both the Cybermen and the Time Lord were drawn into the Land of Fiction, the Doctor realizes that the turf being fought for so viciously is the mind and soul of his companion.
A classified ad is placed, seeking qualified applicants for companions to a traveler in time and space. The Doctor arrives for the final interviews, finding four people with wildly varying personalities and skills. When a crisis unfolds at a gathering of scientists, the Doctor’s potential new companions have their work cut out for them – and so does the Doctor himself, for he wasn’t the one who placed the ad to begin with.
Having just escaped the machinations of the Black Guardian, the Doctor finds himself in unsettled company. Tegan doesn’t trust Turlough, and Turlough is tired of being reminded that Tegan doesn’t trust him. His request to return home meets with the same fate as most requests for specific stops in the TARDIS: instead of going to Turlough’s home, the TARDIS is pulled off course and makes a rough landing on the planet Hellheim, the site of a quarantined genetic engineering facility. To the time travelers’ amazement, someone else is here: Nyssa, now 70 years old, still crusading for the cures to plagues that are ravaging the galaxy. With her security robot, Loki, Nyssa landed at this base to find the cure to a virulent disease, hoping that perhaps the long-dead crew had found a cure before they died. But what the reunited friends find there is far more disturbing: a base crawling with robotic spiders, projected memories of what seem to be the original crew’s grisly deaths, a computer who insists that the Doctor and his friends have been here before… and four decayed bodies, dressed exactly like the TARDIS crew.
The TARDIS – with some assistance from a mysterious cat who resets the coordinates – brings the Doctor and his new companion Tamsin to Nevermore, a world of poison mists and robotic ravens with an affinity for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But the Doctor once knew it as Corinth Minor, and so did the Time Lords, shortly before they took drastic measures to alter the planet’s fate. Now Nevermore is home to a war criminal convicted of genocide, a small group of people tasked with overseeing her imprisonment, and now two time travelers whose arrival coincides with the sudden appearance of a deadly creature. Every event on Nevermore seems to take its cues from the works of Poe, but if the Doctor and Tamsin can’t find and stop whatever is bent on eliminating the planet’s small population, the result will be worse than Poe’s darkest imaginings.