The Time Of The Daleks
Just as happened just before he visited the Cimmerian system, the Doctor’s TARDIS is thrashed by the energy of a time corridor – a corridor which just happens to bring him to a future in which few humans seem to know the historical significance of the works of Shakespeare. Even more alarmingly, time has somehow been altered to a degree that even Charley doesn’t know who Shakespeare is. General Mariah Learman does, however, remember the Bard, and she is intently trying to perfect a time machine of her own to set history to rights. The Doctor is troubled enough by Learman’s mission, but when the Daleks emerge from the time corridor – spouting Shakespearean prose – the Doctor knows something is terribly wrong. Shakespeare has been removed from time altogether, and the Doctor may not be able to put history’s most famous dramatist back where (and when) he belongs.
written by Justin Richards
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Dot Smith (General Mariah Learman), Julian Harries (Major Ferdinand), Nicola Boyce (Viola), Jem Bassett (Kitchen Boy), Mark McDonnell (Priestly), Lee Moone (Hart), Ian Brooker (Professor Osric), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Clayton Hickman (Dalek voice / Yokel), Robert Curbishley (Marcus), Ian Potter (Mark Anthony / Army Officer / Tannoy), Don Warrington (Rassilon)
Timeline: after Embrace The Darkness and before Neverland
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
After refurbishing his TARDIS, the Doctor allows the time machine to decide its own next stop. It takes him to Artaris, once again in the city of Excelis. But things have changed since the superstitious age the Doctor visited in his previous incarnation: a totalitarian government has taken over, the populace is divided between the elite Inner Party, their Outer Party underlings and a helpless proletariat, history now paints Reeve Maupassant and Lord Grayvorn as heroes, and someone is abducting lower-class citizens and stealing their life energy to power a new race of mindless, brutish cannon-fodder soldiers called meat puppets. This government is locked in a bitter stalemate of a war with another power, and the Inner Party seems content to keep it that way. At the heart of the corrupt Inner Party lies Lord Sutton, a calculating, amoral being who has been waiting for the Doctor for centuries. But the Doctor knows Sutton as Grayvorn – and makes drastic plans to free Artaris from the immortal warlord’s grasp. But will freeing the planet’s people from oppression also mean killing them?
Years after her travels in the TARDIS ended, Sarah Jane Smith has resumed her job as an investigative journalist, though her stint with TV network Planet 3 ended in disgrace after one of her exposes was proven to be based on false evidence. Fired by her network, Sarah’s troubles didn’t end there, as her identity, bank account and her employability were systematically erased. With the help of Natalie, her former Planet 3 producer, Sarah is still on the trail of a big story, but now she’s trying to find out who tainted her last big story – and her paranoia is growing. The trail leads to a bank where Sarah assumes a new identity and takes a job – but her cover is blown by the police when the bank is robbed. Sarah receives a message from her friend Ellie, an environmental activist, to meet her the next day at an isolated village, and Ellie’s friend Josh insists on accompanying Sarah, especially after she goes to meet with the bank manager again and finds him dead – with a note on his desk also referring to the village where Sarah is supposed to meet Ellie. Sarah and Josh go to retrieve her car, which she’s taken to keeping hidden in a garage away from her home for security reasons, only to see a man break into it and blow it up. They decide at this point that public transport might be a safer way to get there, and when they do arrive, they find Ellie’s environmentalist group preparing to protest a French biochemical company’s gradual plan to take over the entire village. Only some of Ellie’s environmentalist colleagues have gone missing, and the corpses have begun piling up near the village’s legendary healing well…
The latest in a series of disappearances of young men hits close to home for Sarah’s friends, and she decides to investigate the matter herself. With Josh in tow, Sarah finds that the missing men have become unwilling contributors to an experimental anti-aging serum which can only be replenished with the blood of living donors. At the center of this web of intrigue lies the eccentric Will Butley, determined to keep himself alive even at the expense of others – but even Sarah can’t begin to guess at how long his obscene experiments have been going on. And then Josh becomes his next “donor”… 
At her home, Sarah receives a package – a live rat in a glass cage, with a note attached. When Josh removes the note from the cage, a mechanism seals the cage completely and fills it with nerve gas, killing the rat. If that isn’t ominous enough, the note promises that the same will happen to all of London unless Sarah “finds the truth” in 24 hours. Sarah next gets a visit from James Carver, a man whose name has been in the news recently after being detained and questioned by police following a scuffle with a member of Parliament. Carver, seeming nervous and unstable, claims to have gotten hold of enough sarin gas to kill the entire population of London – and even shows real proof. He claims that he’ll release it in the London underground during rush hour if certain demands aren’t met by six in the morning. Natalie insists that Sarah call the police, but Sarah tries to make use of her contact within the C19 agency instead; shortly after confirming that Carver is dangerous and is in possession of the sarin capsules, Sarah’s contact is found dead and Sarah herself is framed for the murder. And while she’s in police custody, answering questions, Sarah’s losing precious time …and so is London.
Determined to get away from it all after the sarin gas threat, Sarah and Josh take a vacation to Romania to visit one of Sarah’s journalism mentors. But trouble seems to follow – with an international peace conference taking place nearby, and the delegate from America and his wife staying with Sarah’s friend, the visit is hardly normal. On the first night, Sarah sees something that she can only describe as a ghost; the next night, a sighting of something similar frightens the American delegate’s wife literally to death. Sarah and Josh set up recording devices to capture the next appearance of the “apparitions,” but even though there is another sighting, the evidence doesn’t show up on tape – and the enigmatic butler of the house turns up dead. Sarah realizes that someone is manufacturing the “ghosts” to disrupt the peace talks, but that realization, and her hunch about who is responsible, may make her the next target.
Sarah leaves the country on assignment, ignoring frantic warnings from Natalie that a reporter from Sarah’s former employer, Planet 3, is tailing her. Even when those warnings become even more ominous ones that the Planet 3 reporter is not, in fact, a Planet 3 reporter, and even after Sarah has met the “reporter” and figured out that something doesn’t add up, she forges ahead with her story. Josh is at Sarah’s new home when the place is robbed, and even though the robbers rough Josh up, he sees them take the non-functional K-9. Natalie discovers more evidence about the “reporter” Sarah has befriended, discovering that she has a connection to a group whose former members could be out to destroy Sarah’s career, if not Sarah herself. But Sarah isn’t looking ahead for these signs anymore – only over her shoulder.
The Doctor and Melanie arrive at a most inopportune time aboard space station Dark Space 8, and the Doctor is mistaken for the replacement for the station’s recently-deceased commander – a role into which the Time Lord steps eagerly, to Mel’s dismay. Dark Space 8 is playing host to an intergalactic pop song contest in a matter of days, and station security is stepped up accordingly – but apparently not enough, as one of the contestants turns up dead. As more murders occur, the station’s crew is helpless (and clueless), and when one of the suspects seems to have an unnatural hold over the Doctor, Mel worries that she is on her own in solving the mystery…