Weapon Of Choice
A powerful coalition of time-traveling races monitors access to history, stopping newly-emergent time travelers and redirecting them to the planet Gryben for “processing” – though that process often strands them there permanently. That logjam of stranded time travelers has given rise to a new movement – Free Time – seeking to force these temporal superpowers to allow free access to the timeways.
Several delegates from the time-traveling powers, including a Time Lord and a Monan (a symbiotic race consisting of noncorporeal intelligences, and human “thralls” whose bodies they inhabit), arrive to investigate what appears to be the emergence of another sophisticated time-traveling race – but one of the delegates turns out to be a member of Free Time, and soon she has her hands on a timeonic fusion device – a weapon of temporal mass destruction banned by the coalition of time-traveling superpowers. Torvald, the Time Lord operative assigned to this delegation, is recalled to his home planet of Gallifrey.
There, President Romana of the Time Lords’ High Council assigns Torvald to go undercover to retrieve the forbidden weapon. To this end, she also assigns Leela – a mere human primitive who stayed behind on Gallifrey years ago to marry another Gallifreyan – to go with him, and to take her loyal robotic dog K9 with her. Romana, too, has a K9 unit, capable of linking with its counterpart through time and space. Leela, Torvald, and Leela’s K9 travel to Gryben to find the Free Time operative and retrieve the weapon – but while there, they discover that other members of the coalition are willing to overstep their bounds to obtain the weapon, even if it means risking war with Gallifrey. And when she tries to defuse the situation at home, Romana meets a challenge from the ambitious Coordinator Narvin – ambitious enough to set her impeachment in motion.
written by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Lalla Ward (President Romana), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (K9), Miles Richardson (Cardinal Braxiatel), Sean Carlsen (Coordinator Narvin), Andy Coleman (Commander Torvald), Lynda Bellingham (Inquisitor Darkel), Hugo Myatt (Arkadian), Helen Goldwyn (Nepenthe), Daniel Hogarth (Ba’aruk), Stephen Mansfield (Scragbite), Trevor Littledale (Outsider)
Notes: The Gallifrey audio miniseries is a fascinating mixture of elements from televised Doctor Who and professional fiction postdating the original TV series. Leela, Romana and K9 appeared in the original TV series. At the end of her tenure on TV, Romana was left stranded in a dimension called E-Space with the Doctor’s second K9 unit; in the Missing Adventures novels printed by Virgin Publishing, Romana and K9 escaped E-Space, after which she returned to Gallifrey and successfully ran for the Presidency. With that acknowledgement of the novels’ continuity in mind, it’s curious that the Gallifrey audios and their immediate antecedent, the 2003 Doctor Who audio Zagreus establish that Romana and Leela have only just met; the penultimate Virgin New Adventures novel establishes a different first meeting for Romana and Leela. Braxiatel was established in throwaway dialogue in City Of Death (1979), but was later fleshed out in Virgin’s New Adventures novels, including those which postdate Virgin’s loss of the Doctor Who print fiction license, and has also appeared in Big Finish’s Bernice Summerfield audios; Braxiatel was established in print and in audio as the owner of the Braxiatel Collection for which Bernice is a curator. Inquisitor Darkel also appeared in the TV series, presiding over The Trial Of A Time Lord, though she was known only as the Inquisitor during her television appearances.
Timeline: all of the Gallifrey audios take place sometime after the Doctor Who audio Zagreus.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz continue their search for the TARDIS into another “zone,” where they find themselves on a jungle world where a band of freedom fighters is taking refuge from their pursuers. Led by, and fanatically devoted to, the mysterious Major Koth, the guerillas have strange changes in attitude on very little notice. When the Doctor is captured and taken into a nearby cave where the fighters have set up camp, he becomes aware of a powerful telepathic presence, and he suspects that it is influencing everyone else around him – a suspicion confirmed when Charley betrays him during their attempt to escape, and when C’rizz takes up arms to help the freedom fighters. But is Koth the mind manipulating his army, or is he just the first victim?
A summit of the temporal superpowers is scheduled on a secluded artificial planetoid, and Coordinator Narvin is sent by President Romana to represent the Time Lords. Going with him, barely camouflaged, are Leela and K-9. But the out-of-place savage and her robotic dog aren’t there to protect Narvin; Romana has personally charged them with rooting out those responsible for an expected attempt to disrupt the conference. Leela does indeed find danger lurking, but all is not as it seems. Is someone sabotaging the summit to ensure its success?
For every Time Lord who has ever meddled in history, a divergent timeline has been created, for every divergent timeline is then tied off and anchored to the Axis, a transdimensional dumping ground for the timelines (and their occupants) that have been “corrected” out of existence. But if the Axis breaks down, all hell will break loose in time and space. The Axis and its Overseer have a special, if not necessarily cozy, relationship with the Time Lords in general, and with that race’s most prolific meddler in particular. But when the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Peri and Erimem to the Axis in response to a distress call, they find the Overseer on the brink of death…and a sinister Jester is now in charge, trying to break down the barriers between the isolated timelines, and then trying to unleash them into the primary timeline of the universe. The Doctor tries to reason with the Jester, but discovers that the being that now holds the fate of multiple universes in his hands is quite mad.
An inquiry begins regarding the timeonic fusion weapon, President Romana’s unorthodox measures to locate and retrieve it, and her apparent inability to do so – or even, for that matter, to prove that it ever existed. But curiously, the Matrix, the repository of all Gallifreyan knowledge, seems to differ with the established record – a visual document exists of the weapon being created, and even test detonated, by the Time Lords themselves. Cardinal Braxiatel admits that research was carried out, in which he himself participated, but no test of the weapon ever occurred. When Romana digs deeper to find out why the Matrix records conflict with his account, a computer virus is unleashed which Romana’s K9 is barely able to contain – and if he fails, or his batteries run out, that virus will lay waste to Gallifrey’s computer-dependent society. And while she is trying to eavesdrop on Romana’s behalf, Leela discovers how her husband Andred died…and who killed him.
A most curious assortment of travelers boards a train bound from Munich to Switzerland in 1939. Romana and Leela are traveling incognito, but so is swindler and arms dealer Mephistopheles Arkadian, who Romana interrogated during the Gryben crisis. He promises to give her vital information regarding that incident if she and the Time Lords turn the other cheek for only three hours and let him have his way with history. Arkadian’s specific historical interest revolves around a young woman on the train, a Nazi sympathizer named Cecilia Pollard – the sister of Charlotte Pollard, the Doctor’s traveling companion when he was last seen before vanishing into the divergent universe. While Romana uneasily agrees to Arkadian’s terms, she can’t speak for the Time Lords’ Celestial Intervention Agency, and no sooner do Narvin and Torvald appear then things start to go disastrously wrong. Time itself jumps the tracks, creating two parallel timelines – and somehow Leela and Cecilia Pollard have become stranded in the newly created alternate history, along with a Time Lord who has his own murderous intentions. Romana and Narvin are left to wring information out of Arkadian – and hope that Leela can gain enough of an awareness of what’s happened to help them heal the timeline. But Leela is preoccupied with a problem of her own: she has found the man she believes to be responsible for her husband’s death, but at a point in his own timeline before he committed the murder. And if killing him now will prevent that from happening, Leela is prepared to do it – and history be damned.
A virus called NFS – Neurotransmitter Failure Syndrome – has swept the galaxy, laying entire populations to waste. Siy Tarkov, after discovering evidence of an impending Dalek invasion, fell victim to NFS after leaving Velyshaa and placed himself in suspended animation after helplessly watching the rest of his crew die. His desperate distress signal, warning of the Dalek approach, has gone undetected…except by a mysterious man named Selestru, who hires a space traveler named Galanar to find Tarkov’s drifting ship and bring Tarkov back. Selestru wants to know more about the Daleks, and he wants to know about the planet Velyshaa, which has fallen off of the galactic star charts and into the realm of myth.
The Doctor and Ace have insinuated themselves into the staff of a London hospital in 2021, trying to discover what they can about a top secret project called “C Program,” which the Doctor suspects is using alien technology. The Doctor’s nasty suspicions about the origins of that technology come into sharp focus when Ace befriends a young medic nicknamed Hex in an effort to find out more about C Program, and a hulking humanoid tries to kill both of them shortly afterward. Ace lets Hex into the TARDIS, and he quickly becomes involved in the time travelers’ plans to find out what’s going on. He might even join Ace and the Doctor for more of their travels, if any of them survive the harvesting of the human race for the organs needed by an invasion force that could overrun Earth in mere weeks.
Galanar, traveling incognito as a doctor, backtracks Siy Tarkov’s two-decade journey, and decides to investigate the planet Skelanis, where “the Healers” are rumored to be fighting the NFS plague. On Graxis Major, when one of Commander Saxton’s crew refuses to obey a Dalek order, the Daleks show their true colors by exterminating him on the spot. Saxton and the surviving Wardens are rounded up and imprisoned, but Saxton stubbornly insists on formulating an escape plan. Without realizing it, Galanar is being spirited away to Skelanis VIII, which the Daleks have “geoformed” and turned into a massive medical facility. Having only heard Tarkov’s word that the Daleks are a force for evil, Galanar wonders if the Daleks – known here as the healers – are as bad as their reputation. And as Selestru continues to demand more information from him, Tarkov wonders precisely who his rescuer and benefactor is.
The Doctor, Peri and Erimem arrive in Tibet in 1917, just in time for a cricket match the Doctor intends to take part in. But he’s soon bowled over by evidence of a great evil at work – a man from a lost expedition appears and kisses Erimem’s hand, and later she is engulfed by a black storm cloud that seems to be able to think for itself. Before the Doctor can reach her, Erimem is snatched away by the cloud, which then vanishes. The same cloud had been spotted earlier on photos of the Himalayans, and had been dismissed, but now the Doctor is racing against time to find out what kind of menace is being dealt with. It may threaten all of Earth, and the Doctor may have to choose between saving humanity or saving his friend.
Selestru takes Tarkov to meet with the leaders of the Galactic Council, warning them of the imminent threat posed by the Daleks, but the warning is dismissed as unfounded hysteria. Selestru’s case isn’t helped by the fact that he hasn’t received any new information from Galanar. Desperate to bring new facts about the Daleks to light, Selestru sends Tarkov and a woman who claims to be his daughter on another intelligence gathering mission. But the chairman of the Council confronts Selestru with proof that the woman with Tarkov may not be who Selestru thinks she is. And when he breaks cover in the heart of the Dalek base on Skelanis VIII, Galanar is captured and brought before the Dalek Supreme, who says that Galanar isn’t who he thinks he is, either.
The Doctor and Evelyn arrive in Scotland, and the Doctor quickly deduces that they’ve arrived at the time of the infamous string of grave robberies attributed to Burke & Hare. But things are not as they should be – the Doctor begins to notice that certain things are out of place, and certain elements of history are not as they should be. The time travelers quickly find out why history seems to be playing out differently than recorded: they’re not the only ones there with a TARDIS.
Galanar is told that he is a creation of the alternate Daleks who emerged from the Project Infinity dimensional rift two millennia ago. Genetically engineered to have abilities beyond normal humans, Galanar is one of the only experiments to survive. And it turns out that someone else on Skelanis VIII is another one of the surviving experiments, a woman named Elaria. Galanar also learns that the Daleks are trying to find the planet Velyshaa. With Elaria’s help, Galanar frees Tarkov – posing as a patient in the Daleks’ treatment center, and the only man alive who has been to Velyshaa and knows how to go back – and together they launch a desperate escape attempt.
Commander Frey Saxton leads a charge against the Daleks, with hundreds of Graxis Wardens as her army and an armed but battered freighter at her disposal. During the attack on Skelanis VIII, Frey’s crew rescues Galanar, Elaria, and Tarkov from a waiting Dalek force. Once aboard Frey’s ship, however, Tarkov turns against his rescuers, believing that they work for the Daleks, until Frey manages to smooth things over and Tarkov agrees to lead the Graxis Wardens to Velyshaa. There, he believes, they will find the final telepathic imprint left by a man called Kalendorf who fought in the last great war against the Daleks, though what information he might have left behind 2,000 years ago is anybody’s guess. Something else that no one can even begin to guess at is the true nature of the cure that the Daleks are offering to the plague sweeping the galaxy.
Notes: One of the Daleks refers to a refueling station called Exxilon Gamma 9 – apparently despite the trouble they encountered on Exxilon during their final clash with the third Doctor, the Daleks prevailed against the planet’s many perils.