Return Of The Krotons
The Doctor and Charley arrive in the far future, on a far-flung human colony world. What they find there is troubling: the colony’s command structure is breaking down, and the colony’s leader is directing all of his attention toward the hunt for an elusive but valuable mineral called K7…even to the point of disposing of those who question his all-consuming obsession. When the Doctor and Charley show up asking questions, they find themselves at the top of the shortlist of people likely to disappear without a trace. An attempt to dispose of them via a convenient (but, of course, regrettable) underground explosion doesn’t kill them, but instead reveals a spacecraft that’s been buried on this planet for centuries. The spacecraft’s technology is crystalline, much like K7, and only then does the Doctor realize that he’s up against not only a despotic colony leader, but a very old enemy indeed.
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charlotte Pollard), Philip Madoc (Rag Cobden), Matthew Burgess (Ned Gillespie), Susan Brown (Eleanor Harvey), Glynn Sweet (Professor Lyle Woodruff), Ian Brooker (Romilly), Andrew Dickens (Security), Nicholas Briggs (The Krotons)
Timeline: after Brotherhood Of The Daleks and before The Raincloud Man
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
In the aftermath of their fateful visit to near-future Manchester, the Doctor and Charley are at odds – the Time Lord doesn’t trust his companion’s story about not remembering her past, and she remains frustratingly tight-lipped. But before they can continue their conversation any further, Charley falls ill, and the Doctor is forced to take her to the TARDIS’ Zero Room to stabilize her. She has contracted some kind of virus, and the Doctor sets the TARDIS on a course for the Amethyst Viral Containment Station, a massive space station devoted to preserving – in complete isolation – samples of every virus known to exist; if the cure for Charley’s illness can be found anywhere, it will be here. But shortly after the time travelers arrive at Amethyst, each of them faces a dilemma. Charley isn’t alone in her own mind, which is now being shared with a chatty being named Mila, who claims that she has been with the Doctor, in noncorporeal form, since his first incarnation. And the Doctor is horrified to discover that two invasion forces are converging on Amethyst: a Dalek strike force seeking ammunition for viral warfare, and a Viyran ship whose crew will stop at nothing to stop the Daleks’ mission. Anyone caught in the crossfire is unlikely to find mercy. And Charley is losing the battle for control of her own mind and body…
The Doctor receives a summons from the Red Emperor of Draconia for an important state event; the TARDIS materializes and the Doctor discovers that the occasion is the Emperor’s own funeral and a vigil held in advance of the announcement of his successor. The time travelers haven’t even arrived on Draconia itself, but rather in the spaceborne tomb of the late Emperor, floating alongside the tombs of previous rulers of Draconia in deep space. Others are in the Emperor’s tomb as well: his late wife (and high priestess), his son (presumably heir to the throne), a lowly fisherman, a mercenary, and most alarmingly, the recently-murdered prefect who had come to deliver the decree of succession which would reveal the identity of the next Emperor. With aliens and commoners at odds with the nobles and their usual court intrigue, nerves are frayed and tempers flare. But elsewhere in this tomb lies an even deadlier threat – a dark secret that has outlived every Emperor of Draconia, and may now outlive everyone aboard the Emperor’s tomb, including the Doctor and Charley.
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Charley – actually Mila in Charley’s body – to future Earth, where the human race is divided into a technologically and scientifically competent caste and a larger tribe of vicious nomads. Infected with something that both sides simply know as “the madness,” the nomadic humans have regressed to a feral state. The only thing keeping the madness at bay for the more civilized pockets of humanity is a vaccine provided by the Viyrans. When the Doctor and Mila/Charley are scanned by the humans for traces of the madness, the Viyrans are very interested in Mila and send a ship to Earth – a ship that also happens to contain the real Charley, alive and well. Now a number of truths must come out: that the Viyrans are terminating their support of the human race and will soon terminate the entire species, that Mila is not really Charley, and that Charley is from the Doctor’s own future – and traveling with him his created a potentially deadly paradox with implications that reach far beyond the TARDIS.
The Doctor is startled when a flashing red light appears on the TARDIS console. The surprise isn’t that the light has never flashed before, but that it is there at all, where there was no light on the console before. And it’s not just one Doctor, but all of the Doctor’s incarnations.