Eye Of The Scorpion
As the Doctor is trying to show Peri how to find her way around the TARDIS, something yanks the timeship violently off-course. By the time they reach the console room, however, the TARDIS has landed, depositing them in the sands of Egypt around 1400 B.C. Worse yet, as soon as they step outside the doors, they spot a young woman in a chariot being chased by the driver of another chariot. At Peri’s urging, the Doctor lends his assistance, saving the girl’s life – and earning both of the time travelers the favor of Erimem, the Pharaoh-in-waiting. But the Doctor is concerned – he can’t remember a female Pharaoh from this time period, and the other chariot’s driver was trying to kill her. Erimem asks the Doctor and Peri to accompany her to Thebes, where she plans to honor their heroics with a banquet, but only more court intrigue awaits them, including an assassination attempt thwarted by the Doctor, and the presence of an alien mind who can take humans – willing or unwilling – as hosts.
written by Iain McLaughlin
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Caroline Morris (Erimem), Jonathan Owen (Antranak), Stephen Perring (Horemshep), Harry Myers (Yanis), Jack Galagher (Fayum), Daniel Brennan (Kishik), Mark Wright (Slave)
Timeline: after Red Dawn and before No Place Like Home
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor, Peri and Erimem visit an alien market square – Erimem’s first adventure on a world other than Earth – where Erimem stumbles across information that leads her to suggest a visit to the Nekromanteia system. The Doctor goes along with the idea, unaware that he’s landing himself and his companions in the midst of a grim war – between a well-armed corporate entity and a coven of powerful witches – which has been plotted out from the beginning by an unscrupulous businessman seeking immortality for himself.
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.
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.
A diversion in the time vortex throws the TARDIS off course, toward a rough landing on a distant backwater world. The Doctor steps out of the doors and almost immediately blacks out. When he comes to, he is stunned to find that he is being tended to by Peri, who he hasn’t seen since the ill-timed intervention of the Time Lords whisked him away for his trial and left her helpless – 19 years ago in her personal history. She escaped her situation and obtained a spacecraft, but it crash-landed here months ago. She also claims that the Doctor was found unconscious after falling off of a mountain ledge. To make matters worse, the TARDIS has been confiscated by the local religious leader, who has placed it in the village temple and claims it is the vessel of the villagers’ goddess. When the Doctor finally gains access to that temple – normally denied to those not instructed in the local faith – he’s horrified to see that the TARDIS’ outer shell has been critically damaged, leaking chronon radiation and causing deadly time distortions. The only way the Doctor may be able to save this society – and Peri – is to give up his travels and set the TARDIS to self-destruct…assuming the villagers will let him.
After her ordeal in Tibet, Erimem is uncertain of whether she wishes to continue traveling with the Doctor and Peri. The TARDIS arrives on Space Station Medusa, orbiting over a distant world that is the home to Earth Colony Phoenix. Protected from the inhospitable surface of the planet by their artificial habitats, the colonists live and work in isolated quarters, travel only by transmat, and virtually never share space with each other. After she and Peri find what appears to be a nest of enormous eggs, Erimem accidentally activates a transmat port and finds herself beamed to Earth Colony Phoenix, into the quarters of a man who has never met another human being in his adult life. The Doctor and Peri are taken by an android to meet the leader of the Phoenix colony, who insists that nothing is wrong – even though Peri later learns that the colony, capable of supporting thousands, is down to only 16 people. Soon, the Doctor learns the grisly truth: a species of aliens known as the Khellians is also lurking on both the colony and the station, and has slowly harvested the human population for food until the colonists are nearly extinct.
The Doctor, Peri and Erimem arrive to witness the Roman Empire’s first attempt to determine the people’s choice of an official religious belief. But Erimem is deeply offended when she sees that persecution and tyranny are interfering in the process – the will of the people may, in fact, never see the light of day. She vouches her support for Arius in an open session of the council, enraging the Emperor Constantine and putting Peri and the Doctor’s lives in danger. The Doctor warns Erimem against trying to reshape history to suit her beliefs and her sense of justice, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. After all, to Erimem, the 4th century A.D. is in her distant future, and she doesn’t have to live with its past.
It’s Monte Carlo, 1966, and Peri and Erimem are on an assignment: the Doctor has sent them to steal the Veiled Leopard, a spectacular diamond with unusual markings at its center. But this time, the TARDIS travelers are on their own, and the Doctor isn’t there to help them deal with someone else who’s there for the same reason, to say nothing of the other shady characters populating the casino. Two of the other guests in particular stick out like a sore thumb, which is an odd coincidence, because their names are Hex and Ace – and they’ve been sent by the Doctor to make sure that nobody steals the Veiled Leopard.
A Shakespeare premiere goes awry when Peri and Erimem wind up drawing too much attention to themselves, but that’s not as incongruous as the Doctor attempting to drink the Bard himself under the table during a heated argument over historical accuracy, specifically with regards to the fate of the two princes in the Tower of London. The Doctor, after clearing his head, decides to investigate the matter for himself, but the TARDIS is in the hands of an impaired driver – a temporal “hiccup” strands Erimem and Peri in the right place, but two years before the Doctor’s arrival. The Doctor is brought before Richard III, and is disturbed to find himself in the presence of a King who is not only aware of time travel, but of the Doctor himself. Peri and Erimem set out to solve the mystery for themselves in the Doctor’s absence, but they find no princes in the Tower – instead, they become the Tower’s two captives, changing history with nearly everything they say or do…no matter how hard they try not to.
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to Baltimore, 1984 – four months since, as far as her family and friends know, Peri disappeared without a trace at Lanzarote. Far from being a happy reunion, Peri’s arrival coincides with the apparent murder of Anthony Chambers, her best friend’s father. Peri discovers that her friends and her mother aren’t exactly overjoyed to see her. The Doctor becomes interested in Chambers’ death, and when he discovers the Cybermen are behind the incident, he wonders why they’ve targeted one man. Even when the Doctor thinks he’s close to solving the mystery, it’s putting Peri, her mother and her friends into mortal danger.
The Doctor and Peri arrive at a pleasant resort in 1913, meeting an assortment of fellow vacationers, few of whom are actually on vacation. Inspector Chardalot is pursuing a quarry he considers very dangerous, and Nurse Albertine is visiting in the company of a fellow vacationer who prefers not to show his face. That face is exactly what Miss Bultitude, a movie buff, would like to see. And the reason one of the vacationers isn’t showing his face? He’s Toby the Sapient Pig, a reclusive film star who is, in actuality, a sentient pig. But Toby’s not the only pig present, and his pursuers (whether adversaries or admirers) will stop at nothing to find him. Caught up in this collision of personalities and motives, the Doctor and Peri can do little but try to keep themselves, and anyone nearby, from coming to harm.
Aboard a cargo ship buffeted by the high seas during a storm, the Doctor and Peri go from being cautiously welcomed guests to murder suspects when a member of the crew is killed. The ship’s captain orders the Doctor locked up pending his court-martial…but when his own chief mate protests that the Doctor isn’t even a member of the ship’s company and crew, the captain drafts him into service to replace the ship’s missing doctor (reasoning that now the Doctor can undergo a court-martial and subsequent execution). Peri tends to a wheelchair-bound girl who receives periodic “treatments” from the chief mate, discovering that the girl is a captive specimen of a species thought to exist only in myths. Her people will be coming to rescue her soon…but will they make the distinction between the girl’s corrupt captor and everyone else on board the ship?
Exotron: The TARDIS arrives at a distant human colony, and the Doctor is ready to be off again, but Peri is still sampling the local flora. When they meet their first exotron, however, both of the time travelers are ready to go. The enormous, remotely-operated mechanical men – or at least whoever is controlling them – takes a keen interest in the Doctor’s scientific knowledge. An exotron snatches up the Doctor and simply walks away with him in hand, while Peri encounters some human colonists and barely survives a meeting with the local fauna. The Doctor finds that the exotrons are powered by telepathy, or in this case, the machine-enhanced telepathy of a man who seems to have something to hide. The Doctor decides to use his own mental powers to level the playing field, but doing so may put his own survival, and Peri’s, at risk.