Point Of Entry
A strange, scream-like signal from a rogue asteroid leads the Doctor to send a response, which only has the effect of making the asteroid stop and change course toward the TARDIS. To avoid a colliskion, the Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS and arrives in 16th century London, where the strange screaming sound can still be heard. The Doctor and Peri find themselves at a nearby inn with none other than playwright Christopher Marlowe, who is sorting through strange – and possibly unearthly – ideas for a play about Dr. Faustus. Marlowe has been consorting with a Spaniard named Velez, rarely seen in public due to his skin’s habit of falling away from his skeleton, and claims that Velez has shown him the secrets of astral projection, giving him glimpses of unearthly events that now inspire his work. The Doctor suspects that Velez is putting Marlowe under some unearthly influence, and tries to cast doubt on Marlowe’s reliability as a spy for the British government. The accusation only lands the Doctor in the Tower of London, while Peri and one of Marlowe’s actors try to free the playwright from the influence of Velez. When they learn that Velez draws his power from blood sacrifices, they become fast candidates to be Velez’ next victim.
written by Barbara Clegg & Marc Platt
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Steve FoxonCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Matt Addis (Kit Marlowe), Luis Soto (Velez), Sean Connolly (Iguano / Captain Garland), Tam Williams (Tom), Gemma Wardle (Alys), Ian Brooker (Sir Francis Walsingham)
Notes: Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare, though Shakespeare did his most famous works after Marlowe’s peak of popularity, so there are probably no other Doctors around to hear the ominous screaming sound (The Shakespeare Code, City Of Death). In real life, Marlowe’s second career as a British spy has never been confirmed (or, for that matter, officially denied), but is strongly inferred from Marlowe’s extensive travels, which could not have been paid for on a writer’s wage, even with the patronage of the Queen herself. The latter part of the Latin phrase “ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus,” translated in the closing scenes as “where the philosopher leaves off, the doctor begins,” is more accurately translated “the physician begins,” a reference to Marlowe’s character of Dr. Faustus rather than to a certain Time Lord. Point Of Entry was written by Barbara Clegg (Enlightenment) for season 23, and even after the fiasco precipitated by Michael Grade’s attempt to cancel the series, she was asked to rework it back into the more familiar four-25-minute-episode format. When the Trial Of A Time Lord structure was devised, Point Of Entry and other scripts under development were scrapped.
Timeline: after Paradise Five and before Song Of The Megaptera
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor returns to Scotland, finding history changed. The Jacobite uprising has lasted far longer than history records, and the oil well has been developed far ahead of schedule. Someone has begun stripping Scotland of its natural resources, and the fight for freedom is as bloody as ever, decades after it should have ended. Even more surprisingly, after encountering both British occupiers and Scottish freedom fighters, the Doctor is brought before the leader of the Scottish rebellion, Black Donald – a man the Doctor knows as Jamie McCrimmon. Naturally, thanks to the Time Lords wiping Jamie’s memories, Jamie has no idea who this incarnation of the Doctor is. All he knows is the ongoing fight to free his homeland from the domination of the Redcaps and their Overlord. Once Rob Roy turns up in the same time zone – decades before he should even be alive – the Doctor is determined to find out who’s playing fast and loose with human history. But with no idea of who this oddly-dressed English interloper is, Jamie McCrimmon isn’t sure who to trust.
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.
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.
The fifth Doctor visits a Jariden space station where that race is conducting surprisingly advanced experiments in time travel. But the Doctor isn’t the only one with a keen interest in these experiments: a fleet of Dalek ships moves in, and an invasion force boards the station, demanding access to the contents of a sealed vault. And one of the Jaridens, Colonel Ulrik, intends to help the Daleks retrieve what’s in the vault, despite the wishes of his sister, who happens to be the station’s lead scientist. Someone identifying himself only as another Time Lord contacts the Doctor and offers hints of how to resolve the situation, but not any actual help. The sixth Doctor encounters the battle-scarred Colonel Ulrik – at an earlier point in his history – during the bloody battle of Pejorica, in which the Daleks decimated the Jariden species. It seems that the Doctor is pushing Ulric and his race toward a major evolutionary turning point that could help in their struggle against Dalek oppression. The seventh Doctor pays a visit to Michael Faraday, only to find that Ulrik is here as well, followed by a small squadron of Daleks. The small battle that plays out before Faraday’s eyes is almost too much for one of human science’s greatest visionaries. And the eighth Doctor visits the Jariden space station, gently manipulating Ulrik and the fifth Doctor’s actions – and therefore those of his other previous selves – to ensure that the tide of history doesn’t turn to favor the Daleks.
A peaceful visit to early 21st century London becomes less restful for the Doctor and Evelyn when they find themselves pursued by robotic insects with deadly homing instincts. Help comes from an unlikely ally within the police, D.I. Patricia Menzies, pursuing a criminal investigation well outside her home jurisdiction in Manchester. The Doctor has never met Menzies before, but she knows him well, and keeps silent about their past meetings (which take place in his future). Total strangers or not, though, she does need his help in ending the crminal activities of a mysterious gang operating in London. The Doctor and Evelyn quickly find out that the trail leads to a criminal known as the Doctor – described as a fair-haired young man in Edwardian clothes. Though the sixth Doctor is troubled by the thought that another of his incarnations is acting criminally, he follows the clues until he finds out who the other Doctor is: his unethical former companion, Thomas Brewster. Acting as “the Doctor”, Brewster is trying to restore his ability to time travel, and has done a deal with a species from another world. Naturally, what Brewster has failed to take into account is that he himself has been double-crossed by the aliens, who wish to wipe out the human race and take Earth for themselves.
A private expedition from Earth sets out to gain access to the time-looped space parasite Axos, hoping to trap and tame the living space vehicle that once threatened to drain Earth of all life and energy. With Earth now facing a debilitating energy crisis, it is hoped that Axos can be harnessed to transmit energy to Earth from within its time loop. Awakened by the activity in its immediate vicinity, Axos begins making its own plans to regain full strength. “Hijacked” by Thomas Brewster, the TARDIS arrives aboard Axos, and the Doctor is immediately wary of the motivation of the human astronauts trying to revive the being. When not all of the astronauts turn out to be following the same plans, this only serves to intensify the Doctor’s suspicions of them, and Brewster’s ever-changing loyalties make matters even worse. Reawakened, Axos reverses the apparatus designed to bleed its energy off and send it to Earth, instead draning energy from Earth to feed itself. With the unwitting help of the explorers from Earth, and the very willing help of Brewster, will Axos succeed in sucking Earth dry this time?
Recorded Time: The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to the court of King Henry VIII, and the moment he lays eyes on Peri, the King begins making plans to rid himself of Anne Boleyn (and, as soon as he proves to be even slightly argumentative, the Doctor as well). But King Henry has another secret, one that could rearrange history at his whim – one which the Doctor must put to an end.
Reunited with his old friends, theatre impresario Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot, the sixth Doctor whisks them away in the TARDIS for a brief adventure, landing on the planet Venus in that world’s terraformed future. The Venusians – mostly women – who inhabit the second planet of the solar system are distant descendants of humanity, having fled ecological disaster on Earth. The Venusians are in turmoil, their chief scientist having died under mysterious circumstances. When her replacement continues her work, she too finds herself in the crosshairs of the Venusian Empress, Vulpina. The Doctor discovers that the future of the Venusian transplants from Earth is in peril, and offers his help, only to find that anyone who has discovered this secret is marked for death.