Primeval
Nyssa has fallen critically ill, and the Doctor has brought her to her home world of Traken 3,000 years before her birth (and its destruction), desperate to find someone who specializes in Traken medicine. Unaccustomed to visitors, the Consuls of Traken are alarmed by the presence of the Doctor and Nyssa, but as with virtually every decision in this era of their recent history, they defer to the wisdom of the Source…only it seems to refuse to render a decision for them. The Doctor is told to leave and take Nyssa with him, dying or not. Unable to appeal to the Consuls, the Doctor takes his plea for help to Kwundaar, a telepathic being who has been trying to take over the Union of Traken for centuries. But Kwundaar’s price for saving Nyssa’s life is steep – the Doctor must give him the means to invade Traken and enslave its people. Still certain he can find a way to save Nyssa without allowing Kwundaar and his fanatical pirates to overrun Traken, the Doctor tries to play both sides against the middle, unaware that Kwundaar has forseen his actions – and has taken full advantage of them.
written by Lance Parkin
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell StoneCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Stephen Greif (Kwundaar), Susan Penhaligon (Shayla), Ian Hallard (Sabian), Billy Miller (Captain Narthex), Romy Tennant (Lt. Anona), Marc Woolgar (Hyrca), Rita Davies (Janneus), Alistair Lock (Foster Etrayk)
Timeline: after The Mutant Phase and before Spare Parts
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
On a momentary sidestep after dropping Gravis off harmlessly on an isolated planetoid where it can no longer harm the people of Frontios, the Doctor arrives on Artaris, a primitive world where he meets a gruff warlord named Grayvorn. Grayvorn is en route to a convent whose nuns are entrusting him on a quest for an unidentified Relic. But the Doctor is horrified to learn that the nuns have taken on a new visitor: the irrepressible Time Lady known as Iris Wildthyme, the Doctor’s sometimes old flame and sometimes nuisiance. To make matters even worse, the convent’s Mother Superior has entrusted the only known map leading to the Relic to Iris, and insists that the troublesome time traveler accompany Grayvorn on that quest, with another nun, Sister Jolene, in tow. The Doctor, smelling trouble, tags along, and finds himself more than once keeping Grayvorn and Iris from each other’s throats. The Doctor is also suspicious of Sister Jolene’s motives for coming on the trip – and indeed, those of the Mother Superior who is behind the quest. Is the search for the Relic a deadly trap, or a true holy quest which may require terrible sacrifices of those who undertake it?
The Doctor is giving Erimem a tour around the TARDIS, but begins to lose track of where he is inside his own ship. When the timeship’s power fades, the Doctor knows that some outside force is acting on his TARDIS… or is it something on the inside? The Doctor and Erimem discover that a new life form has evolved within the TARDIS itself, and finally it has gained the sentience and knowledge required to take control. The Doctor hopes he can reason with the being, but the creature seems to have other ideas…
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.
The Doctor parks the TARDIS in orbit of the planet Veln to make some minor repairs, when his time vehicle is further damaged by a toxic gas leaking from a nearby freighter on a collision course. He slips the TARDIS forward by a century and sets down on Veln, finding that the atmosphere is saturated with the same deadly gas. He goes to warn the residents of a nearby mansion of the danger, and leaves Nyssa at the TARDIS. A young woman approaches Nyssa, armed with a scalpel and intent on committing suicide. When the authorities arrive, Nyssa is charged with murder, taken to Veln’s central security block, and is interrogated brutally. The Doctor’s attempts to help are blocked by Lady Forleon, who owns the mansion and seems to have a secret of her own to keep – and her agenda may or may not include preventing the Doctor from trying to rescue Nyssa. In the meantime, blood tests have revealed that Nyssa is an alien, throwing Gilbrook, a Veln security officer, into an increasing state of paranoia. Veln’s own past history with alien visitors hasn’t been pleasant, what with the Koteem freighter which, four generations ago, veered off course to avoid a collision and fatally polluted Veln’s atmosphere…
Having learned its lessons from time-traveling history tour lines of the past, Jolly Chronolidays opts instead to recreate history for its customers. One of its tours takes travelers on a visit to the Sector of Forgotten Souls, the very spot where the pioneering Time Lord Omega detonated – and then captured in mid-explosion – the star that became the source of Gallifrey’s power. But the unique dimensional instabilities of the sector have unintended side effects – the actor who portrays Omega’s ill-fated assistant Vandikirian goes mad, convinced that the real Omega is trying to kill him, and when he turns up dead it seems he wasn’t entirely mistaken in that fear. The Doctor, who has been along for the tour, is puzzled when his investigation of the man’s death dead-ends without a suspect. He’s even more alarmed when he begins hearing the voice of Omega himself, urging him to help the fallen Time Lord escape from his dimension of anti-matter. But will he be able to help Omega when it begins to look like the Doctor himself committed the murder?
Imbued with the energy of anti-time and possessed by the power-mad Zagreus, the Doctor wrestles for self-control and terrifies Charley into hiding within the TARDIS. A familiar face appears to Charley as she hides – the Brigadier, or, more precisely, a TARDIS-projected simulation of Lethbridge-Stewart intended to help her. Its method of doing so, however, is unorthodox to put it mildly: Charley must divine the true nature of the increasingly disastrous situation from a series of metaphors, ranging from her own childhood to a visit to Gallifrey’s past to an insane amusement park where animatronic cartoon characters are slaughtering one another. The Doctor, too, hears from some familiar voices in his own past, coaxing him to regain control of his own mind. But all too late, the Doctor realizes that his body and soul are not Zagreus’ only battleground, and the real battle for the fate of the entire universe is only now being joined.
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.
The Doctor brings the TARDIS to the planet Cray, at a point in history where one of his heroes, famed peace negotiator Lord Darzil Carlisle, is about to broker peace talks between the Gora and Lineen nations. But before the Doctor can watch Carlisle in action, he’s drafted into playing a hockey-like game called Naxy. The training is exhaustive, but once the Doctor is out on the field for his first real game, he discovers the true nature of Naxy – it’s close-quarters combat to the death, with thousands of lives hanging in the balance. Nyssa, forced to watch the Doctor compete as the Naxy match is broadcast live across Cray, discovers the horrible truth: Naxy has evolved from a popular sport into Cray’s form of warfare – and the Doctor, who hoped to witness the peace process without having to participate in it, has now unwittingly taken sides as a combatant. And Carlisle is powerless to stop it.
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.
A time displacement brings the TARDIS down for a hard landing in 21st century Moscow, stranding the Doctor and Turlough there until they can find the source of the distortion and put an end to it. While Turlough complains bitterly about the cold, the Doctor explores the enormous glass tower erected by the mysterious Somnus Foundation. Turlough hears a woman’s cries for help, and despite trying to talk himself out of it, runs to help her, finding that she’s looking for her brother, who has gone missing after joining the cult-like Foundation. The Doctor and Turlough help her get to safety, and become even more interested in her stories of the Somnus Foundation causing its enemies to “disappear.” The Foundation claims to be advancing human evolution, but the Doctor soon discovers that it’s something much more twisted than that – something that will bring power that the human race isn’t ready for.
Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Eve Polycarpou (Qel), Maitland Chandler (Seo), Michael Cuckson (Cord), Natasha Radski (Lena Korolev), Oleg Mirochnikov (Alexi Korolev), Max Bollinger (Pavel Fedorin), Dominika Boon (Natalia Pushkin), Billy Miller (Tev), Marq English (Xen)