Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
During the Falklands War, the chemical gas weapon Gravonax was tested on one of the small Hebrides Islands in Scotland. All wildlife on the isle - which was dubbed Gravonax Island - died, and nobody wanted to live there even after it was decontaminated. Major Dickens and a female military chaplain, a.k.a. “the Deacon”, left the British army after “a bit of an incident”. The secluded Gravonax Island was perfect for Dickens’ scientific research, and he took up residence there.
[539]
A Cyber-Leader, potentially the last of its kind, arrived from the far future in a Gallifreyan time-ship. The Cyber-Leader was greatly weakened by exposure to Vortex energy, but continued its scheme to trap the Doctor.
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1982 (April) - Relative Dementias
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Joyce Brunner, a former UNIT physicist, came to suspect abnormal activity at the Graystairs nursing home. She alerted her old colleague the Doctor (who was now in his seventh incarnation), who arrived with Ace to investigate. The head of Graystairs - the Annarene named Sooal - restored the Tulk war council’s memories, then murdered the group upon obtaining the command codes to the Tulk stasis chamber. Two renegade Annarene arrived and killed Sooal, desiring the advanced weaponry within the stasis chamber to return their people to war. The Doctor tricked the Annarene into transmatting into the stasis chamber before it was opened, freezing them in time. He then destroyed the Tulk spaceship.
The ninth Doctor had a number of blind spots in his historical knowledge, the events of May 1982 among them.
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After two years of the eighth Doctor attempting to interrogate him, the imprisoned alien Sallak got a legal injunction preventing the Doctor from making any other contact.
[543]
Isaac Summerfield met Hamlet Macbeth in 1982, and was given a copy of his book
The Shoreditch Incident
.
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1982 (11th July) - Living Legend
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Two agents of the aggressive Threllip race constructed an interdimensional portal in Ferrara, Italy, as a means for their people to invade Earth. The eighth Doctor and Charley squashed the plan, and used the portal to strand the agents on the seventeenth moon of Mordalius Prime.
The Doctor spent time with Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment at Robbin Island.
[546]
Melanie Bush left school after getting five A-Levels. She backpacked around Europe before getting a job at a Scottish nature reserve. Around the same time, SenéNet was buying up European computer firms and other youth market companies. Their executives were converted into drones.
[547]
Peri Brown attended a Slayer concert.
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In Baltimore, Peri was friends throughout her school years with the Chambers family. The father, Anthony Chambers, kept Peri and his children amused by letting them use a telescope. Peri briefly dated Nate Chambers, and became best friends with his sister Kathy.
[549]
Ronald Turvey resented that children grew to become adults and, motivated by the Tinghus within him, schemed to kill all adults with Cuddlesomes: fluffy toys akin to pink vampire hamsters, but equipped with an extra-terrestrial poison. Cuddlesomes were
the
toy to get in the 1980s, and three million were produced. The radio signal intended to release the poison was never sent, as Turvey was arrested for tax fraud and imprisoned for two decades.
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The Doctor in Stockbridge
Around 1983, the fifth Doctor settled in the Gloucestershire village of Stockbridge for a time, a guest at the Green Dragon Inn. He had volunteered to investigate time warps on behalf of the Time Lords. After a number of interruptions, he learned that the time warps had been triggered by the Meddling Monk.
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The Doctor was head of the Stockbridge Chess Society.
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(=) c 1983 - “The Tides of Time”
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The Prime Mover produced the ordered vibrations of the universe on a vast biomechanical device known as the Event Synthesiser. For the first time in centuries, he fumbled a note, introducing a note of discord. Time warps occurred. The fifth Doctor had been staying in Stockbridge for some time, and was playing a cricket match on the village green when he was bowled a hand grenade instead of a cricket ball. Shortly afterwards, a Roman soldier was shot in nearby woods, only to vanish. The Doctor quickly learned the disturbances were worldwide.
Meanwhile, the Event Synthesiser’s discord had opened a gap in time, and the Demon Melanicus emerged through it. He took control of the Event Synthesizer in order to create universal fear, destruction and unending chaos.
A jousting knight - Sir Justin - initially attacked the Doctor, but came to realise his error and vowed to help fight whoever was behind the time warps. Melanicus removed the Event Synthesizer from time to prevent attack, but was detected by the spirit of Rassilon deep in the Matrix. He vowed to act, despite advice from Morvane and Bedevere to be cautious. Rassilon decided to operate through the Doctor, who arrived on Gallifrey and used his Presidential authority to access the Matrix. The Doctor entered the Matrix to commune with Rassilon, and saw him chairing a meeting of the High Evolutionaries from a number of planets.
The High Evolutionaries tasked the Doctor with locating the Event Synthesizer. Rassilon despatched a mysterious agent named Shayde to help the Doctor. Melanicus’ interference created the maelstrom - a whirlpool in space and time - and sent a mantric bomb against Gallifrey. Shayde protected the Doctor from its effects, but the TARDIS was sucked into Melanicus’ domain: a surreal world where the Doctor and Justin encountered a carnival, a mysterious woman that the Doctor recognised, a demonic fairground ride, barbarian hordes and Dracula.
Emerging from Melanicus’ domain, the Doctor took the TARDIS out of time to help his search. He re-entered time, then encountered a ship from Althrace which took them to their home in an alien dimension - a vast solar system engineered so that the planets were bolted together and set orbiting a white hole. The technology of Althrace was as advanced as that of the Time Lords, and the white hole allowed direct access to the forces of creation, making them one vast, living organism. Using the power of the White Hole, the High Evolutionaries combined their mental force to halt time and discover the co-ordinates of the Event Synthesizer. Meanwhile, Melanicus had ushered in the Millenium Wars:
The Millenium Wars
“A thousand worlds in conflict for a thousand years .. with causes lost in the distant past, their fury rages through time and space...”
In the year 375, barbarian hordes from Asia swept into Central Europe... and were wiped out by a division of Nazi tanks... which in turn were wiped out by American F-15 fighters... which in turn were wiped out by advanced space fighters.
“This was the beginning of the Reign of Melanicus as millenium fought millenium... and so what began as a series of small, confused skirmishes soon escalated into a holocaust of conflict, culminating in a far-flung armageddon - the Millenium Wars! A thousand worlds in conflict for a thousand years.”
(=) “The Deal”
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The fourth Doctor caused a trooper of the 12th Trouble ’chuters to crash. The trooper set his robot “spider” on him, but the Doctor blocked its psychic attack. A pursuit ship arrived, firing missiles at the TARDIS. The Doctor realised that the trooper was a psychopath and left, abandoning him to death at the hands of another pursuit ship.
(=) “The Tides of Time”
But due to his lack of knowledge, Melanicus had confined himself to a cul-de-sac in time. This was to prove his undoing.
After a thousand years of the Millenium Wars, Earth was ruined and lifeless. Melanicus had based the Synthesizer here, and the fifth Doctor located it. The Doctor and Shayde weakened Melanicus, and Justin pierced the demon with his sword, unleashing vast energies. Justin and Melanicus were killed, and the Prime Mover was restored to his rightful place as user of the Event Synthesizer.
The Doctor awoke to find time restored, and a memorial to the fallen knight in the church in Stockbridge: St Justinians. As Shayde watched the cricket game resume, the Doctor was unsure if it had all been a dream.
c 1983 - “Stars Fell on Stockbridge”
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UFO spotter Maxwell Edison discovered the TARDIS, and inspired the fifth Doctor to detect an alien spacecraft two days from Earth. They went to the ship, which was deserted and had been drifting for thousands of years. There was some sort of haunting presence on board, but the ship was already heading for Earth’s atmosphere. The Doctor and Maxwell returned to Earth, from where Maxwell watched the shooting stars caused by the ship’s break-up.
No human space agency had any space labs in orbit.
c 1983 - “The Stockbridge Horror”
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A local limestone quarry unearthed the TARDIS in rock five hundred million years old. Nearby, a police constable discovered a charred body.
The fifth Doctor, still staying at the Green Dragon Inn, saw a report from the quarry. He ran to where he had left the TARDIS - Well’s Wood - and found it was still there, covered in mud. He went to the quarry, but couldn’t get to the mysterious buried police box. Well’s Wood caught fire, and the Doctor - upon returning to the TARDIS - discovered an alien figure that could shoot jets of fire.
The Doctor dematerialised his Ship, but the alien clung to the TARDIS, then forced its way inside. It stalked the Doctor, who realised it was the presence he’d recently encountered on the deserted spaceship. The Gallifreyan military dispatched Lord Tubal Cain in a specially adapted TARDIS, while Shayde trapped the alien in the Matrix. Cain fired seeker torpedoes at the TARDIS... which landed on Gallifrey moments after they hit the homeworld.
While the Doctor faced trial on Gallifrey, the government agency SAG3 investigated the TARDIS. Shayde neutralised them, and erased the imprint of the TARDIS just as the military TARDIS landed. The Doctor was freed.
c 1983 - Arc of Infinity
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Omega had relocated the Arc of Infinity - a gateway between dimensions - away from the star system Rondel and placed its curve on the city of Amsterdam. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa tracked Omega to Amsterdam, and found Omega’s base in a crypt there. The ancient Gallifreyan’s attempt to bond with the Doctor failed, and he apparently died. Tegan Jovanka joined the Doctor’s travels once again.
Omega recorporealised enough to stow himself aboard the TARDIS of Ertikus, a Time Lord who arrived in this period to study Omega’s exploits. Ertikus’ TARDIS relocated to the far future with Omega aboard.
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Before this time, the Arar-Jecks of Heiradi had carved out a huge subterranean city during the 20-Aeon War on that planet.
[559]
The seventh Doctor and Ace fought an N-form by the Rio Yari in 1983.
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Jo Jones lived with the Nambiquara tribe from the Mato Grosso for about six months in 1983.
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The Doctor collected some oolong tea in Peking in either 1983 or 1893.
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c 1983 - Hexagora
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The Hexagora, a nomadic insect species, had settled on Luparis - the third planet of Proxima Centauri. A global cooling event prevented the Hexagorans from moving on - to survive, they required mammalian bodies. Humans were abducted from Earth via spacepods, and the Hexagorans swapped minds with them, leaving their insectoid bodies in hibernation. The humanised Hexagorans constructed a city, Lupara, based upon schematics they had taken of Tudor London.
The fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa relaxed in Tegan’s hometown, near Brisbane, when Tegan learned that her friend Mike Bretherton had been abducted. They followed Bretherton’s trail to Luparis. Queen Zafira recognised that human bodies didn’t live long enough to survive the Luparis winter, and so decreed that she and the Doctor would marry and sire longer-lived offspring. The Doctor convinced Zafira that the collective Hexagoran memory pool, the Hexagon, was fragmenting because they were inhabiting human bodies. He aided them in returning to their insectoid forms, and relocating to a warmer world. The abducted humans, most of whom had slept in stasis, were returned to Earth seconds after they left.
There was civil war on Trion. Turlough’s mother was killed and the ship containing his father and brother crashed on Sarn, formerly a Trion prison planet. Turlough was captured and exiled to Brendon School on Earth, where Trion agents, including a solicitor on Chancery Lane, watched him.
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Deela’s father was on the winning side of the civil war, and had seen to it that Turlough was exiled.
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