The Time Destroyer

by the D'Arce

A sequel to the Five Doctors television programme made back in the 1980's. The Doctor has been taken out of time, throughout all his regenerations, by an unknown adversary who will stop at nothing to destroy the Doctor and, in turn, the Universe.

Doctor Who: The Time Destroyer

By Paul D'Arcy

Based on the Original Role Playing Game Developed By Ryan Blake

Episode 1

The Doctor sat on the floor of the Tardis, ignoring the soft hum coming from the moving Time Column as he carefully cleaned his beloved recorder. The Tardis had just left Regulon Alpha, or as some people called it, the planet of eternal relaxation, which was the reason for his going there in the first place.

He blew through the opening at the top of the mouthpiece and inspected it, peering through the disconnected section. Then he fished out a handkerchief. Tipping over the mouthpiece, he gently scrubbed inside its circular connection. That was always the trouble with delicate instruments. They had to be meticulously clean if they were to function properly.

The Doctor stood and took off his black frock coat, hanging it up on the nearby coat stand next to his big, brown hairy overcoat.

'Hmph. I wish the Tardis was like that!' he mused out loud, smiling at the thought.

His Tardis, though clean, never quite brought him exactly where he wanted, which sometimes troubled him. Still, the old girl had never let him down.

Not when it was important, at least.

He sat down again and was about to reconnect the mouthpiece to the rest of the recorder when the Tardis bucked wildly. The Doctor tumbled across the floor as the console coughed a distorted variation of its normal engine noise. All light in the room gradually diminished as the Doctor tried to stand. The Tardis rumbled again, and he was thrown against the console. He gripped its edge while his eyes scanned the controls. There seemed to be some kind of power drain in the Tardis circuitry.

He flicked a couple of switches and the main scanner on the wall opened, revealing the magnificent, incandescent swirling of a space-time vortex. It looked to him just like a hurricane storm in space. The Tardis had obviously gotten caught in it, and he wasn't certain he could get clear.

He checked the readings again, and felt nervous tension creep up his spine. He had only a fraction of the power necessary to blast clear of the phenomenon. Even if he deleted some rooms in the Tardis to provide extra thrust, it wasn't going to be enough.

Which meant he was done for.

Unless…

Gulping once to work moisture into his mouth, he steered towards the eye of the hurricane. Hopefully, it would be as tranquil as its Earth counterpart. The Tardis continued to shake violently as the ship moved into the centre of the vortex.

It bucked once more, and the Doctor held on tightly to the side of the almost-dark console. It shook again, and was still. For a moment all was silent, until an alarm went off on the console before him.

'The proximity alarm? What in all the Galaxies could-?'

He refocused the wall scanner and stared, absolutely astonished. There, on the screen before him, were two vessels that looked at once identical, and totally familiar to him.

Two identical Tardises were gently revolving around in the eye of the storm.

'Oh, my giddy aunt!'

Two things occurred to him just then.

One was that this sort of thing shouldn't happen to him unless it was extremely serious. The other, was that the occupants of those vehicles were just about as happy to see him as he was to see them.

He flew his Tardis to a gap between the others and flicked the comm system on. The screen changed to show a blurry, split-view of both vessels.

One side showed a tall, curly-haired man in his late thirties, wearing a scarlet overcoat and an incredibly long scarf that he didn't recognise. The other was a silver haired man in his fifties in a blue velvet smoking jacket and a frilly shirt. He recognised him instantly, of course.

'Having a little engine trouble are we?' he asked agitatedly.

'Oh, no! What the devil are you two doing here?' asked the curly-haired giant.

'It wasn't my doing, I assure you!' replied his third incarnation.

'Obviously, we're here by accident,' the second Doctor argued.

'Ah, well. That might be what you think,' the young curly-haired man smiled widely at them both. 'However, I have a different and altogether better understanding of the situation.'

'Hang on a minute,' the third Doctor growled. 'Which one of me are you?'

'I'm the third regeneration, which means, incidentally, I'm the most experienced.'

'Now see here…' the second Doctor barked back.

'Listen, you addled-minded…'

But the fourth Doctor was having none of it. He held up a hand and motioned with his lips for them to stop.

'It's no good screaming at me like a couple of banshees! It's just that I've been here before.' The fourth Doctor looked back at them with raised eyebrows. 'Don't you know where you are?'

The second doctor looked at the third, who shrugged his shoulders slightly.

'No. Where are we?' they both asked.

Ah!' the fourth Doctor roared. 'Well, it's not so much a matter of where we are, more where we could end up.'

'Where could we end up?' they both asked again.

The fourth Doctor smiled broadly.

'Why, gentlemen, this time vortex leads to the Death Zone on Gallifrey!'

'Do you mean that this vortex, or whatever it is, will eventually deposit us on Gallifrey?'

The third Doctor stared at his future self with a mixture of curiosity and irritation.

'But that's impossible, surely!' argued the second Doctor.

The third Doctor glanced at the little figure in the black frock coat on the screen, believing his assessment to be spot on.

'I hate to admit it, but I agree with the scarecrow.'

Despite the communications interference, the fuzzy image of the second Doctor stood ramrod straight and scowled at him.

'I do wish you'd stop calling me that! You're so…impossible!'

The fourth Doctor smiled again.

'Yes, I find that the impossible is generally a word used because of people's lack of imagination.'

The Doctor took in a deep breath as his future-self continued.

'The last time I was here, I wasn't in the Tardis. My physical self merged, if you like, with the vortex itself. Now, unfortunately, I didn't end up on Gallifrey at all.'

'We know. We've been to the Death Zone ourselves,' the third Doctor leaned back against the console and folded his arms. 'In fact, we rescued you!'

'For which I'm eternally grateful,' the fourth Doctor smiled again. 'However, the last time I was in here, I was obviously protected by a multi-phasic triangular stasis field which protected me from the vortex. I'd assumed that whoever used old Rassillon's Timescoop was intentionally trying to keep me here…'

'…Thus endangering the next regeneration's temporal existence, and therefore drag him into the Death Zone, too.' the second Doctor finished for him.

'Precisely! But during my…imprisonment, another field of energy, one of considerably lower power, latched onto me and kept me in a stable position, at least in a physical sense, of course.'

The third Doctor glanced at both his selves on the screen, unsure where this was leading.

'Looking through some of the Old Gallifreyan archives afterwards,' continued the fourth Doctor, 'I realised that this secondary power field emanated from Gallifrey itself.'

"So, if we generate a powerful enough multiphasic triangular field from here,' considered the second Doctor, 'we could escape using the vortex's own waves of space-time displacement. It would be like a surfboard, riding the crest of a wave!'

The third Doctor could almost see the light bulb going off inside the second Doctor's head. 'Exactly,' the fourth Doctor beamed at them both. 'Unfortunately, I don't have enough power to generate such a field.'

'Oh.' The second Doctor replied darkly. 'Well never mind. Judging from my readings, I'd say I've got more power than either of you, unsurprisingly!'

The third Doctor ignored the second's jibe.

'What are you going to do? Generate a field large enough to surround all three of us?'

'No. I'm losing power too fast. So I propose that I draw you in and merge our Tardises together. Then we create a single field using power from all three ships.'

'Ooh! I love the sound of that!' replied the fourth Doctor brightly. 'That's good. That's very good!'

The third Doctor scowled at the screen, disliking the idea.

'Now, wait a minute! You could cause a gravity bubble inside the Tardis if you get it wrong, which you're likely to do!' he warned.

The second Doctor started to work the console in front of him.

'How do you know it'll work?'

"In truth, I don't. But anything's better than being stuck in here with you!' With that, the second Doctor flicked the final switch.

Outside, the second Doctor's Tardis started to revolve three hundred and sixty degrees, moving faster and faster as it did so. Its movement drew the other Tardises closer and closer.

The third Doctor gripped the edge of the console. He was starting to actively hate this idea now. The Time Column started slowly moving up and down again. He glanced at the screen as centrifugal forces threatened to throw him clear across the room. The second Doctor's Tardis was spinning quickly, and he could see his ship moving closer towards it.

Just as all three vessels touched together, a blue-white energy dissolved the edges of the third and Fourth Doctor's vessels into the second Doctor's own Tardis. Then, the screen showed only blue-white energy. It was blinding. The third Doctor squinted and he suddenly felt a hot, blasting wind on his face.

The heat made him turn away. With difficulty, he raised one hand to protect himself while still trying to keep a firm grip on the console. The blue-white energy started seeping through the wall and into the console room itself. He let go of the console, and felt himself fall back towards the main door. He struggled to peer into the light.

It swept around the room and over the console like an immeasurably hot wave. The console disappeared, and then it flowed towards him. The rest of the room disappeared too, replaced by the blinding energy. He closed his eyes, thinking that this was the end.

He felt a strange buzzing tingle all over. The tingle became an ache. Then, it became a burning sensation. Then, his whole body felt as if it were on fire.

He fell.

Collapsing into pain.

As if every molecule in his body has been set alight.

He felt himself dissolve into nothingness.

He was afloat in the universe.

Nothing contained him.

And he contained nothing.

Then, memories came upon him.

Taking the Tardis for the first time.

Travelling the Galaxy with Susan

Battling the Daleks.

The Cybermen.

But they weren't his memories.

They were of other times.

Yet they were his memories

Then, more memories.

The Nestine Consciousness

UNIT and Lethbridge-Stewart.

Jo Grant.

Sarah-Jane

These were his memories!

Then, more memories, like snapshots of time and space.

The Kraals?

Weng-Chiang?

Davros?

But these weren't his memories, either!

Yet they were his memories.

He felt the fire die out.

He had a physical self once more.

He fell again.

The blue-white energy gave way to a darkened room, and the third Doctor landed heavily on a red mattress.

'Oomph!'

The red mattress moved of its own volition.

'Ow! That was naughty.'

The third Doctor glanced at it for a moment. Then the fourth Doctor sat up and rubbed at the side of his head.

'Sorry, old thing. Not my fault.' The third Doctor replied as he, too, rose up off the floor. He glanced around and realised they'd both arrived in the second Doctor's Tardis control room.

'Was that really necessary?'

'I didn't hear you complain beforehand!' his former self argued.

'Well, you never gave me much chance, did you?'

'It was a tad rough.' The fourth Doctor agreed.

The second Doctor snorted in disgust.

'Typical, I save both your stupid lives, and what kind of thanks do I get for it?'

'Saved our lives?' the third Doctor glared at him.

'What are you talking about?'

The second Doctor moved around the console and flicked at another series of switches.

'The multiphasic field began altering your cell structures. I barely had enough time to re-solidify the pair of you and bring you in here.'

Without another word, the Fourth Doctor stepped forward and started to access the Tardis systems.

'Hang on,' the Fourth Doctor's voice was deep and rumbling. 'The replay shows that the field pushed both Tardises out away from yours, leaving the pair of us here.'

The third Doctor stood beside him, and rechecked the readings.

"Yes,' he growled annoyingly. 'This didn't happen because of you. It was a natural phenomenon!'

The second Doctor shrugged.

'Same thing,' he sniffed. 'Still, it proves that the idea is sound, anyway.'

'What?' the pair of Doctors glared at him as he started flicking at the controls again.

'Well, if you two made it here, then it means that all we have to do-Ach!'

The Fourth Doctor slapped his hands away.

'Oh, no you don't! Don't you dare touch those controls again, you…you…cosmic hobo!'

The second Doctor snatched his hands away and rubbed them together, a pained, morose look on his face. The third Doctor started flicking various controls as his future self looked over his shoulder.

'What are you doing?'

'I'm reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. It should create a more stable field for us to ride the space-time waves and hopefully get us out of here!'

Almost immediately, the Tardis started revolving again. They could see the other Tardises outside drawing closer once more. They touched together, and all three Doctors were thrown around the room like rag dolls. The three Tardises began spinning uncontrollably like a released boomerang. They spun around in larger and larger circles, eventually breaching the inner peace of the storm's eye, and out into the swirling currents of the vortex.

Each man struggled against the elemental forces to try to reach the console again, but only the Fourth Doctor made it. He noticed the time readings were spinning wildly. Gradually, the second doctor reached the console.

'Something's grabbed us! We're being pulled through the vortex again!'

A magnificent jolt threw everybody towards the wall scanner. The second Doctor smacked his head on it, making him collapse to the floor. The Fourth Doctor landed in a heap nearby, while the third Doctor used the momentum to finally make it to the console. He quickly checked the readings.

'The field's collapsing again! We've got to-!'

The Tardis shook violently once more, and he fell down. For a few seconds, the entire room rattled. Then, it died down, the lights cut out completely and all was still again.

Then, slowly the lights brightened until they reached their normal levels. The three men looked at each other, uncertain as to what was happening.

'You alright?' asked the Fourth Doctor.

'Of course I am. You don't seriously believe that a little thing like a bump on the head would stop me, do you?' replied the second Doctor angrily.

The Time Column inched slowly up and down as the unmistakable sound of the Tardis engine spluttered into life. Then the sound grew more and more powerful, slowly returning to its normal level.

The second Doctor climbed to his feet and examined the instruments.

'Now, let's see where we are, shall we?' he mused.

'Perhaps we should ask when are we?' the fourth Doctor said as he joined him.

The third Doctor rubbed at an aching shoulder as he, too, rose and gave the readings a once-over.

'These readings make no sense.'

'Well, you obviously don't know what you're doing!' the second Doctor argued, shoving him aside.

Just then, the lights on the Time Column went dark and the Column itself stopped moving. The background thrumming of the engine subsided and each man glanced at the others pensively.

'We've landed.' The fourth Doctor answered the unspoken question.

'Yes, but where?' asked the third. The second Doctor reached for the controls and the wall scanner came online. It showed a horrible scene.

War had come to Gallifrey.

They'd landed on top of a cliff overlooking the Capitol. The tallest spires were clearly visible amidst the rising fires of the buildings surrounding the Citadel. Hundreds of fires leapt into the air. Debris flew everywhere like volcanic magma, raining down upon the nearest buildings, creating more havoc and destruction.

The Citadel itself was in ruins. A saucer-shaped vessel had crashed through its dome, the resulting explosions had long-since died out, leaving only the charred remains of a once-proud structure.

The ship that had crashed into it was unmistakably a Dalek ship.

'Oh…Oh, my!' the third Doctor whispered.

The fourth Doctor uttered the old Sontaran curse.

'By the whiskers of...'

'…my giddy aunt!' finished the second Doctor.

The fourth Doctor slowly closed his eyes and sank onto one knee.

'I could've stopped them. I should've stopped them!'

'What do you mean?'

'I had the chance to destroy the Daleks on Skaro, but I wondered if I had the right to extinguish them completely.'

'We could all say the same thing, Doctor.' The third Doctor gently squeezed his shoulder.

'Yes, my dear fellow,' replied the second, kneeling beside him. 'We've travelled to universes some people can only dream of. As a Time Lord, you of all people should know that life generally finds a way. You're worrying about something you can never control.'

The fourth Doctor stared at the second, anguish etched on his features.

'H-How can you possibly know that?'

The second Doctor looked at him with a mixture of mirth and melancholy.

'You're talking to me, aren't you?' he smiled.

'Oh, Jehoshophat! Look at you both. Talking to yourself, the pair of you!'

The second Doctor chuckled and stood up offering a hand to his future self. The fourth Doctor took it at once and rose to his feet with renewed determination.

The third Doctor rechecked the console again.

'Oh, no!' he said quietly.

'What is it?' his future self asked.

'There's no life here. No life at all.'

'What? Not even any Daleks? Have you mucked up the scan again?'

'Look, you scruffy little…'

'Gentlemen, please!' roared their latest regeneration. 'Arguing amongst ourselves won't help. We need to discover if our respective Tardises are here, and who's taken them.'

The second and third Doctors glared silently at each other, but they both knew he was right.

'What I mean is, the instruments aren't telling us anything. No life signs, no time indication, nothing.'

'Then, how will we find anyone out there?' the second Doctor asked, anxiously.

'The old-fashioned way, of course.' The tall Doctor flashed his wide, disarming smile at the pair of them, who frowned at each other, then at him.

'Look, you fools!'

With that, the fourth Doctor pressed the control that opened the door, and strode out the Tardis.

The Doctor unwrapped his extra-long scarf from around his neck as he scanned the horizon. He noticed the acrid stench of smoke in the morning air. From their vantage point, it seemed as if the entire valley was aflame. He could see dead bodies lying all over the valley floor amidst the burnt-out husks of what used to be Daleks.

'Great balls of fire!'

He turned to see his previous self staring out at the carnage.

'It looks as if the Time Lords never regenerated. That suggests some kind of cellular decay weaponry.'

'Hmm. It may be simpler than that. These Time Lords may have reached their last regeneration.'

The fourth Doctor surveyed the war-torn landscape.

'That's possible, I suppose. Still, seems unlikely.'

Suddenly, there was a familiar wheezing noise from behind them. Both men whirled around to see the Tardis disappearing into nothingness. It was replaced by a desolate moor. Dark clouds lay overhead like a horrible white-grey blanket.

And in the distance, was a stark, pointed tower.

The tomb of Rassilon.