Chapter 4

A.N. – Ok, here is a deviation from the original story. Nita has been travelling with the Doctor for about a year, and this is the first time they have been back on Earth in her time period. She thinks it's a good idea to make contact with her family…

Nita ran around the corner and headed towards the post office she had seen earlier. She reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope that she always kept in there. It was a letter to her family, that she had been writing and adding to after each adventure. She read through what she had written:

"Dear Mum, Grandma and Grandad,

I don't know how long it's been since you've heard from me. I told you I was going travelling with my friends Mel and the Doctor. What I didn't tell you is that the Doctor is an alien and has a spaceship which travels in time. I know that sounds crazy and you probably don't believe me, but it's true.

I don't know when we'll be on Earth again in your time period, so I will keep a brief record of my adventures in this letter, and post it to you when I have the chance.

The first place we went was called Iceworld (no, I don't mean the ice skating rink – ha ha). Iceworld is a space-trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos. It was a mysterious place ruled by the callous and vindictive Kane, who bought supporters and employees and made them wear his mark iced in to their flesh. In Kane's lair was a vast cryogenic section where mercenaries and others were being frozen and stored, with their memories wiped for future unquestioning use as part of an army; including a freezer cabinet into which Kane deposited himself when he needed to cool down. There was also, most peculiarly, an aged sculptor who was carving a statue from the ice.

The TARDIS (the Doctors spaceship) materialised in a refrigeration sales section on Iceworld and the Doctor and Mel Bush and I ventured outside. We soon met up with the Doctor and Mel's roguish old acquaintance, Sabalom Glitz, who owed Kane a substantial amount of money. Glitz had come to Svartos to search for a supposed treasure guarded by a dragon. It was located in the icy caverns beyond Iceworld and by chance Glitz had a map, which he won from Kane in a gamble—in fact, Kane wanted him to have the map because he wished to use Glitz as a pawn in his own search for the treasure. Thus the map contained a tracking device in its seal. Kane in return had Glitz's ship, the Nosferatu, which he ordered destroyed. Without realising he was being used, Glitz headed off on the search with the Doctor in tow—though women were not allowed on the expedition so Mel and I stayed with a young, rebellious waitress we met called Ace. It was only a matter of time before Ace behaved appallingly to customers and was fired. Mel and I were stunned to hear that Ace is a human from late twentieth century Earth who only arrived on Iceworld after a bizarre chemistry experiment caused a time-storm in her bedroom.

Kane's staff were not happy. Once they had taken his coin they were his for life – as Ace wisely realised when she rejected such an offer. Officer Belazs was not so clever, and was keen to escape Kane's service. She thus arranged for the Nosferatu not to be destroyed, hoping to use the craft to escape Iceworld. When this failed she tries to persuade Officer Kracauer to help her overthrow Kane, but he was one step ahead. Their attempt to alter the temperature in his chambers and kill him failed.

In the ice caverns it took time but the Doctor and Glitz encountered the dragon, which turned out to be a biped which did not so much breathe fire as fire lasers from its eyes, but not the treasure. Mel and Ace and I ventured into the caverns too and we met our friends. The dragon took us to a room in the ice, which was some sort of control area and contained a pre-recorded hologram message. The hologram explained that Kane was one half of the Kane-Xana criminal gang from the planet Proamnon. When the security forces caught up with them Xana killed herself to avoid arrest, but Kane was captured and exiled to the cold, dark side of Svartos. It turned out that Iceworld was a huge spacecraft and the treasure was a crystal inside the dragon's head, which acted as the key that Kane needed in order to activate the ship and free himself from exile. The dragon was thus both Kane's jailer and his chance of freedom.

Kane overheard the location of the key through the bugging device on the map and sent his security forces to the ice caverns to bring him the head of the dragon, offering vast rewards for such bravery.

The Doctor meanwhile realised that Kane has been a prisoner on Svartos for millennia. He retrieved the head of the dragon that Kane's soldiers had removed and was then told by intercom that Kane had captured Ace but was willing to trade her for the "dragonfire". The Doctor, Glitz, Mel and I travelled to Kane's private chambers for the exchange. Kane rose to the Doctor's taunts but still powered up Iceworld as a spacecraft, which then detached itself from the surface of Svartos. However, when Kane tried to set course for Proamnon to exact his revenge he realised he had been a prisoner so long that the planet no longer exists, having been destroyed through its sun going supernova. In desperation, he opened a screen in the surface of his ship and let in hot light rays, which killed him.

The Doctor now lost a companion but also gained one. Glitz claimed Iceworld as his own spacecraft, renamed Nosferatu II, and Mel decided to stay with him to keep him out of trouble. The Doctor and I acquired Ace instead, promising to take her home to Perivale via the "scenic route". Ace and I have become good friends. She is the same age as me.

Another place The Doctor, Ace and I arrived in was Shoreditch (an inner city district in the historic East End of London) in 1963 and we met Professor Jensen and Sergeant Mike Smith, who were tracing "the primary source" of magnetic fluctuations outside Coal Hill School. They were summoned to "the secondary source" at Totter's Lane Junkyard, where Group Captain Gilmore and his men had been attacked by an unidentified assailant. The aggressor was a grey Dalek (an extraterrestrial race of mutants), which was promptly destroyed by the Doctor using Ace's Nitro-9 explosive.

The Doctor, troubled by the presence of the "wrong Dalek", traveled with Ace and I back to Coal Hill School, and with the permission of the Headmaster began searching the school. The Doctor revealed to Ace and I that the Daleks have followed him through time to this point hoping to secure the Hand of Omega, a device the Doctor had smuggled to Earth when he first arrived. In the basement of the school, the Doctor, Ace and I discovered a transmat device which the Doctor disabled, causing a Dalek operator to charge on us. While Ace was incapacitated by the controlled Headmaster, I escaped, and the Doctor was locked in the cellar to face a Dalek rising up the stairs, chanting his extermination. Ace overpowered the Headmaster and freed the Doctor, and they used anti-tank rockets forwarded by Group Captain Gilmore to deal with the Dalek.

Very concerned about the presence of two Dalek factions, the Doctor decided to "bury the past" and left Ace and I in the care of Smith. The Omega Device was awaiting burial in a local undertakers. The Doctor lead the floating casket to a freshly dug grave. The Doctor, Smith, Jensen, and her assistant Allison travelled to Gilmore's base, where the presence of a large Dalek mothership was detected in orbit. The mothership dispatched an Imperial Dalek assault squad to the transmat repaired by the Headmaster. The Doctor vetoed a proposal of military action, warning of massive reprisals from the Imperial Faction. He assembled a jamming device to interfere with the Dalek control systems.

A bored Ace realised that she left her stereo back at the school. We returned there to discover the school crawling with Imperial Daleks. With some assistance from a baseball bat imbued with power from the Omega Device, she proved more than a match for a surprised Dalek scout. However, during our escape, we were cornered by three Daleks. Alerted to our visit to the school, the Doctor arrived just in time to save us by using his Dalek Jammer. Deciding to buy himself more time, he then destroyed the transmat. The Daleks on the Mothership detected this and decided to wait for the Omega Device to reveal itself. Informed of the location of the buried casket and the Battle Computer's promise of great shared power, Ratcliffe and his association begin digging for the Device. The disturbed device was detected by the Imperial Daleks, and the summoned Dalek Emperor sent a shuttle to recover it from the Grey Renegade Daleks who have rejected his authority.

The Doctor sent Gilmore and his men to establish a defensive position at the school. He revealed to us that two sets of Daleks are vying for control of the Omega Device, which was used to give the Gallifreyans (Gallifrey is the Doctor's home planet) mastery of time. Ratcliffe presented the Device to the Battle Computer. They prepared to flee with the device using a time controller. Not wanting this faction to escape with the device, the Doctor disabled the controller and was chased back to the school by a squad of Daleks. The Doctor assured us that the approaching Imperial shuttle would not land at the school, as it is so far away from the Renegade base. We took cover as the shuttle landed in the playground. The Doctor noted with concern that he might have miscalculated.

The Imperial Daleks left the ship to face the Renegade faction. Using a Special Weapons Dalek for extra firepower, they advanced towards the Renegade base. Realising that Smith was Ratcliffe's agent, Gilmore detained him. The Doctor decided to use the transmat remains in the cellar as a communications link with the Mothership. Smith escaped to the Renegade base to find Ratcliffe a prisoner. The repaired time controller powered up to enable the Renegades' escape, but the base was attacked by the Imperials, who overwhelmed the few remaining opponents. The victorious Imperials returned to the shuttle with the Device. The Doctor asked Ace and I to shadow Smith.

The Doctor demanded the surrender of the Device. The Emperor was revealed to be Davros (a major enemy of the Doctor and is the creator of the Daleks), who announced his plans for his Daleks to overthrow the Time Lords (the Doctor's people). Angered by the Doctor's insults, Davros decided to unleash the device on Skaro's sun. Rather than the desired effect, the device created a supernova, obliterating the Daleks' home. The device smashed back into the Mothership just after an escape pod containing Davros dropped out of view. The Doctor announced that the device is travelling back to Gallifrey.

The Doctor sought out the Supreme Dalek. Convinced of its absolute defeat, it destroyed itself.

After that, the Doctor, Ace and I visited a human colony on the planet Terra Alpha, and were unsettled by the planet's unnaturally happy society. Cheerful music played everywhere; the planet's secret police force, the Happiness Patrol (governed by the vicious and egotistical Helen A, who was obsessed with eliminating unhappiness), roamed the streets wearing bright pink and purple uniforms, while they hunted down and arrested so-called 'Killjoys', and the TARDIS (which is normally blue) got repainted pink so as not to look depressing. While exploring the planet, the Doctor, Ace and I encountered Trevor Sigma, an official galactic census taker, who was visiting Terra Alpha to discover why so many of the population had disappeared.

The Doctor, Ace and I had a brief period of incarceration in the Waiting Zone (Terra Alpha's version of prisons), to find out more about the planet's laws against unhappiness, and met unhappy guard Susan Q, who became a firm ally, and allowed Ace and I to escape when we were taken away from the Doctor to be enrolled in the Happiness Patrol. The Doctor, meanwhile, encountered another visitor to the planet, Earl Sigma, a wandering harmonica player who stirred unrest by playing the Blues. Earl and the Doctor ventured to the Kandy Kitchen, where most of the missing population of Terra Alpha vanished to, and discovered Helen A's twisted executionist, the Kandy Man; a grotesque, sweet-based robot, created by Gilbert M, one of Helen A's senior advisers.

The Doctor managed to outwit the Kandy Man by gluing him to the floor with lemonade, and he and Earl escaped through the candy pipes below the colony, where dwelt the native inhabitants of Terra Alpha, now known as Pipe People. They wanted to help overthrow the tyranny of Helen A. The Doctor returned to the surface, and began stirring up trouble, supporting public demonstrations of unhappiness, encouraging the people to revolt, and attempting to expose Helen A's 'population control programme' to Trevor Sigma.

Ace, Susan Q and I had meanwhile all been recaptured, and had been scheduled to appear in the late show at the Forum. The Doctor and Earl rescued us all, and the five of us headed off to Helen A's palace for a final showdown, while a revolution took full effect outside the palace walls. The first to be disposed of was Helen A's pet Stigorax, Fifi, a rat-dog creature used to hunt down the Pipe People, which was crushed in the pipes below the city when Earl caused an avalanche of crystallised sugar with his harmonica. Then the Pipe People destroyed the Kandy Man in a flow of his own fondant surprise. Realising that she was beaten, Helen A attempted to escape the planet in a rocket, only to discover that the rocket had already been commandeered by Gilbert M and Joseph C, her husband. She tried to flee, but the Doctor stopped her, and tried to teach her about the true nature of happiness, which can only be understood if counterbalanced by sadness. Helen A at first sneered at the Doctor; but when she discovered the remains of her beloved pet Fifi, she collapsed in tears, and finally felt some sadness of her own. The revolution complete, the Doctor, Ace and I slipped away, leaving Earl, Susan Q and the Pipe People to rebuild the planet – but only once the TARDIS had been repainted blue!"

Nita picked up a pen and quickly scribbled off a few more lines.

"In our latest adventure, the Doctor, Ace and I visited England in 1988, where three rival factions—the Cybermen (a race of cyborgs who are among the most persistent enemies of the Doctor), a group of Neo-Nazis and a 17th-century time-traveller named Lady Peinforte—were attempting to gain control of a statue made of a living metal, validium, that was created by Rassilon (the founder of Time Lord society) as the ultimate defence for Gallifrey.

The statue has three components - a bow, an arrow and the figure itself - that must be brought together in order for it to be activated. They had been separated since 1638 when, in order to foil the first attempt by Peinforte to seize it, the Doctor launched the figure into orbit in a powered asteroid.

This asteroid had been approaching the Earth at twenty-five yearly intervals ever since, leaving a succession of disasters in its wake, and had now crash-landed near Windsor Castle.

The Doctor played the three factions off against one other and eventually appeared to concede defeat to the Cyber Leader. However, this was just part of a carefully laid trap, and the Cybermen's fleet was totally wiped out by the statue.

Now we have to take Lady Peinforte's servant back to his time so we can't visit you this time. But I promise the next time we are on Earth in your time, we will try to visit you.

I know all of this sounds crazy and you probably don't believe me, but it's the truth, and one day I will be able to prove it to you. I also know that you are very worried about me because it has been over a year since you've heard from me. But please be assured that I am well and am missing you. I hope to be able to see you soon. Please let my friends read this letter too, as I'd like them to know what I've been up to as well.

Love you

Nita"

Nita folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and wrote her family's address on the front. At that moment, Ace caught up with her.

"What are you doing?" Ace asked.

"Sending a letter to my family," Nita replied. She turned suddenly. "Umm..do you have any local currency? I only have Australian money."

Ace sighed and reached into her backpack. "Here's a pound note. It should be enough."

"Thanks!" said Nita, taking in from her. They went into the post office and Nita paid to have the letter posted. As they headed back to the TARDIS, Nita was thoughtful. They went inside and found the Doctor and Richard in conversation, sipping their tea.

"Oh, there you are," said the Doctor. "What have you been doing?"

"Posting a letter to my family," Nita replied. "Filled them in on what I've been up to since I left."

The Doctor stared at her. "Do you realise what you've done?"

"What?" asked Nita, worried.

"Now that you've sent a letter to your family, you've made your absence a fixed point," explained the Doctor. "I can't take you back to the day you left, because you've told them what you've been doing."

Nita was a bit stunned at that. Then she relaxed. "That's ok, Doctor. I had a plan B. I left notes for them and my friends, telling me where I was, in case you couldn't bring me back to that day. It's no big deal."

"All right, then," the Doctor conceded. "As long as you understand the ramifications of what you've done.

He put down his empty tea cup. "Right, let's get Richard home, shall we?" The Doctor engaged the dematerialisation sequence. "Back to 1638!"

Later, at Lady Peinforte's home, the Doctor and Nita are playing chess in the garden, with Ace watching them.

"So you sent the Nemesis off into space to draw the Cybermen so you could finish them off," said Nita.

"I suppose I did. How clever of me."

"Just like you nailed the Daleks," said Ace.

"As I said, Ace. Unfinished business."

The Doctor tipped over his king.

"There's still one question you haven't answered," said Nita, looking at Ace.

Richard and a lady lute player approached.

"We have none of this jazz whereof you speak, Doctor, but I think you will like this," said Richard.

Richard played the flute while his companion played the lute.

"Professor? Doctor? Who are you?" asked Ace.

The Doctor put his finger to his lips.