The Last Hope
Part One
London, 1965.
Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright walked back to Coal Hill School, having been returned back to their normal lives after their adventures with the Doctor. They were looking forward to settling down and being normal people again. But, after all the alien worlds and other times they had seen, nothing would ever be normal again.
"Excuse me, are you Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright?" a mysterious stranger asked them. The stranger was young, with short brown hair and curious eyes. He looked as if he could be a time traveller, but they knew they shouldn't trust him.
"Yes, we are." Barbara admitted, "Why are you asking?"
"I think you're in grave danger. You need to come with me now." he explained, walking off to a tall cabinet that had been parked down an alleyway. Ian and Barbara shared an awkward look and followed him, realising that they had entered another TARDIS. This TARDIS looked identical to the Doctor's and yet had the appearance of a wooden cabinet. Unable to say anything, the stranger activated the dematerialisation control and the TARDIS vanished, taking Ian and Barbara away from 1965.
Elsewhere in the universe, a tall blue police box flew through the vortex rapidly, its lamp flashing brightly as it whizzed along. Inside the blue box, a young woman stood, watching a tall curly haired man work underneath the console. The man had a long multi coloured scarf and a beakish nose, as well as a friendly face that would make anyone smile.
"Are you sure about this?" June Seymour asked, having seen the Doctor trying to adjust the arrangement of fluid links within the TARDIS.
"Perfectly sure. The fluid links have been on the blink recently and hopefully the adjustments I can make can fix that." the Doctor replied, with his booming old voice.
A series of bleeps then suddenly sounded from the console, each one high pitched and alarming.
"Did you touch anything?" he asked June.
"No. The scanner's saying that there's a strange buildup of temporal energy."
"Really?" he asked, stopping his work on the fluid links and glancing at the instruments on the console, "Where?"
"Earth. Take a look."
He examined the scanner carefully and his eyebrows retreated from the grimness of the information.
"It's London, 1965. Come on, let's see what the issue is."
He set the co-ordinates for where the buildup was coming from and activated the materialisation control, heading into the eye of the storm.
The Doctor's TARDIS materialised exactly where the stranger's TARDIS had materialised a few moments ago and then the Doctor and June emerged, gazing round the local surroundings curiously.
"Strange. This is near to where two of my old friends got dropped off." the Doctor remarked, pointing at an old building, "Over there. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, two of London's finest."
He beamed happily, scanning the local area with his sonic screwdriver.
"This seems like a nice place to be." June remarked, "And we're only about ten years away from the first Star Wars movie."
"Star Wars? The only star war I know of involved the Daleks. Are they involved?"
"No. It's all stormtroopers and Darth Vader. I wonder who he really is though."
"Well if you want I could take you to see the next one after this."
"I'd like that."
Their investigation was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a young woman with a beige satchel slung over her shoulder and who held a sonic screwdriver in her hand. She recognised the Doctor immediately and the Doctor recognised her: it was Marie Jones, albeit without a TARDIS.
"Marie, what are you doing here?" he asked her, as she walked over to them.
"Investigating the strange temporal anomaly originating from this point in space and time. Gallifrey sent me. I suppose you decided to investigate as well." she assumed, smiling at June and saying, "And you must be June Seymour. Marie Jones, charmed to meet you."
"Likewise. Do you know what happened here?" June asked Marie.
"I suspect that Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright may have been kidnapped by another Time Lord. President Romanadevatrelundar sent me to figure out what happened next."
"Well hopefully I can get a trace on that TARDIS, so if we can all get back inside my TARDIS, I can follow suit." the Doctor announced, entering the TARDIS with June and Marie. After a few moments, the TARDIS dematerialised.
In a future version of the same TARDIS, another version of the Doctor stood at the controls, trying to set the co-ordinates for Perivale. This version of the Doctor was short, wore a beige jacket and question mark jumper and carried a question mark umbrella which had a red handle. He had clever eyes and a wise face as well.
"Professor, why have you got this buried in the TARDIS cupboard?" his companion, a young girl called Ace, asked, entering the console room carrying a first edition of The Tempest.
"Ah, William Shakespeare. What a lovely man he was. When I met him last, I helped him fend off a Reaper attack." the Doctor remembered with one of his charming smiles, before saying, "Now, Ace, I can't get you back to Perivale. Not yet anyway."
Before Ace could reply, the TARDIS landed with a thud and the Doctor examined the instruments thoroughly. Ace knew what face he was pulling: something had drawn the TARDIS to a bad place and the Doctor was wondering what the bad place was.
"Professor, where are we?" Ace asked.
"Somewhere bad, Ace. There's been a disruption in space and time and the ripples are crashing against the shore. Come on, we need to investigate our new environment." he replied, opening the doors and walking outside. Naturally, she followed him and the doors swung shut afterwards.
They found that they were onboard some sort of spaceship orbiting a strange desert world and that the TARDIS had landed in the hold. Strangely, however, there was another TARDIS opposite the Doctor's TARDIS. Another police box TARDIS. That could only mean another thing.
"Oh no." the Doctor muttered to himself, "That puts a spanner in the works."
"Professor, is that another TARDIS?" Ace wondered, before noticing a young man with blond hair and who was dressed in Edwardian cricketing clothes.
"Oh no." the other Doctor exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"
"Something brought my TARDIS here. I presume the same happened with you, I suppose?" the Seventh Doctor asked his younger incarnation, adding, "And this is Ace, by the way."
Ace shook the Fifth Doctor's hand and smiled.
"Pleased to meet ya." she said, in her charming voice.
"Pleasure." the Fifth Doctor replied, before telling his older incarnation, "Ian and Barbara have been kidnapped and we need to find them."
"Why?" the Seventh Doctor wondered.
"Because of their futures. Gallifrey sent me here to investigate as Ian goes on to have a pivotal role in the Time War."
"The Time War? But we aren't supposed to know of that yet."
"Romana suspected that time could be rewritten after this so I'll forget everything that happens."
"Indeed. Come on then, Doctor, Ace. We've got work to do."
The stranger's TARDIS had landed. After the short stop on the space station orbiting the planet he wanted to land on, the stranger escorted Ian and Barbara out of his TARDIS and onto the mysterious planet he had taken them to.
"Where are we?" Ian wondered, gazing at the vast citadel he could see in the distance. Something was attacking the citadel and slowly destroying everything that was inside it.
"Mr Chesterton, Ms Wright, welcome to Gallifrey." the stranger said, following Ian's gaze.
"Why have you brought us here? I know this is the Doctor's home planet but you're not the Doctor." Barbara queried.
"I need your help to save Gallifrey. There's an ancient weapon that could detonate at any moment and I need your expertise to defuse it. Come on."
The stranger walked off and Ian and Barbara decided to follow him.
In yet another version of the Doctor's TARDIS, a tallish man with a lined young old face and a mane of white hair stared in shock at the console. His assistant, a young journalist called Sarah Jane Smith, had noticed his shocked expression and was growing ever worried by the minute.
"Doctor, why do you look so worried?" she asked him, standing nearby.
"Well, Sarah, it seems that the TARDIS has stopped in the middle of the Time Vortex." the Doctor replied, with a grim look on his face.
"It can't have stopped, can it? I thought you said you could fly this thing."
"I'm not to blame for this, Sarah. Some sort of time disruption has halted the TARDIS mid-flight and if we don't move out of the way, anything could smash into us."
"I'm guessing that's bad."
"Precisely."
And then a high pitch alarm began to bleep. The wall screen suddenly opened and showed the image of another police box TARDIS, hurtling uncontrollably towards their TARDIS.
"Sarah Jane, hold on tight!" the Doctor cried, as blinding white light filled the console room and the two TARDISes collided.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane woke up in the same version of the console room they had been in two moments ago, except that there were now two other people in there with them: a youngish man with ginger curly hair and who was wearing a multicoloured coat and a youngish woman with short hair dressed in a red shirt and blue trunks.
"Oh no!" the Doctor cried, recognising his future self, "Things are becoming very dire indeed."
"Precisely. Enough damage has been done already; Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are dead." the Sixth Doctor announced, before a few moments of silence.
TO BE CONTINUED...