Happy New Year.
Just as a reminder, I don't own Doctor Who sadly enough, although if I did then there would be many more alternate timelines and different versions of the Doctor with different values cropping up. I hope you enjoy this collection of short stories about an alternate version of the Third Doctor.
In this timeline, the Third Doctor remained on Earth for a long time, similar to the Doctor in a timeline seen in The Quantum Archangel novel, who'd remained on Earth for forty years, but in this timeline, the Doctor's exile has extended to the 21st century.
Please let me know what you think.
The Third Doctor Chronicles: The Third Nestene Invasion.
It was starting.
The Nestene invasion of Earth had begun; the sounds of the shrieks of triumph coming from the Nestene in the vat below as its tentacles writhed grated on the ears and made it very hard for the Doctor to concentrate. The Doctor wasn't completely surprised with their response, given how the Autons had managed to find the TARDIS, and transported the old girl here to the Nestene's underground lair to reveal to him, and he couldn't help but wonder if the Nestene Consciousness had merely wanted to hear what he had to say, even if they remembered him from the seventies before they revealed the TARDIS and used the old girl's presence as the excuse they'd needed to begin their invasion.
The Doctor knew it was his own fault, really; early into his exile, he had stopped the Nestenes in their tracks when he was fighting Channing and the Master, it was no wonder the Nestenes were going this far to spite him.
They had granted him permission to approach in order to ask for them to peacefully leave the humans alone, and he had only done that because he had become so tired of long drawn out battles over the years; ever since the disaster where he had failed to stop UNIT sending those nuclear bombs in the past as part of a sick pre-emptive strike against the Silurians when they had launched an invasion of dinosaurs during that mess with Operation Golden-Age when they had discovered Grover and Whittaker's use of the time scoop to bring the dinosaurs into the present and the whole thing had been turned into a disaster, which turned the centre of London into a lake, ensuring the Doctor's disgust and resulting in his resignation from UNIT once and for all, even though the tragic irony was he was still trapped on this miserable, dreary world and couldn't leave, but the best part had been the commanding officer of UNIT at the time had been that pompous idiot Carmichael, he had been trying his best to stick to the shadows and resolve matters quickly.
The Doctor grunted as he tried to break free of the grip; the problem with Autons was they were incredibly strong thanks to the Nestenes' influence, but he was amazed by how far they had evolved. The first two times he had encountered the Nestenes in the first few years of his exile, the Nestenes had relied on the use of plastic factories they were able to infiltrate before they dominated them completely; with access to the plastics and the chemicals of the factories, the Nestenes were able to create their weapons easily.
Oh, how the good old days were gone.
The humans, thanks to their stupidity, had spent so much time over the years since the good old days of the seventies, now plastic was a part of everyday life. The Nestenes knew it and they no longer saw any point in using factories; instead, they simply had to extend their influence over the entire planet, touching every single piece of plastic they could find, and animate it into becoming a weapon.
And they had weapons.
Now the Nestenes had to extend their influence towards the plastic mannikins in shops, their lack of originality never failed to amaze him but that was true of many of his enemies, transforming them so they carried the literal hand weapon of the Autons he'd encountered long ago.
To make matters worse, if they could transform plastic dummies, they could transform much more. Thanks to the humans and their lack of intelligence, plastic was a part of life.
They used it to hold their food.
They used it for their cosmetics (the Doctor shuddered at the thought of them using plastic to make themselves more attractive, but for him it made them look disgusting; the idea of them throwing away their human nature reminded him of how the Cybermen threw their own nature and emotions away to survive).
They used it to make toys, so the threat against children was undisputed.
The Doctor glanced at the blue beam of thought energy which was being transmitted to the activator, wondering just how many humans were being killed, while he tried desperately to use his expertise in Venusian aikido to break loose, but the Auton was too strong and he couldn't get any leverage. And he could not get close to the Auton who was holding the anti-plastic vial so close; anti-plastic was nothing like the methods he had used against the Nestenes in the past, but because his findings and his research had hinted the Nestenes had changed a lot over the years since their last invasion, the Doctor had worked out none of his previous weapons would work against them. The Nestenes were good at evolving themselves.
X
When he had discovered the Nestene's presence on Earth thanks to an alarm he had installed in the TARDIS after studying the Nestene energy unit he'd once had following their original attempted invasion, the Doctor had spent a while trying to find the Consciousness. His investigation had been thorough, visiting plastic factories before he discovered telepathic boosters around London, one of which was in Hendriks.
Travelling there in the TARDIS, the Doctor had found out the Nestenes had evolved and changed their methods, they'd realised they had drawn attention to themselves by using factories, so they had evolved to the point they could not only animate Earth-type plastics but mutate them so then they could fire the energy bolts of traditional Autons.
And with millions of plastic shop dummies around the world, the Nestenes had an enormous army. The Doctor hadn't realised that when he'd gone to Hendriks, a bomb in his pocket to destroy the telepathic booster, but when he had seen the shop window dummies stored in the basement where he'd saved Rose Tyler, he finally realised why the Nestenes' hadn't used the plastics factories, devised new weapons like the ones used by the Master.
The Nestenes didn't need a factory.
They only had to animate every atom of plastic on the planet, reshape it somehow, and the Nestenes had new weapons which made the plastic daffodils look crude.
The Doctor had tried to triangulate the Nestenes' position in London when he blew up the booster, but he hadn't been able to find it. He'd slashed off an arm from an Auton when it tried to reach him and Rose in that service elevator, and he'd gone after it when he'd realised that he'd need it and he encountered the girl again. Rose had asked him questions, but while the Doctor had given her a lot of answers she had struck him as the kind of human who listened but didn't take anything in.
The Doctor had continued to find the Nestenes, and he had stumbled across Rose again when he detected a large Nestene signal which was coming from a duplicate of Rose's boyfriend. The Doctor had managed to take the duplicates' head, and he'd returned to the TARDIS with Rose to track it down before finding the transmitter at last - the TARDIS hadn't let him down; she'd taken him as close as she could to the transmitter.
And then he had been caught.
But he had managed to break free.
X
"Oh, we haven't got the key!"
The Doctor turned his head automatically at the sound of the voice of Rose Tyler. The nineteen-year-old girl who had been following him ever since he had saved her life from the Autons in the department store he had destroyed because it was just a relay hub.
And then again when he had tracked an arm he had managed to rip out of the socket of an Auton.
But he had found her again when he had tracked down a particularly strong Nestene signal to a posh restaurant, and he had found Rose and a Nestene duplicate of her boyfriend there. The duplicate was trying to discover just what Rose knew about him.
The girl was with her boyfriend, a young black man called Mickey Smith - the real Mickey Smith this time - huddled at the foot of the TARDIS. They were both clearly trying to get inside the ship, but because the doors were locked they couldn't get inside the former time machine. Although even if they could, they could never hope to understand the controls in time to dematerialise although they could never leave Earth thanks to the inhibitor.
The Doctor slowly came to the realisation he could not free himself, and he suspected the Nestenes were more aware of his skills than he'd have liked; his opponent holding tightly was strong, with none of the typical weaknesses of organic races which made Venusian aikido easy to use, and in any case, any of the throws he could have used were useless with his arms bound like this… but if he could just reach the Auton holding the vial…
Moving around, pretending to struggle to break free over the triumphant shrieks of the Nestene creature, the Doctor edged his way closer and closer to the Auton.
"AIKIDAA!" The Doctor yelled as he let out a kick, concentrating all of his energy into the blow, knocking the Auton off of its feet. It went over the edge of the platform and vanished. A moment later the triumphant shrieks of the Nestene changed. They became shrieks of rage and pain. The vial of anti-plastic must have opened, spilling over the Nestene creature.
The Doctor smiled with relief when the Auton holding him was hit by the sudden backlash of psychic energy, and the Auton's too tight grip was released and he was finally freed. The Doctor turned and raced up the flight of steps to the top level where the TARDIS was, ignoring the explosions happening around him; the psychic backlash caused by the Nestene's death throes were creating explosions everywhere. Finally, he reached the TARDIS, taking a quick look at the Nestene Consciousness, unable to stop himself from being fascinated.
He had only seen the tentacles of the original creature grown in the tank in Hibbert's plastic factory, and he'd only gotten a basic shape of the creature the Master tried to summon. But now he had a good view of the creature.
Like he had told Jo long ago (another friend who'd been disgusted at what UNIT had done during that mess with the Silurians long ago), the Nestene Consciousness was analogous to a cephalopod. And it was. Inside the vat was a large octopus-like creature, with long writhing tentacles made from plastic, but it had the features of other animals as well; some of the tentacles ended with crab-like claws and spider-like legs. Its single eye and bloated brain reminded him of the time he had come eye to eye with the Dalek Supreme on his second trip to Skaro, and his other subsequent encounters with them, although the most haunting one would be the time the Time Lords had sent him to Skaro to destroy them at the time of their own creation.
Even now, the encounter with Davros was unsettling.
"Let us in!"
The Doctor jumped at the sound of Mickey's voice, and his hand dove into the pocket of his jacket and he fished out his key to the TARDIS. He pushed the key into the lock, and turned it quickly, cursing the two humans huddled by the door but they quickly got inside the TARDIS enough for him to get inside the ship, and rushed to the console. His hands flew over the console, mentally thankful he wasn't attempting a time-space transit, but ever since the Master had installed the trigger mechanism of the light accelerator during that conflict with the Axons, combined with his own work on the console which had received boon after boon during that time he'd removed the console during the Inferno project, the Doctor's control over the TARDIS had increased.
The Doctor took a deep breath, setting the controls for a short hop before he engaged the drive units. While the centre column rose and fell, the Doctor turned to the two humans, mentally sighing as he caught the look of fear on Mickey's face as he gazed around the TARDIS console room.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," the Doctor said with a smile towards the human, but the boy scuttled away from him, clearly terrified. "I'm the Doctor, and this is my TARDIS. There's nothing to be afraid of."
"Y-you're an alien! Y-you're a thing!" Mickey gasped out.
The Doctor sighed. "Yes, I am an alien," he replied, not seeing any point in denying his Time Lord heritage. "But I am not going to hurt you. I'm going to take you home…"
"How?"
"I'm sorry?"
"How are you going to take us home? Y'see, we humans, you know mortals on planet Earth, we know of your existence now. It was you who put a hole in the middle of London. It was you who let those metal men things nearly burn down New York, San Francisco and Seoul. How do we know you won't kill us and experiment on us?" Mickey demanded, his voice rising in pitch as he became more agitated in his panic.
"Now you listen to me; I didn't put that hole in the middle of London. I tried to stop the people who did, but I failed; the only thing I could do at the time was to stop it from becoming an even worse disaster. Do you know those dinosaurs and the reptile people who came through the rift into the 70s only came through because of a crack into the past? I managed to seal the crack in time that allowed them to travel, but I was too late to stop the nuclear warheads from going off; when that happened, the temporal backwash created too much damage to seal up. And as for the Cybermen, I didn't even know they were here until I came back from a mission given to me by my own people, so I couldn't undo the damage they'd caused," the Doctor countered firmly, mentally hurting still from the fact so many people had died, and the Time Lords had sent him off one of those missions as always, but this one….
The mission in question had been when the Time Lords had wanted him to destroy the Daleks at the moment of their creation, to change the course of history because they had seen the Daleks wipe out virtually every race in the universe, and had attained their long-sought goal of becoming the so-called supreme beings of the universe, when in fact they were nothing more than cybernetic creatures believing they were better than everything else and seeing themselves as strong because they were the ones doing the senseless killing.
Unfortunately, he had failed, not because he was unable. But because by the time he had reached the incubation room, the Daleks were already on the move. And he lacked the resources to truly fight them at the time. He had studied the contained nexus of Skaro and realised there was so much temporal inertia around the planet nothing anyone would do would make any difference.
He had informed the Time Lords of his findings, and they'd sent him back to Earth….to deal with the Cyber invasion, one of many sustained by Earth. He was still convinced the Time Lords had arranged to drop him back on Earth just as the invasion was at its climax, to make it harder for him to cope as punishment for his failure with the Daleks.
No-one was more relieved than he was when he finally closed the TARDIS doors on Rose and Mickey. With luck, he would never see either of them again.