I don't own Doctor Who or the Time Portal which is inspired by the Time Tunnel.
X
Time Portals.
By Time Traveller-1900.
1999.
In a converted warehouse in Cardiff Bay, the Doctor rechecked the computers and the flow of the temporal energy tapped by his TARDIS from the Cardiff Rift. Everything looked good so far, pretty soon he would once more resume his travels in time and space.
The time tunnel was nearly ready.
The Doctor lifted his gaze, sweeping his eyes across the laboratory containing the equipment he had spent the last decade assembling after years of experimentation with dozens of successes and failures.
The Doctor was a Time Lord. He had left his people for a number of reasons, from his desire and curiosity to explore the universe and see what was beyond the Time Lords. One day, he disappeared and he had stolen a TARDIS and he had begun exploring the universe.
Or at least, that had been the original intention. The Doctor had taken a young girl with him, his granddaughter, Susan. After several trips in their stolen TARDIS which he couldn't properly control, the Doctor and Susan had arrived on 1960s Earth. While he was busy dealing with business, the Doctor had allowed Susan to be educated by humans so then she could experience life on the planet and also make some friends after she had confronted him on how lonely she was.
Full of sadness and pity, the Doctor had realised his desire to keep her confined had instead been stifling her, and so he had allowed her to go to a school. But what he hadn't counted on was Susan drawing so much attention to her knowledge, she had brought two human teachers to the TARDIS. Panicking, the Doctor had taken off before he realised he could have let them both go and then he and Susan could have left and nobody would have been any the wiser about their presence, and for two years he had tried and failed many times to get them both home.
But in those years, the Doctor had changed from a time traveller who just wanted to observe after being indoctrinated with the Time Lord's philosophy of non-interference.
When the teachers left, the Doctor had become more friendlier and open to the idea of interference. He had come to see there were times when history had to be fought for. Sadly the Time Lords hadn't agreed with him. They had captured him and they had put him on trial after he had called them for help in saving a number of human soldiers who had been trapped on an alien world.
Exiled to Earth in the 1970s in a new fresh incarnation, bitter at having his time travel knowledge blocked off or removed from his mind - whatever you prefer - the Doctor struggled to make the best of it. On one of his earlier visits to Earth, the Doctor had made contact with a paramilitary investigation team - UNIT; United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. After reuniting with them once again and going through the irritating process of proving who he was, the Doctor had become UNIT's scientific advisor for several years.
He had been exiled to the planet Earth in the 20th century and was meant to remain on the planet in the C-20th for as long as the Time Lords wanted, and occasionally the Doctor had been 'allowed' to leave the planet under the control of the Time Lords and do their bidding, but otherwise, he remained trapped.
But now might be the best way out.
It had occurred to the Doctor during the earlier days of his exile that he might be able to escape his exile to Earth if he either repaired his TARDIS successfully enough or if he found another method of time travel to escape with. The Doctor had no intention of waiting solely for the Time Lords to free him. Time Lords were a very long-lived race. For all he knew, if he left it up to them, he could be stuck on the planet for so long that he would be at the point of regeneration anyway.
Right now the time tunnel he was creating with the help of the TARDIS and the time scoop equipment he had taken from Professor Whittaker was forming and pretty soon he would once more have the means of travelling through time and space.
It would be a one-way trip, sadly, but he had worked for a long time to create a time tunnel which would let him travel to the 51st century so he could collect another time machine, like a vortex manipulator or a time portal glass. It had taken the Doctor two decades since he had taken Whittaker's time travel technology and notes, partly to help him rebuild the technology and to also relearn some time travel secrets that he had once known. It was difficult to learn, but the Doctor had expected that, but some things he picked up instinctively. With some help from Liz Shaw, his old assistant and now a highly respected professor at Cambridge, the Doctor was able to begin rebuilding the time scoop into a time corridor which would help him get to the 51st century.
Thanks to Liz, the Doctor had ironed out a great deal of the problems as he rebuilt the time corridor gateway which would help him create a tunnel through the Cardiff Rift, with the help of his TARDIS, to send him to the 51st century. There had been setbacks of course, and dozens of experiments which ended in success and failure before he was able to refine the design into something he could make use of. He had been thankful he had collected the Osmic Projector used by Linx, the Sontaran warrior he and Sarah Jane Smith had been sent by the Time Lords to tackle when the Sontaran showed signs of changing history, and the projector was brought back with them in the TARDIS.
And now it was time to begin.
The trouble was, the time machine would only work once. So he would have to find a secondary time machine as a backup. Still, at least he would travel through time again.
The Doctor made rapid adjustments to the controls and there was a build-up of power. He lifted his gaze and smiled as the time portal opened. He had set the portal to take him to the 51st century, Gryben. From what he had learnt, this place was a marketplace of time travel technology.
X
Gryben reminded the Doctor of Tatooine when he had watched the Star Wars movies - contrary to popular opinion, he had quite enjoyed the prequel movies since they explained a great deal about the story the original films followed, but he was disappointed with the sequel movies because of the way the fans opinions meant the writers and producers made so many stupid mistakes - and he looked for a piece of time travel technology. The buildings of Gryben were like giant sculptures of worn sculptured clay.
Travelling the portal was like stepping out of a house to another house in a blizzard, and so the Doctor was relieved to land since his senses had gone mad.
Finally, he came across a shop selling time travel technology. The Doctor had seen many forms of time travel thanks to being a Time Lord. All of the devices were enclosed inside open cabinets protected by a security web of forcefields. The Doctor was just examining a cabinet containing Sontaran-made Osmic projectors when he noticed a shapeless shadow standing nearby.
"Good day," the Nekkistani greeted him as he/it floated in an antigravity hover chair. "What are you looking for?"
"I'm looking for a time and space travel device," the Doctor said dryly.
"Well, we have many items on offer, sir. Are you looking to buy or to barter?"
The Doctor had known this would come up at some point and he took out a small number of devices from his pocket as well as the money of this era. The Nekkistani's eyes widened. "Where did you find fluid links from a TARDIS? These are from a very old TARDIS."
"I found an old Type 40 TARDIS some time ago, and it did work before the Time Lords interfered with it," the Doctor replied.
"An old Type 40?" The Nekkistani whistled. "I wish I could have seen one of those. The Type 30s were my favourite, but the Type 40s were more charming than a number of other models. Still, I don't need the TARDIS parts and I wouldn't take them anyway since they belong in one of those beautiful ships. The money will do just fine, thank you. What sort of time machine were you looking for?"
The Doctor had been trapped in exile so long that he knew better than to be choosy. "No time corridors or anything like that," he replied.
"Well, we have these vortex manipulators," the dealer took him to a large cabinet where it appeared every single vortex manipulator model ever conceived was. The Doctor had used manipulators in the past, so he had no trouble recognising older models that would make their users sick if they used them, so he was interested in the more sophisticated versions.
"That one," the Doctor pointed out one of the manipulators he knew would just transport their sender through time and space using the vortex more like a Tube train than sending him in a barrel and throwing him down Niagara Falls from a bouncing helicopter. "And may I also have a second manipulator as a backup?" He added.
The Nekkistani nodded his slug body and entered the security code. The forcefield walls dropped, and the Nekkistani took the manipulators out of the case before reactivating the forcefield. The Doctor paid using a credit chip. He had made sure the TARDIS loaded a fortune into the chip and that it was the correct currency.
Luckily it was.
"Good doing business with you, sir," the Nekkistani smiled. "Please come again soon."
The Doctor smiled, liking the Nekkistani. "I probably will. Thank you."
Outside the Doctor placed one of the manipulators on his wrist and he went through the list of places he could go to now, but as he stared at it in wonder, he realised he didn't even know where he wanted to go. So he punched in a random Earth date, and he jumped through time and space. The Doctor had his freedom back, and now all of time and space was his oyster again.