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Earth's history was full of ups and downs, but Berenyi had to admit she had a fondness for the Second World War. While it was destructive, it made so many things so much easier and simpler for her in the long run.
Plus the fact she had a soft spot for Winston Churchill for reasons she had never bothered to properly understand.
Designing Winston Churchill's life was a dangerous idea; not only was his entire life fixed, and she knew the dangers of meddling in fixed events, Berenyi knew the British Prime Minister was an old friend of the Doctor's, and the last thing she wanted was a confrontation with the other Time Lord.
But while it was dangerous, it wasn't impossible; she began Designing his childhood with small suggestions and pre-programmed commands that would only kick in during 1943, so humanity wouldn't have any changes in its timeline before.
The Time Lady kept hidden as the German rockets bombed London, but the programming she had given Winston Churchill meant the spies he would send into Germany would collect the plans for the rockets while scientists would be tasked with reverse engineering the technology, and one of them would be Professor Quatermass, already an expert in rocket science.
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Berenyi watched from her TARDIS as Britain now held the cards, and she watched with growing satisfaction as the few rockets the British now had were being used on Germany; she had to admit despite their resources their organisers and improvisational skills had paid off. It was not long before the British turned the tables and began bombing Germany and even parts of occupied France.
Naturally, the Germans retaliated, and the cost of the shipping that was being sunk by the U-boat fleets out in the Atlantic was high.
To their credit, she had to admit she was impressed when the British decided to use the rockets to great effect; they would build the first missile launchers to be installed on aircraft, and while they were crude they were effective enough to be used on the U-Boat pens, but it wasn't long before the RAF began training their pilots to precisely launch their payloads so they'd be fired straight in the pens and cause enough damage, to destroy torpedoes, fuel tanks and so on.
To her delight, the British passed on their knowledge of rockets which was growing rapidly to their counterparts in America, and when the Pacific War was beginning to turn in their favour it wasn't hard as the Americans had much greater reserves to draw upon than the Japanese, scientists who'd been experimenting with rocketry in the days before the war were drawn in, and they added their expertise and improved on the German design a hundredfold.
Berenyi had not only Designed the pasts of Winston Churchill and several of British and American leaders to help take advantage of the rockets; she had also Designed the pasts of Russian scientists and leaders as well, so then they could begin investigating the potential of rocket design.
For scientists, the Time Lady had merely sought out those who'd contribute the most to rocket science and make a few modifications; along with Bernard Quatermass, there was soon a growing trend where scientists would cheekily take some of the money from their research posts and begin building rockets to launch into the atmosphere. Cheekily they would tell their 'superiors' that this was vital to test the power of the engines and fuel formulas they were experimenting with to ensure they reached their destinations.
Berenyi went much further by Designing the timeline for other governments to begin their own experiments and research into rocket science after seeing just how devastating it was.
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Her client's idea and suggestions about setting up a secret history where early human spaceflight was forgotten and later discovered had intrigued Berenyi, but she had problems with how realistic it was; just because fictional characters like Cavor and Impey Barbicane had developed homemade rockets/spheres powered by gunpowder and anti-gravity substances, it wasn't realistic enough.
She could Design and program the lives of anybody, but there was only so much she could actually work with.
One idea she had was simply finding an alien race advanced enough for a scientist on Earth to understand, crashing a ship in a place where the scientist was after Designing it into their timeline so they'd be in the right place at the right time, but the problem was she couldn't because alien technology was much more advanced and even if she spent a lot of her time Designing the timeline of a Victorian era scientist, they could never fully understand the science behind the ship.
And besides all of that, once you put some thought into it, spaceships that travelled the galaxy had long since bypassed the atomic age.
No way a Victorian scientist could understand that.
She shelved the idea for later, knowing if she came back to it and moved forward a few decades, it would work out, providing organisations like UNIT and Torchwood didn't get involved. She was tempted to Design the life of a Torchwood scientist to work on a spaceship, but the idea didn't work because Torchwood was a secret organisation. She wanted something known to the public.
But Berenyi, looking through the timeline, discovered she didn't need to work on a human scientist. The work had been done for her already.
In 1878, the Vrall shot spores that carried advanced knowledge to Earth, where a scientist called Professor Boyes-Dennison would design an impeller engine - a reaction less drive humans would not have any true understanding of for 200 years; indeed, the scientist was short-tempered and frustrated he couldn't even properly explain his 'invention' despite having the skill to build it in the first place - and he'd worked for Queen Victoria to build three spaceships that would travel to the moon.
The Fifth Doctor made sure history never remembered this incident, but Berenyi saw an opportunity.
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Designing Emily Boyes-Dennison's life was straightforward enough; Berenyi merely made sure she would keep the plans for the impeller engine and the blueprints for the rockets themselves. And she made sure there was a prototype rocket that was soon sealed away on Glen Island.
Berenyi's plan was simple; with Emily's Design she would marry Captain Halliwell and they would have children while passing down the copies of the work that went into the rockets, and in the future, they would find the plans and reveal them to the government while the prototype rocket was soon discovered. Secondary conditioning would make sure the Doctor and his companions didn't discover the prototype.
Her plan went brilliantly, when Katie Halliwell, Emily's granddaughter and her brother discovered the plans. They both worked for the RAF and they both travelled to the island where they photographed the prototype rocket before revealing it to the authorities. When the rocket was uncovered, the whole secret history would be revealed. By that time, the end of the war would signify a new start for rocket science.