Big Finish Doctor Who/Recap/Unbound/E04 He Jests at Scars...: Difference between revisions

A part of the Big Series [[What Could Have Been|Unbound]] series.

What if the [[Enemy Within|Valeyard]] won at the end of [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E1/E01 The Mysterious Planet|Trial of a Time Lord]]? Spoilers Ahoy.

The TARDIS materialises on the planet Pakha, and the man once known as the Doctor -- and now as the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E1/E01 The Mysterious Planet|Valeyard]] -- sends his companion Ellie Martin to collect the legendary [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe|Ancient Diadem]], an object of great and terrible power. He is no longer the same man who once let that power slip through his fingers -- and if Ellie fails to collect the Diadem, he makes it very clear that he will abandon her here. As Ellie scales the cliff, using canisters of greganic acid to carve footholds and handholds in the rock, a Pakhar arrives to investigate the intrusion into the sacred cavern and is shocked to find two aliens trying to steal the Diadem. He is even more shocked to see that the aliens have arrived in the legendary TARDIS. The Valeyard [[Blatant Lies|promises to explain everything]] -- but as soon as the trusting Pakhar is within reach, the Valeyard snaps his neck. Ellie takes the death in her stride, but is surprised that the legendary Doctor could be so ruthless. But as he’s said before, the Valeyard isn’t really the Doctor any more.

On the space station where the Sixth Doctor was placed on [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E4/E04 The Ultimate Foe|trial]], Mel is speaking with the Time Lords’ new President-Elect and Co-ordinator Vansell of the Celestial Intervention Agency. The corrupt High Council has been deposed, and the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E1/E01 The Mysterious Planet|Earth has been put back in its proper position in time and space]]. However, the Doctor has been lost; as the Fantasy Factory exploded, he rushed back to [[Save the Villain|save his nemesis]], and both he and the Valeyard were trapped as the Matrix collapsed around them. Nobody is quite sure what happened to the Doctor next -- and, to Mel’s consternation, Vansell admits that they don’t actually want to rescue him. It has been known for a Time Lord on the point of a regeneration to be visited by an [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18 E7/E07 Logopolis|inchoate form of their future self]], but it is unprecedented for an amalgamation of their future life essences to be given actual, independent existence. If the Valeyard does defeat the Doctor in battle, he will have access to all of the Doctor’s past and future experiences and memories, and, as such, Vansell considers him a [[Nightmare Fetishist|fascinating object of study]].

Mel, appalled, points out that the Valeyard they knew was a composite of the dark sides of the Doctor’s personality. [[Complete Monster|What might he do if let loose, unchecked by the Doctor’s morality?]] Vansell assures her that the Valeyard and the Doctor are still locked in battle elsewhere in the Matrix, and in the meantime, he, Mel and the President-Elect can still use the Matrix to observe possible projections from the future, just as the Doctor presented a [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E3/E03 Terror of the Vervoids|sequence from his own future]] during his trial. The three enter the Matrix through the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E4/E04 The Ultimate Foe|Seventh Door]] to access the projection of the Vervoid adventure -- but see that, this time around, it was the Valeyard and Ellie Martin who boarded the Hyperion III. And this time around, the Valeyard didn’t think of using vionesium against the Vervoids until it was too late, and every human being aboard the ship was slaughtered -- apart from the Valeyard and Ellie, who decided to [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|cut their losses and flee]], leaving the ship full of Vervoids en route for Earth.

Mel is appalled by what she’s seen, and puzzled by her own absence. When Vansell checks the Matrix records, he finds that Mel apparently never left Earth with the Doctor; instead, she remained in Brighton and eventually died of a brain tumour caused by overuse of a cell phone. When Vansell uses the Matrix to access [[Main/Past Doctor Adventuresthe|day Mel met the Doctor]], they see the Valeyard send Ellie to intercept Mel just outside the Brighton police station, delaying her for a few vital seconds so that she never actually meets the Sixth Doctor. The Valeyard has just changed an aspect of his own past -- and his conversation with Ellie reveals that he’s also helped the Thals to wipe out the Daleks [[Doctor Who/Recap/S12 E4/E04 Genesis of the Daleks|before they ever got out of their bunker]]. He is confident that, if it proves necessary, he can always go back in time to change things back the way they were.

The President-Elect is beginning to doubt the wisdom of letting the Valeyard run free, and Mel agrees; the Valeyard seems interested in creating chaos for its own sake. However, Vansell points out that [[Doctor Who/Recap/S12 E4/E04 Genesis of the Daleks|the Time Lords themselves once sent the Doctor on a mission to destroy the Daleks, and he failed.]] Perhaps the Valeyard, rid of the Doctor’s spurious morality, may be more useful to the CIA. Vansell decides to watch a few more Matrix projections, and sees the Valeyard and Ellie visiting a [[Recap/Big Finish Doctor Who Silurian|bunker in the Galapagos islands]]. There, the Valeyard repairs the bunker’s alarm clock so the Silurians will wake on schedule; perhaps when the human race evolves, the Silurian civilisation will be there to welcome them, and humanity will have spaceflight by the time of the Roman Empire. When Ellie questions the wisdom of the Valeyard’s actions, he threatens to take her back where he found her -- about to be run down by a police car while protesting a highway extension. He graphically describes the agony she’ll suffer in the accident, and she is suitably cowed and stops referring to him as “the Doctor.” Satisfied, the Valeyard takes her away, once again certain that he can always return to put the Silurians back to sleep if the need arises.

Mel has seen enough, and the President-Elect is having grave doubts about letting the Valeyard run free, but as they argue with Vansell, something terrible happens to the Matrix. When Vansell investigates, he finds that both Gallifrey and the space station have been destroyed; the Matrix is decaying, and within 60 years there will be nothing left. Vansell traces the cause to the planet [[Doctor Who/Recap/S8 E4/E04 Colony in Space|Uxarius]], in the year 1471 -- and sees that the Valeyard shot his way past the Primitives guarding the Doomsday Weapon and turned it on the constellation of Kasterborous. Now he’s rid himself of the interfering Time Lords, and acquired the ultimate weapon; he once foolishly rejected its power, but now he will be able to use it as a threat to force all those in the Universe to bend to his will.

The Valeyard has decided to move the Doomsday Weapon into his TARDIS, but to do so he needs to reconfigure the interior of his ship. Thus, he requires the help of the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18 E7/E07 Logopolis|mathemeticians of Logopolis]], but unfortunately that planet was destroyed when the Fourth Doctor inadvertently took the Master there. The Valeyard decides to materialise his TARDIS in the path of its past self, knocking the Fourth Doctor off course and preventing the sequence of events that led to the destruction of Logopolis. However, something goes terribly wrong. Despite his careful calculations, the Valeyard inadvertently Time Rams his past self’s TARDIS and destroys it. The energy wave vapourises Logopolis, kick-starting the end of the Universe, but that’s small potatoes to the Valeyard, who is far more concerned with the fact that he’s just killed his past self -- thus making his own existence a temporal paradox...

In the dungeons of Chronopolis, Mel speaks with Nula, who informs her that the dungeons contain one representative of every species capable of time travel, and that the rest of their species were eradicated by the Mighty One. Nula is from the planet [[Big Finish Doctor Who (Radio)/Recap/011 The Apocalypse Element/Recap|Archetryx]], and her fellow prisoners included an [[Doctor Who/Recap/S19 E2/E02 Four to Doomsday|Urbankan]] (until he was shot trying to escape) and one of [[Big Finish Doctor Who (Radio)/Recap/011 The Apocalypse Element/Recap|the Monan Host]]. Gerrof was the last of the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18 E5/E05 Warriors Gate|Tharils]], and by killing him to make a point, Mel has eradicated an entire species. [[It Gets Easier|She’s depressed to realise how little she cares]]; the things she’s seen since starting this mission have changed her, and not for the better. Nula is stunned when Mel casually admits that the Time Lords were the Mighty One’s first victims; when Mel arrived with her staser and her Time Ring, Nula believed that a Time Lord had finally come to save them. Most of their fellow prisoners have been beaten down and will not help Mel to fight her way out of the dungeons, but Nula offers to accompany her. The dungeons are guarded by the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S2 E7/E07 The Space Museum|Moroks]], the only race of time-travellers to survive their encounter with the Mighty One -- because they surrendered to him and now serve as his private army. This time, when the guards arrive to hand out the prisoners’ rations, Mel guns them down.

In another era, on a slave ship heading for Chronopolis, two slaves named Nula and Gerrof are surprised to find that one of the new prisoners appears to be human. They’ve seen a de-horned [[Doctor Who/Recap/S17 E5/E05 The Horns of Nimon|Nimon]] and heard rumours that a [[Doctor Who/Recap/S24 E3/E03 Delta and Thethe Bannermen|Navarino]] had been captured, but they’d believed that the human species had been wiped out. The new prisoner, Mel, claims that she walked up to a building she knew the Mighty One to be in and demanded an audience with him, only to end up here. When she sees the city of Chronopolis laid out before her, she recognises it as proof that the Mighty One is who she thinks he is. It’s made of crystal and appears unpopulated, but in all other respects it’s a replica of her home, Brighton.

* [[Continuity Porn]]: Let's see: [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E1/E01 The Mysterious Planet|Trial of a Time Lord]], [[Doctor Who/Recap/S23 E3/E03 Terror of the Vervoids|Terror of the Vervoids]], [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18 E7/E07 Logopolis|Logopolis]] . . . [[Long Runner|I give up.]]

* [[That Man Is Dead]]:

{{quote| '''Valeyard''': "Don't call me the Doctor"}}

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