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Overview of Season 22 of Doctor Who
Overview of Season 22 of Doctor Who
New Beginnings
In 1988 San Francisco, a young girl going by the name of ‘Ace’ is arrested after experimenting with ‘Nitro-9’, an explosive of her own devising. Upon being brought in, she asks to see a lawyer before asking any questions. The lawyer, Jim Baines, quickly takes a liking to her, despite her clear guilt. While they discuss a potential strategy of ‘getting her off lightly’, there is a commotion outside. A man breaks in to the room, ranting about a Doctor. He collapses on the floor, and is taken to a cell.
Following this, Jim leaves, and is followed on his way home. Upon arriving at his apartment, he is assailed by an unknown attacker. At the police station, Ace and the mysterious man are placed in adjacent cells, but the guards are soon overcome by people dressed similarly to the man who attacked Jim. The men render Ace and the mysterious man unconscious, and take their bodies with them.
Jim, Ace and the strange man wake up, bound, in an unknown room. When asked for his identity, the strange man mutters only something about being a Doctor. The man makes little sense when he talks and seems to be radiating some form of energy. :
The unknown assailants return, and begin interrogating the trio. They quickly grow frustrated with the man who describes himself as “the Doctor”, as he refuses to give coherent answers. The men explain that they are the Valor, and followed the energy signal of the Doctor’s ship. Their own ship was heavily damaged in a battle with their enemy, and intend to use the Doctors ship to return to their space.
Jim and Ace are, understandably, shaken by this sudden revelation of extraterrestrial life, and begin planning an escape once the Valor leave. The Doctor, who has been slipping in and out of consciousness, seems to be making more sense now, and he explains that he is indeed, alien, and has a ship that travels in space and time. He joins in on their plan to escape.
The Doctor is able to slip out of his restraints, and reaches into his coat pocket to retrieve a device he calls the “sonic screwdriver”. He uses this device to free Jim and Ace, and they escape together. The Valor quickly notice, and pursue. The trio take refuge in Ace’s apartment, where she gathers the materials to make Nitro-9, which they plan to use to trap the Valor on Earth.
Pursued once more by the Valor, the trio hurry to the location that the Doctor claims his ship is. It is located inside an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. Ace booby-traps the building with Nitro-9 in case the Valor follow them in. Upon reaching the ship, that he calls the “TARDIS”, Ace and Jim initially comment on its apparent “snugness” and how it appears to be a phone box.
Upon entering, Jim and Ace are struck by the internal dimensions of the TARDIS, while the Doctor explains that the Valor will almost certainly be unable to break in. Should the booby traps be set off, they will be perfectly safe in the TARDIS. The Valor arrive, and set off the booby traps. While they are not seriously injured, they believe the Doctor’s ship to have been destroyed. The Valor run off, and their fates are left unknown.
Ace and Jim emerge from the TARDIS. The Doctor joins them, and explains that he would be happy to let them travel with him as he “likes company”. Ace agrees, as she is wanted by the police, so would enjoy the adventure. Jim decides to tag along as well, as he is becoming unsatisfied with his work, and strives for “something more”. The Doctor invites them back in. When they ask how they will deal with their apparent disappearance, the Doctor simply replies “It’s a time machine, I can get you back for last week.” The Doctor asks the two where they would like to go.
Straight on Until Morning
Ace and Jim are brought to a space station by the Doctor. While they explore, the station is attacked by a force known as the Julk, and are separated, and the TARDIS rendered unreachable. Jim and the Doctor are trapped with the majority of the civilian population, while Ace organises a push back with the military force that remains on the station. As the Julk continue the attack, will the three be able to save the station in time?
Behind the Times
The three arrive in Earth in the year 200,000. The Doctor quickly notes that the humans seem to be far behind technologically in comparison to what he recalls from his earlier travels. As the trio explore, they start to notice that this world seems to be controlled by an unknown force, the nobody seems to talk about. What lies on Floor 500 of the Citadel, and who is controlling the Earth?
The Mark of the Rani
The trio arrive in Lancaster of the 1800s. There they meet two members of the Doctor’s race, the Master (Anthony Ainsley) and the Rani (Madeline Kahn). The Rani is intending to use chemicals from human brains in her experiments, while the Master intends to use the city as a base of operations for him to build a base of power to begin conquest anew.
That Sinking Feeling
The Doctor, Ace and Jim arrive in Oregon, where there are seismic troubles. When it becomes clear that the area is not quite as friendly as first appears, they begin to investigate. A large parasitic species of worm has burrowed, and is eating large mineral deposits present in the crust. The question soon becomes as to whether they should fins a way to remove the worms, potentially killing them, or to leave the area to its fate.
Phobos
The trio arrive on an outpost on Phobos, a moon of Mars, in the 25th century. A mysterious entity seems to be manifesting as the greatest fears of the crew, then killing them. As the crew dwindles, the Doctor tries to find a way to stop the entity, and determine where it came from. As the dark history of the outpost is revealed, will there be enough time for the Doctor to save the crew and his companions?
Revelation of the Daleks
The three arrive on the planet Necros, where they are attacked by mutated creatures. As they attempt to find the source of the mutated creatures, they discover that the inhabitants of the planet are being transformed into Daleks. It is revealed that Davros is behind the plan, and is intending to build up his own army, after a civil war erupted among the Daleks. As the Doctor comes face to face with his most fearsome enemies once more, will he have to pick a side in their internal conflict?
The Rotan Game
The trio awake in a white chamber, where they are informed that they have been chosen as contestants in “The Rotan Game”, a mysterious futuristic game show. It becomes apparent that the penalty for losing the game is death. When Jim is eliminated, the Doctor and Ace must find a way to escape, and recover Jim if at all possible.
Blood and Fire
The Doctor, Jim and Ace arrive on the UNS Valiant, where an outbreak of “Regulan Bloodworms” has taken hold. When a person is infected, the bloodworms live in their blood, dormant, until one day they wake up, and kill the host within days. While the worms are dormant, the host is virtually unaware of the presence of the worms.
The people on the ship who are infected can be saved by a blood transfusion from a healthy donor, but the policy of the UN is to quarantine ships infected by bloodworms until all infected crewmembers have died. Given the scale of this outbreak, there are not enough healthy donors to save the crew before it becomes likely that the majority will die.
The Doctor, Ace and Jim offer their assistance, and they attempt to convince nearby ships to dock, and donate blood. All decline, worried that they may contract bloodworms from the procedure, though the risk is negligible.
Eventually, they find a ship with crew that are willing to donate blood, and they dock, and the procedure is underway. However, another UNS ship nearby threatens to fire on the ship to prevent potential further infection. The ship barely holds on while under fire, and Jim attempts to reason with the crew of the other UNS ship, explaining the facts of the matter. The other ship leaves.
The crew of the Valiant is cured, and the trio depart. A subplot of the story involves the relationship between the captain of the Valiant, and one of its infected crewmembers, who are both male.
The story ends with a message encouraging the viewers to donate blood.
Entropy
The TARDIS arrives on a planet in a pocket universe that is rapidly collapsing due to entropy. When the TARDIS is unable to leave, and finds its engines draining, the Doctor works with the scientists on the planet to prolong the life of the universe, with the knowledge he gained at the Logopolis complex. But as time runs out for the pocket universe, and the fabric of reality begins to break down, will the trio be able to save the universe and escape?
Echoes
The TARDIS arrives on a planet that is seemingly uninhabited. While there, they discover that the planet seems to be giving them visions of their own pasts, and giving them grim reminders of secrets that they would rather remain hidden.
The Blood of the Zygons
A sinister plot is underway in Los Angeles in 1988. People are going missing, then reappearing a few days later having had a complete change in personality. When the mayor begins acting strangely, the question arises of if he is who he claims to be after all? Or have an old enemy of the Doctor returned once more?
The Two Doctors
The TARDIS lands in Britain in 1963, and the Doctor soon gets the feeling that he had been here before. The Doctor gets the TARDIS to scan the area, and he detects a space station in orbit. The trio travel to the station, where the station’s computer attempts to kill them by depressurising the corridor.
They return to Earth, following a teleport signal from the station. The Seventh Doctor has a vision of his second self being executed, and fears that he may now only exist as an anomaly in time, and has little time to save his own life. While exploring, Ace is attacked by a man in rags, who is revealed to be Jaime McCrimmon, a companion of the Second Doctor.
Upon seeing Jaime, the Seventh Doctor is overjoyed to see a companion that he feared had forgotten about him completely. Jaime explains that he and the Second Doctor are on a mission from the Time Lord Celestial Intelligence Agency (CIA) to prevent the Sontarans from obtaining a method of time travel. In return for working with the CIA, Jaime’s memories of travelling with the Doctor will be preserved, and the Doctor’s sentence from the Time Lords will be postponed. The Seventh Doctor recalls this information, but only vaguely.
The four allow themselves to be captured by a Sontaran patrol, that is going around an estate that they have commandeered. They are taken to a cell, where they meet the Second Doctor. Upon realising that the Doctor is there twice, the Sontarans remove them from the cell, and take them to a makeshift laboratory.
There, they are forced to attempt to isolate the symbiotic nuclei that allow Time Lords to travel through time for extended periods. The Sontarans believe that they have created a time machine, but their tests have all resulted in the molecular breakdown of the pilots.
The Two Doctors work on a plan to escape, and manage to find a way to remotely activate the space station’s self destruct sequence. They do this, and make a run to escape. They barely escape, and the Second Doctor contacts UNIT to deal with the remaining Sontaran forces on Earth.
The Second Doctor summons his TARDIS with a Stattenheim remote, and the two Doctors go their separate ways. The Seventh Doctor explains to his companions why he was unable to remember the events, and as to how and why he can change his appearance. The trio then set off for more adventures through time and space.
Afterword: This is easily the longest update yet, and took me a few hours to write. It's just over 2000 words in all. As a result, as I write in a word processor then paste here, adding the footnotes as I review here, there won't be numbered footnotes for updates like these. They're just a little too long for it to be reasonable.
I've used some elements from a few different seasons here, most notably Series 1 of NuWho. I was going to go with adding writers and the like, but something like this really takes the energy out of me. Where the writer is important, it will be mentioned in other updates. Similar thing with guest stars. To be completely honest, I don't know who was who in television at this time. Where the guest star is important, they'll be mentioned in the plot summary. Nobody too much for this update, but the next season will be very different. Of course, I can't give anything away, but there is always groundwork being lain down for the road ahead in almost every update. I've got the story planned out to the modern day, just need to get it all written down.
So, a long update in all, too long for any footnotes to be honest. If any of you have questions about any of the stories, I'd be more than happy to answer them, but given the scope of this, I won't try to anticipate every question you may have. Until next time gentle reader.