The Time Travellers

Still recovering from their ordeal in miniature, the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian arrive in London of the not too distant future to find the world has changed for the worse. The year is 2006 and England is at war with almost everyone else, the city of London shattered by bombings except for Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs which have been left untouched. The Doctor discovers that some crude time travel experiments are afoot and contrary to what he has been telling his companions all along it seems that history can be changed, and the consequences have been devastating. Alternate versions of a test pilot named Andrews are arriving all the time in London as the enemy forces close in, and the Doctor faces the dilemma of either leaving things as they are or getting involved and facing even further consequences.

This one is great. Out of all the supplemental adventures with the original crew I have to say that The Time Travellers is by far the most complex and rewarding one of the bunch. For starters it captures all of the characters perfectly and even gives them a bit more depth with Ian and Barbara beginning to develop feelings for each other which are only barely hinted at on screen. Susan gets to have some of her best moments here, finally showing some of that scientific know-how that she should have been doing all the time given that she is obviously not human and far more advanced than her schoolteacher companions. Susan's cleverness, though, often gets marred by her bursts of immaturity; she is still young, after all, and resents being treated like a child, and I am sure if this had been made for screen she would have predictably lost her shit once or twice in a very theatrical way. But she comes through some pretty scary events relatively okay; The Time Travellers has a pretty high body count and some nasty ways for the supporting cast to meet their fates. The Doctor harrumphs his way through the tale as one would expect, assuming a commanding presence and persuading the scientists of the time to take him on as one of their own as he tries to suss out what they have done to damage the time lines and create this hellish future. And that future is pretty dark and dreadful - one of the nastiest places the original crew would have been in the continuity of these tales.

The Time Travellers is a bit of a retcon piece; it was published in late 2005 after the first of the new series with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor had aired and there is no denying that it was influenced by the new direction the revived TV series took. At the heart of the story are numerous references to disaster that befell London in the sixties by something known only as "the Machine". The Doctor does not know anything about this, and rightly so as for him it has yet to happen; the book refers to the events of The War Machines from the end of the third season in 1967. That's still a bit off from where I am now, but I'll revisit this tale when that happens. And there is also a very tantalizing moment where events from the 1988 season premiere, Remembrance of the Daleks, are referenced and the impact it has on the Doctor and Susan is fascinating to read. Historical perspective is great, isn't it? Some readers don't enjoy tales like this, referring to them as "fan-wanks" and they are often criticized for piggybacking on established episodes and not really creating anything new, but I personally like this sort of thing. When the Doctor travels back and forth at his whims through time it's inevitable he is going to come across strands of his own actions, and even in some cases come face to face with himself; the later episodes of the series from 2010 onwards have taken criminal license with this notion, though, and go way to far in my opinion, casually dismissing the notion of changing time as something "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" - annoying at best but when delivered by an idiotic fop in a bow tie it's almost insulting to the viewer's intelligence. William Hartnell would NEVER have said those lines; I think he'd be more apt to bitch slap the moron who wrote them. The original Doctor takes it far more seriously and admits that yes history can be changed but time changes around you, making it possible for you to still be aware of the change you made even if no-one else notices it, and to him it's a dreadful concept, not just some fun thing to do to impress your latest tagalongs.

Things are about to change for the TARDIS crew, though. The Time Travellers has an epilogue that shows Ian and Barbara returning home one day, but they're not going to do that for a while. In other spots in the book, though, there come a few hints about Susan's future and how the Doctor wants her to have somewhere stable to live; he hints that what they have done here is going to attract attention and Susan might be safer without him. This is more from the perspective of having seen the entire series already, but still cleverly worked in as to explain Susan's future departure from the crew without writing a whole new take on it. Not that it's going to make the impact any less, in fact it may just be a bit more poignant this way...

NEXT EPISODE: THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH