B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  “The Beast” were flying creatures that would move from planet to planet by way of dimensional interfaces, and invisibly feed off other beings. This was normally harmless, but on the planet Benelisa, the Beast wiped out the native populace as their numbers were few. The Beast moved on, but at least one Benelisan construct - Azoth - endured and pledged to eradicate the Beast. [504]

  In 1564, an Agent of the Council of Eight prevented an Italian blacksmith from gaining the insight needed to invent the steam engine. [505] The Fulgurites - aliens who looked like mushroom-headed men - secretly established themselves on Earth and traded various commodities with other planets. [506] The Doctor said that the stories didn’t lie - Ivan the Terrible really was that terrible. [507]

  1572 (21st-24th August) - The Massacre [508]

  The first Doctor and Steven arrived in Paris in August 1572. The Protestants of the city, the Huguenots, were massing to celebrate the wedding of Henry of Navarre to Princess Marguerite. Yet they lived in fear of the Catholic majority, particularly the Queen Mother - Catherine de Medici - and the ruthless Abbot of Amboise. One hundred Huguenots had been killed at Wassy ten years ago, and a full-scale massacre was now instigated. The Doctor and Steven fled and were forced to leave Anne Chaplet, a serving girl befriended by Steven, behind to her fate.

  Rebels from the mid-twenty-first century kidnapped the young Shakespeare to prevent time-travelling Daleks assassinating him. This removed Shakespeare from time, but history was restored upon his safe return.

  (=) In a version of history without Shakespeare, the Daleks had a compound in Warwick in 1572. [509]

  1580 - The Vampires of Venice [510]

  The planet Saturnyne was “lost” to the Silence, but a small group of fish-like Saturnynians escaped through a Crack in Time and arrived at Venice. Their leader used a perception filter to pose as Signora Rosanna Calvierri, a powerful figure who convinced the Venetians that the surrounding countryside was afflicted with plague. Calvierri also established an exclusive school - a means of genetically altering the girls there into Sisters of the Water, mates for the males. The human survival instinct would override the Sisters’ perception filters in time of danger, making them look like vampires. The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory stopped Calvierri from sinking Venice with an earthquake device, which would have turned the city into the Saturnynians’ new domain. Calvierri killed herself, taunting the Doctor that he had wiped out another species.

  In 1582, the Doctor visited Rome while trying to track the Timewyrm. [511] Boscombe Hall was built on the site of the Convent of the Little Sisters of St Gudula in the late sixteenth century. [512]

  1586 - TimeH: Child of Time [513]

  The cult Sodality sought further power and summoned the Daemon Mastho during a masked ball at the Palazzo Bembo, Venice. Mastho decried Sodality, and ordered that the group destroy the time-sensitives and channellers it had created, lest their existence interfere with the Daemons’ experiments on humanity. Sodality was given exactly one millennium to complete this task; Mastho threatened to return at that time, and to destroy the world if Sodality failed.

  The West Wing of Chase Mansion was completed in 1587. [514] In 1587, the Greld wiped out the Roanoke colony in the New World. They implanted the colonists with components for a meta-cobalt bomb, hoping to sabotage the Armageddon Convention. Christopher Marlowe, an agent of the crown, investigated the tragedy but escaped. [515]

  The Doctor may have been at the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. [516] The Doctor met Francis Drake just before he faced the Spanish Armada. [517] He played bowls with Drake and met William Cecil at Elizabeth’s court. [518] The Doctor let Drake win at bowls so Drake could leave early to face the Spanish Armada on time. [519]

  Jack Harkness had fun with a lady at Elizabeth’s court. [520] An Agent of the Council of Eight released a single butterfly in Africa. The slight disturbance it caused in the atmosphere triggered a storm that helped to destroy the Armada. The Council of Eight’s leader, Octan, arrived in 1588 to try and stop this. The Agent, unable to recognise Octan, pushed him into the Time Vortex. [521]

  The tenth Doctor married and deflowered Elizabeth I. [522] The Queen waited in a glade to elope with the Doctor. [523] Elizabeth I knighted the Doctor for “more intimate reasons” than Victoria would in future. [524]

  Around 1589, Irving Braxiatel began a diplomatic effort that culminated in the signing of the Armageddon Convention. [525] On 28th October of the same year, the ancient werewolf Pieter Stubbe escaped after being sentenced to death for sorcery in Cologne. [526]

  c 1592 (summer) - Point of Entry [527]

  The Omnim, largely existing as mental energy in rogue asteroid D359XQ2, locked onto the TARDIS’ flight trail as a means of drawing close to Earth. A Spaniard, Don Lorentho Velez, found the Omnim-tainted stone hilt in Madrid, and so fell under the Omnim’s power. He was made to find the Omnim stone knife the English had taken from the Aztecs, and recruited help from the dramatist Christopher Marlowe - an agent of the crown, who was busy writing The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus - by allowing him to experience astral projection. The sixth Doctor and Peri destroyed the Omnim as they attempted to manifest during a lunar eclipse. Marlowe wrote a line in Doctor Faustus (“Where the philosopher ceases, the Doctor begins”) in the Doctor’s honour.

  Christopher Marlowe continued serving as a secret agent of the British government. He conspired with Walsingham, the Secretary of State, to fake his death. [528] Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Xaranti attacked a Zygon fleet. A Zygon ship survived the fighting and crashed on Earth. [529]

  Shakespeare [530]

  The Doctor encouraged Shakespeare, a “taciturn” young man, to take up writing. [531] Shakespeare and John Fletcher wrote Cardenio - A Spanish Comedie. [532]

  1592 (September) - “A Groatsworth of Wit” [533]

  The alien Shadeys took Robert Greene, a staunch critic of Shakespeare, from his deathbed and transported him over four hundred years into the future. The ninth Doctor and Rose arrived, hot on Greene’s trail. The Doctor quoted from Richard III and was mistaken for an actor, while Shakespeare tried to seduce Rose. Greene attacked Shakespeare, but the Doctor suggested that if Greene destroyed the great playwright now, Greene himself would lose what little future fame he currently enjoyed. Greene banished the Shadeys and returned to his deathbed.

  1597 - The Kingmaker [534]

  Peri and Erimem watched an exceedingly bad preview of Richard III, while the fifth Doctor went boozing at The White Rabbit tavern with his friend William Shakespeare. A loyalist to the Queen, Shakespeare became greatly disturbed by the Doctor’s suggestion that in future, suspicion for the murder of Richard III’s nephews would fall on Henry Tudor. Shortly afterwards, the Doctor and his companions left for 1485, and Shakespeare - determined to convince Richard to kill his nephews and thereby preserve the Queen’s family name - stowed aboard.

  Events in 1485 caused the TARDIS to materialise back in 1597 during a subsequent performance of Richard III. The genuine King Richard III had stowed away and remained behind as Shakespeare re-entered the TARDIS and met Richard’s historical fate on Bosworth Field.

  To preserve history, Richard III lived out Shakespeare’s life and wrote his remaining plays, historicals, tragedies and comedies. He was moved to write his late brother George into Henry IV, Part 1, but kept misspelling Shakespeare’s name. The Doctor suggested that Richard look up Francis Bacon to help with his writing.

  Shakespeare’s only child, Hamnet, had died, so the Doctor relocated Richard’s nieces to live with him as “Shakespeare’s daughters”, Susanna and Judith.

  The grief Shakespeare suffered after Hamnet’s death allowed three Carrionites entrance back into history, and they manipulated him in a bid to free their sisters. They also influenced Peter Streete - the architect of the Globe Theatre - to design the stage area with fourteen sides, in accordance with the fourteen stars of the Rexel planetary configuration. Streete lost his mind as a
result, and was consigned to Bedlam. [535]

  1599 - The Shakespeare Code [536]

  The tenth Doctor and Martha were surprised when a performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost in London ended with an announcement by Shakespeare that the sequel, Love’s Labour’s Won, would debut the following night. Three witch-like Carrionites were manipulating Shakespeare - Love’s Labour’s Won was embedded with coordinates that would open a spatial rift, and allow the rest of their race freedom. Shakespeare used his command of language to seal the portal and banish the Carrionites; all copies of Love’s Labour’s Won were destroyed.

  Shakespeare took note of the Doctor’s use of the word “Sycorax” [537], and a few choice phrases. The Doctor and Martha escaped when a wrathful Elizabeth I called for his head - owing to events that hadn’t yet happened in the Doctor’s personal timeline.

  The first Doctor used the Time-Space Visualiser to watch Shakespeare at the court of Elizabeth I. The Queen was interested in Falstaff, but Francis Bacon gave Shakespeare the idea to write Hamlet. [538] The Doctor helped Shakespeare write his plays. [539]

  The Doctor suggested that The Merry Wives of Windsor needed to be redrafted, but the Queen wanted it performed as soon as possible. [540]

  The fourth Doctor said Shakespeare was a “charming fellow”, but a “dreadful actor”. [541] The Doctor transcribed a copy of Hamlet for Shakespeare, who had sprained his wrist writing sonnets. Scaroth later acquired the manuscript. [542]

  The Doctor saw Garrick take the title role in the first performance of Hamlet. [543] If the Monk’s plan in 1066 had worked, Hamlet would have been written for television. [544] The Doctor wrote Poor Tom’s dialogue in King Lear [545], and saw Garrick play the part. [546] The Doctor has a copy of Mischief Night, or As You Please, an unknown Shakespeare play, in a TARDIS storeroom. [547]

  The Seventeenth Century

  The planet Caresh was in a binary star system containing the larger, warmer sun Beacon and the smaller, colder Ember. Caresh randomly orbited one of the two stars each solar cycle, causing unpredictable warm and cold years. In the seventeenth century, a protracted cold period killed off a large amount of the population. As the warm years returned, scientists on Dassar Island built a scanner capable of seeing into the future, giving them advance warning of cold years. The Time Lords ruled the scanner a violation of their monopoly on time travel, and dispatched agents Solenti and Lord Roche to shut down the device. [548]

  Centuries ago, invaders dominated the planet Indo. The surviving microscopic natives travelled to Earth on a meteorite. They fed off the latent emotions of humans in the Brighton area, and would gain in strength by 1936. [549]

  The Sepulchre transported a resident of the seventeenth century - “Springheeled Sophie”, a funambulist and thief - into the London-recreation that existed in its mental landscape. Following the Sepulchre’s defeat by the eighth Doctor and Lucie, Sophie remained in the Sepulchre’s recreation of her native time. [550]

  In the seventeenth century, an inhabitant of the planet Parrimor was exiled to Earth. He became Claudio Tardelli - an artist whose paintings and sculptures warped reality, and had a “malign influence” on anyone who looked at them. In Rome, the Doctor stopped Tardelli from using his artworks to influence the Pope. Tardelli was discredited, and the Doctor worked to keep him obscure, destroying many of Tardelli’s works. Tardelli fled to Florence and sequestered himself inside a black diamond he’d created - one that contained a compressed universe about three light years across. The King of Sweden later acquired the diamond in 1898. [551]

  Around 1600, the Necronomicon was translated into Spanish. [552] In the early seventeenth century, the Doctor was given tea by Emperor Tokugawa Ieyasu of Japan. [553] The Doctor once shared a cell with Walter Raleigh, who “kept going on about this new vegetable he’d discovered”. [554]

  Neighbouring empires fought The Long War, a conflict that went on for generations. During this, a space explorer, Reyn the were-fox, crashed on Earth near the village of Foxton. Reyn’s spaceship learned from its travels, attaining some sentience through a process called The Shift.

  (=) Reyn’s ship needed to absorb living minds every half-century, and so extruded a number of temporal and spatial anomalies through Swallow Woods from the Bronze Age to the present day. People subconsciously avoided the Woods, save for when the ship mentally lured in people to drain their minds. It would claim three hundred and nine victims.

  The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory undid the temporal anomalies. The Long War ended very badly for Reyn’s homeworld, but the Doctor and Rory retroactively established a legend that “the Traveller” would one day return with knowledge of lost technology. [555]

  c 1600 - “The Devil of the Deep” [556]

  The ship of Diego da Columba of Cordoba vanished off the coast of South America. It had been attacked by pirates led by Korvo. Diego was rescued after walking the plank by a Sea Devil who had revived ten years previously. The pirates discovered the Sea Devil’s island and he was captured by Korvo. One of the pirates accidentally activated a Caller, a device that summoned a giant marine reptile that sank the pirate ship. Diego was left alone for twenty years until he was rescued and could tell his tale - his proof was that he still had the Caller.

  c 1600 (5th May) - “The Road to Hell” [557]

  The eighth Doctor and Izzy arrived in Japan and were brought before aliens known as Gaijin, who sought to understand the concept of honour. They had a nano-sculptor that turned thoughts into reality, and could make people immortal - they did so with Katsura Sato. The Doctor was angry at the interference, but the Gaijin didn’t understand the objections. One of the Japanese, Asami, saw a vision of Japan’s future in Izzy’s mind, including the atomic bombs of World War II. He decided to launch a preemptive attack on the West. The Gaijin now understood that honour was linked to responsibility and deactivated the nano-sculptor even though it killed them.

  Katsura Sato, unable to commit seppuku, wandered the Earth, became a pirate and ended up incarcerated in Saragossa for fifty years. The Master wrote the Odostra, a fake holy book, and gave it to Katsura in his cell. Katsura was filled with crusading zeal and set out to conquer the world. History changed because of this. [558]

  Jared Khan had adopted the guise of John Dee, and had served as Queen Elizabeth’s counsellor for twenty years. In 1603, the Queen diverted Dee’s attention so he would not discover that the seventh Doctor was at her court. [559]

  The ley lines in Greenwich, London, were a source of energy akin to the Cardiff Rift; in future, Greenwich would become the primary meridian of all Earth time, and the naval college would be full of ghosts. A group of alien conquerors, the Enochians, were drawn to Greenwich’s ley lines, but their colony ship encountered a systems failure. They sought help from John Dee by speaking through his associate, the medium Edward Kelley. Dee parted ways with Kelley in 1589 and returned to England, then moved his private library and the Enochian spaceship to Duke Humphrey’s house. He hoped to help the aliens, whom he regarded as “angels”, and created the Enochian language to better communicate with them. [560] The Enochians had unknowingly been diverted to Greenwich by the Tef’Aree, as a means of enabling its own creation. [561]

  General William Lethbridge-Stewart was among King James’ retinue on his initial arrival in London. [562]

  1605 - The Plotters [563]

  The first Doctor and Vicki decided to investigate the Gunpowder Plot while Ian and Barbara set off for the Globe Theatre. The Doctor and Vicki - who was disguised as a boy named Victor - met King James I, and learned that the statesman Sir Robert Cecil was encouraging the Plot to draw out the conspirators and discredit the Catholics. Some Catholics captured Barbara, leading to Guy Fawkes befriending her. Robert Catesby, a member of the Plot, argued with Fawkes and killed him... which isn’t how the history books reported events.

  The King’s courtier, Robert Hay, was a secret member of a grand order devoted to mysticism. Hay sought to create anarchy, but the Doctor manoeuvred
Hay to the cellar under Parliament, where Cecil arrested him. Hay was tortured and executed in Fawkes’ place, preserving history.

  The Doctor met Cervantes. [564] The Armageddon Convention was signed, and banned the use of cobalt bombs. [565] John Dee learned that the Enochian “angels” were actually conquerors and destroyed their physical forms, but their essences were absorbed into the Earth. One Enochian remained aboard their spacecraft in a clockwork body, and so Dee sealed the ship within the cellars of Duke Humphrey’s house. He finally starved to death aboard the spacecraft. [566]

  1609 - The Empire of Glass [567]

  Irving Braxiatel and the first Doctor - accompanied by Steven and Vicki - hosted a meeting, the Armageddon Convention, that saw doomsday weapons such as temporal disrupters and cobalt bombs banned. Although the Daleks and Cybermen refused to attend, many other races did sign. The Convention was nearly sabotaged by the Greld, a race of arms dealers who stood to lose money from it; and the Jamarians, who craved an empire for themselves.

  The first performance of Macbeth had the last minute substitutions of Shakespeare in the role of Lady Macbeth, and the Doctor and Vicki in the roles of the doctor and his servant. The spy Christopher Marlowe died in a duel.

  The Doctor dropped Sarah Jane off at Skye for a few days, and stopped a monstrous undertaking by the serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, a.k.a. the Blood Countess. He was present at her trial in 1611. The Mimic, a creature banished from Gallifrey, copied a demonic creature that Bathory had summoned. On 29th June, 1613, the talentless playwright Francis Pearson - a follower of Countess Bathory - burnt down Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre during a production of Henry VIII. He later vanished, transported by the ancient Mimic to the thirty-first century. [568] In April 1616, a dying William Shakespeare handed over three unpublished plays - Love’s Labours Won, The Birth of Merlin and Sir John Oldcastle - to Irving Braxiatel in return for memories of events in Venice, 1609. [569]