? 2575 - Human Nature (NA) [813]
The seventh Doctor and Benny visited a bodysmith and bought a Pod that would allow the Doctor to become human. They travelled to Earth, 1914, so the Doctor could experiment with living as a human being.
? 2576 - Rain of Terror [814]
On Earth, holiday excursions were available to an alien zoo on the far side of the moon, and the National Museum of Mars. The Off-Planet Railroad Company had a solid reputation for building train lines. An engineer working for one of the big colony builders could spend weeks or months on faraway planets, returning to Earth in the interim. Colony ships could erect temporary buildings on target worlds prior to engineering firms moving in to do the job properly. Galactic Safari offered use of hyper-sleep chambers that even an upper middle-class family in Brighton could afford. The chambers enabled travel to such worlds as the tourist planet of Xirrinda, which featured such exotic animals as the Trinto, Beslons and the predatory Sharkwolf.
The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory visited Xirrinda after dealing with a revolution that involved super-evolved Mire Beasts, and were present as the swarm of ravenous machine-creatures ejected from Xirrinda - numbering in the tens of billions - returned to their homeworld. The Doctor deciphered the key to an ancient “fail-safe” device left by the creatures’ creators, and switched them off.
2577 - Benny: The Sword of Forever [815]
Marillian inherited many businesses after his father died in a transport accident. He tracked the stolen Ark of the Covenant to the Palace of the Arch-Regent Gebmoses III - the self-proclaimed (and virtually unacknowledged) Emperor of the Third World - in Kampuchea. Gebmoses had Marillian killed, then resurrected using the Ark’s power. Henceforth, Marillian acknowledged Gebmoses as his master.
On Draconia, only two of the six bloodlines from the reign of the First Emperor had survived to the twenty-sixth century: House Kaytar and House Salah. Members of House Kaytar found a stranded Earth ship and indentured the family they found within - but such was the respect and privilege that House Kaytar accorded to the humans, it was disbanded. [816]
The capital of Earth’s moon colony was once the most exciting city in human space, but eventually became half historical theme park, half grimy port. The dark side of the moon was even worse off - efforts to keep it artificially lit and atmospherically supported ended when the population dropped below viability levels. It became a “huge, pitch-black ghost town”. [817]
2579 - Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Possum Kingdom” [818]
Dallas-Fort Worth was now a city within the United States of Texas. Benny and her travelling companion questioned the amnesiac man - Nepesht - whom she had met fourteen years previously. The man’s memories returned, and he generated a portal that let him pursue his nemesis back to 1212.
c 2580 - Arrangements for War [819]
On Vilag, the countries of Galen and Malendia negotiated a ceasefire after centuries of warfare. Governor Justice Rossiter, the head of the country of Kozepen, served as an independent arbiter as Galen and Malendia worked to form a coalition: the Kingdom Alliance. The sixth Doctor and Evelyn visited Vilag three weeks prior to an invasion by the warlike Killorans, knowing that the Alliance was historically slated to overcome them.
The Doctor’s loose lips caused Galen’s Princess Krisztina to declare her love for Lieutenant Marcus Reid, ruining her intended political marriage to Malendia’s Prince Viktor. Thousands were killed as the scandal caused Galen and Malendia to resume their conflict. Nonetheless, the nations united their forces when the Killorans attacked, and drove off the invaders. Krisztina and Reid were killed the conflict. Rossiter, being a widower, asked Evelyn to stay with him, but she resumed her travels with the Doctor...
Adrian Wall fought in the battle of Vilag, and killed a boy no older than five during it. [820]
& 2581 - Thicker Than Water [821]
A triumvirate government was established on Vilag. The sixth Doctor and Evelyn re-visited the planet, and she left the TARDIS to marry Rossiter.
In 2582, Kothar - a descendent of the disgraced House Kaytar of Draconia - was appointed a cultural attaché to the Draconian Embassy on Earth. [822]
& 2583 - Thicker Than Water [823]
Rossiter was elected Principle Triumvir, the head of the tripartite government on Vilag. The sixth Doctor and Mel visited Evelyn Rossiter, and the Doctor ended illicit experiments involving Killoran DNA. He and Mel were present as Evelyn and Rossiter renewed their wedding vows.
Rossiter died. Three years later, Evelyn found the temporal stabiliser of the timeship UNS Pelican in a coal seam. It translocated her to billions of years in the past. [824]
Battrulian artist Toulour Martinique was mysteriously killed after painting his last work, Murdering Art, which depicted his being murdered by demons. [825] Around 2582, the Kalkravian Revolution took place, and the Adjudication Bureau was sent in to free hostages. The All Worlds Science Fair took place on the planet Dellah. Earth won the Worlds Cup in 2584. [826]
c 2585 - Deimos / The Resurrection of Mars [827]
The Mars Terraforming Project established a base on the Martian moon of Deimos, and built a re-ioniser to alter Mars’ atmosphere from space, making it breathable to humans. The Project collapsed due to the onset of the Great Recession and technical problems related to the goal of creating artificial suns to give Mars heat and light. In time, the Martian catacombs on Deimos were excavated, and the moonbase was transformed into a museum devoted to the Ice Warriors. The humans in the solar system believed that the Ice Warriors had been wiped out in the twenty-first century, and at least one documentary had been made of the T-Mat incident.
The Meddling Monk, in a bid to alter history so the utopian society on Halcyon would survive, awoke the Ice Warriors on Deimos “a few centuries” before they were due. He also fired Lucie Miller as his companion, and deposited her in the moonbase on Deimos. The Ice Warriors captured the base’s re-ioniser, and attempted to alter Mars’ atmosphere to support Martian life. The eighth Doctor destroyed the moonbase and the re-ionizer - an act that altered Mars’ atmosphere so it could sustain human life, and ignited the surface of Deimos. The resultant chain reaction turned Deimos into a miniature sun that would supply Mars with heat and light.
Six hundred people had died - and three hundred thousand people living on Mars been endangered - because the Doctor had hesitated in killing the Ice Warriors, as this would have also meant Lucie’s death. The Doctor’s companion Tamsin decried his cowardice, and departed with the Monk. Lucie resumed travelling with the Doctor.
c 2585 - The Also People [828]
The seventh Doctor, Bernice, Roz and Chris enjoyed a holiday at the Worldsphere of the People. Chris became lovers with a young woman named Dep, and Roz had a romantic relationship with a war veteran named feLixi. The seventh Doctor solved the murder of viCari, the first drone to be killed in more than three hundred years. feLixi was punished for his culpability in viCari’s murder with ostracism - nobody in the Worldsphere would ever speak to him again. The Doctor and Bernice also helped restore the feral Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart to sanity. Dep didn’t tell Chris that she was pregnant with his child.
She later gave birth to a daughter, iKrissi. Because Dep made a mistake during conception, iKrissi was an exact clone of Chris. Dep had at least one more child. [829]
= 2586 - TimeH: Child of Time [830]
The Sodality had been created when the surviving members of the Cabal of the Horned Beast re-acquired the Daemon-linked book that was lost in the twentieth century, and retroactively make their insignificant group more powerful. Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish arrived in a version of 2586 in which Sodality’s meddling with history had created a devastated Earth. The Daemon named Mastho appeared at St. Paul’s Cathedral as Sodality summoned him a third time, and revealled that he had ordered Sodality to kill its time-sensitives and time-channellers as a means of culling all but the “Child of Time”: a human with the combined abilities of both. The Daemons want
ed to study such a creature, absorb its powers and gain the unfettered ability to travel through space and time. A woman named Maria became the Child of Time - but killed herself after falling through time to 1949, causing a psionic backlash that killed Mastho also.
An unknown incarnation of the Doctor witnessed these events, and took Sodality’s High Executioner with him upon making his escape. She would part ways with him in 1949, and become Emily Blandish.
A company in the Catan Nebula made Artificial Personality Embodiments (APEs): synthetic humans with a tailored set of memories. Two synthoids - Kara Delbane and an unnamed agent with Stratum Seven-level clearance - were created to join a mercenary group, the Oblivion Angels. They reported to a computer intelligence: the Artificial Viral-based Intelligence Destabilisation (ARVID). The Agent and Kara were sent to the planet Sharabeth, a nexus point of industry and commerce. One of the Dellan gods had been flung back through time, causing a number of time fractures on Sharabeth. It merged its consciousness with the cyber-body of Absolam Sleed, the company founder, and used his resources to commit mass carnage. Sleed seemed to die at the Agent’s hands, but his brain survived. [831]
2587 (autumn) - Return of the Living Dad [832]
The newly-married Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane were on Youkali 6. Benny was studying for a genuine degree in archaeology, while writing a new book and trying for a child. An old friend of her father, Admiral Groenewegen, made contact with new information about Isaac Summerfield’s disappearance. Benny called the seventh Doctor for help - and they discovered that Isaac was alive and well, and living on Earth in 1983.
The seventh Doctor and Chris visited Bernice and Jason on Youkali 6 to inform them of Roz Forrester’s death. [833]
2589 - Phobos [834]
An entity from a collapsing universe forged a singularity bridge to our reality. The bridge ended on the Martian moon of Phobos, but the entity became stuck in the transition point. It fed off feelings of euphoria, set up a thin atmosphere on Phobos and gained strength as the moon was used for extreme sports.
Problems arose during the development of Lunar Park (a hotel and botanical garden) on Phobos; only its environmental dome was finished. Squatters moved in when the moon was left unincorporated, and adrenaline junkies performed extreme sports against the backdrop of the moon’s spectacular ice valleys. Such recreations included grav-board runs outside the dome, ice spelunking in the melted floes beneath the surface and “orbit-hopping”.
The eighth Doctor and Lucie stopped on Phobos, and the Doctor jolted the emerging entity by concentrating his many fears - the creature either died or went dormant. As a precaution, the Doctor recommended that Phobos’ sports come to an end.
The time-active Headhunter landed on Phobos days before the TARDIS’ arrival, but fell off a bicycle and was unconscious until after the Doctor and Lucie had left.
In this era, the Githians were large, hirsute creatures who inter-acted with humanity, but were forbidden to marry outside their species in order to keep their gene pool pure. Hunters retrieved Githians who violated the law.
Around the year 2590, Radon 222 levels on the surface of Argolis had dropped to such a level that the planet became habitable again. [835] Blinni-Gaar was an agricultural planet feeding an entire sector. Channel 400 made a deal with the government and started broadcasting addictive programmes. The Blinnati stopped farming, nearly leading to famine on the Rim until offworlders started running the planet. [836]
c 2590 - Demontage [837]
The eighth Doctor, Sam and Fitz arrived on Vega Station. General Browning Phillips was planning to return the Battrulian junta to power by killing President Drexler, but the Doctor defeated that plan. Drexler and a Canvine representative, Bigdog Caruso, engineered a more permanent peace treaty between the Battrul and Canvine.
The artist Martinique had discovered a process that could physically transfer someone into a painting, or make items in paintings take physical form. He used this technique to survive his “murder”, and took up residence in a serene painting, On a Clear Day.
2592 (31st October) - Cold Fusion [838]
By this time, the Third Draconian War had been fought. An Empress, revered as a goddess by some, now ruled Earth. The Empire had developed Skybases to operate as planetary command centres, and the Adjudicators were sent across the Empire to enforce Imperial Law. The Unitatus Guild, a secret society based on garbled legends of UNIT in the twentieth century, was politically influential.
The Scientifica, the ruling elite of scientists on an icy Earth colony planet, excavated a crashed TARDIS and its mummified pilot. Following experiments on the ship, ghosts start appearing across the planet. The seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz investigated the ghosts. The fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric arrived a month later, and found the Patient - a mummified Time Lady - who promptly regenerated. The Doctor tried to get her to safety as the Adjudicators declared martial law. Both Doctors realised that the ghosts were the Ferutu, beings from the far future of an alternative timeline in which Gallifrey was destroyed in the ancient past. The Ferutu attempted to ensure Gallifrey’s destruction, but the fifth and seventh Doctors joined forces and ensured history was not altered. A few Ferutu were trapped within a chalk circle, the only survivors of their timeline.
The Time Lady, Patience, was fatally wounded but rescued by Omega, who transported her to his anti-matter universe. [839]
Fitz awoke after almost six hundred years to find himself in Augustine City on Ordifica. The colonists had developed the Cold, a horrific weapon. Fitz celebrated his 626th birthday on Ordifica on 7th March, 2593. [840]
Bernice Summerfield at St. Oscar’s University [841]
St Oscar’s University had become became one of the most prestigious centres of learning in the Milky Way. [842] Dellah was closer to the Galactic Hub than Earth, but was considered more of a backwater. The days there lasted twenty-six hours. The Shakya Constellation was visible from Dellah’s southern hemisphere. [843] Trans-galactic travel was fairly easy in this era for those with money, but navigation computers were expensive and time travel was forbidden. Instant information transfer was available. [844] Galactic Basic, the most common language, was an evolved version of English. [845]
2593 (Wednesday, 8th May) - The Dying Days [846]
Benny Summerfield was offered the chair of archaeology at St Oscar’s University on Dellah. She received the job offer in 1997 despite never actually applying for the position. The eighth Doctor dropped her off, and they enjoyed a fond farewell. He also gifted her with Wolsey the TARDIS cat.
The People’s supercomputer God had brainwashed Benny into joining the St. Oscar’s staff, preparing her for the coming day when she would help to free the conceptual entity MEPHISTO. [847]
The Black Guardian transported the con man and art dealer Menlove Stokes to Dellah from the far distant future. Stokes became a Professor of Applied Arts at St Oscar’s. [848]
2593 - Benny: Oh No It Isn’t! [849]
Benny, in her post as the Edward Watkinson Professor of Archaeology at St. Oscar’s, accompanied a team of academics to the quarantined planet of Perfecton. The missile containing the encoded remains of Perfecton civilisation struck Benny’s ship, the Winton, and impacted with Professor Archduke’s thesis on obscure theatrical forms. The missile’s quantum fluctuations manifested aspects of Archduke’s thesis, and so Benny’s team and some Grel - information monarchs / pirates with squiddy faces - found themselves in a world governed by pantomime. Benny passed as a young man named Dick Whittington, and her cat Wolsey temporarily became a talking biped. She ended the scenario, and her team escaped as Perfecton’s sun went nova. Archduke acquired the data module containing the Perfecton culture.
The Knights of Jeneve captured Chris Cwej and put him in suspended animation. [850]
The Irving Braxiatel who was flung through the Time Vortex during his struggle with Lord Burner arrived on Dellah. He met Benny just once [851], realised that she was familiar with an alternate versio
n of himself, and avoided contacting her until 2616. [852]
2593 - Benny: Dragons’ Wrath [853]
Irving Braxiatel was presently the head of the St. Oscar’s Theatrology Department, and - from his perspective - met Bernice Summerfield for the first time. The warlord Romolo Nusek sought to further his power by proving that his ancestor, Hugo Gamaliel, once held a colony on Stanturus Three. Benny used the low-grade nuclear device hidden in the prized Gamaliel Dragon to obliterate the power-mad Nusek and his castle.
2593 - Benny: Beyond the Sun [854]
The Sunless conquered the planet Ursu, and returned the Blooms stolen from them to their homeworld. Benny - with some help from her ex-husband Jason Kane, who approached her at a dig on Apollox 4 - deduced that the Blooms were a stellar manipulator. After being given the right keys - a particular brother and sister the Blooms had spawned - it generated enough energy to revitalise the Sunless’ star.
2593 - Benny: Ship of Fools
Earth’s seas were now a thick black sludge. The famed thief Cat’s Paw stole an Olabrian joy-luck crystal from Marcus Krytell, one of the richest men in the sector. With the Olabrians prone to committing mass murder to recover their crystals, Krytell asked Bernice to handle the ransom exchange on the maiden voyage of the Titanian Queen, a luxury liner. Benny unmasked Cat’s Paw as Isabel Blaine, a construct of the Catan Nebula. The Titanian Queen was destroyed when its artificial intelligence went mad, but Benny and Cat’s Paw saved the passengers. In retribution for Krytell’s crimes, Cat’s Paw returned the joy-luck crystal to him - but also informed the authorities of its location, causing Olabrian battle cruisers to swoop down on his location. [855]
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