The Doctor later used the TARDIS to bring Boolin and a teenage Alex home. Alex was made the new Tsar of the Robotov Empire, and facilitated peace between the robot and human factions. [1619]
c 101,881 - Serpent Crest: Survivors in Space [1620]
The entire village of Hexford and its two hundred fifty-three civilians arrived on the biomoon of the Robotov Empire, thanks to the Skishtari wormhole and a mishap in 2011. Captain Yates took charge of the stranded townsfolk, who were left to their own devices for three months. The fourth Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey arrived in the TARDIS just as the Skishtari egg in their possession hatched. The Skishtari welcomed their giant offspring - but the newborn Emperor had formed an empathic bond with Tsar Alex, and ate its progenitors instead. Alex agreed to relocate the giant snake to a planet with a sustainable food source. A clone of the second Doctor, freed from his obligation to the Skishtari, aided the fourth Doctor in sending Hexford back to the twenty-first century.
Circa 102,890, the white hole seedling from Albert was supposed to blossom into maturity. [1621] The Doctor judged that Carmen Priminger - a gambler who lost her memories - was human, and that her time machine originated from the 108th or 109th centuries. [1622]
c 148,500 - “Onomatopoeia” [1623]
The tenth Doctor and Majenta Pryce rebooted the slumbering robot guardian on Graveworld 909. It ended the pall of silence on the planet, and accepted the rat people who had evolved in the millennia while it slept as its new workforce.
The eleventh Doctor wanted to show Amy a museum in the 175th century, but warned her that the canteen there was rubbish, and for religious reasons served only boiled Jericoacoara beans. [1624]
The Daleks were part of the history of the First Segment of Time. [1625] One Dalek ship, containing the Emperor, survived the Last Great Time War. It arrived at the edge of Earth’s solar system, remaining hidden. For centuries, the Daleks would harvest the dregs and unwanted of humanity, building Daleks from their genetic material. The Emperor meddled in humanity’s affairs and sought ways to slow its development. [1626]
? - “War of the Words” [1627]
The war between the Vromyx and the Garynths had been raging for forty-seven point six three years. The conflict blocked access to the library planet Biblios, where all universal knowledge was stored by legions of robots. The warring factions wanted to access details of superweapons, then deny it to their opponents. The fourth Doctor blew up an empty building, telling both sides it was where the records were kept, and the rivals withdrew.
? 199,750 - Home Truths [1628]
On an island at Ely, a house was built that could grant wishes to its occupants. A husband and wife resided there, but the house proved capable of facilitating even unspoken wishes. In a moment of irritation, the wife briefly wished her husband harm - causing him to fall dead. The horrified wife begged for the tragedy to “stop”, and immediately died also. The house then sealed itself off, its interior almost frozen in time. Some time later, the first Doctor, Steven and Sara found the bodies within. They came under threat from the house’s wish-granting ability, so Sara wished that the house would develop a conscience that distinguished right from wrong. This endowed the house with a disembodied copy of Sara’s persona, and the travellers left in the TARDIS.
Majenta Pryce and the Crimson Hand [1629]
The Order of the Crimson Hand was a secretive group of extra-terrestrial tyrants, elitists and industry tycoons. It possessed powerful artifacts that included the ashes of the scroll of Horath, a shard of the Glory and a piece of the Key to Time. The quartet that composed the Crimson Hand’s inner cabal - Trique, Lunat, Pollox and Pi - recruited Lady Scaph after they acquired the Manus Maleficus: a machine from the higher realms that reshaped reality, but required five operators.
The wealthy adventurer Wesley Sparks was reputed to have harnessed the power of the quark, charted the depths of the multiverse, and duelled with Daemons. He established Stormlight House as a protected residence; those within could watch the largest storm in the universe as it raged at the edge of the Proxima system. Patrons could appear in Stormlight in bodies made from solid engram tachyonics. Scaph passed an initiation test in which she seduced Sparks, then abandoned him the night before their wedding.
The now-complete Crimson Hand field-tested the Manus Maleficus by reaching back to the twentieth century and obliterating a planet threatening their powerbase in the Obsidian Cluster: the Ownworld of the Skith. Lady Scaph regretted her role in the holocaust and fled. She became the entrepreneur “Majenta Pryce”. With her assistant Fanson, they experienced the rout of Ichabod Nine, the Recession Wars on Fiscus and the Tarvu Initiative.
Majenta and Fanson operated one of the last remaining Hotel Historias in the year 2008, but were arrested by time-travelling bailiffs. Before Majenta was incarcerated, Fanson erased her memory to conceal the psychic tracking sigil the Crimson Hand had placed in her mind. [1630]
c 200,000 (Tuesday the Gluteenth of Mauve, and Wednesday) - “Thinktwice” [1631]
The amnesiac Majenta Pryce was incarcerated at the Thinktwice Orbital Penitentiary, and the tenth Doctor met her for the second time while investigating abuses there. The facility’s warden had become allied with the memory-eating Memeovax while he was a boy on Greene’s World, and had constructed the Knowsall machine to extract memories from the prisoners for the Memeovax’s benefit. Majenta destroyed the Memeovax with a power surge of unknown origin, and the Doctor agreed to take Majenta to the Hippocrats of Panacea - the finest mind-surgeons in the universe - for treatment. Majenta agreed - on the understanding that the Doctor was working for her, without pay (for now).
c 200,000 - “The Crimson Hand” [1632]
Intersol recaptured Majenta in the twenty-first century and interrogated her, which unlocked her memories. The sigil in her mind attracted the inner circle of the Crimson Hand, who were wanted on 32,608 individual counts of grand larceny, murder and fraud. They brought Majenta back into their ranks, and she seemingly disintegrated the Doctor - but actually sent him into a pocket dimension for safekeeping.
The reunited Crimson Hand exerted the full power of the Manus Maleficus. Galaxies were swept aside, entire solar systems were rebuilt and many races were extinguished. Majenta brought prosperity, and tyranny, to her impoverished homeworld of Vessica.
On Day 36 of The Crimson Age, Majenta retrieved the Doctor because use of the Manus Maleficus had created an expanding space-time rift. She repented her villainy, killed the Crimson Hand members and relinquished the Manus Maleficus’ hold on reality. Space-time was returned to normal. Majenta died, but the Doctor brought her back to life with a final use of the Manus Maleficus, which returned to its home dimension. Afterward, the Doctor took Majenta to the future to live in New Old Detroit.
The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire
200,000 - The Long Game [1633]
It was the age of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Earth was at its height: the hub of a domain stretching across a million planets, covered with megacities, possessing five moons and a population of ninety-six billion.
A sandstorm on the New Venus Archipelago left two hundred dead. There were water riots in Glasgow. The Face of Boe announced that he was pregnant with a Baby Boemina. The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe was manipulating humanity by controlling its news media from Satellite Five, which broadcast six hundred channels. This held back humanity’s development, and made it fearful of immigrants. The ninth Doctor and Rose defeated the Jagrafess, and the Doctor expected that humanity’s development would accelerate back to normal without its interference.
Adam, a companion of the Doctor and Rose, tried to acquire knowledge from the future and download it to his own time in 2012. The Doctor discovered Adam’s intentions and returned him home.
After Satellite Five was put out of commission, the information feed to Earth stopped. The government and economy collapsed. A hundred years of hell ensued. [1634] The Great Atlantic Smog Storm started in 200,
080. On some days, it wasn’t possible to breathe the air. The storm raged for at least twenty years. [1635]
200,100 - Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways [1636]
The Earth was now divided into continents that included Europa, Pacifica, the New American Alliance and Australasia. Default payments were made to Martian Drones. The Great Cobalt Pyramid was built on the remains of the famous Torchwood Institute. The Great Central Ravine was named after the “ancient” British city of Sheffield. Stella Popbait made hats. There was a penal colony on the moon. Jupiter Rising was a holo-series. The dish gaffabeck had originated on the planet Lucifer. The Face of Boe was now the oldest inhabitant of the Isop galaxy.
Humanity watched savage game shows such as Big Brother, Call My Bluff (with real guns), Countdown (where the aim was to defuse a bomb), Ground Force (contestants were turned to compost), Wipeout, Stars in Your Eyes (contestants were blinded), What Not to Wear (androids mutilated people), Bear with Me (contestants lived with a bear) and The Weakest Link (overseen by the dreaded Anne Droid). These were produced by the Bad Wolf Corporation, broadcast on ten thousand channels and filmed aboard the former Satellite Five, now called the Game Station.
Losing contestants were apparently vaporised, but in truth were teleported away and secretly converted into Daleks. The ranks of the Emperor Dalek’s army swelled. The human, slaved Controller overseeing this operation sought out the Daleks’ greatest enemy to help, and transmatted the ninth Doctor, Captain Jack and Rose to the Game Station.
The Doctor discovered the Daleks’ machinations, and the Emperor mobilised his forces against Earth. Dalek missiles bombarded many of the continents, with enough force to alter their very shape. The Doctor briefly sent Rose to safety in her native time, but Rose gazed into the heart of the TARDIS and thus became endowed with the power of the Time Vortex. She gained the godlike ability to alter time, and used it to destroy the Emperor and his Daleks. The Doctor sacrificed his life to stop the Vortex energies from consuming Rose, and regenerated as a result. Jack had been killed by the Daleks, but Rose brought him back to life. He was left behind on the Game Station, and used his vortex manipulator to travel to the nineteenth century.
The manner in which Rose brought Jack back to life made him an immortal:
“Something happened to me once, a long way away. Time itself changed me to a fixed point, and now I can’t die. I suffer, and I perish, but I always come back.” [1637]
c 200,300 - “Mortal Beloved” [1638]
Centuries after Majenta Pryce betrayed Wesley Sparks, he had become an aged cyborg consumed by hate. His company, Sparktech, was moving to acquire Omnivax Inc. and Marscom. Sparktech’s stock was falling, and Intersol acquired its offworld set-form division. The Mazuma was currently down against the grotzi.
Sparks targeted Majenta and the tenth Doctor when the TARDIS brought them to Stormlight House, but an engram of Sparks - reflecting his nobler, younger self - stabbed Sparks to death, then suffered file corruption.
? 200,750 - Home Truths / The Drowned World [1639]
In the thousand years since the duplicate Sara Kingdom persona was created, humanity had undergone decline and lost much of its scientific knowledge. Even simple intercoms were not in use. Mankind was no longer capable of space travel, and its encounter with the Daleks had become the stuff of stories and legend. Cambridge was home to a Council of Elders composed of revered “old men” in their sixties. War was brewing in mid-Africa. The duplicate Sara had spent the preceding centuries accommodating many guests within her walls. Law officers periodically interviewed her; the law forbade apparitions, but each officer was moved to grant her an exception.
Guests eventually stopped arriving, and a law officer named Robert became the first person to visit the house in a long while. Robert was also inclined to leave the Sara-ghost in peace, but he discovered that she wanted the Elders to visit so she could grant their wishes, and that her power was extending in range - Robert’s wife, in accordance with his unspoken wish, had become pregnant. Fearing her power, Robert ordered the Sara-ghost to disperse itself. She did so.
Twelve years passed, and a fatal sleeping sickness became rampant. The young and oldest were the hardest hit; when the Elders succumbed to the illness, law and order decayed. Robert’s daughter, now age 11, caught the disease. He took her to the house at Ely, and revived the Sara-ghost. She was too depleted to affect reality outside the house, but agreed to cure Robert’s ailing daughter - on the condition that he remain with her for the rest of his natural days. He agreed, and his daughter recovered.
? 200,750 - The Cold Equations
Humanity had produced brilliant scientists and artists, and had shaped the destiny of a hundred different worlds, but a dark cloud had settled upon the Earth, and the remaining humans there were barely living above subsistence level. Earth had lost much knowledge following the downfall of its “vast sprawling empire”, and an intergalactic Dark Age was underway. The very continents of Earth had been warped out of shape, and London was deep under water.
Much debris from Earth’s space age remained in orbit, and a group of Cahlians - humanoids with fiery, sunset-coloured skin and sandy hair - representing the True-Jank Cahlian Co-operative set about salvaging whatever of value could be found in space or on Earth’s surface. To whittle down the competition, the Cahlians had released a sleeping sickness that afflicted about four-fifths of Earth’s population. Amongst other items, the Cahlians recovered the Lion of Knidos.
The first Doctor, Steven and Oliver Harper brokered a deal on behalf of Earth authorities - the Cahlians would keep the material they’d acquired in exchange for clearing the debris from Earth orbit. A coalition government on Earth agreed to assemble some historians, and determine if the salvage had value. Their work done, the Doctor’s party left - having seen in records from the old empire that they were one day going to be incarcerated on the planetoid Grace Alone.
? 200,760 - The Guardian of the Solar System [1640]
When Robert’s daughter turned 21, she left the house to see the outside world. He never saw her again. Robert found he wasn’t aging, and in accordance with his wishes, he and Sara traded places - she was incarnated in an older body, and Robert became the house’s governing intelligence. Sensing Sara’s desire to escape - and to gain absolution for murdering her brother - Robert made the TARDIS materialise outside the house, with the Doctor inside.
At some point, the incarnated “house” version of Sara Kingdom was transported into the Death Zone on Gallifrey. [1641]
The Doctor claimed that the fare at Big Paulie’s Sausages in New York, the twenty-first century, was regarded in the 208th century as the most famous food in the galaxy. “Anything with less than four stomachs” would spend a lifetime of savings to travel back and enjoy it. [1642]
250,339 (14th March) - Night of the Humans [1643]
An Intergalactic Environmental Agency (IEA) was now in operation. Earth’s solar system was home to the Lux Academy, and offered classes in ancient Earth music.
The Sittuun had evolved on a world with no predators, and so never developed fear. Humanity made first contact with the Sittuun, who used human names and language conventions when dealing with humans, as their own language was too untranslatable. The comet Schuler-Khan was due to strike the Gyre (a conglomeration of space junk), which would have propelled city-sized debris toward twelve inhabited worlds within twenty-five million miles. A team of Sittuun destroyed the Gyre, and the humans living there, with the largest nanobomb - which contained metal-eating nanites - ever made. The bomb had been built with funding from eight Battani planets and fifteen associated worlds.
Prior to this, a relatively early incarnation of the Doctor had facilitated swashbuckler Dirk Slipstream’s incarceration on Volag-Noc, after Slipstream had crashed a passenger ship - and killed seven hundred - during a botched diamond heist on Belaform 9. After Slipstream’s escape, the eleventh Doctor and Amy stopped him from acquiring the Mymon Key and blackmailing the Sol syste
m with it. The Key was destroyed, and ravenous Sollogs ate Slipstream.
In 291,994, an alien Fortress materialised at the heart of Arcopolis, a utopian city of arcologies on a world in the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy (or Galaxy Seven) which had not known war or crime for thousands of years. The Weapon at the heart of the Fortress fired, apparently killing all two hundred million people in Arcopolis, as well as annihilating countless other star systems. It was the Ultimate Weapon - something that didn’t just destroy one’s enemy, but instead used vunktotechnology and vundatechnology to destroy everything that had ever been known about said enemy. This was the Last Battle of the Seventh Galaxy. [1644]
292,009 - The Eyeless [1645]
The tenth Doctor went to Arcopolis to deactivate the Weapon at the heart of the Fortress there. He thought the Weapon had rendered the planet lifeless, but soon met survivors who lived in fear of “ghosts” that haunted the city. A girl called Alsa told him that the thirty-seven original survivors had birthed many children over the last fifteen years. The survivors and their offspring stayed away from the city, confining themselves to a settlement in what used to be a park.
The Eyeless - an alien race of glass telepaths who worked as galactic scavengers - arrived to claim the TARDIS. They soon learned of the Weapon and desired it, but Alsa wanted the Weapon for herself, believing it could power the ruins of the city. The Doctor learned that the “ghosts” were actually sentient shadows in space-time left by the people killed by the Weapon, but was himself forced to use the device - which wiped out the Eyeless and destroyed the Fortress. He took Alsa on his travels for a short time, returning her a little later than he expected...
292,029 - The Eyeless [1646]
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