The Seventh Doctor, Ace and new companion Hex land on a rock in space, which turns out to have a deserted city on it... as well as Uluru. The three are soon beset by creatures from Australian mythology. Realising that they're sensitive to sound, the Doctor tries to sonic them, but is drawn into the aboriginal dream world.
While Ace hangs out with human miners and a bunch of Galyari merchants and Hex tries to contact the Doctor (and freaks out a bit), the Doctor goes on a sort of drowsy spiritual journey. He gets his body copied in the process, but eventually breaks free with Hex' help and finds out that modernisation disrupted the natural terraforming dreaming powers of aboriginal Australians. When Uluru was detached from Earth and turned into a space colony, the land's ties with the dream world were broken, and the Doctor helps restore them using sound and a whole lot of Mind Screw.
Tropes
- Alien Sky: Colour shifting stars as they travel across the night sky.
- Another Dimension: The Dreaming seem to be in this. Where one's focus on your own identity keeps your essence coherent (otherwise you are deprived of your senses, and fall into a And I Must Scream like state)
- Artificial Gravity
- Continuity Nod: The Galyari wonder if the Doctor is the same Doctor as their Sandman.
- Curse Cut Short
- Doing In the Wizard: An unusual occasion where this does not happen in Doctor Who. The Doctor seems to take all the Dreamtime mythology at face value, and never tries to give it a scientific explanation through psychic powers or somesuch.
- Doppelgänger
- Foreshadowing: Hex says it'll be a miracle if he lives to become a time travel veteran. As we find out in later episodes, he doesn't.
- Ghost Town / Ghost Planet (Though it's just an asteroid)
- Hollywood Dreamtime: The Dreamtime is portrayed as an alternate dimension taught to the Aboriginal people by aliens.
- History Repeats
- Mind Screw: Yeah.
- Naïve Newcomer: Hex.
- Shout-Out: See also The World Is Just Awesome.
- Ace mentions some "David Attenborough program".
- Taken for Granite: The asteroid the three land on. Later the Doctor.
- The World Is Just Awesome: Hex has a lot of fun with spaceships and aliens, though he expected the whole thing to be a bit more Star Trek.
- Something Only They Would Say: Inverted. The Doctor's double gives himself away by calling Ace "McShane".
- Title Drop
- Vision Quest: Tying into the Australian myth this adventure has.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Seems to be the case in the Dreamtime.
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: Bunyips and Yowies are mentioned as evil spirits (and local fauna are called that as well.)
