This was the eleventh and final release in the the Destiny of the Doctor arc, created in cooperation with AudioGo for the 50th anniversary.
On the 23rd November 2013, the Eleventh Doctor discovers that Professor Chivers of Oxford University has built a time machine. Or more precisely, has sent a time machine back in time for himself to assemble. Which the Doctor knows can't work without the time machine coming from somewhere in the first place. He's also worried about the giant insects nobody can see except him, and that the Professor's future self is using a Time Lord hypercube to send his instructions. He nicks the cube, and heads back to the TARDIS. When he tries to read the hypercube, though, it disappears.
With the aid of Chivers's assistant, Alice Watson, the Doctor discovers the Creevix are manipulating events so that they can use Chivers's time loop to enter our universe and eat it. He also discovers that the time machine was originally the property of Guy Taylor, a Time Agent who was removed from time ... when the Doctor used the machine to travel back in order to track down the Creevix. Oops. The Creevix tell the Doctor that they've won, they've predicted everything he does, and there's no point using the hypercube to send messages to his past selves, because they're blocking the signal. The Doctor and Alice are only alive because one of them needs to take the hypercube in the time machine back to Chivers to complete the time loop.
The Doctor sends Alice back, and she gives his message to Chivers: "How many roads must a man walk down?" Chivers realises this is a message from his old friend Susan's grandfather ... just as the Doctor walks in, and explains everything. The messages to his past selves did get sent; they were read when the hypercube was in the TARDIS, which from its timeframe was after the Doctor recorded them, and the TARDIS used multiple methods to get them to the appropriate Doctors. The result was a complicated chain of dominoes that amount to the fact the Doctor is back and can destroy the Creevix's time loop.
With the Creevix plot undone, Time Agent Guy Taylor finally arrives in 2013 to investigate the anomaly, and Alice volunteers to come back with him to explain things. The Doctor and Chivers put on some Dylan.
"How many roads, Cedric? Eleven so far. And I've still no idea where I'm going."
Of course, he forgot the bump in the road and the fork in the road. He'll be reminded soon enough.
Tropes:
- All of the Other Reindeer: Alice grew up with a dislike for fiction, so she studied textbooks. This made her unpopular with the other children.
- Alternate Timeline: One where human beings invented Time Travel in 2013.
- Alternate Universe: Where the Creevix hail from.
- Applied Phlebotinum: The hypercube, the time core, the stablisers and the Tharasite Stone.
- Arc Welding: Ooooh boy the entire arc of Destiny of the Doctor gets tied up in one monologue by the Doctor.
- Batman Gambit: The Creevix have foreseen everything the Doctor will do and tied it into their plans. They get Out-Gambitted when the Doctor's plan involves influencing people, rather than the linear effects of his actions.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Creevix.
- Call-Back: To the previous Destiny of the Doctor audios as the Doctor outlines his plan, of course:
- Professor Chivers turns out to be Susan's friend Cedric. The Doctor's advice to find out about Bob Dylan led to him having a wife and family, and therefore less susceptible to the Creevix's manipulation.
- Guy Taylor's parents are Captain 01 and Lyric Erskine. They were married on New Vegas at the Mayor MacNeil Memorial Hotel.
- The TARDIS's messages were being blocked by a psychic shield over the 1930s, until Eighth took care of it.
- The TARDIS then used the power of the Omniparadox to rescue the Doctor from the Creevix's destroyed timeline.
- The Doctor got the Babblesphere to send a signal that would ensure the Creevix picked the right scientist for their plan. The signal entered the Creevix's universe by using sub-pulsar transmissions, based on the research on the Quiet Ones.
- The Ovids were so grateful when the Doctor finally returned their sphere that they aided human cybernetics, which gave the time machine's stablisers some interesting properties the Doctor could use to control the Tharasite Stone, which had been in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in Professor Chivers's lab since UNIT's geologist worked there, and smash it into the time machine.
- The Cloister Bell rings repeatedly.
- The Creevix mention that the Time-Lords are gone.
- The Chessmaster: The Doctor had his previous incarnations set up everything he needed for his plan to succeed.
- Continuity Nod
- The Doctor says he attended St Cedd's College, Cambridge.
- The Time Agency is mentioned, as is their eventual invention of the wrist-mounted Vortex Manipulator.
- When the Doctor realises Professor Chivers went to Coal Hill School, he says he had "a really cool science teacher: Ian Chesterton".
- The Creevix Leader mentions the names the Doctor thinks of "Dylan, Columbus, Houdini, Erskin are past". They were from earlier installments in the Destiny series, the First, the Sixth, the Fifth and Tenth Doctors respectively.
- Catchphrase: The Doctor throws in a geronimo.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The Creevix dominated future, where they've eaten the timelines and the Doctor and Alice are the last non-Creevix left alive.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: "Back to the Future!"
- Insectoid Aliens: The Creevix.
- Invisible to Normals: The Creevix, at first.
- Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Professor Chivers wears one.
- The Nth Doctor: The Doctor mentions he's an eleven man team.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Most of what the Doctor says to Alice Watson, who has never had any interest in works of fiction, and therefore has no idea what he means by saying "Ready to go down the rabbit hole, Alice?" or "The game's afoot, Watson!"
- The Professor: Professor Chivers.
- Pun: When Alice mentions she likes stationery stores, the Doctor quips he prefers "Ones that move".
- Ret-Gone: What happens to Guy Taylor so the Creevix can take his time machine. He gets better.
- Series Continuity Error: The Doctor says he'll regenerate if the Creevix kill him. The Time of the Doctor hadn't come out yet, (neither had Day) which retconned in the War Doctor, and the Meta-Crisis Doctor as official regenerations. Though knowing the Doctor, he could also have been bluffing.
- Shout-Out: The Doctor asks Alice if she's done anything impossible. When she doesn't get the reference he asks "Wonderland? Through the looking glass?"
- Later the Doctor says to Alice "The game's afoot!". Alice's full name is Alice Watson.
- At one point the Doctor triumphantly declares "We're going back... Back to the Future! I Always Wanted to Say That!"
- Something Only They Would Say: How many roads must a man walk down? This phrase triggers the memory of the first Doctor, and Professor (Cedric) Chivers realizes that this Doctor is that one.
- Spacetime Eater: The Creevix.
- Stable Time Loop: Chivers believes the Time Machine is one.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: The Doctor and the Creevix both utter a phrase about "knowing everything everybody is going to say all the time" at the same time, adhering to the idea both of them are masters over time.
- Temporal Paradox: Professor Chivers claims he's been getting messages from himself from the future as to how to make the machine.
- Time Master: The Creevix, even more then the Time Lords.
- Time Travel
- Timey-Wimey Ball: The Doctor describes that time isn't linear.
- The Watson: Alice Watson.
- We Are as Mayflies: How the Creevix view us.
- Why Couldntyou Be Different: Alice's dad wanted a son, which led to her flight into textbooks.
