The Sixth Doctor, travelling alone, is forced to land the TARDIS on a medieval planet and immediately proceeds to fall into a coma. When he wakes up again, the TARDIS is being worshiped as the vessel of the local Goddess, and Peri's by his side.
This is a bit confusing for the Doctor, seeing as he thought Peri was still Happily Married to BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! after the Trial. Peri explains that she got out of the marriage, stole a spaceship, crash-landed here, and is trying to find her way back to Earth. Six feels a bit guilty for not having come to check up on her, but he's glad to see her again and promises her he'll take her back home.
While the Doctor copes with frequent headaches and occasionally faints again, it turns out that the people of the village are crowding around the TARDIS to have her cure their illnesses. The Doctor realises that the TARDIS is uncontrollably emitting temporal waves, which accelerate the natural progression of illness in the people. This either cures them or kills them, depending on whether they had a harmless cold or a deadly virus. Unfortunately, a little girl in the village has the latter, and her virus is hastened by the temporal wave and mutates quickly, killing off most of the population. The Doctor tries to create a cure, but keeps falling into comas that last days. When he realises there's no other way to stop the virus, he decides to murder the TARDIS, even though it breaks his hearts. But before he can do so, Peri dies in his arms. As a last resort, Six tries to use the TARDIS medbay to create a cure out of the virus injected into himself, but a quick scan reveals that not only is his entire body failing, he's also got a neural implant in his brain. He performs emergency surgery on himself and rips it out.
Back in reality, Six quickly figures out that he's being experimented on by some evil space warlord who'll be defeated by him in the future, and who's decided to alter the web of time and take the Doctor out of history a bit early. Six is immediately captured, tortured and murdered by the evil scientists' henchwoman... or so it seems, but it turns out Six captured the woman in one of her own Lotus-Eater Machine contraptions, where she believes she's killed the Doctor. Said evil scientist is right annoyed when he realises what's happened, and gets rid of her on the spot. The Doctor escapes and decides that maybe he should visit Peri someday, just to see how she's doing.
Tropes
- The Bus Came Back
- Cargo Cult
- Cat Folk
- Clarke's Third Law
- Cold-Blooded Torture
- Disguised in Drag: The Doctor.
- Distress Call
- Doom Magnet: When Peri mentions strange going ons, the Doctor mutters why he's not surprised.
- Easy Amnesia: The Doctor has a nasty fall, and suffers from this.
- Hoist by His Own Petard
- Lotus-Eater Machine
- Medieval Stasis: Peri mentions the planet Refiloe has had brushes with technology, but they are all considered to be magical.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Peri laments this.
- Omnious Alien Language Chanting
- The Plague
- Public Execution
- Rapid Aging: Exposure to "chronons" causes this.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness
