Recap / Past Doctor Adventures Players

Warning: Spoilers may be unmarked.

Written by Terrance Dicks, featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri, with an interlude from the Second Doctor. Oh, and Winston Churchill.

After a particularly messy adventure on the planet Rigel Seven, Peri yearns to visit an historical period of peace and opulence. The Doctor suggests London, 1899. However, the TARDIS instead lands in South Africa, 1899 - where Boer and British troops are fighting over a stalled train. Having narrowly stopped would-be assassin Marcos, the Doctor, with Peri, helps the intended target - twenty-five-year-old war correspondent Winston Churchill - free the train. The three are then captured by the Boers.

With Churchill mysteriously sent a change of clothes and a Mauser pistol, the Doctor makes his own escape with Peri. Out on the road, a mysteriously accented woman steers Churchill towards a successful escape. Back in the TARDIS, via the thought scanner, the Doctor shows Peri his second incarnation’s encounter with Major Churchill in World War One - wherein he aided Churchill’s escape from the chateau of Count Ludwig Kroner and Countess Malika Treszka.

Suspecting temporal interference, the Sixth Doctor decides to investigate the London of 1936. From a bank deposit set up by his second incarnation, the Doctor rents a house and hires freelance bodyguard Tom Dekker - who, back in Chicago, knew another Doctor Smith. With the alias of Honorary Consul for the Republic of Santa Esmerelda, the Doctor presents his credentials to King Edward VIII, and is invited, with Peri, to a Buckingham Palace garden party, where Marcos - who appears not to have aged since the Boer War - once again unsuccessfully targets Churchill.

Invited both to lunch at Chartwell and Bryanston Court, the Doctor and Peri attend respectively. While the Doctor shares his suspicions with Churchill, Peri, expecting to be introduced to King Edward VIII, finds fiance Wallis Simpson to have instead invited honorary SS General Joachim von Ribbentrop - an acquaintance of the extra-dimensional Count and Countess…

Tropes:

• Always Know a Pilot: In 1915, Lieutenant Carstairs and Lady Jennifer are flown to safety by Major Churchill, who, before the war, had several flying lessons.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Players, extra-dimensional immortals, throughout human history, pursue endless temporal variables. Count Kroner, ostensibly a Danish-born aristocrat, holds high rank in the German Secret Service, by which, in 1915, he intercepts Major Churchill’s summons to General French.
• Assassination Attempt: Marcos, one of the immortal, extra-dimensional Players, tries twice to assassinate Churchill; in 1899 South Africa and at a 1936 Buckingham Palace garden party.
• Badass Driver: With railwayman Wagner knocked out by a shell fragment, the Doctor drives the train to safety.
• Badass Long Coat: Tom Dekker’s trenchcoat.
• Badass Pacifist:
  • In 1915, ambushed by half-starved troops in different uniforms, the Second Doctor sets off some Chinese firecrackers, and has Carstairs fire his revolver in the air and yell.
  • Caught on a Kent open road by SS troops, Dekker, implored by the Doctor not to kill anyone, rakes the air with his tommy gun; sends them running, and into their abandoned Mercedes, lobs a grenade.
• Band of Brothers: By 1936, Lieutenant Carstairs, following their shared ordeal in 1915, has transferred to Military Intelligence, and is one of Churchill’s unofficial advisers as to the state of the country’s defences.
• Big Damn Heroes: With Peri held by von Ribbentrop at Seventeen Carlton House Terrace, the Op distracts Sergeant Schultz with feigned drunken merriment; Dekker holds the Sergeant at gunpoint, and the Doctor breaks open Peri’s door.
• Big Fancy House:
  • In 1915 No Man’s Land, a "suspiciously new-looking sign" leads to the stately yet ominous Au Chateau, equipped with domestic staff, a change of clothes for four, and luxurious bedrooms. The Second Doctor notes its new furniture and recent cleaning.
  • Bryanston Court, Flat Five, described as a miniature mansion, hosts Wallis Simpson’s dinner party.
  • Chartwell, Churchill’s red brick manor house, with its own grounds.
  • At Sunningdale, Berkshire, Fort Belvedere, a sort of mock-castle, is King Edward VIII’s private retreat.
• Big Fun: In 1915, during an unexpectedly luxurious respite from No Man’s Land, Major Churchill shows an affectionate joviality.
  Major Churchill: How do I look, Doctor?
  Second Doctor: Like something out of a Viennese operetta, frankly. I keep expecting to lead you to lead us in a rousing chorus.
  Major Churchill: {laughs and drains glass} An excellent idea, Doctor! I suggest the drinking song from The Student Prince!
• The Big Guy:
  • In 1915, Lieutenant Carstairs reminds the Second Doctor of Jamie’s habit of running into danger.
  • In 1936, freelance bodyguard Tom Dekker serves as the Doctor’s muscle.
• Black Site: In 1915 No Man’s Land, a suspiciously new-looking sign leads to “Au Chateau,” where extra-dimensional Count Ludwig Kroner and Countess Malika Treszka, with their own private army, aim to deliver Major Churchill to the Kaiser.
• Boarding School of Horrors: As was the case for Churchill, and doubtless many others.
  Churchill: My scholastic performance was not distinguished, Doctor. It was a time of discomfort, restriction, and purposeless monotony.
  The Doctor: Not unlike prison?
  Churchill: Yes indeed, Doctor. For one who has endured the horrors of an English public school, a Boer prison can hold few terrors!
• Blood Knight: During the Boer War, whereas defence of a blocked train visibly wearies others, Churchill looks vividly alive.
  Churchill: Few things are so exhilarating as being shot at without result!
• Boisterous Bruiser: The Sixth Doctor, with his good-humoured causticity and genial grandeur, is a verbal variant.
• Broken Masquerade: Downplayed. In 1936, Churchill ponders the Doctor’s uncannily close resemblance to the Dr Smith from 1899. He then mentions assassin Marcos’s corpse, from a guarded morgue, to have unaccountably vanished. The Doctor puts it down to being a funny old world, and Churchill decides not to press him.
• The Caretaker: In 1899, onto the train, Peri helps lift the wounded.
• The Cavalry: In 1936, Colonel Carstairs, with Colonel Rodney Fitzsimmons, arranges, to Fort Bedevere, a substantial discharge of troops. Sir Oswald’s Mosley’s armed Blackshirts, assigned in service of Edward VIII’s attempt to dismiss the government, are quickly overwhelmed.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Between the Sixth Doctor and Churchill, Peri notes some physical resemblance; and that both are dauntless, with “a sort of cheerful truculence”.
• Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: After Waterloo, a night on the town with the Duke saw the Second Doctor’s successful visit to a gambling den, whose winnings the Prince Regent suggested he deposit at newly founded bank Cholmondley's.
• Cope by Creating: In 1936, in Kent country manor Chartwell’s garden, Churchill builds a wall.

“When things were going badly, when he felt tired and angry and despairing, he built walls. Something about the mixing of the mortar, the careful and laborious placing of the bricks, the steady rising of the wall itself, gave him a kind of solace.

• The Coup: von Ribbentrop’s list of Nazi sympathisers ‘when they get the signal,’ are told to take unspecified action. Following Edward VIII’s government dissolution, Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts aim to assist in the installation of a new government.
• Covered in Gunge: In flight from the King of Rigel Seven, the Doctor and Peri, from a sewer, emerge covered in black slime.
• Covert Group: In 1936, to Hitler, honorary SS General Joachim von Ribbentrop, mentions the Consortium, a group of well-connected British subjects sympathetic to Hitler.
• Danger Deadpan: In 1915, at the Au Chateau, the Second Doctor, for foiling Count Kroner’s plans, is sentenced to firing squad.
  The Second Doctor: It’s quite astonishing how many people have that reaction to me!
• Did You Actually Believe...?: From Fort Belvedere’s improvised BBC broadcast studio, King Edward VIII announces his intention to dissolve the current government however, intervention from the Doctor, Churchill and Sir John Reith prevents the broadcast.
• Eerily Out-of-Place Object: Intended assassin Marcos, in the midst of the Boer War, wears a tweed suit, deerstalker, and carries an improbably expensive Mannlicher rifle.
• Fake Aristocrat: The Doctor establishes himself as Doctor John Smith, Honorary Consul for the Republic of Santa Esmerelda; with Peri a railway heiress on tour of Europe.
• Fire of Comfort: A brief visit to the TARDIS’s oak-panelled study, whose grate holds a perpetually burning fire.
• Generation Xerox: At a 1936 Buckingham Palace garden party, the Doctor, on re-encountering Churchill, uses this as explanation for his uncanny resemblance to the “Dr Smith” of 1899.
  The Doctor: My father sends his regards.
  Churchill: Your father, sir?
  The Doctor: Doctor Smith. Doctor John Smith. You were captured together by the Boers in South Africa, on an armoured train.
  Churchill: Doctor Smith! Yes, he helped me to clear the track and free the engine. We were captured together, and escaped together! Your father, eh? You’re very like him, you know.
  The Doctor: So they tell me, sir.
• Graceful Loser: In 1936, the morning after the enforced abdication, Churchill notes Edward VIII’s immersion in his financial settlement and wedding plans.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: In 1936, while Adolf Hitler enjoys promotional appearances and rallies, he finds governmental work boring.
• Haunted Castle: In 1915 No Man’s Land, in the Au Chateau, “a vast affair of towers and turrets”, await the extra-dimensional Count Ludwig Kroner and Countess Malika Treszka.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In 1915, Lieutenant Carstairs, on a supply convoy was ambushed by a German patrol, and says he got left behind - the Second Doctor suspects he’s too modest to mention having sent others to safety.
• Honour Before Reason: Averted. While Sir John Reith is reluctant to undermine a royal broadcast, Churchill, appealing as a fellow veteran of World War One, persuades him that doing so is in the nation’s best interest.
• Hope Bringer:
  Churchill: You see me now an extinct volcano, a spent force.
  The Doctor: I don’t believe it, sir. And neither should you. I believe that fate still has great things in store for you.
  Churchill: Like your father, sir, you lift my spirits and fill me with hope.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: In 1936, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany, is bored by governmental logistics, and relies on “Goering for the ruthless policing, Goebels for the propaganda, Himmler for ruthless terror and repression, Bormann for paperwork”.
• Ignored Expert: In 1936, Churchill’s warnings of Hitler’s preparations for war, despite military leaders’ agreement, have been disregarded.
• Incredibly Obvious Tail: Driving through Kent to Chartwell Manor, the Doctor and Dekker are followed by a conspicuously persistent black Mercedes.
• Pantheism: The Rigellans revere mud.
• Imperturbable Englishman: Captain Alymer Haldane, the young Churchill’s fellow veteran Indian Frontier veteran, is noted to be “tall, elegant, languid and conventional as a British officer should be.”
• Interquel: Via the thought scanner, the Doctor shows Peri his memories of his second incarnation’s trial and sentence. Hereon, the Second Doctor is revealed to have been sent by the Time Lords to 1915 No Man’s Land, to investigate temporal interference.
• The Jeeves: In 1936, the Doctor’s hired Hill Street townhouse is attended by silver-haired butler Rye.
• Just in Time: In 1899 South Africa, Marcos, posing as Boer Captain Reitz, on learning a “thick-set” gentleman to have entered the munitions cabinet, mistakenly believes the Doctor to be Churchill, and orders the troops to open fire. Just before impact, the Doctor and Peri escape in the TARDIS.
• The Man Behind the Man: Wallis Simpson, to whom fiance Edward VIII is in dutiful thrall, collaborates with Nazi ambassador von Ribbentrop and the extra-dimensional Count and Countess. She later disclaims involvement with the King’s attempt to dismiss the government, and says the Count and Countess to have encouraged him.
• Martial Pacifist:
  Major Churchill: You are a man of peace, Doctor, as befits your profession. Believe me, I am no advocate of slaughter, I have seen too much of it. But I must confess, in the heat of battle I am perfectly prepared to kill anyone who is trying to kill me!
• The Matchmaker: Between Lieutenant Carstairs and Lady Jennifer, the Second Doctor encourages a mutual bond.
• The Medic: In 1915, nurse Lady Jennifer drives medical supplies to St Omer. Having nursed many dying men, she realises Major Churchill’s dying driver to have been German.
  Lady Jennifer: A dying man always goes back to his native tongue. I’ve looked after enough wounded French - and German - wounded to know that.
• My Greatest Failure: Downplayed. Blamed by political enemies for the Gallipoli disaster, sorrow at the loss of life is depicted to have driven Churchill into military service.
  Major Churchill: The plan failed, and I was blamed for its failure. I was dismissed from the Admiralty and given no further say in the conduct of the war… the soldiers who died in the Dardanelles will haunt me for the rest of my life. Now - well, I may still have to risk men's lives, but at least I can risk my own life amongst them!
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: In 1936, the Doctor suggests Churchill’s would-be assassin to have been part of a generations-old conspiracy. Dekker compares it to the centuries-old Mafia.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: In 1915, before trying to send Major Churchill to the Kaiser, the Count and Countess, in the luxurious Au Chateau, provide lavish refreshments.
• Oh, Crap!: While Peri mockingly doubts von Ribbentrop’s interrogation expertise, SS Sergeant Schultz is more than up to the job.
• Pensieve Flashback: On escape from the Boer prison, the Doctor, suspicious of temporal interference shows Peri, via the thought scanner, his second incarnation’s encounter in 1915 with Major Churchill.
• Pun: Peri asks the Doctor about the Boer War.
  The Doctor: You’re sure I wouldn’t be too much of a boer?
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When Marcos, posing as Captain Reitz, tries, on dubious grounds, to have Churchill shot, the Commandant refuses to commit murder.
• Recurring Character: The 1915 scenes revisit "The War Games"'s Lieutenant Jeremy Carstairs and Lady Jennifer Buckingham. In 1936, the Doctor hires freelance bodyguard Tom Dekker.
• Renaissance Man: By 1936, a brief but detailed nod to Churchill’s respective careers of Lieutenant Colonel with the Scots Fusiliers; Minister of Munitions, co- development of the battle tank, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• Replaced with Replica: From the prone von Ribbentrop, Peri takes a list of British Nazi sympathisers. The Doctor swaps it for a laundry list.
• Rich Recluse's Realm: Downplayed. As a young war correspondent, Churchill arrives in South Africa with his own cook, tent and food supplies - all of which he shares with several senior officers.
• Running Gag: The Doctor’s dress sense - while he dons period-appropriate togs, a snazzy tartan suit incurs Peri’s warning not to revert to type.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: For 1899, the Doctor dons dark trousers; a frock coat, waistcoat with gold watch-chain, a white shirt with wing collar, flowing black bow tie, and a black top hat.
• Shout-Out:
  • Peri notes the Rigellans to resemble Swamp Thing.
  • In the 1915 visit to the Au Chateau…
  Major Churchill: Welcome to Castle Dracula! You are familiar with Mr Bram Stoker’s celebrated romance, Doctor?
  The Second Doctor: {apparently quite serious} I used to be familiar with Count Dracula himself. A charming fellow - as long as you managed to avoid him at mealtimes.
• Show Some Leg: Imprisoned in a Pretoria prison-converted school, Peri, via gusty sighing and winsome entreaty, persuades young Field-Cornet Oosthuizen to arrange access to the TARDIS.
• Spice of Life: After the Rigel Seven ordeal, Peri, in the TARDIS, has a bath with several galaxy-wide unguents, oils and potions.
• Starting a New Life: After prohibition, the Pinkerton Detective Agency assigned Tom Dekker to their London office.
• Stealth Expert: Dekker’s colleague Jimmy, a “tubby little man in a grey coat,” known generally as “the Op,” on gestured signals, unaccountably appears and disappears.
• Stealth Insult: Between Wallis Simpson and Peri.
  Wallis Simpson: You shouldn’t have dressed up, my dear.
  Peri: But I didn’t. How kind of you to think I had.
  Wallis Simpson: {smiles frostily}
• Tap on the Head: Averted. von Ribbentrop notes SS Sergeant Schultz’s expert knocking out of a struggling Peri - too much force may have resulted in coma or death.
  Peri: I’m so glad. I’d hate to think I’d been knocked out by some clumsy amateur.
• Track Trouble: In 1899 South Africa, a troop carrying steam train is blocked by a boulder on the track.
• Time-Travellers Are Spies: In 1899, the prison Commandant suspects the Doctor to work for the British police.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: From Fort Belvedere’s improvised BBC broadcast studio, Edward VIII makes a speech announcing his decision to disband the government; ensuring his planned marriage to Wallis Simpson. Fortunately, Sir John Reith, urged by Churchill, prevents the speech’s broadcast.
• Viking Funeral: In 1915, into his wrecked car’s fuel tank, Major Churchill fires his revolver.
• Villainous Crush: In 1915, the Second Doctor suspects the Countess to have taken a liking to Major Churchill, whose reluctant distraction of a sudden embrace enables him to snatch back Lieutenant Carstairs’ gun, allowing for escape.
• Walking the Earth: The Count and Countess, ostensibly of respective Danish and Hungarian origin, live, free of temporal limitation, in worldwide opulence.
• War Is Hell:
  • Sudden proximity to the Boer War’s blood, wounds and death holds Peri in horrified fascination.
  • In 1915, the conflict's ruination of fertile farmland and decimation of buildings gives a brief but evocative such glimpse.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: In 1915, when Lieutenant Carstairs, Lady Jennifer and Major Churchill prepare to make their airborne escape from the Chateau, the Second Doctor insists on staying to gun-cover the Count - although, he does have the advantage of the Time Lords’ teleportation bracelet.
  The Second Doctor: I implore you, Winston, just go! Take off! Your country needs you, now and in years to come!
• Yes-Man: In 1936, Nazi Party Official Martin Bormann grumpily considers Joachim von Ribbentrop to serve such a role to Hitler.
• You Fool!: To Hitler, a contrite von Ribbentrop presents what he believes to be a list of British Nazi sympathisers.
  Hitler: The list is in code?
  ’von Ribbentrop: No, my Fuehrer, in clear. A list of important names -
  Hitler: Three pairs of socks, five pairs of underpants, six vests... This is a laundry list, you imbecile! Fool! Idiot! Incompetent swine!
• Young and in Charge: Although a non-combatant, the twenty-five-year-old Churchill, to Boer War troops, exudes authority and energy.
• Young Future Famous People: Downplayed - as a twenty-five-year old Daily Mail war correspondent in the Boer War, Churchill already had a political career.