Doctor Who_ The Twin Dilemma Part 13

The elderly Time Lord coughed for the last time and died.

The Doctor gazed down at his mentor. He felt sad and angry. 'I shall miss you, old friend,' he muttered. 'I shall indeed.'

In spite of having the twins as protection, Hugo and Peri had not had an easy time getting to the TARDIS. They had had to contend with Noma and his troop, who in spite of Mestor's strict instruction that the twins were not to be harmed, had attempted some rather unpleasant things.

Slarn, Mestor's senior chamberlain, had been sent to supervise the action, but instead of being a cautionary influence, had become over-excited and added to the mayhem.

But that was now all over. Azmael had been right when he said that all Jaconda was affected by Mestor's thoughts. Now he was dead, and his control relinquished, the Jacondan guards and courtiers seemed to have lost their drive and motivation. Like lost children, they wandered aimlessly around, confused and concerned as to what would happen next.

All except Slarn. As one of Mestor's most trusted advisers, he was only too aware, once his fellow Jacondans had recovered from their temporary disorientation, what would happen to him. He had been too diligent, too enthusiastic to serve his master and in so doing had made a lot of enemies. Knowing that his next appointment would be with an execution squad, Slarn had tried to bribe Peri and Hugo into taking him away from Jaconda in the TARDIS.

With his mission and career in tatters, Hugo had been tempted to try (after all, six million credits is a lot of money), but the memory of the Doctor's warning that it was more difficult to fly the TARDIS than it appeared, had jolted him into caution.

Slarn had then turned to the twins who were convinced that, for the right price, they could mathematically deduce how to operate the time-machine. Such was Slarn's desperation that he entered into negotiation. By the time the Doctor joined them, they had forced up their price, much to Hugo's chagrin, to ten million credits.

The man who returned from witnessing the death of Mestor and Azmael was very different from the one Peri and Hugo had left behind in the laboratory.

Gone was the vague and erratic behaviour. Gone, too, was the false bravado. The Doctor had now fully regenerated. Peri wondered how the new Doctor would behave and whether he would still want her to travel with him.

As the Doctor ordered the Jacondan guards from the TARDIS, she became aware of a colder, more remote manner to the way he spoke.

Wanting to test how cool and emotionless the Doctor had really become, Peri enquired, 'Now Mestor is dead, what about the people of this planet? We can't just leave them.'

They'll survive. The influence of Mestor is beginning to fade.

Some of the Jacondans have already formed themselves into militia groups and are dealing with the gastropods. I think we have little to fear.'

Fortunately, the Doctor gave a little smile before uttering his last sentence. Peri hoped there would prove to be more smiles and less chilly matter-of-fact logic in the man.

'But who will lead the Jacondans now Mestor is dead?' said Hugo.

'Certainly not Azmael.' There was a brief pause, but Peri wasn't certain whether it was for reasons of grief or effect. Then at last he said, 'Azmael's dead.'

The Time Lord crossed to the console and started to set the coordinates for Earth.

'May I stay?' said Hugo. 'I think I could be of some use here.'

'Really?' The Doctor thought he was mad. But then again, he had noticed Lieutenant Hugo Lang metaphorically measuring himself up for the presidency of the planet.

'I've no reason to go back. People on Earth think I'm dead.'

The Doctor knew that Hugo wasn't the stuff heroes were made from, but then there was more to being a good president than being a hero.

He was also aware that the young pilot was lazy and immature. But then, perhaps in striving to become president, he might accelerate his development, for the Jacondans weren't fools and would soon see through hollow promises and misguided leadership. If Hugo Lang thought he could bully and deceive his way to the top, he was mistaken. After Mestor, the Jacondans would be very weary of allowing another despot to rule them.

'Go,' said the Doctor at last. 'And good luck.'

Smiling, Hugo shook everyone's hand and departed.

In many respects the Doctor had been wrong in his a.s.sumption.

Although Hugo had momentarily considered whether high office would suit him, his heart was set on something far more basic.

Slarn was frightened of being killed. Whatever else Hugo could do, he was good with a gun. And when someone had ten million credits to spend on simple bribery, Hugo was convinced he could earn some of that money by offering to keep Slarn alive.

As the twins explored the TARDIS, thinking the inevitable thought that it was larger inside than out, the Doctor pressed the master control and the time-machine started for Earth.

Peri watched the face of the new Doctor, as he carefully made his way round the console, making final adjustments to the controls.

He looked tired and a little sad.

'I'm sorry about Azmael,' she said, sincerely.

'Hollow words,' snapped the Doctor. 'You had no reason to like Azmael.'

Although startled and angered by the aggressive response, Peri was more concerned that he was about to have another of his fits. Even so, she wasn't prepared to allow the Doctor to get away with his unpleasantness. 'I wasn't feeling sorry for Azmael,' she said. T was feeling sorry for you.'

The Doctor looked at Peri. 'How can you feel sorry for me? You don't understand how a Gallifreyan experiences grief. Come to that you don't understand me as a person. You don't even know me any longer.'

'That's certainly true,' she shouted, giving full vent to the pent-up fury she had felt since the Doctor's regeneration. 'And I don't think I want to, until you take a crash course in manners.'

The Doctor frowned. 'You seem to forget, I am not only from another culture, but also a different planet from you. I am alien.

Therefore, I am bound to have different values and customs.'

'Your former self was polite enough.'

'True. But at such a cost. I was on the verge of becoming neurotic.'

Peri gave up. It was pointless arguing. He had an answer to everything. All she wanted now was to go home and she told the Doctor so.

'Before abandoning me forever,' he said, 'I would suggest you wait a little while. You may well find that my new persona isn't as disagreeable as you think.'

I hope so, she shouted inside her head.

'But whatever else happens, I am the new Doctor. This is me whether people like it or not.'

The statement was as bland and as sterile as it sounded.

Peri hoped that she had caught a glimpse of a smile as he uttered it.

If she hadn't, this particular incarnation of the Time Lord would prove to be a very difficult person indeed.

DIVERGENT CONTINUITY.

PART ONE: After saying goodnight to his twin sons, Professor Archie Sylvest leaves for a publisher's party and drinks with Vestal Smith. He is, however, diverted from this activity by the arrival of Reginald Smith, husband of the aforementioned, on Archie's front doorstop. The scene in the TARDIS wardrobe has been cut. Instead, a newly-garbed Doctor and Peri enter the console room arguing, and the Doctor goes straight into the "Do you know what a Peri is?" dialogue. After Peri fends him off with her mirror, the Doctor falls to the floor and into a sort of autistic trance, rocking gently back and forth without demonstrating any other sign of communication. Outside the twins' home, a ginger tomcat senses the arrival of Azmael and the subsequent kidnapping. Later, Archie Sylvest returns home, having got very drunk with Reginald Smith and paid him off to keep quiet about Vestal. The scenes with Fabian and Elena have been completely removed. Instead, we take the opposite viewpoint: the adventures of Hugo Lang and his squadron. When the squadron challenges Azmael's freighter and follows it to t.i.tan Three, Mestor telepathically creates 'a ma.s.sive [blue] aurora borealis' that surrounds the freighter and lashes out at the pursuing ships. Hugo's fighters are picked off one by one, until finally the Lieutenant himself is attacked and crashes his ship.

PART TWO: The Doctor and Peri actually witness Hugo's crash-landing. Hugo doesn't pa.s.s out in the TARDIS; instead, the Doctor gives him a quick chop to the neck and renders him unconscious.

The twins are forced to use chalk and a blackboard to do their equations. Although Azmael tells the Doctor the truth straight off the bat, their discussion is actually much shorter than on TV. All that garbage about a temporal transmat and a ten-second offset is gone; the Doctor just converts the revitalising modulator into a matter transporter. Instead of explaining the desperate situation to Peri, the Doctor simply shoves her into the modulator and transports her back to the TARDIS. The cliffhanger has, to all intents and purposes, been cut (yes, the Doctor has to kick the modulator once or twice, but isn't that just technology for you?).

PART THREE: The 'death-by-embolism' scene has been cut.

Azmael is called before Mestor; he is embarra.s.sed and humiliated in front of his courtiers, but we do not see what is actually said.

When the TARDIS arrives on Jaconda, the Doctor and his companions witness the devastation wrought by the gastropods as the Time Lord recites the legend of the giant slugs (they don't find any sort of mural). They also find a starving child, whom Peri wants to help; the Doctor tells her that the only way to help is to destroy that which has devastated Jaconda. Later, they return to the TARDIS to materialise closer to Azmael's laboratory. Hugo actually considers deserting the Doctor and Peri and piloting the TARDIS alone, but the Doctor is no fool; when Hugo becomes trapped in gastropod slime, the Doctor doesn't feel any real inclination towards saving a potential thief. Mestor doesn't insist that Azmael reveal all to the twins it's the Time Lord's decision so that entire discussion has been cut. After explaining the plan, he threatens to kill Romulus and Remus if they don't a.s.sist him (an action seen earlier in the TV episode). They understand his desperation, however, and agree to help. A brief typo calls Drak 'Drax'. Although quite angry, the Doctor doesn't try to throttle Azmael. Hugo doesn't rush in to warn the Doctor (Mestor himself will deliver the news later), and the cliffhanger is therefore cut.

PART FOUR: An unconscious Hugo is brought in by the Jacondans. Even though Noma arrrives to take the Doctor to Mestor, the leader of the gastropods materialises in hologram form right in Azmael's laboratory. While considering why Mestor wants to destroy Jaconda's sun, the Doctor takes a quiet moment to reflect on his many past companions. Romulus and Remus don't need to delete their equations, as they've never used the computer. Azmael doesn't give the Doctor his ring. Although Hugo tells the Doctor he will lead the Jancondans, he really just wants to blackmail the Chamberlain for all he's worth.

DIVERGENT CHARACTERISATION.

THE SIXTH DOCTOR: When he regenerated, 'his features...matured slightly and his waste thickened a little, but overall his appearance was quite presentable.' His jacket is 'long and not dissimilar in design to that worn by an Edwardian paterfamilius. [...] The main problem [is] that each panel of the coat [is] quite different in texture, design and colour. This wouldn't [matter] quite so much if the colours...blended, but they [seem] to be cruelly, harshly, viciously at odds with each other.' Add to that a 'pair of black and yellow striped trousers, the hems of which [rest] on red spats, which in turn [cover] the tops of green shoes.

The whole ensemble [is] finished off with a waistcoat which [looks] as though someone [has] been sick on. [...] The final touch [is] a livid green watch chain that at some time must have been stolen from a public lavatory.' At one point, the Doctor wants jellybabies, a.s.serting that he "[thinks] much better when [he's]

chewing." During his confused ramblings, the Doctor veers through the personas of a Victorian actor, an Old Testament prophet, David Livingstone, Sherlock Holmes, Herk the Hunter, 'someone called Musk...the greatest explorer in the known universe', and a country squire. In his Sherlock Holmes persona, he tells Peri a story about how he deduced where babies come from, which, if true, would validate that he lived in a 'large city'

with (at least) his mother, and visited the zoo, where he saw storks all very unlikely.

PERI: She is twenty years old. She lives in the Bronx in New York, or close to it (within the distance of a train ride).

AZMAEL: His first name as Professor Edgeworth is 'Bernard'.

He's 'an elderly man with a shiny bald pate', wearing 'a long brown smock and [looking] a bit like Father Christmas without the beard.' It is known that he once had a wife, although she is now dead. In his childhood, '[he] found comfort in watching flashing lights.' When Azmael left Gallifrey, the Time Lords were so concerned his knowledge and experience might fall in the wrong hands, they trumped up some charges and sent out an execution squad of Seedle warriors after him. The Seedle warriors tracked him to Vitrol Minor, where they 'set about eliminating the populace, justifying the genocide as the elimination of witnesses to the destruction of a Time Lord.' After three days of bloodshed, they realised their target had escaped. Azmael 'returned to Gallifrey and started proceedings to indict the Lord President and High Council', on grounds that they had broken their cardinal rule of non-interference by slaughtering the inhabitants of Vitrol Minor.

For their part, however, the Time Lords twisted the evidence to show Azmael hired the Seedle warriors himself. Furious, the renegade gunned down the entire High Council with a laser rifle.

The new High Council were in debt to him, but they decided to investigate his a.s.sa.s.sination methods instead so he took off for somewhere new. Finally, he found Jaconda 'after many years of travel'. Not long after that, a heavy storm caused the re-emergence of gastropod eggs, which were nourished by weather and hatched to reveal a gastropod army led by...

MESTOR THE MAGNIFICENT: 'Nearly two metres tall', 'everything about him [is] ugly even to other gastropods.' He '[stands] upright, using his tail as a large foot. To aid his balance, he [grew] two small, spindly legs, so that when he [walks] it [is]

necessary for him to gyrate his body from side to side.' He also grew 'two tiny arms and hands which [resemble] the forequarters of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And as with that particular dinosaur, they [serve] no useful function, except when he [speaks]. Then he [gesticulates] with them, prodding the air to emphasis a special point.' He has 'large rolls of fat that [cover] his body'; therefore, 'everything [wobbles] as he [moves]. So instead of a neat, mincing gait, he [appears] to undulate, like a large beached walrus, desperately struggling to regain the sea.' His 'face, what there [is]

of it, [is] humanoid in form. As he [does] not have a neck, head or shoulders, the features [have] grown where what would have been the underside of a normal slug's jaw. As though to add to the peculiarity of a gastropod with a human face, the features [are]

covered in a thin membrane.' This makes him look like he's 'swallowed someone and that the face of the victim [is] protruding through the skin covering his gullet.'

LIEUTENANT HUGO LANG: He's 'a tall, slim, good-looking man in his twenties. He...graduated top of his year from Star Fighter pilot school'. The Doctor knows that he is 'lazy and immature.'

Romulus and Remus: They are 'twelve year old identical twins'

who take 'enormous pleasure' from their parents' inability to tell them apart. Although they are mathematical geniuses, 'in many ways they [are] dumb.' For instance, 'it...required several psychologists and a battery of complex tests to establish the evidence' that they achieved any 'emotional maturation', and this feature is so lacking that they will 'forever remain immature mischief-makers with the mathematical ability to destroy the universe.'