'The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who' by Simon Guerrier and Marek Kukula

Doctor Who stories are many things: thrilling adventures, historical dramas, tales of love and war and jelly babies. They’re also science fiction – but how much of the science is actually real, and how much is really fiction?

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who is a mind-bending blend of story and science that will help you see Doctor Who in a whole new light, weaving together a series of all-new adventures, featuring every incarnation of the Doctor. With commentary that explores the possibilities of time travel, life on other planets, artificial intelligence, parallel universes and more, Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula show how Doctor Who uses science to inform its unique style of storytelling – and just how close it has often come to predicting future scientific discoveries.

This book is your chance to be the Doctor's companion and explore what's out there. It will make you laugh, and think, and see the world around you differently.

Because anything could be out there. And going out there is the only way to learn what it is.

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PART 1: SPACE

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'Sunset Over Venus' by Mark Wright

The Doctor and Clara arrived inside the Genetrix, an observation capsule suspended from a balloon in the thick, poisonous atmosphere of Venus. Shortly after they meet the crew, Devika and Rick, the pod goes out of control and the tether to the Lovell Platform high above breaks. As the capsule plummets towards the planet below, all aboard know they will be crushed by the extreme atmospheric pressure long before impact. The Doctor deduces that gas samples taken by the crew are actually the planet’s indigenous life form, gaseous creatures that live in the clouds. One such creature has attacked the capsule to free its comrades, but when the Doctor orders the release of the sample, the Venusians lift the pod and its occupants to safety.

Notes:
*The Twelfth Doctor and Clara

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'The Lost Generation' by George Mann

The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Sarah to what appears to be a meadow filled with giant sheep. The two travellers are captured by a tribe of humanoid people and taken to meet their leader, who turns out to be a computer. The Doctor learns they are aboard a huge space ship, Prosperity, an ark complete with a bio-system that has taken over the vessel. The Doctor offers the computer the chance to fulfil its programming, and provide it with a course that will take it to a habitable planet for its human charges. Knowing that this will terminate its functionality, the computer still agrees and sets Prosperity’s course for its new home…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and Sarah

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'The Room With All the Doors' by James Goss

Midway through his adventure on the Moon fighting Ice Warriors, the Doctor suddenly finds himself trapped inside the Multivarium, a strange complex full of doors that lead to different dimensions. Here he meets a fellow captive, and together they hunt for the door that will take them home. Days lead to weeks and then months, and together they have almost given up hope. But then the Doctor realises that the trick is to hope for the door that will take them home – and his plan works.

Notes:
*Featuring the Second Doctor

*Time-placing: this story takes place during ‘The Seeds of Death’

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'The Hungry Night' by Jonathan Morris

The Doctor comes to the rescue of the space ship Godspeed, whose hull has been covered in space barnacles. One of the crew has already been killed by the creatures, his space suit drained of all power after he went outside to investigate a power loss. The captain tries shooting the ship’s weapons at the creatures, but this only causes them to multiply. Explaining that the space barnacles feed on energy, the Doctor orders a complete systems shutdown, and then draws the barnacles away from the Godspeedusing the power of his TARDIS as a lure; after the creatures have covered the his space-time vessel, the Doctor then takes the TARDIS to a remote star system in which the creatures can now live. Their ship now free, the captain and her crew continue on their way.

Notes:
*Featuring the Ninth Doctor

*Time-placing: the Doctor is travelling alone; he would usually be inseparable from Rose, so I’m choosing to place this before he meets her, prior to the story ‘Rose’

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'All the Empty Towers' by Jenny T. Colgan

Clara asks the Doctor to take her for a holiday in her home town of Blackpool, but when they arrive they find the place in ruins, the pier broken and falling into the sea, and the fairground attractions overgrown with thick vegetation. After saving a wild donkey from the senile cyborg landlady of a nearby run-down guest house, the two time travellers find themselves hunted as sport by spoilt rich kids riding in airborne dodgem cars. Deducing that the source of the vehicles’ energy comes from the top of Blackpool Tower, the Doctor and Clara climb the rusting edifice and manage to shut down the power. Without the use of their dodgem cars the hunters are powerless, allowing the Doctor and Clara to hand them over to the authorities. The threat over, the Doctor enjoys a ride in the surf on his new found friend, Meghan the donkey.

Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara

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PART 2: TIME

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'Rewriting History' by James Swallow

When the Doctor and Martha arrive on Karadax, they come under attack from the planet’s bad-tempered shark-like inhabitants, who decide to test their prototype robot drone on them. Escaping into the sewers, the Doctor leaves Martha behind with a plastic box, while he rushes off after the robot. Martha is surprised when a portal opens next to her, and her apparent future self emerges: the older Martha warns her younger self to leave the Doctor, warning that her family will be put in jeopardy by the Time Lord’s future actions. Knowing that to do so will cause an historical paradox Martha is immediately suspicious, and questions her future self to prove her identity. The older Martha fails the test, and unmasks herself as a robot exhibitoid from the Reldeen ‘Museum of the Doctor’, sent from the Fifty-First Century to convince Martha to remove herself from the Time Lord’s timeline. When Martha refuses, another portal opens and a Karadax emerges: his subtle plan ruined, the warrior now intends to delete Martha himself. Changing back into Martha’s double, the exhibitoid seizes the Karadax and then overloads its circuits, sacrificing itself to override the warrior’s temporal recall module and sent him back to the future. Just then the Doctor returns, pursued by the drone; taking a sock from the box he left with Martha, the Doctor stuffs the smelly footwear into the robot’s sensitive sensor grid, causing it to short-circuit. Keeping her own side of events a secret, Martha leaves with the Doctor, ready to make history…

Notes:
*Featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha

*Time-placing: this story takes place just after ‘The Shakespeare Code’

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'Silver Mosquitoes' by L. M. Myles

While the Doctor and Clara explore a forest in Germany during the Roman occupation, they are arrested as spies by a squad of legionaries. Escorted to the Romans’ camp, the travellers meet Caesar Ulpia Severina, but are then interrupted by an attack from a swarm of robot mosquitoes. When the Doctor successfully fends off the creatures with his sonic screwdriver, Caesar asks him to help her men, who have been struck down by an illness carried by the robot flies. After examining the patients, the Doctor tracks the mosquitoes to the woods, where he and Clara find the creatures swarming around some high-voltage electrical pylons. The Doctor manages to communicate with the robots, and learns that they are from an exploratory alien probe; having arrived on what they believe to be a primitive planet, the robots are conducting medical tests in an attempt to find a cure to a plague ravaging their worlds. Now that the Doctor has shown that the inhabitants of Earth are sentient, the robot probes accept their mistake; they terminate their experiment and leave the planet in search of another world on which to resume their work…

Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara

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'In Search of Lost Time' by Una McCormack

The Doctor pays a visit to Tilly, a young mother who has been experiencing flashes of other people’s lives in her dreams. To Tilly’s surprise the Doctor explains that her dreams are real: she has been acting as a receiver for the thoughts of a dying alien race. Sadly the Doctor is too late to save the aliens, but he tells Tilly to remember the dreams she experienced so that the memory of the aliens will live on. Tilly resolves that as her baby daughter grows up, she will tell her of the exciting dreams she once had…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor

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'Natural Regression' by Justin Richards

During the Time War, the Doctor’s TARDIS is buffeted by the effects of the Daleks’ Time Destructor. With the ship’s fluid links running out of mercury, the Doctor uses the last of the TARDIS’ energy to materialise on a nearby planet, Rontan 9. He arrives in the middle of a research base, which has been badly affected by the Time Destructor’s effects: sections of the base exist in different times, the staff having either been regressed into primordial slime, transformed into wolf-like creatures or evolved into ethereal beings. After locating some mercury in one of the labs, the Doctor manages to lead the surviving staff to his ship, and they make their escape.

Notes:
*Featuring the Eighth Doctor

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'Potential Energy' by Jacqueline Rayner

In 1812 the Doctor and Peri are on the trail of a creature they have dubbed the Potentialiser, which has been stealing the potential energy of its victims and transferring it to other people, to help them realise their untapped talents. Posing as an American girl with a large dowry, Peri gets engaged to the foppish Lord Roderick so that she can infiltrate his Regency manor and find out which of his relatives, acquaintances and staff is the monster. After a lot of time spent questioning her relatives-to-be, Peri eventually identifies the monster as the governess, Miss Hyde. However, she and the Doctor soon discover that the Potentialiser is only acting out of altruism, and that her victims died from natural causes. Their job done, Peri breaks off her marriage and then leaves with the Doctor in the TARDIS…

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri

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PART 3: HUMANITY

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'The Arboreals' by Marc Platt

The Doctor and Susan arrive on a jungle world, where they discover the remains of a crashed colony spaceship and a row of graves, all old except for one that has been freshly-dug. They meet a salvage operative named Bethan, who has locked herself inside her space-suit to protect herself against the clamour of the jungle while she waits for the return of her missing partner, Tino. Realising that the new grave belongs to Tino, the Doctor and Susan take the woman back to her own ship to rest; however, they soon find themselves succumbing to the effects of the jungle, losing their will to leave as they are watched by strange arboreal creatures in the trees. The Doctor, Susan and Bethan soon discover that Tino is still alive, having been regressed into a primitive state by the planet’s ecology, and is now living with the arboreal creatures, some of whom are the original colonists. Bethan elects to remain with Tino, while Susan leaves with her grandfather, knowing he will soon become bored with paradise…

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor and Susan

*Time-placing: this story occurs prior to ‘An Unearthly Child’

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'The Piper' by Mark Morris

When a sewer worker is attacked and his body begins to transform into metal and circuitry, the Doctor and UNIT are called in to help. Investigating the sewer system where the man was found, the Doctor, Jo, the Brigadier and a squad of soldiers discover a false wall, and then come under attack from a swarm of robot rats. After the Doctor sees off the creatures with his sonic screwdriver, the team find a hidden chamber containing a badly-damaged Cyberman, left over from the London invasion several years before; the creature has cybernised the rats to bring it raw material for conversion. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the infected worker disgorges a plague of cyber-worms, which set about converting everyone in the building, including Benton. By reprogramming one of the cyber-rats, the Doctor is able to reverse the effects of the conversion, curing everyone at the hospital, and deactivating the Cyberman.

Notes:
*Featuring the Third Doctor, Jo, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and UNIT

*Time-placing: this story takes place just after 'Planet of the Daleks'

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'The Girl Who Stole the Stars' by Andrew Cartmel

The Doctor, Ace and Raine are in Canterbury to investigate Raymond Luthier, whose revolutionary artificial intelligence has made him a millionaire. Together they seek out the help of Gina Gilpin, a former friend and colleague of Luthier, who has created a new virtual reality hacking system. Raine uses Gina’s equipment to enter Luthier’s AI system, represented as an alien solar system, and manages to its data core, represented as a group of three stars. Examining the stolen data, the Doctor discovers that Luthier has faked the AI, and has used it as a means to swindle a fortune from crowdfunding. Gina promises to use this information to expose Luthier as a fraud, putting paid to his dishonest empire.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Raine

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'Mercy Seats' by David Llewellyn

The Doctor joins a troop of travellers on a pilgrimage across the Kingdom of Leon and Castile to the church at Santiago de Compostela. Arriving at a tavern, they are confronted by angry townsfolk, who blame them for the arrival of plague in the area and demand that they be quarantined in a nearby church. As they make their way to the church, the Doctor is delighted to learn that one of the pilgrims is Geoffrey Chaucer, although that soon turns to annoyance when he learns the man is only twenty-three, and yet to write any of his famous tales. The group arrives at the church just in time for another of the travellers, Matilda, to give birth. While the mother cradles her new son, the Doctor explains that the church is in fact a spaceship, and the wooden carvings that decorate it are really alive; these wooden creatures feast on the souls of the dead, and have been enjoying a bumper crop thanks to the Black Death afflicting the area. The evil aliens attack the pilgrims, but are stopped when they encounter Matilda’s baby: the child is anathema to the evil aliens, who are repulsed by the concept of new life. With some help from the Doctor, the creatures depart in their spaceship. Bidding goodbye to Geoffrey and the pilgrims, the Doctor returns to his own travels.

Notes:
*The Twelfth Doctor

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'The Constant Doctor' by Andrew Smith

Arriving on the planet Lemaria, the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric attend a popular play that celebrates the liberation of the planet from alien oppressors. Their surprise at seeing a familiar blue police box standing on the stage quickly turns to amazement when an actor dressed as the Doctor’s first incarnation appears, and engages in a re-enactment of the time he once saved the planet’s inhabitants from attacking Megrati. The Doctor realises that the actor is in fact one of his future selves, who has returned to see off a revenge attack by the real Megrati. The Twelfth Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to disrupt the crystalline engines of the invaders’ spaceships, forcing the Grand Megrati to abandon his invasion plans and flee in defeat. The assembled audience applaud as the alien fleet retreats, and the Twelfth Doctor gives his former self a knowing smile before making his exit in his TARDIS.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, and the Twelfth Doctor

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Publication Date:
5th June 2015


Notes:
*A BBC Books publication