'Short Trips': 'Farewells' edited by Jacqueline Rayner

'After all, who knows, if I go down well, I might even make it my farewell performance.'

Sometimes it's easy to say goodbye - to a friend, to a way of life, to a lover. Sometimes it's heartbreaking. And sometimes they just won't take the hint.

Say hello to 14 stories of goodbyes, as the Fourth Doctor contemplates his mortality after a funeral; a young man goes to murderous lengths to stop Jo Grant from leaving him; the First Doctor considers his flight from Gallifrey; the Fifth Doctor desperately tries to get rid of an unwanted companion - and more.

Featuring stories by Paul Magrs, Steve Lyons, Steven A. Roman, Joseph Lidster and many more.
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'The Mother Road' by Gareth Wigmore

Arriving in Chicago, Illinois in 2006, the Doctor once again loses the TARDIS in a bet. Learning that the winner, a Californian named Buchanan, wants to auction the ship, the Doctor and his companions hire a 60s Oldsmobile and set off in pursuit along the famous Route 66. Over the course of their road trip, the travellers take in the sights of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; along the way, Ian and Barbara consider staying on Earth, but cannot bring themselves to leave the Doctor and Susan, whom they now consider their family. Eventually arriving in Santa Monica, the Doctor logs onto his hotel room computer and wins back the TARDIS via an internet auction. Ian realises that the Doctor knew all along that the ship would stay in Chicago – the old man just used it as an excuse to travel Route 66. With his secret uncovered, the Doctor happily agrees to pay for the return trip to collect the TARDIS, only this time they will go by airplane…

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan

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'Father Figure' by Steve Lyons

After experiencing nightmares of her late father, who was killed by the Daleks, Victoria slips out of the TARDIS soon after it arrives in London. Crossing the capital via the Underground system, Victoria soon arrives at her parents’ gravesite, only to find the body of a murdered young man lying nearby; looking round, Victoria is confronted by an ancient android replica of her father, a Dalek creation that has been waiting a hundred years for her return in order to exact revenge. However, the killer automaton has since decayed, and now its face and body are falling apart in a nightmare parody of the man Victoria once loved. As the android moves in for the kill, the Doctor appears and destroys it with his sonic screwdriver. Victoria bids a final farewell to her parents’ grave, and then departs in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Jamie, knowing that one day she will leave them and settle down elsewhere…

Notes:
*Featuring the Second Doctor and Victoria

*Time-placing: Victoria has been travelling with the Doctor and Jamie for a while, and is thinking of leaving, so I'm placing this towards the end of her travels in the TARDIS

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'The Bad Guy' by Stephen Fewell

The Doctor and Jo arrive on an alien world whose population, the Ancetetians, are under threat from a Thrematon terraforming project; a deadly mutagen is sweeping across the land, transforming the flora and fauna into a different, plant-like life form. One of the Ancetetians, Ptella, falls in love with Jo, and becomes so obsessively jealous of her relationship with the Doctor that he attempts to throw the Time Lord into a volcano. Having saved himself with a Thrematon device, the Doctor then manages to reverse the terraforming virus, restoring the Ancetetians to normal. Having rebuked the Thrematons on almost wiping out the Ancetetians, the Doctor then orders them to leave the planet. Knowing that Ptella attempted to kill her best friend, Jo refuses to have anything more to do with him, and turns down the Ancetetian’s pleas to stay with him. However, as Jo and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS, Ptella’s sorrow quickly turns to bitterness…

Notes:
*Featuring the Third Doctor and Jo

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'Separation Day' by Andy Campbell

Emily Rutherford and Tom Charrington are two lovers seemingly made for each other; however, the disparity in their IQs breaks the rules of their society – they are declared incompatible and branded as outcasts. Knowing that they can no longer be together, Emily and Tom visit Separation Day Incorporated; from their space station in orbit around Neptune, the company helps couples to break up in appropriate surroundings, by using complex holograms to recreate the environment of their first meeting. Emily and Tom enter the program and find themselves in the library where they first met; however, their farewell is interrupted when distortions appear in the fabric of the recreation. Then a tall blue box materialises, containing a man called the Doctor and his friend, Sarah; the Doctor tells the couple that he received a warning from his mentor, informing him that if Emily and Tom split up, they would set in motion a causal chain of events that would eventually lead to the destruction of the entire universe. As the library begins to fall apart, the Separation Day Inc. director appears; after turning into a bizarre monster, he then steps into the centre of the instability, to be killed by the forces within. When Emily and Tom resolve to stay together, the instability immediately ceases. The Doctor reveals that Separation Day Inc. was actually a governmental research centre into emotional manipulation; the director was a part of the experiment, but he absorbed too much energy, and only gained release by committing suicide. Leaving Emily and Tom to continue their life together, the Doctor and Sarah depart... Fifty years later, Emily and Tom are still happily married; reflecting on her wonderful son, Emily recalls the Doctor and his companion, and hopes that they are still happy together too…

Notes:
*Featuring the Third Doctor and Sarah

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'The Very Last Picture Show' by Andrew Collins

The Doctor and Leela arrive in a white void, completely empty apart from what appears to be an Earth-like cinema showing a performance entitled ‘The Last Picture Show’. The audience is comprised of men and women, all of whom are methodically eating popcorn, and utterly entranced by the movie playing before them; however, something else is stalking the auditorium, and is feeding on the humans… After discovering that the popcorn is drugged, the Doctor and his companion are attacked by the cinema’s android ushers; while the Doctor is taken prisoner, Leela escapes and encounters a little old lady called Connie, a UFO-abductee whose dislike of popcorn has enabled her to keep her senses. The Doctor meets Grugvengler of the G’Ur, a three-eyed alien who reveals that they are aboard his spaceship, ‘Boo to the Goose’, and then orders the Doctor to be locked up in the projection room; here the Doctor discovers a hoard of giant space weevils, the creatures that have been eating the audience. Having deduced that these ravenous creatures have grown from eggs in substandard popcorn, the Doctor escapes and confronts Grugvengler; it seems that the captain is deliberately kidnapping humans, subjecting them to conditioning, and then using them as mercenaries. Grugvengler attempts to set the zombie audience on the Doctor, but the Time lord has reprogrammed the android ushers, who seize the captain’s control box and turn his mercenaries against the space weevils. As Grugvengler’s crew flee in terror, the captain inadvertently eats some of his own popcorn and falls into a stupor. Having corralled the remaining weevils, the Doctor returns the humans to Earth; meanwhile, Grugvengler settles down to watch a movie – only to become dinner for an escaped weevil…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and Leela

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'Into the Silent Land' by Steven A. Roman

Now well into his fourth incarnation, the Doctor has begun to experience dreams of a beautiful garden; wandering amongst the flowerbeds, he meets his very first personification, and learns that the imaginary garden was improved by each of his former selves. A short while later, the Doctor is invited to attend the funeral of his old friend, Hannah Gites, with whom he shared an interest in roses; while Romana chooses to wear a tasteful black dress, the Doctor exchanges his usual outfit for a more sombre, burgundy version. At the funeral, the Doctor meets Hannah’s daughter, Giselle, who gives him a book of poems. From thereon, the Doctor exhibits a more melancholy behaviour, moping about the TARDIS, reading poignant poetry and distancing himself from Romana. In his sleep, he returns to the garden and tells his first incarnation that he can feel the approach of his next regeneration; he then sees a mysterious white figure watching him from afar. Romana becomes increasingly concerned over her friend’s morose mood; when the Doctor eventually confesses that he is troubled by how people will remember his fourth incarnation, Romana reassures him by pointing out that he will live on in the memories of all the people he has helped and saved. Back in the garden, the Doctor looks forward to planting some tulips…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana

*Time-placing: the events of this story lead into those in Season Eighteen

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'Wake' by Jake Elliot

At the Necropolitan, a huge, neutral interplanetary place of mourning, the Doctor and his companions help solve a murder.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan

*Time-placing: The Doctor and his companions are travelling without Adric, so it is possible that they have come to the Necropolitan in order to mourn their fallen comrade; therfore, I am placing it after 'Earthshock' and 'Long Term'

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'The Velvet Dark' by Stewart Sheargold

The Doctor and his companions are asked to oversee the funeral of their old adversary, the Master, who died while staying at a retirement home on Earth. Having consigned the body of his archenemy to the ground, the Doctor returns to the Master’s room to arrange for the removal of his few possessions. However, it seems that the renegade Time Lord may not be dead after all: one of the staff finds the shrunken body of an elderly resident; the hospital television shows a sitcom in which all the cast have the Master’s face; and when Tegan helps to fix the home’s boiler, she finds it full of burning, doll-like forms; then the Master appears in his earlier, emaciated incarnation and renders Tegan unconscious. Having found Tegan in the morgue, Turlough manages to awaken her and learn of the nightmare in the boiler room; when he investigates he sees the shrunken bodies in the flames transform into miniature versions of the Master’s TARDIS; then several hypnotised patients appear and capture him and Tegan. Meanwhile, the Doctor confronts the retirement home’s general manager, Mr Tase – none other than the Master in disguise; the villain explains that, with his body is now deteriorating, he materialised his TARDIS around the hospital so that he can ‘euthanase’ the patients, using their energy to power his ship. The Master shrinks Turlough and imprisons the boy inside a box, using him as a means of forcing the Doctor to take the hospital and everyone in it in his own TARDIS; after the ship materialises inside a dark forest, the Master and his hostages travel to a castle full of nightmarish furnishings and decorations. Here they find the real Master sitting on a huge throne, his clothes a shell, just empty space where his face should be. The renegade explains that the Time Lords reneged on their promise to give him a new regeneration cycle, choosing instead to exile him on Earth; the villain’s body has now atrophied to such an extent that only his mind still clings doggedly to existence; when the Master’s TARDIS threw off the Time Lords’ programming and followed him to Earth, it created a construct of his previous withered incarnation to assist it in setting a trap for the Doctor. After hypnotising Tegan, the Doctor orders her to bind the Doctor to a complex set of apparatus; using a series of mirrors, he then begins to siphon off the Doctor’s life force, planning to steal one of his regenerations and restore his own body. However, the Doctor uses a sonic scream to shatter the mirrors, causing the equipment to siphon energy from the Master himself, restoring his body one last time. Having overpowered their enemy, the Doctor, Tegan and a restored Turlough set about returning the hospital staff and patients back home, and to consider a suitable punishment for the Master…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough

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'Life After Quelth' by Matt Kimpton

Having defeated the threat of the Tractators, the Doctor and Tegan plan to leave the controlling creature, the Gravis, on the remote, bleak planet of Kolkotron. However, the TARDIS instead lands in a lush forest, where the travellers are attacked by armadillo-like beings called the Queeth; these creatures are concerned about the destruction of their planet, and, despite seeming low in intelligence, they soon draw the Doctor into a debate on quantum physics. With death looming, the Queeth are planning to hide in a pocket universe, using a spherical construction known as the Ecosphere; to this end, the more intelligent Queeth sacrifice themselves to the machine, giving up their life force to increase its power. However, the Doctor recognises the apparatus as a device for detecting quantum echoes of far-flung events. No longer the self-assured leader it was on Frontios, the Gravis panics and shoots the device with one of the Queeth’s weapons, causing the machine to begin to stop large chunks of the planet Quelth from existing; as the planet breaks apart the Doctor ushers the Queeth and his two companions into the TARDIS, dematerialising just as the planet disappears from existence. After Kolkotron shifts orbit to compensate for the non-existence of Quelth, the Gravis breaks the news to the Doctor that it no longer wishes to be his companion; the Doctor tactfully hides his pleasure, and grants the creature its wish to stay on Kolkotron so that it can enjoy the peace and quiet. The Time Lord then takes the Queeth back in time to Quelth so that they can become their own ancestors, fulfilling the time loop in which they are destined to be trapped forever.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor and Tegan

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'Black and White' by John Binns

After taking Peri to London to shop for clothes and see a performance of ‘Les Miserables’, the Doctor assigns her a room in the TARDIS in which to stay. Over dinner Peri ponders the Doctor’s acts of saving races from oppression, posing the question of what side he would choose if faced with two opposing factions of the same species. This touches a chord with the Doctor, and, while his friend sleeps in her room, he returns to the console room and accesses a program that he has been running on the TARDIS computer for some time: a simulation of two conflicting intelligences, portrayed as factions of black and white. The Doctor is concerned over the simulation’s sentience, and considers leaving it in the safety of the Proofrock-Mills Intelligence Museum; however, on arriving there in the year 3009, he discovers a future version of the programme, learning to his pleasure that the two factions are now living in harmony as beautiful swirls of grey…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor and Peri

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'Curtain Call' by Joseph Lidster

An unhappy childhood caused Agatha Ellis to become a loner, unable to bring herself to trust anyone. Then, after many years of loneliness, Agatha finally met Godfrey, a well-meaning man who took an interest in her; the two quickly became lovers, spending several happy days together before Godfrey inexplicably disappeared; not long after, Agatha discovered that she was pregnant... One night, she was visited by Godfrey, who revealed himself to be an alien; terrified of the creature now growing inside her, Agatha tried to seek help, but no-one believed her. Then, when she then tried to kill her unborn child, she was declared insane and committed to an asylum. During her time in the hospital, Agatha was visited by a man known as the Doctor, who reassured her that he believed her claims of alien impregnation, promising to take the creature away and giving her a blue liquid to relax her troubled mind. One night Agatha overheard Godfrey talking to the Doctor, and watched as a fight broke out between the two men over the fate of her baby. Although the Doctor won, and Godfrey subsequently vanished, Agatha realised that she could never bring herself to trust another person ever again; believing that she has no future, Agatha takes an overdose of the blue liquid, and slips into a final sleep…

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor

*Seeing as the Doctor makes a reference to travelling with Frobisher, a character from the 'Doctor Who Monthly' comic strips, this can't really be viewed as canon

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'Utopia' by Darren Sellars

The Doctor visits Doctor Morgan Sturgess, the founder of GENECORP, a company that has carried out extensive genetic experimentation for the last fifty years. Sturgess believes his life's work on the revolutionary Utopia Project will benefit mankind, helping to eradicate disease throughout the world; he is therefore shocked when the Doctor tells him how the project could lead to the type of racial purification that was seen in Nazi Germany during World War II. Shaken by the terrible consequences that misuse of his work could bring, Sturgess uses a device left by the Doctor to blow up both himself and his records of the Utopia Project.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor

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'The Wickerwork Man' by Paul Magrs

In Levenshulme, Manchester, Peter and his family go shopping for garden furniture; after buying a set of wickerwork chairs and a table they encounter a strange man called the Doctor, who invites himself to the barbeque they are planning that evening. Peter’s interest is piqued when the Doctor ominously warns that their furniture is made of very ancient bamboo, and he follows the man back to his spaceship, which is disguised as a Police Box; the Doctor tells Peter that millions of years ago an evil alien tree god named Goomba landed on Earth, and its remains were used to create the bamboo furniture his family have just purchased. The two of them return to the barbeque, only to find that Peter’s family and guests have all been possessed by Goomba, and are currently building a huge effigy of the alien god in their garden out of spare bits of wood. The Doctor and Peter head for the safety of the TARDIS, but Peter spills tea on the console, setting the ship in flight and transporting it several days into the future. When the two time travellers emerge, they discover that the entire neighbourhood is now working on the massive structure representing Goomba, and that Peter’s possessed father is imprisoned in a cage inside the effigy’s head. Goomba’s voice rings out, gloating that its apotheosis is near; the fire consuming its wooden image will soon give it enough power to return to space. While the Doctor distracts Goomba, Peter climbs the structure and rescues his father; Goomba’s life essence flows out of Peter’s father and into the fire, which quickly consumes the effigy, destroying Goomba forever. Some time later, Peter and his father recover in hospital, while the Doctor takes Peter’s mum shopping in the TARDIS.

Notes:
*Featuring the Eighth Doctor
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'The Three Paths' by Ian Potter

Waking from a nightmare involving his father, the Doctor finds that the TARDIS has brought him to Gallifrey, landing on the mountain where he grew up many years ago. Leaving Ben and Polly sleeping in their rooms, the Doctor steps out of the ship and makes his way through the snow; he soon meets his childhood mentor, sitting under a familiar tree on the mountainside. The old man tells his former student that he has arrived shortly after he originally left his world, and then offers him the opportunity of returning to his former life in the Capitol, taking up as if he had never left. The Doctor is torn, but quickly realises that his travels through time and space have changed him; he bids farewell to his mentor and his old life, and returns to the TARDIS to resume his travels…

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor

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Publication Date:
March 2006

Notes:
*Published by Big Finish