'Star Tales'

'Even though they're gone from the world, they're never gone from me.'

The Doctor is many things – curious, funny, brave, protective of her friends...and a shameless namedropper. While she and her companions battled aliens and travelled across the universe, the Doctor hinted at a host of previous, untold adventures with the great and the good: we discovered she got her sunglasses from Pythagoras (or was it Audrey Hepburn?); lent a mobile phone to Elvis; had an encounter with Amelia Earhart where she discovered that a pencil-thick spider web can stop a plane; had a 'wet weekend' with Harry Houdini, learning how to escape from chains underwater; and more.

In this collection of new stories, Star Tales takes you on a rip-roaring ride through history, from 500BC to the swinging 60s, going deeper into the Doctor's notorious name-dropping and revealing the truth behind these anecdotes.

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'Chasing the Dawn' by Jenny T. Colgan

The Doctor tells Yaz about the time she met Amelia Earhart, back when she was a man. Amelia was flying her Electra airplane across the international dateline when her co-pilot turned into a monster, forcing her to land on a spit of land. Mistaking the Doctor for a journalist, Amelia listens to his explanation that her co-pilot was infected by a swarm of alien bugs that slipped through a crack in space-time. Despite her plane not having enough fuel to reach civilisation, Amelia stubbornly refuses the Doctor’s offer to tow her with his own vehicle, and as the waters rise above the spit, she flies off in hope of finding somewhere safer to land. The Doctor follows Amelia in the TARDIS, and when she finally concedes to his offer of help, he uses a hammock to tow the stricken aircraft to Howland Island. But then another swarm of bugs appears in their path; Amelia tries to climb the hammock up to the safety of the TARDIS, but one of the creatures bites her. Knowing she is infected, Amelia elects to return to her plane and blow it up, taking the swarm with it. The Doctor is vague on Amelia’s fate: she may have vanished forever… or maybe she was rescued and travelled with him for many years on lots of adventures…

Notes:

*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan, and the Eleventh Doctor

*Time-placing: The Eleventh Doctor is wearing his tweed jacket, so I am placing this prior to Season 33 (Series 11)

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'That’s All Right, Mama' by Paul Magrs

While dealing with some alien thieves the Tenth Doctor meets a young Elvis Presley and his mother, and entrusts them with two recovered communicators. The Eleventh Doctor later returns to collect the alien devices, but Elvis is busy recording his first single. The Twelfth Doctor visits Mrs Presley instead, but turns a blind eye to her using the devices to stay in contact with her son during his tours across the U.S. Years later, the Thirteenth Doctor is horrified to learn from her ‘Fam’ that Elvis is still alive in 2018, and fears the alien communicators have changed history. Visiting Elvis in Graceland, the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan find an elderly, healthy-living Elvis using the communicators to speak with his mama on the day she died. Realising that receiving good advice from his mama throughout Elvis’ life has caused history to veer wildly off track, the team take him away in the TARDIS; they travel back through his time-line until they reach a point when Elvis can steal the phone from his younger self. As the real timeline starts to reassert itself, Elvis begins to fade away. Granting his final wish, the Doctor takes Elvis back to 1958 to say goodbye to his dying mother at Graceland – and then Elvis fades gently away…

Notes:

*Featuring the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors

*Time-placing: the Tenth Doctor is travelling alone, and doesn’t seem to be brooding over lost companions or ominous foretellings, so I am choosing to place this just before the 2009 specials. The Eleventh Doctor is also travelling alone, so I am placing this just after 'Chasing the Dawn'. The Twelfth Doctor’s coat is worn and singed, but seeing as there is no gap between the 'Doctor Falls' and 'Twice Upon a Time', I am placing this towards the end of his incarnation’s timeline. For the Thirteenth Doctor, this takes place right after 'Arachnids in the UK'.

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'Einstein and the Doctor' by Jo Cotterill

The Doctor takes Graham, Yaz and Ryan to Bern, Switzerland, in 1905 to meet her old friend Einstein. Here they find the town folk in a state of terror: their children have fallen ill, and giant spiders and rats roam the streets. Using an ultraviolet setting on her sonic screwdriver, the Doctor discovers that alien starfish have been drawn to the town by the energy of the children’s imaginations, and are using it to create psychic manifestations. Using Einstein’s brilliant mind as a lure, the Doctor sets a trap for the creatures; the plan works, until Albert’s imagination overloads the aliens, creating dark visions and waves of blood. Luckily Albert’s fiancée, Mileva, is able to calm down her partner, allowing the Doctor and her friends to secure the alien starfish. The Doctor and her Fam leave to take the starfish somewhere safe, departing just as her earlier self arrives for his first encounter with Einstein…

Notes:

*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan, and the Fourth Doctor

*Time-placing: the Fourth Doctor appears to be travelling alone, so I am placing this prior to 'Face of Evil'

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'Who-Dini?' by Steve Cole

The Doctor answers a call for help from his old friend Harold Houdini, who has been implicated in a series of deaths dubbed 'The Magician Murders', despite insisting he was nowhere near the crime scenes. Searching the warehouse of rival magician Gladstone, the duo find an empty prison pod – just as the escaped alien prisoner kills Gladstone and flies away in the pod. As the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS, his next incarnation arrives, to take care of unfinished business. As the Doctor, and her fam search the Uptown theatre where Houdini is performing, Ryan finds the alien pod in the dressing room of Harry’s wife Bess, while Houdini is kidnapped by hoods working for another rival, Wiseman King. The alien monster reappears, only to transform into the form of Harry’s new assistant, Billy. The alien shape-shifter explains how over the years he has been passed between the various magicians, kept a prisoner by a control ring linked to his prison pod; but now the control influence is slipping, Billy has been able to exact his revenge on his former masters. The Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan and Billy race to Wiseman King’s house to rescue Harry and Bess. King demands the return of the alien but Harry refuses, having hidden the control ring for the Doctor to find. The Doctor and her friends arrive on the scene, and with Billy’s transformation powers they are able to overpower the villain and his goons. After bidding goodbye to Bess, with whom he has forged a close friendship, Billy departs in his pod; the case closed, the Doctor and her friends depart in the TARDIS. But Harry has pulled a final trick: he departed in the pod to travel the stars, while Billy changed into Houdini’s form to stay behind with Bess.

Notes:

*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor, and the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan

*Time-placing: this story takes place after 'Demons of the Punjab'

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'The Pythagoras Problem' by Trevor Baxendale

Deciding to return her sunglasses to their rightful owner, the Doctor takes her friends to meet Pythagoras in 500 BC Crotone, Italy. After sensing something strange in the local time-space continuum the Doctor meets Pythagoras, who is drunkenly raving about ghosts. After the gang take him home to sober up, Pythagoras falls out with his daughter, Myia, over a dog: the scholar believes it is the reincarnation of a late friend, while his daughter and the villagers believe it is possessed by demons. When the mongrel crumbles to dust and Myia’s behaviour becomes erratic, the Doctor deduces that the alien presence possessing the creature has now transferred to the girl. The Doctor hypnotises Myia, allowing the creature within to identify itself as Zaris of the Argomeld, a race that grows exponentially from microbial size by transferring across host bodies. Realising that when Zaris jumps to its home dimension it will destroy Myia and the surrounding area, the Doctor offers to help the alien to leave safely; using Pythagoras’ mathematical 'tetractys' sequence, and assisted by some of the scholar’s students, the Doctor is able to return Zaris safely home. The threat over, the Doctor hands Pythagoras his sunglasses – but they aren’t his; maybe they belonged to Audrey Hepburn after all…

Notes:

*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor, and the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan

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'Mission of the KaaDok' by Mike Tucker

On their mission to return some borrowed sunglasses, the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan arrive in Paramount Studios, 1961, where Audrey Hepburn is currently filming ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. After the Doctor interrupts a mysterious figure from shooting Audrey, she discovers that the assassin is in fact an alien called PhiLit of the KaaDok, a race obsessed by Earth’s television and film transmissions. PhiLit explains that the KaaDok have created an exhibition devoted to humanity’s media culture, populated with wax-droids of celebrities whose brainwaves he and his colleagues have scanned on their visits throughout Earth’s history. When Audrey arrives to complain about a ruined take, the Doctor hands back her sunglasses; but Audrey is more interested in the alien, and manages to trick the Doctor and PhiLit into teleporting her abord the alien mothership in orbit around the planet. At the studios, Graham takes the fake Audrey back to the set, where her scrambled brainwaves - taken from both Audrey and the Doctor - upset the filming. Meanwhile Yaz and Ryan discover some anachronistic wax-droids of Alan Rickman, Benedict Cumberbatch and others, which are mistakenly called as extras onto a nearby science fiction movie shoot; as chaos ensues, Yaz instructs Graham to use the Doctor’s psychic paper to calm down the replicas. On the mothership, the Doctor meets PhiLit’s supervisor, AaRee, and learns that not only is he dumping faulty androids on Earth, but also employs child labour, including the young PhiLit. The Doctor vows to stop AaRee, and with Audrey’s help they zap the supervisor with a brainwave scanner and lock him up in the hold. Leaving PhiLit in charge and filing a report to KaaDok Major’s authorities that will bring an investigation into AaRee’s criminal activities, the Doctor and Audrey return to Earth, where all the androids are now behaving like Graham. As Audrey swaps places with her double, the Doctor returns the androids to the mothership.

Notes:

*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor, and the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan

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Publication Date:
5th December 2019

Notes:

*A BBC Books anthology