'Short Trips': 'Tuesday' (1 Part) by Tony Jones

Arriving in London on Tuesday 25th December, the Doctor finds the city lacking any yuletide celebrations, and a bright glowing shape in the sky that only he can see. In a café the Doctor runs into his former companion Harry Sullivan, but the man fails to remember their adventures together, and seems completely unaware of Christmas. After returning to his office to consult a file on the Doctor, Harry receives a letter summoning him to a rendezvous with the Time Lord at a tearoom in Charing Cross station; Harry accepts the meeting, but only so his masters, UNIT, can arrest the Doctor. That night, Harry reads Doctor’s notebook, which starts to jog his memories of both his friend and of Christmas... The next day, Harry visits the Doctor in his cell; after explaining how UNIT disabled an alien ship in orbit around the planet, Harry demands his prisoner’s help in boarding the vessel; he forces the Doctor at gunpoint into the TARDIS, but as soon as the doors close, Harry drops the pretence, his memories having now returned. The two friends arrive inside the alien spaceship, a warship from the constellation of Sagittarius, whose comatose pilot, a huge slug-like creature, is directly connected to the ship’s drive systems. The Doctor discovers that the aliens received the transmission of the Queen’s first Christmas Broadcast in 1957, and interpreted it as a declaration of war; tracking the message to Earth, the aliens accidentally tripped one of UNIT’s planetary protection devices – unfortunately, what UNIT took for a force-field generator salvaged from under lake Windermere was in fact a chronobaric field, which linked with the alien pilot’s mind to project its prejudiced version of the Earth onto its inhabitants, altering their memories and behaviour. With the aid of the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits, Harry examines the alien pilot and learns that it is about to give birth; the Doctor uses the TARDIS to send the space ship back home, its pilot now in charge of five newly-born slugs, and its systems containing an accurately-translated version of the Queen’s speech to help clarify the aliens’ misunderstanding. The Doctor and Harry return to Earth, where the population has been returned to normal, and everyone is now happily celebrating Christmas.

Stephen Critchlow (Narrator)

Release Date:
December 2018

Notes:

*Featuring the Eighth Doctor and Harry

*A Big Finish Audio Production