The Dream Theatre presents... 'Time In A Bottle' - A Doctor Who Adventure
(originally published 17th November, 2017)
Writing up my dream about El Santo teaming up with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing reminded me of another dream - oddly enough also starring Peter Cushing - I had had way back in 2010. With the Santo one, there were lots of gaps and odd interludes that I had to kind of wallpaper over, but this one was pretty much just like watching an episode as scenes flowed logically from one to the next and there were very few incongruities. For the sake of context, at this point in time, Matt Smith had just taken on the role of The Doctor from David Tennant, and had maybe only one or two episodes under his belt.
So here, for your bemusement, is a Doctor Who episode which never happened:
The episode begins with a framing sequence featuring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan as The Doctor and Amy Pond exploring the TARDIS, checking in on all the odd little nooks and crannies that have been left to their own devices. One of the rooms they come across is labelled 'map room', and features which features table upon which is tiny scale model of 17th Century London. Amy leans in for a closer look. "Oh!" she says, and steps back, "They're moving." "Yes," The Doctor replies, "They do that. You see, that isn't a model of London. That IS London. Or at least one day in London's history. I have to keep it sealed up here in order to stop it interacting with the rest..."
The camera pans across the model and then swoops in on the street scene where we can see tiny little people in period costume moving around. The rest of the episode is a flashback sequence explaining how 24 hours worth of Elizabethan London ended up as a sort of animated architect’s model in the TARDIS. It is set during the time of the Doctor's first incarnation, who is played, in the absence of William Hartnell, by Peter Cushing, which I can remember thinking at the time was pretty bloody awesome.
The essential plot is that a Doctor John Dee-style alchemist who has started getting advice from what he believes are Angels... basically floating sheets of multicoloured light with a lot of reverb in their voices. And the experiments which he’s been performing based on this advice has been having unforeseen side-effects. The Doctor shows up to find strange occurances are afoot in London town, people coming unstuck from their shadows and their shadows chasing them down the street. Somnambulists climbing walls and walking on ceilings. Rains of fish. An array of colourful locals are all concerned that it’s all very queer, and that there’s sure to be witchcraft behind it all.
There's a lot of bits and pieces here of the Doctor being nosy and looking at things. Tapping walls with his cane and saying things like, "Mmm... interesting..." At some point, he picks up an assistant, an oddly anachronistic (though I didn't think so at the time) Oliver Twist-style Victorian plucky street urchin who offers to show him around London as he seems to be from 'out of town'.
Investigations lead to the alchemist huddled away in a darkened basement beneath the city. There's a terse exchange where the Doctor reveals that the 'angels' are in fact aliens (can't recall the name he gives them) and that they've duped the alchemist (who's played by a pudgy character actor I'm sure I've seen in episodes of 'The Avengers' or 'The Prisoner' but couldn't put a name to. Very much in the mode of Roy Kinnear, Victor Buono or Richard Griffiths) into letting them into our universe. Unfortunately, the rules of their universe and ours are different, and they've been changing things so that they'll feel at home when they arrive... unfortunately, these changes will probably not suit humanity's needs all that well. So essentially, while the Alchemist thinks he’s been changing lead into gold or whatnot, he’s actually been reshaping the local laws of physics so that our dimension will be a more hospitable environment for his ‘angel’ friends. Changes which will, if allowed to remain unchecked, result in the extinction of humanity.
The urchin tries to rush the 'angels' swinging a cudgel, but gets zapped and dragged away by the Doctor before they can kill him. "Now, now," the Doctor chides, "That particular course of action simply won't do for this situation." He spends some time looking through the alchemist's books and tut-tuts disapprovingly. "Honestly, wherever did you get this? It's like leaving an atom bomb in the care of a caveman, giving him the instructions for a teakettle and telling him that if there are any problems, just consult the book!"
The conclusion deals with magical summoning circles. He looks at the circles in the book and says there's no way the mathematical equations there could hold a (whatever he calls the aliens) and in any rate, they're out now. He comes to the conclusion that they'll have to draw a protective circle around the whole of London to contain the 'weirdness' (not the word he uses... Incursion? Outbreak?) getting out. There's a lot of running around and messing about with calipers and slide-rules and sextants. Climbing towers, checking the wind direction and looking at landmarks through telescopes. Just before he 'throws the switch', the aliens try another attack to stop him. There's a strong wind blowing and I think he's standing on top of a high belltower to activate whatever it is. He pauses to berate the alchemist, "You see, the problem with you people is that you have a little bit of cleverness and you think that makes you smart. Well it just makes you smart enough to cause trouble. And then you need someone REALLY clever like me to come along and fix it for you!" He pauses and then shakes his cane in the alchemist's face, "Well, there's only ONE of me to go around! What would you do the next time, eh? Eh? Answer me that! You can't, can you?" He does whatever he's going to do (again, kinda hazy) and shuts it down, but it's too late for London... or at least, this particular twenty-four hours where everything went topsy-turvy. It has to be quarantined.
Cut to the TARDIS interior. The Doctor and the Urchin. "But Doctor, won't people notice a whole missing day?" Cushing looks very grim, "I very much expect they'll have something else far more pressing to keep their attention for the moment." Exterior shot of the TARDIS hovering over The Great Fire of London.
The camera pans across the model and then swoops in on the street scene where we can see tiny little people in period costume moving around. The rest of the episode is a flashback sequence explaining how 24 hours worth of Elizabethan London ended up as a sort of animated architect’s model in the TARDIS. It is set during the time of the Doctor's first incarnation, who is played, in the absence of William Hartnell, by Peter Cushing, which I can remember thinking at the time was pretty bloody awesome.
The essential plot is that a Doctor John Dee-style alchemist who has started getting advice from what he believes are Angels... basically floating sheets of multicoloured light with a lot of reverb in their voices. And the experiments which he’s been performing based on this advice has been having unforeseen side-effects. The Doctor shows up to find strange occurances are afoot in London town, people coming unstuck from their shadows and their shadows chasing them down the street. Somnambulists climbing walls and walking on ceilings. Rains of fish. An array of colourful locals are all concerned that it’s all very queer, and that there’s sure to be witchcraft behind it all.
There's a lot of bits and pieces here of the Doctor being nosy and looking at things. Tapping walls with his cane and saying things like, "Mmm... interesting..." At some point, he picks up an assistant, an oddly anachronistic (though I didn't think so at the time) Oliver Twist-style Victorian plucky street urchin who offers to show him around London as he seems to be from 'out of town'.
Investigations lead to the alchemist huddled away in a darkened basement beneath the city. There's a terse exchange where the Doctor reveals that the 'angels' are in fact aliens (can't recall the name he gives them) and that they've duped the alchemist (who's played by a pudgy character actor I'm sure I've seen in episodes of 'The Avengers' or 'The Prisoner' but couldn't put a name to. Very much in the mode of Roy Kinnear, Victor Buono or Richard Griffiths) into letting them into our universe. Unfortunately, the rules of their universe and ours are different, and they've been changing things so that they'll feel at home when they arrive... unfortunately, these changes will probably not suit humanity's needs all that well. So essentially, while the Alchemist thinks he’s been changing lead into gold or whatnot, he’s actually been reshaping the local laws of physics so that our dimension will be a more hospitable environment for his ‘angel’ friends. Changes which will, if allowed to remain unchecked, result in the extinction of humanity.
The urchin tries to rush the 'angels' swinging a cudgel, but gets zapped and dragged away by the Doctor before they can kill him. "Now, now," the Doctor chides, "That particular course of action simply won't do for this situation." He spends some time looking through the alchemist's books and tut-tuts disapprovingly. "Honestly, wherever did you get this? It's like leaving an atom bomb in the care of a caveman, giving him the instructions for a teakettle and telling him that if there are any problems, just consult the book!"
The conclusion deals with magical summoning circles. He looks at the circles in the book and says there's no way the mathematical equations there could hold a (whatever he calls the aliens) and in any rate, they're out now. He comes to the conclusion that they'll have to draw a protective circle around the whole of London to contain the 'weirdness' (not the word he uses... Incursion? Outbreak?) getting out. There's a lot of running around and messing about with calipers and slide-rules and sextants. Climbing towers, checking the wind direction and looking at landmarks through telescopes. Just before he 'throws the switch', the aliens try another attack to stop him. There's a strong wind blowing and I think he's standing on top of a high belltower to activate whatever it is. He pauses to berate the alchemist, "You see, the problem with you people is that you have a little bit of cleverness and you think that makes you smart. Well it just makes you smart enough to cause trouble. And then you need someone REALLY clever like me to come along and fix it for you!" He pauses and then shakes his cane in the alchemist's face, "Well, there's only ONE of me to go around! What would you do the next time, eh? Eh? Answer me that! You can't, can you?" He does whatever he's going to do (again, kinda hazy) and shuts it down, but it's too late for London... or at least, this particular twenty-four hours where everything went topsy-turvy. It has to be quarantined.
Cut to the TARDIS interior. The Doctor and the Urchin. "But Doctor, won't people notice a whole missing day?" Cushing looks very grim, "I very much expect they'll have something else far more pressing to keep their attention for the moment." Exterior shot of the TARDIS hovering over The Great Fire of London.
At this point, I woke up, just as we were getting back to Smith and Gillan. Still, very happy with that. A pretty solid narrative given the fact that it was a dream. I remember thinking, "At last, Peter Cushing gets a go at being the Doctor in an in-continuity adventure..." as opposed to the two movies he did. He looked bloody good, too. His clothes were a mix between Hartnell’s Victorian school teacher and Pertwee’s Edwardian dandy, and played the tetchy, Hartnell curmudgeon very well.
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