Wednesday 18 March 2020

Unseen Stories (7)


In this final instalment, for now, we consider those on-screen references to unseen adventures from the Sixth to Eighth Doctors, starting with:

The Sixth Doctor
Shortly after regenerating, the Doctor mentions a couple of planets which he knows might be suitable for a holiday, such as Vesta 95, which might suggest a prior visit. He seems to know a lot about Titan 3 as a good place to become a hermit. There is always the possibility that he knows of these worlds by reputation only. What has definitely taken place off-screen is a visit to Jaconda during his Fourth incarnation. He reminds Azmael of this visit, which he specifically states was two regenerations ago. His stay ended with a drunken night by a pool.
He mentions the Terrible Zodin once again, revealing that they were female. He seems to know Telos at the time when the Cryons were still in power, before the Cybermen took over the planet. There is also the issue of he and Lytton knowing each other rather well, despite the two never properly meeting in Resurrection of the Daleks.
On meeting the Rani in 18th Century England, he seems to imply that they have encountered each other since she left Gallifrey. He says once more that he has met Shakespeare, and is thinking of going to see him again.
The Doctor has met scientist Dastari before, perhaps on more than one occasion. At least one of these meetings took place before he left Gallifrey.
As The Two Doctors opens, we learn that the Doctor has fished for gumblejacks on this stretch of river before. The Second Doctor and Jamie have dropped Victoria off somewhere to study graphology (handwriting analysis). The Doctor claims to have dined at the Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris. This famous eatery at 15 Quai de la Tournelle claims to have been founded in 1582, despite the area where it is located being a swamp until 1650. It does not appear in any guide book until 1860. Pressed duck is a house speciality. The Doctor has been seen to visit Paris on three occasions, but none of them after 1860, although he did mention meeting King George V in Paris in Inferno.
The Doctor recognises the peel of bells of the cathedral in Seville - something he must have personal knowledge of.
He has a lot of calling cards (or at least contact details) from various famous scientists and thinkers, presumably collected in person. These include Archimedes, Aristotle, Brunel, Dante, and Leonardo.
An unseen adventure proves to be pivotal to the the events of Timelash. The Third Doctor visited the planet Karfel with Jo Grant and someone else (whom fans have always assumed to have been Mike Yates). The Doctor saved the planet from some unspecified disaster and met a young scientist named Megelan, reporting him to the authorities for unethical experiments with the Morlox creatures. Megelan would go on to become the tyrannical Borad.
The Doctor knows Professor Arthur Stengos personally, well enough to feel obliged to visit his grave site on the planet Necros - although he doesn't seem to have ever met his daughter Natasha. It's implied that he has had some personal experience of the Knights of Oberon. Orcini gives the Doctor his medal to return to the Order, but doesn't say where he should go - suggesting that the Doctor doesn't need to be told where they are based.
There is a definite suggestion that quite a considerable period of time elapses between Revelation of the Daleks and Trial of a Time Lord.
Just before the TARDIS goes to Thoros Beta, the Doctor and Peri have encountered a dying Thordon warlord, which is what prompts the Doctor to come here in the first place.
We then have the whole Mel situation. From the Matrix, the Doctor selects evidence from his own future, when Mel is already travelling with him. We never get to see their first encounter, or know how long they have been travelling together before the adventure with the Vervoids. Like Stengos, the Doctor knows the investigator Hallett well, and in person. He has also had a previous encounter with Commodore Travers, seemingly in this current incarnation, as "Tonker" Travers recognises him on sight. Travers was just a captain at this time.


The Seventh Doctor
After the defeat of the Rani on the planet Lakertya, the Doctor and Mel have to make a number of unseen journeys to return all the kidnapped scientists (who include Einstein and Pasteur) to their proper place and time.
At some point recently the Doctor has had to jettison the TARDIS swimming pool after it sprang a leak, which is why Mel wants to go to Paradise Towers.
At the Shangri-La holiday camp in North Wales, the bounty hunter Keillor seems to recognise the Doctor by sight. The Fourth Doctor previously mentioned having a bounty of a whole star system on his head.
The spectre of Fenric starts to rear his head in Dragonfire, as the Doctor mentions spotting strange signals emanating from Iceworld for some time. We'll later discover that this is probably the "time-storm" which Fenric used to transport Ace which he has detected.
Remembrance of the Daleks tells us a lot about what the First Doctor might have been up to in the London of 1963, just prior to the arrival in the TARDIS of Ian and Barbara - namely his hiding of the Hand of Omega and setting of a trap for the Daleks. As this seems to contradict the Doctor's apparent lack of knowledge about the Daleks in The Daleks, there is always the slight possibility that he somehow slipped back to 1963 later on in his First incarnation. The funeral parlour worker describes the Doctor as an old man with white hair, and this description could equally apply to the Third Doctor - who is more likely to have been able to get the Hand of Omega from the Time Lords.
The Doctor describes himself as President of the High Council once again, despite being told that he had been deposed in Trial of a Time Lord. Has there been another unseen trip to Gallifrey?
The Doctor has encountered a Stigorax before - in Birmingham. Which Birmingham isn't specified but we should assume the city in the Midlands as he has spent so much time in England over the centuries.
The Doctor visited Windsor in November 1638, as that is when he first encountered Lady Peinforte and launched the Nemesis statue into space. Before seeing him in his current incarnation, Lady Peinforte describes him as "a funny little man" - suggesting either that she met him as he is now, or when he was in his Second incarnation. The latter is most likely, as the Doctor seems to have forgotten all a bout the statue launch, so unlikely to have been recently for him. The Doctor also claims to have visited Windsor when the castle was first being built. He might be referring to the original Norman castle of the late 11th Century, or it might be when Edward III embarked on major building works in the 14th Century.
The Doctor claims to have been fighting the Gods of Ragnarok for a very long time. He might be talking specifically about the three beings encountered at the Psychic Circus on Segonax, or he might be referring to fighting beings like them, and what they represent - such as the Eternals or the Toymaker. He tells Captain Cook that he has had tea in the Groz Valley of Melegathon before.
Not so much an unseen adventure as one yet to be seen with Battlefield. This incarnation of the Doctor from the future sets things up for his current self here, leaving himself useful messages. This is presumably the same Doctor who everyone thinks is Merlin in the alternative dimension, as once again he's recognised by sight.
In Ghost Light the Doctor suggests he has met Neanderthal people before, and talks of an Indian takeaway he knows in the Khyber Pass. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society at different points in its history, as he mentions being a Fellow multiple times.
We then learn about his first encounter with Fenric, which took place in the Middle East around the 2nd Century AD, when he bested him in a chess game and trapped his essence in a vase.
He is familiar with the German navy's cypher room in Berlin, spotting when something is out of place, and tells the Ancient One that he has seen the polluted world that it comes from, in the far future. This would be only the third time that we know of when the Doctor has ventured to a time-line which events in the present have then stopped from happening - alternative futures.


The Eighth Doctor
Obviously a lot of time passes between Survival and the 1996 movie. Ace has left the TARDIS for a start, which we now know was to return to present day England, where she eventually set up her "A Charitable Earth" foundation. The Seventh Doctor will have had time to leave those messages for himself from Battlefield.
The new Doctor is a bit of a name-dropper, and is not averse to telling individuals about their own personal futures.
He tells Grace Holloway that he was with the composer Giacomo Puccini when he died. This places him in Brussels on the 29th of November, 1924. He also claims to have met Marie Curie (presumably whilst in Paris) and Sigmund Freud, and yet again mentions knowing Leonardo.
He seems to have first hand knowledge about Chang Lee's immediate future, advising him to be away from San Francisco the following year, and he prompts Gareth to answer the right questions in his exam as he knows he will be a significant scientist in the future, in the field of earthquake prediction. The Doctor also seems to already know a lot about Grace, though knowing why she decided to become a doctor as a child might be the result of telepathy.
Of course, we only got to see the Eighth Doctor the once, but come Night of the Doctor we'll learn of his having travelled with a number of companions over many years, and his determination to keep his distance from the Time War, plus the events which led to his regeneration into the War Doctor after crashing in a spaceship on the planet Karn.

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