LLEEGGAACCYY REQUIEM Volume 1 First published in 2001 by Legacy Online Publishing This Revised Edition published in 2014 by Frankallen Books The Legacy © & ™ 2001, 2014 by Frankallen Books Doctor Who © & ™ 1963, 2014 by BBC Worldwide Daleks created by Terry Nation, Lytton created by Eric Saward, Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart created by Mervyn Haisman, Cybermen created by Kit Pedler & Gerry Davies, Draconians created by Malcolm Hulke The right of Andy Frankham-Allen, Christoph Lopez, Niall Turner, AR Montacruz and Greg Miller to be identified as the Authors of the work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A Frankallen Books Publication, distributed by Lulu Distributions, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold on the understanding that the cost covers printing and postage only, no royalties are made by the contributors. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental (except where intentional and used with express permission). All contributor profits go to ‘For Luca’ www.facebook.com/ForLuca1 Cover Art © 2010 Andrew Orton Cover Design © 2013/14 Damien May Edited by Andy Frankham-Allen, Elizabeth Medeiros and Greg Miller ISBN 978-1-291-82371-4 Doctor Who remains the copyright of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Foreword (from 2010 edition) It’s been over four years since Doctor Who: The Legacy came to an end… Millions of fans of Doctor Who cover our globe. Our minds have replayed the heroic exploits of our favourite Time Lord since 1963, from television through novels and comic books. Among these fans, some have dared to further the tales of the Doctor, penning new adventures, creating strange worlds, filling them with nightmarish or wonderful creatures, and giving us a chance to tag along with old companions. The best of these combined adventure with intriguing notions of the future, mixing the comic with the tragic, making us gasp and guffaw at quick turns, bringing smiles… and the occasional tear. Along with new worlds, some writers have given us new companions. And during the programme’s hiatus as a regular series, some authors, and indeed some actors, have regenerated our Doctor 2 past his seventh or eighth personas, always biding their time, until the BBC regained their senses and went back into regular production with their own, official, ninth Doctor. During this time, a small group of writers, led by Andy Frankham- Allen, saw another avenue for the Doctor. Perhaps spun from their own sense of loss, from the abrupt cancellation of Doctor Who from the airwaves, from the uncertainty of his possible return, the Frankham-Allen team wrote of a Doctor whose known existence would not only be at risk – it would be obliterated. But the Doctor would always be The Doctor, yes? Even at the worst of times, he could regenerate. We had seen him regenerate seven times already. Indeed, under Frankham-Allen, travelling through Time has never been messier. And being The Doctor is no longer a guarantee of Good triumphing over Evil, of success, even of survival. What if the Doctor hadn’t regenerated those seven times? What if even his erratic, convoluted time-line fell victim to his greatest enemy’s plans? What if the Doctor’s time-line was thrown off course? What then of all those civilisations he had saved, of all those wrongs he had set aright, of history itself? Imagine… Your favourite uncle suddenly disappears. Your favourite holiday destination blinks out of existence. That turning point in history skips by without ever occurring. In fact, you yourself stand on the precipice of annihilation. A hundred people gone. A few thousands. Several millions. An entire race winks out of History. A planet. Now, each and every choice has dire consequences. Or, perhaps each choice always did, but now the ramifications take mere moments to emerge rather than years. And the slightest misstep can begin the onslaught of irrevocable disaster. Much better to leave things as they are and to tread carefully. Much less trepidation to simply spin-off a new story rather than tinker with the old. Yet, everyone seems to be doing that these days. Hollywood is now doing what the Comics Universe has done for decades. Re-imagining those wonderful, glorious, epoch-making moments from our childhood, throwing caution to the wind, and risking it all in their attempts to retell classic tales. Tales so ingrained in our collective minds and hearts that the obvious consequences will be masses swelling to deride any such trickery, and to picket for some sort of a National Protection Act. 3 Yet, the Batman, Hulk, and Star Trek movies are only a few examples of Hollywood grabbing a new audience while hanging on to their established fans, though they’ve tinkered with origin stories, ignoring earlier releases, or, in the case of Star Trek, wiping out all known and beloved history of its series. Sanctity meets the Recycle Bin. Nevertheless, the gamble has worked. And now even more movie series like Spider-man and Superman are preparing to ‘re-start’ their franchises not a generation after their last entries. The secret of their success has been an underlying respect. So what lies within these pages may no longer be unacceptable – but certainly no less shocking. The most important ingredient remains, however: love for the adventures of The Doctor. And each writer here takes on the holy mantle to lead you through a maze of stories: sometimes harrowing, sometimes comical, fraught with emotion and danger, and revisiting classic moments, then twisting them without remorse; edging us closer to a Doctor who must redefine himself as the entire Universe is redefined around him. Thanks for rejoining us for the adventures that lie ahead. So here we go with the first five years of the universe-shattering saga… Avery Montacruz, San Francisco 2010 4 5 Prologue By Andy Frankham-Allen Some called him the Lonely God, but he was no god. I knew him, travelled with him from the beginning. It was I who called to him, encouraged him to leave his home world. Back then I was barely sentient, but when things changed… well, everything changed. Including me. Although I didn’t really know it at the time I had been waiting for a soul like his, a crusader. He was a force of nature waiting to happen. A catalyst for great change. To some he was simply the bohemian wanderer in the fourth dimension. Some worlds, those that belonged to the monsters, feared him; they knew that if ever he visited their worlds the threat represented by them would be destroyed. Even the Daleks, those most evil of creations, called him the Ka Faraq Gatri, the Bringer of Darkness. Oh, you have never heard of the Daleks? Of course, I keep forgetting, they never existed in this universe. At least not yet, anyway. That was his fault. His timeline got altered and reality itself was reshaped, just to fit around him. Entire worlds were destroyed; species once destined for greats things now amounted to nothing. Everything in flux because just one man’s future had been altered. And although the universe was altered to fit him, he found it hard to fit into this new reality. His home was gone, his path unclear, and yet still he went out there, doing what he did. Finding the wrongs and putting them right. I guided him, my awareness altered by the planar shift. It was like waking from an eternal sleep. All those years I had been with him seemed like a dream, but suddenly, like him, I was awake, truly aware of the nature of the universe for the first time. That was then. He is gone now. Some say he is dead, others think he is just lost. Most say his work is done, that the universe no longer needs him. I say they are wrong. He has changed so many, left behind so much. His legacy lives on in me. I’m here, waiting, for I know he shall return. He always does. His name is legend. He is the Doctor. And this is his story. 6 Chapter One ‘Catalyst’ by Andy Frankham-Allen Historian’s note; this story takes place directly after the 1989 adventure ‘Survival’, and during the 1970 adventure ‘Spearhead from Space’. If there was one thing Ace hated, it was Sundays in Perivale; boredom city! She hated it even more when the Doctor sodded off and left on her own with no access to the TARDIS. The police box shaped time machine stood on the corner of the street behind her, while she sat on the curb, her legs safely stretched out on the road, crossed at the ankles. Safely, because there was little traffic passing through the streets of Perivale on a Sunday; in fact, there was little of anything. It seemed, when she and the Doctor had left Horsenden Hill arm in arm, that they were going to be leaving Perivale straight away, off on their travels through time and space. The Doctor had even suggested they go to Ancient Mesopotamia, an idea that made Ace laugh. She vaguely remembered learning something about it in junior school, but it hadn’t impressed on her any desire to visit there. As for the Doctor, he had never really shown much of an interest for delving into history before, unless it was Ace’s history, of course, then it was almost impossible to stop him from sticking his nose in.