Treatment for DOCTOR WHO : The Key to Time Our hero receives his doctorate in cosmic science from the Time Lord Academy. The matriculation is an hour of great triumph for him; a classmate teases him about how long it took him and how barely he scraped by, pointedly using his new title "Doctor" to rub it in. The Doctor responds by using the title of his friend's new degree, Master of Cosmic Science. After the ceremony the Master regenerates in celebration; the Doctor chides him for using up a regeneration merely because he is vain about his good looks, and the Master chides him back for being vain about himself and holding onto his first body unusually long (the Doctor looks like an old man, though both of the Master's bodies, and the other graduating students, in this scene have been young people). But the Doctor's good mood is invulnerable to the point of smugness, and he won't say why. The Doctor visits the Lord President of the High Council of the Time Lords and reveals that he has worked out the mathematics to build the Time Lords' first time travel capsule. Heretofore all Gallifreyan time travel equipment has been large, stationary devices for relay of objects or audiovisual signals between Gallifrey and other spacetime coordinates; but the Doctor has proven theoretically with dimensional transcendentalism that a mobile time machine is possible. The Doctor sees his capsules as a great force for doing good in the Universe, as the Time Lords will now be able to travel to other times and places rather than being restricted to observation and the collection of samples. The Lord President charges the Doctor with building a prototype, and the Doctor chooses the Master to be his Project Engineer. During the course of the construction of the prototype, the Doctor meets the adolescent Susan - who has been assigned to the project as a lab assistant - and becomes quite fond of her for her curiosity and intelligence. Though the Time Lords propagate their race by artificial fertilization and test tube gestation, and no one knows who their relatives are, the Doctor flatters himself that perhaps Susan's intelligence comes from his genes. The capsule test is a success. The High Council name the Doctor the head of the new branch of the Time Lords' time travel facility. The Master, named his chief engineer, becomes jealous of all the attention the Doctor is getting; after all, the Doctor couldn't have built it without him. Susan nicknames the capsules "TARDISes", for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. (Perhaps "Susan" is a nickname as well, given her by the Doctor after some favorite figure from the history of his favorite planet.) A small fleet of capsules is constructed and put into service. During a trip to Earth the first TARDIS develops a fault in the telepathic circuit, manifesting as erratic control and a malfunction in the capsule's camoflage circuit, which locks its appearance into that of a London Metropolitan Police Box of the twentieth century. The Master is the only person who can fix it, because work on symbiotic circuits requires the mental field of both the capsule's assigned operator and the engineer who configured the original circuit. But pleading other pressing work he refuses, because he knows it annoys the Doctor who is irrationally fond of the prototype capsule. That TARDIS is shunted into the back of the repair garage. When the fleet of capsules is used for nothing but sample and intelligence gathering, the Doctor has a shouting match with the High Council; but it only results in the High Council formalizing an official policy of non-intervention in "the affairs of lesser beings". The Doctor is infuriated but can do nothing to change their minds. Some time later the Castellan of the High Council visits the Doctor at the time capsule control center. The High Council has evidence that the Doctor and at least one accomplice have been making secret field missions without the Council's authorization using the defective prototype, missions that violate the non-intervention policy. The Doctor is incontrite but admits nothing. Before the Castellan can do more that threaten arrest, an emergency comes to light: A Time Lord field agent has been left behind in a dangerous situation, captured by natives on that favorite planet of the Doctor, Earth. The Doctor attempts to mount a rescue mission, but just as it is about to depart the High Council, assessed of the situation by the Castellan, vetoes the rescue as a violation of the non-intervention policy. Among the Time Lords present only the Doctor and Susan fail to remain impassive as the capsule control center's main viewscreen shows their colleague burned as a witch. The Lord President calls the grieving Doctor to his chambers. The Lord President intends to retire and, because of the Doctor's high station and achievements, he wants to appoint the Doctor his successor to serve the remainder of his term. The Doctor is honored and enthusiastic at first, believing that he will be able to change the policies of the Time Lords, until he discovers that an appointed, non-elected Lord President votes only in case of a tie among the other four Councillors. The resigning Lord President assumes the Doctor's acceptance, however, and sends him off with the office's security codes. Shortly thereafter the Doctor seeks out Susan and brings her to the computer matrix data bank terminal room. With the presidential security codes he shows Susan what he has discovered himself since his interview with the Lord President: the deceased Time Lord field agent was the Doctor's genetic daughter and Susan's genetic mother. The Doctor tells Susan that he's come to say goodbye - he intends to take the prototype TARDIS and leave Gallifrey forever. Susan asks him to take her along. He objects, "You don't even know where I'm going." She says, "Neither do you." The Doctor and Susan sneak into the capsule bay to steal the TARDIS. Just before they enter it, the Doctor suffers a dizzy spell, falls to the floor, and regenerates for the first time. Wearing a new face and body to go with his new life, he with Susan departs in the TARDIS. After some years of travel together, enough that Susan has obviously regenerated at least once, they are with a group of British soldiers fighting World War One when they burst into a German communications shack and find a two-way television phone and an advanced computer. When the Doctor tries the tv phone an alien is on the other end; the Doctor switches off immediately. The Doctor consults the computer and quickly discovers that this is not Earth but another planet; Earthmen have been brought here from many time periods in order to be honed to the finest warriors, then to be enslaved as an army for these alien would-be conquerors of all of space and time. The Doctor is shocked to find that anyone besides the Time Lords has discovered time travel on such a scale, and abused it so. And he knows that he can't set it right alone. The Doctor decides that the only way to stop the plot is to call the Time Lords. If he uses the TARDIS' distress signal, the Time Lords will surely capture him and punish him for his crimes; but he cannot allow this plot to continue. He persuades Susan with very little argument that she must stay with their new friends from twentieth century Earth with one of whom she has become enamoured, instead of being taken back to Gallifrey with him. The Doctor finds his way back through a raging battle to the TARDIS and inside. He opens the cover on a large red button and presses it. Watching the TARDIS viewscreen he soon sees results. The men at war around him begin to disappear, sent back to their own times. Then, when all the Earthmen are gone, without the Doctor touching any controls the TARDIS takes flight, the doors swinging open at journey's end seemingly of their own volition. The Doctor exits with his head held high. The TARDIS has landed in the High Council legal chamber. The Doctor is charged with stealing the TARDIS and with violating the non-intervention policy. The Doctor defends himself with the fact that even the High Council can be moved to assist a "lesser" race, as in this case. He notes cynically that surely the Time Lords didn't violate their own directive in this one case merely to preserve their universe-wide monopoly on Time Travel; that would be petty... In defense of the non-intervention policy a jurist named Borusa, once an Academy instructor of the Doctor's, cites the alien race of time travel engineers as an example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely without absolute discipline. The High Council deliberate, and return a verdict. If the Doctor wants the Time Lords to meddle in the universe's affairs in the same manner that he does, he shall be their agent. The twentieth century Earthmen he is so fond of had a lot of troubles of the sort the Doctor is accomplished at solving; he and the TARDIS shall be exiled to that time period, and first he will be regenerated, his second life cut short in punishment for stealing the TARDIS. The Doctor objects loudly to both aspects of his sentence, but the High Council close their eyes and concentrate and the Doctor suddenly falls silent and walks stiffly into the TARDIS, which dematerializes.