CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK!

'Doctor Who' is back on Earth!

Fifteen years after the last regular episode, six years after the one TV movie for the Eighth Doctor, we've had a full series of thirteen episodes featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Incarnation.

The final episode for this year has aired, signaling the end of Eccleston's tenure and marking the debut of David Tennant in the role.

And so to celebrate, most of my essays and all of the Crossovers will be dedicated to the Doctor for the rest of the summer.

Be forewarned: In my essays during this summer salute to 'Doctor Who', there will be spoilers for each of the episodes, especially in regard to summaries.....

This part hasn't changed from last week.....

Location: The Gamestation (formerly Satellite 5)
Date: 200,100
Enemy: Daleks

With the fate of the Universe hanging in the balance as the Dalek fleet begins their invasion of Earth, the Doctor needs to decide if he has to sacrifice every human being on Earth so that every other living being in the universe is safe from the Daleks.
[Thanks to TV.com]

The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) faces the Daleks as he fights for Rose's life. He and Jack (John Barrowman) materialize the TARDIS on board the Dalek command ship outside the Solar System, where they find Rose (Billie Piper)... and the Daleks’ master, the Emperor Dalek, who reveals that he also escaped destruction at the end of the Time War, and has slowly been using humanity to rebuild the Dalek species. Except now, the Dalek Emperor believes he’s a god.
[Thanks to Outpost Gallifrey]

CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK
'DOCTOR WHO' - "PARTING OF THE WAYS"
&
'ENTERPRISE'

So here we are, dealing with the last episode of 'Doctor Who' for his ninth regeneration, as played by Christopher Eccleston. And as "Parting Of The Ways" wrapped up a lot of the mysteries from his tenure, it probably stood to reason that this theoretical crossover would the most complicated.

The Doctor and Rose, with Captain Jack Harkness and their other allies, make a final stand against the greatest enemies ever faced by the Doctor and the other Time Lords of Gallifrey - the Daleks.

Until he met that lone Dalek captive, a prisoner of Henry Van Statten, the Doctor believed that all of the Daleks had been destroyed - along with his own people, the Gallifreyans, - in the great Time War. This war triggered an "Armageddon Factor" which brought an apocalyptic end not only to the Dalek race but also to the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey.

Of all the Time Lords, only the Doctor survived. And that was not by choice.

[If he was left behind to trigger the great conflagration, then that was probably the cause of his regeneration from his eighth incarnation, as played by Paul McGann.]

In the third episode, "The Unquiet Dead", we learned from the Gelth that the great Time War was not limited to just the Time Lords and the Daleks. And the Doctor told the Nestene Consciousness that he did his best to save their protein planets during the war in "Rose", the first episode.

But the Time War raged across the cosmos, sweeping up many of the species of higher intellect without regard as to who was truly involved. So that would mean that the humans of Earth, the "Tellurians", would have been affected as well.

At least... I HOPE that we're considered of high intellect in the grand scheme of things!

Jack Harkness, who came from the 51st Century, knew of the Time War. Their allies from the year 200,100 thought of the Daleks as the stuff of legend, which to my mind would mean that they knew the sinister canisters should have been expunged from existence.

So the human race must have had some involvement in the great Time War.

And we saw that as the original storyline arc for 'Enterprise'.

For that 'Star Trek' prequel, the conflict was known as the Temporal Cold War, and it was/will be fought between several time-traveling species in different time periods as they were all trying control Time for their own purposes. So although they were never mentioned in the series, the Time Lords and the Daleks fall into that general description of the chrono-combatants.


[Among those whom we do know to be adversaries in the war:
The Suliban Cabal of the 22nd Century
the Na'kuhl of the 29th Century
The Sphere Builders of the 21st and 22nd Centuries, also known as the Guardians*
The Xindi in the Delphic Expanse of the 21st and 22nd Centuries
And the Andorians, the Klingons, the Tholians, and the United Federation of Planets in the 22nd Century]

On the first mission for the starship Enterprise, Captain Jonathan Archer found out from a Suliban renegade that the 22nd Century would prove to be a major battlefront for the Temporal Cold War. [As such, the correct title for the conflict would be Time War, as it had now escalated into being "hot".]

Because of the involvement of Archer and the crew of the Enterprise in assisting a temporal operative named Daniels (who lost his own life as they stopped the Suliban Cabal, the Na'kuhl, and the Sphere Builders), the ravaged and altered timeline reset itself so that the Na'kuhl never wiped out Daniels' faction and the Cold War never went hot as a result.

Most of the major combatants with whom the Enterprise came into contact were from no farther into the Future than the 31st Century. So I'm not sure if this would have affected the war on a different temporal front, where the Time Lords and the Daleks were waging their own campaigns to destroy each other.

Daniels told Captain Archer that by destroying the temporal conduit in the altered New York City of 1944, the Temporal Cold War was "coming to an end because of what you did. You don't know how many lives you saved."

But on that other front, the battle between the Daleks and the Time Lords led to complete annihilation of both races - or so survivors on both sides thought - before they could consider the Time War to have concluded.

I see no contradiction between these two resolutions. I compare it to World War II, "the Big One" as Archie Bunker would call it. There were several fronts in that war - the invasion and liberation of Europe, the Pacific Theater, the Russian Front. The Axis powers were bound by an alliance in which they had nothing more in common than an interest in defeating their enemies. Had they been successful, I'm fairly certain they would then have turned on each other; the snake vs. the rat, in Susan Hawk's imagery.

It would have played out like 'Survivor', wouldn't it?

So if each faction was trying to subvert the Timeline for its own purpose, then there's no contradiction in the two different outcomes. But if the destruction of the temporal conduit did cause the Timeline to reset itself, perhaps it had an effect on the war being waged between the Daleks and the Time Lords.

It might be that was the reason the Emperor Dalek was able to fall through a temporal wormhole and escape into the past so that he could regroup and create a new race of Daleks from the pulped refuse of the human race throughout the galaxy.

Personally I'm hoping that it also caused a linear loophole of some kind in which the Gallifreyans and their planet can be resurrected. I think their loss made for a great - no, a "fanTAStic"! - mantle of tragedy which the Doctor wore throughout his ninth incarnation. But as the show's producers realized as they went into the "Key of Time" season, the Doctor shouldn't be devoid of attachments to higher powers through which would derive his moral responsibilities.

So I'm hoping there will be some way to negate the results of the great Time War as there was for the Temporal Cold War. After all, by absorbing the Time Stream, Rose was able to bring at least Jack back to Life. (Although unseen, I'm guessing she was also able to save the others on the Gamestation and down on Earth itself with her godlike powers.)

So why not the Time Lords? That way we might one day meet Romanadvortalundar and Susan again.

But that's another topic for another day. Just because I finished with the Crossovers for each individual episode of this new 'Doctor Who, that doesn't mean I'm done with the topic of the Time Lord. I want to write about my ideas for new Doctors and old Companions. I want to write about my theories about what the future holds for these characters. I want to write about crossovers for past 'Doctor Who' storylines.

But there's no rush. After all, I have all the Time in the wor -#

Aaaaah! I broke my glasses! I can't see!

It's not fair.... It's not fair....... I had all the time in the world!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

*More than likely not to be confused with the White and the Black Guardians, who were able to trump even the powers of a Time Lord.