The Armageddon Factor [V]

12 August 1978

“Daleks? Never heard of them.”

And so the Key to Time saga comes to an end. 

As endings go, it kind of works.

The TARDIS is in a forest, on a planet with purple sky. 

A voice calls the Doctor's name. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS. He complains about having been    disturbed. The voice tells him that he is going to meet the Daleks again. The Doctor first claims not to know what they are: but then he turns serious and demands more information. The voice won't tell him. 

“Forewarned is forearmed: you will now forget.” The Doctor loses all conscious memory of the warning; but the voice laughs and the TARDIS de-materialises.

Whose was the voice? It could be the White Guardian, giving him insider information about his future. The 

Doctor did complete his mission, after all, so perhaps the Guardian feels he owes him a favour. Or perhaps the Guardian is sending him on a new mission. He doesn't just say that the Doctor will meet the Daleks; he says that he will be “pitted against them.” Perhaps that's why he laughs: the Doctor has installed a randomiser on the TARDIS, but the Guardian is still directing his flight. Pot Luck is as big a plot device as the Tracer. That would be a good joke. 

But the laughter sounds evil, so perhaps we have heard the voice of the Black Guardian, sending the Doctor off to face his arch-foes as a punishment for denying him the key? 

We never find out. The Doctor forgets all about the meeting. 

And that's not the strangest thing about this vignette. The strangest this is that the Doctor complains that the voice has woken him up “in the middle of August". And as the TARDIS departs, we see that there is a sign hanging on the door. 

“Do not disturb until September 1st."

There is much in the Big Book Of Doctor Who Lore which we do not know. We have never seen the Doctor's bedroom in the TARDIS; the only time we've seen him asleep is when he's been in hospitals of various kind. Odin—at least in Stan Lee's version—sometimes sleeps for weeks at a time. It provides Loki with endless opportunities to usurp the throne of Asgard. So maybe Time Lords hibernate. It would be no weirder than the multiple hearts and the body swapping.

We have never tackled the question about whether or not the Doctor goes to the loo. 

The deleted birthday scene in Stones of Blood would have merged the Watsonian Doctor and the Doylist Doctor into a single figure: it would have said, beyond a peradventure, that the Doctor is a character in a TV series called Doctor Who, and knows he is. This vignette pushes the device to its logical conclusion. The fourth wall has finally been abolished.

The 1970s hadn’t quite ended. The shops still lose early on a Thursday and all day on a Sunday. There is a clear demarcation between the football season and the cricket season. In the summertime, the Blue Peter team go on holiday; the Why Don't You Kids materialise on weekday mornings, and there are bumper issues of 2000AD and TV Comic. Doctor-Who-The-TV show is off air between March and August. And whatever is true of Doctor-Who-The-TV show is true of Doctor-Who-the-Character. If it's the birthday of Doctor Who, then it's the Doctor's birthday. If Doctor Who is not on TV,  then the Doctor himself is asleep, If there is an inter-season minisode then the Doctor has been woken up.

In one way it makes the show less “realistic": the fourth-wall breaking Doctor Who who shares his birthday with the TV show that shares his name can't really be accommodated into a believable Whoniverse. But in another way, it gives him a different kind of reality: a self contained reality, a reality that exists behind that piece of glass in the box in your living room. Everything is part of the story and all stories are true; even trailers and Blue Peter items. Dougal the dog sometimes said “hi” to Bert Ford because the weather forecast came on after the puppet show. Val Doonican once claimed to be pals with Starksy and Hutch for the same reason. George and Mildred and the Six Million Dollar Man can share a turkey because both of them are in the TV Times over Christmas. 

"You will be pitted against a race known as the Daleks.” 

And so the Key to Time saga comes to an end. It began with the Author sending the Doctor on a mission. He was given a plot device that told him which planet to go to; and what to do when he got there; and a companion to remind him to stick to the plot. And the Doctor obtained the ultimate plot device, the device which made him, potentially, the Author of all the stories. And he threw it away, broke the plot device in two; repudiated the Story Teller and announced that from now on his life would be guided by nothing but random chance and his own curiosity. 

And while he was sleeping, the Author spoke to him again and told him that the very first thing that Random Chance would take would be to the home of his greatest enemies. The same place that the Time Lords once sent him, oh so unwillingly. Because, after all, the Doctor was always guided by random chance and his own curiosity; chance and curiosity —and the Doctor himself—were always there to drive the Plot. 

Available to Patreons -- The Androids of Tara 

Available to Patreons  -- The Power of Kroll 

Available to Patreons -- The Armageddon Factor

Or read my compleat Key To Time essays in PDF booklet.