A Biography of the Doctor

The Fourth Doctor

Season Twelve

ROBOT

The newly-regenerated Doctor is placed in the care of UNIT medical officer Harry Sullivan. He heads for the TARDIS, itching to travel in time and space again. However, the Brigadier and Sarah persuade him to stay to help solve a series of hi-tech thefts which could lead to someone making a Disintegrator gun. The Doctor and Sarah track down the culprit - a robot created by members of the Scientific Reform Society. The robot then steals the destructor codes for the world's nuclear missiles. Events escalate, the robot goes on a rampage, and the Brigadier uses the disintegrator on it. This causes it to grow to enormous size, until the Doctor releases a metal-eating virus engineered by an SRS member. This destroys the robot. The Doctor then offers Sarah and Harry a journey in the TARDIS. It dematerialises just as the Brigadier arrives with an invitation for the Doctor to have dinner at the palace.

UNRECORDED ADVENTURE
(Placement value 3)

During the events of Robot, the Doctor takes a brief trip in the TARDIS. He visits an unnamed planet where a Mordee ship is facing problems with its computer. The Doctor repairs the ship's computer by using his own personality print before leaving. After he leaves, his actions cause the computer to go mad.

(This happens at some time between the Doctor's regeneration and The Face of Evil. The novelisation placed this between scenes of Robot, and this timing has been adopted pretty much universally by fans.)

THE ARK IN SPACE

The TARDIS lands on a spacecraft in the far future. It turns out to be the Space Beacon Nerva, converted into an Ark containing the cream of humanity in suspended animation. They were evacuated from Earth following a series of solar flares. The crew have overslept and an insect species called the Wirrn are responsible. They have laid their eggs in a crew member. Noah, the Ark's captain - who has been infected by the Wirrn, leads them Wirrn into a shuttle which is then destroyed. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry then transmat to Earth's surface to ensure that the diode receptor beacons on Earth's surface are properly tuned.

(This is Harry's first trip in the TARDIS.)

THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT

The Doctor starts working on the receptors whilst Sarah and Harry go exploring. The three discover that a Sontaran called Styre has lured a ship belonging to the human GalSec organisation to Earth, captured them, and is experimenting on them to determine how difficult they are to kill. The Doctor challenges Styre to unarmed single combat. The Doctor is saved when a member of the GalSec crew distracts Styre - at the cost of his life. Meanwhile, Harry removes a vital part of the Sontaran's ship and when Styre goes to recharge, the absence of this part kills him. The Doctor sends a message to the Sontarans telling them that Styre has been defeated, and they agree that they cannot continue their current invasion plans without Styre's report. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry enter the transmat, intending to return to Nerva and the TARDIS.

(This follows on immediately from The Ark in Space.)

GENESIS OF THE DALEKS

The Transmat beam is intercepted by the Celestial Intervention Agency. They transport the Doctor and his companions to ancient Skaro shortly before the creation of the Daleks. Their agent (Lord Ferrain) briefs the Doctor on his location, telling him that the Daleks could become the supreme beings in the universe. He orders the Doctor to either destroy the Daleks or implant some kind of weakness in them. Ferrain gives the Doctor a Time Ring, which will return him and his companions to Nerva. Skaro is in the grip of a thousand-year long war between the Kaleds and the Thals and some of the weapons have caused a series of major mutations.

The Doctor and Harry are captured by the Kaleds, whose greatest scientist Davros has created a Mark II Travel Machine - the Dalek - which will house the form the Kaleds will evolve into as a result of the mutations. They arrange for the Kaled government to call an investigation into the Dalek project. Meanwhile, Sarah is captured by the Thals and forced to load radioactive material into a giant rocket. As a result of the enquiry, Davros betrays his people and gives the Thals help with their rocket - destroying the Kaled city but not the bunker he has been working with. He then sends the Daleks - who have been mentally altered to remove emotions like compassion and mercy - to exterminate the Thals.

Meanwhile, he captures the Doctor, Harry, and Sarah and forces the Doctor to reveal details of the Daleks' future defeats. Having received some of this information, he locks up the Doctor and his companion, only for them to be freed by rebel Kaled scientists. The Doctor then wires up the Dalek incubation chamber in a last-ditch attempt to destroy the Daleks. Davros then appears to surrender to the rebels - which means that the Doctor doesn't have to commit genocide. The Doctor uses the distraction to destroy Davros' tape of Dalek defeats and recover the Time Ring, which has been stolen. He then watches on a screen as the Daleks return from the Thal city to exterminate the rebel scientists. The Doctor then returns to the incubation room as this is his only remaining option. He is intercepted by a Dalek who moves over the two wires which would complete the circuit and detonate the explosives. This completes the circuit. The Doctor then watches on a monitor as the Daleks (apparently) exterminate Davros. A small group of surviving Thals and mutants then seal the only exit from the bunker, entombing the Daleks. The Doctor estimates that Dalek development has been set back by a thousand years. He and his companions then use the Time Ring to return to Nerva.

(The story starts with the Time Lords intercepting the transmat beam seen in The Sontaran Experiment.)

A DEVICE OF DEATH
(Placement value 5)

The Time Storm created by the Doctor's interference on Skaro disrupts the passage of the Time Ring. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry are scattered across the Adelphine Cluster - torn in a war between the Landorian Alliance and the Averonian Union. Harry uses his medical skills on the planet Jand, treating casualties from both sides. Sarah ends up in a slave camp, and the Doctor suffers a bout of amnesia whilst arriving in a weapons development facility called DeepCity. He has with him a spare TARDIS provided by the Time Lords to ensure his survival. Sarah escapes and stows away on a cargo ship. She encounters a military robot which is beginning to think for itself, she encourages this process and names it Max. However, the ship they are on begins to run out of oxygen, and they send a distress signal. They are saved by a ship containing Harry and his new allies, and all board the cargo ship, which is en route to DeepCity. They help the Doctor recover his memory before exposing the fact that the homeworld of one side in the war was destroyed and that the other side has been in control of both sides in the war whilst its homeworld recovers in peace. They take over DeepCity, and Max decides that it will use the facility to manufacture a race of impartial peacekeeping robots. A Time Lord then appears, and reclaims the new TARDIS. He also reveals that Max's descendents will prove to be a check on the Daleks. He gives the Doctor and his companions a new Time Ring which will return the Doctor to Nerva. However, unknown to the Doctor, the CIA has one more task which it wants him to carry out...

(This is indisputably whilst the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry are travelling back to the Ark. The Descendents of Max may be the Movellans from Destiny of the Daleks and Resurrection of the Daleks. However, the Dalek Prime's dialogue in War of the Daleks suggests otherwise.)

REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN

The Time Ring takes the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry to the Nerva Beacon some time around the 30th Century, when it is a beacon near Jupiter. Nerva's crew blame the time travellers for a plague which has affected the crew. The beacon warns space travellers about a new planetoid - actually Voga, a planet with vast amounts of gold. The plague has been caused by Cybermen, who want to destroy Voga as they are vulnerable to gold dust. The Doctor and a group of Vogans hidden on Voga destroy the Cybermen's ship with a missile. The TARDIS then arrives, and the Doctor discovers a time-space telegraph message from the Brigadier.

(This follows on immediately from A Device of Death. The task the Time Lords want the Doctor to accomplish is clearly to stop the Cybermen destroying Voga, as otherwise its gold couldn't be used in the next CyberWar.)