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'Her Final Flight'

Subscriber special released December 2004. 2 episodes.

Writer: Julian Shortman
Director: Gary Russell

Roots: Cargo cults, It's a Wonderful Life (compare "every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings with the Doctor's quote about TARDISes in 'Continuity')

Goofs: The assassination attempt on the Doctor sounds wilfully complicated. Given the assassin is able to shoot the Doctor un-witnessed on an alien planet with an hallucinogenic dart, wouldn't it have been quicker, cheaper and easier to just use a bullet instead and also free up the TARDIS for any interested party?

Dialogue Triumphs: "Isn't it amazing? Something so complex, and yet you can break it apart in just a few minutes."

Continuity: Rashaa's sword was taken from... (prologue) she has a borrowed Nekkistani time capsule.

Nekkistani physiology is recognisably different from that of the assassin, as the Doctor deduces from the latter's space suit (alternatively, the assassin's body-shape seems unremarkable and no unusual, so what do Nekkistani look like? Does the assassin have a tail?) The Agent has a TARDIS (is he a rogue CIA agent?)

The TARDIS scanner can be used to view bio-scan readouts. The TARDIS medical supplies include a remote surgical kit (its expiry date is 5097, see: Location), DNA splicer, gel matrix and an electro-fluoro-incubator. There is a medical cupboard located relative to the Console Room down the corridor, third on the left, second on the right, past the broom cupboard, fourth on the right and on the third shelf down. It is blue and contains a large jar of something called 'Namiveer', a solution which impedes viral progression. With its windows cracked, the TARDIS leaks bright light of raw chronon radiation (see: Links) Jettisoning the TARDIS console room causes the Ship's interior dimensions to fold in on themselves, to the point of a singularity. The Doctor was told once that every time a TARDIS dies a black hole is created, but isn't sure whether that's true or not.

The Doctor's physiology allows him to create antibodies that are compatible with that of a human (a Time Lord aspect, or evidence of his half-human heritage?) Chronon radiation can play havoc with a Time Lord's memory

Links: The Trial of a Time Lord. Doctor Who (The characteristic glow of chronon energy made its first TV appearance in the TV Movie.)

Q.v. 'Gallifrey and the Politics of Time Travel' 'The Doctor as Healer'

Location: An unknown planet, but possibly circa 5097 (over a thousand years have passed since the expiry date of the TARDIS' portable surgical equipment)

The Bottom Line: "You should know I was never very good at farewells"

As much as it would like to be a game-changer, this subscriber-only release is merely okay, surpassed by superior Companion Chronicles, and lumbered with elements of BF's worldbuilding (Nekkistani time ships, temporal assassins) of the day. Odd that of all the possible imagined worlds the Doctor's mind is capable of creating to embody his death, it's one so clichéd and ordinary (and isn't Earth!)

THE MANY PARTINGS OF PERI

In the Companion Chronicle Peri and the Piscon Paradox, it is revealed by a Time Lord that there are no fewer than five Peris in existence, each of whom brought in or out of existence at the behest of the fragile Time Lord hierarchy at the time of the Doctor's trial. Additionally, each surviving Peri appears to share "echoes" of the lives of her other versions, such as the number of children idealised or realised, the title 'warrior queen', and the presence of a violent and unpredictable blonde male companion. Identified among the five Peris are a version of Peri who met the (Fifth) Doctor in Lanzarote but who, due to standard Celestial Intervention Agency procedure (as previously visited upon Jamie and Zoe and now instigated by a new female President) was replaced to the time of their original meeting, leaving her with only one adventure's memory of the Doctor. This Peri returned to the US and married her childhood sweetheart Davey Silverman, a violent man whose abuse of Peri caused her to never realise her life's dream of having children. Fleeing Davey and Baltimore she moved to Los Angeles, volunteering first as a Samaritan then working her way to cable TV as a celebrity relationship counsellor, the self-titled Worrier Queen. Alternatively, as revealed late in the Trial Peri survived the events on Thoros Beta and settled down with Yrcanos (the result of a splinter faction within the Time Lord regime of that time) bearing three children (two boys, one girl), the same number and gender mix as she had always wanted. The third and initial version of Peri identified of the five versions meets the most devastating end - assassinated due to her being a material witness of Time Lord interference at the behest of a corrupt (and ousted) President, as witnessed by the Sixth Doctor and, at the time of his involvement in The Piscon Paradox, the only known end for Perpugilliam Brown. The Doctor described it in this story as..."so painful... the moment I lost her was like dying myself."

It is not revealed what the fate or provenance of the remaining two Peris are, although it could be inferred that this is an attempt to reconcile, variously, the future Peris alluded to in the novelisation of Mindwarp by Philip Martin (Peri marries Yrcanos and becomes his wrestling manager), or the New Adventure Bad Therapy, by Matthew Jones (Peri, as 'Gilliam' is again queen of the Krontep), or both of these and the events of Colin Baker's comic strip story The Age of Chaos may well fall within the same destiny forged by Peri's marrying Yrcanos. For the time being, it would appear that the remaining fates of Peri are still an open book.

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