Doctor Who by Alan Kistler

don’t try and judge it from where you stand.”
    In the TV story “Pyramids of Mars” (1975), the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane are defending humanity from a powerful alien menace in 1911. At one point, Sarah Jane suggests they simply leave since she knows her planet wasn’t destroyed in 1911. Humoring her, the Doctor travels to 1980 and opens the TARDIS doors: The Earth that lies outside is a lifeless wasteland, the result of a new timeline created by leaving humanity defenseless in 1911. Either their adventure in Earth’s past is fulfilling a part of history that was always there or the presence of different time traveling races in the universe causes ripples that create new dangers in past and future that have to be vanquished to preserve reality. The Doctor admits, though, that most people can only influence the future, as it takes a powerful being to completely alter or destroy a planet’s fate. Of course, history is much more delicate since the events of the Last Great Time War . . .

6
    Violence and Endings
    â€œIt’s a very difficult thing, time . . . Once you start to interfere with it, the strangest things start happening.”
    â€”The Third Doctor, from “Day of the Daleks” (1972)
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    In the two years following Barbara and Ian’s departure, change became the main theme of the show, which charged forward under the banner that nothing was static.
    During a trip to Earth’s past, Vicki found a new life for herself (and fulfilled a place in history otherwise vacant). She was succeeded by Katarina, a Trojan woman who at first believed the Doctor was a god traveling in a magic temple but who soon understood the basics of technology. Katarina (played by Adrienne Hill) became another example of the program’s darkening atmosphere in the twelve-part story “The Daleks’ Master Plan.” While the heroes and new allies are escaping Daleks in a starship, a madman takes the young Trojan woman hostage in the airlock, demanding the ship land immediately on the nearby planet Kembel. Knowing that Kembel is ruled by Daleks, Katarina chooses to die rather than allow Steven and the Doctor to endanger themselves. Having learned how to operate the ship’s airlock earlier, Katarina opens it, expelling herself and her captor into the cold void of outer space. The Doctor and Steven can only watch. The heroes didn’t save the day and a traveling companion was dead.
    As the adventure continues, the Doctor and Steven attempt to warn the people of the future that the Daleks are planning an all-out assault. A member of the Space Security Service, Bret Vyon—played by Nicholas Courtney, whom we’ll see again—joins them. Vyon learns that Mavic Chen, his superior and appointed Guardian of the Solar System, has betrayed the human race to the monsters. Meanwhile, Chen dispatches Vyon’s sister, Space Security operative Sara Kingdom, telling her that the man is a traitor. Never questioning her orders, Sara hunts down and kills her brother forthe greater good, only learning the truth afterward. With her faith in the system shattered, she joins the Doctor and Steven, hoping to make amends by saving humanity.
    Sara Kingdom (played by Jean Marsh) was the first militaristic character to join the Doctor’s team. In contrast to young Katarina who had fallen into tropes of being a young damsel in distress, Kingdom was an adult and the first physically formidable woman on the TARDIS, which we wouldn’t see again until the late 1970s with Leela. Terry Nation even intended for Sara Kingdom to spin off into a US TV series featuring an anti-Dalek task force. When that plan fell through, Nation absorbed some of the ideas into “The Daleks’ Master Plan” and, sadly, decided to end the character. In the final chapter, Sarah Kingdom is caught in the temporal onslaught of the Daleks’ new weapon, the Time Destructor. She falls to the ground, aging