Fugitive in Time

The Time War #3.3

Released: 13 August 2019

Listened: 1/27/22

The third story shifts gears again, with a small link to the previous story. The Doctor wants Tamasan to agree to protect the planet from the last story, so Tamasan demands he do her a favor in return, by coming with her on a mission. There’s a medieval-ish planet where spaceships tend to crash, and the people there scavenge the tech. They’re harboring the last member of a race called the Helixara, whom the Time Lords deleted from history long ago. If they can find out how this one person managed to escape deletion, they could use that as a defense against further time-meddling. Of course, there’s probably a Dalek agent around trying to find out the same thing. Naturally, the Doctor disapproves of the whole “deletion from time” thing, and thinks it must be absolutely horrible to be the last survivor of one’s race. (Foreshadowing!) Tamasan doesn’t really care, so long as she gets the data. We see a lot more of Tamasan in this story; she makes a nice contrast to Veklin, because she’s not going to “come around” and start to admire the Doctor. She doesn’t dislike him personally; she just disagrees with his point of view, and won’t be changed. But in holding to her own viewpoint, she justifies actions that the Doctor can’t condone. We don’t really get to see a lot of the society, just the poor Helixara, played by Wendy Craig in a way that makes you feel her intense pain in every line. It’s fairly dark, but still rather Doctorish.