Full Fathom Five

Somewhere in the future, another Doctor and his companion, Ruth, stand on the shores of the ocean and discuss events of the past and the future. The Doctor is preparing to go undersea in a submarine to an abandoned research facility where Ruth's father died; 27 years ago there was an accident and the base, known as the DEEP, was scuttled, and Ruth's father blamed. Ruth wants her father's name cleared, and the Doctor seems to be operating on his own agenda. As the truth slowly emerges, Ruth learns that her father was made a scapegoat to cover up for the disasterous results of some illegal genetic experiments that were being conducted alongside his own. The Doctor was there at the time, arriving in the TARDIS, and attempting to stop the events as they unfolded but his efforts left behind a trail of dead bodies, including that of Ruth's father. Realizing that the Doctor has become the monster he has always fought against in the past, Ruth shoots him repeatedly, waiting for him to regenerate between each bullet before firing again...

Wow. There are hints later in the series that say the Doctor has a darker side, and there were glimpses of it offered in the past, but here we are presented with a new kind of Doctor: one who operates on his own agenda and is willing to kill to justify the ends. He deals in absolutes, unlike any of his previous or future selves, and the consequences to himself this time are disasterous. The Doctor was played by David Collings, who will appear on screen in the series in future episodes (The Robots of Death and Mawdryn Undead); as I outlined in my last paragraph of Planet of the Spiders, its possible that this is who the Doctor could have become had he not made it back to Earth after being irradiated by the Metebelis crystals. Just as well he gets killed; he's not the man we would tune in to see every week by any stretch.

Let's go back to the way things really happened...

NEXT EPISODE : ROBOT