It's In The Blood

This one is one of my own creations, so bear with me while I talk abut my own idea rather than review someone else's. I wanted to submit something to the Canadian Doctor Who fan fiction magazine and my original idea went something like this: the Doctor and Romana arrive on a garden moon owned by a royal family and take a break from their travels there. While the Doctor visits with the hosts, Romana is stung by some sort of insect in the flower beds, and the poison it carries starts to slowly kill her. Once the crew return to the TARDIS, Romana goes to her room and quietly regenerates, maintaining her calm through the process and even managing to to influence her final appearance.

This is my own take, of course, as when we next join the show, Romana emerges from her room already regenerated . Who knows how much time really passed between The Armageddon Factor and Destiny of the Daleks; the Doctor and Romana could have gone to all sorts of places in that time, allowing them to form a bit better of a bond than the one they have at the end of the Key to Time series.

My second draft of the story, though, went a bit longer and changed substantially; the TARDIS arrived on a weapons satellite in deep space which is on a locked-off course. K9 estimates that the craft was in flight for centuries but cannot determine where it is going, and when he attempts to patch into the flight computers his systems are infected with a virus that renders him inactive. The Doctor and Romana explore the satellite and come across all sorts of biological weapons stores, and Romana is accidentally exposed to a chemical that she feels working its way through her blood like a toxin. The Doctor, unaware of Romana's situation, presses on and realizes that they have found a Minyan weapons cache which seems to be on course for Gallifrey, and the weapons inside are all biological weapons developed centuries ago to kill the Time Lords in an act of revenge for their botched attempt to elevate the Minyans from barbarism. Romana manages to keep her situation a secret from the Doctor while he steers the satellite away from Gallifrey and onto a course for the planet's sun, and once within the TARDIS she regenerates.

I prefer the second draft, and hopefully if the first hasn't been published yet I might get a chance to slip it in and put a better foot forward.

NEXT EPISODE : DESTINY OF THE DALEKS