Season 42 - 2005

Season 42 would’ve been Stephanie Leonidas’ last season on the show and on top of this it was announced that Paul Cornell would be leaving as well, despite these departures Douglas Henshall decided to stay on for another year as the Eleventh Doctor.

Father’s Day

By Paul Cornell

July 23rd

This would be the same as it is in real life, the only difference is that Pete Tyler has been removed and

instead we have John Mitchell played by Robson Green other than that it’s all the same.

Tooth and Claw

By Russell T Davies

July 30th

Again the same as it is in real-life so I don’t need to discuss it.

Crash Course

By Rupert Laight

August 6th

The story sees the Doctor and Joanna landing aboard a peacekeeping vessel being sent to mediate between two warring races, the Akrids and the Rhopalods. The vessel contains members of various races that the Doctor recognises signed the Peace Among Worlds Act, and even knows one of the diplomats, a Raxacoricofallapatorian named Min-Vo-Zuh-Naci-Bit-Seis-Aut-Blathereen. After a brief reunion, the Doctor is invited to work alongside the diplomats to end the dispute between the two races. However, just as an agreement is about to be made, the ship goes into emergency mode, as it begins to head towards the Akrid planet. Immediately, suspicions begin to arise among the diplomats, as all of them are in the same room, and the pilots and technicians have all been incapacitated by a nerve agent. Naturally, aliens from races known for crime or warmongering are blamed the most. The Doctor tries to calm people down and get people working together to ensure the culprit is found, just as the Akrids threaten the ship crashing towards them as an act of war. Ultimately, it is revealed that another set of the delegates was the culprit who intended to destroy the Akrids on behalf of the Rhopalods in order to collect a heavy profit. The delegate is restrained, and made to tell the Doctor how to get the ship fully stabilised, however, before they can do so, the Rhopalods activate a nerve agent in the delegate's system, killing them. Ultimately, the Doctor manages to re-stabilise the ship by hardwiring the TARDIS to create a forcefield and the Rhopalods are given heavy sanctions for the attempted war crimes. 

Thank you to Our Holy Leader Sylvester McCoy on discord for letting me use this story idea.

Mr Sandman

By Mark Gatiss

August 13th

The story would see the Doctor and Joanna landing on a street in 1950’s London, the Doctor soon discovers that people are being taken away and we soon learn that the people being taken are faceless. The Doctor would later discover that an entity named the Electro Wave is living inside the radios and when the song ‘Mr Sandman’ plays the people listening to it are turned faceless. In the end the Doctor defeats the Electro Wave and everyone goes back to normal.

Dying Beauty

By Matthew Graham

August 20th

This story sees the TARDIS land in a grey landscape, with the grass, sky and trees drained of colour, where it turns out that the villain called ‘The Gloom’ is sucking all the beauty out of the world, the Doctor manages to defeat the gloom and restore the planet back to normal.

The Zygon Invasion

By Paul Cornell and Paul Abbott

August 27th

The story would see the TARDIS landing in London where UNIT track down a faction of Zygons, the Doctor instantly doesn’t like the fact they are here but the Zygons claim that they want to make peace

with Earth. The Prime Minister Barbara Warburton for Series One of Earth Defence decides to negotiate with them but she is very cautious. Whilst this happens a separate Zygon faction lands on Earth and instead of them wanting peace they declare war on Earth and a battle between these Zygons and UNIT begins. The episode ends with the Doctor being injured whilst Joanna gets away, the Doctor is then taken prisoner by the bad Zygons.

The Time For Peace

By Paul Cornell and Paul Abbott

3rd September

This story sees UNIT work with the good Zygons and along with Joanna they plan a way to get the Doctor back, they attack the bad Zygons’ base where they have nuclear codes to destroy the planet. The Doctor tries to make them see sense and that they’ll suffer too if the launch the nuclear missiles but they don’t believe him, UNIT and the Zygons then attack the base and reach the main part of it, UNIT are about to kill the leader of the bad Zygons but if he dies the missiles will be launched. The Doctor then gives a speech about how war should not be the answer and he talks about how peace always triumphs over war and that he knows what it’s like, the bad Zygon leader is then about to launch the codes however he is killed by the good Zygon leader and the bad Zygons are also killed, due to what’s happened on Earth the Zygons decide they should find a new home somewhere else.

Art Attack

By Robert Shearman

10th September

This story sees Joanna visiting one of her old friends, Darren, who has always had a talent for drawing, we would’ve seen the Doctor notice that Darren’s drawings come to life with whatever he draws and the Doctor discovers an sentient being has taken Darren as a host and this is what’s causing Darren to draw all of these pictures, in the end the Doctor banished the sentient from Earth which releases Darren.

Sinkhole

By Peter J. Hammond

17th September

This story would see the Doctor and Joanna land in an English town in 1995, the people of the town are terrified as residents go missing due to sinkholes showing up randomly everyday. The Doctor would find out about an alien crime group known as ‘Chaos Squad’ who are trying to destroy the village by using sinkholes. In the end the Doctor stops them and teleports them to a galactic prison.

Supermarket Sweep

By Joseph Lidster

24th September

The story would see the Doctor and Joanna investigate a supermarket which has had strange activity reported from it; we discover that aliens operate the shop from a speaker. The Doctor discovers the aliens, who are called the Trevi, are planning to hypnotise the shoppers so when they invade Earth they won’t think anything of it. The Doctor defeats them by blowing up their spaceship which happened to be the shop.

Danse Macabre

By Paul Cornell

1st October

This story sees the Doctor and Joanna arrive at an old mansion where people seem to be enjoying themselves but are secretly afraid of something, the Doctor notices and the people tell him they need to leave the orchestral piece of Danse Macabre playing at all times. However the record disc starts to scratch and it no longer plays, we then see a mysterious figure move throughout the house picking people of one by one and we discover this person to be a form of the Grim Reaper, the Doctor realises to stop all of this he must find a way to play Danse Macabre again. He eventually gets a radio from the TARDIS and plays the music on that which gets rid of the Grim Reaper and saves the people in the house.

The Ship of Time

By Paul Cornell

8th October

The TARDIS lands in 2008, where the Doctor and Joanna are going to travel on the SS Voyage, the Doctor asks if she's ready to go on the boat and she says yes, they get on the boat and enjoy themselves for a while, Joanna then says she has to go back to the cabin for a moment, and when she goes inside the look of the cabin has changed, she goes back outside and sees everything has changed and she then sees an old man and she asks him what's happened and he says that she’s in 1942,

Joanna asks him who he is and he says his name is Bilis Manger and she’s stuck here forever.

The Doctor notices that Joanna has been gone for a very long time and goes back to the cabin and find she’s not there and he searches the ship to look for her, but she’s nowhere to be found, the Doctor then pulls out a device and detects Time Energy and realises that something is going on and he later goes back into their cabin and meet an old woman and soon it’s revealed that the woman is Joanna, the Doctor asks what happened and she says a man named Bilis took her back to 1942 and left her there, they took a little about her life and the old Joanna dies.

The Doctor is scared for Joanna and thinks that Bilis is still here and a man starts talking behind him and we see it’s Bilis, the Doctor asks him what he’s doing and he says he’s serving his masters and they need to be out of the way, Bilis is about to send him back in time but he’s knocked out by none other then Hal from the Season 41 two parter The Empty Child and The Masked Invasion.

Hal says that he knew the Doctor would be here and that it’s good to see him, the Doctor asks if there’s anything strange on the ship and says there are human containers down in the cargo and they go and check it out.

The Doctor and Hal go into Cargo and find a time device, and in 1942 we see Joanna find the device as well as the containers, Bilis then appears in front of the Doctor and Hal and says “Now it begins.”

We see him pull down a lever and containers in 1942 and 2008 activate and open and to the Doctor’s horror we see the people inside the containers are in fact - The Cybermen.

The Doctor and Hal run out of the cargo hold and run as fast as they can dodging gunfire.

The Cybermen awake in 1942 and Joanna is about to run away but Bilis appears in front of her and pushes her into the arms of the Cybermen and drag her towards the cyber conversion unit.

The Time of The Cybermen

By Paul Cornell

15th October

This would’ve been the second part in a two-part finale and would be the final story for Stephanie Leonidas as Joanna Mitchell.

The story picks up from the cliffhanger and we see Hal Adams destroy several Cybermen and saving Joanna in time, he takes her back to 2008 and we see her reunite with the Doctor.

The Doctor, Joanna and Hal plan what they’re going to do and the Doctor tells them to get to somewhere safe whilst he deals with something, we then see the Doctor climb up to the top of the boat and encounter Bilis, he confronts him and Bilis reveals that he can step between eras in time and says he wants domination over this planet and he’s got the Cybermen to help him and then disappears.

We see Bilis and the Cybermen plan on what to do and without Bilis seeing, but the audience seeing, the Cybermen plan to betray him.

We then see Cybermen from 1942 cross over into 2008 and they begin to either convert or kill everyone on

the boat, The Doctor, Joanna and Hal defeat most of them and we then see the Cybermen betray Bilis and before they can kill him he disappears, we then see after the Doctor, Joanna and Hal have destroyed most of the Cybermen, they go to the time device, we see the Doctor saying the device is only linked with 1942-2008 and that the only way to defeat the Cybermen is if someone jumps through it and deliver this, the Doctor takes something out of his pocket and we see it’s a Cyber-Virus.

Joanna then says she’ll do it but the Doctor doesn't want her to and begins to get upset as if she does it she’ll either die or end up in a different time, but Joanna reassures him and says her final goodbyes to the Doctor and Hal and then takes the Virus and jumps into the Time Device, we then see a bright light cover the ship and then we see Cybermen on the ship dead and the Doctor breaking down into tears over Joanna.

We then cut to a while later and we see Hal telling the Doctor that his work is done and he must return to his own time. The Doctor says goodbye to Hal and he returns to his time, we then see the Doctor arriving in Llandaff and visits Joanna’s old house and a postman arrives and thinking he’s the owner of the house gives it to the Doctor, it’s addressed to him and he reads it. The letter is from Joanna and she says that she’s doing well and that she is now married with a few children and she doesn’t want him to look for her and tells him to find somebody and not to spend his time alone, the Doctor is visibly upset but not shedding a tear walks back to the TARDIS as it de-materialises.

Underneath The Christmas Tree

By Paul Cornell

25th December

This story would see the Doctor travelling alone and would see him investigate a robot which has made it’s way into a village and after some finds that it’s under a christmas tree where he finds an army of toy robots. In the end the Doctor defeats them but some children come down stairs and believe him to be Santa, the Doctor tells them that he hopes that they have a happy Christmas and leaves in the TARDIS as the children see him leave.

And that concludes Season 42 of Doctor Who, a very good season on the whole and a fitting end to the Cornell era, overall this era would go down as a fan favourite era and a pretty good time for the show, the next season is Season 43 of Doctor Who until then thank you for watching and goodbye.