MR 033: Neverland

The Doctor is the boy who never grew up. It's such an obvious comparison, I'm surprised the classic show never made it. The Doctor literally ran away from Gallifrey, avoiding any and all responsibility, just to explore the universe. He just happens to have the technology to be able to BE Peter Pan. Unlike everyone else.

Somehow Charley being saved from the R101 has caused a rift in time. Not sure how, but ok. She has become a portal from the universe of time, the universe we know, to a universe of nothing, of anti-time. Again, sure. Most of what happens in this story you just have to accept.

Charley being saved being this huge cataclysmic thing plays into Doctor Who's usual "changing history is bad in and of itself" narrative, which I don't like. I always prefer it when changing history stories tell us WHY changing history is bad. What about this particular event being changed would result in a worse timeline. This story makes it pretty explicitly clear, too, that Charley's death doesn't actually change anything in the timeline. She wouldn't have gone on to do anything significant and nothing really would be different. But somehow she's patient zero to allowing anti-time into the universe. What about all the other people the Doctor has saved throughout... literally all of Doctor Who. "Just this once Rose everybody lives?" All of those people are now breaches in time. It's just bizarre.

Like I said, you just kind of have to accept it. Which is fine. It makes for an interesting story even if the premise itself is faulty. The Time Lords try to lay a trap for the Doctor to get at Charley, but the Doctor wants to run away and he does. But Charley wants to take responsibility for being alive when she "isn't supposed to be" and hits the fast return, going into the Time Lords' trap.
The Time Lords mean to use Charley as the portal into the universe of anti-time to explore it, but there is an ulterior motive. There is a story about Rassilon accidentally creating anti-time and then going into the universe of anti-time to try to destroy it.

So when they get into this universe, they find Rassilon's TARDIS and his casket, contrary to his casket being in the dark tower in The Five Doctors. But CIA coordinator Vansell thinks it's really him. It turns out it's all a trick.

You see, there are these ghosts in this universe of anti-time. They're ghosts of time lords who have been "dispersed." The Time Lords thought this punishment would be to wipe someone out of all of time so that they never existed. It did that, but they ended up in the universe of anti-time instead. This is a pretty wild thing for the Time Lords to have done. And the interesting thing is that they don't ever realize that they've done it. Because once someone is dispersed so they never existed, naturally nobody remembers the dispersal even happened. That's pretty f**ked and a really good idea for the Time Lords, showing them to be a lot more sinister than shown on classic who.

The leader of the ghosts who has taken Charley's form is an even more clever idea. It's a former coordinator of the CIA who ordered hundreds of these dispersals, but had no idea. When they uncovered the truth, they used the dispersal machine on themselves, overcome with guilt, only to be with their victims in the anti-time universe.

Now the ghosts mean to use Rassilon's fake casket to disperse anti-time into the universe and thus escape, but the anti-time will destroy all of time and all of history, everywhere. So the Doctor and President Romana work to try to stop them.
The Doctor gets a visit from Rassilon, somehow, but sure. This visit from Rassilon to both the Doctor and Romana is particularly odd when we learn, in this story, that he was the one who created the dispersal punishment in the first place and thus caused this. Seems odd to revere him then, but sure.

The Doctor materializes his TARDIS around the time station with the anit-time bomb on it and manages to get it to explode entirely in his TARDIS, thus saving the universe from it. But in the process, the anti-time is trapped entirely within himself even as the paradox of Charley is also somehow resolved. Unfortunately, the Doctor becomes the very embodiment of anti-time. The mythological figure who is a being of pure anti-time. "I am ZAGREUS!!!!!!!" A cliffhanger that we'll have to wait to resolve until story number 50.

Does the plot make sense? No not at all. Are the vibes nice? Yeah for sure, when you can comprehend what's happening. When people say things like "Warrior's Gate feels like a BF script before BF," this is the script they're referring to. Well, this and Zagreus itself when we get to that. Incomprehensible gibberish.

That said, it's more comprehensible than Time of the Daleks, so I'll give it that. And, more importantly, there a lot of really interesting ideas here. Time Lord lore and emotional pay offs. Not only do you have the moment with Charley hitting the fast return, you also have the moment with Charley begging the Doctor to kill her so that the anti-time ghosts can't escape their universe. Good stuff.

On the whole, it's a bit of a mixed bag in that sense. Incompressible but with some good ideas and pathos. We shall look forward to when we basically get the very same vibes in the four hour epic at number 50: Zagreus!!!!!!!