'Short Trips and Side Steps' edited by Stephen Cole and Jacqueline Rayner

How many lives has the Doctor had? Perhaps more than you think...
Follow the Doctor and his companions as they take short trips around the universe - perhaps to a Wild West overrun with dinosaurs, to a land where robot rabbits roam, or a planet where the Doctor must marry or die - and then step sideways into other universes - worlds full of song and dance; planets made entirely of sweets; lands of movie monsters; places where the Doctor as we know him may never have existed at all...



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'The Longest Story in the World' by Paul Magrs

A Caliph orders a young woman, on pain of death, to entertain him and his court, so she tells a tale of an old man and his adopted granddaughter who live in a world where fantasy is forbidden. The granddaughter ignores the law, telling stories of their future; she says that the old man will invent a machine that will take them away from their world, he will travel through time and space, growing younger as the years go by, fighting evil and will become a hero. Her Grandfather disbelieves her, and is worried that such tall tales will attract undue attention. He is proved correct, when one day he returns home to find guards waiting for them. Cleverly, the storyteller ends the tale on a cliffhanger, keeping the Caliph in suspense until the next night, and thus prolonging her life…

Notes:
* This tale may or may not be about the First Doctor and Susan, but then again may just be a co-incidence on the storyteller’s part. I’m not including it in the time-line because of such ambiguity.

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'A Town Called Eternity' by Lance Parkin and Mark Clapham

The TARDIS lands in the town of Eternity, California, in the 1880s. Peri first meets Josh, a young man who claims to be over 100 years old, and that an elixir that came from the town restored his youth, and then the liberal-thinking Brown family, who are her ancestors. The Doctor is mistaken for Dr Sebastian Rowley, who has been called to Eternity to investigate the death of the town Sheriff, who was apparently attacked by a dinosaur. The new Sheriff, who is actually the Master, arrests the Doctor, hypnotises the townsfolk, and frames the Doctor for a murder that he himself has committed. The Doctor is hanged by a lynch mob, who then set off to deal with the unpopular Brown clan. The Master is really wearing a mask, as his body was horribly burned by the fires of Sarn; he has come to Eternity to use its fountain of youth, water that has been affected by a temporal anomaly caused by a disruption to causality which takes place in the early 21st century. Before he can pour the water over himself, Peri attacks him, and it instead reanimates some dinosaur fossils. The Doctor, having used his respiratory bypass system to survive the hanging, manages to shock the townspeople out of their mass hysteria. The Master restores himself to full health, and tries to set the dinosaurs on the townspeople, but the Doctor reluctantly shoots him, and Josh ties him to a dinosaur and sends it running out into the desert. The rest of the dinosaurs die, having been mutated by the unstable temporal anomaly, and the Doctor blows up the cavern entrance.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor and Peri

*Peri recalls the Doctor taking her to Mars and to Gelsandor, so this occurs after '’Red Dawn' and ‘The Ultimate Treasure'

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Special Occasions: 1 'The Not-So-Sinister Sponge' by Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman

The TARDIS lands on a planet made entirely out of confectionery. K9 is in a bad mood, and, while he is out exploring, the Doctor and Romana check their pocket calendars and realise that it is actually his birthday. Romana takes the TARDIS to the planet Barastabon to buy a sponge cake from the Masterbakers, managing to save the universe on the way; but when she returns, the trip through the Time Vortex in the telepathic TARDIS, and its subsequent arrival on a planet made entirely of sweets, has caused the cake to become sentient. She, the Doctor, and K9 set the cake free to populate the planet with new, intelligent life forms.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, the Second Romana, and K-9 MKII

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'Nothing at the End of the Lane' by Daniel O'Mahony

Barbara Wright, a teacher at Coal Hill School, suffers from schizophrenic attacks and hallucinations. In a moment of stress she snaps at one of her pupils, Susan Foreman; when she later tries to apologise, offering to tutor Susan privately, the girl panics, insisting that her grandfather doesn't like strangers. Barbara is upset, and goes to see him in person, but finds 76 Totters' Lane to be an empty junkyard. Doubting her sanity, and plagued by recurring visions of monsters and a London in flames, Barbara continues to suffer from her attacks - or ‘episodes’. Warned about her strange behaviour by the deputy headmaster, Kint, Barbara confides in fellow teacher, Ian Chesterton, and he agrees to go to the junkyard with her. They wait for Susan to enter, but when they follow her in she appears to have vanished. A old man appears and violently attacks them, during which Barbara experiences another episode in which she appears to have been travelling through time and space with Ian, Susan, and Susan's grandfather, the Doctor. She awakens for this nightmare to find that her friends have just rescued her from death by a creature from a world where time-travel has been ruled impossible. The creature attached itself to her mouth and gave her the wired and horrific dreams as it tried to kill her. She confronts the creature in her mind, and frees herself from its influence.

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan

*Barbara and Ian have now befriended the Doctor, so this may well occur towards the end of Season 1

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'Countdown to TV Action' by Gary Russell

Doctor Who and a young boy named Timmy, fight an alien moss known as a Lepton mind-parasite, which has taken over a village and which plans to destroy all television.

Notes:
*This features the comic strip Third Doctor Who, so is not included as canon.

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'The Queen of Eros' by Trevor Baxendale

The Doctor and Sam arrive in the palace of Asheya, Queen of Eros, a tyrannical ruler who kills her subjects purely at her whim. Sam is sentenced to death for merely speaking out of turn, but the Doctor stands up to the Queen, who realises that she has found an equal at last, and so plans to marry him. As they spend time together Asheya comes to understand the Doctor’s perspective and finally sees the brutality of her world. Her Royal Advisor, Zoleon, is jealous, and challenges the Doctor to combat, but just as he is about to kill the Time Lord, the Queen instead kills him. The Doctor agrees to marry her, thus freeing her subjects, but Asheya returns the Doctor's TARDIS, telling him that she will work to change her planet's ways. The Doctor departs with Sam, never really understanding that Asheya had given him his freedom because she truly did love him.

Notes:
*Featuring the Eighth Doctor and Sam

*This is the less experienced version of Sam, so must occur before ‘The Longest Day’..

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'The Android Maker of Calderon IV' by Miche Doherty

On Calderon IV, an old man, whose dreams of a technocratic dictatorship were once ruined by the Third Doctor, has spent the past five years building a perfect android double of his enemy. He plans to have the android kill the Doctor, replace him, and then assassinate the members of the Presidium. He uses a recall device to summon the Doctor, but he is thwarted once more when the TARDIS materialises in the village market and the Fourth Doctor emerges...

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and Sarah

*Sarah recalls being menaced by cowled figures and prepared to be sacrificed, which alludes to events in ‘The Masque of Mandragora'

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'Revenants' by Peter Anghelides

Investigating a temporal anomaly, the Doctor and Guin arrive on the Schrödinger Institute, a research station in deep space where Tasdevin, a temporal scientist, is conducting an experiment in perpetual motion. The Doctor and Guin find that they are invisible and intangible, and cannot touch any objects until someone else has already done so - they are caught in an ancient temporal echo. It transpires that the other scientists had been bought out by Galaxtricity, and were worried that Tasdevin's experiment would put them out of business if he succeeded in creating a source of perpetual energy. Tasdevin realised that his work was being sabotaged, and attempted to divert the course of his research to give himself immortality by looping his own lifetime in on itself, but the experiment failed and the resulting temporal echo has been going on for years. The Doctor manages to rewire the control box after Tasdevin finishes working on it, and breaks the echo, freeing himself and Guin, and causing the station to return to its correct place in time.

Notes:
*Featuring the future Doctor from the short story ‘Good Companions’ and Guinevere Winchester

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'Please Shut the Gate' by Stephen Lock

The TARDIS arrives on Mars in December 1999, and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find an abandoned campsite. The Doctor realises that he is responsible, as his previous incarnation was forced to abandon the equipment when the TARDIS' lateral drift compensators nearly caused it to leave without him. Realising that the Mars Polar Lander is about to arrive, they attempt to clean up the mess, but are too late - the Lander arrives, crashes into the TARDIS roof, and is damaged beyond repair.

Notes:
*Featuring the second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe

*Jamie mentions Ice Warriors, but Zoe doesn’t react, so this should occur before ‘Seeds of Death’

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'Turnabout is Fair Play' by Graeme Burk

After an explosion in the TARDIS console room, Peri awakes to find that she now inhabits the Doctor's body. Leaving the ship to follow a set of her own footprints, she is captured by the native Volnexians, who are under the domination of the evil Javaman, who has used the Dorganator, a mind control device, to draw the Doctor to the planet so that he can force the secrets of time travel out of the Time Lord. Peri uses a firecracker in the Doctor's pocket to destroy the device, freeing the Volnexians and apparently killing the Javaman. She is then returned to her own body, and the Doctor arrives, explaining that the Dorgantor interfaced with the TARDIS telepathic circuits and switched their minds; while Peri was distracting the Javaman, the Doctor, in her body, sabotaged the Dorganator.

Notes:
*Featuring Sixth Doctor and Peri

*Peri refers to the Rassilon Imprimature, which she learnt about in ‘The Two Doctors’; the Doctor mentions Davros, but Peri does not react to the name, so this occurs before ‘Revelation of the Daleks’.

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Special Occasions: 2 'Do You Love Anyone Enough?' by Norman Ashby

Arriving at the end of the Universe and the end of time, as everything ceases to exist, the Doctor gives Romana his last Rolo.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, the Second Romana, and K-9 MKII

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'The House on Oldark Moor' by Justin Richards

TARDIS takes Doctor Who and his friends to Oldark Moor, where they find a sleepwalking woman named Veronica. Returning her home, they meet her husband, Count Tarkin, who offers them a place to stay for the night. The travellers later find a murdered manservant, and a man locked in the attic, whom Tarkin explains is his insane brother, but who instead claims to be his creation. The man escapes and attacks Tarkin, but Veronica is killed in the fight. Ian's attempts to intervene start a fire which spreads rapidly through the house, and everyone is forced to flee. Doctor Who and his companions make their apologies and depart, as Count Tarkin and Veronica watch the burning house -- unaware that the body of the elder, "mad" Tarkin is lying in the drawing room, draped protectively over the dead body of his wife Veronica.

Notes:
*Featuring Doctor Who, Ian, Barbara and Susan from the 1960s movies

*This story occurs between the movies ‘Dr Who and the Daleks’ and ‘Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD’

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'Gone too Soon' by Christopher M. Wadley

Having seen his future, and that his current incarnation will be cut short in its prime, the Doctor prepares for his regeneration by returning to the dawn of Time and carving his name on the first inhabitable planet. He travels to Germany to jam with the Beatles before they become famous, and then observes the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, giving his mother enough money to ensure that she will be able to keep the child that her husband doesn't want. Finally, the Doctor visits his old mentor at the time of his death, to thank him and bid him farewell. Satisfied that he has done all he needs to do in this life, the Doctor continues his travels in space and time.

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor

*The Doctor is travelling alone and has just seen his future, which places it after ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’ Parts 9-14. However, the end does not fit in with the beginning of ‘Time of Your Life’, suggesting that it occurs between companions, and before ‘Business as Usual’

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'Reunion' by Jason Loborik

Investigating the source of time distortion, the Doctor is led to a deserted Underground station, where he meets Dan Blackwood, a solicitor who, along with eight entranced men, has been abducted by a man named Dobtcheff. They are forced at gunpoint by Dobtcheff to conduct a psychic séance, during which Dan becomes confused, and the Doctor discovers that an alien influence is dormant in Dan's mind, and is seeking revenge. Meanwhile, Dobtcheff is transforming into an alien, having drained the life essence out of the young men, killing them in the process. He tells the Doctor that his people came to Earth in the future to request aid against an alien invasion, but when their fully armed battle cruiser arrived above Earth, the humans panicked and destroyed it. Dobtcheff's escape pod was flung into the past, and he transferred his life essence into an unborn human foetus; but it has taken longer than he anticipated to recover, and his life essence has been divided between the child's descendants. Realising that he will never complete himself and escape, Dobtcheff decides to set his pod to self-destruct, planning to destroy London in revenge. He attempts to drain the life essence out of Dan, but the Doctor helps him to resist. The alien dies, and the Doctor deactivates the escape pod's self-destruct and leaves Dan to recover from what everyone assumes is an accident on the Underground.

Notes:
*Featuring the Second Doctor

*Following the events of ‘The War Games’, it is generally thought that the Doctor undertakes work for the Time Lords before he regenerates; he may be investigating the time distortion on their behalf.

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'Planet of the Bunnoids' by Harriet Green

The TARDIS lands on a beautiful planet; while Steven and Vicki are captured by natives, the Doctor is held captive in the TARDIS by a Bunnoid, a deadly robot bunny rabbit.. The Bunnoid is the servant of a Lapino, a giant brain that feeds on emotions, and which crashed on the planet some time ago - if it does not report home soon, its people will release a pulse of mental energy to destroy its ship and prevent their technology from falling into alien hands. The Lapino intends to torture Steven and Vicki in order to provide itself with the emotional energy it needs to escape, but the Doctor convinces it to alter their perceptions, and causes them to act out the story of Cinderella and to fall in love, reluctantly taking on the role of fairy godmother to help. When the Lapino accuses the Doctor of manipulating his companions to suit his own selfish ends, the Doctor's guilt gives it the last of the energy it needs to escape. Steven and Vicki wake up with no memory of their adventure, apart from a nagging recollection of having seen the Doctor in a tutu. The embarrassed Doctor vows never to speak of it again.

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor, Steven and Vicki

*The Doctor mentions Chumblies, placing this story between ‘Galaxy 4' and ‘The Myth Makers'

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'Monsters' by Tara Samms

Investigating reports of missing people and lights in the London sky, the Doctor searches for aliens in a nearby mausoleum; meanwhile Ace meets a young girl named Kirsty, who is convinced that her mother is poisoning her. They meet a group called the "Friends of the Sky", but they are captured by one of its members, a newsagent. A gang of youths break into the newsagent’s, disturbing the alien creature which has taken on the form of the newsagent, and which has been killing children and lonely people in order to build a flesh cocoon in which to heal itself, and to hide from hunters. The Doctor arrives and distracts the creature, and he, Ace and Kirsty escape moments before the hunters arrive and destroy the newsagent's. Kirsty is upset and chooses to return home rather than face aliens, and the Doctor surmises that Kirsty's mother may be suffering from "Munchausen by proxy", a mental disorder which drives her to poison her own daughter and take her to the doctor's in order to get attention. The Doctor admits that he has no time to help Kirsty - there are too many monsters about, and not all are obvious; it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep ahead of them.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace

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Special Occasions: 3 'Better Take Care' by Steve Burford

Dressed as Santa, the Doctor, together with Romana sneaks into the Brigadier's home at Christmas, and leaves him ssome presents in a stocking.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana

*This must be the Second Romana, as she remembers the events of ‘City of Death’

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'Face Value' by Steve Lyons

Investigating rumours of strange behaviour in the visitors to a theme park called Leisureworld, the Doctor, Jason, Crystal and Zog arrive on the planet Krennos. Plants in a swamp apparently kill the Doctor, while the others are rescued by workers and taken to the park. Zog finds the hidden and comatose bodies of the real staff, but Leisureworld’s Manager captures him, Jason and Crystal. The Doctor arrives, and the Manager admits that he and his staff are Chameleons, who have taken over Leisureworld and are using it as a trap to steal the identities of tourists. But the Doctor tells him that Leisureworld was already a trap, as the planet Krennos is alive, and was sapping the energy of the park’s visitors to feed itself. The Chameleons have inadvertently cut off the planet's food supply, and it has grown hungry. The plants break in and start to pull the staff and visitors out into the swamp, but the Manager, accepts responsibility and uses their mind-transfer machine to link himself to the attacking plants. The shock of trying to take on the entire planet's personality kills him, but the planet is stunned into a dormant state. The time travellers leave as the shame-faced Chameleons agree to release their prisoners.

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor, Jason, Crystal and Zog

*This story takes place after the Sixth Doctor's version of the stageplay 'The Ultimate Adventure'

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'Storm in a Tikka' by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry

After the events of ‘Dimensions in Time’, the Doctor, Ace and K-9 are drawn to Watford by a spatial anomaly. The Doctor investigates, while Ace and K-9 enter an Indian takeaway to get a curry. The takeaway’s mirrored walls are actually a transmat system, which activate and send Ace and K9 to an alien world, where a cat burglar who previously tried to rob the restaurant is captured by cultists and sacrificed to a statue of Kali. The statue comes to life, kills its worshippers and follows the trace of the DNA from the sacrificial blood back to Earth, where it finds that its ancient enemy is posing as the takeaway's cook. As battle ensues, on the alien planet, K-9 activates the transmat and transports himself and Ace back to Earth. The Doctor realises that Kali is drawing her power through the restaurant's mirrors, and so he covers them all in white paint. Kali dispappears, and her enemy tells the Doctor that their battle will continue even though innocent people could have died. The Doctor, Ace and K9 return to the TARDIS and depart to prepare themselves for the game show they've been invited to participate in.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace

*This story takes place between 'Dimensions in Time' and 'Search Out Science'

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Special Occasions: 4 'Playing with Toys' by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry

As Romana relaxes after recent events, the Doctor explores the TARDIS and finds an abandoned toybox. Deep in the box the Doctor finds a doll resembling a Chinese Mandarin, but when he turns to tell Romana, he finds that he has become a marionette, supported by strings, and unable to move himself.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana

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'Vrs' by Lwrnc Mls

Th Cybrmn ttck th rth wth n nxpctd wpn.

Notes:
*This is not applicable to canon!


Publication Date:
March 2000

Notes:

*A BBC Books publication