Untitled (DWM 171 short story)

The Brief Encounter short story published in Doctor Who Magazine 171 was untitled. The story is highly unusual for a Brief Encounter in its introduction of a new character. The Brief Encounter series usually concentrated on offering readers insights into existing characters. It is one of two Brief Encounter short stories to feature no characters from the televised stories, the other being Useless Things.

Summary
Renegade Time Lord and Designer Berenyi's plans the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 Dallas. programming the circumstances into the timeline and the life of the assassin.

Plot
The Time Lady Berenyi is watching the motorcade carrying President John F. Kennedy in Dallas 1963. As it happens, she knows there will be three things she will enjoy in the 1980s - Arthur Miller's autobiography, Cherry 7UP and Sonic Youth, musing that they'd help her better understand humanity even if its only 20 years away.

Berenyi also reflects on her career as a freelance designer and how it conflicts with the ban imposed on the profession several centuries previously by her people, the Time Lords. Berenyi left Gallifrey after feeling constricted by the "restrictive, monastic weishmertz" before "disappearing" from Gallifrey and becoming a Designer out of spite.

The man brought in to assassinate the president has been programmed to perform his job - his past has been meticulously Designed by Berenyi to make him perfect for the job; he is the chairman to the 'Fair Play For Cuba' committee, and he even has a Russian wife.

She watches calmly as the man shoots Kennedy and asks him, "You know what to do now?" To which he replies simply, "Yes." He runs past her and is seen by the police on the second floor of the book depository where he would be caught and shot by Jack Ruby, an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. But they wouldn't be able to find out who the man was and who he worked for, so they would need to get him away.

Berenyi looks back down on the scene - Jackie Kennedy is screaming in the distance and people are running everywhere. She calmly gathers her things and then disappears inside her TARDIS, which is presently disguised in the form of a filing cabinet.

Characters

 * Berenyi

Continuity

 * During his ninth incarnation, the Doctor witnessed the Kennedy assassination. (TV: Rose)