Meet the Doctor (DWAN 2006 short story)

Meet the Doctor was the second short story and fourth work of fiction exclusively published in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 in September 2005 by Panini UK and the BBC. Paired with Meet Rose, Meet the Doctor was one of two prose pieces submitted to the annual by then-showrunner Russell T Davies.

As the title implied, it served to familiarise the readers with the character of the Doctor and his new place in the universe in the new status quo of Series 1: the survivor of a terrifying temporal conflict. This made it the first story that was wholly about the Last Great Time War, then referred to as the Great Time War, rather than its consequence, and covered a lot of ground to which Davies would only return over half a decade later in Doctor Who and the Time War.

Summary
Before he found himself saving an ordinary Earth girl from rampaging Autons and falling back into his old ways, the Doctor had sworn that those days were behind him. Just what happened to the Doctor to make him make such a promise to himself?

Plot
For years leading up to the conflict, the two superpowers that are the Time Lords and the Daleks have been testing each other's strength, with one of the Dalek Puppet Emperors "openly declaring his hostility" to the High Council of the Time Lords and an attempt being made to replace its members with Dalek duplicates. In the end, it was the Time Lords who fired the "first shot" by sending one incarnation of the Doctor back in time in an ill-fated effort to prevent the rise of the Daleks.

Weak peace attempts are made, such as the Act of Master Restitution under which President Romana attempts to create a peace treaty with the Daleks, but one way or another, War breaks out for good, a fact some claim was a direct consequence of the so-called Etra Prime Incident. Reaching back into their own history, the Time Lords assemble a fleet of bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms, matched by the Daleks via the unleashing of the "full might" of the Deathsmiths of Goth by the Daleks, who are led into battle by their Emperor in the flesh.

Yet the physical War is fought in the Time Vortex of which the Time Lords had earlier dubbed themselves the protectors, and beyond even that, in the Ultimate Void, so the Lesser Species live in ignorance of what passes beyond their perception — but not the Higher Species such as the Forest of Cheem, the Nestene Consciousness (to whom its planets are lost because of the War) and the Greater Animus. Even the Eternals, despairing of this reality, decide to flee their "hallowed halls" never to return.

Years pass, and suddenly, after raging on and on, the War ends. All the universe at large can gather is that only one man walked out alive of the ruins of Gallifrey and Skaro, a Renegade Time Lord calling himself the Doctor. His hearts heavy with all he has seen (and all he has done), the Doctor decides that it is to be his punishment to travel alone from this day forward.

For all these reasons and more, when the Doctor comes to Earth tracking down the Nestene Consciousness, he has no plans to take on new companions, even though humans were once his favourite species. Yet all that changes when he takes the hand of one particular Earthling called Rose Tyler and looks into her eyes. The journey starts again.

Yet far away, on the planet Crafe Tec Heydra, carvings concerning "the invsible War" fought between a race of flesh and a race of metals suggest that the lone survivor who walked away from the wreckage of the final explosion beware. "You are not alone..."

Characters

 * Ninth Doctor
 * Rose Tyler
 * Daleks
 * Time Lords
 * Romana

Continuity

 * The Nestene Consciousness lost its planets in the Time War (TV: Rose) after a corner of it bled out into the universe from beyond the regular physical reality of the lesser species. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
 * The Time Lords worked out an Act of Master Restitution with the Daleks, which could have been the start of a peace treaty between Gallifrey and Skaro. (TV: Doctor Who, PROSE: Lungbarrow)
 * Near the start of the war, Romana attempts to broker a peace agreement with the Daleks, but diplomacy proves futile in preventing the Time War. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)
 * The Halldons are mentioned. (PROSE: We are the Daleks!)
 * The Great Time War was invisible to "smaller species" yet devastating to "higher forms", (TV: The Unquiet Dead) with the former group being referred to by the Time Lords as "the Lesser Species". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
 * The Etra Prime Incident (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element) is named by some as the true start of the War for the Time Lords. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
 * The phrase "You are not alone" is the stuff of legends (TV: Gridlock) and heralds the fact that the Doctor is not the only Time Lord to have walked away from the destruction of Gallifrey. (TV: Utopia)
 * Skaro was "ruined" by the Time War, much as Gallifrey was destroyed. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan, Asylum of the Daleks)
 * Bowships are borrowed from earlier points in their own history by the Time Lords as they assemble their fleet. (TV: State of Decay)