CHAOS (short story)

CHAOS was the fourth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Past Tense. It was written by Eric Saward. It featured the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown.

Summary
The Doctor is in great pain. He is being suffocated by a membrane of CHAOS. He manages to free himself, and finds himself in the TARDIS control room with Tegan. They are hurtling through a hole in the space-time continuum. The Doctor fights to get to the controls, and calms the TARDIS. He tells Tegan that they were caught up in time spillage from a time corridor. As the Doctor manipulates the controls to free the TARDIS, it explodes.

The Doctor screams in protest that he left Tegan safely on Earth.

The Doctor runs out of a derelict factory on Earth, accompanied by several men and women. They are chased by figures in radiation suits who fire at the crowd. The Doctor watches helplessly.

The Doctor regains awareness in the TARDIS. They have arrived on Raaga, a Terileptil mining planet. The slave labour created the time corridor to escape. However, they have been betrayed, and the Doctor is forced to go through the corridor with the miners, leaving Tegan and the TARDIS on Raaga.

The Doctor is back on Earth and runs out of the factory. He is accosted by an old man who reaches inside his overcoat. The Doctor stabs him with a spike he picked up earlier.

The Doctor screams in protest that he would never do something like that.

The Doctor awakes outside a cash machine on Broadway. His current companion, Peri, tells him that he was mugged and knocked unconscious. They return to the TARDIS, the Doctor relieved that everything that happened was all in his mind. He is unaware that there is a tiny CHAOS droid lodged in his brain.

Characters

 * Sixth Doctor
 * Peri Brown

Worldbuilding

 * At one point, the Doctor thinks that he sees Susan Foreman and Jamie McCrimmon or possibly Turlough and Romana.
 * In one of his CHAOS-induced dreams, the Doctor considers seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Continuity
to be added