One Wednesday Afternoon (short story)

Summary
Nottinghamshire, 1967: The Doctor and Turlough bump into a woman named Peggy Garratt, causing her to drop her shopping, and the Doctor gives her a rare jobla egg to make up for the trouble. When she gets home, she discovers that he’s given her something else as well: a beautiful jewelled necklace that somehow got mixed up with her shopping. Her husband, Stan, takes the necklace to hide it somewhere until the Doctor comes back looking for it. Moments after Stan has gone, the Doctor shows up again, just as spaceships descend on the town and two alien races begin fighting each other, causing some collateral damage in the process. The Doctor explains that he stole the necklace from another planet because it had been used as a symbol to justify war between the two species; however, the aliens realised what he’d done, poured all their efforts into developing time travel, and pursued him here to Earth to reclaim their property.

Unfortunately, because they’ve travelled through Time, they’ve created a temporal paradox; Peggy was due to wear the necklace next week and get her picture in the paper, and if she doesn’t, history will be changed and the Doctor won’t know that he lost the necklace here. Seeing the damage that the aliens are doing and fearing that people will start to die in the crossfire, Peggy leads the Doctor to the necklace’s hiding place: the town’s air-raid shelter, to which Stan has a key. The Doctor recovers the necklace, and Peggy and Stan help him to attract the aliens’ attention and keep them distracted while the Doctor and Turlough flee back to the TARDIS. The aliens set off in hot pursuit. However, when Peggy and Stan return home, they find that Turlough slipped the necklace back into Peggy’s pocket; she will wear it for the newspaper photograph, and then she and Stan will dispose of it so the aliens don’t come back.

Characters

 * Fifth Doctor
 * Turlough

Continuity
to be added