The Heroine, the Hero and the Megalomaniac (short story)

The Heroine, the Hero and the Megalomaniac was the seventh short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: A Day in the Life. It was written by Ian Mond. It featured the Eighth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Ace, Hex and Charley Pollard.

The Heroine's Story
On Armstrong's Colony, Venetia is running away from a girl and a guy, from whom she stole some kind of device on the orders of her employer, Baron Denton de Kay Leigh. She loses control over her body, which takes her to the market square, and she starts having strange memories. At a jeweller's stand, she sees a blue box nearby, and it seems familiar. She touches it, and remembers that she's Charley Pollard.

A man with a gun grabs her and takes her back to the Baron's caves. The Baron takes the tracker from her and gloats about how he turned a simple village girl into a killer, only for her to be a spy for the Doctor. He plans to place Charley into an artefact that will extract her memories, allowing him to gain her knowledge of the Doctor and the TARDIS.

After Charley is strapped in, the process begins and she feels great pain. Things become blurry, then she wakes to find herself on the floor, being helped up by the Doctor. The chair has been destroyed, but the Doctor says he doesn't know how it happened.

The Hero's Story
The Doctor enters a cave system, knowing what he is about to face and dreading it. He finds two thugs waiting for him, alongside his previous incarnation. The Seventh Doctor sends the thugs to find Falsten, and the two Doctors talk. The Seventh Doctor has brought Ace and Hex to Armstrong's Colony, but the Eighth has no memory of bringing them here. The two Doctors make telepathic contact: the Eighth detected technology on Armstrong's Colony that should not be here, and he and Charley came here to look for it; the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex materialised in the Van Koll system to find several planets missing and tracked a temporal distortion to Armstrong's Colony. The Seventh gave Ace and Hex a tracker and left them while he did some research, tracing the distortion to the Baron's possession of the therapy chair. He travelled back in time to convince several of the Baron's men to help him, using the Baron's controlling device to keep the men in line.

The Seventh tells the Eighth that Charley is the source of the time distortion, but the Eighth refuses to believe it, and they argue. Falsten and the other men arrive, and the Seventh Doctor introduces his associate, who will help in the attack against the Baron. The Seventh then vanishes. The Eighth Doctor frees the mercenaries from the Baron's control, and several of them decide to help him in the attack.

In the Baron's base, the men are attacked by three robots, while a holographic projection of the Baron taunts the Doctor. He disables the robots, heads to the Baron's laboratory, and finds Charley unconscious on the floor. He pockets a note from the Seventh Doctor, who rescued Charley from the chair.

The Megalomaniac's Story
The Baron is tracking Venetia's movements, having learned that she is a spy for the Doctor. He is also aware that the Doctor has recruited Falsten and his men. He notes where Venetia/Charley finds the TARDIS and has it brought to his laboratory.

During the robot battle, the Baron finds the Seventh Doctor in his laboratory, having just freed Charley from the chair. The Baron threatens to kill Charley unless the Doctor takes his place in the chair. The Baron's intention is to extract the Doctor's memories and ingest them. However, when the process is finished, and the Doctor is apparently dead, the Doctor's mind takes over the Baron's. The Baron was unaware exactly how the chair works, and he was also unaware of the effect it would have on a Time Lord brain. The Doctor rewrites the Baron's memories, making him benevolent.

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Seventh Doctor
 * Charlotte Pollard
 * Ace
 * Hex
 * Venetia Dalborough
 * Gertner
 * Tenkoff
 * Begleiter
 * Falsten
 * Denton de Kay Leigh

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor describes the Van Koll system as a "party place".
 * The Ikorans created the therapy chair.
 * The Eighth Doctor uses the name Professor Smith.

Continuity

 * The Seventh Doctor is unaware that Charley is a living temporal paradox, given that his future self rescued her from the British airship R101 on 5 October 1930 when history recorded that she died along with everyone else aboard. (AUDIO: Storm Warning)
 * Charley's memories include plum pudding, (AUDIO: The Chimes of Midnight) Venice (AUDIO: The Stones of Venice) and Sebastian Grayle. (AUDIO: Seasons of Fear)
 * The Doctor mentions the War Lords on Trexa 3. (TV: The War Games)