He Jests at Scars... (audio story)

Publisher's summary
The thing about meddling with time is that one moment something is real, the next, it’s been erased. Probability becomes just a possibility. Established truth becomes a theoretical falsehood. Like dominoes, as one timeline falls, the others come cascading down around it. You can engineer new timelines, new possibilities, but before long, the distinction between what is, what was, what might be and what never can be becomes blurred.

Out of this grow myths, lies and legends. The Doctor was one such legend, but no one knows whether he truly ever existed. Well, not now they don’t. The Mighty One, ruling the multiverses from the eternal city of Chronopolis, has made sure of that.

Cast

 * The Valeyard - Michael Jayston
 * Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford
 * Had Mel not left Earth she would have died of a brain tumour aged 48 in 2012.
 * Coordinator Vansell - Anthony Keetch
 * The President - Tim Preece
 * Ellie Martin - Juliet Warner
 * Nula - Jane McFarlane
 * Gerrof - Mark Donovan

Continuity

 * Vansell, introduced in BFA: The Sirens of Time, also appeared in PDA: Divided Loyalties, BFA: The Apocalypse Element and BFA: Neverland.


 * An alternate version of Ellie Martin appeared in the Sarah Jane Smith audio series.


 * Time Rings first appeared in DW: Genesis of the Daleks.


 * The concept of a Time Ram first occurred in DW: The Time Monster.


 * Ellie complains that the Valeyard criticises her for carrying weapons unless it suits him. In an alternative timeline, the Seventh Doctor's companion Ace would frequently raise similar objections. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks, et al)


 * The Valeyard implies that he’s picked up a weapon which belonged to Jack the Ripper, a probable reference to PDA: Matrix.


 * Vansell compares the Valeyard to the inchoate form of the Watcher (which first appeared in DW: Logopolis) but claims that it is unprecedented for such a being to achieve independent sentience, implying either that the Time Lords are unaware of the existence of Cho-Je (DW: Planet of the Spiders) or that he was something else entirely.


 * The Matrix’s projection of the Sixth Doctor’s missed encounter with Mel doesn’t jibe with their actual first encounter in PDA: Business Unusual; they didn’t meet at the police station, but the previous day, when the Doctor took her friend Trey Korte back home before realising that he was staying with Mel Bush. However, this story does take place in an alternate timeline, and it’s possible that the Valeyard had already changed history in some other way, perhaps erasing Trey or the Nestenes from history.


 * Vansell refers to the Time Lords once sending the Doctor on an ultimately unsuccessful mission to destroy the Daleks after the Valeyard has altered history by helping the Thals to wipe out the Daleks before they escaped from their bunker. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)


 * Vansell observes the Valeyard and Ellie visiting a Silurian bunker in the Galapagos islands. (BFA: Bloodtide)


 * The Valeyard intends to stop his fourth incarnation from destroying Logopolis and to steal the Master's TARDIS. (DW: Logopolis)


 * The First Doctor, Steven Taylor and "an extinct bird" visited Logopolis after leaving 13th century Kiev. (PDA: Bunker Soldiers)


 * The Valeyard lists a number of companions he may have had in alternate universes -- including Hex, the first reference to a new companion of the Seventh Doctor who was introduced in BFA: The Harvest.

Timeline

 * He Jests at Scars.. occurs after: The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe (with an alternate ending)