The most recent era of Doctor Who has been full of time deflection . The show about an alien in a prison term car has been delving into the eldritch ramification of metre travel more than ever before , including the Doctor ’s time - crossed relationship with River Song .
But the show about a mystic transdimensional blue box has always include storylines about time travelling . At least once or twice a year , the show did a account in which the time machine actually influenced the plot of land , instead of just delivering the Doctor and his friends to a new risky venture . Here are all the old - school medico Who stories that in reality deal with prison term traveling as a secret plan machine .
Top mental image viaPunkAyame36 , creative person unknown .
First , let ’s explicate our criteria — most Doctor Who stories include the TARDIS , his magical meter machine . But just as many Star Trek episodes feature the Enterprise delivering Captain Kirk to a new satellite where the action takes place , most classic Doctor Who narrative affect the TARDIS showing up somewhere and then being left behind ( or lose ) until the dangerous undertaking is over .
So here are the classical Who account where time travel is actually what drive the story :
An Unearthly Child ( 1963 ) . The show ’s first serial also includes the first clock time the TARDIS travels through meter , posit the Doctor , his granddaughter Susan and two schoolteachers in a prehistoric geological era full of weirdly Shakespearean cave people . This is the only time the TARDIS makes a trip in the middle of a serial until 1965 . ( See below . )
The Edge of Destruction ( 1964 ) . Mostly , this is a “ bottle ” sequence in which our heroes are trapped inside the TARDIS and strange things are going on — but the actual jeopardy is that the TARDIS will travel back to the beginning of time and be destroyed .
The Aztecs ( 1964 ) . The other old age of Doctor Who featured a number of “ historic ” account in which the TARDIS crew prove up in some famous earned run average , gets capture up in issue , and then escapes . But “ The Aztecs ” is unique in that the Doctor ’s companion , Barbara , really wants to change account , and the ethics ( and plausibleness ) of doing so are debated quite a act .
The Space Museum ( 1965 ) . Due to a weird TARDIS malfunction , the crew leap ahead on their own meter track and sees a time to come in which they ’ve all been turned into immobile exhibits in a museum , trapped patently everlastingly . Then time winds backward , and the work party has a prospect to change their own future .
The Chase ( 1965 ) . The Daleks adjudicate to get disembarrass of the Doctor once and for all — so they build their own prison term machine and chase the Doctor through fourth dimension and space . That ’s about it . This storyline is retell middling in the following time of year ’s “ Daleks ’ Master Plan , ” although there the pursuit is mostly through distance , with a turn of time mix in in . ( That latter story also boast a weapon which ages citizenry to death . )
The Time Meddler ( 1965 ) . The third of three prison term - traveling stories in a row , this one sport a phallus of the Doctor ’s own race who is taste to do what Barbara failed to — rewrite history . He wants to arm the Anglo - Saxons with advanced weaponry so they can prevent the Norman subjugation in 1066 . Just because .
The Ark ( 1966 ) . This is an strange story — because the TARDIS travels forward in time midway through . The survivors of humanity are aboard a giant Ark of the Covenant taking them to a new home planet , and the Dr. assist them deal with an outbreak of the vernacular low temperature , to which they ’ve recede unsusceptibility . But when the TARDIS jumps forward 700 old age , the humans ’ servants , the Monoids , have enslave humanity .
The Evil of the Daleks ( 1967 ) . A Victorian inventor is trying to make a clip motorcar using mirrors and stuff — but what he set out rather is a sojourn from a group of homicidal cyborgs who want to set a trap for the Doctor . There ’s a lot of shuttling back and forth between Victorian England and the sixties , followed by a trip to the Dalek homeworld in ( in all probability ) the far hereafter .
The War Games ( 1969 ) . People are being kidnapped from illustrious wars throughout human history . ( Well , European and North American history , really . ) And they ’re fighting in a giant conglomeration of bastard warfare on another major planet , so that their metre - move around masters can create the most unstoppable army out of those lucky enough to survive . This design makes no signified , unless you just go with it . Anyway , the Doctor has to engage the aid of his own race to get all the time - kidnapped soldier home .
The Claws of Axos ( 1971 ) . The giant blank parasite , Axos , is ghost with learn the arcanum of time travel — and even though they ’ve get their own confined Time Lord , the Master , they still want the Doctor ’s help . Not surprisingly , the Doctor outwits them . I believe this is the story that introduce the estimation of the “ time loop , ” in which someone is stuck loop endlessly through time .
Day of the Daleks ( 1972 ) . Arguably the first Doctor Who story to have an existent clock time paradox , this story take freedom fighters from the 22nd century locomote back in time to prevent a Dalek coup d’etat of Earth — only to notice that they ’re snare in a kind of causal loop topology , which is different from the one the Doctor entrap the Axons in .
The Time Monster ( 1972 ) . This is the story which designate most empty the endangerment of focusing too much on the show ’s own mythos — there are some fascinating ideas here about time traveling , including what would happen if two TARDISes stress to occupy the same space , and lots of crazy time shenanigans . But as a taradiddle , it ’s kind of a bloated mess . The Master impersonates a college professor so he can build a time machine call TOM - TIT ( even though he already has a much effective prison term car ) so he can enslave a clock time - feeder from Atlantis .
The Three Doctors ( 1973 ) . The Doctor meet two of his preceding selves , and remarkably little in the room of the paradoxical happens .
Carnival of Monsters ( 1973 ) . Someone has kidnapped creature from all over time and space , including a boatload of 20th century humans , and placed them inside a rather shabby fairground attracter , where they ’re miniaturized and hold on in an endless time eyelet . Until the Doctor shows up and ruins the whole thing .
The Time Warrior ( 1973 - 1974 ) . Like Barbara and the Meddling Monk before him , a Sontaran warrior is attempting to change history — this time , just so that he can get a place to clank while he repairs his spaceship and work home . Rather unusually , this time around changing history is just a random byproduct as far as the baddie is concerned .
Invasion of the Dinosaurs ( 1974 ) . The dinosaur do n’t actually invade — you sort of figure them all put on military uniforms and being moderate by a dinosaur general and stuff . Instead , some mad scientists are bringing dinosaur forward in time from the prehistoric geological era , so they can empty London to give them breathing blank to work on a plot to bring a caboodle of mankind back in time to prehistoric time to start humanity over , Terra Nova - style . ( Why did n’t they just go on their design without lend a bunch of dinosaur forward in clip ? )
generation of the Daleks ( 1975 ) . This one is rather strange , in that the Doctor himself is sent back in metre to interchange history — to do what Barbara , the Meddling Monk , and a random Sontaran all conk out to do . He ’s on a military mission to prevent the conception of the Daleks , or else to deal them an former setback or learn about some basic weakness in their invention . Spoiler alerting : He more or less fails .
Pyramids of Egypt of Mars ( 1975 ) . This one is debatable — the evil Sutekh build a time burrow , but reasonably much only uses it to travel through outer space , until the Doctor have a go at it around with it .
The Masque of Mandragora ( 1976 ) . The Mandragora Helix highjack the TARDIS and direct it to Renaissance Italy , where it project to — what else ? — alter history , by killing or verify a bunch of Renaissance geniuses .
The Talons of Weng Chiang ( 1977 ) . Weng Chiang is n’t actually a faux Chinese graven image that no real Chinese person has ever heard of — rather , he ’s a criminal from the 51st Century ( yes , the same era as Captain Jack and River Song get along from ) . He ’s seeking to repair his rather lusterless fourth dimension machine so he can return home , even though the first trip melted his typeface moderately .
The Armageddon Factor ( 1979 ) . Mostly far-famed because the Doctor utilise our former admirer , the Time Loop , to keep a dangerous situation under control while he picture out a solution .
City of Death ( 1979 ) . Scaroth of the Jaggeroth explodes his spaceship on a primeval Earth — and as a result , he ’s broken into a number of freestanding selves , scattered throughout time . The telepathically linked splinters of Scaroth work to build a sentence machine so they can go back and stop the ship exploding , not take in ( or caring ) that this will keep humanity from ever evolve .
Meglos ( 1980 ) . Mostly noted because this metre around it ’s the Doctor being put into a Time Loop — which is renamed a Chronic Hysteresis , and can be shoot down by maneuver - acting .
warrior ’ Gate ( 1981 ) . At the confluence topographic point between universes , there ’s a uncanny old palace where the past and the present collide , and you’re able to find yourself slipping between the two timeline without any warning . One of the weirdest and most confusing classic Who floor , this one is not for the faint of heart .
Castrovalva ( 1982 ) . When the Master comes back , so do a good deal of his honest-to-goodness tricks — admit the TARDIS - inside - a - TARDIS joke , in “ Logopolis . ” And in this story , we see the return of the “ flying the TARDIS back to the beginning of time ” trick first seen in “ Edge of Destruction . ” Also , the Master apparently habituate time travel to set up the fake estate of Castrovalva , so it ’ll seem a convincingly old plaza and the Doctor will become trap there .
The Visitation ( 1982 ) . famed for the suggestion that the Doctor actually cause historical events to happen , in this case the Great Fire of London . Also , in “ Earthshock , ” the Doctor apparently help cause the experimental extinction of the dinosaur .
Time - Flight ( 1982 ) . I do n’t really know what in existence this story was about — but it does involve an plane being stolen from the early 1980s and whip back to a prehistorical era without any dinosaur or other beast . For reasons that remain unclear , to this day .
Mawdryn Undead ( 1983 ) . In this tarradiddle , we encounter out what happens if you cope with your own past / next self — a nasty explosion , a fount of amnesia , a spot of PTSD , and a closed loop in which your succeeding ego is doom to meet your yesteryear self , reasonably much no matter what . This has been neglect rather a lot in recent stories , however — and pay that this history contradicts the history of the Doctor ’s friend , the Brigadier , it ’s possible the whole thing take station in a pocket realness that collapse straight off afterwards .
The Five Doctors ( 1983 ) . Mostly notable because we chance out where the baddies in “ The War Games ” got the mind of kidnapping hero from all across time and forcing them to contend — from the Time Lords themselves , who were doing it for a long fourth dimension . Plus , another instance of the Doctor fulfil his past self .
The Awakening ( 1984 ) . Another story in which I ’m not certain what happened — but the 17th one C and the twentieth C are colliding and people are bleeding from one to the other . It ’s all because a church gargoyle is prove to make the English Civil War befall again , so he can belch smoke at everyone .
Resurrection of the Daleks ( 1984 ) . Mostly notable because the Daleks make a time tunnel for reasons that persist indecipherable . They want to hide some samples of a mortal Dalek - killing disease someplace , so they build up a prison term tunnel from a far - future spaceship to 20th century London , where absolutely nobody is guaranteed to stag around .
Attack of the Cybermen ( 1985 ) . This time , the Cybermen need to change history — this time smash Halley ’s Comet into the Earth in 1985 , so that they can ward off the devastation of their homeworld in 1986 .
The Two doctor ( 1985 ) . The Doctor meets a retiring self for the third and last sentence in the classic serial publication — and this time around , we see that anything that happen to the earlier Doctor has a delayed but pronounced effect on the late Doctor . When the Second Doctor turns into an Androgum , the Sixth Dr. slowly starts changing as well . Also , when the Second Doctor gets shot by Sontarans , the Sixth Doctor seems to feel it across the C .
Timelash ( 1985 ) . Thanks to Bluehinter for reminding me of this one . The eponymous “ timelash ” winds up sending an alien princess from another cosmos to nineteenth Century Earth , where she ( and the Dr. ) meet H.G. Wells .
test of a Time Lord ( 1986 ) . Thanks to Hypnosifl for remind me of this one . The Doctor fit Mel for the first meter , but she ’s actually met him before because she ’s from his hereafter . Also , the Doctor gets to see an adventure he has n’t gone on yet . And the Valeyard is theoretically a potential future version of the Doctor .
Time and the Rani ( 1987 ) . The Rani wants to build a Time Manipulator , which will allow her to assure time . This is worth wearing a ridiculous wig for — although not as nonsensical as the wigging the Doctor briefly sports .
Dragonfire ( 1987 ) . A “ time storm ” takes Ace from eighties England to the far time to come on Iceworld . This is later on bring out to be the work of the malign Fenric .
Battlefield ( 1988 ) . Thanks also to Bluehinter for the reminder about this one — the Doctor meet a group of Arthurian character who know him , because they ’ve already meet a future MD . The future Doctor even pass on notes for his retiring ego .
Silver Nemesis ( 1988 ) . Lady Peinforte expend legerdemain ( apparently ) to travel from the seventeenth century to the 20th .
The Curse of Fenric ( 1989 ) . As various commenters have pointed out , this not only explain Ace ’s “ clock time storm , ” it also features Ace meet her own mother as a baby . And Fenric brings a haemovore back in time from a contaminated future that the haemovore actually helps to cause , thus produce another static time grommet .
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