Timewyrm: Revelation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timewyrm: Revelation
Doctor Who book

Series	Virgin New Adventures
Release number	4
Featuring	Seventh Doctor Ace
Writer	Paul Cornell
Publisher	Virgin Books
ISBN	ISBN 0-426-20359-3
Release date	December 1991
Preceded by	Timewyrm: Apocalypse
Followed by	Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible

Timewyrm: Revelation is an original Doctor Who novel, published by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures range of Doctor Who novels.

Like all Doctor Who spin-off media, its canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear.

This is the first novel to feature a personification of Death, and sets the scene for future New Adventures in which the Doctor becomes Time's Champion. Death has also crossed over into the Big Finish Productions audio dramas; in Master, the Master is described as Death's Champion.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 External links
- 3.1 Reviews

[edit] Synopsis

The battle to defeat the Timewyrm having taken the Seventh Doctor and Ace to Ancient Mesopotamia, 1950s Britain and the edge of the universe at the end of time finally ends within the Doctor's own mind with only his past incarnations to help him after Ace is killed by a playground bully...

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Having apparently lost track of the Timewyrm, the Doctor chooses the TARDIS’s next destination apparently at random. The TARDIS arrives in the village of Cheldon Bonniface in the late 19th century. While the Doctor is playing chess with an old friend, Ace is attacked by a child-sized astronaut. Ace evades her attacker, but as she flees the village, she suddenly discovers that they’re actually on the surface of the moon. Away from the protective environment of the faux-village, Ace dies. The astronaut, an eight-year-old boy named Chad Boyle, used a small device to extract Ace’s memories and transmit them elsewhere.

The Doctor discovered the illusion, but was surprised to see that his old friend was in fact Lieutenant Hemmings of the British Free Corps. The Doctor made his way back to the TARDIS, where he discovered that he was really on the moon in December of 1992. The Timewyrm killed Chad Boyle and Hemmings and sent their minds after Ace’s. She took possession of Boyle’s body and waited for the Doctor to confront her.

Ace woke up on some unknown pier looking over some unknown beach. She explored for a while and came across a receptionist, who informed her that she was dead as the result of the Doctor finally losing one of his games. Ace was taken along to the afterlife to be judged. She found herself in a library where she met a kindly old Librarian. After exploring for a while, she decided that she must be dreaming. She concentrated on the village of Cheldon Bonniface.

In that village, in 1992, the Reverend Ernest Trelaw was conducting the usual Sunday service… the last before Christmas. Present in his church were two newcomers, Peter and Emily Hutchings. Also present was something much older, a self-aware non-corporeal intelligence that had existed on the site of the church since long before the church existed. The Rev. Trelaw knew this intelligence as Saul, and both of them were shocked to see their old friend the Doctor run into the church in the middle of the service and deliver a baby into the arms of Emily Hutchings, before running right out again. Later in the same service, Saul received a psychic warning and shouted for all the congregants to leave. Hearing a disembodied voice speak to them in church, the congregants left instantly, except for Emily and Peter. Suddenly, and with a tremendous explosion that devastated the surrounding countryside, the entire church was transported to the surface of the moon. Elsewhere, Ace suddenly got the feeling that she had done something terribly wrong.

The church materialized around the Doctor and Ace’s body. The Doctor retrieved an amulet the he had hidden in the church the last time he had been there, and gave it to Peter and Emily, telling them to find a use for it. The Doctor then left the church to confront the Timewyrm. After a brief conversation, the Doctor nonchalantly danced with the personification of Death that the Timewyrm had conjured, and expired. The Timewyrm once again extracted the Doctor’s memories and sent them after Ace’s, animated the Doctor’s body, and marched it into the church where it collapsed.

In Hell, Ace was being subjected to excruciating torment by her childhood nemesis, Chad Boyle. She was once again eight-years-old, back in school, robbed of everything that made her “Ace”. She was helpless to defend herself or others as Boyle imposed his bigoted little eight-year-old worldview on the school. The Doctor arrived and rescued Ace, returning her to adulthood. She responded by punching him in the face, her way of saying “Thanks for getting me killed.” They went on to meet the Librarian in a splendid rose garden. The Librarian gave Ace her bomber jacket, rucksack, and ghetto blaster, and then spoke with the Doctor. The Timewyrm was trying to take control of the garden, but the Librarian was opposing her. Ace heard Boyle’s sniggering laugh in the distance, and went out to find him. The Doctor went after her, concerned. Ace found Boyle in the center of a maze, covering his eyes and counting, armed with a sub-machine gun and lots of grenades. As she crept up behind him, she thought about blasting him with a nitro-nine canister, but decided that murder was still murder, even in Hell.

The Doctor began to meditate. Back at the church on the moon, Saul began chanting a peculiar rhyme. The others began trying to puzzle out what it might mean. They eventually figure out that it is a kind of message from the Doctor. On the Doctor’s instructions, they find Hemmings’s disembodied head on the moon’s surface, and Saul telekinetically returns it to the church.

Following an epic but ultimately inconclusive battle against Boyle involving grenades and nitro nine, the Doctor rejoined Ace and explained that they aren’t literally in Hell, but in some alternative dimension to their own. They were soon joined by the Timewyrm, who was trying to drive a wedge between the Doctor and Ace. To that end, she summoned a wave of beings, intelligent reptilian people, soldiers in UNIT uniforms, and three individuals named Katarina, Sara Kingdom, and Adric, who all blamed the Doctor for their deaths. They called themselves “sacrifices”. The Doctor had an anguished look on his face as they accused him of betraying them. The Timewyrm left them to continue their hopeless journey to The Pit, the center of this strange world.

Meanwhile, Hemmings had been given another area of this world to control. He had imprisoned the previous occupant, a tall, elegantly dressed man with a shock of wild white hair, and began to remake it in his own image. When the Doctor and Ace arrived, they were immediately arrested by Nazis and placed in a cell with the tall man. While Ace went off to be tortured, the Doctor and the Prisoner managed to escape. Back at the church, Saul, Emily, and Peter tried to find a way to communicate with the head, over Ernest’s religious objections. They succeeded, but only for a moment, after which Hemmings finally died. The zone Hemmings created began to fall out of control. The Doctor and the Prisoner escaped while the zone began undoing the changes Hemmings had made. The Doctor told the Prisoner he was making for the Pit, and to that end, they made their way to a river which divided the various zones, and were met by a Ferryman wearing a floppy brown hat and long multi-colored scarf.

Ace wakes up again, this time in a world where she grew up in a happy an uncomplicated life. She was not a rebellious youth, but merely went along with the prevailing fashions of the time. At the back of her mind, she knew this was wrong. Eventually, she realized the truth, remembered herself, and escaped the trap. She found the Doctor facing off with Chad Boyle, who stabbed him savagely with a sword. Ace helps the Doctor as they continue their journey toward the Pit. The Timewyrm appears again and explains to Ace that they are within the Doctor’s mind.

At the Church, Ernest can see the Doctor’s body is faring poorly. The medallion suddenly began to pulse with energy and grow before their eyes. The runes written on it coalesced into words, written in whatever language the reader could read. Another message from the Doctor, this time telling them to open a dimensional portal. Saul’s psychic powers could provided the energies while Peter’s mathematical abilities established and stabilized the conduit. Emily traveled along it to find the Doctor and Ace. She found them immediately upon arrival and tried to get them back through the medallion portal, but they were being chased by the vast horde of the Doctor’s demons. Emily managed to get herself and the Doctor away, but Ace was left behind.

Once freed from his own mind, the Doctor knew he could destroy the Timewyrm forever, but not without sacrificing Ace. Meanwhile, Ace decided to continue down into the Pit, where she finds the Doctor’s conscience, a fair-haired man in light-colored clothes being perpetually tortured. Ace set him free, and as his wounds healed before her eyes, Ace saw that he was dressed like a cricketer. The Doctor piloted the TARDIS to the intersection between reality and the fiction of his own imagination and rescued Ace. He also spared the Timewyrm, taking her consciousness and depositing it into the body of the baby he had given to Emily. The Hutchingses agreed to raise the child as their own, and at the Doctor’s behest, name her Ishtar. The battle with the Timewyrm was over.