The Velvet Dark (short story)

The Velvet Dark
Doctor:	Fifth Doctor
Companion(s):	Tegan, Turlough
Main enemy:	The Master
Main setting:	Earth
Key crew
Writer:	Stewart Sheargold
Release details
Part of:	Short Trips: Farewells
Short Trips short stories
← Previous	Wake
Next →	Life After Queth

The Velvet Dark was the eighth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Farewells. It was written by Stewart Sheargold. It featured the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough.

Summary

The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough attend the Master's funeral on Earth, then they go to the nursing home at which he spent the last few days of his life.

At the nursing home, the Doctor and Turlough search through the Master's room while Tegan looks for tea. She comes across Laura, a nurse, who is crying. Tegan comforts her, but Laura explains that she had been searching for a missing patient whom she has just found in the boiler room — dead shrunk to doll-size. Tegan, suspecting who is to blame, accompanies Laura to the boiler room.

In the front hallway, a coffin shimmers into view, accompanied by a loud groaning noise; the building then shimmers as well.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Turlough question some of the patients. The Doctor notes the television program that is playing — all the actors have the Master's face.

The Doctor sends Turlough to find Tegan while he goes in search of Mr Tase, the head of the nursing home. Turlough finds Tegan in the morgue, still alive but crying over Laura, who was shrunk by the Master.

The Doctor discovers, as he suspected, that "Mr Tase" is the Master. His body is burnt and he demands the Doctor's help. Tegan and Turlough are brought to the office by hypnotically-controlled patients. To ensure the Doctor's cooperation, the Master shrinks Turlough, though he changed the setting of the Tissue Compression Eliminator and Turlough is still alive.

The nursing home, which is the Master's TARDIS, materialises outside a castle, and the Master brings his captives inside. There, they find that this body of the Master is just an extension of the Master, used by the real Master who has lost all bodily form. He blames the Time Lords and plans to steal one of the Doctor's lives.

He hypnotises Tegan, who connects the Doctor to the Master's machine and, at his command, stabs the Doctor. Part of the apparatus includes twelve mirrors. As the machine begins to take the Doctor's life, he screams at such an octave that the mirrors shatter.

Later, with Tegan un-hypnotised and Turlough returned to normal size, he explains to his companions that he thinks the Master knew this scheme wouldn't work. They return the nursing home to where it belongs, while the Doctor decides what to do with the Master.

Characters

• Fifth Doctor
• Tegan
• Turlough
• The Master
• Laura Henderson
• Mr Burrows

References

• The Master uses the alias Mr Tase.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

• The Master was stripped of his body after failing to help the Doctor in the Death Zone. (TV: The Five Doctors)
• The Master remembers using up all twelve of his regenerations and getting revenge on the Time Lords. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
• The Doctor thought he would never see this body of the Master's again. (TV: The Keeper of Traken) He would meet this incarnation again in AUDIO: And You Will Obey Me.
• There is still some mistrust in Turlough after TV: Enlightenment.
• Learning of the Master's death, the Doctor admits to Tegan that he always held out hope that he could get through to the friend he once had in the Master. The Twelfth Doctor tried to reform the Master in a later incarnation. (TV: Extremis, The Doctor Falls)