Land of Fiction

The Land of Fiction was a pocket universe inhabited by characters from works of fiction, mythology and folklore. The Gods of Ragnarok created the Land for their own entertainment, but grew tired of its amusements and abandoned it for other things. (PROSE: Conundrum)

History

The Second Doctor's adventures in the Land

The Doctor first visited the Land of Fiction in his second incarnation shortly after defeating the Dominators on the planet Dulkis. To escape a volcanic eruption there (TV: The Dominators), he flipped an emergency switch in the TARDIS. The ship materialised in a White Void inhabited only by White Robots and a disembodied force that invaded the minds of the travellers. The crew returned to the safety of the TARDIS, which appeared in a Black Void. The TARDIS appeared to explode, leaving Zoe and Jamie clinging to the TARDIS console, spinning in space and the Doctor floating nearby, seemingly dead.

After a dream-like interval, the travellers found themselves in a world called the Land of Fiction, without the TARDIS. The White Robots re-appeared, this time as Clockwork Soldiers. In the Land, mythical and fictional characters such as Lemuel Gulliver and unicorns had a physical existence, as did puzzles, riddles and puns. (TV: The Mind Robber)

Bernice Summerfield, on a mission at the behest of the White Guardian encountered the travellers as they wandered a maze. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)

They found this realm under the control of an unseen presence known as the Master of the Land. He attempted to turn Jamie and Zoe into fictional characters and to trick the Doctor into assuming his place and rule the Land. A futuristic computer, the Master Brain, had forced the Master of the Land to be its slave.

The Master of the Land was, in fact, a benign old man, a writer of boys' fiction from Earth in the year 1926 who had also been trapped in this universe and taken over by the Master Brain. Zoe and Jamie overloaded the Master Brain's systems, destroying it and freeing the old man from its control. Once the Master Brain was destroyed, everything vanished, the TARDIS re-assembled around them (TV: The Mind Robber) and they found themselves returned to the normal universe. (TV: The Invasion)

For some time there was ambiguity as to whether the travellers had simply imagined the Land of Fiction. However, later accounts more or less confirmed the Land of Fiction as "real".

The Second Doctor later sent himself back to the Land of Fiction to retrieve his recorder, but instead encountered Goth, who sent him to meet his future self to help deal with Omega. (PROSE: Future Imperfect)

Sixth Doctor in the Land

The Sixth Doctor arrived in what appeared to be the highlands of Scotland in 1780 to find an older Jamie McCrimmon, who, under the alias of the ruthless Black Donald, led a group of rebels in fighting the Redcoats. Jamie, despite having no memories of the Doctor due to the Time Lords' mindwipe, agreed to journey with him through events involving what seemed to be advanced, oil-pumping technology from 1884 on the moors, the mysterious Overlord, who was after "black water", and the creation of the Red Caps. (AUDIO: City of Spires)

Jamie accompanied the Doctor into what they realised was the Land of Fiction, where they seemed to have become involved with the RMS Titanic on 14 April 1912, which abruptly became the similarly ill-fated, but literary Titan from 1898. The adventure continued in Captain Nemo's famed submarine, the Nautilus, which faced an attack from a giant squid. (AUDIO: The Wreck of the Titan)

While facing clockwork soldiers, Jamie found an unaged Zoe Heriot, whom he didn't remember. Zoe helped return a flood of Jamie's memories with the data clusters. Jamie and Zoe met up with the Doctor and an interdimensional secret agent version of the Artful Dodger. After Oliver Twist was found to have become a partly-converted Cyberman, the group travelled to the fairy-filled Magic Forest where they met an armoured Lt Alice Liddell in the company of Dracula. The group was attacked by cyber-converted Wagnerian Valkyries. Coming across Sleeping Beauty and her spindle, like Alice, Jamie was found to be fictional, with blood of black ink, even though he had believed himself to have been a real person with a full life. The Doctor told the fictional characters to exercise their free will regardless. Jamie was rescued by the Doctor from metafictioning himself out of existence by the Cybermen in a glass cupboard.

Cybermen in the Land of Fiction. (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen)

The fictional Jamie was upset about the Doctor never coming back to his companions and worried the Doctor had never checked on the real Jamie, who might have been hanged by the Redcoats after the Battle of Culloden. Moby-Dick was discovered to be cyber-converted and Cpt Long John Silver's Hispaniola faced sinking from its torpedoes, but they were saved by Cpt Nemo and Rob Roy MacGregor, who returned the barnacle-covered TARDIS to the Doctor.

The Mistress of the Land of Fiction was the real-life, older Zoe, who had found out she had mysteriously aged two years and captured in a Cyberman attack on the Wheel. When Zoe's memories were triggered, she sent the Cybermen into the Land of Fiction and brought the Doctor there to defeat them, creating Jamie as a friend and as a mystery to solve. After a Datamat, which looked similar to a Cybermat, started climbing up Jamie's kilt, the Zoes were told to work on writing the fictional Cybermen, who had been converted from fantasy creatures, out of existence. Cpt Nemo, finding himself with a cyber-converted Dracula, was rescued by the soon-to-be-killed Karkus, sent by Zoe. The Doctor used the Datamat to erase the fictional Cybermen from existence. The fictional Zoe was killed. Alice was elected to be in charge of the Land of Fiction, as Jamie was more of a fighter. Jamie told the Doctor to find the real Jamie if he ever found himself in the Scottish highlands again. Zoe was rescued by the Doctor, but in doing so, her memories were lost to her again. (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen)

The Seventh Doctor in the Land

Years later, as part of his elaborate scheme to gain revenge on the Doctor, the Monk reactivated the Land and installed Jason, a mentally unstable boy from 1993 Earth, as its new Master. Jason constructed a town called Arandale, inhabited by various fictional characters such as the White Knight and Dr. Nemesis. He trapped the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Benny in this scenario. By tricking Jason into introducing highly disruptive McAllerson's Radiation into the Land, the Doctor escaped. At his request the Time Lords placed beacons around the Land to warn away other travellers in space and time who might become trapped there. (PROSE: Conundrum)

The actions of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart to time travel (PROSE: Set Piece) created a space-time anomaly which allowed energy from the Land of Fiction to bleed into the real universe. This created the Miracle, an energy source which for a time sustained the dying planet Detrios. It also re-activated Jason, who sought to gain revenge on the Doctor, by creating a fictional version of him, Dr. Who. Jason employed Dr. Who in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. Although the Queen was killed by Dr. Who, Jason's distaste for bloodshed made him use his powers to restore her to life. Jason helped the real Doctor seal off the anomaly, after which the Doctor wiped Jason's memory and returned him to Earth. (PROSE: Head Games)

Shortly after Romana became President of Gallifrey, one of the items on her agenda was to annex the Land to the Matrix. (PROSE: Happy Endings)

Other adventures

The Master visited the Land of Fiction and destroyed a council of 19th century literary villains who resided there. (COMIC: Character Assassin)

After her companion Panda was lost in the Time Vortex (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion), the renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme searched for him in the Land of Fiction. (AUDIO: The Claws of Santa)

Behind the scenes

• In a possibly apocrycyphal promotion for the Script to Screen competition, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams became trapped inside the Land of Fiction (although it physically resembled the White Void) and asked for English schoolchildren to help develop an adventure for him so he could escape.