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. (NA: Conundrum)
History
The Doctor's adventures in the Land
The Doctor first visited the Land of Fiction shortly after defeating the Dominators on Dulkis. To escape a volcanic eruption there (DW: The Dominators), he flipped an emergency switch in the TARDIS to escape the lava. Consequently, the ship materialized in a White Void inhabited only by White Robots and a disembodied force that invaded the minds of the travellers. They managed to return 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 transition, 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 (some based on actual beings) had a physical existence, as did puzzles, riddles and puns. (DW: The Mind Robber)
Bernice Summerfield, on a mission at the behest of the White Guardian encountered the travellers as they wandered a maze. (DWM: Time & Time Again)
They found this realm to be under the control of an unseen presence known as the Master of the Land who attempted to turn Jamie and Zoe into fictional characters and to trick the Doctor into assuming the place and rule the Land. A futuristic computer, the Master Brain, had forced the Master of the Land into 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 were able to overload 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 (DW: The Mind Robber), and they found themselves returned to the normal universe. (DW: The Invasion)
- For some time there was ambiguity as to whether the travellers had simply imagined the Land of Fiction. However, later stories more or less confirmed the Land of Fiction as "real".
The 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. (BE: Future Imperfect)
- Although the story states that it takes place immediately after The Mind Robber, it has to take place after The Invasion as the Doctor meets Benton in that story and recognizes him in The Three Doctors.
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 then 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 was able to escape, and 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. (NA: Conundrum)
The actions of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart to enable herself to time travel (NA: 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 the Doctor, Dr. Who. Jason then employed Dr. Who in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. Although the Queen was killed by Dr. Who, Jason's distaste for bloodshed moved him to use his powers to restore her to life. Jason then assisted the real Doctor in sealing off the anomaly, after which the Doctor wiped Jason's memory and returned him to Earth. (NA: Head Games)
Shortly after Romana became President of Gallifrey, one of the items on her agenda was to annex the Land to the Matrix. (NA: Happy Endings)
Rescuing Zoe
The 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 being present on the moors, the mysterious Overlord, who is after "black water", and the creation of the Red Caps. (BFA: City of Spires)
Jamie then accompanied the Doctor into what they realized 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 to include Cpt Nemo's famed submarine, the Nautilus, which faced an attack from a giant squid. (BFA: The Wreck of the Titan)
Jamie, while facing clockwork soldiers, 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 is discovered to have become a partly-converted Cyberman, the group travelled to the fairy-filled Magic Forest where they met an armoured Lt Alice Liddell, who was in the company of Dracula. The group was attacked by cyber-converted Wagnerian Valkyries. While coming across Sleeping Beauty and her spindle, like Alice, Jamie was discovered 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. The fictional Jamie expressed upset about the Doctor never coming back to his companions and worry that the Doctor never checked on the real Jamie, who may have been left to a fate of being hung 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 discovered to be the real-life, older Zoe, who had experienced finding out that she had mysteriously aged two years and was captured during a Cyberman attack on the Wheel. When Zoe's memories were triggered, she was able to send the Cybermen into the Land of Fiction and brought the Doctor there to defeat the Cybermen, creating Jamie as a friend for him 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, who had been sent by Zoe. The Doctor used the Datamat to erase the fictional Cybermen from existence. The fictional Zoe was then killed. Alice was elected to be put 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 the process of doing so, her memories were lost to her once more. (BFA: Legend of the Cybermen)
Other adventures
The Master visited the Land of Fiction and destroyed a council of 19th century literary villains who resided there. (DWM: Character Assassin)
After her companion Panda was lost in the Time Vortex (BFIW: The Panda Invasion), the renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme searched for him in the Land of Fiction. (BFIW: The Claws of Santa)
