Evitability (short story)
Evitability was the seventeenth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed My Life. It was written by Andrew K Purvis. It featured the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
Summary
The Doctor lands with Ace in the heart of Australia, close to the US-managed Pine Gap military base, the target of protests in 1987. One of the attendees is a young girl (unnamed in the story), who the Doctor knows will inherit powerful psionic powers, powers that will lead her in the future to slaughter all staff on the base. He talks to her and while he doesn't ask that she turn from her anti-militarist beliefs, shows her that her unchannelled passion in that way and at that moment will do far more harm than good. Sensing the future has been changed just by knowing this, she asks to know more about her future life, which the Doctor grants, in a very limited way. She also sees him again in her new future, at an undisclosed time.
Characters
References
to be added
Notes
In the first draft of the story, the Doctor comes across the Fourth Doctor's first scarf in a second-hand stall at the end. This was rejected during editing.
Neither Ace nor the Tardis appears in the story by name or appearance, although both are present. Regarding the former, at one point, the protagonist hears an accent that they have only heard on television and 'the accent sounded upset'.
Continuity
Using her psionic gifts, the unnamed protagonist senses that the Doctor is both impossibly young (the age of the current incarnation) and impossibly old (the age of the Doctor in total). She gives the exact ages reflexively, but forgets both as she says them.
