Power to the People (short story)
Power to the People was a short story published in Doctor Who Magazine 114. It featured the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown meeting God. Unusually, this was not eventually revealed to be some lesser alien entity posing as God, although the Doctor and Peri find what they learn about what God is and why He created the universe in the first place to be disturbingly mundane.
Summary
The Sixth Doctor and Peri are in the TARDIS discussing "what-if's" to do with collapsing time-streams. They are interrupted by a voice who claims to have "created the creator", a being who has had a guiding and protective interest in the Doctor that goes back to before he left Gallifrey. The being claims to have made the Universe in a science lesson and placed a barrier around it to protect it from others of its kind and itself. Halfway through its existence it needed to have its Heart replaced. To this end he gave a Key into the charge of a Guardian of the Universe sealed inside.
Unfortunately the Guardian split in two: Black and White. They were too busy fighting each other to fulfil their purpose. The being has chosen the Doctor, whom he has watched out for, to complete the task and renew the Universe's Heart.
The key to the Heart had already been used, having been collected by the Doctor; having once held the Key, he retains the power to open the lock of the heart. The White Guardian once had been given a dud key that only lasted a few years, not the intended half-life of the Universe.
The time has come for the Heart to be replaced. With the Doctor's agreement, the TARDIS doors open on a grey place. The Doctor and Peri pass through the door and avoid dark rooms with walls of sharp teeth and dark fears, illusions of foes fought: Daleks, Cybermen, Davros, and a postmistress from Littlehampton telling the Doctor he hasn't paid his stamp money. The fact that this last vision does not match to any of his own fears makes the Doctor suddenly realise that the illusions are simply an artificial, fallible defence mechanism. They find a pedestal in an empty room with a brown parcel. Underneath is a small hatch which has rusty cylinders in it with the letters E,V,E,R,,R,E,A,D and Y barely visible.
The Doctor replaces the old batteries with new ones he has been given and states this knowledge alone is dangerous. The being hears him and agrees...
Back in the TARDIS the Doctor is trying to read a book. He is interrupted by Peri, who wants to ask him something about Time — but she's forgotten what it was.
Characters
Worldbuilding
- Trying to understand bootstrap paradoxes, Peri makes up a hypothetical scenario about H. G. Wells.
- One of the nightmarish visions the Doctor has is of Professor Findle, one of his teachers at the Academy, chiding him for his tendency to "meddle".
Notes
- This short story was the runner-up in the Over 15 Category in a competition run by Doctor Who Magazine in 1986 and printed in DWM 114.
- Written by reader Ian Marchant (who failed to enclose his address), the story ran to nearly three pages and was illustrated with two pictures by regular magazine artist John Ridgway. Illustrating the scene of the Doctor being frightened by psychic visions of his worst fears by the defences placed by God around the "heart of the universe", it added a Zygon, Draconian and Sontaran to the Daleks, Davros and Cybermen mentioned in the text. On the other hand, it omitted Professor Findle and the fictitious postmistress.
Continuity
- God claims that he helped the Doctor when he first fled his homeworld in the stolen machine, (TV: The War Games) by jamming a guard's staser at a crucial moment. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
- God also says that he was the one who arranged for the Doctor to recover his recorder at an opportune time while he was combatting "the threat of Omega". (TV: The Three Doctors)
- God and the Doctor discuss the Doctor's prior association with the White Guardian in the quest for the Key to Time. (TV: The Ribos Operation, etc.)
- This account claims that the Guardians were twin emanations of God, to whom he entrusted in the Key. The Scrolls of Gallifrey gave a similar explanation of the Guardians, though it named their originator and the builder of the Key as Rassilon. (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey)
