The Way Forwards (audio story)

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	Second Doctor
	Victoria
	Summer Park Mall, USA, 1986
	Big Finish Productions
	Steve Case
	Nicholas Briggs
	Martin Montague
	David Troughton
	Short Trips - Volume II
	28 February 2011
	ISBN 978-1-84435-548-8
Short Trips
← Previous	1963
Next →	Walls of Confinement

The Way Forwards was a 2011 Big Finish Productions audio short story. It was read by David Troughton and featured the Second Doctor, as played by his late father Patrick Troughton in the television series.

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Summary

Chaos ensues when a young boy called Sherman discovers time travel for a science project.

Plot

Sherman Pegg is participating at a science fair, along with three-hundred and fifty-nine other students. Sherman in unwillingly there, his mother having pressured him into enrolling and the fair being biased, with Sprag High School having the benefit of a former pupil as head of the judging committee. Sherman's entry is based on a theory of time travel and is officially called A Way Forward.

Sherman notices as the Second Doctor and Victoria arrive, observing their odd clothes and the way they look at the entries. Sherman talks to the Doctor, realising that he has found someone who understands his theory.

After requesting permission to make a suggestion, the Doctor makes alterations to Sherman's formula. Suddenly, the boy vanishes and the Doctor realises he understood the changes better than expected and has altered history so that he never attended the fair. Their surroundings change from a mall to a field, to a parking lot, then a forest on fire, underwater, and then back in a field.

The Doctor and Victoria make their way back to the TARDIS. They exit and find themselves on a black rock. Ahead is the Summer Park Mall. The Doctor finds several versions of Sherman from different points in his personal timeline.

Holding a hand each, the Doctor and Victoria take the twelve year old Sherman back to the TARDIS, with the former telling him, once he reversed Sherman's alterations, together they are sure to come up with a winning entry for the science fair.

Characters

• Second Doctor
• Victoria Waterfield
• Sherman Pegg
• Russell

Worldbuilding

• The science fair winners always seems to be from Spragg Highschool.
• Sherman uses a basketball in his A Way Forward machine. He originally wanted to use a meatloaf.

Time travel

• Sherman claims Albert Einstein "lost it with that whole three rivers concept" and that string theory is "too linear", while Sooskin and Witten were "closer still".
• Sherman claims to have started with Peabody's theorem and turned it inside out.
• Sherman creates a paradox, preventing his attendance to the fair where he was given the secret of time travel.
• There are talking gorillas in the world created by Sherman's meddling with time.

Notes

• Although officially titled as The Way Forwards, Troughton reads it without the final consonant.
• Sherman's mention of "Peabody's theorem" is possibly a reference to the time-travelling characters "Mr. Peabody" and "Sherman" from the TV show The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1959-63).

Continuity

• It is remarked upon that Sherman does not say "it's bigger on the inside", when he enters the TARDIS. (TV: Smith and Jones)