Alternate timeline (Father's Day)
In an alternate timeline, Peter Tyler never died in a car crash. Instead, his daughter, Rose Tyler, used the Ninth Doctor's TARDIS to go back in time and save his life. (TV: Father's Day [+]Loading...["Father's Day (TV story)"]) The event "appear[ed] fleetingly" on UNIT's files, as 1987/11-Be3a. (PROSE: Rose Tyler [+]Loading...["Rose Tyler (short story)"]) It was known as the Reaper Incident to the Time Lords. (PROSE: TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The TARDIS Key","page":"32","chaptnum":"III","1":"TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual (reference book)"})
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
Witnessing the event[[edit] | [edit source]]
Initially, Rose asked the Ninth Doctor to take her back to the day that Pete died, 7 November 1987, so she could be there with him, given no one was until the ambulance arrived, by which time he had already died. The Doctor agreed. The pair witnessed as Pete exited his car and was run over by a young driver, who quickly sped away in panic. However, Rose was distraught at witnessing the event, running away, unable to will herself to be with him. She confessed her regret to the Doctor, desiring to try again. (TV: Father's Day)
Interfering[[edit] | [edit source]]
Reluctantly, the Doctor took Rose back to when her father died one more time. They waited out of sight from their past selves, who were still witnessing the event. The Doctor informed Rose they could not risk another return and must wait for their past selves to run off before Rose could intervene. However, Rose impulsively ran out, in front of her past self and saved her father's life, pushing him out of the way. The effect of such a change caused the Doctor and Rose's past selves to disappear.
Rose and the Doctor then accompanied Pete into his house. Once alone, the Doctor chided Rose for her actions, remarking that her change to time would lead to catastrophic results. He eventually left, claiming he was leaving her there. Angered, Rose dismissed his threat and spent the day with her father, getting ready for the wedding he was meant to go to had he not died.
They arrived at the wedding, where the guests present revealed they had lost contact with others meant to come. People around the world began to mysteriously vanish. In a park, a young Mickey Smith fled after the other children also disappeared. Rose and others found their phones would only repeat the same message over and over when they tried to ring people: "Watson, come here, I need you," the very first thing said over a telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.
The Doctor, upon returning to his TARDIS, found the interior had been taken out of time. Realising what was occurring, he raced to the church. Rose also met her mother, Jackie Tyler, and her younger self, discovering her parents' marriage was not as idyllic as her mother made her to believe. The Doctor arrived shortly after, saving Rose from a Reaper. The guests fled into the church, as its age acted as a shield against the reapers. However, it wouldn't last as the Reapers gained more power as they consumed more people. The Doctor guessed the only survivors on Earth were people like them in similar old buildings.
Over time, the Doctor revealed to Rose that saving her father had enabled the Reapers to infest reality, where they would cleanse it of everything to fill in the void made by her saving Pete. However, he refused to let Pete die again, attempting to save everyone by using his TARDIS key to pull the TARDIS back into their timeline. However Rose accidentally touched her younger self, enabling a Reaper to enter the church. The Doctor then sacrificed himself and his TARDIS to destroy the Reapers, their last hope lost. The Reapers eventually consumed the whole world. (TV: Father's Day)
Negation[[edit] | [edit source]]
Later, Pete noticed the car from earlier that day was stuck in a time loop, driving round the church only to vanish. He figured out that the only way to restore the timeline was to allow the car to run him over. He told Rose, having understood the Doctor had figured it out also, but tried to find another solution to spare Rose losing her father again. After saying goodbye to Rose and Jackie, Pete ran out into the road, avoiding the Reapers and allowed the car to kill him.
As such, a new timeline was created. This time, Rose was by her father as he died, outside the church rather than his house. The driver stayed in the new timeline, allowing everyone to know who he was. (TV: Father's Day [+]Loading...["Father's Day (TV story)"]) According to the Time Lords, Pete's self sacrifice reset the timelines and restored established history. (PROSE: TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The TARDIS Key","page":"34","chaptnum":"III","1":"TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual (reference book)"})
Aftermath[[edit] | [edit source]]
A video taken at the wedding inside the church captured the appearance of the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler in some frames; this video would eventually make its way into Jackie Tyler's possession, and, in 2006 when she was going through some "old things", she found the tape and lent it to Mickey. Mickey wrote about the video on Who is Doctor Who?, theorising the Doctor may have been "meddling with how history should be". (PROSE: Essay Competition [+]Loading...["Essay Competition (short story)"])
At around the same time, on the secure operations board on UNIT's website, Sgt Catherine Petts posted a report on Rose, detailing that the "Temporal Event", documented as "1987/11-Be3a", appeared on UNIT's files "fleetingly", containing a "cluster of reported anomalies" including flying beasts and missing people. Catherine Petts wondered if this was why the Doctor was interested in Rose. (PROSE: Rose Tyler [+]Loading...["Rose Tyler (short story)"])
Rose later told Jackie she changed history so she was at her father's side as he died, rather than not so as originally occurred, in an effort to prove to her mother how wonderful the Doctor was. (TV: The Parting of the Ways [+]Loading...["The Parting of the Ways (TV story)"])
At some point, this event was recorded as "the Reaper Incident" in the Time Lords' book TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual. (PROSE: TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The TARDIS Key","page":"32-35","chaptnum":"III","1":"TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual (reference book)"})
