Time Rift (fan work)
Time Rift was a four-part fanmade Doctor Who serial released in June 1996. It was directed and cowritten by Jonathan Blum, who also starred as Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor while fellow cowriter AC Chapin stepped in for Sophie Aldred as Ace. The story also featured American stage actor Itzy Friedman as a new incarnation of the Master.
Premise[[edit] | [edit source]]
Set in Washington DC in the then-"near future", the serial involved the Doctor being dispatched by the Time Lords to deal with a time rift threatening the lives of millions. He finds himself at a crossroads when he discovers that the Time Lords actually want him to ensure the rift does detonate and take millions of lives with it, rather than close it — and him considering the option puts him further at odds with Ace. The American branch of UNIT was featured, under the leadership of Brigadier Adrienne Kramer (Marsha Twitty), alongside a cyborg Dalek Killer transported back in time by the rift. The American UNIT's scientific advisor, "Doctor Black", also revealed himself to be the Master, resurrected from his death (ostensibly in Survival) by the Time Lords and despatched by them to keep an eye on the Doctor — but who naturally has an agenda of his own.
Connections with the licensed DWU[[edit] | [edit source]]
Kramer would go on to appear in a major supporting role in Vampire Science, a licensed BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel cowritten by Jonathan Blum, where she referenced the events of Time Rift as a prior encounter between her and the Doctor. Still under license from Blum, Kramer would go on to reappear in later Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Unnatural History and in multiple instalments of the Lethbridge-Stewart series.
Additionally, the plot point of the Master being resurrected by the Time Lords would later be echoed in the Doctor Who TV story The Sound of Drums, although it and subsequent sources building on that reference naturally held this resurrection to occur at some point after the events of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie as opposed to Survival.
