Stop the Pigeon was the fifth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips. It was written by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry. It featured the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
Summary
The Seventh Doctor and Ace learn of a property in Croydon where a tree just vanished into thin air and decide to investigate. They soon discover Joe Dakin, an unwilling time traveller who has been forced to transcend the dimensions by some exterior force. The one responsible soon reveals itself, a biomechanical Virgoan space probe in the form of a pigeon that has been sent to repair temporal glitches and anomalies yet was invaded by a Krynoid influence while on Melandra IV, the battle for control being amplified across any surrounding machinery and vegetation. The probe transports Ace and Joe eighty years into the future where they discover the Master has been sucking the elderly dry, using their life-force to sustain himself and stave off the curse of the Cheetah World. His stock never fades as he fools people into handing over their loved ones with the promise that they will be rejuvenated. He merely uses the Virgoan probe to send hypnotised innocents back in time to collect the elderly when they were infants, thus keeping the illusion alive. The plan falls through when the battle is amplified across the retirement home causing all the machinery and vegetation to tear each other apart and leaving the entire facility nothing but rubble. The Doctor is left to clean up the mess as the Master escapes yet again.
Characters
- Seventh Doctor
- Ace
- The Tremas Master
- Joe Dakin
- Garth
- Krynoid
- Dee Matthews
- Jackie
- Otto
- Tasmin Henderson
- Nick Henderson
References
- Joe works for a company called Innovations Unlimited.
- The pigeon had recently made a trip to Melandra IV, which was under the grip of a Krynoid attack.
- The pigeon is a Virgoan.
- The Master uses the alias Dr Howard Chithros.
Notes
- The title of the story is a reference to "Stop That Pigeon", the theme song to the 1960s cartoon series Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines.
- An audiobook reading of the story, read by Sophie Aldred, appeared on the BBC sampler Tales from the TARDIS Volume 1.
- The Master being somewhere other than America in 1957 after being infected with the cheetah virus contradicts his own statements in PROSE: First Frontier about escaping Cheetah World with the aid of a Kitling to the aforementioned time period.
Continuity
- Krynoids first appeared in TV: The Seeds of Doom.
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