As Rassilon and Romana went to greet the Thanakians, Miss Tarae saw the Doctor talking with Amy, Lurra Rus, and Susan. “Grandfather,” said Susan, unaware of Miss Tarae’s presence, “I still don’t understand why she’d do that!”
“Well, she justified it as the Lie Gallifrey was Built on,” replied the Doctor. “As humans of the 21st century are wont to say ‘cool motive, still murder’.”
“Telling your granddaughter about what happened to our home?” asked Miss Tarae, startling everyone.
“…Well, she deserves to know the truth,” remarked the Doctor.
“What is the truth but a mere interpretation of the facts?”
“That may be,” remarked Susan, “but the truth is an interpretation worth upholding.”
“Oh? So you know about what the Doctor did? What sparked the Time War?”
“I still hold that it was that mission during the last days of the Thousand Year War on Skaro that sparked the Time War,” remarked the Doctor.
“Oh, come now,” chuckled Miss Tarae. “Giving your own granddaughter an incorrect interpretation of the facts? We both know it was Skaro’s destruction.”
“Destruction?” asked Amy. “But we were ON Skaro.”
“A rebuilt Skaro, yes,” replied the Doctor. “The Daleks managed to restore it thanks to their time travel capabilities. But I DID turn Skaro’s sun into a supernova.”
“What?! How?!” asked Susan.
“Through the Hand of Omega,” explained the Doctor. “I knew a wicked race of time travelers would try to use it, so I had the Hand turn the sun of the offending race into a supernova.”
“And that race of wicked time travelers turned out to be the Daleks,” guessed Susan. “But where does Miss Tarae fit into all that?”
“Further along into Skaro’s past,” replied Miss Tarae. “What if I were to tell you that the High Council used me as a sacrificial lamb?”
“What?”
“Not entirely a correct interpretation,” remarked the Doctor. “But the High Council DID make a metaphorical deal with the Devil.”
“I’d hardly call it metaphorical, considering the Daleks ARE the Devil,” scoffed Miss Tarae. The Doctor drew in a breath before continuing.
“When she was the Master,” she said, “Miss Tarae had used up all 13 of her regenerations. She wasn’t technically a Time Lord. She possessed the last Keeper of Traken. To top that off, she was dying, infected with a cheetah virus that was slowly turning her into an animal. Romana and the High Council saw this as an opportunity. She called it the Act of Master Restitution; a bid to try and stop a war between us and the Daleks.”
“I was at the end of my tether,” interjected Miss Tarae, “and the High Council saw me as the ideal man for that suicide mission!”
“No!” argued the Doctor.
“Yes,” countered Miss Tarae.
“It wasn’t as clear-cut as that! I know Romana-!” insisted the Doctor.
“DON’T LIE TO ME, DOCTOR!” Miss Tarae grabbed the Doctor by the collar of her coat and pulled her close. “I was expendable! Some sugar-coated promise of a new regeneration cycle for ‘helping the cause’! But all they really wanted was to kill two birds with one stone! Romana told you every single detail of the plan! You knew I wasn’t going to be walking away from Skaro alive, didn’t you?!”
“…Yes,” admitted the Doctor.
“And the deal was struck!” hissed Miss Tarae. “Go on, Doctor. Tell them all! Tell them the details of that failed deal!” She flung the Doctor to the ground. Lurra Rus helped her up. The Doctor adjusted her coat and continued.
“Miss Tarae was sent back to a period before Skaro’s destruction to broker some form of peace treaty with the Daleks, to try and avert any of the future events from happening and starting a war.”
“But that’s breaking the cardinal rule of time travel!” protested Susan. “The High Council would never allow something like that! They’re not Earth politicians!”
“My dear Susan, whether from Earth or Gallifrey,” said the Doctor, “politicians are a stuffy bunch who will stop at nothing if it means not getting their hands dirty, even if it meant breaking a rule or two. After I destroyed Skaro, the Time Lords knew that any surviving Daleks would see it as an obvious act of aggression and would come here to destroy us.”
“Why didn’t they send you?” asked Amy. “You’re the one that knows the most about the Daleks.”
“They would have killed her on the spot, and the High Council knew it,” replied Miss Tarae. “No, I was considered expendable, and I already had dealings with the Daleks. President Romana felt that would play in Gallifrey’s favor. Doctor, do you know what happened on Skaro?”
“You were executed and somehow transferred your consciousness into a Deathworm Morphant,” answered the Doctor.
“Oh, how naïve,” remarked Miss Tarae. “Although, I suppose I should be grateful for their lack of morality. If only they just killed me. No, the Daleks wanted to know how we work.”
“How we work?” asked Susan.
“Regeneration, my dear,” explained Miss Tarae. “And our sensitivity to time! They must have learned a lot from me.”
“Experimentation!” shuddered the Doctor.
“They did things to me that even YOUR nightmares could not conceive, Doctor! Thank goodness I plucked a jarful of Deathworm Morphants from the swamps of Skaro. They spliced my DNA with other creatures and subjected it to different forms of radiation while I experimented on the Morphants. Only one impossibly strong Morphant could house my consciousness! …On the subject of Dalek experiments, even I learned some things I didn’t think were possible. For instance, did you know that gamma radiation accelerates the regeneration process?”
“But Grandfather just said,” interjected Susan, “that you were possessing a non-Gallifreyan.”
“Yes, and that’s what prompted my execution,” remarked Miss Tarae. “For the crime of stymying their scientific efforts, I was sentenced to vaporization. But the last surviving Deathworm Morphant managed to hold onto my consciousness. After a stint with the Doctor after he freshly regenerated into his eighth incarnation, I was brought back to life.”
“And after several plots,” remarked the Doctor, “she was drafted into the Time War like I was.”
“But that whole incident burned in my mind!” hissed Miss Tarae. “The High Council called it the Act of Master Restitution! And it failed! The Daleks still went to war against us! All because of the Doctor selfishly destroying their homeworld!”
“No, Miss Tarae, the war started when I was sent back in time to avert their creation!” insisted the Doctor.
“Avert their creation?” asked Susan.
“So that’s when you first met Davros?” asked Amy.
“Exactly, Amy,” replied the Doctor. “And to answer your question, Susan, the Time Lords foresaw a time stream where the Daleks would destroy all other forms of life in the universe. So they sent me into Skaro’s past, during the nuclear war we heard about. I had learned that the Daleks’ humanoid ancestors were actually called Kaleds and they produced a madman called Davros. In a bid to win the war with the Thals, Davros accelerated the mutations of his people and slapped them into a metal war machine, the means of locomotion based on his old chair.”
“You mean this Davros character was a halfway point between the Kaleds and the Daleks?” quizzed Susan.
“Exactly.”
“Hold on, I saw him with legs,” said Lurra Rus.
“He didn’t used to have legs, or hair, or a left arm,” replied the Doctor. “A Thal shell packed with radioactive isotopes ruined his body, but he was alive. His chair acted as life-support, but his hatred kept him alive up until he stole some of my regeneration energy.”
“So he’s got two legs these days?” asked Miss Tarae. She then realized something. “Wait a minute-!” she snarled at the Doctor.
“Miss Tarae,” interrupted the Doctor, “unlike you, I don’t force others to fix my insanity, even if they started it in the first place. Rassilon and Romana have weightier concerns, callous though I may sound. Weightier concerns, I might add, that YOU plopped on our doorstep! We’ve all confessed our sins to you numerous times and offered constructive solutions. YOU are the one that refuted them in favor of conquering the universe. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to puzzle out a new tangle Rassilon left us.”
“Something about this Eye of Harmony?” asked Lurra Rus. She and Amy then realized something.
“Didn’t Rassilon say she used the Eye to power the time scoop and bring Romana and Susan here?” asked Amy.
“She did,” confirmed the Doctor.
“So why make a new one?” asked Susan. “…Unless…” She trailed off in thought.
“Susan?” asked Amy.
“Grandfather, perhaps we should assist our presidents in greeting the Thanakians,” suggested Susan. The Doctor caught onto her granddaughter’s plan.
“I do believe you’re right, Susan. Let’s go, everyone.” The Doctor led the way with Miss Tarae snarling.
“Distract everyone by going off on a tangent, Doctor!” she hissed to herself. “How gutless! And the universe WILL pay for my madness one way or another!”
