Raz, Wander, and Sylvia goggled. “I ain’t never been inside this thing before, Doctor!” yelped Wander.
“All this inside a tiny box?!” asked Raz.
“How’s it bigger on the inside?!” protested Sylvia.
“Time Lord headache physics,” replied Tysar.
“OI! It’s not THAT much of a headache!” argued the Doctor.
“To Time Lords, maybe,” countered Tysar. The Time Rotor then moved up and down.
“Doctor, the Mooplexian homeworld’s on the other side of the galaxy,” said Wander.
“A short hop,” replied the Doctor. The TARDIS then made its usual arrival noise and the Time Rotor stopped. “Now, let’s see if I got it right.” She switched the scanner on and it revealed what the outside looked like. There were creatures on stems with open mouths and eyeballs spilling out of their sockets, feet on their heads, and stringy hair. Raz was holding his head.
“Man, I’m getting a lot of psychic readings here!” he said.
“We made it!” said the Doctor. “Now, let’s plead our case to them.”
“…Doctor, are these REALLY powerful psychics?” asked Tysar.
“Take it from me, they’re the most powerful in this galaxy, on par with Psychonauts like Raz and the Time Lords. …And, sadly, they take a dim view on Time Lords. They’re sure to lash out if I step outside the TARDIS.”
“…Then maybe you should-.”
“I can’t stay in here. I must make the case in person. …Now come along.” The Doctor opened the doors and the group stepped outside to speak with the Mooplexians. “Great Mooplexians,” called the Doctor, “I am the Doctor. I speak with you on behalf of-.”
“TIME LORD!” boomed a voice. All of a sudden, the area around everyone changed.
“HEY! WHAT’S WITH THE PSYCHIC SHOW?!” yelped Raz. The Mooplexians’ heads then lifted away from their stems and turned into neon colors.
“You and your ilk are not welcome here!” boomed one of the Mooplexians.
“I understand our species’ contempt for one another,” replied the Doctor, “but Lord Hater-!”
“The sad man is unimportant!” replied the lead Mooplexian.
“With respect, Great Mooplexians, he is VERY important! He’s gotten ahold of a machine that can clone psychic powers and uses YOUR mental energy as a power source!”
“He will be dealt with in due course! You, on the other hand-!”
“Wander, you and your friends will wait!” boomed another Mooplexian.
“What are you gonna do?!” yelped Wander, terrified at the Mooplexians’ behavior.
“She will represent her species in the trial!” replied the Mooplexian second-in-command. A stone wall then appeared, separating them from the Doctor.
“HEY!” protested Raz. He then fired a psi-blast at the wall, but no dice.
On the other side of the wall, the Doctor was on a podium. “Time Lord, your species stands accused of generating enemies and generally picking on the little folk when we taught Rassilon, Omega, and Tecteun all those centuries ago that such actions made them pathetic!” boomed the head Mooplexian.
“I can assure you, those lessons HAVE been learned!” urged the Doctor.
“Not true!” replied another Mooplexian. “The Last Great Time War and the resulting corrupted Shadow Proclamation is proof that your species would rather die than learn those lessons! Need we name your personal enemies, Time Lord?! You had no one to call friends, just enemies!”
“Not true! For every enemy you name, I shall name all those I call my friends!”
“Impossible!” retorted the head Mooplexian. “The Daleks, the Toymaker, the Cybermen! You had no one!” Images of those enemies appeared. They were images of when the Doctor first met those enemies.
“Then you haven’t probed deep into my mind!” The Doctor conjured images of her first incarnation’s friends. “Ian Chesterton! Barbara Wright! My granddaughter, Susan Foreman! Vicki! Steven Taylor! Dodo Chaplet! Polly! Ben Jackson!” The images of her friends overpowered the images of her enemies.
“…These…these are lies!” protested a Mooplexian. “Time Lords cannot have friends! The Ice Warriors! The Great Intelligence!”
“Jamie McCrimmon! Victoria Waterfield! Zoe Heriot! Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart!” countered the Doctor. Once again, the images of her friends overpowered the images of her enemies.
“The Nestene Consciousness! The Silurians! The Sea Devils! The Master! Omega! The Sontarans!”
“Dr. Liz Shaw! Jo Grant! Sarah Jane Smith! John Benton! Mike Yates!”
“The Black Guardian! Sutekh! Davros! The Rutans!”
“Harry Sullivan! Leela! K9! Romana! Adric! Nyssa! Tegan Jovanka!”
“The Mara!”
“Vislor Turlough! Kamelion! Peri Brown!”
“The Valeyard!”
“Mel Bush!”
“Fenric!”
“Ace!”
Raz clutched his head as the trial went on. “Raz?” asked Tysar.
“The Doctor’s engaged in a psychic duel with the Mooplexians!” replied Raz.
“Is she nuts?!” protested Wander. “She won’t survive a duel with them!”
“You don’t know her mind like I do, Wander,” said Raz. “It’s full of twists and turns even I can’t navigate.”
“RGH! TECTEUN!” challenged the lead Mooplexian as it and its fellows were straining against the Doctor.
“RGHGF! DAN LEWIS!” countered the Doctor, the strain evident on her mind.
“THE NOT-THINGS!”
“RUBY SUNDAY! JOY ALMONDO! BELINDA CHANDRA!”
“RITA REPULSA! GURAST! DARTH VADER!”
“WILLIAM DAVIES! AMY ROSE! LURRA RUS!”
“POISON IVY! LEX LUTHOR! LOKI! DR. DOOM!”
“RAZPUTIN AQUATO! WANDER! SYLVIA! TYSAR!” By then, the Mooplexians screamed both in the mentalscape and the real world. The wall collapsed as an energy wave erupted from the Mooplexian homeworld.
The energy wave washed over the planet Lord Hater and his Watchdogs had conquered. It was pandemonium aboard the Skullship. Commander Peepers saw something on the screen. “SIR!” he warned. “That energy wave’s affected the mental cloning machine we picked up! Its abnormal energies have set it into overload!”
“Flabdrassit, give it to me straight, Peepers!” complained Hater.
“It’s gonna-!” The machine exploded, sending debris across the room. Lord Hater summoned an electric force field in time, not lowering it until the noise stopped.
“…Don’t ask me how,” snarled Hater, “but this has Wander written all over it!”
“For once, I agree, Sir,” replied Peepers. “Written in big, red letters.”
Back on the Mooplexian homeworld, the Mooplexians were catching their breath as the Doctor’s friends were attending to her. “How is that possible?!” asked Wander. “The Mooplexians are the most powerful psychics in the galaxy! You shouldn’t be alive, Doc!”
“I have my ways,” panted the Doctor.
“You…you have friends…” panted the lead Mooplexian. “…How? Time Lords cannot make friends! They’re too arrogant for that!”
“…Did…did that thing just talk?” asked Sylvia.
“We had transcended physical form, Sylvia,” replied another Mooplexian. “Never, in all our lives, have we encountered a psychic so powerful.”
“You want powerful psychics,” remarked the Doctor, “you should be glad you didn’t fight Raz here. But, as you can see, your accusations against my people of us making only enemies instead of friends only hold water on a case-by-case basis. Even Rassilon is learning that lesson. Now, about Lord Hater’s psychic cloning machine-.”
“Our duel has already destroyed it,” said the head Mooplexian. “Now, with all that said…leave. While you, Doctor, proved to be an exception, Time Lords are not welcome on our quiet world. Take Razputin Aquato home and dare not trespass on our home again.”
“…As you wish,” sighed the Doctor. “Come along, everyone.” She gathered everyone into the TARDIS and it took off while the Mooplexians assumed their natural state.
“So, how do we bring Raz back to his time?” asked Tysar. “I don’t think Lord Hater would want us back on that planet.”
“Oh, the TARDIS has other ways,” replied the Doctor as she fiddled with the controls. “Let’s see, chrono-navigation’s calculated and…bingo!”
“So, now what?” asked Raz.
“Now you get sent back,” answered the Doctor. “Good luck, Razputin Aquato!”
“Bye, Doctor! Hey, when you visit the Motherlobe again, give us some warning if you changed your face again, huh?”
“I make no promises on that,” chuckled the Doctor as she flicked a switch. Raz then faded away, waving goodbye. After a few seconds, the TARDIS landed. “There we are! For Wander and Sylvia, I’ve set us on Zorbula V!”
“Ooh! Never been there before!” said Wander, giddy with excitement.
“I have,” replied Sylvia. “You’ll enjoy it, Wander! A nice, peaceful little place!” She let Wander jump on her saddle and take the reins, then they left the TARDIS.
“Bye, Doc!” called Wander. “See you later!” The door then shut.
“…Well, that’s a nice turn of events,” sighed the Doctor happily. “No death and destruction and the Mooplexians learned something. It’s always nice to see higher beings learn something new. Heck, that’s why I left Gallifrey! Us Time Lords never bothered to learn something new! …Granted, I was exiled for a time because of it, but-!”
“Doctor, I hate to interrupt,” said Tysar, “but the TARDIS found a new chronal surge! …Although it seems to be centered around this galaxy early in its history.”
“Let me see.” The Doctor checked the readings and goggled. “…Well, isn’t THAT a surprise! This is before he became Emperor!”
“Doctor?” asked Tysar.
“Hold onto your hat, Tysar,” warned the Doctor. “We’re going to the Clone Wars, a conflict that plagued this galaxy long before Wander was born.”