10 Doctor Who Storylines That Fans Pretend Never Happened
8. Time Lords Are Loomed, Apparently!
The Cartmel Masterplan didn't end with the cancellation of Doctor Who in 1989, though. Platt continued the story arc in books for the Virgin New Adventures range, ending the storyline in the masterful novel Lungbarrow. This book explained that the Doctor was a reincarnation of Aaronovitch's "Other" and wasn't even a Gallifreyan. To restore the central character's mystique, the true origins of the Other were deliberately never explained (beyond stating that he was Susan's biological grandfather). In a few of the New Adventures books, Platt and others also strove to make Gallifrey and the Time Lords seem more alien and more interesting by introducing concepts like "looming". Rather than reproducing biologically, it was revealed, Time Lords produced new generations artificially through genetic looms, a process forced on them by a curse of sterility. Fans at the time were split over whether these changes to the Time Lords and the Doctor's beginnings were acceptable, with some of them interested by the new take on the species and others outraged by the impertinence of the retcons. These days, most fans who even remember just shrug and accept the storyline for what it was, a courageous attempt to make the Doctor more of an enigma and an idea that hasn't been used since.
Mike has lived in the UK, Japan and the USA. Currently, he is based in Iowa with his wife and 2 young children. After working for many years as a writer and editor for a large corporation, he is now a freelancer. He has been fortunate enough to contribute to many books on Doctor Who over the last 20 years and is now concentrating on original sci-fi & fantasy short stories, with recent sales including Flame Tree, Uffda, and The Martian Wave. Also, look for his contribution on Blake's 7 to "You and Who Else", a charity anthology to be released later this year.
You can find him on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/culttvmike
