It's been a couple of adventures since the last time we saw the Doctor and his new, official Companions, and he's intending now to take them to a festival in the American Southwest, 2010. Instead, they end up in a military base, and the Doctor quickly realizes... he's landed them in World War II. And not just any WWII base...
Just when it seems that they're about to be in huge trouble with the commanding officer, a young woman claims that they're there to help her. More than that, however, she knows the Doctor, even though he has no idea who she is.
Though the setting is far removed from 1930s' New York City, the Doctor still comes face to face with an old foe...
Tropes:
- Arc Words: Fixed Points in Time get yet another mention.
- Armor-Piercing Question
- Ax-Crazy: Caan, considering that the members of the Cult of Skaro were intended to be thinkers...
- Badass Boast: Kit delivers one to Caan... only for Caan to show just how un-intimidated he is by a Time Lord who is not the Oncoming Storm.
- She later gets her own back in a very big way...
- Bittersweet Ending: Very nearly hits Downer Ending status.
- Chekhov's Skill: Regeneration.
- Cold-Blooded Torture/For the Evulz: Major Barnes suggests to Dalek Caan that the Doctor be handed over to people in Roswell to be dissected — the suggestion is made to further his good standing with the Daleks. Caan is taken with the idea.
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: The involvement of the Daleks in the Manhattan Project.
- Expy: Kit manages in one episode to make several parallels to River Song throughout said character's run. Kit has a PhD., has met the Doctor before he meets her, has poor relations with her current boss, is a Time Lady, uses a burst of regenerative energy in defense, reveals her identity to the Doctor without doing so to his Companions or the audience, and gives the Doctor a vague but heartfelt warning about the future. Unlike River, however, she does not flirt with the Doctor, has no guilt or regrets in facing him, and does not die in the Doctor's first adventure with her.
- Just to drive the similarities home, the remix uses some of River's tracks from Season 6.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Sec, of course, as well as his "children."
- Have We Met Yet?: The Doctor and Holmes quickly realize that Kit already knows them.
- Heel–Face Turn: Dalek Sec, as per the original story, but rather more thoroughly this time around.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- A character you get to know for one scene only but who is also obviously friends with Kit. His death leaves her seriously shaken.
- Sec for his brother...
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Caan wants to "study" a Time Lord's regenerative use of the Time Vortex? Give 'im the Time Vortex, then...
- Barnes is quite taken with the power of the atomic bomb. The two Time Lords plan accordingly.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The undercurrent of the story at first until Major Barnes brings it to full, ugly glory.
- Kill It with Fire: "Pur-i-fy! PUR-I-FY!"
- Moral Event Horizon (In-Universe): Major Barnes crosses it in a very big way just by opening his mouth, the point where the Doctor's temporarily-three Companions agree that the man is dead.
- Mysterious Past: Kit's an intelligent woman of action who knows Holmes, Watson, and the Doctor. Beyond this, however, not even Holmes can deduce anything about her.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Caan's killing one man triggers a very human response in Sec, and his decision to "study" Kit results in a somewhat happier ending than the original story possessed.
- Oh, Crap!: The moment that Barnes notices Kit's Healing Factor, and Caan expresses interest.
- Older Than They Look: The Doctor can sense that Kit is this, though she's as much a mystery to him as she is to Holmes and Watson.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Subverted in that Kit deliberately drops her Midwestern accent for a middle-class London one, then later switches back.
- Redemption Rejection: Thay, Jast, and Caan, Caan, Caan.
- The Reveal: Kit's identity as a post-Time War Time Lord.
- And then her full identity to the Doctor, though see "The Unreveal" below.
- The Unreveal: Kit's connection to Holmes and Watson.
- Walking Spoiler: Kit — although to be fair, her information is pretty generalized up until her reveal/unreveal, and even then, the warning that she gives is sympathy for whatever is going to befall the trio in the future.
- World War II: One word: Manhattan.
- You Are Not Alone
- You Can't Fight Fate: Kit tells the Doctor that the Daleks will never change — she's from his future, and she knows what becomes of them. The Doctor argues that Time is in flux.
