Imperial Moon

Christopher Bulis

2000

When the Fifth Doctor takes Kamelion and Turlough to the Moon, it's the late eighteen hundreds and no one expects there to be anything as sophisticated as a Moon base. After all the people on Earth are just going through the great expansion that was brought on by the invention of Steam Power, and a quarter of the planet was under the flag of the British Empire.

What they found was…different.

The TARDIS had materialised in a crater on Near Side but, rather than the lunar regolith and lack of atmosphere they were expecting, the intrepid group of time-travellers find themselves under a huge dome that covered the crater and allowed a flourishing eco-system to exist.

But not only was there an unexpected, but undeniably alien, base on this moon, there was a fleet of spaceships. Oh, granted, a fairly cobbled together trio, but still far more sophisticated than anything available even to the British. But there they were, proudly emblazoned with the Union Flag.

It's clear that something is up, but is it alien interference or the Doctor's memory that marks these vessels as impossible?

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