Wolfsbane

Jacqueline Rayner

2003

On its way to answer the Brigadier's emergency beacon, the TARDIS stops off in the woods. Believing they're at their destination, Harry and Sarah Jane left. Finding it colder than it had looked on the TARDIS' scanner, Sarah Jane went back in the TARDIS to get a warmer coat leaving Harry outside. He had to watch it disappear in front of his eyes.

When it became clear it wasn't going to be coming back any time soon, Harry realised that he would have to make his own way in this world that was busily counting down to World War 2. But when a scream echoes round the forest, its his training as a medic that causes him to blunder through the forest to find a young woman with her throat torn out. Even as he works on a forlorn hope to save her life, others find the dying girl. While she might be known to the locals, this stranger bent over this latest eldritch death was not and the mood was growing ugly for Harry before he was rescued by someone calling himself the Doctor.

But not Harry's frizzy haired, long scarved Doctor, nor did he appear to have any recollection of Harry that he ought to if he was a future incarnation of the Time lord, nor did he seem to have any knowledge of time travel.

It was the Doctor who introduced Harry to the local squire, his mother and the German cousin. On learning that the squire's fiancée had recently died, Harry reckoned that a stiff upper lip was one thing, but this one was virtually ossified.

With the local flora apparently going crazy around them, the Doctor and Harry know something is coming to a head, but Harry finds the tales of werewolves difficult to believe. Until he's forced to sit through a transformation, that is (not a pleasant sight!). And just what part does the strange boy Godric have to do with the deteriorating situation? Even with the strange things that have already happened to him, Harry finds it difficult to believe in his tales of Camelot.

With its mixture of ancient fantasy and modern technology (though not too much of the latter!) this is a Doctor Who in the classic mode, not dependant on the technology to drive the storyline.

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