Archaeologists have long been puzzled by complex temples dating from thousands of years ago. How had primitive man built such intricate buildings?
Mystery solved: Visitors from the planet Exxilon came to Earth and taught the locals how to build, mirroring the structures on their own planet. (Death to the Daleks)
On 5 November 1872, American merchant ship Mary Celeste set sail from New York City, bound for Italy. On 4 December, the ship was discovered adrift, with the crew having mysteriously vanished without trace.
Mystery solved: Trying to elude pursuit by the Daleks, the Doctor landed the TARDIS aboard the Mary Celeste, the Daleks arriving soon after in their own time machine. When faced with the horror of the Daleks, the crew sensibly threw themselves overboard. Along with a Dalek. (The Chase)
The world’s most famous crypto-zoological mystery is that of the Yeti – aka the Abominable Snowman. Possibly bear-like, the ‘Wild Man of the Snows’ is said to inhabit the Himalayan mountain region near Tibet, and fleeting sightings have been made since the 19th century.
Mystery solved: The Yeti were in fact the robot slaves of the Great Intelligence, a malevolent entity that inhabited a Tibetan monastery for about 200 years. Professor Edward Travers took one back to England after his expedition near the Det-Sen monastery (The Abominable Snowmen / The Web of Fear)
Since the 6th century, there have been reported sightings of a strange creature in and around Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Known as Nessie, this creature could be the last surviving example of a plesiosaur or other prehistoric creature. Many have searched, but Nessie has never been found…
Mystery solved: The Loch Ness Monster is a Skarasen, a cyborg hybrid creature that was released into the loch in the 12th century by the Zygons. From their ship deep beneath the loch, the aliens used the savage creature as a weapon towards their goal of world domination. (Terror of the Zygons)
Or
Nessie is the deformed Borad, banished by the Doctor through the Time-lash from the planet Karfel. With luck, the Skarasen may have eaten him. (Timelash)
In the early hours of Sunday 2 September 1666, a fire broke out at a bakery on Pudding Lane in the city of London. The fire raged for three days, gutting much of the capital. Was it the carelessness of a tired baker, or something more sinister that started the fire?
Mystery solved: In the Fifth Doctor’s final confrontation with the alien Terileptils in the bakery at Pudding Lane, a dropped torch started a small fire during a struggle, causing a Terileptil energy weapon to overload and explode. The fire soon spread to the adjacent buildings. (The Visitation)
Or
Perhaps the Fourth Doctor had a hand in the Great Fire… As he and Sarah left the burning priory belonging to the Scarman family, he said he didn’t want to be blamed for starting a fire. ‘I had enough of that in 1666,’ he complained. (Pyramids of Mars)
THE MOVING EARTH
‘The TARDIS is still in the same place, but the Earth has gone. The entire planet. It’s gone.’
The Doctor, The Stolen Earth
The Earth has a habit of not staying in a fixed orbit
2009 – The Daleks dragged the Earth light years away to the Medusa Cascade where it and 26 other planets were used to power Davros’s Reality Bomb. After Davros’s defeat, the Doctor used the TARDIS to tow the planet back to its normal position in the Solar System. (The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End)
2157 – A near thing, but the Earth actually stayed put. The Daleks invaded Earth and used the world’s population as slave workers to mine the planetary core and replace it with a power system so they could pilot it around the universe. Thankfully the Doctor pitted his wits against them and defeated them – it’s only out of politeness that he didn’t stop to ask them why. (The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
2,000,000 – It isn’t just the Daleks that have a desire to get the keys to the planet and take it for a spin. To cover up an embarrassing theft of secrets from the Matrix, the Time Lords used a Magnetron to move Earth two light years away, destroying the surface in a firestorm, renamed it Ravolox, and hoped nobody would notice. (The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet)
c.5 billion – When solar flares finally forced the population to flee the Earth, the National Trust held back the expanding sun with gravity satellites to preserve the uninhabited planet for posterity. Once Earth was finally destroyed by the sun, New Earth was established in the M87 galaxy on a planet that had the same orbit and size as the original. Humans just hate change. (The Ark, The End of the World, New Earth, Gridlock)
TARDIS LOG
Roll up, roll up for a grand tour of the universe. Let us follow the footsteps of the Doctor as we visit the more notable celestial bodies, planets and moons that feature in the TV series. That madman in a box really gets around doesn’t he?
Skaro
Marinus
The Sense-Sphere
Dido
Vortis
Xeros
Aridius
Mechanus
Unnamed planet in Galaxy Four
Kembel
Desperus
Mira
Tigus
Kembel
Refusis II
Unnamed planet (The Savages)
Mondas
Vulcan
The Moon
Unnamed colony world (The Macra Terror)
Telos
Dulkis
Unnamed planet (The Krotons)
Ta
Unnamed planet (The War Games)
Gallifrey
Uxarieus
Peladon