200133 AD throws The Doctor and Susan forward in time, this time. To the year 200133. now, everyone who has been paying attention to Doctor Who will realise this is thirty three years after the Daleks tried to destroy Earth from the Game Station in Parting of The Ways, the episode in which Nine regenerated into Ten. Nobody said much about what happened to the Earth in the aftermath. I decided to have a go at it.

This story is largely inspired by the map shown in the opening credits of the Christopher Eccleston film Revengers Tragedy, which shows a post apocalyptic British Isles with London and most of the South gone and Liverpool as the first major city to survive. In fact, a more realistic map of what the British Isles would look like if the ice caps melted and the sea levels rose would obliterate Liverpool. It is too low lying on a river estuary. MANCHESTER just survives being quite a bit higher above sea level. The cross on the top of the spire of the church I go to would make it. But just about the rest of Lancashire would be gone.

So when the TARDIS arrives in a strange metal building that is over an expanse of grey sea. It takes a very short time for Susan, a Lancashire girl, to work out where she is. It is the top of Blackpool Tower. This completely freaks her out, not surprisingly. Because she knows that her home town is somewhere under the water. In fact, just writing this story felt rather strange, obliterating so much of my home county is creepy.

Ringway airport, is one of the highest altitude airports in Britain. It was above sea level. And although not an airport any more by the year 200,133, still a transport centre among other things. Grounding the story in places that are recognisable to us in present day lends a realism to science fiction.

And then the return to what is now called the Ghost Station, and The Doctor faces up to his own ghosts as he remembers what happened there. And it is a traumatic thing to have to remember. The Doctor saw a lot of people die. He almost died himself. He only survived because of Rose’s help and then only at cost of one more of his incarnations. So coming back, to find that the station had been abandoned as it was, even the Delta Wave contraption still sitting there, was a shock.

The Doctor wasn’t offering any quick solutions, though. There IS no quick solution to repairing the ice caps. What he offered was a realistic prospect of an Earth-paradise for future generations. Those who worked with him were working for the future generations.

And the Delta Wave Machine? To find out that it didn’t work after all was a relief to The Doctor. The fact that he built a machine capable of killing all life within its range was never really him and that lays one of his ghosts to rest.

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=710322005

http://www.benfieldhrc.org/climate_change/sea_level_rise/sea_level_rise.htm