Stories In Which Hitler Won World War Two - Terrence Dickse - Doctor Who – Timewyrm: Exodus

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Most alternate histories don’t draw in other science fiction elements. Some, like Deighton’s SS-GB are not written by SF authors. It is the science fiction writers who consider the danger of time travellers themselves causing time lines to change course. Ray Bradbury suggested in a 1952 story, The Sound Of Thunder that so much as stepping on a butterfly in the distant past could radically change the present. Other time travel stories have protagonists actively trying to change history. Michael Moorcock’s Behold The Man (1969) even has a time traveller taking Christ’s place on the cross at Golgotha. Ward Moore’s marvellous Bring The Jubilee (1953) has a time traveller from a Confederate Governed US go back and change the outcome of the Battle Of Gettysburg so we got the history we now live and love. Though he has had hundreds of adventures in Time & Space, the Doctor of the Doctor Who stories frowns on actually altering established historic timelines. In the Matt Smith fronted TV episode Let’s Kill Hitler, he stops a time traveller from doing just that. It was Timewyrm: Exodus from 1991, the second of the fifty New Adventures novels produced by Virgin Books, featuring the 7th Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) that dared to explore an alternative reality in which time had changed and it is achieved to a standard way above the quality normally expected in TV tie-in literature. Exodus is the second of the Timewyrm quartet that launched the book series. The Timewyrm is a kind of living Trojan computer virus able to move through the vortex of time and space itself. At the close of the first book, Timewyrm: Genesys, (John Peel, 1991) she was defeated and severely weakened by the Doctor. In Exodus she tries to hide from him in the most powerful evil mind she can find, and she settles on Hitler. Interestingly, she does not shape his destiny. His will is too strong for her and she is dragged helplessly along for the ride through his rise to power. The Timewyrm actually has little to do directly with most events to follow. The Doctor takes Ace to see the 1951 Festival Of Britain only to find the country in the control of the Nazis. The very act of questioning how this came about and trying to investigate why London is so different gets the Doctor and his companion pursued as suspected resistance spies. Worse, their time-machine, the TARDIS has been taken off them by the Gestapo-like British Free-Corps. The atmosphere of a 1951 where any thinking and questioning is regarded as seditious is very Orwellian. (1984 itself may well be regarded by many as an alternative history of life after a Nazi victory). The Doctor now needs to find out from historic archives just how history changed and at what point, and get into the past to put things right again. With rumours of the involvement of some kind of neo-Satanic cult guiding key events in Hitler’s life, the heroes have the clues they need, and in stealing back the TARDIS they are shocked to discover that their main Nazi interrogator from 1951, Hemmings, seems to have a time machine of his own too. He proves to be The War Chief, an evil Time Lord last seen in the Patrick Troughton bow out story, The War Games, and the real villain of Exodus. The Doctor counters his interference by counter-engineering the past himself. The Doctor rescues Hitler when the future Fuhrer is injured during a riot in 1923. He uses Hitler’s gratitude for his assistance to be present at Nuremberg Rallies and in the command centre with Hitler as the 1939 invasion of Poland is launched. The story plays neatly on a struggle between factions manipulating the alternative history timeline and the Doctor generating and maintaining history as we know it. There is no sudden instant event that diverts and re-channels time here, but a desperate long story arc struggle between supporters of two very different opposing futures. The Doctor & Ace find out the War Chief’s plan involves simply using future knowledge of the battles the Nazis lost to ensure the mistakes are not made. The whole Satanic cult charade covers up for a dimensional portal leading to the War Chief’s secret hideaway. Nevertheless, Himmler naively believing in all kinds of occultism, is willing to allow the now captured Ace to be sacrificed for more miracles, but The Doctor uses Nazi paranoia about internal treachery within their ranks to convince Goebbels and other prominent Nazis of The War Chief’s personal agenda. They rescue their Fuhrer from the renegade Time Lord themselves. In a late twist, Hitler admits to knowing he has the Timewyrm in his head and that he is wilfully drawing on her imprisoned energies. The Doctor persuades the Fuhrer to let her go, and tricks the Timewyrm into thinking she can now get into his own (The Doctor’s) mind instead. She is actually given back her freedom. The Timewyrm is now at liberty to go off and get set for events explored in the third book, Nigel Robinson’s Timewyrm Apocalypse, and the Doctor tells Hitler to hold back and hesitate for a while on his plans for immediately invading England. The Doctor & Ace revisit 1951 to assure themselves that history has been put right again. It’s a story with depth, complexity and philosophical dilemmas the TV series could not have handled, and a fine work of SF in its own right, regardless of its television media roots. Arthur Chappell