In The Realms of the Unreal

Chapter 1

As any self respecting Time Lord will tell you, owning a TARDIS has both a major advantage and a major disadvantage. The major advantage being that you can go anywhere across the whole of space and time at your will. The disadvantage being that if you get successful enough, people will inevitably interrupt your travels to repeatedly ask you for help in solving their problems.

The Doctor himself was now experiencing this very problem. He'd just left his home planet of Gallifrey having prevented his long time arch nemesis from restoring his life force and destroying the planet in the process and was looking forward to a nice vacation only to have his TARDIS drawn off course by a signal. Upon stepping out of the TARDIS, he was not in fact greeted by the Time Lords (as was usually the case in a situation like this) but instead found himself in a chamber surrounded by tall alien beings.

The beings themselves could easily have been mistaken for some sort of demon from Earth's own mythology with their black scaly bodies, horned heads and long whiplike tails. However these were no demons.

"Am I to presume I'm speaking in the company of the Overlords themselves?" the Doctor asked
"You are correct Doctor" said the Overlord seated at the centre of the chamber "We are honoured to have an esteemed hero such as yourself within our presence"
"Well I'm flattered you think so" the Doctor grinned "But I'm assuming you haven't brought me here for an autograph"
"I'm afraid it's a bit more...shall we say distressing then that" The Overlord leader replied" We have news of events on Earth that we feel that you should hear"

The Doctor nodded "Well I suppose it can't hurt. Tell me, what do you know?"

The Overlord let out a deep breath before he began
"On the planet known as Earth in the human date of 2000 AD, a grave darkness is stirring"

Now the Doctor was interested 
"What sort of darkness"

"We are not certain" said the Overlord to the right of the leader "It's some kind of dark force from beyond the realm of human understanding"

The Overlord in the centre nodded "Correct. We are certain that whatever this force is, if it returns to the earth, it could spell disaster not just for the planet, but for much of the universe as well."

The Doctor frowned "Surely beings as powerful as yourselves should be able to handle it without my help"
"We wish it were so" replied the centre Overlord "But we've already tried to intervene on the affairs of the Earth and...well you know how humans are"

The Doctor nodded. The one time the Overlords had tried to contact Earth, they'd approached the most intelligent rational individual they could find. Unfortunately for the poor man, the sight of these huge demonic beings was just too much for his human mind to handle and he'd ended up spending several months in a mental hospital. However it wasn't all doom and gloom as once he'd got out, he turned his experiences into a book and was now making a living as a successful Sci-fi author.

"So what do I have to do?" the Doctor asked
"All we know is that there's to be a meeting of some sort in the earth town of Torquay in the month of February in the year 2000. We believe you're supposed to head there and meet with several others. From there you will be given instructions."
The Doctor shrugged "Well I haven't got anything else planned, so I guess I'll give it a try."
Although the Doctor couldn't tell, he was certain that the Overlords were smiling at him
"That is exactly the attitude we'd expected from the famous Doctor. Good luck to you"


The Doctor smiled back "Thank you. I'll be sure to send you a postcard."
With that, the Doctor reentered the TARDIS and set the controls for the coordinates he'd been given. The Overlords meanwhile returned to their usual studies although hoping that the Doctor's adventure was a success. If it wasn't, there'd be consequences far greater than even they could imagine.

Notes:

In the Doctor Who timeline, this story takes place between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil
The Overlords are from Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End. Their design was based on Wayne Barlowe's depiction in Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials while the person they tried to contact is the universe of fiction's Arthur C Clarke.