Chapter Text
The Doctor bounced the dematerialisation circuit he'd stolen from the Master's TARDIS; getting it had been hard, what with the way the circus performers had aggressively attacked him and Jo, but he'd managed to get it.
As he studied the circuit, keeping it as far from the TARDIS as possible since he knew it didn't work, the Doctor mused on his exile and how it had gone so far. In the two years he'd been exiled on Earth, the Doctor had made great strides in understanding how the Type-40 TARDIS worked even if he hadn't managed to get it working again; the best contribution he'd made was when he'd taken the TARDIS console out of the ship, and hooked it up to the Inferno project's nuclear reactor (he would not think about that horrid mess in that parallel universe, but since he'd disabled so many of the automatic safety systems to work on the console, he knew it was his own fault), but ever since his little side trip, the Doctor had learnt a great deal about how the TARDIS worked, and he lamented he hadn't stripped the console beyond what he'd done in the early days with Susan's help.
Okay, at the time the Doctor had been determined to make sure the Time Lords couldn't track them down; he and Susan had replaced much of the control systems and replaced them with technology from the real-world, the universe outside the micro-universe, and granted while it meant the TARDIS didn't go to where he wanted to go, it had stopped Gallifrey from finding them.
But they'd been on the move, and the Doctor knew if they didn't keep on the move, the greater the chances of the Time Lords finding them and punishing them for absconding like that.
Because of the fact they were always on the move, the Doctor's maintenance of his TARDIS had become non-existent and slapdash. His predecessor was the worst of all, but there was nothing that he could do about it now.
As he held the circuit, the Doctor thought about his next moves; he knew the circuit didn't work in his TARDIS - different refit - and he would need to work on the console a bit before it could even be accepted, although how much of it would work with a more advanced circuit, he'd forgotten; once more he cursed the Time Lords for blocking so much of his memory. It was there, he just couldn't access it.
But as he stared at it, he thought about what he could do with it before the Master tried to get it back and escape from Earth. He had already taken it apart and studied it's workings so he could make some adjustments to his own TARDIS, but he knew there was something else he could do with it.
By jingo, there was something!
The Doctor let out a delighted cry, a new plan unfolding in his mind. The Master's dematerialisation circuit might not work for his TARDIS, but it was still time technology, and you could do a lot with time technology.
Ever since the Monk dropped in and tricked him, and that mess with the Time Bridge he'd built, the Doctor had known he didn't need to use his TARDIS for time travel and bypass his exile.
If he had a different time machine, he could still escape.
His hearts racing, he hurried inside his TARDIS. He started dismantling some of the console, removing different components like the main space time element and other pieces of circuitry before he took them outside.
For the next few hours, the Doctor began dismantling the Master's dematerialisation circuit once more, and he put them all together again before he stepped back from his work. The Doctor had just built what appeared to be a fax machine from the latter 20th century, and he needed to connect the power from the TARDIS to it and the Time/Space Visualiser he still had, and he would have a primitive rudimentary time scoop, one he hoped would work.
-0-
It had taken the Doctor a while, but he'd definitely succeeded in building a small time scoop, that only needed a few adjustments and worked perfectly, and he began scooping up small things, before he began planning something else. With the visualiser's help, the Doctor was able to lock on to the Dalek time machine Ian and Barbara had both used to return to their own time in 1965 (not for the first time, he wished he'd been less stupid at his trial and chosen his current face and the time he wished to reside, but his second self had made such a nuisance of himself it had never once occurred to him the Time Lords would just take the law into their own hands).
The moment Ian and Barbara had gotten away, the Doctor had transferred the bomb he'd made with some of the chemical and electronic supplies he'd kept in stock to 1965 before he rushed into the Dalek time machine, and disabled the auto-destruct.
Once the bomb was disabled in the nick of time - he'd been prepared to send it back to the garage to maintain the timelines - the Doctor looked around the time machine; he still thought it was primitive, rudimentary; the micro universe was crude, basic, and the less said about the taranium this thing was powered with, the better. But the Doctor had finally won. He had his freedom back.
But as he was about to examine the controls, the Doctor went through the possibilities; this was a rare opportunity to learn as much as he could about a different form of time travel. This ship might be crude by Time Lord standards, but it was one of two Dalek time machines which had chased him through the vortex.
If he hid it, studied it, he could potentially not only repair his TARDIS, he might also make a new time machine. The thought of building something from Dalek and Time Lord technology was interesting.