If it was Adric I think the fans would have been down with it.
‘But Doctor! I know we can never go back and undo what happened with my father on Traken! But surely this is different, he was right there and it can’t possibly effect causality?’
‘Yeah Doctor, how hard can it be to get this bloc back there, I know you keep missing Heathrow, but hasn’t it got a reverse gear?’
‘Nyssa, Tegan, I know how deeply you must feel… and believe me if I could, I would! Now… why don’t we get some rest hmm?’
Later, as the women slept in their rooms, the Doctor eyed the Fast Retirn switch on the Tardis console, and careful cleaned the edges with a yellow duster, peering over his glasses as he did so.
‘There that should do it!’ He announced to the darkened console room.
With a wheezing groaning sound, the Tardis appeared where it been hours ago and no time at all ago.
‘Now I’ll never know if I was right!’ The boy turned from the smoking ruin of the navigational lock, the Earth looming large on the external viewscreen. ‘Doctor you came back for me!’
‘Yes. Well, that’s the thing about a Time Machine, you can always go back when you forget to do something. And well, as I said, my arms are only this long.’
With that the fair haired Time Lord lunged across the room, and with a startled yelp, Adric was prevented from accidentally affecting the evolution of life on Earth with his Alzarian biology. At least, that’s what the Doctor would tell Nyssa, if she wandered past the scanner on one of her night time trips to the Tardis food machine.
