A short while later, aliens have invaded and it is going down! ...and by it, I mean the population of Shoreditch.
Barbara Wright was left screaming with her back to the door as a Dalek's plunger raised up toward her, Ian was unconscious on the floor, and Susan goes looking for trouble...which she finds as she comes across the Headmaster knocking Ian unconscious and locking Barbara up in the cellar. Using a wooden stick, she conks the Headmaster over the back of the head and helps Ian up. Barbara's screams from within getting their attention. They get Barbara out and seal the door back after, all three utterly terrified as we see a Dalek in full for the first time.
As in Remembrance, the Headmaster gets lambasted for allowing the target to escape. However, the transmat isn't destroyed and thus the flow of the Imperial Daleks continues unimpeded. Susan plans to take Ian and Barbara to 76 Totter's Lane to find her grandfather, but they find him outside the Coal Hill School, speaking to some soldiers who have brought ATRs as part of Group Captain Gilmore's orders. The Doctor has managed to BS his way into being accepted as Queen Elizabeth's royal advisor, Dr. John Smith. However, he does not answer to this name when spoken to, nor as "Doctor Foreman".
With that settled, the Doctor points out that he's detected a transmat beam and that the receiver needs to be destroyed. When he points out where it is, Ian, Barbara, and Susan are less than pleased. After a short shoot out in the corridor that has a pair of dead soldiers and a destroyed Dalek. Gilmore and Professor Jensen arrive just after the transmat gets demolished by another rocket. The Doctor fast talks his way around the lesser intellects, but praises some of Jensen's "later work" while being cryptic as he usually is given future events.
It is here that we finally have Mike introduced, seeing as he did not interact with Susan and the others during the first act. Susan also doesn't get shipped off his mother's boarding house for the evening as Ace did, but Barbara says she'll keep her at her place for the evening. The Doctor pretty much takes the same trek as he does during his seventh incarnation in the main timeline, going to the diner and then later to the funeral home to check on the Hand of Omega. Thinking that the aliens (which he does not, at this point, recognize) might be after it, he elects to take it back to the TARDIS.
Recall also, he isn't aware of the second group of Daleks and thus hasn't planned for an eventuality for them. Radcliff, on the other hand, is still working with the Renegade Daleks and has managed to track the hand as in the proper timeline. Thus, while Mike trails the Doctor, the Headmaster from earlier trails Mike...and meets the same fate as in the proper timeline when the Daleks terminate him as an agent...and also from living.
The Doctor actually sees the fight given that he isn't distracted by the faux funeral, which blows Mike's cover. However, the Doctor is then captured by members of the Association and stuffed in a truck with the intention of bringing him to Radcliff.
Susan, Barbara, and Ian are later contacted by Mike with orders that they're to report to Gilmore. When he asks about the Doctor's whereabouts, they reply that they haven't seen him since last night. Susan does not immediately trust Mike, thinking that he's hiding something. Nevertheless, while he attempts to dissuade Barbara and Susan from coming along by way of sexism, Ian is insistent.
The truck attempting to transport the Doctor to Radcliff gets attacked by the Imperial Daleks, who are after the Hand of Omega. The Doctor manages to escape in the chaos of a shoot out between the Renegade and the Imperial Daleks. The Renegades manage to retrieve the casket containing the Hand and bring it back to Radcliff...who opens it before the Dalek Controller to find that it's empty.
While he wasn't planning for multiple Daleks (or indeed any Daleks as we'll soon find out), the Doctor has managed to have the real casket delivered to the Coal Hill School and put into the hands of Gilmore, with the explicit instructions that it not be opened for any reason.
The Doctor arrives and Mike gets put into custody an episode early after his treachery is revealed. Gilmore declares that his first intention will be to investigate Radcliff and the Association as soon as the Dalek crisis is over, though the Doctor warns him that he may not have the opportunity. It seems there are two Dalek factions out and about in Shoreditch and the Quartermass Rocket Group has apparently confirmed that at least one of them is in orbit of Earth.
As Ace wasn't there to leave her radio in the Coal Hill School science lab, she isn't there to go retrieve it, either. However, like in the broadcast episode, more transmat signals are detected from the School and (between that and radio silence from Gilmore's men) the military arms itself to head in. A battle breaks out between the Imperial Daleks and the military, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan doing their best to stay out of the way.
Rather than the cliffhanger being someone being cornered by multiple Daleks and preparing an ATR, we will end this part with the Time Lords and teachers in the cellar, having found a restored transmat producing many, many more Daleks...all giving their characteristic cry of "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!".
Aaaaand that's where we're leaving off. Things aren't looking too different, though there are some surprises yet to come when we return to this What If?!.
Next time, though, we'll be returning back to the world of Star Trek...going on a little voyage down the Janeway...
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