Let's wrap up this what if scenario!
Ratcliffe's garage becomes an absolute bloodbath as Daleks fight Daleks. The Doctor and Ian manage to escape before the worst of it, but are still witness to quite a few explosions including a few caused by the Heavy Weapons Daleks that are sent in. Unlike in the original timeline, where the Supreme Dalek of the Renegade Daleks was still alive for the Doctor to talk into committing suicide, the Renegade Daleks get slaughtered due to inferior numbers that only get more so as the Imperial Daleks have landed more troops.
However, not all the Renegade Dalek forces are defeated...the little blonde girl has managed to get away in the chaos and is following Mike and Susan. As in the broadcast episode, Susan and Mike end up at Mike's mother's boarding house, where Mike says he intends to keep her until this whole thing blows over. In the traditional 60's style of Who, it seems that she's rather helpless...it seems.
Back at the plot, the Doctor and Ian make it back to the school to find Barbara with Captain Gilmore and the rest. With the help of the two school teachers and both Rachel and her assistant Allison, the Doctor begins to rig up the broken remains of a transmat into a broadcast transmitter. He has a little surprise for the Daleks, he says.
The Imperial Daleks take control of the Hand of Omega just as Gilmore and the military arrive at Ratcliffe's base. Strangely, the Daleks do not seem interested in attacking, instead returning to their ship and seemingly leaving with no further harm done. All's well that ends well and all that, at least as far as Gilmore is concerned.
In the basement of the school, however, the Doctor broadcasts out his message to the Dalek mothership and we get a similar exchange to the one in the broadcast episode, namely the Doctor speaking to the Dalek Emperor...or, rather, Davros.
Davros makes the usual raving proclamations about how the Doctor's appearance is as inconsistent as his intelligence...only this time, the Doctor pulls the rug out from under him.
"My dear chap, I have no idea in the least who you are."
This absolutely stuns Davros as soon as the Kaled scientist can figure out that the Doctor is not, in fact, lying. As the Seventh Doctor says in Remembrance of the Daleks, even the Daleks with their completely insane need to murder all other forms of life, aren't going to just go gunning down people in the timeline all willy-nilly. Especially considering that Earth itself factors heavily into their own history - namely the Dalek Invasion of Earth in the 22nd century.
If he kills the Doctor here, none of the events of their past - or, rather, his past - will occur. Davros may be homicidal, but he's not so stupid as to go needlessly threatening his own existence.
Naturally, of course, the Doctor knows none of this but Davros does...and he orders his forces to fully withdraw...and that's when the Doctor pulls the rug out from under him. Much like the Seventh Doctor, while the First Doctor isn't as much of a careful schemer as his successor is, the Doctor has managed to rig the Hand of Omega to do some damage, namely to create one of it's concentrated bursts within the Dalek vessel. The thought of having a supernova erupt within the ship is not something that Davros is pleased with...and he quickly departs in an escape pod, leaving the Imperial Daleks to be destroyed.
However, despite the fears of the humans around him, the Doctor reveals that he only rigged it for an explosion that would destroy the mothership, not create a new solar body so close to the Earth. When asked about the Hand, the Doctor is pensive as he tells them that it's going back to "My own world, my own time..." and says that it is time for him to go.
When Ian brings up Susan, the Doctor says it's time to go and get here as the pair of them have to leave.
Back at Mike's mother's place, the blonde girl arrives and starts to wreck him with lightning powers much as she did in the original timeline. With him distracted, Susan is able to get to the Time Controller and realizes that it's broadcasting a signal that is keeping her following the Dalek directives. If you recall, the Doctor didn't actually deactivate the Controller back in Part 3 as he did in the main timeline, so I imagine that some standing orders could still be transmitted to the agents of the Renegade Daleks.
Susan manages to deactivate it, which causes the blonde girl to go into fits as she did in the episode. With her out of commission, a heavily injured Mike attempts to turn his attentions back on Susan. He threatens her with his gun, only to be stopped by a sudden strike from a cane that disarms him. The Doctor has arrived along with Ian and the others. The Doctor presses a hand to Mike's head, telling him that he made a very poor choice by harming his granddaughter, and uses his Time Lord telepathy on the young man.
Mike starts going into fits, repeated cries of "EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" as the blonde girl suddenly comes to...and we realized what has happened. Ian renders Mike unconscious, and the Doctor explains that he simply exchanged Mike's mental stability for the damage that the Daleks had done to the girl.
When asked if Mike will recover, the Doctor grimly mentions that he'll live and fails to elaborate any further.
Susan is a bit horrified, understandably, by how her grandfather just forced insanity onto a human being even if he was threatening her life. When told that the Doctor had to use the Hand of Omega to destroy the Daleks, however, she has something else to be terrified by. Susan tells Ian and Barbara what she told them during An Unearthly Child in the original timeline: "I was born in another time, another world." The Doctor adding that they are, in fact, on the run and on their own without friends or protection. Unlike in An Unearthly Child, the Doctor makes no mention of going back.
Instead, they have to leave before their people catch up to them.
In the end, Ian, Barbara, Rachel, and Allison see the Doctor and Susan back to 76 Totter's Lane and are witness to the TARDIS dematerializing. Ian muses on whether or not it's the last time that they will ever see the two again, and wonders just how far the door into the world they've peeked into goes.
A sedated Mike is taken into a van and is to be transported to an asylum nearby, muttering "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" in the characteristic way in his comatose state. He is not expected to recover.
Meanwhile, Gilmore is getting calls from Geneva and from Buckingham Palace about the incident. It seems that radar from several countries had picked up the debris from the Dalek mothership entering the atmosphere. The United Nations has put out a cover story concerning the events in Shoreditch, which have gotten international attention. For his skillful hand in dealing with this matter, it has been agreed to promote Group Captain Gilmore to head the English branch of the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.
Earth has some new enemies in the later 20th century, and it's time that the human race started to build up a better defense to them. They can start, Gilmore is told, by salvaging everything of use from that destroyed mothership...
U.N.I.T. has begun! ...provided we don't have the dating controversy in this timeline. We'll see.
In the depths of space a certain Kaled scientist, a being who is more machine than the man now than he was in the ages past, remembers the day he first met the Doctor at the genesis of his greatest creation. He seethes in his defeat once more and looks forward to the day where he will face him again...and the days that he has faced him before and will again...
...and that's the end of the answer to our question, What if Ian and Barbara never investigated Susan Foreman?. One could, of course, go further into this timeline and see what differences there would be - namely in how the Doctor might use his foreknowledge to defeat the Daleks in their engagements to come - but I think this is a good place to leave things off.
What'd you think of this what if scenario? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin. Next time we return to What Ifs, I'll hopefully have...something a little different planned for you all. See you later! Or earlier! It's all relative, honestly.
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