Is there a Season 6b?

Following on my essays on the pedigree of Captain Jack and the War Chief (turns out Jack IS the Face of Boe, according to Russell "Rose Will Never Ever Return" Davies), we tackle the biggie. Season 6b - did it happen?

Short answer: fuck no.

Long answer: oh, all right then.

Season 6b is a theory. Nothing more. A theory to explain two very bad continuity blunders, and like that Minyan ship in Underworld has attracted so many other factoids it seems almost official. Almost.

In The War Games that ten-part-too-few epic that ended the sixties and changed Doctor Who in a way absolutely no one and nothing has managed since, the mysterious wanderer called the Doctor finds another one of his people (who is the Master, remember) selling out time technology in a frankly baffling attempt to conquer the entire universe. As ever, defeating this is not the problem, but we're left with thousands of human soldiers who should really, really not be here. And the Doctor can't take them home.

Desperately, our hero reveals he is a Time Lord, and has to call in his people even though they will brand him a criminal and do unspeakable things to him. The Time Lords sweep in, rewrite history so that the games never happened, and then take on the three people who can know otherwise. MIB style, Jamie and Zoe are sent back in time, mindwiped, so they experienced The Highlanders and The Wheel in Space but didn't join up at the end. The Doctor is exiled to Earth in the 1970s, and regenerated into a form that clearly won't give the Time Lords much bother. All this happens in under an episode and it's heartbreaking.

Yet there are those who insist this version of events - which was scripted, filmed, televised and available on VHS twice over - is not real. In 1995, The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day & Keith Topping printed a section called "SEASON 6(b)" where it is said a whole season of adventures occurs between The War Games part ten and Spearhead from Space part one. This makes sense of two continuity "mistakes" and a bunch of untelevised adventures.

Their theory works on reconciling countless untelevised adventures and basically cramming them into one rather undigestible bulk occuring DURING a regeneration scene. The fact is, why the hell do we accept this awkward alteration of the basic text. See a hypotetical two Doctors story - with Eccles and Tennant, only Eccles is travelling with Jack and not Rose, and at various points mentions the Cult of Skaro and Torchwood. Despite the fact he shouldn't know it. Would we say, "AHAH! There's a missing season around Boomtown here the Doctor and Jack travel alone and find out about the future, but the Doctor loses his memory in that transmat!"?

Or would we say, "What the fuck is the script editor doing?!"

We most likely would NOT say "The Doctor doesn't regenerate in The Parting of The Ways, and has lots of these adventures, then goes back to the TARDIS - when Rose has her hair done - and then finishes changing."

Yet, people, this is what we are meant to believe!

That at the end of The War Games, the Doctor did NOT regenerate! Some claim the whole 'you're making me dizzy' thing never happened - and that's Terrance "Diminishing Faculties" Dicks, who thinks his own novelization is more canonical that the TV show he wrote, and BOTH are wrong!

According to The Discontinuity Guide, the Doctor's "dizziness" was just a scam and in the next room some CIA spooks were offering him a chance. Now, this just seems so sus to me, I feel silly typing it. The Time Lords make it clear that they are neutral, impartial and won't do a damn thing unless you mess about with time, in which case your arse is theirs. It is the Master bootlegging TARDISes and altering the pattern of history that gets their attention, not Phillip Madoc announcing the universe needs an army of deranged ape footsoldiers to keep the peace. The Doctor and the War Chief are Time Lords and thus, treated differently.

Why, oh why, are we to assume that Time Lord justice is somehow on pay per view? If, say, the universe (or maybe the High Evolutionaries) were watching the trial, that might explain why the mock trial is held to prevent Gallifreyan hypocracy from becoming public. But... who was watching? Even insane Tezza Dicks
says Gallifrey at large wasn't even aware of the mass operation. The only people that could be fooled were the viewing public and the three Time Lord judges (one of which looks identically to Chancellor Goth, the other looking just like the Chancellor in The Three Doctors, so they're high up enough to be the ones faking it). So, why fool the audience at home?

There IS no reason!

Malcolm Hulke, Derek Sherman, Terrance Dicks and some other guy wrote the sequence SPECIFICALLY to set up Season 7. At absolutely no point did they think "let's make it ambiguous". Had Jon Pertwee been officially cast at the time, he would have been in Episode 10. Season 6b only makes sense if we assume a bunch of out of control real life incidents were crucial bits of metatextual evidence. After all, the next story, Spearhead from Space, has Pertwee wearing Troughton's EXACT outfit, down to the tear on his pants he got during The War Games.

Yes, there are a few problems - the Brigadier is sore from a story that never happened where the Second Doctor proved totally unreliable, no one wonders where Jamie is, the Autons have met the Doctor before, the Doctor himself is packing a TARDIS locator in his watch... but they're goofs. Plain and simple. Spearhead was Rob Holmes hastily tearing up an old movie script he wrote and adding police boxes and UNIT. If he was trying to be completely original, well, apart from anything else the Doctor probably wouldn't have two hearts.
Until 1994, the idea ANYTHING else happened then what was shown on screen would have been ridiculed. But see how the Season 6b theory gathers momentum! All sorts of things are attributed to a season that was never written, never filmed, or even thought about: apparently Frontier in Space is full of references to it! The Doctor tells Jo about the time he went to a peace conference, and then tells her the plot of Troughton's last ep in such a way to suggest he was actually talking about Trial of a Time Lord. Apparently, these references are accurate depictions of Season 6b stories despite the fact Frontier in Space shows the first story is a joke to calm Jo down and the second is a smokescreen to distract the Master while the Doctor and Jo escape from a cell. And it's JO he's talking to! The companion he is most likely to take the piss out of!

Apparently the Doctor uses the wooden control console room becuase a) there's a recorder there and b) the Doctor says he could never control the TARDIS from that console. Yet the fact there's a recorder next to the TARDIS cricket pavillion does not have anyone say that the Doctor was a rabid cricket fan in Season 6b, just as the fact the Doctor can't really control the TARDIS from ANY console room is ignored (and the fact the Doctor keeps forgotting if the wooden room is the primary or secondary control room).

Pretty much any 'missing adventure' referenced seems to happen in Season 6b. Remember those Dalek tales the Doctor spun Davros in Genesis? 6b. The time the Doctor claims he got injured in Gallipoli and lists off a bunch of other wars he was in, despite the fact HE'S NOT INJURED, JUST FAKING? 6b. Any namedropping done from Third Doctor onward? 6b. The Master? 6b. Terrible Zodin? 6b. Planet 14? 6b...

And this isn't even some theory with weight, like the Time War! The entire Pertwee era screams it never happened, as does the Fourth and the Fifth. Only two books out of the entirety of Doctor Who publishing ever touched the theory and it was from Terrance Dicks! The guy who perpetrated Warmonger and ergo cannot be taken seriously in anyway, shape or form whatsover!

Of course, I can smash this theory to splinters BUT that leaves two indigestible remnants, the ones that started the whole business.

The Five Doctors

and

The Two Doctors.

So...




WHY THE FIVE DOCTORS DOES NOT CONTRADICT THE WAR GAMES
by Ewen Campion Clarke (IQ: 7 1/2)

Ok. Here is the deal. The Spirit of Rassilon blocks the path to Immortality with spirits looking like ex Doctor Who companions. Suffice it to say companions involved in the Game of Rassilon are kidnapped after they parted company. So when the Second Doctor and the Brigadier stumble across Jamie and Zoe, Jamie and Zoe must logically come fromt a point after they left the Second Doctor, and thus have been mindwiped. So when the diabolic duo recognize our heroes, the jig is up.

EXCEPT, we all scream, the Second Doctor died minutes after they were zapped! How the hell can he know that unless, against all odds, he somehow has this adventure in the middle of the last scene of his last episode!

Fans immediately take this as cast iron proof this Doctor survived The War Games and this is a Season 6b adventure for him, like the way the Third Doctor is from a Season 11 adventure, the Fourth from Season 17 and the Fifth from Season 20.

*shakes head in despair*

Did ANYONE bother to watch the Second Doctor in the other scenes in this story? When Charles Daniels noted the little hobo possessed the Crystal of Discontinuity allowing him to remember his own future, he wasn't just mocking this scene!

In The Five Doctors, the Second Doctor not only knows what happens to Jamie and Zoe, he knows what his next incarnation looks and acts like, and that he ends up working with the Brigadier and UNIT for a while, plus fighting Omega the forgotten hero of all Time Lords! Of course, all bar the first is covered in The Three Doctors, where the Second Doctor (post The Invasion) is taken out of his timestream and briefed before being plopped in 1973 to help the Third Doctor fight the most pathetic alien menace ever. On top of that, he and his future self have several telepathic conferences.

Ah, well, er, yeah, the rejoinder goes, but the Doctor wouldn't read spoilers of his own future! Laws of time!

Bullshit. The Second Doctor is the biggest anarchist of them all, and is not basically stupid. You think he didn't notice the fact his next incarnation was marooned on Earth and in contact with the Time Lords? And no sign of Jamie and Zoe? It doesn't take a genius to twig the Doctor was doomed to be caught by the Time Lords and then exiled, and anything the Second Doctor doesn't guess is pretty much told to his face by the Brigadier.

Frankly, had the Second Doctor NOT twigged to the illusionary Jamie and Zoe, it would be ridiculous.

It's clear that at some point after The Invasion (maybe during The Krotons) the Second Doctor is taken out of time to experience The Three Doctors and for some reason returns with memories of his own future. Not long after, he lands the TARDIS in 1985 and reads a copy of The Times and discovers the Brigadier is being honored at a UNIT get together. For a laugh, the Doctor sets the time machine to take him back in time a day and is amazed when it works. He then gatecrashes the party and chats with the Brigadier about stuff that hasn't happened to them both yet, then admits he's bending the laws of time and shouldn't be here at all. The only question is where Jamie and Zoe are during all this. Meantime, at the end of The Five Doctors, Rassilon mindwipes everyone with "temporal fission" (well, if Sarah needs the experience removed, the Doctor certainly does). Thus, the Second Doctor returns to 1985 with no memory of recent events, and lives on naturally only to be taken by surprise as he encounters the events of The War Games.

Ta-daaaah!!!

Thenk yew, I'm here all week...

THE STRESS OF WORKING OUT THIS MESS TURNS THE SECOND DOCTOR'S HAIR GREY...

Some claim nevertheless the Second Doctor is from Season 6b, with even the hardcore fan rationalists saying something like this happens: Borusa used the time scoop to save the Second Doctor at the end of The War Games - not impossible, but it seems a bit much; why not save him during The Space Pirates? - and the Second Doctor, typically, escapes in the TARDIS, and only later was captured when he happened to be visiting another victim (the Brigadier). This means, at the end of The Five Doctors, he was either sent hurtling back to the courtroom to die, or was let loose on Earth. If the latter, 6b.

If we follow this train of thought, we have The War Games ending with the Doctor being kidnapped, The Five Doctors, and then season 6b. This means the Second Doctor is YET AGAIN captured by the Time Lords, who decide to use him as an agent (even though he's proved himself no tool of the man and escaped them half a dozen times on screen alone, thus pissing them off even more than before - but maybe they're desperate, if we assume the Master has turned down the agent option?). The Doctor, presumably mindwiped and not realizing his destiny is to be exiled, agrees. Hmmm. So we're left with the idea that Season 6b could have happened... but this is a hell of a lot to explain a single scene which as already proved, makes sense on its own.

Quite simply, if there IS a Season 6b, the chances are it doesn't feature the events of The Five Doctors. Since the events of The Five Doctors are the second major justification for Season 6b, this idea tumbles like a house of bricks.

All right then you son of a bitch, the ultimate argument growls, explain The Two Doctors.

Bring it on, say I. BRING IT ON!

Season 6b, according to The Discontinuity Guide, begins with the Second Doctor becoming an agent for the CIA and doing their bidding for centuries on his own with his TARDIS under continual control of the Time Lords. Finally, he earns the privelege to get companions and thus collects Jamie and Victoria as companions, and Victoria is briefly absent for the mission we see in The Two Doctors. This explains the inconsistencies in story, like how Jamie can know about the Time Lords when he doesn't know about them in The War Games, or how Victoria can be "dropped off". Of course, this explains why the Doctor never rescues Jamie (the reason why he left Scotland in the first place was because he'd soon end up dead if he stayed) when he gets control of the time machine... assuming it doesn't happen in a missing adventure. After all, the contemporaneous comic strip The World Shapers established that while Jamie was immune to "the Time Lord's machines" and never forgot everything, he was not rescued by the Doctor for Season 6b. Mind you, the same comic thinks the Voord are Cybermen and a very different version of The Invasion was screened.

But does this work?

Let us not forget that Robert Holmes - the Great Kahuna himself who created more of Doctor Who than Rassilon - wrote The Two Doctors in no way as a "Season 6b" story. He intended it from the first to be a story during the TV lifetime of the Second Doctor, not beyond it. The production team added the stuff about Victoria to make it clear this is not an unseen part of the mythos, just a late addition.

Of course, Rob gets some appalling stuff wrong. The Second Doctor doesn't act a bit like himself, the Time Lord plotthread is awkward and it clashes with The War Games. But when interviewed, Rob was firmly of the belief that the only reason the Doctor stayed free for the first six season was, like his next few incarnations, he did the odd job for the Time Lords (CIA branch), who quite typically screwed the Doctor over when the proper authorities caught him. However, it seems they are the ones that got him a relatively light sentence and then freed him after just four years of imprisonment.

Now, who are we going to believe? The writer of the story and architect of Doctor Who? Or Terrance Dicks and his insane belief that printing thirteen pages from his other books into a new volume is worth value for money? The only real, REAL problem is that Jamie shouldn't know about the Time Lords. Well, Rob Holmes took it upon himself to actually novelize The Two Doctors. While his characterization of Troughton's Doctor is awful, at least it's consistently awful, and no worse than the novelizations of Gerry Davis or Ian Marter.


Wiping his hands on his ill-fitting tailcoat, the Doctor turned back to the console and again began fiddling with the vitreous dome that projected from the instrument deck.

That, Jamie knew, was the cause of his ill-temper. He had flown into a rage the moment he had seen it. The device - a teleport control, he had called it - had not been there before... before when?

Jamie struggled to remember. They had been in a strange kind of garden where the grass was purple and there were flowers as tall as small trees. And althought sunlight streamed into the garden, somehow there had been a dense wall of mist all around it. Then three men, tall, wearing yellow cloaks with high collars, appeared out of the mist. The Doctor had bowed deferentially, so they had obviously been chieftains. After that... nothing. Jamie guessed they had placed some kind of spell on him because the next thing he could recall was returning to the TARDIS with the Doctor as cheerful as he had ever known him.

"If I make a success of this mission, my boy," he said, "it could mark the turning point in my relations with the High Council."

Then he had found the teleport control and exploded with rage.


OK, it fits as badly into continuity as the TV version does, but clearly does not show a Doctor as the Time Lords' wipping boy. He's palpably new to all this chicanery, and the heavy implication is that the Doctor has been approached by the Time Lords to do a mission to make amends for absconding. The Doctor's delight is clear as he thinks he won't have to be a wanted fugitive any more; and the Time Lords are clearly shown to be able to zap Jamie's memory. How many other little odd jobs occured with the companions' memories being removed? (For what it's worth, there's no mention of Victoria, the implication this story is set during that fade to black in the first episode of The Wheel in Space... easier to swallow than during the fade to black at the end of the final episode of The War Games.) Of course, novelizations and TV eps are different...

Luckily, some hack called Jared Hansen has transcribed the eps, so let's have a quick glimpse...

JAMIE: Are you sure we've come to the right place?
DOCTOR: Of course I am!
JAMIE: We don't usually get to where you say we're going.
DOCTOR: I got Victoria to where she wanted to go. Though why she wants to learn graphology, I've no idea.
JAMIE: Ah, will we ever get back to her, though?
DOCTOR: Of course we will!
JAMIE: I'll believe that when I see it.
DOCTOR: At the moment we have other things to worry about. Look at this!
JAMIE: Wha'? Hey, I've not seen that before!
DOCTOR: It's not been here before! It's a teleport control! You'd think I'd never flown a TARDIS solo!!
JAMIE: What's it do?
DOCTOR: It gives the Time Lords dual control! Infernal cheek. I shall complain when this is over.

This sequence is interesting for several reasons:

1) Jamie has not been on a Time Lord mission before. He expects the TARDIS to be uncontrollable, and is surprised at outside control.

2) The Doctor is surprised at the teleport control, and furius at the Time Lords running the TARDIS which is odd if he's been doing these trips for ages. He also thinks this is a one-off mission, which he can complain about. His whole demeanour suggests a volunteer who is shocked to discover he isn't trusted.

3) The Doctor finds the idea of Victoria wanting to study graphs ridiculous. Some claim this is a cover story to explain Victoria's departure to a partially mindwiped Jamie... if so, the Doctor is basically screaming it does NOT MAKE SENSE, which is odd...


DOCTOR: And Jamie, don't go wandering off. Stay with me.
JAMIE: Do I ever?
DOCTOR: It has been known. And, er, let me do the talking, hm? All you have to do is to stand in the background, and admire -
JAMIE: 'Admire your diplomatic skills.'

It's clear the Doctor isn't used to these missions, or indeed turning up somewhere deliberately. His running through the 'to do list' clearly has been done many times before, and Jamie is hardly the type to trust the Doctor alone for two seconds. So, either the Second Doctor hasn't been with Jamie for a while and forgotten how he acts or else he's just nervous.

The next bit in Dastari's office is the crucial evidence:

DASTARI: I remember it very clearly, Doctor. You came to our inauguration, bearing fraternal greetings from Gallifrey.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes.. that was before I, er, fell from favour. I - I'm a bit of an exile these days.
DASTARI: Yes, I heard something about that.

Now, the Doctor's first visit to the station was clearly offical business. It must be pre-The Highlanders since Jamie was not involved, and the wanted fugitive is hardly going to say he's an important Time Lord dignitary. Ergo, Dastari met the First Doctor before he left Gallifrey for good. Therefore, the "exile" thing can refer to the fact the Doctor's now a wanderer. OR it could be the fact the Doctor's been caught, tried, and now a CIA Agent.

However, Dastari knows a little about it. Thus, we have to ask: which is the more credible event for the Third Zoners to discover? That the Doctor fled Gallifrey, or that he is now the High Council's bitch? Does he know about the Third Doctor's exile to Earth, since the Third Zoners all know about humanity and the governments expect Gallifrey to turn up at their official dinners? Is it, therefore, the Second Doctor and Jamie out of their own time streams and (like other multi-Doc stories) visiting his own future? Just an idea, but...

DOCTOR: Splendid! We've hit conterminous time again.
JAMIE: Well, we've certainly hit something.

This is worth noting, as it suggests the TARDIS has been 'outside time', rather than simply taking off normally. In most multi-Doctor stories, we have the past Doctor being brought forward to the 'present'. We know the Time Lords are behind the Second Doctor, but are the the Time Lords from the Second Doctor's time, or has he been recruited by Time Lords of the Sixth Doctor's time? They are, after all, using TARDIS remotes which were unavailable in The War Games...


DASTARI: But you still act on their instructions?
DOCTOR: It's the price I pay for my freedom.

Interesting. The Doctor again suggests that these missions are not the norm, and the rest of the time he is free to do what he wants. Basically, he's like the Fourth Doctor, being dragged in by Time Lords to sort things out for them. Season 6b says "the Time Lords are monitoring his every move" and he needs to "earn privileges" like remote controls. Season 6b has him a prisoner with a gun to his head, yet once again, he's clearly willing to do this on his own, and is happy enough to help out.


DOCTOR: Oh Dastari, you can't have expected help from the Time Lords. Their policy is one of strict neutrality!
DASTARI: Nonetheless, there's been widespread disappointment among the other Third Zone governments.
DOCTOR: Don't chide me Dastari, I'm simply a messenger. Officially, I'm here quite unofficially.
DASTARI: You'll explain that paradox, I know.
DOCTOR: I'm a pariah! Exiled from Time Lord society. So, they can always deny sending me.

This again suggest the "occasionally not continually" approach of the Fourth Doctor's Time Lords. But the Doctor is acting here as a messenger, not a CIA agent, or else he'd be told to take out Kartz and Riemer. Similarly, the whole scenario suggests the Time Lords don't want to act among their "peers", and have sent in the Doctor to basically say, "Lovely station here, guv, what a shame if something bad happened to it?" and scare them off, unofficially. It's clear that the time experiments are worrying Gallifrey, and sending the Doctor in is a unique case. The Doctor doesn't groan about how the Time Lords use him to solve absolutely damn near everything, does he?


DASTARI: And why have they sent you?
DOCTOR: They have been monitoring the experiments in time travel of the professors Kartz and Reimer.. They want them stopped.
DASTARI: I see... And how do the Time Lords equate that with a policy of complete 'neutrality?'
DOCTOR: They don't have to. As I said, I have no official existence. So, they can always deny sending me.

The Doctor's clearly taken aback at this. Hardly someone used to this sort of job.


DASTARI: Even if I wanted to, Doctor, I have no authority to order professors Kartz and Reimer to abandon their work.
DOCTOR: Of course you have! You sanction all the experiments on this station.
DASTARI: And what reason would I give? That 'the Time Lords have expressed concern?'
DOCTOR: Dastari, our monitors have already detected ripples of up to point-four on the Bocher scale. Anything much higher would threaten the whole fabric of time!
DASTARI: They are well aware of the dangers, Doctor. They are responsible scientists.
DOCTOR: They are incompetent meddlers.
DASTARI: Aren't you being a little ingenuous, Doctor?
DOCTOR: What do you mean?
DASTARI: Hasn't it occurred to you that the Time Lords have a vested interest in ensuring that others do not discover their secrets?
DOCTOR: Oh... I'm sure that's not the case.

Again, we have a Doctor who's surprisingly uncynical about the Time Lords, clearly thinking they have the moral highground. He's clearly not thought that the Time Lords are a "dirty, underhanded lot", which you think would occur to him if they had hoodwinked him into being their pet pansy. The novelization notes:

It was a telling point. From the way that the Doctor's back stiffened, Jamie McCrimmon was sure it was something he had not previously considered. "I'm absolutely certain that's not the High Council's motive," he said defensively. He didn't sound certain.


DOCTOR: Look. I've a suggestion. Stop these experiments for the time being, whilst my people study their work. If Kartz and Reimer really are on safe lines, I'm sure they'll be allowed to continue.
DASTARI: 'Allowed to continue?'
DOCTOR: I mean, there would be no further objection!
DASTARI: In the first place, I have no authority to ask Kartz and Reimer to submit their work for analysis. And in the second place, the Time Lords have no right to make such a grossly unethical demand! I've never heard such unmitigated arrogance!
DOCTOR: And I've never heard such specious claptrap! Oh, don't you prate to me about ethics! The balance of the space-time continuum could be destroyed by your ham-fisted numbskulls! (to Jamie) Oh, what are you smiling at, you, you hairy-legged highlander?
JAMIE: I'm just admiring your diplomatic skills.
DOCTOR: Pah!

More evidence this is the Second Doctor's first mission. And he's not very good at it.


DOCTOR: Dastari?
DASTARI: You'll feel dizzy for a time.
DOCTOR: So...I've been drugged. What'd you use? It feels like...one of the anemode group.
DASTARI: Absolutely right. Syrilanomode.
DOCTOR: Syrilanomode? But that effects the memory...
CHESSENE: We're not interested in your memory.
DOCTOR: Sontarans... I remember now...the space station. I had someone with me...Jamie! What've you done with Jamie?

Many fans say that the drug with its amnesiac qualities somehow explain why the Sixth Doctor doesn't remember the affair with the Sontarans, but unless it ultimately has a long term blanket effect over the brain, it's clear the Doctor cures himself of it right away. It's hardly likely to blot out Season 6b, is it?


So, we're left with the clear evidence that the story is set in Season Five, with the Second Doctor doing his first odd job for the Time Lords. It's what's on screen and what the author intended.

So, the Second Doctor and Jamie are at a university or somesuch where Victoria wants to study graphology. The Time Lords contact the Doctor and do a deal. The Doctor agrees, presumably with the condition he is allowed to return and pick Victoria up (as anyone who has watched their actual episodes, he finds her very wearying and could use a holiday). Jamie makes a quick goodbye and they leave on course to a "wee little laboratory" while the Doctor realizes the console is a little bit different.

After the adventure, they report back to the Time Lords (who presumably wipe Jamie's memory, hence he lacks any psychological scars for living rough for three weeks in an air vent). If the Time Lords are from the Sixth Doctor's era, they might wipe the Second Doctor's mind of the event as well. If not, this naughty info could be part of the mindwipe Rassilon gives him later.

Now, as for why the Time Lords would go to trouble to draw the Second Doctor and Jamie into the future, well, as some have noted: if you send the President anywhere, it looks important. If the Sixth Doctor was sent to the space station saying, "Right you roustabouts, stop this skulduggery at once!" there is no doubt the Third Zoners would realize they have as good as cracked time travel. Even if they haven't. It's very unsubtle especially as it's made clear the Time Lords want to keep the Third Zone on their side. But if they sent a version of the Doctor that was a rebel, one that they could deny all connection to, they get a win win situation.
(Similarly, it would explain why the Sixth Doctor gets a link from the Second Doctor when he's not even tortured: the Time Lords gave the Second Doctor a kind of 'pager' so he contacts the local incarnation if in trouble. The Doctor sorts it out, no one suspects the Time Lords. Of course, this makes perfect sense for the Time Lords who refuse to overtly help the Doctor fight the Cybermen and annihilate the solar system in secret).

Ergo, Season 6b, as presented on the evidence I've seen... is clear bollocks. Burn every copy of World Game you find (be fair, you can replace it easily with a copy of Players, Endgame, The Auton Invasion and The Ribos Operation).

But, as I'm opened minded, I will admit that the failed website fan fic archive Season 6b And Beyond at the very least had an interesting variation on the Season 6b myth. The opening story The Possibility War is enough to make you doubt your own memory and me, this entire rant...