Season 13 - Chapter 7

 

Season 13 – Chapter 7

 

 

Ravio

 

Ah, you know what it’s like when you start to think you like a guy. Especially in my life. Things never go straightforwardly.

            And really, I never expected to meet anyone new again. How could I? I was stuck at the end of the world with the last few survivors of the human race. We never even thought we’d last out the week, let alone meet anyone new…

            We really thought we were the last!

            Then Graham and his friends arrived, and everything changed.

            I mean, compared with what I’m used to, he’s a little bit refined in his manners and speech, and the life he’s lived back there in antiquity, back in olde worlde Sheffield, has been pretty soft, but I really like him anyway.

            ‘You okay?’ he asks me quietly, giving my hand a squeeze.

            We’re in a small shuttle-TARDIS manned by Capitol guards. It’s taking us up to that starship.

            ‘I’m just glad not to be a Cyberman,’ I tell him. ‘Everything else is a bonus.’

            He nods and smiles. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Listen, do you think it’s worth telling this lot… about the danger in their future? About the Master and the Cybermen and everything?’

            I shake my head. ‘We’ve got knowledge of their future. I reckon that’s a powerful thing. They call themselves Time Lords… but we know more than they do.’

            Graham looks unsure. ‘I just can’t imagine… how the Doc came from these people, you know? I can’t see how she’d really belong here…’

            I shrug. I’m sick of him going on about his precious Doctor. It’s time he paid a bit more attention to me! I feel like telling him – look at me! I’m here! I’m the one in your life now..!

            ‘Hey, what about those robot dogs though, eh?’ he grins. ‘I’d love to take one of those home with me. Give the neighbours a shock!’

            Then – the hollow clang of our shuttle butting up against the starship. The guard swings his staser at us. ‘Best get ready.’

 

 

 

Bianca

 

I have to tell you, I’m feeling bloody old. My memory’s not the best. But you stir the old fibres, you do. You really bring back the old shadows of things I’d thought long forgotten.

            We were girls together! Can’t you remember?

            How do you look so young and vital?

            You make me furiously envious, you really do.

            I change form, I change form, I change form again and again. Praying for youth. But what happens? Nothing happens! I’m an old bloody woman every single time! I never get any younger! I’m doomed just to get older and older chronologically. All in the right order. More and more decrepit. Just like any normal person in the universe. Do you realise how bloody awful that is, Doctor..?

            What do you care? You seem to become anything, anyone. Each time different. Older, younger, whatever you like.

            And here I am, hobbling round the stone corridors of Season 13 after you. Trying to keep up. Trying to remind you. Trying to take us back to that time when we were both girls at school.

            I don’t think you even really care to remember the past, do you? I think you’d be quite happy staying here, in the moment, with no looking back.

            I envy you that. I really do.

            And flamin’ Dusty!

            That cow’s really got her hooks into you, hasn’t she?

            She won’t leave you alone for a second!

            I caught you in her cell. She was dressing you up like you were a dolly. You looked ridiculous. Hardly suitable for a Time Lady of the first rank! A Doctor of the Academy, strutting about like a show girl! I acted appalled. But you and Dusty just laughed at me. You were only having fun…

            Having fun? Who has fun in a place like this?

            But you even enjoyed school, didn’t you? I remember. More than anyone. You saw it as a place for adventure. A place that was ripe for mischief-making.

            The rest of us were scared and miserable at first. It was so different to little school. Big school took us away from home. We were dragged away from our families. I left my aunties. You had to leave your seven grandmothers, your cousins, your robot badger. We all had to live in a castle that was mostly underground. Far, far away in the scarlet mountains, where the rain sizzled hotly and it was too radioactive to spend very much time out of doors…

            We were the chosen few! The elect!

            Oh, they were all so solemn about that. Drumming it into us – that we had responsibilities. We had so much to learn. Such a fabulous heritage to learn about and to live up to.

            But you just laughed, didn’t you? You didn’t take any of it all that seriously. Easy come and easy go. That’s how you were. Everyone at your family had studied at the Time Academy. It was always assumed that you’d join their ranks.

            But in my family… I was the first. I was from outside. I came from the wilderness. I had never been in a place like this.

            You were kind, taking me under your wing.

            At least, at first you were like that. Back when you were kind. When you were friendly. When life seemed easy and everything was a joke.

            At first we were the best of friends. Inseparable.

            It was you. It was me.

Why don’t you remember?

 

 

Dusty

 

Look into my eyes, The Doctor.

            I know! I know!

            Come closer. Now I’ve got you on your own.

            That old witch Bianca’s gone now. Silly old woman. What does she keep going on about?

Who cares?

            Stare into my eyes. They’re getting bigger and bigger and you’re falling under their spell.

            Why am I here? I left Planet Earth in… ooh, let me see. The year 1999. It was New Year’s Eve. I was in New York, at someone’s party. I looked a little way ahead into the future… using mystical means. We were staying with a wizard – seriously! He had a beautiful town house in Greenwich Village. And a crystal ball! We looked into the future, at what the next hundred years might bring… and I thought: Oh, dear, no. I don’t fancy the look of any of that, thanks!

            So… some time before midnight… when all the world wasn’t looking… I put on my favourite silver wig, packed up my finest stage clothes and I hitched a ride on a passing moonbeam…

            Do you remember New Year’s Eve, 1999, The Doctor? Everything was going a bit peculiar, in a cosmic sense. Of course you were involved. You were in San Francisco. You’d just regenerated and yet still you were doing your best. You were set upon putting the world to rights! And you did!

            But I had slipped away from Earth’s shackles. I swam! I turned cartwheels through the upper layers of the atmosphere and I kicked off into outer space…

            Look into my eyes.

            Step closer. What do you see?

            My silver hair swishes like spun silk. Like a spider’s web.  

            Step closer. Kiss me.

            That’s how you come inside.

            Oh yes. Here you are.

            This is my TARDIS, The Doctor.

            Are you surprised to find that I even have one?

            It’s my hairdo. My beehive.

Isn’t that a blast?

            Come inside. Kiss me.

            Welcome to my world.

 

 

The Doctor

 

Flippin’ Nora.

            This isn’t the kind of adventure I’m used to.

Not at all!