How the Doctor Was Won: Or the Trials of Trying to Catch a Stubborn Time Lord. 2e/?
AN: This is written from the TARDIS’s POV and covers a third of “Inside the Spaceship”. A good portion of this is a zip past the adventures and focuses on how / why the ‘Ship’ or Verity (or Lynx) and the Doctor ended up with the relationship that they possess. The main exception is the scenes that take place in and around the ship.
How the Doctor was won: Or the trials of trying to catch a stubborn Time Lord.
Part Two E: Communicating
The now familiar sound of the danger tone fills the air again, “It's happening every quarter of a minute,” Susan calls.
“Well what does that prove?” Ian asks.
It is Barbara that begins piecing the clues together. “That we have a measure of time as long as it lasts. Yes of course, that explains the clock face. We had time taken away from us, and now it's being given back to us... because it's running out!”
At that guess my stranglehold on the central piston that keeps the Eye of Harmony under control slips, causing an explosion that rattles the room and throws everyone off balance. This forces the Time Rotor to rise and fall. “The column!” Susan exclaims.
“But it…it's impossible!” My Doctor is shocked.
Ian moves over to him, “Doctor, I thought it only moved when the power was on.”
“Yes. The heart of the machine is under the column.”
“Well what made it move?”
The Time Lord answers, “The source of power. You see when the column rises, it proves the extent of the power thrust.”
Scared, Barbara asks, “Then what would have happened had the column come out completely?”
“Well, the power would be free...free to escape!” Susan responds in shock.
This disturbs the Time Lord as well; “Can it be possible then…that this is the end?”
Ian becomes angered, “The end! What are you talking about?”
“We have ten minutes to survive. Maybe less.” My pilot crosses over to the panel with the scanner switch.
“Ten minutes? As little as that?” Barbara wonders.
“Be careful, Doctor,” warns Ian.
“Oh, it's quite safe here. This is where I stood when I tried the scanner switch.”
“Yes! Yes! Why is that part safe?” Barbara quires.
“We'll never stop it in time,” Susan wails.
“Don’t Susan…” Barbara goes over to her, “Please don't.”
“I don't know even where to begin, Chesterton. If only I had a clue,” my Doctor says.
I’d scream in frustration if it weren’t for Barbara’s sudden understanding. She looks at the melted clock; “I think…I think perhaps, we've been given nothing else but clues.”
“Have we..?” Ian starts then changes his tune as he thinks about it, “Like the food machine you mean!? It registered empty, but it wasn't.”
“Yes!” Barbara points at the clock, “But the clock is the most important. It made us aware of time.”
“By taking time away from us,” Susan says, starting to catch on.
“Yes. And it replaced time, by the light on the fault locator.”
Ian nods, “Yes, it did!”
Oh my Doctor, surely you remember? How can you forget or deny when I called you upon the sacred mountain in front of the KingMaker? I am starting to think that the damage you suffered was greater than anyone guessed way back when. Or have you decided that those memories are but a boy’s fancy? “It? It? What do you mean? My machine can't think,” my Doctor declares as he walks up to them. I want to cry. I’ve been wondering if his not drinking tea is a deliberate message that he no longer wishes to even try to have what he fought to regain for so many years. Oh, but maybe… maybe he’s showing his age? Maybe he’s forgotten?
“You say it has a built in defense mechanism?” Barbara asks him.
“Yes, it has.”
She looks at him, “Well that's where we've been wrong. Originally, the…machine wasn't at fault, we were. And it's been trying to tell us so ever since.”
Ian blinks at her, “A machine that can think for itself? Is that feasible, Doctor?”
Grrr. Just forget my organic brain shall we? My telepathic circuits? Our entwined DNA? The fact that I’m much more than a bunch of parts? “Oh, think, not as you or I do, but er, it must be able to think as a machine, you see it has a bank of computers,” my pilot tells Ian.
Barbara crosses over to the safe panel and gazes at the crystalline structure of the Time Rotor, “You say the power is under this column?” The answer she gets confirms her knowledge. “And the column holds it down?” Again this is answered with a yes. “Well then, what would make it want to escape?”
“I've been racking by brains. I don't know,” the Time Lord says.
Ian suggests, “Something outside? A magnetic force?”
My Doctor blinks, “Yes, possible. It would have to be a gigantic one. A one as s-strong as a solar system.”
At this I nearly toss in the effort. An explosion rocks the room. “You see? The machine's been warning us all along. All those blackouts we had,” Barbara says.
“Yes. But only if anybody went near the control column,” Susan adds.
Ian frowns, “But it could be the power escaping.”
My Doctor shakes his head, “No, no it couldn't. If you felt the power dear boy, you wouldn't live to speak of it. You'd be blown to atoms in a split second.”
“Besides, it’s the part of it that's safe,” Susan reminds them.
“Yes, the scanner. I wonder..?”
My Doctor understands her and encourages her, “Well try it, but we're clutching at straws.” But we are out of time, everything is becoming harder and harder for me to keep from happening. Another explosion rocks the room. “Now Susan, and you young lady, should those doors open again, I want you to be standing by them, and tell me whatever it is you see outside, understand?” They move to the doors and my pilot signals Ian over. He says softly to the other man, “I lied, deliberately, so that they won't know.”
“Won't know what?” Ian asks.
“We have five minutes only. When the end does come, they won't know anything about it,” the Time Lord tells him.
“There's no hope then?”
“I can't see any. Will you face it with me?”
Susan becomes suspicious and calls, “What are you two talking about?”
Ian covers, “Oh, just a theory of mine that didn't work.”
This seems to be the answer and assurance that my Doctor seeks from the man. He nods in approval and adopts a jaunty tone so that the two women know nothing is amiss. “Yes, we must solve this problem you know! We must.” He then turns to the scanner and once more I try to communicate to them. It is my last hope. He flicks it on. I show the field and open the doors.
Susan shields her eyes and tries to see through the glare, “There's nothing there! Nothing. Nothing.” This causes her to cry, “Nothing but space.” She seems to fold in on herself as despair takes hold.
“It's all right Susan,” Barbara comforts her. The image on the scanner changes to that of the swamp, Quinnis, then the doors close, and Ian suggests that perhaps Barbara is right about this being a clue. She says, “I am right, I know I am.” She looks back at them, “Whenever there's a good picture, the doors open because it's safe for us to go outside and then it shows us a terrible picture and the doors close again.”
“Yes, then we have the sequence,” my Doctor agrees. At this they all look to the scanner again. They have seen this before. I show them Skaro from orbit. “A planet.” I show them the same, but from farther away. “A planet in the solar system.” I show the galaxy. “Getting further away.” I make the screen flash white and go blank. “A blinding flash... destruction. Yes, of course, it's our journey,” the Time Lord finally sees what I’ve been showing. But it might be too late.
“And…. And the ship refused to destroy itself,” Barbara concludes. “The defense mechanism stopped the ship, and it's been trying to tell us so ever since!”
My Doctor suddenly understands, “Yes, yes. Of course. Of course!” Another explosion, this one bigger than the last, causes everyone to grab something to keep their balance. The control room, indeed the entire ship, is plunged into darkness as I divert even the life support systems to holding myself together to give them those last few seconds that might make a difference. “Oh. I know, I know. I said it would take the force of a total solar system to attract the power away from my ship. We're at…the very beginning, the new start of a solar system. Outside, the atoms are rushing towards each other. Fusing. Coagulating. Until…minute little collections of matter are created. And so the process goes on, and on until dust is formed. Dust then becomes solid entity. A new birth of a sun and its planets!” Only it’s larger than that, my Doctor. We are back at the beginning of the Universe, not just a solar system. The pressure is almost more than I can handle and if someone doesn’t solve this quickly then we will all perish.
Ian comes back over, “Doctor, where are we? When we left the planet Skaro, where did you ask the machine to take us to? Think Doctor!”
“I, er, had hoped to reach your planet Earth. Skaro was in the future and…I used the fast return switch.”
Ian blinks, “The fast return switch? You've sent us back too far. Doctor show me. Show me that switch. Where is it.”
“Well... I... I... I can't very well see it without a light can I?”
Susan looks at Barbara and says, “It's near the scanner switch.”
“Really? But that's the part of the control that's safe,” Barbara comments. Susan nods.
My Doctor struggles to find a light in his jacket, while Ian urges him on, “Doctor, we haven't got very much time left.”
I push the torch he’s looking for into his hand with extreme effort, because he’s so very close to solving this, “Yes, I see. I…I…here it is, here.” He turns the light onto the console, “You see? Now, look. There's the switch. You see?” It’s a simple button that is the problem, one of the items that he’s switched out to allow for nontraceable operation.
“Yes, well how does it work?”
“Well, you merely press it down, and...” He puts his finger on the button but it doesn’t even move. Excited, he looks at Ian, “It's stuck. It hasn't released itself.”
“What? You mean it's been on all this time?”
“Yes, it must have been.”
Ian can see the fix is right there, “Well come on, Doctor. Let's get it unstuck!”
“Hold that,” my pilot passes the torch to Ian and locates the tool he requires, “Yes, just a minute now.” He removes the outer casing, “Ah. Yes. There you are you see.” Ian asks what the problem is and the Time Lord tells him, “The spring's not connecting. It's come off the base.” With that he removes the button itself. “There we are, we’ll take it out. Now luckily we can turn it over, and now it should work. There, ah, that's all right.” He then puts the casing back and presses the button. This releases the fast return and I am able to jump back into a normal region of time. The situation becomes normalized. I allow the power to flow back into the life support and the lights come back on. Other systems spring back to order now that I am not diverting them. I release my stranglehold on the time rotor and it begins to move. After a pause the Time Lord begins checking readings. He quickly concludes that the controls are now safe to use. Ian puts a hand on the older man’s shoulder and gives him a squeeze. The Doctor glances at him but Susan’s sudden hug draws his attention away from whatever question that might have been forming.
“Oh, we're safe now,” Susan says.
“Are you sure?” Barbara is cautious.
My pilot nods, “Yes. We can all relax. We're quite safe now. But it was a narrow squeak.” Ian and Barbara move away. Finally feeling safe, the old man sighs.
Susan asks what happened, and why the fault locator didn’t indicate the problem.
My Doctor explains to her, “It was the switch, it was still in place. You see there is a little spring inside it and it was stuck. It hadn't released itself. The switch hadn't broken down; therefore the fault locator couldn't give us any recognition. You see, let me give you a demonstration.” He uses the torch to show her what happened. He turns the torch on, “Now look, when I put my thumb…on there, the light comes on. And it only stays on, so long as my thumb is pressing that switch. As soon as I take it off....” He lets his thumb up, “... a little spring inside releases the... the switch here, and out goes the light.”
“Oh, I see. So if the spring were broken, it would be as if your finger were pressing it down all the time.”
“Precisely. As simple as that,” He sighs again. His suspicions have caused him to say and do some horrible things, he knows. “You know, my dear child. I think your old grandfather is going a tiny little bit around the bend.” They laugh at this, “Well I think you were very brave, and I…I am proud of you.”
“Grandfather, what about them? You said some terrible things to them,” Susan indicates Ian and Barbara. “When I thought he was going to attack you, even I was against him.”
The shame and rebuke that shows on my pilot’s face is more than enough for Ian. The teacher looks up and can see the old man struggling with his emotions. He places a calming hand on Barbara’s shoulder and then crosses over to the Time Lord, “Don't bother to say anything, Doctor.” He lets off a light relieved laugh, “You know there are times, when I can read every thought on your face.”
This causes my Doctor to echo the laugh, “Really? And I always thought you were a young man, without any recrimination in you.” But as relieved as he is over Ian’s easy forgiveness he can see that Barbara is going to be harder to apologize to. She’s standing by the chair gazing off into space, hurt by the entire experience. Slowly, my Doctor goes over to her, “Well, er, as for you, young lady, well, you were absolutely right. With your instinct and intuition against my logic and you, er, succeeded. I mean, the blackouts and the still pictures and...and…and, er... and, er, the clock. Well, you read a story into those things and was determined to hold on to it. We all owe you our lives.”
She is overwhelmed, “I... I...” It is more than she can face. More than she can deal with all at once. She leaves the room.
Behind her my pilot says, “You know, I really believe I have underestimated that young lady in the past, Charnow.” This makes Ian cringe, but he says nothing, realizing that the Doctor is teasing him. “Well now, we can all start again eh? Yes... we can... er... Yes...” He looks as the young man with a twinkle in his eye, “But which? Hmm?” Ian laughs. “What are you laughing at, dear boy? Oh, really, you are...” He sets to work on the controls and places us safely in the Vortex.
I stay with Barbara as she flees the room, gently guiding her to an inner sanctuary, knowing that my pilot will not mind if she sees. Right now it is what Barbara needs. She’s not aware of where she goes, the path her feet take, but she ends up in a garden. A rose garden. The soft tones of iridescence that shimmer on the soft white to silvery petals tell her that these are no ordinary Earth Roses, but from another place and another time. They exist under a pair of orange suns in a russet sky. She feels her upset peel away as wonder replaces it. She carefully settles down on a bench, surrounded by roses of a color that her mind identifies only as ‘pearl’.
The scent is light, and close to what she expects, but it’s slightly richer, like a touch of honey has been added to the mix. She shaking on the inside, numb. They nearly died. And once more, she never asked for this. To be threatened by being put off the ship - someplace unknown, in conditions that were completely dangerous… The tears flow without her knowledge of them. I do something for her that I have done for no other. I materialize as a silver spotted cat. She needs to be comforted, and my efforts have wounded her. I lightly leap up onto the bench next to her and butt my head into her hand. My form is slightly larger than a house cat, not quite a normal standard for the breed she is used to. More like a Lynx, although with shorter, sleeker fur. Barbara begins petting without thinking about it. It’s my purr and weight as I settle into her lap that gets her attention.
“Well, who are you?” I simply look up at her with my police box blue eyes and hope that she can make the connection. Her fingers find the blue collar with its silver Gallifreyan symbols and the odd little tag that is blank on one side with the word, ‘Verity’ on the other. I purr louder. “Verity? That’s an odd name for a cat. You rather remind me of a Lynx, pretty girl.” She is starting to feel better. This is my goal, of course. I head butt her hand and kneed lightly into her robe to occupy her mind. The blank side of the tag takes on the script, ‘Lynx’.
After a time I sense she is ready to leave. I hop off her lap and lead her back through the halls and passages until we reach the living areas and wardrobe room. She bends down and calls me back. I just turn and look at her swishing my very domestic-cat-like tail. Barbara looks around the room, and back at the cat. “Oh.” Somehow I manage to give her a very human grin with my catlike face before I fade away as the sound of Susan’s footsteps becomes louder, “Not an ‘it’ then? She?” Barbara puts a hand on my wall and feels the thrum. It is almost like a purr.
When Susan enters she finds Barbara still stroking the wall and smiling slightly. She quickly relays that they have landed but that it is cold outside. This draws Barbara away and back to the others. If Susan finds the behavior odd she says nothing about it and the older woman doesn’t mention the form I’ve shown her. I doubt if I’ll have to use it again. After she dresses for the cold the moves into the living area and sits down, still thinking about the things that were said. After a while the Doctor comes in and looks at her. Then he approaches, “I'd like to, er, talk to you, if I may.” He settles next to her at her nod, “We've landed on a planet and the air is good, but it's rather cold outside.”
“Susan told me.”
Still feeling shame, the Time Lord says quietly, “Yes, you haven't forgiven me, have you?”
“You said terrible things to us.”
He nods, “Yes, I suppose it's the injustice that's upsetting you, and when I made a threat to put you off the ship it must have affected you very deeply.”
“What do you care what I think or feel?”
“Well, as we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves. Oh yes. Because I accused you unjustly, you were determined to prove me wrong. So, you put your mind to the problem, and, er, luckily you solved it,” he told her.
Susan runs into the room, bundled up for the cold in a duffel coat, “Grandfather, we're going out now.”
“Oh, please, yes. Do open the doors will you?”
She looks to Barbara, “Are you coming?”
Miss Wright glances at the Doctor, who is watching her with concern, then she looks back at Susan and smiles, remembering Lynx. “Yes.”
“Good,” Susan proclaims as she runs back into the console room.
“Oh, by the way, Susan has left you some wearing apparel, for outside. You know, we have a very extensive wardrobe here.”
Barbara smiles at him, “Yes, she gave me these,” indicating the trousers she is now wearing. I know the teacher means me not Susan. And by the Doctor’s reaction, Barbara seems to see that he understands this too.
He blinks and looks past her for a moment, remembering whispers and the sensation of bliss. Flying free as one that was two, through the time vortex. Rapture. Then it is gone, a tendril of smoke vanished into the wind. He glances at her slacks, “Yes, I think they're rather charming. We must look after you, you know? You're very valuable.” I ache from the loss, the memory I snatch out of the air and bundle with the others. My brilliant Doctor. Fading like the last glow of the day. Dying slowly before my senses. Defiant to the end. He stands and picks up a coat from the table. With a dramatic flourish he holds it up for her to put on. Barbara laughs and slips into it. The he offers her his arm. “Shall we go?” Smiling, Barbara links her arm with his and they walk into the control room where Ian is waiting for them. He shows off the coat he’s wearing and Barbara compliments him on it before Susan dashes in and pelts her with a handful of snow. This makes the older woman squeal and chase the younger one out into the expanse beyond. “Well, I think that's absolutely splendid Chesterton. Yes, it suites you. Always a trifle big for me. You know I acquired that Ulster from Gilbert and Sullivan.”
“Oh, really? I thought it was made for two. Well, shall we join the ladies, Doctor?”
Laughing he says, “Yes, why not.”
Moments later they hear Susan call, “Grandfather, look!”
It would seem that I’ve landed them in still yet another adventure… But I wonder if perhaps I can power down and rest a bit? There are self-repairs that I can run, as long as I have the time to complete them… But do I dare miss even a blink of the time My Doctor and I have remaining?