Thainig na Cait

	“Take it off.”
	The Doctor blanched. “What?”
	“Doctor.” Amy dropped her knapsack on the TARDIS console. “Some men can get away with wearing a kilt. Trust me: you are not one of those men.”
	The Doctor looked at her sulkily. “I thought it suited me.”
	“You don’t have the legs.” Amy was emphatic, and now she was pacing with her fingers loosely curled, halfway to a fist: this was never a good sign. “Now please. In the name of common decency, and out of consideration for my people, change. You can’t pull this off.”
	“So you want me to take it off because I can’t pull it off.” The Doctor tossed the sentence around like a prospector tossing a pan of gravel. Then he grinned. “Oh, English. The unbridled nonsense of your peculiar language.”
	“You speak English!”
	“I speak Gallifreyan.”
	“Whatever.” Amy seethed in exasperation. “I mean, you’re speaking English now.”
	“Well, maybe.” The Doctor clapped his hands and strode over to the console, flicking the first lever his fingers brushed against without even looking at it. “Right! Edinburgh. New Year’s Eve, 1999. Fireworks! Haggis! Aaaand…” He span on his heels, and the bottom of the kilt billowed. “Texas!”
	“And you’re sure it’s safe?” said Amy
	The Doctor gave her an incredulous look. “Since when were you worried about safe, Miss Oh-Let’s-Press-The-Abdicate-Button?”
	“No, but - you know.” Amy rummaged in the knapsack. “Riots. Edinburgh. They’re like peas in a pod.”
	“I checked.” The Doctor was punching buttons near the telephone. “Last serious incident was three years ago, and that was more of a crush than anything else. This one - ” Punch, flip, twirl - “should go without a hitch.”
	“Hmm.” Amy looked at the TARDIS doors. “Famous last words.”

	They landed not far from the Honeycomb, the battered old police box materialising with a wheezing, groaning noise that sounded both tired and arguably overused. The door was only a foot and a half from a lamp post, and the Doctor had to squeeze his way through: being comparatively thin, this didn’t pose an enormous problem for either of them, although it didn’t stop Amy from complaining.
	“Couldn’t you just.” Amy pushed her way past the cold metal. “I don’t know, repark?”
	The Doctor shook his head. “Tight space manoeuvring is tricky.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Between you and me, the TARDIS isn’t very good at three point turns.”
	“When you say ‘the TARDIS’, you mean you, right?”
	The Doctor scowled, and straightened his Christmas hat. “Well, I can’t be a genius at everything.”
	He marched up the street, past the club - shuttered and boarded and looking rather sorry for itself - and the hordes of people, making their way up toward the Royal Mile in various states of perambulation that ranged from the well-heeled dash to the crawl, by way of the drunken stagger. There were black bags and fly tipped donations outside the charity shops, chip cartons and pizza boxes piled high against overstuffed bins, and the remnants of spilled / vomited food splattered across the wet pavements like the most provocative kinds of modern art. 
	“Niddry Street,” said Amy. “Weren’t there some underground vaults here or something?”
	“It was a hive of disease, prostitution and villainy,” said the Doctor. “A hopeless, dispiriting place. A bit like Swindon, only with more of an atmosphere. Burke and Hare used to go hunting not twenty feet below where you’re standing.”
	“Burke and Hare? As in the body snatchers?”
	“Mm-hmm. Met them once. Lovely people, actually.” The Doctor mused, remembering. “Played a decent game of canasta.”
	There was a bang from up the street. The Doctor looked at his watch, annoyed. “The fireworks aren’t supposed to start for three hours!”
	Amy was peering off into the distance, where the edge of Niddry met the Royal Mile. “I think that might have been a car backfiring.”
	“Oh well, that’s all right then. Is the chip shop open?”

	The Mile thronged with activity. The shops were open late, plying their wares - rows of London phone boxes, squashed boxes of rattly fudge (packaged in Maidstone), postcards that curled at the edges. Couples canoodled and men in their fifties sang filthy rugby songs outside the pubs. And yet there was a curious symmetry to the layout of the area, a pattern that started to emerge, as they passed street artists and glow stick stands and a piper on every corner, and the shops began to subdivide into almost identical colonnades, each home to the same souvenirs and woollen gloves and overpriced cappuccinos. It was, Amy felt, rather like the endlessly repeating scenery she’d witnessed in childhood episodes of Scooby Doo, where doorways and paintings and suited knights had flashed past in an endless loop. Some days, when they had done a lot of running, life with the Doctor felt a little like that.
	They bought chips and battered Mars Bars from a two-starred establishment three hundred yards from the Castle; the queue was out the door but the Doctor had waved his psychic paper and the owner, a disgruntled-looking man in his forties, had fobbed them off with complimentary portions and then shuffled away muttering something about “bloody hygiene inspectors with all the timing o’ a Good Friday lunch date wit’ Jesus”. And now they stood outside on the pavement, watching the revellers dance and drink and meander in and out of gift emporiums with tablet and tartan, burning their mouths on the caramelised chocolate.
	“I mean, on paper,” the Doctor was saying (with his mouth full) “it just doesn’t work. And at the same time, it does. It’s one of those oddities of the universe that just fits.”
	“Kind of like you, then,” Amy had been about to say, when she was drowned out by the noise of a dozen snares, all beating out the same roll. And now here they came: a full complement of drummers and pipers, playing ‘Crags of Tumbledown’ as they marched up the Mile toward the castle’s looming entrance, some four-and-twenty men in all, marking time to the thud of the bass, walking in perfect unison, eyes fixed firmly frontward.
	Amy thought: It’s almost enough to make you feel patriotic. And swallowed the lump in her throat.
	The pipers and drums were followed by a platoon of Viking raiders (Danes, they would have had you call them) and then a quartet of fire-eaters, blowing jets of hot flame seemingly from their mouths. Other floats followed, trundling up the cobbled street in the direction of the gatehouse, as ahead of them the music blared before succumbing to the Doppler effect. Amy took it all in. She felt giddy, excited and yet somehow incomplete. It was as if she’d left a part of her behind, perhaps in the TARDIS. No. Not the TARDIS. Somewhere.
	“You’re quiet,” said the Doctor.
	“Just enjoying the spectacle,” she said, realising this was uncharacteristically glib, although thankfully the Doctor let it slide.
	“It’s no’ as good as it used to be, mind,” said a new voice.
	Amy turned her head. The man next to her was in full clan dress and had to be six foot four, with arms like steamed hams, and a bright ginger beard that hung almost to his waist. He was sipping from a plastic pint cup.
	“No?” said Amy, wryly.
	“Aye, well. Back in the day they’d have had twice this number. Stretchin’ all the way back to the lights and beyond. Made a noise that’d wake the dead.”
	“Back in the day? This festival’s only seven years old.”
	“Och, you know what I mean. Afore all this. Afore all the lights and the razzle dazzle and the overpriced tat. Back when it was all aboot celebratin’ the New Year. They’d have had dozens more pipers, real men an’ all, ‘stead o’ this lairy bunch.”
	Amy regarded him quizzically. “Are you a piper?”
	“That I am, lassie. Just no’ allowed to play, least no more. The drink did for me.”
	“Amy?” said the Doctor. “Who’s your friend?”
	“Sorry.” Amy coughed. “This is - this is…”
	“Name’s Angus,” said the stranger, with a hint of suspicion and without extending his hand. “Angus McThistle.”
	The Doctor’s mouth dropped open. “Serious?”
	“And why wouldnae it be?” the bigger man replied, contemptuously. “Summat wrong tae you, that name?”
	“Not at all, it’s just - ”
	“It’s just a bit unlikely,” interrupted Amy, who was anxious to avoid the fight that was brewing, and aware that her Scottish heritage probably gave her a tactical advantage when it came to defusing it. “You have tae admit, it’s a name worthy of a laird. And ye look more like a towerin’ chieftain than a wet sugg livin’ off the fat o’the land.”
	The Doctor’s brow furrowed and his nose wrinkled just a little. “Is it me, or is your accent getting…thicker?”
	But the trick seemed to have worked. Angus McThistle roared with laughter and clapped Amy on the back, hard enough to knock the wind out from her. “Aye, you’re a feisty one all right!” he bellowed, taking another swig from his plastic glass. “Come. Let’s stroll up the Mile and follow the parade.”
	He led Amy by the arm, turning to the Doctor by way of afterthought. “And you, ye ruddy Sassenach? Ye can come, but mind yer manners and keep yer distance.”

	It was hard to hear Angus over the blast of the pipers, but Amy got the gist. His story involved alcohol and sibling jealousy and the love and loss of a good woman. He’d found his way back from the gutter of addiction and depression, but the dark times had left their mark, and it was unlikely that he’d ever be allowed to play with the pipe corps again.
	“ - and I’ve been sober for nigh on six years now. Nae touched a drop.”
	“So what’s that, then?” Amy said, pointing to his glass.
	“Shandy.” Angus looked almost affronted, but not for long. Instead he looked puzzled.
	“Maybe I’m gettin’ a touch o’ the shivers,” he said, “but I could swear that bagpipe just wriggled.”
	Amy stared at him. “What do you mean, wriggled?”
	“Exactly what I said. The pipes. The pipes were wiggling aboot. And not in a natural way.”
	The Doctor, who was graced with excellent hearing and who had heard the entire conversation, even the parts Amy had missed, took a step forward, peering between their shoulders. “Which one?”
	“That one.” Angus pointed, although as it turned out he needn’t have bothered. Because it was at that precise moment that the set of pipes jumped clear out of the arms of its owner, sailing three feet in the air and then descending, attaching themselves to his face.
	The pandemonium unfolded in several stages. First, the unfortunate piper lurched from side to side, his apparent physical pain manifesting in a scream that went largely unheard over the noise. Those either side of him were knocked, and their own piping ceased, as disgruntled Scotsmen expressed annoyance and then - a second or two later - sudden alarm. The afflicted piper was still thrashing, trying desperately to prise the instrument away from his jaws. He staggered forward, headbutting (actually it was more like pipe-butting) the man in front, which started a domino effect, as several men stumbled.
	But there were more of the pipes wriggling now, further up in the ranks of assembled musicians, only this time there was an awareness, a sense that things weren’t right, and most of the men dropped their instruments in time. Most, but not all. A few sets of pipes managed the leap and dive, soaring momentarily into space as if spontaneously infused with life, before plummeting as if suddenly deprived of it. And each one of those sets that had managed a leap also managed to affix itself to a face upon its descent.
	The first piper screamed one last time and then collapsed to the floor in a dead faint or something far worse.
	The Doctor was on him in a second. He poked and prodded at the pipes, which seemed to have become limp, although they were stuck fast to the face of their unfortunate owner. The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver; it fizzed as he flicked switches and pointed. Meanwhile, Angus clambered up on a nearby table and yelled to the bandmaster at the top of his lungs. “WE HAVE A PIPER DOON! REPEAT, A PIPER IS DOON!”
	“Doctor!” said Amy, rushing to his side. “Is he - ”
	“No,” said the Doctor.
	“You had no idea what I was about to say.”
	“You were about to say ‘Is he dead’, weren’t you?”
	“Well, no, actually, I was going to say ‘alive’.”
	“Were you?”
	“Why wouldn’t I?”
	“You just never struck me as a glass half full person, that’s all, and - ”
	“Doctor! Can we focus?”
	“He’s alive but his vitals are failing. We’ve got minutes, and that’s a stretch.”
	“Can we move him? Is it safe?”
	The Doctor shuffled off his knees. “Only one way to find out.”
	Together, they lifted the fallen piper and began to carry him to the edge of the street, while around them the pipes leaped and snarled, going for passers by. Angus was ducking in and out of the parade, helping where he could. There was nothing to be done about the pipers who’d been smothered, but he could at least assist with crowd control.
	“Keep people safe and out of the way!” the Doctor called out to him. “We’ll be back!”
	As he was crossing the street he almost collided with an anoraked passer-by, holding a placard.
	“Bugs!” he cried. “We knew, and they denied! The bugs are on their way!”
	“Sorry.” The Time Lord fought to hold onto the injured piper. “What did you say?”
	“THE BUG! THE COMING OF THE BUG!”
	“What bug?” asked the Doctor urgently.
	“The Millennium Bug, you fool! Ah’ve been sayin’ it for years and naebody listened! And now it’s here! And it’ll destroy us all!”
	The Doctor shook his head in disgust.

	They rested the injured piper on the pub table. The Doctor listened to his heart, while Amy placated the anxious landlady. She had seen her fair share of oddities over the years, but this was a new one. 
	“What the hell’s that thing on his face?”
	“It’s a set of bagpipes,” explained Amy, although there really was no need.
	“What on earth happened? Was it a stag night? Or some kind of student prank gone wrong?”
	“Neither,” said Amy, and turned her attention back to the Doctor. He was feeling all around the edge of the pipes, in an attempt to loosen the bond.
	“Are they eating his face?” said Amy.
	“No, they’re slowly asphyxiating him. The good news is we have a small window to get them off. And that’s the bad news.”
	“Isn’t there a way?”
	“There is, but it’s dangerous. I can oscillate the sonic to artificially stop his heart, just for a moment. And there’s a chance that the thing will assume its work is done and cut him loose.”
	“You can’t do that!”
	“The alternative is he dies a slow and painful death, Pond,” the Doctor snapped. “Now what would you have me do?”
	Amy seethed. Aside from the endless corridors, these impossible dilemmas were the worst thing about travelling with him. 
	“Fine,” she said. “Do it.”
	Grimly, the Doctor nodded. He held the screwdriver against the piper’s chest. Flicked three switches and then hummed a strange, atonal melody that seemed to act as a key, because the screwdriver suddenly went red, its pitch dropping.
	The piper began to shudder and convulse and then stopped, as cold and stiff as death. Instantly the pipes attached to his face went limp, their bonds cut. Amy grabbed them and the ends began to wriggle, thrashing dangerously - 
	She held them with both hands and smashed the instrument on the edge of the table. Once, twice, three times, and then it was still.
	The Doctor flicked another switch. He pounded on the piper’s chest. He pounded again. The man coughed and heaved a huge groan. He was pale, and bright red marks bordered his sweat-encrusted face, but he was alive.
	“Well done,” said the Doctor to Amy, with a weak smile.
	“I’m sorry I killed it.”
	“It makes my job harder. But you probably didn’t have a choice, Amy. It’s acting on instinct. I don’t know if you could have reasoned with it.”
	He placed the bagpipes on the table and prodded. “Looks organic. And carbon-based, which rules out at least a dozen galaxies. In fact I’d go so far as to suggest it might even be from Earth.”
	“But how is that possible?”
	“I don’t know. There’s something else.” The Doctor ran his screwdriver up and forth along the creature, which lay splayed in a most undignified fashion at the long trestle table’s edge: at the other end, the piper was starting to get up, with the assistance of the landlady. “Something I’m missing.”
	He said it in that low, muttery voice he used when his eyes got intense and he started biting his lower lip. It would have been a perfect moment for a theatrical pause, which was why it came as a surprise to Amy when the Doctor added, quite brightly, “And, something familiar. Seriously, I haven’t had this much deja vu since I watched The Force Awakens.”
	“Since you watched what?”
	“Spoilers,” said the Doctor inanely. And at that moment the pub door flew open, and in marched Angus McThistle, his arms grimy with blood and grease.
	“I think we took care of the last of ‘em,” he said. “It’s all gone quiet oot there. Well, for a New Year’s Eve.”
	Amy stared at him, aghast. “You killed them all?”
	“No, just one. And that was self-defence. It was me or it. Then the rest just sort of…scattered. Peeled themselves from the faces of the men they’d attacked, and just ran off.”
	“Were they frightened?” said the Doctor.
	“No,” said Angus, his face thoughtful. “It was like watching a pack of wolves. Almost like they were being summoned.”
	“That can’t be good,” murmured the Doctor, back in intense lower lip mode. And this time, there was no lighthearted afterthought.
	The door banged again. This time it was a small, balding man of sixty, in full highland dress and the insignia of an officer. He carried a captain’s baton under his arm and had a tidy white beard. He looked out of breath, but his uniform was immaculate.
	“Saints preserve us!” he cried. “What shenanigans is this?”
	“Captain Campbell,” said the landlady by way of greeting. “Will ye be havin’ a dram?”
	“I’ll be needin’ the cask, Mary, at this rate! What in Satan’s name is that mess out there? Why is one of my pipers spread-eagled in that armchair? And how have thirteen perfectly good sets of pipes wound up smashed or stolen, ruining what is the most important night of my year?”
	He turned to face Angus, and his angry mouth curled into a sneer. “Well, well. Angus Mc-ruddy-Thistle. Might have known that where there’s trouble, you’d be crawlin’ along in its wake.”
	“Hello, Peter,” said Angus, without smiling. “Nice to see you too.”
	“It’s Captain Campbell to you, laddy.”
	“Not any more,” said Angus. “Ye had me drummed out, remember?”
	“Aye, well, you brought that on yerself. I couldn’t have a piper wit’ no self-control.” Campbell indicated the mess on the table. “I take it you’re responsible for this?”
	“Actually, that was me,” interrupted Amy, stepping forward with a hand raised, half in greeting, half in confession. “I mean, it was trying to kill me, so…”
	“Kill you?!?” The little man’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop out. “What sort of nonsense are you blathering on about? You’ve ruined this parade! This celebration! My career!”
	“They’re not bagpipes,” said the Doctor, by way of interjection. “They’re sentient life forms that look like bagpipes, and they were attacking your musicians.”
	“So you say,” Campbell snorted. “I saw nothing.”
	“Yes, well, you were at the front. But!” said the Doctor, marching over to the armchair and placing his hands on the shoulders of the unfortunate piper, in the process of recovering with the aid of a large bottle of Glen Morangie, “this man almost had his face sucked off by one set of pipes, and it was only thanks to the intervention of this man - ” and he indicated Angus - “and this woman - ” and he indicated Amy - “that he’s still alive. I think that deserves at least a modicum of thanks, don’t you?”
	“The last I was aware,” replied Campbell, fully indignant, “we were halfway up the Mile and halfway through ‘Flower of Scotland’ and all of a sudden the damned parade is falling apart and half my men are running riot!”
	“Your men are lucky to be alive!” shouted Angus. 
	“Poppycock!” Campbell may have been a foot shorter, but he made up for it with the venom in his voice and the hate in his eyes. “You may be able to fool this doe-eyed lass and her effeminate friend with your charm, Angus McThistle, but some of us see you for who you are. A useless lump of a man, a knuckle-dragging ape with all the finesse of a damp squib, a mediocre piper and an embarrassing liability to respectable musicians and their kin. Oh, drumming out was too good for you. In another time and place I’d have seen you shot for SHEER BRAZEN INSUBORDINATION!”
	It was lucky for Campbell that the window shattered, because Angus had been about to strangle him. Instead, they were beset upon by three dozen sets of sentient bagpipes, scampering through the doors and leaping through the windows. The noise they made was a strange fusion of wheezing and growling, half mechanical and half organic; it sounded like a dog being fed through a shredder.
	They landed on the floor, pacing back and forth, aggressively but clumsily, snapping and wheezing at the assembled gathering, who stood, frozen in terror - even the Doctor, Amy noticed, seemed unsure of what to do. She looked at the nearest set of bagpipes. It flashed what looked like teeth. But the creatures did not attack. It seemed as if they were waiting for something. Or someone. 
	As it turned out, it was a something. It was bigger than the others - if the bagpipes had been violins, this would have been a cello - and strode through the door unhurriedly, in the manner of a military general arriving at an inspection. It seemed to possess a greater sense of self-control and command over its own faculties, like a walking child in the midst of a sea of crawling toddlers. Moreover there was something about its gait that absolutely reeked of malicious intent, mixed up with not inconsiderable intelligence. The invading pipes all carried an air of menace: this one looked positively lethal.
	It was looking at the Doctor. As if singling him out. Unfortunately the Doctor happened to be standing quite close to Campbell, who assumed that the pipes were looking at him, having chosen him as the dominant alpha male, the one who would be challenged. He rose to the challenge by dissolving into a gibbering wreck.
	“NOOO!” he yelled, hiding behind the Doctor. “Leave me be! Take him! Take him!”
	And he ran behind the bar and dropped to his knees out of sight. There was a clatter, followed by a yelp of pain.
	The Doctor turned to Mary with a one-word question. “Cellar?”
	Mary pointed to the back, and the Doctor stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled at the approaching bagpipes. “Hey! Catch me if you can!”
	And off he went. With a wheeze and a snarl, the alpha leaped the nearest table and made for him. The bagpipes followed, scrambling over and under tables and between the legs of chairs, bypassing the others, relentless in pursuit of their chosen quarry - 
	- who was already lifting the hatch and receding into darkness.
	The last of the pipes was through and heading down the stairs. Amy rushed to the hatch, desperate to follow, fearing it would ruin whatever plan he had made.
	…he did have a plan, didn’t he?
	“Doctor!” she called into the darkness, willing him to reappear, and then there was the sound of snarling and wheezing and then the clatter of boots on stone. And he was up and out and slamming the hatch shut behind him.
	“Get me something heavy,” he said, but Angus was already on the case - quite literally, as he and Amy tipped the heavy bookcase on its side so that it covered the hatch, as Mills and Boons and walking tour guides and phone books (how long, Amy thought to herself, had it been since she’d looked at a phone book?) spilled out, creating an almighty mess through which the Doctor was now stepping and striding.
	“Thanks,” he said, wandering through into the bar. “That’ll hold them for a bit.”
	Inside, the scene was one of mute devastation, although mercifully no one was injured. Mary stood, staring at the windows in a mixture of dismay and fear. Campbell could be heard behind the bar, quietly sobbing in terror.
	“It was the knuckle-dragging ape that did it,” the Doctor went on, looking at Angus and Amy. “Your Mr Campbell actually did me a favour, even if it was an incredibly rude one. Bang! Lightbulb moment.”
	“What do you mean?” said Amy.
	“Apes! Apes and evolution. Listen.” The Doctor sat down in a dining chair, one leg crossed over his knee. “Mary, come over here and stop fretting. There won’t be any more for a while, if at all.”
	Obediently, Mary did as she was bidden. Amy had been travelling with the Doctor for some time and was still amazed at the effect he had on some people. Not everyone. Some just wanted to deck him. But others, the ones he could reach, found a quiet solace in that pleasant, open face. It invited trust. Some people, she realised, would move heaven and earth for this man, even if they scarcely knew him.
	That, in itself, was a worrying thought.
	“Story time,” said the Doctor. “Many years ago, when I was much younger and also much older, which shouldn’t make sense but would if you were there…I took a holiday in Scotland with a couple of friends. We walked around the countryside, visited the pubs, had a gander at Loch Ness.”
	He smiled at Amy. “I wore a kilt.”
	Amy’s eyebrow went up, but that was about as far as the interaction went - and undaunted, the Doctor continued. “While we were there we discovered that an alien shapeshifting race called the Zygons had started a hostile takeover. Had a bit of a scuffle. Nearly turned very nasty, thankfully didn’t. Still: several people died. You know that thing in Loch Ness? That was them.”
	Angus scoffed. “That’s a legend!”
	“Angus, you’re handy in a scrap but you’re naive. Most legends are based in fact and this one is very, very real.” The Doctor was monologuing rapidly and his voice was becoming more and more intense, borderline snappy, the way it did when he had a tremendous amount of information to impart and next to no time in which to do it. “The Loch Ness monster? Them. Also them: the Biasd Bheulach. The Blue Men of the Minch: Probably not them, unless there was a problem with the colour settings.”
	He sprang to his feet. “Anyway! Point is this: they work by impersonation. Steal their victims, copy the template, generate a bit of aggro, Robert’s your uncle. I thought the incident at Forgill was the first time they’d been on this part of the mainland.” He paused for breath. “Turns out I was wrong.”
	“Wait a minute.” Amy - the only person in the room with any hope of reaching the same chapter of the Doctor’s thought process, if not necessarily the same page - got up. “You’re saying the bagpipes are…shapeshifting aliens?”
	“Of course not, Amy. That’d be completely ridiculous. No, I’m saying that the bagpipes evolved from them. They’re an experiment gone hideously wrong.” He whipped out the sonic screwdriver: it now glowed orange. “I had it on the wrong setting. Managed to do a minor bit of calibration while I had them in the cellar, enough to get a new reading. They’re the original copies. Well, descendants anyway.”
	Mary had her head in her hands. “None of this is making any sense. Not a drop of it.”
	“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mary, it’s only just started making sense to me. Try and think of it like this: the Zygons land, and the first thing they see is a piper. And the pipes are wriggling and bellowing, probably ‘Amazing Grace’ or something suitably cliched like that. What do they assume?”
	There was a sea of blank looks.
	“They assume that bagpipes are the dominant life form. That bipedal thing carrying them, he’s just a means of perambulation, like a car. No, not a car, a horse.” The Doctor did a bit of clip-clopping for effect. “So they copy the pipes, not realising that they’re simply copying the puppet. And eventually they figure out the piper was the puppeteer, and the invasion begins in earnest. But by that point, it’s too late.”
	“What do you mean?” said Angus, sharply.
	“Zygon lab security is notoriously slapdash. I managed to escape their detention block by twisting a couple of wires and holding my breath for a minute. At some point - no idea when, no idea how - a few of these things broke away from the pods. Came to life, got minds of their own.”
	“How?” said Amy.
	“Programming error. Twitch in the algorithm. Maybe a stray bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. Doesn’t matter. The readings I got from the sonic are consistent with that turn of events. Which means…” The Doctor sat back on his dining chair. “You’ve had sentient bagpipes out there in the fields for decades. And they’ve been breeding.”
	For a moment, the quartet reflected in a solemn silence. It was a lot to take in, but it also made a curious sense, once their brains had had the requisite time to process the facts. Amy got there first. Angus and Mary were still playing catch-up when suddenly, somewhere behind the counter, they heard the clinking of glasses.
	“Peter!” barked Mary, her mind suddenly businesslike. “Anything you take, it’s going on your tab!”
	“Assuming that any of this absolute nonsense is true,” said Angus, “why are they here? Now? On New Year’s Eve?”
	“No idea,” said the Doctor. “But I’ve got a theory. Mary, you’re a local. How’s Edinburgh’s property market these days? Any new developments? As in, you know, literal developments?”
	Mary thought. “There’s Collingwood’s. That completed in September. Aboot three miles away.”
	The Doctor snapped his fingers. “That’s it! The great and bountiful human race strikes again!”
	Miss Pond, always keen to defend her people in the presence of an uppity Time Lord, gave him a hard stare. “What do you mean?”
	“You lot! You see a humongous green space in the middle of the countryside, glorious views, plenty of fresh air, you think ‘Oh, what a lovely spot. I know - LET’S BUILD SOME HOUSES!’”
	Amy conceded the point. Silently, of course.
	“Only thing is, it never occurs to you that there might be wildlife living in that area. And that the wildlife, whatever sort of wildlife it is, has to go somewhere. Rats, or mice. Saints alive, Pond, did none of you ever read Watership Down?”
	“So what?” Amy turned on him hotly. “What are you saying, we can’t - we just can’t build houses? Or shouldn’t?”
	“Oh, nothing so patronising.” The Doctor smiled, suddenly quite calm. “This isn’t Social Commentary 101. No, people need places to live, I’d be the last person to criticise you all for that. I’m just saying there are consequences.”
	“They’re here, then,” said Angus. “Marching across Edinburgh. What happened? Did they ingratiate themselves into the pipe band? What do they want?”
	“They’re animals.” A new - but familiar - voice had joined the conversation, as Campbell popped up from behind the bar, getting shakily to his feet with a whisky glass in hand. The ice clinked and made melody in the bottom. “They’re acting like savages.”
	“As much as it pains me to agree with you, I fear you may be on to something,” the Doctor admitted. “But no, I’d say they’re confused. The desire to attack you all is a race memory. That doesn’t mean it’s their prevailing mindset.”
	“So how do we discover that?” asked Amy.
	The Doctor shot her a smile. “I’m going to talk to them.”

	A few feet below, the creatures amassed in the dark, plotting their next move. There was talk of ransacking the town. Currently they were in the middle of an argument as to whether they should eat the women and children first, or save them for later, or not eat them at all. There was some debate as to the protocol of things, and as this was uncharted territory for all of them absolutely no one could decide on the correct etiquette. The creatures were still arguing when the door to the cellar creaked ominously open, sending an acute patch of light down the stairs, and casting into sharp relief the silhouette of the Doctor, standing at the top.
	He was wearing, of all things, a set of bagpipes.
	Amy had asked him if he knew how to play, to which the Doctor had replied that he certainly hoped so, although there was a good chance that he would be a little rusty after all these years, and that this wouldn’t be the end of the world except that it might, in this case, actually lead to it. But here they were.
	The creatures snarled and immediately made for the staircase, but a burst from the Doctor stopped them in their tracks.
	“What did you say to them?” asked Amy.
	The Doctor took his mouth away from the blowstick. “Hello, I think.”
	He gave another burst, and the alpha creature - the large one that apparently led the others - gave a long, low rumble in reply. To Amy, it started like the beginnings of a drone.
	The Doctor responded with a melismatic series of higher notes, stopping occasionally to translate. “We’re just opening a dialogue. They’re telling me to get out of the way, puny human, which is normally the sort of thing I’d take as an insult only it’s really not the time. I’m demanding my rights to parley as per article 3.1572 of the Shadow Proclamation.”
	“That’s your go-to for just about everything, isn’t it?”
	But the Doctor had already begun to play again, answering the alpha’s arpeggios with a strange, almost atonal counterpoint, as the two of them went back and forth. And now something else was happening - other sets of pipes could be heard joining the conversation from the bottom of the staircase, as the attempts to thrash out a peace treaty reached a feverish crescendo with at least six or seven different melodies all jostling for attention.
	Amy remembered the uncle who’d tried to get her into Ornette Coleman and how this was basically like that, only slightly more tuneful. And it seemed to be working. There was a sense of harmony in play now, with the tunes from the creatures in the cellar working almost in tandem with the Doctor, and making a noise that had moved back from unbearable and which was now skating the borders between grating and pleasant.
	All except one. The alpha didn’t seem to be on board. You could literally hear it in its voice. Moreover the Doctor was running out of breath, his face reddening by the second. Angus noticed, and stepped forward.
	“Should I take over, Doctor?”
	The Doctor shook his head no. Amy said “Leave him. He knows what he’s doing.”
	All of a sudden the Doctor pulled his mouth away from the blowstick and leaned against the door brace, his hands on the bagpipes, taking in great lungfuls of air. “We’re almost there. I’ve offered them safe passage to a safe place, and everyone’s in agreement except - ”
	The alpha flew through the air at the speed of a freshly-tossed caber, heading for the Doctor’s throat. He ducked with a microsecond to spare, but it managed to grab onto the top of his head, pulling the pair of them to the floor. The Doctor rolled around helplessly, wrenching with both hands in a desperate attempt to free himself, while all the while the enormous bag was heading across his forehead and in the direction of his face. It was snarling and blowing and wheezing at the same time; it sounded unholy and foul.
	“No!” the Doctor was yelling, even through his cries of pain. “No, we can talk about thi-”
	The pipes wriggled and shook and then attached themselves squarely onto his face.
	But only for a moment. For here was Angus, charging forward with the battle-hardened anger of William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. With a great cry and surge of almost superhuman strength he pulled the bagpipes from the head of the Doctor and ran for the door, holding the alpha at arm’s length as it thrashed and snarled all the way.
	Amy set off in pursuit, the Doctor following not far behind. They reached the street just in time to see Angus heading through the open door of the chip shop.
	“Angus!” the Doctor called out, but there was no answer.
	“We’ve got to stop him,” said Amy as they headed across the street. “He’ll get himself - ”
	From inside: the clattering of metal, a hot sizzling sound, barely audible over the sound of screeching and thrashing, and then silence.
	And then the piper emerged, bruised, bloodied and oil-splattered, but otherwise unharmed.
	“Done,” he said. “But they’ll probably need a bit of deep cleaning.”

	It was some hours later. The Doctor had herded the remainder of the bagpipe tribe into the TARDIS, having promised to take them somewhere safe, warm and with little to no risk of impudent colonists showing up and desecrating the landscape. He had been met with absolutely no resistance, with even the most bloodthirsty of the group falling abruptly and politely into line after discovering the fate of their leader. Angus McThistle, it seemed, was a man not to be trifled with.
	It had made for quite the spectacle: the Doctor, herding the pipes down the Mile in the direction of Niddry Street, as gobsmacked locals gaped and wondered whether their drinks had been spiked. Several made resolutions, then and there and well in advance of midnight, to lay off the sauce entirely during the next year. This being Scotland, most of those promises had been broken within minutes.
	Right now they were waiting to watch the fireworks from the seclusion of an exclusive private function room at Edinburgh Castle, which the Doctor had secured by means of the psychic paper, as footmen dashed back and forth with trays of drinks for the new Laird of Dunans and his entourage. Said entourage included Angus, Mary the pub landlady and also Captain Campbell, who had been invited up at the Doctor’s whim and Amy’s annoyance. 
	“I still don’t understand why you brought him.” Amy looked across at where Campbell was involved in a heated argument with Angus about something.
	“Bear with me. Captain? Could we have a word in your shell?”
	Campbell came across the balcony, wine glass in hand. Some of his earlier anger had evaporated, but that scornful front remained. “You know, I’m very grateful for the invitation,” he said. “But you’ll still not convince me that that little incident down at the parade this evening wasn’t a lot of smoke and mirrors.”
	“Ah, yes, well, smoke and mirrors explain just about everything,” replied the Doctor. “But no, you see, I was thinking about our friend Angus here. Because it strikes me that he did us all a colossal favour today, without once thinking about himself or the danger to his own life. And it strikes me that a man of that calibre might just be someone you want to have in your piping unit.”
	Campbell was already shaking his head. “No. No, absolutely not. It’s completely out of the question. He was drummed out and I’m not about to drum him back in again just because of a sudden spurt of so-called heroics.”
	“Right, yes, understood.” The Doctor paused before adding “Of course, we could just tell everyone about your heroics instead.”
	An eyebrow went up sharply. “What do you mean?”
	“Well, it’s all a bit of a blur, but to my recollection, when the creatures attacked in the pub earlier, you screamed like a marmoset in heat and then hid behind the counter, using several members of the party as human shields while you were doing it.”
	“It’d be a terrible shame if that got out,” said Amy. “Especially here, in such prestigious company.”
	Campbell went pale. “You wouldn’t.”
	“Oh, I think you’ll find we would,” said the Doctor. “But perhaps it needn’t come to that. Now come on, what do you say?”
	The captain looked to be on the verge of hyperventilation. After a moment or two he had recovered enough of his composure to give a squirrely nod. “Yes. Well. I suppose we could come to some sort of arrangement.”
	“That’s the spirit!” The Doctor clapped him on the back, and called over to the other side of the room. “Angus! You’ve got your old job back.”
	Campbell disappeared into the rest of the party, looking deflated. Angus joined them on the balcony. “You really mean that?”
	“I do. Go and see the captain over there, and he’ll thrash out the details. You’ll be back in the platoon before you can say ‘Flower of Scotland’.”
	Amy concurred. “Mm-hmm. I’d give it a few minutes, though. Let him have a drink to recover first.”
	Angus gripped the two of them by the shoulders with his big, brawny, bandaged hands. “I can’t thank you enough. Both of you.”
	“Well, it was the least we could do. You did save our bacon back there.”
	“I confess to a bit of guilt. Drownin’ it in oil like that.”
	“Don’t worry. I’d rather have had it another way, but I think the alpha was too far gone, too animalistic, to be convinced.”
	“And the others?”
	“Oh, the Zygon hybrids will be fine. They want what everybody wants, which is just to be left alone. Right now they’re having a whale of a time in the TARDIS swimming pool. When we’re done here, Amy and I will take them somewhere quiet.” He took another sip. “Somewhere they can live in peace.”
	“You’re a decent sort, Doctor. Ah’m sorry I called ye a Sassenach.”
	The Doctor gave an enigmatic smile. “I’m not even from Earth.”
	Angus nodded and drained his glass. “Funny thing is, I believe you.”
	He left them to it and went off to find Campbell. The Doctor and Amy were left to themselves for a moment - but not for long. From outside they could hear the sound of chanting. “Ten! Nine! Eight!”
	And then the count reached zero and there was an explosion in the sky, and just for a change it wasn’t a dangerous supernova or an exploding battle cruiser. The fireworks were bright, glorious and expensive, and quite marvellous to watch.
	“Look at it,” said the Doctor as the rockets sizzled and burst, leaving glittering trails across the dark green sky. “The end of the millennium. Well, not really, that’s next year, but the year everyone celebrated the changing of the clock. Mankind with all its hopes and dreams and ambitions.”
	“And building plans,” mused Amy.
	The Doctor smiled. “And that.”
	They could hear singing now, strains of a familiar melody that echoed through the function room and the crowds in the courtyard outside.
	“Should auld acquaintance be forgot 
	 And never brought to mind…”
	The Doctor thought about the persistence of memory and the things we forget: because we choose to, because we must, or because they are taken from us. He gave half a glance at his companion and sighed. “Oh, Rory,” he muttered to himself.
	“Who?” said Amy.
	“Nobody. It doesn’t matter.”
	Amy gave a slight frown but let the moment pass. “Anyway. Happy New Year, Doctor.”
	“Likewise, Miss Pond. For the sake of Auld Lang Zygon.”
	“That - ” Amy prodded him in the chest - “is a terrible, terrible pun.”
	The Doctor’s grin was unapologetic. “If you can’t make terrible jokes in the holiday season, when can you?”
	“Well,” said Amy. “I’ll drink to that.”
	And so they did.

The Mary Whitehouse Experience

The main ground floor atrium of the Buffalo Wings Research and Development Centre in East Herefordshire was light, spacious, and currently empty. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through a generous panel of windows spanning most of the length of the room, which was about half the size of a football pitch and a lot less muddy. Ornate columns of off-white marble stood near the glass staircase that led to the atrium’s upper balcony. It held the sort of acoustics most orchestral conductors only dream of, but besides the hum of an air conditioning unit, the chamber was utterly silent.

This was about to change.

All at once the silence was punctuated by a wheezing, groaning sound. It was a sound of intrigue; it was a sound of excitement and adventure; it was above all a sound of hope. It was emanating from an ageing caretaker whose job it was to make sure the room was empty, once an hour, every hour. He shambled out of his cupboard, limping on wobbly, rheumatic legs, gave a vaguely satisfied grunt, and then wheezed and groaned his way back to the armchair in the darkened corner he’d reserved for snoozing.

He did not see the arrival of the police box, which turned up out of nowhere just a couple of minutes later. The door swung open and a middle-aged grey-haired man stepped out, followed by a woman young enough to be his space daughter. The middle-aged man had taken on a variety of appearances over his uncountable lifespan, and had often been described as having a pleasant, open face, but the one he currently wore was neither pleasant nor open. He usually looked like the Demon Headmaster’s stunt double, unless he smiled, which had the effect of creating the sort of sinister, slightly deranged expression that people usually crossed the street to avoid.

He surveyed the room, and harrumphed.

“Bland. Lifeless.” He sniffed the air. “Thursday. I hate Thursdays.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Clara Oswald, who was gazing around with folded arms and a weary expression. “You never could get the hang of them.”

“Haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. In any case: Herefordshire!” He threw both arms up to the sky and opened his mouth wide in mock enthusiasm. “The Buffalo Wings R&D Centre, home to the latest scientific enhancements in multimedia.”

“And we’re here because…?”

The Doctor was running his screwdriver across the desk, scanning. “They’ve got some fancy new device that lets you walk around inside your favourite TV shows.”

Clara frowned. “Hang on, you don’t even like TV.”

“Correct! But,” said the Doctor, pocketing the screwdriver, “the tech is years out of date.”

“Ah.” The penny dropped. “This is a nostalgia fetish, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean years the other way. Way, way too advanced for this time period. Which means…” The Doctor was feeling under the desk for something. “There’s something up.”

His hand reached a button, and a door on the first floor landing swung open. “To be precise, it’s up there.”

***

The Doctor couldn’t be quite sure what happened next.

There was a curiously empty room in this even more curiously empty research centre – why, why, why hadn’t he stopped to wonder why it was so quiet? – and then the stand-mounted CRT television had risen out of the floor like the booby-trapped idol rising out of the ground in some terrible adventure flick, and then the Doctor had touched its edge and then the big red button in the middle and the glass partition that dropped from the ceiling had separated him from Clara. And then the black-and-white static on the TV seemed to bulge at the edges, gaining substance, leaking its way out of the glass and swelling like a balloon, and then getting taller and taller and then it was rising around him like a fog and enveloping him completely –

– and then he was falling and falling and flying through a whirlwind of stars and swirls and bits of circuitry, and the wind was howling like a gale, and he could not feel his own body, and the colours were like that excessively lengthy sequence at the end of that Kubrick film that always bored him to tears, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the sound of crackling, only — no, it wasn’t crackling, it was applause, studio applause, and then he could hear a distorted voice crying “It’s Friday… It’s five to five… It’s CRACKERJACK!”

***

He blinked, and adjusted his eyes. Why couldn’t he see?

No. He could, but for some reason the world had faded to monochrome. The Doctor had no idea why. He also had no idea why he felt so old, all of a sudden, or why his neck felt suddenly both constricted and warm. He looked down at the cravat that dangled from his shirt collar, and examined the wrinkled fingers. Looked down at his feet; noticed the cane propped up against the wall nearby.

Ah. Of course. He was both older and younger, trapped in a previous body. His first. Possibly his first; it was difficult to tell. And apparently he still had his memories, although they were a little fuzzy – rather like the world around him, which seemed to have lost definition. Things looked grainy.

It was a testament to the Doctor’s resilience that he did not immediately freak out. Instead, he got his bearings. The studio was staged and curtained and a live audience of gaggling school children sat watching as a plain-suited gentleman explained how the next game worked. Before the Doctor knew it, he was being handed a variety of prizes, which he was expected to hold, all at once, in an ever-expanding pile. A wooden Dalek-themed jigsaw. A bumper box of sweet cigarettes. A vinyl copy of ‘I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek’. A TARDIS-themed bagatelle game. A doll that was presumably supposed to look like him, although it did not.

His ageing fingers fumbled at the last one and the doll dropped to the ground; there was a chorus of ‘ahhs’ and a bit of laughter, and one of the floor runners emerged from the wings carrying something large and, under normal circumstances, green. A cabbage. The presenter received it with a smirk, and then balanced it on top of the Doctor’s haphazard pile, where it rolled from left to right and back again while the Time Lord tried desperately to steady it.

“I don’t suppose you have any celery?” he asked hopefully.

***

Zap.

There was a moment’s disorientation while the Doctor tried to work out why he was suddenly in the English countryside.

What had happened was this: he had been ripped out of one plane of existence and into another, as if someone had changed the channel. The world was no longer black and white, although the colour didn’t feel quite right to him. He scratched his head, and was alarmed at the sensation.

The Doctor felt the moptop he’d suddenly accumulated, and looked down at the checked trousers.

Ah.

He gazed around him at the scene: the brightly-painted houses lining the edges of an idyllic village square. People milled about, going into and out of buildings, moving with a stiff-legged gait. Most of them were too far away for him to see them clearly, but there was something about them that seemed off.

“This is another fine mess ye’ve gotten us inteh, Doctor.”

He turned to identify the voice, and found himself face to face with a kilted Scotsman.

“Hello, Jamie,” he said. “Are you really here?”

“I’m as here as you are, Doctor. Wherever here is.”

“Some sort of English pastoral scene, I shouldn’t wonder. But none of it looks quite real.”

It didn’t. The buildings and the shrubberies, while brightly hued, lacked a level of depth. The colours were too vivid, the designs too simple, the flowers all identical and stiff, as if they had been cut from fabric and then glued in place. The people, too, were moving in a slow and almost robotic manner, buying fish and walking dogs and waving at passers by, and doing so in complete silence.

“And look at the locals,” said Jamie, as if reading his thoughts. “They havenae any mouths!”

So that was it. The Doctor wondered why he hadn’t noticed already, but now that he had, it was obvious: aside from the occasional moustache, the beady-eyed villagers were featureless from the nose down. The effect was uncanny, and not a little unsettling.

“My goodness,” said the Doctor. “It’s extraordinary.”

“It’s creepy, is what it is.” Jamie was tutting. “Are you no gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“I seem to have been forced to relive classic television series from the point of view of my previous selves.”

“What — all of them?”

“Mmm, well, at this stage I simply don’t know. Perhaps just the old favourites. Anyway, I’m hopping through time at the whim of some unknown entity or person, dropping in and out of programmes seemingly at random, accompanied, it would appear, by various friends and companions from my past. There’s no apparent pattern established as yet, so the best I can do is to leap through from programme to programme until I can find a way to escape.”

“That’s a shedload of exposition, Doctor.”

“Yes, Jamie, it was a big one.”

It went dark. Not after-sunset-dark, but partial-eclipse-dark: the sun (which looked, now the Doctor came to regard it, rather like the bulb from an angle-poised lamp) all but disappeared as a colossal head swam into view.

Jamie balked. “Would ye look at the size o’ that thing!”

The head spoke: its voice was booming but also very polite. “Here is Camberwick Green, where everyone is going about their business.”

“What’s that he’s speaking into?” Jamie asked.

“It’s a microphone. I think he’s — ”

The giant head opened its mouth again. “Hello, Doctor!”

“Oh! Oh, I say! Are you — ”

But the head wasn’t addressing him. It was addressing the bearded gentleman in the top hat who was climbing out of a vintage car. The Doctor looked at the car and felt a pang of nostalgia, which was instantly undone as the bearded gentleman walked toward him, brandishing a scalpel.

“Are you busy on your rounds?”

The bearded gentleman stopped, looked up and gave an exaggerated nod.

“Are you going to deal with the outsiders?”

Nod.

“And how are you going to do that?”

The bearded gentleman looked at the Doctor and Jamie with glowing red eyes. He brandished the scalpel.

“Oh,” said Jamie. “Oh, sh-”

***

Zap.

And now he was in a strange, slightly drab suburban house, minimalist and monochromatic, like an unfinished drawing. Cupboards and doors appeared to have been sketched, the lines carelessly contoured. Most annoying of all there was nowhere to sit, and apart from two long tables at chest height the place was all but empty. Some of the paintwork was gay, and a window looked out on a serene garden bathed in artificial light, but it really was the most cheerless room, a wooden box full of toys and a small bookshelf the only concessions to fun.

The Doctor looked down at himself, and nearly fell over the thick scarf he was now wearing, stretching up and around his neck at least twice and trailing out behind him like a multicoloured knitted wedding gown. It had the air of a garment that had been assembled by some elderly lady who’d got too enthused with her task and hadn’t known when to stop. Still, it would be handy in a cold snap, like a summer’s afternoon in Frinton.

The crown of his head felt warm. The Doctor loosened the hat he found up there and a mass of curls sprang out, wiry and unruly. Instinctively, he licked just behind his lips. “Hmm. I know these teeth.”

A door at the end of the room was opened by a young lady wearing a green cashmere jumper, a pleated skirt, and saddle shoes. At least she looked young, and might not have objected to the adjective. The Doctor happened to know she was only a hundred and twenty-six.

“Hello, Romana,” he said, all curls and familiar teeth.

“God,” she said. “This place is like an interior designer’s nightmare!”

“It is rather dull round the edges, isn’t it?” said the Doctor, knocking on the tables for signs of secret compartments, or woodworm. “Have you encountered any other life forms?”

Romana sighed. “Well, actually — ”

Hot on her heels was an impudent teenager dressed in mustard yellow. The Doctor’s heart sank. Here was a complicated and wearisome history he’d hoped never to revisit, even in a possible hallucination.

The teenager was in the middle of a ferocious argument with someone who was apparently not Romana. “For pity’s sake, I only asked if I could borrow it! Just for a moment! I want to work out where we are.”

He looked around, confused, as if having lost something. “Wait — where’d he — ”

An ugly, rugby-ball shaped creature that seemed to be made of felt suddenly popped up behind the table. Its eyes were large and frog-like, and bizarrely it had a many-toothed zip for a mouth.

“Well, you can’t!” it said, in a voice like an unfiltered Dalek. “It’s mine!” And then, as a sort of half-formed postscript, “I don’t like sharing.”

Adric folded his arms and regarded the creature contemptuously. “Well, if you’re going to be selfish about it then no one’s going to want to be your friend.”

“I’ve got lots of friends!” The creature waved the compass in its hand in indignation. “More than you.”

“What on Gallifrey is it, Doctor?” asked Romana. “And how did it just appear like that?”

“Yes,” said Adric. “How did you do that? You were right behind me when we were arguing upstairs.”

“Some sort of teleportation device,” said the Doctor. “Or perhaps it floats. Look.” He peered behind the counter. “It doesn’t have any legs.”

“Or genitals,” remarked Romana.

“Hey!” the zip-like creature said. “Do you mind? That’s private.”

It was at this point that the bear wandered in. He was six foot tall, with black beady eyes behind a mass of shaggy brown fur.

“Zippy?” he began. “Have you seen my — ” and then stopped. “Ooh! Visitors!”

“How’d you do?” said the Doctor, with a congenial smile. “I’m the Doctor, and this is Romana. Oh, and that’s Adric, squabbling with your pet.”

The bear looked momentarily blank; it took no visible effort. “Eh? Oh, Zippy’s not a pet. He lives here. With me, and George, and Geoffrey. They’re out at the dentist. George needs a filling done.”

“Yeah,” said Zippy. “Too many sweets.”

The bear wagged an accusatory finger. “You can talk, greedy-guts!”

“I never eat sweets!” Zippy cried. “I don’t even like them!”

The Doctor knew a lady protesting too much when he saw one, and was already fishing the bag out of his pocket. “Ah,” he said. “I suppose you won’t want a jelly baby, then.”

You would think it impossible for a pair of fabric eyes to light up, but somehow the zip-shaped thing managed it. “Jelly babies? They’re my favourite!” And, grabbing the bag in a three-fingered paw, he stuffed its entire contents into his mouth.

The Doctor regarded him, amused. “Well now, Adric,” he said. “It would seem congratulations are in order. We’ve found someone even more obnoxious and annoying than you.”

Adric rolled his eyes in the manner of an over-acting waif straight out of stage school. “Oh, fuck off, Tom.”

“So it’s just the two of you?” said Romana, anxious to change the subject before things escalated into a full-on brawl. “Here in this house, on your own?”

“Only for a moment,” said Bungle. “We’ve got a babysitter.”

“Yes,” piped up Zippy. “Actually, we’ve got three of them!”

From just outside, there was a chorus of “Hello!” and “Coo-ee!” and at least one “Bollocks, what have I stepped in?” The trio who walked in were all human in appearance, although the woman’s skirt was far too short for daytime children’s television and the dungarees were the sort of fashion disaster the Doctor hadn’t seen since 1976.

“Seems Eldrad lived after all,” he muttered to himself.

“Hello!” said the bearded man. “We didn’t know you had company.”

“Oh, we’re just passing through,” said Romana, to which the Doctor added “Though we’re glad we stayed. You look to be a cheery threesome.”

The short-skirted woman went red. “Threesome? No, none of that,” she said, far too quickly. “We’re just friends.”

“We’re time travellers,” explained Adric, in the sort of patronising know-it-all voice that always got on the Doctor’s unmentionables. “Only, we got lost.”

“Hey!” the curly-haired young man who looked like he was eyeing up Romana suddenly piped up. “We know a song about getting lost, don’t we?”

“Ooh, yes!” The three of them came round to the front of the table into the big space in the middle of the room. “Shall we sing it to you all?”

“Please don’t,” suggested the Doctor, but of course it was too late.

Mirth-driven, minor-keyed synthesised muzak filled the room like the smell from fish that had been left in the sun for a week, and then Jane’s troubled soprano took up the narrative –

“I was driving to Milton Keynes one day
Saw Tony Blackburn, then drove the other way
But before I knew what was happening to me
I took a wrong turn off the A33

I was lost! Lost! In the English countryside
Found a jolly farmer and he took me for a ride
But we crashed into a haystack, and down on me he went
Couldn’t get him off, and his tractor shaft was bent – ”

“Doctor!” whispered Romana urgently. “You don’t take the A33 to Milton Keynes!”

“Lost! Lost! Oh, what am I to do
I’ve got into an accident, and I can’t find the – ”

Later, the Doctor would wonder where the music was coming from; there had been no sign of any speakers.

***

Zap.

The first thing to note was that he was completely naked. The Doctor scratched his head – which seemed much easier, given that it now had far less hair – and tried to work out whether this had happened before. There was that time in Madrid, of course, after Drax’s stag party, but —

He blinked and sat up. He was in the TARDIS. The console room gleamed like an army of fireflies sitting on the hem of a spangled evening gown in direct sunlight; the Doctor wondered whether he ought to turn down the brightness settings.

He felt his throat. Scottish, again. Shorter. His hand trailed along the floor and brushed against something soft and fluffy lying next to the console: a blonde wig.

From outside, he thought he could discern a jaunty melody; some sort of hornpipe. Then there was a knock on the door. “Five minutes, Mr McCoy!”

The Doctor panicked. There appeared to have been some terrible misunderstanding. Frantically, he looked around for his clothes. Didn’t he wear a v-neck? A v-neck with question marks?

Well, it wasn’t here. Scrambling together what he could, the Doctor headed for the exit just as the TARDIS door opened and a chirpy BBC voice said “the new Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy!”

The Doctor blinked as he entered the blazing lights of the Blue Peter studio. That was the final straw; as far as the console room was concerned, he was going dark. Or had he already? It was a job to remember when you weren’t quite yourself.

For not the first time in this hallucination, the woman standing outside to greet him looked oddly familiar. She was going on about the Pied Piper.

“And what are you going to be wearing?” she asked him.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” said the Doctor. “It’s a secret.” He looked about, his eyes darting anxiously from left to right, for signs of an exit, or his actual clothes. At least the hat was right.

“And which planet are you going to be visiting first?”

Christ. What was this, Twenty Questions? The dog bounded over, wagging its tail. The Doctor hoped it was house trained.

“Do you want to come with me to my planet?” he asked, half-meaning it, half-wishing he could remember the name of the bloody place.

The interview over, the Doctor popped back inside his TARDIS in search of a stiff drink. There were footsteps — tap shoes on linoleum — from the corridor outside, and in walked a disgruntled redhead, wearing a leotard and a sour expression and picking what appeared to be blue ostrich feathers out of her bushy hair.

“Mel?” said the Doctor. “Where have you been?”

“The Pink Windmill,” was the reply. “Seriously. Don’t ask.”

***

Zap.

The Doctor and Rose — he in a leather coat, she in a crop top — were striding down a hill somewhere on a remote Scottish island.

“All I’m saying is, PC Plum is clearly gay,” Rose was saying. “And so is Archie. And they’ve clearly got eyes for each other. So why doesn’t Miss Hoolie see it?”

“Haven’t a clue,” replied the Doctor, cheerily. “Tangled webs of unrequited love are way out of my comfort zone. I’m more concerned about that signal.”

“That, and Miss Hoolie’s wardrobe.”

“She wears the same clothes. Every day!” The Doctor shook his head and examined the readings on his screwdriver. “I can’t imagine ever doing that.”

Rose fingered the hem of his jacket. “I bet you can’t.”

“Still. Balamory’s a catchy name.” The Doctor put away the screwdriver. “Should commit it to memory. Might come in handy.”

“Oh, when will you ever need — ”

From the bottom of the hill, at what looked like Pocket and Sweet’s, there was a sudden, violent explosion, followed by cries of “EXTERMINATE!”

“Contractual obligation of the Daleks!” The Doctor grinned. “Fan-tas-tic!”

***

Zap.

And now he was walking along the harbour of a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast and there was a man who looked like Wilf chatting to a woman who looked like Martha and a man who looked like the man who’d tried to sacrifice Donna to the queen of the spiders…

***

Zap.

A blank, white space, bright and featureless. A noise that might have been a tuning fork.

“God,” said the Doctor. “This is The Mind Robber again, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” said a familiar voice.

The Doctor rubbed at his eyes; he could hear the click of heels on a wooden floor. The voice continued as its owner swam into focus. “There’s an old joke. The BBC only has thirty actors and about a dozen sets, all recycled. I’m wondering how many you ran into.”

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the Doctor, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Hello, Missy.”

“Hello, dear.” The buttoned jacket was porpoise grey, the boots a dark yellow. “Have a pleasant journey?”

He was himself again; moreover, he was back where he had been, albeit on the other side of the room, away from the TV. “Where’d you get the tech? And where’s Clara?”

“She ate my last wine gum, so I killed her,” said Missy. “As to your first question, I built it myself.”

“You built an immersive television?” said the Doctor. “For what? Is this because they wouldn’t let you on Strictly?”

“Immersive!” Missy expelled a gush of air from the sides of her mouth. “You and your understatement. This is next level, sonny jim. We’re talking full engagement. People who believe they’re actually in the shows I assign them to!”

“Why would you want that?”

“Because it’s criminally expensive, which means the richest and most powerful people on the planet are going to be queuing up to have a go. What else do you buy the man who has everything?” Missy was wandering up and down the chamber, in that curious little dance she often performed. “Rock stars, premier league footballers… politicians.” She gave a wicked smile. “And once they’re in…”

“You’ve got them where you want them.”

“Bing! Gold star for the underperformer from Gallifrey. What you saw was the prototype; I just needed to run a few calibration tests to check the damned thing works. Tweak here, bit of wire twisting there… presto! I can have them say anything I want them to say.”

“So I’m your guinea pig?”

Missy pawed with her hands. “Squeak, squeak.”

The Doctor had been moving across the room, casually circling until he was next to the antique television, which stood in its mounted stand like a museum centrepiece. “The enduring appeal of television. God, talk about using their own weaknesses against them.”

The door at the end burst open; it was Clara with a fire axe. “Doctor! Doctor, I — oh.”

“I’m fine.” The Doctor greeted her with a raised eyebrow. “You look like Jack Nicholson.”

“Very funny.” Clara dropped the axe to the floor, where the blade embedded itself in the wood. “So what’s all this?”

“Never mind ‘what’s all this’; where’ve you been all this time?”

“I was gone for thirty seconds!”

“Ah.” The Doctor nodded. “It’s like Narnia, then. Felt rather longer.”

“I’ve just taken your boyfriend on a little trip,” said Missy, beaming nastily at Clara. “I think it did him good.”

“Bit inconsistent, though,” said the Doctor. “I mean it was — ”

“God!” Missy threw up her hands. “You’re such a fanboy. Always wanting stuff to make sense.”

“I just don’t understand why everything else was BBC, and then you had one, just one from ITV… ”

“Look. I like Rainbow, okay?” Missy leaned on the edge of the TV; she was glaring at him contemptuously. “You know me well enough to know my tastes are eclectic. Or are you losing your memory as well as your looks?”

“Ohh, no,” said the Doctor, taking a step back. “I have a long memory. In fact…”

He dropped a wink at Clara.

“It’s almost as long as yours.”

Hefting the axe, the Doctor threw it handle first at the big red button.

Missy was a foot the wrong side of the glass screen when it slammed to the floor. She hammered on it in a fury. “Let me out!”

“You’ve got a fire axe,” the Doctor pointed out reasonably as the static began to fill the room.

Too late, Missy remembered the axe. She picked it up and began to pound at the toughened glass, but even as the first crack appeared, the widening static enveloped her completely, and she was gone.

“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor to Clara. “We’ll get her out.”

“Yeah,” Clara replied. “In about… ooh, thirty seconds.”

***

Zap.

The Master looked at the forest in which he’d landed. It was impossibly sculpted, like a Capability Brown. Bright paths led here and there, and an ornately coloured bridge stood over a cave big enough for a small bear. The Master looked at the trees, some of the grandest he’d ever seen, and the brightly coloured birds that sang a strange song that sounded almost human.

He checked himself over. Blast! He was old. No matter. Age was no barrier, merely a temporary impairment. He would deal with the Doctor in due time, once he found a way out of these woods.

The Master walked across to the cave, noting the presence of two tiny houses, a large bush with three holes, and what looked very much like a hospital bed. He would deal with the alpha predator first, and then assume command of whatever hellhole he’d been cast into.

“I am usually referred to as the Master,” he announced, at the cave entrance. “Universally.” He stopped to wonder whether this was actually true, realised it wasn’t, and decided it was a matter for another time. “I come in triumph and in conquest, and you will obey me.”

There was a pause, and then a small brown fluffy creature ambled out of the darkness, carrying a sponge.

“Makka Pakka?” it said, and then, with a gentle, loving touch, it began to wash the Master’s face.

The Master sighed. It was going to be a long night.

Review: The Power of the Doctor

There was a reason why I didn’t do a write-up for the Easter special. It’s partly because we were in Liverpool, plaque-spotting on Mathew Street and taking ferries to Birkenhead and noting that when Dan and Diane left the museum in the first episode of Flux, they did so by the fire exit. But it’s mostly because it was incredibly dull, the tale of swashbuckling sea adventure turning out to be a bit of a damp squib. It wasn’t outrageously terrible, but it wasn’t very good, either. It was just mediocre. The inclination to write paragraphs about why this was an outrage – something I’d have done in a heartbeat back in 2015 – is more or less gone these days, and if it’s mediocre, I no longer care.

And yet here we are, some six months down the line in a tour-de-force that takes in active volcanos, dastardly schemes and more old faces than a DVD retrospective. Running just shy of ninety minutes, it serves as a swansong both for Whittaker and the departing showrunner, a target of so much internet vitriol it’s astounging he’s stuck it out this long. Perhaps the most potent criticism of Chibnall’s reign, aside from his inability to write dialogue (something that hasn’t improved) is a supposed refusal to acknowledge the past, whether it’s the absence of classic villains in Series 10 or the whole Timeless Child debacle. Thus, with the plethora of famous faces popping up during ‘The Power of the Doctor’, he seeks to answer his critics. “You want nods to the past? Fine. Have this one. And this one. And this one.”

Nostagia sells. This is an anniversary story – not the show, but the BBC – and the buildup to Whittaker’s regeneration is steeped in the desire to look back, so much so that the Doctor scarcely sees the proverbial (and, eventually, literal) cliff until she’s about to step over the edge. It reads like a love letter to times past, a sort of ‘Day of the Doctor’ lite, the style flapping over substance like one of those Top Gear supercars that look better than they drive. Against all odds, and thanks to some genuinely crowd-pleasing moments, it works. If nothing else it’s a relief to get it out of the way so that we can finally sift through the tabloid rumours – media abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of any information the press and the fan pages have had to create their own notes on speculative casting, with everyone from Bonnie Langford to Matt Smith mooted to be somehow involved.

Smith doesn’t show; neither does Capaldi – but they did manage to get most of the others. They play their cameos to a tee, perched atop the edge of a metaphysical abyss like wizened, BBC English gurus; platitudes and received pronunciation. Of the surviving Old Legends, only Tom Baker is absent, which should surprise no one who saw ‘The Five Doctors’. Crucially no obvious effort is made to de-age any of them. which is probably down to budget more than anything else, although it doesn’t stop Chibnall putting in a few lines about how their physical appearance reflects the desire of former companions to watch them growing old. It suffices, at a stretch, but it’s awkard, calling to mind that horrendous clay monkey from the end of Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ video. “This is how I see you…”

But nostagia works like an anaesthetic – or at least a potent variety gas and air, bringing on a euphoric fit of giggles that serves to mask the frantic cutting and squeezing going on down below. This was a story about spectacle, in which we’re expected to applaud first and ask questions later, And thus the sight of McGann alone is almost enough to forgive the writer for thrusting ‘Orphan 55’ upon us a couple of years back (almost, if not quite). Who cares if they got old? We all did. Bringing back former Doctors also allows for closure with their respective companions, the holographic projections washing in and out of the screen like ghosts. It’s a touching moment, although the nod to Ace’s feud with the Doctor has a bit of posturing about it, feeling like a half-hearted attempt at rebuffing all those people who claimed Chibnall didn’t know his Who. He may have been well-intentioned, but this is likely to simply confuse people whose knowledge of Aldred stops in 1989. (And which feud, anyway? There were so many of them.)

Structurally, the whole thing holds up like a house of cards. The opening set piece (an attack on an interstellar bullet train that echoes the opening of A New Hope, including a white-gowned Princess Leia) is there purely to introduce a McGuffin and get rid of a companion – Dan, for whom a cracked space helmet is one brush with death too many. And so they drop him on Granger Street, where his house is still missing (anyone who’s actually visited Anfield will understand why this is funny), in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and it’s back to a life of food banks, doomed romance and abject poverty. His departure is as swift and awkward as we’ve come to expect over this run, and indeed his entire involvement in the story is a cynical piece of audience-baiting, with Bishop’s general absence from the trailer giving rise to the theory that he would be granted an on-screen death that never came.

In the absence of Dan, the old guard steps up – and it’s to Chibnall’s credit that the involvement of Ace and Tegan extends to something more than a token appearance. Fielding fends off an army of Cybermen: on the other side of the world, Aldred dusts off her jacket and hits a Dalek with a baseball bat. Chibnall also elects to bring back Vinder, simply because he can. The final gambit, on a choked and dusty Cyber-planet that resembles an industrial quarry, is a straight lift from series four, with every available character holding down a different lever, but we have just seen Kate Lethbridge-Stewart saved in the nick of time from forced Cyber conversion, so you don’t notice until the dust settles.

In the midst of all this, there’s a plot of sorts, although it is largely an excuse for general silliness. The story revolves around the Master, who has come up with a convoluted scheme involving seismic drilling, reversible tissue compression (yes, honestly) and a series of Photoshopped artworks that serve no purpose except to act as a Tumblr blog in waiting. The central conceit – stolen bodies, extraneous cosplay – is half Face/Off, half ‘Logopolis’; this was almost certainly deliberate, given Fielding’s involvement, and would be outright preposterous were it not for the performance of its central antagonist. Dhawan deviates between calm, hypnotic resonance during the St. Petersburg scenes and a Joker-like mania just about everywhere else – although the episode’s narrative high point sees him cavorting around the winter palace to the melodic strains of Boney M, in a move that will please Fortnite fans everywhere, even if it perplexes everyone else.

Whittaker bows out on a cliff, having seen off the enemy before getting zapped by a planet-shearing laser, carried into the TARDIS by her doe-eyed companion. The scenes with the Doctor and Yaz are as strained as they ever were, and it’s almost a relief when that ice cream is finished – although we do get a beautiful shot of the Earth from space, as the two friends sit on the roof like Wayne and Garth. And then it’s a flash and a bang (Whittaker’s final words are, pleasingly, a reference to a playground game, emphasising that above all else this is a show for children) and in comes David Tennant, in a scene that everyone saw coming – everyone except my thirteen-year-old, whose eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

Cue the unanswered questions. Why did the Master go to the trouble of butchering all that art when he could have made a simple phone call? Why would you ship a planet-powering energy source on a high speed train with minimal security? Does the fob watch still lurk at the bottom of the TARDIS? Why does Tennant have a five o’clock shadow? And just why is it called ‘The Power of the Doctor’, anyway?

But then Chibnall never was the show’s greatest writer. Not for him the subtlety of Moffat’s arc twists, or the urban kitchen sink drama that Davies made his own. His dialogue is still clunky, characters still lecture, characterisation is still inconsistent (the scene where Yaz is told to train a gun on the Master is bound to ruffle feathers) and it still feels like Whittaker – doing the best she can – has saved the world more by accident than by design, as if the Doctor is allowing things to happen. But against all odds, and after a rollercoaster couple of years, it was an exciting and fitting send-off for both of them. And for all its structural inadequacies, cringeworthy exchanges and narrative cu-de-sacs, I was left with a warm, fuzzy feeling, a glow that lasted the evening and is still lingering now, like the vestigial reserves of regeneration energy. I honestly can’t remember the last time I got that from Doctor Who.

We hold these truths to be not exactly self-evident

Well, that came out of the blue.

I think everyone was pegging their hopes on the 14th. It made sense for any number of reasons, not least because you’ve got that sweet spot between the FA Cup Final and Eurovision. Where was the song and dance, the flurry of trumpets, the countdown, the slow reveal? Instead we got a random Tweet that had everyone back and forth across the internet like chickens crossing a road for the five minutes we all spent trying to work out if the official Doctor Who account had been compromised. When it emerged that it hadn’t, the BBC website crashed, and the reactions began in earnest.

It wasn’t a bad decision. There is a thing that happens when you build up the anticipation to a fever pitch: the balloon instantly deflates, the disappointment palpable – “What, them?” It happened with Whittaker; it even happened with Capaldi, although no one remembers. At least this was a bit of a surprise. Dropping us on it the way they did there was no chance to feel let down.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours, on and off, trying to get my thoughts in order. And here they are, in a sort of order. You will not agree with all of them. That’s fine. It’s why we have comments.

1. I’d never heard of Ncuti Gatwa. I don’t watch Sex Education, although I gather it’s very well thought of. That’s fine, although it’s going to take a while to get used to writing out his name. “We say the same about you.”

2. All right, yes, he is a bit young. So was Matt Smith. I was completely wrong about him. I was also wrong about Catherine Tate. I’ve learned, over the years, that I can’t understand the inner workings of the BBC writing team any better than you all can. Sometimes things happen behind closed doors in the heady process that is auditioning and we don’t get to know what they are.

3. At least they had auditions. I think Chibnall said he did for Whittaker’s casting but I also think he’d probably made up his mind before they did the read-throughs. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with casting a mate because he impressed you at a wedding, provided you know what you’re doing, but the fandom is under this irritating misconception that Doctor Who production needs to be some sort of democracy and that they should get a say about how it’s done, so maybe this will shut them up.

4. I like Jodie Whittaker. I always have. I wrote ‘liked’ in the first sentence and then went back and changed it. Anybody else been doing that? It’s very easy to write her off the moment the casting is announced. At least let her finish her arc in peace. We’ve still got Ace and Tegan, remember?

5. I’ve spent years defending Chris Chibnall, and I’m tired of it. The unfortunate truth is that his dialogue stinks. I don’t have an issue with even the more controversial aspects of those story arcs, but he can’t write a believable conversation, and as far as the other week is concerned I can’t defend a turkey. We were in Liverpool when ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ was broadcast; I managed to watch it but didn’t have a chance to review it until the following week, by which point I realised I had absolutely nothing interesting to say about it, because there was absolutely nothing interesting about the story. Doctor Who shouldn’t be dull, and I shouldn’t be bored. But here we are.

6. When you think about it, casting a male Person of Colour was the most likely and sequentially logical direction for the BBC to take, and frankly none of you should have been surprised. I wasn’t.

7. Be careful, too, of the “Oh but I wanted Idris Elba” trope. Because most of the time that’s shorthand for “He’s the only really famous black actor I can name”. Idris Elba, versatile as he is, would have been a diabolical choice. (He’s quite good in Sonic The Hedgehog, though.)

8. It doesn’t matter that Gatwa is an unknown, or famous for comedy, or younger than you. From what I can gather, the kids love him. And like it or not, they’re the future of the show. Not you. Not me.

9. Here’s the thing. A healthy degree of skepticism is absolutely fine. Honestly. If you’re examining Gatwa and saying “Hmm, wouldn’t have been my choice”, go ahead. I did the same with Smith. I was wrong – he had me within two minutes of stepping out of the TARDIS – but it’s quite natural to shrink in bafflement when you hear about a casting choice. Doesn’t mean it’s racist, except when it is, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

10. There is a famous meme that does the rounds. I include it here for posterity:

Processed all that? Good, now forget about it entirely. It’s bollocks. Well-intended, but still utter bollocks. Some people never get past that first stage (that’s the one on the top left, for those of you who were wondering). We need to allow for that. I have never been a huge fan of Eccleston, but that’s probably my southern middle class privilege talking, and I own that.

11. Speaking of ownership: the outright criticism of Gatwa’s casting on the grounds of box-ticking is bigotry, and I will defy anyone – anyone – to prove me wrong. It’s offensive. It does him a disservice as an experienced actor (and winner of several awards). It also does a disservice to Russell T Davies, who – if you remember – was billed as the Second Coming (no pun intended) when his return was announced last September. And now you’re giving him a hard time because he’s cast a gay Scot with Rwandan heritage? Piss off.

12. If you’re wondering why point number 11 was so emphatically worded, it’s because (and you’ll love this) most white people are at least a little bit racist. It’s not a nice thing to talk about, and if you bring it up they’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks, with the likes of “I DON’T HAVE A RACIST BONE IN MY BODY”. Well, yes you do. I know you do, because I do. We can’t help it. You react differently to people who look different, at least when you don’t know them. There are preconceptions about diets, about religious beliefs, about lifestyle choices. If your son or daughter brought home a girlfriend / boyfriend of a different race, your reaction wouldn’t be the same as if they’d been white. You’d hopefully get used to them, but there would be an adjustment period. It’s partly societal, partly upbringing: we take on the values our parents had. And if you’re really about to tell me I haven’t got a clue about what you believe and how you feel, think about the last time someone told you an off-colour joke. Think very, very hard.

13. The question of whether people of colour can be racist is too long and complicated to address here, but I will go so far as to say this: all people harbour prejudice. You can call it racism, or something else entirely, but I don’t care what your skin colour is – if you’re a functional member of society, you have it, in some capacity or another. About men, women, those who have children, those who don’t, the rich, the poor, the East, the West. Don’t shy away from it. It’s what makes us human.

14. Let’s assume that you’ve read 11 through 13 and are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. How do we move forward from this? Because from one perspective I’ve just said it’s OK to be racist. It isn’t – but it is OK to accept your limitations. Inherent racism is a shackle from which you will never be truly free, but (and here’s the point) it is vital that you recognise it. Recognising it is the first step in tackling it; ask any addict. Ask yourself: where does this come from? Why am I reacting this way to this bit of news? No, really? Why does supposed box-ticking irritate me so much? Why was I really angry at Whittaker giving the brush-off to Graham’s cancer fears? Is it because it was callous? Or is it because I’m socially conditioned to expect women to be caring and empathetic? How would I have felt if it were Capaldi?

Only you can answer that one. But you do have to be prepared to ask the question. And many people won’t. Because it involves getting to know yourself a little better, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned these last two years of trauma, stagnation and poor mental health, it’s that we don’t like digging in the dirt.

15. Darren Grimes can, in general, go and f**k himself. From what I hear, he’s quite good at it.

Doctor Who: Flux – The Executive Summaries (part 2)

I’m writing this in the midst of a gale. The wind is buffeting the hills, saturating the coasts, uprooting trees, downing power lines. None of this is happening outside my window. Outside my window it’s a bit blowy. It’s a bit blowy and all the schools are shut, which is a first world problem. I’m supposed to be on my way to the cafe to work on this book that will never get published, but there is a Danger To Life and in any case the cafe will probably be closed.

Anyway: where did we get to? We imagined a conversation between Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens. Oh, and we did a field report to High Sontaran Command. Today, things get a little weirder. But then so did Flux, so at least it’s consistent. You will find three episode summaries below: we’re missing one for ‘The Vanquishers’, because that’s the episode I reviewed. I may write a precis at some point in the future, purely for the sake of completeness. But probably not.

By the way, if anyone at CBBC wants to hire me, I am available for interviews.

Once, Upon Time

INT. TARDIS

[Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor wakes up and shakes her head. She gazes in awe at the sight around her: a vintage 1980s TARDIS, all gleaming white walls and round things.]

WHITTAKER: Holy mackerel, you’ve had a factory reset.

[Dan enters the room wearing Melanie Bush’s tracksuit.]

DAN / MEL: Ah. Feeling better, are you?

WHITTAKER: No. What happened?

DAN / MEL: You fell off the exercise bike and regenerated. Don’t you remember? Ooh, you’ve gone all Scottish.

WHITTAKER: Eh? No I haven’t, I –

[There is a flicker and she briefly looks like Sylvester McCoy, and then it’s back to the blonde.]

WHITTAKER: Oh, I see. I’ve fallen into my own timestream and I’m reliving events from my past. And you’re Bonnie Langford.

DAN / MEL: Who else would I be?

WHITTAKER: That explains the outfit. I thought it was a Scouse thing for a moment.

DAN / MEL: At least I’m not a talking dog this time.

WHITTAKER: That’s a matter of opinion.

[Bang! There is an explosion and we cut to – ]

INT. POND’S HOUSE

[Whittaker manifests in the lounge with a Wiimote in her hand.]

WHITTAKER: Oh, hang on, I remember this. It’s the one with the cubes. Trust Chibnall to reference his own stories.

[Yaz appears in the doorway wearing a checked shirt and padded jacket; Vinder follows in a miniskirt.]

YAZ: You’re playing video games again.

VINDER: No one calls them video games.

YAZ: They really do. I mean unless you work for a magazine or something. Then they’re just ‘games’. But still.

VINDER: How can one man in a position of responsibility be so clueless about popular culture?

YAZ: Ask the Commons Secretary.

[A Weeping Angel takes the place of the onscreen tennis player, serving a perfect ace that smashes through the screen in the direction of the startled Doctor.]

WHITTAKER: Oh, bug-

[The screen explodes in front of us and we cut to – ]

INT. HALL OF MIRRORS

[A dingy funfair. The Doctor, now wearing a cricket jumper, is exploring in the company of Bel, who is clicking incessantly on a small screen.]

WHITTAKER: Can’t you put down the bloody Tamagotchi?

BEL: I’m talking to someone who may or may not be you.

WHITTAKER: Does this mean if I pat your stomach we’ll wipe out the universe?

BEL: Again, you mean?

[The Doctor stops in front of a mirror, gazing at its garish reflection.]

WHITTAKER: This one makes me look fat.

COLIN BAKER: I resemble that remark.

[Enter Dan, dressed as Adric; a lone Cyberman is limping in behind him.]

DAN: Aw, this really isn’t fair.

[Bang! And we cut to – ]

EXT. THE ARUNDEL CASTLE

[It’s the set of Frozen. The Doctor is dressed as Princess Anna, and is in the middle of a duet with the White Guardian.]

WHITTAKER / GUARDIAN:

All this story’s been a series of doors out of place
And some changes in the TARDIS crew
And some dogs turned up and kidnapped the whole human race
And the Angels nicked the phone box and now we’re all screwed

But I think
Yeah I think I finally get it
Though I think it fell short of its ambition –

Love is the only mission!
Love is the only mission!
Love is the only –

[Something explodes offscreen, and the two of them are buried in a landslide. Roll credits.]

DWC write-up

Village of the Angels

DIVISION ENTRY EXAMINATION: PAPER ONE

Time allowed: 6 episodes. (A period of extra time will be allocated in the event that plot strands do not fully resolve themselves.)

Please answer all questions on a separate sheet. Use the black ink of an Andulasian octopus, or crayon.

There is no penalty for spelling or grammatical errors, but we will dock a ton of marks if you dare use the phrase ‘Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey’.

QUESTIONS

1. Tanya is a Weeping Angel. She has been working with the Division for six months. List the pros and cons of trying to engage with Tanya on a Zoom call.     (7 marks)
2. Determine, to the nearest parameter, the probability that Bel is the Doctor’s mother. Calculate the ratio of disgruntlement within the fandom.     (8 marks)
3. The Flame Angel and Scribble Angel are two new derivatives that have recently been launched by the Creativity Department. Design a new type of Angel to complement them. Your drawing should include a comprehensive nomenclature, suggestions for marketing, and size notes for B&M.     (12 marks)
4. Examine the comparative influences of either: a) George Romero, or b) Peppa Pig upon this story.    (6 marks)
5. Boris is giving a speech at a conference. He loses his place for 36 seconds. Given that an unobserved Angel travels a distance of five and a half metres a second, what is the furthest distance an Angel could be standing away from Boris in order to zap him before he finds the right piece of paper?    (3 marks)
6. Count the number of times the Doctor called the Angels ‘Weeping Angels’ in the last episode. Discuss whether this was awkward and clumsy or just mildly irritating.     (10 marks)
7. List some of the reasons vicars never come out well in Doctor Who stories.   (4 marks)
8. Using your knowledge of space-time and temporal ripples, determine Ruth’s exact place within the Doctor’s timeline. Prove your hypothesis. You will find a TARDIS under your seat.    (60 marks)

Bonus question: Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite, would you like a toasted te– THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN REMOVED FOR BREACH OF COPYRIGHT.

DWC write-up

Survivors of the Flux

SPEC SCRIPT: THE DUMPING GROUND, SERIES 9, EPISODE 1

‘SECOND CHANCES’

INT. ASHDENE RIDGE – JODIE’S BEDROOM. DAY

[We’re in a functional-but-brightly-coloured bedroom at the local children’s home. JODIE, a sullen blonde teenager in a t-shirt and jeans, is standing in front of a mirror, holding up a variety of outfits to her chest.]

JODIE: No… not this one… nope… oh, it’s no good. I’m never gonna find an outfit that works.

[Enter JO, Jodie’s African roommate.]

JO: Still looking?

JODIE: Still looking. Ooh. What about this one?

[She holds up a pair of incredibly baggy trousers, hung by a set of braces.]

JO: You have got to be kidding. You look like Mork from Ork.

[Jodie sticks out her tongue, and leaves.]

JO: Oh. Mike wants to see you!

INT. LOUNGE. DAY

[Jodie passes by MONK and SACHA, two boys of about 12 or 13, both ensconced in a video game.]

JODIE: God. Don’t you two ever do anything except sit in front of that thing?

MONK: We’re grounded. Ever since the incident with the toaster.

SACHA: Which was your fault.

MONK: You were the one who switched it on! During an official visit!

SACHA: How was I supposed to know it’d explode?

[Enter MIKE, the long-suffering lead carer. An anxious-looking MAY-LI follows in his wake.]

MIKE: Jodie? Can we see you in the office, please?

[Jodie sighs, and follows May-Li.]

SACHA: Can we go out, Mike?

MIKE: Absolutely not. You two aren’t going anywhere until all the vice-president’s missing limbs are accounted for. Oh, and your room could do with tidying, while you’re at it.

MONK: We’re building something.

MIKE: I know what you’re building. Look, I’ve told you both. You’ll never get Sebastian to fit inside a Dalek case. He’s got no opposable thumbs, and he’s a Doberman.

[As he leaves, Sacha holds up a laser screwdriver and points it at the screen, whereupon Monk’s character explodes.]

MONK: Sach! You’re such a cheat!

INT. OFFICE. DAY

[Jodie slumps sulkily into a chair. Mike sits opposite; May-Li perches in a corner.]

MIKE: Now. You’re not in trouble. We just want to know what happened.

MAY-LI: What were you thinking, running off like that?

JODIE: [shrugs] Don’t know. Got bored.

MIKE: Do you mean bored like when Rani gets bored? ‘Cos we all know how that goes.

MAY-LI: Actually, where is Rani?

MIKE: Out in the workshop. Scraping up bits of rabbit.

MAY-LI: Jesus, that’s the third this week! Where’s she getting them?

MIKE: She mentioned something about Teletubbies. Can we, you know, focus?

MAY-LI: Right, yeah, sorry.

JODIE: I just wanted to see my mum.

MIKE [sighing]: Your mum. Listen, we told you. She’s a bad influence.

MAY-LI: All that stuff she made you do! Those… outings with the Division! All the stealing, the breaking stuff!

JODIE: She’s still my mum! Not my real mum, but the nearest I’ve got!

MIKE [exchanging a glance with May-Li]: We know that. But she’s proved again that she’s not able to look after you. You’ll have to come back here until she can show us she can be a responsible guardian.

[Close-up on Jodie’s face as we cut to a garish Nick Sharatt animation: Jodie smashing some windows in the company of TECTEUN, who wears a wide-brimmed hat and an evil expression. All of a sudden her sneer vanishes as a gigantic crack blisters its way down the screen and the universe is pulled in half; Tecteun is wrenched into a black hole, away from a screaming Jodie.]

JODIE: So what? You’re gonna wipe my memories again? Send me back to the academy like a good girl?

MIKE: Well… not quite. There’s been a bit of a development.

MAY-LI: Jodie… we found your mum. Your real mum.

JODIE: My – my wha…?

MIKE: She made contact with us about a week ago. Just turned up out of the blue. She never stopped looking.

[The doorbell rings.]

MAY-LI: That’s her now.

INT. HALL. DAY

[Jodie walks up the corridor, heart pounding, as the bell rings again. She turns to look at Mike and May-Li.]

MAY-LI: We’re right here.

[Jodie opens the door on an unseen figure.]

JODIE [stunned]: You?!?!?

[Roll credits.]

DWC write-up

Doctor Who: Flux – The Executive Summaries (part 1)

You remember this, don’t you? The silliness that comes between stories; those miniature reviews knocked off in cafes and spare moments that evolved, gradually, into skits and songs and random observations. Pack ’em up, parcel ’em off and lo and behold, the editor at The Doctor Who Companion rolls his eyes and pastes them into this week’s communal writeup.

It didn’t start out this way. There was a time when I was trying to do this properly, to give decent opinions that reflected how I actually felt about an episode, all neatly packaged into condensed three-paragraph summaries. Somewhere along the line, I got bored. Or just fed up. Or a combination of both. It’s not easy, being one of the few DWC writers who actually enjoys the show at the moment. You feel like you do in primary school when they ask the class to vote for an end-of-term video, and you stick your hand up for The Famous Five while everyone else votes for Labyrinth. It’s not that you’re wrong, you’re just a minority.

This time around, I elected not to actually share my opinion of the stories, at least not with any transparency. Oh, certain things slip through. You can feel the scorn, particularly when it was something I really didn’t like. But there are advantages to hiding behind a metaphor: you can just tell people that you’re having a laugh, and to take everything with a grain or two of salt. Besides, it’s far more fun being a little creative. “Are we poor?” my children sometimes ask me. “No,” I tell them. “We’re bohemian.”

These are quite long, so I’ve elected to give you the first two today and the rest in a future installment. There are links to the communal write-ups on the DWC website, if you wanted to read something more sensible, or something that affiliates with your own views. But before we do that, we need to drop in on Matt Strevens’ office.

The Halloween Apocalypse

“Right, Chris. What sort of state are we in for the new series?”

“Matt! Matt, I was thinking. Do you think you could ever make a Zygon sexy?”

“I – I don’t – “

“I mean they’re sort of very distinct, aren’t they? They have a peculiar shape. It’s a bit phallic. But I’m just remembering Coneheads, that Saturday Night Live sketch with Dan Aykroyd, and I was wondering, if you got a Zygon to lounge in just the right way – “

“Chris – “

“I’m just remembering the Katy Manning photoshoot, and – “

“Chris! Can we focus?”

“Fine, yes, sorry, yep. Series 13, then.”

“Series 13. What are we planning?”

“Right. I thought in episode one we’d blow up the universe.”

“Okay, so high stakes. Like it. I presume you mean some sort of threat that overshadows the whole series and that the Doctor deals with at the last minute?”

“No, we actually blow it up.”

“…Right, and then?”

“Don’t know. Something.”

“It’s kind of a narrative cul-de-sac, isn’t it?”

“Only a little bit. And besides, we introduce a bunch of other stories and characters first. I’ve got scenes in the Arctic, scenes in Victorian London, scenes in a desolate alien prison that looks like the edge of hell – “

“Where are we planning on filming that?”

“Swindon. Then we’ll bring in all these new people and have them dig tunnels and stuff. And there’s this woman who knows the Doctor but they haven’t met yet.”

“That’s kind of been done to death, Chris.”

“Yes, but she gets touched by an Angel. And then there’s this fella, Dan. He works as a formula one driver.”

“That sounds prohibitively expensive.”

“All right, he works in a food bank.”

“Better.”

“And he’s kidnapped by a six-foot dog. From the North.”

“Yorkshire or Lancashire?”

“Is there a difference?”

“I – never mind. Are you going to explain who all these people are and what they’re doing?”

“No! That’s the brilliant part. We just leave the audience to figure it out.”

“And then fill in the blanks later.”

“If I remember, yeah. The thing is, they’re always complaining I’m too heavy-handed and obvious. This’ll really fox ’em.”

“The thing is, Chris, you’re not exactly good with dialogue.”

“I know! That’s the joy of it! We throw enough ideas at people, they won’t even care. Give ’em the old razzle-dazzle. How can they see with sequins in their eyes?”

“Chris! Sit down. This really isn’t the time for a soft-shoe. And my office isn’t big enough.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway. You need to have some​ dialogue. How are you going to cover for your complete inability to string a sentence together?”

“We turn up Akinola and blame it on poor post-production.”

“I’ll have to smooth things over with the sound editors, but all right.”

“Meanwhile I’ve got this big bad villain who escapes from his cell and dissolves people.”

“Please tell me he doesn’t snap his fingers.”

“No, but I had this idea about a PELVIC THRUST OF ANNIHILATION, and – “

“Chris!”

“Right. I’ll redraft. So there’s a bit of a chase and there’s the bit where Dan discovers the TARDIS and Yaz and the Doctor have a bit of banter.”

“And then we blow up the universe.”

“Precisely, Matt. Precisely.”

“I assume we keep this a closely-guarded secret so people’s jaws drop when it happens?”

“No, not at all. I’m planning on telling everyone in all the interviews.”

“Won’t they be disappointed?”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

“You’ve obviously never met Lance Armstrong. Fine, I think we’re done here.”

“Brilliant. Are there any Smarties left?”

“No. You ate them all.”

“Really? I hadn’t even noticed.”

“I had.”

DWC write-up

War of the Sontarans

From: First Corporal Erskib, Location Scout for 14th Noble Batallion of the Outer Southwest Fringes of the Great and Indomitable Sontaran Empire

To: Brigadier General Prazan, Central Command

Subject: Field Report

Brigadier General, 

I trust this report finds you well and in rude health, and that the war against the Rutans is going swimmingly. I am sure you have awaited this write-up of what the Sontaran Press have already dubbed ‘Wokgate’ with interest and anticipation, and I am hopeful that my thorough investigation of things will shed some light onto exactly what happened during the latest failed conquest of strategic withdrawal from the planet known as Earth.

Before we go any further, I feel I must apologise for the incident with the cat. I honestly didn’t know it would explode. Had I been aware of this, I would certainly not have inserted the probe until you yourself had moved from splattering distance. No words have actually been said about the matter, but I am of sufficiently sound mind to determine that it was this unfortunate upset that has led to my recent demotion and subsequent reassignment to this backwater hellhole. No matter: I have learned my lesson. Res fiunt, as we say on Sontar – or, as the Judoon might have put it, ‘Ko Blo Ro So Fo Jo No-No’.

Investigating incidents on Earth is, you are aware, fraught with complications. Chief amongst them is the fact that we have been here before, on multiple occasions, and that it has never ended well. There are rumours that one deserter may still be living here in a time period we have yet to identify. We do not know precisely where he is, but there is a trail of confectionary bills. However, on this occasion, the mess was not difficult to spot: Commander Riksaw, for reasons of his own choosing, opted to begin his establishment of Operation: Outpost Earth in 19th Century Europe, supposedly because he had developed an affinity for the local wildlife. We have a word for people like that on Sontar, but sadly the inbuilt censorship filter will not allow me to use it in this missive.

It was all going swimmingly until the irritating human known as the Doctor blundered onto the scene. She used to be a girl, and now she’s a boy. I simply can’t understand how it all works and why things can’t stay as they are. One woman – sorry, one man on his own should not have been able to penetrate our defences, let alone muster enough firepower to blow them up. Where on earth did they get enough dynamite? How did they move it? My investigation has revealed that there was some help at hand: two humans, one of whom has the unenviable job of performing puncture repairs to the skins of wounded humans. Surveillance footage from the black box recording has revealed she has some spunk about her: sadly the human military general that accompanied her was about as interesting as a freshly-plastered wall, and about as two-dimensional.

I have seen the footage of the battle in a Crimean field, and this at least was a glorious day for the might of Sontar. Sadly our excursions some years later seem to have gone rather awry, owing to the antics of a rogue native who managed to knock out half a platoon with a cooking implement. This is the price you get for landing in Merseyside. We should have gone to Tijuana; at least that has a beach. I would also raise questions, Brigadier General, as to how half a dozen troops can empty their magazines from ten feet away without landing a single shot on target. The onboard ship’s computer – a sentient model I have named Angela – recommended a piece of Earth culture entitled Star Wars. After watching this piece of drivel I know more and understand even less. 

My recommendations:

• Up the border security on the secret military encampments – we’re a clone army; surely they can spare a few people to watch the perimeter
• Mandatory shooting range exercises to be introduced daily for all troops
• Can we please, please get the scientists to do something about the probic vent? Honestly, it’s embarrassing. I can’t even stand at a urinal without having to crane my neck every couple of seconds.

Signing off now, Brigadier General. While I wait for the dropship I am examining a little more of Earth culture, particularly its cuisine. I have learned of a local creature known as a poodle. I hear they’re delicious.

Sontar-HA!

Cordially yours,

First Corporal Erskib, Mrs.

DWC write-up

Review: Eve of the Daleks

We spent New Year’s Day in the Usk Valley. Emily’s family try and have a seasonal get-together every year, although last December, like most of the country, we were hunched over a Zoom window, watching out-of-sync Muppet films and screwing up our eyes to see what presents people were showing off. This year the meet was back on, and there was no backing out, so at half past six I turned off my phone and made a point of avoiding social media until we’d got home the next evening.

The upshot of this little slice of family life is that this is not going to be a straight review. I really don’t have the inclination or the energy to deal with people who tell me I’ve got it wrong. And that’s how it’ll go. Because I watched yesterday evening, thought “Yeah, that was all right” and then immediately hopped onto Twitter where I was categorically informed that no, it was not all right, it was a pile of horse shit. “I would rather sell my own family into slavery,” wrote one disgruntled Twitter user, “than watch that inexorable heap of bollocks again. We should burn down the BBC with Chris Chinballs still inside it.” I may be making that up. You decide.

Instead, this is a list of notes: things I spotted, things that jumped out, musings from the rest of the family. We haven’t done one of those in a while, although BuzzFeed does them all the time. It is my vain hope that this one will be faintly interesting, or at least a little less obvious than throwing in GIFs and the words “WOOO! THE COPS CAN’T HANDLE HER!” (something they did during their recent Matrix write-up). The eldest and I spent a weekend last October at a songwriter’s workshop hosted by Martyn Joseph; the key takeaway, at least for me, was “Don’t add to the noise”. So I’m trying very hard not to.

Here we go, then…

02:33 – I used to have that edition of Monopoly. I think everybody did, but ours was just as battered as the one Adjani Salmon has plonked on the table. My mother always used it as a prop in one of the stories she’d repeat ad nauseum, one that made her look both a little smug and also borderline anti-Semitic (which is ironic, given that we’re Jewish by birth). The only mystery bigger than why Nick is dropping it off at a lock-up at ten to midnight on New Year’s Eve is how Sarah could possibly think that cardigan could work. Seriously, it’s a disaster. It’s like being in a 1970s MFI showroom.

09:42 – The opening credits roll. “Oh,” says Emily. “That was a short one.”

The realisation that this is going to be Groundhog Day territory hits my family when the TARDIS crew show up in the basement, miraculously alive. Quoth Thomas: “Oh. It’s going to be one of those episodes, is it?”

As everyone else takes this in, I’m reflecting. The last time Doctor Who did a loop story, the loop itself was the big reveal. ‘Heaven Sent’ works precisely because we didn’t know, until not long before the end, what the Doctor had rediscovered and then forgotten over and over. It strikes me that the reaction of the fandom to new stories and Doctors is its own particularly toxic loop. I’m also musing on the prospect of this particular loop going on for four billion years. Neither thought is comforting.

14:09 – It’s official. I’ve Googled, and can find absolutely no reference to a product called ‘Beef N Beans’. Either they printed thousands of labels on these tins, or they’re so low-end market the internet doesn’t want to know. I’m not sure I want to know. Maybe it’s a dark web thing. That’s somehow more appealing than the prospect that Chibnall made this up in his own head.

15:58 – Dan is arguing with the Dalek. Emily shouts “God! Where’s he been the last few years? Why doesn’t he watch Doctor Who?”

She is shifting a little bit in the armchair to get comfortable. I think the sling is chafing. Emily is wearing a sling because she fell over at Warwick Castle three days before Christmas. It’s her left arm, and it’s only a hairline fracture, so it could have been worse, but she’s in perpetual discomfort. I think she might have been put off ice skating. I tell her that the average age of people with skating limb fractures is 33, so she’s in good company.

“Sorry to hear about your fall,” said her mother, when she found out – to which Emily replied “It wasn’t a fall, IT WAS A SPORTING INJURY!”

16:30 – This time around, the clock reads 23:53. “Ah! Look at that,” I say.

“What?” says Daniel.

“When they restarted before, it was eight minutes to midnight. Now it’s only seven. I think the loops are going to get progressively shorter.”

Sure enough, Whittaker soon confirms this, everyone is faintly impressed at my insight and I nod and smile and don’t let on that I read it in Den of Geek several days ago.

21:09 – I have to say, Aisling Bea is killing this episode. I’ve never been so invested in a supporting character. I want her to come out of this intact. I don’t care about Nick, who is nice enough in a vaguely stalkerish sense but could probably make a heroic sacrifice at the end of the story in order to save everyone else. That would be very Doctor Who. But Sarah is wonderful. I want her in the TARDIS, complaining about the lack of seating in the console room and bombarding Cybermen with sarcastic banter until their heads explode.

34:56 – How many deaths is that? Three? Four? This is basically Chibnall doing a Shatner, isn’t it? Because in Generations, Kirk got to die twice, and then die again in The Return, and then come back to gallivant around the universe with Spock in the fanwank trilogy they threw out in the late 1990s. We’ve seen the Doctor get shot by Daleks before, but it’s never been fatal before now: if a thing is worth doing, it seems, it is worth doing multiple times.

As a side note, it’s curious how the Daleks have a brilliant aim when a target is still but are absolutely shit when someone’s on the move. Don’t they have tracking of some sort?

40:47 – Oh God. The Doctor’s doing her big speech. I can feel the rest of the family inwardly cringing. The problem with moments like this is that Chibnall can’t write them and Whittaker can’t deliver them. She’s a perfectly good actress and a good Doctor, and I like her a lot, but she can’t pull this off simply because the confines of the character she’s created don’t allow for it. It’s like watching an awkward supply teacher reading out a task description left by a far more capable teacher. Please don’t use the word ‘humans’, Jodie. Please don’t – ah, shit.

44:30 – A tear rolls down Mandip Gill’s cheek as John Bishop points out the thing that everyone else has already figured out. We kind of saw this coming but I imagine all the people who shipped her and the Doctor are feeling somewhat vindicated. Apparently they dropped in that term during an interview with Jodie Whittaker recently and she had to admit she didn’t know what it means. I didn’t either. I only put it in here so it’ll show up in the search results.

50:03 – I read on the internet, after the fact, that people were bothered by the ‘fact’ that Dan and Nick get to do the heroic self-sacrifice thing this week while the women stand around being selfish and / or useless. Is that what was happening? Because I honestly don’t know how I feel about that reading, and get the feeling that as a man I probably have an unconscious bias, so I’m not sure I should weigh in. I’d be interested in what female viewers think.

55:00 – This is almost done and we have yet to see the mysterious cameo they mentioned. Somehow I’m wondering whether the elusive Jeff will turn out to be Jeff from ‘The Eleventh Hour’. That’d be a random thing to do. No, wait, there’s a guy filming the fireworks on his mobile. He’s – hang on, who is that? Is that the chap from ‘The Woman Who Fell To Earth’? The one on the crane who was being targeted because Tim Shaw drew his name out of a hat? And what was his name, anyway? I squint during the credits and find out it was Karl, which I’d completely forgotten. I’d say it’s nice to see him, except there seems to be absolutely no reason for him to be here except to generate a bit of SEO interest. Which is a cynical outlook, but I don’t think I’m wrong.

55:15 – The TARDIS has had a refit! It’s…I literally can’t tell the difference.

57:50 – And we’re done. Nick and Sarah cop off in a taxi while the TARDIS flies overhead. The credits roll and then there are pirates, and oh look, it’s the Sea Devils. Well, there’s a bit of excitement. Although we really need Jon Pertwee, opening his eyes wide and muttering about galactic yo-yos. That wouldn’t have been a bad way to finish.

Still. It strikes me that we’ve just watched a compromise episode, on just about all fronts. When you’re filming in a pandemic, there need to be concessions, and for a one-set, one-gimmick self-contained oddity this one just about clung together. It felt like they could have done more with the story, but perhaps as a bit of lighthearted silliness, it wasn’t quite the trainwreck it could have been. Plus the Jodie-haters got to see her blasted multiple times, and her supporters got to see her cheat death. Just this once, Rose, everybody wins.

Chase The Shadows Away

It was a Wednesday, they were in London, and the quiet hum of the TARDIS engines was just about to be undercut by the sound of a ringing phone.

Clara made it to the console first. It was a game they played, on those rare occasions when someone called. Her relationship with the Doctor had begun with a phone call – come to think of it, so had his relationship with her, although it was a different phone and different planet. At least she thought it was a different planet; in truth Clara only half-remembered it, and it hadn’t actually happened yet. These things were complicated. He had been younger then, a quite different man in every literal sense of the word.

Now he was old and grey and often grumpy. There were days they saved the universe, and then there were days she felt like a glorified public relations officer. All too often, the days matched.

She lifted the receiver, ignoring the Doctor’s glare. “Hello?”

Clara blinked. “One second.” Handed him the phone. “It’s you.”

Frowning, the Doctor held out his hand. “Who is it?”

“No, I mean you’re – oh, just take it.”

The Doctor lifted the receiver to his ear, and then his eyes widened to an incredulous stare. “How did you get this number? Well, yes, I mean I know it’s mine, but – no, you’re not supposed to be able to call me! It breaks every rule in the – black hole? What black – never mind, don’t tell me, it’ll come out in the wash. Her? That was Clara. You know, Clara. You really don’t remem- how long’s it been?”

He paced back and forth next to the console, free hand darting over his temples. Now it was clawing at his hair. Making a yak-yak gesture, during which he rolled his eyes at Clara. She was goggling, although mostly at the phone cord, which was in serious danger of getting twisted around his neck.

“You want me to go where? Oh, them. Right. But why?…seriously?”

Concluding the call, the Doctor dropped the receiver in its cradle, with a little more force than Clara thought was probably necessary. “God, what an insufferable idiot.”

“That was you.”

“Yes, well, I’m my own worst critic. How’s your Swedish?”

* * *

At the precise moment the door to the Stockholm studio burst open, Benny Andersson had been trying to do three things. First, he’d been trying to identify the strange vworp, vworp noise he’d just heard outside. Second, he’d been wondering whether it might be something he could sample and use as an introduction to a song he was working on (an as-yet untitled ditty about a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by sentient snails). And third, his sense of recall was performing a desperate catfish through the rubbish bag that was his subconscious in an attempt to work out precisely where he’d heard it before.

His thought processes were interrupted by the arrival of a silver-haired man who looked to be in his mid-to-late fifties, wearing a purple blazer over a tieless white shirt buttoned to the collar, and the sort of expression that meant business. Benny wasn’t sure whether it was the hey-let’s-do-another-musical sort of business, or the accountants-with-folders sort. The second was not something he savoured. But this man didn’t look much like an accountant; he looked like the world’s dourest conjuror.

“Hello, you two,” said the newcomer. “How’s business?”

It had taken Benny two-and-a-bit paragraphs to remember he was not alone in the room. He glanced over at Bjorn, who had been in the middle of constructing a Lego model of the Big Bang Theory set. Bjorn built Lego sets whenever he was blocked. He also liked to pound a toilet brush against the rail of the balcony while singing the Lithuanian national anthem. This was a closely-guarded secret: there was always the possibility of paparazzi intrusion, but so far they’d been lucky.

Benny regarded the stranger with astonishment. “Who are you, and how did you get past security?”

The man was carrying a notebook; he opened it to a specific page and made a tally mark with a ball point pen. “And that’s…thirty-seven marks for opener number five,” he said. “That’s almost as popular as ‘Halt, you’re an enemy of the Daleks’.”

Benny was reaching for the phone on his desk when the stranger held up a single finger. Just wait. “Melbourne,” he said. “March 5^th, 1977. You were trapped in your hotel room and curtain was half past eight. The incident with the mutant sponges.” The stranger leaned over the desk and offered a cheery, if slightly sinister grin. “Do you remember?”

Benny’s jaw dropped like a plummeting lift. He was too transfixed to glance over at Bjorn, but suspected he’d experienced the same reaction.

“Doctor?” said the astonished Benny, after a moment.

“In the flesh. How’ve you been?”

“My god! That must have been…forty years ago!”

“Well, your maths is still good,” the Doctor mused. “Must be all the fish.”

“You’ve aged,” said Bjorn. “In fact your face is completely different. And you’ve got more…Welsh.”

The Doctor was affronted. “Scottish!”

“Right, right,” said Bjorn, trying his best to look abashed. “I always get those two muddled.”

“I like the jacket, though,” said Benny. “I never really cared much for those pinstripes.”

“So you remember?”

“How could we forget? We still talk about that night. We even did a song about it. The title track on our last album.”

The Doctor regarded him curiously. “I thought The Visitors was about Russian dissidents?”

“Well, you know. You have to code these things,” said Bjorn. “No one would have believed the truth.”

“So what brings you here?” said Benny. “So late in the day?”

“Yeah, do you need money?” This was Bjorn. “Only most of ours is tied up in investments, and – ”

“I need you to make another album,” said the Doctor, simply.

Benny and Bjorn’s jaws dropped almost as far as they had when the Time Lord had announced his identity. The Doctor heard something click in Benny’s face, and winced; he’d feel that in the morning.

It was Bjorn who recovered first. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I need you to record a new album. You and the girls. Well, women. Shouldn’t really call them girls. Clara’s always lecturing me about that.”

“Clara?”

“My friend. She’s gone out sightseeing, but she’d love to meet you both.”

“A new album?” Benny was rubbing his jaw. “Now? After all this – but why?”

“We left that behind a long time ago,” said Bjorn. “There’s a lot of water under that bridge.”

“There’s a lot of water under every bridge. That’s the purpose of bridges. They let the water move. Give you a sense of where it’s going, where it’s been. Bridges are brilliant for offering perspective.” The Doctor was walking around the room, gesticulating with his hands in the manner of an animated lecturer. “Unfortunately they only get you so far. Sometimes you just have to walk off the bridge and go down to the water.”

He was facing them now “Because it’s never too late to start again.”

“But still…why? Why now?”

“Because I’ve a feeling that in a few years, people are going to really need it. Specifically me. But also everyone else. You disbanded, what, thirty-five years ago? What have you done since?”

“We wrote an award-winning musical about chess and had cameos in Mamma Mia,” replied Bjorn, somewhat frostily.

“Yes, well. I mean apart from that. Besides, there’s another record inside you both. Well, all right, the four of you. You need the four of you, otherwise you’d just be ‘BB’.”

Benny regarded him with interest. Then he sighed. “They’ll never agree to it.”

“Then convince them. You’re good at the emotional stuff. And I refuse to believe – ” And now he was once more pacing the room, rummaging through cabinets, leafing through piles of papers, examining DATs – “that you’re not still writing.”

“We-ell…” Benny drew out the syllables like smoke rings. “We did have that one about the computer.”

“Don’t Shut Me Down?” Bjorn scoffed. “That’s going nowhere. The tune’s not bad, but the lyrics are terrible.”

“Our lyrics were always terrible. In any case, we could tweak it. Make it about something different.”

“Good. Good start.” The Doctor – who was now sitting in a chair opposite Bjorn’s desk – clapped his hands, then put his feet up on the table. “What else?”

Bjorn tried to ignore the lack of social grace. “There’s one about a cat witnessing an argument between an alcoholic woman and her husband.”

“Make it a dog. Dogs have compassion. Cats don’t care at all. Plus their claws are annoying.” The Doctor was well into his stride now. “Keep ’em coming.”

“We were playing around with Irish music; that yielded…possibilities. And there’s one called Keep An Eye On Dan – ”

“Dan? Who’s Dan?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Well, find out.” He jumped up. “I’m not asking for a tour or anything. Just one more album. Go out smiling.”

Despite himself, Benny was smiling now. “You know what?” he said to Bjorn. “I really think we should.”

“All right,” said Bjorn, meaning it. “Let’s.”

The Doctor grinned. “Trust me, people will love it. Well, probably. The ones that matter.”

“We’d better get to work,” Benny said to Bjorn. “Find those lead sheets we did a while back.”

“Oh. There’s one more thing.” The Doctor was already on his way out, but he’d now turned back, Columbo-style, and was fishing a piece of paper out of his jacket. “When you’re done, send a copy to this chap. With a note that says this.”

Nothing about this made any sense to Benny, but that had been the pattern for this afternoon. And as the Doctor hurried out and then hurried back in again with a young, starry-eyed brunette on his arm, Benny sat down at the keyboard and began to play, wondering if this could possibly go anywhere at all.

* * *

Some time later, and in drastically different circumstances, the Doctor stood in the middle of a quaint pastoral scene on a ship where time ran at different speeds depending on where you parked.

It was appropriate, really, given that the passage of his own life was so difficult to measure. How long had it been? Chronologically, a few millennia. Maybe. He didn’t know when Mondas had started its drift. For him, it had been just over a thousand, most of it languishing outside Missy’s makeshift jail, scribbling lecture notes and occasionally assisting the Templars. That was assuming you didn’t count the several billion he had spent punching a wall. He never knew whether he should.

The Doctor stared out at the field and considered its random promises. Before him lay a pleasant rural backdrop, hedge-lined fields rolling away to pastured common land, bordered by forests thick with oak and ash and beech. Somewhere in the lower decks, aided in no uncertain terms by their convenient proximity to an event horizon, the Cybermen were evolving and rebuilding at an unprecedented rate, and it was inevitable that they would make a repeat appearance – almost certainly in a sleeker costume and carrying a far nastier gun. The Doctor had found he could do many things over the centuries, but even he couldn’t stop the passage of time – time, the enemy of us all.

It would likely be a bloodbath.

He’d worry about that later. Right now, he had a point to prove.

Nardole was still sitting outside the farmhouse, face hunched over the laptop, peering at it over the the rim of his glasses. Occasionally he would prod at one of the keys, almost with hesitancy, like a child discovering at the corpse of a woodland animal they’re not sure is dead. The Doctor wondered if he was actually dealing with the Cyber threat or playing Roblox.

He cleared his throat as he approached, and Nardole looked up. “Ah. There you are, sir.”

“How’s it going?”

“There’s still some lag on the payload delivery, but I think we can compensate. Hope we can, anyway. Otherwise it’ll be short and not very sweet.” The Doctor coughed. Nardole looked at him quizzically: the Doctor interpreted it (correctly) as his what-in-the-love-of-heaven-is-he-gonna-ask-me-now look.

“The, um. The thing. There was a thing I asked you to look after. Some time ago. Had it sent to you. Only I don’t know about it until now, which is when I’ll ask you to give it to me.”

Nardole’s eyes were momentarily blank. Then somewhere inside his head a penny dropped: if you listened carefully, you could almost hear the clang. “Oh, that!” he said. “Yeah, been carrying that around with me for months. Bit random, though. Can’t think why you’d want it.”

He fished into his jacket pocket and produced a small flat cardboard sleeve, not quite square. “Had a note attached, said ‘Keep it with you and don’t tell me.’” The Doctor took the sleeve, staring at the cover artwork: the dark brown of space, a star poking over the edge of an unidentifiable planet.

He found himself nodding in approval, which prompted Nardole to say “I take it that this is somehow important?”

“Depends on your perspective.” The Doctor was reading the back of the case. “Either way, thank you. Particularly for keeping it secret.”

“All part of the service.” Nardole resumed tapping at his laptop. “I mean it’s probably pushed something important out of my head, but never mind.”

The Doctor grinned as he walked away. “Have a look down the back of the sofa. Things have a habit of turning up.”

“Back of the sofa,” Nardole muttered to himself, but there was humour in it.

* * *

The Masters – both of them – were leaning against a stile, watching a cow.

“Do you ever wonder,” the bearded one was saying, “about the Matrix?”

“The one on Gallifrey?” said Missy.

“No, that terrible science fiction film.” The Master shifted his stance; the wood was itching. “I saw it, back when I was running for Prime Minister. And it struck me that if you’re going to have some sort of rogue AI conquer the world, you really don’t want to use humans for a battery source.”

“Why not?”

“They’re impetuous. They don’t listen. That’s the whole point of the film; people are never happy with what’s given to them. Whereas if they’d used a cow – ”

“There’d have been no rebellion.” Missy finished the thought. “The cow wakes up immersed in liquid, it’s a bit confused, they plug it back in, it’s none the wiser. It just eats grass all day, perfectly content.”

“Plus,” said the Master, “cows are big. You’d need far fewer of them, which makes administration much easier.”

“Yeah. They could call it the Mootrix.”

“Good title,” offered the Master. He turned his attention to the Doctor, whose boots made soft prints in the evening grass. “Oh, it’s you. Whatever it is, you can lift it yourself.”

“Actually, no.” The Doctor scratched the side of his nose. “I came back to check something. The conversation we had earlier.

“That?” the Master sneered. “Why are we revisiting that?”

“Something you said. I asked you about the odds of beating the Cybermen.”

“And?”

“What’d you say?” The Doctor stood, arms folded, biding his time. “I mean your exact words.”

The Master eyed him contemptuously. “I said it was about as likely as an ABBA reunion.”

“Yeah.” The Doctor fished into his pocket, and then placed the CD into the Master’s outstretched hand. The Master rolled it over. “So? Some kind of bootl – wait.” He was examining the date. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“They reformed.” The Doctor wore the merest hint of a smile. “New album. Nearly forty years after the last one. Even managed a tour, of sorts.”

“Did they do that song about the gorilla?” Missy was leaning over the Master’s left arm, reading the track list. “I always liked that one.”

The Master glowered at her. “Not helping.” And then, turning back to the Doctor: “This is fake.”

“I’ll think you’ll find it isn’t,” said the Doctor.

“Then why didn’t I know about it?”

“Oh, well, you’re a busy man. Slash woman,” the Doctor added, acknowledging Missy. “You can’t be on top of every temporal anomaly.”

The Master thought this through for a moment, internal cogs whirring in a blaze of tempestuous logic, and then he pointed at the Doctor with an angry finger. “You cheated!”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” the Doctor smirked. “Either way, I get to win this one.”

The Master threw the CD to the ground, and then stomped off. The Doctor dropped to a low squat to pick it up, brushing away the flecks of dirt. “Litterbug.”

“So what was that?” asked Missy, who’d decided that if her counterpart wanted a sulk, he was on his own. “Other than a bit of metaphorical tackle waving.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up. “You can talk.”

“I can, actually,” said Missy, hand on her hip. “But in all seriousness, you did that by contacting your earlier self, right? How’d you even manage it?”

“It’s the black hole,” said the Doctor. “Bends time. Means the phone works. Kind of.”

“And you rang…you.”

“An earlier me. Got him to pop over to Stockholm. Called in a few favours.”

“Then why in God’s name didn’t you get him to help here?” Missy was incandescent with disbelief. “Bring the TARDIS over? Trigger a meltdown? Be a lifeboat? Anything?”

“Because he never did,” the Doctor explained. “Or rather, I never did. I’d have remembered. We can’t cross the timeline, Missy. You know that.”

“So what was the point, then?”

“I don’t know. Fun, maybe? It’s been sorely lacking round here these past few weeks. Maybe there’s nothing actually wrong with spreading a little joy, even if things are rubbish and we’re all about to die horribly. And besides…”

He moved just a little closer, and dropped his voice to that low, measured tone he adopted when he wanted to be serious. “I wanted to show him that even when you’re certain of the outcome, the universe has a way of surprising you. And that people change, even though they don’t always want to.”

For a moment, Missy said nothing. Then she glared at the Doctor. “You think you know me.” And with that, she turned on her heel and stomped off in the direction the Master had taken, in the futile hope that the Doctor hadn’t seen her lip trembling.

He watched her go. Wondered if he could have handled the conversation better, and decided that it didn’t matter. It isn’t about how much water you put on the seeds you plant, he realised. They grow when they’re ready. And sometimes you don’t get to see.

A snatch of remembered melody drifted into his head. Can you hear the drums, Fernando…?

The Doctor walked back across the field. Perhaps Bill was awake.

Review: Flux Part Six – The Vanquishers

My family and I are big fans of The Goes Wrong Show. A TV spinoff from long-running West End hit The Play That Goes Wrong, each week sees the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society tackle a new work, ‘live’ on the Beeb, only to be hindered by missized sets, exploding props and actors who don’t seem to understand the concept of stage directions. It’s rip-roaring family entertainment, ridiculous and physics-defying and occasionally very touching, but it’s the opening episode of series 2 I wanted to discuss: tired of the group’s continual failings, the bombastic Robert (Matt Berry meets Brian Blessed) stages a successful coup and then directs a period drama called ‘Summer Once Again’, insisting on perfection throughout. When the opening scene inevitably falls apart, Robert stops the action and asks for a reset: this happens over and over and by the time we actually finish it, most of the show’s running time has already elapsed and the actors have no choice but to frantically hurry through the rest of the play. Scenery flies in and out in an instant, dialogue is rushed or omitted entirely, and seasons change in a flurry of falling leaves and fake snow until the curtain falls on the breathless and deeply unhappy troupe.

The last time we saw the Doctor, things didn’t look good – but sometimes, particularly when your back’s against the wall, you have to cut a corner or two. ‘The Vanquishers’ has a lot of loose ends to tie up, and it manages by cheating, as well as a certain amount of economisation. After an abrupt and somewhat disappointing conclusion to last week’s cliffhanger (the Doctor evades certain death at the hands of Swarm by diving out of the way), we’re back at invasion central: Yaz and Dan and Jericho are cornered by marauding Sontarans, Kate Stewart’s left UNIT in the hands of the Grand Serpent and the Doomsday Clock has ticked another second closer to the heat death of the universe. So much to resolve, and so little time.

The only solution to such a conundrum, of course, would be if the Doctor could be in three places at once. And this week, for the express purposes of plot, that’s exactly where she is: split assunder between three different locales, phasing in and out as per the story’s needs, usually at the most inconvenient of moments. It plays rather like the Star Trek: TNG finale, ‘All Good Things…’, in which Picard has to navigate both his past and (imagined) future in order to deal with a spatial anomaly and get Q off his back. So while Doctor the first is gallivanting round a Sontaran base with Karvanista and Bel, Doctor the second is reunited with Yaz and Dan, where they deal with the threat of alien invasion and the imminent destruction of the universe by bribing a Sontaran with chocolate. It’s quite as ridiculous as it sounds: there is no reason for its presence other than the fact that it’s funny (to varying degrees; Moffat really handled this stuff rather better) and the sight of a wide-eyed Dan Starkey goggling over a bar of Dairy Milk is destined to be memed to death, which was presumably exactly what Chibnall wanted. There are probably worse ways to be mark your place in Doctor Who’s history. If you’re going down, at least go down fighting.

Meanwhile, Doctor the third is stuck at Division Centre, with a disinterested Ood and a couple of psychopathic killers for company. At least we assume they’re psychopathic. To be honest my entire assessment of Swarm and Azure is built on assumptions. They’re merciless guardians of entropy from a period we glimpsed only in flashback and only when there were dozens of other stories going on at the same time. Chibnall gives us enough to join the dots – just – but at the risk of mixing metaphors, the picture that results isn’t so much a bucket and spade as it is a Rorschach inkblot, or the fuzzy scribble that hounded Rose in ‘Fear Her’. Oh, there’s an enjoyable conversation between Azure and the Doctor – Whittaker at her most intense, sparring with a smirking villainess who thinks that all life is futile and deserves to be snuffed out (as I recall Judge Death aspired to a similar philosophy, though he at least had more impressive teeth). But this is a meagre banquet, a scrap of development here and there, a sliver of empathy amidst the gloating. Both Azure and her brother retire from this mortal coil (disintegrated by the demigod they have supposedly resurrected) no further fleshed out than the bronzed skeletal bodies they’ve inhabited since episode one: all sneer, no substance. We don’t really know what they’re up to, or why, and we don’t particularly care either.

At least it looks pretty. You might accuse Doctor Who of being top heavy when it comes to CGI, but it seems churlish to complain when we’re being granted the spectacular vistas we’d arguably been denied during the scaled down stories we witnessed in series 11 and 12. Dalek fleets explode in dazzling panorama. Sontaran fleets loom over Rio de Janeiro and Paris (we know it’s Paris, of course, because you can see the bloody Eiffel Tower). And the Doctor wanders through a black and white flashback of her own childhood, as the mysterious floating house drifts in and out of existence with a wave of Swarm’s gloved hand – he and Azure providing the only pigmentation in an otherwise drab monochrome, like the girl in Schindler’s List, or the video for ‘Wonderwall’. Ironic, seeing as they themselves are so utterly bereft of colour.

The discussion we had last week – concerning past lives and forgotten history – becomes a McGuffin of sorts for the Doctor, or perhaps an obstacle. There simply isn’t time to actually delve that far, not when there are so many other plot strands to resolve. Tecteun is given only the most cursory of mentions; this has now become about stopping the Flux. Learning about the past, we are assured, is a distraction, and when the whole thing is dangled quite literally in front of the Doctor’s nose in the shape of a fob watch she wisely elects to hide it in the dimensionless depths of the TARDIS, safe from herself and future showrunners, “unless I really ask for it”. The implication, surely, is that we’re moving on, at the very least until New Year’s Day, although I suspect that fans will not let it rest that easy.

But while Swarm destroys and rebuilds the floating house, you can’t help but feel mildly disappointed that the Doctor never enters it. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of mystery; nor are we necessarily done with this story arc, the question of what’s behind that rotting wooden door merely postponed, rather than shoved back into Pandora’s box right before it’s thrown into the sun. There’s no reason we couldn’t go back – all the same, having come this far, why couldn’t we have ventured a little farther? Seen the experiments in the cabinets; cast our eyes over a series of bizarre objects; glimpsed a dozen unknown figures who may or may not have been prior incarnations, like the screen in Morbius’s lab? (Question: is it Division? Or The Division? Because the definite article seems to have gone walkabout this year, and it’s not down the back of the sofa, because I’ve looked.)

Whittaker herself is affable and watchable, whether she’s giggling on a torture rack or flirting with herself (often in the same scene). Time and again she’s shown herself to be an expert at the frivolous remark – “What this ship really needs,” she mutters, faced with someone else she doesn’t know, “is lanyards” – but while she possesses Tennant’s facetious light-heartedness we don’t really delve much beyond that, save a couple of brooding remarks and (god save us) an actual tear during a final not-quite conversation with Yaz. There is none of the fire that lit her during ‘The Haunting of Villa Diodati’ – it’s mostly down to the script, but you wish she’d reacted to the genocide of the Lupari with a little more emotion. Even a dual appearance as the personification of Time, dour-mouthed and serious and sporting a different coat, is largely wasted.

The companions have their own journeys this week: Dan’s takes him to the TARDIS (by way of the museum we saw him exploring in episode one); Vinder and Bel wander straight into each other’s arms, electing to wander the cosmos with Karvanista. It’s all a bit Guardians of the Galaxy, without the tree – although Bel still hasn’t had that baby, and it’s been in there for years, so who knows what she’s actually growing? As for Karvanista, the bushy sidekick is given the nearest thing we get to character development, angrily declaring his backstory with the Doctor off limits (reliving the memory, it turns out, will literally kill him) but giving us hints that the pair were closer than we’d realised. “There was a time I’d do anything for you,” he glowers from the neon haze of a Sontaran prison cell. “But you left me.”

It is Jericho who is granted a hero’s death, bowing out in a literal blaze of glory after proving rather too trigger-happy defending Claire from an oncoming Sontaran patrol. It was inevitable: Kevin McNally does a good line in indignant pomp, and you find yourself nodding and smiling as he introduces himself as ‘Scourge of Scoundrels’, before noting – just before he’s incinerated by the blast – that it would have been a brilliant title for his autobiography. My children were upset, but that’s all part of the fun. It’s not proper Doctor Who unless you lose a supporting character you actually like. (No, Adric doesn’t count.)

And yet it feels rushed. This, you sense, is what happens when you film an ambitious storyline in the height of a pandemic. There is enough material here to fill a series of ten episodes, possibly more if they stretched out the camerawork. Instead we’re plagued with enough jump cuts to make the cafe scene in Bohemian Rhapsody look like a Ken Loach film. I’m not asking for pages of dialogue. I’m just asking for the chance to pause for breath. Because when McNally died on that ship you really feel he ought to have had a little more time. When Bel and Vinder collapsed into that embrace, they needed another minute or two – enough time, at least, for Vinder to process the fact that he was going to be a father. And if the not-quite relationship between Dan and Diane deserved a little more closure than a bit of mumbling about restaurant bookings – or if nothing else a little more than a single wistful stare. Flux manages, at the very least, to give a decent send-off to the Grand Serpent, who is fittingly exiled (by Vinder and Kate) to an isolated rock in deep space, where he can have the rule of authority he always craved, in complete solitude. Be careful what you wish for.

There is a sense of frustration about it, because Flux feels like the series Chibnall always wanted to make: grandiose, world-changing and with a sense of finality, a set of water cooler moments to rival Tennant diving through the hatch of an open spacecraft, Eccleston’s defiant “I’m coming to get you,”, or Capaldi’s four billion year wall punch. Certainly there have been scenes and segments that we’ll be talking about for some time: the Angel freeze-up at the end of part four, the heist on Atropos, the literal destruction of the entire cosmos at the end of the first instalment. Even the Sontaran in the corner shop, although not every word said about it will be praiseworthy.

But it’s hard not to feel a little cheated, just as the programme itself cheats in order to (more or less) finish its narrative on time. There is nothing untoward about the bending of physics or the narrative trick used to get the Doctor back into the universe in order to save it, except that it feels rushed, hastily implemented, skirted around in order to Get The Story Done. And it is for this reason that ‘The Vanquishers’ epitomises, on many levels, everything that’s been both good and bad about this year. It’s fun and bold and often exciting; these are all good things, and to be treasured, because we don’t have enough good things these days. But it’s like wolfing a McDonalds on your way back to the train station – you feel like you’ve experienced something hot and mildly satisfying, but you can’t really tell what it was. There is a sense of things being unfinished, of time being wasted, of opportunity squandered. For all its good qualities, it is hard not to view Flux as a breakneck scramble for the finish line, an ensemble of confused players rushing through the final act before the credits roll, yanked up at speed with the same indecipherable intensity as the drama that preceded them.

Review: Flux Part Five – Survivors of the Flux

I imagine there are a number of very disgruntled Doctor Who fans ranting and raving on social media at the moment. Not that this is in any way new. The internet is pockmarked with zits of anger and boils of rage – all directed at a show these people profess to love – and it is impossible to travel very far, wherever you happen to be going, without running into pustules of self-righteous indignation, seemingly desperate to be lanced or popped. Getting angry at Doctor Who is very fashionable. I should know; I’ve done it myself.

But this week’s anger is liable to take a specific form, and comes as we learn, more or less unambiguously, that two particular fan theories from the last couple of years have basically fallen at the wayside. The first (and by far most popular) is that the Master’s revelation halfway through ‘The Timeless Children’ was an outright falsehood. For a number of people (I’m not going to say ‘many’, because I suspect they’re probably just a particularly vocal minority) the prospect that Gallifrey’s public enemy number one was lying through his teeth was a far more appealing one than the likelihood that Chibnall genuinely wanted to see this through to the bitter end, even if it meant rewriting history. “The Master lies,” we’re told, over and over. “You can’t trust him”.

Well, no. You can’t. As far as unreliable narrators go, he’s up there with Keyser Soze. But…really? Is that something you’d honestly see Chibnall doing? Inserting new Doctors – including the first person of colour to land the role, if you don’t count Lenny Henry – only to turn round and say “Sorry, folks, this doesn’t count”? Or “We said there were loads of Doctors, but we were only pulling your leg”? Not only is it the sort of negligent trolling I don’t think even he’s capable of, it discards everything we’ve seen over the last three years; it also severely undermines the BBC’s (admirable) diversity agenda, and hence it isn’t the sort of trick he’s about to pull. I mean, Davies might. But that’s entirely up to him.

The other theory that has now failed to bear fruit is an expanded version of this: that Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor inhabits a parallel universe, and is most likely herself a parallel Doctor. Hence everything that’s happened over the past few years, from angry Ptings to mysterious to TARDISes buried near lighthouses, has been a series of adventures chronicled by another set of adventurers. You know, a different Doctor. Not ours. Not the real one. And thus the timeline may be restored without prejudice and everybody’s happy (and by ‘everybody’, I mean that small-but-vocal contingent I previously mentioned). Capaldi regenerates into someone else and series 11-13 were only a dream, an imagined memory, half-human on its mother’s side. Isn’t it brilliant when you can strike the stories you hate from the continuity?

But as we saw in ‘Survivors of The Flux’, the Doctor really is the Timeless Child, and this really is our universe – something that’s not just a passing observation but a major plot point. The moment comes at the midway point in what is essentially a fifty-minute infodump. After a visually striking (if pedestrian) opening scene where the Doctor walks through a field of Angels, she then spends the rest of the episode confined to a single room where a middle-aged woman dressed like a post-apocalyptic Amelia Earhart fiddles with a set of controls and sneers at her. There is an Ood in the corner, who is there for no reason other than the fact that Chibnall clearly wanted an Ood, and whose reasoning the Doctor is able to affect in thirty seconds flat. She gets it on side by explaining that the universe it’s about to blow up contains other Ood, and that killing them is murder. How the Ood was unable to reach this conclusion on its own is left unexplained, but we should probably be used to that by now.

That the mysterious woman turns out to be Tecteun, the Doctor’s long lost mother, turns out to be no great shock. Nor are we surprised when she tempts Whittaker with a set of restored memories, presumably detailing all the times she was stomping across the universe doing Division’s dirty work. Nor do we care when the Doctor turns the offer down flat. Even the cliffhanger, in which Swarm and Azure pop up out of nowhere just in time to disintegrate Tecteun out of existence, is something you could see coming a mile off. The net result of this is that a series of uninteresting twists are heaped together in an attempt to make the whole more than the sum of its parts, in which respect it fails miserably. This is a wobbly tower of nothingness: reveals are dumped on top of reveals until they cease to have any impact, a layer cake where every layer is jam.

It’s as if Chibnall sat down to write this week’s episode having woken up in a panic in the realisation that he had ninety-four minutes of screen time left and enough unexplained material to fill about six hours. The only answer is to dump it all into a single speech and leave the audience to fill in the gaps. Which I wouldn’t mind, had it been even slightly entertaining – but most of the exposition is as dry as a desert. “Colossal,” beams Tecteun when the Doctor asks about the extent of Division’s influence. “Across space and time, its influence is unparalleled. Its reach is unlimited. All from the shadows. It achieves its aim beyond our wildest dreams.” It reads like a BBC press release. Barbara Flynn does the best she can with the dog’s breakfast she’s given, but when your job is primarily to tell everyone what’s been going on, how much life can you really inject?

There were good things. Craig Parkinson oozes venom (quite literally) as the treacherous Prentis, a sliver of white in his hair and a snake living on his back. His rise to the top of UNIT might almost be Machiavellian were it not for the fact that we’ve seen him before, in a very different setting, and it is clear that this is probably the same man, either immortal or carrying a TARDIS (or a working vortex manipulator). He manages to off anyone who gets in his way, with the notable exception of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who lights up the screen in what is the episode’s single best scene, before vanishing into the darkness as UNIT is defunded and her house is blown up. It’s all good fun until you realise that Chibnall’s effectively turned a Brexit gag into a significant plot point, but Jemma Redgrave is always fun to watch, so perhaps it’s churlish to complain.

Then there’s the companions, who mercifully have a bit more to do this week, having spent the last three years backpacking round the world in search of artifacts that might help them predict the year of the coming apocalypse (spoiler: it’s 2021); Around The World In Eighty Days with touches of Indiana Jones. They even get their own montage, hiking to Nepal (presumably Wales), red dotted lines charting their progress as the music swells in the background. All this is before they realise that what they were searching for was right under their noses the whole time, which really is a bit Wizard of Oz. Still, it’s nice to see more of Kevin McNally, who slides into the role of temporary sidekick with aplomb, sparking well with Bishop and Gill, whether he’s running from an obviously-placed stick of dynamite or shoving a corpse over the edge of a boat. The scene with the farquhar is likely to split the fandom. Personally, I was chuckling.

Four years ago Emily and I were watching series three of Twin Peaks. It was twenty-five years in coming and in retrospect I wonder whether the sense of anticipation led us to overlook some of its shortcomings. For every wonderful, crowd-pleasing moment (when Kyle MacLachlan looks to camera with a reassuring smile and declares “I am the FBI”, it’s difficult not to cheer) there are moments of unfulfilled promise: James Hurley’s half-visited storyline; the scenes with Ed and Norma and Nadine that basically come out of nowhere…it’s a mess. A god-awful glorious mess, but still a mess.

And the reason it works, despite being a mess, is that we’re dealing with pre-conceived characters we knew well. Lynch knew he’d told us all he really wanted to about these people, when we lived their lives and visited their homes in the early 1990s. All that remains is to drop in a coda (in the case of Audrey Horne, an interrupted cadenza). We don’t need to see any more of Ed and Norma, because we know their story and they deserve the happy ending they’re given. This isn’t the case with Flux, where Chibnall slingshots around a host of new and vaguely-connected characters in different times and places, offers the flimsiest of sketches and the barest character development the running time allows, and then ties them all together at the eleventh hour with string so old and frayed it could snap at any minute. There’s still at least one episode to go (possibly more, if he elects to draw this out into the specials) but it’s become apparent that this year’s Big Event is a story where plot is directing character, rather than the other way round: where they decided to wipe out the universe and stick in a bunch of half-formed people to see how it would affect them. Which is par for the course in Doctor Who, at least some of the time – but when it’s been hyped up so much, and when it’s all the new content we’re getting, you can’t help wishing they’d managed something a little more substantial.