The Time of the Doctor ReKapped! Part One

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Once, there was a planet, much like any other, and unimportant. This planet sent the universe a message. A bell tolling among the stars, ringing out to all the dark corners of creation. And everybody came to see. Although no one understood the message, everyone who heard it found themselves afraid. Except one man.

The man who stayed for Christmas…

The Doctor holds aloft a Dalek eye-stalk: “I bring proof of courage and comradeship. What is this ship and why are you here? Identify yourselves by species and planet of origin.”

“Exterminate!”

Daleks surround him, and, grabbing at an ear-piece, he sends an instruction to teleport him away.

He finds himself back on the TARDIS, yelling to a broken Cyberman head that sits on the console: “Don’t put me on a Dalek ship when I’m holding a broken bit of Dalek!” Handles, as he has christened it, tells him that the message has beamed across the universe – hence why the Daleks, Sontarans, Terileptils, Slitheen and countless other species are now orbiting the would-be-quiet little backwater planet.

The phone goes and he asks Handles to remind him to patch the phone back through the console. Handles does this immediately. “No, not now!” the Doctor says, exasperated. “Remind me later… Just pick a random number, express that number as a quantity of minutes, and when that time has elapsed, remind me to patch the telephone back through the console unit.” He heads outside and picks up the phone on the TARDIS exterior door.

It’s Clara! And she needs a boyfriend…

Clara’s cooking Christmas dinner for her family, and she accidentally invented an imaginary boyfriend. Meanwhile, the Doctor has landed on a new ship – and is being shot at by Cybermen.

The TARDIS materialises on the green outside Clara’s block of flats. She enters… to find the Doctor naked. “I wondered if you’d notice,” the Doctor says. Suddenly, he’s clothed again. Though not actually. “Hologram clothes,” he explains, “projected directly onto your visual cortex.”

She introduces him to her Dad, her Dad’s new girlfriend, Linda, and her Gran, and then takes him into the kitchen to help with the turkey. It’s not going to be cooked in time. What they need is a time machine.

Back in the TARDIS (orbiting, once more, the mysterious planet), the turkey exposed to time winds, Clara meets Handles, a Cyberman with no organics, but with a full set of data banks, found on the Maldovar Market. Handles has finally found out the name of the planet.

“Gallifrey.”

The Doctor doesn’t accept this. Even if he did save his home planet, it’s gone from his universe, trapped in a pocket of time.

A massive ship approaches them, a projection of a tall, dark-haired woman beckoning them aboard. “Papal Mainframe. It’s like a great big flying church,” the Doctor says. “The first ship to arrive. They are the ones who shielded the planet; they can get us down there.”

He gives Clara a pill to swallow: a holographic projector. Because you can’t go to church fully clothed.

Next, she meets Tasha Lem, Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe, who takes them to her chapel for a little privacy. She shielded the planet (because if one ship lands, they all go down, and that’ll result in bloodshed) and will let the Doctor go down under a few conditions: find the source and report back within one hour; cause no trouble; no technology.

Outside the chapel, the Silence gather…

He gives her his TARDIS key – because with it, he could summon the TARDIS – and he and Clara use Tasha’s personal teleport to beam down to the planet.

Its icy cold, the ground covered in snow. The Doctor hugs Clara, trying to keep her warm. And then a hand grabs her foot. Weeping Angels below the snow! Trying to escape, they fall down a hill, getting closer to the source of the message. Weeping Angels follow – amass around them – closing in – nearly on them –

The Doctor pulls off his hair and unveils another TARDIS key. The Time-Space ship materialises around them. He shaved off his hair one night because hey, he got bored.

Back in ordinary clothes, and dressed for the freezing weather, the Doctor and Clara head to the local human settlement. “Right, we’re a couple from the next town,” the Doctor tells Clara. “My name’s probably Hank or Rock – something like that.” But when they meet two villagers, Abramal and Marta, the Doctor reveals: “I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. I stole a time machine and ran away and I’ve been flouting the principal law of my own people every since.”

And Clara lets out that she’s “an English teacher from planet Earth, and I’ve run off with a man from space because I really fancy – ” She slaps her hand over her mouth.

The Doctor realises that the town is in a truth field, so no one can tell lies, especially so close to the tower at the town’s heart.

… When no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered…

And the town is called Christmas.

***

They head to the tower, and find the source of the message. It’s a slice of 26th June 2010, the day the universe blew up.

It’s a crack in time.

“The scar tissue remains. A structural weakness in the whole universe,” the Doctor explains. “And someone’s trying to get through it from outside our universe, from somewhere else… If you were trying to break through a wall, you’d choose the weakest spot. If you were trying to break into this universe, you’d choose this crack.”

Handles identified the planet as Gallifrey merely because analysis of the message indicated Gallifreyan origin – and the Doctor’s home isn’t gone; it’s trapped in another universe. He tells Handles to decode the message using an algorithm in the Seal of the High Council of Gallifrey, stolen from the Master in the Death Zone many, many years ago.

The translation, however, will be heard all over the universe; the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight:

Doctor who?

The Doctor realises that the truth field comes from the crack as well. “A question only I could answer,” the Doctor realises. “A truth field to make sure I’m not lying. If I give my name, they’ll know they’ve found the right place and that it’s safe to come through.” And what happens if the Time Lords return? “Hell. All hell…There’s half a universe up there already, waiting to open fire.” He gives Clara something to put into the TARDIS console and she runs off.

Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Silence: everyone has heard the question. Tasha, too, hears the message, and appears as a projection overlooking the Tower.

The Doctor confronts her: “Mother Superious, there is only one thing I need from you. This planet -what’s it called?”

“Trenzalore.”

The TARDIS dematerialises, taking an unwitting Clara far, far away, and the Doctor knows that he must die here.

If the Time Lords return, the Time War begins anew, with the Daleks waiting to burn Trenzalore and all its inhabitants. There’s a new sheriff in town, though, one who won’t leave Christmas or the Time Lords to their potential fate. “Hello, everyone. I’m the Doctor.”

Meanwhile, Tasha and her Mainframe have an unscheduled faith change: “From this moment on, I dedicate this church to one cause. Silence. The Doctor will not speak his name, and war will not begin. Silence will fall!”

Silence will fall.

NEXT: “LIKE BREATH ON A MIRROR.”

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