#russell t davies i am at your door

[true-bluesargent]

forgot that doctor who drops at midnight now absolutely FUCK that shit i should not be seeing spoilers BEFORE IT HAS EVEN AIRED

[the-lady-hestia]

1. Watch the new Dr. Who episode it’s fantastic

2. Watch the Behind the Scenes video on YouTube and pay attention to how Russel T. Davies talks about writing this story.

He mentions the temptation of taking a big 60th anniversary special like this and turning it into Something crazy and over the top. I think he literally says “what if we open the door and it was William Hartnell standing back there”

But then he talks about having to restrain himself. He mentions how, when writing the story, he adhered to the idea. I genuinely think that this is what makes this episode fantastic. The horror element isn’t undercut by a nod to the audience, or some fourth wall breaking reference (the closest thing we get is a HADs mention). This is a genuinely spooky episode, and the writing (and writer) allows it to stand as such. That sort of thing takes trust in yourself, trust in your audience, and trust in your actors. I think Russel T Davies achieved all of these, and I am so so glad he is back 

In my opinion, we are two for two in terms of good episodes (Last week’s was 8/10 and this week’s is 9/10 so we’re trending upwards). I can’t wait to see the next two bring 

[denimbex1986]

'Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has revealed that there are 'no plans' for David Tennant to return in the new series.

The actor reprised his role as the Time Lord for a trio of Specials to celebrate the show's 60th Anniversary, with a twist in the third and final episode leaving The Fourteenth Doctor to embrace a new life on Earth.

While David's return was praised by viewers, and the conclusion has left the door open for him to appear again in the future, Russell has confirmed that moving forward, new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa is the sole focus.

After his first appearance in the final special last week, Ncuti makes his full debut in a festive special on Christmas Day, alongside Millie Gibson, who will star as his companion Ruby Sunday.

Speaking at a Q&A following the premiere of the festive episode, Russell said: 'Sorry, it's the age of Ncuti now – it's 'David who?''...

Ncuti made his first appearance as The Doctor in the third and final 60th Anniversary Special, The Giggle.

His arrival came when 'creepy' returning villain The Toymaker, played by Neil Patrick Harris, shot David's Doctor through the chest, forcing him to regenerate.

The Toymaker had turned human beings on Earth mad, before challenging the Doctor to a deadly game - which put the planet at stake - forcing the Time Lord to accept to try and save Earth.

Shooting the Doctor, The Toymaker said: 'I played one game with the First Doctor, I played the second with this Doctor, so your rules declare that I must play the third game with the next Doctor!'

His companions Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and the returning Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) ran over to support him as he regenerated, with fans expecting that to be the end for David's character.

Melanie reassured him: 'You're going to be someone else, it doesn't matter who, because every single one of you is fantastic!'

While David tearfully said: 'It's time, here we go again! Alonzee,' as he expected to be replaced, but a huge twist saw his character remain alongside his new incarnation.

As he remained after the regeneration, he asked Donna and Melanie: 'Could you, pull? It feels different this time,' and as they yanked on his arms, Ncuti shot out of him and the two Time Lords stood alongside each other in a massive twist.

Making his hotly-anticipated debut, Ncuti's Doctor shouted: 'No way!' as he laid eyes on David, moving away from tradition which normally sees one Doctor replace another upon regeneration.

David said: 'You're me,' while Ncuti replied: 'No, I'm me. I think I'm really, really me! Oh-ho-ho I am completely me!'

When asked what had happened, Ncuti's Doctor said: 'Bi-generation, I have bi-generated. There's no such thing, bi-generation is supposed to be a myth, but-!'

The pair of Doctors then used their talents to face off with The Toymaker together and incredibly managed to beat him at his own game, sending the villain out of existence forever.

David's Doctor said: 'Best of three, and my prize, Toymaker, is to banish you from existence, for ever!'

'No, you can't. But I - not fair, please,' the Toymaker said, before giving the ominous warning: 'My legions are coming.'

After banishing The Toymaker from the world, both David and Ncuti's versions of the character stayed on screen, and went back to the TARDIS with Donna.

David asked Ncuti: 'How's this going to work, you and me?' as the huge twist saw two Doctors remain after a regeneration for the first time ever.

Ncuti told him: 'You're thin as a pin love, you're running on fumes,' before urging him to slow down and 'stop' rather than running and travelling in the TARDIS.

Ncuti then paid tribute to a whole host of former companions, including the late Elisabeth Sladen, who portrayed Sarah Jane Smith and sadly died in 2011.

'Sarah Jane has gone, can you believe that for a second?' Ncuti said as they sweetly paid tribute to the iconic actress.

Ncuti then told David's Doctor to try and lead a life of his own, to which David said: 'I've never let the TARDIS go, never, that would hurt.'

In another huge twist, Ncuti managed to transform the one TARDIS into two separate time machines as a 'reward' for them winning the game against The Toymaker, under his rules where games override logic.

The episode ended with Ncuti heading off for more time-travelling adventures in the TARDIS, while David stayed on Earth with Donna and her family, sweetly noting he'd 'never been happier in his life.''

[gryfflepuffinthetardis]

Rose and Lillie - Supernova

Note: Bits have been taken from the "Rose" Novelization by Russel T. Davis in 2018, I've rewritten the parts I felt could be rewritten but still have no ownership; those words are either in italics, bold, or in the chat text style (unless I forgot to do it). I only own Lillie Tyler and Nova and their storylines.

Warnings: Death, Violence, Violently Protective Younger Sister, Overprotective Family, Donna Noble missing an invasion.

Datsuzoku — Japanese — Noun — To escape from the daily routine; to take a break from the conventions of one's life; to discover more creativity and perceive your surroundings differently.

"I am tired of pretending I'm fine to those around me, I've never felt more dead in my entire life."

Nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler woke up on the most ordinary day in her very pink room, not knowing that her life was about to change forever. She would often wonder, many years later, standing on the shore of a different universe, about to witness the biggest heartbreak of her life, whether she had missed any signs on that day, long ago. Presentiments of the dangers and joys to come. A lowering sky, perhaps. Distant lightning. Dogs barking at thin air. A fearful old woman staring at her from across the street. But no. It was simply a Friday. Her alarm went off at seven-thirty.

She knew her schedule—shower, have yogurt, wake up her little sister, argue with her mother about the electricity bill or with her sister about her paper assignments scattered all over the flat, walk her sister to the bus stop, and then walk to work.

--

Princess Supernova of Elder glared at the young Time Lord who would one day choose the name “the Doctor” and his standoffish attitude (that was hiding his immense anxiety as he had spent a lot of time crying in the barn of his orphanage lately as this day had grown closer) and then she punched him in the face in front of the whole of Gallifrey’s Academy. The young boy who would one day choose the name “The Master” but now was known by his nickname, “Koschei” let out an impressed and disbelieving chuckle as the Doctor turned back to her in shock, holding his jaw that would soon sport a bruise.

She smirked and stuck out her hand, "Hi, I'm Princess Supernova."

He stared at her for a few shocked moments, he made eye contact with Koschei who was still grinning.

Lillie Tyler was awoken by her sister, Rose Tyler banging on her door. "It’s time for school, Lillie!”

She heard Lillie let out a nasal, overdramatic groan, which vaguely resembled a dying cat parade. “Naaaaaaaaaaggghhh!” which roughly translated in went-to-bed-at-two-in-the-morning-Lillie as, “Don’t make me get out of bed! I’m allergic to sunlight and socializing and dumb people which is everyone at my school including the teachers! Especially the teachers!”

Rose showed no facial expression, indicating that this was unusual behavior for her little sister.

“Don’t make me sent Mum in there!”

“I’m getting up! I’m getting up!” The younger Tyler sister groaned and then rolled over, pulling all the blankets with her as she rolled off the bed.

Lillie stood up, pushing the blankets off her, revealing her hair to be a brunette frizzy mess and her gray-tinted blue eyes bleary with sleep. She rubbed her eyes and got ready for the day.

She and her older sister, Rose Tyler moved in their usual routine. You wouldn't think it by looking at them that they were sisters as Rose had straight blonde hair and green eyes and Lillie had curly chocolate brown hair and blue eyes.

Rose had dropped out of school when she was sixteen while Lillie was exceptionally bright and liked to think of herself as an empathetic Sherlock Holmes.

When Rose was in school, Lillie was a grade behind her even though she was only six months younger. Lillie was still in school, in her last year, she had wild amounts of potential, in between and after her high school classes, she even took advanced classes—college-level advanced classes that were hard for college students and sometimes even professionals—but she had no ambition or confidence in herself.  She occasionally questioned her own sanity as she still believes she met a man with a stupidly long scarf and a woman with purple hair with a magic box that could travel through time and space that was bigger on the inside.

She and Rose left their house, walking side by side before splitting at the bus stop, accustomed to this routine.

--

Throughout school, she stared into nothingness as she was bored out of her mind. Boredom. That's all she really felt her whole life... except when she met the Doctor and Nova and Sarah Jane Smith. When she was dealing with that "Weeping Angel" she had been scared but she felt alive, more alive than she had ever felt. She'd give anything to feel that again. This September she was supposed to go to the University of Cambridge to study astronomy, cosmology, and quantum physics. That's all she wanted, to reach the stars; that'll be the next best thing as it seemed that they were never coming back for her.

She didn’t really have friends at school, they regarded her as weird and abnormal. She had one school friend, one who was intelligent and resourceful, more than any of the other students, the brilliant Lars South-Woods; they became friends and Lillie had fallen hard, they dated for a year before Lars was given an internship at… well, Lars wouldn’t tell Lillie where but she caught a glimpse of the name, it was two words put together but she only made out a “T” and a “W” but then Lars had caught her nearly had a freakout and Lillie realized if she didn’t want to get yelled at to run. Lars and she had broken up on mutual terms with the promise to stay friends but she was alone again.

“Miss Tyler?” Her teacher asked. Well, it wasn’t her teacher but a professor whose class she audited she had been taking these classes since she was twelve years old when she started outsmarting the teachers by calculating things in multiple dimensions. Some of the professors tried to trip her up but she often both outsmarted them and confused them, like when she kept only referring to “Quantum Entanglement” as Einstein’s name for it, “Spooky action at a distance” even in her papers. She was acknowledging the theory brilliantly but only used that term, simply because according to her when her mother confusingly asked her about it, not understanding a lick of it, was because, “it’s funnier to say.”

“Why did a genius such as Albert Einstein consider Quantum Entanglement impossible?”

Lillie just looked up boredly at her and said, “Well, spooky action at a distance is the phenomenon by which one particle can effectively ‘know’something about another particle instantaneously, even if they are on opposite sides of the galaxy. Einstein argued that this violates the local realism view of causality which is the cause of a physical change must be local—that is, a thing is changed only if it is physically touched, he argued at nothing could move faster than the speed of light, not even information. This idea absolutely rattled the physicist and he never accepted it. But it doesn’t at least, not to our knowledge, experiments show that quantum physics can be used to send faster-than-light communication, whether this theory is true is not truly known to this day and may be that way for quite a while. Most physicists today accept spooky action at a distance as a real phenomenon, based on many experiments that confirm it. They also argue that it does not allow for faster-than-light communication, because the measurement outcomes are random and cannot be controlled or predicted.”

She said this with the utmost causality as if explaining what color the sky was.

“What do you think?”

“I think nothing is faster than light.” She said with a slight smirk as if she knew something she didn’t. Well, not consciously.

“Y-yes, well, once again, Miss Tyler, it’s called ‘Quantum Entanglement’.” The professor said.

Lillie sighed and slumped back in her seat before dropping her head on the table, typical, scienctists always wanted to make everything straightforward and never have any fun. The people who had fun never liked Lillie, they found her weird and the people she almost fit in with were no fun.

She and Rose had been promised this year would be better. A promise made on New Year’s Eve by a complete stranger. She and Rose had been heading across the estate before Lillie got sick from the cold, when a man—some drunk the girls assumed—had asked out to the sisters out to her from the shadows, by the bins. He’d asked them what year it was. It had just chimed midnight, so Lillie told him it was 2005. His face was lost in darkness and snow but somehow she heard him smile as he repeated the year, there was a certain weight to his words that Lillie still thought a lot about, and then he said, “I bet you're going to have a really great year.” He had spoken in a southern Estuary English accent and she could make out the silhouette of his sticky-uppy hair.

Yeah. Sure.

“Never trust a drunk in the dark.” Jackie told that to Rose and Lillie when they were young and Rose still continuously told Lillie this as if they were her own words of wisdom, especially after Jimmy Stone. Lillie never did, not that she had many chances to be around drunks with her rather introverted personality.

But the funny thing was, she did trust him. And so did Rose against all sense of logic. That stranger. There was something about his voice, the way he said it, like he was saying it only for them. He had looked directly at Lillie as if he was applying it more to Lillie than Rose. Somehow, out of all the nonsense the sisters had ever heard from drunken men, they remembered his words.

So Rose and Lillie Tyler kept waiting.

After school, she walked to Rose's work after school, she was just so tired of everyday life. She knew Rose was too, despite never having to talk about it but what could they do about it?

Rose told her that she needed to give Wilson the lottery money at her work and Lillie offered to stay up in the store.

Rose let a sarcastic laugh and said, “Not a chance in hell.” She grabbed her hand and pulled her to the elevator. “Blimey, Lils, you’re eighteen and have been taking genius advanced university classes for six years, it’s just a lift!”

“Ugh, you sound like Mum!” Lillie groaned.

They got on the elevator of the building and went down the elevator shaft.

Wilson was known for being a creep, Rose had caught him eyeing her little sister at times but he wasn’t so dumb to make a move after witnessing Jackie scream at and slap a drunk who had hit on her in the store soon after Rose started working at Hendrick’s and it was immediately followed by Rose doing the same thing while Lillie just blushed, mortified with her arms crossed. So he knew both Rose and Jackie wouldn’t hesitate to slap the living day lights out of him and then there was the story of what Lillie did to Rose’s ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Stone, allegedly, she had somehow hunted him down to Amsterdam when seven full hours away from London by car—and Lillie didn’t own a car or a driver’s license, she had been fifteen years old and allegedly slashed his tires and keyed his car and all of his band equipment was mysteriously stolen and then he was found by the police with his bass drum broken over him, trapping him with a convenient list of proof of his petty crimes just for them which landed him in prison for eighteen months. There had been no proof that Lillie had done it but Rose suspected otherwise.

They stepped out of the elevator and Rose looked down the hall, "Wilson!" The sisters looked at each other before venturing down a hall, "Wilson, I've got the lottery money. Wilson, are you there?" The eldest knocked on Wilson's office door but there was no answer. "I can't hang about cause they're closing the shop. Wilson!"

The two sisters heard a clattering down the hall and the sisters looked at each other and they followed the noise with Rose taking the lead; Wilson was known for being a bit of creep.

Rose has always been overprotective of her and Lillie was for her. Rose’s earliest memory was when she was about a year and a half year old, most don’t have memories form the first three years of their life but this memory always stuck to her because Lillie had gotten really sick during the winter, Jackie had cried as she had feared Lillie would die so soon after Pete but Lillie made it through. It turned out it was a really bad case of pneumonia; apparently Lillie had some aversion to cold weather, it made her particularly vulnerable to illnesses such as the common cold or the flu, which was especially dangerous as she not even a year old at that time. They had been told that while most one-year-old’s immune systems were stronger than people thought, usually maturing somewhere between two and three months but Lillie’s immune system just was maturing more slowly, making her vulnerable to the cold.

Rose remembered getting out of her tiny toddler bed and walking to her sister’s room, being quiet as her mom chattered away on the phone.

“I swear, I’m only twenty-one and she’s giving me gray hairs…”

Rose snuck into her sister’s room and pulled the step ladder thing she used to peer over the crib and she saw her sister asleep, she was hugging a stuffed star, fists pale as she clung onto it for dear life as she slept on her side with her cheek all smushed from lying on the stuffed star, she had curly chocolate brown hair, a vast contrast of her mother and sister’s straighter blonde hair.

Toddler Rose didn’t say anything, she just looked at her little sister. At her young age, Rose had been aware her sister was in danger, Jackie had been crying in the hospital as Mickey and his parents and grandmother were there. Odessa and Jackson had been comforting Jackie while Mickey and Rita-Anne sat with her.

Baby Lillie then opened her eyes, revealing brilliant blue eyes, looking up at her older sister with much more intelligence than an eleven-month-old should have.

Toddler Rose smiled down at her sister, she reached down and felt Baby Lillie take her hand.

“I promise to protect you.” The one-year-old Rose Tyler promised. “Forever.” To this day, Rose recalls that day as the first time she promised to protect Lillie and she never failed to live up to that promise and it had become her instinct to protect Lillie before herself.

"Hello? W-Wilson?" She pushed a door open, the sisters entering a very dark room, revealing a huge room of mannequins. The eldest Tyler sister ventured into the room, closely.

"Right, let's just go for a stroll into the room full of nightmares," Lillie muttered before following her sister to a red door that said: Estates Management Department Access: Restricted to Authorized Personnel Only when the door they came in closed shut.

The sisters ran to the door, trying to pull it open but it seemed to be locked.

"You're kidding me." Rose muttered as Lillie kicked the door.

They heard more clanking behind them.

"Is that someone mucking about?" Rose called.

"Who is it?" Lillie called as they wandered further into the nightmare room.

They heard creaking and turned to see a male mannequin looking at them. Lillie saw the mannequin stepping out towards them, Rose grabbed Lillie's arm, pulling her back.

"Yeah, you got me. Very funny." Rose said, her voice slightly shaky, she sensed danger but didn't want to accept it but was still wary of the danger Lillie was in.

A second mannequin behind the first moved, then a third.

"Right, I've got the joke. "Whose idea was this? Is it Derek's? Is it? Derek, is this you?" Lillie pulled Rose away from the increasing number of moving mannequins, Rose stumbled over a box as Lillie backed into a wall with Rose joining her. The sisters clasped each other's hands tightly.

The lead mannequin raised its arm as if going to karate chop them; Rose noticed in a brief glint of light, dark liquid on the dummy’s hand… she hoped it was oil or paint… but she doubted it… Rose pushed Lillie behind her, shielding her with her body, though it wouldn’t be much use… Rose closed her eyes, bracing for impact, letting out a few soft whimpers of fear but refusing to do anything other than live up to her promise. Lillie stared up at the dummies over Rose’s shoulder with a glare, her compass locket given to her five years ago glowed colors of a rageful red, a protective turquoise, a flowery pink that an Elder would recognize for the fierceness of sisterly love but then before the glow became noticeable a man reached out of the darkness and grabbed Rose and Lillie’s joined hands, and with that and one word changing the sisters' lives forever.

"Run."

It was a bald man around his early-to-mid forties with big ears, wearing a t-shirt and a leather jacket.

He pulled Rose and Lillie out of the way, and the three ran through the basement as the mannequins followed until they got to the lift. One of the mannequins grabbed Lillie's hair and tried to pull her back out. Suddenly some unknown instinct kicked in and she spun, grabbing the arm and pulling it off in one fell swoop and the elevator doors closed on the mannequins.

"I..." She drawled out in shock, backing into the elevator wall next to her sister. "...Pulled its arm off."

The man stared at Lillie in shock for a few long moments. She looked just like her, just with brown hair and blue eyes. She even had a similar fashion style. Graphic tee, plaid skirt, jeans, boots.

"What?" Lillie asked, looking down, she hated when people looked at her for what she felt was too long, she felt like they were judging her and while she ultimately didn't care about the opinion of people who were usually too invested in their own lives to consider other people or only did it to feel better about themselves, it hurt nonetheless, not that she would ever admit that.

The man shook his head as if shaking out of a trance, denying something in his head. "Yep. Plastic." He covered up his shock. There would roughly be about six people in the world who would look like her, nonetheless the universe.

"Very clever. Nice trick! Who were they then, students? Is this a student thing or what?" Rose asked.

"Why would they be students?" He asked, curiously, almost as if he were testing her.

"I don't know..." Rose trailed off, feeling flustered suddenly.

"Well, you said it. Why students?" He prompted.

"Cause to get that many people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students." Rose mumbled, she felt shameful that she had froze up in a crisis, she had just acted as a shield for her sister, lot good that would do before they would’ve gotten to her.

"That makes sense. Well done." He smiled.

"Thanks."

"They're not students."

"Whoever they are, when Wilson finds them, he's going to call the police." Rose said, sternly.

"Who's Wilson?" The man asked.

"Chief electrician."

“Slash-caretaker.” Lillie mumbled.

"Wilson's dead." He said simply.

The lift beeped, announcing that they had reached their destination and they walked out.

"That's just not funny." Rose exclaimed.

"That's sick!" Lillie scoffed. The man noted that this brunette had a different accent than she did. It had been Australian.

"Hold on. Mind your eyes." He took out a sonic screwdriver, it was different than the one she had seen her Doctor with.

Doctor. It was her Doctor but with a different face. Like in her dreams. But… where was Nova?

"I've had enough of this now!" Rose complained, the sisters truly did get Jackie's attitude. Sparks emitted from lift mechanism as he continued to ignore most of Rose's questions, "Who are you, then? Who's that lot down there? I said, who are they?"

"They're made of plastic. Living plastic creatures. They're being controlled by a relay device in the roof, which would be a great big problem if I didn't have this." He produced what seemed to be a small bomb, "So, I'm going to go up there and blow them up, and I might well die in the process, but don't worry about me. No, you two go home. Go on. Go and have your lovely beans on toast." He opened a door and pushed the sisters through it, Don't tell anyone about this, because if you do, you'll get them killed." He shut the door.

Doctor. The name appeared in her head and she knew that was who he was.

The man opened the door and opened his mouth to speak but Lillie had spoken, "You're the Doctor, aren't you?"

He blinked at her like he couldn't believe it.

"How did you know?"

"Umm... I don't..." She mumbled, lamely. It couldn't be him. Those were just dreams. Right?

"What's your names?" He asked, narrowing his blue eyes but not in a bad way, but more in a curious way.

"Rose."

"Lillie."

"Nice to meet you, Rose, Lillie. Run for your lives!"

Rose, still holding the mannequin arm, grabbed Lillie's hand and pulled her out of the building onto the street, Lillie pulled Rose back before she became a questionable hood ornament of a car.

"Watch it!" The man shouted.

The sisters looked at one another as they made it to the sidewalk.

KABOOM!

A huge fireball took out the upper floor of Rose's job, making Rose flinch while Lillie just tilted her head. Rose ran straight past an out-of-date police telephone box, Lillie however, stumbled to a stop and the brunette turned to look at it, she walked up to the blue wooden box and went to touch it but stopped when Rose shouted for her and Lillie ran after her.

The Tardis warbled, recognizing the soul of the girl who had tried to touch her, well, the fact that she was the same girl who dressed as Sherlock.

--

The neighbors applauded when the sisters returned much to Lillie’s embarrassment as she pulled her hoodie over her head and then their mother burst out of their flat, resembling five foot tall blonde and denim missile.

Rose flinched and Lillie paused, observing her mother’s mood, trying to decipher, if they’d get a hug or a slap.

A hug. A hug that nearly knocked Lillie off the ground and brought her mother down with her but they managed not to as Jackie squeezed the living daylights out of the sisters.

Jackie Tyler, five-foot-nothing, age—not relevant (thirty-six, but she’d never admit it), karaoke champion of the spinning wheel, life and soul of the party (which birthed Jackie’s eighteen-year-old joke of how she could be Lillie’s mother since she was the opposite) but a monumental lightning storm when angry(which was proof that she was Lillie’s mother), now sobbing and laughing and somehow finding a reason to give Rose a punch on the arm while still nearly strangling her youngest.

“YOU STUPID GIRL!”

“Why am I stupid!?” Rose asked.

“You just are!”

Then she found a reason to get angry at her youngest, “What are you doing out here in the cold! You’ll get hypo-pneumonia!”

“That’s not a thing, Mum!” Lillie protested as Jackie dragged her back to the flat, waving to the neighbors as though she had single-handedly rescued her daughters herself, “It’s ‘hypothermia’ and ‘pneumonia’!

As she dragged her youngest inside as if she were blue from the cold as her oldest, thankful for not being Jackie’s center of attention at the moment, quietly entered as Jackie wittered on, “What would I do if you left! All these textbooks lying about!” To be fair, a bunch of Lillie’s textbooks were at random places, including in the freezer as Jackie had found that morning for some reason and a bunch of her papers were scattered about.

Soon Jackie switched to going on the phone to talk to seemingly everyone she had ever known, as the sisters watched the news, "The whole of Central London has been closed off as police investigate the fire. Early reports indicate..."

Jackie walked out of the kitchen, still on the phone, "I know. It's on the telly. It's everywhere. They're lucky to be alive. Honestly, it's aged them. Skin like an old bible. Walking in now you'd think I was their daughter. Oh, and here's them."

Mickey, Rose's boyfriend entered the apartment, "I've been phoning your mobiles. You two could've been dead. It's on the news and everything. I can't believe that your shop went up!""

"We're all right, honestly!" Rose said.

"We're fine! Don't make a fuss." Lillie agreed.

"Well, what happened?"

"I don't know!"" The sisters groaned in unison.

"What was it though?" Mickey asked. "What caused it?"

"We weren't in the shop. We were outside." Rose lied. "We didn't see anything.

Jackie walked up to them, handing Rose the phone, "It's Debbie on the end. She knows a man on the Mirror. Five hundred quid for an interview."

"Oh, that's brilliant!" Rose said, sarcastically, taking the phone, "Give it here." She took the phone and hung up.

"Well, you've got to find some way of making money. Your job's kaput and I'm not bailing you out."

"Mum, we could've died! Now's not the time to be thinking about money!" Lillie scolded her mother but before Jackie could reply the phone rang and she picked up again.

"Bev! They're alive. I've told them, sue for compensation. They were within seconds of death." She said into the phone as Lillie rolled her eyes. As far as Jackie knew, they hadn’t even been in the building.

"What're you drinking, tea? Nah, nah, that's no good, that's no good. You're in shock. You need something stronger." Mickey told them.

"We're all right." Rose said for what felt like the umpteenth time.

"Now, come on, you deserve a proper drink. We're going down the pub. My treat. How about it?" Mickey told the girls.

"Is there a match on?" Rose asked, knowing her boyfriend.

"No, I'm just thinking about you, babe."

"There's a match on, ain't there."

"That's not the point, but we could catch the last five minutes." Mickey said.

"Go on, then." Rose said.

"We're fine, really." Lillie reassured him.

"Go. Get rid of that."

Rose and Mickey kissed before leaving with the mannequin arm.

"Fire then spread throughout the store. Fifteen fire crews are in attendance though it's thought there is very little chance of saving the infrastructure."

Lillie’s phone rang and she looked at it and stiffened. Lars.

She shut herself off into her room, hearing her mother say, “Oh, Lillie’s gone to her room already. Lasted longer than you thought, Bev but I know my daughter!”

Lillie answered her phone and didn’t even get to answer when a series of fast-paced anxious questions were hurled at her from the other end as if someone had pushed the forward wind button as Lillie repeated the nickname and it wasn’t until about ten minutes later that Lillie could get a word in edgewise.

—

Rose was still shamed how she hadn’t acted as she thought she would in the crisis, wondering if it was a girl thing. She felt like everyone was right about her that there wasn’t anything special about her, that she was simply and utterly average. Maybe Jimmy Stone was right about her, that she was thick. She felt like for the first time, she had let her sister down, who the only person she felt like didn’t look at her like she couldn’t do better. She felt like she had broken her promise to save her sister. Soon she drifted to sleep but she woke up around two when Lillie let in Lars, quietly and snuck into her room. Rose listened to the indecipherable whispering between Lillie and Lars, luckily Rose’s room was in-between Lillie and Jackie’s, so their mum didn’t hear the late-night visitor.  Rose drifted off to sleep again, to wake up again around three.

--

Lillie's alarm woke her from her dream. Her blue eyes opened as she heard her mother shout to Rose, "There's no point in getting up, sweetheart. You've got no job to go to."

Lillie had chosen to stay home that day as Jackie prompted Rose to get another job, even though twelve hours ago her last one blowing up.

"There's Finch's. You could try them. They've always got jobs." Jackie suggested.

"Oh, great. The butchers." Rose scoffed, sarcastically.

"Well, it might do you good. That shop was giving you airs and graces. And I'm not joking about compensation. You've had genuine shock and trauma. Arianna got two thousand quid off the council just because the old man behind the desk said she looked Greek!"

"Mum, Arianna is Greek!" Lillie said, somewhat boredly.

"I know she is Greek, but that's not the point. It was a valid claim."

Lillie dropped her head on the table in exasperation as Rose smiled softly, stroking her little sister's chocolate-colored locks.

Something at the door rattled, the catflap. According to their mother, that was one of the last things their father, Pete Tyler promised to fix, according to Jackie he was a budding entrepreneur and an inventor, at least, that’s who Pete wanted to be; he died before he could. The day of Sarah and Stuart’s wedding, he took the week-old Lillie out to get a wedding present that he forgot about, Jackie had already been furius that he took their newly born daughter who spent most of the week in the hospital because she was born at six months miraculously which had turned to guilt when she was informed of what had happened when the police had tracked her down, baby Lillie had spent hours crying as if she had sensed her father’s death.

Eighteen years later, Jackie had insisted she’d one day fix the catflap but she never did. Lillie didn’t need to take psychology classes to know for Jackie to do it would to fully accept that Pete was never coming back.

Rose and Lillie walked over to it, "Mum, you're such a liar. I told you to nail that cat flap down. We're going to get strays."

"I did it weeks back!" Jackie called.

"No, you thought about it." Lillie called back.

Lillie could swear she heard a familiar sound but she couldn't think where she heard it before. She bent down, finding the screws for the cat flap and it moved slightly. Rose bent down, opening it to see a familiar face.

"What the hell?" Lillie asked as the sisters stood up and Rose opened the door.

"What're you two doing here?" He asked like he was the one who belonged there.

"We live here." Rose said, "what are you doing here?"

"What'd you do that for?" He asked.

"'Cause we do!" Rose snapped. "And I'm only home because someone blew up my job."

He took out the sonic screwdriver again.

"Must have got the wrong signal." He said, "neither of you are plastic, are you?" He knocked on Rose's forehead, then went to do the same to Lillie's who slapped his hand away, giving him a similar drolly glare at Nova was so accustomed to giving him. "Nope, boneheads. Bye, then."

Lillie grabbed him by the arm, glaring at him like, oh, no. You're not getting away so easily again! "You, inside, right now." She pulled him inside, making him stumble from her impressive strength and grip. Lillie herself was surprised by her bold act as she was usually accustomed to just ignoring people listening to her Walkman, because for some reason, she still had one that somehow hadn't broken.

"Who is it?" Jackie called from her room.

Rose poked her head to Jackie's room, "It's about last night, he's part of the inquiry. Give us ten minutes.

"They deserve compensation." Jackie said.

"We're talking millions." The Doctor agreed.

"I'm in my dressing gown."

"Yes, you are."

"There's a strange man in my bedroom."

"Yes, there is."

"Well, anything could happen."

"No."

Lillie had a disgusted look on her face. "Well, I'm scarred for life." Lillie deadpanned, pulling the Doctor away from Jackie's room. "Come into our house, strange stranger,"

"Don't mind the mess. Do you want a coffee?"

"Might as well, thanks! Just milk."

Lillie watched the Doctor as Rose made the coffees.

"We should go to the police. Seriously. All of us."

He picked up a magazine, "That won't last, he's gay and she's an alien.

"I'm not blaming you, even if it was just some sort of joke that went wrong."

He picked up a paperback book, The Lovely Bones, flipping through it and remarking, "Hmm. Sad ending."

"Uh, y-yeah, it's for school." Lillie said, looking at him, strangely. "Don't like it. Very depressing."

"How old are you?" He asked.

"Eighteen. Turn nineteen in October." She answered.

"College?" He asked.

"Cambridge."

"Cambridge? Good school."

"Yeah, astrology. I've always wanted to reach the stars." She said and a smile pulled at his lips.

"They said on the news they'd found a body."

He picked up an envelope, "Rose Tyler." Then he looked at himself in the mirror and seemed to be acting as if he had never seen his reflection before, "Ah, could've been worse. Look at the ears."

"All the same, he was nice. Nice bloke."

The Doctor picked up a deck of cards, "Luck be a lady."

"Anyway, if we are going to go to the police, I want to know what we're saying."

The cards went flying everywhere.

"I want you to explain everything."

"Maybe not." She snarked.

He saw a picture of a thirteen-year-old girl in a Sherlock Holmes costume and then it clicked; he pointed at her, "October thirty-first, two thousand. Sherlock Holmes." He looked her up and down, "You've changed."

She narrowed her eyes at him and scoffed, "You can talk!"

He looked confused for a moment before realizing, "oh yes, the face. I do that."

"You change your face?" She asked.

"And body and personality, done it half a dozen times since I last saw you." He said, causally.

"As you do." She said, sarcastically.

"Why'd you change?"

"Uh, I grew up." She said.

The Doctor made a face at that, like he was Peter Pan thinking of the aspect of growing up.

“What’s this?” He asked, nearly slipping of paper.

“Oh, that’s my paper on spooky action at a distance.” She giggled, “That’s what I call ‘Quantum entanglement’ to annoy my professor. I take university-level classes.”

“At eighteen?” The Doctor asked, actually impressed and picked up another paper.

“That’s my paper on cosmology. It’s about the size of the universe…”

“This… this is like twenty-first century drafting of Camhoolian Flat Mathematics, though oddly with very little mathematics.” He kept turning the paper at different angles as if expecting to spot a secret message.

“I don’t like numbers; they give me a headache.” She said.

“Ah, I understand that! Wait, this paper is dated 1999! And it’s about quantum physics! How long have you been taking university classes?”

“Since I was twelve.” She mumbled.

Then there was a pattering sound, "What's that, then? You got a cat?"

"No."

He peeked over the couch and the mannequin arm jumped up, grabbing his throat. Lillie jumped into action, trying to pull it off.

"We did have, but now they're just strays. They come in off the estate."

Rose came back in and took little to no notice of what was happening, under the impression that it was just a joke.

"I told Mickey to chuck that out... Honestly, give a man a plastic hand..."

"Uh, Rose." Lillie said but Rose didn't seem to hear her.

"Anyway, I don't even know your name, Doctor... what was it?"

The Doctor threw the hand off and it flies across the room attaching itself to Rose's face.

"ROSE!" Lillie screamed, worried for her sister, running to her trying to pull the hand off.

She pulled it off no problem only for it to grab on to Lillie's throat, pushing her down onto the glass coffee table which broke from her weight as it strangled her.

"LILLIE!" Rose screamed.

The Doctor pushed her onto the couch, took out the sonic screwdriver, and disabled the hand. Rose enveloped her sister into a big hug before examining her neck for bruising.

Somehow all of this commotion went completely unnoticed by Jackie Tyler who apparently had the loudest hair dryer known to humankind.

"It's alright, I've stopped it. There you go you see? Armless."

He tossed it at them, Rose snatched it before it could hit Lillie, not wanting to take any chances. "Do you think?" She then whacked him on the shoulder with it.

The Doctor then promptly left with the bemused sisters running after him.

"Hold on a minute, you can't just go swanning off." Rose exclaimed.

"Yes, I can. Here I am, this is me, swanning off. See ya!" He exclaimed.

"That arm was moving, it tried to kill me! It tried to kill my sister!" Rose snapped.

"Ten out of ten for observation." He said, sarcastically.

"You can't just walk away, that's not fair! You've got to tell us what's going on." Lillie said, angrily, getting mad that he had insulted her sister.

"No, I don't."

"Well, you should." Lillie argued.

"Alright then. I'll go to the police. I'll tell everyone. You said, if I did that, I'd get people killed. So, your choice. Tell me, or I'll start talking." Rose tried to sound tough.

"Is that supposed to sound tough?"

"Sort of." She said, sheepishly.

"Doesn't work."

"Who are you!?" Rose asked.

"I told you! The Doctor."

"Yeah. But Doctor what?"

"It's just the Doctor." Lillie replied.

"Just the Doctor." He said, their responses overlapping.

"The Doctor?"

"Hello!"

"Is that supposed to sound impressive?"

"Sort of." He mimicked her earlier words.

"Well, it's not." Lillie said, sharply.

"Come on. You can tell me. I've seen enough. Are you the police?"

"No. I was just passing through. I'm a long way from home."

"But what have we done wrong? How comes those plastic things keep coming after us?" Rose asked. "And how do we stop them before they kill my me and sister."

"Oh! Suddenly the entire world revolves around you! You two were just an accident, you two got in the way, that's all."

"It tried to kill us!"

"It was after me, not you! Last night, in the shop, I was there, you two blundered it. Almost ruined the whole thing. This morning, I was tracking it down, it was tracking me down... the only reason it fixed on you is that you met me."

"So, what you're saying is, the entire world revolves around you." Lillie sassed.

"Sort of, yeah."

"You're full of it!"

"Sort of, yeah."

"If we almost ruined everything last night, then you didn't have to save us," Lillie spoke up, "you could've let us die. Why did you save us, then?"

"It's my job."

"You haven't done this is a while, have you?"

The Doctor stopped and looked at her, surprised, "yeah, how'd you know?"

"I-I don't know. I just know things about people. I'm intuitive I guess, part of the ADHD thing."

"You're ADHD?" The Doctor asked, the similarities just kept adding up.

"Yeah, you got a problem with a girl having ADHD?" She demanded, surprising herself with the confrontational tone as she was not a confrontational person.

"No, my best friend had ADHD before she died." He said, "I'm trying to do better in her memory."

"Then you shouldn't tell people they almost ruined everything; you know how much we already do that ourselves!" Lillie reprimanded him, reminding him of someone who always scolded his dismissive behavior.

"But, all this plastic stuff. Who else knows about it?" Rose asked, changing the subject and they all started to walk again.

"No one."

"What, you're on your own?" Lillie asked, noticing the lack of Nova and Sarah-Jane.

"Well, who else is there?" He said, shortly, "I mean, you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly, while all the time, underneath you, there's a war going on."

"Oh, yeah? Well, some of us would love do something more but can't! My sister dropped out of school without taking her A-levels for a boy and he thanked her by stealing her computer, leaving her to deal with their shared bedsit to run away with a woman named Noosha in a camper van with no A-levels and an incomplete education!"

"Lillie!" Rose scolded, embarrassed.

"Our dad died when I was barely a week old, he was an inventor, Rose wasn't even a year old and our Mum's a hairdresser who raised us on her own." Lillie didn't mention how while Jackie did the best she could, she wasn't as present in their lives as any of them would've liked, Rose essentially took on the protecting role over Lillie and helped raise her as much as Jackie did. "Not everyone gets the opportunity to do something great with their lives. Some things get in the way, some of those things they may be born with, and sometimes people don't know what they're going to do with their life."

The Doctor seemed shocked by all this and felt a little bad, understanding that with all of this companions, some had had less than fortunate upbringings. Vicki Pallister's dad had been killed by someone who she though was like a father figure to her while gaslighting her for years. Peri Brown had been fearful of her stepfather, not that he made it much better when he throttled her after regenerating into the Sixth Doctor. Then... Nova, her parents hadn't been abusive, they loved her with all their hearts, but... the man she had to marry, however...

"Sorry."

Rose sighed and snatched the arm from him. "Okay. Start from the beginning. I mean, if we're going to go with the living plastic, and I don't even believe that, but if we do, how did you kill it?" Rose asked.

"The thing controlling it projects life into the arm. I cut off the signal, dead."

"So that's radio control?"

"Thought control." Lillie said automatically though she wasn't sure how she knew this.

"So, who's controlling it, then?"

"Long story."

"Well, I happen to like long stories." Lillie challenged.

"But what's it all for? I mean, shop window dummies, what's that about? Is someone trying to take over Britain's shops?" And then the three laughed.

"No."

"No."

"It's not a price war. They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you. Do you believe me?"

The sisters spoke in unison but had different answers, "No."

"Yes."

"But you're still listening." He pointed out to Rose.

"Really, though, Doctor. Tell me, who are you?"

He paused, "Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving? It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it." He took their hands "The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, both of you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That's who I am. Now, forget me, Rose and Lillie Tyler." He took the arm from Rose, "Go home."

Lillie watched as he walked towards the blue box from the day before but it was in a different place, Lillie narrowed her eyes before Rose pulled her away when a rush of air blew through the area and then a strange noise. A strange yet beautiful sound that only existed in Lillie's dreams along with adventure that she had never known in this lifetime. The girls ran back to find the blue box gone.

--

The Doctor walked into the Tardis and started to smack the console as he brought up Lillie Tyler's high school picture and info.

Full Name: Delilah Holmes “Lillie” Tyler

Birthday: October 31, 1987

Appearance: Curly dark brown hair, blue eyes, five foot three

Fears: Claustrophobia — Fear of small, enclosed spaces

Skills/Abilities: Deduction, Problem-solving, Creative solutions, Resilience, Compassion, Empathy, Multi-tasking, Adaptability

Disorder(s): ADHD, Directional Dyslexia

Family:

Pete Tyler (Father; Deceased)

Jackie Tyler (Mother; Hairdresser)

Rose Tyler (Former Student; Dropped Out)

Medical History: Born four months early, fortunately, she was miraculously grown enough to go home with her parents and sister; Frequent visits to hospitals for bruised knuckles acquired due to fights; Sensitive to cold weather, prone to getting colds.

Record: Lillie has been known to skip class and get in trouble with the authorities and rebel.

Notes: "Lillie marches to the beat of her own drum"; Lots of potential, no ambition; Equipped for leadership but lacks interest; Highly intelligent but absent-minded.

"What are you?" The Doctor wondered.

--

"This is why we need to get a car of our own." Lillie complained to her sister.

"You're not coming in! He's safe, he's got a wife and kids." Rose told Mickey.

"Yeah but who told you that? He did. That's exactly what an Internet lunatic murderer would say."

Rose and Lillie got out and knocked on the door of the house, a boy answered.

"Uh, hello, we've come to see Clive. We've been emailing." Rose said, somewhat awkwardly.

"Dad! It's one of your nutters!" He called. Rose and Lillie exchanged looks at this.

"Sorry. Hello. You must be Rose and Lillie. I'm Clive. Obviously!"

"I better tell you now, my boyfriend's waiting in the car, just in case you're going to kill us!" Rose said and the sisters laughed nervously.

"No, good point. No murders." He said, he waved to Mickey who glared.

"Who is it?" His wife asked.

"Oh, it's something to do with the Doctor! These girls have been reading the website. Please come through, I'm in the shed." He invited the girls inside.

Lillie tilted her head, he seemed friendly enough, but she had a taser gun in her pocket... just in case.

"They read a website about the Doctor? Girls?"

In the shed, Clive told them about the Doctor. "A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive, I couldn't just send it to you. People might intercept it if you know what I mean. If you dig deep enough—keep a lively mind—this Doctor keeps cropping up all over the place. Political diaries, conspiracy theories. Even ghost stories. No first name, no last name. Just 'The Doctor'. Always the Doctor. And the title seems to have been passed down from father to son, it appears to be an inheritance. That's your Doctor there, isn't it?"

He pointed to a photo of the Doctor on a computer screen behind them.

"Yeah."

"I tracked it down to the Washington public archive last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original..."

He shows the girls some photographs of the Doctor standing in a crowd at the JFK assassination.

"November the 22nd, 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy."

"Must be his father..." Rose mused.

The father/son theory made sense but Lillie wasn't sure. 

"Going further back... April 1912." He brought over a photo album of sorts. "This is a photo of the Daniels family, Southampton. And friend." He pointed to the Doctor standing with them "This was taken the day before they were due to sail off for the New World. On the Titanic. And for some unknown reason, they canceled the trip and survived. And..." He brought them a sketch of the Doctor, "1883. Another Doctor. And look—the same lineage. He's identical. This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra on the very day Krakatoa exploded. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He has a storm in his wake. And he has one constant companion."

"Who's that?"

"Death."

Lillie felt offended but it was brief and fleeting. "Death? How do you know he's the cause for all this death?" Lillie questioned, "what if he only showed up because of the death and he stopped it as much as he could?"

“Uh, his name, how can he be ‘the Doctor’?” Rose asked. “It’s a bit vague. When I tried searching online, I got too many results.”

“Yes. That’s how he hides in plain sight. Clever, isn’t he… or she…”

“What do you mean?”

“Well to narrow the search down, I started look for the Doctor—the definite article—specifically no first name, no last name—just the Doctor and all the evidence seems to suggest, the Doctor seems to be some sort of title—given to a freedom fight or a convert operative. Granted by the some sort of government. Because in times of crisis, there’s always been a Doctor. And look, here they are, these people would seem to be the most important Doctors of all.”

Clive laid out photos on the glass table, all the Doctor’s Lillie had dreamed of… “It’s hard to work out the right order, but I think this is the Doctor…”

Lillie took a photo of an old man with white hair under a black cap and a black cape, standing in front of a metal tank that Lillie somehow knew was a called a “War Machine.”

“What’s that thing?” Rose asked.

“A War Machine.” Clive stated and then he explained, “Evil thanks built by a super computer hidden inside the Post Office Tower which invented the internet.”

Rose expressed her disbelief while Lillie stared at the photos of the old man. Another photo with him had a photo of a girl near him that caught Lillie’s attention. She was around fifteen with short dark brown, almost black hair and blue-brown eyes.

“Grandfather!” A girl’s voice echoed in her head before it seemed to tune in her head, making the girl’s voice clearer now, “Oh, Grandfather, I belong with you!”

Then a man spoke, he sounded older, “Not any longer, Susan. You’re still my grandchild and you always will be.  But now, you’re a woman, too.  I want you to belong somewhere, to have roots of your own.  With David, you’ll be able to find those roots and live normally like any woman should do.  Believe me, my dear, your future lies with David, not with a silly old buffer like me. One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear.”

Then Lillie saw flashes of the girl, just slightly aged, but her face was smudged with ash and blood, her eyes staring at nothing, but as quickly as the image in her head was there, it was gone.

A little man with a Beatles mop of hair and Lillie had another not-memory of him playing a recorder much to a young man’s increasing irritation.

A man with a gray bouffant hairstyle sitting in a silver hovercraft with��� was that Sarah Jane Smith!? There was someone in the backseat but only she bent down, Lillie could only see the top of her head and her multicolored hair.

Lillie saw flashes of him snatching a pair of shoes from a doctor and holding them close to his chest, rather childishly for an old man.

The curly-haired man in the impractically long scarf too small to be seen in detail because he was dwarfed by a silly forced-perspective puppet monster rising out of the Thames at least that’s how Rose’s mind put it together.  Lillie saw another phone of the girl with who seemed to be Sarah Jane again, the girl seemed to be doing a fangirl happy dancing while pointing and squealing to Sarah Jane at the “puppet monster” with her light green hair flying about.

A rather hot blonde man at Heathrow and behind him was the girl again, now with dark green hair sneaking up the stairs as three security guards bolted towards her.

“Is that man wearing celery?” Lillie asked but was ignored.

A curly-haired man clearly on his way to a fancydress party dressed as a picnic behind him was the girl with blue-gray hair with hints of other colors with another girl with dark hair. Lillie saw flashes of some rather tender moments, close ups of the girl who had bruises around her neck as if she had been strangled, as if Lillie herself were comforting, her mind made a seemingly random connection: Perpugilliam. 

Then she saw flashes of the girl, now older, she seemed to be in turn, comforting someone in Lillie’s first-person perspective and she heard her say, “Cute blonde guys can turn into scary violent guys real quick.”

A World War II photo of a short man with an umbrella running with some soldiers but there was no sign of the girl.

A dashing, Byronic man at the opening of some atomic clock thing still no sign of the girl.

And then… “That’s him.” Rose said as Lillie skipped the next two, noting that these didn’t look familiar at all.

A man with floppy hair around his mid-twenties to early thirties with a bowtie and a noticeable jaw and he was adjusting his bowtie, defensively and seemed to be justifying it to a woman whose face couldn’t be seen other than her frizzy grayish hair as another woman who had red hair and seemed to have more legs than most woman, again Lillie couldn’t see her face was her body language seemed indicate she was laughing.

An angry-looking man around fifty-something years old with gray hair and a caretaker's coat, holding a mop for some reason.

 A woman in her mid-thirties with short shoulder-length blonde hair and braces, running away from a giant frog in front of Buckingham Palace.

A Black man in his late twenties-to-early-thirties in an orange coat running through a graveyard.

A tall, bald Black woman wielding a flaming sword.

Another dark-skinned woman who appeared to be middle aged with her hair woven into braids in a navy tweed frock coat with silver buttons with golden hoop earrings. She seemed to be arguing with someone hidden from view.

Lillie was sure she didn’t have any dreams of her but somehow she seemed familiar but at the same time, her appearance put her off slightly, made her feel anxious in ways none of the others had. Like she was part of a deep dark secret Lillie had but didn’t know.

And a young girl or boy in a hi-tech wheelchair with what looked like a robot dog at their side.

“Before we stop, you should see the whole thing. Your Doctor’s not the final Doctor in the sequence, have a look at this next one.”

“We can’t keep Mickey waiting forever.” Rose sighed, checking the time.

Clive was saying something about a man who was usually seen with two pinstripe suits under a brown coat, brown and blue.

“What?” Lillie asked, why did that sound familiar.

She looked at the photo to see a handsome young man in his late twenties to early thirties, he was a distinct look that made Lillie think, oh, this guy could not pass as an American, either he’s British, Scottish, or an alien. He wore a brown trench coat over a blue pinstripe suit covering a dark tie and a white button-up shirt, and vastly contrasting against his professional wardrobe was a pair of white converse sneakers. He had simply fantastic hair, that seemed to defy gravity itself. He looked familiar but Lillie couldn’t place him.

She saw another picture of the man but he seemed a bit more aged, however with a copper-tinge to his chocolate brown fantastic hair, he was wearing a similar but updated wardrobe, a navy blue trench coat over a white button-up shirt with a gray knitted tie, a brown and turquoise checked-tartan waistcoat only buttoned once over his tie with a pair of matching trousers.

“I’m only interested in my Doctor.” Rose said.

“Yes! Yes!” Clive said and fetched a box labeled: 09 but Lillie was examining a picture of what seemed to be the girl but there was a bright lens flare covering her face. She shifted through some more but there were various light or tech problems some lens flares either on or beside her face or full-on glitches; some of the flares were directly over her heart, some had colorful flare-like things around her like an aura. Some looked like filters you’d do for fun, not to convince people, which hinted that Clive hadn’t doctored these. There were only a few you could see her face and in them she seemed preoccupied but the few filtered ones that allowed you to see her she seemed aware of the photographer, from a mischievous glint in her eyes, a uptilt in her cheekbones of a mischievous smirk, or just a feeling Lillie got, like she had power over the lights and even the camera. There were black and white ones with light effect in color. Something told Lillie that these weren’t Clive’s handiwork… but they were because of the girl.

“What are these flares?”

“Blimey. She looks just like you!” Rose exclaimed and then he elbowed her sister, “Look good as a blonde.” Lillie rolled her eyes.

Clive didn’t really see it but he explained, “That’s a companion often seen with the Doctor, she seems to be on and off but it’s rare to get a good picture of her.” He seemed a bit dismissive of her and turned back to the Doctor.

Lillie looked back at the photos to see one with a series of lens glares over her, this one she had red hair.

“What’s this thing?” Rose asked, pointing to the blue box in a picture of the Doctor.

Lillie looked at it and she felt a sense of longing, she missed a home she had never had.

“I don’t know.” Clive said, also sort of dismissing it, like he could see it but because he didn’t know the power of the Doctor or the Tardis he didn’t want to see it; something different that you see but you don’t really focus on it.

“So, how’d you get into this in the first place, Clive?” Lillie asked. “It looks like it must’ve taken years to gather all of this.” She gestured to the research. “So what started it.”

“My dad. He died when I was two years old.”

“Oh.” Rose said, sadly and she wrapped an arm around her younger sister, “I was six months and Lils here was only a week old when we lost ours.”

“I bet you still think about him.”

“Yeah, I do.” Rose admitted.

Lillie’s memory came up blank when it came to Pete as she had only been a week old when he was hit by that car. Only Jackie’s stories, and though neither sister knew, they highlighted who Pete wanted to be and the best of him rather than what she had thought of him at the time. She had always scolded Pete by telling him the girls needed a proper father, that didn’t mean the girls couldn’t think that he was, because he tried to be.

But then Lillie’s memory flashed to a man she was sure she had never seen before but seemed familiar in a way she couldn’t explain. He had dark red hair and blue eyes.

“Me too.” Clive said, “My old fella was a soldier with the Infantry. He was in the London Regiment. Proper little Cockney by all accounts, Mam said he was always scrapping. Handy with his fists. They said he died on manoeuvres. But in Shoreditch, of all places. Sounds a bit odd, dying in peacetime on British soil. Accidental discharge of a weapon, they told my mam. And bear in mind, this was back in 1963. You didn’t argue, back in those days, you accepted what the establishment said. But not me! I got older, I kept asking questions. Second Lieutenant Gary Jonathan Finch, how did he die?” Clive took out a photo from his wallet, laminated—much more personal. A black and white photo of a tough, stocky man in his early thirties, obviously Clive’s father—the same curly hair. “The more I tried to research it, the stranger it seemed. Like something was being hidden. Turns out, Dad’s regiment was caught up in some sort of incident. All very hush-hush. The day he died, they’d sealed off the whole of Shoreditch. Officially, they said a cache of unexploded bombs had been discovered. And there were certainly reports of huge explosions, that day. I tracked down the Service Inquiry, in the end, it was buried deep but I found it. And it said Dad had been killed in a junkyard, in a place called Totter’s Lane.”

Lillie’s mind flashed to an old junkyard, this sounded vaguely familiar but also… different.

“But killed, how? Information redacted. No record of the inquest. But I kept on looking, I searched and searched. Until I found it. The secret.”

“What secret?” Lillie asked.

“There was something else on the streets that day. Something that had no place in this world.” He took a few moments to take a deep breath and he opened a black folder, showing the sisters what he believed to be the real cause of his father’s death. It was a picture of a smaller tank made out of white and gold metal, Lillie hadn’t seen too much of the villians of the Doctor in her dreams, she had mostly seen him saving the day and with Nova but she knew this was one of them.

She had flashes of a young girl just a few years younger than her and she was hiding when a white and gold Dalek came in.

“Small human female sighted on level three.”

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING SMALL!” She bellowed and she started to beat the machine with a bat.

“Under attack! Under attack!”

She hit the eyepiece and then dove under the benches.

“Vision impaired!” The machine whined and started to fire wildly.

The girl had dove under a desk, using it for cover before jumping on it and running along the table towards the window as the creature followed the noise she was making in her haste.

“Reinforcements requested!” Then she jumped through the window into the hallway.

Another creature just narrowly missed her, she ran past it but not before turning around and bashing her bat into its side and taking off down the stairs… apparently they could somehow use stairs… she came upon a dead soldier, making her halt, she saw that he was dead and there was nothing she could do so she took his gun and ran off as one of the creatures rolled into the room.

“Human female is now leaving building!”

Ace ran down a hallway but was then trapped between two Daleks in a large empty area opening onto the playground.

“Stay where you are. Do not move.”

“Exterminate. Exterminate.”

Then a third Dalek arrived, they all closed in on her as they all chanted: “exterminate!”

Ace got down on her knees, taking an anti-tank rocket and launcher out of her rucksack, clearly scared but not going to go down without a fight.

“ACE!” Screamed a voice and Lillie saw the girl again who looked just like her but with multicolored hair, she looked the same as she always did but there was something much more youthful about her, like she hadn’t yet been broken by the universe. She extended her hands, her eyes glowing and all three Daleks exploded.

“Ace!” The woman ran to the girl who was apparently named Ace in a protective manner.

“I nearly had them.” Ace muttered.

“You’re hurt.”

“I had an argument with a window.” Ace dismissed.

“You could’ve gotten killed.” The woman said with obvious worry beneath the her anger that she had taken out on the Daleks.

Clive was speaking again, “No one knows what it’s called. But I believe this creature, from outer space, murdered my dad.”

Lillie’s memory flashed to a fallen soldier, Clive’s dad, dead on the ground of a junkyard.

Rose was clearly not convinced; she looked at the photos of all the aliens. “And all of these things, the lizards and the robots and the blobs. They’re all from outer space? But Clive. Look. I’m sorry about your dad, but … All these creatures, they’ve been photographed out on the streets. In the open. They’re next to Big Ben. That giant big tentacle-thing is wrapped around Westminster Abbey. If all these alien invasions happened in public, how come we don’t know about them?”

“That’s the thing!” said Clive, excited, moving to look them in the eyes, “How do we forget? Why? That’s the biggest mystery of all. Some people say they’ve drugged the water. Some people say there’s an amnesia wavelength being beamed into our heads. And some people say there’s a crack in time, leaching away the memories of the human race.’

“What?” Lillie asked. That didn’t sound good.

He paused. ‘That one sounds a bit too fanciful for me.’

“Mmm-hmm.” Rose hummed in agreement as Lillie gave Clive was bewildered look.

"If the Doctor's back... if you've seen him, Rose... Lillie... then one thing's for certain, we're all in danger. If he's singled you two out... If the Doctor's making house calls... then God help you two."

"Who is he? Who do you think he is?" Rose asked.

"I think he's the same man. I think they’re all the same person. Each Doctor. I think he's immortal. I think he's an alien from another world." Clive said.

Lillie nodded, feeling he was right as Rose felt like this was just crazy... this was fiction... this was the raving of a madman... this was just absurd.

Rose pulled Lillie away from the "crazy" man's house and to the car talking to Mickey before they were even back inside the car.

"Alright! He's a nutter! Off his head! Complete online conspiracy freak. You win!" She said as they got back in.

“Rose! We’ve barley left his house!” Lillie started to scold her sister as she got in and then she stared  at the person in the driver's seat. It seemed to be a poorly made clone of Mickey Smith.

"What're we going to do tonight? I fancy a pizza."

"Pizzaaa! P-p-p-pizza!" The whatever it was said.

"...or a Chinese..."

"Pizza!"

Whatever it was that had taken Mickey's place drove off in a wobbly line. How was Rose not noticing this? Lillie knew she didn't pay as much attention to Mickey as she should've but this was ridiculous.

--

At the restaurant, the trio sat at a table as Rose pondered where she should go to get a job as Lillie stared at the strange-looking Mickey, bemused by how Rose couldn't tell that it wasn't her boyfriend.

"Do you think I should try the hospital? Suki said they had a few jobs going in the canteen. That's it then... dishing out chips... I could do A-Levels..."

"Mickey" just stared at her, grinning creepily.

"I dunno. It's all Jimmy Stone's fault. I only left school because of him and look where he ended up. What do you think?"

Jimmy Stone. Rose's deadbeat ex-boyfriend who she dropped out of school for to which he then repaid her by stealing her computer and dumping her with no A-levels. Lillie had repaid him by slashing his tires and keying his car. Lillie may have been shy but if you hurt someone that she cared about she went all out in getting revenge. She was like a badger, she was often underestimated by her kindness, her quietness, and her non-threatening appearance but when provoked she was able to become vicious and deadly.

"So, where did you meet this Doctor?" He asked.

"I'm sorry, wasn't I talking about me for a second?" Rose asked sarcastically.

"Because, I reckon it started back at the shop, am I right? Is he something to do with that?"

"No..." The sisters said.

"Come on."

"Sort of." Rose said.

"No." Lillie said, sternly, glaring at her sister like, shut up. “Mickey…” She said the name of her oldest friend as she were meeting someone else with that name and didn’t feel like it belonged to them and she spoke slowly and cautiously to both not set off this fake-looking Mickey and to warn Rose, “we never told you anything about the Doctor.”

"What was he doing there?" Mickey ignored her.

"I'm not going on about him, Mickey, I'm not, because, I know it sounds daft but... I don't think he's safe. I think he's dangerous." Rose said. “And you know, I can’t let anything happen to Lillie.”

Lillie disagreed in a way while she didn't think he was safe at the same time she knew he wouldn't let anything happen to her.

"But you can trust me sweetheart! Babe, sugar, darling, sugar."

Both sisters looked confused.

"You can tell me anything. Tell me about the Doctor and what he's planning, and I can help you, Rose. Because that's all I really wanna do, sweetheart, babe, sugar, sweetheart."

"What're you doing that for?"

A waiter approaches the table, Lillie looked up to see the Doctor, he winked and then put a finger to his lips to silently tell her not to say anything.

"Your champagne."

"We didn't order any champagne." Fake Mickey said, grabbing Rose's hand, "Where's the Doctor?

The Doctor moved to Rose's side and held the bottle out to her, "Ma'am. Your champagne."

"It's not ours..." Rose waved him off, not looking at him, "Mickey, what is it? What's wrong?"

Lillie gave her a drolly look like, seriously?

"I need to find out how much you know, so where is he?" He pressed on.

"Why do you want to know so bad? Why do you need to find out what we know?" Lillie snapped, narrowing her eyes at him, suspiciously. "Huh, Mickey!?"

Then Mickey’s smile fell, along with his eye, revealing just a smooth surface…

Rose gasped, barely managing not to scream and she muttered, “Plastic.”

He popped the eyeball back into his head and then he grabbed both Lillie and Rose’s wrists, tightly.

“Let go!” Rose gasped.

“Now tell me, I want to know everything about the Doctor. Or I will kill them.”

“Who!?”

“The people. The diners. The humans. Everyone. Starting with your sister!”

New kind of fear shot through Rose. She recognized the self-preserving kind of fear and then the fear she had for her sister’s safety. But fear for other people’s safety, there was a family nearby with two kids, two couples on either side of them, and a gang of friends. And most importantly to her, her sister. All in danger. Because of her. She’d brought this plastic monstrosity into the building and sat him down in the middle of them all. She felt a raw terror like never before because other people were in danger now, not just her and Lillie... Mickey. The real Mickey. Where was he?

Lillie looked around, where was the Doctor now!? She huffed and resisted, making fake Mickey look at her perhaps for the first time but he seemed to be able to barley do that.

“Think about it, mannequin. You’re in a pizza place with hot ovens. Large ovens. Blistering hot to humans but it’d just melt you.” Lillie growled as her necklace started to glow and Plastic Mickey’s hand started to loosen, not voluntarily but because the plastic-skin enclosed around Lillie’s hand was starting to melt.

Then suddenly he was back,

"Doesn't anybody want this champagne?" The Doctor asked.

Plastic Mickey, exasperated, finally raised his eyes to the waiter for the first time, "Look, we didn't order any..." He then realized that the waiter was the man he had kept questioning about. Plastic Mickey smirked as if this were his evil plan along. To be rude the waiter. "Ah. Gotcha."

"Yes, you've outnumbered him." Lillie deadpanned to him and ripped her hand out of his grip, the hot plastic not even phasing her as it just slipped off her skin like rain off of a roof. Plastic Mickey was so shocked he let go of Rose.

The Doctor started to shake the bottle as he said, "Don't mind me. I'm just toasting the happy couple. On the house!"

The cork popped out and hit Fake Mickey squarely in the face. His forehead absorbs the cork, and he spits it out of his mouth.

"I knew that wasn't Mickey all along!" Lillie exclaimed and Rose looked at her, puzzled like she couldn't understand how she could've noticed that this clay model-looking thing wasn't Mickey.

"Anyway." The fake Mickey turned his hand into a plastic blade and started to smash tables.

Rose pulled Lillie out of the way as a woman screamed.

The Doctor grabbed fake Mickey's head and started to pull, making a creaking noise until the head popped off.

"Don't think that's gonna stop me." The disembodied head said, the man sitting at a table nearby screamed. It was almost funny.

Rose saw that the Doctor was grinning madly like this was fun to him, like it was a game.

"Rose, get everyone out." Lillie said, pushing her sister towards the fire alarm which Rose pulled as Lillie shouted, "EVERYONE OUT! OUT NOW!"

Everyone ran for the exit except for the Doctor, Lillie, Rose, and fake Mickey whose body was blinding smashing tables.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

Then the Fake Mickey swung at Lillie, sensing her voice seemingly. Rose screamed and the Doctor spun around, his glee fading as horror struck him, terrified of losing this mysterious girl, this brilliantly smart girl but Lillie ducked and then jumped as the other hand which had turned into a blade, albeit thinner and weaker swung at her legs, another swing and she spun around of the way, her curly brown hair flying before she stumbled into a table, making it fall over and Lillie noticed a small child at a nearby table, a boy, around the age of four, trying to stay silent but crying, he screamed when he saw the headless Mickey, bring his attention to him.

“No!” Lillie shouted, grabbing a chair and smashing it into the fake Mickey and she went to pick up the boy who clung onto her for dear life, Lillie became aware of the mother of the child was crying out their name.

“Robert! Robert!”

“Mummy!” Robert cried as Lillie handed him over to her.

“Over here!” The Doctor cried and Rose grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her after the Doctor as they ran through the kitchen, warning the staff to leave, only leaving when the headless Mickey came in, causing Lillie to grab the handle of a pot with bubbling water and she threw the water at the creature, weakening its strong arm before the threw the pot at it and was yanked backwards with Rose yanking Lillie by the hoodie, making her let out a strangled gulping sound.

The head started to bark at Lillie like an angry dog after you took their treat away.

The Doctor, Rose, and Lillie ran down a corridor—he grinned at the sisters and said, “Nice to see you, by the way! How’s your mum?”

“Angry!” Lillie stated in a shout from the adrenaline.

“Makes sense.”

They pushed their way out of a back exit, entering a yard containing… The blue box that the Doctor seemed to take everywhere with him which Rose assumed was no use to them now.

Rose spun around to see the Doctor holding Mickey’s head in the crook of his left arm, his foot jamming the fire door shut, whirring that metal stick to lock the door.

“WE’RE OUTSIDE!” Mickey’s head said, taking a break from barking at Lillie.

“Can’t you shut that thing up?” Lillie asked.

She turned to see Rose had run to a gate but it was locked but she was distracted by the Tardis.

Lillie just walked towards the Police Box, she pressed her hand against its wood and could practically hear whirring as if it were purring.

"Hey, girl. Long time no see." She muttered.

"Open the gate! Use that whirry metal thing, come on!" Rose shouted.

"It's a sonic screwdriver." Lillie corrected her, automatically.

“Yes, it is!” The Doctor exclaimed, proudly.

"Use it!" Rose cried.

"Nah. Tell ya what, let's go in here." He dismissed, walking to the police box, unlocking it, and entering.

Lillie eagerly followed him, her first thought, being that he had redecorated. She liked it better. More personality and more… her style.

"Oh, you've redecorated." She said as much. "I like it so much better."

"Yeah?" He smiled; Nova had always insisted that he use this setting but he had refused because he loved to tease her. Now he finally chose it as a tribute to Nova. “How long has it been since you saw me last?”

“Five years.”

“Huh, for the first time, I’m the one taking the slow path.” He said, thinking that couldn’t possibly be right but it was.

“LILLIE, YOU CAN’T HIDE IN A WOODEN BOX!” Rose screamed from outside.

Rose then ran inside and never being inside was shocked.

Nope! Her mind screamed and she ran back outside, making the Doctor chuckle in amusement. Rose, knowing Headless Mickey was going to break down the door, still ran around the box, circling it, to try and get an understanding at how a box that could maybe fit two people could have that much space. She counted the sides. Four.

Then Headless Mickey finally broke through, only a few more chops would allow him to get through, so she ran back inside. "It's gonna follow us!"

"Then close the door." Lillie said, gesturing for her sister to come in and she jumped past  her sister, sliding down the railing towards the door as Headless Mickey broke through and stopped, trying to sense them and then ran at the Tardis but Lillie slammed the doors shut.

They heard Headless Mickey hit the doors but they only shuddered. Rose wouldn’t turn away from the door, struggling to comprehend.

"The assembled hoards of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me, they've tried. Now, shut up a minute." The Doctor was wiring up the clone Mickey's head to the center of the control panel.

“She’s not going to bite you, Rosie.” Lillie said.

Rose finally turned around, nodding and trusting her sister.

The Doctor’s blue box was bigger on the inside than on the outside. Much bigger. Hugely so. She was standing on a metal ramp surrounded by curved walls arching upwards, studded with hexagons. What she’d thought was a dome was more of a sphere; she could look down, through the metal mesh at her feet, to see the curve completing far below in one vast circle. The whole interior was weathered, rusting, bruised, and yet humming with life, as though huge engines were brooding somewhere beyond the walls. The skin of the sphere was supported by weird buttresses, shaped like… coral? Yes, she could smell ozone, like the seaside, though this was a coral glowing with internal light. The metal ramp at her feet was part of a suspended walkway leading to the center of the sphere, to the Doctor. He stood in front of a sculpture, a coral mushroom out of which a glass pillar containing tubes of light soared up to the roof and down to the depths, like a linchpin holding the entire globe together.

 "You see, the arm was too simple, but the head's perfect. I can use it to trace the signal back to the original source.” He turned to the sisters, he may be alien but he knew enough about humans that they tended to struggle with the bigger-on-the-insideness. “Right. Where do you want to start?"”

The Doctor folded his arms, his feet set apart in a classic pose of masculine supremacy, looking down at them but Lillie knew that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t look down on women and he didn’t think he was as superior as he pretended to be.

But what Rose was focused on what that the Mickey-head had been plugged into the console, she stared at it with her mouth open.

The head was still alive, eyes darting from the Doctor to Rose and then to Lillie, eyeing her suspiciously.

“You must have a lot of questions,” He said, to bring Rose back to reality but then Head-Mickey spoke.

“Not really. Seen all this before. Seen better than this! You lot brought a war crashing down on our civilization, d’you think we don’t remember?”

Lillie studied the Doctor’s body language; the Doctor lost his tough-guy pose, muttered a quick sorry, and leapt to the console and stabbed buttons and pulled a big red lever. “Hold on a tick, we don’t need laughing boy.”

Mickey’s head said, ‘I’m gonna do more than—’

“Hey, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, shut up!” Lillie interrupted him.

He seemed offended but then he froze, and his eyes glazed over. Reduced to inanimate plastic.

 ‘Right, where were we?’ said the Doctor, and returned to that superior folded-arms position, facing Rose and Lillie.

Rose seemed a little overwhelmed but she calmed herself down when Lillie took her hand. Rose was glad she had met Clive as the craziness of his theories seemed to have prepared her.

"Um, the inside's bigger than the outside?" Rose pointed out, though that much was obvious, but understandably Rose was in shock.

"Yes." He said and looked at Lillie like, was that so hard? Apparently still a little miffed that she hadn’t said it, to her five years ago, but to him it was hundreds of years ago,.

"You like it when they say that don't you." Lillie asked.

"Yes."

"It's alien." Rose said, still coming to terms with this.

"Yep."

"Are you alien?"

"Yes. Is that all right?"

"Yeah." Both the sisters responded without hesitation.

"It's called..." The Doctor started before the intelligent brunette cut him off.

"The Tardis. T-A-R-D-I-S. An acronym for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

"How do you know this?" He asked, not recalling him, Nova, or Sarah-Jane having told her before but before she could reply, Rose burst into tears, Lillie went by her side to comfort her.

The Doctor was uncomfortable for a few moments. Rose thought he was weird. Kind one minute, and yet, when she cried, he stared like a scientist but then again, her sister was like that too. Kind one moment, and then brutal and reckless the next. She had gotten arrested for hacking into the school records once she discovered the school was embezzling money out of the “special needs” program.

"That's okay. Culture shock. Happens to the best of us." The Doctor said, gently. “Natural reaction, for a human.” Rose glared at him. “It does your head in, seeing technology like this.’ He was arrogant, he was alien, and he was an idiot.

"Did they kill him? Mickey? Did they kill Mickey? Is he dead?" She asked. Lillie knew that she mostly felt bad because she didn't love him like he loved her. She just loved him as a friend and liked him as a boyfriend.

"Oh. I didn't think of that." He said, blankly, slightly crestfallen getting a glare from the sisters.

"He's my boyfriend. You pulled off his head. They copied him and you didn't even think? And now you're just going to let him melt?"

"Melt?" The Doctor asked, confused, he turned to see the head was indeed melting, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no!"

"What're you doing?" Rose cried as Lillie got on her toes, examining the console. the desk had six sides, full of control panels, some sophisticated, some antique, with levers improvised out of bottle-openers and hammers, paperweights in place of dials, toy soldiers and scissors and curling tongs duct-taped to switches to hold them down. Designed by a mad geek wizard child.

No, more like a mad alien science geek man-child who always asked questions like he was in Wonderland. The Doctor had an almost Peter Pan-ness about him. Like he never wanted to grow up.

The Doctor yelled with excitement, “We’re following the signal!’

"Following the signal. It's fading. Wait a minute, I've got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Almost there. Almost there. Here we go!"

Then the Doctor yelled, ‘No!’ He had a rubber mallet in his hand – it was chained to the console, standard kit, for him – and he battered the desk, bang-bang-bang!

“Hey! You can’t hit her!” Lillie shouted, not nearly having as much trouble with the tilting as Rose was.

But whatever he was doing, it was too late. “Lost it,” he groaned, and the tilting stopped and the noise faded away, “I lost the signal but we must be close…”

Before he finished, Lillie had turned and ran to the door, opening it and running outside.

“LILLIE, YOU CAN’T GO OUT THERE! IT’S NOT SAFE!” Rose shouted, wondering if the Doctor’s madness had rubbed off on her sister but then he dashed past her and ran outside. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

The headless Mickey-killer-shovel-hands was still outside in the yard, the Doctor and Lillie would get chopped to death! The fear of losing her sister was enough to get Rose running dwon the ramp and ran to the door and looked outside.

They weren't behind the restaurant anymore but near the Thames River.

"I lost the signal, I got so close." The Doctor was complaining.

"We've moved. Does it fly?" Rose asked.

"More like it disappears and reappears." Lillie said, automatically before shaking her head.

“Oh.” The Doctor said, a bit disappointed and then he asked her, “How do you know this?" Rose looked at her, also curious.

"When I met you when you had an impractically long scarf and wild hair. You had a companion named Sarah-Jane Smith and a friend... with purple-colored hair and purple eyes. I saved your ass with a compact mirror from the Weeping Angel."

"Yes, I know all that." He said, shortly, offended by how she described him.

"Ever since I keep having these dreams of your adventures. Nova?" She had had dreams of Nova's death but didn't want to believe it. His eyes darkened and he shook his head, silently telling her that Nova was gone. "I'm sorry."

He was silent for a few beats before snapping out of it, "Ah, yes. Must be mildly psychic and a bit of the Tardis got in you or... she must've done something. She was quite fond of you for some reason."

"If we're somewhere else, what about that headless thing? It's still on the loose." Rose cut him off.

"It melted with the head. Are you going to witter on all night?" He said, tactlessly.

"Hey! Don't you dare talk to my sister like that!" Lillie glared.

Rose thought of the body dissolving, the last vestige of her boyfriend, and she felt a surge of horror in her heart, the enormity of it. Mickey. Lovely Mickey Smith, with his smile and his mates and his daft yellow Beetle, the only boy who’d buy a car because it was funny, not because it was cool. And it hurt so much, to see the chain of his family across the decades, Odessa, Jackson, Rita-Anne, now Mickey, all gone.

"We'll have to tell his friends, his uncle, and the kids from the estate." Rose realized, running a hand through her blonde hair as Lillie went to her side to comfort her and the Doctor gave them a confused look.

"Mickey." Lillie said, sharply, glaring at him.

"We'll have to tell his mates--The Bad Wolf band, His Uncle Cliff, all the little kids from the estate, they adored him. Oh my God, I’ve got to tell them he’s dead, and you just went and forgot him, again!" Rose shouted at him, "You were right, you are alien."

"Look, if I did forget some kid called Mickey."

"Yeah, he's not a kid." Rose interjected.

"He's older than both of us." Lillie agreed.

"It's because I'm trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering on top of this planet, all right?" He said, bluntly.

Lillie narrowed her eyes at him, it seemed like to her it wasn't so much as what he thought but more like what he told himself to ease his guilt.

"All right."

"Yes, it is!"

This whole argument Lillie's eyes darted back and forth like a tennis match.

"If you are an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?"

"Lots of planets have a north." He dismissed.

"What's a police public call box?" Rose suddenly asked.

"It's a telephone box from the 1950s. It's a disguise."

‘Disguised as what? It’s not a very good disguise if I don’t know what the disguise is. That’s the opposite of a disguise.’ ‘All right, calm down, it’s a bit out of date, that’s all.’ He looked at her askance. ‘I bet you two never lose an argument, do you?’

“Never.” The sister said in unison.

“Well if you must know, they used to have police boxes on every street corner, back in the thirties and forties. They didn’t have walkie-talkies back then, just telephones, so there’s a phone inside that little panel. And that’s the disguise. The TARDIS hides itself, like a chameleon. Park it on a street corner, no one notices.”

“D’you think? It’s a great big box!”

“Yeah, and d’you know what the human race does, when it sees something big and strange in the middle of the street?” He grinned. “You walk right past it.”

“I suppose,” she sighed, and sat down next to him.

“Is that why… we talked to this guy who had information about you…” Lillie started and the Doctor raised his eyebrows at her. “Clive Finch. He said his dad died in Totter’s Lane in Shoreditch.”

The Doctor seemed to recall the event but not the man, he had been there with Ace but Nova… she had been forced to leave him in his sixth regeneration.

“But he didn’t seem to really pay much attention to the box.”

“Perception filter.” He shrugged.

“Do the words you say make sense to you?” Rose asked.

“Sometimes.” He shrugged.

“Why do they want to kill us?” Lillie asked.

“They don’t. They just want a home… there… a long time ago… there was a war and they were swept up into it. Nestene Consciousness. They’re not individuals, but it’s more like a single, vast, physical, thought-hive-aggregation. Huge, restless thing. Ambitious.”

“Like a Hive Mind.” Lillie said.

“Exactly. It’s eyed up the Earth once or twice before. But then the war rolled across and ripped apart the Consciousness, devolved it, rebuilt it into a travesty of its old self. And then the battle boiled away into the stars and left the Nestene to starve.” He gave the sisters a sudden, lovely smile. “I haven’t talked like this in a long time.”

“Well, I’ve never heard anything like it!”

All three of them laughed.

“You’ve been on your own for a while now haven’t you?” Lillie asked and the Doctor just looked at her. The resemblance was uncanny but it was impossible, then again, the universe, there were bound to be look-alikes.

 “So it’s starving,’ said Rose. ‘Is that what the Nestene wants? Is it going to eat us? What’s it got against us?”

 ‘It can feed off the toxic waste of this planet. Loves it, lots of smoke and oil, plenty of toxins and dioxins, perfect. Just what it needs. Its food stocks were destroyed in the war, all its protein planets rotted. So it made its way here, so Earth, dinner!"

“And it what, it controls plastic?” Rose asked.

“It is plastic. That was the damage the war left behind. The Nestene was flesh and blood, once upon a time, it just had an affinity with plastic, it could resonate organic polymers. Nice party trick. But then the war came. And rewrote its DNA. Like a cruel joke. The Nestene Consciousness became living plastic, an actual living plastic creature. No wonder it found its way here. Earth, the greatest plastics factory in the cosmos. You’ve littered this world with so much junk, there’s plastic in the food, in the air, in the wildlife, you’ve got plastic lining the entire ocean floor. The Nestene looks at you lot and thinks it’s in paradise.”

“All right, Swampy, I’ve got it.” Rose cut him off.

“He’s a very nice man. I spent a week up a tree with him.”

“I bet he jumped out first.” Lillie smiled.

“He did, yeah.” The Doctor confirmed.

He noticed her fold her arms to ward off the cold, she had taken her jacket off in the Tardis, “where’s your jacket! You know the cold makes you sick!” Rose fussed, sounding distinctly like Jackie.

The Doctor smiled and he opened the door and pulled her jacket off the railing and brought it to her, wrapping it around her, once again showing a deep kindness.

She smiled in appreciation as she pulled her plaid and leather jacket around her and she smoothed so it matched against her skirt.

“So stopping the Nestene, is that like, your job? I still don’t know who you are or what you really do.”

 “I don’t do anything. I just travel.” He gave the sisters a weary smile. “Believe it or not, all I want is a quiet life. No job, no wage, no boss, no tax, no home, no responsibilities. Just me.”

“Sounds like you’re running.” Lillie said.

“Never stopped since I’ve started.

"Any way of stopping it?" Lillie asked.

"Anti-plastic." The Doctor said, holding up a tube of blue liquid.

"Anti-plastic." The sisters repeated.

"Anti-plastic.”

“It’s a polymer-blading reconvertant heuverstatic animotrope.” He said.

“Right,” Rose said. “Anti-plastic.”

“If I can get this inside the Nestene, it’ll stop it dead.”

“Well that’s good news!” Rose said.

“No,” said the Doctor. “It’s the last thing I want to do.” He pocketed the vial and leapt to his feet, holding his sonic screwdriver in the air like a he was trying to get reception. ‘But first things first, we need to find the Nestene. It’s clever. Hiding the signal, it keeps slipping away. How can you hide something that big in a city this small?"

"Hold on. Hide what?" Rose asked.

"The transmitter. The Consciousness is controlling every single piece of plastic, so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal."

"Well, maybe we can narrow it down. What's it look like?" Lillie asked.

"Like a transmitter. Round and massive, slap bang in the middle of London. A huge circular metal structure like a dish, like a wheel. Radial. Close to where we're standing. Must be completely invisible." He noticed the girls were staring past him at the London Eye but it took him about a minute to figure it out after looking at the monument several times. "What? What? What? What is it? What?" He finally realizes what they were looking at, "Fantastic!"

"Aren't you supposed to be a genius?" Lillie asked, teasingly with a slight smirk pulling at her lips.

He just smiled and ran off with the sisters taking each other's hands and running after him, their hair bouncing. The Doctor soon took Lillie's other hand as they ran and smiled broke out on the sisters' faces,

They ran over the bridge, across the dark river, running headlong towards danger and disaster and death, and the Doctor surprised himself by taking Lillie’s hand and the three ran together hand in hand in hand, and they smiled as they ran, and the smile became a grin as they hurtled along, the lights of the night streaking past them, and in that moment, for all their fear, horror, and grief, Rose and Lillie had never been happier in their lives. Lillie felt more than that though. She felt… home.

They stumbled to a stop once they were at the London Eye, there were crowds of people around them.

Rose felt a panic rising at the idea of them in danger, but at the same time, she felt a dark, powerful thrill. She understood now, how the Doctor could look so confident, so detached, so scornful at times; it was astonishing to know so much more than everyone else. The people around her strolled along in ignorance, while she knew about alien worlds, and spaceships, and alien creatures made of plastic trying to destroy the human race.

Rose Tyler, four GCSEs, an unemployed shop assistant living with her mother, barely forty pounds in her bank account with a genius rebellious younger sister she had dedicated her life to protecting.

Lillie Tyler, brilliant yet having no ambition. Moral and kind but rebellious and unwilling to abide to authority. More interested in using her brilliance for fun while helping people than being boring and serious about it. Antisocial despite her charm, wit, and undying loyalty.

Tonight the sisters knew things about life on Earth that no one else knew. For once, they felt special. More than that, they felt capable. The Doctor had trusted them, and they wouldn’t let him down.

"Think of it, plastic all over the world, every artificial thing waiting to come alive. The shop window dummies, the phones, the wires, the cables..."

"The breast implants." Lillie joked said and Rose giggled.

“So did the Nestene build the London Eye?” Rose asked.

“Don’t be daft. That would be ridiculous.” The Doctor scoffed, “They’re just using it. Although, the Eiffel Tower. That was built by aliens.”

“You’re kidding!” Lillie giggled.

“It’s a good thing I stopped it taking off.” Lillie had a feeling that it hadn’t been him but he was taking credit. “Mind you. I only left it on idle. One of these days…”

“I can never tell when you’re joking.” Rose said.

 “Assume never.” He grinned down at the sisters.

"Still, we've found the transmitter. The Consciousness must be somewhere underneath."

Lillie was searching around as Rose questioned why they couldn’t use the Tardis to track it and he responded, “Word of advice, Rose Tyler, when you’re searching for a hostile alien life form, don’t deliver the universe’s greatest technology into its tentacles.” A few more lines before he noticed Lillie getting too close away and he warned, “Careful. It’s going to be guarded. It knows what we look like, you two and me. Keep an eye out.”

“What for?” Lillie asked.

“Autons.” They stayed silent and kept walking, refusing to ask the obvious, waiting for him instead. He blinked, getting into their rhythm. “Autons are the Nestene in human form. Like the dummies in the shop. They’re just foot soldiers, they’re crude and simple, but the Nestene can make perfect copies. Like your mate Ricky.”

“Mickey,” The sisters said in unison, Rose biting back her fury.

“Don’t make me punch you.” Lillie snapped.

“Understood.” He acknowledged

“So they could look like anyone?”

“Anyone.”

Lillie felt Rose tug her next to her and she rolled her eyes.

“Rose, I’m fine!” She complained.

Rose however was staring at something as they walked. The living statues. Those people in costume, staying frozen in position, to earn money from people throwing coins at their feet. Rose and the Doctor were just walking past a living statue, a comedy tramp like Charlie Chaplin, battered suit and bowler hat, but sprayed silver from top to toe. He stood on a little box, the crowd passing him by.

Jackie always used to complain about living statues. ‘Creepy,’ she’d say. ‘What a way to make a living. If they want to earn money by standing still and doing nothing all day, they could work for BT.’

Lillie used to say she couldn’t last a minute doing that, she had to be constantly moving or doing something.

The Chaplin was perfectly still, he didn’t seem to breathing or blinking He was holding out his hand, offering a fake flower, his arm was still as if he were a real statue. Rose just stared. This was either the best mime of all time, or not a mime at all.

“Doctor,” she said. “You don’t think …”

Hearing the Doctor’s name caused the Chapin to move. It turned its silver face to look at her. It did not blink. ‘Oh my God,’ said Rose. The Doctor, perversely, was delighted. ‘Well done, Rose Tyler!”

Why did he love saying their names so much?

The Chaplin stepped off its box and walked towards them, ignoring everyone other than the trio, its black eyes fixed on them. Slowly, it advanced, holding out its flower like a threat.

A posh little boy stood in front of the tramp. He said crossly, “You’re supposed to stay still.” The tramp swatted the kid aside, whack! Then it kept walking, remorseless.

“Hey!” Lillie shouted out of reflex.

“Come on.” Rose said, taking the Doctor and Lillie’s hand to draw the Auton away from the crowd.

“They’re still in hiding,” The Doctor explained. “The Autons, they don’t want to draw attention. If we can just keep ahead of them.”

They heard shouting behind them. “Hey, you!” They turned to look as a large, red-faced man grabbed hold of the Chaplin. “Did you hit my little boy?” The Doctor started back towards them, but too late. The Chaplin shoved the man and sent him flying. He collided with a gang of drunk lads, which perhaps saved his life as one of them grabbed the man and started waltzing with him, his mates cheering. The Chaplin turned back to face the Doctor and the Tyler sisters and resumed its march/

Then the Doctor said, “Uh-oh.”

“Oh, what now?” Lillie asked. Ahead of them, another living statue. A ballerina, painted entirely white except for blotches of red on cheeks and lips. Eyelashes like spiders, moving towards them.

The crowd was getting jittery as the parents of the boy kept bringing attention to the Autons.

“What do we do?” muttered Rose.

“No idea. Keep going,” said the Doctor. They ran past the London Eye, then stopped. Ahead of them, a third living statue was stepping off its box. A knight in armor. It raised a sword as sharp as steel. Little kids running around it. So close to the sword.

The ballerina was advancing and behind her, the tramp was still pointing with that sinister flower. Behind him, the crowd jostled with violence, Everything volatile. About to explode. Only this explosion wouldn’t kill the Autons.

“This way,” said the Doctor, heading for the Embankment wall where there was a gap, leading to a stone staircase leading down to the river.

The sisters and the Doctor ran towards it as the Chaplin, the ballerina and the knight continued to march towards them—then they followed the Doctor down the wet, worn steps. Plunging into darkness. At least this would take the chase away from the crowds. The sounds of trouble on the Embankment were already fading away. But below them, there seemed to be only mud and black water. No boat, no tunnel, no escape. The knight, the ballerina and the tramp had reached the top of the steps and began to march down.

“But what do we do?” said Rose, panicked, as they reached the bottom, the stink of the river rising up. “We’re trapped, aren’t we? There’s nowhere to go!”

The Doctor grinned—God, he loved trouble—and held up his sonic screwdriver. “What did I say? The absence of a signal. And there is absolutely nothing coming from that!’ He pointed at a manhole, a few meters away, across some slimy flagstones. A hazy red steam billowing from its vents. Like anyone who’d ever lived in any city of the world, Rose and Lillie had spent their lives walking past grilles in the ground that emitted smoke, without ever giving them a second thought. But now, they saw them as a portal to another world. Or to their death. The Doctor ran over the slippery flags, squatting down to aim his sonic screwdriver at the manhole cover.

Rose looked back to see that the Autons were arranged along the steps in a diagonal line. “Why’ve they stopped?”

“Well, yes, problem is,” said the Doctor, a little shame-faced, “I don’t think they’re chasing us. They’re herding us. We’re not escaping, we’re walking into a trap.”

“You mean they wanted us to find this?”

“Yeah. Or we’d be dead by now. We’d have been ballerina’d to death. Which, actually, I’d like to see, but there you go.” The Doctor answered.

“I don’t want a life-sized plastic ballerina to be the last thing I see.” Lillie said.

“Yes. That would be a rather embarrassing death.” The Doctor agreed.

 “So we’re doing exactly what the Nestene wants?” Rose asked.

“Yup!” The Doctor kept whirring away/

"So, you're saying that there's a secret alien base under an English landmark." Lillie deadpanned. "Yeah, that's original."

The Doctor shrugged like, I didn’t write this.

There was a click and release within the manhole. He lifted the cover and a rush of heat and steam billowed up from the depths. An awful stench of sewage and carcasses. And a noise. The distant roar of something vast. Rose and Lillie looked down to see a metal ladder descended into reddish darkness. The Doctor said, ‘Normally I’d say, wait here. But that’s a bit tricky with the Three Stooges behind us.’ ‘Never mind them,’ said Rose. ‘I’m coming with you.’

“We both are. This is our planet and it’s not a replacement.”

“They always used to say that,” said the Doctor, with a sad smile. They didn’t know who he was talking about. But whoever they were, they weren’t them; the sisters do her own thing together.

Lillie moved first, jumping in and landing on a wrung, making Rose move like she was going to catch her. Lillie looked up to see an impressed Doctor and anxious Rose.

“You can wait here if you want.” She said with a cheeky wink and lowered herself down. Rose quickly following.

The Doctor grinned and followed them, descending into the pit from hell. Far below them, deep in the earth, something huge was shrieking with delight.

The trio climbed down a short ladder, all of them now bathed in the red light. They walked past a bunch of chains hanging from the ceiling and opened a door.

"The Nestene Consciousness. That's it, inside the vat. A living plastic creature." He pointed to a vat that seemed to have a pulsing, red-hot substance in it, screaming.

"Well, then. Tip in your anti-plastic and let's go." Rose said.

"No, don't kill it!" Lillie interjected.

"I'm not here to kill it. I've got to give it a chance." The Doctor said, reminding himself of what he swore to do just this one time—do it how Nova would in her memory... but both Rose and Lillie had reignited his passion to save people, reminding him how beautiful humanity could be.

He walked down the catwalk and spoke up, "I seek audience with the Nestene Consciousness under peaceful contract according to convention fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation."

Lillie felt lightheaded and stumbled into Rose who looked at her with concern as she could hear a vague voice echo, "Shadow Proclamation." The vague image of a beautiful woman with pale olive skin with her hair up in a ponytail and glasses over her brown eyes, and a warm, motherly smile on her lips.

The substance in the vat flexed and the Doctor continued to speak. "Thank you. If I might have permission to approach?"

Lillie spotted something and she nudged Rose, bringing her attention to a terrified Mickey. "Oh, God!" Rose gasped as the sisters ran over to him and the Doctor rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Mickey, it's us! It's okay. It's all right."

"That thing down there, the liquid. Rose, Lillie, it can talk!" Mickey cried.

"You're stinking. Doctor, they kept him alive." Rose called to the Doctor as Lillie hugged Mickey.

“Yeah, I can see that.” The Doctor said, sounding annoyed at being interrupted. "That was always a possibility. Keep him alive to maintain the copy." The Doctor dismissed.

"You knew that and you never said?" Rose scoffed.

"Can we keep the domestics outside, thank you?" He continued downwards towards the Nestene Consciousness.

Mickey was terrified, babbling as he clung onto Lillie’s leg tightly, it uneased Lillie as it felt like Mickey was trying to unbalance her. “That thing, down there, it’s alive, it’s been screaming at me.”

“It’s all right,” Rose tried to comfort him as he clawed at Lillie’s black skinny jeans.

“It’s okay, it’s all under control, I promise. But how the hell did you get here?”

“There was a bin, it pulled me inside. Big white light. Opened my eyes. I was here.’ She pulled back to wipe the dirt and snot from his face, and she thought: Culture shock. Like the Doctor had said. Rose and Lillie had discovered this world stepby-step, but Mickey had been thrown in headfirst.

A selfish thought in Rose’s head whispered, maybe I can handle this better than him.

The Doctor started to speak the substance, "Am I addressing the Consciousness? Thank you. If I might observe, you infiltrated this civilization by means of warp shunt technology. So, may I suggest, with the greatest respect, that you shunt off?" The substance gurgled, "Oh, don't give me that. It's an invasion, plain and simple. Don't talk about constitutional rights.” It bellowed and the whole chamber shook. But the Doctor shouted over it: ‘I! AM! TALKING!” He silenced the beast. “How d’you want history to remember you? As a fine and rare intelligence? Or a genocidal intergalactic criminal? You once built mighty transparent empires in the sky. Now you’re reduced to this, plotting down here in the sewers. Don’t you think it’s time to stop?” The plastic lava slopped at the sides, a little sulky. “I know you’ve been through agony. And it wasn’t your fault. But look at the Earth around you.  This planet is just starting. These stupid little people have only just learnt how to walk, but they're capable of so much more. I'm asking you on their behalf. Please, just go."

Lillie could swear she heard a lilt in the gurgles like a question. Apparently so because the Doctor answered it, “

"Doctor!" The girls shouted as two mannequins walked to him, grabbing him. One of them took the vial of anti-plastic from his pocket. Lillie ran down to help him more out of instinct than anything else, “There are a thousand worlds out there with skies of dioxins. Places you could colonize without hurting anyone. The Western Heights of the Jaggit Brocade. Callistenia. Beynhale. Gris. The Threppitch Consolidation…’ He rattled off names with confidence.

Then Mickey pulled on Rose’s arm, somehow still clinging to Lillie’s leg. “It won’t listen,” Mickey whispered, terrified. “I’ve heard it. Screaming at me. It’s furious, it wants us dead.”

“How do you know that’s what it’s saying?” Lillie asked.

“Don’t worry,” Rose reassuered him, ignoring her sister. “You can trust the Doctor.”

“But it’s going to destroy the whole world.” Mickey whined, clawing at Lillie’s leg again as she tried to shake him off, making the bridge shake but Mickey wasn’t budging.

“No, it can’t.” She leaned closer to him and whispered, ‘He’s got this anti-plastic. He can kill that thing if he has to.”

“Wait, Rose…” Lillie warned.

“Really?’ he said. And Mickey smiled a terrible smile. His voice was cold. “Thanks babes, baby, babyface boombastic.”

He wasn’t Mickey. He was a copy. It copied him twice. Mickey stood, now strong and unafraid, but still clinging onto Lillie like determined to provoke her into attacking him as he faced the pit and calling out to the Nestene in words that were more like roars and howls.

The Doctor turned around, furious, with Rose and Lillie, not Mickey. “What have you two done?”

“LET GO OF ME!” Lillie screamed, punching on fake Mickey’s chest but fake Mickey grabbed her wrists as Rose stood helpless to do otherwise.

Mickey called out alien commands. Two shop-window Autons dressed in sharp navy suits, strode out of the darkness at the back of the Doctor’s ledge.

“Doctor!” Lillie cried but he had nowhere to run, with only the drop in front of him. He was helpless as one Auton grabbed hold of him and pinned his arms behind his back, the second Auton digging into his jacket. It found the vial of blue liquid anti-plastic and held it aloft for the Nestene to see. The beast screeched with rage, betrayed.

“Let me go!” Lillie screamed, her compass starting to glow, fake Mickey’s hands started to melt again until she ripped them out of his grip and bolted to the Doctor.

"No, Lillie, don't!" The Doctor warned.

"I'm not leaving you!" She shouted back but then another dummy grabbed her, making her shriek as she fought back.

"LET HER GO!" Rose screamed.

"Oi, let her go! She's got nothing to do with this! What? That was just insurance. I wasn't going to use it. I was not attacking you. I'm here to help. I'm not your enemy. I swear, I'm not.”

But Mickey answered as the Nestene’s puppet. He yelled one simple word of English: “Liar!” Then Rose looked on in horror as Mickey turned to her and grinned. His teeth a perfect, plastic white. “See ya,” And he melted away.

“Mickey,” Rose said, helpless.

Then a grill behind Rose moved and the real Mickey Smith tumbled out, panicked and terrified.

“Rose!” He grabbed a hold on her, “Oh my God, it held me prisoner, there was a bin and this light and then that monster!”

“RUN!” Lillie shouted, fighting against the guard holding her.

“Get him out,” yelled the Doctor, still being held tight by his Auton guard. “Rose, both of you, get out of here.”

“Who’s he?” said Mickey, and that convinced her he was real, because the last copy hadn’t even asked. That and the stink of sweat and fear rising off him, God, yes, definitely flesh. But she didn’t have time for him. He’s alive, great, been there, done that, sorry. She sort of patted him on the head as she looked up at the top of the chamber. The living statues were still guarding the exit.

“We can’t get out!” she yelled at the Doctor.

A door nearby Rose and Mickey slid open revealing the Tardis.

Rose could tell from how the guard started handling her sister and the Doctor more aggressively and the horror on the Doctor’s face that this was bad news.

"No. Oh, no. Honestly, no!” He cried.

“What’s going on?” Asked Mickey.

“Shut up,” Then she yelled, down to the Doctor, “What’s going on?”

“It knows the TARDIS,” The Doctor said, “Worse than that, it knows who I am. And it’s terrified.” He turned back to the pit, desperate. “Yes, that’s my ship, but I swear, I’m not attacking you, I promise. That's not true. I should know, I was there. I fought in the war.” And now the Doctor was terrified. More than that. He was sorry. “I couldn’t help it,” His voice was raw as if the wound had been reopened. Was he crying? “It wasn't my fault. I tried to stop the war. I lost everything. But it was too late. I’m sorry, but I couldn't save your world! I couldn't save any of them! I couldn’t save her or her world!” The last part was almost a sob.

But the Nestene’s screech was monstrous. It was pure noise to Rose, yet its ferocity pressed on her mind to form words. She was beginning to understand it. She realized: it’s a consciousness, it’s making me conscious. It spoke of pain. It spoke of war. It spoke of planets boiling in space and a thousand TARDISes spinning in flames. And then Rose saw its molten maw shape a word, which seemed to say: ‘Time.’ It reformed, to roar another word: ‘Lord.’

He hadn’t seen her world die. Her world already burned, she (Nova had always said Elder was more of a ‘she’ than an ‘it’) thrived on burning as her inhabitants were literally living stars but then there were no more Elders, or at least, not enough to keep her alive, so she froze and that would’ve killed any remaining Elders on Elder.

"What's it doing?!" Rose asked.

"It's the Tardis! The Nestene's identified its superior technology. It's terrified. It's going to the final phase. It's starting the invasion! Get out, Rose! Just leg it now!"

"Not without my sister!" From above, now in front of the Tardis, Rose started the call Jackie but Lillie couldn't hear her from where she was.

Rose couldn’t do anything to save her sister but she could try to save her mother, she took out her phone and called her.

“Hello sweetheart!” Jackie Tyler sang.

It was a bad line, crackling and dipping. Rose’s voice sounded a thousand miles away. “Mum, where are you?”

“I’ve got you that compensation form from a police officer,” Jackie said, waving the paper about slightly, “And who’s that woman that Howard likes, is it Cynthia Rothrock? Cos I thought I could buy him a DVD, after I knackered his washing machine.”

“No, but listen,” said Rose. “Where are you?”

“I’m up West, I’ll tell her, it’s a bit nippy out! You make sure Lillie’s all warm.” Rose looked at her sister in exasperation at her mother’s non-stop chattering phone skills. “You should see Henrik’s now! How the mighty are fallen. It’s like Pompeii. Oh and they found that man, they said he was dead, that’s sad, isn’t it? Didn’t you say he was horrible? I’ve always said that—the way he would eye your baby sister! We don’t need her getting her own Jimmy Stone, not that it was your fault, darlin’…”

Rose’s voice flickered in and out, “Mum,” and then “Don’t,” and then maybe, “Go home.”

“Sorry darling,’ said Jackie. “Bad line. I’ll speak to you later, I’m off shopping. On your money, but you’re a very kind girl. There’s a bit of paella in the fridge if you and Lillie get hungry, although heat it up properly because old rice can kill you, see you later.” As Jackie hung up, she heard Rose swear—cheeky girl. Lillie was rubbing off on her.

“Mum! Mum!” Rose shouted and then she swore.

The Consciousness started to throw energy bolts.

"It's the activation signal. It's transmitting!"

"It's the end of the world." Rose said.

Not too far away, Clive Finch, finally with proof that the Doctor was read, gave his life to save his wife and his children and Jackie Tyler ran for her life in shoes that weren’t meant to be ran in.

--

Far away, beneath the city, Rose looked up. She thought she could hear the terror on the streets. Screams. Sirens. Gunshots. Her mother was out there somewhere. Her mother and everyone she knew, with an Auton army on the march. But then the Nestene bellowed, forming another two syllables with its red plastic maw. It said, “Doc.” And then “Tor.”

On the ledge below, the Auton holding the phial stood back and its twin began to push the Doctor forwards. Towards the edge.

The Doctor struggled, gasped, dug his heels in, but the Auton was remorseless. And Lillie’s the same, surprisingly, having a harder time as Lillie was not going down without a fight as the screams of all those she cared about echoed in her head and she felt like she could feel their fear.

Its rage battered Rose’s mind, hammering ideas into her thoughts. It said feast. It said sacrifice. It said revenge. And one more word, what was it …? Absorb. It would absorb the Doctor and Lillie. And with him, it would gain everything he knew about time and space. The TARDIS would come under Nestene control. The massacre spreading across London would roll on forever and outwards into the stars. Rose sank down, helpless, to hug poor, sobbing Mickey. There was nothing she could do. She’d never felt so small; one stupid girl in the middle of a war, trapped underneath a burning city with entire galaxies pivoting around this moment, and she was tiny, infinitesimal, useless. The Auton pushed. The Doctor and her sister were forced closer to the edge.

Lillie could feel Jackie’s fear and her determination to save her daughters

--

Somewhere in Catford a lanky, rangy, stubbly man was making a quick escape. Jimmy Stone had been living with a Ghanaian woman called Abena for three months. In truth, he couldn’t stand her. But she had money to spare. Her father was the CEO of a petrochemicals firm back in Ghana, and she’d come to London to study Politics and Philosophy at the LSE. Her student life was supported by an open cheque book from dad. Nice flat, nice car, nice meals. And that, thought Jimmy Stone, was very nice indeed. So he’d romanced her, and moved in, and helped her to spend the money. And then he’d got bored. It was all very well, having cash to flash, but he couldn’t bear her smile, her positivity, her relentless dedication to doing good in the world. Give it a rest, love!

She kind of reminded him of Rose Tyler, his ex-girlfriend, only Abena didn’t have an annoying younger sister who Rose had cherished more than him, Lillie had been protective of Rose and saw through his act but Rose, still young and naive when it came to the cruelty of men, dismissed her concerns until Jimmy Stone left her.

Abena was out tonight, at some posh wedding in Henley. Jimmy had wrangled his way out of the invitation by pretending to have food poisoning. Left alone, he went around the flat, helping himself. Six pairs of gold earrings, one gold bracelet, one platinum bracelet, and bingo, her Duomètre Chronographe watch, worth about £25,000, all shoved into his pockets and off he went, down the stairs, thanks, Abena, bye-bye. He reached the street and inhaled a shock of cold air. He’d done it! He wasn’t a thief by nature—a born liar, perhaps, and unfaithful, okay, that was only natural—but Abena deserved it. In fact, he was doing her a service. He could teach her more about politics and philosophy than the LSE with one simple phrase: always look after Number One.

“You’ll come to no good one day,” said a memory in his head. The voice of that gorgeous, stupid Rose Tyler. Ranting at him as he drove off with her rubbish second-hand computer stashed in the back of his car. Hah, he’d proved her wrong!

Though, he had regretted pawning her computer after he stopped his car, seeing Lillie Tyler in his headlight late one night, staring at him with icy cold eyes that almost looked dead, like she was in trace with her compass glowing with pure fury. It had been days since he left Rose and somehow her fifteen-year-old sister had traveled to Amsterdam. He tried to defuse the situation with his usual charm but as always it hadn’t worked on Lillie. Her eye had twitched and then… even to this day, he swore her eyes had flashed purple several times, then next thing he knew she was chasing him around the woods he had been stopped in as he screamed like a little girl as she laughed manically, taunting him, never feeling such fear as he felt for her, not even the fear he would feel moments from now. The next thing he knew his camper van was ransacked as if by racoons and smudged with ash, his tires slashed, his band equipment gone, later it turned out it had been given to charity after being retuned and polished, except for his bass drum which had been smashed over his head, trapping him like an afternoon cartoon, burn marks he couldn’t explain for the life of him, and a list of everything he had done.

His account of the incident was a little foggy, but he swore at one moment he was in a tree and had nightmares of her walking up the side of the tree trunk like Spider-Man as if it were the floor.

He had considered suing Lillie, not that her family had anything he wanted, but then a good-looking American man in a military coat had entered, smiling at him with false kindness but a rage in his eyes like he had hurt someone the man had cared about and he had threatened him, not to say anything about Lillie.

Besides he refused to acknowledge the time when a fifteen-year-old girl, six years younger than him at the time, he had made him scream and cry like a child. Besides, there was no evidence and no way she could’ve gotten there.

 Jimmy Stone, swaggering in tight jeans, turned the corner onto Catford Broadway, his pockets bulging with so much expensive jewelry that technically he died a very rich man, as a crowd of Autons fell upon him and chopped him into bits.

His last memory was Lillie’s last words to him: When you die, you will remember me and know that if you hadn’t crossed me, you might’ve lived.

And he swore, he saw Lillie Tyler staring at him with no mercy and slight smirk before blackness.

—

As the citizens of London ran, screamed and fought for their lives, someone was fast asleep. In a house in Chiswick, a woman hugged her pillow a little tighter, annoyed by vague alarms from far-off. She’d had hell of a time last night, a bit too much vino collapso because Rufus from Accounts was leaving, to go to Northampton, and she fancied him like rotten, except she drank a bit too much and told him, and he’d laughed in her face, so that went well, and it was still only nine-thirty p.m., and God knows what had happened after that, except she’d arrived home at three A.M, without one shoe. Or, to put a positive spin on things, with one shoe. She’d then wandered through Saturday, dazed and glum. She made a truly disgraceful ham in parsley sauce for her mother’s birthday tea, then gave up. ‘You go to sleep, sweetheart,’ said her granddad. ‘Good idea,’ said Donna Noble. And she slept through the whole thing.

—

Lillie fought, her mind flashed to people she knew who had died or were dying, like Clive, and even those she didn’t like, Jimmy Stone, and those she didn’t know. She didn’t know who she was but she was a woman in her forties, older than her mother with brown hair and brown eyes. Lillie somehow knew she had a daughter around her age, eighteen, who was clever and witty, and… impossible. And… and something about a leaf, the most important leaf in human history or something, whatever the hell that meant! She knew people would die, people she loved, even if half of that list was down here, but people like Jackie and Lars would soon be dead too if they didn’t do something. The Nestene below widened its awful mouth in anticipation.

Lillie pushed the mannequin whose hands were now all melty as a bolt shot it, incinerating it but she slipped and nearly falling into the plastic below but she managed to grab onto the ledge.

"LILLIE!" Rose screamed.

"Get out, Rose! Just get out! Run!" The Doctor shouted.

"I'm not leaving my sister!" She repeated.

"The stairs have gone!" Mickey shouted.

Rose, with no intention to abandon her sister, but to get Mickey somewhere safe, or where at least, he'd stop clinging on her like a magnet, ran to the Tardis but it wouldn't open for her.

"I haven't got the key!" She cried.

The dummies tried to push the Doctor into the vat as Lillie desperately tried not to fall in as the vat spoke, "Time Lord."

Lillie looked down at the vat and vaguely heard it say, "Elder."

She saw flashes of that woman again and then of that man with the blue eyes.

In the shadow of an overturned black cab, Jackie Tyler felt her legs buckle and she sank to the floor as the brides advanced. The dummies raised their stilettos. Jackie sobbed, and she thought of Rose, and thought of Lillie, and thought of Pete, and she closed her eyes, she hoped her daughters were safe.

--

Rose stared in horror as her sister dangled above the Nestene Consciousness, kicking her feet at the faces forming.

Then an old memory came to her from just before she started dating Jimmy Stone.

Rose Tyler at sixteen years old bailed out her fifteen-year-old sister for hacking into the school computer and vandalizing the headmaster’s office, while she had busted the headmaster for having a hacker embezzling money from both the "special needs" program and from parents and had then digitally rerouted it back to the family’s, she hadn't been able to do it from the school, so she had broken into the school's "sponsor"'s mansion, she had avoided the security and disabled the cameras with ease, even bypassing some kind of defense matrix but miraculously she hadn't gotten jail time thanks to the help of a certain American in a military coat who the had flirted with multiple of the officer at once.

“Why do you have to do it this way? You could’ve gotten expelled or worse, arrested.”

“He was embezzling.” Lillie complained.

“You could’ve called the police.”

"And how much much would family and the program lose by the time they arrested him!"

“They never believe me. I stopped trusting them to do the right thing a long time ago. I had to do it myself.”

“Why? Why couldn’t you have just shown them the evidence.”

“True character and integrity is doing the right thing even if no one is watching. I couldn’t stand by and let him do it. It wasn’t right. The coppers are too cautious with their careers and the kids at our school aren’t exactly rich. I looked into it, several families were on the verge of bankruptcy and homelessness, I had to act fast before they lost something they couldn’t just grab back. You can’t just do what is easy, you have to do what’s right, even if it’s the most painful decision you ever make, you have to do what’s right because then what’s the point in doing it at all!?”

It would be so easy for Rose to follow Mickey’s first instinct to run away, to find a way to enter the Tardis. Well, easier than to do what she was thinking of doing but nothing in this universe would keep her from her sister. Nothing in any universe would.

Rose stood up, gathering her courage, it was easy when her sister was in danger. And then Rose Tyler said no. She said it aloud. She said, ‘No.’ She’d had enough. She’d had enough of standing back and doing nothing. Of being told to sit still and behave and go to work and wear this and say that, of being told what to do by men, and boys, and her mother, and teachers, and bosses, and boyfriends, by the Doctor and the Nestene and everyone in between. Above her, the world was ending. In front of her, the Doctor and her sister were dying. At her feet, Mickey was blubbing. Well, to hell with that.

Rose got a determined look in her eyes as she looked at her sister. She may be a high school dropout with a future of a dead-end job but she'll be damned if anything happened to her little sister. She will fight with her life to keep her safe. She ran across the catwalk to the wall as Mickey shouted after her, "Just leave them! There's nothing you can do!"

If the circumstance were different, Mickey would know better than to tell Rose that when it concerned her sister and Rose would've smacked him with the protective ferocity of a wolf in her eyes.

She ran across, jumped down to a lower gantry. "I've got no A-Levels, no job, no future." She said as she grabbed an axe. "But I tell you what I have got." She broke a chain attached to the wall, if she were a physicist, a soldier, an architect, or whatever, she might be able to calculate the angle and distance and velocity but sod it. In a life without many qualifications, Rose had one badge of merit—"Jericho Street Junior School under sevens gymnastic team. I got the bronze!" She took a firm hold onto the chain, wrapping it around her wrist, So she held on tight to the chain and looked at her sister.That was all the motivation she needed.

She took a deep breath and let out a growl of exertion before she jumped off the gantry and swung across the chasm, throughout the chamber. She kicked dummies into the vat and she sailed towards the Doctor. He saw her coming somehow; in that second,or whatever a second was to a Time Lord, he seemedto gaina second wind—with that big stupid grin, he doubled over, to throw the dummy holding him over his shoulder and down into the pit, so easily that later on when she had a second to think, Rose would wonder: What, was he waiting for me?

More importantly, the Doctor was free and he didn’t waste a second before running to Lillie whose boot and sock had been absorbed by the plastic and was burning holes into her other boot, and he grabbed her hand, surprised she had lasted for so long, she looked up, her eyes seemed to get bluer from a purplish hue when he looked at her but it must’ve been a trick of the light.

Rose swung over the Doctor’s head. She wasn’t aiming for him. She was aiming for the second Auton. The Auton still holding the Doctor’s vial of anti-plastic. She managed to knock the dummy off its balance, making it totter and then the one-booted Lillie, apparently not bothered by the metal of the floor in the hot chamber against her bare foot, pushed the dummy and kicked it, knocking it down into the living molted plastic.

Rose’s arc completed and she began to swing back. As Rose sailed back towards the wall, there he was, the Doctor, with that huge, silly smile, arms wide open to intercept her, a whoomph of air from his lungs as he caught her and held on tight. The two of them laughed with joy and looked over the edge. Below them, the cauldron of red and yellow plastic seethed and bubbled, but now lines of dark blue streaked and skittered across its surface. The Nestene started to scream and started to glow brightly as it turned blue.

Rose turned to her sister and laughed out of joy at seeing her alive and safe, she ran to her shouting her name and hugging her and Lillie hugging back, laughing out her sister’s name.

"Now we're in trouble." The chamber started to fall apart and blow up. “Come on!” The Doctor laughed, taking the sisters’ hands and pulling them across to and up the last stairway. Towards the TARDIS.

Mickey who had moved to where Rose had run to, pressed against the wall, wailed, “We’re going to die!”

“Oh, shut up, Rickey!” The DOcote shouted as they reached him and he grabbed his hand, letting go of Lillie’s who moved across the platform to see the Nestene Consciousness as a huge ball of fire erupted up from the create itself but Lillie didn’t flinch, she showed to sign of being affected by heat, not even sweating like the others.

“Oh my God!” Rose cried, grabbing onto her sister’s hand and trying to pull her back away from the fire but so they could still see the Nestene.

The web of anti-plastic had thickened until the creature’s entire skin had become a beautiful, poisonous blue that seemed to have entranced Lillie.

“Doctor, its solidifying, its losing its elasticity.” Lillie shouted.

It reached out into tendrils but its skin tore open and fire guttered from the rips. It tried to rise from the pit but pulled itself apart, red flames bursting out of blue wounds. The chasm below became a lake of fire. And it seemed to entrance Lillie, like an old memory.

“It’s destroying itself,” The Doctor said. In that moment, Rose saw his glee, and his agony, and she was terrified of him. “Come on!” The Doctor shouted and led the three humans to the Tardis.

 “There’s no way out,” Mickey cried.

“In there,’ yelled Rose, pointing at the TARDIS. ‘But it’s just a box!’ said Mickey,

“Oh, hush!” Lillie told him as Rose remembered how dumb she’d been just a short time ago.

Debris began to fall and Lillie instinctively ran back to the Doctor.

Rose ducked, dodging breaking concrete and bits of bricks as she pulled Mickey along the platform as the Doctor shielded Lillie from debris.

Rose reached the rickety blue doors of the police box and yelled to the Doctor, “Key!” The Doctor reached into his pocket and took out the key, holding it between him and Lillie, she stared at it in awe.

“Get this to your sister.” He told her, “I’ll be right there.”

She smiled with a glint in her eyes as she held his gaze, that he had trusted her with a key to the best technology in the universe. She suddenly threw her arms around him in an uncharacteristic act of affection, laughing and she ran off to Rose and Mickey, giddy as if she wasn’t at risk of being hit by falling debris.

The platform shook, the chains threatening to snap but they held as Lillie reached Rose and Mickey and she pushed the key into the door, gently caressing the side of the Tardis as if greeting an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long, long time, then she turned to Rose and Mickey and grinned before swinging the door open and the sisters pushed Mickey inside before Rose did the same to Lillie and tumbled inside after her.

Again, that shock of entering the TARDIS, the change in pressure like a physical thump; the sound of the crumbling evil lair became muffled. And for Mickey, the interior was a brand new terror. He yelped. ‘Whaaat?’ and boggled like he was being attacked by bees as Lillie laughed before realizing the Doctor wasn’t there.

She went to go find him when he had jumped into the doorway, his back to her, standing on the edge to look down. Rose ran forward to join him as Lillie ducked so she could squeeze through the gap under his arm to see, much like how a child would.

“What the hell is going on?” Mickey’s voice was more like background noise as the three saw  the dying Nestene Consciousness.

The creature was ripping itself into blue, fleshy chunks as it descended into the pit of fire, huge explosions blossoming up from the depths, the walls caving in on all sides. And above the roar, a terrible, keening sound as the Nestene wept. Rose looked at the Doctor, though he did not look at her nor did Lillie.

She wasn’t smiling anymore, she looked sorry and apologetic. Like she had the weight of the universe on her shoulders, she seemed to hold more responsibility in that moment than Rose had ever known her to have in her entire life.

The Doctor and Lillie’s eyes were like skies of ice.

“I’m sorry.” The Doctor whispered.

Then he slammed the door shut, sealing them inside the cocoon of the TARDIS.

Mickey, still not understanding how the Tardis was the safest place on Earth, cried, “We’re still going to die!”

The Doctor strode past him, dismissively and he reached the controls, flipped a big red lever. Rose sank to her knees, exhausted, with a blissful smile, welcoming the joyous sound of the engines lurching and stuttering into life as Lillie stood her ground, feeling strong.

The shining glass within the central column began to rise and fall, and the roar of the world outside faded away. In the lair of the Nestene, a final wail rose from the beast as the walls and roof collapsed into the burning ravine. The creature died in fury and despair, and the flames and rocks became its tomb. The rising stanchion reached maximum stress and sheared in half with a snap like a thunderbolt. The last lattices of ceiling fell, exposing the chasm to the night sky above and then as the stars shined down on the Nestene… it felt a sense of peace in its final moments as if the stars were smiling down on it, giving it some comfort in its last moments before death.

—

“Mum!” Rose suddenly gasped, fumbling with her phone as the Doctor frowned at Lillie’s one-booted shoe.

“You look daft with one shoe.” He stated and then he pulsed his sonic screwdriver at her boot, “One second.” And then he left.

“Where’s he going!?” Mickey squeaked.

Jackie was desperate. Thinking of Rose and Lillie. She kept walking. Heading for home. All around her, horrors. Injuries that made her flinch. People lying on the floor, asking for help. Huddled in corners, crying. Lost children. But Jackie didn’t have time, she had to get back to the flat, to find Rose and Lillie. She had to make sure they were safe.

She’d been in that flat so many years ago, when she left one morning with Rose just to go to a wedding, upset with her husband and then returned a widow and a single mother with her two baby girls.

She had to be there now. To stop that news from ever coming again. And then her mobile rang. Rose.

Jackie answered, “Oh my God! Sweetheart, is that you? Are you all right? Is Lillie alright?”

 “Mum! Oh thank God, you’re alive! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Never mind me, what about you and Lillie.”

“Honestly, trust me, I’m fine. And Lillie’s right here, she’s fine.”

“Where are you?”

A pause. “Travelling,” Rose said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Jackie asked.

“Never mind, I’m on my way home.” Rose said, Rose’s voice became muffled as she asked someone, ‘How long?’ Then she came back to Jackie, “I’m one second away, apparently.”

“I’m still up West. Did you see it? All the dummies? And not just people dressed up, their heads fell off, I picked up this bride’s head and I gave it a tap and it was solid. Then I banged it on the floor, and I’m telling you, 100 per cent plastic! But it was moving! And they tipped over a bus! And killed this man right in front of me, you should’ve seen it, and this great big clown—"

“Yeah, sorry, got to go.” And click, Rose was gone.

“Oh, well thank you, madam,” said Jackie to her phone. But Rose was alive. Her daughter was safe, and heading home. Jackie would get there somehow, even if she had to walk all the way, she’d burst through that door, she’d get out the whisky, she’d knock them up a curry, she’d toast their survival and hold her daughters tight. Hey, she might even sell her story for a bit of money. My Night of Hell, by Jacqueline Tyler. But first of all, she thought of the children she’d walked past. And Jackie went back to help.

—

The Doctor returned with an identical pair of boots to the ones Lillie was wearing and waved off her thanks.

Mickey interrupted. “How do we get out of here?” He was sitting on the floor, on the opposite side of the console to the Doctor, determined to stay as far away from him as possible as if he were suddenly going to grow tentacles. He’d initially retreated down one of the gantries, so scared of the chamber’s size that he’d tried to hide in the shadow of an internal doorway. But then he’d heard a roar from the depths of the TARDIS.

“That’ll be the dragon,” said the Doctor with a bit a laughter in his voice and Mickey had scarpered back to the center. Now he huddled into himself, overwhelmed, smeared with grease and grime. As far as he knew, the police box was still inside the underground lair; he could accept that the inside was calmer somehow, safer and sort of detached, but he had no concept of the box having moved.

Rose supposed she could explain it to him. But later, maybe. The Doctor was more important, right now. Time with him was precious, he could vanish on a whim, and she didn’t like the idea of seeing that happiness fade from her sister’s eyes.

Rose and the Doctor discussed how they were in flight when Mickey interrupted, “What the hell are you on about?” The Doctor had a wolfish gleam in his eye, that made Mickey regret his question. A challenge. He strode down the entryway, his big boots making the metal clatter and clang. He looked at the sisters, seeing the excitement in their faces, returned his challenge and he opened the left-hand door. Lillie was immediately at his side, leaving a gap for Rose to see the outside who soon joined them as Lillie sat down, dangling her feet as she looked at the view.

They were in flight above the entire planet. They held the whole of the world within their sight.

“It’s a trick. That’s not real,” Mickey denied. They didn’t look back at him.

Down below at Great Britain, the lights of London a yellow sprawl in the dark of night. Down there, she supposed, there must be fires and alarms and tragedies, but it seemed mercilessly peaceful from above. The clouds of the Atlantic curling towards a bright fringe of sunlight, the long day ending beyond the curve. When Rose looked at the north-east curve of the horizon below, some plains of Russia, focusing on particular dips of landscape. Up and out where the infinite stars.

Rose had imagined space as a simple black. But it was paler, and richer, and so much more complex, infused with extraordinary maroons, reefs of light blue, glints of yellow on vast clouds of the deepest green. They stood there together, Rose and the Doctor, standing over Lillie, in an intimate silence.

Lillie waited, and then, as she knew she would, she saw them change under the planet’s slow revolve, she felt an exhilaration, a thrill, that almost made her feel powerful, like she was capable of universal possibilities.

“I can feel it,” she said aloud so the Doctor and Rose could hear her. “The turn of the Earth.”

The Doctor smiled and they stayed there for a while. Lillie soon became antsy and moved back into the Tardis and the Doctor closed the door. Time to go home but Rose knew that the Powell Estate was no longer Lillie’s home. Earth was no longer home to her.

The TARDIS had settled with a big, resounding thump, the glass column hissing to a halt and the groan of engines falling away. The end of the line. The Doctor had promised to bring them back to the Powell Estate. With a grin, Rose opened the door. Onto the cold and dark. She stepped out, into the London night with Lillie behind her.

“We’re in the wrong place!” She realized this was Henrik’s. Where it all began. They were just beyond the ruin of the shop. The TARDIS had brought them to a mountain of blackened rubble sealed off by hazard tape and chain-link fencing. Just twenty-four hours ago… One day in which everything had changed. But the sisters also knew it couldn’t last forever. Rose turned back to the Doctor who was leaning against the TARDIS doorway, arms folded. “You said home, you got it wrong.”

Then he was pushed aside as Mickey ran out, came to a halt. He looked around, looked back at the TARDIS, then at Rose, then at Lillie, down at the ground, up at the sky, down again. He stamped on the street to prove it was real. He’d convinced himself that seeing the Earth from orbit had been some sort of illusion, but now he had to face the truth. That they’d moved.

Then he asked, “Were we thrown?”

“What?” Lillie asked.

“What d’you mean, thrown?” Rose asked.

“Like, we were underground. And it exploded... And we got thrown out. And we landed here.” Mickey tried to reason.

Rose took a deep breath, to explain, but the Doctor interrupted, “Actually, that’s not bad. Same difference. Well done, Ricky.”

“It’s Mickey,” He said, trying to hide behind a large piece of wood, away from the Tardis.

Rose went to him to check on him, “Is he all right?”

“Don’t talk like I’m not here,” Mickey complained.

Lillie spun on her heels to look at him, “Oh, so you know the side effects of you being copied into plastic twice?”

Mickey opened his mouth, shut it, and then open it again, like fish out of water.

“He was copied. Bit knackering. Ten minutes, fresh air, right as rain. So, are we done?”

Rose saw her sister’s posture fall and her smile falter, the happiness in her eyes dimmed. She herself could feel a sudden rush in her heart. This was it. The Doctor was going. He’d step into that box and slam the door, never to be seen again. She saw her sister trying to hide her emotions like she always did and Rose didn’t want to give her disappointment away either.

She said, as though indifferent, “I suppose.”

“Good,” The Doctor said,

“Yeah,” said Rose.

“Yep.” Lillie choked down, looking down.

And they stayed where they were.

Then the Doctor said, “Right. I’d better go.”

Lillie noticed that he seemed to be hesitate to leave them too.

“Well, good luck,” Rose said, “You’ll need it.”

“What makes you think that?” He asked with mock offense.

“You were useless in there. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me,” Rose smiled that brilliant smile, quite proud of herself.

“D’you think?” He was smiling too, just a little and then he admitted, “Yes, I suppose I would be. Thank you.”

And still, all three of them hesitated. The Doctor’s weight shifted onto his back foot, his hand tensed on the wooden door, about to close it—but not yet. The moment suspended. The Doctor knew these two girls were special; his empathy for all life—especially humanity was back, the one he thought had died with Nova.

"Right then, I'll be off… unless, uh, I don't know,” He shrugged, to appear casual, “you two could come with me. As you know this box isn't just a London-op, you know. It goes anywhere in the universe free of charge.”

Everything fell away: the sirens, the city, the cold, the pain of her new replacement boot rubbing against the back of her bare heel raw.

Then he blinked, drew in a sharp breath, looked at the sisters as though preparing to forget them, “Anyway. Never mind. Just a thought.” He took one step back.

“No! Don’t go!” Lillie blurted out and he looked at her.

Forcing herself to process what he was asking, Lillie got a surge of excitement in her body at the idea, her happiness coming back. For the first time in her life, something felt... right. She wasn't a kid anymore; she was eighteen and Rose could come with.

"You're serious?" She asked, grinning wildly.

"Nova made you promise, didn't she?" He smiled.

Mickey looked up at Lillie and said, “You can’t. It’s not safe. He’s an alien. He’s a thing.”

"Don't. He's an alien. He's a thing." Mickey said, pointing as if it needed to be clarified who he was referring to.

"He's not a bad alien." Lillie said, not looking away, "besides I've saved his hide twice now."

"He's not invited. What do you think? You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep, or you could go anywhere. The choice is yours, Lillie Tyler.”

"Yes!" Lillie exclaimed at once, practically giddy with excitement.

A flash of relief passed over the Doctor’s face and he looked at Rose.

Rose looked tempted too but she forced herself to think logically.

"Is it always this dangerous?" Rose asked.

"Yeah." Doctor admitted and Mickey clung to Rose’s waist.

Rose thought about the fear she had felt but it had been worth it, to do the good that she did. She wanted to feel that again.

But then, ping, ping, ping. Her phone was bombarded by texts as it reconnected with the network came back to life; thirty-four messages received—thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven.

The list of names: Sally, Shareen, Mook, Patrice, Omar, Maxwell, Suki, Janice, Keisha, Cole, Mum, Mum, Mum. Rose's old world coming back.

Lillie checked her phone and the Doctor spotted, only two people had messaged her. Mum. Mum. Mum. Lars. Lars. Lars. Lars. Lars. Lars. Mum. Mum. Mum.

Rose wondered if any of those texts would be someone’s final message. And then Jackie, of course, she thought of Jackie, wandering home. And Mickey, poor Mickey Smith, that lovely bright boy shattered by events. Needing her help. And tomorrow the sun would shine and life would go on and she needed a job, she needed a wage, she couldn’t go running off like she’d done with Jimmy Stone, she wasn’t a kid any more. She had to buckle down and behave and face her responsibilities.

"Yeah, I can't. I've uh, I've got to go and find my mum, and someone's got to look after this stupid lump, so..." she turned to her sister, "you have fun and be safe. Okay, Lillie? I'll tell mum that you've... gone studying abroad or something..." Rose shrugged. "Take a year off before you head off to Cambridge."

While Rose didn't want her sister to go without her, she knew that Lillie had been waiting for a moment like this all her life and it wouldn't be fair to take it away from her. Lillie deserved it.

The Doctor’s expression did not change. He kept a level stare, as though none of this mattered at all and Lillie ran in the Tardis with the Doctor with a huge grin on her face. Though she knew that Rose wanted to go.

 “You watch after her. She’s sensitive to the cold.” Rose warned, “She gets sick easy when she’s cold.”

The Doctor didn’t mention that the radiation of the Tardis mutated human cells, making them better at fighting off diseases.

"Okay. See you around." The Doctor said, closing the door.

The Tardis started to dematerialize…

Mickey stood up to stare alongside her and they saw the miracle of the box for the first time. The lamp on top of the stacked roof flared as bright as the sun. Then it pulsed up and down, seeming to draw all the color out of the box as the noise heaved into a bellow, a fierce little wind whipping up, a vortex of papers and flakes and ash spiraling around the shape of the box even as that shape began to disappear. The lines and light melted away into the night. The wind died down, the debris settled to the floor, and the noise faded down to a whisper, and then nothing at all. The Doctor had gone with Lillie.

Rose stared at the empty space for a long time where the machine that had her sister and the Doctor inside were. Her eyes fell to a mirror in an alley and she saw herself in a tall broken shard of mirror that was a Hendrik’s display that had been thrown across the street.

And there she stood. Nineteen years old, London born, average height. Hoodie and jeans, like everyone her age. A scoop of dirty blonde hair around her face. Eyes like her father’s, mascara and hair like her mum’s. A bit of a sullen expression which made everyone, her whole life, say “Cheer up.”

The most ordinary girl in the world. And I’m happy with that, she thought. This ordinary girl helped to save the world, not with magic, not with science, not with any particular skill, I just did one simple thing: I never gave up.

--

The Doctor caught Lillie staring at the door from the console as she bit and sucked on her lip and she felt his gaze on her, she looked at him.

"She wants to go, you know." Lillie said. “She ran away from her responsibilities once for a prat of a boy. Dropped out of school.”

“How do you know this isn’t that?” He asked.

“It’s not.” She said, confident.

The Doctor smiled before heading back to give Rose a second chance.

And then she heard it again. The grind of engines. The light blazed into existence, a rush of, a spiral of wind, and the outlines of the box, bleeding into the air, and then with a thump, the TARDIS was back.

The Doctor opened the door again and said, "By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?"

The spin of the world beneath her feet seemed to tilt. Now so many things made sense. The photographs in the shed. Those two words, spoken by a furious beast: “time” and “lord”. Rose turned to Mickey. She loved him, but that seemed a very small thing, right now. She thought of the people who’d abandoned him, the people he’d lost over the years. And she was sorry, but above and beyond that, she thought: That’s his story. But this is my story, now. And the only person who can tell it, is me. She gave Mickey a kiss. She said, "Thank you." Then she ran towards the rest of her life, joining her sister.

Lillie and Rose knew that the stranger’s promise, given to them in the dark and snow of New Year’s Eve, had finally come true. Lillie thought back to that man from what little she could see of him.

And that’s how the journey began. And they hoped it would never end.

[emjee]

2020: Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out (a NYE playlist)

Tracklist (full annotations under the cut)

1. Toxic / Britney Spears 2. It’s the End of the World as We Know It / R.E.M. 3. Bye Bye Bye / NSYNC 4. It Was a Shitshow / from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 5. Be Calm / fun. 6. Summer, Highland Falls / Billy Joel 7. Hard Times Come Again No More / The Proclaimers 8. Bridge Over Troubled Water / Simon and Garfunkel 9. Better Not Look Down / B.B. King 10. I’m Still Standing / Elton John 11. I’m Still Here / Patti LuPone 12. Someday We’ll Be Together / Diana Ross and the Supremes 13. We’ll Meet Again / Vera Lynn 14. We’ll Meet Tomorrow / from Titanic: a New Musical 15. This Year / The Mountain Goats 16. The Parting Glass / Hozier 17. Auld Lang Syne / Iona

Listen to 2020: Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out on Spotify.

Much love to you all. May this coming year be kinder and more just. May we make it so.

Toxic - Russell T. Davies called this as the anthem for the end of the world in the second episode of the Doctor Who reboot in 2005, and who am I to argue with genius?

It’s the End of the World as We Know It - I personally do not feel fine, but I didn’t feel like I could leave this one off.

Bye Bye Bye - I do indeed want to see 2020 out that door, bye bye bye, etc.

It Was a Shitshow - “Not to be crass, but this sucked ass” is how I feel about this year in a single sentence.

Be Calm - This is my go-to song for “I need to have a minor breakdown and process Emotions” moods.

Summer, Highland Falls - “They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known / And I believe there is a time for mediation in cathedrals of our own” is a line that has been in the metaphorical dark pit with me for a very long time, and this year was no different.

Hard Times Come Again No More - This whole song is just a huge 2020 “could we get a fucking break” mood.

Bridge Over Troubled Water - I spent much of 2020 weary, feeling small, and with tears in my eyes, so, you know, I just need to hear Art Garfunkel singing about that.

Better Not Look Down / B.B. King, I’m Still Standing / Elton John, and I’m Still Here / Patti LuPone are the “despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m going to be okay” trio of this playlist.

Someday We’ll Be Together / Diana Ross and the Supremes - I started listening to this song on repeat in March and its central premise is what I’m clinging to as the year rolls over.

We’ll Meet Again / Vera Lynn - Ditto for this song.

We’ll Meet Tomorrow / from Titanic: a New Musical - Okay so I don’t listen to this song a lot because it makes me absolutely bawl but it got me through some very intense grief and what was 2020 if not an exercise in very intense grief. Unlike “Someday We’ll Be Together” and “We’ll Meet Again”, this song (which in the musical is sung as they’re about to cast the lifeboats away) is about...what if we won’t? How can loves and lives that have finite endings last? “If tomorrow is not in store, let this embracing replace forever.” God, I’m tearing up just writing this. This Year / The Mountain Goats - Practically obligatory. We are gonna make through this year if it kills us. Motherfucker.

The Parting Glass / Hozier - This one has also gotten me through a lot of grief, specifically pandemic-related grief. Tipping my hat to Mr. Andrew Hozier-Byrne for this one, it’s a real gift.

Auld Lang Syne / Iona - I love this song, I sing it at the top of my lungs every NYE, I love that it’s the tradition where I am. This version uses the tune that I’m used to singing at Burns Night Supper, and it includes the verse that is a delightful ode to splitting the bill: “And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup / And surely I’ll be mine!”

[anncanta]

‘Dracula’ and ‘Doctor Who’. Blood is testimony

Stephen Moffat is often accused of using similar plots, repeating the same plot lines, and returning to a number of his favorite ideas.

Moffat really develops a certain set of specific, quite recognizable topics, and in his different scripts, he one way or another tells similar stories.

But with his recurring motives and ideas, as, indeed, with another stuff, not everything is so simple.

First, the outstanding authors are most often accompanied by craving for certain narratives and archetypal forms, as well as cross-cutting themes. Some of this authors create ‘frames’ for these ideas in the form of multivolume novels or novel cycles, others devote wreaths of sonnets and collections of stories to their favorite topic, and others choose whole genres for reflection on issues that are important to them. I think that none of those reading this article will have any difficulties with examples.

Secondly, there are not so many really interesting stories.

And thirdly, repetitions can be different. Like any feature, it can exist on its own, or it can – if the author has a large-scale talent – become another way to tell a story like no one else do.

In Stephen Moffat's case, we are dealing with a very unique situation where the author's stories are literally read through one another.

I will make a separate reservation: I am not talking about postmodern ‘intertextuality’ – a vile definition for references and quotations that have existed in literature since the emergence of storytelling and are news only for postmodernists themselves – but about a peculiar use of certain plots and motives.

If you want, you can find a huge number of such things in Moffat's scripts. The viewers who have been closely following his work since the period when he became the showrunner of Doctor Who will immediately name a dozen of them. But I would like to dwell on one example – the newest one for today.

When the TV series Dracula by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss was released on BBC and Netflix in 2020, some viewers noted the similarity of its style, and in some places, the plot outline, with Doctor Who, and directly called the main character of the film, Agatha Van Helsing, the female version of the Doctor.

The first is obvious, and the second is quite understandable in light of the two years earlier release (absolutely disastrous, in my opinion) of the eleventh and twelfth seasons of Doctor Who.

But the beauty of both Moffat's game and the whole story is that there`s not Agatha who is the Doctor here.

Yes, by all appearances, it is this brave, interested in science, well acquainted with evil, fighting against it and even – partly – traveling through time, the heroine who seems most suitable for the role of the Doctor in the new setting. There was a calculation for this: Moffat, during his time as the showrunner of the series, who, it seems, tried all the plot possibilities except this one, and who left on the eve of the epochal transformation of the character, it would seem, had to offer the audience his version of the female Doctor. Well, he did: on the surface. As if he said: ‘Here is a heroine with such qualities. This is how you imagine her, isn`t it? Well, get it.’

And inside this shell, as inside the unfortunate Jonathan Harker (Moffat, as a true Briton, uses materialized metaphors and often literally shows what he means), there is another story.

In order to understand it, you need to take a close look at Dracula and – at Doctor Who written by Moffat.

With Dracula everything is simple. As soon as you start looking for the main character of this film who: a) lives for several centuries; b) collects human stories; c) travels in time; d) always has one or more people next to him – you instantly find him. And if you've watched an entire episode and a half and still don't understand anything, in the middle of the second one you will hear a direct quote.

'The sophistication of a gentleman, Agatha, is always a veneer.'

'Even a gentleman like Mr. Balaur?'

'Mr. Who?'

But that's just one detail.

A deeper level opens if you try to read Dracula through Doctor Who itself.

In the Christmas special Twice upon a time, which ends the last season, written by Stephen Moffat, the plot is centered on the Doctor's encounter with strange creatures, as if made of glass, which are living vaults of memory. The episode itself is full of layered ideas and references. But for us now only one dimension is important.

At the very end of the special, the Doctor addresses the glass creatures with an ardent speech – one of those that he loves so much.

‘You're just memories, held in glass. Do you know how many of you I could fill? I would shatter you. My testimony would shatter all of you. A life this long, do you understand what it is? It's a battlefield. And it's empty. Because everyone else has fallen.’

Does this remind you of anything?

It seems to me that this is a literal description of what is happening with Dracula.

What he says throughout the film, and what Agatha did not understand even at the end, because in order to understand this, you had to live his life.

And in order to understand this whole context, you need to understand that the Doctor was never a good guy. He always said this to everyone but no one believed him.

No one believed the stories of the horror before which entire civilizations tremble, about a creature that destroyed its entire species in order to stop the most destructive war in history, about the person who does not need weapons so that the captains of warships flocked from the most distant corners of the Universe, after listening to him for a couple of minutes, ran away without looking back.

The Doctor was never a good guy, but just as important, he always knew it. For the Doctor of Russell T. Davis, this position looks like a fact with which neither the character himself nor the people around him and aliens are very inclined to interact. I guess it’s a matter of Davis’ very outlook on the story and perhaps his own worldview.

But the Doctor of Moffat is a hero who lives with this knowledge and with the impossibility of passing this knowledge on to others.

Because the Doctor is always the one they are waiting for, the one they go to for advice, the one with whom they travel around the Universe, the one who opens the door to the magical world, the one they hope for.

He is never the one who sits on the roof of the TARDIS, surrounded by the loneliness of the starry sky. Not someone who lives longer than any human being, not someone who knows what it means to make monstrous decisions in circumstances that most of us cannot imagine.

And the one in whom there is so much testimony that it is able to break the vessel that they will try to fill with.

In Dracula, all these details, motives, and meanings are repeated sequentially.

The most obvious is ‘blood is testimony’. This is not self-quotation, as it might seem, but a literal proposal of the author to look in a certain direction.

The blood in Dracula is not only memory. It's also a way to watch. And to see a bright and diverse world, which otherwise would have become boring long ago.

In the fifth season of Doctor Who, there is a moment when Eleventh says to Amy Pond, ‘You don't understand. I have the whole Universe in my backyard. I'm used to it. I don’t notice it. But when you appear, I look with your eyes. And it becomes a miracle again.’*

In this sense, the ‘brides’ and everyone that Dracula ate are in some way his companions. If you remember what a great sense of guilt towards most of his companions the Doctor felt and how some of them ended up, the comparison turns out to be not so poor.

Dracula, like the Doctor, has companions with whom he has a very special relationship that he cannot explain to himself. He travels through time and space, discovering one day that all human experience is stored and cataloged somewhere in his head, and there is nothing new.

And – as is often the case in Moffat's stories – here one character completes and harmoniously implements a theme started by another.

If the Doctor, being who he is, and fully aware of this, tormented by endless insatiable loneliness and memories of life as an empty battlefield, invariably continues the path that seems to him more and more meaningless, then Dracula decided to end the life like that.

And all this, the whole story, is organized as a transition, as a movement forward and backward in time, which unites and brings to life what is dissolved, inherent, basically exists, and ‘spilled’ in blood. The blood here is also the same as the space in the Doctor Who, it is the Universe, which belongs to everyone and flows inside everyone, and inside which everyone exists, and which determines everyone. In order for blood to become an individuality, it takes time, a specific moment at which each specific individuality comes to the surface. So, for example, the return of Agatha takes place. There must be something she wants to come back for. Like the TARDIS, blood is always within us and speaks through us. In the case of Dracula and Agatha, this is their bond, their love for each other. Even if this love is unaware, – sometimes the TARDIS acts on her own and travels wherever she wants, forcing the Doctor and his companions to act in the circumstances she suggests.

And all this, this whole context, the whole story, with all its dimensions and additional meanings, became possible only due to the fact that Stephen Moffat, the author of both series, is not afraid to describe ambiguous heroes, to reflect out loud on their adventures, and – sometimes – to repeat.

* The words of Eleventh quoted from memory.

[ollyarchive]

Olly Alexander: ‘I want to make the community proud. I don’t know if I've always got it right’

By

David Levesley

As Ritchie Tozer in Russell T Davies’ devastating 1980s-set drama It's A Sin, Olly Alexander told a story from a tragically formative decade in gay history. As himself and as frontman of synthpop trio Years & Years, he contributes to a new narrative. But, as he reveals here, the insecurities and anxieties written into minority identities are not just a personal challenge: they can shape stories told by, for and about all his peers

It is the afternoon before It’s A Sin is broadcast to the nation and its star, 30-year-old musician and actor Olly Alexander, is buying a cat cushion. “It’s for a friend!” he says, mortified to be caught in the act of buying a plush feline.

Where once being the star of a primetime Channel 4 drama might mean greenrooms, watch parties and a celebratory afters, this is January 2021, so a flame-haired Alexander is sitting in his kitchen, drinking a smoothie the exact same lilac as his top.

“I’ve had a lot of restless energy,” he says, having binge-watched The Real Housewives Of New York City in between doing lots of squats and “watching homoerotic YouTube workout videos”. It’s not quite the normal build-up to a game-changing drama, but is there a better way to remember peacetime than watching a show filled with period pieces such as “friends drink indoors” or “strangers have guiltless sex at a house party”? It’s A Sin is both a masterpiece and a reminder that someday we will, once again, be able to be eaten out by hot men. “You’re so welcome,” Alexander says, laughing. “If I can bring anything to the British public, it’s a lesson in anal hygiene.”

Anal hygiene are two words we have probably never published together in GQ, but, more importantly, are probably not the subject of many – if any! – scenes in a piece of media not uploaded to OnlyFans. They are, however, the subject of a crucial scene in the first episode of It’s A Sin, in which Alexander’s character – an 18-year-old fledgling queer from the Isle Of Wight called Ritchie Tozer – gets rimmed by his campus crush, Ash Mukherjee (Nathaniel Curtis). No gay men watching came out of that scene not feeling seen and, like all the other sex scenes in It’s A Sin, it feels deeply realistic and fantastically homosexual.

“I can tell you I’ll never forget being practically butt-naked with my arse in the air in front of colleagues,” says Alexander, laughing. But by that point, he says, he had done so many sex scenes that it felt somewhat rote. “‘Ritchie’s got a dirty bum! Stick that arse in the air and look disappointed!’” What was interesting, he says, was the dynamic of trying to produce the most authentically gay experiences possible on camera.

‘WE UNDERSTOOD THESE CHARACTERS WITH A KIND OF SHORTHAND THAT GAY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND’

They were working with Ita O’Brien – a movement director and arguably the OG intimacy coordinator – but, for her sins, not a gay man. So while everyone would have an input in how a sex scene would be best shot, “There came a point when they would say, ‘Please tell us, because we’re not gay men.’” So then the writer, the performers, the director and O’Brien’s team would come to a consensus on how to make a threesome look like three men shagging, yet also make it look the best it could on camera and make sure “you never touch each other’s genitals, basically”.

Alexander says O’Brien’s input was a “lifesaver” for him on set. Although by the end he felt comfortable, he was at first intimidated by just how exposing this would be. “I had a bit of a hysterical breakdown. I was really worried I couldn’t do it. I just didn’t feel safe.” This was interesting to hear from Alexander, the proudly queer frontman of the band Years & Years, who “spent four years on the road performing and finding this character that I do feel sexy in”. It was then that O’Brien and the team asked him to bring whatever made him feel comfortable on stage into the room before the cameras rolled. “So I would sing before the takes, be a little bit of Olly on stage,” he says, laughing. “That was my way of tricking my brain and thinking it was a character. Which, of course, it was.”

Before he was Olly Alexander, consummate gamine artiste, Olly Alexander Thornton was a singled-out kid at a primary school in Gloucestershire (where his mother ran a music festival). He was, like many other gay kids growing up, bullied and harassed for being something “other”, which everyone is able to see long before you can define it yourself. “I remember being in primary school and I had long hair and people would call me a girl,” he says, and the wound still feels raw when he recounts it.

“I knew that was bad for boys. I didn’t like the things that other boys liked: I just wanted to play with the girls and watch Disney movies. Which obviously straight boys do as well,” he mentions, always making sure to provide caveats to include all facets of the human experience. Although the bullying began to subside by secondary school in Monmouthshire, he still stood out: he had big curly hair – “I was trying to hide my ears” – and would wear make-up or a choker sometimes on nonuniform days. “I think I was trying to figure out who I was,” he says. “Imagine getting to discover your own sexuality without any preconceived ideas! I mean, maybe that’s impossible. But it would be nice, right? Why should people bullying you be your first brush with your own sexuality?”

Like Ritchie Tozer, Alexander moved to London at 18 to pursue acting, but he also had designs on becoming a musician. “Because when you’re writing a song, you’re the director, the star, the producer, the writer. I wanted all of that! I needed that to be able to express myself,” he proclaims with faux hysteria. For years he found success as an actor in a diverse selection of roles: he appeared in Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void, costarred with seemingly every other white British actor in The Riot Club and also in God Help The Girl, a musical film written by Belle And Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. “Then Years & Years just got to a place where it was going to take over and needed my full time,” Alexander says. So his focus moved to the music.

‘IMAGINE DISCOVERING YOUR SEXUALITY WITHOUT ANY PRECONCEIVED IDEAS!’

It was on their third single, “Real” – released in 2014 – that Alexander first felt his art and his sexuality really intermingle. “It was the first time I put in a male pronoun – I say ‘Do it, boy’ – and it’s quite subtle, but it was a big deal for me at the time.” This was when Years & Years were trying to get signed to a major label, so doing something so consciously queer felt like a risk (the band went on to sign with Polydor later that year).

While pop music has long had an element of queerness about it – you need only look at the artists featured in It’s A Sin to see how gay 1980s pop was – Alexander has long been frank that sexuality and success are not always seen as natural bedfellows. At a Stonewall event in 2018 he recounted being told during his media training, “Maybe it’s better not to say anything about your sexuality at all.” In the same year, he told NME there had been progress, but that “I just know there are people who are hiding their sexuality, so it’s still not gone completely”.

Alexander doubled down on it with the music video – featuring his Bright Star costar Ben Whishaw – where he “purposefully made it gay. There’s a cruising element to the very beginning. It’s slightly ambiguous, though, because back then I wasn’t quite ready to launch into being the gay crusader I think I am now.” In 2015 the band won the BBC’s Sound Of 2015 poll, releasing their first album, Communion, the same year. It became 2015’s fastest-selling debut album from a UK-signed band.

‘I JUST WATCHED LIAM PAYNE TAKE HIS TOP OFF, BUT NOW I’M NOT ALLOWED TO?’

But despite the success, and the realisation that audiences were either supportive of – or simply unfazed by – the queerness of Years & Years’ music, there is always an anxiety for Alexander about just how accepting people are willing to be. “I’ll tell you for real,” says Alexander, “I go out on stage – even if it’s for our own audience – and I’m like, ‘What if some of them don’t like me? What if some of them have an issue with me today?’ I always feel like I’m going to try a bit harder next time, try to do a bit more.”

While the character of “Olly Alexander, Years & Years frontman” is one that bespangles its performer with confidence, being queer in the music industry isn’t always an easy thing to navigate. He remembers seeing a tweet from someone who said Alexander’s sexuality was a ruse to try to attract the pink pound – a term for the spending power of gay men – “And it had an impact on me, because I’ve consciously tried to [be openly gay] in a lot of circumstances where I wouldn’t normally. And then for someone...” He tries to think of how to put it and comes up short. “It can chip away at you.”

He wouldn’t change a thing about his success, he says, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when it isn’t hard to be out and proud while also getting your foot in the door. “When we’re playing a pop music festival, I’m looking at the other acts in the lineup and there aren’t that many gay people on them,” he says. “You see how quickly your show isn’t family friendly any more because I want to take my top off and I’m like, ‘Well, I just watched Jason Derulo and Liam Payne take their tops off and have all these women in underwear, but now I’m not allowed?’ What do you do with that?”

It’s A Sin marks a return to acting but, also, a chance to refresh Alexander’s musical batteries too. Following Years & Years’ second album – 2018’s Palo Santo – the third album was proving hard to pin down. “I’ve been trying to make this album for about 18 months at this point, stopping and starting, listening to all the songs and... it’s just not feeling relevant any more.” Alexander had always loved Russell T Davies’ work, so when he heard Davies was making a new TV show he “had to be in it. I would just jump at the chance to work with him. And that was before I read the script.” Years & Years had just finished touring Palo Santo and, to Alexander, it felt like the stars had aligned.

While the anxiety of performing queer sex scenes might have been particularly exposing for a gay man like Alexander, there were huge benefits for him being in a cast and crew that were predominantly LGBTQ+. “It was a revelation. I’ve never been on a set with so many queer people. I’ve never even worked with a gay director, so it was a completely new experience.” Plus, being asked to play part of a group of gay best friends, portrayed predominantly by gay actors, meant the chemistry came very quickly: “We understood these characters [with a] kind of shorthand that gay people understand.”

An inclusive, comfortable environment was beneficial for more than just sex scenes and simulating a decade of friendship. It’s A Sin also required its cast to grapple with the issue of HIV and aids, not just as a part of the furniture – as we do in the 21st century, with our knowledge of viral loads, sleeping with undetectable partners and new medications such as Prep – but really putting a forgotten part of British queer history under the lens, who it affected and how it changed the LGBTQ+ community irrevocably. “It’s an issue that is deeply surrounded by stigma and there’s a lot of trauma there and a lot of fear,” Alexander explains. “I know, personally, it was an area that I was scared to really engage with.”

He mentions that just before filming he made friends with an older gay couple at his gym and in talking about the show with them he was offered a rare opportunity to hear about personal experiences of the aids crisis. “It can be so difficult as a gay person to feel like you have intergenerational support,” says Alexander. “Elders are so important in our community. You can get so much from the people who have gone through so much before and fought that fight.”

For Alexander and the cast, It’s A Sin was a rare opportunity: a chance to be brought together with a whole group of men and women who were there at the time and who were willing to share their experiences with them. “I feel so lucky that I got to engage with that and keep learning. I was just scratching the surface and there are so many stories you can tell from this period. It’s impacted us all the way until now and it will in the future.”

Starring in It’s A Sin has also changed what Years & Years’ third album is going to sound like. After the initial writer’s block, Alexander says, he focused instead on the music of the show (Bronski Beat, Kelly Marie, the titular song by Pet Shop Boys) “and it really took my mind back to the club” – especially in the midst of a pandemic, when the queer nightlife venues that are the backbone of our community are so desperately missed.

“All the music I wanted to listen to in lockdown was high energy. It was dance floor. It was club music.” This was the music that had played such a huge role in his early life in London, had inspired the first Years & Years album and a genre that owes a great debt to the LGBTQ+ community. “I think at their heart, lots of these songs are about joy despite crushing pain. I just thought, ‘God, imagine hearing “I Feel Love” on the dance floor for the first time.’ What a transcendent experience that would be.”

‘ELDERS ARE SO IMPORTANT IN OUR COMMUNITY. YOU CAN GET SO MUCH FROM THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE FOUGHT THAT FIGHT’

And so Alexander went into the studio – as soon as it was safe to do so – and created a bunch of new songs. Is it easy to find collaborators behind the scenes who get it when he says, “I want it to feel like Britney meets Rihanna meets Hot Chip via New Order”?

“It can be a challenge to find someone that really understands,” admits Alexander. He recalled being sent round the songwriters and producers in Los Angeles that all artists are sent round at a certain point, “And some of those people are amazing – some amazing queer people as well – but predominantly... You know, they’re straight, so it can be quite challenging.”

Feeling safe with his collaborators hasn’t been an easy journey, but now he’s in a good place for it. He also pointed out that it’s not just queers who can understand his vision: his bandmates are straight, he points out – “I really believe in working with straight people! Some of my best friends are straight!” – and his frequent collaborator, the producer Mark Ralph, “is a real ally to us gays”, who was always willing to vibe along to Paris Hilton singles with him.

A new sound – a queerer sound – isn’t just a risk in a world where Alexander’s performances are held to double standards and the linchpins of queer culture can still be seen as synonymous with perversion. The impossible standards queer work is held to don’t just come from the straight world: gay men can be terrible recipients of work designed for them too.

Russell T Davies has dealt with it his entire career: “There’s the problem of lack of representation, but there’s the problem that when you are represented, it’s just not seen,” he explained when I spoke to him recently. “You just learn to cope. I worry about it. I probably worry about it more than I say here, but at the end of the day it’s never stopped me writing the next thing.” But he gets it because he, too, is a gay man who consumes art and he sees the same biases coming out when he watches other queer-centric work.

Yet he was amazed that artists younger than him are still dealing with the same crises: “It’s what comes with being a minority. It’s what comes of oppression and you kind of expect this to pass. But then you talk to young people like Olly, who’s a different generation from me, and you find them thinking the same things,” Davies said. “I was lucky to have my training during an age when you’d be lucky to get one review in the Times. Now you live in a world of reviewers.”

When I ask Alexander if he worries how gay men will respond to a gay artist’s work, it is no easier for him to respond than it was for Davies. “Oh, God, you’re making my heart race now,” he says, breathless. “I should be careful, because I don’t want to demonise anybody. But I tried to really unpack this myself and... I’ll just sort of say it.” It is clear that this is intense for him: his eyes are looking watery as he tries to phrase it delicately.

“I have this – I think irrational – anxiety about gay men tearing me down. And I tried to interrogate that within myself and I think it’s complicated, because a lot of it has to do with internalised phobias and shame, about how I see myself versus how other people see me.” He begins to cry. “What I do know is that I want them to not hate me. And I want to make the community proud. It’s been at the heart of pretty much every decision I’ve ever made. And I don’t know if I’ve always got it right.”

‘I HAVE THIS – I THINK IRRATIONAL – ANXIETY ABOUT GAY MEN TEARING ME DOWN’

It’s tough being an actor asked to shed light and humanity on a complex phase in British LGBTQ+ history; it’s just as tough to be a gay man trying to make pop music that speaks to the queer experience. But Alexander is doing both and, what’s more, he’s being unapologetically queer in the public eye. There aren’t many LGBTQ+ people in the position Alexander is in and it must be exhausting, I suggest, to be expected to speak for the needs and fears of an entire spectrum of sexual and gender identities. After all, he’s just one man who wants to be proud of who he is. “Sometimes, when I feel the most anxious, I have a voice in my head that goes, ‘Oh, Olly, why on earth did you put yourself in this position? You really are not the strong person people think you are.’” But, he says, he is learning he can’t speak for everyone, even if people expect it of him.

Instead, he’s focusing on being proud of what he’s done – the visibility, the audacity, the bravery – rather than the critique of his anxieties or Twitter trolls. “I’m always thinking about me as a teenager and how I’m creating the person I wanted to be in the world. I’m actually doing it! Holy fuck!”

[itsjackgilbert]

Situation Comedy

INSCRUTABLE MUSIC-VIDEO GENIUS MAKES MOVIE. IT'S VERY GOOD. INSCRUTABLE FILMMAKER DOES MAGAZINE INTERVIEW. IT'S VERY BIZARRE. A VERY SMALL GLIMPSE INTO THE INSULAR WORLD OF SPIKE JONZE, WHERE MAKING AWESOMELY STRANGE FILMS, WEARING FAKE PENISES, AND GETTING BEAT UP (SORT OF) ALL ARE PART OF THE SCENERY

BY ZEV BOROW

"He came to visit me once and when he first arrived I got a phone call that I had to come pick him up because his car had been impounded because he'd been chased by, like, ten cops on bikes after he drove his car onto these little fairgrounds and did a bunch of doughnuts. So, then I had to drive him around all weekend." — Three Kings director David O. Russell

"Actors are more consistent. They tend to land their tricks." — filmmaker Spike Jonze, on who is easier to direct, actors or skaters.

"He wanted his brother to be in Three Kings, so he shot an audition tape with his brother doing the Sharon Stone role in Basic Instinct, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It was the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen." — David O. Russell

I meet Spike Jonze at the production offices of his new movie, Being John Malkovich, which is a bizarre comedy about a love triangle between three people who find a secret portal into John Malkovich's head behind a file cabinet in an office building where the ceilings are four feet high. John Cusack and Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener are in it. So is John Malkovich. It's really good and weird and funny, though not always in that order. Spike Jonze directed it.

Jonze is 29 years old and sort of famous for directing some of the best music videos ever made: the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"; Fatboy Slim's "Praise You"; Weezer's "Buddy Holly"; Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet"; and other really good ones, too. He's also made some excellent commercials and two interesting short films. However, mostly because of the exceedingly cool videos he's done for, mostly, exceedingly cool people, Jonze has also become famous for being exceedingly cool. A wide and deep selection of the hippest people alive dig Jonze. They are his friends. This past July Jonze married actress, filmmaker, and fellow sort-of-famous person Sofia Coppola. Tom Waits sang at their wedding. Tom fucking Waits.

Jonze is small and wiry, with the body and demeanor of a skateboarder, which he is. He is relaxed, unfailingly polite, and has a voice suggesting a 15-year-old boy. When we meet he is wearing a T-shirt and scuffed-up $350 Marc Jacobs shoes. He tells me he's supposed to meet with Knox, an as-yet-unknown guitar player, to discuss ideas for his video and invites me along. But first we go to buy a big bag of cat food for his cat.

Jonze says Knox plays "sort of country-funkabilly-Prince-like music...really beautiful stuff." A friend gave him a tape, he says, and he fell in love with it. We get lost trying to find Knox's house.

When we finally arrive, Knox says he was asleep because Jonze was supposed to arrive hours ago. Jonze says he's sorry, that it must have been his assistant's fault. Knox is tall, with short, dark hair styled vaguely pompadour-ish. His apartment is small. Neil Young in on the CD player. An acoustic guitar rests in the corner.

"I'm the only one in the band, so I do the whole gig," Knox says. "My old man was a guitarist and my mother was, like...well, she was a capable pianist, not great. I'm from Tenness–Knoxville–that's why I go by Knox. My mother ahd a baby two years before me, a little boy, and it died at birth, and I am, like, the copy of that kid. And my little brother almost died at birth 'cause of me, so it's kind of all cyclical. But I'm still tweaking it. So, uh, what kind of ideas do you have?"

Jonze talks about making a video that's not very commercial, about something that's cool in and of itself.

Knox: "I just don't want it to be cute. Don't take this as an affront, but some of your videos are...cute. The 'Buddy Holly' thing was little fucking cute. I was thinking more of an early John Cugar-type of thing. Like 'Jack and Diane.' Maybe with some of the words on the bottom of the screen."

Jonze: "Uh, cool.... But it’s also cool to do something maybe not as literal.” He asks Knox if he wants to be in the video. Knox says maybe just his face, as a child.

Jonze says he could come over with a video camera and they could try some stuff out.

Knox: “Like what?”

Jonze: “Well, I don’t want to just throw stuff out.”

Knox: “Well, I’m not going to steal your stuff.”

Jonze laughs, sort of. There is an awkward silence.

Jonze: “How about a video with Xeroxes, just as a cool medium?”

Knox: “Yeah, well, that sounds schticky. Xeroxes are schticky.”

Jonze tries to say something about form. Knox says he likes “the Jazzercize” video Jonze did.

Jonze: “‘Praise you.’ Cool.”

Knox turns toward me and says he doesn’t think Spike looks very into it. Jonze says he doesn’t want to do anything he’s done already. He asks Knox if he saw the video he did for Sean Lennon.

Knox: “Nah. That guy’s too fuckin’ avant garde for me.”

Jonze: “No, I’m not saying that. It’s just I don’t want to make something silly out of your song, but at the same time....” He trails off.

There’s a tense silence, then Knox turns to me and asks if I have any ideas for videos. I tell him I don’t. Knox says “fuck,” loudly.

Jonze: “Look, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, and if you don’t really like my stuff maybe we shouldn’t work together. I like working with people who are....”

Knox: “Yeah, well...fuck.... Well, if you come up with some ideas, any ideas, call, but I just...shit.”

Jonze: “I should go.”

Jonze gets up. Knox begins to pace. Then he screams, “Fuck!” and throws a small wooden chair Jonze had been sitting on against the wall. It shatters.

Jonze: “Dude, chill.”

Knox: “I think you better leave!”

Jonze: “I was just....”

Knox: “Just fucking leave!”

Then Knox pushes Jonze into a wall, hard. I think to myself: Spike Jonze is about to get his ass kicked. Then, like a panther (or jaguar), Jonze jumps at Knox. They hit the floor. Jonze is on top of Knox, throwing punches at his head. After about 15 seconds, I pull them apart. Knox gets up and screams, “Wait right fucking there!” and runs into a back room. Jonze looks at me and says, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” and runs out the door, fast.

Knox jumps out from the back room, glowering and holding a baseball bat.

DRIVING AWAY, JONZE MUSES ABOUT HOW “HECTIC” things got with Knox. He repeatedly pushes his face toward the rearview mirror and asks if I think his eye looks swollen. It doesn’t. He says nothing like that has ever happened to him before, except once “with Everlast, but it never got physical.” We pull into a 7-Eleven and he gets a juice and some Advil.

I try to ask some more questions about the movie. “I’m apprehensive about talking about it at all,” he says, “because I feel like it’s going to cloud someone’s opinion. You think about all the movies you had preconceived notions about, about all the ones you read stuff about until you were sick of them before you even saw them.

SPIKE JONZE’S REAL NAME IS ADAM SPIEGEL. He isn’t interested in talking about why, or when, he started going by Spike Jonze, or how much it has to do with Spike Jones, the 1940s band leader, but it’s probably related to the fact he grew up hanging out with a lot of competitive BMX bikers similarly fond of pseudonyms and alter egos. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, a well-heeled suburb of Washington, D.C., where his mother enjoyed photography and his father enjoyed being the scion of an extremely successful family-owned catalog company. Jonze is the middle child (younger brother; older sister) and was into skateboarding, photography, lots of Dischord-era punk rock, and, most of all, BMX.

In the mid-’80s, BMXing’s popularity was exploding, and Jonze was spending much of his time at Rockville BMX, a legendary retail and mail-order BMX shop in nearby Rockville, Maryland. At age 15, he accompanied the Haro pro-BMX team on a summer tour of the U.S., serving as part-time roadie, contest announcer, T-shirt salesperson, and using an old 35-millimeter camera, team photographer. By the time he was 16, he was writing and taking pictures for skate and bike magazines. At 17, immediately after finishing high school, he moved to Torrance, California, to work at Freestylin’, the sport’s preeminent glossy. There, he met Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins, two kindred spirits.

“We were all living together in this apartment across the street from the magazine’s offices, in the Valley, which was like the epicenter of the skateboarding and BMX world,” says Lewman, who was 18 at the time and is now a creative director at Lambesis, a San Diego–based advertising agency that deciphers youth culture. “We’d skate to work, ride ramps, listen to Black Flag and Eric B. and Rakim, and get into adventures drinking Night Train, being weird, and stomping around downtown L.A.”

They’d also make zines. First, in 1991, Homeboy, then, two years later, Dirt. Clever and funny, they became popular with the 25-and-under, proto-extreme-sport, punk/rap-inclined hipster set. During this time, Jonze also started getting hired to take photos for magazines such as Details and Interview. And he began filming skateboarding videos, including one particular deft collaboration with ‘80s skate god Mark Gonzales titled Blind Skateboard Video.

One night, backstage at a Sonic Youth concert, Gonzales gave a copy of that tape to his friend Kim Gordon, who dug it so much that she asked Tamra Davis–who had just directed her first film, Gun Crazy, and had yet to become the wife of Beastie Boy Mike D.–to work with Jonze on shooting some skateboarding segments for Sonic Youth’s video for the song “100%.” He was 21.

Jonze has always lived in something of a rarefied world inhabited by bikers, skaters, emerging rock icons, and movie stars. Even so, he notes, he first met the Beastie Boys through his sister. She and Adam Yauch met in traffic school. The Beasties and Jonze share an appreciation for the absurd. Yauch and Jonze used to do things like rent police uniforms so they could direct traffic in Manhattan.

A few short years after “100%,” Jonze was established as America’s preeminent director of unusual music videos. This fact seemed to bore him. In 1998′s Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video, the one with the dancers in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Jonze credited the direction to Richard Koufey and the Torrance Community Dancers. To this day, Jonze denies having been a part of it. Earlier this year, a typed letter arrived at the Spin offices vehemently demanding Spin retract its report that Jonze directed the video. It was signed Richard Koufey and included a detailed résumé for Koufey that stated he was a dancer in the “Thriller” video, the “Love Shack” video, the film Dirty Dancing, and something called “Dancextravaganza” at the opening of a Dellamo Fashion Center.

IN ADDITION TO BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Jonze has another movie coming out, one in which he acts. It’s called Three Kings and was written and directed by David O’Russell. The two met when Jonze hired Russell to help him write a script for Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was to be a partially animated adaption of the children’s book, and Jonze’s feature-film debut, but never made it into production. Jonze costars in Three Kings with George Clooney, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg. They play four U.S. soldiers who try to steal a secret cache of Kuwaiti gold at the end of the Gulf War. It’s a different, very sharp war-genre picture. Jonze plays a redneck private who is the sidekick of Wahlberg’s more seasoned soldier.

“I’d never really acted before,” Jonze says. “A few little things with friends, but nothing serious. And it’s not like I really want to get into acting. But David was really into me doing it, and Mark was especially supportive. In some ways I feel like I had no right to do it. But it was a lot of fun.”

Russell recalls Jonze’s commitment to the project. “He stayed in character a lot on set, and I think he eventually regretted it because Mark started beating the shit out of him as if Spike was really his tagalong sidekick. We tried telling Mark to go easy on him, but he was in character too. I think Spike was upset that that was happening.

AMONG THOSE IMMERSED IN THE CULT of Spike Jonze, the Weird Al prank is infamous. As partially recounted in an issue of the Beastie Boys’ zine, Grand Royal, Mike D. and Russell Simins, the drummer for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, interviewed by Weird Al. During the interview, they got the conversation to come around to the Beatles. Precisely at that moment, they had Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono walk by and staged something weird and funny. No one at Grand Royal can remember exactly what happened, but it included Spike Jonze dressed up as a waiter.

I didn’t know of the Weird Al prank until weeks after meeting Jonze. As such, I spent a good portion of my evening immediately following the Knox vs. Jonze incident breathlessly telling friends all about their fight, until a friend, a longtime skater, looked at me and matter-of-factly said: “He staged it.”

Two days after the fight I go to meet Jonze for lunch, and, even though I’m not sure, I tell him I now that the afternoon with Knox was staged. Jonze demurs. “That would be gnarly” he says. “Maybe we should come back to this topic after lunch.

We pull into a Carl’s Jr. Things between us are slightly tense. I keep pressing him on the issue as we walk into the restaurant. Jonze doesn’t say anything until he’s just about to order at the counter, then he says we should walk outside. I follow him into the parking lot toward a parked black sedan. There is a guy in dark sunglasses sitting there, sipping on a Coke.

“Dude, it’s off,” Jonze says. “We’re busted.”

Jonze then reveals that he’d “planned something” for right there, right then, at the Carl’s Jr. We all had back inside the restaurant, where Jonze begins walking around the seating area and tapping on what appear to be lonely Carl’s Jr. diners on the shoulder. There are four of them, strategically placed; two have video cameras hidden on them, on has a regular camera. Two of them, including the guy from the car, who is Jeff Tremaine, the art director of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother, are wearing hidden microphones.

“This was going to be an all-out assault,” Tremaine says. “I was going to walk by and bump into Spike and my drink was going to fall all over me. And then I was going to get all jacked at Spike and knock some shit on him and get into a fight.”

“I was actually going to take a punch this time,” Jonze says, “but I was also going to bite down on some blood pellets.” He shows me two small capsules of fake blood. “I wanted the whole article to be about how I keep getting my ass kicked.”

“I was going to knock over the salad bar,” Tremaine says. “We were going to have the whole thing on tape. I twas going to be a turkey shoot, like Kennedy.”

“You are all extremely fucked up,” I tell them.

Jonze says he started planning for it late last night and tells everyone he’s sorry he didn’t go through with it. Tremaine tells Jonze that he was excited to punch him. Then, everyone tells me some stories of previous pranks, the best of which is described as simply the Hard-On One. It goes something like this:

The guy who played Knox yesterday–a friend of Jonze’s who also pulls stunts like getting himself hit by a car (for a Big Brother photo shoot) and shooting himself with a gun while wearing a bulletproof vest (for fun)–puts on a pair of flimsy gym shorts, out of which sticks a large, fake rubber penis. Then, he goes out and gets into a pickup basketball game. Next, he walks into a guitar store, where, when a salesman hands him a cord to plug in, the salesman is pulled toward the fake rubber penis. After that, he makes a quick stop at a karate studio, from which he is quickly removed. Finally, he goes to get measured for a tux, where, according to Jonze, the tailor exclaims [in a thick Indian accent], “What? You always run around with your dick sticking out?”

“It’s amazing,” Jonze says. “We’ve got the whole thing on tape.”

After Carl’s Jr., Spike lobbies me to concoct a wild, made-up story with him, one I could submit in lieu of the article. He’s got some funny, clever ideas for it, too.

“SPIKE DIDN’T GROW UP WATCHING A TON OF FILMS or even TV,” says Kim Gordon, who has known Spike ever since he worked on “100%.” “So he’s not tied to any sense of history image-wise, the way most people are. He just has a real instinctual feel for what people like. And he’s willing to try absolutely anything.”

“I think he kind of looks at everything like it’s a chance to take a golf cart and make it go 60 miles per hour,” says his old friend Lewman. “It’s always been about having a really good time.” Even so, by all accounts Jonze is meticulous, tireless even, whether it concerns a feature film, or taking down a Carl’s Jr. salad bar. His willingness to go to almost any lengths to maintain the integrity of any project–no matter how seemingly small, trivial, or twisted–is nothing short of spectacular. It is probably the one quality that best portends him making very good movies for a long time. A vast portion of Jonze’s creative energies are consumed by these tiny, hysterical performances that will never make any money, that are solely for the benefit of himself and his like-minded friends.

“But it’s not about being weird for weird’s sake,” Lewman says. “I mean, Malkovich is a movie that, at its heart, is about something everyone can relate to–desperately wanting to be someone else.... I think a lot of how [Jonze] looks at the world might come from skating and biking. You do that as a kid and you don’t look at things normally. You look at a hockey rink and see a place to skateboard. You look at a bench as a thing to do tricks off of.”

I SEE JONZE ONE MORE TIME. HE MAKES IT OBVIOUS he’d rather I not write about the Knox and Carl’s Jr. pranks. Further, he mostly turns off my tape recorder any time I start to ask him anything. He tells me he doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t want to come off as a guy who is lucky enough to make cool movies with big stars but is all petulant about talking to the press. He tells me again how anything he says as far as explanation of his own work is less interesting than someone’s own interpretation of his, or any, movie. About an hour passes. I ask him to name some of his favorite movies and filmmakers.

“I like stuff that is unpredictable in terms of tone,” he says. “I like Tim Burton, The World According to Garp, Being There, all the Coen brothers’ stuff. I feel really lucky to even have the opportunity to try to make those kinds of movies.”

I ask about his movie, about what Malkovich was like.

“He’s just amazing. Really genuinely eccentric. He heard about the script and contacted us, loved the idea. It was weird because he plays himself in the movie, but it’s not really him, it’s the script’s idea of him. Whenever I see him do the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment, I’m like, this guy is my hero.”

The Dance of Despair and Disillusionment is reason alone to see Being John Malkovich. In the movie, John Cusack plays a puppeteer who enters the body of John Malkovich and forces him to give up acting for puppeteering. At one point, Malkovich acts out the dance he wants to be his ultimate master-puppeteer work, the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment. Just out of the shower, he acts it out in a towel. David Fincher, the director of Seven and Fight Club, fellow former music-video director, and close friend of Jonze, calls it “up there with Butch and Sundance jumping off the cliff, as far as greatest movie moments ever go.”

I try to get Jonze to talk about other things, videos, his commercial work. (Jonze often shoots commercials, the most recent being Lee Jeans’ “Buddy Lee” spots.) He won’t. A few days later, we talk on the phone. He asks how I’ve decided to “handle” the article, says he knows I’ll write “something good.” The next day, I call him back, ask him to clear up some factual stuff, dates he worked on things, how he first met certain people. He’s not into it. But, before we get off the phone, he does answer one question.

Me: Where did the idea for the “Sabotage” video come from?

Jonze: “Australia.”

[cepmurphy]

“I always think I’m rid of them. Never am.”– Resolution

S11 ends with It Takes You Away and then Resolution, and I will accept no arguments.

There’s a cliché that a Doctor isn’t truly one until they’ve fought the Daleks. They’re the one foe just as iconic as the Doc. They’re a British icon. They’re so cool, they could have 50% of their TV appearances be a bit crap and we still want them. They’re almost certainly what the BBC said “Chibnall, you HAVE to include them if we let you have all this freedom on the other episodes” about.

But how will they fit here, in the more grounded and less flashy S11?

Chibnall cannily takes the Russell T Davies approach: there’s just one Dalek, it’s loose on Earth, and we see how dangerous it is because that one single, solitary Dalek is pushing the Doctor to the brink. This will also start off moving the Christmas Specials to New Year’s, and it harkens back to the old RTD approach there again – this, a time of year when everyone’s got free time and families are vegging out together in front of the telly, so now’s the time for a crowd-pleasing thrill ride.

And what a ride! We’ve had runarounds and battles and the like before, but the budget is stretched as far as it will go here, a story of car chases down real highways and tanks trading fire with aliens and a climax in front of a supernova! This is a real battle, and not on Ranskoor Av Kolos!

There are parts where the plot doesn’t quite work and veers into the same now-it’s-3407-years-later stabs at being ‘epic scifi’ for the sake of it: the Order of Custodians are really a nothing thing with little explanation (how did the Custodians found it when they’re so far apart?), there’s a company buying up alien tech on the black market (WHAT?!) but they’re just to explain a Dalek gun (couldn’t it be from the dig?). The joke that with no power, families are forced to talk to each other is lame at the best of times but jars when it comes surrounded by scenes taking the Dalek’s threat entirely seriously. But unlike Battle or Tsuranda, the episode is charging ahead so fast and doing so much fun stuff that it’s easier to ignore.

Before the Dalek, because there’s a lot I want to talk about there, the humans.

Mitch and Lin, our meet-cute archaeologists, are very quickly sketched out as characters and a couple in their first minute, with Mitch needing clarification about a kiss particularly adorable. We care about her quickly, which makes the Dalek’s takeover of her all the more painful. (Though points deducted for how, at the end, she seems over being made to kill people! Points deducted too for Yaz never having a reaction to fellow Sheffield police being killed)

Ryan, Graham, and Aaron are, of course, the main human activity. After a series of build-up, Ryan’s dad is here and we can’t blame Graham for immediately going “no” and shutting the door on him, not after all we’ve heard. But Aaron is not what we’ve been led to expect: he’s not cold, he’s not unfeeling, he’s not abusive. (Or not intended to be seen as abusive, as there is a reading of him as emotionally abusive) What he is, is pathetic and needy and aware he’s pathetic, but unable to express things. He hopes he can just sidle back in, and he’s frustrated to find Ryan and Graham (who won’t even look at Aaron) have bonded, and angry he’s being treated like this.

But over the course of S11, Ryan has been getting better at expressing himself instead of bottling things up. Here’s where that ends: being able to tell his dad exactly how he feels. “Don’t come walking back in, demanding respect, because that ain’t where we are.” He’s able to express that his dad made him feel like he was unworthy of being loved; he’s able to express exactly what Aaron needs to do and say.

Aaron can’t express well. In the café scene, Aaron is bigging up the microwaves he helped make and he so clearly wants Ryan to be impressed, and is pained when he realises “I make it sound like a con. So maybe I’m not cut out for that.” When he finally admits his failings and weaknesses, it takes work, and Ryan is not sympathetic (and would you expect him to be?). Graham is the one who, despite all his contempt and anger for Aaron earlier in S11 and this very episode, is sympathetic enough to reach out to the man who he was once afraid would take his grandson away. He’s old enough to ask why Aaron didn’t come to Grace’s funeral for his own sake, to break down the last barrier – that Aaron was scared to accept the death.

While Aaron will go on to help stop the Dalek, the way S11 runs, the moment he breaks and admits “I wish I was better at life” and can express his failings so they can be fixed is the point where he can be redeemed. In S11, male characters have been repressed and needed to get past it to be better people, for their own sake and for others.

(Yaz, neatly, does not need that – her immediate response is to help Ryan, telling him that he and his dad can have a conversation in a very nearby café. Also the Doctor, the voice of the show’s moral code, the character who bluntly cuts to the chase for Aaron where others don’t: “You let him down.”)

And with humans done, the Dalek.

The Recon Dalek is one of the most formidable showings we’ve seen from the pepperpots in years. It’s cruel, it’s cunning, it has the highest on-screen bodycount of the entire series, it takes the Doctor’s entire team to stop it and then keeps coming anyway. It also gets a whole new bag of tricks we’ve not seen from a Dalek before, as now it can forcibly control another’s body and outgun a bloody tank. When it wipes out soldiers, smoke drifts over a battlefield like you’ve just watched a war drama.

And with the creature loose from its armour and possessing Lin half the time, we get a new reading on old cliché lines like “you are an enemy of the Daleks”. There’s a glee in it when it comes through a human mouth. ‘Lin’ smiles when she kills; the Dalek is enjoying this. This nastiness brings us back to the recurring horror beats of S11. The Dalek is scary again. (The massacre of GCHQ is a good example: nothing but distant, terrified screaming as SOMETHING comes your way. Also the clear pain Aaron’s in when the Dalek is jammed into his spine.)

But there’s more there. This is the Dalek equivalent of The Woman Who Fell To Earth.

The Dalek is completely unarmed and powerless and unaware where it is when it pops up in Sheffield, just like the Doctor was. The Dalek turns to the nearest people for aid, just as the Doctor did. The Dalek has to improvise with what’s around it to defeat a better-armed foe, just as she did. And just like the Doctor built her new sonic, the Dalek constructs its new shell out of scrap and welding. The Doctor is aware how the Dalek thinks, and it thinks a lot like she does.

As with last episode, the Doctor is using technobabble a lot more than she does in most of S11 – but this time, it’s barely working. Instead of being a handy resolution for a plot, it’s part of a battle of wits against a Dalek. Have a magic scanner? The Dalek can block it. Hack the city’s traffic cameras? The Dalek knew you would. Hack satellites? Not enough. Eventually what does stop it is practical engineering with the microwave, but even there, the Dalek adapts.

All of this, again, the sort of thing the Doctor does! The Dalek even ignores when the Doctor mocks its apparent weakness, just as she ignored Tim Shaw in her first go. Just as in Dalek, they’re two sides of the coin but unlike that story (or Inside The Dalek), it’s more that the Dalek would make a good Doctor. The Doctor wins, sure, but it’s a very close thing. How does she win in the end? As she did in Woman Who Fell, collaborating with a group of disparate people with something to offer. The Dalek, in the end, has no one but the Dalek, and that’s what beats it. One last thing: “I’m so sorry, UNIT operations have been suspended pending review… following financial disputes and subsequent funding withdrawal by the UK’s major international partners.” If you have to write UNIT out for a story, that’s a hilarious way to do it.  Nobody wanted to pay for defending Earth. That’s a political jab that’s not likely to age for a long time! ** Tomorrow, S12 starts. We’ve seen more monsters in the trailer than S11 had. There’s implications of an arc. S12 may be quite different from S11, it may go for a bigger scope and more monstrous foes that are monsters, and that can lead to good episodes. But S11 was something new – it was a version of the show where smaller stakes were still important, where practical work saved the day, where the alien could be benign and the humans the great threat. It stands as a model of another way you can do the show.

[alphacentauriiswatchingyou-blog]

Steven Moffat Appreciation Day 2017: DWM Production Notes

With the end of the Moffat-era we are not just losing Steven’s writing talent on the screen, but also in the monthly DWM column in which he answers questions from readers of the magazine, sometimes serious, sometimes less so. Here are some of my favourites: 

Is the Doctor's accent innate or part of the TARDIS' translation system? While people and lizards from Earth hear the Doctor speak with a Scottish accent, would beings from other planets hear him speak with a totally different accent?

The Scottish accent is prevalent throughout the universe because it is so sexy. That's one hell of an evolutionary advantage.

How do you think the other Masters would react to Missy if they ever met?

Oh, I've given it thought! Surely there's fan fiction already? There must be - to your work, if not! The impossible one, of course, is the Delgado/Gomez simmer-fest - but oh, imagine! Hooded gazes at dawn! Sneers like sword slashes! Sexy prowls, cat-like circling! In no time flat, a country cottage, three kids and a Volvo.

One summer evening, as they both puff away in the cigar gazebo, watching the children (identical girl triplets, dead white and levitating) rebuilding the lawn mower into a nuclear reactor using Master Plan Q, the question inevitably arises...

THE MASTER: My dear, you've never exactly told me who you are.

MISSY: You're always so busy, trying to drain the world's oceans, or rob banks with dinosaurs - 

THE MASTER: I just want the kids to have a future. 

MISSY: Then why do you keep trying to blow up the planet? 

THE MASTER  Must we always take this attitude to my work? 

MISSY: Or freeze the polar ice caps. 

THE MASTER: That was a simple administrative error. 

MISSY: Don't you think there might be a clue in my name? 

THE MASTER: Missy? 

MISSY: Tiny bit of a clue? 

THE MASTER: I have long suspected there was some cunning word play involved. Some abtruse hint as to your true identity, of some fiendish complexity and subtlety that it eludes even my mighty Time Lord brain. Is it short for Mistress, though? 

MISSY: Yep. 

IN THE GARDEN, THE TRIPLETS OBSERVE THE TWO CIGAR TIPS GLOWING MORE BRIGHTLY FOR A MOMENT IN THE SHADOWS OF THE GARDEN. 

THE MASTER: My dear, do you think the triplets ever get lonely?

AND FROM THE HAPPY HOME, THE REST IS SILENCE. EXCEPT FOR THE NIGHTLY SING-A-LONG OF THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

In Kill the Moon Clara is very upset at the prospect of killing a big chicken. Yet in The Time of the Doctor she is seen gleefully roasting a turkey! How can she care so much for one type of poultry and so little for another?

Oh, for God's sake! It's not a turkey inside the moon, is it? It's a giant, pregnant space dragon and some spiders. Have you no grasp of physics?! Has Doctor Who taught you nothing?!

RUSSELL T DAVIES asks: I love your list in DWM 482 of the Doctor's many wives. Did you ever think we'd be having that conversation, 10 years ago? But... what's this? His marriage to Queen Elizabeth the First was unconsummated? But, but, but... in The End of Time Part One, the Tenth Doctor arrives on the Ood-Sphere to greet his old friend Ood Sigma with the words, "Got married. That was a mistake. Good Queen Bess. And let me tell you, her nickname is no longer... ahem." So, what does that mean, boss? What can it possibly mean?? Steven, what does it MEAN??? Thank you.

Oh for God's sake. PAY ATTENTION. You've gone soft up there in Manchester. Practically tofu, I'd say. Probably all that lazing about, never writing any episodes for me, even though I wrote six for you. Yes, SIX. Actually, no, SEVEN. Time Crashcounts too - and it was for charity. But never mind, oh no, I'll just type on and on and neglect my children, that's fine.

Okay, the facts. I said the marriage was unconsummated - and so it was. You saw for yourself in The Day of the Doctor - he ran straight off after the ceremony. Would we have put that on television if it wasn't true? But I never said - not once, not ever - that the relationship was unconsummated!

Yes, Russell! I went there. Even as you gasp and clutch the furniture for support, I am writing in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine about pre-marital shenanigans! I realise you've probably never heard of such unsanctified naughtiness - glancing at your resume, I see you write mainly about fruit and veg for Channel 4 - but it does go on, you know. Well, outside of Manchester.

So there you are. You may sleep again. The Doctor's boast in The End of Time (oh, and thanks for that title, just before I took over) and my statement that his marriage to Elizabeth was unconsummated are in no way contradictory. True fact! Accept my True Face. Back away in shame at your wrongness.

Actually, write me a story, and we'll say no more about it.

I read an article that said there was a TARDIS flooding scene in an episode of the 2012 series that was cancelled due to Karen Gillan being unable to swim. Could you elaborate on that further, please?

We decided not to drown Karen. There was a meeting. We voted.

Do you have any plans in store for the Cyber-Brigadier? Or will he just be left in limbo, protecting Kate wherever she goes?

Oh God, can you imagine. It's the spin-off: "My Dad's A Cyberman!"

KATE: Dad, please don't sit in my office. CYBERBRIG: Just sorting out a few things for you... KATE: Really, we're fine. CYBERBRIG: You've got far too many people. All you need is a Sergeant, maybe an occasional Captain, and a nice family car for you all to drive around in. Keeps the Earth perfectly safe! KATE: It's changed days, Dad. CYBERBRIG: And why don't have a big sign outside - UNIT HQ, with your name on it? Does you good to see your name on a big sign. KATE: Well, we are supposed to be a top secret organisation. CYBERBRIG: Yes, yes - you put 'Top Secret' on the sign. Have I taught you nothing about security?! And for goodness' sake, why do you have all these women about the place? How much tea do you need? KATE: They're scientists. CYBERBRIG: Scientists?! Have we been infiltrated? Evacuate the building, I'll lure them into a nuclear reactor. KATE: They work here. CYBERBRIG: They what?! You only need one scientist, Kate. A funny one, with silly clothes, that's the ticket. Give him a tiny little office and a table, he'll be perfectly happy. KATE: I'm a scientist. Science leads, that's what you taught me. CYBERBRIG: Exactly! Science leads! But only if you let it. Round them all up, put them in booths, waterboard any trouble-makers - KATE: Dad, you're getting excited again! Your moustache has slipped. CYBERBRIG: Oh, no, has it? It's this face, it's a bit slippery - like all aliens. I say, Kate - do you think people know my moustache isn't real? KATE: I think they always did.

Since the earliest days, whenever we viewers follow the Doctor into the TARDIS, he seems to take quite some time getting to the console before the TARDIS takes off. But when we stay outside, the door barely has time to close before dematerialisation occurs. What's your in-universe explanation for this quirk?

Oh, you and me both! I've worried about that for years. And in fact, decades before I got anywhere near Doctor Who, I came up with an answer. It's not in the show - it is not canonical - but I offer it up.

The TARDIS knows the future. Or rather, the TARDIS makes no distinction between past, present and future - for any time machine, time is all one long event stream, hanging there in causality, unmoving and unchanging. In other words the TARDIS already knows when its connection to real time and space will no longer be necessary, in any given part of the event stream. So as the Doctor and friends move towards the console, in the world outside the doors, the TARDIS has already fast-forwarded to the take-off the Doctor is about to perform.

Any good? Got something better? All head canons are equal!

How come the Doctor allowed River Song to go freely with her vortex manipulator but he kept disabling Jack's?

Every time he grabs River's wrist, it all goes very wrong.

[In Heaven Sent] who put the chalk marks around the missing paving slab, and who buried the slab in the ground? Was it whoever created the trap?

Oh, this is... wrong somehow. I figured out, in detail, how the Doctor's first few trips round the castle worked, but I deliberately buried it. I wanted atmosphere and mystery: for us to be trapped in the Doctor's nightmare, never sure what to trust. And I particularly liked (and still like) the idea that everyone would have a different theory about the logic. Peter Capaldi has one version, Rachel Talalay has another, and in a moment you'll have mine. But mystery and discussion is better, I swear.

So. What follows is not canonical. It's just the best I could work with from what the Doctor told me. Frankly, and with all my heart, you're better off not reading what comes next. Never trust answers - they're the opposite of conversation.

Okay...

The first time round the castle, the Doctor is there for many years - because there is no clue leading him to room 12. He's ancient by the time he understands that room 12 is important. It's a very old man who starts punching the wall...

After a few thousand years of this, he realises he's going too slowly. He needs to get the next version of himself into room 12 faster. But how to leave a message in a recycling puzzle box that a man like him would ever trust?

One ancient version of the Doctor doesn't punch the wall. He totters back out of the chamber before the veiled creature can arrive, and scratches the words 'I AM IN 12' in every nook and cranny he can find. He chooses that message because it sounds a little like a cry for help, and that always appeals to him. The next Doctor might even be fooled into thinking it's Clara. Oh, the cruelty of the Doctor to himself!

He knows that some of those hidden messages might just survive, because he knows the castle reset isn't perfect - the dust in the teleport room, the skulls in the water, the way the portrait of Clara he painted (of course it was him, the soppy old fool) has aged. Suspecting that objects moved from rooms, or added to them, sometimes can resist the reset, he pulls a scratched-on flagstone from the kitchen floor and buries it in the garden (later Doctors add the details of the arrows and the spade). It's this message - one of only two that manage to survive - that he always finds. The loop shrinks, the Doctor is younger as he punches the wall, and the Time Lords tremble as the storm grows closer.

The other message that survived? In my head - and I suppose, only there - 'I AM IN 12' is also written on the back of Clara's portrait. The trouble is, the Doctor draws too much strength from her smile ever to turn her face to the wall...

There are many more and I recommend to read them all. You can find a lot of them on reddit or on here. I really hope old chibs keeps this up, but I know it will never be as glorious as the answers of Steven “Master Selfcest Fanfic Writer” Moffat.

[asarahworld-writes]

@timepetalsprompts Doomsday free-for-all + @doctorroseprompts Doomsday month other Doctor’s getting involved

Notes: All recognizable dialogue (italicized) taken directly from ‘Doomsday’ as written by Russell T Davies.

“But it's like you said. We've all got Void stuff. Me too, because we went to that parallel world. We're all contaminated. We'll get pulled in.”  Rose said, her brow furrowed.

“That's why you've got to go.”  The Doctor looked at her.  The computer said something, but Rose wasn’t paying it any mind.  “Back to Pete's world. Hey, we should call it that. Pete's World. I'm opening the Void, but only on this side. You'll be safe on that side.”

“And then you close it, for good?” Pete.  She’d forgotten that he was there.  Rose briefly wondered when her not-father was going to leave.

“The breach itself is soaked in Void stuff. In the end it'll close itself. And that's it. Kaput.”  The Doctor explained.

“But you stay on this side?”  Always self-sacrificing, always trying to keep her safe.  She’d told him that she was never going to leave, hoping beyond hope that he’d eventually believe her.

“But you'll get pulled in.”  Mickey.  He’d ended up to be friends, of a sort, with the Doctor.  He’d grown so much over the last few years.  Rose knew that she’d miss him desperately, but she also knew that staying with the Doctor was the only thing she could do.

“That's why I got these.  I'll just have to hold on tight. I've been doing it all my life.” For a genius, the Doctor certainly could be thick.

“I'm supposed to go.”  Her voice was thick with disbelief.

“Yeah.”  His voice was dead.

“To another world, and then it gets sealed off.”  He wasn’t going to do this her, not again.

“Yeah.”

“Forever. That's not going to happen.”

“We haven't got time to argue. The plan works. We're going. You too. All of us.”  It was Pete.

“No,” Rose said firmly.  “Mum, you go with Pete to the other universe.  Twenty years without Dad, you have a second chance.  To get it right.  Happily ever after.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Jackie said, affronted.

“Mum, you’ve got to.  I've had a life with you for nineteen years, but then I met the Doctor, and all the things I've seen him do for me, for you, for all of us. For the whole stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, mum. But not anymore, because now he's got me.”  Rose turned sharply to face the Doctor.  “And don’t you dare.  Don’t you dare send me away, not again.  I’ve been remembering things, bits and pieces, from the Game Station. You didn’t sing a song to the Daleks and they just ran away.  You died, and it was all my fault, wasn’t it?”

“Rose,” the Doctor gaped.  “We don’t have time-”

“No, Doctor, we don’t.  Tell me the truth.  I was the Bad Wolf, wasn’t I?  All the times those words appeared, it was me, wasn’t it?”  Rose pressed.

“If I say yes, will you go with Pete and Jackie?”  The Doctor asked carefully, his voice flat.

“No,” Rose said fiercely.  “Tell me the truth.  I killed you, didn’t I?”  Her face fell, her hand flew to her mouth.  “I killed you,” she said faintly.

“No, Rose, but,” he was cut off.

“No, Doctor.  Because I remember, mostly.  Jack’s not rebuilding the Earth, is he?  He’s dead.” Rose’s voice broke.  “Jack’s dead, and I killed you.  That’s why you’re sending me away, isn’t it?  I’m too dangerous to be runnin’ about in space and time.”  She waited for him to deny it.  He didn’t. “That settles it.  Mum, you’ve got to go.  I love you, and we had twenty years together and then I met the Doctor. It’s like what I told you before, the last time he tried to send me away.”

Jackie opened her mouth, as if to protest, then closed it, nodding.  “Of course, sweetheart.”  She pulled her daughter in close.

“I love you, Mum,” Rose choked.

“I love you,” Jackie held her daughter a moment longer, then stepped back to Pete. Before anyone could stop her, she’d looped two hoppers round their necks and they disappeared back to Pete’s World.

Systems rebooted. Open access.

“Those coordinates over there, set them all at six. And hurry up.”  The Doctor snipped.  She wasn’t supposed to be here.  Time was in flux, he could see new timelines opening up.

Levers operational.

“That's more like it. Bit of a smile. The old team.”  Rose grinned.

“Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake.”

“Which one's Shiver?”

“Oh, I'm Shake.”  The Doctor produced a pair of Magnaclamps.  “Press the red button.”  He was about to say more when a gust of wind whistled through the corridor, accompanied by a faint wheezing.  There, about two feet behind them, the TARDIS was materializing.

“I thought the TARDIS was parked in that loading area,” Rose said curiously.

“She is.” The Doctor frowned.  “Time’s in flux,” he commented, sounding surprised.

A older man stepped out of the new TARDIS.  “Rose,” his voice was distinctly Scottish, “in the TARDIS.  Pretty Boy, shut up -” (“I didn’t say a word,” the Doctor protested.) “and allow me to fix my timeline.

“You’re me?”  The Doctor said incredulously.  “I regenerate into…that.”

“I’d forgotten how vain I was,” the man commented.  “Rose, please go in the TARDIS.  It’s the safest place you could possibly be.”  His face was lined, but his eyes were ancient.  Looking into them, Rose felt the same sensation as when she’d looked into the Doctor’s eyes just after he’d regenerated.

“Hello,” she said, uncertainly.  “Won’t the Reapers come?”

“Time’s in flux.  What was about to happen, what I’ve averted from happening, was not a fixed point.  Which is how he failed to see it coming. Of course, I’m still changing my personal history, but,” he took Rose’s arms in his hands, “you are worth it. Always.”

“Doctor,” Rose looked into his eyes.  “How long?”

“Too long,” was his only verbal response.  “But,” he clapped his hands together, “that’s what we’re changing isn’t it? Exciting, I know, but Rose, you need to stay in the TARDIS.  You’ll be safe there, even if the Reapers come.  And your safety is paramount.  If anything happens to Sandshoes there, he’ll regenerate.  Not entirely certain what would happen to me after that, but that’s not important.  If anything happens to me without something happening to him, I’ll regenerate.  But you,” he kissed her forehead, “you, Rose, can not regenerate and therefore must stay in the TARDIS.”  The new Doctor made eye contact with his younger self.  “When Rose looked into the Vortex, she became the Bad Wolf.”

“I know that just as well as you do.”  The Doctor said crossly.

“Jack’s immortal.”

“I know that too,” the Doctor hissed.  “Why else did we leave him there?  A fixed point in time held inside the TARDIS?”

“You know, but you don’t understand,” the Doctor said, his voice sharpened by his Scottish accent.

“Understand what?  You’ve clearly had ample time to think this over, Doctor.”

“Bad Wolf left herself a key, hidden in her mind, to let her out of the box we locked her in.  It was burning Rose’s mind, so we took it out of her.  But in her wake, she left the potential to change Rose’s brain chemistry, to create a fixed point in time that was constantly in flux.”  The older Doctor finished dramatically.  The Doctor blinked.  “Right now, if you look at Rose, her timeline is in flux.  Bad Wolf saw this during the events at the Game Station and manifested herself a nice little niche in the back of Rose’s mind so that she could come back.”

“We don’t have time for this, Doctor,” the Doctor snapped.  “Any minute, the Cybermen will be here and we’ve got to be ready to dump them into the Void.  It’s our only chance.”

“Quite right,” the Doctor replied.  “It’s our only chance.  Not Rose’s.  And if Rose waits for us in the TARDIS while we deal with the Cybermen, then we can help her.”  He looked past his younger self to Rose.  “But if you lose her to Pete’s World today, then I can’t help her.”

Rose looked from the older Doctor to her Doctor.  “He’s you.  I trust you absolutely.  I’ll wait in the TARDIS, but you had better come back and explain what’s going on.  Both of you.”  She turned to walk back but stopped when the older Doctor called her name.

“In my timeline, I never had the oppor-, I never took the opportunity.”

“Opportunity?  What opportunity?”

“Any of them.  There were so many times that I wanted to do this,” he broke off, placing his hands on her cheeks.  Rose looked into his eyes, knowing what he wanted to do.

“Doctor,” she whispered, closing her own eyes trustingly.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, kissing her forehead.  “Rose Tyler.  Now, TARDIS, go.”  He smiled reassuringly, before turning back to the younger Doctor.  The Doctor waited until Rose had shut the door to his TARDIS to speak.  “Before you say a word, know that I am taking full responsibility for changing my own timeline.  You know that Time is in flux, a fixed point is being altered.  Yes, it was a fixed point in time, but not any more.”

“How did you change it?”  The Doctor asked.

“Spoilers,” the Doctor replied, after a moment of silence.  “The Cybermen will be – ” he was cut off by a Dalek.

“Magna-clamp and lever NOW!”  The Doctor shouted urgently, his Scottish accent thick.  The younger Doctor followed suit immediately.  “Open the breach and the Void will suck up the Daleks and Cybermen.”  The older Doctor threw something to his younger self.  “Tie yourself to the clamp.  If you get sucked into the Void, it’ll cause a paradox.”

“No thanks to you.”  The Doctor gritted his teeth, tying himself up nonetheless.

“I’m changing my personal timeline, doing what you ought to have done in the first place.”

“If this works, you might fade from existence,” the younger Doctor spat.  “Why would you,” he stopped, realization dawning on his face.

“This was the day I lost her.  Because of my own arrogance and thick-headedness, I didn’t think clearly enough to save Rose.  And even though she had a happy ending, a new beginning even, I am far too old and selfish not to save her if I can.”  The Doctor said quietly.  “And as for what happened after I lost her, well, I’ve no doubt that TARDIS will still take you where you need to go.  Where I needed to go,” he said, clearly briefly reminiscing of a memory.  The Doctor knotted a rope to his own magna-clamp, knowing that his lever would slip.  He’d just gotten a new regeneration cycle after all, and he didn’t fancy spending it entirely in the company of Jackie Tyler without his TARDIS.

“How long?” The younger Doctor asked softly.  “Tell me how long it’s been since today for you.”

“I don’t know.  Twenty-four years on Darillium, two thousand years in the confession dial, nine hundred years on Trenzalore… it’s added up.”

“So why now?”

“Because it was only when I saw my wife for the last time that I realized how much I’d truly loved Rose.”  The Doctor admitted.  “I say wife, only because she said husband and it became a habit. River loved to banter, and who was I to deny her?  Not when I was all she had left, because I lost her parents.”  The Doctor looked up and saw the approaching Cyber-army.  “Levers, now.”

The void opened.  Daleks and Cybermen were flying past the two Doctors.  Dalek Sec once more manages to save himself, but the Genesis Ark speeds into the void.  The Doctor knows that the lever is about to slip and tests his knots.  They hold.  He closes his eyes, then lets go of the clamp.  The lever falls.  It takes all his energy to move it upright once more, but he manages.  His rope is taut, and his arms are longer than Rose’s, and he easily reaches the lever, collapsing over it in a heap.  Just as it did for Rose in his original timeline, as soon as it locks in upright, the suction of the Void becomes much stronger. He holds on as the Void seals, collapsing in a heap on the ground.  It’s over. And Rose is safe.

[denimbex1986]

'Doctor Who star Jacqueline King has paid tribute to her co-star and on-screen father Bernard Cribbins as he returned to the show in Wild Blue Yonder.

It's the first time in 15 years that Cribbins has returned to Doctor Who, and it was his final role before he died in July 2022 at the age of 93. He played Wilf, grandfather to Catherine Tate's Donna and father to King's character Sylvia.

The final scenes of the second 60th anniversary special showed the Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna (Tate) opening the TARDIS doors and stumbling across Donna's grandfather, Wilf, with the world in chaos, presumably heralding the arrival of Neil Patrick Harris's Toymaker in the next special.

Remembering her beloved co-star, King exclusively told RadioTimes.com: "I was just the most fortunate person in the world to have him as a friend, not just a work colleague.

"We had another memorial for him this year. We were at his funeral last year when he died, and then friends and relations organised a beautiful memorial only a couple of months ago. And it was reiterated that, of course, he brought joy and humour and fun and fabulous acting, but what was emphasised was that he was a fantastic friend, he rang people on their birthdays and was just really, really attentive and sweet and supportive.

"When Catherine was in a play in the West End, we went together to go and support her. So he was a true gentleman, an adorable man."

Cribbins filmed just the one Doctor Who scene before his death, with a dedication at the end of the episode reading: "In loving memory of Bernard Cribbins, 1928 to 2022."

Cribbins's return to Doctor Who for the 60th anniversary specials was confirmed by David Tennant earlier this year, who said: "I am thrilled to say that – although very sadly he wasn't in those episodes as much as we hoped – he was on set with us and Wilfred lives on.

"Bernard is much missed and much grieved for, but I am so excited that his final screen performance will be [one] I had the great honour of being part of, and you'll see it all on your screens."

He also appeared in behind-the-scenes footage of the read-through, with showrunner Russell T Davies saying: "The whole room sighed when Bernard Cribbins said his first line."

Outside of Doctor Who, Cribbins was known for his appearances in the Carry On films, as well as The Railway Children, and his various roles in children's TV, including voicing The Wombles and being the most-featured celebrity storyteller on BBC series Jackanory.'

[the-witching-ash]

The 11 Question Tag

1. Always post the rules                                                                                

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you.

3. Write 11 questions on your own.

4. Tag 11 people

Tagged by @dannifielding

Question 1) What are some of your favorite childhood cartoons that you remember and love? Here are the main ones. For Cartoon Network: Teen Titans,  Powerpuff Girls, and  Codename: Kids Nest Door. Disney: Proud Family and Phineas and Ferb.

Favorite stuffed animal and what did I name it) Back story - there's a store in my state that a barn that sell Harley Davidson stuff. I can't remember how young I was but one time In the kids section I found a stuffed dog with a HD bandana - I think its a gold lab, got it and basically called it Puppy - I was young and couldn't think of any thing else! I'm 20 and can't sleep without him!

Favorite color(s): the main colors I used when redecorating my room - Teal and Black.

4) What fandom are you currently focus on? The musical Hamilton, for which I named my familes new puppy after. Fox's Gotham is the big one. The CW - DC Superhero shows, The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and sort-of Super Girl. I have a deep love for Once Upon A Time. Does Disney overall count a fandom? Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and their respective sub-fandoms. I watch and love Doctor Who, but am currently not active to due being an American who does not have BBC and have not watched seasons 9/10.

5) Childhood/Current Character Crushes: Childhood: Robin from Teen Titans. Current: The beast from the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast.

6) Current Job/Dream Job/ Is Current job your dream job? Current Job: I work at a rest area, so its not my dream job. My dream job is to one day run/own my own Library, and i'm currently taking classes to reach that goal some day!

7) What is your favorite book? An unpopular choice, but Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Askaban.

8) Who is/are your best friends? Don't really have any.

9) Do you have any pets? What are their names? Two cats and a dog. The cats are named Popcorn and Tator. The Dog is named Hamilton, as I stated in the fandom question.

10) If you could meet any one in the world, past and present, who would it be? I like this one a lot! Past: Queen Elisabeth 1st,  Alexander Hamilton, the deceased actors who played The Doctor, Elisabeth Sladen, and the creators of that wonderful, crazy show! Present: Queen Elisabeth 2nd, @dannifielding J.K Rowling, The living actor who played the doctor (Baker to Capaldi), Russel T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and the respective main cast Doctor who (Companions), as well as the cast of Torchwood. The entire main cast of the 2017 Beauty and the beast. Finally, the original Broadway cast of Hamilton.

11) If you could rewrite a famous/book/movie/comic/TV etc series,w hich one would you change. Arrow, for so many reasons, but namely for the facts the writers killed of The Black Canary, didn't give her the full treatment and respect she deserved, and she wasn't Oliver's main love interest as apposed to being basically the soulmate she is in the comics.

Ok so I might have gone overboard, but I wanted to be honest and though!

Im tagging:

@jennisloud @demigoddessonfire​ @rammi and  I quess any other 8 that want to do this, barrowing some of @dannifielding q's

1: What's your favorite color?

2: What is your favorite book?

3:What fandoms are you currently apart of?

Original Question:

4: What is your favorite childhood/current/all time movie?

5) Who is your favorite Disney princess/prince/villain/side kick

6) What is your least favorite book you've read?

7) Who is your least favorite character from a book and why?

8) When buying movies, do you prefer Blu-ray or normal?

9) If you could live in any book/tv/movie/comic world, which would you pick?

10) What is your favorite video game?

11) What is one surprising fact about you?

[jenmedsbookreviews]

That’s got you wondering hasn’t it? Well … this is nowt to do with me going for a run. I’m not that daft. But I know someone who is. This weekend Mandie took part in the Spitfire 10k at RAF Cosford, which is an annual event designed to raise money for the RAF charity, specifically this year the RAF100 appeal. This is Mandie’s third year of completing the mammoth run around the RAF base so a massive well done to Mandie on completing the course and on getting her winners medal (and lovely associated t-shirt)

My contribution? Well, I went along to support her which was very nice of me as it meant getting up early on a Sunday morning. While she was doing all the running and such like, I went for a bit of a mooch around the museum. Shamefully, as it is no more than 10 miles from my house, I haven’t been here since my Dad was alive and he passed away in 1991 … Still, it was lovely to have a wander about and I will go back again for a proper visit very soon.

Funnily enough I saw a few planes. And some tanks. And missiles. As you do. Well at least you do at an RAF Museum anyway. Managed to pick up a nice ‘tubby pen’ and thermal mug to commemorate the centenary while I perused the shop too. Tidy.

I’m not completely against exercise. On Saturday morning Mandie and I did a nice lap of Attingham Deer Park, a short 3 miles stroll while the weather was nice. Because we made the opening of the park at 0800 we were blessed with seeing squirrels, rabbits, pheasants and lots of the lovely deer who make the park their home. Because I didn’t have my camera ready enough I only have gratuitous deer pics but you can imagine the other animals scampering about …

Because I haven’t quite lost the wanderlust (and because Mandie wants an excuse for time off work) we did another day out, this time to Powis Castle. Again, somewhere I haven’t been in years but it was fab and ended with a quick jaunt to Charlies where I managed to pick up some lovely Flamingo stationery. As you do.

And I managed some reading too. Go me huh? Book wise, I’ve been kind of good. Ish. Four from Netgalley but all for tours so necessity not indulgence. They were The Warning by Kat Croft; Tell Nobody by Patricia Gibney; Hush Hush by Mel Sherratt and one I can’t tell you about just yet, but it looks really good.

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Book book wise I’ve been very good. Only two. First up was the preorder of the second Amy Winter book from Caroline Mitchell (so new it doesn’t have a cover yet), The Secret Child, and I also bought myself a hard back copy of The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry.

Books I have read

The Way of All Flesh – Ambrose Parry

Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder.

In Edinburgh’s Old Town young women are being found dead, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. Across the city in the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson.

Simpson’s patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. It is here that Raven meets housemaid Sarah Fisher, who recognises trouble when she sees it and takes an immediate dislike to him. She has all of Raven’s intelligence but none of his privileges, in particular his medical education.

With each having their own motive to look deeper into these deaths, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld, where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to make it out alive.

Oh how I enjoyed this book. In it we meet newly qualified Doctor Will Raven who has somewhat of a questionable past and one which is coming back to haunt him right from the start. Full of mystery, murder and all things medical, and set in 1840’s Edinburgh, I simply flew through the reading of this book, loving the dynamic between Raven and housemaid Sarah, a young woman who was very much ahead of her time. I’ll be reviewing the book this week, but you can buy your own copy here. By the way, if you’d like to see Ambrose Parry in the flesh, aka husband and wife writing team Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman, they’ll be appearing at Bloody Scotland at the end of the month. You can find all event tickets (if there are any left as it is selling out left, right and centre) here.

…

The Night She Died – Jenny Blackhurst

On her own wedding night, beautiful and complicated Evie White leaps off a cliff to her death.

What drove her to commit this terrible act? It’s left to her best friend and her husband to unravel the sinister mystery.

Following a twisted trail of clues leading to Evie’s darkest secrets, they begin to realize they never knew the real Evie at all…

Ooh what a twisty thriller this is. Telling the story of very new wife Evie, who takes her own life, this story will shock and enthrall readers. Told through the eyes of Evie and her best friend Rebecca there are many secrets to uncover as we try to work out why Evie chose to end her life. The book is released on 6th September and I’m reviewing as part of the tour (I’ll also have an extract) but if you want to buy a copy for yourself you can find it here.

…

The Lion Tamer Who Lost – Louise Beech

Be careful what you wish for…

Long ago, Andrew made a childhood wish, and kept it in a silver box. When it finally comes true, he wishes he hadn’t…

Long ago, Ben made a promise and he had a dream: to travel to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve. When he finally makes it, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined…

Ben and Andrew keep meeting in unexpected places, and the intense relationship that develops seems to be guided by fate. Or is it?

What if the very thing that draws them together is tainted by past secrets that threaten everything?

A dark, consuming drama that shifts from Zimbabwe to England, and then back into the past, The Lion Tamer Who Lost is also a devastatingly beautiful love story, with a tragic heart…

Gah. This book. Beautifully lyrical, tragically poetic in style and delivery, a story full of love and loss, this moved me to tears. Literally. Just ask my DPD driver who didn’t quite know what to do with himself when I answered the door in a full on red eyed, wet cheeked mess. I’ll be reviewing on the tour, assuming I can find any words, but you can buy a copy of the book here.

…

Ed’s Dead – Russel D McLean

Meet Jen. She works in a bookshop and likes the odd glass of Prosecco… oh, and she’s about to be branded The Most Dangerous Woman in Scotland.

Jen Carter is a failed writer with a rubbish boyfriend, Ed. That is, until she accidentally kills him one night. Now that Ed’s dead, she has to decide what to do with his body, his drugs and a big pile of cash. And, more pressingly, how to escape the hitman who’s been sent to recover Ed’s stash. Soon Jen’s on the run from criminals, corrupt police officers and the prying eyes of the media. Who can she trust? And how can she convince them that the trail of corpses left in her wake are just accidental deaths?

A modern noir that proves, once and for all, the female of the species really is more deadly than the male.

I don’t know why or how I’ve not read this before but I’m bloody glad I have now. Full of unbelievable unfortunate incidents, poor Jen’s life is turned upside down when she finally decides to give her long term loser boyfriend, Ed, the boot. You just … might not expect quite how much. This had me chuckling to myself and racing through the pages like the devil was at my heels. If you want to find out why, you can grab a copy of the book here.

…

The Proposal – S.E. Lynes

‘The first thing you should know, dear reader, is that I am dead…’

Teacher Pippa wants a second chance. Recently divorced and unhappy at work, she uproots her life to renovate a beautiful farmhouse in the countryside, determined to make a fresh start. But Pippa soon realises: your troubles are never far behind.

When Pippa meets blue-eyed Ryan Marks, he is funny, charming, and haunted by his past. He might just be the answer to all her problems. But how well does she really know him?

She knows the story of his life, the pain that stays with him, the warmth of his smile and the smell of his skin. She knows he can make her laugh over a glass of wine.

Pippa can tell truth from lies. She’d know if she were in danger. Wouldn’t she?

That’s a humdinger of an opening line don’t you think? Never let a stranger in your house, that is what I’ve learned from this book. (To be fair, I seldom let people I know in the house because I’m antisocial but that’s another story). Oh, yes, and be very wary of teachers turned romance authors … This is a psychological story of obsession, written in an intriguing style and littered with literary references that will make enlightened readers smile and now knowingly. I’ll be reviewing as part of the tour but for now you can order a copy of the book here.

…

Not too shabby that, five books. Anyone would think I had nothing better to do … Busy week on the blog. Recap below.

The Hangman’s Hold by Michael Wood

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill

Fractured by Billy McLaughlin

Bye Baby Bunting by Tannis Laidlaw

Truth and Lies by Caroline Mitchell

The Not So Perfect Plan to Save Friendship House by Lilly Bartlett

Return to the Little Cottage On the Hill by Emma Davies

The Other Victim by Helen H Durrant

The week ahead is a little quieter. But then i’m going to be busy personally so perhaps not a bad thing. Three tours in the offing, The Body on the Shore by Nick Louth; Overkill by Vanda Symon; and After He Died by Michael J Malone.

Hope you have a lovely week all. I am in count down mode now as it is less than three weeks until Bloody Scotland. Cannot wait.

See you next week.

Jen

Rewind, recap: Weekly update w/e 02/09/18 That's got you wondering hasn't it? Well ... this is nowt to do with me going for a run.

[a-pan-in-a-van-blog]

Review: Mark Gatiss’ Masterclass at The Theatre Royal Haymarket

Mark Gatiss. Where do I begin? To start with, as an inspiring actress, writer and director – for me, he’s generally one to look up to, hero wise. And quite literally – as he’s a lanky six foot of great Northernness and I’m just about 5”4 of Norfolk.

 I first met Mark Gatiss, otherwise known as Mycroft Holmes from the BBC’s ‘Sherlock’ Series as he’s recognised mostly to the general public, after his Masterclass at The Haymarket Theatre Royal at Stage Door on Friday the 16th of October 2015.

 I’ve been a great fan of the infamous writer and actor for the last 6 years, ever since the first Series of ‘Sherlock’ aired in January 2010 and since then he has been on top of my list of actors to meet.

 To some people he doesn’t mean a lot, yet, to me he means the World and more! He’s influenced Geek Culture more than most realise, he’s written his own Doctor Who spin-off ‘P.R.O.B.E’, a Docudrama of Doctor Who ‘An Adventure In Space and Time’ (of which he was also in) and he’s written & been in several episodes and novels for the greatest and longest running Sci-Fi series itself! Which wouldn’t be airing today if it weren’t him and Russell T. Davis pushing the BBC to re-establish the show.

 He started his incredible career with his three best friends, Reece Shearsmith (The Stag and Psychoville), Steve Pemberton (Benidorm and Inside No.9) and Jeremy Dyson, who all-together form The League Of Gentlemen, which was a dark comedy sketch show that first aired in 1999 and after 3 Series ended in 2005 after another 2 Theatre Tours, a Pantomime and a Movie! They originated as a small theatre production that started at smaller theatres in London (The Canal Café Theatre, The Battersea Arts Centre and The Komedia Theatre), then The League Of Gentlemen got commissioned to become a Radio Drama in 1995 and aired on BBC Radio 4 as ‘On the Town with the League of Gentlemen’, however, they were so popular, the show was eventually moved to television, which won many, many awards, which then led them all to a successful career in writing and acting. Apart from Jeremy, I’ve met Reece and Steve as well, I can tell you now, they are as gentlemanly as advertised! All three are kind and caring and love speaking to and listening to their fans and what they have to say.

 Mark is often described as a ‘Professional Fanboy’ as throughout his wonderful career – he’s displayed his interests in the Horror Genre, James Bond, H.G. Wells, Vampires (& other supernatural beings), The Victorian and Edwardian Era and of course – Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes. Since Masterclass, I’ve met him another two times and every time he’s been the same lovely, down-to-earth, kind hearted gentlemen who takes his time with everyone and can make you fall in love with one look of his soul-wrenching beautiful blue eyes; and every time I’ve we’ve ended up talking about either Doctor Who, Palaeontology (the study of fossils and another common interest of ours) or Jelly Babies.

Before I went to see Mark in Masterclass, I knew nothing about it! I didn’t know they existed! The only reason I found out is through the Social Media site – Facebook. I was planning to go down to London for a weekend away because we already bought tickets to see ‘Three Days in The Country’ at the National Theatre, which, of course, starred Mark and The Master himself – John Simm. We chose the 17th of October because me being me – wanted to see Mark on his birthday and give him a present. And by total coincidence, Facebook suggested an ‘Event That I Might Be Interested In’ that included Mark! My first thoughts were: ‘Ohhh… Mark Gatiss…’ my second thought was ‘Ohhh… Masterclass…’ I then read up on the Event even more and did some research on The Haymarket Theatre Royal and on the basis it was an Acting AND Writing Masterclass… with my favourite Actor… Who’s also my hero… And it was the day before I planned to see ‘Three Days In The Country’… And it was FREE! I would’ve been an absolute Goldfish (as my dear Mycroft would say) to do so otherwise!

 A few weeks before my weekend to London, I read up on some of Mark’s Author Credits and I discovered that he’d also written the marvellous ‘The Lucifer Box’ Trilogy. I had no known knowledge of these, which is surprising as 1. I’m a keen reader. 2. As you can tell… I’m a bit of a Mark enthusiast… Anyway, I ordered my copy of the Trilogy of which are my Prized Possessions and call me ‘sad’ if you will, however, I’m very proud to say I have ‘The Vesuvius Club’ signed by Mr. Re-Mark-able Gatiss.

 The Masterclass started when Mark made his way to his chair in the middle of the stage and was welcomed to a wonderfully warm round-of-applause! Everyone else who was there were also huge fans of Mark, whether they were a ‘Sherlockian’, a ‘Whovian’, a ‘Local��� or just as passionate about Gatiss as I and wanted to just see and meet him. My first impressions of him were not as I expected. They were better. He’s very loveable, very easily, with his goofiness and quick wit, you can soon become friends with him and feel that you’ve known him for a life-time. The jokes and stories rolled off the tongue without hesitation or pause. He’s incredibly intellectual – more than what he makes out to be, as he can be quite purposely silly and clumsy on occasion. He answered EVERYONE’S questions and took a long amount of time to answer each one with precise detail and care, I was lucky enough for him to answer one of my own questions (on character development within scripts) of which he did not disappoint with the answer. He was incredibly sweet about it all and was gutted that he only had a limited amount of time to answer questions and to talk to fans, I’m sure if he had the choice he would still be there now – talking to us and I’m sure I’d still be there listening to him talk. He’s so charming! I could listen to him talk about his amazing tales of his family, friends, work and life ALL DAY! I wish he did another Masterclass! It was so disappointing when it ended and we had to leave, all the lit up faces blacked out like if there was a power-cut within the human race.

 On a second note, I can’t wait to meet Mark again for another three times this year! Once at Sherlocked: The Event in September, second and third time watching him and his wonderful husband, Ian Hallard, perform in the revived play, ‘The Boys In The Band’ at The Park Theatre later this year which runs from September the 28th to October the 30th, I’m seeing it on Opening Night (28th of September) and the day before Mark’s birthday (16th of October) which co-incidentally works out to be my girlfriend’s 18th birthday as well. I am also looking forward to Mark’s next episode he is writing for Series 10 of Doctor Who, which is coming out in 2017 and Series 4 of Sherlock which will be broadcasted on January the 1st next year also, which has currently been in production since April. Ian will be in another Pantomime later this year at The Queens Theatre, Aladdin, run by Imagine Theatre Ltd., where he will play the role of Widow Twankey.

 The Haymarket Theatre Royal is a beautifully designed theatre, one of the most gorgeous interiors I’ve seen of a theatre, you can feel the history within and I felt like I was ‘a part’ of it. The staff were so lovely and understanding and the whole place felt very welcoming and homely.

 The Masterclass itself is incredible! I would recommend it to anyone, not just young or budding Actors, Writers or Directors or if you’re just want to meet your heroes or favourite actors, writers or directors or simply just want to ask professional practitioners within the Performing or Creative Arts your own questions about their time in the industry – go for it!

 Show Rating: 5/5

 Written By: Henrietta Leigh

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 Written: June 2016

[derededicto]

200 60s Albums

60′s lists are making the rounds right now, so I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring. As usual, the choices reflect my obsessions and my limitations. This list is more canonist than I’d prefer but I’m no crate digger. (And before you get too excited, know this: it’s, like,  50% jazz.)

The 5th Dimension – The Age of Aquarias

13th Floor Elevators – Easter Everywhere

Albert Ayler – Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village

Albert Ayler – New York Eye & Ear Control

Al Green – Green is Blues

AMM – AMMusic

Andrew Hill – Black Fire

Andrew Hill – Point of Departure

Anita O'Day & Carl Tjader – Time for Two

Archie Shepp – Four for Trane

Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man

Aretha Franklin – Lady Soul

Art Ensemble of Chicago – People in Sorrow

Art Ensemble of Chicago – A Jackson in Your House

Art Pepper – Smack Up

B.B. King – Live at the Regal

The Band – The Band

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys -- Wild Honey

The Beatles – Rubber Soul

The Beatles – Please Please Me

The Beatles – Magical Myster Tour (US L.P. version)

Beroff, etc. – Messiean: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps

Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills

Bill Evans Trio – Waltz for Debby

Bill Evans – Portrait in Jazz

Blue Cheer – Outside Inside

Bob Dylan – Another Side of Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

Bobbie Gentry – Ode to Billie Joe

Bobby Hutcherson – Components

Booker T. & the Mgs – Green Onions

Buck Owens & His Buckaroos – Carnegie Hall Concert

Buddy Guy & Junior Wells – Hoodoo Man Blues

The Byrds – Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Can – Monster Movie

Cannonball Adderley – Sextet in New York

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Safe as Milk

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica

Caetano Veloso – Caetano Veloso

Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures

Cecil Taylor – Conquistador!

Charles Mingus – The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady

Charles Mingus – The Great Concert of Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus – Oh Yeah!

Chuck Berry – St. Louis to Liverpool

Coleman Hawkins – Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy & The Poor Boys

Dexter Gordon – Go!

Dionne Warwick – Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls

Dionne Warwick – Golden Hits

Dolly Parton – Just Because I'm a Woman

Don Cherry – Symphony for Improvisers

Donald Byrd – A New Perspective

Don Ellis – Electric Bath

The Doors – The Doors

Duke Ellington – Far East Suite

Duke Ellington - ...And His Mother Called Him Bill

Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach – Money Jungle

Dusty Springfield – Dusty in Memphis

Ella Fitzgerald – Ella in Berlin

Ella Fitzgerald – Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook

Elvis Presley – From Elvis in Memphis

Ennio Morricone – The Good, The Bad & the Ugly

Eric Dolphy – Out to Lunch

Eric Dolphy – Live at the Five Spot

Fairport Convention – Liege and Lief

Flamin' Groovies – Supersnazz

The Four Tops -  Reach Out

The Flying Burrito Brothers – The Gilded Palace of Sin

The Fugs – First Album

Frank Sinatra – Sinatra at the Sands

Frank Sinatra – Nice 'n' Easy

Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention – We're Only In It For The Money

Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention – Uncle Meat

Freddie Hubbard – Hub-Tones

Funkadelic – Funkadelic

Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster – Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster

George Russell – Ezz-Thetic

George Solti, Vienna Philharmonic et al. – Das Ring Des Niebelungen

Glenn Gould – Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier, Bk 1

Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze, et al. – Topicalia our Panis et Circencis

Godz – 2

Grachan Moncur III – Evolution

Grand Funk Railroad – Grand Funk

Grant Green – Grantstand

Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa

Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza – s/t

Gyorgy Ligeti – Requiem/Lontano/Continuum [Bour, Orchestre Du Sudwestfunk]

Hank Mobley – Soul Station

Harry Partch – The World of Harry Partch

Herbie Hancock – Empyrean Isles

Herbie Hancock – Maiden Voyage

Holy Modal Rounders – 1

Holy Modal Rounders – The Moray Ell Eats the Holy Modal Rounders

Horace Silver – Songs of my Father

Howlin' Wolf – Howlin' Wolf

Hungarian String Quartet – Barktok: Six String Quartets

Iannis Xenakis – Metastasis/Pithopakta/Eonta (Simonovic, Ensemble Instrumental De Musique...)

Incredible String Band – The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul

Joao Gilberto & Stan Getz – Getz & Gilberto

James Brown – Sex Machine

James Brown – Live at the Apollo

Jackie Mclean – Destination...Out!

Jackie Mclean – One Step Beyond

Jacques Brel – Ces Gens-La

Jaki Byard – Jaki Byard Experience

Jerry Lee Lewis – Live at Star Club, Hamburg

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

Jimmy Giuffre – Free Fall

Jimmy Rushing – Rushing Lullabyes

Jimmy Smith – Back at the Chicken Shack

Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz – Getz/Gilberto

Joe Harriot – Abstract

John Fahey – The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

John Coltrane – Live at the Village Vanguard

John Coltrane – A Love Supreme

Johnny Cash – Orange Blossom Special

Johnny Hartman – John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

Joseph Jarman – Song For

Karl Bohm, Nilsson, Windgassen, et al. – Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Karlheinz Stockhausen – Hymnen

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gielen/Kagel – Gruppen fur 3 Orchester

Karlheinz Stockhausen – Mikrophonie I&II

Kenny Burell – Midnight Blue

The Kinks – Something Else By The Kinks

Laura Nyro – Eli & The Thirteenth Confessions

Larry Young – Unity

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II

Lee Konitz – Motion

Lee Konitz – The Lee Konitz Duets

Lee Morgan – Searching for the New Land

Lennie Tristano – The New Tristano

Leonard Cohen – The Songs of Leonard Cohen

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington – The Great Summit

Luciano Berio/Swingle Singers/New York Philharmonic – Sinfonia

Magic Sam – West Side Soul

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas – Dance Party

The MC5 – Kick Out the Jams

Merle Haggard & The Strangers – Pride In What I Am

Merle Haggard & The Strangers – Same Train, A Different Time

The Meters – The Meters

Miles Davis – Miles Smiles

Miles Davis – In a Silent Way

Miles Davis – Nefertiti

The Millenium – Begin

Mississippi John Hurt – The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt

Moby Grape – Moby Grape

The Monkees – Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, LTD

Morton Subotnik – Silver Apples from the Moon

Muddy Waters – Live at Newport

Nat King Cole – Wild is Love

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

New York Art Quartet feat. Amiri Baraka – New York Art Quartet

Noah Howard -- The Black Ark

Oliver Nelson – The Blues and the Abstract Truth

Ornette Coleman – This Is Our Music

Ornette Coleman – At the Golden Circle

Os Mutantes – Os Mutantes

Otis Redding – Otis Blue

Patty Waters – College Tour

Peter Brotzmann – Machine Gun

Pharoah Sanders – Karma

Randy Newman – Randy Newman

Ray Charles – The Genius Sings the Blues

Ray Charles – Modern Sounds In Country and Western

Red Krayola – The Parable of Arable Land

The Rollings Stones – Between the Buttons [UK Edition]

The Rolling Stones – Beggar's Banquet

Rod Stewart – The Rod Stewart Album

Roscoe Mitchell Sextet – Sound

Roger Miller – The Return of Roger Miller

Sam Rivers – Fuschia Swing Song

Scott Walker – Scott 4

Serge Gainsbourg – Initials B.B.

The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World

Sly & The Family Stone – Stand

The Soft Machine – The Soft Machine

The Sonics – Here are the Sonics!!!

Sonny Rollins – The Bridge

Sonny Rollins & Coleman Hawkins – Sonny Meets Hawk

Sonny Simmons – Music of the Spheres

Sonny & Linda Sharrock – Black Woman

Stan Getz – Focus

Steppenwolf – Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf – The Second

The Stooges – The Stooges

Sun Ra – Atlantis

Sun Ra – The Magic City

Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air

The United States of America – The United States of America

Vanilla Fudge – Vanilla Fudge

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Wayne Shorter – Speak No Evil

The Weavers – Weaver's Almanac

Wes Montgomery – Smokin' at the Half Note

Wilson Pickett – The Exciting Wilson Pickett

The Who – The Who Sell Out

The Zombies – Begin Here

VA – A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

VA – Anthology of American Folk Music