The Doctor frowned down at the young, bearded man sat in the wooden chair. Steven Taylor - a space pilot that the TARDIS crew had met inside the towering Mechanoid city, just before the climactic battle between the Mechanoids and the Daleks. A battle that ended in the flaming destruction of the city, from which the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki had barely escaped via climbing down a mile long abandoned cable on the city roof that led to the ground below. They had expected Steven to accompany them in their escape, but he had returned to the city for his mascot, a panda bear toy that had kept him sane during his years of imprisonment, and whilst Ian tried to stop him, he had been beaten back by smoke. Ian had been the last to descend the cable from the city, hoping Steven would follow, but just as he had reached the ground the cable had burned away. The four travellers had given Steven up for lost.
Yet now Steven was here, claiming to have climbed down that same cable. The Doctor knew this was untrue, but he detected no malice in the younger man’s attitude. He undoubtedly could not remember exactly how he had escaped the city and was filling in these gaps in his memory with ideas of what most likely happened. The same was surely true of his claim that he had managed to simply push open the TARDIS doors, while the Doctor and Vicki were saying their goodbyes to Ian and Barbara inside the Dalek time machine. The Doctor knew for definite the TARDIS doors had been locked.
Despite the fact that he was giving young Taylor the benefit of the doubt, there were still unanswered questions about him. How had he really escaped the burning city? How had he got aboard the locked Ship?
The Doctor mused on these puzzles after sending Vicki off to help Steven get cleaned up. He would find the answers, eventually.
Yet now Steven was here, claiming to have climbed down that same cable. The Doctor knew this was untrue, but he detected no malice in the younger man’s attitude. He undoubtedly could not remember exactly how he had escaped the city and was filling in these gaps in his memory with ideas of what most likely happened. The same was surely true of his claim that he had managed to simply push open the TARDIS doors, while the Doctor and Vicki were saying their goodbyes to Ian and Barbara inside the Dalek time machine. The Doctor knew for definite the TARDIS doors had been locked.
Despite the fact that he was giving young Taylor the benefit of the doubt, there were still unanswered questions about him. How had he really escaped the burning city? How had he got aboard the locked Ship?
The Doctor mused on these puzzles after sending Vicki off to help Steven get cleaned up. He would find the answers, eventually.
***
“Oh, you sexy thing!”The Doctor pushed through the doorway of the TARDIS, letting the Police Box doors swing shut behind him. He ran across the new floor, bounded up the new steps and surveyed the new console with relish.
Regeneration. Man and machine. A new Doctor and a new TARDIS, working together in harmony. Oh, it didn’t get better than this!
His fingers flew across the new controls, feeling their way instinctively to where they needed to be. Then he paused.
What about Amy? She had waited, little Amelia Pond, she had waited a long twelve years for him to return from his five minute ‘hop’ into the future to stabilise the TARDIS. She deserved her first flight.
But not yet, he reasoned. Need to run things in a bit, make the process less bumpy, less scary for the unseasoned time traveller. Quick test flight should do it, Moon and back, easy.
Fingers flying again, the Doctor set the TARDIS in motion, little knowing that Amy Pond was standing outside, watching him leave her behind for the second time in her life.
***
Smoke. Thick, grey, dense smoke. The fires were raging throughout the Mechanoid city, but Steven Taylor had passed up his chance to leave, his first chance in two years, because of Hi-Fi.
Hi-Fi was his mascot, a small panda toy given to him by his maternal grandmother when he was six. Everyone else had given him spaceship toys for his birthday, because his obsession was already making itself known to his family. But Granny Drake had always been different, an independent thinker, and that’s why he had loved her most out of everyone in the family, beside his parents. So it was that Hi-Fi had accompanied him all through regular school, pilot training and even onto missions. He and the bear were inseparable.
So he couldn’t just leave it behind to escape down the cable with the others. He would find Hi-Fi and join them, follow them down and escape this cursed planet forever.
He spotted the bear at last, near the door to the sleeping quarters. Tucking the little fellow into his jacket, he turned back to the steps leading to the roof, but a blast of smoke caught him right in the face and he fell to his knees, coughing.
The smoke was getting thicker as the flames came closer. Steven’s head started to spin. He tried to push up from his knees but fell back to the floor, unconscious.
His last sensory moment before blackness swallowed him was the sound of trumpeting elephants…
***
The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches and pulling levers. The grating roar of the TARDIS landing slowly died back as the time rotor ceased its rhythmic rise and fall.
Just a quick peek through the doors and off again, he decided as he extended the air shield a couple of feet beyond so he could actually step onto the Moon’s surface.
His first thought was that this wasn’t the Moon. Unless it was a smoke filled room in a base upon the Moon. A smoke filled room with, as his eyes adjusted to the haze, a body laid on the floor a few feet away.
With no thought for his own safety, as ever, the Doctor plunged out into the smoke and knelt down beside what he could now see was a man. He turned the figure over, to look for a pulse, and gasped. Then coughed as his gasp swallowed smoke-filled air.
“Oh, you sexy thing!”The Doctor pushed through the doorway of the TARDIS, letting the Police Box doors swing shut behind him. He ran across the new floor, bounded up the new steps and surveyed the new console with relish.
Regeneration. Man and machine. A new Doctor and a new TARDIS, working together in harmony. Oh, it didn’t get better than this!
His fingers flew across the new controls, feeling their way instinctively to where they needed to be. Then he paused.
What about Amy? She had waited, little Amelia Pond, she had waited a long twelve years for him to return from his five minute ‘hop’ into the future to stabilise the TARDIS. She deserved her first flight.
But not yet, he reasoned. Need to run things in a bit, make the process less bumpy, less scary for the unseasoned time traveller. Quick test flight should do it, Moon and back, easy.
Fingers flying again, the Doctor set the TARDIS in motion, little knowing that Amy Pond was standing outside, watching him leave her behind for the second time in her life.
***
Smoke. Thick, grey, dense smoke. The fires were raging throughout the Mechanoid city, but Steven Taylor had passed up his chance to leave, his first chance in two years, because of Hi-Fi.
Hi-Fi was his mascot, a small panda toy given to him by his maternal grandmother when he was six. Everyone else had given him spaceship toys for his birthday, because his obsession was already making itself known to his family. But Granny Drake had always been different, an independent thinker, and that’s why he had loved her most out of everyone in the family, beside his parents. So it was that Hi-Fi had accompanied him all through regular school, pilot training and even onto missions. He and the bear were inseparable.
So he couldn’t just leave it behind to escape down the cable with the others. He would find Hi-Fi and join them, follow them down and escape this cursed planet forever.
He spotted the bear at last, near the door to the sleeping quarters. Tucking the little fellow into his jacket, he turned back to the steps leading to the roof, but a blast of smoke caught him right in the face and he fell to his knees, coughing.
The smoke was getting thicker as the flames came closer. Steven’s head started to spin. He tried to push up from his knees but fell back to the floor, unconscious.
His last sensory moment before blackness swallowed him was the sound of trumpeting elephants…
***
The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches and pulling levers. The grating roar of the TARDIS landing slowly died back as the time rotor ceased its rhythmic rise and fall.
Just a quick peek through the doors and off again, he decided as he extended the air shield a couple of feet beyond so he could actually step onto the Moon’s surface.
His first thought was that this wasn’t the Moon. Unless it was a smoke filled room in a base upon the Moon. A smoke filled room with, as his eyes adjusted to the haze, a body laid on the floor a few feet away.
With no thought for his own safety, as ever, the Doctor plunged out into the smoke and knelt down beside what he could now see was a man. He turned the figure over, to look for a pulse, and gasped. Then coughed as his gasp swallowed smoke-filled air.
Head swimming now, he staggered to his feet and got his hands under the armpits of the man. Even though the TARDIS was just feet away, it seemed like it took forever for him to walk backwards through the air shield with his burden and collapse to the floor, coughing.
But there was no time to waste in recovery. Through the murk beyond the still open TARDIS doors, he heard a familiar battle cry.
“Seek-Locate-Exterminate!”
Slamming the doors shut, he ran back up the steps to the console. He had to wipe his streaming eyes twice on the back of his jacket sleeve as he carefully set the controls for a short hop.
The TARDIS dematerialised, just as a Dalek entered the room, gave a cursory glance around with its eye-stalk, and then was instantly crushed under the weight of the collapsing roof.
***
For the second time in two days, a blue, seemingly wooden box appeared out of thin air in the jungles of Mechanus. The pilot, the same man despite looking many years younger and in fact being many years older, peered out cautiously.
Yes, this would do. Far enough away from his earlier TARDIS and the Dalek time machine, which he would probably be arguing about with Ian and Barbara right now. The Doctor smiled, lost in memory for a moment.
A faint groan from behind him brought the Time Lord back to the present. Steven was starting to stir. The Doctor had given the pilot an injection to overcome his smoke inhalation and it was now time to set him back onto the path of his destiny.
It didn’t take long to drag Steven a little way into the jungle, close to one of the city’s massive ‘legs’, and facing the right way that when he got up, he would head towards the TARDIS. The other, earlier TARDIS.
The Doctor was going to leave him there, and let history happen as planned, but something was nagging away at the back of his mind. Something troubled him still, some vague memory of this time that didn’t quite fit.
So it was that he watched Steven stir from behind a tree. The young man got shakily to his feet and stumbled off in the right direction, attracting the attention of some of Mechanus’ carnivorous plant life, which he managed to fend off.
The Doctor followed, slowly and carefully, as Steven found the clearing where the other TARDIS had landed, the Dalek time craft beside it. There was nobody about. Good, the other, earlier Doctor, along with Ian, Barbara and Vicki, would still be inside the Dalek craft.
Steven struggled over to the TARDIS, his strength obviously failing. He pushed against the door, but it was locked. Slowly, he slid down the fake wooden exterior, unconscious once more.
That was it! The Doctor remembered now, the question that had nagged in his memory, the thought from so long ago. He had solved the puzzle of how Steven escaped the burning Mechanoid city, when the cable he claimed to have climbed down had burned away before he could use it. But the other mystery, the locked box puzzle, was here for him to solve also.
Aware he could be spotted by his earlier self at any moment, the Doctor rushed across the clearing, his own TARDIS key in hand. It fitted the lock perfectly, turned with ease and the door creaked ajar. Picking Steven up once more, the Doctor slapped his face lightly. As the pilot began to come round again, the Time Lord propped him carefully against the edge of the TARDIS and retreated.
Just as planned, Steven’s eyes opened. He felt forwards with his hand, brushed the door open and staggered forwards across the threshold, pushing the door shut behind him by reflex.
Another dash across the clearing and the Doctor locked the door behind the pilot. He had just made it back to cover when he heard raised voices.
A smile creased his young/old face as he watched his earlier self emerge from the Dalek time machine, shouting and blustering with rage while Ian and Barbara tried to persuade him to let them try to get home in the craft. How young he was back then, trying to act all gruff and pompous, because he thought that was what people expected when they saw his elderly seeming exterior.
Shaking his head at the callow youth still arguing with his companions, the Doctor headed back to his own TARDIS. He needed to rectify the lateral balance cones, then try again for the Moon. Then back to Earth to give Amy her much delayed trip in a time machine.
Mark Simpson
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