The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

by Simon Guerrier

  We can see a general distrust of computers running through a lot of Doctor Who: as we’ve already seen, The War Machines and The Green Death are about evil computers. The Face of Evil, The Girl in the Fireplace (2006) and Deep Breath (2014) are about machine intelligences that have gone wrong – with deadly consequences. The point of The Ice Warriors (1967) is to not rely on machines; in Destiny of the Daleks (1979) we see the limits of battle computers that cannot think creatively; in The Two Doctors (1985), the Doctor speaks proudly of a scientist who hated computers and worked out a famous theory using pen and ink. His attitude seems best summed up in Inferno (1970):

  * * *

  ‘I’m not wild about computers myself, but they are a tool.

  If you have a tool, it’s stupid not to use it.’

  The Third Doctor, Inferno (1970)

  * * *

  But there are exceptions. The Doctor is genuinely moved in The Time of the Doctor (2013) by the death of Handles, the reprogrammed, severed head of a Cyberman. That seems to be because he and Handles have spent more than 300 years together – the Doctor has become emotionally attached to Handles whether or not he thinks Handles is really alive.

  Of course, the Doctor has had an even longer-standing relationship with another machine intelligence:

  * * *

  ‘I always leave the actual landing to the TARDIS herself. She’s no fool, you know.’

  ‘You speak as if she were alive.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do, don’t I?’

  The Third Doctor and Mike Yates, Planet of the Spiders (1974)

  * * *

  For a long time, we might have excused the Doctor calling the TARDIS ‘old girl’ or speaking of it as being alive as an affectation. While exiled on Earth, he also gave a name to his car, Bessie, and talked to her affectionately, but we don’t think of Bessie as alive.

  However, in The Doctor’s Wife (2011), the consciousness of the TARDIS – referred to in the story as its ‘soul’ – is deposited in a woman called Idris. For the first time in the hundreds of years they have been together, the Doctor and the TARDIS can talk to each other directly, and it turns out that the TARDIS – like the automated systems on websites we discussed earlier – understands the Doctor’s needs better than he does:

  * * *

  ‘You didn’t always take me where I wanted to go.’

  ‘No, but I always took you where you needed to go.’

  ‘You did. Look at us talking. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could always talk, even when you’re stuck inside the box?’

  ‘You know I’m not constructed that way. I exist across all space and time.’

  The Eleventh Doctor and Idris, The Doctor’s Wife (2011)

  * * *

  The implication is not that the TARDIS is now, for the first time, alive, but that it has always been alive – just in a different way. Its intelligence or being hasn’t changed by being transferred into Idris, just the way it is able to communicate. Yet at the end of the story we’re told something else.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I’ve found it now … Alive. I’m alive.’

  ‘Alive isn’t sad.’

  ‘It’s sad when it’s over. I’ll always be here, but this is when we talked, and now even that has come to an end.’

  Idris and the Eleventh Doctor, The Doctor’s Wife

  * * *

  It’s as if ‘alive’ doesn’t mean intelligence or understanding: it’s to do with looking and sounding like a human. The human Idris dies and the consciousness of the TARDIS returns to the time machine, apparently no longer alive.

  But later, the Doctor talks to the TARDIS, requesting a destination. For a moment there’s no response and he thinks that he’s been silly: of course the ship can’t hear him. Then levers on the console start moving on their own and the Doctor is delighted…

  We’re not told explicitly what that means – but the people making Doctor Who assume we have intelligence. So, what do you think?

  fn1 It’s a good job British Telecom used only the Fourth Doctor’s voice and not a copy of his mind – that caused a lot of problems for the computer system Xoanon in The Face of Evil (1977).

  ‘In Aprille and the Kingdom of Castile

  We came upon a hostelrye genteel

  And there bigan this tale of misterie,

  About the Doctor, Skeletons and me.’

  From ‘Tales of My Young Manhood’ by Geoffrey Chaucer

  Written c.1373, manuscript discovered in the British Library, June 2193

  ‘OK,’ I announced, slapping my hand against the table. ‘I’ve got one. So there are these two chickens, right?’

  Everyone else groaned; even Matilda, who was heavily with child.

  ‘Not this again…’

  ‘You told us the chicken story in Pamplona,’ said her husband, Johannes the cobbler. ‘And it wasn’t even funny the first time around.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said William of Bristol. ‘Anything’s better than the one about him being kidnapped in Rheims. Every single tavern, Peachfuzz here tells us his story about Rheims.’

  William was the eldest of our group, a veteran of what we then called the Twenty-Seven Year War, and he called me Peachfuzz on account of my embarrassing excuse for a beard. I hated the name.

  ‘Fine!’ I snapped, and sat back down, my arms folded across my chest. ‘I’d like to see you lot do any better.’

  Met with a chorus of shrugs, I pointed to our newest member; the curiously dressed Scotsman with alarming eyebrows who had joined us only a few miles back.

  ‘How about you?’ I said. ‘You’ve hardly spoken a word since supper.’

  The stranger glanced up. ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yes, you. What did you say your name is, again?’

  ‘The Doctor.’

  ‘Very well, then, Doctor. Tell us a story.’

  ‘I don’t tell stories,’ said the Doctor. ‘Usually, I am the story.’

  ‘Then perhaps someone else could tell one,’ sighed William of Bristol.

  ‘Do we even need to tell stories?’ asked Hugo the tailor. ‘I know it’s traditional, but quite frankly I think we all ran out of amusing anecdotes halfway across France.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel, his wife. ‘I haven’t told the one about my Uncle Ralf’s pig yet.’

  Hugo sighed, and through clenched teeth muttered, ‘No one wants to hear about your uncle’s pig.’

  We six travellers – not including this Doctor – were almost a thousand miles from home, and 130 from our destination; the church at Santiago de Compostela. Readers will no doubt be aware that this pilgrimage across the Kingdom of Leon and Castile is one of the holiest in all of Christendom, yet we had spent almost every single mile of it bickering with one another. This latest argument might have lasted a lot longer had our evening not been very suddenly – and rudely – interrupted by a band of angry-looking villagers, who entered the tavern armed with pitchforks and daggers and swords.

  ‘We’ve come for the pilgrims,’ announced their ringleader.

  Matilda gasped. Johannes opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Hugo chewed his lower lip while his wife downed the rest of her sherry in a single gulp. William of Bristol began with a ‘Now, look here,’ but was shoved back into his seat. As for me… well, let’s just say I learned some very important lessons about chivalry and derring-do in Rheims and know exactly when to keep my trap shut. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I noticed that the Doctor was grinning with the mischievous anticipation of a schoolboy who has placed a thistle on his schoolmaster’s chair.

  The tavern’s owner, a plump little man, came out from behind the bar, and said, ‘Listen, Fernando. These people are pilgrims. We don’t want any trouble here. What’s the matter?’

  ‘You know what,’ the man replied angrily. ‘For years, not a single plague death. Then, just when we think it’s safe to bring our children back, it starts ag
ain. And just like the last time, it’s these foreign pilgrims who bring death to our door. Why, only last night we lost another two souls.’

  At the mere mention of the word ‘plague’ the tavern fell silent. There was still plague in these parts? But hadn’t it died out some two decades ago? All eyes turned to us, and the tavern owner hung his head and sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’ll all have to leave. With them.’

  The cart was little more than a wooden cage on wheels, built for carrying chickens and pigs, and it smelled exactly as you might expect. What’s more, there was barely enough room for the seven of us to stand, let alone sit. Matilda, the pregnant woman, was short of breath, and it took three of us, Johannes and Hugo holding her by the arms and Isabel gently fanning her face, to stop her from fainting altogether.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘To Bembibre,’ said the rather gruff Fernando, his voice raised above the clattering of wooden wheels and horses’ hooves. ‘You’ll be quarantined there till we know what to do with you.’

  ‘Quarantined?’ said the Doctor. ‘Fantastic! Where?’

  ‘We haven’t decided yet,’ replied Fernando.

  ‘How about the church?’

  ‘Actually… That’s not a bad idea.’

  I laughed. For one thing, our Scots friend seemed inappropriately cheerful. For another, I knew there was no church in Bembibre, and told him as much. ‘Any pilgrim worth his salt knows that.’

  ‘Peachfuzz is right,’ said William of Bristol.

  ‘Who says?’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Our map?’ said I.

  ‘Old map, is it?’

  ‘Fairly. Why?’

  ‘The Church of the Blessed Miracle appeared overnight,’ said Fernando. ‘Twenty years ago, it was.’

  ‘One minute an empty patch of land,’ said the Doctor. ‘Next… Ta-daa! A church.’

  ‘That truly is a miracle!’ said I.

  ‘Unlikely,’ said the Doctor. ‘Miracles are just the universe’s way of papering over the cracks.’ He turned to me. ‘And what sort of a name is “Peachfuzz”?’

  ‘My name’s Geoffrey,’ I replied, bitterly. ‘Of London. Son of the late John Chaucer, the vintner. You may have heard of him.’

  ‘Chaucer?’ said the Doctor. ‘Geoffrey Chaucer? You’re the Geoffrey Chaucer?’

  Assuming this was sarcasm, I simply nodded.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said the Doctor. Then, turning to one side as if addressing some invisible friend: ‘You travel through all of space and time, and when you finally meet one of the greatest poets in the galaxy, he’s on his gap year.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked.

  The Doctor looked at me with a curious expression and then at the empty space to his left. He sighed.

  ‘No one,’ he said. ‘Old habits. There’s usually someone there.’

  I was about to question him further when Matilda let out a gasp. From inside his coat the Doctor produced a curious metal stylus, which he pointed at her belly, and for a moment the instrument chirruped and glowed with bright green phosphorescence.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Matilda.

  ‘Excellent!’ said the Doctor, ignoring her completely. ‘The baby’ll be with us in under an hour. Let’s just hope Fernando here can get us to the church on time.’

  I was bemused. ‘I must say,’ I told him. ‘You seem in very high spirits, considering we’re about to be locked up in some Castilian backwater.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said the Doctor. ‘Who says that wasn’t my plan all along?’

  The Church of the Blessed Miracle stood on a low hill, perhaps a hundred yards from the edge of Bembibre. I don’t know what I was expecting. A spire of pure gold, perhaps, or choirs of cherubim and seraphim dancing in the clouds above. Instead, it was a grey and rather drab little building with a stubby spire, and looked much like every other village church we’d visited on our pilgrimage. Without ceremony, Fernando and his men herded us inside and then the doors were closed and locked behind us with an ominous, echoing clunk.

  Only moments before, and just as the Doctor predicted, Matilda had gone into labour, and it seemed she might give birth at any second. To make her more comfortable – or as comfortable as she could be – we pooled together our cloaks and shawls and turned one of the wooden pews into a makeshift bed. Her husband Johannes sat beside her, holding her hand.

  ‘Just remember to breathe,’ he said.

  ‘What in blazes do you think I’m doing?’ Matilda barked. ‘I knew this was a stupid idea. My sister was right. We should have stayed in Sidcup.’

  ‘This is perfect!’ said the Doctor.

  On the verge of losing my temper with this strange, strange man, I took him to one side, and in a low, hushed voice said, ‘You speak as if this is part of some plan. Now, I don’t like to pick holes, but what plan could this possibly be a part of?’

  ‘This place,’ said the Doctor. ‘The church appeared twenty years ago, yes?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘And what else happened here, twenty years ago?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘The plague,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not just any old plague, but the Black Death. That’s the plague turned up to eleven, with bells on. Thousands died. Millions.’

  ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘It was the same in London.’

  ‘But why would something just appear here in the middle of a plague?’

  ‘Perhaps the Almighty wished to provide them with a place of solace…’

  The Doctor gave me a wordless look and shook his head. ‘What if,’ he said, ‘death is a substance? Something valuable, like gold, or edible, like… I don’t know… cheese?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re human.’

  If we hadn’t been standing on sacred ground, I would have punched him in the nose. And what did he mean by ‘You’re human’? Was he not? Before I could ask him, the Doctor produced the very stylus we had seen earlier, and the room was suddenly illuminated with that same unearthly green light.

  I looked around the church but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The walls were painted with Biblical scenes, though I can’t say I recognised any one of them. At the far end of the nave was an altar flanked on both sides by four large wooden misericords, or ‘mercy seats’, and framing each of them a life-sized skeleton, carved from the same dark wood, and wielding a scythe.

  ‘When you die,’ said the Doctor, ‘where does that energy go? The chemical energy, oh, that becomes worm food. Yum yum, lucky worms. But what if there’s something else?’

  He aimed his stylus at the church’s walls, and those rather fascinating eyebrows of his furrowed together with considerable intensity.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve seen more accomplished frescoes,’ I remarked.

  ‘Not the paintings, the walls,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’d expect them to be made of mud or stone, but they’re a proamonium-titanium alloy with a dense network of inner circuitry and a holographic shell.’

  ‘Could you repeat that in Middle English?’

  ‘This isn’t a church. It’s a spaceship.’

  ‘That doesn’t exactly help. A space ship?’

  From behind us, we heard a sudden, piercing scream.

  ‘Push!’ said Johannes the cobbler. ‘Push!’

  ‘I am pushing!’ snapped his wife.

  ‘Doctor?’ said Johannes. ‘Some assistance?’

  ‘From me?’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes. Right. Of course.’ He rushed over to Matilda’s side. ‘Remind me again… How many heads do these things have?’

  For several moments, the gentlemen in the room turned our backs to preserve Matilda’s modesty. Then, with a squawk and a squeal, there was a brand new person in the world, and Matilda was cradling it, o
r rather him, a baby boy, in her arms.

  ‘Perfect!’ said the Doctor. ‘Right on schedule.’

  ‘Perfect?’ said I. ‘We can’t stay here. Not now. We don’t know what those villagers are planning. If they think we’re carrying the plague…’

  ‘They’ll burn this place down,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Which, if I’m wrong, might be the best thing for it.’

  ‘Are you mad? We’d all die.’

  ‘But so would they,’ said the Doctor, pointing to the wooden skeletons.

  ‘What are you talking about? Those are carvings.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what they want you to think.’

  ‘They? Who are “they”?’

  ‘In layman’s terms I’d call them an energephagic transdimensional chameleoform, but seeing as this is the fourteenth century, let’s just call them “nasty wooden beasties”.’

  I laughed, and it echoed around the church, for a moment drowning out the baby’s first squeals. ‘You are mad. We’re the only people in here.’

  Striding down the nave, the Doctor aimed his stylus first at the altar and then at the carved wooden skeletons.

  ‘Doctor… They’re made of wood.’

  ‘Why do humans always assume aliens would disguise themselves as humans? You’re not the only organic life on the planet, you know.’