Doctor Who: The Time of the Companions: Book One (Doctor Who: The Companions Adventure 1)
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Doctor Who
The Time of the Companions
The Companions’ Adventure
Part 1
Cour M.
Dedication & Author’s Note
Good day, Reader, welcome to ‘The Time of the Companions’, a novel set based on the BBC Television Series, ‘Doctor Who’. If you are picking this up, then that means that you love ‘Doctor Who’ as well as I, and I hope that the concept behind it gives you pleasure. In this novel, the Doctor’s companions of the NuWho Era come in contact with Doctors that they did not travel with in the television series. Each companion has their own individual story and arc with that Doctor.
In regards to focus, the doctors in this series are 9, 10, 11, & 12 while the companions are Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Clara Oswald, and with brief appearances from Rose Tyler and Bill. Therefore, when you continue, I hope that the Reader can enjoy the surprises. This book was written considering all that occurred before series 10 of NuWho.
To give a reference to where you shall be starting with each Doctor, here is a list of what episodes each one takes in between.
9 – Series 1. Father’s Day has just occurred, and The Empty Child has not taken place.
10 - Series 4. The Voyage of the Damned has just taken place, so this occurs between that one and Partners in Crime.
11 – Series 7. This is the only one to occur in the middle of an episode, The Bells of Saint John. This occurs just after 11 left Clara at the Café when they have just defeated the Great Intelligence, and just before he goes back for her to ask her to join him on the TARDIS.
12 – This occurs after series 9, and a little after that release of series 10’s excerpt, when he meets Bill.
Also to be clear, this is alternative fiction to the television series. No copyright infringement was intended, these characters belong to the series, begun in 1963, strictly owned by BBC. This is simply written by an avid lover of ‘Doctor Who’, and I just had a story that I felt compelled to tell. Therefore, again, I just wish to confirm for those who are picking this up, that I just am a humble fan who thought maybe other fans might enjoy her story behind the beloved show that we love so much. Also this was written before series 10, and it mostly is inspired by the events in series 1-7 of NuWho, therefore, if anything in this series contradicts anything that will occur later on in the show, then it is accidental.
And as we all know, as is the way with dedications, usually one has to see a list of names of people who are not related to you as the reader. Well, I feel it’s always more fitting to know that without one’s audience, we writers would be nowhere, therefore, for those Whovians who felt like being adventurous, then thanks for being brilliant and I dedicate this book to you!
Cour M.
The Time of the Companions
Prologue
Prague, Czech Republic, Earth
September 1791
He watched his feet as he paced back and forth, looking at the ground underneath him. Wondering how he even had the strength to walk, with how far he was into his illness, he did his very best not to let his ailment affect him at all.
“Wolfgang,” he said to himself, “remember, mind over matter. You may recover from this later.”
The words had little to no effect as he felt his temper rise to be even more on edge, and wondered if he ought to have listened to his wife, Constanze, before he left. However, he knew that he couldn’t listen, due to the need he had for money. His wife cared for him, but she had married a musician and all the burdens that came along with it—his children needed him to be present, and this commission was important. Also, with this new coronation of Leopold II, he could eventually get more commissions, and with the improvement of his situation, and the ambitions of a man who felt that nothing could stop him, even sickness, he felt strength in his limbs once more.
His health was deteriorating—yet he was in denial.
His mind felt as if he was losing control at every minute, yet with every loss of his mental faculties, the closer he felt that he came to artistic genius. Madness fed his mind. Insanity gave him motivation. And the musical notes that ruled his life hung about his head and always at the edge of his vision, tempting him, driving him forward into the unknown. Each time he finished an opera, or a concert, he felt as if he had reached the top of a great mountain, and then when it was time to finish a new one, he had disappeared from the lofty height and appeared back at the base of the mountain. The mountaintop looked down at him, taunting him, teasing him, telling him to begin all over again.
The journey that never ended, it was.
The journey that never would end, it would always remain.
As he stood there, gathering his last peace of mind, he was come upon by Lorenzo, the assistant to the conductor of the opera.
“Signor Mozart,” Lorenzo said, “the opera is soon to commence.”
“Yes, thank you, thank you.”
Following Lorenzo out, they both made their way to the stage of the Opera House, where Mozart took his seat in one of the theater boxes. He was met by enthusiastic applause, to which the love of the crowd swelled his heart, and then eventually came the arrival of Leopold II, the new King of Bohemia. All in the audience stood for him, including Mozart himself.
“Please,” Mozart sighed to himself, “make me rich.”
As he sat in his theater box, the new King looked up at him from his own box, and waved at the struggling composer. Mozart naturally raised up his arm and smiled in return—but he would not have gotten the chance to see the new King’s reaction, or see how his jaw dropped when he looked on the man. For in the blink of an eye, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was no longer in his seat, the box, or the Opera House. He was there one second, and gone in the next.
The King of Bohemia blinked twice, and was the only one in the house to see that Mozart had disappeared into thin air.
Chapter 1
The First Odd Couple
Saturn, Solar System
February 2017
Putting an equation into the TARDIS, Twelve didn’t even second guess himself on being accurate with the coordinates. Between his double checking about the new establishments with the Judoon at the Shadow Proclamation, named Zeus, he felt that all was well.
“Honestly,” Twelve said to himself as he was pulling the lever to input the equation to make it to The Rings of Saturn, “What Judoon mother would name her son Zeus? Too obvious to even be funny!”
With the speed of light, the TARDIS’s telepathic circuit informed him that he had arrived as he pulled the lever, and the comforting sounds of the:
VWORP! VWORP!
As the familiar voice of the TARDIS landing began, for he forgot to put the breaks on… as he always forgot.
“Ah well,” he sighed, “it’s a comforting sound. Always has been. Always will be.”
Putting his coat on, he looked in the mirror at himself.
“As handsome and as old as ever,” he said, pulling back his hair, and then he stepped out of the TARDIS, and put his foot on the new terrain, where he found himself immediately accosted by a resident of the Rings.
“Good morning, sir,” the Saturnian greeted, “And welcome to the Rings of Saturn, the new colony and holiday resort.”
“Good evening,” Twelve replied simply.
“Yes, our mornings look exactly like our evenings here.”
“A place where the mornings and the evenings are identical, not being able to ever tell them apart,”
Twelve elaborated, “well, first time for everything. Thank you for the invite.”
He looked around himself at all the people passing around him. Some walked with firecrackers in their hands, or with holiday attire, and all from different planets.
“Oh, look!” Twelve cried, despite himself, appearing giddy as a school boy, “that’s a Xicoren! Oh, and there is a Nelthern, oh, I haven’t seen one of them since my fourth regeneration.”
“Oh, well you’re a funny one then,” the greeter said.
“Yes, I suppose I am. That’s good, right? I’m usually not funny. So it’s nice to be funny, isn’t it? After all, being funny is always good, right?”
The greeter didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he did his best.
“Yes sir, I believe it is.”
Realizing that he wasn’t making much sense, Twelve swiped the air with his hand, dismissively.
“So,” the greeter continued, handing the Doctor a fold up paper, “Might I interest you in a map of the Rings? We have the Rings separated into eight areas and neighborhoods. I can assure you, that you will not find a better map on the whole of Saturn.”
“Thanks, but I hate maps,” Twelve stressed, “truly, every time that I take one, I end up getting frustrated and just throwing it into a supernova.”
“Ah, bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?”
“Not if you’re me, believe me. When it’s me, it’s an underreaction. Yet I have heard good things about the area called Andromeda Auster, so can you point me in the general direction of it?”
“Yes, you walk straight for four blocks, and it’s on your left on Mold Street. Right there, Old Ham Street turns into it.”
As the greeter pointed to it, Twelve did a double take.
“It begins on Mold Street and Old Ham Street turns into it?” Twelve repeated.
“Yes,” the man replied, clearly not getting the joke that was at the end of that one.
“Thanks,” Twelve added, then took one last look at his TARDIS and began to walk, until he heard the greeter call to him.
“Oh, sir, just curious, are you here for business or pleasure?”
“Simple really,” Twelve added, “I am simply here to look for a place to impress a girl.”
“Oh, isn’t that always the story?”
“Yes, I suppose that it is.”
Twelve walked away from the greeter, and was not attentive to the actions of the greeter, who was there one minute, and then dissolved into thin air in the next.
As he walked along, he saw all the beautiful sights, from the bustling marketplace, the many buildings around him, and all the human/alien life. As he was walking, he had seen a young woman, with light brown hair, eating some brienna-cream from a cone, and for a split second, he was reminded of when him and Clara had partaken in it once when he had taken her to a planet on an outing.
Yet in the moment he thought of her, his eyes flashed with pain at his loss and he had to wipe the emotion away. As quickly as he had looked at the woman, even more quickly did he look away, for the memory was too much.
In his previous reincarnation, he was very good at turning away from the pain of things—of pretending to forget, even if he didn’t. Yet this was different. This was Clara Oswin Oswald, and there was no forgetting her. She was the first face that his face had ever seen and the last face that his previous self had ever beheld—she could not be erased. Not ever. Therefore, a part of her would always remain within him, and it could not be silenced. Yet the way she had… died. And the words she once gave…
‘Let me be brave’
Such words would never be forgotten. However, here was his chance to move on, to recover, as he always did. Even Clara advised him to not be alone, and Clara was always correct, as was Amy, as was Donna. Now he had a new companion in his life, and Bill was already proving herself to be suitable for his personality and what he needed at that time. And the last thing he wished to do was make the same mistake that he did when he was Ten and treat Bill the way that Ten had treated Martha… no, that had to be avoided at all costs.
Therefore, he was searching around, looking for lovely spots to show Bill, and this new resort would be the ideal place. He had never taken a companion there before, yet then again, the resort was new.
As Twelve walked around, he looked at the ground below them and could not help but be amazed.
“Humans!” He sighed, “always stretching their grasp further than their reach, and now they have done the unthinkable and have even colonized the Rings of bloody Saturn. Honestly, I never would have seen that coming.”
And then he realized he was talking to himself.
‘Clara and the lot of them were correct,’ he thought, ‘I’m rubbish at being alone.’
Yet his moment of preoccupation was interrupted when he realized that he was being watched.
And when one is being watched, it means one is being followed.
With a nonchalant attitude, the Doctor proceeded forward, walking through the crowds of the Rings of Saturn, and within every reflected surface that he passed, he casually glimpsed into it and saw a hooded figure following after him.
Never one to run from being chased, the Doctor turned down an alley that had little to no people on it and he heard the familiar footsteps of his pursuer behind him. He surveyed the area with his eyes, and saw a nearby storage facility in it that looked like either the ideal place to face his chaser—or to get killed because he was being foolish. Oh well, come what may.
He rushed up to the door, happy that it was made of metal and not wood, unlocked it and rushed within the storage room, closing the door behind him. When he entered, he smiled when he saw that it was a storage facility that possessed many clocks within it.
“Perfect!” He ran forward, and hid in the darkness, while pulling out his sonic screwdriver just as the pursuer entered, and rushed within.
Raising up his screwdriver, he pointed it at all the clocks and then all of their hands began to tick away at a loud volume. Then the lights in the room flickered and the blinding lights, mixed with the sound of the clocks ticking away grew to such a pitch that they temporarily blinded the man and also hurt his ears. Covering them, he dropped to the ground, weakened.
Taking his moment of distraction, Twelve appeared before the penitent figure, then raised up his sonic screwdriver and the lights returned to normal and the sounds of the clocks diminished to quiet. He stood over the figure, his expression filled with the wrath of the Timelords.
“So,” the Doctor said, aiming his screwdriver at the hooded figure, “I’d ask you the question of who you are, but I know that you are prepared for that one. Just as I’m aware that you know to lower your hood, and I shouldn’t have to ask you that one either.” Twelve aimed his sonic screwdriver even more directly, “Or do I have to ask you still?”
“No, you don’t,” the man said, raising out his hands in supplication. The Doctor faltered, recognizing the voice.
“It can’t be…”
“But it can,” the man said, standing up and lowering his hood, “You know that it can.”
“Well,” Twelve sighed, lowering his screwdriver, “Nice to see you, Mickey Smith.”
“Nice to see you as well, Doctor,” Mickey Smith replied.
Standing there, still strong and firm, Mickey Smith looked at the Doctor in slight wonder and slight alarm.
“Oh, let me guess,” Twelve pointed to himself, “you’re marveling at my face.”
“How can I not?” Mickey chuckled, “good god man, you look… I’m trying to think of a polite word for it.”
“You better not say old.”
“That was the word that I was looking for, I admit.”
“And you look different as well, but still more of the same.”
“Still handsome,” Mickey grinned, “What can I do? I’m lucky.”
“Trust me, in looks, no you’re not.”
&n
bsp; “Ouch.”
“How is Martha?”
“She’s good. I left her behind on another planet where she’s safe until I’m done with all this. But yeah, she’s great, and I’m a lucky man there at least.”
“Yes, you are. Very lucky.”
“Oi! Don’t rub it in.”
“Have no choice really, because you really did get lucky.”
“Well, fortune comes to those who get rejected sometimes. You got Rose, and I got my happiness.”
The Doctor smiled. Mickey Smith had in fact been the one to win in the end.
“Still unable to die from anything, even me?”
“And still lucky. So, Rings of Saturn, huh?”
“I’m thinking of bringing a friend here,” Twelve commented, “Breaking in a new person.”
“What happened to the last one?” Mickey asked innocently, but Twelve gave him a menacing look and Mickey was able to comprehend.
“Never mind, I shouldn’t ask.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’m sorry.”
Pause.
“Thank you. So, how did you find me? Or were you just passing by?”
“Oh, come on, when am I ever passing by?”
“Had a feeling. You’re wearing the vortex manipulator,” Twelve noticed it on his arm, “no matter how many times I tell people not to use those things, you just can’t help yourselves.”
“You have your way of travelling through time, and I have mine,” Mickey grinned slyly, “and that’s never going to change. Captain Jack Harkness himself let me borrow his. Yes, I was following you.”
“And what for this time? And how disappointed are you that you run into me when I have this face?”
“Look on the bright side,” he winked at the Doctor, “at least now you are no longer to Jack’s tastes.”