‘Gallifrey would be gone, the Daleks would be destroyed, it would look to the rest of the universe like they’d annihilated each other,’ said Grumpo.
‘And where would Gallifrey be?’ she asked.
‘Frozen!’ he told her. ‘Frozen in an instant of time, safe and hidden away!’
She looked at me. She was hoping so hard, but she still wasn’t getting it.
‘Like a painting, Clara,’ I said. ‘Like a 3D oil painting.’
In fairness, the General was already having a bad day, and he’d known for several hours it would be his last. The Time War was coming to an end and it wasn’t going to be good. That morning, the warrior formerly known as the Doctor had left a message for Daleks and Time Lords alike, that the war was over for them all. The tone had sounded ominous, and the intent, apocalyptic—especially as the Doctor had broken into the Time Vaults and stolen the deadliest weapon in the universe. Armageddon was imminent, the General was sure, but in the shuddering chaos and falling masonry of Gallifrey’s last surviving war room he tried not to let it show in his face. Keep them focused, keep them fighting, he always said. But whether the end came from the Daleks massing in the sky, or the Doctor destroying Daleks and Time Lords alike, it would be here very soon.
‘Not soon enough,’ he caught himself, muttering under his breath.
So when Androgar approached him to say there was another message from the Doctor, he barely felt a flicker of interest.
‘You’re sure the message is from him?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Androgar replied. The Under-Colonel had been in the disintegrating war room so long, he looked like he was carved out of solid dust. ‘It’s definitely the Doctor.’
‘What did he say?’
‘See for yourself.’
The General turned to see two words spread in shimmering holograms in the dust-filled air above the war table. He blinked in astonishment. ‘What’s the mad fool talking about now?’
GALLIFREY STANDS, flickered the holograms.
‘Gallifrey stands,’ he sighed. ‘What’s he talking about. We’ve already fallen!’
‘Hello!’ came a cheerful voice, filling the room. ‘Hello, Gallifrey High Command, this is the Doctor speaking.’
One of the screens fizzed, and there was a smiling, youthful face above a ludicrous choice of neckwear.
‘Hello, also the Doctor, can you hear me?’ On another of the screens, another smiling young idiot.
‘Also the Doctor!’ And there he was on another screen, the battered old warrior the General knew so well, with his leathery face and his slitted eyes. Odd, thought the General—he didn’t normally call himself the Doctor. ‘Standing ready,’ the old man said.
The General felt himself leaning against the table. ‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘three of them! All my worst nightmares at once.’
‘Standing ready for what?’ Androgar asked.
‘General, we have a plan,’ said one of the two younger Doctors.
‘In fairness,’ said the other one, ‘it is a fairly terrible plan.’
‘And almost certainly won’t work.’
‘I was happy with “fairly terrible”.’
‘Sorry, thinking aloud.’
The old warrior was rolling his eyes. ‘Gentlemen, time is pressing—can we just get on with it?’
‘Sorry, Grandad,’ said one of the young ones, adjusting his neckwear. ‘General, we are flying our three TARDISes into the upper atmosphere of Gallifrey.’
‘We’re positioning ourselves at equidistant intervals round the globe.’ It was his turn to straighten his neckwear. ‘“Equidistant”—so grown up!’
‘And we’re just about ready to do it,’ said the old man.
‘Ready to do what?’
There was a beat of silence, as if none of them wanted to say. It was the one with the ridiculous neckwear who finally spoke. ‘General, we’re going to freeze Gallifrey.’
‘… I’m sorry, what? You’re what??’ said the General.
On the screen, Neckwear was holding something up, so they could see it. A silver sphere. ‘Got my hands on one of these,’ he said. ‘Using this, and our TARDISes, we’re going to freeze Gallifrey in a single moment in time.’
‘You know—like those Stasis Cubes,’ said the old man. ‘A single moment in time, suspended in its own pocket universe.’
‘Except we’re going to do it to a whole planet. And all the people on it.’
The General looked round the three faces, each alight with the confidence of madness. ‘Even if that were possible … which it isn’t … why would you do such a thing?’
‘Because the alternative is burning!’ said the old man.
‘And I’ve seen that,’ said one of the young ones.
‘And I don’t want to see it again,’ said Neckwear.
‘We would be lost in another universe, alone forever,’ protested the General. ‘We would have nothing.’
‘You would have a chance,’ said Neckwear. ‘And right now, that’s exactly what you don’t have.’
The General was suddenly aware of everyone in the room, staring at him, and there was something terrible in their faces. It was hope, he realised. Oh, Doctor, don’t give them hope—don’t be cruel!
‘It’s delusional,’ he said. ‘It can’t be done. To translate every detail of a whole planet, an entire population—it’s impossible.’
‘My TARDIS could do it.’
‘Not in the time you have. The calculation alone would take hundreds of years.’
‘Oh, hundreds and hundreds.’ said the other young one. ‘But don’t worry—I started a very long time ago!’
Another voice was echoing round the room now. ‘Calling the War Council of Gallifrey! This is the Doctor. I am on final approach now, this is the Doctor!’ Another screen fizzed into life, and there was an old man with long white hair. ‘Do you hear me? This is the Doctor. I have received your message, and am here to assist.’
The General stared. He knew that face from centuries ago. The dark-eyed child who claimed he lived in a barn. The adolescent who kept disappearing into the mountains. The student who had broken into the deepest levels of the Cloisters and never spoken of what he’d seen. The young man who had stolen the moon and the President’s wife. He looked older and sterner now, as if he was trying to appear respectable, but the General remembered the crisis that had ensued the day this man had fled Gallifrey, not just because he had stolen a TARDIS, but because he had taken with him—
‘That’s the original, isn’t it?’ said Androgar, cutting across his thoughts. ‘The first one, the first Doctor?’
The General rolled his eyes. The Doctor had become the obsession of the entire military and they knew all his faces by hearts. Aloud he said, ‘Four of them!’ and sighed heavily.
‘Commencing calculation,’ said the original Doctor.
Androgar was gripping the General’s arm now. ‘Do you see what he’s done, sir?’
Yes, of course I bloody do, thought the General.
‘He’s spread the workload across his timeline. He’ll have time to do it. His TARDIS computer will have centuries to complete the calculation, he can do it!’
‘Listen to me, please, listen!’ The General was now shouting at all four faces on the screens. ‘Do you understand what translating an entire planet into another dimension will do—the havoc it will cause? The poles could switch. There will be earthquakes, tidal waves. We could lose half the population. We could lose everyone!’
‘I’m aware of the dangers,’ said Neckwear. ‘I’ll get to it later.’
‘Later? When’s later?’
‘The calculation is complete—thank you, Doctor Number One! Sorry, General, we’re moving the TARDISes into position now. Translation will begin in two minutes. Brace yourselves.’
All four screens winked out.
The General thumped his fist on the war table. ‘Brace ourselves? How are we supposed to do that? He’ll tear Gallifrey apart faster
than the Daleks!’
‘He said he was going to do something later.’
‘There is no later,’ snapped the General.
‘Then how about now?’ I suggested. Both men turned. It was the first time they’d noticed I was in the room and they stared at me aghast. It might have been my eyebrows, they often had that impact.
‘Doctor?’ said Androgar, while the General just mumbled something about ‘Five of them.’
‘Sir, you can’t be here,’ continued Androgar.
‘Oh, do you think so?’ I said, mostly because it sounds really good in a Scottish accent. ‘Well, that’s bad news, because here I come.’ I glanced up and they followed my look.
The large screen on the highest part of the wall was filled with a view of the sky over the Capitol, and now, down through the fire and smoke, tiny blue objects were spinning towards us.
‘I put the word out,’ I explained.
Androgar was staring at the whirling objects. ‘What are those?’
But the General already knew. ‘How many now?’ he asked faintly.
‘Hard to say,’ I replied. ‘Loads, lots. From all over my timeline. What is the collective noun for those anyway? How about a blizzard? Do we like “blizzard”?’ Nobody replied; they just stared upwards. ‘Okay, to work. Gallifrey is about to disappear down a plughole, and it’s going to be a helluva ride. I’ll need a continuous live feed of every disaster area on the planet. I am literally—literally—all over this.’
For a moment, they said nothing. They just stood and stared up, as the war-torn skies of Gallifrey were filled with a blizzard of police telephone boxes.
It took the better part of a day to translate the world of Gallifrey from one plane of reality to another, and the General was right. The planet screamed and burned and raged.
There was a town, on the southern shore of Lake Calasper, ripped apart by a giant earthquake. No one should have survived, but everywhere the people ran, they found a police telephone box standing in front of them, opening its doors.
A tornado tore through a tiny village, till a ring of blue boxes spun round the storm in the opposite direction, shrinking it into the ground.
As cities and towns and villages burned all around the planet, blue boxes came hurtling through the smoke, rescuing people from windows and rooftops.
A sky transporter, plunging towards the heart of the Capitol was suddenly being piloted by a funny man with big ears and a black jacket. Everyone on board stared out of the windows, as he climbed along the wing, to rewire one of the engines.
A ship on the high seas, about to capsize, was suddenly captained by a strange little man in a frock coat and check trousers, who kept offering people gobstoppers and complaining about his aunt being giddy.
There was a man with a ridiculous umbrella, who evacuated a school as a mountain crumbled towards it, and kept everyone laughing as they ran. A gentle cricketer took command of a hospital on fire, rescued the patients and completed an operation, as the flames licked at the theatre door. A man with a cloud of white hair and a swirling cape stood on a beach and, with a tiny silver rod, froze a whole tsunami as it thundered towards a town. A laughing joker in a colourful coat led a party of miners out of the tunnels that had come crashing down around them. Four children, trapped on the side of a cliff face, knew beyond doubt that no one was coming to their rescue, till the end of an absurdly long scarf dangled down in front of them.
I was everywhere I was needed that day, across all my lives, and I believe I have never run so fast. If I sound proud, forgive me: it is the inverse of the shame I carried for so many years. This was the last day of the Time War, but it was no longer the worst day of my life. Instead, this was the day the people of Gallifrey rose up and put 2.47 billion children safely to bed. This was the day I remembered who I was, and swore never to forget again.
This was the day of the Doctor.
FEED CONNECTING
FEED CONNECTED
FEED STABLE
WARNING: IF THESE WORDS ARE VISIBLE ON THE PAGE YOU ARE WITHIN TEN FEET OF A CYBERMAN.
For the people of Gallifrey, the translation from one dimension to another took many hours—rather longer than the Doctor had estimated, in fact—but for the surrounding Daleks, active in a slower gradient of time, the planet vanished in a little under two seconds. As the Doctor had planned, once their target disappeared, the Daleks were engulfed in the firestorm of their own weaponry, and the final battlefield of the Time War was marked by a supernova that burned for over a thousand years.
Now, the fact is, there are many historians out there, shaking their heads and frowning—and not just because they’re a funny, cross bunch of people who can only see time in one direction, and think that’s worth boasting about. It’s not even because a weekly Cheese & Wine Social is the only way they can think of to meet new people. No, it’s this: how, historians demand of each other, could all the Daleks have been destroyed? Most them certainly. Maybe nearly all of them? But is it credible that this explosion, massive though it was, could have ended the life of every last Dalek in the universe? Surely some of them must have survived? This question has caused heated debate at the highest level, and froideur at the Cheese & Wine.
The truth is, of course, we know that a number did survive, and that they continued to plague the Doctor in the years that followed the end of the Time War. But still, say the historians, can this account for the likely number of survivors? Perhaps not.
It might help, though, to imagine what happened from the Daleks’ point of view. Their campaign had been going well up to that moment—they had driven the Time Lords back to their home world, which they had then surrounded and were on the verge of destroying. With victory in their grasp, picture what the Daleks then saw: in two accelerated seconds of time, their most dreaded enemy, the Doctor in the TARDIS, was flying everywhere at once, filling the skies of the world they were about to destroy. For a moment, there was a planet full of Doctors, and before they had time to react, their entire battle fleet blew up.
That many of them perished in the explosion is certain. That a few of them survived to regroup is known. It is my strong suspicion, however, that the remainder are still running for their lives.
Now! I promised you a treat. Everybody settle down, and just wait a moment. Talk among yourselves.
Shh!
No, really, shh!
I’m back, but you’ve got to be very quiet. I’ve got the webcam on, they might hear us. I’ve popped it in the flower in my buttonhole, and I feel rather like a spy. Exciting, isn’t it? Now keep your voices down, they’re just around the corner.
Who’s around the corner, you ask silently (thank you!).
I’ll explain in a moment. First of all, let me explain how this webcam works. I’ve switched on the automatic prose translator. That means everything the camera reads, you will read. No, sorry, I’ll try that again. Everything the camera reads, you will read. Oh, dear, there’s a problem. Any time I say the word ‘read’, the prose translator automatically turns it into the word ‘read’, if you read what I mean.
Oh, never mind. What a bother!
Okay, once the Doctors and Clara Oswald had saved Gallifrey, they did what Doctors and Clara Oswalds always do. They went for a cup of tea. As it happened, they all went to the National Gallery for another look at the Gallifrey Falls painting, which had started the whole thing. And that’s what they’re doing round the corner from me, right now. To be honest, that’s the real reason I waited all this time to write my bits of the book. So I could give you a live experience for the last of our sessions together!
Hush, listen!
‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know if we really succeeded. We pushed Gallifrey into another dimension, and kept it safe in transition—but how long can they survive? Where are they all? Still, at worst we failed trying to do the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong.’
Oh! That was the War Doctor (as we’ll call him to avoid confusion).
‘Life and soul, you are.’
Oh, cheeky. That’s Clara Oswald, of course. Oops, sorry, she’s still going on.
‘Something happened. And at least the Daleks blew up.’
‘At least they did that.’
Shall we take a peek round the corner? If I can just position my spy-button-hole …
Oh, there they are. There’s the goofy one with the bow tie, standing next to the painting. He looks rather dashing, really, doesn’t he?
Also next to the painting is the one in the tight suit. Goodness, it is tight, isn’t it? No wonder he stands like that.
And, oh, sweet, they’ve got their glasses, so they can look clever. I think it works, don’t you? As a matter of fact, I have glasses like that.
That’s the War Doctor, sitting on the bench, and that’s Clara Oswald next to him. Yes, I know, she’s very pretty. Settle down, boys and girls. Along the far wall, you can read a very rare sight. Three police box TARDISes, standing in a row. The same box, three times. Brings a tear to one’s eye, doesn’t it? Sorry if there’s smudging.
Notice there’s a lot of abandoned teacups around the place. I think we have missed quite a few people. Look, someone’s left their umbrella. Yes, you’re right—the handle is in the shape of a question mark! Rather stylish, don’t you think? I’ll pop it in Lost Property later, I’m sure you-know-who will be back for it.
Hang on, I think they’re about to start talking again. Shall we listen? Look, Tight Suit is examining the painting.
‘What’s it actually called?’ he says.
Look, there’s Goofy, sniffing like an art critic. ‘There’s some debate. Either No More, or Gallifrey Falls.’
‘Not very encouraging.’ Oh, that was the War Doctor, sipping his tea. I’m sure he feels he ought to join the other two at the painting, but I think he rather likes sitting next to Clara, don’t you?
‘How did it get here?’ asks Tight Suit.
‘No idea,’ says Goofy.
‘There’s always something we don’t know, isn’t there?’
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