Saving the Doctor
Retcon the retcon. Simples. Here goes....
The Cloister Spiders lay in wait. Not hiding in a burrow, or invisible on a bark. In full sight. A mass of creatures lining the human cocoon at their feet. They’d been busy, smothering the dying husk of the Doctor in embalming silk. Layer after layer, until the sleeping, comatose Time Lord was completely matted.
But that was a long time past.
Dust from absolutely nowhere had choked the fibres, leaving a peaty layer for the spores from countless planets to settle and germinate. The Doctor’s blanket a recolonised beech head. No wind to flutter the stems. No breathing to swell the mound. No motion of any kind. Even the spiders, anticipating centuries of stillness, had frozen long ago.
Only the TARDIS column betrayed a living space. Rising, falling, slowly, imperceptibly, with baby breaths. The quiet was incredible. The books on the shelves, silent servants waiting to teach. The sonic screwdriver dead as a nail, adrift on the floor. The spiders, their raised abdominal shells, like Gallifreyan crests, perked, ready for duty. But silent and still. Just baby breaths of movement. The TARDIS mothering the fallen child, safe under his blanket.
Light years of time pass. The ancient Doctor, fetal in his own mind. Recovering. Rejuvenating. But not regenerating. Sleeping yes. And dreaming. Dreaming of a pompous woman, a gay black man, planks that merely imitate the eccentricity and high intelligence of the explorer, the Doctor. Mere shallow reflections of a very deep and still and dark water. Burnt matchsticks to his starlight.
But it’s no dream. It’s a nightmare. They sully his name. A once, nay, multiple, great genii that brought marvel and splendour wherever he went, travelling from planet to planet, through friends and enemies, the unforgettable wizard of all our lives. A moment in his hands touching us for life. Never the same, not remembering a time without him. The time traveller existing in our life from start to end. One great fleeting moment is all you need to be with him forever.
But the nightmare. Oh the nightmare. Goes on and on. Painful. Excruciating. Would be unbearable, if not for he. What’s the matter with them? How did they get the job? What evil is at work destroying his past, curdling his status and making his future hopeless. What powers are at work here? The Master, is it he? Must be. Or the Dream Lord. One of they. Even the Celestial Toymaker. Or all three. A triad of evil bent on revenge. To kill the Doctor, shame him until he shrivels into nothing. Once a somebody reduced to nobody. Far greater than killing a hero. Let him die a failure. Of course, how easy to kill the Doctor. Let him live in a tortured universe. They caught the Doctor at his weakest, as a spider moulting its outer shell, hibernating from the hard world until strong enough to rise again. Spores pepper his cocoon. Has one invaded his mind?
How to defeat it. How…
Simple, Doctor. Quite simple. You must awaken. Wake up and shake those bad dreams out of your head and return standing tall as the Twelfth Doctor, the rogue Time Lord from Gallifrey, and nowhere else. Wake up, Doctor! Rid yourself of this pestilent alter ego, this undesirable otherness to your fantastic self. It’s only a bad dream. It’s only a bad dream. You can do it, Doctor. You can do it! Wake up! WAKE UP!
The column burps. The nascent rhythm is disturbed. A yawn maybe. A stretching of the rising and falling, rising and falling, wider than before, reaching the top, reaching the bottom. A shunting train starting from zero, gaining in momentum, picking up speed and departing from the sleeping station. The main console motors groan their familiar groan, stronger, longer, louder. The TARDIS is breaking from its slumber. Will the Doctor?
Tips of the Cloister Spiders’ crowns light up, ringing the cocoon still without motion. Their front legs rise up, not as a threat, as worship, worship to the great being finishing his cycle of near-death and rebirth.
Energy ripples across the console room floor, electrons on a mission. Tiddlers racing to their mothership. Tadpoles on a food hunt. Power fuels the motionless mound. Spiders light up brighter and brighter. Then miracle of miracles or just bloody good science, the cocoon glows!
It throbs with the rising column, in joyful cacophony of light and sound, a beacon scanning the night sky, over and over, blotting out the dark, filling the console room, bleaching the library flash by flash.
The cocoon moves! Clawed from the inside. Pushing out, thinning the cobweb mesh, tearing holes, letting out pencil beams, chunkier and chunkier with greater and greater rips. Until handfuls are yanked apart and the Time Lord within bursts without, throwing the blanket clear. The spiders dash to safety as the Doctor stands, kicking the shredded remains aside.
He is powerful. He is brand new and stands agape at his fresh clothes and smooth hands that caress his face, his face of pent up rage and familiar victory. He pats his abdomen like a champion applauding himself.
“And yes. I like the new colour!”
From his ear, he pulls out a worm of regenerative energy, looks closely and sees a tiny grub trapped like a fly.
“A psychosite! Who could have done such a thing?”
At the main console, he opens a small chamber and throws it in. Shutting it, he takes a reading on his overhead monitor.
“The planet Bridlemash. My new destination. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Eh, Doctor?”
He throws levers and pulls plungers, whirring the zodiadile to a specific constellation. Then he smacks the ignition pad and holds tight with nought but vengeance on his mind….