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Encounter on Burnt Snake Flat - Marc Platt, Doctor Who Yearbook 1993

Transcription down below:

Encounter on Burnt Snake Flat, by Marc Platt

She yelled and slammed on the brakes. She was right. It was him. As the red dust cloud drifted from round the Range Rover, his figure materialised out of the landscape. Squatting in the shade of a gum tree, abo-fashion, as if he was waiting for the Dreamtime to return.

He rose, pale coat pushed back, hands plunged into trouser pockets, and grinned boyishly as she almost fell out of the car.

“Doctor!”

“Tegan Jovanka." Her hand was shaken enthusiastically. “You got my note then.”

“What note?”

“Ah.” A frown. “Well, I expect you will… sometime.”

“I can’t believe it,” she floundered. “I mean… what are you doing out here?”

He smiled and she went cold, easing back her hand. Why was he being nice to her? That exasperating reserve reeked of Englishness, even when he was an alien. What did he want? The sun was baking the back of her neck, but she’d frozen inside. “I mean it’s not that I’m not glad to see you.”

“No, of course not, Tegan.”

“But to turn up… out of the blue.”

“And what a blue.” He gazed up into the depths overhead. “You should really wear a hat, you know. The ozone layer and all that.”

“It’s in the car,” she heard herself saying.

There was a pause while his so innocent-looking blue eyes bored against her defensive mask. “You got back from London all right.”

“You can see that, can’t you?”

“And your family?”

“They had to wire me money. They still want to know where I'd been.”

“Ah… But they’re well?”

“Dad’s laid up in hospital.” she snapped. “So I’m running the farm.”

“An accident, Tegan?”

“Sort of.”

“What sort of 'sort of'?”

“What are you doing here?” she retaliated.

“Just a visit.” He was needling his way back in. What did he know… suspect? Now he was walking off through the spinifex and she was following. “I’ve brought some things you left behind. You left us rather suddenly.”

“That was three years ago!”

“Really?” He sighed. “Well, I thought you might feel better by now. Less bitter?”

“Why?”

He turned, his patience evidently wearing thin. “Didn't you learn anything with me, Tegan? You must have got something out of it?”

She faltered and looked away.

“Tegan? I thought we were friends.”

“I have fifteen hands working under me and a couple of thousand sheep. Why did you have to come back? It’s so long ago, I sometimes wonder if you really existed — if it wasn’t all a dream.”

“A bad dream?”

“Sometimes. So many innocent people died. Sometimes it felt as if the world didn’t have a future. I thought I was going mad!”

“So you shut it all out. Left it all behind.”

“Did I?” She turned to fix him with a blazing stare, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was casting about for something along the edge of a half-dried pool.

“You came back to check up on me!” she accused.

“I am a Doctor, Tegan,” he said, deep in his search. “So there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Nothing?”

He paused, squinting under a small rock with a satisfied smile. “What did you imagine?” He looked up at her again. “What did you say happened to your father?”

"None of your business!"

“Tegan!” The politeness had evaporated into a steely command.

She paused, her mouth drying up with fear. Avoiding his stare, she whispered, “It was a snakebite.”

“Any snake in particular?”

“You know,” she blurted. “You know which snake! The snake in my head.”

“Like this?” he said.

She looked and saw the thing that he held in his hands, his fingers pinching the back of its head.

"No!"

“Is this what you think you’ve brought with you, Tegan?”

The reptile’s dry skin shimmered as it coiled and writhed in his grasp.

“No! Take it away!”

“Is this what you’ve seen in your dreams?”

“Get it away from me!”

She was transfixed by the beady serpent stare as he brought it closer. The jaws opened and a diamond of venom hung on the curved needle fangs.

“What do you think it is, Tegan? Is this what’s been coiling in the shadows of your mind all this time, waiting to strike again? It’s a dark and evil thing, full of venom and hate. And you know its name, don’t you?”

“No!”

Closer still it came and hissed its anger.

“Call it by its name, Tegan. Is it the Mara? Is that what you think?”

“No!” she cried. “It’s not. It’s just a snake.”

With one movement, he flung the creature away from him across the pool that glittered with sunlight.

He held her gently for a long time. “Exactly. Just a snake,” he said. “The Mara’s long gone, I promised, remember?”

“How did you know?” she kept saying through her tears.

“I didn’t until I called at the sheep station looking for you. The foreman says your father will be fine.”

He glanced at the small brown waterhole. “Is that what they call a billabong?”

She half-grinned at last. “You never change, do you, Doctor? Always expecting the worst.”

“You too, Tegan.”

She sniffed and completed the grin. “Your celery needs changing,” she said.

Five and Tegan short stories for closure

Perfect Day - Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who Yearbook 1994

Transcription down below:

Perfect Day, by Mark Gatiss

It had been, Tegan was forced to admit, quite an adventure: even by the Doctor's standards. And, as he was forever fond of pointing out when there was an unexpected lull in his hectic life, the Doctor's standards were exacting. Any man with experience of however many hundreds of year of traumas and vicissitudes certainly earned Tegan's respect, although her opinion of his long-term memory had been taking a few knocks of late. She had beer enthralled by his first-hand account of the Battle of Waterloo; how he had stood at Wellington's side as the German mercenaries sealed the fate of the French. She had later been less impressed when told exactly the same story a few days later, although this time the Doctor claimed to have been standing with Napoleon. Perhaps it was possible for him to have been in both places at once. As he approached her, Tegan looked deeply into his impenetrable blue eyes and decided that as far as the Doctor was concerned, you could never be sure about anything.

The double doors of the TARDIS were wide open and a warm breeze wafted into the console room. Outside, a balmy evening was beginning on Kolkokron and Tegan stood watching the Doctor's slow return, her face inclined towards the low range of mountains. Earlier, the Doctor had disappeared in that direction, carting the dormant Gravis in an unlikely wheelbarrow-like contraption, possessed of large, round thruster pads instead of wheels. He had struggled off into the fading pink light with a cherry wave and a strained "Back in a tick”, uttered through clenched teeth. Wryly, Tegan wondered whether the thrusters were taking as much of the Tractator's weight as the Doctor had predicted.

“All done and dusted,” announced the Doctor happily upon his return. “He's unlikely to get up to much mischief here. I think we've just time for some tea before we collect Turlough and say our farewell to the colonists on Frontios.” He went through the doors into the TARDIS, his voice carrying in the still, dusty air. “One for each person and one for the pot. And stir thirty times if you don't have the patience to let it brew..."

Tegan remained sitting on a boulder and didn't even look up as the Doctor's head popped around the doors again. "Tegan? Coming?"

She looked at his eager face and suppressed a smile. His enthusiasm was certainly contagious. But their most recent adventure had set her thinking.

"I was just..." she began and gestured expansively with her hands. The Doctor trotted out of the TARDIS, digging his hands into the pockets of his cricketer's frock-coat and adopting the furrowed brow and jutting lip of a concerned family practitioner. "What's the matter?"

Tegan ruffled her dark hair. "Everything you said. About Earth. About the colonists of Frontios being the last... the last of..."

The Doctor turned away as though he hadn't heard, shielding his eyes and gazing at the sinking pink sun. "Turlough getting you down is he? Something like that? Well, you have to remember, he's an adolescent, Tegan, and liable to be a bit difficult. We were all young once. Even me. And besides, he was an absolute brick on Frontios..."

“Doctor, you're not listening.”

“Hmmm?”

“I want to know what happens to my home. In the future. I have a right to know."

“| thought I'd explained,” said the Doctor, sill not turning round. “The destruction of Earth is an historical fact. Surely you understand that, Tegan? Civilizations rise and fall. Stars grow and die. People, places, galaxies... Nothing is fixed. Otherwise, where would the fun be?"

Tegan got up of the rock and gently caressed her throat, enjoying the warm breeze which nuzzled her skin. “You don't have to treat me with kid-gloves, Doctor,” she murmured evenly. "It's just that it never struck me before. | remember Nyssa telling me about Traken...”

"There you are, then.” The Doctor turned on his heels, his hands flapping at his sides. "A case in point." Traken, Nyssa's homeworld, had been destroyed in the flood of entropy released by the Master on Logopolis, around the time that Tegan had first met the Doctor.

Tegan fixed him with a penetrating stare. "But she never saw exactly what happened - only from a distance. How it ended. All that history..."

The Doctor crouched down and picked up a handful of crumbly soil, letting it slip through his hands. “The people of Traken were wiped out, Tegan. That's the difference. The colonists on Frontios are living proof of your species’ absolute refusal to give in. Earth's time may be up, but humanity itself, with all its foibles, still goes on. Frontios, Refusis, Balanystra...”

“Yes, yes, I know that. And it helps. But I really need to see how it stops. The closing credits..."

“The end of the world?” asked the Doctor quietly. Tegan nodded. “Is that wise?” he continued.

“I'm not a kid...”

“No, no of course not. But we're not talking about a visit to the dentist, Tegan. Watching the destruction of one's homeworld could induce all sorts of nasty traumas. Each of us has an affinity with our own planet. A connection, It runs very deep. Deeper than you can know.”

“I need to see it,” said Tegan, firmly.

The Doctor looked her in the eye and recognized his companion's steely determination. He fiddled with the rather wizened stick of celery in his lapel and said, almost under his breath, “All right. But just a glimpse. We mustn't get involved."

If he had expected Tegan's thanks, he was disappointed. She merely nodded, walking with head bowed into the TARDIS. The Doctor gave a last look at the silent landscape. He sniffed resignedly, hoping that the Gravis was indeed out of action, and ducked back inside the Ship. Within a few moments, the hazy air was disturbed by a strangulated, grating whine and the TARDIS disappeared from Kolkokron.

Tegan was standing against the roundeled wall, chewing a thumbnail anxiously. The Doctor shot her a glance and then immediately busied himself at the console, flicking switches and studying screens with an almost feverish intensity. “I just hope this short hop won't queer our pitch,” he said quietly.

“Hmmm?”

“Returning to Frontios, I mean. The old girl's taken such a beating of late. I should hate to leave Plantagenet with a sulky Turlough as.a farewell present.”

"The Doctor slipped his spectacles out of his coat and immediately pushed them up onto his forehead, as though forgetting why he had needed them in the first place, He squinted at a fuzzy read-out and then patted his pockets absently in search of an apparently elusive object.

Tegan cleared her throat and pointed to the Doctor's forehead. He myopically peered at her and then, locating the half-frames, popped them onto the bridge of his nose with a cheery smile. "There we are. Nearly there. Just a slight compensation..." He tailed off again and then closed his eyes as the TARDIS materialised with a particularly unsettling bump.

Susha found herself almost laughing. Instinctively, she put a gnarled brown hand to her lips and suppressed the urge bur then, shrugging, let herself go, giving voice to a peal of giggles which echoed across the plains. When the fit was over, she wandered to the rain barrel and splashed tepid water into her face. The laughter left a cheerful warmth in her stomach.

Above the broad and dusty land, the sun blazed with unaccustomed ferocity. Susha walked towards the cabin and sat down gratefully in the shade. She glanced at her arthritic wrist where the ancient chronometer she was fond of wearing had left a deep indentation. It didn’t matter to her that the twenty-four hour clock had been abandoned a millennia before. It didn’t even matter that she had very little cause to know the hour. In fact, as the astronomers had long-since predicted, nothing much mattered any more. Time was almost up.

Susha gently rubbed her wrist, absently wondering where the watch could have got to. It was a great comfort to her. A link to the vanished civilisation. A kinder, better time. And now it was gone. She shrugged.

Cuther hobbled out of the cabin, sunburn showing on the wasted skin of his legs. He shifted the makeshift crutch from one arm to the other and shielded his eyes against the glare.

“Susha?”

The old woman turned, the sun reflecting brilliantly off her round brown eyes. The boy stumbled towards her and she kissed him lightly on the lips. "What'll we do today?" He asked eagerly. Susha shot a quick glance at the sun.

"Do?"

“Yes. It's Penultima Day, isn’t it? I counted on the scroll. You said we'd do something on Penultima Day."

So she had. But yesterday had been Penultima Day. She'd thought it better to mislead the boy so that he wouldn't have time to be afraid.

“What would you like to do?”

The boy bit his lip, remembering the fishing he had done at the stream. Or the frenzied music and dancing they had all enjoyed before the colony ships’ embarkation.

There was a deep rumble of thunder which Cuther seemed to feel in his bones. He shivered despite the stifling humidity of the day and glanced down at the old woman. He was about to speak when something caught his eye. In the middle distance, shimmered by the heat haze into a rippling azure column, was a tall blue box.

“Central Africa,” said the Doctor, closing the TARDIS doors. “In your terms at least. Countries and power blocks have shifted somewhat by now.”

Tegan screwed up her eyes against the glare of the sun, feeling immediately uncomfortable in the sticky heat. A wide, flat, yellow plain stretched before them; a few stubby trees struggling through the soil. She had read somewhere that, before the end of the world, there would be one last perfect day. In her imagination, it would have been a balmy, luxurious summer one, the hours sliding gracefully by into a dusky and beautiful final evening. But even as her foot made its first imprint on the parched ground she could feel the sense of of fear in the air, a kind of charged, palpable, electric panic.

The Doctor placed his Panama hat gratefully onto his brow and looked about with a serious disquiet in his eyes. He felt an overwhelming urge to whisper, as though the gravity of the occasion warranted an almost religious reverence. "This is where it all began," he said gently.

Tegan refrained from adding the obvious rejoinder. They both knew that it was all about to end. That was, after all, the reason for their visit.

“I don't know what I expected,” she murmured

“But this isn't it? Oh, Earth has had its great, shining cities, believe me, Tegan. And more empires have risen and fallen since your time than you can count on your fingers and toes. But all the arks will have gone by now. Things are pretty quiet."

Tegan frowned. “There's no-one left? Everyone's gone?”

“Not quite everyone.” The Doctor inclined his head towards a heat-shivered figure, struggling painfully across the plain towards them.

Cuther couldn't remember the last time he had seen two such healthy looking individuals, In the months since Reeson and Kane and Luc had departed he had been surrounded by the old and the sick. He stared in wonder at the tall, athletic young man in the funny coat and the attractive woman by his side. He put all his weight onto the willowy crutch and held up his one good hand. The Doctor reciprocated, searching his erratic memory for a suitable greeting of the time.

"Bless and keep," he offered without much confidence.

“Bless and keep,” replied Cuther, grinning. "Who are you?"

The Doctor doffed his hat. “Just visitors.”

“Visitors? Weren't you on the arks? There's nothing wrong with you, is there?"

“Not that I know of," said Tegan. "How d'you mean?"

The Doctor touched Tegan lightly on the shoulder and gave an almost imperceptable shake of the head.

"This is where you live, is it?" he cried cheerfully, indicating the distant cabin with his hat.

"Susha and me. That's all. The others... the others that were left I mean, they went a while ago."

"I see. May we...?"

Cuther nodded eagerly and led the way back across the plain to the cabin. “Today is Penultima Day, you know that don't you?”

“Penultima Day?” queried Tegan

“The day before?” suggested the Doctor uncertainly, glancing up at the furiously blazing sun.

"I'm glad you've come. It's good not to be alone. We can do something now. You two, me and Susha.” Cuther almost scurried into the cabin, returning a moment later with the old woman. She regarded the Doctor and Tegan with indifferent eyes, grunting as she lowered herself into a chair.

Cuther produced two spindly bottles and held them aloft with glee. “These were for tomorrow. But we have to celebrate... err...?

"Doctor," said the Doctor "And Tegan Jovanka."

Cuther smashed the tops off the bottles and poured generous measures of a glutinous mead into four glasses. Susha raised her glass in a stiff hand.

“Health.” A cracked smile lit up her face.

Cuther and Tegan toasted in silence.

“Bottoms up,” said the Doctor.

There was silence for a while, then Tegan put a gentle hand on Cuther's arm. "Why weren't you on any of the arks?"

The boy laughed without a trace of bitterness and slapped his withered legs. “Isn't it obvious?”

"Only he strongest and fittest could go, Tegan.” said the Doctor gravely. “In order for the species to survive."

Tegan's face darkened. “But that's obscene. Is that all we evolve into? A bunch of Nazis?"

"Seems perfectly reasonable to me." muttered Susha, downing her mead in one swift movement. “There was a story my father used to tell me... From one of the old religions..."

"And the animals went in two by two." said the Doctor

Susha nodded. "Simple reproduction. And my reproductive days are long gone." The Doctor tilted his hat onto the back of his head and drank the warm liquid thoughtfully. “There's another version of that story.”

Susha cocked an eyebrow. “Yes?”

"Yes. Noah took the animals into the ark but he had to leave many, many others behind. The Unicorns, the Centaurs, the Basilisks... Pragmatism is the enemy of diversity."

"Well, I'm content to be a Unicorn," croaked Susha, smiling. "And when tomorrow comes...”

The Doctor looked at her and understanding passed between them.

“Yes, when tomorrow comes, we'll be ready. Won't we, my boy?”

Cuther hobbled across the porch and held Susha tightly.

The Doctor tapped Tegan on the shoulder and rose. “Well, we have to be off."

Cuther detached himself from the old woman. “But | hoped you would stay. We could see it together.”

Tegan looked searchingly at the Doctor and smiled. “No. We'll... we'll see it in our way."

She looked back only once as they crossed the plain towards the TARDIS.

“Well Tegan?” The Doctor's hands were already spread over a console panel.

“How could they be so... calm about it?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Perhaps they can feel that it's a natural end. They're at peace with themselves."

He flicked a switch and the scanner screen hummed into life. Tegan could she an astonishing vista of stars and planets, dominated by a livid, boiling sun - a halo of vapours expanding from its disc. She felt the Doctor's arm close around her shoulder and the comforting tones of his voice.

“Brave heart.”

And suddenly she sun erupted into molten fire, a dazzling crimson explosion as its mass expanded beyond reason. In the midst of it all, Tegan saw a tiny blue and green planet world vapourise into space. The astonishing fury filled the entire screen until the Doctor shut off the scanner and let his arm fall to his side.

Instead of the grief or rage she had been expecting, Tegan found herself ovewhelmed by the sheer beauty of the sight. As the reassuring hum of the console room once again encroached on her senses, she walked over to the Doctor and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

He smiled, a lock of blond hair falling into his eyes. “Yes, well. Let's see what we can do about co-ordinates for the Veruna system, hmmm? All systems go and back to..." His face lit up as he sensed an awful pun. “Back to..."

“Don't say it.” said Tegan, a broad grin spreading across her face.

#doctor who #classic who #5th doctor #tegan jovanka #yearbooks

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