#when will gallifrey come back to me???

[yellow-faerie]

Could you talk about one of those Doctor Who aus?

Hello! Thank you anon for the ask :) I have a few AUs that I'm currently rotating in my head but my favourite at the moment is the one I just call The Modern AU - it's official name is The Doctor Project but that's not what I call it. This took me a hot minute to write up because it is a lot.

(Also if you wanted to hear about any of my other AUs, I put some brief descriptions in the tags :D)

The basic premise is that the Doctors are all human and a team that worked together for their variety of expertise during the early 2000s to repel an alien invasion and the effect it has on each of them and their general lives. Also the Tardis is there as the only sensible one of the lot.

Some doctors do have more story fleshed out than others, mostly due to the fact that I'm still quite new to a lot of the eu stuff like Big Finish and the books and certain Doctors I would feel better about having engaged with some more of it before getting some proper stories fledged out (mostly because I hope it will give me some more inspiration lol)

I'll put some more general outline below the cut for anyone interested :)

[Warnings: mentions of abuse, discussions of war and the aftermath, complicated relationships to disability, implied torture ]

First Doctor

So the First Doctor is the oldest of the bunch, a retired surgeon and medical doctor (he used to work at Royal Hope Hospital) who was brought into the Doctor project for his research into medicine.

He spent most of the War in London due to his old age making it difficult to run around cities infested with alien invaders but he does get sent out periodically (mostly when one of the others gets too injured to be moved from their current location which happens a few times).

He had a daughter, Gillian, when he was quite young but he and his wife split up, and his daughter spent most of her time with her mother instead. However, he was the one to gain custody of his daughter's daughter (Susan) when Gillian died as his ex-wife had also died.

When the Doctor was conscripted, Susan was about 15 and stayed with their neighbour Steven over the course of the war, and Vicki and Dodo, two girls he fostered as well while their parents were off fighting.

Due to the secure nature of the work that the Doctor Project was doing, she and her grandfather only exchanged a few letters over the course of each year, and they were always heavily edited, and she found herself finding a lot of the emotional support she was lacking from her two teachers at Cole Hill, Barbara and Ian.

When she left Cole Hill Sixth Form, a year before the war ended, she moved back into her grandfather's house but kept in contact with Barbara and Ian who helped her with finding a job and advice on living alone, etc. This would break GDPR and a host of other protection laws these days but it's the middle of an alien invasion, let's pretend that doesn't exist. They didn't know the Doctor at all until after the war when he returns and it's a bit weird for everyone.

Especially since Ian is completely furious at him for leaving his granddaughter alone, mostly because people meet Susan and get the immediate urge to protect her; they do mostly get over that particular hurdle though as more comes out about how the war ended, although the Doctor doesn't help matters much by being his usual grouchy self.

His usual grouchy self made worse by the fact that everything has changed a lot since he had left home. Susan is in training to be a nurse and has these faux-parental figures she trusts so implicitly, and is decidedly more wary around him; he has also been fundamentally changed by living four years in various bunkers while working against an invisible clock to defeat a foe more technologically advanced that they are.

Eventually things do settle down: Ian and the Doctor apologise to each other, Susan and the Doctor have enough heart-to-hearts that it clears the air between them, that sort of thing.

There's not a whole lot of plot to any of the First Doctor's stuff but the vibes and the setting are pretty much in place.

Second Doctor

The second doctor is probably about forty when he's conscripted and he was a physics lecturer at St. Andrews university, specialising in sound and acoustics and waves, that sort of thing. He invented several new versions of sound systems which is what got him noticed for the Project.

St. Andrews is where he meets Jamie, actually, who was working as a guard; they bonded over a mutual love of music, Jamie in particular on the bagpipes, and then over other mutual interests.

I'm imagining they got married before the war (as this is an alternate history anyway, I'm making gay marriage legal earlier because no-one can stop me) when Jamie went on to fight in the army and the Doctor got conscripted into the project. Both of them being in different deployments so regularly meant letter writing was even more difficult.

After the war, the Doctor gives up the whole lecturing thing, as the project had left him with a bad taste in his mouth over the work he had been doing. Instead, he takes his knowledge of music and goes into conducting an orchestra, as well as giving music lessons on the side.

In like...any instrument; he's not even very good at playing a lot of them but he has the technical know-how to make someone else very good at playing them, if they can get past his eccentricities.

Zoe is the first violin in the orchestra who he gives personal tutoring too in a vague attempt to get her to put some feeling into her music. She's technically very brilliant and knows her way around most string instruments with almost military precision, but she was taught in a very wooden way and the Doctor is attempting to bring that out of her.

Victoria, on the other hand, takes piano lessons from him except she's around like four times a week and barely ever actually plays the piano and they always give her supper because her home life is...not the greatest. Her father's very absent and her mother's dead. It's all a bit iffy.

Eventually, Jamie probably calls Social Services who are overstretched in the aftermath of the war as it is, but she manages to find herself to a very nice foster family (the Harris') who make sure she keeps having her piano lessons. Although they continue not to really be piano lessons.

[I feel that I should put a note on Ben and Polly here; they are sort of known to both One and Two as Polly is Barbara's niece (and quite close to her aunt) and Ben is Two's half brother (but not that close all things considered) - they are the sort of people who come around for birthdays and Christmas and the one off weekend, and give you very thoughtful advice and presents, but that's sort of the limit of your relationship with them.]

Third Doctor

The Third Doctor studied chemistry at university, trying out multiple different branches, and had managed to get noticed for a variety of things such as creating a few new medications, discovering the compounds of some rarer chemicals, that sort of thing (I will admit, I don't know what makes a chemist famous).

Sarah Jane is his younger sister by about twenty years: when she was younger, she had a bit of a hero worship of him going on but nowadays she's much more sensible.

He worked at Cambridge with Liz before the war, and a lot of the breakthroughs they made together; they (and by they I mean the Doctor has while Liz is facepalming in the background) have a bitter rivalry with the Oxford researcher Emil Masters (the Delgado Master).

They are married but they keep that out of their professional rivalries.

After the war, however, the Doctor stays with UNIT. He's the only one of the doctors to do this and it's mostly because he doesn't trust that unit won't make terrible decisions with the research the Doctor Project produced, so he stays as a Scientific Advisor and pokes his nose into everyone's business to keep his conscience clean.

Jo is his assistant as per canon, only now she is being invited around for supper four times a week at his house and is probably inheriting everything that both the Master and the Doctor own when they eventually die.

They turn up to her wedding to Cliff when her parents don't.

Once again, this is incredibly vibes based rather than very much plot; there's probably going to be something to do with Jo falling out with her family, but that's about as far as I got with it. It's mostly fluff at this point lol.

[Also a note about the incarnations of the Master: while the doctors aren't actually related, the incarnations of the Master are because I find that entertaining, and also there are less of them]

Fourth Doctor

The Fourth Doctor is an environmental activist before the war! He got a PhD in ecology and then proceeded to throw away a promising career in academia (his parents' words) to gallivant around the planet doomsday prophesying.

What he's actually doing is blackmailing people into implementing climate saving machines, etc. so that he isn't Doomsday prophesying; he actually meets Sarah doing this because they both get thrown in prison for getting nosy around a nuclear power plant and thus is the start of a beautiful friendship/relationship, it's really unclear to everyone else.

He has two sisters; Winifred (although everyone calls her Fred) who is Romana I, and Romana who is Romana II. Romana turns 18 just before the war and Fred turns 25 around the same time, while the Doctor is 30ish.

Romana immediately joins MI6 (she had always wanted to be in the secret service) and the Doctor gets roped into the Doctor project, which means that when Fred dies during the war, neither of them get informed for months due to the lack of proper communication channels.

This is something they both feel very guilty about, especially considering the fact that they have two nephews who got immediately lost in the overworked system without any other relative around who could look after them.

Anyway, also during the war, the Doctor gets captured by the aliens, and held for a good few months; he barely ever acknowledges that this ever happened to anyone, even when he is literally hospitalised after rescue. He just...pretends that everything is fine and dandy actually.

His doctor is actually Harry who then gets roped into the whole Very Secret Doctor Project thing for like a month until the Doctor was determined to no longer need constant observation etc and then he's just sent back to his ship.

However, Harry has better communication with home than the Doctor, and also shore leave, so he's sent to basically tell Sarah Jane that the Doctor is alive and alright - they immediately hit it off and so after the war, Harry and she hang out a lot until he's also living in the house with her, the Doctor and their gaggle of foster children (their are a lot of orphans after the war and so the three of them foster).

The actual content of their relationship is debateable - they could be a throuple, it could be that two of them are a couple and the other is third wheeling like a boss, it could be that none of them are romantically involved at all - but they do care for each other a lot.

Also the children are Luke and Sky from SJA and Leela, who's probably about 16. They have a dog, too, called K9 because the Doctor has called every dog he has ever owned since he wasa child K9, and just added a MK on the end; currently they're on Mk IV.

After the war, they just sort of settle back into what they were doing before; Sarah Jane writes for her newspapers and magazines, Harry takes up a civilian doctor's position again at New Hope and the Doctor returns to blackmailing people into Doing Better, only none of them are all that alright after the war and hiding it affects how well they are with other people.

There are some arguments had, mostly with the Doctor and Sarah Jane as Harry is much more mild mannered - with each other, with various siblings, with annoying work colleagues - until they at least admit that something is wrong, and then they go from there.

Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor is the computer guy. He studied computer science at university and as well as developing quite a lot of high level software, he also developed cheaper hardware storage stuff.

With a lack of people I wanted to make him related to, I made him a Cranleigh - I think this was so he could go to boarding school and hate literally everything about it apart from cricket. His notes say that he cuts most communication with his family after going to university so they're not that important to the story.

During the war, he gets caught under a collapsing building at one point which causes nerve damage to his spine which affects the communication between his legs and his brain, periodically causing the connection to short out and his legs to collapse; the collapsed building also means that he can get quite a lot of pain in his legs, and should really be using crutches (only he forgets to bring them with him a lot).

Before the war, he works for some sort of big tech company who fund a lot of his research but after the war he doesn't particularly want to do research any more - nor work for a big tech company - and goes on to lead the IT department at Royal Hope. Which consists of Turlough (who is there because he needs a job after school and he heard that IT jobs were really easy actually) and possibly a few other characters (I've heard of some that exist in audio format, so when I get there, I may edit this).

He also fosters two kids in the aftermath of the war: Adric, who's mother was Fred and who's older brother died in the time that they were lost in the foster system, and Nyssa, who's father Tremas Masters (the Ainley Master) got imprisoned for murdering both of his wives and very sweetly asked his old university roommate if he might very kindly look after her for him.

Tegan is Nyssa's girlfriend and is subsequently always around at their house, to the point that the Doctor just gave her a key and makes supper expecting that she'll be there.

As for Peri, she and the Doctor meet at the local garden centre, and now she comes around to help look after his garden because her apartment is too small for a proper one (she and Six keep saying that they're saving up for an actual house but that might be a commitment too far).

There are the inklings of an actual plot idea I had here? In my head, somehow the Master escapes prison and intends on escaping the country with his daughter, only the Doctor is like no??? You can't do that to Nyssa??? And someone gets hospitalised.

[A note about Royal Hope, and also Cole Hill, and other reoccurring places: occasionally, the characters coincidentally working at these places is an actual coincidence, but the rest of the time it's because the Tardis has a lot of sway with people and she is always pushing the doctors and their friends to work in similar places so that they actually talk to each other again.

Or something like that. Honestly it's just plot contrivance because I like putting them in the same working environment, it makes it easier for me]

Sixth Doctor

The Sixth Doctor studies law and philosophy, being a lawyer both before and after the war. He's a really good one too, just really obnoxious.

I don't have a lot for the Sixth Doctor yet because I know he has a few audios that I want to listen to for some ideas, but I am very fond of the two seasons we got of him so here's what I have:

Peri meets the Doctor because he represents her in court when she's fighting her stepfather over something; after the court case (which they win) they go out for a few dates, and even though he's obnoxious and incredibly big-headed, he's also weirdly sweet and gentlemanly and so they get together officially.

Then the war starts and the idle talk they had of getting married/getting a house gets pushed aside while the Doctor joins the project and Peri helps with farm work by using her botany to develop crop something or other.

The war really did affect the Doctor. When he was younger, he suffered from Bipolar Depression but got it under control with medication and therapy, but the war and it's aftermath dragged that out of the depths which definitely put an extra strain on his and Peri's relationship.

When it's really bad, he did try to strangle her (like in the show) which did cause her to leave; but she does come back eventually, after the Doctor calls to apologise, and he does get it back under control.

At some points, it's really not the healthiest relationship, but it doesn't stay like that forever; it's something I really want to get into with my writing and I have the outlines of a fic over the period that he and Peri spend sort of separated.

On a lighter note, some of the other characters of the era! The Master keeps appearing on his doorstep after escaping prison looking for help and the Doctor keeps refusing to give it because he did try to kill Five; he once is a prosecutor against the Rani for unethical experimentation and she straight up sends a hit out against him; the Valeyard is his coworker who hates the Doctor a lot more than the Doctor hates him; and Mel is straight up just his personal trainer at the gym who got WAY too invested in his life.

Seventh Doctor

The seventh doctor is a high level tactician for the MOD before the war, and is actually one of the ones to help collect the other doctors together. He actually continues to do his MOD job while doing the Doctor Project which means he's the only doctor to really have a good understanding of what's happening around the world in real time.

However, he doesn't really have anyone to write home about. He grew up in foster care and it took a lot of effort to get to where he was at the outbreak of war, and so he didn't exactly have that many friends about.

The exception to that is Mel who he grew up with in part and so he does send her the odd letter.

After the war, he gets made redundant by the MOD and goes on to become a PE teacher at Cole Hill; he always dresses like he might be lecturing on politics or history, and stands on the sidelines while watching the students. Or he actually lectures on history or politics; honestly the amount of PE that's done is reliant on the mood.

He also ends up living with Ace; officially, she's his foster daughter, but she's so fiercely independent that she insists that they're roommates and he was willing to accept that.

I wish I did have more for him but I'm hoping that as I get through the Audios and books and such like, I'll get a better understanding of his era and the characters around it to make something a bit more developed.

Eighth Doctor

I'm only eight or so audios into this doctor's travels with Charley, and I have yet to read the Eighth Doctor Adventures (although I am looking to) so this isn't at all a complete section.

The Doctor is an expert in psychiatry and neuroscience, specifically in memory, mostly due to his own issues with memory throughout his childhood.

I'm still debating what the actual cause of the memory issues are, but I'm thinking that it might be because he had epilepsy as a child that was believed to have gone as he grew into adolescence but returned due to one (or multiple) head injuries during the war. I know there are certain types of epilepsy that can really affect the memory.

Either way, the Doctor also seems to be a bit of a romantic and very easily swept up in someone else's life; I see him, before the war, having a disastrous marriage to Grace Holloway which breaks down over four years of not seeing each other and ends in divorce as Grace returns to the states.

After the war, I think that he rents out the rooms in his house which is how he meets Charley, but that's about as far as I can really go with other relationships in his life because I haven't seen anything else of his stuff.

Ninth Doctor

The Ninth Doctor is an expert in mechanical engineering and is the one who does the main body of creating the Moment (the thing that takes out the alien invader's mothership).

He is the son of the War Doctor who's the General who Seven went to with his idea of creating a project to end the war, and the one who officially leads them. He mostly raised the Doctor single-handedly but was not exactly the most caring man in the universe.

The Doctor has a lot of very complicated feelings about his father which don't really get resolved because he (the War Doctor) sacrifices himself to set off the Moment.

Anyway, the Doctor never really wanted to get into Academics and become some sort of fantastic mechanical engineer but his father really pushed it (especially when it became clear the Doctor would never join the army); so after the war, he becomes a sort of freelance mechanic and works with Mickey.

Which is where he meets Rose. Rose often comes to visit Mickey at the end of his shifts because they're friends and live close together, and so she and the Doctor meet regularly there until they are both like...want to go travelling?

Rose was 19 when the war started, and runs the Bad Wolf magazine which she basically created at the beginning as a sort fo morale booster and also because she didn't like how the newspapers were reporting and wanted to make something that wasn't filtered through a hundred government filters; Sarah Jane actually writes for it during the war and on occasion afterwards, and is quite a good friend of Rose's for all that they don't see each other face-to-face all that often.

Still, after the war, sales of Bad Wolf kinda drops off a bit but Rose really loves the magazine and so wants to try something different: she wants to travel so she can see the world, and show people how people are rebuilding and getting their lives back in the aftermath (and help out where she can). She tells the Doctor this and then he offers her his van, and they start travelling together.

They live out the back of his van for years and they're quite happy to do it; they get married in Paris, periodically come back to visit Jackie (who is naturally rather displeased about this life choice they've made - although it's fine because they paid for her to come to Paris for the wedding), and just generally having a good time. They're like van lifers except not obnoxious about it, and when they eventually have Mia, they move back to the UK somewhat permanently (they still travel on holidays) so that she is living somewhere steady and permanent in her upbringing.

We also can't forget about Jack - he was a pilot during the war who also wrote for Bad Wolf, usually entertaining and slightly flirty pieces, and after the war, Rose and the Doctor invited him to travel with them after a few years. When they settle down in London, he moves to Cardiff for a bit on a 'journey of self discovery' where he meets the various Torchwood team (I have to admit I haven't got around to watching Torchwood yet).

He is Mia's godfather (so is Mickey, and Shareen is her godmother) and he dotes on her like no-one's business.

Tenth Doctor

The Tenth Doctor is an expert in anthropology and archaeology. He's Donna's little brother although there isn't much of an age difference between the two of them.

Of all the doctors, he's probably the one I've had the hardest time with.

I know he has a wife who died during the war (I'm thinking that this might be Astrid, for lack of someone better), and that Donna's boyfriend Lee died during the war as well - a lot of people did, during bombings and attacks and that sort of thing - and that with his wife he had a daughter (Jenny) (although I'm also playing around with the idea that he also had a younger daughter, that being Sally - as in Sally from Blink).

In the aftermath of the war, then, he and Donna move in together to help each other out, and eventually their mother and grandfather join them as old age arrives.

Donna meets Shawn in the aftermath and they get on well, and have a very healthy relationship and marriage. On the other hand, we have the Doctor who has the worst situationship ever with Martha.

In the aftermath of his wife's death, he meets Martha who got her medical licence during the war and has been working at Royal Hope since then, and I know that they probably hook up a few times in what is absolutely not recommended.

This is where I get a bit stuck on how things develop from here. I've been getting fonder and fonder of Tenmartha as I think on it more (although Martha does not deserve him) but I do quite like the idea of the two of them coming out of trying to force a relationship and being like...oh we're much better and healthier as friends.

Also, although that epilogue for them came out of nowhere, I do think that Mickey and Martha have a lot of potential as a couple.

There's a lot more I would like to develop here but I shall see what happens as I start writing some more of this.

Eleventh Doctor

The Eleventh Doctor was chosen for his mathematical skill. He's also the youngest of all of them, having just finished his PhD at age 20 as the war broke out.

He's the adopted son of Brian, so Rory's younger brother by a few years, and used to follow him and Amy around like a duckling that had imprinted on the closest moving thing. He did end up going to university quite young (honestly like most of the rest of the doctors) and it's there that he met Strax, Vastra and Jenny who took him under their wing as they were older students.

The war happens before he can really start a job and after the war, he struggles for a bit to find his place, but eventually ends up working with his old university friends in the Paternoster Detective Agency.

Amy and Rory get married after the war - Rory is a nurse at Royal Hope, which he was training for before the war, and Amy is a painter. She always intended on being a model or something like a fashion reporter, but during the war she found painting brought her (and others) the joy that could sometimes be very lacking in such a desperate time.

Her favourite artist is Vincent van Gogh.

They have Melody, although her birth is rife with complications, and so they decide to settle very happily with just the one daughter. She is doted on so completely by everyone, especially her uncle; there's a period when she's like four or five when she is convinced that the Doctor is a secret agent of some sort and gets really into all the spy sort of things.

She makes him play dress up with her and she calls herself River Song because it sounds cool and secret-agenty and the Doctor is her quirky sidekick.

[I debated with putting River Song in as a separate character but I wasn't quite sure what I would do with her? There's potential there for an AU of sorts where she is there, but I unfortunately never quite vibed fully enough with River for her to be a major player in the Main AU]

He lives with the Ponds for a bit after the war, and then moves in with Craig, but when Craig moves out with Sophie, he mopes about it and moves back in with the Ponds.

It's around this time that he meets Clara; she's an English teacher at Cole Hill and her mother went missing nearly five years ago. After trying to get the police to do anything at all, and then saving up the money, she hires the Paternoster gang to find out what happened.

What actually happened is still a bit of a mystery, but she definitely isn't still alive, which the Doctor is the one to tell her the news.

I don't think I'm going to do anything romantic with them but I do think they're quite cute together, so I might dabble. But also I quite like the Doctor being aro and I can see him just living with the Ponds and never leaving.

Twelfth Doctor

The Twelfth Doctor is an astrophysicist. He's spent a lot of his life developing telescopes and astral bodies, but after the war, he mostly just lectures. He's such a longstanding part of St Luke's university that they probably couldn't fire him for anything short of murder.

He's married to Missy quite young, actually, although they never had children; she has spent like half of their marriage in prison though, and now spends most of her time hanging around the Doctor's office being annoying to all his students.

During the war, he did get blinded. It's something he has a complicated relationship with, and does not like it when people mention it around him. He uses a cane when he moves around and wears sunglasses because it hides that his eyes aren't necessarily looking at the person he's talking to.

Again, he has a complicated relationship with it.

Nardole is his teaching assistant, only he's massively overbearing about every aspect of the Doctor's life (only he just manages to be endearing enough that the Doctor doesn't just fire him on the spot).

Bill is, like in canon, someone the Doctor tutors, only now instead of getting to see the galaxy, she has he, Missy and Nardole giving her wildly different yet equally terrible dating advice, which somehow works to get her with Heather.

As for Clara, I genuinely don't know what to do with her; she's such a big part of the Twelfth Doctor's story that I do really want to have her be an important character, but I don't know how. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thirteenth Doctor

The Thirteenth Doctor is an expert in microbiology. She's a government researcher into disease for the few years before the war, but after the war, she becomes an A&E nurse. She found that she preferred chaos and wanted something that was less science based but still within her interests.

She's fostered by Graham as a child, which is how she knows him, and subsequently how she comes to know Ryan and Grace, when Graham meets them. Her mother was Tecteun who she was taken away from when she was twelve due to the fact that Tecteun was a piece of shit (as in canon).

She wrote a lot to all of them during the war; out of all the Doctors, she probably spent the most writing letters (apart from maybe Six who wrote to Peri...so much, he spent so much time agonising over writing letters to her).

She knew Yaz from school and they both moved to London after the war - they met up again when they both returned from the war, and they decided that a change of scenery from the place they grew up might do them good.

London was one of the main targets during the war so there was a lot of practical work and training to do in both the police force and in nursing (which is what the Doctor wants to go into); they stay in shared accomodation and volunteer to help with the rebuilding effort in some of their free time.

When the rebuilding is mostly finished and everything has started to even out again, they stay in London; the Doctor has a job at Royal Hope and Yaz has found her footing in the local police force. They visit Sheffield a lot though, and invite Ryan to stay with them a lot, so he can get away from all the Old People.

Fourteenth Doctor

The Fourteenth Doctor technically doesn't exist. The Doylist reasoning for this is because there was far too little that separated the Fourteenth Doctor out to make him his own character in a modern AU; the Watsonian is because there was meant to be a Fourteenth member of the Doctor Project but he died in transit to the first meeting. Out of respect, the rest skip over the number that was meant to be his.

I've played around with the idea that the Fourteenth and the Tenth Doctor were siblings/related/possibly twins but I think this might be more of an AU sort of thing.

Fifteenth Doctor

Obviously we haven't had the Fifteenth Doctor's actual first season yet or much of anything for him (very excited for it though) so this is very much a work in progress - I'll make more decisions about his story after the season has come out and I've watched it; from vibes alone though, I think he'd be possibly an expert in sociology, and after the war he would own a club or something similar, where Ruby would get herself a job.

Notes and Stuff

Congratulations for getting this far lol! This AU is very precious to me and gets bigger every time I watch a new episode/listen to a new drama/rewatch/relisten/etc.

There are a few general things I'd probably note: all the Doctors have like...actual names (mostly John or a variation there of) but I refer to them all as the Doctor because that's what rolls off the tongue more easily.

Another thing is Idris/the Tardis - on one hand, the original idea was that she would die and her funeral would be the thing to get the Doctors back together so to say, but the more I think about it, the more I would like her to live.

I'm planning on writing some fic for this AU and posting it to AO3 - there's a Sixperi fic I really want to write, and I'm a sucker for some family fluff with various Doctors - and I might draw some stuff, so stick around if you're interested :)

I've only been really into Doctor who for four or five months, and with such an expansive EU (and frankly, such a lot of main content), there's a lot I don't know (although I very much intend to know it one day). If you got this far, I would honestly love to hear your general thoughts and ideas on the AU, a lot of the Eleventh Doctor stuff I worked out was developed from conversation I had with a friend!

Anyway, thank you for getting this far! And thank you for the ask to let me ramble, it took me a while to get all the rambling together but now I've finished, I'm really pleased I got here.

[stopmyhearts]

today caffeine did make the tv static brain fog go away but now instead I'm at no thoughts head empty which is really not any more helpful for anything

[simp-ly-writes]

Lost Souls & Broken Hearts

─────── · ·  For All Time: The Series (pt.1)

─ · · PAIRING: 10th Doctor x F!Time Lord!Reader, 10th Doctor x Rose Tyler

─ · · SUMMARY: You thought yourself to be the last remaining Time Lord but that all changes when a certain Rose Tyler catches you breaking into your own apartment and is dead set on introducing you to the Doctor, your husband back on Gallifrey.

─ · · TAGS: female pronouns used, second person perspective, canon divergence, soulmate au, emotional angst, depictions of anxiety attacks, coarse language, eventual happy ending (but not yet), not beta read.

─ · · MASTERLIST | TAGLIST REQUEST | WORDCOUNT: 4,223 | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

─ · · A/N: I'm so excited to finally be writing this, hope you all enjoy!

─────── · · 

It was easy blending in with human life, a bit too easy, you thought to yourself while carrying your shopping bags up the stairs and around the corner down the hall towards your apartment.

Living in the city made it easy to blend into the crowd and not be questioned, chased or judged. You could simply observe as the world spun around you day after day and as the human race followed its canonical historical calendar.

Sure you could skip time to make everyday Christmas or take a turn around the stars and be back for breakfast but the utter domesticity and simplicity of taking a boring human job, studying at a boring human university, and generally performing a boring human life was a pleasant enough change from the usual or what was the usual at least, you often thought. 

Once reaching the oak door, you jiggled the door handle with a huff before remembering the silly little key the landlord gave you, like that would stop anyone from coming in.

Patting down every pocket and starting to lose hope, you take one long look left and then right before quickly pulling out your sonic screwdriver from your jacket pocket and point it at the lock.

"Excuse me Ma'am, but can I ask you-" a young blonde woman halts your motions causing you to take a sharp breath in through your nose before turning swiftly on the heels of your leather boots, long coat sweeping with the dramatic motion to meet the younger woman's sheepish stare and greeting her with a plastered smile on your painted lips.

"It's The Lady actually, or Lady for short, but I also go by (name, last/name) now… what's your name and how may I assist you?" You tilt your head forwards, eyebrow raised to observe the woman's fashion choices with intrigue as the younger woman appears to do the same to you with squinted eyes.

"Well hello, Lady,” she drags out your old title with a sarcastic tone, “I'm Rose Tyler and I was just about to ask what the hell do you think you're doing breaking into that apartment with that-" she takes a sharp breath inwards, the recognizable type gasp, you thinks to yourself, eyes gone with with pure panic before kicking open your front door and throwing your bags to the floor before starting to rush inside.

Rose grabs your arm, pulling you back into the hall and pinning you against the chipped plaster wall. Blowing a strand of hair from your face, you shake underneath Rose's hold with a huff before managing to shove her off. "You know on this planet I was told they shake hands in greeting- not the whole bloody body!" you exclaim with a huff, adjusting the jacket on your shoulders, sonic screwdriver in hand.

Rose shakes her head, mouth aghast, "how did you get that?" she asks, fingers pointing towards the device in your  hand, taking a step forwards as you take one step back, "Get what?"

"That screwdriver!" Rose reaches out with both hands now, brain half frazzled with her discovery, the other clouded over with worry as to what this woman must have done to the Doctor in order to get that off of him.

"Oh, this?" you dangle the device from between your fingertips before tossing it upwards and catching it with a wink, "got it from the contractor's store on Yonge Street. They were having a sale, I think you may still be able to get the deal, half-off or something like that-"

"Don't lie to me, I know what that is. Now tell me how. did. you. get. that?" Rose demands, hand slipping into her pocket to phone the TARDIS.

"If not a screwdriver then what is it?" you ask, looking over Rose's shoulder and into your apartment, calculating.

"Just answer my question!" Rose yells, phone starting to ring. 

“What is going on out here?!” You both look towards an older blonde woman who steps out from across the hall in what looks to be a dull yellow bathrobe, “and who the hell are- you’ve got to be kidding me, you’ve found another one? Fucking ‘ell Rose Tyler, I’m starting to think danger follows you better then your own shadow!” 

“Mum! Now is not the time please and you-” Rose begins to speak before realizing you had taken down the hall and slammed the apartment door shut with a heavy BANG! Echoing down the hall. 

“Now look at what you’ve done!” Rose huffs, fingers balling up into fists as she walks past her mother to stand in front of your door, knocking repeatedly. 

“And what have I done?” Rose’s mom stands back, arms crossed as she watches her daughter switch between ringing your doorbell and banging on your door. “I know you’re in there! I’ve got words for you!”

Meanwhile inside the apartment, you are rushing around, tripping over the various groceries that have spilled out onto the wooden floors and knocking into the picture frames across the walls. You were not expecting to have to move so soon and to say you were disappointed to have to leave so soon would be an understatement.

Your features hold a frown as you rip open the closet doors and throw every article of clothing out onto your bed in search of a specific piece of luggage. I know I left you here somewhere girl. C’mon I know you must be just dying to get out there again so now’s your chance! Just have to show me where you- your thoughts are cut off by Rose’s relentless pleas as she yells in through the mail slot now. 

Gods that girl is really getting on my nerves now, is this really any way to introduce yourself? You scoff. Turing back out of your room and down the hall to the guest room and closet in search, nearly tipping over a tangerine on your way there with a curse. 

Never liked those fruits either, clementines are superior in every way, why do I torture myself with these things- why do I- oh! There you are, you look at the red luggage with a smile before unzipping it to find the uncovered stairs within and throwing down various papers and gadgets, anything that could link to her identity within the apartment. 

Textbooks, tea, pictures… you felt yourself pausing on the last one of that list, your fingers hovering over the some dozen faces you saw right through that all contained the same hearts and those hearts that you willingly connected yourself to all those centuries ago…

Shaking your head of those distant thoughts you throw the frames down into the luggage before taking one last look towards your… open front door? Shit. You spin on your heel, darting off towards the guest room and falling into your luggage, tumbling down the stairs and finding yourself at the console. 

The machine stirs to life with a joyous tune, Hello! Hello! Welcome back, I have missed you so! You laugh at the voice in your head, I’ve missed you too, girl. Now who’s ready for an adventure? You watch as the room comes to life, every bulb shining to full illumination, switches and dials spinning without your hands to command them and that familiar buzz underneath your feet has you giddy in your shoes- it had been quite awhile since you’ve had a frill… since… you remind yourself not to have such memories before inputting a time and destination and lean back against the rails waiting for the vworp sound to commence. 

But before you can begin to enjoy the sound, a voice calls out to you and not the two you had accounted for in your brain. Grabbing the edge of the console and poking your head around you look to see… Rose?! 

“Do explain yourself,” you cross your arms with squinted eyes. 

“How’re you alive?” Rose rebuttals. 

“Answering a question with another question again?” you tease a smile, biting your lip to hide its spread across your cheeks as you try and maintain a straight face. 

“What are you smiling about? Gods you are just as worse as him! And you started the question-answer thing!” Rose exclaims before taking in a deep breath and meeting your eyes once more, “Okay. I decided to follow you. I was… curious. I’ve travelled with your kind before but had never seen another one of… well you unless you’re the Doctor and decided to regenerate again… but then again we’d be in a blue box not some luggage.”

“The Doctor?” you question in a raised tone, you feel your hearts skip a beat in your chest, no… that couldn’t be… 

“Yeah, the Doctor. Do you know him?... Them? They? I don’t know how you refer to each other in the past,” Rose explains, starting to walk around the console, picking up on the various differences between the two machines she’s travelled inside. 

“I don’t know them,” you lie, turning back to the console and flicking some levers. 

“Really? You don’t know the Doctor?” Rose asks again in a much softer tone. You can feel the disappointment in her tone rattling your bones causing you to shiver at the sound of his name. You could distantly remember the sound of his voice calling after you regenerations ago, feel his touch against your skin, feel the way his essence buzzed with pleasure being combined with your own- “No. I… kept to myself back on Gallifrey,” you lie again. 

“Huh, do you know any other Time Lords?” she peers into the valves at the centre of the console, watching as the flicker between yellow and blue hues like a rampant fire. 

“What is this?- an interrogation Miss. Tyler?” you tease, walking behind the girl to reach the other side of the console as you correct your travel angle to a quarter of the degree, “I’ve met one other one… but he is long gone now…” your voice trails off as you stare at the specks of dirt on your outfit with utmost intrigue. 

Rose apologizes, “sorry.”

“For breaking and entering? Or for questioning me?” you joke, bumping the bad mood off yourself and into her shoulder as you smile at the girl. 

“May I ask a few questions? Since it seems you’re stuck with me now for the next hour or so,” you look down at your watch before tipping your head in the direction of your kitchen, “tea?”

“Yes please.” 

─────── · · 

Rose tells you all about her travels with the Doctor across the years, you don’t miss the sparkle in her eyes nor the sound of her heart soaring, pupils dilating everytime she brings up his name. You remember being that person, in utter awe of his intelligence, wit and wisdom. Put under a spell of his charm, weak to his touch… But with every word she adds, every memory that resurfaces, a new pain settles across your skin that you pick at, eyes flashing with a burning pain at the physical proof that he moved on from me… thought me good as dead… didn’t think of our bond…  

“Are you alright there?” Rose asks, reaching across the table to hold your hands, “I’m really sorry now. I was not thinking how painful it must have been to be alone for so long… you don’t have to be alone anymore though, you could take us back to earth after this adventure and I could introduce you to the Doctor and-”

You squeeze her hands in yours, leaning forwards across the table and letting out a long breath to only answer in a whisper, “it’s okay dear. I rather liked being alone… gives me time to think and after what you’ve told me… I think I need more time than ever.” 

Rose nods, “Are you sure- I think he’d love to meet- I mean okay! But do let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“I will,” you nod back before dropping your touch and leaning back in your chair, “now I do believe you had more questions and I have many answers.” 

“I wish for only the truthful ones,” Rose smiles as you mirror hers to hide the guilt gnawing at your hearts. “How old are you?”

Coughing up a part of your tea with the shock of the question, you laugh, “you know it's rather rude to ask a Lady her age,” you tease, “but I’m.. old… I think I’ve recently reached 900 but I would have to count again. I’ll get back to you on that.” 

Rose nods, “what planet do you like the most?” 

“Earth,” you say instantly. 

“Why?” 

“It's become a second home to me.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to your home planet.”

You look away, remembering the skyscrapers that reached the reddish glow of the homeworld atmosphere. “It was a sad necessity or else the wars never would have stopped,” you explain. 

“Is that what you truly believe?” she whispers, tone anxious, knowing that she really shouldn’t have asked but can’t help but desire to know. You partially admire this trait of hers. 

“It’s what I know,” your head falls, eyes cast to the remaining tea leaves at the bottom of your cup, observing the abstract picture with a frown.

“Lighter question, where are we going?” you shrug, “It didn’t really matter to me then… but with a human aboard…” you stand, speaking to yourself as you look at the travel log on the console, huh, why Earth?

“Say Rose, does Earth, January 2025 ring a bell?” 

“That's the first time I met the Doctor!” Rose smiles, jumping up from her spot and running down the hall to meet you, eyes cast over your shoulder with intrigue. 

“Great,” you smile tightly before slowly turning back to the screen, cursing your TARDIS.

─────── · · 

You could laugh at yourself, back where you started just a few years behind at some random street corner in Scotland. “Now this is not where we met but the time’s the same,” Rose says, eyes cast over wet cobblestones reflecting the setting sun. You let out a breath in relief. 

The streets were quiet as people prepared themselves for work the next day and you took off down the street, peering into various storefronts and cafes, a whole sleepy city all to ourselves, and to think I doubted you girl. You can hear the TARDIS buzz excitedly before quieting down once more within your head. 

“What’re we doing here exactly?” Rose asks, you turn around and shrug, placing your hands into your pockets. 

“Enjoying the world like we’re the last ones on it,” you reply with a smile before tilting your head, “how does a walk around the park sound?”

“Sounds a bit too easy than what I’m used to,” Rose laughs, looping her arm around your own, “usually when I’m with the Doctor the worlds about it end.”

“Is that so?” you mumble, “and what does he do about it?”

“Well, he saves the day of course!” Rose deadpans, scoffing at your question. 

“Does he shoot them? Kill them? Converse with them? How does he save it?” you keep your stare forwards so that Rose cannot pick up on your minute expressions, I know how he ‘saved the day’ last time… you think to yourself bitterly. He left you behind, better left for dead, you watched him do so without a second glance back and now he was with the girl on your arm that you walked around with in a barren Scottish park.  

You cursed yourself in this moment for not being able to move on centuries later, for waiting to feel his soul call out to you once more. You could still feel a part of him, maybe it was hope but you thought-no, knew him to be alive after all of these years. You wondered if he still felt you too but then again… he wouldn’t have gotten with her then… right? You ask yourself.  

You could remember his smile on your skin on your soul-bonding day, your wedding day where two became one for all time, for all existence, until the very end… or at least that's what you gave to him, the promise of forever… but at least he’s happy now… but that thought almost hurt more knowing what he was happy with someone else, you curse yourself for the selfish thought. 

Rose notices you stopped listening to her as she stops walking, causing you to pause alongside her. She walks in front of you, grabbing your shoulders as you tense in wait, remembering how the morning went. “I’m not gonna shake you for all your worth again, don’t worry about that but what’s going through your head? You stopped listening long ago…”

You stare at her, observing her youthful features, worried smile and kind eyes. You feel a stake driving through your chest, the last strand of your bond wilting away painfully slowly, untying itself from inside you causing you to grip your chest as you heave over your knees, falling to the ground. 

“Oh my god, you’re not okay. Shoot, shoot, shoot! You we’re supposed to tell me if I could help with something! I’m going to call the Doctor, okay? He’ll know what to do with a sick Time Lord better than I will, just gimme a minute okay? Don’t go anywhere,” she warns you like a stern mother, finger in your face as she waits for you to nod. You just stare blankly up at her, a singular tear falling from your eye that opens the floodgates to a waterfall. 

You cry out your pain, knowing this to be how heartbreak feels. You remember reading about the science behind the bonds in your youth, enraptured with them. You would become soulmates with someone from them… two parts always able to recognize the other no matter what and even after death. And when treated right, the bond could strengthen and so would the couple and when weakened… so would its parts. 

You felt it vividly. A fire starting up from your feet spreading up to your head as you shook off a sweat in the grass watching as the moon came up from the horizon… I wonder if he’s looking too, feels this too…

─────── · · 

“Doctor!’ Rose yells down the line, eyes watching as you rock yourself back and forth refusing to meet her gaze, actively wincing everytime she tips her head trying to chase your own stare. 

“What? Where are you? I’m waiting outside your flat and your mother keeps staring me through the window like I’m the creep,” the Doctor replies, he feels a pang at his heart as he stares down at his chest, eyebrow raised in question as he touches the hurt gently before hitting his chest with a grunt and standing up straight one more. 

“I’m currently in Scotland-” Rose begins to speak before being cut off by a worried Time Lord. 

“What on Earth are you doing there?! When did this happen?” 

“Well only about two hours or so ago, I met another Time Lord and I kinda became a stow-away, she’s really nice! A bit sassy but I take that’s a part of your species DNA,” Rose rambles, kneeling down by your form, hand outstretched that you flinch away from, she pulls away quickly, feeling guilty for trying in the first place. 

“A what?” the Doctor gasps, vowels open alongside his jaw as he stares at Jackie, not believing a word he hears. 

“A Time Lord, you know console, sonic screwdriver, time travel and all that jazz,” she explains, “and she’s hurt, I don’t know what happened but she looks to be in a lot of pain. Please come quickly… I'm scared for her, I don’t like the thought of you being the last one left when we could have done something about it.”

“C-can you tell me her name?” the Doctor asks gently, sprinting back to his TARDIS.

Rose pauses, did I really just hear the Doctor stutter? She asks herself before responding, “She said her title was Lady but takes on a human name now-”

“Are you absolutely sure that was her name?” the Doctor asks, a sudden wave of sickness has him crashing into the console, gripping its ledge as he sways side to side, impossible, he thinks to himself. 

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I’ll be there soon,” the Doctor says with utter determination, with utter need, he must see this for himself… see possibly you, “keep your phone on Rose, I’ll track the signal to your location.” 

─────── · · 

You hear as their conversation ends and you stare up at the star filled sky above as the oil lamps flicker on around you both. “If-” you wince at your weak tone, clearing your throat before beginning again, “If he’s coming here then this is where we must part ways… it was… nice getting to meet you Rose. Please, treat him well,” you smile softly up at Rose as she stares down at you, shock evident across her features before they are sculpted sharp into a frustrated expression. 

“You lied to me! You told me you didn’t know him, who are you truly?” she demands, watching as you stand with a wobble on your feet. You can hear the Doctor's muffled voice in her pocket, demanding to know what is going on. You look between both voices before turning back and walking towards your red luggage left on the street corner, “Goodbye Rose!” you yell hearing as she chases after you. 

“Please just tell me who you are, please stay, please-”

You fail to turn around, one foot in your TARDIS, the other on the cobbled streets, another play of history about to be written on these very stones. “I’m the Lady, I’m (name, last/name), and I’m leaving behind the past like I should’ve many centuries ago. Live a good life, Rose. The best life, with many walks in the park… make sure he does the same, okay?” 

Rose stares at you for a long moment, you both look up to watch as a blue box descends from the sky at a rapid speed. “But why can’t you tell me who you are?”

“Let the Doctor tell you whatever he wants you to know… I don’t want to become between you both,” you smile at her one last time before shutting and locking the door behind yourself and setting a course off somewhere you knew yourself never to be found, at least not for a long time. 

─────── · · 

The Doctor falls out the door, cursing as he sees the red box flicker before disappearing before his very eyes. He chases after the spot in which you last stood, shaking his head in disbelief as he grips his hair before turning towards his companion. “You really weren’t lying, there was another Time Lord here,” he blinks rapidly, hearts squeezing in his chest- impossibly tight as he coughs, feeling his airways somehow becoming affected. 

“Doctor? Are you alright?” Rose races to his side, shocked when he flinches away from her touch as if she burned him. “I’m fine just a little under the weather is all, should be good in a minute or two,” the Doctor rushes out to explain, “and are you positive that was her name?”

“Yes!” Rose replies exasperatedly, “why do you keep asking? Who is she? Why- how do you know each other?” 

The Doctor remains silent, choosing his next words carefully as he slowly walks back to the Blue Box, Rose in tow. “We grew up together…but that's a story for another time.”

“Why another time, why not now? She had the same reaction you're having,” Rose presses, taking a step forwards, cornering the man in between two sets of rails. The Doctor keeps his head low, “Is she your friend, companion, ex?” The Doctor does not even breathe. 

“She’s your ex, huh… girlfriend? fiancee?... wife?” Rose whispers the last title underneath her breath catching the way the Doctor’s breath hitches as he takes in a sharp breath of air.

“So that’s why you could never call anything official?” Rose questions yet she knows the answer. She blinks rapidly, stepping back as she is confused as to how to feel. She knew him to be a centuries old creature, lived longer and will live longer than she ever could, ever would and yet… she couldn’t help but feel disturbed knowing that in the few years they shared together… he hadn’t been entirely truthful. 

“What else are you hiding from me, Doctor?” she whispers underneath her breath. The Doctor remains silent, simply staring down at his converse, gripping the rail behind him with white knuckles. “I thought her to be dead, could feel it up in here,” he points up to his head in explanation.

Rose strides forwards, painted finger poking at his chest, he swears to feel it underneath his suit, gritting his teeth at the pricking feeling that spreads across his warm chest. “But you failed to listen here, didn’t you?” 

─────── · · 

PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

↳ Taglist: @just-levyy

[marvelmaniac715]

I probably shouldn’t write for Doctor Who, because this is an overplayed trope, but here’s what I want for a potential multi-season companion. Her name is Callie (short for Calypso, which means ‘she who conceals’ but that’s just a coincidence…) and, personality-wise, she’s practically a stereotypical companion at first. Smart, witty, cheerful, reacts to the TARDIS with a typical “it’s bigger on the inside” but when she says it it’s almost like she’s making fun of the past companions. Her eyes are similar to Clara Oswald’s, she has blonde curls like River Song, which she keeps in two plaits like Yasmin Khan, she smiles like Rose Tyler, and the Doctor has an overwhelming sense of deja vu. She’s not much of a hugger, which the Doctor respects, but the one time she does hug him after a particularly emotional moment, he swears he can hear two heartbeats. That’s not the only thing - her eyes seem kind, but if you really look into them, there’s an iciness there. She’ll often smile to herself, like she’s laughing at a private in joke. She’ll often make herself a soup which smells just like a soup that can only be made with ingredients native to Gallifrey, and during her adventures with the Doctor things go wrong more often. She’ll push the Doctor to be more selfish because “you can’t save everyone”, and she won’t tell him much about her childhood. But then, one day, Callie starts acting even more odd. She responds to a question with “I’ve mastered it”, and the Doctor discovers that her ringtone is Saxon’s theme from when he was Prime Minister (“I was just a kid when Saxon became Prime Minister, that tune’s really nostalgic for me…”), then the truth comes out - Callie never existed; she is in fact the Doctor’s best enemy the Master (but you probably already knew that 😅). Her motivations are quite similar to Missy’s - she wanted her friend back, so she managed to make her newest regeneration a combination of every woman that the Doctor’s loved, and has drawn upon her knowledge of what the Doctor finds most appealing in a friend/romantic partner. When he tries to push her away, she gives him a look of mock-confusion and asks:

“What’s wrong, Doctor? I thought you were going to show me the universe?…”

Edit: I’ve started writing a fic about it :D:

[intuitive-revelations]

Theory: Something serious is up with the TARDIS

I had been wondering about this all series, but after Rogue today, it's finally been confirmed that something's going on with the TARDIS (on top of all the other arc threads going on!).

The moment I picked it up was in The Devil's Chord, where the TARDIS makes a strange groan and creaks after landing back in 1963. Ruby thinks it's from Maestro, but the Doctor says it's "something else". As of today it's happened again, twice! Once in the episode itself, once in the next time trailer. The exact same sound effect!

Someone on reddit pointed out a few weeks ago that this sound appeared even earlier too, in Wild Blue Yonder (notably also when we first saw Susan Twist, had gravity changed to mavity, and welcomed the Pantheon into the universe). Each time, it's also had attention drawn to it. Here's a video of each scene, followed by a direct comparison of each sound:

(I did have a quick glance to see if it appeared elsewhere, maybe even during Flux. As far as I can tell however, Wild Blue Yonder seems to be the only non-S14 appearance.)

What's more, going back to that Reddit thread, someone pointed out what the Wild Blue Yonder script says about this moment:

And then the TARDIS seems to moan. The Doctor fascinated. DONNA: Is it working? THE DOCTOR: I think so. Strange. He reaches out, touches the TARDIS, wondering. And that 'strange' will come back to haunt him, one day. But now...

(Suddenly the TARDIS freaking out over Donna's spill might make a bit more sense...)

So what the hell's going on?

Well, between a trailer scene and some news that just came out a few hours ago as of writing this, I think I may have an idea. Given it's based on trailer footage uploaded and then removed from YouTube, I'll put it below beneath a read more:

In a removed Disney+ teaser trailer we get two frames of the Doctor screaming out into space (with Mel behind him). Except it's not from "his" TARDIS:

It's the f*cking memory TARDIS!

And here's the thing. Not only was this trailer scrubbed from the Disney+ and BBC channels, but in the other trailers, this clip is entirely different! Not only is Mel gone, but the TARDIS interior is now Fifteen's own, and the TARDIS is in a different, generic region of space.

Just before this, we also see a similar nebulous region of space matching the unmanipulated clip.

But why on Earth is this such a big deal, that the BBC/Disney would go full MCU and give us a deliberately altered clip? The only previous time I remember Doctor Who doing this was for Series 10, hiding the plot point of the Doctor's blindness. It's not because of Mel, who literally appears in the released trailer. It's also seemingly not because of the background, despite it also being altered (unless the two moons are a clue with the planet being Gallifrey or something - the thought had occurred to me - but that's such a tiny detail, and we also only see one sun). Instead, it must be the Memory TARDIS. But why?

In-universe, I have no idea. On one hand I'd be delighted to get some answers as to its nature. Assuming it's connected to the groans we've been hearing, then it could be the TARDIS undergoes some sort of metamorphosis into this state? But we've seen the TARDIS change all the time, whether for safety, to recover or whatever. I also can't imagine general audiences are falling over themselves to find out the in-universe explanation for a Classic Who re-release framing device. Not to mention, apparently the sound will go on to "haunt" the Doctor...

...maybe the TARDIS straight up is taken out of commission in some way? And the Memory TARDIS isn't the same ship, but the Doctor's way of saving the day without her? Maybe even remembered into existence Fitz/Amy style?

Out of universe however, it's just been announced yesterday that we're getting more Tales of the TARDIS.

And not just more omnibus stories with past characters returning for in-universe commentary... but with Fifteen and Ruby! What's more, it's apparently a one-off, right before the finale (but, note, after the first part next week).

Which means it's important. Possibly extremely so, given the edited trailer scene. It might even serve as an interquel, given Fifteen and Ruby are somehow in it.

I've seen two common theories. Either a) it will be Pyramids of Mars, and we're getting Sutekh in the finale (presumably with Fifteen and Ruby partially because of bringing back Elizabeth Sladen obviously not being an available option - and even if you thought up another character, eg. Luke, I doubt Tom would be interested, at that point anyway), or b) it will be something tying into Susan returning.

Honestly between the remaining trailer clips (eg. sandstorms and dusty planets), a tease RTD supposedly gave in DWM, and an old interview with him where he supposedly floated the idea of bringing back a Classic Who for a finale and airing the original serial on BBC3 beforehand, I'm kinda leaning towards the prior, even though it wasn't at all on my radar.

However, this still doesn't actually answer what's up with the TARDIS.

It could quite literally be anything. However, here's a few ideas, some reasonable some weird, that I have come up with:

Old age / stress. This is a weird one, but oddly enough something I had thought of once in the past, and I just saw someone else come to the same idea on Reddit. The idea is that while the Doctor has a new regeneration cycle and now a good few years, if not decades or more, of rest and recovery, the TARDIS may struggling in it's own right (especially if it is somehow old enough to have once been the Fugitive Doctor's). However, while this could be something interesting to explore, and I think isn't entirely mutually exclusive with other options, I can't imagine going anywhere near a storyline of the TARDIS itself 'wearing thin'. Besides, if we did, I like to imagine it would have been foreshadowed with size leakage, as per Name of the Doctor.

Relating to the above, could it be something linked to the TARDIS splitting in The Giggle? However, the sound starts before then (not that that means much to the TARDIS, but still).

Laws of rationality breaking down. This one makes the most sense in a lot of ways, between the expanded universe (particularly Christmas on a Rational Planet) and Flux, we've seen the TARDIS cannot survive in an irrational universe. While time has stabilised for now, we're still seeing magic and other Old Time forces encroaching in on the Web of Time. I'm a bit torn with this one however, as while it works from a lore and writing perspective, plus matches with this starting in Wild Blue Yonder (right after the Mavity incident... interestingly), it seems odd it's not more connected with what happened in Flux? Why are the sounds and effects on the TARDIS completely different?

Something to do with the Doctor's fobwatch. In Rogue, the Doctor blames the sound on indigestion. We know we're getting more Timeless Child related stuff - could this somehow be linked to Thirteen dropping the Division biodata module deep into the TARDIS? Would be a weird time to pick this up though, and I'm not sure exactly how that would have had such an effect.

The most actually likely, but least possible to theorise about: it's something time-wimey to do with Ruby, the villain(s) of the story, and/or Susan Twist, especially given this started after her first appearance.

Regardless, I'm just excited to see what's up with the Memory / "Remembered" TARDIS, because it's seems we're about to learn something...

[nethnad]

thinking about time lords and their fucked up little society again and i just realized how devastating the revelation of the drums in the end of time is in relation to the master's character.

because of all the renegade time lords in the universe, i think it's the master who most exemplifies the philosophical outlook that the time lords have towards the rest of the universe. they're stuffy observers, administrators, yes - but this position is one they've decided for themselves because of this concept of supremacy over other life forms. imposed and upheld this idea that other species that lack a time sense are less-than, primitive. and the master buys into this hard.

and i mean... compared to the doctor, the master is good at being a time lord. he buys into these supremacist concepts, this idea that every other species (and especially humans) is practically a meaningless ant in the grand scheme of the universe. takes it to the extreme, yes, but its the same underlying principle. he's a good student (despite whatever chibnall might think) - that one time lord from terror of the autons (identity forever a mystery) (its brax) even says "he did receive a higher degree of cosmic science than you." the master could play their game if he wanted to. he's remarkably comfortable with being on gallifrey/the idea of gallifrey(in eot/tlotl) than the doctor ever is. where the doctor avoids the subject of the lord presidency like the plague, the master is like "well if you kill the president you ARE the president! and then you have all of gallifrey!" and when the doctor destroys gallifrey (nominally), the master tries to rebuild it in the sound of drums/last of the time lords. tries to emulate their society. honor them in his little fucked up way. he brings them back from the time war!

and what does he get for it? how did the time lords treat him in response?

they decide to implant the sound of drums in his head, stretching back until he's a child. puts this insufferable noise, this splitting headache, in his head for his entire life. all so that they may live while he dies. because he is diseased, because of them. he has swallowed the pill, bought their propaganda, he has followed the rules, he tried to rebuild them he tried. and in response he is chewed up and spit out like trash so that rassilon's god complex can survive while the universe crumbles.

how crushing must that be to someone? to have your whole worldview - that you are better, you are chosen, you are special - come crumbling down in a few short moments? to see the revered founder-god of the civilization you have so desperately tried to revive look at you and say "you are diseased," even though he was the one to poison you in the first place?

and as his heart is torn to pieces... when rassilon says "no more," and charges his gauntlet, the master - who has spent countless lives fighting death with his bare hands - does not move.

part of me thinks he does not want to.

[am-i-obsessed---maybe]

Wrong Tardis (Ninth Doctor x M!Reader/ Tenth Doctor x M!Reader)

I'm not a huge fan of Nine but I'm slowly going back and watching his episodes and he's kinda growing on me.

Not sure if he's ooc here (though I'm like 90% sure Rose is) but whatever. I'm super excited for tomorrow's special and really wanted to write more for this series.

If you have any requests for this series send me an ask! (just keep in mind I have my own plans for big episodes like Silence in the Library or End Of Time.

Wordcount: Just over 1k

Series masterpost

The Tardis was old, like really old, like when the Doctor stole it it was already in a museum old. So occasionally it glitched, nothing too big. That is until it glitched and teleported you you to Cardiff 2005.

That was a whole earth year before you even met the Doctor. On the plus side the glimpse of his face you saw before you were teleported told you he would find you and come to pick you up, it was only a matter of time so you walked around.

You had yet to be in Cardiff in 2005, you'd been in to Cardiff circa 1910 but not 2005 so you look around, you saw the sights, you people watched for a bit and then you saw a familiar blue box.

"About time" You told yourself as you walked in.

"Did you fix the timezone processor?" You asked, happy to be back. By your calculation is had been about 3 hours.

"Who're you?" Asked a blonde woman who'd put herself between you and the Tardis console. You blinked.

You may have jumped to conclusions.

Looking around the inhabitants of this Tardis were very much not the inhabitants of yours. You only recognized one face. Captain Jack Harkness (Though he wasn't traveling with you when you'd been teleported away).

"You're Rose Tyler" You said to the woman who stood in front of you and she nodded.

"Yeah, and who are you?" She asked again. By now Jack and the Doctor, or the man you assumed was the Doctor were looking at you wearily.

You looked to the Doctor, his hair was darker and buzzed close to his head, his forehead creased in ways your Doctor's didn't and his ears were definitely larger than you remembered them being. Looking into his eyes calmed you though, because those were definitely the eyes of the man you loved. Though perhaps a few years younger.

This was the Doctor before you'd met him. before he knew you existed, maybe even before he destroyed Gallifrey.

"Well? Aren't you gonna answer her?" Asked Jack all three were looking at you expectantly.

"I'm an anthropologist" You finally said.

"An anthropologist?" Rose asked and you nodded.

Both Jack and Rose looked at you intently, not really buying it.

"Is that your name?" Rose asked wearily.

"No" You answered honestly, "But I can't tell you my name. I'm sorry." You told her and once again looked at the Doctor. He hadn't said anything yet.

"What do you mean you can't tell us your name? Why?" Rose asked.

"Because he's from the future Rose" The Doctor finally said, climbing down from the ladder he was perched on when you burst in.

"Aren't you?" He asked and you nodded.

"You're from my future" He said and you smiled almost sadly.

"Inquisitive as ever Doctor" You told him.

"I should go" You said, slowly turning around.

"Wait, if you're really from the future how come you were so shocked to see us? Don't you know us? Like, the future us?" Rose asked.

"He can't tell you anything Rose, it could put the whole timeline at risk" The Doctor said.

"He's right, I really shouldn't even be here. I thought this was my Doctor's Tardis coming to finally pick me up."

"Finally? How long have you been here?" Jack asked.

"About three hours" You told him.

"Does that mean there's another version of the Doctor wanderin' around Cardiff right now?" Rose asked and you chuckled a bit.

"No, we had a bit of glitch—" "With the timezone processor?" The Doctor asked.

"I can't tell you that" You said but he smiled at you with the cheeky little smile that only this face must have because you'd never seen it before and you sighed, "Yes with the timezone processor".

"What's a timezone processor?" Rose asked.

"It's what keeps all occupants of the Tardis in the same time bubble in flight" Both you and the Doctor said together, the two of you looked at each other.

"It's going to be your fault you know. You don't check the timezone processor enough and at some point it's going to act up. I want you to remember me saying this when I see you again. It's your fault" You told him but your voice held no malice, quite the opposite, it was loving teasing and both Rose and Jack could tell.

"I'm gonna go meet Mickey at the train station" Rose said and she grabbed Jack with her as she left. Leaving you and the Doctor alone but not before looking at the Doctor one last time, smiling and giving him a big old wink.

With just the two of you left the Tardis was quiet except for the soft whirring of the engine as it fueled up.

"How do you know what a timezone processor is?" The Doctor asked.

"I can't tell you" You said.

"When are you from?" He asks.

"I can't tell you that either" You repeat.

"Then can you tell me why you're looking at me like that?" He asks.

You step closer to him and gently cradle his face in your hands.

"I've never this face before" You simply say.

"What are you to me?" He asks.

"One day you'll find out. One day you're going to look at this face and smile and you're going to call me brilliant and when you do you're going to remember this and who knows, maybe I'll see this face again" You told him and kissed his cheek.

The wheezing sound of the Tardis landing could be heard faintly from beyond the wooden doors and you smiled widely.

"See you soon" You said and turned around, walking out to hopefully find your Doctor waiting for you.

Outside the Tardis stood another blue police box with the door open and the Doctor stood outside.

"There you are! We've been looking all over for you!" He said. His face was covered in oil and grease.

"Did you fix the timezone processor?" you asked.

"Eh, eventually" The Doctor said.

"And was it sparking because of a loose wire from when we crashed on Auros?" You asked, admittedly somewhat condescendingly.

"Yes" The Doctor mumbled and you rolled your eyes.

"I told you to check it" You said as you walked inside. The Doctor closed the door behind you.

"Y/N" He said, calling your name and you turned your attention from the Tardis console to him.

"Yes love?" You asked.

"Have I told you that you're brilliant?" He asked and you smiled.

"Not recently, no" You said.

[uneducated-author]

I'm a strong believer in 'Midnight should have never been revisited' because we're always going to be way more scared of something that we never got the chance to understand, but as a continuation, this episode was great at making me terrified. Like, it was really well written, edited, scored. Genuine shivers when the doctor figures out where he is and what he's up against, and I haven't gotten that in a WHILE. The details around how accessibility and disability might look like 500,000 years in the future is really interestingly done as well, from the projected words to the little details of 'signing still scares people' and the Doctor being called out with 'I can still lip read'. I would have liked something from Aliss's side, like a pair of gloves that brought text to her own signing, similar to what's in development now.

As an episode, some parts were great and others slipped. I don't feel less scared of the Midnight entity, which is good, but having Aliss somewhat able to communicate without the entity controlling her I feel kind of broke it a little for me. The Doctor at his core wants to communicate with the universe, and the horror of the midnight entity was that he couldn't communicate with it without making it stronger, and it couldn't communicate without consuming someone. The best part of Midnight for me was the mystery. We still don't know whether Sky Silvestry had some history with the Midnight entity, or whether it consumed her completely, just hunting from her fear. It would have been great if Aliss was just the ultimate form of the entities forgery of humanity, or if that was at least an option. Giving it a physical form immediately felt a bit dull, and I never like being able to see a monster, and I also didn't like how it was actively murdering or hunting people down.

In Midnight, it was careful. Unexposed to humanity, but aware that more were coming, and it did everything with the intention of leaving the star to find more humans. Having it seemingly wreak havoc and kill as many humans available to it feels very juvenile in comparison. It could have been interesting if it showed knowledge of military protocol. For instance if it damaged Aliss's body, knowing that she would be evacuated for treatment rather than interrogated. Like, it's learned more and more and can use human tactics to counter them.

Speaking of, don't like them being a mission crew. It gives a casual level of competence which diminishes the danger. If they went the route of 'this thing dismantled a crew of prepared soldiers' that could have been great but instead, the mutiny has no real emotional impact and everyone comes off as very cold and disconnected. None of the losses feel personal. We don't really get many humanising moments across them and honestly, it's way too many characters. I literally only remember Mo's name and I JUST finished the episode. They literally refer to each other as numbers, and that's never even seen as tragic.

Back to the Doctor, we're getting some repeat issues with characterisation where the Doctor is becoming very comfortable with letting people die for him. Like Ko Sharmus on Gallifrey, where she literally hands him her self destruct button, it feels like he'll sacrifice his own life, only until someone else volunteers. And the definite promises feel a little toooo Time Lord Victorious vibes, he doesn't trust the universe that much.

Setting up the 'something happened to Earth in May 2025' is great, and I love it. Having Bel actively discover stuff really works to build her character. Also love that her willingness to sacrifice herself is being a recurring detail, it's nice that she has these values of utilitarianism as a consistent trait and isn't just as nice as the script wants her to be.

Belinda is lovely in this episode! Right level of dissent to not be annoying while still getting across how scared she is, but a clear and nice interest in the reality of travelling through space and time. I've become quite fond of her.

Shouldn't have given the Midnight Entity a body, I'm pretty certain on that. I don't like that they gave it a voice of it's own either. When it was a possessing shadow, it was alike to the Vashta Nerada, and the fear of 'you can't kill a shadow'. If it's physical, it can be destroyed. And it's boring, having it be countered by it's own reflection.

All things aside, it's not a bad episode at all! Ncuti Gatwa's acting is great, and there are some tricky moments that I can just imagine look very awkward on the script. Really happy with how the new season is shaping up.

[azerinbouee]

If Donna stayed the Doctor's companion Part 2:

12th Doctor: *trying his best act* Look, Donna, So I am with monks now, I don't care about the Earth or your people...

Donna: You know I can tell the type of breakfast you had today from looking into your eyes at this point , right?

Donna: So wrap your acting up, we have an afternoon tea arranged at Jupiter after we get this monks out of the Planet.

12th Doctor: Can't you just play along for once...

-

12th Doctor: I can't tell Donna that I am blind! She will fuss over me!

Nardole: You need to tell her! How can you hide it?

12th Doctor: Trust me, she will not notice one single thing.

Donna: *the second she walks into TARDIS* You are still blind, aren't you?

12th Doctor: Oh for Time's sake...

_

11th Doctor: So, River is Amy and Rory's daughter and she is also my wife as well... Does that mean Amy is my in law?!

Donna: She can berate you Like a child at any time. Living my dream for real

_

Donna: ...

12th Doctor: Not another word-

Donna: WORLD PRESIDENT LOL *bursts out laughing while pointing at him*

Donna: UPGRADE FROM TIME LORD VICTORIOUS THO

12th Doctor: Oh hell.. *puts his head on his hands*

_

_

War Doctor: We are surrounded by knights, we need to do something to escape!

11th Doctor: Oh there is no need to espace. Watch. Donna?

Donna, from the portal: YOU STUPID SPACEBOY WHERE IN THE EARTH ARE YOU AND I AM COMING THERE TO KICK YOUR IDIOT ASS TO SPACE

Knights: *run away in true terror*

10th Doctor: It's like we never left...

_

12th Doctor: *after turning up on the coffee shop Donna's relaxing* So, remember Davros?

Donna: ... Of course I do.

12th Doctor: *laughing nervously while thinking how he fucked up* So Guess what...

_

10th Doctor: *getting married to Queen Elizabeth*

Donna and 11th whispering aggressively behind* : - I cannot believe you did not mention you were married to QUEEN ELIZABETH! -.OBVIOUSLY i diDN'T KNOW!-

_

12th Doctor: So this is Gallifrey!

Donna: I thought it was Space Eden or something from the way you described it, this is just red sand. Like literal Azirona has more eccentric places than here.

12th Doctor: ...i sincerely want to believe I will be able to impress you one day because this is killing me.

_

Donna: So...

12th Doctor: ...

Donna: Why did you kidnap the president's wife?

12th Doctor: Oh, Heaven, you had a conversation with Missy, didn't you?

Donna: I literally have enough material in my hand to embarrase you for at least one regeneration, yeah.

Missy: She is my favorite.

_

13th Doctor: *steals Donna's coats every once in a while and does not give the clothes back*

Donna: *rants to her about that but secretly loves it*

_

12th Doctor: Clara, please be rational and give the TARDIS keys to me.

Donna: *whispers to Doctor* Not to interrupt an emotional moment but she does know you can just snap your fingers and get into TARDIS doesn't she?

12th Doctor: *shakes his head slightly*

Donna: Also that I have an extra key...

Donna: In fact I have a bowl of them because you like the noise the keys make when you drop it in there

Donna: But I guess this is what we are doing because you like to see people in angst. Okay.

[daughterofheartshaven]

You know, I didn't always identify as a fan of Gallifrey specifically. I've been a Doctor Who Expanded Universe fan for a long time, and I've always respected the Gallifrey series as a part of that, but it's only within the last month or two that I've come to self-identify as a Gallifrey fan specifically.

And I've been having thoughts on how I came to tumblr a little over six months ago. Once I got comfortable on here, I started interacting with the fan subcultures of different parts of the Doctor Who EU. To be clear, the EU fandom as a whole has been a delight to interact with. But this was my first time being in a social media community or a fan community or anything like that. I didn't really know how to interact with people in these settings. You dig up my blog from, like, November and I was so timid back then.

Which made it so wonderful and surprising when Gallifrey fan circle went out of their way to welcome me to the community with open arms. Like, I can't emphasize enough how much the interactions from a group of specific people (and if you're thinking I might be talking about you here I probably am) have allowed me to branch out and gain so much confidence. Because you accepted me. You wanted to hear what I had to say.

And, like, you all had so much to say and do about this series. I loved Gallifrey, but only as a part of the Doctor Who EU. But seeing you all love Gallifrey specifically so much and so many ways, I couldn't help but discover what makes Gallifrey so special for myself. Gallifrey is an amazing series, and I've found such a love for it when I look closely that I don't think I would have found if you all hadn't taken me in.

So yes, I am very much a Gallifrey fan. But I am one only because the Gallifrey fandom accepted me as one of their own.

[thethirdromana]

I'm watching the edited version of the War Games (it's on BBC4 right now and my parents wanted to see it), so, have some thoughts.

I'm normally a bit iffy on colourisation but this is genuinely very well done. The titles are gorgeous.

Squishing it into 90 mins makes the opening very zippy. The pace feels a shade too quick if anything.

It also gets a bit weird when the cliffhanger is turned into continuous action.

This is despite the fact that they only cut about 10 mins of episode one.

They drink a lot of tea in the War Games but it comes across as even more when you cut out of the non-tea-drinking bits.

OK, there's some very fun editing around the redcoat and Buckingham remembering the mist coming down. (Dare I say possibly an improvement on the original?)

But then it goes back to feeling too zippy, but least because episode 3 is brutally cut. Very little of it left.

Gah, I'm trying to like this, because it's clearly been lovingly made and the colourisation is genuinely superb, but the grinding relentlessness of the War Games has been replaced by rattling through the plot at a frenzied pace and it's not really working for me.

Ooh, Murray Gold's Master theme has been added over the War Chief's appearance. Not sure how I feel about that, but it's certainly an interesting choice.

They've dealt with the cliffhanger issue at the end of episode 4 by taking it out entirely.

The little added CGI bits are not hugely successful - they look oddly plasticky. Which is a bit disappointing, because have I mentioned how good the colourisation is?

It's taken my dad until the episode six cliffhanger to note the place where the original cliffhanger was.

(My mum has given up because she doesn't like how much fighting there is. Not sure if the original edit would have been any better on that score.)

Episodes 6 and 7 are so thoroughly chopped up that it's tricky to trace the original storyline. It's neatly done but it's not really the War Games any more.

More of the Master's theme when the War Chief admits to knowing the Doctor.

My dad comments that this bit seems like it was inspired by the Prisoner (which he also watched when it first aired).

It feels a bit weird when it switches from Murray Gold to 1960s incidental music.

This really centres the War Chief et al over the rest of the storyline.

"Complete loyalty and devotion" - oh, Jamie. This loses a lot of character beats in favour of the Time Lord-centric storyline, but not all of them.

Oof, their last desperate attempt to escape is still just as grim and desperate in the edit. Like there's still part of me wondering if they might somehow get away this time.

There are new Who-style images of Gallifrey on the view screen.

"Is the next episode The Trial of a Time Lord?" asks my dad, who has seen all of Doctor Who, but mostly not very recently.

The middle bit of episode 10 is cut, which means that I can watch the ending without crying for once.

Lots of establishing shots of Gallifrey.

The too old/too young/too thin shows a series of New Who Doctors. Not entirely sure how I feel about that choice either.

And it ends with the Doctor regenerating in the TARDIS - again, New Who style - before the date ticks back and forth erratically between 1970 and 1980, a joke that will appeal to a small number of people that includes me, and finally the very opening scene of Spearhead from Space.

I think if you accept the premise that a 90-min version of the War Games could be done, it's about as good as it could be. A few of the choices make it pretty clear that this is primarily for a New Who audience - particularly that it becomes a very Time Lord-centric story - not really for existing fans of the War Games.

Still, I wasn't expecting to love the colourisation as much as I did, and it made me wish I could watch a colourised version of all 10 episodes.

[corallapis]

notes on square one:

i have of course seen my beloved mutuals expound upon 'well, they do only like to watch, don't they?' what i find interesting is that that comes along with describing narvin as 'a nasty sort,' and saying 'you'll need it with that time lord after you.' which would imply they don't have a reputation of being completely hands off...

gallifrey used to have control over all of time and space travel! be curious to know exactly when that changed.

three bells! (they also use bells to mark time on gallifrey in tid.)

well-known(?) that gallifrey edits its own past.

a time loop gimmick is always fun!

hossak spending time with the monans... an example time lords living openly on other worlds not as renegades.

'presidential TARDISes, no personality' very fun. does romana have her own non-presidential tardis? is her only previous experience the doctor's ship?

inside a TARDIS described as a different dimension, huh.

'i will never sanction genocide' <- i sense something.

the president described as the protector of gallifrey...

'my cardinal backs me' why is brax her cardinal? there's numerous cardinals, but the president has one in particular? is it that brax is the prydonian cardinal, and since he and romana share a chapter, they are in alleigance? or? is that what goth was to the assassinated prez in tda? (eta: goth was chancellor. disregard this.)

[gingerteaonthetardis]

If you want prompts for ninerose I'd love to read something about Nine speaking to/about Rose in Gallifreyan and her learning the language in secret to understand him

nonny, i cannot stress enough how much i loved this prompt. that said, i took it and kind of spun off a little. it's not precisely what you asked for, but i hope you enjoy it anyway! (and please forgive any mistakes. i was too excited to do much editing.)

—

𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬

[read on AO3]

—

He only ever did it when he thought he was alone.

The first time, she thought he must have hit his head or something—after all, if the TARDIS wasn't translating, the Doctor was surely talking gibberish. Strange syllables that sounded musical and otherworldly, with long vowels stretched between, reminding her of wind chimes—they tickled her ears and the back of her brain in just the same way.

But when she’d come into the console room, calling out to him with a note of worry in her voice, the Doctor had turned and grinned at her. Wide and crooked and pleased—as pleased as he always was to see her, which made her grin back, sort of embarrassed and thrilled at once. “Rose,” he'd said. 

Perfectly clear, perfectly English. Northern-tinged as usual. Nothing odd about it.

And then some sensor or other had started going off, and she didn't have time to ask.

She caught him at it again, a few weeks later, down in the TARDIS storage cellar that he was in the process of “re-purposing” into a workshop. This mostly involved negotiating with the ship and moving precarious stacks of boxes around, grumbling to himself. But that day, the usual back-and-forth had turned to a full-blown argument loud enough to call her over from the media room: on one side, with flashing lights and hissing pipes, and on the other, with shouting in that same semi-melodic way. The ends of each… well, sentence, she supposed… were more clipped off, though. Irritated.

Rose was fascinated.

"What is that?" she asked, poking her head through the door.

The Doctor's shoulders, somewhere up near his ears, dropped suddenly. And rather than meeting her gaze, he looked with suspicious intensity at the crate he held.

"What's what?"

"You were shouting just now."

"I was making a point," he shot back.

"Yeah, in a different language."

"So?" He shrugged too forcefully, then wheeled on one foot and stalked off to put the crate down on the far end of the room. "I speak loads of languages. So does the TARDIS. She prefers Romance languages, or else Ancient Manussian, but there's no accounting for taste." It was such an obvious attempt to distract her that Rose almost took pity on him and allowed it. But she was too curious to let the subject drop.

"The TARDIS wasn't translating it, though," she went on, "the words you were saying. I've heard you doing it before and it's just, like… nonsense sounds."

The Doctor turned on her, looking indignant. "Excuse me, that's my native language you're talking about! And if any language is nonsensical, look to your own butchered tongue. So many diphthongs!"

She didn't know what to say to that for several seconds. She could only look at him, standing there in his jumper with his sleeves rolled up and a smudge of some kind of grease across his chin, his hands on his hips like he was about to launch into one of his lectures.

Native language. She couldn't believe it, but… didn't it make perfect sense? He wasn't human. He was alien—a Time Lord—no matter how often he made her forget it, looking how he did. Behaving how he did.

"But… if it's a real language," she tried slowly, carefully, "your language—how come the TARDIS doesn't translate it? She's from there, right? From…?"

For some reason, she couldn't say it.

"Gallifrey," the Doctor answered for her.

The syllables seemed to sparkle, even though he'd spoken them flat, without affect. And fast, like he was ripping off a bandage.

"So she understands it." She gestured all around her at the ship's recessed lights, which had gradually receded to their usual, steady glow. "But she doesn't… translate? Using the telepathic field thingy?"

The Doctor blinked at her. And didn't look away.

It wasn't his usual kind of stare; his there you go again, asking the right questions look, the one that made her feel so proud, was nowhere to be seen. Eyes not cold, but not warm either.

He was just… looking at her. Sort of through her.

After a little while, she prompted him. "Doctor?"

Then he jerked back into motion, walking back across the cellar to where his leather coat was draped over a tall metal bench, mixed in with scraps of machine parts. He shook the jacket off, and nuts and bolts went flying this way and that, prompting a fresh, irritable hiss of steam from one of the nearby pipes. The Doctor spoke as he moved, as sharp and sudden as a lightning strike.

"She doesn't need to," he clipped out. "Nobody really speaks it anymore, 'sides us two. For all intents and purposes, it's a dead language." And then he said, just as quickly, "Come on. Just remembered we're out of eggs," before striding out the door.

—

A dead language.

The phrase stuck in her head all the rest of that day, as they wandered around the Predoran market, the burble of automatically translated speech humming all around. Fishmongers and cargo haulers and sailors on shore leave. Thousands of people speaking a language she couldn't really hear, but nonetheless understood.

The thoughts lingered the next morning, when she stumbled back into the TARDIS, salt-crusted from their tip overboard a cargo ship, and all but collapsed into her silent bed.

She couldn't shake it, though the Doctor flew her back to London for her mum's birthday—though he made a production of taking her to the Centennial Carnival on Cortago—though he helped her "bump into" Jane Austen in an old friend's drawing room—though he dragged her halfway across the universe and back, narrowly averting disaster, saving lives, meeting new people, grinning wildly as he always had. Speaking in that elemental tongue they somehow shared: the one that spelled adventure.

But…

A dead language.

She couldn't stop remembering. And she was sure he couldn't either.

—

"Gallifrey."

The library terminal beeped. The golden text across the darkened screen said, Results: 0/0.

Rose puffed out a breath. "Okay. What about 'Gallifrey-ish'?"

Results: 0/0.

"Seriously? Nothing in Time Lord-ese?"

The terminal gave another sad-sounding beep.

Rose frowned, chewing on her thumbnail while her other hand hovered over the screen.

She'd never really bothered with the TARDIS library, except the visual media section and the few times she'd checked out the The Collected Works of Charles Dickens. The massive room had been included on her initial hasty welcome tour, but she'd been too intimidated to spend much time there.

There were so many dusty, fragile-looking old books—not to mention hundreds of thousands of hardbacks and paperbacks, scrolls and tablets and comics—all categorized in endless towering rows that made her head spin. The Doctor claimed this wasn't the largest library in the universe, but Rose thought that had to be a lie.

And it didn't seem possible that a room this big didn't contain a single volume with the name of the Doctor's home planet in the title.

Her eyes flicked up, and she bit her lip, feeling silly as she said, "Look, just give me something. Please," to the empty room. "It's for him. I'm trying to… help."

She winced.

Help was possibly not the right word. Maybe there was a reason for the zero results. Maybe the Doctor didn't want any reminders of his past, his people—the world that was now gone, with he the only living remnant. Maybe he'd purged the library or something.

But if he didn't want to be reminded of home, why did he still speak the language? Why had he looked like he'd swallowed a stone when she'd caught him at it?

Sighing, Rose realized that the TARDIS wasn't going to magically intervene, raining down Time Lord Culture for Dummies and English-to-alien dictionaries on her head. She turned from the search terminal, ready to give up the hunt.

But before she could fully turn her back, the computer gave another little beep. And then two together, like synthesized chirps. Then several more in rapid succession.

She looked back.

The screen had tabbed over from the default library results to a page with the header 'Local Audio Logs.' Beneath that was a subheading of 'Relative date: 5000 AD'.

Results: 1-9/77.

"Oh my god."

She immediately went back to the terminal, the base of which had opened, projecting out a narrow tray. Nestled in its foamy lining were a pair of thin, silvery-blue headphones, and she reached for them eagerly, sliding them onto her head without a second thought. She tapped one of the logs at random and an audio player sprung to life, crackly sound immediately filling her ears.

"—sense in giving the game away. Just a few short, simple commands, you know, could make all the difference next time. I'll try one now." And then she heard it: the fluid string of sounds, the chiming vowels, pronounced with much more theatricality than she was used to from the Doctor. She wondered who was speaking.

The voice was fuzzed with age, but was clear enough to make out it wasn't the Doctor; the accent, the tone were all different. It had to be someone he'd travelled with in the past. Someone who spoke his language.

"Well? That means, 'Watch out.' Did you get it?"

"Negative."

The second voice almost made her jump. It sounded mechanical, robotic.

"Listen, K9, just listen!" The man repeated the same sounds, and this time, Rose strained her ears the way she imagined the robot-thing called K9 might have. She tried to pick out the unique sounds, to make sense of them in her mind. "Yes? Got it?"

There was a brief pause. Then: "Affirmative, Master."

"Very good! Well done, K9." The man laughed, and it was a warm laugh. Almost impish at the same time, too, and Rose felt herself smiling confusedly before the audio log continued. Was that his name, like the Doctor was the Doctor? Was this man called 'Master'?

She scrambled to hit the pause button and dragged her finger back, so the audio could play again.

"Listen, K9, just listen!" And then the Gallifreyan words.

She played that bit back once, twice, first mouthing along with the sounds and then whispering them. They strained her voice in an odd way, like she had too many vocal cords and they were tripping over one another—or maybe like she didn't have enough. But after a dozen times or so, she peeled one of the headphones off to hear herself mumbling along.

It didn't sound like anything, really, certainly not like words. But it also didn't sound wrong. She grinned.

"Affirmative, Master."

"Very good! Well done, K9."

"Oh," she realized suddenly. "Like, K9. It's a robot dog." And then she burst into giggles.

—

Progress was, of course, very slow.

Rose figured out a way to get the audio logs onto her MP3 player, but even compressed the files were enormous, so she could only fit three or four of them at a time on there, even after giving up her whole Spice Girls collection.

It was probably better that way. All of the logs were just that same man, and he seemed to like talking as much as the Doctor did. He sped along at warp speed, tossing out the words and phrases he seemed to think a robot dog ought to know. Simple things, mostly.

Rose drank in every syllable.

She listened to the logs a few at a time, in the morning while she was putting on her makeup and after she'd crawled into bed. She turned the phrases over, whispering them into the silence like a great secret. She immersed herself, as much as she could.

Before long, those audios started to feel like a song she'd listened to over and over. They got stuck in her head. When she found herself racing down the shop floor of an abandoned textiles mill, the Gallifreyan word for faster shot through her mind. When a Quellian high noble kept interrupting the Doctor during peace negotiations, she had to stop herself from snapping out the phrase for be quiet.

Sometimes, though, she turned on some of the audios and just listened. Not because she wanted to practice, even, but because she liked the man who spoke in them. She liked how his voice had a smile in it. How affectionate he was toward K9. How quick and clever he seemed, as he came up with increasingly specific commands for his robot dog to learn.

Rose found herself wishing that the logs were in video format, so she could see the man's face.

She considered asking the Doctor about him, but quickly abandoned the idea. A friend of the Doctor's, most likely travelling with him, speaking the language—he had to be a Time Lord. Which meant he was gone.

The thought made her feel lonely… as if somehow, she had lost him, too.

—

Rose lay sprawled across the media room sofa, eyes closed with her MP3 player resting on her belly.

"Want to—earn—other one, K9?" the man in the audio log asked, his voice somewhat muffled. There was a clanking noise that kept interrupting, drowning out snatches of his speech. For some reason, she had a vision of the Doctor with his head under the TARDIS console, fiddling with some loose wire or bit of piping.

"Affir—tive, Master."

"I do—ish you'd give—this 'Master'—usiness. I have—name, you know."

Rose's eyebrows pinched in concentration, while her heart rate steadily climbed, thudding eagerly in her chest. She realized, all of a sudden, she'd been waiting for this moment. Was she finally going to learn the man's name?

"Here, I'll tell—you in—allifreyan."

Gallifreyan. That's what the language was actually called.

She barely had time to take the new information in before there was an extra loud clang and a shuffling scrape. The man's voice was clearer when he spoke.

Rose hadn't been sure she was piecing together anything very meaningful about the structure of the Doctor's native language, up 'til then—she knew nothing about what made it work, what the individual bits and pieces amounted to. The grammar of it evaded her, and she'd mostly felt like a baby mimicking the world around them, repeating noises without real comprehension.

But this particular jangle of sound lodged itself in her ear, and she felt like she understood it perfectly. Like it made absolute sense; the sound was the man, the man was the sound.

"Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?" the man joked. "But I guess it's better than Theta Sig—"

She raced to pause the audio log, to rewind. To play it from the start.

And again.

She realized she was hearing something in the name, something a shade off of one of K9's commands—a syllable that was like the word for 'find,' or maybe… 'help'? They were so similar, it was hard to tell. But it made her feel something, a lightness in her chest. This man had been a helper, a finder, a seeker of something. She'd heard it in his voice, and now she could hear it in his name.

She played the clip back again, and again, and again, lips moving in time. Then she paused, pulling off the headphones, saying the name aloud for her own ears. She was getting better at the ringing bell vowel sounds, and she smiled proudly as she said it again, a little more confidently.

"What are you doing?"

She snapped upright, looking over the back of the couch, at where the Doctor stood in the doorway.

He looked shell-shocked, his usually bright eyes curiously glossed over. And he had his coat on, his hands stuffed in his pockets, like he'd been coming to fetch her for another adventure and had instead stumbled upon a crime scene, or an alien artifact he could make no sense of.

"Doctor!" she began, too brightly. "Are we going somewhere?" She flung her legs off the couch, hurriedly pulling the headphones off her neck. They'd come disconnected from the MP3 player, which had clattered to the floor. "Let me just—get my—"

"Rose, what are you doing?"

His voice stopped her in her tracks, and she stared back, wide-eyed. His voice was raspy like he'd been yelling—or maybe as if he was about to cry. But his face was cold and remote as the snow-capped waves of Women Wept. Rose could barely stand to look at it.

She swallowed thickly and, for a flash of a second, really considered lying. And after she lied, she decided, she would go and delete the latest audio files; she would put away her MP3 player and never even look at it again without feeling furtive guilt.

But she couldn't do that. The Doctor didn't deserve that.

Her mouth ran ahead of her.

"I was learning Gallifreyan," she said.

The Doctor said nothing.

"I… stumbled across some old audio logs where this man—this really nice man—was teaching his robot dog some commands in your language, and I thought…" Weakly, she trailed off, trying to smile. "Well, if this robot dog could learn, so can I, right?"

"K9," he replied. "That's his name."

Her smile came a little easier now. "Yeah, I heard. And the man teaching K9, did he travel with you? I thought, since the TARDIS called it a log that it must have been recorded on the ship, but… Was he a friend of yours?"

His face remained impassive, but his hands dug further and more obviously into his pockets. "That word you said. Did he say what it was?"

"Oh, yeah," Rose nodded fervently. "He told K9 it was his name in Gallifreyan." Then she repeated the sounds as she remembered them, knowing her pronunciation was clumsy—there was none of that chiming rightness in her voice now, from nerves—but it must have been understandable. Because she watched the Doctor's expression contort, his eyes fluttering shut, jaw ticking.

She hesitated, then asked, "What does it mean, in English?"

"The Doctor," the Doctor said heavily.

She felt an odd, hysterical urge to giggle. "What? You had a friend called Doctor, too?"

"No."

"Then…" Her mind swam, torn between the sound of the word echoing off her grey matter and the information she was being presented with. "You're the… man in the audio log? That was you?"

Slowly, the Doctor nodded.

It didn't make sense. "But you sound so different!"

"'Cause I was different. My people were alive back then, and an endless source of bother. I wore a hat, and a scarf, and I had long hair. Corkscrews," he added, gesturing at his own close-cropped head. "And I was taller, I think." He spoke each word like doing so strained his muscles. "I've changed a lot, Rose. Many times."

"What d'you mean, changed?"

Her voice came out sharp, and the Doctor's eyes batted open.

"Why did you want to learn Gallifreyan?" he asked, as if she hadn't even spoken.

"So I could talk to you." It was an automatic answer, and her mouth screwed up with its inadequacy. "In your own language. And because… I didn't like what you said. About Gallifreyan being dead."

"Rose," he said.

"It seemed wrong. I mean, you're alive, aren't you? And as long as you can speak it, and someone else can answer, then it's like—the language is still alive, too. Or at least, there can be people who remember it." She realized her hands had balled into fists, and there was an unwelcome prickle in the corners of her eyes. She didn't want to cry; this wasn't about her. But she couldn't seem to help it. "Someone should remember," she said, pleading.

For a long moment, she thought he would simply turn around and leave again. He looked like he wanted to.

But then, after a little longer, he said. "Your pronunciation is off. You need to hold the 'o' a little longer, and not turn it into a 'u'." The Doctor scoffed to himself. "You Brits and your ridiculous diphthongs."

Rose tried again, said the name—his name, she marvelled—and his posture eased. The lines crowding his forehead smoothed out a bit, and she felt herself exhale, too, the relief heady. Blood rushed back to her uncurled fingers.

"Is that right?" she asked.

"It's better."

And that was good enough for her.

—

A few days later, they were back in the media room, talking on the sofa as they sometimes did after a particularly eventful day.

The Doctor hadn't been in the mood to read aloud—tired, for once, of his own voice, she assumed—and she was somehow too tired even to watch the telly, ten billion channel package or not. So they both rested their heads against the back of the couch and just sat, facing one another, talking now and then. Sometimes they tried to pepper in the bits of Gallifreyan Rose understood. She wanted to ask him, still, what he'd meant when he said he'd changed.

Mostly they were quiet.

But then:

"Doctor?"

"Hm?"

"What's my name? In, er, your language, I mean."

His smile was strangely soft, and his mouth made the syllables, and Rose heard them. She tried to listen for root words, to make meaning out of the musical jangle, but her name wasn't like the Doctor's. It was shorter, sweeter. Simpler. But he said it warmly, and the same warmth spread in her chest.

"I like that," whispered Rose.

"Yeah," said the Doctor. "Me too."

[soft-faerie-sage]

Gonna live react to the newest doctor who so spoilers below

- idk how i feel about the BBC saying Whoniverse to me, especially before the spin offs are out. It feels like when the grown ups are trying to be in on the jokes. Which CAN be endearing... tbd

- oh fuck okay nukes good morning wtf

- audio processing disorder go brrrr i cannot understand shit without my precious subtitles

- i miss 1950s fashion

- SPOON (yk what at this point i hope this whole spoon motif is the doctor finally coming out as autistic, haha get it bc im autistic and then there's spoon theory)

- i dont have hope for this random man's lifespan

- are people just... staying for the next show without paying? Is the theatre playing different films in the same room?? Like VASTLY different films???

- the couple making out in front of Mr Ring-a-Ding is so fuckin real

- these bitches arent aware of the 4th wall, its okay guys deadpool and pinkie pie will desensitize you one day

- "this one's kinda silly, innit?" XD

- did 3D fucking exist yet??

- Belinda tell him to take you to May 23 or 25, like it will also not work but i cannot fathom why we do not try

- XD oh god if only Gallifrey were called Timelordia

- YO HE SAID WHAT I SAID

- getting Hell Bent flashbacks every time Gallifrey is mentioned 🫥

- i really shouldnt be laughing at the dramatic irony of there is no gallifrey to go back to

- he thinks he's soooo cute putting his fists on his hips

- im glad she is happy to go to 1952

- THEIR OUTFITS

- Belinda "We can go now 😃" Chandra my beloved

- please let her go home my dude please respect her decisions

- the fuck do you mean "save it for later, Belinda" sir you have put her in this situation without properly warning her oh my god

- oh this poor poor mum "i will sit and wait for that boy forever" 😭

- "Does that give you hope?" The TARDIS is a symbol of hope 😭😭😭

- that head spin XD

- OH THEY HAVE A WHOLE SCOOBY DOO THING

- yo wait they have TV character nicknames and this is the TV episode broooo 🤯

- "Really? Just 'the Doctor'? Always?" "Yeah" "Ridiculous." I love her omg

- damn they actually got me with the laugh

- i actually really like the light thing

- movies also feed me i can relate

- oh my god his wife poor mr pye

- omg his wife is so beautiful he's so so precious i love when people are in love

- i really like the god angle tbh sorry my scifi brethren

- honour bound eh?

- the doctor's like "how do i make myself sad? Ah yes. Gallifrey."

- something hilarious about this moment being animated

- 😮 that BITCH here i was feeling sorry for you goddamn (the mother not mr Pye)

- oh whoops im dumb

- god imagine if the Doctor and Belinda showed up in my dorm after pushing through the screen, i'd lose it

- ngl jealous af of these fans

- just like Extremis fr

- oh fuck

- love seeing regeneration energy but i a little feel like thats a waste of extra like what if Oxygen 2.0 happens

- omg they put his arse in Blender

- YES BELINDA USING HER NURSING KNOWLEDGE

- oh yay theyre alive!

- okay not to be a bitch but i love they committed to the bit of 15 crying literally every single episode

[intuitive-revelations]

Semi-live/retrospective analysis of Lux!

Again, some of my scattered thoughts watching the episode! Not nearly as long this time, with quite a bit less character analysis. I managed to finish my analysis before the episode's live airing was complete this time (I watched on iPlayer), so am posting right as it finishes!

The newsreel is interesting - very Oppenheimer. Is this story going to link to nuclear bombs? Between this, 73 Yards, and Years and Years, I'm getting the feeling that RTD is really tense about our "New Cold War" era.

Love the old cinema technology being applied.

So it's connected to the moonlight? I assume this is some sort of special radiation hitting the moon or something, and not coming from the Moon itself, otherwise we're going to have to somehow weld this into Kill the Moon.

Man, Gallifrey really is the elephant in the room this era, huh.

"Who have you got? Girlfriend, boyfriend, otherfriend?" Bi / enby rights! Also, interesting using the term "other" for non-binary genders again - we got that before with Sutekh as "Father and mother and other of them all [the Pantheon]". Particularly considering the notability of that word in DW lore. Maybe the Nechronomancers' worship of a genderless "Seventh Founder" was right on the money?

Why the fuck did they just play a bit of Amy's theme when Belinda talked about her parents?! Hello?

Wait a sec, is the "v-indicator" doing exactly what I theorised the TARDIS was doing last week?! Trying to pull its way back to Earth only to end up pulling these historical nodes/landmarks to it?

Continuing to love the historical costumes. Glad Fifteen is clearly particularly into this part too, no "changing jumpers" here.

The direct parallel with The Devil's Chord in getting dressed is an interesting choice.

*looks at his hand* "1952... that might be wise..." 😬 Also explicitly discussing segregation with the diner and cinema later is good. I was wondering for a sec when they were at the bar what the laws regarding that would be at this time/place.

"Now you've got your own soundtrack." Oh, more non-diegetic music then huh...?

"Don't make me laugh... because it sounds like this!" AHHHH! So the theories that Mr Ring-a-Ding / Lux was a "God of Light" are true?

"The Harvest Bringer" -> "Harbinger" Goddammit not again! So who's the Harbinger in this case, Rock Hudson? The cinema itself?

Man, the bit with Mr Pie and his wife, with that transition out of the screen and into colour.

The Doctor's description of the Pantheon really highlights the Lovecraftian side of the Whoniverse, huh.

The way being turned 2D gives the Doctor and Belinda 2D personalities too! The dialogue feels so stilted here, but at least it's clearly deliberate, just by sheer contrast with everything else.

The change in audio quality going into the cartoon kinda took me out for a second.

Never mind, forget what I said about Gallifrey earlier. Also emphasis on "Last of the Time Lords"... 🤨

I feel like the cartoon segment could have been a little bit longer, but eh...

The Doctor being able to point out the animation frame (thanks to his fourth wall vision)! I wonder if there's anything to be said about the fact that Belinda was able to interact with it too.

"We've been framed." No kidding. Of course, the nice moment in the diner would get subverted like this, even if the mother's suspicion is kinda understandable, it's hard not to see a racial element in all this.

Belinda being assumed to be Caribbean reminds me a lot of Yaz being called Mexican back in Rosa.

Oh nevermind! "Your continuity is terrible" lol

Oh, the fourth wall! Literally!

WAIT LITERALLY?! Damn, ok, TV theory truthers... I was wondering why there was glass in front of a movie projection.

This is such a stupid turn, I love it, even if I know some people are going to see this as jumping the shark. The stereotypical Whovians, while clearly an affectionate thing, is a little rough feeling though.

"Blink" lol.

I['d love to see all the merch they put on set here. I clearly see a bunch of the DVDs (New Who and Classic) plus the collections. I've love to know if there's any EU stuff included. I think I see some NSAs?

Oh and the Mad Man with a Box too? Why so much Series 5 soundtrack?

Damn, the inversion with the in-universe fans not being real in the Whoniverse! "We're the sort of characters that don't have surnames" I wonder if RTD saw the TV Theory and stuff, and, while not planning on going anywhere with it, appreciated it enough to incorporate his own version of it. Centreing it around DW fans feels like it only adds to this interpretation, as a response back to the fandom and celebration of fan theories and meta.

Even though we obviously knew the Doctor and the Belinda would get back to their universe, I 100% feel doing it this way is what saves this scene from the "jumping-the-shark" thing I said earlier, and immediately sways my own doubts about it. Knowing the fans are another creation of Lux also weirdly brings us back to the Pantheon vs Fourth Wall thing again.

Oh it's not just Mad Man with a Box... it's straight Words Win Wars being recycled. A bit bombastic for this scene but I'll never say no to it popping up.

This is still a crazy thing for the Doctor and Belinda to go through, especially the latter. How does it change their dynamic? I guess it doesn't need to too much, since she knows it was a fiction, but still, seeing herself as part of a long-running adventure series must be pretty notable nonetheless.

"Bigeneration, it left me with a little pocket of energy I've been saving just for this." OH? I was worried we were going straight up unlimited healing with regeneration energy for a second, but that's actually a fair explanation. A nice fix also for any concerns with the butterfly last series. Again an interesting writing inclusion - I wonder if it's specifically to patch that up, or important exposition on regeneration for later this series [edit: or this episode I guess!]?

"But you're the most amazing creation, my Doctor, sir. You have light within you that builds a body." Uhhh... maybe Timeless Child lore hints? Or less a Timeless Child-specific thing (given Lux still refers to it as the "light of a Time Lord") and more acknowledging the artificiality of Time Lord regeneration?

"Let the light of a Time Lord build me a body!" Yep saw that coming after that line above.

Oh, so it IS about the nuke?!

Lux becoming 3D - transitioning from 2D to an untextured 3D model to cartoon-y 3D animation to creepy "realistic" 3D! Why does this start to feel like a commentary on modern 3D and live-action remakes of 2D cartoons?

The Doctor's heartbeat again?! Why on Earth could we have two episodes where we can hear a Time Lord's heartbeat in a row, if not for you-know-who?

(Also again, the beat phase sounds slightly off, which feels very validating for my Time Lord biology idea that it's not always a perfect four-beat between the two hearts.)

The early line of Lux being interested in moonlight, not sunlight feels like it maybe should have been cut, considering sunlight ends up being exactly what he's seeking by the end? I guess he wasn't corporeal yet, but still.

In some way, Lux ascending into nothing could feel a little cheap, but him actually "winning" and becoming a legitimate God of Light is fascinating. Kinda leaves the door open for him to return too.

I thought the 15 were all going to be killed by the explosion for a moment as part of the sacrifice, thank goodless it freed them safely.

Belinda's change of heart, while I kinda predicted it earlier, is a little bit of a shame. I'm sure she's still intent on going home, but would have been interesting to see that stronger tension last a little longer than the one episode.

Mrs Flood?! It was kinda obvious, but that's her confirmed to be a time-traveller now, huh.

"Limited run only. Show ends the 24th." Like... the "show" ends, or the series ends...? I know there's plenty of rumours and speculation about future series, or the possible lack thereof, but...

Also clearly linking back in-universe with 24th May as well...

Overall thoughts

I loved this one! There were a lot of shaky bits - the fourth wall sequence standing out the most - but I felt it stuck the landing in each case, often suprising me doing so. Again I do feel there was a bit of a missed opportunity, mind you, in regards to the limited animated sequence in this case. The ending was a little simple too, but perfectly servicable for a DW episode and a bit intriguing in its own right. (Personally, if I was writing this though, I also would have had Lux's defeat link back to the idea that becoming more 3D means your personality does too, resulting in him becoming less of a 2D unrepentant villain. Would have been a nice meta twist, and the Doctor and Belinda's personality changes as cartoons would have been good foreshadowing. I guess you could argue that happened anyway, given Lux's change of heart in the sunlight.)

I didn't talk about him much, but Lux is a great villain - Alan Cumming was great in this. Mr Ring-a-Ding's animation is so fluid and delightful, makes me wonder if the whole animation budget was used on him, and that's what led to the cut down animation sequence.

The nice resolution(?) of the TV show theory/meta was a surprise, but honestly worked in exactly the way I thought it couldn't! As I said above, I wonder if it was at all inspired in reaction to the fandom theorising itself? The only real evidence against this imho is that the fans didn't explicitly mention the theory itself.

I'm curious how Belinda and the Doctor's relationship will look going forward. She's clearly not as worried about trusting him, but I hope there's still some tension in her wanting to get home.

The implied lore stuff with the Timeless Child / Time Lords' regenerative ability was a nice surprise, as small as it was. Plus the extra bit of explanation on the Doctor's recent regenerative healing. It feels a little ominous we've ruled that out as something that can be used in the future. I wonder if Lux taking that energy will have any effect on the Doctor going forwards? Davros taking it in The Witch's Familiar didn't though, unless you count Thirteen being small compared to other incarnations, so who knows. At least there isn't an explicit cycle to worry about now, though there's no guarantee the Doctor's regenerations are unlimited (in fact, Rassilon in Hell Bent implied exactly the opposite, though who knows how that plays with the Timeless Child stuff).

A little concerned about Mrs Flood's line about the show, as I said above. Not to be a doomer, but I hope we're not about to get an announced hiatus / break for the show... At least Fifteen still having some regenerative energy from the bigeneration gives me hope Ncuti isn't leaving soon, since it would be odd for him to regenerate so soon after still feeling the effects of the previous regeneration (then again, look how long Fourteen lasted!).

More arc plot points hinted at this episode, between Mrs Flood and yet more drumbeating. I guess we need to keep an eye out for more this series? I'm kinda stunned by the whole vindicator thing, since it feels like my theory the TARDIS is / will end up accidentally pulling bits of Earth's history to that barrier might be right on the money? Is this my Apollo's dodgeball moment?

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

the thing is. why bring Rose back for this finale. she didn't particularly do much other than standing around and looking pretty. I assume there'll be more of her for the second part. I stand by my original assertion from the star beast that it doesn't make sense that she can just 'give up' the alien DNA she was born with. my point back then was that it would be fun if she could regenerate, and ended up becoming the timeless child herself, thus making the Doctor's entire existence a very fun paradox AND also canonizing the 'half human, on my mother's side' line from the 8th doctor's movie (my beloved) (because Donna was only half human whether she knew it or not).

HOWEVER.

all the susan-baiting is really getting to me. I want our weird little granddaughter back. they canonized the fact that the Doctor doesn't actually know who her parents were. and I REMEMBER. that Susan's original gallifreyan name was Rose. well, their language's equivalent of it. that's how Rose Tyler got her name, it was meant to be a cute little easter egg, the first classic companion and the first new who companion sharing a name. so walk with me. the weird girl daughter of Donna Noble, who grew up on earth but never fit in there, who has the Doctor's DNA woven into her being, and access to a yardis, and can in this scenario regenerate...coming across a younger version of the her father/uncle, introducing herself as Rose (which translates to gallifreyan, I really don't feel like looking up the spelling rn I'm sorry it started with an A), the doctor can recognize her- as family, he thinks, not knowing its a spark of him, their shared mind. she knows about how risky spoiling the future would be, she doesn't know if he has siblings and he looks older than she's ever seen him, so she says she's his granddaughter instead of his niece. daughter. him. she's part time lord. she lives longer than her human family. the Doctor is all she has left and she wants to be with him even if it isn't a him that knows her yet. she's heard the phrase 'timey wimey' before, and she's a smart and careful girl. she finds she doesn't fit in on gallifrey any more than she ever fit in on earth. the Doctor knows exactly what that feels like. they travel. when her human friend renames her Susan, she likes it a lot. feels like when she changed her name the first time. freeing, empowering, becoming. feels like the new name fits her new life better. Rose has a long dead family but Susan has her grandfather. the part of her that is her mother and father, though, still craves human connection. the love and fascination with humanity that she inherited from the Doctor is still there. she tells him all about humans and he takes her to visit them more and more to humor her. she ends up fostering his love for earth that will one day define him AND lead to her creation. she accidentally coins the name tardis the same way the doctor will accidentally invent a banana daiquiri a few centuries too early. he just thinks she's creative and silly. a very dear child. odd and bizarre to her classmates at school, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was the first time around. sometimes she even goes to see a younger Wilf. he's somehow exactly how she remembers him as an old man. she's so grateful they're in the 60's though, because if she ever has to look into the eyes of a Donna Noble who didn't know her, she thinks she may actually die. but the Doctor- he IS enough. he is still part of her, part of her mother, even if he doesn't realize it. she can't help but worry over his health, even knowing he lives long past this, because she got so used to helping his older self in his retirement. she knows him better than he knows himself. she'd do anything for him, and she knows he'd do anything for her.

she just never thought leaving her was something he'd do, though.