The TARDIS HAD stopped. The time rotor was still. The engines were in
‘parked’ mode. But they were still rocking and pitching as
if they were on a boat being tossed around by a wild, angry storm at sea.
“We’re on a boat, being tossed around by a storm at sea,”
The Doctor announced as he gripped the handhold on the console tightly.
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Wyn groaned. “Now
I’ll be sea sick as well as time-and-space sick.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Alec pointed out. “It’s
the same sort of sick whether you’re sea sick or air sick or time-and-space
sick. You won’t get any more sick just from knowing the TARDIS is
on a boat.”
“Can you stop talking about sick, please,” Jasmin begged.
She was looking a little green, too. “For the record, I’m
ok with time-and-space, but I ALWAYS have trouble with boats.”
“That’s true,” Alec added. “She got sick on the
Mersey Ferry on a school trip.”
“STOP talking about sick,” Wyn yelled and then made a dash
for the inner door of the TARDIS, wishing fervently that the bathroom
was not such a long run from the console room. Jasmin managed another
thirty seconds before she made a run for it as well.
“If they don’t make it, you’re on cleaning up duty,”
The Doctor told Alec.
“Oh, please, no,” Alec answered. “Cleaning up sick always
makes me sick.” The Doctor grinned a grin that clearly implied ‘Serves
you right.” Alec decided to change the subject.
“WHY are we on a ship, anyway,” he asked. “And what
sort of ship, when, and where?”
“Oh, I LOVE those multi-part questions Humans ask,” The Doctor
replied, manoeuvring around the console to the environmental panel. “We’re
on a ship because I was just a very, very tiny tad out in my steering.
We’re in the English Channel, it is 2015 and he ship appears to
be an eighteenth century two-masted brigantine of the sort known as a
‘square-rigger’.”
“Right, so you’re an expert on eighteenth century sailing
ships?” Alec said.
“I’ve had my moments,” he answered nonchalantly. “There
was the time I spent as ships medic on board the HMS Victory. Incidentally,
if you want to see somebody REALLY seasick I could introduce you to my
old pal Admiral Nelson.”
“I think we’ve had enough of that for the time being,”
Alec told him ruefully as the girls returned from the bathroom looking
decidedly ruffled.
“The first person to say ‘better out than in’ gets a
kicking,” Wyn promised as she met the faces of the two men. “So
where the heck are we and why?”
The Doctor repeated his information, leaving out the explanation of Square
Rigging and the bit about his personal acquaintance with Admiral Nelson.
“But hang on,” Jasmin said, glad of something to take her
mind off being sea-sick. “You said the year was 2015. Why are we
on an eighteenth century ship?”
“We…ell,” The Doctor drawled slowly. “There could
be several reasons for that. The ship could be caught in a temporal anomaly
that has thrown it forward in time. Or…”
“Or your instruments could be wrong and this IS the eighteenth century,”
Alec suggested.
“Well, yes, that is a possibility,” he admitted. “Shall
we go and see? The fresh air will do everyone good.”
The air, in fact, was TOO fresh to do anyone any good at all. There was
a gale blowing. The Doctor irritated everyone by being able to tell them
by putting a finger up that the wind was coming from the south-west and
it was force ten on the Beaufort Scale, and officially not a gale but
a storm.
“Force twelve is a hurricane,” he added, shouting above the
noise. “So this is quite impressive for the English Channel in…”
he glanced at his watch. “In June. Wow. I think there’s something
VERY unnatural about this. The wrong ship, the wrong weather, the wrong
century…”
“Wrong everything,” Wyn commented as she looked at the people
who were trying to bring the sails in and control the ship while horrendous
looking waves threatened to engulf it. They were definitely NOT eighteenth
century sailors.
Not unless denim jeans were invented in the 1790s.
There WERE some people who looked like eighteenth century sailors, but
they didn’t seem to be doing anything except trying to keep dry
and keep out of the way of the ones who WERE working.
“Who are you?” somebody asked. It was one of the eighteenth
century sailors who had been too busy being ill to notice that he was
doing so up against a 1950s police box.
“Stowaways,” The Doctor replied. “Who are you?”
But the answer was lost as a scream rang out above the roaring of the
force ten storm. The Doctor looked up to the top of the foremast and saw
a man hanging by one leg that was tangled in the rigging. Another man
was trying to reach him but he looked in imminent danger of falling himself.
The Doctor didn’t hesitate. His friends watched in amazement as
he threw off his coat and jacket and began to climb the mast as if he
was a professional sailor. Wyn and Jasmin both forgot to be sea-sick as
they watched the wind buffeting him and the angle of the mast changing
moment by moment as the ship broached the high waves.
“Oh my God, he’s going to die,” Alec murmured.
“He doesn’t like heights,” Wyn said. “That’s
how he regenerated once. He fell from a really high place and hurt himself
bad.”
“He doesn’t look like it,” Jasmin answered. “Look
at him go.”
The Doctor didn’t like heights. But he was not afraid of them. He
didn’t let the memory of that fatal fall that had caused his fourth
regeneration stop him from doing what had to be done to save a life.
“Hey,” he said to the man as he came level with him. “How
are you doing?”
“Ho…www… am…I… I doing?” The man was
so surprised by the question that he stopped screaming. “I’m
trapped and I think my leg’s broken.”
“I think you’re probably right,” The Doctor said. “Just
hang in there a minute or so more.” He looked up above him to the
yardarm where the other man was lying horizontally and trying to cut the
ropes that were tangled around the stricken man’s leg.
“Don’t do that,” The Doctor yelled to him. “Those
ropes are the only thing stopping him from falling.” He anchored
himself in the rigging by his legs and reached out with both arms to grasp
the man by the shoulders, taking the strain off his leg. “Ok, I’ve
got him. Now cut it.”
The man continued cutting and The Doctor took the weight of the man fully.
He pulled him across onto his shoulders in a ‘fireman’s lift’
and held him firmly but gently so as not to aggravate his broken leg as
he slowly descended. He looked up and saw the other man coming down after
him. He looked down and saw a crowd below all watching him. He was too
busy worrying about the fact that it was still a long way down to take
in the fact that the crowd seemed to come from two different historical
periods.
He was too busy getting down safely to notice that the storm had stopped.
Just like that, the storm ended. The wind dropped, the sea calmed, the
rain stopped battering him and the sun shone from a sky that was a uniform
blue.
“Here, we’ve got you,” somebody said as he reached the
bottom of the mast and hands reached to lift the stricken man from his
back and lay him down on the ground. “Get the first aid kit,”
somebody else yelled as The Doctor knelt and began to examine his injuries.
“He has a clean break across the tibula,” he announced. “There’s
also a lot of damage to the anterior cruciate ligament.” He put
his hands on the man’s forehead gently reaching in to block his
pain receptors. The injured man looked up at him gratefully as one of
his crewmates brought a first aid kit and begun to put his leg into a
splint.
“Get him into the sick bay,” another voice ordered, one with
a sort of authority. “And get on the radio. We need helicopter rescue.”
The Doctor stood and looked around at the man who had spoken. He was dressed
in twenty-first century merchant seaman’s clothes. Beside him was
a man in the uniform of an Admiral of the late eighteenth century British
Navy and another in a sweatshirt and jeans. He was holding a lens of the
sort used by film directors to view a scene as it would appear through
the camera. Behind him were two men in the same sweatshirts with the logo
of a company called “Phoenix Productions” on the breast. One
had a camera recording the events and the other a boom mike.
“Oh, I GET IT!” he said with a wide grin. “This is a
FILM SET!”
“This is the MV Halcyon,” the man in the merchant seaman’s
clothes said. “Replica sailing ship for hire to the TV and Film
making industry. I’m Trevor Goss, ships captain, this is Mike Norton,
star of the film, and Bryan Worthing, director. And as grateful as we
all are for saving the life of one of Britain’s foremost stuntmen,
the question remains - WHO THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU and why are you on
my ship?”
“I’m The Doctor,” he replied. “These are my friends,
Alec, Jasmin and Wyn. As to how we’re on your ship, call that a
slight navigational miscalculation. I was aiming for Wembley. Alec’s
a Manchester City fan and they’re in the FA cup final this year.
I was planning to take him.”
“The FA Cup was in MAY,” Mike Norton told him. “It was
nearly five weeks ago. City won - 3-1 after extra time,” he added
enthusiastically. “But….”
“Doctor,” Wyn said as Alec and Mike started talking about
football in a boring way. “Ok, this is a film set, which explains
why there’s an eighteenth century ship in 2015 with guys in old-fashioned
clothes. But that storm… THAT’s weird - your kind of weird.”
“Yes,” The Doctor began to say. “Do you know….”
One of the 21st century crew came running towards the captain. The Doctor
heard him say something about the radio being off air.
“You mean the radio’s damaged?” the Captain asked him.
“The storm broke the aerial or something?”
“No,” the crewman said. “I mean the radio is off air.
ALL radio. We can’t even get Rock FM. It’s as if there’s
nothing being broadcast ANYWHERE. And GPS is down, too. We can’t
get a lock on our position.”
“Wyn,” The Doctor said. “Nip into the TARDIS and see
what our position is according to the environmental console.” She
nodded and ran to do as he asked. He turned and followed the captain as
he went with his crewman to find out what was wrong with his ship. The
director and film star were left on deck looking as if they were neither
of them sure what they were supposed to do next.
“I forgot you were a City supporter,” Alec said to Mike Norton
to fill in the time while they waited to find out what The Doctor was
going to do next. “I saw you a couple of times in the director’s
box with the Chairman and the VIPs.”
“Yeah, I do that sometimes,” he answered. “But I prefer
to be in the stands with the real fans. Same as I used to do before I
was famous. Born and bred in Levenshulme. A Blue all my life.”
“Mike,” Jasmin said with a voice that seemed strangely and
uncharacteristically nervous. “Could I have your autograph. I think
you’re fantastic. Your last film… I loved it.”
“Magenta Brown?” he said with a smile as he took her pen and
the scrap of paper she had handed him. “I’m glad you liked
it.
“No, not that one,” she began. “I was thinking of….”
She stopped and laughed to herself. 2015, The Doctor said. She looked
at the actor again. He DID look MUCH younger than he did in the film she
was thinking of, that was new out a couple of weeks before she and Alec
met The Doctor in 2025. She looked around her at the sailing ship and
at his uniform and ran through his film credits in her head and she realised
that she had SEEN this film hundreds of times. She had it on DVD microdisc.
And the two sequels.
She had never REALLY appreciated what it meant to time travel until that
moment.
“See,” the radio operator said to Captain Goss. “The
whole bandwidth is dead. There’s nothing. Complete silence. Not
a single broadcast signal. I’ve tried every wavelength. DAB, FM,
Citizens Band, even the old analogue Medium Wave and Long Wave channels.
It's as if every radio station in Europe is off air.”
“But that’s not possible,” the Captain said. “Where
are they all?”
“I think it’s not a question of where as when,” The
Doctor said as he stepped the other side of the radio officer and pressed
buttons, apparently at random. He picked up a set of headphones and put
them on and listened carefully. He looked up and noticed the Captain and
radio officer and crewmen all looking at him. He took off the headphones
and smiled disarmingly. “Sorry, jumping in there. Should have asked
if it was all right to touch.”
Captain Goss stared at The Doctor. His ship and its crew and clients were
in some kind of trouble and he had an injured man who he couldn’t
get any help for. Those distractions had so occupied his mind he had actually
forgotten that The Doctor and his friends were not even supposed to be
there.
“I still don’t know who you ARE or how you got on board my
ship.”
“I’m The Doctor,” he replied and decided to go for absolute
honesty since he could think of no lie that would explain his presence.
“I am a traveller in time and space and my ship accidentally landed
on yours in the middle of the storm. I apologise absolutely for the intrusion
and ordinarily I’d be off right away and no fuss. But you do have
a bit of trouble on your hands that I might be able to help you with.”
“Traveller in time and space…” Goss looked at him incredulously.
“What kind of nonsense…. Look, we’re all very grateful
for what you did there in the storm. But you are trespassing and unless
you can come up with a better explanation I’m going to have to call
the authorities.”
“What authorities?” The Doctor asked. “There’s
nobody there to call.”
Goss had to concede that point.
“Do you know anything about this?” he demanded. “Did
you do this to my ship?”
“No!” The Doctor protested. “Certainly not. I don’t
think so, anyway. I’m almost sure I didn’t. When did the problem
start?”
“The radio went off air forty minutes ago when the storm began,”
the radio operator said.
“It was weird,” another man said. “One minute we were
sailing in a light south-westerly and it was seven o’clock in the
evening, broad daylight. The film crew were doing a stunt up in the rigging.
And then suddenly it was pitch dark and we were in a force ten storm.
All the equipment went dead at the same moment. GPS, weather satellite,
the radio communications.”
“That was a good ten minutes before we got here,” The Doctor
said, looking at his watch. “It was nothing to do with my ship.
We must both have been caught up in the same time storm.”
“In what?” Captain Goss demanded.
“A time storm,” The Doctor replied. “They usually happen
in deep space. There’s always one roiling about somewhere in the
universe. They’re a real hazard to space travel. Ships getting caught
up in them can be thrown years off course. It’s really bad for business
when passengers arrive at their destinations a century late. You get smaller
ones on planets from time to time. But the only one I know of on Earth
is localised around Bermuda.”
“The Bermuda Triangle?” The radio operator laughed, but it
was a laugh without conviction. It was hard to laugh at the most outlandish
theory when he was sitting there with a radio that wasn’t even receiving
white noise.
“You’re kidding aren’t you?” Captain Goss said.
“Come on. This is… you’re with the film crew. They’re
pulling a practical joke on me. This is for the gag reel on the DVD extras.”
“Doctor!” He turned as he heard Wyn’s voice calling.
She was trying to reach him but one of the crew was blocking her way onto
the bridge. “Doctor, come here. There’s something totally
weird you need to know about.”
“Captain, come on,” The Doctor said as he swept past him.
“This IS your ship, after all.”
“Glad you remembered,” Goss answered him. The radio operator
and navigator looked at each other for a moment and then abandoned their
posts to follow on.
“Doctor,” Wyn told him when he emerged on deck where she had
run back to rejoin Jasmin and Alec and their celebrity friends. “According
to the TARDIS we’re in the English Channel, about four miles off
Plymouth….”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Goss said. “We’re
only about a mile off course after all that wind.”
“….But it’s the 21st of May, 1588,” she added.
“It never is!” The Doctor said with a laugh. “Really?
Well I’ll be.…”
“Er….” Brian Worthing was the one who worked it out
first. “Captain, you might want to get this ship under sail and
get us out of here.”
“Why?” The Captain asked. “What on Earth is.…”
“The Ships of Medina Sidonia,” Mike Norton said as he worked
it out, too. “My first major film role.”
“Er….” The Captain looked between the director and actor
and wondered what they were talking about and why it had anything to do
with his ship.
“Oh for heaven sake,” The Doctor sighed. “Didn’t
you do English naval history? May 21st, 1588, Francis Drake, Spanish Armada…
big battle off PLYMOUTH.”
“Look!” Somebody yelled and the crew of the Halcyon as one
ran to the port side to watch with amazement the sight of the Spanish
Armada, the ACTUAL Spanish Armada, sailing towards them.
“Get back to bloody work,” The Captain yelled. He wasn’t
sure he believed his eyes entirely, but what his eyes were showing him
was a fleet of ships with guns aimed at the Halcyon. He thought he’d
better give his eyes the benefit of the doubt for the moment. “Get
this ship under full sail now. They’ll make matchwood of us if they
catch us up.”
“What the hell is THAT?” Brian Worthing turned and pointed
to the starboard side of the ship. The Doctor followed his finger and
stared at the impossible sight of the sky half blue and in full daylight
and half a clear starry night. The demarcation line between the two was
sharp, as if two pieces of scenery had been spliced together.
“Aim for that,” The Doctor shouted. “Captain, get the
ship turned around and aim for the darkness. It’s the way into another
time zone.”
“The Armada won’t be on our tail,” The Captain said,
understanding that one thing if nothing else. “Come on! Get to it.”
His crew responded, realising the urgency of the situation. The ship was
quickly turned about and they raced under full sail towards the dark side.
“Doctor,” Alec said. “How do you know we’re not
heading out of the frying pan and into the fire?”
“I don’t. But we don’t have much choice. Let’s
get out of the frying pan and I’ll worry about the fire afterwards.”
He turned and headed towards the TARDIS where it was parked amidships.
Wyn, Jasmin and Alec all followed him as a matter of course. So did several
other people.
“Wow!” Brian Worthing’s reaction was typical of the
reactions from those who crowded in through the open door. “This
is… WOW. This is really a space ship?”
“Yep,” Wyn told him. “The best space ship in the universe.”
“But it doesn’t look anything like…. I mean. I’ve
had space ship sets DESIGNED. And nobody ever came up with anything like
this. It’s… Wow. It’s FANTASTIC.”
“Glad you appreciate it,” The Doctor said. “But if it
turns up in any film you make I will sue for copyright theft. The console
room was created psychically as a visual representation of MY mind.”
“Was he feeling well at the time?” Mike asked Jasmin. “It’s
kind of…”
“It’s BEAUTIFUL,” Jasmin told him. “And if you
think you were privileged to sit in the director’s box at City that
was nothing to being allowed to be here, in the TARDIS.”
“TARDIS?”
“It’s an acronym. It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions
in Space,” The Doctor explained. “It means this is a ship
that travels in space and time. And yes, it’s bigger on the inside
than out. That’s the relative dimensions bit. And if we’ve
got a full house for the show can somebody close the door. Everyone watch
that screen there. We’re about to cross time dimensions in an eighteenth
century sailing ship. It should be rather interesting.”
“We’re about to be hit by cannon fire from the Spanish Armada,”
Alec pointed out as The Doctor turned on the viewscreen to show them racing
towards the dark part of the sea pursued by three Spanish ships. They
saw cannon balls flying through the air, missing the Halcyon by inches.
“What if the Armada follows us in there?” Jasmin asked. “We
don’t know WHAT century we might be going into.”
“I don’t think the seam will hold for very long,” The
Doctor said looking at the console. “According to these readings
it's very unstable. I think we’ll make it, but the Spanish ships
are too far behind.”
The TARDIS crew and guests watched the viewscreen in near silence as the
Halcyon reached what The Doctor had called the ‘seam’. They
held their breath as the bow of the ship crossed from the bright day in
1588 to the dark night ahead of them. Somebody on the bridge had used
some initiative and the bow light came on. They could see it in the darkness
ahead as it quickly engulfed the whole ship. For a brief moment as The
Doctor reversed the view they could still see the daylight of 1588 and
the Spanish Armada in pursuit. And then, in an eyeblink, it was gone.
One last cannon ball fell with a splash a few feet away from the ship
and they were in darkness on a calm sea with a starry sky above.
Not alone though. Captain Goss gave a sudden cry and ran for the TARDIS
door.
“I have to SEE this!” he yelled as he wrenched open the door
and ran outside. Everyone followed, The Doctor last of all, closing the
TARDIS door behind him.
“Oh my….” Wyn murmured as she went to the rail and looked
out over the dark sea.
Not an empty sea. They were far from alone.
“Doctor…” Jasmin turned to him. “What date is
this now?”
“It’s June 6th, 1944,” Captain Goss told her before
The Doctor could begin to speak.
“Is it?” Alec asked in surprise. “Wow.”
“Yes,” The Doctor answered him. “We got away from one
Armada to land amidst another one.”
“My great-grandfather was in this,” Mike Norton said. “He
used to talk about it. How more than 2,000 ships carrying more than 150,000
men crossed the channel in near silence, with hardly any lights on the
ships in case….”
“Get our lights out,” Captain Goss whispered loudly, his voice
carrying on the night air all the same. Somebody at once ran to the bridge
and ordered the bow lamp and the other lights around the ship to be turned
off. The rest watched in awe as that other Armada slowly passed them by,
unaware that they weren’t part of that great military manoeuvre
known to the generals as Operation Overlord until it entered history as
D-Day.
“My great-grandfather was there,” Alec said. “Only he
didn’t make it back to tell the stories. He died trying to reach
the beach.”
“My father was an able seaman on one of the ships,” Goss added.
“He’s out there somewhere.”
Everyone stared in silence for a long moment. The thought of Alec and
Mike’s great-grandfathers and Goss’s father somewhere in the
dark heading for Normandy gave them a strange feeling.
“Is that sunrise?” Brian asked. “That light there…”
“That’s due north,” Goss answered. “It's not sunrise.
Besides, it’s only about 1 am.”
“It’s another seam in time,” The Doctor said.
“Do we head for it again?” Goss asked.
“We might as well,” he answered. “Wait until these ships
pass us by first though. We’re relatively safe once they’ve
gone. The action is all going to be on the other side of the Channel.
I need to go look at some data in my TARDIS and see if I can work out
what caused this and what I can do to cancel it out and get everyone back
where they belong.”
“I’ll help you,” Wyn said. “Alec and Jasmin are
too busy hero worshipping your man there, the actor.”
The Doctor looked around and smiled as he saw his two young friends.
“I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve never even
heard of him.”
“You should get his autograph while you can,” The Doctor told
her. “In 2013, after his debut film they started to call him the
English Leonardo. And they weren’t talking about my old friend Da
Vinci.”
“Hah,” Wyn replied scornfully. “That’s nothing
to write home about. Who needs film star heroes? I’ve got the real
thing. I’ve got you.”
The Doctor smiled warmly at her and vaguely wondered what he could possibly
do to shake her faith in him. He remembered once having to do that to
Ace, for reasons that she came to understand afterwards. But he had felt
like a ratbag for doing it to her. The hurt in her eyes had been heartbreaking.
He would hate to see Wyn hurt that way.
“Come on. Let’s see what we can do about getting Mr Film Star
and his friends home.”
“The Doctor…” Brian Worthing said as he and Mike sat
with Alec and Jasmin at a table in the Halcyon’s mess room. Around
him the cast and crew of his film were trying to relax and not worry about
being plunged into something stranger than the fiction they were used
to dealing with. “Can he REALLY help us?”
“Never seen him fail,” Alec assured him. “If he can’t
help….”
“But he MUST do it,” Jasmin said. “I’ve seen this
film that you’re making. He must get you all back where you belong
and we must be all ok.”
“You’re from the future?” Mike asked. “All of
you?”
“It’s a long story,” Alec assured him.
“I’m sure it is,” Brian said with a smile. “One
with BAFTA winner under the title! Tell me more about The Doctor. He’s
really something. I could SO make a film out of him.”
“I don’t think The Doctor would LIKE that,” Jasmin said,
though SHE liked the idea a LOT. A film about a hero like The Doctor -
especially if he was played by Mike Norton. SHE would go see a film like
that.
“He wouldn’t,” Alec was quite sure. “So don’t
even think about it. Besides, when does science fiction win BAFTAS?”
“It would when I make it,” Brian said confidently. “So,
come on. Spill the beans. Who is he exactly? What’s his name? Where
is he from? How did you guys get hooked up with him?”
Jasmin and Alec looked at each other and smiled a secret smile. How could
they begin to answer those questions. They didn’t even KNOW the
answer to the first two, and the third wasn’t their secret to tell.
As for the last question, it was a story they doubted they could EVER
share with anyone.
“Are we in big trouble?” Wyn asked as The Doctor scanned
through what looked like incomprehensible data. “Can we get away
from this weird stuff?”
“WE could leave any time,” The Doctor pointed out. “The
TARDIS is fully operational. We could be at Wembley in plenty of time
to buy a hot dog and a couple of souvenir flags and soak up the atmosphere.”
“But you’d never just go and leave those people stranded and
lost in time?”
“Course I wouldn’t. These are innocent people mixed up in
something they have no power to control. I have to help them if I can.”
“And… can you? Do you know what’s happening?”
“Yes, and yes,” he said. “But it’s not going to
happen before we hit the next seam and go into yet another time zone.”
He tapped the screen and Wyn looked to see a graphic representation of
another time zone fast approaching their position. “Out of the frying
pan and into the fire.”
They watched on the viewscreen as they went from dark night to a bright
afternoon sunshine with a completely different fleet of ships coming up
the channel.
“28th of February, 1653,” The Doctor sighed. “Battle
of Portland. The British navy fought for nearly a month against the Dutch
for control of what was, henceforth called the ENGLISH Channel.”
“And they have cannons,” Wyn observed as they once again came
under attack. She ran to the TARDIS door and saw Captain Goss ordering
his people to get the ship turned into the headwind. As they did she saw
another of those strange demarcations between day and night. They sailed
straight for it.
“Oh, my,” she heard The Doctor say as they passed into a quiet
and battleship free night. “This I HAVE to see.” He took Wyn’s
hand as he stepped out of the TARDIS and guided her to the port side of
the ship.
“Not another sea battle?” she asked him. “I never knew
this much went on in the channel.”
“No, not a battle this time. Nothing to worry about at all. Not
for us, anyway.” The Doctor looked out over the sea and Wyn followed
his gaze. She saw a ship maybe a couple of hundred yards away that seemed
hauntingly familiar. A big steam liner with four great funnels. It was
brightly lit against the darkness and it looked beautiful as it sailed
on through the night.
Wyn tried to work out why the sight of it made her feel sad.
“What’s the date now?” she asked The Doctor.
“April 10th, 1912,” he said. “About eleven o’clock
at night. She left Cherbourg at half past eight to head down the channel
towards Queenstown on the south coast of Ireland to pick up the last of
her passengers and then off out into the Atlantic.”
“We’ve got a radio on board this ship,” Wyn said as
the history clicked into place and she realised why she felt the way she
did. “We could contact them. Warn them what’s going to happen.”
“They would hardly believe us,” The Doctor told her. “They
believe their ship is unsinkable. Nothing anyone could tell them would
make them think otherwise. Besides, some things in history just can’t
be messed with.”
“It feels funny, to have actually SEEN it,” Wyn commented.
She shivered. Whether from cold or something else, she wasn’t sure.
The Doctor put his arm around her comfortingly. Before he turned away,
telling her they should get a warm drink below deck, he raised his hand
in silent salute to that other ship as it continued its fateful voyage.
Alec and Jasmin were still chatting to the film folk when they came into
the mess hall. They all looked up at The Doctor and he read the guilty
expressions on their faces.
“I’m not a national secret,” he said. “Jasmin,
Alec, I never said you had to keep the stories of our time together to
yourselves, never breathing a word to another soul on pain of death. Wyn’s
mum told her stories about me at bedtime. When you have kids of your own
I hope you’ll do the same. It’s all right that you told Brian
everything. And I’m sure Brian’s fertile imagination will
do wonderful things with what he learnt. But for heaven sake, Brian, do
not write a screenplay with a time machine in it called The SIRTAD. It
sounds downright silly and the acronym is meaningless.”
Brian looked at him in surprise and opened his mouth to ask a question
of Jasmin and Alec.
“Yes,” The Doctor cut in. “I can read your mind. It’s
a lively and imaginative one and it should be treasured. But I think your
period dramas are better than your science fiction. Now, where’s
the captain? I need to talk to him about getting to the bottom of this
little situation.”
“Here,” Goss said, standing up from the table where he had
been sitting with his own crew. “Do you know what’s going
on here?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “We were ALL caught up in a time
storm, like I said. The first manifestation of it WAS like a real storm
that hit your ship suddenly, right in the middle of filming that stunt
up on the masthead. The atoms that make up the Halcyon and all its crew
were resisting being pulled into it because they’re NOT a time machine
and they didn’t want to go, naturally enough. That’s why it
was so rough. But you’re too small to resist for long and it eventually
just sucked you through and landed you in 1588. It tossed you into the
eye of the storm as it were and you’ve been slipping from one fractured
piece of time to another ever since. 1588 to 1944, to 1653, to 1912. And
any minute now we’re about to hit another one.”
“Ok,” Goss said. “I think I follow you, but can we get
out of it again and can we be sure it won’t happen again next time
we put to sea? What’s doing it and can you stop it?”
“Oh, those multipart questions again!” The Doctor grinned
manically. “Can I stop it? I don’t know. I can try. What’s
doing it, I think I know now. But I don’t know who and why. And
I don’t know if they’re hostile. I don’t think they
are aware yet of your presence. When I alert them, they may not react
well. Your ship is made of wood. I’ve never heard of a wooden ship
standing up to thermic torpedoes.”
“What’s a thermic torpedo?” Brian asked. The Captain
made an educated guess and didn’t like it one bit.
“What do I do?”
“Get everyone onto my ship. It ISN’T made of wood and it can
withstand fairly close proximity to a supernova.”
“We have to abandon my ship?” The Captain looked upset about
that. The Doctor could understand that. He would feel the same if his
TARDIS was in that sort of danger. But saving lives came before saving
boats, even one as beautiful as the Halcyon.
Captain Goss looked around at the people in the mess hall. The crew were
ordinary people who made a living taking film and television crews out
to sea on old fashioned boats to make authentic looking action scenes.
Their idea of adventure and danger was sailing into a bit of bad weather.
The rest of the people on board were actors, stuntmen, camera and sound
men, make up artists, hairdressers, costumers. They MADE adventure happen
as an illusion for the silver screen and talked about it on the DVD commentary.
But he thought he understood The Doctor’s point.
“If we don’t deal with this problem we’ll be stuck here
forever,” Goss reasoned. “Bouncing around in history. Sooner
or later we might run into the Armada again and their cannons WILL hit
us. Besides, what if some other ship gets caught up in this time storm,
some fishing trawler from Newlyn or a liner going off on a cruise full
of passengers.”
“I COULD take you all to safety in my ship, drop you all off in
Plymouth. But that way you’d definitely lose your ship and the time
storm would still be out there and I’m not sure I could get back
into it again afterwards. The thing about a time storm is that it has
no set co-ordinate in time and space. You can’t pin it down. It
would still be there causing a hazard to sea traffic.”
“So we’d save our own skins but I’d have lost the Halcyon
and other ships could still be in danger.” Captain Goss looked at
The Doctor with a studied gaze. “I speak for my crew at least, if
not for Brian and his people. We can’t do that. If there’s
another option, I think we should try it.”
“Go for it, Doc,” Brian Worthing told him on behalf of his
own people. The Doctor turned to him with a gleam in his eye.
“NOBODY calls me Doc,” he said. “And no, that won’t
make a great catchphrase for your hero.”
“Maybe not,” the film director answered him. “But we’re
in. Let’s find out what this is all about.”
“Ok,” The Doctor said. “Captain, make the announcement.
Abandon ship. Get everyone inside the TARDIS. Somebody go and get the
injured man.”
Those who had not seen the inside of the TARDIS yet were puzzled by what
was going on. The Doctor smiled as he heard Brian Worthing trying to explain
to his own people about dimensional relativity. He was nearly right -
a VERY fertile imagination, indeed.
“Ok,” The Doctor said. “Everyone grab a piece of floor.
Sorry, there’s not enough chairs for you all. I don’t usually
carry this many passengers.”
Everyone sat in a ring around the edges of the console room. The Doctor
looked around and saw that they were all watching him expectantly. He
turned to his console and looked at the readings. He grinned as he saw
them pass into yet another time zone. The date had to be another historical
coincidence. But this time, at least, the waters around Plymouth were
quiet. The action was further down the coast around Kent.
He moved to his communications console and sent the signal he knew would
attract the attention of those causing the time storm that had tossed
them all around naval history. Almost immediately, the TARDIS began to
judder and shake as if something was vibrating underneath it. Captain
Goss jumped up and ran to the door.
“What’s going on with my ship?” he demanded. “Let
me out. I need to make sure…”
“Don’t,” The Doctor warned him.
“It’s MY ship,” he said. “Let me out of here.”
To The Doctor’s surprise the door opened. He looked at the console.
It really did have a mind of its own sometimes. It ought to have locked
tight against any danger.
Did that mean there WAS no danger? Was the TARDIS telling him it was ok?
“Everyone else stay put for the moment,” he said as he followed
Goss.
It was daylight again in this time zone. A brisk, cool day in October,
as The Doctor knew from his last reading. He saw Goss by the portside
railing and joined him there.
What he saw amazed even him.
The Halcyon was rising up out of the water. Its hull was caught up between
two raised sections of what was clearly a much bigger craft underneath
it.
“What is THAT?” Goss asked. Behind him everyone else had come
pouring out of the TARDIS to look.
“So much for stay put!” The Doctor muttered as his friends
reached his side. They all watched as the bulk of the alien craft emerged
from the water.
“Alien ship?” Wyn asked him. But he didn’t need to answer
that. It was very definitely alien. It was like a giant flatfish apart
from the two raised sections. The Halcyon was caught in them roughly midway
along the back of it. It was a sort of greenish blue shade that shimmered
as if it was a part of the sea. Wyn wondered if it was something to do
with camouflage.
And it was BIG. The Halcyon looked like a rowing boat in comparison to
it.
“THAT is what’s been causing our problems,” The Doctor
said. “It’s a Callathusian ship.”
“And?”
“And they are not usually hostile,” The Doctor added. “I
don’t think the things that have happened to us were deliberate.”
He watched as a door opened in the raised fin of the Callusthusian ship.
He alone knew what to expect to emerge. His TARDIS companions were ready
to expect just about anything. The rest of the Humans around him all took
a step back as five Callusthusians emerged, one at a time, from the doorway.
They were definitely alien, too. They were something like eight feet tall
and as thin as a normally proportioned Human man who had been stretched.
Their heads were elongated and fish-like with gills stretching from the
rudimentary noses to either side of the thin-lipped mouths. Their fish
eyes bulged in the sockets and their skin was grey-green to match their
ship. They were all dressed in long, shimmering robes that resembled fish
scales and their hands and feet were webbed.
“They’re amphibians. They come from a planet with very big
oceans,” The Doctor told those close enough to him to hear.
The Callusthusians stopped halfway between the doorway and the Halcyon
and looked up expectantly at the Humans who looked down curiously at them.
“Captain,” The Doctor said. “You come with me.”
Goss nodded to his crew to open the companion gate and drop down the ladder.
The Doctor led the way. Above him the rest of the crew and passengers
of the Halcyon watched in wonder as he approached the aliens.
“Greetings,” he said, bowing his head to the senior Callusthusian.
“I am The Doctor. And you must be the captain of this fine vessel.”
“I am Gresh Velkar,” he replied. “The Doctor? The Lord
of Time who is renowned throughout the twelve galaxies as a man of justice
and mercy?”
“That would be me,” The Doctor answered with no trace of false
modesty. “May I introduce the Captain of this other vessel which
has been caught up in the time storm caused by your ship.” Captain
Goss came forward a little nervously as The Doctor signalled to him. “You
do understand that you have been responsible for disruptions in time echoing
through the centuries?”
“I regret that there has been any such disruption. Our temporal
engines were damaged when our ship crashed through the atmosphere of this
planet. We have been attempting to relaunch and leave this place. We did
not intend to alert the indigenous population to our presence.”
“How come the alien speaks English?” Mike Norton asked Jasmin
as they leaned against the railing and strained to hear the conversation.
“It doesn’t. It’s speaking its own language. But The
Doctor said that anyone who has travelled in the TARDIS gets a sort of
free translation service from it. You hear English no matter what language
is being spoken.”
“Oh. Right. That’s handy. Does it wear off? Only I’m
going to the Tokyo Film Festival next month.…”
“I don’t know,” Jasmin admitted. “I think maybe
not. But….” She turned her attention to what The Doctor was
saying, and what the alien called Gresh Velkar was saying to him.
“Your engines are out of phase,” The Doctor was saying. “I
picked up the resonances in my ship. That’s why you can’t
get off this planet and why time is being affected in the locality of
your ship. The Halcyon was sailing over the place where your ship was
hidden on the sea bed just as you tried to launch. It was caught up in
the time storm and tossed around from one temporal location to another.
If I hadn’t dropped in they’d be lost in time forever.”
“I apologise,” Gresh Velkar said and he bowed his head to
Captain Goss. “No harm was intended to you or your people.”
“I… er... um….” Goss looked at the Gresh Velkar
and then at The Doctor. He swallowed hard.
“The appropriate response is to accept his apology,” The Doctor
told him.
“Yes, of course,” Goss said. “I accept your apology.
But how does that help? His ship is still damaged and ours is trapped
here with it.”
“Well, you have me, the best temporal engineer in the twelve galaxies.
And Wyn and Alec are both handy enough with a wrench. You’ve got
technical staff. Brian, too. We’re all going to pitch in and help
fix their ship, recalibrate it so that it stops emitting the disruptive
resonances and then we can ALL go home.”
And that was exactly what happened. Under The Doctor’s expert direction
a team made up of the Halcyon’s crew and the technicians of Brian’s
film crew, stripped down the Callusthusian ship’s engine, repaired
it and put it back together again in a few very busy hours. The rest of
the unwitting time travellers were treated to Callusthusian hospitality,
given food and drink on their mess deck, Humans mixing with Callusthusians
cheerfully, and discovering that they had more in common than they thought.
When they were done the parting was quite emotional. The Doctor smiled
as he saw digital cameras and hand held video cameras and even some of
Brian’s film cameras brought out to capture pictures of aliens and
Humans shaking hands, standing shoulder to shoulder and waving at the
camera, and exchanging souvenirs. Captain Goss was very moved when Gresh
Velkar offered him what he realised was a Callusthusian flag and sent
one of his people to find a Union Jack to give in exchange.
Then The Doctor ordered everyone back on board the Halcyon. Velkar ordered
his people to go below decks, and they hung on tight to the rails as the
Callusthusian ship submerged and the Halcyon was set down in the water
again. There was a disturbance in the water and a lot of wake as the Callusthusians
moved their craft from under the Halcyon and then began to ascend again,
this time faster than before. When they broke through the water they kept
on going, rising vertically into the sky until the great ship looked no
bigger than an airliner. The Doctor looked up and smiled and waved.
“Good journey,” he whispered as the Callusthusian ship accelerated
away. Then he turned and told everyone to get back into the TARDIS.
“The time storm is over,” The Doctor said when they were all
gathered in the console room. “But the current date is October 14,
1066. William the Conqueror arrived a bit further up the coast so we’re
not going to witness any more historic ships today. Besides, I think Brian’s
cameraman has got enough interesting footage. By the way, the shots he’s
taken inside here will be useless. I don’t mind anyone having fond
memories of visiting my ship, but it has automatic protective fields that
prevent indoor photography. And incidentally, you will never win a BAFTA
with a film about a time travelling detective called ‘Doctor Who???’.”
“Do you think it would be better with just the one question mark?”
Brian asked hopefully. “Or maybe no question mark. Then it’s
a sort of double meaning. It’s a question and it's his name as well….”
The Doctor just grinned enigmatically and turned to his amazing ship’s
controls.
“It’ll be a bumpy ride, folks,” he said. “I’ve
got to extend my ship’s dimensional field to include the Halcyon
and then bring us all back through the time vortex to where you left off.
Captain, you should know there’s a fifty-fifty chance it won’t
work and your ship will be ripped apart by the temporal forces. And I’m
sorry about that, because it's a beautiful ship and it will be a financial
loss to you since there’s no way you can explain that to your insurance
underwiters. But just cross your fingers.”
They ALL crossed their fingers. The Doctor noticed that Alec and Jasmin
made sure they were sitting with Mike Norton who seemed to have become
a firm friend to them now. But he needed them more than their screen idol
did.
“Wyn, Jasmin, Alec, I need you three here,” he said. “Alec,
grab that lever there and keep pushing it until the dial next to it reads
150. Jasmin, check lifesigns and make sure we didn’t leave anyone
on deck and then keep an eye on the radiation detectors. Wyn, you’ve
been with me longest. The TARDIS knows you best. I want you to take the
flight control.”
“You want ME to fly the TARDIS?” she gasped. “But…
you never even let MUM do that.”
“Your dad doesn’t even let your mum drive the Land-Rover,”
The Doctor replied. “But we both love her to bits. You, fortunately,
take after your dad a bit more. I trust you not to blow anything up, least
of all me. So you take the flight control and follow my instructions.
I have to stay at navigation, because we’re navigating from a position
that I didn’t originally programme into the TARDIS, and we’ve
got the extra weight and mass of ‘towing’ the Halcyon through
the vortex. Things could be a bit tricky.”
“Tricky as in we could implode and explode at the same time or tricky
in that we might overshoot and end up in the ice age?”
“The second, but since the English channel was frozen solid in the
ice age I think I’d like to avoid that, too.”
He checked his readings again and then set the co-ordinate he had extrapolated
from the data he had collected since they arrived in this strange situation.
The TARDIS might have been parked, but it had registered its piggy back
journey on the Halcyon through the different time zones and he had enough
information to work out how to get them back to four miles off Plymouth
in June, 2015.
He just wasn’t entirely sure if they would get there whole. The
Halcyon wasn’t the only ship that was likely to be pulled to pieces
if he got it wrong.
“We believe in you, Doctor,” Alec told him as his expressoon
gave away his concern. He looked around and grinned and keyed in the co-ordinate.
It WAS a bumpy ride. The Doctor watched the vortex changing from the
red colour that indicated they were going forward as they should be, to
blue indicating that they were being pulled backwards again, to green
which shouldn’t have been appearing at all. He furiously adjusted
settings on the navigation panel and compensated for the extra weight
of the sailing ship, wondering if the groaning sounds he could hear were
the Halcyon having a rough time of it or his TARDIS engines overloading.
And then, suddenly, they dropped out of the vortex. The Doctor looked
at the console and then he looked up at the viewscreen. He opened the
communication channel and they heard a radio broadcast.
Rock FM.
The Doctor adjusted the frequency until he found a short wave signal trying
to contact the Halcyon. He signalled to Captain Goss who came and took
the microphone. He reported that they had a temporary radio fault and
asked for the helicopter rescue for the man with the broken leg who was
still sleeping it off in the TARDIS medical room. Other than that, he
reported, all was well.
“At least I hope it is,” he added as The Doctor cut the communication.
“My ship… is it….”
The Doctor smiled and opened the doors. The Captain ran outside. Again,
everyone followed. The Doctor brought up the rear, stepping out into a
bright sunny day. He looked up into the sky and saw the vapour trail of
a jet plane high in the sky above. Everything was normal for June, 2015.
“Not a scratch on her,” The Doctor said proudly as a light
breeze caught the sails. “Well, I think that’s us sorted.
We’ll be off. Alec, we should be on for Wembley this time.”
Alec was the last to settle into his seat in Wembley Stadium where they
were all soaking up the pre-match atmosphere. He passed hotdogs and coke
along the row to everyone.
“I saw Mike Norton surrounded by Press. I was going to say Hi, then
I realised he doesn’t know us yet. Isn’t it weird?”
“Time travel can do that sometimes,” The Doctor agreed. “Just
as long as there isn’t a nine year old you around here. That’s
when it gets complicated.”
“No,” Alec answered. “I missed it because I got chicken
pox. That’s why this is so fantastic.”
“That’s why The Doctor is a way better hero than some movie
star,” Wyn said, loyally.
“Doctor,” Jamin said. “If history changes ever so slightly,
do our memories of it change too?”
“Yes,” he said. “Most people wouldn’t even notice
that it has changed. They would accept the new version of reality. You
might because you’ve travelled in the TARDIS and you’re aware
of the tiny fluctuations.”
“Right. Because something just popped into my head that I’m
sure wasn’t there before. Brian DID drop the three question marks
and he DID win the 2017 BAFTA and he was nominated for an Oscar, too -
just pipped by something by Spielberg. Mike was brilliant as you, by the
way. And they didn’t call the time machine anything silly.”
The Doctor laughed and bit into his hot dog.
“Had to happen sooner or later. Good luck to them.” He grinned
and sat back to enjoy the football.