The Doctor always hated it when Mel made him ride the exercise bike. Strangely she didn't appreciate him voicing this concern.
"Do I have to do this?!" he moaned.
"Yes you do, Doctor," she said with a smile on her face. "You need to sort out that stomach of yours somehow!"
The Doctor gave Mel an unimpressed look, watching as she leant against the console where she was preparing to pour out some more carrot juice.
"Now then Doctor, don't you stop pedalling! How many have we got to now?"
"A few million, I think", the Doctor muttered quietly, hoping she wouldn't actually hear him.
"Pardon, Doctor?" Mel asked, "I didn't hear that."
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak. "What I was saying, Mel, before you so rudely interrupted me, is that I don’t like -"
Before he could finish, the TARDIS suddenly lurched and sent the Doctor tumbling off the exercise bike. He didn't much mind this, since it meant he was granted a temporary and unexpected reprieve of having to ride the blasted thing. Mel kept upright by holding onto the console but the Doctor had no such luck as he ended up smashing his face onto the floor. He tried to reach for something to stand himself up again but then the TARDIS jolted in the other direction and the Doctor was thrown towards the doors and found himself pressed against them with a thud. There was something odd about how the TARDIS had lurched, it often was thrown around by time winds (and the occasional Vortisaur incursion) but this was bigger than anything the Doctor had experienced in his memory.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be so bad, but as Mel tried to steady herself on the console she accidentally pressed a button and, much to the mutual horror of the two time travellers, the doors opened out into the time vortex!
And then the Doctor fell through them. He grabbed to the doorway as he went and kept a tight hold on them for a few seconds. “Mel!” he shouted. “Mel, help me!”
Mel however was frozen to the spot. She stared at the harsh blue light radiating around the TARDIS, mesmerised.Under other circumstances she’d have called it beautiful, but right now: Terrifying.
“Mel!” the Doctor cried out, snapping her out of her trance.
“Doctor!” she yelled. “Doctor, what’s happening?”
“I’m falling into the time vortex! Quickly, shut the doors! I won’t survive falling into this! Not even as a Time Lord!” He felt his grip beginning to slip and then he fell. Mel screamed.
The Doctor, suspended on the edge of the vortex, managed to hold Mel’s gaze for a few seconds – maybe longer, it was so hard to tell – and then he was gone. “Sorry!” he shouted, but no sound came out.
Mel stared back at the Time Lord as she saw him tumble through time itself. It seemed to her as though the Doctor was frozen still, with the look of shock and horror on his face and his four limbs spread out. Then with a blinding flash of light he was gone.
Mel was horrified but she realised quickly that there was only one option left for her to do now. She pressed the button again, the doors closed, and she was suddenly very alone. This was a new sensation for her, the Doctor had always been unpredictable, usually running off and leaving her to her own devices, but this was different. This time he was cut off from her and she couldn’t do anything about it.
She was stuck alone inside the TARDIS with the Doctor falling through the time vortex, almost certainly dead. Mel felt a sinking feeling deep inside – her struggling to stay upright had just killed her best friend and left her abandoned to wander through the time vortex alone until she had gone the same way herself. Heaven only knew how long that would be. She stared with a forlorn look on her face at the TARDIS’s doors as she let this dread sink in. She listened to the sound of the TARDIS as it drifted away through time, and Mel realised she had never been more alone.
"Sorry Doctor," she said. "I'm sorry."
"Do I have to do this?!" he moaned.
"Yes you do, Doctor," she said with a smile on her face. "You need to sort out that stomach of yours somehow!"
The Doctor gave Mel an unimpressed look, watching as she leant against the console where she was preparing to pour out some more carrot juice.
"Now then Doctor, don't you stop pedalling! How many have we got to now?"
"A few million, I think", the Doctor muttered quietly, hoping she wouldn't actually hear him.
"Pardon, Doctor?" Mel asked, "I didn't hear that."
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak. "What I was saying, Mel, before you so rudely interrupted me, is that I don’t like -"
Before he could finish, the TARDIS suddenly lurched and sent the Doctor tumbling off the exercise bike. He didn't much mind this, since it meant he was granted a temporary and unexpected reprieve of having to ride the blasted thing. Mel kept upright by holding onto the console but the Doctor had no such luck as he ended up smashing his face onto the floor. He tried to reach for something to stand himself up again but then the TARDIS jolted in the other direction and the Doctor was thrown towards the doors and found himself pressed against them with a thud. There was something odd about how the TARDIS had lurched, it often was thrown around by time winds (and the occasional Vortisaur incursion) but this was bigger than anything the Doctor had experienced in his memory.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be so bad, but as Mel tried to steady herself on the console she accidentally pressed a button and, much to the mutual horror of the two time travellers, the doors opened out into the time vortex!
And then the Doctor fell through them. He grabbed to the doorway as he went and kept a tight hold on them for a few seconds. “Mel!” he shouted. “Mel, help me!”
Mel however was frozen to the spot. She stared at the harsh blue light radiating around the TARDIS, mesmerised.Under other circumstances she’d have called it beautiful, but right now: Terrifying.
“Mel!” the Doctor cried out, snapping her out of her trance.
“Doctor!” she yelled. “Doctor, what’s happening?”
“I’m falling into the time vortex! Quickly, shut the doors! I won’t survive falling into this! Not even as a Time Lord!” He felt his grip beginning to slip and then he fell. Mel screamed.
The Doctor, suspended on the edge of the vortex, managed to hold Mel’s gaze for a few seconds – maybe longer, it was so hard to tell – and then he was gone. “Sorry!” he shouted, but no sound came out.
Mel stared back at the Time Lord as she saw him tumble through time itself. It seemed to her as though the Doctor was frozen still, with the look of shock and horror on his face and his four limbs spread out. Then with a blinding flash of light he was gone.
Mel was horrified but she realised quickly that there was only one option left for her to do now. She pressed the button again, the doors closed, and she was suddenly very alone. This was a new sensation for her, the Doctor had always been unpredictable, usually running off and leaving her to her own devices, but this was different. This time he was cut off from her and she couldn’t do anything about it.
She was stuck alone inside the TARDIS with the Doctor falling through the time vortex, almost certainly dead. Mel felt a sinking feeling deep inside – her struggling to stay upright had just killed her best friend and left her abandoned to wander through the time vortex alone until she had gone the same way herself. Heaven only knew how long that would be. She stared with a forlorn look on her face at the TARDIS’s doors as she let this dread sink in. She listened to the sound of the TARDIS as it drifted away through time, and Mel realised she had never been more alone.
"Sorry Doctor," she said. "I'm sorry."
Statues in the sand
written by z. p. moo
The desert was a very big area, bigger than the eye could see. Some might say that it had no beginning and no end with the orange-grey sand stretching far beyond where one could even imagine, and probably a good deal further. But the strangest thing was the lack of any natural features. Most deserts have the sun above them to heat the sand, but this had none. There was a bleak whiteness where the sky should be. And the whole place was very cold, even though no wind blew.
The Doctor wasn't sure quite what exactly had just happened to him. One moment he had been in the TARDIS with Mel (he still had the sickly taste of carrot juice in his mouth) and the next thing he knew was that he was in this desert. He didn’t recognise the place, neither the planet nor the timezone, which was unusual for him. And where was everybody? There were no signs of life that the Doctor could recognise, and while he knew that deserts do indeed tend to be rather deserted – it’s right there in the name – this was something else. This place was a whole other level of desertedness. In all honesty it creeped him out, not that he’d ever dare admit it.
Oh yes, that was it! He remembered now. The TARDIS had jolted itself about and Mel had accidentally knocked into the door controls. The Doctor couldn't escape the fleeting moment of pride that he was the first person on record ever to successfully travel through the time vortex without some kind of time-travelling device or external influence, but then some realisation came upon him swiftly that something about this was all very wrong. By all known rules of the universe, he shouldn't be alive. And yet here he was. What was going on?
Unless it actually was death he had experienced? The Doctor had always suspected an afterlife might exist and he had often thought that he might take a shot at trying to find one. He'd never got round to it though, the thing about time travel is that one never seemed to find the time.
"Is this death?" he asked, to nobody in particular. He'd said exactly those same words last time that he regenerated but nobody had given him an answer. But this time somebody did.
"Shouldn't think so, I know we're not dead at least!" It was a man's voice, British, from London (or perhaps just north of it), going by the regional accent. The Doctor looked round and saw a man running towards him, then a subdued-looking woman just behind. A quick look over them both told the Doctor that they were both in their mid 20s and probably from the early 21st century. The Doctor concluded that whoever or whatever had sent them here must have done so to them both at the same time.
The next thing the Doctor noticed was their clothing; They were both conveniently dressed for a cold day. They were both dressed in a warm coat, black hiking boots and matching trousers. He was disappointed they had no hats or scarfs; he himself had always enjoyed it when he'd worn such things in previous incarnations, but now was not the time for nostalgia.
"Hello there you two! You can call me the Doctor, if you so please. Now tell me please, where are we and how did we get here?”
“We don’t know”, the man said. “We were out for a walk. Heard a noise, turned our backs, and suddenly we were here.”
“You look human”, the Doctor summarised. “I’d say 21st century Earth, by the look of you.”
“Yes, that’s where we were”, said the man. Then he realised what that question implied. He gasped, and then stepped back suddenly in horror. "He’s an alien, Becky!" he shouted at the woman. Then he faced the Doctor directly and barked at him "Get away! Stay back!" He stretched out his arms, as if to intimidate him, and the Doctor noticed that this man had no ring on his finger, even though the woman did. He concluded that these two people must be engaged.
"Not every alien is hostile, you know. Some of us are actually rather friendly, if only you'd open your self-centred human minds once in a while you might realise that the universe does not revolve around you. Why does your species find such a trivial thing as that to be so very difficult? My old friend Nicolaus got that into his head, you know, but I suppose he was the exception."
The man said nothing, but the woman, Becky, spoke quietly to her husband-to-be. "Rondal, I think he's friendly."
"Maybe, sweetheart, maybe”, the man, apparently called Rondal, replied. “But he’s got an ego and he’s patronising as hell.”
Takes one to know one, the Doctor thought. He resisted the urge to say it though.
Rondal continued. "Someone took us away from Earth to wherever this is and they seemed to know what they were doing. All I wanted was to have just one day away from your parents' constant meddling and your poor excuse for an apartment, we'd go hiking, you know, my favourite hobby, gets me away from people before when we have to see hundreds of them tomorrow – but then, when we do, THIS happens!" He faced the Doctor again, but he was standing much further back than his fiancee was now. "I don't trust you, Doctor. Doctor what exactly? Well, whoever you are, maybe you were responsible for what happened to us! In fact, I should think that you are the guilty culprit! All the evidence says you’re to blame."
"Rondal, he asked you what it was that happened, if you haven't forgotten already,” Becky muttered. "Why would he do that, unless something bad had sent him here too?"
She turned to face Rondal just as the Doctor was already doing. She took a step back and stood beside the man of Gallifrey. Rondal was at a loss for words. He opened his mouth to speak.
"Becky -", he began, but was interrupted suddenly when a soft tremor shook the sand below him. It started to churn. Rondal pointed at the Doctor. "What are you doing now? Stop it, you fiend! You monster! You demon!" he shouted.
"This is nothing to do with me!" the Doctor shouted back. The sand churned some more and some of it moved behind Rondal, as if held there by an unseen wind.
Becky gasped in horror. Behind Rondal the sand coalesced into one collective shape: a grey statue of an angel with hands over its eyes.
The Doctor said authoritatively "Do not blink, either of you. It can’t do anything if it’s being watched. Now carefully Rondal, walk to us slowly."
But Rondal just stood still, continuing to point and stare at the Doctor. "You've killed us, haven't you!" he accused. He hadn’t seen the monster behind him yet, but then he felt its presence when it grabbed his neck. Rondal, now unable to move, stopped with his posturing but not his accusing. "How are you doing that???" he asked in a quiet and raspy voice. And then the Weeping Angel suddenly moved its hands. It was a small movement, small enough not to be noticed, but that was all it had to be. With a noise that sounded not unlike a large stick of wood splintering in two, Rondal suddenly collapsed on the ground. He was dead and the Weeping Angel had killed him. It was quick, it was sudden and it didn’t even take more than half of a single second. It was a horribly brutal death for any man. Rondal’s body fell to the ground almost exactly as would a rag doll dropped by a child.
Becky shouted a very rude four-letter word that the Doctor did not care to repeat.
"Well, young lady, you wanted to know how we got here and I think we have ourselves a culprit", the Doctor said in a matter of fact way.
"It killed him!" Becky cried, a noticeable wobble in her voice.
"Saying he’s dead won't change the fact that he is, you know." The Doctor was holding her up, but never once dared to look away from the Weeping Angel in front of him. He began to walk backwards slowly, hoping to Rassilon that there wasn't another angel in that direction. He saw the lifeless corpse of Rondal, with his slightly lopsided head, lying at the Weeping Angel's feet. But most shocking of all was what he could see when he looked at the angel's face. The eyes were shut closed (Phew!) but there was a look of pure malice on its face that the Doctor could've sworn was a smile. The total opposite response to Becky, the Doctor noticed, who had started to silently cry.
“Your fiancee has died, I’m afraid”, the Doctor said. “And if we don’t get away then we’ll be next. Oh, do stop your blubbering woman, contain yourself!”
Becky was struggling all the while and the Doctor had barely got more than ten, twenty, metres away from the Weeping Angel before Becky managed to break free. "How can you say that? Rondal just died!" she screamed at him. There were tears beginning to trickle from her eyes at this point. Then she suddenly shrieked something and stared at something behind where the Doctor was. He turned and saw another Weeping Angel had appeared behind him.
"Keep staring at it! Your life depends on it!" the Doctor instructed, before looking back to the other one. It had got much closer even in those few seconds. The Doctor and Becky stood back to back and could see that the two Weeping Angels were barely more than a few feet away from them.
"What's going on?" Becky asked, her voice beginning to reflect her highly emotional state. “What are they?”
"Weeping Angels. They can't move if they are seen. They like to send people through time and space and let them live to death, feed off the new timeline that's created in the process. It’s quite a humane death actually. I’ve seen creatures who need to disembowel people to communicate, civilisations where acid baths are used for criminals, planets where the sunlight alone can kill you, and don’t get me started on your twin planet! This is tame by comparison, Rondal’s troubles were over very quickly, cheer up woman!”
“How can you talk like that?! He’s dead!”
The Doctor ignored her. “But sending you and Rondal here and then killing him like that, that's a new one. I haven’t seen the Weeping Angels do it that way before. I suppose that you must have encountered one when you were out walking. But me and my TARDIS, that I can't explain."
The realisation that Mel must be in huge trouble finally dawned on him.
"TARDIS? Is that your alien spaceship?" Becky said.
"Yes, it is. A rather beautiful vessel, but now is hardly the time to -"
"Can you communicate with it?"
"What?"
"Like they do on Star Trek. Beam us up, Scotty!"
The Doctor tried to mutter that his TARDIS was nothing like the ships in that show, how much more exquisite it was and how it didn’t need a crew to maintain it, but then he stopped himself because, now he thought of it, Becky had actually had quite a good idea, she may be worth keeping around if they escaped with their lives. She'd certainly be better off without Rondal; that much was clear. The Doctor had only seen a fleeting glimpse of their relationship but what he’d seen hadn’t been entirely comfortable. He made a mental note to ask her about that later, but for now there was the small matter of getting themselves out of this desert. It reminded him of how this incarnation had once been and of his relationship with… but that was a mistake, he knew that now, and he’d definitely be fixing that for Becky where he couldn’t last time.
“As helpful as it’d be, I don’t have a way to communicate with the TARDIS like that”, he said. “I hate to say it but I really think we’ve had it.”
Suddenly a sound echoed across the desert. It could only really be described as a buzzing noise, almost like scraping rough metal over metal but more electronic sounding. The source of the noise was a blue static burst that surrounded the duo, and suddenly hundreds of Weeping Angels appeared in response all around them, their hollow eyes fixed on them. The two Weeping Angels closest to the Doctor and Becky were caught in the static burst too, as was a substantial amount of the sand underfoot, but that couldn't be avoided given the circumstances. Deal with one problem at a time, the Doctor decided.
"It's the TARDIS!" the Doctor announced, barely audible over the noise, which was a shame as he did all his best stuff in audio format. "I don’t understand! How can it be here?”
“Does this mean we can escape?” shouted Becky.
“Yes! Yes! I think we can!” the Doctor shouted back. “Can you hear me, Mel? Just a little bit closer now, hold down that purple lever, the one opposite the scanner!"
While events had played out for the Doctor in the span of several minutes, it had only been one or two minutes for Mel. After she had seen the Doctor fall into the time vortex, she had held on tightly as the TARDIS lurched about a third time, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth time and even a seventh. It was a bumpy ride but then it ended abruptly. Whatever had meddled with events had ended as suddenly as it had begun and the machine was cruising along just as it always did. Mel couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
"Doctor, where are you?" Mel whispered to herself, thinking aloud in the hope that the silent TARDIS might somehow answer. As if in response to her plea it made a small buzzing sound.
“Are you trying to communicate with me, TARDIS?” Mel asked. Then she shook her head. “No, you can’t be. I’m going to be in here until I die of old age and I’m already starting to go mad!”
The TARDIS made that noise again, twice this time.
“I was a computer programmer back on Earth but I still don’t know what half these buttons do. If only I did, then I could try to go after him!”
The TARDIS made a low humming noise. It kept making this one. Mel decided to test an idea and reached for a button. The humming noise got shriller as her hand got closer so she withdrew it. “You are trying to talk to me!” Mel said with a combination of cautious optimism and excitement. “So all I need to do is find the right switch and you’ll tell me?”
She started to walk slowly around the console, moving her hand over various features and found that the humming noise got shriller as she got near to some components and less so as she found others. Eventually she found a point where she could’ve sworn the TARDIS had stopped humming and started to purr. “This one?” she asked. The TARDIS continued to make that same noise. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.” She flicked the switch she had found and suddenly the TARDIS started to make a screeching sound, it could only really be described as a buzzing noise, almost like scraping rough metal over metal but more electronic sounding. It was like the time machine was in pain. A blue static burst began to appear.
Suddenly the Doctor's unmistakeable voice came through the speakers. "...you hear me, Mel? Just a little bit closer now, hold down that purple lever, the one opposite the scanner!" The voice was quiet, as if speaking through some kind of distortion, but there was no mistaking what was being asked of her, or who was asking.
Mel rushed over to the right place and did as the Doctor had said. The TARDIS started to screech, the whole place shook more violently than it had done before, and the only sound coming through the speakers now was a deafening electronic static buzz. Added to this dreadful sound was Mel screaming in pain as the TARDIS began to shake around in such a way that she was certain she might dislocate something, but just as it was almost too much to bare she saw a blinding blue light and the Doctor suddenly appeared. There were three others with him that she didn't recognise. Two of them were statues, but there was a human woman there too.
"MEL!" he shouted. "LET GO OF THAT LEVER! NOW!" She could barely hear him over the noise but she did as he said. Suddenly the blinding light disappeared and the TARDIS instantly pulled itself away from wherever or whenever it had just gone.
The Doctor immediately dropped down to the floor of the TARDIS console room, grabbing Becky and pulling her down with him, both of them landing in the sand, just as the two Weeping Angels reached out. Now the two statues were hand-to-hand and, more importantly, face-to-face.
"That ought to hold them!" he said, triumphantly grabbing his coat's lapels like he often used to. There was a big smile on his face, Mel noticed. He was obviously tremendously pleased with himself.
Becky Brown just sat down with her back to the walls of the room, in shock and awe and terror at what was going on. All she had wanted was for her wedding to go well, but now, only one day before, she was on some kind of spaceship with a man wearing a coat plucked straight from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, a girl who looked like she’d been lifted right out of the mid-to-late 1980s, and not to mention the fact that her soon-to-be-husband had been killed by statues! Two of these statues were here now. She knew not what was happening, but had figured out she had no choice but to stare at the statues – so that’s just what she did.
The TARDIS was flying as normally now. The Doctor was satisfied with this, it would seem, because he nonchalantly turned and started to walk down a corridor whistling a song about something that sees you in your bed.
"Where are you going?" Mel asked. She looked at Becky. Then she looked back at the Doctor. "And what is going on, Doctor, what’s happened?" There was noticeable confusion in her voice.
"I, Melanie, am going to go get a great big hammer. And that’s Becky. The Weeping Angels just killed her fiancee. It was very quick, if telling her that will bring her any comfort at all then you probably should.”
“Doctor…” Mel began, but it was too late.
“I’ll be back in a minute, I think I keep a big hammer just down here a litle way along. See what day she's from, could you please? We need to get her back home."
Becky immediately let out a squeal when Mel approached. "No! Not me, the statues, stare at them, stare at THEM, they killed Rondal, they killed him!"
"Stare at them?" asked Mel.
"They can't kill you if you're looking."
Mel turned to look at the Weeping Angels again. "They're staring at each other, Becky", she observed. "If the Doctor were here then I’m sure he’d say that that counts."
Becky took a deep breath. "Who are you?" she said.
"I'm Melanie Bush, I come from 1989. This is a time machine, so I have to ask that last part!” She chuckled to herself. “I meet all sorts with the Doctor, even another one of me once!"
"I wasn’t even born yet in 1989", Becky said. "I'm from 2019."
"What month? What day?" Mel continued. "Oh, please do tell me! It's so important, we need to get you back there!"
Becky knew the answer to this one immediately. "The day before my wedding, 13th of
February."
"You’re getting married on Valentine's Day?" said Mel.
“It was my idea, Rondal was opposed to it.” Becky explained.
"Enough with that sickly display!" said the Doctor, entering the room again. "You humans, so sentimental. It's no wonder that so many of these aliens keep invading your homeworld. Try to maintain a little bit of dignity once in a while!"
Becky and Mel noticed the colossal hammer in his hands.
"I should've tried this idea before!" he said to them both as he began to smash up the two Weeping Angels. One sideways hit clean through the both of them, one each from above, a few more hits and the two statues crumbled up into dust, which intriguingly was exactly identical to the sand they were stood in. The Doctor put down the hammer with a smile on his face and walked over to the console, preparing himself to set course for Becky’s time. Save for the sand on the ground, it was impossible to tell the Weeping Angels had ever been there.
Sadly this only lasted for a matter of seconds.
Suddenly the sand began to move about as though blown on some unseen wind (exactly as it had before Rondal was killed, the Doctor noticed) and there were three fully formed Weeping Angels, with just a small amount of sand left over. Each of this unholy trio of Weeping Angels was about the size of a very tall and wide man and they dwarfed the Doctor and the two women. "Nobody blink", the Doctor instructed. "If you do then nothing can save you. Not even me." He paused. "That wouldn't be good for my incredibly healthy ego."
"Your ego could do with being brought down to size, Doctor", said a voice through the TARDIS speakers.
The Doctor and Becky recognised it at once.
“Rondal!” Becky exclaimed.
"Rondal?" the Doctor exclaimed simultaneously.
Rondal's voice spoke again. "We wanted a mouthpiece. We chose Rondal."
The Doctor was about to ask why but Becky spoke first.
"Rondal? Rondal, are you alive somewhere out there?" Becky said.
"We have taken him."
"Who's Rondal?" asked Mel.
"My fiancee!" Becky said. She was beginning to get emotional again, but who could blame her for that?
"I assume we're talking with the Weeping Angels right now?" the Doctor asked.
"That is correct, Doctor."
"So what is it you want with this Rondal?"
"It is like we said, we wanted to have a mouthpiece. We chose him. We came for him when he was alone with just Becky. We were drawn to Becky Brown.”
“Why?” the Doctor asked.
“She should not exist,” ‘Rondal’ replied. “And yet she does. She was of the wrong disposition so we picked Rondal. But your arrival was..unforeseen, Doctor."
"Yes, I can be a bit of a nuisance to evil monsters like yourselves. I assume my TARDIS passed by the time distortion at the point you grabbed them, is that what those shockwaves were? Don't answer, of course it was. And I guess I got caught in the slipstream as you took them away to your own dimension." He stopped and considered. “I guess that’s why I survived.”
"Yes. But now you know about us we cannot operate in secret away from Time Lord interference, as we had wanted to. Instead we shall have to take care of you ourselves."
As soon as the voice of Rondal had said this, the remaining sand moulded into a humanoid form and immediately Becky and the Doctor recognised it. Instead of his winter attire, he was clad in a fetching suit and tie combo that the Doctor thought looked rather good on him, but there was no mistaking the person’s identity: Rondal.
The thing that looked like Rondal walked over to Becky, shoving Mel aside, and took her hands. "It's me Becky, I’m Rondal, I’m alive, and I’m back!"
"No he isn't, Becky, don't listen to him,” said the Doctor.
"Silence you!" said Rondal, pointing at the Doctor just as he had done in the Weeping Angels' desert when he was still alive. A second later, the Doctor felt the arms of one of the Weeping Angels on his shoulders and the remaining pair restrained Mel and Becky. Damn, they had all been distracted by Rondal’s entrance that they had neglected to look at the Angels. Even a single second had been enough to let them get across the console room!
"Now then, Time Lord, open up the doors immediately or your friend dies.” Rondal didn’t sound like he was asking. “Refuse again and I kill the other one. A third time and we make you regenerate in the most painful possible way."
The Doctor’s mind raced with possibilities but he saw no outcome that wouldn’t leave two dead women on the floor of his TARDIS, not to mention dying himself which he had no desire to do any time soon. If only he hadn’t dropped the hammer on the ground! He was helpless and felt he had no choice but to press the relevant button and open up the doors.
Rondal walked up to the exit. "Thank you, Doctor", he said. "Now stay away from me. Do not interfere or you will pay for it dearly."
He crumbled into sand, which disappeared through the door and into the time vortex. The trio of Weeping Angels did the same thing.
"Now what do we do?" Mel asked.
"I don't know", said the Doctor. "It looks like stopping Rondal will be impossible. But I'm determined that I'm going to find a way in which we can!"
Afternoon of February 13th, 2019, London:
In central London a podium had been set up, surrounded by lots of sand that had suddenly appeared overnight, and on the podium stood Rondal. The people just walked by, they assumed that the prime minister, Nigel something, was about to give one of his populist addresses, especially likely since a state visit from Mike, the president, was under way. The people in London didn’t care for either of them.
Rondal looked rather grand up there, clothed in his suit and tie with a strong air of confidence around him. He decided to test the microphone he had wired up to a few speakers dotted around the place. Tapping it twice caused some booming sounds to come out the speakers. There were lots of people there and some of them looked round to see what the noise was as they continued to go about their business, but most ignored it.
"Listen to my voice, people of humanity!" he declared. Some people stopped and stared. Others didn't. Most didn't. "I said LISTEN!!!" he bellowed. This was very loud and it worked. Almost everyone there did as he said now. It’s funny what effect a good bit of shouting can have on people.
"Thank you. Now, hear my message for your species: the time of man's dominion is almost over. The descent of the angelic ones is upon us!"
This got a murmur from the crowd. "He's drunk", a few people said. "He's crazy", said some others. "This is insane", an older man with some chips could be heard to say. But he had seen some strange things in his time, like that man on the motorbike six years earlier. Maybe this might be worth a watch.
Rondal glared at some of the people there. His eyes darted around the area fixing upon certain people who had said these things, before he settled his view upon the man with chips. "You have failed as a species! Your world is in disrepair, your leaders are nasty to you, and your own brothers around the world have turned on you! This world needs an angelic visitation to subdue it and give your world the fresh start it deserves! The best of humanity will hear this call and accept their coming. There will be space for you in the new order!"
This got largely the same reaction, with some additional uneasiness as well.
“It’s time for the Weeping Angels to come forth and make planet Earth great again!”
At least one child started crying.
"Will there be none who come forth?" Rondal asked one last time. He waited for someone to heed his call and come forward to take their place. Nobody did. The man with chips had began to walk away, and he wasn’t the only one. "Then this is of your own doing!" Rondal shouted at the top of his voice, and then the sand around him began to blow around. It was like a sandstorm had struck, an analogy unusual for Central London! Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.
But then the sand began to take on the form of statues. People stopped running from the storm and stared at them. Rondal's voice rang out again, but his voice was softer and quieter this time. "Behold your conquerors, human race!"
The whole place fell silent. And then he issued one chilling command in a slow and steady voice. It was almost a whisper.
"Kill them."
The man with chips started to run. He saw other people doing the same thing and amidst all the chaos, the statues moved freely. Suddenly he was face to face with one of them and, in his horror, he dropped the chips. He looked to the floor where they’d landed and then he felt two hands, one either side, touching his neck. The Weeping Angel shook him quickly. The man with chips fell dead to the floor with a thud, and that was the last thing he ever knew. He wasn’t the only one.
Bloodcurdling screams and cries rose up to the heavens for a few minutes as this massacre occurred, but then silence fell, as silence always must.
Watching the drama unfold on the TARDIS scanner, Becky was fighting back more tears at the sight of what her fiancee was doing. Mel had her hands over her mouth, and the Doctor’s expression was grim.
"There's only one thing I can do about this", he said. "And even I'm not sure if I dare do it."
"What?" said Mel. "We need to stop this if we possibly can!"
"Mel, there is only one thing that can defeat the Weeping Angels and it involves breaking my own greatest rule."
"What's that?"
"I need to break up the sequence of events, Mel. If I can stop Rondal and Becky from being sent to the Weeping Angels' dimension then the paradox would be enough to kill all of them, possibly for good. This massacre won’t happen! But I would have to cross the timelines, and that goes against everything the Time Lords stand for."
"Doctor", Becky said, "Would that work?"
"I don't know, but I'm sure it would."
"Then we must!"
The Doctor sighed. "I suppose, if you insist", he said. "But if it fails then the repercussions are on you!"
"Is your ego that big?" Becky remarked. "Rondal, or the thing that became Rondal, it wasn't kidding."
"Oh, do be quiet would you? This is a very delicate operation!" He ran over to the other side of the console and started to push a few buttons, pull some levers and flick a couple of switches. The TARDIS made a sound of protestation as it set off through time. "Come on now, old girl, don’t put up a fight!" the Doctor murmured soothingly, as the TARDIS continued to shake wildly. He ran over to the same purple lever Mel had used earlier and tried to hold it steady. The TARDIS continued to fight against the idea.
Becky shouted in terror at the sensation of the time machine trying to stop them.
"What's happening?" she yelled.
"She's protesting! She knows what we're trying to do!" the Doctor shouted over the noise.
"Which is what, Doctor?" Mel said, making some protestation of her own. "I still don't understand!"
"I think if I stop them from being taken then we can destroy the Weeping Angels!" he said. "The paradox would be too big, even for them! Kills them dead. Or at least, that’s the theory. Time to see if it works!"
Earlier that same day:
"Come on, Becky!" Rondal said. "We need to get going."
Becky was struggling with her hiking boots. They were very tight round her feet, perhaps a size too small. Truth is, they were Rondal’s size. He had small feet. Also small hands, but he didn’t like to draw attention to that.
“Becky!” Rondal yelled.
“Coming!” She yelled back.
She eventually did manage to get the boots on, and off they went on their way for their afternoon walk. Becky didn't want to go. She wanted to put in some last minute wedding planning before the rehearsal that evening.
Outside in the cold air Rondal and Becky set off, when suddenly they heard a noise. "What's that?" Becky asked.
"Nothing, nothing to worry about, you stupid woman, you need to stop panicking and grow up," Rondal replied. "Come on! Let’s see if the rumours are true about that American diner that appeared up that hill." He went on some more, but Becky stood still for a moment as Rondal got several metres ahead of her.
The Weeping Angel that was watching them got the shock of its life when a blue box dropped out of the sky between it and the targets. The doors opened and the three travellers inside saw it instantly, and decided maybe they would stay just inside the TARDIS for now. "Weeping Angel!" the Doctor proclaimed. “I order you to leave this level five planet in accordance with the 17th regulation of the-”
Suddenly the doors closed themselves and the TARDIS disappeared in a flash. “What’s going on old girl?!” the Doctor shouted as he and the two women were thrown to the floor.
“Why are we going back into the time vortex?” Mel asked. “Did that Weeping Angel do something, Doctor?”
“No, this looks like the TARDIS herself has run away from there! She won’t let us change the timeline!”
“Then can’t we stop the Weeping Angel?” Becky said in horror. “Rondal’s going to kill all those people and there’s nothing we can do about it!”
The Doctor looked grimly at her. “There might be actually”, he said. “Come here, Becky.”
Becky came over to where the Doctor was stood. He asked Becky a question he had thought to ask earlier but hadn’t managed to yet. "Why did you stay with him, Becky, let alone agree to marry him?"
"Why do you ask her that?" asked Mel, before Becky could answer.
"Because I saw what they were like together", he said, "and it's emotionally abusive. I should know what that's like because I had something similar to that with-” He stopped himself. There was too much sadness and regret there. “But that's something I was wrong to do,” he continued, “and I regret it now. If I could change anything I did in this life then that'd be it.” He stopped again. “I can't change that now. But you still can, if this works."
Becky was initially shocked to hear him speak in such a manner, but it dawned on her that maybe he was right. “He made me feel like I was special, at first. I hoped he’d be like that again.”
"Then he had you fooled." The Doctor said this sternly. He wanted her to get the point.
"Maybe", she said. "Perhaps I should tell him where to go. You know, I was thinking before that there might be something better for me than a man like Rondal. I never really took the thought of it seriously before, but you’ve made me realise how much more there is, and if this is the man that the Weeping Angels go to – he didn’t even seem that different when he became one of them!”
"I'm the Doctor, not a marriage counsellor, but I think that it would be for the best to get out of there while you can.”
Becky didn’t say anything, but in her mind she resolved that she would give Rondal the ring back, but perhaps do it somewhere public.
“Will you promise me this, Becky? Will you save yourself?”
Becky nodded.
“Good”, said the Doctor.
With that promise made, she watched as the Doctor removed a piece of panelling from the console. Underneath it was some brown soft material that resembled fabric. “The TARDIS’s telepathic circuits”, the Doctor explained. Becky didn’t understand, but the look on the Doctor’s face was comforting. He knew what he was doing, and Becky figured it was safe for her to trust him now. “Put your hands in there, Becky, and do as I say.”
Becky did so. It felt soft. Then she felt something grab her and she let out an involuntary squeal.
“Don’t resist it”, the Doctor instructed. “She should be latched on to your personal history now.” The TARDIS started to make those noises again. “Hmm. It seems to me, that the paradox of your kidnapping is upsetting her. Just hold on tight now and focus hard. I want you to think hard of the moment just before you got taken. Can you do that?”
“Yes”, said Becky. “We were just leaving our apartment when-”
“Quiet please, no distractions like thinking of me, hard as it must be for anyone who has met me not to.”
“Doctor, please just be quiet!” said Mel.
The Doctor didn’t be quiet, and instead kept speaking softly to Becky. “Focus hard on that moment, Becky, you’re flying the TARDIS now. She’s tuned to your thoughts.”
The TARDIS began to fly much more smoothly. The lights went dim. The sound grew quiet. “It’s working!” the Doctor declared. “We’ve smashed through the defences. We’re going to change history!”
Back in 2019:
She eventually did manage to get the boots on, and off they went on their way for their afternoon walk. Becky didn't want to go. She wanted to put in some last minute wedding planning before the rehearsal that evening.
Outside in the cold air Rondal and Becky set off, when suddenly they heard a noise. "What's that?" Becky asked.
"Nothing, nothing to worry about, you stupid woman, you need to stop panicking and grow up," Rondal replied. "Come on! Let’s see if the rumours are true about that American diner that appeared up that hill." He went on some more, but Becky stood still for a moment as Rondal got several metres ahead of her.
The Weeping Angel rushed forward and was just behind her. It reached out and had almost made contact when a rushing sound was heard. Becky wheeled round and saw the Weeping Angel, who petrified instantly. Rondal turned and saw it too. He was about to shout at her and tell her to catch up when suddenly the source of the rushing sound was revealed. A blue light, resembling a static burst of energy, formed around the Weeping Angel and Becky. Rondal could only watch on as his fiancee was taken suddenly from his sight, and with her that statue that had appeared from nowhere.
The younger Becky had no idea what was going on. “Where am I?” she asked. Then she saw her older self. “What on Earth is-”
“You’re safe now”, said the Doctor. “I’ve saved you.”
Then the younger Becky and the Weeping Angel both vanished.
Mel screamed. “It got her!” she shreiked. “After all that!”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so Mel”, he said. A blinding white light appeared around them suddenly. He cheered. “Yes! I knew it would work! We changed the past and stopped the Weeping Angels!”
The light grew more and more intense and the Doctor immediately ran over to the purple lever from earlier and pushed it down to the position Mel had held it in before, and he did it just in time too. No sooner had he managed this, the light grew too much and the three people inside the TARDIS suddenly collapsed to the ground. They woke up mere moments later and found they weren't in the TARDIS anymore but back in the Weeping Angels' desert, except that…
"The sand is gone now", the Doctor observed.
"Does this mean the Weeping Angels are all gone?" Mel asked.
"It seems like it", the Doctor said. "But we've got to take Becky back home to Rondal.”
“But how are we going to get me there?” Becky asked. “Your TARDIS isn’t here!”
“That’s not a problem, Becky”, the Doctor said. “Not after I set some things up before I realised we’d be coming back here. The time distortions are gone too, so that lever should hold and bring the TARDIS back here.
As he was saying this, the familiar sounds of the TARDIS engines started to become audible. They saw the console room materialise around them. The Doctor ran over to the console and started to set a course. “Back to 2019, February the 13th I think it was?”
Becky nodded.
“Off we go then!” the Doctor said.
With the TARDIS back in Becky’s time she had a few questions. “Doctor, when Rondal said I shouldn’t exist what did he mean?”
“I don’t know Becky. That’s what happens with my trips around space and time, there’s always something I don’t know. Just make sure it’s worth it, eh?”
Soon they had arrived outside her house and Becky stepped outside. “How is this thing bigger inside?” she asked.
Before the Doctor could answer, Mel shoved him back inside and told him to wait for her. He was protesting but Mel knew he wasn’t serious about it.
And Mel told Becky everything.
Becky was soon back home, feeling determined to set out her own course for herself. After seeing her off, the Doctor and Mel went back into the TARDIS and set off back into the time vortex.
"Were you telling the truth, Doctor?" Mel asked. "Are the Weeping Angels really gone? And what about the sand that's all over the place, Doctor, like at the beach? Couldn't they create some new Weeping Angels with it?"
"No, no, isn't it obvious?" the Doctor said. "All the sand from their homeworld is gone! Never even existed in fact. They can't use that ability now, not now we’ve made it so they never even had it in the first place.” He stopped and thought. “I suppose that there will be stragglers among their ranks and they'll regroup in some places throughout history but on the whole their race is not as powerful as it once was. I shouldn't think they'll trouble me again for quite some time, but I’ll be ready for it when they do!"
"That's good then", Mel said.
"And when I meet them", the Doctor went on, "all I'll have to do is tell everyone to not blink.”
He set some coordinates on the console. “What did you tell Becky?” the Doctor asked.
Mel was speaking to Becky in February of 2019. “He’s not just a regular doctor, Becky, he’s the Doctor, and he may seem mean but he isn’t, not really. He’s a good man deep down, when you get to know him, and I really think that’s where his chosen name comes from. He ran away from his people just to make the universe better. And I know what that’s like because I get to live that adventure every single day. I hope he never changes from how he is because, despite a brash persona and an eyesore coat, he’s quite possibly the most perfect person I’ve ever known. Every second with the Doctor is an adventure but there’s adventure to be had at home too. That’s what he’s given you, you’ve got that life back because of him and now it’s up to you. Stand up to Rondal and live your life.”
“What did you tell Becky?” the Doctor asked.
“I told her what you said already, to get rid of Rondal,” Mel replied.
“Good”, said the Doctor. “Telling her to be a strong and independent woman. More people need to hear that message.” He paused. “That could be interesting to try for myself sometime.” He looked up at the TARDIS ceiling in thought. A strong and independent woman... that sounded good. “Who knows what’s in store for days to come,” he said wistfully.
Mel laughed. “You know, I don’t understand you sometimes!” she said. “Now get back on that exercise bike. We’ve lost a lot of time!”
The Doctor wasn't sure quite what exactly had just happened to him. One moment he had been in the TARDIS with Mel (he still had the sickly taste of carrot juice in his mouth) and the next thing he knew was that he was in this desert. He didn’t recognise the place, neither the planet nor the timezone, which was unusual for him. And where was everybody? There were no signs of life that the Doctor could recognise, and while he knew that deserts do indeed tend to be rather deserted – it’s right there in the name – this was something else. This place was a whole other level of desertedness. In all honesty it creeped him out, not that he’d ever dare admit it.
Oh yes, that was it! He remembered now. The TARDIS had jolted itself about and Mel had accidentally knocked into the door controls. The Doctor couldn't escape the fleeting moment of pride that he was the first person on record ever to successfully travel through the time vortex without some kind of time-travelling device or external influence, but then some realisation came upon him swiftly that something about this was all very wrong. By all known rules of the universe, he shouldn't be alive. And yet here he was. What was going on?
Unless it actually was death he had experienced? The Doctor had always suspected an afterlife might exist and he had often thought that he might take a shot at trying to find one. He'd never got round to it though, the thing about time travel is that one never seemed to find the time.
"Is this death?" he asked, to nobody in particular. He'd said exactly those same words last time that he regenerated but nobody had given him an answer. But this time somebody did.
"Shouldn't think so, I know we're not dead at least!" It was a man's voice, British, from London (or perhaps just north of it), going by the regional accent. The Doctor looked round and saw a man running towards him, then a subdued-looking woman just behind. A quick look over them both told the Doctor that they were both in their mid 20s and probably from the early 21st century. The Doctor concluded that whoever or whatever had sent them here must have done so to them both at the same time.
The next thing the Doctor noticed was their clothing; They were both conveniently dressed for a cold day. They were both dressed in a warm coat, black hiking boots and matching trousers. He was disappointed they had no hats or scarfs; he himself had always enjoyed it when he'd worn such things in previous incarnations, but now was not the time for nostalgia.
"Hello there you two! You can call me the Doctor, if you so please. Now tell me please, where are we and how did we get here?”
“We don’t know”, the man said. “We were out for a walk. Heard a noise, turned our backs, and suddenly we were here.”
“You look human”, the Doctor summarised. “I’d say 21st century Earth, by the look of you.”
“Yes, that’s where we were”, said the man. Then he realised what that question implied. He gasped, and then stepped back suddenly in horror. "He’s an alien, Becky!" he shouted at the woman. Then he faced the Doctor directly and barked at him "Get away! Stay back!" He stretched out his arms, as if to intimidate him, and the Doctor noticed that this man had no ring on his finger, even though the woman did. He concluded that these two people must be engaged.
"Not every alien is hostile, you know. Some of us are actually rather friendly, if only you'd open your self-centred human minds once in a while you might realise that the universe does not revolve around you. Why does your species find such a trivial thing as that to be so very difficult? My old friend Nicolaus got that into his head, you know, but I suppose he was the exception."
The man said nothing, but the woman, Becky, spoke quietly to her husband-to-be. "Rondal, I think he's friendly."
"Maybe, sweetheart, maybe”, the man, apparently called Rondal, replied. “But he’s got an ego and he’s patronising as hell.”
Takes one to know one, the Doctor thought. He resisted the urge to say it though.
Rondal continued. "Someone took us away from Earth to wherever this is and they seemed to know what they were doing. All I wanted was to have just one day away from your parents' constant meddling and your poor excuse for an apartment, we'd go hiking, you know, my favourite hobby, gets me away from people before when we have to see hundreds of them tomorrow – but then, when we do, THIS happens!" He faced the Doctor again, but he was standing much further back than his fiancee was now. "I don't trust you, Doctor. Doctor what exactly? Well, whoever you are, maybe you were responsible for what happened to us! In fact, I should think that you are the guilty culprit! All the evidence says you’re to blame."
"Rondal, he asked you what it was that happened, if you haven't forgotten already,” Becky muttered. "Why would he do that, unless something bad had sent him here too?"
She turned to face Rondal just as the Doctor was already doing. She took a step back and stood beside the man of Gallifrey. Rondal was at a loss for words. He opened his mouth to speak.
"Becky -", he began, but was interrupted suddenly when a soft tremor shook the sand below him. It started to churn. Rondal pointed at the Doctor. "What are you doing now? Stop it, you fiend! You monster! You demon!" he shouted.
"This is nothing to do with me!" the Doctor shouted back. The sand churned some more and some of it moved behind Rondal, as if held there by an unseen wind.
Becky gasped in horror. Behind Rondal the sand coalesced into one collective shape: a grey statue of an angel with hands over its eyes.
The Doctor said authoritatively "Do not blink, either of you. It can’t do anything if it’s being watched. Now carefully Rondal, walk to us slowly."
But Rondal just stood still, continuing to point and stare at the Doctor. "You've killed us, haven't you!" he accused. He hadn’t seen the monster behind him yet, but then he felt its presence when it grabbed his neck. Rondal, now unable to move, stopped with his posturing but not his accusing. "How are you doing that???" he asked in a quiet and raspy voice. And then the Weeping Angel suddenly moved its hands. It was a small movement, small enough not to be noticed, but that was all it had to be. With a noise that sounded not unlike a large stick of wood splintering in two, Rondal suddenly collapsed on the ground. He was dead and the Weeping Angel had killed him. It was quick, it was sudden and it didn’t even take more than half of a single second. It was a horribly brutal death for any man. Rondal’s body fell to the ground almost exactly as would a rag doll dropped by a child.
Becky shouted a very rude four-letter word that the Doctor did not care to repeat.
"Well, young lady, you wanted to know how we got here and I think we have ourselves a culprit", the Doctor said in a matter of fact way.
"It killed him!" Becky cried, a noticeable wobble in her voice.
"Saying he’s dead won't change the fact that he is, you know." The Doctor was holding her up, but never once dared to look away from the Weeping Angel in front of him. He began to walk backwards slowly, hoping to Rassilon that there wasn't another angel in that direction. He saw the lifeless corpse of Rondal, with his slightly lopsided head, lying at the Weeping Angel's feet. But most shocking of all was what he could see when he looked at the angel's face. The eyes were shut closed (Phew!) but there was a look of pure malice on its face that the Doctor could've sworn was a smile. The total opposite response to Becky, the Doctor noticed, who had started to silently cry.
“Your fiancee has died, I’m afraid”, the Doctor said. “And if we don’t get away then we’ll be next. Oh, do stop your blubbering woman, contain yourself!”
Becky was struggling all the while and the Doctor had barely got more than ten, twenty, metres away from the Weeping Angel before Becky managed to break free. "How can you say that? Rondal just died!" she screamed at him. There were tears beginning to trickle from her eyes at this point. Then she suddenly shrieked something and stared at something behind where the Doctor was. He turned and saw another Weeping Angel had appeared behind him.
"Keep staring at it! Your life depends on it!" the Doctor instructed, before looking back to the other one. It had got much closer even in those few seconds. The Doctor and Becky stood back to back and could see that the two Weeping Angels were barely more than a few feet away from them.
"What's going on?" Becky asked, her voice beginning to reflect her highly emotional state. “What are they?”
"Weeping Angels. They can't move if they are seen. They like to send people through time and space and let them live to death, feed off the new timeline that's created in the process. It’s quite a humane death actually. I’ve seen creatures who need to disembowel people to communicate, civilisations where acid baths are used for criminals, planets where the sunlight alone can kill you, and don’t get me started on your twin planet! This is tame by comparison, Rondal’s troubles were over very quickly, cheer up woman!”
“How can you talk like that?! He’s dead!”
The Doctor ignored her. “But sending you and Rondal here and then killing him like that, that's a new one. I haven’t seen the Weeping Angels do it that way before. I suppose that you must have encountered one when you were out walking. But me and my TARDIS, that I can't explain."
The realisation that Mel must be in huge trouble finally dawned on him.
"TARDIS? Is that your alien spaceship?" Becky said.
"Yes, it is. A rather beautiful vessel, but now is hardly the time to -"
"Can you communicate with it?"
"What?"
"Like they do on Star Trek. Beam us up, Scotty!"
The Doctor tried to mutter that his TARDIS was nothing like the ships in that show, how much more exquisite it was and how it didn’t need a crew to maintain it, but then he stopped himself because, now he thought of it, Becky had actually had quite a good idea, she may be worth keeping around if they escaped with their lives. She'd certainly be better off without Rondal; that much was clear. The Doctor had only seen a fleeting glimpse of their relationship but what he’d seen hadn’t been entirely comfortable. He made a mental note to ask her about that later, but for now there was the small matter of getting themselves out of this desert. It reminded him of how this incarnation had once been and of his relationship with… but that was a mistake, he knew that now, and he’d definitely be fixing that for Becky where he couldn’t last time.
“As helpful as it’d be, I don’t have a way to communicate with the TARDIS like that”, he said. “I hate to say it but I really think we’ve had it.”
Suddenly a sound echoed across the desert. It could only really be described as a buzzing noise, almost like scraping rough metal over metal but more electronic sounding. The source of the noise was a blue static burst that surrounded the duo, and suddenly hundreds of Weeping Angels appeared in response all around them, their hollow eyes fixed on them. The two Weeping Angels closest to the Doctor and Becky were caught in the static burst too, as was a substantial amount of the sand underfoot, but that couldn't be avoided given the circumstances. Deal with one problem at a time, the Doctor decided.
"It's the TARDIS!" the Doctor announced, barely audible over the noise, which was a shame as he did all his best stuff in audio format. "I don’t understand! How can it be here?”
“Does this mean we can escape?” shouted Becky.
“Yes! Yes! I think we can!” the Doctor shouted back. “Can you hear me, Mel? Just a little bit closer now, hold down that purple lever, the one opposite the scanner!"
While events had played out for the Doctor in the span of several minutes, it had only been one or two minutes for Mel. After she had seen the Doctor fall into the time vortex, she had held on tightly as the TARDIS lurched about a third time, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth time and even a seventh. It was a bumpy ride but then it ended abruptly. Whatever had meddled with events had ended as suddenly as it had begun and the machine was cruising along just as it always did. Mel couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
"Doctor, where are you?" Mel whispered to herself, thinking aloud in the hope that the silent TARDIS might somehow answer. As if in response to her plea it made a small buzzing sound.
“Are you trying to communicate with me, TARDIS?” Mel asked. Then she shook her head. “No, you can’t be. I’m going to be in here until I die of old age and I’m already starting to go mad!”
The TARDIS made that noise again, twice this time.
“I was a computer programmer back on Earth but I still don’t know what half these buttons do. If only I did, then I could try to go after him!”
The TARDIS made a low humming noise. It kept making this one. Mel decided to test an idea and reached for a button. The humming noise got shriller as her hand got closer so she withdrew it. “You are trying to talk to me!” Mel said with a combination of cautious optimism and excitement. “So all I need to do is find the right switch and you’ll tell me?”
She started to walk slowly around the console, moving her hand over various features and found that the humming noise got shriller as she got near to some components and less so as she found others. Eventually she found a point where she could’ve sworn the TARDIS had stopped humming and started to purr. “This one?” she asked. The TARDIS continued to make that same noise. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.” She flicked the switch she had found and suddenly the TARDIS started to make a screeching sound, it could only really be described as a buzzing noise, almost like scraping rough metal over metal but more electronic sounding. It was like the time machine was in pain. A blue static burst began to appear.
Suddenly the Doctor's unmistakeable voice came through the speakers. "...you hear me, Mel? Just a little bit closer now, hold down that purple lever, the one opposite the scanner!" The voice was quiet, as if speaking through some kind of distortion, but there was no mistaking what was being asked of her, or who was asking.
Mel rushed over to the right place and did as the Doctor had said. The TARDIS started to screech, the whole place shook more violently than it had done before, and the only sound coming through the speakers now was a deafening electronic static buzz. Added to this dreadful sound was Mel screaming in pain as the TARDIS began to shake around in such a way that she was certain she might dislocate something, but just as it was almost too much to bare she saw a blinding blue light and the Doctor suddenly appeared. There were three others with him that she didn't recognise. Two of them were statues, but there was a human woman there too.
"MEL!" he shouted. "LET GO OF THAT LEVER! NOW!" She could barely hear him over the noise but she did as he said. Suddenly the blinding light disappeared and the TARDIS instantly pulled itself away from wherever or whenever it had just gone.
The Doctor immediately dropped down to the floor of the TARDIS console room, grabbing Becky and pulling her down with him, both of them landing in the sand, just as the two Weeping Angels reached out. Now the two statues were hand-to-hand and, more importantly, face-to-face.
"That ought to hold them!" he said, triumphantly grabbing his coat's lapels like he often used to. There was a big smile on his face, Mel noticed. He was obviously tremendously pleased with himself.
Becky Brown just sat down with her back to the walls of the room, in shock and awe and terror at what was going on. All she had wanted was for her wedding to go well, but now, only one day before, she was on some kind of spaceship with a man wearing a coat plucked straight from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, a girl who looked like she’d been lifted right out of the mid-to-late 1980s, and not to mention the fact that her soon-to-be-husband had been killed by statues! Two of these statues were here now. She knew not what was happening, but had figured out she had no choice but to stare at the statues – so that’s just what she did.
The TARDIS was flying as normally now. The Doctor was satisfied with this, it would seem, because he nonchalantly turned and started to walk down a corridor whistling a song about something that sees you in your bed.
"Where are you going?" Mel asked. She looked at Becky. Then she looked back at the Doctor. "And what is going on, Doctor, what’s happened?" There was noticeable confusion in her voice.
"I, Melanie, am going to go get a great big hammer. And that’s Becky. The Weeping Angels just killed her fiancee. It was very quick, if telling her that will bring her any comfort at all then you probably should.”
“Doctor…” Mel began, but it was too late.
“I’ll be back in a minute, I think I keep a big hammer just down here a litle way along. See what day she's from, could you please? We need to get her back home."
Becky immediately let out a squeal when Mel approached. "No! Not me, the statues, stare at them, stare at THEM, they killed Rondal, they killed him!"
"Stare at them?" asked Mel.
"They can't kill you if you're looking."
Mel turned to look at the Weeping Angels again. "They're staring at each other, Becky", she observed. "If the Doctor were here then I’m sure he’d say that that counts."
Becky took a deep breath. "Who are you?" she said.
"I'm Melanie Bush, I come from 1989. This is a time machine, so I have to ask that last part!” She chuckled to herself. “I meet all sorts with the Doctor, even another one of me once!"
"I wasn’t even born yet in 1989", Becky said. "I'm from 2019."
"What month? What day?" Mel continued. "Oh, please do tell me! It's so important, we need to get you back there!"
Becky knew the answer to this one immediately. "The day before my wedding, 13th of
February."
"You’re getting married on Valentine's Day?" said Mel.
“It was my idea, Rondal was opposed to it.” Becky explained.
"Enough with that sickly display!" said the Doctor, entering the room again. "You humans, so sentimental. It's no wonder that so many of these aliens keep invading your homeworld. Try to maintain a little bit of dignity once in a while!"
Becky and Mel noticed the colossal hammer in his hands.
"I should've tried this idea before!" he said to them both as he began to smash up the two Weeping Angels. One sideways hit clean through the both of them, one each from above, a few more hits and the two statues crumbled up into dust, which intriguingly was exactly identical to the sand they were stood in. The Doctor put down the hammer with a smile on his face and walked over to the console, preparing himself to set course for Becky’s time. Save for the sand on the ground, it was impossible to tell the Weeping Angels had ever been there.
Sadly this only lasted for a matter of seconds.
Suddenly the sand began to move about as though blown on some unseen wind (exactly as it had before Rondal was killed, the Doctor noticed) and there were three fully formed Weeping Angels, with just a small amount of sand left over. Each of this unholy trio of Weeping Angels was about the size of a very tall and wide man and they dwarfed the Doctor and the two women. "Nobody blink", the Doctor instructed. "If you do then nothing can save you. Not even me." He paused. "That wouldn't be good for my incredibly healthy ego."
"Your ego could do with being brought down to size, Doctor", said a voice through the TARDIS speakers.
The Doctor and Becky recognised it at once.
“Rondal!” Becky exclaimed.
"Rondal?" the Doctor exclaimed simultaneously.
Rondal's voice spoke again. "We wanted a mouthpiece. We chose Rondal."
The Doctor was about to ask why but Becky spoke first.
"Rondal? Rondal, are you alive somewhere out there?" Becky said.
"We have taken him."
"Who's Rondal?" asked Mel.
"My fiancee!" Becky said. She was beginning to get emotional again, but who could blame her for that?
"I assume we're talking with the Weeping Angels right now?" the Doctor asked.
"That is correct, Doctor."
"So what is it you want with this Rondal?"
"It is like we said, we wanted to have a mouthpiece. We chose him. We came for him when he was alone with just Becky. We were drawn to Becky Brown.”
“Why?” the Doctor asked.
“She should not exist,” ‘Rondal’ replied. “And yet she does. She was of the wrong disposition so we picked Rondal. But your arrival was..unforeseen, Doctor."
"Yes, I can be a bit of a nuisance to evil monsters like yourselves. I assume my TARDIS passed by the time distortion at the point you grabbed them, is that what those shockwaves were? Don't answer, of course it was. And I guess I got caught in the slipstream as you took them away to your own dimension." He stopped and considered. “I guess that’s why I survived.”
"Yes. But now you know about us we cannot operate in secret away from Time Lord interference, as we had wanted to. Instead we shall have to take care of you ourselves."
As soon as the voice of Rondal had said this, the remaining sand moulded into a humanoid form and immediately Becky and the Doctor recognised it. Instead of his winter attire, he was clad in a fetching suit and tie combo that the Doctor thought looked rather good on him, but there was no mistaking the person’s identity: Rondal.
The thing that looked like Rondal walked over to Becky, shoving Mel aside, and took her hands. "It's me Becky, I’m Rondal, I’m alive, and I’m back!"
"No he isn't, Becky, don't listen to him,” said the Doctor.
"Silence you!" said Rondal, pointing at the Doctor just as he had done in the Weeping Angels' desert when he was still alive. A second later, the Doctor felt the arms of one of the Weeping Angels on his shoulders and the remaining pair restrained Mel and Becky. Damn, they had all been distracted by Rondal’s entrance that they had neglected to look at the Angels. Even a single second had been enough to let them get across the console room!
"Now then, Time Lord, open up the doors immediately or your friend dies.” Rondal didn’t sound like he was asking. “Refuse again and I kill the other one. A third time and we make you regenerate in the most painful possible way."
The Doctor’s mind raced with possibilities but he saw no outcome that wouldn’t leave two dead women on the floor of his TARDIS, not to mention dying himself which he had no desire to do any time soon. If only he hadn’t dropped the hammer on the ground! He was helpless and felt he had no choice but to press the relevant button and open up the doors.
Rondal walked up to the exit. "Thank you, Doctor", he said. "Now stay away from me. Do not interfere or you will pay for it dearly."
He crumbled into sand, which disappeared through the door and into the time vortex. The trio of Weeping Angels did the same thing.
"Now what do we do?" Mel asked.
"I don't know", said the Doctor. "It looks like stopping Rondal will be impossible. But I'm determined that I'm going to find a way in which we can!"
Afternoon of February 13th, 2019, London:
In central London a podium had been set up, surrounded by lots of sand that had suddenly appeared overnight, and on the podium stood Rondal. The people just walked by, they assumed that the prime minister, Nigel something, was about to give one of his populist addresses, especially likely since a state visit from Mike, the president, was under way. The people in London didn’t care for either of them.
Rondal looked rather grand up there, clothed in his suit and tie with a strong air of confidence around him. He decided to test the microphone he had wired up to a few speakers dotted around the place. Tapping it twice caused some booming sounds to come out the speakers. There were lots of people there and some of them looked round to see what the noise was as they continued to go about their business, but most ignored it.
"Listen to my voice, people of humanity!" he declared. Some people stopped and stared. Others didn't. Most didn't. "I said LISTEN!!!" he bellowed. This was very loud and it worked. Almost everyone there did as he said now. It’s funny what effect a good bit of shouting can have on people.
"Thank you. Now, hear my message for your species: the time of man's dominion is almost over. The descent of the angelic ones is upon us!"
This got a murmur from the crowd. "He's drunk", a few people said. "He's crazy", said some others. "This is insane", an older man with some chips could be heard to say. But he had seen some strange things in his time, like that man on the motorbike six years earlier. Maybe this might be worth a watch.
Rondal glared at some of the people there. His eyes darted around the area fixing upon certain people who had said these things, before he settled his view upon the man with chips. "You have failed as a species! Your world is in disrepair, your leaders are nasty to you, and your own brothers around the world have turned on you! This world needs an angelic visitation to subdue it and give your world the fresh start it deserves! The best of humanity will hear this call and accept their coming. There will be space for you in the new order!"
This got largely the same reaction, with some additional uneasiness as well.
“It’s time for the Weeping Angels to come forth and make planet Earth great again!”
At least one child started crying.
"Will there be none who come forth?" Rondal asked one last time. He waited for someone to heed his call and come forward to take their place. Nobody did. The man with chips had began to walk away, and he wasn’t the only one. "Then this is of your own doing!" Rondal shouted at the top of his voice, and then the sand around him began to blow around. It was like a sandstorm had struck, an analogy unusual for Central London! Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.
But then the sand began to take on the form of statues. People stopped running from the storm and stared at them. Rondal's voice rang out again, but his voice was softer and quieter this time. "Behold your conquerors, human race!"
The whole place fell silent. And then he issued one chilling command in a slow and steady voice. It was almost a whisper.
"Kill them."
The man with chips started to run. He saw other people doing the same thing and amidst all the chaos, the statues moved freely. Suddenly he was face to face with one of them and, in his horror, he dropped the chips. He looked to the floor where they’d landed and then he felt two hands, one either side, touching his neck. The Weeping Angel shook him quickly. The man with chips fell dead to the floor with a thud, and that was the last thing he ever knew. He wasn’t the only one.
Bloodcurdling screams and cries rose up to the heavens for a few minutes as this massacre occurred, but then silence fell, as silence always must.
Watching the drama unfold on the TARDIS scanner, Becky was fighting back more tears at the sight of what her fiancee was doing. Mel had her hands over her mouth, and the Doctor’s expression was grim.
"There's only one thing I can do about this", he said. "And even I'm not sure if I dare do it."
"What?" said Mel. "We need to stop this if we possibly can!"
"Mel, there is only one thing that can defeat the Weeping Angels and it involves breaking my own greatest rule."
"What's that?"
"I need to break up the sequence of events, Mel. If I can stop Rondal and Becky from being sent to the Weeping Angels' dimension then the paradox would be enough to kill all of them, possibly for good. This massacre won’t happen! But I would have to cross the timelines, and that goes against everything the Time Lords stand for."
"Doctor", Becky said, "Would that work?"
"I don't know, but I'm sure it would."
"Then we must!"
The Doctor sighed. "I suppose, if you insist", he said. "But if it fails then the repercussions are on you!"
"Is your ego that big?" Becky remarked. "Rondal, or the thing that became Rondal, it wasn't kidding."
"Oh, do be quiet would you? This is a very delicate operation!" He ran over to the other side of the console and started to push a few buttons, pull some levers and flick a couple of switches. The TARDIS made a sound of protestation as it set off through time. "Come on now, old girl, don’t put up a fight!" the Doctor murmured soothingly, as the TARDIS continued to shake wildly. He ran over to the same purple lever Mel had used earlier and tried to hold it steady. The TARDIS continued to fight against the idea.
Becky shouted in terror at the sensation of the time machine trying to stop them.
"What's happening?" she yelled.
"She's protesting! She knows what we're trying to do!" the Doctor shouted over the noise.
"Which is what, Doctor?" Mel said, making some protestation of her own. "I still don't understand!"
"I think if I stop them from being taken then we can destroy the Weeping Angels!" he said. "The paradox would be too big, even for them! Kills them dead. Or at least, that’s the theory. Time to see if it works!"
Earlier that same day:
"Come on, Becky!" Rondal said. "We need to get going."
Becky was struggling with her hiking boots. They were very tight round her feet, perhaps a size too small. Truth is, they were Rondal’s size. He had small feet. Also small hands, but he didn’t like to draw attention to that.
“Becky!” Rondal yelled.
“Coming!” She yelled back.
She eventually did manage to get the boots on, and off they went on their way for their afternoon walk. Becky didn't want to go. She wanted to put in some last minute wedding planning before the rehearsal that evening.
Outside in the cold air Rondal and Becky set off, when suddenly they heard a noise. "What's that?" Becky asked.
"Nothing, nothing to worry about, you stupid woman, you need to stop panicking and grow up," Rondal replied. "Come on! Let’s see if the rumours are true about that American diner that appeared up that hill." He went on some more, but Becky stood still for a moment as Rondal got several metres ahead of her.
The Weeping Angel that was watching them got the shock of its life when a blue box dropped out of the sky between it and the targets. The doors opened and the three travellers inside saw it instantly, and decided maybe they would stay just inside the TARDIS for now. "Weeping Angel!" the Doctor proclaimed. “I order you to leave this level five planet in accordance with the 17th regulation of the-”
Suddenly the doors closed themselves and the TARDIS disappeared in a flash. “What’s going on old girl?!” the Doctor shouted as he and the two women were thrown to the floor.
“Why are we going back into the time vortex?” Mel asked. “Did that Weeping Angel do something, Doctor?”
“No, this looks like the TARDIS herself has run away from there! She won’t let us change the timeline!”
“Then can’t we stop the Weeping Angel?” Becky said in horror. “Rondal’s going to kill all those people and there’s nothing we can do about it!”
The Doctor looked grimly at her. “There might be actually”, he said. “Come here, Becky.”
Becky came over to where the Doctor was stood. He asked Becky a question he had thought to ask earlier but hadn’t managed to yet. "Why did you stay with him, Becky, let alone agree to marry him?"
"Why do you ask her that?" asked Mel, before Becky could answer.
"Because I saw what they were like together", he said, "and it's emotionally abusive. I should know what that's like because I had something similar to that with-” He stopped himself. There was too much sadness and regret there. “But that's something I was wrong to do,” he continued, “and I regret it now. If I could change anything I did in this life then that'd be it.” He stopped again. “I can't change that now. But you still can, if this works."
Becky was initially shocked to hear him speak in such a manner, but it dawned on her that maybe he was right. “He made me feel like I was special, at first. I hoped he’d be like that again.”
"Then he had you fooled." The Doctor said this sternly. He wanted her to get the point.
"Maybe", she said. "Perhaps I should tell him where to go. You know, I was thinking before that there might be something better for me than a man like Rondal. I never really took the thought of it seriously before, but you’ve made me realise how much more there is, and if this is the man that the Weeping Angels go to – he didn’t even seem that different when he became one of them!”
"I'm the Doctor, not a marriage counsellor, but I think that it would be for the best to get out of there while you can.”
Becky didn’t say anything, but in her mind she resolved that she would give Rondal the ring back, but perhaps do it somewhere public.
“Will you promise me this, Becky? Will you save yourself?”
Becky nodded.
“Good”, said the Doctor.
With that promise made, she watched as the Doctor removed a piece of panelling from the console. Underneath it was some brown soft material that resembled fabric. “The TARDIS’s telepathic circuits”, the Doctor explained. Becky didn’t understand, but the look on the Doctor’s face was comforting. He knew what he was doing, and Becky figured it was safe for her to trust him now. “Put your hands in there, Becky, and do as I say.”
Becky did so. It felt soft. Then she felt something grab her and she let out an involuntary squeal.
“Don’t resist it”, the Doctor instructed. “She should be latched on to your personal history now.” The TARDIS started to make those noises again. “Hmm. It seems to me, that the paradox of your kidnapping is upsetting her. Just hold on tight now and focus hard. I want you to think hard of the moment just before you got taken. Can you do that?”
“Yes”, said Becky. “We were just leaving our apartment when-”
“Quiet please, no distractions like thinking of me, hard as it must be for anyone who has met me not to.”
“Doctor, please just be quiet!” said Mel.
The Doctor didn’t be quiet, and instead kept speaking softly to Becky. “Focus hard on that moment, Becky, you’re flying the TARDIS now. She’s tuned to your thoughts.”
The TARDIS began to fly much more smoothly. The lights went dim. The sound grew quiet. “It’s working!” the Doctor declared. “We’ve smashed through the defences. We’re going to change history!”
Back in 2019:
She eventually did manage to get the boots on, and off they went on their way for their afternoon walk. Becky didn't want to go. She wanted to put in some last minute wedding planning before the rehearsal that evening.
Outside in the cold air Rondal and Becky set off, when suddenly they heard a noise. "What's that?" Becky asked.
"Nothing, nothing to worry about, you stupid woman, you need to stop panicking and grow up," Rondal replied. "Come on! Let’s see if the rumours are true about that American diner that appeared up that hill." He went on some more, but Becky stood still for a moment as Rondal got several metres ahead of her.
The Weeping Angel rushed forward and was just behind her. It reached out and had almost made contact when a rushing sound was heard. Becky wheeled round and saw the Weeping Angel, who petrified instantly. Rondal turned and saw it too. He was about to shout at her and tell her to catch up when suddenly the source of the rushing sound was revealed. A blue light, resembling a static burst of energy, formed around the Weeping Angel and Becky. Rondal could only watch on as his fiancee was taken suddenly from his sight, and with her that statue that had appeared from nowhere.
The younger Becky had no idea what was going on. “Where am I?” she asked. Then she saw her older self. “What on Earth is-”
“You’re safe now”, said the Doctor. “I’ve saved you.”
Then the younger Becky and the Weeping Angel both vanished.
Mel screamed. “It got her!” she shreiked. “After all that!”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so Mel”, he said. A blinding white light appeared around them suddenly. He cheered. “Yes! I knew it would work! We changed the past and stopped the Weeping Angels!”
The light grew more and more intense and the Doctor immediately ran over to the purple lever from earlier and pushed it down to the position Mel had held it in before, and he did it just in time too. No sooner had he managed this, the light grew too much and the three people inside the TARDIS suddenly collapsed to the ground. They woke up mere moments later and found they weren't in the TARDIS anymore but back in the Weeping Angels' desert, except that…
"The sand is gone now", the Doctor observed.
"Does this mean the Weeping Angels are all gone?" Mel asked.
"It seems like it", the Doctor said. "But we've got to take Becky back home to Rondal.”
“But how are we going to get me there?” Becky asked. “Your TARDIS isn’t here!”
“That’s not a problem, Becky”, the Doctor said. “Not after I set some things up before I realised we’d be coming back here. The time distortions are gone too, so that lever should hold and bring the TARDIS back here.
As he was saying this, the familiar sounds of the TARDIS engines started to become audible. They saw the console room materialise around them. The Doctor ran over to the console and started to set a course. “Back to 2019, February the 13th I think it was?”
Becky nodded.
“Off we go then!” the Doctor said.
With the TARDIS back in Becky’s time she had a few questions. “Doctor, when Rondal said I shouldn’t exist what did he mean?”
“I don’t know Becky. That’s what happens with my trips around space and time, there’s always something I don’t know. Just make sure it’s worth it, eh?”
Soon they had arrived outside her house and Becky stepped outside. “How is this thing bigger inside?” she asked.
Before the Doctor could answer, Mel shoved him back inside and told him to wait for her. He was protesting but Mel knew he wasn’t serious about it.
And Mel told Becky everything.
Becky was soon back home, feeling determined to set out her own course for herself. After seeing her off, the Doctor and Mel went back into the TARDIS and set off back into the time vortex.
"Were you telling the truth, Doctor?" Mel asked. "Are the Weeping Angels really gone? And what about the sand that's all over the place, Doctor, like at the beach? Couldn't they create some new Weeping Angels with it?"
"No, no, isn't it obvious?" the Doctor said. "All the sand from their homeworld is gone! Never even existed in fact. They can't use that ability now, not now we’ve made it so they never even had it in the first place.” He stopped and thought. “I suppose that there will be stragglers among their ranks and they'll regroup in some places throughout history but on the whole their race is not as powerful as it once was. I shouldn't think they'll trouble me again for quite some time, but I’ll be ready for it when they do!"
"That's good then", Mel said.
"And when I meet them", the Doctor went on, "all I'll have to do is tell everyone to not blink.”
He set some coordinates on the console. “What did you tell Becky?” the Doctor asked.
Mel was speaking to Becky in February of 2019. “He’s not just a regular doctor, Becky, he’s the Doctor, and he may seem mean but he isn’t, not really. He’s a good man deep down, when you get to know him, and I really think that’s where his chosen name comes from. He ran away from his people just to make the universe better. And I know what that’s like because I get to live that adventure every single day. I hope he never changes from how he is because, despite a brash persona and an eyesore coat, he’s quite possibly the most perfect person I’ve ever known. Every second with the Doctor is an adventure but there’s adventure to be had at home too. That’s what he’s given you, you’ve got that life back because of him and now it’s up to you. Stand up to Rondal and live your life.”
“What did you tell Becky?” the Doctor asked.
“I told her what you said already, to get rid of Rondal,” Mel replied.
“Good”, said the Doctor. “Telling her to be a strong and independent woman. More people need to hear that message.” He paused. “That could be interesting to try for myself sometime.” He looked up at the TARDIS ceiling in thought. A strong and independent woman... that sounded good. “Who knows what’s in store for days to come,” he said wistfully.
Mel laughed. “You know, I don’t understand you sometimes!” she said. “Now get back on that exercise bike. We’ve lost a lot of time!”
writer - Z.P. MOO
cover art - Z.P. MOO
story editor - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH
producer - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH
cover art - Z.P. MOO
story editor - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH
producer - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH