Categories > TV > Doctor Who > Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - Series 1
Grounded - Short Story
0 reviewsShort story - David gets himself lost in the TARDIS! And he and Diana learn more about their mysterious Doctor as they literally, and metaphorically, find each other again.
0Unrated
The Doctor storms across the glass platform in the TARDIS control room to check the scanner again.
"How on earth did he got lost this time?" he groans, as Diana steps over next to him. She attempts to read what is on the console, but cannot decipher what it says. "It's Gallifreyan, the language of my people. You won't be able to understand it, I'm one of the few people left in the universe who can."
David has managed to get himself lost in the TARDIS again, for context. He went for a swim in the swimming pool, in the library, but had forgot how to find his way back to the main TARDIS console room. The Doctor is this time extremely irritated, as it's the second time that he's managed to go missing in the TARDIS. Diana was still intrigued to actually know more about by now her best friend, as she only knew the basics that the Doctor has told them during their early travels together.
"So your people, they're called the Time Lords?" Diana kicks off her questions.
The Doctor bows his header slightly, before continuing to read. "Technically not my people." That was not the answer Diana was expecting. "I was raised with them, but apparently I wasn't from there. Even any nearby."
The Doctor is visibly distraught. Clearly he isn't mentioning it because he doesn't know it himself.
"I'm sorry," Diana adds.
"It's fine. From what I know, I was raised on my home planet, well technically, Gallifrey at some point, stole a TARDIS and started travelling through all of time and space," the Doctor said. "It's quite fun, and it's always fresh with new eyes next to me, like you two."
"That language, Gallifreyan. What's it reading there?" she next inquires.
"What room he's in," the Doctor answers. "And he's walked about a bit, and found himself in the antigravity room. Suppose he's having a whirl."
David enters the antigravity room, one that unbeknownst to him activates upon entry. He gulps at the sheer height of the room. It's nothing like he's seen before, and he's seen things made of pure heat, Martians and robot people. On entering, he finds himself arisen into the air. Not noticing at first, he attempts to walk forward, but feels no ground beneath his feet.
"Wha-" David is perplexed at suddenly being flung on the air. "Why the hell does he have a room with no gravity in it? What the hell does he get up to?"
"You've got some weird hobbies if you have anti-gravity rooms," Diana says, walking through the corridors of the TARDIS with the Doctor.
The Doctor smiles. "You have no idea what I get up to when you guys are in your room sleeping." That intrigues Diana, who signals for him to keep talking about what he does. "Talking to the TARDIS, popping about places I want to go that you guys think are boring..."
She interrupts her best friend in obvious offence. "Like where? All of time and space and you think we don't want to see it?"
He stops in front of her, and turns to face her.
"When you're like me, living for as long as I have, with as many different faces and eyes, you can see the same piece of universe again and again," the Doctor begins. "From what I genuinely know, I've had seventeen faces. Seventeen pairs of eyes. I can see the same piece of universe seventeen different times. Sometimes I want to see it with the most dearest to me... and sometimes I need to see it alone."
The Doctor turns around and continues to walk on towards the anti-gravity room that David is in. Diana takes those words to heart and starts thinking: the Doctor is more emotionally torn, and old, than they thought he was.
David throws his arms and legs out, almost swimming in the air to try and stabilise himself. Obviously, it worked to no avail at all. The lack of gravity is not going to be averted by simply flapping your arms and legs about. He begins to panic excessively, but as he continues to fear the worst, finally the doors to the room open.
"David!" Diana shouts, clearly frightened and panicked. She's about to run into the room, before the Doctor grabs her jacket to pull her back.
"Di, you remember this is an anti-gravity room, right?" the Doctor playfully chastises to the naïve companion of his.
Diana brushes herself off after the Doctor lets go of her jacket. "I knew that. Are you able to get him down?"
"Of course," the Doctor responds. Following that, he takes his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and disables the anti-gravity within the room itself, leaving David to plummet down from an extortionate height.
"DOCTOR!" Diana exclaims in pure shock, thinking that the Doctor has just signed the death warrant of her boyfriend.
"Relax. You're going to laugh in 3... 2... 1..." and as the Doctor says "1", David hits the ground. But instead of splattering into a bloody mess of limbs and bones, David bounces right back up into the air.
Diana looks absolutely perplexed, but does end up laughing like the Doctor said she would.
"Told you, trampoline flooring. Go and have some fun, I'll meet you guys at the console room when you're ready. I'm thinking... 18th century Germany. I've been meaning to meet Beethoven for an autograph," the Doctor rambled again, his voice growing quieter and quieter as he begins to walk away to the console room.
Diana chuckles some more, and takes a step back, before jumping into the anti-gravity room feet first to join David. Over time, they eventually bounce into each other, and reach for each other's hands as they continue to bounce on the trampoline until the energy dissipates and they finally stop bouncing.
When they do finally stop, they fall straight onto their backs, still holding each other's hands and still laughing. David begins to stroke his girlfriend's hair, chuckling with every one.
"I was totally in bits up there, thought that was it," David starts.
She smirks back at him. "When we agreed to go with the Doctor, I did not think that we would end up on a trampoline in a room with no gravity."
David laughs out loud at that remark, and squeezed her hand a little. After a few seconds, his face falls into one of skepticism.
"Who really is he? The Doctor, I mean. We know the basics and stuff but don't you think we should know more?" David inquires.
Diana turns to face him, and begins to relay the outline of what the Doctor said as they walked through the TARDIS to find him. "He said he was from this planet called Gallifrey, that he can't find. They've got this weird language that they speak in circles and only he is one of the few people in the universe who can read it he says."
David jerks his head back to lie flat on the ground. Diana continues. "The planet was lost. Not destroyed, just lost. 99% of his people with it. He said something quite sad as well, about this face changing thing he does. He can see everywhere in the universe again with new eyes, but sometimes needs to see it on his own. That's why he's so busy and hyper when we're asleep."
David sighs, and begins to feel slight pity for the Doctor. Imagine, a 3,000 year old time traveller being pitied by some bloke from 21st century Portsmouth. "He sounds so lonely. I mean what is he, 3,000 years old? He sounds like he's lost a lot in that time."
"You can lose a lot in a year, and he's had 3,000 of those. Maybe that's why he seems so hyper, he just wants to enjoy these moments with us," Diana admits. David looks at her, nodding gently in agreement. "It's been an absolute dream travelling with him, but we've got lives of our own, David. I think I've got an idea for us both to work things out, for the Doctor's sake and for ours."
"I'm listening," David says.
The Doctor sits on the seats on the platform propping up the TARDIS console, waiting for his friends to come back and continue the travels.
"Is there anywhere I can pop to quickly while they're busy?" the Doctor ponders, rising to his feet again and playing around with the TARDIS controls. He presses a button which seems to make the TARDIS unhappy, which groans in reaction to him.
"Sorry..." he whispers, kissing his hand and stroking his ship. Realising there's nowhere he can think of to go in such a rush, he relents and sits back at the seat he got up from merely moments before.
He sighs, in a mixture of boredom and upset, before clearing his throat.
"Access personal records for 'The Doctor'," he says, rubbing his face in upset. The interface shows the thousands of folders in the TARDIS archives regarding the Doctor. "Access 'Most Favoured Locations'."
The TARDIS shows the Doctor a list of his favoured places to travel to throughout his previous sixteen lives. There are still hundreds and hundreds yet to be visited by this version of him.
This puts a smile back on his face when he realises he's got a lot still to do and see.
The Doctor sits down with a relaxed facial expression once again. Unable to sit and wait, like a child waiting for his best friends to come out to play, he begins to fiddle with the sonic screwdriver, looking at what little things he could maybe improve.
Diana and David begin to walk about towards the main TARDIS control room to join the Doctor and decide where to go next.
"Are you sure he'll be alright with it?" David asks.
Diana shrugs her shoulders. "I hope so, but don't forget we need a break too. We are human, and he's not." She regrets saying that immediately. "You know what I mean. He lives for ages but we don't, that's the problem."
David agrees. "I think all the running around different planets and times is a bit of a banana skin, doing it all the time."
She rolls her eyes. "It is fun though, I mean come on. Anywhere and anywhen we want. Together." They hold each other's hands, and continue to walk back to the TARDIS console room.
The Doctor is still fiddling with the sonic, having suspended it into three different parts, playing around with it and trying to make cheeky adjustments to improve the device. He can hear the footsteps of his two best friends about to enter the console room, and he stops messing around, trying to predict what they're about to say.
"Sorry! Been busy messing around with the sonic, trying to make it work on wood. No luck," the Doctor jokes, not letting the two get a word in. "I was thinking maybe we could head to meet Beethoven now? I've always wanted to know who actually composed his-"
"Doctor," David sighs, finally breaking his long new rant of speech. He can already predict what he's going to say next, and interrupts him this time instead.
"Yeah, I know. It's okay," the Doctor points out. "I've got a lot of places to see myself, alone. But it's been lovely having you aboard. Truly, an honour. You guys have been some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and my god I'm going to miss you."
The Doctor pulls his best friends into the tightest hug he can, before Diana starts to speak.
"Doctor," she begins, with a slight chuckle in her voice.
"Yes?" is the simple response.
"We're only taking a break for a bit," she reveals, completely stumping him, and he steps back, breaking the hug to look at them.
"Oh," he says, slightly embarrassed. "I knew that. Just making sure you knew how much you guys... oh just shut up." He hastily turns away to put in the controls to take the TARDIS back to Diana and David's home, with a bit more of a smile on his face than when they first entered the room.
Diana and David laugh at the Doctor's emotional antics.
"You're quite the emotive one, aren't you?" David quirks.
The Doctor, on the other side of the TARDIS console, pokes his head around the Time Rotor in order to look David in the eye. "Absolutely, emotions make us who we are. Without them we are nothing, and trust me, I've met some things that make me realise that even when I struggle to myself. Embrace those emotions, like I embraced you."
And with that, the TARDIS lands exactly in the spot that Diana and David made in their house especially for the ship to land, whenever the Doctor picked them up for a trip.
"It's funny that we have a room to stay in on board but we barely ever use it," cleverly pointed out by Diana.
The Doctor walks down the steps of the platform in order to open the door. "Think of this as your holiday home, a portable holiday home, like a big blue caravan. And think of all of time and space as the holiday itself."
The couple walk down to meet the Doctor, and exit the TARDIS hand in hand, smiling at him.
In their living room, they notice it feels a lot different since they first were in the room defeating the Ice Warriors. It had been weeks, maybe even months, for the three of them, but in reality it had only been a few days since the incursions in Portsmouth.
"Right then, I best be off. Give me a date and time, and I'll pop there after I've done some stuff," the Doctor hastily says, attempting to close the TARDIS door. But, he is stopped by David.
"Oh no you don't," he pops. "You're staying for tea."
"Tea?" the bemused Time Lord asks. "Like cups of tea? Or the meal tea? Or the natives to the planet Sherming, because if it's the last one I really don't feel like staying. They have massive molars and that's it."
"The meal, obviously. Maybe the cups of tea too. But if so, you're making, just because you rambled on about some gross creatures," Diana jokes.
The Doctor steps outside of the TARDIS, closing the door behind him and puffing, with a pat on the shoulder from David.
"Is she always like this at home?" the Doctor enquires, with an air devoid of complete and utter shock.
David grins profoundly. "Yeah. Maybe we should jump back in, just you and me, and have a go in that anti-gravity room again."
The Doctor bows his head down slightly. "It would be nice, but I don't think she'd approve if we do that before... 'tea'."
The two friends share a happy smile with each other and head off to the kitchen.
Diana begins to look through her freezer for some things to cook for herself, David and the Doctor.
"Are you allergic to anything Doctor?" Diana calls out, making sure she doesn't cook up something that accidentally causes him to regenerate or something.
"I'm the Doctor, I'm the Oncoming Storm, I strike fear into the most intimidating and cruel species in all of creation..." the Doctor growls out, before Diana looks unimpressed. "...celery. I think it's because of my past with it." He rolls his eyes, admitting a very silly and minor weakness.
"It couldn't be that bad Doctor. It's not like you wore it or anything," David mentions, oblivious to the fact that of course, yes he did.
The Doctor heads over to the kitchen, in order to make those cups of tea Diana said he'd have to make. Using the sonic screwdriver, he instantly causes the water to boil with a setting he developed whilst fiddling with the sonic screwdriver earlier.
"How many sugars?" the Doctor asks his best friends.
"None, for both of us," David adds.
"Good," the Doctor says. "More for me." With that, he puts in three tea spoons of sugar into his tea, stirring the cups and taking out the teabags. Suddenly, a question was clearly on the tip of the Doctor's tongue that he just had to ask David. "You know, about that military formation situation from the Calefaction people? How did you know so much about that?"
David sighs, with absolutely no intent to hide it. "I was in the military once. And I've been discharged." The Doctor was surprised, but not angry or discontented like David and Diana expected him to be upon mentioning that.
"So was I," he points out. "Bet you didn't fight in a war as big as I did." It was intended as a joke, but David clearly wasn't laughing. "Sorry. It's not often I get asked to meals with my friends. It just reminds me of the last time."
Diana raises her eyebrow. "What happened last time?"
The Doctor's face falls. "A ginger and a Roman, quite a while ago. Here's to hoping that we stay friends forever."
"Of course," David says, pulling him in for a hug that Diana joins in with.
"Now then, that heating setting should work for cooking too," the Doctor grins after pulling away from the hug. His friends laugh loudly with him.
After the meal, the Doctor relaxes back in his seat at the dinner table.
"Phenomenal, better than most of the restaurants I've been to across the cosmos," the Doctor admits. "Right, I'm going to be off then." He rises from his seat, and heads towards the TARDIS, parked in the basement downstairs. Diana and David follow him.
"Give me a date and time, and I'll see you there whenever it is," the Doctor smiles through slight, and undetectable, upset.
"Maybe this time next month?" David suggests.
Diana nods. "Sounds good. Take care of yourself, Doctor. And make sure, if there's another damn alien invasion in the mean time that you do come to us, even if it is during our month away."
The Doctor's face lights back up, and unlocks the TARDIS to enter the bigger-on-the-inside time machine. Standing in the door way, he smirks at his best friends. "See you in a month." The couple smile back at him, as he closes the door, and a few seconds later the TARDIS begins to dematerialise.
The Doctor begins piloting the TARDIS, resisting the urge to just travel a month into the future to meet his friends. Instead, he decides to head to one of the locations he's favoured throughout his lifetimes.
"Right then sexy, you pick," he pokes, but the TARDIS doesn't set anything into the controls. “No? I guess not then.”
"No...I guess not then…" a voice eerily repeats over the TARDIS comm set, paralysing the Doctor.
The Doctor is shocked, but heads over to the monitor to speak back. "Whoever you are, get out of my TARDIS comm set, right now."
"Oh Doctor... you really are stupid..." the now clearly feminine voice growls.
The Doctor raises his eyebrow, before beginning to deduce who it may be. "You, who are you?"
"Is it not obvious, Doctor?" the voice says.
The Doctor finally realises and steps back, in disbelief.
"What do you want?" the Doctor spits back.
"I've been looking forward to tango with you/," the voice flirts down the microphone. "/These space-time coordinates, meet me".
The voice ends the transmission, and the Doctor is left infuriated, and enraged. The coordinates are transmitted onto the monitor, and the Doctor angrily punches the coordinates into the TARDIS, and pulling the lever to take him there.
Next time:
The Doctor follows the mysterious voice throughout time and space in order to stop the threat presented by her to the cosmos — but WHO really is she?
"How on earth did he got lost this time?" he groans, as Diana steps over next to him. She attempts to read what is on the console, but cannot decipher what it says. "It's Gallifreyan, the language of my people. You won't be able to understand it, I'm one of the few people left in the universe who can."
David has managed to get himself lost in the TARDIS again, for context. He went for a swim in the swimming pool, in the library, but had forgot how to find his way back to the main TARDIS console room. The Doctor is this time extremely irritated, as it's the second time that he's managed to go missing in the TARDIS. Diana was still intrigued to actually know more about by now her best friend, as she only knew the basics that the Doctor has told them during their early travels together.
"So your people, they're called the Time Lords?" Diana kicks off her questions.
The Doctor bows his header slightly, before continuing to read. "Technically not my people." That was not the answer Diana was expecting. "I was raised with them, but apparently I wasn't from there. Even any nearby."
The Doctor is visibly distraught. Clearly he isn't mentioning it because he doesn't know it himself.
"I'm sorry," Diana adds.
"It's fine. From what I know, I was raised on my home planet, well technically, Gallifrey at some point, stole a TARDIS and started travelling through all of time and space," the Doctor said. "It's quite fun, and it's always fresh with new eyes next to me, like you two."
"That language, Gallifreyan. What's it reading there?" she next inquires.
"What room he's in," the Doctor answers. "And he's walked about a bit, and found himself in the antigravity room. Suppose he's having a whirl."
David enters the antigravity room, one that unbeknownst to him activates upon entry. He gulps at the sheer height of the room. It's nothing like he's seen before, and he's seen things made of pure heat, Martians and robot people. On entering, he finds himself arisen into the air. Not noticing at first, he attempts to walk forward, but feels no ground beneath his feet.
"Wha-" David is perplexed at suddenly being flung on the air. "Why the hell does he have a room with no gravity in it? What the hell does he get up to?"
"You've got some weird hobbies if you have anti-gravity rooms," Diana says, walking through the corridors of the TARDIS with the Doctor.
The Doctor smiles. "You have no idea what I get up to when you guys are in your room sleeping." That intrigues Diana, who signals for him to keep talking about what he does. "Talking to the TARDIS, popping about places I want to go that you guys think are boring..."
She interrupts her best friend in obvious offence. "Like where? All of time and space and you think we don't want to see it?"
He stops in front of her, and turns to face her.
"When you're like me, living for as long as I have, with as many different faces and eyes, you can see the same piece of universe again and again," the Doctor begins. "From what I genuinely know, I've had seventeen faces. Seventeen pairs of eyes. I can see the same piece of universe seventeen different times. Sometimes I want to see it with the most dearest to me... and sometimes I need to see it alone."
The Doctor turns around and continues to walk on towards the anti-gravity room that David is in. Diana takes those words to heart and starts thinking: the Doctor is more emotionally torn, and old, than they thought he was.
David throws his arms and legs out, almost swimming in the air to try and stabilise himself. Obviously, it worked to no avail at all. The lack of gravity is not going to be averted by simply flapping your arms and legs about. He begins to panic excessively, but as he continues to fear the worst, finally the doors to the room open.
"David!" Diana shouts, clearly frightened and panicked. She's about to run into the room, before the Doctor grabs her jacket to pull her back.
"Di, you remember this is an anti-gravity room, right?" the Doctor playfully chastises to the naïve companion of his.
Diana brushes herself off after the Doctor lets go of her jacket. "I knew that. Are you able to get him down?"
"Of course," the Doctor responds. Following that, he takes his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and disables the anti-gravity within the room itself, leaving David to plummet down from an extortionate height.
"DOCTOR!" Diana exclaims in pure shock, thinking that the Doctor has just signed the death warrant of her boyfriend.
"Relax. You're going to laugh in 3... 2... 1..." and as the Doctor says "1", David hits the ground. But instead of splattering into a bloody mess of limbs and bones, David bounces right back up into the air.
Diana looks absolutely perplexed, but does end up laughing like the Doctor said she would.
"Told you, trampoline flooring. Go and have some fun, I'll meet you guys at the console room when you're ready. I'm thinking... 18th century Germany. I've been meaning to meet Beethoven for an autograph," the Doctor rambled again, his voice growing quieter and quieter as he begins to walk away to the console room.
Diana chuckles some more, and takes a step back, before jumping into the anti-gravity room feet first to join David. Over time, they eventually bounce into each other, and reach for each other's hands as they continue to bounce on the trampoline until the energy dissipates and they finally stop bouncing.
When they do finally stop, they fall straight onto their backs, still holding each other's hands and still laughing. David begins to stroke his girlfriend's hair, chuckling with every one.
"I was totally in bits up there, thought that was it," David starts.
She smirks back at him. "When we agreed to go with the Doctor, I did not think that we would end up on a trampoline in a room with no gravity."
David laughs out loud at that remark, and squeezed her hand a little. After a few seconds, his face falls into one of skepticism.
"Who really is he? The Doctor, I mean. We know the basics and stuff but don't you think we should know more?" David inquires.
Diana turns to face him, and begins to relay the outline of what the Doctor said as they walked through the TARDIS to find him. "He said he was from this planet called Gallifrey, that he can't find. They've got this weird language that they speak in circles and only he is one of the few people in the universe who can read it he says."
David jerks his head back to lie flat on the ground. Diana continues. "The planet was lost. Not destroyed, just lost. 99% of his people with it. He said something quite sad as well, about this face changing thing he does. He can see everywhere in the universe again with new eyes, but sometimes needs to see it on his own. That's why he's so busy and hyper when we're asleep."
David sighs, and begins to feel slight pity for the Doctor. Imagine, a 3,000 year old time traveller being pitied by some bloke from 21st century Portsmouth. "He sounds so lonely. I mean what is he, 3,000 years old? He sounds like he's lost a lot in that time."
"You can lose a lot in a year, and he's had 3,000 of those. Maybe that's why he seems so hyper, he just wants to enjoy these moments with us," Diana admits. David looks at her, nodding gently in agreement. "It's been an absolute dream travelling with him, but we've got lives of our own, David. I think I've got an idea for us both to work things out, for the Doctor's sake and for ours."
"I'm listening," David says.
The Doctor sits on the seats on the platform propping up the TARDIS console, waiting for his friends to come back and continue the travels.
"Is there anywhere I can pop to quickly while they're busy?" the Doctor ponders, rising to his feet again and playing around with the TARDIS controls. He presses a button which seems to make the TARDIS unhappy, which groans in reaction to him.
"Sorry..." he whispers, kissing his hand and stroking his ship. Realising there's nowhere he can think of to go in such a rush, he relents and sits back at the seat he got up from merely moments before.
He sighs, in a mixture of boredom and upset, before clearing his throat.
"Access personal records for 'The Doctor'," he says, rubbing his face in upset. The interface shows the thousands of folders in the TARDIS archives regarding the Doctor. "Access 'Most Favoured Locations'."
The TARDIS shows the Doctor a list of his favoured places to travel to throughout his previous sixteen lives. There are still hundreds and hundreds yet to be visited by this version of him.
This puts a smile back on his face when he realises he's got a lot still to do and see.
The Doctor sits down with a relaxed facial expression once again. Unable to sit and wait, like a child waiting for his best friends to come out to play, he begins to fiddle with the sonic screwdriver, looking at what little things he could maybe improve.
Diana and David begin to walk about towards the main TARDIS control room to join the Doctor and decide where to go next.
"Are you sure he'll be alright with it?" David asks.
Diana shrugs her shoulders. "I hope so, but don't forget we need a break too. We are human, and he's not." She regrets saying that immediately. "You know what I mean. He lives for ages but we don't, that's the problem."
David agrees. "I think all the running around different planets and times is a bit of a banana skin, doing it all the time."
She rolls her eyes. "It is fun though, I mean come on. Anywhere and anywhen we want. Together." They hold each other's hands, and continue to walk back to the TARDIS console room.
The Doctor is still fiddling with the sonic, having suspended it into three different parts, playing around with it and trying to make cheeky adjustments to improve the device. He can hear the footsteps of his two best friends about to enter the console room, and he stops messing around, trying to predict what they're about to say.
"Sorry! Been busy messing around with the sonic, trying to make it work on wood. No luck," the Doctor jokes, not letting the two get a word in. "I was thinking maybe we could head to meet Beethoven now? I've always wanted to know who actually composed his-"
"Doctor," David sighs, finally breaking his long new rant of speech. He can already predict what he's going to say next, and interrupts him this time instead.
"Yeah, I know. It's okay," the Doctor points out. "I've got a lot of places to see myself, alone. But it's been lovely having you aboard. Truly, an honour. You guys have been some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and my god I'm going to miss you."
The Doctor pulls his best friends into the tightest hug he can, before Diana starts to speak.
"Doctor," she begins, with a slight chuckle in her voice.
"Yes?" is the simple response.
"We're only taking a break for a bit," she reveals, completely stumping him, and he steps back, breaking the hug to look at them.
"Oh," he says, slightly embarrassed. "I knew that. Just making sure you knew how much you guys... oh just shut up." He hastily turns away to put in the controls to take the TARDIS back to Diana and David's home, with a bit more of a smile on his face than when they first entered the room.
Diana and David laugh at the Doctor's emotional antics.
"You're quite the emotive one, aren't you?" David quirks.
The Doctor, on the other side of the TARDIS console, pokes his head around the Time Rotor in order to look David in the eye. "Absolutely, emotions make us who we are. Without them we are nothing, and trust me, I've met some things that make me realise that even when I struggle to myself. Embrace those emotions, like I embraced you."
And with that, the TARDIS lands exactly in the spot that Diana and David made in their house especially for the ship to land, whenever the Doctor picked them up for a trip.
"It's funny that we have a room to stay in on board but we barely ever use it," cleverly pointed out by Diana.
The Doctor walks down the steps of the platform in order to open the door. "Think of this as your holiday home, a portable holiday home, like a big blue caravan. And think of all of time and space as the holiday itself."
The couple walk down to meet the Doctor, and exit the TARDIS hand in hand, smiling at him.
In their living room, they notice it feels a lot different since they first were in the room defeating the Ice Warriors. It had been weeks, maybe even months, for the three of them, but in reality it had only been a few days since the incursions in Portsmouth.
"Right then, I best be off. Give me a date and time, and I'll pop there after I've done some stuff," the Doctor hastily says, attempting to close the TARDIS door. But, he is stopped by David.
"Oh no you don't," he pops. "You're staying for tea."
"Tea?" the bemused Time Lord asks. "Like cups of tea? Or the meal tea? Or the natives to the planet Sherming, because if it's the last one I really don't feel like staying. They have massive molars and that's it."
"The meal, obviously. Maybe the cups of tea too. But if so, you're making, just because you rambled on about some gross creatures," Diana jokes.
The Doctor steps outside of the TARDIS, closing the door behind him and puffing, with a pat on the shoulder from David.
"Is she always like this at home?" the Doctor enquires, with an air devoid of complete and utter shock.
David grins profoundly. "Yeah. Maybe we should jump back in, just you and me, and have a go in that anti-gravity room again."
The Doctor bows his head down slightly. "It would be nice, but I don't think she'd approve if we do that before... 'tea'."
The two friends share a happy smile with each other and head off to the kitchen.
Diana begins to look through her freezer for some things to cook for herself, David and the Doctor.
"Are you allergic to anything Doctor?" Diana calls out, making sure she doesn't cook up something that accidentally causes him to regenerate or something.
"I'm the Doctor, I'm the Oncoming Storm, I strike fear into the most intimidating and cruel species in all of creation..." the Doctor growls out, before Diana looks unimpressed. "...celery. I think it's because of my past with it." He rolls his eyes, admitting a very silly and minor weakness.
"It couldn't be that bad Doctor. It's not like you wore it or anything," David mentions, oblivious to the fact that of course, yes he did.
The Doctor heads over to the kitchen, in order to make those cups of tea Diana said he'd have to make. Using the sonic screwdriver, he instantly causes the water to boil with a setting he developed whilst fiddling with the sonic screwdriver earlier.
"How many sugars?" the Doctor asks his best friends.
"None, for both of us," David adds.
"Good," the Doctor says. "More for me." With that, he puts in three tea spoons of sugar into his tea, stirring the cups and taking out the teabags. Suddenly, a question was clearly on the tip of the Doctor's tongue that he just had to ask David. "You know, about that military formation situation from the Calefaction people? How did you know so much about that?"
David sighs, with absolutely no intent to hide it. "I was in the military once. And I've been discharged." The Doctor was surprised, but not angry or discontented like David and Diana expected him to be upon mentioning that.
"So was I," he points out. "Bet you didn't fight in a war as big as I did." It was intended as a joke, but David clearly wasn't laughing. "Sorry. It's not often I get asked to meals with my friends. It just reminds me of the last time."
Diana raises her eyebrow. "What happened last time?"
The Doctor's face falls. "A ginger and a Roman, quite a while ago. Here's to hoping that we stay friends forever."
"Of course," David says, pulling him in for a hug that Diana joins in with.
"Now then, that heating setting should work for cooking too," the Doctor grins after pulling away from the hug. His friends laugh loudly with him.
After the meal, the Doctor relaxes back in his seat at the dinner table.
"Phenomenal, better than most of the restaurants I've been to across the cosmos," the Doctor admits. "Right, I'm going to be off then." He rises from his seat, and heads towards the TARDIS, parked in the basement downstairs. Diana and David follow him.
"Give me a date and time, and I'll see you there whenever it is," the Doctor smiles through slight, and undetectable, upset.
"Maybe this time next month?" David suggests.
Diana nods. "Sounds good. Take care of yourself, Doctor. And make sure, if there's another damn alien invasion in the mean time that you do come to us, even if it is during our month away."
The Doctor's face lights back up, and unlocks the TARDIS to enter the bigger-on-the-inside time machine. Standing in the door way, he smirks at his best friends. "See you in a month." The couple smile back at him, as he closes the door, and a few seconds later the TARDIS begins to dematerialise.
The Doctor begins piloting the TARDIS, resisting the urge to just travel a month into the future to meet his friends. Instead, he decides to head to one of the locations he's favoured throughout his lifetimes.
"Right then sexy, you pick," he pokes, but the TARDIS doesn't set anything into the controls. “No? I guess not then.”
"No...I guess not then…" a voice eerily repeats over the TARDIS comm set, paralysing the Doctor.
The Doctor is shocked, but heads over to the monitor to speak back. "Whoever you are, get out of my TARDIS comm set, right now."
"Oh Doctor... you really are stupid..." the now clearly feminine voice growls.
The Doctor raises his eyebrow, before beginning to deduce who it may be. "You, who are you?"
"Is it not obvious, Doctor?" the voice says.
The Doctor finally realises and steps back, in disbelief.
"What do you want?" the Doctor spits back.
"I've been looking forward to tango with you/," the voice flirts down the microphone. "/These space-time coordinates, meet me".
The voice ends the transmission, and the Doctor is left infuriated, and enraged. The coordinates are transmitted onto the monitor, and the Doctor angrily punches the coordinates into the TARDIS, and pulling the lever to take him there.
Next time:
The Doctor follows the mysterious voice throughout time and space in order to stop the threat presented by her to the cosmos — but WHO really is she?
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