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The universe is unraveling.
The universe is unraveling, and the Doctor has wrenched open the TARDIS console, something Yaz didn’t even know was possible, and Yaz is— well. Yaz doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s known, this whole adventure, she’s understood her place: help rescue Dan, help pilot the TARDIS even when the TARDIS is falling apart at the seams. But there are too many threads, and Yaz has dropped them all. She can only watch as golden light streams out of the TARDIS and into the universe, into the glittering clouds of red and black that seem to be devouring it.
The universe is unraveling, and Yaz can’t look away. She stares outside, watching stars disintegrate, and then at the Doctor, who seems fragile and scattered and focused all at once. And then she glances at the console, just for a second— but something catches her eye. There’s a monitor, hidden among the instruments, that shows the view outside, and where Yaz would expect to see the Flux expanding, burning its path through the universe, she sees— something else. She steps closer. It’s a woman. A woman, hovering in space. And glowing gold, her eyes made up of otherworldly light. Yaz glances to the Doctor, who’s too focused on the Flux to notice, and then out the door of the TARDIS, where she sees the same chaos as before.
But the TARDIS has more than one door, these days.
Yaz runs to the back of the console room, opening a door that has embedded itself in the wall at an angle, so anyone would have to climb through— and she’s met with just the blackness of space. No Flux, no woman.
She tries another door. This one’s higher up the wall, and she sort of has to jump for it: she probably looks silly, hanging off the ledge with her legs dangling into the console, but both the Doctor and Dan are too preoccupied to notice.
This door, like the last, yields nothing. Just a planet drifting in the distance. That’s odd, but it’s not what Yaz is looking for. She drops to the floor and looks around.
There it is. Another door. Embedded in the floor. Yaz pushes it open, and— yes . The woman from the monitor is here, hovering a few feet away. Yaz leans back and sticks her feet through the opening. She has a theory— and— it’s proven correct: the minute she pulls herself through the opening, there’s a tug in her stomach and the gravity shifts. What was just back is now down , and what was just down is now forward . Yaz catches the ledge she’s now sitting on with both hands, letting them steady her. She looks around and realizes she must have come out in a totally different place: there’s no sign of a universe-threatening battle, no sign of the fabric of spacetime being unmade before her eyes.
Finally, Yaz looks at the woman in front of her. She’s even more brilliant up close; it feels to Yaz like every one of this woman’s cells is emitting light. Her hair seems almost made of light. One of her hands is lifted, and a tendril of light stretches from it all the way past Yaz’s head and into the TARDIS: Yaz cranes her neck and sees the tendril reaching towards the console.
She turns back to the woman. “The TARDIS showed you to me,” she says, her voice reaching into the darkness even as the clanging and yelling continues behind her. “Why?”
“The Doctor’s in danger,” the woman says.
Yaz almost laughs. “You don’t say.”
“The walls between universes have grown thin.” The woman is staring at Yaz, but somehow Yaz feels like she’s being looked through , like this woman sees all of her and none of her at once. “I could feel it coming.”
“Feel what?” Yaz raises her eyebrows. This woman may be some kind of otherworldly being, but Yaz has dealt with too much of the Doctor to be cowed. In fact, she’s getting to be wholly fed up with strange aliens who refuse to be straightforward about anything .
“I don’t know much more than you,” the woman says. “I am only here to lend my strength.”
“Who are you?” Yaz blurts. She knows the Doctor has many friends throughout the universe, and possibly even more enemies.
“An old friend,” the woman says. “Of the Doctor and her TARDIS. I have a few names, but you might refer to me as the Bad Wolf.”
“Bad Wolf,” Yaz murmurs. It doesn’t sound familiar, but of course, nothing about the Doctor’s life sounds familiar, because the Doctor won’t tell her anything . “The Doctor’s never mentioned you.” But even as Yaz says it, she thinks about the photos she’s seen scattered around the TARDIS, unfamiliar faces staring at her through the impassable barrier of time.
“He often doesn’t,” the Bad Wolf says. “It’s easier to keep us in his past.”
“Her past,” Yaz corrects automatically. But then again, the Doctor has never really seemed to get gender. “You think you can help her?”
“I know I can help,” the Bad Wolf says. “If only I could break the barrier fully.”
“What barrier?”
“The barrier I thought would separate us forever.”
“Just tell me what you mean!” Yaz is yelling now, she knows she’s yelling, but she’s had weeks and weeks of the Doctor dodging all her questions even though she knows something happened, the Doctor went to prison and she won’t say why, she won’t say what happened on Gallifrey, she won’t say anything about her past. She’ll let Yaz travel with her, even hold her hand on alien streets, but she won’t answer the simplest of questions about her life. And now there’s this woman, this Bad Wolf , who holds another piece to the puzzle that is the Doctor, but she won’t say anything outright either! Yaz feels tears of frustration forming in her eyes, and she looks down, embarrassed.
“The barrier between universes,” the Bad Wolf says. “Between worlds. Between me and her.”
That makes Yaz look up.
“Universes?” she asks. “Are you saying that you’re in another universe right now?”
“I am.” The Bad Wolf gestures to the TARDIS. She uses the hand that’s already sending light into the console room, and the light flows as if it were thread, creating an arc and then a wave before it stills. “This is the only point of connection between my world and yours. And it’s only possible because the Doctor’s TARDIS is breaking down.” The Bad Wolf’s voice falters for the first time. “I think she— the TARDIS— was looking for me.”
“Are you— connected, or something?” Yaz asks, her eyes following the thread of light between the Bad Wolf and the TARDIS.
“Something like that.” There’s a banging noise in the background, and the Bad Wolf’s attention shifts. “I think I’m going to lose you soon. I’ll find a way to get back. I promise. Tell the Doctor—” The Bad Wolf hesitates. “No, I’ll tell her soon enough. I’ll see you later, Yasmin Khan.”
“How d’you know—”
But she doesn’t get the chance to finish before she’s thrust backwards. Her head hits the floor of the TARDIS with a thud: she shuts her eyes tight against the pain that blooms in the back of her head. She hears the Doctor yelling her name in the background — “Yaz!” — and then she feels the fabric of the Doctor’s jacket brushing against her arm, the ends of the Doctor’s hair touching her face. She opens her eyes to see the Doctor’s face hovering inches above her own. “Yaz, are you all right? What happened?”
“‘M fine,” Yaz mumbles, still dazed. “There was this woman— while you were fighting— I talked to her—”
“What woman?” the Doctor asks.
“Didn’t give me a proper name,” Yaz says. The whole encounter already feels like it happened long in the past, and Yaz has to reach to find what she has to tell the Doctor. “Said she was called the Bad Wolf.”
Yaz can see the moment the Doctor’s expression shifts. Her whole body shifts; Yaz can feel it.
“You’re sure? She definitely said, Bad Wolf ?” the Doctor asks. There’s something in her eyes that Yaz has seen there before, some kind of resolution combined with opacity. Yaz knows the Doctor will never tell her what “Bad Wolf” means, but it doesn’t stop her from asking anyway.
“Yeah. What is it? What does it mean?”
True to expectations, the Doctor jumps up.
“No time for that, sorry. I’ve got to run some scans— some tests— it’s not possible— and we’ve still got the universe unraveling to worry about—”
Yaz pushes herself to a sitting position with a sigh. She won’t get answers anytime soon. She knows that. So she stews in her frustration as the Doctor tries to hammer the TARDIS into submission. Dan comes to sit next to her, and Yaz shifts instinctively to make room.
“That looked like a bad hit there,” he says. “Your head all right?”
“It’s fine,” Yaz says heavily. “What happened back there?”
“Oh, you don’t want to ask me,” Dan says. “I’ve no idea.”
Yaz laughs an exhausted laugh. “You and me both, mate.”
And sparks fly from the console; the TARDIS begins its whirring. And Yaz settles in for a bumpy ride.