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The Doctor blew out some dust and fluff that had accrued in K9’s central processor nexus and slid it carefully back into the robot dog’s squared-off body. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting some rest now,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Quite a harrowing day, all told.’
Romana was considering all the grime and concrete dust that had gathered on her formerly-pristine scarf. ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, brushing at the tassels. ‘Dalek anti-radiation drugs are surprisingly efficient, I doubt any of their slaves would even set off a Geiger Counter.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ grunted the Doctor, a screw held between his teeth as it occurred to him he’d totally forgotten to ask after her exposure to Skaro’s radioactive atmosphere. ‘You’ve just regenerated for the very first time and faced a Dalek taskforce for twice in as many days,’ he went on, spitting out the screw. ‘I know the feeling. It’s terribly exhausting.’
Romana paused in the doorway. ‘Was your first regeneration particularly troublesome then?’
‘Troublesome? It was a horrible ordeal of mental and physical agony!’ her friend replied with just enough melodrama in his voice to tell her that he was double-bluffing and actually, yes, it had been that bad actually. ‘I was convinced I was a flautist who referred to himself in the third person, suffered vivid hallucinations and violent mood swings – it was ages before my brain got over the regenerative trauma, and by that time I was fighting fish people and mad scientists in the ruins of Atlantis…’
‘Well, my renewal seems to have gone rather well,’ said Romana, shrugging her shoulder.
‘Yes, well, I suppose you did have the benefits of all those new age academy neuro-program tantras,’ muttered the Doctor darkly. ‘And you were copying the body of someone you knew. We’re not as all fortunate as you. When you’re blowing up Cybermen and defeating giant spiders, you don’t have time to think where the next body is coming from.’
‘You could,’ Romana pointed out. ‘Your problem, Doctor, is you’re always putting things off. If you regenerated when your current body reached its endpoint instead of clinging on…’
The Doctor glowered across the room at her. ‘What are you implying? This body’s got centuries left in it! I’m in the prime of my life, this one anyway!’ He got to his feet and needlessly wiped his hands on an oily rag. ‘Besides which, saving the universe can lead to dying and being reborn in less than ideal circumstances. Hmm? We don’t always have the luxury of picking and choosing!’
Romana, despite her fresh brand-new body, felt too tired for this particular argument. ‘I thought you’d project a Watcher like any sensible renegade would,’ she said, wandering off to change.
‘A what?’ spat the Doctor as she left.
Whether he found the idea offensive or simply had no idea what on Earth she was talking about was hard to tell.
‘What do you know about Watchers anyway?’ asked the Doctor curtly.
Romana was used to the erratic and arbitrary nature of her friend’s conversation, but she was still slightly taken aback. It had been days since they’d spoken about her regeneration and had, up until a moment ago, been in animated discussion about fish soup.
‘Well, the legends say that Time Lords who leave the protective noosphere of Gallifrey’s influence become able to perceive a version of themselves that exist exactly between their current incarnation and their next. Normally invisible and intangible, your average common-or-garden renegade would effectively cast a shadow across their timeline, effect before cause.’
The Doctor gave a studied look of ill-tempered patience. ‘And how precisely is that a phenomenon that could possibly be of any use to anyone?’
Romana glanced awkwardly around her, searching for a distraction and finding none. ‘Well, this sort of ghost-like entity can be a warning that regeneration is about to take place. If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot the Watcher. Forewarned is forearmed, isn’t that what you always say.’
‘Nonsense,’ declared the Doctor, who’d said the same thing three times that morning.
At that point the train reached its destination and the Doctor and Romana had more of Paris to explore.
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor, politely waiting until he, Romana and K9 had defeated the villains and now had a long trudge across the desert back to the waiting TARDIS to fill up with conversation, ‘they say in the Old Times, back when regeneration was first mastered, a Watcher could be more than just a glorified trick of the light.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Romana politely, calculating how long before they reached the fake idyllic colony where the time ship had landed. ‘What was that?’
‘Well, the idea was that your future self, your unregenerate form so to speak, could be shunted ahead in time… or backwards in time, depending of course on your point of view… in order to meet you for the time of your death and thus ensure your continuation.’
His companion frowned. ‘Why?’ she wondered.
‘Hmm?’
‘Why do that remarkably dangerous, complicated and paradoxical thing instead of regenerating like a normal Time Lord?’
The Doctor blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, to break up the monotony of course. Besides, it could be very useful to have a future regeneration travel back to save you. After all, they’d have a vested interest in the whole business.’
‘Because otherwise they wouldn’t have that future without you?’
‘Yes! The logical culmination of life insurance policies.’
‘Reductio ad absurdum,’ agreed Romana, and it was only several adventures later did the Doctor realize what she’d said and take offense.
‘Of course, it’s not a ridiculous idea,’ the Doctor said. They had just saved the fashion-capital of the galaxy from total annihilation and the reward was a new outfit for the Time Lord as his old one had been dissolved by digestive gasses in the process. He was trying on a variety of maroon wide-brimmed hats to match his maroon overcoat, red under-jacket, red-and-purple scarf and red leather shoes.
Romana was still at the checkout as she wasted a small colony’s gross domestic product on fresh clothes for the TARDIS after the Doctor had accidentally deleted the original wardrobe room. ‘What is?’
‘Projecting a Watcher to help out with a regeneration.’
‘Doctor, you were hardly in risk of needing a regeneration because a ravenous shape-shifter exploded while giving you a piggy-back.’
The Doctor wasn’t listening as he readjusted his scarf and tried to remember why the tailor had suggested question marks for his shirt lapels. ‘It’s an elementary Time Lord skill, the externalization of internalized thought…’
‘You mean talking to yourself?’
‘Literally. The ability to project an aspect of yourself as an independent form. I knew an old man who could do that with his eyes closed; he used his next regeneration to do all the fiddly admin work and run reception. Of course, he was a very clever Time Lord. Meditated all the time. It was very karmic, I suppose, him giving his future self all the dirty jobs so he’d end up doing them himself.’
‘Sounds like a chronic procrastinator to me.’
‘A chronic what?’
‘Procrastinator.’
‘Oh. Yes, well, it’s very easy to put off to tomorrow if you’re determined to live in yesterday.’ He turned and glanced at his ankles in the mirror. ‘There must be a decent set of boots on this planet.’
Keeping on the run from the Black Guardian by necessity required them to remain absolutely still for long periods. Months and years elapsed as the Doctor and Romana stayed in his Baker Street residence while K9 took the TARDIS on randomized jaunts to leave false trails.
The Doctor was sitting in the lotus position on the couch, or rather a variety of different lotus positions simultaneously so it appeared he had dozed off during a combined gymnastics display and juggling session. Romana put down a cup of tea before him.
‘Doctor, what are you doing?’ she asked, as seemed to be her lot in life sometimes.
‘Meditating,’ said the Doctor. ‘Attuning my tertiary lobes to project a psycho-temporal avatar, gleaning and refining my potential future into pure abstract consciousness.’
‘In other words, you’re bored?’
‘Only boring people are bored. I’m not bored. I’m trying to actualize my next incarnation in order to come back in time and assist me should things get a bit hairy.’
‘I would have thought you’d have hated ruining the surprise,’ said Romana, sipping her own tea. ‘Imagine what it would have been like if you’d seen your Watcher before we took on the Mandrels or the Sontarans. You’re prone to dark moods at the best of times.’
‘Yes, well, that’s the trouble when you spend all your time in the shadow of events yet to come,’ mumbled the Doctor as his left elbow gave way and he crumbled to the ground. ‘You keep waiting for the other foot to drop,’ he concluded, face down in the carpet.
The TARDIS was spinning away from Argolis and the seawater gushing out of K9 had still yet to dry on the control room floor. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have been worried about you,’ said Romana as she disconnected the wires and cables for the now-missing randomizer.
‘Of course not,’ said the Doctor cheerfully.
‘I suppose it means you’ve got another seven hundred and fifty years before you need to worry about regenerating,’ she went on. ‘Though if you keep taking risks like that…’
‘Nonsense,’ the Doctor said, kicking a towel to the floor to mop up the water. ‘I was never in any danger. I didn’t see any Watchers floating around the place, did you?’
‘You think you’re actually able to conjure up a Watcher, do you?’ Romana scoffed. ‘I don’t think you have the concentration. You can’t even focus on fixing K9, let alone projecting your future self. Besides, you wouldn’t even know what it look like.’
‘Well, I’m sure I’ll work that out,’ huffed the Doctor.
‘Why don’t you work on K9 in the meantime. At this rate if you do ever summon your next-self, they’ll look like a Foamasi rather than the new Doctor.’
‘You know, Romana, education holidays have done nothing for your sense of humor,’ the Doctor retorted, and thus it was many weeks before he actually got round to fixing K9 and then shortly after was caught up in a doppelganger plot with a time-warping shape-changing cactus man.
The Doctor awoke with a splitting headache in a pink-grey blur. There was a ringing in his head, and he couldn’t feel the familiar hum of the TARDIS’s engines. Stiffly he sat up and realized he was floating in mid-air in the Zero Room. What had happened? He remembered working with Romana and Adric to locate a CVE and then… nothing. He must have hit his head and Romana dumped him here to recover. She was probably off having fun without him.
He managed to stop levitating, and then fell over.
‘Careful, Doctor,’ he said to himself, even though he didn’t utter a word.
The Doctor straightened up and turned to see himself. It wasn’t quite a shadow or a reflection, but neither was it complete or real. It wasn’t him, not quite, not yet. Somehow the figure before him was vestigial and undefined, and to any observer was unrecognizable as the Doctor.
‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’
‘Yes, well, the subconscious can be terribly presumptive like that,’ said the other Doctor. ‘But it does get there in the end. As requested, one ghost of Christmas Future, and it’s not even August yet!’
The Doctor ran a hand through his curly hair. The other Doctor’s hair was unformed and incoherent, like a mass of cobwebs atop a mummified fetus scalp. The clothes were a blur of gauze and mist too, bleached and beige like a drawing waiting to be coloured in.
‘You’re the Watcher?’
‘Watcher, Shayde, Dream-Self, Animus…’ the other Doctor shrugged what might have been shoulders. ‘There are lots of names, but I’m what you asked for. A projection of your potential future regeneration, a walking temporal paradox borrowing your own life-force to animate this body.’
The Watcher looked down at itself. ‘It’s still in draft stage. What do you think?’
‘I think Romana right have been right,’ said the Doctor guardedly. ‘Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Maybe not, but it’s too late for that, old chap. I’m here. I’m fairly certain that when the telepathic circuits overloaded and burnt out your dendrites, that was the last obstacle keeping you from conjuring me up. And, yes, I suppose this is a rare occasion when near-permanent brain damage has benefits.’
The Doctor looked longingly at the double doors from the Zero Room. ‘And I suppose now you’re here, it means my time’s up? I have to regenerate?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied the Watcher airily. ‘You see, this hasn’t quite gone according to plan. No one’s ever tried to project their future self while suffering brain damage in an exo-space-time continuum before. I’m ahead of schedule, but I’m pretty sure I’m all of your future regeneration cycle.’
‘What?’ croaked the Doctor aghast. ‘But that means… I can’t regenerate anymore!’
‘Bereft of incarnations, you would cease to be. Don’t worry, if anything happens to you, history will catch up with me and I’ll just ebb away into nothingness. I could try and give it back to you here and now, but then you’d regenerate here and now.’
‘I can’t afford to regenerate here and now!’ fumed the Doctor. ‘There’s K9 to fix and we’ve got to get back into N-Space and to Gallifrey, and I still haven’t managed to see the opening of Brighton Pavilion…’
‘Yes, maybe this wasn’t a good idea,’ agreed the Watcher. Already its vague outline was getting fuzzier and less-defined. ‘I’ll just have to trigger the regeneration cycle later, when it’s needed.’
‘Assuming it will work at all!’ the Doctor yelled at the vanishing psycho-temporal projection.
But he was alone in the Zero Room, no longer able to regenerate and stuck in the wrong universe.
The Watcher – as good a name as any for what it was – fizzed and coalesced out of the ether. It roughly resembled a blank-faced white humanoid in a tunic and belt, ancient and brand new, desiccated and embryonic all at once. It had been enjoying the dreamlike non-existence ever since its first manifestation but now had been wrenched into reality as if on a leash.
It was standing in the TARDIS control room. Something was wrong, all the walls and ceiling seemed slightly warped and contorted. Sprawled beneath the console, almost drowned in his clothes, was the Doctor looking particularly haggard. His curling hair was grey, his pallor ghastly, and his occasionally gaunt frame was now painfully emaciated. He looked, in short, far too old for this sort of thing.
The Doctor’s weary face was twisted into sudden cheer. ‘They’ve arrested the dimension spiral,’ he told the Watcher. ‘Things are looking up!’
The Watcher regarded his old/true self through unspecified eyes. ‘You’ve reached final regeneration point,’ it said in a voice no one could hear or remember. ‘That’s body’s not going to last much longer.’
‘I didn’t imagine it would,’ replied the Doctor, rummaging in the inspection hatch of the console pedestal. ‘You’ve been pestering me all afternoon.’
The Watcher was taken aback. ‘I hardly think so. I only just manifested.’
‘Did you? Oh, I thought you were masterminding everything to set up events so I’d regenerate.’
‘That’s hardly my style.’
‘It’s not mine – will it be the next chap’s style?’
‘I imagine not. Something simple would be preferable after all this effect-before-cause. But if you’re right, I have to travel back in time and manipulate you to this point before I can regenerate. That’s not exactly the wisest course of action now, is it?’
‘Well, there’s no point changing me here and now, is there? Stuck in a booby-trapped TARDIS on Logopolis with the Master on the loose… might as well wait until we get out of here. If we can get out of here.’ The Doctor took a page of calculations and peered at them. ‘An error in the dimension subroutine. Somewhere here. I will not be beaten. I simply will not be beaten… but I could certainly do with a little more help from outside,’ he added, looking up at the giant concerned faces on the scanner screen.
‘Perhaps,’ said the Watcher briskly, ‘you could bring me up to speed, Doctor?’
The Doctor’s explanations were, as always, rambling and full of digressions but since the Watcher was also the Doctor, he was able to follow his chaotic narrative. ‘A predestination paradox,’ mused the Watcher. ‘My least-favorite narrative format. So I need to not only stalk you for the last few hours, stand by and let the Master go on a murder-spree, but also pick up Nyssa?’
The Doctor was examining the circuit-boards. ‘And every moment we’re stuck in here, things get worse. In theory, reversing the sabotage is simple, but I’ve no idea which part of the code needs reversing. I don’t suppose you’d know anything useful.’
The Watcher might have shaken its head. ‘Alas, not really. I’m your subconscious mind, untampered by a single thought. Narrowing down the past is hard enough, let alone the future.’
‘Pah. It’s a poor memory that only works backwards.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. In all this chaos, somethings have become quite clear. Do you remember that time you and Romana were punting down the Cam before you got caught in a time vortex? Well, the three Doctors before you were scooped up as well. They ended up in the Death Zone itself, as well as the Next Doctor and his friends. As well as…’
‘I know.’ The Doctor cut across his companion’s voiceless words. ‘You’ve told me.’
‘Ah.’ The indistinct face turned the scanner. ‘And they say forewarned is forearmed.’
‘“The cheeseboard is the world, and the pieces the phenomena of the universe,” as my old friend Huxley used to say,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘Cheese board?’ That sounded wrong, but he remembered the right words before his future self could speak. ‘Chess board. “And the opponent makes no allowances for mistakes nor makes the smallest concession to ignorance.” I’m an ignorant old Doctor, and I’ve made a mistake.’ Not just failing to dispose of the Master, of getting caught up in this bootstrap paradox that endangered all time and space, but sabotaging his own life cycle to prove a point.
The Watcher was staring at the scanner.
‘There’s only one direction help can come from now,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘I’ll just have to sit here and wait…’
A non-existent throat was cleared and the Watcher pointed a gauze-white finger at the screen.
A screen full of coded print-out, a close-up of one particular string of numbers.
‘Ah yes! Something along those lines!’ The Doctor found the energy to haul himself upright and started to reset the controls. ‘Right, once I’ve got this back to normal size, you need to go back and do all the fiddly bits that got me here in the first place. Then return the TARDIS to its first landing point on Logopolis, I’ll meet you there. Hopefully things will have sorted out and you and I can complete our business. I’ve never really been a fan of forward-planning.’
‘Nor will you ever be, I suspect,’ said the Watcher.
The interior of the TARDIS seemed to expand in all directions yet remain perfectly intact. The strange crushing weightlessness was gone and the Doctor sagged in his heavy coat. Had he still possessed the ability to regenerate, golden light would be flickering around his hands. For a moment he almost yearned for the storm that would rewrite and rebuild him in every way.
But not yet.
The Watcher’s withered bony fingers set coordinates, retracing the TARDIS back to the Barnett Bypass, to the Thames and to Logopolis. It was taking a long time but it dared not risk a mistake. The dangers of a single wrong digit had been made utterly clear.
Outside, the Doctor had rushed off to find Adric and Nyssa who were foolishly looking for the Master. The Master instead arrived in the Central Registry, held Tegan and the Monitor hostage and had activated a glorified mute button over Logopolis. The Monitor was terrified at his Logopolitans being silenced, but the Master was unmoved; after all, he was simply cutting out noise and not hurting anyone. For once.
The Doctor, Adric and Nyssa returned to confront the Master now in the body of a former ally. The Master again shrugged off their warnings of dire consequences if the silence was maintained and disbelieved that the locals were being reduced to dust as a result.
‘If you destroy Logopolis, you unravel the whole causal nexus!’ cried the Monitor.
‘Causal nexus? You insult my intelligence.’
‘You’re interfering with the laws of cause and effect,’ the Doctor snapped bitterly. Well, quite.
At last, the Master was compelled to de-mute the planet to prove the point.
Unfortunately, it did. Logopolis remained silent. The Monitor had been telling the truth, and this brief pause had proved fatal. Without the constant computations holding the entropy at bay, the planet was starting to crumble into nothing all around them. And if the Monitor was right about that, then his fears that the universe itself would be destroyed were accurate too…
The Watcher dematerialized the TARDIS.
The time machine appeared in a thicket of trees on a hillside overlooking a motorway. The Watcher emerged and approached the rickety wooden fence. On the other side of the bypass a policeman with a bicycle was leaning against an old police box.
The box shimmered and blurred as a TARDIS performed a perfect materialization around a solid object – down to the telephone receiver in the policeman’s hand. A moment later the door swung inwards and a black-clad arm snaked out, grabbed the policeman’s arm and dragged him bodily through the door. The traffic noises drowned out the cruel chuckle and the dying gasps.
The Watcher gripped the fence tightly, furious at being unable to do more than observe. Events had to fall precisely into place or the paradox of its existence would be totally untenable. It would have wait for the right moment, and use this time to try and work out what to do about the imminent universe-destroying cataclysm. Technically all Doctors past and present, it must have some idea…
All too soon a sports car with a flat tire pulled up in the layby near the Master’s TARDIS. There the Watcher saw Tegan, just a few hours younger but completely different without the grief of loss or quite as much fear-provoked aggression. Her whole life was about to start today, but like her transport would never reach its intended destination.
As Tegan and her aunt tried to repair the flat tire, a plane shrieked overheard and masked the arrival of a second police box in the layby which then vanished again before it materialized around the Master’s TARDIS with enough force to knock off the late policeman’s bike. Two time machines inside each other, causing all sorts of dimensional anomalies. Had the Watcher a face, it would have winced.
The TARDIS door opened and the Doctor emerged, glanced around and was about to re-enter when he spotted the Watcher. The Watcher did nothing, while the Doctor froze as he silently took in the countless implications of his presence. Then, without a word, he re-entered the TARDIS.
Unaware of this, Tegan crossed to the police box in hope of finding assistance to their damaged car. She entered the TARDIS as, inside, the Master’s own ship took off. Caught in a glitch between dimensions, the Doctor and Adric would run a gauntlet of echoing console rooms and police boxes before finding themselves out on the grass outside as the glitch was resolved. Tegan, however, marveling at the impossible interior of the time machine.
The Watcher stood by as Tegan’s aunt lost patience and went to investigate the police box. Pushed open the door and stepped into the console room and found not Tegan but the Master who, laughing like a madman, advanced on her. The older woman retreated out into the street, picking up the flat tire to defend herself before a flash of orange condensed her matter and compressed her tissues until she was little more than a doll-like corpse.
No traffic paused or noticed the Master pick up the tiny body and arrange it on the driver’s seat of the car along with the similarly-miniaturized corpse of the policeman. He re-entered the TARDIS shortly before a police car pulled up, drawn by the abandoned sports car and policeman’s bicycle. Finding the tiny dead bodies would bewilder most people, but the Master’s still an internationally-known criminal. Perhaps the Inspector and his men thought these odd shapes are voodoo dolls or something? Either way, they knew two people have gone missing with the MO of a notorious serial killer.
Unsurprisingly, they were very suspicious when the Doctor arrives and confirms he just happens to know about Victor “the Magister” Master. However, they were still shaken by the whole matter sufficiently for Adric to easily distract them and he and the Doctor narrowly escaped in the TARDIS – leaving the baffled policemen struggling to break into an empty police box.
The Watcher was already leaving.
The observation was useful. The Watcher had watched the Master, the Doctor, Tegan and Adric, seen their actions, heard their words, sensed their thoughts and felt their timestreams. The patterns were coming clearer, like a jigsaw slowly approaching completion.
The Doctor, having realized the Master had successfully smuggled himself aboard the TARDIS, had come up with a desperate, angry and insane plan. He would land his TARDIS underwater and open the doors, effectively scuttling the time machine. The Doctor and Adric would swim out to begin a self-imposed exile on the Thames until the Master either came out into the open for a direct confrontation or else gave up and left them alone. It was not the Doctor’s best plan, but it was a stressful day and he was still getting used to not having Romana around to curb his lunacy.
The Watcher materialized in Chelsea near the river and walked out onto the bridge. It watched as the TARDIS appeared in mid-air and plunged down through the sky to slam into a pier ahead. A few moments later, the Doctor and Adric emerged. They exchanged a few words and grim expressions before they noticed the Watcher looking down at them.
The Watcher beckoned the Doctor. The red-clad figure told Adric to stay put and cautiously approached.
‘I take it you were trying to attract my attention?’
‘Yes, Doctor. I suppose introductions are unnecessary.’
‘Yes. And unwelcome too. I was rather counting on not seeing you any time soon.’
‘Oh? And when was that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe on a particularly boring day when there was nothing on the radio. Maybe the heat death of the universe.’
‘Well, one out of two isn’t bad.’
‘The universe is ending today? That requires quite a lot of bad luck.’
‘Indeed it does. The laws that hold the universe together are fragmenting. You and I are both part of the chain of circumstances that lead to this crisis – and, with any luck – its salvation.’
‘But I don’t come out the other side of this one then? I take it you’re not just here to make up the numbers, you’re here to bring in the new and ring out the old, et cetera, et cetera?’
‘Yes. I am your preparations for the worst, the moment it ends. And that moment is approaching.’
‘How grim. And on a leap year too! Oh well, I suppose we should get down to business.’
‘Yes. Stop trying these ridiculous antics.’
‘Ridiculous antics? I’ve got a murderous Trojan Horse aboard the TARDIS! The Master’s following us and when he was Keeper of Traken he looked through my every thought. Do you know how difficult it is to defeat your arch foe without following your own instincts? Well, yes, I suppose you do.’
‘Doctor, this is important. You need to head directly to Logopolis as planned.’
‘Logopolis?! Nonsense! That’s almost certainly what the Master wants!’
‘Indeed. Do it anyway.’
‘If I give the Master free passage to Logopolis, there’s no telling what damage he’d do!’
‘Far from it, actually. I’ve seen what happens.’
‘Watched it, did you? Your plan to save the universe is to endanger it first?’
‘I never said it was my plan, nor that I approved of it.’
‘So what should I do there? Hmm? Ask the Monitor and his people to form an orderly queue for tissue-compression elimination? Perhaps draw a map to any weapons of mass destruction? Look, old chap, we both know it was a bad decision summoning a new alternate version of myself and you’re the essence of what was and what will be. There’s no real substance to you or your arguments…’
‘So what do you intend to do instead, Doctor?’
‘Well… All right. I’ll go to Logopolis. A planet of mathematicians with ties to Gallifrey? As good a place to leave Adric as any. I’ll pretend I’m there for the chameleon conversion and then I’ll be straight off. If I’m quick, the Master won’t have a chance to step outside and even if he does, he’ll have a choice – going after me or conquering the universe. And we all know what he’d choose.’
‘You cannot change your own future, Doctor, anymore than you can change your own past.’
‘Can’t? There’s no such word as can’t! Besides, where’s your guarantee I even have a future?’
‘Remember Lord Tennyson?’
‘Young Alfred? Why, what about him?’
‘Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be…’
Three sets of memories, each forgotten and out of synch with the timelines, briefly washed up into the Watcher’s consciousness and shared with the true Doctor for the briefest of brief moments.
The Dark Tower in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. What are these young people doing in his TARDIS? They say the TARDIS belongs to the young, helpless man unconscious on floor. Regeneration? Fourth – so goodness me, that means there are five of them now! The young man says he’s Turlough and the colourful Australian woman insolently introduces herself as Tegan Jovanka, and she clearly understands that the Doctor can change his face. She’s seen it with her own eyes.
And she tells him that the Master is out there, she knows and hates him for past encounters.
The Master, so much older and crueler than the ones he’s met in his first three lives, slaughtering Cybermen with a body that not born of Gallifrey. Of course he is playing every side against each other while he cares only for himself and his own rewards. The prize of immortality, of survival, well, what else would anyone in the Death Zone crave?
And as the Master holds the Doctor – Doctors – are gunpoint, he says those terrible words.
‘Killing you once was never enough for me, Doctor. How gratifying to do it three times over!'
There are only four Doctors there, the first three and the fifth. The fourth’s got diverted off somewhere. The Brigadier punches the Master’s lights out and everything ends as well as ever and they get out of the Death Zone but that doesn’t change what the Master told them.
He killed the Doctor. His old friend would kill him. Not just a threat but actually killing him.
The First Doctor gladly dismisses it as part of his overcomplicated future.
The Second Doctor feels put out he was getting blamed for being rude to the Master when he had no idea the bearded blackguard was even involved in this mess.
The Third Doctor, the one who’s faced the Master the most, assumes he is the one who will die.
The Fourth Doctor isn’t there.
The Fifth Doctor doesn’t comment.
And if the First Doctor died in the snow with the Cybermen, if the Second Doctor was flung into spinning darkness by the Time Lords, if the Third Doctor was dried out by the radiation of blue crystals and the Fifth Doctor came afterwards, then there can only be one possible outcome.
The Master will kill him.
He will regenerate from the Fourth Doctor to the Fifth Doctor.
He will travel with Tegan and Turlough.
And, at the beginning and end of it all, the Death Zone is waiting.
The Doctor looked as pale and gaunt as the paste-coloured figure before him. His hearts hammered violently in his chest, but he remained as motionless as the spectre of days to come. Already that jumble of memories, something about meeting himself several times over, was fading from his memory.
Only those words, that face he suddenly recognized as Tremas, lingered.
Killing you once was never enough for me, Doctor…
‘So he finally does it,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I never thought he had it in him to tell you the truth. Still, I can at least choose where and when and who isn’t caught in the crossfire. I’ll see you on the other side then, I suppose. I’m sure we can both be patient.’
The Doctor turned on his heel and headed back down to the pier where Adric and the TARDIS were waiting. The Watcher waited until the police box dematerialized before turning back to the waiting time machine. By now the Doctor would be vaguely-outlining his plan to dump Adric and run, maybe even thinking the future was escapable until he saw Tegan Jovanka was aboard the TARDIS. The companion of a Doctor who didn’t exist yet, an enemy of the Master, another herald of the approaching end.
One last trip to ensure the past and future synched up.
The TARDIS communication circuits still held the last incoming message, a cry for help from Traken.
‘Doctor? Adric? This is Nyssa of Traken, calling the Doctor’s TARDIS. My father Tremas has disappeared from Traken and no one, not even the Keeper can tell me what has happened to him. He disappeared minutes after you both left here defeating the Melkur. Doctor, I’m begging you, help me find him. Please, I’ll do anything. You’re the only chance Tremas has left! Attached are the relevant coordinates to come and collect me from Traken. Please respond at once!’
The Watcher punched in the coordinates with long-nailed white talons and the TARDIS forced its way back into reality in the middle of Consul Tremas’ quarters. It pulled the red door lever and stood back, waiting for the next line of destiny to be drawn.
‘Doctor? Adric?’
Nyssa stepped cautiously through the doorway, looking around the control room for her friends.
The Watcher closed the doors and activated the fast return protocols to take them to Logopolis. It was aware of Nyssa staring at it with wonder and concern. ‘Are you a friend of the Doctor’s?’
‘Yes, something like that,’ the Watcher replied knowing Nyssa could only understand vague and general impressions. Communicating with anyone other than the true Doctor was like trying to speak in two different languages simultaneously down a bad telephone line. ‘He picked up your message and sent me to collect you. The Doctor and Adric are on a planet called Logopolis and you can meet them there. They’ll help you find out what happened to your father.’
The Watcher thought of Tremas, of how Nyssa would react as she realized her father’s corpse was being worn like a second-hand suit by his murderer. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and the heartache Nyssa felt now was not going to be improved by the catastrophe they were hurtling towards.
‘Please,’ Nyssa insisted. ‘Whatever else happens, I have to know what’s happened to my father!’
The Watcher focused on materializing the TARDIS in a small cleft of rock not far away from where the earlier version of the TARDIS stood. By now, the Doctor would have slipped inside intended to repair the chameleon circuits and then run for the outskirts of eternity, leaving a bewildered and resentful Tegan and Adric in the care of the Monitor.
The best laid schemes of mice and Kraals gang aft agley.
The doors opened and the Watcher followed Nyssa out onto the surface of Logopolis. ‘Adric should be around here,’ it told Nyssa. ‘Why not give him a shout?’
‘Adric?’ Nyssa called out obediently, looking around. ‘Adric?’
The Watcher shifted away, seeking a vantage point as the Alzarian arrived to meet Nyssa.
The Master’s booby-trap was sprung. The TARDIS flickered with vivid electric blue light, shrinking and dwindling in a dimensional spiral, crushing the Doctor to the point his subconscious generated the Watcher in the first place.
The Watcher moved silently through the streets, letting the drama continue. It did not linger in any place one too long, ignored by the devoted Logopolitons as they worked. At the end of the street, it saw Adric and the Monitor realize what had gone wrong with the calculations and rush off to the Central Register. Things were falling into place, the past finally catching up with the present.
Another street corner, and the Watcher passed Adric again. This time he was Nyssa and they both followed in pursuit. The Watcher set off to a particular street where the Master was waiting to lure a different trap, one that would risk destroying the entire universe.
In theory, it was all the Watcher’s fault this was happening.
In practice, well, that remained to be seen.
The timestreams were synchronous once again. The Watcher drifted through the emptying streets of crumbling stone. At the other end, the Doctor was berating Adric and Nyssa for recklessly trying to hunt down the Master when they spotted the Watcher’s approach.
‘That’s the man who brought me from Traken,’ murmured Nyssa. ‘He said he was a friend of yours.’
‘But he’s the man on the bridge!’ Adric protested, still believing the white figure to be the Master.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor simply, avoiding the gaze of his future.
‘You said to be prepared for the worst,’ Adric continued.
‘Indeed I did – and I am prepared for the worst.’
‘Why are you prepared for the worst, Doctor?’
‘Because he’s here,’ said the Time Lord quietly, and set off back to the Central Registry.
The Watcher returned to the TARDIS and relocated back to the plateau. Cracks were spiderwebbing the stones and the outer streets of the town were collapsing into clouds of choking pink dust. The Doctor, the Master, Adric, Tegan, Nyssa and the Monitor were present but even as the scanner shutter rose, the Watcher could see the Monitor sneaking away on one final quest to salvage the situation.
It was all unfolding predictably. The Doctor was out of options and asking the Master for help to try and prevent the entropy field destroy the universe, even though he knew he was signing his own death warrant. The Monitor was working to re-open the CVEs with the untested back-up programs. And Adric, Tegan and Nyssa were scared, confused and desperate to help.
The Watcher pulled the door lever and the three young people trooped into the control room. Tegan came to a sharp halt as she saw the pale figure for the first time. Adric and Nyssa were used to its appearance but were still wary and uncomfortable.
‘This is the guy who’s going to be looking after us?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘He hasn’t tried to harm anyone,’ Nyssa pointed out.
Adric glowered. ‘No, he just stands and watches. Nothing else.’
‘I think I’ll take my chances with the doers rather than the watchers,’ said Tegan, turning on her heel. ‘You lot can hide in here with that thing, but the Doctor needs help!’
Adric ran after her out of the TARDIS. The Watcher knew Tegan’s future stretched further than Adric’s or Nyssa’s, and that she was probably the safest one to leave on Logopolis. And she was right, the Doctor would need some advantage over the Master.
As soon as Adric was back inside, the Watcher closed the doors and dematerialized.
The first thing to do now was reconfigure the TARDIS into a time-cone inverter and then isolate as much of space-time as possible, effectively slowly the halt of the entropy wave across reality. The Master would already have come to the same conclusion and be doing the same; between them, the universe’s destruction could be delayed for a few days, long enough for the Monitor’s plan to succeed.
There was, of course, the question of all the entropic decay already loose in reality.
The Watcher knew how that could be resolved, and that Nyssa’s suffering was far from over.
Adric and Nyssa, uncomfortable in the Watcher’s uncertain presence, had retreated to the corridor outside as the TARDIS hurled itself outside time and space to the hovering nothingness above the universe. They were retreating into the depths of the TARDIS, trying to cope with the sudden turnaround of events and wandering what would happen next.
Down in the real universe, the new Keeper of Traken had made his first and last great decision. Evacuating most of his population to the edges of the constellation, the Keeper was using the bio-energy storm of the Source to nullify the entropy wave. Traken and the entropy would cancel each out, saving the universe at the sacrifice of a civilization. It was as noble as it was tragic.
Poor Nyssa would not be left the last Trakenite in the universe, but she would lose everything else.
Should she witness it first-hand or hear of it later?
Subdued, the Watcher headed to the Cloister Room where Adric and Nyssa were there. He stood at the edge of the walkways and beckoned Adric, who cautiously approached. Communicating with linear-locked beings was no easier with practice.
‘Adric,’ said the Watcher in the closest thing it had to a voice which happened to sound exactly like the Doctor. ‘I need your help for what happens next.’
‘What does happen next?’ asked Adric impatiently. ‘How do you know? And who are you, anyway?’
‘You know who I am, Adric, you just haven’t realized it yet. Now the important thing is that the Monitor on Logopolis duplicated the Pharos Project as part of their efforts to save the universe. Entropy is loose on Logopolis, so the antenna will be useless.’
‘What about the real Pharos Project? Could that be used?’
‘Yes, which is why we need to go there. Reconnect the coordinate sub-system and get us to Sector 80-23 of the Third Quadrant. The Earth’s galaxy will be safe for a few more hours but we must hurry. You can pilot the TARDIS, you’re better at this than you’d think.’
‘Why can’t you pilot the TARDIS?’
‘Because you and Nyssa need to be in the control room when the time comes.’
‘Time comes for what?’
‘Battle stations.’
Adric nodded and returned to Nyssa. By the time he reached her, all the precise details of their conversation had melted away like a dream. Only the salient facts remained and, disconcerted, Adric became as secretive and evasive as the Doctor had been after he had spoken to the Watcher.
‘Well, what did he want?’ asked Nyssa urgently. ‘What did he say to you?’
Adric glanced back at the Watcher. ‘It’s as if he knows what's going to happen…’
‘But what did he say to you, Adric?’
‘Come on, we’ve got work to do…’
The Watcher remained in the Cloisters. It pained it too much to witness Nyssa’s grief, or her desperate steeling resolve when the Keeper’s sacrifice became known. Instead it waited until the TARDIS flipped back into reality and the Watcher blazed obsidian black in the pale grey of the Cloisters as positive and negative fought for balance.
Finally the TARDIS wheezed into existence in the Pharos Compound. By the time the Watcher had returned to the control room, Adric and Nyssa had already left to provide whatever assistance they could. It would probably be diversionary tactics, but all the Doctor and the Master needed. The Watcher had kept its presence and the implications of its existence from the renegade.
The brutal fact was that future with Tegan and Turlough was potential, not certain.
The Watcher opened the door and gazed out at the cluster of low offices and research labs in the scrubland surrounding the antennae of the radio telescope. It sensed the Doctor behind one of those windows, gazing directly back at him through the early morning sunshine.
Killing you once was never enough for me, Doctor…
It was obvious that the moment the Master gained the upper hand he would betray the Doctor and seize the first opportunity to conquer everything. If the CVE-program worked, the Master would have access to a kill-switch that could destroy all reality. Would he really try and blackmail the universe? Or was he just looking for an excuse to end everything, deliberately this time?
Yes, the Watcher and the Doctor could both imagine the Master broadcasting a ransom to all of creation, knowing no one would accept his rule. Just so that everyone would know it was he who had damned them all when the entropy shredded their atoms.
There was a way out of this that led to Rassilon’s Tomb. But which way was that?
The Watcher returned inside the TARDIS and relocated it quietly to a small paddock closer to the base of the radio telescope, the door open and engines running ready for a quick getaway. Above, the blue sky was filled with the booming voice of the Master as he declared his provocative ultimatum.
The Watcher stood in the shadows of the girders and struts supporting the antennae, losing what definition and reality it had possessed. History was catching up with it. Far up above, the Master’s TCE was aimed at the Fourth Doctor, as he might one day threaten the First, Second and Third. But with one last flourish of free will and uncertainty, the Doctor ran out into the gantry.
He’ll have a choice – going after me or conquering the universe. And we all know what he’d choose.
The Master chose the Doctor. He realigned the antennae, and the gantry with the Doctor tipped sideways. Maybe the Doctor might have been able to climb to safety, but he chose instead to focus on removing the data cable and with it the Master’s power over the CVE.
The universe was saved. The Master was defeated.
And the Doctor?
He was dangling hundreds of feet above, clinging to a cable with sagging strength as his old body – already worn thin before the entropy began to nibble at him – started to give up the ghost. Would the cable or his grasp be the first to snap? How many enemies and foes had the Fourth Doctor defeated, only for it to end like this, Mistress Gravity doing her worst?
Killing you once was never enough for me, Doctor…
Why not? Why wasn’t that enough?
Because the Master didn’t kill the Doctor.
The Doctor wasn’t going to fall, he was going to let go. No one, not even destiny, told the Doctor what to do. Let the Master delude himself that this was a victory, a success, because the Doctor had been preparing for this a long time ago.
To prove his point, the Doctor swung from the cable to grab onto a metal pylon and curled his hands around the bar. He could have got out of this another way. It didn’t have to end like this. The Master wasn’t the one to decide the outcome now, any more than he’d be in the Death Zone.
The Fourth Doctor let go.
Romana, if she had been there, would have shaken her head wearily to see it end like this. Because of course the Doctor would refuse to die neatly in bed with a cup of tea and K9 reading Beatrix Potter. Even when his body was on the verge of death, he needed drop ninety feet and break every last bone in his body in a mix of childish spite and stubbornness. And of course only the Doctor’s personal portent of doom would need to risk destroying half the universe to add gravitas to proceedings.
The Watcher wondered where Romana and K9 were now and what they were doing. Or Leela or Harry or Sharon or Sarah Jane Smith or the Brigadier and all the others. Similar thoughts were flickering through the dying brain of the Doctor. It was getting hard to disentangle the pair of them, but then that was the point of the exercise.
The Watcher remained where it was, just a short distance away in the shadows. The Doctor was on the brink of death, but a reward for his sacrifice was a last chance to look at the friends of his new self. The Doctor wasn’t going to die alone, not yet.
‘It’s the end… but the moment has been prepared for.’
Someone or something lifted the Doctor’s left arm towards the Watcher and the time for watching was well and truly over. The regeneration process was now in motion, all the players were present and the Watcher and the Doctor were becoming closer and closer, until they were one and a brand new Time Lord with another eight regenerations would take their place.
‘The Watcher!’ Adric was calling.
‘He was the Doctor all the time,’ Nyssa was explaining for Tegan’s benefit.
Finally the two of them touched, the two of them were complete, the two of them were one, the two of them cancelled each other out, and then there was just the Fifth Doctor smiling the affectionate smile of someone who’s never going to do anything as stupid as creating a Watcher ever again.
And then that smile faded from his brand new face as he realized that while the moment had been prepared for, it was far from being all over…