Chapter Text
Clara Oswald sank into the Doctor’s easy chair and closed her eyes as she tried to relax.
It had been a long few days. The Doctor had finally made good on a promise to take her skiing at the Olympus Mons Resort. Hurtling down the slopes on post-terraformed Mars several millennia into her future had been an amazing experience — easily in the top ten of her many amazing experiences with the Doctor — but it had also been a mixed blessing.
Oh, she had enjoyed herself tremendously, and had been frankly gobsmacked at seeing the Doctor execute some amazing moves he claimed had been taught to him by Jean-Claude Killy — though her own skiing didn’t pass without compliment from the Doctor, either. She’d also been amazed at the form-fitting ski suit he’d gotten made especially for her by Edith Head, who designed the costumes for some of her favourite Hollywood films. Though, truth be told, she thought the Doctor didn’t look half-bad in his ski suit, either.
Yeah, it had been fun. And the après-ski scene had been amazing; she’d even coaxed the Doctor onto the dance floor a couple of times. She found that, while the Doctor wasn’t particularly graceful at any of the “modern” dances (then again, neither was she), when the time came to do a waltz and — surprisingly — a tango, they were almost perfectly in synch with each other.
It had been a fantastic holiday, easily rivalling the Orient Express in space, in more ways than one (and minus the angst). After finding herself gazing into the Doctor’s eyes once too often, Clara reflected that, if theirs had been a standard relationship, the whole thing might have ended like one of the old Harlequin Romance novels her gran liked to read. But that wasn’t how she and the Doctor rolled. Instead, they spent their evenings on a balcony sipping Space Champagne (well, that’s what she called it, anyway), watching Phobos and Deimos spin through the Martian heavens, the Doctor’s hypnotic voice recounting the time he once defeated an alien overlord who’d transformed one of the moons into a giant spaceship. For Clara, that was enough for a perfect moment, one she’d have been happy to be time-looped in forever.
But now Clara was paying for it. Sore back, sore feet, sore legs, sore … well, you get the picture. Even the deep softness of her bed aboard the TARDIS wasn’t enough and she’d found herself unable to sleep. The Doctor, wide awake as ever, guided her to his easy chair in the console room.
The luxurious softness of the Doctor’s chair was like heaven (he’d muttered something about it being inhabited by a colony of semi-sentient massage microbes, or something. She’d been too tired to pay attention). She just closed her eyes and let the massage microbes do their magic and, before long, she found herself walking alongside the Doctor in 1795 London, hands intertwined as they explored the Frost Fair. A pleasant memory replaying itself in a dream. She wished they could have stayed there forever.
Everything was perfect until, suddenly, London’s sky was filled with the squeal of something that sounded like a crossbreeding of a giant mosquito and a screaming goat.
Jarred back to the present, Clara’s eyelids popped open. “What the hell? Not now!” Clara muttered, annoyed at the noise and at the Doctor’s apparent and sudden loss of guitar-playing ability. Normally, she found the bluesy tones he tended to favour playing within the TARDIS — at least when she was around — soothing, even sexy and someday she intended to tell him so. Right now, however, his playing sounded to her ears like a pregnant yak with pernicious anemia with her tail stuck in the jaws of an alligator with acid reflux disease and piles. The fact he’d decided to start playing just as her dream was reaching the good part made her even more annoyed.
Clara pulled herself out of the chair and leaned over the railing. “Doctor, what the hell are you doing?” she yelled. She had to yell to be heard over a Magpie Electricals speaker that had been cranked to eleven. That isn’t a euphemism: the Doctor had literally rewired the damn thing so that it actually went up to eleven.
It wasn’t until a break in the notes arrived that the Doctor realized that a grumpy five-foot-one swearing machine was operating at full bore behind him.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Clara. Did I wake you?” the Doctor said, in all innocence.
Clara came down the steps and glared at him.
“Look me in the eye and ask me that again,” she said, menacingly. “What was that noise?”
“That, my dear Clara, was rock and roll!”
“No it wasn’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“No it wasn’t. You might think that was rock and roll. But it was just noise. I know you can play better than that. I’ve heard you. Your ‘Amazing Grace’ is, well, amazing, and I’ve heard you playing around lately with a really nice melody that sounds like a love song.”
“It is,” the Doctor said sheepishly.
“Who for?” she teased.
The Doctor quickly changed the subject. “Okay, Miss Oswald, if that wasn’t rock and roll, than what is?”
“You know: Elvis. Chuck Berry. The early Beatles. Cliff Richard. Bill Haley.”
“I wouldn’t expect someone of your age to even know most of those names.”
“Are you kidding? Hello, I’m the kid who had a poster of a Roman philosopher on my wall while everyone else had the Spice Girls, remember? One of my prized possessions is still that Sun Records 45 of ‘I Walk the Line’ that you got Johnny Cash to autograph for me as a birthday present before he’d even recorded it. And you still owe me one Sinatra concert, my friend. And anyway, it’s part of my family history; my gran was at the Battle of Waterloo!”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Okay, you just said that. Your gran is nowhere near that old unless you’ve been lying to me about your age.”
“No, the Second Battle of Waterloo. Waterloo Station in 1957 when Bill Haley arrived for his first big tour of the U.K. Thousands mobbed the station and the poor guy. My gran still talks about it.”
The Doctor was impressed, and it gave him an idea. “Would you like to see it for yourself? We might even catch a glimpse of your gran.”
Clara’s curiosity overrode her fatigue and her sore backside. “Why not?”
“I thought you were knackered after the skiing.”
“I don’t think I’m likely to get much sleep with that racket you’re playing. Let me grab a couple of Tylenol and put on something more suitable for 1957. And you, ‘Dr. Disco,’ might want to find something more period-appropriate, too.”
“Clara, you don’t mean …”
“Oh yeah. You gotta wear a tie!”
***
The TARDIS emerged from the vortex in an alleyway a couple of blocks from Waterloo Station on 5th February 1957. Clara emerged first wearing a red and white sweater over top of a white skirt that ended just below her knees. She’d intended to go bare-legged except for the iconic bobby socks, but the Doctor had warned her the midwinter weather in London would likely be chilly, so she opted for flesh-coloured tights; anyone getting close enough to tell the difference would have to get through her “Uncle John” first, anyway.
The Doctor had bristled at the suggested alias and Clara had to reassure him it was nothing personal, but would limit the questions. He’d switched out his usual hoodie and shirt ensemble for a black velvet outfit. He’d wanted to go with the burgundy one that Clara liked, but she said he was about ten years too early for that look. And, much to his chagrin, his usually tie-less existence had now been rudely interrupted with a bland-looking piece of Windsor-knotted cloth around his neck. It had been so long since he’d worn one that Clara had had to tie it for him. It took several attempts to get it right; she’d never tell the Doctor she muffed it intentionally, just to have the excuse to spend a little more time in what was for all intents and purposes a clinch. If only the Doctor hadn’t insisted on keeping his hands to himself…
As the Doctor closed the TARDIS door, two things struck him. The first: that this was the first time in many years that he’d visited a place where the TARDIS’ police box disguise was actually appropriate. The second: considering a near riot was supposed to ensue — according to his calculations, within about fifteen minutes, just a couple of blocks away — it was awfully peaceful.
Clara noticed this, too. “Maybe things don’t pick up till Haley’s train arrives at the station,” she suggested. “Are you sure we’re at the right date? It’s not actually 2026 and we’re on some alien space station that just happens to look like 1950s London?”
The Doctor took a deep lungful of London air and instantly regretted it. He coughed loudly. “I’m pretty sure.”
As the couple got closer to Waterloo Station, the more concerned Clara became. Ignoring the Doctor’s assurances that this was indeed 5th February 1957, she ducked into a newsagent and took a peek at a front page. The date jived, and she checked a clock disguised as an advert for Pepsi and it seemed to be the right time she remembered from Gran’s stories: Haley’s train was due to arrive at 2 p.m. and it was about 1:45.
The Doctor and Clara arrived at Waterloo Station to find the place bustling — but no more so than one would expect midway through a Tuesday afternoon prior to the start of the rush. Clara checked the arrivals board and saw a Southampton train scheduled to arrive at 2 p.m. Only five minutes to go.
The Doctor scoffed a bit as he looked around. “Maybe they’re about to throw the world’s largest surprise party and they’re all hiding behind that tree over there? Otherwise, this is the lamest battle I’ve ever been to. No cannon. No horseback riders with swords. The best I can hope for is that one of these commuters has a deep-seated Napoleon complex.”
“I don’t understand, Doctor. I have the date and the time right. This place should be wall-to-wall kids, screaming their heads off.”
The train arrived, right on schedule. A conductor popped open the door to the first passenger car and started helping people offload. As the Doctor stood back, Clara approached the man. “Excuse me. Is Bill Haley on this train?”
The elderly conductor cocked an ear. “Bill Haney?”
“No, Bill Haley, the American rock and roll star. Is he on this train?”
“No, ma’am. Never heard of Bill Haley. One other thing, ma’am: what’s rock and roll?”
***
In silence, the Doctor and Clara returned to the TARDIS. The Doctor seemed somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing. “Maybe your gran misremembered another event. The memory does cheat, you know, Clara.”
“No, Doctor, I know this date by heart and I’ve even seen the newsreel footage on YouTube,” Clara said. “That spot where we spoke to the conductor should have been packed with news photographers.”
The Doctor pressed a switch and spun a monitor towards Clara and, reading his thoughts, she called up a browser window. She knew the Doctor had just linked the TARDIS into the Internet from the late 2010s.
Search engine queries for “Second Battle of Waterloo” came up blank. Searching for “Bill Haley” was almost as bad. There were some references to Haley being a country singer before he’d recorded “Rock Around the Clock,” which Clara also knew, but she could find no reference to him ever having a hit with that song. In fact, according to Wikipedia, other than recording a few minor hits in 1952 and 1953, Bill Haley spent his life in radio as a disc jockey. She typed in “Rock Around the Clock” but could only find reference to a version from early 1954 recorded by some group called Sonny Dae and His Knights.
“Doctor, I don’t understand …” Clara began, but she stopped short when she noticed an odd look on the Doctor’s face. He was standing next to the Magpie amplifier he usually rested his electric guitar on. But there was no sign of it anywhere.
“Doctor …” she began again. “Where’s your guitar?”
“My guitar is gone because it would seem it never existed. It would appear musical history has been altered, and that means the universe could be at stake.”
“Overselling it a bit, aren’t we?”
“Temporal effects usually do not impact objects within the TARDIS. I have things in here taken from non-fixed moments in time that have been altered, and they are still here, even though in some cases the very planets they came from never existed.”
“Cheery thought.”
“What I’m getting at is, if it’s gone, that means my guitar wasn’t protected. Which means a fixed point is being messed with. The trick now is finding out where the divergent point is and undoing the damage.”
“How do we do that?” Clara asked.
“Quickly, Clara, tell me everything you remember about Bill Haley.”
Clara Oswald, Blackpool’s onetime queen of Trivial Pursuit, thought through any memorized trivia about Haley that came to mind.
“Started out singing country music in the 1940s. Blind in one eye and adopted an odd hairstyle to distract people from that. Started singing songs that we’d consider rock and roll around 1951 with a group called the Saddlemen that he renamed the Comets based upon a common American mispronunciation of Halley’s name. People consider him the founder of rock and roll because ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was used in a movie called Blackboard Jungle in 1955…”
“That’s it, Clara! You just said you couldn’t find any major references to him doing ‘Rock Around the Clock.’ Look up Elvis.”
Clara typed in the name. According to an online bio on a website devoted to obscure singers of the 1950s, Presley’s career flatlined in early 1956 because he wasn’t able to establish a national foothold on the charts. One article was titled: “Lost opportunity: how an obscure singer from Memphis could have sparked a musical revolution.”
She read the first few paragraphs and got the gist: Elvis was considered too wild, too sexual, for audiences of the day. People were used to the likes of Perry Como and Frank Sinatra, but they were not prepared for Presley’s wild gyrations. He’d been banned from national television after his very first appearance and RCA Records cancelled plans to release an album after his recording of “Heartbreak Hotel” was blocked on radio stations coast to coast.
“Okay, Doctor, this isn’t how things played out at all and you know it.”
“Rose and I once tried to get in to see Elvis performing on the Ed Sullivan Show before we were, uh, sidetracked, and River dated him during his Vegas era, so you don’t need to convince me.”
“River Song dated Elvis.”
“Priscilla turned her down.”
Clara’s eyes went into “Oooo-kaaay, moving along” mode. “So, anyway, something prevented Haley from recording ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and this sort of caused a domino effect?”
“Must be,” the Doctor said. “Maybe ‘Rock Around the Clock’ made audiences more receptive to the type of sexier stuff Elvis did later. And without Elvis to push it further, the rock and roll movement petered out. Hence, my guitar evaporating into the ether.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t suppose you remember what day ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was recorded, do you?”
***
Milt Gabler stalked back and forth in the control room at the Pythian Temple, a onetime fraternal-order temple-turned-recording studio in the heart of mid-1950s Manhattan, adding to the already-impressive groove in the carpet. Not for the first time, Gabler wondered if the venue wasn’t jinxed by the ghost of some long-dead Knight of Pythias who didn’t like the idea of it being used by Decca Records to record “pop” music. And not for the first time, the balding middle-aged record producer wished he’d stuck to jazz.
“Where the hell are they?” he scowled.
This was unacceptable. When Decca had signed Bill Haley and His Comets a few weeks earlier, right from under Dave Miller’s nose at Essex, he’d been promised a polished, professional group. A replacement for Louis Jordan who’d recently jumped ship for Aladdin. Gabler had been Jordan’s producer for years. He was the man who made Billie Holiday, the Andrews Sisters, even Red Foley, for Christ’s sake. And here he was sticking his neck out for some two-bit swing band out of Chester, Pennsylvania, that played a weird hybrid of rhythm and blues, Dixieland and hillbilly, and couldn’t even be relied on to show up for their first big-time recording session.
“That’s it,” he said to his secretary. “I’m giving them two more hours and if they’re not here, I’m giving their spot to that other new guy, Sammy Davison Jr., or whatever-his-name is.”
***
“What do you mean, we’re stuck on a sandbar?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Haley, nothing much we can do until a tugboat arrives.”
Bill Haley slapped his hand against the hood of a car and stalked back to were his cohorts sat looking out on the Delaware River. He was a tall man with a round face topped with a curl of dark hair that he’d adopted as a gimmick back when he was a yodelling champion. He’d kept it when his manager had suggested it drew attention away from a blind, sometimes wandering eye that he’d had since a doctor messed up an operation when he was a toddler.
Normally, Haley had a jovial face, but there was little to be happy about. They were already late for the recording session as it was, but getting stuck on a ferry in the middle of the Delaware meant the odds of them arriving in time to get any work done was rapidly dropping to nil.
“So remind me; whose smart idea was it to take a ferry instead of driving up to Philly and using a bridge?” he addressed the five men.
Billy Williamson, his stocky, always-jocular steel guitar player, pointed at Johnny Grande with his slight mustache and Ricardo Montalban-esque complexion that helped sell his skill as a piano player. Johnny pointed at Marshall Lytle, the bass player, whose pencil-thin mustache made him look a bit older than his years. Marshall pointed at Joey Ambrose, the Comets’ tenor saxophone player and the “baby” of the group (having just turned twenty), who liked to joke that he was short of stature, but long on hot air. Joey pointed to the athletic dark-haired man sitting next to him — the band’s drummer, Dick Richards. Dick pointed at a seagull that had landed on the rail nearby.
“Very funny,” Haley said. “Well, boys, joke all you like, but we’re screwed if they don’t get us off this sandbar pretty damn quick.”
***
On the New Jersey side of the river, an overweight, balding man stood sentinel on a small pier. There was no one else nearby, but, if there had been, it’s unlikely they would have noticed much about the man. Except perhaps his mode of dress. Although the region was not devoid of monasteries, even in the 1950s, the old-fashioned medieval-style robes — and tonsure haircut — certainly were.
They also might not have paid much attention to the binoculars the man had in his hands, though, if they’d gotten close enough to take a look, they might have been puzzled at the fact they were like no binoculars they’d ever seen — and likely would not see for another few centuries, at least.
The man held the binoculars up to his eyes, focused on the ferry stuck mid-river and flicked a switch that began to broadcast amplified sound to a Bluetooth earpiece.
“If we don’t get to New York in time for this recording session, we won’t get another chance,” he heard the human named Bill Haley say.
The man smiled. Everything was going according to plan. It had been a simple matter to adjust the ferry’s course by remote control, sending it aground on the sandbar nearly exactly halfway across the river. Soon the cultural history of Earth would be shunted onto another track. After all, they didn’t call him the Meddling Monk for nothing.
His only question now was: where was the Doctor?