‘I really am so sorry,’ she said truthfully.
He looked right at her, and the disappointment in his gaze was worse than the anger.
‘That was murder,’ he said baldly.
Harriet squared up.
‘That was defence. Defence that’s been adapted from alien technology. A ship that fell to Earth ten years ago.’
‘But they were leaving.’
‘You saw the way their leader broke his word to you moments after he’d sworn it. You said yourself, Doctor: they’d go back to the stars and tell others about the Earth.’ Harriet gazed up at him with a sudden anger. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but you’re not here all the time. You come and go, and sometimes people die. It happened today: Mr Llewellyn and the Major, they were murdered. They died right in front of me while you lay sleeping. And if you’re not here, we have to defend ourselves.’
The Doctor stared at her. ‘Britain’s Golden Age,’ he said, his tone dripping with contempt.
‘It comes with a price,’ she shot back.
They stared at one another for a long moment. Then the Doctor shook his head.
‘I gave them the the wrong warning,’ he said. ‘I should’ve told them to run, as fast as they can… to run and hide because the monsters are coming: the human race!’
‘Those are the people I represent!’ Quivering in self-righteous anger, Harriet Jones pointed at the Doctor’s friends. ‘I acted on their behalf.’
‘Then I should’ve stopped you,’ said the Doctor.
‘Then what does that make you, Doctor?’ she demanded. ‘Another alien threat?’
The Doctor took a step forward at that. ‘Don’t challenge me, Harriet Jones.’Cos I’m a completely new man. And I don’t need swordfights to beat you. I’m stronger than that. I could bring down your government with a single word.’
Harriet remained unbowed. ‘You’re the most remarkable man I’ve ever met, but I don’t think you’re quite capable of that.’
‘No, you’re right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not a single word…’ He counted out on his fingers. ‘Just six.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Six words.’
‘Stop it!’
‘Six,’ the Doctor repeated, walking around her, not taking his eyes from her.
She held his gaze, trying not to show her fear. She felt a sudden urge to cough. But she would not yield. They both held each other’s gaze, and neither would back down.
Then, still keeping his eyes fixed on Harriet, the Doctor moved, slowly and carefully, towards Alex.
And Harriet felt scared; scared, because this ruthlessness in him: this really was new.
Without taking his eyes from the Prime Minister, the Doctor motioned for Alex to take off his earpiece. Then he simply whispered, straight into his ear: ‘Don’t you think she looks tired?’
And he walked straight off, briskly, calling out to the others, ‘Come on! We’re going!’
The Doctor, Mickey, Rose and Jackie walked off down the street, leaving Harriet Jones behind them.
She rushed up to Alex. ‘What did he say? Well? What did he tell you?’
Awkwardly, Alex shrugged. ‘It… was nothing, really.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing! I don’t know!’
Harriet turned from him, harried and alarmed. ‘Doctor!’ she shouted after him. ‘What did you say?’
The Doctor ignored her, and the others followed suit, leaving her alone, leaving her desperately calling after him; shouting over and over the words that could change nothing now: ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry!’
20
All I Want for Christmas Is You
The wardrobe in the TARDIS is vast. Self-cleaning, entirely crammed with every conceivable type of outfit for most occasions, from Vyxar System state balls, which lasted anything up to four lunar rotations, to anything that might help you out at a Romansch evensong.
The Doctor picked up a soldier’s uniform. Absolutely not. He looked around, unsure. He needed something to blend in… something he could run in, if running was required, and in his lengthy experience, running was often required. Something that would suit him. Or did he care about that? He wasn’t sure. He grabbed a red hussar jacket. No. But no more black. What colour was his hair again? Brown, Rose had said. Not ginger, but … OK. Brown then. He glanced up and down—and then he saw a slim-cut brown pinstriped suit and snatched it from the rack. He’d never been able to get into it before. But maybe now…
He tried it on. Oh yes. He—quite wrongly—did not consider himself to be a vain man, but turning around in front of the mirror, he couldn’t help but admire the effect. Yes. This would definitely do. He ran his tongue over his strange new teeth one last time. Then he squinted. His reflection looked a little fuzzy. That was odd. But he was going to be late for dinner.
Mickey was carving the turkey—very badly—and Rose was serving the sprouts as the Doctor walked quietly into the house.
The delighted look on Rose’s face told him all he needed to know. The relief this brought was like warm water sluicing through him. The Sycorax hadn’t worried him much—not for a second. However, the possibility that Rose of all people—that Rose, his heart of the TARDIS, might not recognise him, nor accept him… He would never have admitted to himself how close to an unbearable thought that was.
They sat down at the table and he pulled a cracker with her. She screamed, absurdly. He won, but handed her the bigger half anyway, because he liked to see her smile, and she did. She pulled out the party hat.
‘It’s pink! Mum, it should be yours!’
Jackie smiled as Rose put the hat on anyway, laughing. It wasn’t pink, thought the Doctor. It was rose. Then he stopped himself. He felt mushy. He didn’t want to be mushy. What was he even doing, sitting down for Christmas lunch? This wasn’t him. This wasn’t his family. And he didn’t play happy families. Not any more.
Mickey was watching them both, his festive mood vanishing in an instant. The Doctor, sat there wearing his new body, looked like he’d had his feet under the table here for years. The way Rose was laughing…
On his part, the Doctor watched Rose laugh and felt a faint stab of alarm; a slight realisation that he was out of his depth in some tantalising, difficult fashion he could only sense and not truly understand. Rose was talking, but he couldn’t hear her. Then he noticed she was pointing at the TV.
‘Look! It’s Harriet Jones!’
They all turned to look, and the Doctor realised the screen was fuzzy too. Aha. He supposed this was payback for the slim-cut suit and luxuriant hair; and he pulled a pair of black-rimmed spectacles from his pocket, left for just such an occasion, and put them on.
A journalist was speaking.
‘Prime Minister, is it true you are no longer fit to be in power?’
Underneath the interview, the caption ran: Alien Invasion. But just behind that scrolled: PM Healthcare—Unfit for Duty?
‘No,’ said Harriet Jones, turning away to cough crossly. ‘Now, can we talk about other things?’
The Doctor watched, his gaze steely.
‘I repeat the question: Is it true that you’re unfit for office?’
‘Look’ said Harriet, entirely in a flap. ‘There is nothing wrong with my health! I don’t know where these stories are coming from! And a vote of no confidence is completely unjustified!’
The phone rang and Jackie left to answer it.
‘Are you going to resign?’ badgered the journalist.
‘On today of all days?’ Harriet seemed utterly frustrated. ‘I’m fine. Look at me. I’m fine. I look fine. I feel fine.’
Jackie came back into the room.
‘It’s Beth,’ said Jackie. ‘She says go and look outside.’
The Doctor took off his glasses. He’d seen more than enough on the television screen.
‘Why?’ said Rose.
‘I dunno, just go outside and look! Come on, shift!’
Outside, even though many win
dows were boarded up, there were people everywhere, laughing and throwing snowballs around as light flakes fell on them.
‘Oh that’s beautiful!’ said Rose. ‘What are they, meteors?’
The Doctor’s eyes were full of sadness. ‘It’s the spaceship,’ he said quietly. ‘Breaking up in the atmosphere. This isn’t snow. It’s ash.’
‘OK,’ said Rose. ‘Not so beautiful.’
The Doctor looked around. ‘And this is the brand new planet Earth. No denying the existence of aliens now. Everyone saw it…’
Rose had a lump in her throat. Everything was new. Completely changed. And she’d been wanting to wait until after dinner, after they’d enjoyed just a bit of Christmas; after she’d had a chance to talk to her mother.
But she couldn’t wait. She couldn’t. She had to know.
‘Doctor…’ Rose stared at the grey ash on the ground so she didn’t have to watch his face, in case it shifted; in case he looked sorry and regretful as he told her something she didn’t want to hear. ‘What about you?’ she ventured, gently. ‘What are you going to do next?’
The Doctor stiffened. That wasn’t a ‘we’. That wasn’t a ‘What are we going to do next?’ Was she trying to let him down gently? Was dinner a farewell? If he’d known, he’d have skipped the sprouts. He sighed. What else could he say?
‘Well… back to the TARDIS. Same old life.’
His face had changed. His world did not; he couldn’t blame Rose for not wanting to continue. She must have really… she must have been very fond of the last incarnation. Some change was too much.
She looked up at him, tentative and nervous.
‘On… on your own?’
He answered too quickly he realised, even as he was speaking.
‘Why, don’t you want to come?’
There was a long pause as each tried to gauge the other’s mood. Rose could feel her heart speed up. Would he? Could she?
‘Well, yeah,’ she said, stiffening, preparing for rejection.
‘Do you, though?’ said the Doctor, wary she was just being polite.
‘Yeah!’ said Rose again, more emphatically this time.
‘I just thought…’cos I changed…’
‘Yeah, I thought….’cos you changed… you might not want me any more.’
A huge beaming smile cracked across the Doctor’s face. ‘Oh, I’d love you to come!’
Rose mirrored his expression, filled with glee. ‘Okay!’ she said, and they beamed at each other like idiots, as if they were the only people there—although they were not.
Mickey stared at the ground. Watching another man make Rose happy was too much for him to bear. ‘You’re never going to stay, are you?’
Rose looked at him, not understanding; not wanting to understand. She never did.
‘There’s just so much out there,’ she said. ‘So much to see… I’ve got to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mickey.
Jackie heaved a sigh. ‘Well, I reckon you’re mad, the pair of you. It’s like you go looking for trouble.’
‘Trouble’s just the bits in between!’ said the Doctor joyfully. He pointed her face up to the stars. ‘It’s all waiting out there, Jackie. Everything’s brand new to me…’
Rose smiled happily watching him. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, thought Mickey crossly. Not for a minute. And the other guy. That guy had been old, and a bit weird looking. This one… this one was young. And handsome. And she stared at him like he was chocolate cake.
The Doctor was still talking.
‘All those planets… creatures and horizons… I haven’t seen them yet! Not with these eyes… and it is gonna be… fantastic!’
Rose grinned; he sounded so like himself. Then she looked down. His hand was held out towards her; just as it had always been; just as she’d dreaded it might never be again. Then she remembered it was his new hand.
‘That hand of yours still gives me the creeps,’ she said, but the Doctor merely grinned, and waggled his fingers at her, and she took it, of course, as she had known she would, because it was the only place her hand ever wanted to be. She moved closer as they looked up at the sky. A flare came down, then another, brighter cascade of sparks in the sky.
‘I miss him,’ she said, quietly.
‘So do I,’ said the Doctor.
They smiled, a little sadly, at one another. Then Rose perked up again.
‘So, where’re we going go first?’ she asked him.
‘Um… that way.’ The Doctor pointed at a tiny spot in the night sky. ‘No, hold on… that way,’ he said, moving his finger incrementally.
Rose pointed too. ‘That way?’
The Doctor looked at her. ‘Do you think?’
She nodded, softly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That way.’
And, oblivious to anyone else, they stared at one another, then up at the light of the stars.
Epilogue
Jackie went home, and turned up the telly as loud as it would go, and called Bev, and put the kettle on and pottered about, making noise, clearing up, doing anything she could to distract herself, so she didn’t have to hear that noise.
That damned noise.
Sometimes, the only noise she longed for. Other times, like now, the noise she dreaded most. The grinding of the gears…
And Mickey didn’t go home, but walked the cold streets all night, watching the festive revellers, alone, powering on, trying to make his brain tired enough to sleep; trying to wear himself out enough so he could stop feeling so much, all the time. Stop missing her, every second of every day.
And five miles north, in the Tower of London, Sally Jacobs was back at her desk; sitting with the same mug she’d used that morning; trying to take in the terrible reality of what had happened. Four people had been teleported from the office. Two had returned, and as the others vocally mourned their decent boss, she mourned them both.
But there was work to do; more than ever. For the eye of the universe had opened and blinked slowly in their direction. They had all seen it. They had all felt it.
And as the old year turned and a new year began, the Earth would hold its breath.
Author’s Afterword
A Target book! I have said it before, and it’s true: if you want to become a lifelong Doctor Who fan, being born in the very early 1970s is a very good place to start, because it made you more or less seven years old by the time Horror of Fang Rock and City of Death and all that awesome stuff came out. But of course in those days, you only got to see them once (plus the BBC two early evening repeats).
So I grew up on the Target novelisations: a little line of distinctively scented, plastic-lined paperbacks in Prestwick library.
Terrance Dicks was my favourite of course, but Ian Marter would do. In fact, I think with the limitless Imagination Budget books have, I actually preferred them to when years later, I finally caught up with the DVDs. My only problem was how quickly you could read them: you could only borrow four books a week from my local library, and there was absolutely no way you could make four Targets stretch that long.
But oh the joy of finding a new one on the shelves. My absolute favourite was The Deadly Assassin, and I must have read and returned it eight times. I never owned one—buying books was for rich people—which is why when people talk about closing down libraries I get a bit foam-y at the mouth.
Ridiculously, back in 2005, I was unsure about David Tennant becoming the new Doctor. I hadn’t seen Casanova, although I remembered his wonderful performance as the beautiful damaged child in the exceptional Taking Over the Asylum.
But in my opinion nobody could touch what Christopher Eccleston had done: taken what was at the time a massive risk and turned it into the biggest hit the BBC had had for years. Chris wasn’t wacky; he was earthy, sincere, mindbogglingly sexy, a proper grown-up, and you believed every single thing he said. So casting a skinny, pretty boy seemed a strange step to take, and covering up his Scottish accent simply bizarre.
Fortunately I was
totally and utterly wrong, although you have to watch quite a lot of him being unconscious before you get to this: a truly fantastic tease by the production team, who knew exactly what treasure they had on their hands. The Christmas Invasion is an episode so inventive and funny and terrific that it started the tradition of yuletide episodes that continues to this day (with, it has to be said, occasionally mixed results).
The episode, with its clever, sinister blood control, ugly chatty monsters and terrific climactic battle, feels like an air punch, a wonderful, bravura introduction that immediately makes you realise you’re in safe hands (three of which belong to the new Doctor).
‘Don’t you think she looks tired?’ has entered the lexicon of people who haven’t even seen the show. (In a particularly 2017 move, by the way, my Harriet also has a cough.) It also has my absolute favourite type of set-up: utter normality twisted on its head.
What’s more normal than eating satsumas at Christmas? Peril showing up in your own living room is always more frightening to me than an alien landscape (which is why I think the scariest nu-Who episode by far is Turn Left), even if it comes in the guise of a rotating bandsaw Christmas tree.
Within the year, David would take the show from a hit to a phenomenon. Friends of mine (particularly, I noticed, mums) who had never before taken an interest in my peculiar side career suddenly wanted to discuss the finer points of Silence in the Library and Blink. The fake regeneration in The Stolen Earth became a national crisis. And the very clear and certain, undeniable inevitability that this Doctor and Rose would fall madly in love is on the page from the very start.
I have so enjoyed reliving this episode here. Although the stories that mark Doctor Who moving into its Second Imperial Phase don’t really date, I did enjoy Mickey still having to ask to plug his modem into the phone line. (What a brilliant hacker he was too, on dial-up. Wasted working in that garage, if you ask me.)
You can tell Russell T Davies isn’t a novelist, by the way, because a novelist would never, ever call a character Llewellyn; it is an absolute toad of a word to type. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. Fortunately, what Russell is, is a genius, which made the rest of my job not just easy but an utter joy. I am still slightly overwhelmed that the first Target book I will ever own will be one that I have written—and I so hope you’ve enjoyed it.
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