The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

by Simon Guerrier

  Lastly, in Level IV universes, even the laws of physics can be different and anything might happen. In Battlefield (1989), the Doctor says the Arthurian knights come from ‘another dimension’ and ‘sideways in time from another universe’ – one where magic seems to be real. That suggests the other Earth where King Arthur is real has its own laws of physics, different to our own. If all possibilities are played out somewhere, then there’s a universe where Doctor Who is real – all of it, even the bits that are contradictory or silly – and another universe where you are the Doctor, and another where you’re a Dalek.

  Perhaps there are even more than these four levels of universe. In 2011, physicist Brian Greene suggested nine different types. There might be many more. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Trying to understand the very smallest size of matter has led to fundamental questions about how the universe works at the very biggest scale.

  * * *

  Double trouble

  In 2003, physicist Max Tegmark argued that even in our universe there’s a good chance that physical circumstances repeat themselves, so that there are distant worlds where copies of you and me live copies of our lives. He called this a Level I Multiverse. In Doctor Who, we’ve seen several people who look just like Doctors or companions. (This list does not include robots or creatures who disguise themselves as Doctors or companions.)

  • Steven Taylor looks just like tourist Morton Dill – seen in The Chase (1965)

  • The Brigadier looks just like Space Security Service agent Bret Vyon – seen in The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965–1966)

  • The First Doctor looks just like the sixteenth-century Abbot of Amboise – seen in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve (1966)

  • The Second Doctor looks just like dictator Ramón Salamander – seen in The Enemy of the World (1968)

  • Harry Sullivan looks just like Lieutenant John Andrews – seen in Carnival of Monsters (1973)

  • The first Romana looks just like Princess Strella of Tara – seen in The Androids of Tara (1978)

  • The second Romana chooses to look just like Princess Astra of Atrios in Destiny of the Daleks (1979)

  • Nyssa looks just like a woman from 1925, Ann Talbot – seen in Black Orchid (1982)

  • The Sixth Doctor looks just like Maxil, Commander of the Chancellery Guard on Gallifrey – seen in Arc of Infinity (1983)

  • Torchwood’s Gwen Cooper looks just like Victorian servant Gwyneth – seen in The Unquiet Dead (2005)

  • Martha Jones looks just like her cousin Adeola Oshodi – seen in Army of Ghosts (2006)

  • Amelia Pond looks just like the Soothsayer – seen in The Fires of Pompeii (2008)

  • The Twelfth Doctor looks just like marble merchant Lobus Caecilius – seen in The Fires of Pompeii (2008), and that might be on purpose (as we’ll discuss in Chapter 15)

  • The Tenth Doctor looks just like a human copy of himself created by regeneration energy – seen in Journey’s End (2008)

  • Clara Oswald looks just like a number of people the Doctor has met throughout his life, including space traveller Oswin Oswald – seen in Asylum of the Daleks (2012)

  • Danny Pink looks just like time traveller (and Danny’s relation) Orson Pink – seen in Listen (2014), which we’ll discuss more in Chapter 11.

  * * *

  fn1 In The Armageddon Factor, Drax suggests that the miniaturised Doctor should ‘fly over’ and close the TARDIS door. This Time Lord ability to fly is only mentioned once again in the series – in City of Death (1979). Perhaps Drax is only joking – there are lots of occasions when being able to fly would have got the Doctor out of difficulty, such as when he’s hanging from a radio telescope at the end of Logopolis (1981), so it seems odd that he doesn’t use this ability more often.

  ‘It’s time to leave the airlock, if you dare.’ The snatch of tune went around Tobbs’s head, just as it did whenever he entered the airlock, turned the dog lever and opened the exterior hatch. It was a tune from the olden days, hundreds of years old, and those probably weren’t even the right words. And now he’d have it looping around in his head for the rest of the EVA. If only he knew what the next line was.

  He reached outside, gripped a handrail in his thickly padded gloved hand and swung through the hatchway. Ahead of him stretched a horizontal ladder of more handrails, leading across the rust-red panelling. Above him lay a night sky of infinite blackness, speckled with a billion points of unwavering light. Although, of course, out in space, concepts like up and down were a matter of personal choice. Tobbs made a conscious effort to think of the star-dotted firmament as ‘up’ and began to float along the ladder, one handrail at a time.

  ‘Nearly there,’ crackled Locklear’s voice in his helmet. ‘Outage in aft hull, section twelve. Spreading to sections ten to fourteen.’ That was unusual. A localised power failure was a familiar occurrence in interstellar space, hence why a lowly third-class engineer had been assigned to investigate. The assumption was that it was the result of the ship being struck by a piece of debris and only warranted direct observation because the failure had also blacked out the exterior cameras and the sensor array. For a power failure to expand was seriously out of the ordinary.

  Tobbs felt a flutter of excitement in his stomach, thinking of congratulatory handshakes and well-earned bonuses. Maybe, when he was hero of the hour, he’d even get up the courage to ask Thelesa out to dinner. He maintained a steady speed, grasping each rung and propelling himself forward. According to extra-vehicular protocol, he should’ve been tethering and decoupling a safety line to each rail, but this was an emergency and, besides, he could always use his jet if needed.

  The line of the song kept going round his head as he reached the end of the ladder. The aft section was hidden out of sight below the side of the hull. Tobbs hauled himself over the edge, and the sloping aft hull rose into view. He held his breath, the only noise the hiss of static.

  The hull was in absolute blackness. His headlamp lit up a number of plates scattered over its surface. The plates were dome-shaped, like flattened cones, as white as bone and covered in ridges.

  ‘What can you see?’ said Locklear. ‘Tobbs. Report.’

  Tobbs realised he’d been holding his breath. ‘It’s not an impact. It looks like, mad as this sounds, organic material.’

  ‘Organic? Specify.’

  Tobbs drifted closer. The plates were shells. This was an undiscovered life form. They’d probably be named after him.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Tobbs. ‘They look like sea life. Barnacles. Space barnacles.’

  Something moved. Tobbs leaned forward, his nose almost touching the glass of his helmet. One of the shells ejected a cloud of dust. Then, as it was caught in the glow of his headlamp, it detached itself from the hull and floated silently upwards. Tobbs could make out glittering, gossamer tentacles undulating beneath its shell.

  ‘They seem to respond to light,’ said Tobbs. Hearing his own words back through his earphones, his voice sounded full of wonder. ‘Like it’s waking them up.’

  ‘Report on hull damage,’ said Locklear. ‘Outage in sector eleven.’

  ‘Can’t see any damage, but there’s too many of them, they must be covering the cameras.’ Tobbs swung his headlamp back and forth. Was it his imagination or was the light fading?

  ‘Return to airlock,’ said Locklear.

  ‘What?’ said Tobbs. One of the barnacles rose up before him, so close he could reach out and touch it.

  ‘We’re picking up a power loss on your life support—’ Locklear’s voice was buried in static, then the radio fell silent.

  Tobbs checked his life support. The row of indicator lights just below his eye line flashed. He switched to back-up, and the lights lit up, then began flashing again.

  Tobbs looked up, just in time to see the underside of one of the barnacles as it rushed towards him, its tentacles twirling, lights pulsing up and down the glass-like filaments. It hit the front of his helmet, clasping onto the glass
. Tobbs could see its squashed, fleshy innards.

  He reached up to pull it away. His heavily padded fingers could barely grip and he couldn’t wrench it off; the angle was wrong and it had excreted some form of glue.

  ‘Request assistance,’ said Tobbs, forgetting that his radio had stopped working. ‘Request assist—’

  Something hard and hefty slammed into his back. Then something hit his left arm, sticking fast. Then more and more of the barnacles smacked into him until he was encrusted in a ball of the creatures. He couldn’t see anything through his helmet. All he could see were the indicator lights going out one by one.

  Then he heard a terrible, high-pitched squeaking. Cracking. The sound of breaking glass.

  His last thought was that he would never find out the next line of the song.

  ‘Tobbs, respond! Respond!’

  The only answer was the hiss of static.

  ‘Life support’s out,’ reported Thelesa, her questioning tone betraying her shock and grief. ‘He’s… gone.’

  Locklear turned away from the communication desk. The flight deck of the Godspeed was in near-darkness, the faces of the crew lit by flashing viewscreens.

  ‘What’s our power situation?’ she asked Keinholz.

  Keinholz tugged at the collar on his uniform, as he always did when it was bad news, and indicated the schematic diagram on his viewscreen. ‘Down to thirty-five per cent. Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Still no idea of the cause?’

  ‘Something in section twelve. That’s the centre of the energy drain, where it started.’

  ‘Whatever it was that Tobbs found,’ said Thelesa, brushing away something in the corner of her eye. ‘He said there were “barnacles”.’

  ‘You heard of anything like that, Professor?’ said Locklear, turning to the ship’s xenobiologist.

  Ferrier frowned. ‘No, Captain, but I suppose a space-borne creature is theoretically possible. Several extremophiles have been known to survive in a vacuum.’

  Any excuse for a biology lecture, thought Locklear.

  ‘Power reserves down to thirty per cent,’ said Keinholz with all the gravity of a tolling bell.

  Locklear turned back to Thelesa. ‘Looks like we have no choice,’ she said, trying to sound confident despite her stomach tightening with dread. ‘Send out a distress call.’

  Thelesa nodded, swallowed, and pressed the activation sequence. The mayday signal sounded, a succession of urgent bleeps. Then it faded away to silence.

  ‘What is it?’ said Locklear. ‘What’s happening?’

  Thelesa’s fingers ran over the controls of her workstation, to no effect. She shook her head. ‘The power-drain, it’s affecting the comms.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Keinholz resignedly. ‘The transceiver is based in section ten.’

  ‘We might’ve got a message out for a few seconds, but that’s it,’ said Thelesa, her voice filled with fear. ‘There’s not enough power left to broadcast a distress signal.’

  Locklear stared at the main viewscreen, blacked out due to the power shortage. Every instinct made her want to scream, but she had to do her duty, she had to remain calm. ‘So we’re stuck in a dying ship, with no means of calling for help, and nobody to come to our rescue.’

  ‘What you talking about?’ said a brazen male voice. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  Locklear turned – to see a tall man standing in the middle of the flight deck with his arms folded and his chin raised.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Locklear indignantly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  It was difficult to see in the gloom, but Locklear thought she could see his lips curl into a mocking smirk. ‘I got your message,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna save your lives. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, so you can call me “the Doctor”.’

  Locklear stared at him. The rest of the crew were also staring at him. The man relished being the centre of attention, acknowledging each of them with a cheery nod. ‘The Doctor?’ said Locklear, looking him up and down. He appeared to be wearing a jacket made of tanned animal hide.

  ‘That’s right, don’t wear it out,’ he said, as he jogged across to the engineering workstation. The electric blue glow from the schematic diagram illuminated an aquiline nose, two protruding ears and a gaze of ruthless determination. ‘Here’s the deal. Do exactly as you’re told and you might just get to live.’

  ‘Are you threatening us?’ said Locklear.

  ‘It’s not me you have to worry about.’ While Keinholz stared at him in disbelief, the Doctor tapped at the workstation keypad. ‘Reserves down to fifteen per cent. It’s gonna start getting very dark, very cold and very hard to breathe. No, what you need to worry about are these little tykes.’ The Doctor held up a pen-shaped device which buzzed and glowed blue. The main viewscreen flashed into life.

  Locklear gasped. The viewscreen showed the ship’s starboard hull, facing aft. The ship’s surface was coated in barnacles. As she watched, more of the creatures drifted out of the blackness and adhered themselves to the hull.

  ‘What the hell are they?’ she said.

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘No idea. Never seen them before. Just picked them up on my scan when I came in.’ He grinned wildly. ‘A brand new form of life. Fan-tastic!’

  ‘And they’re the source of the power outage?’ said Keinholz.

  ‘Evidently,’ said Ferrier, gazing at the viewscreen in awe. ‘If they can eat through metal, they could’ve chewed through the power lines.’

  ‘Do they look like they have teeth?’ said the Doctor incredulously. ‘Do you see any teeth? I don’t see any teeth.’

  ‘Whatever they are, they’re attacking my ship,’ Locklear snapped at him. ‘If we don’t deal with them, we’re dead. Keinholz, use the plasma cannons.’

  Keinholz began tapping at his keyboard. The Doctor turned on Locklear. ‘So, what? You discover a new life form, and what do you do? Shoot at it!’

  ‘We have to defend ourselves, Doctor,’ said Locklear. ‘Don’t you think you should try to understand them first?’

  ‘What is there to understand? They’re not intelligent. We can hardly negotiate. Once we’re finished, Professor Ferrier can dissect their remains.’

  ‘Plasma cannons energised, Captain,’ said Keinholz.

  ‘Then destroy them,’ said Locklear firmly. ‘Maximum dispersal. Wipe them out!’

  ‘Listen to me—’ began the Doctor, but the howl of the cannons drowned him out. The floor shuddered as the sound was conducted through the fabric of the ship.

  On the viewscreen, a shaft of plasma flashed through the darkness and one of the creatures exploded into a cloud of dust. The cannon fired again, winging another of the barnacles, causing it to spin away into the void. It fired again, and again, but each time it fired, more of the creatures appeared. They swarmed over the side of the hull, streaming towards the viewscreen like a slow-motion snowstorm.

  ‘Keep firing!’ said Locklear, and muttered, ‘Where are they all coming from?’

  ‘They can’t be reproducing,’ said Ferrier doubtfully. ‘Can they?’

  ‘Plasma cannons losing power,’ said Keinholz. ‘We can’t keep this up much longer.’

  ‘Keep firing,’ repeated Locklear, even as the creatures inundated the viewscreen.

  ‘Oh, you stupid, stupid apes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Work it out. Energy’s their meat and drink. So firing plasma at them, you’re just inviting more of them to lunch.’

  ‘That would explain the power drain,’ said Ferrier.

  ‘And the life-support failure Tobbs experienced,’ said Thelesa sadly.

  ‘They’re breeding,’ said the Doctor. ‘Converting your ship’s energy to mass.’

  ‘Captain, we’re running out of power,’ said Keinholz.

  Locklear sighed. ‘All right. Stop firing. Stop firing!’

  Keinholz tapped a button and the cannons stopped.

  Locklear leaned towards the Doctor, her face inches f
rom his. ‘So, Doctor. What d’you suggest?’

  ‘Answer’s obvious,’ said the Doctor. ‘But first, you tell me something. What are you doing out here? What’s the purpose of your mission?’

  None of the crew responded, so Locklear answered. ‘Our mission is to seek out unregistered planets and stake claims on behalf of the parent company.’

  ‘What sort of claims? Research? Colonisation? Mineral extraction?’

  ‘What the company does with them is none of our business.’

  ‘No, your job is to roam the galaxy calling dibs,’ said the Doctor. ‘You humans like to think you own things you had nothing to do with creating. OK. Listen. I get you out of this, you leave this system, never to return. And you tell your company there was nothing of interest here, so these barnacles can get on with their lives in peace. Agreed?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Locklear. ‘There was nothing of value here anyway.’

  ‘Doctor,’ said Keinholz. ‘We’re down to two per cent. What is the solution?’

  ‘Simple. Switch everything off. Put the ship on silent running. They’re attracted by energy, so make them think there’s no more left. Lunchtime’s over.’

  The crew didn’t respond. Locklear nodded wearily. ‘Do it.’

  Keinholz pressed a sequence of switches and one by one, the workstations around the flight deck went dark. The ever-present background hum of the ventilation system faded away and silence filled the room.

  ‘All systems off-line,’ said Keinholz. ‘Including life support.’

  ‘What?’ cried Thelesa. ‘But without that, we’ll suffocate.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ll freeze to death first.’