1
Arrival
"Run!"
The sound of something being whacked repeatedly disrupted the calm inside the TARDIS as it drifted through empty space.
"Come on, run, you stupid thing!"
The Eleventh Doctor's boyish face popped out from behind the TARDIS console. "What on earth are you doing?"
"It's my stupid computer," said Clara. She was sitting on the steps leading up to the central platform, balancing her laptop on her knees. She gave it another whack. "It's so slow. It's taking forever to start up."
The Doctor straightened his bowtie and grinned. "Well, if you need a computer repair man, you know who to ask!"
"Yeah," said Clara. "The girl who had her mind hacked and updated with computer whiz-kid skills."
The Doctor looked miffed. He came round to her side of the console. "Fine. Why do you want to fix it, anyway? The TARDIS is far better than any silly human invention!" He patted the console. "Right, old girl?"
The TARDIS clonged, the sound reverberating in the pale blue glow of the console room.
"Oh, young girl, then," said the Doctor. "The point being, you don't need a computer when you've got me!"
"I need to access my email," said Clara. "And you can't do that, can you?"
"Of course not," the Doctor said, a little too quickly. "Ha! The very idea!"
Clara narrowed her eyes at him.
"Can't you use your phone?" said the Doctor, in an effort to change topic.
"Battery's died." Clara was still giving the Doctor a Look. She was good at them.
The Doctor looked away sheepishly. "Well," he mumbled, "I offered my help. I'll leave you to it."
As he turned to move back around the console, Clara said. "Wait. You can do something, can't you? Do a thing?"
"What thing?"
"You know, a thing! A sonic thing! Sonic it and make the computer run faster!"
The Doctor affected an air of superiority. "The sonic screwdriver is not a toy. It can't just do anything you care to name."
"No, indeed," said Clara. "Especially wood."
"Oi!" said the Doctor. "None of that! Anyway, I couldn't possibly help. Augmenting your laptop with my screwdriver would be a gross misuse of Time Lord technology."
Clara grinned. "In other words, you can't fix it, and don't want to admit it."
"As a matter of fact, I could hook your laptop up to the TARDIS and turn it into the most powerful computer in the world. Not that I'm going to. But I could."
Clara wasn't fooled for a second. She knew that the Doctor couldn't resist a chance to show off. "Never mind," she said, offhandedly. "You probably can't do anything anyway. You're just pretending you can to look clever."
"I am clever!" The Doctor came over and snatched up her laptop. "Just watch," he said with a grin. "You'll be the envy of all your mates at school."
"I'm a teacher, not a school kid," she reminded him.
"Can't imagine why. It's much more fun being a kid." The Doctor placed the laptop on the TARDIS console. "Right, now I just need to interface it."
"I have the cable thingy in my bag," said Clara.
The Doctor shook his head and chuckled. "The TARDIS doesn't need such primitive things as cables. Just placing the computer near it will work. Right!" He began fiddling with switches on the console. "Just need to connect to the device… done! Now I need to reroute power from somewhere. Hmmm…" He examined the TARDIS' own computer screen. "Need to find something we're not using… oxygen? No, we probably need that. Karaoke machine? No, we definitely need that. Aha!" His face lit up. "The BBC!"
"BBC?" said Clara. "What's that?"
"No idea!" the Doctor said cheerfully. "And since I don't know what it is, it mustn't be important!" He pressed a button.
The TARDIS clonged again.
"Steady on, old, uh, young girl," said the Doctor, giving the console a reassuring pat. "Just shifting some power."
"Um," said Clara. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"Of course!" The Doctor continued pressing buttons.
The TARDIS clonged for a third time, sounding louder.
"Doctor, I'm really not sure that whatever you did was a good idea," said Clara.
"It's fine!" said the Doctor, waving his arms dismissively. "Look, I'll prove it. I'll find out what the BBC does." He began rapidly pressing buttons on the screen. "BBC… aha! Found it! It's the Big- oh."
"Oh?" said Clara. "Oh what?"
"Oh dear," said the Doctor. He suddenly noticed that, on another part of the console, a red light was flashing. He looked at Clara. His face wore the manic grin of someone who knows they're in deep trouble and are desperately trying to pretend otherwise. "Word of advice. You might want to hold on."
"To what?!"
"Anything!" The Doctor suddenly grabbed the console and held on to it tightly. Alarmed, Clara followed suit.
"Doctor," she said, "what is the BBC?"
"Well, as a matter of fact," he said, trying and failing to sound casual, "it turns out that it's actually very important. It prevents the TARDIS from crashing into-"
He was cut off by an especially loud clong from the TARDIS. "Well," he said, "this is probably not going to be good."
Suddenly, everything went crazy.
The entire room began shaking violently. Clara gripped the console as hard as she could to stop herself falling over. The Doctor did likewise, but slipped and was thrown to the floor. The TARDIS' cloister bell was ringing loudly. The engines made their familiar screeching sound. There was a big bang, and then a deep noise that sounded like something ripping.
And then, just as suddenly, silence.
Cautiously, Clara looked around. Everything was still again. The room was exactly as it had been before… with one slight difference.
"Ah!" said the Doctor. He quickly leapt to his feet and began fiddling with the console. "That could have been very bad. I think we got away with it. Bit of a lucky escape, really."
"Doctor," said Clara.
"We're no longer in flight," said the Doctor, not paying attention. "Let's see… yep! We had a mid-air collision. Well, mid-space collision. Knocked us right off track. We've landed. On Earth, for some reason." He examined the screen. "Britain… near London. Why is it always London? It's near the present. Your present, I mean. Possibly a year or two in the future for you."
"Doctor," Clara said again.
"Wonder where the other one ended up," the Doctor continued, evidently speaking to himself. "It must have hit us, bounced off, and returned to its own time. Because we weren't on any particular fixed course, we seem to have been dragged along with it." He examined the screen in front of him. "No local activity, so it's not around at the moment. We probably missed by a few days either side. Still," he straightened up and adjusted his bowtie, "we definitely shouldn't stick around. Otherwise we could be in big trouble."
"Doctor!" Clara sounded much more urgent.
A frown crossed the Doctor's face. "Hang on," he said. "Here's me being all clever and intentionally mysterious, and you're not being impressed and asking questions. Why not?"
Clara pointed. The Doctor turned to look.
There was another person in the TARDIS.
Someone was standing close to the back wall, partially hidden. Someone who definitely hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Hello," said the man, and fell over.
Neither Clara nor the Doctor moved. They stared at him, and then at each other. Then back to the man, who was sprawled on the floor.
Whoever he was, he looked like a normal, average man in his early thirties. His skin was very pale and his hair was a deep, rusty red colour. He looked rather thin. Intriguingly, he was wearing a dark purple jacket that was too big for him, dark trousers, a waistcoat, and, most notably, a bowtie.
"Doctor," said Clara, "what's going on? Who is that?"
"Oh, not good, so very not good," said the Doctor, flapping his arms around in a panic. "This can't happen. This shouldn't happen. Why has this happened?"
Clara grabbed one of the flailing arms. "Stop that!" she said. "Listen to me. Explain what's going on, because I am very confused right now."
The Doctor took a few deep breaths. "Okay," he said. "I'll explain quickly, before… he wakes up." He cast a worried eye over the figure sprawled on the floor, apparently unconscious. "You see, the BBC is the Big Barrier Control."
"Big Barrier? Seriously?" said Clara. "As opposed to what, the small barrier?
"No!" the Doctor was becoming more agitated. "The TARDIS has lots of protective measures surrounding and within it. I call that one the Big Barrier because it's probably the most important of all of them."
"Why? What does it do?" Clara demanded.
"It stops the TARDIS from colliding with, well…"
"With…?"
"Think about it!" said the Doctor. "I zip about all over the place, backwards and forwards in time, here, there, everywhere! There's a danger the TARDIS could collide with the one thing it absolutely must not ever bump into!"
"Which is what?"
"What d'you think? Itself!"
The figure groaned, and began stirring.
"What do you mean?" said Clara, a note of panic in her voice.
"I mean," said the Doctor, watching the figure with apprehension, "that the TARDIS has just encountered itself from the future. It must be the future – if it was the past then logically I'd remember this. Which I don't." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Present and future collided for a moment. And they left something from behind."
Clara looked at the mysterious man again. "Him?"
"Yes. He's from the future. My future." The Doctor looked at the TARDIS console screen again. "According to the readings, not too far in my future."
"But who is he?"
"Well-"
The Doctor was cut off by a louder groan. Suddenly, the man's eyes snapped open. He looked at them. In one move, he sprang to his feet.
"There we go!" the man said happily. "Brrr! Oh, that tingled. That was fun!" He smiled, and then clutched one of the railings beside the steps. He made a choking sound, and then coughed a cloud of golden energy from his mouth.
"I knew it," said the Doctor grimly.
"What?" Clara looked very confused.
"That's regeneration energy. He's a Time Lord. One that's just regenerated."
"But," Clara looked at the man and back to the Doctor, "I thought all the Time Lords were locked in another dimension!"
"They are. So either this one escaped, or he's…"
The stranger had regained his balance. "Ah! That's better. Now, give me a moment." He began running his hands over his body. "All this new stuff. Let's see… still male… no facial hair; well, easy to maintain I suppose… ooh, but I've got lots of hair everywhere else… think I've lost a bit of weight too. And I seem to be a bit taller. Great!" He smiled at them. "Now then, Doctor! Clara! Good to see you! It worked, then!"
The two of them stared at him wordlessly.
"Oh!" he babbled on. "You're probably wondering who I am. Behold! My ID!" He whipped something out of his jacket pocket.
It was a sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor looked at it. Slowly, he reached into his own jacket – a jacket, now they could see them both clearly, that was identical to the one the stranger was wearing – and extracted his own screwdriver. He cautiously stepped forward and touched the tip of his own screwdriver to the other man's.
There was a crackling noise, and sparks erupted from the point they were touching.
The Doctor withdrew his screwdriver. He smiled grimly again. "As I thought," he said.
"What was that?" Clara was hopelessly lost at this point. She was aware that some meaningful exchange of information was going on. However, it was one that she couldn't understand.
The Doctor turned to her. "They're the same. The same screwdriver, I mean. Touching them together caused a mini paradox, hence the sparking. He turned back to the other man. "The same screwdriver, from a different time. At a guess, I'd say the not-too-distant future?"
The man nodded.
The Doctor turned back to Clara with a meaningful look on his face. Evidently he felt that she would now understand the situation.
She did not.
"But who is he?!" she insisted.
The Doctor waved his arms. "Think about it! My TARDIS, from the future! My screwdriver, from the future! He's just regenerated! And he's wearing my clothes!"
"But…" Realisation was beginning to dawn on Clara. "You don't mean…"
The mysterious figure stepped forward. "Come on, Clara!" he said. "Wakey wakey! It's me! The one and only!"
Clara looked at him in shock.
The stranger's face broke into a wide grin. "I'm the Doctor!"