Doctor Who: The Missing Companions
This is a seires of fanfiction stories set in the break between the two halves of Series 6 of Doctor Who when the Doctor goes looking for Melody Pond. These contain no spoilers to canon material but served as filler for me while I waited for the season to pick up again. I think I did a good job of tying off the story arch I created so that someone could read these inbetween "A Good Man Goes To War" and "Let's Kill Hitler" without disrupting the canon story. There are thirteen stories in all, arranged like a normal 13-episode series of Doctor Who. I do not own Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures, or any of the characters mentioned in these shows, and this is purely recreational writing, not intended for publishing. Thank you and I hope you enjoy!
1. The Crystal Sea
Prologue
"...and I promise you, Amy, I will find her."
That was the last thing the Doctor said as he stepped into the TARDIS to go on a hopeful yet ominous quest to find Melody Pond, daughter of his companions Rory and Amy. What really happened that whole summer, only the Doctor knows now, but here it is chronicled. Here, the never-told, never-would-be tales of the Doctor's missing companions are etched into the fabric of the Almosts. The only other records of these stories exist in supposed works of fiction and in the Doctor's personal journal. This is because, to the rest of the universe, these stories never happened.
Chapter I
The TARDIS sparked and groaned noisily as the Doctor flailed about, trying to triangulate the coordinates to where his most recent lead on the location of the ever-important infant gave to him. His intention was a sort of school in the 53rd century, but it seemed the blue box had other plans. "Oh come off it, you bloody useless thing! Settle down a bit and let me navigate for once, eh?" the Doctor pleaded. "Oh, sorry, forgot you can't talk back anymore, can you, Sexy?" he smirked. The TARDIS then turned upside down, throwing the Doctor to the ceiling, then back, causing him to hit the floor. "Okay, maybe that was a bit low, even for me, sorry," he said, groaning. He crawled up to the console and pushed several buttons and flipped a switch or two, capping the sequence off with a pull of the wibbly lever. The Doctor stood up and pulled the monitor around to him. "Now, let me see where we're headed at least, since I don't have a say in it anyway." He hit the side of the monitor until the picture came into focus. "Ooh, that's nifty, the Octarian System! Haven't been in this corner of the galaxy for a few faces, this should be fun!" The Doctor then felt the crashing, sparking, and tumbling slow, eventually to a stop, and heard the familiar cloister bell signaling he'd landed.
Stepping outside the doors of the TARDIS, the Doctor immediately realized he'd landed on a very tiny island, made out of a sort of deep red crystal. Looking around, he saw a vast, azure ocean which looked like it covered the rest of the planet, and one or two other miniscule crystal islands. Alright, that's weird. I've been to every planet in this system and none of them looked like this when I left them, the Doctor thought to himself. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it towards the crystal beneath him. It shined it's green light and pulsated until the Doctor brought it back up again and examined the results. "Marronite, one of the densest crystals in the galaxy," he muttered to himself. That narrows it down, only three planets in this system have marronite on them, he thought. Suddenly, perhaps even surprising himself, the Doctor decided to plunge his head under the water and take a quick peek. He looked around him and saw the blurry, refracted shapes of mountains, all made of marronite. Pulling his head back out of the water, he exclaimed, "Cephaloscondis! That's it, we—I'm—on Cephaloscondis!" The Doctor turned to the TARDIS and looked sort of confused. "Why am I on Cephaloscondis?" he asked his wooden time machine. Not getting an answer, he turned around, looked again, stuck his head back under and out of the water, and then realized why he was there. There are about 50 more miles deep of ocean than there were the last time I was here. The Doctor knew he hadn't been there in a decade or two, but there was no way on any planet that that much water accumulates naturally.
Just as a million new questions appeared in his head, the Doctor was surprised to see something rise violently from under the water. It was a red and orange, amorphously shaped transport pod of some kind. The Doctor was sort of taken aback, enough time for the driver dome to open and reveal the pilot running the pod. It was a sort of scaly, blue creature, humanoid, with globules of a strange blue and white liquid. The creature had a beak that looked like it opened into four parts, and it's arms and legs had three twisting lines going all the way up and down the appendages. "Care for a ride to town Mr...?" the driver offered, speaking in an Irish accent, which intrigued the Doctor more than the fact that the driver was blue.
"Yes, actually, and call me the Doctor, Interior Operations Inspector for the Octarian system," he said, pulling out his ever useful psychic paper, giving his made-up-on-the-spot credentials validity. "I'd like a ride down to your government's base of operations please, and take the scenic route, I'm in no hurry" he instructed the beaked driver.
"Not a problem, Inspector. Your credentials give you a round trip through the city today free of charge, so just let me know when you want to come back to the surface," the driver explained.
"Thank you kindly, sir. You are a sir, correct?" the Doctor said, not wanting to offend.
The driver chuckled. "Yes I am, and don't worry about it, many of the Pioneers are confused of our gender. My name is K'Zerdo, by the way," he said as he dove the now re-sealed car into the ocean.
"A pleasure, kind sir. By the way, you said Pioneer earlier, what exactly do you mean?" The Doctor asked, perplexed.
"You don't know? Maybe the Internal Operations group don't call them that, but that's what they're known as on Cephaloscondis. They're the people improving the environment on the planet so it will be more habitable for us, the Blue Cephaloscondians," K'Zerdo explained.
"Ah, so that's the water, then, hmm? Where would I find the headquarters of the Pioneers, exactly?" the Doctor asked, now even more confused.
"Well, we're actually passing it right now if you want to stop in, Inspector," the driver offered.
The Doctor looked through the dome and saw, amongst the serenity of the marronite mountains, a giant factory building with an enormous generator protruding from the back, labeled with a giant neon sign that said "McDonaugh's Hope Factory."
"Why, yes, K'Zerdo, I do believe we're going to stay here quite a long time," the Doctor said ominously.