'The Night of the Doctor'
based upon the minisode by Steven Moffat
starring Paul McGann and Emma Campbell-Jones as the Doctor and Cass
A/N: I absolutely, completely loved 'The Night of the Doctor', the seven-minute Paul McGann minisode. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd get to see my Doctor again on TV, but I did and it was amazing. The 1996 film was middling at best, but the Big Finish audios are astonishing and the eighth is absolutely one of my favourite Doctors.
He mentioned Charley and Lucie and Molly, made Big Finish's eighth Doctor stories canon in one fell swoop and every bit the awesome Doctor I've fallen in love with the last few years.
So I decided to novelise the minisode! And, well, expand on it. Because if 'Night' had one problem, it's that it wasn't long enough. As epic and awesome as it was I sort of want my Doctor to go out with the full orchestra, so imagine a full, forty-five minute story depicting the eighth Doctor's final adventure? I wanted one. And I decided to write it.
Prologue:
The Unexpected Doctor
Her ship was dying.
It bucked beneath her, sparks falling from burnt out consoles and damaged conduit housings. Flashes lit the darkened cockpit, temporarily brightening dull red twilight of the emergency lighting.
Briefly, Cass wondered when she'd come to think of this flying hunk of junk as her ship. It handled like a brick, the thirty-nine year old twice-rebuilt engine had a tendency to give out at any given moment and the bulkheads and deck plating creaked ominously before every hyperlight jump. The onboard computer was a temperamental nightmare with an obsolete AI and a voice recognition system that had taken half a year to get used to her slight accent. The ship didn't even have a proper name.
It was an absurd notion, connecting with a heap of metal and circuitry, the same as any of a million travelling the spacelanes, but Cass had indeed connected with the old bird, and even through the adrenalin and terror that was coursing around her body, she felt a sharp pang of guilt and grief.
I'm sorry, she thought to herself, sparing a moment to caress the sharp metal edge of her control console, that I can't save you. With that display of emotionalism and rank sentimentality aside, Cass focused all of her not inconsiderable skill on trying to keep herself alive.
She was a pilot, a highly-trained pilot, who had graduated with full honours and a citation for conspicuous gallantry from the Taylor Flight School on Ulysses 519. She had garnered full marks for situational awareness and she had near-record reaction times. She had a reputation for keeping a cool head in stressful situations. She was one of only five students in the school's long, storied history to successfully complete the Jobis Crisis simulation.
Her anti-authority streak might have condemned her to flying out-system scouting and cargo runs, but that in no way undermined the reality that she was talented.
It took only a few moments for her to fully assess her situation.
It took a moment more for her to realise how hopeless it was.
In the very next moment, she resolved not to give up.
The ship was going down, there was no way around that. Scientists and theoreticians and magicians had found ways to bend and subvert the physical laws of the universe, propelling ships across the stars at phenomenal speeds, reorganising matter at the subatomic level, altering the flow of time. Gravity, however, was still a universal constant, even if there were ways around it... if only she could find some way of reactivating the microgravity drive...
The great rocky planet that loomed before her out of the forward screen, however, had other ideas. It was pulling the dying ship in ever closer, at ever-increasing velocity.
She had to think of something, though. She was damned if she was going to die out here, alone. She'd volunteered to take control after the ship had been damaged, to remain behind and try to keep it from crashing. The rest of the crew had fled to safety, burning out the teleporter.
Tapping at her console, holding on for dear life, she took an inventory of which systems remained functional: the artificial gravity, the oxygen scrubbers, the water recyclers... the long range communications system! Sending a message this far off the main space lanes was like calling for help in the middle of a desert, but it was worth a shot.
She hit the control for the transceiver array and was gratified to see it activate without any complaints. The first time since she'd come aboard that it had done that. Figures.
"Help me!" she called, broadcasting across all frequencies in the ordinary and subspace bands. "Please! Can anybody hear me?"
The ship's computer, the AI's voice recognition system keyed to understand calls of distress, came to life. In a maddeningly calm, cool feminine voice, it said "Please state the nature of your ailment or injury."
"I'm not injured, I'm crashing!" Cass nearly screamed with frustration. The planet was getting closer and closer by the second, the pull of its gravity well inescapable. "I don't need a doctor."
The computer cheerily ignored her. "A clear statement of your symptoms will help us provide the medical practitioner appropriate to your individual needs."
Us. The computer was still using collective pronouns, as if it was connected to the Federation Datanet. Stupid machine, Cass thought, with no small amount of bitterness. "I'm trying to send a distress signal!" she spat. "Stop talking about doctors!"
"I'm a doctor," a voice answered her.
It wasn't the computer's pre-recorded tones, but a deep, sonorous male voice, ever-so-liltingly accented. Cass spun in her chair just as an overhead panel exploded in a spray of sparks and escaping coolant. The accompanying flash temporarily blinded her, and as she blinked the floating purple blobs in her vision resolved into a short, lean man with cropped brown, wavy hair, with a handsomely lined face.
"But probably," he said as he stepped towards her, "not the one you were expecting."