AN: This is an old story that was originally posted on Whofic, that I've been asked to repost here.
Written for my sister, who wanted a Doctor Who story with her original characters that didn't actually impact on the canon Whoniverse.
It was not the common folk of the planet Gallifrey that creatures of the universe feared.
Ask any being the first thing that came into their head about the Gallifreyans, and they would reply immediately with 'Time Lord'. It was in fact the so-called 'benevolent' Time Lords who became more feared even then the tyranny of the Daleks.
The Time Lords started humbly enough, revered for their even mixture of science and mysticism. They were fair in their justice, and respected the rights of the common people. But like all things, the glory days came all too swiftly to an end.
Revolution came to this peaceful planet, and all those loyal to the old ways were banished, never to return to their home plant. Those that remained believed that science would be their salvation. Revered turned to feared and life turned to dust upon the quest for the unattainable. The people of Gallifrey had already been travelling through the stars for aeons and they wanted more.
It was the scientists Omega and Rassilon that realised what the Gallifrey supremacy was lacking. What would make them all-powerful? Time, the ability to manipulate that omnipresent power, that great force. They would be the ultimate. The scientist Omega sacrificed himself for that belief, opening the black hole that allowed his people to attain the levels of Time Lord.
Shortly after, the Time Lords became the highest on the hierarchy of Gallifrey and they, in their TARDIS, were able to cross time and space in the blink of an eye based on the fact that Space and Time are always relative to one another. One could interfere directly with a planet and its people, and even the leaves would not sway with your passing. They would be able to kill you by simply preventing your very existence.
The Time Lords called it a humane way to die. However, the rest of the universe did not feel that confidence, and that threat alone caused more than one species to quake in fear and declare war.
All were destroyed. A hundred advanced races, gone. Simply because they refused to bow their backs to the Citadel of Gallifrey.
Finally the Council, realising its folly, proclaimed a new rule. This would later become known as the First Law, and it prohibited Time Lords' interference into lesser-evolved worlds. The universe breathed a sigh of relief.
But the damage had already been done, and in the process it had created the greatest evil the cosmos had ever seen, an evil that would finally bring down the children of Gallifrey.
They became known as the Daleks. Upon the murder of their creator, they hid in the dark space and increased their numbers, becoming a plague of epic proportions. The universe would tremble under their might.
Many years later, when the fleet had sufficient numbers, the Emperor of the Daleks ordered a last assault against the Time Lords and the Council. The Time Lords were reluctant to engage the fleet at first, as to do so would have broken their most sacred of laws, but were eventually drawn into the struggle for dominance over Time and Space. The battle raged across time, a million dimensions. Lesser peoples never had the slightest idea of what was being fought and won above their heads, and the more advanced races were forced to do battle simply so their own corners of space could remain safe.
This lead to the extinction of millions of species across the dimensional spectrum.
Plots and counter-plots followed, and neither side could seem to gain the upper hand, until centuries later when the Gallifreyan resistance broke down. The Daleks were victorious and the planet of the Time Lords was destroyed. However, the Dalek Empire also was decimated. None remained.
Excerpt from 'Time Lords' by Doctor P Voyle.
After the nuclear reactor of Vilinguard mysteriously combusted hundreds of years previously, weapon making ground to a halt. Planetary myth states that a man known as 'the Doctor' was responsible for this meltdown and left in a blue device he called a 'TARDIS', but not before making off with an armload of blueprints, the dirty rotten scrounger.
Vilinguard progressed from there. Soon it was found that because of the chemical imbalances in the atmosphere, the only thing that could be successfully harvested were a particularly hardy crop of bananas. This seemed like a dead end, but it soon became clear to the President that Vilinguard was the only planet in his sector that could grow the simple banana.
The Grove of Vilinguard sprang up from there. However, several weeks later, there were reports of beings suddenly disappearing from various tour groups, something the President ardently denied.
Forty two years later, there was a sudden change in the government of Vilinguard. On the Board of Directors there was not one natural Vilinguardian. This lead to speculation that the stories about alien-knapping had been real. It was a fact that occasionally beings would surface saying that they had been prisoners of Vilinguard, but that was only generally after a share increase.
What lead to this reversal in the bureaucracy is anyone's guess; though an ageing Reptilian remembers "A skinny man, a girl with bright hair, and one of our kind. No one was s'posed to say anything, though." More star struck visitors in another blue box?'
'The Development of the Groves of Vilinguard' midterm essay by Kryten Vox Moorn.
The siren cut through her head, the lights flashing a dangerous mauve. Lights and computer circuits popped and fizzled as she jogged down the corridor. All programs were being absorbed and encrypted, rendering the base completely helpless.
"Come on, come on!"
"How much time have we got?"
She looked down at her wrist computer. "None. Hurry up!"
The Time Lord looked up from his work. "You can't rush perfection." He sniffed. "I may be a genius, but this will be finished in its own time."
"I don't care whether you're one of the greatest geniuses in the Universe or not." She snapped. "I'm not going to sacrifice my team for you." The Gallifreyan woman turned to the handful of scientists and engineers still left in the room. "Evacuate, now!"
"But the virus-" He protested.
"Now!"
Once given the word, the room emptied quickly. She once again turned back to the Time Lord sent to supervise them, still bent over the workbench. "We have to leave." She said.
"A little longer."
"Evacuation procedure 129.5 has been initiated." Said the loudspeaker. "Docking bay doors have been overridden. Those unable to reach the evacuation points, please join together in the Prayer of Three as the base is detonated to inflict maximum damage to the Dalek Fleet."
"You've done all you can! We're going to die!"
"We all die in the end." He mused. "Crumble away into nothingness…"
"And who's going to be there to finish the virus when you're dead?"
That caught his attention, and he straightened up. "Time for you to get going, I think." He said stately, seeming unaware of the chaos going on around him. She envied his calmness.
"Good." She replied. Taking his arm, she almost pushed him out the door. "The escape pods are this way." She made to move off, but he stopped in his tracks. "There's still time!"
"Not for me." His voice had suddenly become brittle. "It's all over for me."
"What?"
"Get going. I'll complete the virus."
"But-"
"Trust me."
"Stop!" She shouted out behind him."Doctor!"
"Outer sanctuary breach."
And so she started running as fast as she could toward the escape pods. She was too far away and knew it.
Panting heavily, she skidded to a stop. Think, she told herself firmly. Think. There must be a way out. There's always a way out. Pressing her hands against the cold surface of the observation window, she could see hundreds of little pods jettisoning off the doomed base. Their allies. And almost all that was left of the once great Time Lords.
"No." She gasped. Dalek scout ships began to emerge from all sides of space, surrounding the escapees. She could only stare out hopelessly as the Gallifreyan ships impacted with the Dalek fighters, and one after another, she could feel the life forces of the pilots and passengers being snuffed out.
"Murderers!" She screamed, though none could hear her.
The Time Lords had lost Arcadia.
"Inner sanctuary breach."
Her hearts were gripped with an icy terror.
Eris Cassiopeia was a plain girl from Gallifrey, not a Time Lady or anything special, merely a bio engineer. She wasn't meant to be here. This wasn't meant to happen. Why was this happening? Harnessing some of the Doctor's ever-present level headedness, she turned around and walked back the other way.
Gallifreyan TARDIS Program. As Eris looked up at the logo emblazoned across the door, her stomach squirmed uncomfortably as she realised what she was about to do. She was about to steal a TARDIS, an offence that would otherwise see you imprisoned.
All complete and functional ships had been sent offworld to aid the war effort, so all that were in the room were a couple of prototypes and one in for repair. A sign above an empty space read STOP. Before you leave your TARDIS, have you left the lights on to discourage burglars?
Eris walked past the non-functioning prototypes and opened the door of the seemingly complete ship. The image the ship projected seemed to change with each minute, and she immediately diagnosed the problem.
Faulty chameleon chip.
She stepped in and the door snapped shut. The dimensional stabilisers reactivated as they recognised the presence of a Gallifreyan on board.
Teeth gritted with concentration, she pulled levers into place. She would make the jump before the explosion, she would!
Eris kept telling herself that even as the TARDIS was engulfed by the shockwaves from the matter bomb.
The room was dark, and she sat up.
"Ooh, my head." Her voice crackled and sounded different to her ears. Actually, everything seemed a little different, and it wasn't just the feeling of having jumped a planet going supernova.
"Lights on." She told the ship. Nothing happened. "Lights on!" Grumbling, she rose to her feet. The control console flashed once in greeting and at once she was blinded.
"Yes, thank you. That is very helpful." Now she realised what else was wrong with this ship. The compliance chip was faulty and the ship was close to gaining a personality of its own. A trait potentially dangerous to any Time Lord or Lady. Who needed a ship that could think for itself?
You're not a Time Lady, Eris reminded herself. She had joined the Scientific Division long ago, before she had gone through her first regeneration cycle. Her brother had always laughed at her for not becoming part of the Academy.
Wait. She froze. Arcadia!
A quick search was all that was needed to confirm her suspicions. Arcadia was a dead planet. Nothing was left of the once glorious civilisation. With trembling fingers and hearts in her throat, she typed in another planetary name. Gallifrey.
Nothing was there. The home galaxy had been completely destroyed. The readout on the TARDIS console stated that their arm of the galaxy had been dead for forty-two years.
The ship had somehow automatically ridden a rip in time and appeared in the future space.
That was impossible! Wasn't it? She had been knocked out yesterday and woken up again today decades in the future. Eris had studied the unpredictability of the Time Vortex. The instability meant that a great shock of some kind could disrupt the flow of time. Rip it, if you will, and it will send you spiralling.
Planets that were only hours away would become years away.
"Termination reports."
The TARDIS dug into its archives.
Termination report: planetary destruction — 100%, located TARDISes — 0, Gallifreyan population — 0. Statistics excluding TARDIS 45938.75 and passenger.
"By the Other! What do I do now?" She sunk back into her seat.
Time passed. Eris wasn't particularly fond of travelling by TARDIS. You never really knew for certain where you were going to end up. Some Gallifreyans enjoyed the thrill, but she was a test pilot, not an adventurer.
She appraised her new regeneration. A pasty freckled redhead with a big nose and square jaw,she thought critically. Once, when she was doing her engineering degree, she and her friends would compare regenerations on who improved the most from the last century. But then, she would never see her friends again, would she? Hear her parents arguing in the background, her brother teasing her for not joining the Academy and becoming a Time Lady.
She had almost resigned herself to a life of floating aimlessly through space and time when the TARDIS sent up a blue alert, requesting her presence on the bridge. They had landed. Eris once again bent over the computer console. "Now why did you bring me here?"
But, of course, the ship could not reply.
There was only one way to find out. She stepped out onto the surface.
"Welcome to Vilinguard, the banana capital of the universe!"
An alien came up to her. He was vaguely humanoid and a jaundiced yellow. "You're missing the tour, ma'am." She allowed him to shepherd her back to the main group, the majority of which looked like schoolchildren on a fieldtrip, their teacher scolding them as she watched. "Ahem." The alien said, pushing his way to the front of the small crowd. "Ahem!"
It took several minutes before it was silent enough for him to talk. "I am Designated Guide 2965, and I will be showing you around the groves today. I must ask you to take your rubbish with you as we move, and please do not touch the produce. There will be the opportunity to buy something from our gift store at the end of the tour." Designated Guide clapped his hands together. "This is Phase One in the processing plant area. Although the machine has been retired for five years, I would still appreciate no one sticking their fingers in the holes!"
A little boy jumped and looked around guiltily.
"And we're walking!"
Many of the instruments were crude and looked as ineffective beyond belief. Eris made the mistake of mumbling this aloud as she studied a pulping device that was large enough to throw a person into.
"Vilinguard is not the place it once was." Someone said morosely behind her. She turned and saw another of the yellow-skinned inhabitants of the Grove.
"Oh, hello. I didn't mean to - My name is Eris."
"I am Nothing, once Designated Guildmaster of Science." He said. "You are correct to call our technology primitive and backwards. As it is, we have not been great since the Weapons Factory was destroyed many years ago. Why, I remember once we were even were commissioned by the Time Lords themselves to equip their soldiers for the Last Great Time War!"
Last Great Time War. Eris looked away.
"Are you unwell?" Nothing asked in a concerned voice.
"I'm fine. Really." She sighed, her hearts sinking. Nothing here could have sent out a mayday specifically to a TARDIS. Certainly not any of the worryingly-cheerful banana men or the lizard creatures that looked like they would have trouble remembering their own name.
"Psst." Eris looked around. "Psst. Down here, Ma'am." A pair of green eyes was peeking up at her from the grated floor, and her eyes widened in surprise.
"Reece needs to talk to you, ma'am."
Eris blinked. "Why? Who are you?"
"Because Reece sees that you are-" He lowered his voice. "Different."
"How did you know that-?"
"The masters have another that is different."
"A Time Lord? The Vilinguardians have a Time Lord here? Where is he?" Hope rose as a small bubble in her chest. A Time Lord! One of them had lived? But why couldn't she sense him? Why?
"Shh." Reece shushed her. "Plantation One, ma'am. Do not mention Reece, please." And he was gone.
"Ma'am? The tour group has reached the factory floor."
It was several minutes before she plucked up the courage to ask. "Are we allowed to see Plantation One?" Eris questioned. "If it's not too much to ask."
Designated Guide seemed taken aback at the question.
"Yes, of course!" The other aliens took up the chorus.
"Plantation One!"
"Eh," Designated Guide eased a finger between his neck and the collar of his shirt. "I am afraid not, good people. Plantation One is currently being fumigated for… flesh eating fungus."
There was a collective 'Ohh' of disappointment. Eris's lip curled.
"Follow me to proceed to the kiosk!"
As the last Vilinguardian passed by her, she pretended to slip, grabbing at his belt to steady herself.
"Oh, how clumsy of me!"
"Not to worry! Follow along when you have righted yourself!" The Vilinguardian chirped happily. Eris smiled as the man walked away.
"Very clumsy indeed," she chuckled, slipping the keys in her pocket.
The wall of Plantation One was tall and solid. Danger. Keep out. All a big fat danger sign had ever done for Eris was make her want to see what was behind it. She stood there feeling awkward, trying each key in the lock, wishing she had had a little more time to grab something from her toolkit on Gallifrey. Finally the lock chinked and the Gallifreyan slipped inside. What she saw next shocked her.
Creatures from all across the galaxy were slaving under ropes and scythes, hauling bananas away in poorly designed carts to different transmat points. She forced herself to walk.
"Get off me!"
She jumped. The accent was shockingly familiar, from her quadrant of space.
"Your recent attempts to escape Vilinguard have been noted." Said a Vilinguardian coldly. "And will no longer be tolerated. You will be punished."
Eris lent around a stack of banana boxes. A yellow-skinned Vilinguardian with his distinctive elongated head was holding a stun rod, standing over a huddled shape in ripped clothing that might have once been grand.
And she knew without a doubt that that man was one of the last Time Lords.
The Vilinguardian lowered his stun rod and the Time Lord screamed.
Her teeth ground together. The ability to sit still and be quiet was a talent that had always seemed to allude her.
"Stop!"
The Vilinguardian seemed taken by surprise at the appearance of the female and lost concentration on his stun rod. Quicker than Eris expected, the Time Lord bunched his fists and drove them into the Vilinguardian again and again.
"Stop it." She said firmly, grabbing his hands. "Don't kill him!"
"Forty-two years! Forty-two years!" The Time Lord shrieked. "I ought to wipe you all out, you –"
Eris drew back a hand and slapped him sharply across the face. After a moment of complete shock, he slowly blinked and rubbed a hand across his eyes.
"Are you alright?"
He managed to nod wearily before he fainted.
Oh, please.
The Time Lord woke after a moment to a redheaded girl fanning his face with the leaf of a banana palm. "Ooh, my head," he moaned. Then everything came back in a rush and he doubled over, feeling sick.
"I have to get my ship back!"
"What? Are you crazy?"
"I'm not leaving my TARDIS!" He shrugged off her hand and forced himself to his feet. He brushed her off and straightened his rags as though they were grand robes.
"'Thank you for saving my life, Eris, I am in your debt, Eris'." She muttered under her breath. Prat. Pompous prat.
That was when an announcement was blared over the speakers."Designated B1.25 has been damaged! Search for the male that is different! We are lead to believe that there is now a female with him!"
Oh no.
"Come on!" The Time Lord pushed her through the banana groves.
"Where is your TARDIS?" She asked.
"In the President's boardroom." The Time Lord puffed. "With any luck they are still trying to find out how to pick the lock. Hurry, before we are — "
"Caught." The Vilinguardian stepped from behind the corner of a storage shed and smiled at them coldly. "I am Designated One. You harmed my brother and must suffer the consequences. Vilinguard is the greatest banana grove in the universe, and our reputation must remain unsullied!"
"Your reputation?" The Time Lord spluttered. "You're doing all this for your reputation?"
"A reputation is an important thing!" Designated One sung out. Privately Eris agreed. Gallifrey would not have been as nearly as powerful as it was if it wasn't for the Time Lord's supposed prowess and the Council of Thirteen thinking that they had achieved Godlike status.
"Many years ago, we Vilinguardians were the finest makers of weapons in the known universe! We were commissioned to work in hundreds of star systems! Our reputation was grand! But then — " He scowled. "-one of the Different came. He called himself the Doctor."
The Time Lord looked confused. The title wasn't familiar to him. Eris frowned.
"The Doctor did not like the way we Vilinguardians did things. He destroyed our nuclear reactor because of it. The old ways of weapon making were lost, and the only thing we could cultivate were bananas!"
Yes. That sounds like the Doctor's sense of humour.
"But we built up another reputation from there. To once be the best, even only in bananas. They were the best damn bananas in the universe!" He shouted. "We have treated the Different the same since. You are not worthy of our spit!"
"You're insane." Eris whispered.
There was a noise above their heads and she looked up before seizing the Time Lord's wrist and pulling him down sharply as the claw that had been suspending a crate of the yellow fruit hit Designated One in the back of the head, knocking the man clear off his feet.
"Reece got the evil banana man!" Came the victorious shout. "Reece is a hero!"
"Reece!" Eris laughed. As Reece jumped down from the stack of bananas, she saw that he was one of the upright-walking lizard creatures.
"Ma'am!"
"Call me Eris." She looked down on the Time Lord. "You aren't going to faint again, are you?"
He just glared back at both of them. "This way."
"You're welcome," Eris muttered.
Her initial suspicions were confirmed about the Time Lord.
Not necessarily the part about being a prat, but that later turned out to be true too. He introduced himself as the Judge, which meant he was certainly a graduate from the Academy, and he was pathetically young in the cases of most Time Lords. He hadn't even reached regeneration age yet. That it itself puzzled Eris, as she knew from her brother that a Gallifreyan had to be the minimum age of 300 to be 'advanced' enough to be considered for a Time Lordship. He must have had family high up in the hierarchy.
But despite the fact that the TARDIS's statistics and her own telepathic link clearly said that she was the only Gallifreyan left in existence, here he was. No matter how pompous or insufferable he turned out to be, the Judge gave Eris hope that others of their kind had survived.
Eris managed to find the key to Plantation One's factory floor on the first try. She and Reece almost had to carry the Judge over the threshold. Even being as skinny as he was, he was still quite heavy.
Perhaps Reece and I should just leave him here and run, she thought sourly. But the thought of a fully operational TARDIS and the Judge's sonic wand spurred her on.
"Through there."
Is a sonic device, no matter how powerful, really worth this?
"You landed in the middle of their diabolical committee meeting? You're not serious, are you?"
"I didn't exactly have much of a choice." He snapped back. "I was shot at by a Dalek scout ship on the inter-dimensional plane. If I didn't land I would have been quite literally taken apart. Good thing the other Time Lords blasted it into oblivion, like they always do." He said with a faint trace of pride.
Eris dropped the keys loudly. He didn't know that Gallifrey and all the other Time Lords and Ladies were gone.
"What?"
"Have you wondered why you can't sense any of the other Time Lords?" She didn't look at his face, but instead glanced around the boardroom. There, in plain sight, was the Judge's sonic wand. She picked it up.
"At times, yes. I assumed a chemical in the atmosphere impaired — why?"
Eris studied the sonic wand. "It's the screwdriver model!" She exclaimed.
"I'll have you know that it is a FXP 4000 SonicWand." The Judge said huffily.
"I think I know the difference between a screwdriver model and a wand model. I am an engineer, after all. I design these things."
"And I am a Time Lord."
"And Reece isn't either of those fancy things, but he knows when he's outgunned."
Eris and the Judge stopped arguing.
The chair at the head of the table swivelled around.
"Lady and gentlemen." Another creature in a flamboyant purple suit that could have only been the President smiled. "Welcome to the heart of the grove of Vilinguard." He stood up, and TARDIS components fell out of his lap. The Judge just stared at the pieces of his disembodied TARDIS. The President smiled and picked up part of the time vortex modulator.
"Yes, it is your ship." He spoke calmly, not shouting and hyper like all the other Vilinguardians they had met. "A very interesting specimen. I would have liked to learn more, but unfortunately the only way to force the door was to blow it up. Needless to say, there wasn't much left after that."
The Judge's expression was devastated. The President ran his thumb over the modulator. "You see, as soon as Designated B1.25 was attacked, I guessed it would only be a matter of time before you came back looking for your T. A. R. D. I. S., Time Lord." Eris blinked in surprise. "Yes, do not think I don't know who you are, Time Lady. The scrounge of the Universe."
The Judge's hand tightened on the sonic wand. "She is not a Time Lady." He suddenly spat. "She is just another nobody. Like you. What gives you the right to abduct people to work your groves? You are a soulless evil creature and I am surprised your workers haven't risen against you."
The President rubbed his hands together. "It is all a matter of reputation, Time Lord. My own people would not voluntarily work in the groves. So I improvise."
Something banged into the door behind them that Reece had the sense to lock.
"My reinforcements." Said the President. "Just in case I could not handle an injured Time Lord, female, and Reptilian on my own."
The door was pounded on again. The President smiled, and pointed a finger at Eris.
"You, Time Lady. Lead me to your TARDIS."
"If I refuse?" Eris said, sounding bolder than she felt.
The President clicked his fingers and the doors burst open. Armed Vilinguardians burst in, the laser sights of their weapons focused on the Judge and Reece. "Then I will execute the Time Lord and the Reptilian." He replied. Reece began to shake uncontrollably. The Judge stared down the lasers defiantly. Eris looked between the both of them. Their lives or giving the Vilinguardians the technology of a TARDIS?
She was not a Time Lady and now knew that she would have never chosen to become a Time Lady. She did not possess the necessary ruthlessness anyway. She closed her eyes.
"Follow me."
The President followed Eris back to outside the compound, the Judge and Reece at gunpoint. The Judge was gripping his sonic wand so hard that his knuckles were white. He glared at the engineer's back. What in the name of Rassilon was she doing? Did she have no idea what would happen if the Vilinguardians got their hands on Gallifreyan technology? Galaxies filled with bananas.The Judge shivered in disgust.
Eris stopped in front of a giant silver egg. The Judge's eyebrows rose. The Vilinguardians shoved him and Reece forward before levelling their weapons at the three of them. The President stepped forward.
"Open it." He hissed.
Eris fitted the key into the lock and the door swung open, aware of the crowd they were attracting. The President took another step forward to look inside.
"No wonder the Time Lords were so superior," he breathed. He then chuckled. "Yet they got their comeuppance in the end, didn't they?"
"W — what do you mean?"
"Ah, poor Time Lord. Has your pet Time Lady not yet told you of the demise of Gallifrey?" The Judge stared at Eris with a mixture of anger, denial and a little hurt on his face. The President obviously revelled being the one to tell him this news.
"Yes, Time Lord. The Daleks finally did us all a favour and destroyed the Time Lords forever! The great, cosmic know-alls, finally there was something they didn't see coming. I really should have sent the Dalek Emperor a note. Maybe a chocolate box."
He laughed. Some of the wind had finally gone from the Judge's sails. "Gallifrey gone?" He asked slowly.
"Gone, gone, gone!" The President clapped his hands in childlike glee. The Judge rubbed his eyes and rose his sonic wand.
The President raised his hand. "Thank you for this marvellous technology." He said happily. "But now you all have no further use to me, as you have proven to me that you cannot be broken. It is time to join your beloved Gallifrey."
The Judge flicked his wand into the 'on' position. "Fine." He said. Before the President's arm dropped, he jabbed his hand forward, slamming the wand into the Vilinguardian's eye.
The Vilinguardian froze, then started to shake. The Judge felt Eris take his hand and pull him back. Reece crouched behind them both.
The President began to emit a high-pitched whine before his mouth opened. "Presidential Unit Zero malfunction, malfunction. Self destruction in five, four, three, two, one."
And he exploded, leaving the three of them standing in the room covered in synthetic flesh and banana pulp.
Eris ran her fingers through her banana slicked hair and looked up slowly. Reece was busy licking his face with his long blue tongue and the Judge was shaking the pulp from his hands, an expression of disgust on his face.
No one had shot at them yet. In fact, all the Vilinguardians had dropped their weapons and had collapsed twitching on the ground. Eris watched as the Judge retrieved his sonic wand. He peeled back a flap of purple pinstripe and probed about in the mush.
"Ah, of course. An organic layer over a mechanical frame."
"Don't give me that tone. If you had any idea that thing was an android, you would have done that years ago."
The Judge ignored her. "When this 'Doctor' destroyed the nuclear reactor, it must have wiped out the last of the real Vilinguardians. The original President must have transferred his consciousness into a biomechanical form before the final explosion, and programmed it to create more and more machines to repopulate the planet."
"They were all tied to the President's consciousness."
Reece was standing in the doorway of the TARDIS. He did a little dance on the spot. "Evil banana men are gone! Does Reece get to travel now?" He asked anxiously, spinning around to face Eris and almost tripping up the Judge with his tail.
"You bet." She grinned. The Judge looked up at her, his expression sour.
"Oh. And you too, I suppose."