I don't own Doctor Who. This is my first one-shot of the new series.
I love Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, don't get me wrong, but I've had this in mind for a long time. While Steven Moffat brought in good ideas, I did ask myself how long it would be before he came around. I mean, Tom Baker may have been immortalised for his roles, but how long does he have left?
Anyway, this is my idea for what happened to the Thirteenth Doctor, but I've got other stories planned for her. Hopefully, they won't be as grim as this one.
Enjoy nonetheless.
The Time of the Curator.
The Doctor was paralysed as she lay on the floor of her TARDIS's Zero room.
It had been a long time since she had been inside this particular room of her ship; she had not used it to help her recover from her sixth incarnation onwards whenever she'd regenerated, but she could understand why her own people had locked her in here. In here, in the depths of her ship where the power of the Eye of Harmony copy was stronger than in the console room, paralysed, there was no way she could wriggle out of what they planned to do to her.
It was starting.
A tell-tale burn in her body that was so strong she could feel it on a cellular level, one she had felt many times before in her lifetimes.
She was regenerating, and unlike her previous incarnation, there was no way she could stall the regeneration from occurring while she was paralysed on the floor of her own TARDIS.
As she felt the regeneration energy burn through her body, though not strong enough to break the temporary paralysis the Time Lords had imposed on her and would last long into the 15 hours of her next body. Talk about being unfair, but there was nothing she could do about it; she could hear the TARDIS dematerialising off of Gallifrey, on it's way once more to Earth.
The Doctor almost could not believe it. Back in the days of her second incarnation during her original regeneration cycle, she had been force regenerated and sent to Earth for her exile, and now in her new regeneration cycle by some cruel twist of fate, her first two lives of the new cycle she had received after that mess on Trenzalore, she had encountered Mondasian Cybermen, and now she was in the second incarnation of the new cycle she was being exiled to Earth.
She could understand the Time Lords anger towards her previous self for what she had done and breaking the Laws of Time to rescue Clara after that mess with Me and the Raven, but their reasons for capturing her this time around were more complex than they had been in her original regeneration cycle. Back then she had lit up the flare on the War Chief's alliance with the War Lords and their plans involving brainwashed and kidnapped human soldiers, and she hadn't managed to escape from her people who had put her on trial and made her a secret agent for a time before she was formally exiled to Earth.
But those good old days where the Time Lords hadn't even been aware of the looming Time War were gone. Now her people were more unforgiving and they were determined to ensure their own survival followed through. The Time Lords were not stupid; they'd worked out what her previous selves had done to save Gallifrey so then their wartime incarnation didn't destroy the planet.
An endless paradox, one the Time Lords had no intention of playing games with. They weren't happy about her various incarnations meeting each other, but if it saved their people then they wouldn't do anything about it. The Doctor had no idea how long it had taken for Rassilon to get Gallifrey out of the pocket universe her previous selves had locked the planet away and then tricked the universe into thinking that the Time Lords had been rendered all but extinct, but she knew they'd find out how her previous lives had managed to do it and the events that led to that point.
Thinking of Rassilon made the Doctor mentally groan.
The old bastard had returned home when the leftover yes-men who thrived in the environment he fostered, and he had been furious when he learnt that his ideas about the Hybrid were wrong, but what was even more annoying for him was the punishment the Doctor was currently suffering. Rassilon was a sadistic maniac, he actively enjoyed inflicting misery and pain on his victims; he hadn't batted an eyelid when he had ordered that drumbeat rhythm to be transmitted into the mind of the Master as a child, and he hadn't given any thought about what that action would do to an innocent child.
Oh, the Master would still have gone mad looking into the Untempered Schism, but if that drumming rhythm had not been lodged into the Master's brain as a kid, then he would have had a bit more sanity. If that was possible.
Rassilon had not ordered the entire universe trawled for her to be dragged back to Gallifrey when he returned to his position of Lord President, but he hadn't ordered her to be captured right away. No, he had decided to let her think she had gotten away with what she had done to him, and then he would have her dragged back home.
He had waited years to get his revenge.
He had planned for this moment where she would finally pay the price for what her twelfth self had done to him, but Rassilon knew that he couldn't kill her. He couldn't kill any of the Doctors of the past because of their role in the universe, even Rassilon was not stupid enough to push the universe that far even if the Time Lords had the technology to mitigate the worst of the timeline damage. Her role in history was just too great, and since she had saved Gallifrey from the Daleks, it made it even more vital she lived.
Besides, he had scanned the timelines and he had seen her eleventh incarnation speak to someone who sported a remarkable resemblance to the Fourth Doctor, and he had hit upon a poetic idea of stranding her on Earth while sporting the face of the incarnation who had truly been free; her first two incarnations had been overjoyed with travelling the universe, but there was always the shadow of her people looking in and punishing her, that was why she had always been on the move.
The Doctor was unable to move as the regeneration finally began to truly surge through her body, and she wished she could stand up as she had done for some of her previous regenerations so then she could get used to the new incarnations' change, but there was nothing she could do.
With the next surge of regeneration energy, the Thirteenth Doctor was no more…..
The moment he woke up, and quickly assessing his new body, knowing that he was no longer female in this incarnation. It took a moment for it to settle in his mind that he already knew that Rassilon had planned on triggering a regeneration while making him "re-visit" his earlier fourth incarnation. He knew that his eyes would once more be so wide it would appear they were on the verge of popping out, and he had a beaky nose. Nothing he couldn't handle.
After breathing in and out for a moment, the Doctor couldn't help but feel…..old in this new body, and he groaned out loud, and he jumped in surprise and delight when the sound penetrated his ears as it echoed around the room. The paralysis had worn off. He could stand up. Well, easier said than done, he thought as he tried to get up; this new body, well old body if you looked at it from different angles since it was basically a copy of his fourth incarnation, was not as limber and as youthful as his previous life had been.
As he stood up, however, the Doctor realised he had another problem; there was a pain in his right leg as he tried to put some of his weight on it. The Doctor frowned down at his leg, and he tried again but it was the same result.
The Doctor couldn't believe it, but it was true. This body was flawed, crippled, and there was nothing he could do about it. As he hobbled around the Zero Room to get used to his new body's flaw, the Doctor realised what the thought was behind it. For centuries, he had run away, literally and figuratively, and now like one of those cruel people on Earth who clipped the wings of birds, he could no longer run. The Doctor frowned at the cruel pettiness of Rassilon, knowing this was right up the old bastard's street.
But the Doctor wondered what the ancient Time Lord President had in mind for him in the long run. The last thing he wanted now was to be played like a puppet on the old bastard's strings. The thought made him ache wearily more than he actually felt. The Doctor sighed and he walked slowly over to the mirror he had placed in the Zero room a long time ago; he had always planned to hold off the regenerations he'd experienced since his fourth and fifth regeneration, which were the most painful regenerations he'd had, and the most mentally painful he'd ever had to experience.
The way his fourth life had ended had been painful and more traumatic than succumbing to old age or radiation poisoning, but his fifth incarnation hadn't lasted longer than a few centuries, and considering how nasty spectrox toxaemia had been the Doctor had decided to try to regenerate in the Zero room in the future, but it had never happened.
But the mirror stayed put and the Doctor walked over to it.
As his now blue eyes scanned the image reflected in the mirror, he needed a moment to remember the way the Curator had appeared to his eleventh incarnation; the man reflected in the mirror was identical to the Curator.
The Doctor winced when he remembered his clothes, they were too tight around his newly regenerated body, and he sighed sadly when he caught sight of the tears in his thirteenth self's coat and the dungarees were now like shorts that were bursting at the seams.
His last incarnation had been fairly short. He remembered how he'd been dwarfed in the clothes of his twelfth body after the regeneration, but he now remembered how tall he'd been in his fourth body. It would take a while for him to adjust to once more being taller, but he'd been in tall incarnations before, so he wasn't worried.
The Doctor sighed and hobbled out of the Zero room, ignoring the instantaneous haze around his mind, though it wasn't strong enough to worry him. He knew the Time Lords had locked him inside the Zero room and it would only unlock once 15-16 hours were up, and he was just relieved his people had had the common decency to make sure he was sleeping off the post-regeneration trauma instead of just letting him cope with the misery.
As he wandered close to the wardrobe to get out of his clothes since they were far too tight for him to cope with in the long run, the Doctor thought about what was going to happen now he was once more exiled to Earth (that was a thought, had the TARDIS materialised?), but truthfully he found he couldn't care less. He had coped with one exile, and he had been driven insane trying to escape but it wasn't until that business with Omega his exile had been lifted.
But now…. he was older and more experienced. He had no idea what was going to come out of being in this new and yet so old body that was almost identical to his fourth life, but one thing was for certain. He was not going to work for UNIT again, at least not as he had done years ago. He may have enjoyed some of the work he'd done with them centuries ago, but UNIT had changed a great deal. He was not interested in spending hours and hours in a laboratory, trying and failing to repair a TARDIS that was locked. Thinking about the way the Time Lords had removed the knowledge he had of time travel, made him remember to check his own knowledge.
To his surprise, his knowledge was still there. That made no sense. Why would he be exiled to a primitive world in a primitive time zone and yet have the knowledge to escape?
Then he realised the Time Lords had something else in mind, but the problem was he had no idea what it could be. When he didn't know what his own people had in mind, the Doctor worried. He had seen the corruption on Gallifrey first hand, he had seen them play dangerous and horrifying schemes that were designed to help themselves and only themselves, not the people of Gallifrey.
As he headed for the wardrobe, the Doctor expected the Time Lords to block off the knowledge he had of time travel and dematerialisation theory since it was the usual protocol for an exiled Time Lord. But nothing happened, and when he entered the wardrobe at last after a long walk where he had cursed his people for making it harder for him to walk, the Doctor was relieved. It didn't take long for him to find the essential bits of his fourth incarnation's outfit - long coat, buccaneer boots, felt hat and extremely long scarf. The Doctor brightened at the sight of the familiar garments, but before he could touch them, he paused.
No, he couldn't wear them. Oh, he might wear the scarf from time to time, but looking at the clothes…. the Doctor realised he had become too old to wear them. It was disheartening. He knew that as they grew older, children lost some of their interests; one boy could be interested in Thomas the Tank Engine, but in later life, they'd consider it babyish and immature. In the case of Time Lords, as they moved through their regenerations, their earlier interests were just….abandoned in the same manner. It didn't help that while the Doctor currently resembled an earlier life, he had moved on in terms of style.
Resigned, the Doctor browsed through the wardrobe for an hour, and when he left he was wearing a wonderful blazer in dark blue, mahogany red trousers, and black slip-on shoes with a red hanky in his left breast pocket. In the wardrobe, he had found a simple cane to help him hobble along, and he indeed hobbled along to the console room, blinking in astonishment at the massive shape of the 3D oil painting leaning against the wall, a painting he had not seen in a long time.
Gallifrey Falls No More.
The Doctor sighed. Great, another self-fulfilling prophecy; he always became annoyed with them. Ever since he had first laid eyes on the wretched thing all those years ago when he was about to discover the truth of what happened at the end of the Time War, the Doctor had wondered just what the "remarkable circumstances" had led to him acquiring the painting and ensuring the destiny line continued without the three incarnations who'd joined up to save Gallifrey from burning were.
It had never occurred to him to think of exile.
The Doctor should have expected this. The Time Lords almost always used their Stasis cubes to 'photograph' important events in their history; they did it whenever a Lord President stood down or was elected, or whatever else happened in their history that was considered important. It made sense they would use the cubes to 'photograph' events during the war. A bit reckless since the Daleks could find a way of breaking out, but it was doubtful it would happen.
The Eleventh Doctor had assumed that in the future he would somehow go back in time and take the snapshot himself and hang it up in the museum, but it seemed the Time Lords had done the job already.
Grunting irritably, the Doctor walked around the console and was a little bit surprised that he could understand the finer workings of it. What were the Time Lords doing? He knew he had a biodata tag already, he'd seen the damn tattoo on his forearm that signified him as a Time Lord prisoner, why weren't they going the whole hog?
The Doctor swallowed as he wondered what they had in mind, but at that moment the TARDIS began to materialise. When the dimensional stabilisers were finished pushing the TARDIS out of the Vortex, the Doctor didn't move as though he were afraid to leave his ship and have it snatched away from him. In the end, he realised he was just being silly, so he checked the controls and found he was on Earth, London in the year 1999.
Why would the Time Lords imprison him here? He checked the date again and found that the TARDIS was definitely there, about three months before that mess with the Master in San Francisco where his eighth self nearly lost his lives. The Doctor cautiously poked his head out of the TARDIS, and he smiled, but before he could leave he heard a voice call him.
"Hello, Doctor. So you've finally left your TARDIS."
The Doctor stiffened. It was Rassilon himself. He turned slowly and he found the other Time Lord standing close to the TARDIS that he was almost leaning against it.
"What do you want?" the Doctor asked shortly, not bothering to be polite to the man who had caused so much misery over the centuries.
Rassilon seemed amused by the rudeness as though he'd expected it. "I just wanted to wish you luck; new body, new life, new exile. Oh, please, don't look at me like that. I didn't want to exile you, but if the first of your prior two lives of your second regeneration cycle had bothered to act like a mature adult and told me what I wanted to know about the Hybrid-.'
"You and the High Council manipulated me. You tortured me in that Confession Dial."
"You simply don't get it, do you Doctor? Gallifrey barely survived the Last Great Time War," there was a mocking tone to the Lord President's voice as if he were personally amused by how the war had been dubbed, "and when you were defending that crack on Trenzalore, we came close to being wiped out in a second Time War." Rassilon's face hardened. "Do you really blame us for taking steps in ensuring our survival?"
"There was no life on Gallifrey when I arrived in the ruins, aside from Me," the Doctor replied. "What was the point of that then, eh?" he asked, slipping into his fourth incarnations' mannerisms easily.
Rassilon nodded and he looked momentarily regretful, but it disappeared quickly. "Alright, I admit it; we made a mistake. Shoot me for wanting to protect my people."
The Doctor lifted a brow, but he didn't comment on Rassilon's snarky reply. Rassilon had regenerated since that mess with Clara and that meeting on Gallifrey, he didn't know and frankly didn't care why. But this new Rassilon was more sarcastic. The new Rassilon resembled a human in his early twenties, a switch when you saw how old he had appeared in the past, but now it seemed he favoured a younger looking appearance. It did look convincing until you saw just how old the Time Lord was.
"Alright, Rassilon. What is it, what do you want? Why are you here?"
'By now, you're probably wondering why you've still got your knowledge of time travel?" Rassilon smirked when he saw the look of surprise on the Doctor's face. "You are more useful to me with your brain intact. While you are exiled here, I will know exactly where you are. Don't deny it, you have a truly annoying habit of not being reliable because you are never where you are."
"How are you going to keep me here?" the Doctor asked cautiously. "If you haven't done something to my knowledge, then the TARDIS is alright."
"That's what you think," Rassilon's voice dropped to a whisper. "Your TARDIS is going to be functional. I haven't ordered an inhibitor to be installed. That's been done before, as your third incarnation can attest to."
The Doctor bristled at the reminder. He was beginning to despise the fact he was in the third incarnation of his second regeneration cycle and yet he resembled an older version of the incarnation who had put a lot of distance between himself and UNIT.
Rassilon carried on. "I'm not like those de-evolved intellectual giants who exiled you before, Doctor. No, I'm more imaginative. I wanted your punishment to be more poetic."
"What have you done?"
Rassilon pointed something at the TARDIS door and it opened instantly. The Doctor frowned, he didn't like the fact this man had the means of getting in and out of his beloved ship. "Check the read-outs," he instructed and he folded his arms as he waited for the Doctor to do it. The Doctor sent him a suspicious glare as he hobbled inside the TARDIS.
A few minutes later he stormed out, furious. "What did you do to the Eye of Harmony?" he demanded furiously, his voice a whisper much like he had used when he had worn this incarnation's younger appearance many lifetimes and centuries ago.
Rassilon smiled. "I had it frozen. Oh don't worry, the TARDIS will still transmat you around the planet, but that is the limit of how much it will work. You can't go beyond the solar system, and the time travel facility has been frozen."
"You did this deliberately so then I'd have the knowledge of how the TARDIS works, but knowing I can't use it?"
"That's right. The biodata tag also helps. When your twelfth self exiled me, well I dropped in on this planet; I was interested in what made you more at home here than on our planet. While I was here, I read a book. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Interesting read, though truthfully if I met someone like Lord Voldemort, I would probably dematerialise him. But anyway, it gave me an idea. Every time you defy me, you will tremendous pain and it will last as long as it takes you to carry out your missions. As far as I am concerned, you are now my agent, and if you push me, I will push back harder. Don't take me on, Doctor. I want to ensure my races' survival as much as you do, but I won't run away."
Rassilon walked a few paces away from the TARDIS and then paused as though he'd just remembered another detail. "Oh, by the way…if you try to steal a Vortex Manipulator or make contact with the TARDISes of your younger selves, the biodata tag will return you here. Good luck Doctor, and enjoy."
Rassilon pushed up the cuff of his very human jacket as though he were just checking the time on his watch, but on the wrist was a copper coloured band. Rassilon touched the Time Ring and in a few moments, he disappeared, leaving the Doctor behind.
The Curator paused in the doorway leading into the exhibition room where the portrait of Arcadia burning in the Time War was hung, waiting for his tenth incarnation to leave after his war incarnation departed. He had been standing outside of the room for the last half an hour, listening to them speak. It hurt him when he heard Clara's voice, so bright and energetic, completely unaware of what was coming; the siege of Trenzalore, the Daleks launching one brutal attack on the town of Christmas after another, his youthful-looking eleventh incarnation ageing on those two visits separated by centuries, convincing the Time Lords to give him a new regeneration cycle, witnessing the way he destroyed the Daleks with that blast of regeneration energy, his regeneration into the twelfth Doctor and dealing with his sudden apathy after seeing so much death and destruction while deliberately keeping himself on Trenzalore, dealing with Danny Pink and her infatuation with him before seeing him being converted into a Cyberman…..
The Curator pushed that out of the way as he thought about his exile. He had been stranded on Earth for nearly 20 years, occasionally he had done some work for Rassilon and the other Time Lords who had quickly taken advantage of his exiled state to push him out into different and various missions.
Rassilon had not given a damn about his bodies' physical problems when he'd ordered his last regeneration, nor had he given a damn about what kind of stress running around would do. But after a few missions where his limp had caused more problems than it was worth, the Curator had changed his approach. Now he was more careful and he actually went to the source of the problem before running became necessary.
But the good news was the Curator had enough time on his hands. He had used it wisely to check up on his former and future companions. He had not said hello to anyone though there was the exception; Sarah Jane Smith had not seen anyone looking like him for years since that mishap where she'd arrived in Aberdeen and not in Croydon, but he had changed that when he'd had the first opportunity. He had also met the Brigadier before his death.
Alistair had been surprised to see him as he was now, as had Sarah Jane, but he had explained everything to them; Trenzalore, the survival of the Time Lords, and what happened later on to his new exile.
The Curator had avoided working for UNIT but he had revealed himself to Kate Stewart shortly after the portrait was hung up, but he had told her he would only help from behind the scenes; with his eleventh and twelfth selves interacting with her, it was too dangerous for him to bump into them by accident.
When he heard the tenth Doctor say goodbye and step inside his own TARDIS after that grim talk about Trenzalore (it made him snort a little bit that these two puppies didn't even understand that Trenzalore was a nexus where two things could happen, though it would lead to something different the way they talked about it you'd think they were talking about the end of the cosmos), the Curator stepped lightly into the room, ignoring the painting while he adjusted the perception filter so Clara and his eleventh self from noticing him, but since both were paying more attention to each other he need not have worried about not being seen. He switched the filter to maximum when Clara walked into the TARDIS (he regretted manipulating her life, Designing her timeline so then she would enter his eleventh self's timeline and save him and his previous selves from the Great Intelligence, but it had needed to be done, besides Rassilon had wanted extra security for the survival of Gallifrey), and he waited for his eleventh self to talk about retiring and becoming a curator himself. The Curator had to hide the snort for the second time; his eleventh self had no idea what it was like, he'd be bored in an hour, but in his case, it was quiet and gave him something to do while he was still stuck on Earth.
"You know, I really think you might," the Curator said after turning the filter off, and attracting his eleventh incarnations' attention.
It was time to fulfil a paradox.
What do you think?