A/n: I don't own Doctor Who. This is 'Fanfiction' as in 'I'm not getting paid for writing about someone else's fantastic blue box invention I promise'.
A/n: Here is a short and sweet 20K-or-less episode featuring the Doctor and Donna at the height of awesomeness! Seriously though. There are but two alien-only scenes in this whole story. No want Donna then no want read.
A/n: Please register all complaints, technical disputes, etc. in the box at the bottom of the page. Unless it's about the topical content of the ad banner. All I can say to that is ... isn't it about time to clean your browsing cookies?
A/N: For continuity 'It Doesn't End There' came first as did the fourth series but any fan of any Doctor Who era should be capable of figuring out how the last plot finished just from how the next plot starts.
10thD THEY DON'T NEED AIR
Part One: Spacegirl
There was a final nerve-wracking jolt and the Tardis wheezed and whirred to a stop. The Tardis had landed.
"There you go!" The Doctor said from the jump seat behind Donna. "Wasn't too hard, was it? Uh ... Donna?"
"Are you ... kidding me?" Donna gasped breathlessly and managed to pry her white-knuckled hands from the console. She leaned her head back and shook her straight red locks away from her face, trying to settle her racing hearts and find the right words to express how complicated getting it all right was. "It was like trying to ... I dunno ... hop between two moving trains." She straightened her green floral shirt and skirt.
"Piece of cake." The Doctor said spiritedly, whirling to her side. "You've done from a car to the Tardis."
"This time it was in a tunnel." Donna added as though the first experience hadn't been harrowing enough.
"Waell ..." The Doctor folded his arms, leaning comfortably against the console. "Does take a bit of practice to get the hang of it, I admit."
"Wearing a blindfold?" She dug at him.
Donna watched his face sober with a bit more attention to her personally, but there was still that glint of brilliance in his eyes that never failed to melt away Donna's feeling of fear.
"But you still did it, Donna." He grinned encouragingly at her. "Not much help from me either. First time round not bad at all. Molto Bene. Instinct. Just like your gramps taught you ..."
The positive words of congratulation tumbling from his mouth meant more to Donna for the sound of reassurance they made. If he'd actually been on about talking space fish in that tone of voice it wouldn't have mattered; Donna still would have felt a release of personal pressure.
It had been easy enough to think about how the Tardis operated but it'd been hard work when it came to do even just the bare bones of the rematerialization procedure. Bless the Doctor's golden hearts; there wasn't a single critical word on Donna's serious lack of attitude adjustments. The Doctor wasn't flogging the fact of how extra bumpy the ride was in the slightest. He just loved the fact she'd had enough guts to have a go at flying and follow it right through the landing procedure.
At length the Doctor gestured to the external monitor screen. "So! Here we are safe and sound ... Wherever that is, um ... where do you suppose we are ... Donna?"
Donna looked from the view of a corridor outside back to the Doctor with his eyes fully on hers and his mouth open in a mock of bewilderment. The kind of look he was giving her really matched his spiked up hair. Donna could tell the Doctor was playing with her because he had his tongue pressed up to the roof of his mouth and his eyes were sparkling with merriment.
"What? Me? You serious?"
"Why not?" The Doctor grinned gamely at her and leaned with his back against the console again. "Go on then, you've got all that 'Time Lord knowledge' in your head now." He stared challengingly at her with glittering eyes. 'Discovery' was his most favourite game in the whole universe and he was sharing it with his best friend. "Now's as good a time as any to put it to good use."
"Okay!" Donna breathed, trying to calm herself from another bubble of excitement so she could think straight. "Let's see." She moved around the console, taking in the readings. The first thing she picked to look at was the environmental readout. "It's a ship, radiation reads normal, no signs of toxic chemicals so I'd say by the atmospheric reading the people here are going to be like us. I'd suppose they're gonna be upright like us too ... possibly humanoid."
"What; you can tell that by reading the atmosphere?" The Doctor asked in surprise.
"No, you prawn, the corridor on the screen!" Donna answered with a laugh. "Ceiling's not too low or high, and the corridor's not too narrow neither."
"Oh. Good work." He admitted with a slight blush, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Thanks." Donna giggled and looked at the next reading. "So narrowing it down to humanoids ... the metallurgy of the nearest bulkhead is impure which makes me think possibly colonists built it. I mean I reckon a big old empire would have better metal refineries than what they got out there, yeah?"
The Doctor shrugged and declined to comment. "It's your deduction."
Then Donna moved on to the astro-chronometric readout screen. All at once she found herself pressing her fingers to her forehead. All the digital circles and alphanumerical inscriptions turning three dimensionally around on the screen made her head spin trying to figure out what they all meant. "Um ..." The Gallifreyan written word honestly did look familiar but it was still a new language to her English trained brain. What did make sense to Donna was the layout however: 'relative distance to' had a specific position and so did 'large gravitational object'. As for the time part, the circles had a suspicious look to them and that was it for Donna's 'I'm suddenly a Time Lord now' deductions.
"If I'm reading this correctly," She pointed to the various items in the layout as she'd figured them; "the nearest planet is one metre away and the year is thirty thousand million." She then pointed at a particularly funky looking conjugation of letters that she didn't have the foggiest about. "Also there's a full moon going on and it says here we should probably bring our wellies." Donna added the extra touch of the ridiculous just to emphasis how much she was struggling with. She crossed her arms and matter-of-factly turned back to the Doctor.
The Doctor erupted into a quiet fit of laughter.
"What ... are you laughing at me?" Donna tried to keep a straight face herself but she still felt herself blushing.
"No, not at all." He snorted. "Sorry." He cleared his throat.
"Oh, go on with you." Donna prodded humorously and gestured to the foreign language on the screen. Given time and a really large hammer, which she planned on getting, Donna would crack this macadamia nut. "So where are we really then, spaceman?"
"Oh ..." The Doctor headed around the console with his hands in his pockets. "Ship. Probably a civilian space freighter. Most likely humanoid ..." he waved vaguely at the view screen, "and somewhere around the ..." He looked at the screen with all the Gallifreyan letters, numbers and circles spinning around on it. "Ah, Exxilon, excellent. Well, we're heading away from Exxilon. Which is excellent. Always a good thing; that bit." The Doctor headed off from the console and leisurely picked up his brown leather jacket on the way to the external doors. "Escape from Exxilon," he twisted around to face Donna, still walking backwards towards the doors, "that has a ring to it. Someone should write a book about it."
"I got a bit about Exxilon in my head." Donna followed him to the door. "So you reckon it's a mining expedition then?" Donna reasoned as she caught up with him.
The Doctor held out his hand for her with a cheeky smile. "Let's find out, shall we? 'Spacegirl'?"
"What'd you just call me?" Donna's jaw dropped.
"Well, it's only fair." He pouted. "You did just land the Tardis all by yourself and not to mention accurately negotiate a couple rough turns in the vortex earlier."
"Yeah, I kinda did, didn't I?" Donna grinned back at him actually feeling pretty good about her recent achievement.
Hand in hand, they headed out into the alien ship beyond.
