The console room lurched violent, almost tipping ninety degrees to the side, the Doctor holding onto the console, his tan coat fluttering around him. Suddenly the ship righted itself, the Doctor landing on the floor with a thud.
"Right then," he said, getting up and adjusting the celery stick on his lapel. "Feels like I was caught in some sort of time eddy. Nyssa, could you just run some temporal scans."
"Whose Nyssa?" asked an unknown voice in a Scottish accent. The Doctor looked up to see a redhead woman and an unassuming man staring back at him.
"Ah," the Doctor said, recalculating in his head on how to fix the situation. "I don't suppose any of you know how to recalibrate a temporal scanner?"
"Where's the Doctor?" asked the woman angrily.
"Well, that would be me," the Doctor said, giving a cheerful smile. "And you are?"
"I'm Rory," said the man. "And this is my wife, Amy."
"And you're not the Doctor," said Amy, confidently stepping forward to look the Doctor up and down. "Where is he? What have you done with him?"
"A future regeneration, no doubt," said the Doctor to himself, thankful that Nyssa and Tegan already knew about if the situation arose again.
"I'm sorry," said Rory, "but what is going on? This is the TARDIS, yes?"
"Yes, that's right," said the Doctor. "And I am the Doctor. It's a bit, err, difficult, to explain."
"Well you better start talking quickly mister," said Amy, standing in front of the Doctor, eyes piercing into his.
"You better do as she says," said Rory.
"Well I'm sure I can relieve your worries," said the Doctor, but was cut off by the TARDIS landing. He furrowed his brow and went over to look at the controls.
"How odd," he said, checking the instruments. "We appear to be in the East End of London."
"When?" asked Rory.
"I don't know," admitted the Doctor. "Readings are all over the place."
"Well lets go out and investigate," said Amy and, before the Doctor could react, she switched the door open lever and was out the TARDIS. Her husband gave an apologetic look, shrugged, and followed her out. The Doctor sighed, before doing the same.
"This is certainly the East End," agreed Amy. "But why does everything look... different."
"You mean like the monorail?" answered Rory, nodding to it as it shot on by. "Fairly certain there wasn't one in London when we left."
"There shouldn't be one at all," said the Doctor. "Not till the twenty-second century. Excuse me ladies," he asked, flagging down a lovely couple by a stall. "Can you tell me what year this is?"
"Why, it's 1973, isn't it?" said the first lady.
"Aye?" said the second. "It's 1993, thank you very much."
"I think you'll find it's 2013," said a third, who was always willing to have a good nosy poke at what was going on.
"They can't be all right, can they Doctor?" asked Amy.
"Depends," said the Doctor slowly.
"On what?" asked Rory.
"If time really exists here..." said the Doctor, trailing of confused. He walked around, picking up a newspaper off the ground. Try as he might, he could seem to get it to focus, as it kept swirling in front of him.
"Doctor?" asked Amy.
"This appears to be a dimension in time," said the Doctor, putting the newspaper in his coat. "But one that appears to be rapidly shrinking."
Rory and Amy said nothing, just looking at the Doctor in befuddlement. The Doctor sighed, and tried to think of a way of explaining it.
"You are aware of how space is often seen in three dimensions? Up and down, left and right, forward and back? Well time moves in sort of the same way... generally speaking, that is. But something is right. Imagine, if you will, that your three dimensions shrunk down to two, and you found yourself living in a flatland in a 2D plane."
"I'm officially lost," said Rory.
"Put simply," said the Doctor. "Time seems to be collapsing here, moving into an ever smaller point. Dimensions in time are becoming dimension, singular. And that's not good."
"Why not?" asked Amy.
"Imagine your entire being being compressed into a dot," said the Doctor, looking around. "Now imagine that on a temporal scale."
"So we should investigate what is happening?" asked Amy. "Maybe find out the cause."
"No," said the Doctor. "No we should get out of here right away. Come on! Back to the TARDIS."
"You're just going to leave?" asked Amy. "You're not going to explore, figure it out?"
"I've learned my mistake from last time," said the Doctor, fiddling with the controls. "No, better to leave now, before we get trapped in a loop."
"What about Nyssa?" asked Amy. "And Tegan?" The Doctor paused, and looked up at them. His calm, pleasant face had turned hard.
"Who told you about Tegan?" asked the Doctor icily.
"You did," said Rory.
"I did no such thing," said the Doctor. "My memory is quite good, thank you, and I know I didn't mentioned the New Zealander."
"Sure you did," said Amy. "You mentioned how you met her in JFK."
The Doctor said nothing, staring at the two of them. Without a word he turned and went back to the controls.
"Doctor?" asked Amy. "Doctor!" she repeated forcefully, when the man ignored her.
"I don't know who you are," he said, back to the two of them. "And I don't know what you are. And if we weren't currently in mortal peril I'd be asking a lot more questions from the two of you. But whatever you are, leave now, and bring my friends back to me."
"What do you mean?" asked Rory.
"Tegan isn't a New Zealander I met at JFK," said the Doctor, whirling round suddenly. "She's an Australian I plan to take back to Heathrow again. But the only way you'd have come to that conclusion is if you were reading my mind, as I specifically set that trap up for you. So, what are you, and what do you want?"
Before anyone could answer the pain shot through the Doctor's back, hunching him over in two. This was some sort of psychic attack to be sure. Different parts of his body flared up in pain, entirely inconsistently. Clearly the aliens in front of him must be attacking him with a psychic blast. With all his concentration he used his immense willpower to throw it back at them, to break their concentration.
He only just realized his mistake when the console room violently lurched.
"Excellent," said the Rani. "Another one caught. Soon there'll be nothing stopping me-"
"Pause," said the accomplice. The scene froze. Wearily the accomplice rubbed his temple. Yes, his plan was working perfectly, and the Rani was providing the Doctor with a good distraction. Puzzles upon puzzles, none of which lead to the answer. It was just tiresome, however, to hear the same thing being repeated over and over again. He almost pitied the Doctor for going through the same thing.
Still, the trap he set was working. The stupid fool was running through the same loop, again and again, never having a chance to get their bearings, never realizing what was actually going on. The accomplice glanced at the heads floating around them. Each one signified a part of the Doctor that had succumbed to the loop without realizing it.
Still, it was yet complete. Parts of the Doctor resisted. Some were better than others. He needed to create bigger distractions to really stop the Doctor from figuring out. Yes, that would work.
"Go," he said.
"From having the Doctor out of my way once and for all!" finished the Rani. "Now... I know just how to make him suffer next."