Hey guys! Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter, took me a bit longer to write it when I was in a bad mood for the past couple of days. However I've improved and finished this chapter. Sorry for any spelling mistakes. In this chapter (and in the last) I'm interested in exploring what happens in between episodes, especially since there was a gasp between the Caretaker and Kill the Moon. I should add Kill the Moon is not a favourite episode of series 8 of mine, it dragged in parts and I was not fond of the forced pro life message it showed and it will show in the character of Lauren.
But without further ado,
Chapter 9 Kill the Moon
The Doctor and Lauren burst through the TARDIS doors and quickly slammed them shut again, both of them panting, leaning against the doors as angry shouts and stones could be heard hitting the wood behind them. The Doctor and Lauren suddenly erupted into a fit of laughter.
"I can't believe you did that!" Lauren gasped between her laughter.
"He deserved it! Pompous pudding brain." The Doctor grinned which was a delight to see in this incarnation of him. He made his way to the console, flipping the lever and taking off from the forest planet they were on. Lauren remained at the doors, trying to steady her breathing. Her lungs and legs ached with all the running, she was never a running type of person and now suddenly she had to be. She was sweating and the adrenaline high she experienced was lowering, making her realize how much pressure she actually put on her body. Never mind a casual drug high she thought, she could understand Clara getting her kicks out of adrenaline and the danger.
Lauren finally calmed her racing heart enough to speak again, "Yes but he was their King of course he was going to be pompous! Anyway there was no call to insult him then push him down their sacred well in front of his whole tribe, which might I add, was well over a hundred people."
"I did not push him, I accidentally bumped into him when I tripped over his stupid long cloak. Which he didn't need, he looked ridiculous."
No, but you did once have a ridiculously long scarf at one point, surprised you never tripped over it thought Lauren though she loved his scarf.
"Hmm, whatever you say. I'm going to change." Lauren left to head to her room to get out of her sweaty clothes.
It had been a few days since she arrived in the Doctor's world. She still wasn't use to the whole thing. Her first adventure with the Doctor and Clara went surprisingly well, nothing remotely dangerous happened while they were on Yavon, though she felt the Doctor was secretly disappointed at the fact. Her second went less smoothly with them but didn't get too out of control. And as for her third, well, the Doctor pushed a tribe King down a well while they were investigating the monster plaguing the village. Turned out the creature came from a crashed spaceship on the planet and was injured after men kidnapped it from its natural habitat to sell for profit, attacking anyone who would get too close to it. They found the kidnappers who were promptly arrested not before getting the creature back to its world, and running again for their lives as the angry tribe people wanted their heads after the Doctor disrespected and injured their King.
It was a lot to take in within a few days. Already it felt as if she met the Doctor weeks ago. The adventures kept her busy which she supposed was a good thing. She had yet to experience another episode since the Caretaker one but she knew there was at least some time gap between that episode and the next, if only she could remember what the next one was. Clara still had that once a week schedule she was desperately trying to maintain so there was a lot of in-between time never explored onscreen. Lauren had yet to decide whether being part of the in-between adventures was a good thing or not. Pros: she gets to see things no Doctor Who fan ever will, it was new and exciting, she gets to know the characters better. Cons: she had no future knowledge which meant she was in real danger. Lauren had no idea about what was going to happen this morning on her adventure which was why she shuck to the Doctor like glue throughout the whole thing.
As she got to her room and changed she felt the ship land. He must be gone to get Clara again. Lauren grabbed her journal she kept in the drawer beside her bed and began writing down a summary of her adventure. She decided she was going to keep a journal after her adventures as well as to write down her feelings; she needed a place to vent them. It wasn't even her idea, it was the Doctor's idea of all people who suggested that she should keep her human emotions as he said, in a book after he caught her moping over her lost family. Lauren cried on the second night in the TARDIS and even more the next night. Clara assured her she could always come to her if she needed to talk or just want some company but Lauren didn't want her to see her cry like that. She didn't want to be vulnerable, she would not be weak in front of anyone. You know when its okay to cry and you would often tell others its okay to do so but when it came around to yourself you suddenly find yourself unwilling to even say you're not okay? That was what Lauren was currently doing even if she knew it was stupid.
She finished her entry and made her way back to the console room. The Doctor wasn't there but in his place was Courtney Woods. Wait, what?
"What are you doing here?" Lauren demanded.
Courtney looked at her startled before remembering she was the other girl with the Doctor. "Oh it's you. What's your name again?"
Thanks for remembering… "It's Lauren."
The Doctor stepped through the doors followed by Clara who didn't look too happy. He spots Courtney is inside at the console and runs over to her, "Oi! Give over!"
"I got stuff to clean up with," said Courtney holding up paper towels.
"What?"
"And I got these from the chemist," she adds, showing the bracelets on her wrists. The Doctor looked down at them in confusion.
"Vortex manipulators?" he asked.
Courtney frowned at him, "No travel sickness"
"Good. Because I don't like people being sick in my TARDIS. No being sick. And no hanky-panky. And that goes for you as well Lauren." The Doctor said pointing to her as he moved around the console.
Lauren looked offended, crossing her arms. "Excuse me but I haven't done any of that."
"You haven't done any of that yet. I'm saying don't do it at all."
Clara was still not happy about something. "Doctor!"
"Sorry, that's the rules." He clarified thinking that was the problem she was having. Clara stepped towards the Doctor and looked at Courtney.
"Look, Courtney, you're not going to be needing those because you're not going to be doing any travelling." She leaned on the console and continued to the Doctor in a lower tone. "Doctor, will you just, just tell her?"
He looked down at her still confused. "Tell her what?"
"Yeah what's going on here?" Lauren piped in not understand what was going on. Was this part of an episode? Courtney was here so it could well be she reasoned but if so, what episode was it again?
Clara almost exasperated, "Tell her that she's special."
"Have you gone bananas?" This was clearly the most pointless conversion the Doctor thought he was having. While Lauren was just getting more confused.
"Okay, who the hell is special?" Can someone please answer my questions?!
Instead of a direct answer to her question, this time Courtney spoke up and she was clearly upset. "Do you really think I'm not special? You can't just take me away like that. It's like you kicked a big hole in, in the side of my life! You really think it? I'm nothing? I'm not special?"
The Doctor looked at Courtney then flicked his gaze to Clara who was standing by the railings with her arms crossed. Clara held her ground, she wasn't going to help him, she gave him a definite look that said 'this is your doing, you started it, you damn well fix it and fix it right.' The Doctor narrowed his eyes and scoffed, turning away from them briefly.
Wait, hold on did the Doctor say to a fifteen year old girl she wasn't special? Wtf…
"Wait let me get this right, Doctor did you tell Courtney she wasn't special? You told a teenage girl that she was not special?! Doctor you do not say that to people, especially to people that young. Even by your standards that's cruel." Lauren glared at him. She couldn't believe he would say that let alone to a fifteen year old girl. She was now rather angry at him.
"Yes, thank you Lauren that is my point exactly." Clara said
The Doctor was outnumbered and rebuked by his two companions. He looked at the three of them judging him before he mumbled to himself, "God." Then he turned back to Courtney and in a softer voice, "How'd you like to be the first woman on the moon? Is that special enough for you?"
Courtney immediately brighten and smiled, "Yeah, all right."
"Okay. Now we can do something interesting." He sets the TARDIS flying and the ground shakes beneath them.
Clara turned around suddenly realizing what the Doctor was doing, "Hey, Doctor!"
Ooohhh! Lauren suddenly remembered this was an episode. This was the next episode Kill the Moon. She got excited then she remembered it was that episode and her excitement diminished. The one she wasn't particularly fond of. The one with spiders (and Lauren really, really didn't like spiders) and the moon being an egg and that awkward pro-life message that was really unnecessary and was handled poorly in the episode. And of course the Doctor leaving Clara to deal with it. Yeah she had a lot of conflicting feelings over this episode and judging from fan reviews of the time she wasn't the only one this story pissed off. Lauren didn't remember must of the dialogue if not at all, only the main events, she remembered more of the reviews rather than the story itself.
Once the TARDIS landed the Doctor sent everyone off to get the orange space suits to wear. Lauren wondered how many of these suits the Doctor actually had and if the TARDIS duplicates them. The orange suits where cool but turned out to be a pain to put on and when the helmet went over her head she discovered it was rather claustrophobic.
Once everyone was suited up in their spacesuits they stepped out of the TARDIS into a storage area filled with various cylindrical objects, pieces of equipment, racks of objects sacked, labelled and there was a US flag hanging on some. The area was futuristic and stereotypically silver and white in colour.
"This isn't the moon. Where are we?" said Courtney from first stepping out of the blue box.
"On a recycled space shuttle. 2049, judging by the prototype version of the Bennett Oscillator." The Doctor said taking off his helmet, the others following his lead and removed theirs. Lauren let out a relieved sigh as she held her helmet – she wouldn't call herself claustrophobic but she hated to be confined. "Where's the gravity coming from?" he wondered. The Doctor walked around surveying everything around him from the sack of boxes and equipment piled together.
"What are they?" Clara asked.
"About a hundred nuclear bombs."
An alarm suddenly blared causing everyone to look around them startled as the floor rumbled. The Doctor looked out through the airlock window. Lauren did likewise and gasped. "Ah. We're on our way to the moon." The Doctor realized as the floor began to shake. "Check that. We're about to crash into it!" He ran back to the others, "Hold on! Hold on!"
Everyone quickly grasped onto the cargo nets hung on the wall before the shaking worsened and things went flying around them. "Why didn't you just tell her you didn't mean it?!" Clara shouted over the noise hanging on for dear life.
Lauren with her eyes strewed shut and knuckles turning white from holding on tightly, felt her stomach churn and she fought the urge to throw up as the space shuttle dissented at a sickly alarming rate before belly-flopping onto the surface of the moon and skidding to a less than graceful halt. Everyone lay slumped against the wall and the floor while Lauren went flying forward and unceremoniously hit the ground. She lay in a heap on the floor and all she managed to do was make a sound of muffled pain. Lauren really hoped she wasn't going to make a habit of falling face first into things. The Doctor give Lauren a hand getting up quickly assessing her and Clara and Courtney were fine.
The door of the storage room opened with a whoosh as three crew members entered, led by a woman, their captain, who were all dressed in the same white bulky spacesuits.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" the woman demanded, anger laced her voice as she looked at the four of them in distrust.
The Doctor however was unfazed by the woman's angry demeanour or demand. Instead of a response he asked the question that was more important in his mind, "Why have you got all these nuclear bombs?"
"I'm not going to give you another chance." The woman warned. You could tell from her face she was itching to just throw them out the airlock and be rid of them or just plain shoot them.
Again, the Doctor was unfazed and didn't take seriously her warning. "Oh? Well, you're just going to have to shoot us then. Shoot the little girl first." The Doctor pulled a startled looking and protesting Courtney to the front to stand before the woman and her crew. "She doesn't want to stand there watching us getting shot, does she? She'll be terrified. Girl first, then the other girl, then the teacher, and then me." Courtney walked back from everyone and sat on the floor, sulking.
"You'll have to spend a lot of time shooting me because I will keep on regenerating." The Doctor began moving and walking in a strange way. Testing the gravity Lauren thought but his display was rather amusing. "In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I won't keep on regenerating forever."
"Doctor, what are you doing?" asked Clara watching the Doctor make slow steps backwards and forwards.
"Gravity test. So, it'll be very time consuming and messy, and rather wasteful, because I think I might just possible to be able to help you," He started doing bunny hops as he speaks, "You see, I am a super intelligent alien being who flies in a time and space. Are you going to shoot me?" He now stopped hopping and stood directly in front of the woman.
The woman sighed heavily, "No."
The Doctor asked about the nuclear bombs before deciding the easier question to ask was what was wrong with his yo-yo. Just like the Fourth Doctor he took out his yo-yo and used it to do a gravity test.
"It goes up and down which it shouldn't be able to do here." Lauren beat Clara to the answer.
"Bingo. Correct Lauren. It shouldn't." Lauren smiled at the praise even if it was cheating since she knew the answer already. It was like taking a sneak peek at a test before doing the test. The penny finally drops for everyone else. "Ah ha. We should be bouncing about this cabin like little fluffy clouds. But we're not. What is the matter with the moon?"
The captain explained that nobody knew but the Doctor remarked the moon has put on weight; he began listing several ways it could that made no sense to Lauren whatsoever. But they knew one thing it was something alien.
"Must be causing chaos on Earth. The tides will be so high that they will drown whole cities." The Doctor stated.
"Yeah."
"So what are you doing about it?" he sounded exasperated. The captain took a case from the pile. The Doctor looked confused. "This?" he asked.
"That's what you do with aliens, isn't it? Blow them up?" There was slight menace in her voice and Lauren felt a feeling of dread in her stomach. This was not going to be a fun adventure.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lauren watched through her helmet, breathe fogging her view on every exhale she made, the airlock opened with a hiss revealing the moon's surface. "Never thought I'd be on the moon." She whispered in awe. Never thought you'd be travelling with the Doctor, the voice in her head supplied. Courtney had the honour of stepping out first, only to then ruin Neil Armstrong's quote. The captain, Lundvik her name was, summed it up perfectly, so much for history.
The group made their way from the space shuttle onto the moon's surface which crunched under their feet. Shortly after they came to a modular settlement in a nearby crater. Captain Lundvik explained things as they walked. "There was a mining survey, Mexicans. Something happened up here. Nobody knows what. That's when the trouble began back on Earth. High tide everywhere at once. The greatest natural disaster in history."
They approached the entrance, the airlock was wide open and covered in cobwebs. "Cobwebs?" Clara questioned. Lauren shivered. One of those spider things was in there. She was redundant to step inside.
"Henry, go back and prime the bombs." Lundvik ordered.
Henry the middle aged astronaut, looked very unsure of himself, in fact, he looked unsure of everything at the moment. "Er, is there any instructions?" he asked uncertainly. Clearly this wasn't his area of expertise.
Lundvik sighed in annoyance, "There's a switch on each of them. The light goes red."
"They won't go off?" he asked nervously. Lauren felt sorry for him.
"No, not till I fiddle with this thing." She explained trying to control her frustration at her rather useless colleague.
A worried looking Henry turned around uncertainly and slowly began to walk in the direction they came, and Lauren's chest tightened. He's going to die. He's going to die! The thought repeated in her head as her breathing increased.
"Shall we?" Lundvik gestured.
"Is that the best you could get?" the Doctor observed.
"Second hand space shuttle, third hand astronauts."
The rest of the group made their way into the base, while Lauren just stood frozen, staring at Henry's retreating form. Guilt. If she didn't do anything that's what she'd feel. If she doesn't even try to save him. She could though, save him. There was a chance she could. This man surviving would have no effect on the overall plot of this story. The question was how would she do it? Without raising suspicion from the Doctor and Clara, but the Doctor especially.
"Lauren?" Clara called. The girl in question jumped slightly.
"Yup, sorry coming!" Lauren said too quickly. Earning a questioning stare from Clara. Lauren hastily entered behind them, the other astronaut man named Duke closing the airlock door behind her. The sound of its heavy thud shut made her wince. I need to go back out there and save him! She was beginning to get very distressed. The Doctor gave a brief glance in her direction but she pretended not to notice. The cobwebs hung everywhere across the walls and ceiling, adding to her unease and guilt. The place was dark save for the flashlights.
The others began talking about the facts of this place but she wasn't really listening. She wanted to leave and run to Henry, make him turn back. She hated spiders, she didn't want to be here. She needed out. Lauren was panicking. Suddenly Courtney screamed and everyone rushed to where she was.
"Courtney!" Clara shouted and was the first to reach her. Courtney stumbled upon a spacesuit hanging in a cocoon in the cobwebs. "Oh, my god. Doctor, tell me there wasn't anyone inside that thing?"
The Doctor approached the cocoon and scanned it with his sonic screwdriver, "I could, but it wouldn't make it true."
Lauren let out a gasp as she seen what was left of the man's body. She wanted to vomit, the world felt like it was tipping over. She felt light headed. A dead body. Worse, this was the fate of Henry, going to be his fate if she didn't do anything. Lauren couldn't take it anymore. What was the point of her being here if she couldn't change anything? Before she realized what she was doing, she was running down the corridor to the airlock door. She felt her heart pounding in her chest and the blood rushing in her ears as she struggled to open the heavy door. Using all of her strength, arms straining, clumsily spacesuit clad hands making the task even more difficult – she finally turned and pulled the door open with a grunt.
Lauren ran out the door before the others could realize she wasn't with them, in pursue of Henry.
