Act Three
Petronella crumpled helplessly on the TARDIS floor for several seconds when suddenly the noise stopped and the strange light abated. She looked around and saw on the screen where her mathematical problems appeared that a word had materialized in large letters: HELLO?
Petronella quickly sat back in her chair. "Romana, something appeared on the screen."
"I can see that. Answer it, but don't tell them I'm here."
Petronella quickly typed her response: hello.
ARE YOU PETRONELLA OSGOOD?, the screen asked.
YES, she typed.
GOOD. HERE ARE SOME MORE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS. And several duly appeared on the screen.
"These appear to deal more with probability," Petronella said out loud, and was about to type that.
"Petronella, don't type anything more." Romana said. "For the moment we're all working on the same page. I know the situation we're in is incredibly dangerous. And solving math problems one after other is kind of dull…"
"I don't find it dull."
"Really? Now I admit that solving one math problem after another isn't as glamorous as Sarah Jane Smith shooting at gelignite on an Osirian missile, or Rose Tyler wiping out a Dalek armada, or Martha Jones travelling around the world and defeating the Master or Peri Brown wearing a skimpy bikini. But what you are doing is vitally important, and no other human can do it."
"Romana, just one more question."
"Yes?"
"If this is the third Big Bad, and Fenric is the second Big Bad, what about Spencer?"
"For the moment, we're going to have to ignore him. One thing at a time."
"So now you understand my point of view, Doctor," Fenric continued.
"You claim moral superiority as a force of natural selection?"
"Now that's clearly tendentious. You make me appear as if I was some annoying asteroid. Natural selection is the algorithm that creates life and ultimately intelligent life. I want to move beyond that. Marx said that revolutions were the locomotives of history, at a time when locomotives were something people were easily impressed by. But they're such messy affairs, with quarrels and disasters all around. You can get the same effects much more quickly with wars."
"Wars are something humans increasingly can't afford."
"But that's not entirely true, Doctor. How did Britain advance to global dominance? Partly it was by having the best navy and partly by having other countries fight their enemies. I don't doubt that it's trickier to mange in this day and age. But you're wrong to dismiss it out of hand. Consider what Nietzsche said in the Genealogy of Morals: 'At the centre of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast avidly prowling around for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild – Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings – in this requirement they are all alike.' People often think the allusion is to blonde Germans, but it's more likely to a lion. And consider the analogy. The lion is a majestic beast. And it has to kill in order to survive, and kill ferociously. A vegetarian lion would be preposterous, a ridiculous eunuch."
"You're using metaphors from natural selection to justify a world that supposedly transcends it."
"Transcendence is beyond most people, Doctor. But there is an infinite glory with intensification. Doctor, do you know what the supreme achievement of human culture actually is? Novelists, poets and dramatists have sought to create something of the special power and potential of life. And again and again and again, they return to their roots. To the Iliad, the poem that shows more than any other the beauty of victory and mastery, a beauty only achieved by the triumph of life destroying other life."
"Defoe once said the Iliad is about the rescue of a whore."
"Such language, Doctor. But consider the dispute over Briseis that makes up much of the actual poem. What an honor for Briseis to breed for a hero such as Achilles. Compare that to the mass rapes carried out by the victorious Red Army. Merely showing the Russians to be the degenerate savages they are, and for which they can never be punished enough."
"The war whereby you impose your will would be the cruelest ever waged. The Time War itself would pale beside it."
"But of course, Doctor. It has to be unprecedented. Nothing less will break the algorithm."
"I can't imagine how your glory could justify the death of the smallest child."
"I could reply that you're not trying very hard. The key point, Doctor, is that the Vasari said you had to choose one of the Three. I suggest that you should choose me."
"I don't think I'll choose any of you, thank you."
"Stubborn as always. You will choose, and given your moralism you'll choose too late. Everyone else will pay a very high price."
"You'll pardon me for not believing that if one's narcissism is sufficiently infinite, it is of transcendental significance."
"In choosing me, you choose life. Life admittedly crueler and more savage than you prefer, but also infinitely richer and more creative than you can imagine. The other two will destroy everything."
"How do you know that? You don't know who my true people actually are. How do you know their motives?"
"Logic for a start. Sutekh, Spencer and the Vasari confirm there are three powers. Spencer knows who your people are. If their motives were benign, or even remotely more defensible than mine, why haven't they contacted you? What game could they play that could have such a congenial result?"
Privately, the Doctor thought that was all too plausible. Fenric had been watching him for six regenerations. Somehow Spencer had manipulated things at least four regenerations earlier, back when he was on trial before the Time Lords. Who could tell how long the third power had been playing him? All of Time Lord History was certainly conceivable.
"I know that you don't trust me, Doctor. Well, clearly you loathe me and would happily destroy me. But let us continue pretending we are rational people having a civilized conversation. I would argue you're disingenuous. Consider the late Davros."
"One of your agents of chaos?"
"Good Lord, no. Dreary fellow, a miserable and vindictive cripple, who didn't even appreciate life even before the Thals maimed him. But remember when he was closest to absolute victory? Here's how he described you: 'The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons.'"
"I don't deny that I've killed."
"And remember the Mara. How you could only defeat it with Turlough's help. Which he did by killing an innocent man."
The Doctor sought to rally. "If you genuinely wanted my help, you could make a gesture of good faith. You could you tell me what you know about Spencer."
"No, Doctor, that wouldn't work. If I told you what I knew, what I confirmed today, you'd never believe me. And the harder I worked to convince you, the more you would think it was a cunning plan.
"But there is another way. People fight wars for glory, Doctor. They fight to defend themselves. They fight for principle. They fight for the pleasure in exterminating others. Well once I win, I will launch the most glorious war of all. And here is a war where you will join me, you will fight for me. You will kill for me. You will even murder for me. Dalek Sec, Drax, Melanie Bush all mentioned this. You will do all this, against the Ice. And I can tell you one more thing, Doctor. If you should escape me, you will fight the Ice alone very shortly afterwards, and you will die."
"The Ice. The Cybermen feared them."
"Everyone should fear them. Because there are worse things than murder. There are worse things than genocide."
"Another ultimate enemy, in combination with the three I'm already fighting."
"Very much so. How do you respond, Doctor?"
The Doctor paused, carefully collecting his thoughts. "You mentioned Nietzsche. You are aware that he spent the last years of his life insane?"
"Syphilis, wasn't it? What about it?"
"His breakdown was caused when he saw a horse in Turin being beaten and instinctively tried to protect it. Where is your Turin Horse? Where is the sign that you view other life forms as anything other more than an ornament or a tool to your greater glory?"
Fenric tried to reply, but for a few seconds was speechless. "'…they came back by the Pecherie and slipped into the Turkish woman's house, still holding their big nosegays,'" he said softly. "I believe I've exhausted this path. Let us try something else."
"Us?" the Doctor replied skeptically. But suddenly the room shifted around and transformed itself. Though the Doctor was still in a place with no light nor windows, it now resembled a prison interrogation room. He found himself sitting at a table, but handcuffed to an old-fashioned radiator. Fenric now resembled an interrogator, with his sleeves rolled up, suggesting a vibe out of Heat or the US Marshalls in The Fugitive.
There were no longer images of human atrocities projected on the wall. But now the Doctor saw an image of his fourth (or "fourth") incarnation as Fenric spoke. "On the planet Karn, you faced and defeated the renegade Time Lord Morbius. Briefly, you were in mental combat with him. Images of past regenerations appeared. Are these images that follow your three previous incarnations images of you?"
"No. They're clearly images of Morbius. The High Council censored those images after his defeat, but they are him."
Fenric showed another image. "The turn of the millennium in San Francisco. Your so-called eighth incarnation has just regenerated, and he says:
'I'm half-human, on my mother's side.'
"Explain that, Doctor."
The current Doctor tried to remember this. "Umm? I was drunk?"
"What? That's ridiculous! You were clearly giving evidence about your true origin."
"Not really. I often do stupid things after I regenerate. And how could I be half-human? It would be easier for Rose Tyler to be half-porcupine."
"Here's what I think. If Cybermen could live in the far future, so could humans. Billions of years from now, they develop the ability to regenerate. At some point they have to flee far into the past and you, as a child, get lost. The Time Lords find you, and steal your regenerative abilities. Your human form was merged with Time Lord biology, so half and half, but your original form is human, 'on my mother's side' as you say."
"Not likely. I've seen humans billions of years in the future, and they're nothing like that."
"But you said this for a reason!"
"Supposedly. To be perfectly frank, not all of my incarnations are up to snuff. And when I say 'not all,' I actually only mean the supposedly Byronic one who oddly resembles the less interesting member of the duo in Withnail and I."
Fenric repressed a surge of anger. "Then perhaps this will jog your memory." More images appeared behind him. "When you first wore this face, you died after fighting the Master and the Time Lords. But this woman appeared to Wilfrid Mott three times warning him and offering vital advice. And when you finally confronted the Time Lords you saw this woman with them and acknowledged her presence. But this woman couldn't be a Time Lord because they were all trapped in a time lock before they briefly made their way out thanks to the White Star Diamond. So this woman has to be key to your true identity."
The Doctor stared at the images of the enigmatic Woman. Fenric continued. "The Silent who Spencer murdered said he was given something by a Time Lady to travel down your timeline. And if he was given a special orb, he could only do that if you agreed or a close relative did. So she's a relative. And not a Time Lord."
"I don't know. What I thought, what I believed…" And the Doctor spoke with some effort.
"You said you had a granddaughter. But this wasn't Susan Foreman because Lytton murdered her."
"No, it's not her."
"Then who is she?"
The Doctor's mood suddenly stiffened. "I'm not going to tell you. I have a right to some secrets."
"Excuse me? You have no right to any secrets!"
"She's not the person you're looking for."
"I'll be the judge of that!"
"No. I will," the Doctor replied with quiet but clear determination. Fenric was not so much speechless this time, as quiet with respect. "You can imagine what you please. She's a distant relative. She's a close relative. She's a figure from Time Lord History or Mythology. She's a teacher. She's the Gallifreyan equivalent of Immanuel Kant or Baruch Spinoza. She's a minor politician, the Gallifreyan equivalent of Neil Kinnock or William Hague who at the right moment did the right thing. She's a ghost. She's a digital sequence. She's an anomaly caused by the Time Lock. The High Council put whatever she was in a prison ship in the Void like they did Daleks, which means could she still transmit things outside the Time Lock's restrictions. But there is one thing she told me before the Time War. And that is that people like you don't have to win. And I know she's dead, and not just because all the other Time Lords are dead."
Fenric angrily banged his fist on the table. "For centuries, you thought you were a Time Lord. But you never had any real connections to them. Without family, without blood, were you ever anything other than a pawn or a rook in their bureaucracy? Did you have any relationships that meant anything?"
"I had a family once. It's been so long… I can barely remember them."
"The Master, was he your brother?"
"Only metaphorically."
"You claim to be defending life in all its forms. But how you can you claim to be helping people, when no one has any instinctual drive to care for you?"
"I thought you said real life shouldn't stay together for the kids."
"Answer the question!"
"Cardinal Borusa. He was my uncle… on my mother's side."
Petronella Osgood was still sitting at the console, but she had nodded off. Suddenly a sharp noise awakened her. "I'm awake! I'm awake!" She looked around. "What's going on?"
She heard Romana's voice. "The third Big Bad wants the TARDIS to materialize near them. But their place isn't a normal point in space and time. There's a particular procedure you have to do first." Petronella noticed some numbers appear on the screen. She recognized them as particular coordinates and started inputting them.
There was then a strange Whoosh sound which then stopped, as did the sharp noise. The motor of the TARDIS console moved up and down, but otherwise all was normal in the console room.
And then Petronella heard it. It was a tolling sound, low at first, but increasingly present and absolutely ominous. "No. Oh no." Petronella gulped, then stood up and got out of her chair. "Romana? Romana! Do you hear that?"
"Yes, I do. It's the tolling of the Cloister Bell."
"That only happens when the TARDIS is in imminent danger of destruction. The Doctor was warning all three of us weeks ago. The TARDIS was going to be destroyed in an explosion." Petronella was now very nervous, and frantically paced back and forth.
"I know. There was always a risk of that happening."
"It's going to happen now! It's going to happen right now! I'm going to die! And there's nothing I can do to stop that!"
"Petronella, please keep calm. I'm right behind you."
And just then Petronella turned around and found Romana right in front of her.
Act Four
"What?" Petronella wondered.
"I transported myself from my TARDIS. But you can still can't tell the TBB that I'm here if they ask."
Petronella looked around, as the cloister Bell still tolled. She noticed two strange things. First, the TARDIS motor had stopped moving. Second, something glowed near the base of the console.
"That's the Malachi circuit," Romana explained. "It notes the entire time line of the TARDIS' history before its end."
"Why has the console motor stopped?"
"We're in a brief, anomalous situation. It's happened to the Doctor a couple of times. Outside, when we materialize, time will proceed at its own rate. When the TARDIS travels, time also proceeds, in the TARDIS' own dimension. But we're sort of paused in this special zone. Causality is still going on, because we're talking to each other. But it won't be measured on the TARDIS' chronometer. It won't last long. I think it's connected to the strange dimension Fenric has trapped the Doctor. The TARDIS will soon snap out of it, and we'll materialize. Then one of the screens will start counting down."
"I'm going to die soon, and there's nothing I can do about it." A few tears started to run down Petronella's face.
"I know this is bad, Petronella. But please listen carefully. There is a very good chance I'll be dead within the next hour."
"That is not remotely reassuring."
"I know. But I've made plans. And I am very sure that you are not going to die. I know you're afraid. And once the countdown starts, you will get even more afraid. But at some point, you're not going to be. There is something within you that is very strong, that will make sure you survive. At some point, you'll have to leave the TARDIS before it's destroyed. But I assure you that you will not die this day, even if I have to take you from the gates of Hell itself."
It was another room of Fenric's Sphere of Influence. Fenric was dressed in a schoolmaster's gown and wearing a mortarboard on his head. He was playing at an organ. The Doctor approached him wearing a schoolboy's cap on his head. He knocked at an imaginary door.
"Come in," and the Doctor "entered."
"You were talking in class."
"No, sir."
"You would not admit it."
"I wasn't, sir."
"But you know who was."
"Yes, sir."
"Who was it?"
"I can't tell you."
"Can't?'
"Won't, sir." The Doctor paused. "Are you going to mention society?"
"Answer me."
"Are you going to say I'm the lone wolf, and society can't tolerate me?"
"No. I am the lone wolf, and I am society. You are neither. You have to answer."
"About who spoke in class?"
"I don't care about that, anymore. You will take six."
"Six, sir?"
"Six of the best."
"Because I am Six?"
"You will take six. You will take twelve. And you are Six."
"You mean my Six?"
"You were your Six. Now you are their Six."
"And I take six of the best?"
"And another six as well. You've already taken them. You've taken them many times. One gets used to them."
"So you say?"
"Very much so. Now, why did you resign?"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard what I said. Why did you resign?"
"I don't understand. I'm a student, how could I resign? From what?"
"Why did you resign? People have wanted to know that for almost as long as you've been here."
"Resign from what? And I am still Six?"
"You are only Six. My Six, not your Six."
"Not Five?"
"No."
"Not Seven?"
"Why Seven? No."
"But I'm not a number, I'm a…"
"A free man? But you're not a man. And you're not a Time Lord. Which means your five or six or seven don't mean anything. You could be sixty thousand or six million. And even if you were a Time Lord, you'd still be lying, thinking you were Ten. Because you're actually Eleven. Because you never forgave the real Nine, even after you forgave him. Six or Nine or Half a Dozen of the other."
"I'm confused."
"If you're an Eternal, you don't really have memories, or conscience or a real intelligence. You would just think you do, from the Time Lords' programming. All your principles, all your morals, everything that makes up your soul would be just like cotton candy or papier-mâché. You think you're protecting all your friends, but by not telling the truth you're condemning them to the evil of your People."
"You were Four."
"We're past that. Why did you resign?"
"Resign from what?"
"You resigned from the Time Lords. You were their agent for a billion years or so. And then you resigned and you fled. And they let you do that. You were confined to Earth, but they gave you liberty after that. Therefore, when you resigned you must have done something to break their programming."
"Why did they do that?"
"But that's not the point. I can read your mind. Although you can't remember anything before One, you believe in it. 'Ruth Clayton' must have been before you. In a deepest part of your soul, you believe it is true."
"I do believe it."
"Now why did you resign?"
"Ruth must have been in my past."
"Again, why did you resign?"
"Which means she was captured again. And her TARDIS was a police box. But she has to be me."
"For the third time, why did you resign!" And Fenric angrily got up and banged his fist on the top of the organ.
The Doctor paused. Then he held his chin thoughtfully. Then he tossed his school cap away.
"But you know why I resigned."
"Do I indeed?"
"You know why he resigned."
"Who is he?"
"Six. John Drake. He resigned out of conscience. South Africa. Rhodesia. Cyprus. Oman. Vietnam. Something like that. And his superiors wanted him back. But they needed something more. That's why they teamed up with Spencer to set up the Village. In Portmeiron, Wales." And the Doctor took out the ring with the picture of the Penny-Farthing bicycle that the Vasari had thrown him just as he left Xanadu.
"Yes, that was Spencer. But that's not relevant."
"I would say it is relevant. Because if both sides knew why Drake resigned, the point wasn't to get him to tell the truth, it was to get him to obey. That Drake couldn't be sure which side was behind the Village would make his submission even sweeter. And here's the important thing. You can always get someone to obey you. You can torture someone until you break their spirit. You can torture other people if that doesn't work. You can force someone through the same thing over and over again until he realizes there's no hope. And that's what Spencer could do over and over again, no matter how many times Drake escaped, and that what made them stronger than any human intelligence service."
"Number Six was Number One, as it turned out."
"That was just a subterfuge."
"You're sure about that?"
"The point is you don't want me to obey. You don't want me to confess. Eventually you'd like me to do both, but first you need to know the truth. And power itself doesn't make the truth."
Fenric surged with rage for a moment. Then he tossed his mortarboard away.
"Not looking good for Degree Absolute," the Doctor added, just a bit cheekily.
Fenric regained his composure and smiled. "In Scandinavian mythology, Fenris Wolf was the son of Loki, the ultimate trickster. Well, the child is father to the man. We'll try something else."
While Fenric and the Doctor were talking, there were many sunless and shadowy corridors throughout Fenric's Sphere of Influence. And in one of them someone suddenly appeared. That someone looked exactly like the Doctor. But it wasn't.
"I'm in," the Pseudo-Doctor said.
A voice spoke to him, very old, but with even more authority. "Just because we found a loophole doesn't mean Fenric won't detect you. You have forty seconds."
"I'm on it." The Pseudo-Doctor quickly bent down near a wall, took out a variety of tools from his inside suit pockets, and quickly unscrewed what turned out to be a wall paneling. There was unknown circuitry behind it, and the Pseudo-Doctor quickly clamped a mechanical device to some of the wires, and then spliced some wires to fit into two more. The Pseudo-Doctor restored the panel and stood up.
"Finished. Now what?"
"This helps deal with the physical and temporal paradoxes of the Sphere. But there are paradoxes of the Soul, and that's up to the Doctor to solve," replied the Ancient Voice.
Now Fenric and the Doctor appeared to be in another police station. There were, of course, no windows to the outside, but there was a chaotic and messy bulletin board behind Fenric and Fenric's desk. The Doctor was, somewhat unusually, rather meek and subdued in his chair. He even looked somewhat lame while Fenric commanded authority in his dress shirt and tie.
"There was a lawyer," the Doctor spoke softly.
"What lawyer, Verbal?"
"Kobayashi."
"Convince me, and tell me every last detail."
"A man can convince anyone he's somebody else, but never himself."
"I'm smarter than you, and you're going to tell me what I want to know whether you like it or not."
"Are you trying to get a rise out of me, Agent Kujan?"
"Verbal, I know you like Keaton. I know you think he's a good man."
"I know he was good." Just then the Doctor shook his head. "Wait, what are we doing?"
"Answer the question!"
"But you're not interrogating me. We're just reciting lines from The Usual Suspects. It's pointless."
"It's not pointless at all!"
"Really? Because I think I'm too tall to play Verbal Kint."
"Doctor, I'm trying to use your ingenuity against you. You'd think up an elaborate cover story, while the 'truth' would be something altogether different. And with that I'd be able to find clues into your true state."
"Ohhh," the Doctor acknowledged. "Yes, that does make sense. Of course, now that I know that you're doing it, it completely falls apart. Let's see. What else can you take from the Village? Since I don't genuinely know my past, the whole 'letting me escape so I'll blurt out the truth,' won't work."
Fenric fumed in momentarily impotent anger as the Doctor continued. "We've tried making me hallucinate. The Big Bad Computer thing is so 1967. How about using social pressure to sideswipe me? But where are we going to find 200 angry Maoists, and at this time of night?" The Doctor smirked. He noticed Fenric's anger but didn't see something click in his eyes. "You know, I liked the gambit where you make me think I'm my own double. Now that was clever…"
"I've got it!" Fenric realized.
"Is there any food? It occurs to me I haven't eaten anything since I met Romana and…"
But just then Fenric grabbed him out of the chair and angrily strode with him out of the room. Soon they were in the corridors. "Don't like being dragged around, Doctor? Well here's a solution!" And Fenric effortlessly tossed the Doctor down to the end of the corridor. The Doctor hit the wall, but was still standing, if somewhat confused, when Fenric picked him up and tossed him down another corridor. "Physical pain, inflicted suddenly with unclear logic, it disorients you, doesn't it?" Fenric was now wearing the suit he was wearing when the Doctor first named him. "But this will work! This time I have you!" Again, the Doctor was tossed down another corridor. This time he rolled on the floor, and he noticed he was just outside the main suite where, once again, images of human atrocities were playing on the walls. But this time Fenric caught up to him and tossed him into another room nearby.
"I've got you, Doctor! I've got you, and this time it will be your wretched conscience that will get the better of you. You will be hoisted by your own self-righteousness!" The Doctor was now somewhat confused. "Pay attention, Doctor. You need to see this."
"I'm sorry. What are you talking about?"
"Remember the Mara?"
"The Mara is dead."
"Not the Mara, Doctor. How you defeated it." Suddenly images appeared on the wall. The Doctor saw images of New York City. Signs of fashion, movies and Broadway shows suggested it was the late eighties. Then the Doctor saw a couple, young, thin, not very rich, in their mid-twenties, the woman blonde, nervous, perhaps five months pregnant.
"You remember them, Doctor? You remember the man Turlough killed to stop the Mara? Benjamin O'Malley?"
"I've always remembered them," the Doctor said, almost choking as he motioned to an inside breast pocket.
"Oh good, that makes things so much easier! It was their love that brought the Mara into the world. So Turlough stopped the Mara by destroying that love the only way he knew how… by shooting O'Malley in the back of the head."
"I didn't know he would do that." All this time more images of the O'Malleys and their friends appeared on the wall beside him.
"What about Riley O'Malley, who killed herself a few years later? What about their daughter who killed herself in 2014? Why didn't you do something to help them?"
"They were in New York… the Weeping Angels prevent me from travelling there."
"You could have sent a letter, told them why their husband and father died."
"When I found out about them they were already dead, I couldn't manipulate time like that."
"But you always found a way to save yourself and a few select friends. You didn't do enough. And that's not all. O'Malley died because he truly loved her. But to everyone he knew he was just a pathetic schmuck who knocked up a not close enough friend and then he was killed because of gambling debts. None of your success stopping the Mara offered his widow and child the slightest consolation! It's easy enough to be so accepting of other people's sacrifices. You know it in the abstract, but avoid the blood and the pain, while I revel it because I must! Well, now you feel it too!"
And then the images of the wall momentarily ensnared the entire room. The Doctor realized it was August 19, 1988 and it was the Soho warehouse where Turlough had tricked the O'Malleys into visiting. Ben had been severely beaten and was on his knees, while Riley was sitting helplessly in a chair. Overheard were the last lyrics of Chicago's "Old Days."
Old days (on my mind and in my heart to stay)
Ah, ah, ah
Old days (darkened dreams of good times gone away)
Ah, ah, ah
Old days (days of love and feeling fancy free)
Ah, ah, ah
Riley could not scream but she could still whimper pathetically. "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?"
"Coup de grace, Mrs. O'Malley, coup de grace," Turlough replied. And he aimed the revolver at the back of Ben's barely conscious head.
Old days (on my mind and in my heart to stay)
Ah, ah, ah
"Now, Doctor, you will feel! You will know exactly what they think and feel at this very moment!" Fenric shouted.
Old days (darkened dreams of good times gone away)
Ah, ah, ah
Old days (days of love and feeling fancy free)
Turlough pulled the trigger and the Doctor experienced exactly what the O'Malleys thought at the moment. But not what Turlough thought.
Another lyric, in the background: "So here's your holiday/Hope you enjoy it this time/
You gave it all away."
"Who are you Doctor? WHO ARE YOU?!"
The Doctor fell to his knees and gasped. His eyes opened wide. "I remember. I know everything!"
Coda
The images in the room all vanished. Fenric's face filled with elation. "Yes, you do remember! Your mind is still cloudy, but you realize who you are." He quickly got the Doctor to his feet and started walking him back to the main room.
"It's becoming clearer," the Doctor added.
"Yes, yes, go on."
"Everything, it's all becoming clear. It's making sense. Of course…"
By now they were near the main room, with images of human atrocities still playing on the wall. Neither of them noticed someone walking behind them in the shadows, covered in a cloak.
"Tell me where you're from, all in good time, but tell me where you're from."
"You don't understand. All this… has been about you."
Fenric's face was almost glowing: "Are you my son?"
And at that moment the cloaked figure fired at Fenric. A bystander would think it was a simple blaster or phaser. They wouldn't recognize the sheer amount of technology that went into such a deadly weapon.
A billion years of technology…
The force of the shot was enough to propel the Doctor back a few steps. Fenric twirled a couple of times before landing on a settee.
"So this is what it is like to die. Not one of my avatars, myself." He paused. "Can't say I like it very much.
"I am dying, Doctor. But your fate is sealed. You have six hours left, and there is the last human you will ever see." And just before he died, he pointed to the image of Himmler.
The Doctor turned around to see Fenric's assassin, who no longer needed a disguise and was now majestically robed. Often when facing enemies, the Doctor projected confidence. Calm. Sometimes he was sardonic and even openly contemptuous. But inwardly he always treated his foes with the respect they deserved. Much rarer was fear, and especially so the fear he felt now.
"You wear an old face, Doctor," said the old and eminent figure who had earlier guided the pseudo-Doctor.
"So do you… Rassilon."
TV Guide preview Episode #11 An Ordinary Day in Milton Keynes
The Doctor finally learns his true origin, and then finds himself in a desperate battle. Cybermen, Reapers, the all-Black assassins, Weeping Angels and much, much more combat in both the present and at the end of time. Along with—Rose Tyler?
TV Guide preview Episode #12 Eclipse
The Doctor, after suffering the greatest defeat in all his regenerations, now finds himself fleeing for his life in the void between the universes. Only the most unexpected of allies can help him. Meanwhile Captain Jack Harkness and Romana flee from the minions of Spencer.