Episode: Paradigm of the Daleks
Chapter: Victory of the... [4/4]
Summary: Winston Churchill wanted to protect his people. Edwin Bracewell wanted to help win the war. Amy Pond wanted to see her Raggedy Doctor happy. The Master wanted blood. Or the one where they answer Churchill's call and realize nothing matters anymore.
Rating: T
Amy feels useless. It's like Starship UK all over again, sitting against the wall and watching the Doctor modify the computers to kill the Star Whale. Only, this time, Amy is not sitting against the wall, and there's even less she can do.
Churchill and his people are organizing the defenses as a new raid approaches, all professional and efficient like a well-oiled machine after that minute of terror when all the lights in the city had turned on. No one had been able to switch them off until, all of a sudden, they had gone out on their own.
They cheered, knowing the Doctor was working his magic up in the Dalek spaceship they could detect but not touch, and gone back to work.
Bracewell, feeling more determined than ever to fix the mess 'his' Ironsides have wrecked, keeps fiddling with his scanner, trying to see if he can actually contact the TARDIS instead of tap into the Dalek feeds. He modified it to synch with the Ironsides' radio channels, and managed to get a grainy black and white image with accompanying crackly sound before.
Almost the whole map room had sucked in a breath at the same time.
A Dalek was onscreen. It wasn't one of the Ironsides, though Amy wasn't able to tell just what made it different, other than the paler overall color and lack of toolbelt, due to the poor image.
And the Doctor was on the ground.
He was sitting against the TARDIS, one hand pressed tightly against his chest, and he seemed to have trouble breathing.
For a moment, they had all feared the worst.
But then the Daleks had started talking, and the Doctor mocked them right back about something to do with the colors red and white. Amy had let out a relieved gasp, and Churchill had patted her back without looking away from the screen.
And then the Doctor stood up, snarled, and, without a care, turned his back on the Dalek and entered the TARDIS.
"See you in Hell."
When nothing had changed, Bracewell had turned the radio around and started fiddling with it, trying to establish contact with the TARDIS now that they knew the Doctor was inside.
"Any luck?" Amy asks the scientist yet again, stepping out of the way of another soldier, and Bracewell huffs.
"Nothing yet, I'm afraid. If only we knew the frequency, it would be so much easier…" he bemoans, and Amy makes a mental note to herself about registering the Doctor's mobile phone number when she's next in the TARDIS.
She's not sure how that would work in 1941, what with the lack of satellites, but who knows? Churchill managed to phone them, after all.
"Damnit!" Bracewell curses, slapping the scanner, and Amy blinks back to the present. "The signal cut. Either the Daleks realized we were listening in and put up some sort of scrambler, or they… moved or… something…" he explains, his voice growing thinner as he blinks owlishly and grimaces, rubbing his head.
"Professor? Are you alright?" Amy asks, grabbing his arm when he goes pale and starts swaying in place.
"I-Yes, just… I'm feeling a bit dizzy… I don't know… Is that a countdown?"
"A what?" Amy asks, frowning in worry and confusion and wondering if she heard right.
With so many people around, it is possible someone is counting, but she can't make out anything more specific than some random words—
There's a scream outside the door, and everyone turns to it just as a yellow and blue blur rushes inside and straight into Amy and Bracewell, pushing her away from the scientist and slamming the man into a wall with a hand tightly fisted in his collar.
"What the—"
"Who—"
"Put those guns down!"
"Doctor!" Amy exclaims through the chaos created by the Time Lord's sudden entrance, pushing out of the arms that caught her without bothering to look at their owner, not sure whether to feel relieved or annoyed.
On the one hand, here he is, alive and moving quite actively, what with him shoving Amy away and manhandling Bracewell into the wall. On the other hand, he pushed Amy away again. She's sure he saved her life, back at the laboratory when the Ironsides revealed themselves as Daleks, but he had no reason to this time!
"Bracewell! Edwin! Look at me, look at me!" he snarls, shaking the man one more time to get him to focus on the Doctor. "That's it, there you go. Can you hear it? The numbers, the countdown?"
"I-Yes… Yes, I can. What—"
"It's a bomb, Edwin. A bomb the Daleks put in your head," the Doctor answers, deadly serious, and the whole map room goes silent as everyone holds their breath. "An Oblivium Continuum. It's a wormhole, a tunnel between two disparate points in spacetime. The Daleks used it as a power source, but it can easily swallow the Earth and rip it to pieces before spitting it out who knows where."
"And that thing is in my head?"
"What? No, how could a wormhole be in—Alright, no, you got it wrong. The Daleks put the instructions in your head," the Doctor corrects with a shake of his own head, but Bracewell still looks wide-eyed and about to faint. "Oblivium, it's Latin, means 'to forget completely'. That's what its original name translates into because that's how it works. You see, the Daleks trust no one, so they put the codes into your mind and then made you forget all about it until they would trigger it with a signal. That countdown you're hearing is the signal."
"Is that how they – I mean, the Ironsides—"
"Yes, that's how they implanted those fake memories as well. Now, listen, hypnosis is not foolproof. You can hypnotize someone into thinking themselves a chicken or to operate an alien machine, but you can't hypnotize them to death. The human mind, primitive as is, has survival instincts. And when those are triggered? Poof! Link broken. So, the Daleks gave you everything necessary for you to blow up the Earth, but they didn't tell you what it would do. And how could you figure it out when you can't even read the language? You wouldn't have been able to. But now you know what the Oblivium Continuum will do, you know it will kill everyone on the planet. And you won't let that happen, will you?"
"N-No, no! Of course not!"
"Then tell them! You're human, they can't hypnotize you to destroy yourself, they can't tell you to die."
"They can't – They can't tell me to die. They can't make me; I won't do it!"
"That's it!"
"I'm human! And if two world wars haven't killed me, neither will the Daleks!" Bracewell shouts, eyes closed tightly, and stills.
Amy holds her breath, as the whole room seems to do, though she can hear the Doctor pant quickly, his shoulders shaking with each breath.
And then, Bracewell opens one eye.
"The, uhm, the countdown, it… it got to zero," he says softly, easily heard in the silence, and even the Doctor stills. "It got to zero… and it's gone now."
And the whole room erupts in cheers, Amy hugging Churchill tightly before she can think better of it. Bracewell slumps against the wall, looking around with a smile filled with disbelief, while the Doctor relaxes his grip on the scientist's collar, lets his head drop – and Bracewell barely manages to catch him with a startled cry as he collapses.
"Doctor!" Amy shouts, rushing to where Bracewell is helping him sit on the floor, Churchill right behind her— "Oh my God, you're bleeding!"
He is, it's clear as day now that Bracewell has finally pushed him away from his chest and Amy can see the Doctor properly for the first time since he burst into the room. The hand he'd kept pressed against his chest is a bloody mess, the fingers mangled, cut and burnt, with the thumb and index being so badly off that Amy is not sure whether they're still attached to the rest of the hand or held in place by the other three curled into a fist. The shirt is shredded, revealing more slashes and burns down the wrist and forearm, with some minor ones over his chest and face. A trickle of orange-tinged red blood falls from his lips, parted as he takes in gasping breaths. His forehead is covered in a sheen of cold sweat, and his skin is worryingly pale. His eyes are closed, but they open when Amy rests her hands on his cheeks, murky brown and only focusing when they finally meet hers.
"Hey, it's alright, I've got you now," she tells him, trying for a smile, and feels him try to shake his head under her hands. "You did it, Bracewell fought off the hypnosis and the Daleks left. We can find the bomb once you're better and deactivate it for good, and everything will be alright."
"I-I—" he whispers, cutting himself when he doesn't manage to form words, closing his eyes and scrunching his face as if focusing really hard on something.
"Shush, it's okay, don't say anything—"
"I found the bomb. In the past. I didn't know what it was, but I deactivated it," he finally says, surprisingly clear, before grimacing and opening his eyes again to give Amy an utterly defeated look. "The Daleks got away."
"Yeah, they did," she answers, shifting so she can make some space for one of the women around, who has managed to find a first aid kit and starts to work on putting a tourniquet around the Doctor's arm. "But you saved the day. That thing with the lights, and now with the bomb—"
"They got away," he whispers again, grimace turning into a snarl as he rips his hand away from the woman bandaging it. "I was going to blow them up, rid the universe of them. I was going to make them pay for Gallifrey, and they got away again," he hisses, using his good hand to push off Bracewell and back to his feet, and both Amy and the scientist quickly get to theirs to catch him when he wobbles.
"Doctor, please, sit down! You're hurt!" Amy pleads almost desperately, but he shrugs them off with more strength than they thought he had left.
"There's nothing humans can do for me. The TARDIS will fix me up," he tells them over his shoulder as he limps out of the room.
Amy exchanges a worried look with Churchill before rushing after him.
"At least let me help you," she whispers softly when she catches up to him, matching his pace and walking by his side.
She carefully, tentatively, tugs his good arm over her shoulders and wraps her own around his waist. When he sighs and leans on her, Amy lets out a relieved breath.
They make their way to the TARDIS, back in the filing room, without problem, and Amy easily unlocks the door once the Doctor manages to get the key out of his pocket. They stop in the control room for a moment, for the TARDIS to show them a scan image depicting no alien crafts in orbit, before all the corridors but the one on their level go dark, the first door on the right opening on its own.
Inside, as Amy hoped despite knowing it was a bathroom the last time she checked, they find an alien but clearly recognizable infirmary.
The Doctor is somewhat groggy, but between his instructions and the images the TARDIS keeps displaying on a monitor, Amy manages to straighten his fingers—without looking too closely at just what, if anything, is keeping them attached to the palm, swallowing down bile—and puts his hand and forearm into some kind of jelly-filled cast. If the Doctor's dizzy words are to be believed, the contraption will use the jelly to mend the damage caused when the Daleks blew up his screwdriver, of all things.
"What were you trying to do, assemble a cabinet at them?" Amy asks with a half-smirk that tries to be teasing but is too shaky to come across as such.
The Doctor keeps dozing off now that he's in a safe location and lying flat, but Amy doesn't want to let him sleep until she's sure she has covered everything, and that he'll wake up afterwards.
God, I wish Rory was here…
But he's not, and so, Amy will ask silly questions even though she knows the screwdriver can be dangerous, she saw what it did to the Smilers back in Starship UK. Or was that all it can do? The Smilers were robots while the Daleks are aliens—alien robots? Or aliens in a suit?—so, would the screwdriver have affected them as it did the Smilers? Was the Doctor just bluffing when he threatened Churchill with it?
"Detonate the TARDIS self-destruct," the Doctor finally mumbles, seemingly not even aware he just spoke, and Amy freezes.
The Doctor's eyes slide shut before he forces them open again, though he's unable to focus on anything in the pristine white room. Amy takes in a really slow and really deep breath – and returns her attention to the controls of the UV chamber-like thing he's lying in, deciding to focus on one problem at a time.
The chamber is supposed to help with any internal damage he might have, like the second heart that was stopped by the Dalek's shot, back in the laboratory. The scan that fills its holographic screen shows a bunch of organs that Amy doesn't recognize, but she doesn't need to know their names to be aware of what is damaged, what with it flashing mauve. The TARDIS displays a pattern of weird glyphs on the monitor on the wall, and Amy does her best to ignore the string of technobabble the Doctor is muttering in favor of inputting the sequence in the machine.
She follows that by attaching some drips to a bracelet and slapping it around his undamaged wrist, which displays his vitals on the screen for her to monitor. She doesn't understand them, doesn't know what should be normal, but since the TARDIS doesn't react, she assumes they are alright and proceeds to carefully maneuver something that looks like an airplane's oxygen mask over his face.
He harrumphs like a disgruntled cat but lets her do as the TARDIS shows on the monitor without much protest. As soon as the mask is in place the bag inflates slowly, filling with an orangish mist, while the Doctor writhes on the table, gasping and coughing. Amy grabs his hand, wincing at the tight grip, but the screen still shows everything's alright, so she whispers reassurances and caresses his sweaty brow, hoping it helps.
When the bag fills completely, he stills and relaxes his grip.
"Are you alright?" Amy asks carefully, taking the bag off and making a note of the cabinet opening on the other side of the room, the TARDIS' way of telling her to bring the bag there.
"Draining the lungs. Never a good experience," he scoffs with a raspy voice, eyes closed and lying very still. "I'm going to take a nap now."
"Ah, is that a good idea? I really don't know how to read this screen, so…"
"I'm not concussed, Chantho. With this medicine and some rest, I'll be back to that gravitissimal accelerator in no time," he answers, breathier than before, and Amy knows he's asleep even before he's done speaking.
She has no idea who Chantho is, or what is a gravitissimal accelerator, but the TARDIS seems alright with letting him rest, so Amy decides to clean up his smaller burns, and the instruments when she's done with that.
It doesn't take that long, which leaves her alone with thoughts she'd rather not be alone with.
"You'll call me if something changes, right?" she asks the TARDIS, resting a hand on the wall and thinking about those bells that had taken her Raggedy Doctor away before he could hunt Prisoner Zero down.
The TARDIS doesn't answer, only the background hum of the machinery around her, but Amy takes it as a yes. It isn't like she'd be too far for too long, anyway; she just needs some air. Besides, she still has the key. No one gets in the TARDIS but her.
So, decision made, she gets out of the infirmary, crosses the control room, and opens the door.
Churchill is sitting next to the staircase, a couple of boxes between him and Bracewell, occupying the other chair, and some folders and blueprints stacked on their makeshift table.
"No, no, the Spitfires go as well," Bracewell is saying while Churchill puffs away almost angrily at his cigar, but both men cut their conversation as they notice Amy's presence. "Ah, Miss Pond! How is the Doctor?"
"Sleeping," she tells them, closing the door behind her and hearing it lock with a soft click before she approaches the two men, who stand up to be eye level with her. "He's a tough one, stubborn as Hell. Still, that shot, back at the laboratory…"
"Oh, I am so sorry for that… If I hadn't let the Daleks hypnotize me…" Bracewell bemoans, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Nonsense. When dealing with aliens, I've learnt there's little we humans can do about. And yet, you did it, Bracewell. You shook off their control and saved the country. The whole world," Churchill cuts, taking a drag of his cigar more calmly than before, and the scientist straightens a bit with a relieved smile. "Too bad you're so determined to get rid of your ideas. They are not alien, for Pete's sake! There's no need to throw those away."
"Oh, but I'd rather not tempt fate. Who knows how much was influenced by the Daleks? Many of my inventions or improvements contained Ironside technology. No, Prime Minister, I'd rather scrap it all and start anew, maybe with a different focus," Bracewell answers, more confident, and gestures to the pile of paperwork on the boxes when Amy gives him a confused look. "The Prime Minister has told me the Doctor is a time traveler, on top of being an alien, and he didn't seem too keen on my designs. So, to preserve the future, I have decided to destroy all of my more outlandish ideas. Just in case. Besides, the old human self still has quite something to offer, wouldn't you agree, Miss Pond?" he asks, tapping his own temple like an excited child, and Amy has to chuckle.
"Who am I to disagree with a Paisley genius?"
"Crazy Scottish people. As bonkers as the Doctor, and just as resourceful. Don't think I didn't notice you keeping that daft old alien in place, Miss Pond. Good job, K.B.O.," Churchill huffs, a sincere smile on his face.
Amy's cheer vanishes.
"He was going to blow up the TARDIS to destroy the Daleks," he tells them when they frown at her, foregoing any adornments or niceties.
These are men living the Second World War, in the middle of the London Blitz, and with the First World War in their pasts. She's not going to insult them by using pretty words to soften the blow.
Bracewell looks worried, but Churchill puffs at his cigar with a pensive look.
"That bad, those Daleks, aren't they? And he said something about them destroying his planet and his people too."
"He's the last one. All alone, so hurt…" Amy confirms, looking down at her hands and rubbing them as if cold. "He has rules, about not killing or hurting people, and giving everyone a chance to surrender. I think he did. Give the Daleks a chance, that is."
"And they threatened to blow up the Earth and ran away instead," Bracewell supplies, once more looking guilty, while Churchill huffs.
"He gave up revenge for Earth."
"I don't think he had a choice," Amy interrupts before Churchill can get lost in thought, attracting their attention. "He said that he's not supposed to interfere, but he has done it before, when there was something that was supposed to happen," she tells them, remembering that rant in the Tower, when they found out about the Star Whale, and how he had said he had to do something to keep the ship safe, or at least some of the people aboard. "I think that, maybe, he can't interfere, not that he doesn't want to. He has wanted to do things before that he didn't, and ended up doing what he didn't want to. Maybe… Maybe he really, truly, can't."
They fall silent after that, each lost in their thoughts, with Amy's inevitably going back to that one sentence.
"What were you trying to do, assemble a cabinet at them?"
"Detonate the TARDIS self-destruct."
The Doctor would have died on that ship. To save the Earth—No. To stop the Daleks, to get revenge and protect the whole of the universe, he would have died aboard that ship.
What Amy doesn't know—what she fears to ask, once he gets better—is if that had been his plan all along.
She refuses to believe it. The Doctor, her Raggedy Doctor, is a broken man, but he's not suicidal. He's too curious, too cheeky and too much of a bastard to be suicidal.
And yet, he had held Churchill at gunpoint—maybe—and ordered the Ironsides, whom he suspected to be Daleks, to kill him to protect the Prime Minister. He had gone up to their ship after confirming they were Daleks, completely alone, and had resorted to threatening to activate the TARDIS self-destruct. And the Daleks had tried to set off a bomb that would destroy Earth to distract him, because they had believed him.
The Raggedy Doctor is not suicidal, he can't be. Can he?
"Any good leader would give their life for their people and country. If my being at the frontlines would end this war and keep my people safe, I would be over there in an instant," Churchill tells Amy, likely in answer to whatever expression she had been making. "The Doctor is a soldier too, no matter what name he takes. But he'll pull through. These are dark times, and there might come darker ones further ahead, but a truly devoted soldier doesn't surrender, he doesn't give up. For people and country, they fight till the end. You have to remind him of that, Miss Pond, give him a reason to fight. And I will do the same for my country."
"What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then?"
"Never give up, never give in, huh? The Doctor, the sanctimonious twat who makes people better."
"I know. But I also know that someone who isn't the slightest bit kind wouldn't smile at a scared seven-year-old girl."
Amy smiles at the memories, and realizes that he already has a reason to fight. She just needs to help him remember it.
And then, it finally dawns just what Churchill's words mean.
"Wait, you won't ask for the TARDIS key again?"
"I will certainly not refuse it if it's offered, but no. I have seen enough," Churchill answers calmly, almost solemn for a moment, before taking another puff of his cigar and giving her a mischievous smirk. "Besides, you, Miss Pond, are very obviously Scottish and from the future. And there is no way any British, Welsh or Irish will not fight for at least as long as a Scottish! So, I will hold out hope. There is still reason to live and to fight, Miss Pond. You have shown us that much," he explains, gesturing to both Bracewell and himself with his cigar, as well as giving a meaningful look at the TARDIS.
Amy blinks, startled, before she manages a small smile, which both Bracewell and Churchill return.
"Keep buggering on?"
"Keep buggering on, Miss Pond."
AN: On a different note, I decided to watch some Classic Who, and which episode is better to start with than Terror of the Autons, the Master's very first appearance? So, I did. As soon as Delgado appeared onscreen, I realized where all the high praise comes from. Now that was amazing, very Master-y, so cool and confident and just whoa. And then, we jump to the Doctor's first appearance in the episode. My reaction? I literally spat my tea, broke down laughing, and shouted at the screen that's definitely the Doctor!
Next time: Koschei and Amy meet people that know a lot more and not as much as they are comfortable with, and a familiar face returns with a grim warning. (Episode title: Silence in the Catacombs)