Right, well, I've been pretty busy, but here we go with the Impossible Planet! Now, I am NOT skipping the Idiot's Lantern. However, that's going to come a little later in the season. Why? You'll see.
Another day, another adventure. Having stopped a group of aliens from recreating their god of war out of children's dreams in modern-day Wales and swung by WW1-era Belgium for chocolate, Barry eagerly headed out of the TARDIS for their next adventure and beheld…the inside of a closet.
"You take me to all the nicest places," he called back, but the Doctor didn't seem to hear him.
"Don't know what's wrong though," the Time Lord murmured, stroking the side of the TARDIS. "She's sort of queasy. Indigestion, like she didn't want to land."
Barry raised his eyebrows.
"Well, if you think there's going to be trouble, we could always get back inside and go somewhere else."
They both burst out laughing at that, and headed out to see where and when they were. As they walked along a series of modular corridors, the Doctor explained that they were in a human-made base somewhere, put together from a kit.
"Thousands of years in the future, we've still got IKEA, then," Barry grinned, running a hand along the walls. The
Doctor smirked back at him as they entered a larger room.
"Oh, it's a sanctuary base! Deep space exploration. We've gone way out. And listen to that, underneath. Someone's drilling."
"Welcome to Hell," Barry read, nodding to a series of scrawled letters on the opposite wall above a vertical alien script.
"Hold on, what does that say?" the Doctor frowned. "That's weird, it won't translate."
"But I thought the TARDIS translated everything, writing as well."
Barry scratched his head. "We should see English, right? What's wrong?"
"Exactly," the Doctor nodded. "If that's not working, then it means this writing is old. Very old. Impossibly old. We
should find out who's in charge. We've gone beyond the reach of the TARDIS' knowledge. Not a good move. And if
someone's lucky enough…"
Just then, a group of tentacled aliens entered through the door, and the Doctor backed away. "Oh! Right. Hello. Sorry.
I was just saying, er, nice base."
All of the aliens lifted metal balls attached to their mouths and spoke as one. "We must feed."
"You've got to what?" the Doctor asked, backing away. "We must feed," they repeated ominously.
"Yeah. I think they mean us," Barry muttered, turning to go back-to-back with the Doctor as more of the tentacled
aliens emerged from other doorways, chanting the same mantra over and over again.
"We must feed. We must feed. We must feed."
Nowhere to run, Barry thought, picking up a chair. He watched the aliens get closer, and closer…and then the lead one tapped its lighty-uppy speech ball.
"You. If you are hungry."
"Sorry?" the Doctor blinked, and Barry lowered his chair halfway.
"We apologize," it said. "Electromagnetics have interfered with speech systems. Would you like some refreshment?"
"Er…"
Just then, another door opened, and a human man burst in. "What the hell?" he stammered. "How did…Captain, you're not going to believe this," he said into his comms. "We've got people. Out of nowhere. I mean, real people. I mean two living people."
A bunch of other people on the comms expressed disbelief, but then one of them announced an incoming earthquake.
"Through here, now!" the man ordered. "Quickly, come on! Move!"
They followed the man through another corridor and into a control room.
"Oh, my God. You meant it," a crewman breathed.
"People! Look at that, real people!" another agreed, dumbfounded.
"That's us. Hooray!" the Doctor waved cheerfully.
"Yep, definitely real," Barry agreed cheerfully. "Hey, I'm Barry Allen, and this is the Doctor."
"Come on, the oxygen must be offline," yet another man shook his head. "We're hallucinating. They can't be. No, they're real."
The leader snapped at them to buckle down, and moments later, the earthquake struck, and he hung on for dear life.
Once it was over, the captain checked in with everyone.
"Never mind the earthquake, that's, that's one hell of a storm," Barry said shakily. "What is that, a hurricane?"
"You'd need an atmosphere for a hurricane. There's no air out there. It's a complete vacuum," a woman about his age shook her head.
"Then what's shaking the roof?" he asked.
"You're not joking," the woman exclaimed. "You really don't know. Well introductions. FYI, as they said in the olden days."
She introduced herself as Ida Scott, introduced the rest of the crew as well, and showed where they were: in orbit around a black hole.
"How is that even possible?" Barry asked, astounded.
"We should be dead," the Doctor agreed.
"And yet here we are, beyond the laws of physics," Ida smiled. "Welcome on board."
"But if there's no atmosphere out there, what's that?" Barry asked, nodding to the stream of light arcing above.
"Stars breaking up," she explained. "Gas clouds. We have whole solar systems being ripped apart above our heads, before falling into that thing."
"Yeesh," Barry shook his head. Zach pulled up a hologram on his console.
"That's the black hole, officially designated K37Gem5."
"In the scriptures of the Falltino, this planet is called Krop Tor, the bitter pill," Ida explained. "And the black hole is
supposed to be a mighty demon. It was tricked into devouring the planet, only to spit it out, because it was poison."
"Huh," Barry nodded. At the Doctor's query, Zach explained that they'd flown in through a gravity funnel reaching out into clear space.
"But that field would take phenomenal amounts of power," the Doctor exclaimed. "I mean not just big, but off the scale! Can I?" he nodded to the computer, and Zach assented. One of the tentacled aliens offered Barry a drink. To his surprise, they were apparently a slave race called the Ood.
"Since when do humans need slaves?" Barry asked.
"But the Ood offer themselves," Danny shook his head innocently.
"If you don't give them orders, they just pine away and die."
"Dude, house elves don't exist in real life," he shot back. "A species born to serve could never evolve."
"House elves?"
Barry's response was cut off by the Doctor, announcing that the gravity field needed "a power source with an inverted self extrapolating reflex of six to the power of six every six seconds."
"That's a lot of sixes," Barry noted, raising his eyebrows.
"And it's impossible," the Doctor noted. The crew of the Sanctuary Base explained that there was an incredible power source creating the funnel, down in the darkness, beneath the ruins of an ancient civilization.
"They buried something," Toby explained. "Now it's reaching out, calling us in."
"And you came," the Doctor exclaimed, shaking his head.
"Well, how could we not?"
"So, when it comes right down to it, why did you come here? Why did you do that? Why? I'll tell you why. Because it was there," he beamed. "Brilliant. Excuse me, er, Zach, wasn't it?"
"That's me," the captain nodded. With an almost ecstatic, adoring look on his face, the Doctor stepped forward. "Just stand there, because I'm going to hug you. Is that all right?"
"I suppose so."
"Here we go. Come on, then."
The Doctor put his arms tightly around the other man and held him for a few moments. "Oh, human beings. You are amazing! Ha! Thank you."
"Not at all," Zach said, seeming both flattered and confused. Barry grinned.
"But apart from that, you're completely mad," the Doctor continued without missing a beat. "You should pack your bags, get back in that ship and fly for your lives."
"You can talk," Ida snorted. "And how the hell did you get here?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Oh, I've got this er, this ship. It's hard to explain. It just sort of appears." "We can show you,"
Barry nodded along. "We parked down the corridor from er. Oh, what's it called? Habitation area, uh…"
"Three," the Doctor completed. Which, as it transpired, was also known as storage six. Which the earthquake had hit. And sent the TARDIS down into the depths of the planet.
Despite the Doctor and Barry's pleading, Zach refused to divert the drill, arguing that they only had just enough resources to complete their mission. Regretfully, they turned away, and Barry put his arms around his friend.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I know how much the TARDIS meant to you."
"I've trapped you here," the Doctor responded quietly, not pulling away.
"Don't worry about it," Barry shook his head. Then he looked up. "Okay, we're on a planet that shouldn't exist, under a black hole and no way out. Maybe we should worry, just a little."
As the Doctor worked on translating the impossibly old language, Barry went to get dinner from the Ood.
"Help yourself," Scooti smiled. "Just don't have the green. Or the blue."
Barry grinned back at her. "Thanks. Uh, Scooti, right?"
"Yeah. Nice to meet you, Barry."
"So, uh, trainee maintenance. That's pretty cool. You keep this place going?"
She shrugged. "Someone has to, and most of the others are bollocks at mechanics. Don't tell 'em I said that."
"My lips are sealed," Barry promised, awkwardly juggling his tray to make a "zipping-his-lips" motion. She giggled.
"I can't believe anyone actually still does that."
"Yeah, well, I'm old-fashioned," he shrugged, smiling to himself.
"Thanks," he added to the Ood as it spooned some mash onto his tray.
"So, do they pay you guys? You get, like, leave time and benefits and stuff?"
"The Beast and his Armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God."
"Huh?" Barry blinked. The Ood shook its translator ball.
"Apologies. I said, I hope you enjoy your meal."
"Uh, sure. Yeah. Thanks."
He looked over to see Scooti watching him thoughtfully. "What?"
"Oh, nothing. Just, most people don't really care too much about the Ood."
"Well, I don't think it's right to treat people like furniture," Barry said, face set. "No matter what species they are."
Scooti barked out a laugh as they sat down together.
"Now you sound like Danny."
"You know, that's not necessarily a bad thing," Barry pointed out, and Scooti shrugged, though her lips twitched in a smile. "So, tell me more about yourself."
Barry snorted. "You wouldn't believe half of it."
She gave him a frank look, leaning forward slightly. "I'm on an impossible planet in orbit around a black hole. Try me."
Doing his best to focus on her face, Barry obliged.
"You might want to see this," Ida said a while later. "Moment in history."
Barry, Scooti, and the Doctor looked up from their table to the now-open shutters above. Ida spoke in a funereal voice, like the tour guide at Arlington Cemetery Barry had visited once.
"There. On the edge. That red cloud. That used to be the Scarlet System. Home to the Peluchi, a mighty civilization spanning a billion years, disappearing forever. Their planets and suns consumed."
Barry closed his eyes and bowed his head for a moment. "Ladies and gentlemen," Ida continued, "We have witnessed its' passing."
She went to close it, but the Doctor held out a hand. "Er, no, could you leave it open? Just for a bit. I won't go mad, I promise."
"How would you know?" Ida smiled wryly, but acceded, ordering Scooti to check the lockdown.
"See you in a bit, Barry," she said with a quick grin.
"See ya," he waved.
Barry sighed and leaned back, thinking about the entire civilization that had just been destroyed before their eyes, and about Kara, whose smile he would never see again.
"Long way from home," he sighed. The Doctor put an arm around his shoulders and used the other hand to point. "Go that way, turn right, keep going for about, er, five hundred years, and you'll reach the Earth."
"So, second star on the right and straight on 'till morning, huh?"
The Doctor smirked as Barry turned on his phone. "No signal. That's the first time we've gone out of range. Mind you, even if I could…what would I tell Dad? And Kara, Joe, Iris?" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Any chance
you can, just, uh, grow another TARDIS?"
The Doctor shook his head. "With my own planet gone, we're kind of stuck."
Barry shrugged and sighed. "Well, it could be worse. They said they'd give us a lift. We could, I dunno, set up a life on Earth. We're only, what, two thousand years out of my time?"
"Give or take," the Doctor shrugged.
"I mean, y'know, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe. I could be a superhero! And you can be my tech support! We can set up a superhero hideout! You can be my guy in the chair! Or my sidekick! Like Peter and Ned."
"I'd have to settle down," the Doctor blanched, not seeming to listen. "Get a house or something. A proper house with, with doors and things. Carpets. Me, living in a house! Now that, that is terrifying."
"You'd have to get a mortgage," Barry sing-songed.
"No."
"Oh, yes," Barry smirked. "I've seen you up against Daleks, Cybermen, Slitheen, ghosts, a werewolf…but nope, a mortgage, and you're terrified."
"I'm dying," the Doctor announced. "That's it. I'm dying. It is all over."
"It could be worse," Barry said seriously. "I could be stuck out here by myself. I'd much rather be with you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
They smiled at each other, and Barry blinked as his phone rang. "Huh. 'Scuse me." He answered it. "Hi, this is Barry."
"He is awake," a deep voice rumbled. Barry stared at his phone.
"Weirdest spam call of my life."
Later that evening, the Doctor and Barry stopped by Ood Habitation to talk to Danny.
"Sorry, straight to business," the Doctor smiled. "The Ood, how do they communicate? I mean, with each other."
"Oh, just empaths," Danny shrugged. There's a low level telepathic field connecting them. Not that that does them much good. They're basically a herd race. Like cattle."
"This telepathic field. Can it pick up messages?"
"Because I was having dinner," Barry said, "and one of the Ood said something, well, odd."
"Hmm," Danny mused. "An odd Ood."
"And then I got something else on my, uh, communicator thing."
Danny shrugged again. "Oh, be fair. We've got whole star systems burning up around us. There's all sorts of stray transmissions. Probably nothing. Look, if there was something wrong, it would show. We monitor the telepathic field. It's the only way to look after them. They're so stupid, they don't even tell us when they're ill."
Barry frowned at the condescension in Danny's voice, but before he could say anything, the Doctor nodded to the monitor. Despite the fact that their telepathic field was only supposed to be at Basic 5, it had gone up to Basic 30.
Below, the Ood lifted their heads.
"But they can't!" Danny insisted.
"Doctor, the Ood," Barry breathed. "What's basic thirty mean?"
"Well, it means that they're shouting, screaming inside their heads," Danny frowned.
"Or something's shouting at them," the Doctor mused.
"But where is it coming from?" Danny asked. "What is it saying?" He turned to Barry. "What did it say to you?"
"Something about the beast in the pit," he frowned.
"What about your communicator? What did that say?"
"He is awake," Barry muttered.
"And you will worship him," every Ood chorused as one.
"What the hell?"
The Doctor leaned over the railing, arms spread, face grim. "He is awake."
"And you will worship him."
"Worship who?" The Doctor demanded. "Who's talking to you? Who is it?"
There was no answer, but moments later, the base shook.
"Another earthquake?"
"Emergency hull breach," the computer announced. "Emergency hull breach."
Barry rolled his eyes. "Of course it is," he muttered.
"Everyone, evacuate eleven to thirteen," Zach announced over the comms. "We've got a breach. The base is open.
Repeat, the base is open!"
The whole group rushed to the control room, where Zach sealed the hull breach.
"That wasn't a quake," the Doctor frowned. "What caused it?"
No one answered him, but Barry noted that Scooti was missing. Zach picked up her biochip in Habitation Three, and they headed out to get her.
"What happened?" the Doctor asked the fallen Toby, helping him up.
"I don't, I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "I was working and then I can't remember. All that noise. The room was falling apart. There was no air…"
"Come on, let's go," Barry murmured, putting an arm around the man's shoulders. "Come and have some protein one."
"Oh, you've gone native," the Doctor raised an eyebrow, but Barry shrugged. "Hey, when in Rome, right? If I'm gonna live here, might as well."
Upon reaching Habitation Three, there was no sign of Scooti. At first.
"I've found her," the Doctor reported, and Barry followed his gaze upwards. At Scooti's body, floating in space, hand raised in a final farewell. He gasped and turned away.
"Captain," Jefferson reported into his wrist-comm. "Report Officer Scootori Manista PKD, deceased. Forty three K two point one."
"She was twenty," Ida murmured. "Twenty years old."
Same age as me. Pressing his hands to his mouth, Barry tried to hide the shaking. The Doctor put an arm around his shoulders and held him close. As the shutters drew together, Barry watched her course until they were completely shut. Jefferson spoke.
"For how should man die better than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of his father, and the temples of his Gods."
The base stopped, and an odd silence fell. The drill had reached its destination.
Reporting to the console room, the Doctor pulled on a space suit.
"Reporting as a volunteer for the expeditionary force," he said cheerfully. Zach protested, but the Doctor overrode him.
"I want that spacesuit back in one piece, you got that?" Barry ordered. "Take care of yourself out there."
"Yes, sir," the Doctor smiled, pulling on the helmet.
"It's funny," Barry sighed, looking out the window. "Because people back home think that space travel's going to be all shooting about and teleports and anti gravity, but it's not, is it? It's tough. Sometimes…sometimes people die."
"Yeah," the Doctor nodded. "I'll see you later."
"Not if I see you first," Barry smiled, and hugged him tightly. "Don't get into trouble down there, okay?"
"You know me."
"Yeah," Barry raised his eyebrows. "That's why I said it."
He watched with sweaty palms as the capsule descended.
"You guys okay down there?"
"Barry, stay off the comms," Zach ordered.
"Sorry," he said without a trace of remorse. Suddenly, the capsule shuddered more than usual and dropped straight
down.
"Doctor! Doctor, you okay?"
"Ida, report to me," Zach ordered. "Doctor?"
"It's all right," the Doctor's voice came over the comms. "We've made it. Getting out of the capsule now."
He reported that they'd found a massive cavern, with more marks of Toby's ancient civilization. Meanwhile, Danny
reported that the Ood were at Basic 100.
"But that's impossible," Zach breathed.
"What's Basic 100?" Barry asked.
"Basic 100's brain death," Jefferson frowned. Despite being supposedly brain dead, the Ood were not just alive, but standing there, staring at Danny. Zach ordered that a guard be put on the Ood.
"Is everything all right up there?" the Doctor asked.
"The Ood are at Basic 100," Barry told him. "That's not good, right?"
"Something's screaming at them," his friend said grimly. "Be careful."
"Believe me, I will," Barry agreed.
Just a few minutes later, the Doctor reported that they'd found a trapdoor with more of the indecipherable writing.
"Hey, Toby," Barry turned to the archaeologist, who was huddled to one side. He approached him gently and knelt
down. "They need to know that lettering. Does it make any sort of sense?"
"I know what it says," the young man murmured without lifting his head.
"Yeah, so tell them."
"When did you work that out?" Jefferson asked.
"I didn't."
"What?" Jefferson demanded. Barry started to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"I didn't," Toby repeated, and now he did rise. Except that his face and arms were covered with the symbols, and his irises were a demonic red. Barry leapt backwards in alarm.
"These are the words of the Beast," the man growled in a voice not his own. "And he has woken. He is the heart that
beats in the darkness. He is the blood that will never cease. And now he will rise."
"Officer, stand down! Stand down!" Jefferson ordered, leveling his gun. Naturally, he didn't, and the letters floated through the air, leaving Toby and flying to the Ood, who jerked and twitched as their own eyes turned red. Toby spasmed and collapsed.
"Something's possessing him!" Barry shouted over the comms to the Doctor. "I've got a really bad feeling about this. It's the Ood, whatever was possessing Toby went to them. Now they're talking about being the Legion of the Beast."
As the base lurched, the Ood spoke as one, advancing on them and boasting a lot of stuff that sounded awfully like…well, Barry really didn't want to say "the Devil," but…
He and Jefferson backed up towards the door, which, naturally, refused to open. Oh, and, according to Zach, the planet's orbit was destabilizing.
"I have been imprisoned for eternity," the Ood—or rather, whatever was speaking through them—said as one. "But no more. The Pit is open. And I. Am. Free!"
Honestly, I did not intend the ship tease between Barry and Scooti, but it pretty much wrote itself, and he does have a thing for sweet-natured, rather badass blondes...Anyway, see you soon for one hell of an adventure! (Sorry not sorry).
