Guest: Thanks for the review! Honestly, I'm not a Trekkie, so I really couldn't say.

It should be noted that Barry and the Doctor have met Sontarans before, in the Doctor Who Magazine comic The Betrothal of Sontar, set early in Season Two (obviously, in canon, it's 10 and Rose). That won't be terribly significant to this episode, but it does mean Barry's familiar with the Sontarans.

I also threw in another classic favorite this episode, 'cause why not?

"I can't believe I'm doing this!" Donna exclaimed.

"No, me neither," the Doctor agreed wryly. As she flipped a switch, Barry reached out at super-speed and flipped it back, then smiled innocently.

"You're doing great," he promised.

"Left hand down, left hand down!" the Doctor urged as the TARDIS shook.

"Did he teach you?" Donna asked Barry, who was gripping the console.

"Yeah, yeah he did."

The Doctor coughed and raised an eyebrow.

"Look, I said I was sorry about that crater, okay?" Barry rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"Long story," the Doctor waved her off. "That was a day and a half. Literally."

Just then, a mobile phone started ringing.

"Doctor?" Barry heard a distant, familiar voice as the Time Lord answered. "It's Martha, and I'm bringing you back to Earth."

"Where and when are you?" the Doctor asked, then nodded. "March 2009? Leave the line open, I'll hone in on your call. Be right there."

He nudged Donna gently out of the way, slotting the phone into a slot in the TARDIS console. "Have to finish this some other time."

Moments later, they were in an alleyway on Earth, facing an old friend.

"Hey, you!"

Barry and Martha hugged tightly, though he pulled back after a minute to let the Doctor have a turn.

"How's the family?" Barry wanted to know.

"Not so bad," she shrugged. "Recovering."

"And you?" the Doctor asked, but Martha's gaze shifted as Donna stepped out of the TARDIS.

"Should've known," she smiled sadly. "Didn't take you long to replace me."

Barry clapped her shoulder. "Hey. Keeping him out of trouble is a full-time job, you know that."

"Ain't that the truth," Donna agreed as she came up and extended her hand. "You must be Martha. Donna Noble."

"Hi."

"I've heard all about you," Donna smiled. "He talks about you all the time."

"I dread to think," Martha smirked at the Doctor. However, their catching up was interrupted by a radio on her hip.

"This is Doctor Jones," she said. "Operation Blue Sky is go, go, go. I repeat, this is a go."

Donna, Barry, and the Doctor exchanged bemused glances as army trucks and men hurried by. Soldiers spread out through a factory, forcing men to kneel as they searched.

"Is that what you did to her?" Donna asked. "Turned her into a soldier?"

"No," Barry snapped. "Never."

Donna blinked and dropped her gaze. "Sorry."

Martha came up to them, and the Doctor proudly noted that she was a full doctor now. Smiling, she led them to UNIT's field base and introduced them to Colonel Mace. He saluted the Doctor, who waved him off dismissively.

"But it's an honour, sir. I've read all the files on you. Technically speaking, you're still on staff. You never resigned."

"What, you used to work for them?" Donna asked.

"Yeah, long time ago," the Doctor shrugged. "Back in the 70's. Or was it the 80's? But it was all a bit more homespun back then."

Barry looked around, nodding. Back in the days when he was constantly investigating the impossible, he'd run across mentions of them several times, and even considered joining them. He'd heard Oliver mention them a couple times, and during the Year That Never Was, quite a few UNIT personnel had joined the Resistance against the Master, loaning their skills, experience, and resources to fight the Master's forces and help himself and Martha. In retrospect, he supposed he wasn't surprised at all that she'd joined them.

"A modern UNIT for the modern world," Mace was saying.

"What, and that means arresting ordinary factory workers, in the streets, in broad daylight?" Donna snapped. "It's more like Guantanamo Bay out there. Donna, by the way. Donna Noble, since you didn't ask. I'll have a salute."

Mace looked at the Doctor, who gave a sort of nod. The Colonel saluted Donna, and gave Barry the nod of one equal greeting another.

"Ma'am. Sir."

"Thank you."

Mace went on to explain that 52 people had died simultaneously the previous day, all across the world.

"Any connection between them?" Barry asked, frowning and rubbing his chin.

"Just one: they were all in ATMOS cars."

Martha led them into the factory as she explained to the Doctor about ATMOS, newly-invented devices that made every car 100% environmentally friendly, cutting off all emissions. She left with Mace while the Doctor and his current traveling companions examined one of the objects.

"Do you know how many cars there are on planet Earth?" the Doctor asked grimly. "Eight hundred million. Imagine that. If you could control them, you'd have eight hundred million weapons."

He determined that the device worked as claimed, and that it wasn't alien, but not much more than that.

"Time travel?" Barry suggested as he looked it over. "Maybe someone from the future?"

"No, it's only decades ahead," the Doctor mused absent-mindedly. "You lot don't develop time travel for centuries."

"Let me look 'round," Barry offered. "See if I can find something."

He disappeared in a gust of wind, and came back at the same time as Donna, who was holding open a binder of sick leave records. An empty binder.

"I can see why he likes you," Martha smiled, and Donna smiled back bashfully.

"Super-temp."

"You find anything, Barry?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah, actually. Mysterious lab in the basement. Has some kind of vat in the middle with some kind of green stuff, some kind of pod, looks like a teleport pod, I don't know. Might be worth a look?"

The Doctor, Donna, Mace, and Martha shared a look.

"Show us," the Doctor ordered.

At the end of a corridor, they found a pair of men guarding the door. One of them stepped forward. "Halt," he ordered dully. "This area is out of bounds."

"Oh, I'm authorized to be anywhere," the Doctor said quietly, moving towards them with the screwdriver raised.

"Robots?" Barry whispered.

"Mind control?" Martha offered, and the Doctor confirmed with the sonic that her guess was the right one. As the Doctor approached, they stepped forward to bar the group's advance.

"You must not enter," the one who'd spoken earlier ordered.

"Oh? Why not?"

"We have our orders. You must not enter."

"Or?"

Donna looked around at a gust of wind by her left shoulder, but when she looked back, it was only Barry, smiling slightly. When one of the men tried to step forward, he stumbled and fell, bringing the other with him. Both of their shoelaces had been tied together.

"Good job, Barry," the Doctor said. "Allons-y, you lot."

He breezed past, Mace and his companions following.

Inside, as Barry had said, they found a large room, dominated by a metal casket, a table set at an angle, and a kind of metal pod.

"Cloning chamber," the Doctor announced grimly. "Subject's put in that table, and their memories are copied. The details of their features get copied onto the blank template, which is grown," he nodded towards the vat, "in there."

"And that?" Mace asked, nodding to the circular chamber in one corner.

"Teleport pod," the Doctor announced. "You were right, Barry. The question is, where's it lead to? And who set this all up?"

He scanned it, then shook his head at the screwdriver's readings. "Somewhere in outer space, can't get any readings. Still, that pretty much confirms it's alien. Worth a look!"

And before any of them (save perhaps Barry) could stop him, the Doctor had bounded into the pod and hit a switch. A moment later, he disappeared in a burst of light.

"Typical," Barry sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets as he peered around, smiling slightly. "Absolutely typical."

"Shouldn't we…" Donna started, but just then the Doctor appeared again, followed moments later by a squat, armored figure. Barry flinched slightly, remembering an icy planet, a superweapon, and a race of proud warriors they'd met shortly after the Doctor had regenerated. The Time Lord raised the sonic and pointed it at the pod, which sparked.

"Sontaran!" he announced. "That's your name, isn't it? You're a Sontaran. How did I know that, hey? Fascinating, isn't it? Isn't that worth keeping us alive?"

"I order you to surrender in the name of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce," Mace ordered, but the Doctor shook his head again."Well, that's not going to work. Cordolaine signal, am I right?" he addressed the armored figure. "Copper excitation stopping the bullets.""How do you know so much?" it growled.

"Well," the Doctor shrugged. "This isn't typical Sontaran behavior, is it? Skulking in the shadows, stopping bullets? A Sontaran should face bullets with dignity. Shame on you!"

"You dishonor me, sir," it growled.

"Yeah? Then show yourself," the Doctor shot back.

"I will look into my enemy's eyes!" it announced, and removed its helmet with a hiss.

"My God, he's like a troll," Mace muttered.

"Yeah, let's leave the diplomacy to me, okay?" the Doctor muttered back. "And your name?" he addressed the Sontaran.

"General Staal, of the Tenth Sontaran Fleet. Staal the Undefeated."

"Oh, that's not a very good nickname," the Doctor replied. "What if you do get defeated? Staal the Not Quite So Undefeated Anymore But Never Mind?"

Barry sniggered, Martha smirked, and Donna smothered a cough.

"Sontarans," General Mace noted. "We've fought you before, and won. By the authority of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, I order you and your people to leave Earth space, or face the consequences."

Staal snorted. "You are bold! It will be an honor to defeat you, sir."

"Humans aren't so easily beaten," Mace growled, but the Sontaran just smirked.

"We are not accustomed to losing."

"He's right," the Doctor agreed, pulling a cricket ball out of one of his voluminous pockets and bouncing it in his hand. "So what's the plan this time, eh?"

"A general would be unwise to reveal his strategy to the opposing forces!"

"Eh," the Doctor pulled a face. "Worth a try."

"This planet will suffocate beneath Sontaran might!"

"Not going to happen," Mace shot back.

"Very brave species, the Sontarans," the Doctor put in, still bouncing his cricket ball. "Proud history of warfare. But for all your technological achievements, and your courage in battle, and frankly ridiculous numbers of weapons, you do have one weakness."

"Sontarans have no weakness!" Staal snapped at him.

"No, no, it's a good weakness," the Doctor insisted cheerfully.

"The probic vent, correct?" Mace asked.

"Very good!" the Doctor nodded. "Yup, that hole at the back of their neck where they feed. Isn't that brilliant? They can never turn their backs."

"We stare into the face of death," Staal asserted.

"Yeah?" the Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Well, stare at this."

And in a blur of movement that even Barry's eyes had trouble following, the Doctor whipped the ball forward, sending it ricocheting off the back wall of the teleport chamber and right into the probic vent. The Sontaran collapsed with a wheeze.

"Run!" the Doctor bellowed, shepherding his friends ahead of him. They piled out, he sonicked the door locked, and frantically rifled through his coat pockets, pulling out a bag of jelly babies, a stethoscope, a toy Batmobile, and finally a deodorant canister. He grinned.

"What's that?" Donna asked.

"Parting gift from Ace."

He tossed it over his shoulder, into the doorway. A fireball billowed up, and the doorway to the Sontaran cloning chamber collapsed in a pile of smoke and rubble.

"There. One problem solved, at least. Allons-y."

Sometimes, despite the fact that Barry was the speedster, he swore that the Doctor's mind worked just as fast as his. UNIT had taken the two men into custody and were working on de-hypnotizing them, along with the other factory staff.

Martha was leading this effort, caring for the men and trying to discover anything she could about the Sontaran's plans. Mace had gone to make contact with other UNIT facilities worldwide to put them on alert and share information on known Sontaran tactics, abilities, and weaponry.

Donna had popped home to visit her family and warn them about ATMOS, and the Doctor and Barry had headed off to meet Luke Rattigan, the teenage genius who'd invented the ATMOS system.

"If there was a teleport pod in the basement of an ATMOS factory, there's probably a connection somewhere," the Doctor had noted. "Always assume your enemy has a backup plan."

"Information wins wars," Martha had said, and he'd nodded approvingly.

"Exactly."


Barry leaned back and grinned. Mace had explained that as soon as they'd known the Doctor was coming, UNIT had dusted off and brought out "an old favorite of the Doctor's." Said old favorite, as it turned out, was a sprightly yellow Edwardian roadster named Bessie which, despite its antiquated appearance, was eating up the road at a considerable pace.
Of course the Doctor has his own Millennium Falcon car, he'd thought, amused.
His smile faded as he thought about the conversation he'd had with Donna and Martha earlier.

"He's wonderful," Martha had said, "He's brilliant, but he's like fire. Stand too close and people get burnt."

Since joining the Doctor, Barry had been tied up, shot at, kidnapped, interrogated, and knocked unconscious so many times he'd lost count; gotten possessed, had his mind drained, and been killed (twice!). And then there had been the events of the Year That Never Was. They still gave him nightmares sometimes.

But then, too, had been the miracles. Getting superpowers, spending time with and being mentored by real-life superheroes, watching the beginning and end of the Earth, listening to the Emancipation Proclamation and Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech in person, visiting the Speed Force, meeting Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Madame de Pompadour, Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Da Vinci, Picasso, Einstein, Winston Churchill, to name just a few…He'd seen wonders of the universe too beautiful to describe (though Kara's smile outweighed them all).

And, of course, thanks to the Doctor, he'd got to grow up with Henry Allen in his life, instead of in prison. He would always be grateful for that. Despite the restless nights, the constant bruises, the fear, pain, worry, and stress, despite everything he'd been through…he was one of the luckiest people alive.

"You okay?" the Doctor asked, glancing at him for a second as they whizzed past an Aston Martin, whose owner gave them a gesture similar to a thumbs-up but with a different finger. Barry took a deep breath and smiled wanly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."


"Oh, now, that's clever, look!" the Doctor exclaimed as he led the way into the Rattigan Academy's laboratory. He had on his brainy specs and puppy-ish grin as he dashed about the lab. Barry himself was feeling much the same way.

"Single molecule fabric?" he breathed. "Dude, that'd be amazing for camping!"

"Is that a gravity generator?" the Doctor asked, dashing around. "Terraforming, biospheres, nano-tech steel construction. Ha-ha! This is brilliant. Do you know, with equipment like this you could, ooo, I don't know, move to another planet or something?"

"If only that was possible," Luke told them, and Barry's instincts went off. He wasn't the genius Luke was, let alone the Doctor, but he was no slouch in the science department either. He looked around at the technology on display. Everything he recognized—and he recognized a lot—could've been used to resettle another planet. This from someone who was linked at least indirectly to a Sontaran plot.

Coincidence? I think not.

"If only that were possible," the Doctor told him, whipping off his glasses. "Conditional clause."

Luke's facial muscles worked.

"I think you'd better come with me," he snapped.

Leading them to a recreation area, the 18-year-old genius wheeled on them. Barry didn't fail to notice the teleport pod in one corner, identical to the one in the factory basement, and judging by the way the Doctor's eyes tightened almost microscopically, neither did he.

"Who exactly are you, and what exactly do you want?" the teen genius snapped.

"I was just thinking," the Doctor sniffed, wandering about the room, hands in his pockets, seemingly not a care in the world. "What a responsible eighteen year old. Inventing zero carbon cars? Saving the world."

"Takes a man with vision."

"Mmm, blinkered vision. Because ATMOS means more people driving. More cars, more petrol. End result, the oil's going to run out faster than ever. The ATMOS system could make things worse."

"Yeah," Luke snapped, striding forward to stand nose-to-nose with the Doctor. "Well, you see, that's a tautology. You can't say ATMOS system because it stands for Atmospheric Emissions System. So you're just saying Atmospheric Emissions System system. Do you see, Mister Conditional Clause?"

Instead of getting angry, the Time Lord just looked down at the young man with all the compassion of someone who'd once been a father and a grandfather.

"It's been a long time since anyone said no to you, isn't it?"

"I'm still right, though."

"Not easy, is it, being clever," the Doctor murmured, looking into his eyes. "You look at the world and you connect things, random things, and think, why can't anyone else see it? The rest of the world is so slow."

"Yeah."

"And you're all on your own."

"I know."

"Well, except for the Sontarans, anyway," the Doctor added, eyes flashing around the room.

"What?"

"We've seen that kind of pod before," Barry put in. "And dealt with Sontarans in the past. What are they offering you? The chance to move to a new planet once you've destroyed this one?"

Luke's face twitched. It wasn't much, but for someone who'd picked up the basics of interrogation from Oliver Queen, it was enough. The Doctor stepped closer again, eyes imploring.

"You could be better than this, Luke Rattigan. You could do so much more. Do something brilliant with your life. Right here, on Earth."

The teenager looked up at the Doctor, and there was more than a hint of uncertainty in his eyes.

"You're brilliant, Luke Rattigan. You really are. Stone-cold genius. You're actually clever enough that I notice, and I hardly ever do that. Don't let the Sontarans tell you what to do. Live your own life."

Luke looked away, his shoulders slumped.

"It's too late for me."

Just then, there was a crash, and a wall panel swung away. Half a dozen Sontarans stepped out, between the Doctor, Barry, and the door, and raised their guns.

"Now, Doctor, you will die!"

They fired.

Yeah, I know, I know, I'm evil. Making you all wait a couple extra days and then leaving you on a cliffhanger.

Anyways, next episode should be up on Sunday as usual. Why is Mace okay with Barry and the Doctor going off by themselves? As usual, that'll be explained later. Spoilers! ;)

Until then, stay safe!