While in his healing coma, the Doctor had remained vaguely and peripherally aware of what was going on around him. He was fairly certain it had prolonged the time he spent in the coma, but after Rose had woke him up in order to get him to save them from the killer Christmas tree, he hadn't wanted to go completely out of contact.
Between Jackie's rambles before falling asleep at his bedside, Jack and Rose's whispered conversations in the doorway, and the occasional shout from Mickey to alert the others to something happening on his laptop, the Doctor managed to have a vague idea of the state of affairs outside his head.
He'd known when Jack carried him to the TARDIS that things must have gotten pretty bad. He debated waking up long enough to mention the Zero Room, since going there would probably speed up his recovery. Before he could gather the strength to do so, however, Rose had gone off to look for her mum and screamed, causing Mickey and Jack to follow her.
With no one to take him to the Zero Room, the Doctor was momentarily worried he wouldn't be able to help his friends. Then the smell of hot English Breakfast tea filled his nostrils and he inhaled sharply. Ahh, yes, he thought. Perfect. Even better than the Zero Room.
Within minutes, he woke up on his own. He righted the thermos of tea, then with a shrug, drank down what was left inside. It was mostly breathing it in that had helped, but he figured drinking it wouldn't hurt. And he had been asleep for a while. Tea always made him feel less groggy.
He stood up quickly, bounced a few times on the balls of his feet. Stretching his arms, he bounded over to the console and pulled the monitor around so he could check on what was happening outside the TARDIS doors. He could see Rose, Jack, and Mickey, along with two other humans, all with their backs to the TARDIS. They were surrounded by hundreds of… the Doctor squinted at the monitor. He guessed Sycorax, though given the size of the display he could be wrong. Probably wasn't, though.
He headed towards the doors of the TARDIS, shrugging his shoulders to loosen them up and adjusting his dressing gown until it hung just so. He glanced up at the walls of the TARDIS and stuck his hands in his pockets. "At your leisure, then," he murmured to the ship. "You know how I like to make an entrance."
A moment later, the doors in front of him opened, and he grinned widely at the group of surprised onlookers. "Did you miss me?"
He was rewarded with a delighted smile from Rose (which he figured was a good sign under the circumstances), a broad grin and a mischievous twinkle in the eye from Jack, and an angry roar from the nearest Sycorax (oh, brilliant, he thought, I was right about them being Sycorax). He was clearly the leader; his clothing and his bearing both made it obvious. That, and the glowing whip he was about to hit the Doctor with.
Almost bored by the predictability of the big guy's reaction, the Doctor sighed inwardly and caught the crackling whip. The electric charge was easy for the Doctor to prevent from harming him. Once the end had wrapped sufficiently around his arm, the Doctor gave a sharp yank, and the whip flew away from the Sycorax leader and into the Doctor's hand.
"You could have someone's eye out with that!" he said, keeping his tone light and teasing. He dropped the whip off to the side, untangling the end from his arm with a few twists of the wrist.
With an angry roar, the Sycorax leader rushed at the Doctor, waving his staff. The Doctor coolly snatched it out of his hands and snapped it over his knee. He dropped the pieces on either side of himself and then brushed his hands together as if trying to get dirt from the staff off of his palms.
"You just can't get the staff," he said amiably. "Now, you," he said, pointing at the leader sternly and using a tone of voice generally reserved for small, misbehaving children. "Just wait," he said firmly. "I'm busy." The leader stared at the Doctor, bemused and bewildered (perhaps even bewitched, the Doctor thought, amused at himself). With one last stern finger-wag, the Doctor turned to Mickey.
"Mickey!" he said, delighted. "Hello!" He turned to Jack, shook both his hands warmly, too pleased to see him for the tug of discomfort that now accompanied the sight of him to affect the greeting. "Captain Jack, so glad you're here!"
Turning on his heel, he realized that one of the other humans there was none other Harriet Jones. Positively tickled to see her, he grinned broadly. "And Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North! Blimey," he said, glancing around the cavernous room. "It's like This Is Your Life!"
Finally, he turned to Rose and beamed at her. "Tea!" he said in lieu of a greeting. "That's all I needed! A good cup of tea! Super-heated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for jump-starting the synapses!" Abruptly, he turned serious. He leaned in towards Rose, lowered his voice so just she and those closest to them could hear. "Now," he said, "first things first. Be honest," he added seriously. "How do I look?"
Rose blinked at him, bemused. "Umm…" she said, scanning his face. "Different," she finally settled on.
"Good different," he asked, tone still serious. "Or bad different?"
"Just… different," Rose said, either unwilling or unable to elaborate.
Deciding more specific questions were in order, the Doctor leaned slightly closer and, face now deadly serious, asked, "Am I ginger?"
Rose looked up at the Doctor's hair and shrugged. "No, you're just sort of… brown," she said.
The Doctor grimaced and turned away, annoyed at himself. He really was rubbish at this regeneration business after all. "Aww," he said, kicking the dirt. "I wanted to be ginger, I've never been ginger!" A thought occurred to him then, and he whirled back around, pointing an accusatory finger at Rose.
"And you, Rose Tyler, fat lot of good you were! You gave up on me! Oh," he said, remembering that in addition to saying he'd left her, she'd also cried a fair amount and had the sense of mind to relocate them all to the TARDIS, "that's rude! Is that the sort of man I am now, rude?" He shook his head slightly, mildly disappointed in himself. "Rude and not ginger?"
"I'm sorry," Harriet Jones said, interrupting the Doctor's stream of consciousness monologue. "Who is this?" She directed her question at Rose, glancing back and forth between her and the Doctor.
"I'm the Doctor," he said, ever-so-slightly put out. He'd come out of the TARDIS, hadn't he? Asking if they'd missed him! Was no one following the plot?
"He's the Doctor," Rose said, and the Doctor grinned because Rose had said it.
"Definitely the Doctor," Jack agreed, giving the Doctor a quick wink.
"But what happened to my Doctor?" Harriet asked. "Or is it a title that's just passed on?"
The Doctor strolled over towards her, keeping casual. "I'm him," he said simply. "I'm literally him. Same man, new face. Well," he said, glancing at Jack and winking back at him, "new everything."
Harriet's brow furrowed in confusion. "But you can't be," she said.
"Harriet Jones," the Doctor said, focusing in on her. "We were trapped in Downing Street, and the one thing that scared you wasn't the aliens, wasn't the war… it was the thought of your mother being on her own."
"Oh my God," she murmured, accepting the truth.
"Did you win the election?" he asked, bending closer to her and smiling because he knew the answer. Of course he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it and watch her face when she did.
"Landslide majority," she said with a pleased and proud smile on her face.
"If I might interrupt," the Sycorax leader said, his voice gruff and sardonic.
The Doctor spun around, and he realized he'd almost forgotten the Sycorax whilst he'd been catching up with his friends and finding out that once again he'd failed to make himself ginger. (It had occurred to and been suggested to him on more than one occasion that it was possible to artificially color one's hair, but he felt like that was cheating. Next time he'd make more of an effort to concentrate on being ginger when he regenerated. This time, he'd been rather focused on hoping Rose wasn't going to reject him after the process was over.)
"Yes, sorry!" he said, addressing the Sycorax leader. "Hello, big fella!" He watched the Sycorax intently, waiting expectantly for him to speak again.
"Who exactly are you?" he asked coldly.
"Well," the Doctor said, fixing a small grin on his face. "That is the question, isn't it?" he said.
"I demand to know who you are!" the Sycorax leader roared angrily.
"I don't know!" the Doctor roared back, imitating the leader's voice. Well, he thought as the roar tickled his throat annoyingly, not doing that again soon. He relaxed and spoke conversationally.
"See, there's the thing," he said. "I'm the Doctor, but beyond that, I…" he paused momentarily, searching for the words. "I just don't know," he said, shrugging. "I literally do not know who I am. It's all untested!" This he said with some degree of excitement. It was nice, he thought at the back of his mind, to be excited about regeneration again. The last time… he'd felt like he might never like himself ever again, if he were being honest. He didn't feel that way this time, and it was lovely.
He began to stroll around, smiling at everyone as he passed them. "Am I funny? Am I sarcastic?" He stopped briefly in front of Jack. "Sexy?" he said, grinning. He glanced over at Rose and winked cheekily, and was rewarded with a hint of a blush and a shy smile.
"Right old misery?" he continued, resuming his measured steps around the small crowd of people in front of the TARDIS. "Life and soul? Right-handed, left-handed? A gambler, a fighter, a coward? A traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck?" He smiled self-deprecatingly. "I mean, judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob." Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Rose and Jack exchanging amused smiles.
Then he noticed a big red button, and his eyes grew round as saucers in delight. He immediately shifted the direction of his steps so that he was heading towards the button. "Oh, and how am I gonna react when I see this?" He pointed over at the button. "A great big threatening button," he said, relishing every syllable. "A Great Big Threatening Button Which Must Not Be Pressed Under Any Circumstances," he elaborated, enunciating with exaggerated clarity to ensure that the fact that each word was capitalized would be clear. "Am I right?" he asked, bounding up to where the button was installed.
"Let me guess," he said, poking around at the device to which the button was connected. "It's some sort of control matrix? Hmm?" Spotting a small door, he concluded it was the source of the control. "Hold on," he said, opening the door. "What's feeding it?" He knelt down and peered into the small cavity.
"What have we got here?" he said, spotting a red liquid. "Blood?" he added, before sticking his finger into the cavity, and dipping it in the viscous liquid. He licked the substance off and grimaced a little. "Yeah, definitely," he said, rubbing his tongue along the roof of his mouth in an attempt to get rid of the taste. "Blood. Human blood, A-positive if I'm not mistaken. Which I'm not." He wiggled his fingers and then wiped the last of the blood on his dressing gown. "With just a dash of iron."
He wished he had a banana to eat to get rid of the last of the blood taste from his mouth. "So, ah, that means…" he muttered, still distracted by the taste and the idea of having a banana. Bananas were good. "Blood control," he said, getting his own attention by doing so. "Blood control!" he exclaimed, suddenly delighted, the taste of the blood forgotten. "Oh, I haven't seen blood control in years! You're controlling all the A-positives."
It was a little harder to read Sycorax facial expressions than it was to read human ones - there were a lot of ever-so-slightly-different ways the Sycorax could frown, after all. But the Doctor was reasonably certain the Sycorax leader was just a little bit crestfallen that the Doctor had figured out the blood control thing. The Doctor grinned fiercely.
"Which leaves us," he continued, "with a great big stinking problem." Again, he over-enunciated each word. He could tell this was going to be another regeneration that enjoyed the feel of words in his mouth and tripping off his tongue. He liked those regenerations. "'Cos I really don't know who I am yet," he said. "I don't know when to stop."
He glanced around, noticed Jack obviously bracing for hell to break loose, having already figured out what the Doctor was going to do. He was a quick one, the captain was. "So," the Doctor continued, "if I see a Great Big Threatening Button Which Must Never Ever Ever Be Pressed…" He grinned maniacally. "Then I just wanna do this," he finished, slamming his hand down on the button as he said the last word.
Rose and Harriet both stepped forward and shouted "no!" whilst Mickey grimaced and Harriet's assistant just stared at the Doctor in open-mouthed shock. Jack, for his part, seemed to actually relax once it became clear that the Sycorax weren't going to shoot the Doctor for pressing the button.
"You killed them!" Harriet's assistant finally choked out.
"What do you think, big fella?" the Doctor asked the Sycorax leader. He meandered down to where the others stood in varying degrees of shock. "Are they dead?"
The Doctor could practically hear the Sycorax leader grinding his teeth. "We allow them to live," he finally said, his jaw clenched.
"Allow?" the Doctor repeated, entirely amused. "Allow! You've no choice!" He began to pace theatrically. "I mean, after all, that's all that blood control is, a cheap bit of voodoo." He shrugged. "Scares the pants off you, but that's as far as it goes. It's like hypnosis," he said, stopping by an outcropping of rock that was the perfect height for him to lean on casually. "You can hypnotize someone to walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis, but you can't hypnotize them to death." He smiled. "Survival instinct's too strong."
"Blood control was just one form of conquest," the Sycorax leader blustered. "I can summon the armada and take this world by force."
"Well," the Doctor said, nodding. "You could, yeah. You could do that, of course. But why?" he asked. "Look at these people." He gestured around the area at the assembled humans. "These beautiful human beings," he added. "Think about their potential. From the day they arrive on the planet, and blinking, step into the sun… there is more to be seen than can ever be seen. More to do than…" He cut himself off, the words sounding too familiar as they tumbled past his lips. "No, hold on," he said, trying to place what he was quoting. "Sorry," he said finally, remembering, "that's The Lion King. But the point still stands," he added, somewhat indignantly even though no one had challenged him. "Leave them alone!" he finished, half shouting.
"Or what?" the Sycorax leader asked, voice shrewd.
"Or…" the Doctor said, thinking quickly. He bounded over to one of the Sycorax standing next to Rose and in one smooth motion, pulled a sword from the scabbard at the Sycorax's waist and brandished it at the leader. "I challenge you!"
The Sycorax leader, along with what seemed like every other Sycorax in the cavernous chamber, laughed heartily.
"Ah," the Doctor said mildly. "I see that struck a chord." He raised his voice to be heard over the dying chuckles. "Am I right that the sanctified rules of combat still apply?" They certainly had the last time he'd run into Sycorax, and it had helped him get out of a tight spot then just as he hoped it would now.
The Sycorax leader unsheathed his own sword and stepped menacingly towards the Doctor. "You stand as this world's champion?"
The Doctor was partially occupied with shrugging out of his dressing gown, but he spared a quick smile for the leader. "Thanks," he said conversationally. "I"ve no idea who I am, but you've just summed me up quite nicely." He'd managed to get out of the dressing gown, so he tossed it in Rose's general direction. He saw her catch it out of the corner of his eye as he focused in on the Sycorax leader. "So," he asked brightly. "Do you accept my challenge?" He narrowed his eyes and went in for the metaphorical kill. "Or are you just a cranak pel casakree salvak?" It was a very rude name in Sycoraxic, and the Doctor was frankly glad the TARDIS refused to translate that kind of language because he was pretty sure he didn't want Rose or Jack to have that one in their arsenals when they inevitably got furious with him for refusing to pick up milk or insisting on preventing them from helping him if he were in trouble.
Predictably, the Sycorax leader roared in anger and then hissed menacingly at the Doctor before kneeling behind his sword.
"For the planet?" he asked tightly.
The Doctor imitated his adversary's posture. "For the planet," he affirmed.