PREVIOUSLY ON DOCTOR WHO:
In his Sixth body, the Doctor turns the Daleks and the Rani against each other and escapes with Clara to the Tower of London, where the final component lies with the Crown Jewels. After regenerating two more times, the Doctor (now in his Fourth body) and Clara encounter the Rani outside the Tower, and she does not look happy.
"Rani?" the Doctor said, surprised. "You survived the Daleks?"
The Rani shrugged. "I simply made them destroy each other. And in case you were wondering, Doctor, I managed to get my sample from them."
The Doctor stepped in front of Clara. "You know I'll never help you, Rani. So you might as well give up."
"Oh no, Doctor. I've still got an ace in the hole." She approached the Doctor's TARDIS. "Unless you willingly help me and deliver to me the components you've stolen, I'll take your TARDIS hostage."
"You don't have a key," the Doctor said.
The Rani reached into her coat and pulled out a long, thin device. She clicked a button on it and aimed it at the box's lock, sending a high buzzing through the air. The door clicked and opened on its own.
The Rani smirked as she placed one foot inside the TARDIS.
The Doctor's wide eyes widened further. "Sonic screwdrivers work on TARDIS locks?" He whipped around to face Clara. "Did you know this?"
Clara shrugged. "Why are you asking me? You're the Time Lord."
"Choose, Doctor," the Rani said. "Give me the components or forfeit your TARDIS."
"Why do you need the components?" the Doctor asked. "You said that your chameleon arch was repairing itself."
"I can't have you modifying your own now. I'm the only one who will have this power."
The Rani took another step inside the TARDIS, but the Doctor took a step forward himself.
"Alright," the Doctor said. "I'll give you the components. But I'll need to enter the TARDIS. I've kept them hidden away in a secret place."
The Doctor stepped toward the TARDIS and the Rani allowed him to enter. The two of them stepped into the console room and the Doctor looked around.
"It's down this way," the Doctor said, pointing to a corridor.
"Don't try anything, Doctor," the Rani warned. "Or your—"
"Yes yes, I know," the Doctor said. He walked forward and disappeared into the corridor.
He returned a moment later carrying a small, oblong box. It was filled with various items, old and new, many of them alien technologies, and the Rani looked hungrily into the box.
The Doctor set the box on the console. "Let's see…" He dug around in the box until he pulled out a wrist strap device. "Here's the first one."
He handed the Rani the device, which she looked at in confusion. "A vortex manipulator?" she asked.
"I know it's an odd choice for an altered chameleon arch," the Doctor said. "But I find that the vortex manipulator's temporal circuits work better in locking the time-strewn regenerations in place. But be very careful, that one's damaged quite a lot."
The Rani gingerly held the device in her hand and looked it over as the Doctor rummaged around in the box some more.
"Ah, here we are," the Doctor said. He pulled out a bizarre, mismatched device that appeared to be a cell phone with a thick battery attached to it with copper wires. Two prongs extended from the end and had a small green diode between them.
The Rani wrinkled her nose at the device. "What, exactly, is that?"
"It's a sonic probe," the Doctor explained, holding the probe up to the Rani. "Observe."
He clicked a button on it and a shrill buzz filled the air, the diode on the probe lighting up. The small screen on the vortex manipulator lit up blue and the device sparked to life.
In a flash of light, the Rani disappeared from the TARDIS, the last look the Doctor got of her being her angry face.
The Doctor placed the sonic probe back into the box and chuckled to himself, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Thank you, Amy."
The Doctor started towards the door, but stopped once he saw that his hands were glowing. He burst with light, and a new Doctor emerged. He now had silver hair and a hooked nose, but remained the same height.
He crossed to the door and exited. "Well, now that that's taken care of…"
Clara looked his new form up and down. "Doctor, what happened in there?"
"I tricked her, Clara," the Doctor said. "I trick the Rani. I gave her a malfunctioning vortex manipulator and sent her on a one-way trip back in time without her TARDIS. She won't be bothering us for a long time."
Clara glanced over at the stone rectangle. "So what are we going to do with her TARDIS?"
"Already on it." The Doctor leaned back into the TARDIS and dialed the phone. "Kate, it's the Doctor again. Yes, I'm that one now. I have a pickup for you at the Tower of London. It's another TARDIS; this one looks like a large stone. You might want to put it in the Black Archive. Thank you."
He hung up the phone and faced Clara. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Shimmerian diamond, tossing it in his hand and watching the sunlight glint off of its surface.
"Now then," the Doctor said, "before my regeneration number whittles down to one, let's get to work."
The Doctor and Clara went hard at work modifying the Doctor's chameleon arch. This machine looked different from the one the Rani used; while the Rani's was a table hooked up to a console, the Doctor's chameleon arch looked like a helmet hooked up to machinery in the ceiling.
The Doctor's fingers flew as he combined technologies together into his chameleon arch – technologies gathered during his temporal scavenger hunt as well as spare parts found around the TARDIS. His sonic screwdriver buzzed frantically as he fused the various components together. He even had Clara help him by chewing pieces of gum, which the Doctor then took and squished into tiny crevices on the machine.
During the Doctor's tinkering, he entered another regeneration, this time winding up as a shorter man with a mop of black hair. When he realized what his new form was, he seemed to fly into a panic, attaching objects to the machine in a more rapid fashion.
"Oh dear, oh me," the Doctor said. "We must work faster, much faster. We only have one more regeneration to my final form – or rather, my first form. Oh my giddy aunt…"
The Doctor added more and more to the chameleon arch, ordering Clara to help him as he became more neurotic. He wrung his hands and ran his fingers through his hair, muttering to himself as he did so. Clara was starting to become concerned for the Doctor's sanity by this point.
After a while, the Doctor stood up and flipped the sonic screwdriver in his hand. "There," he said with a smile. "Finished."
The chameleon arch was essentially the same form that it was before: a helmet attached to the ceiling by wiring and machinery. After the Doctor's copious tinkering, it was now bulkier, with several more wires running through it and devices tacked on. A few of these devices stuck out from the machine at odd angles, some of them spinning or blinking.
As the Doctor beamed at his creation, his skin started glowing again. The Time Lord looked down at him golden, shimmering with a look of great concern.
"Oh, no, no, no," the Doctor said as his regeneration kicked in.
After the brief explosion of light, the Doctor emerged as a much older man with a high forehead and white hair that was longer in the back. He had a round, warm face that reminded Clara of a kindly grandfather, but currently, that warm face was stricken with panic.
"Quickly, my girl!" the Doctor said as he hurriedly approached the machine. "We must get me into the chameleon arch! I can't spend much time in my first form! Oh, I'd forgotten how horribly un-nimble this body was…"
Clara helped the elderly Doctor into the machine, strapping the helmet portion of the chameleon arch onto his wrinkled head.
"There's a switch on the TARDIS, just over there," the Doctor explained. "Pulling that will activate the arch. I may scream out in pain, but that's normal. Do not stop the process under any circumstances."
Clara rushed to the TARDIS console and readied her finger at the very switch the Time Lord referred to.
Before she could pull it, she turned back to her time-travelling friend. "Doctor?"
The Doctor turned his head towards her, which wasn't easy because of the helmet. "Hm?"
"In case this doesn't work," Clara said, her voice beginning to quiver. "It was nice knowing you. All of you."
The Doctor smiled, and the grandfatherly image returned. "Same to you, my dear."
Clara smiled back, then mustered all of her strength and threw the switch.
The chameleon arch hummed and crackled with electricity, and just as the Doctor had predicted, he screamed out in agony. He gripped the sides of the helmet until his knuckles turned white. It was almost too much for Clara to bear, watching an old man scream in pain as God-knows-whatever that machine was doing to him.
But the Doctor's screaming died down, and his face took on an almost serene image once his skin started glowing gold. Then, in rapid succession, his face and body began to change repeatedly as he went through his thirteen regenerations, from Grandpa, to Beatles-Hair, to Big-Nose, to Wild-Eyes, to Blondie 1, to Blondie 2, to Balding-Hair, to Long-Hair, to Captain Grumpy, to Big-Ears, to Sideburns, to Chinny, and then finally, to Eyebrows.
Clara's Doctor gasped and clutched at his hearts as he pulled the helmet off and stumbled out of the chameleon arch. Clara launched forward to keep him from falling to the floor, keeping his relatively upright.
"Doctor?" Clara said. "Are you okay?"
"Well, let me check." The Doctor ran his fingers over his face and body. "Arms. Legs. Hearts. Kidneys. Nose. Eyes. Eyebrows! Scottish! It worked!"
He laughed and picked Clara up in a tight hug, causing her to laugh along with him.
"I thought you weren't a hugging person?" she asked.
The Doctor put her down and looked at her in confusion. "Was that a hug? Sorry. Won't happen again."
"No, it's…fine," Clara said as the Doctor returned his attention to the TARDIS console.
The Doctor cleared his throat and pulled on a lever, darting his eyes around the room as the TARDIS dematerialized.
"So, after that whole debacle, I'd say we're in need of a vacation. 15th century France sounds nice. Or maybe the aromatherapy dens of Yegros Alpha. Or perhaps—"
The Doctor's thought was cut off when a wheezing, grating noise filled the console room. It sounded just like the TARDIS's materialization noise, but it was almost like there were two sets of noises.
Clara and the Doctor turned in unison to see an image begin to take shape within the console room. It was blue and boxy, and had a bright flashing light on top. The words "POLICE BOX" glowed from the top edge, and in a few moments, another TARDIS was inside of the TARDIS.
As the Doctor's brow furrowed and his eyes bugged, the door to the box opened up. A red-haired man stepped out, dressed in a grey blazer and a goldenrod sweater vest. He had a bowler hat on his head, and he looked around the console room with as much confusion and concern as the Doctor.
He looked into the Doctor's eyes and nearly jumped.
"Sorry," the red-haired Doctor said. "Is this the wrong time?"
THE END