1: The Black Cloud
"And Voila! I give you…"
The Doctor swung the doors of the TARDIS open dramatically.
"Oh no wait, this isn't right."
"I'll say," Amy said, stepping out from behind him and gazing at the flat, grassy landscape suspiciously. "How is this ancient Greece during the first Olympic games?"
"It would appear that we are…" the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and took out his sonic screwdriver, a soft breeze blowing up the back of his tweed jacket lightly as he made a twirling motion while holding it in the air and pressing a button to make it buzz. He looked a bit like a drunken ballerina, his lanky legs just barely missing each other as they tangled and untangled themselves again. When he was finished, he brought the screwdriver back down to eye level to examine it.
"Ah yes, it would appear we're in the American Midwest. Missouri, to be exact. Present day. Well, I say present, I mean your present…"
"Missouri? Isn't that a state?" Rory asked, the last one to step out of the TARDIS.
"Yes, yes. One of the middle ones," the Doctor waved his hand impatiently. "But that's not important, what's important is… why are we here?"
He knelt to the ground and plucked a stem of grass, examining it as though it held all the answers to the universe in its thin fragile frame. Amy and Rory exchanged a 'here we go again' glance, and Rory began to twiddle his thumbs, nervous for the answer to the question he was about to ask. "What do you mean why are we here and not in Ancient Greece? You think there's a reason?"
"Isn't there always a reason?"
"Right, well…"
Amy cut in over her husband's faltering sentence. "Doctor, can't we ever just go where we intend to? The last time we meant to go on holiday and wound up elsewhere, I got swallowed by a hole in the ground and nearly dissected by green lizard people."
But the Doctor wasn't listening. He'd sprung up suddenly from his fixation on the grass and was now gazing intently at the sky. Over the treetops of the distant forests stretching around the empty field the three stood in, a black mass was moving through the sky. As it drew nearer its details became more refined, and it became apparent that the mass was made up of black smoke that seemed to be crackling with energy. It was absolutely massive as well, darkening the entire sky as it passed above them.
"What the hell is that?" Amy asked, having to raise her voice over the electrical noises being emitted from the cloud. Her bright red hair blew back in the gust of wind that accompanied it.
"I'm not sure…"
The Doctor held up his screwdriver to scan the sky again, this time, as the cloud was right overhead. For a few moments the sky was completely black, and then it was passing away from them, continuing off into the distance. The Doctor took his screwdriver down to examine his readings yet again. It was silent as Amy and Rory waited for him to say something, but he remained still.
"Doctor…?" Amy ventured, tentatively. But all at once he was moving again, springing into step and pacing around in front of them.
"Oh this is bad. This is very, very, extremely not good…"
"Alright well can you let us in on what is so not good about it?" Rory asked in frustration. He had grown as fond of their raggedy Doctor as Amy, but sometimes he just wanted straight answers. Of course, the Doctor rarely had them, and this time was no different.
"Come along Ponds! I think we've found our reason for being here. Follow that cloud!"