I Missed a Competition Deadline - Here’s What I Would Have Written
It’s always infuriating when a deadline passes you by, especially when it’s for ‘Doctor Who’ and you thought the idea had legs. But, I’m a blogger now, and every failure is an opportunity. So, here’s my outline for a standalone episode of Jodie Whitakers run of ‘Doctor Who’ that I WOULD HAVE submitted to the Big Finish competition if I’d been more organised.
DOCTOR WHO - ARCHIVE OF EMPIRES
The Archive of Empires was once the Universe’s largest digital museum, home to the collective knowledge of a billion galactic cultures. Their history, science, superstition, colonial tactics, and language all neatly organised and displayed in underwater chambers that spanned the seabed of the water planet, Simstema. But for 50 years, the Archive of Empires has been abandoned.
After a snowballing of unexplainable mysteries where guests and staff would disappear, only to turn up minutes later with no memory of who they were, the archive faced closure by the governing Corporation. Closure turned to evacuation when hundreds of guests and staff turned feral and began attacking friends, family, and strangers. According to the annals of history, the Archive of Empires is now nothing but a hollow chamber of lost knowledge.
So, when the Doctor receives a distress signal from the supposedly empty archive, she can’t resist taking a look.
When she arrives, she instantly forgets why she’s there. Can you blame her? The largest museum of Empires in the Universe and she’s, what, not going to geek out? She geeks out so hard it takes her a couple of minutes to notice two strange things. The power is still on, and everything is relatively clean. It could do with a dust, but it’s not ’50 years abandoned’ levels of dirty. Back on task, the Doctor gets looking for survivors. It doesn’t take her long to find signs of life, she just follows the trail of cleanliness. Expecting to find a group of raggedy survivors, she’s mesmerised when she comes across an enormous glass dome housing the most advanced shanty town she’s ever seen. Children of multiple species run around former exhibits, laundry hangs between higher makeshift buildings, and there’s even distinct districts dotted throughout. She watches as a multi-species group of fishermen haul an enormous catch through a hatch on the far side of the dome. The Doctor is so mesmerised, she doesn’t notice the bayonet at her throat until she’s warned to stay perfectly still.
Like a child in reins, the admittedly young soldiers have a rough time getting the Doctor to the heart of the settlement, as she keeps trying to run off to peruse the novelties of this place. Clothing from this culture, butchering techniques from that empire, she’s stimming out. But they do get her there, to what used to be the information centre. Now it’s a council room, where the Doctor is quizzed by the settlement leader, an elderly man called Elbattor. She answers honestly, joyously, if a little impatiently. She’s responding to the distress signal. Elbattor is slow to trust. They weren’t even sure the signal got through, and there’s been no word of approaching rescue. She’s always been more of a surprise good news. Like a winning lottery ticket. Elbattor’s son is slower to trust. Born and raised underwater, Hyeton has been reared on the legend of the Corporation and the day they were abandoned. The Doctor promises she’s not from the Corporation. When Hyeton demands to know where she is from, she finds a unique opportunity to verify her identity. The archivists look up ‘Gallifrey’, but are unimpressed with the twice destroyed planet. That is until Hyeton remembers the Doctor’s name. Gallifrey, twice destroyed, once by ‘the Doctor’. Sensing the tide turning against her, the Doctor urges Hyeton to look her up specifically. As her captors argue, Elbattor looks up ‘the Doctor’, and sets her free.
Unbeknownst to the Doctor and her new friends, the search for Gallifrey has been picked up deep in the archive.
Elbattor gives the Doctor the history of the archive. The Corporation didn’t evacuate the archive, they abandoned it. Cheaper to pay for the few hundred funerals of lost souls than the legal costs of sending their staff on a potentially suicidal rescue mission. The survivors looked desperately for a way to send a distress signal, but none of them were technically minded in the way they needed to be. They were service staff and guests. All they could do with the systems was read them. So, that’s what they did. They used the knowledge of the museum to build a new life under the water. Within 50 years they went from rubbing sticks together to what the Doctor sees today. Being raised around the computers and waters of the archive, younger generations were able to pick the systems apart and cobble together the distress signal that summoned the Doctor. Even keeping the Feral’s at bay got easier as time went on. The Doctor senses a rift at the mention of the Ferals. Hyeton and the younger generations want to cull the Feral’s, but Elbattor and his first generation still remember when they were friends and loved ones. Stopping the pending argument, the Doctor wonders if that’s why they’re sending the signal now, to save the lives of the Feral’s.
No, they’re sending the signal now because the Feral’s have gone missing. There hasn’t been a sighting in over a month. Their nests have been abandoned, and all the settlement trackers can tell them is they’ve gone downwards. What’s downwards? The servers, the heart of the coolant, and the Pressure Matrix. If the Feral’s rupture anything at the waterbed, the whole museum could implode. Elbattor is keen to move as quickly as possible to save his people. He can’t save the Feral’s but his settlement, the Doctor must help them.
She will. She can’t wait. But… what caused the Feral’s to go feral? Where have they gone? Why have they all gone to the waterbed? Hyeton presents a second option. They extinguish the Feral threat and they don’t have to leave. Or better yet, leaving becomes a choice. The Doctor is torn, but before she can side one way or the other, Ferals attack the settlement.
They don’t move as feral or pack animals, though. They attack with military precision. Hyeton is up in arms immediately, rallying troops, deaf to the pleas of the Doctor and his father. The Ferals attack takes them over the rooftops of the shanty town, avoiding combat where necessary, but all of them headed in one direction, directly towards the Doctor. Realising this, the Doctor quickly surrenders, desperate to avoid any bloodshed, but she’s too late. As one of the Feral’s grabs her, Hyeton impales them with his bayonet. The Feral drops to the floor, where Elbattor finds them. He cries out. He knew the Feral. They were colleagues, teachers on a school trip the day of the abandonment. The Doctor crouches by Elbattor, putting a hand on his chest and urging him to restore peace. She’s going with the Feral’s, it’s time to find out what’s really going on here.
As she’s led deeper and deeper into the museum depths, the Doctor tries to make light chit chat with the Feral’s. She recognises a couple of species, and wonders what they had for breakfast. The only relevant thing she does notice is that yes, they are heading deeper towards the ocean floor. The pressure must be insane out there. Engineering that keeps all this from imploding? Brilliant.
Less brilliant is the glass antechamber where the Feral’s finally stop. After a brief moment, doors open into an enormous, cavernous server room. At the centre of the glass cavern is a makeshift throne of servers, and on it sits…
A child.
In truth, the child is actually hundreds of years old, but her species ages at an impossibly slow rate, meaning she appears to be perpetually a child. This of course means the Doctor christens her ‘Perpetal’, as it sounds pretty. But who is she really? What is she doing here? How does she control the Ferals? Questions pour out of the Doctor, and Perpetal patiently answers them. She tells the Doctor of her fallen Empire. No, not just fallen, forgotten. She assures the Doctor there was no Time Lord trickery, just perfect propaganda. Each successive government undoing another strand of Empiric control until it disappeared from sight and memory. But why does she care? Because it was her Empire. Perpetal was born to rule, to subjugate and be beloved. Her Empire may have been forgotten by its subjects, but here it all lives on. The memories of a thousand top scientists, military strategists, and her dog. From here, she can not only reclaim her Empire, but learn. Cultures of personality, failed and successful coups, the rise and fall of a million Empires, all of it her curriculum. The Ferals are just the first step.
No, there’s something the Doctor is missing… she just can’t… the distress signal! If she’s got the technology to wipe the minds of hundreds, she can stop a distress signal. And why let some people keep their minds? Oh, she didn’t. They’re resistant.
Perpetal concedes that her control is not complete, and that’s exactly why she allowed the distress signal to be sent. She’s not a scientist. She may have the algorithms and commands in front of her, but her knowledge can only stretch so far. She needs help. Why now? Why wait 50 years? She needed the settlement to grow to a number where she could slip into the evacuation unnoticed. Too soon and she’s be recognised as an outsider, which brings her onto the Doctor. Perpetal has looked her up. The Emperor of Death. Predator of the Daleks. Destroyer and failure of the Time Lords. There’s a whole ravine of servers dedicated to her. Left with the survivors, she could undo half a centuries work. It’s now that Perpetal reveals why she’s being so liberal with all this information. Because she knows.
She knows the Doctor gave Elbattor her sonic screwdriver, and she knows the settlement army is on its way to save her. And she knows the Doctor has been stalling all this time. But why let it happen? Because it gives Perpetal the upper hand. The Ferals and the settlement will fight. Many will die. Unless the Doctor takes Perpetal and her Ferals to the TARDIS. If she does that, Perpetal will shed no blood.
And unleash her Empire on the Universe? Not likely.
Perpetal urges the Doctor to act soon, as time is running out.
On a server monitor, Perpetal shows the Doctor footage of the antechamber. Elbattor, Hyeton, and the settlement army have arrived. There’s a stalemate. Nobody is moving. But the Doctor can’t. She can’t take Perpetal to the TARDIS. She begs Perpetal to reconsider, but the girl declares she can’t lose. She either leaves the museum with traumatised survivors of an avoidable bloodshed, or she leaves with the Doctor. While the Doctor thinks, Hyeton takes the decision from her by striking first in the antechamber.
All hell breaks loose. The Doctor is powerless to stop the bloodshed as Elbattor tries desperately to get between his people and the former-sentient enemy. Commenting that the ethics of the battle are a little too cut-and-dry to truly traumatise anyone, Perpetal releases the Ferals. The effect is instant. Rabid Ferals suddenly become terrified victims of an unstoppable bloodshed. Realisation of the shift is slow to ripple through the ranks, but slowly and then all at once the army recoils. There are bodies everywhere. Perpetal toys with the Ferals control switch, she can turn it on and off as much as she needs. The Doctor, defeated, agrees to take Perpetal in the TARDIS, and even promises no funny business. No trapping Perpetal in a mirror or launching her into a supernova. As further security, she reveals another control, this one portable. With one click of the button, she can depressurise the deepest servers, causing a planetwide implosion, killing everyone in the museum in a heartbeat. From anywhere. From anywhen.
The Doctor leads Perpetal from the throne room and into the antechamber massacre. Shock is plastered on the faces of everyone in the room. It’s eerily silent. There, in the middle of the room, Hyeton hunches over the body of his father. The Doctor approaches the grieving man, paying her respects to Elbattor. Perpetal considers the room. The army’s shock is broken by the appearance of the strange girl, not recognised by any of them. The former Ferals shock breaks into a ripple of abject fear as they realise who she is. Sensing it, Perpetal urges the Doctor it’s time to move on. The Doctor turns, begging for calm. As tension rises, the Doctor moves. The button in Perpetal’s hand sparks, but she doesn’t drop it. Tutting, she pushes the button.
Nothing happens. She’s confused. It’s a deadlocked circuit, the sonic can’t stop the detonation. No, but it can delay it by a couple of minutes. The Doctor turns to the survivors. If they want to live, they have to run. Now.
And they do.
Barrelling through the shanty town, the adults sweep children into their arms. Perpetal runs in the throng, but with small legs and the furthest to run, she’s thrown around and soon left behind.
With 30 seconds to spare, the refugees finally file into the tiny blue box near the surface that is actually ENORMOUS on the inside. The Doctor is the last one in. With one hand on the door, she hears the guttural scream of childhood fear deep in the museum.
Hyeton urges her to leave the girl. She’s a monster. The scream comes again. She’s still alive. She has to go back.
But too late. Thunder CRACKS through the museum, drowning out the scream. Hyeton slams the TARDIS door shut and the whole box shakes. The Doctor stares at the door until the shaking stops. She slowly raises a hand to the door. The closer her hand gets, the louder Perpetal screams inside her head. Then, as her hand connects with the white wood of the door, the scream stops, joining the rest of the souls she couldn’t save.
The Doctor turns, ignoring Hyeton’s affirmations and thanks for saving them. She looks at the TARDIS, full to bursting with lives she did save. As she approaches the console, each stride restores more of the mask of ‘The Doctor’, until she’s able to slam a control with a grin on her face. And she’s dancing around the console, flipping switches and twizzling dials.
It seems the distress signal worked. A Corporation Rescue Vessel has arrived in orbit. Apparently their lives are worth saving when there’s risk of their secret getting out. She’ll drop them there.
And what about the Doctor? Where will she go? Probably on a wander.
Where she actually goes, quite predictably, is home. Home being Planet Earth, 2020, where she can get a big hug from Yazmin Khan, no questions asked.
