Doctor Who and the Universe of the Daleks: Chapter two

 I kinda forgot I was posting these. Well, after an unintentional delay, here's chapter two!

Sergei followed the Doctor down the abandoned streets of London, careful to stay close to the buildings. Weeds and sprouting trees grew out of cracks in the pavement. Vehicles clustered around intersections, like enormous burnt insect husks.

Mercifully, there were no human corpses… although there were hundreds of scorch marks of roughly human shape and size.

The street’s once bright commercial signage was now faded and tarnished. Store fronts still displayed the remnants of unimaginable wealth: rotting dresses and purses, rusting electronics, jewelry and more.

Only grocery stores had been thoroughly looted.

London’s pre-invasion prosperity was as alien as Daleks to Sergei. Post-war Russia had shaped his formative years, and much of his home city of Leningrad had been flattened by Hitlerite artillery. More than a million people had starved. His brother and older sister starved, and his father and uncle perished at the front.

Sergei shuddered, childhood memories flooding back unbidden. Flashes of gaunt figures huddled in frigid subway station, dust falling with every shuddering shell hit; mobs butchering horses in the street. The blood curdling shriek of German dive bombers. His father messing his hair before departing for the front, for the last time.

A flutter of wings and a burst of motion ahead shook him out of reverie: The Doctor had startled a cluster of pigeons.

Sergei chided himself: stay in the moment!

“Come on, Sergei! Keep up!” The Doctor urged, waving him forward before peering around the corner.

Sergei trotted up beside him and leaned past the Doctor to get a view. It was Trafalgar square! He’d seen pictures. The monument to Nelson still stood in the square centre, beside a fountain, now bone dry and stained black. A string of military vehicles wound its way along the road to the South: blackened hulks, their upside down turrets scattered about randomly.

What really caught his eye was the gleaming metal obelisk, lined with domes along its length, that stood before the National Gallery, crowned by a glowing white dodecahedron that thrummed with power. He could feel a low level vibration emanating from it in his bones.

“Tovarish,” he hissed, “What is that?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Not quite sure. Could be a BLEN. Lined with sensor domes. We’d best go around. Back that way.”

“It was not here last time?”

“No,” replied the Doctor. “That’s what worries me.”

“Tovarish, what’s a BLEN?”

“A Blinovitch Limitation Effect Negator. It’ll register any time eddies in the area… like our arrival. Among other things…”

Sergie’s brow furrowed as stepped over a fallen telephone pole. “What we felt earlier? The stuttering?”

“Yes,” nodded the Doctor. “It’d register across realities. Provide an event anchor, of sorts. Come on, let’s cut through this alley.” They clambered over a makeshift barricade of barrels, bikes and planks, passing into the comforting darkness beyond.

Shadows offered the illusion of safety.

One never felt so exposed as on the Russian steppes. Sergei remembered being the tallest thing in view, surrounded by an endless sea of wheat, with nowhere to hide.

Sergei gasped for breath. It was challenging to keep up with this nimble, genius time domovoy. Sergei had been in space for a week, and the sudden shift back to a terrestrial environment was taxing his leg muscles and stamina. “So… the Daleks know you are here.”

“Worse. You alright?”

Sergei nodded and slumped down on a crate. “Let me catch breath. How much farther?”

“Oh, another 45 minutes, I imagine. Little longer, if we stay off the main roads. Sooner we get to Wood Lane the better. We’ll need allies. Hopefully the resistance can provide clues. Ready?”

Sergei grunted, slapped his thighs and stood up. “Poyekhali!”

An hour later they finally reached Wood Lane and entered the dilapidated ruins of a tube station. Old newspapers, leaves, and twigs littered the concrete floor inside.

“How we reach these rebels?” asked Sergei, taking the opportunity to sit down again, this time on a worn wooden bench.

“I’m trying to remember,” replied the Doctor, examining the room carefully. “Never been myself. Susan said the entrance was revealed by pressing… ah!” The Doctor stopped before a sign.

Sergei noted that he could understand it, despite his poor grasp of written english. It advocated boiling rainwater. Curious! Before Sergei could ask, the Doctor pressed the letter ‘o’. A low grinding sound followed, whereupon a section of wall slid back, revealing a flight of stairs descending into inky black. The Doctor smiled, produced a flashlight from his seemingly bottomless coat pocket, and aimed it into the depths. He turned to Sergei and nodded towards the stairs. “Shall we?”

“No time like present,” replied Sergei.

They descended two full flights into the earth. At the bottom of the stairs was a platform. If it had once been an active station, it’d been mothballed long ago, and sections bricked up. At the far end was a reinforced metal door. The Doctor ran a hand over the smooth surface, then tapped it lightly with the flashlight. Shave and a haircut, twice.

They heard bolts being snapped back, and the door swung inward. The smell of grease, welding fumes and pungent charcoal flooded over them.

A disheveled fellow in a tattered suit stood beside the steel door. He motioned them forward with an automatic weapon he clutched tightly in gnarled fingers. His face was grim and unwashed.

The room beyond was lit by work lights strung from the ceiling. They hung low over workbenches littered with weapons, explosives, tools and a radio. Two dozen workers, clad in drab clothing, looked up at them expectantly. Sergei noted that one, an older fellow with unruly hair and feverish eyes, was in a wheelchair.

For a moment, no one moved.

“ATTENTION! ATTENTION SURVIVORS OF LONDON!” blared the radio. “THE DALEKS ARE THE MASTERS OF EARTH! SURRENDER NOW AND YOU WILL LIVE—”

The stocky man in the wheelchair switched it off, rolled back, and expertly manoeuvred towards them. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he snapped, waving a hand at the door. “Get inside!”

The Doctor stepped theatrically into the bunker. Sergei followed.

“Well, hello!” said the Doctor cheerily. “You must be Dortmun, yes? I’ve heard so much about you. How’s that bomb coming along? Won’t work, you know. Complete dud, but I can fix that. Is David about?”

Dortmun’s craggy face cycled through surprise, indignance, and bewilderment. Finally he managed to splutter, “Who are you?”

“Yes, exactly,” beamed the Doctor, more than a little smugly. “But you can just call me The Doctor. We have a lot to talk about. Swimming in the Thames, latest cricket scores, end of the world, what have the Daleks been about, all that.”

The seated man ignored The Doctor. “You,” said Dortmun, pointing at Sergei’s arm. “That’s Cyrillic on your flight suit. Are you Russian? How did you get here? Do you still have active air bases? Where?”

Sergei shrugged. “It long story.” He grinned broadly. “You have vodka? I tell you tale, you tell me tale.”

“We do,” grunted Dortmun. He hunched forward in his chair and fiddled his fingers. “But there won’t be time for it.” He nodded at the guard by the door.

The man grunted and flung the steel door shut with a reverberating clang. He then stepped before it, revealing the gleaming metal hull of a Dalek in an alcove that had been concealed behind.

The alien floated forward silently; as it did so, it emitted a sharp, acrid ozone smell that stung Sergei’s nostrils.

A half-dozen more Daleks flooded into the bunker from adjoining tunnels, accompanied by a swarm of gaunt humans. Sergei’s eyes widened: the poor souls were clad in rags, in stark contrast to gleaming metal helmets atop to their heads. The devices were elaborate affairs; each had a transmitter on the side. The men carried stubby automatic weapons and walked stiffly, like zombies. Their eyes were blank. Soulless.

Robot men!

It got even more eerie: the seated humans had frozen in place, unblinking, as if they’d been turned off.

“DOC-TOR! DOC-TOR!,” grated the Daleks in triumph, energy compensators flashing in unison.

Something about them struck Sergei as odd. These daleks looked… less sophisticated, somehow simpler, than the one Sergei had met in orbit. Most were gleaming silver with light blue domes running along their faceted skirts. Their base was larger, thicker.

One with a bright red and gold casing glided to a halt in front of the Doctor. “WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU!” It’s metallic voice seethed with hatred. “NOW WE CAN BEGIN!”

From: season 4 thoughts

A gigantic Kenny is revealed to be behind the mystery of the From pocket universe which is kept in his basement. You bastard!

So all my thoughts and theories about what would happen this season have been... dead wrong. 

The space didn't reset, it didn't update, winter wasn't coming (Hollywood strike ended), and the show went ahead and zigged in completely unexpected directions. 

I do have some thoughts: 

1) Donna, the matron protector of Colony House, will wind up inhabiting the golem. 

2) The Man in Yellow is a cosmic spider (escaped from Stephen King's It? A relative?), and the town is its web. Like a bird assembles its nest from debris and sometimes human garbage, it has pulled the town together as a hunting grounds. Pretty basic, same as what a lot of people are thinking. That or he's a top lieutenant of the From space itself.

3) I thought the monsters in the woods were the people who sacrificed the children. But only 7 children were sacrificed, and there are 16-28 vampire creatures. The math doesn't work. So did other people entering their town get the option to become vampires? 

4) There are 1970s buildings, why didn't the vampires' desktop theme update? Is it because Victor didn't die? I suppose that makes more sense than the whole silly music playing bit.

5) If nightmares can become real in this pocket universe, why aren't there an awful lot more of them? Everyone has different nightmares, but only 2 manifested? Where are the others? 

6) Did someone dream up the talismans they hang on the doors, so they became real? 

6) Why are there so few reincarnated Jade's between 1506 and the Civil War, and so many after? Did the frequency of reincarnation accelerate?

That's about it. 

Season Four has seen a shift in character focus, many have been shoved into the background as the show slowly follows new threads, dribbling out content sparingly. 

From has always been a slow burn, and I generally don't mind; it's atmospheric and grounding. 

But it also is beginning to feel frustrating.

The story walker angle is weak tea, it's gone nowhere; presumably it'll figure in eventually. I hope.

The Lake of Tears... how many lakes could there be? Will that bird dig its way out of the grave? 

Season Five will be the last, so we know they DO have an ending in mind, a target they are aiming for, and an entire season to wrap everything up. 

That's promising. 

The Boys: Final season review

I have really enjoyed The Boys over the last five years. It started out like a breath of fresh air, sharply satirical and boundary pushing. The gross-out giblet gags were appropriately shocking. The undercutting of celebrity culture was bang on. 

Unfortunately, shock and vulgarity yield diminishing returns, and by season five what had once been fresh was turning, well, a little gamey. 

One interview I saw had Jensen Ackles mention that he objected to some of his dialogue, which made Kripke cackle and double down on giving Ackles vile dialogue. Kind of gave me an 'ew' feeling about the brain behind the show. That side of it I could have done with less of, although I did enjoy Kripke's satirical humour a lot.

Don't get me wrong: the show is still incredibly well made, the actors are superb, the humour (generally) sharp, and the action scenes cinematic. 

But five seasons is enough. 

So how was season four? It was... fine. There were lots of great moments and plenty cutting comments. I liked the prison camp stuff. The authoritarian elements Homelander imposed felt suitably oppressive (when they were shown), and the unctuous genuflecting before him properly stomach churning. 

But the season didn't build to a climax so much as... meander.

Homelander declaring himself a god was drawn out and anticlimactic. Our main villain spent the season hanging out with his dad, having meetings, and getting pissy when he wasn't worshipped suffiicently. But he killed only a few people. 

Not what I was expecting for the final season.

My own foolish expectations? I kinda wish they'd had Homelander visit destruction on America's enemies, garnering acclaim at home even as he commits atrocities abroad. Have him kill foreign leaders, annex countries, etcetera. 

Raise the dramatic temperature, and hint that this outward destruction could easily be directed inward. That would presage him going Full Mass-Murderer when he ultimately turns on not just the American people, but humanity itself. 

They could cover his overseas destruction with brief clips on TV, or just have characters discuss it, if budget was an issue. 

Have him put his face on Mount Rushmore, erect giant gold statues of himself, organize supers into a formal personal army to establish a new hierarchy over humanity. 

Have him demand great worship ceremonies as a saviour (on pain of death) even before he decides he's actually a god.  

Something!

That rising tide of horror and grandiosity would build to the climax where he goes Full Monster. 

Everything with Homelander's dad, Soldier Boy, was superfluous to the main plot, only there to connect to the upcoming prequel series. Ugh. 

Many of the characters felt locked in repetitive conflict loops, rehashing endlessly the same points without advancing anything. 

I wouldn't say that was bad, the actors sell their scenes, the show's still solid, but it didn't escalate the way I was hoping. 

The final episode isn't perfect, but it worked (for me) well enough.

Homelander's switch from domineering to grovelling didn't quite ring true, though: Homelander is, emotionally, a five year old. If he lost his powers and was so thwarted, I'd expect a full blown, all consuming tantrum, wailing, shrieking, the works. Lashing out in pure rage. My understanding of his character (obviously not as good as that of the real writers) is that he'd be just too frustrated and panicked (and furious) to argue or even beg intelligibly. His downfall didn't show the all consuming inner rage that I feel is in his core.

But what they did worked on an emotional level, and it's what I'd expect after (if) Homelander was ever able to regain control of his faculties. Although he'd probably try to hide behind the law and his followers (any who were left) if he could.

That he finally got his comeuppance was satisfying. 

Anthony Starr's performance as Homelander has been one of the stand outs of the entire series. He's been phenomenal. The other actors say he's the most like his character, which is both deeply disturbing (Homelander is a vile, despicable monster) and illuminating (cast to type, man!). 

The happy endings, for most of the good-guy cast, landed well. Butcher's fate was sealed given all the horrible things he'd done. I wasn't keen on Vought still existing, or Stan Edgar being back in control, as it diminished the victory over Homelander, but hey, they probably are hoping for more spinoff series.

Will I be watching?

Probably not. The gross-out stuff really wore out it's welcome, and show's point has been made. 

Recommend watching for the closure.

Back to the past: Our AI-Weimar future

Robo-cars aren’t science fiction anymore.


A friend visited San Francisco and got shuttled around town by one.

I’d heard autonomous vehicles had stalled (pun intended), but apparently they’re already here — gliding through real city streets.

And with them will come robo-trucks, robo-buses, robo-trains, and Johnny Cabs.

In the United States alone, 3.55 million people work in trucking. That’s just one sector in AI’s crosshairs. If these technologies roll out fast (like Australian rabbits), we’re in trouble. Add in artists, coders, lawyers, paralegals, administrators... heck, white colllar workers of all stripes, it adds up fast.

If one person loses their job, that’s their problem.


But if 30 million people lose their jobs, in short order?

That’s a Weimar Germany level problem, and we all know where that went.

Great Depression level desperation leads to populism, demagoguery, extremism, and political instability.

It only ends well for The History Channel.

Silicon Valley executives, with their ‘move fast and break things’ agenda, insist AI is not only inevitable, but may also exterminate humanity, while simultaneously building luxury bunkers for themselves in places like Patagonia, Hawaii and New Zealand.

Complete with blast resistant doors and self-contained air filtration systems.

Sam Altman even carries a ‘go bag’ filled with antibiotics, gas masks, and firearms.

Because AI + 3D bio printers makes engineered superviruses inevitable, too.

But hey, they’ll make a lot of money for shareholders before The Event happens, right?

Freedom is no longer compatible with democracy, as Peter Thiel says, and as such we peons don’t get a say.

It’s already decided.

Because money.

Of course, the grandiose 'warnings' by AI execs are, bottom line, self-serving advertisements.

Time will tell what's real and what's The Matrix.

Hey, what's a Saturday without a little doom-mongering? 

Universe of the Daleks: Chapter one

Might as well post my Doctor Who novella here, serial style. There's so much stuff on AOO, it's difficult to get noticed without frequent posting, and I've pivoted to another graphic novel. Anyway. Here be...

Chapter One: The Impossible Visitor

Colonel Sergei Valentin Malevich checked the forward hatch of his Soyuz capsule as it swung around the earth at 27,600 kilometers an hour.

Satisfied everything was in order for docking with Salyut I, he spun about and propelled himself into the descent module.

As he passed through the ring, there was a tremendous impact against the hull that slammed Sergei’s stocky frame against the inner hatch rim, knocking the wind out of him.

A clatter of sharp metallic pings against the hull, then silence.

A micrometeoroid's impact could be catastrophic... and this was significantly larger than that!

Out the porthole, bright blue oceans flicked to the black void of space and back, again and again, like a strobe light.

There was no time to waste. The pilot-cosmonaut slotted down into his moulded Kazbek command seat and buckled himself in. He took a brief moment to smile at the crumpled, faded photo of his wife Sofia, and little Anya, affixed to the dash. “I will get back to you,” he said, and fired controlled bursts of the attitude control thrusters.

Slowly, gradually, the craft’s spin slowed, then stopped.

The blur of iridescent blue and jet black out the window resolved into a hazy line separating both. He squinted: dozens of bright metal shards, gently curved arcs of gleaming silver and iridescent nodules, spun through space outside the porthole, along with sections of… the Soyuz capsules’ heat shield.

He exhaled expletives.

He flicked the radio switch on, opening a channel to Roscosmos Control.

Silence.

He toggled the switch several times.

Nothing.

The Rassvet communications system was down.

A faint hiss alerted him to another issue: hull integrity had been compromised!

Sergei sighed and slumped back. Misfortune was the price of aiming high.

When it rains, it pours, as the farmers of his home town in Siberia were so fond of saying.

He cycled through options. Donning his spacesuit and depressurizing the hull seemed the best option. He just needed to reach the space station, contact ground control, and wait for a relief mission.

It would be fine.

No cause for panic.

He fumbled for his bulky helmet as a dark shadow passed over the window. Curious, he leaned over, pressing up against it, his breath fogging the glass, and peered out.

A large, conical object floated into view. It moved with deliberation, as if under power, yet he saw no evidence of thrusters, or propulsion of any kind. Magnetic perhaps?

It was a meter and a half tall; the lower-half was faceted, with rows of embedded nodules running the length, topped by a gleaming dome, out of which jutted what was unmistakably an eyestalk. Two short cylinders flanked the stalk, atop of the gleaming dome.

As he gaped at it, the cylinders flashed with a fierce blinding light, and a hysterical machine voice rang inside his head: “Infection detected. Exterminate!”

Alarmed, Sergei snatched the attitude controls and fired thrusters. “Do svidaniya!” The Soyuz spacecraft lurched forward, and the unwelcome guest vanished from view.

The periscope camera showed a debris field of fragments ahead. They pinged harmlessly against the hull.

Sergei’s eyes went wide as the unwanted visitor slid back into view out the porthole. He initiated erratic firing, jerking the capsule this way and that, to no avail. The guest easily maintained its relative position.

What was this thing? A capitalist ship killer? American sabotage? Did the corrupt West even have such technology? Or could it be even more fantastical? Aliens, lying in wait for humanity to slip the surly bonds of earth, only swat us back down like an upstart fly?
“Go away, you stupid machine!” he raged as his fear and frustration rose.

“EXTERMINATE!” roared the shrill voice again.

Sergei’s heart sank. Perhaps little Anya had been right. Perhaps he shouldn’t have volunteered for this mission after all.

With his free hand, he rummaged in his Sokol flight suit pocket, plucked out a flask of vodka, and took a long, final swig.

------

The Doctor stood, legs planted on softly humming deck plating, before the gleaming hexagonal console of the TARDIS, head downcast, while he contemplated eternity as only a Time Lord could. With drama aforethought, he tilted his head upward, one eye on the console mirror. He grimaced, dissatisfied. “Nah, doesn’t work. No audience, and even if there was, I’m just not as portentous!”

He stalked around the control pylon, hands thrust deep in coat pockets, muttering to himself. He stopped abruptly and snapped fully upright.

“I’m bored!” he exclaimed, grinning broadly. “That’s what it is! Must be why I keep all those humans around… Oh dear.” He slumped against the console and ran a hand through his spiky hair. Personal revelations flowed: “Without them, I… don’t know what to do with myself. What does that even mean?”

An alarm squawked and shook him out of reverie. Console lights flashed and data feeds chittered excitedly.

“Now, now, steady on, old girl” he soothed the TARDIS, patting the console. “I’ve plenty of—wot’s that?” Hazel eyes darted over readouts: the exquisitely sensitive TARDIS detectors had picked up an emergency time shift!

Who was left to mess with time, but him?

“Not too far off,” mused the Doctor, tightening the scanner scope. “Jackson was, what, 1851? We’re… ah! May 5th, 1971. Earth orbit… that’s odd.” He gave a blinking readout a sharp tap. Alien text flowed across the tiny scope. “Dalek. Unmistakable. Up to new tricks, eh? Well, I’ve come up with a few of my own!” He scampered around the console, flipping switches, spinning dials and pressing buttons. “Once more into the breach!” He flipped the materialization switch.

With a great wheeze, the central column flared white. It rose and fell like some kind of temporal butter churner. A groaning, shuddering sound filled the ship.

------

Outside Soyuz, the whisk-like appendage protruding from the alien’s casement dazzled Sergei’s eyes with a brilliant green light. Then, somehow, the light turned in upon itself, and the machine… rippled. Chunks of it collapsed at angles Sergei’s eyes couldn’t make sense of, as if it were happening in dimensions beyond his perception.

“SPATIAL ANOMALY!” grated the disembodied voice. “ALERT! VORTEX–AAIIEEEE!”

There was a blinding flash, a resigned wheeze, and all at once the alien was replaced with a British police call box.

Sergei gaped again.

He looked down accusingly at his flask, then back out the portal.

He blinked.

It was still there.

He’d seen these police boxes on his tour of London back in ‘61, with Yuri.

“Chto za huynya?” he blurted. There was no rational, sane reason for one to suddenly appear 450 kilometers above the surface of the earth!

Then the rough wooden doors of the blue box flung inward. Golden light flooded out.

He squinted and held up a hand to shield his eyes.

The silhouette of a man appeared, framed by a shimmering halo. Behind him was a vast control room, far too big to fit inside the box.

As Sergei’s eyes adjusted, he could make out more detail: the man wore a sharply fitted pinstripe blue suit and a taupe overcoat. His hair was spiky at the front, and he had a big, stupid grin on his face.

Alarmingly, the man wore no protection against the harsh, cold vacuum of space.

Impossible!

As if reading his thoughts, the stranger grinned even more broadly, reached out, and tapped the porthole. He stabbed a forefinger at the docking hatch, and spoke. Despite the vacuum, Sergei could hear him cheerily say, in fluent Russian no less, “Privyet, comrade! You’ve got some good sized gashes in your ablator plating. Fancy a lift back down?”

Sergei stared, dumbfounded. Then he drained the last of his flask, pocketed the picture of his family, and propelled himself towards the bow of his wounded ship.

One had to deal with reality, however unreal, after all.

------

After setting the TARDIS cortex onto the trail of the Dalek, the Doctor sat down for a quick, convivial tea with the bewildered cosmonaut. The poor fellow was clearly having difficulty processing, which was understandable.

Nothing like tea and crumpets to settle the mind!

Temporal disruption eddies faded quickly, The Doctor explained: it was vitally important they find out what the Daleks were up to, and why.

The prospect filled The Doctor with giddy excitement. A tantalizing new challenge! Something for his vast looping intellect to sink its proverbial teeth into. Puzzles and problems and more!

He did love them so.

It would be great to have a mission again. A purpose. Meaning.

As warm fuzzies washed over him, without warning, the TARDIS was struck by a jitter. Queen Victoria’s fine china spilled onto the floor, erupting into a cascade of porcelain shards.

“Well, t-that’s n-n-not g-gooood!” The Doctor exclaimed as he shot to his feet in a staccato of fractured temporal shards. He stumbled forward, grabbing at the hexagonal console to steady himself. Had he left the TARDIS’s brakes on again?

Sergei dodged his own oxygen tank as it careened erratically across the deck plating. “W-w-what is this? What is happening?” he spluttered, holding up a dainty china cup in one hand.

As the vessel lurched violently forward and back, the Doctor hauled himself along the console. He looked as if he were climbing Everest; reaching out with a trembling hand, stretching with every fibre of his being, he flicked one ruby red switch.

The TARDIS snapped back into the flow of time with a thunderous crack.

A blur of out of sync selves rippled around Sergei, who was now bug eyed. The poor fellow looked like he was about to toss his biscuits.

The Doctor’s haze of multi-timeline selves, however, were nonplused. He wobbled over to Sergei, an accordion of visages contracting and splaying out, and patted the cosmonaut on the shoulder reassuringly. “I’m going to see where we are-re-re-re...” his voice echoed. “It’ll settle down in a minute.”

------

The Doctor poked his head out of the TARDIS. Took a sniff. Satisfied, he slipped outside and took a few unsteady steps; a fading blur of iterations flowed after and through him, each bemusedly half-aware of the others. Small wonder the poor cosmonaut was overwhelmed, this sort of timey-wimey nonsense was challenging even for a Time Lord. Loops of consciousness from multiple realities interwove, cross-pollinating, implanting memories of other realities into the recesses of his already crowded mind.

He steadied himself on the still warm faux-wood TARDIS frame and took a deep breath.

The echoes finally faded, and he suddenly felt very alone.

“Well! That doesn’t happen every day.” He patted his striped blue suit down, snapped taut the taupe overcoat, and fully took in his surroundings.

The TARDIS had landed in a clearing between several ruined buildings. Dark grey clouds loomed menacingly overhead. The ground was littered with concrete chunks, half-melted steel beams and copious debris. There were stacks of bricks and rotten wooden planks dusted with ash resting against the ragged remains of a wall that cupped the TARDIS. A tattered poster declared, in faded red lettering:

EMERGENCY REGULATIONS: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER.

“Charming,” sniffed the Doctor. “Not taking a dip then.”

To his left, a broad river, about 60 feet down a gravelly slope, cut through the ruins of what had once been a great city.

It all felt disturbingly familiar.

“Have I been here before?” he chortled to himself. “Or am I yet to come?” A noise behind him and whirled about. It was Sergei, the cosmonaut, stumbling out of the TARDIS.

“Tovarish!” called the man. “What was that? I could see myself, hear my thoughts, mine yet… not mine.”

“Temporal jitter,” said the Doctor, scanning the horizon. Far to the north, columns of smoke crumpled into the crisp grey sky. “It’ll pass.” Smokestacks jutted above the ruins to the south.

He felt a chill of recognition. It couldn’t be!

He had to get a better look. See what they were attached to.

He scampered up a concrete outcrop; from this vantage point he could see the stacks led down to… the Battersea Power Plant! The remains of it, anyway: two of its great brick smokestacks were missing, the outer walls pockmarked and scorched. A large metal sphere loomed beside it, streaked with rust and ringed by a narrow walkway. Low pressure gas storage, the Doctor mused.

“Incredible,” said Sergei. “Where… where are we? It looks like Leningrad, during the war.”

“Not quite. London, circa 2164,” said the Doctor softly. “Give or take a decade.”

This is where he’d bidden farewell to his granddaughter, Susan, all those lives ago.

Or would.

He wasn’t sure which timeline he was even in, thanks to that temporal jitter. Time travel was inherently multi-universal, flitting about infinite possibilities interwoven into a great big ball of timey-whimey stuff.

“Pizdets,” swore Sergei, as realization sunk in. “We finally did it. Nuclear war.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No… Not this time.”

A breeze from the river reached them. It carried the unmistakable stench of death. “Come on!” The Doctor clambered over the loose rubble to the water’s edge, with Sergei close behind.

At waters’ edge, jumbled flotsam and waves gently lapped at cracked remains of a pier. The mud brown river beyond was filled with corpses. Hundreds of them, bloated, purple, bobbing and spinning, carried along by a swift current.

The Doctor frowned.

Earlier, then.

Maybe 2140, when the plagues seeded by the Daleks were still doing their work.

“So much for the emergency regulations,” mused the Doctor quietly. “How very unlike Londoners.”

Sergei pulled out a handkerchief and placed it up against his face.

The Doctor clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and thought back to an earlier life. Lives. The journey of at least two selves had intersected here, both times with the Daleks. This place was temporal taffy, a knot in spacetime, pulling in the same players repeatedly, across realities. But the specifics… ah, the specifics! Jumbles of capricious whimsy, a million-billion dice rolls.

Every Dalek attack proceeded with the same pitiless logic: asteroid strikes against major population centres, military installations and the moon bases, closely followed by genetically engineered plagues to ravage the world’s human infrastructure. The beleaguered survivors were left isolated, confused, vulnerable.

Just the way Daleks liked humans.

Other than dead, that is.

He explained the invasion to Sergei. “The object that hit your ship? That was a Dalek. A Time Strategist, to be specific.”

“The alien salt shaker.” Sergei grunted, troubled by the memory. He had felt its cold, merciless hatred in his mind. “Machine creatures.”

“Actually, inside the shell is a living dumpling of hyper-intelligent hate. Terrible at cocktail parties. Even worse everywhere else. I hate cocktail parties.”

“What brought them here? What do they want?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Oh, some batty scheme involving gravity. Planets as ships. Depends on the timeline, but it’s always grandiose. I have to give them props, you know, for engineering evil.” He sniffed the air. “Smell that? The faint metallic tang? ”

Sergei shook his head.

“Residual ozone of cosmic ray bombardment. Degrades DNA. Nasty touch.” The Doctor sniffed again. “Ten years, tops.” He pondered. “This Dalek task force is pre-time travel. Yet I traced that Dalek Time Strategist’s emergency temporal shift here, to post-apocalypse London. Curious…”

Sergei’s brow wrinkled. “What is it doing here?”

“No good! But exactly what kind of no good? Why wasn’t it locked down in the Time War? Is it starting a new one? Is it a precursor?”

“Time war?”

“Aaaah,” groaned the Doctor. How could he explain the Time War in a single, comprehensible sentence, using cultural touch points Sergei would understand? “Imagine the universe… is a film, written by a thousand thousand writers who hate each other and spend eternity rewriting each other’s material.”

Sergei made a face.

“Exactly. More and more so, the longer it goes on. Infinite recursion. Ouroboros eating its tail. Well. I’m mixing metaphors. You get the idea. Doubt any English teachers are left to correct me. Let the double negatives fly…” He frowned and slumped as realization weighed down upon him: they couldn’t leave. Not until whatever kinks the Dalek added to the timeline were smoothed out. Sooner he got to it, the sooner they could get out of this mournful place.

He gave Sergei a quick tap on the back, and set off Westward. “Alons-y! Time to go.”

“Go?” blurted Sergei, perplexed. “Go where, tovarish? It’s ruins in every direction!”

“Wood Lane, tube station. Resistance has a bunker there. Or did. Reality’s a bit interwibbly.” He interwove his fingers and wiggled them. “Like so. Keep an eye out for Dalek patrols. Been a cosmonaut long? Chop chop.”

What's going on? Why are we revisiting a Who Classic? Has the writer lost his mind? Tune in next time to find out!