Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 3

[wyrdwritere]

 A figure looking rather like a furry Neal DeGrasse Tyson walks along a seaside cliff.

 

NDB: How old is Kazokunoe? How was it created? Were we created, or did we appear by chance? Is there some reason we came to exist, or it up to us to make sense of the universe on our own? These simple yet profound questions are at the heart of this episode.

 

As he continues, we switch to animation of the cosmic events unfolding as he describes them.

 

Neal Degrasse Bison: To begin with, no one created our world. It formed nearly 4 billion years ago when a cloud of cosmic gas and dust coalesced to form our suns and the other planets in our system. During the early days, our home planet was still molten rock, pelted by asteroids and even another, smaller planet, the remains of which became Eisei. After millions of years, the planet cooled enough for oceans to form, and an atmosphere. We don’t know exactly how or when life first appeared, but evidence of microscopic life forms has been found in the fossil record nearly two and a half billion years old.

 

NDB: Simple microbes over time spread throughout the oceans, their metabolic processes changed the composition of the sea and air, and single cells started to blend together, cooperating in mutual survival, becoming more complex life. 

 

NDB: Over time, these first plants and animals spread from the water onto the land, and even into the air. The first warm-blooded creatures appear in the fossil record from 70 million years ago, and the first Ruijin’en evolved in the lush forests of to mitsuno kuni only 5 million years ago. The oldest permanent settlement we know of is 13,000 years old. All of

our recorded history, starting from our first cities, is only 4,000 years old. In that brief time since then, we have become a species of more than 18 billion souls, living not just here on our home planet, but on a multitude of worlds throughout the Twelve Galaxies.

 

Back to NDB overlooking the sea.

NDB: Some find it comforting to imagine that a great and wise being willed us into existence, but the science is clear: our planet was formed by random chance alongside the rest of our solar system, and our species is the just latest in a long chain of evolution of different life forms adapting to their environment. So if there is no single purpose for our existence, what are we supposed to do with our lives?

 

OPENING CREDITS

 

Prefect: Doctor.

 

Doctor: Prefect.

 

Prefect [stands and strikes a pose]: To choose nothing is to choose everything.

 

Doctor [strikes a mirroring pose]: To choose everything is to choose nothing.

 

[Both come together in a new pose]: Choose!

 

[They separate.]

Prefect: It’s good that you have come, Theta Sigma.

 

Doctor: Still wearing the same face, I see. Thirteen lives, all of them the same.

 

Prefect: It’s a perfectly good face, so I saw no reason to change it. If you’d paid attention in class, you’d have been able to keep yours, too. Perhaps you’ll manage to pull a favorite back up next time.

 

Doctor: Are we really going to spend this time rehashing squabbles from when we were kids?

 

Prefect: No.

 

Doctor: Well then why am I here? I know I’m a Prydonian, but we’ve never been friends, so why invite me to serve as psychopomp?

 

Prefect: It’s not enough that, in the wake of the Dalek war, we are the only Timelords left? 

 

Dan: What happened to all the others?

Doctor: The war.

 

Prefect: And your choice in the moment of truth.

 

Doctor: It wasn’t much of a choice; either try to hold on to what we had and keep fighting the Daleks, or let it all go and save the universe.

 

Prefect: We both know that’s not what actually happened.

 

Doctor: Close enough.

 

Prefect: No! All or nothing? A simple binary? There was another way, and you lacked the courage to hold the line until we found it.

 

Doctor: You mean Rassilon’s plan to transcend corporeality and let the physical universe collapse behind us? That’s just another way to choose ourselves over absolutely everyone else.

 

Prefect: Is that what the High Council was planning?  Madness.  No, I mean some other way of letting the Daleks think they’d won, while we diverted them into oblivion.

 

Doctor: Once Davros cracked the Skasis Paradigm, that was impossible. That’s why you were sent here, remember?

 

Prefect: Yes! And my sojourn here has given me opportunity to return to our first principles and reflect on what really matters. That’s why I sent an invitation even you could not ignore, Doctor. I can’t do what I must without you.

 

Doctor: And what’s that?

 

Prefect: Make a choice. What else?

 

—————————

 

The Undertaker and Yaz emerge from the acceleration corridor back at the great vault. He’s carrying his newly built detector machine and Yaz is lugging a sports equipment bag. He leads the way to a paternoster heading up, waits a moment to be sure Yaz is ready, and then steps onto the next rising platform. He starts fine tuning his device while Yaz stares at him.

 

Undertaker: What?

 

Yaz: I dunno. I feel like I’ve met you before.

 

Undertaker: You haven’t.

 

Yaz: Are you sure? 

 

SHE HOLDS UP HER HAND TO OBSCURE HIS BEARD.

 

Undertaker: I can’t help it if I remind you of someone else. 

 

Yaz continues to stare intently at him, while he sweeps the parabolic antenna back and forth along each level that they pass.

Undertaker: This is our stop.

 

THE UNDERTAKER JUMPS OFF AT A LANDING, MUCH LIKE ALL THE OTHERS. YAZ SCRAMBLES TO FOLLOW.

 

Yaz: Why here?

Undertaker: I think there’s a rift where the Nestenes are getting in; I need your help to seal it.

 

The Undertaker pulls open a vault door. Inside is a hexagonal room with faintly glowing roundels on the walls. The floor and ceiling have a maze design similar to the one in the entry garden. In the center of the room is what looks like a permanent electrical arc, crackling and shifting. It’s the only other source of light.

 

Yaz: That’s a Timelord cadaver?

 

Undertaker: Sort of. More an after image, or a scar.  Technically, it’s a holochronic negative rift.

 

Yaz: So, what do we actually do? You made it sound dangerous. 

 

Undertaker: It can be. With the right sort of hook, you can unravel the universe with one of these. That’s another reason for the isolation and heavy machinery. The idea is to seal the other parts of the rift, so only this one remains. The residual Artron energy helps power the barrier, and our universe rushes on.

 

Yaz: How do we seal the rest of the rift?

 

Undertaker: Simple. We hop inside, look for the point where reality is wearing thin, and gum it up.

 

Yaz: Yes, but how do we actually do… any of that?

 

Undertaker: Take these.

Undertaker unzips the duffel bag, then hands her an old school droplet-shaped TARDIS key and a tennis racket with fairy lights on it.

 

Undertaker: Now, hold the access matrix out like this, step into the rift, and let it lead you through.

 

YAZ DOES AS DIRECTED, AND DISAPPEARS INTO THE RIFT.

 

———

Doctor: What choice do you have in mind? What’s the unfinished business you need my help with?

 

THE PREFECT PUTS ON A PAIR OF GLOVES THAT SHINE WITH A PECULIAR RADIANCE, AND HANDS ANOTHER PAIR TO THE DOCTOR, THEN BEGINS TO DANCE, A SLOW FORMAL PROGRESSION OF POSES. THE DOCTOR JOINS IN.

Doctor: A stellar pavane? That’s grandiose.

 

The Doctor dons the gloves and joins in.

 

Prefect: Well, these are my last moments.  And you spend so much time as a vagabond, I want to remind you of what else you can be…. Caught up in the flow of events, in the moment, you need to remember how a Timelord experiences the universe; all the choices you aren’t making.

 

Doctor: By making a new star system?

Prefect: Indeed, but why stop with just a new star or two?

Doctor: Perhaps a sheltering gas giant for the smaller planets?

 

Prefect: And maybe one of those smaller worlds could have a stabilizing companion moon?

 

Doctor: That would make it ideal for complex life to evolve.

 

Prefect: And allows for more exotic possibilities…

Doctor: You’re guiding the evolution of a new, spacefaring species!

 

Prefect: Yes, I am.

 

Doctor: Is this meant to be your final legacy?

Prefect: Perhaps, though without any fixed points it won’t last once we finish.

 

WE SEE THE SAME CLIP FROM THE COLD OPEN. PREFECT AND THE DOCTOR COME TO A STOP, HANDS CLENCHED. THEIR GLOVES PULSE IN A REGULAR PATTERN.

 

Dan: Hang on, I’m sure that there’s a lot going on with your dancing that I can’t see, and you Timelords are all really smart, but even you can’t sweep up some dust and then wind up with a planet with people a billion years later with a bit of Twyla Tharp.

 

Eshe, an adorable little humanoid with something like a bat’s head is standing next to Dan, wearing THE KIMONO the doctor wore in the opening scene and the birthday hat.

 

Eshe: Right, it’s such a chaotic process that even the smallest change in the initial state will lead to profoundly different outcomes.  And to ramify that over astronomical time scales… it’s absurd.

 

Prefect: It’s absurd to you, because you’re caught up in the flow, carried along by the stream, unable to see more than the next bend in the river. The Doctor and I can see the whole of it, so as we make a small change at one point, we see how the whole changes at once, until you're standing here with us, and always have been, as far as you know.

Eshe: You absolute clown, are you seriously claiming that my family and I, my society, my species, my home planet, the whole of my entire existence, only happened because of something you two did right here just now?

 

Prefect: Just so.

 

Eshe: Doctor, this fool is just skipping rocks, right?

 

Doctor: I’m sorry, Eshe.

 

Eshe: But… but.... no’ve been with you ever since you got me out of that terrible gig at the cocktail lounge on Orphan 55.  You took us to karaoke at Milliway’s last week. We were just making sandcastles on the beach for our birthday!

 

Prefect: All true, but beside the point.

 

Eshe: What’s more pointed than my life? 

 

Prefect: For the Doctor? Nothing. But I take a different view. Adding your civilization to the mix leads to several protracted wars with Stenza, weakening the twelve galaxies’ resistance to the Cyberiad invasion. Ma!! is never exiled on Cestus 3, and thus never composes the Trashman’s Lament.  Insect larvae accidentally shipped from your world are missed during a customs inspection on Peladon and wind up evolving into an exquisite and beloved genus of butterflies there.

What consequences are too high a price to pay for the gift of your friendship? What beauty is too luminous to forsake? What can the generations of prosperity say to the age of misery? 

 

Dan: But you don’t have to do anything! No one made you do this dance!

 

Prefect: And every dance we do not do is also a choice. Facing these moments, and living with the consequences, is what it means to exist as a Timelord. This is what our passage through Prydonia prepared us for.

 

Doctor: Prepared you maybe. I’d rather be a singer on the stage like Eshe than a producer sat at the back of the theater.

 

Eshe: It seems to me that the most responsible way to live with all that power is to use it as little as possible.

 

Prefect: I agree.

 

Doctor: Don’t!! We haven’t blended this theme into the greater Cosmos! I can’t maintain it by myself.

 

Prefect: As little as possible, Doctor.

THE PREFECT RELAXES, UNCLENCHES THEIR FISTS, AND STANDS STRAIGHT. THE DOCTOR TRIES DESPERATELY TO AVERT WHAT’S COMING, BUT the entire sequence of creating the planet reverses ANYWAY, and then there are only three figures in the garden. Dan is holding the birthday hat.

 

—————

Yaz finds herself walking down into an old quarry. Everything seems normal. After a bit, she spots the Undertaker descending along a parallel path.

 

At the bottom, she notices a shimmering in the air. She waves to the Undertaker, who comes  over and checks the dials on his gadget.

 

Undertaker: This is it.

 

Yaz: Right. So, now we wave these tennis rackets with lights on them around?

 

Undertaker: I needed something about that size and shape and the tennis rackets were handy. It’s not like I could order an Artron depolarizer from Kerblam!

 

Yaz: Well, can we use them for some mixed doubles later? I bet we could find a park somewhere.

 

Undertaker: We can play right here.

 

The Undertaker produces a glittery golden ball from a pocket of his hoodie, and proceeds, in a montage, to play an impromptu game of tennis with Yaz. There’s a flash and a pinging sound each time the ball passes through the shimmering area, which serves as a de facto net. Whenever the ball gets by one of them, the Undertaker does a magician’s flourish and the ball is back in his hand. After a bit, Yaz figures out how to do it, too. After a volley with no pings or flashes, the Undertaker gestures Yaz over.

 

Yaz: That was surprisingly fun.

 

Undertaker: You have a wicked backhand.

 

Yaz: Yours wasn’t the worst I’ve seen.

 

Undertaker: And there’s another.

 

The Doctor holds up the old school TARDIS key, there’s a flash of light, and then they’re standing back in the tomb.

 

Undertaker: It’s time you got back to the Doctor.

 

He pulls out his sonic screwdriver; there’s a pinging sound from Yaz’s pocket.

 

Undertaker: Your phone should guide you to him.

 

Yaz’s phone: Starting route to The Doctor.

 

Yaz: Is that a sonic screwdriver?

 

Undertaker: Mmmm. They’re very handy.

 

Yaz gives him a look; he remains impassive. They shakes hands, and she turns and leaves.

 

OUT IN THE HALLWAY, WAITING FOR THE PATERNOSTER, YAZ SUDDENLY SPARKLES WITH LIGHT JUST LIKE FROM THE PREFECT’S GAUNTLETS.

 

Yaz: Oh, god! Eshe!

 

YAZ COLLAPSES AND TUMBLES OVER THE EDGE.

 

END CREDITS.
 

 

 

Continue to the Conclusion.