TARDIS Travels No.36

TARDIS Travels comes right up to date with Series 9 and the 2015 Christmas Special. Last time, the Doctor and Clara left London at Christmas, 2014. Who knows how many unseen journeys there have been, but when we next catch up with the Doctor he is all alone...

Journey 786: Location and date unknown to Skaro, date unknown.
The TARDIS returns to Skaro, and once again the Doctor is not alerted to this fact. The Thal - Kaled war is in progress, and the Doctor comes across a frightened boy in the middle of a mine-field. On learning that this is the young Davros, the Doctor abandons him. How could the Doctor not know that he was on Skaro? Some sort of enemy-homeworld-alarm is surely called for.

Journey 787: Skaro, date unknown, to Karn, date unknown.
Feeling guilty, and that his end might be nigh, the Doctor goes to Karn and passes his Confession Dial to Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood. She is to give it to Missy.

Journey 788: Karn, date unknown, to Essex, England, 1138.
The Doctor takes himself off to medieval England to meditate. He stays in a castle for a month or so and becomes very friendly with the natives. A man named Bors becomes his squire, after he saves him from choking on a marble. Clara and Missy arrive - but so too does Colony Sarff, who has come to fetch the Doctor to meet Davros.

We don't see how the Daleks transport the TARDIS to Skaro. Some form of teleportation it would seem. The Daleks have a weapon that appears to destroy the ship. However, the HADS is in operation. The "D" now stands for Dispersal, rather than Displacement or Defence. The Doctor uses his sonic shades to reconstitute the ship.

Journey 789: Skaro - Dalek city to environs.
The Doctor takes the ship to the desert outside the city and he and Clara watch it being destroyed.

Journey 790: Skaro - date unknown to several centuries earlier.
The Doctor goes back to the mine-field, and this time he rescues young Davros. No sign of Clara. He may have taken her home first, unseen, otherwise she might be waiting in the ship.

Journey 791: Skaro, date unknown, to Caithness, Scotland, 2119.
The TARDIS arrives in the underwater mining complex known as the Drum, which lies at the bottom of a drowned valley. The Doctor notices that something is wrong with the ship - the presence of temporal anomalies as it will transpire.

Journey 792: Caithness, Scotland, 2119, to same, 1980.
The Doctor goes back to the point when the alien spaceship first arrived. The flood has not yet happened, and in the valley is an army training camp, designed like a Soviet township. With the Doctor are Drum crew members Bennett and O'Donnell. The latter is killed by the Fisher King.

Journey 793: Caithness, 1980 to same, half an hour earlier.
The Doctor attempts to return to 2119, but the ship won't allow this. This is because it is caught up in the Doctor's own time-stream. Instead, it goes thirty minutes into the past. The Doctor and Bennett must avoid their earlier selves - and cannot save O'Donnell.

Journey 794: Caithness, Scotland, 1980, to same, 2119.
Bennett is alone in the ship when the emergency hologram takes it back to the Drum. The Doctor is already there - having been in hibernation for 159 years - the reason why the ship didn't like landing here in the first place.

Journey 795: Caithness, Scotland, to unknown region of space, date unknown.
Unseen, the Doctor has led some belligerent aliens on a wild goose chase across the cosmos in order to drain their engines and weapons. Clara has been left hanging in space in the middle of a mine-field, with a parasitic Love Sprite in her spacesuit. The Doctor materialises the TARDIS around her.

Journey 796: Unknown region of space, date unknown, to Scandinavia, 9th Century.
The ship arrives somewhere in Scandinavia. Somewhere with fjords. And Vikings. Fairly rubbish Vikings.

Journey 797: Scandinavia, 9th Century, to London, 2015.
After saving Ashildr, by making her immortal, the Doctor takes Clara back home.

Journey 798: London, 2015, to Hounslow, Middlesex, England, 1651.
The Doctor traces an alien artefact to the countryside just west of London, where he meets Ashildr again. She's now Lady Me, and lives a double life as a Highwayman.

Journey 799: Hounslow, 1651, to London, 2015.
The Doctor goes to see Clara. She shows him a photo of one of her pupils, and he spots Ashildr loitering in the background. (Unseen, the Doctor has at some point taken the pupil to visit Winston Churchill).
The Doctor claims to have kept an eye on Ashildr / Me over the years when we next see her on screen, so lots of unseen journeys which appear to have been made without Clara being present - as Clara looks like she's seeing her for the first time since the Mire business in the Trap Street later on. Clara mentions then that the Doctor has a whole room in the ship catalogueing what she gets up to, which Clara isn't supposed to know about.

Journey 800: London 2015 to same.
The TARDIS travels to Brockwell Park, South London, arriving beside a children's play park. En route, the Doctor has received a warning from Osgood that the truce between the Zygon refugees and the humans might be about to break down - referring to the events seen in The Day of the Doctor. Lots of globe-trotting in this two-parter, but all by conventional transport. The ship is still in the park at the conclusion.

Journey 801: London, 2015, to the Le Verrier space station, 38th Century.
This station is in orbit around the planet Neptune. Not everything that happens here is necessarily true.

Journey 802: Le Verrier space station, 38th Century, to the second most beautiful garden in the universe, date unknown.
We don't get to see it, but the Doctor has almost married a sentient plant form, which almost ate Clara. An amorous Krynoid perhaps? Or maybe Meglos wasn't the last of the Zolfa-Thurans after all...

Journey 803: Second most yadda-yadda..., to London, 2015.
The TARDIS returns to London after Clara gets a call from Rigsy. It materialises in the living room of his flat.

Journey 804: London, 2015 to same.
In order to track down some town plans and maps, the Doctor moves the ship to the city centre.

Journey 805: London, 2015 - street level to mid-air.
With Clara hanging out of the open door scanning the streets below, the Doctor hovers the TARDIS over the city. This is so she can scan for the alien Trap Street.

Journey 806: London, 2015 - mid-air back to street level.
The Doctor takes the ship to the district where the Trap Street is situated. After Clara's death, and the Doctor's disappearance, Rigsy graffiti paints the exterior in her memory, with a portrait and flowers.

Journey 807: London, 2015, to Nevada, USA, 2015.
Presumably Clara and Ashildr bring the TARDIS here using their own TARDIS, which gets stuck in the shape of a diner. It's the same diner that the Eleventh Doctor visited with Amy, River and Rory - near Lake Silencio. Does it just look like it, or was that actually Clara's TARDIS back then? The real diner is in Cardiff Bay. I've breakfasted there a few times. Or have I actually been in Clara's TARDIS...?
On dematerialising, the graffiti peels off.

Journey 808: Nevada, USA, 2015, to Mendorax Dellora, Christmas 5343.
An Earth colony. The TARDIS tries to cheer the Doctor up by giving him holographic antlers. He is not amused, and is threatening to criticise carol singers. He does not notice, or at least comment upon the fact, that the street where the ship has landed looks suspiciously like a Trap Street in central London. (You'd think he would, considering what happened there...).

Journey 809: Mendorax Dellora, 5343, to starliner Harmony and Redemption, date unknown.
Not necessarily still 5343. The vessel is heading towards the Andromeda galaxy. The Doctor gets to do the "it's bigger on the inside!" bit - very badly. At first the ship won't budge, as King Hydroflax is both inside and outside the ship at the same time. The head's inside, and the robotic body is outside. River reveals that she has stolen the ship on many occasions - always returning it to the same place so the Doctor didn't notice. She has installed a drinks cabinet behind one of the lower level roundels, which he never knew about. One of the buttons which the Doctor always presses on dematerialisation actually vents the waste on Deck 7. The Doctor obviously hasn't been on Deck 7 for a very long time, and doesn't plan on going there anytime soon.

Journey 810: Starliner Harmony and Redemption - hold to bridge, date unknown.
Christmas Day, so of course the Doctor is on a spaceship that is about to crash onto a planet. Where else would he be? He's emergency teleported River back to the TARDIS and she materialises the ship around him. In this instance, the spaceship and its occupants (guests and crew) ain't worth saving.
The ship crashes onto the surface of the planet - Derrilium. The impact is felt within the ship.

The Doctor recovers before River and notes that it is night outside, and the wreckage is still blazing.

Journey 811: Derillium, date unknown to same - next morning.
The Doctor nudges the TARDIS forward a few hours. At least that's what it seems. We will find out shortly that a night on this planet lasts 24 years, so it may be more than a few hours, though the wreckage is still being dealt with. Knowing that a restaurant will be situated here overlooking the twin singing towers, the Doctor causes it to be.

Journey 812: Derillium, date unknown to same - a few years later.
The Doctor nudges the TARDIS further forward in time, without changing the geographical location. The restaurant is now built. Trouble is they don't have a booking until Christmas Day in four year's time.

Journey 813: Derillium, date unknown to same - four years later.
The Doctor nudges the ship forward by the four years, so that he and River can finally have that dinner that he kept postponing. She thinks it is her last night, but she's really got up to 24 more years to go. I'm sure that he will have a word with her about nicking his ship, and will make use of that drinks cabinet himself...

So there you have it. A whole year to wait until I can do TARDIS Travels No.38. A bit TARDIS-lite Series 9 was. Before the Flood had a bit but it hardly featured otherwise until you got to The Husbands of River Song, when it was used magnificently.