The Five Doctors
The fight was terrifyingly brief. The guards fought bravely and well, but every injury the Valeyard suffered was healed within moments, accompanied by a smaller, but no less deadly, gout of golden flame.
One by one the soldiers fell. Starlight tried desperately to protect as many ponies as she could, but whenever her attention was on one group of soldiers, the Valeyard would strike at another.
“Fall back!” Fleur called. “All of you!”
The remaining soldiers did as they were told. Starlight, on the other hoof, stayed dug in, firing spells and blocking shots from the Valeyard.
“Glimmer!” Fleur roared. “Disengage!”
“If I do that, you’re all toast,” Starlight shouted back, her face tight and twisted in a mask of concentration. “Go! I’ll hold him off!”
“But --”
Fancy Pants grabbed her and pulled her out of the square. It was now empty, save for Starlight, the Valeyard, and dozens upon dozens of charred corpses.
Neither of the combatants let up for even a moment as the soldiers withdrew. Each of them knew that a moment’s distraction could -- and would -- be instantly fatal. Starlight cast a ray of scorching flame, but the heat was dissipated by a blast of entropy from the Valeyard. That entropy moved on to age Starlight into dust, but she redirected it into the ground, making the grass wither and die, the earth itself crumbling under the forces of erosion.
And on and on it went. A freezing spell was met with a portal to Tartarus, was met with a beam of radiant fire, was met with a wave of despair, and so on and so forth. The battle wore on for what felt like hours, but was in reality closer to ten minutes.
And then it was over. There was no grand final spell, no last-minute trick. Starlight was only mortal, that was all. Eventually, her powers and energy waned. Her shield shattered under the Valeyard’s onslaught, sending her sprawling into a pile of still-smoldering bodies. She groaned and looked up to see her opponent approaching her slowly, still expecting a final trick. Her horn sparked and spat, but nothing happened.
The Valeyard stood over her now, his expression unreadable as he gazed down at her over the bridge of his muzzle. “Well?” she spat. “Are you going to kill me or not?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he responded. “On the one hoof… I want to. I really would enjoy that, you know. Besides, it would ensure that you can’t do something stupid later on, for instance, continue trying to resist me. I really should kill you. And yet…”
He tilted his head, looking like a large, evil bird. “There’s something about you,” he murmured. “A note of potential that could become so very useful later on, once we’ve finished with this universe and can move on to the next one.”
“I’ll never serve you,” Starlight spat.
“Perhaps not. But my associate is much, much harder to refuse. For now, Miss Glimmer -- au revoir.”
There was a flash of light, and Starlight was frozen in time, golden frost etching complex patterns over her body. Her mouth and eyes were wide in a furious, silent scream.
The Valeyard smiled thinly, admiring his work before he turned his attention to the temporal machine still sitting in the middle of the square. He levitated it into the air, threw his head back and laughed, then ripped it in half.
The following moments were excessively anticlimactic. The temporal barrier did not crumble. The Matrix port did not destabilize and begin devouring the planet. In fact, nothing happened at all.
He looked at the machine. Sparks flew from either end. Nothing inside was moving. Yet, nothing outside had changed, either. He grit his teeth. “Romana,” he snarled, pacing off to find his erstwhile companion.
The Doctor landed with a thump in the ruins of his home planet. He groaned, rolling onto his back. Daring fluttered down to hover beside him.
“Seven out of ten for style, but the landing’s really gonna cost you,” she remarked.
With some difficulty, the Doctor levered himself up into a sitting position. “Alright. Now that we’re back in this nightmare, would you care to explain why I have to suffer through this all over again?”
“We’re looking at the present,” Daring said impatiently. “Your current state of mind is vitally important to how this is all going to play out.”
The Doctor looked around. Shadowy shapes moved in the broken buildings. “Doesn’t look very promising,” he said darkly.
“Ruins usually don’t,” Daring replied. “The question is, as with all ruins, why do they look like this? What happened in the past to affect the present?”
The Doctor looked at her flatly. “Well, there was this little thing called the Time War…”
Daring rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay, but what about them?”
The Doctor caught sight of some very menacing glares being directed at him from usually friendly faces. “I led them to their deaths,” he said.
“No, you fucking didn’t,” Daring said flatly. “Like, ninety percent of them are alive and well.”
“Alive, maybe, but well?” the Doctor argued. “When people get near me, they end up getting burned. I know that, but every time, I still get close to them. I still invite them onto the TARDIS, knowing the risks, knowing that it isn’t safe, knowing that they always leave in the end.”
“You invited them,” Daring said. “But they chose to come with you. Well, okay, not Ian and Barbara, but everyone else. You think we don’t know that it won’t be safe? When we start traveling with you, it’s usually right after we nearly died three times in one day, but we come along anyway.”
The Doctor pursed his lips and glanced away.
“I wouldn’t have traded my time traveling with you for the world,” Daring said. “I don’t think any of us would. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you accept that we made our own choices? You’ve saved all of our lives time and again, even given yours in exchange. But when you think of us -- your friends -- you see us like this?”
“It hurts too much,” the Doctor said quietly. “What else could they be?”
Daring shook her head. “Doctor. What I’m about to say is going to sound hurtful, and I don’t mean it to be, but these are monsters of your own making. You built them in your lab and set them free, and they’re destroying everything else here.”
The Doctor looked down at the ground for a long moment. “Can we please move onto the Spirit of Doctors Yet to Come?” he asked.
There was a long silence. “...You know that isn’t going to be better.”
“Please?” he asked.
Daring sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”
When the Doctor glanced up again, Daring was gone. In her place was an older mare, golden curls spilling down her off-white back. On her flank was emblazoned a stylized question mark. She quirked a smile at him. “Hello, sweetie,” said River Song.
The Valeyard found Romana in the town bar, empty apart from the two Time Lords. She had practically wrapped herself up in her pale pink wings, but turned to glare at him as he walked in. Sitting in front of her was a glass of sparkling golden liquid.
The Valeyard sneered. “Ginger ale? I expected more from you, Romana. Perhaps it was foolish to. You always were a rather weak leader.”
“Killing people to get your way is hardly evidence of your strength of will, nor of your intellect,” Romana noted. “Some of the greatest idiots in history have managed to do that. Anyway, why shouldn’t I have a drink? I doubt I’ll be around for long enough to have to deal with the hangover.”
“True enough.” The Valeyard walked toward her, letting the door to the bar fall shut behind him. “What did you do, Romana?”
She looked over at him archly. “You’ll have to be more specific. I do so much these days.”
The light in the bar took on a golden hue. Romana merely turned back to the bar and took another long chug of her drink.
“How does the barrier work?” the Valeyard demanded.
Romana didn’t even deign to glance at him. “I would have thought that would have been obvious, even to someone who only got a seventy-two percent in temporal theory.”
“Those grades were supposed to be locked--” the Valeyard clenched his jaw shut, pursing his lips tightly together. After a long moment, he spoke through gritted teeth. “How do I turn off the barrier?”
“You don’t,” Romana said simply.
The Valeyard chuckled, deep and low in his throat. “Oh, you’ll tell me how. One way or another, I’ll get it out of you.”
Romana turned around on the bar stool and rolled her eyes at him. “No. I mean, there is no way to deactivate the temporal barrier, not with that device. I designed it to erect a bubble around Ponyville that would never be taken down. Obviously.”
The Valeyard’s mouth hung open slightly. He was utterly lost for words. Romana sniffed at him and turned back to her glass.
“But -- but why?” he demanded after several seconds of floundering. “You’ve damned yourself and this entire town alongside you. This is as much a prison for you as it is for us.”
“Mm,” Romana hummed with a short nod. “Yes, that seems to sum it up.”
“You’ll all suffer for this. You’ve built yourself a personal hell, and I will be your devil for eternity. You will die a thousand thousand times before the first moment of eternity passes, watch as your friends suffer the same endless torment, listen as they curse you for building this prison.”
“Will I?” Romana asked drily. “Gosh. I hadn’t realized.”
The Valeyard snarled. “Don’t you understand? The Time War will be as nothing compared to what I’ll unleash on you and yours.”
Romana laughed at that. “Good grief, you really are compensating for something, aren’t you? And as it happens, I understand perfectly well. The one who’s running behind in this conversation is you. You’ll never understand my motivations, Valeyard, and you never will. I’m afraid you dissociated from that aspect of yourself quite some time ago.” She picked up her glass of ginger beer and drained it, slamming it back on the counter when she had finished.
“Now. Is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked, turning to face the Valeyard dead on, not flinching at his furious expression.
The golden light in the bar burned brighter and brighter. Romana pursed her lips and shut her eyes tight. A single tear trickled through, then boiled away as the Time Lady burst once more into golden flames.
The Valeyard walked away from the Stick and Carrot, not once looking back as its thatched roof began to smolder and glow. Behind him, a pale grey unicorn with curly chestnut locks stumbled out of the bar, choking and wheezing. The first Romana glared at her departing foe with eyes watering from the smoke. She did not curse at him, merely watched him balefully as he walked away. She turned back to the bar and walked inside to try and put out the fire before it spread too far, though she suspected it would be an exercise in futility. Everything was, now.
“Why you?” the Doctor asked. “I barely knew you, and I saw you die --”
The mare from the Library smiled at him. “Oh, sweetie. You might not know me yet, but I certainly know you. Anyway, since the last two were archaeologists as well, it seemed like a good idea to keep the theme going.”
The Doctor pulled a face at that. “I’m a time traveler. I --”
“Yes, yes, you point and laugh at archaeologists,” River said briskly. “You know, you really don’t have time to waste on rehashing old ground, so if you’re quite ready to move on?”
“You know, all of you seem to be getting more impatient as time goes on, too,” the Doctor grumbled.
“Well, as I believe I mentioned, you happen to be running rather short on that particular commodity,” River replied, her voice clipped. “Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of changing scenes while you were distracted.”
The Doctor glanced around, surprised. In all the fuss, he hadn’t even noticed Gallifrey fading away and being replaced by… whatever this was.
“River? Where are we?” the Doctor asked, turning in a slow circle. They were standing in a plain-looking courtyard, filled with a faint mist. It was circular, made of smooth grey stone, and almost entirely unadorned aside from some very plain-looking columns along the walls. Between the columns, corridors branched off in all directions. At least, he assumed they were all corridors. Most of them -- all but two, in fact -- were blocked by locked doors.
She gestured around. “We’re in the future, sweetie. Do try to keep up.”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
River sighed and gestured to the doors. “These are your immediate potential futures. As you can see, quite a lot of them have been closed off. I’m sure you can guess whose fault that is.”
The Doctor nodded. “Only two choices left. So, what, I just pick the one I want?”
“When has it ever been that easy?”
The Doctor nodded reluctantly. “So what, then? If we don’t go down the corridors, what are we doing here? Just waiting?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” The Doctor pondered this. “...Waiting for what?”
“Us, I imagine,” said a bright, Northern-accented voice. Out of the corridor on the left, three ponies stepped out -- a tall, gangly pegasus in a bowtie and fez, an old batpony with tremendously cross eyebrows, and a short earth pony wearing a rainbow-striped shirt and a grey coat.
The one in the bowtie waved. “Hallo! We’re the Doctor!”
“Possibly,” the old one added. “That’s looking less certain than ever at the moment.”
“Doesn’t hurt to be optimistic,” Bow Tie retorted.
Eyebrows rolled his eyes at that.
Rainbows sighed. “C’mon, you two. Would you rather bicker or ensure our continued existence?”
The other two grumbled a bit, but turned back to look at the Doctor.
The Doctor himself was frowning. “You’re my replacements, then? A P.G. Wodehouse reject, a retired rockstar, and a kindergarten teacher?”
“Watch it, prettyboy,” Eyebrows growled.
River smirked in the background. “You know, I simply can’t tell you what I’m thinking right now.”
Everypony glanced at her, then looked away with varying degrees of embarrassment.
“So…” the Doctor said. “If you represent one possible future, I suppose the other tunnel…”
“No prizes for guessing that, no,” Eyebrows agreed, scowling at the alternate path. “Where is the Knacker’s Yard, anyway? He never struck me as the fashionably late type.”
“More the ‘annoyingly early and looking pointedly at his watch when you walk in’ type,” Rainbows agreed.
“Flattering words,” said a sandpaper-dry voice from behind them. “Punctuality is the politeness of princes, after all.”
River and all four of the Doctors looked around in shock. Standing at the other side of the courtyard, a pale figure stepped out of the swirling mists that had concealed him.
Bow Tie took a step back. “That’s… not quite what I was expecting,” he admitted.
“You’re not alone there, Sweetie,” River said, taking several paces back toward the Doctors as the Valeyard advanced on his hydraulic metal joints, blue steel wings sprouting from a white-coated body as dark flickering energy hovered, crownlike, over his head -- the perfect fusion of organic and mechanic, Time Lord and TARDIS. The Valeyard smiled nastily at them, menace in his flickering red LED eyes. “And what am I if not a prince?”
No matter how fast or how far they ran, Ditzy and Fluttershy couldn’t see the end of the hallway. On the positive side, the Carrionites didn’t seem particularly inclined to follow them, and their screeching laughter was faint in the distance. When the two mares judged they had run far enough, they all but collapsed against the wall, panting. Fluttershy’s eyes were glazed and wild, her coat shining with sweat. Ditzy was sure that she didn’t look much better herself, but she reached over and took one of Fluttershy’s hooves in hers.
Fluttershy didn’t say anything, but she gripped that hoof like it was a lifeline. They stayed like that for several long minutes. Eventually, Fluttershy spoke, her voice thin and strained. “Do you… do you think that they’re still alive?”
Ditzy closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Those … Carrionites? they ordered them ‘bound’, not killed.”
“...That’s something, anyway,” Fluttershy conceded. “Not much. But something.”
There was another long silence. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep running,” Fluttershy said. “There’s nowhere we can run to, nowhere we’re safe…”
“I know,” Ditzy said.
“I’m so tired.”
“I know. I am too. But we can’t just give up.”
Fluttershy tilted her head back and shut her eyes, resting against the wall. “I know we can’t. But… can’t we? Just for a few minutes.”
Ditzy hesitated. “No,” she said firmly. “If we stop now, how will we start again? We have to keep moving.”
“Oh, dear. I suppose so,” Fluttershy conceded.
Ditzy hauled herself back to her hooves, then helped Fluttershy rise. “Should we go back that way?” she asked, nodding toward where the Carrionites had been. “Or keep going to the foyer?”
“Foyer,” Fluttershy said with feverish intensity. “Definitely the foyer.”
“Alright.”
The two mares walked side by side down the hall, ears pricked up for any signs of hostile creatures lurking in the shadows. They walked, it seemed, for miles, with no sign of life.
“Ditzy,” Fluttershy said, a note of hysteria in her voice. “We can’t -- we can’t just walk forever.”
Ditzy said nothing. She didn’t want to betray how scared she herself was feeling. Instead, she merely glanced around the corridor, searching for something, anything that could help them. Then, she saw it. A glimmer of light in the darkness, down a side tunnel. “Look!” she hissed. “A way out!” She began to gallop toward the light, Fluttershy close on her tail.
As they drew closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, Ditzy thought she saw a figure in the light, but dismissed that thought quickly. There was nothing blocking the brilliant light, nothing casting a shadow, no door, no room, only a brilliant golden Light…
And then both mares were gone.
Light nodded. “Subjects collected for cataloging,” it said, before going out and leaving the hallway in darkness.
Ditzy and Fluttershy both tumbled into separate golden bubbles, which jostled around all the others. Ditzy pulled herself upright and shook herself. “I just don’t know what went wrong,” she said sadly.
From inside the TARDIS, the Crusaders watched as the last two ponies still at large were captured. Rumble had gone very quiet. Sweetie Belle was crying on Button’s shoulder. When Dinky saw her mother appear in one of the bubbles, she turned away, unable to watch any longer. Apple Bloom seemed to be having a dissociative episode, staring blankly and blindly at the screen before her.
There was a long and dreadful silence. “Well,” said Scootaloo. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Dinky said.
“What are those bubble things?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can we save them?”
“I don’t know!”
Dinky fell to the ground, her vision going blurry with tears. Almost immediately, she felt her friends gathering around her, worried. She shook her head vigorously. “Not a relapse,” she said. “I just… I don’t know what to do. All that stuff I saw in the Zero Room while my mind was healing, it was all so useless. Or maybe I’m useless. Or maybe everything’s useless.”
She felt a hoof wrap around her barrel. “Okay,” said Scootaloo. “That’s a lot to unwrap, and I don’t… totally understand what you were saying about the Zero Room? But we can come back to that. You’re not useless, Dinky. Alright? You got us so far, and you’ve done so much. We’re your friends. We’re proud of you. We love you. So don’t go saying dumb shit about how useless you are and selling yourself short, because that’s my friend you’re insulting.”
She paused and pulled a face. “That was cheesy as shit, but it’s still true.”
Dinky managed to crack a grin at that remark, looking up at Scootaloo. Then she frowned. “Hey. What’s up with the light?”
As Scootaloo had been talking, the light in the control room had shifted dramatically, casting everything in a bright, rich, orangey-amber light. Even as Dinky spoke, however, the light was fading back to its normal pale yellow hue.
Apple Bloom shifted uncomfortably. “Was that some o’ that Artron energy y’all were talkin’ ‘bout earlier?”
“Don’t think so,” Dinky said, struggling back to her hooves. “Entirely the wrong color, for one thing. Also, our brains haven’t been microwaved.”
“Oh. Yay?” Button said, tilting his head.
“I’m inclined to think that not having cooked brains is a yay-worthy occasion, yeah,” Rumble said drily.
“It must have meant something,” Sweetie Belle said, casting an eye over the console. “Doesn’t look to me like anything’s different, though.”
“Hm.” Dinky studied the console. “All the panels are color-coded, though. Pink, red, purple, blue, magenta, and orange. Maybe we need to look at the orange one?”
“That’s… the flying one, right?” Button asked, peering at it closely. “Is the TARDIS telling us that we need to fly her at the bubbles?”
There was a long pause. “Okay,” Button said. “But do we have any better ideas, though?”
“Gimme a minute,” Apple Bloom said, her brow furrowed. “Uh… secret compartment, maybe? Look in th’ panel fer one o’ them.”
Much to everypony’s surprise, there was indeed a secret cupboard in the console under that panel. Unfortunately, all it contained was a boxful of cat-shaped pins and some jammie dodgers.
Scootaloo sighed. “Alright, fuck it, let’s slam this box into the prison bubbles.”
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Of course, a classic of the Peter Davidson era: The Four Doctors (and a pre-recorded cameo of Tom Baker from an unfinished serial). Full of gratuitous cameos, monsters old and new, Gallifreyan lore, and, of course, everyone's favorite Doctors, as long as your favorite Doctor is the First, Second, Third or Fifth. (I'm partial to the Third myself, so it worked out for me.)
Nice to see the Valeyard making use of that post regeneration hardiness. I once heard a theory that the reason the Doctor is so loopy after regenerating is because he holds on to the form and doesn't let the process happen immediately like it's supposed to, and the Valeyard seems to be supporting that theory right now. Of course, it's bad for everypony else.
"Dammit! It always works when The Master does it! Evil laughter is overrated..."
Oh hey, it's space archeologist No.2! And this is before the Doctor figured out what her 'deal' was. Who better to guide him into Doctors Yet to Come?
Romana's unflinching casual attitude in explaining exactly what she did, I love. It's an interaction archetype I just can't get enough of.
And hey, Romana I! We're getting appearances from the whole gambit here!
At least, not without bumping up the age rating.
Mecha-Valeyard. If that isn't a final boss, I don't know what is.
Something about this feels familiar, but I'm not sure what.
My assumption here is that the Doctor forgot about this cupboard when he banged his head and regenerated into the Seventh, and it's sat there unopened ever since.
Ah, the 'Time Ram' approach. Always works, because if it didn't you wouldn't be around to know about it.
So, Ten has to make a choice regarding his future. Endure the Moffat Years and whatever Chris Chibnall has planned, or fuse with his TARDIS and become super cool (but also evil). ...This is gonna be tougher than I thought... (I kid, I kid. I don't mind Moffat. Now, if this was a choice between just Thirteen and Mecha-Valeyard...)
Starlight may have fought Twilight to a standstill... but only after months of planning that gave her every advantage she could claim. She doesn't get that edge here, sadly.
Heh. Evil or not, show the Doctor a fascinating contraption and of course he'll assume it's important.
And he just can't accept that he isn't responsible for every single action taken by every single being who walks in the TARDIS. He's more married to that narrative than to Ditzy at this point. Hopefully shoving the consequences of his actions in his face will get him to shift a little.
"Why would I put a self-destruct button in my own main facility? That's just asking for trouble."
To be fair, the light at the end of the tunnel isn't always an oncoming train.
Seeing a bunch of doomed futures is anything but useless. It tells you what not to do. Process of elimination is your friend.
Hmm. Where have you seen that before?
Well, the Crusaders are in action and the Valeyard pretty much isn't. Let's see where we go from here.
I don’t know why that hurt as much as it did, but it did. Wow.
One minute you’re down, the next you’re right back up again.
And of course the Valeyard doesn’t understand why Romana does what she does. No flawed, truncated, funhouse-mirror version of the Doctor could.
Beautifully done, and one of the few titular references I’ve seen lately. “You know this place” “Yes, to my shame!” LOVE the characterization in that film. And, coincidentally, in this chapter.
And so, with greater knowledge and self-knowledge, the CMC are to the rescue again! We shall see what happens next...