The Girl Who Grew Up In The TARDIS (Wattys2014)

"Doctor No More."

 The Doctor had gone, the man who I saw could no longer be the Doctor but had to become “The Warrior” and it broke my heart to see the Doctor turn into a soldier, something he would never have wanted to be. But I understand that the TARDIS needed me to see it, the Doctor was young again but already darkness was gathering around him. There was fire and passion but also a coldness I had not seen before for the Doctor was driven and prepared to fight to the bitter end whatever the cost to himself and all around him.

 And at that particular dark chapter of the Doctor’s life that’s as far as I can go, the TARDIS did not want me to see anymore and as the Time war would rage for untold years, I would have to be put to sleep and held in a stasis field until it was all over, I understood what the TARDIS wanted to do and for the first time in my life, I did not fight back, like the Doctor I calmly, stoically accepted my fate as I lay down but as I felt my heart pounding hard against  my chest and my lungs fill up with coldness which somehow made me recall that November night I had never felt so afraid. In my heart I did not believe that Gallifrey could win, that the Doctor would die and the Universe would be lost. I wondered what it would feel like to no longer exist but there lay madness in those kind of thoughts because if you no longer existed you wouldn’t feel anything at all… And I would not be alone in this when the whole Universe faced annihilation. The TARDIS tried to soothe me to my sleep and selected the Kate Bush song “And Dream of Sheep” as it played in the background the last thing I saw was the faded photograph of my mum as I clutched it close to my breast and then my eyes began to close and I found myself dreaming, dreaming of a life I would never know, mum was there and so was my dad except his features kept changing he never looked the same man… We lived in a cottage, where there was only sky and sea and I was so happy that a part of me never wanted to wake up. Sometimes I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Either way it didn’t matter what the truth was, only I had not felt this happy in a long time and I didn’t want to leave this place… But the Doctor, that brilliant, impossible man had other ideas and the TARDIS had always foreseen those final days of the Time War.

 When I saw the Doctor again he was an old man, older than I had ever seen him, he was worn and ragged, yet he wasn’t quite beaten not yet as he carried himself with dignity, he looked fragile but he was still fierce, war weariness and guilt in every part of his being but at the same time there was still hope and compassion in his eyes. Despite all the killing, he was still a good man, yes he had done bad things but it was always in the pursuit of trying to do the right thing. But something was about to change, the Doctor could stand it no more and neither could the rest of the Universe. I wondered what his people had done, what depths of depravity they had sunk to, for now it seemed to me that they had become no better than their enemies. I sometimes wonder whether the time wars between the Daleks and Time Lords could have been avoided and might never have happened if the Doctor had not been sent back in time to destroy the Daleks and stop their existence. Some say that the Time Lords had started it, though ultimately the Daleks were evil and there would have been a time when the Time Lords would have had to fight back. Though in the war to end all others stalemate had been reached. And now it seemed it was left to the Doctor to end it. Of course before the Time War apart from the odd momentarily blip the Doctor had never used weapons everything he did he had solved with his mind but not anymore. The Doctor was a warrior but one with a brilliant mind and if he couldn’t end the war then who could?  So the Doctor stole the most powerful weapon known to Gallifrey, a sentient one called “The Moment” and he was going to use it to end the Time War… And then the visions were gone and that’s as far as I can go, the TARDIS did not show me the rest. The time war ended, the Daleks had vanished and there was no more Gallifrey, what was I supposed to think? I know the TARDIS has her reasons for leaving me in the dark but I’m haunted by what the Doctor might have done…So if I had been given a choice would I have wanted to watch while the Doctor wiped out his own people? All I know is the Doctor was alone and it seems he had to do the most terrible thing imaginable and no one was there to help him. Could I have stood alongside him? I don’t know. Though putting my selfish needs aside (for the first time in my life) if I couldn’t be with him then someone should have been there. I really wish he hadn’t been alone. And yet to this day I cannot believe the Doctor had ended the war, I find it desperately impossible to believe that the Doctor could ever commit mass genocide on his own people, the Daleks maybe but not his own people. That’s not my Doctor. Try as I might but I still cannot believe it, there must have been another way…