Among The Stars

Daleks in Manhatten (Part 1)

"Where are we?" Asked Martha as they all stepped out of the TARDIS.

"Ah, smell that Atlantic breeze! Nice and cold. Lovely." The Doctor exclaimed with big grin. He's been more chipper since the whole thing with Lorelai in the medical room. He turned around to look at what they parked in front of. "Lorelai, Martha, have you met my friend?"

The two girls spun around and looked up in awe of the Statue of Liberty towering over them.

"Is that...oh my god, that's the Statue of Liberty!" Martha laughed.

"Gateway to the new world." The Doctor said. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free."

"That's so brilliant." She breathed. "I've always wanted to go to New York. I- I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new one."

"Well, there's the genuine article." He started as they turned to face to city and started walked towards the edge of the island. "So good, they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally. Harder to say twice. Now wonder it didn't catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam..."

Lorelai giggled, but her attention was quickly caught by a newspaper sitting on a bench. She picked it up to read it.

"I wonder what year it is, cause' look, the Empire State Building's not even finished yet." Martha stated as she pointed at the building in the distance.

"Work in progress. Still got a couple floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around..."

"November 1st 1930." Said Lorelai.

"You're getting good at this." The Doctor turned to her only to see her looking at a newspaper.

"Eighty years ago." Martha muttered as she looked at the paper before staring back at the city. "It's funny, because you see all those old newsreels all in black and white like it's so far away, but here we are. It's real. It's now!" She laughed in excitement. "Come on then, you two. Where do you want to go first?"

"Daddy." Lorelai held the paper up to him and he read it with a frown.

"I think our detour just got longer." He said.

"Hooverville Mystery Deepens." Martha read the headline. "What's Hooverville?"

~~~

"Herbert Hoover, thirty first President of the USA, came to power a year ago." The Doctor explained as they walked through Central Park. "Up till then New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then-"

"The Wall Street Crash, yeah?" Martha cut in. "When was that?"

"1929." Lorelai told her.

"Correct!" The Doctor beamed and patted her head in praise. "Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden, the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So, they ended up here in Central Park."

"What, they actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?" Martha asked.

Hooverville looked like a small camp, with tents and small shacks set up all around. The residents walked around just going on with their lives.

"Ordinary people lost their jobs. Couldn't pay the rent and they lost everything." The Doctor sighed. "There are places like this all over America. No one's helping them. You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go."

"You thieving lowlife!" Yelled a black man ahead of them as he punched a white man in the face. "For a single loaf!"

"I didn't touch it!" Yelled the white man but he got punched in the gut. Two other guys were trying to break up the fight.