Full Circle

Twelve’s TARDIS. This was Twelve’s TARDIS. I could feel it. I loved his TARDIS.

The clangs of his boots echoed in the console room. Turning around, I saw him coming down the staircase. He was dressed up in his usual magician wear. He looked confused at me, like he was trying to remember something but couldn’t.

He knew. God dammit, he knew. For a thousand years, he’s been waiting for me. He wanted to have these kids. He was with me for three hundred years on Trenzalore, knowing that I was so far away from being the wife carrying a baby.

He’s made me feel like crap now. Now that I know Theta was always just waiting for his children. Maybe that’s why I could never fix him. I never knew how truly broken he was. He went into Trenzalore, knowing he would die, with a wife who wasn’t even his wife.

The Doctor is in for a surprise.

“Terra.” The Doctor greeted.

“Magician.” I snapped.

His blue-gray eyes widened. “No. No. You can just go right back.”

“Hmm?”

“Not when you’re angry. I really don’t like you when you’re angry.” The Doctor said, going back up the stairs.

“I have a surprise.” I said in a sing song voice.

The Doctor chuckled, still climbing the stairs. I smiled. “What news could you have that possibly surprises me?”

I raised a questioning brow. “How about, I’m the one having a baby?”

He stopped.

I could sense his thoughts. I could sense his hearts. I could sense his lungs. They had all stopped.

“Theta?” I asked, quietly. “Amore, can you please say something.”

The Doctor finally turned around.

Sweet Merciful Storyline. His face. His eyes were wide, and he looked like he was when he found out Missy was a Time Lady.

“What?” He whispered.

I gulped. This felt awkward. “I just did the Wire, way back when. You ran a scan afterwards, and it said I was pregnant.” I said. “98.”

The Doctor was coming down the stairs, still looking at me like I was a ghost.

“Please just say something!” I pleaded. “Anything.”

“You’re having a baby?” The Doctor finally said.

I nodded. “Yes. Me. Baby. Your’s too, idiot. Do I have to explain everything?”

The Doctor, the Last Time Lord, the Oncoming Storm, could not pick up his jaw. He was coming closer and closer to me, and I felt like panicking.

“Please. Just tell me something. Please. I need to hear you say something.” I pleaded. “I’m starting to get scared.”

Then, I got freaked out. The Doctor did something unexpected, but something I should have known was coming. The Doctor hugged me, so tight I feared finding bruises. I wrapping my arms around him, trying to hold him just as tight. We started laughing, happily, at one point.

His grip on me tightened. “Too tight. Too tight. Amore, you’re crushing me! And the baby!”

Suddenly, I was released. The Doctor was just looking at me in unbridled joy. “Pregnant! You! You’re going to have a baby!”

I gave him a ‘finally’ look. “Yes! What about that is so hard to get?”

(More)

He put a hand on my stomach.

“I should kill you.” I said, happily. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

The Doctor just grinned, like the idiot he was. I rolled my eyes, smiling happily. “I didn’t tell you about Blythe either.”

I gave him a half-glare. “Hey. That was because that meant telling me I wound up with the Master. That’s a completely different-” I stopped myself. No fighting. Not a fighting time. Damn my hormones. I shook my head, laughing. “Story, you’re an idiot.”

The Doctor kept his hand on my stomach, grinning. “But your idiot.”

I smiled. “My idiot.” I put my hand over his, trying to feel the baby inside. “Our kid.”

(More)

“Oh. 98 Clara.” I smiled kindly at her.

Clara: “Courtney Woods. Doctor, she has gone crazy.”

“Well, guess I know where I stand.”

“She’s uncontrollable. She took your psychic paper. She’s been using it as fake ID.

The Doctor: “To get into museums?

Clara: “No, no, no. To buy White Lightning or alcopops or whatever.

The Doctor: “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What, what is Courtney Woods?

Clara: “She’s one of my year tens. She was in the TARDIS.

The Doctor: “Doing what?

Clara: “Throwing up.

The Doctor: “Oh, her. Oh, that was ages ago.

Clara: “Look, she says that you told her that she wasn’t special.

The Doctor: “Rubbish.

Clara: “She says that’s what sent her off the rails.

The Doctor: “Pffff.

(More)

==FC==

(More)

Clara: “Doctor. I know, I know. But, you say something like that to somebody, it hurts. Especially if you’re somebody of her age, especially if you’re you. Doctor, it can affect her whole life.

The Doctor: “Bah.

(More)

I grunted, feeling the familiar pain of Time Lady morning sickness.

Clara turned to me. “Are you alright?”

I nodded, wincing a little. “Yeah. That’s just the baby.”

“Oh. Okay.” Clara said, looking away.

To keep from laughing, I bit my lip. Clara soon stopped, turning to me with wide eyes. “What?”

“The baby. She likes hurting Mommy’s tummy the first trimester.” I groaned. “Just like her big sister.”

“You’re pregnant?!” Clara almost squealed.

I gave the Doctor a grin. “Every time. Do I have to explain it every time?”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

(Courtney is inside, at the console. The Doctor runs over to her.)

The Doctor: “Oi! Give over!

Courtney: “I got stuff to clean up with.

(She holds up paper towels)

The Doctor: “What?

Courtney: “And I got these from the chemist.

The Doctor: “Vortex manipulators?

(Magnetic bracelets on her wrists.)

Courtney: “Travel sickness.

The Doctor: “Good. Because I don’t like people being sick in my TARDIS. No being sick. And no hanky-panky.”

Clara: “Doctor!”

The Doctor: “Sorry, that’s the rules.”

Clara: “Look, Courtney, you’re not going to be needing those because you’re not going to be doing any travelling. Doctor, will you just, just tell her?”

The Doctor: “Tell her what?”

Clara: “(through clenched teeth) Tell her that she’s special.”

The Doctor: “Have you gone bananas?”

Courtney: “Do you really think I’m not special? You can’t just take me away like that. It’s like you kicked a big hole in in the side of my life. You really think it? I’m nothing? I’m not special?”

The Doctor: “(sotto) Pfft. God.” (normal) “How’d you like to be the first woman on the moon? Is that special enough for you?”

Courtney: “Yeah, all right.”

The Doctor: “Okay. Now we can do something interesting.”

(He sets the TARDIS flying.)

Clara: “Hey, Doctor!”

(More)

(They step out of the TARDIS in full spacesuits into a storage area filled with cylindrical objects, some in racks. Some have a US flag on them, some have Cyrillic writing.)

Courtney: “This isn’t the moon. Where are we?”

The Doctor: “On a recycled space shuttle. 2049, judging by that prototype version of the Bennett oscillator.”

(They take their helmets off.) The Doctor: “Where’s the gravity coming from?”

Clara: “What are they?”

The Doctor: “About a hundred nuclear bombs.”

(An alarm sounds. The Doctor looks out through the airlock window.)

The Doctor: “Ah. We’re on our way to the moon. Check that. We’re about to crash into it! Hold on! Hold on!”

(They grab hold of cargo nets.)

Clara: “Why didn’t you just tell her you didn’t mean it?”

(The space shuttle belly-flops onto the moon’s surface and skids to a halt. The three person shuttle crew enter, lead by a woman.)

Lundvik: “Who the hell do you think you are?”

The Doctor: “Why have you got all these nuclear bombs?”

Lundvik: “I’m not going to give you another chance.”

The Doctor: “Oh? Well, you’re just going to have to shoot us, then. Shoot the little girl first.”

Courtney: “What?”

The Doctor: “Yes. She doesn’t want to stand there watching us getting shot, does she? She’ll be terrified. Girl first, then her teacher, and then me. You’ll have to spend a lot of time shooting me because I will keep on regenerating.”

(Courtney sits on the deck behind the big Russian bomb and sulks.)

The Doctor: “In fact, I’m not entirely sure that I won’t keep on regenerating for ever.”

Clara: “Doctor, what are you doing?”

(The Doctor is making slow steps backwards and forwards. He ends up doing bunny hops.) The Doctor: “Gravity test. So, it’ll be very time-consuming and messy, and rather wasteful, because I think I might just possibly be able to help you. You see, I am a super-intelligent alien being who flies in time and space. Are you going to shoot me?”

Lundvik: “No.”

The Doctor: “Good. Why have you got all these nuclear bombs? No, no, no. Easier question. What’s wrong with my yo-yo?”

(Just like the Fourth Doctor did once, he uses a yo-yo to test the gravity.)

Clara: “Doctor, it goes up and down.”

The Doctor: “Bingo.”

(The penny finally drops.) Clara: “Ah.”

The Doctor: “Ah ha. We should be bouncing about this cabin like little fluffy clouds. But we’re not. What is the matter with the moon?”

Lundvik: “Nobody knows.”

Clara: “Do you know what’s wrong with the moon?”

The Doctor: “It’s put on weight.”

Lundvik: “How can the moon put on weight?”

The Doctor: “Oh, lots of ways. Gravity bombs, axis alignment systems, planet shellers.”

Lundvik: “So it’s alien.”

The Doctor: “Must be causing chaos on Earth. The tides will be so high that they will drown whole cities.”

Lundvik: “Yeah.”

The Doctor: “So what are you doing about it?”

(Lundvik takes a case from the wall.)

The Doctor: “This?”

Lundvik: “That’s what you do with aliens, isn’t it? Blow them up?”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

(Helmets on, they open the airlock onto the moon’s surface. Courtney goes first. Okay, it is actually Lanzarote. At least they got to go on location - to the same place as in Planet of Fire.)

Courtney: “Wow. Wow! One small thing for a thing. One enormous thing for a thingy thing.”

Lundvik: “So much for history.”

(They leave the scorched and pretty much wrecked unnamed space shuttle and walk over to a modular settlement in a nearby crater. Courtney takes her mobile phone from a pocket and takes lots of photos, as a half-Earth hangs in the sky.)

Lundvik: “There was a mining survey, Mexicans. Something happened up here. Nobody knows what. That’s when the trouble began back on Earth. High tide everywhere at once. The greatest natural disaster in history.”

(They walk around the building. The airlock is wide open.)

Clara: “Cobwebs?”

Lundvik: “Henry, go back and prime the bombs.”

HENRY: “Er, is there any instructions?”

Lundvik: “There’s a switch on each of them. The light goes red.”

HENRY: “They won’t go off?”

Lundvik: “No, not till I fiddle with this thing.”

(The red case she has kept with her since she took it off the wall. Middle-aged Henry turns back, looking worried.)

HENRY: “Okay.”

Lundvik: “Shall we?”

The Doctor: “Is that the best you could get?”

Lundvik: “Second-hand space shuttle, third-hand astronauts.”

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==FC==

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(A remarkable lot of cobwebs for a building open to vacuum. They close the door to the corridor behind them.)

The Doctor: “How many people here?”

Lundvik: “Four. Minera Luna San Pedro. It was privately financed. They where doing a mineral survey up here.”

The Doctor: “Messages? Mayday? SOS?”

DUKE: “Pretty much all the satellites had been whacked out of orbit. They managed to send back some screams.”

The Doctor: “So then you came up here to rescue them with your bombs?”

DUKE: “Not quite.”

Lundvik: “They disappeared ten years ago.”

The Doctor: “Nobody came?”

Lundvik: “There was no shuttle.”

The Doctor: “You had one.”

Lundvik: “It was in a museum. They’d cut the back off it so kids could ride in it. We’d stopped going into space. Nobody cared. Not until-@

(Courtney screams.)

Clara: “Courtney!”

(Courtney has found a spacesuit hanging in a cocoon.)

Clara: “Oh, my God. Doctor, tell me there wasn’t anyone inside that thing.”

(He scans it with his screwdriver.) The Doctor: “I could, but it wouldn’t make it true.”

DUKE: “I’ll get some power back on.”

Clara: “Come on. Now, Courtney, come here. Don’t look. You all right?”

Courtney: “I’m okay.”

(The Doctor cuts the corpse down.)

Clara: “Hey. Look. Look at me. Look. It’s all right if you’re not.”

Courtney: “I’m fine. What did it?”

The Doctor: “Maybe something trying to find out how you’re put together. Or maybe how you tasted.”

Courtney: “Do we have guns?”

Lundvik: “Not unless you brought some.”

The Doctor: “Chicken, apparently.” (The settlement powers up.) The Doctor: “Save the air.”

(They take their helmets off. A few notes of that Psycho shower scene theme sound in the background. The Doctor powers up a computer console and looks at the survey records.)

The Doctor: “They didn’t find anything.”

Lundvik: “Eh?”

The Doctor: “The Mexicans. They didn’t find any minerals on the moon at all. Nada.” (He looks at photographs of the moon strewn on a table.) The Doctor: “Oh.”

Clara: “Oh?”

The Doctor: “Lines of tectonic stress.”

Lundvik: “That’s the Mare Fecunditatis. It’s been there since the Apollo days. It’s always been there.”

The Doctor: “No, no, no. These are much, much bigger. Sea of Tranquillity. Sea of Nectar. Sea of Ingenuity. Sea of Crises.”

Clara: “Meaning?”

(The lights flicker.) The Doctor: “Meaning, Clara, that the moon, this little planetoid that’s been tagging along beside you for a hundred million years, which gives you light at night and seas to sail on, is in the process of falling to bits.”

(Bang! Everything shakes.)

(There is a high-pitched sound and a scuttling noise.)

Courtney: “What the hell was that?”

Lundvik: “Duke, is that you?”

DUKE: “I don’t sound anything like that.”

Lundvik: “Can you try and get the lights back on?”

DUKE: “That’s what I’m doing.”

The Doctor: “Torch. Give me your torch. Whatever it is, it’s in here.”

(Sounds of running claws.)

The Doctor: “I think we’ve found your alien.”

(A giant space spider with luminous red knees heads for them down an adjoining corridor.)

The Doctor: “Back, back, back! We need a door. A door, a door!”

Clara: “Here! Here! The door’s locked.”

The Doctor: “Come on, come on! There’s no power to work it. Come on!”

Clara: “Doctor.”

(He drags them down behind the table.)

The Doctor: “Stay still. It’s sensing movement. It can’t see you. Fast movement. There must be another exit through there. Slowly. Slowly. Head to that exit. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly, slowly.” (They inch their way.)

The Doctor: “Gently, gently. When I say run, run.”

Lundvik: “Who made you the boss?”

The Doctor: “Well, you say run, then.”

Lundvik: “Duke!”

(The giant spider leaps on Duke as he comes in from another corridor.)

DUKE: “Argh!”

Lundvik: “Duke!”

(The locked door opens.)

The Doctor: “Run! We have power. Run!”

Clara: “Quick, it’s shutting.”

(The door slams shut, and Courtney is on the wrong side, because her feet are no longer in contact with the floor.)

Courtney: “Miss!”

Clara: “Courtney! Courtney!”

Courtney: “Miss!”

Clara: “Courtney! The power’s gone again.”

(Courtney is floating in mid-air.) Courtney: “It’s killed him. It’s coming in here! Doctor, it’s coming in here!”

The Doctor: “You’ll be okay!”

(Lundvik uses her communicator.) Lundvik: “Henry? Henry?”

The Doctor: “Courtney, look at me. Look at me! Courtney!”

(The spider is walking across the ceiling.) The Doctor: “Try and get to the door! Try and get yourself down here.” (The Doctor gets the glass pane out of the door.) The Doctor: “Courtney, grab my yo-yo!”

(She does, just as gravity returns and she drops to the floor. The spider rears over her and she screams, then reaches for something in her backpack.)

The Doctor: “Courtney!”

(Courtney stands and pumps something out of a bottle at the spider. The others re-enter.) Clara: “Courtney.”

Courtney: “Kills ninety nine percent of all known germs.” (The clean-up stuff she brought with her.)

The Doctor: “Good stuff, Courtney. Just don’t try that at home, okay?”

Clara: “You all right?”

Courtney: “Why did I just fly? This is nuts.”

(The Doctor scans the remains of the spider with his screwdriver.) The Doctor: “Did you say germs? Oh, God, this is incredible. Look at the size of it. It’s the size of a badger.”

Clara: “Doctor-”

The Doctor: “It’s a prokaryotic unicellular life form, with non-chromosomal DNA. Which, as you and me know. Well, not you and me. Well, you, certainly not. You and me, yes, scientists know, this is a germ. You flew because that one point three billion tonnes shifted. It moved. It’s an unstable mass.”

Courtney: “I’m scared, Miss.”

Clara: “Okay.”

(Lundvik has looked at what is left of Duke.) Lundvik: “He’d just had a grand-daughter. Elina. She was his first. He was my teacher. He taught me how to fly. We were both given the sack on the same day.”

The Doctor: “Which way to the Mare Fecunditatis?”

Courtney: “Please can I go home now? I’m really. I’m really sorry, but I’d like to go home.”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

(The Doctor leads them in single file.)

Lundvik: “Henry, come in. If you don’t mind, Henry, come in.”

Clara: “Doctor, this is dangerous now.”

“It was dangerous before. Everything’s dangerous if you want it to be.” The Doctor said. “Eating chips is dangerous, crossing the road. It’s no way to live your life. Tell her. You’re supposed to be teaching her.”

Clara: “Look, I have a duty of care, okay? You know what that is?”

The Doctor: “Course I know what a duty of care is. What are you suggesting? She’s fine. What are you, thirty five?”

Courtney: “Fifteen.”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

The Doctor: “Now, don’t touch anything.”

Courtney: “You got any games?”

The Doctor: “Oh, don’t be so stupid!”

Courtney: “Can I get reception up here?”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

(Lundvik is setting the triggers on the nuclear devices.)

The Doctor: “Get in.”

Clara: “Why are you shutting her in? We don’t need to stay, do we?”

The Doctor: “Eh?”

Clara: “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The moon doesn’t break up.”

The Doctor: “How do you know?”

Clara: “Because I’ve been in the future, and the moon is still there. I think. You know the moon is still there, right?”

The Doctor: “Maybe it isn’t the moon. Maybe it’s a hologram or a big painting, or a special effect. Maybe it’s a completely different moon.”

Clara: “But you would know.”

The Doctor: “I would?”

Clara: “If the moon fell to bits in 2049, somebody would’ve mentioned it. It would have come up in conversation. So it doesn’t break up. So the world doesn’t end. So, let’s just get in the TARDIS and go.”

The Doctor: “Clara, there are some moments in time that I simply can’t see. Little eye-blinks. They don’t look the same as other things. They’re not clear. They’re fuzzy, they’re grey. Little moments in which big things are decided. And this is one of them. Just now, I can’t tell what happens to the moon, because whatever happens to the moon hasn’t been decided yet. And it’s going to be decided here and now. Which very much sounds as though it’s up to us.”

Lundvik: “Neither of you are going anywhere. I’ve lost my crew. We were the last astronauts. This is the last shuttle, these are the last nuclear bombs. We’re the last chance for Earth, and you’re staying to help me.”

The Doctor: “Decision made.”

Clara: “Yeah.”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

(Looking down on the Mexicans’ survey and sample equipment.)

The Doctor: “What is killing the moon?”

Clara: “How can the moon die, though?”

The Doctor: “Everything does, sooner or later.”

Lundvik: “Can we save it?”

The Doctor: “Depends what’s killing it.”

Lundvik: “There are the other three.”

(They go down to the spacesuits in cobwebs near cracks in the crust.)

Clara: “Is it those germ things, then? Are they like cockroaches? Is it, is it an infestation?”

Lundvik: “Is it?”

The Doctor: “Well, I’ve only seen one of them. It would take an awful lot more to cause the moon to put on one point three billion tonnes.”

(A giant spider-germ comes out of its lair next to a spacesuit and jumps the Doctor.)

The Doctor: “Argh!”

Clara: “Doctor!”

(Clara tries the disinfectant spray.)

Lundvik: “It’s a vacuum. It won’t work.”

(They grab at its legs and get it off the Doctor’s faceplate. It scuttles back into its lair.)

The Doctor: “Well, that makes two.”

Clara: “Sunlight.”

Lundvik: “Sunlight?”

Clara: “If they’re germs. My nan says it’s the best disinfectant there is.”

The Doctor: “Shine your light down there.”

(Lundvik does. There are lots of the red-kneed germs.)

Lundvik: “Where have they come from?”

The Doctor: “Maybe they’ve been there all the time. It’s warmish. They’re multiplying, feeding, evolving.”

(They leave, rapidly.)

Lundvik: “Doctor, if the moon breaks up, it’ll kill us all in about forty five minutes.”

The Doctor: “I agree. Unless something else is going on.”

(He uses his yo-yo to get a sample from another fissure. It comes back wet)

Lundvik: “There’s no water on the moon.”

The Doctor: “It’s not water. It’s amniotic fluid. The stuff that life comes from. I’ve got to go down there.”

Lundvik: “Doctor.”

The Doctor: “Back to your shuttle. Get your bombs ready. You, get to the TARDIS. Get safe. Get Courtney safe. I will be back.”

(He takes germ killer spray from Clara.)

Clara: “What? No. Doctor. Doctor!”

(The Doctor jumps down into the fissure.)

Clara: “Doctor!”

Lundvik: “Will he?”

(Clara raises her arms in surrender, then lowers them and sighs.)

Lundvik: “Will he be back?”

Clara: “If he says so, I suppose he will.”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

Courtney: “Miss? Come in.”

Clara: “Courtney?”

Courtney: “I’m bored. When are you coming back?”

Clara: “We’re on our way. What you doing?”

Courtney: “Putting some pictures on Tumblr.”

Clara: “No! Courtney, don’t put any photos on Tumblr.”

Lundvik: “My granny used to put things on Tumblr.”

(A small moonquake makes them stagger.)

Lundvik: “There he is.”

(They have reached Henry. His helmet is open to the vacuum and he is a skeleton now. Clara looks across at the shuttle, on the opposite side of a ravine.)

Clara: “Was that where we landed? It looks so different.”

(Cracks form in the moon’s crust.)

Lundvik: “It’s going down.”

(The shuttle tumbles into the widening ravine.)

Clara: “Courtney! Doctor!”

Lundvik: “We going to have to take cover. We’re running out of oxygen.”

Clara: “Doctor!”

(He appears behind them.) The Doctor: “Today’s the day, humankind.”

(More)

==FC==

(More)

Clara: “Where’s the TARDIS?”

The Doctor: “She’s in the shuttle, isn’t she? She’ll turn up.”

Clara: “Last time you said that, she turned up on the wrong side of the planet.”

The Doctor: “You two have never gotten on, have you?”

Clara: “Look, we need to know where Courtney is.”

The Doctor: “Courtney is safe. Och. Well, do you have her phone number?”

Clara: “No, no, no. Of course I don’t have her phone number.”

The Doctor: “Well, what about the school? Does the secretary have her number?”

Clara: “I can’t. The secretary hates me. She thinks I gave her a packet of TENA Lady for Secret Santa. Look. Courtney’s posting stuff on Tumblr. Doesn’t that know where you are?”

Lundvik: “I don’t know. I’m not a historian.”

The Doctor: “Phone. I know what the problem is. Oh, she can’t post that. She can’t put pictures of me online.”

(He sonicks Clara’s phone then aims at a monitor up on the wall. Shades of the Three Doctors.)

Courtney: “Yeah?”

The Doctor: “You can’t put pictures of me online.”

Clara: “Are you okay?”

Courtney: “Er, I’m fine. What’s up?”

Lundvik: “You said you know what the problem is.”

The Doctor: “Yes, yes. It’s a rather big problem.”

Clara: “Okay, do you want to share it with the class?”

The Doctor: “Well, I had a little hypothesis. The seismic activity, the surface breaking up, the variable mass, the increase in gravity, the fluid. I scanned what’s down there.”

(He moves a mobile console and sonicks it, then creates a 3D projection of the moon.)

The Doctor: “The moon isn’t breaking apart. Well, actually, it is breaking apart, and rather quickly. We’ve got about an hour and a half. But that isn’t the problem. It’s not infested.”

Courtney: “What are they, then, those things?”

The Doctor: “Bacteria. Tiny, tiny bacteria living on something very, very big. Something that weighs about one point three billion tonnes. Something that’s living. Something growing.”

Clara: “Growing?”

The Doctor: “That.”

(He sonicks the image to show what looks very like a baby dragon curled up inside the moon.)

Courtney: “That lives under the moon?”

The Doctor: “No.”

Clara: “What?”

The Doctor: “That doesn’t live under the moon. That is the moon.”

Lundvik: “What the hell are you talking about?”

The Doctor: “The moon isn’t breaking apart. The moon is hatching.”

Clara: “Huh?”

The Doctor: “The moon’s an egg.”

Clara: “Has it, er, has it always been an egg?”

The Doctor: “Yes, for a hundred million years or so. Just, just growing. Just getting ready to be born.”

Clara: “Okay. So the moon has never been the moon?”

The Doctor: “No, no, no, no. It’s never been dead. It’s just taking a long time to come alive.”

Courtney: “Is it a chicken?”

The Doctor: “No!”

Courtney: “Cos, for a chicken to have laid an egg that big ”

The Doctor: “Courtney, don’t spoil the moment.”

Clara: “Doctor, what is it?”

The Doctor: “I think that it’s unique. I think that’s the only one of its kind in the universe. I think that that is utterly beautiful.”

Lundvik: “How do we kill it?”

Clara: “Why’d you want to kill it?”

Courtney: “It’s a little baby.”

Lundvik: “Doctor, how do we kill it?”

The Doctor: “Kill the moon?”

(Lundvik nods. He turns off the hologram.)

The Doctor: “Kill the moon. Well, you have about a hundred of the best man-made nuclear weapons, if they still work. If that’s what you want to do.”

Clara: “Doctor, wait”

Lundvik: “Will that do it?”

The Doctor: “A hundred nuclear bombs set off right where we are, right on top of a living, vulnerable creature? It’ll never feel the sun on its back.”

Lundvik: “And then what? Will the moon still break up? You said, you said we had an hour and a half?”

The Doctor: “Well, there’ll be nothing to make it break up. There will be nothing trying to force its way out. The gravity of the little dead baby will pull all the pieces back together again. Of course, it won’t be very pretty. You’d have an enormous corpse floating in the sky. You might have some very difficult conversations to have with your kids.”

Lundvik: “I don’t have any kids.”

Clara: “Stop. Right, listen. This is a, this is a life. I mean, this must be the biggest life in the universe.”

Courtney: “It’s not even been born.”

Lundvik: “It is killing people. It is destroying the Earth.”

Clara: “You cannot blame a baby for kicking.”

Lundvik: “Let me tell you something. You want to know what I took back from being in space? Look at the edge of the Earth. The atmosphere, that is paper thin. That is the only thing that saves us all from death. Everything else, the stars, the blackness. That’s all dead. Sadly, that is the only life any of us will ever know.”

Courtney: “There’s life here. There’s life just next door.”

Lundvik: “Look, when you’ve grown up a bit, you’ll realize that everything doesn’t have to be nice. Some things are just bad. Anyway, you ran away. It’s none of your business.”

Courtney: “Doctor, I want to come back.”

Clara: “Courtney, you’ll be safer where you are.”

(Lundvik enters the code to start the countdown on the bombs.)

Courtney: “Doctor, I’m sorry. I want to come back, okay? I want to help.”

The Doctor: “Ah, there’s some DVDs on the blue book shelf. Just stick one into the TARDIS console. That’ll bring you to me.”

Courtney: “Right.”

The Doctor: “And make sure you hang on to the console, otherwise the TARDIS will leave you behind.”

Clara: “So what do we do? Doctor? Huh? Doctor, what do we do?”

The Doctor: “Nothing.”

Clara: “What?”

The Doctor: “We don’t do anything. I’m sorry, Clara. I can’t help you.”

Clara: “Of course you can help.”

The Doctor: “The Earth isn’t my home. The moon’s not my moon. Sorry.”

Clara: “Come on. Hey.”

The Doctor: “Listen, there are moments in every civilisation’s history in which the whole path of that civilisation is decided. The whole future path. Whatever future humanity might have depends upon the choice that is made right here and right now. Now, you’ve got the tools to kill it. You made them. You brought them up here all on your own, with your own ingenuity. You don’t need a Time Lord. Kill it. Or let it live. I can’t make this decision for you.”

Clara: “Yeah, well, I can’t make it.”

The Doctor: “Well, there’s two of you here.”

Clara: “Well, yeah. A school teacher and an astronaut.”

The Doctor: “Who’s better qualified?”

Clara: “I don’t know! The President of America.”

The Doctor: “Oh, take something off his plate. He makes far too many decisions anyway.”

Lundvik: “She.”

The Doctor: “She. Sorry. She hasn’t even been into space. She hasn’t been to another planet. How would she even know what to do?”

Clara: “I am asking you for help.”

The Doctor: “Listen, we went to dinner in Berlin in 1937, right? We didn’t nip out after pudding and kill Hitler. I’ve never killed Hitler. And you wouldn’t expect me to kill Hitler. The future is no more malleable than the past.”

Clara: “Okay, don’t you do this to make some kind of point.”

The Doctor: “Sorry. Well, actually, no, I’m not sorry. It’s time to take the stabilizers off your bike. It’s your moon, womankind. It’s your choice.”

Clara: “And you’re just going to stand there?”

The Doctor: “Absolutely not.”

(The TARDIS arrives, and Courtney comes out.)

Clara: “Doctor?”

The Doctor: “A teenager, an astronaut and a schoolteacher.”

Lundvik: “Hang on a minute. We can get in there, can’t we? You can sort it out with that thing.”

The Doctor: “No. Some decisions are too important not to make on your own.”

Clara: “Doctor. Doctor? Doctor!”

(The Doctor goes into the TARDIS and shuts the door. It dematerializes.)

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==FC==

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“Get. Her. Back.” I growled at him, tears still pouring on my cheeks.

The Doctor kept his face stern. “Did you hear that woman? She was willing to kill the moon. Who knows what she would do if she found out about you. I am not going to risk my child!”

“You do not get to use that on me!” I shouted. “It is my child too, and I have already lost one. I won’t lose another one!”

The Doctor frowned.

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==FC==

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“Detonation aborted.”

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(The TARDIS materializes.)

The Doctor: “One, two, three, into the TARDIS.”

Lundvik: “What’s happening?”

The Doctor: “Let’s go and have a look, shall we?”

(The Doctor sets the TARDIS flying.)

Lundvik: “Bloody idiots. Bloody irresponsible idiots.”

(The Doctor walks over to her.) The Doctor: “Mind your language, please. There are children present.” He glanced at me. I nervously waved at him, my other hand resting on my stomach.

Lundvik: “You should have left me there, let me die. I wanted to die up there with the universe in front of me, not being crushed to death on Earth.”

The Doctor: “Nobody’s going to die.”

Lundvik: “Could you please let us see what’s happening?”

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==FC==

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(The TARDIS lands on a Lanzarote beach below a full moon in a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The moon is falling apart as the baby spreads its wings.)

Courtney: “What’s it doing?”

(There is a faint image of a giant winged creature in the sky, making noises.)

The Doctor: “It’s feeling the sun on itself. It’s getting warm. The chick flies away and the eggshell disintegrates. Harmless.”

Clara: “Did you know?”

The Doctor: “You made your decision. Humanity made its choice.”

Lundvik: “No, we ignored humanity.”

The Doctor: “Well, there you go.”

Lundvik: “So what happens now, then? Tell me what happens now.”

(The Doctor turns his back on them and closes his eyes briefly.)

The Doctor: “In the mid-twenty first century humankind starts creeping off into the stars, spreads its way through the galaxy to the very edges of the universe. And it endures till the end of time.”

(He turns back to them,)

The Doctor: “And it does all that because one day in the year 2049, when it had stopped thinking about going to the stars, something occurred that make it look up, not down. It looked out there into the blackness and it saw something beautiful, something wonderful, that for once it didn’t want to destroy. And in that one moment, the whole course of history was changed. Not bad for a girl from Coal Hill School, and her teacher.”

Courtney: “Oh, my gosh. It laid a new egg. It’s beautiful. Doctor, it’s beautiful.”

The Doctor: “That’s what we call a new moon.”

(A blank white round thing in the sky waiting for fresh meteorites to start decorating its surface.)

Courtney: “You can be the first woman on that.”

The Doctor: “I think that somebody deserves a thank you.”

Lundvik: “Yeah, probably.” (to Clara) “Thank you. Thank you for stopping me. Thank you for giving me the moon back.”

The Doctor: “Okay, Captain. Well, you’ve got a whole new space programme to get together. NASA is er, it’s that way. About two and a half thousand miles. (to Courtney) You still got your vortex manipulators? I’ll give you a run home.”

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(Courtney and Clara come back upstairs from below the console after getting changed back into their school clothes. The Doctor is dropping books on the steps to the gallery.)

The Doctor: “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you did the right thing.”

Clara: “Yeah, you’re right. It’s none of your business. Come on, Courtney, off you go. Double Geography.”

Courtney: “Can we do it again?”

Clara: “Go. Go, go. Chop chop.”

(Courtney leaves the TARDIS, and the Doctor sets it flying. Clara stops it.)

Clara: “Tell me what you knew.”

The Doctor: “Nothing. I told you, I’ve got grey areas.”

Clara: “Yeah. I noticed. Tell me what you knew, Doctor, or else I’ll smack you so hard you’ll regenerate.”

The Doctor: “I knew that eggs are not bombs. I know they don’t usually destroy their nests. Essentially, what I knew was that you would always make the best choice. I had faith that you would always make the right choice.”

Clara: “Honestly, do you have music playing in your head when you say rubbish like that?”

The Doctor: “It wasn’t my decision to make. I told you.”

Clara: “Well, why did you do it? Was it for Courtney, was that it?”

The Doctor: “Well, she really is something special now, isn’t she? First woman on the moon, saved the Earth from itself, and, rather bizarrely, she becomes the President of the United States. She met this bloke called Blinovitch”

Clara: “Do you know what? Shut up! I am so sick of listening to you!”

The Doctor: “Well, I didn’t do it for Courtney. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Do you think I’m lying?”

(Clara is crying with rage.)

Clara: “I don’t know. I don’t know. If you didn’t do it for her, I mean. Do you know what? It was, it was cheap, it was pathetic. No, no, no. It was patronising. That was you patting us on the back, saying, you’re big enough to go to the shops by yourself now. Go on, toddle along.”

The Doctor: “No, that was me allowing you to make a choice about your own future. That was me respecting you.”

Clara: “Oh, my God, really? Was it? Yeah, well, respected is not how I feel.”

The Doctor: “Right. Okay. Er.”

Clara: “I nearly didn’t press that button. I nearly got it wrong. That was you, my friend, making me scared. Making me feel like a bloody idiot.”

The Doctor rested a hand over my stomach, as if to cover the baby’s ears. I rolled my eyes at the childish gesture, smiling fondly all the same. “Language.”

Clara: “Oh, don’t you ever tell me to mind my language. Don’t you ever tell me to take the stabilizers off my bike. And don’t you dare lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable. You walk our Earth, Doctor, you breathe our air. You make us your friend, and that is your moon too. And you can damn well help us when we need it.”

The Doctor: “I was helping.”

Clara: “What, by clearing off?”

The Doctor: “Yes.”

Clara: “Yeah, well, clear off! Go on. You can clear off. Get back in your lonely, your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don’t come back.”

The Doctor: “Clara. Clara.”

Clara: “You go away. Okay? You go a long way away.”

(Clara slams the door shut behind her. The TARDIS dematerializes as she leaves the store cupboard, leaving a few papers flying around in the resulting breeze as the air rushes into the hole it has left.)

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==FC==

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It was ocean blue, going down to my knees and flowing. Just above my waist, I had some golden intricate belt. Underneath, I had some gray pants. Then there were some black boots. Around my upper arms, I had some more gold bands. Around my neck was a golden necklace. Finally, there was the Infinity Bag.

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The Doctor kissed me again. It was hard, and it was deep. I couldn’t help but moan.

Then, I jumped away.