(Ruinous Time): The Spider Cut

The Spider Cut


Conventional wisdom has it that the Doctor's body is destroyed by the radiation in the Great One's cave - but he's well enough to escape from the mountain and make it back to the Tardis. I suggest that the radiation poisoning is slow-acting and cumulative. In Love and War, we learn that it takes ten years for the Doctor's body to slowly decay before he makes it back to UNIT HQ, which seems to back up this assumption, and gives us scope for additional adventures during the early stages of the radiation poisoning.

- Andrew Kearley, eyespider.org.uk


Arachnophobia was invented in the year 1,000,000BC by the Meddling Monk, when he beat a spider to death with his shoe in front of a group of cavemen. Before the unfortunate intervention of the time traveller, the race of men and the race of spiders lived peacefully in the African wilderness, minding their own business and only occasionally mingling on the event of a bountiful harvest or a protest against locusts.

One morning, a tribe of men and a tribe of spiders sat on opposite sides of the river Nile, enjoying the way the flowing water lapped at the dry sand and made it soft and pleasant to sit on. Spiders scuttled across the dense foliage, ever-changing patterns of black on green. Two women hurled the legs of a deerskin into the water, and begun to peel away the remaining flesh and bone. They washed the pelt and hung it to dry, as the spiders on the opposite side of the bank spun webs from canopy to canopy. Tiny white strands glistened in the light, like thin strings made from the river water, and frozen solid at the moment the sun caught them at the right angle for them to gleam and shine.

The Monk was a Time Lord, one big on the self-importance that came with ‘Lord’ but not so much the responsibility that came with ‘Time’. He landed his craft in a nearby clearing, and had been collecting things he deemed interesting while wiping his brow with a cloth and grumbling about the heat, in all the manner of a stuffy tourist. Zipping about through space and time had given him a penchant for grumbling. And grumble he did. Grumbling about the disease in ancient India, the cold in future Antarctica, the rules of time he barely understood and the widespread religion he had always needed as a crutch to be respected. Grumble grumble. All the ideas he came up with were so much better than the ideas anyone else came up with, but they never worked. That didn’t even make any sense. Wouldn’t you grumble?

He wasn’t sure what he was doing in 1,000,000BC. He wasn’t even sure it was 1,000,000BC. His time coordinate displayer (labelled so with a Post-It note) only had four digits to it.


The sight of the Nile eased the Monk’s grumbling. Emerging from the jungle onto the riverbank, he saw women washing pelts and children playing. He smiled, despite himself. He even gave the sweltering summer heat a brief pass as he thought about the prospect of bathing in the cool water himself. He placed his objects of interest into his pockets and waved at the tribespeople on the opposite side of the bank.

There was an itch at his wrist. Startled by the sudden movement, the Monk jumped a little, and saw the long marching legs and beady, black body of a spider, making its way up the length of his forearm. It was almost at his elbow now. Fast little thing. The Monk performed an unceremonious wriggle and the spider plopped onto the sand.

Lifting his left foot up towards his torso, he removed his shoe. With a single tap, the spider died.

From there, the traditional sequence of ‘man turns around, man sees writhing mass of spiders, man runs away’ took place, with little deviation from the expected. He did put his shoe back on, though.


- - - - -


“Oh, good grief.” The Doctor stumbled out of the TARDIS, and fell to his knees. His eyes were swimming in metaphors, his vision was blurred and there was an acute pain behind his forehead like the shrill scream of a faraway vulture. He tried adjusting to his environment by keeping his head still, and that seemed to work. It took some significant effort to keep his neck straight, like his great bouffant of grey-white hair was a block of iron weighing his head down, all but slamming into the floor.

Good grief. Why had he said that? Snoopy didn’t seem to be around. There were no military men marching and throwing some alien artifact about, that tended to annoy him. No obvious shady facilities harbouring some great secret.

In fact, as he basked in the ominous blue glow of his landing spot and traced the rough, rocky ground with his hands, the Doctor didn’t know why he had even spoken at all. He continued to stroke the ground like a drunk archeologist for a while longer, until his vision cleared slightly.

“Oh, good grief.” The radiation poisoning seemed to have limited his vocabulary somewhat, but he thought it appropriate. He leapt to his feet and stared at the sky, his lips curling into an aware grimace. A small, blue marble sat in a nest of clouds, clouds that writhed and wriggled and folded outwards until they looked like the eight limbs of a spider. It hung in the sky like it was suspended from a string, and seemed to lower itself towards the Doctor, who stumbled backwards and yelled in surprise. He took a glance behind him to avoid tripping, and when he looked back at the sky, Metebelis III seemed almost peaceful. Melancholy macabre, he thought to himself.

Almost like an ocean planet, the surface seemed to boast a million and one shades of blue. Gorges and mountains and seas and forests, all indigo and turquoise and aquamarine and verdigris. It seemed almost cheating, like a false advertisement. At least the giant spider showed some honesty.

Time to get to work. There was only one planet in the system the Doctor could be on where Metebelis III was so close.

Metebelis IV.


His TARDIS, somehow managing to stand out amongst the blue sky and the blue dirt it was nestled in, spat out a harsh thrumming noise. It wasn’t the groaning and coughing of the antiquated engine. It wasn’t even the toaster ding reverberating off twenty-seven different corridors.

The Doctor raised his hand to his chin. “Oh I’m so sorry, old girl.”

He had a faint memory of cave walls folding in on themselves, a high pitched shrieking laughter that devolved into screams of pain, and a glowing crystal, radiating so much blue you’d have thought it had dyed the whole solar system with it. And he had held onto the TARDIS telepathic circuits, almost crushing the plating between his straining fingers, the veins bulging. Those were blue too, like some of the planet had infected him. The blue crystal, the blue cave, the blue mountain range exploding in a ball of flame, flame that, no doubt, burned blue at its heart. He hated the colour. The very idea of it. And as he looked at his hands as they gripped the telepathic circuits, thinking home, home, home, he couldn’t help but fixate on the veins beneath his wrinkled skin.

His vision was blurring, his knees about to buckle any second. All the Doctor could be sure of were his hands. He tightened his grip, although he knew a light touch sufficed. Home, home, home. He heard a crack come from the console, and despite that, all he could think about was blue, and that the blue in his veins clearly meant the planet had infected him and would never leave. His brain seared. His muscles ached.

The radiation poisoning was taking effect.


He had landed. The word infection had flashed through his brain in a hundred and three different fonts although he knew it was a ridiculous idea to begin with. Flexing his fingertips and then spiralling his wrist, the Doctor found that actually, his brain didn’t sear. His muscles didn’t ache. The cloister bell began to ring, a harsh tolling that made him dizzy.

He jumped. A spluttering noise had come from the telepathic circuits, and a yellow goop was beginning to ooze from the cracks he had made with the force of his fingers. Drip, drip, drip. It fell to the ground, a pus yellow against the sterile white of the console room floor.

Falling backwards, the TARDIS doors parted to let him hit the ground outside.


Caressing the floor. Spider planet illusion thing. The Doctor snapped himself back to the present. He had probably given his vehicle radiation poisoning. Ah. He stroked his hand down the side of the police box door, and began to walk in the opposite direction.


- - - - -


God was dead. Tristan Arachnus let the ice cold water splash over his face, then remembered the pipes had burst the day before as soon as lukewarm, clammy water left his palms and slapped him between the eyes. Grabbing a towel, he dried off to the chorus of smalltalk in the hall next door. The town of Thorax had not exactly collapsed into anarchy in the past hour, but given that the only thing stopping it from doing so was a sermon from the local priest to confirm that God wasn’t dead, it might as well have.

Adjusting his sapphire cufflinks, Tristan opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the abdomen of the church. Two hundred eyes stared at him in anticipation, many churchgoers with six additional eyes tattooed onto their faces to better resemble the spider goddess that definitely wasn’t dead.

He cleared his throat and adjusted the microphone on his lectern, a dusty wooden stump fashioned into twenty spiders all sat on each other’s backs.

“In the name of the Great One, her Many Partners She Has Consumed, and Their Potential Million Children, we will begin.”

Silence.

“I have sinned. I think it is important to acknowledge such a thing, as we are all imperfect in the eyes of the Great One, and must be absolved. I do not believe I will be absolved today. Or any other day. I confess before you all, when I have thought of the Great One in this past hour, I have thought of her as a spider.”

A collective gasp echoed around the hall, a soft but cutting noise, like a thousand spiders scuttling down a silk curtain.

“The might of the Eight Legs has endured for some indeterminate amount of time now. And it has been a glorious indeterminate amount of time. We have spun the heretics in webs and thrown them into the canyon.”

“For the Great One,” the crowd replied. A reminder of some good old community violence had raised their spirits somewhat.

“We have fed them to the birds that lurk in the mountains.”

“For the Great One!”

“We have torn off their arms and stapled them to their terrorist leaders so their leaders could die with eight legs instead of the mortal two.”

“For the Great One!”

“But I fear her reign may be over. An indeterminate amount of time ago, a member of our race built the device that received the telepathic calling of our goddess the Great One.”

“All praise to the Great One.”

“It is fitting, then, that another member of our race should be gazing up at Metebelis III with another device, a telescope, to witness the end of our most sacred religion. A full circle, like the globular body of a spider. And yes, I say spider and not Eight Legs. The explosion of the Great One’s mountain cavern was a small one, and yet it sent ripples through my soul, as I fear... the Great One is dead, and her power is nothing. Gone. A mere dead spider when once she was a goddess.”

A gasp from the crowd.

“So. Does anyone have anything else we could start worshipping? I’m open to suggestions.”


- - - - -


The sign read ‘Thorax’, and it swayed in the wind. The Doctor had removed his velvet jacket and wrapped it around his waist, and from jacket downwards he was covered in dust. Metebelis III sat hidden behind a mountain. He had walked for hours.

The sign was of respectable craftsmanship, engraved in a lilac wood and mounted from two chains beneath what looked like a lifeguard’s podium. A town opened up a few metres away. It was on fire.


The air began to spark and fizzle, and the Doctor shielded his eyes with a limp, tired hand. A light flashed blue for an instant, and the Doctor frowned. He lowered his hand. A spider was sat there, in the shade of the podium, with spindly legs stretching a metre long each. It’s skin was rubbery, and it’s eyes piercing.

“Doctor! Do you think you have escaped the Great One?” The spider’s voice was unbearably shrill - each word was a whisper and a scream at once. No, not a spider. An Eight Legs.

“Impossible. How can you be here?”

“We Eight Legs travel through the power of religious offence. Like the insensitive Buddhist chanting through which we materialised on your Earth, so we appear here. There is heresy in this town. Blasphemy against the Great One!”

“I’m sorry, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a seat. I feel lightheaded, and like you’re going to be explaining a great deal to me.” The Doctor’s journey had taken him across valleys and forests, fields and deserts. He was not in the mood for exposition being screeched at him. He wiped sweat from his brow, and found a nearby rock. The Eight Legs scuttled over to him. Maybe I was right about the planet infecting me, the Doctor thought. Would he never be free of the infernal spiders?

“I was the only one to escape the cave of the Great One! Everyone else screamed as the power of the crystal washed over my people and massacred them!”

“They were pure evil. Your Great One, as you call her, is a slaver, and a warmongering, power-hungry lunatic. I shall be the ruler of the entire universe, indeed. She had to be stopped.”

“You are dying. You gave your life to destroy her,” said the Eight Legs.

“Yes. Yes I did. It was the right thing to do.”

“Your people made us the way we are.”

“What? It was the crystals. The radiation from the crystals. They mutated you, emphasised the fear humans have for you.”

“That fear has not always been there.”

“It’s only natural. Harming you isn’t, but inside every human there is a fear that has evolved over a thousand thousand generations. A fear of spiders. Acting on that fear by killing you is their choice. A wrong choice, no doubt.”

“Then you admit you made the wrong choice by killing the Great One and my people?” The Eight Legs was twitching, it’s legs causing the dust and rocks around its feet to vibrate slightly.

“Your average spider isn’t a war criminal.”

“We are not spiders. We are Ei-“

“Oh do be quiet! You’re all ridiculous, anyway. Petty, monstrous. Quite immature too, yes. I faced my fear in that cave. Before this occasion I had never sacrificed myself. I had died of old age. I had been executed by my own people. Today I set forth to give my life to stop injustice. Direct action. Even now I feel the radiation coursing through my blood. My death could take years. It could take minutes.”

“You think you are brave.”

“On this occasion, yes. Not always. Hardly ever, really. But now, I suppose so.”

“Humans fear us because of cowardice.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Not the cowardice of humanity.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Our ancestors from the Earth planet were visited by a Time Lord. He killed one of our people in view of the Two Legs Earthmen. At the time, we did not know he was no human. Your people look so similar to Earthmen. It broke the peace.”

“Who was this Time Lord?” The Doctor had a terrible feeling. He had always known this incarnation would feel his death at the hands of his greatest enemy. “It was the Master, wasn’t it?”

“Who?”

“A man with a dark goatee. Olive skin. A glare that can melt the very flesh from your bones. Dressed from head to toe in black.”

“The radiation from the crystals in the cave did not only magnify our hunger, our size, and the Two Legs’ fear in us. It gave us our powers. The ability to travel through space and time in the presence of questionable relgious politics. In our culture, we see this as a sign that the progenitor of the hate between the Eight Legs and the Two Legs was himself, a man of religious insensitivity.”

The Doctor erupted in raucous, raspy laughter. “The Meddling Monk. He has well and truly done it this time.”

“You know this man?”

“I do.”

“Then you are an associate. The Late One was clear on what to do if an associate of the Time Lord was found. Doctor, I sentence you to die.”

The Eight Legs sprung from its hind legs, and leapt into the air. It grabbed onto the frills of the Doctor’s shirt.


“ODIN IS A FALSE GOD,” the Doctor bellowed. There was a bright flash of blue light, and the Doctor disappeared and reappeared almost exactly where he was a second ago. The Eight Legs was still wrapped around his chest. The Doctor kicked off the rock he was sat on, and performed a clunky backflip, tossing the flailing spider into the dirt behind him.

Landing on his feet, the Doctor curled his lips into a wry smile. “It seems the religious insensitivity is right here, my dear fellow. No need to be going anywhere.” He dusted off his trousers.

Building to a sprint, the spider started, and lunged once more at the Doctor, who punched it out of the air with his left arm, already ducking to pick up a rock with his right. “Where are you trying to take me, eh? Back to the Great One’s cave, I would imagine.”

The Eight Legs did not reply, only prowl. Left to right. Right to left. They circled each other in silence, the Doctor still clutching at his stone. The town of Thorax crackled and spat faintly in the background. He briefly wondered what had happened to it.

A shot of indigo dust and sand flew up into the air, as the spider kicked its back legs. It was a feint. The Doctor barely flinched. They kept circling each other. Without breaking eye contact, the Doctor untied his jacket from his waist, and slipped his arms through the sleeves.

“AKI-DAAAAAAA,” shouted the Doctor. The spider gave a jump, part fright and part confusion. The Doctor threw the stone to his left, and jumped at the Eight Legs as it predictably skittered to the right. He grabbed it from the front and twisted it around. It kicked and squirmed, and squirmed some more. It felt slimy to touch, a slime caked in flakes of mud and tiny stones. Slippery and rough at once. Its back legs tensed and it flailed the other six around, hoping to make space and slip out of the Doctor’s grasp. The Doctor stumbled around, trying to keep still.


With a sudden movement, the Doctor let go of his arachnid attacker, and clapped his hands around either side of its head. He felt their minds become one and the same. He felt the spider beginning to summon enough psychic energy to teleport. At the moment of the blue flash that cracked the vortex like an egg before zipping it up again, he yelled “MONTY PYTHON’S HOLY GRAIL IS A GREAT FILM AND I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.” The result was the same as before - a short hop a few inches to the right, and nothing more. A lavender cloud of dust erupted around them at the force of take-off and landing at the same time. The Doctor focused his mind, and pressed on either side of the spider’s head. “You’re not going anywhere, old chap. Unless I take you there.”


- - - - -


The sight of the Nile eased the Monk’s grumbling. Emerging from the jungle onto the riverbank, he saw women washing pelts and children playing. He smiled, despite himself. He even gave the sweltering summer heat a brief pass as he thought about the prospect of bathing in the cool water himself. He placed his objects of interest into his pockets and waved at the tribespeople on the opposite side of the bank.

There was an itch at his wrist. Startled by the sudden movement, the Monk jumped a little, and saw the long marching legs and beady, black body of a spider, making its way up the length of his forearm.

“It seems the Great One’s wisdom was right for once,” said the Doctor. He still clutched at the Eight Legs, and had ridden it across the vortex, the millennia beating at his skin like steel raindrops and clawing into his ears, his nostrils, the pores under his eyes. He felt youthful. “The religious insensitivity. The definite article, centuries before religion came to Earth in the first place. Appropriating the modest and studious and pious, all to prat around through history like a stuffy child. What are you even doing here?”

The Monk’s expression was blank. The little spider crawled up his forearm and into the sleeve of his garb. It seemed suddenly insignificant next to the beast the Doctor cradled, all eight limbs still squirming and squeezing and striking at the air. They were both caked in what looked like dark blue caster sugar.

The Monk took a step back in fear, and fell into the Nile with a loud splash. He began flailing around in the water, both humans and spiders eyeing him curiously from their sides of the river. He yelped as his garb caught on a branch at the surface of the bed. Grunting and gargling as water washed over him, the Monk paddled and tried to break himself free. The washerwomen had known the true speed of the Nile, as blood from the skinned deer flew down the river bend in seconds. The water seemed choppy and aggressive now, where the light and smooth surface had before made it seem slow. The Monk kept flailing, creating ripples wherever he moved. Gallons of water rushed past him, some pouring down his gullet as he struggled to keep afloat.

The Doctor absentmindedly threw the Eight Legs to one side as he dived in to rescue him. “You idiot! What are you doing, man! Grab my hand!” The Nile turned bluer than it had ever looked, as the mud of Metebelis IV dissolved in alien water and dyed the river, spreading shades of indigo and turquoise like mottled paint dumped in by the gallon. Wading slowly and carefully, the Doctor approached the Monk. He tugged at the Monk’s garb, and it wouldn’t come loose. There was a slight blue flash from the bank that surely meant his way out had gone. He tugged harder. He felt for the branch that was snagging him. He twisted it, as he struggled to stay anchored into the soil of the riverbed. He tensed his legs as hard as he could, the entire Nile beating down on him. “Come on man, come on!” He grunted in frustration. And again. But as the flowing water silenced the surefire snapping noise, the Doctor and the Monk were cut loose, and began to tumble down the Nile, limbs intertwined. The two Time Lords bobbed up and down, mercilessly trying to balance in a way so they stayed afloat. He had nothing to fear in that cave, the Doctor realised. Endangering his life for others had become second nature to him. If he had to die, his body was ready to go. It had become a reflex. But did it have to be the Monk?


A village sped past them, as did dozens of trees. Hundreds. The waters rushed past them, and each attempt to grab onto the side of the riverbank was met with a wet splash and a throatful of sandy water that stung and burned. They were approaching a rock now. The Monk squealed quietly to himself. Until the rock opened up. Then he was reduced to silence once again, eyes agape and mouth twisted into a crooked half-grin that left his cheeks wrinkling and contorting with confusion and sand. A bright light emerged from the rock, and the Nile parted, the rush of water tearing into two at the very sight of the glowing column. The Doctor raised an arm to shield his eyes from the burning doorway, and the Time Lords plunged in.


“Yes, I wondered when you’d be showing up.” It took a second for the Doctor’s eyes to adjust, but the dark shadow that cast itself over a room of sentinel roundels, hands tucked neatly behind itself and piercing eyes glancing casually at an array of buttons could only be one person. The Monk shuffled backwards on the sodden control room floor at the sight of the immaculate, bearded figure: the Master.

“And,” the Master began. He pushed a lever down and tapped at some keyboard buttons with a stiff finger. “Timeline erased. You are welcome, my dear Doctor. How undignified it would be for you to die at the hands of rabble such as young Mortimus here.”

“You idiot,” the Doctor spat. “This is a fixed point in time! The genesis of the human-spider relationship as it is known throughout the universe!”

The interjection of the word “what” was the extent of the Monk’s input.

The Master frowned. “Here? Fixed points in time? Unlikely. History right now is boring. People hitting sticks together and juggling sticks and beating each other with sticks. Time has... no interest in this part of Her dominion.”

“I really don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, my dear Doctor, I think I do.” With a dramatic flourish, he turned his body, revealing eight distinct blotches of cyan grime, and clinging to each one, a wiry limb of the Eight Legs, digging into the back of the Master’s Nehru jacket.

And digging into its back, a throwing knife.

It fell to the floor, and gave a defeated squeak. The Master stumbled, and was left lying on the moist ground next to his fellow bewildered Time Lords. The Master’s TARDIS hummed peacefully.

From out of the corner appeared a man - a well-dressed, very familiar man with a hopelessly wet smoking jacket and flattened mop of grey-white hair. The Doctor.

The new Doctor smirked and began delivering some frightfully clever quip, but the Master removed a shoe and lobbed it at him. He continued, nonetheless. “This is getting ridiculous. I’ve come to help.”

“You’ve come to die.” The new Doctor fell to the floor, a bullet wound in his head. A third Doctor, one who was neither drenched nor dead appeared from another corner. “You’re all in great trouble.” This Doctor sported sunglasses, and was holding a pistol, smoke rising from the end of the shaft. “You all need to-“

The sentence lodged in his throat, as did the head of the axe. A fourth Doctor, neither drenched nor shot nor beheaded, appeared from a fourth corner. His face was bound with a dirty mask, a yellowing fragment of bone decorated with silver trimmings that seemed to shift with each small movement. “This timeline has been corrupted. Once by the Doctor, again by the Master, and now by-“

He died.


It went on for some time like this until the problem was eventually, solved, I suppose. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it’s a La La Land situation, where this version is simply a fantasy experienced by the Doctor as he daydreams about what could have been in a world where his final adventure was more exciting. Maybe it’s all an elaborate setup, and the Monk is going to make use of the Eight Legs’ ability to track the Monk and invade his privacy to make a point about DuckDuckGo, or NordVPN. Maybe everything happened, and the Time War undid it. Or undid it, redid it and undid it again. Maybe it was Brax. Maybe it was the War Chief, who was the Master, and the Monk, and Tristan Arachnus, and the dead deer the washerwomen were preparing.

Moral of the story

- no racism

Go home.