Doctor Who and The Countryfile Conundrum: A Target Novelization

 

Part One: Rhiannon

Gallifrey both does and doesn’t exist. It’s like Schrodinger’s Cat, except instead of knowing when it’s observed or whatever it sort of just doesn’t exist sometimes whenever it feels like it. It’s gotten lost in all the continuity over the years. It’s hard to keep track of whether it’s blown up or not, it does tend to happen on the regular. People keep bringing it back too, so it’s sort of gotten like a little tug of war game, and so the planet itself just doesn’t exist whenever it remembers it’s supposed to not exist, and vice versa. This is very problematic for those who live on Gallifrey, but being Time Lords, they’ve invented a fix-it. The technology, a new phase coil, allows them to exist in nonexistence itself. It's rather like normal life, except everything is shadowy and sometimes you hear the voices of the damned. This isn't about that. This is about the people outside Gallifrey. 

The Renegades are all you ever hear about, regrettably. Gallifrey hates bad press, but it's true, once you achieve near Utopian Society (operating word being near) You only hear about the problems with it. You hear about the Doctor, and you hear about The Master. But this isn't about the Master. You occasionally can hear about The Monk or The Eleven, but only if it's an audio drama, and also time to time you can hear about The Rani, but only if it's the 80s. This isn't about any of them. This is about Romana. Mostly. At least these few paragraphs. 

Technically speaking, Former President Romana wasn't supposed to be in office. She was in a pocket dimension or something. But she wasn't, that was something she'd given up. It was bad for the spine. 

"Sardonia," she asked a plucky young intern who definitely wouldn't go on to do many ridiculous things in future stories, "Do you know where the Activity Reports have gone to?"

"All filed, Ma'am," Sardonia replied.

Romana opened up the files on her holo-display. There was nothing to say about them. Gallifrey was blisteringly ordinary, positively sedate, which made her slightly curious as to whether Rassilon or Borusa or Morbius or somebody was going to rise from the dead to wage war on the cosmos. They tended to do that. 

But no, Rassilon was sleeping the great sleep, Borusa was a skeleton, Morbius wasn't a big deal and Carionix the Unimaginable was currently not being imagined. Incidentally, Please don't think about Carionix. It's a very bad thing to do. 

All of this was fine. All of this was very very fine, all of this had to be fine, and Romana did have those Presidential Duties, but also she did wish there was something more to be had than the ornate gold-looking alloy of Time Lord offices. Damn it all to hell, she was feeling nostalgic. 

She considered voicing these thoughts to Sardonia, but decided against it. One had to maintain an atmosphere of stability in politics. How exactly did she get into politics? She was a good person, that was a prerequisite against doing this sort of thing, but yes, she'd been doing politics for the last four centuries. And rather jaded it made her feel too. 

"Sardonia, would you care for some tea?" Romana asked.

"What is tea?"

"An Earth Beverage." Romana said, calmly. "You might like it." And she looked at Sardonia's bitter expression, and her yellow stained lips, and she decided that tea wasn't something Sardonia might like, but in fact, mandatory. 

She had only just got out the Fine China when the Maroth battle-fleet emerged from hyperspace and vaporized the entire planet.

* * *

The TARDIS doors rushed open with a scattering clamor as The Doctor and Danny careened into the central console room.  

"What was that?!!?" Danny shrieked, because there really wasn't much else to say about it. 

The thing pried open the TARDIS doors, and extended it's long bright orange, stilt-like mandibles into the TARDIS control room. 

The Doctor screamed like a little boy, running out of the console room and into the TARDIS hallways, her black skirt and white jacket moving so fast that for a moment it looked like a cloak full of Zebra. 

The thing finally managed to pull itself inside the cavernous central room, looking about with it's no eyes. It's long stilt like pinchers (or pelipeds) came to a canopy atop, where a sort of crustacean like shell rested. It's mandibles jittered. It hobbled around the room with great anger, roaring at nothing in particular. It kicked over a bookshelf of Calvin and Hobbes. 

"What is it!!?" Danny yelled, but the Doctor had left the room completely. If the Doctor was there, she could have explained that sometimes the TARDIS landed on places that just had frankly hostile ordinary animals, and there wasn't really anything diabolical going on, but The Doctor wasn't there, she was running away. 

Danny for a quick few seconds wondered if he was about to die, and concluded that yes, indeed he was, the thing with the stilt claws and the crabshell atop it would indeed be killing him very soon, he would be dying rather horribly, and so Danny began to make peace with the cruel cruel gods that would allow such a thing, before a tearful Doctor rambled back into the console room at great pace.

"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" The Doctor yelled, throwing a Molotov Cocktail at the thing. It did around as much damage to the thing as a loving kiss to the forehead, the cocktail bouncing off the creature and landing on the center console, setting it on fire. 

The fire suppressant systems began to unhinge from the ceiling, spraying the console room with a vast quantity of foam, most of which formed an unholy afro upon Danny's forehead. 

"Doctor!!" Danny made a choked squawking yelp noise. 

The Doctor concurred - more drastic measures must be taken! She ran into the central console - still on fire, the foam had sort of hit everywhere else, and began wailing on it with a mallet. The TARDIS made a deranged bellow, slamming into earth. The TARDIS doors, had of course, been taken mostly off their hinges. 

The Doctor had no clue where they had landed, but concluded that it would be better than here. Having landed on top of an Alabama Bachelorette Party, she was indeed quickly proven wrong. 

A trio of women, all of whom could be practically considered a Sontaran clone batch, were now within the TARDIS. Their names were respectively, Chrissy, Delilah and Savanna, all bleach-blonde and wearing too much makeup to look real. There was also a male stripper named Tyler in a fireman uniform. Because of course there was.  

"What's going on!?!" Yelled Savannah, angrily. She was the most Tegan-like of the four of them, and she decided to yell at things. 

"It's all - It's all under control!" Danny blubbered. The thing moved across the room and slammed into a pillar - a shard of metal flew at Danny and hit him square in the chest.

This was the moment the TARDIS remembered it had a Hostile Action Dispersal System and decided to take off into the cosmos. 

While Delilah screamed angrily, and incredibly shrill-ly, the other three partiers began to continue their endeavor. Almost in response the massive thing began to roar furiously and stomp around the TARDIS console room. (Which was vast, but the thing was vaster enough for it to be rather an irritant.)

 "This is the worst day of my life!!" Danny moaned, as the shrapnel in his chest began to bleed profusely.

"Oh, come on." The Doctor said, looking at him with severe disappointment. "You're jinxing it."

The TARDIS careened around the planet Earth, swinging like a wrecking ball that wasn't a ball, but more of a box that was slamming into mountains, buildings, practically anything remotely tall whatsoever.

"Hang on!!!!" The Doctor yelled as they built up enough speed and the TARDIS swung into nothingness.

* * * 

The Planet Earth rested, continuing it's orbit around the sun with shy indifference. This was one of the rare days in history that nothing happened. In fact, it was the day nothing happened. April 11, 1954. On this day there was an election in Belgium, and a Football player died. That's essentially it, really. Everywhere else in the world absolutely nothing of note occurred. 

Well - statistically nothing happened. Perhaps to a certain family it was the most important day, a birthday or anniversary with momentous importance. You can't know everything about every person on the planet's personal lives. But statistically, there wasn't a war or a bombing, or a film premiere or an art exhibition. 

Statistically, the most interesting thing happening on this day and time was a blue box swinging out of the time vortex and materializing into a hill in Surrey. Materializing is too nice a word though. The TARDIS more bashed into the hill at great velocity, leaving a large crater at it's tip. The Doctor flapped away some of the copious amounts of smoke with her hands, and pressed a button on the console. The TARDIS' exterior shifted and moved itself into an upright position. 

"Get! Get! Get!" Were the absurd cries of The Doctor in anguish, beating the long legged now apricot and turquoise crustacean with a newspaper. It was slowly battered outside the TARDIS' portal where the doors once lay, although it left the box mostly out of shame rather than necessity. 

"And Stay Out!" The Doctor yelled, embittered. 

Danny looked out the hole where the TARDIS doors once were into the Surrey Countryside as the long legged crustacean abomination lay waste to the hilly fields. 

"Are we sure that that's not going to disrupt the environment?" Danny asked warily. He wondered why he even was concerned about such a thing as his blood continued to drip onto the floor.

"Oh, yeah, sure." The Doctor nodded quickly and decisively, but also possibly not paying attention. "Come on, let's focus on the important bits." She moved to the center console of the TARDIS, tapping a button which unveiled a holographic display. "If you'll forgive me being Miss Exposition for a hot sec - that creature is an Algarian Bull-Svatter. Natural Crustacean from Algarius. We were going to land on Algarius for your second TARDIS trip, and indeed we did."

"Doctor!" Danny said, now becoming woozy.

"Danny, quiet, I'm explaining," The Doctor said, not looking. "The issue was the giant thing barging in on us. Now the reason I wanted to go to Algarius was this massive temporal signature I received from the Maroth embassy on the planet's surface -" 

The Doctor trailed off, turning around to see Chrissy, Delilah, Savanna and Tyler standing shocked, jaws dropped and immensely confused as to what was going on. They were really really having a difficult time processing the foam filled room that was bigger on the inside, on fire, didn't have doors, piloted by Dame Judi Dench, and that had until recently held a crab abomination.

"Oh!" The Doctor said, smiling. "You're still here. That's nice! Well, I don't really feel like returning you all to your home time period right now. I'll do it later. There are lollipops in the fridge." 

"Doctor!" Danny called again.

"Okay, Danny, sorry, what is it?" 

Danny then died of blood loss.

* * *

"I cannot believe you died on your second trip out, you'd think you'd get this sort of thing by now," The Doctor admonished, as Danny came to a weird sense of consciousness. 

"What's happened to me!?!" Danny screamed, horrified, as he was now a levitating blue cartoonish ghost. Indeed he was - it was almost parodical, the way his skin was terrifyingly translucent and light blue. It ebbed away and back together from time to time, it had a shape, yet was still shapeless enough. Fascinated, he waved his hand through a TARDIS wall, watching as the translucent hand moved in and out of the solid curvature of the TARDIS coral with no effort whatsoever. 

"I got you Life Insurance, thank you very much," The Doctor said, bitter. "No, no, don't thank me! This sort of thing doesn't usually happen, but it's fine, it's fine. You'll just have to get used to existence as an undead creature of the night." 

"What the hell!?-" Danny whispered, not really paying attention as he continued to adjust to being a motherfucking ghost. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know, it has it's downsides, being dead," The Doctor continued, "But think of the money you'll save on things like food, water, toothpaste. Aw man, The tricks you can do at parties! Try and look at the positive. Just be sure not to say the word Beetlejuice three times, dude is literally the WORST." 

"I'm dead!!!" Danny exclaimed with horror. "I'm dead!" He repeated, still trying to understand the words at all. 

"Yeah! Jeez, it hasn't sunk in yet? Look, I'm sorry I didn't explain the whole thing to you earlier, but like, after the whole deal with like Adric and also every Eighth Doctor companion ever kicking the bucket, having a backup undead waveform existence for my pals became kind of important. And yeah, it's a surprise, but like, how can you bring up this sort of thing organically? Morning, here's breakfast, and Oh, yeah, If you die, I'm gonna turn you into, like, a ghost thing, you're gonna be Caspar, dude! See? Sounds sketchy as fuck, of course I didn't advertise that I was gonna do it." 

Danny whined, but there wasn’t really a point to it, or a statement he was making, he just sort of whimpered out sad pathetic noises for a moment. Occasionally you would hear a few coherent words through the sobbing like “but I never…hfvfvgfhfhgh… job at McDonald’s when I was fifteen…. Wwwagaagagaghchh,” but mostly there wasn’t anything. 

This was interrupted by Chrissy looking outside onto the fields of Surrey once more, thinking very concernedly about all that was going on, and literally running for the hills. 

The three others followed. 

“Hey! Hey! Didn’t I say don’t wander off??!” The Doctor yelled. 

“Ufugugughghgfhhffhfhgghh…” whined Danny. 

“I swear, some people, nothing but disrespect.” The Doctor grunted, and she rushed out onto the fields after them. 

* * *

The fields of Surrey in this time period were incredibly sparse. There were of course, a few huts, little sort of idyllic houses and a few windmills, but the majority of it was pretty hillside. And mud. You don’t see the mud in the pictures, but it’s there, waiting to strike. As maniacal as any supervillain. The Doctor’s heels squelched into the terrain, as she ran after the panicking Bachelorette party. “Oi!” She yelled, “Slow down! I’m not a psycho killer! Qu'est-ce que c'est? Aw dang, won’t you stop running?!?” 

She reached into her bigger on the inside pockets and produced a pair of Galoshes. 

Danny’s spectral form floated up nearby her. “Doctor, why are we worried about them? Surely the historical impact would be nil compared to the giant Crab Creature.”

The Doctor sighed, and made a confused expression. “Come on, Danny, didn’t you go to school? Bachelorette Parties are way more dangerous than giant crab creatures.” 

* * *

Chrissy rounded a corner and hid in a bush. Her makeup was starting to drip, not from crying, but from her sweat from running. She rubbed her temples confusedly, panicked and beginning to break down from the shock of it all. I mean, her best friend was getting married next week, and what a guy too! But did that matter? No, no that didn't matter, her skirt was torn, her face ruined and smeared with dirt and blood, and there was an evil crab invasion that was led by famous actors. The Hollywood elite were out to kill them! 

No, that didn't make any sense. Nothing made sense! It was all so STUPID! 

Brushing herself down, she got up and out of the bushes. That Doctor lady had passed. Good. She just needed to find the others, and then maybe they could escape the crazy woman’s grasp. 

“Good afternoon.” said a cold voice behind her. She turned. A man in denim pants and overalls, brown haired and average yet somewhat nice looking was just… standing there. He was almost frozen in a respectable position, hands behind his back, in charge. Beside him stood a blonde woman in a brown unassuming dress, although she was quite beautiful indeed. They carried a pitchfork and wore glasses. It was a strange distortion of the American Gothic painting. 

“I’m Ellie Harrison,” said the denim man in his cold and pristine voice. “I am a farmer and do formerly things.” 

“And I’m Matt Baker,” said the woman, “and I manage the property and do farmerly things too, I do think.”

Their stillness was unsettling. “Um… hi…” Chrissy managed. “Do you know what the hell is going on?”

“Ooh, she used naughty language, Miss Harrison,” the Woman said. 

“Yes, Mr. Baker, we can’t have that on our BBC channel.” The Man concurred. “This is bountiful big crops territory.” 

“Can’t do no cursing around here,” The Woman mocked. “No siree. We ought to run you over with our farming equipment.” 

“Yes, we ought to, oughtn’t we? You make a salient point, Mr. Baker.”  The Man sneered.

“Thank you, Ms. Harrison.” The Woman agreed smugly. 

Chrissy turned to run. But she didn’t see any farming equipment outside of the pitchfork. None at all. Almost as if Miss Harrison could hear what she was thinking, he responded.

“Ah, it is a shame the farming equipment is on the other side, far beyond the eye can see.” The Man sneered.

“Such a shame indeed.” The Woman replied serenely. “We will have to make do, Miss Harrison.”

“Yes, I rather think we will, Mister Baker.”

Chrissy screamed, but it was too late, as a blue crack appeared in midair before her, and outstretched a long, pale and pallid hand. Long talons extended from the void. They were attached to a shape, an indispensable shape, which slowly unveiled itself from the crack, crawling out with a monstrous roar. 

A roar attached to a creature helpfully adorned with the Countryfile logo. 

Confusion was the last thought that Chrissy had.

Part Two: Farmin’ In The Country

The Doctor and Danny began to Run - in Danny's case, float, across the landscape. 
Danny heard a scream. "Doctor! Over there! On your left!" He shouted, pointing a translucent finger across the terrain. The trouble it was a bit too translucent.

"That left or my other left??" The Doctor asked, confused, because it looked like Danny was pointing right. 

"I said left, didn't I!?" Danny snapped sarcastically. 

"Oh jeez, shoot my head off, why don't you, Donna?" The Doctor said, momentarily forgetting who she was travelling with. Danny didn’t know how to respond to this, but Donna was a nice name and he was very open minded, so he just floated after her. 

As they rounded over the hill they found Chrissy’s body, lying desiccated in the dirt. The inside of her head had been removed, leaving a hollow and flaky mass that appeared rather like a deflated balloon. Danny wasn’t Christian, but he let out a surprised screech of “Jesus!” upon seeing the horrific corpse. “Is that… is that Chrissy?”

“Wow? Her name’s Chrissy?” The Doctor said excitedly as she delicately examined the deflated head by poking it repeatedly with a stick. “You know the first character who dies in Stranger Things 4 is ALSO named Chrissy? Golly, that’s a fun shout-out!”

“It’s a woman who has died,” Danny growled plainly, but the Doctor took no heed, and jittered about for a bit, twiddling her thumbs absentmindedly. It was only a few minutes later that the gravity of the situation seemed to sink in. Suddenly the Doctor looked up, at once grave. “Come on,” The Doctor said, and Danny looked at her and swore he could almost see the shift between ridiculous and stern click behind her eyes at times. 

“What are we doing?” Danny asked, confused.

 “Come on, let’s move quickly! We have to find the others.” She said, determinedly. She dashed over the next hill and Danny followed. 

* * * 

The three worried survivors of the Bachelorette nonsense hurried alongside the mulchy hills. They were getting decently far away from the TARDIS now - hoping that they could hide. Hide anywhere. 

"This is bullshit, this is bullshit, this is bullshit," Savanna murmured under her breath nervously. "What's going on?? What's going on??!"

"Holy shit, where's Chrissy?!" Delilah asked. "Where'd she go?"

"We were splitting up, remember!?" Tyler yelled angrily. "Except both of you knuckleheads followed me!"

This wasn't going well, Delilah thought quietly. It was her party, her wedding - and it was in absolute shambles. She didn't feel she knew these people, even though she knew Savanna quite well, she was like a completely different person under pressure. Damn it all, this wasn't going how it needed to go! This was supposed to be one of the happiest nights of her life. She missed feeling happy, and not utterly petrified, running away from an insane woman in a magic box. It was - it totally was insane, she had to be like, maniacally evil or something! People weren't maniacally evil! That was like a cartoon thing. Minus Politicians, of course. But even so. 

It just couldn't be right. She didn't believe in psycho nonsense like this. Someone had probably slipped something in her drink or something. Which scared her even more. This couldn't be real, it couldn't. Oh god, she missed Brad. Her gorgeous fiance. How he made her laugh, how he made her feel safe... while she liked Savanna, she was a wreck, and Tyler was eye-candy that until fifteen minutes ago she hadn't considered to be much of a human being whatsoever. He cost too much for that.

"Splitting up was a bad idea then," Delilah noted quietly. 

"This is crazy!!" Shrieked Savanna angrily. 

"Saying that fifty times doesn't make it fucking better," Tyler snapped. 

God, the drama. She hated the drama. But she didn't know what to say. She just didn't. She wasn't confrontational when she was this exhausted, she had to put proper energy into being confrontational. That was just how she was.

Savanna though, no, she didn't need that, she just yelled and yelled and yelled. 

Wouldn't stop yelling. 

She zoned out. Tried to think through the problem. What was she supposed to do?

"Hello," said a giant purple octopus with angel wings. It was just - it was just there! What - what the -

"Huh, what?!?!" She shrieked. 

"Hello," The Giant Purple Octopus said again, it's strange beak-like maw at the bottom of it's body subtly sliding back and forth as it spoke. "I say, Hello. Are any of you good fellows intelligent?" It spoke in a British cadence but with a thick German accent. "I would rather like my chicken eggs, Yo, my bro fam," It said, as if quoting from a phrasebook. It tapped a tentacle against a small leather and metal packet on it's belt. "Is the translator on? Whyever dost thou seem thine dicks in a tither? Understand me not yet hear me still?" 

Savanna ran away screaming in one direction. Tyler ran away screaming in another. 

Delilah decided to follow suit, but it grabbed her - not furiously, but gently, understandingly, but still unyielding. It would not let her go until it's questions were answered.

"My name is Prince Francisco Edward Long John Silver Human Name Edward. I was told that this is the farm. I'm here for the Eggs!" And it said THE EGGS rather insistently, as if it was an incredibly important thing. Because it probably was, but honestly Delilah had no idea. "I AM A FUCKING BRITISH ROYAL," Prince Edward the Purple Octopus insisted. "Am I not worth - could you not spare - an egg in this difficult era?

Part of Delilah couldn't help but laugh. Part of Delilah couldn't help but scream in terror that it was AN OCTOPUS. The noise that extended out of Delilah's chest was not convincing as either. 

"Gimme thine egg," Prince Edward implored. "I no want violence." 

Oh geez, now it was threatening her. It's tentacle wrapped around her further, creeping up her chest. Ah, fuck no. 

She slammed her stiletto into it's tentacled limb - it reeled backwards and grabbed itself in pain, grunting. "Alas, using one tentacle to hold Mademoiselle was but a folly, my dudes!" Prince Edward proclaimed. 

Delilah, taking this opportunity, ran.

She was doing a lot of that. 

* * *

The Doctor, upon moving over the next hill, found herself completely lost. "Where are we?" She blundered.

"The Country, surely." Danny noted. 

"Oi," The Doctor responded, but did not expand on this admonishing further. "Seriously, this is wild, I'm usually really good at basic hills."

"They are totally basic hills though. Normal hills. The terrain is normal! It's not the infinite white void again, you are just lost because they all ran in weird directions and it's hard to find them." 

"Three of them ran in different directions together, they messed up at running in different directions!" The Doctor said miserably. 

Danny pointed in the distance. "Is that a giant Turkey?"

"Holy shit, that's a giant Turkey!" The Doctor agreed. For it was. A Giant Turkey in the distance. While it was in the distance, rather small looking, the fact that it was giant was unmistakable. It was frolicking in a field between the inclines of two hills. 

In the distance, they heard a calling. "ALL HAIL THE POULTRINE QUEEN," It chanted. It was unnatural. 

"Idyllic, isn't it?" Danny said warily. "Let's stay away from it so I don't die to the second power." The Doctor didn't say anything, but they both agreed that this was the best course of action. After walking for a moment, The Doctor became uneasy. 

"Giant Turkeys..." The Doctor bit her lip. "This doesn't make any sense at all..." 

"You know what else doesn't make sense?" Danny asked, contemplatively.

"I don't know, are you going to give me a really snarky response if I ask?' The Doctor joked. 

Danny continued on. "The fact that I'm getting an inescapable feeling of dread. This is all very silly of course - but it's too silly. It's silly adjusted for inflation. It feels engineered. It's not normal silly, I can cope with normal silly, life is normal silly. It's not like Daleks or evil Computer AIs, it's - it's just this feeling. This feeling of something purely... alien. Unrecognizable. Lovecraftian. Something very wrong."

"Something is very wrong." The Doctor agreed. "It's exciting, isn't it?"

* * *

Over the next hill, The Doctor recognized where they were in Surrey. 

"Oh, thank Rassilon, I know where we are! There's a village over there, Townsend Green!"

"Thank - Rassilon?" Danny asked, confused. 

"On second thought, do not thank him." The Doctor mumbled. "But I know where we are, I know what to do. There's an inn in town, I went there once in the old days, lovely lady behind the bar named Geraldine." 

"Cool, but I think if we go into a village in this time period with me looking all Ghost-y like this, there will be a Witch Trial." Danny pointed out. 

"Dim problem!" The Doctor said happily. "I think if I know this right, there should be an old Priory around here where I stow things. I'll just make you a new body. It'll be proper brilliant." 

* * *

Tyler collapsed against a tree trunk, dehydrated and tired. Just needed to take a rest for a second. And geez, he was fit, too. It took a lot of running to get him like this. His vision blurred as he began to rest, only for him to jump back to reality as two figures walked over the hill. A woman in overalls and a - bowler hat? - and a man in an summer dress. 

"Mister Tyler Harding, in 2009 you stole forty-eight dollars from your best friend to help cover your Gambling Addiction." The Man said, coldly. "You never told her." 

"Naughty, naughty! Of course, we at Countryfile don't judge." Matt Baker said, her grin unnaturally wide. "All the same, it is worth mentioning. You see, we don't tolerate cheats on this programme. We don't even usually have guest stars. Normally it's just trees and the like."

"So I do believe you must be rather well behaved," Ellie Harrison said, his nostrils flaring. A bright white shape moved behind him at great speed. Tyler could only see a blur approaching.

He was too tired to move, too tired to do anything, as Matt Baker proceeded to lean down to his eye-level. She reached over and delicately stroked his chin for a brief second, before she began to dig her fingernails into his face...

* * *

The sky had slowly turned grey as they walked, the beautiful countryside now being pelted with bitter raindrops. As The Doctor and Danny neared the Priory, Danny contemplatively noticed the raindrops falling through his incorporeal frame. 

"We're here," The Doctor noted, digging a small wallnut chest out from beneath one of the pews. 

"It's more of an abandoned Chapel," Danny mentioned mildly, but knowing the Doctor, he supposed that the word Priory did indeed sound cooler. 

"Okay, gimme a wild second." The Doctor said, frantically typing information into something that looked like a small - almost handheld - water cooler with a keyboard, wires extending out of it haphazardly. "This may take a bit, it's very precise."

Danny waited.

 "So if I have this engineered correctly, it should bring you, Danny Devito, back to life." The Doctor said.

"That simple?"

"I made backups of you at the insurance agency." The Doctor mentioned, pressing a button in triumph. 

A small Japanese woman with blue hair dematerialized out of thin air, crashing onto the ground with a thud. She stood up, holding up a hand in a defensive posture. 

"Oh." The Doctor said, looking at the device with derision. "It seems the device is confused. Hey - hey, for the record, lady, what's your name?"

"I am Danieru." The woman said meekly. "Where am I?"

"Danieru - Danieru - Danieru." The Doctor said, considering. "Last name wouldn't be Devito by any chance?" 

"Yes," Danieru hissed defensively.

"Ah, yeah. Okay, so it seems like the device is confused because someday in the future, or like, in the past if I lost my memory, I have a completely unrelated companion to you, Danny, who just happens to be coincidentally named Dani Devito." The Doctor said, disgruntled. "Let me just send her back." Pressing the button a few times, eventually Danieru disappeared, incredibly confused. 

Danny was equally so. "You've had companions before me?" He asked, a little over-emotional. "I'm not special??!"

The Doctor reached into her pocket and removed a picture of a Silent dance party that she had attended in the 80s, and waved it in front of Danny's face, repeatedly. 

"What happened to the last ten minutes??" Danny asked. 

"I've learned something!" The Doctor exclaimed.

"What?" Danny asked, still dead.

"That whole thing that you have now forgotten wouldn't happen ordinarily." The Doctor said. "I think that in most circumstances, only a computer with a lot of data would mess up information like that." 

"A Computer? I thought this wasn't a psycho computer thing." 

"No, no, I don't think it is." The Doctor said. "I think we're dealing with something that's literally damaging reality. And it's doing it as we speak." 

* * *

Delilah and Savanna had run off in opposite directions, or at least they thought, but there are indeed, only so many directions that one can run opposite to. 

"I'm so confused, what was that?" Savanna asked. "A Giant Octopus thing?" 

"I dunno." Delilah said dejectedly. "A total killer to any good Bachelorette Party at the least." This joke didn't go over well. Savanna turned with a scowl. 

"Hello," said a little man carrying a clipboard. Delilah jumped in shock. It had only been a few seconds since she had looked in that particular direction, and yet still, this orange bearded man who hardly came up to her knees, frantically scribbling notes on his clipboard, had somehow managed to sneak up on her.

"Hello, I'm taking a survey," he said, rather politely, although his voice did sound rather nasal, "I was wondering if you were finding all of this rather surreal enough. You see, the giant alien crab wasn't to do with the whole surreal thing, and the octopus was us, but you see, we were hoping that it hadn't established any pattern or anything when the giant Turkeys showed up. We don't want this whole surreal experience to be exclusively focused on rather large animals, don't you agree?? We shouldn't like things to appear as a pattern, We only want the highest class experience possible. Have you been satisfied that the past few hours have been immensely disorienting and confusing?" 

Delilah skeptically made a notion that could be almost construed as a head nod, even though it wasn't, but the strange man accepted it with fervor. "Excellent," He said, scribbling on his clipboard once more. "We shall do our best to make the following surreal experience as batshit as possible, I thank you kindly. Here is a cup of boiling hot acid and a toothpick." 

With that, the man was gone. Delilah frantically threw the cup out of her hand, as she saw that as soon as it left the man's hand the acid had begun to leak through and out of it, as if the moment it was not being overseen by him, it's effects had immediately resumed.

"What the hell," she hissed.

* * * 

The Doctor stepped outside the Priory, looking at the rain. There were stormclouds ahead. Heavy, dark, and pendulous. It was certainly, in terms of a mood - rather evocative. Shadows moved over the hill. The Doctor fiddled with the device with her sonic screwdriver. The hills weren't alive with the sound of music, but they did make her feel uncomfortable. That feeling that Danny mentioned - oh, he was right. It kept growing. The Doctor wasn't usually afraid, but - oh, there was something going on. The device glowed a dim light, and chimed. 

"Success?" The Doctor quizzically asked herself. Within a moment, she was proven correct, as Danny materialized into a solid body, happily smiling to myself. 

"Oh my god!" Danny shouted happily. "I'm alive!! This is wonderful!!" 

Within seconds, his chest splattered open into a vicious spiral of blood, bullet shrapnel flying everywhere.

The shadows that were moving in the distance over the hill - the shadows that the Doctor had barely noticed... they were moving closer. A man in a dress and a woman in overalls. And a solid white box - with squat stick like appendages ending in claws stood behind them. It carried a smoking assault rifle. 

The solid white box was labelled Countryfile.

Danny writhed on the ground. "OW OW OW OW SHIT OH GODDDD OH SHIT OH FUCK OH FUCK FUCK SHIT OW OW OWWW” He screamed, gyrating in pain. 

The Doctor screamed out, in horror. No words were clear - nothing, nothing at all. Just the scream. 

"Good afternoon, Doctor." Matt Baker smiled her sick grin.

"We are the Maroth," Ellie Harrison said, in his miserable cold tone. "We have come to issue the challenge." 

The Doctor screamed in pure terror, unlike that she had ever felt before as the strange white box lifted it's weapon once more, placing it's hands on the trigger. With a thunderous gunshot, the Doctor very suddenly, and very quickly didn't exist.

Part Three: Worlds Apart and Separate Ways

By the time the Doctor existed again, she was in a lime green cell room. Which was strange, at least the way she thought about it, because she had been in plenty of cell rooms, really, that wasn't the strange part, but you know, she'd only been in a few dozen lime green cell rooms before. Cells tended to be grey. It was rare you'd get a species ostentatious enough to deck the cell rooms out with color. Metallic color at that. Especially not in a building, buildings usually threw you into the cement covered basements. Couple that with the differences in gravity and The Doctor had already come to the conclusion that she was trapped within an advanced alien spaceship. 

She only had a few enemies that came to mind that would make sense right now. The Doctor didn't know what would make sense, but she came to the conclusion that it was likely the Maroth. The Maroth had been the one to shoot her after all. But she shouldn't jump to conclusions. It could be someone else really rubbish. She had been having one of those days.

Looking through the electrified cell bars she could see a door open, and in strolled Ellie Harrison - or more accurately, the Maroth agent. It snapped it's fingers and a hole in reality soon appeared nearby. A taloned hand pushed itself out of the gap and out appeared the same nondescript box as before. Clearly the box was a bodyguard, summonable at will from a Pocket Dimension. Handy, The Doctor noted. She was envious, but she was also far more irritable at being shot, and her friend being shot, and everyone being shot, really. That's right - Danny had been shot! That was very inconsiderate of him, she had only just gone through the effort of bringing him back, too. Oh, she really hoped she hadn't bungled it and the Life Insurance people would bring him back a second time, or else this would be a very messy and problematic thing to explain. 

"So, what's the deal!?!" She yelled. "What's going on with your crazy - BBC programme thing?!" 

"You aren't aware of the effects??" Ellie Harrison's cold precise voice asked. 

"What effects?? Come on, I asked you first, what's the deal??" She shot back. 

"Subject is not aware of this dimension's effects." Matt Baker noted. 

"This dimension??" The Doctor asked. Now, now things were getting interesting. "What about this dimension?? What aren't you telling me?" 

"The attack on the Maroth people was devastating to our culture." Ellie Harrison proclaimed. "The death toll was catastrophic. Those who survived had their entire personalities revised by the effects of the cataclysm. We are among some of the less affected survivors." 

"Ohhh god, please just talk normal!!" The Doctor hissed. "It's not hard, just talk in a way that I can understand, if you don't mind!! What attacked the Maroth?!"

Ellie Harrison's cold implacable tone began to quiver. "The Breach. We have been faced - we've been faced with a dimension of pure insanity. And it is leaking into and rewriting our own." 

The Doctor stood there, trying to understand.

"The Breach revises. It changes whatever it touches to make less sense. To become more ridiculous. We were some of the lucky ones. Other survivors were turned into inanimate objects, particles. The Maroth were peaceful before." 

"I remember." The Doctor said. "You never hurt anyone. But why have you come here - after us - killed so many people??" 

"Because you, Doctor, are affected. You are the ridiculous. The absurd. The surreal. And you must be destroyed before any more damage is done."

The Doctor sighed. "Oh no. You're gonna be some of those antagonists."

* * * 

Danny woke up in the dirt with fifty four bullet holes in his chest. 

"Stand still," said a bald man with a dry and aged voice. He stood above him in a trenchcoat, and wore some sort of technological eyepatch. He looked downright sinister.

"Ah!" Danny yelped, and he tried to move away, but he couldn't, because he had fifty-four bullet holes in his chest.

"Oh, for god's sake, man!" The sinister man grunted, fiddling with some sort of sonic screwdriver and a device printed with circular, flowery text overlapping upon itself.

"What's that??!" Danny asked, tearfully. "Are you one of the bad guys!?" 

"Yes, and I'm going to eat you alive with a nice drink of Chianti," He growled. "No, of bloody course I'm not one of the bad guys!! Now, I said stay still, I'm healing fifty four bullet wounds, that sort of thing usually doesn't happen." 

He was right. As he used the device, Danny could see the bullet wounds disappearing out of his chest before his eyes.

"It's a selective time machine used for medical procedure. Sends your organs back in time to before they were damaged. Very expensive." The man said, wearily, but a little proudly too. 

"What's your name??"

"Oh, I'm still figuring that out, I think," he said with a wink, and then, realizing he was wearing an eye-patch, promptly removed it - it was fake, as the man did in fact, possess both eyes. "I used to be called something else," he said, rather distantly. "But enough of an old man's reminiscing, I want to know about that woman." 

"The - The Doctor?"

"Yes. She's in terrible danger, trapped in the hands of the Maroth. We must rescue her imminently. Your wounds should be healed now. Come!" The man said, and he strode off immediately as Danny struggled to get back up. 

Danny observed his solid organs with a sigh of relief. "You know, that was the second time I died today!" Danny said, not to brag, but a little exhaustedly, and to make a point.

"Braggart," The man retorted. "I've died once today already as well, you aren't special. Besides, We'll all be dead by sundown if we're not careful." 

Danny was a little offended, but he didn't press on. "So, what - what should I call you?? If you aren't sure about your name??" 

Lord President Romana considered this new male body, and wondered what to call himself. He thought intently for a few moments before coming to a momentary conclusion. 

"Fred. Call me Fred." The Man said, and he beckoned Danny for him to follow as they proceeded over the hill by the Priory and into the town below. 

* * *

Delilah and Savannah, coming over the last hill before a farmer's field beneath them, decided to have a conversation for the first time in a while. This was always difficult, you know, starting conversations. Delilah wasn't very good at it. 

"What do you ... what do you think of all this?" Delilah proffered. 

Savannah didn't say anything, maintaining her dark complexion. She had been in a heinous mood since the trouble with the Octopus and then the trouble with the small little man taking the survey, and Delilah's happy little perfect attitude (which Savannah had no clue was entirely being put on right now) was really pissing her off. 

"I'm just..." Delilah began awkwardly, unsure of what to say. "I don't like how all of this is going." Shit. That sounded awful. Quick, think of something else. "This is really bad." Delilah internally screamed at herself for her awkward shittery. 

And then, as if she was the most klutzy klutz that had ever klutzed, she tripped on a branch and fell on her face. Savannah broke her scowl as she moved in shock. "Are you alright?" 

"Yeah..." Delilah whimpered. The mud was all over her face and her dress. She pulled herself up, and tried to pat off the mud, some of which she managed, before she smeared the rest of it across her blouse. "Oh, god, this cost a fortune!!" She cried. 

"Do you know what else cost a fortune??" A voice rang over the hill. 

"Oh god - oh damn, I really hope that's not the Octopus or the Survey man again." Delilah blurted. 

It wasn't. It was a doorknob. An enormous levitating doorknob, three times their size. A cavalcade of emotions came over Delilah as the doorknob rose into the air. "Do you know what else cost a fortune??" The doorknob repeated, an anthropomorphic mouth appearing on it's lower half (although it had no other human features.) 

Delilah ducked, and she tried not to cry as the doorknob continued to rise vertically above them. "Do you know what else cost a fortune??" The Doorknob asked, repeating the set-up to a punchline which did not exist. "Do you know what else cost a fortune??" It intoned. 

She was crying now, crying in fear, laughter, sadness and mostly still fear. She hoped it wouldn't kill her. She hoped it would just go away, that it was just some sort of Alice in Wonderland thing that wasn't really there, or that maybe she was in Alice in Wonderland and was still at the nightclub overdosing on something unhealthy. That was a preferable idea to this doorknob - horrific, monstrous, defiant to the laws of physics and downright 100% incredibly stupid.

"Oh, Piss off!" yelled an old voice, filled with the gravitas and weariness that came with the position of having many years under your belt. "You heard me!" It yelled, and although Delilah didn't know where it came from, suddenly she turned behind her to check, and she saw the bald incredibly old man in a brown trenchcoat at the bottom of the hill near the entranceway to the town. "Piss off!!" He repeated with vigor. 

The doorknob levitated higher, rushing away to wherever it was it came from, clearly intimidated by the man - who Delilah now noticed had the same suddenly not-ghostly figure of Danny, the man who had been with the psycho lady earlier, by his side. 

"Hello! Hello, I say!" The ragged voice said, the man it belonged to hobbling closer to them. "No, no, there isn't anything to fear, my dear friends. That was simply a natural phenomenon, something you sometimes find on Thoros Beta. Not to say that it's not disconcerting, it most certainly is, I can tell you. I am -" The man paused, and turned to Danny in deference. 

"Fred??" Danny shrugged. 

"Ah, yes! I am Fred!" The old man smiled, his bald brow wrinkling with a chuckle. 

"Yeah, man." Savannah blurted. "You're telling me you don't know your name??" 

"I most certainly do! It is Romanadvoratrelundar! ...I mean Fred." He turned to Danny once more. 

Danny shrugged. "It's your conversation!" 

"I'm Roman - a . I mean Fred. Let's - Let's go with Roman." He finished. "Let's also get to the village before nightfall." 

"Savannah, can we trust these guys?!" Delilah blurted a little too loud. 

"I think." Savannah answered. "Regardless of whether we do or not, I'd like to do so indoors." 

With this, Delilah wholeheartedly agreed and they walked into town. 

* * *

The town was one of those delightful British towns you've never been to. Everyone loves those towns as a setting in film, or your average Midsomer Murders episode, but it's slightly more disconcerting seeing one of those stereotypes in real life - it feels like something that shouldn't be. Especially since all of these towns feel the same - they're like airports, identical to one another. 

"Ladies, avail yourselves of an Inn." Roman commanded.

The two women, wearing little to nothing by this time period's standards and utterly covered in mud were slightly disappointed by this command.

"HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE CAN FIND AN INN AROUND HERE?!" Savannah yelled. 

"Very well, I'm sure," Roman answered promptly and he turned to Danny. "We must locate the Doctor, and if we cannot, we must contact the authorities. I have a few friends in this time period, I should hope. Maybe Torchwood or the Counter-Measures organization could work to our benefit. Find a phone-box, use this number, ask to call Lizbeth Hayhoe." He handed him a card.

Danny nodded. "Um, okay." He noted. 

Roman trailed after Delilah and Savannah as they entered the nearest tavern - upon the barstools of which there was a certain enormous purple octopus, plucking eggs out of a carton.

* * *

Danny discovered a little red phone booth - how idyllic - upon the doorstep of a postal shop. "Good afternoon, Dearie," the woman said. "You wanna use the phone??" 

"Very much so," Danny said, a little breathily. 

"Well, all-right then." 

The lady stepped out of the phone box, and gestured happily for Danny to do his phone call first. Aw, she was really sweet. The kind of lady that would bake you cookies for breathing. "I'm Geraldine." she said, and Danny remembered the Doctor mentioned her. "She said you worked the bar..." Danny said distantly.

"Oh no, I haven't done that in donkey's years, love!" She laughed. "Where'd you hear that from? oh, the cheek!" 

Danny examined the rotary phone with many thoughts in his head, most of which were as a modern day person (what the fuck) and attempted to dial the number Roman had given him. After a while, he succeeded in putting the number into the receiver and lifted the reciever to his ear. There was a slow reverberating noise, and Danny felt his hand on the dial feel strangely wet. He lifted it and saw a strange red substance - not like blood, but more like treacle, dripping from the phone booth at all ends. The call wouldn't go through.

Shit. The entire phone box was dripping with the red treacley stuff now, and Danny was a little afraid now, and he shuffled open the door, stepping out onto the road. The sky was dripping the same red treacley substance too, and it pooled on the street in unnatural shapes like water splashing, but frozen, growing as each drop flew down from the sky. It was like modern art was growing in front of his eyes.

Geraldine was frozen too, and she didn't seem to be seeing anything at all. In fact, she seemed like she was entirely composed of the strange substance, now sort of muscly, ribbony, the more he looked at the solid aspects of it. Unnatural, though. Red. 

"BUY PARAMOUNT PLUS," Geraldine chanted. "CONSUME! CONSUME!"

And with a flash, he was back in the phone box. There was no dripping from the sky at all, he still had the phone in his hand and it was still ringing the dial noise. Geraldine was still outside the box waiting for him. 

"You done with the call, luv?" She asked innocently. 

Danny slammed down the phone, and stepped out of the box. He ran back towards the tavern.

* * *
Back at the bar, Danny cradled the drink he had gotten in his hands. Savanna had brought him a blanket as he went over the details of his ordeal at the phone box.

"The surreal aspects of this landscape clearly don't want us to communicate with what's outside." Roman noted. "It's malevolent." 

"It certainly was actually trying to scare me that time, instead of bewilder as per usual." Danny agreed.

"I wonder whether each element is part of a singular entity or is in fact, created individually." Roman theorized. "Our good friend the Octopus seems non-hostile now placated with eggs."

"That's Prince Francisco Edward Long John Silver Human Name Edward to you!" The Purple Octopus at the bar observed, but it returned to it's carton, a tentacle scooping the eggs into it's beak-like orifice. 

"Well, if we're allowed to think about all of this, and not just you two, there was that poll guy." Delilah said. "He wanted to be sure it was suitably bonkers." 

"He's without a doubt central to the entire endeavor," Roman said with sartorial elegance. "Possibly responsible for whatever has destroyed Gallifrey."

"Gally-what-what?" Savanna asked. 

"My home planet. I escaped it's forty-sixth destruction just in time, although apparently at the cost of my previous female body." Roman explained calmly.

"You can't just SAY shit like that!" Savanna blurted.

"No, it's important. I believe him." Delilah said, sternly. "We've been through too much today for us not to."

"The Doctor's absence is disturbing. They have intentionally removed the one of us that represents the greatest fighting chance." Roman solemnly uttered. "If this pattern remains, I am to be next."

"About that," Danny noted. "Uh - not to diss the Doctor or anything, she's super great, but um, you're way more competent." 

"What?" Roman said, confusedly.

"Yeah, she's all about half-truths, morally ambiguous choices, she gives up on stuff if it's boring, and she really likes action film? Are we talking about the same lady here?" Danny asked. 

"It certainly sounds different than usual, though I'm sure this incarnation holds merit. All of them do." Roman said, although he actually sounded rather cautious. "Whatever the case, our next move should be to find her." 

The bell on the door rang as it swung open. A man in a dress and a woman in a plaid shirt stepped into the room. "The state of this establishment, Mister Baker, why, it's positively modern!" The man said with distain. 

"This is the Country, you heathens!" The woman agreed. "We'll have to do something about it, Miss Harrison. I say, do you have the heavy artillery?"

"I jolly well do, my good lady!" The man agreed, removing an assault rifle from a pocket that normally could not fit it.

"I like that they respect each other's pronouns." Danny noted.

"Danny, they're about to kill us," Delilah mentioned. 

"I still like it." Danny shrugged. 

The two Countryfile hosts opened fire on the establishment. Roman, Danny and Delilah rushed behind the bar as the bullets flew and sparks blasted everywhere. 

Matt Baker removed a flamethrower from her similarly small pockets and began to set the room ablaze. As she did so, Ellie Harrison's assault rifle's bullets slammed into Prince Edward the Purple Octopus, which fell backward, screeching inhumanly in pain. The bartender splattered onto the wall soon after.

"We gotta get outta here," Savanna said urgently. "I'll try to draw their fire, run that way, there has to be a door out the Kitchen for health purposes." 

Roman nodded. It was a good plan, exactly what he would have suggested. 

"Oi, cocksuckers!!" Savanna yelled, running to the right of the bar. 

"I reproduce asexually, bitch!" Yelled Ellie Harrison, shitting out another Ellie Harrison. 

"She's distracting us!" Matt Baker yelled angrily. "And doing so incidentally very well!" 

Ellie Harrison yelled furiously as they fired at Savanna, who was rushing down the side of the bar towards the stairwell. Bullets slung into the wall with thunderous thuds as the automatic weapon continued to fire. Savanna ran up the stairs. 

"We're going after her." Ellie said.

"She's distracting us." Matt sighed.

"Yeah, but she's really pissing me off!" Ellie agreed. 

They ran up the stairs after her.

Above was a hallway, with many doors. Savanna furiously tried each door as fast as she could, but each was locked. She heard the thudding of Ellie Harrison's combat boots as he ran up the stairs approaching. 

Savanna moved towards the final door, desperately reaching it. Unlocked. She rushed inside and slammed it. 

"Savanna Willson, you've disappointed the BBC and us here at Countryfile." 

"Roman and Danny told me, I know you're aliens!" Savanna called, angrily. 

"We stopped being something so simple long ago," Matt Baker said, breaking down the door and raising his flamethrower.

* * *

"She's gone!" Danny exclaimed as the three of them clambered out of the tavern, and onto the street. "She sacrificed herself for us! I - I can't believe that -" 

Delilah was crying too, but she wiped it off. Danny was a little scared of her - she was just shutting down at this point. She'd been through too much, too overwhelmed, she was just focused now, a little scarily so. As they moved into the town square, they paused, unsure of which way to go.

They heard the noise of a gun cocking. A white box with stick figure arms and legs labelled Countryfile was behind them. 

"Danny, you said we wanted to find the Doctor..." Roman asked.

"Yeah?"

"I think we're about to." 

Countryfile fired.

Part Four: Defilers

The Doctor really didn’t cope well with being locked in a cell. In addition, this was her second time doing so recently, and this time, there wasn’t a guard that she could chat with and possibly drive insane. It was a pity. 

She was just, quite simply, in a cell. 

There were technically speaking, things to do in prison. If you had a rubber ball, you could bounce it on the walls. The Doctor had no rubber balls on her, frustratingly. You could also stare at those walls and contemplate existence. Or try and draw something on the wall by scratching with a rock, if you had a rock, which the Doctor, indeed, also didn’t have, Plenty of things to do in prison, most of which boring and wall related.

They’d confiscated her Sonic Screwdriver, of course. 

She was so bored. Literally sitting around just wasn’t her forte. She was much better at fun things, like cribbage, and murder. And talking. She was really good at talking, she hoped there was someone to talk to, soon. 

Of course, she was excellent at talking to herself, but she tried to not do that. Tried not to develop too much psychosis too quickly. 

There! There was someone to talk to! To be fair, it was her jailor entering the room, but she really tried to not go and ruin it.

“Afternoon, Doctor,” said Matt Baker, sharply. “I’ve brought you a present.”

“Oh, good, is it awful tea and sandpaper Biscuits?” The Doctor asked, excitably. 

“Nothing so petty,” Ellie Harrison said, walking in, carrying a lumpy bag. “It’s four of your friends.”

He comically placed the bag onto the floor. 

“Oh, that’s actually a good present. Hopefully they aren’t dead.” The Doctor grinned happily.

“No, only one of them is.” Ellie Harrison said calmly.

“Well, I already know Danny is a ghost.” The Doctor said. “So… they’re all fine?”

Ellie Harrison emptied the bag, and an unconscious Danny, Roman and Delilah fell onto the floor. Savannah didn’t. 

“Wow, I thought you were gonna have a body in there with them! That’d have been really edgy.” The Doctor noted.

“We aren’t psychos, we’re just killing people indiscriminately.” Matt Baker said, tossing her hair impishly. 

“You’re going to help us,” Ellie Harrison said, his slick cold voice really starting to get on The Doctor’s nerves. 

“No, No, I’m not.”

“We’ve told you about the expansion of the surreal-world into this reality. It’s destroying everything. Every law. Every physical part of existence itself, making this very universe inhabitable. We’re on your side. We’re doing whatever we can to stop it.”

“And killing indiscriminately on your way to do so, cool motive, still really an asshole move.” The Doctor snapped. 

“We are doing so because of you, Doctor. All of this is because of you. You don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember your regeneration!!”

“You got me there.”

“You died on a Maroth scout ship, Doctor. Sacrificing yourself for us. You absorbed mass quantities of the surreal infection that we had discovered to save the ship. It made you like this. Ridiculous. Spreading stupidity everywhere! You’ve unleashed so much, a bachelorette party, a giant crab monstrocity, we’ve had to cull it. wherever we could!” 

“Stop with the lame retcons, I’ve had, like eighty.” The Doctor sighed. 

“You are the source. The source of the absurdity we have had to cull everywhere we can. Earth. Gallifrey. The Country. And we’re taking you deep. We’re taking you to the rift. The rift into surreal-world itself. You will sacrifice yourself again, you will stop it expanding. Or we will kill your friends - one by one.”

* * * 

The cell door opened, and The Doctor, Danny, Roman and Delilah stepped out. The ship was speeding towards another planet. They saw stars fly by through the cockpit window. Stars. They were hurtling out of this galaxy. “It’s… it’s unbelievable.” Danny murmured. The Doctor nodded.

 “Delilah, I say, are you alright?” Roman asked.

“I’m fine…” Delilah said quietly. “Let’s just figure out a way out of this…”

 “If they’re right, then we’re going towards the breach into a dimension of pure absurdity.” Roman stated. “This could not be more dangerous. If we’ve only been dealing with leakage this entire time…” 

“I’m just excited it’s a new location, I hate when I have to run around the same three corridors for ten episodes.” The Doctor mentioned. 

Ellie Harrison, behind the ship’s controls, narrowed his angry eyes towards her.

“Okay, okay, sorry, not saying anything surreal.” The Doctor said, hands raised. “Being a very normal Doctor Who right now.” 

The ship suddenly stopped in space, crumpling against a planet like a tin-can between two hands. The Doctor saw the planet ahead of them in real sight now - torn open by a massive rip in space-time. The opening to another universe.

“We’re here.” Delilah whispered.

* * *

The Breach

The Doctor and Danny stepped out of the ship into a place of no reality. The Doctor brushed away some atoms which were also frogs.

“We will hold your other friends hostage until you destroy this place.” Matt Baker said, distantly. “You will have little time.”

“Please don’t kill them.” The Doctor said quickly, and then she beckoned Danny onwards.

Further up and further in.

* * *

The ground was was made of nothing, and the ground was made of everything. The ground was made of Sharks, and noise, and trees, and time, and death and glass. Danny made the mistake of stepping on it in what was apparently the wrong spot. 

“Danny, that’s a shark. You’ve stepped on a shark!” The Doctor screamed.  

“But it’s - it’s floor.” Danny said, confused. “It’s - there’s no water for it to breathe.”

“Danny, we aren’t dealing with the same laws as usual. That floor could retain the same properties of a shark. It’s lungs could be made of tissue paper. There’s no reality. It could vaporize us with a fire beam, summon the Italian Mafia or roll a four.” The Doctor said urgently.

“It’s …not done that.” Danny said eventually.

“It could! I’m telling you!” The Doctor said. “That floor could be our greatest threat yet.”

“It seems completely fine, Doctor, you’re the one with the legs made out of jam.” Danny noted. 

The Doctor looked down, frustratedly noting that yes, she was being affected by the weirdness and her legs were now made of jam. “…Do you think I have jam genitals?” The Doctor asked. “I know it’s inappropriate to like, talk about these things, but I’m unironically curious.”

“I’m not, let’s go, Doctor!” Danny hissed, because his face was now a working elevator for a family of four. It dinged as the people got off of his brain and proceeded down to his esophagus. 

The Doctor nodded. They had to keep moving, or they were going to die. She batted away some air that was metal and proceeded on. 

* * *

The landscape appeared to somewhat resemble the townscape that Danny and Roman had discovered in Surrey in what seemed like ages ago. It was made out of things the Doctor couldn’t begin to process, like chairs, cacti, and Michael Jackson. Snakes ate their own tail. Chairs ate their own tail. Cacti elephants ate their own tail. Michael Jackson ate the members of the Jackson Five, including his younger self. All the while, they were walls, floors, rivers, a semblance of normal life, but completely unlivable. 

“This is ridiculous. How can we hope to stop this?” Said Danny, sputtering as another family came up his esophagus in an elevator. 

“I dunno, Speak to the Manager, I guess.” The Doctor theorized. 

“How did you come up with that as an solution?”

“It’s not a solution, Danny, I was joking, geez.” The Doctor sighed. “We probably don’t have long before we become part of this.” 

Decently famous veteran of Friends and the Scream Franchise, Courtney Cox stepped up to them. More like Rose, Rose from the earth, like some kind of flower in a video game. “Congratulations, Doctor Dre and Owch. You have spread our word. We will expand. We will envelop.” 

“Am… am I owch??” Danny asked. “What kind of nickname is that?” 

“You’re the Avatar of this place?” The Doctor questioned.

“James Cameron, 2009.” 

“I hope that’s a yes.” The Doctor admitted sheepishly. “We’re looking for who’s in charge. And we’re on a time limit.”

“Filing Cabinet, Filing Cabinet, Chris Chibnall.” Courtney Cox answered.

“She can’t help us.” The Doctor realized. “Come on.” She grabbed Danny’s arm, but it wasn’t there. Danny had lost an arm, simply because it didn’t make sense.

“Doctor!” Danny screamed, blood dripping from the wound.

“Oh god, please don’t tell me you’re gonna die again, I’m gonna have to pay the Health Insurance guys buttloads and I might not be able to afford it!” The Doctor whined.

“Go down the well,” Courtney Cox called. “Become one with us.” 

There was a well up ahead, actually. But the Doctor didn’t like the option of doing anything this place wanted. “I’m not becoming one with you - I have to save my friends!”

“Georgia,” Courtney Cox said, and she raised her hand. The Doctor was lifted into the air and thrown through existence - down, down, down the well. 

* * *

The bottom of the well was round, damp and stony, the walls slick with slime from some viscous substance. The Doctor was rather disappointed. She’s been expecting something a lot more strange and wonderful, but it was very much like a usual well. Grimy and wet and miserable. There wasn’t any water, and no rope either, no way to climb up. There was an indentation in the wall, something that led out into a tunnel. 

The ceilings in the tunnel were low and difficult. Sheer, even. The Doctor knelt down, and decided to move on, because regardless of what was going on, she was certainly aware she had remarkably little time. The stone tunnels were bricked, dark and cold, and as The Doctor began to crawl through the tunnels, she began to wonder what all of this could possibly be - An Artifact of an old simple age, a well that was unaffected, or perhaps just something else strange and surreal for her experience. As if to answer her questions, as the Doctor crawled deeper and deeper into the dark tunnel, she had not been far, but she had realized now that there was absolutely no light to see with. 

The darkness extended, and she could not turn around, the tunnel was so thin, and she was getting tired. She had to move forward, although it felt like there was no end in sight. 

She began to see a pinprick of light ahead of her, and although this felt like an enjoyable idea, a pinprick of light approaching - it meant something good, didn’t it, her hopes were dashed when she saw another, and another, and another, and she quickly realized that these were not pinpricks of light at the end of the tunnel, but distant stars and constellations of a sky she knew quite well. 

It didn’t make sense, she was deep underground, but nothing made sense recently. The stars surrounded her in such a way that she ran out of room to crawl - and trying to go backwards, she couldn’t. However, she was still driven to her feet by a strange compulsion and found she could stand.

“Is this some kind of drug trip?” The Doctor bitched. 

“DOCTOR.” An ancient, soft and deadly, yet booming voice called out. 

“Who’s there?” The Doctor asked. “Is it another celebrity?? Because I really can’t be bothered!” 

A different voice. “WE ARE THE DEFILERS. THE DEFILERS OF PLOT. WE GROW WEARY.” 

“Great, great, because I also grow weary,” The Doctor snapped. “If you lot are the psychos behind this, buddies, I gotta say, you got a LOT to answer to. You’ve distorted existence, corrupted an innocent townspeople, distorted their language, world, summoned Poultrine Queens and ridiculous alien monstrosities. You’ve made some good people live in fear, and you’ve made some bad people give into their temptations. You’re like, kind of awful. And I’m pretty nasty too, but I’ve got at least something of a moral goal here.”

A Third Voice. This one female. “Enough Talking,” It spat.

“Didn’t you have a whole dimension to yourself? Why do ya need this one?

“WE WERE ONCE RULERS. WE HAD A PERFECT LIFE. THE PEOPLE, AS PEOPLE DO, GREW DISCONTENT. WE WERE LIKE YOUR TIME LORDS. BUT THE PEOPLE GREW TO HATE US, HATE ORDER. WE ATTEMPTED TO APPEASE THEM. USED OUR POWER TO ADD A SPARK OF INSANITY TO THEIR LIVES. IT KEPT US IN POWER. FOR A WHILE.”

“IT DID NOT LAST. THE COMING ELECTION WE WERE TO BE DEPOSED. WE EXPANDED THE POWER OF THE MACHINE. MADE IT A PART OF OUR VERY BEING, OUR VERY CULTURE. THE MACHINE REQUIRED VAST ENERGIES. THE BODIES OF OUR ENEMIES WERE SUFFICIENT.”

“IF OUR MACHINE RUNS OUT OF ENERGY, WE SHALL DIE. OUR BODIES DECAYED LONG AGO. ONLY OUR MINDS EXIST NOW.”

“WITH ENOUGH ENERGY, WE SHALL LIVE FOREVER.”

The Doctor thought about this for a moment. “You’re ….you’re basic.”

“WHAT?”

“I’ve met so many hostile alien forces in the universe. I thought - god, I really had thought - that because you’re strange, you’d be different. But you aren’t strange. You aren’t even absurd, you’re uninspired. Maniacs who love being in power and can’t stand to die, regardless of the people beneath them who suffer and die. You just always need more, don’t you? More, more, more, more, MORE! Every villain of the week wants more. And frankly, it’s almost disgusting.” The Doctor scowled. “The sheer end point of a species desperately hoping to be anything but normal, desperately begging from attention from Mama, so much so, that they punch through a hole in the universe!”

There was a cacophony of anger. There, she had hit the right notes. They were pissed off. She just needed to get out of here - get out of here and figure out how to seal the breach. Stop the expansion. Maybe she could start with the machine…

* * *

The Maroth Ship

“The Doctor will be back, right?” Delilah asked, worriedly, as her legs began to solidify into rock. “I’m starting to have trouble breathing.”

Roman nodded. She’d be back. Of course she would. Roman glanced down at his hand, parts of it mottled with some kind of injury, and the other half composed entirely of glass.

“If we’re here too long - we’ll end up like them, won’t we?” Delilah worried, gesturing to Matt Baker and Ellie Harrison. They had begun to congeal, sort of collapse into an ill-fitting shape. They had already been affected before they came here, and now the additional effects had essentially killed them. It was horrible. They were zealots, Delilah knew that she shouldn’t feel sympathy. But she did. 

“They destroyed … your home.. you said?” 

“I only escaped in an evac capsule. I’m sure a few others did too. But it will be back.” Roman stared blankly into space. “It’s like a Bad Penny.” 

“Why? Why did they destroy it, I never got that.”

“Because they thought the Doctor is the source. She’s not, I don’t think so… she’s certainly infected, however. Infected by the surreal. The Maroth viewed the entire race as a threat because of that.”

“Then let’s hope the Doctor gets back soon,” Delilah said morosely. “I don’t much like standin’ around like this, hoping for something to happen.” 

There was an explosion in the distance. 

* * *

The Doctor had chucked a Nitro-9 into the void. It hadn’t done much. The Defilers weren’t exactly solid and nor did she know where the machine was. She certainly didn’t know how to get out.

“CHILDISH. FUTILE.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, ‘hahahaha I’m so evil,’ I get it.” The Doctor scowled. She just had to play for time. 

* * *

Danny came to, realizing he had been knocked unconscious. Oh damn, what had happened?? He had an elevator for a head before and had lost an arm and that was before he had been exposed to the infection for so long. He checked his body for anything weird. There was an Umbrella growing out of his backside, but otherwise nothing seemed any different. The bell on his forehead chimed as the people stepped out into his ear canal. Having a hotel for a head really was rather irritating. 

The Doctor was nowhere to be seen - clearly going about somewhere. Nor were there any other celebrities he could be confused about being present. 

He got up. A well seemed to be the only ordinary thing about this junk heap of absurdity. Looking around, he considered. A third eye opened on his forehead. 

He could see things as they were before. The well wasn’t a well - it was a shed. A shack. A gateway to an underground complex hidden by whatever government was once in charge around here. He could see the people that used to be alive here - laughing, playing. He saw a strange machine. The third eye closed as soon as it opened. Just a glimpse. 

Just so he would know what this place had lost. 

If the Well was an entrance - than there must be a way to find what he had seen before. He could sort of deduce the strangeness of what it all represented. And he could probably help the Doctor. Danny ran.

* * *

The Doctor cast a glance about the starlight of the room, if it was a room, and not simply a place. 

…Danny??

Danny had come strolling into the place with a purpose. He was standing - clearly unaware of the low ceilings the Doctor had struggled with a few moments before. This was all getting rather psychedelic.

“Danny, can you see??” The Doctor yelled.

“No, but I can remember.” Danny answered. “The Machine is that way. Do you have any more bombs??”

“Danny, I can’t move.” The Doctor hissed. “I’m stuck in this spot.” 

Danny extended his hand. The Doctor reached out. 

* * *

With a second thunderous explosion, it all began collapsing in front of Delilah and Roman. They could see pieces of the world fall apart, disintegrate into sand, or fade down into the ground as an earthquake began to shake the ground that wasn’t ground. Or was it a tidal wave?? The insanity was crumbling towards them, above and below but neither. 

“Roman, we need to ready the ship or none of us are getting out of here.” Delilah said.

The fear was still there for her. The emotions were still there for her. She just had to stay calm. She… she was a survivor. She had a life ahead of her. And she was getting the hell back to her gorgeous fiancé and she was walking down that aisle. 

Roman nodded solemnly. “I’ll start the engines. But they may have been infected - there may not be a way back.” 

Delilah nodded. She stepped over to the melting corpse of Matt Baker and Ellie Harrison, and she sternly picked up the gun. 

Any self respecting girl in her town knew how to use one of these. 

She breathed in. Stay calm. It’s all going to be all right. 

Be a survivor.

She aimed the gun onto the outside landscape, and she furiously began to fire onto the insanity that was approaching them.

In the distance she saw two figures running - two very absurd figures indeed - running away from the tidal-quake. She aimed the gun - and then she saw who they were. 

“HOLD THE SHIP!!” The Doctor yelled. 

* * * 

“Roman - they’re here!!” Delilah yelled to Roman in the cockpit. 

Roman grunted angrily, but it was at the ship’s interface not working. “Damn it!! Why isn’t the thing working?!?” 

“I don’t know!!!” Delilah yelled back.

The Doctor and Danny kept running. Because that was what they did. Running from Daleks. Running from Evil Computers. Running from swarms of alien insanity, spirals of carrots and petticoats. The Doctor loved the feeling of her feet hitting the ground and moving fast. Moving faster, faster. Whether they were made of quickly decomposing jam or not, she loved that feeling of the legs hitting the ground, and not knowing whether the thing behind her was going to kill her or not. She always knew though, one thing.

It was gonna have to catch her first. 

* * *

“Punch it!!” Delilah yelled to Roman as Danny and the Doctor clambered on board. 

The ship moved like a dagger thrown from the hand of a god. Streaking fire, it set off into the sky, quite literally piercing the heavens open. 

It swung through the sky and out though the breach - steadily collapsing behind them until there was nothing but ordinary space. 

Normalcy. 

“We’re free,” Delilah said breathily. “It’s over.”

“Not yet,” The Doctor said sternly. “We need to get you to your dang Wedding.”

* * *

Earth

Getting back to the TARDIS didn’t take too long. Landing the Maroth ship on Earth, the Doctor rang Torchwood on the phone, and asked Lizbeth to handle the practical wreck of a ship, before they abandoned it and set back towards the TARDIS just a few hills over. The Doctor knew exactly where they were now. 

But they were all worried about Delilah. She was still feeling things of course, she wasn’t a robot, she had just, well, somewhat shut down, a little. It was hard to be upbeat even when your problems are solved if your best friends are dead. 

The Doctor didn’t mention this, of course. She was blunt, a little loopy, but not cruel. 

“I jolly well hope the infection didn’t get too far, you know.” Roman said. “It seemed to be primarily located in Surrey, but I can’t help but be concerned that if it reached as far into this universe as Surrey, other places might be in danger. Perhaps Cardiff, Greenwich, or that time there was a robot parrot and a giant hollow planet crewed by an insane Captain dude.” Roman declared.

“It’s going to go wherever I go. Small particles of it are probably why we’ve dealt with loopy things like Dalek Ex Wives, or Cicily.” The Doctor murmured. She couldn’t be sure how much it had affected her life - or how much it would going forward. She was just focusing on what she could. “I can fix the aesthetic effects certainly. The umbrellas and elevators and whatnot. But suffice it to say we’re going to be actual ‘weirdness magnets’ from now on.”

They stepped inside the TARDIS. “You ready to go back, Delilah?” The Doctor asked. 

“Yeah,” said Delilah, sullenly. “Yeah, I am.”

The Doctor knew how Delilah felt - empty. But she also didn’t know what to say.

* * * 

They dropped Delilah out a few hours after the Bachelorette Party ended. 

“You’re.. you’re invited, by the way, if you’d like.” Delilah said awkwardly.

“To what?”

“The Wedding,” she replied, as if it was obvious. “I’m… you saved my life. It’s simply the nice thing to do.” 

The Doctor, Danny and Roman weren’t sure what to say. There wasn’t a good way to say yes to things like this. They certainly couldn’t replace her best friends. They certainly couldn’t stay. They’d probably only be a danger. 

“Okay. Thought as much.” Delilah said quietly, and then she walked off into the late night - one of those city nights where all the puddles and street lamps give off a dappled and quiet glow, but the world is still going to be shadow for another four hours. 

There wasn’t anything to say to Delilah, and they didn’t know what to say to each other either.

* * *

Three Weeks Later

The TARDIS landed on the hilltop nearby the Wedding. It was down on the Beach below, which The Doctor, musing, as she got out of the blue box, petticoats billowing in the wind, was right, because they certainly had had enough of the Country.

The Wedding was idyllic. And they were distant, but they had wanted to be there. Delilah deserved it. Delilah deserved a lot more than what she had been through the past few days. 

The Doctor could see her dancing on the beach below. Happy. The Doctor was glad she was happy, or at least looked like it.

The TARDIS door opened and Roman stepped out, ruffling through some paperwork. “It’s all in order??” The Doctor asked.

“We only managed one of them.” Roman sighed. “Life insurance really is rather difficult.” 

The door opened once more, and out stepped a ghostly figure, cautiously stepping onto the hill. 

Savanna smiled. She hugged them.

And she began her descent down the hill.