DOCTOR WHO

REHEARSALS

WRITTEN BY ZARIUS

The Doctor knew this would work. The fam with a plan.

She also liked it when time was on her side; these were the moments she savoured as a traveller. The culmination of the journey.

When all the present evils threatening the world had been dealt with and all that was left was the clean up.

Sometimes that was the easy bit, but it also came with its fair share of hardship too.

For now, this was the fun bit.

Now she needed to get the details down to a precision science. Put together the flight plan and print it out on a pamphlet, place it on Daniel Barton's plane in the past while it's under construction, create little side plates that pointed the fam, Ryan in particular, to which seat contained the pamphlet.

If The Master was good at laying out traps, then she would impeccable at creating mazes and leaving breadcrumbs.

This was peak timey-whimey.

She wondered just what she would do with The Master's TARDIS after she arrived back in the present...set it to self-destruct perhaps? She couldn't store it within her own TARDIS, that was such a calamity in the final days of her fourth incarnation.

She'd figure it all out later, she had more to tidy up afterwards, like the small matter of the non-consensual mind wipes to her two allies, Ada and Noor, both extraordinary women caught up in an adventure one might consider far too extraordinary by the standards history would set them by.

She wouldn't tell either of them just yet of course, she wanted to hold off sordid clean-ups of that sort for when the missions were almost complete. They were the ugly side of the after party; it was almost as if she were dealing out hangovers.

After putting together the plan for her fam, The Doctor next had to record a very special video message for all three of them, just so they weren't too bamboozled over what to do after they discovered the instructions on the plates and pamphlet.

She made sure to leave details on how to uplink the video to the plane's television screens in the pamphlet. A simple trick of hooking up Ryan's phone to the connective cables on the panel floor, charging up the video and allowing it to run.

Now all that was required was for her to make the video.

That proved to be the tricky bit, as she found herself constantly thinking of just one person of the fam while she was making it.

She knew the reason why, she just didn't want to face it, not at a moment as crucial to the fam's survival as this, she tried to focus primarily on assuring what had to be a trio of terrified passengers that all was going to be well.

"Welcome aboard, I realise you have questions" she said.

Once again, she began to project and think ahead, her thoughts turned to that same individual member of the fam and what he would ask of her, and how he would react.

Graham O'Brien was the strongest person she knew, but it was a big ask for him to keep his cool with an impending an assured death hurtling to the Earth at a thousand feet.

He'd ask where she was in the moments where they were going to die.

He'd need her.

"First of all, you're not going to die, what is it with you lot rushing to no-win conclusions like that? You know how I am Graham, I'm the hopeful type, and I know you have my back in anything , so put a little back into this too, I need you to be at your strongest, it's what I admire the most about you"

The Doctor wasn't sure if this was coming out well in the video, it felt more like a confession than an instruction video.

After deciding to give this part of the recording a do-over, she made it clear that she could not respond to anyone due to this being a recording, in case anyone got the impression even from the do over that she could.

She'd now made two things very clear, now all that was left was the third, and still she couldn't keep her thoughts away from Graham for too long. She knew instinctively what he would say, and how he would act.

"Third, don't panic...especially you Graham"

What she said next she had no real control over, it just spilled out.

"Now, I get that you were worried that I'd replaced you with my friends from history, rest assured that's not the case, you, Yaz, Ryan, you're what glues me together, that's what helped me pull those two along the centuries and bring The Master squarely to heel. You're indispensable in my eye, you're not just the strongest Graham, you're the purest. Everything I do, I do for you and all of us. Nobody could ever match what you mean to these two beating hearts"

The Doctor paused, put the tip of her middle right finger to her lips, and pondered whether or not to keep this bit in also, or whether to sort it all out in the editing suite.

Ultimately, she chose the latter.

"Sorry, got a bit carried away. Shouldn't have mentioned Ada or Noor just yet, you've yet to meet them, I'll cut off this last bit, save it for an extra emergency protocol in case anything happens to me. You can have a right laugh with it; think of it as how bad I am at rehearsals. Kisses"