'Can You Hear Me?' (Story Code 12.07) by Charlene James and Chris Chibnall

“Such an exquisite animal. Built in pain. And the repositories of that pain: the nightmares.” - Zellin

In Aleppo, Syria, in 1380, a hospital is terrorised by werewolf-like creatures, the Chagaskas. In the present, the Doctor returns Yaz, Ryan and Graham to Sheffield so they can see their family and friends. Alone in the TARDIS, the Doctor is distracted by a psychic signal emanating from ancient Aleppo, and fails to see a mysterious, tattooed bald man dressed in black materialise behind her; he smiles, then disappears into thin air… While Yaz returns home to her sister, Ryan visits his best friend Tibo, who seems very ill at ease, and Graham enjoys a card game with his mates. The Doctor lands the TARDIS in the desolated Syrian hospital, where she finds the sole-surviving nurse, Tahira, cowering in fear from a Chagaska. As the creature runs away, the Doctor is puzzled that it left no reading on her sonic screwdriver… Enjoying his card game, Graham receives a psychic call for help from a beautiful woman, along with images of planets. Ryan learns that Tibo has been plagued by nightmares of a strange man; hearing that the man has apparently started appearing in real life, Ryan stays the night. After an anniversary dinner with Sonia, Yaz falls asleep during a movie and dreams of a road and a policewoman; when she wakes, she sees the man in black, who vanishes into thin air… The man reappears in Tibo’s bedroom, and his disembodied fingers fly into the young man’s ear; as Ryan arrives the man disappears, taking Tibo with him… In Aleppo, the Doctor receives phone calls from Ryan, Yaz and Graham; after snagging a couple of the Chagaska’s hairs from a gouge in the wall, the Doctor rushes off in the TARDIS, taking Tahira with her. Having retrieved her fam, the Doctor wonders why an analysis of the Chagaska’s fur says it doesn’t exist; her curiosity is further piqued when Ryan and Yaz report dreaming of the same bald man, and Graham recounts the message he received in his mind. Connecting Graham to the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits, the Doctor is able to trace the message to a deep space monitoring platform in the distant future. The station is in geostationary orbit around two colliding planets – but the extinction-level event has been halted by a geo-orb suspended between the two worlds. A bank of the station’s controls holds many disembodied fingers, all transmitting psychic signals to the orb. Identifying the technology as a quantum fluctuation lock, the Doctor deduces that the geo-orb is a prison… Tahira wanders off to explore her new surroundings and finds a chamber filled with glass cylinders containing her fellow nurses and a Chagaska. Ryan, Yaz, Graham and Tibo arrive just in time to see the bald man appear – then his disembodied fingers fly towards them… Yaz dreams of the road, the policewoman and Sonia; Ryan dreams of an elderly Tibo, abandoned by his best friend as the Earth burns and the Dregs attack; Graham dreams of being in hospital with Grace, as she tells him his cancer has aggressively returned… In the control room, the Doctor is busy connecting the platform’s systems to the TARDIS when the man appears. When he introduces himself as Zellin, the Doctor attributes the name to a mythical god; but Zellin explains that he an immortal being, an Erternal, who revels in playing games by provoking fear in his victims and then extracting their nightmares. Horrified that Zellin’s fingers are transmitting stolen nightmares to the woman trapped in the orb, the Doctor frees the prisoner. But this is exactly what Zellin wants: he deliberately enticed the Doctor to the station to free his partner, Rakaya. Pleased to be reunited with Zellin, Rakaya tells the Doctor how she and her partner came from another realm and were revered as gods, and decided to wager on which deity could destroy a planet first. After fighting wars in their deities’ names, the people of the two worlds below eventually united andf fought back by setting their worlds on a collision course, trapping Rakaya in a prison between them. Thanking the Doctor for her help, the two Eternals imprison her in a cylinder alongside her captured friends; leaving their prisoners to burn in the imminent planetary collision, the immortals depart for Earth to obtain more nightmares… Walking from a dream of Gallifrey and the Timeless Child, the Doctor frees herself using her sonic; after freeing the others, she then manages to hack the bioware one of Zellin’s fingers. Materialising at night outside a street of houses, Zellin helps Rakaya to gorge herself on the nightmares of those around them; but they are interrupted by a call from a Chagaska, which summons them back to Aleppo. Here the Eternals are confronted by the Doctor and her gang, along with Tahira, who now controls her nightmare-created Chagaska. The Doctor has brought the control sphere from the monitoring station, and she uses it and the hacked fingers to give Zellin and Rakaya their own worst nightmare: imprisoning them inside the geo-orb, along with the Chagaska. The threat over, the Doctor sets about returning everyone home… The next day, Tibo bids goodbye to Ryan, then makes good on his promise to join a therapy group. Yaz recalls the time when Sonia reported her to the police for running away from home; the officer who found her, Gabriel, sympathised with her plight, and made a bet that she could help Yaz could turn her life around. Grateful for the advice, Yaz pays a visit to Gabriel to thank her. Later on, in the TARDIS, Graham confides to the Doctor about his fear of returning cancer; the Doctor is unsure what to say, but Graham knows he has his friend’s support. Ryan and Yaz wonder how their travels in space and time will change them, but before things get too deep, the Doctor whisks them away for a Frankenstein-related adventure…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Ian Gelder (Zellin), Buom Tihngang (Tibo), Clare-Hope Ashitey (Rakaya), Sharon D Clarke (Grace O’Brien), Bhavnisha Parmar (Sonya Kahn), Aruhan Galiva (Tahira), Sirine Saba (Maryam), Nasreen Hussain (Anita Patel), Everal A Walsh (Gabriel), Michael Keane (Fred), Amanda Liberman (Mum), Willie Jonah (Old Tibo), Anthony Taylor (Andrew)

Directed by Emma Sullivan
Produced by Alex Mercer
Executive Producers Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
9th February 2020 @ 7.10 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz

*Unlike the previous few episodes, this story has a pre-title sequence

*The closing credits were accompanied with contact details of a BBC Action Line for mental health issues

*Working titles: 'Fingers' and 'The Girl in the Orb'