'The Day She Saved the Doctor'

Four Stories from the TARDIS

A companion: explores time and space with the Doctor, gets into trouble with the Doctor, fights enemies with the Doctor . . . And - more often than not - has to save his life.

Here are four fantastic new adventures with the Doctor, starring Rose, Sarah-Jane, Clara and Bill. Publishing on International Women's Day in March 2018, it will also be the perfect way to prepare for Jodie Whittaker's first ever female Doctor.

Written by Jenny Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Dorothy Koomson and Susan Calman, these stories are a celebration of the Doctor's fantastic female friends, for fans of all ages.


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'Sarah Jane and the Temple of Eyes' by Jacqueline Raynor

While exploring a market in the ancient Roman port of Ostia, the Doctor and Sarah learn of a recent spate of inexplicable blindness amongst the wives of powerful merchants. Resolving to determine the cause, the Doctor and Sarah split up to question the wives of other important merchants. From speaking to Marcia, wife of Aulus Pumidius, Sarah works out that the stricken wives were part of a female-only cult devoted to the Bona Dea, the Good Goddess. Concerned by Sarah’s quick deduction, Marcia kidnaps the reporter and takes her to the Bone Dea’s temple; here Sarah meets the blind priestess Orbiana, who guards an anachronistic machine given to her by the gods. The priestess explains that she is using the machine to record people’s memories of Rome, which she will then provide to the gods; but Sarah realises that Orbiana has been duped: having killed the ‘gods’ - the visiting aliens who left the machine - Marcia is using their device to gain important knowledge with which to increase her husband’s business, thereby elevating her own status. Meanwhile, the Doctor follows Sarah’s trail to the women-only temple but is apprehended when he attempts to sneak inside; condemned to death by viper for his sacrilege, the Doctor is spared when Sarah offers up her memories in exchange for his life. After the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to prevent the machine from blinding anyone else, Sarah allows her memoires to be recorded. When Orbiana experiences Sarah’s bravery during her adventures with the Doctor, the priestess resolves to only use the machine to show her fellow worshippers the value of women in a male-dominated world. Satisfied that the alien tech is in good hands, the Doctor and Sarah depart in the TARDIS…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and Sarah

*Time-placing: this story takes place shortly after ‘The Brain of Morbius’


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'Rose and the Snow Window' by Jenny T. Colgan

The Doctor and Rose hang out in a Toronto apartment, waiting for the effects of a slow time puncture to manifest. After discovering that one of the apartments in the tower opposite contains a Russian room from the Nineteenth Century, the time travellers use written notes to communicate with its time-displaced occupant, Count Nikolai Artem Livosich. Using the TARDIS to travel to St Petersburg in 1812, the Doctor investigates the count’s palace, and Rose dresses up to attend a celebratory ball. Rose meets and dances with the count, and is disappointed to learn that he is about to wed in a marriage arranged by the count’s father to bring money to their family. One of the bride’s footmen identifies Rose as an anomaly, and threatens her with a futuristic weapon; Nikolai attempts to defend his friend, and in the struggle a ‘time-loop’ ribbon given to Rose by the Doctor is activated, transporting the trio to the Toronto apartment in 2005; but while Rose and the count arrive safely inside the room, the footman falls to his death on the other side of its window. Seeing the Doctor in the anomalous apartment under attack by another footman, Rose and Nicolai race back and use the count’s time displacement to return to the past. After Nikolai renders the footman unconscious, the Doctor identifies him as a disguised Causubus, a reptilian parasite that feeds on time energy. The Doctor and Rose realise that Nikolai’s bride-to-be is also a Causubus, the wedding a means to bond with the count and feed off his time energy. With family poverty or a term in the army his only alternatives, Nikolai goes ahead with the marriage; but when Rose objects mid-ceremony the count breaks off the wedding, allowing the Doctor to reveal the bride’s true form. As the crowd screams in terror, Canadian Mounted Police arrive on the scene - the past is colliding with the present, and disaster is imminent. The Doctor uses Rose’s time ribbon to provide the Causubus with enough of his own temporal energy to send the aliens home, then uses the TARDIS to plug the time puncture. Wanting to know Nikolai’s fate, Rose gets the Doctor to take her to the Alexander Column in Saint Petersburg; here they learn that the count died fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, his only means to provide for his family.

Notes:
*Featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose

*Time-placing: after ‘The Unquiet Dead’, but still quite early in Rose’s travels with the Doctor


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'Clara and the Maze of Cui Palta' by Susan Calman

The Doctor takes Clara to Cui Palta, voted the Most Beautiful City in the Galaxy, only to find the place completely deserted. Against her better judgement Clara allows herself to be talked into entering the Maze of Cui Palta; her misgivings are proved right after she and the Doctor walk round and around in circles for hours on end. Concerned that they will be trapped forever, the Doctor tries summoning the TARDIS, but is unable to find the ship’s key. After the walls and floors turn into mirrors the time travellers become separated. Clara is overcome by sneezing, and when she breathes through her hanky, the maze walls vanish to reveal the Doctor literally walking in a circle. Realising that the plants infesting the maze are causing her to hallucinate, Clara instructs the Doctor to use his own hanky to breathe through; the plan works, and the two friends are quickly reunited. Deducing that the hallucinatory pollen caused the population to leave the planet, the Doctor and Clara make a swift departure too…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Clara


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'Bill and the Three Jackets' by Dorothy Koomson

Preparing for a date, Bill goes shopping for a new jacket. In the shop ‘O & Ohhh’ she tries on three jackets, but when she tries taking a selfie with her phone to help decide which to buy, the shop assistant, Ziggy, prohibits any photography to prevent plagiarism of the shop’s designs. As a compromise, Ziggy agrees to take polaroids of Bill in each jacket, but the photos leave Bill feeling dizzy, so she goes to get a snack to feel better. Waking from a sleep, Bill discovers that she has somehow swapped bodies with Ziggy; she tries talking to the Doctor, but he refuses to believe her claims of identity, believing the real Bill to be with him in the TARDIS. In desperation Bill turns to Lou, the girl to whom she once gave extra chips, and manages to convince her of her real identity; together they visit the clothes shop, finding it closed and devoid of photos. After working out that Ziggy is an alien who used psychic paper with the camera to swap bodies, Bill phones the Doctor and piques his curiosity enough to meet with her in the park. When the Doctor arrives with the fake Bill, Lou jumps out from behind a tree and tackles the alien, allowing Bill to retrieve the photos; tearing up the pictures, Bill becomes herself again, restoring Ziggy to her own form too. Ziggy confesses that she stole Bill’s form so she could ask the Doctor to take her home, having being exiled from the planet Onhwhie for speaking up against an unjust government. Persuaded by Bill and Lou into helping, the Doctor agrees to return Ziggy to Onhwhie. Looking back on her experience, Bill vows to use the TARDIS’ wardrobe in future…

Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Bill

*Time-placing: Bill has a TARDIS key, so must have been friends with the Doctor for a while; I am therefore choosing to put this story midway through season 10 / 36


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Publication Date:
March 2018

*Published by Puffin for BBC Books