Doctor Who_ Empire of Death - BBC Worldwide [6]
James smiled at his brothers. 'If only you could see what I have - you would understand. You would know. This, all of this -' the boy glanced around himself at the falls, the trees on the hillsides - ìt's just one world. There is another world beyond this.'
Josiah lashed out, slapping James across the face. He was about to strike his brother again but John prevented him.
'Josiah, no! Leave him!'
James began coughing. ‘I - I -' The boy collapsed sideways, silt-laden water dribbling from the side of his mouth.
Josiah bent over James but could not revive the boy. Ìt's no use. He's gone again.' Josiah muttered. He stood up and began pulling on his clothes. Ì'm going to get Dr Kirkhope -
maybe he can find what's wrong with James.'
'What about me? What do I do?' John cried.
'Stay with him. Don't let him out of your sight.' Josiah began running the long track back to the village, his footfalls soon lost in the sounds of the surrounding trees.
John pressed an ear against James's chest. He could hear the faintest of rattles inside, along with an unsteady thumping noise. Good, James was still alive. That was something. But what had he been babbling about? John struggled to remember his grandfather, a kindly old gentleman who had only visited them once before dying. Why was James talking as if they had just spoken? It couldn't be right, what the boy was saying - could it? John realised he was shivering and pulled on his shirt, the fabric clinging to the dampness on his back. It would be dark soon and they had already stayed out far too long for their father's liking. A sound thrashing awaited them when they got home. But that was the least of John's worries.
He looked into the water from where they had rescued James. What had happened down there? James should be dead, by rights. He had been under the water far too long.
John had seen the pasty white and blue faces of drowning victims before. But his brother was still alive. How was such a thing possible?
Extract from Observations and Analysis, A Journal: It all began soon after the Doctor asked where we should go next, as if uncertain of his own judgement. I mentioned that we had been trying to reach something called the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Doctor nodded happily and began resetting the controls. He said this event was among the crowning achievements of Victorian Britain, bringing together a fantastic range of displays and oddities from around the globe. I still wasn't sure why he wanted to show this spectacle to me but did not challenge his enthusiasm. After recent events, it was good to see him smile again. But the happiness soon faded from his face.
The TARDIS is the most complex device I have ever encountered. It maintains thousands of different functions at any given moment and, seemingly with little effort, is able to transcend time and space. For all that ability, it is also a temperamental creation and one of which the Doctor seems to have a limited mastery. His attitude to this marvellous blue box of tricks is like that of a resident who has lived in the same house for too long. They no longer seem to notice the cracks in the plaster, the dust in the corners, the slow and remorseless decline going on around them. They live with a home for so long, they lose the sense of perspective that a fresh occupant brings, simply settling for the way things are.
For some time I had been urging the Doctor to consider making some, or indeed any, of the repairs the TARDIS
requires. Rare is the trip that does not trigger some warning as another circuit cries in distress at its neglect. Of course, not all such alarms are caused by internal matters. The TARDIS travels through the space-time continuum and is sensitive to weaknesses and attacks upon that delicate balance. These are not uncommon, so it came as little surprise when a flashing red light and a warning chime soon accompanied the Doctor's efforts to pilot us back to nineteenth-century London on the planet Earth. We had been in transit but a few seconds when