Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [57]
Also, there seems to have been an important issue bothering the Doctor for some time. His notes are covered in question marks, and if he’d put the question into words he might well have put it like this:
These apes, these babewyns, are an elemental force. They appear to be everywhere and to exist in their millions. Then why have I, with all my experience of such matters, never seen anything like them before?
Doubt, uncertainty… and sickness. Everyone agreed that the Doctor’s mood had been, to say the least, unstable in the weeks leading up to his first meeting with Sabbath. There had been many more occasions on which he’d been spotted mulling over his beard (and at least one squabble with Anji, after she’d suggested that it didn’t suit him). Prone to rapid mood swings, at the start of his stay he’d been a dynamo of action at best, merely a little haunted at worst. But increasingly, those around him noted less and less humour in his character. Once, shortly before the House had de-camped to Manchester, Rebecca had disturbed him in his study and asked him whether she could borrow some of his writing materials. The Doctor had responded by suddenly snapping at her, with some anger, and even throwing one of his curious devices across the room in her direction. When the machine had shattered against the wall, it had apparently shaken the Doctor to his senses and he’d immediately apologised: Rebecca had simply shrugged. But on her way out of the basement, Rebecca later said, she’d heard the Doctor gasping for breath. More than once, he’d been seen clutching his chest as if in pain.
He’d improved a little when Fitz and Anji had been brought to the House – perhaps, when he’d ‘opened up time’ for them, he’d felt briefly in touch with his TARDIS again – but the relief hadn’t lasted long. Unfortunately, he was constantly evasive when anyone asked him what the matter was. Fitz’s opinion was that the Doctor simply didn’t know himself, although there’s some evidence that he perceived a link between the ape attacks and his own sickness, the typical magician’s belief that his own well-being is connected to that of the whole world.
What nobody knew, not until much later, was that the Doctor wasn’t just sick. His body was actually dying.
Yet despite all this, he felt no fear on board Sabbath’s warship. He confided to Rebecca that it was only a matter of logic. The apes hadn’t attacked as soon as he’d entered their lair, despite their vicious nature, so therefore something was stopping them. He concluded from this that whoever had ‘trained’ the beasts was quite prepared to let himself and Rebecca pass, and in this he turned out to be correct. Once the Doctor had finished examining (blessing?) the body, he had no compunction about entering the chamber beyond, and Rebecca seems to have had no compunction about following.
The chamber turned out to be the closest thing the warship had to a bridge. With no crew other than the apes, there can hardly have been a need for the usual structure of a military vessel. The heart of the craft was a command centre, cabin and war room all in one, and waiting there was Sabbath himself.
The bridge-room is worth describing, as so much is known about it. Apart from several accounts, there’s even a sketch, though not in the Doctor’s hand. The room was the largest on board the warship, over twenty feet wide and thirty long, by the ship’s standards a great vaulted steel hall which ran halfway along the length of the vessel. But although it was wrought out of metal, with archways of welded steel and walls of riveted black iron plate, there was something of the feel of a classical temple to it. (‘Classical’ was a recurring motif in the architecture of the period,