An Eye for an Eye (Doctor Who/Sherlock Crossover)

Building the Impossible

    “Didn’t you date him?” John entered the room, folding his arms. “Did you know he was an alien?”

    “Obviously I knew,” Molly said sheepishly. “He was using me to try and find out how to build a TARDIS. I was using him ‘cause I thought he might lead me to the Doctor.”

      John couldn’t fathom the thought that Molly – sweet, little Molly – had manipulated the most dangerous psychopath in the modern world. He looked at her tiny frame and her big, soft eyes. It didn’t look like she could lie to anyone, but clearly, she had.  “All right, then.”

     “So, Molly,” the Doctor said, “how have you been doing with imitating time lord technology?”

    She grimaced. “Not great, to be honest. Come here, I’ll show you.”

    The Doctor trotted after Molly as she led him to the back of the morgue. John hung back a bit, watching her stride to a door labeled “samples” and unlocking it with a flip of her ID card. “Not exactly top security,” John observed as the door opened at her touch.

    Molly rolled her eyes, beckoning the two men inside. “I’m the only one with clearance in here. Everyone assumes this is where I keep spare body parts for testing, so no one questions it.”

    John reluctantly followed her through the doorway. When she flipped the light switch, the fluorescent revealed a vast room, its walls covered with complex technology. It looked like a spaceship had exploded, cramming its consoles and inner workings into this one, tiny room.

    Distracted by the blinking lights and smoking machinery on the walls, John almost didn’t notice the main attraction: a huge console that towered almost to the ceiling. It looked like something right out of a sci-fi movie. John’s eyes widened, trying to take it all in – from the blinking lights to the knobs of every shape, color, and function.

    “Good on you, Molly!” the Doctor exclaimed, running up to it and pulling random levers. “This is impressive.”

    “Hardly,” Molly muttered, stepping up beside him. “This thing is a piece of shit.”

    “Oh come on, don’t sell yourself short. This has all the right pushy things and pulling mechanisms, Molly, it looks just like the real thing!”

     Molly grabbed a yellow legal pad off of another piece of strange machinery. “You should get your memory checked, Doctor. Aside from the engines crapping out every time I start it up, the brakes make this god-awful noise and the index file is nonexistent. Not to mention, I can’t figure out the chameleon circuit.”

    John’s head was spinning. How was she talking so fast? “Wait, wait,” he stammered, trying to catch up. “A chameleon…what?”

    Molly tossed him a pitying smile. “A chameleon circuit, John. It’s the cloaking device, it hides it from the normal people. Hides it in plain sight, if you will. Like as a police box.” She shook her head at the blinking console. “The point is, Doctor, even with all the spare TARDIS parts you gave me, making another one is basically impossible. I’ve been trying for years, and it’s just not happening.”

    The Doctor didn’t respond. Rather, he crouched down and observed the underside of the console, frowning and poking at things occasionally. Molly folded her arms and watched him, breathing audibly. Then, the Doctor’s eyes widened, and he sat straight up, nearly hitting his head on the metal.

    “I’ve got it!” he cried. “It’s so simple!”

    Molly glanced back at John, then moved toward the Doctor. “What’s so simple that I haven’t been able to figure out for years?”

    “It’s understandable, there’s no way you could’ve known, and I forgot to tell you. Sorry about that! Slipped my mind. A lot of things tend to do that,” the Doctor said, frowning, as he stood up. “You can’t have a fully-functioning TARDIS without a Rassilon Imprimatur.”

     “A what?” John and Molly asked at the same time.

    “It’s a fancy term for time lord DNA,” the Doctor explained as he examined the technology before him some more. “In layman’s terms, a TARDIS must have an imprint of time lord biology within it. It’s a safety clause, against the misuse of time travel. That way, no one can try to imitate a TARDIS without a time lord’s consent.”

    John, so confused already with the events of the day, shook his head. “What exactly does that all mean?”

    “Basically, without a Rassilon Imprimatur, a TARDIS would be lethal to operate.”

    “Lethal?” Molly bit her lip. “I’m glad you thought to tell me this before I tried actually going back in time, Doctor.”

    Again, the Doctor stayed silent. He closed his eyes and held out his hand, pressing his hand to the heart of the console. Then, he released a long, shuddering breath as a burst of vibrant gold light spread from his fingertips, enveloping the machinery in a bubble of light. It was blinding – John stepped back, shielding his eyes as the light disappeared into every crack within the metal and the console whirred to life.

    At long last, the Doctor turned and grinned wide, all across his face. “Molly, my love, you’ve successfully built yourself a TARDIS.”