Doctor Who - The Impossible Pear Tree

Introduction - Creeping Time

LONDON 1859

   The hammer slows and then finally stops an angel's breath away from the colossal bell, never striking the last hour. The mechanics of the clock tower are dead still, like a photograph. The brass cogs ready to move into the next part of their cycle, what they were built for, sit motionless, an ironic stillness. In fact all of the springs and internal workings of all the watches and time pieces across London have all been rendered equally useless by the fact that time is slowing down to a stop. Or so it seems. Time is  moving, but at an infinitesimally slow pace. London is caught in a Time Ripple; a circular, slow outward moving time anomaly. It is holding seemingly motionless people like puppets mid-walk, in poses that look ridiculous and would normally be impossible to hold for any length of time. One complete step could take hundreds of years to complete. One flap of a robin'swing and a hundred generations could live and die. Time outside of the ripple is still moving at a normal pace, so onlookers peering in at the people stuck like insects in honey, may seem like they are frozen but they are, in fact, moving through the ages so very, very slowly. The outsiders are lucky, unless their hand, foot or coat tail is caught by this creeping doom - then it is only a matter of  time before they too are trapped.

   Empires could rise, conquer and crumble whilst a mother kissed her babies' forehead and sang her a song of tenderness and love. A child calling for its parent might have to wait a thousand years for a reply; just beyond its lips, sound waves held fast, like twisted invisible icicles. In a park somewhere, a snowball hangs an inch away from the glowing cheek of a newly married woman. Her jovial revenge on her husband would take the same time as a moon to crumble away. The evolution of science within this temporal prison acts like a glacier, moving fractionally compared to the torrent of discovery beyond the ripple's influence. A scientist, squeezing a complex solution from a pipette onto a plate under a microscope, eventually shouts the word Eureka as humanity on the outside leaves the earth in golden spaceships, blazing and arcing fire across the skies, exploring brand new worlds.

   Looking downwards upon the city from the tireless snow spewing clouds, London, in the early evening of Christmas Eve 1859 , resembles a snow globe; with winding streets, quaint buildings , old stone bridges and a river path along which little people are bustling home to start their festive activities. But this globe cannot be shaken, everything is frozen, a population stopped fast. In the streets the snow hanging in mid-air is peppering a scene of carol singers, hot food stalls, market sellers and revellers. The rude white flakes just sit like splashes of white paint lazily sprayed from the edge of a brush onto this celebratory picture. Mince pies, their smell, along with warm fruit, cinnamon and wood smoke hang motionless in the air like faint colourless webs. A blind beggar's fire dulls and stops emanating heat as the particles slow their merry dance. Even the few people sleeping, at home or in the streets, are becoming ensnared by the time trap. Dreams start to slowdown as the neurons fire slower and the electricity across the brain crawls like a dying spider through broken memories - fantasies and dreams of love and hate, wealth and fear all at an impossibly slow and aching pace. A city of bizarre marionettes is a spectacular yet tragic view. It looks to be a dead city but is quite the opposite. This city is very much alive. The blood of all the people and animals is still pumping but at the pace of once a week, their breathing once a month. They are truly living, not dead; stuck in a seemingly perpetual youth or forever prolonging their twilight years. These living statues have no idea of their situation.

    What if this ripple stopped moving outwards? Would the outside world look in and grow jealous of their eternal youth? Maybe they would miss these people for a short time and end up even forgetting them as they themselves grew old but the city stayed forever young. Phrases like 'a snapshot of time', 'living history' and 'a curious real life museum piece' would be common when describing what essentially would be Victorian London caught in amber. All of this is happening right now in a time long past but, at the same time, this crises has already been resolved. The strange explosion of time threatening to make all that has been said a permanent reality has already been stopped. Time is strange like that. One person has managed to help resolve this universal threat. Its saviour? A brave and fearless time traveller who has saved the universe multiple times and never asks to be thanked. Defeating terrible foes, quashing evil, helping societies come together to fight for themselves and forever bringing peace to worlds. This hero is silent, this hero walks in the shadows, this hero likes making Soufflés.