The Girl Who Grew Up In The TARDIS (Wattys2014)

"For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about."

 Adric died. After I had witnessed his death I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I lay on the control room floor curled up in utter devastation and shock, for a long time afterwards I couldn’t stop shaking and my face burnt with tears. Death surrounds the Doctor, I learnt this from a tender age, so many people that get close to the Doctor, that help him in his fight, don’t live to tell the tale. The TARDIS only shows me a fraction of these dark days, the days when so many die. At first she wouldn’t show me what happened to Adric but I had to see. So with clenched fists and adrenalin of ice pumping through my veins to accompany my racing heart I watched the desperate fight with the Cybermen in the control room as the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan destroyed the Cyberleader and fought to get back to Adric who was on a speeding space freighter on a collision course with the Earth. Adric was brave but maddeningly stubborn to the end, he could have escaped but he died a hero trying to save the Earth, he had already sent the freighter back in time to prehistoric Earth, turning it into the “asteroid” that wiped out the dinosaurs and therefore created life on Earth but the tragedy was that Adric did not know this was meant to be, so he stayed behind to try and stop something that was meant to happen and became a fixed point in time, so the Doctor could never go back and save Adric, not ever… I still cannot believe it, the Doctor always rescues his companions. But the Doctor was too late… for the first time the very worst and unthinkable had happened, the Doctor could not save his companion. Later on, in what passes for night, Nyssa and Tegan were in their rooms consoling each other but I watched the Doctor in the control room as he stood perfectly still and stared out into space, if others who did not know him could have seen him, they would have said he was cold and unfeeling but I could feel the grief and pain rippling from him in waves. I wanted to reach out and hold the Doctor but the dark spell was broken as he suddenly moved and picked up something glinting under the time rotor, I wondered what it was but then I realised; it was the crumpled star badge made of gold which Adric had worn proudly for mathematical excellence, the very thing that was used to defeat the Cyberleader. The Doctor looked at the badge for a long moment and then I could scarcely believe it as tears started to fall uncontrollably down his face. It felt like I was trespassing as I guiltily watched, unable to look away while the Doctor was lost in his private grief but then it was all over abruptly as he placed the broken badge in his pocket and walked away from the control room. That was the first time I saw the Doctor cry. Nothing would be the same again.

 I found it hard to just carry on after Adric’s death, so I retreated into my own world with the TARDIS for a little while but when I came back Nyssa had gone, living a life where she would use her science to selflessly help others but thankfully Tegan was still there. And then there was the new boy but I didn’t like him one bit, he must have been one of the most untrustworthy and dodgy individual’s that the Doctor had ever invited on board the TARDIS. Turlough was his name, he wore a school uniform, was a sarcastic so and so and was pretending to be human. At first I thought he was insane as he ran off into darkened corners, muttering to himself but then I realised he was working for the Black Guardian! My God I had taken my eyes off the ball for one moment and then when I resume watching over the Doctor again there was actually a companion on board who was trying to kill him! The Doctor knows how to pick them, what is he like?!...Though it all turned out alright in the end, the Black Guardian was sent back to wherever he came from and I suspected that the Doctor must have had an inkling about Turlough, which has it turned out was kind of blackmailed and bullied into helping the dark Lord so it wasn’t his fault I guess but I could never really warm to him. I think this incarnation of the Doctor was at his most forgiving and compassionate. So this new team muddled on but it wasn’t long before goodbye came around again and it was far too soon.

 It was the Daleks that ended Tegan’s travels with the Doctor, when I shut my eyes I can still hear those creatures grating, shrill metallic voices ready to erupt with anger, the compressed charge of their weapons firing followed by agonising screams and then silence. Tegan was tired of all the killing and I couldn’t blame her… I go through every emotion as I watch the Doctor and his companions but I’m only watching, I’m not living it, not yet. But Tegan leaving, it was all so impulsive and abrupt, the kind of girl she was really but if she had just slept on it, I think the next day she would have changed her mind but Tegan always was one big mass of contradicting emotions, she didn’t think, she just acted. But when she ran from the Doctor like that, I just felt a terrible wrench inside and I shudder to think what the Doctor was feeling, it was always a bit love and hate between those pair, they fought like how I imagined a brother and sister would but Tegan had been there for this incarnation of the Doctor right from the start and the Doctor was never quite the same after Tegan left him. Another bright and shining companion had gone from the Doctor’s life and it was far too quiet on board the TARDIS.    

 And it wasn’t long before Turlough left the Doctor all this time he was a political exile that could finally return to his people, when I found out his history I actually felt sorry for him and I wish I’d known before. And with the Master seemingly defeated for the time being the Doctor had gone and picked up a new companion, an American botany student who strutted around in a bikini top, though to be fair she was on her holiday at the time and like Tegan before her Peri shouted a lot, liked a good scream but she stood up to the Master and would go on to be very brave. I thought they made a great team, however this version of the Doctor wouldn’t be getting to spend much time with his new companion. You see the Doctor was so young physically and I just assumed he had years ahead of him and more companions to come, that there was even a chance that one day I would be one of them but it was not to be. The Doctor and his companion found themselves in the darkest and most desperate situation, in the wrong place at the wrong time but that is the story of all the Doctor’s lives… Though when the time came the Doctor did not hesitate as he sacrificed his life to save Peri’s but it was no surprise really, the Doctor had always been so compassionate and utterly selfless and he wasn’t going to watch another companion die. Oh but he suffered and it was the closest the Doctor came to not surviving, I swear as I watched him dying in Peri’s arms that I believed his regeneration would fail and he would not make it. And that was the first time that death almost claimed the Doctor.