"Hide" an alternate ending and missed opportunity, Part 2

Spoilers!

Please beware, I am using original dialogue and plot from the episode “Hide” in season 7 of modern Doctor Who.  I have rearranged things a bit, and added some bits of dialogue, but most of it is intact in some form or another from the episode.  I begin my alternate ending at about thirty minutes in.  I will write some small bit of lead-up, to show the context of my changes, but the rest after that is my engineering or my reproduction of events between my changes.  Enjoy!

This is part 2.  Please see part one here. 

At last, Clara saw what she had been hoping for.  The rope tugged again.  “It’s the Doctor!” she cried.  Without waiting for any assistance, she immediately ran to start pulling him through.  It was more difficult than she’d thought it would be.  The psychic screamed again, and the professor ran to her instead, while Hilla threw herself to helping Clara get the Doctor out.  He had saved her life, after all, it was the very least she could do.

Just as the wormhole was collapsing with a final scream from Emma, a figure fell out of the doorway, but not the figure any of them expected.  Hilla practically ran backwards until her back hit the wall, Emma fainted (though to be fair, that was due to the strain), and Clara and the professor stared in shocked astonishment.

Instead of the Doctor, they saw a creature made of knobby logs hunched on the floor.  The harness seemed to be attached with some difficulty to one stumpy leg, and it watched them with at least as much caution as they watched it.

“Where’s the Doctor?” Clara demanded.  Her concern outweighed her fear, and after everything she’d seen so far with the Doctor, she almost expected to get an answer back, even from such a creature.  “What have you done with him?”

It took a couple rapid steps forward, and she backed up just as far before she could help it.  Steeling herself, she raised her chin and determined to keep her ground this time, though her confidence that the creature could understand her and speak was waning.

Before she could repeat her question, the monster rushed forward, and Clara had to jump out of the way or be run over.  It burst through the door right next to Hilla, who threw her arm across her face to try and protect herself, but it went straight past and through the door, leaving all of them unmolested.  The rope from the harness caught on the door, and the harness pulled off the creature’s leg, slamming one of the doors shut behind it.

Clara turned and stared in horror at the empty doorway.

***

The Doctor stared at the empty doorway.  Well, that hadn’t worked out quite like he’d hoped.  He looked round the empty room, then took one slow step.  It vanished, leaving him alone in the collapsing pocket universe, back in the misty woods.  Unable to think of anything to do yet, he crouched down to retrieve the folds of his tie, now lying on the floor where he’d dropped it after the alien broke the door down.  “Oh dear....”

***

A bell tolled.

Clara turned away from the empty door to look for the source of the sound, but she didn’t see anything that might make a sound like that.  It sounded far away, though, so maybe another part of the house? 

Enough of that, though.  The bell continued to sound ominously in the background.  Her eyes landed on the unconscious Emma.  “Wake up,” she muttered.  Then, launching herself toward the Doctor’s only hope, she shouted, “Wake up!  Open the thing!”

“I’m sorry,” whimpered the groggy Emma, her face pressed against Alec’s chest.

“Don’t be sorry,” Alec insisted, raising her head so he could look at her and she could see his sincerity.   “Don’t be sorry!  What you did—”

“Wasn’t enough,” Clara interrupted.  “She has to do it again.”

“She can’t.  Look at her!”  He held Emma’s head protectively.

“She has to!”

They stared at Clara for a moment, then Emma looked at Alec.  She was a wreck, barely able to keep her eyes open, and breathing heavily.

“We can’t leave him!”  Giving up on them as useless, Clara got up and stormed out of the room.  She refused to be helpless!  There was another option.

Alec supported Emma’s weight so he could keep looking into her eyes.  “I know you think you can’t do this, Emma,” he said gently, “but look at that woman over there.”  They both looked at Hilla Tacorian, who was still slumped against the wall, not sure what to do next but not willing to leave the room just yet.  “You saved her.  She’s only here because of your strength!  And so am I.”

***

The TARDIS.  That was the Doctor’s other hope.  Clara remembered what the Doctor had said about the TARDIS going into the pocket universe, but that was before he was trapped in it!  The tolling of the bell had gotten louder as she went, so it must be coming from the TARDIS.  It started right when the gateway to the pocket universe collapsed, and the Doctor was trapped.

She slammed against the doors harder than she expected.  Blinking, she rattled the door to try and get it to open, but no such luck.  Clara stared up at the lights coming out of the windows in open-mouthed astonishment that the TARDIS would refuse to let her in now, of all times!  She rattled it again.  “Oh, come on!”  Once more.  “Oh, let me in, you grumpy old cow!”

A zap from behind her made Clara spin round, and she was faced with ... herself.  “Whoa!”

***

“Emma, I was as lost as her,” Alec continued, “but being with you?  You gave me a reason to be, Emma.  You brought me back from the dead.”

A change came over her face, and Emma had finally gotten her breath mostly back.  Alec stood up and helped Emma to her feet.  Without a word, Hilla came forward as well.  With the crystal back on Emma’s forehead, the three of them linked hands to help her concentrate for another try.  One last deep breath, and she closed her eyes.

***

“What’s this now?” Clara demanded.

“TARDIS voice visual interface,” intoned the fake Clara.  “I am programmed to select the image of a person you esteem.  Of several billion such images in my databanks, this one best meets the criterion.”

“Ugh!  You are a cow, I knew it!”  She pushed that aside for now.  Squabbling with a time machine was low in priority at the moment.  “Whatever!  You have to help the Doctor.”

“The Doctor is in the pocket universe.”

“You can enter the pocket universe!”

The fake Clara twisted her mouth sardonically at the suggestion.  “The entropy would drain the energy from my heart.  In four seconds, I’d be stranded.  In ten, I’d be dead.”

“You’re talking, but all I can hear is ‘mehmehmehmehmeh’!  Come on!  Let’s go!”  Who would’ve thought it would take so much convincing to get the TARDIS to go rescue the Doctor?!  The interface didn’t even let her argue any further, though, because it disappeared right after she finished.  “Hey, hey, hey!”  She spun back to the police box and pounded on the door. 

***

“Doctor?” Emma asked, as the black, spinning mirror appeared in the air where it had before.  “Can you hear me?”  It shattered, and the whirring sound of its spinning grew louder and louder.  “Doctor?”

***

“Come on....”  Clara rattled the door again, then stepped back to regroup, but the door creaked open as soon as she moved away.  A smirk at the blue box later, she was inside the console room, trying to figure out how to get the TARDIS into the pocket universe after the Doctor.

  



It got a little too long for only two parts, but I've completely finished it, and there is a final segment coming tomorrow for plot resolution!  Read it here.