"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.

"Hide" an alternate ending and missed opportunity

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!

“Hilla!” the Doctor cried as he ran from the collapsing edge of the universe.  “Hilla!  Hilla Tacorian!”  A cracking sound stopped him dead in the misty woods, and he looked round carefully, but saw nothing save the moss, tree trunks, and mist.  The sound came from all round.  He took a few experimental steps, but the sound echoed again, louder this time.

He felt a thrill of fear down his spine as he carefully walked forward, looking round all the while.  That wasn’t unusual in itself.  He was often scared, but this was different.  That sound could be made by any number of things, all of them equally able to hide in a predator’s dream like this dark wood.  It could be anything from a wild animal that got trapped there with their lost time traveler, to a hostile alien that had chased the woman into this pocket universe, or even another lost soul in need of just as much help.  Without knowing what it was, he didn’t know what to do.

Maybe it was just Hilla, he tried to convince himself.  The echoing sound of her running through the woods.  But then, he reminded himself, she is running from something.

The sound approached from behind.  The Doctor closed his eyes.  “One,” he whispered.  Still closer.  “Two....”  He braced himself.  “Three!”  He whirled, the tails of his coat flying round, but saw nothing behind him.  The sound had stopped, replaced by the echoing plea for help from the woman he had come to save.

It faded away, and he was left with the silent woods and the sinister movements of the hidden creature again.  “Where are you?”  He caught a glimpse and ran the other way.  But no matter which way he went, he always seemed to see it ahead of him. 

Finally, he stopped.  “What do you want?  To frighten me, I suppose, hey?  I guess that’s what you do.  You hide, you’re the bogeyman under the bed, seeking whom you may devour....”  Saying that out loud did not actually make him feel any better.  And they say to face your fears, hah.  He circled on the spot, trying to see what was out there, but only caught snatches, and always the sounds.  He couldn’t leave without Hilla, or the whole trip was wasted, so he had to swallow his fears.  Easier said than done.

When it sounded like the creature was right behind him, the Doctor spun round and shouted in fear before he could stop himself. 

Still, hearing the sound of his voice had helped a bit, so he tried again.  “You want me to be afraid ... and well done.  I am the Doctor ... and I am afraid.  So,” he kept going, to fill the silence between haunting sounds, “why am I still here, huh?  Why not just eat me?”  He stood and spread his arms, inviting.  That was actually comforting.  Now, he was getting something that led somewhere other than fear.  “Huh?  Come on....”  He felt courage returning, the courage that came from increased understanding.  “Because you still need me.  Yeah, you need me to piggyback you across.”  He laughed.  It was still a nervous sound, but now he knew he was at least somewhat safe.  (Everything is relative.)

“Aaah....  To which I say....  Come on, then, big boy.”  He looked round uneasily still but didn’t back down from his decision.  “Chase me.” 

Suddenly, as he whirled away to run, a woman in white emerged from the mist right in front of him.  They nearly crashed together, but he snatched her arm to help keep them both upright and unharmed.  “Hilla Tacorian, I presume?”  Before he’d finished, he was already stumbling back for the harness.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

The Doctor whirled round yet again, taking a few steps back toward her to explain as quickly as possible to try and forestall any questions.  “Collapsing universe, you and me dead, two minutes, no time, complete sentences, abandon planet.”  He tried to run off again.  He had wasted so much time already on the creature.

“Wait!”  He paused.  “There’s something in the mist.”

What he’d experienced was too profound for any longer explanation, and it hadn’t dispelled his fear any.  So, he simply said, “I know.  Run.  Run!”

And they did.  Leaping over logs and dodging the great trunks, Hilla followed the Doctor as he ran back for the harness that would pull them to safety.

Back on Earth, things were getting difficult for his helpful psychic.  He heard her calling out to him, echoing through the woods like all sound seemed to in this place.  Though already at full tilt, he pushed out a little more speed.  That was their way out.  If they missed the opportunity, there would not be another.  Underneath all that noise, they could hear the creature of the mist chasing after them with more persistence and energy than ever.

Suddenly, the edge of the wood reared up in front of them.  Arms wheeling, the Doctor stopped on the edge of the cliff, slowly dissolving under its own entropy.  “Okay,” he said, fighting the panic down.  “Not that way, which means....”  It’s gone.  He didn’t say that.  He didn’t accept that, yet.  “Probably....”  Back the other way.  Hilla, not sure what was happening, but knowing the Doctor was her only hope, followed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as they ran.

“You know that exit I mentioned?”

“Yes?”

“I seem to have misplaced it.”  That must be it.  It can’t have gone off the edge of the universe already.

They both heard the monster ahead of them, and the Doctor wasn’t quite sure where to look for the harness, so they stopped, back to back, and circled slowly, cautiously.

“Doctor!” he heard faintly from a very specific direction.

He would have smiled if the situation didn’t have him so terrified.  Clever, clever girl.  “This way.”

Through the woods, the outline of the haunted house appeared, first vague but with increasing solidity.  “Doctor!  Come home!  We’re here!”

“Whoa!”  Hilla had just looked up from running when they paused and saw the house appearing.  “What’s that?”

“An echo house in an echo universe.  Clever psychic!  That is just top-notch.”  Even so desperate, he couldn’t help but praise her.

With the monster right on their heels, it seemed, they dashed for the front doors.  Emma’s oft-repeated, and increasingly desperate, cries spurred him on even faster.  He knew the strain was getting to her.  This had to be tremendous effort.  If they could get to the same room she was in on Earth, they could probably get back from there.  Entropy of the universe wasn’t the only clock.  She could only last so long.

They slammed and locked the doors behind them, then the Doctor put his ear to the door, listening to the scraping on the other side.  “It’s looking for a way in.”  As the weight of the creature crashed against the doors, they ran down the hallway.

***

Every second counted.  Clara knew it.  Emma screamed with the effort.  “I’m not strong enough!”

“Just a few more seconds!” Clara urged her, desperate to see the Doctor return.  He said the TARDIS couldn’t get into that universe.  If he didn’t come through before Emma closed it, what would happen to him?  She fought her helplessness as she listened to the psychic scream again.

***

Sure enough, the same door that opened the wormhole for his departure from Earth was a doorway back there in this echo house.  Once Hilla was through, the Doctor slammed the doors and pulled out his sonic screwdriver to lock it.  “Grab the rope!” he instructed as he did so.  “Give it three tugs.  Quick as you like!”

“What about you?” Hilla asked, even as she put the harness on.

The Doctor smacked his sonic screwdriver against his palm.  Stupid pocket universe.  He knew psychic technology was the only thing that would get him to and from this universe, but he had gone for his sonic screwdriver out of habit and hope.  Never mind that.  “I’ll be next!”  Off came the bowtie.  He had others. 

Hilla tugged on the rope as the Doctor secured the doors, and those waiting on Earth immediately set to dragging the harness, and its passenger, back through.  Clara stared eagerly at the glowing wormhole, hoping to see that old-fashioned coat and ridiculous hairstyle.

Instead, out came a different figure, who could only be Hilla Tacorian.  While the professor helped her up, Clara stared in horror at the wormhole she knew would be closing in just seconds.

***

Inside the house now, the monster approached the doorway and banged on it.  The Doctor looked up and laughed a little to himself.  “Ah, that’s what that noise was!  Lovely!”  He ran for the doorway to get the harness which Hilla should hopefully be throwing back for him now. 

It appeared out of the wormhole, and he snatched it, but before his arm was through the first loop, he paused.  His mouth dropped open as the banging sounded again.  “No....”  The door rattled in its frame.  The Doctor nearly dropped the harness as his mind raced off in a thousand directions.  “Stupid!”  He smacked his forehead and ran back for the doorway.

I have a few more changes to make, but this was getting long.  Tune in tomorrow for the second (and hopefully last) installment of my alternate ending!  Found here.

"The Severed" -- an exerpt from NaNoWriMo novel

The severed had always been an unspoken horror, discussed in whispers, cast as victims or villains in campfire stories.  No one ever took it for granted, and among the packs for certain, it was tantamount to a death sentence.  He didn’t know how other cultures handled it, but he knew what happened to any severed among the packs.

             

He had seen it once, while they were visiting another pack.  Branain had been young then, but old enough to remember and put the pieces together.  He had been playing with several other boys his age, throwing a ball around and chasing each other without any need for rules or structure.

             

A hush had fallen over the whole pack before any of the kids knew what was happening.  The laughter died, the pups tucked their tails between their legs and hid behind their boys.  A woman came staggering into their line of sight around a building on the other side of the town.  She wasn’t hurt, but her face and arms were covered in scratches, as if she’d walked blindly through the forest and let all the sharp branches scrape over her skin.  The look on her face drew all the boys into a knot together, the pups behind them, staring wide-eyed at her.  Branain didn’t know her, but a few of the boys from the pack whispered the same name, so he knew she had been one of theirs.

             

No longer.

             

A loose ring of men formed around her as she staggered to a halt, their hands spread and open, talking soothingly to her.  She didn’t seem to be paying attention; he wasn’t sure she had even noticed them at all.  That face, those eyes, held absolutely nothing.  Not even pain or fear, which he thought he would feel if he ever lost Zian.  Just nothing.  When one of the men approached and led her off by the arm, she didn’t protest.  She still seemed beyond even noticing.  The other men watched them leave for a moment, then dispersed.  The boys around Branain dispersed, running off home to be with their parents.

             

Branain sat down right where he was.  Zian crawled into his lap.  He put his arms firmly around the pup and held him close, staring at the last place he’d seen that woman.  The last place he knew anyone in the pack except that one man would ever see that woman again.  He didn’t need to be told what had happened to her after that.  He knew.  He just didn’t want to.

             

When his father found him a little later, he sat down next to his son and put his arm around the pair of them.  Felic curled around them on the other side, resting his head on Branain’s feet.  Even though he knew, Branain still questioned his father, pushing for some other explanation, but Kennet didn’t pull any punches.  He explained, in simple terms a child could understand but it was still the truth, about why she had been alone, and about why she shouldn’t be left that way.

             

“No one would leave her to that pain,” Kennet had said.  “Forcing her to keep living would be mean.  For her sake, we helped her so she wouldn’t hurt anymore.  In the only way that really matters, she was already dead.  After you die, you can’t keep living.”

             

Branain cuddled close to his father, squeezing his eyes shut.  “If I lost Zian, would you help me, Daddy?”

             

Kennet’s arm tightened around him; Felic whined.  “Of course I would.  I love you.  I wouldn’t let you stay in pain.”

Doctor Where? -- Time and Relative Serenity, Part IV

“Zoe!”  Mal’s voice from the cockpit.  “What’s keeping you?”

“Someone I don’t recognize says he’s here to help?”

“I don’t believe this,” he grumbled in Chinese, sticking his head out the door.  “You think you can trust a gun-toting mercenary to at least keep strange folk in one spot....  Look, just bring him in here and keep watch on him; I need you.”

Zoe gestured toward the door with her gun, and the Doctor happily went along.  Once he stepped in, he got an annoyed scowl from Mal.  “This don’t mean I trust you.  This means I need to talk to one of my crew, and I don’t got time for your foolishness.  Quipping and crazy babble aside, stand in a corner and keep that mouth quiet.”

The Doctor grinned harmlessly and saluted.  He stayed out of the way, peering through the glass at the sky beyond and the large ship that loomed before Serenity.  They both seemed of the same class of technology, though the ship he stood in was less refined.  Most likely not aliens, then, or at least aliens that were already part of this world.

Mal and Zoe put their heads together, though she never took her eyes off the Doctor.  They conferred in low voices.  “How much did we look into that last job we took from Davin?” Mal whispered.

“Not a lot, sir.  We had to do some heavy negotiating to get an advance on the fee so we could fuel the ship just to do the job, remember?”

“Remind me why it’s a good idea not to look too close at jobs,” Mal said, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Because not all jobs do a conscience good to know what they are, even if we need them to keep flying, sir.”  It sounded rehearsed, like she was throwing his own words back at him.  The look on Mal’s face confirmed it.  “Also, it’s stupid and dangerous.”

He scowled.  “Those last two aren’t reasons why it’s a good idea.”

“No,” Zoe said with a straight face.  “They’re not.”

“Might I point out that they’re still trying to talk?” Wash said as he fiddled with some dials.  “I can only fake the communications error for so long before they just decide to board us and talk that way.”

“I could talk to them,” the Doctor offered, not thinking twice about breaking the command not to talk.

“Who is this guy?” Wash demanded, looking over his shoulder at the Doctor.

“Someone who doesn’t get to represent my crew,” Mal interjected before the Doctor could answer.  “I don’t know who you are, why you’re here, or even how you got here, but you stay out of my business, okay?”  He ran his hand over his hair.  “Things never go smooth....  One thing at a time.  Wash, keep delaying.  We’ll go ahead and let them board.  You,” he pointed at the Doctor, “out.  Zoe, go with him.”  Mal followed them out as they headed back down to the cargo bay.

Halfway down the hall, they heard a squeal of unmistakable, yet feminine, rage.  The Doctor recognized Amy’s voice and took off, gun-toting soldier be damned.  Mal and Zoe were right on his heels.

Doctor Where? -- Time and Relative Serenity, Part III

The Doctor had a hunch.  Not really based off anything in particular, just a hunch, that he would need to know what was going on right now between the captain and the pilot.  The gun-happy moron in front of him wasn’t likely to make that happen any time soon, so the Doctor turned to his greatest weapon to get him to where he needed to be.  He opened his mouth.

“Having a bit of trouble?” he asked amiably.

“Nothing you need to concern your stupid little tie about,” Jayne assured him.

“I like my tie,” the Doctor said, fiddling with his bowtie in a very offended manner.  “Bowties are cool.”

Jayne cocked an eyebrow.  He switched to Chinese momentarily, but only the Doctor realized.  “Big stupid pile of stinking meat....”

“Hey!” Amy snapped, pointing a finger at him.  “There’s no call to be rude!”

Turning to her, a lascivious smirk crossed his face.  “I can show you rude, girl....”

Rory pulled her back and stood between her and Jayne, staring him down.  Though he didn’t cut an intimidating figure--not the way Jayne did--there was something in his glare that he’d gotten during all the time traveling with the Doctor and all the trouble he’d seen that made Jayne’s smirk falter just a bit.  “If you want to touch her, you’ll have to go through me.  Something tells me that captain of yours would be very upset if you did that before he got his answers.”

Not one to back down from a challenge, Jayne approached Rory to look him in the eye.  The gun was still between them, but not pointing at anyone in particular at the moment, since the challenge was between the two of them.  “I got lots of ways of getting through a stupid melon-head,” more Chinese, the Doctor noted with amusement as he edged out of Jayne’s peripheral vision, “that the captain won’t mind a bit.”

Amy and Rory noticed the Doctor’s subtle movement and immediately decided to keep this going as long as possible.  “Sure of that, are you?” Amy asked defiantly.

“I think I know him a mite better than you,” Jayne shot back, sticking his chin up with superiority.

“That’s funny,” Rory said, exchanging a baffled look with Amy, “since it really seemed to us that he didn’t respect you at all, and barely trusted you to get things right.”

“That ain’t true!”  He lost his smirk, though, and the gun was pointed at them again.  The pair of them backed up a step or two, and Jayne followed them, placing the Doctor firmly out of his sight and free to sneak off after Mal.

Seizing his chance, the Doctor started sneaking up the stairs, then paused when he saw a figure watching him.  Turning slightly, he caught sight of River again and smiled at her, crossing his lips with a finger.  She just kept watching, but didn’t make a sound, so he took that for assurance she wouldn’t give him away. 

Up the stairs and through the door he’d heard the captain disappear through, the Doctor looked around and spotted a couple figures down at the end of the hall, one seated and the other wearing the brown duster he’d seen before.  Perfect!

“Who’re you?”  His progress was halted by the sound of a gun, yet again, and he held his hands out to show them empty before slowly turning around.  Zoe held her gun leveled steadily at his chest, a wary look on her face, and a glance down the hall toward where Wash and Mal stood.

“I’m the Doctor.  Here to help.”  He smiled disarmingly.  Unfortunately, disarming smiles didn’t actually disarm people.