Total Eclipse of the Heart (short story)

Total Eclipse of the Heart was a short story published in Doctor Who Storybook 2010. It was written by Oli Smith.

Plot summary
Shortly after the colony ship Heart leaves Earth’s orbit its engine rooms explode. Two astronauts aboard, Arnold and Captain Jacobs, are enraged. Mission Control speaks to them via video call, informing them that they still have three active engines and should be able to complete their mission. Jacobs informs mission control that he’s sealed off the engine room, and a spacewalk will be needed to conduct necessary repairs. He also says the ship’s trajectory has been altered. Elena sends diagnostics to Mission Control. After looking them over, Mission Control approve the spacewalk and recommend an investigation into the integrity of the ship’s hyperdrive. Finally, before disconnecting the call, Mission Control informs captain Jacobs of a mass anomaly in the small-arms part of the ship.

The Doctor emerges from his TARDIS, finding himself in a weapons storage room, and begins dismantling some pistols and rifles with his sonic screwdriver. After smelling the gunpowder inside one bullet casing, he identifies the year as 2070. A door to the room opens, and the Doctor sees a man and a woman standing there. One of them, Danielle, asks for a reason not to shoot the intruder on her ship. The Doctor diffuses the situation by showing Danielle his psychic paper and claiming to be an operative for UNIT.

Elena and captain Jacobs pass Column Two, the halfway point between Heart’s airlock and engine room, and take a second to admire the sunlight being reflected in by the ship’s solar sails. After Arnold has a heated exchange with Elena over the radio, Jacobs orders him to change his attitude by the time he and Elena return to the ship’s control room. Arnold is worried about the state of the ship, and whether the Heart project will be a success. Jacobs replies that the mission has to succeed for the sake of the Earth.

Danielle escorts the Doctor from the small arms room, and the Doctor tells her they have plenty of time to chat, as the eclipse is still a few hours away. Danielle tells the Doctor that once the eclipse is directly over Houston the ship’s hyperdrive will engage and it will dematerialise, travelling twenty-six lightyears in six hours in order to reach Centauri-Beta, a planet Danielle refers to as a “new Earth”. Upon learning that Heart is a colony ship, the Doctor questions the need for guns. Danielle tells him that the colonists on Centauri-Beta will have no contact with Earth, and will be raising a society from newborn babies, and so will need a way of enforcing law and order. The Doctor then questions how Heart has a hyperdrive, which shouldn’t exist in human society in the 2070s. Danielle suspects that the Doctor doesn’t really work for UNIT, but doesn’t think he’s a terrorist either, so decides not to question him further, and asks if he’s excited to be the fifth human to step foot on a new planet. The Doctor grins. He then asks Danielle to show him the newborns the Heart crew plan on using to populate their new planet.

Arnold radios Captain Jacobs to inform him of a blackout somewhere on the ship, saying the hyperdrive is on standby until communications to that area can be re-established. He says they have three hours until the ship completes its slingshot orbit of the moon, and so three hours to complete the ship’s repairs. Jacobs and Elena then enter the engine room, wearing spacesuits and magnetic boots to keep them safe while exposed to the vacuum of space. Jacobs is stunned. His hypothesis of a meteor hitting the ship is disproven when he sees that the hole in the ship’s hull does not bend inwards, but outwards.

The Doctor inspects a series of test tubes from which new humans will be grown. Danielle then flicks a switch, and four half-grown human embryos emerge from a column in the floor. The embryos are almost fully developed, with genetic material set aside to be implanted just before their birth.

As Elena and Jacobs conduct repairs on the ship, their radio communication is disrupted by radiation from the sun. After a miscommunication between Jacobs and Arnold causes Jacobs to engage a valve before it’s safe to do so, he and Elena are hit with a burst of sparks and energy from the ship’s engines. The pair are vaporised almost immediately.

Finding the ship’s trajectory now wildly spinning out of control, the Doctor leaps into action, running to the ship’s control room instinctively spinning dials. Danielle demands that he explains what’s going on. He tells her that two crewmembers have been vaporised, and says he’s sorry that he wasn’t able to save them. Through tears, Arnold continues to make adjustments to get the ship stable and back on course. When the Doctor presses his sonic screwdriver to the ship’s control panel Arnold panics, pulling a gun on him. Danielle intervenes, telling Arnold that the Doctor works for UNIT and was stowed aboard the ship to ensure things ran smoothly. The Doctor bounces a signal from a nearby satellite to pick up an Israeli news channel, which is reporting that the ship’s mission is on track to be successful. He then explains that the embryos in storage are too developed to add genetic material to, and that the colonisation of Centauri-Beta is doomed to failure. He says that the people who built the ship must have known this, and some would have known that the ship was doomed to have technical faults, and that the mission was allowed to continue regardless. He says there is no hope for the Heart project. Arnold cocks his gun.

The ship’s solar sails retract into its hull, as its orbit around the moon nears completion.

Arnold confesses that, as the ship’s engineer, he’s known all along that the mission won’t work, and that the hyperdrive technology isn’t truly developed. The Doctor asks what the hyperdrive really is, and Arnold says it’s a firework. It’s designed to disintegrate the ship immediately, so that to observers on Earth it will appear as if the Heart has made the journey to Centauri-Beta. The Doctor then challenges Arnold, asking him why he didn’t say anything before the mission began, and Arnold says he believes it was the right thing to do, as the people of Earth needed a shared hope to keep them united after the Great War. He then says he had a change of heart, and sabotaged the engine room in order to make an excuse to abort the mission, but never intended for Jacobs and Elena to get killed.

Enraged, Danielle calls up Mission Control. She tells them that Jacobs is dead, and that she knows the remaining crew are going to be dead in another half an hour. Mission Control pretends not to hear her, and eventually Danielle smashes the screen with her fist. At this the Controller appears to get emotional. He wishes Danielle and the crew the best of luck, and thanks them for the hope they have given to planet Earth, before disconnecting the call.

The Doctor offers to rescue Arnold and Danielle with his ship, but Arnold insists that he can’t just leave and let Jacobs’ and Elena’s deaths mean nothing. He enlists the Doctor to help repair the ship’s engines so that they can steer it in the opposite direction. His hope is that the people watching from Earth will notice the unusual change in direction and realise the mission is not going as perfectly as the news reports. As they finish repairing the engine the hyperdrive coil activates and begins powering up. Arnold orders the Doctor and Danni to head to the control room and begin steering the ship, but the Doctor refuses to let Arnold kill himself. Arnold again pulls his gun on the Doctor, leaving him with no choice.

The Heart finishes its orbit of the moon, leaving its behind and travelling at full speed. The hyperdrive is at full capacity, and the ship begins to rotate faster and faster until it explodes in a ball of multicoloured flames. Around the world people cheer. At the Mission Control in Houston, the Mission Controller quietly excuses himself from the celebrations and calls his wife.

On Centauri-Beta, the Doctor reclines on a deckchair with a mug of tea and a custard cream. He turns to Danielle, saying that the planet is beautiful, and remarks that the Earth scientists really knew their stuff. Danielle gets up to go for a walk, so she can admire the view from the top of a nearby hill. The Doctor remains in his chair, looking up at the stars.

Characters

 * Tenth Doctor
 * Arnold
 * Jacobs
 * Elena
 * Danielle
 * Controller

Worldbuilding

 * Following a Great War fought in the 2060s, Earth's 194 nations were all unified.

Continuity

 * The Doctor refers to human colonies on Europa (AUDIO: Death Among the Stars) and Mars. (TV: The Waters of Mars)