The End (11DC audio story)

The End was the third and final story in the audio anthology Geronimo!, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Rochana Patel and featured Jacob Dudman as the Eleventh Doctor and Safiyya Ingar as Valarie Lockwood.

Publisher's summary
Valarie/The Doctor is dying. Only the Doctor/Valarie can save Valarie/the Doctor, but for her/him to survive, the Doctor/Valarie will have to die in her/his place.

For the Doctor/Valarie, this is journey's end.

Timeline 1
Valarie hurries the Doctor, who is going into cardiac arrest, onto a medibed where Luna tries to help him. However, the computer declares that he has died. Luna tells Valarie to ignore the computer and uses a medibot to take over the functions of the Doctor's secondary heart, reviving him. He is still being attacked by a toxin, however, and Luna informs Captain Vega of the presence of the two travellers on the ship.

Captain Vega and Delphine arrive at the medbay and are shown the two red marks on the back of the Doctor's neck, looking like a bite from a parasite. Valarie takes Delphine to the TARDIS in the cow pens whilst the Doctor remains with Luna and Captain Vega. Valarie and Delphine examine the cows, which are bound for the newly-independent Earth, bought by the Shadow Proclamation for basically nothing after the previous owner deemed it a bad investment. The Doctor joins them, followed by the protesting Luna, and detects something in the engine room with his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor finds an egg sac in the engine room and Luna takes a sample from one of the embryos, after which the mother creature attacks and bites her before disappearing from reality. Although they are able to get Luna out, she goes into cardiac arrest and dies. Delphine calls Captain Vega and tells him about Luna. Valarie has been bitten on her cybernetic arm and is thus unharmed. She enters the TARDIS with the Doctor, who runs a DNA analysis and identifies the creatures as Time Spiders, believed to have been wiped out by the Time Lords. The TARDIS can produce an antivenom, but it will take twelve days and the TARDIS is unable to dematerialise due to the Time Spiders.

The Doctor brings Captain Vega and Delphine into the TARDIS and loses control of his legs. Valarie suggests that they flood the reactor chamber and goes with Delphine to see if it would be possible. Valarie and Delphine open the bulkhead, guided by the Doctor who is using a communicator from the TARDIS. Valarie and Delphine redirect the coolant and Captain Vega is bitten, allowing the two of them to make a run for the release valve. Delphine reaches it but is bitten by the mother which then sits by the valve, keeping Valarie from reaching it.

The Doctor believes that the mother is scared of Valarie, having already bitten her. Valarie uses her strength to break the pipe, releasing the coolant to freeze the eggs. The mother discharges energy. The coolant flows backwards and into the pipe, making the Doctor realise that he has underestimated the Time Spiders; the mother is keeping the eggs in a time loop of about an hour and is able to undo whatever is done. Any moment now, the loop will reset and they will remember nothing, repeating their actions again and again until the eggs hatch.

The Doctor tells Valarie that she needs to let the mother bite her so that they exchange places, meaning that he will be on his feet and able to stop the Time Spiders. Valarie tries to make the Doctor promise to save her and everybody else aboard, but the Doctor has forgotten who she is. He says goodbye and that he should go home. Valarie frightens the mother and lets her bite her, hoping that the Doctor will get it right next time.

Timeline 2
The Doctor hurries Valarie, who is going into cardiac arrest, onto a medibed where he and Luna try to help him. However, the computer declares that she has died. Luna uses a medibot to take over the functions of Valarie's heart, reviving her but requiring her to remain sedated. She is still being attacked by a toxin, however, and an alarm sounds due to the two travellers being on the ship.

Captain Vega arrives at the medbay and is shown the bite mark on the back of Valarie's neck. The Doctor intends to go to the cow pens to find the parasite responsible, but Captain Vega stands in the way and receives a call from Delphine, who is in the engine room with a creature which bites and immobilises her. The Doctor and Captain Vega head to the pens. The Doctor and Captain Vega find Delphine in the engine room with a bite smaller than that on Valarie, indicating that there are at least two creatures on board. They hear skittering in the pipes above them and the Doctor uses his screwdriver to lock the door, trapping the creature inside with them.

Captain Vega finds an egg sac and the Doctor takes a sample from one of the embryos. The eggs hatch and the Doctor and Captain Vega flee from the hundreds of Time Spiders and return to the medbay where Luna is pessimistic about Valarie's chances of survival. Valarie gives her permission to be put into cryogenic stasis to await a cure. The Doctor tells Captain Vega that he wants to blow up the ship. The Doctor plans to put Valarie, Captain Vega and Luna into an escape pod to send them away from the blast radius of the ship once it detonates.

The Doctor and Captain Vega sneak around the sleeping spiderlings to reach the coolant. The mother sits at the entrance to the engine room and attacks Captain Vega, standing on his body to keep the Doctor from entering. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS to collect Valarie and take her to the best hospital in the universe, but the TARDIS is unable to dematerialise due to the Time Spiders.

The Doctor sees the mother manipulating temporal energy and realises that he has been stuck in a time loop. The mother is letting the spiderlings out now, however, so there will be no more resets. Luna informs the Doctor that there is a spiderling in the escape pod and that she has been bitten. With the mother opening the time loop, the Doctor is able to use the TARDIS to skip ahead a second in time and set a course to the escape pod. Luna tells the Doctor that a woman is with her in the escape pod before dying. The Doctor arrives and awakens Valarie.

In the TARDIS, Valarie is scared to die but accepts that she knew the risks when she came aboard. She forgets the Doctor and dies, asking to see her mother. The Cloister Bell tolls and the Doctor decides to explode the TARDIS to destroy the time loop, but the TARDIS suddenly gives him antivenom which he administers to Valarie, reviving her. The Doctor realises that the ship has been working on producting the antivenom since the first loop as Time Spider DNA is immune to the reset. He moves the TARDIS forwards in time small amounts to extend the loop, keeping the mother from opening it. Eventually, when the Time Spiders have starved, time snaps back.

Timeline 3
The TARDIS materialises in the cow pen and the Doctor and Valarie emerge, unsure of where they are aside from being shortly after Valarie's time in the 54th century. Valarie suddenly jumps, feeling as though she is being attacked and experiencing déjà vu which the Doctor shares. They receive conflicting memories of the Time Spiders, the carcasses of which they see around the room, and remember their repeated deaths. Delphine finds them both and informs Captain Vega, both of whom come to remember them.

The Doctor explains that they have all been in a collapsing time loop. He and Valarie return to the TARDIS, saying that they have places to go and people to save. He suggests that they visit the Endless Beaches of Pernia, but Valarie wants to keep busy rather than waiting for the new memories to fade. The TARDIS telephone rings and the ship is hijacked once again; the woman asks for help once again and the Cloister Bell tolls once more. The Doctor believes that the woman is a Time Lord and that she gave the Darinthian Blight to Hendricks. The TARDIS crashes.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jacob Dudman
 * Valarie Lockwood - Safiyya Ingar
 * Vega - Paul Panting
 * Delphine / Computer - Jo Castleton
 * Luna - Pepter Lunkuse

Worldbuilding

 * The ship docked at the Orion Shipyard.
 * Luna is a medtech. Captain Vega trained as one.
 * The cows include Buttercup, Cupcake, Daisy and Ermintrude.
 * Delphine looks for Jeznox worms. The Doctor says that they are "horrible bitey things".
 * The Shadow Proclamation recently bought Earth and made it independent again.
 * The Doctor says that he speaks Cow telepathically.
 * Time Spiders belong to the chrono arachne genus, supposedly wiped out along with their natural predators by the Time Lords in their early days of exploring the Time Vortex. The Doctor recalls legends of them weaving the Web of Time.
 * The TARDIS Cloister Bell tolls.

Continuity

 * The Doctor says that he needs better kidneys. Upon regenerating into the Twelfth Doctor, he remarks upon his new kidneys. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor suggests Totter's Lane 1963 as where he first ran into trouble. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * The Doctor has seen the destruction of the TARDIS destroy the universe. (TV: The Big Bang)