Dead Time (short story)

Dead Time was the eleventh short story in the Short Trips anthology More Short Trips. It was written by Andrew Miller. It featured the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones.

Summary
The Doctor and Sam are travelling in the TARDIS when something goes wrong. There is an explosion and everything goes dark. After turning on the emergency lighting, the Doctor discovers they are in deepest space and have landed "in countless different times all at once".

Outside the TARDIS is also dark, and they go out to explore. As they make their way through the darkness, Sam thinks she sees something, but is hesitant to mention it. They can see distorted shapes that look like faces, and there are points of light that are beginning to coalesce. The lights start moving toward the Doctor and Sam, and they run away. They enter an area that seems familiar to the Doctor. He realises it is an ancient TARDIS, and it is awakening in response to his presence.

The cloud of lights places Sam in a stasis field, and comes after the Doctor. They attack his mind. Suddenly he sees a version of himself from the future, come back to warn him about the alien entity attacking him.

The Other-Doctor tells him the "aliens" are the Forgotten, from Gallifrey's past. They were memory surfers, who figured out how to time travel through a Time Lord's timeline. The side effect is that the host's life unravels. The owner of this old TARDIS was one of their victims, and when he went mad, they did as well.

The Other-Doctor fades away, and the Forgotten start travelling through the Doctor's past in his mind. When they get to the time his first incarnation was about to regenerate, he traps them in a sealed area of his mind.

He and Sam find themselves in the console room of the old TARDIS. This reality starts to dissolve, and they head back to their TARDIS.

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Sam Jones

Continuity

 * Sam's "Richter scale of danger" is used. (PROSE: Genocide)