Love & Monsters (TV story)

Summary
Elton Pope, an ordinary young man from London, narrates his story to his video camera. He introduces himself and tells how, when only a little boy, he came downstairs one night to find a strange man in his house: the Doctor.

After the alien invasion last Christmas day, Elton looks for information on the strange goings on and finds a photo of the Doctor, looking exactly as he did all those years ago. Elton meets Ursula Blake, who posted the photo on her blog and believes his story about the Doctor. Ursula introduces Elton to her group of friends - Bliss, Bridget and Mr. Skinner - who have all heard of the Doctor and meet regularly to discuss their findings. Despite the name Elton coins for them (London Investigation 'n' Detective Agency, or LINDA), they soon become more of a social group, helping each other through their problems and enjoying each other's company.

That all changes with the arrival of Victor Kennedy, an evidently wealthy man who doesn't touch people on account of a skin condition, and who also wishes to find the Doctor. He soon takes over LINDA, forcing the members to work harder. Bliss stops coming to meetings, and the group get close when they track down the TARDIS. Elton finds the Doctor and Rose, but freezes when the Doctor sees and apparently recognizes him. Victor is furious, but decides to change plans: they will look for Rose. Elton finds Rose's mum Jackie with surprising ease, visiting her often to do odd jobs. One night Jackie tries to seduce Elton, but a phonecall from Rose brings her to her senses. Elton feels ashamed of using her, realising at the same time that he loves Ursula, but Jackie finds a photo of Rose in Elton's jacket, and angrily tells him to leave.

Elton tells Victor he's ruined LINDA and that the three remaining members are leaving, noting that Bridget has gone, just like Bliss. He asks Ursula out to dinner, but Mr. Skinner stays behind as Victor offers to help him find Bridget. Ursula forgets her phone, and when the pair return for it they find Mr. Skinner has disappeared and Victor has transformed into a corpulent green alien - the Abzorbaloff, as Elton names it. The creature absorbed Bliss, Bridget and Mr. Skinner, who all retain some consciousness within the creature's body, and it wants to find the Doctor as it believes he will be the ultimate feast due to his unique experience.

Ursula is absorbed too and Elton runs, the creature chasing after him until the TARDIS appears. Rose has come to confront Elton about his behaviour with her mother, but before the Abzorbaloff can try to consume the Doctor the absorbed members of LINDA manage to distract it, Ursula telling Elton to snap its cane. This destroys the field that maintained its integrity, and the Abzorbaloff dissolves, itself absorbed into the ground. The Doctor then explains to the distraught Elton that the night they met so long ago he was hunting a living shadow which had escaped its home dimension; he caught it, but not before it killed Elton's mother.

Elton muses that meeting the Doctor is fraught with danger, but that he did save him one last time: with the sonic screwdriver, he was able to partially restore Ursula, who now exists as an unaging face in one of the paving stones where the Abzorbaloff melted. The pair have found some happiness despite their ordeal.

Continuity

 * Elton remembers the events of Rose, Aliens of London, and The Christmas Invasion.
 * Bridget shows slides of police boxes from history, including a pictogram from some kind of ancient tablet which could refer to an unseen adventure into early human history.
 * Mr. Skinner describes the Doctor as a "collection of archetypes", which echoes fictional lectures about the Doctor given in Steven Moffat's short story Continuity Errors in Decalog 3: Consequences.
 * Victor Kennedy has access to Torchwood files on the Doctor, though the files' details of Rose are incomplete as they had been affected by something called the "Bad Wolf virus".

More Info

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