Gallery (The Gallery)

Earth's most famous art gallery was once a hotbed of activity, with seemingly endless rooms. Hundreds of loud tourists came every day, from hundreds of different cities, and were led by guides. The marble floors were waxed and shined daily.

When the Seventh Doctor visited centuries later, the gallery was dark and silent, abandoned like the planet it sat on. He nevertheless came to admire the works of the old masters, still largely intact.

Collages hung on the walls, next to picturesque streams trapped in mid-babble with birds hung in the sky. The Doctor caught his eye on one statue, Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders. As he stood in front of the statue, the figure toppled off his atlas, and the Doctor was unable to stop its fall. It pulled the globe down with it.

Holding the two largest pieces of the globe, the Doctor looked out the window with tears in his eyes, out at the gray world, which he contrasted with the paintings hung on the gallery walls. "No birds hung in the skies, no scenic rivers babbled into the sea. Just grey dust whipped into a frenzy by a cold, unforgiving wind." The sounds of the Doctor's sobbing echoed through the halls of the once silent gallery. (PROSE: The Gallery)