When Starlight Grows Cold (short story)


 *  was the sixth illustrated short story in the 1968 Doctor Who Annual.

It featured the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly and was notable for being the first time the vast emptiness between galaxies had been used as a setting in a piece of authorised Doctor Who fiction, and the first time that the TARDIS performed a controlled "short hop" between two close points in space.

Summary
The TARDIS materialises in nothingness. It is pitch black in every direction, according to the scanner. The Doctor at first waxes lyrical about where they are, before finally telling Ben and Polly that they are actually in the vast, empty space between galaxies. He sends out some probes to check for any biological life-forms nearby, not really believing he'll possibly find any.

Excited by being in such an unusual location, the Doctor entreats Ben to join him for a bit of a space walk. They exit the TARDIS in space suits, leaving Polly behind in the console room to monitor the readings from the probe. While the boys perform their extra-vehicular activity, Polly shouts down an intercom that the probes are beginning to transmit signs of nearby life.

The Doctor guffaws at the very idea, providing a series of objections to every claim Polly is making. Ben finally tells the Doctor to turn around, so that he can see the big, white sphere behind them. Ecstatic at the discovery, he tells Polly that he and Ben are going inside to investigate. Polly strongly protests, telling the Doctor that if he dies, there'll be no one left to pilot the TARDIS home. The Doctor flippantly tells her that this is the perfect time for her to learn how to fly the TARDIS, then. Ben essentially concurs, telling Polly to "stop snivelling".

The two space walkers enter the sphere. They discover that it's housing massive life-forms that are apparently in suspended animation in huge cocoons. The Doctor is absolutely transfixed at the uniqueness of this life-form and the improbability of their incredibly long journey. The cocoons begin to open, and Polly and Ben fill the intercoms with worried chatter. The Doctor, though, is lost in his thoughts about this new species, and cannot understand the gravity of his situation. He is only gradually aware that he is somehow back in his TARDIS.

When he chides Polly for bringing the TARDIS to their location and interrupting his studies, Ben steps in to defend her. The aliens were far too massive for them to defend against, should they turn aggressive. The Doctor can't object, so his anger with Polly fades. Indeed, it turns into admiration because she's managed to do something he's never done before: make the TARDIS perform a short hop in space. When he asks her how she did it, she reminds him that he told her it was time she learned to fly the TARDIS. When he presses further, she admits that she got lucky and can't show him how she did it.

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Ben Jackson
 * Polly Wright

Continuity

 * The Doctor says that he's failed to provide an airlock for the TARDIS, intimating, perhaps, that he constructed the ship. It's possible to interpret the first Doctor, especially in the first televised episode as intimating the same thing. However, other stories indicate that the TARDIS does have an airlock.
 * Later, the Doctor calls the TARDIS "the most marvellous thing ever made by the hand and brain of man", suggesting that he is human.
 * The Doctor's initial description of their location is reminiscent of the tenth Doctor's description of the Void between dimensions, given in Doomsday. However, it soon becomes apparent that the Doctor was vastly over-simplifying for his companions, and that they are firmly in their own universe, but simply in the emptiness between galaxies, not dimensions.
 * The TARDIS is shown to have the ability to send out probes.
 * Polly manages to make the TARDIS do a short hop in space. The Doctor claims this is the first time the TARDIS has ever managed a short hop. When the Doctor asks Polly to show him how she did it, she is unable to do so.  She claims she got lucky, ". . . a chance in a thousand million, Doctor.  It'd take me another thousand million years to do it again."