April
(The Doctor is leaving a message on the Williams' or Pond's answerphone.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Hello, Ponds. Checking in. How are you?
(The Doctor is carrying a surfboard, and confronting Sontarans.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Not much to report. Surfed the fire falls of Florinall Nine. Not deliberately, just the easiest way out.
(He leaps from a spaceship. Next, toasting muffins by a fire.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Met Mata Hari in a Paris hotel room.
(Mata Hari undresses for him.)
DOCTOR [OC]: What an interesting woman.
(A recording studio.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Laid down some backing vocals.
(The Tardis.)
DOCTOR: I should be with you any day now. Literally any day. Helmic regulator's playing up. Can't get the temporal steering right.
(Ronald and Isabella are listening to the message.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Oh dear, I appear to have collided with ancient Greece. Argh!
(Ronald turns off the message.)
Isabella : The Doctor.
(They drink to him.)
May
(The Doctor bursts into Isabella and Ronald's bedroom.)
DOCTOR: Argh! Stop everything.
RONALD : What's going on?
Isabella : Doctor! Bedroom!
RONALD : We have a rule about the bedroom.
DOCTOR: No one on this planet is safe right now. We have to solve this before it's too late. Get your clothes on. If we move fast we at least stand a chance and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?
Isabella + RONALD : No.
DOCTOR: No. Helmic regulator again. Too early. Wrong point. As you were.
(The Doctor leaves.)
Isabella : Doctor, you can't just go like that. What's happening? Don't we need to know?
(The Doctor returns and sits on the bed.)
DOCTOR: Popped up in the wrong order. Easy mistake to make. Nothing to alarm you. Forget I was ever here. I'll be back soon enough, I would have thought. Everything's fine, pretty much. Don't worry about the future. The future is really (flashes of spoilers) safe. Really, really, safe. Sleep well.
(The Doctor leaves. Sound of the Tardis dematerialising.)
RONALD : I really hate it when he does that.
June
(Morning. Ronald is fastening his dressing gown and heading for the bathroom. Something in there makes him call out.)
RONALD : Whoa!
Isabella : Out of the way, Mister Pond. What? Why not?
(There is an Ood sitting on the toilet.)
OOD: May I be of any assistance?
RONALD : Ood on the loo.
Isabella : Yeah.
July
(In the Tardis, under the time console, the Doctor is on the phone.)
DOCTOR: Ood. Yes, I was wondering where he'd got to. I thought he'd just gone for a walk in the Tardis.
(Isabella and Ronald are listening to the message on their phone whilst having breakfast.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Must have wandered off when I popped in the other night. If it was the other night.
(Isabella steals one of Ronald's sausages.)
DOCTOR [OC]: You know, I rescued him from the middle of the Androvax conflict. I was taking him back to the Ood Sphere.
(Back in the Tardis.)
DOCTOR: Anyway, he's not being a nuisance, is he?
(No, he is the perfect housekeeper.)
OOD: Enjoy your workday experience.
RONALD : Cheers.
(Making the beds, putting out the washing, cleaning the windows.)
RONALD : Doctor. Doctor? He seems to think that he's our butler.
(The Doctor is still repairing the Tardis.)
DOCTOR: He's conditioned to serve. The best thing is, let him do just that. I'll come and pick him up tonight. Whenever tonight is. Oh no, got to go. Power drain's threatening to cause the Tardis to implode. Oh no, that's bad.
(Back to the Pond's home.)
DOCTOR [OC]: Why's it doing that? No, no, no, no, no, don't do that!
(So the Ponds continue to have a servant.)
OOD: Your infusions. How else may I be of service?
RONALD : I feel so guilty.
Isabella : Just eat your breakfast.
August
(The Doctor is changing the bulb on the top of the Tardis whilst leaving a message on the answerphone.)
DOCTOR: Me again. Sorry about the gaps in communications. Dropped your Ood back home. Reconnected it to the hive mind. Helmic regulator's still not working. Got hit by an arrow at Hastings Hill. Also rode a horse through eleventh century Coventry. Also, I think I may have accidentally invented pasta. I popped round but you were out. Which is fine. Everything's all right, isn't it, with you two? Course it is. Ponds always fine. Just worrying unnecessarily. Anyway, just call me if you need me.
(Ronald is angry and Isabella is in tears.)
DOCTOR: Okay? Toodle pip.
(He uses the sonic screwdriver on the phone.)
ANSWERPHONE: Message deleted.
(Isabella comes home to see there are no messages.)
Isabella : We need you, raggedy man. I need you.
YOU ARE READING
The Story of a Mad Man with a Box (Series 7) Doctor Who
ActionSeries 7 has been described as being a series of "movies" squeezed into forty-five minutes, although The Snowmen was sixty minutes. The first half is about the Doctor deleting himself from the universe to hide from the deadly Silence, who attempted...
