Doctor Who: Series A [COMPLETE]

Episode Three: Knights of Steel

"Any questions?" the Doctor asked, tapping his stick against the blackboard, adorned with various words and arrows and bubbles.

Callum raised his hand awkwardly.

"Just one. What does any of this mean?" 

The Doctor sighed and tapped the starting point again. 

"Someone is testing a virus on Earth. Someone sent the virus to Earth from a prison world. Somewhere in all this, one of my people is involved - they're probably behind the virus, but I'm not sure to what end."

"So what's next on the investigation?" 

"We need to find where they made the virus container, right Doctor?" asked Jade.

The Doctor turned the stick towards Jade and lit up with glee.

"Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Five points to Jade. Callum, you need to catch up."

"Wait, when was the point system introduced?"

"Before you arrived," Jade teased.

The Doctor felt numb to their laughter. It felt like a cruel lie even having them aboard - the necessity of time had brought them here, rather than any real connection to the Doctor - but to join in with their happiness...that felt worse.

Instead, he turned to his blackboard and wiped the notes away. At some point, they would have to go to the prison world - at some point one of them would ask why they hadn't gone yet - and the loop would close. In his time alone, whilst Jade and Callum slept in their rooms tucked away in the TARDIS, the Doctor mulled over what he saw on that trip. Perhaps, he had considered, the one Jade was asking to be saved...was Callum? He couldn't be sure. Suffice to say, time wanted the pair of them with the Doctor, if only to prevent a paradox from ripping the universe apart.

"Doctor?" 

He put down the eraser and announced that they had arrived. Avoiding their gazes, he headed to the console, where he fiddled with switches, and then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

"Where are we?" Callum asked.

"Mallian Six. Home of the Cyvers, makers of all sorts of cosmic junk. Don't get me wrong: some of what they make is great. Other bits of it...not so much. The universe tends to chuck it out when it doesn't work."

"Shall we?" Jade asked, opening the TARDIS door open.

The Doctor pulled his jacket from the console, and followed his companions outside.

***

Mallian Six was a world of wonder and invention. The Cyvers had undergone twelve industrial revolutions within a century, advancing their technology to the point where every city threatened to tear the sky with the height of its buildings, and forges burned day and night as new inventions were mass produced.

The sight outside the TARDIS, however, was not what he was expecting to find. Instead of glistening skyscrapers, there were fields; instead of forges, there was a nearby village with something resembling a blacksmith.

"Doctor...where are we?"

"I don't understand. This is supposed to be Mallian Six at a point in time where they'd be producing the containers."

"It looks like one of those Renaissance fairs," Callum pointed out, as a knight on horseback approached.

"Halt! Identify yourselves, strangers!" he demanded, valiantly.

The Doctor looked around at this walled in village and the castle looming over it. 

"Doctor..." Jade hissed, nudging him in the ribs.