Renaissance

By Matthew Durrant

 

She screamed in pain as wave after wave of artron energy flowed over and through her, glowing and crackling, relentlessly tearing the old type 40 apart as she sought to tear free of Skaros transduction barrier.

The Police Box exterior of the Tardis began to break apart, debris spinning back down through the clouds of the Daleks home planet. A once gleaming white console room twisted, writhed and blackened, under the violent assault.

Multiple figures, all identical to the Doctor’s 7th incarnation, walked around calmly pressing buttons and switches as the cloister bell tolled mournfully in the background. Smoke rose through the time rotor as raw energies of it’s creation sought to break out. A roundel clattered through the floor sparking with residual energy. The Doctor ignored all this as he put his 953 years of experience into practice.

The Tardis, now a rainbow of colours, slowly pulled free and began to rise up and into the vortex - her home. Exhausted, battered and shadow of her former self but alive, the ship of time and space began to heal along with her Timelord companion.

The Doctor’s numerous selves faded from view leaving the small figure dressed in a scorched brown jacket, and a ripped jumper festooned with question marks. He surveyed the damage, his blue/grey eyes betraying no emotion. She was a wreck, her soul tortured beyond endurance, yet she persevered and came through stronger. The Timelord had aged visibly through his ordeal but there was work to do. He had a Tardis to rebuild.

Closing the inner door he carried a small container and placed it in a dull metal box. He shook his head sadly. Things could’ve been so different. However the Master had chosen his path and paid the price.

With the Doctor gone, the console room descended into darkness. Everything was silent nothing moved, nothing lived. Condensation built up on the walls, slowly turning into ice crystals as the temperature dropped. The corridors too were silent and dark, the normal hum and bright lights were absent.

A pair of Stars shone brightly in the darkness as they continued the waltz they had danced for billions of years. Dead planets circled the binary stars and bore silent witness to a small blue box fading into existence, showing no sign of the earlier trauma she had endured.

Inside the ship, a soft whispering could be heard in console room, and the corridors beyond. The whispering continued on through the ship into the cloisters and deep into the very heart of the old ship. The Doctor sat quietly in the darkness, his eyes closed as if asleep. Structural changes began to manifest themselves. The corridors changed in colour from their original white roundled shapes to a darker richer texture of wood and metal.

The walls rippled and cleared. Light streamed in through a stained glass window to reveal a vast chamber, in which was housed the eye of harmony. No longer would the Doctor need to rely on Gallifrey alone for his Tardis’s continued existence.

The console room too had changed. Gone were the white roundled walls and in their place, stone. The large double doors were bigger than before, in fact the whole room had been transformed in to a vast chamber stretching into infinity.

The Console itself now appeared to be made of wooden panels with dials, levers, and brightly coloured bulbs scattered around each panel. In the centre, a large glass cylinder glowed softly, illuminated by the crystal tubes within.

Tall scaffolds surrounded the ensemble the with a network of thin metal strips crossing from side to side with wires could clearly seen running up the inside. The whole thing reached up to the large metal casing above the cylinder. Covered with a multitude of wires, the whole set up dominated the central control console.

A variety of light sources from candles to street lamps, lit up a vast library stretching out into the distance.

The Tardis no bore little resemblance from before. To all intents and purposes she had been reborn.

With his work completed, the Doctor, now smartly dressed in a tweed jacket, and grey check trousers sat down to enjoy a well earned cup of tea...