Series 4 and 3/4 ficisode 6: Invasion of Ivonia
Series 4 and 3/4: Ficisode #06
Title: Invasion of Ivonia
Writer: lindest
Characters: Ten, Donna
Rating: G
Word Count: 3007
Summary: An unscheduled stop leaves Donna and the Doctor temporarily stranded on an alien planet, just in time to see the rebirth of a creature which destroyed a civilization.
Editor: alex_e_smith
Director: cherryfeather
The laboratory was clean and cold, blinding white and smelling strongly of bleach and other cleaning solvents. In the centre, beside a large refrigeration unit which purred with electricity, stood a man in a pristine lab coat. A stack of pens hovered hopefully at his fingertips.
He looked unremarkable in every way save for a shock of vibrant fuchsia hair, curling at the edges and a thinning into a comb over across the top of his head: a unique trait passed down from his grandmother, who had also gone bald young. Like the rest of his planet, he had the usual pale green skin and humanoid features.
On the countertop in front of him, he manipulated a Petri dish until it fit snugly beneath some kind of microscope, which projected the magnified image onto a large screen. Fiddling with the knobs until the cells of the green matter came into focus, he took one look and announced in a proud voice to his lab assistant, "We’ve just about got it now, Gillian."
The cells wandered in and out of view on the screen, green chloroplasts searching for sunlight in the sterile fluorescence of the lab.
Gillian, a young female wearing black lipstick, was stroking a tiny bonsai. It wriggled under her fingertips, demanding to be petted, and preening under the attention. "They’re beautiful."
"Imagine," he waxed poetic, "if we’ve succeeded, we’ll have rediscovered the lost art of our ancestors."
"Before the last temple dies."
"Before the last temple dies," he agreed. "And if we can’t repair her, we can at least prolong her life until we can grow a new one."
"Doctor Sauer, do you really think we can replicate the same technique they used to build the temple, with science instead of the ancient magic?"
"Let’s find out, shall we?" He gestured at her. Gillian handed him a seedling from under the heat lamp. Sauer gently injected it with amber liquid, cooing and fussing over it like it was a baby. "There’s a good girl, yes she is."
At first, nothing happened. But then the tiny plant began to stir, unfurling its leaves and stretching its stem as it began to grow.
And grow.
And grow.
The vine snaked out, fast as lightning. Sealed off in the lab, no one heard their screams.
The TARDIS puttered along in the Vortex, idling as she waited for new instructions as to her next destination. The Doctor pawed through a tabloid magazine from the twenty third century, catching up on the gossip and waiting for his companion to wake. Here was a recipe he wanted to try, or rather give the TARDIS to make for him, and here was a coupon for his favourite brand of hair gel. A lucky day!
Coffee, he thought. The smell alone would wake Donna up, and then they could go off and do something to celebrate his lucky day. "I’ll just pop ‘round to the kitchen," he said to himself, "and brew some of those beans I bought at the factory on Colombia Minor." He sniffed in happy anticipation.
But... something was wrong with the air. The Doctor could taste it on the back of his tongue when he inhaled.
Taking the appropriate next step of his personal scientific method, he stuck out his tongue as far as he could, until it made him feel a little cross-eyed and look for all the worlds like a petulant three year old.
Yes. Something was definitely wrong with the air. It was a bit salty, distinctively metallic, and just generally off. The usual soft whistle of wind through the grating was slightly more of a wheeze.
Flopping down on his hands and knees, the Doctor gave the floor an experimental lick. "Oh," he said to himself, conscious whirling with possibilities even as his unconscious had him up on his feet and yanking on levers. The TARDIS gave a tremendous lurch, struggling her way out of the Vortex.
Within a thirty seconds, his companion stumbled into the room, violet blouse creased from being caught up in her nap. "Where are we going?" Donna demanded blearily, rubbing the grit from her eyes with her fingers. "I can’t believe I fell asleep in my clothes again..."
The Doctor grinned and peeked up over the console. "Quick emergency stop." He coughed, glancing to the monitor while he rose to his feet, not pausing in his seemingly random manipulations of the TARDIS controls. "Ooh! Lovely place, you’ll love it! Ivonia. Not like ivory, like ivy. Lots of, well, trees mostly. The people are rabid horticulturists. Bit snobby but I managed last time. Weeeeeell, I did get in to a bit of a bother with the most holy Vinarch of Florates, but I... doubt..."
He froze, perfectly upright like a deer caught in the headlights. He licked his lips compulsively, wishing (not for the first time in several hundred years) that he had his celery, and darted around the console as the TARDIS began to really rock and rumble.
Donna was less sure footed and stumbled heavily against one of the coral branches. "Doctor, what is going on?" She leaned against it for support, shoes not properly on her feet.
"Everything! Come on Donna, sense of adventure!" He seemed oblivious to the way his voice was growing hoarse, rasping out, "Allons-y!"
"Trees? All this because we’re going to see trees?"
"Special trees. Beauuuutiful trees. Ivonian buildings are grown! Literally, living houses! And togas," he babbled, eyes wide and bulging. Did he seem more pale than usual? It was hard to tell, what with the whole room rattling like a car without shocks on a dirt road. "You could wear that purple thing from Pompeii. Smells like a chimney sweep, mind you, but it looked- Erk-"
"Doctor!" she shouted as he collapsed against the controls. He shook his head and tapped his chest below his left heart, trying to signal to her that his respiratory bypass had kicked in. "Doctor! What should I do?" Donna’s voice, which naturally carried, boomed in his ears. The thud of his double heartbeat was filling up his head, but at that moment he managed a landing which was just slightly better than crashing.
The TARDIS flung her doors open and new air rushed in. The smell was powerfully crisp to his aching lungs. "Molto bene," the Time Lord breathed, looking distinctly shaken as he gratefully stroked the police box. He took several deep lungfuls before he felt steady again.
"It’s something in the air," Donna realized. She scrutinized him with her usual brand of concern. "You don’t need another shock, do you?"
"No!" the Doctor quickly yipped, wobbling to his feet with her help. "Just fresh air. Perfect place for it, too. I do so love a forest."
"There’s something wrong with the TARDIS?" Her fingernails were digging in to his armpit; he squirmed in discomfort.
"Nothing I can’t fix in a few hours. We’ll let her pump out the toxins and cycle in the good air. Probably something melted and the fumes disagreed with me. It didn’t seem to bother you." His mind switched gears without a clutch. "You know, celery turns purple when exposed to certain praxis gases. I used to keep a stalk on hand for just this situation."
Donna laughed at what she assumed was a joke. "I bet you did, Spaceman. I bet you wore tweed, too."
"Tweed?" the Doctor pulled a face. He straightened, recovering in the breeze. "Why would I- What?" He had turned his attention to the outside. Thousands of feet below them rose a glittering white city, stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. The hum of hovercars and the sputter of hydrogen exhaust systems resonated off the buildings.
The TARDIS was perched on the edge of a skyscraper, tiny and blue against the sky in the forest of steel and glass. "Huh," commented Donna, leaning on one hip. "Not quite what you were expecting, hm?"
The Doctor shrugged, a bit sheepish. "This is the farthest I’ve ever been in the future here. I didn’t know that Florates had an industrial era, but most places do. Solar flares will get her in another five hundred years; the records are muddled."
"You mean, your memory is muddled," she scoffed.
"It is not!"
"Is so! I don’t see any trees!"
"They’re all... vanished," the Doctor sputtered. She gave him a Look.
The air was crisp, nearly biting, but Donna felt more awake and refreshed than she ever had before. She inhaled deeply. "Mmm, Doctor, what is that?"
"Oxygen, Donna. The atmosphere here is three times as oxygen rich as Earth. It’s a by-product of millions of years of plant life."
"Huh," she replied, folding her arms close against the chill of the air. "Well, that’s got to be good for me, right?" The Doctor grinned wildly and she returned it, eyes crinkling at her smile. "Good for you, too."
"We could take a look around."
"We could."
The Doctor rocked back on his heels, eager. "Want to race?" Before she could reply, he took off, coat flapping behind him in the wind, for the door marked STAIRS.
Florates, Donna came to believe, was just like any Earth city. People talking away on mobiles while driving, buying knock off handbags from street vendors, arguing over bus fare at a shuttle point. Nice handbags, really. Venusian, even. And she had enough credits...
"Just buy the thing already," the Doctor grumbled, holding a stack of rejected purses as she examined the stitching on a black Achel Rouen. "I swear, you’re worse than Jackie when it comes to this stuff."
"Jackie?" Donna said unthinkingly, expecting to hear the story of another in a long line of girls.
"Rose’s, er, mum." Bringing her name up must have been a reflex; already, Donna could see the way his eyes had gone sad about the corners. "I-never mind."
"Help me pick," she suggested, her voice tinged with sympathy and encouragement.
"Um, that one." He gestured with his elbow to a small bag in a neutral colour, boring, about the only one she hadn’t fingered.
"Why?"
"It’s real."
She picked it up and looked at it close from all sides. "How can you tell?"
"I met the designer... oh, many years ago. And I just know."
Trusting his judgment, she stepped towards the vendor, who was haggling over a pair of sunglasses with another customer. In the meantime, the Doctor pulled his guidebook from deep inside one pocket.
"Look, we can tour the temple."
"I don’t want to spend my day in a church, Doctor. It’s not Christmas." She tucked her credit strip into her new bag.
"It could be," the Doctor replied. "It is, someplace. Hundreds of human colonies in this time period, and most don’t have the right number of days in a year on their planets to follow the Gregorian calendar."
"Speaking of which, these aliens don’t look very alien- Ooph." A moody teenager bumped into her on the sidewalk without apologizing. "Hey! Don’t tell me they’re descended from humans."
"Nope." He weaved around a woman and a baby and quick stepped to catch back up to Donna. "Convergent evolution. It’s an amazing thing. Humans, Time Lords, Ivonians, Sea Devils..." He cleared his throat. "Though when you consider that bipedalism is not the most effective form of locomotion, you get to wondering."
They were suddenly standing in front of a massive tree structure, what appeared to be several individual organisms gnarled together to form a canopy structure that easily rivalled the tallest cathedral on planet Earth.
"Here we are! The Great Floratesian Temple. Still standing after all this time. I remember when-" A withered yellow leaf, the size of his torso, bounced off the Doctor’s face and onto the sidewalk. An automated robot sweeper buzzed past, muttering to itself unhappily and sucking up leaves as it went. "Rrright. As I was saying, the Great Floratesian Temple. We can get a package deal and see the biodome too for only twenty-seven credits." He pointed to a sign, in chalk, which said just that.
"Oh, alright," she gave in, hoisting the strap of her purse higher onto her shoulder.
The air in the biodome was very close and the tour guide tedious, but fortunately both facts seemed trifles in comparison to the exotic beauty of the place. Birds chirped happily up in the highest parts of the dome, perching on sprinklers, and gorging themselves on insects and seeds. The flowers were in reds and blues and colours not even on the spectrum of visible light for a yellow sun.
Donna, inspired, stuck her nose into the fresh bud of a soft, spindly looking plant. The shape was like something akin to an Earth rose, but the petals alternated black and white in each layer. She took a deep whiff and sighed happily. Not to be outdone, the Doctor leaned forward to examine a small cluster of exquisite blue flowers. The perfume was ever so sweet.
"Oh," he murmured mildly, head immediately starting to spin. "Shouldn’t have done that. Won’t do that again." Thoughts, dangerous unbidden thoughts swam through the pink fog in his brain. Martha’s mouth, wet and slack with surprise when he kissed her. Rose’s eyes, framed by thick eyelashes, burning bright as the sun as she destroyed the Daleks. Grace, Charley, Fitz, Mel and Ace, warms hands pressed firm in his cool palm. The images were coming faster, older and even more painful. Tegan and Turlough, Nyssa, Adric, Sarah Jane, Romana- Tearing at his memories, wrenching them to the front of his mind, an acute agony. Brax, Susan, Koshei-
The Doctor gasped, choosing a single memory to block out all the others, hands pressing to his temples delicately, pressing down on his mind until the floodgate was reduced to a trickle of dull pain. "Peri would have loved it here."
"Who?" Donna looked curiously at the vine which was playfully curling around her feet, like a puppy seeking attention. It was tiny and the palest green, no thicker than the stem of a Kurrovian sweat pea.
It was a relief to be able to think just one thing at a time again. "Perpugilliam Brown. She was American, a botanist. Welllllll, before she became the queen of the Krontep." He shoved his hands into his pockets, fishing for a handkerchief. "Gorgeous gardens at the palace on Thoros Alpha now. Her great-granddaughter has quite the green thumb, I’m told."
"Queen? How did she end up queen?" Donna wanted to know.
"Long story," the Doctor coughed into the cloth. "I’ve been known to travel with royalty in my time- Ooh! What’s that?" Distracted, he left Donna blinking in his wake. She leaned down to read the tiny brass plaque labelling the flowers. Forget-me-nots. That had to mean something, she thought, but what was not clear.
The Doctor was bent over the handle of a white door labelled LABORATORY, sonic screwdriver in hand and blinking blue. "What are you doing?" Donna hissed.
"What does it look like?" He grinned. "Locked door, couldn’t resist, wanted to take a peek inside, meet the people behind the scenes, as it were."
The knob gave a satisfactory click and the door gave way. Giving one last furtive glance towards the tour guide, who was droning on about the mating cycles of the humpbacked lily-monstrous purple things that they were-the Doctor cracked open the door. It hissed and popped on its hinges as the vacuum seal was broken.
The second indication that today was not in fact a lucky day was the putridly sweet stench which poured out in waves against their faces. Donna pulled back, gagging, under the power of the smell. The Doctor fared little better.
The automatic lights flickered on, dim and yellow from disuse. The air was hot and wet, and only the faintest of rustles could be heard from within the hallway. It could have been mistaken for a bird taking flight or a person’s clothing nudging against the stalks beside the footpath. As soft as a whisper was this noise, a whisper of silky leaf on white tile flooring.
But it grew more pronounced as the light sputtered to life, the dormant entity inside beginning to unwind from its dormant slumber. The Doctor let the door fall wider open, the odour lessening but nowhere near abating. The sonic screwdriver hummed warningly at him when he extended it, brandishing it like a rapier to defend himself from whatever could have produced such a vile stench.
And then, as if from out of the depths, it came. The first tendrils of vine, with inky black-green leaves, proved to be the advanced guard. The leaves were shiny and approximately the size of a humanoid palm, no more, though some were curled into a conical shape which made it more difficult to judge. The top sides were slick and shiny in the light, the undersides dull and sandpapery.
"Oh, look at you, you’re beautiful," the Doctor breathed. "Look, Donna, it’s a sentient plant. And they’ve kept you all cooped up in the dark like you were a monster to be starved out. Who would do such a thing to you?"
A leaf brushed at his trainer curiously, responding to the vibrations of the Doctor’s voice in the air. The tour group had taken notice and were moving towards them, the guide at the rear, protesting beneath his owlish glasses, "What are you doing? You can’t be in there! That’s a restricted zone." A Raxacoricofallapatorian in a large pink hat and lipstick led the pack, her bulbous eyes blinking with thick mascara and black liner.
"Doctor," Donna urged in a strangled tone, eyes adjusting to the strange flickering pattern of the fluorescent light, which was by now nearly completely swathed in leaves. "There’s something in there. Something in the dark."
The Doctor leapt forward without warning past the door and into the chamber. "Now, what do we have here?"
TO BE CONTINUED
Series 4 and ¾ will return next Saturday with ‘The Ivonian Problem’ by canemex.
Confronted with a hungry plant, the Doctor and Donna must team up with a native to save his world... and their lives.
Title: Invasion of Ivonia
Writer: lindest
Characters: Ten, Donna
Rating: G
Word Count: 3007
Summary: An unscheduled stop leaves Donna and the Doctor temporarily stranded on an alien planet, just in time to see the rebirth of a creature which destroyed a civilization.
Editor: alex_e_smith
Director: cherryfeather
The laboratory was clean and cold, blinding white and smelling strongly of bleach and other cleaning solvents. In the centre, beside a large refrigeration unit which purred with electricity, stood a man in a pristine lab coat. A stack of pens hovered hopefully at his fingertips.
He looked unremarkable in every way save for a shock of vibrant fuchsia hair, curling at the edges and a thinning into a comb over across the top of his head: a unique trait passed down from his grandmother, who had also gone bald young. Like the rest of his planet, he had the usual pale green skin and humanoid features.
On the countertop in front of him, he manipulated a Petri dish until it fit snugly beneath some kind of microscope, which projected the magnified image onto a large screen. Fiddling with the knobs until the cells of the green matter came into focus, he took one look and announced in a proud voice to his lab assistant, "We’ve just about got it now, Gillian."
The cells wandered in and out of view on the screen, green chloroplasts searching for sunlight in the sterile fluorescence of the lab.
Gillian, a young female wearing black lipstick, was stroking a tiny bonsai. It wriggled under her fingertips, demanding to be petted, and preening under the attention. "They’re beautiful."
"Imagine," he waxed poetic, "if we’ve succeeded, we’ll have rediscovered the lost art of our ancestors."
"Before the last temple dies."
"Before the last temple dies," he agreed. "And if we can’t repair her, we can at least prolong her life until we can grow a new one."
"Doctor Sauer, do you really think we can replicate the same technique they used to build the temple, with science instead of the ancient magic?"
"Let’s find out, shall we?" He gestured at her. Gillian handed him a seedling from under the heat lamp. Sauer gently injected it with amber liquid, cooing and fussing over it like it was a baby. "There’s a good girl, yes she is."
At first, nothing happened. But then the tiny plant began to stir, unfurling its leaves and stretching its stem as it began to grow.
And grow.
And grow.
The vine snaked out, fast as lightning. Sealed off in the lab, no one heard their screams.
The TARDIS puttered along in the Vortex, idling as she waited for new instructions as to her next destination. The Doctor pawed through a tabloid magazine from the twenty third century, catching up on the gossip and waiting for his companion to wake. Here was a recipe he wanted to try, or rather give the TARDIS to make for him, and here was a coupon for his favourite brand of hair gel. A lucky day!
Coffee, he thought. The smell alone would wake Donna up, and then they could go off and do something to celebrate his lucky day. "I’ll just pop ‘round to the kitchen," he said to himself, "and brew some of those beans I bought at the factory on Colombia Minor." He sniffed in happy anticipation.
But... something was wrong with the air. The Doctor could taste it on the back of his tongue when he inhaled.
Taking the appropriate next step of his personal scientific method, he stuck out his tongue as far as he could, until it made him feel a little cross-eyed and look for all the worlds like a petulant three year old.
Yes. Something was definitely wrong with the air. It was a bit salty, distinctively metallic, and just generally off. The usual soft whistle of wind through the grating was slightly more of a wheeze.
Flopping down on his hands and knees, the Doctor gave the floor an experimental lick. "Oh," he said to himself, conscious whirling with possibilities even as his unconscious had him up on his feet and yanking on levers. The TARDIS gave a tremendous lurch, struggling her way out of the Vortex.
Within a thirty seconds, his companion stumbled into the room, violet blouse creased from being caught up in her nap. "Where are we going?" Donna demanded blearily, rubbing the grit from her eyes with her fingers. "I can’t believe I fell asleep in my clothes again..."
The Doctor grinned and peeked up over the console. "Quick emergency stop." He coughed, glancing to the monitor while he rose to his feet, not pausing in his seemingly random manipulations of the TARDIS controls. "Ooh! Lovely place, you’ll love it! Ivonia. Not like ivory, like ivy. Lots of, well, trees mostly. The people are rabid horticulturists. Bit snobby but I managed last time. Weeeeeell, I did get in to a bit of a bother with the most holy Vinarch of Florates, but I... doubt..."
He froze, perfectly upright like a deer caught in the headlights. He licked his lips compulsively, wishing (not for the first time in several hundred years) that he had his celery, and darted around the console as the TARDIS began to really rock and rumble.
Donna was less sure footed and stumbled heavily against one of the coral branches. "Doctor, what is going on?" She leaned against it for support, shoes not properly on her feet.
"Everything! Come on Donna, sense of adventure!" He seemed oblivious to the way his voice was growing hoarse, rasping out, "Allons-y!"
"Trees? All this because we’re going to see trees?"
"Special trees. Beauuuutiful trees. Ivonian buildings are grown! Literally, living houses! And togas," he babbled, eyes wide and bulging. Did he seem more pale than usual? It was hard to tell, what with the whole room rattling like a car without shocks on a dirt road. "You could wear that purple thing from Pompeii. Smells like a chimney sweep, mind you, but it looked- Erk-"
"Doctor!" she shouted as he collapsed against the controls. He shook his head and tapped his chest below his left heart, trying to signal to her that his respiratory bypass had kicked in. "Doctor! What should I do?" Donna’s voice, which naturally carried, boomed in his ears. The thud of his double heartbeat was filling up his head, but at that moment he managed a landing which was just slightly better than crashing.
The TARDIS flung her doors open and new air rushed in. The smell was powerfully crisp to his aching lungs. "Molto bene," the Time Lord breathed, looking distinctly shaken as he gratefully stroked the police box. He took several deep lungfuls before he felt steady again.
"It’s something in the air," Donna realized. She scrutinized him with her usual brand of concern. "You don’t need another shock, do you?"
"No!" the Doctor quickly yipped, wobbling to his feet with her help. "Just fresh air. Perfect place for it, too. I do so love a forest."
"There’s something wrong with the TARDIS?" Her fingernails were digging in to his armpit; he squirmed in discomfort.
"Nothing I can’t fix in a few hours. We’ll let her pump out the toxins and cycle in the good air. Probably something melted and the fumes disagreed with me. It didn’t seem to bother you." His mind switched gears without a clutch. "You know, celery turns purple when exposed to certain praxis gases. I used to keep a stalk on hand for just this situation."
Donna laughed at what she assumed was a joke. "I bet you did, Spaceman. I bet you wore tweed, too."
"Tweed?" the Doctor pulled a face. He straightened, recovering in the breeze. "Why would I- What?" He had turned his attention to the outside. Thousands of feet below them rose a glittering white city, stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. The hum of hovercars and the sputter of hydrogen exhaust systems resonated off the buildings.
The TARDIS was perched on the edge of a skyscraper, tiny and blue against the sky in the forest of steel and glass. "Huh," commented Donna, leaning on one hip. "Not quite what you were expecting, hm?"
The Doctor shrugged, a bit sheepish. "This is the farthest I’ve ever been in the future here. I didn’t know that Florates had an industrial era, but most places do. Solar flares will get her in another five hundred years; the records are muddled."
"You mean, your memory is muddled," she scoffed.
"It is not!"
"Is so! I don’t see any trees!"
"They’re all... vanished," the Doctor sputtered. She gave him a Look.
The air was crisp, nearly biting, but Donna felt more awake and refreshed than she ever had before. She inhaled deeply. "Mmm, Doctor, what is that?"
"Oxygen, Donna. The atmosphere here is three times as oxygen rich as Earth. It’s a by-product of millions of years of plant life."
"Huh," she replied, folding her arms close against the chill of the air. "Well, that’s got to be good for me, right?" The Doctor grinned wildly and she returned it, eyes crinkling at her smile. "Good for you, too."
"We could take a look around."
"We could."
The Doctor rocked back on his heels, eager. "Want to race?" Before she could reply, he took off, coat flapping behind him in the wind, for the door marked STAIRS.
Florates, Donna came to believe, was just like any Earth city. People talking away on mobiles while driving, buying knock off handbags from street vendors, arguing over bus fare at a shuttle point. Nice handbags, really. Venusian, even. And she had enough credits...
"Just buy the thing already," the Doctor grumbled, holding a stack of rejected purses as she examined the stitching on a black Achel Rouen. "I swear, you’re worse than Jackie when it comes to this stuff."
"Jackie?" Donna said unthinkingly, expecting to hear the story of another in a long line of girls.
"Rose’s, er, mum." Bringing her name up must have been a reflex; already, Donna could see the way his eyes had gone sad about the corners. "I-never mind."
"Help me pick," she suggested, her voice tinged with sympathy and encouragement.
"Um, that one." He gestured with his elbow to a small bag in a neutral colour, boring, about the only one she hadn’t fingered.
"Why?"
"It’s real."
She picked it up and looked at it close from all sides. "How can you tell?"
"I met the designer... oh, many years ago. And I just know."
Trusting his judgment, she stepped towards the vendor, who was haggling over a pair of sunglasses with another customer. In the meantime, the Doctor pulled his guidebook from deep inside one pocket.
"Look, we can tour the temple."
"I don’t want to spend my day in a church, Doctor. It’s not Christmas." She tucked her credit strip into her new bag.
"It could be," the Doctor replied. "It is, someplace. Hundreds of human colonies in this time period, and most don’t have the right number of days in a year on their planets to follow the Gregorian calendar."
"Speaking of which, these aliens don’t look very alien- Ooph." A moody teenager bumped into her on the sidewalk without apologizing. "Hey! Don’t tell me they’re descended from humans."
"Nope." He weaved around a woman and a baby and quick stepped to catch back up to Donna. "Convergent evolution. It’s an amazing thing. Humans, Time Lords, Ivonians, Sea Devils..." He cleared his throat. "Though when you consider that bipedalism is not the most effective form of locomotion, you get to wondering."
They were suddenly standing in front of a massive tree structure, what appeared to be several individual organisms gnarled together to form a canopy structure that easily rivalled the tallest cathedral on planet Earth.
"Here we are! The Great Floratesian Temple. Still standing after all this time. I remember when-" A withered yellow leaf, the size of his torso, bounced off the Doctor’s face and onto the sidewalk. An automated robot sweeper buzzed past, muttering to itself unhappily and sucking up leaves as it went. "Rrright. As I was saying, the Great Floratesian Temple. We can get a package deal and see the biodome too for only twenty-seven credits." He pointed to a sign, in chalk, which said just that.
"Oh, alright," she gave in, hoisting the strap of her purse higher onto her shoulder.
The air in the biodome was very close and the tour guide tedious, but fortunately both facts seemed trifles in comparison to the exotic beauty of the place. Birds chirped happily up in the highest parts of the dome, perching on sprinklers, and gorging themselves on insects and seeds. The flowers were in reds and blues and colours not even on the spectrum of visible light for a yellow sun.
Donna, inspired, stuck her nose into the fresh bud of a soft, spindly looking plant. The shape was like something akin to an Earth rose, but the petals alternated black and white in each layer. She took a deep whiff and sighed happily. Not to be outdone, the Doctor leaned forward to examine a small cluster of exquisite blue flowers. The perfume was ever so sweet.
"Oh," he murmured mildly, head immediately starting to spin. "Shouldn’t have done that. Won’t do that again." Thoughts, dangerous unbidden thoughts swam through the pink fog in his brain. Martha’s mouth, wet and slack with surprise when he kissed her. Rose’s eyes, framed by thick eyelashes, burning bright as the sun as she destroyed the Daleks. Grace, Charley, Fitz, Mel and Ace, warms hands pressed firm in his cool palm. The images were coming faster, older and even more painful. Tegan and Turlough, Nyssa, Adric, Sarah Jane, Romana- Tearing at his memories, wrenching them to the front of his mind, an acute agony. Brax, Susan, Koshei-
The Doctor gasped, choosing a single memory to block out all the others, hands pressing to his temples delicately, pressing down on his mind until the floodgate was reduced to a trickle of dull pain. "Peri would have loved it here."
"Who?" Donna looked curiously at the vine which was playfully curling around her feet, like a puppy seeking attention. It was tiny and the palest green, no thicker than the stem of a Kurrovian sweat pea.
It was a relief to be able to think just one thing at a time again. "Perpugilliam Brown. She was American, a botanist. Welllllll, before she became the queen of the Krontep." He shoved his hands into his pockets, fishing for a handkerchief. "Gorgeous gardens at the palace on Thoros Alpha now. Her great-granddaughter has quite the green thumb, I’m told."
"Queen? How did she end up queen?" Donna wanted to know.
"Long story," the Doctor coughed into the cloth. "I’ve been known to travel with royalty in my time- Ooh! What’s that?" Distracted, he left Donna blinking in his wake. She leaned down to read the tiny brass plaque labelling the flowers. Forget-me-nots. That had to mean something, she thought, but what was not clear.
The Doctor was bent over the handle of a white door labelled LABORATORY, sonic screwdriver in hand and blinking blue. "What are you doing?" Donna hissed.
"What does it look like?" He grinned. "Locked door, couldn’t resist, wanted to take a peek inside, meet the people behind the scenes, as it were."
The knob gave a satisfactory click and the door gave way. Giving one last furtive glance towards the tour guide, who was droning on about the mating cycles of the humpbacked lily-monstrous purple things that they were-the Doctor cracked open the door. It hissed and popped on its hinges as the vacuum seal was broken.
The second indication that today was not in fact a lucky day was the putridly sweet stench which poured out in waves against their faces. Donna pulled back, gagging, under the power of the smell. The Doctor fared little better.
The automatic lights flickered on, dim and yellow from disuse. The air was hot and wet, and only the faintest of rustles could be heard from within the hallway. It could have been mistaken for a bird taking flight or a person’s clothing nudging against the stalks beside the footpath. As soft as a whisper was this noise, a whisper of silky leaf on white tile flooring.
But it grew more pronounced as the light sputtered to life, the dormant entity inside beginning to unwind from its dormant slumber. The Doctor let the door fall wider open, the odour lessening but nowhere near abating. The sonic screwdriver hummed warningly at him when he extended it, brandishing it like a rapier to defend himself from whatever could have produced such a vile stench.
And then, as if from out of the depths, it came. The first tendrils of vine, with inky black-green leaves, proved to be the advanced guard. The leaves were shiny and approximately the size of a humanoid palm, no more, though some were curled into a conical shape which made it more difficult to judge. The top sides were slick and shiny in the light, the undersides dull and sandpapery.
"Oh, look at you, you’re beautiful," the Doctor breathed. "Look, Donna, it’s a sentient plant. And they’ve kept you all cooped up in the dark like you were a monster to be starved out. Who would do such a thing to you?"
A leaf brushed at his trainer curiously, responding to the vibrations of the Doctor’s voice in the air. The tour group had taken notice and were moving towards them, the guide at the rear, protesting beneath his owlish glasses, "What are you doing? You can’t be in there! That’s a restricted zone." A Raxacoricofallapatorian in a large pink hat and lipstick led the pack, her bulbous eyes blinking with thick mascara and black liner.
"Doctor," Donna urged in a strangled tone, eyes adjusting to the strange flickering pattern of the fluorescent light, which was by now nearly completely swathed in leaves. "There’s something in there. Something in the dark."
The Doctor leapt forward without warning past the door and into the chamber. "Now, what do we have here?"
TO BE CONTINUED
Series 4 and ¾ will return next Saturday with ‘The Ivonian Problem’ by canemex.
Confronted with a hungry plant, the Doctor and Donna must team up with a native to save his world... and their lives.