Having binge-watched the rest of the current season of Doctor Who last night, I went looking through all the posts I’d skipped quickly past so as not to get spoilt. And yeah, I’d have been pissed had I had that spoiled for me. I honestly hadn’t considered myself enough of a good boy that I’d get a season this good for new year’s. But then it occurred to me... as it maybe has in a few other substandard ‘updates’ of the Morbius vs Four Mind-Bending match in s13e5ep4, ‘The Brain of Morbius’. What was going through the Doctor’s mind during that fight? Did Four get any inkling of all the lives he’d lived through before? What must it have been like to be careening through that sudden store of memory? Well, having read recent c19 Quarantine releases of Russell T Davies’ ‘Doctor Who & The Time War’ as well as Chris Chibnall’s ‘What She Thought As She Fell’, I thought I’d take a stab at that moment. With apologies to the late Terrence Dicks. I wonder what HE might have thought of all this? I hope he might have been as excited as I am to see what comes next. -Edward WinterRose (03-29-2020)
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What was it Morbius had said of himself? Well... Itself? A Time Lord of the first rank? And what was he exactly? Well... 51% on the second try at the academy wasn't all that bad... but it was starting to feel bad now. Morbius' will had been strong enough to dominate Time Lord society in their thousands. And he was on his own. Only in his 4th life... A mere 754.... not a big advantage in a mind bending. He didn't really have that far to be bent backward did he?
‘En guarde.’, he'd said. But the brain driving that Frankensteined agglomeration of biology was always on guard. Morbius had only been caught momentarily by surprise in that first feint. The reaction of someone who'd used that first pawn in the match to gauge his opponent's resources of will. And the Doctor... Okay... he'd admit it now, was not the chess player he professed to be. Oh he knew a few tricks... but opening with the equivalent of the Queen's Gambit to a recognized master of the game? Foolish!
And there it was... the opening Morbius had needed. That momentary twinge of self doubt had been all the fiend had needed to send him reflecting on past mistakes... Past inadequacies and fears. He could feel Sarah's rising panic beside him. A distraction he couldn't countenance... But then a seed of doubt... from Morbius? The pressure of forced retroflection momentarily ceased... Morbius spoke then. It was all the Doctor could do to understand the words at all with the effort he needed to maintain against the mental onslaught being brought to bear against him. But Morbius sounded unsure... labored.
"Is your mind... Doctor... mine?"
The idea was repulsive... they were nothing alike. No part of him and the calculating obsidian mind pressing in on him were alike. It was astonishing they'd even come of the same universe, much less the same planet. What had Morbius seen in him to cause such a slip? Still, a chance was a chance. He rallied and brought himself to the here and now once more. Focus, Doctor! You've a lot more in you than this, eh? Let's give him the full nine! The Doctor pounced on that momentary confusion and tried to spin it into the bewilderment he so often inspired in all the foes he'd once faced...
...and found that it had been as effective as charging at a wall of dwarf-star alloy. The bewilderment he'd so often inspired now took root in himself. How had the man's mind stayed this hard in a jar in a basement these many years? How stong was that will? Never in all his days had he come against a mind so diamond hard. And in that moment of wonderment, he was back in the retroflective loop again. Remembering his days with Sarah at Unit... wearing different clothes... a different skin... And suddenly was that Doctor again! Who else would he be? Some grinning lunatic; all teeth and curls? Madness!
What he had to do was muster the will to fight this obvious attack from... who was he fighting again? Was this a mind-bending? Was he on Gallifrey? If only Sarah would stop distracting him... oh... she meant well, but-
"How far, Doctor?" growled the monstrosity across the psi-link at him. "How long have you lived?"
480 years, certainly! The question was ridiculous. As sure as they stood there, he could confidently tell this creature he was every year of 402. Wasn't he? What was it he'd just thought? That didn't sound right? If only the thing would lay off him a moment... Koschei would have known. He was always better at mind-bending of the two of them. Be fair... he was only 170.... except... that wasn't right.
He was 12,400 years old at least!
"Your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius!"
No... 8,900... surely...
And then another random thought... innocuous in its seeming irrelevance... inexplicably and utterly terrifying in its apparent significance to some part of him...
A clock in Prydonian red and gold.
NO!
The thing's voice was triumphant now... having siezed on an inner truth he hadn't known himself... as though the idea of himself had any meaning. Identities and incarnations washed over him/her/them and through him/her/them in reverse. Personalities and lives flowing backward in instant after instant... this should have been impossible. A person is the sum of their memories... Time Lords even more so... How could have they have been all of these... how many more had they been? What hidden depth had the thing across from them wrenched open?
How deep did it go? It was too much to know! Too much!
"BACK!!"
All the victories and defeats... all the interventions and nightmares... all the people they'd saved and lost... the oceans of blood on their hands... the responsibility rose up before them like an edifice the length and breadth of eternity... confronted with the infinitude of themselves... over and over... never-ending... never dying...
Blackness rushing at them now. ...with all the force and speed of Event One. Was this death? Finally? Would they finally be allowed to rest? Had this been what they'd been running toward across all their lives? Racing with abandon into danger over and over again? Time's champion... Time's pawn... Ever longing for death...
It didn't sound like them, did it?
"BACK TO YOUR BEGINNING!!"
The blackness was all about them now. But there was a calmness coming with that rushing dark. A deeper thing still. Something that ran through every moment and second of their lives... a deeper steel this thing should have left buried. A strength that knew pain and suffering far more intimately than this creature could ever inflict. They'd lived through it over and over again hadn't they? They still lived. And their lives were not for this pitiful thing to end. For all they'd done for all the worlds and time... this creature had not earned the right.
"BACK!"
This creature did not know pain. They would show them the memory of their eternity. It would unfold in their foe's mind with fractal endlessness with the merest glimpse and taste of the pain they'd felt...
A taste say... of this particular memory...
'Thank you for your service...'
The blackness shredded itself in a a flash of blinding white. The backlash of that memory exploded through the creature's inelegant casement, showering the thing's remnant brain with neuron-searing sparks... It recoiled from the psi-link, already a receding presence in their minds. They could still feel vestiges of its animal confusion and atavistic horror at the fact of them. Smoke trailed from their 'head' in a gray cloud, with the unbearable smell of chemicals and fried meat...
Still alive.
Of course they were. Because it never ended. Did it?
The woman beside them spoke then with a tremulous voice. One valiantly fighting their fears in spite of themselves. Because that’s what you did. What else could you do, really?
“Doctor?”
Doctor? Oh right! Wonderful chap, him. They'd get right back to being him again in a moment. They just needed to have a little lie down first.
And with that, The Doctor collapsed at Sarah-Jane's feet as the rasping growl of the creature receded into the menacing dark.
