James Wylder, Writer

​This story is part of a 10,000 Dawns Christmas. You can read the other stories and fine more about this author by clicking HERE.

The Convoy crept across the infinite ice.

That was their world. It had been for as long as they could remember – an ocean of frozen darkness. No dawn. Not even a day. Just the embrace of the night, its blackness only broken by the blinding white of a lightning bolt, or the red agony of satellites collapsing into the corrupted atmosphere.

There had been a war, once, see. A long, long time ago. A bunch of rich men, and the people they had oppressed, rising up, the force of their songs of protest shattering the very fabric of an unfair society. But, as brave as these kalashnikov-carrying knights in feathery armors were, the dragons they intended to slay were too greedy, to full of spite – and, from their piles of bloody gold, preferred sacrificing the world rather than yielding it, a last offering to their dark and hungry god.

And so, the winter had crept in, and century after century, the world faded in absolute darkness. Ignored by everything and everyone, an orphan drifting on current of stardust in the empty immensities of the multiverse.

People lived relatively normal lives, at first. Grasping onto the remains of civilization with both hands. And then they didn’t. Settlements grew smaller and smaller. Some disappeared entirely, leaving their population to die or wonder the wasteland. Humanity slowly died away – not in a bang but a whisper, the cold, quiet, almost beautiful death of a man drowning in arctic waters.

Of course, every passing has death throes.

That was the Convoy. It was more than people hurrying towards their destination: it was a line of light that cut the dark, the last bloodstream of the human race, leaving red dots on the ice as they were desperately looking for a heart to inhabit.

Kept warm only by their flickering torches; by the stories and prayers they whispered; and by hope, invincibly dim.

It had all started with the woman who walked at the head of the column, before the huffing-and-puffing trucks and the ice beasts dragging carriages across the desert. She probably had a name, but no one knew it – no one asked. She did not need it. Some people can live on even after their mortal life has withered around them, after all: ideas in the shape of man, with an existence of their own. Names, then, matter far less than what they stand for, the ideal they inspire, the words they whisper. And, of course, the shape these form, in the end. That particular shape was the Grandmother. An affectionate nickname for someone who had travelled across the frozen world for hundreds of years, by now, rescuing settlements, and offering them to either remain in an sanctuary of deathly quiet, or to join her in a great travel. They would probably die trying, she said, but everything would be better than extinction endured passively. Just like their ancestors had fought against the Board, they would fight their fate.

The Sun would shine again. That was her promise.

It sustained her, through all the years and hardships. Not on its own, of course – the cybernetics she had acquired in the days of old were invaluable, even in their current state, rusty, frozen, and sticking out of her skin and bone like metallic rugged spikes. But there’s only so much technology can do: will, now that remains intact through the snows and acid rains. Like a songbird’s canto echoing through the steppes.

It opened the way for the others, and into that breach they went, searching for dawn.

After months, their strength had started to dwindle. But they kept going, in spite of pain and disease. What other choice was there? The universe was cold, and uncaring, and full of powers that could crush them in an instant: and in such a situation, the only thing to do was to walk, ahead, forever forwards. To prove they could change their destiny.

And one day, they did prove it – as much as “day” and “night” still had value in such a forsaken recess of the galaxy.

They saw it coming, in the air and in the ice. They had stepped away from land, and onto what had once been sea, deep and blue. The ground was treacherous, liable to crack under the feet. But they had planned for the situation, and slowly unpacked the necessary supplies from their vehicles.

They wouldn’t be coming back.



-


Grandmother was gazing at the vast open land in front of her, when someone caught up to her. She recognized his face – Adam, yes, that was his name. A good kid. Born in the darkness, but craving light: not just the one of the sun, no, but illumination, knowledge, belief. He had a beautiful mind. Not unlike her own, so many, many years ago: inquisitive, sharper than a glacier’s edge. A wonder of nature.

“They’re ready.”

She smiled. Faintly. “Good. Are you?”

“I’ve never been more eager.” Childlike enthusiasm passed through his face. He couldn’t be old. Twenty years? Eighteen? Maybe less. But not a kid – there was no place for childhood, happy or sad, on this world. Whatever lives were lived here were lacunar odd things, a strange, mangled mutation of human society rather than a reproduction. “But …”

“Yes?”

“Are … Are you? The trip has taken a toll on all of us, and …”

“I’m old and frail.” He recoiled, about to say something in his defense. “No, don’t argue, it’s only the truth! It’s true. I have been dying for longer than I was alive, and I don’t think this” – a gesture at the technological implants protruding from her limbs – “is going to keep me going for much longer. But it doesn’t matter. As long we reach our destination, everything will be fine. We will all be fine.”

A noise pierced the darkness.

She grabbed the young soldier’s hand. “Look!” she said, pointing at the ice in front of them.

Lights were shining under the ice. Bright fires – orange, green, purple, shining their way across the silent still waters. She could feel Adams’s hand tensing, anticipating a threat, but she knew better. Soon they had reached her feet, and she could see, underneath the frozen surface, a small gilled face looking right at her.

She coughed with laughter. “Fishes. Feeding on the chemicals. It makes them go funny. Reminds me of when I had an aquarium in my bedroom …”

The boy seemed mesmerized. “It’s beautiful. The lights …”

“Well, I suppose some beauty is bound to come off even the most destructive of our actions. Causality, my dear. It works in strange ways … Different versions of the same event, different outcomes, are woven inside each of our actions. Maybe our attempts at survival only exist to allow for the rise of an empire of sea basses. Who the hell knows.”

He seemed rather lost.

“Never mind”, she smiled. “I’m babbling. At my age, it’s to be expected. But,” she continued as the fishes danced under her, a ring of alien, angelic colours, “it does mean we’re on the right track. It must be close.”

“Our destination?”

“Yes, dear. Atlantis. The Sunken City.”



-


A bad name, really, all in all. It hadn’t vanished beneath the waves. Rather, they had trapped it. A jewel of steel encased in ice, like the skeleton of a neoliberal mammoth. It had been a place of learning once, but only now stood as a grim warning concerning men’s deep ignorance. They had been blind way before the neverending night came.

And now, the men, women and other humans of the Convoy were opening the eyes of the world, pickaxe swing after pickaxe swing, tearing the station away from the cold embrace of the depths. Adam had been the first attacking it, while Grandmother, shaking, feeling her inner fire faltering, watched with fearful approval.

Hours passed. A day, maybe? Time was hard to measure, all the more in the rush and excitement of a convict about to break his prison bars. But finally, they were able to make their way to a door, and slowly, very slowly, forced the circular crank to pivot once more, allowing them passage in the cold corridors of the laboratory.

There, the air was heavy with ghosts, unchecked memories roaming the rooms, teeth and claws bared. The specters of a world gone by, but still so real, living within the regrets and the myths, the tearful recollections around the campfire.

Grandmother led the way. She knew where to look. Her previous fatigue had turned to a frantic rush. So, so very close now.

Through the narrow alleys, filled with ice that had split in forests of fanciful stalactites, she led them into some kind of hall – empty, save for the old bones of dead men, scribbled messages on the walls, and an impressive amount of technological equipment.

She walked upon to the consoles, a crowd slowly constituting behind her. Fear – would it still work? After all this time. It had too. She wanted it to. They would make a difference, their will would allow them passage to … Yes!

A shower of sparks flew from the controls, but the room was illuminated by a dim blue light. The central device, some kind of gateway, a portal, or now, rather a circle of ice, hummed.

Good. Now, the difficult part.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. The last of her strength burning up, for an energy rush, straight to her brain – the old calculations, the equations she used to glance at during her breaks, it all came back, in new and original forms. She was shaping her past into an arrow, and firing it through the fabric of reality. Only breaking her concentration to gaze at Adam’s face, full of expectations. For a bit of inspiration; to borrow a bit of his youthful courage.

Behind the circle, something was appearing. Another vista. Another world. A gateway. It was working. Freedom was at hand.

Not for her, though. She knew her fate was tied to that world. She had walked its surface for so long she had become part of it – turning into the very embodiment of the dead planet’s beauty and mysteries and pain to help its children. Woven her blood and skin and dreams with the corrupted crust of Earth. There was no escaping it. But, still, a last kindness, before the end …

Adam raised his pickaxe, a circular blow under the vaulted ceiling of Aril’s technological dreamscape.

And the inch-thick barrier of glass separating one dimension from another broke. On the other side, something else – the warmth of a family, the songs of a distant celebration. A destiny, an actual purpose, one made of solid dreams.

The boldest of the Convoy already rushed through, not taking the time to savor the moment. Like a man dying of thirst and stumbling in his stupor on an oasis.

Adam was looking at her. Waiting for a sign. She nodded, and he faded into the future.

She remained there, sitting in the icy calm. Waiting for all her protégés to depart. And then, she walked up to the portal, and sat in front of it, quietly, staring at the chasm between worlds.

A sunray – the first in centuries – hit her forehead.

And Graelyn Scythes died.

​This story is part of a 10,000 Dawns Christmas. You can read the other stories and fine more about this author by clicking HERE.

Once upon an ice age, arctic winter was let loose from its prison at the poles and allowed to creep across the whole of Earth, accompanied by its levelling breath, the frigid North Wind; by its upward-reaching shadow, the unending arctic night; and by homogeneity. For as snow smothered the globe, land and ocean slowly stopped being all that different, became unifyingly solid from surface to substratum. And life continued.

I
A nightly battle was being waged in the atmosphere of Graelyn Scythes’ bedroom, the one casualty her sleep. The snug warmness of several blanket layers against the all-permeating stench of frozen salt; the soothing trickle of Beethoven’s 11th Symphony versus malignant memories of mistakes made in an old home on the other side of the world. A standstill, until the forces of awakeness received reinforcement from the other room of her house. Graelyn gradually noticed, rising between empty beats, the continous bump of something soft against a plane of glass, and she knew that her beloved pet was looking for midnight attention. So the war was won and all the warriors withdrew, save the salty smell.
A minute later, Graelyn walked across the wooden floor in her nightcoat, gaining alertness with each slippered step. She reached the tank before fumbling her glasses on, so when the world came into focus she was greeted by an expectant face, ash grey with peppered spots of silver, whiskers twitching and mouth--wide, toothless, and dopey--opening and closing like an excitedly confused baby. Miss Sparkles the catfish was happy to see her owner.
“What is it, Sparks?” She dipped her hand into the naturally-warmed water and began rubbing smooth, scaly skin along from gills to fin. Miss Sparkles responded by once again tapped her head against the edge of her tank. “Oh,” Graelyn whispered with an understanding exasperation that reached no ears but her own. Sparkles bumped the glass again, then raised her gaping catfish face just above the surface of the water in a very hopeful manner, then puckered in such a way to gently squirt Graelyn’s chin. Graelyn considered her options for a moment and decided that sleep was overrated. “Ok then, time for a walk.”
After putting an outside coat over her nightcoat, Graelyn reached into the water once more to harness a leash around Sparkles’ fins, pulling it tight but comfortably against scale and bone. She reached in farther, grasped the entire toddler-sized creature from its underbelly, and lifted it out into the cool air. Carefully carrying the slippery Miss Sparkles, trying to go quickly to not let too much water drip on the floor, Graelyn unlocked and shoved open her front door.
In an instant, the small home stopped being an independent space and was absorbed into the greater outside--no biting wind, no blinding flurry, just a moment’s influx of pure cold that stole the warmth from every inside inch. It tried to assimilate Graelyn too, burrowed all the way into her lungs and tried to crystallize, but only managed to destroy her final shreds of drowsiness.
With a determined heave, she threw her wonderful catfish through the front door, down towards cold, hard ice. In most other universes, this would kill a catfish (and in most other universes hurting animals was exactly the sort of thing Graelyn Scytheses this age were doing), but Miss Sparkles was an electric catfish, hyper-charged by reality-exclusive evolution. Sparkles curled her whiskers mid-flight into a loop, and when the tips touched they formed a closed circuit, a short circuit that sparked and glowed a warm yellow within milliseconds. When a catfish of another world would be pulverised against a solid surface, Sparkles landed with a small splash into perfectly warmed water.
Graelyn followed, leash in hand, and the midnight walk began.

The city was built like a downwards branching corkscrew of oxygen, carved into the surface of the Pacific Ice Sheet by the last lingering pioneers who were thrilled to colonise even farther west. They named it after the most prosperous of the Yukon mining towns. They tamed lone fish that wandered near the surface to provide power. They set up furnished shacks along all the spiralling tunnel-streets, and invited the whole world in.
Graelyn and her fish travelled on incompatible levels of reality, connected by the water-proof, shock-resistant, unmeltable leash. Sparkles looped and leaped in the ground beneath her human anchor’s feet; Graelyn was sort of ungracefully pulled forward, sometimes stumbling to keep up. There were little metal spikes at the bottom of her shoes to ground each step into the ice, and she still wasn’t used to the extra milliseconds they added to a gait.
House after wooden house they passed (some decorated with tinsel and fir branches for the holidays), most dark inside but all billowing with life. The misty condensation formed clouds against the high icicled ceiling, a gravity-defying river of loose water molecules that drifted up towards the opening of the city’s entrance and dispersed under the large transparent dome that shielded the entire tunnel-settlement from being filled in by hail and snow. Another force rumbled in the opposite direction: a distant echoing surface-howl from the ghosts of long-dead waves.
Deeper and deeper, the catfish weaved trails of water like knots around the edge of the narrowing tunnel. She was the primary light source now, tinkling about like a golden whiskered fairy, like a dancing torchflame in an infinite cavern. The surrounding ice was crystal clear down here, so Graelyn could see beneath herself an endless darkness that was either an imperciably giant vanishing point or the place that once been an ocean floor. Like walking on an inverted night sky guided by a scaly star, further and further.
And suddenly they had walked to the absolute end of the city and had only the cold solid sea in front of them. Finally, they both stopped.
A silent salty emptiness
Without borders
Without warmth
Without life.
…
A distant pinprick point said otherwise.
Graelyn squinted to be sure, for such a thing was unknown and unheard of. A gaggle of lights were shining in the far-off depths: a rainbow of bioluminescence glowing all the unearthly shades that humanity never got around to naming: a swimming cloud of colours in its own hazy pocket of liquid: a mass of living pixels escaped from an early 2000s screensaver.
Amid the rusty greens, chilled lavenders, and nebulaic sapphires there were streaks of gold identical to Sparkles’ hide. And sticking out from that gold were rows of tendrilish whiskers, bright as lightbulb filaments, illuminating dark fishy eyes slightly above. Graelyn felt a soft yearning tug of the leash, and knew this school of lights were family. This, evidently, was what her catfish friend had been so excited to see.
The marvellous shape came nearer, passing deep below the city and painting the drab underfloors of houses with splotches of epheresence. Miss Sparkles wagged her fins and tail watching it all, staying close to the space under Graelyn's feet.
The two waited to be bathed in the strange luminosity when the school came directly beneath them, but it never happened. Instead, at the moment of convergence a shadow was cast from something trapped in the ice between and they were momentarily plunged in sudden darkness. Graelyn stared at the heart of this eclipse and saw the most improbable thing of the night: a perfectly unmoving human figure, metres upon hundreds of metres deep embedded in the ice. She saw the shape of each individual silhouette finger and the subtle folds of a long coat projected through the ice, tinged at the edges by glowing patina.
It was over in seconds.
The multi-coloured underwater sun meandered forward to the opposite underwater horizon, briefly extending backwards a small corona of golden fish that wasn’t bright enough to catch that figure’s shadow again. Then night returned, enveloping Graelyn and her pet in empty cold. It would be a while until she took the first step back towards home.

Graelyn returned to that spot the next day, and the next, and the next… She taught herself to use the sort of seismic technology that could detect things deep below the surface, and found nothing. She became a leader and personally oversaw an expedition into those neptunian depths, and still found nothing. She kept searching until the day the city caved in, but it was as if that frozen figure had never existed, or somehow escaped.


II
Snowflakes are similar to universes in that no two are exactly alike; dissimilar in that 10,000 snowflakes are much more manageable than 10,000 universes. Archimedes Von Ahnerabe was getting to grips with his role in the 10,000 Dawns, but he had no way of dealing with well over 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 snowflakes, compressed into a glacier larger than all Earth's land continents put together.
    He could see for miles, yet couldn’t move an inch, for there wasn’t so much as an atom of air between his outermost polymer casing and the ice. His metals limbs were far stronger than anything of the fleshy variety, but couldn’t do squat against the weight of a sea. So he waited, frozen in hope.
    Archimedes had gotten here four hours ago, the result of a last minute escape route from some adventure that was drastic enough that he thought it would be more preferable to be stranded within the ice-ocean of an obscure universe, but not interesting enough you need to hear about it.
If it were almost any other reality, Arch would have been back at Spiral within minutes, sipping hot chocolate on a grassy hill with his best friend Graelyn, but the interdimensional doorways of Dawn didn’t work that great in solid matter. There was simply too much ice in every direction! So he needed to be rescued twice, first from the confines of the open sea and then from the confines of this bubble of existence.
There was a sort of city far above Arch’s head, a twisting tangle of hollow tentacles filled with air and lined to one side with dark structures spaced like suction cups. Earlier, he tried in vain to catch the attention of some potential rescuer up there using his light-up skin -- became not a message in a bottle, but a body in a message -- but after less than minimal success gave up to preserve his ever dwindling power.
Yes, electricity was rather a problem. Cyborgs have twice as many ways to starve to death. It was rather grim thought, but Archimedes had only his mind to keep himself occupied and nobody can entirely choose which avenues of possibility imagination might choose to explore.
It was in a sudden, subtle shift that an event invaded the uneventfulness. Like many who think they’re near-death, Archimedes saw a distant light at the end of a metaphorical tunnel, and it was for him a genuine metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, a tiny ray of hope shining all the bioluminescent colours that humanity never got around to naming.
You can guess what this incoming mass was composed of, but you’d probably be slightly wrong. As it approached, Arch was pleasantly surprised that each individual coloured node was a living, glowing fish. This thing was busy and beautiful and big. And as it got nearer and nearer, he noticed that each and every fish had something harnessed to their frames: a harness. All the hundreds of organisms that made up this school melting its way through the Pacific, they were tethered and leashed to something in the dead centre!
It was skimming so close beneath Arch now, the area of temporarily melted water ended just metres away. Still, he could not move a motorised muscle. And this near, he saw for the briefest moments the man-made thing that lay at the heart. He saw rows of bolts. He saw sheets of brass. He saw a window, and someone on the other side saw him; it was hard to tell who was more surprised.
Under these many layers of fish there lay a real nautilus of a nucleus, harnessing the power of the animals to travel beyond the reach of any purely human technology. This submarine in a shining sentient shell continued floating forward, but within a minute a clump of fish detached at the back, tied to a smaller vessel. So Arch’s saviour came riding in on an underwater chariot pulled by catfish with skin like the Sun, and he basked in its coming aura.
For the first time in ages, he began feeling the ability to bend his knees, turn his neck, and wiggle his fingers. The fish came close, and he became entirely physically free. He was swimming now! The person inside the tiny vessel gestured at the fish, indicating for Arch to grab on one, so he did. It was soft and slippery.
Into the heart of the school they went, the brass eye of the auroral storm. The submarine structure was surprisingly large, and in all its windows there were people watching Archimedes’ arrival. The vessel docked in a hollow opening and the tethers of its leashes slid from grooves in its hull onto the outside of the larger ship. Archimedes let go of the fish and in three strokes swam to the opening. Once he was inside, doors closed behind and the newly walled room began draining of water.
When the process completed, his rescuer began opening the door of the tiny vessel and he went over to very, very, very profusely thank them. But before he could, a click followed by a voice sounded from behind his back, “Welcome, strangest of strangers, to Project Hyperborea.”
The phrase “snowflakes are a bit like universes in that no two are exactly alike” has a paradox at its core, as the existence of multiple universes precludes the uniqueness of snowflakes. No two universes are exactly alike, but they’re all made from the same history. In an infinite multiverse, the exact same intersections of possibility that create a snowflake that is utterly unique in its own universe occur infinite times. And it happens with more than just snowflakes, of course. When Archimedes turned around to address the welcomer, he was greeted by a face he’d seen many times before in similar contexts in other realities, the face of John Aril.

III
Aril was emotionally dead to begin with, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. It’d been confirmed by the head dimensional physicist, the sub-atomic nuclear welder, and all the 45 other people within a cubic kilometre radius. Aril had brought a small, specialised crew into frozen depths beyond civilisation, and they didn’t need to be the super-geniuses to realise something was very wrong with their boss announcing a 12 day break for Christmas.
He’d practically given up, shutting down all operations for nearly two weeks.
There were, in retrospect, very little scientific benefits to coming down here other than the total isolation, and that could instead be considered a detriment. The surrounding fishy lights were at first quite soothing, but eventually became just another monotonous feature of the confined space. And no wifi! All these factors wouldn’t mean as much if the Project was going well, but there hadn’t been any breakthroughs in years, so it was all quite horrible for mental health.
What Aril needed was just a single pebble to send ripples through his stagnant pond, something impossible, more impossible than a time-travelling ghost, and life gave him a reality-travelling cyborg.
Although he was the last to be informed, Aril was the first and only person to greet the newcomer. In a single welcome, he took in the stranger’s smooth artificial skin and single wedjat-ish eye. And the stranger said with a wave, “Hi, Mr. Aril! Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“You still have the advantage over me. I’ve got no idea who you are.”
    “Archimedes,” the word cordially echoed with potential across the room, “I’m a...  traveller. Thank you so much for picking me up from that dilemma.”
    “Well Archimedes the traveller, I think there’s much we can discu-”
A line of crackling blue light slashed through the air directly behind Archimedes’ back, forming two rectangles of electricity that parted like elevator doors to reveal the space between reality, and a young woman.
    “Oh there you are Arch, we’ve been trying to find you for ages!”
    “And I’ve been waiting for ages! You wouldn’t believe what I’ve just been through. It’s been, actually, kinda deja vu. Thanks again,” he said to Aril, “and bye.”
    The cyborg stepped through the doorway, his trenchcoat still dripping ocean salt, and the portal fizzed into nothing.
    It was over before it could begin. That was it? Damn unsatisfying, but... in an invigorating, inspirational way.
When Aril walked into the next room over, where his employees were eagerly waiting to see the impossible frozen man, they were at first disappointed to see that the stranger had vanished, but with a single sentence Aril surprised them all and revealed that things were once again as they should be. “Christmas is cancelled, we’ve got work to do.”
​
Once upon an ice age, arctic winter engulfed the Earth, at first accompanied by its most unpleasant attributes. But as the snow fell on, the nicer aspects of the arctic started to show through, among them shimmering aurora, reincarnated in piscine form, and potentiality. The potentiality for cities to be built atop solid water, for a snowflake to tumble into a snowball. The smallest actions echo farther in utter desolation. Life continued, for now.

Aya Rodriguez is having a terrible day.
It’s not that anything particular has happened to make it terrible. It’s a day like any other, but when you live on the Magellan, better known as the Rat Maze – that wretched hive of scum and villainy – every day by default is terrible.
“I’m just saying,” Aya complains. “I thought our first paying job would be a bit more, y’know…glamorous.”
“Glamor doesn’t pay the bills,” Josie remarks mildly from next to her. The two of them are perched on a catwalk across from a bar they’ve been scoping out for a while now. Josie’s got a pair of binoculars pressed firmly to her face, peering intently through the bar’s windows. The binoculars are the old-fashioned type, like the kind you’d see on Earth in the 21st century. Josie claimed she’d swiped them from a traveling history exhibit, and Aya’s inclined to believe her. Josie might look sweet and innocent, but she’s and incorrigible filch. Not that she’s one to talk, she supposes – Aya’s own specialty is breaking into places she’s definitely not supposed to be breaking into.
“Anything interesting yet?” Aya watches a group of scruffy men enter the bar, trying to stave off her mounting boredom. One of the men has three arms, which is the most exciting thing she’s seen in hours.
“She’s still at the bar. Looks like she’s waiting for someone, maybe? Oh, wait.” Josie lowers the binoculars a bit and pulls a face. “She’s on her fifth root beer.”
“Five?” Aya asks incredulously. “How is she affording that? Lemme have a look.” She holds out her hand for the binoculars and Josie pulls away with low whine. “Oh, c’mon. You’ve been hogging those things for ages.”
“Oh, fine.” Josie hands them over, a bit unwillingly.
“You’re cute when you pout.” Aya raises the binoculars to her own face. It takes her a bit to refocus them on their targets and for a moment she panics, thinking she’s lost them. Then the face of the women they’re after fills the lenses and she relaxes. She’s a strange one, that’s for sure. Dark skin, dark hair, bright green eyes. She’s wearing a scarf with little horned animals Aya doesn’t recognize on it and a tall conical hat with a pompom on the end of it. According to Josie, she’s been pulling various objects that couldn’t have possibly fit out of her coat pockets all night. Aya watches as she proceeds to just that, offering what looks to be like a long string of tinsel to the woman sitting next to her, who shakes her head. This one looks a lot more like the typical Rat Maze denizen. She’s wearing beat up black combat armor, her white hair cropped short. She’s glancing around the bar, seemingly casual, but Aya recognizes the look in her eyes. Cold, practical. It’s the look of someone always on edge. The woman turns her head, and for a moment it seems like she’s looking directly at her. Aya jerks back, startled.
There’s a sudden ping! and Aya glances at Josie. “Your butt’s beeping,” she says with half a smirk.
“It’s probably Ze.” Josie scrambles to pull her communicator out of her back pocket. “She’s been sending me pictures.” She presses a button and a grainy, glitchy holophoto of their friend posing in from of a menorah flickers into life in the air. The text below the holo reads MISS YOU GUYS with multiple exclamation points.
“At least someone’s having fun.” Aya raises the binoculars again, a fond smile playing on her lips. A flash of movement catches her eye and she swings them over to the bar’s back exit just in time to see three men dressed in black enter. A sudden wave of pure ice sweeps over her, dread filling her stomach. “Oh, hell.”
“What?” Josie reaches out for the binoculars and Aya hands them over wordlessly, hands shaking. She feels sick. Josie takes a look, and Aya can hear her breath hitch. “Oh no. Oh no, no, what are they doing here?” “I don’t know! I don’t-“ Aya can feel herself start to panic and she sucks in a huge breath. “Okay. Okay, let’s just keep calm. We don’t know what they’re here for, right? It doesn’t involve us.”
“I think it does,” Josie says grimly, handing the binoculars back over. “Wha-“ Aya shoves them to her face so fast she’s surprised she doesn’t give herself a black eye. She sees the white-haired woman lean over to her companion, gesturing to the Men in Black. They’re just standing in the corner, staring, and Aya has to suppress a shudder. The woman in the hat nods, shoves the tinsel back into her pocket, stands up, and the pair head to the back exit. The Men in Black follow after them.
Aya sits back, a little stunned. Josie takes the binoculars back from her and slips them into her coat pocket. “Guess we found out who they were waiting for.” She chews on her lip for a moment. “I think we should go warn them. The ones we were watching, I mean.”
“Are you nuts?” Aya hisses. “Do you remember what happened last time we ran into one of those guys? We almost died!” “Yeah, which is why I think we should warn them! I don’t want any innocent people getting killed!”
“We don’t know they’re innocent,” Aya mutters, and Josie shoots her a look. Aya lets out a long, exasperated sigh, fighting the urge to scream. “Okay, fine. What do we got, weapon-wise?” She reaches into her own pocket as she asks, fingers closing around her raygun. It’s small, and it jams half the time, and it took her entire savings to get it, but it’s better than nothing. “I’ve got…” Josie rummages for a bit. “A couple of smoke bombs and – oh hey! Stun grenade!” She pulls it out. “Forgot I had that. Dunno if it still works, though.”
“Great,” Aya says glumly. “A bunch of prank toys and two weapons that might not even work against three genetically-altered super soldiers.” She takes another deep breath. “Well, let’s get going if we’re going.” Josie nods and puts the grenade back into her pocket carefully. “If we go that way,” she points at a catwalk above their heads, “we can get around to the alley behind the bar.”
“Super. Gimme a lift.” Josie does and Aya squirms onto the catwalk, them metal creaking ominously beneath her. “This thing’s rusted all to hell,” she puffs as she hauls Josie up beside her.
“What else is new,” Josie says, and Aya lets out a small laugh as they edge their way along the catwalk. She can hear voices up ahead, but they’re still too far away yet for her to make out the words. “I’m sure we can sort this all out peacefully, don’t you think?” Someone says as they come to the end of the catwalk. Aya drops flat and pulls Josie down beside her, peering out at the alley some thirty feet below. The woman in the hat is holding her hands up in a calming matter, one of them hovering in front of her companion, who has a gun trained on the men in black. The men in black are for their part standing completely still. Aya doesn’t think they’re even breathing.
“I don’t think peace talks are on the table here,” the white-haired woman says, and the other woman frowns at her.
“Don’t be silly, Blanche. Peace talks are always on my table, along with toast, popcorn, jellybeans…” She trails off. “Now I’m hungry. Give me the gun, Blanche.” She holds out her hand. Blanche hesitates, and she raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, alright. You better know what you’re doing.” Blanche mutters as she relinquishes the weapon.
“I almost never know what I’m doing,” the woman in the hat says confidently, and turns to face the Men in Black. Aya can barely believe what’s happening. This woman has to be either crazy, or suicidal, or both.
“What is she doing?” Josie hisses in her ear.
“I don’t know. You think we should step in?”
“Let’s see how this plays out,” Josie responds, and Aya nods.
The Men in Black all extend their right hand in unison, and she tenses. “The Factory,” they say, voices filtered and distorted. “Give it to us.” The woman in the hat pulls a face. “I don’t think so.”
“We are not asking.” The Men in Black take a step forward, and then several things happen all in a jumble.
First, Blanche pulls another gun from seemingly out of nowhere. Second, Aya finds herself yelling something that sounds like AIM FOR THEIR HEADS, which causes Blanche to startle and instead aim the gun at her and Josie. Three, Aya shifts her weight backward to get out of the scope of the gun and the catwalk chooses that exact moment to crumble in a scream of twisted metal, sending her and Josie plummeting to the hard ground below. And four, the woman in the hat pulls something out of her pocket and tosses it in the air, and everything goes white.
Aya finds herself facedown on a hard surface and groans, doing a mental inspection of her body. First, she’s alive, which is always a good thing, and second, she doesn’t appear to have any broken bones. Or any injuries at all, really, which is odd considering she’d been heading for the floor of the Rat Maze at top speed.
She sits up with a groan and freezes when she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Blanche. None of that.” Aya spots the woman in the hat out of the corner of her eye, her tone disapproving. “Where’d you even get that gun from anyway? I thought I took it.”
“These are the girls that were following us, Aesc,” Blanche says, ignoring the question.
“Yes, I know.”
“Who are you?” Aya blurts out suddenly. She’s feeling reasonably confident that Blance won’t shoot her. Hopefully. “Lady Aesculapius.” She gives Aya a wink. “My friends – like Blanche here, who is going to put down that gun, thank you Blanche – call me Aesc.” She holds out a hand and when Aya takes it, hauls her to her feet with so much force Aya almost goes flying. She then does the same to Josie. Aya takes a moment to look around. They’re standing on a flat surface made out of what looks like blue crystal, stretching as far she can see. In the distance there are what looks like buildings and cities, made out of the same material. Aya’s never been anywhere like this before. She was born surrounded by metal, and she’s spent her entire life surrounded by metal. This is the first time she’s ever seen anything else.
She turns her attention back to Lady Aesc when the woman claps her hands suddenly. “Well!” She says cheerfully. “That was quite a pickle we got ourselves out of, don’t you think?” Lady Aesc then proceeds to take the hat off her head, fold it up, stick it in her pocket, and pull out a different hat, putting the new one back on. Aya watches, a bit stupefied.
“Hold it!” She says, shaking her head to clear her thoughts. “I have questions I need answered.”
“Me too,” Josie says from where she’s hunched over on the ground, busy trying to pry a bit of crystal free.
“Well, naturally!” Lady Aesc folds her hands in front of her. “Just answer me one first. Why were you following us?”
Aya and Josie exchange glances. “Well,” Aya starts awkwardly, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “Me and are bounty hunters. Or trying to be, anyway. We just started. Our first job was to track you down.”
“Me?” Lady Aesc looks confused. “Who would possibly want to track me?” Blanche snorts, and Lady Aesc shoots her a hurt look. “Lots of people,” Blanche says. “Those Men in Black, for one.”
“That’s an entirely different kettle of worms.” Lady Aesc waves her hand dismissively.
“Fish.”
“No Blanche, they definitely were not fish. Genetically-enhanced super soldiers, if I had to guess.
“No, I-“ Blanche snaps her mouth shut, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth the effort.
“So tell me, who wanted you to find me?” Lady Aesc fixes her eye on them.
“Local trader,” Josie cuts in. She does finger quotes. He said, and I quote, ‘this weird lookin’ woman and her bloomin’ great big ship came outta nowhere and squashed my trade stall, that’s my entire livelihood, y’know, and I want her to apologize!’” She shrugs. “So I told him we’d find you and try to get you to fix it.”
“Oops.” Lady Aesc looks guilty.
“I told you you hit something,” Blanche says. Lady Aesc just elbows her in the ribs.
“This is the ship he was talking about, isn’t it.” Josie says suddenly. Aya notices she’s managed to free the crystal she was working on and watches her sneak it into a pocket. “You pulled something out of your pocket before we fell, and now we’re here. It’s gotta be size-shifting. That’s high tech.”
“Nailed it.” Lady Aesc shoots Josie a delighted grin. “It’s a Factory of Crystal. The Firmament makes them.”
“The what-ament?” Aya furrows her brow. This is all getting to be a bit much for her. Scrapping and fighting in order to survive, she understands. Size-shifting crystal ships and their weird pilots she doesn’t quite get.
“Firmament. They’re kind of like my…” Lady Aesc scrounges for a word. “Family, I suppose. They’re the ones who sent me to the Magellan.”
“Not a great family if they send you to the Rat Maze.” Aya raises an eyebrow. “What were you even doing there?”
“Spreading holiday cheer, of course!” She spreads her arms with a big grin, dropping both when she’s met with a trio of stony faces. “Okay, well, that was secondary. Those Men in Black have been sniffing around other Firmament members, and they wanted me to see what they’re up to. I don’t know what they want with the Factories, but it can’t be anything good.” Lady Aesc makes a face, sticking her tongue out a bit, then shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll get back to that after I drop you two off back home.”
“Home?” It feels like a stone’s been dropped into Aya’s stomach, and she suddenly realizes how much she does not want to go back to the Rat Maze. “No, wait – you said this was a ship, right? So you can take us somewhere else!” She knows she’s starting to babble, but she can’t stop it. She needs off that godforsaken hellhole. Josie’s eying her strangely, and Aya shoots her a look that says ‘roll with it’.
“Yes, I could.” Lady Aesc says slowly – dubiously? Aya can’t tell.
“We know about the Men in Black,” Aya says desperately. “We’ve run into them before. We can tell you all about them in exchange!”
“Woah, calm down!” Lady Aesc raises her hands.
“I think she’s telling the truth.” Blanche leans over. “She said to aim for their heads, earlier.”
“Hm.” Lady Aesc looks at Aya with her sharp green eyes and Aya resists the urge to squirm under her gaze. “I think there’s more to you than it appears. Oh!” She suddenly slaps her forehead. “I just remembered, I never got your name.”
“I’m Aya.” She holds out her hand and Lady Aesc shakes it so heartily her hat threatens to fall off.
“I’m Josie,” Josie says. She doesn’t hold out her hand but Lady Aesc takes it anyway, then pulls the crystal Josie had squirreled away earlier out of her pocket and sticks it behind her own ear. Josie looks nonplussed, but Aya can tell she’s a bit disappointed at losing her treasure.
“Pleased to meet you both. And yes, I’ll fly you somewhere else. In exchange for one thing.”
“What?” Aya asks a bit nervously. She hopes it’s not money; she and Josie barely have two cents to rub together.
“I want…” Lady Aesc starts ominously, pointing at Aya. “…you to smile,” she finishes.
“Excuse me?” Aya sputters. She definitely hadn’t been expecting that.
“Smile! You’ve done nothing but look miserably this entire time, and it’s the holidays!” “I don’t do…holidays.” She says with difficulty. Josie gives her hand a sympathetic squeeze. She knows.
“Seriously? Not even one of them?” Lady Aesc’s eyebrows shoot up.
“No, I-“ Why is her throat burning so bad all of a sudden. “My sister died, last year. My twin.” Aya blinks quickly and gives Lady Aesc, who’s looking stricken, a weak smile. “It doesn’t feel right to celebrate without her.”
“Oh.” Lady Aesc goes quiet, and Blanche is giving Aya a look she doesn’t think she likes. “I’m sorry. I know…I know how much losing people hurts.”
“Yeah.” Aya gives another weak smile, smaller this time. “Well.”
“Well.” Lady Aesc shuffles a bit, then brightens. “Guess I’ll just have to deal with my own Grinch.” She throws an arm around Blanche.
“I am not…I don’t even know what a Grinch is.” Blanche says, deadpan. Lady Aesc pulls what looks like mistletoe out of her pocket and dangles it over her head, grinning. Blanche rolls her eyes and turns away, her face slightly pink. Lady Aesc shrugs, then crams the mistletoe into her mouth. Josie makes a yuck! sound.
“Okay, then.” Lady Aesc says after she’s finished munching. “How about I take you somewhere in exchange for you two telling me your story? I do love a good story.”
“Sounds good to me,” Josie says, and Aya nods.
“Great!” Lady Aesc claps. “I’ll whip us up some tea. Just gotta build the tearoom first. By the way – where do you want to go?”
Aya and Josie look at each other. The entire universe was out there for them. They could go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, and the prospect, was dizzying.
“You pick,” Josie says. “I’m happy anywhere as long as I’m with you.”
Aya smiles and resists the urge to bounce on her toes like a child. She wants to go somewhere where she’s free of having to sleep with one eye open, where she can breathe fresh air, where she can explore a million different possibilities.
“Let’s go to Mars.”

This story is part of a 10,000 Dawns Christmas. You can read the other stories and fine more about this author by clicking HERE.

Twas the Dawn before Christmas, when all throughout mars,
Not a Martian was fretting, they dreamt of the stars.
Their rifles were cleaned and racked with such care,
In hopes that their freedom soon would be there.
The rebels were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of democracy danced in their heads;
And Zhang in her study, report on her desk
Had just settled her brain for a long winter's rest
When out on the street there arose such a clatter,
she sprang from her chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the window she flew like a flash,
Tore open the curtains and threw up the sash.
The moons’ light on the glass dome aglow
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to her wondering eyes did appear,
but a small crowd of people spreading holiday cheer,
they all carried candles, lit at the wick,
Voices raised in song, the melody thick
Sonorous as angels, the carolers came,
young and old ran out laughing, and joined just the same.
“Tomorrow for freedom, we might march for our home,
but tonight  sing together under the dome.
From Titan to Venus to the planets all,
We raise our voices so they'll hear our call!"
Like a herd of great beasts the carolers went,
Left Zhang all alone, her mood malcontent.
So off to the doorway, Zhang almost flew
As she struggled with haste to put on her shoe.
The building was silent, its walls all aloof
not knowing the joy of which the singing was proof.
As she opened the door and turned to the sound
of the carolers’ voices and their feet on the ground.
She made off in haste to catch up to the crowd,
she would march with her people, their heads all unbowed.
She joined in the chorus, she did not look back
they welcomed her in to become one of the pack..
Their eyes—how they twinkled! Their smiles, how merry!
Not one face concerned, not even one wary.
Zhang sang along and let her worries all go
she knew that soon enough they would only grow;
This one night at least, she would share in the peace,
she wouldn’t let worry put her brow in a crease.
They walked on for hours until their voices were sore
they walked on until they could not sing any more.
as Zhang looked on to their numbers quite ample
the last of her sadness she was able to trample.
With a smile on her lips, and a glint in her eye
she looked to the heavens and took in the sky.
She thought of her office, what was left of her work,
she thought of responsibilities she just could not shirk.
Thinking all this finally she knew,
tonight there was only one thing to do.
she climbed up a pole and gave a great shout,
to all those who were still there milling about
because working any more this day would not be right--
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

​

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
by James Wylder

​So, here we are, the end of one road, the start of another. The Chibnall era of Doctor Who has seen it’s first season finale, and we’ve reached the culmination of everything we’ve been building to. This year of Doctor Who was very different in that there wasn’t a story arc, there weren’t narrative elements that built from episode to episode, but instead we got arcs of themes. The repetition of themes over the course of these blogs got to the point where I basically skimmed them, but they were the point, they were what we were building towards in this finale. Interestingly, not all of these themes paid off the way I was expecting, but were still paid off. Of course, this also means this season of Doctor who was a strange one in that what it communicated to the audience from episode to episode was more subtle than we’re used to. There was no “Bad Wolf” or “Hybrid”, but there were things that came up again and again, and they came together in this episode.


I won’t give myself total credit though, I missed a few things repeated throughout the series that were built out to here. But let’s start with the biggest thing that returns from the past: Tim Shaw.



One of the most surprising things in this episode is the way that Tim Shaw is paralleled with the Doctor. In fact, we’re given a cracked mirror of the “The Woman who fell to Earth” over this whole episode. But Tim is the biggest parallel. Just like in “Woman”, we open without the Doctor, with an older person trying to help a younger person learn a skill. These are the Ux, and the Ux are our dark mirrors of Graham and Ryan. In the middle of their magic, the Ux are interrupted by a powerful magical being coming down to Earth, (er, coming down to Ranskoor Av Kolos?)--Tim Shaw, injured and without his transport off world. Just like the Doctor arrived, crashing down to Earth injurred and without her TARDIS.
Tim Shaw then builds a strange parody of the Doctor’s world: he lives in a magical structure that floats and does wonders, but its at it’s heart a weapon. He sits on a dias, upraised like the 13th Doctor’s TARDIS console. Indeed, the first shot we see of him, he’s framed in the center like the TARDIS’ central column in shot, a pair of panels behind him framing him as visual pairs to the crystal columns of the TARDIS. Tim has adopted a long cloak, visually mirroring him with 13 more as well. Tim has companions, the Ux, only instead of being his friends he’s made them into his cultish worshipers. Where 13 tries to make her companions not hurt people, Tim makes his hurt each other, and the universe.
We also have anther parallel: Tim Shaw and the Doctor are both styled within the episode as being something like gods, or perhaps wizards. Tim becomes a tinkerer, living in a workshop, building robots and war machines and machines to fix his breaking body. Tim lays claim to scientific ingenuity and knowledge as the means to his power, mirroring the “make it yourself attitude” the 13th Doctor has. Throughout the season we’ve seen the Doctor’s sonic called a wand, seen her travel into a magic mirror through fairy land, and Frog princess turn out to not be a real girl after all. Here, she encounters the dark wizard in his laboratory, doing arcane blood rituals to defy the laws of creation.
Ironically, though, Tim Shaw’s parallels to the Doctor aren’t entirely kind ones, and the juxtaposition is so pointed as it must be a feature, not a bug. We learn early on in the episode that the Doctor breaks her own rules, and admits she held Ryan to standards earlier in the season about using weapons she had no intention of keeping herself. We’re back to the old adage here: the Doctor lies. 13 is nice, and sweet, but she’s still manipulative. She still wants her companions to behave the way she wants, and deems correct. The way Tim Shaw lies to the Ux isn’t different in practice, only in content. And obviously the content matters, but the point is the episode is paralleling them, and putting the comparison in our head, not that it’s seriously asking a question of who is better. I mean, one of them committed genocide. We know.
` But this is what’s interesting about Tim Shaw as a villain: he isn’t creative, only imitative. He’s not the Master, in that he really is the Doctor reflected. He’s like the Doctor reflected because he is trying so so hard to be. Because he’s a Stenza.
We learn early on that the Stenza take a tooth from their victims, and put it into their skin. For them, victory isn’t just winning, it’s assimilating your victims into yourself. It’s not a long reach to imagine that this attitude in his culture would make Tim Shaw wish to mimic the Doctor’s power however he could making this pale and strange imitation.
Even so, in his imitation, he like the Doctor has become an exile from his own people, a renegade.


The desolation of the battle on Ranskoor Av Kolos bring an old episode to mind: Twice Upon a Time. There we were shown Rusty the Dalek, who learned the wrong lessons from the Doctor and wound up killing other Daleks for eternity, holed up in a fortress. With how much “Woman” followed TUAT, that this episode mirrors that isn’t too far a stretch, though it could be a neat co-incidence.
Outside of Tim Shaw though, we have other mirrors to the premiere: an amnesiac general who can only remember tasks as he begins doing them, ala the Doctor’s amnesia. We have a person out for revenge on Tim Shaw, before the brother of the last target of the Stenza leader hunt, this time Graham the husband of Grace who died during the fight against Tim Shaw on Earth. We have a mysterious object the characters don’t know the purpose of, which turns out to be a container. We have pieces of technology attached to the protagonists, which are turned against the antagonists in the finale.
We have so many mirrors, it’s some sort of sick funhouse.
But this has been a season of mirrors, nothing has been singular. While going through the repeated themes and elements this season, it got almost silly at times how the elements cropped up in each episode. Here they pay off.


The biggest theme, bodily autonomy paid off in a big way. In my opening essay this year, I compared Tim Shaw to a sexual predator in the way he violated the bodies of his victims, and here his abusive streak continues, only tied into another theme that I should have picked up on stronger, but big missed note in these episodes: the recurring religious elements. From a prayer at the end of Tsuranga, to the religious zealotry of the Witchfinders, to the religious division on Demons of the Punjab, we’ve seen it all over the place. Of course it was coming back. Only, I uh, didn’t note it.
Whoops.
Here, Tim’s abuse of other’s bodies is linked into his abuse of religion. One of the Ux is literally having his body violated on a crucifix under Tim’s orders. The Ux’s religion is corrupted by Tim to enable his abuse, his violence, and his lust for power. You can draw your own parallels to our own world if you want, but I’ll just leave the implications there on the table. Regardless, the older Ux looks on as Tim commits atrocities, because of her faith. She helps him, even. Becomes complicit.
This violation of the Ux becomes Tim’s ultimate weapon, through these smaller violations, comes the destruction of worlds. Through allowing these small atrocities, the bigger ones are birthed.

But this raises a question: how complicit is the Doctor in allowing these villains to escape? We reach the consequences, the Doctor being forced to confront this, and we’re not given an easy answer. Indeed, to the frustration of many, it looks like this will be one of the defining questions of this era of the show: how far is the correct amount to go for justice? Throughout this season, villains have escaped, and here the consequences were genocidal. The Doctor’s companions have trusted her to make the right calls, after all they are in awe of her, like the Ux are to Tim. She’s a wizard, a god, a wonder. There has been push-back before, but never a revolt. Till Graham.
In what is sort of a surprise, Graham got the biggest character arc this season. He got a huge development from his beginning in episode 1, not quite respecting Ryan and blaming his disability as just an excuse for his personal failings, to the last two episodes, where he was forced to choose between his own happiness last week, and his own pride and wrath this week, and Ryan. Graham defies the Doctor, and goes to kill Tim Shaw. Graham thankfully choses against revenge, and he and Ryan decide to imprison Tim in one of his own prisons. This solution, not quite the Doctor’s, and not the bloody solution Graham planned, finds its own path. Tim Shaw gets no glorious death, instead suffering the fate he put so many others through.
The false god is imprisoned, and in a show all about change, he becomes stagnation. Really, it’s all he was anyway.
The Doctor is also challenged by Tim, to kill the Ux or let planets die. The Doctor finds a solution here, using the tech they placed on their bodies as a solution. But the question hangs in the air.
I suspect this won’t be the last challenge. We’re only at the start of an era.
We know the questions now, and now there is only future.
End of the first act. We’ll see where the play goes from here on New Years eve.

What surprises will wait in store? What is that in the trailer? What mysterious creature is that?

...Its a dalek, but look, that’s still exciting.

See you on New Years eve!

Oh, and check back here on Christmas. There will be a big surprise for you who fans...but not an essay :).

What exactly is Doctor Who? Why is this a show we keep coming back to after decades? There are a lot of answers one can give, and a lot of different reasons, but the biggest one can be boiled down to one moment in “It Takes You Away”, where the Doctor has a conversation with a talking frog who is a sentient alternate reality that’s chilling out on a white chair where she basically has to break up with the frog with “it’s not you, it’s me”. It’s absolutely bonkers, played straight, and is exactly why Doctor Who exists as a program. There are other reasons, but this is the big one: it gives us something that absolutely nothing else on television is even thinking of doing.

This is an episode that gives us not only a magic mirror that leads into faerie land, and then into an alternate mirror universe, an orc with a magic light up balloon that attracts giant flesh-eating moths, monsters in the woods that turn out to be an illusory trick, stories of plotting sheep from dreams or nightmares, dopplegangers of dead loved ones whispering lies, and finally a frickin’ frog on a chair. This is a veritable treasure trove of wonderful, wondrous images, and we’re lucky to have each of them. There have been massive effects-laden blockbusters with hundreds of millions of dollars in budget that don’t even get close to the number of memorable images we’re treated to in “It Takes You Away”.

But the images aren’t hollow, luckily, and each supports the structure on what is unquestionably the most “Doctor-Who-y” episode we’ve had so far this year, and the episode that really clearly states what this season was about. I’ve written about the recurring themes of the series, but I’m now confident I know what it’s about, and so before we move on to picking things apart, let’s just get it out there:

Over all, this series of Doctor Who is about failed standards of masculinity.

From the toxic “you have to kill someone to be a man” of the Stenza, to Epzo forgoing teamwork for self-interest in “The Ghost Monument”, to the stoic-handsome-authoritative evil racist in Rosa, to the cowardly but power hungry Trump-stand-in in “Arachnids in the UK”, to—okay I don’t have to list everything, do I? The other themes lay into this, support it. The infringements on bodily autonomy. The need to combine organic life with technology to support power structures—we’re inhabiting a world this season where the failures of masculinity have been laid bare. It’s why Graham has been our point character, he’s not perfect, but he’s a model of a strong but caring kind of masculinity, an alternate to the ones the characters run into, while Ryan has been damaged by the same kind of toxic masculinity that’s destroying the family in this episode.

Throughout the season, we’ve been shown lots of bad parents, and in “It Takes You Away” we reach a climax on that. Ryan’s father left, and couldn’t even bother to show up for his own mother’s funeral. Epzo’s mother abused him. King James I’s mother abandoned him. All of these bad parents have left damage, and here is the challenge: we meet a man who is a bad father.

Erik is so caught up in his own wants and desires, he has boiled his brain into excusing his own selfishness. His daughter Hanne can take care of herself, after all. Or so he says. So he makes her afraid, for her own good. Or so he says. But really, he has abandoned his daughter because he’s selfish: he has the woman he loves, or so he thinks. He is blinded by his own importance. Unfortunately, this is all foreseen by Ryan. Early in the episode, Ryan says exactly what her dad has done: run off and left her. Everyone else assumes that there’s a Doctor Who monster afoot. Some menacing beastie in the woods that is hunting Hanne. Hanne wants to get her father back, she loves her father, but Ryan has been right this whole time. He lived through it before, and his experience is the most valuable here, but no one knows it.

In contrast, we have Graham. Both Graham and Erik have lost their wives, but Graham recognizes that the chance to live alone with Grace is wrong, because it means that Ryan will be alone. Graham realizes this when confronted with the reality that Ryan will be alone, while Erik only realizes it when his wife turns him down for the Doctor. For Erik, this was always selfish. It wasn’t about his wife being alive, really. It wasn’t about Hanne. It was about his own loss and longing for his wife.

The only way to end this is for the Doctor break his entire illusory mess, and she only can do this by playing against the forces of his toxic masculinity. She steals his girl. When he realizes he’s not wanted, that this wasn’t really his wife, the spell is broken. Hocus Pocus.

Because, this was all magic tricks. The fake sounds are our first clue, that this is an illusory game. The Solitract makes a world, just as Erik made a world. The Doctor constructs a lie for Hanne on the wall that she cannot see. Ryan tries his best to follow the Doctor’s lie. But all of these lies have holes: Hanne can hear that the chalk is writing, not drawing. Ryan can see the wires to the speakers, and see that Hanne’s dad has abandoned her. The Doctor can see that the Solitract isn’t really dead loved ones. On their own, each person would be trapped, but together they can see through the lies. There is strength in togetherness, something the Solitract longs for but can never find.

That togetherness brings back Father and Daughter, the Father has failed her, but he is back, and hopefully learned something from it. And Graham and Ryan are together, and family. He’s a grandfather now, after all this time. Even in our imperfections, together, humans can be amazing.

Which leads to the greatest scenes we get: the Frog on the chair. The Doctor has to convince the Solitract to let them go, and appeals to it’s better nature to do so. We have seen the tricks, but this is real magic, faerie land. The unknown too strange to be faked. The frog on the chair is the same as the orc and his light up balloons, but brighter. She is something beyond, revealing herself in her favorite form. Not death, or an illusion, but a form she trusts the Doctor to see, letting her in without the pretense of fakery. It’s a world of dreams. Mentioning the sheep at the start wasn’t just kidding around.

And of course it’s weird, anything beyond our little lives is. The Earth is just a tiny speck compared to the great celestial bodies in our universe, so small it can barely be seen next to them. And if you go in closer, there’s a girl in her bed in Norway. What does she dream of? Sheep? And in her dream, there is a frog, and in the frog’s dream, there is a world, in that world, if we zoom down, there is a girl in a bed in Norway.

We always wake up, but for that little moment, we’re in Faerie Land. Maybe there’s a frog there to. And maybe, if we’re really really lucky, someone will put that dream on our television sets, laptops, and phones. How lucky would we be then? 

It could take us away.

The Witchfinders (wear masks)
​by James Wylder

There’s a certain type of Doctor Who story we’re all familiar with called the Celebrity Historical. You know, Team TARDIS meets this famous person or another: Rosa Parks, Vincent VanGogh, Shakespeare…it’s a staple of the show in it’s modern form. Usually, the episode is something of a beatification. The historical figure is shown as a hero in some way, their accomplishments lauded. In the last few years though, there’s been a few episodes that subverted this. Matt Smith had episodes where the historical figure was a rather nasty person like Richard Nixon or Hitler, and Peter Capaldi had no episodes with famous historical figures, only mythical ones like Robin Hood or Santa Claus. But what we hadn’t had was a sort of middle ground: a historical figure who is painted in shades of gray, with the episode coming down neither in favor of them, nor against them (the closest we got to this was Nixon meeting the Doctor, but the last moments we have with Nixon come down fairly on “he’s a bigot”).

That was until King James I showed up.

Making King James I purely a villain or purely admirable would be the obvious choices here, he’s leading Witchhunts throughout England after all. But then again, he assembled the King James Bible, a lot of people still like that too. He’s also pretty definitely gay or bisexual, unless you want to duck tape your eyes closed to the massive pile of historical evidence that yes, he was. So what to make of him? Maybe, instead of a saint of a villain, he’s just a really flawed person. And as it turns out, that’s a way more interesting take.

James I does a lot of bad things during “The Witchfinders”, and those things are never excused. We as the audience aren’t told, “Well, this is alright because...” he does wrong things, and they are wrong. But, at the same time we’re asked to empathize with James. He’s a man wearing a mask in order to travel about and not be accosted, followed by sycophants who butter him up that he knows he can’t trust. People try to kill him. He was abandoned by his mother, and still reeling with the loneliness of his life. And he has let bad things happen because of that. But the Doctor doesn’t think he’s irredeemable. She gives him a chance. And he still let’s her down in the end, but he’s not ungrateful. Unlike Jack Robinson, he doesn’t walk away from the Doctor cocky and vile. He says he owes her his life.

This mirrors, in many ways, the real man. James I did over see the torture of Witches, but over time grew to doubt that they were really finding witches at all.

It’s a complex look at a complex person, and even if there are some kinks to work out, this is a fascinating path for Doctor Who to take for how it looks at historical figures. More, please.

Also, more Alan Cumming please. If anyone comes back from Series 11’s guest stars, can we please have a sequel to this absolutely delightful performance? Watching James I hit on Ryan Sinclair was great, and watching Cumming seamlessly move between comedy and honest drama was fantastic. He was perfect casting, and I really would love to see more of his take on this character. He’s a pure delight.

Another thing this episode does well is allowing us the small pleasures we’d like: the Doctor and Graham wearing the big Witchfinder hat, for instance. Of course we want to see the Doctor wearing a big silly hat, and it gives us that.

It shouldn’t be understated also, that this episode handling the Witchhunts themselves so deftly is a coup for scriptwriter Joy Wilkinson. We’ve had some very difficult historical subject matter being dealt with this series, and Wilkinson did it well. Hopefully we see more from her too.

The running theme of bodily autonomy this series is key in Wilkinson’s script as well, our villains not only go inside human bodies to use them as macabre puppets, but our conflict stems around a healer being uncomfortable performing a medical proceedure on a patient. Every antagonist in this episode, from James I, to the town’s landholder, to the alien threat, wish to take people’s bodily autonomy. To bind them and torture them. To bind them and dunk them under water. To fill their bodies up. None of them respect other people’s rights to exist as bodies freely. To control other’s physical bodies is power, and it’s how they deal with their problems. How the landholder deal with being unable to cure her illness, how King James I deals with his sad life, and how the aliens deal with their imprisonment: they destroy other’s bodily autonomy to feel some sense of control.

The reveal that the aliens were imprisoned for War Crimes fits with this running theme perfectly: their lack of respect for autonomy is cosmic. They parallel the Stenza in this way. The names are different, but it rhymes.

How fitting then, that amidst these Witchhunts, the Doctor becomes the hero of bodily autonomy? She once called herself a Doctor of Hope, but maybe she is a Doctor in a physical sense, yet not only as a physician. A Doctor that knows that it’s not just our souls that need saving, but our flesh too. A Doctor who defends our right to live inside our own skin unmolested.

A Doctor I’d be happy to call for an appointment.

* * *

But oh yes, let’s check in on our running themes, shall we? We have all the usual ones, and the repetition of them is becoming pretty in our faces. So there’s something going on with these. With the reveal of the finale’s title and synopsis, I’m fairly certain that how the elements of this season come together isn’t going to be in a direct way, but in a thematic way. We’ve had these recurring elements of bodily autonomy (this week, that theme was your face...literally!), living beings with something else inside them, bad guys getting away, etc. Plus one new one I should have listed before in these essays: the Doctor doesn’t kill something, but someone else in the episode tries to or does it for her (Jack Robinson shooting the spider, Kevin shoving the Stenza off, James I shoving his torch into the bog zombie, etc). We’re leading to something in the finale, and I’m getting more and more certain that something is going to do with the Doctor facing a scenario where these repeated narrative elements come together in a way that she cannot walk away from, or not interfere with. Perhaps the Stenza will still return, but I don’t think it will be the Monster Mash some predicted or would like.

But time will tell. Let’s see then.
​

Doctor Who: Kerblam! (...azon)

I woke up this morning, stressed about money. Being a freelance writer isn’t easy, and gets more difficult when you’ve had a few health crisises in one year. Pulling up my feed from Kindle Digital Press, an Amazon Company (TM), I looked through the stark last few days of book sales. Book launches always peter out, that’s in their nature, but it still always sucks to reach the point where the luster has rubbed off for readers. My anthology is in the slow burn phase of it’s life, where it will remain. I remember that I need to continue the work of getting my books onto Audible, an Amazon Company (TM). I have a lot of work to do. I always do. I feel guilty for taking care of myself, after all, I have no salary. My time is mine for work.

If someone orders one of my books, they’ll roll off the printers, and an Amazon employee will package that book and send it out. Dropped on a doorstep, kerblam.

Meanwhile, in space, the same thing. But a different company name. Space Amazon… Spamazon… Kerblam!, that’s it, yes, Kerblam! is the biggest mailing retailer in the galaxy. They send antique lamps! And Fezzes! And their workers only get to see their own kids twice a year! They’re not allowed to talk or robots will come up and very politely threaten them! A big old happy place. We shouldn’t question it, not when our lives depend on it, our livlihoods. Even if our jobs are terrible, even if they disrespect our dignity, or reduce us to things machines could do, or give us little indignities that sting up our arms bit by bit till it sneaks up on us we have sores, its okay!

Kerblam! Is nice. They’re looking out for us. Sure, the manager is a brute who insults the nicest person alive, and sure they’re an autonomous entity that answers to no authority when people are dying, But that’s okay.

After all, at the end of the episode, the system at Kerblam murders an innocent girl, Kira, the nicest person alive, to try to show another one of it’s employees that he shouldn’t murder people. It’s not a fake out, they really murder her. But that’s okay. The Doctor even says that the system murdering her was because it was being kind and trying to save the guy who is going to kill a lot of people! How nice. We all know Kerblam is kind now, and that the Doctor did nothing about it’s murder of an innocent person and lets it walk away as though it was pure is because...it must actually be pure! It isn’t an indictment of the Doctor’s morals that she’d let that happen. Kerblam had our best interests at heart after all.

Which is why we should be so angry about Charlie, the terrorist who wants to kill people so more people get jobs. Charlie after all, wants to kill people, which is wrong (it’s not wrong when Kerblam does it though! Don’t misunderstand me! Bless Kerblam). The Doctor and friends stop him from murdering people which is good.

Kerblam then, in all it’s wisdom, closes the facility for a month while they get things together again. They give their employees two weeks pay (not pay for the full month though, let’s not be unreasonable), and the Doctor and co leave to deliver a necklace to the daughter of a nice man Charlie reprogrammed some of the adorable robots in Kerblam to murder.

The end of the episode seems strange. You have expect the Doctor to hang out of the TARDIS and yell, “Wait, what?”. Was this episode pro Kerblam? By the end, Kerblam is the good guys, the guy asking for more rights as a worker is evil and dead, and the middle managers promise change. The middle managers had been searching out the deaths all along?

Was this episode braver once, and did it get toned down somewhere in it’s process? Was it always just a subversion of Doctor Who tropes? Or does it really think that the endless stress of young people in our economy is a selfish cry that will lead to bombs and we shouldn’t ask for a better world?

Kerblam is, from a craft perspective, the best episode of this series of Doctor Who. The pacing is fantastic. The dialogue sings off the page, naturalistic but witty. There is the best action sequence we’ve had yet (with the chute!). The music is, once again, fantastic. The fake company looks like a real fake company! But the episode’s ending, with the murder of an innocent girl, with it glossing that over, with the demonizing of the person asking for change…it leaves a confusing sour note. Sweet and sour, mixed together. Results may vary on how it will sit in your stomach. If morality bothers you, you’ll probably be left uncomfortable. If not, I suppose it’s just fun! Kerblam is great! Smile!

There is a discord there. Did the writer miss the dissonance, or was the dissonance intentional? Is this a black comedy, or a defense of mega corporations? If you owed your income to a company, would you be brave enough to speak out against it? Or would you muddle that message? Would it come out whole, or in pieces.

I guess we’ll never know exactly what Kerblam meant to say.

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