‘I notice we didn’t get gifts,’ said Amy.
‘I got you gifts,’ the Doctor replied.
‘Did you?’ asked Amy.
‘What do I get?’ asked Rory.
‘You get to drive,’ said the Doctor.
‘Really?’ asked Rory excitedly.
‘For a little bit. With me supervising,’ said the Doctor. ‘I mean, it’s now absolutely imperative that we get home for Christmas, or you pair will never let me hear the end of it, so I think Rory should drive. He’s determined. He can find Christmas for us.’
‘I can?’ Rory asked.
‘You’re a wise man, Rory,’ said the Doctor.
Rory rubbed his hands together gleefully and led the way into the TARDIS.
‘So what do I get, then?’ asked Amy.
The Doctor turned to her. He reached into his coat pocket, took something out and handed it to her.
It was a single mitten on a snapped piece of elastic.
‘It’s just what I’ve always wanted,’ she whispered.
‘Really?’ he asked.
‘Shut up, I’m welling up here,’ she sniffed.
‘Merry Christmas, Pond,’ said the Doctor.
‘It’s not actually Christmas, you know,’ she replied, following him into the TARDIS.
‘Nonsense,’ the Doctor replied, ‘that’s the great thing about time travel. It’s always Christmas somewhere.’
The door closed.
After a moment there was a shudder, a creak and a groan. The light on the top of the police box began to flash like a cold blue star. With a shivering, juddering noise, the TARDIS began to dematerialise.
Far overhead, as the blue box faded and disappeared, taking its noise with it, lights glimmered in the night sky.
If they had still been standing there, the three travellers in the TARDIS would have been able to see the silent stars go by for the very last time.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Justin Richards, Steve Tribe and Nik Vincent for their generous help and encouragement.
About the Author
Dan Abnett is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. He has written forty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. His latest novel for the Black Library, Prospero Burns, topped the SF charts in the UK and the USA. His novel Triumff, for Angry Robot, was published in 2009 and nominated for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel, and his combat SF novel for the same publisher, Embedded, was published in spring 2011.
Dan has written more than a dozen comic strips and short stories for Doctor Who Magazine, as well as several Doctor Who audio plays and short stories for Big Finish Productions. His Doctor Who audio originals The Forever Trap, read by Catherine Tate, and The Last Voyage, read by David Tennant, were released by BBC Audio in 2008 and 2010. Between 2006 and 2008, he wrote the novels Torchwood: Border Princes and Doctor Who: The Story of Martha for BBC Books, and the Torchwood audio original Everyone Says Hello, read by Burn Gorman, for BBC
Audio.
Dan was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. His blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com.
Follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett.
Available now from BBC Books
The TARDIS Handbook
by Steve Tribe
£12.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07986 3
The inside scoop on 900 years of travel aboard the Doctor’s famous time machine.
Everything you need to know about the TARDIS is here
– where is came from, where it’s been, how it works and how it has changed since we first encountered it in that East London junkyard in 1963.
Including photographs, design drawings and concept artwork from different eras of the series, this handbook explores the ship’s endless interior, looking inside its wardrobe and bedrooms, its power rooms and sick bay, its corridors and cloisters, and revealing just how the show’s production teams have created the dimensionally transcendental police box, inside and out.
The TARDIS Handbook is the essential guide to the best ship in the universe.
Available now from BBC Books
Nuclear Time
by Oli Smith
£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07989 4
Colorado, 1981. The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in Appletown — an idyllic village in the remote American desert where the townsfolk go peacefully about their suburban routines. But when two more strangers arrive, things begin to change.
The first is a mad scientist — whose warnings are cut short by an untimely and brutal death. The second is the Doctor…
As death falls from the sky, the Doctor is trapped. The TARDIS is damaged, and the Doctor finds he is living backwards through time. With Amy and Rory being hunted through the suburban streets of the Doctor’s own future and getting farther away with every passing second, he must unravel the secrets of Appletown before time runs out…
A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor, Amy and Rory, as played by Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in the spectacular hit series from BBC
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The King’s Dragon
by Una McCormack
£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07990 0
In the city-state of Geath, the King lives in a golden hall, and the people want for nothing. Everyone is happy and everyone is rich. Or so it seems,
When the Doctor, Amy and Rory look beneath the surface, they discover a city of secrets. In dark corners, strange creatures are stirring. At the heart of the hall, a great metal dragon oozes gold. Then the Herald appears, demanding the return of her treasure… And next come the gunships.
The battle for possession of the treasure has begun, and only the Doctor and his friends can save the people of the city from being destroyed in the crossfire of an ancient civil war. But will the King surrender his new-found wealth? Or will he fight to keep it…?
A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor, Amy and Rory, as played by Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in the spectacular hit series from BBC
Television.
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The Glamour Chase
by Gary Russell
£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07988 7
An archaeological dig in 1936 unearths relics of another time… And — as the Doctor, Amy and Rory realise —
another place. Another planet.
But if Enola Porter, noted adventuress, has really found evidence of an alien civilisation, how come she isn’t famous? Why has Rory never heard of her? Added to that, since Amy’s been travelling with him for a while now, why does she now think the Doctor is from Mars?
As the ancient spaceship reactivates, the Doctor discovers that nothing and no one can be trusted. The things that seem most real could actually be literal fabrications —
and very deadly indeed.
Who can the Doctor believe when no one is what they seem? And how can he defeat an enemy who can bend matter itself to their will? For the Doctor, Amy and Rory —
and all of humanity — the buried secrets of the past are very much a threat to the present…
A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor, Amy and Rory, as played by Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in the spectacular hit series from BBC Television.
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The Only Good Dalek
by Justin Richards and Mike Collins
£16.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07984 9