Hopes and Fears of all the Years

THE HOPES AND FEARS OF ALL THE YEARS

Paul Cornell

Doctor Who

The boy's name was Tom Wake, and he was nine years old. And perhaps because the year was 1920, or perhaps because he was the sort of boy who liked to believe in things until there was a reason not to, he believed in Father Christmas. And so, on Christmas Eve, he found it hard to sleep. And when he heard thumpings about downstairs in his house, he was sure he knew who it was. And it couldn't be his mum and dad, because he could hear them snoring. So he went downstairs. Surprisingly, there was nobody thumping about, when a second ago there had been an enormous wild noise. There was a pile of presents under the Christmas tree. And one strange thing hanging from a branch…a slim metal cylinder, with a twirly thing on top. Tom had never seen anything like it. There was a handwritten tag attached. Tom was about to read it when he heard the sneeze. A man's head was sticking out of the chimney, looking at him upside-down. The man's face was covered in soot, he didn't have a beard, and his hair was very untidy. His glasses had nearly slipped off his nose. "Ah," he said, "Now. This is not what it looks like." Tom went over and peered at him. "Are you a burglar?" he said. "Okay. Right. This is not either of the two things it looks like. I'm -" He looked suddenly horrified, then with a great blast of soot he fell out into the fireplace, and rolled to his feet. He was in what might have been a very fashionable suit if you were what Mum called a bit of a waster. "Oh yes!" he cried. "Thought it was only a matter of time before I popped out. Tardis landed inside the chimney, got a bit mixed up with it, couldn't tell what was Tardis and what was chimney, so I got out, got stuck, now all I have to do is hop outside, find a way to climb up on the roof, get back down the - oh, by the way, I'm the Doctor -" He reached out a hand then withdrew it when he saw how dirty it was. "And you are -??" "Tom." "Well, Tommy Boy, Tom Tommity Tom, I'll be out of your -?" He stopped. His mouth had dropped open. He was pointing at the tree. "What year is this?" "1920." "Bit…early for those? Isn't it?" He wandered over, adjusting his glasses and staring at the strange present Tom had noticed earlier. "What?" said Tom. The Doctor plucked it off the tree. "A sonic screwdriver. Not Toy of the Year until Christmas 3498. Your Mum and Dad, they're not … eccentric, are they? Might wear waistcoats? Very well travelled?"

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The Hopes and Fears of all the Years

"We went to Blackpool once." The Doctor looked suspiciously at him, pushed his glasses straight and read the handwritten tag. "Ah," he said. "Right?…?" Who's the present for?" asked Tom, hoping it was him. The Doctor opened his mouth and took a deep breath, and Tom thought maybe he was going to tell a big lie. But then he deflated. He handed the tag to Tom. In terrible, scrawled handwriting, it said: "To the Doctor, In the next nine decades you're going to save us from danger so many times at Christmas. Thank you." It was signed with a squiggle that Tom couldn't read, and it was dated, incredibly: Christmas 2007. "But you haven't saved us," said Tom, boggled. "Have you?" "Not yet," said the Doctor, sucking his teeth, deep in thought. For a moment, Tom thought, he'd looked almost scared, distantly haunted by the possibilities of what this might all mean. "Time travel, you see. The 'us' must be you and your family. Wish whoever wrote this had been a bit more specific about which Christmases. Not much of a present. More of a lengthy obligation. Still -??!" He pocketed the sonic screwdriver and the tag with it. "Must get on, this has given me a bit to do. Oh, and I got a present, so…" he patted down his suit, and found something. "Here you go. Orange." He threw it to Tom. "That's the essence of all orangeyness, specially prepared for me by the translucent chefs of Zarn. Didn't get round to eating it. I like a banana. Didn't want to tell them that. Now, I'm assuming the danger doesn't start now, 'cos there was nothing on the scanner, so -?! See you next year!" He marched out and closed the front door behind him. Tom stared after him. He absent-mindedly unpeeled the orange and bit into it. It was the orangeyest orange he'd ever tasted. He went back to bed wondering if he'd dreamed all that, and fell asleep before he heard strange noises on the roof and then in the chimney, and next morning woke to his Mum complaining about soot footprints and orange peel. But Christmas morning was as wonderful as ever, and all about those presents under the tree. Next Christmas, Tom was 10 years old, and grown up, and was sure he'd just had an odd dream last time. And he was no longer so convinced about Santa.

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Doctor Who

Sure enough, no Doctor came down the chimney. But when Mum and Dad took Tom to visit a friend who'd got the first motor car in their street, Tom realised someone was watching them. It was the Doctor, standing beside some sort of ultra-modern blue box, which had a sign that said something about the police. He raised a hand, and Tom waved back, making his Mum ask who that was. Tom said he didn't know. The Doctor had looked worried and puzzled. Tom spent the rest of the holiday waiting for danger, but none happened. In the next few years, Tom started to anticipate that, over Christmas, he would glimpse the man in the blue suit, like he'd stepped from one Christmas right into the next. Tom became a young man. In 1931, on Boxing Day, sitting in her favourite chair, listening to the radio, his mother died. As his father dealt with the funeral arrangements, Tom found a hand on his shoulder, and looked up, and there was the Doctor. "You didn't save her," said Tom. "No," said the Doctor. "I'm sorry. That wasn't danger. Just time and nature." "You're not getting any older." "No." By then Tom didn't believe in Father Christmas, and now he had learned dread. Boxing Day was a bit miserable for Tom for a few years after that. He didn't see the Doctor much during the 1930s. But perhaps that was because he wasn't paying as much attention. During the summer of 1936, in Blackpool, Tom met a girl called Alice. She was small and very pretty. At the end of the holiday Tom told her about the Doctor, and she believed him, or at least she didn't laugh, and said maybe she could come and visit for a day that Christmas. During that visit, they kissed under the mistletoe after Dad had popped down the pub. Then they heard a cough, and the Doctor walked past, examining a device in his hand, shaking his head, a questioning and suspicious look on his face, saying he didn't want to be a gooseberry and where was this danger, then? Alice put a hand over her mouth in shock and laughter that he was really real. Tom asked her if she thought the Doctor was handsome, and she said she had no idea and kissed him again. They got married that next year, and Alice had a little girl, Mary, born on Christmas Day.

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The Hopes and Fears of all the Years

When they took her home, they found she had her first Christmas stocking waiting, with toys that were all too old for a baby. But all of which would become beloved in the years that followed. As Alice started showing the stocking to Mary, Tom saw something at the window. The shape of the Doctor. Standing out there in the cold, looking in at them all here in the warm. But then, with a shake of the head, as if annoyed at himself, he was gone. Tom wrote a note to remember to say thank you. But the next Christmas he saw the Doctor, Tom was wandering through a jungle in Burma. He was lost and alone and feverish. It was sickly, hot and wet. He hardly knew what year it was, never mind that it was Christmas. He was in the uniform of the 1st battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and something terrible that he couldn't quite remember had just happened to every friend he had there, and he wasn't sure he had a left arm any more. He looked beside him, and there was the Doctor. "Are you real?" Tom asked. "I'm real," said the Doctor. "This is me saving you, just for once, I hope. Keep walking. Here's a use for my present," and he moved what he'd called the sonic screwdriver over Tom's missing arm, and suddenly Tom couldn't feel the distant pain that had been going to rush at him at any moment. There was a sound from behind them. The clonk of a rifle being prepared to fire. Tom started to turn round, but the Doctor had already spun and thrown something Which had made the uniformed men behind them dive for cover. Until they realised it wasn't a grenade and started to get up Only for huge stalks of bamboo to burst out of the ground in front of them. "Instant plant food!" yelled the Doctor, sprinting, darting left and right, dragging Tom with him. Shots started to sing through the tree branches all around them. "Here!" They burst through the undergrowth And looked down at the calm blue of a river A hundred feet below the cliff on which they were tottering. "You do realise," said the Doctor, "that according to that note there are going to be more Christmases like this?" "Let's hope!" said Tom.

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Doctor Who

"Well, no, 'cos I'd like to think I'd saved you from all of this danger that, according to whatever's messing with me, is supposed to keep on happening." "And then you could go away and do something else." "Exactly! Yeah! Obligation over!" But for some reason the Doctor didn't look too pleased at the idea. There came the sound of boots rushing towards them. "How is that little sweetheart of yours? I like a baby. She's going to be clever, you can tell. And the wife? How's Alice?" "Doctor -" "You're doing all right, aren't you? Bad stuff happens, you just keep going 'till there's good stuff. I'm getting addicted. I even checked up on you this summer. It's like your family's for life, not just for Christmas." "Doctor -!" "One day," said the Doctor, "I should introduce you to a native American friend of mine, Goyaale, 'The One Who Yawns'." "Doctor, why is this a good time to mention him?!" "'Cos he's also known as -" The Doctor grabbed Tom by the hands. "'Geronimo!'" And he dived for the river, taking Tom with him. Tom came back from the war and started selling insurance door to door. Having one arm helped: people liked a war veteran. He'd started to say he believed in Father Christmas again, for little Mary's sake. Every Christmas, Tom and Alice would leave one mince pie and glass of port for Santa, and one for the Doctor. Until the Doctor left a note saying he was experiencing these Christmases faster than they were, and he was getting full and a bit dizzy. Mary got into trouble at school one year as Christmas approached for insisting that the Doctor was real, but that turned out fine when the magician at her birthday party was the Doctor himself. That bully Samantha Phelps never did say what she saw inside the magic box that so scared her, and everyone believed Mary from then on and were sure to be back every year. On his way out of the door one Christmas, 1955, Alice stopped the Doctor. She put a hand on his arm. "We've got a spare room," she said. "You saved my husband's life. I don't care if you're magic or what, when you visit here, you never have to go back out into the cold." The Doctor looked at her, and Tom thought he had the saddest look on his face, just for a moment. There was something like a fierce, distant love there. A love for things that had been gone a long time. And for what was in front of him at that moment. But there was also still something guarded, like he was waiting for the punchline to be on him. 5

The Hopes and Fears of all the Years

But then he grinned, and it lit up his whole face. "Ta, but I have things to do, Mrs Tom, people to see, including you, next Christmas, in about, ooh, five minutes." And he was gone out of the door. In 1962, Tom's old Dad passed away before the Doctor could see him again, and in 1967 Mary moved out just before Christmas, yelling that her parents could believe that they were being looked after by a representative of some cosmic establishment if they liked, but that she was having no more of it, and Alice cried. Tom sat down beside the Doctor, who was watching Magical Mystery Tour on their blackand-white television, having said he was only going to pop in for a moment, and they had a good old natter. Alice came in with mince pies and asked if that had been their danger for this year. "Nah," said the Doctor. "I'm pretty sure that's just normal life. We're halfway to the note now, and there's only been one lot of your actual danger. This is boggling me. I don't know what this is about." He took a bite of his pie. "How do you feel about lawyers?" Two years later, Mary had met a young man in India who turned out to be a lawyer, and they got married and moved to Blackpool. That Christmas, Tom and Alice showed the Doctor the photos, with them standing beside the happy couple. "Aww," said the Doctor. "And five minutes ago you were all yelling at each other." "And in five minutes more," said Alice, "we'll be gone." The Doctor made so many jokes before he left that it wasn't until they went to bed that Alice suddenly thought she wished she hadn't said that. In the 1970s, the Doctor played with Tom and Alice's grandchildren for an hour or so every December. Tom didn't think he'd ever seen anyone give himself over to play that completely, without any thought for his own dignity. The little ones started to think of the Doctor as a weird sort of uncle that only appeared at Christmas. In 1981, the couple spent a while getting the house together and threw a family party when the Doctor walked in. They had to grab him and pull him in and say no, this time he was not getting away that easily. This was all because they'd retired, and had time for everything now. The Doctor stayed, and actually danced, doing an awkward sort of boogie to Duran Duran that made the kids collapse in embarrassment. "What?" he said. And did it again. And in 1982, Alice fell and broke her hip, and died under general anaesthetic, and, despite his children urging him to join them, Tom met the Doctor in a cold house that Christmas, and they talked for a long time, and Tom felt at the end of it that he knew this always young man like an old friend…and not at all. Ten years later, Tom had to move into sheltered accommodation. He hadn't liked to leave the house, because the memory of Alice was there.

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Doctor Who

His nurses in the home were wonderful, and his children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren - blast it, how had that happened? - came to visit. And he had his mates. The Doctor wandered in every Christmas, now resigned to the fact there probably wasn't going to be much in the way of danger. Though sometimes he'd throw open a cupboard and go ah-ha and find something that turned out to be nothing dangerous at all. But at Christmas 1996, there was this one big new nurse who was brusque with Tom, who repeated his words in a sarcastic voice when he talked about the Doctor, and went so far as to pat him lightly on the cheek when he protested. Then there was a low, certain voice from behind him. "Don't you dare." Shortly afterwards that nurse started to find he was incapable of not yelling "idiot!" every time his boss's name was mentioned, especially in front of his boss - and before he could work out that he might have been hypnotised, he was somehow working in a chip shop. To his own surprise he turned out actually to be rather kind. When the Millennium came, Tom had a sense of completion, and time seemed to slip by a lot, and he said he was ready to go, eh? But the Doctor said they were celebrating it on the wrong year, and why not hang on at least till next year for the real thing? Besides, there was the date on that note… So Tom suddenly found himself at Christmas 2007. It had only seemed five minutes since the last one. Since the first one. He believed in Father Christmas again, because there was once again no reason not to. "I'm catching you up," he said to the Doctor, who was wheeling his blasted awkward chair through the cold garden outside the nursing home. "Are we going to find out about that note?" "Well, I've been thinking about that, Tommy Boy -?" "It's the only reason you kept visiting us." "Maybe at the start." The Doctor paused. "But knowing you lot, it's been?…" "The sort of life you never had. Am I right?" The Doctor was silent. Then: "Anyhow, I was thinking we could find out." And he wheeled Tom into a blue box that the old man hadn't seen since he was a small boy, and so remembered perfectly. There was wonder inside the control room. Tom asked questions and got answers. And then they were in 1920, in the lounge of the house of Tom's youth. On the night of Christmas Eve. It took a bit of thumping about to get Tom's wheelchair out of the Tardis. There was the tree with the gifts. But nothing was hanging from it. They waited and watched. Nobody appeared. And soon young Tom would come down the stairs, and the Doctor would fall down the chimney. 7

The Hopes and Fears of all the Years

Tom got fed up with this. "All right," he said, "show me that message." The Doctor took it out of his pocket. Tom looked at it, and started to chuckle. There was a twinkle in his eye, because now he got it! He wheeled himself over to the table and picked up a new blank gift tag, and a pen, and copied the words from the old tag on to it. In his terrible, shaky handwriting. And then he signed it, with his signature that was now just a squiggle, and wrote the date he'd come from: December, 2007. The two cards looked exactly the same. The Doctor opened his mouth in amazement. He numbly handed Tom his sonic screwdriver, and Tom attached the tag to it, and hung it from the tree. "You'll get it back in a few minutes," he said. "So it was you, tricking me," said the Doctor. "Goodness," said Tom, "I suppose it was. I suppose you wouldn't have shown up without the mention of danger - at least, not at first. But you have to admit, I think that turned out to be -" "Quite a present after all," said the Doctor. Tom shook his hand. "Merry Christmas, Doctor." And then they had to be away. As the Tardis flew off into time and space, the Doctor stood at its controls, in all that wonder, alone once more. He was thinking about how that message had come to exist. Tom had only copied it. So could it be said that anyone had written it in the first place? It was like a gift from infinity itself. A gift that had sent the Doctor on a merry dance, that, despite all his fears, had ended well. And just for a moment then, the Doctor was struck by a strange and wonderful sensation: that the universe loved him. And, at Christmas, had wanted him to know that. He put a hand on the Tardis console. "Thank you," he said. Then he slammed down a control. And was off on another adventure.

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This Doctor Who Christmas story is Written by

PAUL CORNELL Illustrations by

MIKE COLLINS Published on December 22th, 2007 on the Daily Telegraph