Sam wasn’t even sure how this happened. One second the Daleks all had their tiny gun things pointed at him and the next the TARDIS powers up and leaves him? Now he had nothing reassuring him of his survival. So he just stood there, his arms by his sides because he got tired of holding them up and waited for one of them to shoot him or take him away. But they didn’t. In fact, he hadn’t heard a thing out of them for a minute now. Not that he was complaining, but the complete and utter silence made him nervous.
After another minute or so, Sam convinced himself that the Daleks were powered down…. Just as the TARDIS powered up.
“Huh.” was the only remark Sam could make.
His eyes moved around the room one more time before he dared to take one step. Then another. Then he ran towards the white door... which he slammed into.
Sam rubbed his forehead as several thoughts ran through his head. Most of which were “Well, I’m trapped here.” but some were “I really hope those Daleks don’t get their power back.” and a couple were “I suppose whoever took the power from the Daleks also used power from the ship. Just not all of it since it’s still flying. And the lights are still on.”
Sam looked around the room again, not knowing what else to do. He saw another door, but he assumed it also couldn’t open. Why couldn’t advanced alien lifeforms just use non-power dependent doors?
He let random thoughts fill his head as he waited for someone to save him. Or kill him. Preferably the former.
****
Emily stood at the doorway to her room as she stared at the contraption the Doctor built. It didn’t look like it could do much as it was made out of coat hangers, tissue paper, toilet paper rolls and she think there might’ve been a couple of apples. They were all placed on her coat rack in a way that kind of made it look like an upright telescope. “What’s that meant to be?”
“Well, I got a bad feeling that something happened to the universe and I have to stop it somehow. But since I don’t even know what happened, I have to assume that the Daleks did something so I have to go to them first, but I have to find out where they are first so this machine will help me determine their coordinates and then bring the TARDIS to me by redirecting their ship’s power to power the TARDIS and we just have to hope Sam is in the TARDIS so I can bring him back too.” The Doctor stopped to catch his breath. “If not, we can just go up there and get him. Any questions?”
Emily was silent as she tried to catch everything the Doctor said, but he was talking incredibly fast so some information got left out. “But if you take the power from the Dalek’s ship, won’t it crash?”
The Doctor placed his sonic screwdriver in a hole he made on top of the coat rack and immediately began buzzing. “Well, no. I’ll leave enough power for the ship to fly. The rest goes to the TARDIS.”
“Does it have to buzz like that? Can’t you make it not so noisy?” Emily walked over to her bed and sat on it.
The Doctor looked at Emily for a second, feeling as if he’d heard this question before but shrugged the feeling off. “No, I can’t. It’s a sonic screwdriver. Sonic means sound. It can’t be silent, otherwise it’d just be a… silent screwdriver. Or just a normal screwdriver. Which doesn’t sound as cool.”
Emily was getting tired so she just left the Doctor to his business as she looked around her room. The question about her family photos earlier had brought back memories of what her room used to look like. Photos of her family plastered all over the walls.
Souvenirs dangling from her lamps, bed post, the corner of her desktop computer. Really anything that had dangling potential.
And how could she forget the blue boxes.
Wait, Emily’s world span, her head dizzy. How did she forget about the blue boxes? Her mother always had her make them for arts and crafts. She remembered painting the black windows and the white sign.
Emily was sure there was more, but she couldn’t remember anything else. But she now had the feeling her brain was hiding something from her. And she was going to find out what.
Emily was so focused on her memories that she didn’t realise the annoying buzzing had stopped. She also didn’t realise that the Doctor was gone as well.
I wasn’t that deep in thought, was I? She hoped not anyway. And if she was, she hoped she wouldn’t be in deep thought often. She hated it when things happened around her without her noticing.
She took a step outside her bedroom. Her eyes darted down the hallway that led into the kitchen. The house was once again, eerily quiet.
I preferred the annoying buzzing. She thought, not wanting to alert any potential monsters in her house.
As she stepped foot in the kitchen, she jumped a little when she saw the Weeping Angel. Emily had forgotten it was there. And right now, she wished it wasn’t. But it was still facing the mirror so she guessed it was okay.
Emily looked around the kitchen. She had partially wanted to stay there because it had knives and that was the best weapon the house. Except, maybe for Sam’s baseball bats. Why does he have them anyway? He doesn’t even like baseball.
She wanted to grab a knife to protect herself but saw a note held on by a magnet on the fridge and decided that it was more important.
Emily, I’m fine. But the TARDIS lost power as I got to Sam. I didn’t take you along because you didn’t hear me (seriously, how did you not hear me?) when I called you. I was about to drag you along, but then the TARDIS started leaving by itself. I think something pulled us back. I don’t know who. Or what. But the Daleks stole the power back from the TARDIS. It’s a good thing the HADS was on. Anyway, we’re lost (Sam’s here) but I’m trying to power the TARDIS. I promise I’ll find you. I promise.
But if you do manage to find help, then tell them to come to Iceland. At least I think it's Iceland.
—The Doctor (and Sam)
Emily reread the letter several times. Confused by only one thing. Well, two things. What HADS meant was one of them. The other was: If the Doctor is lost. Then how did he get the letter to me?
She decided to ask him that when she found him.
But right now, Emily had to do something because she sure as hell wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for the Doctor to show up. She grabbed a knife from the knife rack and a flashlight from her room. She put them in a black, brandless bag. The logo had been torn off by one of her neighbor’s dogs. It also took off a bit of the fabric, but she managed to sew it back on. But she never got the logo back.
Emily debated whether or not to bring a sleeping bag and decided on bringing one. Because she definitely needed one in this weather. She also took some apples, pears and oranges from the fridge and put them in her bag. Her bag was relatively small compared to other bags and it was nearly full, but she decided there was room for one more item. She opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of custard. It was amazing how much it meant to her. But she realised that bringing water along was also a necessity.
With all that, Emily walked out the door into the now light snowfall. But the wind still blew fiercely. In a way, Emily was relieved to leave the house. Not just because of the creepy angel. But also because the memories of her room would be too depressing for her.
She shook the thoughts off and walked two metres before realising that she had no idea where to go. “Um…”
She looked around and noticed a faint blue glow over a couple of houses. It seemed far away, and Emily thought it might’ve just been her eyes. But the vision was then followed by an auditory cue. Three gunshots.
Emily took a deep breath and shivered. From the cold mostly, but partially because of fear. Fear of the unknown.
Emily took a deep breath. Her heart was racing. She had never travelled alone. Well, she had never actually travelled. Most of the time, it was just to go to school. But she didn’t have school anymore so the only travel she ever got was to the mall.
She looked again at the faint blue glow, still unsure if it was actually real.“Well, I’ve got nothing else to go on. Plus, that’s where the gunshots came from. I’m sure that’s a good sign!”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
Hello The Phoenix and congratulations for winning the Best Novels Award for 2015 on your novel. Anyways, I'm here to review this chapter of your novel that is still in the Green Room, as I'm trying to help hedge clip this a little bit. Just a quick note, I haven't read any of the previous chapters, but I am familiar with Doctor Who(a fan) so I kind of know the context a little bit.
Anyways, let's get into this, shall we?
I feel like this was a little bit all over the place, and maybe it was even meant to be rushed. I don't know. I think that you should probably stick with one main event happening, and here apparently the doctor was repeating his mistakes and kind of ironically leaving two of his helpers behind stuck in one place or another one or such. I think that there's a big plot hole there kind of, in the sense that how do you think that the doctor felt like leaving both of them behind at the same time(from what I can gather) in an unknown place.
Also the settings confused me very much, and I guess that's because you didn't really introduce where they were properly. For some reason, I though that they were inside of the TARDIS in both scenarios, and again although that is only my perceptions, I would like it if you have verified that at the beginning.
Now, let's get into the nit-picky stuff, shall we?
Even though this isn't the first sentence of your novel, I was still expecting a stronger sense of a "hook" in that first sentence, so that it could hook me in and make me want to keep reading. Because at this moment, I am honestly already judging this as a cliche start. The bottom line is, especially in the beginnings, you always want to put your best foot forward.
This is a kind of sharp piece of dialogue, because apparently there has been "utter silence" and now what compels Sam to make a noise, whatever that may be. We already know that he's really confused, perhaps it would be better if he just thought this in his head, if you see what I mean.
The way that this is formatted makes it look kind of very rough transitions, something that you could definitely work on. You don't need all those those words in between the quotations, what if you merged this whole blurb into one big quotation of thought?
What thoughts? The same ones that have plagued him before, or were they a little bit different? I guess that I'm just trying to understand by getting into his head, something that the author could only provide insight on.
****
So now we're switching over to the Emily part, and as I was quickly scrolling past through this, I just noticed how many times that name "Emily" was mentioned. Annoyingly two many times, like in every other sentence, to the point was it got repetitively irritating to me at least. I think that you should cut most of that out, and just stick with "she". Anyways, she is alone in this room, correct?
I also agree with SongMorning, because I guess that it just seems like, umm... this isn't realistically Doctor Who, and I know that this is just a fanfiction which is based off of the show, but that line that I'm pointing out sounds like The Doctor is playing with some kind of toys, which I honestly don't think that he has the time to waste it on. Is this like play-dough Doctor Who or something like that?
This sentence literally looks like a paragraph, which run-ons are unaccpetable in English grammar. I would that you break it up a lt.
Here's a minor inconsistency, but which step is the Doctor going to do first? I know that he is rambling and once he starts going you can't stop him, but all that you have to do is take out that additional word.
I was pretty suprised how a low buzzing sound was bothering Emily so much, I mean hasn't she been through worse things and on bigger adventures. I couldn't correctly say that she's out of character since I don't really know her character that much. I guess that it's just kind of weird that you would take up maybe 1/4 of the chapter just dedicated to her complaining about it. I would cut a lot of that out, because the readers don't care and apparently the doctor doesn't dcare either.
Those memories and flashbacks that Emily was having were a great introduction to Emily's backstory, but the problem with that particular section was that you told us a lot. I would encourage you to apply the principles of "show and tell"(<< amazing article that you should read) for the reason that it will make your writing much more vivid and interesting.
I was confused on how the note got to her fridge, on a magnet?? I just assumed that the Doctor quickly transported it in the TARDIS, or maybe he just wrote it before he left? I don't know but throughout this whole chapter I sometimes feel like you leave us with too much mystery. Mystery is good but too much leaves the reader discouraged.
That's all that I have for you for this chapter and this review. Overall, I hope that this isn't overly-harsh, because I just honestly want to help you improve your writing. Keep on writing!
Until Next Time,
~P.S.
Ah, this is nice. When I first clicked on this in the Green Room, I read the first paragraph and didn't know the context. Now that I know the story up to this point, it's really pleasant reading it again and thinking, "Ah, so that's what's going on."
Yeah, that seems about right. I almost feel as if I would say about the same thing in a situation as strange as that.
This, however, is rather too silly. How did he manage to do that? Did he actually not see that the door was closed, or did he expect it to open for him somehow?
In the paragraph in which several thoughts are running through Sam's head, it would flow more smoothly with different formatting. Put a colon after every "were", a comma after every quote, and instead of using quotation marks for his thoughts, use italics.
Use past tense "thought" rather than "think".
And this also seems a bit overly unrealistic in a silly way for Doctor Who. Was there ever any time in the show in which he did something as absurd of making a "machine" of coat hangers, toilet paper, toilet paper rolls, and apples? It sounds more like something a little kid playing make-believe Doctor Who would do. And Emily just seems to be accepting it all to a certain extent. She's a bit skeptical, yes, but not skeptical enough.
I liked the part where you hinted at Emily's memories and past again...You're developing her past in a very slow, tantalizing way that makes me continually want to find out more.
That note doesn't make any sense. I thought the TARDIS wasn't there. What did the Doctor leave in, then? The coat hanger contraption? The way he vanished is too disorienting for the reader, and I find I'm quite confused once more.
Where does Emily think she's going? Iceland? *bemused smile*
Well, thanks for writing. It's been a fun read, and maybe I'll continue reading it when you add more chapters. Doctor Who isn't my favorite show in the world, but I do like it when I encounter it.
I clicked on this, thinking, "Hmm...a fanfiction. A fanfiction of what, I wonder? Will I know what it is?"
Then I saw the word "Daleks" in the first line.
And I knew.
Oops, but I see this is Chapter Six, so I'll go back to the beginning and start from there...