79B Aickman Road

The Auto Pilot was a program in a ship (of unknown origin) that landed on Earth in 2010.

Technology

Some time around the 21st century, a space ship crash landed on planet earth and disguised itself as a second storey of an average, everyday flat. The crew on the ship all died, leaving the Auto Pilot, an intelligent hologram, to fix the ship and find a captain.

In 2010, the Auto Pilot used a speaker phone outside the flat to ask people to come inside. Once there he asked them to help him upstairs, where he then tested to see if they were capable of flying the ship. As all the people tested did not want to leave their home and their brains were unable to cope with the machine's power, it killed them and caused a strange stain to go through the ceiling on the lower floor. The Doctor comes to stay as a lodger in the lower floor of the flat with Craig Owens and his roommate Sophie while he waits for his lost TARDIS (with Amy inside) to materialise. He specifically warns Craig not to touch the stain on his ceiling. When Craig once notices flashing lights coming through the door upstairs, he knocks on the door to check that everything was okay; however, the Auto Pilot tells him to go away, claiming that he is not needed. Meanwhile, the TARDIS comes close to materialising outside the flat, but the ship in the building prevents it from doing so and also causes a localised time loop. During a conversation with the Doctor, Sophie reveals that she wishes to move abroad to care for animals, as opposed to Craig, who is very attached to his home. When Sophie returns home one day, the Auto Pilot calls her upstairs under the guise of a young girl. A cat also runs up the stairs and through the door. When the Doctor comes into the flat, he sees the cat coming downstairs, and is able to create a psychic link with it and learns from its memories that a 'time engine' is being reconstructed upstairs. Now with the knowledge of what is upstairs, and also aware that Sophie has ventured up, the Doctor and Craig run into the upper floor and find the time engine. The Doctor points out that the ship they are currently standing in is actually the upper floor of the building, disguised by a high-level perception filter. Seeing Sophie being pulled towards the engine by an energy beam, the Doctor uses his Screwdriver to break her free. The Auto Pilot appears and reveals that it is prepared to test every member of the human race as a captain, but Craig points out that it told him earlier that he was not needed. The Doctor realises that the Auto Pilot knew that Sophie had been willing to leave home, unlike Craig, and that the ship can only be reactivated by someone who wishes to move away. The Auto Pilot activates the energy beam and tries to link the Doctor to the engine, but the Doctor knows that his mind will be too powerful for the time engine and will cause an explosion large enough to destroy the whole solar system. The Doctor tells Craig to link up to the engine, as his unbreakable attachment to his home will cause the engine to shut down. Craig begins to do so by revealing that he is in love with Sophie; she then returns his love and also connects herself to the engine. As the time engine begins to shut down, all three are released and the Auto Pilot disappears. Everyone runs outside to see the upper floor transform into a ship before imploding, leaving the building with just one storey as it was always meant to be.