Things She Thought While Falling (short story)

Things She Thought While Falling
Doctor:	Thirteenth Doctor
Main setting:	Yorkshire skies, September 2018
Key crew
Publisher:	Doctor Who website
Writer:	Chris Chibnall
Release details
Release date:	25 March 2020
Reprinted in:	Adventures in Lockdown
Format:	Online short story
Doctor Who: Lockdown! originals
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Things She Thought While Falling was a short story written by Chris Chibnall for the Doctor Who website which acted as a prequel to series 11 of Doctor Who, namely The Woman Who Fell to Earth. It was later published as the second story in the charity anthology Adventures in Lockdown.

Publisher's summary

Hello! We're living through some strange times right now.

With people staying home, and families stuck together, I thought maybe a few little presents from Doctor Who might help. Something to read, together or alone. New treats, from the people who make Doctor Who.

We'll try and post things here once or twice a week. Later this week, we'll have a never-before-published treat written by Russell T Davies.

To start us off, I've written a few words about what went through the Thirteenth Doctor's head, immediately after she regenerated and was thrown out her TARDIS.

Stay safe.

Chris x

Plot

The Doctor has just fallen out of her TARDIS after it exploded and dematerialised, or as she puts it "dematerialexploding". Feeling the regenerative energy flowing through her, the Doctor attempts to figure out how to solve her predicament and begins arguing with herself. As she wishes that a trampoline factory was under her, she gets distracted and remembers a planet with trampoline like terrain called Fintleborxtug which was named by an alien who "was hiccuping and just before it was sick." As she calmly thinks about the planet, her inner voice snaps her back to her current falling position.

The Doctor deduces that she must be near South Yorkshire and looks down to see an approaching train. She laments that her new appearance does not have x-ray vision, something she has always wanted, and as she embraces for impact she notices that she has a warm feeling in her stomach which she identifies as kindness. She crashes through the roof of the train and quickly heals from her injuries before starting a new adventure.

Characters

• Thirteenth Doctor
• Gathering coil (cameo)
• Team TARDIS (cameo)
• Grace O'Brien (cameo)

Worldbuilding

Locations

• The Doctor is tumbling through the night skies above Sheffield after having been ejected from her TARDIS.
• The Doctor once visited a planet named Fintleborxtug, which had soft and bouncy ground similar to trampolines.
• The Doctor calculated her location to be Earth, Northern Europe, Britain, South of Yorkshire in the outskirts of Sheffield not far from Grindleford.

The Doctor

• The Doctor wished her ragged old clothes had a built-in parachute.
• The Doctor is still in the middle of the regeneration process and can feel her body burn and change as she tumbles through the sky.
• The Doctor can calculate where she is by sticking out her tongue and feeling the air.
• The Doctor is capable of 3007 thoughts in 3 seconds, and wondered if counting them at the same time would count as 3008 thoughts.
• The Doctor complains about not having X-ray vision, something she claims to always have wanted.

TARDIS

• The Doctor claims her TARDIS is "Dematerialexploding", a combination of dematerialising and exploding, before reminding herself that it's not a word.

Food and beverages

• The Doctor once ate ice cream sundaes while bouncing around Fintleborxtug, citing it as a mistake.

Species

• The Doctor claims the founder of Fintleborxtug was in fact in the middle of a hiccup while naming the planet.
• The Doctor remembers getting "his" hand chopped off by the leader of the Sycorax.
• The Doctor, after crashing through a train, gets up and electrocutes a strange creature and makes new friends.

Story notes

• This short story serves as a sequel to Twice Upon a Time and a prequel to The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
• The short story was written in response to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, offering a form of escapism for fans during a time of anxiety.
• Neither Grace, Graham, Yaz or Ryan are mentioned by name in this story, but it is mentioned that the Doctor "[made] new friends", revealed in The Woman Who Fell to Earth as being them, cementing their cameos in this story.
• This is the first Doctor Who related prose story from showrunner Chris Chibnall, who had previously written exclusively for televised media.

Continuity

• The Doctor sees the TARDIS vanishing as it explodes while complaining about being in her predecessor's clothes. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
• The Doctor talks to herself at length. (TV: Orphan 55, Can You Hear Me?, The Timeless Children)
• The Doctor remembers getting her tenth incarnation's hand chopped off by a Sycorax (TV: The Christmas Invasion) and crashing through the roof of the Naismith mansion. (TV: The End of Time)
• The Doctor reminds herself to stop switching personal pronouns. (TV: The Two Doctors)
• The Doctor crashes through a train, zaps a creature and makes new friends. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)

External links

• Things She Thought While Falling on the Doctor Who website