Borrowed Time (novel)
- You may be looking for the comic story.
Borrowed Time was the forty-ninth novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by Naomi A. Alderman and featured the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams.
Publisher's summary
"You want more time Mr Brown, of course, you do. We all want more time. Let me make you an offer..."
Andrew Brown never has enough time. No time to call his sister, or to prepare for that important presentation at the bank where he works. The train's late, the lift jams. If only he'd had just a little more time. And time is the business of Mr Symington and Mr Blenkinsop. They'll lend him some – at a very reasonable rate of interest.
Detecting a problem, the Doctor, Amy and Rory go undercover at the bank. But they have to move fast to stop Symington and Blenkinsop before they cash in their investments.
Plot
Struggling to manage his time while preparing for an important meeting, Lexington International Bank worker Andrew Brown is paid a visit by the elusive Mr Symington and Mr Blenkinsop who offer to give him a loan of extra time on condition that he repays them promptly and with interest. Elsewhere, Amy Pond and Rory Williams enjoy their honeymoon in the 55th century by using a Super Lucky Romance Camera to capture and prolong snapshots in time. However, things turn sour when they accidentally trap a swarm of duplicating mutated crabs inside their time bubble and they have to be rescued by the Doctor. The Doctor then whisks Amy and Rory away to 2007 in order to witness the largest bank collapse in human history, that of the Lexington Bank.
Outside of the bank the trio encounter a homeless old woman, Nadia Montgomery, who gives them her card and warns them that the bank will steal their time. Using the psychic paper the Doctor tricked the receptionist into believing he was Doctor Schmidt, an expert from Zurich, and that Amy was his assistant. For Rory, however, the paper claimed that he was a new employee for the mailroom and he was led away. The Doctor and Amy met with the bank boss Vanessa Laing-Rabdall and they came to witness the unexplained death of middle-aged worker Brian Edelman. Vanessa and her assistant Jane Blythe attempted to brush the situation under the carpet by suggesting that Edelman has passed away due to overworking himself as he refused to take holidays but the Doctor and Amy were unconvinced, especially as Amy had seen him checking his non-existent watch seconds prior to keeling over. As the Doctor headed off to sit in on a meeting he advised Amy to stick around to interrogate the other workers and look out for any with watches of their own.
In the mailroom, Rory was suspicious about how much work Andrew Brown and Sameera Jenkins were getting through, far too much for any two humans. The other workers hinted that they knew more information about this and suggested Rory head down to a storeroom if he wanted answers. Inside the storeroom Rory was confronted by the ghostly figure of a woman who was seemingly caught on a loop. He tried to escape the storeroom but found himself trapped and contacted Amy for help. Although he was soon able to free himself, back in the mailroom he received a phone call from Andrew Brown and was shocked to see another version of him working in the mailroom leading him to question how Andrew could be in two places at once. Meanwhile, in the meeting the Doctor became suspicious when Andrew Brown and Sameera Jenkins kept leaving the room and returning with more work that helped meet the new client's expectations. He suspected that they were both using time travel technology to get ahead of the competition and outside the meeting he phoned Amy to meet back up with him.
One of the workers that Amy paid a visit to was Sameera Jenkins, who was rudely dismissive of her. When Sameera had left Amy began to search her office for clues only to be caught by Sameera on her return. Sameera was initially annoyed by Amy's intrusion but she relaxed when she learned that Amy was also a time traveler. When Amy received phone calls from Rory and the Doctor in short succession, Sameera suggests that she needs more time and invites Mr Symington and Mr Blenkinsop to her office. The pair offer Amy some additional time and she accepts willingly despite learning that she would owe them interest of five minutes per hour. Using her newfound Time Harvester watch Amy travels back in time an hour in order to meet with Rory for lunch, but she soon gets carried away and turns the watch back several more times to go and get her hair and nails done. She then turns the watch back an entire day so that she can visit her mother and father in Leadworth, and then uses it several more times over the course of the next couple of days for various reasons. When she reconnects with the Doctor, only an hour since they last saw each other for him, he's horrified to learn of the deal Amy made and reveals to her that the contract was actually that she owes five minutes per hour, per hour meaning that she now owed Symington and Blenkinsop ten years off her lifespan.
In a desperate attempt to get the watch off her hand, which now seemed to be fused to her skin, Amy attempts to prise it off. She and the Doctor are interrupted by Symington and Blenkinsop who reveal that attempting to sabotage a Time Harvester breaks the contract Amy agreed to and thus she has forfeited her remaining lifespan to them. The pair reveal themselves to be Shark-like aliens and attack. The Doctor and Amy manage to escape and meet up with Rory, however, Symington and Blenkinsop are able to use their time travel capabilities to great multiple copies of themselves from various points in time to trap them. The trio manage to get away when Rory traps several of the Symington and Blenkinsops in time bubbles using his Super Lucky Romance Camera after Nadia Montgomery arrives and causes a distraction with her broken Time Harvester.
to be added
Characters
- Andrew Brown
- Advisor
- Sara Brown
- Sameera Jenkins
- Vanessa Laing-Rabdall
- Jane Blythe (Mr Symington/Mr Blenkinsop/Mr Hoogeveen/Mr Verspronck)
- Amy Pond
- Rory Williams
- Eleventh Doctor
- Nadia Montgomery
- Receptionist
- Brian Edelman
- Dean
- John
- Bob
- Simon
- Rob
- Audra
- Greg
- Amy's mother
- Amy's father
- Galactic customer service
- Yomalet-Ram
- Dorotea Kemal
- Dan Logovik
- Benny Har-Even
- Security guard
- Marieke Jansen
- Boy
Worldbuilding
- Earth is referred to as "the most frequently attacked, colonised, exploited and enslaved planet in the Five Galaxies".
- The vaults contained within the Little Green Storage included:
- a snow-capped landscape which the Doctor dismissed as being Narnia
- a room filled with soap bubbles and another filled with string-like yellow roots
- an empty room that emitted a powerful gale that required four people to help shut the door again
- a room filled with mirrors that showed Amy various alternate realities
- a room staging live re-runs of I Love Lucy and another room made of mucus
- several spaceships, one of which was a six-sided TARDIS-like structure being worked on by several red-metal robot men
- In the aftermath of Symington and Blenkinsop's defeat, the cleanup at the bank is taken care of by UNIT and Torchwood.
- The Doctor claims to be a unicorn.
Foods and Beverages
- The Doctor has an apple in his pocket.
- Rory's favourite sandwiches are ham and cheese.
Notes
- The Millennium Dome is being used as a secret self-storage depot for intergalactic travellers called "Little Green Storage", under the auspices of a small alien called the Yomalet-Ram.
- The Doctor gives twenty years of his own lifetime to settle the debt Amy incurred on her Time Harvester.
- To someone who lives as long as the Doctor, this may only be worth 10% of the years to him.
- This story was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.
Continuity
- The Doctor mentions the Mandragora Helix, suggesting that a temporal flux caused by it was responsible for the death of renaissance nobleman Piero de Medici. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora)
- Author Naomi A. Alderman has cited The Masque of Mandragora as one of her favourite Doctor Who stories. [1]
- The Doctor mentions World War VI. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
- The Doctor mentions needing to keep a diary again. The Second Doctor previously used a diary when he first regenerated (TV: The Power of the Daleks) and the Eighth Doctor also had one. (TV: Doctor Who)
- The Doctor encounters a group of robots attempting to assemble a TARDIS console using a burned book, which could possibly be the Doctor's TARDIS manual, recovered from the supernova he claimed to have thrown it in. (TV: Amy's Choice)
- UNIT is mentioned. (TV: Aliens of London)
- The Doctor is referred to as the "Raggedy Doctor". (TV: The Eleventh Hour, et al)
- When Amy borrows time, she visits her parents. (TV: The Big Bang)
- The Doctor mentions having faced Genghis Khan; (PROSE: Blood Harvest, TV: Rose)
Audio release
- The story was released as an audiobook download read by Meera Syal and was available from the AudioGo website before the company went into administration.
Additional cover images
2018 edition
Editions published outside Britain
- Published in France by Milady in 2012 as a paperback edition.
- Published in China by New Star Press in February 2021 as a paperback edition.
Audiobook
- This novel was released as an audiobook in April 2012 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Meera Syal.
Audiobook cover
External links
- Official Borrowed Time page at Penguin Books
- Borrowed Time at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Borrowed Time at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: Borrowed Time
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