The Doctor's Diary (DWAN 2015 short story)
The Doctor's Diary was the first short story and third release exclusively published in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2015 on 25 September 2015[source needed] by Penguin Group and written by Moray Laing.
Plot
The Doctor has a life of danger and fun, and, on occasion, gets the opportunity to write his adventures down.
The Doctor writes in his diary that, as Clara Oswald has saved his life uncountable times, he doesn't know where he'd be without her, although he feels the balance is kept by how many times he has saved her life. The Doctor writes that he was initially mystified by why he kept encountering girls who looked like Clara, but it soon made sense to him when Clara jumped into his time-stream to save him from the Great Intelligence, with versions of Clara being scattered across time.
It was as he was rescuing Clara from within his time-stream he was forced to remember "a big, old secret", a version of himself who fought in the "dark days" of the Time War, and soon after banded together to form a "gang of Doctors", the trio defeating the Daleks and saving Gallifrey.
Continuing, the Doctor writes about how, on Trenzalore, he protected locals from "monster invasions" for centuries, before reaching the end of his life with no regenerations to spare. Clara had begged the Time Lords for help and they gave the Doctor a new regeneration cycle.
The Doctor is still adjusting to his eyebrows after his regeneration, and writes about how Clara was shocked upon his transformation. He details how he travelled through the streets of Victorian London in a nightshirt trying to stop some "rubbish robots from the dawn of time" and his remorse about the dinosaur he had accidentally brought with him.
Concluding, the Doctor writes about how Clara doesn't want to travel with him all the time, as she has her own life and a job at Coal Hill School, and, most recently, how he needed her help with a Dalek.
Characters
(In order of appearance)
Referenced only
Worldbuilding
Notes
- It isn't clear if the in-universe diary was written by both the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors at different points or if it was written by just the Twelfth Doctor.
- This short story depicts the Twelfth Doctor's diary entry about the events of Deep Breath. A later short story — First Day of the Doctor, printed in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 — also depicts the Twelfth Doctor's diary entry about the events of Deep Breath. While these are two separate texts, they aren't necessarily contradictory, as the extracts could have been written alongside each other in an otherwise longer, unseen, entry.
Continuity
- The first paragraph covers the events of The Name of the Doctor, the second covers the events of The Day of the Doctor, the third covers The Time of the Doctor, the fourth covers Deep Breath, and the fifth covers Dalek.
Gallery
to be added
