The City of the Dead

ANJI: Do you think he's different? Since New Orleans, I mean.

FITZ: Different how?

ANJI: I don't know. Calmer. A bit more at peace.

FITZ: Maybe. Yeah, actually. It's subtle, but it's there. Like he's resolved something.

ANJI: What, do you think?

FITZ: No idea. And no sense speculating. That way madness lies.

“Me? I'm chance. The role of the dice that comes up seven. The straight flush. The fifth bingo number. Also, I'm from another planet. Don't ask me which planet. I've forgotten.”

RUST: How long since you lost your memory?

DOCTOR: About a hundred years.

RUST: You hardly seem forty. Can you even die?

DOCTOR: Yes.

RUST: You don't sound certain.

DOCTOR: I am, though. I'm as certain as if I'd died once already. Isn't that strange?

“It's always hard to know with him. You overreact, and then he walks in after a three-day hunt for the perfect jelly baby and you feel like a right git. So next time he's gone, you tell yourself it's just him being disorganised and forgetful, and find out he's been locked in a dungeon by something with tentacles.”

“If I were a demon, you'd have been in pieces ten minutes ago. I'm an alien. Not of this earth. Oh come on, you've seen the movies. We're not pre-Spielberg, are we? Wasn't Close Encounters in the seventies? This is your close encounter, Dupre. Welcome to the mysteries.”

DUPRE: Have you travelled the universe?

DOCTOR: The universe, the obverse, the reverse. The inverse, where everything has to rhyme. The freeverse, where nothing ever does. I'm well versed.

ANJI: It spooks me when he gets like that.

FITZ: Yeah.

ANJI: You know why he does, don't you. Why he forgot. What he forgot.

FITZ: There's so much I don't know, Anj. He had decades on him before I met him. Maybe centuries. Probably centuries.

“I scramble. I shoot. On occasion, I scurry. But I never scoot. Appearances must be preserved.”

DUPRE: You're not scared?

DOCTOR: I scare very, very easily. Budgies unnerve me. Gerbils throw me into a state of panic. Don't even mention rabbits.

FITZ: I don't think the Doctor quite gets evil, not really, no matter how much he's fought it. Basically, it just doesn't make sense to him. He's an innocent. And that's scary, it gives him a blind spot.

ANJI: Do you really think he's good?

FITZ: (nods emphatically) Bloody awful sometimes. But always good.

ANJI: Why does he inspire such loyalty? Why do we think we ought to be helping him and looking out for him?

FITZ: Because he's good. He's bigger than we are, somehow. More full of life.

“'He can take care of himself,' Fitz muttered, starting for the kitchen. He always had, after all, for hundreds of years. Still, at some point his luck was bound to run out. But please not today, Fitz thought, as he grasped the pantry door handle. Please never, as long as I'm with him.”

Her head turned towards him. 'Your blood smells funny.'

The Doctor was beginning to feel more and more light-hearted. 'That's because my blood is funny. Two leucocytes walk into a bar. The first one says "Do you serve subpoenas here?"' He trailed off. 'That joke doesn't even make sense,' he said worriedly.