DOCTOR: Chickens! Mortal enemies of vampires!

MARCO POLO: I saw again the years and years we spent on the road, in the trackless wastes, in the forests and jungles, in the shining deserts. Always heading on, and on. Always knowing we had to keep moving, and never looking back. Like we thought we’d never run out of world. And like we’d never run out of years.

DOCTOR: You always were a terrible judge of character. Look at me!

BERNICE: Happily.

DOCTOR: Have you had a good life?

BERNICE: All things considered.

DOCTOR: Quite. And you’ve just saved the universe again.

BERNICE: I have, haven’t I? Something to tell the cats when I get home.

DOCTOR: Cats, eh? Plural?

BERNICE: Plural.

DOCTOR: How many? Not too many?

BERNICE: No such thing. Oh, you’re going to love them. Come on.

DOCTOR: Back home?

BERNICE: And beyond.

That was the thing about the TARDIS. It had a drag queen’s sense of timekeeping, always making a big entrance, just a bit late.

JENNY: Doctor – Dad? Um. Have I helped – like – fix whatever's wrong with you?

DOCTOR: No. But you have told me that whatever happens to me, that won't be the end.

JENNY: Is that the best I'm gonna get?

DOCTOR: You don't get the best from me. You get it from you.

DOCTOR: The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart. If only.

NYSSA: You can't argue with mathematics.

TEGAN: Tell that to Adric. How did it work out for him?

(Nyssa gasps.)

DOCTOR: Tegan–

TEGAN: Sorry.

AETHER: Who's Adric?

DOCTOR: Our friend. He died, not long ago.

AETHER: I’m so sorry. Death is an unwanted companion.

NYSSA: You also know of grief?

AETHER: When you're my age, my dear, grief is stitched into living. It just depends how you wear it.

DOCTOR: Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.

DOCTOR: Time And Relative Dimension In Space. TARDIS for short. You're safe in here. You're safe in here and you always will be.

ROGER PUGH: I'm sorry – so sorry –

GWEN: No no no – listen!! It doesn't matter, okay? You just help me! Pull! Hand over hand! If we can just pull ourselves back –

ROGER PUGH: It's coming! It's right behind us – I can't –

GWEN: Of course you can!

ROGER PUGH: I just can't –

GWEN: Yes you can!! Because – because behind us, snapping right at our heels, is something that would kill us! It won't care, it'll barely even notice, because it thinks we're insignificant! It thinks we're meaningless! But we're not, Roger! And I need you to prove it!

ROGER PUGH: Ten years ago. Walking home from work when in the sky, there was this...

GWEN: Meteorite.

ROGER PUGH: Yeah. It was all over the news. This great fireball blazing through the sky over the city. Everyone staring up at it. This beautiful, magical thing.

GWEN: Yeah, I remember. It was my first day on the job.

ROGER PUGH: And a driver. He takes his eyes off the road, staring up at this thing, and – he veers and – stupid. Pointless accident. Just like that. The best person in the world is dead. How do you stop that, eh? How do you save people from that? From stupid bad luck?

GWEN: You don't, Roger. You can't. But you try your best to save everyone else. You try your best.

IRIS WILDTHYME: Stories, hidden inside stories! Ooh, I love all that. Makes me feel right at home.

MICHAEL: I know my dad is dead. I understand that. But he went away as well. Why do they go away as well? Dying is bad enough, but going away as well? It doesn’t make sense.

DOCTOR: No.

MICHAEL: That is what confused me. So where is he? Just gone?

DOCTOR: He’s in what I consider to be a very special place.

MICHAEL: Please don’t say heaven. Clouds are just evaporated water. I know this for a fact.

DOCTOR: I was thinking of the past. A lot of people think the past is a sad place, but I visit it a lot, and let me tell you, I find it just as exciting as the present and the future. Your father lives there now, and all the moments where he is a living, breathing loving father are there too. All stored safely. And they will never go away.

MICHAEL: Can I visit him? I’d like to see him again.

DOCTOR: Of course you can, Michael. Anyone who can remember 130 gnomes can certainly visit him. Just close your eyes.

DOCTOR: I let him down. I did my best–

ACE: Well, it wasn’t good enough.

DOCTOR: I know… I know. And I’m sorry.

ACE: Do you even know what that means?

DOCTOR: Of course I know what it means! Everyone I’ve ever met. Everyone I’ll ever meet. They’re all dead, Ace. Every last one.

ACE: What are you talking about?

DOCTOR: Flick a switch, and I can reach a time when every soul that ever set foot inside the TARDIS is long departed. Or I could go back and see them. The times when they’re alive. Somewhere, somewhen, they’re all still there. Making tea. Walking the dog. Eating beans on toast. Living and breathing… Alive and dead. Everybody. All of the time. And none of the time. It’s how it’s always been for me. How it always will be.

LEELA: She is quicksilver. I prefer steel.

DOCTOR: Do you know Puff the Magic Dragon?

BERNICE: We went out a few times. He was very immature.

DOCTOR: Do you know the bit where Jackie Paper leaves him? Leaves him all alone?

BERNICE: I really don’t want to hear this.

DOCTOR: The dragon can’t be brave without the little boy. He doesn’t have anything to be brave for. He might as well go, might as well drift off into myth, and just be something in old stories.

BERNICE: But what would happen then? There are other monsters, other terrible things out there beside the Hoothi.

DOCTOR: Many of them. Yes.

BERNICE: Well, they must be fought. Because—and this is important. You can’t just be alone. That’s a childish thing to be. You can’t just isolate yourself from everything, no matter what terrible things have happened. You have to help other people.

DOCTOR: That’s what Jackie Paper would have said.

BERNICE: Oh. Oh, I see.

DOCTOR: What do you think?

DOCTOR: Evelyn. Evelyn, can you hear me?

EVELYN: Oh, it’s you. I thought you might be my Doctor.

DOCTOR: You know me, never knowingly punctual.

EVELYN: You’re not surprised, are you? How did you know?

DOCTOR: Remember that calendar you had in the TARDIS, with all your old friends' birthdays written on it? Let’s just say I have something like that.

DOCTOR: Lucie, there's a lot of darkness out there. Some of it where Orbis used to be. But you know something? We wouldn't notice any of it if it weren't for all those little pinpricks of light; planets and stars. And that's where I go whenever I feel sad. The next bit of light in the darkness. Keep on moving. Never look back. Well, hardly ever.

NYSSA: He took my hands and he kissed my forehead. Then he started to walk forward towards the white figure. He turned back once and looked around, and somehow he found where all of us were looking at him.

DOCTOR: Thank you, all of you. Goodbye.

NYSSA: He said. And then he started to run with determination, without a hint of reluctance, because he still had things to do. He had someone to save back in the real world. He had a whole other self that he had to be to do that. He ran right into the white figure of the Watcher and he fell, fell into the figure, spiralling down until he was lost in the distance. I suppose if I never meet him again and grow old myself, I'll have to say that was the last time I saw him, in a dream. But without evidence, I'll say to people that I know he's still alive, somewhere out there. I'll know he's still travelling. I'll know that he's still having adventures. I'll know he always will be.

LEELA: I was so alone in the world of dreams when you left… The wildlands were dark and so quiet. I… I do not wish to be alone.

ROMANA: There will be a place for you with me. For always. Whatever face I wear.

DOCTOR: Tears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, in looking on the happy autumn fields, and thinking of the days that are no more. I don't just switch my emotions on and off, Evelyn. It may look as though I do, but I don't. It's not a conscious thing. I can't help the way I am. Perhaps in my next regeneration I'll be different. Perhaps I'll take everything to heart, although, having met me, I'd say that was unlikely. A small type with an odd accent. Not looking forward to that at all.

EVELYN: I'm not asking you to change, Doctor, and I don't actually want you to change. I like you. I want to put all this behind us now. Now that we understand one another better.

DOCTOR: What about you? Will you miss Rossiter?

EVELYN: Mmm hmm. I will. A great deal. He calmed me down, made me see the value in not concentrating on the less important things.

DOCTOR: It's a challenge for me in some ways to travel with you, you know, Evelyn. I mean, I'm so terribly, terribly fond of all my companions. Each of them has been special to me, unique. It's not just anyone I let into the TARDIS.

EVELYN: And it's not just anyone who could put up with your mood swings.

DOCTOR: Indeed, indeed. But they've all been, well, I suppose I have to say younger.

EVELYN: Thank you.

DOCTOR: No, no, no, no. Perhaps I mean less experienced. Less well-rounded. I've travelled with my intellectual equals, with my emotional betters, but no one other than you, Evelyn, has been. Well, I've travelled with an American for some time recently, and I'm sure she would have told me the phrase I was looking for, however much it irks me to utter it. It was the whole kit and caboodle.

(Evelyn laughs.)

DOCTOR: Come here, Doctor Smythe. I think we both need a cuddle.

CHARLEY: Come on. Take my hand.

DOCTOR: But we can see now. We don’t need to hold on to each other.

CHARLEY: I know. Take my hand anyway.

DOCTOR: Love. Huh! Wrote a treatise on the chromosomal origins of love once, when I was a small boy. Proved categorically which gene began it, which enzymes carried it, which electrochemical receptors translated it… Took all the fun out of it. Got a rubbish grade, too. My tutor told me I’d missed the point.

MICKEY: The audio medium. It can be so deceptive…