POLLY: You’re condemning us all to die. Have you no heart?

CYBERMAN: No. That is one of the weaknesses that we have removed.

DOCTOR: My dear Mister Chinn, if I could leave, I would, if only to get away from people like you.

BRIGADIER: Doctor—

DOCTOR: And your petty obsessions! England for the English? Good heavens, man!

CHINN: I have a duty to my country!

DOCTOR: Not to the world?

ROMANA: You nearly got us killed.

DOCTOR: If you call that being nearly killed, you haven't lived yet. Just stay with me, and you'll get a lot nearer.

ACE: Don't you have things you hate?

DOCTOR: I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations. Terrible places. Full of lost luggage and lost souls.

ACE: I told you I never wanted to come back here again.

DOCTOR: And then, there's unrequited love, and tyranny, and cruelty.

ACE: Too right.

DOCTOR: We all have a universe of our own terrors to face.

ACE: I face mine on my own terms.

GWENDOLINE: Sir, I think Mr. Matthews is confused.

DOCTOR: Never mind. I'll have him completely bewildered by the time I'm finished.

DOCTOR: Who was it said Earthmen never invite their ancestors round for dinner?

ACE: When I lived in Perivale—me and my best mate—we dossed around together. We'd out-dare each other on things. Skiving off. Stupid things. Then they burnt out Manesha’s flat. White kids firebombed it. I didn't care anymore.

DOCTOR: I think you cared a lot, Ace.

ACE: You’re no gentleman. Scratch the Victorian veneer, and something nasty’ll come crawling out.

LIGHT: Earth. Why mention that wretched planet to me?

ACE: If you don’t like it, then bog off!

LIGHT: I once spent centuries faithfully cataloguing all the species there. Every organism from the smallest bacteria to the largest ichthyosaur. But no sooner had I finished than it all started changing.

DOCTOR: That’s life.

Ace wanted to run down to a phone and call everyone that she loved, and tell them. She wanted to eat a massive bacon sandwich, to arrange a vast explosion of fireworks, to dance and snog her head off.

One day, she would die. Taken suddenly and sweetly, she hoped. That was okay. Even better if she didn't, mind. Like a character at the end of her book, she would stop doing things. What she had achieved, for good and bad, would have to do.

What she did, what she was going to do in this astonishing world, would be as strong and beautiful as a snowflake.

Ace grinned up at the rising moon, pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of the coat, and ran down the hill towards the vicarage, blowing kisses at the sky.

He stood at the base of the hill on which St Christopher's stood, his back to her as she descended. Maybe he was thinking, going over the terrible experiences they'd gone through. Or maybe he was planning again, constructing another elaborate campaign to rid the universe of evil. Ace decided that she would probably never know what he thought, or even how he thought.

The Doctor turned round as she tripped down the hill behind him. His eyes sparkled in the first dark of evening, and his face held an expression of sad wisdom. He looked at her for a long moment. Ace noticed that his eyes had returned to their normal brilliant blue.

"Hello," he said finally. "I'm the Doctor. And this is my friend Ace."

The two adventurers held each other for a long time. And then, wrapped about each other still, they tramped back to the vicarage.

Far above them, Saul was sounding the first bells of Christmas Eve.

They say that no two snowflakes are the same. But nobody ever stops to check.

’Are you sure,’ asked his companion, ‘that this is the nineteen-eighties?’

The Doctor looked around. ‘Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?’

The air was musty, as if something malevolent had crawled in there a million years ago and given birth to shadows and silence and dust.

And then, perhaps for the first time in centuries, a faint echo ran through the corridor; a sound like distant drums, or perhaps a thunderstorm far away across a black sea. The air in the corridor swung apart like a grimy curtain to reveal a large blue box with a flashing light on top. Momentarily the thunder crashed overhead, as if something infinitely heavy had come to rest.

DOCTOR: Sometimes I think that I am a Doctor of no brain at all.

RUBY: You know, one thing the Doctor said keeps coming back. Like a voice in a dream. Sometimes I’ll have forgotten all about it, then back it comes, surfacing into consciousness.

It’s not so much the words. It was the way he said them. That still small voice.

‘Things will get better, you know.’

I’ll believe you, Doctor.

Her fingers caressed and massaged the Doctor’s neck. He began to stir.

‘Destroy the – destroy the ice maze,’ he was muttering.

‘It’s done,’ she said.

He opened his eyes. They were a gorgeous, indefinable colour.

‘We can use the bomb–’

She put a finger to his lips.

‘It’s done,’ she soothed.

No, not indefinable. The colour of rainbows.

He wondered how Susan was getting on, though he – of all people – should know how idiotic the thought was. Susan wasn’t ‘getting on’ now at all; she would be ‘getting on’ in about three and a half billion years’ time. But still the Doctor found himself thinking: a day has passed, two days, she will be with David, they will be planning a wedding in some half-ruined church, choosing a place to live –

And then –

‘How will you tell him, my dear?’

I can’t bear your children, David, my people and yours are not cross-fertile –

Maybe they would adopt a child, one of the many orphans of the terrible war; or more than one child. He imagined Susan, happy in the middle of her huge family, teaching her children Earth-things, half-forgetting her own inheritance. And David growing older . . .

Would she try to disguise it? Dye her hair, perhaps? Put something on her skin to make it dry and wrinkled? How long would it be before she had to admit the truth?

I won’t grow old, David, not for hundreds of years. My people are – different. But I’ll put flowers on your grave, David, flowers on your grave . . .

BARBARA: You don’t care about anyone, do you? Everyone’s just a – a chess piece, to you, now that Susan’s gone. Ian, me –

DOCTOR: My dear Susan –

BARBARA: I am not Susan! Nor am I a piece of Susan, whatever you’ve told the Venusians. Neither is Ian. We’re people – people who are travelling with you, and through no choice of our own. You have a responsibility to us. If you can’t get us home, very well. But at least you can look after us in the meantime. Or if you won’t – if you’re too busy with your ’mysteries' – then we’ll just have to look after ourselves.

The Daleks of Skaro, of course, know him as the Ka Faraq Gatri. Traditionally this is translated as ‘Bringer Of Darkness’, though Professor Lyttle has established beyond reasonable doubt that this translation was, typically, the work of the Doctor himself. More accurately, and with that wonderful Dalek sense of irony, Ka Faraq Gatri means ‘Nice guy – if you’re a biped.’ And that perhaps sums up the Doctor better than anything. He just never knows when the Daleks are kidding.

‘Let’s just say I’m a doctor of history.’

She smirked, in a way exactly calculated to inform people when they were being pretentious. ‘You mean you study it.’

‘I mean I make it better.’

BERNICE: Do you know what I’m doing here?

ANDREA: You appear to be sticking Post-its in your diary.

BERNICE: Sometimes, when the past gets tough to deal with, I go back and rewrite it. I change things. The Doctor does that too. But with better equipment.

‘What’s this?’ asked Paul. His fingers caught her TARDIS key and lifted it away from her skin. He held it up to the moonlight, letting it spin on its chain, catching and scattering the silver.

‘It’s a long story,’ she said, looking away. She hadn’t really felt the key there for months – it had become as familiar and unnoticed as a wedding ring.

They were sitting pressed together near the river bank. It was just chilly enough for them to notice. They were just warm enough together not to mind.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.

She sniggered. ‘Come on, it’s a door key.’

‘To a magic door?’ She saw that raised eyebrow again, and she wasn’t sure if he was leading up to something rude or he really meant the question.

‘To the place with the butterflies,’ she said.

‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in these last three years,’ Sam murmured, ‘it’s that you can’t just keep running away.’

She reached out and took his hand.

Neither one of them moved for a long moment. For her it was like touching a naked power line – her heart was vibrating more than beating.

She held on, feeling each finger interlaced with his, memorising by touch each hint of the pattern of bones in the back of his hand. A red admiral flitted from her wrist, tentatively, to his.

‘Here. Look.’ She thrust the needle safely through her sleeve, reached out and touched him under the chin, raising his face, bringing his eyes to the butterflies.‘You’re still here. I’m still here.’

The Doctor stared milkily at the insects, whirling like a cloud of memories, just out of reach.

Then, without warning, he crumpled into a hug.

She felt her whole body tighten up, in a fight‐or‐fly spasm. But she held on to him nonetheless, arms sliding across his back, mouth murmuring things that weren’t quite words.

More of the butterflies were marching off her shoulders and arms and on to him. She could feel the feather touches in her own hair, the current they carried as they flitted back and forth between the two of them.

She could almost see the marble of his skin softening to flesh tones as she watched, as if he was drawing their colour straight into himself. His arms were tightening around her, as though acknowledging she was there, real and solid.

The butterflies were a whirlwind, scattered pieces of rainbow spiralling round them everywhere they looked.