KATARINA: The Priestess Cressida told me all would be well and I knew it was to come.

DOCTOR: What was to come, my dear?

KATARINA: That I was to die.

DOCTOR: My dear child, you’re not dead. That’s nonsense.

KATARINA: This is not Troy. This is not even the world. This is the journey through the beyond.

DOCTOR: Well, as you wish.

KATARINA: Thank you.

DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes, as you wish, my child. Now, I want you to keep an eye on that young man. Will you?

KATARINA: Yes, great god.

DOCTOR: His name is Steven. And remember, Katarina, you must call me Doctor.

KATARINA: Oh, as you wish, Doc–

DOCTOR: I am not a Doc. I am not a god. Oh, my dear Vicki, I hope you’ll be all right. I shall miss you child.

STEVEN: She pressed the wrong button, Doctor.

DOCTOR: She may have wanted to, dear boy. She wanted to save our lives.

BRET: It must have been quick.

DOCTOR: I hope she’s reached her Place of Perfection.

STEVEN: Yes. But not that way.

DOCTOR: She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. She wanted to save our lives, and perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the Solar System. I hope she’s found her Perfection. Oh, how I shall always remember her as one of the daughters of the Gods. Yes, as one of the daughters of the Gods.

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.

KIMUS: But I don’t understand!

DOCTOR: Exciting, isn’t it?

DOCTOR: Listen, I've been threatened by experts, you know. Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Daleks... BBC producers...

FROBISHER: D'you know... I once spent fourteen years as a till on a checkout counter in a supermarket in Walthamstow? I did it for love... But she thought I was only in it for the money...

FROBISHER: Sorry I frightened you, Doc. Here... Glerb! Have a fish!

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

DOCTOR: Fear is a mirror, Benny. It shows us ourselves.