Doctor Who - Season 11

When it comes to the programme, Doctor Who, I go back as far as the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee. I have seen the show go through ups and downs and finally into a decline into cancellation.

After a failed attempt at regenerating the programme with Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, I was pleased that it returned with Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. Season one was uneven; it was clearly finding its feet. We had the excellent "Dalek" and "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" but we also had the poor "Father's Day".

The programme's writing issues never went away under the leadership of Russell T. Davies. Stephen Moffat wrote most of the good episodes during this period but brought in new writing issues when he took over control. I suspect he used up all of his best ideas during the first four seasons.

Six series later Moffat stepped down and a new head writer took over the helm. Chris Chibnall had previously written four stories, none of which warranted the use of the adjective "good". Perhaps he was saving up his best ideas? Some of us were concerned...

The opening episode was a mediocre affair; its purpose to introduce the characters to the audience with the story relegated almost to an afterthought. This is a pattern set by the programme since the first episode, "Rose". It was too early to make a judgement.

Next up we had a filler episode. My description at the time went something along the lines of "a suspense-free romp on a dangerous planet were the dangerous things are completely useless". I think this sums up everything that needs to be said about the episode very succinctly. It was not an auspicious start.

"Rosa" was the episode that lit up social media. "It's too PC!" were the cries. The powerful emotional punch that Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a person because of her skin pigmentation was undeniable. However, under that was the plot, which made zero sense. This was a shame because it broke the legs of what could have been a very good episode. I wish this had been held back until season 12 so that the science fiction element could have been ripped out and replaced with something more robust. It could and should have been so much better.

Chibnall has another go with "Arachnids in the UK". This episode featured over-sized spiders and yet, let's be frank here, they somehow managed to make them unscary. Suspense and tension were conspicuous by their absence (again!). The plot was a spider web of holes held together by something far less robust than spider silk. Was a scene edited out at the end? The scene where the Doctor actually deals with the spider problem rather than leaving them wondering around Sheffield or locked on a room to cannibalise each other!




By now, it was becoming all too clear that Chibnall was not the right man for the job. Twitter was full of legitimate complaints about the poor quality of the writing. I have friends who have watched the show for many years who were growing increasingly concerned. I saw the question asked: is the future of Doctor Who not with the BBC but with Big Finish? My experience of Big Finish's Doctor Who is very limited therefore I am not in a position to comment.

I made my complaints about the poor quality of the season so far (easily the worst since its return). Persons of limited intelligence tried to reframe this as a dig at Jodie Whittaker and her gender. Others suggested I stop watching the programme. Is this the answer? If we complain about the poor quality by switching off, will this push the BBC to improve it or will it just get cancelled again? Is it better to put the programme out of its misery or do we watch it stumble painfully on as we did during the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years?

I felt the best way forward at this point was to only watch the episodes not written by Chris Chibnall and to tell people as loudly as possible that this was what I was doing. The protest was being made but I was still supporting the programme. It seemed like a workable compromise



The sequel to the bad spider episode was "The Tsuranga Conundrum" penned by Chris Chibnall. At the time of writing, I have not seen this episode and judging by the feedback I have heard about it, I have not missed anything worth watching.

"Demons of the Punjab" was next. This is the first episode of this season that I can say I genuinely enjoyed. The script is the most polished of the series so far and, for the first time under Chibnall's leadership, the story hangs together. There was even some dramatic tension. This is probably the best pseudo-historical since "Vincent and the Doctor".

"Kerblam!" was a bit of fresh air. The tone of the episode was more lighthearted. Comparisons with Kerblam! and real-world companies (one in particular) are obvious. It was a cleverly written episode with twists and turns that kept the audience guessing. It has more depth than is obvious at first glance. The episode itself suffered from poor pacing and again the absence of suspense and tension were detrimental. On the plus side, this was the first story where I felt Jodie Whittaker really got her teeth into the role of the Doctor. What seemed like a dig at corporate greed turned into a cautionary tale about ordinary people getting caught in the crossfire in the fight between Right and Left Wing extremism. The terrible background music only made matters worse. As far as I am concerned, Pete McTighe can write more episodes. I wonder what he could deliver under a better showrunner? To achieve what he did in the episode, the main villain could not have been working alone, therefore, there is room to explore this in more detail in future stories, either on screen, in print or on audio.

After the science fiction of the previous episode, we are served up with another pseudo-historical set in seventeenth century Lancashire, "The Witchfinders". Anyone expecting a visit to the infamous Lancashire witch trials will be disappointed. This is a rather laboured episode. Frustratingly, the trend of lame aliens continues. The only decent villains so far have been humans. There were many things wrong with this episode, the usual lack of tension and suspense and the usual poor background music. In this version of history, landowners have the legal right to commit murder and the famously paranoid King James I wonders around without an armed guard in a county full of Roman Catholics who are so angry with him that a group of them will attempt to blow him up and his parliament in the not too distant future. The writing fits in very well with Chris Chibnall's lazy approach. An opportunity was lost here to do something much more interesting and engaging.

Addendum - in discussions I had regarding the "The Witchers", it was suggested King James was an imposter. This makes a lot of sense and explains away many of the problems with the episode, i.e. why he was wondering around the County Palatine of Lancaster with no guard, why he was unaware that he has no witchfinders general, and why he took no action against a landowner murdering people with a cucking stool.

And then we get to the final episode I am prepared to watch, "It Takes You Away", set on modern day Earth (yawn). This episode was a real mess. I should say not so much half-baked as forgot to put it in the oven. Good things about this episode? We had a blind actress playing a blind character. Ellie Wallwork was superb. I hope we see her in more roles. The basic premise was that there is a mirror Universe that is linked to ours by an "anti-zone". The anti-zone has dangerous things in it that kill an alien but don't really bother anyone else. We have a lame alien. It turns out that the Mirror Universe is lonely and just wants a cuddle but the presence of people from our Universe makes it unstable. The presence of one human being in the mirror Universe is fine; multiple humans renders it unstable as does one Time Lord. The Doctor persuades the mirror Universe to let the others go if she stays behind and then persuades it to let her go. The episode crawls along haphazardly to an anticlimax. Again, a wasted opportunity: if they had made the mirror Universe malevolent and given it a better narrative reason for kidnapping beings from our Universe it could have been a good episode. Sadly, this was not to be.

The finale was "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos". As I type this, I have not seen this Chibnall-penned episode. On the night we watched the colourised version of "The Power of the Daleks".


There is no getting away from this being the weakest season since Russell T. Davies brought the programme back but it is not all bad. The tedious and ill-suited story arc is gone. We have a very much back to basics approach. The stories are self-contained. I believe the lack of returning adversaries is a good thing (the lack-lustre nature of the new ones is not). It refreshes the show and takes it forward. There has been too much of old favourites returning. The programme needs to look forward more than it looks back.

The downsides, though are many. Chris Chibnall's writing is lazy and despite being a big fan of Doctor Who, he seems to have the same problem that RTD had: he cannot write for it. The music was terrible. Was this really composed specifically for each episode? The aliens were consistently weak and ineffectual; humans stand out as the only real monsters. It quickly became apparent that the TARDIS is too crowded. Bradley Walsh's Graham O'Brien is the best thing about the current incarnation of Doctor Who. Unfortunately, he does have a tendency to steal scenes. It brought back memories of Amy upstaging Eleven. The Doctor should dominate scenes where she is present. Ryan and Yasmin had their moments of glory but most of the time they melted away and disappeared into the background. I fear at least one of them will have to go before season 12 to redress the balance. The ideas were there, they were not given the opportunity to develop into interesting stories (except for "Demons of the Punjab").

DaYan Jupiter Bermuda Cube

After solving Mars, the next port of call was Jupiter. Like the Mars cube, this has three Bermuda sides but on this cube, they are all on adjacent faces. The white and blue faces have one Fisher section each, while the red face has two. In the solved position, the only degree of freedom is to rotate the white face. Rotating the white face can free the red face. The red face must then rotated to free up other faces.

The bandaging of the puzzle only allows one of the faces with a square centre to be turned at any one time.

I have not had any popping issues with this puzzle. To turn one of the faces, it has to be aligned accurately in most cases. In situations, where cornering is theoretically possible, it does not turn well. Positioning the faces carefully while performing moves is adviseable.

The scrambled puzzle looks something like this...

Solution

On reaching Jupiter, I realised that there was a pattern to solving the Bermuda cubes. Solve a Petrus-like block that leaves two faces free to turn (even if one of them has been turned out of position). Extend the block to two thirds of the cube and then solve the final layer.

Step 1 - Solve the Orange/Green Edge

This is more difficult than it looks but should not present too much of a challenge.

Step 2 - Extend Solved Section to the Yellow Face

Solve the yellow/green and yellow/orange edges and the corner between them. The bandaging makes this tricky therefore the moves have to be planned. I do this intuitively.

Step 3 - Solve the Blue Pentagon and Triangles

Again the bandaging makes this step challenging. With careful planning, it can be completed intuitively.
The puzzle now has a Petrus-like block with freedom of movement on the white and red faces.

Step 4 - Orientate the Remaining Rectangles and Pentagons

These pieces all behave like edges. Orientating the pieces is not difficult.

Step 5 - Solve the Red Pentagons

This is a trivial step. The red pentagons behave like edges.

At this point, it is advisable to permutate the white pentagon and rectangles, which also behave like edges. This will reveal whether or not there is a parity issue that needs to be resolved. I have yet to work out a neat way of doing this; I just realign the puzzle so that I can turn the orange face by 90° and then fix the damage. Though I do not try to put these pieces in position during the next step.

Step 6 - Orientate the Remaining Squares and Triangles and Solve the Red Triangles

These pieces all behave like corners. This step is very fiddly.

Step 7 - Permutate the White Rectangles and Pentagon

These pieces behave like edges. Manoeuvring them into the correct position is not difficult.

Step 8 - Permutate the White Squares and Triangles

The bandaging of the puzzle makes this a little fiddly but once I had figured out the algorithms I needed to use it turned out to be not that difficult.

One solved Jupiter Bermuda cube.

DaYan Mars Bermuda Cube

Now that I have the full set of DaYan's Bermuda cube, I picked up Mars after solving Venus. Mars has three Bermuda-faces (I am not sure if that is the correct terminology but that is what I am going to call them). Two are on opposite faces, the white and blue, with the third on the blue. In its solved position there are two degrees of freedom: the orange and white faces can be turned freely. The bandaging makes it impossible to rotate the green face. This makes things interesting during a solve. The orange, green and red squares all behave as centres.

I have not had any problems with popping but the bandaging is so heavy compared with the Mercury, Venus and Earth that turning a face is not possible unless the faces are positioned correctly. It is something that I feel is better not pushed with this puzzle.

When scrambled it becomes a confusing mess. There are three Bermuda faces, therefore, seeing ahead to the correct orientation of the triangular centres is confusing. I recommend studying the puzzle carefully before scrambling and trying to solve it. If the puzzle is held with the red face to the left and the orange one to the right, all of the triangular centres point to the top right-hand corner.

Solution

The bandaging creates significant restrictions therefore careful planning is needed when executing a series of turns, especially in the early phases of the solve. I studied the cube carefully before making an attempt to solve it and planned my strategy in advance.

Step 1 - Solve the Red/Green Edge

This is trickier than it looks unless luck has placed it in a convenient spot during the scramble. The bandaging restricts what moves are available. This piece may take the scenic route before finding its way home.

Step 2 - Solve the Yellow Triangles and Pentagon

Again, this is trickier than it looks and I had carefully planned the moves. I found the triangle adjacent to the green face trickier to get into place. I found I needed to solve this one first before its red counterpart.
After completing this stage, the puzzle now has a solved cube-shaped block.

Step 3 - Solve the Blue Triangles and Pentagon

After completing the first two steps, I found things started to get a little easier. The blue face is freed by placing the white face in one of three orientations. I found solving the Fisher section of the blue face straightforward, especially in comparison with the yellow.
The puzzle now has a Petrus-like solved block with complete freedom of movement on the white and orange faces, without disturbing the solved portion of the puzzle.

Step 4 - Orientate the Orange Rectangles and the White Pentagon

This step is straightforward, especially for anyone familiar with the Petrus method. Once these pieces are orientated, care needs to be taken if the blue face is used after this point, lest the pieces become de-orientated.

Step 5 - Solve the Remaining White Pieces not Adjacent to the Orange Face 

I found it easier to solve the Fisher portion of the side first and then the other two pieces. This just leaves the corners on the top, orange face to solve. This extends the solved block to the white face.

Step 6 - Permutate the Orange Rectangles

The orange rectangles behave like edges. It is not difficult to get them into the correct positions.

Step 7 - Solve Orange Corners

This final step is trickier than it looks. I found the easiest way to do it is to work out how to permutate the corners first and then orientate them. The bandaging of the puzzle restricts what moves are possible and what algorithms are available.

There you have it, one solved Mars cube.

Separate from the Herd

Separate from the Herd

There are worst things than being alone, he mused… actually no, this is the worst thing that could to happen to a Puppeteer – to a Puppeteer? – to a citizen. He had spent far too much time living among humans; now he was thinking like one of them. He felt shivers run down his necks. He surrendered to the urge to groom his mane. He adjusted, tucked and readjusted but no matter what he did he could not get it right. He tried curling up into a ball but regardless of where he put his heads he was unable to find comfort. He was just too fidgety.

He was regarded as insane by members of his species. There were few able to do what he had done: leave the herd but even an insane Citizen needs a psychological fourth leg and his was gone. Despite how far away he was, or how long the mission, there was always the thought that he would eventually return to the Fleet, once again to be with his own species and to smell genuine herd scent instead of the synthetic one aboard ship. Scientists assured him that they were the exact same chemical compounds but he could smell the difference.

He assessed his situation. The instrumentation was still working, as far as he could tell, though far from optimal. Checking the read-outs revealed that much of the cabling was sheered. The wireless back-up systems were functional, where needed, but less efficient.  All external scanners and sensors were off-line, presumably destroyed: such was the peril of attaching them to non-hull mountings. General Products hull integrity, status intact. Otherwise would have been unexpected but even so it was still a relief. The rest of the ship had not fared so well. The stasis capsule had saved his life but much of the ship was wrecked. Life support was functional, but two layers of redundancy were gone. He would eat, drink and breathe for the foreseeable future. The power plant was still intact but there were some structural stresses. Now that was a worry. It was designed to survive a high energy impact but even Citizen technology had its limits. There was nothing he could do about it now; he moved on…

Next, he assessed his surroundings to estimate the level of threat. He had crashed on an airless ball of rock in orbit about a star that humans classified as a yellow dwarf, despite the fact they appeared white to human eyes. The threats? Radiation could be discounted, the hull would protect him from any emitted by the star and also from cosmic rays. No, the threat was from the vacuum of space. The first priority was to ensure that potential hull breaches could be sealed off to keep the ship’s solitary occupant safe and alive. Solitary, not a word used in polite society and the concept made his legs quiver. No one wanted to be separate from the herd.

Momentarily, he considered going outside to assess the damage but the risk was too great. His thoughts drifted back to the humans he had studied; doubtless, a human pilot would have gone outside with barely a second thought. Despite all of the years spent studying humans, and other aliens, he had yet to gain an understanding of their attitude towards risk. Their languages had words for risk-averse individuals and they were always derogatory. How a sentient being could not only regard risk as acceptable but also to seek it out, to embrace it, was something utterly alien and beyond rational comprehension.

Again, he checked the hull integrity. It was intact. Atmospheric pressure had not dropped since last time he had checked it. His fear subsided but was not dispelled. A certain sense safeness was beginning to form, albeit fragile.

As his mind cleared, his training become hindmost in his thoughts. First thing to do to prevent panic was to stand with fore-legs apart. So that was what he did. His tutor had taught that this stance altered the brain chemistry and changed blood flow. The hind leg got an extra boost of blood in readiness to kick. His instructor had also told him that the kick of a Citizen could kill or seriously maim a Kzin. He could not imagine himself kicking a Kzin; some things were beyond even an insane Citizen. Whether or not there was any truth to any of this, it seemed to be working. He now stood firm and took control of the situation, at least, that was what he was telling himself.

Feeling the most confident he had been since emerging from stasis, he continued to follow the training. Herd scent: the calming and soothing scent of the herd was proven to reduce stress and the levels of flight hormones. Food and drink: for the brain to work efficiently it needed fuel and to be properly hydrated. Make a plan: working out how he was going to get out of this mess that was the difficult part.

# # #

“Separate from the Herd.” It was an expression that was used freely by Citizens every day without a second thought. He guessed that its original usage, way back in the mists of time, were literal rather than the modern figurative, for example, being the only Experimentalist in a room of Conservatives was considered to be “separate from the herd”. The literal meaning of the expression was weighing on his mind rather too heavily as he surveyed the hyperdrive. Verdict: it was now little more than a collection of metal parts ready for recycling. He was about as separate from the herd as it was possible to be.

He stood there, legs apart, assessing his situation. He was beginning to think that standing in this position was nothing more than a pile of half chewed grass because right now his legs felt like jelly and he believed that if he were to kick with his back leg he would collapse in an undignified heap.

Thankfully, the ship’s thrusters were still operational. Thankfully? If he escaped from the planet where would he go? Yes, he could get off this unnoticed and insignificant rock; he could never catch up to the Fleet of Worlds on thruster power alone. He thought about where he might go where a Puppeteer — he was thinking like a human again — where a Citizen would be safe and wait for assistance. Safe, the key word was “safe”. Where could he go that was safe? That question was hindmost in his mind. He would have to go into stasis. It would take so long to get there that anything could happen during his journey, especially now that the herd was fleeing and was not guiding the other, more dangerous, species.

Various scenarios formed in his mind. He might be found by a Pak ramscoop, or perhaps by a ship crewed by vengeful humans working for ARM, or perhaps a ship of hungry Kzinti. His forelegs trembled. Maybe it would take so long to be discovered that  his kind would have been forgotten or,worse still, he might continue until the wave of lethal radiation caught up with him. The possibilities were endless. He tried to think of a low-risk scenario that led to his safe rescue and a return to the herd. For the first time in his life he was genuinely missing being with humans: they were so much better at dealing with risk.

The strength in his left leg gave way. He tried to compensate but it was no use. He found himself sprawled out on the floor.

# # #

His two heads emerged from under his torso. He was still in the engine room in front of the hyperdrive. He had no memory of curling up and entering a catatonic coma nor a sense of how long he had been out. He stood, shaking out his mane. The time out must have done him good; he was feeling much better and was ready to continue the task of assessing the damage to the ship. It was but a tiny jump by stepping disc to check out the condition of the thrusters.

They had survived remarkably well. In fact, he found it odd that the thrusters should be operational and pretty much intact while the hyperdrive was useless. The thrusters had not escaped unscathed from the crash but there was no damage beyond the reach of a thorough service. The more he thought about it, the odder it seemed.

There was nothing he could do here so it was a quick step back to the hyperdrive. He tongued the controls and ran a full systems check. Better to be thorough, better to make sure he had missed nothing. Structurally, it was still intact; there was little in the way of physical damage and yet it was completely inoperative. Granted, he was no expert when it came to hyperdrive technology but the idea that the damage was inconsistent with what might be expected from the crash refused to go away.

The engineers who had fitted the ship had told him not worry about any of its systems. They had installed multiple layers of redundancy. So, it was possible that one too few redundancy had been installed in the hyperdrive or, more likely, something nefarious had happened.

He decided to go over the events that led to his crash. He had been sat in the pilot’s seat watching the mass indicator when, without warning, he found himself in normal space. He had panicked, as any Citizen would. An unidentified fault in the hyperdrive had caused it to fail. Hyperdrive shunts built by Citizens did not have unidentified faults. In fact, faults unidentified or otherwise, were not a feature of any Citizen technology.

His sensors had revealed that he was near to the outskirts of an unchartered system. It was a single star with a catalogue number and a spectral analysis: such was the extent of Citizen knowledge in his ship’s database database. He had set the autopilot to take the ship onto a course into orbit around the star and then he had rolled up into a ball to quiver with fear, as was only natural.

In retrospect, it was clear he had not been thinking clearly. Fearing sabotage or, worse still, space piracy he had chosen to land on a small planet, safely out of sight. Normally, he would have let the ship’s automatic systems handle it but this time he got his mouths on the job and landed the ship himself. He came down too steep and far too fast. The stupidity of it stung as the memories resurfaced. If he had not gone into stasis he would not been stood here to feel embarrassed about it. The one advantage of his solitude was that there was no one to witness his shame.

Getting back to the here and now, he studied the results of the damage assessment. Some circuits were burnt out caused by a current overload. Current overload? There should be multiple systems in place to prevent that from happening. He felt his right leg tremble. There were spare parts aplenty in stores; he needed to get his mouths busy.

# # #

Five days later he had finished replacing the damaged parts; he spent another day testing. While not particularly arduous work, he had found it exhausting. There was only one way to found out if his repairs had worked: pilot the ship to the edge of interstellar space and try it. The thought terrified him.

However, he was exhausted. He did not trust the autopilot to take him out of the system, at least not without him being awake to keep an eye on it. No, it was better to rest, he decided and pilot the ship after he was refreshed. There were no predators nearby.

He stepped into the recreational area and settled down onto a three-legged stool. The environment controls were within easy reach and he flooded the room with herd scent. He could not be with other members of his species but having their, albeit artificial, scent in the air was not a bad second best under the circumstances.

One of his heads turned towards the huge vid-screen that was one of the walls of his rec-room. There were multiple cracks across it. He wondered if he could fix it. An image of a herd of Citizens would be most welcome right now but his brain and his lips protested: no more manual work!

Instead, he set to work straightening his mane. There was no one here to judge his appearance but that did nothing to diminish the need to groom. On reflection, he found grooming to be much better for his state of mind than the legs apart stance. If he ever got back, he would have to give some very stern feedback to the Citizen who had given that bad advice to him.

The blood flowed freely in his arteries and his rear leg felt strong and ready to kick anything. Unfortunately, his front legs felt weak and wobbly.

# # #

He awoke and realised with great disappointment that he had been dreaming. He had been in a large and predator-free meadow with thousands of his fellow Citizens. The herd galloped across it as one, a great stampede. The wind had felt wonderful rushing through his mane but alas the tyranny of the waking world had reasserted itself and here he was on his crash-landed space ship, alone.

On the plus side, he was feeling refreshed and ready for anything, well almost anything. “Ready for anything”, it was a human expression, not something a Citizen would normally say. He was thinking like a human again. The thought weighed heavily on his mind – how abhorrent but maybe that was what he needed right now. At least his front legs had stopped shaking.

“Let’s do this.” He said the words out loud. In the humans’ language the words sounded right. They had a “ring”, as humans would say (he did not really understand the expression: human voices were incapable of reproducing a ringing sound and therefore it was not a feature of any human language but it sounded good). In his native language it sounded ridiculous, at least it did inside his brain.

He stepped to the bridge and settled onto the pilot’s stool. The ship shook worryingly but he coped with it by repeatedly telling himself that it was safer to leave than to remain behind. He just about managed to believe it.

The ship’s external sensors were nothing more than a memory but he could see the stars through the transparent hull and was therefore able to point his ship in the right direction after escaping the gravity well of his host planet. The journey was uneventful. It nearly always was through the vast emptiness of normal space.

He was on his way now. He had made the first steps towards facilitating his own rescue. The plain was predator free. He was hindmost of his situation.

He left the bridge and stepped in to the observation deck. Not even an insane Citizen would rely solely on external sensors. In here were telescopes he could use to plot his position. Once he had that and he was far enough out of the star’s gravity well he could send a hyperwave message to the Fleet and await rescue. He was not looking forward to explaining how he had managed to crashland but there were fates worse than humiliation. He considered the possibility of being sentenced to a few years labour on one of the agri-worlds. He found the prospect appealing.

The telescopes on the observation deck were only sensitive to electro-magnetic waves of the visible portion of the spectrum, those wavelengths that could penetrate a General Products hull. The remains of the sensors for the rest of the spectrum were mounted on the outside of the hull. In theory, it should be easy to find some familiar stars and plot his position and bearing. In practice, he was not a skilled astronomer.

The first thing he had to do was plot his location on his course through space. The calculation was simple. He knew how long he had spent in hyperspace, he knew his velocity relative to normal space. Multiply the two together and he had his result. Now he had his location in space he had to match the pattern of stars he could see outside to the pattern of stars in the ship’s star charts. Citizen astronomers had catalogued and plotted the orbits of countless millions of stars in the Galaxy.

Someone had once told him that there were more Citizens alive today than stars shining in the Galaxy. He wondered if it were true. As he looked out at the countless points of light in the sky, he, somehow, doubted it. He found this line of thought chilling, reinforcing his solitude. He forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

If he still had the external telescopes his task would have been much simpler. Finding the positions of millisecond pulsars and X-ray sources would have given him a much more manageable sample set of stars with which to do his calculations.

The ship continued inexorably towards the outer system while he studied the stars and compared them with his star maps. He extracted spectral analyses from the data he obtained from the on board telescopes and plotted the positions of blue supergiant stars. It took time but he eventually managed to plot the local distribution in space to calculate his position. It took many days for him to complete his work. It had not occurred to him that he would be off course; if the ship was where it was supposed to have been, the task would have been much simpler. He was in a little explored section of the Galaxy; there were no known spacefaring aliens within easy reach.

The more he thought about it the more he came to one inescapable conclusion: sabotage. Such a thing was beyond the capability of a Conservative therefore it must have been planned and perpetrated by one of his fellow Experimentalists. An alien would not have enough information to accomplish such a feat unless it had obtained it from a Citizen. That seemed unlikely; once sensitive information regarding Citizen technology was passed to an alien, it was passed over permanently. The risk that that information could be used against Citizens as a species was far too great. Not even an insane Citizen would consider such a foolhardy action.

He had studied and worked with humans for a long time: they would make excellent predators of his species, given the opportunity. He felt more afraid of humans now than he had ever done while in their presence.

He let out a whine with clear harmonics denoting despair.

# # #

He was assaulted by the stench of his own waste when consciousness returned. He let out a surprised yelp and fled to his personal quarters. He immediately trotted into the shower; it felt good to be clean again. Next, he visited the autodoc to check that he had not picked up an infection. He clambered in and let the device work. Thankfully, he came up clear.

He stepped back to the room where he had soiled himself. He activated the automated housekeeping and ordered it to clean up the mess. He returned to the stepping disc and went to the bridge. He checked the ship’s course, which revealed he was well on his way towards the outer system. It was here, as he stared at the chronometer, that he realised he had been out for just over three days. It was now that his brain acknowledged his hunger pangs. The ship had not deviated from its course therefore he felt safe enough to step into the kitchen to eat.

The grass seemed sweeter than usual. He tongued the control that increased the amount of herd hormone in the room. It was comforting but he knew his situation had not improved.

His thoughts returned to his distant life back on the Fleet of Worlds. The Hindmost himself had awarded him with the right to become a parent. His insanity had ruled him out previously but the success of his studies of and dealings with humans had overcome this obstacle or so he had been told. He considered the reasons why this might be. Was it because the Fleet needed more of the right kind of insane Citizen, able to leave the herd? Maybe the Hindmost had not expected him to return? He wondered if he would ever discover the truth and whether or not it was better not to find out…

With the satisfaction of a good graze and a full belly he returned to the bridge. He felt restless with the need to occupy himself but there was nothing to do. The ship followed its course inexorably without requiring the intervention of a pilot so he kept himself busy by making another complete check of the ship. As expected, he found no more faults. He ran the diagnostic on the hyperdrive again: zero faults. He studied the holographic readout wanting to believe it but that particularly crucial part of his ship had failed before without reporting a fault. What was preventing it from failing again? He was no engineer so there was no way he could do a thorough investigation to discover why it had failed at least not without spending who knows how long studying hyperdrive technology. There were many Citizens with more of an engineering inclination than he who were unable to grasp the concepts of the technology. He was only an alien liaison, he did not fancy his chances. The more he thought on it the more he realised that using the hyperdrive to get back to the Fleet of Worlds was dangerous, perhaps too dangerous.

He had two possibilities: send a hyperwave message to the Fleet requesting aid or attempt a rendezvous with it.  The former seemed the obvious choice but he had no idea who was responsible for sabotaging his ship. Would the culprits be the ones crewing the rescue party? The thought of it was like a stalking predator just out of sight. The alternative could hardly be described as safe either.

# # #

It took him five days to overcome the paralysis of indecision. During those five days he had made his decision, unmade his decision and changed his mind more times than he could possibly count before spending the final day curled up in a ball wishing it would all go away.

The decision was made: he would call for help. It was better to die at the mouths of those who had put him in this predicament than to die alone in space, lost, forgotten and separate from the herd. At least, he might have the satisfaction of some answers.

He steadied himself, assumed the legs apart stance and tongued the controls. Nothing happened. The hyperwave had failed. The strength drain from both his necks and his heads flopped onto the console. The urge to kick with his hind leg welled up in his mind but this was vetoed by the strength draining from there too.

There was only one course of action open to him. He allowed himself a short time to despair. Then, he set to work,

The Fleet’s destination was the Magellanic Clouds, as the humans called them, two dwarfs that were making a close approach to the Galaxy. Gravity had distorted both and would continue to do so in the future. In fact, it looked like the larger and closer one was tearing apart the smaller. The primary target was the larger, which was believed to be on a parabolic trajectory around the Galaxy, headed in the direction of the Galaxy’s south pole. Such was what he learned from the ship’s library.

Riding a dwarf galaxy away from the predatorial aliens of the main Galaxy might be a good idea but no one knew what species had evolved there. Some Experimentalists had expressed the opinion it might be sterile due its low metallicity but how could they be sure? He had heard the theory that the long term plan was for the Fleet to return to the post-explosion core, by then sterilised and ripe for re-colonisation. Unsurprisingly for a Citizen in contact with aliens, no one had confided with him regarding the Fleet’s ultimate plans. Working out an intercept course was more difficult than it seemed. The object appeared stationary in the night sky but he knew it was moving at a high speed relative to the Galaxy.

He called up the course on which the Fleet traversed and plotted a parallel course through the Galaxy. The Fleet would arrive ahead of him but that was not a bad thing. The ship was now on its way.

Fatigue weighed him down. Time for food, he reflected. As his hoof touched the stepping disc, he felt a sense of inevitability but also of accomplishment. If it were possible to overcome his current predicament, he believed he had done everything he could have done to make it happen.

The synthesised leaves tasted sweet. He tongued the herd scent up to maximum. He closed his eyes and imagined himself to be in a pasture surrounded by the herd, grazing as his ancestors did for millions of years but it was a short-lived fantasy. His meal finished he set to grooming his mane.

Humans had a tradition: a person condemned to death was given one last meal before sentence was carried out. He wondered if he had just eaten his last meal. The thought should have terrified him but he was strangely calm.

He stepped back into the cockpit and checked his trajectory. All was fine. The thrusters were working perfectly. He programmed the stasis field to switch off after he reached the edge of the Galaxy. From there he could recalculate his trajectory to his destination.

He had done everything he could think of. The only thing left for him now was to active the stasis field.