Merry Christmas...

...also Kwanzaa, Pancha Ganapati, Hanukkah, Soyal, the solstice, the feast of the sun goddess Amaterasu, and all the other winter holidays celebrated by my characters in their various parallels. 

And if anyone wants to give me the perfect present, just leave your review (whether good, bad, or otherwise) on the PARALLEL U. Amazon page. Thanks, and good cheer and good will to you all!

Chapter 1

Here’s the first chapter to PARALLEL U. - FRESHMAN YEAR. You can read the rest by buying the ebook (just 99 cents!) or the trade paperback. Not a shabby gift idea, either. Just sayin’.

* * * * * *

Oh, it was a beautiful day!

The sun pushed past the tar-black clouds, spilling golden joy like honey from a jar. The winds had slowed as well, to just under 160 kilometers an hour—not even enough to uproot a tree. There was far less cinder and ash in the air than usual, so I could make out the blasted thicket across the soybean field—a thicket I couldn’t ordinarily see unless I was close enough to throw a rock at it. And the thermometer outside my window read 51 degrees, making it the warmest August morning I could remember.

Why, oh why did it have to be so gorgeous on the day I had to go?

I sat on my bed and packed the last of my clothes into my suitcase, trying not to look out the window. It would be my first time leaving home—the first night I’d spend away from my parents, my brother, the house where I was born. I kept telling myself, You’re seventeen, it’s time you went out into the world; but that was just the problem.

I wasn’t going out into the world. I was going someplace else entirely.

There was no mistaking how big a deal this was. I hadn’t even left yet, and it had already changed my life. My parents had become noticeably shy around me, as if I was already the stranger I might soon become.

It was hardest on Cody. He was three years younger than me and very much a baby brother, even though he was now a teenager himself. I’d had to spend my childhood studying my parents, trying to make sense of the world from the confusing, contradictory clues they gave off; but when Cody was a kid, he never needed to do that. He’d had me to explain everything to him. And he’d depended on me ever since.

Now I was going away, and he was only just starting to realize what that meant. Suddenly he was shy around me, too, not sure of what to say to me, what to think about life without me. We used to spend our days together, inseparable, but lately it was almost like he hid from me. I missed him. And I hadn’t even gone yet.

I sighed and looked out the window again. The winds had torn open a hole the size of a tractor in the clouds, and one whole section of the farm was all yellow and glowing. When we were kids, Cody and I would whoop with happiness at such a sight, quickly suit up, and tear outside to jump around and dance in the warmth and the light before the clouds closed up again.

But I wasn’t a kid anymore. Something was different now. I could feel it inside—something restless, something reaching. I was sorry to be leaving Cody; but I was ready for new challenges, new experiences that he couldn’t be part of.

A rustling at the door made me turn away from the window; and there he was, leaning against the jamb. How long had he been standing there? I felt a stab of guilt, like he might have been reading my thoughts.

“Hi,” I said.

He dragged one toe across the floor. “Still packing?” he asked listlessly, like he wasn’t really interested.

“Figured that out, huh?” I said, nodding at my open suitcase.

But he didn’t laugh, or tease me back. Instead he crept in and sat on the edge of the bed—lightly, as if at any second he might change his mind and run back out. He watched as I folded up one of my old radiation suits, and when I was about to put it in the suitcase he said, “That one doesn’t fit you anymore.”

I looked down at it, like I was seeing it for the first time. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“Plus,” he added, “you won’t really need it where you’re going, right?”

“Right,” I said. I dropped the suit back on the bed.

I was afraid to say or do anything else; this was the closest we’d come to talking about my leaving since the day the letter came. Then, everyone had been excited and proud; it was only a few weeks later that the doubts and worries had set in.

Outside, the hole in the clouds closed up and the big bowl of sunlight disappeared.

“Tell me again why you have to go,” Cody blurted, with a catch in his voice that took me completely by surprise. I was afraid he might cry, and I couldn’t allow that. Not on such a beautiful day. Not on the day I was going away.

“I don’t...have to go,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I want to.” He looked at me, not understanding—or not letting himself understand. “It’s an honor. I couldn’t say no. Plus, it’s so...I mean, it could open up so many...”  Agh! It was crazy hard to talk with him looking at me this way—eyes wide, almost begging me to make it all make sense to him. “I have a chance to do something, to improve all our lives—not just mine.”

“You won’t know anyone there,” he said. “They won’t get you at all.”

“Only at first. That’s the whole point of the place. Bridging the gap that divides us. Learning about each other.”

“Parallel U.,” he said with a sneer in his voice.

“Yes,” I said, tossing it back at him, but without the sarcasm, “Parallel U.” He scowled and pulled at a loose thread on my blanket. To cheer him up, I said, “You might go there yourself, someday.”

He looked up at me with an expression that said, We both know I’ll never leave Kansas. And it was true; I was the exceptional one in the family—the one whose mind moved like lightning, whose curiosity expanded beyond the framework of the tiny life we knew here and grasped for something bigger, something grander.

I closed my suitcase. Another awkward silence fell over us that Cody broke by saying, “Are there any other parallels like ours? Where there was The War, and everything?”

I’d already considered this; investigated it, in fact. I tried to phrase my findings so he could understand them. “There are some parallels where something like The War happened; but mostly the people all died.”

“So there really won’t be anyone like you,” he said, a tone of bitter triumph in his voice.

“Probably not. But there’ll be people there who are as different as me. That’s the whole point of Parallel U. Ever since the Veil was pierced, and they discovered all the different parallels—all the alternate Earths where history took different paths—they’ve been trying to bring people together to share their experiences and to pool their knowledge.”

“I know,” he said defensively. I had to watch myself; I didn’t want to come off like I was lecturing him.

I began again. “I may meet people from parallels where America was colonized by the Spanish instead of the English. Or where Christianity never took hold and western civilization is still pagan. Or where the Nazis won World War Two. Though in that case,” I added with a smile, “I hope not.”

“How are you even supposed to talk to them?” he asked, desperate to find some flaw in my plans, some reason for me to give up at the last moment and stay home.

“It’ll be easy,” I said. “I already speak English. And since the physicists who first pierced the Veil were British, that’s the school’s official language.”

Cody had used up all his arguments. He turned away and sulked.

“Don’t,” I said. “Come on, Cody. It’s not like I want to go. I mean, I do; I want to go, but I don’t want to leave. Not you. Not Mom and Dad. If only I could split myself in two!”

He refused to look at me. “I don’t care if you leave or not. I just think you’d be happier at home.”

“Cody...”  I stopped myself; I didn’t want our last talk together to be an argument. “Listen, I’ll be home for holidays. And probably for the summer.”

He whirled. “Probably for the summer? You’re not sure?”

“Well...no. A lot of the students come from parallels where schools don’t have a summer break. Of course the university accommodates them. And since I’m only on a two-year scholarship, I might take advantage of that and apply for classes during June and Jul—”

“You can’t wait to get away from us,” he interrupted. “You can’t wait to forget you ever knew us and be embarrassed when anyone reminds you of us.”

My shoulders slumped. “Cody, you know that’s not so...”

He fled the room.

I sat numbly on the bed for a while. Inky, the family cat, slid up onto the covers and rubbed against my arm and purred, as though this were just another day and so would be tomorrow, and I surprised myself by bursting into tears and clutching him to my chest. He panicked and scratched my arm, and when I loosened my grip he propelled himself away from me.

I was upset, and I knew why. Cody’s accusation had hit a nerve: I did want to leave. I didn’t want to waste my life—waste my mind—on this scorched, barren world, where the most anyone could hope for was to stumble along from season to season, scratching out the barest living possible from the hot, irradiated soil. I felt such a whirlwind of possibility and hope, so many feelings and ambitions, and there was nowhere in this parallel where I could act on any of them.

I wanted to go away, and never come back.

Except...I didn’t. I was born here. I grew up here. The only people who loved me, in all the dozens of parallels on record, were right here.

I brought my knees up to my face and clutched my ankles, and cried some more. And that’s how Mom found me, twenty minutes later.

“Merri, honey, it’s time to go,” she said, and from the swollen look on her face I could tell she’d been crying too. We hugged, and she added, “You’re going such a long way away.”

I sniffled and gazed up at her. “Depends on how you look at it,” I said. “In one sense, I’m just going to England.”

“An England. One of many. And one I’ll probably never see.”

“I know,” I said, suddenly feeling the weight of my decision. Apparently Cody had gotten to me after all. “Mom,” I said, and I didn’t need to go on; the terrified tone in my voice said it all.

“Hush, now,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “You’ve gotten this far, so it’s no time for doubts. Besides, you know what I always say: Better to give it a try than to miss out and cry.”

I laughed in spite of everything. “I can’t believe one of your lame expressions is actually making me feel better.”

She pretended to be shocked. “Who says my expressions are lame?”

“Everyone,” I said, and she put her hands around my neck and mock-strangled me. I cracked up.

Then she kissed me on the forehead and checked the seams of my radiation suit, and said, “You’d better get going, your father’s waiting.” And her voice sounded funny, like those were the last syllables she was going to be able to manage for a while. So I picked up my suitcase and went to the garage, where I found Dad loading my bags into the back of the truck.

He looked up brightly and said, “Guess my little girl’s really heading off to college!” I started crying again, and he looked guilty, like he didn’t know what he’d said wrong; then he very thoroughly double-checked the boot’s radiation seals. It should’ve taken him about five seconds, but he kept at it until I reined in my bawling, which took quite a bit longer.

He gently helped me into the truck, climbed up after me, and shut and sealed the doors. He started the motor and pressed the button to lower the shield behind him; the garage door noisily scrolled back and the truck pulled out onto the gravel drive.

I braced myself for the first slam of the wind into the vehicle; with that out of the way, I craned my neck for a final look at the only place I’d ever called home: the tiny farmhouse, built into the side of a hill to protect it from the worst of the ion storms, and surrounded by the acres of blasted fields that had, with tireless effort, day in and day out, yielded up just enough sustenance to keep the family going all these years. Suddenly I had a “grown-up moment,” as Cody called them—one of those sudden realizations where I grasped something terribly important that never occurred to me as a kid. I realized how fragile our lives had been, and how one small miscalculation, one injury or spell of bad luck, might have ruined us entirely. And there was no more government to bail us out or even lend a helping hand.

I looked at Dad as though seeing him for the first time, and tried to imagine the load he shouldered every day. I wondered why it was that I never appreciated this about him till now, when I was saying goodbye. And almost as quickly I knew the answer: It was only because I was saying goodbye that I could see him this way.

I wanted to say something, to let him know I understood and respected and loved him for it. And I was trying to find the right words when, at just about the point where our property ends and the Loughlins’ begins, he didn’t watch where he was going and hit a nest by the side of the road, and as he was backing up, about a hundred cockroaches came spilling out of it and swarmed over the truck. Dad cursed, using some pretty blunt words I’d never heard him use before, and scrambled to activate the grid on the truck’s exterior that repelled the roaches with an electric charge.

I looked out the window as the roaches fell to the side of the road, sizzling and smoking. Dad said, as he always did whenever we encountered them, “Damn filthy things—big as dogs.” Because apparently when he was a kid, cockroaches were no bigger than your thumb, and it was only after The War that radiation mutated them to jumbo size. Dad liked to tease Mom by saying there’s no reason we shouldn’t use them as a food source—they were so plentiful, and they were pure protein, and he knew people who treated them like livestock and had recipes for them and everything, which would make Mom go very quiet and shut herself in the bathroom till he changed the subject. But I know he was never really serious about it, because he was always unnerved by the roaches too, no matter how many times we ran into them; and also, the stink of them was just awful. You’d never, ever want it in your kitchen. Even now I thought I could smell it leaking through the radiation seals, but that was impossible; it was just my traumatized brain filling in the stench I knew was outside.

Dad seemed pretty shaken up; in fact, a lot more than usual. And come to think of it, it wasn’t like him to hit a nest like that. He was usually the most careful driver ever. And all at once I realized he was upset about my leaving too, and it was distracting him, affecting his focus.

He checked the truck’s battery level; it was now dangerously low. Activating the repellent grid had seriously depleted it. He’d have to stop for a charge after dropping me off, and maybe even before. And I wondered if maybe he even hit the nest on purpose, so he’d have an excuse for running out the truck’s power and missing my appointment at the Terminus Dock, which would mean keeping me home a while longer.

But no, that was silly; it wasn’t like him at all.

Was it?

I reached over and placed my hand in his. He closed his fingers around mine and gave me a smile. Then without letting go of me, he used his free hand to steer the truck back onto the gravel road, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

I wonder now, many months later, about what he did after he left me—whether he stopped to recharge the truck, or took a gamble that he could make it home and charge it overnight in our own garage. Either way, I like to think he made it back in time to see Mom and Cody; I like to think he reached them first, so that they were together when it happened. But I’ll never know for sure.

Trade paperback now available

The Parallel U. Kindle edition is still available (for just 99 cents!), and now the traditionalists among you can purchase the trade paperback edition as well—featuring the back-cover portrait of principal cast by the one-and-only Dan Dougherty. Hey, makes a great Christmas gift as well! Just sayin'. 

And after you've read it—in whatever format you've read it—come back here and let me know what you thought, okay? Thanks, cheers, happy hols.

Prologue

"My name is Merri Terryl.

"This is the story of my freshman year at Parallel U. I’ve pieced it together from old emails, journal entries, video footage, and the stories my friends have told me about what I did, and why I did it. 

"It’s the only way for me to tell what happened. 

"After all, I wasn't there."

Rest the rest in Parallel U. - Freshman Year.

Merri Terryl

Merri is from Parallel 81, in which a nuclear conflict between the USA and the USSR in the 1980s has left the Earth a scorched cinder. Merri's family ekes out a subsistence-level existence by farming the irradiated soil in what used to be known as Kansas.

Merri doesn't seem in any way remarkable. She's not powerful, or beautiful, or a natural leader, and she struggles in her classes after arriving at Parallel U. But she soon learns she has a destiny, and that—somehow—the fate of the entire multiverse depends on her. Or more accurately, on what she does before she dies. Which may be soon. Learn more about her in Parallel U. - Freshman Year.

Gerrid Selk

Gerrid is from Parallel 57. He's very pale and gaunt, has elongated canine teeth, and shuns the daylight. Everyone on campus is convinced he's a vampire. But vampires don't exist; they're just folklore. The truth about Gerrid is much, much stranger. 

Every parallel Earth diverged from our own at some point in history, creating its alternate timeline. Find out when Parallel 57 diverged, and the astonishing reason why, in PARALLEL U. - FRESHMAN YEAR.

Darius m-1119

Darius is from Parallel 33, where advances in artificial intelligence vastly outpaced those of other parallels...and where a devastating plague in the 1980s left androids as the only human "life" left on the planet.

Darius is nicknamed the Living Doll by his classmates, because he's not only a synthetic man, he's physically perfect and completely irresistible—despite a complete absence of body hair (even eyebrows). He's charming, humble, off-the-charts intelligent, and—thanks to nanotechnology—incredibly strong and rapidly self-healing. Read more about him in PARALLEL U. - FRESHMAN YEAR ... now available in paperback.

Fabia Terentia

Fabia is from Parallel 24, where the Roman Empire never fell...though it did endure a 200-year Mongol occupation. After the Mongols were expelled, the empire entered into a Classical Revival phase that saw the return of arenas, bread & circuses.

Fabia attends Parallel U. on an athletic scholarship. Her sport of choice: lion-taming. She's dizzyingly tall, ridiculously strong, fiercely competitive, and ferociously loyal. Oh, yeah: she's also studying to be a nun.

Learn more about her in Parallel U. - Freshman Year.

Meet the Parallel U. crew

Here's a new portrait by ace illustrator Dan Dougherty of the major characters in my novel Parallel U. - Freshman Year. It's designed for the back cover of the upcoming trade paperback edition, but it's already got a life as the official profile shot of our Facebook page.

I'll be introducing them to you individually over the next week or so. In the meantime, enjoy!

Black Friday and the Zombie Apocalypse

I spent Thanksgiving week in the wilds of rural North Carolina, so I wasn’t aware of the tumult that reigned on Black Friday until I got back home and saw some of the astonishing clips online. The metaphor I once used for these kinds of nationally incited mass-shopping binges was that of lemmings, racing to collective suicide by drowning. But the level of violence has escalated since the idyllic days of, say, 2004. Now, a different metaphor comes to mind: the undead, brain-eating variety.

I think you can tell a lot about a culture by the genre fiction it embraces. For a long while, vampires ruled; and not just vampires, but hot vampires…vampires as dream lovers. That made sense to me, in a society in which sex had been so completely commodified that it had lost all its primal aura of mystery and menace. People missed the element of risk that used to come with falling in love or lust; they longed for the feeling of one kiss being worth torching the rest of their lives to cinders. Vampire fiction (and movies, and TV shows) supplied that, even as mainstream culture continued to streamline sexual behavior into a series of Add to Cart products and hook-up apps.

The recent rise of zombie fiction to spectacular prominence (starting a decade ago with 28 Days Later and culminating in The Walking Dead and World War Z) seems to me to have a similar societal prompt, one that becomes especially apparent around the holidays. Our culture has become increasingly predicated on consumption—on reflexively grasping for the newest and hippest and most tech-forward products dumped into the marketplace; and since our major corporate players have turned planned obsolescence into a science, they’ve pretty much guaranteed we keep buying the same things over and over again. (“You need Beta tapes…no, VHS…no, DVDs…no, Blu-Rays…no, you need digital downloads…no, you should be streaming.”) The result is a kind of sustained hysteria. We never feel like we have enough, and we’re always being exhorted to get more, more, more. And we respond with mindless, relentless obedience.

Enter the zombie apocalypse. This represents our current worst cultural nightmare: the idea that even in death, we won’t be done consuming. We’ll still have to get up and go stalking around in search of more. And every brain we eat will just create another zombie who’s then our competitor for the diminishing supplies that are left.

That’s why I think most zombie fiction out there still hasn’t hit the right angle. It’s not the living survivors who should be the focus: it’s the zombies themselves. We should be seeing things through their eyes, and face, with them, the unimaginable horror awaiting them at the logical end of their rampage—the same one facing every patriotic red-blooded shopper in America:

What happens when there’s literally nothing left to consume? 

The 16 best new Doctor Who episodes

In anticipation of the Doctor Who 50^th anniversary special, which airs on November 23 (exactly half a century to the day after the series debuted in 1963), I’ve re-watched the entire run of the revived series, which began in 2005 under show runner Russell T. Davies, and continues under Steven Moffat.

This concentrated viewing has only confirmed what I’ve felt since the revival premiered, which is that it’s a textbook lesson in how to resurrect an iconic brand for a new era. Brash, funny, stylish, and smart, shot through with heart (and an occasional undercurrent of darkness), it’s a show designed for people who grew up immersed in genre TV, movies, and comic books. It plays with the conventions of science fiction ironically, but affectionately—in the same way Joss Whedon played with the conventions of horror films in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

In seven seasons (and assorted specials), the majority of episodes have worked—I’d even say worked beautifully. There have been a few wince-worthy clunkers, of course; but viewers who hung on through those were inevitably rewarded with something transcendently wonderful a few episodes later.

Originally I wanted to make this a countdown of the 10 best stories since the revival, but found myself not up to the task of whittling down the list quite so far. So I cut to the bone, and what I had left was the most stellar 16. And to pare it even that much, I had to focus solely on stand-alone stories that don’t depend too heavily for their impact on other episodes, or on season-long arcs. Which is why you won’t find otherwise excellent entries like “Doomsday” or “Let’s Kill Hitler” here.

The list ranges over the entire seven seasons (and specials), as well as over three separate Doctors and more than a dozen companions and costars. What’s remarkable is that through all the personnel changes, the Doctor himself—winsome, childlike, dashing, and occasionally frightening—remains recognizably himself; and the ways in which he differs seem largely driven by the people with whom he surrounds himself. Which is as it should be. The greatest change from the old classic Doctor Who series (aside from the incalculable one of higher budgets and the availability of CGI), is that the revived version often seems less like a science-fiction adventure show than a family drama.

I like to count myself a member of the extended clan.

16. “Dalek” (Season 1, episode 6)

Early in the first season, we learn there’s been a war between the Doctor’s race (the arrogant, aristocratic Time Lords) and their ancient enemies, the murderous Daleks—a war of which the Doctor is the only survivor. This suits us fine; as phenomenally popular as the Daleks were in the 1960s (and for a while they were arguably bigger than the Doctor himself), the pepperpot-shaped psychopaths don’t translate well to the 21^st century. They’re clunky and obvious. Yet this episode works like wildfire: the Doctor meets his analogue—a previously unsuspected sole-surviving Dalek—and immediately goes into all-out-war mode. His companion—the incomparable Rose Tyler—is astonished by the change in him, and the entire episode is very crafty about the way it peels away our preconceptions to hint that there are more similarities—more moral equivalency—between the Doctor and his longtime nemeses, than we (or he) ever knew. When the Dalek goes on the rampage (in an underground compound manned by only a handful of people), we get a far greater sense of its lethal capacity than we ever did in stories featuring dozens or hundreds of the things. In the end, the Dalek finds redemption; the Doctor does not. And that might have served as the perfect epitaph for the iconic creatures. Alas, the pressure to bring them back was too great to ignore; they returned later that same season, and ever since they’ve been responsible for some of the lousiest episodes in the new Who run. But on its own merits, “Dalek” is just about perfect.

15. “A Christmas Carol” (Christmas 2010 Special)

Christmas specials are a Doctor Who tradition. In the Davies era, they were usually spectacular, widescreen-wannabe epics about disasters that threatened to blow up the planet (or at least London). In Moffat’s tenure, they’ve gone an entirely different route: fanciful, lyrical, fairy-tale stuff, which ideally suits Moffat’s Doctor, Matt Smith, who capers through them like a hyperkinetic elf. “A Christmas Carol” is the best to date. In it, the Doctor’s honeymooning companions, Amy and Rory, are trapped on a rapidly deteriorating spaceship, and the only man who can save them is a an Ebenezer Scrooge type, Karzan Sardick (played by the legendary actor Michael Gambon). But Sardick won’t lift a finger, and sneers at the idea he’d even be asked. So the Doctor, taking inspiration from Dickens, decides to jump into Sardick’s timeline, right back to his childhood, and rewrite the whole narrative of his life to make him a man with a heart. What follows is an old man literally watching his life change before his eyes (thanks to an old film projector), with the Doctor bopping between planets and time periods in a manner even the Who series was never quite so audacious to attempt before. There’s also a girl, of course; and some incredibly beautiful images, like flying fish (literally flying fish), and the whole thing is what you expect when people use the word “magical,” except they’re usually just hyperbolizing. This time, it’s the goods.

14. “Hide” (Season 7, episode 9)

One of the things I love best about Who is its absolute bedrock foundation in science fiction. Since the series was revived, it’s featured ghosts, witches, werewolves, and vampires, but all are ultimately revealed to be extraterrestrial in origin; in Who, the supernatural quite simply n’existe pas. (This is, unfortunately, one of the ways in which its spinoff series, Torchwood, let down the side.) “Hide” is my favorite entry in this particular category. It begins as a standard haunted house outing, creepy and portentous; but then—through a series of wonderfully unexpected twists (including an impromptu sprint across the entire lifespan of planet Earth, which triggers a mini-meltdown in the Doctor’s new companion, Clara, as well it might)—it unexpectedly evolves into both a nail-biting science fiction caper and a surprisingly sweet love story, with a kicker at the end that will have you laughing in sheer delight. It’s also gorgeously shot and brilliantly edited, and features wonderfully appealing performances by guest actors in compelling supporting roles—another Who staple.

13. “Father’s Day” (Season 1, episode 8)

As I mentioned earlier, the major difference between the revived Who and its classic predecessor is that the new series is much more devoted to the idea of family. In the original series, the Doctor’s companions would climb aboard the TARDIS and leave their everyday lives behind without a backward glance. In the new run, those everyday lives exert a powerful pull. The Doctor’s companions—Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara—don’t leave anything behind; their relationships remain vital…so much so that lovers, parents, even grandparents find themselves joining the TARDIS crew. “Father’s Day” was the first episode of the new series to make this difference incandescently clear. Rose convinces the Doctor to bring her to the day on which she lost the father she never knew—he was killed by a hit-and-run driver while she was still an infant—and despite his warnings not to interfere with history as it unfolds before her, the inevitable happens. The remainder of the episode—with the fallout of Rose’s rescue of her father threatening to pull the space-time continuum apart—is memorable chiefly due to its poignant portrayal of a family given a second chance, that’s really no chance at all. “Father’s Day” has resonances in the show’s following season, and even beyond; but on its own, it’s a beautiful little tale of folly and sacrifice.

12. “The Time of the Angels”/”Flesh and Stone” (Season 5, episodes 5-6)

It’s a shame the Who producers feel compelled (who knows, maybe they are compelled) to keep trying to revitalize the series’ tired old menaces, like the Daleks and the Cybermen, when they have such an amazing track record at inventing wildly terrifying new ones, like the Silence, the Vashta Nerada, and—best of all—the Weeping Angels, who make their second appearance in this two-parter. The Doctor’s mysterious time-inverted love interest, River Song, also makes her second appearance here, and the sparks—as well as the questions—fly like grapeshot. The plot involves the crash of the starship Byzantium, whose cargo contained one of the aforementioned Weeping Angels—a race of statue-like creatures who only move when unobserved. The Doctor and his companion Amy Pond join River and a group of commando clerics (yes, really) in trying to capture the Angel before it threatens a human colony on the planet. But the deeper they get into the crash site—which encompasses an unfortunately not quite accurately named “Maze of the Dead”—they begin to realize they’re outnumbered. And the assault isn’t just from without; it’s from within—as Amy Pond falls victim to one of the most diabolically inventive, and scream-for-your-life scary, possessions I’ve ever seen. This is a rollicking, surreal two-parter, where the ground under your feet is never anywhere near as steady as you think it is.

11. “Turn Left” (Season 4, episode 11)

As noted above, I’ve tried to restrict this list to stand-alone stories—i.e., those that aren’t hugely dependent for their effect on other episodes’ developments. “Turn Left” is a bit of cheat in that respect, as it rewinds the show’s continuity to reveal what would have happened had the Doctor’s season 4 companion, Donna Noble, never met him. The result is an increasingly dystopian narrative that finds Donna spiraling into ever greater distress—and the world along with her. Most of the events portrayed are from previous episodes, but with different (i.e. disastrous) endings—and if you’ve seen those episodes, “Turn Left” will have much more resonance. But it’s also possible to appreciate solely from Donna’s point of view, as she strives to understand the terrible things going on around her, and why a mysterious stranger (the returning Rose Tyler) keeps telling her she’s the most important person in the world. What Rose of course knows—and what we come to appreciate—is that the role of the Doctor’s sidekick is much more than someone for him to spout expository dialogue to. “Turn Left” is ostensibly about Donna, but in fact it’s a tribute to the essential part played by every one of the Doctor’s companions. Though the Doctor himself scarcely appears, this a great episode, ambitious and agonizing, and featuring a searing performance by Catherine Tate as Donna.

10. “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” (Season 2, episodes 6-7)

A standard Who plot is to place the Doctor among a small group of colleagues in a small, claustrophobic environment—a spaceship, a submarine, an isolated factory, etc.—and then pull it all down around their ears. In this story, the Doctor and Rose stumble onto a planet that is—impossibly (hence the title)—orbiting a black hole. A “gravity tunnel” holds it in place, and allows for transport to and from a small base on the planet surface; and since such a tunnel requires an unimaginable source of energy, the base’s crew is drilling to find out what it is. The Doctor barely has time to tell them how really lousy an idea that is, before the gravity tunnel collapses, the crew’s servant staff (an unsettling race called the Ood) go nuts and rebel, and what’s revealed at the center of the planet is not just something evil…it may be the original evil. The pace is steady and unrelenting, the shocks and plot twists come at you like hand grenades, and the supporting staff drop like flies, Ten Little Indians style. This two-parter is just harrowing, hair-raising fun, culminating in a spectacular confrontation between the Doctor and the big bad (and I do mean big). The visuals are bold, the writing’s snappy and taut, and the interactions between the players run an emotional gamut. A classic, on every count.

9. “The Doctor’s Wife” (Season 6, episode 4)

Doctor Who occasionally takes advantage of luxury casting, recruiting from the ranks of acting royalty such talents as Michael Gambon, or Derek Jacobi, or Diana Rigg. This episode is, I believe, the first time they’ve brought in a superstar writer. And Neil Gaiman doesn’t disappoint; in fact, he makes it seem like Doctor Who has just been waiting for him to arrive. In fact, his sensibility is very close to the show’s; both depend for their vitality (and their charm) on cobbling together bits and pieces of many other narrative genres, from Victorian gaslight thrillers to dystopian science fiction—and “The Doctor’s Wife” has all that, and more. The plot involves a malevolent being who feasts on TARDIS energy, and who has drawn the Doctor, Amy and Rory to his junkyard-like asteroid the way you or I might order a pizza delivery. But in the process of deconstructing the TARDIS, its essence—its persona, in fact—is transferred to a living woman, Idris; and thus we’re granted the very great pleasure of watching the Doctor flirt with the love of his life, for the first time, in flesh and blood. Idris’s dialogue is a zany delight (she tells the Doctor, for instance, that the TARDIS likes to be called “Sexy”), and the chemistry between Matt Smith and guest-star Suranne Jones lifts your hat right off your head (if you wear a hat). Gaiman anchors all this with some decidedly unsettling scenes of Amy and Rory in the depths of the lobotomized TARDIS, that reveals the other, darker side of that iconic machine. A real winner of an episode, and justifiably a fan favorite.

8. “Midnight” (Season 4, episode 10)

You couldn’t find an episode more different from our previous entry than this one; which serves to illustrate the series’ wonderfully vast canvas. Doctor Who easily accommodates Neil Gaiman’s rollicking, fanciful Steampunk tomfoolery, but it can also deliver an episode like this: static, unnerving, and taut as a violin string. The Doctor is one of eight passengers on a tourist tram crossing a highly radioactive planet, when something—we’re never quite sure what—attacks. What follows is a brilliant distillation of how happy, harmonious human societies can rapidly degenerate into irrationality, fear, and finally violence. It’s possibly the most frightening episode the series has ever delivered, yet there are no giant monsters, no special effects of any kind; there’s not even a change of scene—it all plays out in the cramped cabin of the tram. All the strangeness and horror is completely, masterfully conveyed by the writing and acting alone. By the time the credits roll, you’ve had a genuine catharsis. I’d rank this one higher on the list if I didn’t ultimately feel that Who, at its best, is a hopeful show—a joyful one. This episode is bleak and dark and devastating. And absolutely unforgettable.

7. “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” (Season 1, episodes 9-10)

Doctor Who two-parters are a tricky enterprise; they have to have enough ideas to carry the added story time, without becoming too confusing or convoluted. This one slam-dunks it, providing a story about a bizarre plague infecting besieged citizens during the London Blitz, and a seemingly unconnected scam being run by a ridiculously charismatic 51^st century con man (Captain Jack Harkness, one of the most beloved characters in the Who canon—and one of the few to be awarded his own spinoff). The aura of menace and mystery is wonderfully sustained; there are some wonderfully unsettling images (chiefly a spectral boy in a gas mask continually muttering “Are you my mummy?”) and some terrific set pieces (including Rose Tyler, in a Union Jack t-shirt, hanging by a rope from a dirigible in the midst of the Blitz). The plotting and pacing are bang-on as the Doctor and Rose—first separately, then teamed with Captain Jack in a series of scenes that sparkle with collective chemistry—begin to tie it all together; and the wonderfully inventive finale offers the best kind of tension and release. There’s not a false or feeble moment in it, and it leaves you feeling pretty much euphoric.

6. “The Girl Who Waited” (Season 6, episode 10)

Steven Moffat’s genius idea for the show’s sixth season was to give the Doctor—for the first time in the show’s five decades—married companions. At the end of Season 5, Amy Pond wed her long-suffering (and by that time, “long-suffering” meant actual millennia) fiancé Rory Williams, and the two showed up for Season 6 nuptialed, honeymooned, and ready to rock ‘n’ roll. Nothing Moffat ever threw at them, however (and he threw a lot), comes anywhere near “The Girl Who Waited.” It’s basically a chamber piece, featuring the three principals and no other characters. Well…that’s not entirely true. Because you have two Amys. Two radically different Amys. It all comes about when the Doctor takes the couple to what he thinks is a holiday planet, but which has, since his last visit, become a plague planet. They land in a “kindness center” operating on two separate time-streams—one accelerated, so that the family of the afflicted can watch their doomed loved ones live out their lives through a portal. Amy ends up in the accelerated timeline, and by the time the Doctor and Rory reach her, 36 years have passed, and she is pissssssed. She’s also completely badass, having had to survive on her own in a kind of garden paradise where robots are out to kill her. Older Amy is played—as is younger Amy—by Karen Gillan, who completely throws down as an embittered woman suddenly confronted with the much younger husband she lost, and by the “raggedy Doctor” of her childhood, whom she now hates. And then…she’s confronted by her younger self as well, as the Doctor, through some Doctor whammy, brings the timelines together. But only one Amy can survive the episode, and as good as Killan is, Arthur Darvill as Rory gets in some heart-rending scenes, as a decent man torn between two women—both of them his wife. If you had to pick one episode that shows what the new series can do that the old never could, then paradoxically this one—which in every other respect is as linear and low-budget as the old Who—might be it.

5. “The Waters of Mars” (Autumn 2009 Special)

Throughout the revived Who, much is made of the idea that, while the future can in many cases be changed, there are certain “fixed points” in time that cannot, absolutely cannot be altered, not for anything or anybody, anywhere, ever. The fall of Pompeii (which the Doctor witnesses in Season 4) is one such “fixed point,” and he goes to great length to explain to his traumatized companion, Donna, that this is why he can’t—doesn’t dare—save the city. Well, “The Waters of Mars”—which comes very late in Russell T. Davies (and David Tennant’s) run—shows us what happens when the Doctor decides that goddammit, he’s a Time Lord, and he’ll alter a fixed point in time if he bloody well feels like it. But before we get to that turning point, we have a superior example of the Doctor-in-a-confined-space-with-doomed-colleagues scenario that the series loves so much. This time the first human colony on Mars in 2059, headed by Captain Adelaide Brooke (played by Lindsay Duncan—more acting royalty). Everyone in the colony is famous to history, and the Doctor is over the moon at getting to meet them…but then finds himselef having to turn and walk away from them just as they face their deaths at the hands of their own team members, possessed by an intelligent water virus (and man, the special effects involved here will give you some hellacious nightmares). The fall of the Mars colony is a fixed point in time…there’s nothing he can do about it. Until, in a burst of compassion—or hubris—or both—he does. The result?...One of the darkest, most disturbing Who episodes ever…pitiless, powerful and utterly indelible.

4. “Silence In the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” (Season 4, episodes 8-9)

At first, this seems like it might be a routine Who outing. The Doctor and Donna Noble arrive at a planet-sized library called—The Library. (Because, what else?) But instead of teeming with 51^st century library-card holders, the entire world is empty. Then a team of archaeologists arrive, and we can pretty well guess what happens next: the menace that wiped the Library clean of life will start picking off the archaeologists, while the Doctor scrambles for a solution that will save everyone. And that’s exactly what does happen. But as it unfolds, the narrative slowly becomes much, much more, due to several unexpectedly amazing elements. The first is the menace itself, the Vashta Nerada, one of the most chilling alien races the series has ever dished up (the fact that they’re both carnivorous and take the form of shadows, gives you an idea). The second is that the events unfolding in the library seem to be visible on television by a little girl in an apparently 21^st century living room. The third is that one of the archaeologists—one Professor River Song—is a highly charismatic woman who appears to know the Doctor very well…intimately, even…though he himself has no recollection of ever having met her. And from there the story continues to spiral off into increasingly wild new directions—including a parallel reality side-trip for Donna that’s both jaggedly surreal and genuinely heartbreaking—eventually rushing to a series of climaxes that run the gamut from the tragic to the exhilarating. Not just outstanding Who, this is outstanding TV, period.

3. “The Girl In the Fireplace” (Season 2, episode 4)

Another standard Who story device is to pair up the Doctor with a personage from history; in the revived series alone, he’s met Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Richard Nixon, and Vincent van Gogh. But this episode, in which the Doctor encounters Madame de Pompadour (a.k.a. Reinette), is outstanding in any number of ways. It begins in the far future, in deep space, on an empty ship that contains a series of temporal doorways into specific moments in Reinette’s life. Before the Doctor can figure out what the hell that’s about, he finds himself rescuing her from clockwork creatures in period dress (wonderfully creepy) who seem to be after her head. But despite the dazzling ingenuity of this narrative scaffolding, the real heart of the episode is the simmering romance between the Doctor and Reinette—a remarkable woman who seems fully capable of meeting him on his own level. Even so, the entire thing might well sink without the casting of Sophie Myles as Reinette; hers is one of the truly great guest performances in Who history. Her brilliant, beautiful, ultimately tragic Madame de Pompadour lingers in your mind, long after the episode is over.

2. “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” (Season 3, episodes 8-9)

A common plot device for fantastic or heroic characters, is to place them in a story where they’re suddenly ordinary, mundane men or women in our everyday world, and their more outsize, colorful personae are said to be no more than delusions they can’t shake. That’s where we find the Doctor in “Human Nature”: he’s John Smith, a teacher at an English public school in 1913—an endearingly gangly, socially awkward sort who just has the daftest dreams about traveling the universe in a small blue box. But thanks to his companion, Martha—who shares the scenario with him, but remains aware of its artificiality—we know that this is actually the Doctor’s attempt to hide himself from the Family of Blood, a clan of alien predators who, right off the bat, unnerve us a little, because—hello, they can scare the Doctor? And when they appear, taking human form, they’re just as disquieting as they’ve been billed—especially Jeremy Baines as Harry Lloyd, whose cocked head and twisted smile are way more terrifying than a full-on Dalek invasion. Martha’s unenviable task is to awaken the Doctor’s memories in time to get him to evade capture by the Family…but John Smith has unfortunately gone and done the one thing the Doctor never anticipated: he’s fallen in love. The object of his affections, the school nurse (unforgettably played by Joan Redfern), becomes, more than any other character in Who history, the tragic representative of the innocent lives that are devastated by contact with the Doctor. Yet, as good as Redfern is (and she’s tremendous), the episode belongs to David Tennant, whose John Smith could melt the polar icecaps with his grief at having to stop being who he is, and become something—someone—he doesn’t even understand. Then there’s the epilogue, in which Davies takes the metaphor of World War I (with the schoolboys’ battling the Family) and makes it concrete (with those same boys, one year on, in the trenches), and you’re basically being ravished by the most beautifully rendered, most ambitious, and most affecting episode of Who ever.

1. “Blink” (Season 3, Episode 10)

The irony of “Blink” being the best-to-date episode of new Who (and it’s not just me who ranks it so high; do some Googling and you’ll find it topping nearly everyone’s list) is that the Doctor’s barely in it. Its central character is a young photographer, Sally Sparrow, who finds herself drawn into the chronal upheavals caused by a race of extraterrestrial predators known as the Weeping Angels—fearsome creatures who are immobile statues…until you shut your eyes. They don’t kill you, it turns out; they hurl you back through time, and feed off the energy of the timeline you’ve now abandoned. Only the Doctor can stop them…and the means by which Sally eventually encounters him is both over-the-top ingenious and laugh-out-loud thrilling. In the meantime, there’s so much to feast on—so much to prompt reflection about what it means to be alive, and how much when we are makes us who we are—that “Blink” can stand proudly outside the Doctor Who canon. It’s a perfect example of short-form filmmaking; it takes you on a journey, and delivers you on the other side fundamentally changed in small but important ways. It’s got heart, and laughs, and wonderment, and some serious, jump-out-of-your-seat frights. If Doctor Who ever manages to top this, I’d be surprised. But you never know…we might get that lucky.