Expectations (short story)

***Expectations*** was a short story written by Philip Scholes. It was the third of the ten prose stories submitted by fans to the *Doctor Who: Lockdown!* as part of the 2020 *The Husbands of River Song* tweetalong to receive a release on the *Lockdown!* website.

## Plot

Extracts from the Scytherian Vaults' records about River Song are converted from raw memory into text to prevent data loss.

The first extract is Nardole's memory of being told to look for a physician on Mendorax Dellora by River, who also tells him to look out for the Doctor and to warn her immediately if he encounters the one with the bowtie or the one with the pinstripe suit.

The second extract comes from the memories of Bernice Summerfield as they explore a set of sealed tombs on Valderaaz together. Despite Bernice's much more down-to-earth theory, they soon find evidence that River Song's hypothesis (that this tomb is a Time Lord construct, built to contain an extremely dangerous demon known as Hemnus) is correct. Panicking, the two agree that they should go look for the Doctor.

The third extract is from the perspective of the Thirteenth Doctor, who has been summoned to the finest restaurant in New New York by River while she was searching for the Spy Master. River reminds her of the promise she made to herself as the Twelfth Doctor immediately prior to regenerating and points out to her that she mustn't give up on being the Doctor just to "fuss over small mysteries", calling up the Time Lord Victorious as an example of what catastrophes befall the universe when the Doctor ceases being the Doctor. When the Doctor keeps refusing, River shows her an image of her eventual reunion with the Master in the ruined Panopticon, thus forcing her to take a break from her search with the Master: she cannot risk encountering the Master too early and once more putting the timeline out of sync. River tells her to go collect Team TARDIS on Travazion and resume her adventures, "because one
day [her] last night will have passed and [she] will regret not spending your life with the people you care about".

## Characters

* River Song
* Nardole
* Thirteenth Doctor
* Bernice Summerfield

## References

* River Song was once married to Hydroflax as well as to the Doctor.
* River is a "Level 3 inhabitant of the universe".
* Bernice Summerfield first believes the tombs on Valderaaz are the work of the Felreesh, a race of "peaceful wanderers" who "built tombs to honour their most influential citizens".
* Some legends allege that the Outsider was a being who grew bored of watching nothing and created the universe by clapping his hands. He later created Hemnus as a demon of revenge, to exact vengeance upon the peoples who had ruined his creation's chance of being a paradise, such as the Great Vampires, the Racnoss and the Kotturuh.
* Bernice mentions that the last time she encountered a demon was an adventure also involving an Egyptian God with a "gift of death" and an Ouroboros loop.
* The Doctor mentions that she usually likes unsolved mysteries, such as what the plans of Prisoner Zero really were.
* The release of the Scytherian Vaults' files was authorised by the Redgrove Foundation.

## Story notes

* Despite the Thirteenth Doctor's assumption otherwise, River's meeting with her is clearly signaled to take place after her "last night on Darillium" with the Twelfth Doctor, as River is shown to be familiar with the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor and reflects wistfully on not having done all she wanted to do with "the people [she] cared about" before "[her] last night had passed".
* As well as serving as a companion piece to *The Husbands of River Song*, this story was intended to tie into the then-ongoing *Time Lord Victorious* event: River and the Doctor discuss the Tenth Doctor's stint as the Time Lord Victorious with the detail of his wearing Gallifreyan robes and the Kotturuh are referenced by Bernice Summerfield.
* The emphasis on the Doctor never having found out what Prisoner Zero's plans in *The Eleventh Hour* actually were is a joke quoted from Steven Moffat's novelisation of *The Day of the Doctor*.

* **Expectations** at the Fan Gallery