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“There was a total solar eclipse in North America yesterday,” Rose reported as she arrived home from her school’s play rehearsal and stood in front of her parents, who were settled into lawn chairs in the garden. “Shame we missed it.”
“Yeah, well,” Donna flipped a page in her magazine. “Wrong continent.”
“Shame we didn’t have a free way to travel there,” Rose replied.
“Mmm,” agreed Shaun, not looking up from his laptop. “Would’ve been lovely. Next time maybe.”
Rose crossed her arms. “Shame we can’t travel back in time, landing whenever we want.”
Her parents made vague sounds of half-listening agreement.
Rose yanked the magazine from her mum's hands and slammed her dad’s laptop closed.
“Rose!” Donna chastised.
“What was that for?!” Shaun echoed.
“I said: it’s a shame that we don’t have access to any sort of device that could comfortably transport us across the world together, which also happens to travel in time. Sure would be nice if we could experience one of our precious planet’s most wondrous natural phenomena together. I know that I, for one, would find that an unforgettable family-bonding experience — one that I’d always thank my brilliant, genius, lovely mum and dad for.”
Donna turned to her husband, her ponytail making an audible swoosh. “What do you think Shaun? Isn’t that a shame?”
“Sure is, yeah.”
Rose huffed. “Oh come on! We don’t even have to leave the TARDIS. We can watch from inside. Please, please, please. It’ll only take like five minutes.”
The Doctor poked his head out of said TARDIS, parked a few meters away. “You rang?”
“Mum and Dad want to see yesterday’s total solar eclipse.”
The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Donna and Shaun glared at their daughter.
Rose put her hands into a prayer position, pouted, and aimed her best puppy dog eyes at them.
“No no no no,” the Doctor said, coming to her side. “No. I see what’s happening here.”
“Thank you!” said Donna.
“That’s not how you win your parents over. This,” he grabbed Donna’s hand, pulling her to her feet. “Is how you win your parents over.”
“Oi!” Donna yelped.
“Oi yourself! Come ooon, Donna. You’ve missed it. Traveling! And like Rose said, we don’t even have to leave the TARDIS! Welllll, barely.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, not letting go of Donna’s hand and giving her a long, searching look.
“Alright fine,” she relented, smile creeping up to match the Doctor's. “But you have to get us back five minutes from now. Ten tops. Mum’s making a stew. She’ll boil you in it if we’re a millisecond late.”
“Scout’s honor,” the Doctor crossed his hearts. “No Doctor chowder tonight. Now let’s—” he pulled Shaun up too. “Allonsy!”
“We’ll stop on the way to buy some of those special glasses, right?” Shaun asked.
“Nah,” the Doctor had already set coordinates into the TARDIS’s console and was launching it into flight.
“‘Nah’?!” Donna asked. “I don’t know about Martians—”
“M’not from Mars.”
“But us humans can’t go around staring at the sun. Not unless we want to be blinded. So I’ll thank you not to ‘nah’ us, Spaceman.”
“She’s right,” said Rose. “I read—”
“Here, catch,” the Doctor tossed Rose a paper bag.
She opened it. “3D glasses?!”
“Sunny-hunny protectors. Also known as personal ocular bi-lateral anti-solar radiation spectacles. Much better than those cheap doodads sold in the twenty-first century, no offense.”
“Are they safe?” Donna asked, gazing at her hand through the glasses she quickly donned.
“Course they’re safe. Super ultra safe! Made ‘em myself. They block out one hundred percent of ultraviolet and infrared radiation, and ninety nine point nine percent intense visible light. Can also air fry potatoes from up to 18 feet away and download village newsletters from the fifteenth century. You ready?”
“For what?” asked Rose.
“The eclipse.”
“We’re already there?!”
“YuP! Burlington, Vermont,” the Doctor skipped to the front door and threw it open. “Ahh just in time! The moon’s shadow is crossing over our view of the sun. Maximum eclipse should begin in forty—no, thirty-two seconds.”
Rose, Donna and Shaun hurried out, standing in a field two meters outside the TARDIS, overlooking a crowded beach and of course—
“The sun!” Rose squealed.
“Incredible!” Donna said with a chuckle.
“Oh my god!” Shaun adjusted her glasses. “It’s… it’s… wow. Beats any photo.”
“HOLY SHIT!” Rose exclaimed, before clamping her mouth. “Sorry.”
Luckily, her parents were too immersed in the viewing experience to react, but…
“HOLY SHIT!” said the Doctor.
Donna pulls her glasses up to glare at him.
“Sorry.”
Suddenly, the temperature dropped by a few degrees. The sky darkened, bright blue giving way to navy streaked with orange and purple, followed by total darkness—save for a bright, white ring perfectly enveloping the empty void of the moon’s black shadow.
Hundreds of people lay on blankets beneath it all. The two Nobles, one Temple, and one honorary Noble could only detect the crowd’s presence by the lights of their mobile phones, cameras flashing away to capture the fleeting moment.
They were collective waves of “whoa”s, “wow”s, and “oooh”s. Kids shrieked and adults swooned.
“That’s your sun’s corona,” the Doctor explained. “Its outermost atmosphere. Round about ten million times less dense than the star’s surface. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? You can’t see it from Earth. Not usually. The sun itself is too bright. But during a total solar eclipse…”
“Hello, corona,” Donna’s voice was hushed, reverent.
“Hello, halo,” he agreed. “Brilliant!”
“But you must have seen this before, yeah?” Shaun asked.
“On Earth? Oh yeah, dozens of times! I may or may not have been the first to record one. Twenty-second of March, 1223 BC. Oof, that clay tablet was tricky to write on.”
Shaun snorted. “I bet.”
“And,” the Doctor continued, though he had removed his glasses to observe the elated human sightseers as mobile cameras continued to light them up, “Earth this millennia has some of the very best eclipses! Sure, other planets get them more often. There’s Paxido of the Circinus Galaxy or Florshaclu in the Lindsay-Shapley Ring. Both have one sun and more than a hundred moons. Eclipses happen every few days at least. Often just minutes or hours apart.”
“That sounds incredible!” Rose said. “Can we go there?”
“Nah, you don’t want to see that.”
“Oh, but I do!” Rose insisted.
“Me too,” said Donna.
“And me,” Shaun added.
“Well, that’s the thing about so-called ‘extraordinary’ natural phenomena. When they’re so frequent, who cares? Certainly not the locals. The people on Paxido and Florshaclu? They barely glance up. Similar to you lot on Earth. You're treated to a sunset and a sunrise every single day — one each per measly twenty-four hours — how lucky is that! Astounding! But how do you react? Do you gasp? Do you shudder? Do you gaze in glory at the sky, contemplating the ineffable nature of the cosmos? Nah, you mostly stay asleep or keep watching telly.”
“You make us sound ungrateful,” Donna said.
“No no no! Cuz look at this,” he swept a hand toward the crowd, not that Donna saw. “You’re amazed now. That’s why I love Earth eclipses so much. It’s not the moon, not the sun. It’s the people. You go ga ga over it. A tiny little shadow obscures an equally tiny bit of light, and you drop everything to travel hundreds—thousands—of miles to see it for a few ephemeral minutes. Write poems and songs about it. Paint paintings, snap photos, and flood social media with it. You make so much meaning out of it. A passing shadow!”
“Now you make us sound like kittens chasing after a silly little string.”
“Well,” he bumped Donna’s shoulder. “It’s true. You’re curious. So very curious, and it’s brilliant! It’s how you learn about yourselves, about the world. How you advance civilizations and better society. Humans wouldn’t be humans without curiosity. Fantastic. Molto bene!”
“Really puts my homework into perspective,” said Rose.
Another round of “whoa”s, mixed with some disappointed “aw”s reverberated through the crowd as the moon’s shadow began to slowly glide away, lighting the sky back up into day as the sun’s corona fizzled out.
“Now you know how I feel,” the Doctor said. “Welllll, a little. Nothing like a good ole eclipse to showcase your connection to the universe. Earth’s position among other celestial bodies. When there’s laundry to do and bills to pay and Nerys-es to chide—“
“Oi, must you bring her into it?” asked Donna.
“When you’re living your everyday life, I think you forget that Earth is just a tiiiiney wiiiney rock hurtling through space, one among trillions.”
“Nerys isn’t so important then.”
The Doctor laughed. “No. Not to the cosmos. But to other humans? Ooh, you’re all so important to each other! The most important things. Compared to the universe, you’re so so tiny—I am too!—but to each other, you’re entire worlds.”
Shaun wrapped an arm around Donna and Rose pulling them in tight. The Doctor beamed.
“You too, Doctor,” Shauna beckoned. “Get yourself a snuggle.”
Rose pulled him in. They stood together, quietly observing the moon, the sun and the humans basked in the beauty of it all.
“Will we ever see one at home?” Rose whispered. “A full solar eclipse over London?”
“Oh, sure.”
“When?”
The Doctor did the maths. “Wellll, if I multiply the six and carry the five, then… the year two-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-six.”
Rose put her best puppy dog eyes back on. “Please please please! Can we go?”
Shaun and Donna shared a look.
“On your birthday,” her mum handed down the verdict. “Like the Doctor said, it’s more meaningful when it’s infrequent.”
“I’ll take it!” Rose cuddled everyone tighter.
On the beach, people shed their glasses to pull out packed food, toast champagne and wade into the water.
“Want to know a fun fact about Earth’s moon?” the Doctor asked his small audience.
“Is it that Earth’s tides are caused by the moon’s mavitational pull?” Rose guessed. “We learned that in primary school.”
“No. Wellll, true. But no. Not what I was going to reveal.”
“Blimey, was the US landing faked?!” Shaun tried.
“Thankfully, no. I was there. Hid from Neil Armstrong. Twice.”
“So what then, Doctor?” Donna asked. “You with your big smile. Bursting to let us in on a secret. What, is the moon made of cheese??”
“Nooo, don’t be ridiculous, Donna. That moon’s not made of cheese.”
“Well that’s a relief.”
“It’s an alien egg. Hatches every few million years and leaves a new one behind,” he pointed back toward the TARDIS. “So… time for stew?”