The Glass Princess (Short Trips: The Muses)

Prose  Does the Doctor have a celestial Google Calendar which pings him through the incarnations to return to certain places and catch up with whoever's there?  The Glass Princess offers another example of this cross (re)generational story, as an event which happens during the Hartnell years, the poisoning of a young princess, becomes a mission as he returns throughout his life so he can wake her up now and then, for a few hours, so that her parents can spend time with her until she's the only one left of her civilisation.  It's a similar effort to A Christmas Carol, with birthdays in for the 25th December and a group effort rather than just Eleventh.

The Eighth Doctor appears in the final scene, leading the girl towards her final moments.  It is, as you might expect, horrendously sad and it's through his words the writer, Paul Leonard, articulates another element of the Moffat era, seven years earlier, that it's just a fairy tale, an articulation of Sleeping Beauty with the Time Lord in the role of the Prince.  But honestly the section which really punched me in the gut is the moment when the Seventh Doctor gifts her a small blue badge in the shape of a boat which has been passed on by Ace who says she doesn't need it any more: "She said to tell you that you had deserved it. It's a badge really, not a brooch. It's only given to people who are very special. Very brave."

Placement: Outrageously, I think I'm going to retcon this in the Time War era, in the period when he's dealing with unfinished business.