'Hide your tie in your bag,' Kate said to Lisa, as they ascended the travelator with the other shoppers. Lisa looked at her suspiciously. 'Why?' Kate Maguire tutted and rolled her eyes. 'Because we're nicking off, you idiot! Hyperville's packed with CCTV. Anybody spots us, we'll be slung out!' 'Oh. Right.' Lisa Henshaw looked abashed, and pulled her St Mary's School tie off and shoved it into her bag.

Alice Wendell stepped out beneath the great glass dome of the Oxygen Gardens and gazed up to see the glittering, icy moon of Tethys passing overhead. She had lived on Chelsea 426 for almost six months, practically since her graduation, but still the other residents - and even her colleagues - looked at her and spoke to her as if she were a complete stranger. She was sure they meant nothing by it, of course; it was just their way.

It was a forgotten world. On the very edge of explored space, the planet resembled little more than a speck of dirt floating between the stars. From the surface of this world, the nearest sun was visible only as a distant blue glow on the horizon. The planet existed in perpetual dusk. It had once been inhabited by men intent on pushing back the dark boundaries of the universe. The planet had been a useful staging post between the old worlds and the distant, uncharted stars beyond.

Wild dogs roamed the streets outside the Acropolis, the huge, high rock overlooking Athens. Their claws skittered on the smooth marble flagstones, and their tongues lolled from between snaggled, yellow teeth. They looked hungry and bedraggled, and they kept most people away from the ancient monument in the hours before it opened. June pretended not to notice the scraggy, smelly things as they trotted back and forth around her.

Trainee Pilot Kareel Rossiter uncrossed her fingers, opened her eyes and let out a sigh of relief. Made it! The hyperspace jump had been perfect: a textbook transition between one location in real space and another, courtesy of a combination of higher mathematics and enough raw power to tear a hole through reality itself. Like an ancient icebreaker, pushing its way through polar ice, the Space Freighter Tintin had thrust itself out of its home system, passed through the inter-dimensional maelstrom of hyperspace and then had punched its way back into real space in Quadrant Delta Three Black.

The first walkway the Doctor tried almost gave way beneath his feet. The second creaked disconcertingly, and he half-ran, half-tiptoed across it. He didn’t even dare put his foot on the third. He’d got two city blocks closer to his goal and decided to enter the nearest tower and descend to ground level – an easier task than he’d dared hope, as the building had a fantastically carpeted staircase. This place had been a hotel.

It was raining up on the hill, the steady patter-patter-patter hitting the vast golfing umbrella like bullets on tin. Truth be told, it was raining everywhere, but up on the hill, here in the allotment, that was the only place Wilfred Mott really cared about it raining right now.Whenever it rained, he couldn’t help but remember. That awful, awful day when  he  had come to the house, bringing Donna with him. Unconscious, unable to remember anything. For her own safety.

It felt as if the whole world was made out of night. Their small boat was running the tide inshore towards an invisible coast. Above them hung ink-black air, starless and heavy. Below them, the sea was as dark as the sky. It broke around the bows like black glass. The little outboard motor chugged to itself. They were barely leaving a wake.

‘Two and a half billion light years,’ said Donna Noble, her eyebrows raised and a gentle smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, ‘and you’ve brought me to an art gallery?’ ‘Two and a half  million  light years,’  corrected the Doctor, pulling Donna back out of the path of something that resembled an upright anteater, studded with drawing pins, trundling down the street, ‘and it’s not  just  an art gallery.’ He sounded almost hurt.

You will be told: Planet 1 is real. Planet 1 is real just as any other planet is real: an actual world orbiting an actual sun in an actual bona fide solar  system. Planet 1. The planet where technology got so advanced  its ruler is in every material sense all-powerful. The planet where the very molecules of the air can be sculpted into whatever you desire. Oh, it’s real, all right. You will be told.