It was another beautiful, sunny day on the planet Sunlight 349, as Lillian Belle set off on her latest assignment. If she was honest with herself, the fact that every day on Sunlight 349 was 'another beautiful, sunny day' was perhaps a little tedious. Mind you, whenever she had such thoughts, she would force herself to remember what life had been like for her parents. They had lived on the edge of starvation for the first thirty years of their lives. In squalor. On a freezing cold, polluted planet whose name no one even wanted to remember.

Balmoral Castle lay bathed in autumn sunshine. The light shone on the white stone of the castle's ivy-covered walls. It sent golden shafts through the tall windows. Captain Harry Carruthers, companion and aide to King Edward VII , marched along the red-carpeted corridors of the castle. He glanced through the window. It was a beautiful day. He sighed. On a day like this, the King would be sure to insist that he went outside and did something healthy.

The view on the monitors was dark. Occasionally, a line of numbers scrolled past, faster than any human eye could have followed them. But mostly, it was dark. It was dark, in a sense, all the time. But then, 'all the time' is a relative concept. A lot can happen in a slice of time too infinitesimally small to be measured on any human scale. So, occasionally there was a burst of frenetic activity. But mainly, it was dark.

He'd never intended to become a thief. Edgar Miller considered this as he wedged the end of his crowbar against the sill and began to prise open the sash window. He'd always planned to do something worthwhile with his life, to make something of himself. Life, however, had pointedly refused to provide him with any opportunities. For years he'd tried to earn an honest living, breaking his back with manual work, mucking out stables, fetching and carrying. In the end, though, where had that gotten him?

The rain splattered against the windscreen before the wipers swiped the glass clean, patting the water down into a splashy trough above the dashboard. Beyond, the car headlights picked out a narrow country lane rolling out of the darkness, the high hedges on either side giving it the feel of driving through a tunnel. Rebecca rubbed her forehead. Another headache. Probably due to the idiot who had spent the last five miles behind her, his headlights blazing away in her rear-view mirror.

Mallik ran as he'd never run before. He was young and strong, and though he had been running for hours already he knew that he could keep going for a while yet. This didn't mean that he wasn't aching all over, that his throat wasn't raw with gasping and panting. The air was foul in this place. It tasted bad, it smelled bad - it was filled with pollutants. But still Mallik ran, sucking it in in great lungfuls. He was staggering along a corrugated steel conduit.

The TARDIS was crashing. The big clue was that the floor lurched at a sixty-degree angle. I knew this because the Doctor pointed it out. 'Sixty degrees!' he called, like he was greeting an old friend. 'Amy, this is serious.' I grinned, and then saw the expression on my husband's face. Rory was clinging to a chair, and making a noise. Making an 'oh my god, you didn't say this was a seafood restaurant' noise. My husband has one of those faces that looks best when it is worried.

Between the housing estate and the motorway lies an ancient wood. Birds live there, and foxes, and the many small beasts that snuffle round the undergrowth busy on their own quiet errands. The woods teem with life: sharp, clever robins and blackbirds with bright and restless eyes; owls that sleep by day and quest by night; vivid darting butterflies; and all the wild and thrilling creatures - badgers, and hares, and maybe even a glimpse of a soft-eyed, soft-footed deer with her small fawn. Yes, the woods are filled with life.

Once upon a time, a long way away, the TARDIS whooshed and zoomed and spiralled through the space-time vortex. To one of the occupants, this was the most exciting, thrilling and fantastic thing she had ever experienced. And basically, she guessed, it would stay that way for the rest of her life. And she had met the man who flew this amazing, extraordinary and fantabulous ship only a couple of days before.

They came only at night. They crept around the dark places, the hidden places, the poor and lonely places. It was said in the city that you could tell when they approached. First your skin began to prickle and then a sickening cold fear lodged itself in your belly which rose and rose, up and up - until you could not speak and you could not breathe, and the lamp that you were carrying couldn't bear it any longer and went out - phoomph!