Chapter Text
“Y’know, I really wish I’d remembered to pick up my phone,” Ryan mused as they trudged up one of the sand dunes. “Or my Polaroid. I mean - we are on an alien planet . It’s a proper shame I can’t take any photos.”
Yaz glanced at him slightly incredulously. “You do realise we’re stuck on said alien planet, right?”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted, slightly sheepishly, “but still. I mean - “ He gestured at the sky, blazing brightly. “ - there’s three suns! Three! If we actually make it through all this, I won’t even have any photos to show my kids when I’m older.” Yaz looked at him pointedly and he raised his hands in defeat. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, not the most important thing right now. I’m just saying.”
He didn’t bring the subject of photos or footage again on the trek across the desert, but the thought had sparked the beginnings of an idea in his head, and he mulled it over as they walked.
When they landed in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, Ryan really, really wished he had his camera on him. Of course, he didn’t have much fondness for most of the town (or its people), but meeting Rosa Parks? Meeting Martin Luther King Jr? He was profoundly irritated that he couldn’t take a photo of the three of them to commemorate the occasion. (The thought also crossed his mind of leaving a copy on his nan’s grave, just to show her a glimpse of the amazing things he’d done since she’d gone. He knew how much she loved Dr King.)
Once they’d finally made it back, ideas of photos and clips and footage and titles kept flashing in the back of his mind, like tiny subliminal messages. They kept nagging at him, and by the time the three of them were standing in the Doctor’s Tardis (she had a bloody spaceship, for goodness sakes!) he’d made up his mind. He sidled up next to the Doctor as she tinkered with the console, and took a readying breath.
“Hey, Doctor?”
“Ryan!” Her face lit up with a smile, and he blinked, slightly taken aback by her enthusiasm. “D’you want anything?”
“Uh, yeah, sort of,” he replied. “What would you think if I recorded some of the stuff we’re gonna see?”
Her nose scrunched up in confusion. “What, like a photo album?”
“Well…” He paused for a minute. “Like a sort of vlog thing. Y’know on the internet, where people post videos of places they’ve visited? Disneyland and stuff? I was wondering if I could do that with alien planets, cause I’ve really wanted to have a proper Youtube channel where I make those sorts of videos, but my life’s kind of boring. Or it was before I met you, anyway. So now I’m gonna be doing all this cool stuff, and I want to document it. If that’s alright with you? Uh…”
He paused, suddenly intensely aware of how long he’d been talking, and petered off into a slightly awkward silence. But the Doctor didn’t seem to notice his sudden awkwardness, and grinned enthusiastically. “Sounds awesome, Ryan! I’d love to see your videos when you make them!”
Ryan was taken aback. “So it’s alright, then? I’m not breaking any time travel codes or whatever, I can put videos of aliens on the internet?” He had half expected her to talk about the dangers of changing the future by altering the past (though it was his present, so he didn’t exactly know how the rules applied) like she had during the Rosa Parks incident.
“Course!” The Doctor grinned at him again, taking a bite out of the custard cream she’d somehow obtained during their conversation. “In your time, there’s all sorts going up on the internet - almost everything’s a hoax one way or the other, and no one believes the stuff that’s actually true anyway. Well, except for UNIT and Torchwood, but their job’s to look into all the alien stuff. Just maybe don’t put up pictures of my Tardis? It gets really tiring when government agencies try and track me down to deal with one thing or another as the President of the Earth. And practise internet safety. That’s an important one.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” Ryan smiled (again, a little awkwardly), choosing to ignore her comments about secret government agencies. He’d process that later. “ And I won’t put up anything about your ship, if you don’t want me to,” he added. The Doctor gave him yet another beaming grin and a thumbs-up, already moving on to something else.
That was settled, then. He was going to start his vlog channel.