" - and okay at this point I'm wondering how we get the recording I'm making now back to you in the past."

"Right - don't worry about getting your recording to me yet, we'll work that out after we deal with the Weeping Angel.  Once I say go, just hit the play/pause button, second from the left on the bottom of the display screen, then hit the leftmost button twice, then the second button again.  That'll start the whole recording over.  And make sure your phone's recording you once you hit play again.  Got it?"

"He's got it."

"Go."

"So, hi!  I know this is an emergency but that was kinda cool."

"Could've gone worse, I suppose.  I'm the Doctor, by the way."

"Hi, The Doctor.  So, uh, what - "

(It's not quite what he goes into that sentence expecting to ask, but what comes out is:) " - the fuck is going on?"

"What do you know so far?"

"You've got - a time machine and-or spaceship I guess, that was stolen by a Weeping Angel.  Weeping Angels can't usually move if someone's looking at them but this one wrapped itself in blankets and wore a mask so we couldn't see its skin.  Your time machine was - just kinda sitting around in an alley? before the Angel lugged it away into this abandoned auto shop.  It was on a forklift, I guess that's how the Angel got it here.  I poked around and found it, the Weeping Angel chased me away, I met Sarah Jane, I got the TARDIS open while she distracted the angel, and the Angel - uh, disappeared her - and your robot dog got out of the TARDIS and paralyzed the angel.  He's still keeping it locked down now.  ...Also I guess you're somewhere else in time even though your time machine's still here."

"Hold on, the Angel was wrapped up in blankets?  Wearing a mask?  And - and that counted as not seeing it?"

"...yeah."

"But then why don't they all do that?  They're so fast the blankets would've never stayed in place.  Then why'd it work this time, why wasn't this angel moving that fast? - ohhh because it's so weak, it's starving, that's why it was only able to send me back a year - you said Sarah Jane fought it, it was moving like a person?  Under the blankets?"

"Yeah, I wasn't even sure it wasn't a human before I pulled the mask off.  Look, can you back up a second, what did the Weeping Angel do to you and Sarah Jane?"

"A Weeping Angel's a weapon, an instrument of kidnapping.  There was a war, a long time ago, a war between time travelers, and Weeping Angels were one of the weapons used in that war.  An Angel gets its hands on its target and sends it back in time, far back in time, dozens or even hundreds of years, and the people who deployed it go back as well to the same time and place and pick up the victim.  Then they send a signal to their past selves in the future, let them know the mission's going to be successful so they know to deploy the Angel.  This one must've got caught by some other kind of weapon, something that flings its target through time and space - and it wound up on Earth for some reason.  But Weeping Angels eat TARDISes, and this one didn't have anything to eat.  It must have been hiding out for who knows how long, getting hungrier and weaker until I came along.  It must've recognized my TARDIS and sent me back to get me out of the way, then carted it off.  If you saw it in the alley then you saw it while I was still around, we just missed each other.  But I had the only key, the only one that wasn't locked inside it anyway.  I sent a package to Sarah Jane, she's an old friend of mine, with the key and a letter explaining what was going on, and the disc that was supposed to be her side of the conversation we're having now.  Actually I just sent it off, she doesn't get it for at least a few days, maybe a few weeks, from my perspective.  Overseas shipping."

He nods along.  "So the Angel did the same thing to Sarah Jane as it did to you?"

"It's probably getting weaker, it may have only sent her back a few months."

Nod.  "So okay maybe this is a stupid question, but - the Angel sent you back in time, and you sent Sarah Jane in your future to get into the TARDIS and - what, send it back in time to you?  Why didn't you just wait out the year?"

"If I had tried to wait out the year, then I could've run into someone else the Angel sent back in time after it sent me back in time, and they might've given me information about what happens in the future.  For the future to be determined by your actions, your actions have to not have been determined by that future - otherwise it's just an arbitrary future determining itself, with you as an intermediary.  And if you know the future, you can't stop that knowledge from affecting your actions.  Whether you try to stop it or try to bring it about, you're doing it because you know what's coming.  So if I want to make sure the TARDIS is safe from the Angel, I have to take actions that cause its safety while minimizing the chance of getting advance knowledge of what happens to it."

"...But you're getting advance information right now."

"Well, I've already done all that.  I didn't watch this tape myself until I'd already done everything I reasonably could to affect the events this tape would tell me.  I've kept my actions in the past and the information I get from the future in the right relative order.  From Sarah Jane's perspective, I make the plan, give Sarah Jane my instructions, she executes the plan, it goes however it goes, then she reports back to me by watching her tape.  From my perspective, I make the plan, set the plan in motion, I watch my tape and learn what happens in the future.  I lose the ability to affect the plan, but I already affected the plan before I learned its outcome.  So the Sarah Jane who already executed phase one is talking to the me who can't affect phase one any more, but we share the ability to influence what happens in phase two.  (Obviously it's you who's reporting back not Sarah Jane, but it sounds like if she were on her own she wouldn't have gotten the TARDIS open at all, so that worked out all right.)"

"...okay let's just stipulate that this all makes perfect sense.  What do we do next?"

"We need to get me and the TARDIS and the Angel and preferably Sarah Jane all in the same place at the same time.  I can pilot the TARDIS and Sarah Jane can do it well enough to bring it back to me, but we're both stuck in the past."

" - could you wait out the year now?  Since you know what happens in the future, and it's me and K9 immobilizing the Angel, so it can't send anyone else back in time to meet you and trap you in a stable time loop you don't like?"

"In theory, maybe, but I have other reasons not to want to stay in one place too long..."

" - Sarah Jane could, maybe.  Except she didn't pack for that long a trip - and she's not exactly in the country legally, that could get dodgy - and she's technically using someone else's legal identity as long as she's displaced backwards in time.  And if she runs into the Angel between when it shows up on Earth and when past-her and you and K9 beat it, then past-Angel could send her back again even farther."