Monday 8 January 2018

Fourteen plots from David Bowie's The Next Day

For David Bowie’s birthday, riffs on the titles from the album preceding , The Next Day:

The Next Day
The travellers save a world and head back to the TARDIS - and it materialises on the same world, twenty-four hours later, refusing to budge. What did they miss?

Dirty Boys
Who is abducting Victorian chimney sweeps, and why?

The Stars (Are Out Tonight)
On the night of a rare stellar alignment, London is plunged into darkness, allowing its citizens to see the stars clearly. And some of them have never been seen before...

Love Is Lost
A brilliant scientist seeks a way to travel back in time and save the one she loves from an accidental death. If she succeeds, the timeline could shatter... but do you have the heart to stop her?
(or: One day, everyone wakes up to find they’re no longer in love with those they were the day before.)

Where Are We Now?
The travellers find themselves back in their homes, but none of their families or friends are here. In fact, nobody they recognise is here. Looking at the date, it has been one day since they left, so where is everyone?

Valentine’s Day
In order to root out an alien invasion, the travellers have to go undercover at a speed dating meetup.
(or: Everyone finds that they’re now in love with someone they hardly know.)

If You Can See Me
A spacial distortion moves the Stranger out of phase with reality, rendering her invisible and inaudible to everyone except a young girl who believes that she’s a ghost.

I’d Rather Be High
Gangs of Paris kids living rough have taken to hiding out on rooftops, because something unseen is hunting them on the streets, something that has to stay in contact with the pavement but can find them as soon as they touch it. Can you get across the city without touching the ground?

Boss Of Me
The Stranger’s worst nightmare - one of them anyway, not the one about entire planets burning - a nine-to-five job. Someone working in this excruciatingly dull office is an alien spy, and the travellers have to go in as efficiency experts to find the intruder.

Dancing Out In Space
The Supernova has the most stunning views of any social venue in the Seventh Great And Bountiful Human Commonwealth, orbiting its namesake in the Dendra System. So it’s the perfect place to host the Bountiful Ball, a dance contest watched by trillions across the galaxy. Or was until one of the microgravity quadrille contestants was found dead and the stasis engines keeping the station from being torn apart by unstable stellar gravity started making a nasty rattling sound...

How Does The Grass Grow?
2023, and a blight threatens to wipe out every crop on Earth. Who created it, and why?

(You Will) Set The World On Fire
The Stranger’s visions of the world burning intensify, and she sees other signs leading up to it. Can she stop it? Does she cause it?

You Feel So Lonely You Could Die
Human emotions are such fragile things. The quiet invaders can create love, quash it, and leave those they target so bereft that they might die of broken hearts. How do you stop something that can make you give up trying?

Heat
The world burns. The Stranger blames herself. The TARDIS sits dark and inert. Can she use the scientist’s time portal to undo her mistake? And will the Daleks she started the fire to stop allow it?

4 comments:

  1. DarkStarling added on RPG.net:
    Valentine's Day: A human exploratory ship in the far future finds a signal being transmitted from a black hole. It's love poetry, addressing the crew by name.

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  2. A very evocative - and inspirational - season of story ideas there.

    Apropos of nothing, I challenge you to come up with a modern Doctor Who scenario set in North Korea ... that doesn't feature Trump or some 'twist' like Kim Jong-un is a slitheen ;-)

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