‘Anyone hurt?’ called the Doctor, finally releasing his grip on the sides of the stretcher. Mae, Clara and Warren confirmed that they were all fine.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor, leaning between the front seats to peer through the window. Outside, everything was brilliant white and, apart from the driving rain hammering down on the roof of the vehicle, completely silent.

‘Wherever we are, we appear to have arrived in the middle of winter,’ Mae pointed out.

‘Not necessarily,’ said the Doctor, reaching across Clara to wind down her window. ‘This could be what summer is like here. Or it could be a mixture of winter and summer running at exactly the same time.’ He took a deep breath of the ice cold air. ‘A brand new season called wummer.’

‘Wummer?’ said Clara, slapping his hand away and winding her window closed again.

The Doctor sniffed. ‘Maybe not. Come on, let’s find some civilisation.’ He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the ignition and gave it a blast. The engine started on the fourth attempt, but the ambulance wouldn’t respond to Warren’s commands. The wheels simply spun on the icy ground.

‘We’re stuck,’ he said, shifting the gears back into ‘park’. ‘Wedged in the snowdrift.’

‘Then we’ll have to dig our way out,’ said the Doctor. He flung the back doors of the ambulance open and leapt out, immediately losing his footing and landing hard on his bottom. ‘Watch out for that first step,’ he cried as he hauled himself to his feet. ‘It’s a doozy!’

Clara and Mae joined him, shivering against the freezing rain. ‘Where do we start?’ asked Mae. But the Doctor didn’t answer. He was studying the area around them with interest.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the far end of the snowdrift they had hit. ‘A row of houses.’

‘They’re tiny,’ said Clara. ‘There’s not one of them over a single storey high.’

‘It looks like they’re built into the side of the hill,’ said the Doctor.

‘Like hobbit holes,’ said Clara.

‘Exactly like hobbit holes!’ agreed the Doctor.

‘So we’ve come to the planet of the little people?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said the Doctor. ‘The doorways look around average human height from here. And have you noticed that some of them are hanging off their hinges?’

Clara squinted to get a better view through the lashing rain. ‘A lot of the windows are broken, too,’ she said. ‘I wonder why?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I’d be very interested to find out.’

Mae wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Can we examine the local architecture after we’ve dug the ambulance out of the snow and got back in the warm, do you think?’

‘Of course,’ grinned the Doctor. ‘We just need something to dig with.’

There was a crack of wood, and Warren appeared, holding the decorative panel from the inside of the driver’s door. ‘We could use these,’ he suggested.

‘We’re already in trouble for stealing the ambulance,’ Clara reminded him. ‘I’m not sure we should start vandalising it as well.’

‘If you’d prefer us to dig with our hands, that’s fine,’ said Warren. ‘But it’s likely to take at least twice as long, and we could end up losing our fingers to frostbite …’

‘Give me that!’ said Clara with a smirk, snatching the piece of wood.

Warren chuckled and went back to break off some more panelling.

It took them around twenty minutes to free the side of the ambulance from its snowy tomb, by which time they were all soaking wet and shivering with cold. Warren shunted the engine into drive and finally coaxed the vehicle into moving forwards, even if the wheels were still finding it difficult to grip the ground.

Clara jumped into the front passenger seat and cranked up the heating. ‘I thought I’d never be warm again,’ she groaned.

The Doctor leapt into the back with Mae and slammed the doors shut. He was giving Warren instructions as to which might be the best direction to drive when a group of people – very much like humans but with much paler skin and dark, round eyes – leapt over the top of the snowdrift and began to approach the ambulance, spreading out to surround it.

‘Hello!’ said the Doctor, cheerily. ‘Looks like the welcoming committee have spotted us.’

‘They don’t look very welcoming to me,’ Clara pointed out.

‘Give them a chance,’ said the Doctor. ‘This might be their way of greeting strangers …’

The people edged closer to the ambulance, arms outstretched. They were all dressed in ragged clothes and wrapped in old blankets. Their faces and hands were covered in scabs and sores. A woman with sunken cheeks stared through the windscreen at the occupants of the ambulance and spat angrily, baring blackened, broken teeth.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Then again …’

A tall, thin man suddenly darted forward. He grabbed one of the ambulance’s wing mirrors and began to wrestle with it.

Warren sounded the horn. ‘Get out of here!’ he shouted.

The crowd jumped back at the noise but, once they realised the sound hadn’t done more than startle them, they approached again. Once more, the tall man clutched at the wing mirror and, after a moment, he tore it free.

The figure hugged the prize to his chest and turned to run away, but only managed a few steps before two of the others from the group lunged for him. They dragged him to the ground, fighting for the mirror, punching and kicking its temporary owner into submission.

‘OK,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think we need to get away from here.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ said Warren, shifting the engine back into ‘drive’.

Before they could move, the rear doors of the ambulance were pulled open, and three more of the attackers began to climb inside. Mae screamed at the sight of them and tried to close the doors, but one of the men grabbed hold of her leg and dragged her back out onto the ice.

‘Mae!’ The Doctor jumped out after her, crashing down on top of her abductor and sending him sprawling. By the time he was back on his feet, two women had hold of Mae’s arms and were dragging her away towards the row of hobbit houses.

‘Doctor!’ bellowed Clara. ‘Behind you!’

There was a thump of metal, and the Doctor whirled round to see two more of the group battering on the sides of the ambulance, and a third clambering up onto the roof. ‘Drive!’ he yelled to Warren, slamming the back doors. ‘I’m going after Mae. I’ll find you!’

Nodding, Warren stamped down on the accelerator. The wheels spun crazily, then finally caught and the ambulance jerked forward. Several of the gang were forced to dive out of the way to avoid being dragged under the vehicle as it sped away.

Certain Clara and Warren were safe, the Doctor ran after Mae and her kidnappers. It was hard to see where they had gone in the driving rain, and the icy ground caused him to slip to his knees more than once. Then he caught a flash of Mae’s red jumper up ahead and raced after it, stomping down hard to dig the heels of his boots into the ground with each step.

The two women were obviously more used to running in these conditions than the Doctor, but Mae was putting up quite a fight which was enough to slow them down.

‘Stop where you are!’ the Doctor roared, appearing out of the rain behind them. He was using his sonic as a torch, the green light illuminating the snow around him eerily. At the sight of this magical instrument, the two women seemed to forget about Mae, releasing their grip on her and allowing her to slump to the wet ground. They began to advance on the Doctor, their large eyes fixed hungrily on the pulsing end of the sonic.

The Doctor reached out to Mae and helped her back to her feet, taking her hand to stop her from falling again. ‘Run!’ he hissed.

They ran, their feet alternately slipping on the ice or sinking into the snow. The trouble was that, with the rain in their eyes, they couldn’t tell which was which and that was slowing them down.