Doctor Who Snippets
Happy Almost-New Year! I come bearing a few little stories. "Ficlets," the kids might call them. If I were a betting woman (I only play the nickel slots), I'd bet that there would be a few more coming in the next few days, including ones about those most elusive of creatures, Mulder & Scully.
1. Ten/Rose
The Idiot's Lantern
She circled him in a predatory way. It put him in the mind of a hawk and a mouse, an axe and a tree. She narrowed her eyes.
The shears were behind her on the jump seat. Just waiting, all silver and sharp.
She smoothed her skirt and folded her arms, leaning back against the console.
“It looks kind of like an animal. That’s on top of your head.”
“A wild animal? An untamed, wild, virile, top-of-the-food-chain-type animal?”
“An otter?” she said, tacking a disconcerting question mark to the end and uncrossing her arms to pull her fingers through his hair, standing it on end. She tilted her head, looking at him as if he were an armchair and she couldn’t decide if he’d look best next to the window or up against the wall.
“Sea or river?”
“Here. Look.” She spun him around. “It’s doing this weird thing, like you’ve got a tail going down the back of your head. And it’s shiny. Really, really shiny. Like one of those poor little oil tanker seals they have to scrub off with a toothbrush.”
“So which is it? A poor little oil tanker seal or the fabled sea-river otter?”
“What the hell did you put in here, Doctor?” She held her hands out to him. They looked slightly damp.
“What?”
“It’s sticky.” She opened and closed her hands like a small child who’d just finished a bowl of ice cream. “Sit.”
It sounded like snow against snow. Or like leaves on a sidewalk. A gentle sound, a pleasant sound. A sound that had poems written about it; a sound that inspired odes. It was terrifying. His hearts thrummed and he considered the deadly sin of vanity. Regeneration via a dodgy haircut at the hands of Rose Tyler? Possible.
He squinted, bits of hair poking his eyes and tickling his nose. He thought he might sneeze. He could dimly make out Rose, her hands and the snap-snap-snap of the scissors she held.
Right before she’d started, she leaned down and whispered in his ear: “You trust me, don’t you, Doctor?”
“You wanna put those very, very sharp scissors somewhere a bit safer, Miss Tyler?” he said when she climbed up onto the jump seat, a knee on either side of him and a cloud of scratchy crinoline between them.
She twirled them like a gunslinger and dropped them unceremoniously to the floor.
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Goodbye, 1953,” she said, unzipping her jacket.
Her dress was slippery under his hands, her jacket stuck on one wrist, hanging down like the peel off a piece of fruit. One pink shoe dangled from her foot and he slowly drew a finger from the soft back of her knee down to her ankle, catching on the fishnet.
“Oh, not fair,” she said. She reached around to the nape of her neck with one hand and untied the pink ribbon. It slithered out of her grasp.
“Life isn’t fair,” he said, pulling pins out of her hair.
She leaned over him and smiled, sifting her fingers through his hair. “Sometimes it’s a little bit fair, yeah?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “A little bit.”
2. Ten, Donna: sassy (for meatfight)
Donna’s patience was wearing extremely thin. The Doctor was turning out to be the stupidest man alive. Alien alive. Human-type being alive. Whatever.
She tried again.
“I bump into you because I’m not looking. I spill my drink all over myself. You say?”
“So sorry! Can I buy you another?”
“You’re sitting at a table. I come up and tell you that’s my table. You say?”
“So sorry! Didn’t realize you were sitting here!”
He was relentlessly cheerful in his stupidity. Which made it worse. She rubbed her eyes.
“Hopeless. How have you not been killed in a knife fight?”
“Donna, how would saying something awful to someone-someone who presumably is in possession of a knife-prevent me from being killed in a knife fight? I’m quite certain, actually, that it would only increase the chances of an altercation involving knives occurring in the first place.”
“You need to get the upper hand. Make sure they know you’re someone to be reckoned with.”
“I am someone to be reckoned with!”
“You’re really very dim, aren’t you? Give me that.” She snatched the sonic screwdriver out of his hand, where he was twirling it like a majorette. “You’re like one of those freaky child geniuses who plays the cello and has a stamp collection and goes to university when he’s seven and has to have a booster seat to reach his desk and he knows what the square root of pi is and he did a heart transplant on a pig, but he doesn’t know how to order lunch at a restaurant or call someone on the telephone.”
“Well, okay, why do all of your examples seem to be happening in pubs? How often am I in a pub? I can’t even remember the last time I was in a pub.”
“Fine! Here we go. Busy car park. Christmas Eve. You’ve been driving around in circles for twenty minutes. Finally, there’s a spot! Right there. Perfect. You signal and everything. Suddenly, another car whips into the spot. What do you do?”
“I don’t have to park the TARDIS in a designated spot. So I don’t really use car parks.”
She made a strangled noise and punched him in the arm, hard.
“No! You get out of the car and you bang on their window until they’re too terrified to get out, so they just back out and drive away and you sarcastically yell ‘Happy Christmas!’ at them as they leave and you get the spot! Oh my GOD! Don’t aliens ever cut in queues or make rude alien hand gestures in traffic or dump their alien girlfriends over alien text message?”
“Donna, I’m delighted that you want to teach me how to verbally defend myself, but I think I do okay. I’ve made it through quite a number of years without needing to sass anyone at an advanced level.”
She tilted her head and made a sympathetic face, how-sad-it-is-that-you’re-so-un-self-aware. “I worry about you out there, Doctor. What if I’m in the loo or something and you run into trouble? Look at you. A stringbean. I mean, how much do you weigh soaking wet?”
“I’m rude all the time!” he said. “Queen Victoria banished me for getting too excited about a werewolf! I once asked a Symmplett female when she was due, when everyone knows that Symmplett males bear their offspring! If your mother ever slaps me, I’ll be three for three on being assaulted by mothers! Rude!”
“Thoughtlessly rude, Doctor, is a fair sight different than being pointedly cutting. Sassy. Ballsy.”
“I’m ballsy….enough.”
Donna stifled a laugh.
“Okay. Maybe we could try menacing silence instead. I’d’ve thought you’d excel at this, but maybe silence is worth a thousand words and all that. Though, I reckon your problem there is that as far as I can see, you’ve got three main faces: insane glee, insane insanity, small animal in the rain. All fairly useless in terms of sassing people, except for maybe insane insanity. Your Drowning Gigantic Spiders Face might be just the thing for someone who gets in the express at the supermarket with too many items and tells you that her five apples count as one item because they’re all apples. Pretend that just happened. What face would you make?”
The Doctor paused.
“Are the apples all in one bag?”
Donna stared at him, long and hard. Not quite a Drowning Gigantic Spiders Face, but menacing nonetheless.
“You’re on your own, Spaceman. I hope the sonic has a switchblade function.”
3. Martha
The Shakespeare Code
There were three possibilities, as far as Martha Jones could see.
Oh, God, she wished she had a pen. And some paper. If any situation had ever called for a list, then this was surely it.
But she didn’t, and that still left three possibilities.
Possibility one: she was mad. If someone had told her about anything she’d done in the past twenty-four hours, this would certainly have been her cursory diagnosis.
Possibility two: she was dreaming. Less likely, unless she had also been transported into a bad sitcom, which would’ve opened a whole new world of troubling possibilities.
Then, possibility three. She was-somehow, someway-in 1599.
It certainly smelled like 1599. She was fairly certain her subconscious could never have come up with that smell, mad or not. Hay, wet hay, who on earth had come up with that as an acceptable mattress filler?
And he was just lying there quietly, apparently thoroughly enjoying the small pieces of straw sticking into his ankles where sock and trouser met.
She didn’t think the Doctor was actually asleep, even if his eyes were closed and he was breathing steadily, his long fingers folded across his chest. He was probably thinking of his friend, his friend Rose, his friend who always knew the right thing to say, who made him get that gooey, far-away, injured look in his eyes. If they hadn’t been in-well, in 1599-she might’ve stormed off, slammed a door, told him what was what, suggested that bringing a woman somewhere (after kissing her, mind!) and then mooning over some other girl wasn’t exactly socially acceptable behavior. But she didn’t want to, you know, end up ditched, stuck in 1599. Buses didn’t run, she couldn’t grab a lift home with someone else. She really didn’t want to end up someone’s serving wench.
Okay, Martha, okay.
She flipped to a fresh page in her mental notepad.
What did she even know about the Doctor? She didn’t even know his name, for one. He was terrifically handsome, if a bit skinny, with some hair she seriously wanted to touch, and is that, Martha Jones, is that why you’ve ended up in Elizabethan England? Because of some sweet-talking bloke with some hair?
She tried breathing through her mouth. Oh, God. No. Because that meant that that smell was going into her mouth, which was a worse idea to contemplate than it going into her nose.
She hadn’t washed her face. She always washed her face. Always, because- Martha! You met Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. Surely you can go one night without washing your face, right? Right.
But the list! The list.
So, his name was the Doctor, and he was, apparently, a time-traveling alien, and he had, apparently, brought them to 1599 in his blue phone box (she mentally drew several large question marks behind that one on the list) that was bigger on the inside. Which was patently impossible.
Then again, education aside, she had to admit that she didn’t know how mobile phones worked, not exactly, or wireless internet, or anti-lock brakes, so perhaps she should be a little more open-minded about a blue box.
I am losing my mind, she thought.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye: long legs, brown hair, suit and tie.
One trip, she told herself. Just one trip.
1. Ten/Rose
The Idiot's Lantern
She circled him in a predatory way. It put him in the mind of a hawk and a mouse, an axe and a tree. She narrowed her eyes.
The shears were behind her on the jump seat. Just waiting, all silver and sharp.
She smoothed her skirt and folded her arms, leaning back against the console.
“It looks kind of like an animal. That’s on top of your head.”
“A wild animal? An untamed, wild, virile, top-of-the-food-chain-type animal?”
“An otter?” she said, tacking a disconcerting question mark to the end and uncrossing her arms to pull her fingers through his hair, standing it on end. She tilted her head, looking at him as if he were an armchair and she couldn’t decide if he’d look best next to the window or up against the wall.
“Sea or river?”
“Here. Look.” She spun him around. “It’s doing this weird thing, like you’ve got a tail going down the back of your head. And it’s shiny. Really, really shiny. Like one of those poor little oil tanker seals they have to scrub off with a toothbrush.”
“So which is it? A poor little oil tanker seal or the fabled sea-river otter?”
“What the hell did you put in here, Doctor?” She held her hands out to him. They looked slightly damp.
“What?”
“It’s sticky.” She opened and closed her hands like a small child who’d just finished a bowl of ice cream. “Sit.”
It sounded like snow against snow. Or like leaves on a sidewalk. A gentle sound, a pleasant sound. A sound that had poems written about it; a sound that inspired odes. It was terrifying. His hearts thrummed and he considered the deadly sin of vanity. Regeneration via a dodgy haircut at the hands of Rose Tyler? Possible.
He squinted, bits of hair poking his eyes and tickling his nose. He thought he might sneeze. He could dimly make out Rose, her hands and the snap-snap-snap of the scissors she held.
Right before she’d started, she leaned down and whispered in his ear: “You trust me, don’t you, Doctor?”
“You wanna put those very, very sharp scissors somewhere a bit safer, Miss Tyler?” he said when she climbed up onto the jump seat, a knee on either side of him and a cloud of scratchy crinoline between them.
She twirled them like a gunslinger and dropped them unceremoniously to the floor.
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Goodbye, 1953,” she said, unzipping her jacket.
Her dress was slippery under his hands, her jacket stuck on one wrist, hanging down like the peel off a piece of fruit. One pink shoe dangled from her foot and he slowly drew a finger from the soft back of her knee down to her ankle, catching on the fishnet.
“Oh, not fair,” she said. She reached around to the nape of her neck with one hand and untied the pink ribbon. It slithered out of her grasp.
“Life isn’t fair,” he said, pulling pins out of her hair.
She leaned over him and smiled, sifting her fingers through his hair. “Sometimes it’s a little bit fair, yeah?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “A little bit.”
2. Ten, Donna: sassy (for meatfight)
Donna’s patience was wearing extremely thin. The Doctor was turning out to be the stupidest man alive. Alien alive. Human-type being alive. Whatever.
She tried again.
“I bump into you because I’m not looking. I spill my drink all over myself. You say?”
“So sorry! Can I buy you another?”
“You’re sitting at a table. I come up and tell you that’s my table. You say?”
“So sorry! Didn’t realize you were sitting here!”
He was relentlessly cheerful in his stupidity. Which made it worse. She rubbed her eyes.
“Hopeless. How have you not been killed in a knife fight?”
“Donna, how would saying something awful to someone-someone who presumably is in possession of a knife-prevent me from being killed in a knife fight? I’m quite certain, actually, that it would only increase the chances of an altercation involving knives occurring in the first place.”
“You need to get the upper hand. Make sure they know you’re someone to be reckoned with.”
“I am someone to be reckoned with!”
“You’re really very dim, aren’t you? Give me that.” She snatched the sonic screwdriver out of his hand, where he was twirling it like a majorette. “You’re like one of those freaky child geniuses who plays the cello and has a stamp collection and goes to university when he’s seven and has to have a booster seat to reach his desk and he knows what the square root of pi is and he did a heart transplant on a pig, but he doesn’t know how to order lunch at a restaurant or call someone on the telephone.”
“Well, okay, why do all of your examples seem to be happening in pubs? How often am I in a pub? I can’t even remember the last time I was in a pub.”
“Fine! Here we go. Busy car park. Christmas Eve. You’ve been driving around in circles for twenty minutes. Finally, there’s a spot! Right there. Perfect. You signal and everything. Suddenly, another car whips into the spot. What do you do?”
“I don’t have to park the TARDIS in a designated spot. So I don’t really use car parks.”
She made a strangled noise and punched him in the arm, hard.
“No! You get out of the car and you bang on their window until they’re too terrified to get out, so they just back out and drive away and you sarcastically yell ‘Happy Christmas!’ at them as they leave and you get the spot! Oh my GOD! Don’t aliens ever cut in queues or make rude alien hand gestures in traffic or dump their alien girlfriends over alien text message?”
“Donna, I’m delighted that you want to teach me how to verbally defend myself, but I think I do okay. I’ve made it through quite a number of years without needing to sass anyone at an advanced level.”
She tilted her head and made a sympathetic face, how-sad-it-is-that-you’re-so-un-self-aware. “I worry about you out there, Doctor. What if I’m in the loo or something and you run into trouble? Look at you. A stringbean. I mean, how much do you weigh soaking wet?”
“I’m rude all the time!” he said. “Queen Victoria banished me for getting too excited about a werewolf! I once asked a Symmplett female when she was due, when everyone knows that Symmplett males bear their offspring! If your mother ever slaps me, I’ll be three for three on being assaulted by mothers! Rude!”
“Thoughtlessly rude, Doctor, is a fair sight different than being pointedly cutting. Sassy. Ballsy.”
“I’m ballsy….enough.”
Donna stifled a laugh.
“Okay. Maybe we could try menacing silence instead. I’d’ve thought you’d excel at this, but maybe silence is worth a thousand words and all that. Though, I reckon your problem there is that as far as I can see, you’ve got three main faces: insane glee, insane insanity, small animal in the rain. All fairly useless in terms of sassing people, except for maybe insane insanity. Your Drowning Gigantic Spiders Face might be just the thing for someone who gets in the express at the supermarket with too many items and tells you that her five apples count as one item because they’re all apples. Pretend that just happened. What face would you make?”
The Doctor paused.
“Are the apples all in one bag?”
Donna stared at him, long and hard. Not quite a Drowning Gigantic Spiders Face, but menacing nonetheless.
“You’re on your own, Spaceman. I hope the sonic has a switchblade function.”
3. Martha
The Shakespeare Code
There were three possibilities, as far as Martha Jones could see.
Oh, God, she wished she had a pen. And some paper. If any situation had ever called for a list, then this was surely it.
But she didn’t, and that still left three possibilities.
Possibility one: she was mad. If someone had told her about anything she’d done in the past twenty-four hours, this would certainly have been her cursory diagnosis.
Possibility two: she was dreaming. Less likely, unless she had also been transported into a bad sitcom, which would’ve opened a whole new world of troubling possibilities.
Then, possibility three. She was-somehow, someway-in 1599.
It certainly smelled like 1599. She was fairly certain her subconscious could never have come up with that smell, mad or not. Hay, wet hay, who on earth had come up with that as an acceptable mattress filler?
And he was just lying there quietly, apparently thoroughly enjoying the small pieces of straw sticking into his ankles where sock and trouser met.
She didn’t think the Doctor was actually asleep, even if his eyes were closed and he was breathing steadily, his long fingers folded across his chest. He was probably thinking of his friend, his friend Rose, his friend who always knew the right thing to say, who made him get that gooey, far-away, injured look in his eyes. If they hadn’t been in-well, in 1599-she might’ve stormed off, slammed a door, told him what was what, suggested that bringing a woman somewhere (after kissing her, mind!) and then mooning over some other girl wasn’t exactly socially acceptable behavior. But she didn’t want to, you know, end up ditched, stuck in 1599. Buses didn’t run, she couldn’t grab a lift home with someone else. She really didn’t want to end up someone’s serving wench.
Okay, Martha, okay.
She flipped to a fresh page in her mental notepad.
What did she even know about the Doctor? She didn’t even know his name, for one. He was terrifically handsome, if a bit skinny, with some hair she seriously wanted to touch, and is that, Martha Jones, is that why you’ve ended up in Elizabethan England? Because of some sweet-talking bloke with some hair?
She tried breathing through her mouth. Oh, God. No. Because that meant that that smell was going into her mouth, which was a worse idea to contemplate than it going into her nose.
She hadn’t washed her face. She always washed her face. Always, because- Martha! You met Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. Surely you can go one night without washing your face, right? Right.
But the list! The list.
So, his name was the Doctor, and he was, apparently, a time-traveling alien, and he had, apparently, brought them to 1599 in his blue phone box (she mentally drew several large question marks behind that one on the list) that was bigger on the inside. Which was patently impossible.
Then again, education aside, she had to admit that she didn’t know how mobile phones worked, not exactly, or wireless internet, or anti-lock brakes, so perhaps she should be a little more open-minded about a blue box.
I am losing my mind, she thought.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye: long legs, brown hair, suit and tie.
One trip, she told herself. Just one trip.