Doctor Who: Old Timer (2)
“Not exactly. I’m going to put you into a state of ‘fixed regeneration’. I’ve slowed the process down somewhat so I can stop it somewhere in the middle.” “Why…Why tamper with me like this?” “Perhaps I can extend a Time Lord’s life this way…perhaps indefinitely.” “Immortality…I’ve heard rubbish like that everywhere…” The Doctor screamed in pain. “Bloody load of rubbish!” The Rani went to the tray of instruments and injected a fluid into the patient’s neck. “Not even you…” Slowly, the Doctor’s eyes began to close. “How’s the patient?” asked Doris, unpacking several Safeway bags worth of shopping onto the kitchen table. She’d just come back from her trip and was practically exhausted. The Brigadier wouldn’t have gone with her even if they hadn’t had an ill man in their home – he loathed supermarkets. Full of indecision and whimpering children. Horrible. “Better I think. I just put him back to bed.” “He was up and about then?” Doris looked up at her husband with her eyes wide. The Brigadier sat on one of the chairs, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He’d offered to help unpack but she waved a hand at him to sit back down. She liked to know exactly where everything was – where it belonged. “Yes…babbling some nonsense or other.” He didn’t want to alarm her so he waved the details away. Anyway, she didn’t know anything about the dreaded cybermen, yeti or autons or anything of the sort. The official security act reached home as well. “He remembered me anyway which is good. Something bad must have happened to him…” “Must have. I remember when he was last here – he was such a bubbly person wasn’t he? Odd dress sense I remember…well he still has. What is it that he was wearing when you found him anyway?” “I don’t know. Some sort of special get-up it looked to me…but so much of the Doctor I don’t know…he’s a real mystery.” The Brigadier smiled. “Perhaps that’s why I respect him so much. Why I like him so much.” “You mean that.” “He’s an old friend…I’ve known him for years but I know hardly anything about him. It’s funny, but I don’t even know his real name.” “Here.” Doris held out a saucer with a blueberry muffin sitting on it. “Treat yourself.” The Brigadier smiled again, taking it, mouthing ‘my favourite’. “Name’s aren’t important – it’s what’s inside that counts.” “Whoever first said that knew what he was talking about.” It was almost two straight days after the Doctor was abducted that he next woke up. He now looked very different to his old self. He was taller, thinner, with a well etched face that one could almost call handsome. His hair was black and similar to that of Alfred when he was alive but distraught in style – the Rani wasn’t the sort of person who would comb it for him in his dazed state. The Rani was working close by next to the control console, punching in little pieces of information and coordinates, as the Doctor woke up. He was unable at that moment to talk properly. He moaned a few noises but he couldn’t quite form the words that he thought he wanted to say. The Rani heard the muffled noises and stopped her work, grinning with interest. She walked over to the still tied Time Lord and looked him in the face. The Doctor couldn’t quite open his eyes fully either so under sleepy eyelids he tried to keep focus on the blonde female in front of him. “Don’t worry Doctor, it’s almost over.” “C…Come on…,” the Doctor managed, slurring. “You’ve done your damage.” “Not quite. I need to see if my creation can breathe.” Her eyes lit up hungrily like a child wanting to play with her new toy. She turned to the table of instruments and picked up a small box of flashing lights and a controller. With no formal placing she slapped the box onto the Doctor’s forehead and immediately sprung upon the controller with glee. “What are you doing?” asked the defenceless Time Lord. He’d almost given up on all hope – certainly no one would rescue him and the Rani would never stop her work out of pity. This was it. “This box of tricks can warp memories, Doctor. I’m going to play around to see what I can create – to see how memories shape the person.” “You’re mad…” “Not mad Doctor…only curious. Let’s see what Doctor we get when I make you believe that all of your past victories through time and space were failures, eh? Contrary to what you believed, your companions were mostly all slaughtered…many innocents lives lost.” She twisted the buttons and levers on the controller frantically until she was satisfied. The Doctor’s face was being contorted this way and that, stretched and warped as he remembered all of his ugly past – the worlds he couldn’t defend…the people he couldn’t save. “Yes…yes…” Like Frankenstein with his Creature, she let the Doctor loose out of his bindings because of sheer ‘curiosity’. With his hands either side of his head, the Doctor took a few steps forward as he tried to control himself. He tore the box from his forehead and threw it to the floor, shattering it into pieces. The Rani’s eyes were wide open as she watched her creation take its first few steps. Hunched over, the Doctor looked vicious and lunged at the Rani, grasping for her neck. They both fell to the floor but the Doctor didn’t let go. Desperately he tried to suffocate his prison guard. All of the built up fear – the ability to twist a situation and outwit his opponent was all gone. All that was left was a furious want to get the job done by any means possible – murder seemed justified. The Rani’s mouth was wide open as she desperately tried to suck in some air. She fumbled with the Doctor’s hands around her neck but she couldn’t escape. With her last breath she tried to tear his face away but it was no use. The Doctor felt her go limp in his hands and he knelt beside her. His body was exhausted but he made it to his feet and wandered towards the police box in the corner of the console room. He had to escape in any way possible. Since arriving at the Brigadier’s residence, the Doctor had only made one visit to the TARDIS that still sat on the lawn. He went in wearing his long flowing robes and came out with an old grey jacket, wearing a blue cardigan with neat chinos and a straw hat. It had been two months. Slowly he made his way down the stairs from his room with a suitcase by his side, idly letting it bang against his left leg. The Brigadier stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the old timer. “Are you quite sure you want to do this Doctor? I mean, you’re welcome to stay here with us for longer if you’d like…” The Doctor walked past him and down the length of the corridor. The Brigadier obediently followed. The old UNIT officer was doing his best – hell, he didn’t want the Doctor to leave. There were so few people that came round the house to visit and there was no one like him. The house seemed at peace when he was there but deep down, the Brigadier knew all along that it would come down to this. The Doctor was a traveller. He would always be missed. “I must go Brigadier…I must. While I’m here I’m a danger to both you and Doris.” The Brigadier knew that it was best to give up – he was being foolish trying to make him stay. “If there’s so much danger, Doctor, why don’t you fly off in the TARDIS?” “I don’t feel strong enough to do anything of the sort…I’ve had a bad time of it lately. No, the little cottage should do fine. Here, keep this safe.” The Doctor opened up a pocket in his jacket and passed him a small card detailing an address. “This is where I’ll be. If anything happens…this is where I’ll be. Only in emergencies you realise.” “Scotland?” “I need some peace and quiet.” The Doctor continued with his case into the main hall and Doris stood by the porch with her hands in her pockets. “So you’re leaving us?” “Yes…I’m afraid so.” “It’s been…interesting.” The Doctor smiled and lifted his hand to shake hers. “Thank you for having me. Thank you both.” He cast a gloomy look at the Brigadier and opened the front door out onto the driveway. “Look after the TARDIS for me won’t you?” “The least we can do.” The stony path cackled under the Doctor’s feet as he approached the old yellow car that sat waiting patiently. “Good old Bessie.” With a wheeze he lifted himself into the driver’s seat and caught his bearings. The Brigadier and Doris stood by the door and watched him turn the ignition and drive off down the lane. “So he’s finally gone,” said Doris, moving back into the hallway. The Brigadier stood where he was, watching the Doctor drift away like the many other times he’d disappeared out of his life. “Yes.” Still hunched over, the Doctor pushed the two great doors inwards and stumbled into the console room of great pillars. As soon as he eyed the design, it changed, morphing into a setting much more sinister. The room was smaller and yet even gloomier than the foreboding columns. Tall candles stood close to the rough stone walls and the familiar console in the centre had a wooden finish. It looked as if the Doctor had just entered a crypt. Uncertain with his thoughts, he moved around the control console, staring at the different dials and switches and buttons with curiosity as if he was unsure as how to make it work. He checked the randomiser and began dematerialisation from the Rani’s TARDIS. It was a complicated procedure but at last, it seemed as if he knew what he was doing. The machine shook as if the coordinator was new to all this – as if machine and operator didn’t understand one another. With a snarl, the Doctor brought the glowing central column to a halt. Mission accomplished: he’d escaped from the Rani at last. He left the console room and found himself in the corridor. He began to sweat as he clutched his chest – something didn’t feel right. It was as if his hearts were being squeezed. The condition that the Rani had put him into was obviously unstable – he wondered how long it would last before regeneration was resumed. Perhaps it wouldn’t happen like the times before…perhaps he would just diminish. If only he’d built a new zero room – he’d had plenty of time of late. A good zero room would be just what he needed. With effort he crawled along the floor, grappling with the stone walls. At the end of the cold corridor he reached a door and pushed it open. The room seemed to help him – he straightened his back and was confronted by row after row of wardrobes stuffed with clothes. What would it be this time? On the first opportunity he grabbed a mirror and stared at himself for a long moment, prodding his fingers at the long face that stood with strong eyes. Was this really him? He pulled the closest wardrobe open and almost brought the door off of its hinges with the effort. With as much fury he tore the clothes that he wore off and threw them to the floor in an unrecognisable heap. The past was forgotten. The Doctor quickly changed into the clothes that he’d found and approved of – a dark grey suit with a black shirt that made him look almost like a vicar. Upon moving back into the console room, he looked at all of the switches and dials from a few feet back, wondering which one to press first. In a flurry of movement he navigated the TARDIS. The central column sprang to life again and the Doctor was back on his adventures. Then it stopped. He’d landed. After a few seconds thought he opened the large oak doors with a flick of a switch and moved out into the darkness. The TARDIS had materialized in a cavern. The walls were damp and in the distance the trickle of running water could faintly be heard. Then footsteps – the pace quickened and they were getting closer. Now two pairs of footsteps. A young child jumped out of the darkness of the rocky pathway, took one look at the Doctor and hid behind him. The Doctor shielded the boy as an adult appeared holding a laser pistol. Without attempting to understand what was going on, the Doctor moved against the adult in black plastic armour and caught the gun in his hand. He chopped at the neck, sending the stranger to the floor. “Run!” yelled the Doctor as he turned the pistol on the unconscious alien and fired, blasting a hole in his head. With a sharp tug, the Brigadier revved up the engine to the lawnmower and the familiar roar of the blades tore through the air. It had rained in the night. The once crisp now soggy grass glistened in the intermittent light of the sun that broke through the wispy yet unthreatening clouds in the sky. The robin was nowhere to be seen. Still around the edges of the garden where the tall trees stood, water fell from sopping leaves, overshadowing the blue box in the centre in the early brightness. With his goggles and earmuffs firmly in place, the Brigadier began his march, pushing the lawnmower down the lengths of garden. There was a chill in the air that made him wear his thick coat but the wellies were standard issue. The Doctor had been gone some three weeks but the Brigadier had the TARDIS in the centre of his garden to remind him that he was still close by. It was good to have the Doctor where you could see him, even though he could pull the odd magic trick here and there and fool you into thinking otherwise. You could watch him but still not know what he was up to. The mystery of the Time Lord continued. The Brigadier remembered the first time he entered that police box. He remembered his surprise… He hadn’t respected the Doctor as much then…he didn’t understand. Perhaps he still didn’t – he knew not of the workings of the space-time craft, or how it was bigger on the inside than the out. The trust that was created felt as if it should never have logically happened – the Brigadier always wanted answers, he needed to know. But for some reason, he didn’t need to know about the Doctor…he was a friend. Slamming the front of the mower into the TARDIS, he realised what a nuisance the box was being there. It completely destroyed his attempt at running neat parallel lines down the garden. He turned the mower off and looked up at the box, wondering. Taking off one of his gloves, he pressed his old hand against the wood, remembering the good old days – the days when he wasn’t sitting in his favourite armchair or mowing the lawn but commanding a UNIT taskforce instead and fighting alien beings. All of that was gone. Without a sound, a gigantic spacecraft chugged through the nothingness of space towards the small blue speck of a planet called Earth. Gigantic was certainly the word for it – floor after floor of control stations and corridors with a total population of thousands. Thousands and thousands of Daleks. Silently a message was sent through the vacuum and slammed straight into one of the many artificial satellites that buzzed around the Earth like bees around their hive. Having received the message, it bounced down to Earth and caught itself in a computer terminal manned by a hairy trainee. The crackle of the robotic voice made the trainee wake up from his nap and after a few moments of deliberation, he chose the correct switch to copy the message and sent it straight to HQ. This was sifted through many relevant (and irrelevant) personnel until it hit the desk of a bored UNIT official called Brigadier Banberra. The dark skinned lady with fuzzy black hair had just got back from a conference in Geneva and so she wasn’t in one of her infrequent good moods. “What’s this?” she demanded of the envelope entitled ‘Top Secret’ and sat down at her desk while slightly undoing her formal jacket. With her teeth flaring she tore the envelope open and out popped a letter and a CD. “How about some tea around here?” she called to one of the assistants buzzing around outside. No one replied. She switched her computer on and it started to load as she began to indulge in the letter. ‘Priority one’ she mouthed, wondering what it could be. Tapping away at the keyboard, she entered her password and opened up the CD, double clicking on the single file. The alien voice blared through the computer speakers and Banberra quickly turned the volume down. “HAND OVER THE DOCTOR OR THE EARTH SHALL BE DESTROYED. YOU HAVE TWO DAYS.” “The Doctor?...” Banberra rolled her eyes and called an assistant into the office. “Get me Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s home address. And where’s that tea?” The Doctor stood in the defendant box with his eyes open and there was a fire that burnt behind their glare. With his multi-coloured jacket and black striped yellow trousers he looked like a clown and nothing more, but this was a clown that was ready to burst in fury. “In all of my travellings across the universe I’ve battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilisation: decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Ha! Power-mad conspirators? Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen! They’re still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power – that’s what it takes to be really corrupt!” “Take it easy Doc,” said Mel from the side with her striking red hair crashing over a blue dress. “Doctor, these unseemly outbursts…” “’Unseemly outbursts’?!” roared the Doctor, cutting the disapproving Inquisitor off mid-sentence. “If I hadn’t visited ‘Ravalox’ as I then thought of it, the High Council would have kept this outrage carefully buried as presumably they had for several centuries.” “I must agree,” said the Master, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He spoke from the large screen at the far end of the courtroom, from inside the Matrix itself. “You have an endearing habit of blundering into these things Doctor and the High Council took full advantage of your blunder.” He was enjoying himself immensely, watching his arch-enemy, the Doctor, squirm throughout the proceedings as the evidence mounted against him. “Explain that,” demanded the lady Inquisitor in full official dress, staring with dark eyes up at the bearded man in black. “They made a deal with the Valyard or as I’ve always known him, the Doctor, to adjust the evidence. In return for which he was promised the remainder of the Doctor’s regenerations.” “This is clearly…” “Just a minute!” Silence. The Doctor held the courtroom under his demand as he stared over at the Valyard in the prosecution box. The long-faced Valyard stared back, his plans crumbling before his eyes. “Did you call him ‘the Doctor’?” “There is some evil in all of us Doctor, even you.” The Master was gorging himself on revealing this terrible truth. In the prosecution box sat the Doctor after the Rani’s tampering – the crippled brain. Only with the destruction of the Doctor’s morality and principles found in the earlier incarnation could the Valyard be free – only then could he progress onward without interruption. “The Valyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, heh, and I say you do not improve with age.” The Doctor’s voice turned almost to whisper in reply, unable for the moment to come to terms with this haunting information. “Madame, this revelation should halt this trial immediately. Surely even Gallifreyian law must acknowledge that the same person cannot be both prosecutor and defendant.” The eyes of the Doctor and the Valyard hadn’t left each other until now. “The single purpose of this trial,” replied the Inquisitor, angry at all of the interruptions, “is to determine the defendant’s guilt or otherwise on the basis of the evidence that has been presented.” The Valyard slipped out of his chair and quickly made his way round the edge of the court knowing that it was now too dangerous to stick around. “Anything else is for the moment irrelevant!” “What?!” screamed the Doctor as the Valyard slipped away behind him. “Doctor!” cried Mel, pointing at the Valyard as he made tracks out of the room. “Valyard!” shouted the Inquisitor, demanding his return. But the old Doctor was gone – disappeared through a gateway into the Matrix. Everything had gone wrong but he still had an ace up his sleeve. Brigadier Banberra wasn’t taking any chances. She knew how elusive the Doctor could be and the last thing she wanted was for him to slip through her fingers and leave the whole planet at risk. No, arriving at Lethbridge-Stewart’s home with an armed escort catching him unaware was a good idea. The Doctor wasn’t going to escape if that’s where he was hiding himself. It was only a gut feeling of course, but the old Brigadier having the old yellow car taken out of storage a couple of weeks back seemed like an odd thing to do unless the Doctor had indeed returned. At least the little green aliens in their spaceship seemed to think that he was back. What they wanted the Doctor for however, Banberra couldn’t guess. The escort turned into the stone pathway and the green 4x4s took the rough road with a smile – that was what they were built for. At the rear of the trail of vehicles there was a large truck full of soldiers, ready to be unleashed on anything that stood in their way. Of course, Banberra hadn’t contacted the old Brigadier beforehand – that would alert the Doctor. This had to be done as a quick snatch and grab. As they neared the large house at the end of the drive, Banberra took the car phone in her hand and pressed a button. “Rhino-alpha, stop and unload.” The convoy halted and the army-readiness showed off as within seconds, the armed soldiers were on their feet and moving into position. Banberra escaped from the jeep and pulled her gun from its holster. Fifteen to twenty UNIT personnel went round the back of the house while the Brigadier kicked the door in and confronted the old Brigadier at gunpoint in the hallway. “What?...” The Brigadier didn’t know what to make of it all. “Is the Doctor here? Speak!” “Banberra, I…” “Is he here?!” “No!”
Copyright © 2004 Jack M Brown |