Doctor Who and Deepdark part two
Author’s note: I claim no ownership of Doctor Who or its associated elements. Lock, stock and barrel owned by the BBC. This story is presented for fun and for free. No payment is needed but your time.
Previously in Deepdark, we learned that T’K, a reptilian alien who overtook a Middle East country and was overthrown by the Doctor in his third incarnation, is being held in Deepdark a secret maximum security prison for alien superfiends. The aliens are put to the task of fighting off alien invasions. One such alien has just handed himself in, a Professor McCoy. Barrington Jacques, the governor of the prison, has him vetted and then takes him to meet T’K, who takes McCoy for a tour of the prison. But before the tour is properly underway something manifests, something with a grudge against the Doctor…
Part Two:
It was at that moment that Bendigo Apollyon manifested in the corridor in front of them. Of medium height, but of abnormal girth, he had small piggy eyes and a sensuous mouth. T’K had found him a disagreeable man, portentous and self-important.
Apollyon had been a human (real name Benjamin Appleyard) who had been chosen by an other-dimensional entity called the Arrhythmic Absence as its servitor in this reality. It had rebuilt his human form so that it could house unholy fires and work counter to the flow of time. But it had not fully understood human beings, and the thing it created was neither human or sane.
(more…)
Doctor Who and Deepdark, Part One
Author’s note: Doctor Who is not mine to do with as I wish, the whole shebang is owned by the BBC, I only present the following story for the fun of it. As mentioned last week, this was written for a competition to write a story about how the Doctor changed my life. I got wrapped up in doing the antithesis of the obvious story, the Doctor making someone’s life better. In retrospect, this may be why I don’t win many competitions. I don’t think you’re meant to deconstruct the idea, I think you’re meant to do the thing they ask.
I had at the same time fallen in love with the idea of a retirement home for super-villains. And everybody was writing stuff about Guantanamo. This idea morphed into the situation below. In the original version that I submitted to Big Finish, T’K was a lot softer. He had come to accept his situation, although there was a hint that maybe this was hiding something darker.
The original version had no continuity references either. I extracted them, but I think that fitting them back in makes the story better.
Part One:
The desert. At night T’K remembered its heat, as he lay in his cot with the artificial breeze of the air conditioning passing over his scales. He had been happy there, in the ruins of some Earthling kingdom.
Amongst the warring factions of brothers and the subjugated sisters, he had offered them protection, sold them it, in return for their worship. The Earthlings had made him a god. They didn’t realise that he was a god in hiding. (That there was a sentence of death awaiting him in his home systems. For a small theft. It was such an unjust sentence that kept him from his home. Never to hatch a brood.)
So he had built a nest amongst the Earthlings, had taken the riches they willingly gave him. Had eaten the odd child to keep up appearances. Had mercilessly slaughtered those who opposed him.
Ace’s War Story
As promised, here is my first attempt at flash fiction. It’s a bit of Doctor Who fan fiction set between the old version that I grew up on and the new version that some other funny little kid is growing up on. It features the character of Ace, who was the final companion of the old show and is in many ways, the proto-Rose. Ace was a schoolgirl who had been swept away in a time storm to Iceworld, where she met up with the Sylvester McCoy version of the Doctor. More than any previous companion, the show revolved around Ace. The Doctor took her to visit her past and seemed to be working to fix the young woman, who was angry and unhappy. In the Curse of Fenric there is a moment where Ace tells the Doctor, “I’m not a little girl, anymore” and she means it.
It was the best of times. Doctor Who was showing levels of inventiveness and joy that it hadn’t in years, it was capturing the zeitgeist, but no one was watching it. So they stopped. So we didn’t get to see that the script editor planned for Ace to become a Time Lord. However, it’s such an affecting idea that I had to combine it with the unseen Time War that burned Gallifrey and hey ho! A bit of flash fiction!
Disclaimer: as you all should know, Doctor Who, the TARDIS and all related elements are owned wholly by the BBC. I have no rights to the characters or situations and present this story for entertainment value only.
On the planet Keriszhutra they sew people’s mouths shut with protein chains so that you couldn’t tell there had ever been an orifice there. It wasn’t a punishment, it was a reward. If you were devout enough you were allowed to inject food directly into your bloodstream, to be removed from the messy physical act. More devout still, they sealed up the other end and removed the larger part of the intestinal tract. Those who were the most zealous did not need eyes, did not need ears or noses or fingers or genitalia.
Dorothy McShane, neophyte Time Lord and ex-waitress also known as Ace, had none of her exits or entrances sealed and she had all the bits she had been born with. That was the way she liked it.