TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME

Jun 22, 2006 14:21

TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME...
By Kim McCarthy, Atlanta Lea, Jill Stone, and whoever else was there (c. 1987)


PROLOGUE: Long, long ago, at a con far, far away - before the Intergalatic Interdimensional Bordello ever opened its doors and the boys got to play - the idea for this story was born. It was outlined in a hotel room, scribbled down and filed in ‘stories to be written’ - which was very nearly the end of it. Kim sent along the illustration shortly thereafter, but it’s only now that I’ve unearthed the original notes and finished them off.
This one’s for you, Kim, with my love and apologies for the delay! Hope you approve…

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER ONE

For once, the scenery on the TARDIS viewscreen didn’t look dangerous. Ian and Barbara surveyed it with interest (and some skepticism) as the Doctor checked his coordinates for one last time.

“Where are we?”

“Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet,” the Doctor announced. “I’ve wanted to see this place for a very long time. Heard about it from an old acquaintance of mine, a Federation starship captain with an overactive thyroid and delusions of grandeur, but with a reasonably good eye. I just had to find where I’d noted the coordinates in my 200-year diary.”

He swung open the door and marched triumphantly out into the balmy air. Ian and Barbara followed, with Susan behind. Several people appeared, natives come to greet them.

“Aaah,” sighed the old man, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Just what the Doctor ordered. Care to join me, Chesterton?”

Barbara took a closer look at the welcome committee - and announced, “He does and he dies.”

Ian looked like he thought it would be an interesting way to go. “Might be, er, educational, come to think of it.” His face wore a broad smile until a loud ahem from Barbara replaced it with a sheepish expression.

“Susan, you’ll stay aboard this time,” the Doctor decreed.

“But Grandfather! I’m not in my nineties any more. I’m quite old enough for-“

“When you reach 200. we’ll see about it. Until then, you go work on your temporal equations.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he repeated, “No.”

Susan subsided into resigned obedience. “Yes, Grandfather.” She turned to go back to her own room, but made sure her route gave her a chance for a quick squint at the coordinates. “Just wait till I get my own TARDIS…” trailed down the corridor.

“I’ll be back in, oh, a day or two,” the Doctor said, tugging down his waistcoat as he eyed the pretty brunette eyeing him with equal interest. “Sure you won’t join me, Ian?”

“Quite sure,” Barbara replied, keeping a grip on her fellow-teacher’s arm. “I have something he’s been wanting to see for a very long time…”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER TWO

In the console room of the TARDIS, the viewscreen showed a peaceful setting, and a familiar discussion was taking place.

“Are ye sure ye know where we’ve landed, Doctor?”

“Quite sure, Jamie.”

“And it’s no’ dangerous?”

“Of course not! Well, I suppose it could be…” the little Time Lord acknowledged parenthetically. “But I’m in the prime of life, you know - hearts quite sound and everything else more than fit to go. No, no, I’m sure it will be quite safe. Let’s be off, shall we?”

But his companion was staring wide-eyed at the small crowd that had gathered expectantly at the TARDIS doors.

“Och, look at the size of those things, Doctor!”

“Yes, they are big ones, aren’t they?” the Doctor agreed blissfully.

With some difficulty, the young Scotsman dragged his gaze away from the attributes in question. “But where are we, Doctor? Ye still haven’t explained.”

“This is a recreational planet, Jamie, where one goes to refresh one’s powers. One can indulge in any sensual experience that one might desire, with a band of houris whose imaginations are limited only by one’s own. Every position in the Kama Sutra…”

“What are ye haverin’ aboot, Doctor?”

The dreamy expression slid off the Doctor’s face, to be replace by one of guilty dismay. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… I had forgotten quite how young you are, my boy. But old enough to learn, wouldn’t you say?”

“To learn what? What’re we here for, Doctor?”

“We’re here for, er… relaxation. A night on the tiles. A bit of the old how’s-your-father.” His companion’s face was still blank. “A roll in the hay? Snogging? Making all the running? Home base? A good knees-up?” Still no comprehension. The desperate Doctor tried to reduce it to balder terms. “It’s, er, what a male being does with a female being, when they’ve, er, taken all their clothes off and, ummm, gotten into bed with each other…”

The penny finally dropped. “Och, ye mean fuckin’!” cried Jamie enthusiastically. “Well, if that’s it, what are we waitin’ for?”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER THREE

It was with some difficulty, there being a girl on either arm, that the Doctor swirled back his elegant cloak. “Come along, Brigadier!” he called to the rather bemused officer following him into the room. A line of Parisian-style showgirls kicked enthusiastically on the stage. More under-attired, over-abundant beauties offered trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Lethbridge-Stewart wondered for a moment if he was dreaming all this - it was a much more pleasant destination than he’d ever expected from that infernal traveling machine of the Doctor’s.

“There you go,” the Doctor handed his old friend a champagne glass and steered him towards a closer table. “This ought to do wonders for both of us after all that paperwork Downing Street demands. Beaucracry!” he snorted. “Reports in triplicate and top-secret mumbo-“

“Doctor!” shouted the Brigadier across this tirade, staring at a bearded visage in the front row. “Look who’s at this table!”

“Ah, yes. Shall we join him?”

“Join him? I’m jolly well going to get him in irons, Doctor.”

“Uh-uh. Mustn’t do that, Alastair - this is neutral territory, even for him.”

The fiendishly familiar smiled mocked the Brigadier. “That’s right, mushn’t do that, Alashtair,” greeted the somewhat sloshed scourge of the Universe. “My, my! What are you two do-good-niks doing here?”

“Getting away from bureaucrats,” said the Doctor genially. “And you?”

“Resting, Doctor, merely resting. It’s so exhausting to conquer the Universe,” sighed the Master. “It simply won’t shtay conquered.”

“Ha! Your plans never did work,” jeered his nemesis. “Do you remember the time back in the Academy when you tried to talk the President’s daughter into doing it in-“

“Doctor! Are you going to sit here and exchange reminisces with this… this…?”

“Now, now,” soothed the Doctor. “What you need, Alastair, is a girl or two hanging on your every word, and maybe one to hang on that stiff neck of yours, not to mention-“

“That will be quite enough, Doctor,” snapped the Brigadier, his moustache ends fairly quivering with indignation.

Two of the exotically-clad young women approached, various parts of their anatomies quivering for other reasons. “Ooh, I love a military man,” cooed one. “You can always tell by the voice!”

“Oh, is that a real moustache?” asked the other, investigating in a most distracting fashion.

“Completely authentic,” the Doctor murmured, beckoning to three other young ladies across the room. “There you go, Alastair. Just keep a stiff… upper lip.”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER FOUR

The noise of materialization died away in a last, wailing shudder, and Harry Sullivan cast a somewhat apprehensive look at his host. “It’s just for a few hours,” the Doctor said reassuringly, not that it reassured his returning companion.

“Last time you said that, we were gone for weeks,” Harry pointed out. Oh well, at least he’d left a note for the Brig this time - and routine got terribly routine, even at a post like UNIT. “The old girl’s going to kill me for going off without her,” he observed cheerfully. “That is, if the monsters don’t get us first.”

“No monsters,” the Doctor promised. “Not but what she might not kill you anyway, but that’s a risk we’ll just have… to… take… There!” he said triumphantly, looking up from the console.

The viewscreen brightened to display a desert moonscape.

“Oops,” muttered the Doctor. The familiar vworping racket enveloped them again as he concentrated on levers and buttons. “Off by just a digit…. There,” they materialized again, “Or maybe two…” The screen showed nothing but murky green, and a startled fish staring in at them. One more desperate leap and a few more buttons, and the Doctor flung the door open triumphantly.

“What did I tell you? Spot on!”

“Yes, Doctor,” Harry agreed, rolling his eyes and checking to make sure the aspirin bottle was still in his pocket. He’d come prepared this time. “Let’s have a look at this holiday planet of yours, shall we?”

He followed the jaunty scarf out the door - and stopped, flabbergasted.

“Oh, I say!”

“Oh, I’m sure you will, Harry - but maybe you’d better not say it to Sarah Jane.”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER FIVE

“So where are we this time, Doctor?” Tegan demanded as the shuddering stopped.

The Doctor peered uncertainly at the panel, pushing a flopping lock of blond hair out of his eyes. “I’m not quite sure,” he confessed. “The old girl picked this one by herself. Though the coordinates do seem familiar, somehow… Metebelis III? Casseopeia? I must have programmed them in, therefore I know I must have been here sometime… I think.”

He opened the doors anyway. His three companions crowded behind him to survey the placid scenery, suspiciously, with interest, and hungrily, as their various temperaments dictated.

“It looks very peaceful,” Nyssa observed hopefully.

But it didn’t stay that way. As the Doctor stepped out of the door, he was greeted by a swarm of females and melodic cries of “Doctor!” He was submerged in no time, to his perhaps no less than to his companions’ surprise.

“Well, at least this lot is friendly,” Adric commented.

“It must be a very warm climate,” Nyssa innocently observed of the natives’ semi-dishabille. “Should we go change into something cooler, Tegan?”

“Not bloody likely,” snapped the Australian. “Doctor, who are these girls - and how come they all know you?”

Bedizened by several pairs of affectionate arms, the Doctor could only manage a shit-eating grin. “Er, umm… Well, it’s… Or rather, it’s more like…. Ulp.”

“It’s a bleedin’ cathouse, that’s what it is! Adric, you get back here!” Tegan collared the reluctant Alzarian, who was just starting to get interested in this latest landing site.

“What’s a - oh,” said Nyssa, suddenly realizing how friendly the greeters were getting with the Time Lord. “Doctor!” she exclaimed in stern reproof.

His instincts for self-preservation not being so far gone as his memory, the Doctor disentangled himself from the Welcome Wagon. “I, er, think I had better go, girls.”

A chorus of pouts and protests swamped him. He wavered a moment, cast a glance over his shoulder and winced under twin glares.

“Later, girls,” he promised sotto voce as he did a jackrabbit imitation back through the TARDIS doors. “Much later…”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
CHAPTER SIX

The familiar blue shape shimmered into view, alerting everyone within earshot of its arrival.

As the door swung open, the denizens gathered expectantly, to see a tall, curly-haired man stepping out into sunshine that became blinding as it reflected off of his clothes.

“But Melanie,” he said over his shoulder, “You said I needed a workout…”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

TO BE CONTINUED…

doctor who

Previous post Next post
Up