Knitting Is Not A Language (Except When It Is)
It started when he was hunting through a storage room for some spare zeus plugs he knew he’d left there some regenerations previously. At the back of a drawer filled with scraps of broken circuitry and other components he’d been saving with the intent of repairing them someday, he spotted something out of place, something that wasn’t made of various metals and plastics, something… fabric.
The Doctor had made many unorthodox repairs to his TARDIS over the years, but other than a few bits of string holding things together, he’d never made electrical components out of wool. Frowning, he reached into the drawer and pulled the thing out - assuming it would be a hat or glove that had found its way in there by mistake.
When he saw what it was, he almost dropped it in surprise.
It was, unmistakeably, a Dalek, and probably the least threatening Dalek he’d ever seen; it was about eight inches tall, very squashy, and made of soft grey and black wool. More than simply made of: it had been knitted, and with some considerable skill and attention to detail at that. The panels of the base were clearly in place, each of them with their rows of neat black hemispheres standing out sharply; the details of the upper body, the blinking lights on top, even the weapons and the eyestalk - all were carefully duplicated and represented in the medium of yarn.
Which meant that someone had, painstakingly, sat down and spent hours of their time and effort making a cuddly toy replica of one of the most deadly and vicious beings in the known universe.
The Doctor stared at the thing in bemusement, turning it over and over in his hands, blond hair falling into his eyes as he puzzled over the object. Who had made it - and how on earth had it ended up here?
*
One peculiar knitted object was enough for the Doctor to ignore, and ignore it he did, stuffing it back into the drawer where he’d found it and burying himself in the search for spare parts.
When he found a second, though, it became somewhat more difficult to pretend nothing odd was happening.
In that first moment when he’d spotted the Dalek, thinking it to be some lost glove, he’d passingly thought how lovely it would be to have some gloves that would go with his cricketing jumper and long coat. The TARDIS had a plentiful supply of accessories in the wardrobe - but they were all, due to an unfortunate but interesting accident with the reconfiguration of the internal corridors, stuffed into one large, messy pile.
He’d been looking through the items, deciding that if he did find something suitable he’d take his companions somewhere beautiful and wintry to try them out, and spotted something of an attractive beige-gold colour in the pile; without really thinking, he’d taken hold of it and pulled it out.
It hadn’t been a glove. It was - if possible - even odder than the Dalek; a humanoid shape, knitted entirely out of some odd wool that gave it a dappled effect in subtle oranges and golds. It had hair, made from short pieces of tightly-curled wool, and over-large eyes like humans’ depictions of little green men.
The Doctor sat down on the pile of knitwear, staring at the thing in dismay. If there were two such objects, then there was nothing preventing there from being three - or four, or more.
*
He started to spend free time hunting through little-used rooms of the TARDIS, trying to find more objects. He found what, after some consideration, he determined to be a Draconian noble lodged in some of the plumbing, and a knitted daffodil sitting innocently in a vase in an otherwise unadorned bedroom.
He certainly hadn’t made any of the objects or dotted them around his ship. There were three other people on board, and so far as he knew, knitting as a craft had never developed on either Alzarius or Traken.
That left Tegan, who he cornered while she was busily absorbed in a classic novel from some centuries in her future.
‘What is it?’ she asked, giving him an irritated look from her position curled on a chaise longue. ‘Can’t you see I’m reading?’
‘Just one quick question,’ he assured her, with a smile he hoped would placate her. He produced the daffodil. ‘Would you know anything about this?’
‘Well, it’s a daffodil,’ Tegan said, taking hold of it. ‘But I’m sure you already know that.’
‘I was wondering if you might have made it?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Or anything else…’
‘Knitting?’ Tegan asked, her tone almost a laugh. ‘That was my Aunt Vanessa’s hobby,’ she said, handing the flower back to the Doctor with a tone in her voice that suggested she was far beyond any hobby that her aunt had enjoyed.
The Doctor almost opened his mouth to ask if she could have made it before remembering that her Aunt Vanessa was dead, and closing it again. ‘Ah. Thank you. I’ll let you get back to your book. Although if you want a happy ending-’
‘Doctor,’ Tegan said, warningly.
‘Right. Sorry,’ he said, before exiting the room - no closer to solving the puzzle.
*
Over the next few weeks, he found another humanoid figure, oddly misshapen and ridged, and a careful replica of a Sea Devil, its white netted clothing carefully knitted out of some very fine thread. The Doctor was still at a loss for how to explain them.
He might never have realised if, at some point, it occurred to him that his companions might have found some additional objects. Adric said he hadn’t; Nyssa, when he enquired, merely looked puzzled.
‘I haven’t seen anything like that,’ she said. ‘The nearest thing I’ve found was a long string of yarn; I think it came from your scarf, when you were unravelling it after you regenerated…’
If she said anything else, he missed it, because he’d been hit by a blinding realisation of people he knew that could knit, and exactly what linked all the items he’d found together. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘They’re all connected - but what does it mean?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Nyssa asked.
The Doctor beamed at her. ‘Thank you, Nyssa, you’ve been very helpful,’ he said, before running off.
*
He still wasn’t sure what the items meant, but he knew where they came from, and so he decided to fashion a response in kind. Which, he realised - sitting in the TARDIS kitchen late at night, with a few skeins of wool and some shiny new needles - was easier said than done.
He was so involved in attempting to pick up a dropped stitch that he didn’t notice the door opening until Tegan said, ‘Doctor?’
He started, caught; he dropped his hands and the incriminating knitting below the surface of the table, but she had already seen; and at any rate, the balls of yarn and assorted paraphernalia were damning enough.
‘Were you knitting?’ she asked, seeming amused.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, bringing it out and returning to his attempt to pick up the stitch. ‘Or attempting to.’
‘Let me take a look,’ she said, stepping over and frowning at the tangle of wool in his hands. She took another look at the pattern, frowned even harder, then took the knitting out of his hands and proceeded to rip it off the needle and unravel it.
‘Tegan!’ the Doctor protested, but she didn’t stop.
‘Sorry. But you’d gone completely wrong. No way of saving it,’ she said. ‘At least you’d only just started.’
The Doctor, who’d been working on it for a solid hour, shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought this was your Aunt Vanessa’s hobby?’
‘It was,’ she said, beginning to cast on quickly and efficiently. ‘She taught me. And it looks like I’m going to have to teach you. Honestly, have you ever done this before? This is kind of advanced for a beginner. Most people do a scarf.’
‘I know,’ the Doctor said, looking down at the quick flash of the needles with a small smile. ‘When I was young, a friend of mine took it up. I was quite interested in Earth at the time - I think he did it to please me. Started off with a scarf, only he made it far too wide. And then he didn’t know how to bind off, so he simply… kept on going. Too proud to admit he couldn’t stop.’
‘Just like you’re too proud to admit you don’t have a clue how to do something?’ Tegan asked. ‘Men. You’re all alike. Here, I’ll start you off,’ she said, taking the needles and casting on for him. ‘What’s all this in aid of, anyway? Does it have something to do with that flower?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Someone’s trying to send me a message,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d reply.’
‘What sort of a message?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the Doctor said. ‘There’s a reason no culture has ever adopted knitting as a method of communication. I’m not entirely sure what the reply’s meant to say, actually.’
Tegan was examining the pattern. ‘This is meant to be…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, at least they’ll know who it’s from,’ she said, shrugging and handing him back the needles. ‘Right, the first row you just knit. I assume you’ve worked out how to do that…?’
*
It was some time after that when he ran into the sender of the messages, but when he did, he was prepared.
He managed to find a pretext and an opportunity to sneak into the Master’s TARDIS, and when he did, he left the somewhat wonky knitted celery propped proudly on the console. It had seemed the most apt reply, even if he wasn’t sure what it implied; after all, the Master had given him, in a roundabout way, the celery he wore on his lapel, the celery he’d got from Castrovalva.
As a method of communication, it was certainly worryingly imprecise - but then, communication with the Master had never been simple and rarely straightforward. With a last smile, the Doctor slipped out of the Master’s TARDIS - already awaiting a reply, though what form it might take he couldn’t guess.
The Doctor had made many unorthodox repairs to his TARDIS over the years, but other than a few bits of string holding things together, he’d never made electrical components out of wool. Frowning, he reached into the drawer and pulled the thing out - assuming it would be a hat or glove that had found its way in there by mistake.
When he saw what it was, he almost dropped it in surprise.
It was, unmistakeably, a Dalek, and probably the least threatening Dalek he’d ever seen; it was about eight inches tall, very squashy, and made of soft grey and black wool. More than simply made of: it had been knitted, and with some considerable skill and attention to detail at that. The panels of the base were clearly in place, each of them with their rows of neat black hemispheres standing out sharply; the details of the upper body, the blinking lights on top, even the weapons and the eyestalk - all were carefully duplicated and represented in the medium of yarn.
Which meant that someone had, painstakingly, sat down and spent hours of their time and effort making a cuddly toy replica of one of the most deadly and vicious beings in the known universe.
The Doctor stared at the thing in bemusement, turning it over and over in his hands, blond hair falling into his eyes as he puzzled over the object. Who had made it - and how on earth had it ended up here?
*
One peculiar knitted object was enough for the Doctor to ignore, and ignore it he did, stuffing it back into the drawer where he’d found it and burying himself in the search for spare parts.
When he found a second, though, it became somewhat more difficult to pretend nothing odd was happening.
In that first moment when he’d spotted the Dalek, thinking it to be some lost glove, he’d passingly thought how lovely it would be to have some gloves that would go with his cricketing jumper and long coat. The TARDIS had a plentiful supply of accessories in the wardrobe - but they were all, due to an unfortunate but interesting accident with the reconfiguration of the internal corridors, stuffed into one large, messy pile.
He’d been looking through the items, deciding that if he did find something suitable he’d take his companions somewhere beautiful and wintry to try them out, and spotted something of an attractive beige-gold colour in the pile; without really thinking, he’d taken hold of it and pulled it out.
It hadn’t been a glove. It was - if possible - even odder than the Dalek; a humanoid shape, knitted entirely out of some odd wool that gave it a dappled effect in subtle oranges and golds. It had hair, made from short pieces of tightly-curled wool, and over-large eyes like humans’ depictions of little green men.
The Doctor sat down on the pile of knitwear, staring at the thing in dismay. If there were two such objects, then there was nothing preventing there from being three - or four, or more.
*
He started to spend free time hunting through little-used rooms of the TARDIS, trying to find more objects. He found what, after some consideration, he determined to be a Draconian noble lodged in some of the plumbing, and a knitted daffodil sitting innocently in a vase in an otherwise unadorned bedroom.
He certainly hadn’t made any of the objects or dotted them around his ship. There were three other people on board, and so far as he knew, knitting as a craft had never developed on either Alzarius or Traken.
That left Tegan, who he cornered while she was busily absorbed in a classic novel from some centuries in her future.
‘What is it?’ she asked, giving him an irritated look from her position curled on a chaise longue. ‘Can’t you see I’m reading?’
‘Just one quick question,’ he assured her, with a smile he hoped would placate her. He produced the daffodil. ‘Would you know anything about this?’
‘Well, it’s a daffodil,’ Tegan said, taking hold of it. ‘But I’m sure you already know that.’
‘I was wondering if you might have made it?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Or anything else…’
‘Knitting?’ Tegan asked, her tone almost a laugh. ‘That was my Aunt Vanessa’s hobby,’ she said, handing the flower back to the Doctor with a tone in her voice that suggested she was far beyond any hobby that her aunt had enjoyed.
The Doctor almost opened his mouth to ask if she could have made it before remembering that her Aunt Vanessa was dead, and closing it again. ‘Ah. Thank you. I’ll let you get back to your book. Although if you want a happy ending-’
‘Doctor,’ Tegan said, warningly.
‘Right. Sorry,’ he said, before exiting the room - no closer to solving the puzzle.
*
Over the next few weeks, he found another humanoid figure, oddly misshapen and ridged, and a careful replica of a Sea Devil, its white netted clothing carefully knitted out of some very fine thread. The Doctor was still at a loss for how to explain them.
He might never have realised if, at some point, it occurred to him that his companions might have found some additional objects. Adric said he hadn’t; Nyssa, when he enquired, merely looked puzzled.
‘I haven’t seen anything like that,’ she said. ‘The nearest thing I’ve found was a long string of yarn; I think it came from your scarf, when you were unravelling it after you regenerated…’
If she said anything else, he missed it, because he’d been hit by a blinding realisation of people he knew that could knit, and exactly what linked all the items he’d found together. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘They’re all connected - but what does it mean?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Nyssa asked.
The Doctor beamed at her. ‘Thank you, Nyssa, you’ve been very helpful,’ he said, before running off.
*
He still wasn’t sure what the items meant, but he knew where they came from, and so he decided to fashion a response in kind. Which, he realised - sitting in the TARDIS kitchen late at night, with a few skeins of wool and some shiny new needles - was easier said than done.
He was so involved in attempting to pick up a dropped stitch that he didn’t notice the door opening until Tegan said, ‘Doctor?’
He started, caught; he dropped his hands and the incriminating knitting below the surface of the table, but she had already seen; and at any rate, the balls of yarn and assorted paraphernalia were damning enough.
‘Were you knitting?’ she asked, seeming amused.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, bringing it out and returning to his attempt to pick up the stitch. ‘Or attempting to.’
‘Let me take a look,’ she said, stepping over and frowning at the tangle of wool in his hands. She took another look at the pattern, frowned even harder, then took the knitting out of his hands and proceeded to rip it off the needle and unravel it.
‘Tegan!’ the Doctor protested, but she didn’t stop.
‘Sorry. But you’d gone completely wrong. No way of saving it,’ she said. ‘At least you’d only just started.’
The Doctor, who’d been working on it for a solid hour, shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought this was your Aunt Vanessa’s hobby?’
‘It was,’ she said, beginning to cast on quickly and efficiently. ‘She taught me. And it looks like I’m going to have to teach you. Honestly, have you ever done this before? This is kind of advanced for a beginner. Most people do a scarf.’
‘I know,’ the Doctor said, looking down at the quick flash of the needles with a small smile. ‘When I was young, a friend of mine took it up. I was quite interested in Earth at the time - I think he did it to please me. Started off with a scarf, only he made it far too wide. And then he didn’t know how to bind off, so he simply… kept on going. Too proud to admit he couldn’t stop.’
‘Just like you’re too proud to admit you don’t have a clue how to do something?’ Tegan asked. ‘Men. You’re all alike. Here, I’ll start you off,’ she said, taking the needles and casting on for him. ‘What’s all this in aid of, anyway? Does it have something to do with that flower?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Someone’s trying to send me a message,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d reply.’
‘What sort of a message?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the Doctor said. ‘There’s a reason no culture has ever adopted knitting as a method of communication. I’m not entirely sure what the reply’s meant to say, actually.’
Tegan was examining the pattern. ‘This is meant to be…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, at least they’ll know who it’s from,’ she said, shrugging and handing him back the needles. ‘Right, the first row you just knit. I assume you’ve worked out how to do that…?’
*
It was some time after that when he ran into the sender of the messages, but when he did, he was prepared.
He managed to find a pretext and an opportunity to sneak into the Master’s TARDIS, and when he did, he left the somewhat wonky knitted celery propped proudly on the console. It had seemed the most apt reply, even if he wasn’t sure what it implied; after all, the Master had given him, in a roundabout way, the celery he wore on his lapel, the celery he’d got from Castrovalva.
As a method of communication, it was certainly worryingly imprecise - but then, communication with the Master had never been simple and rarely straightforward. With a last smile, the Doctor slipped out of the Master’s TARDIS - already awaiting a reply, though what form it might take he couldn’t guess.