(Doctor Who/Community) Vacation for wnnb_darklord
Title: Vacation
Author: virtual-toast
Fandoms: Doctor Who/Community
Characters 10; Annie, Jeff, Dean Pelton, Troy, Shirley, Abed
Pairings: N/A
Rating: PG
Word count: ~1750
Spoilers: Up to Community 3x17, Doctor Who any time vaguely before the S4 finale
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Community belong to their respective creators
A/N: Merry Xover Exchange, wnnb_darklord! Hope you like it. You had so many amazing prompts it was incredibly hard to decide on one to write on, but I really enjoyed writing this! All comments and constructive criticism are welcome. Also thank you to my wonderful beta B.
Summary: 10 imposes a vacation on himself... that involves teaching.
It was a warm, sunny day in Greendale, Colorado; the first one in a while, signalling that the lingering chill of winter was finally relenting to the second half of spring. Flip flops and shorts were starting to emerge, along with the increasing presence of people outside, relishing the sunlight. One such person was the Doctor, who stepped nonchalantly out of the mouth of an alleyway where he had safely parked his trusty TARDIS.
He smiled at his surroundings, enjoying what to an ordinary human being would be a perfectly normal day in late April. To him, however, it was freedom. The Doctor had decided to enact a self-imposed vacation; given all of the current stresses of his profession - could he call it a profession? - he’d decided he needed a break before the endless rollercoaster that was his life drove him crazy.
Well, crazier than usual.
He felt the tip of his nose begin to sting a little in the bright sunlight so, leaving his trench coat in the TARDIS, the Doctor stepped casually onto the sidewalk and made his way down the street. He’d already decided what he was going to do with his vacation. It would involve history, science, mathematics, engaging with a plethora of different humans both socially and academically, and above all, the excitement of education. The Doctor loved teaching humans new things and watching their faces light up when they discovered the impossible. Since his usual method of teaching was a little stressful for the moment, he’d chosen to insert himself as a Professor at a local Community College.
Why Greendale Community College? He’d asked himself the same thing while fiddling with the TARDIS’ control panel. It was something about the culture of the school itself; Greendale Community College and Greendale County were like apples and pears. While Greendale was generally a sleepy place where even speeding fines were a rarity, the College was like a magnet for all things insane. It was as though the entire place’s creative, paradoxical and downright ridiculous energies had been focussed in on this institution in order to spare the rest of the world. While none of the school’s shenanigans were harmful, the Doctor had performed a sweep and even detected hints of possible space-time anomalies related to the College that could not be ignored.
Frankly, the place was fascinating, and he had to see it for himself.
Lost in his thoughts, the Doctor had swiftly travelled three blocks from where he left the TARDIS and found himself standing adjacent to the entrance of Greendale’s main office. He looked up, taking in the small details; the second ‘e’ in the school’s name was hanging crooked, one of the hedges had been hacked clean in half and a hairy teenager wearing nothing but a pair of jeans seemed to be asleep in it. Right next to the hedge was a flagpole proudly bearing the school’s pink and blue flag.
“Ah, the crossroads of knowledge,” the Doctor nodded. “I like it.” He stopped for a further moment to admire a life-size bronze statue labelled “Luis Guzmán”, and remembered how much he enjoyed Boogie Nights.
Proceeding through the front doors, the Doctor smiled at everyone who passed and received nothing but a grunt in return from one particularly surly-looking man. The Doctor never understood humans’ lacklustre approach to education. Finally reaching the administration office, the Doctor leant an elbow on the desk and smiled again, this time at the office clerk. She turned to him with a kind, yet bland, expression, and asked what he wanted.
Lifting up his psychic paper as his credentials, the Doctor replied, “Oh, I’m the, uh, substitute Professor for-”
The woman cut him off. “Oh, thank God you’re here! We were really getting desperate for stand-ins this time. The Dean wants to speak to you before you start your classes for the day.”
Before he could reply, she walked over and stuck her head through a rickety wooden door. The Doctor heard an excited “oh!” before the woman was followed back to the desk by a bald man in a shirt and tie.
“You must be the substitute for today!” The Dean held up his hand and the Doctor shook it. “It’s great to meet you. I’m Dean Pelton, but you can just call me Craig. I’m so thankful you could come, we’re really having trouble getting people who want to teach “The World as We Know It”!”
“That… that’s the name of the class?” The Doctor was perplexed.
“Of course, isn’t that what you’ve come here to teach?” Craig chuckled, touching the Doctor’s elbow
affectionately.
“Oh, yes, of course,” the Doctor rallied, “it’s just that at my last school they just… called it History.”
“Well it’s a little more than just History at this school. In fact, it’s more just basic general knowledge of any topic you can think of, but you’d be surprised how much that knowledge is lacking in students these days!” Craig chuckled awkwardly again before turning the Doctor towards the door. “Well, it’s almost time for your first class, so you’d better get your tall and handsome British self over to the Humanities building. You’re in room 2A, okay? Good luck!”
As Dean Pelton waved him goodbye, the Doctor nodded and began to walk in the direction indicated, taking a few moments to process all of this new information in his head. He heard the Dean call out something about not letting Garrett eat the goldfish before he rounded the corner and stepped out onto the quad.
Picking his way through hurrying, book-laden students and a flurry of airborne hacky sacks, the Doctor made his way deftly across the quad and into the Humanities building. Turning down the corridor in search of room 2A, the Doctor’s curiosity and inherent excitement increased as he read the placard on each door he passed. In addition to the normal subjects, Greendale Community College apparently taught classes on such things as “Sarcasm 101”, “The Dichotomy of Bikini Bottom”, “Advanced Sheet-Folding” and “Ladders”. The Doctor chuckled at the absurdity of it all as he finally found 2A (with “The World as We Know It” stuck underneath) and went inside, where the students were already assembled.
They didn’t seem to notice him enter, so the Doctor quietly stepped up to the desk at the front of the room and scanned his eyes across it. Someone had laid out all of the appropriate materials for the day’s lessons; numerous textbooks and notebooks opened to relevant pages. Flicking through a few of them, it only took the Doctor a couple of seconds of reading page headings such as “The Great Wall of China” and “Ancient Egypt” before he stuck out his tongue in disgust and swept the materials off the desk altogether, then seated himself where the books had been.
This action finally caught the attention of the class, who mostly fell silent and turned to face the front. They observed the Doctor sitting there swinging his plimsoll-swathed feet and with a wide grin planted firmly on his face. Most of the students wrinkled up their noses in apparent distaste.
“This isn’t gonna be another Whitman, is it?” the Doctor heard one student murmur.
A petite brunette at the front piped up. “Excuse me, but who are you?”
“I’m your substitute Professor for the day!” the Doctor proclaimed excitedly. “Although you can call me Doctor.”
“A Doctor of what, exactly?” the brunette continued.
“Oh, nothing specific. Just ‘Doctor’.”
“Then if you’re teaching us, why did you push the books off the desk?”
“We don’t need them. Or, more specifically, I don’t need them.”
“Then how are you going to teach us on the appropriate syllabus?”
The Doctor looked at the girl thoughtfully; she was more interested in education than almost anyone he’d ever met in a school. She also seemed to be getting slightly hysterical at the concept of not being taught something. “What’s your name?”
“Annie.”
“Annie. And you’d like to learn something today, would you, Annie?”
“Yes, I would!” she said proudly, sitting up straighter. The rest of the class groaned.
“What? What’s wrong with learning?” the Doctor asked the class as a whole, his arms spread wide.
“This class is boring,” a boy mumbled. His skinny friend next to him nodded as the class groaned again in agreement.
“Look, sir,” a handsome, thirty-something man in the front row raised his voice. “To be totally honest with you, most of us are only taking this piece of crap class as an easy credit and to keep our schedules synched up. We never learn anything in this class because we already know all of the horrifically basic knowledge that is written in these stupid fifty-dollar books.” He pushed his textbook off the table for effect. “If this class wasn’t a guaranteed A, then I’d be in Physical Education right now.”
“And he doesn’t even like those PE shorts,” a large woman added from the row behind, as if it supported the man’s argument.
The Doctor sighed. “Okay, look, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. I’m the Doctor, and whether you like it or not, I’m here to teach you something today. That might not sound exciting to you lot,” the class grumbled a third time, “but that’s something we can change. Using the feedback I have just received from…”
“Jeff.”
“Troy.”
“Shirley.”
“…Jeff, Troy, Shirley and Annie, we can MAKE this a fun class. And I guarantee you that I will teach you something you didn’t know before.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” said Troy.
“It might be. But I will take it as a personal offence if I don’t blow your collective minds by the end of today, so let’s get started!”
A man with a top hat and large, star-shaped sideburns stood, sighing, and made his way towards the door.
“This blows, man, I’m outta here.”
As the man reached for the handle, the Doctor withdrew his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the door, its familiar buzz filling the room. The latch inside the door’s lock instantly flicked closed and the sideburns man withdrew from the handle as though it were red-hot. The rest of the class gaped in shock.
Placing the screwdriver elegantly back in the breast pocket of his pinstripe suit, the Doctor grinned around at the class once more.
“Now. Who’s ever heard of Raxacoricofallapatorius?”
-END-
Prompt: Doctor Who/Community - After everything that's happened, Ten takes a bit of a break by being a professor at Greendale.
Author: virtual-toast
Fandoms: Doctor Who/Community
Characters 10; Annie, Jeff, Dean Pelton, Troy, Shirley, Abed
Pairings: N/A
Rating: PG
Word count: ~1750
Spoilers: Up to Community 3x17, Doctor Who any time vaguely before the S4 finale
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Community belong to their respective creators
A/N: Merry Xover Exchange, wnnb_darklord! Hope you like it. You had so many amazing prompts it was incredibly hard to decide on one to write on, but I really enjoyed writing this! All comments and constructive criticism are welcome. Also thank you to my wonderful beta B.
Summary: 10 imposes a vacation on himself... that involves teaching.
It was a warm, sunny day in Greendale, Colorado; the first one in a while, signalling that the lingering chill of winter was finally relenting to the second half of spring. Flip flops and shorts were starting to emerge, along with the increasing presence of people outside, relishing the sunlight. One such person was the Doctor, who stepped nonchalantly out of the mouth of an alleyway where he had safely parked his trusty TARDIS.
He smiled at his surroundings, enjoying what to an ordinary human being would be a perfectly normal day in late April. To him, however, it was freedom. The Doctor had decided to enact a self-imposed vacation; given all of the current stresses of his profession - could he call it a profession? - he’d decided he needed a break before the endless rollercoaster that was his life drove him crazy.
Well, crazier than usual.
He felt the tip of his nose begin to sting a little in the bright sunlight so, leaving his trench coat in the TARDIS, the Doctor stepped casually onto the sidewalk and made his way down the street. He’d already decided what he was going to do with his vacation. It would involve history, science, mathematics, engaging with a plethora of different humans both socially and academically, and above all, the excitement of education. The Doctor loved teaching humans new things and watching their faces light up when they discovered the impossible. Since his usual method of teaching was a little stressful for the moment, he’d chosen to insert himself as a Professor at a local Community College.
Why Greendale Community College? He’d asked himself the same thing while fiddling with the TARDIS’ control panel. It was something about the culture of the school itself; Greendale Community College and Greendale County were like apples and pears. While Greendale was generally a sleepy place where even speeding fines were a rarity, the College was like a magnet for all things insane. It was as though the entire place’s creative, paradoxical and downright ridiculous energies had been focussed in on this institution in order to spare the rest of the world. While none of the school’s shenanigans were harmful, the Doctor had performed a sweep and even detected hints of possible space-time anomalies related to the College that could not be ignored.
Frankly, the place was fascinating, and he had to see it for himself.
Lost in his thoughts, the Doctor had swiftly travelled three blocks from where he left the TARDIS and found himself standing adjacent to the entrance of Greendale’s main office. He looked up, taking in the small details; the second ‘e’ in the school’s name was hanging crooked, one of the hedges had been hacked clean in half and a hairy teenager wearing nothing but a pair of jeans seemed to be asleep in it. Right next to the hedge was a flagpole proudly bearing the school’s pink and blue flag.
“Ah, the crossroads of knowledge,” the Doctor nodded. “I like it.” He stopped for a further moment to admire a life-size bronze statue labelled “Luis Guzmán”, and remembered how much he enjoyed Boogie Nights.
Proceeding through the front doors, the Doctor smiled at everyone who passed and received nothing but a grunt in return from one particularly surly-looking man. The Doctor never understood humans’ lacklustre approach to education. Finally reaching the administration office, the Doctor leant an elbow on the desk and smiled again, this time at the office clerk. She turned to him with a kind, yet bland, expression, and asked what he wanted.
Lifting up his psychic paper as his credentials, the Doctor replied, “Oh, I’m the, uh, substitute Professor for-”
The woman cut him off. “Oh, thank God you’re here! We were really getting desperate for stand-ins this time. The Dean wants to speak to you before you start your classes for the day.”
Before he could reply, she walked over and stuck her head through a rickety wooden door. The Doctor heard an excited “oh!” before the woman was followed back to the desk by a bald man in a shirt and tie.
“You must be the substitute for today!” The Dean held up his hand and the Doctor shook it. “It’s great to meet you. I’m Dean Pelton, but you can just call me Craig. I’m so thankful you could come, we’re really having trouble getting people who want to teach “The World as We Know It”!”
“That… that’s the name of the class?” The Doctor was perplexed.
“Of course, isn’t that what you’ve come here to teach?” Craig chuckled, touching the Doctor’s elbow
affectionately.
“Oh, yes, of course,” the Doctor rallied, “it’s just that at my last school they just… called it History.”
“Well it’s a little more than just History at this school. In fact, it’s more just basic general knowledge of any topic you can think of, but you’d be surprised how much that knowledge is lacking in students these days!” Craig chuckled awkwardly again before turning the Doctor towards the door. “Well, it’s almost time for your first class, so you’d better get your tall and handsome British self over to the Humanities building. You’re in room 2A, okay? Good luck!”
As Dean Pelton waved him goodbye, the Doctor nodded and began to walk in the direction indicated, taking a few moments to process all of this new information in his head. He heard the Dean call out something about not letting Garrett eat the goldfish before he rounded the corner and stepped out onto the quad.
Picking his way through hurrying, book-laden students and a flurry of airborne hacky sacks, the Doctor made his way deftly across the quad and into the Humanities building. Turning down the corridor in search of room 2A, the Doctor’s curiosity and inherent excitement increased as he read the placard on each door he passed. In addition to the normal subjects, Greendale Community College apparently taught classes on such things as “Sarcasm 101”, “The Dichotomy of Bikini Bottom”, “Advanced Sheet-Folding” and “Ladders”. The Doctor chuckled at the absurdity of it all as he finally found 2A (with “The World as We Know It” stuck underneath) and went inside, where the students were already assembled.
They didn’t seem to notice him enter, so the Doctor quietly stepped up to the desk at the front of the room and scanned his eyes across it. Someone had laid out all of the appropriate materials for the day’s lessons; numerous textbooks and notebooks opened to relevant pages. Flicking through a few of them, it only took the Doctor a couple of seconds of reading page headings such as “The Great Wall of China” and “Ancient Egypt” before he stuck out his tongue in disgust and swept the materials off the desk altogether, then seated himself where the books had been.
This action finally caught the attention of the class, who mostly fell silent and turned to face the front. They observed the Doctor sitting there swinging his plimsoll-swathed feet and with a wide grin planted firmly on his face. Most of the students wrinkled up their noses in apparent distaste.
“This isn’t gonna be another Whitman, is it?” the Doctor heard one student murmur.
A petite brunette at the front piped up. “Excuse me, but who are you?”
“I’m your substitute Professor for the day!” the Doctor proclaimed excitedly. “Although you can call me Doctor.”
“A Doctor of what, exactly?” the brunette continued.
“Oh, nothing specific. Just ‘Doctor’.”
“Then if you’re teaching us, why did you push the books off the desk?”
“We don’t need them. Or, more specifically, I don’t need them.”
“Then how are you going to teach us on the appropriate syllabus?”
The Doctor looked at the girl thoughtfully; she was more interested in education than almost anyone he’d ever met in a school. She also seemed to be getting slightly hysterical at the concept of not being taught something. “What’s your name?”
“Annie.”
“Annie. And you’d like to learn something today, would you, Annie?”
“Yes, I would!” she said proudly, sitting up straighter. The rest of the class groaned.
“What? What’s wrong with learning?” the Doctor asked the class as a whole, his arms spread wide.
“This class is boring,” a boy mumbled. His skinny friend next to him nodded as the class groaned again in agreement.
“Look, sir,” a handsome, thirty-something man in the front row raised his voice. “To be totally honest with you, most of us are only taking this piece of crap class as an easy credit and to keep our schedules synched up. We never learn anything in this class because we already know all of the horrifically basic knowledge that is written in these stupid fifty-dollar books.” He pushed his textbook off the table for effect. “If this class wasn’t a guaranteed A, then I’d be in Physical Education right now.”
“And he doesn’t even like those PE shorts,” a large woman added from the row behind, as if it supported the man’s argument.
The Doctor sighed. “Okay, look, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. I’m the Doctor, and whether you like it or not, I’m here to teach you something today. That might not sound exciting to you lot,” the class grumbled a third time, “but that’s something we can change. Using the feedback I have just received from…”
“Jeff.”
“Troy.”
“Shirley.”
“…Jeff, Troy, Shirley and Annie, we can MAKE this a fun class. And I guarantee you that I will teach you something you didn’t know before.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” said Troy.
“It might be. But I will take it as a personal offence if I don’t blow your collective minds by the end of today, so let’s get started!”
A man with a top hat and large, star-shaped sideburns stood, sighing, and made his way towards the door.
“This blows, man, I’m outta here.”
As the man reached for the handle, the Doctor withdrew his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the door, its familiar buzz filling the room. The latch inside the door’s lock instantly flicked closed and the sideburns man withdrew from the handle as though it were red-hot. The rest of the class gaped in shock.
Placing the screwdriver elegantly back in the breast pocket of his pinstripe suit, the Doctor grinned around at the class once more.
“Now. Who’s ever heard of Raxacoricofallapatorius?”
-END-
Prompt: Doctor Who/Community - After everything that's happened, Ten takes a bit of a break by being a professor at Greendale.