Entry tags:

story: tardis

Title: Truthiness And Relative Dimensions In Space: How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? (6/8)
Rating: PG (with ropes on)
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S4 is fair game.
Summary: Young Stephen is completely and totally fine (who wants to know?); and the Master is pronounced an it-getter.

The following chapters imply that the Master (like everyone else) has a thing for the Doctor; that Stephen (bless his subby little heart) has a thing for the Master; and that the Rani (being a sensible lady) is exasperated by the both of them.

If you liked the start of Romana'n'Dave, the complete series can now be found here, thanks to the amazing ksleet. (In which our own Buck Henry makes an appearance! Also, the Red Dwarf crew! Also, 1990!O'Reilly!)

Beta and Brit-picking by the indomitable stellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.


How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?
Part Six


Ahnooie-4: 3792.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. Stephen Colbert is 44. The Master is in the incarnation played by Anthony Ainley.

"That was . . . passable," said the Rani sternly when she had switched off the camera.

It was "the Rani", Stephen had learned, because she was yet another Time Lady, and "Rani" was the title she had chosen. He hadn't been brave enough yet to ask her if the word meant anything, or it if was just more nonsense like Romananconvenientruthdor.

"I suppose you can't help being smug," she continued. "You never could resist showing off in front of the Doctor."

The Master's fingers were tapping out their irritated beat from before (onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour), this time at the base of Stephen's neck, so he leaped to the Time Lord's defense: "He deserves to show off."

At least, that was what he tried to say. With the gag still in his mouth, the best he could manage was "Mmmrrumumumph."

"Almost forgot," said the Master. Slipping his fingers into the knot at the nape of Stephen's neck, he tugged, pulling Stephen's head back for a moment before the gag came loose. "Better?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you. I was just saying that you deserve to show off. And the Doctor needs to be put in his place once in a while."

"You see, Rani?" The Master's smirk was evident in his voice as he ruffled Stephen's hair again. (From almost anyone else, Stephen would have taken this gesture as an insult. From the Master, he had the sense that he was lucky to get it.) "This one understands."

"That's right," agreed Stephen. "I get it. We're it-getters, us two."

For the first time, the Rani addressed him directly. "And you! If you act half this smitten the next time we call the Doctor, you'll give the whole game away. Control yourself."

The ropes wrapped around him, which until then had been surprisingly comfortable, felt restrictive for the first time as Stephen squirmed under the Time Lady's gaze. "Yes, ma'am."


⇔

The Vortex.
The Doctor is in his tenth incarnation. Stephen Col-bert is 17. Jack Harkness has forgotten more memories than you've had time to form.

The first thing Stephen heard as he regained consciousness was the Doctor exclaiming, "Ah! He's waking up. Better put him down."

He opened his eyes to find himself flat on his back in a perfectly white room, with the Doctor and Jack leaning over him. Oh, no. He hadn't fainted, had he? What would Jack think of him? What would the Doctor think?

"I'm okay!" he exclaimed, sitting up so quickly that his vision went spotty. "I was just—relaxing. That's all."

The Doctor sat back on his heels and pulled off his black-framed glasses. "It's all right. I put you to sleep."

Stephen latched onto this new bit of information and switched tracks in a heartbeat. "What did you do that for? I was fine! Nothing I couldn't handle!"

"How do you feel?" asked Jack gently.

"Never better!" declared Stephen, raising his voice to demonstrate how good he felt. "Want me to prove it? We can go back. Right now. Let's do it."

"Can't," said the Doctor. "We've already been in that place and time. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect prevents our going back."

Stephen might have accused the Doctor of making words up, but he was too relieved to care. Something about that restaurant gave him . . . the creeps. Yes, that was it. The creeps. Not a terrifying sense of insignificance that made him want to scream until his lungs gave out just to prove that he still had a voice. And anyway, he wasn't thinking about it. He wasn't. He was thinking about . . .

"Why don't you go study your Delphon?" suggested the Doctor.

Delphon! Yes! Now there was a subject that would take all of Stephen's concentration. You can't panic when your mind is full of verb conjugations. "I'll do that!" he said brightly, feeling steadier already as he got to his feet. "Just you wait. I'll practically be a native speaker before you know it."

I'll be good enough. You'll see.


⇔

Ahnooie-4: 3792.

"Now hold down the red button. But make absolutely sure you don't push the blue button, or we'll have to start all over."

"The lights are still off, Doctor!" protested Sarah Jane. "How am I meant to tell?"

She and the Doctor had returned to the TARDIS in the hopes of using it to track down Stephen, but so far it was proving just as much of a challenge to track down the right controls.

"Here." The Doctor aimed the lone torch at her section of the console, nearly blinding her. "All set?"

"Give me a minute. My eyes need to adjust . . . All right, got it." As Sarah Jane leaned on the button, the beam of light moved away as quickly as it had come, leaving her totally in the dark except for the colored afterimages dancing on her retinas. "Can you at least tell me what you're doing?"

"Scanning for TARDISes. The Master ought to have one around here somewhere . . . Aha! Here—no, that's not the Master's. Must be Romana's . . . ."

"Didn't Romana leave already?"

"So she did. I wonder whose this is, then? And here's another! Dear me, this planet is absolutely crawling with Time Lords. I wonder if I can get any of them to identify themselves."

With that, he lapsed into silence, except for a few mutterings under his breath.

After a while, Sarah Jane prompted, "Did you figure out whose they were?"

"What? Oh, that. A while ago, yes."

"Well, don't leave me in the dark here, Doctor!" She paused. "No pun intended."

"None taken. One of the TARDISes is recorded as stolen by the Monk. He's another renegade I used to run into—haven't seen him for centuries. He won't be a problem, though, as he's got a police TARDIS locked onto him—owned by someone called the Ace, nobody I know but hopefully on top of his game. One isn't registered at all; what's more, it's young, as if somebody grew it independently and is taking it for its first test run. The Master wouldn't have the patience for that. No, he's likely in the TARDIS that belongs to the Rani—which I was in the process of remotely hacking when you interrupted."

"Sorry about that."

"Not to worry. Time Lords have this lovely ability called multitasking. Really comes in handy in situations like this. Ah! Here we are."

There was a triumphant sort of dinging noise, and the large screen on the console room wall lit up with a mosaic of smaller shots, each displaying scenes from the interior of a ship decorated in grey with, of all things, pink highlights.

"Quick, Sarah: do you see Stephen anywhere?"

Sarah Jane scanned the views. "There he is! Third from the left, in the bottom row."

The image promptly enlarged to fill the whole screen. "What luck!" exclaimed the Doctor. "They've left him in a room with a security camera and a speaker system. Probably didn't realize it was so easy to hack."

"Or it could be a trap."

"That too." The Doctor hesitated for a moment, then shook himself. "Only one way to find out! Patching in . . . disabling internal monitoring systems . . . rerouting the audio . . . Stephen? Stephen, can you hear me?"


⇔

At the sound of the voice, distorted but strangely familiar, Stephen looked up in confusion. "Conscience? Is that you?"

Not that he was feeling guilty, of course! Not at all! What would make him feel guilty? He was only doing what the Master said. And if this meant betraying the Doctor, well, the Doctor was a jerk. So there.

Trouble was, now that the Rani had gone off to work on some experiment and the Master was busy with part of the plan that he would probably explain to Stephen at some point, they had left Stephen alone in a bare room. And the blank grey walls and sparse grey furnishings only underscored how richly decorated his room, the one in the Doctor's TARDIS, had been. And that, in turn, made him remember how nice the Doctor could be . . . .

"Stephen, it's me," said the voice. It wasn't his conscience after all; it was the Doctor himself. "Are you all right? Have they hurt you?"

"I'm fine," snapped Stephen, then remembered he was supposed to be an unwilling captive. "So far. Wait, how are you talking to me?"

"Hacked the sound system in the Rani's TARDIS. We're seeing and hearing you through the camera in the room. Up and to the left. More left. That's it!"

Once he was facing in the direction the Doctor had aimed him at, Stephen automatically arranged himself to make sure the nondescript whorl in the molding caught his good side. Not that all of his sides weren't good, but it never hurt to take care.

"You're still On Notice," he couldn't help saying, once he knew where to aim his formidably arched eyebrows.

"Yes, yes, you mentioned. It's a good thing they untied you; that'll make this easier."

"Make what easier?"

"Getting you out, of course."

Stephen wished he had still been tied up. It would have given him an excuse to stay put. "Uh, the door's locked," he invented quickly.

"From the inside?"

"Uh—I mean—well, what if I run into the Master or the Rani in the hall?"

"They're both a fair distance from you right now. I can't think why the Rani's got her TARDIS so wired, but it's working in our favor. If they get too close, I can always fake the sound of an explosion nearby, throw them off the scent. But it'll still be best if you hurry."

Stephen took a breath to give another excuse, then realized his stock had run dry.

"Now, once you're out the door, you'll want to turn left and go straight down the hall about sixty feet—"

"I'm not going!"