Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2008-09-01 12:07 am
ptahrrific) wrote2008-09-01 12:07 am
Entry tags:
Fake News/Doctor Who: How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? 2/8
Title: Truthiness And Relative Dimensions In Space: How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? (2/8)
Rating: PG
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S4 is fair game.
Summary: Young Stephen makes a serious bid for the Doctor's attention. Adult Stephen, in the midst of a group including two Time Lords and three companions from five different times, realizes why his bids didn't work.
The "late-night TV personality catches a ride on a TARDIS and has wacky adventures" plot is Older Than You Think. It's older than this community. It's older than The Daily Show. For some readers of this story, it's older than you.
Which is why this serial is full of shoutouts to Romana 'n Dave.
Table of contents, and footnotes, here.
How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?
Part Two
The Vortex.
The Doctor is in his tenth incarnation. Stephen Col-bert is 17.
Alone in his room on the TARDIS, safe behind a closed and locked door, Stephen was doing the unthinkable.
He was poring over a book.
Over the course of averting a few timeline-destroying paradoxes together, Stephen had kept up his efforts to win the Doctor's approval. The Doctor rarely addressed him directly, and once in a while Stephen would catch the Time Lord frowning at him, a strangely dark look in his eyes, when he thought Stephen wasn't looking.
Still, he had been more prone to smiling in Stephen's presence since their first mad dash from danger. The fact that Stephen hadn't made any progress since only encouraged him to redouble his efforts.
Which was why, dictionary in one hand and mirror in the other, he was practicing his Delphon.
Stephen didn't know why the Doctor wanted him to learn Delphon. (He assumed this was what the Doctor wanted, or why would the dictionary be in his room in the first place?) It certainly wasn't coming easily. The human body was simply not designed to express all the subtleties of a language based on eyebrow movements.
But then, Stephen had exceptionally talented eyebrows.
⇔
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Stephen Colbert is 44. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. David Letterman is 43. Romana is in her second known incarnation.
"David Letterman? Are you a Time Lord?"
Letterman—it was definitely him, no question about it, although he looked at least ten years younger than the one in Stephen's era—shook his head. "Nope! You want the Time-babe? She went off to buy some time-travel type components, said I couldn't be trusted with anything more technically advanced than a screwdriver, and told me to stick around here. Women and their shopping! Say, how did you know my name? Are you a fan?"
"Peer," corrected Stephen peevishly. "I'm a peer. At least, I was. Will be. Am going to have been. Were any of those in the right tense? Wait, you're the companion of a Time Lady? The Doctor didn't change into a woman at some point, did he?"
"In order," said Letterman, "what?, yes, and that would be very wrong but strangely arousing. Hey, there she is now!"
Sure enough, approaching them through the crowd was a woman in an old-fashioned dark suit, a straw hat perched on her long blonde hair. What's more, she was deep in animated conversation with the Doctor, and it was clear to Stephen that she was a Time Lady from the way she didn't look completely baffled.
"Stephen! Sarah Jane!" exclaimed the Doctor once they were close enough to hear. "Look who I ran into! This is the very charming Romanadvoratrelundar. I don't actually know her yet, but she insists that she knows me."
"Well, it's official," said Sarah Jane to nobody in particular. "I've completely lost track of who knows who."
⇔
Argabuthon: 17,452 AD (Earth time).
The Doctor is in his tenth incarnation. Stephen Col-bert is 17. Jack Harkness is older than that joke about the chicken and the road. (For the record, he likes both sides.)
Stephen was conjugating basic Delphonic verbs when Jack knocked on his door. "Vermicious Knids at ten o'clock! You coming?"
The Doctor was already in the console room when Jack and Stephen arrived, standing before the open doors of the TARDIS. "That was a great landing!" offered Stephen. "Usually we might as well be crashing, but that time I didn't feel the impact at all."
"That's because we haven't landed," said the Doctor. "We're in orbit."
"Oh," said Stephen quietly.
Jack broke the resulting silence. "We're catching the invasion before they get to the surface," he explained. "C'mon, we're all guys here. Let's blow some stuff up!"
⇔
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
After a fresh round of introductions by all, in which Dave Letterman revealed himself to be from 1990 and Romanadavematthewsbandar revealed that she would gladly answer to "Romana", the group had headed for Romana's TARDIS.
A cascade of technobabble washed back and forth between the Time Lords, most of which the companions tuned out. The general idea was that an examination of Romana's (fully functional) ship would help them figure out what was wrong with the Doctor's. Of course, being Time Lords, they couldn't just say that. It would be too simple.
"I should warn you," added Romana as she opened a door labeled JANITORIAL STAFF ONLY, "the chameleon circuit's broken."
"Oh, that's not so bad," said the Doctor brightly. "So's mine."
To the companions, he added, "The chameleon circuit is supposed to make the exterior of the TARDIS blend in with its surroundings. Mine got stuck at some point, and now it always looks like a police box, which still looks natural in a surprising variety of settings. Romana, what's . . . oh. Oh my. That's not it, is it?"
"Yes. Yes, this is my TARDIS."
"It looks like a fire hydrant," said Stephen in disbelief.
"Yes, it does." Romana sighed. "I never should have let K-9 build the chameleon circuit. Can't talk too much about that, though. Spoilers."
"Say no more," said the Doctor magnanimously, waving the issue away. "In we go, then. Come on!"
⇔
Argabuthon: 17,452 AD (Earth time).
The technologically advanced but ultimately peaceful citizens of Argabuthon insisted on throwing the Doctor a party for stopping the invasion, and Jack insisted that they actually attend.
It had been fun to blast Vermicious Knids out of the sky, but Stephen was relieved to be back in black tie. Suits made him feel important. Legitimate. Like he deserved to have an opinion, and the rest of the world had better shut up and listen.
Or, in this case, shut up and look.
All spoken conversation ground to a halt when the main course (something lumpy, smothered in a creamy yellow sauce with little blue flecks) arrived and those gathered dug in, using a utensil that looked like nothing so much as a fine silver spork. After eating a few sporkfuls, Stephen began pushing his whatever-it-was around the plate, his eyes on the Doctor.
Eventually the Doctor looked in his direction. It was only a glance, but an instant later he frowned and looked again, properly this time.
~Like me,~ Stephen was pleading in Delphon.
The Doctor furrowed his brow; and then his own eyebrows were forming a recognizable and definite phrase: ~I like you.~
~No. You no talk me. Why?~
~It's not your fault,~ replied the Doctor, his phrasing much smoother than Stephen's, signed slowly and clearly so that it could be followed. ~I have [something] to protect, and if I talk to you too much it could cause a [something] that would [something] [something] everything [something].~
Stephen blinked several times, then realized he was probably signing something nonsensical and hastily rearranged his eyebrows. ~I no understand.~
~Right,~ signed the Doctor, then broke into speech. "Look, the timeline is in a very fragile state right now, so yeah, I'm keeping mum, because if I talk to you too much it could end up causing a paradox on a scale that might very well tear apart the whole fabric of existence!"
The entire table stared.
"Uh, Doctor?" hissed Jack under his breath. "I don't think these guys are big on talking during meals."
"Yeah, I got that," murmured the Doctor in response, then grinned broadly at the table. "Lovely dish, this! Absolutely smashing. My compliments to the chef!"
⇔
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
"So, if the Doctor picks up me now, while Romana picks up you over then, and the android mummies on Mars were then . . ."
Sarah Jane had enlisted Dave's help to diagram the complicated tangle of who-met-who-and-when. Stephen, who had quickly gotten bored with the idea, was now only half listening to them, the other half of his ear occupied with the Doctor and Romana.
In spite of its unfortunate exterior, the inside of Romana's TARDIS was much neater and more tasteful than either this Doctor's white minimalism or the older Doctor's crazy orange twisty scheme. It was all dark wood, with chrome accents on the console and seats (upholstered ones, even!) around the edges. A section of the floor had been removed so that the two Time Lords could poke around at the insides. Fortunately for the "let's compare parts" theory, the underlying gears of the two machines looked pretty much the same.
". . . but then an older Doctor comes back and picks Stephen up here," continued Sarah Jane. "How do we show that? We're going to need some string."
"Top ten ways you can tell you've been hanging around with Time Lords too long," mused Dave. "When faced with a seemingly paradoxical question of temporal mechanics, your first instinct is to reach for the string."
It did seem paradoxical, now that Stephen thought about it. If an older Doctor had picked him up, then all the time he had been on the TARDIS when he was seventeen, everything that was happening now had already been in his memory. And if the Doctor had said anything to Stephen's younger self that had affected how he, the current Stephen, would behave with the younger Doctor, then that would in turn affect the older Doctor's memories.
No wonder the Doctor had been so standoffish at the time!
Stephen shuddered, feeling his muscles start to seize up. He was in that same position now! Did he dare to move, if he was currently in a position to tear apart all of existence with a paradox?
Except . . . .
"Romana says she met the Doctor about here," Dave was saying, as he and Sarah Jane stood over what was turning into a veritable cat's cradle. "They palled around for a while, then Romana left, here, and picked up me back here, and then the whole shebang loops back and meets the Doctor and you two crazy kids right now."
Except that Romana was in that position too, wasn't she? Talking to a Doctor who hadn't met her younger self yet?
Stephen looked over at the open floor panel. The two Time Lords were chattering away like old friends, laughing, joking, using words of about ten syllables, and generally being about as friendly as possible. And then there was the way Romana's eyes sparkled when she smiled at the Doctor, as if she were very fond of him and didn't care who knew it.
"What's wrong with you two?" demanded Stephen abruptly.
The pair broke off their conversation about circuits and light cells to look up at him. "Who, us?" asked the Doctor blankly.
"Yes, you! She," and Stephen aimed an accusing finger squarely at Romana, "is talking to you as if you're the you she already knows! But you only just met her!" He turned to the Time Lady. "Aren't you the least bit afraid you'll cause some kind of paradox that makes the universe go foom?"
Romana shrugged. "No."
"Why?" added the Doctor. "Should she be?"
For a moment Stephen could only stutter. "But—but the timeline—I mean, the timey-wimey ball—or whatever—"
"'Timey-wimey ball'? I like that. I'll have to use it again. Really, Stephen, no need to fret. Time is surprisingly resilient. It bounces back."
Stephen saw red. "Then—all the times you fed me lines about keeping the timeline safe, you were full of it," he said, voice dangerously low.
Sarah Jane and Dave had gone silent. He could feel their eyes on his back.
The Doctor frowned. "I'm sure I must be going to have a good reason . . . ."
"Oh, sure, make up something else!" snapped Stephen. "You just didn't want to talk to me, did you? Was I not good enough for you? Everything I did, and I still wasn't good enough?"
"Stephen—"
"Don't start! I'm not listening to one more excuse." Stephen turned on his heel and stalked to the TARDIS door.
"Oh," he added, turning back for just a moment before he stormed out, "and guess what? You're On Notice. Yeah. Hurts, doesn't it? Now you know how it feels."
Rating: PG
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S4 is fair game.
Summary: Young Stephen makes a serious bid for the Doctor's attention. Adult Stephen, in the midst of a group including two Time Lords and three companions from five different times, realizes why his bids didn't work.
The "late-night TV personality catches a ride on a TARDIS and has wacky adventures" plot is Older Than You Think. It's older than this community. It's older than The Daily Show. For some readers of this story, it's older than you.
Which is why this serial is full of shoutouts to Romana 'n Dave.
Table of contents, and footnotes, here.
How Many Time Lords Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?
Part Two
The Vortex.
The Doctor is in his tenth incarnation. Stephen Col-bert is 17.
Alone in his room on the TARDIS, safe behind a closed and locked door, Stephen was doing the unthinkable.
He was poring over a book.
Over the course of averting a few timeline-destroying paradoxes together, Stephen had kept up his efforts to win the Doctor's approval. The Doctor rarely addressed him directly, and once in a while Stephen would catch the Time Lord frowning at him, a strangely dark look in his eyes, when he thought Stephen wasn't looking.
Still, he had been more prone to smiling in Stephen's presence since their first mad dash from danger. The fact that Stephen hadn't made any progress since only encouraged him to redouble his efforts.
Which was why, dictionary in one hand and mirror in the other, he was practicing his Delphon.
Stephen didn't know why the Doctor wanted him to learn Delphon. (He assumed this was what the Doctor wanted, or why would the dictionary be in his room in the first place?) It certainly wasn't coming easily. The human body was simply not designed to express all the subtleties of a language based on eyebrow movements.
But then, Stephen had exceptionally talented eyebrows.
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Stephen Colbert is 44. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. David Letterman is 43. Romana is in her second known incarnation.
"David Letterman? Are you a Time Lord?"
Letterman—it was definitely him, no question about it, although he looked at least ten years younger than the one in Stephen's era—shook his head. "Nope! You want the Time-babe? She went off to buy some time-travel type components, said I couldn't be trusted with anything more technically advanced than a screwdriver, and told me to stick around here. Women and their shopping! Say, how did you know my name? Are you a fan?"
"Peer," corrected Stephen peevishly. "I'm a peer. At least, I was. Will be. Am going to have been. Were any of those in the right tense? Wait, you're the companion of a Time Lady? The Doctor didn't change into a woman at some point, did he?"
"In order," said Letterman, "what?, yes, and that would be very wrong but strangely arousing. Hey, there she is now!"
Sure enough, approaching them through the crowd was a woman in an old-fashioned dark suit, a straw hat perched on her long blonde hair. What's more, she was deep in animated conversation with the Doctor, and it was clear to Stephen that she was a Time Lady from the way she didn't look completely baffled.
"Stephen! Sarah Jane!" exclaimed the Doctor once they were close enough to hear. "Look who I ran into! This is the very charming Romanadvoratrelundar. I don't actually know her yet, but she insists that she knows me."
"Well, it's official," said Sarah Jane to nobody in particular. "I've completely lost track of who knows who."
Argabuthon: 17,452 AD (Earth time).
The Doctor is in his tenth incarnation. Stephen Col-bert is 17. Jack Harkness is older than that joke about the chicken and the road. (For the record, he likes both sides.)
Stephen was conjugating basic Delphonic verbs when Jack knocked on his door. "Vermicious Knids at ten o'clock! You coming?"
The Doctor was already in the console room when Jack and Stephen arrived, standing before the open doors of the TARDIS. "That was a great landing!" offered Stephen. "Usually we might as well be crashing, but that time I didn't feel the impact at all."
"That's because we haven't landed," said the Doctor. "We're in orbit."
"Oh," said Stephen quietly.
Jack broke the resulting silence. "We're catching the invasion before they get to the surface," he explained. "C'mon, we're all guys here. Let's blow some stuff up!"
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
After a fresh round of introductions by all, in which Dave Letterman revealed himself to be from 1990 and Romanadavematthewsbandar revealed that she would gladly answer to "Romana", the group had headed for Romana's TARDIS.
A cascade of technobabble washed back and forth between the Time Lords, most of which the companions tuned out. The general idea was that an examination of Romana's (fully functional) ship would help them figure out what was wrong with the Doctor's. Of course, being Time Lords, they couldn't just say that. It would be too simple.
"I should warn you," added Romana as she opened a door labeled JANITORIAL STAFF ONLY, "the chameleon circuit's broken."
"Oh, that's not so bad," said the Doctor brightly. "So's mine."
To the companions, he added, "The chameleon circuit is supposed to make the exterior of the TARDIS blend in with its surroundings. Mine got stuck at some point, and now it always looks like a police box, which still looks natural in a surprising variety of settings. Romana, what's . . . oh. Oh my. That's not it, is it?"
"Yes. Yes, this is my TARDIS."
"It looks like a fire hydrant," said Stephen in disbelief.
"Yes, it does." Romana sighed. "I never should have let K-9 build the chameleon circuit. Can't talk too much about that, though. Spoilers."
"Say no more," said the Doctor magnanimously, waving the issue away. "In we go, then. Come on!"
Argabuthon: 17,452 AD (Earth time).
The technologically advanced but ultimately peaceful citizens of Argabuthon insisted on throwing the Doctor a party for stopping the invasion, and Jack insisted that they actually attend.
It had been fun to blast Vermicious Knids out of the sky, but Stephen was relieved to be back in black tie. Suits made him feel important. Legitimate. Like he deserved to have an opinion, and the rest of the world had better shut up and listen.
Or, in this case, shut up and look.
All spoken conversation ground to a halt when the main course (something lumpy, smothered in a creamy yellow sauce with little blue flecks) arrived and those gathered dug in, using a utensil that looked like nothing so much as a fine silver spork. After eating a few sporkfuls, Stephen began pushing his whatever-it-was around the plate, his eyes on the Doctor.
Eventually the Doctor looked in his direction. It was only a glance, but an instant later he frowned and looked again, properly this time.
~Like me,~ Stephen was pleading in Delphon.
The Doctor furrowed his brow; and then his own eyebrows were forming a recognizable and definite phrase: ~I like you.~
~No. You no talk me. Why?~
~It's not your fault,~ replied the Doctor, his phrasing much smoother than Stephen's, signed slowly and clearly so that it could be followed. ~I have [something] to protect, and if I talk to you too much it could cause a [something] that would [something] [something] everything [something].~
Stephen blinked several times, then realized he was probably signing something nonsensical and hastily rearranged his eyebrows. ~I no understand.~
~Right,~ signed the Doctor, then broke into speech. "Look, the timeline is in a very fragile state right now, so yeah, I'm keeping mum, because if I talk to you too much it could end up causing a paradox on a scale that might very well tear apart the whole fabric of existence!"
The entire table stared.
"Uh, Doctor?" hissed Jack under his breath. "I don't think these guys are big on talking during meals."
"Yeah, I got that," murmured the Doctor in response, then grinned broadly at the table. "Lovely dish, this! Absolutely smashing. My compliments to the chef!"
Ahnooie-4: 3792.
"So, if the Doctor picks up me now, while Romana picks up you over then, and the android mummies on Mars were then . . ."
Sarah Jane had enlisted Dave's help to diagram the complicated tangle of who-met-who-and-when. Stephen, who had quickly gotten bored with the idea, was now only half listening to them, the other half of his ear occupied with the Doctor and Romana.
In spite of its unfortunate exterior, the inside of Romana's TARDIS was much neater and more tasteful than either this Doctor's white minimalism or the older Doctor's crazy orange twisty scheme. It was all dark wood, with chrome accents on the console and seats (upholstered ones, even!) around the edges. A section of the floor had been removed so that the two Time Lords could poke around at the insides. Fortunately for the "let's compare parts" theory, the underlying gears of the two machines looked pretty much the same.
". . . but then an older Doctor comes back and picks Stephen up here," continued Sarah Jane. "How do we show that? We're going to need some string."
"Top ten ways you can tell you've been hanging around with Time Lords too long," mused Dave. "When faced with a seemingly paradoxical question of temporal mechanics, your first instinct is to reach for the string."
It did seem paradoxical, now that Stephen thought about it. If an older Doctor had picked him up, then all the time he had been on the TARDIS when he was seventeen, everything that was happening now had already been in his memory. And if the Doctor had said anything to Stephen's younger self that had affected how he, the current Stephen, would behave with the younger Doctor, then that would in turn affect the older Doctor's memories.
No wonder the Doctor had been so standoffish at the time!
Stephen shuddered, feeling his muscles start to seize up. He was in that same position now! Did he dare to move, if he was currently in a position to tear apart all of existence with a paradox?
Except . . . .
"Romana says she met the Doctor about here," Dave was saying, as he and Sarah Jane stood over what was turning into a veritable cat's cradle. "They palled around for a while, then Romana left, here, and picked up me back here, and then the whole shebang loops back and meets the Doctor and you two crazy kids right now."
Except that Romana was in that position too, wasn't she? Talking to a Doctor who hadn't met her younger self yet?
Stephen looked over at the open floor panel. The two Time Lords were chattering away like old friends, laughing, joking, using words of about ten syllables, and generally being about as friendly as possible. And then there was the way Romana's eyes sparkled when she smiled at the Doctor, as if she were very fond of him and didn't care who knew it.
"What's wrong with you two?" demanded Stephen abruptly.
The pair broke off their conversation about circuits and light cells to look up at him. "Who, us?" asked the Doctor blankly.
"Yes, you! She," and Stephen aimed an accusing finger squarely at Romana, "is talking to you as if you're the you she already knows! But you only just met her!" He turned to the Time Lady. "Aren't you the least bit afraid you'll cause some kind of paradox that makes the universe go foom?"
Romana shrugged. "No."
"Why?" added the Doctor. "Should she be?"
For a moment Stephen could only stutter. "But—but the timeline—I mean, the timey-wimey ball—or whatever—"
"'Timey-wimey ball'? I like that. I'll have to use it again. Really, Stephen, no need to fret. Time is surprisingly resilient. It bounces back."
Stephen saw red. "Then—all the times you fed me lines about keeping the timeline safe, you were full of it," he said, voice dangerously low.
Sarah Jane and Dave had gone silent. He could feel their eyes on his back.
The Doctor frowned. "I'm sure I must be going to have a good reason . . . ."
"Oh, sure, make up something else!" snapped Stephen. "You just didn't want to talk to me, did you? Was I not good enough for you? Everything I did, and I still wasn't good enough?"
"Stephen—"
"Don't start! I'm not listening to one more excuse." Stephen turned on his heel and stalked to the TARDIS door.
"Oh," he added, turning back for just a moment before he stormed out, "and guess what? You're On Notice. Yeah. Hurts, doesn't it? Now you know how it feels."