Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2008-10-30 12:09 am
ptahrrific) wrote2008-10-30 12:09 am
Entry tags:
Fake News/Doctor Who: I Want My MTV, part one
Title: I Want My MTV (1/6)
Rating: PG
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S3/Torchwood S2 is fair game.
Summary: Jack tells young Stephen a bit about Torchwood; Ten extols the merits of planets that look like rock quarries; and Sarah Jane observes that Stephen is starting to get awfully moony.
For those trying to guess the arc word, I should clarify something: the comic that kicked this all off is not one of the serials (think of it as an intro for the first serial), and the word (well, three-word phrase, if you want to be technical) does not appear therein.
Beta by the celebratedstellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.
I Want My MTV
Part One
Another Damn Planet: 7032
Stephen Col-bert is 17. Jack Harkness is not, in fact, older than sin, but it's only a matter of time.
"What do you do for a living, anyway?" asked Stephen. "When you're back on Earth, I mean."
They had landed on a planet whose surface, or at least this part of it, looked more or less like an abandoned rock quarry. ("Lots of planets look like abandoned rock quarries," the Doctor had said dismissively. "I give it ten minutes before we run into an evil plot of some sort.")
Half an hour later, they hadn't found anything but more rocks. (Although, as the Doctor had pointed out, some of them were awfully sinister-looking.)
"I work with Torchwood," replied Jack. "Don't look us up when you get home. We don't officially exist."
Stephen nearly fell off his rock. "There are secret societies? I knew it! Are you like the Masons? Do you have a secret handshake? Do you control the world behind the scenes?"
"Even better," said Jack with a grin. "We hunt aliens."
It was hard to describe any of Torchwood's missions without including too many details that were classified, or just plain gory. But Jack told a generic story about weevil-hunting, and this went over so well that he moved on to the Cybermen, then switched tracks to explain how Gwen had infiltrated their top-secret base by pretending to be a pizza deliverywoman. Stephen hung on to every word.
Jack was in the middle of the story about how he and Ianto had caught the pterodactyl, which now hung around in the aforementioned top-secret base, when Stephen interrupted: "This Yan-to guy—is he . . . I mean, are you and he . . . y'know . . . ."
". . . together?" suggested Jack. "As of pretty recently—yeah."
"And you left him? To run off with the Doctor?"
Jack winced. "It's not like that! Besides, eventually the Doctor will drop me off at the point in time right after I left. As far as Ianto's concerned, it'll be like I was never gone."
"But you'll know. Don't you miss him?"
"Of course I do. I miss my whole team. But it's not like I'm in danger of dying before I ever see them again."
"I guess," said Stephen.
"You don't sound convinced."
The boy kicked a pebble; it skittered across the ground, stirring up a fine trail of dust in its wake. "All I know is, if I had a . . ." He swallowed. ". . . a b-boyfriend, I'd never let him out of my sight."
⇔
Chelonia: 13,694.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. Stephen Colbert is 44.
Turning a corner on the garden path, Sarah Jane finally spotted Stephen, curled up in a curved stone bench under a bank of flowering trees. "There you are!"
"Oh, hey," said Stephen distractedly, his face turned towards the moon.
"We were wondering where you'd got to," Sarah Jane, settling in the bench next to him. The seats were molded to fit Chelonians, not humanoids, but they were surprisingly comfortable if you didn't worry about keeping your spine straight.
"It's not like anything would attack me on this planet. All the natives care about is flower arrangement. I did try to get a couple of them to see the merits of a strong national defense policy, and I think I was making some real progress when a big one showed up and dragged me away from the party."
"There's a surprise."
"I know! You would think a race of cybernetically enhanced turtles would be cooler. They aren't even ninjas!"
"I can see how that would be a disappointment," said Sarah Jane.
They sat in silence for a while. The sounds of the garden party in the distance, where the Doctor was doubtless getting into some kind of trouble, mingled with the sounds of alien insects chorusing in the trees.
"It looks like ours," remarked Stephen, half to himself.
"What, the party?"
"The moon. Doesn't it look like the one from Earth? Right size, right shape, right color. And there's only one of it. If you don't look at the patterns too closely, it's almost like you're home."
"Ready to go back, then?" teased Sarah Jane.
"What? No! No, not yet. Just . . . missing it a little, is all."
"Missing anyone in particular?"
"I am not," snapped Stephen, "and I don't know why you need to keep bringing it up. Just because of what happened on the psi-moon, you think I'm pining after Jon every time I look at the sky at night? Don't be ridiculous!"
"Actually, I was thinking of Lorraine."
"Who?"
". . . your wife?" Had she misremembered? He had only brought the woman up once or twice, and never for long. "Didn't you say her name was Lorraine?"
"Right! My wife! No, her name is, uh, Evelyn. If you'd said that, I would have known who you were talking about right away! And yeah, I miss her terribly. Think about her every day."
"Your kids too, I guess?"
"My—? Oh! Sure, them too."
"I see," said Sarah Jane.
⇔
Another Damn Planet: 7032
"It works the same way with your family," Jack explained. "We'll put you back on Earth on the day we took you from, and they'll never know the difference. Even though I'm sure you miss them."
Stephen couldn't suppress a shudder.
"You'll have to go back pretty soon, too, or people will notice that you've grown overnight. And . . . come to think of it, we grabbed you from the middle of summer, right?"
"Almost the end. School was going to start in a week."
"You didn't have a tan, did you? Because if you did, it's long gone. We'll have to visit some beaches before you go back."
Stephen looked down at his pale arms. "Nah, this is pretty much normal. I spend most of my time inside."
"I see."
"Doing cool things, though!" insisted Stephen. "Like . . . watching MTV, and not returning phone calls!"
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"Well," said Stephen. "Technically, nobody calls me in the first place."
Jack nodded silently.
"Oh, all right!" cried Stephen. "I'm inside all the time because I'm playing D&D. You've dragged it out of me. Are you happy now?"
⇔
The Vortex.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. Stephen Colbert is 44.
"You think he's ready to go home?" asked the Doctor.
Stephen had eventually returned to the party, downed a few glasses of Chelonian wine, and had to be carried back to the TARDIS. (Sarah Jane was just thankful he hadn't been intercepted by another evil mastermind first.) They had all gotten a good night's sleep; he was presumably sleeping still, leaving Sarah Jane and the Doctor to work out where to go for breakfast in a console room that was quieter than it had been in several weeks.
"I don't think it's that bad," she replied. "It might even be just a bit of moodiness. Maybe he'll snap out of it on his own in a few days. I don't know. Whenever I think I've figured him out, he goes and does something completely unexpected."
"So he does."
"Kind of like you in that respect, really."
"Yes, he—I say, Sarah Jane!" exclaimed the Doctor, all wounded pride. "Did you just compare me to that—that anti-intellectual?"
"Did I? Can't think why. He's arrogant, self-important, eccentric, presumptuous, and generally oblivious to how other people feel. Or was that you?"
The Doctor's reply was cut off by a loud beeping from the console. He pressed a button, and the starry expanse on the wall screen was replaced with a field of scrolling numbers.
"What's going on, Doctor?"
"Distress call," replied the Doctor shortly. "Heavily encrypted. Can't tell offhand what species it's from, but—oh, Stephen's going to appreciate this."
"I do wish you'd stop being mysterious and—"
"It's coming from Earth."
Rating: PG
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S3/Torchwood S2 is fair game.
Summary: Jack tells young Stephen a bit about Torchwood; Ten extols the merits of planets that look like rock quarries; and Sarah Jane observes that Stephen is starting to get awfully moony.
For those trying to guess the arc word, I should clarify something: the comic that kicked this all off is not one of the serials (think of it as an intro for the first serial), and the word (well, three-word phrase, if you want to be technical) does not appear therein.
Beta by the celebrated
stellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.I Want My MTV
Part One
Another Damn Planet: 7032
Stephen Col-bert is 17. Jack Harkness is not, in fact, older than sin, but it's only a matter of time.
"What do you do for a living, anyway?" asked Stephen. "When you're back on Earth, I mean."
They had landed on a planet whose surface, or at least this part of it, looked more or less like an abandoned rock quarry. ("Lots of planets look like abandoned rock quarries," the Doctor had said dismissively. "I give it ten minutes before we run into an evil plot of some sort.")
Half an hour later, they hadn't found anything but more rocks. (Although, as the Doctor had pointed out, some of them were awfully sinister-looking.)
"I work with Torchwood," replied Jack. "Don't look us up when you get home. We don't officially exist."
Stephen nearly fell off his rock. "There are secret societies? I knew it! Are you like the Masons? Do you have a secret handshake? Do you control the world behind the scenes?"
"Even better," said Jack with a grin. "We hunt aliens."
It was hard to describe any of Torchwood's missions without including too many details that were classified, or just plain gory. But Jack told a generic story about weevil-hunting, and this went over so well that he moved on to the Cybermen, then switched tracks to explain how Gwen had infiltrated their top-secret base by pretending to be a pizza deliverywoman. Stephen hung on to every word.
Jack was in the middle of the story about how he and Ianto had caught the pterodactyl, which now hung around in the aforementioned top-secret base, when Stephen interrupted: "This Yan-to guy—is he . . . I mean, are you and he . . . y'know . . . ."
". . . together?" suggested Jack. "As of pretty recently—yeah."
"And you left him? To run off with the Doctor?"
Jack winced. "It's not like that! Besides, eventually the Doctor will drop me off at the point in time right after I left. As far as Ianto's concerned, it'll be like I was never gone."
"But you'll know. Don't you miss him?"
"Of course I do. I miss my whole team. But it's not like I'm in danger of dying before I ever see them again."
"I guess," said Stephen.
"You don't sound convinced."
The boy kicked a pebble; it skittered across the ground, stirring up a fine trail of dust in its wake. "All I know is, if I had a . . ." He swallowed. ". . . a b-boyfriend, I'd never let him out of my sight."
Chelonia: 13,694.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. Stephen Colbert is 44.
Turning a corner on the garden path, Sarah Jane finally spotted Stephen, curled up in a curved stone bench under a bank of flowering trees. "There you are!"
"Oh, hey," said Stephen distractedly, his face turned towards the moon.
"We were wondering where you'd got to," Sarah Jane, settling in the bench next to him. The seats were molded to fit Chelonians, not humanoids, but they were surprisingly comfortable if you didn't worry about keeping your spine straight.
"It's not like anything would attack me on this planet. All the natives care about is flower arrangement. I did try to get a couple of them to see the merits of a strong national defense policy, and I think I was making some real progress when a big one showed up and dragged me away from the party."
"There's a surprise."
"I know! You would think a race of cybernetically enhanced turtles would be cooler. They aren't even ninjas!"
"I can see how that would be a disappointment," said Sarah Jane.
They sat in silence for a while. The sounds of the garden party in the distance, where the Doctor was doubtless getting into some kind of trouble, mingled with the sounds of alien insects chorusing in the trees.
"It looks like ours," remarked Stephen, half to himself.
"What, the party?"
"The moon. Doesn't it look like the one from Earth? Right size, right shape, right color. And there's only one of it. If you don't look at the patterns too closely, it's almost like you're home."
"Ready to go back, then?" teased Sarah Jane.
"What? No! No, not yet. Just . . . missing it a little, is all."
"Missing anyone in particular?"
"I am not," snapped Stephen, "and I don't know why you need to keep bringing it up. Just because of what happened on the psi-moon, you think I'm pining after Jon every time I look at the sky at night? Don't be ridiculous!"
"Actually, I was thinking of Lorraine."
"Who?"
". . . your wife?" Had she misremembered? He had only brought the woman up once or twice, and never for long. "Didn't you say her name was Lorraine?"
"Right! My wife! No, her name is, uh, Evelyn. If you'd said that, I would have known who you were talking about right away! And yeah, I miss her terribly. Think about her every day."
"Your kids too, I guess?"
"My—? Oh! Sure, them too."
"I see," said Sarah Jane.
Another Damn Planet: 7032
"It works the same way with your family," Jack explained. "We'll put you back on Earth on the day we took you from, and they'll never know the difference. Even though I'm sure you miss them."
Stephen couldn't suppress a shudder.
"You'll have to go back pretty soon, too, or people will notice that you've grown overnight. And . . . come to think of it, we grabbed you from the middle of summer, right?"
"Almost the end. School was going to start in a week."
"You didn't have a tan, did you? Because if you did, it's long gone. We'll have to visit some beaches before you go back."
Stephen looked down at his pale arms. "Nah, this is pretty much normal. I spend most of my time inside."
"I see."
"Doing cool things, though!" insisted Stephen. "Like . . . watching MTV, and not returning phone calls!"
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"Well," said Stephen. "Technically, nobody calls me in the first place."
Jack nodded silently.
"Oh, all right!" cried Stephen. "I'm inside all the time because I'm playing D&D. You've dragged it out of me. Are you happy now?"
The Vortex.
The Doctor is in his fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith is 29. Stephen Colbert is 44.
"You think he's ready to go home?" asked the Doctor.
Stephen had eventually returned to the party, downed a few glasses of Chelonian wine, and had to be carried back to the TARDIS. (Sarah Jane was just thankful he hadn't been intercepted by another evil mastermind first.) They had all gotten a good night's sleep; he was presumably sleeping still, leaving Sarah Jane and the Doctor to work out where to go for breakfast in a console room that was quieter than it had been in several weeks.
"I don't think it's that bad," she replied. "It might even be just a bit of moodiness. Maybe he'll snap out of it on his own in a few days. I don't know. Whenever I think I've figured him out, he goes and does something completely unexpected."
"So he does."
"Kind of like you in that respect, really."
"Yes, he—I say, Sarah Jane!" exclaimed the Doctor, all wounded pride. "Did you just compare me to that—that anti-intellectual?"
"Did I? Can't think why. He's arrogant, self-important, eccentric, presumptuous, and generally oblivious to how other people feel. Or was that you?"
The Doctor's reply was cut off by a loud beeping from the console. He pressed a button, and the starry expanse on the wall screen was replaced with a field of scrolling numbers.
"What's going on, Doctor?"
"Distress call," replied the Doctor shortly. "Heavily encrypted. Can't tell offhand what species it's from, but—oh, Stephen's going to appreciate this."
"I do wish you'd stop being mysterious and—"
"It's coming from Earth."
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LOL, poor guys. Planet diversity sacrificed in the name of small budgetsX)
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You can almost hear past directors grousing, "In my day, we filmed seven planets in the same quarry and we liked it!"
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Ah yes, poor alien planets that look like quarries... lol
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Thanks!
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Despite the general feeling of overhanging doom.
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Doom? Why, what ever makes you say that?
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...awwww, Stephen, you're so needy and cute.
"I am not," snapped Stephen, "and I don't know why you need to keep bringing it up. Just because of what happened on the psi-moon, you think I'm pining after Jon every time I look at the sky at night? Don't be ridiculous!"
Suuuuuuure, Stephen. =P
Ooh, something's happening on Earth? This should be good!
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I do hope so!
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Holy cow, I do rather love this:
"...He's arrogant, self-important, eccentric, presumptuous, and generally oblivious to how other people feel. Or was that you?"
Oh Sarah Jane. You say these things to cover up your own insecurities, admit it. :)
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I actually didn't realize how many qualities the Doctor and Stephen have in common until Sarah Jane started listing. Of course, the Doctor is as awesome as he thinks he is, so it's forgivable =3
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I haven't seen the episode yet! *scurries off to watch* I've been out all day and it doesn't come up on the website until about mid-morning here. (Nice to come home to a chapter!) The endorsement doesn't surprise me though. Obama's looking pretty likely to win right now, and Stephen needs to be able to say 'I told you so'.
I don't know about more. TDS pushed pretty heavily for Kerry in 2004, and TCR didn't exist back then :/
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Stephen's not actually voting for Obama - just endorsing him. It's a bit of a stretch, perhaps, but cute.
I wasn't a regular watcher in '04, so I guess I don't have much to compare it to. It's just that they usually go for the joke rather than the political point, but now, in the past couple of weeks especially, there have been a lot of moments that don't ring funny. (Or, in Stephen's case, that don't quite work for the character.) So the Righteous Liberal Anger is getting in the way of the reasons why I watch the shows in the first place.
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(Anonymous) 2008-10-30 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)The boy kicked a pebble; it skittered across the ground, stirring up a fine trail of dust in its wake. "All I know is, if I had a . . ." He swallowed. ". . . a b-boyfriend, I'd never let him out of my sight." <--- so cute!
this chapter is love. and the bit with Doctor and Sarah Jane! their expressions are perfect.
...did they have MTV back then?
and dude, wasn't Word-sama brilliant last night? heh, she endorsed Obama. and she and Stephen were bold together. heh.
thank you for the prompt updates!
Kagaya
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and she and Stephen were bold together. heh.
...for some reason, this sounds to me like they had matching Halloween costumes. Which is an incredibly adorable idea.
♥!
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-02 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)Pure win!
Read Free!
The BookWorm