Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2008-11-17 02:11 am
ptahrrific) wrote2008-11-17 02:11 am
Entry tags:
Fake News/Doctor Who: I Want My MTV, part 6
Title: I Want My MTV (6/6)
Rating: PG-13 (sex'n'violence)
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S3/Torchwood S2 is fair game.
Summary: In which there are several dramatic rescues, a burning building, and a really cool cave.
Illustrations from earlier are now all up on DA: serials 1-3, serial 4.
Beta by the judiciousstellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.
I Want My MTV
Part Six
Earth: 1994.
Sarah Jane sniffed the air. "Do you smell smoke?"
"Not now, Sarah," said the Doctor, fiddling with his sonic screwdriver. "I'm sure this thing has a disable-ray-guns setting . . . aha!" Raising his voice to address the aliens on the other side of the table, he added, "I would think you'd be more polite to someone who fixed your ship!"
There was a pause, then a confused alien voice. "Dude, your planet does not have the tech for that."
"Well, I'm not from this planet, am I?" asked the Doctor, raising his head just a little ways above the table edge. This time, he didn't get shot at.
"You totally look like a native," said one of the aliens. "Are you bluffing?"
"Bluffing? Me? Of course I'm not bluffing! Sarah Jane, am I bluffing?"
"He's not bluffing," called Sarah Jane. Yes, that was definitely smoke in the air. And to her left there was a set of shadows that danced on the wall, as though cast by a light source that flickered.
"No, I'm definitely an alien here," continued the Doctor, raising his hands slowly. "After all, if I were a human, could I do . . . this?"
The aliens (the non-Doctor aliens, that is) let out shouts of dismay. These stopped after a moment when they realized that the sonic screwdriver hadn't shot anything, at which point they started guffawing again. "He's totally bluffing!" laughed one. "We are so taking this place over."
Sarah Jane peeked at an angle around the side of the table. Diners crouched in similar predicaments all around the room, with the addition of little flames cropping up on the carpets. As she watched, one flame trickled over to a tablecloth, and shot up it like, well, wildfire.
There was a woman behind this table, in a red cocktail dress. She let out a little shriek and sprang for the next one.
"Hey-o!" exclaimed one of the aliens, pointing his gun at her and pulling the trigger.
The weapon clicked uselessly at him.
"Whoa, man, it's jammed!" cried the green man in dismay.
Then he collapsed, as Stephen broke a chair over his head.
⇔
Okay, so there was a tiny flaw in Stephen's plan. Namely, the fact that while one of the would-be invaders had gone down, and gone down hard, he was now facing two others with nothing but a couple of splintery chair legs.
"N-now see here," he stammered, trying to look more impressive than he felt. "I'm putting you under Citizen's Arrest—for destruction of property—assault with a deadly weapon—intent to overthrow the government—and—and—"
"Dude!" interrupted one of the aliens, grabbing him around the neck and lifting him into the air. "Didn't your mama ever teach you not to sneak up on people?"
"Gack," Stephen replied wisely.
He meant to say something like "Let's get out of here, before we all burn to death." There were at least three fires in his field of vision now. Whether they had been started by candles or alien gunfire, he didn't know.
Somewhere above them, a smoke alarm finally began to go off.
The aliens looked up in confusion, which seemed to be their default setting. Between the noise and the wriggling captive Stephen, they were distracted enough not to notice Sarah Jane sneaking up behind them, wielding yet another chair.
⇔
"All right!" shouted the Doctor over the crackling flames. "There won't be any more shooting. Everybody out!"
Sarah Jane chimed in. "You heard the man. Please move toward the exits in an orderly fashion!"
They kept alternating voices as the diners moved towards the door, and there was hardly any panicking at all.
The Doctor had hooked one of the aliens under its brawny arms and was dragging it towards the exit, so Sarah Jane did the same with another. Stephen grabbed the third, but reluctantly. "How come we're saving these guys? They tried to kill us!"
"I hope you're not suggesting we sink to their level!" exclaimed the Doctor, adjusting the sonic screwdriver one-handed. The tip glowed blue, and then with a slight shimmer the green faces were replaced with almost impossibly beautiful human features in natural shades of brown. "Oh, good, I didn't fry their chameleon units. Come on!"
⇔
By the time the trio reached the front door, burdens in tow, the room had emptied of diners and the smoke was thick in the air. A siren began to wail in the distance.
"Doctor," said Stephen, coughing, "do we have to drag them all the way back to their ship? Now that they look like humans, can't we just take their guns and dump them somewhere?"
"Certainly not!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Don't tell me you're—"
He broke off sharply, and held up a hand for silence.
A moment later they all heard it: "H-hello? Somebody? Help!"
"Someone's still in there!" exclaimed Sarah Jane.
"You two, get these gentlemen out of here," said the Doctor, dropping his alien and taking a step towards the fire.
Stephen grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him back. "Not in that scarf, you don't!"
And he sprinted back into the room. Quickly, so he wouldn't have time to come to his senses.
⇔
Following his voice, Stephen eventually found Tarantino.
The man was under a table, pinned, as the flames licked closer. A patch of hair over his left ear was singed and frazzled, not from the fire, but from the ray gun beam that had stunned him as it went by. "Hi," he said dreamily.
"Hey there," said Stephen, shoving the table aside. "Get up!"
They stumbled back the way he had come: Tarantino swaying dizzily, Stephen half-dragging him forward. Had the room been this big before? Impossible to tell how far they had come, couldn't see five feet now through the smoke . . .
. . . and then there was a hiss and a whoosh and the blaze reared back, split by a jet of white foam.
"Are you coming?" yelled Jon over the roar.
⇔
They stumbled out into the street just as the fire trucks pulled up. A cheer went up from the crowd of gawkers.
As the firefighters charged in, hoses unrolling behind them, one paused next to the trio. "That was brave," she said. "Reckless, but brave. Make sure you stop by the ambulance, get those burns checked out."
"It's okay," said Coffee Thief. "We're with a doctor."
⇔
Another Damn Planet: 7032
Stephen gaped.
Scrambling down off of Jack's back, he took a few running steps forward, then came to a stop and simply turned around in place, staring openmouthed at the scene around him.
None of the bland grey stones of the planet surface, this! The rock formations around them, towering several stories high, were fine and detailed and full of color. Veins of ore glittered in the walls, and the small stream fed into a vast network of pools in which their reflections also shone.
"There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose," said Stephen, almost to himself, "fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms."
"What's that?" asked the Doctor, joining him.
Stephen looked warily at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and continued. "They spring up from many-colored floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities . . . cities stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, and . . . and . . ."
He trailed off, memory failing him.
"That's beautiful," said Jack quietly.
"It's Tolkien," replied Stephen. That ought to be enough explanation for anyone. "Hey, Doctor? If, hypothetically speaking, you wanted to change a planet's name, how would you go about that?"
The Doctor tapped his chin with the tip of the sonic screwdriver, throwing the shadows behind him into a chaotic frenzy. "I suppose you'd have to start by figuring out what you wanted the new name to be."
"Aglarond," said Stephen firmly.
The Doctor grinned. "The Sindarin name for the Glittering Caves, behind Helm's Deep."
"Exactly."
"You are a geek."
Stephen folded his arms. "Yes, I am. You got a problem with that?"
⇔
Earth: 1994.
Together they hauled the camouflaged aliens back to the studio: Coffee Thief, Crazy Scarf (revealed to be Doctor Crazy Scarf), and The Babe each carrying one piggyback. It turned out they weren't stalkers at all: they had shown up at his building because there was a spaceship parked on the roof. Who knew.
Jon offered to help with the carrying early on, but as he had already had to pull out his inhaler several times, he was left with the duty of guiding the still-dazed Tarantino. Once inside the building, they found the director a couch, onto which he gratefully collapsed.
The still-unconscious aliens was barely starting to stir when they were finally deposited back in their ship.
("And don't come back!" Coffee Thief ordered. "No loser deadbeat green guys are going to zap their way into invading our planet. I mean, if you disguised as humans, infiltrated our political system, and subtly engineered its downfall—no, wait, make it our financial system, everyone cares about money—then you might have a chance! But a couple of hoodlums like you could never pull that off. Now, uh, what did you say your name was? Gorlock? Okay, Gorlock, take your friends and beat it.")
All too soon the mysterious alien-hunters were standing in front of their blue box (which Jon assumed was some kind of teleportation module), shaking Jon's hand and saying their goodbyes.
"You really were fantastic, young man," said Doctor Crazy Scarf, grinning in a cheerful if surprisingly toothy way. "I have a feeling you'll go far. Come along, you two." He beckoned to the others; Coffee Thief hesitated.
"Come on, Doctor," said The Babe, taking his arm. "Let's give these two a minute."
"All right." Doctor Crazy Scarf tapped Coffee Thief on the shoulder. "Don't do anything stupid, you hear?"
They stepped into the box and closed the door.
⇔
Jon spoke first. "Thanks," he said quietly. "For saving my guest. And, y'know, my planet."
"No big deal," said Stephen, trying to sound as though he saved planets every day before breakfast. More softly, he added, "You saved my life too."
"But you weren't expecting it. You ran into the fire to save a stranger, not knowing whether anyone would come after you," pointed out Jon.
(Stephen hadn't been talking about the fire. He let it pass.)
"I mean, I didn't exactly give you any reason to believe I'd come back."
"Why'd you do it? Especially after . . . you know." Stephen waved his hand in a weakly mimed slap.
Jon smiled his adorable embarrassed half-smile. "That was kinda why. I had some sense knocked into me. A guy's gotta care about something enough to risk his life for it, right?"
"I guess."
"What about you?" Jon took a step closer. "Do you have someone to care about?"
"I . . . I have tons of fans," Stephen stammered. "Friends! I meant friends. Though I have fans, too."
A small shake of the head. "Not what I was asking."
Stephen froze.
Jon's voice was low; his lips curved into a slow, inviting smile; his whole body less than three feet away. Stephen had a single heart-stopping moment to take this all in before his mind shot off in two directions at once.
Don't you dare, Col-bert! shouted one part. He's a married man! At least, he will be! You could change the whole course of his life, and he likes the one he's got! You have no right. Don't you dare!
Oh, God, take him now, panted the other, just as loudly. He's young and hot and single and offering! Grab him, kiss him, pin him to the wall, rip off those stupid acid-wash jeans. You'll probably never get a chance like this again!
Jon brushed a bit of soot from Stephen's lapel, let his hand rest on the fabric. "You okay?"
"I—I have to go," choked Stephen. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
And he bolted for the TARDIS door.
Rating: PG-13 (sex'n'violence)
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything through New Who S3/Torchwood S2 is fair game.
Summary: In which there are several dramatic rescues, a burning building, and a really cool cave.
Illustrations from earlier are now all up on DA: serials 1-3, serial 4.
Beta by the judicious
stellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.I Want My MTV
Part Six
Earth: 1994.
Sarah Jane sniffed the air. "Do you smell smoke?"
"Not now, Sarah," said the Doctor, fiddling with his sonic screwdriver. "I'm sure this thing has a disable-ray-guns setting . . . aha!" Raising his voice to address the aliens on the other side of the table, he added, "I would think you'd be more polite to someone who fixed your ship!"
There was a pause, then a confused alien voice. "Dude, your planet does not have the tech for that."
"Well, I'm not from this planet, am I?" asked the Doctor, raising his head just a little ways above the table edge. This time, he didn't get shot at.
"You totally look like a native," said one of the aliens. "Are you bluffing?"
"Bluffing? Me? Of course I'm not bluffing! Sarah Jane, am I bluffing?"
"He's not bluffing," called Sarah Jane. Yes, that was definitely smoke in the air. And to her left there was a set of shadows that danced on the wall, as though cast by a light source that flickered.
"No, I'm definitely an alien here," continued the Doctor, raising his hands slowly. "After all, if I were a human, could I do . . . this?"
The aliens (the non-Doctor aliens, that is) let out shouts of dismay. These stopped after a moment when they realized that the sonic screwdriver hadn't shot anything, at which point they started guffawing again. "He's totally bluffing!" laughed one. "We are so taking this place over."
Sarah Jane peeked at an angle around the side of the table. Diners crouched in similar predicaments all around the room, with the addition of little flames cropping up on the carpets. As she watched, one flame trickled over to a tablecloth, and shot up it like, well, wildfire.
There was a woman behind this table, in a red cocktail dress. She let out a little shriek and sprang for the next one.
"Hey-o!" exclaimed one of the aliens, pointing his gun at her and pulling the trigger.
The weapon clicked uselessly at him.
"Whoa, man, it's jammed!" cried the green man in dismay.
Then he collapsed, as Stephen broke a chair over his head.
Okay, so there was a tiny flaw in Stephen's plan. Namely, the fact that while one of the would-be invaders had gone down, and gone down hard, he was now facing two others with nothing but a couple of splintery chair legs.
"N-now see here," he stammered, trying to look more impressive than he felt. "I'm putting you under Citizen's Arrest—for destruction of property—assault with a deadly weapon—intent to overthrow the government—and—and—"
"Dude!" interrupted one of the aliens, grabbing him around the neck and lifting him into the air. "Didn't your mama ever teach you not to sneak up on people?"
"Gack," Stephen replied wisely.
He meant to say something like "Let's get out of here, before we all burn to death." There were at least three fires in his field of vision now. Whether they had been started by candles or alien gunfire, he didn't know.
Somewhere above them, a smoke alarm finally began to go off.
The aliens looked up in confusion, which seemed to be their default setting. Between the noise and the wriggling captive Stephen, they were distracted enough not to notice Sarah Jane sneaking up behind them, wielding yet another chair.
"All right!" shouted the Doctor over the crackling flames. "There won't be any more shooting. Everybody out!"
Sarah Jane chimed in. "You heard the man. Please move toward the exits in an orderly fashion!"
They kept alternating voices as the diners moved towards the door, and there was hardly any panicking at all.
The Doctor had hooked one of the aliens under its brawny arms and was dragging it towards the exit, so Sarah Jane did the same with another. Stephen grabbed the third, but reluctantly. "How come we're saving these guys? They tried to kill us!"
"I hope you're not suggesting we sink to their level!" exclaimed the Doctor, adjusting the sonic screwdriver one-handed. The tip glowed blue, and then with a slight shimmer the green faces were replaced with almost impossibly beautiful human features in natural shades of brown. "Oh, good, I didn't fry their chameleon units. Come on!"
By the time the trio reached the front door, burdens in tow, the room had emptied of diners and the smoke was thick in the air. A siren began to wail in the distance.
"Doctor," said Stephen, coughing, "do we have to drag them all the way back to their ship? Now that they look like humans, can't we just take their guns and dump them somewhere?"
"Certainly not!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Don't tell me you're—"
He broke off sharply, and held up a hand for silence.
A moment later they all heard it: "H-hello? Somebody? Help!"
"Someone's still in there!" exclaimed Sarah Jane.
"You two, get these gentlemen out of here," said the Doctor, dropping his alien and taking a step towards the fire.
Stephen grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him back. "Not in that scarf, you don't!"
And he sprinted back into the room. Quickly, so he wouldn't have time to come to his senses.
Following his voice, Stephen eventually found Tarantino.
The man was under a table, pinned, as the flames licked closer. A patch of hair over his left ear was singed and frazzled, not from the fire, but from the ray gun beam that had stunned him as it went by. "Hi," he said dreamily.
"Hey there," said Stephen, shoving the table aside. "Get up!"
They stumbled back the way he had come: Tarantino swaying dizzily, Stephen half-dragging him forward. Had the room been this big before? Impossible to tell how far they had come, couldn't see five feet now through the smoke . . .
. . . and then there was a hiss and a whoosh and the blaze reared back, split by a jet of white foam.
"Are you coming?" yelled Jon over the roar.
They stumbled out into the street just as the fire trucks pulled up. A cheer went up from the crowd of gawkers.
As the firefighters charged in, hoses unrolling behind them, one paused next to the trio. "That was brave," she said. "Reckless, but brave. Make sure you stop by the ambulance, get those burns checked out."
"It's okay," said Coffee Thief. "We're with a doctor."
Another Damn Planet: 7032
Stephen gaped.
Scrambling down off of Jack's back, he took a few running steps forward, then came to a stop and simply turned around in place, staring openmouthed at the scene around him.
None of the bland grey stones of the planet surface, this! The rock formations around them, towering several stories high, were fine and detailed and full of color. Veins of ore glittered in the walls, and the small stream fed into a vast network of pools in which their reflections also shone.
"There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose," said Stephen, almost to himself, "fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms."
"What's that?" asked the Doctor, joining him.
Stephen looked warily at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and continued. "They spring up from many-colored floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities . . . cities stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, and . . . and . . ."
He trailed off, memory failing him.
"That's beautiful," said Jack quietly.
"It's Tolkien," replied Stephen. That ought to be enough explanation for anyone. "Hey, Doctor? If, hypothetically speaking, you wanted to change a planet's name, how would you go about that?"
The Doctor tapped his chin with the tip of the sonic screwdriver, throwing the shadows behind him into a chaotic frenzy. "I suppose you'd have to start by figuring out what you wanted the new name to be."
"Aglarond," said Stephen firmly.
The Doctor grinned. "The Sindarin name for the Glittering Caves, behind Helm's Deep."
"Exactly."
"You are a geek."
Stephen folded his arms. "Yes, I am. You got a problem with that?"
Earth: 1994.
Together they hauled the camouflaged aliens back to the studio: Coffee Thief, Crazy Scarf (revealed to be Doctor Crazy Scarf), and The Babe each carrying one piggyback. It turned out they weren't stalkers at all: they had shown up at his building because there was a spaceship parked on the roof. Who knew.
Jon offered to help with the carrying early on, but as he had already had to pull out his inhaler several times, he was left with the duty of guiding the still-dazed Tarantino. Once inside the building, they found the director a couch, onto which he gratefully collapsed.
The still-unconscious aliens was barely starting to stir when they were finally deposited back in their ship.
("And don't come back!" Coffee Thief ordered. "No loser deadbeat green guys are going to zap their way into invading our planet. I mean, if you disguised as humans, infiltrated our political system, and subtly engineered its downfall—no, wait, make it our financial system, everyone cares about money—then you might have a chance! But a couple of hoodlums like you could never pull that off. Now, uh, what did you say your name was? Gorlock? Okay, Gorlock, take your friends and beat it.")
All too soon the mysterious alien-hunters were standing in front of their blue box (which Jon assumed was some kind of teleportation module), shaking Jon's hand and saying their goodbyes.
"You really were fantastic, young man," said Doctor Crazy Scarf, grinning in a cheerful if surprisingly toothy way. "I have a feeling you'll go far. Come along, you two." He beckoned to the others; Coffee Thief hesitated.
"Come on, Doctor," said The Babe, taking his arm. "Let's give these two a minute."
"All right." Doctor Crazy Scarf tapped Coffee Thief on the shoulder. "Don't do anything stupid, you hear?"
They stepped into the box and closed the door.
Jon spoke first. "Thanks," he said quietly. "For saving my guest. And, y'know, my planet."
"No big deal," said Stephen, trying to sound as though he saved planets every day before breakfast. More softly, he added, "You saved my life too."
"But you weren't expecting it. You ran into the fire to save a stranger, not knowing whether anyone would come after you," pointed out Jon.
(Stephen hadn't been talking about the fire. He let it pass.)
"I mean, I didn't exactly give you any reason to believe I'd come back."
"Why'd you do it? Especially after . . . you know." Stephen waved his hand in a weakly mimed slap.
Jon smiled his adorable embarrassed half-smile. "That was kinda why. I had some sense knocked into me. A guy's gotta care about something enough to risk his life for it, right?"
"I guess."
"What about you?" Jon took a step closer. "Do you have someone to care about?"
"I . . . I have tons of fans," Stephen stammered. "Friends! I meant friends. Though I have fans, too."
A small shake of the head. "Not what I was asking."
Stephen froze.
Jon's voice was low; his lips curved into a slow, inviting smile; his whole body less than three feet away. Stephen had a single heart-stopping moment to take this all in before his mind shot off in two directions at once.
Don't you dare, Col-bert! shouted one part. He's a married man! At least, he will be! You could change the whole course of his life, and he likes the one he's got! You have no right. Don't you dare!
Oh, God, take him now, panted the other, just as loudly. He's young and hot and single and offering! Grab him, kiss him, pin him to the wall, rip off those stupid acid-wash jeans. You'll probably never get a chance like this again!
Jon brushed a bit of soot from Stephen's lapel, let his hand rest on the fabric. "You okay?"
"I—I have to go," choked Stephen. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
And he bolted for the TARDIS door.
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I love the last picture, though Jon with no grey in his hair just seems so wrong. =P
I'm so glad Jon got some sense knocked into him! That's the boy I know and love.
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...it is so hard to draw brunette!Jon and still have him look like Jon, you have no idea.
And you were worried =D
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Thanks!
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1994!Jon, you
temptresstempter(?)! And, damn you Stephen, you should have taken the chance! I'm semisorta glad there's only minor paradoxes in this chapter. The Children in Need vignette made me want to curl up in a corner and hide. My mind is not imploding, and it's good.I wonder if Stephen Colbert ever ran into a young Steven Carell and started yelling at him out of the blue. That would be so interesting.
Steven: "Um, excuse me, can you move? I have to...I have to go to suchandsuchaplace. I have an audition."
Stephen: "No!"
Steven: (confused) "Um, yes?"
Stephen: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
I miss "Even Stephven"... I really do...
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I'm pretty sure it's "tempter" in this case =3
Oh, man, that's delightful. Young!Steve would be so confused XD
And thank you!
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"Exactly."
"You are a geek."
*giggles* Takes one to know one. *hearts them both*
(Stephen hadn't been talking about the fire. He let it pass.)
Awww, Stephen.
I loved young!Stephen reciting the passage from Tolkien, and changing the name of the planet (though I did love its original name). And ofc older!Stephen saving Tarantino and resisting JON. I'm very proud of him, and of young!Jon for deciding to help save the day.
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I'm sure the old name will end up with some other, more genuinely boring planet eventually. In the meantime, Stephen did good. As did Stephen. (Definitely one of the harder things he's done.)
Thanks!
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And JSS!Jon... how I would have just ravaged you so go Stephen for not jumping him!
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Stephen did good XD
Thanks!
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-18 12:04 am (UTC)(link)...aww!...
i like the picture and the ending.
...aww, Stephen, you poor thing...
Kagaya
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I wish I had read all of this more slowly, now I just have to go back and reread, like I'm doing now.