I wrote this story in March 2010 in response to a competition being run by Big Finish Productions to find short stories by writers new to publishing for an upcoming series of audio CDs. Sadly, my story was not chosen but, in the spirit of waste not, want not, I decided to put it up here. Besides, I think it's a reasonable effort for my first attempt and I thought it deserved an audience. Entries for the competition were strictly limited to 2,500 words and this story clocks in at pretty much that limit. It was quite a struggle to keep its length down and several things I quite liked had to be sacrificed. Perhaps, at some future date, I will expand it to incorporate all the ideas I had originally intended to include but that's for a future project.
The story was suggested by the appalling policy of cultural vandalism practised by the BBC up until the late 1970s and the invention of the domestic video recorder whereby any television program deemed to have outlived its broadcast life (and not to be of cultural significance) was wiped and the tape was reused. I won't go on about what is one of my big obsessions but, suffice it to say, this led to many (indeed, most) television programs produced by the BBC, including 108 episodes of Doctor Who, being destroyed and lost forever. So I thought about this and wondered what would happen if The Doctor were real and he discovered episodes from his life were being told as TV dramas...
Finally, a note about copyright. I fully acknowledge that the copyright for Doctor Who is owned by the BBC. I wrote this story out of a life-long love of Doctor Who and complete respect and admiration for the thousands of people who have contributed to its ongoing success since 1963. I am receiving no financial gain out of it and would respectfully ask the copyright owners to forgive this small and well-intentioned infringement.
The Wiping Of Doctor Who
by
© BBC 1963 / Mike May 2010
“A car boot sale?”, groaned Ace. “That’s so boring. Can’t we do something more exciting?”
“More exciting than a car boot sale?”, replied the Doctor. “But the car boot sale is one of the wonders of the civilised universe. Untold worlds of mystery end excitement can be found in the objects you find for sale at these things. Where’s your sense of adventure? Besides, some sunshine and fresh air will do you good.”
Ace had to admit she was feeling a bit cooped up in the Tardis and was happy to get out for a change of scenery. She was still feeling a bit shaken after that business with her friends back in Perivale. Although it was just a week or so later for her, by the magic of time travel, which still made her head spin sometimes, outside it was a sunny day in the early years of the new millennium.
The Doctor pushed the Tardis door control and strode out into the sunlight, swinging his umbrella with the red question mark handle. Ace picked up her backpack and followed him out. She never went anywhere without her supply of homemade explosives she had called Nitro Nine. Despite the Doctor’s disapproval, that not so secret hoard had saved the day on more than one occasion.
The Tardis was in the shade of a tree just next to the entrance to a car park. If people passing by registered the once familiar but now anachronistic blue box, they didn’t think to comment upon it. The time travellers strode up to the entrance where a bored looking teenage girl was sitting at a folding table with a cash box open on it.
“A pound each.” She intoned without making eye contact. The Doctor fished around in his pockets for some change. I always have this problem, he thought to himself. They should standardise galactic currencies; it would be much simpler. Then to his surprise, he found two pound coins, dated after the current year but he knew the girl wouldn’t notice.
The Doctor tipped his hat to the oblivious girl and passed through the entrance. He cast a look around the thirty or so vendors and selected one. Ace trudged after him. The items on the stall in front of them looked to her like they were only fit for the skip. The Doctor, however, was enthusiastically rummaging through the ornaments, lampshades, crockery and other assorted ephemera on offer.
After a while they moved on to a second, similarly-laden stall. Then a third. This was more like it, thought Ace, as she began to look through a pile of CDs. Nothing much there interested her, though, until she spotted the name of one band she’d particularly liked. She read the title: Second Coming. Wicked, she thought; she’d loved The Stone Roses’ first album. She paid the 50p asking price and turned to the Doctor to show him her purchase. The Doctor, though, was staring intently at what looked like a thin, plastic-covered book.
“No, no, no. This isn’t right at all.”, he said to himself. Ace tried to read the title; The Doctor Who Remembered something or other.
“What’s the matter, Professor?” She asked.
“This is all wrong”, he said, waving the book. “We must get back to the Tardis.” He set off back towards the car park entrance. A bewildered Ace followed.
As Ace entered the Tardis, she was just in time to see the Doctor’s back passing through a door opposite. She wondered what he was up to this time. He can be so infuriating, she thought. A few seconds later, he returned to the console room carrying what looked to Ace like the result of using some of her Nitro Nine inside an electronics factory. She asked him what the tangled jumble of components was.
“It’s a television. Did they have those in your time?”
“Well, duh! Of course they did.” Ace looked doubtfully at the contraption. It didn’t look like a telly to her but then she had learned not to expect the obvious since becoming the Doctor’s companion. The Doctor pulled out something like a rolled-up poster with some wires attached from the middle of the pile. He unrolled it and, failing to find somewhere stable to put it, balanced the metre-wide flexible panel on the arms of a chair that looked as though it had been specifically placed there for the purpose, even though Ace couldn’t remember ever seeing it before.
The Doctor connected some wires between the contraption and the Tardis console. A few sparks and some smoke later, neither of which surprised Ace nor seemed to concern the Doctor, he stepped back to admire his handiwork, a satisfied smile on his face.
He took the book he had bought at the sale and opened it. Ace realised that it wasn’t a book at all but a thin plastic box. It seemed to have a CD in it. He removed the disc and slid it into a slot in the console. The panel on the chair flickered and an upside-down copyright message appeared. The Doctor hurriedly turned the panel the right way up. Next came an undulating coloured ribbon accompanied by a brief snatch of mellow guitar music followed by a logo Ace instantly recognised.
“Cool, they’re putting films on CDs now”, she said.
“No, it’s A DVD”, replied the Doctor. Ace was about to ask, a DV-what? But seeing the Doctor’s concentrated frown, she thought better of it. A list of some kind appeared and the Doctor pushed some buttons on the console. A star field appeared onscreen over some synthesiser music. A title came up: “Doctor Who”, it read. Oh no, I hate medical dramas, though Ace.
But as the programme began, she realised this wasn’t a medical show at all but a science-fiction one. After a few minutes, the scene switched to an ordinary-looking street. A groaning, wheezing sound began, quickly getting louder. At first Ace didn’t connect the sound to anything but suddenly a big blue box appeared as if from nowhere on the screen.
Ace gasped. “But that’s like...” Her voice tailed off as the materialisation completed. A door in the blue box opened and two figures emerged; a middle aged man in a pale linen suit and a young woman in a leather jacket covered with badges. Ace stared at the screen open-mouthed.
“He called her Ace”, she said. “But what..? I mean, how..?
“I don’t know, Ace.” The Doctor said. “I think they’re supposed to be us.” They watched on for a few minutes.
“They’re not very much like us though. I mean, the actor playing me has got a Scottish accent.”
“Well, you have too. Kind of.”
The Doctor looked sharply at his companion. “But I’m not Scottish. I’m not even human”, he said, rather defensively, Ace thought. “And why Doctor Who? I’ve got a perfectly serviceable name, you know.” Ace jumped hastily in, thinking we’ll be here all night if he actually tries to say it.
“And she’s just a kid. And annoying too. Nothing like me.”
“Whether or not they’re like us is hardly the point, Ace. What I want to know is how an episode from our lives has come to be made into a television show. The details aren’t completely right but they’re far too close for comfort.”
“But only a few people know what happened there and they were all official government types. None of them would make a TV show out of it.”
They watched on, mostly in silence, punctuated by occasional tuts of disapproval and comments about how events didn’t actually happen how they were portrayed. After an hour and a half, the final credits rolled.
“Hmm, I wish I really was as pretty as that Sophie girl”, Ace mumbled to herself. Then, more loudly, to the Doctor, “What do we do now, Professor?”
“We do what we always do. We investigate.”
After quick trip to the nearest large town, the Doctor and Ace returned to the Tardis, laden down with a pile of silver discs in their grey plastic boxes.
“There are dozens of them. And they go all the way back to my first incarnation when I was first here with Susan.” The Doctor paused, thinking back to those long-gone days, six regenerations ago. I must look up Susan; see how she’s getting on, he thought. “From what I can gather”, he went on, “there seem to have been stories from my life filmed between the early 1960s and the end of the 1980s. That’s a fairly short period of time but it does match a period when I was here quite a lot.”
“But how could someone know all those details about what you’ve been up to?” Ace wondered aloud.
“That’s the question. To have such a wide-ranging knowledge of my travels, you would need access to the archives of the Timelords.” The Doctor thought for a moment. “We need to go back to when the stories stopped being made. “ He rummaged through the pile of discs. “According to this, the last story was made in 1989 so that’s where we’ll go.” Ace watched as he pushed buttons and switched switches in a seemingly random sequence. To the accompaniment of the familiar dematerialisation sounds, the central column in the console began to rise and fall.
A loud thump signalled their arrival. On the console, a red light was blinking in time with a persistent beeping noise.
“Um, what does that mean?”, asked Ace, pointing to the light.
“What? Oh that. It means there’s some temporal disturbance in the vicinity.” The Doctor suddenly looked alert. “And there really shouldn’t be any. Come along, Ace.”
The Doctor picked up something the size of a TV remote control. It was flashing and beeping in time with the console. They stepped out into a narrow mews street lined with small terraced houses. As they walked along it, the beeping from the gadget the Doctor got faster and faster until, in front of an anonymous white-painted door, the sound was continuous. The Doctor knocked on the door. After a pause, the door swung slowly open. An elderly man with snow-white hair and glasses with thick bottle-bottom lenses stood there.
“Ah, got your attention at last then, Doctor, did I?”, the man said.
“Bornabus. I might have known. May I?” Before getting a response, the Doctor entered the house, followed by Ace.
“Pushy as ever, I see. Can I offer you and your young friend some refreshment?” With a smoothness and fluidity that belied his aged appearance, Bornabus showed them into a room. “No? Oh well. “ He motioned them to an old, threadbare sofa and sat down opposite in what must be, thought Ace, his favourite armchair. Next to the sofa was a large mahogany wardrobe. It was humming quietly.
“Professor,” said Ace, “this wardrobe is humming.”
“Yes, Ace,” replied the Doctor, “that’s his Tardis.”
“His Tardis?” The Doctor nodded. She went on. “So he’s a timelord too then?”
“That’s right, young lady”, Bornabus said. “My name is Bornabus. And yours?”
“Ace”, said Ace.
The pleasantries out of the way, The Doctor got straight to the point.
“What are you doing here on Earth, in this time period? And why have I discovered episodes from my travels being broadcast as popular entertainment?”
“Ah yes, sorry about that. As I said, it was a way of getting your attention. You know that I’m a historian and that early, primitive human history is my specialist area?”
“Primitive? Listen mate, this is my people you’re on about”, said Ace.
Not unkindly, Bornabus said, “Primitive is a relative term. I meant no offence.” He continued his story, saying how he had been researching the post-war nuclear stand-off and how it hadn’t ended, like in so many other civilisations, in an all-out exchange of nuclear weapons. “It’s a very dangerous stage of cultural development and few societies get through it without destroying themselves. Fortunately, with a small tweak here and there, like the Buddy Holly thing...”
The Doctor shot Ace a look that said, don’t ask.
“... we managed to keep things on track. Anyway, unfortunately, when I got here, my Tardis broke down. I’m not a temporal engineer so I couldn’t fix it. I knew from the records that you made frequent visits to this planet during this era so I thought I would get some assistance from you.”
“So you made some cheesy telly to contact the Doctor? Haven’t you got a galactic phone to call the space RAC or something?”, asked Ace.
“Well I didn’t make the programmes personally. I thought about how best to attract the Doctor’s attention and I realised that broadcasting events from his life would be bound to work. It was a simple matter to telepathically implant the stories in the minds of various people in the television industry and the broadcasts were made. Of course, I had to keep it going until you turned up which took much longer than I expected. You’re very popular, you know.”
“Popularity is overrated”, commented the Doctor. “You can’t go around broadcasting things about me. Besides, the stories are wildly inaccurate. Most of them are nothing like what really happened.”
“Well telepathic suggestion is an inexact process”, explained Bornabus, “and, besides, those television people are all artistic types with their personal intrigues and hidden agendas so, to be honest, I’m surprised they got as close to the truth as they did.”
The Doctor was far from happy but, nevertheless, he agreed to help repair Bornabus’ Tardis, a job which proved quite straightforward.
“Right, Ace,” said the Doctor as they returned to their own Tardis, “now we’re going to do some cultural vandalism.”
The Tardis appeared in a dark, musty space. Clearly a storage area of some kind, it was lined with shelves holding row upon row of large videotape canisters. The Doctor and Ace walked down the aisles searching for the right tapes.
“Ah here’s some more”, the Doctor said. He pointed his sonic screwdriver at a number of tapes. With a high-pitched whine, the tapes were wiped. “You know,” he said, with a sigh, “this is futile, there a millions of copies of the programmes out there and we can’t destroy them all. We’ve done all we can. At least some of Bornabus’ mischief has been undone.”
“OK,” said Ace, “but there’s just one more...” She grabbed the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor’s hand, and pointed it at some tapes a little further down the aisle.
“But that’s not...” protested the Doctor.
“I know,” said Ace, “but I can’t stand Dad’s Army.”
With satisfied, if slightly guilty, expressions, the pair walked back to the Tardis.
“You know,” said the Doctor, “if they must choose a Scottish actor to play me next time, the least they could do would be to make him do it without a Scottish accent.”
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