Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication (18 page)

This broke whatever spell of inaction had been cast upon Linn and myself. We rushed over to the dead form of the Dr.

‘Doctor!’ I cried. It was a cry of despair.

 
‘Linn,’ I urged. ‘You must do something! Take the TARDY, go back in time, undo this terrible thing.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, her voice full of sorrow.

‘Don’t be like that . . .’

‘No, I mean I can’t. I
really can’t
. I don’t know how. I’ve got years of training before me. I’m not a Time Lady, I’m just an apprentice.’

These were very discouraging words indeed. If Linn couldn’t operate the TARDY then the Dr was indeed dead, irrevocably. Moreover, Linn and I were both trapped there: stuck on the planet Skary, in the heart of the bunker of a criminally insane fascist Greek chef just at the moment he turned his planet over to the rule of the Garleks. Things looked bleak indeed.

‘Bother,’ I said.

Then something happened that I was not expecting. The Dr sat up and said two things that sounded, to my jangled ears, rather like non sequiturs. Which is to say, sounded unlike garden pruning scissors. He said, ‘has he gone?’ And then he said. ‘Quick, help me off with my
tie
. . .’

‘Tie?’ I stammered. ‘What?’

‘Quick!’ he urged. ‘Quick—quick—’ He was scrabbling at his neck. ‘I had to wait until I was sure he was gone,’ he explained, as he yanked the tie to loosen it. ‘Or else I . . . there!’ The tie was loose, a snake of cloth that wriggled as the Dr flung it through the air. Then in mid-air something strange happened. The tie seemed to explode. It kinked and shreds and bits of fluff flew out from it.

‘What . . .?’

An instant later a bullet caromed into the far wall. The tie, in two pieces now, fell slowly to the floor.

‘My TARDY tie,’ the Dr explained, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. ‘You know that space between the front and back bit of a tie? That little flat cavity?’

‘I have never worn a tie,’ I said, honestly enough, but feeling the oddity of my statement.

‘Well a tie is actually a sort of tube of cloth,’ the Dr was saying. ‘Think of a tapering tube pressed flat . . . there’s your tie. And since this was a TARDY tie, with the logo on it and everything, of course it was considerably bigger inside than it is outside. I’ve never actually measured it, but I have reason to believe it’s about a mile across from front to back.’

‘So when the ET shot you . . .?’

‘The bullet passed into my tie: it was hurtling across the cavity as I lay there. But I had to wait until the ET left, or he’d just shoot me again. It’s like towel - you remember that TARDY towel you used to dry yourself off after your dip in the North Atlantic? That was similar technology. The spaces between the strands of towelling were much much
much
larger than the towel itself. That was why it was so extraordinarily good at soaking up water.’

‘So that explains the towels,’ I said.

Not much of a sentence, really. Considering that I’m a prose tailor, and everything.

‘Right!’ said the Dr with enormous vigour. ‘Let’s get on with this averting of terrible consequences, shall we? Put an end to the Garleks - nip back in time to rescue your ladylove - and get away!’

My relationship with Lexanco didn’t last, of course. The time I spent upon Tapov had its moments, but the main thing I learned there was that I couldn’t dance very well. Well, the two things I learned there were, (a) that I couldn’t dance very well, and (b) it’s hard to keep a woman interested in you if you are flabby and pale and badly co-ordinated when that same woman is surrounded by a whole planetful of lithe, muscular, handsome, graceful and co-ordinated males.

Ah well.

But that’s not what I want to talk about in this epilogue.

You’ve now read my story, tailored out of my own prose, about my experiences with the Dr. If you’ve read it with any attention you will have spotted a variety of errors of punctuation, and the occasional grammatical solecism. If you’ve paid even closer attention you
may
have noticed that the story was not arranged according to the rules of sequential and chronologically-linear development. Everything that the Time Gentlemen represent.

This was done on purpose.

You see, I met up with the ET again. I couldn’t stop thinking about his words, to be honest; and when I met him again he was able to convince me.

To convince me that the Time Gentlemanly obsession with rules, order and sequence is not only wrongheaded, but actively dangerous to the cosmos.

To convince me to join him in his campaign to save the universe from the Time Gentlemen.

And if you’ve been able to follow the story this far - if you’ve survived this dislocation of narrative - then I hope you’ll understand. Understand, and maybe join us too . . .

 
Only available from Whom Industries plc.
¹
Yours for only £399.99 plus postage and packing, placing, platterning and patrolling. And pirouetteing. [Whom plc guarantees that our staff will pirouette at least three times for every order received].

 
The answer to all your problems is a MORONIC SCREWDRIVER©!

 
That’s right, a MORONIC SCREWDRIVER ♣ of your very own! Be king of screws with this
handy
device.
²

 
 
The MORONIC SCREWDRIVERO™ operates according to a radically new principle. Simply point your MORONIC SCREWDRIVER⊕ at the screw, engage the patented MORONICIZER RAY with your thumb, and watch as the screw goes all moronic, probably falling out of its own stupid accord, the stupid twit, hah! Any screw to which the patented MORONICIZER RAY is applied will become too
idiotic
,
brainhurty
and
durr!
to be able to continue doing its screw-ish work of holding stuff together.

 
[WARNING: do not use this device to grout wax out of your ear. Should you accidentally activate the MORONIC SCREWDRIVER
hellomum
! inside your skull, Whom plc can take no responsibility for the moronification that may result.]

The complete range of monsters against which the Dr and his apprentice have battled is now available via Monsieur Monster, the specialist Monster Introduction Agency

 
THE GARLEKS

Available in clove, megaclove, supermegaclove, hyper-supermegaclove and Big.

 
THE CYDERMEN

“
Oi am a zyder thinker, oi think it all of the day
. . .’

 
THE SLUTTYTEENS

‘Sluttyteen’ over-skin suits now available in Matt Lucas or Nicholas Soames sizes.

 
THE SKI DEVILS

Rising from the depths of water (well, of frozen water on the slopes of the Alps, but that’s still technically water) to terrify innocent skiers . . .

 
THE SONTAGANS

A fearsome sect of fanatics whose life is dedicated to the writing of Susan Sontag.

Who could forget the roll of acting honour, the range of genius that embodied Dr Who for generations of eager viewers?
³
Deathless their names shall be; never shall their glory fade; they shall not grow old as we who lack the capacity to regenerate our bodies via some frankly implausible cod-biological strategy shall grow old. Let us list them here, names as familiar to us as the names of our own families, in an if-you-will roll of Who-honour. Whonour, indeed:

 
Patrick HartweLL
. Hartnell. Hatywell. Or was it William? Hmm. Not that it matters: nobody can remember him these days anyway.

 
Patrick Troughton
. He was short. He wore a natty black jacket, black moleskin trousers. He had black hair, black eyes. In fact, as I recall him to memory, he had grey skin. That can’t be a good sign, can it? Medically I mean? Let me put it this way: if
I
woke up one morning and looked in the shaving mirror and saw that my skin had gone literally
grey
, I’d get down to the GP pretty sharpish, let me tell you. ‘Here!’ I would say. ‘What are you going to do about this? My entire dermis as grey as gunmetal, and my eyes, previously a rather fetching blue, gone all black. I want to know what you’re going to
do
about it, that’s what I want to know. And
don’t
try giving me some brush-off prescription for a “special medicated cream” that we all know is just plain moisturiser, that’s not going to
fly
with me, sonny. I want specialists from all over the world congregating to discuss this astonishing dermatological development, from off-pink to grey in one night. I want high-tech treatments.’

Anyway, the
point
here, the point, is that nobody can really remember Troughton either.

 
Jon Pertwee
. Sean Pertwee’s dad, you know. Curly white hair, red velvet jacket, no ‘h’ in his first name. That’s what was memorable about him. Obviously most people called ‘John’ are happy enough to carry the h. But not ‘Jon’ Pertwee. I mean, what’s that supposed to prove, anyway? That’s some strange affectation, right there: like he’s saying ‘oh, oh, I can afford to buy this crushed velvet jacket and to drive about in a
personal hovercraft
but I can’t afford the h for the middle of my first name’. Is that what he’s saying? Because,
let me tell you
, personal hovercrafts are both extremely expensive and frankly unnecessary. If he can afford that, he can sure as dammit afford the ‘h’. Why can’t he drive a Cortina, like everybody else? Or else that other Ford car, the one with the three gears and the single windscreen wiper, the one with the SFy-name, what was it called? I find that kind of behaviour despicable. Like those aristocrats who go around in really tatty tweed trousers with saggy crotches and holes in the knee, ‘Oh look at me, I’m rich enough to put all my children through Eton but I’m too poor to buy new trousers.’ It makes me sick, I don’t mind telling you. It makes me actually nauseous with fury. I may have to go and have a little lie down, right now.