"The scanner, my dear! Where are we?" The Doctor asked rather urgently.
Vicki fumbled with the switch, her eyes glued to the screen as it flickered to life. "I'm not sure." She gazed at the image pensively.
"Radiation levels are Earth normal. There are people nearby, about a kilometre to the east." She finally reported.
The Doctor hummed concomitantly.
"Aren't we going to go out? Do some exploring?" Vicki asked curiously.
"Very well, my child." The Doctor acquiesced.
"Is something wrong?" The Doctor seemed slightly worried, she thought.
"We, are in the Colonies," he pronounced, with an unusual solemnity.
"The Colonies?" Vicki queried quizzically.
"The land that will become the United States of America. This is the late eighteenth century, unless I'm much mistaken." The Doctor fastened his cape and motioned for his companion to precede him out the door.
The weather was overcast, the cold wind biting through Vicki's scarf. She was painfully aware of each of the fifteen minutes it took to walk to the colony; it must be the dead of winter, she thought.
Approaching the town, Vicki could see an obvious commotion near the water. She gasped in horror when she realized what the protesters were doing.
"Doctor!" She could only point. "What on earth are they doing?"
The Doctor merely chuckled. "Don't you study world history in the twenty-fifth century, Vicki?" He asked good-naturedly.
"Of course, but we study important historical events. The World Wars, the Great Floods of the twenty-third century, that sort of thing. I focussed on the twentieth-century when it came time for individual research." Vicki was at a loss.
"Shall we?" Asked the Doctor, indicating two boxes filled with tea.
"Oh, I couldn't," Vicki protested.
The Doctor laboriously began to stack the tea.
"You're making it easier for them to dispose of," Vicki said.
"This is history," was the Doctor's answer. "1773. The Tea Act is passed, allowing the East India Company to directly ship to the New World. American colonists feel betrayed by the home country, because the sellers of tea here stand to lose business due to a tax on incoming product."
"Well that seems rather silly," Vicki commented derisively. "The colonists take the tea, which is already decreasing in value, and make it completely worthless by dumping it into the ocean!"
"Humans," the Doctor said, rather fondly, though carefully masked under a layer of contempt. "Are you coming, child?" He began to push the boxes (which he had, Vicki noticed, stacked on a primitive sort of cart) towards the water.
"Now see here," Vicki ran to catch up, carrying her own box of tea. "Whatever are we going to do? You're not suggesting that we actually participate in these events? I remember you distinctly saying that history wasn't to be meddled with."
"Ah," said the Doctor. "But this, my dear, is far from meddling. This is ensuring that history happens the way that it's meant to."
"Don't the first boxes get thrown into the ocean off a boat?" Vicki wondered, trying to recall anything she may have come across in her readings.
"We haven't put anything in the water," the Doctor reminded her, almost gleefully. He deposited the trolley at the water's edge and leaned against the boxes, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. He seemed, Vicki thought, to take on a child-like aura of gleeful innocence.
"There's someone watching, over near the top of the docks!" Vicki said.
The Doctor peered through a pair of antiquated opera glasses. "I do believe that that man is Samuel Adams," he exclaimed. "Officially, he only campaigned against the Tea Act, but there have always been whispers that he, in fact, gave the very signal that started the revolution."
"So you have changed history!" Vicki cried accusatorily.
"Not necessarily, my child. Not necessarily." The Doctor began to walk up the docks.
"Where are you going?" Vicki hurried to catch up.
"To speak with Samuel Adams, of course," the Doctor replied brusquely.
"But it must be nearly midnight," Vicki protested, looking around at the dark, empty street.
The Doctor said nothing, hurrying forward.
"Oh very well," Vicki muttered, following the Doctor to the top of the docks.
They must have stood out, like they didn't belong in this time. They didn't, of course, and they were English, which made people instantly distrustful. Americans, no they weren't Americans yet, Vicki reminded herself, the future Americans declaring their independence from England. It reminded her of several larger revolutions, all on a planetary-scale.
Samuel Adams was, Vicki had to admit, an impressive figure. People were attentive to what he wanted to say, and though she was from their future and England besides, Vicki found that she was drawn to what he had to say. It was not fair for the colonists to be taxed for products that they used when the people who collected the taxes had nothing to do with them. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right. Adams roused her sense of justice and freedom. The laws that protected her in the twenty-fifth century didn't exist yet and Vicki knew that she would have fought tooth and nail to have them passed.
The Doctor had been engaged in conversation for at least twenty minutes, and Vicki was getting bored of listening to the men talk. She wandered around the docks, looking around her surroundings. The docks were littered with remnants of the Tea Party – empty boxes that had been hastily discarded, tea spilling out of the chests.
The men disbanded. Adams handed Vicki a canteen. "I'm afraid we haven't any milk or sugar," he said, somewhat apologetically.
"Oh, that's quite alright," Vicki laughed deviously, unscrewing the top and pouring the tea into the ocean.
"What are your plans? Will you be staying in Boston, Miss?" Adams inquired, watching as the brown liquid quickly dissipated.
"Oh no. We're just passing through. Travellers, the Doctor and I. It's…wonderful." Vicki thought longingly of the TARDIS. "Vicki Pallister."
"Samuel Adams, Miss Pallister." Adams nodded in greeting. "We must move swiftly. It shall be morning soon and there is still work to be done, if we hope to have any response from England."
"I shouldn't worry about that, my dear fellow," the Doctor clapped his shoulder. "Vicki, I do believe that we have stayed past our welcome."
Adams looked at the strange pair. "I bid you good day, then. Safe travels, Doctor. Miss Vicki."
"Mr. Adams," Vicki curtsied, biting her lip to hide a grin. She couldn't remember when curtsying went out of style, but felt as though she ought to do something a bit more formal than a wave. The Doctor tutted quietly, but Vicki didn't care.
"He's a nice man," she told the Doctor.
"I suppose he is, my dear," was his reply. The walk back to the TARDIS was spent in silence; if Vicki strained, she could barely hear the boxes being moved along the docks. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the dark outlines of men dumping tea into the ocean.
Vicki snickered as the Doctor unlocked the door to the TARDIS. "We had a tea party at the Boston Tea Party!"
A grin emerged from the Doctor's wizened features. "Perhaps, in the most liberal sense of the word," he chuckled, stepping into the ancient time machine.
"We did help 'serve' the tea," Vicki said, a fit of giggles starting. The Doctor snickered, and soon the duo was laughing their heads off, the TARDIS engines rasping as the disappeared into the Time Vortex.
Notes:
"What about me? I saw the Fall of Troy, World War V. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon. In Cardiff!"
-The Ninth Doctor, "The Unquiet Dead", Series One, Doctor Who