Hello there!
A bit of background info on the story. I'm a second generation Doctor Who viewer who grew up on VHS copies of the old series. Ever since I was a tiny little thing, I loved the Seventh Doctor story Remembrance of the Daleks. Ace is awesome. At one point during the serial, there's a television switched on in someone's sitting room. In a nod to the audience, the television is introducing 'a brand new science-fiction story'. The book series took that and ran, creating a 'parallel' Doctor Who series that existed as a fictional entity inside the Doctor Who universe. It was called 'Professor X'. This is based on that idea.
The Adventures of Professor X originally came from me wondering how different the series would be it were a Canadian or American production. How different would it be from Doctor Who? I know most people would automatically assume it would be no better than a Michael Bay film, but hey. Star Trek. The X-Files. Firefly. There is a precedent. What all those American sci-fi series have in common, that Doctor Who also has (but not in quite the same way), are the themes of restless wandering, never-ending quests, and the hero as the underdog. I hope I can emphasize that here, while maintaining the self-aware camp and sense of childlike wonder that made us all love Doctor Who in the first place.
Take a moment. Sit back. Grab a banana, and while you're at it, grab another one because you probably need the potassium* and enjoy
THE ADVENTURES OF PROFESSOR X
Chapter One, Part One: In Which Several People are in Particularly Bad Moods
In a wholly unremarkable solar system, on a wholly unremarkable planet, hugging the edge of one wholly unremarkable landmass, sat a university.
On the far edge of the campus, past the main cluster of buildings, sat the small laboratory that housed most of the university's biomedical science department. Inside that small laboratory, young Megan Dewey, biochemistry grad student, was cleaning a dirty Erlenmeyer flask. The word 'dirty', of course, was highly subjective. The casual viewer would hardly have considered the flask dirty, but after years of lectures on proper laboratory techniques, Megan knew that the flask could hardly hold water without contaminating it, much less her precious salamander DNA samples.
As she sat idly over a Bunsen burner, burning microscopic organisms off the rim of an Erlenmeyer flask, Megan was consumed with an oddly maternal love for her salamander DNA samples. She had obtained them at great personal expense, and stored them in a tiny disused corner of the main research lab, safe where no one would think of bothering either them or her. No one else was due to come in for the next few hours. She was alone, and her salamander DNA samples were safe. It was lovely.
After cleaning the flask, Megan reached to switch off the gas and nearly caught her hair on fire. Her bizarrely misplaced surge of maternal instincts had led to distraction, which had nearly led to singed hair, which had led to the warm fuzzies in her chest being replaced with burning embarrassment. With a frustrated grunt, she flicked her hair behind her ears and reached for her coffee in the vain hope that it might either give her the caffeine to focus, or at least calm her down enough to keep her from actually messing anything up. It was empty. She tapped the bottom. It was still empty.
"Lovely." she said.
With nothing better to waste time on, Megan Dewey decided to keep on keeping on with the salamander DNA. Sighing, she got up from her stool and went to see if she could find the gel electrophoresis apparatus she was using yesterday.
After far too long, the polyacrylamide gel had solidified into the right consistency to run the electrophoresis. Megan grabbed her plastic micropipet and her DNA samples, and began preparing the gel with far too much gusto for so early in the morning. Then someone burst in.
"Hey, have you seen anyone today?" She said, somewhat breathily.
The intruder was in her mid-thirties, of Asian extraction, and was far too put-together to belong in a lab. Megan quickly sized her up. Too old to be an undergrad, and she'd recognize her skirt and blazer combo if she made a habit of hanging around the lab.
"What're you doing here?" Megan asked.
"Have you seen anyone?" The woman seemed rather impatient. Oh well.
"Does it matter?" That was when Megan realized she had dropped the micropipet. This was a mild conundrum, as she had no spares. She briefly thought of cleaning the plastic micropipet with the Bunsen burner, then realized how ridiculous a solution that was.
"Come on. Seriously. Have you seen anyone?" The woman was visibly shaking with impatience. On a brighter note, Megan noticed that she had managed to catch her breath.
Megan paused before answering. It was a tense pause, but only because she intended it to be that way. A random woman may have broken into her lab, demanding answers to stupid questions like the fate of the world rested on them, but Megan was still in charge. "No. No, I haven't. Why?"
The woman sighed in relief as soon as Megan said the word 'no'. "Can I speak to you for a minute? Outside?"
Megan thought her face did a spectacular job of answering the question all by itself, but the woman wasn't taking no for an answer.
"You're in danger." The woman said, and when it became clear Megan wasn't taking her seriously, she muttered, "Everywhere I go, always. Somebody tells them they're in danger, they never believe it. Now come on."
"What kind of danger?" For some reason, the long-suffering tone in the woman's voice went a long way in Megan's mind to making her less of an annoying intruder and more of a person she might actually listen to. Of course she didn't believe her.
"Dangerous danger." The woman replied, with more than a trace of frustration, and she bounded over, grabbed Megan by the arm, and tried to forcibly drag Megan out of the lab. Megan shrieked and put up a fight, but the woman was much stronger than her. Which really wasn't saying much.
The woman pulled Megan down the hall and to the fire exit, where she stopped and looked around, as though waiting for something. Megan managed to wrestle her arm free and glared up at the woman.
"What the f-"
"Shh!" The woman cut her off. "They might hear you."
"Who?" Just as Megan decided this woman was insane, a janitor came out of one of the labs. He stopped in the center of the hallway, looked around briefly, and walked off. His movements as he walked were oddly jerky, as if he had a bum knee. He probably had a bum knee.
The woman hissed in her ear. "You see that?"
"You're hiding from the janitors?"
"That's not a janitor." The woman whispered, looking at Megan with an expression that clearly showed how stupid she thought Megan was.
"Looks like a janitor to me."
"Well it isn't."
There was another awkward pause, after which Megan raised an eyebrow. She'd had enough of this; there were micropipets to clean. "Well, this is lovely, but I've got to-"
"No!" The woman said, alarm evident on her face. "You can't stay in there. Just wait until the professor gets here. He knows what's going on here." And with that, the woman grabbed Megan's arm again. Megan twisted her arm, but settled for fixing the woman with a glare filled with all of the annoyance she could muster.
The woman simply held on tighter, and with a face-smackingly beatific smile, said, "My name's Kimberly. What's yours?"
Megan had no words. Luckily, she was saved from saying anything by the sudden arrival of a tall blond man in an ugly sweater-vest. He shot a quick grin at Kimberly, and spun around wildly on the spot, scanning the walls. He fixed on a clock above a nearby doorway, and said, "Oooh. 10:38. That's wrong. Either way. Kimberly?"
"Yeah, Professor?"
"Find anyone? Anyone still around?"
"Only one. She's right here." At that, the man noticed Megan. And stopped.
After a few seconds of staring, during which Megan tried again to wrench her arm free, the man managed to choke out, "What's your name?"
"Megan." At that, Kimberly looked up sharply at the man. His eyes widened.
"Megan what?"
"Megan Dewey." Kimberly then dropped Megan's arm. The man continued to stare at Megan, completely dumbfounded. Like any normal person, Megan found the scrutiny more than a little disconcerting, and opened her mouth to say so when the man managed to collect himself at just the right time to cut her off.
"What's your prob-"
"I'm the Professor." He said quickly.
Megan was briefly taken aback, but she composed herself and quickly reconsidered him. She could see it. Slightly flighty demeanor, a mildly audacious air of authority combined with frantic desperation, bad taste in clothing. He probably taught something in the humanities. Like English. Or History. Megan immediately pegged him as the naive young professor that thought it was great that so many of his female students came to his office hours, but had no idea why they always were there.
"Of what? History?"
At that, the professor grinned at her, a large amused grin. "No, but I like that. I'm the Professor. Note the definite article." He continued staring at Megan, the amused grin still on his face.
Kimberly shuffled her feet and asked loudly, thankfully breaking the Professor's reverie, "Have you done the thing yet?"
"Right, the thing," He said, turning to the clock. "Yup."
Kimberly nodded. "Ok, good. How long do we have?"
"Long enough." The Professor replied glibly. Suddenly a top hat was in his hand. He put it onto his head. "Now we go. We've got thirty seconds."
Megan stared at the top hat. The top hat stared back.
"Thirty seconds?" Kimberly screeched.
"Till what?" Thirty seconds did not sound good. Especially since Kimberly had bolted out the fire exit.
The Professor grabbed Megan's hand roughly, and pulled her along. In the middle of her confusion, Megan couldn't help reflecting that it was a pretty good thing that he grabbed her hand and not her arm. It was a bit more humane. If she was going to be dragged out of her lab and restrained, the least they could do would be to keep from bruising her arm.
Fascinating Fact: The standard unit of measurement for radiation, known as a coulomb, is exactly equivalent to the amount of radiation given off by the potassium in a single banana?
(Fascinating Facts may or not be true.)
Check back some time in the near future(relative to publication date) for the next installment!
Oh, and review. That is, if you don't mind. Please.