The Dawn of the Doctor
No one was around to hear it the moment when the TARDIS materialized at the back of an alleyway. Nobody was there to see it when four people stepped out to breath in the air. No soul could see the details of their faces. One was an old man with lengthy white hair and a Victorian coat. Another was a woman with a bouffant hairstyle and contemporary 60's clothing. Another was a man with short hair and similar 60's clothing. Another was a young girl who had 60's clothing like the man and woman, but hers seemed less like clothing she would naturally wear.
These people were the Doctor and three companions, Ian, Barbara, and his granddaughter Susan. And there was nobody out and about at that moment to hear them talking to each other.
"So where have we landed this time, Doctor?" Ian asked as they strolled out of the alleyway.
"Well there was a small fault in the controls when I tried to land. You see, I somehow drove us out of our own universe altogether!" The Doctor said.
"Is that what was causing all that interference before, grandfather?" Susan asked.
"Yes." The Doctor said.
"Out of our own universe, is that possible?" Barbara asked.
"It is indeed." The Doctor said. "I believe it is possible to get back though, so there's no need to worry."
"Around what year do you suppose it is?" Ian asked.
"Well, crossing over messed with the scanner a bit, but I believe we are in this dimension's counterpart of Britain, but I don't know exactly which part of it, and we are in the counterpart of the early 1960's. About 1961 or 1962, I'm not sure, I'm not sure…" The Doctor mused.
"Well can we get back?" Barbara asked.
"Yes, yes, it should be quite easy to return to our own dimension. Still, I'm rather interested in finding out what's different about this version of Earth in relation to our own version of Earth. It shouldn't be too hard to find a newspaper or something like that around here. But I'm fairly certain there's no nuclear war or global crisis going on right now, so it should be safe to take a walk around the city. However we have landed before anyone had really woken up." The Doctor explained to them.
"Well it shouldn't be too bad. This place doesn't look all that different from London in our home time." Ian said, looking around the dimly lit streets.
They walked about the city, noting they couldn't find any differences between this London and the London that Ian and Barbara had lived in. They made this walk until the streets were filled with people that were leaving their homes and people that were driving through.
"Now it looks even more like home, don't you think Barbara?" Ian said chuckling to himself.
"Looks exactly the same." Barbara said, nodding. "It's quite surreal to look at this place and think it isn't London when it looks so much like it."
"Yes." Ian agreed.
And they sort of split up to look around the small area they were in. The Doctor sat down to read the newspaper and figure out the differences of the history of this Earth versus the Earth he frequently visited in his own dimension. Susan, meanwhile, sat down at a table for a nearby restaurant.
A man, apparently no seeing her, sat down at the same table, sitting across from her. He had grey hair and a gray mustache and looked pretty important, if you could really judge a person's position by the suit they were wearing. It was then that he saw her sitting there.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't notice this table was taken." The man said, having a Canadian accent.
"Oh, it's quite alright." Susan said.
"Are you with anyone, miss? You look pretty young." The man asked her.
"I'm with my grandfather. He's over by somewhere reading the newspaper." Susan said, not wanting to give away too much personal information. "We're also with a couple of our friends, but they're off taking a walk."
"Oh." The man said. "By the way, what's your name, miss?"
"My name's Susan." Susan said.
"Susan." The man repeated to himself. He nodded. For some reason even he was not sure of what it was, he decided to make further conversation. "So why are you and your grandfather around here? What does he do?"
"He's a doctor." Susan answered. She knew this wasn't a total lie.
"Really." The man said. "Why are you in London?" He knew that they probably just lived there and it was a stupid question, but it just felt right for him to ask.
"Well, we're traveling at the moment. We're just going from place to place. It's very fascinating." Susan said, looking down. She didn't feel like lying, but she didn't feel like revealing that she wasn't from this planet.
"Well what kind of places do you go to?" the man asked her.
Susan looked up. She couldn't really think of an excuse on the fly for this one. "Well…we go to lots of places. By now we've probably been any place you can think of." She was beginning to seriously regret getting chatty with this man, but she couldn't think of any way to just cut off the conversation.
"That's really interesting. Any place I can think of in the world, huh?" The man asked. "What about other planets?"
Susan briefly stared at him in horror, but dropped her head down again. She didn't realize that the man wasn't being serious with her. "Well… yes, we have."
The man chuckled, apparently not taking her seriously despite seeing her very serious expression. "Oh really?"
"Well, yes." Susan, deciding just to not talk at all anymore. She had been stupid saying anything at all. She had said far too much. Then a thought came to her. They were not in their own dimension. They were, by accident, in an alternate dimension that was, although very similar, not quite like her own at all. Whatever she would say didn't really matter here, as she was not at risk of seriously altering the course of history. The only person that would hear it was this man, and he probably wouldn't even really believe her anyway. In fact, he would probably just walk off and forget about it.
So, she opened her mouth and started talking. "You see, as a matter of fact, we're time travelers. We have our time machine parked not far away. It look like a police box on the outside, but it's far bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It lets us go anywhere in time and space, and we have quite a few adventures in it."
And she actually stopped and thought about what she had just said. She looked up at the man, trying to hide her horrified expression.
The man looked at her with a rather amused expression, but he seemed very interested in what she had said.
Susan's brain told her that there was only one way out of this situation now that she had said that: Get out immediately. "Oh, my grandfather won't be happy that I said this much. I'm sorry, I have to go. Goodbye." And she darted off.
The man was pretty surprised at this.
Susan quickly ran and rejoined the Doctor just as Ian and Barbara were coming back.
"Ah, there you are Susan. I just finished looking through the history of this Earth. It's quite fascinating. I couldn't find any noticeable differences in the history of this dimension. At least none that have happened yet." The Doctor said.
"Well that's really something." Ian said, looking at the newspaper. He set it down on the bench. "Well I couldn't see anything different here."
"No, me neither." Barbara said.
"That's odd." Susan said, agreed.
"It really is." The Doctor said. "But I suppose we'd like to go back to our own dimension, don't you think?"
"Yes." Ian said, chuckling.
"I'm ready to go." Barbara said.
"Oh, I think we should go quite soon." Susan said. She was not willing to tell her grandfather all that she had told the man in the restaurant.
They all walked off. They smiled at the fact they had made this brief little trip without incident as they got back to the TARDIS. They stepped inside it and after a moment, it dematerialized. There were people who heard it this time, but nobody really took it to heart.
Meanwhile, the man was walking out of the restaurant. He was still thinking quite hard about what Susan had told him. He wasn't really sure he believed it, but it was a great story. And he wondered about that grandfather she had mentioned.
He stepped into a nearby telephone booth and dialed a number. The person he was calling picked up the phone. "Hello, Bunny? It's Sydney Newman. You know how I said we needed a science fiction show to fill the slot at the BBC? I think I have a great idea…"
The End.
Author's note: This is just a small little tibbit I wrote to say this: Happy 50th Anniversary, Doctor Who! I'm sure it'll be great.
I wrote this just a few hours before I'm going to watch An Adventure in Space and Time. That's when you'll see another take on the inception of this great show.
