Hi BBC

I borrowed the Doctor for a short ride, and swear, I will return him unharmed :-))

Hi readers,

This is my first attempt to write fan fiction, and to write in English language. I am not a native English speaker and really HOPE my grasp of language is not too horrible. No idea how bad it really is. If you want to beta read following chapters, please contact me, you are most welcome!

But if not, please give it a try and give me feedback, what to improve. (I am very willing to try..)

I write this story from the viewpoint of some OC, a guy who happens to stumble into the Doctor and let him tell the story.... It is set somewhen between The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead, when our Doctor is travelling alone. I have plans for one or two sequels too.

Chapter 1

Spaceship in the morning...


When I look back, this weird story started on one of these completely ordinary, inconspicuous, wet May days in London. One of these mornings you desperately want to stay in bed when the alarm clock rings much too early. And be assured, sometimes it could make your life a lot easier if you just followed that impulse of blissful stupor, ignored the call of duty and overslept. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. But if you saw it from a different angle, it could make your life also a whole lot more boring.

It was not an alarm clock that woke me up this Tuesday morning, back in 2009. It was the ringing of my cell phone. I grasped for the light switch and cursed it.

It was of course my boss, Mr. Turner. The moody managing editor of the magazine I worked for. My first employment since I had left university, a little less then two years ago. He called at 5 o'clock in the morning. Despite the fact that I had been working really late the night before. There had been an important international conference of virologists about the dangers of an influenza pandemia. Alarming stuff actually, and it was my job to turn the results of that conference into an article.

I let the phone ring a few times, then had no choice. I picked it up. This time, I had decided to refuse any orders to come to the office in five minutes, instantly or half an hour ago. I wanted at least some coffee and a decent breakfast!

„David? Is it you?" Idiot! Of course it was me! He shouted into the speaker, as usual. A certain tone in his voice made my fantasies about breakfast crumble.

„Listen, we just had an alien spaceship crash landing and of the team, you live closest."

This news was better then caffeine. A spaceship crash landing in London! I was electrified, sleep or breakfast forgotten.

„Where? Near Norbury Park. Into a post office. There are casualties."

Into a post office. Imagine that! At 4 o clock in the morning..... I hastily scribbled the address onto some paper while he continued haranguing me. An alien crash landing was lot more interesting then some of my other work, as a junior scientific journalist. At least if you had a boss like Mr. Turner.

Aliens and spaceships had become somewhat habitual around London and worldwide lately. Too habitual for my taste, after the Big Ben crash landing, the ghost invasion and a few other nasty incidents. It worried me, it seemed just a matter of time, sooner or later humanity wouldn't get off as cheaply as so far from these encounters. I reckoned that massive police forces sealed off the whole area, along with the army, the UK division of UNIT, and more secretive „specialists" like Torchwood. But in the chaos of an evacuation I might be able to get a closer look at it and maybe a good interview or two.

Definitely this was not everyday business. Unless of course it was a hoax, a gas explosion, some incompetent terrorist had forgotten his gps receiver. Or the toilet seat of an old soviet space station had crashed into the post office. The silly thought of the pilot episode to one of my favourite tv series crossed my mind....

So I leaped out of my cosy bed, jumped into my suit, and looked into the bathroom mirror. When I had tamed my brown curls sufficiently, shaved at record speed and was somewhat refreshed by cold water I grabbed photo- and interview equipment. A short trip to my rather dirty kitchen, where I made myself some sandwiches and took the next best bottle with a non alcoholic beverage I could find from the fridge. Mineral water. Well, not the first choice, but it had to do.... At least I was well earlier then the rush hour. In the dark I hurried through the drizzle to my shabby old car. It took me only about twenty minutes of really hazardous driving, eating my sandwich and listening to some ACDC and the latest radio news on the event on the way.

I found a parking space at a some distance to a road barricade. The police was evacuating in a wide area. I fixed the press badge to my black coat, picked up my knapsack from the back seat, raincoat and umbrella and sighed. I had to do my best to look inconspicuous. At alien events the officials usually reacted highly allergic to press, freedom of press didn't mean much to them, as some colleagues had already learned the hard way...

Helicopters with searchlights circled in the air , police cars patrolled, loudspeakers requesting the inhabitants to leave the area. Their sirens seemed to intend waking up even the inhabitants of the district cemetery for evacuation. With other words, chaos as usual, as it could be expected at any average disaster site.

A lot of people were fleeing the area, in their cars and on foot, but it was amazing what crowds the rumour of a UFO crash landing could draw. Even that early on a rainy morning.

In the darkness, a mob of religious fanatics, alien haters equipped with banners, souvenir hunters and the unavoidable, common, blood thirsty rubberneck you found blocking the roads at any average traffic accident gathered.

I got through the first police post, thanks to my press badge. They were clearly overchallenged with the size of their task, doing their very best to turn chaos into an orderly evacuation. I continued my way and must have been quite close to the site about 20 minutes later. I approached a line of fences, the spaceship, or whatever it was, still out of sight. The police officers there were more resembling fierce army guard dogs, armed to the teeth, then your everyday bobby. And they were adamant in refusing me passage, threatening to arrest me or drag me away by force if I did not leave the area voluntarily. I could not argue with that, I had to change my strategy.

I spotted a nearby office building with a flat roof, that seemed to offer a chance to get a good view, and sprinted across the street. The doors were open. But the elevator was out of order so I hurried up the staircase.

In the first grey of the dawn I arrived up at the roof, out of breath. The view from the lofty heights up there was indeed fabulous,

The edge of the building was about 600 yards from the crash site, a few other spectators had already gathered there. It was indeed a spaceship down there, in the distance. A dirty white, battered, oddly banana shaped structure. So that was what a real alien spaceship looked like. I found the design really interesting. It wasn't huge, only about the size of the NASA space shuttles, or slightly bigger, I estimated. Part of it stuck out of the rubble heap that once had been a post office building. It must have made an almost controlled landing, otherwise whatever powered it would probably have turned half of London into a smoking crater!

Fortunately at that time, the building had been almost empty, the crash should not have killed too many people . I didn't want to imagine what would have happened if it had crashed into an old peoples home, or Piccadilly Circus in the afternoon.

I got the binoculars and my camera with the telephoto out to get a better view and take some nice shots. What I could see down there is, that the injured people my boss had talked about were already evacuated and the spacious road junction down there was not very crowded. I bent down and brought my camera into position. In the glare of floodlight soldiers were building up large tents, unloading supplies from trucks on the east side of the site. They had already covered part of the wreck with green plastic foil, so I couldn't see what they were doing there. An ambulance crew was hanging out at the other side of the street. I observed some skinny civilian guy in a long brown coat approaching the barrier. In stark contrast to the other people working there, he looked more like the latest generation of wannabe cool indie rock musicians then an official. He showed a passport and he was let in. But did not approach the wreck immediately. Unlike the busy soldiers and scientists in lab coats, he was just looking around as if he hoped to spot something more interesting, invisible.

The drizzle had stopped. This was indeed an excellent place for my work and I was looking forward to a really interesting morning. Now I just needed the small folding chair to make myself more comfortable and to finish the rest of my breakfast. I turned to my bag.

Then my heart stopped. Gripped by some strange force I lost balance.

I stumbled, tipped over the edge of the roof. And fell. I screamed my lungs out in panic and then hit the ground. Hard? No, actually not hard at all.

I touched my face. Wait. I could touch my face. According to every law of physics that I knew of, I was a dead man. But I was still breathing! I felt a little dizzy and bemused, but that was it. Apart from my elbow, which reported some minor pain, I felt quite in whole. Definitely not dead!

Or did dead feel like this?

I looked up, and saw the ambulance crew racing in my direction. They jumped me and I had a very hard time to convince them that I was all right. No, nothing broken. Yes, shocked. But no shock! Really, just a few bruises. Everything else okay. REALLY! NO!

The head of the spiky haired indie rocker suddenly appeared over the busy crowd of medics, a pair of curious eyes in a freckled face trained on me.

He held out some kind of pen with a radiant blue tip, expression suddenly turning very grave. Then looked back at the wreck, shouted at the top of his lungs „ ALL GET DOWN" and threw himself to the ground.

I covered my head. The explosion that followed an instant later was deafening and sent a shock wave over the place. Rubble rained down on us. We'd been in relatively safe distance. Nothing really big hit me. But I heard the screams of injured people who had worked near the spaceship and who had gotten the full blast. A complete chaos of shouting, sirens and vehicles broke loose.

When I looked up, there was no more floodlight. The dust settled in the gloomy first light of the morning. The medics were on the way to help, where the explosion had caused a small inferno.

Next to me the indie rock guy was sitting on the ground, brushing dust and sand from his face and suit. He looked at me and must have noticed how puzzled I was.

„Gravity generator went up. Sent ripples all over the place when it became unstable, just before it exploded. Made you fall. Take it easy now!"

Then he took no more notice of me, got up, heading to the crash site.

There went my one chance to get informations out of what seemed a competent person!

„Wait!" I got to my feet as fast as I could and ran after him „Can you give me an interview?"

He stopped dead and turned around, suddenly looking seriously pissed off.

„WHAT?!?"

Gaze wandering to my press badge and obviously regretting his chattyness, he pointed a menacing finger at me. „ YOU stay exactly where you are. This here is none of your business. You press people don't dare bother me." He then pointed his pen at me. I half expected that now his pen would zap and I lost memory of everything that had just happened. But it didn't. Instead it gave an odd whirring and my camera made a small crunching noise.

He turned, picked up a torch he found lying on the ground, checked it and hurried through all the screaming and shouting, the wounded and medical teams, over to the east side, where the force of the explosion had ripped open the hull of the spaceship.

I checked my camera. Dead. Not NOW. Some really X rated thoughts crossed my mind..... I checked my cell phone. Dead too.

But my professional curiosity had taken over. Probably this guy was from Torchwood or UNIT. I decided not to let go of this once in a lifetime occasion for a story. In all the chaos nobody took much notice of me when I followed the man in some distance. I saw him switching on the torch, then he climbed into the serrated hole the explosion had blasted into the hull of the ship, nearly ripping it apart.

I hurried to get there, too. An actual alien spaceship! From a civilisation who knew where in the universe! I stroked over the strange material of the hull with my fingertip, holding my breath in awe.

Then I peeked into the hole. I saw the guy working frantically at some parts of it's machinery in the light of the torch. When he wasn't holding his pen, which was obviously some kind of tool between his teeth, he was absorbed in a manic and completely freakish monologue, occasionally insulting the damaged craft. The whole place was splattered with green goo.

I inched into the ravaged shuttle and spotted a cavern where I could kneel down and watch this surreal scene unnoticed.

At least that was my plan until a crunching noise under my foot ruined it. The guy turned and locked his gaze on me. I got up, holding my breath.

„Don't touch those.." He shouted, when suddenly a batch of green slime dropped from the ceiling right onto my head, burning on my skin like fire. Reflexively I wiped it out of my face, my elbow knocking painfully into something hard behind me. And suddenly I was drowned in ice cold blackness.

When the sensation ebbed away I was not in the wreck anymore. And in a state of utter shock. I was standing on a platform in a dimly lit, square, alien looking room, shaking violently. I was surrounded by grey metal walls, covered with almost organic looking structures, the same as in the shuttle wreck, just these were whole. The cool, moist air had a smell that turned my stomach.

Just a moment later, like out of thin air the indie rocker alien expert appeared right next to me. I was so glad that I was no longer the only human, alone in this strange place.

„Don't touch those instruments behind you" with a frown he finished the sentence he had begun in the shuttle wreck, glaring at me. „Well, that's obsolete now, isn't it..." He raised an eyebrow.

Then turned, checked some panels, quickly and professionally, like somebody who didn't have any time to lose. That gave me the opportunity to wipe the rest of the stinging goo from my head with the end of my coat and compose myself. Some moments later he turned back to me, now obviously trying to assess how I responded to all this.

„Okay. We got teleported here, thanks to your carelessness. You triggered the emergency teleport of the shuttle. Now this is the mother ship. And as far as I can see something is very wrong with it"

He ignored my bewilderment, piercing me with his stare, and continued more stern, „It's Rutan. Really not the most friendly species in the galaxy. The teleport field is exhausted. And judging the damage, it takes at least ten minutes to built up again, until then it'll not transport anyone. So no chance to get you back down now. I'm just saying this once! You will stay with me. You don't touch anything. You don't talk or do anything else that I might consider stupid. Control your curiosity. And most of all, if I order you to do something, you do it. Instantly. Is that clear!"

I nodded, quite intimidated, asking myself if I was still allowed to breathe.

He grabbed the press badge dangling from my coat, „Right then Mr...." he took a closer look at it, „David Barnham...."

Surprise in his eyes, his gaze wandered to my face, then back to the press badge." Your name is David Barnham?" He straightened himself. I nodded.

„How very curious .... "

I stared back at him, dumbfounded „Is anything wrong with me? Have we met before?" I asked him, confused, that in this unlikely place suddenly this guy found me a lot more interesting then the fact that we just had gotten transported onto a bloody alien spacecraft.

„Oh.. ah... no. Not at all, anyway... we don't have time for this now. Sorry!" He snapped back to his usual self as if nothing had just happened. Then went on with much more benign voice, looking into my eyes. He waved a hand gesturing at our surrounding. „Just trust me, David. I'm not completely inexperienced at this. I'm the Doctor, by the way."

„Doctor..... " He brusquely cut short what was meant to become a question, rolling his eyes.

„Oh no! Here we go! Not the pesky discussion again! It's the Doctor. JUST the Doctor. Now follow me."

With that he cautiously stepped into a dusky, tube like corridor. At the far end it seemed to open up into something that looked like a hall.

Apart from his eccentric behaviour this guy gave me the impression he knew what he was doing. So I did as I was told. I followed him and painstakingly avoided to touch anything.