Author's Note: This is Gary's answer to a GCSE English exam question about the most exciting day of your life. He's written it from his own point of view. The idea came from some deep recess of my mind where my three years of Home Economics classes in a classroom with a lime green door rest. Somehow, the Doctor got in and went crazy. Set between series 6's The God Complex and Closing Time. No real spoilers, though, unless you squint while looking through a magnifying glass. I hope you enjoy it, folks...
THE MOST EXCITING DAY OF MY LIFE
By Gary Roberts
The most exciting day of my life wasn't the day that I went to Egypt. Nor was it the day I got my first fish. Or even the day I won my first chess match. No, the most exciting day of my life was so exciting that it was worth remembering the date – 19th September 2011. I had to make sure I remembered it, because I never want to forget a single minute of what happened on that cloudy Monday morning. The most exciting day of my life was the day I saved the world.
It all started with the news on the previous Friday that Mrs Trent – the strict, dull and very pregnant Home Economics teacher – was going on maternity leave. I was just starting in year nine of high school, and Mrs Trent had been the bane of my life from day one. She hated me, and probably all children. Why she decided to get pregnant, I'll never know. I was thrilled to hear that she was leaving, however temporarily, because I really needed a break from constant homeworks and tellings-off.
The weekend came and went, and I remember being incredibly excited up until the time I lined up outside the HE classroom with my fellow classmates. Then it hit me that I might not like this new teacher – what if they were even more strict and evil than Mrs Trent? What would I do then?
The lime green door opened, and the oddest man I had ever seen stood there. I took a moment to take in what he was wearing, and I'll never forget. A tweed jacket, light blue and white stripy shirt, dark trousers and shoes. Oh, and a bow tie. I'd never actually seen someone wearing a bow tie before, so this was quite a shock. His hair was big, brown and floppy. By the time I got to his eyes, I realised he was staring at me with an insane grin on his face. "Why are you not smiling?" he asked. It took me a moment to realise that the question was directed at me.
I could have said something witty, clever or smug, but all I could manage was, "It's Monday." I mentally slapped myself. That was really rubbish.
To my surprise, the man nodded. "Yeah. But don't worry, I'll soon fix that," he told me. I couldn't help but smile as my class quickly walked through the door and into the classroom. I spotted Mrs Trent's seating plan on the pin board behind the teacher's desk almost instantly. That meant that everyone would go and sit in their own seats, until the substitute teacher noticed the plan and moved everyone to their normal seats. The girls in the class usually sat on one side of the room, and the boys on the other. This happened again today. I went and sat beside Jordan – he was and still is a good friend of mine. I didn't bother unpacking my bag, as the new teacher had shut the door and was wandering over to his desk, staring at the seating plan all the way over. He stopped and stared at it for a moment, the whole class going quiet, ready to be told off. Again.
The teacher pointed at the paper on the wall with his thumb and turned to the class. "You see this?"
Tentative nods from the whole class.
"It's boring." He then proceeded to tear it off of the board, scrunch it up into a ball and throw it with surprisingly good aim at the recycling bin. It went straight in, of course. "Now," he announced to the shocked class, "I'm supposed to introduce myself, aren't I?" When no reply came from his still shocked class, he continued. "I'm the Doctor. You can call me Doctor, or Mr Doctor, or Mr Teacher Man... Actually, forget the last one." He smiled at the class, and even I found myself smiling back. There was something about his smile. It was so infectious and genuine. I'll never forget that smile. He wrote 'Doctor' on the board, with 'Mr' in brackets in front of it.
Now I did get some of my school bag's contents out, I realised with a panic that I'd forgotten to do my homework. This was going to be bad...
The Doctor searched the desk for something, before picking up Mrs Trent's homework and class planning diary. That thing was seriously thick – there must have been at least four hundred pages in it! The Doctor flicked through it until he reached today's date and read Mrs Trent's scrawled notes (she was quite famous for her messy writing). Oh, man, here it comes...
"It says here you're supposed to have homework for me. Something to do with researching the prices for three ovens and writing notes on them. Anyone got that?" As per usual, Emma's hand shot up. She always had her homework in on time, and today was going to be no exception. "Okay, then... sorry, what's your name?"
"Emma O'Brian," said Emma with complete pride.
"Emma O'Brian," the Doctor repeated as he wandered over to her desk. "That's a brilliant name. Don't change it, whatever you do," he advised her as he plucked the piece of paper out of her hand. He held it up to the light, and I stifled back a giggle. The look on Emma's face was priceless – she looked a mixture of confused and repulsed. Once he was done sniffing Emma's homework, the Doctor spoke again. "If anyone else has their homework with them, please hold it out for me to collect."
Fourteen of the fifteen remaining pupils stuck their hands up, leaving me looking sheepish. The Doctor did his rounds, pausing at my desk. "Do you not have your homework?" he asked me, looking into my eyes.
"No, sir. Sorry, I forgot it..." I said quietly, trailing off before I got to the part with the endless football marathon and huge four-cheese pizza.
"Don't worry..."
"Gary," I informed.
"...Gary," he said. "Homework's boring anyway, and a waste of time. If I were you, I would have spent the weekend playing dominoes, making Jammie Dodgers and wearing a fez."
I really didn't know what to say to that. I just nodded. To my relief, he didn't start talking about more of his weekend adventures, and instead walked over to one of the eye-level cupboards. He pulled out a baking tray and placed the homework sheets he had collected on it, before going to the nearest oven. The pupils in class 9A2 watched, slack-jawed, as he placed the tray with the homework in the oven on the bottom shelf, gas mark four. The oven glowed a pale orange as it cooked the pages. There was a shocked whimper from Emma in the corner. I was glad that for once, I didn't do my homework.
The Doctor turned away from the glowing oven and saw the look on everyone's faces. "What?" he asked, looking genuinely confused.
"That's our homework!" Emma shouted before she could stop herself.
"Yes, I know. We cook stuff in HE, don't we?" Realisation dawned on the man's face. "Oh. That's not what we do with HE homework is it?"
Emma shook her head.
"Sorry!" he shouted as he turned off the oven at the wall switch and grabbed a pair of oven gloves. "Sorry about that," he said as he held the homework tray in his gloved hand. The edges of the paper were charred, but mostly unharmed. He carefully placed the tray of paper on a rack to cool. The Doctor took off the glove and left it beside the oven. "Okay, then," he said to his class. "Show of hands: what do you do with your old teacher?" Steven's hand shot up. "Yes, small... person."
"It's Steven. Anyway, Mrs Trent usually makes us write about cooking, child care and nutrition. Sometimes we cook, but it's only, like, about once a month."
"If we're lucky," I added.
The Doctor looked dumbfounded. "You mean to say that in a class about cooking, you just write about cooking and some other rubbish, and don't actually cook that often?"
"Yep," I chirped. I decided that playing along would be my best tactic. This man was clearly mad, and an idiot.
"Blimey." The Doctor clapped his hands together and smiled. "Okay, then, class. Today, we are going to cook something."
"But Mrs Trent was cooking with us a fortnight ago," pointed out Melissa.
"Mrs Trent isn't here. And besides, cooking is way more fun than writing stuff down. What shall we cook?"
"Apple pie?" suggested James.
"Bacon sandwiches?" This came from John. He was pretty chubby, with a soft spot for dead pig.
"Bean soup?" asked Emma.
Jordan nudged my arm. "How about Gary? He'd be nice with gravy."
To my horror, the Doctor nodded at this. "Yeah... No! No, no, we're not eating Gary. And we're not having anything with apples, or bacon, or beans. I've got a better idea. Fish custard!" he beamed.
I felt like I was going to be sick. That sounded like the worst food combination that I'd ever heard of, but the Doctor was adamant. "It's really lovely," he reassured when he saw the expressions on everyone's faces. He walked over to the fridge-freezer that sat beside the lime green door. He opened the door and reached inside, pulling three packets of ready-made custard from the fridge at the top, and four packets of fish fingers from the freezer at the bottom. He placed them all on the one empty desk at the front of the class. "Okay, Gary – get me three saucepans. Emma – turn on the oven and hobs. Bacon Boy..." John pointed at himself in mild confusion, "...Yes, you – get me four baking trays. Human Cannibal beside Gary – I'm going to need some plates, knives, forks and spoons set out on the desks. You can do that, can't you?" Jordan nodded. "Good."
I quickly set about my appointed task, collecting three saucepans from a cupboard. I took them over to the Doctor, who was already putting fish fingers in neat rows on a baking tray with the help of John. The Doctor was talking to John and as I approached, I could make out some of what he was saying. "...Getting their hooves painted yellow. Did you that hippo milk is pink?" John's head shook. He glanced in my direction, begging for help. I smiled and set the saucepans on the desk beside the Doctor, who turned and grinned at me.
Twenty minutes later, and the whole class was busy with something or another. The HE room was turned into a fish custard factory. There were four custard stirrers, eight pupils manning the ovens, and the Doctor gave three of my classmates the job of supervising plate distribution. I was given the best job of all – I was in charge of timing. I stood beside the Doctor, who was leaning on his own desk. He was fidgeting with his hands – it was obvious to me that he was desperate to do something – probably help with the custard stirring. I kept glancing at my watch. We had two minutes left before everything would be ready. "Two minutes!" I announced, feeling pleased with myself that I could shout loud enough so everyone could hear me. I felt like a game show host at that moment, before it was interrupted.
"Amy used to let me lick the spoon," the Doctor said, staring longingly at the classroom, before turning to me. "Do you think I'll be able to lick the spoon?"
I tried my best not to laugh, but ultimately failed. "You sound like my little sister, and she's three!" I managed between fits of laughter.
"Oh. Sorry," the Doctor said so quietly that I almost didn't hear it. I glanced at my watch again.
"Time's up, guys! Plate up!" Everyone in the class, even the Doctor, turned to stare at me. "What?"
Everyone in the class got handed a slightly cooled fish finger, while the Doctor poured the three saucepans of warm custard into a large bowl. He grabbed himself a fish finger before saying, "Okay everyone, dig in!" He roughly dipped his fish finger into the custard, covering half of his own finger and his fish one in the yellow not-quite-liquid, not-quite-solid, at the same time. Then he took a huge bite, devouring half of the fish finger in one go. He looked back to see that the rest of my class were nibbling carefully on their custard-less fish fingers. The look on his face was one of confusion, and not for the first time that morning. "What's wrong?"
It was Emma who answered him. "No offence, Mr Doctor, but I don't think I'd like custard with my fish finger." There were collective murmurs from everyone in the class. The Doctor's face changed from confused to hurt. I was yet to start my processed fish, so I decided to at least give this Doctor's favourite snack a try. Without a word, I stepped forward and dipped my fish finger into the custard, coating the last centimetre in the yellow goo. Well aware that everyone was watching me, I took a tentative bite. The flavour of the custard came first, closely followed by the batter and then the fish. All three flavours combined on my taste buds in a sickening mixture. It took all of my self control not to throw up at that moment, but instead I swallowed it, along with the bile that was coming up my throat.
The Doctor smiled at me. "Thank you, Gary," he said. I nodded back, unable to speak for fear of throwing up, my face scrunched up in distaste.
I haven't touched fish fingers or custard since.
The rest of the class were murmuring amongst each other and nibbling on their fish fingers when the lime green door suddenly burst open. The ugliest beast I had ever seen entered the room. Its face was oval-shaped, pink and wrinkly. Its dark eyes were too close together, its gums were exposed, and it had long, yellowed teeth jutting out of what must have been its mouth. It was wearing some sort of black armour suit, with wires sticking out here and there. If the girls' mouths weren't full of fish at that point, they would have screamed. Instead, it was Jordan who did the screaming - much to my amusement.
The Doctor wasn't as amused though, and rushed over to clamp a palm over his mouth. Everyone else just stared in wide-eyed shock.
The Doctor stood in front of the now huddled group of year nine pupils. I was behind one of his arms. "Is that an alien?" I whispered.
"Yep, it's called a Hoix," the Doctor whispered back, his eyes not leaving the intruder.
"What's an alien doing in our classroom?" I asked urgently.
"It's hungry. Hoix live to eat. What better place to eat at but a school HE room?"
"Oh, I don't know. The restaurant up the street's pretty good," I joked. Joking was the only thing I could do now. "But how is there an alien in my classroom?" The alien finally seemed to spot us and growled. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
"I guess it's just coincidence, but when this is over, I'm definitely locking the door to the staffroom."
"What are we going to do?"
"We have to catch it, before it gets out into the open. Distract it, trap it with something." From my position behind his arm, I couldn't see the Doctor's face, but I guessed that he was searching the room for something to use. It's a good job that I was known for my practical jokes.
"Leave it to me," I whispered to him. Before the Doctor could react, I ran out of the group and over to another corner where the left over fish fingers were situated on baking trays. "Look here, Hoix!" I shouted to the alien, "A distraction!" Picking up several fish fingers in one hand, I started to jump up and down and generally make a lot of noise. This seemed to work, as the ugly alien made is way clumsily over to me. I was vaguely aware of movement on the other side of the room, and could hear the Doctor's voice shouting instructions at my classmates, but my attention was on the Hoix approaching me, and growling a little. I threw a fish finger in its general direction, and the Hoix bent over and swallowed it whole. I threw another, and this time in landed somewhere behind the alien. It turned and ate that too. I kept throwing fish fingers in the alien's direction, stopping it from coming any closer to me.
"Gary!" I heard the Doctor shout. I turned to see that the Doctor and my classmates had built a pen trap out of three desks turned on their side, with a fourth ready to be slid into place. I threw another fish finger in the Hoix's general direction, keeping it at bay.
"Doctor! You're going to need something better than fish fingers to get it in there." My eyes scanned the room, throwing another fish finger at the alien as I searched. My gaze landed on the massive bowl of custard. "Doctor, you can use the custard."
I heard the Doctor moan, but I was watching the Hoix and throwing another finger at it.
"Doctor! Do it!"
With some reluctance, the Doctor ran over to his desk and lifted the heavy bowl, taking it back and setting it in the middle of the trap. I started backing over to where the trap was, bringing the final two fish fingers with me. Discovering that no more food was being thrown at it, the Hoix started growling and followed me. Glancing behind me, I side-stepped the trap's entrance, and threw the last fish fingers with surprisingly good aim into the bowl of custard. The alien instantly ran at the bowl, and John slid the final desk into place. The Hoix didn't notice, though, and continued to messily slurp at the custard.
The Doctor patted me on the back, before lifting a bronze tube with a green light on the end of it. To my surprise, he pointed it at the alien and pressed a button. There was a funny noise, and the Hoix fell to the ground.
"Did you kill it?" asked Jordan.
"No, of course not. I just stunned her, that's all," the Doctor said simply.
"Her?" Emma asked. I guessed that she probably never thought that such an ugly beast could possibly be female. I thought that it might be useful at this point to tell her about spiders, because she I had once heard her say that she thought they were ugly too, but I held my tongue.
"Yes. Her."
All further questioning was cut short when the school bell rang. I glanced at the clock on the wall above the lime green door. Ten o'clock. Break time. "You better go," the Doctor said to the class. Everyone looked torn for a moment, but the thought of pancakes and sausage rolls from the school canteen helped them make their decision. They walked over to the pile of discarded school bags in a far corner. Aprons were shrugged off and replaced with black school blazers. Most left the room briskly with murmurs of thanks and goodbye and another few lagged behind, but soon every pupil bar me had left the room. The Doctor had been watching them go, so he didn't notice me until he whirled around to face the trap again.
"Oh," he said. "You're not going for a sausage roll?"
There was no way I was going to leave the strange man and the even stranger alien for a pastry. "No," I said, folding my arms for effect, "I'm staying to help you with whatever it is you're planning to do."
"But what if I plan to go and get a sausage roll?" he asked me, raising his eyebrows slightly.
"Then I will help you get that sausage roll," I replied.
The Doctor sighed. "It's going to be dangerous, Gary, and I can't guarantee your safety." There was a sad look in his eyes.
I decided now would be a good time for reassurance, as the Doctor's shoulders had slumped a little. "Do you know how many dangers I meet on my way to school every morning? I walk out the door, and there's a step I could fall off, I could get bitten by the dog next door, I could get run over by my school bus if it didn't stop in time and I could get hit on the head by a flying banana skin."
The Doctor chuckled a little. "A banana skin?"
"It's amazing what the boys at the back of the bus can find to throw at you," I told him.
The Doctor's smile widened. "Alright, Gary. You can help me." He walked over to stand in front of me. He was really tall. "Now, listen. This is important. This is a sonic screwdriver. If our friend here shows any sign of waking up, point this at her and press." He fished the bronze device out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Remember – point and press." I nodded and he walked out of the room, calling back to me, "Back in a minute!"
I stood in that room for a minute as asked, keeping an eye on the alien lying on the floor, its face covered in splashes of custard. I stood for another minute. And another. Another. Yet another...
Then the room filled with a loud wheezing noise, like an asthmatic elephant. I'll never forget that noise either. The noise was closely followed by a light breeze that soon became strong enough to blow the singed homeworks off of their baking tray and onto the floor. That was followed by a blue box fading in and out of sight before settling in the middle of the classroom. If I hadn't already seen a teacher put some homeworks in an oven and a Hoix eat custard, I would probably would have fainted. As it was, I just stared and gaped a little. The blue box had windows and doors, and 'POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX' written in big letters in the top. There was another sign on one of the doors, but before I could make out what it said, the Doctor came bounding out, hair flopping everywhere.
"Hello, Gary! See? Exactly a minute," he beamed, pushing his hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
"More like five, Doctor, but nice try."
The Doctor's smile faltered a little. "Oh. Well, at least it wasn't twelve years," he murmured.
"Right. Why would it be twelve years?" I asked.
"Yes, I haven't done this in a while... Gary, since you have found out this much already, you might as well know some more. This blue box here is called the TARDIS." He patted the door. "She's my spaceship. But she's not just any spaceship; she's the best in the universe. A time machine."
I was understandably dumbfounded. "A time machine? As in Back to the Future?"
"Yes, but instead of a car, it's a box."
I shook my head to rearrange my priorities. "What are we going to do about the alien Hoix thing?"
"I'm going to take her home," he replied.
"Home as in Planet of the Hoixes?"
The Doctor simply nodded. He motioned for me to stay where I was while he dragged the alien into the TARDIS by its arms. "Come on, Gary!" he called once inside the box. I followed him, still holding the screwdriver pointed in the alien's direction.
The Doctor closed the door to the TARDIS behind me, for I was far too busy gaping at the huge expanse of a room I'd stepped into. There was a huge glass-floored platform in the middle where the Doctor now stood, flinging levers on a circular table-type thing in the middle. There was a glass column that stretched all the way up to the roof, which had lots of wires sticking out of it.
I was still gaping when the creature behind me stirred.
The Doctor looked at me with a panicked look on his face, and I took a moment to realise what he was really looking at. I turned around to see the Hoix rise groggily from the floor, a low growling coming from her mouth. I pointed the screwdriver at her, pressed the button and along with a warbling noise from the screwdriver, the alien fell to the ground again, unconscious.
"That was close," I managed. "How does this room work?"
"Basically, it's two dimensions. Alien technology. Cool, isn't it?" the Doctor said.
"Alien technology," I echoed. "But are you an alien? I mean, I understand that this Hoix here is an alien, but you? You look like a person, but you know lots of stuff about aliens and have a box that can appear out of nowhere. And – you wear a bow tie."
The Doctor whipped his hand up to wrap around his bow tie, almost as if he was comforting it. "Hey, bow ties are cool. And yes, I am an alien to you. Last of the Time Lords. To me, you're the alien." His hand relaxed and he placed it on the rail.
"Time Lords? The last one? What does that mean?"
The Doctor didn't reply. He ran around the circular table in the middle of the room, reaching for a leaver, he said, "Hold on to something!"
I ran to the nearest rail and held on as tight as I could as the whole room shook and I heard the sound of the asthmatic elephant again. I glanced at the Doctor to see that he was laughing, his hair bobbing up and down as he struggled to stay upright on the glass floor. Suddenly the noise stopped along with the shaking. The Doctor was at my side in an instant. "Would you be so kind?" he asked me, gesturing to the door.
Anticipation gripped me. "Are we on Planet of the Hoixes now?" I asked, failing to keep the excitement out of my voice.
"Yep," he beamed.
I ran to the door, quickly pulling it open and stared outside. We were in some sort warehouse with grey brick walls and a concrete floor. It was the dullest place I'd ever been to. "This is Planet of the Hoixes?" I asked to the Doctor who had just finished dragging our own Hoix out of his blue box.
"Yes, it is. We can leave Louise here. She should be safe until she wakes up, and then she can get out herself," he said, jabbing a finger behind him to where the Hoix now lay.
"But why does it look so dull?" I asked, this time failing to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I waved my hands around me to prove the point. Before the Doctor could answer, I came up with another question. "Hold on, 'Louise'?"
"What better name for a hungry alien than Louise? And you're right – it is dull here. But it is safe, and that's good." The sadness in his eyes was obvious yet again.
"Thank you very much for your concern, but I still haven't seen Planet of the Hoixes properly. Is there no way you can show me something cool safely?"
"I suppose I could." We went back into the TARDIS and the room shook again, and this time the Doctor didn't land, but used what he called the 'blue boringers' to stabilise us in the sky. He let me open the doors and I looked down on Planet of the Hoixes. We appeared to be above some sort of market. The open stalls had lots of food-like items on them as far as I could tell, and Hoixes were milling around in their hundreds, sampling different foods before choosing which one to go for. The Doctor explained at length the customs of the Hoix race, and he went at such a pace that I didn't hear much of it, to be honest. Standing beside me at the doors, the Doctor pointed out our Hoix.
"That's Louise, there," he said, pointing at what seemed to me to be a hundred Hoixes at once.
"O-kay..." I said slowly, dragging the word out a little. The Doctor closed the doors again, and soon had the TARDIS parked back in the HE room. We'd been gone for exactly a minute.
"Let me guess," I said, "this is you proving the whole time travel thing?"
The Doctor just smiled. I gave him back his screwdriver just as Jordan entered the room. "Hey, Gary, are y' coming for a sausage roll in the canteen or not?" The Doctor was still busy smiling, so I smiled back, nodding.
"Yes, Jordan. Coming." I turned to the Doctor. "Will I see you again?"
"I honestly don't know, but if I need any more help with Hoixes in classrooms I'll come to you, okay?" He smiled again and held out a palm. I gave him a high-five. I turned to leave the room before I remembered the manners that Mum was always trying to drum into my head.
I turned back, smiling broadly. "Thank you, Doctor."
"You're very welcome," he replied, giving me a mock salute. He turned away from us and started on tidying the HE room.
As Jordan and I walked to the canteen and sausage rolls, I heard the sound of the TARDIS leaving and smiled to myself.
The most exciting day of my life. I might not have saved the whole world exactly, but I did save my class. It was the day I met the Doctor, and that's one thing I'll never forget.
A/N: I hope you liked it. The banana skin on the bus is based on a real event my friend experienced. With thanks to; Andrew (for laughing at the right bits), the person who designed my high school's HE room (without whom, I would not have had a lime green door to walk through for three years) and you (for reading this far, that sure is a feat of endurance, and I can't thank you enough).