Hello readers and welcome to my next story for Doctor Who.
For this story, I've decided to take a break from the norm and do a novelization of an attempt at an animated Doctor Who episode. I should tell you how this came to pass. In 2007, while the third series was being aired, the children's spin-off show Totally Doctor Who released twelve short segments that formed nearly the whole episode. The thirteenth and final part aired in the omnibus when the series ended after only two series. Now being South African, I never watched Totally Doctor Who but I found out about this episode on Wikipedia and found it in five videos on YouTube. Some people found the animations of this episode to be a bit lacking which I agreed with, but the voice acting felt like the actors were very into the parts, David Tennant and Freema Agyeman especially being very much like their live-action acting, and it had a very good story. After a third or fourth viewing, I ran the story through my head and after a few tries and viewings, finally figured out how to put this story on paper. I'm still trying to get the DVD which has the bios for each character, so if you don't understand a lot of the story, then I'm sorry but it's the best I can do.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or the rights to this episode. They belong to their respective owners, blah, blah, blah, etc.
So with that out of the way, let's begin.
Prologue: Scourge of the Galaxy
The Milky Way Galaxy
Sometime in the 40th century
From beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a mighty ship was on the move. Shaped like a vast bronze eagle and powered by fusion reactors, it blasted through space like a missile, headed for a small and peaceful planet.
On board the ship, in the cockpit, the pilot scanned the flight computer for his target. He was quite a sight to behold, dressed in a stripy jumper, his face hidden behind a gas mask with glowing blue eyes and his right arm covered by a large robotic claw. Then, the computer flashed up the image of the planet and a voice chirruped, "We have arrived at our destination: Sol 3, also known as Earth."
"There she is," the pilot hissed to himself. "So peaceful, so delicate, so small I can reach out and-" He held up his normal hand over the image and clenched it into a fist. "Crush it!"
"Crush it!" the large robotic bird squawked out from in the cage behind the pilot's chair. "Crush it!"
"Quiet, Caw," the pilot berated his pet. "No time for your nonsense; this is my moment of destiny."
"Moment of destiny," Caw rasped with glee. "Moment of destiny!"
The pilot then pressed a button on the arm of his chair and spoke into the intercom to the lower levels of his ship. "Attention, armoury. Prepare plasma cannons for firing. Commence the countdown."
"Acknowledged," the computer responded. "Plasma cannons will be armed in T-minus four minutes and counting."
Pleased with the news, the pilot got out of his chair and walked up to the observation window which overlooked the Earth below. "Soon, I will gain riches beyond the dreams of all men and nothing can stop me!" He raised his arms over his head and crowed, "I'll be the king of the world!"
"King of the world," Caw repeated from his cage. "King of the world!"
The pilot's laughter ran across the ship, but it didn't cover the loud grating roar that built up near Caw's cage. The robotic parrot turned his head round and saw something that wasn't there earlier; a blue box roughly his height with a light on top.
Then a door opened and a woman's voice rang out, "So where are we this time, Doctor?"
"In the presence of a great man," a man's voice responded.
"What the…?" The pilot turned round to see two figures emerge from the strange blue box; a young man in a blue pinstriped suit and red running shoes and a dark-skinned woman in a red jacket and jeans.
As the pilot watched, the young man turned to his friend. "Now you can forget your Bonapartes, your Boadiceas and your Blackbeards even. This, Martha Jones…" And at this, he indicated to the pilot. "This is Baltazar, Scourge of the Galaxy, Corsair king of Triton here in the 40th century and quite possibly the greatest despot that ever, ever lived."
The young girl, Martha glanced around the cockpit with absolute awe. "Oh, Doctor, this is just… just…" She struggled to find the words. "Fantastic!"
"Yeah, it is pretty cool," the Doctor agreed. "Now the incredible thing about Baltazar-"
"Scourge of the Galaxy!" Caw interrupted loudly.
"Yes, thank you," the Doctor sighed before continuing, "Anyway, the most incredible thing about him is, he built this entire ship himself!"
"He didn't," Martha breathed.
"Oh yeah, by hand," the Doctor said. "Go on then, tell her, Baltazar."
"T-minus three minutes and counting."
Baltazar nodded his head slowly and approached the pair. "Your friend is quite correct, young lady. I tended this vessel by hand over countless decades. I forged the metals, built the engines and weaponry, and burnished her into the greatest warship in history."
"And not that long ago," the Doctor added, "you used your great warship to blow all of Earth's defenses out of the sky." He glowered at the pilot and whispered, "You really shouldn't have done that."
"Shouldn't have done that," Caw repeated, narrowing his eyes.
"They got in my way," Baltazar replied nonchalantly. "And now I'm going to cover the Earth in a field of plasma fire, superheating the carbonates that scurry over its surface."
"Really?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow at this. "Plasma fire, eh? So all carbon-based life will be super-compressed by the heat of a plasma field, making…"
"Diamonds!" Martha cried out.
"Precisely! Well done, Martha," the Doctor agreed. "Yes indeed. Every living being on planet Earth turned into diamonds."
"Right," Baltazar nodded. "And the plan starts in seconds."
"T-minus two minutes and counting."
A small grin crossed the Doctor's face. "Now, that is a plan. That is indeed a plan. I've heard some great plans in my life but yours, oh that is just brilliant. Is that not the most incredible plan you've ever heard, Martha?"
"Oh, yeah incredible," Martha said uneasily. "But, we're going to stop him right?"
"Oh, yes," the Doctor replied, slipping a hand in his pocket. "And I'll do it by giving Mr. Baltazar… this!" And he pulled out a small gold-plated teaspoon and held it before the corsair.
"What is that?" Baltazar scoffed.
"Just a little something I picked up in my travels," the Doctor replied. "Take it now and leave Earth alone. Trust me; I like to stir things up sometimes."
But Baltazar, unimpressed by the gift or the joke, simply raised his robotic claw and cut through the spoon as easily as it was a flower stem.
"Ouch," the Doctor winced as the broken utensil clattered to the floor. "You REALLY shouldn't have done that!"
"And he shouldn't have broken your spoon because…?" Martha prompted.
"Because that was no ordinary spoon," the Doctor replied as Baltazar turned back to his window. "That particular spoon was passed through the hands of the greatest chefs on Planet Earth; Fanny, Delia, Madame Cholet… that spoon was an antique! And it was forged by the now-extinct inhabitants of a planet which specializes in ribicola."
"A fungus?" she asked.
"T-minus one minute and counting."
"Oh yes," the Doctor replied grimly. "But not just any old fungus, oh no. This is a special hydroxiding fungus. There's been no treatment for it for the last 200 years…" He then turned to the pirate. "This is why, Baltazar, Scourge of the Galaxy, even as we speak…"
"Your deck is rusting away," Martha finished triumphantly.
"What?!" Baltazar glanced down to the floor and realized they were right.
From where the broken spoon lay, a circle of reddish corrosion was radiating rapidly outwards like the ripples in a pond and before he could react, the rust had reached out under his feet and he fell through the floor! "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
As Baltazar disappeared into the lower decks, lights began to flash red across the cockpit. "Warning! Corrosion detected! Countdown terminated!"
Martha let out a yelp of alarm as the rust spread closer to her and the Doctor. "That's no ordinary rust, is it?"
"Uh, no," the Doctor admitted sheepishly as they backed towards the blue box. "See, it was originally too slow to react, so I pepped it up a little bit, gave it a bit of zing, a bit of va-va-voom."
"Va-va-voom!" Caw squawked out in alarm. "Va-va-voom!"
The Doctor opened the door to his box but Martha grabbed his arm. "Doctor, no. You can't leave him here, not to the rust."
Glancing over his shoulder, the Doctor moaned, "Oh, alright." He pulled out a small ceramic wand from his pocket and pointed it at Caw's cage. A loud buzzing rang out and the cage swung open, allowing Caw to spread his mechanical wings and take off down the lower decks so he didn't see the blue box disappear into thin air…
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor bounded around the central control console, flicking switches and pulling levers. Then he noticed his companion glancing at the doors. "Are you alright, Martha?"
"It's just that Baltazar still got away," she replied. "Will he ever get caught?"
"Oh I imagine so," the Doctor nodded slowly. "He's still wanted by the Earth authorities. His luck can't hold out forever."
"So what will happen to him, do you think?"
"In this year, the most likely prison planet for him would be…" He closed in thought. "Uhhhh… Volag-Noc. Yeah, that's where I'd take him if it was to me. Said to be the coldest place in the galaxy."
Martha shuddered at the thought. "Oooh, nasty."
"Yep," the Doctor agreed, staring into space for a moment. "They've got very severe sentences for any crimes ever committed. With my streak, I hope never to end up in that place."
Then he smiled and turned back to his controls. "Now then, I want you to give me a number between 0 and 99."
"Um, 45," she replied.
"Okay, now another."
"72?"
"Good and one more?"
"3," Martha chuckled. "What is this, galactic lottery?"
"Destination settings," he replied, as he pressed some buttons on the console and placed a hand on the take-off lever. "And you, Martha Jones, have randomly chosen to take us to…"Martha crossed her fingers, hoping for somewhere good. "Copacabana Beach!"
"Yes!" Martha cheered and the Doctor thrust the lever down with a cry of "ARRIBA!"
Just behind Earth's moon, the large bronze ship was rapidly corroding away into nothing. As the rust hit the engines, the explosions lit up the depths of space like fireworks. Amid the chaos, a large robotic bird swooped into the stars with a masked figure clinging to its back.
If anyone in the vicinity was watching, they would see the figure shaking his fist at the Earth and heard his curse to the heavens as he disappeared into space, "I'll get you for this, Doctor! I don't care how long it takes, but I'll make you sorry you were ever BORN!"