Hi, thanks a lot for sharing your opinion with me! I didn't expect a response like that, and neither did the site apparently because I could only read your comments in my mail at the first time, the site just didn't show them, and some of them were cut.

I won't lie to you, I like every idea you have (even yours, Joseph, about the costume, and yes I intend to use the one shown in the trailer). Unfortunately, I can't use every single one of them. But let me be clear about several things if you read this short author's note at all.

When you describe me your idea of what the Doctor is and must be, you actually describe the Doctor; not your version or an echo of the Doctor. Everything you think the Doctor must be, the Doctor is.

There won't be elements of deep philosophy about racism, sexism or anything such in this particular story. I'm not your mom or BBC to tell you that it's a bad thing.

However, in the pre-last chapter, I intend to ask you all a thing. But as it's only the second chapter I won't ask the question because you're not accustomed to Alex, story and my writing style-ish yet. Consider this story as a pilot episode if you like.


The Doctor opened her eyes, her lungs hurt when she took a deep gulp of air. She was on a couch, quite uncomfortable couch, familiar couch, her neck completely stoned, her limbs numb. Her eyes darted to the phone on the coffee table, which was next to her. What time was it? What day was it?

She stretched her hand to the phone with those thoughts, her brains only beginning to warm up, and halted. Her eyebrows knitted together in disarray. The Doctor brought up her hand to the face. There was a glimmer of radiating regeneration force leaving her body. And the hand! It wasn't quite hers, fewer hairs, different shape, shorter fingers, smaller palm than she'd remembered and feminine milky skin. The luminescence stopped. She turned the hand around. Squeezed it and unclenched. No ring. Was there a ring in the first place?

The Doctor drew out her other hand. No ring there, too. Had she made up the ring when she had been sleeping? Had she been sleeping?

She threw away a blanket, it landed somewhere on the floor. With a groan, she got up. Everything hurt.

She found a bathroom in the house, turned on a sink and washed her face. She looked over her dark clothes, oversized and ragged, red lining peeped out where the dark material was broken, they smelt of burnt cotton. That's when it struck her with severe pain: regeneration, one more lifetime, burning TARDIS, falling and finally waking up in a dark place. Everything was fuzzy, everything was confused – her now and tomorrow, tomorrow and yesterday. The console on fire, the body burning, hearts beating so ever slowly, the pulse decreasing, no one at his side, no one to teach him, no one to be taught by him. She was alone.

She looked up, came into a woman and startled with a scream. A chill rose up the Doctor's spine when she realised that it was a mirror, and the woman was herself. She turned her head, touched her nose, brushed her hair. She was different. She was new. The Doctor made the deepest frown she could make: not her best, not so impressive and not so very frightening. A simple serious frown for simple serious talks. She smiled: a charming smile! They would certainly like it!

On a laundry basket, she found someone's clothes. Right, she needed to find the woman who saved her, she remembered there had been one somewhere, she needed to say her thank you and goodbye.

The Doctor got back to the hall, there was a door to the living room, a door to the kitchen and a spiral staircase to the second floor. Her stomach made a space-whale noise, so the choice where to go was obvious. She poked her head in the kitchen only to find that a massive black Rottweiler was slumbering on a pillow. The dog hadn't moved an inch when she came in. The Doctor decided to try out her luck and tiptoed towards the fringe. She got a feeling that the dog was watching her all the time but was just too lazy to do anything about her.

Having found a packet of nuts, she headed to observe the second floor.

The second floor had two rooms. The first one was a bedroom with a small bed and a paper chaos all around. The second one appeared to be a working place. There was a desk with computer, the walls were all in posters of comic heroes and drawings. Lots of drawings. Some were minimalistic, some were very detailed, but they all seemed to have one common thing – the same person in green tights in some heroic pose. At the desk was a woman who was so deeply concentrated on her work that she didn't notice when the Doctor came in.

"Hello?" The Doctor gently called the woman.

The woman turned around with a startle. "Ah! It's only you, hi." She closed all her browser tabs. The Doctor only caught the last one: 'fluorescent skin diseases'. "I've called the ambulance one more time but… uh… it still doesn't come."

"I told you, no doctors." A deep furrow appeared on the Doctor's face. "Or did I?"

"You did." The woman affirmed and bit her lips awkwardly. "Three times, in fact."

The Doctor tried to recall her day but she could vaguely remember only parts of it: falling, waking up… no, that was it.

"I don't remember." With dismay, the Doctor looked at the woman. She, on the other hand, didn't look surprised at all.

"I know. When you've come in you wore that lost face, again. You probably don't remember my name, right?"

No, not Alvin. I'm not a chipmunk.

"Was it Alvin?" The Doctor tried.

"Alex." The woman prompted in a small voice.

"Ahh, Alex! What a charming name!" A grin enveloped the Doctor's face. "Look, it was very nice to meet you but I need…"

"I know, you need to go because you don't want to be rude. You'll leave a winning lottery ticket in my mailbox, I shall check it tomorrow. Then you'll enter that police box on my street which you'll call your TARDIS. But it's not your TARDIS apparently because whenever you enter it you look confused. And then you'll lose your consciousness and I'll have to drag your body back to the couch. Can we break the circle?" Alex told her with a little shy smile.

The Doctor dashed to the window and looked out of it. It was getting dark outside, and she found that police box Alex had mentioned. "Oh, it really looks like my TARDIS!.." the Doctor considered her words with a pause. "Or actually my TARDIS looks like a police box. Why is it here anyway? Haven't they demolished them?"

"I dunno. Mr Collins said it had always been there."

"Really?" The Doctor paid a glance back to the blue box. "What year is it?"

"What planet are you from?"

"Gallifrey. Why do you ask?"

"Ah, never mind. It's 2018."

The Doctor gave the blue box an intentional stare. Strange... Very strange and very interesting at the same time. No, probably nothing. Probably she was making up things. Or probably not. The police box looked like it had never been used before.

She noticed a man staring at her from the street. He must have been there for a very long time, he seemed glued to his spot. The Doctor opened the window widely and poked her head out of it. "Hi! You must be Mr Collins! How do you do?"

But Mr Collins didn't answer her. Pretending he hadn't seen her at all, he turned back and walked down the street to his house. The Doctor could only hear the shut of his door.

"He doesn't talk much," Alex explained. "And he doesn't like strangers."

"Why not?" The Doctor closed the window with a loud bolt. "I like strangers. You can unstrange them and make your best friends."

"I don't think he shares your idea. When I had only moved in, he shooed me away every time he saw me. Said I'm not his Alex."

"And why would he say that I wonder?"

"The old lady who sold me this house was also Alex. It took me some time to explain to him I'm not her." Alex eyed the Doctor from tip to toe and shook her head. The Doctor peeked down. Yeah, a nasty appear. "Look, as the ambulance doesn't come today at all apparently, why don't you take a shower?"

"Why would I need a shower?"

"Because you smell? And frankly, you look like someone who had a hell out of a day. And I have many questions, and I- I- I'm just confused! And you're weird! You had that orange aura emitting like within you, and you were speaking some gibberish in tongues. You certainly do have a concussion because you were keeping to lose your consciousness, and the ambulance just doesn't come and nobody wills to help me!"

"Hey, you saved me, you more than anyone deserve an explanation. Ask anything you like."

Alex didn't take much time to pick up one of her many questions. "What's your name? I need to know it to find your family or friends so they could take you away."

"The Doctor."

"No, your real name."

"The Doctor." The Doctor shrugged.

"Had you been on a plane before you fell?"

"No." Technically, that wasn't a lie.

"Who are you?"

"I'm just a normal person, passing by, looking for troubles."

She saw that Alex didn't believe a thing of what she was saying to her. The woman wore that face she knew too well, the face that was looking for better answers. "You must have a really bad rare concussion," Alex concluded.

The Doctor considered her words with a long deep hum. "I might have. I fell from 12.5 thousand feet. I might have forgotten things. Important things. Not important too. This new me might have forgotten how to play the Burmese harp, or how to read backwards, or how to write with two hands. Poor Leonardo, I've already asked him to explain this trick four times in the past."

"Right. Just… have a shower. I left you some of my clothes there, but when the ambulance comes, please, change back into yours."

"Okay." The Doctor was heading to the exit of the working place but stopped at the door, her hand simply wiggled in the air. "Ah, Alex! Can I ask you a question, too?"

"Yeah?" The woman seemed to be flabbergasted already.

"Why do you help me?"

Her mouth opened slightly before she noticed and shut it. "I just do. I mean, I found you… I don't know. Do I need a reason?" Alex's eyes unconsciously moved to the biggest poster in the room which had a man in green tights and many handwritten scribbles all around him.

"No," the Doctor shook her head, leaving her alone in her working place, "of course you don't."


Alex put the tip of her finger on the computer power button. Was she doing a wise thing? Letting some stranger be in her house for more than a day? Of course, it wasn't her fault, the ambulance hadn't shown yet, but she couldn't shoo away the idea from her head that normal people don't do that, they don't find strangers in the woods and keep them in their living rooms. But the ambulance… argh, what did take them so long?! She had a woman with a concussion in her shower, about to wear her clothes and go back to sleep and possibly lose her memories once again. Above it all, she was alone in this business! Mr Collins had refused to help. Other neighbors hadn't even left their comfortable houses when she had called them, not even Mrs Caley who had looked like a nice old lady before she shut a door quite close to Alex's face.

Alex phoned 999 again, but all she heard was answering machine saying that the help was on its way. Well, it didn't, did it?! And what was she just supposed to do?!

The man's blazing eyes and a shining white smile from the poster told her to relax. Strange things happened in the life, no one's safe from them, and the Doctor, well, she was one of them. She should probably go to sleep, she was tired and overstressed, she needed to dream it all off.

Alex closed the door to her bedroom, leaned on it and sighed.

She could do that. She could accept that this was all for a short time, not permanently. Except the Doctor was the first strange thing in her entire life, and she hadn't the faintest idea how to deal with it.

Alex stepped accidentally on one of her sketches, her shoe leaving a slight footprint. When she picked it up, it appeared to be that same man in green tights she hadn't named since she'd made him up back in uni. This version of him had ginger hair, blue eyes and wide nose, the costume was plain green. One of the first visions of her own superhero: no plot, no character, just a vision of a masculine, handsome vigilante with a messed up background. She picked up the rest sketches from the floor and put them in a heap on a bedside table.

She got inside the bed and texted to her customer that she would send him a better version of the logotype tomorrow. Today, she had had an accident. The Doctor. That she hadn't put in her text.

She couldn't make herself sleep no matter what side she was laying on. She turned on the lights, found a pencil and turned around a sketch to use it. She started with drawing a square in the heart of the paper, then she put the square into the circle. She added few curves, she deleted them.

She looked at what she had done, really looked at it. Seriously, was that all she could come up with after so many years? A square and a circle, she gawked at it. Did she lose it? Or was it just today?

Alex crumpled up the paper and throw it in a basket. She missed.

Argh, whatever, she can always try tomorrow.


The Doctor zipped up a black hoody. The clothes she was given weren't exactly her size but still were more comfortable and cleaner than her old clothes folded neatly on a washer. She put a sonic screwdriver and a packet of nuts in her new pockets.

In the hall, the dog was sitting at the front door, and when the Doctor was in view, it barked at her, its tail waggled from side to side. The Doctor looked baffled at him (was he talking to her with that imperious tone?), but the dog's look gave no doubt.

"You wanna go outside?" The dog barked excitedly. "I dunno, maybe we should ask Alex first." The Doctor mused, putting her left foot on the first step of the staircase to the second floor. The dog rushed towards her and gently clenched his teeth on her hoody. "Five minutes?" She considered his plea. Well, five minutes wouldn't kill anyone. "Okay, boy, but just so you know I'm a Time Lord, meaning I'm very good at the time. Mostly. Sometimes. Maybe never." The dog smirked. "Aye, shut up!"

She let the massive creature out and followed him down the road, with no lead which was nagging her mind. If Alvin ran, she could only talk sense into him, but with that ego, she doubted she could cope.

As Alvin was doing his business outside the house, the Doctor craned her neck up. The sky was dim, lit slightly from the lampposts on the street, several grey clouds were obliviously floating to the East. She didn't worry about the TARDIS, she would come back when she felt better. The Doctor watched the sky to check the stars.

"You must leave. You don't belong here."

The Doctor looked back to see Mr Collins watching her with an expressionless wrinkled face, his body slumped on a wooden cane.

"Sorry, I'm just walking my friend's dog. We promise to stay away from your house."

"No." The man emphasized, his posture dangerously moving to her. "You don't belong here."

"Yes, you're right, I don't live here." The Doctor put on her best smile and stepped back.

"You don't belong here!" The man shouted at her with his cane above his head. The sonic was quickly withdrawn out of her pocket and pointed at him. There was a light wheeze; the Doctor pressed the button to simply scare away the old man with far from modern technologies. Instead, Mr Collins stopped dead, one foot in the air, only his eyes were moving rapidly from side to side with a sudden confusion of what had just happened.

"Oh." The Doctor peeked at the sonic screwdriver. Back to the man. She pressed it to her ear and listened in. "Oh!" She exclaimed after several beeps. "I don't want to disappoint you, but, the reading says, neither do you."

The Doctor watched him cautiously. His eyes were statically looking back at her. As the effect of the pulse the sonic screwdriver had given him started to wear off, his mouth unfroze.

"You are not Alex's friend and Alex is not my Alex. You took her away from me. You are not supposed to be here."

"How old are you?" The Doctor asked, scanning him over and over again. The sonic gave her a picture of what was standing in front of her but nothing gave away his real age.

"Five." Mr Collins hissed through his clenched teeth.

"How can you be five years old and look like an old man, I don't understand." The Doctor shook the sonic and tried again. "You look good inside, no organ faulty, no bugs, no cracks. You're perfect."

"I am not perfect. We are not perfect. Yet. But you are," Mr Collins said in unearthly tone. "You spoiled my Alex. That's why you shall leave."

"But nothing you say makes sense. Nothing." The Doctor felt a tickling warm spreading over her hearts. It wasn't the excessive energy anymore, this feeling was pleasant and exciting.

Mr Collins mobilized but he wasn't aggressive anymore. At last, he put the cane down and hadn't attacked her, though there was something threatening in his look nonetheless.

The Doctor's hand was touched by something wet and cold, the dog was calling her back to the house as five minutes had passed long ago.

"The dog belongs here," Mr Collins said with a hint of a smile, but it very quickly disappeared. "Alex belonged here. Alex doesn't belong here. You don't belong here. Go away."

Alvin grabbed the Doctor's sleeve and pulled it with a force so she had no choice but to succumb.

"See you tomorrow, Mr Collins." The Doctor said, casting a glance back at him, and reluctantly followed the dog.


Hiya, what is it?! The story plot begging, wow! Who is Mr Collins and why the Doctor managed to stun him? What do you think about Alex, btw? More to come, soon, not soon, I'll try +_+

To get a faster response to your reviews, follow me on Twitter