CHAPTER ONE

A/N: So, the Doctor's changed into his eleventh body, but who he has become is anyone's guess…

Another A/N appears at the end.

"Doctor…" Martha whispered, her face completely ashen.

"Mmmmm…" the Time Lord said. He felt his face, which had a more elongated chin. He touched his head, which had shorter, darker, more coarse hair this time around. Feeling his nose, he touched a flatter, rounder nose, not quite pudgy, but not as long as his tenth persona had been. His eyes opened to the sight of Martha, shaking her head over and over.

"What…?" the Doctor asked his companion worriedly. They both noticed his voice had grown deeper, and more aristocratic, with no hint of Cockney. "Have I gone blue, or something?"

He quickly removed the tubes from his body, ambling out of the bed and going to the full length mirror in the bathroom.

"Oh…bollocks!" the Time Lord exclaimed as he gazed into the glass. "I'm not ginger again! What's it gonna take for me to be ginger? Who do I have to kill to get that?!"

He paused, getting a good look at his new face and body. He saw the intelligent forehead, pronounced cheekbones, warm sepia eyes staring from a still handsome face, and a much more muscular figure this time around. He had lost a little in the height department, he saw, but not much. He took in his complexion, which was smooth, albeit slightly oily—he surmised because of the increase in his melanin pigmentation—but at least, he didn't have acne.

Leaving the bathroom, the newly regenerated Time Lord greeted his companion. "Hello, Martha!" He said enthusiastically, happy that he'd remembered his traveling friend first time out of the regenerative gate. He took in her expression, which was a wide eyed stare.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked again. "I seem to be okay." He flexed his arms for emphasis. "All parts are in working order." He jumped up and down to prove his point again. "So what's with the fish face?"

"Doctor…you're…you're…" Martha whispered, "black!"

Bl-ack…" the Doctor murmured. "You know, I will never understand your planet's predisposition to identify people by the color of their skin. None of the people of the more advanced worlds do that, even the ones with beings who wish to take over Earth!"

"How? How are you able to…" Martha asked.

"Well, I was genetically created to mimic traces of my family on my home world," the Doctor said slowly. "My family was quite large, several aunts, uncles, cousins. Some of them were of…African backgrounds, you might say. While that genetic trait wasn't dominant, which was why I often regenerated as an individual with Caucasian traits, it was in my family tree and my genetic blueprint, so to speak, hence the skin color change this time around."

Martha nodded, trying to process all the Doctor had told her. Before she could respond, the Doctor bounded out of the room, saying, "Now…who's up for a wardrobe change?" He took in her disheveled appearance, saying, "I know I am!" He glanced at his tattered, pinstriped clothes, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Pinstripes…just not my style," he said, heading for the wardrobe room.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Tossing aside the pinstriped suit, the Doctor threw aside several of his previous incarnations' outfits. Martha waited outside for about 20 minutes, after which she said, "You made up your mind, yet?"

The Time Lord came out in a bunch of flowing robes representing the African flag. Martha waved her hand in an either or gesture, commenting, "It's okay, but do you think it's really practical for what we do?"

"Point taken," the Doctor replied, going back into the wardrobe room.

A moment later, he came out in an outfit representative of the 1940's Zoot suit. Martha made a face, saying, "No…definitely not."

The Doctor frowned in mock disappointment. He ran out after 10 minutes, showing her his third choice: all leather, from the jacket to the pants to the shirt. Martha rolled her eyes, as if to say, you aren't being serious, are you?

The Doctor went back in, saying, "Humans are so hard to please."

After about another 20 minutes, the Doctor emerged. He was wearing a peacock blazer in navy, with gold buttons. The blazer had a wrap around design, giving him a nautical look. His pants matched the blazer. A white shirt complemented the ensemble, and a tie with the colors resembling the African flag, namely black, green, and orange completed the look. On his feet were a pair of running shoes.

Martha gave the thumbs up gesture, adjusting his tie so that it was straight. The Doctor made it slightly crooked again, chiding softly, "Looks better this way."

Martha sighed, but went to change her clothes now that the Time Lord was settled. They both entered the console room a moment later.

"So, where to?" the Doctor asked. "I know where I'd like!" He winked at her.

Martha couldn't help grinning at the Doctor, but a moment later, she grew serious. A tear ran down her cheek, followed by another, as she considered the loss of the Tenth Doctor. The new Doctor's brown hand reached out, flicking the tear from her cheek. He felt incredibly guilty as he realized why his companion was sad.

"I'm sorry, Martha," the Doctor said, sighing. "I know you cared a great deal for him. If there had been any way I could have prolonged things so that you could spend more time with him…"

Martha frowned, commenting, "You speak as though he was a different person."

The Doctor said matter-of-factly, "He is. He isn't me, and I'm not him, yet I am me."

"I'm really confused now," Martha confessed.

The Doctor thought a moment, saying, "Think about him as though he was a brother, or a cousin. We share similar memories, and similar traits, yet there are individualities about us, too."

"Ohhh," Martha replied. After a moment, she said, "Doctor, are you sure you should be going anywhere? I mean, you just regenerated, and you should be resting…"

"Resting?" the Doctor queried, and then shouted, "RESTING?!" He quieted down somewhat before responding, "I'm only 906, relatively young for a Time Lord!"

"But…" Martha started protesting.

The Doctor sighed, saying, "Okay. I know you won't be satisfied until you listen to my vital signs, right?"

"Well, yeah," Martha replied, going back into the medical area, and emerging moments later with a stethoscope and the sonic screwdriver. She put the stethoscope on and placed it on one of the Doctor's hearts. It was beating a little bit faster than the normal human rate, but since she'd traveled with the Doctor for a while now, Martha knew the normal rhythm of his hearts' beats and, satisfied that his first heart was fine, she moved the 'scope to the second one. It too beat normally.

"How do I run this over you?" she said, twisting the knob on the sonic screwdriver. "I mean, this is kinda like a tricorder, right?"

The Doctor huffed, saying, "Hardly! Comparing Gallifreyan technology to something as primitive as that instrument on a second rate science fiction TV programme is almost like comparing a Blue Ray DVD player to a gramophone!" Under his breath, the Time Lord muttered, "Although I suppose that analogy is an insult to gramophones."

Martha chided, "Doctor…"

He sighed, saying, "All right. Turn the knob at the back of the screwdriver to setting 007. That's the one for scanning and reporting the vitals on a Time Lord. Hit the button—" he pointed to a small button near the light at the other end—"here. If everything reads normal, the light will glow blue. If not, it will be green."

"Green?" Martha echoed. "Shouldn't it be red?"

"Different worlds…different rules," the Doctor replied. Martha did as he had instructed. She hit the button and breathed a sigh of relief at the blue light which blinked from the screwdriver after the Doctor had been scanned.

"Satisfied?" he asked. Martha nodded. She wanted to give the Doctor a more thorough examination, but she knew he'd never sit for that long. He was itching for another adventure.

"Just curious, though," Martha inquired, a thoughtful expression on her pretty face. "Does it have a red button?"

"Yes," the Doctor said. "If the indicator flashed red, that would have been an indication that my thought processes were erratic. Memory and so forth."

He went to the console room and the control panel. Martha followed, looking at him turn dials and pull levers with a newfound elegance, she noted. He also didn't bounce as much as his previous persona. Every move he made now had a deliberate slowness to it, a sort of…graceful motion, like a ballet, as opposed to the Jitterbug moves his tenth self had demonstrated.

She put the sonic screwdriver on the hexagonal console. Neither person saw the sonic screwdriver's light blinking just then in a scarlet hue. The Doctor smiled his new, warm, enigmatic grin as they heard the engines stop.

"We've landed, Marsha," the Doctor replied.

Martha laughed, thinking he was joking. "Martha," she said. The Time Lord opened the doors to a place which looked like New York.

"New York," the Doctor confirmed. "Let's go get some bagels!"

Martha also noted that this new Doctor wanted bagels, not scones, as his predecessor would have wanted.

"Sounds good," Martha said, grabbing her beige denim jacket off of a hangar in the console room. The Doctor closed the doors, but ran back inside the ship a second later.

"Almost forgot this," he said, grabbing the sonic screwdriver. He shoved it in his pocket, not glancing at the colour of the light. It was still red.

A/N #2: Colin Salmon has been cast as the Doctor. If you don't know him, he played a doctor in the two part story "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead". As I said, a friend issued this challenge to see if the Doctor could regenerate as a black man, so I jumped at it.