Author's notes:
Mickey finishes his tour of the Enterprise. They come back from the 1960's after telling Gene Roddenberry their story, and set off on their next adventure.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by to read, and to those who left comments. Much appreciated.
Chapter 7
The Final Frontier
After their meal, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey set off again on their tour of the Enterprise. They turned right as they left the recreation room, to see a turbolift along the curved corridor on the left. After a few seconds wait, the red doors slid open, and two female crew stepped out of the lift wearing yellow mini dress tunics. The trio entered and held the handles around the edge.
'Deck seven,' the Doctor said as he twisted the handle.
The lift pod moved backwards and then sideways. It then moved down a deck and horizontally towards the centre of the saucer. The doors swished open, and they stepped out.
'What's on this deck then?' Rose asked.
'Mainly medical facilities,' the Doctor told them. 'With some stores, ships computer servers, and the emergency bridge.'
'How'd you know all that?' Mickey asked him.
'I looked up the floor plans last time we were here,' the Doctor replied.
'What, an' you remember all of it?' Mickey asked incredulously.
The Doctor looked at him as though he had dribbled down his red, starfleet sweatshirt. 'Of course I do.'
They took Mickey to the arboretum on deck eight, which was a park which curved around the inside of the starboard hull for a hundred feet, and was sixty feet across. It had a meandering gravel path with benches where crew members could enjoy some private time in a natural environment. There was also a pool with fish in it.
'This is amazin',' Mickey said in open mouthed wonder. 'I don't remember seein' any of this in the original series.'
'You wouldn't have. NBC didn't have the budget to build a complete star ship,' the Doctor told them.
They worked their way down the other decks, which were either fabrication workshops, or storage areas. They passed deck nineteen where the TARDIS was waiting for them, and went to see the the shuttle craft storage bay on deck twenty one. There were eight, white craft with large, black tinted windows at the front, four on each side of the bay.
'Ho-ho,' Mickey said, rubbing his hands together with delight. 'Look at those beauties. We send men to the moon in a tin can, and this lot have mini buses.'
'None of which would have been possible without those pioneering men in the tin can,' the Doctor reminded him.
'Hey. I'm not belittlin' what they achieved,' said Mickey. 'I'm just sayin' how far they've come since those first small steps.'
Rose hugged Mickey's arm proudly, and the Doctor patted his shoulder. 'Quite right too Mickey-Boy. Quite right too.'
After being shown around one of the shuttles by a maintenance technician, they finally reached the Shuttle Hangar on deck nineteen, where the TARDIS was waiting for them.
'Well. Here we are then, end of the tour,' the Doctor announced as they stepped out of the turbolift.
'Oh man. This has been the best,' Mickey said, sad that it was all over.
'Yeah. We didn't see all that last time we came,' Rose agreed.
'And now it's time to move on,' the Doctor said. 'But first of all, I think we should thank our host and say goodbye.'
He moved to a small, red panel to the side of the turbolift, pressed the white button next to the grey speaker.
"Whee-ee-woo"
'This is the Doctor calling Mister Spock on the Bridge,'
['Spock here, Doctor.']
'Ah, Mister Spock. We've finished giving Mickey the tour so we'll be on our way now. We just wanted to thank you and your crew for your hospitality.'
['No problem, Doctor. Have a safe journey all of you. Live long and prosper.']
'He really says that!' Mickey whispered to Rose, holding his hand up in the Vulcan salute.
The Doctor looked at them with a lopsided smile as he spoke again. 'Live long and prosper Mister Spock. And please give our regards to Captain Kirk. Bye.'
He took his thumb off the button, and they all strolled over to the TARDIS. They took one last look around the hangar and stepped through the blue doors in to the gothic interior of the console room. The Doctor ran up the ramp to the console, throwing his long brown coat over the coral, and started up the Time Rotor.
'Hey Doc?' Mickey said, deep in thought. 'I was wonderin' about those people who were created down on the planet . . .'
The Doctor looked up from the console. 'Hmm. What about them?'
'Well. I was wonderin' what happens to them when the people who thought about them leave . . . I mean, do they hang around, or do they disappear back underground?' Mickey asked.
'Oh yeah. I hadn't thought about that,' added Rose.
The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. 'Blimey Mickey. You're on a roll today. I have no idea. They're self sustaining autonomous units controlled by that complex energy field, so I suppose they could hang around and interact with other people on the surface.'
'Only, I was thinkin' . . . There's a copy of Captain Flash and Rose's mum down there . . . Shouldn't we warn the people on shore leave?' Mickey said with a mischievous grin.
'Oi!' Rose said, playfully slapping his arm.
'No. He could be right. Those people down on the planet won't have come across anything like your mum and Captain Jack. Maybe we should warn them . . .' The Doctor looked over the controls for a while and then looked up, giving them a big grin. 'Nah. Let them boldly go where no one has gone before.'
Mickey spluttered a laugh as the Doctor gave an open mouthed smile. Rose, who was slightly indignant about them making fun of her mother, started to laugh as she thought about her mum flirting with captain Kirk, and then laughed even more when she thought about Jack flirting with captain Kirk.
Mickey noticed her expression become thoughtful as she stopped laughing. 'You okay Babe?'
The Doctor looked up from the console and saw the same sad, thoughtful look on her face.
'Eh? Oh yeah . . . I was just thinkin'. While I was on that planet, I could've seen my dad,' she said wistfully.
'Do you want to?' the Doctor asked her. 'We can go back.'
Rose thought about his offer and then smiled, shaking off the melancholy mood. 'Nah. It would only be a copy, made from the memories I already have of him. I've had a real hug with my real dad. That'll do me.'
'Right then. Off to see Roddenberry in the nineteen sixties,' the Doctor said, pulling levers with a flourish. He then looked at his two companions. 'And you two had better get changed out of those uniforms if you want to be taken seriously.'
Rose looked down at her tunic and smoothed it down. 'Oh yeah. We don't want to look like Trekkies before Trekkies were invented do we.'
'Who's to say we aren't the first Trekkies that start the trend?' Mickey said, tugging down his sweatshirt.
'Me!' the Doctor told him. 'Oh go and get changed,' he said as though he was a parent telling off a couple of teenage children.
Rose grabbed Mickey's hand and dragged him towards the passageway opening.
'If it's any consolation . . . you can keep the uniform,' the Doctor called after him.
'Oh neat,' he heard from the passageway which made him smile and shake his head.
The three time travellers walked up the ramp to the console, and the Doctor activated the Time Rotor, putting them into the vortex.
'Did you think Gene looked tired?' Rose asked the Doctor as she activated the monitor which hung over the console.
'He did, yeah,' the Doctor agreed. 'Mind you, I'm not surprised. He said he'd been working flat out for the last two years without a break.'
'He's certainly packed a lot in since you dropped him off,' Mickey said, referring to the incident where the Enterprise had travelled back in time and accidentally wrecked Roddenberry's jet fighter which had been scrambled to investigate.
'You're right, he has. Being a pilot, joining the police force. And all the time he was honing his writing skills and getting himself know to all the major television production companies, ready for when science fiction became popular again,' the Doctor explained.
'An' all those plane crashes he survived. It's like he's livin' a charmed life,' Rose added.
'I suppose he is in a way,' the Doctor said as he started making adjustments to the controls. 'In the timeline we remember, he lives on to create Star Trek. He's one of those defining fixed points in time.'
'According to this though, the "Shore Leave" episode wasn't plain sailin',' Rose said as she read the history on the monitor. 'It says here Gene had been runnin' flat out for two years without a break, just like he told us. He first produced the army drama The Lieutenant.'
'That was while he waited for "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer limits" to make science fiction popular to the viewing audiences,' the Doctor added.
'Well, he then sold Star Trek to NBC, and finally got the series into production,' Rose read. 'Just after "Shore Leave" was approved for pre production, his wife Eileen, and his doctor insisted that he should take a vacation.'
'Eileen? I thought he was married to Majel Barrett,' Mickey said with a frown.
Rose searched for more information. 'Er, he didn't marry Barrett until 1969. It says here that he was married to Eileen-Anita Rexroat before that.'
'Huh. Never knew that,' replied Mickey.
'He got renowned science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon to write the script,' Rose continued to read. 'He'd emphasized the importance of fantasy as a component of relaxation, and the network was concerned that the script might be too surreal.'
'That must have been McCoy's white rabbit and Tonia's fairytale princess outfit we told Gene about,' the Doctor speculated, continuing to orbit the console, making adjustments as he went. 'Mickey. Could you hold your finger on that button for me?'
'Yeah, sure,' Mickey said and pushed down the button with his right index finger.
'Well, the bosses at NBC didn't like it,' Rose read on. 'So Roddenberry assured the network that the script would be rewritten and the fantasy would be de-emphasized before he went on vacation. Unfortunately, this was not made clear to incomin' operational producer Gene L. Coon, who did the rewrite and emphasized the fantasy aspect even more,' Rose laughed.
Mickey read the next part as Rose was laughing. 'Roddenberry returned the day before shootin' was due to begin and realised that he had a problem. He set up shop under a tree with his typewriter, frantically rewritin' and tryin' to stay ahead of the production crew. Apparently, much of the dialogue was ad-libbed.'
Rose went back to reading. 'Even with Roddenberry's rewritin', many of the fantasy aspects remained, from an encounter with a samurai, to meetin' a tiger.' Rose frowned. 'Those weren't fantasy aspects. Wasn't it Rodriguez who thought up the tiger?'
'Yes and Mister Spock told us he'd seen it, along with the samurai, when he and Kirk were running back to the glade,' the Doctor recalled. 'Could you push that lever up for me Rose?'
'Eh?' Rose looked away from the screen to see where he was pointing, and pushed the lever up.
The Doctor continued. 'And don't forget, we gave Roddenberry a first hand account of our adventure. With retelling it to Sturgeon, and with Coon reading Sturgeon's script, the story would get embellished and edited until it was no longer an accurate account . . . You can let go of the lever now Rose.'
Mickey thought about that and looked at Rose. 'So when you come home an' tell me about what you've been up to, do I get an accurate account, or do I get the embellished and edited highlights?'
'No. I tell it like it is,' Rose said with a reassuring smile.
'Cos, I mean, I know the Slitheen things were real aliens. Saw them with me own eyes . . . and got covered in their snot with yer mum. But all those aliens you told me about on Platform One, they were really aliens? And those gas things in Cardiff?' he asked.
'Yep. one hundred percent alien,' she said as she sat on the jump seat.
'And the werewolf?' Mickey queried?
'Wellll. It wasn't really a werewolf,' the Doctor said as he sat next to Rose. 'More of a Lupine Wavelength Heamovariform . . . But to all intents and purpose, yeah, it was a werewolf.'
'So there really are all sorts of creatures out there?' Mickey asked.
'Yeah,' Rose nodded. 'Flaps of skin. Big old faces . . .'
'Talking trees. Talking gas,' the Doctor added. 'And that weird munchkin lady with the big eyes? Do you remember? The way she looked at you! And then she opens her mouth and fire comes out!' the Doctor said with a laugh.
'I thought I was going to get frazzled!' she laughed with him.
'Yeah, one minute she's standing there, and the next minute . . .'
' . . . .Roar!' they said together, laughing.
'Yeah, where was that, then? What happened?' Mickey asked, smiling at the fun that they'd had.
'Oh, it was on this er, this er, planet thing, asteroid, it's a long story, you had to be there.' He noticed that Mickey was still holding down the button on the console. 'Er, what're you doing that for?'
'Because you told me to,' Mickey said.
'When was that?'
'About half an hour ago.'
'Erm . . . you can let go now,' the Doctor said sheepishly. Mickey took his finger off the button and it went "bloop". Rose started giggling.
'Well, how long's it been since I could've stopped?'
'Ten minutes . . . ? Twenty . . . ? Twenty nine?'
'You just forgot me!' Mickey said angrily.
'No, no, no. I was just . . . I was . . . I was calibrating. I was just . . . . No, I know exactly what I'm doing.'
"BOOM!"
The console exploded in a flash of light and plumes of smoke, and the group were thrown to the floor. They picked themselves up and clung on to the console.
'What's happened?' Rose asked.
'The Time Vortex is gone. That's impossible, it's just gone,' the Doctor said, trying to compensate with the controls. 'Brace yourself! We're going to crash!'
The TARDIS slammed into the ground, and threw them to the floor, all the lights went out, and the console fell silent.
'Everyone all right? Rose? Mickey?'
'I'm fine,' Mickey said. 'I'm okay. Sorry. Yeah.
The Doctor looked up at the rotor. 'She's dead . . . . The TARDIS is dead.'
'You can fix it?' Rose asked as though it was a statement of fact.
'There's nothing to fix . . . she's perished,' he said as he circled the console. 'The last TARDIS in the universe, extinct,' he said sadly.
'We can get help, yeah?' she said.
'Where from?' the Doctor asked her.
'Well, we've landed. We've got to be somewhere,' she said.
Mickey moved away from the console and walked down the ramp.
'We fell out of the Vortex, through the Void, into nothingness,' he said, his voice went quiet and thoughtful. 'We're in some sort of no place . . . . The silent realm . . . . The lost dimension.'
'Otherwise known as London,' Mickey said as he looked outside the door.
The End
