Robot Taxi.
The Doctor was hopeful that he had guided the TARDIS to Earth to the right place and time while he stood by the console as the Ship began to materialise. The journey had been worryingly strange. The TARDIS sounded like she was sick, and the Doctor was clueless about what that was but he wondered if it could be related to how his unwelcome guest had appeared in the console room. To make sure Donna was returned to Earth to the right period, he had made use of the vortex manipulator he had discovered to set the coordinates with that, but the Doctor had connected the manipulator and the TARDIS together to help him guide the ship.
But right now he had no idea if the connection was good enough.
"We've landed," he announced gravely.
Donna turned to the doors. "Are you going to open the doors then, Martian?"
Annoyed at the case of mistaken identity, the Doctor had to remind himself humans didn't know during the 21st century didn't know any aliens. Swallowing his annoyance, the Doctor lifted his gaze sternly. "I will need to check the location and the time, and the environment," he said haughtily.
"What, you mean you dunno where we are?" Donna demanded.
The Doctor glared at the irritating woman. "My ship is not functioning properly; I have done some work on the console when I was stranded in the 1990s for a period - I had found a vortex manipulator and jumped to Earth, and I did some work, but when you arrived in the TARDIS console room I've had problems guiding the ship to Earth."
"Oh, just my luck!" Donna threw her arms into the air in exasperation while the Doctor ignored her and turned his attention back to the console. "I find myself teleported into an alien ship, with some old Martian who doesn't know how anything works!"
"Not quite, my dear, not quite, now please let me check the instruments. You want to return to your wedding, yes? Well I will need to check to make sure we're in the right place," the Doctor then ignored her with a mighty effort and he checked the console. "Mm," he nodded thoughtfully as he lifted his gaze from the console, "well I can tell you that we are on Earth, but the instruments are still affected by…whatever it was that drew you inside…."
But Donna was not in the mood for explanations. She was too impatient to get married. "Oh, never mind all that!" Donna yelled, waving her arms around. "Just open the sodding doors, will ya!"
The Doctor bridled again, both at the poor use of language and at the woman's attitude. "My dear, do not take that tone with me! I am trying to help you, and yelling at me is not going to help!" The Doctor came to a decision and he switched on the scanner. His heart sank in his chest when he saw what was on the scanner. The Doctor didn't know enough about human culture despite his time spent in the 1980s, but even with his lack of knowledge of what a church might look like, he knew only too well that they were not in a church.
The moment Donna saw it she became furious when she saw the scanner image swing around to show they were in a back street surrounded by buildings. "I said, Saint Mary's. What sort of Martian are you? Where's this?"
The Doctor sighed as he reached for the scanner controls. "Why don't we go outside and see? We can't be that far from this church."
When the doors were opened the Doctor led Donna out of the ship. As he walked out of the time machine, tutting again at the police box-shaped outer shell - he really did need to sort out the chameleon circuit, it was getting ridiculous; TARDISes should blend in with their surroundings not stand out like a sore thumb, but he had to admit there was something endearing about the blue box - he brushed the side of the TARDIS, wincing at the hard vibration of the faulty chameleonic shielding.
But there was something else, something that worried him. The Doctor paused and touched the TARDIS shell and frowned. "Something's wrong with her," he declared, ignoring Donna in favour of examining his ship. "Yes, I believe the TARDIS is recalibrating from your arrival. Please, tell me if you have come into contact with anything unusual. You really have to think. Have you come into contact with anything strange, unusual in the past month?" Donna wasn't listening. She was staring at the still open TARDIS door which showed the inside of the console room which showed the size that contrasted so greatly with the small blue wooden box.
The Doctor didn't notice as Donna walked around the TARDIS, patting the sides of the box-like shape. "Have you seen lights in the sky, or did you touch something? Did you touch something different, something strange? Something made out of a strange material you have never seen before? Who are you getting married to? Well, Donna?"
The Doctor turned his head, and he finally noticed that Donna was walking away. "Miss Noble, where are you going?" He called.
When Donna didn't reply, the Doctor sighed as he pulled together what little physical strength he had (it was times like this he wished he had regenerated for the first time; this old body of his wasn't exactly nearing the point where he was on the cusp of regeneration, but the longer he had this body which had served him so well on Gallifrey but the increasing proof that its age was just not practical for the rigours of time and space travel, the greater the temptation grew, but his body had served him so well back on Gallifrey, but the truth of the matter was the Doctor was worried about losing what made him who he was, and he was frightened of wasting a regeneration merely because he wanted to be stronger but at the same time he had to admit he wasn't the able specimen he had once been on Gallifrey) and he chased after Donna as fast as he could. "Donna," the Doctor panted as he caught up with the woman, "please, come back with me. There is still so much we need to discover."
"Leave me alone. I just want to get married," Donna's voice sounded so lost, and the Doctor realised she was in shock. Still, he had to try again.
"Come back to the TARDIS."
"No way. That box is too weird," Donna stressed the last word in her sentence, meaning it completely.
"Please, Miss Noble. There's nothing weird about the TARDIS; it is just dimensionally transcendental, that's all."
"Oh! That's all?" Donna scoffed, throwing her arms out in disbelief, not listening to a word he'd said before she checked her wrist, and the Doctor recognised a human wristwatch there on Donna's arm. "Ten past three. I'm going to miss it."
The Doctor looked at her with regret, his mind racing as he tried to remember the technology he had seen in the 1980s. This was 2007, but it wasn't that far off that time frame, and he had seen primitive communication devices, mobile cellular telephones if he remembered correctly. But the Doctor knew the humans had developed the technology and since he had checked the instruments the Doctor knew this century had a rather basic version of Galactic Net, an Internet.
"You can telephone them, surely? You can tell them where you are, using a mobile telephone.
Donna stopped and glared at him. "How do I do that? I ain't got a mobile! I'm in my wedding dress. It doesn't have pockets, haven't you noticed that, or are you thick? Who has pockets? Have you ever seen a bride with pockets? When I went to my fitting at Chez Alison, the one thing I forgot to say is give me pockets!"
The Doctor winced at the loud shouting. "Please, calm down," he said while he tried to resist the urge to snap back, knowing that she would only be provoked into shouting at him again. "Must you always shout? I am trying to help you, Miss Noble," the Doctor lowered his voice as he looked kindly at her, even if he didn't think she deserved it, "but please, shouting at me and blaming me for everything is not going to help. I don't know how you got into my TARDIS. I didn't bring you inside my ship, but most of all I am trying to help you. Now stop trying to fight me!"
Donna looked contrite. She knew one of her greatest flaws was her temper, but after spending so much time being cut down by her mother and Nerys and so many others, Donna had learnt to lash out at the smallest thing and she regarded it not only as her greatest strength but also her greatest weakness.
At the same time, she had to admit the Doctor had done nothing to warrant the abuse she heaped on him and she had slapped him, and he looked physically older (how old was he? Donna remembered Guinan from Star Trek, she was centuries old, and yet she appeared to be a woman in her 40s-50s) than her granddad. "You're right. I'm sorry, but I have been waiting and looking forward to a lovely wedding with a man I love for so long; and now it was so close, I was just thrown into that weird box thing of yours, and I just lashed out, but I am not interested in how I got into that ship of yours. All I want is to get married," Donna stalked away after that, leaving the Doctor behind.
The Doctor was torn, a part of him was tempted to go back inside the TARDIS and leave. But he couldn't. His mind was locked on the question of how Donna, a human who was seemingly normal (once more he wished he knew more about them, but ever since the day he had left Gallifrey and he'd travelled to the planet for the first time, his initial visits were just too brief.
His mind made up, the Doctor followed on. He found Donna on the street - while he was there, he took the time to study the humans in their natural habitat; he really did hope he found the time to stay here for a little while - where she was yelling at the passing vehicles. As he studied the vehicles, the Doctor's nose wrinkled in distaste when the smell of the exhaust he knew was caused by burning fossil fuels. Didn't the humans know or have any idea how finite that power source was?
"Taxi!" Donna yelled at a passing vehicle - the Doctor saw it was designed and constructed differently from the others in a more subtle way with a lighted hump that read 'TAXI.' But it drove past "Why's his light on?" Donna asked in exasperation.
The Doctor had no idea what this light meant. It was possibly to show that the taxi was in operation. He looked around the street and he spotted another taxi. "There's another one, I believe!"
"Taxi! Oi!" Donna yelled, making the Doctor glare indignantly at her for the loud noise. Another was driving past with its For Hire light on. "There's one!" The Doctor called.
"Oi!" Donna yelled, but the taxi, like the last one, didn't stop. "I don't understand, why bother to have a taxi service if they just refuse to stop?" The Doctor asked, completely baffled by the humans. "Why aren't they stopping?"
"They think I'm in fancy dress," Donna moaned. "Stay off the sauce, darling!" A passing driver hollered. "They think I'm drunk."
"You're fooling no one, mate!" Another driver yelled.
"They think I'm in drag!" Donna complained angrily.
"This is getting ridiculous," the Doctor complained himself. "We need to find some way of contacting your family. Isn't there anything here we can use?"
"I thought you'd been here before?" Donna replied, sending him an exasperated look but he knew instinctively that Donna wasn't exasperated entirely with him. "I'm gonna raise one helluva stink for this. Talk about the Christmas spirit."
The Doctor looked around interestedly, perking up. He had arrived on Earth during Christmas during one of his earliest visits to the planet, and he had enjoyed every moment of it. When he had fitted in the vortex manipulator he had found, he had arrived on Earth during those moments; his favourite Christmas experience was when he had spent a few months in the Victorian age - it was a risk considering the Time Lords could be tracking him down and they would certainly notice if his TARDIS was in one place too long.
"Is it Christmas?" He asked with a smile as he looked around, spotting only a few decorations and signs of Christmas, much to his disappointment; the Victorians seemed to be the masters of celebrating Christmas.
"Well, duh," Donna's tone had the Doctor staring at her again in confusion; what did 'duh' mean, anyway? "Maybe not on Mars, but here it's Christmas Eve. Phone box!" She suddenly said when she noticed a tall box the size and shape of the TARDIS. "We can reverse the charges!"
"Why are you getting married on Christmas Eve?" The Doctor asked her as they hurried along to the phone box.
"Can't bear it. I hate Christmas. Honeymoon, Morocco. Sunshine, lovely," Donna replied as she opened the door and picked up the telephone before she stopped and looked between it and the Doctor curiously. "What's the operator? I've not done this in years. What do you dial? 100?"
The Doctor tapped his lips thoughtfully before he perked up. "Wait a moment," he said, reaching into his pocket and he pulled out a small device that put Donna in mind to a small penlight before he jabbed it into the telephone, and it let out a harsh electronic buzzing sound and suddenly Donna got a dialling tone. "Just call them directly." But Donna didn't move. "What did you do?"
The Doctor held up the penlight. "It is called a sonic screwdriver; it's actually a lot more complex than a conventional tool. Now please call your family."
Donna nodded before something occurred to her. "D'you have any money on you, to pay for a taxi fare?"
The Doctor paused. "No, I don't."
"Well, you'd better go and get some money," Donna said practically, glancing out of the windows. "There's a cash machine there. Go on, chop-chop."
Annoyed by how she had dismissed him, the Doctor left the phone booth and he walked over to the money machine as fast as he could, his hand already clenched around his sonic screwdriver. He joined the queue at the machine, waiting patiently for his turn.
When the customer in front of him was finally finished, the Doctor leaned forward and examined the control pad before he took out the sonic screwdriver and leaned forward while making sure nobody could see what he was doing before he didn't know how they'd react. Once the money appeared - he really did need to learn about the currency of Earth at this time - he took it and left the money machine.
The notes of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen took the Doctor's attention to a group of people wearing Father Christmas suits playing the tune on brass instruments.
The Doctor stepped forward absently, forgetting about Donna Noble for a moment so he could enjoy the song. Then he noticed that beneath their jackets, the Father Christmas figures were moving artificially compared to the people around them. Surprised the Doctor took his sonic screwdriver and scanned the Father Christmases.
The screwdriver buzzed. The figures were robots of some kind. Drones. Donna's voice broke through the Doctor's thoughts, and he turned around and saw the human woman standing in front of a taxi with the door open waiting for her to step inside. "Thanks for nothing, spaceman! I'll see you in Court."
The Doctor spotted one of the Father Christmas figures sitting behind the wheel of the taxi car which then drove off. "Miss Noble! Donna!" He yelled, but it was hopeless when the taxi drove away. The music stopped and the Doctor turned in time to see that the Father Christmases were pointing their instruments at the Doctor like they were weapons.
The Doctor was momentarily unsure of what he should do. He then realised he still held the sonic screwdriver and he had his small computer pad in his pocket. The Doctor took out his pad and aimed it at the money machine. Within seconds he overrode the primitive system, and banknotes streamed out flying across the street. Lots of people rushed to grab the money, inadvertently blocking him from the sight of the figures in the Father Christmas costumes and using the distraction to get away.
X
In the taxi, Donna relaxed while internally she was conflicted by what she had just said to the Doctor. While she meant every word she'd said because she was sure the Doctor could have done a lot more to get her to the church on time, she wondered if there could have been a different way. "I promise you, mate, I'll give you the rest when we get there," she said to the drivers before looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Oh, I look a mess." She took off her veil and turned back to the driver. "Hurry up."
But Donna was so distracted by checking and rechecking her appearance, she didn't notice the driver was going a different way.
X
The Doctor ran as fast as he could, pausing occasionally to lean against the sides of buildings and ignoring the looks of worry from people who were nearby before he carried on. He wasn't far away from the TARDIS.
X
Donna had finished up with checking up on her makeup to check the route the driver was going. She was familiar enough with the roads of London that it didn't take her more than a second to realise something was wrong. "Hold on a minute. I said Chiswick. You've missed the turning. Excuse me, we should've turned off back there. We're going the wrong way!" She shouted at the taxi driver.
But the driver said nothing.
X
Cursing his failing body, the Doctor reached the TARDIS and without giving himself any time to recover from his run, he reached into his pocket for the key. Once he was inside the console room, the Doctor checked the instruments, adjusting them to find Donna's biodata. The humans' presence within the TARDIS made it easy for him to find her, and he switched on the scanner screen. He studied it closely, seeing that the taxi she was in was taking a route far away from Chiswick. But where the taxi was ultimately aimed for, he didn't know and didn't care; he had to find her and get her back in order to discover how she had come into the TARDIS.
As he studied the scanner, the Doctor saw that the driver was a robot, confirming his suspicions but there was nothing to tell him what the robot was after. It had likely been programmed by somebody else.
With that in mind, the Doctor set the TARDIS to scan local space for any sign of nearby alien ships. While that was going on, the Doctor tapped his lip with his finger, wondering what he was going to do. He knew he could dematerialise the Ship and materialise around Donna, but he didn't want to risk it; the TARDIS was not in the best of conditions, and he didn't know if the vortex manipulator would be capable of handling the complicated manoeuvre. But he didn't want to risk it.
Another choice was to simply engage the main drive and fly the TARDIS like a conventional airship or aeroplane to the location where the taxi was, but he decided against that very quickly. While he could do it, the fact was the TARDIS wasn't entirely designed to travel like that, especially with the chameleon circuit faulty as it was.
But there was another reason.
He was a renegade Time Lord, but he was determined to avoid being noticed by anyone since it would give the Time Lords the means to track him down from Gallifrey.
While he was curious about Donna Noble and the mystery that surrounded her, the Doctor knew better than to risk his freedom.
X
Donna was seriously panicking by now. She had been in the cab for half an hour already, she was late for the wedding and she was being sped away by the silent taxi driver to god knows where. "What the hell are you doing?" Donna shouted at the driver, deciding to try again to grab his attention although she wondered about the driver's Santa getting up; she could appreciate some people had a thing for Christmas but wasn't that taking things a bit too far? "I'm late for the wedding. My own wedding. Do you get that? Turn around! Turn this cab around right now! Are you deaf or what?" Reaching forward and grasping the fabric of the Santa suit, Donna tugged at the Santa's hood and the mask fell off to reveal that the driver had the golden head of a robot with large black bug-like eyes. Donna recoiled. She wanted to deny what she was seeing, but she knew after seeing a box that was bigger inside than outside that robots were possible. "Oh, my God," she whispered.
First aliens, then ships bigger on the inside. And now robots.
What the hell was happening?
She was like a magnet for the weird? She turned to the window to open it up to escape. But it was stuck; a part of Donna was relieved by that, with the speed they were travelling at, she would be lucky not to break her neck, and her wedding dress was very bulky and she knew even if she clambered out there was no way of predicting what could happen.
She risked a glance at the robot driver. It hadn't moved once. Donna didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She tried banging on her windows trying desperately to get the attention of passing drivers. "Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! Get me out! Help me! Help me! I'm being driven by a robot!"
Suddenly Donna felt weird before out of the corner of her eyes the whole of the taxi cab seemed to warp and twist like she was going through a revolving door. Her eyes became hazed as two images, the inside of the taxi cab speeding off to God knew where on the motorway and the inside of the Doctor's ship. The taxi cab vanished, leaving only the TARDIS.
X
In the TARDIS a few minutes earlier the Doctor looked down at his work with the vortex manipulator with a smug smile. He had been reconfiguring the teleportation actuator to work with the TARDIS to create a rather basic time scoop. When he finished, the Doctor only had the most briefest moments of hesitation. He didn't know if this would work the way he wanted, but the vortex manipulator was more basic than the TARDIS, and since he was patching the time-travel wristband into the TARDIS, it wasn't like he was putting the time machine at risk.
Granted he had needed to shut down some of the TARDIS's defence mechanism but he would bring them back up when Donna was safe back inside the ship.
The Doctor pressed the actuator sequence into the vortex manipulator and the ghostly sight of Donna Noble slowly appeared in the console room before she staggered to her feet.
"What did you do?" Donna demanded after he'd finished with the defensive systems.
"I rigged this device to work with my ship to teleport you out of that car," the Doctor said briefly while he checked the vortex manipulator, mentally sighing with worry as he saw that the device, which had already been on its last legs, was on the point of being burnt out. The Doctor studied it for a moment, guessing it would only have another few jumps left before it burnt out completely. He had stolen the manipulator from a Time Agent who had been trying to change history and he had patched it into the TARDIS to give him more accurate jumps for the first time ever. "What happened? The TARDIS picked up the robot."
"Yeah," Donna awkwardly walked over to him, the Doctor even swearing he could see gratitude in her features. "I pulled off the hood and saw it was a flaming robot. Where did it come from?' Donna asked while the Doctor studied the console again, paying only the smallest amount of attention to her.
"Mm? Oh, you mean they. It wasn't alone, I saw others in the same street where you departed in that taxi, and I must say, my dear that it was foolish for you to go off like that," the Doctor said, adding the last part with a glare. "I told you I was going to help you."
Donna was about to argue when she realised something, and she checked her watch. She frowned.
"What is it?" The Doctor asked, seeing her expression.
"Doesn't matter. The wedding," she added when the Doctor sent her a questioning look.
For a moment, the Doctor wondered what she meant by that, but he stopped when he saw how depressed Donna was. "I am sorry, my dear, did we miss it?" Donna nodded sadly, looking like she was about to break down into tears.
"Yeah."
"Could you book another date?"
Donna smiled at the thought, "Course we can."
The Doctor couldn't help but smile back. Just because he was very guarded about his travels and safety especially after what happened on Gallifrey, it didn't mean that he couldn't be kind. "I am sorry."
"It's not your fault."
"Really? Oh? That's an interesting change, still, I'm glad," the Doctor said.
Donna looked around the TARDIS console room wistfully. "Wish you had a time machine, then we could go back and get it right."
The Doctor stiffened. As far as he was concerned, he was going to help Donna because it was obvious she was needed for something otherwise those robot drones wouldn't have tried to kidnap her in the first place. That was bad enough. But if she learnt there was a time machine, no, two time machines, then the risks would be incalculable. He had left Gallifrey under a cloud, the last thing he needed was to make it worse. "Yes, perhaps my dear, perhaps," the Doctor smiled sympathetically while he looked around pretending that he too wished the TARDIS was capable of time travel. "But even if I did, I couldn't go back on someone's personal timeline."
Nor would he want to.
That kind of act, any kind of time meddling could alert Temporal Observations back on Gallifrey where he was. Donna sat down in one of the antique chairs and looked down at her clasped hands, the very air of depression. The Doctor studied her for a moment, and he slipped off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. It wasn't something he had done before to anyone, barring Susan, but…he wasn't sure, but he felt a paternal protectiveness towards Donna. And he wanted to protect her.
And it worried him that he wasn't sure how or why or even when it had come about. "God, you're skinny," Donna scowled. "This wouldn't fit a rat."
The Doctor glared back at her indignantly. "I'll remember that," he said before he remembered something else, and he pulled out a small ring. "Oh, and you'd better put this on."
"Oh, do you have to rub it in?" Donna spat when she saw the gold ring in his hands.
The Doctor was confused by her annoyance. "What is it?'
"That looks like a wedding ring!"
The Doctor flinched as he realised what he had inadvertently done. "Oh dear, well I didn't mean to offend you, Donna. But this ring is a very special one. Those creatures can trace you. This is a bio-damper. The ring should protect you." Donna sighed, nodding as she conceded the Doctor's point. "So, come on then. Robot Santas, what are they for?"
"I've never met them before, but I would say they're nothing more than basic drones. The Father Christmas suit was just a disguise. They're trying to blend in. But the most important question is what do camouflaged robot mercenaries want with you? And I would still like to know how you got inside the TARDIS? What do you do, Donna?" The Doctor asked suddenly as he hit upon an inspiration.
"I'm a secretary," Donna asked, surprised by the question before the penny dropped. "You think I might have picked something up at work? But how? I work for H.C Clements. It's where I met Lance. I was temping."
"Temping? I don't understand."
Donna sighed. She had realised by now the Doctor, despite looking human, didn't really have much of a clue when it came to Earth things. "I work temporarily at places. H.C Clements is the latest in a long line of places where I've worked."
"I see. It sounds interesting."
Donna shrugged. "It is at times. I've worked in dozens of places, improved my CV by miles."
The Doctor nodded, deciding to relegate this concept to the back of his mind for now. "What happened when you met Lance. I mean, it was all a bit posh really. I'd spent the last two years at a double glazing firm. Well, I thought I'm never going to fit in here. And then he made me a coffee. I mean, that just doesn't happen. Nobody gets the secretaries a coffee. And Lance, he's the head of HR! He don't need to bother with me. But he was nice, he was funny. And it turns out he thought everyone else was really snotty too. So that's how it started, me and him. One cup of coffee. That was it."
"When did you decide to get married?"
"Six months ago."
The Doctor frowned, "Forgive me, but isn't that a little quick to decide to get married?"
Donna glared back at him, "Well, he insisted. And he nagged, and he nagged me. And he just wore me down. And then finally, I just gave in."
"What does HC Clements do?" The Doctor asked, changing the subject. There was nothing too extraordinary about Donna and this Lance fellow getting married, but while he was fascinated by human courting customs, this was not the time.
Donna blinked at the change of subject. "Oh, security systems. You know, entry codes, ID cards, that sort of thing. If you ask me, it's a posh name for locksmiths."
"Keys," the Doctor whispered, tapping his lip thoughtfully. There was something there, and the Doctor was certain that whatever had happened to Donna to make her appear in the TARDIS and why those drones were after her, the answer was in this HC Clements. Donna became tired of waiting for the Doctor to explain what was suddenly so interesting before she spoke again, "Anyway, enough of my CV. Come on, it's time to face the consequences. Oh, this is going to be so shaming. You can do the explaining, Martian boy." The Doctor sighed in exasperation, "I'm not from Mars." Donna ignored him. "Oh, I had this great big reception all planned. Everyone's going to be heartbroken."
X
Author's Note - According to some accounts, the First Doctor did occasionally use a sonic screwdriver, but in this alternate universe the First Doctor here uses the same one used by the Second Doctor like a penlight and was only used for basic things. I'm not going to let this First Doctor use the sonic screwdriver so frequently as the modern Doctors. In the original series, this incarnation preferred using his intellect rather than gadgets that buzz every second.
