I don't own Doctor Who.
One of the things I despised about Power of the Doctor was how only a few former companions came back, and how Yaz was handled. I hope Mandip Gill does come back later on and we see more of her interacting with other Doctors.
X
How many Doctor's are there?
By TimeTraveller-1900.
Graham smiled as she stood in front of the group he'd set up with help from Kate and Dan and the others. "I'm Graham. And apparently, I've got to be the first one to talk," everyone chuckled, "so... Right. I have this problem. See, I met this person, and I got whooshed away across all space and time. I mean, I had the most amazing adventures, really. I mean, you wait till you hear, 'cause I'm going to tell you 'em all. But... But I came back, and I actually can't tell anyone, because they'd have me put away. And that's... That started me thinking, though. I can't be the only one. I can't. And look! I'm not."
In a circle of chairs in the hired room, Graham looked around the array of faces - Ace, Yaz (he was worried about his old friend), Martha and Mickey Smith, Tegan, a woman called Grace Holloway from America, a woman called Liv Chenka, Jo, Dan, Ian and his wife Barbara, Kate, a woman called Anji Kapoor, and a redhead called Mel.
"I reckon there are more people out there too. So maybe this is where we share stories about the Doc," Graham finished.
"I will also say, I may want to recruit you for some work," Kate remarked, making everyone chuckle.
Jo smiled. "I hope you do, Kate; I would love to get back into the thick of things again; my knowledge of UNIT operations might be out of date, but I still know how to deal with Ogrons and Sea Devils."
Kate smiled back at one of her father's oldest and dearest colleagues, but before she could open her mouth, Yaz looked up at the older, glamorous woman. "Sea Devils? You've met the Sea Devils?"
Jo turned and smiled uncertainly at the younger woman. "Yes, you have as well, I take it?"
"Yeah," Yaz nodded, pointing at Dan, "we both have."
"And me; I was with the Doctor in 2084, when the Silurians and the Sea Devils tried to set off a nuclear war from an undersea base. The Doctor tried to make peace between us and the Silurians and Sea Devils, but they refused to listen. In the end, he had to kill them with a gas which poisoned them," Tegan piped up.
"I've met the Silurians, too," Ace piped up with Mel. "It was only a year after your encounter with them - from Earth's terms - and he gave them a signed agreement which would give them Earth when solar flares cook the planet."
"What?" Martha said.
"Why would the Doctor do that?" Grace asked.
"No, it makes sense. If solar flares are going to hit the planet in centuries to come, you'll have the technology to go out into space. I'm a med-tech from the future, so I know Earth goes out, and builds a presence in space. When a world is hit by solar flares, you have two options. The easiest is to simply evacuate the planet. That would be the perfect time for these Silurians to come back," Liv said. "And it sounds like the Doctor; by the time they came up with that agreement, they must have worked out humans and Silurians could never share the planet."
"UNIT's policy with the Silurians and Sea Devils is to find their shelters and keep them under observation. They're to be kept locked up at all times. They're too dangerous to be allowed to fight us," Kate said.
"They are dangerous. I met them when the Doctor was exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, for breaking some of their laws. When I first met the Sea Devils, they were being helped by the Master to wipe us out so then he could get out of prison," Jo spat in contempt.
"The Master? You've met him?" Martha demanded.
"Frequently," Jo nodded. "I first met him when I joined UNIT. After that, he frequently attacked Earth, and allied himself with dozens of aliens just to slaughter us all."
"He hypnotised us into betraying the Doctor, so he could steal the TARDIS because his own had fallen apart and stranded him on a world populated by humans and another alien race he'd manipulated into fighting so they developed nuclear power so he could repair his ship," Barbara gestured to herself and Ian.
"He murdered my aunt, shrunk her down to the size of a doll!" Tegan said angrily. "I don't understand why the Doctor lets him off; I mean, I know they used to be friends, but surely she realises it's pointless."
"She?" Anji said while other former companions were just as surprised, especially Ian and Barbara.
"The Doctor's regenerated into a woman," Ace nodded before she saw several of the faces drawn in surprise and shock.
"She?"
"A woman?" Ian and Barbara said.
"Yes," Yaz replied slowly.
Anji shook her head. "Now I've heard everything where the Doctor is concerned," she said before she frowned, "Or have I?"
"I met the Master when he tried to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations," Grace said to shake off the clearly bizarre mental image of the Doctor being a different gender.
"He tried to steal the Doctor's regenerations?" Yaz shook her head in disgust at what the evil Time Lord had done. "Doesn't he come up with anything new? I mean, he did that only recently and he forced the Doctor to regenerate and took her body. He wanted to destroy the Doctor's reputation."
"I'm still not sure how we stopped that," Ace shook her head.
"The Doctor put AI implants into you, me, and Tegan which would help her come up with a plan to deal with it," Yaz shook her head in frustration as she tried to wonder how the Doctor had known when to do it, "maybe she was sent a message from the future, and had enough forewarning to get prepared?"
Ace shrugged, "I remember when I was travelling with the Professor; he always left notes around to give him a leg up, but he stopped when another Time Lord named the Monk got involved and messed everything up."
"The Monk? I know him," Liv said, "him and the Master. He was in New York manipulating the building of new developments in the city. The Doctor called him a time meddler, but he was thrown back in time because of the Weeping Angels."
"Weeping Angels?" Dan, Yaz, and Martha jumped.
"Statues with wings, always hiding their faces, but can move really fast?" Martha said in a rush.
"Yeah. You've met them?" Liv asked rather redundantly.
"Yeah. They threw the Doctor and me back in time to the 1960s, and let me tell you, the Doctor is absolutely useless in a flat," Martha said.
"Useless in a flat? What did he do?" Yaz asked with a chuckle.
"Oh, he didn't have a clue about the light switches, and he nearly blew up the entire wiring," Martha actually ticked off the points on her fingers. "He made me work in a shop because he didn't have clue. Oh, and he blew up the oven - don't ask, it was hell. And he nearly flooded the bath."
"Oh god!" Anji chuckled before she sobered. "Hold on, I forgot; does the Doctor remember who he or she is now?"
"What do you mean?" Mel asked in confusion.
"When I met the Doctor, he had apparently been on Earth for a century; from what I gathered from our other friend, Fritz who didn't elaborate, something traumatic happened to the Doctor's homeworld," Anji shook her head in frustration at the memory. "So the Doctor remembers?"
Martha and Mickey exchanged looks with Yaz, Dan, Graham and Liv before turning to Anji. "The Doctor remembers alright; he never told us about memory loss," Martha replied at last.
"That sounds like the Doctor, alright," Graham sighed. "Why doesn't she say anything?"
None of the others could reply to that. All of them had encountered the Doctor's inability to tell them anything at one point or another, and it was still irritating.
Dan held up his hand to move things along since there was still plenty of time to talk and share stories "Dan. I've, er... I've only been back a month, and I've got to say, I'm glad I'm not on the verge of being exterminated anymore. But I do miss her."
Everyone else nodded. All of them had left the Doctor either on peaceful terms, simply because of the events around them, or through disagreements.
"How many Doctors are there now?" Mel asked.
"I think we're going to be here quite some time," Jo shook her head.
"Oh, I think I can do better than that," Kate reached behind her back and pulled out the backpack she had brought with her. "I expected someone to ask that question and so I brought these."
These turned out to be a collection of tablets. Kate passed them along until everyone had one. "Just turn them on. I made sure they would be easy to use," Kate explained.
Yaz nodded and she turned her tablet on. Instantly she came to an icon which read 'The Known Doctors.'
Curious, she tapped it and found herself looking at a collage of pictures with different men on it. There was an old man with swept-back white hair, wearing Victorian-style clothes, with the caption reading First Doctor.
The Second Doctor was a smallish man with the air of a comedian with his black hair cut in a Beatles style, wearing an oversized jacket that made him resemble a clown.
In complete contrast, there was a tall man wearing old-fashioned clothes that looked elegant and gave him a really smart air. It was like the Third Doctor was what inspired the creators of Austin Powers, except the Third Doctor, made the velvet jacket and frilled shirt look smart and elegant, rather than stupid.
The Fourth Doctor was a tall man with a head full of curls with a toothy grin, but what surprised Yaz the most was just how long the scarf was (she had seen scarves like that before, in the wardrobe of the TARDIS and what the Master had worn when he had briefly taken the Doctor's body; knowing that he had worn the scarf and the jump to mock the Doctor only made Yaz hate the Master even more).
The Fifth Doctor was a physically slight man with a rather mild-mannered attitude, wearing a - was that a stick of celery pinned onto the lapel of his beige frock coat on top of his cricket jumper? But the Fifth Doctor's appearance was acceptable enough since the Sixth Doctor was a large man in terms of both height and weight, with blond curls while he wore a patchwork coat of garish colours that Yaz knew her sister would vomit over and condemn as a fashion nightmare.
It seemed that the choice had come out of something wrong with the Doctor's mind because of the regeneration because the next Doctor - the Seventh Doctor - was a small man with a face full of wisdom that comforted Yaz greatly as it reminded her of the wisdom of her grandparents. He wore a straw hat and was dressed in the same question mark jumper the Master had worn.
The Eighth Doctor was a vast contrast to some of his predecessors in terms of how he was much younger physically than the other Doctors and how he appeared to be a Byron-esque character wearing a velvet jacket, a grey cravat, and a grey waistcoat. But it seemed the Eighth Doctor had a change of style. There was a photograph of him wearing a blue leather jacket and a t-shirt with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder, while his hair was cut shorter.
The next Doctor was an old man who had the tired and weary air of somebody who had the weight of the world on his shoulders while he could barely just hold, with a beard he'd barely had time to see to, and hair that was receding on top. Yaz frowned as she studied this Doctor, there was something about him she could not work out.
The next Doctor was far from the strangely dressed Doctors she had seen. This Doctor even made her own seem normal with his battered leather jacket and v-necked jumper and black trousers, but he was certainly unique like the others with his shorter hair and large ears and a massive aquilline nose.
Immediately following this Doctor was a tall man who, next to the Eighth Doctor, was the best looking of the lot, with spiky brown hair and brown eyes and was dressed in a pinstripe suit with a beige overcoat.
Some of the Doctors had been young - the Eighth and the Fifth had both been fairly youthful in appearance, but this latest Doctor took the cake. He was a tall man with a babyish quality to his face, with a large prominent chin green eyes and floppy brown hair. He dressed a bit like a geography professor, of all things, wearing a tweed jacket and a bowtie.
The Doctor following this version was a tall white-haired man with a Kindly but stern face wearing a very familiar coat that Yaz and Graham would definitely remember.
"Oh yeah, I remember. Sorry, half an hour ago I was a white-haired Scotsman."
Yaz's breath caught in her throat as she remembered the Doctor - her Doctor, the crazy woman who had turned her entire life upside down and continued to do so to this day, the one who'd been so cheerful and yet carried so many burdens and secrets on her shoulders it was a surprise to Yaz she had still been able to stand. After hearing from some of the others what the Doctor had gone through - being exiled to Earth twice must have truly caused her a lot of grief - Yaz would never have blamed the Doctor.
Finally, and with shaking fingers, Yaz swiped the screen of the tablet and her heart caught when she saw the bright, cheerful, sunshiny smile of the Doctor she, Ryan, Dan, and Graham had seen on their travels. How many times had she wanted to grab the Doctor, and snog her senseless?
"You okay?" Yaz heard a voice next to her ask, and she almost jumped out of her skin before she realised it was Tegan who had spoken the question.
"Is she okay?" Ace asked.
Yaz looked down at the array of faces on the tablet in front of her, seeing the many faces of the Doctor, all of them, and she smiled. But it was a bittersweet smile because she was unsure if she would ever see the Doctor again. "Of course she's okay. She's the Doctor," Yaz replied.
