Does Travel Broaden the Mind?
You have to imagine how it is. Or do I mean, was? Hmmm!
For some, the problem is getting your brain around what is going on. Reality, or your previous conception of it, seemed to have flown out of the window!
We all live our mundane lives, as we do, when out of the blue, literally, something appears that changes things for all time. Time? Now there's a concept we all have very little understanding of the possibilities of.
It was an ordinary sort of day. Typical summer, started off grey, then the sun broke through, eventually hanging up there, in an all blue sky, virtually all on it's ownsome. I was on holiday. Well, I'd taken a break from work and not having really thought about it beforehand, hadn't made any arrangements to go anywhere. Pathetic really, but that's the way of things. With me anyway!
I'd just been round the corner to get a morning paper. I've already mentioned mundane? I was just about to cross the road to the front gate of where I lived, when there was a sort of groaning/grinding noise. I couldn't make out where, exactly, it was coming from. Then I thought I was hallucinating or there might be something the matter with my eyes, for where I had been looking across at the house I had lived in all my life, as the noise had started, everything began to shimmer. Like a mirage in a sixties TV serial. All that was lacking were the wiggly lines!
It's all right me remembering this now, as if time had been passing slowly (time, there it is again) but this happened in seconds, or less even! And there in front of me, slap bang in the middle of the road, with a sort of echoing clunk, .. I can hardly believe I'm saying this .. was an old battered looking Police Box?!!!
As I started to walk round it, the door opened and this mop of curly hair appeared. The face below it, gazing away from me at first, but swiftly turning towards me.
"Hello! ... I'm the Doctor!"
"You can't leave that there, it's in the middle of the road! Someone will drive into it! It's dangerous!"
"Really?! I'm terribly sorry .."
"Yeah, that's all very well, but what are you gonna do about it ... wha-wha- what do you mean, you're the Doctor?"
"Well, that's what everyone calls me. Of course I've been called a few other things over the centuries."
"Yeah, never mind that, just move it .. Shall I give you a hand? ... ... Centuries?" I said, as I pushed him back inside and in a moment of madness, followed him in. I'm a small bloke and he was a huge ... well much taller than me ... but curiosity had seemed to have taken me over!
I still can't believe I did that. In a way I wish I hadn't. What am I saying, course I don't wish that, otherwise I wouldn't have .... well just bear with me.
Anyway there I was ... rooted to the spot and starting to jabber. "It ... It .. errrrrr ...it's . errrrrrrrr .. It's ... bigger on the inside ."
"Ye-es, .... than it is on the outside! Yes, they all say that. By Rassilon, how I'm sick to death of that!"
"It's huge," I said gabbling, "It's ...well .. huge!"
"Yes, you've said that. Shall we move, just in case you're right and we cause an accident." As he was saying this, he went over to this strange desk, in the centre of wherever we were. I thought it was circular, but as I went up to it, I realised, it was, in fact, hexagonal.
This Doctor chappie was fiddling about with some switches and buttons and knobs and things, as he was darting around it, finally pulling down a lever. Immediately, there was the sound of a gentle thud behind me, where huge (so ... I like the word huge) doors closed, through which we must have entered. Then, there was a grinding noise and then a whooshing sort of noise, which made me wheel round towards the desk thing, in the centre which was a sort of clear column with lights inside, that started to rise and fall.
"What the f....?"
"Oh dear!" I heard him utter.
I looked over to him, where he was at it again. Flipping and twiddling, occasionally banging with his fist on part of the desk, as he continued to mumble to himself. All the time, the column continued to rise and fall with its strange grinding sound.
I was still trying to take in the size of the place, little realising that something else was puzzling me. Where was the light coming from? There were no lights, as such. No bulbs, no neon strips, no diffusers of any kind. It was just ... bright .
"I'm most dreadfully sorry," he started to say to me, "but I think we're on the way to Kastor Minor in the galaxy of Prado Urmor. The co-ordinates are so similar to those of where we were, and I've adjusted the wrong part."
"Yeah, right! Now you've moved it, .... What do you mean, you've moved it? Lets just get back outside. This place is doing my head in."
"No, you don't understand. .... I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced, I'm the Doctor"
"Yeah and I'm the Lawyer!"
"Are you really? You don't look like a lawyer, but of course lawyers look like all sorts of people. And they probably all look different on their day off. Is it your day off?"
"Yes it is, how did yo ... Nah! Nah, wait a minute, I'm not a lawyer, just pulling your leg, about this 'arm the Doctor crap'"
"Yes, but that's what I am. So what do I call you?"
"Well, I don't see as it matters, but as you've asked, it's Dino and I don't want any of that Flintstones doodah."
"Flintstones? What are Flintstones .. well I know what flint stones are, but what's that got to do with your name?"
"Oh, forget it! Come on let's get out of here. Open those doors."
"Ah! ... that's what I wanted to tell you."
"C'mon, open these doors, this place is beginning to get up my nose."
"Is it? We-ell, there are times when it does that to me too, but ..... Look, I'm sorry young man, but shortly, we are about to land on Kastor Minor. Not much of a planet in Earth terms, but not unpleasant. I have this terrible habit of ending up somewhere I hadn't intended. I only intended moving a few feet and instead we have travelled ... oooh, must be several light years. "
"Listen mate, this is all very clever an' all that, but just open the effing doors and I won't bother you any more."
With that he just flapped his arms with exasperation at my narrow mindedness (I didn't know it at the time), leant over the desk with his head bowed, where he stayed momentarily, until there was that grinding, groaning noise I'd heard before. The column, in the middle of the desk thingy, sort of slowed, stopped in mid rise and then gently sank to rest. Then all was quiet apart from a gentle background hum that I hadn't noticed before.
The so-called doctor's head snapped up from his bowed, despondent position. "We're there! We've arrived!" he said turning and flashing an enormous expanse of teeth. "Let's see what it's like here." Flicking some switches, a panel opposite, across from the desk, slowly slide to one side revealing a huge (must have a thing about that word!) screen upon which a weird scene appeared.
"Don't think much of that channel and the colour's a bit wonky. Look at that sky! It's pink! And what's all that about?"
There on the screen, was, what at first glance, appeared to be a town square, but the buildings were unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was all of a mixture, of domed and spiky-towered ... well ... towers. How would I describe them? Nothing seemed to be square or have any parallel sides. There was something else odd too. No windows! There was nothing that could be called a window, an orifice or opening to look out from, from within these buildings. And no doors either!
The square, although it certainly wasn't square, was all angles. Gentle, non acute angles, but from where I was viewing it, I couldn't tell what shape it was forming. It was paved, almost like a large mosaic, in variously and amazingly coloured slabs, again, non of which had parallel sides.
I was taking all this in, but what was really smacking my gob, were the people that were in this square. People, I'm sure that's what they were .. but they were .... blue! Well, not blue ... Blue-ish! Yes, daft I know. All sorts of blue-ish shades. I'd thought I was seeing them in a sort of reverse negative and what should have been a normal flesh colour, was the negative colour of blue. Must admit I don't know what the reverse colour of pinky flesh is, so this might all be a load of rubbish! It was hard to take in. They were clothed of course, unusual clothes yeah, but clothed.
That's why I had thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, about their colour. There was also the fact that they were all floating about a foot or so above the ground. They didn't seem to have any visible legs and darted about like goldfish in a bowl!!! I don't remember having anything alcoholic!!! Oh and did I mention that the sky was pink!! Bloody hell!
"Come on, what's with this video? Just open the doors and I won't trouble you any more!"
"Video? What video? ... Oh! I see! No! .. this isn't a video. This is what is outside! These are the people of ... Yes, well I can't be sure, but it should be Kastor Minor." As he banged one of the dials on the desk. "Oh! I wasn't expecting that! Hmmmm!" And he banged it again. "Aha! Just what I thought!"
"Yeah?" I said with some exasperation. Expecting a bit more clarification. Instead he casually moved around the desk twiddling and dabbling and mumbling to himself, before finally ....
"Well, it looks okay. The air isn't unlike that of Earth, but slightly acidic. The atmospheric pressure is a somewhat heavier, but it shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't have to exert ourselves. Let's have a look outside."
"You're winding me up," I said as I strode towards where the huge, (yes I said it again) doors were swinging open. "Oh my God, what's that smell?" Stepping outside to where I was expecting to find the front door of my house, I stopped in my tracks.
"Hell's teeth! Look at that!" I turned to find the so called Doctor just locking the door of the police box. I must be dreaming! I shook my head but it was all the same as I looked around. I hadn't realise just how huge, there it is again, the square or area or whatever it was, that we were in, was. He was standing beside me now. Adjusting a wide brimmed hat on the shock of curly hair. He too looked around at our surroundings.
"Quite marvellous, don't you think? I wonder if the natives are friendly?"
In the moments we had been standing there, we had been attracting some attention and to tell the truth, it was only then, realising I wasn't outside my front door, that not only did I not know where I was, but that there were these strange people .. blue people, with no legs, that floated in the air and darted about like goldfish and that they were beginning to congregate around us, getting closer and more numerous by the second. Oh hell! I hope I don't wet myself!!
Needless to say, everything was all fine. Well there was a bit of a sticky moment, when one of these blue-ish people tried taking my morning paper from me, that I still seemed to be clutching. But it all got sorted out and we zapped to some other planet, well several really, over the next few months. Some were a bit hairy. I had the pleasure of meeting some Daleks, Ogrons, Movellans and Draconians, to mention a few, but each time the Doctor managed to get us out of trouble we had managed to find ourselves in.
Despite it all being a real whiz, providing I didn't try to think too deeply about it all, I had been worried that people back on 'Earth', I can't believe I said that, would wonder where I was. That I had become another statistic, of one of those people that disappear, never to be seen again. Abducted by aliens. Nah, you never get that in the UK, you only ever read that happening in America.
Well, the Doctor managed to bring me back to almost the time before we left. I said we have no real concept of what time means. So no one ever knew I'd gone anywhere. I couldn't tell anyone. They'd think I'd really gone off my trolly. Now what did I do with that paper?
You have to imagine how it is. Or do I mean, was? Hmmm!
For some, the problem is getting your brain around what is going on. Reality, or your previous conception of it, seemed to have flown out of the window!
We all live our mundane lives, as we do, when out of the blue, literally, something appears that changes things for all time. Time? Now there's a concept we all have very little understanding of the possibilities of.
It was an ordinary sort of day. Typical summer, started off grey, then the sun broke through, eventually hanging up there, in an all blue sky, virtually all on it's ownsome. I was on holiday. Well, I'd taken a break from work and not having really thought about it beforehand, hadn't made any arrangements to go anywhere. Pathetic really, but that's the way of things. With me anyway!
I'd just been round the corner to get a morning paper. I've already mentioned mundane? I was just about to cross the road to the front gate of where I lived, when there was a sort of groaning/grinding noise. I couldn't make out where, exactly, it was coming from. Then I thought I was hallucinating or there might be something the matter with my eyes, for where I had been looking across at the house I had lived in all my life, as the noise had started, everything began to shimmer. Like a mirage in a sixties TV serial. All that was lacking were the wiggly lines!
It's all right me remembering this now, as if time had been passing slowly (time, there it is again) but this happened in seconds, or less even! And there in front of me, slap bang in the middle of the road, with a sort of echoing clunk, .. I can hardly believe I'm saying this .. was an old battered looking Police Box?!!!
As I started to walk round it, the door opened and this mop of curly hair appeared. The face below it, gazing away from me at first, but swiftly turning towards me.
"Hello! ... I'm the Doctor!"
"You can't leave that there, it's in the middle of the road! Someone will drive into it! It's dangerous!"
"Really?! I'm terribly sorry .."
"Yeah, that's all very well, but what are you gonna do about it ... wha-wha- what do you mean, you're the Doctor?"
"Well, that's what everyone calls me. Of course I've been called a few other things over the centuries."
"Yeah, never mind that, just move it .. Shall I give you a hand? ... ... Centuries?" I said, as I pushed him back inside and in a moment of madness, followed him in. I'm a small bloke and he was a huge ... well much taller than me ... but curiosity had seemed to have taken me over!
I still can't believe I did that. In a way I wish I hadn't. What am I saying, course I don't wish that, otherwise I wouldn't have .... well just bear with me.
Anyway there I was ... rooted to the spot and starting to jabber. "It ... It .. errrrrr ...it's . errrrrrrrr .. It's ... bigger on the inside ."
"Ye-es, .... than it is on the outside! Yes, they all say that. By Rassilon, how I'm sick to death of that!"
"It's huge," I said gabbling, "It's ...well .. huge!"
"Yes, you've said that. Shall we move, just in case you're right and we cause an accident." As he was saying this, he went over to this strange desk, in the centre of wherever we were. I thought it was circular, but as I went up to it, I realised, it was, in fact, hexagonal.
This Doctor chappie was fiddling about with some switches and buttons and knobs and things, as he was darting around it, finally pulling down a lever. Immediately, there was the sound of a gentle thud behind me, where huge (so ... I like the word huge) doors closed, through which we must have entered. Then, there was a grinding noise and then a whooshing sort of noise, which made me wheel round towards the desk thing, in the centre which was a sort of clear column with lights inside, that started to rise and fall.
"What the f....?"
"Oh dear!" I heard him utter.
I looked over to him, where he was at it again. Flipping and twiddling, occasionally banging with his fist on part of the desk, as he continued to mumble to himself. All the time, the column continued to rise and fall with its strange grinding sound.
I was still trying to take in the size of the place, little realising that something else was puzzling me. Where was the light coming from? There were no lights, as such. No bulbs, no neon strips, no diffusers of any kind. It was just ... bright .
"I'm most dreadfully sorry," he started to say to me, "but I think we're on the way to Kastor Minor in the galaxy of Prado Urmor. The co-ordinates are so similar to those of where we were, and I've adjusted the wrong part."
"Yeah, right! Now you've moved it, .... What do you mean, you've moved it? Lets just get back outside. This place is doing my head in."
"No, you don't understand. .... I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced, I'm the Doctor"
"Yeah and I'm the Lawyer!"
"Are you really? You don't look like a lawyer, but of course lawyers look like all sorts of people. And they probably all look different on their day off. Is it your day off?"
"Yes it is, how did yo ... Nah! Nah, wait a minute, I'm not a lawyer, just pulling your leg, about this 'arm the Doctor crap'"
"Yes, but that's what I am. So what do I call you?"
"Well, I don't see as it matters, but as you've asked, it's Dino and I don't want any of that Flintstones doodah."
"Flintstones? What are Flintstones .. well I know what flint stones are, but what's that got to do with your name?"
"Oh, forget it! Come on let's get out of here. Open those doors."
"Ah! ... that's what I wanted to tell you."
"C'mon, open these doors, this place is beginning to get up my nose."
"Is it? We-ell, there are times when it does that to me too, but ..... Look, I'm sorry young man, but shortly, we are about to land on Kastor Minor. Not much of a planet in Earth terms, but not unpleasant. I have this terrible habit of ending up somewhere I hadn't intended. I only intended moving a few feet and instead we have travelled ... oooh, must be several light years. "
"Listen mate, this is all very clever an' all that, but just open the effing doors and I won't bother you any more."
With that he just flapped his arms with exasperation at my narrow mindedness (I didn't know it at the time), leant over the desk with his head bowed, where he stayed momentarily, until there was that grinding, groaning noise I'd heard before. The column, in the middle of the desk thingy, sort of slowed, stopped in mid rise and then gently sank to rest. Then all was quiet apart from a gentle background hum that I hadn't noticed before.
The so-called doctor's head snapped up from his bowed, despondent position. "We're there! We've arrived!" he said turning and flashing an enormous expanse of teeth. "Let's see what it's like here." Flicking some switches, a panel opposite, across from the desk, slowly slide to one side revealing a huge (must have a thing about that word!) screen upon which a weird scene appeared.
"Don't think much of that channel and the colour's a bit wonky. Look at that sky! It's pink! And what's all that about?"
There on the screen, was, what at first glance, appeared to be a town square, but the buildings were unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was all of a mixture, of domed and spiky-towered ... well ... towers. How would I describe them? Nothing seemed to be square or have any parallel sides. There was something else odd too. No windows! There was nothing that could be called a window, an orifice or opening to look out from, from within these buildings. And no doors either!
The square, although it certainly wasn't square, was all angles. Gentle, non acute angles, but from where I was viewing it, I couldn't tell what shape it was forming. It was paved, almost like a large mosaic, in variously and amazingly coloured slabs, again, non of which had parallel sides.
I was taking all this in, but what was really smacking my gob, were the people that were in this square. People, I'm sure that's what they were .. but they were .... blue! Well, not blue ... Blue-ish! Yes, daft I know. All sorts of blue-ish shades. I'd thought I was seeing them in a sort of reverse negative and what should have been a normal flesh colour, was the negative colour of blue. Must admit I don't know what the reverse colour of pinky flesh is, so this might all be a load of rubbish! It was hard to take in. They were clothed of course, unusual clothes yeah, but clothed.
That's why I had thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, about their colour. There was also the fact that they were all floating about a foot or so above the ground. They didn't seem to have any visible legs and darted about like goldfish in a bowl!!! I don't remember having anything alcoholic!!! Oh and did I mention that the sky was pink!! Bloody hell!
"Come on, what's with this video? Just open the doors and I won't trouble you any more!"
"Video? What video? ... Oh! I see! No! .. this isn't a video. This is what is outside! These are the people of ... Yes, well I can't be sure, but it should be Kastor Minor." As he banged one of the dials on the desk. "Oh! I wasn't expecting that! Hmmmm!" And he banged it again. "Aha! Just what I thought!"
"Yeah?" I said with some exasperation. Expecting a bit more clarification. Instead he casually moved around the desk twiddling and dabbling and mumbling to himself, before finally ....
"Well, it looks okay. The air isn't unlike that of Earth, but slightly acidic. The atmospheric pressure is a somewhat heavier, but it shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't have to exert ourselves. Let's have a look outside."
"You're winding me up," I said as I strode towards where the huge, (yes I said it again) doors were swinging open. "Oh my God, what's that smell?" Stepping outside to where I was expecting to find the front door of my house, I stopped in my tracks.
"Hell's teeth! Look at that!" I turned to find the so called Doctor just locking the door of the police box. I must be dreaming! I shook my head but it was all the same as I looked around. I hadn't realise just how huge, there it is again, the square or area or whatever it was, that we were in, was. He was standing beside me now. Adjusting a wide brimmed hat on the shock of curly hair. He too looked around at our surroundings.
"Quite marvellous, don't you think? I wonder if the natives are friendly?"
In the moments we had been standing there, we had been attracting some attention and to tell the truth, it was only then, realising I wasn't outside my front door, that not only did I not know where I was, but that there were these strange people .. blue people, with no legs, that floated in the air and darted about like goldfish and that they were beginning to congregate around us, getting closer and more numerous by the second. Oh hell! I hope I don't wet myself!!
Needless to say, everything was all fine. Well there was a bit of a sticky moment, when one of these blue-ish people tried taking my morning paper from me, that I still seemed to be clutching. But it all got sorted out and we zapped to some other planet, well several really, over the next few months. Some were a bit hairy. I had the pleasure of meeting some Daleks, Ogrons, Movellans and Draconians, to mention a few, but each time the Doctor managed to get us out of trouble we had managed to find ourselves in.
Despite it all being a real whiz, providing I didn't try to think too deeply about it all, I had been worried that people back on 'Earth', I can't believe I said that, would wonder where I was. That I had become another statistic, of one of those people that disappear, never to be seen again. Abducted by aliens. Nah, you never get that in the UK, you only ever read that happening in America.
Well, the Doctor managed to bring me back to almost the time before we left. I said we have no real concept of what time means. So no one ever knew I'd gone anywhere. I couldn't tell anyone. They'd think I'd really gone off my trolly. Now what did I do with that paper?