It was an ordinary day in the T.A.R.D.I.S. That is, relatively speaking, of course. Things were never truly ordinary when you were inside of a time-traveling piece of alien tech that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, along with a several-hundred year-old alien that just so happened to be the last of his kind, a former WW2 soldier that wouldn't stop flirting with people, who was also unable to die, and your boyfriend. But that's why Rose Tyler liked it.
Things were never ordinary. If they were, it would be boring. As the Doctor put it, where would be the fun in that?
So instead, Rose, Captain Jack Harkness, and Mickey Smith all held onto the railing that surrounded the T.A.R.D.I.S. control panel as the Doctor ran around it, flipping switches and pushing buttons like a mad man, which, in a way, he was, while glancing up at the circular writing that popped up on the various screens.
"Would you care to tell us where you're whisking us off to this time, Doctor?" Mickey asked.
"Fantastic question, Rickey," the Doctor said, messing up Mickey's name, yet again.
"Mickey," he corrected to no adval while Rose rolled her eyes and Jack laughed.
The Doctor continued on, as though he didn't hear the much younger man, "We are going to Brooklyn, New York. Not your time though, but certainly your Earth."
"Wait, there's more than one Earth?" Mickey asked, having not been with the Doctor and Rose when they got trapped in a hospital by the last 'pure' human in 5,000,000,023 while they were in New New York on New Earth.
"Well, if you go far enough into the future, to when Sol, your sun, expands and envelopes your planet and what remains of the human race has left," Jack explained, having originally been from the 51st century and a former time-agent, most likely having been there before, "they find another planet much like the old one and rename it 'New Earth' and starts to live on and populate it, along with a bunch of cat-people"
Rose scoffed slightly when she remembered the Sisters of Plenitude.
"Quite right, Captain Harkness," the Doctor said, stopping his running around for a moment to elaborate on some of his love for the human race, "You are really an amazing lot, you humans. Able to assimilate almost seamlessly with another species, so different from your own."
"Doctor," Rose said, her voice always able to ground him back to reality.
"Oh, right, of course. We are going to, drumroll please, Coney Island," the Doctor said rather triumphantly. He waited, as if waiting for applause, "What? Nothing?"
"It would probably help if you also told us when we're going too," Rose pointed out, looking at Mickey as though it was ovidius. After traveling with the Doctor for so long, she was used to having to ask when as well as where.
"Right! We will be visiting Coney Island on the date of May 15, 1904," the Doctor clasped his hands together, a wide grin on his face.
"Um, Doctor," Mickey raised his hand a bit, "are you sure that;s a good idea? Not all of us will exactly be, welcome, in that time era,"
"What?" the Doctor asked, confused, "of course you will be. Why wouldn't you be?" he glanced over his companions. "You'll all human," he paused briefly at Captain Jack Harkneww, "enough."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jack asked, trying to look offended. The others ignored him.
"Are you serious?" Mickey asked, forgetting that the Doctor hardly ever was, "You're the one that's been all over space and time. I'm not even from the States and I know what they were like back then. Even in a place as far North as Brooklyn, they still had it! Exspeclity in a place as popular as Coney Island!"
The Doctor, only now remembering about the segregation that plagued almost all of America during the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's. Along with the fact that Coney Island didn't allow people of color, such as Mickey, back then.
"Oh, right, forgot about that," the Doctor said as he went to rub his chin, "No matter! We can get past that!"
"How?" Mickey asked, unsure of many of the Doctor's methods.
"Improvising, of course!" the Doctor said with some flare, "now, go get changed! We don't want to mess up history too bad mow do we? Allons-y!"
A bit later (if you can call it that, what with all the wibbly wobbly timey wimey-ness of time-travel), near the trolley lines that came together to form the entrance to Coney Island, a VWORP attracted the attention of a few onlookers. With the VWORP, a blue police phone box appeared.
It didn't appear to be very big, barely large enough to fit one person inside of it, let alone two. But the strangest thing about it was that, after it fully appeared, two men and a woman walked out of it, seemingly unfazed by its small size. One of the men even leaned back into it, far further than he should have been able to.
After a moment, he came back out, followed shortly after by another man.
The third man, darker in color that the other three, appeared to be extremely uncomfortable.
For the most part, they were all approplity dressed. The lady in a simple shirtwaist and skirt, one of the white men in a casual suit and long coat, and the darker man in something much similar, but without the coat. The man who had leaned back into the blue box was dressed strangely however.
He was wearing a brown pin striped suit and strange cream colored shoes that appeared to be held together by thick strings running along the top of them.
As the quartet made there way to the entrance to the amusement park, they began to talk amongst themselves, their British accents raising even more questions from the Americans nearby.
"How do you plan on getting me into the park anyway?" Mickey asked, still wondering what the Doctor's plan was, if he had one that is, "We're already drawing looks, probably because of me. Why couldn't we have come here, modern day? Or any time after the Jim Crow laws have been repealed?"
"He does have a point there Doctor," Rose said, "we could have just as easily here in back in 2006."
"Very true," the Doctor said, as the marched forward, "but we wouldn't have been able to see Dreamland then!"
"Dreamland?" Rose asked. She had never heard of a 'Dreamland' at Coney Island before.
"Yes, Dreamland!" the Doctor said excitedly, "It was the last of the three orgianl parks built for Coney Island. It only lasted from 1904 to 1911 and was extremely competitive with the neighboring Luna Park. Unfortunately, it suffered a chaotic fire in May of 1911 and was never rebuilt."
"So, why are we here?" Jack asked.
"Can't you tell," the Doctor said as he stopped and turned around to face his companions, "it's opening day!"
When they walked up to the entrance, they were imettily stopped by one of the guards.
"I'm sorry sirs' and ma'am," the guard at the gate said, addressing the Doctor, Jack, and Rose, "but I have to ask if he's with you?" He nodded his head in Mickey direction.
"Why yes he is," the Doctor replied.
"Well, I don't know how they do it over in the Queen's land, but we don't let negros in here."
"Oh right," the Doctor said as he took what looked like a small notebook out of his pocket, "Would it help if you saw this then?"
The Doctor held up the book open to the first (and only) page. To those with basic psychic training or those with feeble imaginations, it would look like a blank piece of paper, if not, when shown to someone, it made them see whatever the user wished them to see printed on it.
The guard had a look of surprise on his face, "Oh my! I'm terribly sorry! Here, this should help to prevent more confusion," he wrote something down on a piece of paper, "it's best you were this on your chest."
He handed Mickey the paper and a pin. Mickey took them, nodded his thanks and pinned them to his chest.
The guard then let them pass into the park with no other objections.
"Have a great day!" he said as they pasted.
"You too!" Jack called back with a wink.
"Jack, no!" the Doctor said, knowing Jack.
"What?" Jack asked in mock confusion.
"Just no," the Doctor said.
"You're no fun sometimes," Jack said, laughing a bit.
As they day went on, they all had a great time. Even Mickey.
They did have a bit of trouble with getting into some of the activities and a lot of the people seemed to judge them as they went about their day. None of them outright said anything, but Rose could see the hate in their eyes. She could have sworn that they thinking about hunting him down to lynch him.
Racist basterds, Rose thought, Won't even let Mickey have any fun.
She tried no to think too much about it though, she was having too much fun.
They saw several vaudeville shows and even some silent movies at one of the nickelodeons there.
Plus, they only had to stop Jack from flirting with three people! It was a record!
The Doctor had even brought a Brownie camera to commemorate the occasion.
Over all, the day went well, until they were by the beach.
None of them wanted to actually go swimming. That would have involved going back to the T.A.R.D.I.S. to find some era appropriate swimwear and much complaining from Rose, but they did take a walk on the pier.
"You see," the Doctor said, walking backwards, "I told you that you would have a great time here!"
"I guess you were right," Mickey immetted, "other that the hoards of people staring at me, it has been fun."
"I'm just glad that nothing has decided to go horribly wrong today," Rose said, grateful that she hasn't had to run in the uncomfortable shoes she was wearing.
Of course that was when something wanted to come out of the water, close to where they were standing.
"You just had to jinx it, didn't you?" Jack asked, slightly annoyed.
Quick as lightning, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the massive figure rising from the ocean.
"That's strange," he said, mostly to himself, after he scanned it, "but they were all whipped out in the time war. Then again, so were the Daleks."
"Doctor?" Rose asked, "Do you care to explain what that is?"
The figure had grown to be the size of the apartment building that Rose and her mother lived at, and was still growing.
"Oh," the Doctor snapped back to reality, "that is a baby Kragilleen."
"Baby?" Mickey asked, "If that's a baby, then I don't want to see what his mum looks like."
First off," the Doctor said, "that's a she. Male babies of the species aren't nearly as big. Second, you're right about it's mum. Mother Kragilleens can be as big as say the Empire State Building. Possibly bigger if pregnant."
"Wait," Rose said, remembering something that the Doctor had said, "you said that they were whipped out in the Time War. Did they fight with the Time Lords too?"
"Oh, no," the Doctor answered, "Kragilleens are a peaceful race. They disapproved of the whole war in the first place. It was simply the proximity of their planet to Gallifrey that took the out. When Gallifrey was destroyed, so were they."
A solemn look appeared on the Doctor's face as he remembered the War that made him the Last Son of Gallifrey and the Last of the Time Lords.
"What's she doing here then?" Jack asked as the baby finally stopped growing.
Other than the fact she was the size of a small Hollywood mansion, the Kragilleen resembled an octopus.
"Why don't we ask?" the Doctor said as he approached the Kragilleen, "Hullo there! What brings you to Earth on this fine day?"
The Kragilleen turned to the small group of time-travelers. She was able to tell that two of them were human, one of them was both human, and something else entirely, and the fourth one was Gallifreyan.
Lifting up one of her tentacles, she moved to swipe at the Gallifreyan.
The Doctor, see this, ducked. Jack, however, happened to be standing right next to him and didn't. The tentacle smacked him right in the side and sent him flying into a wall a few yards away with such force that it killed him.
The people who happened to still be there at that time, saw this as finally started to run away from the beach and giant octopus.
After a few moments, Jack groaned as he got up. Getting killed was a real inconvenience for him. Now he had to walk all the way back to his friends.
Before he made it all the way back, he saw his friends running towards him, Rose now holding her shoes.
"Back to the T.A.R.D.I.S.!" the Doctor yelled as he ran past Jack.
Jack, shrugging slightly, turned around and joined them in their running.
As they ran, Rose noticed that the Kragilleen had left the water and started to follow them.
"Um, Doctor?" Rose called, "she's coming!"
"She is?" the Doctor called back, "Oh, good!"
"How is that good?" Mickey asked.
We need to get her into the T.A.R.D.I.S.!" the Doctor replied. "Jack! Go open the doors to the pool!"
Hurriedly opening the T.A.R.D.I.S.'s doors, the four rushed inside the blue box, Jack, running in deeper than the rest to open up the pool.
"Care to tell us your plan, Doctor?" Rose asked.
"Oh, it's simple really," the Doctor explained, "I temporarily adjust the T.A.R.D.I.S.'s layout and size in order to get the Kragilleen into the pool. That should keep her safe until we're able to get her to a different, more watery planet."
"Okay, they're open," Jack said as he came running back.
"Alright," the Doctor said as he pushed a series of buttons. "Hold on everyone!"
A large jolt rocked the T.A.R.D.I.S. Everyone held onto handrails around the control panel to avoid being thrown around. The Doctor ran around hitting more buttons, switches, and levers. The VWORP came again as they joltted around. They were heading to a different planet. Suddenly the Doctor yelled again.
"Open the doors!" Rose ran to open the doors as the large Kragilleen came towards them. Once open she jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding being smooched.
After the baby Kragilleen had left, the T.A.R.D.I.S. layout restored, and things had calmed back down. The Doctor was itching for another adventure.
"So," he clasped his hands together, "what's next?"
"Something without giant octopus Babies would be nice," Rose said with a laugh.
"Right! Allons-y!" the Doctor yelled and they were off again