There hadn't been a crazier day in the lives of Charlotte Flair, Bayley Martinez, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch. Even the most insane days in each of their lives put together wouldn't even come close to the pure insanity they'd just been through – and were currently still experiencing.
Not only had the four women been plucked out of their individual locations on Earth and beamed up to an alien spaceship, but they'd been confronted by their alien bat captors masquerading in human forms. And then they'd been strapped into chairs fitted with telepathic programmers, their subjugators intending to burn their brains out to use them to pilot their stranded spacecraft.
All of that was crazy enough as it was. But then a blue box had materialised out of nowhere, a man stepping forth to introduce himself as the Doctor, scolding their alien captors known as the Krillitane.
The stranger known as the Doctor had strutted as though he owned the place, showing no fear and openly mocking the terrifying bat-like aliens. He'd cracked jokes with the air of someone who was entirely in control of the situation. He was either a man with a fierce intelligence, or a complete fool. Given his choice of attire – a tweed jacket and a bowtie – there was considerable evidence of the latter.
Everything seemed to be looking up for the confused and afraid women. The Doctor had contained the Krillitanes in a forcefield and set about freeing them from their bonds, when disaster had struck. The head Krillitane had broken free, restrained the Doctor, and started the process of using the four women's minds to pilot the ship, with the dire consequence of burning their brains in the process.
Fortunately, the information cleverly extracted over the prior conversation allowed Becky, Sasha, Bayley and Charlotte to turn the tables on their captors. The Krillitanes had wanted to leave. The imprisoned women would make sure that it was a journey they'd never forget. Focusing their combined mental strength to send the spacecraft into the heart of the Sun, chaos ensued as the temperature soared. This had allowed the Doctor to escape and free the bound women, the lone surviving Krillitane helpless to change course as the ship started to break apart due to the external forces.
Just as they were ready to make their escape, it looked as though they might come to an untimely end after all. Through the smoke, the surviving Krillitane leader took flight, threatening to use his vicious claws to tear the would-be escapees apart. Charlotte had had the strength and wherewithal to pick up a chunk of fallen metal and hurl it at the approaching creature, incapacitating him.
Leaving Brother Bezar to his arguably well-deserved fate, the four women ran with the Doctor into his blue box, but what they saw made all of what had happened beforehand seem relatively sane.
"What the-"
The wonderment contained in those two words from Sasha Banks could not have been any more palpable. So stunned by what she saw, Sasha couldn't even finish that question with more colourful language.
The other three women jostled past a motionless Sasha, whose eyes were drinking in every single impossible detail of the room they'd entered. As they all clapped eyes on it, Becky, Charlotte and Bayley were left just as speechless, looking around in awe.
They'd assumed that the five of them would be crammed inside of a small wooden box, packed in like sardines. After all, a small blue box was what the Doctor had arrived in. But they couldn't have been more wrong. Instead they'd been faced with an impossible sight. The room they'd crossed the threshold of was huge! Of all the insanity they'd been put through today, this was easily the icing on the cake. There was simply no way such a room could be so much bigger on the inside.
From rough calculations of her eyes, Bayley estimated the room they were standing in alone was easily ten times as large as the exterior. And that's not including the doorway below them at the end of the room with the beginnings of a corridor that led beyond. A gentle hum echoed around the spacious room, the sound emitting an aura of calm.
"I know! I know! Just hang on a minute."
As soon as he'd dashed inside, the Doctor had skidded to a halt at a structure that dominated the room, sitting at the dead centre. The structure was a hexagon of metal panels. From what they could see at their current distance, each individual control panel was filled with a different variety of levers and switches. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were currently standing in a spaceship of some kind, and the hexagonal structure was the console used to pilot the ship.
A circular glass tube ran from below the hexagonal console to up above it. A multitude of thin glass tubes were encased in the much thicker glass. These inner tubes emitted a teal glow leaning more to green than blue. The intense light was bright enough to see, but not bright enough to properly illuminate the entirety of the room, giving off a mood lighting vibe.
The Doctor snapped his fingers, and the doors slammed shut behind them, making the four bewildered women jump at the sudden noise. Turning back to the Doctor, they watched him pull a sturdy-looking lever, and that's when the calmness of the room changed. The room suddenly seemed to shudder, causing the women to stumble at the unexpected turbulence, gripping the metal railings beside them at the entryway to steady themselves. The thin inner tubes inside the larger tube began to rise and fall. And then they heard it once more. The same grinding, warbling, whooshing sound they'd heard as the object had materialised earlier.
Looking up, they noticed that the thick glass tube led up to expand outwards in metal, the circular shape not unlike the end of a French horn. At the very top the shape was rounded off by a variety of mysterious symbols running along the edges. The symbols were unlike anything any of them had ever seen before. It didn't match any known language.
Those same edges rotated around as the inner tubes continued to rise and fall, spinning around like helicopter blades.
"What's happening?" Charlotte called out amid the frenetic energy inside the room.
"We're in flight!" the Doctor shouted back. If the childish glee wasn't evident enough on his face, it was in his tone. Becky had a sneaking suspicion that the man had been through this same experience hundreds of times before, if not more. However, it was the thrill of giving this experience to the four women for the first time that induced his glee. It was not completely unlike her stunt work, she mused. Although she'd ran stunts hundreds of times before, she always got an extra thrill and a certain sense of pride when she knew someone was watching her work for the very first time.
"You mean this box can fly?!" Bayley shouted in stunned surprise.
"Well how else did you think I was going to get you out of there?" he called back. "Wave a wand and magic you back to Earth?"
"I thought we'd fly back on something more…conventional," Bayley retorted. "Not a tiny pod that looks like it's made of wood."
"Oi! She'll get upset if you talk about her like that!"
At first Bayley chuckled at the joke, but then the warning look from the Doctor gave her pause. "Surely you're not serious?" A nod told her he was. "You're telling me this spaceship is alive?!"
"Not conscious in the way you and I know it, but the TARDIS is sentient," he confirmed. "She's the one who pointed me in your direction by the way, so I'd be more complimentary if I were you."
Before Bayley could respond, a thud - not unlike a bass drum - echoed around the room, and everything steadied down to the same neutral state the room had been when they'd entered. No turbulence, and the centre console was still again.
The return of calm to the room allowed the woman to look closer around the room. The in-flight turbulence had unintentionally jolted them further into the room, where they could now get a closer look. The control portion of the room was in fact on a circular platform surrounded by the same metal railing they'd had to grip earlier to keep themselves upright. Now they could see stairs leading down, where they could see that the centre console went right down to the metal floor below. They could also see the doorway they'd glimpsed earlier, devoid of an actual door, leading to a corridor.
On the platform they were currently standing on, steam hissed out from vents around their feet. But the large centre console wasn't the only object on the platform. There was also a metallic chair placed next to a rectangular panel, which they assumed was a secondary control panel. But it was far beyond them to understand the controls and mechanics of the ship. All they could do was trust this eccentric madman that had crashed into their lives.
Looking further around the room, they could not only see the stairs leading down below, but also stairs leading up to a balcony that surrounded the entire circumference of the room. Illuminated blue discs lined the walls going around the room. Above the illuminated circles, lights danced around in a clockwise fashion around the room.
It was bizarre stepping through the doors of the wooden blue box into a metallic room that was bigger on the inside. But bizarre didn't even seem to cut it. There was no word in the English language to sum up just how crazy the day's events had been.
"So!" the Doctor clapped his hands to get their attention. "First things first: no, you are not going mad. Yes, you are standing in a ship that's bigger on the inside than the outside."
Charlotte gasped involuntarily in shock. She didn't think her own internal feelings had been showing so clearly outwardly. She had indeed been questioning her own sanity. But how could one not? Kidnapped by aliens, that was crazy, but somewhat plausible. But standing in a spaceship that was bigger on the inside than the outside? That was pushing it. But she was still considering the possibility that she'd been overdoing things at work, and this was all a crazy fever dream.
"But, how?" Bayley asked inquisitively.
"It's dimensionally transcendental." Fully expecting the blank looks the explanation was met with, the Doctor didn't waste much time explaining further, gesturing with his hands animatedly as he spoke. "Basically, the inside is located in a different dimension to the outside."
"Who are you?" Sasha finally managed to ask, finding her tongue once her brain had finally begun to slow down and process the new information.
"I'm the Doctor." The casual way he repeated this already known information seemed to be brushing them off, but at least one of the women wouldn't be deterred so easily.
"No, but really, who are you?" Bayley asked, firmness blazing in her eyes. She wanted answers, and she wouldn't stop asking until she got them. "Those, that thing in there," she stumbled, clearly still having taken a toll from the ordeal. "He called you a 'Time Lord'. But what does that mean?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, but Charlotte interjected. "You called us 'humans' in there, like you're not one of us. So who are you really, Doctor? After all we've been through today, I think we deserve to know." She now shared the same steely glint in her eyes as Bayley; a burning desire to get answers. Now that the source of their fear had been removed, their resolve had returned in full force.
The Doctor sighed, admitting defeat. He straightened his bowtie before launching into an explanation. "Well done." The smile reached his eyes, making clear that his words were genuine rather than sarcastic. "You've earned answers from those deductions alone."
He stepped away from the console and forward towards the group of four women, ensuring that he gave them his undivided attention.
"I'm not human. I'm an alien. I've lived for 1,000 years now, give or take. I'm not entirely sure, it's hard to keep track when you're a time traveller." Although he didn't laugh, it was clear that that last part was at least partially flippant, something that seemed to be a recurring theme. "The TARDIS, or Time and Relative Dimensions in Space if you want the long version, is mine. I fly around the universe, seeking all the amazing, wonderful things it has to offer. Oh, I've also got two hearts and I hate pears. Any questions?"
Three of the women remained stood in stunned silence, mouths hanging open in shock, their minds processing the impossible information. All except Becky, who was still scanning the room in childish wonderment, still enraptured by the preposterous sight.
"Holy shit!"
"Oi! Don't swear!" the Doctor quickly chided the Irishwoman, pointing as an exclamation point. She glared back at the rebuke.
Sasha raised her eyebrows. "Seriously? You're a 1,000-year-old alien who travels through time, fighting terrifying aliens, and you can't handle a bit of profanity?"
"Oh of course I can handle it, I just don't approve." The Doctor purposefully slowed his words down towards the end, making his position on the matter perfectly clear. "And that's something you'll just have to understand, if you decide to accept my offer."
Bayley was the first to question, "What offer?"
"All of time and all of space. It's all just sitting there, waiting to be explored. For most people, events occur just the once, and then it's over. But not for me. Travel with me, and I can take you anywhere and everywhere. Any time, past, present, or future." His voice was firm, but threatening to burst with enthusiasm. The grin on his face betrayed just how much he loved his lifestyle, and delighted in sharing it with others. "All of time and all of space. Everything that ever happened, or ever will. Right outside those doors."
"Why us?" Charlotte demanded to know. "If what you're saying is true, and I still need to see it to believe it, you could pick anybody. Why us four in particular?"
"Do I need to have a reason?"
"Everybody always has a reason," she retorted with a cynical huff.
"Do I look like everybody?"
"Yes."
The curt response once again displayed their tenacity, one of the many qualities he was beginning to admire about the four women the longer he spent with them. He'd always made a point of only inviting the people to join him with the right qualities. Stubbornness, while often annoying, was one such crucial quality.
"Look, I didn't arrive there with the intention of asking you all to join me. I thought I'd just whiz in, save you innocent humans from the Krillitane and then just pop you back on Earth. Now, I can still do that, if that's what you want." His mouth then softened into a smile. "But you four showed me something. Intelligence, courage in the face of overwhelming fear, and initiative. All qualities that I value. You didn't need me to tell you that how to get out of that situation, you worked that out on your own." His voice then suddenly rose slightly in volume, as though praise deserved to be heard loud and clear. "And none of you could have pulled it off singlehandedly; it took all four of you to realise it. You were all intelligent enough to work it out on your own." He took a second to exhale and shake his head before continuing on. "Bezar might have taken you for his nefarious purposes, but he wasn't wrong about you four wanting to leave, was he?"
All four women shook their heads in confirmation. Becky wanted more thrills, more adrenaline than she could ever get on a film set. Charlotte wanted to get out there and explore life instead of focusing single-mindedly on her career. Sasha wanted new experiences, after having already travelled the world. And Bayley just wanted to help others. And she sensed that travelling space and time would fulfil that desire more than a single high school.
"You all want more out of life, and I'm just the alien to give it to you." He looked at them expectedly, waiting for a response. None came readily, the four women content to keep him waiting, still contemplating if they should trust the word of a relative stranger. This sounded too good to be true.
"Why should we trust you?" Sasha finally voiced, levelling him with a cynical stare, folding her arms for extra emphasis. "For all we know, you're just a madman with a box."
Full of surprises, the Doctor responded to the thinly veiled insult with a smirk. "There's something you've got to understand about me, because one day your life could depend on it. I am definitely a madman with a box."
The smiles and chuckles from each of the four in response – even Sasha - was all the confirmation he needed.
"So, Sasha Banks, Bayley Martinez, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair," he listed off all their names, leaving a pause as though he was about to ask the most important question in the whole universe. "All of time and space; where do you want to start?"
A/N: Future of This Story
The Good
I am very excited to announce that I plan on editing together a video trailer for this story! Wrestling and Doctor Who fans alike will see the characters they don't yet know in action, hopefully allowing them to be immersed further in the story. I don't know when I'll have it completed, as I still have to plot the rest of the story out and find suitable clips of the Four Horsewomen (easier said than done). But it is coming, I promise.
Although I have not yet determined exactly how many this story will have, I am structuring this story as a season of Doctor Who, with each chapter being an individual episode. There will be a season-long story arc, culminating in a season finale. I will be writing the entire season-worth of stories before I begin releasing them on a weekly basis.
Shortly before release, I will be uploading visual aids for the aliens and side-characters the Doctor and the Four Horsewomen will be encountering throughout the season (though understandably, I may decide to leave one or two out as a surprise).
The Bad
Unfortunately, I don't anticipate the season being released anytime soon at all. I don't want to put a specific timeframe on it, but I'm estimating it could potentially take up to a year. While that may seem ridiculous for a piece of fan fiction, I do want to take my time with this and get it right. But rest assured that when it is ready, you'll have a steady stream of content for perhaps three months straight. I am currently in the final months of my degree, and so I need to focus on that for the next few months before writing can become a priority.
But It's Not All Bad!
You can help speed this project up! I am currently in the beginning of my planning stage in plotting the season. I've been given a few ideas, but I'd love to hear any from YOU! Please, if you're a wrestling fan, please feel free to suggest a specific time period or sci-fi setting for a story to take place. If you're a Doctor Who fan, please feel free to suggest not only settings or plot ideas, but any of the Doctor's enemies or allies you'd like to see make an appearance. Please, if you have any kind of ideas, anything at all you'd like to see, don't be shy! Leave your ideas in the comments!
I am also seeking a co-writer! If this sounds like something you're interested in, please get in touch.
Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you when this story returns!