Yes, you guessed it, I'm trying out an episode rewrite. I'm confident I can add enough that it's not boring.
This could get confusing, so I'll continue to differentiate the twin Doctors as I always have. The next Doctor will be called either next Doctor, or new Doctor.
XxXxXxXx
It was snowing, and the three of them walked through a marketplace, which was decorated for Christmas.
The Doctor in brown saw a boy and asked, "You there, boy. What day is this?"
"Christmas Eve, sir."
The Doctor in the black trench coat asked, "what year?"
"You thick or something?" the boy questioned him.
"Oi. Just answer the question," he told him, affronted that anyone questioned his intelligence.
"Year of our Lord 1851, sir."
The Time Lord Doctor then commented, "Right. Nice year. Bit dull."
Suddenly, they heard a woman shout, "Doctor!"
The Doctors grinned and ran, with Rose right on their heels. They ran into an alleyway, where a local woman stood in front of a pair of doors. She hadn't seen them yet and backed away from the doors slowly, looking nervous. "Doctor!" she yelled.
She had deep chocolate skin with a nice complexion, and her hair was naturally an Afro. What struck Rose the most was her attire. She was dressed in clothing of the time, but not anywhere near warm enough for the weather.
The Time Lord got there first and pulled her back. "Don't worry, don't worry. Stand back, what have we got here?"
Suddenly, the door rattled, and a growling was heard.
"Ooh," the Doctor in blue commented,"What is this?" He was intrigued.
"Uh, oh," Rose had a bad feeling about this.
"OK, we've got it," the Doctor in brown told the woman. "Whatever's behind that door, I think you should get out of here."
"She ignored him and yelled, "Doctor!" again.
"Um, standing right here," the Doctor in the blue suit and black trench coat put in. "Hello!" he greeted and wiggled the fingers of his right hand.
The woman looked back and forth between the two of them. "Don't be stupid, who are you?" she asked, as if they were both daft.
"We're both the Doctor," The Time Lord retorted, in the same manner.
She rolled her eyes. "Well, there can't be three o' ya!"
"You'd be surprised," Rose muttered. She had a pretty good idea of what was going on now.
Just then, a man ran up to them He looked a little older than her current Doctors and wore a tan coat, red waistcoat, a gold cravat, and a white shirt. His clothing also matched the period, which Rose found odd, but then again, with the exception of the Chucks, her second Doctor could fit in anytime in the 20th century, her third, could fit in the same periods and the earlier part of the 21st century, and her first Doctor could fit in starting when leather jackets became popular, whenever that was. And once in a great while, she could get her pinstriped Doctors to dress in period clothes.
"Where the hell have you been?" The woman demanded.
In true Doctor fashion, he didn't answer her question. "Don't worry. Stand back. What have we got here, then?"
Rose could believe that this was the Doctor.
"Hold on, hold on. Who are you?" the Doctor in the brown suit asked. Wait, he didn't know this other version of the Doctor? Must be a future version, then.
"I'm the Doctor. Simply the Doctor. The one, the only and the best," the new Doctor said, pompously. "Rosita, hand me my sonic screwdriver," he ordered.
"What?" both Rose and the Time Lord Doctor said at the same time. Rosita? Was Rosita her? So she could regenerate! Wait, why did Rosita seem not able to recognize the Doctors or herself? That didn't make any sense. Unless it was so far into the future that her memory couldn't remember who she was, or she hadn't remembered yet. No, not possible, that's why she did the pictures, and her journal, and all, to help with the frailty of human memory. She didn't want to forget her part human Doctor, or her family, or- the part human sensed her thoughts and gave her hand a squeeze in an attempt to send comfort. She hadn't realized that she was projecting. The reassurance coming from him helped her settle down enough to pay attention to what the other two Doctors were doing.
"Job for a what Lord?" The brown suited Doctor asked, incredulously.
"He's you, Dumbo," she heard the blue suited Doctor send to their current Time Lord telepathically. While she had an open link to one, she could hear that one talking to the other, that was new.
The rattling door burst open to show a shaggy bodied creature with a metal mask. The metal mask looked horrifyingly familiar.
"oooh, that's different," Rose's Time Lord enthused while he pulled out his sonic.
At the same time, the new Doctor and the blue Doctor pulled theirs out as well and happily said, "Oh, that's new."
"Allons-y!" All three Doctors cried out.
"Ahhh, the traditional yuletide invasion, now I really feel like I'm home!" Rose exclaimed, gleefully, despite the obvious evidence of Cybermen here.
Rose stood behind them with Rosita, enjoying the display in front of her. She had her new sonic out as well, but not pointed at anything, yet. She didn't know the settings like the others, but the Doctors told her that morning at breakfast that her's had a telepathic interface keyed to her and she could just point and think for most applications. A quick glance at Rosita showed her to not have one out.
Either Rosita was not her, or future her had lost or broken her screwdriver. She did have the new Doctor's in hand. It must have been recent, then.
"I've been hunting this beast for a good fortnight. Now step back, sir," The new Doctor commanded, a bit pompously. Oh great, this future Doctor was pretentious, well, even more so.
The Cybercreature jumped over the five of them and clung to the building.
"It's got the brain of an animal!" Rose realized.
"Some primitive conversion, like they used the brain of a cat or dog," the brown suited Doctor thought out.
"And here we thought they were gone for good. Shoulda known, really." The Doctor in the blue suit added.
"We'll talkin's all very well," the new Doctor rolled his eyes and chided them. "Rosita!"
"I'm ready," she told him. She gave him a rope, and he swung then end of it. It had been tied into a lasso.
"Now, watch and learn!" He let go of the rope and it flew up over the Cybercreature. "Excellent!" he exclaimed as he wrapped the rope around his arm for better purchase, "now then, let's pull this timorous beastie down to Earth!" The Cyberanimal scaled the wall. Instead of pulling the creature down, he was pulled up with it. "I might be in a little bit of trouble!" he told the people below.
"Oh, nothing changes, I've got you!" The Doctor in brown ran up and grabbed the rope, in the hopes of being enough extra weight to pull them down.
Rose couldn't help but snort. " Well, if I wasn't already fairly convinced that you were the Doctor before, I am now."
"Gee, thanks," the part human Doctor sarcastically said. "Glad to see that my unwavering ability to bollocks things up has you convinced."
The cybercreature pulled up the Doctor in brown as well, and now both versions of him dangled from the rope. The part human Doctor had jumped up to help, but the end of the rope dangled just out of his reach.
"Move it!" Rose shouted, and the part human Doctor got out of the way just in time for Rose to run up towards the bit of wall that was sticking out next to where the Doctors hung. She jumped just as she got to the wall and bounced off of it. The motion was just enough to get a good grasp on the rope. If the thing the Doctors tried to tug down had moved forward a bit more, she wouldn't have been able to grab it.
She knew that they wouldn't be able to tug it down, not now that the thing was in the building, but she could try to stop it.
"What are you doing?" The Doctor asked.
"Oh, you know me, just 'anging around," Rose replied sarcastically, "Whaddaya think I'm doin', ya plum? 'M tryin' ta help!"
"You idiots!" she heard Rosita exclaim below, more evidence that they might be the same person, but that was a mystery to be solved later.
"Perhaps if you could pull?" the new Doctor asked.
"I am pulling. In this position, I couldn't not pull, could I?" The Doctor shot back.
"Then I'd suggest you let go, sir," The new Doctor suggested. He then looked down and noticed Rose, who had put her feet on the wall and used it to slowly pull herself up. "And you too, madam!" What are you doing! This is no task for a woman!"
"Oi mate, you don't want to do that!" the Doctor on the ground hollered up at him.
"I'm not letting you out of my sight, Doctor. Don't you recognize us?" Rose's Time Lord called up.
"No, should I? Have we met? This is hardly the right time for me to go through my social calendar!" the new Doctor shouted down.
"Seriously?" Rose interrogated the next Doctor. "Did you really just try to tell ME my place?" She growled, "'M gonna save your arse, then 'm gonna personally make sure ya regenerate inna someone who isn't...blimey, wha's the word? Misogynistic!"
The extra weight that Rose added to the rope had stopped the cybercreature for a couple of moments, and Rose thought that they were winning against it, but then it moved again. The sudden upward motion caused Rose to lose her footing on the side of the building and she now hung from the rope the same way both Doctors did. It reminded her too much of a certain barrage balloon.
"Rose, let go before you get hurt!" The Doctor in the brown suit cried out when her lower body dropped.
"As soon as you do!" she yelled back.
They rose faster now, closer to the window that the cyberanimal went through. A quick glance down showed that the Doctor and Rosita had disappeared from below. The ground receded at a rate that alarmed her. She knew that the Doctor, no matter what version, would never leave her in danger, real or imagined. He must have some sort of plan.
"Doctor, where are you?" she reached out to him telepathically.
"Headed up the stairs of the building you're dangling from," he replied.
"Whatever you're planning, hurry up, the next Doctor is going through the window on the top floor now!" she let him know, then returned her concentration to the matter at hand.
Both men quickly went through the window, and in a second, she was pulled through too. She tried to use the window's frame to hold herself in place, but the jerky motion of the rope combined with the speed of the beast made it impossible to do so. When she got through the opening and landed on her bum, she accidentally let go of the rope for a second.
Free of that weight, the cyberbeast sped up, pulling the Doctors faster. Rose made another grab for the rope, but between the pain in her hands and the speed of the rope, she was unable to get a good grip on the end before it was pulled out of her grasp.
She ran after them as they were pulled across the floor as if they were on sleds. She winced at the thought of the floor burn they were sure to have when this was over, and she was glad that she had lost her grip. The feeling lasted only a moment, though, as she realized what the cyberbeast was about to do. It ran to an open window on the other side of the building, and they were on the top floor.
The Doctor of her time line must have realized what was about to happen at the same time she did, because he yelled, "It's gonna jump!"
"We're gonna fall!" the other Doctor exclaimed.
Right after the realization was made, Rosita appeared, with the Doctor in the black trench coat on her heels. Rosita carried an ax. She saw what was about to happen herself, and ran into action. The rope was cut with one quick swipe of her ax.
The sudden stop made the Doctors tumble and a few seconds later, the shaggy cyber thing was out the window. When they stopped, they slowly got up with groans. When they were upright, they both laughed hard and hugged each other. Okay, you can touch your future or past self once you've regenerated, good to know. Rose wished again that she had kept hold of the rope, because that looked like fun, and in a second, she was laughing too.
The part human Doctor gingerly took the ax from Rosita, who watched the laughing Doctors with anger.
The five of them made their way down the stairs. On the way down, Rose pointedly told the new Doctor, "next time, just let go."
"I was stuck!" He protested, which caused a new wave of laughter.
They stepped back outside and the Doctors, all three of them now, were laughing. Rose was watching them, worried now that she had a moment to think about what just happened.
" Well, I'm glad you think it's so funny. You're mad. All three of you!" She pointed to the Time Lords and Rose. "You could've got killed!"
"But, evidently, we did not," the new Doctor told her. He remembered his manners. "Oh, I should introduce Rosita. My faithful companion, always telling me off."
"Well, they do, don't they?" the Doctor in brown said, fondly. Then it clicked. "Rosita?" He gave Rose a significant look. "Good name. Hello, Rosita!" He gave her his little handwave.
"Finally! I was beginning to think he had shorted out his brain when he met the future version of himself," the blue suited Doctor thought to Rose, who had to stifle her giggle. He leaned the ax against a chunk of wood in front of the doors that the cyberbeast had come out of.
Rose examined her hands, they had burns from the rope, but not nearly as bad as they were the last time she had hung from a rope. They still hurt, though, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.
Rosita huffed, "huh. Now I'll have to go and dismantle the traps. All that for nothing. And we've only got 20 minutes till the funeral, don't forget. Then back to the TARDIS, right?" She walked off.
"Funeral?" the part human Doctor asked with great interest.
"Oh, long story. Not my own, not yet." He bent over in a bit of pain. "Oooh, I'm not as young as I was."
"Well, not as young as you were when you were me." The Doctor in brown quipped.
"When I was who?" he asked, confused.
"You really don't recognize us?" The part human asked, baffled.
"Not at all," he replied.
"But you're The Doctor. The next Doctor. Or the next-but-one. A future Doctor anyway," Rose's current Time Lord babbled. "You should recognize us."
"Oh," the new Doctor said, as if that explained everything.
"No, no, don't tell me how it happened. Although... I hope I don't just trip over a brick, that'd be embarrassing. Then again, painless. Worse ways to go, depends on the brick," he babbled, musing over the evidence of the demise of his current incarnation.
"You're gabbling, sir." He looked between the three of them. "Now, might I ask, who are you three, exactly?"
"No, I'm, uh... I'm just Smith, John Smith. And the handsome bloke in the blue suit is my brother, Giacomo. Well of course he's my brother, I mean who else would he be? He looks just like me!" He realized that he was babbling again.
"Giacomo?" she heard the part human Doctor in her mind, "really?"
"I guess that's what you get for calling him Amadeus last week," she replied. "At least he called you handsome."
"Yeah, but that's also calling himself handsome, so it doesn't count."
"Giacomo, that's an odd name for a British man." The new Doctor commented.
"Yes, yes it is. Our mother was from Venice." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I go by my middle name, James. This is my lovely Rose, Rose Tyler." He said her full name with significance, and she could tell that he hoped it would jog the older Doctor's memory.
"But we've heard all about you, Doctor. Bit of a legend, if I say so myself," the Doctor in brown butted in.
"Modesty forbids me to agree with you, sir. But yes. Yes, I am," he agreed with an air of self importance. If he'd have still been the pinstriped Doctor, he'd have been straightening his tie.
"A legend with certain memories missing. Am I right?" Rose's Time Lord asked.
"How do you know that?" he queried.
"Because you've forgotten me," Rose whispered. There it was, the worst fear she had, that she was separated from the Doctor and he would forget her over time, or that he'd regenerate and not love her anymore.
"Great swathes of my life have been stolen away. When I turn my mind to the past, there's nothing." The new Doctor looked despondent as he admitted that he was suffering from amnesia.
"How far back are your memories?" Rose asked him.
"Since the Cybermen. Masters of that hellish wall-scuttler and old enemies of mine, now at work in London town. You won't believe this, Miss Tyler, but they are creatures from another world."
"You'd be surprised at what I believe, Doctor," she told him sincerely.
"It's said they fell onto London, out of the sky in a blaze of light. And they found me." He paused for a moment, looking anywhere but at them. "Something was taken, something was lost." He then turned to Rose and asked her earnestly, "What was I like? In the past?"
He took her hand in both of his and pressed it to his chest as his eyes searched her for answers. She felt something something off. Something wasn't-
"I don't think any of us should say," The part human Doctor interrupted her thoughts. "Sorry. You've really got to be careful with memory loss."
The new Doctor dropped Rose's hand and stepped back. He looked between the three of them. "It's funny, I talk of Cybermen from the stars and you don't blink."
The Doctor in brown suddenly jumped in one of his aha moments. "Ah, don't blink, remember that? Whatever you do, don't blink? The blinking and the statues? Sally and the angels? No?"
The new Doctor looked at the pinstriped one like he had just declared that the sky was currently royal purple. "You're a very odd man, Mr. Smith."
She could practically see the gears in both of the Doctors heads turning. "Hmm, I still am. Something's wrong here."
She knew what he meant, and she was certain that she knew what it was.
The new Doctor suddenly remembered something important. "Oh, the funeral!" he exclaimed, "the funeral's at two o'clock. It's been a pleasure, Mr Smith, Mr. Smith, and Miss Tyler." He grabbed her hand again and brought it to his lips so he could kiss her knuckles. He turned to walk away. "Don't breathe a word of it!"
"Oh, can't we come with you?" the part human Doctor spoke up.
The new Doctor turned around, not stopping his movements towards where he was going. "It's far dangerous. Rest assured, I shall keep this city safe. Oh, and, er... Merry Christmas!" He then took off.
"Okay, I'm following him," the Doctor in brown announced quietly before the other man had disappeared.
"You'll be noticed," Rose told him.
"Then I'll have to be sneaky."
"You are not sneaky. In fact, 'm certain you got less sneaky with regeneration, and that's saying somethin' seein' as 'ow you were never sneaky to begin with."
"Oi!"
"If you're goin', you'd better shift!" She hissed.
The Doctor moved to follow, and Rose and the part human Doctor followed as well.
"He's not you," she told them both telepathically in an effort to keep quiet as they were following the man. She felt their surprise at her declaration.
"What changed your mind?" the Doctor in blue wondered.
"Now, Rose, you know-" the Time Lord started.
"If that's you in the future," she interrupted, "then where am I? And how come he doesn't remember any of us?"
"Maybe we got separated, it has happened before," he reminded her, not that she needed reminding of that particular incident. "Maybe you finally had enough of me and-"
"Don't even think it," she growled in her mind. The three of them turned another corner and were almost spotted by Rosita. They ducked quickly.
"And as for not remembering," the other Doctor injected, "I've had memory issues before, lost all of my memory a couple times in my 8th life. Maybe 'Rosita' has been brought along because of a bit of memory leaking through, or maybe you're Rosita. We still don't know if you can-"
"I thought that at first, but wouldn't I say something if I was!" she interrupted the oncoming babble.
"Not if your memory was also compromised, or if you were trying to prevent or protect a paradox," the Time Lord told her.
"He really isn't you, though, unless you," she indicated the part human Doctor, "can regenerate after all or gain the ability again. And it's a thought I've given some credence to, stranger things have happened."
"Why do you say that?" the Doctor in blue queried.
"Because that man," she pointed to the 'new Doctor,' who was arguing with Rosita, "has a pulse that indicates that he only one heart and he is far too warm."
XxXxXxXx
The Doctor listened to Rose as she told them all of the evidence that had her convinced that this other man wasn't him. It was well thought out and logical. It made perfect sense, but there was still something off about it.
"But I don't think he's you, either," she told his counterpart, "because he has no telepathic ability as far as I can tell, and I checked as much as I know how. What I can't figure out is why he thinks he's you. Also, I'm wondering about the sonic screwdriver. I didn't get a good look, did either of you?"
Okay, he was officially, properly impressed. They came to a wrought iron fence where they could see the other man and Rosita arguing.
"No, I didn't," he replied.
"Me, either," his twin admitted.
"Are you deducting again, Lewis?"
"Ya betcha, Sarge."
"The Doctor's companion does what the Doctor says. Off you go." They heard the other man say. Rosita left without much argument, and Rose herself would have been very, very angry if it was her.
He was pretty sure that Rose, no matter how many times she regenerated, or even if she lost her memory, would never, ever put up with being sent back to the TARDIS while he got himself into trouble.
"Yeah, maybe that's not you, either," the Doctor in blue conceded.
"For right now, let's continue acting as if he was me, and see where that takes us," the Time Lord suggested, to which both his counterpart and Rose agreed.
They followed the man to the house where he was breaking in. They went right through the front door, and no one on the street even gave them a second glance, assuming they were meant to be there. When his twin opened the door, Rose pulled out her own screwdriver and started to use it to help speed up the healing of her hands. The Doctor saw what she was doing and helped out with his own quickly. She'd been in pain and hid it since they were hanging from the building, and he hated himself for it. She knew what he was thinking, even without the telepathy, and just gave him her 'you're-an-idiot-quit-blaming-yourself' look. Which, of course, he ignored.
They made a beeline for the back door, where they could hear the other man attempting to open the door. The part human Doctor stepped right up to the door and opened it, revealing the other man. For a moment, he looked like a deer caught in the headlights until he realized who opened the door.
"Hello," his twin said.
"How did you three get in?" he asked, at a loss.
"Oh, I'm good at doors," the Doctor waved the question off, both metaphorically and physically. "Do you mind my asking, is that your sonic screwdriver?"
They finally got a good look at the device in his hands. It was a regular screwdriver of the period, with a wooden handle.
"Yeah," he said with a smile, "I'd be lost without it."
"But that's a screwdriver, how exactly is it sonic?" the blue suited Doctor asked.
"Well, er, it makes a noise." He hit it against the door frame to demonstrate. "That's sonic, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes, it is," Rose agreed.
He glanced around outside. "Now, since we're acting like common burglars, I suggest we get out of plain view."