Of colourful sonic devices and spacemen in shining tentacle-armour
In which the Doctor 'rescues' River from a crowd of spacemen, the 56th century is bashed to pieces and someone rave about the brilliance of sonic whatnot.
The Doctor had always been of the opinion that when he met River for the first time – from her point of view – it would be a wonderful and quite tranquil affair. Since this did not apply fittingly to their first meeting, or any other for that matter, the Doctor felt inclined to submit his opinion onto the next encounter with her – and naturally he was rather looking forward to that wonderfully and quite tranquil affair. Boy was he ever wrongly-opinionated – once again. What the Doctor should have as an opinion in regards to River Song, if he wanted to predict the encounters, should simply be an attitude of expecting the unpredictable. Unpredictable and adventurous, and he should most certainly try to remember that whenever River showed up trouble was bound to occur – and that wherever trouble showed up he was bound to follow. So, Trouble, River and the Doctor equal a nice mix of unstable elements, even if it is the abhorrent 56th century.
Now, think about the complicated random attitude of the universe and the vastness of space – and tell me the odds of actually meeting the same person not only twice but thrice. Yes that is a random event that surely would be tricky to calculate – especially employing the pessimistic approach of 56th century spacial-hyper-bole-science which adorned the world with its uniquely cynical approach to understanding the surrounding universe for decades. Now decades are rather like blips – if even that – in contrast to all of time but even then those 56th decades were exceptionally long and dull, and contributed nothing at all to the universe but boredom and headache.
You see? This is the reason the Doctor has been avoiding the 56th century for most of his long life, and the reason he would do almost anything to never go there again. Yes the 56th century would be classified as 'harmfully boring' in the Doctor's encyclopaedia if he ever wrote one – next to the paragraph on why to avoid Sundays when travelling through time and space but that is a story for another time.
What matters now – and would be quite insignificant in the future but woefully important in the past – is that once again the Tardis has decided to land in the 56th century. And not only is it the 56th century… but it's likewise the ¤5 holidays. A more volatile combination couldn't even be found in a container full of explosive gasoline meeting trigger-happy gun-wielding maniacs.
Worse yet – and this is where its gets complicated and ridiculously unrealistic if applying the 56th century science which is also the reason the century was mocked shamelessly by the ones following it – the Doctor walked out of his beloved time machine to find himself in the middle of a Mexican hold-up. Now, with you being human and all, you might think the hold-up was the work of Mexicans but that is where you assume incorrectly. This was a Mexican hold-up of the space-variant; a horrible galactic description that never fit the situation but was nonetheless always employed as an explanatory phrase for something involving a huge amount of high-powered guns and semi-sea-creatures in spacesuits. Really it had absolutely nothing to do with Mexico but that's the problem with foreigners isn't it – they always get these things horribly wrong.
Now, the Doctor would simply have slinked back to his machine if it hadn't been for the fact that the Tardis had disappeared – an occurrence that 56th residents would declare as so unlikely to happen that even the notion of the existence of a Tardis in the first place was considered highly impracticable. Yes, you should stay far away from anything remotely related to the 56th century.
"Hello there"
The Doctor was infamous throughout the universe for his impeccable timing – you see he always did appear whenever things got icky. A fact most of the universe's population considered most maddening – and the few who rather liked this gait of his make a rather insignificant group against the rest of the universe. Thankfully the vast majority also seems to be of the notion that the Doctor is a made-up fairytale so they never really find his intruding timing too upsetting. That is of course only the majority of the majority. You see, there's a small fraction of the majority, a minor party, who do find the Doctor most annoying and most dangerous to their well-being. Coincidentally this minority is also the group that scored the highest in the recent Ghallu' universal questionnaire on psychotic hyper-space megalomania. Whether psychotic hyper-space megalomania is at all related to a negative attitude towards the impeccable timing of a Time Lord has yet to be established but certainly ranks high on the research grants in the 98th century.
"Dok-tah"
"Space-thingie-tentacle-thingies"
Meeting aliens you've never met before even though they know your name always turn out to be an awkward encounter – even for someone as well-travelled as the Doctor – and makes it slightly hard to greet them by a proper name.
"Sei-ze hi-im"
The problem with megalomaniacal aliens always seems to be that they never really win any beauty contests, or even 'unremarkable-but-slightly-disturbing-to-look-at' competitions. The more serious problem with megalomaniac aliens though, in spite of their less than appealing nature, is that they always seem to be able to cause a whole lot of trouble for the Doctor and his time-travelling cronies. The Doctor had stepped out of his Tardis and into a wrecked containment facility – right into a dangerous group of rebels from the look of it, who formed a circle around him and pointed their many shiny weapons at him.
The Doctor has never been much for violence – at least not the suicidal kind – so he raised his arms in surrender and gave them a big cheerful smile. Despite the smile – a gesture the Doctor thought most inviting – the 'Mexican' tentacle-aliens had him in handcuffs in a manner of seconds and dragged him none to gently down a dark corridor to lock him up in a small room which looked suspiciously like a 56th cupboard.
What came as a surprise – even though it really shouldn't – was finding a young River Song the inhabitant of the storeroom, bound and tied. The aliens plumped the Doctor on the floor next to River and left the two friends alone in the small rather humid room. River seemed to be on the verge of vexation: a sure sign things were indeed not even in the remote proximity of wonderful and quite tranquil.
The Doctor sighed, and filed his 'wonderful and quite tranquil' opinion to their next meeting where he was sure it was bound to happen.
"River"
"Doctor"
Now greetings between the Doctor and River did have a nice quality of tranquillity in it – if you looked really hard and possibly narrowed your eyes a little to better see.
"You are exceptionally ineffective when it comes to a rescue mission, you know"
"Ah – but I never planned on this being a rescue mission"
"Still rubbish"
"But I have a plan"
"What plan?"
"A thing, a plan – you know"
"Please do not tell me it's in progress"
"Well - it actually is"
"Drat"
River was quite right – the Doctor was in the middle of processing his infamous plan-in-progress contemplation and how to act on the not-yet formed plan. This is something that has puzzled and astounded philosophers – and some war strategists – for hundreds of centuries and they never seem to comprehend the basic layer of what a plan-in-progress is and how the Doctor makes it valid and square – why sometimes it even takes the form of something pear-shaped.
"Ah – I shall use the new setting on my sonic screwdriver"
"What - the green flash-thingie?"
"No, no – the slightly green but mostly pink flash-thingie"
What they failed to put into the aspect of plans-in-progress is that it sometimes needs a little boost by something sonic and hand carried – but then again philosophers have never cared much for the sonic nature of inanimate things and war strategists have next to none use of a screwdriver unless their weaponry is extensively raided.
Unfortunately what the Doctor failed to put into the aspect of his own plan-in-progress was that in order to use a sonic device it required free use of at least one hand. Now with both River and himself handcuffed, extracting said sonic device from the depths of your relative-dimensional pockets turned out to be rather tricky indeed.
"Umm, River?"
"What"
"My sonic screwdriver is in my pocket"
"I know"
"Yeah – it's kind of a tiny problem, you see"
"Why?"
"I cannot reach it – my hands are tied"
"Can't you just overstretch a bit?"
"I'm not a damn boneless creature!"
"You could have fooled me"
"Har-har"
You might think this is the part where River edges closer to the Doctor and somehow manage to ransack his pockets, and then miraculously ends up freeing the both of them. Unluckily the 'Mexican' tentacle-aliens are infamous for their ruthless knots and they had managed to tie River to one wall and the Doctor to the opposite wall – a most conniving action even the Doctor found worthy of applause.
"It's not pinkish"
"What isn't?"
"The new setting – it can't be pinkish"
"River, it's pink – deal with it"
"No it's a green flash thingie"
"No, no – it's mostly very pink"
"That is mostly very ridiculous"
"It most very certainly is not"
"Can't you just voice-activate your sonic?"
"Well… no"
"Why, what good is a sonic device then!"
"Hey – don't hate the sonic"
"Hmmf"
Time moves obnoxiously slow when one is tied up in a small cupboard. It's a fact. But when that cupboard is situated in the 56th century time is moving at an even slower snail pace.
"Dratted century"
"You blame this on the century – how very quaint of you, Doctor"
"The 56th has brought nothing but boredom – it's a stinky, icky cesspool of boredom – dull, dull, boring boredom"
"How do you explain the transgenic ahoo-gobii then?"
"Easy – it's obviously not from here… … I checked."
"Checked?"
"Yeah, it was in one of my earlier days, I ran through the whole genetic make-up of the plant"
"Only you would analyze a goddamn plant to prove a century is boring"
"I was bored"
The concept of the Doctor being bored is rather frightening actually – even more so when experienced first-hand, I tell you. River knows this too – which is the reason she stays clear of anything Tardis-related whenever it's Sunday.
"So, been up to anything criminal lately?"
"Spoilers"
The Doctor sighed – spoilers always did annoy him. A fact River knew all too well and exploited more than was necessary. But not many things irk a Time Lord, so once you find that thing that does, hang on to it tightly and use it extensively.
"Stopped any invasions of Earth recently?"
"Why River, that is big shiny neon 'spoiler' no-no"
Pause.
"Been to prison lately? – or is this a failed break out?"
"Sorry – that is need to know, Doctor"
Pause.
"You've just been to R'mish, right?"
"R'mish, River – really!"
"They were experiencing unexplained abnormalities in time – and suddenly 'puff' – their dimension was restored rather crudely"
"We-ell"
"Admit it – you crashed the Tardis, caused a bit of havoc, committed a couple of inter-galactic felonies and left the place in a mess"
"Sure"
"Sure? – you're admitting it – just like that?"
"Yes"
"Why?"
Pause.
"I lied – I always lie"
River had forgotten rule number 1 – the Doctor lies. This is why the two time-travelling aliens fit so well, you see, both skilled in the charming art of lying left and right, forwards and backwards.
"Twit"
"Honey"
You might think the Doctor and River continue their juvenile conversation for quite some time – and you would be absolutely right. Which is the reason we fast-forward a couple of hours in time to the point where the Doctor and River actually escape, though not how you necessarily escape with dignity but a escape nonetheless.
The escape involved not only three dimensions of unspeakable actions but a whole range of dimensional transgressions that really have no business being retold. Most importantly; the Doctor and River escaped.
And even more importantly; they found out the colour of the new setting on the Doctor's screwdriver. Incidentally the colour turned out to be a cross between aquamarine and turquoise. A shade not even in the remote proximity of either green or pink.
Needless to say the Doctor still insisted it was indeed pink – and River still maintained it was green.
=).. Yup, this was weird writing. But a lovable weird. Hehe.