The Redemption of Doctor Who

(The Man Called The Doctor)

Mason Black was bored. No, it was more than bored. He was out of his mind.

He had nothing to complain about; he held a steady job, read good books and succeeded in avoiding his crazy family most days. However, Mason possessed a computer-like brain and a photographic memory, neither of which were of much use on the shores of Cape Cod. His dream of becoming something like Sherlock Holmes also was beyond reach.

Then one late summer afternoon, a man with a serious afro steps out of a tall blue box. What follows this fateful meeting will challenge every skill Mason has, make him question everything he knows, require all of his wits and intellect and just might change his life forever. And all because of an impossible man called the Doctor.

Disclaimer:

Thank you very much for deciding to read my story! Before you go any further, however, I want to point out a couple of things.

This story was started several years ago when my obsession with Doctor Who had also just begun. Other than the Tardis, and other Who elements, everything in my story is of my own creation, from my version of the Doctor, to the setting, the characters and the aliens. I would appreciate it if you do not copy them without asking. The idea of this afroed 13th Doctor of mine was first sketched on paper in late 2016/ early 2017. This was before I had ever heard of the female 13th Doctor, and even when I had, I still stuck to my Doctor being the 13th. In my mind there is no female Doctor. My stories morphed into a sort of 'redemption' of the show I love, hence the working title. I understand that this may offend some people, and if it does, please do not read after this, as I am sure more of my story will offend you. The prologue was written later, and also ties in with this idea. The BBC's idea of the 13th Doctor does appear in following stories, but not as they intended. I do not wish to offend anyone at all, but I am not willing to change my story simply so everyone will be happy.

Okay, so, got that out of the way. Please go ahead and read on. I will (most likely) be posting a chapter every week. I hope you enjoy the adventures of the Doctor and Mason!

Prologue

"The Man"

Somewhere out in space...

The man rather abruptly opened his eyelids and found himself staring at a pale nondescript ceiling. The air around him was quiet, except for a soft, steady beeping in the background.

His ears, however, seemed to be ringing with voices, voices shouting, screaming and crying, and the sounds of explosions and other unpleasant things.

The man tried to move and found he couldn't.

He looked down and saw he was lying on a bed, his back propped up with a mound of pillows. His feet were poking out from under the white sheet. He turned his head to the left and saw a window. The blinds were open, but there seemed to be nothing outside, just white empty space. A tube was stuck into his left hand. The man turned the other way. His right arm was bare from the shoulder down. A collection of wires and tubes were taped to his hand and arm, one running to a panel on the wall, the other two ending at bags of colored fluids hanging on a stand. The beeping was coming from the panel, and several blue digital graphs were flickering on the screen. The man's eyes took in the rest of the room. There wasn't much to see. Two empty beds and a screen by a door which appeared to lead out into a hall at the far end.

Everything from floor to ceiling was white.

A revelation dawned in the man's mind. He was in a hospital room. How he had gotten there was something he couldn't remember. Nothing was coming to him, only the vivid images in his mind, which he hoped were nothing more than rotten dreams, yet he couldn't be so sure. It had felt far too real to be only a dream.

And he didn't dream.

The man closed his eyes and sighed.

His head ached, his hearts hurt inside his chest.

There was the sound of approaching footsteps. The man opened his eyes again to see a woman standing by the bed. She had vibrant purple hair pulled up neatly under a small cap which sat perched on the top of her head. The color of her hair seemed to perfectly complement her silver-toned skin. By her white uniform and the data pad she held in her hand, the man gathered that she was a nurse.

The nurse smiled at him brightly. He simply stared at her face.

"You're awake at last," she said cheerfully. "The head surgeon was beginning to despair of your recovery. It was quite a deep coma you were in."

The man continued to stare, unblinking. "How long?" He asked. His voice was rough and cracked, like a worn leather shoe that has sat unused in a back cupboard for a time. He couldn't tell if his voice sounded male or female. It did sound old.

The nurse's smile stayed. "A long time. Very long."

"And how long is very long?"

The nurse flicked her finger across the data pad's screen. Her eyes darted to it. "You were admitted on the eighteenth day of Mayware, the end of the spring cycle," she said, "The planet has orbited twice, and it's now the eighteenth of Junetine, the first summer month… so we've had you for thirteen months, thirteen months exactly."

"Thirteen months," the man repeated slowly, his Scottish accent showing. What had happened to him in that time? Had he been unconscious to everything?

"Where am I? What planet?" the man asked. His voice now sounded familiar to him. It was masculine anyway, of that he was slowly becoming certain. Perhaps he hadn't changed. He was studying the nurse's eyes.

The nurse was either not easily intimidated or didn't notice his stare.

"This is the intensive care ward in Saint John's Intergalactic Advanced Research Hospital. We're off the rings of Jermel, second planet in the Zoran Cluster."

The man blinked twice. Saint John? How curious. The Zoran Cluster was very far from where he last remembered being. His ship must have brought him.

"Did you really not know?" the nurse murmured sympathetically.

"No, I didn't," was the man's reply. "Who admitted me?"

The nurse smiled again. "Why, you did of course. You admitted yourself." She studied the screen on the data pad a bit more closely. "Considering your condition, it's amazing you were able to get yourself here, let alone communicate at all."

"What happened?" the man asked.

His gaze dropped to his hands. Rough and wrinkled, with the dark veins standing out against the pale skin, they were the hands of an old man.

"We don't really know," the nurse replied. "You couldn't talk very much, and I'm afraid the little you did say wasn't very helpful. What I can say is, you did have a significant concussion and one of the most impressive cases of dehydration I've seen in years. Not to mention your hearts. We discovered their status soon after you passed out."

The man's attention was grabbed. "What?"

The nurse paused. "Yes?"

"Hearts. You said hearts."

"M mm-hmm, so I did. As of this Monday, your brain and respiratory systems were fine, and the rest of your body has fully recovered. But those hearts of yours, tsk," she clicked her tongue. "A very severe CHF, the surgeon said." The nurse shook her head, a purple curl escaped her bun. "They will need a good, thorough check before you go anywhere, honey."

The man eased himself slightly more upright so the pillows were at his back and frowned at the nurse. Her smile was beginning to annoy him. The universe was a cruel place, every second people were dying, planets burning, stars going out. And here she was, cheerfully telling him he had congestive heart failure. "So, basically what you're saying is I have heart problems and the rest of my body is fine."

"Exactly. Now that you're conscious, we can stop flowing these fluids into you."

The nurse tapped the panel beside the man's bed, the beeping ceased. She then removed the tubes from the man's hands and arm, cleaned the wounds and sealed them up with bandaging. The nurse gathered up her data pad and wheeled out the fluid stand.

When she had gone, the man threw the sheet back and put his bare feet on the floor. Oddly, the floor was warm. The man paused, his hands nervously touched his face, then his hair. He had slightly dreaded to do so, afraid of what his fingers would feel. Instead of finding straight, silky locks falling to his chin, there were short curls above his ears and cut close to the head. Good, he wasn't sporting a bobbed haircut.

He looked up and noticed clothes laid out nearby; white shirt, black jacket, his waistcoat, trousers, socks. The man's mouth tried to crease into a smile but didn't quite do it. He knew those clothes. The man stood up and collected the clothes and his shoes in his arms.

He discovered the bathroom was hidden behind the large screen. The man touched a panel by the door and the light flickered on.

Minutes later, the shapeless hospital garb lay on the floor. The man stood dressed in his old comfortable attire and was busy making his fingers do up the buttons on his shirt. He grumbled. His hands were not as nimble as he could wish them to be. When the shirt was done, he tugged on the waistcoat, then the jacket.

He breathed out. He face felt hot. He went to the sink and splashed cold water on his skin, letting it run down his neck and drip off his nose and ears. He raised his eyes to the circle of glass over the sink. He had up to now been avoiding the mirror. Two piercing blue eyes stared back at him from under thick bushy eyebrows and a head of curly gray hair. He felt excessively relieved at seeing those eyebrows again. He honestly hadn't known for sure what he would encounter. He ran his wet hands over his pale face down to his Adam's apple.

He was still himself. He hadn't changed yet. He was still a man.

All of what he had thought had happened, the latest regeneration, the new body, the terrifying adventures, his increased apathy and cruel manners, the transformation into a woman… was all false. It had been only a lie, a trick of the mind. Only a dream after all, a nightmare of nightmares brought on by injury.

For the first time since he had awoken from his self-induced sleep, the man breathed freely. He sighed and smoothed out his hair. He noticed a few streaks of white were intermixed with the gray. Those were new. He also thought he looked a bit silly with half of his hair shaved off. It gave him a sort of teenager vibe, like he was trying too hard to appear younger than he was. This, of course, was not his goal, as the style had not even been his choice. The shaved side was where the sensory nodes had attached to his head. Also, he had been unconscious at the time.

The man dried his hands and switched off the light, leaving the bathroom, exactly at the same moment as the nurse walked into the hospital room. They just missed colliding with each other. The nurse was startled.

"I see you're up," she said, looking him over with her bright smile.

The man said nothing. He sat down and tied his shoes.

"Before you go, we do need to run a few tests on your hearts."

The man grunted.

"It's either that, or you will have to stay here for another full week," she said. "No discussion about it."

The man said not a word, but he did yield. Only for the tests, nothing more, then he was on his way and nothing short of a siege could stop him. The nurse kindly pointed him to the hall heading to the main lift. She said if he went down to the lobby he would find his transport waiting.

He raised a bushy eyebrow at her and she merely smiled.

"And do remember about your hearts," she called after him. "You need to rest. No excitement!"

He pretended not to hear her.

The man reached the lobby with little difficulty. It was on the bottom floor. The lobby was a bright, large room, filled with rows of white benches and exotic potted plants. Two walls of the lobby were entirely made of windows, yard-thick safety windows looking out into space. Blank empty space, the same as had been outside the windows in the ICU ward.

However, the man only briefly noticed these things. He had ceased doing up his waistcoat. He hardly glanced at the assortment of people around him, for all his senses were entirely arrested by the tall blue box standing off in the corner by the reception desk. Whether anyone else had seen it did not matter. He saw it, and he was satisfied, for it was his. He pulled his key from his waistcoat pocket and made his way past the desk, giving the receptionist a grumbled reply to her well-wishing.

The key was in the lock, and his fingers were set to turn it when the man abruptly and instantly forgot what he was doing.

The phone was ringing.

One would think, that such an ordinary thing as a telephone ringing wouldn't be enough to cause anyone a stir. However, this was not an ordinary phone. This was the phone of the man's box, nestled behind a panel in the door.

Suddenly, the rest of the lobby disappeared completely and was silent to the man as he pulled the handle and stared at the black corded phone.

He let it ring two more times before he reached out with shaking fingers and drew the receiver up to his ear.

There was a sound of someone pausing for breath on the other end.

Then the voice spoke.

"Doctor?"

"Yes," the man replied.

"This is the Prime Minister speaking. Sir, we need you now."