Doctor Who And The Choclate Bandit

Doctor Who And The Chocolate Bandit

By GODDAMN BOWTIE

It was another Thursday for Clara, before the Doctor had materialized his groaning, wheezing Tardis in her flat and whisked her off to the wilds of Wisconsin.  Which had certainly surprised her; normally the Doctor only showed up on Saturdays, but lately he’d become somewhat erratic, perhaps because he had recently changed.  Changed.  Initially she’d been reticent to accept this new, older Scottish gentleman as the same man she had known as the Doctor who was so unlike the wacky younger man she had first met, then all those all those other versions in his past that she dimly remembered from what seemed to be grainy videotape memories of his past.  But here she was now, looking over his shoulder at the Tardis view-screen that hung over the console on a swinging arm, as if nothing had really changed.

“But why Wisconsin?” Clara asked her scowling friend.

“The crying of a child.  The Tardis picked up on it with the special maudlin circuits I installed after the Great Time War.  I thought I had gotten rid of them after I regenerated into the ragamuffin you first met, but it turns out they’ve only gotten stronger since then.  I really should look into getting those taken out, so unlike me these days.”

I’ll say,” Clara offered, then scowled herself at the screen.  “So who’s that bloke?”

“The crying child.  Or so the Tardis thought.  Really should rip those circuits out, they’re clearly malfunctioning.  Never lead to anything good.”

Clara examined the image on the screen of an unkempt, abnormally thin man with a greying mop of curls on his head - much darker than the Doctor’s but in a much worse state.  His black clothes bore the mark of a man who gave no thought to his appearance, the dark circles under his eyes the mark of a man who’d obvious not been satisfactorily visited by the sandman in a very long time.  He was currently accosting a by-passer on the street of this Wisconsin town with the ridiculous name she couldn’t recall even though the Doctor had mentioned just a few moments ago.  The scruffy man had his victim by the lapels of his orange anorak in his crazed grip and was shaking him, babbling.  The parka man tore himself free and ran, leaving the black figure to collapse, sobbing in the street.

Clara’s heart melted a bit to see the man’s state.  “Poor chap looks like he’s seen something horrible.  Maybe we should talk to him, might be something alien related yes?”  The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her in disbelief, “If we spoke to everyone who looks like they’ve seen something awful, we’d never get away from Earth, would we?  I’m not about to -”  The Doctor realized he was talking to empty space behind his shoulder and looked past the screen and over the central console of the Tardis to see Clara opening the doors.  “No, don’t!”

Clara stood just outside the Tardis, pulling her thin jacket closer around her slim frame as the cold bit into her and crimped up her toes in her strappy sandals.  “Why not?” she tossed over her shoulder, back into the Tardis and the Doctor’s lunging figure.  “What’s the worst that could - ?”  She was cut off by the lean, disjointed figure of the deranged man as he leapt upon her and grabbed her jacket’s lapels much as he had the man moments ago.  Her shock and the man’s attack carried her back against the Doctor, tumbling all three into the Tardis.  Both the Doctor and Clara struggled to prize his grasp from her coat, leaving him sobbing on the floor of the Tardis.  Mindful that other outsiders might see into his wondrous travel machine, the Doctor leapt to the console and closed the door then turned back, to the weeping figure on the floor, his eyebrows ready for combat.  Clara sat on the floor beside him in disbelief as his sobs wracked his frame.

“You have no business being in here!  You think you can just go about attacking people like that?  You’re lucky she’s here or I might toss you out into a black hole!” the Doctor shouted.

“It wasn’t my fault!” sobbed the pathetic figure.  “They ruined it!”  The Doctor could already see Clara’s face warming into it’s sympathetic expression and sighed.  “Who ruined it, what did they ruin?” Clara asked, not without warmth.

“My script!  I sent them a perfectly good telly script and they ruined it!  I never want to see another Cyberman as long as I live!  They made it into a nightmare!”

Clara looked to the Doctor and his eyes opened wide, “Cybermen?!  Why didn’t you say so?”  He leapt to the controls of the Tardis and off they voorp-voorp-voorped.

Once in flight, the Doctor turned back to see that Clara had helped the poor man to a chair and had tossed a packing blanket over his huddled form.  “Now tell me, where are we off to?  We can’t just let these Cybermen ruin... something.  Hang on, did you say they ruined a, a script?”

Clara glowered at the Doctor for his lack of bedside manner.  “What’s your name then, love?” she asked the man, who’s weeping was more under control but still occasionally erupting.

“Neal,” he choked.

“Tell us about your script Neal.”

“It was going to be scary, scary!  But I got side tracked by this mad romp!  Why did I ever agree to it?  I-I’m a famous author - I’ve won awards!  B-but now I can’t write anything good!  All my ideas sound like second rate fairy tales now!  I’ve been on the Simpsons!” he interjected.

“Who hasn’t?” the Doctor asked, “they even let Matt Lucas on during the thirty-fifth season.  That hardly means anything,” the Doctor said.

“O-ooh, the Simpsons!” Clara enthused, somewhat unbelievably.  “Uh, was it one of the good ones?”

The Doctor felt his interest in this pathetic man’s plight starting to flag, Cybermen or no, and he motioned Clara over to him for a whispered conversation.  “The man’s clearly mad, Clara, we should drop him back off and be done with him.”

“What?! Clara whispered back, “you can’t scoop him up and then not help him!  What about helping your fellow man?”

The Doctor smiled patronizingly at Clara, “‘Fellow man?’  Really?  I’m not even British, and he’s he’s obviously British.”

“But we’re in America, Doctor.  Or we were before you sent us off.”

“Clara, you heard his accent.  SO he’s an ex-Brit then, probably driven mad he moved to America, after all.  But still no more than a British madman with a block.”

Clara glared at the Doctor, “but I’m British too!”

“And you’re lucky I don’t hold that against you,” the Doctor offered lightly.  He turned and made towards the man, no doubt to usher him to the doors.

 “You were too, once, you desiccated skeleton!” Clara hissed under her breath as she went around the console after him.

“Look,” the Doctor addressed Neal in a normal tone of voice, “there’s really quite of lot of things I need to get to.  I still need to remove those maudlin circuits and I have quite a lot of macrame I’ve been meaning to get to, why not -- ”  Clara elbowed her way past the Doctor to address Neal.

“Neal, look, it was just one script, why not do another?  Have you written books?”  Neal sadly nodded.  “There you go then!  Just turn one of them into a TV show!  Take one of your books, sign it over to someone and just sit back; you’ll never have to finish another book.  People like books turned into something worthwhile,” she offered.

“I tried that, back in ninety-six,” Neal sighed.  “Some of the actors they hired were OK, like the guy who played the angel, but it looked like a cheap BBC production - they filmed it on video!” he angrily shouted.

“Surely you have other books or scripts?”  Clara tried.

“Already done so too.  Mirrormask or Coraline.  Surely you know them?”

“Never heard of them,” the Doctor peremptorily stated, his hand twitching a dismissive gesture, “I don’t have time for every bit of pop culture across the millennia.  I read Harry Potter for heaven’s sake, what more would you have of me?”

Neal looked up, his eyes wild, “Harry Potter?!  That was my idea back in 1990!!”  The Doctor spun away in disgust, his patience clearly at an end.  Clara rolled her eyes and asked “just tell us where you need to go to make this situation better.  And when.  It might surprise you, but this is a time machine as well as a… well, a way to go places,” she stumbled.

“Cardiff.”

The Doctor turned back, intrigued by Neal’s answer.  “Cardiff you say.  There has been a lot of rift activity there, or least about ten years ago.  When was this?”

A slightly hopeful look played across Neal’s aging face, “2013.  They took my script and ruined it and I’ve vowed to do whatever it takes to make that Cybermen quisling pay for what he did!  I want to bracket him like he’s never been bracketed before!”

The Doctor’s eyebrows struggled while considering this new information, his head tilting to one side.  Clara came up to him, “what could it hurt taking a look, Doctor?  And he did say the Cybermen were involved; maybe there’s something to this.  If not, we can turn around and drop him back off in Wisconsin, no one would believe his ravings, right?”

The Doctor’s lidded eyes on the floor, he held his breath for a second before giving a slight shrug.  “Alright, Cardiff, 2013.  We’ll take a look.  But!”  He turned back to Clara with a raised finger, “if I regret this, I’ll disappear, you won’t see me at least for a year!”

Clara grinned, creating her perky little dimples to either side of her perky nose.  “That’s the spirit!”

Following Neal’s careful directions, the Tardis materialized in the parking lot of a somewhat disreputable-looking television studio in Cardiff.  Neal instantly burst from the doors and ran off towards the office door, “thank you!  I know exactly what I’m going to do!  Thank yooouuu!”  His voice faded into the distance that quickly grew between him and the tall blue box, just as Clara and then the Doctor exited.  Clara looked in the direction Neal had vanished as the Doctor closed the Tardis door, “I think I best follow him, make sure he doesn’t get himself into too much trouble, yeah?” Clara asked.

The Doctor nodded, “you do that, nanny.  I’ll take a look around myself, see if I can spot the Cybermen or their agents.  They shouldn’t be too hard to find.”  He grasped Clara’s shoulder and she turned back, “and watch out for yourself, don’t go taking risks on Neal’s behalf.”  Clara smiled back, “when have I ever risked myself unnecessarily?”  The Doctor scowled after her, then looked about, took out his sonic screwdriver and waved it’s green bulb about a little, then proceeded off himself.

After about an hour, the Doctor and Clara met each other back at the Tardis.  “Where’s Neal?  You didn’t lose him did you?  Tell me you didn’t lose him,” the Doctor said.  Clara shrugged, “I followed him into the offices but he scarpered.  I did try, but there were too many corridors in there.”  The Doctor squinted off into the distance and put in his sunglasses which emitted a telltale buzzing sound as scanned the surroundings.  “How about you, see any Cybermen? She asked him.

“No, just a rather large and uncharismatic Welshman with the strangest hair I’ve seen this side of an Androgum.  That and a lot of unhappy crew members working on some show that sounded awful.”

Clara’s brow folding into thought, “Maybe if we--”  The Doctor cut her off with a theatrical gesture, “look!  Here’s our Neal right now.”

Neal strolled up to Clara and the Doctor, clearly pleased with himself and a handful of chocolate bars clasped in his besmeared hand, scarfing down the sweets happily.  The Doctor irritably scowled at him as Clara spoke, “Neal!  Where have you been?  We were starting to maybe get worried!”

Neal waved away their concerns with his other hand, which also had chocolate stains.  “No worries, I’ve taken care of everything.  Just look at these Galaxy bars I found in Steven’s desk!”

“Chocolate?!” the Doctor burst out, “What has chocolate got to do with Cybermen?!”

Neal looked up from his precious chocolate bars, surprised, “what?  Oh, nothing at all, except that I knew Steven had some he always kept from me when I was on set.  The Cyberman script’s already gone out - completely butchered with super fast running and terrible child actors, the damage done.  But I just had to get my revenge by stealing his chockies!  And now I have!  And look - I even took his watch too!” He held up his other wrist, grinning at the shining band.  “Go ahead, ask me what time it is!”

The Doctor drew a deep breath, his hands on his hips, then glowered at Clara.  She winced, knowing that the trip back to Wisconsin and then her flat was probably going to be rough.  She opened her mouth to reply, then left it that way for a second as she tried to think of something to say that might mitigate the situation.

“Shut up.”