JKF Doctor - Halcyon Putrefaction

Doctor Who--The Superiority Complex Audio Dramas
A short story involving the Doctor as played by Jeffrey Coburn
"Hackneyed Putrefaction"
by Sub Parr

(Note: Set between 'The Pretension Society' and 'Objets D'art')


* * * * *

Suddenly, red warning lights began to pulse over the control room. Before the Doctor could say a word, a blasts of steam began to gush from under the console. Flakes of burnt polycarbons fluttered in the air. The TARDIS trembled alarmingly, as the sound of twisting metal began to be heard all around.

Chris looked around with much less panic than the Doctor. "You didn't actually repair the TARDIS before we took off, did you?

The Doctor tried to look nonchalant as he dodged blasts of burning steam. "Let's not play the blame game right now, Christine," he said as the corridor beyond the control room broke out in flames. Smoke rolled into the room and began to obscure his vision as he tried to check the controls. "It's YOUR fault after all, you stupid girl, you should have reminded me!"

The underside of the console exploded messily, creating a fresh inferno. The Doctor sprinted from panel to panel of the console, desperately trying to regain control of his beloved ship as the heat of the expanding fires singed his back. Realization struck them both that they had nowhere left to run to and soon nothing even to run from.

"Save us, Doctor," said Chris with a deranged calm before she realized which incarnation she was stuck with. "Doctor!" screamed Chris, directing all her annoyance and frustration at the Time Lord she had been lumbered with when he transmogrified into a complete jerk.

"Just hold on, Christine you stupid peasant," sneered the Doctor, trying his utmost to hide the sheer panic that'd been haunting him ever since he woke up after regenerating. It was utterly apparent to everyone with a central nervous system how utterly useless, pathetic and clueless he was - he couldn't even dematerialize the TARDIS properly!

In desperation, the Doctor pulled a lever in the vain hope that, against all the odds, it would magically save his sorry and surprisingly large gluteus maximus.

It didn't.

Because it wasn't a random lever programmed to trigger a precise set of circumstances to miraculously save the time machine and it's occupants.

It was the door control.

The Doctor turned to watch the double doors right before him swing open, revealing the time vortex. His brain raced through a million possible epithets as he was viciously torn from his own two feet and out of the TARDIS into the maelstrom, but he ultimately had to settle for screaming the word "Bugger!" at the top of his voice.

Unable to do a single solitary thing as he plummeted through the vortex, the gravitational pull of the recently departed planet sucked the tubby Time Lord into the deep void of inner time.

Behind him, barely clinging onto the console, Chris hurled abuse at him. "You're a complete failure, you weak, spineless dog! You cheap, smug idiot! I only met you for a day and I hate you more than anyone else I have ever met you arrogant, selfish, self-centred insensitive bastard!

Another violent shudder, only this time more devastating, ripped through the
TARDIS. It received a generous welcome from the audience and was confident enough to follow itself with an encore, this time accompanied by a terrific explosion that was overacting slightly due to first night nerves.

The upshot was that the TARDIS shattered, segmenting the structure into several different pieces. Which is what "shattered" means in case I'm going too quickly. Despite the disintegration of the time machine around her, Chris continued to heckle the Doctor as he hurtled into oblivion.

"You actually think you're an improvement on the last guy?! I hope you die horribly, you callous, spiteful hypocritical, moronic braggart!"

Wow, the Doctor thought. She really HAS expanded her vocabulary.

But the Time Lord knew she spoke the truth. He was a complete and utter failure and his life was not so much 'over too quickly', but 'long overdue to die'.

"I'm sorry, Christine," he said, which might have been poignant if anyone could hear him. "I'm so sorry I EVER MET YOU! I'm sorry I ever ALLOWED YOUR POISONOUS EXISTENCE INTO MY LIFE, TO ROB ME OF MY BEST YEARS AND LEAVE A SHRIVELED-UP HUSK! YOU ARE NOTHING, AND DESERVE TO DIE LIKE THE WHORE YOU ARE!!"

He ran out of insults at that point and had to settle for making vulgar hand gestures and stupid noises. With Christine no longer in his sight, he only had the belief that somewhere, somehow, she was dead and gone forever.

By now, the Doctor was speeding through the vortex like a Ferrari down a racetrack if the racetrack was a long, long tunnel of butterfly hues with a blinding light at the end of it. It was like a near-death experience. Or a near-sex experience. Or, indeed, both for your kinky customer.

As the Gallifreyan continued to hurtle through the vortex,

The multicolored energy that made up the walls of the tunnel began to close in on the Doctor as he continued to hurtle forwards. Like a really messed up screensaver, the walls engulfed him, interfering with biological cells and... whatever else type of cells he had. This in turn corrupted his already shagged-out and thoroughly-knackered DNA.

Helpless and pathetic, the Doctor could only make incoherent, scared shouty noises and weakly flapped his hands in front of his face. Did this hold back the energy swarming around him? Did it bollocks!

His life (for want of a better world) was over.

This Doctor's short, unproductive and thoroughly dull timeline was being undone! Every memory of him, every action he had ever performed (not that there were many of those) were being dissolved, surgically removed from time! The timelines were knitting into a new pattern, and causality healing over him! He was being retconned out of history itself!

"This is just like that Red Dwarf episode!" the Doctor wailed.

Covering his bloodstained face with his scorched hands, the Doctor could only wail pathetically like the crybaby he was as his worthless existence was wiped away to be replaced by someone who would be less of a complete loser.

All my glorious work will be undone, he thought, before it struck him he hadn't DONE any glorious work. He hadn't done anything. He had done absolutely nothing - and he couldn't even hang on to that!

Every bone in his ugly, overweight body clicked and adopted a new physique. He felt the hairs of his ridiculous moustache regressing into his skin, facial features changing... as indeed was the rest of his physicality. Suddenly, the limbo Doctor snapped into reality.

* * * * *

Things change...

* * * * *

"I'm afraid... afraid... that I'm more beat up than I've let on," the Doctor wheezed to Chris as they stood by the gutted console. "But with any luck... I can still survive... without having to do the whole... body changing repair deal..."

"Uh-huh," said Chris flatly, not understanding a word.

With considerable effort, the Doctor managed to hold up his hand out before him and stared at it apprehensively. The veins shimmered with a golden light for a moment, and then the strange glow was gone. The Doctor cheered up instantly. "Oh, no," he said brightly. "False alarm..."

He trailed off as he realized his whole hand was suddenly glowing with the orange light.

"Aw, crap... No, I can't go through with it... I can't... I won't! I will NOT give in... I defy augury, so destiny can go hang!"

And suddenly, the Time Lord was propelled backwards with a blast of golden light. He clutched his stomach as though he had been punched, then fell to the ground in a dead faint.

"Doctor!" he heard Chris shout at an ear-bleeding volume.

But for some reason, he couldn't see her... whoever she was. Memories were shifting in his head, moving like ghosts. His vision was blurred and dim. Through the darkness, a familiar figure appeared.

"Hi, Doctor," said the Bastard with insane glee. "I'm back. Mind if I cut in? Cause now you're out of the way, the universe is mine! Unless you want to play for keeps? Do ya know what it's like to be hit, Doctor? To be struck down, to have your hearts torn out and cut up into pieces? Do ya know what I'm talking about Doctor? Any idea? Do you want fries on the side? Sir? Can I help you, sir? Do you wanna fry? You're gonna fry... I love these psychological games! Go on, little boy. Let yourself die. Why don't you die? Don't have the guts, eh? Finish it off! What are you waiting for? Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile... smile... smile..."

The puckish redhead was blurring now, and as the Doctor tried to focus he realized he wasn't looking at the Bastard any more, but at his old companion Commander Mark Tryhard who was looking down at him in disgust.

"Honestly, Doctor, just look at yourself! Lower than this you cannot sink!" he sneered distastefully. "Pull yourself together, trigger a full scale metabolic change and get over yourself - for the love of god, you are an immortal Time Lord of Gallifrey and you're dying from a couple of pissweak cuts and grazes which any loser with half a brain cell could have avoided... You're a weak, spineless dog and don't ever summon me on a deathbed flashback ever again! DOCTOR, YOU MAKE ME SICK! THE WORLD WILL BE A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT YOU!!!"

The fury of the soldier's words caused his form to shimmer and blur and then Mark was gone. In his place was Colonel Charles Chrichton of UNIT Britain, who had red, puffy eyes and was gnawing on his own fist as he looked around him.

"You all hate me!" he was sobbing. "Yes, you do, you ALL hate me! And I know why! It's because I've got a tin leg, isn't it?! I had a Japanese Samurai sword, and I don't know where it is! I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate everything! Oh, Christ, I've got the fear again!" he was screaming as he collapsed to the floor, hugging his knees to his chest as he let out a wail of despair.

Standing over them both was Dara Hamilton.

"Look on the bright side, Doctor," she said, twirling her dyed hair around one finger, "you got to meet ME before you died, and you know that so many people depend on ME and I'M the one who mustn't die! I still have so much to do! I'm far too important to waste time on you, so I'll just dance erotically as the last thing you ever see... GOD, I am SO hot right now!"

Suddenly, she began to remove her clothing revealing hideous pale flesh shot through with blue veins like certain English cheeses. On the verge of a full blown hysterical fit, the Doctor found the energy to sit bolt upright. "DARA!!" he shouted, as he realized he was in the TARDIS. The only other person was Chris, who was looking at him in confusion.

"Doctor! You still live... what an anticlimax!"

"My past is catching up with me!" the Doctor gasped hoarsely. "Oh, god that was frightening! Is there no escape except oblivion?! I must try to regenerate into someone halfway fistworthy..."

The Doctor realized that he was falling backwards, his spirit separating from his body painlessly as numbness spread. His old form was sloughing like the skin of a snake as everything lost clarity and substance. Energy exploded from his very skeleton in a burst of lightning, and in the blink of an eye everything shimmered, rippled and renewed itself. Suddenly light flooded back into his world. A taller, gangly figure was left on the floor with a long face, strong cheekbones, a very sharp nose and a mouth slightly wider than normal. The tabby-grey-haired figure looked like he could act convincingly as well.

"Who art thou? What hast thou done with my lord Doctor?" Chris demanded.

"You talk too much do you know that? Always asking questions! Maybe if you shut your fat gob for a second you'd know what was happening, hmmm? What do you do anyway?"

"I do not understand..."

"Obviously. What's the point of you being here? Do you usually just stand around and make the place look messy? Why don't you make your self useful and go and get me something to drink? And not tea! That's not a drink, that's bathwater! Bring me something stronger, wench!"

It was at that moment Chris headbutted him unconscious.

* * * * *

The New, Proper Doctor squinted his newborn eyes at the bright, shining white light at the end of the long and treacherous tunnel. As it grew closer and closer, brighter and brighter, the Doctor had but one thing to say before he struck the light:

"I just BET no matter what I say, it's taken out of context..."

Upon contact, there was the distant sound of an explosion and the vortex was empty once more, as if we had simply cross faded to some stock footage of the title sequence. But that, of course, would be ridiculous.


* * * * *

Things change...

* * * * *

With a low rumbling tremor not unlike someone accidentally leaning on a mixing desk and blinding flash of light exactly like a cheap CGI screen-wipe, something hurtled into reality and landed in a patch of marshy grass in a bleak, dreary, dark and morose dump. The sort of place that smelled like a graveyard on a rainy afternoon and mobs of torch-wielding townsfolk chasing demons was the highlight of the social calendar.

Wild-eyed and gasping for breath, the Doctor looked uncomprehendingly around the ugly and alien world he now occupied. Everything was hazy, dreamlike, full of shapeless forms. Even sound seemed to be happening too rooms away.

He was obviously completely stoned.

Numbly he wandered up the road, his lazy, stuttering steps kicking up rocks. He squinted, trying to get his bearings. Thoughts seeped into his consciousness. Lost in the wilderness of space time with no hope of rescue. Condemned to a life of pointlessness. Still, at least there was somewhere to get some booze.

Ahead was a pub with a sign saying HOPE THE LANDLORD'S INN. Two ethnic stereotypes in turtleneck sweaters and beanies were sitting outside, sharing narcotics and chatting about the weather.

The Doctor's eyes drifted, as he wondered if he was hallucinating.

"Look at that bloke coming down the road obviously weakened and injured!" said the more stupid-sounding local. "He looks to be in bad shape!"

"I'm not blind, ya daft twat," retorted his companion. "Come on, let's help the poor fool."

"Excuse me, sir? Sir, are you all right? Sir?"

The Doctor stared at him impassively. "Christine," he mumbled.

"Christine?" asked the other. "Is that your wife? Or your daughter?"

"Maybe some ruffians jumped them up the road."

"Oh get real."

"What?"

"Who says 'ruffians' in real life?"

"Christine... TARDIS... gone..." the Doctor said. Who were these idiots? What was he doing here anyway? Why did his head hurt? Who was he, anyway?

"Poor sod is delirious! Or on cheap smack."

"We need to get him to the doctor."

"That'll be the one that died a few days ago, will it? Moron."

"That was..." the Doctor said, holding his head, "either the biggest hangover in history or--"

He didn't finish and he suddenly collapsed. One of the rednecks caught him, he couldn't be bothered to tell them apart. "Whoa! I've got you, mate."

"Least I'm finally free of that tart Christine," the Doctor told them with a beatific smile two seconds before everything went black.



THE END

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Halcyon Putrefaction
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Doctor Who
Jeffrey Coburn

Doctor Who
Jym De Natale

Doctor Who
James K Flynn

Christine Thunder-Wing Doom-Slayer
Rachel Sommers

Graphics
I See No Graphics!

Additional Script
Julio Iglesias

e-Book Concept
James Quack

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