Fill- Challenge 160 (DW)

[romanajo123]

The TARDIS, with its signature screech of metal , appeared into life as the first few flecks of sunlight began to show in the sky. 
Pulling on his glasses and running a finger through the spikes of his hair, he opened the door.
Donna, dressed in a floor-length gown with enough bows and frills on it to decorate a tree, carefully followed after him. 

"Are we nearly there, spaceman?" Donna asked,  wincing a little with each step.  " Really want to lose these shoes.  It's like wearing daggers!" She complained, taking one off to rub her foot. 

"Yes!" The Doctor enthused, "Oh you are going to love this , Donna! The most breathtaking...-" 

The Doctor paused, taking in the landscape,  before taking a step forward and landing in a rather large puddle of mud.  "Oh" he said. 

Donna didn't even to do three guesses as to what that meant.  "We're not where we're supposed to be, are we?" She asked, with her face slowly going sour. 

"Just...a bit off. Maybe a decade or two?" the Doctor tried to explain. As if it was as simple as forgetting to do the dishes! 

Putting her shoe back on, Donna painfully ran back into the TARDIS.  "Means I can change out of this!" She called, a bit too excited. 

Comments

[shivver]

Okay, I laughed out loud at this one. I love Donna running back in to change her clothes at the first sign of not being wherever it was that they were trying to go to. :) The scene wasn't quite what I was going for with the challenge (not enough description to picture where they were), but that's fine - the point of this comm is to write, not necessarily to write what was asked for. ;) I otherwise enjoyed this one a lot.

The only concrit I have is about the line "As if it was as simple as forgetting to do the dishes!" The narration up until that point was mostly neutral, but then this bit was definitely biased toward the Doctor, and that felt odd. If it's actually the Doctor's thoughts, then I would indicate that - I usually put direct thoughts in italics, but I think the standard would be to put a thought dialogue tag, like: "As if it was as simple as forgetting to do the dishes," he muttered silently to himself. Though, doing it like that, I'd probably change the phrasing to match his character. If it's not the Doctor's thoughts, then I'd omit it. Third option would be to write the entire scene as third-person Doctor-biased.