Fill: Challenge #206 (DW)

[shivver]

romanajo123 reminded me that the first audio in Big Finish's Doctor Who 60th anniversary series came out today, and that made me think of BF's previous anniversary effort, the 50th's The Light at the End. It's one of my favorite audios, and I've always wanted to novelize it, so I figured, why not do the first scene? I spent some time a few years ago transcribing the audio and have finished about a quarter of it, so the dialogue here is from that transcript.



Bob Dovie liked his little corner of Hampshire. His position as a wages clerk at a small firm on the edge of Southampton provided enough for a house and garden and a comfortable, if simple, life for his Jenny and their young family. Throw in a St Martin’s summer in late November, a bit of that newfangled rock’n’roll blaring from the plastic radio, and a little football - what more could any man want? Everything was stable and familiar, except that he couldn’t quite convince his son to let anyone else near the ball.

“Come on, Kevin!” he called, beckoning with both hands. “You can’t keep scoring goals if you’re the one in goal.”

The boy picked up the ball, half his size, and tromped to the flower bed to deliver another game-winning point. “I can!” he squealed as he dropped it in the "goal". Spying his little sister running over for her turn, he grabbed the ball and threw it as hard as he could at his father, laughing with delight as it connected square with his nose.

“Ow!” roared Bob, eliciting giggles from both children. “I said on my head, not in my face! That really hurt, you know.” He bent for the ball, and Kevin ran over to kick it out of his reach. “Give the ball to Linda, Kevin. Come on. She’s hardly had a go.”

Bob swung his son up into his arms to keep him out of the way for a moment so he could retrieve the ball unhindered and turned to call Linda to him. He barely noticed the electronic whistle that drowned out the music for two seconds. It was hardly remarkable, as the radio did that sort of thing every so often, though it usually wasn’t accompanied by a splodge of dark blue in the corner of his eye.

Kevin struggled out of his arms and jumped down, thrusting a pudgy arm in the direction Bob had seen the streak of colour. “Daddy, what’s that?”

Bob looked around, but anything that might have been amiss was gone now. “Eh? I don’t know. Thought that was… Is that a plane or something?”

Kevin shook his head. “It was a p’lice box.”

Bob barked a laugh. “Da, Kevin, don’t be silly now.”

Another flash of blue, squawking like a badly-tuned aerial, crashed through the trees that separated the Jenkins’ garden from theirs, showering the grass with leaves and broken branches. Screaming, the children ran toward the road, and their father sprinted after them.

“Kevin, Linda, come here, now!” he ordered, and they ran to him, Kevin clutching at his leg as he cradled Linda.

“It’s broken the garden shed, Daddy.”

Bob shielded them as best he could. “I know, Kevin, I know, I saw it, but it’s gone. Jenny?” he called toward the house. “Jenny, love?”

“Where’s Mummy?”

“She must’ve popped over the road to see Pat,” he answered absently, looking out toward the trees for further swathes of blue. A stuttering, grating noise rose behind him, but before he could turn to look, something crashed into the roof and, grabbing his son, he dashed his family away from a rain of tumbling bricks.

“It’s on the roof, Daddy!” Kevin yelled, pointing.

At the edge of the garden, Bob turned to look, his two children still dangling from his arms. “Er, yes… yes, it… it’s on the roof. It looks like… It IS a police box! It’s smashed our chimney.”

“Is it Father Christmas, Daddy?”

Bob stared at the blue box embedded in the remnants of the chimney of his formerly stable and familiar house. “Wha? Er, no, Kevin, darling, it… no, it’s, er, it’s a bit too early for that.”

Comments

[romanajo123]

:D

Been awhile since I listened to Light at the End , but I do remember feeling so bad for Bob and his family. I can't remember the exact quote , but there's a bit near the end where apparently EVERY Doctor and Companion came to see if he was alright.

This is great, by the way. Kevin is precocious

[shivver]

That ending was hilarious. I'm sure you don't remember so... Of course, since the Doctor(s) fixed the situation, none of the awful things that happened to Bob's family actually happened, but all of the Doctors knew that something was odd, so they each went with their companion to that evening to check up on him. The ending only shows Eight and Charley doing this, and by this time, Bob is incensed, having had eight different people calling themselves "the Doctor" showing up on his doorstep "with some bird" (including one "dressed like a female Tarzan"), interrupting his family's evening over and over to check to see "if they were all right". I don't remember exactly what he says at the end of his rant, but he basically tells Eight to sod off. :D

I love TLatE. It was a much better tribute to DW than "The Day of the Doctor" was. Like in "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors", all of the Doctors were part of the story, not just comic relief or meant to make the current Doctor look good by comparison, and each one contributed to the plot and the solution in their own unique way, according to their strengths and personalities. (And it didn't give the Doctor an easy way out of his Time War dilemma and negate all of his history and character growth since ending the war up through the end of Eleven.)

I just haven't decided which is better, TLatE or "The Five(-ish) Doctors Reboot"...