TTR: The Topys of Domo Warning: SPOILERS for End of Time Part 1 & 2. This isn’t really a comment or even a parody. Mere random silliness, inspired by Clocketpatch’s lovely typo in her LJ review. Any mistakes are obviously, in the context of the story, completely deliberate. Obviously. **** Ten breezed into the Round, whistling to himself. “You seem cheerful for someone who’s about to bite the dust,” said Benny, taking a seat next to him. “No last minute nerves?” He thought about it. “Well, the Master’s been gloating about stuff for days, but that’s nothing new, is it? I’m quite looking forward to it. I mean, as it is, I have to go off all on my own, all angsty and whatever, while Nine and Handy swan around here with Rose. Bit naff, really.” “Well,” said Benny, raising her eyebrows, “there’s always fanfic. The things you two get up to in those stories, I tell you -. Ace and I were having a good laugh only the other day about that one where -.” He drew back. “Can we *not* talk about the fanfic?” “Right. Sorry.” The Simm Master pulled up a third stool, on the other side of the Doctor. “Hello there, gorgeous. Looking forward to our date, were you?” “Benny,” said Ten. “Can I have what you’re drinking? I don’t think ginger beer is going to hack it this time.” The Master grinned. “Oh, trust me, I wasn’t any happier about it than you. Well, except for -.” Ten put his hands to his ears. “No spoilers, okay!” “Hmm,” said Benny, nodding behind him as a silent visitor appeared by the First Doctor’s table. “An Ood. Wonder what he wants, eh, Doctor?” Ten swallowed and moved forward. The Ood said, “We are sorry, Doctor. There has been a terrible mistake. We are sorry.” “What?” he said. “And where’s Ood Sigma?” “We will explain. Read this.” He passed Ten a sheet of paper and they both vanished. * Somewhere in a snowy landscape, Ten choked. “What? WHAT? *WHAT*?” The script in his hands that melted away in the light had read: THE END OF TIM * Benny glared at the Simm Master. “All right, what have you done this time?” “Me?” he said, miming innocence, pointing his fingers towards himself and waving a bundle of papers around. “I didn’t do this. An early draft has escaped onto the internet. It has typos.” She snatched them from him and read them in dawning horror. “The End of Tim? Who the hell is Tim?” * “Tim himself is ending,” continued the Ood. Ten paused. “*Tim*? Who’s Tim? And where’s Ood Sigma, anyway?” “He is now known as Odd Sigma and chooses to hide himself. We are sorry, Doctor. Tim is ending.” “Tim,” mused the Doctor, walking back to the TARDIS. “Tim… Let me think: do I even know any Tims? There’s Timmy the dog, I suppose, but that’d be ridiculous.” * “Typos?” said Benny. “Dear goddess, who knows what a hasty typist might make of Gallifrey, Rassilon and regeneration.” He chucked. “Or the Master for that matter.” “Well,” said Benny, “I think you’ve pretty much exhausted the possibilities there, haven’t you?” He folded his arms and sulked. “I never did. That was the cryptic crossword duo over there.” He nodded towards the Ainley Master and the Delgado Master who were sitting a table pointedly ignoring each other. “Anyway, we need to help him,” she said. “No one deserves to be trapped in an ungrammatical first draft, however self-pitying they may have become.” “You’ve noticed that too?” “Oh, shut up.” * The TARDIS landed and the Doctor stepped out cautiously. An early draft, he thought. Never meant to see the light of day. Who knew what disastrous or comical spelling mistakes or grammatical errors he might encounter? It dawned on him that he had something unusual around his shoulders, and once he’d offloaded the disgruntled brown goat, he set off. * “Sounds as though you could use my help,” said Thursday Next, walking across to Benny. She said, “I don’t think there’s anything sinister about this. Just bad typing. I mean, look.” “True,” she said, examining the script. “However, I do have some expertise when it comes to extracting characters from their stories.” The Brigadier glanced at her. “I’m sure you do, miss, but this -.” “She took Jane from *Jane Eyre*,” murmured Benny. “No patronising her, sir.” He said, “Nonetheless, rescuing the Doctor is my job. And I notice here there’s a mention of two soldiers. It doesn’t say anything about them not being well-known UNIT soldiers. Benton and I are going in.” “Good thinking,” said Benny. “I’m going to peek ahead, see what horrors await if you don’t succeed.” Thursday coughed. “Actually, that’s not how it was -.” * Ten surveyed the group of old age pensioners hopefully. “Now, are any of you called Tim by any chance?” “Doctor,” said an unexpected voice from behind him, as two soldiers arrived at the wasteland. * “Well, I was only trying to help, Doctor,” said the Brigadier moments later. He glared at him. “There was no call to order Benton to do that!” “I said fire at *will*,” he told him. “Or, at least, I certainly intended to.” Benton was trying not to be there. “Well, you *said* ‘Fire at Wilf’, sir.” On the ground, Wilf whimpered, and the Doctor knelt down. “Just you leave me here, Doctor,” he said. “You go and find Donna and this Tim bloke. I’ll be all right; it’s only one of my vital organs punctured and a few pints of blood lost. Don’t you worry about me.” Ten said, “Brigadier, you and Benton get Wilf to hospital. I’m going to find Tim if it kills me.” “Isn’t that rather the point, Doctor?” He shrugged. “Right now, for all I know, this might turn out to be my dehat, so let’s not worry. However, the Ood said Tim was ending and that doesn’t sound good for Tim, I can tell you. Now, get Wilf out of here, before Benton’s a murderer all over again.” “Again?” The Doctor nodded. “Well, I know nothing was ever proven, but have you seen The Ambassadors of DEATH?” “I beg your pardon?” Benton coughed. “The Doctor’s right – better get the poor old fellow out of here, sir.” * “That went well,” said Benny. “Congratulations, Brigadier!” Ace had joined them. “Look, this is nothing a can of nitro 9 couldn’t sort.” “We could try burning the script,” suggested the Delgado Master. As ever, this was dismissed as an evil plot. “Look,” said Ace, “I go in there, blow everything sky high, including Tim. Problem solved, right? I mean, the Doctor’s got other places he needs to be today.” The Simm Master gave another grin. “Oh, shut up,” said Benny, before he could open his mouth. “Ace, that is a spectacularly bad idea and I think we all know that. So, what the hell: why not?” After all, she thought, any minute now, the other Doctors would get wind of this, and then they’d probably start trying to correct the script or write in new sections and it’d be worse than her diary. She wasn’t even sure the spelling would be any better. * The motorbike skidded to a halt in the middle of the great hall. “What’s going on, Doc?” said Ace, hopping off, and over to him. He said, “Mmph.” She removed the gag. “Well,” he said, “I dunno. There’s some sort of giant healing agate over there and I’ve just been tied up and gloated at by some bloke called Mestar who actually isn’t the Master in disguise, which is a first, so blow me if I know. I still haven’t met anyone called Tim, either.” She said in a loud whisper, “Right, then, I’m going to blow the whole place to kingdom come and that’ll be the end of it.” “Can you do that?” “Try stopping me!” * At that moment, everyone else turned into Mestar, Ace included. “Nice try,” said the Doctor, to be fair. He had to admit he was getting a very bad feeling about this. * “That was well weird,” said Ace, on returning to the Round. “Anyone else want to have a go?” Benny paused. “Yes, because we haven’t demonstrated our combined incompetence sufficiently yet this evening.” “I daresay I could find some solution,” offered the original Master. “After all, it would be perfectly logical to assume this Mestar actually will turn out to be me. Therefore -.” Three, who had arrived by now, rounded on him. “Yes? And what would you do then? This is probably all your doing in the first place! What fiendish plot did you have in mind?” “My dear Doctor,” said his arch enemy, after paling slightly, “I treasure your high opinion of me, but do you really suppose me capable of writing anything this illiterate and incoherent?” He coughed. “No. Sorry, old fellow.” “Besides,” added Benny, “if he had, it’d have ‘BY COLONEL WILKIE CHARLES THACKERAY MAGISTER on the title page, or something equally obvious. Does anyone else have any ideas?” Three leant back in his chair. “Yes. You see, I thought -.” “No,” said everyone else as one. Jo patted his arm. “Not the Venusian aikido, Doctor. Not today.” “I was only going to suggest that we reversed the polarity of the neutron flow, thereby restoring the humans to their original selves -.” “What say you to a sonnet?” offered Will Shakespeare. “It could offer the good Doctor a brief respite.” “Well, you’d better hurry,” said Benny, “because Raddilob, Precedent of the Timw Lors is about to turn up and I’d imagine he’s not going to be in a good mood with that sort of spelling flying about.” * “So, Doctro,” growled Raddilob. “We meet again!” He thought about thought, screwing his face up. “Again? Because I don’t remember a Raddilob, and you’d think I would. Your first name’s not Tim, is it? If it is, I need to tell you that this might not be your day.” “You lie there, broken -.” The Doctor picked himself up and brushed the green strands from his clothes. “Yeah, off that, isn’t it, falling right throw a window and winding up covered in grass. Only goes to show what an odd place the universe is. Now, where were we?” “Doctor, you try my patients.” “Really?” “Yes. In fact, so much so, I am… feeling the sudden need to spout poetry?” “I’m sorry?” said Ten. “From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die…” He said, “Look, I only asked if you knew anyone called Tim who might be in trouble. There’s no need to go on about my old girlfriends. Or death for that matter. Sensitive subject right now. Honestly.” * “Oh, all right,” said Benny. “I suppose I’m the one who’s always rewriting things. I’d better go in. I’ll just stick a post-it note or two here and – wait a minute. That’s odd.” “What is it?” asked Ace. She turned the last sheet over. “I don’t think the writer actually got to the end of this draft…” * As Ten was about to ask Raddilob yet again if he knew anyone called Tim, the world went black briefly and he found himself back in the snow. “It was not yet finished,” said the Ood. “We are sorry.” Ten stared back at him. “What? Not *finished*? You mean… I’m going to DIE and I’m never even going to know who Tim was? Well, that’s not fair.” He found, as he spoke, that even the snow had faded away and he was back in the Round, lying on the floor, in the centre of an interested crowd. “Never mind,” said the Simm Master with a grin. “You wait till later. You’ll have a few billion of me to cheer you up. It’s gonna be fantastic.” He looked at Benny. “I can’t help,” she said. “I know I’ve got a reputation to keep up, but this is lemonade. Go on. It won’t kill you. Well, oops. Sorry. It will, but hey, you won’t have to deal with the return of alli8frey.” The Master smirked. “As for you,” said Benny, getting to her feet, “I see your destiny approaching.” His smile grew. “Yes,” she finished. “A big fat PLOT hole is going to swallow you. Could take *years* before they fish you out again.” * The Doctor was paying little attention to Professor Summerfield’s quashing of the Master. It was bad enough as it was, he thought, and now he’d been *spoilered* on top of everything else. Ten exited the Round in a black mood, ready to meet his fate. *** Thursday Next belongs to Jasper fforde Doctor Who etc to BBC, BBC Wales & BBC Worldwide. Benny to Virgin and Big Finish. For the rest, I blame Clocketpatch. ;-)