Four Doctors: Chapter 7

Takeshi Watanabe stood quietly at the TARDIS door, looking out at the blasted wasteland that just moments ago had been his hometown of Hiroshima, Japan. Rose stood by, wanting to say something but no words seemed appropriate to the moment. The Doctor glowered over the console, poking at buttons and frowning at readings. Finally he straightened up and strode briskly toward the door.

“Right. Let’s go,” he said to Rose.

“Where?”
 
“I’ve got a lock on the time-corridor. We’re going to check it out.”

“Doctor…” Rose gestured at Mr. Watanabe and at the scene beyond. “Shouldn’t we just leave well enough alone?”

“Someone who doesn’t belong here is already involving themselves in this. I’ve seen it happen countless times before, and it never ends well. Not unless I make it end well.”

He walked to the door, pausing at Takeshi’s shoulder. The two men stood a moment in silence, looking at the devastation. The Doctor put a hand gently on Takeshi’s arm. “Too much war,” he said. Takeshi nodded and followed numbly behind Rose and the Doctor.

They passed in silence through the crumbled burning ruins. Here and there a survivor would emerge to stagger away, or to wail pitifully over loved ones buried in the rubble -- or perhaps reduced to ashes in the street and a shadow burned into the wall. Many had been scarred, burned, some were barely recognizably human any more. If indeed there were such a thing as Hell, Rose thought, it couldn’t be worse than this.

She found that she had to keep reminding herself of the reality of the scene around her. This wasn’t a quick jaunt thousands of years to a distant future. It was only moments ago, in real-time, that this desolation had been a vibrant and active city. Too much time-travel, she supposed, could have a kind of numbing effect. She only had to look to Takeshi, to his reaction to the ruins that had been his home, to feel again the reality of it all.

And, just perhaps, to understand a little better why the Doctor wanted her tagging along on his travels.
The steady stream of survivors grew as they moved away from ground zero.

“Where are we going?” Rose asked.

The Doctor pointed several blocks up, at a stand of bamboo and trees that seemed to have been mostly spared.

“Asano Park,” Takeshi muttered to himself.

Rose looked around at the growing crowd around them. Many were already approaching the park, taking shelter within the greenery. “They’re all going there,” she observed.

The Doctor nodded. “Most of the survivors of the Hiroshima bombing end up there.”

“Right where someone put this time-corridor thing,” Rose completed his thought. He nodded grimly.

“There’s something very not right going on here,” he said.

< Chapter 8

Chapter 6 >

Chapter 1 >> 

Four Doctors: Chapter 6

“Doctor, are you sure we’ve even moved?” As far as Donna could tell, the rocky wasteland around them looked a lot like the rocky wasteland they had just left behind.

“Mmmm?” The Doctor was staring out past the horizon, lost in thought. “We’ve moved. That was Skaro. This is Gallifrey.”

“So is there a reason why half the planets we visit look like Beachfield Quarry in Sussex?”

“Hmm? Of course there is,” the Doctor said, then fell into a moody silence.

“Right,” Donna said. “That’s helpful. Thanks.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor replied, shaking off his mood. “Industrial civilizations throughout the universe may develop in an infinite number of different ways, but the devastation it leaves on their native ecosystem looks the same everywhere.”

“So we left that first place, Whadayacall…”

“Skaro,” the Doctor said. “Home planet of the Daleks.”

“Those metal things we saw back there?”

“Yes, those metal things that invaded your own planet not too long ago.”

“Did they?” Donna asked. “When was that?”

“It was right before you appeared on my TARDIS the first time. Surely you remember…?”

“Yah,” Donna replied. “Surely you remember I had a wedding to plan back then? Alien invasions were not a big concern of mine.”

“Clearly not,” the Doctor said. “So we’ve gone from Skaro…”

“Home planet of the Daklites, right.”

“Daleks,” the Doctor snapped. “The single most ruthless war machines in the known universe. And we’ve come here to my own home planet of Gallifrey…”

“Hang on now,” Donna said. “You told me your planet was destroyed.”

“Well it was,” the Doctor said.

“And it was time-locked, or something, so you could never go back.”

“It was,” the Doctor said.

“So how can we be there now?”

“That,” the Doctor replied, “is what I’d like to figure out.”

He pulled the gadgety device out of his coat pocket and began taking more readings. “That time corridor we blundered into seems to be transporting something from the Thall City of Skaro, where we were before …” He adjusted some dials and took a few more readings. “… to somewhere just over that rise over there.”

Donna had tuned out the Doctor’s speech and was surveying the scenery around them. 
“So I imagine it looked better before the big war, then?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “It always looked like this. My people call this the Wastelands.”

“Oh, there’s originality for you.”

“We’re scientists, not poets.”

“Obviously. Do you suppose anyone lives out around here?” Donna asked, looking around at the myriad caves in the surrounding rockface.

“Oh, quite a lot. We call them the Outsiders.”

“Of course you do.”

“But they’re not our concern right now,” the Doctor said, returning his attention to his gadgety device. “We’re far more concerned with who’s responsible for this time-corridor. And the Outsiders just don’t have the technology, the wherewithal, or, quite frankly, the interest.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would,” Donna quipped, but found the Doctor too engrossed in his readings to take notice of her acerbic wit. “So,” she went on, “I’ll just nip about and see what’s what, then.”

“Sure, fine,” the Doctor said absently.

“Maybe see what the natives are up to.”

“Jolly good. Enjoy yourself.”

Which left Donna with nothing better to do than to follow through on her bluff, even though the Doctor’s complete and utter failure to notice rather dampened the appeal.

Climbing to the top of the rise behind them, looking out over the barren landscape below, she saw an odd and oddly familiar blue box in the valley below. She turned back to look the way she had come – the Doctor was still engrossed in his work, and the TARDIS stood a few meters beyond, right where they had left it. She considered calling out to get the Doctor’s attention, then decided not to bother him. She set out down the hillside to investigate the duplicate TARDIS on her own.

< Chapter 7

Chapter 5 >

Chapter 1 >>

The Sacrament of Story

I found the following story on Facebook recently.

One day Buddha was walking through
a village. A very angry and rude young
man came up to him and began
insulting him.
"You have no right to be teaching
others!!!" he shouted.
"You are as stupid as everyone else.
You are nothing but a fake!!"
Buddha was not upset by these insults.
He just smiled. The man insulted him
again and again but the only reaction
he could get back from the Buddha
was a
smile and silence. Finally he stomped
his feet and left cursing.
The disciples were feeling angry and
one of the them couldn’t keep quiet
and asked the Buddha, “Why didn’t you
reply to the rude man?”
The Buddha replied, “If someone
offers you a gift, and you refuse to
accept it, to whom does the gift
belong?”
“Of course to the person who brought
the gift,” replied the disciple. “That is
correct,” smiled the Buddha.

I liked the story, so I "Facebook-liked" it and shared it. Though I'm Catholic rather than Buddhist, I felt this story was very much in keeping with my own ideals. Just change the character of the Buddha and it might as easily be a story out of the Gospels, or from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

But, as any writer can tell you, changing a character in a story ends up changing the story. Once I put St. Francis in the Buddha's role I came to realize how a Christian -- a true follower of Christ in the way that few besides Francis have ever managed -- would have handled the situation differently.

Francis would have upped the ante. He wouldn't have simply refused to accept the "gift" of Hate, but would have offered the gift of Love in exchange. Which, in turn, got me thinking about an interesting point of Catholic  theology. We are told that all religions, all traditions, point the way toward God. But it is only in Christ that we find the fullness of Truth. The Buddha's way in this story is good and wise, a challenge that most of us would not be up to. That's fine, as far as it goes. But Christ would have us take it that one step further.

Another story:

A young man approached Christ and asked, "What must I do to gain eternal life?"

In reply, Jesus turned the question back to him: "Why do you ask me? Do you not know the commandments?"

"I do," the young man insisted. "And I  try to live them every day!"

And Jesus looked at him with love. "Then only one thing remains," He said. "If you would be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor. Then come follow me."

In the Biblical version, the young man goes away sad because he has many possessions and is not ready to part with them. In the Franciscan version, Francis and his followers rejoice that their many possessions allow them to give generously to the poor.

A religion, any religion, is ultimately made up of the stories we tell ourelves. Stories which inspire, guide, help us make sense of the world we live in. Any story that pushes me or challenges me to improvement is a good story. Any religion that accepts such a story is a beneficial and important part of civilization.

Which is a large part of why, even with all the problems plauging the Church, I remain faithfully Catholic. This is where I mind Christ, where I meet Christ, where I take his stories and make them my own. With Christ, the journey takes a lifetime. Perfection is the goal, and there is always another step that can be taken toward that end.

Movie Musings: Lincoln

The biopic has never been my favorite form of filmmaking. Which is not to say I haven't enjoyed a good many of them -- it's just that, inevitably, somewhere along the way I find myself thinking that there is just too much material for the one movie to do justice to. If they could just narrow their focus, I find myself thinking, pick one pivotal moment of the person's life and make a really strong movie about that, then we might have a much stronger movie.Well, Steven Spielberg has actually gone and made that movie I've been wanting to see all this time, and making my point a lot more effectively than I ever could.

Lincoln avoids the ungainly biopic-sprawl by focusing its dramatic energies on a single point in history. In the time between his re-election and inauguration, President Lincoln is determined to push through Congress the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, thereby finishing what he had started with his Emancipation Proclamation, and fixing it as unassailable law. The politicking and backroom-dealing involved in making this happen provide the narrative momentum, through which the person and character of Abraham Lincoln is presented.

In this sense the screenplay, by award-winning playwright Tony Kushner, feels more like a stage-play than a movie. And that may be a big part of what makes the narrative work so well. The biopic is a kind of distant cousin to the Overwrought-Big-Budget-Epic, in the sense that both types of movie can fall into the trap of creating sprawling, elaborate, and ultimately unnecessary, set pieces just because they can. A stage drama, on the other hand, is often at its best when it does more with less -- finding ways to bring the larger story into the one episode, the one location, the one dramatic moment that marks a turning point. It is, perhaps, something of a lost art which screenwriters might do well to re-learn.

Four Doctors, Chapter 5

“Right. So. Let’s just review what we know, shall we?” The Doctor put on his best professorial airs, which still, he felt, didn’t quite fit this youthful and gangly new physique.

“Well I know nothing,” Rory offered. “Amy?”

“Nothing,” she agreed. “That about covers it.”

“Right,” Rory went on. “So really it’s more about you reminding us that you’re the only one here who really knows what’s going on.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” the Doctor said. “I may not look it, but I’m a lot older than you are, or were, before you became an Auton and spent two-thousand years … well never mind that right now, that’s not what’s important.”

He adjusted the overhead viewscreen. A vast network of time-corridors appeared as faintly glowing lines, all crisscrossed and radiating from a central point.

“Looks like a spider web,” Amy observed.

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “It is very much like a spider web. A spider web buried just below the topsoil, if you will, of spacetime. So an underground spider web … something like a trapdoor spider’s web, except nothing like that, really. It’s more like a cosmic system of gopher-holes. And we’re the big lumbering buffalo who’s gone and trod in the gopher-hole and got stuck, and swept away in the currents … you know, metaphors are rubbish for trying to explain a thing.”

“So what you’re saying,” Rory broke in, “is that it’s a lot of tunnels through spacetime, the TARDIS went and stumbled into it, and got swept off-course by it all.”

“That’s… well, yes.”

 The Doctor leaned in close to Amy and, in a loud stage-whisper, added, “I like this boy, Amelia. He’s definitely a keeper.”

“But what’s it all for?” Rory asked.

“Ah, well there’s the question.” The Doctor returned to studying the readouts on the console. “Unidirectional vortices… a very limited functionality… mostly works like a great big cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up stuff from all these endpoints and dropping it all here.” He finished with a finger planted at the center of the web on the screen.

“So what’s there?” Amy asked.

“Yes, exactly! What is there, and what does it want with all this out here, and why does it want so much of it, and what exactly does it intend to do with it all?”

“Again with the questions we can’t answer,” said Rory to Amy. “You notice how he does that?”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” said Amy. “And now he’ll dazzle us with answers we can’t really understand.”

Not quite yet,” the Doctor said. “First I need … if the Old Girl would be kind enough … to locate the when and the where for all these temporal points, and …” He was interrupted by a few petulant bleeps from the console. “I did ask nicely,” he shot back, and was answered by an indignant squonk. “Well then pretty-please. With sugar. And a dollop of honey too, if you like.”

Rory leaned in to Amy and asked, “Does he always talk to the equipment that way?”

“Like an old married couple,” Amy replied.

After a few more knob-twists, button-pokes, and bleeps and bloops, the Doctor straightened up and gave the console an affectionate pat.

“Thank you, Dear. Right,” he continued, turning to face the Ponds, “looks like someone is targeting all the worst, the most devastating, most brutally awful acts of war from throughout space and time, taking things from there and collecting them …” he squinted again at some readings, “… at some central point which does not actually register … not sure how they get in past the time-lock, though… someplace not within normal spacetime … or even within any of the standard varieties of abnormal spacetime, apparently.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Rory prompted.

“You know, my people had an old proverb; ‘All temporal vortices lead to Gallifrey.’ Which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem all that proverbial.”

“It probably loses something in translation,” Amy quipped.

“Not really,” the Doctor said. “My people were never very poetic.”

“Right, question,” Rory broke in. “I’m awfully curious about the ‘leads to Gallifrey’ part of all that.”

“Yes. Well. It looks like the only way we’ll get any real answers here is to break through the time-lock and visit my old home-planet to see what sort of new and unpleasant developments are now being infiltrated into the Last Great Time-War.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rory muttered.

< Chapter 6

Four Doctors: Chapter 4 >

Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors: Chapter 4

Darkness. The world, the universe, all is total darkness. Except, one wonders if darkness can even exist if light is … 

            <Pawn to E4.  Your response?>

            <Knight to C6.>

… if light is what? A distant memory? A half-remembered rumor? A myth?

            <Knight to F3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to E5.>

There are flashes, impressions of a world made up of images and material objects. Of days spent in shops or out of doors …

            <Bishop to B5.  Your response?>

            <Knight to F6.>

… and always a chessboard. Yes, the game was once played on a board, with pieces, with physical objects…

            <Bishop to A4.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to A6.>

… not simply the constant dry stream of information it has become …

            <King castles.  Your response?>

            <Bishop to E7.>

He remembers sitting in the park and enjoying a friendly game of chess with whomever happened by.  He wouldn’t even have minded losing …

            <Rook to E1.  Your response?>

            <King castles.>

…wouldn’t have minded losing once in a while.  Except, of course, he never did.  It was rare enough that he was ever truly challenged.

            <Bishop to B3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to B5.>

There was that one fellow … not very friendly.  Odd-looking, too … something in his eyes … something not natural …

            <Pawn to C3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to D6.>

This odd stranger, with the lifeless eyes … he sits down without so much as a how-do-you-do and starts a game …

            <Pawn to H3.  Your response?>

            <Knight to A5.>

… no chit-chat, just goes at his game like his whole life depends on it

            <Bishop to C2.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to C5.>

The stranger is good, he’ll give him that.  They play to a stalemate.  And for the first time, the stranger cracks a smile.

            <Pawn to D4.  Your response?>

            <Queen to C7.>

Not much of a smile, but it’s the first sign of humanity he’s shown.

The stranger stands, looks down at him. 

“You’ll do nicely,” the stranger says.

            <Knight to D2.  Your response?>

            <C pawn captures D4.>

It is his last memory of the place … of the life he once had…

            <C pawn captures D4.  Your response?>

            <E pawn captures D4.>

…or was it just a dream?

< Four Doctors: Chapter 5

Four Doctors: Chapter 3 > 

Four Doctors: Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors, Chapter 3 revised

This is a work in progress, and as such will probably be revised more often than not as I work through it. This particular chapter was tweaked in response to a few points a friend and fellow Whovian raised when I posted it before. It was the first instance, so far, where I realized I had to fix them early before getting too much further into the story. And so, here is the revised third installment of the Four Doctors.
 
The TARDIS landed with a solid “thunk”.  The Doctor frowned over the console readouts.

Rose tentatively loosened her grip on the support beam she’d been clinging to.  “Have we stopped?”

“Stopped?" The Doctor snorted something remarkably close to a laugh. "Relatively speaking, the entire Universe is expanding outward at a rate slightly greater than the speed of light. Nothing is ever 'stopped', really.” He gave her a quick glance, a spark of humor in his eye.  “But for now we're anchored to a planetary gravity well.  We’ve landed.”

“Landed where?” Rose joined him by the console to stare at a bank of blank screens.

 “Can’t say,” the Doctor mumbled, punching at some buttons and re-checked his readouts. “That jaunt through the time corridor fried a few circuits so I can’t get a reading.”  He poked in frustration at the controls once more. “We’ve set down just beyond the corridor’s terminus but where and when that is exactly …” he slammed his mallet into the readout panel and re-adjusted some dials, all to no avail. He turned and strode purposefully toward the door.  “We’ll have to go outside and get our bearings.”

“Is that safe?”

“Probably not,” he replied brightly, and threw open the door.

He stepped out and looked around to get a sense of the place.  They were in the middle of a city but somewhat removed from the bustle of downtown by a wide, slow moving river to his right.  The rising sun hung low in the sky to his left.  He took in the trees lining the streets and sniffed the air.

“Definitely Earth,” he said as Rose stepped up beside him. “Mid Twentieth-Century, I’d guess.  Late summer.  Some fifty years or so before your time.”  What he didn’t mention was a strong stench of death in the air.  They were in the middle of a war – one of the big ones, probably the second World War.

He strolled down to the edge of the river, nodding a greeting to a small, plump old man sitting contentedly at the riverbank, studying a chessboard set up beside him. He seemed to be waiting for someone to come along and join him. The man smiled and lifted his hat, reminding the Doctor of himself in a previous life -- not so very long ago, and yet it seemed so irretrievably distant.

“Nice day,” the Doctor observed, as he squatted beside the man and moved a black pawn on the chessboard. "Good day for a game."

“It is,” the man said with a grin.  “It is always a good day for chess.” He moved one of his own pawns in answer to the Doctor's opening.

“Good way to spend a morning,” the Doctor said. He shifted another piece on the board and settled to the ground.

“You speak Japanese,” the man observed as he made his next move. He seemed more intent on the conversation at this point than on the game.

“I do,” the Doctor replied.  It was technically true, and easier than trying to explain the TARDIS and its translation matrix.

“You’re not a spy, are you?” the man asked benignly.

“Why, are we at war?”

“I hope not,” the man said. He sighed heavily, shaking his head.  “Too much war.”

The Doctor nodded.  The two of them sat quietly, alternately staring out at the river and studying the chessboard between them.

There was a sense of deja-vu about this place. Not just the physical location, though it did seem familiar. But something niggled at his temporal senses. He suspected they were very near one of Earth's many unchangeable fixed points. World War II had more than its share, certainly, so maybe it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Still...

He was more and more convinced that they had just left behind an unexpected fixed point – it was the only explanation for the near-disaster when he’d let Rose change history and save her father’s life. Oh, sure it had been risky. And he had danced much closer to the edge with that one than he had ever done (intentionally) before. But even so...

Not to be immodest, but he is the Doctor, after all. He quite literally wrote the book on Advanced Temporal Manipulation (or at least, he had meant to but never quite got around to it. Although, he had come across the book once or twice in Gallifrey’s used-book stores, so he obviously wrote/would write it at some point.) He was the only Time Lord in recorded history to meet and interact with his own past and future selves. He simply didn’t make careless mistakes like that. No, he had to conclude that Rose Tyler and her family had a greater cosmic significance than he’d thought.

And now he’d discovered a time corridor playing about the edges of another fixed point. Whatever was going on here, it could not be good.

Rose sat down beside the Doctor and watched his dark brooding for a bit. Then she turned to the other man.

"Hi! I'm Rose."

The Japanese grinned and tipped his hat in a way she found charmingly old-fashioned. "I am Takeshi Watanabe," he replied. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Rose. And he ... he is Thorn?"

Rose laughed at that. She bumped the Doctor playfully with her shoulder. "Ah, the Doctor's not so bad once you get to know him."

"Nah," the Doctor said. "Once you get to know me I'm much worse." He moved a bishop, but continued to be distracted by a vague unease about his surroundings.

Rose reclined on the grass, gazing up at the early morning sky. Mr. Watanabe brought one of his knights into play on the board. He leaned in toward Rose to speak confidentially, but loud enough for the Doctor to hear.

"Your friend, Doctor Thorn, he is trying to checkmate in six moves."
 
"Not trying," the Doctor said, flashing a toothy grin and shifting a rook into position. "I don’t try, I do."

"Today you do not," said Mr. Watanabe with a grin, as one of his pawns came forward to guard the square the Doctor had been headed toward.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in appreciation. "Impressive," he said. He brought a knight into play. "This game might actually take me ten moves."

"You play well," Takeshi said with a grin, as he moved a bishop off to the sidelines. "But I think perhaps you do not play quite so well as you think."

"You're probably right," the Doctor said with a grin as he repositioned his rook. "But near enough. I play to win."

"I also play to win," replied Takeshi, as he moved his knight. "And you are in check."

The Doctor stared, slack-jawed, at the chessboard. "Fantastic," he enthused.

"Doctor," Rose interrupted, still looking toward the sky.

But the Doctor ignored her, intent on retracing Takeshi's moves on the chessboard. "This is really something," he gushed.

"Doctor," Rose repeated, more urgently.

"I mean I'll still win," the Doctor went on, "but I haven't had a challenge like this since, I don't remember when."

"Doctor!"

"What, Rose?"

"Well I was just thinking it seems strange that that's the first airplane I've seen all morning, and it might be worth pointing out to you, is all."

"Yes, well. There's a war on, you know, and..." The Doctor paused a moment and followed her gaze skyward. "Bloody hell!"

Suddenly the Doctor was pulling her to her feet and propelling her up the hill. "Get back to the TARDIS!"

"Doctor," she called breathlessly as she ran. "...Doctor, we... this is..."

"Back to the TARDIS!"

As she reached the top of the hill, the Doctor grabbed her hand and pulled her roughly across the lawn. She stumbled in through the TARDIS door and collapsed to catch her breath. The Doctor had only just got the doors shut when the world outside exploded into a blinding white-hot light. She could feel the TARDIS around her shudder as if it were buffeted by strong winds.

"Doctor..." Rose turned on him. "He was out there!"

"Yeah," the Doctor growled. "Him and a hundred-thousand like him. Ordinary people, living their ordinary lives, in Hiroshima, Japan. They all die today, and there is not a bloody thing we can do about it."

"But Doctor...!"

"You think I like it? I hate it. With every fiber of my being I hate it. But I can't change it."

"So," a soft-spoken voice behind them broke in. They turned to see Takeshi Watanabe, gazing around him at the TARDIS console room. "So this box of yours ... it is bigger than it looks."

< Four Doctors: Chapter 4

Four Doctors: Chapter 2 >

Four Doctors: Chapter 1 >>