Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by Adams, Douglas

‘You’re still under their control?’ he whispered to her.

  She nodded.

  ‘And you haven’t, by any chance, bypassed it and done something really clever like secretly jettisoning that vault of five million Krikkitmen?’

  Romana winked.

  The Doctor relaxed.

  Romana punched him fondly on the arm. ‘Of course not, silly. The Krikkitmen are now stowed safely aboard the Pavilion.’

  ‘You’re being such a tinker,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘I know,’ replied Romana.

  She opened the TARDIS doors. A group of Krikkitmen marched through. They didn’t even glance at the Doctor. They simply swept past him and into the Pavilion.

  The Doctor peaked out through the doors. Shada looked terribly quiet and empty. ‘When they find out the Krikkitmen have gone missing, the Time Lords are going to be ever so cross,’ he remarked.

  ‘When they find out, it’ll be too late,’ said Romana. She closed the doors and began to set the controls.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘To the asteroid that holds the Lock,’ Romana said. She set the controls with distressing ease. ‘We now have the entire Wicket Gate. We’re going to release the planet Krikkit from its prison. And then we’re going to complete our war. And this time we’re going to wipe out the Universe.’

  ‘I see. I realise the odds are five million to one against me—’

  ‘5,000,020 to be precise.’

  ‘Thank you. But you can’t go taking over my ship. The controls are isomorphic, you know. They simply won’t work for anyone else.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Romana grinned. ‘They barely work for you.’

  She flicked a final switch and the TARDIS lurched off into the Vortex.

  The Doctor allowed himself a sigh.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  REGRETTABLE ACTS BETWEEN THE SWIMMING POOL AND THE CAR PARK

  The TARDIS dragged itself unwillingly onto the surface of the Asteroid of the Wicket Gate. It really wasn’t a place anyone dropped by. Although it had been the site of the end of an ancient war, that war was nearly forgotten. Forgotten in such a carefully guided way that, even though the asteroid offered rather sweeping views of the nearby Dust Cloud, no one had ever thought to go there to look at them. There had been some talk of building a Garden of Peace around the Wicket Gate, but, as the wicket had long ago been stolen, that had fizzled out. The asteroid was purposeless and abandoned. The exception to this (and there is always an exception) was the hotel that someone had built there. The Hotel of the Asteroid of the Gate sat off to one side of the monument. For some reason, all its rooms faced sternly away from the Dust Cloud. There wasn’t even a picture of the Dust Cloud in the lobby, nor had anyone ever thought to ask for one. One of the reasons for this was that no one had ever stayed there.

  The TARDIS arrived in the shuttle park. The shuttle park had been broken up into individual bays by neat yellow lines, which the TARDIS delighted in ignoring as it bellowed into being. It didn’t care if everyone knew it was having a particularly bad day, and was just dying for someone to ask how it felt.

  A moment later, the Krikkit Pavilion appeared beside it. It parked itself very neatly between two yellow lines. The front of the Pavilion opened and twelve Krikkitmen marched out across the shuttle park.

  The TARDIS door opened. The Doctor was pushed out. Romana strode behind him.

  ‘See Doctor, the ultimate triumph of the Krikkitmen!’ exulted Romana.

  ‘Oh, I do wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’ The Doctor pulled his hat down over his forehead. It was one thing when supervillains used the imperative tense. It was quite another when your best friend did it. He always wondered what it was about the imperative tense and plans for universal conquest. It was always ‘Behold!’ this and ‘Tremble!’ at that. It reminded him of tour guides. He always enjoyed forming his own opinions, and was less than likely to adopt those of someone shouty in a cloak.

  He’d wondered sometimes about popping back along a villain’s timeline to find out at what precise moment they went from ‘Daddy, please come and have a look at this!’ to ‘Kneel before my finger painting!’ There’d certainly be a monograph in it, or, at the very least, a good long lunch with Dr Spock.

  Romana was still banging on, bless her. ‘The apotheosis of the Krikkitmen dawns!’ she thundered.

  You’re going to feel so embarrassed about this when you’re back in your right mind, the Doctor thought. That was the other thing about villains. They delighted in reaching up to the top shelf for their vocabulary. When they weren’t issuing commands they were wheeling out grandiose Scrabble-dodgers like ‘Ascendancy’ and ‘Denouement’ which made you fear for how they ordered their breakfast eggs.

  In reality, all that was happening was that a dozen Krikkitmen were marching across the shuttle park. An auto-bellboy had poked his head excitedly out of the abandoned hotel reception, then whipped it back inside again. Either a race memory had been triggered, or he knew to recognise a non-paying guest when he saw one.

  What was taking place in the hotel grounds might have been ceremonial, and even slightly chilling, if it hadn’t been happening by an empty swimming pool. The Krikkitmen held aloft the various components of their masters’ ancient prison lock – rebuilding the Wicket Gate – a tripod of, now you looked at it, ancient and foreboding power.

  They strode beyond the swimming pool and the artificial palm trees, to a point where the rocky desolation had been smoothed over just a little. And then one of the Krikkitmen turned to face the Doctor and Romana. It nodded.

  ‘The arising approaches,’ Romana intoned. ‘It has been decreed that there shall be witnesses.’

  ‘Oh good. I’d figured it was either going to be that or sacrifices,’ the Doctor replied. ‘You’re not really an impartial witness at the moment, though. You’ll just witter on about glorious ascendancy and so on. You may even applaud, and that would be tasteless.’

  Romana glared at the Doctor. ‘Quail before the might of Krikkit,’ she announced, a little hesitantly, and then blinked.

  She looked around herself and blinked some more.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Doctor, we’re no longer on Bethselamin. Is that a good thing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did we defeat the Krikkitmen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which is why they’re standing by that swimming pool?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is the reason why I can’t remember anything that I was under their control?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh dear. Did I say anything stupid?’

  ‘No,’ the Doctor lied.

  ‘That’s something. I take it we’re not about to heroically defeat them?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing up your sleeve?’

  ‘Not even a handkerchief.’

  The Doctor pointed up at the skies between them and the Dust Cloud. ‘Somewhere out beyond that Dust Cloud is the planet of Krikkit. Shielded in Slow Time. Invisible from the Universe. Just as they like it. Sadly, their robots don’t see it that way. It has remained invisible and isolated for two million years.’

  ‘Or, as far as they’re concerned, five years,’ Romana calculated. ‘Not an encouraging amount of time for much cultural progress towards accepting the rest of existence.’

  ‘Not so much, no.’

  Romana surveyed the hotel grounds. The Krikkitmen were all stood around a patch of rock. At a signal, they raised up the trident. It glowed.

  ‘Glowing ancient artefact,’ noted Romana. ‘Rarely a good thing.’

  ‘Rarely.’

  A plinth rose from the rock, sending lava-spewing cracks racing towards the swimming pool. A Krikkitman marched onto the stone altar. A glowing crystal cylinder unscrewed itself from the plinth, rising gently up. It caught and reflected the Dust Cloud. There was an air of racy daring about the cylinder that said ‘Go on then.’

  The Krikkitman plunged
the trident into the crystal, the three prongs vanishing into slots made for them. When it had sunk into the tip, the Krikkitman twisted the handle, and the crystal began to hum.

  There are various kind of hums. The control room of the TARDIS has a hum which says, ‘It’s all going to be fine.’ An Earth microcomputer has a hum about it which says, ‘Not now, I’m busy doing something more important.’ And ancient deadly artefacts tend to emit the sort of hum that says, ‘Run.’

  The hum turned into a malignant pulse.

  The wonderfully pointless Hotel of the Asteroid of the Gate ceased to exist in a flash. So too did most of the nearby Krikkitmen. A beam shot into the vast spaces between the asteroid and the Dust Cloud. For a moment nothing was there. And then a star appeared burning inside it. And, circling it, the planet of Krikkit.

  Its reappearance didn’t really warrant the soaring voices of the remaining Krikkitmen chanting the planet’s name, although they did it anyway.

  The planet of Krikkit was back.

  As the planet moved towards them, more and more Krikkitmen filed from the Pavilion, until all five million and change stood there, gazing up at the giant, chanting its name.

  The Doctor, when he spoke, did so in a murmur. ‘That vast army?’

  ‘Did I by any chance release them?’

  ‘We’ll get to that later,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘But don’t they seem a little distracted?’

  ‘I would be too,’ Romana whispered. ‘I’ve just been given everything I wanted and now I’m free to destroy the Universe again.’

  ‘They’re listening to something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s find out later. The TARDIS is just over there. I think we should run for it.’

  The Krikkitmen remained grouped around the glowing pillar. Above them the sky continued to glow as the planet of Krikkit swung closer and closer.

  The Doctor paused in the TARDIS doorway. ‘Bye then,’ he said to them, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. The Doctor was very worried indeed.

  The small blue box left the asteroid in a hurry.

  Deep inside the TARDIS, the Doctor sat on a deckchair in his workshop. K-9 was perched upside down on his lap.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ Romana asked.

  ‘Well, perhaps you lot shouldn’t have hit him so hard,’ the Doctor muttered through his screwdriver.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Romana, and then couldn’t resist, ‘You’re tightening the mergin nut the wrong way.’

  ‘Am not,’ said the Doctor, and promptly started turning the nut the other way.

  Romana brought the Doctor his tea in a chipped tin mug, then poured hers into a blue china cup. ‘It’s not been a particularly good day, has it?’

  The Doctor searched blindly around for a custard cream. Romana nudged the plate nearer to him.

  ‘Really, you know, I can mend him,’ she said.

  The Doctor looked up from the dog’s traction engine. ‘I’ve got the hang of it by now.’ The traction engine burst into flame. He hastily put it out.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Romana insisted. ‘I’m no longer under the control of the Krikkitmen.’ She paused, rather defeated. ‘You really can trust me.’

  ‘Of course I trust you,’ the Doctor muttered, slurping his tea.

  ‘And anyway, if I was still controlled by the Krikkitmen, then I’d have poisoned your tea.’

  The Doctor choked.

  Romana leant back in her deck chair, dropped a slice of lemon into her cup, and took a delicate sip.

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor eventually, ‘you could just have a look at his sensor probe.’

  ‘Delighted,’ Romana smiled.

  They were back in the control room a few minutes later. The revived K-9 was carrying out a survey of damage to the console. The Doctor had pulled up the planet of Krikkit on the screen.

  ‘Just to summarise,’ he said. ‘We’ve let a team of Krikkitmen reassemble the key to their planet’s prison, we’ve freed five million more of them from stasis, and they’ve brought their home world back into existence. At which point, there’s nothing to stop them from replaying their universal war.’

  ‘I’m very sorry about all that,’ said Romana sheepishly. ‘Not only a not particularly good day, but a long one too.’

  The Doctor bowed his head. ‘Yes,’ he said solemnly. ‘And it’s not over yet.’ He twisted the scanner to one side. The Krikkit Pavilion hung in space, shimmering. It multiplied into an armada of ships.

  ‘How do we stop them?’

  ‘We don’t.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘I’ve stopped the odd army. I’ve diddled the occasional battle fleet. But that is an unstoppable force. And they know how good they are – they didn’t even bother killing me. They let me go. That’s how little I matter to them.’ He sucked a thumb. ‘I should feel a little insulted. Actually, I do. I feel a lot insulted.’

  K-9 bumped against his knee. It must be quite something if even his dog felt sorry for him.

  There was one chance. The Krikkitmen hadn’t begun their onslaught against existence. They were waiting for something.

  The Doctor twisted the scanner back to Krikkit, and tapped the planet on the screen inside its Dust Cloud. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to ignore them back. We’ll head to the planet Krikkit.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Romana said. ‘But those people hate all other life. You’re not just going to get a bad reception before you win them over with your bashful charm. They’ll tear us apart as soon as we land.’

  ‘I know.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘And I’m scared stiff. But it’s our only chance to stop the Krikkitmen. We’re going to go to Krikkit and we’re going to reason with them.’

  ‘That always works with genocidal maniacs,’ Romana said softly.

  ‘Otherwise the Universe is doomed.’ The Doctor flashed her his broadest grin. ‘I love a tough crowd. If we’re to stand a chance of saving existence, we’re going to go to Krikkit and make them change their minds.’

  And so they did.

  PART TWO

  ‘There’s a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.’

  William Shakespeare

  ‘List of Galaxies

  ‘This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it.’

  Wikipedia

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  FROM A TO NOT TO BE

  For once, Romana was hoping the Doctor would miss. He’d insisted on setting the controls for Krikkit, his face grim. It was a relatively simple journey, but that had never stopped the Doctor from pinging off somewhere else entirely.

  Maybe, just this once, that would be nice. A war was about to break out across the stars, and the Doctor had never struck Romana as good at wars. Handy in a skirmish, brilliant at a coup, but not suited for the battlefield. For one thing, wars required patience. If you wanted to win a war, you had to put the hours in. She tried to imagine the Doctor on sentry duty, guarding a gun post. She saw the Doctor making a catalogue of local birdlife, repainting the bunker, planting some tulips and maybe putting up a hammock. She did not see him manning a battle station. He’d probably leave K-9 to do the guarding and go fishing.

  The people of Krikkit were also going to go against his nature. The Doctor liked to be liked. He was needy. He enjoyed annoying pompous people, making guards laugh, and winning nice people over. The problem was that there were going to be no nice people on Krikkit. The Krikkitas weren’t just immune to the Doctor’s charms, they were allergic to them.

  She wondered how he’d cope when it all went wrong for him. She pictured the smile sliding off his face. It wasn’t going to be good. He’d be genuinely upset. He might even resort to card tricks, and they never went down well.

  When the Doctor set the TARDIS controls, she hoped they’d arrive somewhere else. He’d be cross about it, for a bit, but then he’d be bound to get into trouble.
There’d be villains to laugh at, cells to escape from, and clever serving girls to win over. He’d enjoy himself, so long as Romana could keep him from noticing the stars going out across the sky.

  The TARDIS plummeted through the vortex, and Romana started to calculate the end of pi from where she’d last left off. They seemed to be travelling for quite a while. She risked feeling hopeful. She watched the central column of the TARDIS’s controls rise and fall, like a great glass bicycle pump puffing them through eternity. Just a few more goes and they’d be well away.

  The column fell and went dark.

  Was she imagining it, or had the TARDIS gone cold as well?

  She shivered.

  ‘Krikkit,’ the Doctor announced.

  There are rules to exploring strange new worlds. The Doctor habitually ignored all of them. He preferred to throw open the doors and bound out whistling. Perhaps he’d be in a jungle, perhaps he’d be facing a forest of spears, but it would all work out in the end.

  For once the Doctor paused before opening the doors. ‘We don’t know what it’s like out there. We’ve only seen the grim bits. For all we know, Krikkit is a bucolic paradise. It was supposed to be quite leafy.’

  He strode out the door and into a grey concrete wall. He edged nervously past it. Romana squeezed out after him, and left K-9 to glide out in a complicated three-point turn that would have made a driving instructor applaud.

  The TARDIS had sighed onto a grey street, full of grey walls forming grey houses. It was all thoroughly depressing.

  ‘This is worse than Mareeve.’

  ‘Do you think I should change?’ asked Romana. ‘Into something grey?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said. ‘We may win them over.’

  ‘Being wilfully conspicuous just makes us easier to shoot at,’ she retorted.

  The Doctor sniffed. ‘Do you think even their death rays are grey?’

  K-9 glided ahead. His body merged into the drabness of the road. He seemed quite happy with this development. It might be useful if he was able to camouflage himself.