Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by Adams, Douglas

  Marvellous shots of exploding spaceships etc.

  Hactar says, ‘No, failure doesn’t bother me.’

  The Doctor says, ‘You know what I’ve come to do?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Hector. ‘You’re going to disperse me. You are going to destroy my consciousness. Please be my guest. After all these eons oblivion is all I crave. If I haven’t already fulfilled my function, then it’s too late now. Oh, and congratulations on your destruction of my Krikkitmen. Very elegantly executed I thought. Good night.’

  The Doctor bows and floats back into the Tardis. The mirage fades behind him. The Tardis doors close. The Tardis begins to vibrate and give off some kind of kinetic energy. The Dust Cloud slowly begins to disperse. We still hear Hactar’s voice, muttering to himself as he gradually fades into oblivion.

  ‘What’s done is done … I have fulfilled my function …’

  Later, the Tardis materialises on the Asteroid. Jane and the Doctor have come to collect the wooden stump from the Key, in order to return it to the MCC. They take it, and then gaze at the planet of Krikkit in the distance,

  ‘Is it safe now?’ asks Jane.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says the Doctor. ‘Hactar is gone for ever. The Krikkitas will quickly adjust to a normal way of life. They are no longer isolated.’

  Back in the Tardis they ceremonially burn the cricket stump again, and put it in its Urn. The Doctor speculates as to whether the MCC would regard the theft of the Ashes or the annihilation of the Galaxy as the greater catastrophe.

  Jane suggests that perhaps they ought to be kind and hop back in time a couple of days in time to the moment they originally left and therefore return the Ashes immediately.

  The Doctor says that that is strictly against Time Law, but since it is the Ashes after all it probably won’t hurt. Just this once.

  LORD’S: We see the Doctor and Jane enter the Tardis and leave. A few seconds later the Tardis rematerialises in a slightly different spot, and the Doctor and Jane emerge holding the Urn of the Ashes.

  This is almost the last straw for some of the people standing on the pitch.

  The Doctor however is all smiles. He explains that they can have the Ashes back now because the Universe has been saved.

  The Cricketers are confused but grateful.

  The Doctor says it’s always been an ambition of his to bowl a ball at Lord’s, and would they mind awfully? There is reluctant agreement, and a batsman who has been sitting on the ground with his head between his hands stands and walks to the wicket. The Doctor turns and walks away in preparation for bowling. He puts his hand in the pocket he put his souvenir ball in, and takes it out. He doesn’t look at it.

  He starts his run up. As he picks up speed the batsman raises his eyes.

  He is a particularly evil looking Krikkitman.

  Film goes into very slow notion. Register horrified look on Doctor’s face. We hear phrases echoing through his mind.

  ‘Just hop back in time a couple of days’

  ‘Against Time Law’

  He is trying to stop himself, but he is held in thrall by the Krikkitman’s gaze. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the distinctive markings on the ball he is holding.

  It is a Supernova Bomb.

  More phrases echo through his mind.

  HACTAR: Have I failed? Failure doesn’t bother me.

  ELDER: How can you be sure you aren’t being manipulated as well?

  HACTAR: I would honestly rather like to wipe out the Galaxy.

  JANE: Hop back a couple of days in time.

  HACTAR: If I haven’t already fulfilled my function, it’s too late now.

  Yes, I have made one or two little things.

  I have fulfilled my function.

  I have fulfilled my function …

  The bomb leaves the Doctor’s hands and floats in slow notion down the pitch. The Doctor doesn’t stop running.

  Triumph gleams in the Krikkitman’s eye as he raises the bat to swing.

  The ball starts to glow and flash. It is quite clearly the real thing this time.

  The ball bounces in front of the Krikkitman and spins at an unexpected angle, under the swinging bet. It nicks a bail off the wicket and drops neatly into the wicket keeper’s hands.

  Return to normal speed.

  The Doctor has continued running and reaches the Krikkitman at the moment that it is too astonished to react.

  He seizes the bat from him, and swinging it desperately knocks off the Krikkitman’s head.

  The Umpire buries his face in his hands.

  The Doctor takes the bomb from the wicket keeper.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘I’ve just saved the Universe.’

  ‘Again?’ says somebody weakly.

  Jane runs up to him. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘This is the real Supernova Bomb,’ says the Doctor. ‘Hactar put it together himself and left it in my pocket whilst distracting me with friendly chat. If the Krikkitman had hit it, that really would have been it I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well it’s very lucky he missed,’ says Jane.

  ‘Luck?’ exclaims the Doctor? ‘Luck had nothing to do with it. That was one of my super top spun googlies.’

  He picks up the Krikkitman’s head.

  ‘It would take more than one of these sub-meson hyper-computer brains to work out how that ball was going to bounce. I mean I didn’t even know myself …’

  APPENDIX 3

  THE KRIKKITMEN – SARAH JANE SMITH VERSION (AN INTRODUCTION)

  CHAPTER 1

  It was an ordinary day, even by the standards of Ealing. The suburbs of London have a proud tradition of edging away from any form of excitement, and that definitely includes London itself. They drown out the frantic hubbub of the city with shrubbery and roses and long leafy lanes along which dogs can be walked.

  She was walking her dog. She did this discreetly, politely and with the minimum of fuss, which was quite surprising given that her dog was, very firmly, a robot dog. She had been given the dog a long time ago as a going-away present, or, equally possibly as an apology, or, indeed, as an apology for going away. Vanishing was her best friend’s way of apologising. Actually, it was the way he dealt with most things. Birthdays, weddings, Christmases, and, these days, funerals – all these, he had a remarkable knack of missing. The one exception, the one thing he was guaranteed to turn up for, was the end of the Universe.

  But today, as always, Ealing felt a long way away from the end of the Universe. Autumn leaves fell with a gentle hush, conkers plonked from trees knowing they would never be fought over, and birds whispered ringtones to each other.

  She rather enjoyed the fellowship of dog walkers, a polite society of nodding. Coming to small talk late in life, she was rather enjoying it. As a crusading reporter, she’d honed the art of the razor-sharp question. As a time traveller she’d only ever asked about the weather when a sun was exploding. But now she delighted in gathering up ‘Well, you know’s and ‘Mustn’t grumble’s and ‘Probably rain on Wednesday’s.

  Walking her dog across the common, she felt invisible yet welcome. Only one person had ever even asked why her dog was made out of metal. It was a little old lady who had, with a weary ‘so, it has come to this’ tone, enquired if it was made in Taiwan. She’d shaken her head, and the old lady had just nodded, tutted and walked on.

  The placid calm of it all was so very reassuring. Normally. Today, she found it oddly stifling. She threw sticks for her dog to retrieve (he ignored them), she chatted with him about stock prices (he enjoyed this), and every now and then, a passing stranger would tell her something obvious about the weather. The trees closed in around her, forming an endless avenue of people walking their dogs and gradually fading away.

  ‘I’m bored, K-9,’ said Sarah Jane Smith.

  The dog did not reply.

  ‘I’m old, K-9.’

  The dog glided on.

  Sarah kicked at some leaves. They settled firmly back into place. She looked around at
the placid autumn scene and, with a chill of more than October, she knew it was mocking her.

  ‘Nice day for it,’ said a retired accountant with a Doberman.

  ‘I’ve been to Betelgeuse,’ Sarah told him.

  ‘Lovely this time of year,’ the man said, and let himself be led away.

  Sarah caught up with her robot dog. He was waiting patiently for her by the recycling bins. He wished her to correctly file some stray tin cans that had somehow ended up among the glassware. He was most insistent.

  She fished around in the bin, hoping that the cans had been rinsed. They had not.

  ‘I once fought the anti-matter monster of Zeta Minor,’ she said, wiping her hands on the frozen grass.

  Again, the dog did not reply.

  Sarah Jane Smith stood by the bins and felt utterly wretched. As she straightened up, there was a tightness in her back, or was it her chest? What if I just drop dead, right here, right now? She’d once thought that the last thing she saw would be a sky full of exploding battle fleets, but would her last view really be of some bollards and a distant corner shop?

  She was leaning against the bin, and a robot dog was nudging against her leg. This really, really wouldn’t do.

  Sarah Jane Smith took a breath and hoped for something better.

  Something better roared out of thin air.

  It was a battered blue box that carefully managed to look completely, ridiculously at home on Ealing Common. A friendly light shone from the roof of it, which was decorated with the words ‘POLICE BOX’, which seemed absurd until you looked at them and then realised that they were precisely perfect.

  The door opened and a scarf – no, an explosion of curls – no, a swirling coat – no, a massive smile – bounded out.

  ‘Sarah Jane Smith!’ cried her best friend, grabbing her in a hug so cheery it had made Sontarans chuckle.

  ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘Is the Universe ending?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ he laughed.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘You’ve brought me to a cricket match?’ Sarah Jane Smith exclaimed.

  ‘Hush.’ The Doctor looked around furtively. This was strange. The Doctor was never furtive. This was a man who even sauntered through minefields. But right now he had the guilty expression of someone caught roasting next door’s budgerigar.

  The Doctor had promised her the end of the Universe. Instead, he’d brought her to Lord’s Cricket Ground. The seats around them were crowded with greasy-looking bankers treating each other to corporate hospitality. Further below was a sea of middle-aged men trying to get sunburn. Adrift in the middle of it was the occasional Colonel, completing the Times crossword with the help of a thermos flask of tea, soup or gin. All of human life was here – if your definition of human life was really very narrow.

  To give the Doctor credit, he’d got them very good seats. Sarah Jane Smith had a splendid view of the pitch – a strip of grass as cossetted as a rich old lady on life support. Dancing around it were two teams of men in spotless cricket whites, looking like fastidious knights who’d ordered their armour with a high thread count. Occasionally one player would throw a small red ball at another. Sometimes they’d hit it away from them. Sometimes they wouldn’t. Often nothing at all would happen.

  Cricket was the most English invention imaginable. As if a prep school teacher had tried to demonstrate eternity.

  Sarah sipped at some ginger beer the Doctor had handed her. ‘I don’t like cricket,’ she announced.

  To her surprise, the Doctor had shuddered. ‘Neither do I,’ he’d said.

  It was turning out to be a very surprising day.

  Sarah would have liked to have taken the reappearance of her oldest friend in her stride. His time machine did have a habit of tumbling out of nowhere at her. But recently he’d been wearing a lot of quite extraordinarily different bodies. There was the one in the smoking jacket who’d taken her hiking through a lethal version of the Lake District. There was the nice young man who’d kept saying sorry. The boy wonder who’d invited her to his funeral. The grumpy one who’d bought her tea in Debenhams and criticised the jam. She’d even bumped into a scampering clown who’d gasped in mock horror and announced firmly that one of them shouldn’t be there. She’d firmly pointed at the alien craft hovering above London at the time and icily suggested that perhaps that was really the interloper. He’d accepted her point and scurried away.

  It wasn’t exactly as though the Doctor had left her alone. But it had been ever such a long time since she’d seen her Doctor. The one she felt she truly belonged with. The one who’d abruptly shoved her out the door one day in a cul-de-sac near Aberdeen.

  But there he was. Acting like he’d never left. Hair a bit wilder, scarf a bit tamer. The only thing that had been the same was his casual knack for averting apocalypse. To the Doctor, it was as though they were just popping down the shops for milk, only he liked shops and he really loved milk.

  When they’d hurtled through the Time Vortex, he’d just beamed at her – she couldn’t decide if it was because he’d missed her or because he was just in a beaming mood. K-9, bless him kept trying to interrupt, but the Doctor dropped to his knees and shushed him. ‘Not now, K-9. We’re having a moment, aren’t we, Sarah?’

  And they were. Sarah Jane Smith was never lost for words, but just right now her brain kept thinking that the right thing to say was a wordless croak. If a croak could convey surprise, wonder, love, annoyance, and a tiny pinch of fear, then that was the noise she was making. Only a croak can’t do that. A croak is just a croak.

  The Doctor looked at her and nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ he said. The three words she’d waited decades for him to say. He then immediately ruined the moment. ‘You sound parched. I’d offer you water but we’ve only got tea. Never mind. Plenty of both on tap where we’re going.’

  Sarah’s brain told her to make the croak again.

  ‘The end of the Universe,’ the Doctor laughed again, dancing round the controls of his time machine. In theory it could hurl them back to the Big Bang, but the whole get-up looked like someone had set up home in a hospital boiler room. Take the controls – a large bank of dials and switches with a drum in the middle which churned and spun – for all the world like an industrial washing machine. All it was lacking was a pair of socks and some Y-fronts.

  Sarah’s croak turned into a giggle. She’d forgotten how much she’d missed this place.

  ‘The end of the Universe,’ she repeated, her tone exactly mocking his.

  ‘We need to dress for it,’ the Doctor said solemnly. ‘I’ve been reading up.’

  K-9’s ears twitched, but the Doctor ignored them.

  ‘Ties must be worn,’ the Doctor announced solemnly, handing her one. He tried looping one around his own neck and immediately made a tangle of it. She noticed his tie read ‘Women’s Institute Champion Bread Makers’ and she glanced hastily at hers. It merely contained an offensive mixture of spots.

  She tried asking him where he’d got them from, but her brain again croaked. Luckily her arms were flapping up and down and the Doctor clearly hadn’t forgotten how to read them.

  ‘“Where are we going?” and “Why do we need ties?”’ the Doctor interpreted as the TARDIS roared to an abrupt halt. He opened the doors. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

  And he’d taken her to that cricket match.

  The TARDIS had bellowed into the Members’ Enclosure like a tipsy colonel. The apparition was greeted with alarm and surprise, which was rapidly transferred to the Doctor’s appearance.

  There were times when the Doctor looked like a champion of eternity. Sarah Jane had seen giant green blobs suddenly look at their floor with all 100 of their eyes. The Ninth Sontaran Battle Brigade had remembered an urgent call they just had to make. The Kraals had muttered something about having to write their Christmas thank-you letters.

  There were times when the Doctor was precisely that wonderful. And then there were others when he just looked insane. W
hat are we like? thought Sarah Jane miserably. He was an explosion in plum woollens. She had, after all, been walking her dog, and so she was dressed in the sort of baggy casual things one was allowed to wear only when walking a dog or washing a car. They were confronted by an army of disapproving sports jackets. Someone said very loudly, ‘Well really!’ Someone else cried, ‘Disgraceful!’

  Sarah Jane Smith wondered if they were going to be booed.

  The Doctor faced the deadly tide of tweed and felt the full blistering force of middle-aged disapproval. It was quite something. Nevertheless, he fished about in his pocket and flashed a crumpled card.

  ‘I’m the Doctor,’ he announced grandly with only the slightest of hesitations. ‘This is Sarah Jane Smith. We’re from the MCC.’

  Sarah, along with most of the front row of sports jackets, squinted dubiously at the card. It was signed by W.G. Grace. The date read 1877.

  The card allowed them grudging access to the cornucopia of the hospitality suite. This amounted to a leaking tea urn and a pile of paste sandwiches.

  Out on the terrace, Sarah Jane hissed at him. ‘I’m the only woman here.’

  ‘Are you?’ said the Doctor. He was staring at the cricket match grimly.

  ‘You promised me the end of the Universe, and you’ve brought me to a cricket match.’

  ‘Any true Englishman would tell you they were the same thing.’ The Doctor laughed mirthlessly. A small red ball arced through the air and the players scurried back and forth. The Doctor shuddered and looked away.

  ‘Why don’t you like cricket?’ Sarah demanded. She felt rather defensive about it. ‘It seems harmless enough.’

  The Doctor pulled a horrified face.

  Sarah blinked. Surely, surely the Doctor liked cricket? He was such an eccentric anglophile – he adored tea towels, he’d made her go fishing, he liked stately homes so much he’d blown up at least a dozen.

  ‘Come on. What’s wrong with cricket?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’ve always meant to find out,’ said the Doctor.

  Sarah didn’t like the Doctor’s tone. When he wanted to sound grave, he could sound extraordinarily grave. Like a rumbling of very distant thunder. She looked up at the cloudless sky, at the bright sun soaking into the green, green grass and she shivered. Only the Doctor could manage a sentence that was both nonsense and also terrifying.