I posted chap. 1 of my new Dr Who fan fic a while back. Finished Chap. 3 last night in the wee hours. I think I may scrap Chapter 2 though. It's exposition, leading up to Chap. 3, but really, it kind of stops the flow of the story, I think.
I can't seem to get any feedback, so I'd like to ask someone--anyone--out there, for your opinion(s), on this. Should I cut chapter two, or leave it in?
Here's the three chapters--sorry, I know this makes for a bit of a long post, but I really am teetering on this. Though I have trimmed off sentences and paragraphs in my story, that I decided were unnecessary to the plot, I really don't like making big cuts in my stories, if I don't have to, though. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a necessary evil, and there are times when big cuts will actually tighten up the story line to make a greater impact on the reader. Then again, a big cut can leave a gaping hole in the story, leaving the reader somewhat in the dark. Very tricky business, cutting most or all of a chapter.
I'm not really looking for reviews of the story--still too early for that, anyway, I just am curious to see if anyone else concurs that most or all of Chapter 2 can be cut.
Just be aware that this IS a work in progress, and does, I'm sure, contain at least some grammar or spelling errors.
Doctor Who: Dark Holiday (working title)
by
Nancy G.
(4th June, 2008)
Doctor Who is copyright of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
Doctor Who: Dark Holiday (working title)
by
Nancy G.
(4th June, 200 8)
Doctor Who is copyright of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
It was an overcast day in late May, as a bleak wind moaned over the barren moor. It bent the grasses and flowers, carrying with it the vague dampness of rain, which was falling in the distant mountains. Anne Clark was at her wit’s end. She and her twelve year old son Rory were on their way to a holiday camp in the mountains for the weekend, when a tyre on her car had developed a puncture. She’d opened the boot, only to discover that the spare tyre had somehow gone missing. Now, she and Rory were alone by the side of the road, miles from nowhere, hoping for help to arrive.
Sitting on the front passenger seat of his mother’s Skoda, facing backwards, and looking down the road, Rory mumbled, “Try it again?” His mother only shook her head. “It’s no use, Rory.” She said, looking helplessly at the mobile, clutched uselessly in her hand, “I can’t get a signal. We’ll just have to wait for someone to happen by.” Anne looked at her son. His blond hair was tousled by the wind, as he stared sullenly down the empty valley. She glanced ahead, up the long hill, hoping against hope to see another vehicle appear like magic over the rise. But, after four hours of waiting, they were still alone, with nothing but each other and the wind, for company.
Rory shifted restlessly in the seat. “I’m hungry,” he sulked, “and cold. Some holiday this turned out to be.” Anne frowned. “Oh, stop your complaining, Rory. If you’re cold, put on your anorak, for goodness sake. Besides, where’s your sense of adventure?” She brushed a strand of her long brown hair from her eyes, forcing herself to smile, “Trust me, someday you and your mates will get a laugh out of all of this.” Rory just rolled his eyes and said nothing.
Anne sighed and leaned her head back against the driver’s seat. Just then, over the wind, she thought she heard a noise. “Mum!” Rory exclaimed, “I think someone’s coming!” With a rush of relief, she got out of the car. Shading her eyes against the mid-afternoon glare, Anne followed the direction of her son’s finger, as he pointed down the valley. There, in the distance, a vehicle was slowly winding its way up the long road. She anxiously watched what looked like a blue motor home, crawling along the narrow pavement with a wretched grinding of it gears.
As it finally came up to them, it stopped. Admonishing Rory to stay put, Anne walked over to the driver’s side window of the old Morris camper. Rory angrily slumped down in the seat, muttering, “I’m not a child, you know.” His mum looked hopefully at the driver, “Can you help me, please?” A thin, silver-haired man rolled down his window and smiled at her. “What’s the matter love? Have a break-down, did you?” He asked cheerfully. Before Anne could reply, the man’s wife had already climbed down from the passenger seat of their beat-up camper, and was clucking over Anne’s misfortune. “It’s a good thing we happened along, isn’t it dear? You could have been out here all day! Hardly anyone takes this road any longer, since they put in that new motorway.”
The old woman didn’t seem to notice Rory still sitting in the car, as she steered Anne to the side door of the vehicle. “My name’s Emma, by the way, Emma Plock.” She spoke rapidly, “Come on now, why don’t I make you a quick cuppa’ tea, while my John sees to your motor, alright?” Before Anne could protest, the short, rotund woman had bustled her inside the cramped interior of the camper. Anne never noticed that John never got out of the Morris, never had time to realize that the old man hadn’t even bothered to switch off the engine. In fact, Anne never noticed anything else, ever again. Rory cried out as her heard his mum’s terrified scream from inside the old motor home. He rushed out of the car calling for his mum, but it was too late, the camper was already driving away. Inside, the two old people were laughing.
CHAPTER TWO
Glowing brightly green, the Tardis’ central column slowly rose and fell, its ancient engines sounding like an out-of-tune musical saw. The Doctor was leaning back casually against the console chair, absently watching it move. Donna came into the room and sat down beside him, “So, Doctor, where we off to, now?” She smiled. Then, she catching a glimpse of his face, she frowned. Her Time Lord friend seemed somehow distant today, almost melancholy, even. “Are you alright?” She asked.
The Doctor seemed to notice her for the first time, and abruptly shook himself out of it. Heaving a big sigh, he said, “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about someone I used to know.” That’s when Donna noticed the old photograph in his hand. “May I see?” She asked quietly. He looked at her for a long second, then almost reluctantly handed her the photo.
Donna gazed at the picture. It was a man with a full head of gray or blond hair, dressed in a frilly shirt and cape, standing next to a middle-aged portly man wearing tweeds and a bill cap. A young woman in what looked like clothing from the seventies, stood between the pair. The photograph appeared to be at least a hundred years old. All three were smiling, obviously enjoying themselves. “Were they friends of yours?” she asked.
The Doctor nodded, “Those are my friends, Sarah Jane and Jim Bailey. Sarah used to travel with me. Jim was a game warden for the Fifth Earl of Brentwood. And a good man, he was, too. Saved my life–and the entire planet, you know. Mind you, he wasn’t too thrilled with me when I had to leave him stranded in 15th century Iceland for a month. But,” the Doctor shrugged, “he got over it, erm–eventually.” Donna looked at the photo again, “Who’s the other bloke?” “Oh, that’s just me, when I was going through my man-of-action phase. Just a little Time Lord mid-lives’ crisis,” he sniffed, “I grew out of it, eventually…well, regenerated actually.” Donna shook her head, “I dunno’ about you sometimes, Doctor.” He gave her a lop-sided grin, “You know, neither do I.” Returning her glance to the photo, she asked, “What happened to him?”
The Doctor frowned, suddenly angry, but with whom, Donna wasn’t sure. “He was killed,” the Doctor muttered, “murdered on the moor while he was checking on some poachers. I only just found out about it a short while ago.” She raised an eyebrow. “One of your friends from a hundred or so years ago was murdered, and you’re only just finding out about it, now? What, you have a time machine that can go anywhere, but you don’t stop and pick up a copy of the Times, now and then?” The Doctor leaned forward and sighed again, “It’s…complicated, being a Time Lord, you should know that by now, Donna. It’s all that,” he waved his hand through the air, “wibbley-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.”
Donna shook her head. “Yeah, I know, sorry. I must be getting used to you. Sometimes I almost forget that you’re not human.” She paused for a second, and then asked gently, “How did your friend die?” The Doctor looked at the floor and shrugged, “I dunno’. The details seem to be a bit vague. All I do know for sure is that they never caught the killer–or killers.” Giving him a calculating look, she asked, “So, why don’t you go back and find out?” The Doctor started to give her a look, but Donna just ignored him and forged on ahead. “It’s not like you’ll be changing history or anything, is it? I mean, the murder already happened, and all you’d be doing is finding out the how…and maybe the why.”
The Doctor shook his head violently, “No, Donna!” Putting a hand on his arm and looking him straight in the eye, she said, “I’ll bet any one of your friends–myself included, would want to do that for you, if you had died under mysterious circumstances. Don’t you think you owe it to your friend to do try and find out what happened to him?” For a long moment, a tense silence passed between the two of them, as the Doctor gave her a dark look. Then he said simply, “I’ll think about it.” A few minutes later, the Tardis re-materialized near a rock outcrop, on a windswept moor.
CHAPTER THREE
Shrugging into his coat, the Doctor stepped out of the Tardis door, looking around at the bleak landscape. Following close behind him, Donna said, “Are you sure we’re on Earth? Looks sort of alien to me.” The Doctor sniffed loudly. “Do you need a tissue?” Donna asked, “Just do me a favour and say yes…I’d rather you didn’t use your sleeve again…” The doctor put up a hand and shushed her. “I’m fine, Donna. I was just checking the air. Smells like England, to me.” She looked at the distant hills. “But, where?” Suddenly looking alert, he put up a finger and shushed her again. “Not now, Donna. Just be quiet for a moment, and let me listen, alright?” She shook her head, confused. “I don’t hear anything, Doctor. Just the wind.”
Then, Donna did hear something. Like a keening sound., being carried on the wind. “What is that?” She asked. But, she was asking thin air, because the Doctor was already sprinting away from her, down the grassy slope. Following carefully in his wake, Donna saw the Doctor run behind a large outcropping of rock. She came around the jagged stones, and slid to a halt. She saw the Doctor standing over a body. A young girl, about fifteen years old, was sat on the stony ground, holding the head of a young man, in her lap.
The young boy, who appeared to be the same age, was dressed in a long coat and corduroy trousers, and had a tweed cap on his tousled head. But it was his face that attracted Donna’s attention. He had no colour at all–it was as if the boy had been completely drained. The Doctor crouched beside the boy, his face seemed suddenly creased with tiredness and age. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I’m so sorry.” The boy lay sprawled out on his back, eyes wide in his final moment of terror. One hand still was dug into the earth, clutching the mud and stones beside him. The lonely wind whistled between the cold, unforgiving stones, punctuated by the girls sobs.
Donna went over and put a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder. Strands of the girl’s dark hair were plastered to the side of her face, clinging to the tears that coursed down her cheeks. “It’s alright, we’re here now.” She said in a comforting voice. The girl’s long blue dress was muddy and torn. Without looking at Donna or the Doctor, she began rocking back and forth and starting rambling, “Kevin’s been missing for two days. I was so worried about him. He was to meet me near the Hopewell bridge, Thursday night. I think he was going to ask me to the dance at the school, he seemed so nervous. Kevin was always so shy. It took him months just to get ’round to kissin’ me, and even then it was only a quick peck on the cheek! She stroked the boy’s cold waxy forehead. “He was so good to me. Always had a smile for me, always there, looking out for me, making sure I wanted for nothing. I–I can’t believe he’s gone.” For the first time, she looked up tearfully at Donna, “Who could have done this awful thing to him? Kevin wouldn’t have harmed a fly. I don’t understand.”
Donna looked up at the Doctor, as if waiting for him to say something. For just a moment, the Doctor simply crouched there, silent and grave. While the girl was talking, he’d been surreptitiously examining the boy’s body for signs of how he’d died. Now, the Doctor brooded over a discovery he’d made, wondering how much he could actually tell the grief-stricken young woman, without driving her over the edge into madness. He signed and asked softly, “What’s your name?” The Doctor reached into his coat pocket and handed her some tissues. She took them without seeming to really notice them. “Cath-Catherine.” She sniffed, “Catherine Taylor.”
The Doctor looked into her eyes, trying to maintain eye contact. The first thing he needed to do was to draw the girl’s focus away from the corpse, so he could get some answers out of her. “Well, Catherine, I’m the Doctor and this is Donna.” He said evenly. “We’re going to need to ask you a few questions, and I want you to try and answer them as best you can, alright? We’re too late to help Kevin, here, but if whoever did this is still out there, you can help us to prevent any more deaths like this. Do you understand?” She gave him a bewildered look, and Donna, stroking the girl’s hair, said, “It’s alright, you can trust him. The Doctor wants to make sure no one else has to go through what you’re feeling right now.” Mechanically wiping her face with the tissue, Catherine looked up at the Doctor and nodded her assent. The Doctor gave her a slight smile, and said, “Good girl, you’re very brave, Catherine Taylor.”
Standing, he shoved his hands into his coat pockets, looking down at her. “You said Kevin went missing on Thursday. Do you have any idea where he was going, why he might have ended up way out here?” Catherine shook her head. “I don’t know. He sometimes went out walking here on the moor, because he said he liked the open places, that being out here made him feel free, somehow. He was an orphan on the streets in London, when he was twelve, he got collared by the police for stealing an orange, and spent a year in jail. Never liked closed spaces, after that.” “A year in jail for stealing an orange!” Donna gasped. The Doctor waved her to silence. “Not now, Donna. You can be outraged later.” He squatted down again. “I need you to think, try and remember, was there anyone else around, that day? Maybe some stranger, or someone new to the area?”
Catherine thought about it and shook her head in the negative. “There’s been no strangers through the village in a couple of weeks, and the only new people are a young newlywed couple, who’ll be spending their summers here. They’ve rented old Mrs. Gavin’s cottage, down by the river.”
The Doctor looked up thoughtfully. “Have they? What do you know about them? Is there anything different about them? Anything unusual you’ve noticed, anything at all, no matter how so small?” He urged her. Catherine seemed to draw a blank for a moment, and started to shake her head in the negative, when she stopped. The Doctor leaned forward. “What is it?” He asked eagerly. “Well, I don’t know if it’s all that unusual. But, my Uncle George owns the village shop, and sometimes I help him out on Saturday mornings. I’ve noticed that the young lady, Mrs. Williams, buys an awful lot of salt. I overheard her ask my uncle if she could place a special order for a barrel. Took Uncle George by surprise, that did!”
The Doctor dug his hands down into his coat pockets and began pacing furiously. Donna bent down, and helped the girl up, “Come on, you’ll catch your death down there. We’ll take you home, and see that your Kevin is seen to.” She brushed a strand of hair from Catherine’s eye, and gently turned her away, so she was no longer facing the boy’s body. “Tell me, did that woman ever give your uncle a reason for needing so much salt?” She asked the girl.
The Doctor whirled around and stood there, looking intently at Donna and Catherine. The girl sniffed and nodded. “That’s the other strange thing. I heard her say she was preserving some meat. Yet later, when her husband came in to pick up the barrel of salt, he claimed that they needed it because they had a bad infestation of slugs.” Donna glanced at the Doctor and they simultaneously raised their eyebrows. Then, sadness returned to his face, as he squatted down and closed young Kevin’s eyes. Straightening again, the Doctor’s eyes were afire with determination to seek out the truth. “Right!” He exclaimed. “I think we’ll see Catherine home, and then pay a little visit on this Mrs. Williams–maybe I can put a little salt under her tail, and get some answers.”
phone call, so the git could just piss off, as far as I'm concerned. I HATE talking to grown men, that just sit on their lazy American bottoms and whine, and refuse to just deal with things--for goodness sake, what's so frightening about dialing a telephone??? And let's not be a man and stand up and show some pride....let's just yell at an innocent woman, and stomp and snort and act like a spoiled five year old...what a waste of manhood! No wonder we can't win any wars anymore! 
