Part 4 – Between A Rock and a Hard Place

The Doctor moved moodily round the console, as it bleeped and hummed contentedly.

"I've been wanting to do this for a long time!" he said to himself. And a sparkle glinted in the Time Lords eye, one that hadn't been allowed to glimmer for many centuries.

Adric came into the console room. Oddly, he was topless. His flaccid man-breasts jiggled along as he approached the Doctor, but he was annoyed to see his hero more concerned with the TARDIS instrument banks.

"Florana next then?" Adric piped up.

"That'll have to wait," said the Doctor. "Adric, we're going to Seville!"

"But Doctor... Doctor, I have something to show you first." said Adric, fingering the edges of his trousers.

"Later Adric, later. We've arrived!" commanded the Time Lord.

It was a warm July afternoon in 1985. Winter was hot enough here - summer was unbearable. The TARDIS eased out the thin air and came to rest under a withered tree, just as the Doctor had programmed it to.

"Phew, I'd forgotten how hot this place was," the Doctor sighed, wiping droplets of perspiration from his forehead. Adric followed him from the police box, his vile yellow rubber trousers cut down to shorts to reveal his manly legs. He wondered if the Doctor had noticed how high around the groin he'd cut them.

"Now then."

The Doctor withdrew a small fob watch from his pocket and studied it closely.

"If I remember how this particular adventure panned out, and invariably I have..." he murmured to himself. "Ah!"

The Doctor lay down on the warm grass, and waited. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then Adric heard the rustle of someone running through the grass, just over the steep embankment below which they'd materialised. A pretty young girl, dressed in a blouse tied at the waste, was being chased by a growling male figure brandishing a menacing looking carving knife.

"Come to Shockeye little one!" grunted the man. The girl seemed to be gaining distance from him until she suddenly lost her footing and tumbled down the slope - right on top of the Doctor.

"Ouch!" she groaned. The Doctor struggled out from under her, and Shockeye stopped at the top of the hill before retreating at the sight of the Doctor and Adric.

"I'm... I'm sorry," muttered Peri. "I'm afraid you kinda broke my fall."

"Not to worry Peri!" beamed the Doctor jauntily. "I quite enjoyed it! Now, I think you'll find your Doctor back in the Hacienda!"

"You know, that was very unethical." noted Adric when the girl, Peri, had finished looking bemused and hurried back over the hill and away. "Now what?"

"Oh Adric, we have a time machine!" smiled the Doctor "Let's do this again!"

"But Doctor," protested Adric. "We've been here today five times already!"

--

"You know," the Doctor noted, back inside the warmth of his ship. "That was fun, but I can think of a few better ways we can stretch the laws of causality Adric."

Adric was puzzled. The Doctor simply smiled, and set the coordinates.

--

Some time later, the TARDIS had made its next stop of the day, on a desolate landscape etched out with sharp rocks and craters. The dark skies of deep space cloaked them, pricked with distant stars.

"What are we doing here?" asked Adric. "And why do I have to have this plastic wall around my head?"

"It's a space helmet," explained the Doctor as they crept lightly over the cold, rocky surface of the Moon. "There's no oxygen out here. And no life."

"Then, what's that?" asked Adric, pointing to a large dome on the horizon.

"It's a Moonbase," replied the Doctor. "Come on."

"We're not staying long, hardly at all in fact," the Doctor noted, as they clambered through an air-lock. "I just have to leave them a present."

He unrolled a sheet of flexible perspex from his spacesuit pocket and took out a laser marker before writing in immaculately precise lettering.

"What present? Why is this important?" pestered Adric impatiently.

"Never mind, let's go." the Doctor said, placing the finished sign on the wall and smiling happily to himself. He patted it, then led Adric away.

It read "Be Healthy - New Space Regulations Say 'Take Your Coffee Without Sugar!'".

--

"I still don’t see what the point of that was," Adric said, once they were on their way again once more.

"Well, let’s just say I’ve saved myself a bit of trouble somewhere along the line," noted the Doctor secretly. "And I’m not finished yet. Just think of the possibilities – all the mistakes, all the regrets… I can undo them! I can make it so I’ve lived the perfect life!"

--