Summary: The Fifth Doctor, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa get stranded on an alien planet, and end up on an impromtu camping trip as they wait for the Tardis to return.
This is my first Classic Doctor Who fan fic!! I hope you enjoy : )
Tegan stood in the forest and breathed deeply, enjoying the calm air, the woodland scents, and the peaceful, almost blissful, silence. They were on a small planet called Arabol - a planet of nature and wilderness, and home to a fascinating race of leaf people. She smiled, enjoying the calm. Compared to the usual chaos, the sound of only birds tweeting, leaves rustling, and....wait..was that.....was that the TARDIS? The unmistakable wheezing jolted her out of her tranquil day dream, and she began to sprint towards the source of the noise.
Inevitably, the others had heard the sound too (good, she couldn't help thinking, they didn't take off without me) and they had all come running. The Doctor was standing at the front of the group looking more than a little concerned, and Nyssa and Adric stood behind. Tegan jogged over to them.
"What's happened?" She asked, directing her question to the other two, and leaving the Doctor to wander sadly around the spot where the TARDIS had been seconds before.
"The TARDIS dematerialised." Answered Adric.
Tegan rolled her eyes. "Tell me something I don't already know."
"We don't know anything more than that." Said Nyssa, ever the peacekeeper. "It just sort of.....went."
"Did anyone get inside it?" Pressed Tegan.
"Not that we saw." Said Nyssa, trying hard to remain calm for all of them. At this moment, the Doctor returned from his circling.
"Any idea what happened?" Said Adric.
"It was one of two things." Said the Doctor, replacing his Sonic Screwdriver in his pocket, and looking thoughtfully at them.
"Oh?" Prompted Adric.
"Either the HADS - hostile action displacement system, the TARDIS relocating itself if it senses danger," he clarified, "or some external force influencing the systems, forcing it to go somewhere. Or, I suppose, someone could have broken in." He added as an afterthought. "But that's unlikely, it was locked, and no one but me can fly it."
"Not even you can fly it properly." Muttered Tegan.
The Doctor looked a little hurt. "That's not fair." He said.
"Yes it is, you've tried and failed to get me back to Heathrow at least 15 times by now."
There was a silence, as everyone took in this fairly good point.
"Well," said Nyssa, "we can worry about Heathrow once we get the TARDIS back."
"Yes, about that." Added Adric. "What are we actually going to do?"
"There's not much we can do." Said the Doctor. He looked slightly more concerned than he had done before. "But take more readings and hope we can figure out what happened to it."
"This doesn't seem very likely." Said Tegan, her voice rising a little in fear. "What are the odds that we get it back now?"
"Try not to think about that." Said the Doctor, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Right now we need to find somewhere to stay. There's just one more reading I want to get, and then we can have more of a look around."
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, and scanned all around the area, walking a large radius around the site. When he returned to them, his eyes had lit up with hope.
"It looks like we're going to be fine." He grinned. "Local time blip - extremely unlikely, but perfectly normal, with time being the mess that it is. All it means is that time blipped back a day or so for a fraction of a second - and the TARDIS thought it was a day early."
"So it's travelled forward a day!" Said Adric, jumping in the air a little as he too realised what had happened.
The Doctor pointed at him, still grinning. "Exactly!"
"So all we have to do is stay here a day, and wait for it to come back?" Asked Nyssa.
"This feels too easy." Said Tegan. "What's the catch?"
The Doctor laughed, but not unkindly. "There is no catch. That's it. We just have to wait."
"But wait...what are we going to do? Where are we going to sleep?" Asked Tegan, her voice filling with more than a little apprehension.
"We'll have to build a shelter. And I have just the thing!" The Doctor grinned, reaching a hand into a pocket deep inside his jacket, and drawing out two small squares of fabric.
"I don't think those are going to build us a shelter." Said Tegan, looking doubtfully at the green squares.
"Just wait, you'll see." Said the Doctor mysteriously. He held one square in each hand, and with a precise flick of each wrist, he swished them through the air. The fabric seemed to unfurl, cascading from his raised hands on both sides, and hitting the floor more than a hundred times their original size. Even Adric was impressed.
"How does that work?" He asked, staring at the huge swathes of fabric curiously.
"Dimensional engineering." Said the Doctor simply, as if this explained it.
"But it isn't possible." Continued the boy, his incredulity growing.
"Adric, we live in a Police Box with an interior larger than a small planet. I think we're way past that. Come on!" And with that he strode towards the edge of the forest, obviously expecting them to follow.
Adric walked after him, still shaking his head, and Tegan turned to Nyssa as they too followed the Doctor.
"Is the inside of the Tardis really bigger than a small planet?"
"Oh yes." Nyssa shrugged. "Didn't you know?"
"No! And if it's so big, how come we only use a few rooms?"
"It's very easy to get lost in. Remember the lipstick and the unravelled scarf from just before we went to Castrovalva?"
Tegan shrugged. She supposed it made sense, in some way. If anything about the concept of bigger on the inside made sense.
"Come on!" Shouted the Doctor, who had already made it to the edge of the trees.
Tegan and Nyssa rolled their eyes a little, but jogged after him anyway.
*********
When they finally reached the forest, the Doctor and Adric were setting up the fabric over branches, forming what looked like two tents.
"Camping!" Grinned the Doctor, as if it was the best thing in the world. "One tent for me and Adric, one tent for you two. Go on, get yourselves sorted. I'm going to collect some fire wood." And he was off again into the trees, before they could ask any more questions. Adric shrugged, and disappeared into the tent on the left. Nyssa and Tegan made their way to the other one and crawled inside.
"Well, this is certainly not bigger on the inside." Nyssa remarked, looking at the green roof barely six inches from the tops of their heads.
"Oh, there's plenty of room." Tegan said.
"Do you think the Doctor has any more of this extendable fabrics? Could make this ground a bit more comfortable."
"If not we could always use leaves." Said Tegan.
"You're being remarkably calm about this whole camping thing." Nyssa commented.
"Why shouldn't I be?" Said Tegan. "I went camping all the time as a child, It was great fun. I remember this one time my friend fell in the lake. We had to fish her out using a net - we pulled up a good pound of seaweed too. Luckily she could swim, and she saw the funny side."
Nyssa smiled at her friend, who was now smiling at the moment from her past. "I never did." She admitted. "It wasn't really a thing on Traken."
"Well, shall we go out and see what shenanigans the Doctor and Adric are up to?" Asked Tegan, shaking off the memory.
"Shenanigans." Nyssa repeated, thoughtfully. "Nice word."
*****************
The Doctor had returned from his firewood mission, and he and Adric were in the centre of the two tents, attempting to build a fire.
"No Adric, we have to stack the logs like this." Said the Doctor, fiddling with the pile of sticks they had placed inside a ring of stones.
"It doesn't matter how they're placed, just light it will you? It's getting dark." Said Adric.
"It does matter!" The Doctor objected. "We haven't got many matches, so we need to give it the best chance of catching fire we can. Oh, hello Nyssa, Tegan. Everything alright?" He smiled.
"Yes, all fine." Said Tegan. "Apart from you're doing it wrong."
"Hah, I told you!" Crowed Adric.
"You are too." Said Tegan, and Adric's face fell.
"What are you, the camping police?" He grumbled.
"No, but I did go camping lots as a child." Tegan shot back, "So I, at least, know what I'm doing."
The Doctor handed Tegan the remaining firewood and the pack of matches he had found in one of his many pockets, and stood back, leaving her to it.
"How do you have so much stuff in your pockets?" Asked Tegan.
"Well, the thing about my pockets..." Said the Doctor.
"Don't tell me...they're bigger on the inside?" Finished Tegan, sighing.
"Precisely." The Doctor smiled.
The fire leaped into life, a orange glow filling the dusk that was closing in on the little campsite.
"You know, I could really go for some marshmallows right now." Tegan thought aloud, as the others sat down.
"What are marshmallows?" Asked Adric.
Tegan was stunned. "You don't...you don't have marshmallows on Alzarius??" She asked, unable to understand how a race could live without this fundamental item.
"No." Said Adric.
"We didn't either." Said Nyssa, turning to Tegan for an explanation.
"Really? Well, they're like these small fluffy things. They're made from sugar, and then sort of whipped into airy, fluffy shapes. You can toast them on a fire, and the outside layer caramelises. They're delicious." Her mouth was watering at the thought, but Nyssa and Adric were unconvinced.
"Sounds.....interesting." Said the Trakenite.
"They are the best, I promise you." Tegan looked at the Doctor, who had a hand deep inside his coat pocket.
"Did you have marshmallows on Gallifrey?" She asked.
The Doctor screwed up his face, trying to reach right into the depths of his pocket.
"No," he replied, "but I've had them on Earth since, and I think...I might..." He triumphantly pulled out a rather battered packet of marshmallows.
Everyone looked at him in utter shock, demanding with their eyes (as they often did) an explanation.
"I think I acquired these....oh, I don't know....oh wait, I remember! I went into a sweet shop to buy Jelly babies, I think, but I bought these by accident. I don't know how they ended up in this coat, though." He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then shrugged, grinning at their surprised faces.
"Wait....you used to buy those Jelly babies?" Asked Adric.
"What else did you think I did, steal them?"
"I never really thought about it." Adric said.
"Like a lot of things." Muttered the Doctor, and Adric glared at him.
"Was that really necessary?" He said.
"No, sorry." Said the Doctor.
"Enough chatting. Can I please have a marshmallow now!" Tegan finally burst.
"Of course." The Doctor handed her the bag, and she immediately pulled it open and popped one into her mouth.
"Ahhh, heavenly" She grinned, as it melted into her tastebuds. She took another and pronged it onto a nearby stick, before holding it over the flames and passing the bag to Nyssa, who carefully did the same. Adric did too, and then the Doctor, and soon all four of them were enjoying (slightly old, but they tasted the same) toasted marshmallow.
"You know," said Tegan, her mouth sticky with marshmallow, "eating marshmallows on earth is never going to be the same after toasting them over an open fire on an alien planet with you lot."
**********
Half an hour later, the bag of marshmallows was empty, and Tegan had moved them on to another camp fire tradition.
"Another thing you do camping is tell Ghost stories." She said, peering ominously round at them.
"Ghost stories?" Asked Adric.
"Yeah, and I've got a great one."
"I bet it's not scary at all." Said Adric.
"We'll see." Said Tegan, who was absolutely loving every minute of this. "A long time ago, in a small rural village, a man was driving late at night. It was raining, and the combination of water and the shadows cast by the trees created distorted images, like bony hands reaching out to grasp his car." She peered around, gauging their reactions. Then she continued. "It was an overcast night, of course, and the only light came from the moon, which would occasionally be visible through the thick clouds. As the man rounded the corner, he drove past the ancient abbey perched on the hill."
"Ancient Abby?" Adric interrupted, sceptically. "That sounds like the name of a cartoon character."
"Not Abby like the name," the Doctor explained, "An Abbey, like the place."
"Exactly," Said Tegan, "Now if I could get back to my story?"
They nodded, and she began again.
"As the man rounded the corner, he drove past the ancient abbey perched on the hill. There were many rumours going around the village that this place was sacred, and haunted. If you set foot there, the Ghosts of the many who had come before would drag you to the other side. It was even said that on dark, stormy nights like this one, the Ghosts could be seen...." She paused for dramatic effect, staring round at the (finally) riveted expressions on her audience's faces. "As the car trundled along the path, an unearthly sound filled the man's ears and, against his better judgement, he looked up and saw....a figure in all black robes. He had his hands stretched, upwards towards the sky, and was chanting what sounded like evil incantations." She held up her hands, demonstrating. "At that very moment the car, which had been working perfectly all evening, suddenly shuddered to a halt, and the noise of the engine dulled to a whine, and then to nothing. The man frantically twisted the key, trying to escape the Ghost, which was now advancing towards him, but nothing happened. The car simply sat there. The Ghost neared him, and the man could make out his shaking hands, his low, melodic chants, and, as he neared, more and more of the face beneath the hood." She paused again, making eye contact with each person around the fire. "When the Ghost finally reached him....it stumbled on a rock, and the hood slid off it's face, revealing.....his younger brother!" The tension immediately evaporated, and Tegan laughed at their shocked faces. "It had all been a prank orchestrated by his sibling, to terrify the citizens of their village. The opportunity to frighten his brother was too good to miss, but in the end that was what put a stop to this particular prank."
The others laughed, a little apprehensively, and Tegan smiled at the success of her story.
"Well that was.....fun." Said the Doctor, eventually finding a word. "Anyone else got a Ghost story?"
"No!" Adric blurted. "No thanks. What else do you do while camping, Tegan?"
"Well, we could always try truth or dare?" Tegan suggested, a mischievous grin creeping into her face.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed : )
Also, if you're an All Creatures Great and Small fan (I know it's in the original TV Series, not sure if it's also in the newer series) then you might notice that Tegan's Ghost story sounds suspiciously similar to something that Tristan does in an early episode....and that's because it is!! Well, at least it's loosely based on it : )