(MAIN RANGE): Mainframe

 

(MAIN RANGE): Mainframe

Starring Jo Martin as The Fugitive Doctor

This is not your average pre-Hartnell fan-fic or a 6B retcon. I don't want to write something that will be retconned by Chibnall next year. As such, the Fugitive Doctor is going to have a unique way of appearing in the NCJDDAS, and I don't want to have to deal with the whole Doctor has a police box before it becomes one in An Unearthly Child thing. Look, as a preface, this sucks, but this isn't the main Ruth backstory, this is a weird runabout way of doing it. And here we go

Chapter One

Tecteun sat in the Gallifreyan High Office, beside herself with worry. 

"You know, I'm very disappointed in you." Rassilon said. This incarnation was a bald female, exceedingly pale, but imposing. "The Doctor has left Gallifrey."

Tecteun, this body of hers, shaggy with long grey hair and misshapen rags. Rassilon was imposing, prim and perfect, fitted with a robe that was bigger on the inside, and made of stars, but she had goggles, an ragged apron placed atop a frayed boiler suit. She was grey, and she was looking up at the new future of Gallifrey. 

At least if they weren't both dead.

Rassilon glared. "He has stolen a Type Forty TARDIS. And a granddaughter. They have ran off, into the unknown. The President doesn't know when they will get them back. Or if they will."

Tecteun remained silent. Rassilon was made of fury. "The Timeless Child, the origin of Gallifrey's survival is gone."

"We don't need him." Tecteun said softly. "I extracted everything I could from all of the child's bodies. The origin of the individual is meaningless. There is nothing in him that makes him anything more than ordinary. He perhaps, even is less than exceptional. His grades are disappointing." 

"Lack of interest." Rassilon said. "I'm not concerned with the person. He has long since proven uninteresting. He's a boffin, a mad tinkerer that never amounted to much on Gallifrey other than the birth of our race. What I am concerned with is the symbol. If he knows-"

"He has forgotten his origin." 

"No, the symbol of having a timeless child on Gallifrey. It's what the president is going to come down here and talk about. I don't think he'll be very happy." 

Chapter Two

The Lord High President of The Time Lords soon descended into the Matrix, as one does in the times of trouble, to confer with the long dead elders of the time lords, stored deep within the bowels of the Matrix. To talk to the founders who lived long enough to be stored: Rassilon and Tecteun. 

He entered the Matrix's form of the Gallifreyan High Office to see the two conversing. Arguing. As they often did. Rassilon had discovered the secret to immortality and laid dead, for now, until the Time Lords needed him to return, but Tecteun died in obscurity. The Lord High President hated them both. 

Two dead people who dictated to him the laws of the land. Right now, though, he needed them. 

"Ah, Mr. President." Rassilon said in a faux laugh. "Upset with the Doctor's escape?"

"Certainly." The President said, gruffly. "The Doctor in itself isn't important. I don't care about your symbols, Rassilon. The problem is no one leaves Gallifrey. As of yet, the public will soon notice an absence. If any of them gets the idea that they can just escape, steal a TARDIS, I know half the Deca are going to become psychotic vigilantes. I need a way to convince the people of Gallifrey the Doctor is still here."

Tecteun smiled, thinly. Her hair draped around her, a ragged nightmare of grey and white. She looked up at Rassilon and the President, cocking her head devilishly. "Well, it seems you need my help..."

Chapter Three

The Doctor opened the farmhouse door, standing on the outside of the capital. The building she had lain crying as a child at night, not sleeping. 

Where she thought she would never make a time lord. 

Where had she come from? Hadn't she left? With Susan? Oh, this was weird, she thought, looking down at her hands. 

She certainly wasn't her old self anymore.

Well, she was her older self.

"Doctor." The Time Lord High President stood nearby, his robes billowing in the Gallifreyan wind. 

"You, as of right now, are no doubt confused. Yes, you have left Gallifrey. You succeeded, congratulations. You however, are not, in fact, the Doctor." 

"What?" The Doctor spat out.

"Your newest body left Gallifrey. So we did our work, trying to make it seem like you never left, and we made a copy of you out of files in the Matrix. You are a solid, self-emitting hologram. It took some doing. We were aiming for you most recent body, but it seems Tecteun isn't as good at this sort of thing as she led us to believe." 

"I'm...you made a copy of me, and, I'm a hologram?! You're keeping me here on Gallifrey-" The Doctor yelled angrily.

"There are now, for all intents and purposes, Two Doctors in the universe. You will take up the place in Gallifreyan society your other self left. We will be watching you. Making sure you blend in to the hole in society you left, Doctor."

The President leered in. 

"You're going to have an ordinary life." He snarled.

The Doctor bludgeoned him in the neck with a rock. 

Chapter Four

Suddenly 25 of the President's personal guard jumped out of literally nowhere. 

Seriously, it was improbable. 

"Well, mates." The Doctor said in a serious, yet resigned voice. "Lock me up, why don't you? Jail time? Or better yet, disperse me into the dimension from Neverland!?" 

"You just killed the President!" Said The Time Lord Lead Captain. He was the same Lead Captain that 4 billion years later, The Judi Dench Doctor would shoot in the head after her regeneration.

Continuity.

"Why, yes. I'm before Hartnell. I have to be a really terrible person for his character arc to remain intact." The Doctor said, pretty straight laced. 

"You! You just killed the President!"

"I knew that before you said it twice." The Doctor said, but then shut her mouth as she was led into a cell. 

"You do know what you've done, yes?" The Guard Captain said, closing the door and activating the laser grid bars. 

The Doctor remained silent, and looked the Guard Captain directly in the eye. 

"Damn it, listen to what I'm saying!" The man yelled. "Doctor!" 

The Doctor looked at him over her spectacles. 

"I'm going to break out of Gallifrey's highest security prison before tomorrow, steal a TARDIS, and go off into the universe again. I don't care if I'm an outlaw. I don't care what you think of me. You have changed my life, reverted me to a life I no longer wish to live, and plus, you've removed me of all my standards. I'm not the Doctor, I'm essentially a clone lab baby." 

"This doesn't excuse your crimes. Not of murder."

"No. But I'm not expecting it to." The Doctor said. "And no, it's not the Doctor. You can call me the fugitive."

Epilogue:

The Lord High Vice President of The Time Lords entered the Matrix, and descended to talk to Tecteun and Rassilon. He was very angry.

"What have you done!?" He yelled. "The Lord High President is dead because of your Matrix Clone. The...Newly entitled Fugitive has delievered an ultimatium. She's going to escape in 3 hours, and steal a TARDIS, and wreak havoc across the universe!!!" 

Tecteun smiled creepily. "Of course."

Rassilon and The Vice President glared at her. "OF COURSE??!?"

"She's not an exact duplicate of the Doctor. No. She's an very inexact copy. One programmed to wreak havoc, to sow disaster." Tecteun said, wickedly. "Once she wreaks havoc across the universe, with the Doctor's old face...He'll have to come back to Gallifrey. He simply won't have a choice."

Tecteun disappeared back into the Matrix. 

"Purge Tecteun's program from the Matrix." Rassilon said to the Vice President.

"We've already tried. We can't. Her programs locked-." The Vice President said, resigned, as Tecteun giggled from nowhere, and off in the distance, an explosion resounded.

There, smoke rose from Gallifrey's prison building... and Tecteun continued to laugh. 

To Be Continued...

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Jo Martin as The Doctor

Julie Walters as Tecteun

Tilda Swinton as Rassilon

Ronan Vibert as The Time Lord High President

Michael Lumsden as The Time Lord Vice President

Daniel Craig as The Time Lord Captain