Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [1]
Martha nodded wisely.
‘That’s all well and good,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t really answer my question, does it?’
She dropped, cat-like, to her knees and pressed her face against the floor, squinting to see exactly what the Doctor was doing, down in the bowels of the TARDIS.
‘I said –’
‘I heard what you said!’ snapped back the Doctor, yanking the thing out of his mouth with a scowl. ‘But what you don’t understand is –’
And he shoved it back between his teeth and mphphphed a bit more, this time with added emphasis, until Martha shook her head exasperatedly and stood up. She wandered around the console, covered with what looked like the contents of a particularly poor car boot sale. There were brass switches, a bicycle pump and something that looked like one of those paperweights with bubbles in it. She was wondering exactly what any of these weird objects had to do with flying through time and space when she suddenly found the Doctor standing in front of her, sonic screwdriver in hand, his hair all ruffled and askew.
‘Well?’
‘Um. . . yeah,’ replied Martha cagily, wondering what he was on about. ‘Probably.’
‘Good!’
And he was off, racing past her, around to the other side of the console, where he grabbed the paperweight and gave it a delicate tweak.
All around her, the subtle burblings and electronic grumblings of the TARDIS changed key ever so slightly, settling into something much more comfortable. Martha followed him, watching as he fiddled and faddled with the junk set into the console’s luminous green surface.
‘What I was saying before. . . ’ she ventured, watching his narrowed eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding firmly. ‘Croissants. For breakfast. Definitely.
We’ll pop over to Cannes and pick a –’
‘Not the croissants,’ she interrupted.
‘No problem. Porridge is fine by me. Edinburgh – 1807. Fine vin-tage.’
‘I’m not talking about breakfast.’
He jolted upright, as if he’d received an electric shock, and turned to her, eyes wide and manic.
‘You mean it’s lunchtime?’ He glanced at his watch, frowned, shook it and then placed it to his ear. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He rolled his eyes and slipped the sonic screwdriver into the breast pocket of his dark-brown suit. ‘I’ve been down there for hours.’
‘You’ve been down there for fifteen minutes.’
He opened his mouth to say something, but quick as lightning Martha clamped her hand over it. ‘What I’m trying to tell you,’ she said with slow and forced patience, taking her hand away. ‘What I’ve been trying to tell you for three days now, is that you ought to let me know how the TARDIS works – and if not how it actually works, how it operates. How you operate it.’
She ignored the muffled protestations and the wiggled eyebrows. ‘I mean – all I want is some basic lessons, yeah? Just “Press this button to get us out of danger; press this button to sound an alarm; press that button to get BBC Three.” That kind of thing.’
Martha folded her arms again and leaned back against the console, putting on her most reasonable voice. ‘Now that’s not too much to ask, is it? And it would help you too – you wouldn’t have to be hovering over this thing twenty-four seven.’ She patted the console behind her.
The Doctor puckered up his lips thoughtfully, reached into his pocket, pulled out the sonic screwdriver and shoved it back in his mouth.
‘Mpfhphfhhff,’ he said.
She reached out and pulled the device from him, extracting an indignant Ooof! along with it.
‘You think I’m too thick, don’t you!’
He just stared at her – actually, he just stared at the sonic screwdriver. Martha looked down at it, hanging between her fingertips, and pulled a face at the dribble on it before handing it gingerly back to him. She pointed at her own chest with her free hand.
‘Medical student, remember?’ she said. ‘A levels.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
‘Driving licence,’ she added.
The other eyebrow joined the first one.
‘Martha, Martha, Martha,’ he said patronisingly, making her instantly want to slap him. ‘Operating the TARDIS isn’t about intelligence. It’s not about pressing