The Doctor swooned in the middle of spinning the spinny gizmo as his entire life flashed in front of him. As he fell, his companion swooped in and caught him under the arm.
“Doctor?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”
The Doctor shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “There was… a disturbance… as if… a dozen lifetimes were simply… extinguished!”
His companion wrinkled her nose. “What’s that supposed to -?”
The Doctor interrupted her question by leaping out of her grip and furiously flipping switches and turning dials in a mad dance around the TARDIS console.
“- mean?” she finished, goggling at the Timelord’s wild scurry. Shaking her head, she mumbled, “I suppose this means another weird adventure.”
The Doctor didn’t answer. He suddenly threw the toggle and the TARDIS boomed, throwing them both off their feet and signaling another landing. Recovering quickly, the Doctor grabbed an umbrella from the stand and bolted through the door.
He ran like a madman through the fluffy white grass, easily outpacing his companion, who was already at a disadvantage in that race. His feet hardly hit the ground as he sprinted and leapt across the meadow, spotting his quarry in the distance.
It was hard to believe that the man lying in the grass was in distress. His beaten felt hat was tipped over his eyes, blocking out the green sunshine, and his long coat open to the breeze. His arms were comfortably nestled behind his head, and his ridiculously lengthy rainbow scarf was gathered beneath his neck to serve as a pillow. But the closer the Doctor got to him, the more he felt it. Something dark. Something hungry. Something voraciously gobbling at the man’s personality. And the Doctor knew that if he didn’t act fast, the man would die!
“Ah!” the Timelord said, spotting the low-hanging powerline directly over the endangered man. “I love convenience!”
He leapt, using all his strength and momentum to propel himself towards the line. The low gravity helped, but not enough to reach the entire distance. Fortunately, the Doctor thought to bring his brolly. He hooked the handle over the line, and on his descent took hold of the other end, aiming his feet right at the prone man’s chest. The instant of contact, thousands of volts shot through both, kicking the prone man into sitting bolt upright.
“What was that?” the man demanded, his hat flying off and exposing a wild mop of curly brown hair.
“Sorry,” the Doctor told the man, looking up ruefully at his umbrella, now hooked and half melted to the powerline far above. “It was the first thing I could think of.”
“Ah!” the man grunted, then he cried out in pain, clutching his head as if it was going to explode.
“Doctor!” a woman cried out from nearby.
The Doctor turned to the sound of his name and his jaw dropped. Hardly able to articulate the word, he gasped, “Romana!”
Romanadvaratralunda raced across the puffy meadow with a fierce, determined glare, her eyes burning into the Doctor as she rapidly approached. She held him in her glare until she dropped to one knee next to the man and put her arms around him. “Doctor, what did he do to you?”
“I didn’t do anything,” the Doctor told him. Then, glancing at the powerline above, he added, “Well, nothing that wasn’t necessary.”
“It’s in my mind, Romana,” the other Doctor hissed, pressing his temples as hard as he could. “Something’s eating away at me from inside!”
“And if we don’t stop it,” the Doctor interjected, “Then I won’t exist!”
Romana looked up in shock. “You?”
The Doctor offered her a crooked smile.
“But that’s forbidden by the Laws of Rassilon!” she scolded.
The Doctor hesitated, then quietly said, “Much has changed since then.”
Romana studied him warily for a moment before turning back to her Doctor. That incarnation was in such intense pain that he was effectively out of the conversation, though, so she turned back to the other.
“What do we do?” she demanded.
“Whatever it is, it’s eating his personality, his will,” the Doctor told her. “I can feel it myself, like an echo of a memory that I’ll never have. We need to drive it out of him before it’s too late.”
Romana thought for a bit, then said, “You could link your wills!”
“Too… powerful…” The earlier incarnation could barely get the words out. “Two… not… strong enough…”
The Doctor glanced back in the direction of his distant TARDIS. “I’d never make it in time to get the others.”
Romana scowled in deep concentration, then thrust herself to her feet. “Be right back!”
With that, she bolted back along the path she’d flattened in the puffy grass. As the Doctor watched her go, full of memories of similar runs with her, he heard his current companion shout, “Doctor! Where are you?”
Before the Doctor could answer, Romana reappeared carrying a strange weapon. It looked like a 1940’s serial ray gun complete with concentric discs along the barrel and chrome trim. As she approached, she checked its settings, and then she stopped a few paces away from them. The Doctor scowled suspiciously at her, then threw up his hands when she leveled the gun at him.
“Wait!” the Doctor pleaded. “Romana!”
“Relax, Doctor!” she admonished. “This isn’t what you think! It’ll put your mind in touch with your other incarnations across space and time, so you don’t have to fetch them here!”
The Doctor scowled even more suspiciously. “How long have you had that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just something I cobbled together recently. Now, hold still!”
“Wait!” the Doctor cried. “How do you know it -!”
She pulled the trigger and a weird pulsing ray shot from the ball at the barrel’s end, enveloping both Doctors in a shimmering silver aura.
“Works?” the Doctor finished before realizing that he was somewhere else. The place was dark and seemed to extend forever in all directions. A strange gray mist clung to the ground, dampening the cuffs of his trousers. He looked down, then around, and muttered, “Well, then!”
“I’d say it worked quite well, wouldn’t you?” his younger self said as he settled his big floppy hat over his curly locks.
“Did you know about that?” the Doctor demanded, scowling at himself.
“Not a clue,” he told himself. “But then, Romana is something of a tinkerer, like me!”
“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked himself.
“Well,” his younger self hummed sagely. “It’s still eating away at my will, but otherwise…”
“What’s is this all about?” a crotchety old Doctor demanded, hobbling into view.
“Yes,” a flamboyantly dressed Doctor said airily, striding out of the dimness. “I should like an answer to that, too!”
A tall, stout woman appeared, looking ready to take charge. “Isn’t this a fine reunion!”
“Excuse me?” a short Doctor with a bowl cut demanded, lurching into the group and pointing at the woman. “Who are you?”
“Who are any of us?” the woman demanded, then spread her hands to indicate dozens of Doctors emerging from the shadows.
The Doctor gazed in wonder. “I didn’t know there were so many!”
“Past, present, and future,” one of the new arrivals stated, her long coat seemingly in homage to the afflicted Doctor. “Every one of us is here to answer the call! That’s what family is all about!”
The brown-coated Doctor grimaced, then swayed weakly. The Doctor caught him just in time.
“He’s fading!” he told the rest of him. “If we’re going to do this, we must do it now!”
“All right, everyone,” the tall woman told the rest. “Link our minds!”
“Now!” The flamboyant one gave the cue, and dozens, scores of Doctors linked minds. The feedback was blinding.
The Doctor looked around. He was back in the meadow, and Romana was hastily tossing aside a crackling ray gun. The instant it hit the ground, it burst into a million brilliant sparks, then simply ceased to be.
Romana stared ruefully at the burnt circle of bare ground amidst the fluffy grass. “It didn’t work!”
“What?” the afflicted Doctor loudly demanded, brushing himself off with his hat. “Nonsense! It worked perfectly!”
“Doctor! You’re all right!” Romana chirped cheerfully.
“What do you mean, all right?” the Doctor grumpily returned. “I’m perfect!”
Then he hemmed a bit before adding, “Thanks to you, of course.”
She shook her head wryly, then asked, “What was it, Doctor? What happened?”
“Well,” the Doctor hedged uncertainly. “The details are fuzzy, but I believe your little invention worked.”
“It put us in touch with our other incarnations,” the Doctor added. Then, scratching his head, unsure how to put it without revealing any of the future, he added, “It might have worked a bit too well.”
Romana scowled. “The point being?”
“The point being that we defeated this little fellow,” her Doctor said, holding up something bright pinched delicately between thumb and forefinger. All three peered at it intently.
“What is it?” Romana asked breathlessly, intrigued by the thing.
The older Doctor recognized it. “It’s a Willgrim.” He scowled thoughtfully.
“I’ve never heard of them,” Romana confessed.
“They usually go by unnoticed,” the Doctor told her and his younger self. “They just take a sip of a person’s will and move on to another. And they’re usually harmless.” He peered even closer at the tiny alien. “I wonder why this one is different?”
“They only eat willpower, you say?” Romana asked.
“Yes,” the Doctor confirmed.
“Well, it’s obvious, then,” she airily replied. “It took one sip of the Doctor’s enormous ego and got drunk on it! It just couldn’t help itself!”
“And who can blame it?” her Doctor shot back indignantly. Then he smiled with enormous teeth. “No one can resist my sweet disposition!”
Romana frowned at the sparkly dot the Doctor held so gingerly. “Well, what do we do with it, now?”
“We let it go, of course,” her Doctor said. “It can’t help it if I go down so well!”
“It won’t hurt anyone else,” the older Doctor told them. “Besides, I think it’s learned its lesson about over-indulging!”
Romana made a wry face. “If you think so, Doctor.”
His younger self opened his fingers and the spark zipped away.
“Doctor?” the older Timelord’s companion called in the distance. “Where did you go?”
“I should go,” he excused himself. “I’ve polluted the timeline enough for one day.”
His younger self tipped his hat to the Doctor and Romana gave him a nod, and the Doctor rushed off to rejoin his companion. On the way, he couldn’t help glancing upward and regretting the loss of the umbrella.
Tales of a Tired Daddy 