A Lesson To The Past, From The Future

Chapter 1 - Pop Goes The Matrix Cyclotron

A large bang, followed by a series of pops filled the console room, followed by a medium-sized cloud of smoke, which rose upwards in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

"Doctor... What's broken this time?" whined Jo, tired of the Doctor always spending time fixing the TARDIS only for it to break every time they flew the old girl.

"Broken, Jo?" the Doctor replied "No, no, the old girl just needs a bit of 'TLC' here and there, well, less 'here and there' and more everywhere, really."

"Doctor..." Jo continued "This is the third time this week this has happened - can't you let the Time Lords take her in for an MOT?"

"Don't be silly Jo," the Doctor snapped, before scratching his left cheek with his right index finger, "they'd be all to happy to put her in a museum, not a garage."

As he said this, a component on the opposite side of the console burst into flame, letting out a high pitched back-firing whine.

"Not the matrix cyclotron!", the Doctor complained, sounding slightly sad in the process, "I took some of Bessie's best parts to fix that. Maybe you're right Jo - this old girl needs an MOT."

With that, the Doctor took to flicking various levers on the console, pushing buttons, and twisting knobs. His eyes were focused on the many small screens and displays dotted around the console.

"Get that to 300, set this to balance-right, make sure that stays level, yes, yes, very good." he muttered to himself.

"Will you ever tell me what these bits-and-bobs of yours actually do, Doctor?" Jo wondered out loud.

"Fine, fine, if you so insist!" the Doctor responded, "but they're more than just bits-and-bobs - they all serve critical in maintaining smooth operation of our dear TARDIS!"

Jo smirked, she knew she'd pushed the right buttons in the Doctor to let her in on the workings of the machine that she so adored, but knew so little about.

"This first contraption, on the 2nd panel, the one that puffed out all that smoke," the Doctor lectured, somewhat condescendingly, to Jo, "is known as the 'vortex-loop-vector-tracker', it allows me to pilot the TARDIS relative to coordinates within the time vortex, moving relative to a space-time event, et cetera."

Jo was realising that maybe asking the Doctor for information to broaden her knowledge of the TARDIS was a lot more sleep-inducing than she first thought.

"This second contraption," the Doctor went on, not noticing Jo stifling a yawn, "is the matrix cyclotron. This uses the fluctuation of charged anti-particles to create a link between the TARDIS memory banks and the matrix back on my planet, its a sort of living computer - far too complicated to go into now. The important thing is that if we don't fix this, the Time Lords will soon realise that communications have been severed, and will send out a less than friendly search party to find out why."

"But why do they care so much, don't they take a break from being nosey - you're free now Doctor, they said so, remember?" Jo chimed.

"Free to move, yes," the Doctor told her, "but never fully free from their authoritarian grasp. No, my dear, the Time Lords have these in place to make sure Time Lords are never too far out of their reach should the be needed. It's this circuit that helps them call back a TARDIS and force my hand into accepting their missions."

"So, what are we going to do?" Jo rightfully asked.

"I know a man who may help us. I don't know how he knows what he does, especially because he's from your planet." the Doctor said, a look of disgust forming on his face.

"Oh Doctor," Jo spat back. "Don't be so cruel! We've met plenty of very intelligent Earth-men, like those time-travelling rebels from the 22nd-Century, or those delegates from the Earth Empire, remember?"

"Yes Jo," the Doctor replied smugly. "But the difference is, those men were from long after your time, with much more advanced technology. We're headed to 1988."