Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication by Adam Roberts

global government. After school I went to the Prose College where I learned to shape, snip and tailor prose. After my graduation I worked as a prose tailor, out of a little shop in the Reefer Barn (the main mall for all You-Rapper’s Reefer needs). It was tough work. Few people in You-’K? have any use for prose. Of course, state regulation requires every citizen to possess a dozen personalised lyrics by the age of majority, and Rap Tailors do good business. But I never had the knack for rap. I was rap-knack-less. My parents were ashamed to see me follow the ignominious path of the Prose Tailor, writing little pieces of legalese, or perhaps the liner notes for other people’s albums. I barely earned a living: money was always tight, and I never had enough for the little luxuries that make existence bearable. Worst of all I never had enough cash to be able to travel . . . to voyage to far countries, as I dreamed of doing! To visit the home of our Global religion, the great nation of You-Say! , the holy land, where the power of sayin’ was first mooted - where it was first determined that every ordinary person, no matter how inarticulate, ugly or stoopid, could have their say. But I would never be able to see that exotic land nor travel to the Progrok paradise of Rush?Yeah! , nor the teetering, foul-mouthed antipodian continent of ‘ Oz’ - Ausbourneia .
    My life was trapped in narrow grooves. Waking, working, eating, sleeping.
    And then one day I answered an advertisement for assistant-stroke-companion to a Time Gentleman, and everything about my life changed.
    My life, up until that moment, had been empty. I shuffled to work and shuffled home alone at the end of the day. My days were without colour; my life was as hopeless as a soap-on-a-rope that has lost its soap and is only rope thereby becoming hopeless as soap in the shower. You can’t wash yourself in rope, after all. I was ropey.
    As you can see from this, I’ve never been a very good prose tailor.
    Until I joined the Dr and his apprentice, Linnaeus Trout. The three of us together had a series of extraordinary adventures. And ultimately I was with him when he discovered the secret at the heart of time; and fate - in the shape of a malign ET and his Dr-killing weapon - forced us apart.
    This is my story.

Chapter Seven
    THE DR RE-UN-DEGENERATES
    But although I was anxious that the Dr was injured, perhaps fatally, in fact things took a much stranger path. Not to put too fine a point on it: I was privileged to witness one of the Dr’s ‘re-new-generative episodes’. You see, unlike most other life-forms the Time Gentlemen do not die. At least, they don’t die in the normal course of things. Instead their bodies ‘re-un-degenerate’. One ‘incarnation’, or ‘iteration’, or ‘actor playing’ the Dr passes away, and an entirely new one takes its place. I know ! It’s almost too incredible. It’s almost beyond belief. But there you go.
    I watched as the Dr fell to the floor, although not so carelessly as he was likely actually to injure himself. He lay there, and his face went all - fuzzy. I can’t think of a better way of describing it. For a moment it looked as though he possessed two faces, but then his features settled into a new configuration. His hair took on the lifeless, shaggy appearance of a bad wig, and then it too seemed to disappear revealing a short crew cut. The Dr had changed into a tall, bony man with a large nose.
    He sat up. ‘Ey-oop,’ he declared.
    ‘Doctor . . ..?’ I hazarded.
    ‘’Appen Taylor! Ey-oop Linn!’ he said, clambering to his feet. ‘Oo I say!’
    ‘Doctor! You’re alright!’
    He nodded, smiled, and then a look of concern crossed his face. He burped, noisily. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I do apologise.’ Again he belched. A sour smell of eggnog became palpable in the air of the TARDY. ‘You have to understand,’ said the Dr, embarrassed, ‘that the process of re-un-degeneration carries with