THIS TIME ROUND: CLEAN-UP CREW by Paul Gadzikowski DOCTOR WHO series characters and concepts copyright BBC tv THIS TIME ROUND concept by Tyler Dion, after Kielle "So what's all this then?" Emma asked. "Well, Gadzikowski's decided he's gone too long without posting something new to adwc," said Doctor Nine. "So he's rounded up his favorite characters to fill in the bomb crater in the parking lot." "He always says he doesn't have any favorites," Ace objected. She turned to leave but Doctor Nine tripped her. "The little Pooh filk wasn't enough for him?" Peri whined. "Now, he likes you," Doctor Nine pointed out, passing shovels to everyone as trucks full of gravel pulled up in the Saturday morning sun. "He even never gave you the dialog tag 'whined' until now." "He doesn't like me," Peri retorted, "he lusts after me. I always lose my clothes in his humor pieces." "Fake him out," suggested Hawkeye Pierce. "Take them off now." Peri started to answer, "You first," but apparently thought better of it. "There was a TTR piece of his where you didn't," said Ace as the shoveling started. "The one about the group of companions no one likes who come to the tavern once a week to get drunk together and then they go upstairs and then Adric gets laid two or three times over." "Lust again," said Peri. "I was in the first TTR he wrote - even if it was the second he posted - and in that one I got took upstairs too. That was the one that invented upstairs! I mean, Mel has Bates and Adric has Killings and Willis and Grace and Sam have Dowgiert. If Gadzikowski likes me all that much, I wish he'd write something with some character development." "There's that short-short story about cats and dogs on his website," Doctor Nine said. "Or was it mice and ducks?" "Or at least he could get me laid more often," Peri concluded brightly. "Given the way his chronology works," said Emma, "the STAR TREK crossover you'll be in will be set during the three months Kirk's officers spent on Vulcan while Spock's memory was being retrained." "Does that mean I'll get some character development, or I'll get laid?" "Three months on a steamy hot planet with James T. Kirk and nothing to do? Probably both." "At least you know what he likes about you," Ace said. "I don't know what I'm doing here." "Well, perhaps 'favorite' was a misstatement," said Doctor Nine. "As is already obvious, this is one of his ads-for-his-own-works TTR pieces." "Ace," said Ace. "Then I'm here to mention that the comic strip format BUFFY crossover currently being serialized on his website has flashbacks to my own last days in the TARDIS. They're the panels with no shading." "Didn't he say once that -" Emma started. "Don't give it away," Ace hissed. "He only implied that, on the thread of that filk of 'Cat's in the Cradle'." "Hey, I was in that," Peri said. "Oh, and he asked me to ask that that filk be reposted or emailed to him so he can save it offline. Or that someone remind him of the subject/title, so he can find it on DejaNews." After a moment's silence - except for the chunk of shovels in gravel and the grunts and curses of the shovelers - Doctor Nine said to Hawkeye, "Your turn." "Well, one reason I'm here is because the story in the queue - Isn't that great? An American saying 'queue'. - after Ace's BUFFY crossover is a M*A*S*H crossover." Peri frowned. "What kind of plot would a M*A*S*H crossover have?" "None," Hawkeye grinned. "Like the movie and several of the tv stories, it's episodic, depicting several otherwise unrelated incidents during the Doctor's many visits to the MASH." "Which of me are in it?" Doctor Nine asked. "The third, fourth, and fifth," said Hawkeye, "- successively, not simultaneously." "How does he work this crossover chronology stuff, anyway?" Ace asked. "He picks the Doctors and companions contemporary to the screendates of the crossover property," said Hawkeye. "M*A*S*H ran 1972-1983." "You said that's one reason you're here," said Emma. "What was the other?" Hawkeye grinned at Peri again. "In case there was anyone here who wants to get laid in Gadzikowski's work more often." "Sorry," Peri said, not sounding sorry, "I'm contemporary with AfterM*A*S*H and you weren't in that." "So," Emma asked Doctor Nine, "what are you and I doing here? Are we here just as a general reminder that Gadzikowski decided you and I are canon even if the actual events of 'Curse of the Fatal Death' are only a dream (http://www.sff.net/people/scarfman/pp9z.htm)?" "Yes, only a dream," said Doctor Nine, "including the only incidence of your being called 'Emma'." "What, that's not my real name?" "Why should it be, when it was used only once, during regenerative aphasia, in a dream, in which during a previous regenerative aphasia I couldn't remember your name at all?" "So who am I really? In Gadzikowski's fanfiction." "Well, you will recall that in THE NIGHT VISITORS (posted December '98, http://members.iglou.com/scarfman/dwxst.htm#nv) he wrote, in a pathetic gag attempt to make people think for one paragraph that he was putting Sam in his fanfiction, that Saavik's third regeneration had short-cropped blonde hair ..." "So I'm really Saavik," said Emma. "Huh! Who'da thought." "Well, we've finished," said Ace, spreading a film of asphalt over the gravel-filled hole. "That must be the end of the self-referentiality." "So," grumbled Ace, "that's done." "Until or unless Nyssa blows it up again," said Emma/Saavik. "Or unless Doug's and/or Bradley's newsserver misses this post," said Doctor Nine. He raised his glass of the round he'd bought everyone. "Say - where's Peri? And Hawkeye?" "I think they went upstairs," said Emma. THE END Paul Gadzikowski, scarfman@iglou.com http://members.iglou.com/scarfman "Well, you did pray rather loudly, my lady."