"But that can't be the end!" the little Ninth Doctor complained. "Sherlock Holmes hasn't solved the mystery."

"No. That's your lot." the Master replied.

"But the nice man got squished!" Baby Rose wailed. "And no-one caught the baddies! This is a dreadful story!"

"Of course it isn't the end," little Martha reassured her.

"Oh yeah?" The Master gave her a glare. Toddler or adult, this girl always seemed to end up as a thorn in his side. "What do you know about it?"

"If the man died in the machine, he can't have come to Doctor Watson's house to tell him the story. That's a para-thingy."

"Paradox." He cursed mentally. The brat was right. If he left causality tied in knots like this, he might end up as Reaper-bait.

Master / Narrator:
All right, you horrible rugrats. You know that foreign woman who tried to warn Mr. Hatherley? Well, when she heard the sound of the press, she ran at once to a corridor just beside it.

[A narrow corridor, lined with wooden panels. Donna hurries up, carrying a blue suit and the Doctor's spare-hand-inna-jar. The sound of the hydraulic press can be heard.]

Donna:
This had just better work.

[A ghastly scream, followed by a crunch, as before. Glowing golden vapour pours through the cracks in the woodwork. Donna throws the jar to the ground. It shatters; the hand absorbs the vapour and promptly grows into a timelord/human metacrisis.]

Donna:
Right. No time for explanations, monkeyboy. Get this suit on and make a run for it.

Other Doctor / Victor:
And the compliments of the season to you, madam.

[He dons the suit, and they run together along various corridors and down a flight of stairs. Suddenly Donna stops.]

Donna:
No good, they're ahead of us. Quick, into the bedroom.

Other Doctor / Victor:
Why?

Donna:
So you can jump out the window, numbskull! Quick!

[They dart into a bedroom. Donna opens the window and helps the Doctor onto the sill. As she does so, the Abzorbaloff smashes down the door and bursts in, brandishing a weapon like a meat cleaver. Donna picks up a chair and advances on him.]

Donna:
You promised me, Fritz. After last time, you said: Never again.

Abzorbaloff / Colonel Stark:
He knows too much.

Other Doctor / Victor:
Do you always think in clichés?

Abzorbaloff / Colonel Stark:
Always worked up to now.

[He grabs the other end of Donna's chair and gives it a shove, knocking her over backwards. Then he heads for the window.]

Other Doctor / Victor [vo]:
I had let myself go, and was hanging by my hands from the windowsill, when his blow fell.

[The cleaver slashes down. The Doctor drops from the window into the garden, picks himself up, and scarpers, leaving a trail of tomato sauce.]

Master / Narrator:
You know, I'm growing fonder of this story by the minute.

Other Doctor [limping for cover]:
But I'm within... fifteen hours... of regenerating. Why can't I grow—

Master / Narrator:
Paradoxes. You show up after the flashback without a thumb, so you can't grow one now. Ha! What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the Doctor. And so, weakened by loss of blood, Mr. Hatherley suddenly fell in a dead faint among the rose bushes, which pricked him in awkward places.

Other Doctor / Victor [vo]:
The next thing I knew, it was day, and I was lying by the side of the road outside the railway station. I took the first train back to London and went at once to see Doctor Watson here.

[The extended flashback sequence ends, and we're back in 221B Baker Street. The Tenth Doctor's suit is now blue, but the rest of causality seems intact.]

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Interesting. What do you make of this?

[He produces a bulky scrapbook, and reads from it.]

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
"Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since."

Captain Jack / Watson:
You mean, he was the previous person the Colonel had to look at his machine?

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
And that's what the girl meant by "last time". Right. Well, let's go to Scotland Yard and get a detective, and then we can all go down to Eyford.

[A railway carriage. Sitting in it are Holmes, Watson, Victor, Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard (played by Mickey), and a plain-clothes detective (played by Sarah Jane Smith).]

Mickey / Inspector Bradstreet:
Here's a map of Eyford. I've drawn a circle on it, ten miles from the station. The place we want is somewhere near there. The question is, whereabouts on the circle?

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
I know.

Mickey / Inspector Bradstreet:
Yeah, I thought you'd say that. OK, let's hear everyone else's guesses. I reckon it's to the south.

Other Doctor / Victor:
East.

Sarah Jane:
West.

Captain Jack / Watson:
North.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
You're all wrong, of course. [He points at the map.] Right in the middle.

Other Doctor / Victor:
But the twelve-mile drive?

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Simple. Six out and six back.

Mickey / Inspector Bradstreet:
Sounds likely enough. And I think we've all got a pretty good idea what they were doing.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Yeah. Forgery. They use the machine to make nickel amalgam.

Sarah Jane:
We've had our suspicions for a while, but we haven't been able to track them down before now. This could be our lucky break.

Master / Narrator:
But they were wrong wrong wrong. When they got there, they found the place easily enough. No-one was there and the house was on fire.

[Outside the house. Everyone is standing on the front lawn. Three fire engines are in attendance, with UNIT men working stirrup pumps. They are making no headway at all against the fire. The chief fireman walks up to join the group.]

Mr. Copper / Fire Chief:
The fire started last night, from what I heard. But by the time we got here, it was too late.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Oh, fantastic. You know what caused it? When they tried to crush you—

Other Doctor / Victor:
Actually, they did crush me.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Shut up. That would have broken the oil lamp, and—

Other Doctor / Victor:
It wasn't an oil lamp.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Shut up. And that set the house on fire, and they were too busy chasing you to notice until too late. Did you find anything else?

Mr. Copper:
Oh, a lot of nickel and tin in one of the outhouses.

Mickey / Inspector Bradstreet:
Yeah, definitely coiners. I suppose you didn't find any actual money?

Mr. Copper:
Sadly not.

Other Doctor / Victor:
And how come they didn't kill me when I was unconscious in the rose bushes?

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
It looks from these footprints as if you were carried down to the road by two people. One with remarkably small feet, and one with unusually large ones...

[Flashback. Victor is lying unconscious in the rose bushes. The three villains approach him.]

Abzorbaloff / Colonel Stark:
Right. Dinner time. Yum yum. One touch is all it'll take.

[He bends over his prey.]

Donna:
What a pillock. I'm not putting up with you any longer, mate.

[She grabs his cane and smashes it against the house.]

Abzorbaloff / Colonel Stark:
Oh, bottoms.

[He melts.]

Donna:
Right, you skinny streak of vinegar. Help me get this lazybones down to the station.

Diana Goddard / Ferguson:
In these heels? You've gotta be kidding me.

[Donna holds up a pair of flipflops.]

Donna:
Don't worry, I brought these in case. Come on, before he wakes up.

[They take one leg each, and drag Victor off. The flashback ends.]

Master / Narrator:
The fire wasn't brought under control until sunset.

[Sunset. Everyone is exactly where they were, but the house is now a smouldering heap of rubble. A fireman approaches the little group on the front lawn.]

Ross Jenkins / Fireman:
Sir, the fire's out.

Mr. Copper / Fire Chief:
Well done, men.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
Probably only because there isn't any house left to burn.

Mr. Copper:
Tch, details.

Other Doctor / Victor:
I don't suppose you happened to find a severed thumb? It would probably be on a windowsill at the back, a couple of floors up. Or perhaps it rolled off.

Mr. Copper:
Now, it's funny you should say that. As it happens, we did. I gave it to our chief scientific advisor to look at.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
And?

Mr. Copper:
She decided to check if it was living membrane by passing a potent galvanic charge through it.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
I can see where this is going. Hang on, you said 'she'.

Mr. Copper:
That's right. Look, here she comes now.

[Rose arrives, wearing her elaborate dress from "The Unquiet Dead".]

Rose:
Good evening, gentlemen. Oh, you've got one of them as well, have you?

Mickey / Inspector Bradstreet:
One of what?

[Rose indicates Other Doctor.]

Rose:
One of them. Look, here comes mine. He grew back from the thumb.

[Another Tenth Doctor wanders up, wearing a dinner jacket.]

Other Other Doctor:
Hello everyone.

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
This is worse than rabbits.

Captain Jack / Watson:
There's nothing wrong with rabbits!

Rose:
Sorry, can't stop. You know how it is, places to go, people to see, fake Time Lords to kiss, chips to guzzle.

[She kisses the Other Other Doctor. They go off arm-in-arm.]

Captain Jack / Watson:
Aww, isn't that just too romantic?

Sarah Jane:
We need to get after those forgers. I was speaking to a farmer just now, and he said he'd seen some people matching their descriptions on the road to Reading. They were in a cart with a lot of boxes.

Mickey / Bradstreet:
When was this?

Sarah Jane:
Early this morning.

Mickey / Bradstreet:
So they've got a ten-hour head start. Oh well. Let's head for the police station and raise the alarm anyway.

[Everyone, except Victor, begins to walk off.]

Other Doctor / Victor:
Hang on. What about me? I've lost fifty guineas, I've lost my thumb, and I don't even get the girl.

[The Ninth Doctor / Holmes turns back briefly.]

Ninth Doctor / Holmes:
You'll have to put it down to experience.

[He departs, along with the others. All are chatting happily. Other Doctor is left, all alone, in the smouldering ruins.]

Other Doctor / Victor:
Thanks a bunch.

[Once more, he stares moodily into the camera.]

The Master shut the book with a bang.

"The End," he said. "And that really is the end, so I don't want any backtalk from you lot."

"Does that really work?" Baby Yvonne asked. "I mean, if you cutted a Time Lord's fumb off, could you grow a new Time Lord from it?"

"I shouldn't think so for a moment," the Master replied. "Don't let me stop you trying, though, if you want to."

Yvonne looked around for a convenient Time Tot to mutilate, but for some reason they had all decided that it was a good time to be elsewhere.

"Anyway," the Master continued. "You shouldn't take these stories so literally. In the end, it's all about the moral."

"What's a moral?" asked little Jack.

The Master smiled nastily.

"In this case? 'Don't suck your thumb, because if you do the Abzorbaloff will come in the night and cut it off with his cleaver'. Sweet dreams, children."

He left them, satisfied in the knowledge of a good job well done.

• "Doctor Who" characters are the property of the BBC.
• "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is in the public domain.
• Extracts from "Kiss You Off" by the Scissor Sisters.
• Nitpicks based on "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes", edited by Leslie S. Klinger.
• This Time Round created by Tyler Dion.
• Look Who's Talking created by Imran Inayat.
• Storytime created by B. K. Willis.