Every time we’d step out of the TARDIS, it was always something incredibly new.
At the same time, it was often very much the same.
For example, I was running behind the Doctor, as he held out his sonic screwdriver, reading - something - off of the device.
We were running through the streets of 19th century San Francisco. All the Doctor had said was something about “anomalous temporal emissions”, and off he went.
Finally we reached a hotel. The Doctor almost contemptuously bypassed the concierge at the front desk, saying something clever and baffling like he always does. While the man stammered, the Doctor followed his screwdriver into the interior.
Finally he stopped long enough for me to catch up. “There he is,” he breathed, and I looked. All I could see was a group of people playing poker.
“There who is?” I’d asked in confusion. Then I looked closer.
One of the players looked normal enough, except for his slicked-back black hair and distinctly yellow complexion. I mean, quite literally, a golden-yellow hue.
The concierge caught up with us, and the Doctor threw him off his stride again with an abrupt and imperative demand: “Tell me who that man is.”
“That-- that’s Mr. Data, sir, a guest-- Sir, I really insist–”
The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows, and the man hesitated - years of ingrained customer service habits, no doubt.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded - though not as loudly as he might have. Maybe he wanted to avoid alerting the strange-looking man we were after.
The concierge visibly hesitated, perhaps ransacking his memory for the Doctor’s memorable face. As far as I know, we’d never been to this place and time before - but maybe he had? The Doctor was over 2,000 years old. He could conceivably have come here before. But no, it was just a distraction.
Just before the concierge came up dry, the Doctor snorted. “I shall never patronize this hotel ever again!” He stalked off, transforming himself in the concierge’s eyes from an intrusive stranger into a treasured guest. I followed the apologetic hotel staffer from a safe distance, casting my glances backward from time to time. Had this “Mr. Data” noticed us?
After one glance backward, I saw him looking straight at me.
Oops.
The Doctor was taking measurements when he caught sight of Mr. Data approaching. The yellow-hued stranger was walking, quickly, decisively, but still walking.
The Doctor put his screwdriver away and quickly composed himself, putting on an ingratiating smile. As Mr. Data approached, he opened as he often did - trying to get the initiative, trying to wrap up the other person’s inner rhythm and take control of it.
“Hello! And how can I help you, my good sir?”
Mr. Data tilted his head. “I observed you and your companion in the hotel,” he explained, with a brief nod in my direction. I smiled and nodded politely in acknowledgement. But he kept talking, in a calm, detached tone.
“You expressed curiosity about me at the hotel. May I ask the nature of your business with me?”
The Doctor glanced at me, and looked back at Data with that weirdly polite smile. I never knew what he was thinking, but he was not polite by nature. This was always a mask he’d wear, to get through some necessary conversation.
“Ahh, well, you see my friend and I–” He was polite enough to introduce me by name, at least. He didn’t waste a breath continuing, of course.
“We’re – journalists. We’re interested in visitors to–”
He turned to me. “Where are we?”
“San Francisco,” I prompted.
“San Francisco! Quite right.” Back to Mr. Data, and out came the psychic paper. “As you can see here, we’re accredited journalists.”
Mr. Data stared at the paper, head tilting again. He appeared to be evaluating something. And then he spoke, without a smile, but also without malice, frustration, or much else by way of genuine emotion. It was like being lectured by a parent who’d grown weary of humoring a pair of children.
Honestly, having traveled with the Doctor, I could empathize with that just a bit.
“I do not believe that either of you are journalists.”
The Doctor glared briefly at the paper, then looked back at the other man. His voice lost some of its politeness, replaced with determination. “Well, I don’t believe you are who you say either.” He was trying to rally himself, with mixed success.
“May I ask what led you to this conclusion?” Mr. Data asked.
“Well…” The Doctor glanced at me, then uncertainly back. “Your complexion is not typical for a native of this region.”
Mr. Data hesitated too. “I am a Frenchman,” he said finally.
The Doctor’s facial expression could only be described as a mixture of disbelief and annoyance, and I could almost hear his face saying something to me: “can you believe the nerve of this man, lying so badly to the biggest liar in the universe?”
Neither of these men were what they claimed. I was almost curious what would happen next.
I did not expect the Doctor to say what he said.
“Come with me. I’ll tell you the truth.”
When had the Doctor ever told the truth?
The Doctor led the way back to the TARDIS, carefully concealed in the back of a warehouse. I say “carefully concealed” despite the fact that it still looked like a police box from 1960’s-era Britain.
If Mr. Data was surprised to see the exterior, he didn’t reveal it.
Nor did he flinch in the slightest, when the Doctor opened the doors with a snap of his fingers and stepped inside.
The Doctor reached the center console, and turned. He was expectant, eager - he knew the words he wanted to hear. “It’s bigger on the inside”. Everyone said it.
Mr. Data spent seconds looking around. Although he didn’t look amazed, or surprised, or scared, he was clearly curious. Finally he looked back to the Doctor, whose anticipation was peaking.
“May I ask a question?” he asked.
“Of course, of course,” the Doctor said encouragingly.
“Is the dimensional disjunction between the exterior and interior dimensions a natural feature of our environment, or would deactivation of the machinery cause some sort of spatial collapse?”
The Doctor’s face, for the first time in a long time, reflected an emotion I enjoyed seeing: deflation. He wanted to smugly demonstrate his cool time machine, and this visitor had seemingly leap-frogged several logical steps past it.
“Ah. Well, that’s an excellent question. Honestly, most visitors just open with ‘it’s bigger on the inside’.”
Data nodded in apparent understanding, and immediately moved to explain himself. “The technology here suggests a machine or vehicle. I surmised that as operator of this machine, you were already familiar with that property. I saw no reason to repeat such a deduction.”
He looked carefully at the Doctor, then added something. “If you were hoping I would say it regardless, I apologize. It is indeed bigger on the inside.”
The Doctor faced the console, lowered his head, and laid his hands heavily on the surface. Somehow, he’d been defeated.
He turned back with a teeth-baring grin. “I promised you the truth. My name is the Doctor. This is my TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension in Space. We’re time travelers.”
He looked carefully at his visitor. “And so are you.”
“Ah.” Data seemed unperturbed by all of this. “In that case I should clarify. I am an android.”
“You said you were a Frenchman,” I said, frowning. “Don’t androids have to tell the truth or something?”
The Doctor turned to me and shrugged. “He could be a French android.”
Data felt the need to explain. “I did not wish to announce my existence as a time traveler or an android. I therefore felt the need to engage in subterfuge. I am not, in fact, French. It would be hard to assign any specific ethnicity to me–”
The Doctor held up a hand, cutting off the exposition. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what you’re doing in this time?”
Data told us a story, about another planet, a group of time traveling aliens siphoning life force, and a time portal he’d been drawn through.
The Doctor was absorbing the details like a sponge, though privately I wondered how many similar adventures he’d had. Surely he’d run into something like this before, as outrageous as it sounded?
“That explains why we’re so far off course,” he said aloud, but mostly to himself. “A destination I’d never have imagined us reaching.”
Data looked between the two of us. “Earth?” he asked.
The Doctor turned back to him, and a genuine grin broke out. “America.”