“Tea?”  Mickey scowled.  “Whatever.  Rose is dead and you’re acting like you don’t care.”

“Rose gave up her life to save Jack’s.  She was the finest example of the courage and heroism your species is capable of.  She put the needs of others before her own.  You should be proud of her.”

“Yeah, well how come you survived?  And how come you’re a woman?”

“I was killed too.  By the Daleks.  Somehow though I managed to recover.  Every cell in my body was devastated.  I regenerated the damage.  My whole genetic code was put in a blender and then sellotaped back together.  Along the way I got an extra X chromosome so my new body was female.  It’s not an uncommon experience.  In fact I knew families on my home world who’d both change gender at the same time so they’d take turns being the husband and the wife.  Sometimes they were the same sex.  It’s just a chromosome at the end of the day, it’s nothing important like whether you’re good or evil, nice or cruel.  I’m still the Doctor, I just look and sound and think and walk differently.  Look at it this way, your best friend is an alien with a time machine.  How many people get to say that and not get institutionalized?”

Mickey smiled, just a little though.  “I’m still not happy about Rose dying though.”

“Of course not.  You shouldn’t be.  You should be upset; you can cry if you want to, I’m a girl now so it’s ok if you want to.  I’ve got a packet of tissues somewhere in my pockets.  I hope Jack didn’t use them all up.”

“ATTENTION DOCTOR.”

“Who was that?”  Mickey asked.

“ME.”  The voice replied.  “I AM FROM THE PLANET PIRO.  MY WORLD IS DYING.  WE NEED YOUR HELP TO SAVE IT.  COME TO THIS ADDRESS.  BRING YOUR ASSISTANT.”

The Doctor held her hand out and a piece of psychic paper materialized on her palm.  “A non-localised transmit beam.”  She looked at Mickey.  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“We get to go to a meeting.  I’ll have to buy that cocktail dress now.”

“Oh no!”  Mickey backed away.  “I ain’t going shopping with you again.  You’re mental.”

“I only spent £28,000 on shoes.”  The Doctor replied.  “I was quite restrained actually.  I need that dress though.  I really do.  It’s perfect for this party.  You don’t want to me to look bad, do you?”

“Ok, ok.”  Mickey agreed.  “I’m not going into the cubicle with you again though.”

“Fine.”  The Doctor pouted.  “I’ll just get someone else to lie to me about my bum.”

“I’m not having this conversation.”  Mickey said to himself.  “I’m not having this conversation.  I’m not having this conversation.”

The party however turned out to be less of a formal cocktail dress affair and more of a scruffy casual affair.  The Doctor felt horribly over-dressed and over-exposed in a room full of nerds whom had obviously never been this close to a real woman before.  Maybe if she slipped into the loo she could make a run for it?  However her plans for escape were cut short when their host cornered her and started talking about obscure scientific minutiae.

“Ah, Doctor Smith, of the United Kingdom.”  The Pironian ambassador spoke softly.  “I see our files were incorrect.  They said you were a man.”

“Well even I make mistakes.”  The Doctor replied.

“We never make mistakes.”

“Really?  That’s usually the first claim of a delusional mind.  Maybe I should get you on my couch for an intimate session?”

“The file also had many pictures of you; none of them were the same.  I think perhaps that you are a cunning expert in disguises or perhaps you can alter your appearance to help you spy on others?”

“Paranoid too?”  The Doctor tutted.  “You really do need specialist help.  Luckily I am a doctor, The Doctor, as it happens.  Check my DNA if you doubt me.  You scanned me on the way it.  It was most clumsy of you, such a crude machine, with a slight instability in the pica-wave region; you get sound bleed you see.  It’s most annoying when you have hearing as good as mine.”

“The genetic scanner identified you as a member of the same species as the Doctor.  Since there are no others of your species left I have to concur that despite all evidence to the contrary you are indeed the Doctor.”

“As if there was any doubt.”  The Doctor replied.  “Could anyone else have detected the numerous video surveillance cameras in this room?  Some of them are over three millimeters long for Omega’s sake.”

“You are perhaps more stupid than you think, Doctor.”  The ambassador stated.  “You are too clever to be allowed to live.”

“Oh, I’m too intelligent for you now?  Threatened by a woman are we?  Feeling inferior to someone so gorgeous and talented?  If you’ve got plans against this world then I will stop you, I won’t allow anyone to destroy Earth.  Not now, not ever.”

“I must kill you.”  The ambassador drew a gun, but he fell to the floor when Mickey hit him on the head with a large wooden chair.  “I used to watch ECW matches.”  He said with a smile.  “Why did he have a gun?”

“He’s not a very nice man I guess.”  The Doctor started to search the alien ambassador’s pockets.  “Uh oh.  Mickey, please leave the room and the building as fast as you can.  Take people with you.  Hurry.”  The Doctor looked at the bomb in her hand.  “I’ve got to try and defuse this.”

“Bye!”  Mickey ran out of the room as fast as he could.

Mickey grabbed a couple of people and dragged them outside, seconds later the Doctor sprinted outside and the whole building exploded in a huge fireball.  “I thought you were going to defuse it.”  Mickey said sarcastically.

“It was booby trapped.”  The Doctor replied.  “I’ve never run so fast in all my lives and in heels too!  I don’t know which hurts more; my feet with these torture devices or my back because I’m wearing a strapless bra.”  The Doctor spotted a small aeroplane, undamaged by the blast.  “We can escape in that.  Somehow I don’t think we’re safe here.”

“Are you sure you can fly this thing?”  Mickey asked the Doctor.

“Of course I’m not.”  The Doctor replied.  “If you want a go though, feel free to have a go.  It’s nothing at all like your computer games, in fact it’s quite boring really.  All you have to do it not hit the ground.  I’ve got that part figured out, but if you think you can do better then feel free to get us both killed.  I can probably get another body, but I doubt very much that you can.  You don’t even look after the one you’ve got.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well you could lay off the curries for a start.  I don’t know how Rose put up with you.  Also you could exercise a bit more, do a bit of jogging every day, or you could join in with my daily aerobics routine.  We should give you a detox too.  How do you feel about colonic irrigation?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Anything to keep your mind off the fact that we’re about to land.”  The Doctor replied.

“Oh my god!”  Mickey screamed.  However the plane was bathed in an unnatural green light.  He looked up out of the windscreen to see a massive spaceship above them.  “We’re being abducted, by aliens!”

“How embarrassing.”  The Doctor shook her head.  “That’s so clichéd.  It’s older than me and I’m only eight hundred and fifty.”

“Liar.  Rose said you were nine hundred.”

“I lied to her as well.”  The Doctor smiled.  “How would you feel to be the wrong side of a millennium though?”

The planet Piro was small and orange and covered in a vast purple and brown crystal city.  Its crust was slowly crumbling and whole sections of the planet were falling into the white hot lava below.  The Pirons wanted the Doctor’s help to invent a cure to save their planet.

“I’m afraid you’ve brought this upon yourselves.”  The Doctor replied.  “You’ve stripped your world of all its natural resources and now you’re suffering a bad case of subsidence.  Maybe if you bulldoze the city flat and fill in the holes you might get lucky.  I doubt it though.  I think you should seriously consider moving planet in the next few hours.”

One of the Pirons spoke.  “You destroyed our base on Earth Doctor.  Why should we believe you?”

“You can stay if you want to.  In which case I’ll say goodbye now.  Goodbye.”  She looked at Mickey.  “Come on then, we’d better get back home.  That circuit won’t repair itself.”

“You’re not going anywhere.  We will do as you suggest.  In fact we’ve been planning it all along.  Earth will be our new home.  Guards arrest these creatures; imprison them in an escape proof cell.”

“What is it with megalomaniacs and prison cells?”  The Doctor asked Mickey.

“I dunno.  Maybe they have control issues?”

“Yes, I think you could be right.”  The Doctor nodded, and then suddenly sent her elbow smashing into the solar plexus of the guard next to her, and she stamped on his foot with the spiky heel of her shoe for good measure.  “Haii!”  She crippled the other guard with a Venusuian aikido nerve jab.  “I don’t know my own strength.”  She grabbed Mickey’s hand and ran for it.

The spaceship was parked in neutral.  The Doctor piloted it out of the docking bay and up into the air.  “What a pity they turned out to be such sore losers.”  She started pressing buttons on the control panel.  “Now let’s see.  Heavy Neutron Bombs?  Take two and call me in the morning.”  She dropped them on an uninhabited part of the planet.  “This should distract them while we make our escape.”

Mickey watched as the planet was sucked inside out.  “You killed them all!  You destroyed the whole planet.”

“That’s impossible.  Those bombs weren’t even enough to dent the planet’s surface.  I rather suspect that the Pirons tried to zap us with one of their weapons and it backfired somehow.  Instead of us dying, they destroyed themselves.  It’s all very tragic in a ‘I’m-glad-it’s-not-us’ sort of way.”

“Well I guess I should get us back to Earth, just in time for fish and chips.  It’s your treat; I’ve got no where on this dress for pockets to keep any money in.  I should really buy a few purses.”

“I’m not sure what’s worse, being stuck in an alien cell for all eternity or shopping with you for a few hours.”

“Oh I’m by far the nicer of the two alternatives.  Maybe we can get you a new jacket?  With trousers of course.  Maybe some shoes while we’re at it.  How are you off for shirts?  Maybe we can get you some ties too?”

“I’m fine.”  Mickey replied.  “Really, you’re worse than my mother.”

“Ah, a fine woman.  I must pop by for a good natter and a cuppa one of these days.”

“No way.  Besides Jackie’s still looking to chin you over you getting Rose killed.”

“At least she doesn’t know what I look like.”  The Doctor replied.

“No, I said you were some Scottish geezer with a fake English accent, and you’d moved to Wales.”

“A culturally diverse lie.  How inventive.”

“Let’s just get home, eh?”

“Home it is.”  The Doctor smiled and set course for Earth.