The Doctor and the Albatross - Prologue

Prologue 

or

What's All This, Then?

My oldest daughter is 14.5 as of the time I'm writing this. She is an avid author, mostly of fan-fiction with a little poetry and other stuff thrown in for flavor. Ask her what she wants to do for fun, and she'll ask you for a notebook, something to write with, and a few hours of peace and quiet. She's also very talented. I've read most of her stuff and it's really quite good.

The Tardis

In fact, she's inspired me to take my own stab at a piece of fan-fiction. That is what I'm going to present here, as a series of entries to my blog. What you are about to read, for those unfamiliar with the fan-fiction universe, is called a "cross-over." It's a story in which characters and  universes of two separate franchises interact to create a new adventure for both .. basically. Usually a cross-over assumes that the reader is familiar with both "parent universes," and this will contribute to his enjoyment of the story. I've tried to do that, but at the same time I've provided some details to try and help those who may not be overly familiar with either of the universes I'm about to unceremoniously smash together.

With that said, however, if you haven't seen David Tennant as Doctor Who, and/or you haven't watched Joss Whedon's masterpiece Firefly and the movie that followed it (called Serenity) then please stop what you're doing, go log onto Netflix or whatever, and watch them. Do it now. Not so much because it will help you better appreciate this story, but just because they are both excellent series and you will be a better, wiser person for having viewed them.

Serenity

Firefly and Doctor Who are two sci-fi series on the opposite ends of not only the longevity spectrum, but others as well. The Doctor has been puttering around through space-time in his bizarre police box ship for over 65 years now, and is the longest running sci-fi show ever. Conversely, Firefly was canceled, most fans believe unjustly, after just one season.  Firefly portrays a more believable future than most sci-fi shows - there are no phasers, light-sabers, or photon torpedoes. Humanity, after having expanded into space to survive (and having done so without warp drive or transporters), still believes itself to be the only intelligent life in the universe, and maintains its conflicted nature which breeds corruption and war along with compassion and love. Doctor Who, however, contains some of the craziest, most outlandish, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, cheesy, steam-punk-ish, and mind-numbing .. stuff I've ever seen, complete with time travel paradoxes that inexplicably sort themselves out, alien robots with toilet plungers protruding from their forms .. the list goes on and on. Obviously, I am a huge fan of both.

Possibilities ...

So what would happen if the Tardis suddenly showed up in Serenity's cargo bay? To be fair, I did search the web for other Firefly/Doctor Who crossovers, and there are plenty. I didn't read any of them.

I had originally presented this story as a series of posts, but I have now consolidated it into one giant page that you can get to from the front of my blog, or here. I did this to make it easier on the reader to follow along since, in blog format, the posts appear in reverse order, and .. you know .. spoilers.