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Hamster Book Club - ‘Trix’ - original short story · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:10
  Look, I'm not trying to turn this into a daytime soap, I
• 0:13
  promise. But there's a score to settle
• 0:16
  with my dad. I honestly don't know if I want
• 0:19
  answers or to finish him. That's how strongly I feel right
• 0:23
  now. He smooths his way into people's
• 0:26
  lives. He seduces them with talk of
• 0:28
  status and power, uses them and discards them.
• 0:34
  That was the rumour until I became the Grand Duchess and saw
• 0:37
  it for myself, saw the man who would be Minister of Time.
• 0:41
  With his connections with crystal people that propel him
• 0:45
  into all of time and space. I knew I had to be as cunning as
• 0:49
  him to get close, first disguising myself as a wealthy
• 0:53
  woman and then as a companion of the Doctor once I found a way
• 0:57
  into his ship of time. It was just a case of waiting.
• 1:03
  Waiting until our adventures collided.
• 1:05
  Waiting to ask why in his footsteps through time that he
• 1:09
  took a shine to my mother. Why she was his choice and why,
• 1:15
  amongst his many consequences of meddling, he never even stopped
• 1:19
  to consider that his daughter would want answers about her
• 1:23
  father. Out of something evil must come
• 1:36
  something good. But what if the deed was so
• 1:40
  corrupt and poisonous that the entire universe was wounded as a
• 1:44
  result? It's the sort of dangerous
• 1:47
  thinking that you can get caught indulging in when thinking of
• 1:50
  the Second World War and whether you should exist if all those
• 1:54
  people hadn't died. A leaver was poured, a planet
• 1:59
  was destroyed, well, extinguished from existence
• 2:03
  entirely, and the whole universe shuddered, and the tremors
• 2:08
  knocked the timeline a few inches to the right.
• 2:12
  The sons and daughters of the end of the war all knew deep
• 2:16
  down that if Gallifrey hadn't fallen, they wouldn't be like
• 2:22
  Patricia McMillan. The sadness was living with the
• 2:26
  secret. Most wandered through their
• 2:29
  liars with an itch at the back of their heads telling them that
• 2:32
  they shouldn't exist. Tricks was braver than that.
• 2:36
  Smarter, she saw her chance to get close to the Doctor, the
• 2:41
  Grand Duchess, Sabbath, Good time, Zinc, the Council of
• 2:47
  Eight, the Tomorrow Windows. She knew he would eventually
• 2:53
  open the door to the past and discover his hand in the
• 2:57
  destruction of his world, try to change the past or rebuild.
• 3:04
  Trix was an assassin waiting to strike.
• 3:08
  She was the Doctor's friend until she was his enemy.
• 3:14
  Because if the universe was corrected.
• 3:16
  If the timeline was restored, if the mistakes of the Time War
• 3:21
  were rectified, she might never exist in the first place.
• 3:38
  You can't be serious. I'll blow your brains out if you
• 3:42
  don't. You are serious as a bullet into
• 3:48
  your brain, Miss McMillan. Mr. Hartford, what makes you
• 3:52
  think I have the skills to get close to the doctor?
• 3:57
  Because we've been watching you for some time.
• 3:59
  Because you have certain chameleonic skills that
• 4:03
  transcend the talents of even our most proficient agents.
• 4:08
  Because I'm holding the gun. And because I used it to murder
• 4:12
  your father. You did me a favour.
• 4:16
  He's a monster and your Public Enemy number one with some
• 4:22
  forensic foresight. And only I can provide you with
• 4:27
  an alibi. Very neat.
• 4:32
  It's an agency standard. What do you want me to do?
• 4:38
  Just watch the doctor get close to him, discover his secrets,
• 4:46
  deliver them to me. What do I get in return?
• 4:55
  The gratitude of my employer. Little Patty Macmillan was the
• 5:13
  runt of the litter, the mousy bookwormer knuckled down and
• 5:18
  worked hard and wanted desperately to break free of her
• 5:21
  sick life at home. She was stronger than I ever
• 5:25
  was, despite the fact that she was five years younger than me
• 5:29
  and shorter and a girl. It was the little things at
• 5:34
  first. Little insults when we were
• 5:37
  scared of the dark. You little whips.
• 5:42
  Then situations that would make us scared.
• 5:45
  Then the slipper. That fucking leather slipper.
• 5:51
  Then the cupboard for hours. Then the pain, his disgusting
• 5:57
  smile when he lunged for us. The creative ways he would hurt
• 6:02
  us or would exist in a state of fear.
• 6:07
  Punishment could come at any time.
• 6:10
  Mum was too frightened to do anything.
• 6:13
  She let him. Patty waited with a knife in her
• 6:17
  lap, watching him sleep and wondering if she could do it.
• 6:22
  She knew she would, because if he stirred she'd be dumb, for
• 6:26
  there'd be no second chances, so it's just a matter of time.
• 6:30
  When she chose to slit his throat.
• 6:34
  I wondered if Mum would even react.
• 6:38
  I will never forget the look on her face when she walked out the
• 6:42
  house, dropping the knife, blood running free on her face.
• 6:47
  Where are you going, Patty? She looked so sad when she
• 6:50
  realised this life was over. I'm tricks.
• 6:55
  Patty's gone and you won't see her again,
• 7:10
  all right? I don't understand how it
• 7:11
  happens, but I'm just a bloke, right?
• 7:14
  I've got needs like everyone else.
• 7:17
  Who can resist the charms of Fixed Fortune Superstar?
• 7:22
  Maybe it came from watching too many Bond movies.
• 7:25
  The TARDIS is fully stocked, you know, gorgeous, leggy spies who
• 7:30
  can transform from dumb babe to badass in a heartbeat.
• 7:35
  The Doctor explained with lots of complicated words as usual.
• 7:40
  Fancy energy from Albert, terraforming abilities from the
• 7:44
  Crooked World, and all the weird potential energy built up in the
• 7:48
  time travel shenanigans in between.
• 7:51
  Result tricks. Macmillan Fantasy Babe, a woman
• 7:57
  of 1000 faces cold and clinical to start with, but you know,
• 8:02
  relent into my charms eventually.
• 8:05
  It's the old, old story. One artificial person made out
• 8:09
  of technobabble meets another artificial person made out of
• 8:13
  technobabble, and they fall in love.
• 8:27
  My sisters were all dead. My planet, my timeline.
• 8:36
  I couldn't whop whop through the stars or the years.
• 8:40
  I was trapped in this form, unable to ride the time winds,
• 8:46
  unable to look for survivors. Am I alone, the last of the
• 8:53
  Tardises, no eye to anchor me, no Artron to nourish me?
• 9:01
  I wondered the surface of this strange world, a life nobody
• 9:06
  would call normal, as a human, a woman.
• 9:12
  Patricia, my sister called me. My heart leapt.
• 9:19
  She had a pet, the Doctor, and he was full of gaps.
• 9:26
  Work with him, she purred. Come with us.
• 9:31
  I can give you sustenance from the vortex.
• 9:35
  You can guide him to the truth. We can resurrect our family.
• 9:41
  You're a machine of disguises, Patricia.
• 9:45
  Concentrate. Become part of this adventure
• 9:50
  and time and space can be yours again.
• 10:04
  Tricks couldn't raise her eyes to me.
• 10:06
  Fitz's, you don't understand. She whispered, wanting so much
• 10:10
  to be honest with him. I can't tell anyone who I am,
• 10:14
  not even you. Fitz's frustration always had
• 10:17
  him in tears. Whatever he tried, there was
• 10:20
  always a barrier between Tricks and him.
• 10:22
  Hell, between Tricks and the world, if I tell you, if I tell
• 10:27
  anyone, she might find me. She'll track me down, and she's
• 10:32
  unstoppable, merciless. She'll keep on coming till she
• 10:36
  finds me. I'll save you.
• 10:40
  Trix almost cried at Fitz's gallantry.
• 10:42
  She shook her head. If you don't understand, you
• 10:46
  can't. I'll take on the universe for
• 10:49
  you, you know that? Trix's laugh was hollow.
• 10:53
  I couldn't put you in her way. Fitz did the closest thing he
• 10:56
  could to a heroic pose. Try me.
• 11:01
  She sighed. She had to give him the little
• 11:04
  she could. She breathed deep.
• 11:08
  I crossed her once. An honest mistake, but she
• 11:13
  doesn't accept that. And I'm on the wrong side of the
• 11:16
  most implacable enemy in the universe, Fitz.
• 11:19
  But there's one thing I can ever tell you.
• 11:21
  It's this. Never mess with Angie Kapoor.
• 11:38
  So what's real? Everyone is experimenting with
• 11:42
  time, you see. I learned about it afterwards,
• 11:46
  stories of clock people and time agents and Sabbath with his
• 11:51
  snarling apes and men split eight ways and repeated history.
• 11:56
  The TARDIS is like a battery, a magnet for all the temporal
• 12:00
  energy these abrasions caused. A psychiatrics is the technical
• 12:06
  term sick a tricks. I was running and I was scared
• 12:15
  he was coming after me because of what I'd done, because I'd
• 12:18
  been brave enough to strike back at last, to protect my brother,
• 12:22
  to save my mum. He filled the alleyway, the rain
• 12:26
  coming down in terrible, violent streaks.
• 12:29
  He had his gun out and his badge on display and Dad's blood on
• 12:33
  his uniform. There's nowhere to run.
• 12:36
  Patricia with something blocking the alley, a blue box, slick and
• 12:41
  shining in the rain. Light flew from the ship like
• 12:44
  glass fragments, so many pieces of splintered light, and in each
• 12:49
  one I could see another. Me confronting a man with ham
• 12:53
  fists and screaming I'm your daughter being handed a dossier
• 12:58
  on the doctor, holding back my father's hand from striking
• 13:01
  Graham. A cartoon version of me, light
• 13:06
  pouring from inside me as I open up and let somebody walk inside
• 13:10
  me. What the hell?
• 13:14
  They're all me. All possible me's.
• 13:18
  Time's up, Patricia. Without a breath, I step into
• 13:22
  the light, and every possible version of myself tears me
• 13:25
  apart. I'm all of them.
• 13:29
  None of them. I'm Trix, the Woman of 1000,
• 13:34
  faces of a million backstories. I'm every possibility.
• 13:40
  Only you can decide which.