I love computer archaeology. While carefully stripping the layers away from a mysterious, neglected folder of documents, I unearthed three short pieces of fiction I wrote many years ago. So let’s try this: I’ll put them online, and you can read them for free. So here’s number one!

Doomsday Presage (yes, that title’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?) was written in 1996 and is a 247-word slice of Doctor Who flash fiction. Funnily enough, its obscure subject matter will probably make this explanation longer than the story itself. But I’ll be short. Here goes:

In the 1972 TV story The Daemons, the Master poses as a village vicar and uses Black Magic to summon a slumbering alien, Azal. Azal is the last of the Daemons, a race of god (devil?)-like beings. It turns out that what we know as Black Magic is really the ancient science of the Daemons. The Master wants Azal to hand his power over to him, but of course the Doctor (and, more specifically, his companion Jo) gets in the way.

Fast-forward to 1994, and Andy Lane’s Doctor Who New Adventure novel All-Consuming Fire is published. In this book, the Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and they traipse off on a Lovecraftian adventure. Seriously, it’s cool – in fact, it’s probably my favourite Doctor Who book ever. Anyway, in this book Holmes and Watson visit the Library of St John the Beheaded, a secret repository of terrible knowledge buried somewhere in Holborn, London, and presided over by monk-librarian Ambrose.

You guys keeping up?

So, put it together. In The Daemons, the Master has clearly done his homework. Where did he get the incantations and rites needed to summon Azal? From the Library of St John the Beheaded. When did he visit? Well, 1887, obviously. Coincidentally at the same time as Holmes and Watson do in All-Consuming Fire.

Got it? Got it. A 247-word story explained in 219. I’m doing well.

I suppose Doomsday Presage counts as Doctor Who fan fiction, but I would argue the point. To me, fan fiction is when a fan of something – like Doctor Who, or Xena, or Firefly – decides to write a proper story set in that universe using the main characters. Like writing your own TV episode. I’ve always steered clear of that, instead focussing on incidentals and expanding them into something more substantial. It’s possibly a more interesting exercise.

This little story was written for and published in issue 46 of TSV, the zine of the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club. You can find that issue online in its entirety here, including Doomsday Presage. I was 18 when I wrote it, and I haven’t done anything to it at all in presenting it for download except switch the name from my real one to my nom-de-plume. Which I did, frankly, because McGechan is impossible to spell and impossible to pronounce, so it makes much more sense to use my middle name.

Click here to download Doomsday Presage. I hope you like it. If you do, let me know!