May 13, 2002

The TARDIS at Pooh Corner - Introduction and Chapter 1

In Which We meet Doctor Pooh and his Companion and they take the TARDIS for adventuring.

THE TARDIS AT POOH CORNER

by

Peter David


"But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye, because

the Forest will always be there... and anybody who

is Friendly with Bears can find it."

-- A.A.M.


Introduction

There was once a very simple bear in a red shirt who used to live in an Enchanted Place in Florida, until Jeannie found him there one day while she was on a visit and brought him to live with her in a small apartment in a place that Jeannie called Newyawk. And so the bear lived there happily, and though in time many bears came to live there as well not to mention (but we will anyway) puppies, kangaroos, lions, unicorns and dragons, plus a certain donkey, tiger and very small pig, that particular bear was still Most of All.

And then one day the bear began to watch on television the adventures of "That Other Time Lord," and then he acquired a hat and a coat, which he borrowed from some friends, and a scarf, which he said that he had acquired in his travels. Jeannie simply nodded when he informed us of this and kept on doing her knitting. And pretty soon the bear informed us that he was actually a Time Lord from another planet, and that his name was Doctor Pooh and he had simply come to that Place in Florida by some accidental shiftings in time. And not too long after that a certain donkey and tiger and very small pig were also remembering that they too came from other planets, and not Sears and Roebucks at all. And a certain kangaroo, who joined the family after all these recollections happened, when told of these things and when told by her baby, in no uncertain terms, that he remembered coming from another planet, said "That's nice, dear," and So It Was.

Well, as you can imagine, Doctor Pooh started recalling all his adventures and started telling them to us, and pretty soon all the animals wanted a television show like that Other Time Lord, but since that was impossible (it would have required almost certainly a great deal of travelling and going past Roo's bedtime and other difficulties) this book was a compromise. So in fact it should say "As told to" instead of "by" on the cover, but then it would have been necessary to have the entire Introduction on the cover to set the matter straight right off instead of being able to save it for the roomier insides. And so the Doctor settled for "by" instead of "as told to" because, after all, his picture is up on the cover, and besides, he's That Sort of Time Lord.


Chapter 1

In Which

We meet Doctor Pooh and his Companion and

they take the TARDIS for adventuring.

Once upon a time, on a planet named Gallifluff, which is as far away from Earth as the end of the week is from the beginning of the week (when it's the beginning of the week, of course) there lived a Time Lord named Doctor Pooh.

There were many Time Lords on Gallifluff, and most of them were very happy with their lives, and Doctor Pooh was one of those. He lived in a small house under a name that you couldn't pronounce, which is why everyone called him Doctor Pooh. No one is sure of just who thought of calling him that, but it was a perfect solution to the problem for Doctor Pooh. Actually, Pooh did not even see the problem to begin with, being a Time Lord of very little brain, and so it was that that was his name.

Time Lords are concerned with time, and so too was Doctor Pooh. The time that he was most concerned with, naturally, was meal time. He ate every day precisely at five minutes to eleven, which was fortunate because his clock had stopped some weeks ago at that exact time, and being of very little brain (as we said), he never remembered to wind it. And why should he wind it, since the time that it showed was a very mellow one, indeed?

One morning, at precisely five minutes to eleven, Doctor Pooh was having a smack of his favorite food, Honey, and as he dipped his paw into it, he started humming a song. And the humming song grew into a most appropriate Time Lord Honey-Eating Song, which was straightaway titled by its composer "The Time Lord Honey Eating Song," and it went like this:

I like honey because I'm a Time Lord;
As long as I have honey I will never be so bored;
No need for adventure when there's honey here about
Everything is fine and there's no need to run or shout
Just need one more sentence to complete my honey rhyme
How about I'll eat my honey -- till the end of time.

This, Doctor Pooh thought, was a satisfactory song, though not one of his better ones, and he was just trying to think of what one of his better ones was when there was a knock at the door. He put down his snack, stumped over to the door and opened it. There stood a little blonde-haired girl named Jeannie Robin.

"Hallo, Jeannie," said Doctor Pooh.

"Hallo, Doctor," said Jeannie, and she stepped inside.

Doctor Pooh walked back to his table and plumped himself down. "How is Christopher Robin?" asked Doctor Pooh.

"My brother is fine," said Jeannie as if she would rather be doing something else, which was probably because she would rather have been doing something else. "He has the sniffles."

"Ah," he said with a slow nod. "That can be very serious."

"Our doctor told us it was nothing."

"It can be that, too," agreed Doctor Pooh.

Jeannie walked over to the Doctor, bent over, and whispered in his ear--which was really unnecessary, since there was no one else about--"How would you like to go on an adventure?"

Doctor Pooh looked at her cautiously. "An adventure?"

"Yes."

"What sort of adventure?"

"I don't know--an adventurous one, I should think."

"Yes, those do seem to be the only kind," harrumphed Doctor Pooh. He rested his chin on his paw for a time, and then scratched his left ear, and then his right ear, and then said, "An adventure?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. That is to say," he amended hastily, "I do know what it is, but I don't know if such a thing is necessary right now. Right during snack time, that is to say."

"Well of course it's not necessary," huffed Jeannie, who was getting a bit impatient to get on with it. "If it was necessary, it wouldn't be an adventure. It would be work. Do you want to do work?"

Doctor Pooh thought about that. "No," he said with as much certainty as he could have. "I shouldn't want to do that."

"It's either work or an adventure."

Doctor Pooh sighed. "So it would seem. Oh bother! May I finish my snack first?"

"Certainly."

Doctor Pooh finished his snack quickly, reasoning that the sooner he was done eating the sooner the adventure would begin and the sooner it began the sooner it would be over and he would be back in his house. A thought struck him.

"Will I be back in time for my next meal time?"

"You're a Time Lord. You can be back for anything you wish."

"Oh, yes." He then finished the last smacks of honey, and he accompanied Jeannie Robin out the door, stopping only to put on his coat, long scarf and large floppy hat.

They walked all the way across the central city of Gallifluff, and Doctor Pooh only tripped twice on his scarf, although one time was down a flight of stairs, and he rolled down the stairs, bump, bump, bump, crash, landing at the bottom completely wrapped up in his scarf. Jeannie Robin helped him untangle himself, shaking her head the entire time.

"Bother!" said Doctor Pooh. "I don't know why I wear this scarf at all." And with that they set out once again, the scarf trailing behind them.

When Doctor Pooh saw where Jeannie had led them, he stopped nervously. "Well, this is enough adventuring for me for one day," he declared.

"Come now, Doctor. Here we are in the workshop for all the time machines, and you want to go home now."

Doctor Pooh nodded. "This is true."

"Come on." And she went into the nearest TARDIS, which was in the shape of a large police call box, only it wasn't quite right, because instead of "Police Box" written across the top over the door, it said simply "Sanders." Doctor Pooh, who had never read anything by A.A. Milne, didn't understand it at all. So he simply cleared his throat and called nervously, "Jeannie, you better come out now."

"Come in instead," her voice floated through the open door.

"I don't think so."

Suddenly the bright round light on the roof of the TARDIS changed into a pot of honey. This effect was accompanied by a giggle from inside the machine, but the Doctor, whose attention was occupied by what was on top of the machine, didn't hear the giggle. Instead he said, "Perhaps for a moment. It couldn't hurt. No, I shouldn't think so."

He peeked in through the door and was surprised by how large it was inside. "How big do you think it is in here?" he asked.

Jeannie Robin, who had no idea, said carelessly, "Oh, I think it's about a hundred acres." She went to the control column in the middle of the room and started fiddling with the controls.

Doctor Pooh became very nervous when he saw that, and since he was nervous, decided that the best thing to do was to make sure no one else saw it and became nervous as well. He shut the door behind himself cautiously and then said "Ahem."

Jeannie went on working with the console.

"Ahem," he ahemed a bit more loudly.

"Yes?"

"Are you sure you should play with that, Jeannie Robin?"

"Nothing I could do to start this up. You have to go to school to learn how to do that."

"Are you going to go to school for it?"

"Someday, I suppose. In the meantime, we will pretend."

The Doctor nodded and started across the control room. "Did you by some chance happen to see a stairway to the top of this...."

But he didn't finish his sentence, because suddenly he tripped again over his scarf and rolled across the floor like a ball, to stop with a thunk against the TARDIS control column. And this thunk by chance was just the right sort of thunk to activate the TARDIS.

Doctor Pooh looked about nervously and a thrumming filled the air, and he said, "I think we're going on an adventure after all."

Jeannie Robin smiled as the thrumming grew louder, and she said to him lovingly, "Silly Old Time Lord."

And the TARDIS vanished as if it had never been there.

Posted by Peter David at May 13, 2002 12:27 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commenting
Comments
Posted by: Allyn Gibson at May 13, 2002 11:12 PM

I think a round of applause and appreciation needs to go out to Corey Tacker. Were it not for his diligence in tracking down "The TARDIS at Pooh Corner" it would never have been posted here, and generations of Winnie-the-Pooh and Doctor Who fans would continue to speculate fruitlessly as to what Peter David did when he combined the two worlds. Corey did the real legwork, I merely retyped the story for posterity's sake.

Thanks, Corey!

Posted by: Corey Tacker at May 14, 2002 12:13 AM

You're welcome, Allyn! And in turn, I'd like to thank Alex Kasman, illustrator of the original TARDIS at Pooh Corner, for making an original edition of the zine available.

Posted by: Gideon at May 20, 2002 02:07 PM

Thats just bloody brilliant !! Will the oft mentioned, but never before read(by me) Quantum Beast be recounted here ?? I'm dying to read that ...

Posted by: Elayne Riggs at May 24, 2002 08:57 AM

Thank you very much to Corey and Peter for making this story available at last! I've heard about it for years, and eagerly await more chapters. Corey, will Alex allow his illustrations to be posted as well, as accompaniment to the story?

Posted by: Jay at June 21, 2002 02:56 PM

As soon as I saw the title, I had to read it!

Now... on to Chapter 2!

-- Jay

P.S. I find myself faced with trying to introduce a friend to "Doctor Who," and asking myself which story to use. I'm a huge Peter Davison fan myself, but "Mawdryn Undead" and "The Caves of Androzani" take too much explanation (well, "Caves" doesn't until the very end... which, with Anthony Ainley shouting "No, my dear Doctor, you must die!," is the only weak moment in one of Who's most amazing stories. Well, OK, there was also the pathetic Magma Creature. Never mind.) So, I'm thinking, even though it's Tom Baker: "Pyramids of Mars?"

Posted by: Paul D. Jedrzejewska-Selman at June 26, 2002 08:30 AM

Being a reader of very little brain, I found some parts of this story quite confusing, but when my human keeper, Wendy, explained it to me, I loved it almost as much as a full pot of hunny...

Posted by: Paul D. Jedrzejewska-Selman at June 27, 2002 08:08 AM

Sorry about the duplicate post. For some reason I got an error message the first time I posted it and, therefore, tried again.