Dr. Hooves and the Broken Box

by Lyichir

Chapter One: In the Dark

Everything had gone wrong.

The Doctor couldn’t see a thing and yet he could still tell. He had died, he knew that much. He had died there, in the TARDIS, and he still didn’t know why. His memory was foggy, he had no awareness of his own body, and it was far too dark. The darkness scared him, not because he was afraid of the dark, but because he knew that if he was still alive, he had regenerated, and if he had regenerated, he would still be in the TARDIS. That meant one of two devastating situations. Either something had gone wrong with his regeneration, and he was now blind, or—even worse—the TARDIS had completely lost power.

The first thing he needed to do, as he had done every other time he had regenerated, was to figure out just what sort of body he had ended up in. That was going to be harder to do this time around; he couldn’t see a thing, and could hardly feel his own body.

“Uhhhh…” he moaned. His mind did a double take when he heard his own voice. “Uhhhh-aaaah! Ah! Ay-Ee-Eye-Oh-Ooooh! One-two! One-two! Allons-y! Geronimo!”

He could talk, that was a start. Although he really needed to start thinking up a new catchphrase. It had become almost a tradition for him to invent new mannerisms and personality quirks to go with his new body. Doing so helped him adapt to the new body, made him stand out if he ever crossed paths with one of his past incarnations, and perhaps most importantly, kept friends and enemies alike on their toes.

He still couldn’t see, or feel his arms and legs. “Let’s see… I can start with the mouth, and work my way from there. Thonghe!”

He said the last word as he stuck his tongue out. Even though he couldn’t see himself, he felt very silly. “Yes. Tongue. Very good. Teeth!” He rolled his tongue around in his mouth to feel his teeth. It almost felt as though he had more this time than in his old body. But this was no time to sit and count them.

“Nose?” He took a deep breath. “Yowzah!” He was in the TARDIS, he now knew that for sure, but HOW he knew! He could smell her better than he ever had before. Slightly metallic, but something was off. He could smell only the faintest hint of electricity, and it smelled acrid, like a battery that had expired. He tried to reach up a hand to hold his nose, and felt something impact on his face, but try as he might, he couldn’t get a grip on his nose. That bothered him.

“Let’s see… eyes.” He opened his eyes (he could feel his eyelids move), and was greeted once again by pitch-blackness. No, not pitch black—he saw the faintest trails of moonlight emanating from twelve tiny windowpanes. It was dark in the TARDIS, but not so much outside it. He started in the direction of the doors, but then hesitated. He really should try to finish checking his new body out before he went waltzing into unknown territory.

“Alright, mouth, ears, nose, eyes… arms.” He tried to move his arms again, and this time heard a clopping sound.

“No, those are feet. Arms!” The clopping sound came again, this time from further behind him. He had been right the first time. But…

“Oh dear. One, two… three… four.” He counted off his legs. This wasn’t right. Time Lords had two legs. Even Humans had two legs. He raised one of his legs to see if the faint moonlight coming through the window would allow him to see what was wrong. He could make out the outline of something short and stumpy—not a hand, and certainly not a foot. Almost more like a hoof.

“Not good, not good…” he muttered. “Let’s review. I died. So, it seems, did the TARDIS. I regenerated into… something. I have no idea what is outside those doors, but I have no idea what’s inside this TARDIS either. Myself included.”

That did it. Until he had more concrete knowledge of what the hell had happened, he was useless. And with no light to see by, he wasn’t going to find out much by staying put. He needed to get outside.

Clip, clop; clip, clop. He paced warily toward the TARDIS’s doors. He opened them and was greeted by a positively serene view. He was in a town. Not an alien landscape, or some steel juggernaut of a space station, but a pastoral village that looked almost like the kind you’d find on Earth. The roofs were thatched, and there was a fountain, and little tents. It looked almost like a Renaissance Festival; all of the good aspects of Earth’s middle ages with none of the bad.

But it wasn’t Earth. At least, not the Earth he knew. If it were, the TARDIS would still be able to draw power from the universe. The Doctor moved forward and then stumbled. Looking down, he could see that his assessment in the darkened Tardis had been correct. Those were definitely hooves. Four of them. He spotted a shop window reflecting the light of the moon, and moved toward it carefully, still not quite used to a four-legged gait.

In the window he could see his reflection, and it was quite unlike anything he had seen before. His face was long, like that of a horse, but rounder, with two enormous eyes frozen in wonder. His skin (or was it fur? He couldn’t tell) was dyed a dusty brown, and his dark brown hair was swept back like a mane. He turned a quarter turn, moving one leg at a time. Yes, he definitely had four legs. And a tail! He allowed himself a slight grin as he shook it about, delighted at having a completely new body part.

But this wasn’t right. Time Lords didn’t look like horses. If anything, they looked like humans, and no matter how many times they regenerated that wasn’t supposed to change. He had enough difficulty blending into human society when he looked just like one of them. How, wondered the Doctor, will I do so in a form like this?

As he turned back toward the glass window, one more aspect of his new body caught his eye. On his hip (or perhaps, he considered grimly, his flank) was some sort of icon. It quite clearly resembled an hourglass, in color and all. It certainly didn’t look like a natural marking.

He looked back at the TARDIS. He had no light source he could use to find his way around it as he made repairs. His sonic screwdriver seemed to have gotten lost during the regeneration. And besides, in its current, powered-down state, the TARDIS somehow felt less safe than normal. He searched his memory for the source of his unease. How had he died exactly? What could have killed him without him even being aware of it? He still didn’t know.

He wasn’t going to make any progress on the TARDIS now, in the middle of the night, with no one to aid him and no light to see by. He looked around for some sign of life. The air was tranquil, but he saw a light come on in one of the thatched-roof houses. “Electric,” he observed with amusement. He walked toward the house with the light on, hoping to find somebody who might be able to provide him a room for the night. Or perhaps—he shuddered as he thought this—a stable.

Author's Note:

Hello, and welcome to Dr. Hooves and the Broken Box! This is my first serious attempt at writing fiction in some time. So if you have any criticisms, feel free to share them, but please don't be too harsh.

As a novice Whovian, I was inspired to write this story in part because I couldn't find a Dr. Hooves story that quite matched my vision of the character. The Dr. Hooves in my story is the actual Doctor from our universe (or the BBC's depiction of it, in any case), not simply a pony version of the Doctor or an unconnected character. This is a fish-out-of-water story (like many human-in-Equestria stories, save for the fact that the Doctor was not human to begin with), so in Equestria he won't be facing many pony versions of aliens he's encountered before or anything like that. The challenges he faces will be a mix of familiar characters from the My Little Pony universe and new characters created for this story. Finally, I'm trying my best to create something that feels like a natural blend of the types of storytelling in both TV show.

I hope you enjoy what I've written, and stay tuned for the rest of this story!

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