In another hotel, one hundred years later and off-world, a conference was underway.
The hotel was built into a small, rather tatty-looking asteroid and it was, for one weekend, playing host to an academic conference and a motley collection of academics, all of them concerned with Terran Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century.
It was to be a very fraught weekend.
In the hotel foyer, there were all the usual conversations going on.
Delegates sat on sofas and drank odd-looking concoctions as they chewed over the day's panels and papers.
It was the second night of the conference and, by now, tongues were loosening, new friendships and alliances being forged. Old animosities were, of course, happily flaring up anew.
The long, stringy creature who had this morning given a pleasant, if unchallenging paper on the early short stories of Philip K Dick, was slumped in an armchair, gazing blankly into his foaming cocktail as his tiny companion droned on.
Perched on the coffee table, his tiny companion was an insect with fractious, silver eyes that were glaring about meanly as their owner ranted.
The insect was called Professor Alid Jag and his long, stringy friend was Doctor Stellus Pontin.
They hailed from rival institutions, light years apart, but they had found themselves thrown together again and again at affairs like this, because they worked in the same area of literary research.
Sometimes Stellus Pontin, the long, stringy, glazed-looking creature, wished that he had chosen a rather less fertile, perhaps more sedate, furrow to plough.
This evening his insect friend was being particularly shrill.
'It is the temerity of it that I can't understand,' Alid Jag was saying. 'How someone, sitting at home on that planet in the middle of that hectic century, could even have thoughts about attempting such a thing. To start to believe that they could imagine or have any inkling about!' Alid Jag gave out a tinny, rattling cackle. 'Well! about life on other planets!'
'Hmm,' said his stringy companion.
'It was, when you think about it, a very dubious preoccupation. What was wrong with their own world, that they had to start poking their noses elsewhere?'
Stellus sighed. 'Well, you can see.'
He gestured meaningfully around at the patterned wallpaper and the potted palms. Their whole hotel had been decorated in imitation of some seaside joint in the mid-twentieth century. For the duration of the conference they were supposed to be pretending they were somewhere called Bournemouth. 'The place was so bleak,' Stellus Pontin said. 'Of course they made up other, more outrageous places, in order to cheer themselves.'
His insect colleague was growing quite animated. 'They were forever dreaming up other societies, other dimensions, other ways of doing things. It's sickening.'
'Anyone would think you despised the genre you work in,' Stellus smiled. It was well known that the resolutely pragmatic people of Alid Jag's world - they were tantamount to aphids - had little or no truck with the purely imaginative or the metaphysical. Really, it was a wonder that the small professor had chosen such a specialism as he had.
'It is good to look keenly at what sickens us,' declared Alid Jag. 'It is good to gaze into our worst horrors.'
'Really? Why?'
This flummoxed the aphid for a moment.
The long, stringy Stellus went on. 'I, on the other hand, adore all of it. Just give me the most improbable story that anyone on that benighted rock ever thought up and I will be as happy as anything. Make it as ludicrous and incredible as possible. Why, even make it so it doesn't even make sense, and I'll be delighted!'
The insect creature rolled his silver eyes witheringly. 'You're far too credulous to be a proper critic, you know. You have to learn to despise what you analyse. Everyone knows that. Before you can know what anything is about, it really has to stick in your craw.'
They had had this argument before.
'I know,' said Stellus fondly. 'And that's why I'll never get on in my work. I'm too wilfully accepting and delighted by the trash dished out of the decadent Terran subconscious, out of a bastardised genre in a depraved era.'
'Exactly,' said the insect creature firmly and smugly. 'A too willing desire to be felled by the ridiculous, that's your tragedy. And it will be your downfall, ultimately, in my opinion.'
And with that, the TARDIS materialised, rather noisily, in the exact spot that their coffee table had been occupying.
There was a horrible crunch of wickerwork and a tinkle of smoked glass and crockery, still audible beneath the elephantine, transdimensional hullaballoo set up by the arrival of the Police Box.
Stellus jerked up in his seat, appalled, as the tall blue box solidified in front of him and the light on its roof stopped flashing.
His very next thought was of the fate of his learned colleague and sparring partner, who had been sitting amongst the tea cups and plates on the coffee table.
'Professor Jag!' he shrieked, jumping up.
But there was no reply. The blue box itself was impassive and still.
On long, pale, trembling legs, Stellus Pontin hurried across to reception to alert the desk clerk.
The desk clerk's eyes went wide as the stringy being stammered out his tale.
The desk clerk stubbed out her cigarette and bellowed at someone called Francine in the office to mind the front desk. 'Can't leave it unattended,' she explained, tottering round the counter on the marble flooring. 'Not with a horde of scholars running about the place. They're notorious for thieving.'
'Quickly,' Stellus Pontin insisted. 'I think the esteemed Professor Jag may be in considerable agony!'
The desk clerk led the way breezily to the bar area, flicking her hair and snapping gum. 'What was it you said had happened to him? A box, was it you said? Some kind of box fell on him?'
They hurried up the few short steps to the bar, where a few other of the evening drinkers were staring in some concern at the strange, new, stationary arrival.
'Goodness,' said the receptionist whose name badge, Stellus Pontin now saw, identified her as Ellie. 'That is a big box, and no mistake. And you say your little friend is trapped underneath it?'
Stellus Pontin nodded dumbly and felt his eyes begin to fill with tears. Alid Jag had been a scholarly thorn in his skinny side for years, true enough. But Stellus Pontin would miss seeing the little fella at gatherings and jamborees like this.
There was simply no way, Stellus Pontin realised, that the Professor could have survived, squashed flat under a box like that.
Ellie the desk clerk was getting herself quite worked up.
'Where did it come from? I assure you, sir, that this hotel isn't usually a place where we drop large, heavy objects on our guests, squashing them painfully to their deaths as they enjoy a quiet drink in the luxurious setting of the Hawaiian bar.'
'It happened!' Stellus Pontin cried. 'I saw it with my own eyes!'
Several other academics were clustering around the agitated desk clerk, recognising that she was in charge. A being composed entirely of russet-coloured rock and a rather hairy colleague had lumbered up with their drinks still in their hands.
'It's true,' said the silicon-based person. 'We saw it too. Professor Alid Jag was talking away happily one minute, as was his wont! then, the next minute - bang!'
His hirsute friend blinked thoughtfully under his fringe. 'There was a ghastly vworp-vworping noise.'
'This is murder,' gasped Ellie the receptionist, chewing her fingers.
'If it is, it's not very subtle,' said Stellus Pontin. 'Let's face it, if someone really wanted to get rid of Alid Jag, all you'd have to do is tread on him and grind him into the carpet. You wouldn't need an object of this size.' He stared up at the sides of the implacable blue box. He reached out one thin hand and realised that the thing was humming. And the others were looking at him strangely. 'I mean,' he added hastily, 'if you really wanted to find a quick, easy way to assassinate an esteemed academic of his modest dimensions. Not that I ever thought about it.' He coughed.
Ellie had a bright idea. 'I'll give Mr Brewster, the manager, a ring.'
The rock creature shook his craggy head. 'There's bound to be pandemonium. Blue boxes dropping on conference attendees. And on only the second day!'
The lavishly coifed gentleman said, 'I was rather hoping Professor Jag might come to my paper on the prevalence of goat motifs in multi-volume quest sagas of the nineteen-eighties. It hardly seems worth giving it at all now. The heart and soul has gone out of our discipline!'
Just then the wooden doors of the Police Box rattled and flew open.
A head appeared in the dark gap, tousle-haired and bearded. Steady blue eyes gazed at them all and the assorted onlookers blinked in amazement.
'Hullo,' said the Doctor. 'I do hope we're not too late?'
Ellie found herself replying, 'Too late for what, sir?'
He beamed at her. 'To hear Professor Jag's paper on the epistemological anomalies in the work of the early twentieth-century mystery writer, Fox Soames. I found the conference brochure stuffed into an old pair of waterproof waders while I was having a tidy round the boot cupboard. Well?'
Ellie was jabbing at the buttons of a slim, but slow, communications device. 'Well what, sir?'
'Have I missed it? I'm very interested in the anomalous novels of Fox Soames. I think he was perhaps up to no good, if you get my drift.'
Ellie was speaking into her device now, having got through to the manager. 'I think you'd better come down to the Hawaiian bar,' she said, somewhat breathily.
'Oh, don't go to any bother for us,' the Doctor smiled.
'Us?' said Stellus Pontin, quivering. 'Just how many of you are there inside that awful thing?'
The Doctor stared at him as if he hadn't noticed him before. 'There's myself, of course, and there's Fitz and there's Anji. Those two are rather slow off the mark this morning, I'm afraid. I think maybe the novelty of new times, new places, might have worn off slightly with them. They send me out first to see what it's like, like a sheep down a poisoned treacle well! Or whatever it is they send sheep into!'
'There are three of them in there!' Stellus Pontin gasped to the other delegates.
'Three murderers!' said the silicon-based scholar.
'Murderers?' said the Doctor. 'Oh no. Not one of those affairs. Are you saying that no sooner have we arrived than we're being mistakenly arrested for murder? Do you realise how often people make that mistake?'
'It's no mistake,' shrilled Stellus Pontin. 'I saw it happen with my own eyes.'
'Really?'
Triumphantly Ellie the receptionist snapped off her communicator and said, 'The manager is on his way.'
'Your terrible blue box squashed Professor Alid Jag flat, right in front of me,' snapped Stellus Pontin. 'You won't get to hear him deliver his paper because you yourself have pulverised the poor fella.'
'Oh,' said the Doctor with a long face. 'Are you sure?'
'Quite.'
'I think we should leave all the questions until Mr Brewster gets here,' said Ellie. 'He will know what to do. He always does.'
'I'd like a title like "manager",' said the Doctor, glumly. 'Something to make me sound in control and competent. "Doctor" just sounds like someone who meddles and stitches things up.' He sighed and brushed down his blue velvet jacket, as if preparing to meet someone important. Then he banged his fist on the open TARDIS door. 'Anji! Fitz! You'd better come out! We're up to our necks in it already!'
The others watched, warily, as two further interlopers stepped out of the terrible box into the muted hush of the Hawaiian bar. The first was a skinny young man in a trench coat and T-shirt, his hair fluffed as if he'd been sleeping on it. He hadn't shaved and he was rubbing crossly at his eyes.
'What do you mean already? We haven't even stepped over the! oh.' He looked at them all and seemed to give in, his thin shoulders slumping. He glanced ruefully at the Doctor. 'Record for you this, Doctor.'
The Doctor gave him a half-hearted smile. 'They seem to think I've squashed the very person I brought us here to see.'
'Can you do that?'
'It's never happened before,' said the Doctor. 'But he was very small, by all accounts.'
'Jesus,' muttered Fitz.
Anji emerged behind them, wearing a dark jacket and trousers, with her hair tied up, ready for anything. She stared at them all blankly. 'What is this?'
'It's a bit of a bungle, I'm afraid, Anji,' said the Doctor apologetically. 'Do you remember that bit in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's house drops out of the sky into Munchkinland and kills the witch and everybody's very pleased and they dance around her singing, telling her exactly how pleased they are with her?'
She furrowed her brow suspiciously. 'Hmm. Yes, I do.'
'Well, it's a bit like that, really.'
'We're in Munchkinland and they're all delighted to see us?'
'No. We're on a hotel on an asteroid and they don't look that pleased at all.'
There was some commotion then as the large, overbearing manager huffed and puffed his way through the small crowd of onlookers to take over.
'So how's that like The Wizard of Oz, then?' asked Anji impatiently.
'It doesn't matter,' the Doctor sighed. 'Bad allusion, anyway. Look, here's Mr Brewster.'
The manager was a boar, standing erect on his two hind legs and wearing a smart uniform adorned with all manner of medals. His humped back stood almost as tall as the TARDIS itself and his rancid breath came steaming out through a snout that quivered and dripped in annoyance.
'This is them, sir,' quavered Ellie.
'I'll take over from here,' Mr Brewster grunted. 'Have security move this box and fetch the cleaners to scrape up the remains.'
'That's the remains of the esteemed Professor Jag,' the Doctor told Anji helpfully.
'Oh, great,' she said.
'We landed on him.'
'Can we do that?' she hissed.
'That's what I said,' Fitz put in.
'Now that it apparently has happened,' mused the Doctor, as they were led off to the manager's office, 'It makes me wonder why it hasn't happened before. I might have squashed intelligent beings all over the galaxy and never been any the wiser!' He shook his head and scratched his beard, which was itching, as if presciently, alerting him to the fact that something here wasn't quite right.
