One word: Prologue

The Doctor sighed. 'Ace you are my friend and I love you, but you cannot wear me down,' he stated firmly. 'I am not going to do it. I have given into bad suggestions before and do you know where it got me?' He shuddered. 'Carrot juice.'

'Carrot juice,' wondered Ace?

'But this isn't carrot juice Professor. This is just a little trip. I'll enjoy it. Even you will enjoy it,' she lied.

The Doctor turned to Ace and grabbed her by the shoulders. 'I am going to say this once and once only: There is absolutely no way on any of the planets I have ever visited in any of my life times that I am going to take you to an Ozzie Osbourne concert. I saw that TV show. I am not taking you to see someone who can barely remember his own name and bites the heads off chickens. I do have some responsibility for your education and I intend to invoke it here and now. And furthermore I am going to cancel our subscription to Foxtel. I don't think it is doing you any good. The whole of time and space to explore and I find you watching reruns of The Simpsons.' He looked at her intently. 'It is not, I repeat not,' he spluttered. 'Going to happen.... One minute it is Ozzie Osbourne and before you know it its carrot juice!'

Ace was about to reply somewhat untactfully that the Doctor was losing it about this whole carrot juice thing when somebody knocked on the door of the TARDIS. This would not have been so odd, except for the fact that the TARDIS was in flight in the time vortex.

'Rap tiddley rap rap.'

Dead silence.

'Tat tat.' They looked at each other in alarm. 'Professor? Was that what I thought it was,' she asked?

'Er yes. I think it might have been, but that is impossible. We are in the vortex. It's probably just vortex turbulence,' he replied nervously as he checked the console.

'And him,' asked Ace as she pointed to the man on the view screen? Rather oddly for a man apparently existing in the interstitial wilds of the time vortex he was wearing a pin stripe suit and a bowler hat. He was also waggling a piece on paper at the view screen.

The Doctor clapped his hand to his chin. 'Ahh,' was all he said as he stared at the view screen?

The man on the viewer was now making a series of pantomime duck like swimming motions at them. 'I think he wants to come in,' suggested Ace.

'And just how am I meant to open the doors when we are in mid flight,' retorted the Doctor tartly?

As if in response the man on the view screen smiled smugly and held up a small key. The Doctor's face fell as he recognised the object. That was his key. But his key was in its usual place around his neck.

'Oh no,' he muttered. 'This is not good.'

Then unbelievably, impossibly, but indubitably the doors slowly began to open and the man from the view screen walked into the console room.

Ace could see the vortex through the open doors. It was a whirling, sucking, vicious sort of thing. How could a bloke be wandering around in it without being diced, spliced and chopped into tiny little bits of time?

And how did he get in?

'This is not good,' she thought.

The man raised his bowler hat politely. 'The Doctor,' he asked looking between them? Bewildered Ace could only raise a finger and point.

The man took out the piece of paper he had been previously waggling and handed it to the astonished Doctor. 'You are officially served. Good day.' With that he lifted his hat again and walked out the doors back into the vortex, the door closing neatly behind him.

The Doctor examined the piece of paper. 'It's a supoena to testify at a trial,' he said looking up in disbelief.

'Whose,' asked Ace.

'Mine'

.....