Every now and again you have one of those ideas that gets stuck in your brain and won't go away until you do it. This phenomenon is probably responsible for the deep-fried Mars Bar, the Bognor Regis Birdman competition, and many other things that probably shouldn't exist but do.
Into this crowded field of lunatic endeavours comes my latest crossover short story, "The Not-Quite Kidnap of Betty Hardin", which can be found either at that link or in the Crossover Shorts side-panel. In the story, the 13th Doctor meets the legendary Floating Outfit of 1960's Western author J.T. Edson. It's an everyday tale of mistaken identity, bandit kidnappers, and cybernetic killing machines from the far future.
Given that some people (often many of the sort of people who still read J.T.) decry the recent Dr Who canon as overly politically-correct and J.T. himself was as politically-correct as something that most definitely, certainly isn't, this wasn't exactly a match made in heaven but I consider everyone involved to be basically good at heart so I did it anyway. To allay any fears, this is not one of those really annoying revenge-fiction pieces where a writer takes a character they have it in for and does horrible things to them.
To finish with a little warning- while I've done my best to stay as close to J.T's style as possible, not especially hard since he's been an influence on my own to some extent, I should point out to anyone interested in his books that he was very much a man of his time regarding sexual preferences, gender politics and race (though all three topics could be the subject of some interesting discussion in this context.) If you do decide to check them out, You Have Been Warned.
At the very least have a look at that Wikipedia page if you're at all concerned!
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