And for My Next Trick... (short story)
"and for my next trick..." was a short story that appeared in the TV Action + Countdown Holiday Special 1972. It featured the Third Doctor.
Summary
Billed as "The World's Master Magician", the Great Chang performs before an audience impatient for his greatest illusion, the Disappearing Man. Chang launches instead into a mind-reading routine, for which the Doctor provides an old-fashioned pocket watch. "Let us see just what the good Mr. Chang makes of that!" the Doctor says, as he stands up and walks to the front of the audience, staring down the magician.
Chang is stunned and declares that he can tell nothing from the pocket watch, giving it back to the Doctor. The magician flees the stage. The Doctor smiles as the audience erupts in fury, demanding the Disappearing Man act or their money back.
Chang's manager pleads with Chang backstage, offering a higher fee, suggesting the press will have a Roman holiday with what the manager knows about the secretive magician, and finally theatening to tell the police "about what happened in Paris". Chang walks back on to the stage.
A shy and awkward volunteer from the audience, Frederick, is placed in a steel-framed glass box. Chang announces that while lesser magicians can make people disappear from closed cabinets, Frederick will disappear in full view of everyone. "I command you — GO!" says Chang, and suddenly the glass cabinet is empty.
The satisfied audience leave, speculating amongst themselves about how the DIsappearing Man trick works. The Doctor gives £1 to the man at the stage door, and enters the magician's dressing room. Chang reveals when he held the pocket-watch and found the Doctor's mind closed to reading, he wanted to leave, but needed another subject so badly for the survival of his people, so went ahead with disappearing Frederick. The glass cabinet is a matter transference chamber which sends its victims to experimental laboratories on Chang's home world. Like the others, Frederick was carefully chosen by mind reading, having no close relatives or friends.
The Doctor tells the magician that his "subjects" were intelligent, thinking beings, not laboratory animals. He lunges at and struggles with Chang, and the glass cabinet is destroyed. With a gesture of his left hand, Chang summons white doves whose razor-sharp beaks attack the Doctor, while the magician escapes the dressing room. The Doctor heads to the stage. Chang causes cherubs and winged horses over the proscenium arch to crash down, and the Doctor flings himself into the front stalls.
The chase continues upward through the gallery. Two fire extinguishers spray the Doctor with foam as he climbs a ladder, finally reaching the theatre roof. Floating in the air, Chang threatens to collapse the entire building. The Doctor calls out to Chang suggesting "you could put your power to good use, as I have done!"
Chang ignores the Doctor and pulls back his left hand about to carry out his threat, but being distracted, strikes high tension electricity cables, and falls to the street far below with a thud. The Doctor watches from the rooftop as an ambulance and police arrive.
Characters
References
- One audience member, Beryl, aged 53, lives in Kensington with her daughter and son-in law, and a poodle called Chuckles. She worries about her engineering shares.
Notes
- The word "now" does not appear in the title of the story as printed. Neither do any capital letters.
- Two sub-headings also appear through the text: "Vanishing Point" and "No Return".
- No author is credited for this story.
- The five-page text story is illustrated with three drawings and two publicity photos. It was the only Doctor Who content in the TV Action + Countdown Holiday Special 1972.
- The Doctor is referred to as "Doctor Who" in the text of the story.
- A stage magician called Chang, involved in the disappearance of vulnerable people, and who is heckled by the Doctor; a cockney manning the stage door, a cabinet involved in nefarious experiments, and a pursuit through a darkened theatre, are all elements that re-occur in the 1977 TV story The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Continuity
to be added
