The Doctor Was Involved in the Dummy Massacre (short story)
The Doctor Was Involved in the Dummy Massacre was the third short story exclusively published on the Who is Doctor Who? website on 3 April 2005[1][additional sources needed] by the BBC webteam. This short story revealed more information about the Dummy Massacre in Rose. This short story was set a week after the events of Rose and the previous short story on the website, Dummy Massacre, giving more detail about the aftermath of the "Dummy Massacre"; while this story was released at the same time as the television episode The End of the World, it didn't tie into it as that episode was set in the year 5,000,000,000.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Who is Doctor Who? website is updated, a week after the Dummy Massacre; "everyone in the know", apparently, knew of the Ninth Doctor's involvement in the Dummy Massacre, which is why it is all the more strange he wasn't captured on CCTV cameras around the "Killing Grounds". That being said, one piece of evidence did slip through the Doctor's supposed suppression of the footage, that being a video of Rose Tyler eating at a restaurant in Kennington, seemingly with her boyfriend, Mickey Smith. However "Mickey" was not actually him, but, as the webmaster speculates, perhaps some sort of special model or Advance Guard of the Killer Dummies. As the webmaster observes, the Doctor was briefly visible towards the edge of the frame of the footage, and questions if the Doctor was there to prevent the attack, or perhaps more insidiously, to contribute to it. But regardless, there is one thing for certain, that Rose hadn't been seen since.
In another section of the website, the webmaster writes about the conspiracy that has been growing since the Dummy Massacre, that despite the seventy-eight fatalities and the three hundred casualties and the countless pieces of video footage and eyewitness accounts, the coverage of the attack is vanishing from the World Media. And, as the webmaster puts it, those strong enough to remember what they saw with their own eyes can "only watch in horror" as cynical hands divert people's attention to home security, terrorist threats, public order, and consumerism, disregarding the greater threat. People are in denial.
The webmaster continues onto the subject of Clive, the man who "tirelessly" devoted his life to his search for the Doctor, and his reward? Death, as the webmaster sardonically answers. He died during the Dummy Massacre, and the webmaster reveals that he visited Clive's widow — Maggie — and, after discussion with her, agreed to take on Clive's mantle to prove the truth to the world. The webmaster is at peace with the idea that he too could pay with his life for his efforts, but values the truth above all.
Finally, the webmaster addresses the claims that "millions" of people heard a "ghostly disembodied voice" last weekend, although these claims are unverified. The webmaster is still interested in the claims despite the possibility of them not being true and asks his readers to contact the site with their stories.
Entries[[edit] | [edit source]]
The collection of entries is arranged in order, oldest first
Dummy Massacre entries[[edit] | [edit source]]
# | Character | Summary |
---|---|---|
1 | SharonValerii | Sharon saw Rose outside of University just the other day, seeming a bit preoccupied with a rather oldish fellow with some large ears and a leather coat. Sharon asks if Doctor Who? thinks he has kidnapped Rose, lamenting that maybe she should have done something and hoping that Rose is alright. |
2 | Artie D | Artie says that Rose looks like a girl he entirely failed to get off with at a party in Islington when she swan off after this other chap came up and said something about a different planet. |
3 | John Smith | John had a wrong-number phone call from somebody called Rose Tyler the other Wednesday afternoon, claiming that she was calling from the year five billion, which he found absurd, dismissing her as an obvious nutter |
4 | Steve Woolfall | Steve saw a girl that looked like Rose in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester this afternoon with a chap that reminded him of that Casanova bloke. Steve concludes that it might not be the same girl but that it is strange. |
5 | Ryan Norman | Ryan tells Doctor Who? to admit that the CCTV "evidence" presented of the restaurant was clearly falsified, unless the site has been hacked. Ryan suggests that "they" could be tracking him and everyone else, before advising to stay safe. |
6 | Emma.Walters | Emma saw Rose in a shopping centre called meadowhall at 9:00am, raiding the coffee. |
7 | Eden | Eden saw Rose walking out of the lush shop with 20 bathboms and a man with short brown hair |
8 | Ivan Livermore | Ivan finds it incredibly strange as he realises that Rose looks exactly like a girl in a rare picture of Charles Dickens which he has amongst his collection, adding that the unidentified girl in the photo has been quite a matter of contention and the similarity is uncanny. Ivan assumes that the two are distant relatives. |
9 | Steve | Steve says that Rose's picture looks identical to a girl called Rose who he met back in 1987. |
10 | SkipN | SkipN saw Rose last year walking in Boston near the Charles River. |
11 | Jonny Hall | Jonny saw Rose, screaming with bruises all over, roaming the streets of Linclon at half past nine, rushing and running with a man. Adding that the incident was at 8:00 pm |
12 | David Mc Giveron | David was on a family outing to the Lake District when he got split up from the rest of the group during their walk. Wandering into an abandoned quarry, he met a girl, identical to the one in the picture, who said her name was Rose and asked him if he had seen a man in a leather jacket before running off. |
13 | David Collins | David saw Rose in a photo in one of his history lessons at school. His teacher told him that the photo was from the year 1806 when he asked. |
14 | Richard Hawton | Richard says that Rose looks so much like his student teacher who he remembers from 1976, but reasons that it surely cannot be her. |
15 | Scott Nisbet | Scott says that Rose looks just like a drawing of a girl in a white dress from a history textbook at home. Pointing out that the picture comes from the early 19th century, Scott concludes that it must be a family lineage or something. |
16 | bobby | bobby tells Clive, who he assumes has got a lot of archived stuff with the Doctor's image, to go and look at the Bayeaux Tapestry, pointing out that the Doctor is standing next to a blue box with a figure remarkably like Rose. |
17 | Mark Young | Mark, who collects old Daguerreotype photographs from the 1840s, found a family portrait with a striking resemblance to Rose. Mark would not have considered it worth mentioning were it not for the fact that her face only appeared in the picture since yesterday. |
18 | Alexander | Alexander saw Rose in an old family wedding photo from the 1920s. She was accompanied by a strange man in a leather jacket. Alexander is confused since it looked like she was walking towards an old 1950s police box. |
19 | Nigel Dawson | Nigel saw Rose yesterday outside Wetherby Whaler, eating something out of a newspaper and walking towards the bridge. |
20 | Mr Mystery | Mr Mystery says that he has seen Rose before, but cannot say where or when, for he is Mr Mystery. |
21 | Ryan Daly | Ryan saw Rose walking up his street at 20 Hundred Hours / 8:00pm. Ryan shouted "Hey you!" when she spat out some gum, but she ran off. |
22 | thomas | thomas says that the camera footage on the site is clear forgery, the clock times on the cameras are only one second apart, yet different things are going on in each frame. thomas tells Doctor Who? to admit they are part of the conspiracy. |
23 | polly loughlin | polly saw Rose in a photo at her friend's house. When she asked her how she knew Rose, her friend thought she had gone mad. |
24 | S C Wallace | S C Wallace saw Rose right outside WHSmith, adding "and WOW! !" |
Voices entries[[edit] | [edit source]]
# | Character | Summary |
---|---|---|
1 | Mrs. Smith | Mrs. Smith says that she hears voices all the time, adding that she is 81. |
2 | Mrs Baggs | Mrs Baggs admits to having heard voices, but dismisses them as coming from the "silly radio dramas" her husband listens to. |
3 | Sarah | Sarah has heard the voices and is pleased to know that she is not alone as her family thought she was going crazy. |
4 | Jonny | Jonny found the voices disturbing and quite frankly strange. |
5 | Emma Stagg | Emma heard a voice saying "I see dead people" on Tuesday. |
6 | Guy Anwar | Guy was sitting at home trying to write his latest short story when he heard these strange voices telling him "Is this live?". He thought he was imagining it, as in his story he was writing about a dentist being nailed to an electronic crucafix. |
7 | Whatsamacallit | Whatsamacallit heard the voice through the radio saying that they were in danger. |
8 | Malthusias | Malthusias recalls hearing the voices with shock, initially believing they were the only one to do so. They heard screaming, which was suddenly cut off, and then a few minutes later a frightened voice asking "Am I here?". Though Malthusias does not believe in ghost, they had to sleep with the light on that night in light of all those people who died. |
9 | 112 | 112 suggests that something was radio transmitting to the dummies. |
10 | Andy Whitehead | Andy heard in a press release from the police that there was supposed to be a security guard down in the basement of the now destroyed department store building, whose body was never found. Andy suggests that the security guard was captured by the unidentified criminals who blew up the building last weekend and that the interference came from his walkie-talkie, which he turned on and asked obvious questions into the radio such as "where are we going?" to let his fellow security guards know that he had been captured. Believing it to be a joke, he may have asked "Is this live?". If a maintenance man or another security guard also had a radio, and was in the basement at the time, when viewers were watching the event on TV it would be possible to have heard the broadcast from the second radio. Andy ponders on what fate befell the owner of the radio. |
11 | Markusdragon | Markusdragon remembers the voice being distinctly Irish and hopes that it does not happen again, quipping that Guinness is the only Irish spirit he wants hanging around in his head. |
12 | Madman | Madman says that he hears voices every night. |
13 | David McGiveron | David heard the disembodied voice, accompanied by what sounded like a crowd of people shouting and calling out. He suggests that it was a future echo of the disaster, and the crowds were really the hundreds of frightened victims screaming in terror. |
14 | kenickie | kenickie thought it was just him since he told loads of people he had heard the voices but no-one believed him. He thought he was going mad (again). |
15 | Frank | Frank says that the voices were strange and not quite human, as though they were a message from above. |
16 | Magz | Magz heard ghostly laughing and cheering. Almost as if some evil entity knew what was about to happen. |
17 | poingman | poingman suggests that the mysterious voice is tied with Loki from the old Norse myths and that the Doctor is a trickster, a troublemaker of immense power and fickle humour like the old Greek pantheon. poingman fears for those who see the Doctor. |
18 | M. Scott | M. Scott turned on the television after getting back to their hotel in London. They heard a faint whispering despite the sound being off. They went over to the windows and the whispering started again and they heard "Who can it be now?" Then "Where art thee gone unto nevermore." After all the strange goings on their third day of vacation, M. Scott had a difficult time sleeping that night. |
19 | Paradox | Paradox offers a story or a riddle to those who wish to know of the Doctor. In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth and he saw it was good, the heavens groaned out in rapture as millions of angels saw with delight, all but one, the morning star; Lucifer, he sighed as he saw what Elohim was doing, creating a new race to enslave to his will, and with a great uproar he rebelled. A thousand years have passed and now he walks in the night observing the enslaved, especially one girl, Rose Tyler. In conclusion, the Doctor is the devil, Marilyn Manson + Pac-Man = Evil. |
20 | Gerard Shannon | Gerard says that it is strange the voices happened before the Dummy Massacre, suggesting that whatever was controlling the dummies was picking up interference, and that it might have been what finally killed them. |
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
(In order of appearance, oldest first)
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more to be added
Referenced only[[edit] | [edit source]]
more to be added
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The webmaster mentions that the Doctor was not captured on the CCTV cameras of the "deadly shopping mall".
- Kennington is located in South London.
- Rose is nineteen years old and Mickey is twenty.
- The webmaster is unsure about the fate of the "special model" of the Killer Dummy that took Mickey's appearance, that if it still was dangerous.
- The webmaster also refers to the Dummy Massacre, once, as the London Attack.
- The webmaster refers to when Rose disappeared as "the night of the accident".
- The webmaster shares a picture of Rose.
- The webmaster thanks Bernard Ho and Daffodil for their help.
- The webmaster speculates the reason that people are so willing to forget the attack is that they are uncomfortable and scared that there is "something" out there that the media won't let them know about.
- People had vowed to boycott shops with dummies on display, but within the week people are back in the shops, wilfully ignoring their previous claims, although the webmaster knows that even the shops aren't completely forgetting the attack as all the dummies are missing hands.
- The webmaster finds it an honour to take Clive's mantle.
- The webmaster believes that he is being bombarded with proof of the supernatural.
- This is a small disclaimer about the photographs on the site not necessarily being in the webmaster's copyright, although no infringement is intended.
- There is a small icon for Campaign for Real Aliens.
- Mark Young is able to remember a version of history where Rose was not in a photograph in his collection.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- This page of the website had links to clips of the "Dummy Massacre" taken from behind the raw unedited footage used in the episode Rose as well as some recycled footage from the episode, but the Web Archive wasn't able to archive the individual pages that hosted the footage properly, given the way the BBC set up the website, so the footage is lost media.
- Despite this story not tying into The End of the World, John Smith's entry claims that Rose accidentally called him first, before Jackie.
Authorship[[edit] | [edit source]]
The "main" story was written by the BBC webteam.
However, most of the contributors of the rest of the content remain effectively anonymous, as they either used unidentifiable handles, invented fake names, wrote from the perspective of established fictional characters or entered names which are too common to trace. However, some can be positively identified.
- Steve Woolfall, a Doctor Who fan, used his real name for his story.[2]
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Rose being nineteen aligns with her birthdate being given as early 1986 in sources such as The Unquiet Dead, Dalek, Army of Ghosts, etc, although it contradicts other sources that give her birthdate as 27 April 1987, in sources such as Father's Day, Rise of the Cybermen, and Rose Tyler.
- This story, and Dummy Massacre, is set in the aftermath of Rose.
- Mickey Smith taking over Who is Doctor Who? would become an ongoing storyline in later stories published on the Who is Doctor Who? tie-in website, from this story to Lifeboat Museum and beyond. The short story The Secret Lives of Monsters, although it has a few minor contradictions with the tie-in website, does mention that the in-universe website continued to be updated after Clive Finch's death. Even the short story Mickey's Blog, which alternately asserts that Mickey never took over Who is Doctor Who? and instead ran a blog, followed a very similar plot to the tie-in website.
- In this story, Mickey suspects that the Doctor removed the footage captured by CCTV cameras of himself, however the short story Operation Mannequin reveals that many cameras malfunctioned during the attack.
- The details about Clive corresponds with his appearance in Rose.
- Rose sends a phone call from the year five billion. (TV: The End of the World)
- Rose is seen with Charles Dickens. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)
- Rose is spotted in 1987. (TV: Father's Day)
- Rose is spotted with a "Casanova" lookalike, a likely reference to the fact that David Tennant, who was rumoured to take over from Christopher Eccleston in the role, had previously played Casanova. David Tennant did indeed play the Tenth Doctor, beginning with the minisode Born Again.
- An entry by Guy Anwar was previously present in Have You Seen This Man?.
Gallery[[edit] | [edit source]]
A frame of CCTV footage.
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Sources[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ BBC webteam, et al. (3 April 2005). The Doctor Was Involved in the Dummy Massacre. Who is Doctor Who?. Archived from the original on 3 April 2005. Retrieved on 20 April 2024.
- ↑ Aristide Twain (20 April 2024). Fun With Time Loops. Tumblr. Archived from the original on 20 April 2024. Retrieved on 20 April 2024.
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