The Chibnall Dimension

[Creepypasta in progress. Lore Autist will publish in due time.]

The Chibnall Dimension

by Lore Autist

Chapter I
Have you ever noticed something slightly off in the Series 8 opening sequence? If you've spent any time on /who/ at all you probably fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, and I'm no different to you in that regard. I re-watch Series 8 routinely every few months, sometimes more often, and an often-levelled criticism is that most of the sci-fi elements are generic and unchallenging, and the perennial anger at the contrived Splink love triangle is e'er-present. But the most irksome error, to me, is one that would barely register with anyone else: a trivial production error, in that the title sequences of each episode are v e r y slightly out of synch with one another. That's it. That's the thorn in my shoe I have to endure every time I re-watch Series 8, my travail before the reward of Clala smiling sweetly at the camera, at the vindicated cheer at Danny forgetting to Splink, at Missy's telegraphed yet effective reveal.

In one of the intervening stretches of time between my periodic re-watches, I managed, through some miracle, to get myself a girlfriend. Such was my luck that her main fictional interests were more geared towards Harry Potter and WandaVision, and that she was effectively stuck in the RTD era Doctor Who-wise. With this in mind, I tried my best to contain my autism, trying to be the better man and accept my girlfriend for who she was rather than what she preferred to consoom. However, I wasn't going to give up my dream of introducing her to real Doctor Who - warts, soft focus and all - I'd managed to successfully introduced myself into her nether regions, the time would surely come for her to accept that there was a world beyond cute spunky protagonists and blonde damsels in distress. My plan was simple: every once in a while, I would drop a quote, a reference, in casual conversation, or on a note, and wait for her to ask me where I'd got such novel language from. At first I would plainly answer "Doctor Who", and we'd stop there, but over time it sufficed simply to let slip a knowing smirk; inevitably she would break into a smile, exclaiming "Doctor Who!", happy at the knowledge she felt she had gained about me. The next step left the ball in her court: however little she knew about Doctor Who, she had still religiously watched the narrow period between the Christmas Invasion and the End of Time when "Dalek" wasn't a swear word. Sure enough, she grew aware of the gaps in her culture, and began to question where all these quotes I was dropping actually came from. And I had selected them judiciously, for the best part of them were lifted from Matt Smith's run, tele-visually lacking, but still a fun watch for all the family. I explained to her that the man we see at the End of Time was not just sequel bait, but an actual promise that was delivered on, however flimsily. It was my girlfriend who took the initiative - one day when I came from work, she had done her research and left The Eleventh Hour  paused on our favourite streaming service, ready to watch. I was touched - though it was with a heavy heart that I had to postpone my Series 8 re-watch, I was glad to watch another three Series of my favourite programme with the woman I loved. Our journey to Nerd-dom was only just beginning.

Chapter II
"-Lore Autist, did you see the latest?"

"-Would you shut the fuck up, Dooti, you Romana-sole-licking tastelet!" I said, in my head. In my mouth it was more of a mumble. As I arose from my snooze, I noticed my toast had stuck to my forehead, to Dootiokaer's great amusement.

"-I said, you spaz, did you see the latest?" he reiterated, guffawing.

"-The latest I've seen is your ugly mug, and I don't like it one bit. Tell the Guardian I'm cancelling my subscription."

"-It's not on the Guardian, it's on /tv/. Said someone died watching Doctor Who, thought it'd be right up your street."

"-Well his name is 'Autist'", chipped in A Fandom User pointlessly.

"-Well no, I haven't seen that, maybe because I don't spend every waking moment on that shithole that is /tv/. As it is I've barely been on the general, been too busy watching Smith with my girlfriend."

"-Nice euphemism. Did she make it past Let's Kill Hitler?"

"-I'd warned her about it beforehand. We finished Time of the Doctor last night, hence my present state. You should have seen her face when he regenerated."

"-Did she go all OOGLEH on you?"

"-You wish, you dirty nonce. Anyway, what did that person who dies watching Doctor Who die of? Cringe, I presume?"

"-Well I'd forgive you for thinking that, seeing as it's a Chinballs-"

"-What a load of guff!" exclaimed Another Fandom User, interrupting Dootiokaer.

"-Fuckofferino", we both chorused. "Yeah, it was a Chibnall episode. Specifically the one you keep complaining about, which is why I brought it up. Should probably wipe that marmalade off your face, just so you know," he suggested condescendingly.

"-Oh, the one with the out of synch titles?" - I paused to clean my forehead - "All things considered, we should count their blessings they remembered to include the titles. Dan's good in it though, and I wouldn't mind Mandip sitting on my face."

I'd said the trigger word.

"-DAN!! DAN!! DAN!! DAN!! DAN!! DAN!!" we shouted, and in a higher-pitched voice, "Dan!" from Yet Another Fandom User, always late to the party.

"-Fuckofferino. So what did he die of then, if not from cringe?"

"-Err, hang on, cannae remember..." Dootiokaer reached for his phone. "Aw shite, thread got nuked. Maybe Chinballs is a janny and that's why he takes so long to produce the show?"

"-They do it for free", I replied, absent-mindedly.

"-They do be doing for free!" concluded a clueless Fandom User, who had just joined the conversation.

My mental state barely improved throughout the day, but commuting home, it dawned on me that today was a rather monumental day: finally, I would be able to resume my Series 8 re-watch, this time with my girlfriend. I wondered whether she had been as  - enamoured with Capaldi as she had been with Smith to leave Deep Breath on the TV when I got home, and decided in advance that I wouldn't hold it against her if she didn't. In fact, even if she gave up on Doctor Who, I could still have claimed to have converted her to watching something other than Tennant. That in itself was victory enough for me. As I crossed the threshold inside, she came to greet me on tippy toes, just like Clara would do with 12... the anticipation of starting the best Doctor was having much more of an effect on me than I realized, and she sensed it, asking what was wrong... I brushed it off, said I was fine, and made it through to the living room - and there it was plain for me to see, our favourite streaming service, ready to play. They don't call me Lore Autist for nothing. I doubt she meant anything by this tiny gesture, but rushed to kiss her and envelop her in my arms, my girlfriend who had made so many minute adjustments to my way of life and expected nothing in return. She choked:

"-Sweetie.. I-I know how much this means to you, and-"

"-Don't mention it. It's just a shitty kids' program."

"-I mean... I wasn't really on board with the whole older Doctor thing at first, but I loved the 11th Doctor so much, and I felt bad about not watching Eccleston so I watched all of his today, and ordered the boxset of his audio adventures for the car... I just want to give him a chance."

"I'd watch a naked Indian farting contest if it was with you, my love."

And so we settled down on the sofa, to watch Deep Breath in front of dinner. All was well with the world. I felt as happy as Binge must have been when he first saw Series 8 on his side. Deep Breath turned into Into the Dalek, dinner turned into plum pudding and pancakes, Into the Dalek turned into Time Heist. Not a Clyde Langer in sight.

That was it. Not a flaw in sight. A perfect evening. But something was going almost... too smoothly. Was it the lighting? The settings on the TV? No. It was, weirdly, with the program itself. But how? Surely the streaming service hasn't altered the episodes since last time I'd watched them? /who/ would have told me if some episodes had been pulled, surely?

I wanted to tell my girlfriend. But why ruin it when she was enjoying it so much? Much more then me at this point. I was still struggling to see what could have changed in the episodes. What was the thing I noticed the most?

That's when I realized. The theme. The theme tune was, for once, in sync, and the thing that had bugged me so long was now bugging me with its very absence.

I really wanted to tell my girlfriend now. Still, she seems even more sucked in that before. Somehow drawn to the screen, as if by magnetism. I then began to suspect she was behind this. Hadn't expounded about this pet peeve at length to her before? Could she have taken the trouble to find the episodes online, and recut them in such a manner to not offend my autism? Of course. I grabbed the remote and paused. It did nothing. This was no streaming service. I followed the HDMI cable with my eyes until reaching the computer, and suddenly felt ever so stupid.

Doctor Who had been playing on the small screen this whole time and I hadn't even noticed.

But who else hadn't noticed? My girlfriend, inching ever closer to the screen. This was the end of Listen, and the credits sang.

Then silence fell.

The room went dark.

The temperature dropped.

And still my girlfriend was transfixed by the pitch black of the screen.

I panicked as a low grumbling sound began to emanate from an unidentified source. As it grew clearer I came to realize it was in fact a very low-pitched laugh. Then not so low-pitched. A bit like Dan's laugh after drawing a smiley face on Christ the Redeemer.

A Scouse laugh.

The kind of forced, humourless laugh, in the same kind of voice from the same kind of man who would call Terror of the Vervoids routine.

Very routine Doctor Who.

"Can you hear me?" I queried to my girlfriend. But as it were, you could say she had transcended dimensions. She was in another realm, the realm I would later come to know as the Chibnall Dimension. As I fretted over her catatonic shell, the TV screen slowly came back to life, with a sinister variation of the Doctor Who theme to accompany it. This was no Segun "Clang Clang" Akinola arrangement. This was on the next level of sinister, the kind of noise your brain makes when you're being chased by a pack of wolves in the forest, the kind of alarm that sounded in Colin Baker's head when he knew his firing from the BBC was imminent - a sound no instrument could produce, yet which sounded so familiar. The mess of light which had first danced on the screen had crystallized into some graphics - eerily reminiscent of the Series 13 theme, but without any credits whatsoever and with a green tinge layered over it. Thought I suppose there were credits, after a fashion - for a disembodied head, cycling through the colour spectrum and then some more, was intermittently drifting in and out of the vortex, laughing a silent yet chilling laugh. The mocking face of Chris Chibnall.

It felt like ages, but in reality the theme tune had only just reached the middle 8. At that point the first sounds came out of Chibnall's mouth:

"You're coming with me."

I thought he was addressing himself to me, but as it turned out, it was my girlfriend who was transported, levitating into our television, travelling down the vortex. I had to act. Would I stay hear and wait for the horrors to abate, or would I follow and join the Chibnall Dimension before it was too late? I hesitated, seeing Chibnall's eyes locking into mine. Me getting caught was part of his plan, but I was determined to crash his dimension, with no survivors.

I took the leap of faith and ran head first into the TV set. But instead of plunging into the temporal abyss, Chibnall lunged forward and opened his mouth wide, beyond any human capacity. It was too late. Before I had time to process what was going on I was already halfway down his gullet.

But I had made it, after a fashion. Even if I was bound to suffer a horrible fate inside the man, I was on a mission to rescue my girlfriend. I had taken the first steps into a world sci-fi writers would only dream of. I was, in many ways, living something akin to what the Doctor would live.

I was in the Chibnall Dimension, trapped until further notice.

Chapter III
I woke up.

From the first breath I took the stench overcame me, nearly choking me. I scrambled for purchase on the slimy ground, but repeated slipping made it difficult to stand for long. In the absence of light, I checked myself to see if I was still whole. Legs, arms, finger, penis… penis! No clothes! Had I been undressed? Raped, maybe? I surreptitiously checked my (anus), in a nonsensical attempt at privacy in a lightless solitary room. I poked and pulled at myself and felt horrified at my skin apparently detaching itself from my body – radiation? Of course. The Chib' Dimension must be swimming in it. Dry eyes, prickling sensation – the end was near, but not without pain. I had tried to rescue my paramour, to no avail.

I took a few random steps. I learnt to stabilize myself on the uneven surface, and with that my mind also cleared. Silly me, this couldn't possibly be radiation, I thought, unless I’d been here for ages. Got to retrace my steps… walked into the TV, got swallowed whole by the Chibster’s gob… of course! Somehow, through his disembodied head, I had travelled through his digestive tract into his cavernous stomach. I pondered how I could have shrunk to such a tiny size, or how large Chibnall’s true form actually was. Time and space clearly worked very differently in this bizarre vortex, I rationalized. Must press on.

As it turned out, this stomach of sorts wasn’t as empty as I had thought. Besides that wretched acid, there was a small glow in the near distance, around halfway up the gastric wall. Wasting no time, I tried my best to climb up toward it, helped by the gradual incline of the walls. Once there I found a shallow recess, at the end of which seemed to lie an oil-covered door, apparently the source of this mysterious glow. My mind was now simply focusing on any immediate task at hand, a paradoxical reaction to the horrors I’d so recently witnessed. Forward I went and gently I opened the door, not without difficulty, given the slippery consistency of the oil.

On the other side, a surprise awaited me. It couldn’t have come at a better time, for behind me I could hear a deep grumbling sounds - not the grumble of a pompous Scouse about to devour you but the groan of a stomach preparing to crush on empty. Who’s laughing now, I thought. The surprise in question felt nearly inappropriate, given the grim circumstances I found myself in. It was, simply, a slide – one which, had I been of a more Asheristic inclination, I could have described as something akin to those bonus levels in Super Mario 64 (e.g. The Princess's Secret Slide). Wasting no time, I coated my naked body with oil from the oil-covered door and prepared to whizz down my (hopeful) path to freedom.

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" would have been what I would have cried out, had that meagre amount of oil actually provided any lubrication at all. Well, fuck this. I’ll just walk down into the darkness. At least this time there’s that eerie glow to guide me. So I too it upon myself to amble down this perverse imitation of the Yellow Brick Road, trying where possible to avoid falling off – may I point you to a similar simile (hah!) in Simon’s recap of Series 8, ironically the very Series that brought about my ongoing downfall. Such a dull experience would not be worth writing about. As Father Time fattened his piglet minutes, growing them into big strong porky hours on a robust diet of organic seconds, the background to my trek began to subtly change, at about the same rate that I as descending vertically. This wasn’t nearly as spooky as the mutated title themes on the TV, though a similar sense of apprehension loomed. Imagine watching a firework display in ultra slow motion, with the knowledge that there’s still a bang waiting to happen, just very quietly. This being the Chibnall Dimension, there wasn’t anything that creative or original to look at. I started wishing I’d fallen into the Ed Wood or the Tommy Wiseau Dimension instead – my time there would have been twice as horrible, but at least it would have been interesting. Here was just close-ups on random colours with the occasional lens flare. I’d seen better screensavers. Still, must press on.

When I lost any sense of time whatsoever, I started pondering that this slide may actually be infinite, and that Chibnall was once again deliberately luring me, knowing I’d fall for the bait. It wasn’t like I’d find my girlfriend at the bottom of the slide. To add to that, my hunger pangs were becoming increasingly frequent. With no source of food readily available to me, I just had to will it away, which worked after a fashion. Out of curiosity, I looked back up to where I’d come from – that is, if it was even still visible to me.

And boy it was.

In fact, Chris’s colossal body had somehow moved closer to me. Once again, I had failed to notice even the most basic of details and warning signs.

So, I did what any sane man would do.

I challenged Chris Chibnall.

"-All right Chibby, had enough on trying your new writing tricks on me? Is this the part where I think really really hard and everything goes back to being hunky dory again?" I said, playing for time.

"-DON’T THINK THAT’S GOING TO SAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND, LORE AUTIST. I’VE GOT MUCH MORE THAN A FIVE-YEAR PLAN FOR HER."

"-Oh really? I don’t think you’re going to be able to fit in her at that size, just a word of advice."

"-I DON’T NEED ANY ADVICE FROM YOU! I WAS GOING TO LET YOU OFF EASY, BE NICE TO A LOYAL FAN!"

"-Yeah."

"-NOW I’M PISSED OFF. I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO LET YOU SE YOUR GIRLFRIEND."

"-Really?" (I was sure he would catch on to my subtle jabs at his dialogue writing, but he was probably too thick to even notice)

"-YEAH. NOW HOW ABOUT YOU AND ME GO TO THE EXPOSITION ROOM?"

This had caught me off guard. "E-Exposition Room?" I echoed. Feebly, I tried to respond with more humour. "As you can see, I’m already pretty exposed as it is…"

But this is all trivial compared to what I'm living now. The Exposition Room I now know to be the absolute worst corner possible in the Chibnall Dimension, second only to whatever undetermined fate my girlfriend must be undergoing as I speak. And to the end of detailing the daily – monthly – yearly – I don’t even know anymore, time has lost any meaning it once had, I will do precisely what the Exposition Room was intended for.

To expose.

[Don't write a comma after a question, e.g. " 'What?', I asked" " - just put " 'What?' I asked".]