Seven
Unaired Pilot Episode
The trouble with being Oxford’s friend was that Oxford was friends with everyone. He attracted people like time travel attracted cats.
When Oxford threw a party, there were no limits.
To be fair, he did actually take physics into account with his party planning for this particular shindig, which necessitated a last-minute venue change from the dorms to Professor Mycroft’s rooms. Because of course, the professors all loved Oxford too. He and Monterey were both sons of Founders, and thus were treated by longer-serving staff members as something halfway between honorary nephews, and college mascots.
Professor Mycroft was a cheery, rotund sort of fellow, well-liked by the students. No one remembered a time when he had not been in residence in the Department of Practical History.1
Mycroft’s comfortable suite was heaving with students, professors, travellers and cats by the time Ruthven turned up to the viewing party with the chronocle safely stored in his jumpsuit pocket.2
“Rrrrrreally the unaired pilot?” asked Lovelace, an Abyssinian short-hair whose notorious time travelling exploits had made her a local icon.
Ruthven’s cat, Aesop, had been good friends with Lovelace, whom she looked up to as something of a mentor. She always acted so casual in Lovelace’s stately presence, then squealed afterwards with Ruthven about how cool she was.
Damn, he missed Aesop so much.
“Fragments,” he said now, in response to Lovelace’s question. “It’s a clip show, so it’s certainly not all of it, but it’s the only footage of the unaired pilot that we’re ever likely to see.”
“Good enough for me,” sniffed the cat.
The humans had gone all out with Cramberleigh cosplay, aided and abetted by Fenella from Costume.3
Ruthven had never spent much time with Fenella. The only thing he knew about her was that she had never been partnered with a cat. No tragic backstory: she simply had not been issued one upon graduation due to an administrative error currently in its fourth year and counting.
It wasn’t that he avoided her exactly, but it irritated Ruthven that everyone assumed they must be great friends because of their mutual lack of feline companionship.
If a physical description of Fenella would be helpful at this juncture, imagine an extremely petite young woman, with dark hair in a pixie cut, and unnaturally large eyes like someone who had fallen out of the Silent Movie era. She constantly flitted back and forth in wild, quick movements, and always had several pairs of scissors and a spool of thread somewhere about her person.
Fenella’s relationship to her old school sewing machine, despite the availability of far more sophisticated garment printing technology, was similar to Ruthven’s own interest in vintage media players… yes, all right. He could see why everyone thought they should be friends.
In any case, Ruthven had little reason to visit the costume department these days, so avoiding Fenella (or not avoiding her, as the case may be) was largely out of his hands. He was no longer a time traveller, and he rarely attended the sort of parties where a costume was expected.
He hadn’t planned to dress up tonight, but as soon as he entered Professor Mycroft’s suite, Oxford and Fenella pounced upon him. Somehow, he ended up wearing a top hat.
“Won’t it block everyone’s view?” Ruthven protested meekly. Fenella had already darted away with an armful of cravats and shawls for other party guests who had failed to put in the appropriate costuming effort. Somehow, she had figured out Ruthven would not say no to Oxford.
It disturbing to be known so well by someone he barely knew.
“It won’t block anyone’s view,” said Oxford, who had done himself up in bowler hat and suit, just like the debonair Mr Knight from the Seventies Spy Hijinks era of the show (1976-1978). “You’re going to sit at the back and not talk to anyone. Might as well look good doing it.”
Oxford said things like that all the time. Ruthven couldn’t even resent it, because he knew Oxford didn’t have a bitchy bone in his body. He was being genuine.
What a dick.
The screening was about as chaotic as Ruthven expected. Drinking, laughing, hushing each other, making fun of the terrible 80s fashions, and commenting loudly on the differences between these scenes from the unaired pilot, awkwardly sandwiched into the episode as a series of flashbacks, and the ‘canon’ version from 1965.
The fact that the maid was called Gladys in the early footage and not Gladioli had everyone so excited that Oxford paused the show for five whole minutes.
Lady Ann’s slightly different hairstyle almost caused a riot.4
Ruthven had taken precautions against being annoyed by the distracting antics of the fannish crowd by watching the episode twice ahead of the party, and uploading a short but pithy article to the Cramberries fan forum.
He had not been paying enough attention. That became obvious very quickly.
“Wait,” said Oxford loudly, spitting out a mouthful of cucumber sandwich. “Is that?”
“Pause it,” gasped Lovelace, leaping up on the back of the padded couch. She arched her back in a menacing silhouette.
“No claws on the furniture, please,” said Professor Mycroft in a long-suffering tone.
It was Monterey who moved first. He was wearing a replica of the same dressing gown worn by Sir Victor Wildegreen in the 1972 episode “Why Didn’t The Petunias Eat Evans?” Ruthven had been coveting it all evening.
If a physical description of Montgomery J Monterey would be helpful at this juncture, imagine a bright-eyed gentleman of warm brown complexion and dark curly hair. Monterey had a taste for the finer things in life: silk dressing gowns, designer suits, and vintage port. He was a little shorter and stouter than was fashionable in the twenty-fourth century, but a perfect fit for the nineteenth century and earlier, depending on the theatricality of the relevant crowd.5
Monterey was vaguely senior to most of the active travellers, and liked to pretend he was decades older than the rest of them. In fact, thanks to an early start and a pinch of nepotism, he was only two years older than Ruthven and Oxford. As a traveller paired with Lovelace, Monterey was a slapdash maniac who constantly left disaster in his wake, while remaining unruffled.
He was ruffled right now. Practically wild-eyed. Monterey bent over the media player, winding it back frame by frame, then going too far, snapping irritably at Oxford when he tried to help.
For anyone to snap at Oxford wasn’t just a warning sign, it was practically an emergency siren. Something was very, very wrong.
Ruthven shuffled closer to Fenella, who could usually be relied on for gossip. “Do you know what’s going on?”
He was trying to remember what was in this particular scene to cause this level of commotion. It featured Lady Ann meeting her new husband’s horrible Aunt Phyllida (Lady Cradoc) for the first time, outside the greenhouse. Like most of the scenes from the pilot, it was mostly interesting because it was a location shoot.6
