Those Who Came Before
Created | Updated Aug 9, 2007
'Doctor, do you have anything I can change into? These clothes really need a wash,' said Martha. The Doctor looked up from under the console.
'I wasn't going to say anything,' he said with a grin as he leapt up and grabbed her hand. 'Come on.' He led her to a large room that was full of clothes; Martha clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself squealing with delight — dressing up had always been her favourite pastime as a child. When they stayed at Gran's house, the first thing she and Tish did was head for the loft where they would spend hours rummaging through the boxes of clothes.
'I'm sure you'll find something in here that'll fit you. The laundry room is next to the kitchen,' said the Doctor as he turned to leave.
Martha stood open-mouthed as she stared in awe at the amount of clothes in the room and the mess the room was in. She started opening drawers in a huge bureau and found some underwear; she opened another drawer where she found some shorts and then went about looking for a t-shirt. She found a drawerful and pulled out one with a Union Jack on the front. She heard the Tardis sigh in her mind and the name 'Rose' came to her — it must have been one of her predecessors', so she put it back. The Doctor would probably freak out if she wore that. Martha blinked a couple of times as the Tardis showed her a picture of a grinning blonde girl dressed in jeans and the Union Jack t-shirt. So this was the wonderful Rose. She smiled at the picture and some of the bitterness slipped away. She pulled out a very low-cut t-shirt, pulled it over her head and looked in the mirror. The shirt was far too low-cut for her; if she breathed out too quickly she'd be flashing the Doctor too much of her underwear. The Tardis chuckled in her mind and showed her a picture of a well-built, dark-haired woman, younger than her and Rose, who was dressed in a low-cut shirt, shorts and high heeled sandals. Peri was the name the Tardis provided; Martha wondered how she had managed to run in that outfit. She pulled out another shirt, a white baggy one and pulled it over her head. This one fitted her okay.
'Who did this belong to?' she asked, the Tardis provided her with a picture of a young girl with a cheeky grin, dressed in a white t-shirt, a black skirt and holding a baseball bat. The name 'Ace' came into her mind. Martha smiled. She'd like to get to know more about Ace.
She gathered up her clothes and made her way to the laundry room. After throwing them into the washing machine, she decided to go back to the wardrobe room and tidy it up — sort the clothes into time periods so that if they had to blend in with the locals they wouldn't have to spend hours searching through the mess. Martha made her way back to the wardrobe room and started to pull the clothes off the rail and dump them on the floor. She started by putting all the really old-fashioned clothes together. Not being one for history, she couldn't tell Elizabethan clothes from Tudor clothes. Every so often she would hold a dress up in front of her and giggle at her reflection. After an hour, she'd got to the Victorian era. The Tardis had told her the story of a young woman called Victoria who had travelled with the Doctor after her father had been killed. Victoria, she gathered, had been rather naïve and Martha wondered how she'd coped with all the space stuff.
After another hour of sorting out 20th-century clothes, she came to the 1960s. There seemed to be more of these than any other decade. She pulled a pair of capri pants off the floor — they were quite small and certainly wouldn't have fit her. The Tardis gave her a picture of a very young, elfin-faced girl with a haircut that made her look like a pixie and dressed in the trousers she was holding and a striped shirt. 'Susan' was the name that went with the picture. The Tardis held a lot of affection for Susan — maybe she was the granddaughter the Doctor had spoken of. The next outfit she picked up was a short, sleeveless dress and a cardigan. Martha pulled off the T-shirt and shorts and tried the dress on. She giggled at her reflection — it was more Heartbeat than the Diana Ross look she was hoping for.
'Who wore this?' she asked aloud. 'Barbara' was the answer she got and the picture that went with it was of an older woman with a bouffant hairstyle that was typical of the 1960s. She had a bit of a stern look on her face that made Martha think of a teacher. The Tardis told her she was one of Susan's teachers and was one of the first humans to step aboard the Tardis.
Another couple of hours passed and Martha reached the 1970s. She couldn't help laughing at some of the fashions and prayed fervently that the Doctor would never take her there. She picked up a pair of white platform-heeled boots and sighed; the woman that wore these must have suffered some sprained ankles in her time aboard. Sarah-Jane was the name of the woman the boots belonged to. According to the picture the Tardis gave her, she had shoulder-length chestnut hair and a kind smile; she had the look of someone's big sister. Martha hung a long denim skirt on the rail and was told it belonged to Jo Grant — a ditzy blonde, according to the Tardis.
The rest of the clothes didn't take her too long to tidy up. Most of them seemed to have belonged to Rose, Peri, Ace and a girl called Mel who had the wildest ginger hair she'd ever seen. Martha started to fill a rail with clothes that didn't seem to belong to Earth or a particular period; she picked up a dress made of a light silvery material that was definitely not from Earth — well from not from any Earth period she knew. A picture of a slim girl with wide eyes that made her look startled formed in her mind along with the name Zoë. Martha's eyes widened when she spotted a leather bikini — whoever wore this was seriously kinky.
'Oh my God, who the hell wore this?' she asked out loud. The answer came in a picture of a wild-haired, savage-looking woman who looked like she'd just stepped out of the film One Million Years BC. 'Leela? Blimey, she must have been cold in that outfit.' She packed it away in one of the drawers, making a quick note of which one in case she wanted to borrow it. She picked up another outfit with a flowery skirt similar to Zoë's, but in burgundy — this, she was told, belonged to Nyssa, a very aristocratic-looking woman with a mop of dark, curly hair. She picked up something that seemed really out of place — a lilac-coloured airline stewardess' uniform. Since when did the Tardis need in-flight staff? A picture of a woman with short dark hair and a scowl on her face popped into her mind; 'Tegan' was the name that went with it. The Tardis gave off an air of sadness. Apparently Tegan had never been very happy aboard the Tardis and had left because she just couldn't take the horrors she'd witnessed anymore.
Martha looked at her watch and yelped with surprise. She'd been in the wardrobe room for six hours and had only got half of it tidy. She'd better get back to the Doctor before he came looking for her. She took off the shorts and pulled on a pair of leggings that had belonged to someone called Vicki and put on Barbara's cardigan.
'There you are, I wondered where you'd got to,' said the Doctor as she came in with two mugs of tea.
'I've been tidying up the wardrobe room,' she said. 'I've still got loads to do the next time I'm bored and you're fiddling with the Tardis.' The Doctor looked at the outfit she was wearing and smiled.
'That's Barbara's cardigan, Ace's t-shirt and Vicki's trousers,' he said softly,
'What were they like?' Martha asked as she handed him his mug.
