Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing (short story)

Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing was a short story written by Robert Shearman for 2003's Short Trips: The Muses. It was notable for being a relatively rare instance of a solo adventure for the Sixth Doctor and for being one of the first professionally published stories to deal with the concept of "timey-wimey-ness", later popularised by Steven Moffat's television episode, Blink.

Summary
Whilst Peri is away, the Sixth Doctor pops round to a dance instructor's studio for tuition in the art of the waltz. She initially declines, maintaining that she has a full class of children to teach. The Doctor returns the next day, having bought off all the parents. Now her only possible student, she begins to teach him. He learns very quickly and soon progesses to the foxtrot. Along the way, Rebecca reveals that much of the joy in her life has been sapped by her loveless marriage. When she announces that she has fallen in love with the Doctor, for he has been the first man to care about her ambitions in a very long time, the Doctor decides that he had best exit her life so as not to cause her further pain.

Some eighty years later from the Doctor's perspective, he meets Becky as a teenager. He decides to repay her earlier tuition by teaching her how to waltz. Thus, he effectively teaches himself how to dance. He realises too late, however, that he should have been teaching her husband-to-be; then they would have shared a common interest, and their marriage might have been happier. The Doctor departs, sad that he has been unable to properly help her.

Later, nearing the end of his regeneration, the Doctor returns to Becky, now in her eighties. He offers her the chance to travel with him in the TARDIS, but she declines, noting that she is now far too old for such an adventurous life. The Doctor leaves Becky's side for the third time in her life, while she dreams again her original, unfulfilled dream of being a professional dancer.

Characters

 * Sixth Doctor
 * Rebecca, the Doctor's dance instructor
 * David, variously her boyfriend or husband

Continuity

 * This story posits a longer lifespan for the sixth Doctor than is acknowledged in other media. His age is at least twice given as nine hundred years old (DW: Revelation of the Daleks, BFA: The One Doctor) and once given as " more or less" (DW: The Mysterious Planet). At the time of his regeneration, he is said to be specifically nine hundred fifty-three. The time passage in this story is at least eighty years, and intimated to be much more than that. Thus, it seems asynchronous with earlier stories. However, the Doctor's age is anything but definite, characterised more by contradiction than agreement.
 * The Doctor tells the elderly Rebecca he's been travelling alone for a very long time since he last met her. Though not particularly apparent in either televised or audio Doctor Who, this long period of solo travels has its genesis in the fact that the Mel and Doctor we see in Terror of the Vervoids are from the personal future of the Sixth Doctor who is standing trial; that the Mel encountered in The Ultimate Foe has been dragged to the trial from that Doctor's future, as well. Thus, when we see him depart with Mel at the end of Foe it is to take her back to her proper time, when she is travelling with an older, post-Vervoids Sixth Doctor. The novel, Business Unusual, is the "missing story" of how Mel met the Sixth Doctor for the first time from her perspective. That novel initially shows the Sixth Doctor travelling alone, because he is between the time when he returned Mel to his older self and the time that she met him. It is in this the gap between The Ultimate Foe and Business Unusual that parts 2 and 3 of this story are set. Even more precise placement is possible, but with greater apparent precision comes greater speculation. Nevertheless, one possibility of a more precise time placement can be seen in the "Timeline" section, below.
 * The Doctor can be said to at least entertains a romantic relationship with Becky here, even though he dismisses it fairly quickly. Like incarnations appearing outside the original 1963 run of Doctor Who, he indulges here in what can't be said to be wholly platonic kissing.

Timeline
Part I:
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs after PDA: Blue Box.
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs before BFA: Davros.

Part II:
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs after ST: Christmas Special.
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs before ST: The Terror of the Darkness.

Part III:
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs after ST: The Glass Princess.
 * Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing occurs before ST: The Inquisitor's Story.