Spore (short story)

Spore was the eighth Puffin eshort released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. It featured the Eighth Doctor.

It was later published in the short stories anthologies 11 Doctors, 11 Stories, 12 Doctors, 12 Stories and Thirteen Doctors, 13 Stories.

Publisher's summary
In a small town in the Nevada desert, an alien pathogen has reduced the entire population to a seething mass of black slime. When the Eighth Doctor arrives, he realises this latest threat to humanity is horrifyingly familiar — it is a virus which almost annihilated his entire race, the Time Lords...

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Major Platt
 * Captain Evelyn Chan

Worldbuilding

 * A grocery store has a pink, neon Budweiser beer sign above its door.
 * The pathogen arrived on Gallifrey more than a thousand years before the Doctor was born, killing several hundred Time Lords.
 * The Doctor shines his torch on a Chevrolet and a Honda.
 * The pathogen/spore is a von Neumann seeding probe, named after John von Neumann, who theorised the probe's possibility.
 * The Doctor poses as a member of the CDC.

Continuity

 * The Doctor remembers visiting the nearby town of Roswell. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)
 * When Major Platt looks at his clothes, the Doctor mentions that he was called away from the opera, mirroring what happened to Grace Holloway. (TV: Doctor Who)
 * The Doctor says he is working with UNIT. (TV: The Invasion et al.)
 * The Doctor says there are conspiracy sites that mention him. Clive Finch would later run such a website. (TV: Rose)