Breadcrumbs (short story)

Breadcrumbs was the sixteenth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Transmissions. It was written by James Moran. It featured the Fourth Doctor and Romana II.

Summary
Romana wishes to go on holiday, but the Doctor is distracted by signals that he wants to track around the universe. Romana places a bet with him saying that he has two weeks to track all the pieces round the universe whilst she goes on holiday; if he manages it without regenerating, or destroying the TARDIS, she will pay for an expensive meal, otherwise he will pay for the meal.

He tracks the signals, collects them all and plans to run them through a machine which he has to get from a dangerous man, who fires a shot at the central console. On his way out he falls into a wormhole and has to send himself in parts to get out of it, creating the initial signals he was tracking. When he returns to Romana she pretends to have looked at the sensor array log, tricking the Doctor into telling her what happened, and she wins the bet.

Characters

 * Fourth Doctor
 * Romana II
 * G'rlanix

Worldbuilding

 * Romana bounces a beach ball to hint that she wants a holiday.
 * The loser of the bet will pay for lunch on Surrifleq 9.
 * The Doctor uses a Centauran Matter Disperer to assemble the fragments into one message. He wanted to ask Sjad to get it from G'rlanix, but G'rlanix had murdered Sjad.

Continuity

 * Romana recalls holidaying in Paris 1979, which she claims to have happened a year ago. (TV: City of Death)