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 focus on with the concept of temporal paradox, later popularised by Steven Moffat's television episode, Blink.

Summary
Whilst Peri is enjoying a day out, 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 progresses to the foxtrot. Along the way, Becky reveals that much of the joy in her life has been sapped by her loveless marriage to David. 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 his next 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
 * Becky
 * David

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor travels to the 1970s to help repel an Auton invasion. He doesn't call on UNIT because he thinks he's already here in a previous incarnation.
 * The Doctor is thinking of learning ballroom dancing or pottery.
 * The Doctor and Becky order vegetarian lasagna.

Continuity
to be added