#Canonwelding

[hemipenal-system]

human dragon rider who serves as an ambassador to a local elven government, who immediately finds that they’re a lot more… open, sexually.

he starts getting his ass slapped teasingly basically the second he’s off the dragon and as he gets further into the capital city he gets propositioned by entirely nude elves with increasing regularity

they keep calling him zhu olu’och with wolfish smirks and he keeps asking what it means and no one will tell him until another human visitor laughs and tells him it just means dragon rider

when he explains it, he entirely omits the preposition in the phrase that changes the meaning to ridden by dragon, but come on, every single person in the city can tell

[howlingaround]

[ Doctor Who ] Timey Wimey Fanon and Headcanons that I accept as the hashtag True Canon: - Regeneration is a temporal process, and every time the Doctor regenerates a new point of origin is added to their time stream ( multiple timelines make one stream, a time lord survival mechanism maybe ?). This means that each incarnation has their own "backstory" but they are all part of the same backstory: the First Doctor is a time travelling human from the 49th Century with only one heart, but the Second Doctor has two, and the Third is biologically gallifreyan. The Seventh Doctor was Loomed, the Eighth is half human with Ulysses and Penelope as parents, the Thirteenth Doctor is Timeless - The TARDIS is spatially bigger on the inside, but also temporally bigger on the inside. All those comics and novels and audio dramas are part of the "inner" timeline / interior time stream, but we cant see them on the television adventures since they are hidden "inside". This makes no sense does it - Regeneration and Bigger on the Inside technology are side effects of Time Travel itself. Time Travel is unnatural and breaks the universe, which is why magic and gods and all those impossible things can happen in the Doctor Who Universe - The Doctors real name is the television intro theme, and all gallifreyan is spoken in song - The Eye of Harmony is inside the planet of Gallifrey, because the whole planet is bigger on the inside as well - One K9 fell into Omegas Black Hole and now theyre stuck together being annoying friends

[pl9090]

A visual version of the previous post.

[intuitive-revelations]

I don't know if I'm excited or frustrated at the 'future children' angle for Susan's origin. On one hand... I'm very interested in the possible links to the likes of Miranda, the Other etc.

On the other hand... ok confession time: This may make me a minority in the fandom, but I actually really dislike the 80s-90s retcons of Susan's origin. (Birth of a Renegade, Lungbarrow etc.)

I kinda just like her and the Doctor being some of the last surviving members of what was once a family on Gallifrey. I find the mystery and tragedy of what happened on Gallifrey, with implied student uprisings and political assassinations, far more intriguing than any twists saying "actually she's not really his granddaughter". Fortunately, some things can be canonwelded into that (eg. Susan really could be also related to the president / descended from Rassilon), but stuff that actually gives her an origin elsewhere is always a pain.

Idk. I just see once being a parent (and losing it all tragically) as such a crucial part of the Doctor's background and Susan fits very well into that as far as I'm concerned. Anything disconnecting her from that, or worse erasing it completely, ultimately damages what I find to be one of the most compelling things about the Doctor and Susan. :/

The few posts I've already seen talking about this suggests this is an unpopular opinion, but I'd be interested to know what people think, and if they agree or disagree...

[doccywhomst]

okay so i know chibnall directly shot this down in an interview, but dhawan!master is pre-missy, right? the simm -> dhawan -> missy pipeline is so real and scrumptious mmmm i love that for them: thinking the doctor would never trust her again post-gallifrey, missy found their last incarnation and tried to resume business as usual, but when she was captured/executed (for razing gallifrey, amongst infinite other crimes) and imprisoned, her past started creeping up on her emotionally - but the doctor can’t know their shared future !!!! she can’t confide in him! or ask for forgiveness! despite how much she misses their friendship, what she’s done can’t be undone, nor atoned for.

dhawan!master preceding missy adds so much depth and deliberation to her choices; conversely, dhawan!master succeeding missy adds nothing to their character, besides bulldozing over missy’s character development/moral complexity, so…. instructions unclear. i canonwelded myself to the radiator

[doctornolonger]

The Killer Cats of Gin-Seng

In Survival, the last regular serial of Classic Doctor Who, the Doctor and Ace visit a planet of humanoid cats called “Cheetah People”. The Cheetah People are highly telepathic: they can mentally control and inhabit their pet cats, and they can even teleport between planets. Most notably, one of them is played by Lisa Barrowman, better known as Bernice Summerfield.

But this wasn’t actually the first time that humanoid cats had been set to appear in Doctor Who. In 1977, script editor Anthony Read commissioned his former collaborator David Weir to write the Season 15 finale, a four-part serial set on Gallifrey. The request was to explore society outside the Capitol with an emphasis on morality, a theme which Weir had written well in the past. So he pitched a story about Gallifreyan civilization of humanoid cats.

The Gallifreyan cat-people would have mirrored real-world cats’ dual penchant for both sophistication and savagery: they would appear advanced and civilized until the Doctor wound up in one of their elaborate gladiatorial displays! Weir delivered his scripts on time, and production proceeded to the point that Dee Robson designed costumes for the cat actors.

Ultimately the story was cancelled: Weir, by all accounts an excellent screenwriter, dramatically overestimated the show’s VFX capabilities and budget. But executive producer Graham Williams later mentioned the idea at a fan convention, so it became well-known in fandom (albeit under the false name The Killer Cats of Geng Singh). As a result, when Survival finally brought cat people to screens, fans naturally canonwelded the two.

One of these fans was Adrian Middleton, editor of the Apocrypha fanzine. Here’s how Apocrypha issue 1 covered the cats:

Apocrypha on the Killer Cats

THE GIANT CATS     -16,000,000

The first intelligent mammalians on Gallifrey evolved from its version of the sabre-toothed Tiger. These giant cats developed a rudimentary form of empathic communication, which allowed them to influence the actions of their prey.

Over an extended period of time, the cats developed a finer telepathic ability, allowing them to actually control other species. This became a necessity as feline culture grew, as their physiological form prevented the use of tools to build or write with. Thus, in spite of their intelligence, the cats could not establish a true civilisation without anthropoid assistance.

FELINOID CIVILISATION     -14,000,000

Early Gallifreyan hominids soon became the tools of feline culture. The first buildings on the planet were built by hominids but designed by cats, taking the form of vast stone arenas, in which the cats would use lesser species for sport - hunting and killing for pleasure rather than survival.

HOMINIDS     -14,000,000/-13,980,000

Forced to live alongside saurian and feline predators, Gallifrey's first hominid tribes evolved as creatures of guile and stealth. Communities were established using primitive communications. These hominids were the cave-people, the tree-people, and the river-people.

THE FALL OF THE GIANT CATS     -13,980,000

The hominid tribes had at first been easy prey for the cats, easily manipulated as a supply of muscle and food. Ultimately, however, the development of feline culture accelerated the development of hominid culture. Being made to use their hands and having the telepathic parts of their minds manipulated awakened a new sense of purpose within them. Seeing the cats as their slavers, they rebelled, exposing the cats to a coup so bloody that the species was all but wiped from the face of the planet.

THE LEGEND OF THE VANISHING CATS     -13,800,000

It is rumoured that, after their defeat by the hominids, the giant cats fled to the mountains, where they hoped to restore their numbers (perhaps in an effort to restore their power over the hominids). Often hunting parties would venture into these mountains, bringing back the occasional cat. It seemed that the mental strength of the hominids had come to match their feline contemporaries.

Other psychic powers were attributed to the cats, including the power of teleportation. In Gallifrey's southern hemisphere, atop one of its highest mountains, there stands a crudely erected stone circle. Gallifreyan archaeologists determined that this was built by the cats themselves. Legend states that the giant cats emigrated by mass teleportation to another worlds. Few giant cats were seen from this time on, and those that did appear bore no telepathic powers. However, smaller domestic cats, or Kitlings, retained this ability.

WHY LINK THE KITLINGS FROM 'SURVIVAL' WITH THE KILLER CATS OF GALLIFREY?

The 'cat' theme is one that has been expanded on greatly in recent years. Colin Baker's cat motif and 'I am the cat that walks alone' slogan, followed by Eric Saward's novelisation of 'Slipback', set a pace followed by 'Survival' and the 'Cat's Cradle' trilogy.

Upon learning about 'The Killer Cats of Ginseng' by David Weir, everything seemed to fit into place. Cats can't exist everywhere in the universe, they have to come from somewhere - we have Earth cats, and Gallifrey has telepathic or empathic cats, just like the Kitlings.

Commentary

Since the 90s, a few stories have referenced the killer cats idea. Gary Russell’s VMA Invasion of the Cat-People mentions “mercenaries of Gin-Seng” alongside the Cheetah People in a list of felinoid species (hence the “canonical” spelling); there’s a similar offhand mention in Big Finish’s Erasure. But there’s only been one actual appearance of one of the cats: Daniel O’Mahony’s Faction Paradox short story “The Return of the King” (pdf).

“The Return of the King” is a prelude to the author’s 2008 novel Newtons Sleep. In that book there’s a glimpse of “the nocturnal delegations of the wild things, whose sharp bright teeth and claws gleamed in the dark of their robes.” The prelude elaborates,

[Time Lord Thessalia’s] oracle stays at the window, seething playfully below his hood. He has fiercely intelligent eyes, neither as sharp nor as bright as his scar. His mouth is a succulent white smile in a lightless face. His people have nothing but contempt for the rituals of the Great Houses. She’s little better than prey to him, a bloodless snack for his long teeth and hungry mind. He breathes, honeyed air purring out of the cavities of his body.

A killer cat kept as a Time Lord’s personal oracle … as @rassilon-imprimatur​ once noted, a funny recontextualization of The Mark of the Rani’s reference to the Lord President’s “pet cat”!

This was my first exposure to the killer cats, so I always took it for granted that they’d always had psychic or oracular abilities. But in fact, as best as I can tell, there was zero hint of this in the original serial. I tracked down every published description of the story, and they all amount to the same few repeated bits of information: Gallifrey, humanoid cats, and a gladiatorial arena. Richard Bignell ultimately told me, “No summary of Killers of the Dark exists. Even David Weir couldn’t recall anything about it when I spoke to him.”

So when “The Return of the King” features an oracular cat-man, it’s not just a reference to the unmade Classic serial. It’s a reference to fan interpretations like Middleton’s which canonweld that serial with the psychic Cheetah People.

And in some ways, it seems to be referencing Middleton’s version specifically! In “The Return of the King”, the above quoted memory is interrupted by commentary:

Your first oracle? ‘My last.’ You think? But his kind were vanishing from the world. ‘They were escaping the War. They could see it coming.’

Compare:

Legend states that the giant cats emigrated by mass teleportation to another worlds. Few giant cats were seen from this time on, and those that did appear bore no telepathic powers.

And so Middleton explains how the cats vanished in O’Mahony’s telling, and O’Mahony explains why they vanished.

Afterword

While we’re on the topic of why, why did O’Mahony choose to revive this specific idea in “The Return of the King”?

One of the places I checked for Killers of the Dark details was issue 336 of Doctor Who Magazine. Imagine how thrilled I was to find that the relevant “Accidental Tourist” piece, located one page after a Faction Paradox ad, was written by none other than O’Mahony himself!

Part of his reflection was particularly striking. He recaps the wild undefinedness of the Doctor’s backstory, a topic I’ve discussed before on this blog. But in his telling, the uncertainty extends past The War Games all the way to The Deadly Assassin.

After all, The War Games declared that “the Doctor’s people are the Time Lords”, but “who are the Time Lords?” was still left undefined. In the Time Lords’ many subsequent appearances, they were simply walking plot devices, and lore details were left to the wayside. Contradictions were rife. Who was Rassilon to Omega? Is their planet called “Gallifrey” or “Jewel”? Who or what on earth are the “First”, “Second”, and “Third Time Lord” who exiled the Doctor?

It was The Deadly Assassin which first dove into the details by featuring the Time Lords like they were any other of the show’s alien cultures. And for this, it was widely panned: “the fans had voted it the worst story of Season Fourteen and published reviews vociferously attacking its ‘betrayal’ of the Time Lords. The BBC practically disowned it, physically vandalising the master tape to placate Mary Whitehouse.” In other words, the stage was all set for a discarding of Holmes’ Time Lords.

O’Mahony writes in his conclusion,

The Deadly Assassin could have remained a one-off, its vision of the Doctor’s homeworld set at odds not just with the Gallifrey stories of the past but also those of the future. The Killer Cats of Geng Singh was the last chance to slip the leash. Williams loved the Time Lords but he had a raft of other ideas he could have put into play, not least the frustratingly deferred Guardians who were clearly intended as a new rung of the series cosmology above and beyond the Time Lords. The premise of Killer Cats was also to counterpoint the Time Lords with another Gallifreyan species – a race of humanoid cats that delighted in bloodthirsty gladiatorial contests alongside a highly refined culture. This wasn’t cribbing from The Deadly Assassin, this was building something new that would expand the newly-forged mythology of the series. In fact, with the cat-people on board and the Guardians waiting in the wings, the possibilities for Time Lord mythology were fluid. It might be possible to return to Gallifrey and find something new and exciting each time, different Gallifreys, with a mutable and ever-expanding history.

However, thanks to Killers of the Dark’s cancellation, Williams and Read were left with a slot to fill on short notice, and for The Invasion of Time they ultimately turned back to Holmes’ ideas. The Deadly Assassin wasn’t discarded or undermined, it was reentrenched.

This was the real moment that the Time Lords as we know them were crystallized: a real-world anchoring of the thread. This was when the whimsically-named planet “Gallifrey” definitively transformed into the rationalistic, stagnant, bureaucratic Homeworld that would feature in the Faction Paradox series.

Because in FP, by the time Grandfather Paradox enters the scene, the Great Houses are total strangers to whismy. It’s only through the course of the War that their understanding of the cosmos is broadened and stranger things begin to return to the Homeworld (with great vengeance).

By showing us a cat in the flesh, O’Mahony is finishing the housekeeping: just as the Intuitive Revelation banished the Pythia, the Eremites, and the Carnival Queen; just as the Grey Eminence unwrote Gallifrey’s first childbirth; and just as the Eternals “despaired of this reality, and fled their hallowed halls” at first hint of conflict – the Killer Cats have to leave to set the scene for the War to come.

P.S.

In Baker’s End, Tom Baker wound up “the King of Cats”. What does this imply about the Other?!?

[doolallymagpie]

…canonwelding the Tzun to the Sectoids and the Colonists actually makes sense

[hemipenal-system]

when leaving irreality zones, make sure you don't bring anyone else with you! does your shadow move like you do? it's probably best to check, isn't it?

[howlingaround]

I love how messy the Solar System in Doctor Who is There is: Vulcan (Power of the Daleks), Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mondas (The Tenth Planet), Mars, the Fifth Planet (Image of the Fendahl), Jupiter, Voga (Attack of the Cybermen), Saturn, Neptune, George, Pluto and of course ... Planet 14? Which might be Cassius? Or Marinus? Or not in the Sol Sytem at all

Considering Time Lords can move planets up and down without much notice (Ravalox incident) i shouldnt be too suprised

Also the Moon is an egg

[pl9090]

Canonwelding Tardis cubes

As always constructive feedback is welcome.

.T.T. capsule recovery mode Size: 1" x 1" x 1". Colour: Shining coal black. Featured in: .E.D.A. Ancestor Cell. Notes: Full recovery takes along time and close proximity to it's pilot.

.T.T. capsule siege mode Size: 6" x 6" x 6". Colour: Metallic grey. Featured in: .D.W. Flatline. Notes: Activation/Deactivation has a huge power requirement, initiation after a severe power drain causes a shutdown.

While recovery mode isn't stated to have any surface detailing like siege mode it could be claimed that they don't show up as as much due to it's size and colour and or its nature as alien cube meant it went without saying. The size difference maybe directly proportional to the available power levels. The .T.T. capsule might not be able to go into recovery mode while it's still occupied which would explain why it didn't do so automatically during, "Flatline" after the severe power drain.

I'd posit that a transparent 1" x 1" x 1" cube is a dead .T.T capsule.

[raindropsonwhiskers]

I saw your ask game. So my asks are numbers 1, 4, 16, 17 and 44. Also, I’m glad you also noted the similar vibes to Faction Paradox in Alex/Manticore’s work, it’s mainly why I canonwelded The House in the Ocean (and the Monument Mythos by extension) into Faction Paradox and Dr Who as per my headcanons. I thought it was just me at first.

Firstly, yes!! Mr Manticore's stuff has that same... grounded unreality to it. You know it isn't real, but it feels like it SHOULD be, even though it also feels that little bit Wrong and Upsetting. Glad to know I'm not alone in this!

1. Comfort characters - my oldest comfort blorbo is probably my Pokemon Mystery Dungeon character from the first time I beat the game, but other honorable mentions go to the Doctor, Romana, and the newest edition, Jasper Heartwood from LA By Night

4. What cryptid do I believe in - Mothman. I'm from very near West Virginia and he seems cool

16. Can I drive - yep! I drive a blue Jeep as old as I am, and she's a very loyal steed, minus the time I had to replace her battery twice because it died on me mid-drive to school

17. Am I farsighted or nearsighted - ...whichever the one where I can't see at a distance is. Up close is fine, anything more than arm-length away is iffy and only gets worse the further it gets

44. Who would I kill if I got a free pass - Trump, probably. Just so long as I can absolutely not take the fall for it

[ouidamforeman]

Okay, but: if (like me) you are a canonwelding gremlin who continues to assume that the Morbius Doctors were in fact part of the Doctor's life as we know it, regardless of Others and Timeless Children — what would you make of a Theta Sigma who is a younger Christopher Barry rather than William Hartnell? (IMO, he too would absolutely stab you.)

Idk what this ask is in response to but although in my personal canon the Morbius Doctors were incarnations of the Other and Hartnell was still the first Doctor I think your version is very good and valid thank u for sharing it with me. All Theta Sigmas are bastards.

[a-wartime-paradox]

I can definitely empathise with choosing being difficult! I did like Vampire Science (although I listened to a fan audiobook instead, because it's quite expensive) and I liked Seeing I until the end, which I felt kinda pushed the whole book down from "really good" to "meh".

Well, you've quite a way until getting the proper Fitz Gay afaik, as I haven't seen it yet and I'm (just) ahead of you. But he does stay until the very end. I wonder, did Fitz or Liv spend more time with 8...?

Well, initially I was just reading the FP EDAs, but then I decided to get more of a picture. I chose by already being somewhat knowledgeable in the EDAs through getting addicted to Tardis wiki over Lockdown, and then asking people if a book was worthwhile on the discord (#canonwelding and #book-n-comic). I also got two lists from Outcast and Quad there.

I haven’t picked up an EDA in a while (sat at 65% through Interference I for… a few weeks.) but within an hour of reading my feels have been hurt by 1) eight breaking apart in prison, my precious mentally-claustrophobic boy, 2) me thinking he’s talking about Sam when BAM it’s actually Ace all along. So happy I watched her run. My beautiful girl. and 3) eight seeing Sarah Jane for just a few moments and being too beat up to be happy about it.

So the rest of it will probably be really chill, right? And the second, too. A walk in the park.

Still holding out hope that’s it’s not Not-Susan, btw. can’t take that away from me.

[intuitive-revelations]

Side note - there's also something in the teaser which people have suggested could be the 'black sun' of the story:

In retrospect, I kinda find it odd no-ones attempted yet to canonweld The Star Beast's 'black sun' with the Order of the Black Sun, or the Great Black Eye of the EDAs?

[doccywhomst]

Ah, sorry! I don't expect you to finish anything by any particular point. I've worked on-and-off on some of my projects for decades. It's just that I don't expect myself to notice if you already have something finished, because Tumblr search is famously a disaster. Among other reasons. :) But I'm glad you love writing these, because I'm really looking forward to whatever they'll become

that makes sense!! :) for now, i’m all-in on Factory Reset (which does actually include Sam and Eight as side characters, for anyone disappointed by the poll!) - i’m still working on the subplot, but i have the main plot and its twists mapped out. the lore is rich and juicy. Romana is there. there’s an obligatory Divergent Universe mention, before Eight encounters it in the audios. there’s a ton of references to the Eternal War and the N-Forms. i’ve managed to canonweld a few different eras together and tie a pretty bow around them, and i’m really excited to get it all written out! ♥️

[doctornolonger]

Where are the Eremites now? *down the back of the sofa*

Well, besides their recent Hulu appearance…

In 2016's Doctor Who Christmas special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio, the Superman stand-in Grant Gordon receives his superpowers when, as a child, he swallows a gift from the Twelfth Doctor which he thought was a cough drop. As the Doctor later explained, it was much more than a cough drop:

DOCTOR: [It's] like a kind of on-board computer. Come here. Can you see, can you see that little yellow star at the end of that curve? It comes from near there. Formed in the heart of a red hole and stabilised in pure dwarf star crystal. The gemstone is intuitive. It knows what you want and draws energy from the nearest star to make it happen. There's only four of them left in the universe. The Apocalypse Monks of the Andurax called this one the Hazandra, the Ghost of Love and Wishes. Okay, then, pop it in.

Beginning the day after Christmas, Titan Comics released an eight-part comic series called Ghost Stories featuring the Twelfth Doctor's later adventures with Grant and his family, and in the final issue we actually got to meet these "Apocalypse Monnks of the Andurax". But when we do, the Doctor calls them something slightly different:

In its entry on "Faction Precursors", The Book of the War says of the Eremites,

Some commentators have drawn tenuous comparisons between Faction Paradox and the Eremites [… But] members of the Faction decorate themselves in ceremonial armour, and only draw their own blood when absolutely necessary, whereas Eremites were more likely to find expression through severe self-mutilation and the abnegation of pain.

And indeed, what do we see in Ghost Stories when some Vigilant Eremites pull back their hoods to operate a bit of machinery? Distinctly Faction-like visages:

The Book of the War concludes,

There’s a maxim that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as comedy, then as farce. If any parallels can reasonably be drawn between the Eremites and Faction Paradox, then perhaps it could be said that the Eremites are the tragedy and the Faction the comedy.

When comparing Doctor Mysterio to The Book of the War, that comparison may be flipped around – but the point remains.

(My friend Ryan Fogarty, writer and canonwelder extraordinaire, has noted further, even more remarkable connections between Ghost Stories' Vigilant Eremites and some other figures from ancient Time Lord myth. I hope we'll all get to see his vision of the Eremites some day!)