#clara piloting the tardis!! GETTING IT IN THE RIGHT PLACE!

[dandelionjack]

waugh :’)

OUGH :’)))))

[johannesviii]

By Popular Demand Of Me Being Bored: a compilation of some of my old Eleventh Doctor textpost memes

[images: various screenshots from Doctor Who with text posts pasted on them.

1- Amy floating in space just outside of the TARDIS, Eleven holding her foot to prevent her from floating away - “Across the universe and chill”

2- Amy holding the apple from The Eleventh Hour and Eleven holding her hand, trying to convince her - “I’m actually pretty cool just give me like 5 tries to get it right”

3- Eleven falling and making a weird face - “Funny Idiot Falls And Fails Compilation 10 Hours”

4- Eleven touching his bowtie - “yo if you see someone rockin a bow tie that isnt me knock them out”

5- Eleven (panicked) and Clara, trying to land a plane - “Hello yes this is your pilot speaking and by pilot I mean I read a wikihow on flying a plane once so I guess I’ll just have to WING it haha just a little pilot humor okie dokie nothing to worry about folks Im sure I can figure this out”

6- Eleven touching the ground, looking serious - “Uh yeah I’m a pretty big history buff *picks up rock* this has probably been there for a long time. *touches ground* old people once stood on this ground. Maybe even dinosaurs”

7- Eleven talking to the villain from Vampires of Venice - “Vampires always like ‘I could kill you if I wanted’ like? yeah? so could another human being. so could a dog. so could a dedicated duck. You aren’t special”

8- Eleven examining the Pandorica with the sonic - “Spatially inverted Pandora’s box into which you place things in order that they become problems”

9- Eleven sitting on a couch between Amy and Rory, all eating fish fingers and custard - “Shoutout to the friends that still like me. All two of you”

10- Eleven in front of the crack in the wall in Time of the Doctor, pointing at Clara - “The best way to solve problems is to create more problems until you are dead”.]

[princesses-and-bitchcraft]

In Which Introductions Are Made (Or Rather, Are Not)

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: General Word Count: 1204

Summary: “Doctor, funny thing happened just now. What appears to be an Earth penguin just showed up in my console room, and insulted me right to my face?" Clara has lived a long time, and seen a wide array of Things, but a penguin in the console room has to be a new one. Where did it come from? Why is it here? How can it be talking to her? And possibly most important of all, what does she have to do to be rid of it?

So I’m planning on doing a whole series of these eventually, showing the scenarios in which Clara is introduced to various other characters from the Whoniverse. They’re all technically a part of my Movie Night AU, but some are probably more “relevant” than others. I’ve been reading Frobisher’s comics lately and he wouldn’t leave me well enough alone, so he has the honour of being the first I suppose.

Read on AO3 or under the cut.

Clara couldn’t possibly have been seeing what she thought she was seeing. It was simply impossible. Maybe she was imagining things. Maybe her brain was finally starting to fail her after who knows how long piloting a TARDIS. She’d seen a lot of things in her day, sure, but this one she just wasn’t ready for. She shook her head, blinked, rubbed her eyes, but unfortunately for her there continued to be what looked like an Earth penguin in her console room.

“Can I... help you?” She spoke hesitantly, questions flying through her head all jockeying to be released at once. She wasn’t anywhere near Earth, was this an alien penguin? Why was it on her ship? How did it get into her console room? What did it think it was doing?

The penguin, if indeed it was a penguin, looked up from where it had been poking around. It seemed to be giving her as much scrutiny as she was giving it. She was beginning to question what she had expected to happen by questioning it, when finally, it opened it’s beak and out tumbled something Clara was ready to call ‘speech’, although not speech that she was ready to accept.

“Well,” said the penguin, in a way that pleasant conversations so rarely start out, “you see, nobody came to serve me at the bar up front, so I took it upon myself to find someone I could speak to. Got a bit distracted by all the machinery here. It looks quite a bit different from the last one I was in, but I’d wager this was a TARDIS. You’re not another Time Lord, are you?”

Clara blinked again, not even sure where to begin addressing the intruder examining her console. She held up a finger and said, somewhat distractedly, “Could you actually hold that thought a second?” She slowly pulled out her phone, dialing the Doctor. She wasn’t surprised when it went to voicemail, had in fact been more or less composing her message in her head as it had rung. “Doctor, funny thing happened just now. What appears to be an Earth penguin just showed up in my console room, and insulted me right to my face? Asked if I were ‘another’ Time Lord? Yeah, call me back!”

She turned her attention back to her unwelcome visitor, and sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for this. “First of all, it’s a diner , not a bar . Second of all, it’s closed . And third of all-” her brain hit a block. ‘Third of all, why’re you a penguin ? Third of all, how are you talking? Third of all, what makes you the expert on Time Lords and TARDISes?’ “Third of all,” she settled on, moving towards the penguin, “get out of my console room!” Unsure of what else to do, she made a shooing motion with her hands, trying to direct the bird back out to the front room.

“You’re a little tightly wound, aren’t you?” replied the penguin, continuing to wander everywhere but the direction Clara wanted. “Got a margarita dispenser hidden back here or something? You could probably use one for yourself too. Oh, this looks new, the Doc never had one of those. What's it for?”

Clara made a flying leap towards the penguin, tackling him to the ground before he could touch... whatever it was he was about to touch. There were things in here even she didn’t know the function of. “That’s it. This ship has a very strict ‘no birds allowed’ policy, and you’ve just overstayed your welcome.” As she was speaking she felt herself crash against the ground. Looking around in confusion, she saw a snake slither out from underneath her. The snake continued on towards the door leading back to the diner section before turning back into a penguin.

“I gotta tell you, Miss, the hospitality around here is a little lacking.” He waddled his way out of the console room and pulled himself onto a bar stool in the diner section. “But I can be a forgiving guy,” he called back to her. Clara scrambled to follow his voice, closing and locking the door to the console room as she went. “I heard this place has the best somethings in the local space-time area, you know that? What was it again? Best drinks? Best pies? Best movies? No, probably not that one. Anyway, like I said, I can be a forgiving guy. Show me your best and I’ll forgive the rude service, huh?”

What the mouthy (beaky?) bird was ignoring as he babbled was the way he was being manhandled out of his seat by the tiny diner proprietor. She pulled and prodded him until she managed to throw him over her shoulder. He made little by way of protest as she carried him towards the ship’s front doors, which opened for her as she approached. She put her whole body into tossing the penguin out, but no sooner had she turned him loose then she felt something slam against her shoulder and clatter to the ground. Lying at her feet was a boomerang she had never seen before. As she bent down to examine it more closely, it reverted back to penguin form. “Ah, what a classic,” he said as he brushed himself off. “You’ve got some spunk, I’ll give you that. Give me a warning next time you want to do that, I can make myself smaller for you!”

Clara turned away. She was at a loss as to how she was supposed to be handling this situation, but she could only assume it would be best not to give the penguin any more of her attention than strictly necessary at this point.

She picked up her phone again, intending to give the Doctor another try. After all, clearly this was a friend of theirs, or at least somebody they knew. Hopefully the TARDIS would be able to help route the call appropriately through their timeline to a version of them that would recognize the nuisance. Unfortunately for Clara, instead of the screen lighting up at the touch of a button, her phone was instead blowing her a raspberry. Having caught on to what was happening, at least to a certain extent, she simply placed the no-longer-a-penguin onto the nearest table and reached back into her pocket, not taking her eyes off the decoy as she did so. Once her actual phone was securely in her hand, she turned away again.

She could almost cry from relief when a familiar voice answered the call this time. She launched right into things, forgoing the usual pleasantries. “Doctor, please tell me the shape shifting penguin in my TARDIS is yours, and more importantly, come and get it!”

“Ooh, Frobisher! Been a while since I saw him. Hi Frobisher!” the Doctor called happily into the phone, clearly ignoring the fact that he shouldn’t be able to hear her.

“Hold on, who? Did you say Frobisher?”

“Sorry Clara, I’ve really got to go. Quite busy! Have fun with Frobisher though!”

“Doctor! Come and get him!” Clara heard the telltale beep letting her know she’d already been hung up on. “DOCTOR!” she screamed into the dead air.

[nehswritesstuffs]

The Legacy of Peladon - Part I

This has been in the works since January 2020, which started as a simple prompt fill, but has since then become much bigger a thing. I’m only going to be posting the first part here on tumblr, with the rest being exclusive to AO3 due to... things. This entire story is an experiment in what I can do, so it doesn’t necessarily vibe with some of the rest of my stuff (i.e.: not soft or AU, but at least there’s Whouffaldi in all this darkness). Don’t worry though, as I’ll post links to it here each time there’s an update.

AO3

The Legacy of Peladon

The Doctor promises Clara the court at the Peladonian royal palace, which he last visited more than a few faces ago. Instead of Queen Thalira greeting him with open arms, several generations have passed, and with time has come great misfortune to the crown. With the TARDIS locked, can the two space-and-time travelers figure out the mechanizations of what has passed? [5044 words]

While Peladon wasn’t precisely the oddest place the Doctor had taken Clara during their latest whirlwind of adventures, it certainly did have its own peculiarities, she was quickly finding. The first thing she found was most of the planet was covered in a near-constant storm, making things rather difficult when it came to piloting the TARDIS into a safe spot for landing, which also meant that when the Doctor opened the door, wind and rain came rushing into the ship while an errant lightning bolt revealed that they were parked directly next to a cliff face.

“Not one of your better landings,” she noted.

“It’s actually my best parking job on the planet to-date,” he claimed. “At least we won’t need to hug the rocks as we make our way to the tunnels.”

“Alright…” She raised her eyebrow as she noted the distance from the door to the opening in the craggy mountain, judging how quickly she’d need to run to get the minimal amount of rain soaked into her clothes and wind putting her hair out of place. The two travelers then dashed through the storm into the safety of the mountainside, right before a mighty wind knocked them to the ground. They laid on the stone floor for a moment, catching themselves, before standing up and brushing themselves off.

The second thing that Clara noticed was that Peladon was really, really garish.

As they walked further into the mountain, they came upon a brightly-lit town filled with loud, burly Gallifreyanoids and the occasional off-world being. Banners of all sorts of color combinations were draped across doorways and from building to building. No one seemed to notice as they wandered their way through the market, where everything from dazzling and glittering baubles to all manner of food were being sold in the open.

“The Pels are a fierce, sturdy mining folk,” the Doctor explained. He could not help but smile as Clara clung to his arm as they walked, feeling her touch through the red velvet jacket he was wearing. It sent a jolt up his spine and made his hearts flutter, even after all this time. “Trisilicate—which is the closest word the TARDIS can conjure for it without sounding like your brain melted—is the backbone of their society and economy. There are few minerals as versatile, while there are few planets with as much of it as Peladon.”

“Reminds me of Gimli, in a way,” she chuckled. Just the past week she had shown one of her classes some movie clips from The Lord of the Rings while explaining conflict in narrative and now she was in a market packed with what she could honestly refer to as Space Dwarves. Many wore robes and tunics and kilts and dresses that showed much of the men’s legs and none of the women’s—there was little armor to be seen, mostly on large, hulking soldier-looking blokes—but the metal adorning them was fantastical. There were elaborately-made necklaces, rings, and clasps, decorative piercings along some ears, beads and other adornments woven into their striped hair, and where there was armor, it was easily amongst the most intricately designed and made things she had ever seen. Form and presentation from such a community absolutely screamed the Mines of Moria to Clara. She glanced over at a food stall with roasted kebabs of meat and… she wasn’t certain what… and her stomach gurgled loudly.

“I’ll take two,” the Doctor said, pointing at the kebabs. The stall owner nodded and held out her hand—payment first. Digging into his pocket, the Doctor took out a few small coins, which he gave her. She looked at the payment and scowled.

“What sort of fool do you take me for?” she snapped. “This hasn’t been worth a ghost’s weight in forty years! I’m not a smith asking for materials!”

“Sorry, sorry—been off-world and heard about the place by happenstance,” Clara cut in. She quickly glared at the Doctor, who made a face in an attempt to protect his innocence, before turning back to the stall owner. “What money do you use? We still might have some.”

“Here,” said a voice. The Doctor and Clara turned to see a tall, hooded, cloaked figure, holding out a hand with different coins. Even with their frame obscured, they were taller and broader than the Doctor—clearly a physical force of concern.

“I don’t want no trouble,” the stall owner said. She was staring at the decorative metal bracer on the figure’s forearm, her unease apparent.

“No trouble, on my honor,” the figure said. “There should be enough to forget there was ever someone to begin with.”

A moment of hesitation and the stall owner took the money, handing the Doctor and Clara each a skewer of food. She then stepped backwards and slipped behind a door, leaving her remaining wares unattended.

“Move lightly; word shall spread soon of your arrival,” the figure said.

Eating as they walked, the time-and-space travelers followed their benefactor through the marketplace, ducking out into a torch-lit alleyway, then past the intricately-carved buildings into raw cave, where things turned into a continuous series of winding tunnels and shafts. As they walked further into the system, bioluminescent lichen became less prevalent, forcing the mysterious guide pull a handheld device out from its cloak. A press of a button and it whirred to life, giving off a soft, green glow that lit their way.

“The sonic used to look like that,” the Doctor noted quietly. He leaned down to be closer to Clara, wanting to make sure that only she heard. “It didn’t glow then, but the other similarities are too striking. Something is wrong.”

“That wasn’t exactly the first clue I picked up on,” she replied.

“Money that is no longer good despite aiming for a time where it is, a device modeled after an old sonic screwdriver casing, elaborate advances in ornament that organically takes centuries to achieve, a dangerous-seeming individual whose first instinct is to pay for our lunch then low-key kidnap us? Peladon is never what it seems, though is definitely not always this interesting.”

Their guide then stopped, pointing the light in the direction of a small opening high in the wall.

“We go there next.”

“What is ‘there’?” the Doctor asked. “Where is the queen? Is it a king now? I demand to speak with them.”

No reply.

“I think that is what’s happening, Doctor,” Clara said. She stepped towards the hole and looked up at it—not even if she jumped she could reach it. “Give me a boost, yeah?”

“Take these,” the Doctor said. He came up close to her and placed the sonic sunglasses on her face. Pressing the button on the side, data metrics began to flash across the lenses, giving her too many breakdowns to comprehend, as though she’d want to do so. “They’ll let you see ahead without the light. Be safe.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she smirked. Clara braced herself against the wall as their guide cupped their hands together, creating a foothold for her. She gently put her foot in their grasp and she was lifted up, now able to easily grab hold of the opening and shimmy her way through.

The third, and honestly the most annoying, thing that Clara noticed in the past two hours since leaving the TARDIS was that crawling through tight passageways made of rough-hewn rock was not the best thing to be doing while wearing a skirt and jumper. Then again, the Doctor hadn’t warned her that they’d be spelunking, and so she thought her trainers would be more than enough prep for whatever it was that awaited them. At least her shoes gave her some of the traction she needed to move throughout the tunnel, which was incredibly steep and twisting at points. She could hear the Doctor not far below her; there was no going out now.

Eventually, Clara saw that the tunnel was opening up, spreading out into a large, room-like pocket that was lit by proper torches along the walls, going off into another tunnel. She took off the sonic sunglasses as she looked around—there was no one else in sight. Turning to the entryway, she waited until the Doctor popped up and gave him a hand for the last couple steps—they made it.

“Thanks,” she said, putting the shades back in his jacket pocket. He put an arm around her and leaned in close in order to whisper in her ear.

“High alert—something really doesn’t seem right.”

They lingered like that for a moment, separating as they heard their guide finish the final bit of the ascent. Clara inhaled deeply as they did so, attempting to take in all she could of the Doctor’s scent before he was too far away again; sweat, stardust, books, and cinnamon bread, all with a musky undertone that she never wanted to be without. Soon as it was gone she missed it, and it was clear she had gone too long between proper adventures this time around.

“We are out of danger for now,” their guide said. Putting down their cloak’s hood, the guide showed their face for the first time: chiseled and worn, with grey spreading throughout hair that was already varying streaks of auburn and dark brown, and light brown eyes that were sharper than the jagged rocks around them. An old, faded scar went from their right temple down to the tip of their jaw, making the cheek and jawbone seem uneven.

“Who are you?” the Doctor asked. “Why all the secrecy?”

“That is not for me to say.”

The guide pulled a torch from the wall and continued walking, headed towards the other end of the room. Clara and the Doctor followed cautiously, keeping a couple paces behind as the stranger led them through even more tunnels. They eventually stopped at a large door made of wood and reinforced with thick metal bars. The guide pounded a fist on the door, which prompted a small slit to open and reveal a set of eyes.

“Long live the King.”

This satisfied the set of eyes and the slit slammed shut, only for the door to creak open immediately. The guide placed the torch in a sconce on the wall and walked in, looking back at the travelers as they stood in place.

“You wanted to see our ruler; come.”

The Doctor held out his arm and waited for Clara to take it. Looking at him, she saw that he was standing with his shoulders straight and back, his face set in what she knew to be a mask for intense scrutiny and calculation. Hooking her arm with his, she assumed a similar stance and made certain to match his stride—they were precisely where they wanted to be, yet not where their guide preferred to lead them.

As they walked through the stone-carved corridors, both the Doctor and Clara attempted to take careful note of their surroundings and the people in them. They were nearly all native Pels—pale skin, mostly stocky bodies, and streaked hair—though there was clearly a great variety to their social stature. Many were flashily adorned in metal baubles just as people in the marketplace, yet nearly as many were plain and modest in their appearance. Whispers swirled and stares thrown as the travelers were led further into the secret stronghold.

The fabled Doctor had returned!

Eventually, the guide strolled past a pair of heavily-armored guards, who crossed their pikes as the Doctor and Clara passed them. No one else was allowed past that point, which Clara definitely took notice of.

“This is getting creepier and creepier,” she muttered, glancing back at the guards for a moment. They were in a much smaller, narrower corridor now, with portraits carved into the very rock that made the walls. “How are you sure they’re not just going to kill us?”

“I know Peladon,” the Doctor replied. He stopped walking and stared at one of the portraits, seeing a familiar face in the relief. “Here he is.”

“Was he the king last time you were here?” she asked.

“No; she,” he motioned towards the following portrait, “was the queen. It looks like time has gotten away from me.” He counted the portraits afterwards—three—and frowned. “It really got away from me.”

“You are expected,” their guide said from the end of the corridor.

The Doctor and Clara resumed their more formal air and caught up, being ushered into the inner sanctum of the compound. There, on the other end of the spacious room, was a man slightly older than Clara sitting on a high-backed throne atop a low dais. He appeared to have been expecting them, as he rose soon as they stepped across the threshold.

“Just as Grandmother told me,” he marveled, crossing the room. There was no one else—just the four of them in the worryingly empty space. The man was dressed in a fine tunic with a short kilt, a sweeping cape, and a high pair of boots. Decorative metal bracers, grieves, and pauldrons added to the look, all topped off with a pendant around his neck that bore a crest of a snarling monster holding a pickaxe in one paw and a hammer in the other.

“I know we are on Peladon, but who might you be?” the Doctor asked as the man approached. His brown and dark blond hair almost seemed to ripple as he turned his head, looking back and forth between his guests.

“I am Prince Halir, Heir to the Seat of Peladon and the rightful ruler of all who mine this planet’s mountains,” he replied. “My grandmother told me stories about you, the ageless Lord Doctor and his Lady Sarah, the tales passed down from her grandmother, and they always stressed that you would return one day.”

“Lady Sarah…?” Clara blinked.

“Are you not?” Prince Halir asked, baffled. “Grandmother spoke of a tall and fair-featured man whose hair was an even mix of brown and grey, while his betrothed was shorter, with hair perfect as fertile soil untouched by stone or sand or salt. Both possess fierce eyes and the standing of great breeding. Does that not describe the two of you?”

“A lot of time has passed between the last time I was here and now,” the Doctor said. “This is Lady Clara, of the TARDIS. She is my dear traveling companion and you shall afford her the same respect that you do for me.”

“A new bride for your arm—don’t be coy about it,” Prince Halir assumed with a smirk. “Pesha, please bring us refreshments.” The guide bowed deeply and walked away, slipping behind a screen in the corner. “My top bodyguard, prized champion, and one of my most loyal retainers—she treated you well, I hope?”

“She could have let us know what is going on,” the Doctor frowned. “Why all this secrecy? Why are you the prince but living in hiding?”

“My family has been in exile since before I was born,” Prince Halir explained. He guided them towards the side, where a low table and some chairs sat. “We, along with some close allies, were able to make it to safety and have been living here ever since. Every member of my family has passed on with the hope that you would show yourself again one day, Lord Doctor, and that with your return you would guide us towards what is right.” Pesha returned, carrying a tray with tea and small cakes—she had shed her cloak to reveal the scarred arms and toned build of a seasoned warrior. Man or woman, it was only something Clara had seen in television shows or films and not in real life. Prince Halir caught her looking at the scars and nodded. “Pesha has been here from the very beginning—she has won many battles that few could even begin to fight.”

“In the name of you and your lord father and your lady grandmother, milord,” Pesha stated. “For Aggedor’s sake, and all of Peladon.” She finished serving tea and stood behind her prince, ready for his next command.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” the Doctor warned. Prince Halir took a sip of tea and pondered where to begin.

“There was false revolution, to put it kindly,” he continued. “My grandmother was biding time, waiting for a chancellor who was poor in mind and spirit to fall on his own sword instead of disposing of his services outright, which would have made him a political martyr. The people did not understand the rift between them, and the chancellor was able to maneuver just enough to depose my family, murdering many of my grandmother’s relations and those who were loyal to her. It was by a miracle that even my father survived, as he had just barely become a man himself.”

“Who or what now rules in the place of your family?” Clara asked.

“A puppet government run by the man that started the coup: Grand Chancellor Denberk,” Prince Halir explained. “He already has groomed a successor in his daughter, who in turn has a son who is younger than me—they are forming a new dynasty while spitting on everything that my forebears worked to uphold.”

“What might that be?”

“Peace and prosperity, my Lord Doctor.” Prince Halir put his tea down and rested his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. “Soon as Denberk placed ‘Grand’ before ‘Chancellor’, he removed Peladon from the Galactic Federation. We were cut off from the bridges we were doing our best to build—he claimed they had become one-way relationships, yet he merely was only looking at things from a perspective used to taking. It was our turn to give, and it was something he would not tolerate.”

“The town we were in seemed peaceful,” Clara mentioned. “It actually looked fairly prosperous, if the look of everyone was anything to go by.”

“Did you not see soldiers wandering around, with shaved heads and heavy armor?” Prince Halir asked.

“Now that you say so… yeah, I did.”

“Those are Denberk’s riot guards—they were not yet looking for you, but should they ever, you should hope that they completely mishear your description. They are part of why Denberk rules so completely. Even the autocrats that are allowed entrance to his commons chamber fear their presence—it is a return to old, uncivilized ways when we were ruled by fear and not our fellow Pels. That is not true peace.”

“…and the other part…?” the Doctor asked.

“He holds the people back. The town you were in happens to be one of the wealthiest on Peladon, yet it used to be what a poor town looked like. We accept lowball deals in trade that line the Grand Chancellor’s pockets before caring for the people; I heard their complaints and have trained my entire life to regain the seat my family once lost. The only thing I lack now is experience with the crown upon my brow, which I am more than willing to attain if it means I can help my people.”

“…and you hope that I am here to help you with that?” the Doctor questioned.

“It would be an honor not only for myself, but for Aggedor, my people and all of Peladon,” Prince Halir said solemnly. He reached out a hand and set it on the Doctor’s knee for a moment—after seeing that the Time Lord’s face had not changed, he made for his tea instead, sitting back in his chair. “What were you here for?”

“To visit with your grandmother’s grandmother, I suppose,” the Doctor replied. “She became a great ruler, if heard correctly, and I wanted to see for myself.”

“Queen Thalira the Kind’s reign helped Peladon truly prosper. She held court with common miners and fairness was treated in kind. I was even named for her, in hopes that it would bring about your return.”

“I simply go about time and space, helping when and where I can; just an idiot and his box, one might say.”

“…and you, Lady Clara?” Prince Halir wondered, ignoring the confused and suspicious look on her face. “Do you find such travel to your liking?”

“I do,” she replied. Clara took the Doctor’s free hand in her own and laced their fingers together. She made certain to make eye contact with the prince, choosing her words carefully so that they matched his. “It is a wonderful purpose to have, to travel with the Doctor, to be tied with him.”

“Then… you are full…?”

Clara blinked and narrowed her eyes at that. “It is fulfilling, yes.”

“No, my apologies; Humans and Pels truly are different, but only when chatting,” Prince Halir laughed. “I asked if you are full.”

Clara glanced at the last bite left of her cake—she had to admit she was more than a little peckish still, though she also did not want to be rude. She did not know what these people needed to go through to get together something as simple—yet complicated—as a bit of cake. “Not yet, but nearly.”

“Pesha.” Prince Halir clapped twice, his champion standing at attention. “Show the Lord Doctor and Lady Clara to their chambers. They must be tired from all the travel they have done and yet are still very busy.”

“We cannot possibly impose—if we can only make our way back to the TARDIS…” the Doctor began, only to be cut off by the prince again.

“Nonsense; the Line of Peladon has kept up quarters for you from the moment we were driven to this forgotten and ancient antetunnel. You come to us in times of need, Lord Doctor. It is the very least we can do to prepare ahead of time to make certain you and your companion are treated honorably.”

“…but the TARDIS…”

“…shall be retrieved by our finest reconnaissance team when the night has come and they can move in larger numbers without being seen. Rest for now, shed your travel-worn clothes, work on your lordly duties; let Pesha know when you are ready to dine, for she is at your command for the duration of your stay.”

“If you will come with me,” Pesha said, bowing deeply. The Doctor and Clara both stood and followed her back out into the main of the compound, through another set of corridors, until they came upon another door flanked by two armored guards. “This is the Lord Doctor and his Lady Clara—know them and respect their wishes.”

The guards both bowed and allowed the three of them to pass. Beyond the guards a spacious apartment opened up, with many side-rooms and screened-off areas set aside for varying uses. The most striking part was the singular large bed, almost directly next to what appeared to be a balcony that opened to a pale yellow sky that filled the room with a soft and golden light.

“How deep within the mountains are we?” the Doctor asked. He pulled out his sonic shades and began to survey the room—no holes or devices around to spy on them, making the chambers a safe zone… though one he was going to have to continue monitoring.

“Terribly,” Pesha replied. “This is forbidden off-world tech, outlawed by Grand Chancellor Denberk. We Pels crave a calm sky, which led to this gift from our former Federation brethren during Queen Thalira’s reign. I do not know how much of it has lasted amongst the people, though it is installed all throughout the royal palace, as well as here.”

“…and what is here?” the Doctor pressed.

“A former palace, from ancient days, thought lost to the mines for generations thanks to unstable shafts and collapsed tunnels.”

“How old were you when you first came here?” Clara wondered.

“I was a girl of eleven years when Denberk overthrew his lordship’s grandmother. She was a distant relation to my mother and I had little choice but to fight for my life. It was how I got this…” Pesha undid the fastenings to her left bracer and removed it, showing a gnarled branding scar on her inner arm. “I am the physical proof the Galactic Federation needs to know Denberk’s reign was brought on by lies and broken lives.”

“Where I’m from, I am a teacher and many of my students are eleven,” Clara said, staring at the scar. “On really bad days I wish for half a moment I could smack a couple, sure, but this… what does someone have to think to make this okay to do to another person, let alone a child?”

“That a child who has not yet begun to shed life-blood is blocking their path to ultimate power.” Replacing the bracer, she knelt into a reverent bow. “I am now not far from the age Queen Majild was when she was driven from her forebears’ home. This is nearly all I know. My purpose is to serve.”

“Leave us,” the Doctor said plainly. He placed his hands behind his back and turned to look towards the tech-given “sky”. “Tomorrow we will do preliminary reconnaissance on Denberk.”

“Then ring the bell should you require me any further; I am here to serve you.” She bowed her head before getting to her feet. “May Aggedor favor you both tonight.”

At that she left, the Doctor and Clara finally finding themselves alone for the first time in hours. They both looked out over the “balcony”, digesting all they had heard and seen.

“Something’s still not right,” the Doctor said.

“A lot of things seem not-right,” Clara replied. “What do you suspect?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” he pondered. “The past two times I’ve found myself in the middle of Peladonian power grabs things have never been exactly what they seem aside from a few bits here and there; at least back then, there were other extraterrestrials—other perspectives—to assist us. I don’t doubt our safety, but we are also in the middle of something much more than we know.”

“Then who isn’t telling the truth? Halir or Pesha?”

“If either of them are lying, then it is likely that they themselves do not realize they are not speaking truths,” he said. “What we need to do is meet this Denberk and figure out what is going on from his end of the situation. It could be precisely as Halir and Pesha say, or there could be additional layers, or even a completely different situation thanks to the time that’s passed…”

“So we wait, get the TARDIS, investigate this Denberk man…”

“…then leave.”

That surprised her. “We don’t fix it?”

“It might not be our problem to fix, Clara,” he frowned. “We became legends—or, more I should say, Sarah Jane and I became legends—and hold a place of honor in their folk pantheon despite how long we’ve been gone. How Halir spoke of us, it was almost as though he was talking about gods that have come again into the mortals’ realm. They assume we will be benevolent and help their cause, which never, ever bodes well.”

“Halir assumes a lot of things, let’s be honest with ourselves,” she replied. “How does someone decide that a couple is married, only to then make a pass at one of them in front of the other?”

“I was never here long enough before to take in a majority of Peladonian social morays—it could be that is how to seal an important pact here, and that not placing a hand on his knee in turn was in effect slapping him in the face. It could have even become a custom that only evolved since I was last here.”

“He looked like he wanted to shag you stupid on the floor in front of me, his only concern about me being if I was having enough to eat.”

“I admit plenty of things have changed since I saw Thalira last, but by how much is the question.”

“What sticks out the most?”

“The Champion is a woman who is able to speak, for one.” He glanced over at Clara, seeing that she was sitting on a chair, picking at her nails in worry. “What is it?”

“Pesha’s scar—it’s making me think about the kids at work,” she admitted.

“That only creates another question: why have they not found the Galactic Federation and shown them her branding beforehand?”

“I don’t know one of my students who would ever show someone if that happened to them.” She felt the Doctor’s arm rest on her shoulders, which prompted her to lean into him, comforted by the contact. “You know what? I am very tired. All that climbing and hiking wiped me out.”

“Then let’s see what they’ve left around for us,” the Doctor suggested. He gave her a boost up, kissing her hand as she stood.

Wandering around the apartments, the Doctor and Clara were able to find washbasins and soap, as well as a wardrobe that was stocked with clothes for them both. They cleaned up and changed into what seemed to be pajamas—baggy trousers and a loose-fitting tunic, both plain and undyed. As they approached the bed, the display on the wall changed from a yellow sky to a deep orange, becoming a glittering brown that evoked jewels shining in dense rock.

“It’s so gorgeous,” Clara said as she laid down, facing the false sky. The Doctor observed it for a moment longer, which allowed Clara to take in the sight of him against the alien backdrop. “I don’t think you know how gorgeous it really is.”

“It pales in comparison,” he replied. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled gently. “Then again, I am spoiled.”

“Come here, you idiot,” she laughed, holding open her arms. He joined her in the bed—soft and comfortable and warm—and hummed in satisfaction as he laid down in her grasp, using her shoulder as his pillow. “Do you promise we will at least get to the bottom of this before we take off?”

“Possibly.”

She was going to take what she could get.

[lizzy-bennet]

May These Memories Lead Us Home Can be read as a stand-alone or as a sequel to The Symbolism of Owls Fandom: Doctor Who Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 3,700 words Rating: G   Also on Ao3

Once, he heard a story from a weathered old woman under some golden alien sky, that the things you love always find a way back to you in the end. And it is only a fairy tale, a shot in the dark, one odd in a billion.

And yet he hopes.

A post-Hell Bent AU.

Clara Oswald is lying dead on Trap Street, and Clara Oswald is alive, somewhere out there, living in the space between heartbeats. There are so many places in the world she could possibly be, but her flat isn’t bound to be one of them, and yet the Doctor finds himself there anyway.

And he doesn’t know why.

For a moment he just stands there, right in the middle of her living room, his black boots sinking into the beige carpet, feeling at a loss for why his unconscious muscle memory would land the TARDIS there.

And then he remembers:

It’s Wednesday.

The two-word thought is something like a sucker punch, or like being sucked into space with no suit on. It is mind-reeling and breath-stealing, and it shatters him, swallows him, and around him, the room spins as the realization circles around and around in his mind to rhythm of his heartbeats.

It’s Wednesday. It’s Wednesday. It’s Wednesday.

”Of course,” he says, and he sighs, runs a hand over his face and closes his eyes. “Stupid, stupid old Doctor.”

Where else in the universe could he possibly end up? Wednesdays were Clara’s days, and old habits were hard to break. He cannot remember the color of her hair or the cadence of her voice, but he remembers other things, like an Ice Warrior on a submarine and (apparently) the address of her flat and the fact that he must’ve loved her very, very much.

Which is why he stays in her flat that she’ll never come back to, and tries to reconstruct an image of the girl he once knew.

He starts with what’s in front of him, his eyes scanning shelf after shelf along her living room wall, trying to learn what he can about one Miss Clara Oswald. She was ridiculously short, he decides, from the placement of the items on her shelves. Her head couldn’t have come up much past the slope of his shoulders. But she was obviously well-read, judging by the weathered pages and worn spines on her myriad of books. And, he remembers significantly, as his eyes land on a bright white ceramic figurine, she had collected owls.

He stares at the ceramic, and a memory niggles somewhere in a dark corner of his mind of the day she brought that first owl knickknack home. The memory is fuzzy, all sort of soft and hazy, and he feels like he’s a sailor on a ship in a storm-swept sea, trying to see a lighthouse’s beacon through clouds of fog. But the fog is too thick, the waves too high, and he can’t remember exactly what she’d told him or what he’d said back.

But he knows the memory is important to him, somehow. And he thinks that maybe it was important to the both of them.

And maybe that’s enough for the plan he’s forming in his mind.

Once, he heard a story, from a weathered old woman under some golden alien sky, that the things you love always find a way back to you in the end. And it is a fairy tale, a shot in the dark, just a nearly nonsensical spark of hope.

Hope, he knows, can be the worst thing.

But, but, but:

Hope can also be the best thing.

And the thing about it is, it’s impossible to resist. So he raises his sonic screwdriver and points it at the owl, letting a glowing blue light wash over the white, putting a tracking imprint on it. The sonic hums, locking onto her leftover memories and fingerprints, and should Clara ever (anywhere, in all of time and space, just by chance) find and hold her owl again, the sonic will glow red and lead him to her.

So he finishes getting a tracking lock on the ceramic owl, puts it back on the shelf...

...and he hopes.

#

Somewhere out there, Clara Oswald is lying lifeless on Trap Street.

But right now, Clara Oswald (one-hundred-and-twelve and the pilot of her very own TARDIS) is also in a shop on the Embarcadero in mid-century San Francisco.

The idea that her body is somewhere out there, lying beneath a cold tombstone should probably bother her, she thinks, but it doesn’t. Not really. She’d already jumped into the Doctor’s time stream, after all, and has long since come to terms with the idea that the universe is filled with the many graves of Clara Oswald.

All that matters is that, right at this very moment, this version of herself isn't in one yet.

Which is why she’s enjoying herself now, browsing a little, kitschy shop in nineteen-fifty-nine, enjoying the quiet break.

(She’s just been busy saving an entire species of luminous fish in thirty-thirty-five and needs a relaxing change of pace.

Plus, the shopping prices are quite cheaper in the fifties.)

And that’s when she comes across a pair of owl salt-and-pepper shakers.

They are adorable and admittedly tacky, but they match the retroness of her faux TARDIS diner perfectly and Clara can’t help but stop and stare at them. She’d collected owls back in her own, original timeline and silly old habits were hard to break, even after years flying around all of time and space.

Clara picks up one of the owl shakers, runs her thumb over it, and thinks of the first owl figurine she’d brought home oh so many years ago, with it’s white ceramic feathers that nearly looked like furrowed brows and the odd, almost alien expression on its painted face. And then she thinks of him, because of course she does. The only reason why she’d even started collecting owls in the first place was because they reminded her of the Doctor, with his funny, angry owl-like eyes and his velvet coat that floated behind him like a pair of wings.

The one owl she can never have.

Because that is the thing about her and him, they loved each other a little too fiercely, pushed the universe a little too far, and this is the price they paid: she is here, breathless with too many memories of him, and he is elsewhere, living with none of her at all.

Slowly, the owl salt shaker in her hand starts to gloss over and blur, it’s outline all wavy and watery, and Clara has to take a second to purse her lips and shut her eyes and tell herself very sternly not to cry.

(The thing is, she can no longer breathe and her heart doesn’t beat, but she can still shed tears.

She doesn’t know if that bit of leftover humanity is a gift or a curse from the Time Lords.)

And then she shakes her head, clears her throat, and takes the miniature owls to the cash register.

Because decades of agelessly sailing the stars hasn’t done a thing to lessen her fondness for owls.

#

The Doctor is in Clara’s old room on the TARDIS, and he keeps finding owls. They are tucked away, hidden in corners and locked in drawers and pushed behind other knickknacks, so inconspicuous that he hadn’t even noticed them at first glance, but now he sees nothing but them.

There is a painted porcelain owl standing guard over a stack of silver rings, a discarded phone charm of an owl with outstretched wings, and then, sitting atop her nightstand, as if it was meant to keep vigilance over her while she slept, there is a tiny, grey owl with bright blue eyes. It is a plastic thing, a mere children’s toy, but obviously important to her. And as he picks it up and turns it over in his hands, he remembers it sitting atop the TARDIS console.

He cannot see Clara in his memories. Her silhouette is nothing but an indiscernible blur of colors, a nebula in the outline of a body, and her voice is all distorted, but he still remembers that, at one point, she’d pointed to an owl and said:

“He looks like you.”

And then, later, later, later:

“I love owls.”

His usually steady hands falter at the memory and the owl slips through his fingers, falling to the floor, and he knows he should be moving, reaching down to pick it up, but his hands are frozen and his hearts are hammering and he’s replaying her words in his head, over and over and over again.

When she said she’d loved owls, he wonders, had she meant that she loved him? Had she been telling him all this time and he’d just been too deaf and too blind to take notice?

The thought is too much. It is gut-wrenching and raging and and all-consuming, roaring in his mind like an exploding supernova that just won’t stop, and he sinks down to the floor and puts his head in his hands and tries not to scream.

She loved him. She told him right to his face and he hadn’t heard it.

And the thing is, he no longer knows the sound of her laugh or the curve of her lips, but he remembers how he feels about her. He remembers that he loved her, loved her enough to die every day for four-and-a-half billion years. Loved her enough to burn the universe and unravel time, and he knows that she was some sort of guiding force - a North Star and a touchstone and an anchor and something that meant home.

And she still means home.

He just has to find his way back to her.

#

Once upon a time, little Clara Oswald had clutched a book about one-hundred-and-one places to see and dreamed of going to them all.

And now Clara Oswald is over two-hundred and has been to them all and then more. She’s seen the birth and death of stars and the seven wonders of the ancient world back when they were new, she’s seen the Grand Canyon on Earth and the one up on Dreaminx, and more than just seen the universe, she’s saved it.

(Thousands and thousands of times. Because in all of time and space, there are Doctors running around with countless faces, but there is also her, and she is a one-woman storm, sweeping in and saving lives before the Doctor’s ever needed.)

And right now she is standing in the middle of a festival on a starship she’s just saved from crashing, and she’s surrounded by a sea of partiers and entertainers. There are brightly glowing balloons and dancers on stilts and jugglers that hover, and off in the corner, there’s a puppet show being watched by the children with rapt attention.

And Clara turns toward it, steps closer, like it’s slowly reeling her in on a string.

(She gets closer, you see, because the puppet being used in the show is an owl.

It is a black owl, and Clara almost expects to see a flash of red in the lining of its wings.)

By the time she gets near enough to hear, she’s missed most of the story, but from what she’s pieced together, it was about something that was lost.

“See?” the owl puppet says in a gravelly voice. “The things you love always find a way back to you in the end.”

And Clara wonders if it’s true.

#

The tracker on his screwdriver is still running, and sometimes the Doctor thinks that it will always be running, that he’ll spend an eternity chasing after phantoms all hoping they’ll turn out to be her. It was a mere chance, after all, one odd in a billion. He is waiting for one particular ceramic owl to find its way back to one particular girl, and he well knows the vastness of time and the sheer magnitude of the universe and how there’s billions upon billions of galaxies and myriads of stars and countless possibilities of where in all of time and space she could be.

But he can’t bring himself to turn the tracker off.

After all, she’s died before and he’s always found her. Again and again and again. 

All he needs to do is find her just one more time.

#

Clara Oswald is winding her way through an alien bazaar. She doesn’t look a day over thirty, but she’s well over three-hundred.

And she’s about to receive a gift from the past.

Because as she’s weaving through all the brightly colored booths and carts full of trinkets, she finds herself in front of a stall selling antiques, and in that stall, sitting on a stack of crates right at the level of her eye, is a small, white ceramic owl.

It is old and weathered, its paint is scratched and its horns are cracked, but it looks exactly like the very first owl she got, so, so, so many years ago.

(Clara has no way of knowing yet, but after her death on Trap Street, the ceramic owl and her other belongings were packed up and donated and put in a thrift shop and bought as gifts and eventually passed on in wills as antiques until the owl now sits here, some hundreds of years later, miles and miles and miles away from Earth, on an alien planet, simply waiting for her to find it again.

She also has no idea that somewhere out there, the man she loves is spending an eternity tracking it, desperately hoping he can follow it back to her.)

Carefully, Clara picks the owl up, smiling at its glowering beak and the grumpy look in its eyes.

“It’s a very old antique,” the alien vendor tells her as she runs her fingers over the carved feathers. “Made in the form of some Earthen creature.”

“It’s an owl,” Clara tells them, handing over her currency.

“An owl,” the vendor repeats, carefully rolling the odd word over its blue tongue. “What’s an owl?”

Clara smiles, holds the ceramic close, and she thinks.

She thinks of the shade of his eyes and the sound of his voice and the rare curve of his smile and the way he made her laugh.

And at over three-hundred years-old, she’s earned the right to be a sentimental old fool, so she smiles and says:

“It’s something wonderful.”

#

Clara Oswald is on a far-off distant planet, purchasing back her very own owl in a marketplace, and at the very same time, the Doctor is hundreds and thousands of light years away up in space.

And the tracker on the sonic screwdriver suddenly turns bright red.

#

He tries to follow the tracker to her, but the time zone and coordinates are always changing, the numbers and eras she’s in shifting and blinking away, the temporal displacement of two different TARDISES making it hard to get the tracking and timing exactly right. He finds he’s always landing just a step behind her, a day or a decade too late to reach her.

But whenever he lands, he always knows he’s in the right spot, because the traces of her are all around; in fresh sonic scorches on metal or in ancient songs about a girl who is the savior of a thousand worlds or in bedtime stories for children about a warrior queen who came down from the stars just to rescue them.

She is everywhere and she is nowhere, and nothing feels more bittersweet.

“She was scary,” one small child tells him, when he’s landed just an hour too late. “But she was kind. She drew a picture with me. Do you want to see it?”

And the child is confused as to why the Doctor looks like he’s about to both laugh and cry over a drawing of an owl holding a guitar.

#

Clara Oswald has just liberated a prisoner’s of war camp in a futuristic rainforest, and now she’s collapsed on a stool in her faux TARDIS diner.

There’s mud on her shoes and scratches on her skin, but she’s laughing, wired and exhilarated and high off her adventure, and as she laughs she places a small brown owl one of the newly free prisoners carved from the root of a tree for her onto the counter.

She sits it right next to the old, weathered (terribly antique by now) ceramic owl she’s got sitting on the counter, and she thinks of him and wishes he could’ve been there with her, and she smiles into the quiet darkness, and says:

“You would’ve loved it, Doctor.”

(And she pats the owl on the head, and she has no idea that somewhere out there, the Doctor’s desperately trying to use it to follow her home.)

#

When he follows the tracker and lands on Lumia Five, it’s like he’s entering the aftermath of a battle. There are white ashes dusting the ground like fresh snowfall and little burning red embers that look like fallen stars and sweeping plumes of smoke curling up against the clouds.

But all around him the alien villagers are cheering. They are hugging and kissing and singing, and as a group of alien children run by, screaming at the sheer joy of being alive, the Doctor grabs one of them by the shoulders.

“There was a girl here, wasn’t there?” The Doctor asks.

“She saved us,” the child tells him excitedly. “The sky was burning, but then she saved us.”

“What was she like?” The Doctor asks, desperate and proud and eager to hear. “Please, tell me, what was she like?”

And the child grins and says, “She was impossible.”

#

The year is twenty-fourty-nine and there’s a comet about to light up the Nevada night, so Clara’s landed her TARDIS on a dusty desert hill under a clear patch of sky.

The comet only passes once every fifty-seven years. It is a once in a lifetime thing.

(Unless you’re ageless or a time traveler, of course, of which Clara is both. She’s just been back to see it in nineteen-ninety-two and is in the mood for a rerun.)

And when Clara hears the soft ding of her diner’s door, meaning someone’s walked into it, she figures that it is simply another mistake. Nothing out of the ordinary.

She is wrong on both counts.

Because who she sees in her diner stops her right in her tracks, and it’s like the world‘s stopped spinning and time has stood still, because he is there, standing in her faux diner. The sight of him again is both breathtaking and heartbreaking, intoxicating and devastating, because he is not hers, not anymore, but he is beautiful.

(And Clara....Clara has seen nebulas that burn color into dark skies and suns that sweep patterns of light and glittering, curving constellations and diamond filled caverns and nothing, nothing, nothing compares to the elation at seeing him again.)

“Owls,” he says softly, and for the first time, she notices that he has not bothered to turn toward her, that he is concentrated instead on the collection of owls she’s got on the counter.

Clara stares at his side silhouette, but he doesn’t even spare her a glance. He still doesn't know her, she realizes. Maybe he’d just wandered in on a whim. It was the night of a historic comet, after all. She’d been reckless and foolhardy, thinking she could be a part of history and not ever run into him.

And once again, Clara silently, violently curses the entire planet of Gallifrey for making her ageless but leaving her with the ability to cry, because there’s a lump in her throat and there are tears stinging the corners of her eyes. And she’s torn between drinking in the sight of him and closing her eyes because it’s been over three-hundred years since she’s seen him and even after all this time she’s not sure she can handle another goodbye.

“You collect owls,” he says, interrupting her internal storm of thoughts, and his voice manages to sound both matter-of-fact and full of wonder.

“I love owls,” she says quietly.

And at her words, he turns toward her. His gaze first falls at her feet, and then slowly, (slowly, slowly, slowly,  as if he’s trying to scan a blueprint for a secret or piece together a puzzle) he looks up at her face.

And when his bright blue eyes lock onto her dark brown ones, it feels like everything has all come down to this moment, that maybe timelines changed and the universe rearranged and all that tragedy and heartbreak happened just to bring them both back to here, to now, to this very moment.

(She should not dare to hope, she thinks. She is hundreds of years old and she knows that hope is a dangerous thing, and yet she finds herself standing there, hoping and pleading and wanting and wishing.)

And then, in a rough Scottish voice that’s uncharacteristically, desperately, questioning and quiet, he says, “Clara?”

He is asking for confirmation. He is asking for information that once sent the universe burning. Clara stares, swallows hard.

“Dangerous question,” she says, and she means it.

But then he says, “What’s wrong with dangerous?”

And the next thing she knows, he is running to her, hugging her, his arms coming around her in a way they haven’t since Trap Street, and she is falling into him, collapsing against his chest and clutching onto his coat and swearing she’ll never let go, not ever, not again. His face is buried in her hair, and against her temple she hears him murmur something that sounds like her name, over and over again, and she gasps out a sob, tears falling onto the dark velvet of his coat. And for the first time, she’s happy that the Time Lords left her with the ability to cry. Because this...this is both joy and peace, exhilaration and serenity, every second of happiness wrapped up in something that utterly, unquestionably feels right, because falling into his arms feels like coming home.

“Clara,” he whispers against her hair. “My Clara.”

And she thinks that sometimes the things you love really do find their way back to you.

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 34

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 34 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 34/? SUMMARY: Elise Smith is now a teenaged Timelord. In addition to losing the Ponds, the fields of Trenzalore are calling. But first they have to figure out exactly who Clara Oswald is.

[A/N - Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! Here’s a new chapter!]

The engine room was nothing but a cliff.

“The engine room. The heart of the TARDIS,” the Doctor said.

“We're outside,” Clara told him.

“No, we're still in the TARDIS.”

“There's no way across.”

“No, okay, you're right.”

“So what do we do? Time for a plan. Do you have a plan?”

“Well, no. No plan. Sorry.”

“If you don't have a plan, we're dead.”

“Yes, we are. So just tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. Just tell me who you are.”

“You know who I am.”

“No, I don't. I look at you every single day and I don't understand a thing about you. Why do I keep running into you?”

“Doctor, you invited me. You said…”

“Before that. Elise and I, we met you in the Dalek Asylum. There was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving our lives, and she was you.”

“She really wasn't.”

“Victorian London. There was a governess who was really a barmaid, and we fought the Great Intelligence together.”

“She died trying to save me,” Elise told her.

“And she was you!”

“You're scaring me.”

The Doctor got in her face. “Elise was right. What are you, eh? Are you a trick, a trap?”

“Hey! Don’t go blaming me! I had just regenerated!” Elise snapped.

Clara backed away from the two Timelords. “I don't know what you're talking about!”

The Doctor grabbed her before she could fall off the cliff and hugged her. “You really don't, do you?”

“I think I'm more scared of you right now than anything else on that TARDIS.”

“You're just Clara, aren't you?” The Doctor laughed and hugged her again.

“Okay, I don't know what the hell this is about, but the hug is really nice.”

“We're not going to die here. This isn't real! It's a snarl.”

“What?”

“What does a wounded animal do? It tries to scare everyone away. We're close to the engine. The TARDIS is snarling at us, trying to frighten us off. We need to jump.”

“You're insane.”

“We'll cross a portal to the engine.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can't.”

The three of them backed up.

“Okay, well, that's watertight,” Clara said.

“Hey now, Clara, I have piloted this ship for over nine hundred years. Trust me this one time, please.”

Clara raised her eyebrows at him.

“Okay. Okay. As well as all the other times. Ready?”

Clara nodded.

The Doctor looked at Elise, who gave him a smirk.

“Who’s scared? Geronimo.”

He smiled, remembering another red headed with a Scottish accent. He grabbed her hand and they all ran towards the cliff and jumped off.

They landed in a white space filled with pieces of metal frozen in time.

Elise gasped and the Doctor squeezed her hand. Elise squeezed it back.

When the Doctor spoke, Clara could hear the pain in his voice. “The heart of the TARDIS. The engine, it's already exploded. It must have been the collision with the salvage ship.”

“We're not dead,” Clara told him.

“She wrapped her hands around the force. Froze it.”

“So, so it's safe?”

“Temporary fix. Eventually this whole place will erupt. There's no way I can save her now. She's just always been there for me, and taken care of me, and now it's my turn and I don't know what to do. I think it just…”

Elise could feel her hearts shattering in her chest. The last TARDIS was dying. The last thing left of their home planet, besides each other, and soon she’d be dead.

Clara took the Doctor’s other hand and the Doctor noticed the burn marks on it.

He looked at her and smiled. “Oh, Clara. Oh. You are beautiful. Beautiful fragile human skin.” He kissed her palm. “Like parchment. Thank you. The rift in time. All the memories leaking out. I need to find the moment we crashed.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver. “I need to find…”

Music started playing.

“…the music.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He grabbed Clara and Elise’s hands and they found the control room.

They carefully made their way under the console as the music played. There was crack in the wall. Thankfully this one wasn’t “W” shaped.

“The time rift. Recent past, possible future,” the Doctor said.

“What are you going to do?” Clara asked.

“Rewrite today, I hope.” He grabbed the grenade that went off earlier and etched letters onto it with the screwdriver. “I've thrown this through the rift before. I need to make sure this time. Going to take it in there myself. There might be a certain amount of yelling.”

“It's going to hurt?”

“Things that end your life often do that.”

“No!” Elise yelled.

The Doctor walked over to her and kissed her forehead. “It’ll never have happened. This timeline.”

“Big Bang?”

He smiled and kissed her head again. “Big Bang.” He walked over to the crack.

“Wait! All those things you said. How we've met before, how I died,” Clara said.

“Clara, don't worry. You'll forget. Time mends us. It can mend anything.”

“I don't want to forget. Not all of it. The library. I saw it. You were mentioned in a book.”

“I'm mentioned in a lot of books.”

“You call yourself Doctor. Why do you do that? You have a name. I've seen it. In one corner of that tiny…”

He put a finger on her lips to stop her. “If I rewrite today, you won't remember. You won't go looking for my name.”

“You'll still have secrets.”

“It's better that way.” The Doctor stepped through the crack in the wall, screaming.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Elise came out of her room and into the control room. “What the hell was that?”

“Magno-grab. Nothing to worry about,” the Doctor told her.

“My room’s a mess.”

The Doctor waved his hand. “The TARDIS will fix it.”

The rotor beeped.

“I didn’t mean like you’re a maid or anything. You know I didn’t mean it.”

Elise laughed. “You two are about as bad as you and River.”

“Speaking of River, would you like to see her?”

Elise’s face lit up. “Oh! Could we?”

“I could drop you off.”

Elise’s smile fell. “You mean, you’re not coming?”

The Doctor shrugged. “I figured you could use some mum and daughter time.”

Elise smirked. “You just don’t want her to meet Clara. That’s what it is.”

“It is not!”

“It so is! You don’t want your ex-wife to meet your new girlfriend.”

“Clara’s not my girlfriend and why is River my ex?”

“Because ever since the Ponds, you don’t want to visit her. I.e. she’s now your ex-wife.”

The Doctor was quiet. “I never meant for it come across that way.”

Elise smiled and hugged him. “I know. River is still my mum. But Clara now gets to be the super-cool step-mum.”

The Doctor smiled and threw a lever.

Before Elise stepped off the TARDIS, the Doctor said, “Be sure to wish River a happy birthday.”

Elise stepped out into the Stormcage facility just in time to see Rory dressed as a Roman walk off with a younger version of herself. She knew exactly where she was in River’s timeline.

Elise walked up to River’s cell. “Was that Rory I saw?”

River turned to her, dressed in Regency era clothing. “Yes it was. What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t think I was going to visit you on your birthday? I’m hurt.”

River laughed and hugged her.

They sat down on River’s bed.

“Now, tell me what’s been happening.”

“Well, it all started when…”

[oswildin]

The Boss ~ Dhawan!Master x Clara Oswald

~ Okay so a while ago I had the idea of Clara travelling with Dhawan!Master. Or rather him travelling with her in her TARDIS. Just some fun. ~

Request: You do know that I’m going to have to request a Clara x Dhawan!Master fic now?? I have this idea that he couldn’t get back to his tardis after spyfall part 2 and has been hitchhiking for a bit. Maybe in return for a ride to his next stop he fixes the chameleon circuit in Clara’s tardis? But if you had another idea on how they’d cross paths I’d take anything at this point 😂 ( @theaussietimelord )

Warnings: None just some fun!

Clara had been travelling alone for a few days. Me said she had things to do, which Clara didn’t understand considering she had surely done everything in her extremely long life, right? Or not. She shrugged it off, sighing as she paced around, pursing her lips, clicking her tongue trying to fill the silence. Maybe a trip home? Yeah. Trip home.

Clara landed the TARDIS with ease. Luckily for her this TARDIS liked her, as much as it groaned with annoyance every time she’d take a trip, still running from her inevitable death. Clara would just say ‘next time’, which of course never came.

She patted down her clothing, her red dress reaching her knees as she wore a leather jacket on top. She went to walk towards the door, as there was a knock on it. She furrowed her brows, confused as to why someone would knock. The diner had a close sign up. She opened the door, revealing the restaurant on the other side, along with a very disheveled looking man. He was wearing a long purple jacket, reminding her of Eleven’s, with a deep blue shirt and checkered trousers. She folded her arms, raising a brow.

“Er, can I help you?” She inquired, looking at the man in confusion. He didn’t seem threatening. In fact, the look in his eyes felt familiar. The man in front of her slowly grinned, glancing behind her to see the inside of the TARDIS.

“Oh, I think you can.” He said almost menacingly, but Clara just furrowed her brows further, looking at him as if to say ‘okay....’ He stepped forwards as she glared, taking a step back cautiously.

“Okay, slightly menacing tone there.” She commented. “Do I know you?” She wondered, folding her arms. The man seemingly almost giggled with glee as he placed his hands on his hips.

“I’m offended. You don’t recognise me?” He raised a brow. “Clara Oswald.” She raised her brows at the mention of her name, suddenly becoming cautious and suspicious.

“Nope! Should I?” She asked, licking her lips anxiously.

“Oh come on.” He said exasperatedly. “Say something nice.” He told her, a small smirk on his lips as she finally understood. She looked surprised for a moment, before clearing her throat.

“Missy?” She looked confused, looking him up and down.

“Master.” He told her defiantly. “Call me Master.” She pulled a face.

“Bit pompous isn’t it?” She almost chuckled. “I mean, at least Missy was a name. Master?” She couldn’t help but chuckle, as the Master growled in annoyance. He’d forgotton how annoying she was. “Got a bit of a fetish do we?” She joked as he rolled his eyes in irritation.

“I forgot how unbearable you are.” He muttered as she gave him an amused glance.

“Right so, why are you here?” She asked, ensuring her body was in front of the entrance to her ship. “Planning to steal a TARDIS and run away? Joining the gang are you?”

“Planning to steal your TARDIS.” He told her. “And no. I’m not running away. That’s more the Doctors thing.”

“Speaking of... Have you seen him?” She asked, her walls falling down for a second.

“Her.” He informed Clara as she raised her brows in shock. “And yes, fairly recently actually.” He sounded annoyed.

“So, not friends then?” She questioned as he pulled a disgusted face. Clara rolled her eyes.

“Timelords. You’re all children having tantrums aren’t you?” She commented as he just stared at her frustrated. “Anyway, you aren’t getting my TARDIS. Not for sale I’m afraid.”

“Wasn’t planning on investing.” He stepped towards her, somehow towering over her. She glancing up at him, a stern look on her face.

“You know, you could just ask nicely.” She offered. “Manners go a long way y’know?”

“Not really my area of expertise.” He gritted his teeth, giving her a dark smile. “And I always get what I want.”

“How about a deal?” She raised her chin, keeping her eyes on his own. “I give you a ride, you fix my chameleon circuit. Deal?” The Master laughed lightly.

“I don’t take compromises.” He told her. She clicked her tongue, sighing as she turned away, going to go back inside.

“Well then, guess you’re staying here.” She told him as she began to walk away. He groaned as he reached out, grabbing her arm, spinning her back around.

“Fine.” He hissed. Clara eyed his tight grip on her arm as she narrowed her eyes. “We’ll do it your way. But I can’t promise I won’t kill you.” She rolled her eyes, pulling her arm away.

“Good luck with that.” She commented. “I’m already dead.” She turned away, leaving the Master confused as they entered her ship.

“What?” He asked, brows furrowed.

“Oh yeah, guess the Doctor hasn’t told you.” She closed the doors. “I died. But the Doctor went to Gallifrey, saved me. Kind of. He removed me from my death, leaving me in between heartbeats. He was in a lot of trouble.” She explained as she walked around the console. The Master listened intently. “So now, I travel the universe, just waiting for the day I decide to return to that moment in time.”

“Interesting.” The Master said genuinely, his eyes analysing her. “I knew the Doctor was a rebel but wow.” He breathed out, a smile on his face. “This is something else.”

“Yeah... Well..” Clara cleared her throat, shrugging. “He’d do it for anyone.” She pulled a lever, the TARDIS taking off, entering the vortex. “So, where to?”

That was 3 months ago. The Master stayed longer than he had planned. He needed to better his plan, he needed to figure out what his next move was. Of course, he didn’t tell Clara any of it. She’d only try to stop him, of course.

“I should start charging you rent.” Clara commented as she entered the console room. The Master narrowing his eyes at her. “You’re basically a squatter right now.”

“You invited me.”

“I had no choice.” She argued.

“I fixed your chameleon circuit didn’t I?” He raised a brow as she nodded slowly, pursing her lips.

“Did you sneak off somewhere last night?” Clara inquired, folding her arms. The Master faked shock and hurt.

“Why would you think that?” He gave her puppy dog eyes as she leant against the console.

“Because I found the handbrake off this morning, and I always put it on.” She told him, a small smirk on her face.

“It’s not a handbrake.” He muttered, stepping towards her.

“Hmmm...” She hummed as she traced the console with her finger, giving him a suspicious glare. “What if I told you, the TARDIS told me?” She offered as he scoffed.

“Don’t be stupid. You can’t communicate with the TARDIS. You’re not telepathic.” He folded his own arms.

“You’re right.” She nodded, before grabbing the screen, swinging it round to show him. “But she does know the human language.” She showed him the screen that said the words ‘The Master went out.’ The Master furrowed his brows, glaring at the machine as he swore under his breath. “What have I told you about going off without me?!” She exclaimed, talking down to him like he was a child.

“I’m not a child.” He argued. “Just be lucky I didn’t throw you out into a supernova and steal your ship.” He narrowed his eyes, as she raised a brow.

“Right that’s it.” She had enough. “You are grounded.” The Master looked annoyed, but slightly amused.

“You can’t ground me.” He told her. “Not even the Doctor could do that.”

“I’m not the Doctor.” She told her defiantly. “Now go to your room.” She ordered as he looked shocked her by strong tone.

“You can’t order me around! I’m the Master!” He exclaimed, anger flashing through his eyes as he met her gaze.

“Go. To. Your. Room.” Clara repeated, glaring at him, pointing towards the corridor. The Master growled, deciding to do as she said. She was the pilot after all. He marched past her, sulking as he disappeared from sight. Clara couldn’t help but smirk to herself.

She was in charge of this ship.

[timeagainreviews]

My Series 10 Rewatch: The Husbands of River Song

One of the beautiful aspects of starting this blog has been the opportunity to revisit old episodes. The title of this blog "Time and Time Again," isn’t just a reference both to Twin Peaks and Doctor Who, but also a raison d'être. The hope is that repeat viewings will bring forth new insights. Things I loathed previously may seem charming in hindsight. Things I initially adored may begin to show cracks in their facade. Some records take a few listens until we discover their greatness. Sometimes art requires consideration.

I mention this because our first review for the series 10 retrospective is for "The Husbands of River Song," an episode of which I detested. It's important to give this context as my opinion of it has indeed mellowed over time. I will endeavour to highlight this shift in perspective as memory permits. Before the other day, I hadn't watched this episode since it first aired on Christmas of 2015. What then can nearly half a decade add to the experience?

It should be noted that I have never been a big fan of Doctor Who Christmas specials. It would be quicker to count the reasons I like them, or in this case, the reason. That being, it's more Doctor Who. Other than that, I find the whole Christmas theme to be hokey. Growing up, I was a Halloween kid. I really don't like Christmas all that much, so an entire episode themed around it is not my idea of a good time. Even worse is when the villains themselves have Christmassy gimmicks like Santa robots or evil snowmen. I suppose in some ways, it's in the Christmas spirit for the Doctor to die and regenerate on Christmas, as they so often do. The concept of birth and renewal are a big part of the holiday. But if I was known to die a lot on Christmas, I might use my time machine to skip it every year.

Landing his TARDIS on Christmas Day, in the year 5343 is Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. The planet, Mendorax Dellora, is one of Steven Moffat's usual Christmas village planets, stuck somewhere in a vortex of quaint sentiment. The Doctor appears to have about as much Christmas spirit as I do. Having just lost Clara both in spirit and memory, he's reverted to the Doctor's most worrisome state- hermitic and bitter. Not even the TARDIS' holographically generated reindeer antlers can bring out the holiday cheer. It's a visit from Nardole, a nebbish sort of man, that brings the Doctor out of his slump. Mistaking him for a surgeon, he leads the Doctor to what appears to be a crash-landed saucer. The obscene redness of its exterior against the plain backdrop gave me the strangest pangs of the circus tent from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." Just throwing that out there.

From the outset, Peter Capaldi is at his most charming. I've never actually covered a Twelfth Doctor story before now, so I would like to mention how much I adore his performance as the Doctor. I know he gets a lot of flack from certain fans (see: dipshit morons with no class), but I think he's brilliant. Right away his banter with Nardole is apparent. It's easy to see why someone may have watched Capaldi and Matt Lucas interacting and thought "There's something here." Lucas' history in comedy gives him great timing as the foil to the Twelfth Doctor's eccentricity.

However, it won't be Nardole filling the role of co-star for long. As the Doctor enters the ship of King Hydroflax, he is greeted by the familiar face of River Song. As I have mentioned previously, I have issues with the way River's story plays out, but by this point in the show, I had grown to love her. Which is why this episode pains me so much. The problems inherent in having the Doctor and River's relationship play out like two ships in the night are at their worst in this episode, but I'll get to that in due time.

The King Hydroflax, played with great relish by Greg Davies is a mere head atop a giant robot body, painted in the same garish red as the flying saucer. River, acting very unlike herself, is practically prostrating herself in front of the vain king. Furthermore, she doesn't seem to recognise the Doctor's new face at all. Even more disturbing to the Doctor is the fact that River appears to be married to the king tyrant, talking about him as some sort of cherished lover. After analysing his new patient, the Doctor discovers a foreign body lodged into Hydroflax's skull. All the while, the king's loyal subjects watch a live feed of the operation, booing the Doctor when he refuses to placate the ego of their leader. It's an idea that has become painfully more believable in the years since airing.

The Doctor and River go into another room of the ship where River explains that the foreign body is, in fact, the most valuable diamond in the universe known as the Halassi Androvar. Somewhat to the Doctor's relief, he discovers that River's love for the king has been a ruse to recover the diamond for the Halassi people, from whom it was stolen. Much like the Doctor has turned into a bitter hermit, loneliness has brought out River's more sadistic nature as she takes to the idea of killing Hyrdroflax for the diamond in stride. Less enthusiastic of the idea than even the Doctor is the emperor himself, who has somehow managed to eavesdrop on two Time Lords while walking around in a massive robotic body. This kind of logic will continue throughout the night.

The king is much displeased with learning that his new wife is some renegade archaeologist with a sonic trowel. Taunting the pair, he removes his head from his robot body, leading River to improvise. Holding his head hostage at trowelpoint, River improvises and takes the entire head in a duffel bag. River's other husband, a beautiful but submissive man named Ramone, teleports her and the Doctor to safety with the head in tow. Meanwhile, Hyrdoflax's body sets about taking on a new head in the form of poor Nardole. It’s worth noting that River wiping Ramone’s mind of any knowledge that they were married is a bit creepy. There are implications involved that kind of gross me out.

The Doctor, having just met Ramone, is taken aback after having met yet another of River's husbands. Beginning to feel like a bit of an afterthought the Doctor takes small potshots at River's sense of loyalty, while also fishing for clues that he may or may not have ever meant something to her. For all this episode does to highlight the Doctor and River's secret feelings for one another, it does a piss poor job of actually staying true to River's character in one key manner. Throughout a majority of the episode, River fails repeatedly to recognise the Doctor for who he is.

Moffat tries somewhat to cover his tracks by making it look as though River only knows of twelve previous regenerations, including the War Doctor. In what looks like one of the cheapest props of the episode, she even has a little fold-out wallet with all of the Doctors' pictures. Knowing that the Eleventh Doctor was the end of his regeneration cycle, she never even considers the idea that the Doctor may have lived on. Even though toward the end of the episode, she remarks that the Doctor always finds a way to cheat fate, she wholeheartedly buys into the idea that the Doctor would just never regenerate beyond the Eleventh Doctor. In a single episode, not even River's own logic believes River's own logic.

Learning that River sometimes shows up to places he's been long enough to take the TARDIS for a joyride, the Doctor is given a chance to act as a bit of a spectator in his own life. There is a definite bit of glee to be found in the Twelfth Doctor's over the top reaction to his own TARDIS. Finally being able to say "It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor savours the moment to great comical effect. Ramone parts ways to he and River's pre-established rendezvous point. However, he is cut short by the giant robot body holding a gun to Nardole's head. Poor Nardole, he's having such a rough go of things. First, he brings the wrong surgeon, then he loses his body, and now he's being held hostage by his new body. The robot’s only demand is that Ramone send a message to River.

River, as always, is quite at home in the TARDIS, even taking a moment to raid the liquor cabinet of which not even the Doctor was aware. However, her flawless piloting of the TARDIS is thrown out of whack by unforeseen circumstances. Even after the Doctor deduces that the TARDIS won't fly while it senses the King's head and body are both inside and outside the TARDIS, River still doesn't grasp the fact that he is the Doctor. I would also like mention that while I found the TARDIS' failsafe to be a rather creative invention, it did immediately make me wonder about the Cyberhead Handles' body. What constitutes a body the TARDIS recognises? Could the Face of Boe fly in the TARDIS? Could Dorium Maldovar? Oh well, it doesn't really matter.

A knock on the TARDIS door from Ramone, now part of the robot, quickly reunites the head and body. However, for the third time in this episode, any action is immediately sidestepped by yet another person taking a disembodied head hostage. This time it's the Doctor threatening to throw Hydroflax's head down the garbage chute. Every chance this episode gets, it bravely avoids the perils of forming some sort of plot. The stakes have never been lower. The Doctor and River take the TARDIS to a restaurant aboard the starship Harmony and Redemption. Everyone onboard is some sort of war criminal or seedy individual, including the Maître d', a bug faced man named Flemming. After taking a seat in the restaurant, River reveals that she never planned on returning the diamond to the people of Halassi. Instead, she plans on selling it to the highest bidder.

The Doctor uses this moment to probe River for further information. River reads silently from her TARDIS diary. She reveals to the Doctor that the person who gave her the diary was the type of man who would know just how long a diary she would need. It's at this moment that the Doctor begins to see traces that River is very much still in love with him and that she may be a little lost without him. I would say this scene was touching if it weren't for the fact that it was undercut by River's inability to recognise the man sitting directly in front of her. It's so out of character for River to be this myopic. By this point in my initial watch through, I was so annoyed by this betrayal of her character that it took me out of the story completely. The second time around was only a little less irritating due to the fact that at least now I expected it.

River's buyer turns out to be Scratch, a very Moffatty body horror bad guy, in the vein of characters like Colony Sarff or the Headless Monks. After accepting River's price, Scratch opens his head like a coin purse and pulls out a little orb that connects to any bank in the universe. By this point, I've grown accustomed to Moffat's over the top exploits like this. It's feasible to imagine that Scratch's cruel master may have torn his head open to store money. It's like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," when Humma Kavula removes a servant's nose to reveal a control pad that opens a series of draws tucked into his chest. However, it gets a bit far fetched when it is revealed that many other diners in the restaurant are the same species as Scratch and they all have the same scar across their faces. Is this some evolutionary trait? Are they a species so greedy that they evolved a place to squirrel away their money? Do they keep other stuff like car keys or bags of space weed? Not every bad guy needs to be a toy, Moffat!

The reason the patrons suddenly turn on the Doctor and River is that they discover the diamond is lodged within the head of their great leader. This brings up even more questions about their heads. Why doesn't Hydroflax’s head have the same scar? Are they the same species? How did this asshole even get so much power in the first place? There seems to be neither anything likable nor competent about him... oh right. Once again, the events of the years since have made this episode more believable. Dinner is even further interrupted by the King's body barging in, demanding its proper head. Only now it deems King Hydroflax's head unsuitable. Having been detached from his body for too long, the King's head is now dying. The body disintegrates the King's head, leaving behind the diamond. Flemming uses this opportunity to alert the patrons of the restaurant to the fact that River knows the perfect person to become the next head of state, so to speak. Of course, it's the Doctor.

Why Flemming knows River knows a Time Lord, but doesn't know she herself is a Time Lord is anyone's guess. Or maybe he knows and is just throwing shade by implying that the Doctor is a better Time Lord. It's at this moment that Alex Kingston is given one of her finest moments as River Song in the form of an emotional monologue. After arguing that the Doctor wouldn't be there with her because he doesn't care, it finally dons on her that the Doctor has been standing next to her the entire time. Despite the fact that Moffat sacrificed River's intelligence for the sake of a big reveal, the moment still resonates. Capaldi's warm gaze meeting River's expression of shock followed by his soft utterance of "Hello sweetie," is genuinely touching. No cynical sensationalism can undo the beautiful performances given by Capaldi and Kingston, who bring more gravity to the scene than the script.

For all of the hand-wavey tripe this episode heaps upon us, the way in which the Doctor and River escape this sticky situation is actually rather brilliant. In any other show, the appearance of a sudden freak meteor collision with the ship would seem convenient. But River is an archaeologist and a time traveller. She picked her meeting location perfectly- a starship about to be destroyed by meteors. Her line of "I'm an archaeologist from the future, I dug you up," is easily one of the best River Song lines ever written for Doctor Who. If this is truly her final episode, that's one hell of a line to go out on.

In another convenient moment, the diamond lands in River's dress as they're making their escape. I guess she planned that too. The Doctor uses Scratch's money orb to short circuit the robot body with its firewall. River and the Doctor run to the TARDIS while the ship crashes into the planet Darillium, knocking River unconscious. While River is out, the Doctor uses the opportunity to do a bit of time travelling. First, the Doctor gives the diamond to one of the crash's first responders, telling him to build a restaurant in front of the singing towers of Darillium. Then he jumps forward to a time when the restaurant has been built to make reservations. Then he jumps forward to the day of the reservation. River wakes up to find herself wandering into a beautiful restaurant on Christmas Day. Even Ramone and Nardole have survived due to some trickery on the Doctor’s behalf. Nardole is having a bit of “alone time,” which River remarks must be difficult as a head. That one goes up there with Ursula becoming a blowjob dispensing pavement stone at the end of “Love and Monsters.” The Doctor is waiting for River in a First Doctor style bow tie and coat. He treats her to a romantic meal and the gift of her own sonic screwdriver, the same sonic screwdriver she has when we met her in "Silence in the Library."

There's a nice little cap on the entire River storyline here that feels a bit more final than the one between her and the Eleventh Doctor. Perhaps it's the fact that it's the last time Moffat wrote her character, or perhaps it's because even River seems to know something is up. Having heard the legends of her own romance with the Doctor, River knows that her last night was spent with the Doctor on the planet Darillium. This is a bit of retconning that you often find in Doctor Who. River doesn't really know in her first appearance that she's headed toward her own demise, yet here she's all too aware of it. It's compounded by the fact that the Doctor reveals that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years. It's meant to be a sweet line that implies they got to spend a lot of time coupling together for 24 years, but it's really just 24 years for River to know, for certain, that she's going to her inevitable doom.

Retcons like these don't necessarily ruin the show. Storytellers shouldn't be forced to sacrifice the current narrative all for the sake of creating tidy bookends. Should Big Finish not put Peri and the Fifth Doctor in more adventures for fear that it may dilute the Doctor's sacrificing his own life for a woman he barely knows? Does him knowing her better make his sacrifice any less admirable? How about the many times River meets the Doctor in his previous forms even though the Tenth Doctor clearly had never met her in his life? I'm not going to answer these questions because they should be open-ended. It is a thing to consider in Doctor Who. If time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, then maybe the storylines are allowed to be as malleable.

As I've demonstrated above, our own experiences with the stories can be malleable. I watched this episode with my boyfriend because I wanted to gauge his initial reaction. A lot of his reactions mirrored my own. We both found ourselves enjoying it as a light romp afforded by the air of a Christmas episode, while also deriding it for its lack of plot. Like myself, he too felt that the big reveal was detrimental to River's intelligence and went on past the point of acceptability. It's one of the oddest things about Steven Moffat as a writer, no matter how clever his ideas actually may be, he doesn't ever seem to know when his audience has caught on. Perhaps it's the suits at the BBC underestimating the audience. Or perhaps this is because he spent a lot of his life as a Doctor Who nerd, oftentimes feeling out of place when talking about Doctor Who to casuals. But the modern Doctor Who audience has been raised on science fiction and intricate narratives. No hand-holding necessary.

Regardless of how attuned he perceives his audience to be, River's realisation seems more slavishly timed to the climax of the story than anything else. One can't help but wonder if Moffat hadn't been so insistent on making this moment the crux of the episode, we may have actually gotten a more serviceable plot. Instead of heads held hostage and hand waving, we could have gotten a stronger villain. Scratch could have represented more than just some guy with a coin purse head. There are lots of fantastical elements on display, but none of them is ever given any gravity. Moffat's fixation on character relationships is so single-minded that it comes not only at the sake of plot, but character as well. It's unfortunate that despite Alex Kingston's greatest efforts, River's goodbye is undercut by one writer's need to be clever.

[working-write-now]

Comparing the Eras of NuWho: Moffat and Davies

I wrote this a year ago, before Jodie Whittaker’s series came out. I’m not going to add Series 11 to the comparison, because Chibnall’s run on Doctor Who isn’t done yet, and I don’t want to evaluate it before it’s done. In the original google doc, I had some footnotes, which unfortunately can’t be used in this format, so I adapted them as [NOTE: <more here>].

Now that Steven Moffat’s time as head writer on Doctor Who is done, it’s a good time to take a step back and examine the differences between how he and his predecessor,  Russel T. Davies, wrote for the show. Needless to say, there are spoilers ahead for the entire revived series of Doctor Who.

One good place to look at how the writers differ is how The Doctor’s companions are introduced. Davies introduces companions to the audience prior to their meeting The Doctor. As “Smith and Jones” begins, Martha walks down the street, trying to mediate her family drama. She then attends her class at the hospital, where she meets The Doctor. Rose’s introduction was similar: in the middle of an ordinary day, Rose is suddenly attacked by mannequins, and The Doctor appears. Donna’s introduction disrupts this pattern. She appears in the TARDIS at the end of “Doomsday.” However, in “The Runaway Bride,” her first full episode, she is walking down the aisle at her wedding when suddenly she’s transported to the TARDIS. When she’s reintroduced in “Partners in Crime,” the episode begins with The Doctor and Donna performing similar actions even though they don’t actually meet up until later. Davies even introduces one-off companions this way, such as Christina de Souza in “Planet of the Dead,” which begins with her robbing a museum, and eventually getting on the same bus as The Doctor to escape the police. By introducing the companions before The Doctor, Davies develops them, establishing them as characters before they travel time and space.

Conversely, Moffat’s episodes which introduce companions are centered on The Doctor. The pre-title sequence of “The Eleventh Hour” shows The Doctor and the TARDIS crashing through London, and “The Bells of Saint John,” which introduced Clara, begins with The Doctor in a monastery. Although “The Time of Angels,” which reintroduced River Song, begins with her on a spaceship, she doesn’t stumble into The Doctor like other companions, instead summoning him for assistance. “The Pilot” begins with Nardole bringing Bill to The Doctor, and the audience doesn’t get a glimpse into her life until later. By not taking the time to introduce the companions before The Doctor, Moffat implies that it doesn’t matter who the companions were before The Doctor shows up in their lives, and that the focus of the show should be on him.

Moffat continues to put the emphasis on the Doctor by making him an independent hero, while Davies emphasizes the importance of the companions. In most episodes Davies wrote, it’s not The Doctor, but his companions who save the day. Take “The Parting of the Ways,” for example. The Doctor can’t defeat the Daleks without also killing all humans, and decides to put himself at the mercy of the Daleks instead, until Rose shows up as the Bad Wolf and destroys them. Martha also saves the world; in the year between “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords,” she travels Earth, telling people about The Doctor and to think about him during The Master’s Countdown. [NOTE: There are probably some of you who are arguing that the plan to defeat The Master was made by The Doctor, but it was Martha who implemented it, and the only thing he told her was to “use the countdown.” Martha had to figure out about the Archangel Network and everything else on her own. Thus, I attribute this win to Martha.] Donna too saves the day in “Journey’s End” when there’s not just one, but two Doctors running around, both of whom are powerless to stop Davros. Donna, who has become just as smart as The Doctor, is able to deactivate the reality bomb and save all of creation. In fact, in the “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” the episodes that function as the magnum opus to Davies’s time as showrunner, The Doctor is mostly helpless, and it’s his companions who work together to save the day. In “The Stolen Earth”, the Earth has disappeared and The Doctor has no clue where it’s gone or how to find it until Jack, Sarah Jane, Martha, and Harriet Jones all work together to let The Doctor know where they are. In “Journey’s End,” The Doctor spends most of the episode trapped in a holding cell, and it’s his companions who try to foil The Dalek’s plan, Martha by threatening to destroy the Earth, and Jack, Sarah Jane, Mickey, and Jackie by threatening to blow up the Dalek’s ship.

In contrast, Moffat’s episodes generally feature The Doctor saving the day. In “The Eleventh Hour”  The Doctor alerts the Atraxi to Prisoner Zero’s presence, so it can be imprisoned once again. In “The Big Bang,” it’s The Doctor who flies The Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS, rebooting reality. [NOTE: Though Amy remembers The Doctor and brings him back, that happens after the main problem of the episode is resolved.] In “The Wedding of River Song,” it’s The Doctor who comes up with the plan of hiding in the Teselecta to escape his death. The Doctor is also the one who saves the day in “Flesh and Stone,” “The Day of the Moon,” and “The Time of The Doctor.” [NOTE: Though Clara convinces the Time Lords to grand The Doctor more regenerations, it’s The Doctor who destroys them with regeneration energy.] This trend continues into Peter Capaldi’s time playing The Doctor, notably occurring in “Death in Heaven,” where although it’s Danny Pink who destroys the Cybermen when given control of them, it’s The Doctor who grants him that control. The trend is also present in “Hell Bent” where it’s The Doctor who makes the heroic sacrifice to forget Clara so that she and Arya Stark Lady Me can travel time and space together.

Also interesting are the ways in which the two writers present the companions before they meet The Doctor and why he asks them to travel with him. Before traveling with The Doctor, Rose, Martha and Donna are all very ordinary people: a shop worker, medical student, and temp. The companions during Moffat’s run, however, are mostly chosen because of who they are: Amy grew up with a crack in reality in her bedroom wall, River Song and The Doctor keep meeting out of order, and Clara seems to be fractured through time and space [NOTE: Bill Potts is a bit of an outlier here, though she is picked out by The Doctor because she smiles when she doesn’t understand something, where other people frown. ]. For Moffat there needs to be something special about a companion, whereas for Davies, ordinary people have something to offer to The Doctor. In fact, when Davies’s Doctor travels without someone for too long, he becomes callous and cold. Just look at the “timelord victorious” mentality he exhibits in “The Waters of Mars,” or the way he ignores the suffering happening around him in the destruction of Pompeii until Donna begs him to help (“The Fires of Pompeii”). Davies’s Doctor needs someone to travel with him to help him have a sense of humanity.

To sum up, while Moffat was the main writer for Doctor Who, it was very clearly a show about The Doctor, who invited companions aboard his ship if there was something special about them. While Davies was running the show, Doctor Who was a story about the lives of the companions, in which The Doctor happened to show up. Davies’s mentality, I think, was part of the reason Doctor Who succeeded when it came back onto the air: everyone could imagine themself as a companion. There wasn’t anything special about the people The Doctor picked--they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Anyone could go on adventures through time and space, even people sitting on their couches in front of the TV. With these in mind, it will be interesting to see which of these mindsets Chris Chibnall, the new head writer, will take when it comes to the new companions being introduced alongside Jodie Whittaker Doctor this autumn.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

A Jenna Coleman DVD/Blu-ray library

About a year or so ago, I did a quick survey of Jenna’s film and TV work and its availability on home video. With the recent UK release of Victoria S3 and questions over whether there might be a DVD release of this week’s National Theatre Live broadcast of All My Sons, I thought I’d do an updated version. (I’m generally focusing on physical releases - I’m aware some shows unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray may well be available on streaming - though if I know about legal online availability I’ll mention it.)

A text break first as this will be a bit lengthy. (And corrections are always welcome if I goof anything here.)

Summer Holiday: As I was compiling this list I noticed that this has been added to her IMDb listing. This is dated 1998 and is the title of a play Jenna appeared in when she was about 10. An IMDb listing implies that a video has been released, but I know nothing of this. IMDb is also notorious for including dubious listings. I’ve looked around and general consensus is this video does not exist or maybe there’s a snippet someone shot from the audience and somebody decided to make an IMDb listing for it.

Emmerdale: There’s been no DVD release of Jenna’s era on Emmerdale. With about 140 episodes featuring her, it would need to be a very big box set. ITV Hub streams the show, but only recent episodes it seems. I’ve also seen a reference to BritBox but I don’t know if the 2005-2009 era is included.

Waterloo Road: Jenna was featured in Series 5, which has been released to DVD in the UK. For the rest of the world (and those who didn’t get the DVDs), the production company behind the series has made the entire series - including Jenna’s arc - officially available for free on YouTube. (Episodes are edited to remove opening and closing credits, however.) Her first episode can be found here.

Maria’s Story: Around the time she was on Waterloo, Jenna made a PSA for a an organization dedicated to addressing cruelty to children. She performed a dramatic reading of a survivor’s letter and it’s heart-wrenching. The IMDb lists her as the executive producer but I don’t know if that’s accurate. Being just a PSA it’s not on DVD anywhere, but you can view it on Youtube here. This one slipped by many fans because some of the posts don’t mention Jenna (who is uncredited in the video) and the one place she was mentioned, they misspelled her name.

Imaginary Forces: During her year in America, Jenna filmed a role in a Jacobs Ladder-esque horror short that has, as of 2019, never been released. All we have is the trailer which was posted to YouTube in I think 2010. That original post appears to no longer exist (or it didn’t show up on a search anyway), but the trailer was reposted by a fan account for one of the actors about 6 years ago. You can hear Jenna’s early attempt at an American accent and she appears on screen for about one second.

Unknown pilot episode: Jenna auditioned for a large number of TV shows during her time in America. Some of these auditions have circulated on YouTube. According to an interview she did film a pilot for a sitcom in which she played an Australian character. I’ve looked around for a few years and have not found any indication as to the title of the production or anything else. It has never been broadcast, at any rate. But it’s always possible it might turn up somewhere. Maybe in a box set alongside Imaginary Forces. LOL

Captain America: The First Avenger: The Marvel Cinematic Universe classic is obviously widely available and is undoubtedly the biggest-seller of anything on this list. I believe that, for a while, Jenna technically had the biggest box office take of any former companion because of her cameo in this movie, until Karen Gillan joined the MCU as Nebula. Natalie Dormer also has a cameo.

Titanic: The 2012 miniseries has been released to both DVD and Blu-ray worldwide. In Canada it also seems to get rebroadcast quite a lot on cable. There were several Titanic productions in 2012; this is the 4-episode one with Jenna and Perdita Weeks (and Jenna’s picture is on the DVD cover too!)

Room at the Top: The original broadcast of this two-part adaptation of the novel (previously filmed in the 1950s), originally scheduled for 2011, was delayed a year due to rights issues (ending up with it airing around the time Jenna debuted as Oswin Oswald). These same rights issues are presumably the reason behind the fact there has never been a home video release anywhere. Amazon’s streaming service apparently has it available in the UK only. The BBC website once had it available for streaming (again only in the UK) but it’s not available. No idea of its Britbox status.

Dancing on the Edge: This five-episode minseries has been released worldwide on DVD and Blu-ray, though it might be a bit hard to find now. I assume it’s on streaming somewhere. This is the one that also features Tom Hughes, though he shares no scenes with Jenna.

Doctor Who: Obviously, Jenna’s era in the series is available widely both in physical and streaming formats, though some of the spin-off work she did for the 50th such as the Five(ish) Doctors Reboot and The Ultimate Guide might be a bit harder to track down. In Canada, for example, the only way to see these was on a bonus disc in a Matt Smith Era box set. I don’t know if they’ve been put on streaming. Likewise I’ve never bothered to look to see if any of the minisodes she made (especially Clara and the TARDIS), available on the DVDs and Blu-rays, are on streaming.

Death Comes to Pemberley: Widely available on DVD and Blu-ray. However the North American release put out by PBS stresses that it’s the UK version. That implies that (much like Victoria) the US broadcast was different in some way. I’ve never seen the PBS edit so I don’t know if there is actually a difference.

Me Before You: Widely available on DVD and Blu-ray, which also feature a rare appearance of Jenna in a gag reel.

Victoria: All 3 seasons are out on DVD and Blu-ray in Europe and North America. The North American release features the ITV edit, and thus does not include the additional scenes featured in the longer PBS broadcasts (it also often omits some of the special features like commentaries in the UK release). I’m hoping that, when Victoria finishes its run, somebody will release a box set that includes the extra footage for the benefit of UK fans and for those who watched the PBS version. There are some very nice sequences featuring Jenna that are technically missing. I hear mixed messages as to whether the PBS streaming service features the Masterpiece edits or ITV.

Thunderbirds Are Go: Jenna did a guest voice in the second season premiere of the CGI remake of the Gerry Anderson classic, again doing an American accent. The season has been released on DVD in the UK and elsewhere but not in North America. As far as streaming goes, it appears to belong to Amazon. 

The Cry: The miniseries has been released on DVD in the UK and Australia, but at present is not available in North America due to Sundance Now holding the streaming rights. There’s no indication as to if or when we’ll get a physical release here. My guess is probably not until Sundance Now has exclusivity for at least a year.

National Theatre Live: All My Sons: During his recent radio interview with Jenna, Graham Norton brought up the idea of All My Sons getting a DVD release. Jenna couldn’t answer, however National Theatre Live’s website states that they don’t do DVD releases and there are no NTL releases other than a documentary marking an anniversary listed on Amazon.co.uk. All My Sons would have been recorded because NTL’s website is already listing encore broadcasts for next February in the United States so it’ll probably get filed in some archive.

Inside No. 9: Jenna has a guest role in the upcoming 5th series of this comedy show. The series does get a DVD release in the UK, but not in North America where once again we’ll be restricted to seeing it on streaming (via Britbox, apparently).

[c1araoswa1d]

Flashes of Life

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13181369/1/Flashes-of-Life

There she lay, a speck of nothing in his hands, barely occupying the space between them...

 There she lay, a speck of nothing in his hands, barely occupying the space between them.  Body still as she took breath after breath through half-opened lips, pale without the sun’s first kiss upon them.  Swallowing roughly, the Doctor exhaled and watched the few strands of her chestnut hair she had waver slightly in that breath just before her nose wrinkled in dissatisfaction and she whimpered.  It was a noise barely audible even in the chasm of silence around him, and it broke both of his hearts with the thought he’d disturbed her.

“What will you call her, Clara?”

Charlotte smiled at a month, earlier than most, gummy grin swung underneath excited eyes – wide and dark by her mother’s making.  Swaddled after a nappy change and a belly full of milk, she raised her delicate chin twice as he stood over her, watching her struggle happily, waiting for him to pluck her up into his arms to nestle against his chest.  A tale he would tell her, pacing the living room, and she would coo quietly at him to voice her adoration of his words, his presence, his love.

In a few short weeks she’d wrapped her fragile little fingers around his hearts and she’d taught him that home was a place he belonged.  He looked to Clara, asleep on the couch, and he smiled, joking with the girl and waiting for her to scold him.  A tease in her mind’s voice, he longed for the day he would hear it aloud.  Those words that would spill from her, the thoughts and ideas.  The hope.  He pecked his lips to her forehead, felt it wrinkle against them, and he sighed as she whispered sleepily at him.

“She’s mummy and she’s mine, like you are.”

Face dropping into the blanket, she grumpily cried and then picked her head up again, slowly making her way towards him on unsteady knees.  Crawling, Charlotte argued, was tedious.  Six months, the Doctor thought.  He counted her days in his mind and each tick of time cut at him painfully.  Too human to regenerate, too human to live out a life in space, Clara had asserted, too human he reminded himself as she cried.  He hesitated and Clara scooped her daughter up, cradling and comforting as a mother should.

He watched them often, no different than he’d watched so much else in the universe.  A sun – hair flowing over her shoulders; face glowing radiantly in health and motherhood; body curved just right by the process of it all – spinning gracefully with her solar system held safely in her arms.  The Doctor never tired of seeing them together, the mirrored souls and silhouettes, admiring one another as tears were dried, as lullabies were sung.  They looked to him in unison, melting away doubts with their loving stares.

“Doctor, come, join us in a dance.”

Terrible two’s weren’t so terrible, he thought as he watched her blow bubbles and then run off to chase them, little dress fluttering as she went.  There were moments, he was sure, when he was off on some distant planet.  He would get a pang in his chest sometimes, an echo of her anger, then her sadness, before the serenity returned.  The Doctor had forgotten those days, of holding a child in his hearts, and there were days the strength of it pulled him across the universe to join in on some glorious event, or help with a moment of discipline.

Clara lay beside him, napping away as her daughter giggled and frolicked.  Their picnic would soon come to an end and he’d be knelt on the tile by a tub.  Charlotte splashed wickedly and she enjoyed topping his nose with the froth she churned, ducking her head shyly before flashing a decisively playful grin.  Her mother, he often thought as he watched her, she was entirely her mother in miniature.  Not, he knew, that he would have it any other way.

And before he knew it he’d be tucking her away in bed.  Watching her eyes flutter with the beginnings of some dream as her rosy cheeks shifted with unspoken words, showing off the dimples she loved to poke to elicit his laughter.  Clara edged underneath his arm as he stood in the doorway and she sighed, thinking the same as him as they watched the little girl lying there, gripping tight to her stuffed bear.  He says aloud what they both know and afterwards he spends a few hours with her, asleep in his arms, knowing how the words affect her.  Knowing what they mean to her more than him.

“I never think time moves too quickly, and then it does.”

Charlotte calls out to him and he coughs a laugh when her weight crashes into his legs as he pushes through the door.  Her colors are too bright and it takes him a moment to discern her from her costume – an assortment of items from her closet – as she bursts into a song of chatter detailing her days without him.  There’s schoolwork and friendships and mud puddles and a spanking for backtalk at mum.  Typical five year old days, he understood, nodding and listening and catching quick glances at Clara as she smiled, grading papers and sipping tea.

They hid inside of her fortress – a lavender colored tent with unicorns and hearts and rainbows – and buried themselves underneath a hoard of every pillow in their home, protecting themselves from the monsters that lurk in the night sky.  And then she asked about the stars.  How many there are and how many hold life and how far they are and how far it all goes and how long ago it started and how long it will last.  She has a sparkle in her eyes and an airy quality to her voice – that little whisper of wonder that circles each question as it tumbles out before she went silent to wait for his answer, then interrupted with a quietly breathed request.

“Daddy, I want to go to the stars with you.”

Her hands were quicker than his, fingers tapping, palm toggling, thumbs wrestling with knobs that needed oiling and she laughed when the rotor lit up a new color.  Every.  Single.  Time.  Clara stood beside her, giving her direction and shared knowing glances with him over the key and boards before them.  Their little girl was always meant for this.  Charlotte was born to travel the universe and she danced around the console, shouting out to them as she went.  More questions and suggestions and contemplations – too many for them to keep up with as she darted about gleefully.

She was seven, hitting a growth spurt, and loved everything in the stars and in the ocean.  Charlotte once said they weren’t quite that different.  All of this space and not all of it travelled; so many things to explore and discover.  Watching her catalogue things in a little notebook pleased him greatly and he reveled in the warmth of her hand within his as they discussed a planet or a people or the color of a sunset.  The Doctor smiled gleefully when she brought him an old book, given to her by her mother, and declared she wanted one hundred and two places.

She was adventurous and brave and kind.  She was thin and bright and ran.  Oh, the Doctor laughed sometimes, oh did she run.  Chasing the butterflies that chirped like birds and going over vines and in through tunnels and caves and across fields and beaches and barren desserts.  Charlotte ran with them and she never turned back and the Doctor enjoyed those moments, after the Tardis doors had closed on them again, while she sat in a chair around the console, barely looking up at him and Clara as they piloted comfortably across from each other, taking ragged breaths as she scribbled.

“Mum, that was wicked what you did there, and dad, oh dad!  DAD!”

Ten candles had been set out on a table, ready to be pushed into a cake that stood lopsided in the fridge.  They were the sort that didn’t extinguish when they went out and the Doctor thought them funny when he bought them at a market on present day Earth.  A wrapped box sat in her room, just at the foot of her bed, inside a dozen notebooks and a pack of fancy pens.  It was quiet, just like the day she’d been brought home, and the Doctor sat holding the urn, a speck of nothing that had been everything.

Her name had been engraved and what was left would be scattered to the stars and he damned her for being too human, too quick, too brave.  Clara sniffled lightly in the master bedroom and the Doctor settled the urn down to look about the room.  The star spattered bed sheets and the chart of the ocean life on the wall.  The books on planets and the stuffed beluga and the worn book that sat open atop her desk, a new destination written hastily on a taped in sheet.

Eyes closing, he inhaled the scent of dirt from her boots, of flowers from their pressed books, of must from the novels collected on shelves.  There was the ticking of a clock picked up at a charity shop, and the light rattle of the tissue paper she’d affixed to a fan, the deafening silence.  And then her laugh, shocking the warmth from his body as he looked to see her perched at the edge of the bed, years older than she should have been, holding tightly to her own ashes and shaking her head at him.  Speaking to him without words...

Sitting up in bed, he gasped for air.  There were droplets of sweat clinging to his forehead and his clothes hugged too tight against the dampness of his skin.  He pulled himself up to sit and jammed his palms into his eyes, pushing them until they sparkled in that darkness and he felt Clara’s body shift at his side.  He listened to the fabric rustle and he knew she’d sat up, could see the black of his eyesight gain a shade of red as she clicked on a lamp.

“Doctor?”  She questioned, her voice blanketed in sleep.

“I had the nightmare again,” he allowed.

“Charlotte?”

“She was mine, Clara.  Ours.  So perfectly ours,” he whispered through a constricted throat.  “And I sleep and she’s there.  She’s there Clara, so vibrant and brilliant, growing up right before my eyes again in fast-forward, too fast, Clara.  And then I wake...” his hands opened and closed, crushing into balls in front of him.

She leaned into him, finishing softly, “And she’s not here.”

“It’s only a dream, you don’t have to tell me,” he argued, looking down at her tired face as she sighed.

“You keep calling her a nightmare,” she responded evenly.

He nodded, looking away.  “Her urn is always there, her name etched in like the most horrible promise, just before her tenth birthday.  To give us something so pure and perfect and then steal her from us just as she’s beginning, it’s cruel, Clara.  It’s the worst nightmare the universe could offer.”

Clara yawned and then reached for his hand, pulling it into hers to kiss before dropping it to settle atop her stomach, the baby girl inside instantly shifting towards it, to tell him, “She’s there.  Right there, Doctor.  Just as she’s been for seven and a half months.”

“What if it isn’t a nightmare, Clara?”  He hissed, hating himself for questioning it.

Offering a smile, she told him plainly, “I can’t live my life waiting for the end at every turn, Doctor – if I did that, I’d have never met you – and I won’t have her doing that either.  She’s going to live a wonderful life and if it’s ten years, then it’s going to be the best ten years.”

“You aren’t fearful that perhaps...” he began.

Her hand came up to tap at his lips and she giggled softly, “No.”

“Why not?”

Clara shifted back down into bed and she smiled up at him.  Her eyes drifted over his face, imagining, he knew, what the little girl she was so close to holding would look like and how she would take after him.  The Doctor spread his palm over the thumps just beneath the pattern on her nightie, looking from his wife’s content expression to the flesh he slowly revealed, watching for that movement that soothed him after his nightmares.  And he understood.  Every nightmare he had, he saw little bits of a potential life and every nightmare he had ended in it’s premature end, but every nightmare held the same message from a girl reaching out to shake her father from a bad dream.

“Daddy, don’t worry, I’m gonna be fine.”

[afteriwake]

All Screwed To Hell And Eternity And Space And Back (10/11 - An “intersections” Story) - NEW CHAPTER

And the last of the alternating chapters! In the next one, they’ll finally meet...or will they?

All Screwed To Hell And Eternity And Space And Back - Everyone has a countdown on their wrist to when they will find their soulmate. If they don’t, they die. Even Steve Rogers’s ran in one direction, though it took him ninety years to meet his. But Bucky’s has never run normally, not in the 40s, not when he was the Winter Soldier, and not now that the whole mess with the Infinity Gauntlet has been fixed. But now it’s stuck and he has no idea why. Meanwhile, Clara’s is still running despite being taken out of the timeline, though never in any way that makes sense or has ever made sense. Not to her, not to the Doctor, not to Ashildr. She’d expected it to disappear. But it’s simply counting down to her inevitable demise. And yet? Fate has it ways to make these two meet…even if it takes a TARDIS and the Avengers to make it happen.

READ CHAPTER 1 | READ CHAPTER 10 | SERIES PAGE | HELP ME SURVIVE? | COMMISSION ME? | BUY ME A KOFI?

“If you don’t stop pacing, you’ll wear a rut in front of the console,” Ashildr said, coming up next to Clara and placing a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s better than checking my wrist every ten minutes,” Clara murmured, stopping in her tracks.

“You know Carol. You know Loki. You trust them, right?” Clara nodded. “Then trust that they’ll get you to your soulmate in time. You cheated death more than once. It’s what you do. You’ll do it again today.”

“That should sound encouraging but somehow it makes me think that I’ve had a string of extremely good luck and it’s about to run out,” Clara said. Then she shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “Sorry, it’s just...I know I’m usually an optimist but it doesn’t help that someone knows who my soulmate is and won’t tell me. What if he doesn’t like me?”

“I’m not the most sentimental of people, but just think. Carol knows who it is. Carol probably knows them, and she seems excited. On your behalf, by the way. I think it will all work out fine.” After a pause, Ashildr gave Clara’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “It almost seems like an end to an era.”

“I think on the show of our lives, this would be the companion’s good-bye or one of the regeneration episodes,” Clara said, giving her a small smile.

“Who says we have to leave? Who says we can’t keep helping the way we do?” Ashildr pointed out. “We are not women who follow history, we make our own. You showed me that.”

“I did?” Clara asked.

“We make our own and we don’t let things like death stop us. You’ll be here piloting, taking those of us who come aboard off to deal with threats in space and the fabric of time. There will just be less worrying and more happiness.”

“I hope so,” Clara said with a wider smile before Carol cleared her throat. “Yes?”

“We think we have a workaround. Loki can help set up a temporary link to the Bifrost apparatus in the Sanctum Santorum that Stephen has been allowing the Asgardians to set up. It’s the one that’s the most complete. And I’ve made sure your soul mate will be waiting. Apparently, he’s having a sandwich at the moment,” Carol said.

Clara nodded. “Good. Good.” She took a deep breath. “Anything I can do to help?” she asked, uncrossing her arms and reaching for the elastic band on her wrist to pull her hair back.

“A quick lesson on TARDIS technology and how the console works should be sufficient,” Loki said. “If you show me where I can find what I need, we can get you to New York City with few problems.”

“No problems will be better,” Clara said.

“We have yet to do more than transport messages with this adapted technology,” Loki pointed out. “The space travel portion has been done with Carol’s help. But Heimdall himself is at the Sanctum Santorum right now. They’ve gotten the person to place travel working well down on Earth. This is the first time going out into space and he wants to make sure you come through just fine. You’re in the safest of hands.”

“Good,” Clara said, letting go of her hair as it was in some semblance of a smooth ponytail. “Alright, let’s get started, then.” Loki came over to her and she began doing quick explanations of the various functions, trying to ignore the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. This had to work.

It had to.

[dingdongsnogbox]

Bedtime Stories

Chapter: 2/?

Rating: M

Word Count: 1891

Description: When the Doctor shows up at Clara’s flat one Wednesday afternoon, he’s surprised to find the place empty. Deciding to wait for her to return home, he takes it upon himself to occupy his time by routing through her things. What happens when he stumbles upon a racy book stashed underneath Clara’s pillow?

Author’s Note: So apparently I wrote most of this a year ago and only just found it lying around on my computer... 20 minutes later and I’ve finished it off and now it’s here for anyone who’s still interested in reading this story. I think the award for the longest time taken to update a fanfic ever definitely goes to me...

The Doctor strides up to the TARDIS console purposefully and promptly pulls down on the leaver to send the ship into flight. He doesn’t go far; just takes her to drift in the vortex. Sort of like the equivalent of storming out of one’s own home, only to find one has nowhere to go and winding up hovering about outside uselessly. The Doctor has never been particularly good at storming off and thinks he’s done well to even dematerialise the TARDIS out of Clara’s flat.

“Well, I think I’ve certainly surpassed myself in terms of downright stupid ideas today, hey old girl?” He gazes up at the ceiling of the console room as he finally acknowledges the sheer idiocy of the situation he’s landed himself in. In response, he feels something distinctly resembling amusement tickle the edges of his mind from his ship. The Doctor rolls his eyes. “I should have known you’d be on her side. You women are always ganging up on me.” He remarks as he spins away from the console.

Now all he has to do is solve this mess he’s gotten himself into. There is of course the option of taking a quick trip into the distant future, finding an erotic novel and passing it off as something he’d written himself, but somehow the Doctor can’t quite bring himself to deceive Clara in such a way. Besides, anything written by a human is bound to be pure drivel anyway.

With a resigned sigh, he ponders his options and decides that to write a book, one must first conduct an extensive amount of research. Thankfully, research is an area he is particularly skilled in. Unthankfully, he does not fancy conducting extensive research into this particular area. No, that definitely won’t do. He’ll have to make do with researching existing books within the genre and go from there. He briefly ponders the thought of paying a visit to the library onboard the TARDIS, but dismisses the idea as quickly as it comes. Whilst there’s undoubtedly some literature with a hint of an erotic nature lying around in there, the Doctor likes to consider himself above keeping a collection of such books.

First stop: the nearest bookshop. Well… strictly speaking that could be any bookshop really what with the whole ship that travels anywhere in time and space thing and all, but some locations are easier to land accurately in than others. 21st century London is always an easy one and there’s bound to be no end of bookshops stocking inappropriate novels there. London bookshop it is.

When they land, the Doctor sticks his head out of the TARDIS doors to examine his surroundings. A dank alleyway greets him, and he promptly exits the ship to take a closer look at the street sign in order to remember where exactly he’s parked. It wouldn’t be the first time he forgot where he’d parked the TARDIS, and the idea of wandering around looking for the ship whilst carrying a collection of erotic fiction is far from an appealing one.

Once satisfied that he’s aware of where they are, he leaves the alleyway and strolls out onto a relatively busy street. Conveniently, almost directly opposite the alleyway sits a large, yet somewhat rundown bookshop. Perfect. With a smile, the Doctor makes a mental note to congratulate himself on his excellent piloting skills later.

The inside of the shop is brimming with wall-to-wall books of every genre. Each section is vaguely categorised by a faded sign above the shelves and the Doctor makes a beeline for the one which reads ‘romance’. There, he begins to scan the shelves, skimming the title of each book with a frown of concentration. Unfortunately, the titles seem to give him little clues as to the actual contents of the books. The Doctor is about to resign himself to taking out each one and reading the blurb in the hope of finding those which might be on the more er… exotic side when he catches sight of a sign which reads ‘erotica’ off towards the right. Bingo.

He doesn’t bother to read the titles of the books, simply starts to drag them off of the shelves one by one until half of the section is empty and he can no longer see where he’s walking from behind a precarious tower of inappropriate literature.

Miraculously, he manages to find his way to the checkout desk without falling over anything or bumping into anyone and promptly sets the pile of books down in front of him with a soft thud. The woman behind the counter eyes the collection with a raised eyebrow and slightly widened eyes, clearly alarmed by his choice of purchases.

“You want to buy all of these?” The young woman asks, voice laced with mild disbelief. The Doctor stares at her as though she possesses all of the brain capacity of a turnip. “Well I didn’t carry them all over here just for fun.” He answers dryly and the woman, clearly taken aback by the bluntness of his response, simply ducks her head and begins to scan and bag up the books. The Doctor frowns slightly and wonders if this has something to do with that being nice thing Clara is always babbling on about…

He’s in the middle of pondering over whether he ought to try to engage the woman in further conversation when she interrupts him to state how much his purchase totals to and he hands her over a wad of money without another word. He isn’t often in the habit of keeping money on his person, but he keeps an amount stashed away onboard the TARDIS for emergencies. Buying a bookshop’s entire collection of erotic literature is clearly one such an emergency. The woman behind the counter accepts the cash with some muttered thanks and the Doctor begins to gather up the numerous carrier bags of books that are now sat gathered on the counter in front of him. It’s a struggle but, somehow, he manages to hold all of them at once and hurries rapidly out the shop door and back towards the TARDIS.

Once inside the ship, he practically begs her to move the library as close as physically possible to the console room so that he doesn’t wind up hauling his ridiculous collection of carrier bags along miles and miles of corridors. The TARDIS, for a change, decides to be generous and he finds the door to the library off to the right, a couple of doors down from the console room.

Off to the left-hand side of the extensive room is a large wooden desk, and it’s here that the Doctor empties out the entire contents of his carrier bags in an unceremonious heap. There. Now all that’s left to do is go through the pile and try to figure out what on Earth he’s actually going to write about…

*******************************************************************************************

Two hours in and after reading the words ‘engorged member’ for what feels like the millionth time, the Doctor tosses yet another book over his shoulder into the growing pile of discarded novels behind him. “Humans. You’d think with all of the canoodling they get up to that they’d actually be capable of writing about it, but apparently, that’s too much to ask of a bunch of pudding-brains.” He remarks to himself with an exaggerated sigh.

The Doctor thinks to himself that if he has to read one more poorly written description of ham-fisted foreplay then he might actually select the largest of the novels in the pile and proceed to beat himself over the head with it. It rapidly becomes too much to bear and the Doctor swiftly pushes himself up from the desk.

“Well, you know what they say old girl. If you want something done properly, ask a Time Lord to do it for you.” He speaks to his ship with a grin and feels what seems distinctly like an eye roll in response. One of these days, somebody around here will actually appreciate his wit.

Deciding that it’s about time he starts attempting to write this dreadful book, the Doctor seeks out another desk free from pornographic clutter and seats himself at it with a stack of paper and a pen. He could have done the human thing and used a computer, but he’s a little old fashioned and finds that his superior writing speed hardly makes it an inconvenience to write the whole thing out by hand.

His pen moves to form the cursive lettering that reads ‘Chapter One’ at the top of the first sheet of paper, and then begins detailing the beginnings of his story about an enigmatic, scarily handsome Rockstar from outer space who happens upon a petite, bossy young woman who knows exactly how to put him in his place…

*******************************************************************************************

He’s been writing for some time, when the Doctor hits a mental block and freezes with pen on paper. Despite bragging to Clara about his extensive knowledge in the area, it has actually been a while since he last engaged in… relations with anyone and he finds himself stuck as to the correct response one might give to the situation his story is currently depicting. Frowning to himself, he tries to conjure up the words to describe the reaction he’s looking for and repeatedly comes up short. Blast.

Then an idea pops into his head and he’s jumping out of his seat and running out of the library before the rational part of his brain can catch up and explain to him exactly why said idea is one of the less intelligent ones he’s had.

Back in the console room, the Doctor plugs in the coordinates for Clara’s flat and sends the TARDIS into flight. Moments later, the ship has materialised back in her bedroom and the Doctor is striding out through the doors.

“Clara?” He calls out, his Scottish accent thick as he annunciates her name.

On cue, she appears from the living room with what appears to be a smug grin on her face. “Given up already, have you?” She teases with her arms folded across her chest.

“Not exactly.” He responds, eyeing her calculatingly.

“Well then, where is this master-,” her words die in her throat to be replaced with a sharp intake of air as the Doctor closes the distance between them, winding his arms around her waist and bringing his lips down to suck hard at the soft skin of her throat.

“Doctor-,” Clara manages to squeak out, the word tinged with a mixture of shock and a hint of arousal. In fact, the Doctor feels her go slightly weak in his arms and tilt her head back ever so slightly in encouragement, before she seems to catch herself and places her hands forcefully against his chest.

“What the hell are you doing?!” She exclaims, eyes wide in alarm.

Now, with his gaze on her face, the Doctor takes the time to note the pink flush that has crept over her face and neck and the way her breathing rate has substantially increased. He flashes her what can almost be described as a cheeky smirk and answers: “research, Clara.” And with that, he turns on his heel and walks straight back into the TARDIS, dematerialising and leaving a flabbergasted Clara Oswald in his wake.

[whovianfeminism]

Whovian Feminism Reviews “Twice Upon A Time”

Letting go is always the hardest part. And yet, letting go is how this show survives. We have to let go of Doctors and companions, TARDIS windows and sonic devices, and producers and showrunners to let new ones come in. It’s how Doctor Who has survived for 54 years. Change and go on, or die as we are, as the Doctor would say. But it doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier. "Twice Upon a Time” gave us an episode filled with both sadness and hope, a perfect balance between a heartfelt goodbye to Peter Capaldi and a generous welcome to Jodie Whittaker.

To prepare for this historic regeneration, we’re brought all the way back to another iconic regeneration -- the very first one. After playing William Hartnell himself in An Adventure in Space and Time, David Bradley returns to Doctor Who to play the First Doctor in “Twice Upon A Time.” His portrayal of the First Doctor is incredibly well done, recreating the feel of Hartnell’s performance while also providing his own subtle interpretation of the role. In the unseen moments between the First Doctor’s escape from the Cyberman ship and his regeneration in the TARDIS, Steven Moffat slips in a story about how he, too, might have resisted regeneration.

Although it doesn’t quite break the fourth wall, I can’t recall an episode of Doctor Who that acknowledges quite as much as “Twice Upon a Time” that we are, in fact, watching a television show. The “Previously...” opener doesn’t just show us an abbreviated version of “The Tenth Planet,” it tells us that it took place 709 episodes ago. Black and white footage from “Tenth Planet” is show in its original, smaller dimensions before it beautifully transitions from Hartnell’s Doctor to Bradley’s Doctor, in color and in modern television dimensions. 

There’s also a bit of a retrospective on the era and the actor which influenced the character of the First Doctor. Though this is a show about an alien time traveller, Doctor Who has always been a product of the people of its time, and has reflected their biases and prejudices. This was something that Steven Moffat was very aware of when writing his version of Hartnell’s Doctor. He told SFX magazine that the First Doctor reflected "old fashioned attitudes” in ways that stand out to modern audiences but were “normal and invisible” at the time. And instead of ignoring that, he tried to embrace it and confront it head on. 

The first Doctor has several astounding moments that lay his sexism bare in “Twice Upon A Time,” several of which are grounded in comments and actions from previous stories. The First Doctor threatens to give Bill a “jolly good smacked bottom,” which is exactly what he threatened Susan with in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” (a line which Hartnell may have improvised himself). And the First Doctor mentions to both the Twelfth Doctor and Bill about how he expects female companions to clean up the TARDIS and fetch him things. That moment is handled much better than a similar one from “The Five Doctors,” where the Fifth Doctor asks a very offended Tegan to “humor” the First Doctor when he makes a similar demand of her.

Although I understand and appreciate what Moffat was attempting to do, I have to admit that after the fourth or fifth sexist comment it began to feel overplayed. His point could have been made with just one or two lines. Eventually, they began to actively detract from my enjoyment of “Twice Upon a Time.” The last thing I wanted to hear in the episode introducing Jodie Whittaker was two men sniggering over how all women are made of glass, even if they were clearly in the wrong. Hartnell and the First Doctor were hardly progressive, and it’s perfectly reasonable to want to address that. But to have some of the worst moments of that era of Doctor Who thrown so frequently in your face was just exhausting. 

And yet, I have to admit there might be a generational difference here. I later watched "Twice Upon a Time" with my mother, who's just one year younger than Moffat, and she actually appreciated those moments. She grew up watching the same era of television as Moffat did, and remembered just how pervasive and accepted those sexist attitudes and comments were. These types of comments were already outrageously outdated and caricaturish by the time I was watching television in the 90s. But they were the background radiation of the media my mom consumed at a young age -- a poison in the foundation of our current media that we are still, generations later, trying to clear out. She felt it was important to have those moments called out for what they were, instead of letting them be swept away and forgotten. 

And she felt that those moments perhaps revealed the endemic bigotry that kept a woman Doctor from being able to come forward earlier. Is it really believable that an alien time traveller would believe it is appropriate to spank a grown woman or would be befuddled by lesbians? No. Is it also believable that an alien capable of totally changing their physical appearance has only ever appeared as a white man? No. But did we really need to belabor the point and escalate the problematic comments? From my perspective, no. 

Between three Doctors and two regenerations, we hardly have any time for Bill Potts, who makes a re-appearance to help urge the Doctor towards regenerating. Although it’s always a delight to have Pearl Mackie back on our screens, Bill is unfortunately not much more than a plot device in “Twice Upon a Time.” She’s used as a tool by the Testimony to either manipulate or understand the Doctor. She asks the right questions so the Doctors can provide us with exposition. And she’s there to put in the emotional labor to convince the Twelfth Doctor that he should regenerate. Bill does have moments of charm but ... that’s it. Moments. In the end, nothing much has changed since “The Doctor Falls.” She still lacks a satisfying story arc that is wholly her own, and exists almost entirely to further the Doctor’s arc. It makes me long even more for the next season of Doctor Who, where a woman will be the lead protagonist and a woman of color will be one of her companions, and it will be much harder to make their stories center around white male characters.

But for the time being, this is still Peter Capaldi’s story, and I cannot begrudge him the incredible ending that he so justly deserved. The man who was introduced as the Doctor while holding his lapels in an imitation of Hartnell ends his tenure by encouraging the First Doctor towards regeneration. The man who began by creating a “darker, less user-friendly” Doctor lands on his defining ethos: “Be kind.”

There is fear and sadness here, too. Regenerating isn’t dying, but it is an ending, and both of the Doctors are afraid of what comes next. The First is afraid of who he might become. The Twelfth is afraid that he might never leave the battlefield. But they still get another chance at life — which is why it is so very fitting to put them up against a British Army Captain from WWI, who is facing a very real and very final death. He was resigned to his death, until the Doctors accidentally gave him hope. Now he’s had time to think about everything he will lose, and he is afraid.

But kindness underlies everything. The Doctor pushes time forward to save a stranger’s life, relying on the simple and yet extraordinary kindness two armies showed each other in the middle of a brutal war. That selfless act of kindness gives the First Doctor the courage and conviction to regenerate. The Testimony allows the Twelfth Doctor to see his companions one last time and restores his memories of Clara Oswald, giving him peace. But it is one more call for help, one more act of kindness, that finally convinces the Twelfth Doctor he must regenerate. 

His final triumphant speech epitomized the Twelfth Doctor, and the man who played him. Peter Capaldi will be remembered above all for being one of the kindest, most generous actors to ever pilot the TARDIS. He understands intimately what it is like to be a fan of the show, and what the Doctor means to so many. He was generous with his time and went the extra mile to show his appreciation. And he never, ever gave a condescending answer to children. His final lines about how children can hear the Doctor’s name came directly from his answer to a young fan at an episode screening. 

I’ll admit that I have never before cried at a Doctor’s regeneration. During Capaldi’s, I sobbed. Bill was right — the hardest part of knowing the Doctor is letting him go.

Enormous credit has to be given to Rachel Talalay for creating such a gorgeous episode. I feel like I say that every time I review one of her episodes, and yet it has never been more true. She faced such a variety of challenges in this episode, from faithfully recreating scenes from the 1966 story “The Tenth Planet” to a grim and damp WW1 battlefield, from spaceships and glass ladies to explosions galore. And never is an opportunity wasted to turn what could be a simple scene into a work of art. When the two Doctors first meet at the South Pole, the scene is infused with the shifting, changing blues and greens of the Aurora Australis. When the Twelfth Doctor is considering whether or not to regenerate, the sky is filled with a fading golden light.

And never has a regeneration been quite as incredible as Jodie Whittaker’s. Most regenerations are efficient -- one Doctor burns or fades (or sneezes) into the next, and he plunges straight into a new adventure. But Whittaker is revealed in a mix of intimate glimpses and long, slow shots. We see her lit from behind, standing amongst smoke and light. We see her stumbling to see her own reflection, our first glimpse of regeneration from the Doctor’s perspective. Each scene, beautiful on its own, builds up our anticipation until we finally get our first full reveal of the Thirteenth Doctor. It’s a regeneration that will be remembered as being truly iconic.

Steven Moffat may never have cast a woman to play the Doctor himself, but he has been laying the groundwork within the narrative of the show for a woman Doctor for a very long time. And in an episode that could’ve been focused solely on memorializing Capaldi and Moffat’s time on the show, they both instead provided an incredible generous welcome to Jodie Whittaker.

“Twice Upon a Time” is, above all, a story about letting go. The First Doctor believes it is courageous to simply live and die as himself, but it is later revealed to be fear — and perhaps vanity and selfishness too. The viewers know, from seeing all the Doctors who have followed, that he has so much left to do. There are so many adventures to be had, planets to be saved, and friends waiting to be known. Things can’t end with the First Doctor.

But it’s not just the Doctor who needs to hear this —it’s the viewers too. We all have favorite eras and favorite Doctors, and that’s okay. But some fans go even further to say that the show should have ended after their favorite time or Doctor, as if because they got no enjoyment out of what followed that it held no value for anyone else. To end the story now, to deny all those stories that are waiting to be told, is selfishness.

Some are just nervous or afraid about what comes next. And that’s okay. I won’t deny I’m nervous about what the future holds too. But “Twice Upon a Time” has a message for us too — this is a chance worth taking. We wouldn’t have Peter Capaldi if someone didn’t take a chance on Patrick Troughton, or all the men who followed him. 

Jodie Whittaker is a chance worth taking. 

The Doctor has to grow and change, or the show will die. This is a change that brings the character forward into a new and exciting direction. This opens up a whole new universe of stories, and gives another wonderful actor a chance to define the role. And it gives a whole new generation of young girls and boys a new hero to look up to.

In one beautifully delightful moment, we get a glimpse of Jodie Whittaker and the Doctor she might be. And I cannot wait to see where we go from here. 

[smillingcartoonist]

TV Shows that I Watched in 2017

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2 Episodes)

I Nearly forget that I watch this ! I Watched 2 episodes and then something happened to my computer, I don’t remember what ! but I lost interesting, and still with no interesting what so ever to continue watching.  

Samurai Jack (Season 5)

This wasn’t my favorite cartoon back in the day so I wasn’t expecting much out of it ,but oh man ! Turn out to be a really good ! a much more mature story line, I got a little down by the end, But I think it end really well ! The whole story of Jack dealing with his failure and his own wish for Death was pretty interesting, when all of that was solved it kinda drop the ball a little ! and Visually too, by the end the visual aspect of the show is gone ! I remember that some people are really worried about if Ashi and Jack are gonna end up together,well this is tumblr,this is what really important here !! I don’t know/care about the general opinion about the ending of the show, but I guess for other people if doesn’t go the way they want they will rage about it ! which is pretty stupid ! after the success of this revival, some other shows announced a revival,First Invader Zim and then Hey Arnold, The Arnold movie come out just recently,But Invader Zim is still with no date of release,that’s a bummer.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Season 1)

If we talk about fidelity to the material which was originated, this version of Ghost In the Shell is the more faithful adaption of the comic ! Mamoru Oshii movie was good, but It kinda goes really far from the manga, like this version got more of the political and crime drama that the comic had and it’s more appropriated to the show. The Major of this version is more like the Major of the comic, she have a pretty humorous personality, way more in the comic, The tachikomas are in here and the the whole section 5 appears in most episodes, even trough the main focus is on The Major,Batou and Ishikawa,most on him ! I guess because he’s the most Human Character in the team !

The Show is divide in a main line story,The Laughing Man case, and some others cases, that later on some of they get integrated into the main story, overall is pretty good, I can’t think of something bad about this show, everything is really well craft, expect to the Major Child Spare body,why the fuck she have that ? Why she use that ? That’s was really weird !! Other think that is good and deserve some credit is the dub, the English dub is really good,but only for the main characters,everyone else have a mediocre or bad dub, In fact it was really hard to find subs for this show ! 

Doctor Who (Season 10)

This season was bad ! The First half of episodes are ok,but the second is just the worst ! and this season got the worst season Finale so far ! Let’s break this shit down !!

Let’s start with Bill, did she have a arc of a story in this show ?? for most of the time she was just there ! either something happen to her and the doctor have to save her or she was there to do something and say something, but outside of that, she doesn’t have a story ! in comparison to another character like Martha from Season 3,she did have a story, she began travailing with the Doctor,she kinda fall in love with him but he doesn’t love her, things happens and Martha and the doctor solve it ! and by then end she quits because the Doctor doesn’t love her and she get on her life,it’s kinda lame but at least it have some goods reasons, Bill story is like What ?? She travel with the doctor,die and becomes a cyberman, die again and become a liquid alien and then she goes way because the doctor is Dead and her Crush come to get her ?! Is that even a conclusion ? Nardole was even worse, he’s boring, he is a boring comic relief, he was pretty funny on the Christmas specials,but on this he’s like the Doctor’s mom ! and he also have nothing to do ! most of the episode he appear he doesn’t  do anything, So Why put him in there ??

The First half episodes are good, they are most involving the relationship between the Doctor and Bill, again Jamie Mathieson write a really good episode “Oxygen”probably the best episode of this season even trough I don’t think it was his best episode ! Extremys was also good, even trough it had some of the over the top stuff that Moffat like to put ! The Doctor meeting the Pope, The Doctor Fuck the pope, a female Pope ? for some reason they keep trying to make that Doctor have bang half of the universe ! I was expecting at some point Matt Smith say to Clara “hey Clara did I Tell you about when I Bang Joana D’arc ?” and also anything that happens in this episode got nothing to do with the next, Why the monks are running this specific scenario ?? Why they let they own Computer send a warning to the Doctor ?? 

 The Other half of episode is when things start to fall apart, “the Pyramids at the end of World” still a solid episode even trough the most convenient thing happens at the end to let the story have a third part ! This Third part is a Failure,they had a really good premise “the Monks have brainwash humanity to believe they are they rulers and the Doctor is on they side” This could be a really good episode, but turns out to be bullshit, turns out the Doctor is faking he do a faking regeneration just to fuck with Bill, also they really exploit the fact that this is the last season of Capaldi and think they audience are a bunch of idiots that don’t know that will only happens in the last episode ! At least the scene with Michelle Gomez was good !  Mark Gatiss write another bad episode so fuck it,  The Eaters of Light was really good, after two really bad episodes it’s refreshing to have a episode with Doctor Who stuff on it !! and then The Season Finally comes in, World Enough and Time was pretty good, even trough I Got a big issue with The Doctor saying that he have a Crush on the Master when they are children, was that really Necessary ?? did Moffat had to do this so he could appeal the hearth of some horny teenager girl Out there ? did the Doctor really need to say “Oh he was my fundamental school crush”, Was that necessary,no ! Fuck You Steve !! But that’s not even the tip of the Iceberg ! The problems get worse on the last Episode !

The Doctor Falls his the lamest Season Finale so far !! This episode is a soap novel that doesn’t go anywhere !! and also they keep showing the Doctor Contenting his regeneration, Oh he can do that now ? yeah I Guess he can, and only now !! Why Bring John Simm back if you not gonna do anything with him ?? The Only thing that he do is Flirt with Gomez and then shoot her in the back, also that, You expect that Missy story will have some kinda of nice conclusion,Oh ! Missy is turning good ? she will have some kinda of redemption at the end,that since interesting, but Moffat have to end that in a lame way with he Master Shooting himself, Oh ! God Moffat ! get your dick out of our mouth !! that was terrible and we something even worse ! You have the lamest Deus Ex-Machina that I Ever seeing,so the Doctor is dead,cyberBill is about to die and then The Liquid alien girl appears at the end and just transform Bill into another liquid alien, Because she can do that of course !! if this chick could appear anytime to help she could appear sometime before all this shit happens,or even in some other episode where Bill was in danger and she could help, But any way, she get then make in the Tardis,How ??, and she just happens to know how to pilot the Tardis,because she is a Dues Ex-Machina !! and then Bill leaves the Tardis seeing “Yeah Doctor that was fun,But your Dead Now,and my Crush have come pick me up, so Bye !” and the she leaves, The doctor wake and say some embarrassing and unnecessary stuff and go outside the Tardis to Scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in the snow,because he acting like a kid and does not want to regenerate. Man ! That was terrible ! Fuck You Steven Moffat !!

American Gods (Season 1)

Adaptation of a book,written by Neil Gaiman,Book that I read in the beginning of the year and I Like reading it,maybe it was the last Book that read this year ! I don’t remember ! But anyway, I Liked this show overall,really competent adaption,just some things i Think Like: Anansi is not a elderly pervert man,that was the whole reasons I like that character,because he was grumpy and every line he insulted Shadow. Other thing I didn’t like was the among of gratuity sex scenes in the show,there is not that among of fucking in book, there is this scene where Bisquis Pussy vore this guy in the beginning and some other sex scene later, in the show they put some more of Bisquis eating people for no reason at all !! she also become a important character now,because in the book she appears and then she appears again and die ! 

Michiko To Hatchin (22 Episodes)

Anime is not really my thing, But this year I Try somethings, this and Ghost In the shell are the ones that I Like ! I find this thanks to Tumblr,Yeah !! sometimes you can find good things in this place, It got my attention because of the premise, It happens in Brasil and some Brazilian guy made the sound track, that enough to get me to watch ! and I Like it, one thing I find weird is the Tone of the show, like it begins really cheeky and Funny and on the forth episodes things start to get more serious and then get less serious, and it keeps going like this into the end. The Director of this show Sayo Yamamoto, direct a show that made a huge success last year, specially here on tumblr, the anime about gay ice skating “Yuri on Ice” I kinda wanna watch that now,just because it was directed by her ! By The end of anime I Got that the message was “Girls shouldn’t be running after man that are fucking jackasses” which I think that is true and right !

Ballroom & Youkoso (4 Episodes)

This was the first deception on trying to get on Modern anime ! It is this slice of life with a bunch of dull characters and dull humor, I didn’t like anything about it, the animation too was really dull,like everything in this show was dull for me ! The whole point that I thought it will be interesting was the dancing part ! but when that happens, it’s lifeless, like Finally the dull Protagonist get to Dance and he does a incredible move where he stand still !! don’t move, dance is all about moving and the first he does is not Move !! in the next episode the “I’m the best” character goes dance,furious because the dull protagonist got some fun not dancing on his place, and the you think is gonna be the most awesome thing into the next Dance contest,but there is only 10 seconds of actual dancing and the rest is just flashing images and the crowd cheering, I Get the impression that I should be doing the same but is so dull !! after this I really could care anymore !

Preacher (Season 2)

I Enjoyed This Season a Lot more then the first,Like this season have a lot more of the fell of the comic into it then the first and it’s way more resolved in the adaptation part ! finally Jesse gonna search for god ! the they motivations are different, in the comic Jesse what to find God because pissed with him and the TV show he want to do that because he thinks that he is in some kind of holy mission ! The Humor get’s kinda predictable, Because everyone in the world of Preacher is really nasty and terrible person, so you know that something nasty is gonna happen ! One thing that I find strange was the whole Hitler good man thing,every time that happen is said “No Man! what are you doing !!” in times like this, that’s pretty dangerous !! 

Castlevania (Season 1)

Warren Ellis can do anything, he can write a story about dish washing and it gonna be the most awesome thing ever, it will probably involve a alien abduction or a secret organization plot to kill aliens or supernatural creatures ! any way this was another good show with marvelous quality, the only bummer it is so short, 4 episodes, and when it ends it end out of the no where like “that is, more next year” ! I Just wandering what’s gonna happen in the next season ! if Belmonth is gonna have to fight the monster of Frankenstein and mummy ?! 

Psycho-Pass (20 Minutes)

Din’t even bother to get anything for this ! I Thought this would be a good show, the premise was good, the design of the characters look like shit ! But maybe the story would be good, but when I Finally watch, damn, that was terrible ! the first episode begins with the villan (I guess) wanking about himself and then it goes for some of the stupid anime shit that ever seen ! I Just could care ! after 20 minutes i Just stop the video and said no ! fuck this !!

Twin Peaks (Season 1,2 and 3)

My favorite show of the year !! I Got interesting in it when I saw somethings here on Tumblr,and the I decide to Watch the First episode of the Third season, after watching some episodes I decide to go see the other 2 seasons (To see if anything that I saw it will make sense), that was like 36 episodes or something, for some reasons at the time I got nothing to do so had plenty of time of nothing to do ! I Enjoy most of it, it’s like a Soap Novel with bizarre characters and that managed to get me entreating to watch everything and see what was gonna happens with to does characters,You Know like any other show should be ! But It fells kinda flat after they solve the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, but the whole thing with Window Earl was cool the actor that play him was really good ! I Just wonder how he moved a giant piece of Chest to that, hum that … that place and later they show like 5 people with a crane trying to move that thing from there !

I Also watched the two Movies,Fire Walk with me and The Missing pieces, The Movie are really different from the the TV show, like It doesn’t have space for comedy into it so the Movie is really depressing,You already know what is gonna happen, but even so !! after watching that I watched the Missing Pieces in a vain hope to see if anything that I saw later would make more sense ! Guess what, It Didn’t !! The Missing Pieces is all the scenes that didn’t make to the movie,it also have the scene of the meeting in the Convenience store and the scene with Phillip separated of which other,that for some reasons Lynch decide to put them together to make even less sense !! does that mean that it make sense now ! I Guess !? 

Season 3 was incredible, if I was not terrified I would be laughing my ass off, but after 18 hours of pure surreal stuff did i Understand anything of it, mostly of it no, I saw some theories and it make me fells stupid ! Because there is this whole other thing happen and I didn’t even notice, “I’m a idiot for not noticing that early” I said to my self, and I saw some other theory about how this things that seen out of place and weird are in fact critics to state of America. When I finally saw the ending I was not expecting anything different, I wasn’t expecting to end on a good way, every season didn’t end with a happy ending, so this one should be the same ! What i find incredible was the number of people trying to figured out the meaning behind the ending in a number of way’s, but like It doesn’t matter if you watch all episodes at the same time, you not gonna find anything, the only way to figured out is to Interpreted everything you see and figured out how that work !! You have to think about you saw, But if can’t do that,what are doing watching this then ??

Big Mouth (Season 1) 

I Got interested in this after seeing the two teaser, the first one I laugh once, and the second,that was the ending of the second episode, sold me into it. I find it really funny at some parts and not funny at all in others, all that Thing with Jay and his Pillow I think that was the most surreal stuff that I have seen in years !! even more surreal then Twin Peaks. Maya Rudolph was The Hormone Monstress is the high point of this show,she give a lot Charm to the character. A Lot of people didn’t like this show because it was to offensive for then and too ugly !! But like, all this cartoon show for adults are all really ugly !! so like, so what ??

Mindhunter (Season 1)

I Like a lot of crime investigative stuff, and like most of the show even through there is somethings that kinda seen like they go no where, all that stuff with the tickling, I Though it go to something bigger but it didn’t !! I Though that they will go back to the first case they reject and solve it, but I guess that would be a think for season two. I Like how they handle the arc of the Mindhunter,this whole thing of him being this ambitious agent that want to discovery a new method of investigation and becoming this self centre asshole that thinks that he his the fucking most ! Now that is a Grow of a Character !!

American Vandal (Season 1)

The whole part of the humor of this show kinda feel flat for me, but the investigation stuff is way more engaging, I like how fluid the whole investigation process how they going finding out how everyone in this school have some dirt in then and how that later affect them ! in the end they come to a solution to get the asshole that was false accused set free, but later he get in jail again because he’s just a asshole, But they don’t solve the mystery,Who Draw the dicks ??  My Guess is that was the History teacher,the cool dude that bad mouth the other teacher, I think because the way he storm out of a scene they show in the last episode.

Inuyashiki (3 Episodes)

I already have made fun of the two first episodes of this anime, I was reluctant to continue watching this,after the third episode I was done with this, basically what happen in it is a reminder that Bad guy is bad and good guy is good Nothing else happens,the characters does’t haven anything to them they have no charm or anything,they are this bland person with no expression, I guess that they faces never change,they have the same face every time !! I was really expecting something more out of this !! I Guess that I don’t have the age to watch this animes anymore,I can’t go back be a thirteen old again !!

Genocyber (5 Episodes)

This is some old cult anime stuff, ultra violent and really nonsensical, and some how can be was better any of this other animes that I have watched, is there a lot of more effort put into it by the way,it was kinda fun to watch this and see the stuff happening and just shout to the screen “What ?? Why ?” it made me care that’s the important thing, also the soundtrack is good,is probably the best thing out of it !! 

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (Season 2)

Is kinda sad talk about this,since the show was cancelled, But even so,I don’t have enjoyed this season as more then the first one, It was funny and all,but the whole fantasy world don’t have got me, and this whole another plot of Dirk trying to be a normal Detective didn’t land well for me.I Think that the Third Season out have turn out to be great, also this thing of turning that Computer guy into the antagonist was kinda surprising and out the nowhere !! Also The Creator of the Show Max Landis was accused of Sexual harassment recently, Guess that’s way the show was cancelled !!    

The Young Pope (Season 1 ??)

From all the shows here,this is the one that got the best cinematography of them all !! really stunning photography, Jude Law give a incredible performance in this show,I Guess that i never seen anything else with him,But anyway he’s just awesome ! They gave him a bunch of huge speech to him, so there are some incredible long scene of Jude Law talking about how his character is awesome and can do anything ! also I was kinda confused watching, the initial speech that he give on his dream confused me when he was taking decision that are the opposite from early, I was thinking that he was just pretending to be a huge asshole when in fact he is a huge asshole !! but also sometimes not a total jackass and by the end he have some kind of redemption ! that I don’t understand if they want to make a Season 2 out of this,the whole story of Jude Law is done what more can you go far from this ? But if they wanna do it I’m Fine with this !

Dark (Season 1)

My Second favorite show of the year, I Like everything about it,the story,the photography.the music, it’s really well put together, a lot people compared this to Stranger Things,and it’s nothing like it ! Stranger Things is this little light harder show that funny and colorful and Dark it’s just Depressing, It’s this show that nothing is gonna go well and it’s not go end in a happy way, The only problem that I got is that I don’t remember any of the names of the characters I Only know the name of the main kid with the yellow jacket that is Jonas. I’m looking forward to the next Season,the show leave a lot of question open, and I wanna know who is going to be our real protagonist !! Also The Director of this show Baran Bo Odar,is the director of one of the worst movies of this year called Sleepless,which I find weird since this show is so good.

Stranger Things 2 (Why The Two ? Season 2) 

Another Show That I don’t think it make it up for the last one, I not part of the cult of adoration of this serie,but I like it I Think there are good and fun to watch and not this Grater masterpiece that people make up to believe. I felt that the some of the same stuff that happened in the last season is happening again in this, Hysterical Mom is more Hysterical, let’s trash Winona Ryder House in some way ! Friends are not friends anymore and get back being friends !! the rest of it was just ok, they the asshole from the last season not be a asshole anymore,guess I Kinda like him now, which make four of the characters that I like in this show,Him,Dustin, the new Hellboy man and Eleven. I Guess that they could’t stretch this for one more Season,but they did !! What gonna happen in the next season ?! Did they gonna turn the asshole of this season into not a asshole and make him have a affair with the mom of the sour face kid ?! is Dustin gonna have more adventures with the non-asshole cool guy ?! Winona Ryder is goona stop being Hysterical ?! (probably no !) Also they kinda ruined Dustin Character in this season,they turning him into fat kid slop comic relief, I don’t remember him being like that In the last season ?!

Punisher (Season 1) 

The last Show that I watch this year, I enjoyed watching, even trough I Don’t think it had the among of shooting that I wanted to have ! From all this netflix super heroes show’s I only watched this,Jessica Jones and Daredevil,I Really don’t care about the rest, But This show is on pair with Jessica Jones in mine opinion.I don’t know much about The Punisher comics so can’t comment on anything of this part ! I Think that Jon Bernthal is great actor, he really give a good performance making the Punisher into this psycho maniac that want to kill people ! He have great Gutural Scream ! I saw video about Sicario and how Dennis Villanueve put this whole section of in the movie so he could Film Jon acting !! Like he is really good, I Think that he is the perfect Candidate to be a New rambo, If someone ever wanna do a new type of Rambo Movie he would be great there !! shooting people and screaming at the same time !