Incidentally--
So I've been reading about the S4 DW finale.
This is my best strategy for retconning Ten out of canonicity. By this, I mean specifically strategies for denying that Ten is, in fact, the person known as the Doctor, without impacting the canonicity of either Nine or the events of S2-4. (I must specify this because if you need a strategy for retconning Ten out of existence, I've already got a couple and I'd be happy to think up more for you. Also, the simplest and probably still most effective way of denying Ten's canonicity is the more direct, "What series 2?" route.) I also believe I know how recent events with Donna might be addressed within this framework. Yes, I have already thought about it. I enjoy puzzling it out. It actually makes more sense than the actual show all half the time.
Any and all help in hashing out the theory, writing a story, or forcing me to write a story would be met with genuine and heartfelt gratitude.
Right now, if you've glanced at that theory and found it in some way interesting, here's pretty much the only scrap of fic from that scenario I have:
(-)
It doesn't look a thing like a prison cell.
Too lavishly furnished. A bit small, but every square inch is crammed with carpets and wall-hangings and rich chairs and tables and sofas (who is it they think he'll have occasion to entertain?). Mirrors and gilt and aged elegance, opulence so thick he can see how they've all drowned in it. A small computer, seamlessly recessed into the wall; a desk, with possibly the only ballpoint pens on the entire planet: large ones, that write thick, bold lines, because they don't want him near anything that even remotely resembles a point.
It's such a civilized prison. All the comforts, all the luxuries, it's so very humane. It might even be possible to forget the trivial fact that you can't get out.
But he's always had an unusually acute sense of space and time, and he doesn't need anything so dramatic as iron bars to feel the presence of the cage around him.
He taps the too-thick pen against the table. His jailors have done their job with truly scrupulous paranoia; there's hardly a scrap of real metal in the place, much less accessible circuitry, or power lattices or crystals or lenses. They're pretentious enough to serve him his meals on sliver platters, with proper cutlery, but afraid enough of him to count every single piece when they clear it away.
Much as he hates to admit it, he doesn't have a damn thing to work with. Nothing to build on, nothing to start with. He's in a cage and he's got nothing, but he will not be trapped in this place. Not here: never here.
He's escaped from this place before, and he will do it again.
Which only leaves him the question of how.
Out of sheer boredom-- and to distract himself at all possible costs from the conclusion that he's trapped until they slip up-- he starts going through the mail. Nothing from anyone he knows; all the people he ever really knew are dead by now. Just letters from councils and wardens and sub-committes, which appear to actually be cordially welcoming him to his stay and acquainting him with the facilities; why is it that one always finds the most alien things in the universe right at home?
He opens them all anyway, because he isn't exactly busy-- and hang on, the last one appears to contain something besides empty platitudes. Three or four tiny objects concealed within the unusually thick folds of parchment-- he tips them into his sleeve in a minor feat of sleight-of-hand. Surely it escaped the cameras, and the dullard who was no doubt manning them. Well, he'd find out.
The letter is another set of platitudes, enjoining him to see the wisdom of the new policy and assuring him he will be perfectly free as soon as he steps into line. Like all the other letters, except perhaps a bit more fancy, with a rather fetching geometric border.
He can't help but grin, because it's genius, unadulterated and strong. There were few, if any, telepathic translation fields on Gallifrey-- in the city, who would need them? Even the planet was homogeneous enough to render such things unnecessary. And even if this had fallen, by some chance, into the hands of someone who could translate, the code still wouldn't fail: telepathic translation depended on intent, what the other person intended to communicate, and the person who had written this had been thinking quite blandly of lines, of geometric shapes, of four colors and a deadline and how he hated it when a committee demanded a new design for every meeting.
And yet: for anyone who knows the written language, there are red English letters standing out quite clearly against a latticework of multicoloured lines.
We have not all betrayed you, it says.
And in the bottom corner: Get to work!
Who does he know who could have done this? He never had got a clear roster of the dead-- had Romana's loss somehow proved less than permanent? It seems impossible, but he isn't much inclined to trust his sense of the impossible anymore.
How much does it matter? If she'd taught someone, if there were some other scholar, if he'd recklessly looped back on his own timeline, what difference does it make? He's got a lens, two circuit panels, and a match. He gives it a month at most before he's gone.
-
I don't know if I myself can write this, but the things I've been hearing have made me want to. Thing is, I suspect my emotional divorce from the show has just about gone through again for the last time, and given how spectactularly unproductive I've been of late, I think I'd need some fury to get myself through it. I know one person who volunteered to help, but she seems to have disappeared (or have you? I know you've got my e-mail, feel free to impose if you're reading)... Any interest? Advice? Aid? Probably it's a waste of time...
This is my best strategy for retconning Ten out of canonicity. By this, I mean specifically strategies for denying that Ten is, in fact, the person known as the Doctor, without impacting the canonicity of either Nine or the events of S2-4. (I must specify this because if you need a strategy for retconning Ten out of existence, I've already got a couple and I'd be happy to think up more for you. Also, the simplest and probably still most effective way of denying Ten's canonicity is the more direct, "What series 2?" route.) I also believe I know how recent events with Donna might be addressed within this framework. Yes, I have already thought about it. I enjoy puzzling it out. It actually makes more sense than the actual show all half the time.
Any and all help in hashing out the theory, writing a story, or forcing me to write a story would be met with genuine and heartfelt gratitude.
Right now, if you've glanced at that theory and found it in some way interesting, here's pretty much the only scrap of fic from that scenario I have:
(-)
It doesn't look a thing like a prison cell.
Too lavishly furnished. A bit small, but every square inch is crammed with carpets and wall-hangings and rich chairs and tables and sofas (who is it they think he'll have occasion to entertain?). Mirrors and gilt and aged elegance, opulence so thick he can see how they've all drowned in it. A small computer, seamlessly recessed into the wall; a desk, with possibly the only ballpoint pens on the entire planet: large ones, that write thick, bold lines, because they don't want him near anything that even remotely resembles a point.
It's such a civilized prison. All the comforts, all the luxuries, it's so very humane. It might even be possible to forget the trivial fact that you can't get out.
But he's always had an unusually acute sense of space and time, and he doesn't need anything so dramatic as iron bars to feel the presence of the cage around him.
He taps the too-thick pen against the table. His jailors have done their job with truly scrupulous paranoia; there's hardly a scrap of real metal in the place, much less accessible circuitry, or power lattices or crystals or lenses. They're pretentious enough to serve him his meals on sliver platters, with proper cutlery, but afraid enough of him to count every single piece when they clear it away.
Much as he hates to admit it, he doesn't have a damn thing to work with. Nothing to build on, nothing to start with. He's in a cage and he's got nothing, but he will not be trapped in this place. Not here: never here.
He's escaped from this place before, and he will do it again.
Which only leaves him the question of how.
Out of sheer boredom-- and to distract himself at all possible costs from the conclusion that he's trapped until they slip up-- he starts going through the mail. Nothing from anyone he knows; all the people he ever really knew are dead by now. Just letters from councils and wardens and sub-committes, which appear to actually be cordially welcoming him to his stay and acquainting him with the facilities; why is it that one always finds the most alien things in the universe right at home?
He opens them all anyway, because he isn't exactly busy-- and hang on, the last one appears to contain something besides empty platitudes. Three or four tiny objects concealed within the unusually thick folds of parchment-- he tips them into his sleeve in a minor feat of sleight-of-hand. Surely it escaped the cameras, and the dullard who was no doubt manning them. Well, he'd find out.
The letter is another set of platitudes, enjoining him to see the wisdom of the new policy and assuring him he will be perfectly free as soon as he steps into line. Like all the other letters, except perhaps a bit more fancy, with a rather fetching geometric border.
He can't help but grin, because it's genius, unadulterated and strong. There were few, if any, telepathic translation fields on Gallifrey-- in the city, who would need them? Even the planet was homogeneous enough to render such things unnecessary. And even if this had fallen, by some chance, into the hands of someone who could translate, the code still wouldn't fail: telepathic translation depended on intent, what the other person intended to communicate, and the person who had written this had been thinking quite blandly of lines, of geometric shapes, of four colors and a deadline and how he hated it when a committee demanded a new design for every meeting.
And yet: for anyone who knows the written language, there are red English letters standing out quite clearly against a latticework of multicoloured lines.
We have not all betrayed you, it says.
And in the bottom corner: Get to work!
Who does he know who could have done this? He never had got a clear roster of the dead-- had Romana's loss somehow proved less than permanent? It seems impossible, but he isn't much inclined to trust his sense of the impossible anymore.
How much does it matter? If she'd taught someone, if there were some other scholar, if he'd recklessly looped back on his own timeline, what difference does it make? He's got a lens, two circuit panels, and a match. He gives it a month at most before he's gone.
-
I don't know if I myself can write this, but the things I've been hearing have made me want to. Thing is, I suspect my emotional divorce from the show has just about gone through again for the last time, and given how spectactularly unproductive I've been of late, I think I'd need some fury to get myself through it. I know one person who volunteered to help, but she seems to have disappeared (or have you? I know you've got my e-mail, feel free to impose if you're reading)... Any interest? Advice? Aid? Probably it's a waste of time...