Round Two Reviews - Part 24
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Today's Featured Stories Include:
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The Breathing Series by Kaethel
Category: Tenth Doctor, Episode Tag
Characters: Rose, Donna, Jack, Ten
Rating: PG
Details: Four-part series of one-shots, each told in First Person through a different character's eyes, all taking place within the last three minutes of the episode The Stolen Earth.
Why It Rocks:
Time is relative.
When you're little, it moves too slowly. When you're older, it moves quickly. When you desperately want something to happen - it takes forever to get there. When you'd like to avoid the worst, it comes rushing at you with the force of a thousand aeroplanes circling your head.
There was, for the D/R shipper, never any week so slow as the week between The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. And yet - for the four characters involved in that last, penultimate scene, it was begun and ended in a single breath.
Kaethel has given us four short one-shots, all told in first person from each character's POV, in real time, as the events unfold. What I particularly liked about it, though, was that Kaethel went in a very logical order. We start off with Rose, who sets the stage in Keep Breathing. And that's exactly what Rose does - she keeps breathing, through the fear that propells her into the Doctor's world, the joy of seeing him again, and the despair that having found him, he will only die before her eyes.
Rose starts us with the Doctor and Donna exiting the TARDIS; but Donna, the second of the series, starts with them already outside it, just as Donna is about to spot Rose at the end of the street. We forget, I think, that Donna has had a terribly hard day so far.
I remember the way I felt in the Shadow Proclamation headquarters. For a couple of hours, I was the only one left. I had to sit down and think of what I’d lost while he carried on the way he always does.
Is that what it’s like? To be the Doctor? The loneliness weighing on your shoulders, the burden of knowing you’re the last one, that your life is a tiny little spec that can blink out and wipe an entire species out of existence if you die?
It's an interesting comparison - and maybe the first clue we should have had for what lay ahead. The DoctorDonna - two people in the same skin, seeing the world in nearly the same light. Donna's story is called Holding My Breath - and really, that's what Donna has done for a great deal of the season. To hold your breath is to imply that you're waiting for something: hasn't Donna been waiting her entire life for the Doctor? And having found him, isn't she always waiting for what comes next: whether it's Lee in the Library, or Agatha Christie to solve her mystery, or the Doctor to find his way back to Rose. Or, worst of all, to find out why River Song looked at her so oddly.
In a way, it's what they're all doing, at the end - holding their collective breath, waiting to see what happens when the Doctor bursts into flames. Jack's story, Breathless, is a headlong rush into the Doctor's, Last Breath, which tumbles into just that - the last moment, he has, looking at his friends clinging to each other for dear life, desperately watching him to see what will happen, not having any idea what awaits.
And we leave them exactly so - all four of them now holding their breath. Each entirely conscious not of themselves, but of the others: the Doctor focused on not just Rose, but all his companions; his companions focused on him.
(It would be interesting, I think, if Kaethel were to revisit the last story in the series, in which the Doctor tells his version of events. Because surely at the last, he knows what he's going to do, or at least has an idea. Granted, Kaethel wrote and posted these stories before JE actually aired, so she didn't know - but in hindsight, it would be interesting to have some modicrum of hope that the breath he takes isn't necessarily the last.)
But this leads us back to time, and the fact that all four of these fics span a period of what couldn't have been more than three minutes. To all four of them, it's the passage of time that makes the most impression: from Rose's years of searching for the Doctor, to Donna's hours believing she was the last human in existance. Jack's lack of time to explain to Ianto and Gwen, to greet Rose the way he know he should. And for the Doctor, the least amount of time of all, because here he has run out of it.
Time keeps moving, even if they'd rather it not. They all keep breathing, even if as they're afraid one will stop. They count the time in breaths - or maybe their breaths in minutes.
Waiting is unbearable. We’ve already waited so long, too long, but this time, this one time, nothing will stop us. Nothing can stop us. Nothing.
In short, vote for the Breathing Series. It's a carefully structured look at time and how it moves; breathing and how it continues; love and how it endures. It's four views of the same three minutes, told with absolute clarity and steading increasing tension, and it's not only worth the time in reading, and worth the breath you'll hold, it's entirely deserving of your vote.
*
Memory Lapse by Carmen Sandiego Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Donna Noble
Characters: Donna, various characters from Torchwood & SJA & Classic Who.
Rating: Teen
Details: Fourteen chapters, post-JE fixit fic in more ways than one.
Why It Rocks:
The story "Memory Lapse" isn't so much about memory as it is about loss - and not just loss of memory, but of everything in general. Among the things that the Doctor has lost, the most important is his own sense of belonging, and how the destruction of Gallifrey affected him. After all, even if the Doctor never really liked Gallifrey or the other Time Lords, he at least still belonged to them, and they to him.
At the end of Journey's End, however, the only that that still remains of his belonging is in his memories. For a brief time, those memories, that sense of belonging, also belonged to Donna. And because of that, even if there was no Gallifrey any longer, they at least both belonged to each other, in the theory that they both had once belonged to to Gallifrey. (Or would have, in Donna's case.)
(Which, if you look at it that way, could turn the Doctor into a fairly dark character - does he take those memories from Donna, because he actually wants to be alone in his belonging? Or is it really to save her mind from the madness? Now, there's a plot bunny for you. Donna does tell the Doctor, around the middle of the fic, "You're afraid I'll hate you, and that I could end up hating myself." It's as good a reason as the Doctor ever has for doing what he did to her - as much has he can't bear the thought of Donna dying, he also can't bear the thought that someone he loves would ever not feel the same about him or themselves.)
Memory Lapse starts off as a typical fixit-fic, in which various ex-companions of the Doctor attempt to discover why Donna's memories have been erased. It's fantastically constructed, with each group (Sarah's kids, Jack's team) having their own issues surrounding the fallout from the events of Journey's End. Sarah is looking for the missing Maria and Alan; Jack's team is trying to figure out why there are strange readings in Cornwall.
One of the best parts of the story is the dialog - especially the scenes with more than three people. Each character sounds exactly like themselves, reacts exactly as themselves, and more importantly, has their own agenda at stake:
Mickey raises an eyebrow, gives Jack a pointed look. “How come I wasn’t given any feminine wiles?”
“You got mine,” says Jack.
“He’s very feminine,” murmurs Ianto, over his coffee and not quite under his breath. He flushes slightly at the look he gets from Gwen. “When he wants to be. It’s very nice really. Expressive.”
“Martha,” says Gwen, expression deadly serious, “you have got to stay. I need someone sane to talk to around here.”
“Heh,” objects Mickey.
“New boy,” says Gwen.
I can very much see Gwen standing there, tossing a "new boy" at Mickey (as she does periodically through the fic), as a reminder or a warning or for no reason in particular at all.
But lest you all think it's fun and games and tossing insults at Mickey, the theme of loss and its connection to memory does permeate the entire story. Starting, of course, with Donna, but even Mickey has his own issues:
...it had been Jake’s death that’d made him realise exactly where his place was over there, and that when he didn’t have Jake anymore, there really wasn’t much of anything left for him in that world....Mickey closes his eyes, and it’s the stupid, brilliant things he remembers, and he smiles.
Mickey had to deal with not only the loss of Jake in the parallel world, but also the loss of his grandmother - but he, at least, still has the memories of them to make him smile. It's the same with most people - you lose something precious, but you still carry the memories with you.
This, in contrast, with Donna, who had something fantastically precious, but can't remember a thing - it doesn't sit well. In fact, it's enough to give her nightmares:
But there were other things, wonderful, brilliant, exhilarating things, but when she reaches for them now they slip away like grains of sand between her fingers. There was a majesty to her nightmares, she remembers, a terrible, shining majesty and a feeling, something magnificent, something... special.
The nightmares are, of course, Donna's memories trying to resurface; and as in Human Nature, Donna writes them down. She herself begins to see the connections, and starts to ferret them out in the world around her - which leads her smack into the mystery in Cornwall. Which is when it gets really twisty. It's not just an ordinary alien mystery in Cornwall, you see.
To sum up: “So,” says Martha, “we’ve got aliens in a castle, Daleks in the sea, Alan and Maria missing, Donna vanishing in front of our eyes and absolutely no sign of the Doctor.”
“Yup,” says Sarah Jane cheerfully, “it’s definitely one of those days.”
Memory Lapse, though, is a fixit fic - in more ways than only one. Donna's memory isn't the only thing that needs fixing.
“I thought the whole war had been time-locked, but Dalek Caan managed to make an emergency temporal shift into the first year and was able to get Davros back out, effectively changing an event in the war, and we managed to materialise on Skaro....But what would happen if we tried to get in somewhere else, some pivotal point in the war?”
Does it work? Is the Doctor able to pull Gallifrey back from the brink? Does Donna's memory manage to take hold and stay without her head exploding? And what good is a memory, if there's no one you can share it with, and have it mean something to both of you?
So he begins: "It’s a story about this woman, this ordinary human woman, who had all these adventures all over the place, doing the most amazing things, and she turned out to be the most extraordinary sort of person, in fact, for one moment, she was the most important person in all of creation..."
In short, vote for Memory Lapse. It has Gwen being snarky, Mickey being anything but thick, and Sarah Jane leading the way. It has Shakespeare translated (badly) into Gallifreyan, some seriously twisted medical experiments, and two additional Time Lords you might not have expected. It has car trips and space trips and temporal trips and it ends back where it began, but in a very different way. It very much deserves your vote.
*
Seed Pearls by HonorH Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Classic
Characters: Rose, the Tyler clan, The Doctor, alt!Human!Nine
Rating: Adult
Details: 17 chapters, complete, post-Doomsday AU, set in Pete's World.
...how would you feel if you suddenly realized every single assumption you’d built your life upon was wrong?
Where are you supposed to be right now?
No, I'm not talking about if you should be on the computer reading reviews of fanfic, or doing that homework you're ignoring, or downstairs in the kitchen washing the dishes. I'm going for something more metaphorical. Where are you supposed to be?
And more importantly, who are you supposed to be?
In Seed Pearls, HonorH has given us a very curious riddle: Rose, left in Pete's World at the end of Doomsday, does not belong there. Unlike Mickey or Jackie, there was no Rose-shaped hole for her to fill. The universe makes room for her, yes - but willingly? Not quite.
And the universe, seeing her as something unfamiliar - a wound, if you will - strives to fix the problem. It tries to make Rose fit - and by doing so, alters her memories by changing them.
[She] came to realize that months of her life now existed in her mind as Swiss cheese, full of holes. She couldn’t remember the sound of her second Doctor’s voice, or the color of her first Doctor’s eyes...In their place, she was suddenly remembering a childhood with both parents....And she knew it was all wrong.
To say that Seed Pearls is about Rose, or about Rose without her memories of the Doctor, wouldn't be quite accurate. The loss of memories for Rose is important, don't get me wrong - it's the entire background of the novel, after all - but it's not the whole story. As the Doctor tells us (because he's narrating the story, in a way), Rose is still Rose, even with the wrong memories in her head. All the things she learned and became with the Doctor are still evident in how she thinks and reacts, even if she doesn't quite know why.
Seed Pearls is more about finding your place in the world - even when the world is wrong, or you are wrong in it. A piece of sand lodged in an oyster becomes a pearl. Rose Tyler lodged in Pete's World becomes....dangerous?
Maybe. There's a mystery at foot here, as well. Rose Tyler, twenty-one, has been having nightmares of another world. She feels lost and alone, and has no idea why. And then a mysterious stranger comes up and meets her, carrying a book about the Big Bad Wolf, and tells her a fantastic tale that sounds eerily all too familiar.
Aiden, our requisite bad guy: "This place is not your home. You’ve been shoehorned in, painted with its colors, but the real Rose Tyler is still in you, desperate to get out....[This world] tried to absorb you, to make you a part of it; but the joining is imperfect. Cracks are starting to form. Things are breaking through that shouldn’t."
And here we come to the crux of the story - Rose, knowing she's the sand in the oyster, has a choice. Does she stay, and risk the lives of everyone she knows and loves? Every day she stays, more and more odd things pop through from the other univese - Daleks, and Cybermen, and streets fluxuating in time. She recongizes them all, and doesn't know why.
Yet - she knows this world, remembers going to school and making friends and having Pete take her places on her birthday. She can't imagine a London sky without Zeppelins in it, and she's even fallen in love with a man who was instantly familiar at first sight.
(Yep. Alt!Human!Nine, enter, stage left.)
Rose, on her dreams: “On one hand, these feelings and these dreams--it’s all so real. I close my eyes and I can see the Doctor, I can hear his voice, I can even smell him. And there’s part of me that is so desperate to get back to him it’s choking me. But then another part of me says that I’ve got everything here. I’ve got family, friends, work . . . John. How could I leave all that? And am I really making things dangerous for all of them?”
To Rose, to those around her - she belongs squarely in Pete's World. The idea that she might have come from anywhere else is preposterous. But to Rose - whose dreams are becoming more vivid, making more sense in a way, she's beginning to doubt. There's logic, and then there's her heart.
Her heart tells her that something is wrong, has been wrong for the last year or so. Her heart tells her that something is missing - the same heart that tells her that John might be part of the link - John, who she recongized instantly without having met him before. John, who also appears in her dreams, in conjunction with the mysterious Brown-Eyed Man, and makes her feel safe:
His voice was hoarse in her ear, tight with the same longing she felt. She pressed even closer, burying herself in his arms and chest, feeling like she was soaking him up through every pore, and he was filling the emptiness that had haunted her for almost a year.
Rose is a grain of sand in Pete's World, yes - but that world has crusted her over, and fixed the wound. It's turned her into a pearl - and not just her, but John as well. That's what oysters do. In Pete's World, Rose is a pearl; in her own, she was one grain amongst thousands.
And that, perhaps, is why Aiden is targeting her, telling her she must return. Rose, the pearl shining in Pete's World, is different. She's special, she's got a wealth of experience and knowledge that no one else in her current universe can match. Aiden - for whatever his reasons, whatever his ultimate goal - is determined to take her back to where she's not special, not unique.
Which brings us full circle. Where are you now? Is it where you are supposed to be? Are you the unique pearl, shining in the oyster, waiting to reach your potential...or are you the single grain of sand amongst thousands, sitting on the shore?
Where are you now --- and would you be the other, if someone offered you the choice?
In short, vote for Seed Pearls. It's a fascinating read, a fascinating question, and a completely unexpected answer. It's got sex and psychoanalysis, bookstores and first-dates, a story framed by beaches, and a lecture you won't forget. It's a most intriguing look at how pearls are made, and wounds healed, and it is entirely worthy of your vote.
*
Chewing Gum by ElfgirlJen Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: CrackFic
Characters: The Doctor, the Master
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, post LaTL AU where the Master doesn't die.
Why it Rocks:
You have to figure that in 900 years of space-box travel - and a number of those with the Doctor being exiled to Earth, and unable to really do much in the way of travel - there have been some....curious solutions when it came to fixing the TARDIS.
“You used chewing gum to hold the Ohm plates together?” the Master demanded in an amazed voice.
You also have to figure that the Master, who clearly doesn't think much of the Doctor in any case, would be horrified to discover such fix-its. And it's not like we haven't seen the Doctor use chewing gum before. (See Season Two, Rose spitting said fix-it into the Doctor's hand on command.) Granted, this is the same TARDIS that the Master turned into a paradox machine - but by God, it was done with proper parts.
What's most amusing about the fic - because we all shudder to think what the Doctor's done to keep his ship flying - is the three-way conversation. Yes, three-way - not that the TARDIS is exactly talking to either of them. But just as humans have a habit of tacking personalities onto our machines and cars (and who doesn't pat their car after a particularly harrowing stop or near-miss?), the Time Lords seem to have done the same with the TARDIS. I think it's actually less that the Master is appalled by the Doctor's fixes than he is appalled by the Doctor's clear nonchalance about how the TARDIS might feel about them.
“You poor poor thing,” the Master cooed in a sympathetic voice.
“Thank-you,” the Doctor replied, touched by the sympathy in the Master’s voice. It had been difficult being exiled to the 1970s.
“I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the TARDIS,” the Master replied, patting the console.
It's fun, to see the Master caring about something. And it sort of makes sense, actually, that he'd rather care for an inanimate object than an actual living being. He did care for the Toclafane, in his own way. What might have started as a form of "punishment" - the Master fixing the TARDIS that he'd previousy destroyed - has clearly turned into something else. It's not punishment for the Master - it's redemption.
Sort of. With a crackfic twist, of course.
And also, an extremely funny mention of Jack Harkness.
In short, vote for Chewing Gum. It's put together with more than just spit, it has a literally shocking revelation at the end, and it'll keep you in stitches. It's absolutely worth your vote.
*
One Quiet Moment by szm
Category: Jack/Doctor
Characters: Nine, Jack, Rose off-screen
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, set sometime at the end of S1.
Why it Rocks:
It's hard to think of them being still, really. Rose, we can imagine being still, and listening, because she does that quite a bit in the show itself. The Doctor, though, while he may listen, is never really still, not for long. Which isn't to say he isn't observant, but he doesn't need to be quiet in order to notice what goes on around him.
The same can be said for Jack. Jack - especially before he became immortal - was not one for sitting still. I can't even see him sitting still in a post-coital haze for more than two happy minutes; nope, he'd be up on his feet and bouncing around like mad.
So late one night, when Rose is asleep and they've had a long, too-close-to-death day, Jack is buzzing. He can't be still, he can't sleep, he wanders the corridors of the TARDIS, and the only thing that stops him dead in his tracks is this:
It took him a few moments to register the Doctor sitting on the floor opposite the archway Jack had come through. He was leaning against an ivy covered wall, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. Jack took a moment to appreciate the line of his throat. The Doctor had discarded his jacket somewhere and rolled the sleeves of his jumper up. Jack didn’t want to speak. He didn’t want to break the moment.
The Doctor invites Jack to sit next to him - and orders him to remain still. It's kind of like ordering a dog not to wag his tail. (Or ordering a cat to do...well, anything.)
It's while Jack is sitting still that he is able to hear it - the TARDIS's song, and with it, the Doctor humming along. It's a soft, quiet, not-quite-melody that calms Jack's anxious nerves and allows him at last to sleep.
It makes sense, really, that the Doctor would share this with Jack and not with Rose. Rose - apart from being asleep at the time - doesn't need to hear it. She already has the sense of calm peace about her. The Doctor could show Rose this secret singing, yes - but it wouldn't mean quite as much for her, and because of that, it wouldn't mean so much to the Doctor. Teachers don't just teach because they want their students to learn. They teach because by allowing their students to grow, it makes them better, too.
Jack needs the lesson, in a way that Rose does not - and further, the Doctor needs Jack to learn the lesson, in a way that he doesn't need Rose. Rose, at 19, is more sure of herself than Jack is at...well, whatever age he's at. Part of that is because Rose has less living experience under her belt - part of that is Jack's own confusion about his two missing years of memories. Jack doesn't sit still. Jack doesn't look back.
It takes the Doctor's orders - which Jack follows almost without thought - to get Jack to sit, and relax, and listen.
And for what might be the first time - to actually hear.
In short, vote for One Quiet Moment. It's a sweet look at what the two men can do and give to each other. It's a soft melody in a gently lit garden, and it's a breath of clean air in the dark of night. It's absolutely lovely, and it's very much worth your vote.
*
Today's reviews were written by azriona.
Today's Featured Stories Include:
*
The Breathing Series by Kaethel
Category: Tenth Doctor, Episode Tag
Characters: Rose, Donna, Jack, Ten
Rating: PG
Details: Four-part series of one-shots, each told in First Person through a different character's eyes, all taking place within the last three minutes of the episode The Stolen Earth.
Why It Rocks:
Time is relative.
When you're little, it moves too slowly. When you're older, it moves quickly. When you desperately want something to happen - it takes forever to get there. When you'd like to avoid the worst, it comes rushing at you with the force of a thousand aeroplanes circling your head.
There was, for the D/R shipper, never any week so slow as the week between The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. And yet - for the four characters involved in that last, penultimate scene, it was begun and ended in a single breath.
Kaethel has given us four short one-shots, all told in first person from each character's POV, in real time, as the events unfold. What I particularly liked about it, though, was that Kaethel went in a very logical order. We start off with Rose, who sets the stage in Keep Breathing. And that's exactly what Rose does - she keeps breathing, through the fear that propells her into the Doctor's world, the joy of seeing him again, and the despair that having found him, he will only die before her eyes.
Rose starts us with the Doctor and Donna exiting the TARDIS; but Donna, the second of the series, starts with them already outside it, just as Donna is about to spot Rose at the end of the street. We forget, I think, that Donna has had a terribly hard day so far.
I remember the way I felt in the Shadow Proclamation headquarters. For a couple of hours, I was the only one left. I had to sit down and think of what I’d lost while he carried on the way he always does.
Is that what it’s like? To be the Doctor? The loneliness weighing on your shoulders, the burden of knowing you’re the last one, that your life is a tiny little spec that can blink out and wipe an entire species out of existence if you die?
It's an interesting comparison - and maybe the first clue we should have had for what lay ahead. The DoctorDonna - two people in the same skin, seeing the world in nearly the same light. Donna's story is called Holding My Breath - and really, that's what Donna has done for a great deal of the season. To hold your breath is to imply that you're waiting for something: hasn't Donna been waiting her entire life for the Doctor? And having found him, isn't she always waiting for what comes next: whether it's Lee in the Library, or Agatha Christie to solve her mystery, or the Doctor to find his way back to Rose. Or, worst of all, to find out why River Song looked at her so oddly.
In a way, it's what they're all doing, at the end - holding their collective breath, waiting to see what happens when the Doctor bursts into flames. Jack's story, Breathless, is a headlong rush into the Doctor's, Last Breath, which tumbles into just that - the last moment, he has, looking at his friends clinging to each other for dear life, desperately watching him to see what will happen, not having any idea what awaits.
And we leave them exactly so - all four of them now holding their breath. Each entirely conscious not of themselves, but of the others: the Doctor focused on not just Rose, but all his companions; his companions focused on him.
(It would be interesting, I think, if Kaethel were to revisit the last story in the series, in which the Doctor tells his version of events. Because surely at the last, he knows what he's going to do, or at least has an idea. Granted, Kaethel wrote and posted these stories before JE actually aired, so she didn't know - but in hindsight, it would be interesting to have some modicrum of hope that the breath he takes isn't necessarily the last.)
But this leads us back to time, and the fact that all four of these fics span a period of what couldn't have been more than three minutes. To all four of them, it's the passage of time that makes the most impression: from Rose's years of searching for the Doctor, to Donna's hours believing she was the last human in existance. Jack's lack of time to explain to Ianto and Gwen, to greet Rose the way he know he should. And for the Doctor, the least amount of time of all, because here he has run out of it.
Time keeps moving, even if they'd rather it not. They all keep breathing, even if as they're afraid one will stop. They count the time in breaths - or maybe their breaths in minutes.
Waiting is unbearable. We’ve already waited so long, too long, but this time, this one time, nothing will stop us. Nothing can stop us. Nothing.
In short, vote for the Breathing Series. It's a carefully structured look at time and how it moves; breathing and how it continues; love and how it endures. It's four views of the same three minutes, told with absolute clarity and steading increasing tension, and it's not only worth the time in reading, and worth the breath you'll hold, it's entirely deserving of your vote.
*
Memory Lapse by Carmen Sandiego Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Donna Noble
Characters: Donna, various characters from Torchwood & SJA & Classic Who.
Rating: Teen
Details: Fourteen chapters, post-JE fixit fic in more ways than one.
Why It Rocks:
The story "Memory Lapse" isn't so much about memory as it is about loss - and not just loss of memory, but of everything in general. Among the things that the Doctor has lost, the most important is his own sense of belonging, and how the destruction of Gallifrey affected him. After all, even if the Doctor never really liked Gallifrey or the other Time Lords, he at least still belonged to them, and they to him.
At the end of Journey's End, however, the only that that still remains of his belonging is in his memories. For a brief time, those memories, that sense of belonging, also belonged to Donna. And because of that, even if there was no Gallifrey any longer, they at least both belonged to each other, in the theory that they both had once belonged to to Gallifrey. (Or would have, in Donna's case.)
(Which, if you look at it that way, could turn the Doctor into a fairly dark character - does he take those memories from Donna, because he actually wants to be alone in his belonging? Or is it really to save her mind from the madness? Now, there's a plot bunny for you. Donna does tell the Doctor, around the middle of the fic, "You're afraid I'll hate you, and that I could end up hating myself." It's as good a reason as the Doctor ever has for doing what he did to her - as much has he can't bear the thought of Donna dying, he also can't bear the thought that someone he loves would ever not feel the same about him or themselves.)
Memory Lapse starts off as a typical fixit-fic, in which various ex-companions of the Doctor attempt to discover why Donna's memories have been erased. It's fantastically constructed, with each group (Sarah's kids, Jack's team) having their own issues surrounding the fallout from the events of Journey's End. Sarah is looking for the missing Maria and Alan; Jack's team is trying to figure out why there are strange readings in Cornwall.
One of the best parts of the story is the dialog - especially the scenes with more than three people. Each character sounds exactly like themselves, reacts exactly as themselves, and more importantly, has their own agenda at stake:
Mickey raises an eyebrow, gives Jack a pointed look. “How come I wasn’t given any feminine wiles?”
“You got mine,” says Jack.
“He’s very feminine,” murmurs Ianto, over his coffee and not quite under his breath. He flushes slightly at the look he gets from Gwen. “When he wants to be. It’s very nice really. Expressive.”
“Martha,” says Gwen, expression deadly serious, “you have got to stay. I need someone sane to talk to around here.”
“Heh,” objects Mickey.
“New boy,” says Gwen.
I can very much see Gwen standing there, tossing a "new boy" at Mickey (as she does periodically through the fic), as a reminder or a warning or for no reason in particular at all.
But lest you all think it's fun and games and tossing insults at Mickey, the theme of loss and its connection to memory does permeate the entire story. Starting, of course, with Donna, but even Mickey has his own issues:
...it had been Jake’s death that’d made him realise exactly where his place was over there, and that when he didn’t have Jake anymore, there really wasn’t much of anything left for him in that world....Mickey closes his eyes, and it’s the stupid, brilliant things he remembers, and he smiles.
Mickey had to deal with not only the loss of Jake in the parallel world, but also the loss of his grandmother - but he, at least, still has the memories of them to make him smile. It's the same with most people - you lose something precious, but you still carry the memories with you.
This, in contrast, with Donna, who had something fantastically precious, but can't remember a thing - it doesn't sit well. In fact, it's enough to give her nightmares:
But there were other things, wonderful, brilliant, exhilarating things, but when she reaches for them now they slip away like grains of sand between her fingers. There was a majesty to her nightmares, she remembers, a terrible, shining majesty and a feeling, something magnificent, something... special.
The nightmares are, of course, Donna's memories trying to resurface; and as in Human Nature, Donna writes them down. She herself begins to see the connections, and starts to ferret them out in the world around her - which leads her smack into the mystery in Cornwall. Which is when it gets really twisty. It's not just an ordinary alien mystery in Cornwall, you see.
To sum up: “So,” says Martha, “we’ve got aliens in a castle, Daleks in the sea, Alan and Maria missing, Donna vanishing in front of our eyes and absolutely no sign of the Doctor.”
“Yup,” says Sarah Jane cheerfully, “it’s definitely one of those days.”
Memory Lapse, though, is a fixit fic - in more ways than only one. Donna's memory isn't the only thing that needs fixing.
“I thought the whole war had been time-locked, but Dalek Caan managed to make an emergency temporal shift into the first year and was able to get Davros back out, effectively changing an event in the war, and we managed to materialise on Skaro....But what would happen if we tried to get in somewhere else, some pivotal point in the war?”
Does it work? Is the Doctor able to pull Gallifrey back from the brink? Does Donna's memory manage to take hold and stay without her head exploding? And what good is a memory, if there's no one you can share it with, and have it mean something to both of you?
So he begins: "It’s a story about this woman, this ordinary human woman, who had all these adventures all over the place, doing the most amazing things, and she turned out to be the most extraordinary sort of person, in fact, for one moment, she was the most important person in all of creation..."
In short, vote for Memory Lapse. It has Gwen being snarky, Mickey being anything but thick, and Sarah Jane leading the way. It has Shakespeare translated (badly) into Gallifreyan, some seriously twisted medical experiments, and two additional Time Lords you might not have expected. It has car trips and space trips and temporal trips and it ends back where it began, but in a very different way. It very much deserves your vote.
*
Seed Pearls by HonorH Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Classic
Characters: Rose, the Tyler clan, The Doctor, alt!Human!Nine
Rating: Adult
Details: 17 chapters, complete, post-Doomsday AU, set in Pete's World.
...how would you feel if you suddenly realized every single assumption you’d built your life upon was wrong?
Where are you supposed to be right now?
No, I'm not talking about if you should be on the computer reading reviews of fanfic, or doing that homework you're ignoring, or downstairs in the kitchen washing the dishes. I'm going for something more metaphorical. Where are you supposed to be?
And more importantly, who are you supposed to be?
In Seed Pearls, HonorH has given us a very curious riddle: Rose, left in Pete's World at the end of Doomsday, does not belong there. Unlike Mickey or Jackie, there was no Rose-shaped hole for her to fill. The universe makes room for her, yes - but willingly? Not quite.
And the universe, seeing her as something unfamiliar - a wound, if you will - strives to fix the problem. It tries to make Rose fit - and by doing so, alters her memories by changing them.
[She] came to realize that months of her life now existed in her mind as Swiss cheese, full of holes. She couldn’t remember the sound of her second Doctor’s voice, or the color of her first Doctor’s eyes...In their place, she was suddenly remembering a childhood with both parents....And she knew it was all wrong.
To say that Seed Pearls is about Rose, or about Rose without her memories of the Doctor, wouldn't be quite accurate. The loss of memories for Rose is important, don't get me wrong - it's the entire background of the novel, after all - but it's not the whole story. As the Doctor tells us (because he's narrating the story, in a way), Rose is still Rose, even with the wrong memories in her head. All the things she learned and became with the Doctor are still evident in how she thinks and reacts, even if she doesn't quite know why.
Seed Pearls is more about finding your place in the world - even when the world is wrong, or you are wrong in it. A piece of sand lodged in an oyster becomes a pearl. Rose Tyler lodged in Pete's World becomes....dangerous?
Maybe. There's a mystery at foot here, as well. Rose Tyler, twenty-one, has been having nightmares of another world. She feels lost and alone, and has no idea why. And then a mysterious stranger comes up and meets her, carrying a book about the Big Bad Wolf, and tells her a fantastic tale that sounds eerily all too familiar.
Aiden, our requisite bad guy: "This place is not your home. You’ve been shoehorned in, painted with its colors, but the real Rose Tyler is still in you, desperate to get out....[This world] tried to absorb you, to make you a part of it; but the joining is imperfect. Cracks are starting to form. Things are breaking through that shouldn’t."
And here we come to the crux of the story - Rose, knowing she's the sand in the oyster, has a choice. Does she stay, and risk the lives of everyone she knows and loves? Every day she stays, more and more odd things pop through from the other univese - Daleks, and Cybermen, and streets fluxuating in time. She recongizes them all, and doesn't know why.
Yet - she knows this world, remembers going to school and making friends and having Pete take her places on her birthday. She can't imagine a London sky without Zeppelins in it, and she's even fallen in love with a man who was instantly familiar at first sight.
(Yep. Alt!Human!Nine, enter, stage left.)
Rose, on her dreams: “On one hand, these feelings and these dreams--it’s all so real. I close my eyes and I can see the Doctor, I can hear his voice, I can even smell him. And there’s part of me that is so desperate to get back to him it’s choking me. But then another part of me says that I’ve got everything here. I’ve got family, friends, work . . . John. How could I leave all that? And am I really making things dangerous for all of them?”
To Rose, to those around her - she belongs squarely in Pete's World. The idea that she might have come from anywhere else is preposterous. But to Rose - whose dreams are becoming more vivid, making more sense in a way, she's beginning to doubt. There's logic, and then there's her heart.
Her heart tells her that something is wrong, has been wrong for the last year or so. Her heart tells her that something is missing - the same heart that tells her that John might be part of the link - John, who she recongized instantly without having met him before. John, who also appears in her dreams, in conjunction with the mysterious Brown-Eyed Man, and makes her feel safe:
His voice was hoarse in her ear, tight with the same longing she felt. She pressed even closer, burying herself in his arms and chest, feeling like she was soaking him up through every pore, and he was filling the emptiness that had haunted her for almost a year.
Rose is a grain of sand in Pete's World, yes - but that world has crusted her over, and fixed the wound. It's turned her into a pearl - and not just her, but John as well. That's what oysters do. In Pete's World, Rose is a pearl; in her own, she was one grain amongst thousands.
And that, perhaps, is why Aiden is targeting her, telling her she must return. Rose, the pearl shining in Pete's World, is different. She's special, she's got a wealth of experience and knowledge that no one else in her current universe can match. Aiden - for whatever his reasons, whatever his ultimate goal - is determined to take her back to where she's not special, not unique.
Which brings us full circle. Where are you now? Is it where you are supposed to be? Are you the unique pearl, shining in the oyster, waiting to reach your potential...or are you the single grain of sand amongst thousands, sitting on the shore?
Where are you now --- and would you be the other, if someone offered you the choice?
In short, vote for Seed Pearls. It's a fascinating read, a fascinating question, and a completely unexpected answer. It's got sex and psychoanalysis, bookstores and first-dates, a story framed by beaches, and a lecture you won't forget. It's a most intriguing look at how pearls are made, and wounds healed, and it is entirely worthy of your vote.
*
Chewing Gum by ElfgirlJen Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: CrackFic
Characters: The Doctor, the Master
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, post LaTL AU where the Master doesn't die.
Why it Rocks:
You have to figure that in 900 years of space-box travel - and a number of those with the Doctor being exiled to Earth, and unable to really do much in the way of travel - there have been some....curious solutions when it came to fixing the TARDIS.
“You used chewing gum to hold the Ohm plates together?” the Master demanded in an amazed voice.
You also have to figure that the Master, who clearly doesn't think much of the Doctor in any case, would be horrified to discover such fix-its. And it's not like we haven't seen the Doctor use chewing gum before. (See Season Two, Rose spitting said fix-it into the Doctor's hand on command.) Granted, this is the same TARDIS that the Master turned into a paradox machine - but by God, it was done with proper parts.
What's most amusing about the fic - because we all shudder to think what the Doctor's done to keep his ship flying - is the three-way conversation. Yes, three-way - not that the TARDIS is exactly talking to either of them. But just as humans have a habit of tacking personalities onto our machines and cars (and who doesn't pat their car after a particularly harrowing stop or near-miss?), the Time Lords seem to have done the same with the TARDIS. I think it's actually less that the Master is appalled by the Doctor's fixes than he is appalled by the Doctor's clear nonchalance about how the TARDIS might feel about them.
“You poor poor thing,” the Master cooed in a sympathetic voice.
“Thank-you,” the Doctor replied, touched by the sympathy in the Master’s voice. It had been difficult being exiled to the 1970s.
“I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the TARDIS,” the Master replied, patting the console.
It's fun, to see the Master caring about something. And it sort of makes sense, actually, that he'd rather care for an inanimate object than an actual living being. He did care for the Toclafane, in his own way. What might have started as a form of "punishment" - the Master fixing the TARDIS that he'd previousy destroyed - has clearly turned into something else. It's not punishment for the Master - it's redemption.
Sort of. With a crackfic twist, of course.
And also, an extremely funny mention of Jack Harkness.
In short, vote for Chewing Gum. It's put together with more than just spit, it has a literally shocking revelation at the end, and it'll keep you in stitches. It's absolutely worth your vote.
*
One Quiet Moment by szm
Category: Jack/Doctor
Characters: Nine, Jack, Rose off-screen
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, set sometime at the end of S1.
Why it Rocks:
It's hard to think of them being still, really. Rose, we can imagine being still, and listening, because she does that quite a bit in the show itself. The Doctor, though, while he may listen, is never really still, not for long. Which isn't to say he isn't observant, but he doesn't need to be quiet in order to notice what goes on around him.
The same can be said for Jack. Jack - especially before he became immortal - was not one for sitting still. I can't even see him sitting still in a post-coital haze for more than two happy minutes; nope, he'd be up on his feet and bouncing around like mad.
So late one night, when Rose is asleep and they've had a long, too-close-to-death day, Jack is buzzing. He can't be still, he can't sleep, he wanders the corridors of the TARDIS, and the only thing that stops him dead in his tracks is this:
It took him a few moments to register the Doctor sitting on the floor opposite the archway Jack had come through. He was leaning against an ivy covered wall, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. Jack took a moment to appreciate the line of his throat. The Doctor had discarded his jacket somewhere and rolled the sleeves of his jumper up. Jack didn’t want to speak. He didn’t want to break the moment.
The Doctor invites Jack to sit next to him - and orders him to remain still. It's kind of like ordering a dog not to wag his tail. (Or ordering a cat to do...well, anything.)
It's while Jack is sitting still that he is able to hear it - the TARDIS's song, and with it, the Doctor humming along. It's a soft, quiet, not-quite-melody that calms Jack's anxious nerves and allows him at last to sleep.
It makes sense, really, that the Doctor would share this with Jack and not with Rose. Rose - apart from being asleep at the time - doesn't need to hear it. She already has the sense of calm peace about her. The Doctor could show Rose this secret singing, yes - but it wouldn't mean quite as much for her, and because of that, it wouldn't mean so much to the Doctor. Teachers don't just teach because they want their students to learn. They teach because by allowing their students to grow, it makes them better, too.
Jack needs the lesson, in a way that Rose does not - and further, the Doctor needs Jack to learn the lesson, in a way that he doesn't need Rose. Rose, at 19, is more sure of herself than Jack is at...well, whatever age he's at. Part of that is because Rose has less living experience under her belt - part of that is Jack's own confusion about his two missing years of memories. Jack doesn't sit still. Jack doesn't look back.
It takes the Doctor's orders - which Jack follows almost without thought - to get Jack to sit, and relax, and listen.
And for what might be the first time - to actually hear.
In short, vote for One Quiet Moment. It's a sweet look at what the two men can do and give to each other. It's a soft melody in a gently lit garden, and it's a breath of clean air in the dark of night. It's absolutely lovely, and it's very much worth your vote.
*
Today's reviews were written by azriona.