Fic: The Shadow of Death (2/2)

[dark_aegis]

Title: The Shadow of Death
Author: Gillian Taylor
Character/Pairing: Jack Harkness, Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You can't change the past. Can you? And, if you do, can you live with the consequences?
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.

A/N: Thanks, as always, to my lovely betas wendymr and ponygirl72. Sorry

Comments

[bulky_monster]

Perfect! I love it. Very good job on the strong, but subtle differentiation between the two Doctors. You made it very obvious who each of them was, without resorting to stereotyping their personalities.

The bit about Jack holding a living Rose was wonderful. I wanted to put something like that in one of my stories, but had to leave it out eventually because I couldn't get it to sound right. You've managed to make this poignant without going over the top, and very in character. Big kudos!

[catsfiction]

One of the many things I love about your stories is that you take me deep inside the Doctor's mind and I see how very different it is from any human's perspective. You add in all the extra senses and I experience them vividly. It always makes me very relieved I'm a mere human and I don't have that weight of responsibility on me.

I find it very difficult to handle the complexities of even a couple of alternative timelines, and your stories, like a beautiful garden, always have a very well-thought-through and solid foundation.

Love the contrast between the Doctor's way of operating and Jack's more violent and impulsive chivalry towards someone he loves - also the way you can switch so effectively from Nine to Ten, yet retain the sense that they are the same character.

[dark_aegis]

Thank you so much! :) I've always had this fascination with the Doctor character since I saw my first Doctor Who episode. I loved Seven's manipulations and Ace blowing things up. But it was only when I started watching Nine that I really started to get curious about the Doctor's abilities. He was able to slow down time. I already knew he was brilliant and could use a type of hypnosis to convince people to do as he wanted, but it was really Nine that opened up all the possibilities for me. I'm so glad that you enjoy those little nuggets of what I think it'd be like to be the Doctor. There's got to be more to being a Time Lord than the title, the TARDIS and the ability to travel in time and space. :)

And thank you so much for the compliments! It's a blast writing Jack and the Doctors. *g*

[dark_aegis]

Thank you so much! :) I'm so glad that you enjoyed the Jack holding Rose scene. I actually struggled with that bit for a while. I was trying to figure out just what Jack would do when confronted by the living Rose rather than his memory. As soon as I figured it out, the rest came easily. Thank you so much again!

[bulky_monster]

I was trying to add the reunion scene to "Pick Me Up," actually. Because, if you think about it, Jack hasn't seen Rose except on the viewscreen since thinking she was killed by Ann-droid. I wanted to get into how knowing she was alive was one thing, "actually holding her and smelling her Pantene Pro-V and feeling her heartbeat against his chest was another" but it sounded so dumb :p
I worked on one paragraph for half an hour and decided the scene just didn't belong. So I really know how hard it is to get things like this right.