FanFiction
They didn’t know what planet they were on--the TARDIS had a crash-landing. Nyssa and Tegan were lost. Adric wasn’t even sure what the Doctor was afraid of, but he knew for certain that he and the Doctor were scared.
“Adric, stay down and crawl. Crawl until you’re far enough away where you can run and not be seen.”
“But ( Read more... )
“Adric, stay down and crawl. Crawl until you’re far enough away where you can run and not be seen.”
“But ( Read more... )
1) Like I said, the shape-changers are very efficient to play with the characters guilts and fears, tauting them, etc. It's very cool to read. But they're absolutely not efficient to get what they want, i.e. the TARDIS. Their strategy is quite bad: playing characters who are not here, or dead, allows all the characters, even in the trance-like state, to know they are shapeshifters - this they should try to avoid.
There must be a reason to this. Are they only empathic, not telepathic, and knowing only the emotions associated with the characters, not the exact story? Are they non-sentient, and it's only an automatic defense mechanism? Is their sadism getting on the way of efficiency? Did they plan to slowly break them, with absolutely no intention of being really led to the TARDIS on the first try, but planning to having them hurt or even kill each other to break their will? Were they not really interested by the TARDIS at all, and playing reverse psychology to keep them from going to their only way of getting away?
All these explanations make sense, but honestly, when I read the fic, the first one coming to my mind is that they are quite stupid and bad at what they do. Because, you know, we're human-centric and imagine aliens with an human mind until said otherwise. And I don't think it was what you wanted. So maybe, at the end, the Doctor could have technobabbled away these doubts with a bit of explanation, or at least hints of it.
Still with the we don't know the creatures's agency problem: why do they want the TARDIS so much? Especially when they know where she is?
2) Still with the creatures: as they are shape-changers, and not illusionists, how did they do the trick with Adric and the Hadron web? It was not him going crazy, like I thought first - if it was, it would not have been risks on his life, only his sanity. But if they can do large scale illusions, why not on the others? Here too, you could put some hints of why Adric's situation is so different of the other's.
3) I don't like the Doctor's attitude with Adric. First, the I, uh, destroyed the Master while you were still asleep is treating like like a child, more than he does in the series. "The creature who posed at the master" would have been better. Maybe it would still have been a lie - we don't know if the Doctor killed him, I don't think so, and if he knows how to do it it could be a more important plot point - but at least it would not be a blatant lie.
Same when the doctor says he’s still totally unstable. He promised not to tell the girls, and he says it, casually. It's callous. Maybe it's on purpose. Five is nicer than some of the other Doctors, but one can still write him lacking in social skills and telling truths a little too blunt. But someone - Adric's internal voice, the narration, Nyssa - could imply it's not OK...
4) The ending. Finally…he almost died, Nyssa is not as striking as it could be. Why? Because in all the Doctor Who episodes, the characters spend their time almost dying, Nyssa and Adric included. So, it will be sad to lose the brievety of it, but I still think it would have been better if this last line had more content about why this particular "almost dying" way is worse than any other. It's not nice to be killed by remorse, regrets and guilt.
That's all! Not big problems, only very detailed!
About lj-cuts: it's often used here. If you watch the comm, you'll see that most long posts are only shown as their introduction, and if you click on a link, you will have the whole post. It is a lj-cut, used on long posts, NSFW things and large images.
Do you use html or richtext to post? The lj-cut system is different. Maybe I could explain.
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As far as the lj-cut is concerned, I have only posted 3 or 4 times, and this particular time, I used copy-paste, because I don't really know how to attach word documents and what-not. Sorry if my not-knowing is a bit annoying, but could you just explain the whole lj-cut system to me, please?
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Like I said, there are two way of posting on LJ. html, where you type code (example : to make text bold like you did at the beginning, you type < b > at the beginning of the bold part, < / b > at the end, without the blanks). Then you should type < lj - cut > before tour introduction and < / lj - cut > after, still without the blanks.
If you're in RichText, to write in bold you select the text and click a button near the window. To make a lj-cut, you just select all the content after the introduction, and click the lj-cut button instead, IIRC (I use html).
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