Carrot, carrot, carrot, donkey...
I've finished my endless UNIT series, so now I'm contemplating WIPs. I have other shorter things to do, but I can go back to at least one long fic. I shall probably tackle the first, but here's most of what I have of them. Which one would people prefer? (Of course, I'll probably get mugged by a passing plot bunny, but I'll bear it in mind
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“I can’t say I’ve ever met him in person,” Bambera confessed. “No doubt I shall now that I’m back in the UK.” She unconsciously straightened her uniform tunic. “I hope to get some more foreign personnel over here,” she announced, “and send some of our people overseas. It’s good for them, personally and career-wise, and it’s good for UNIT. The world has changed in the last year or so…”
“It certainly has,” Ashcombe agreed. “I know I spend most of my time preoccupied with extraterrestrial invasions, but even I noticed that Berlin Wall business.”
“Precisely,” she replied. “There’s going to be much more scope for international cooperation now that the Cold War is over. The new governments in the former Soviet bloc will hopefully stop treating their own UNIT contingents primarily as conduits through which they can try to steal alien technology, and we can then work on developing a true global response to the threats facing Earth in the future.”
“Sounds as if I’m retiring just when it’s about to get interesting,” Ashcombe murmured, although without real enthusiasm. In fact that might have been understated sarcasm she heard in his tone.
She’d detected it in his voice when he mentioned Husak and UNIT Poland, and the way he’d spoken of “the first commanding officer”, as if there weren’t fifty or so equivalent postings scattered around the globe, all answering to the Secretariat in Geneva. It seemed that he was one of those who thought of UNIT’s UK contingent as being in some way unique and autonomous. There was a lot of that sort of thinking about, she knew, partly because the UK contingent had been the first established back in the late ‘60s, and had for so long been under the command of the Brigadier, the organisation’s effective founder and still-patron saint. The US and French contingents had similar attitudes, though, to be fair. It was something about certain nations.
It was going to be hard to change that sort of thinking among her officers and men, she realised, but it was going to change. She was determined that it would be so.
“Well, then,” said Colonel Ashcombe, “I suppose I should be off so that you can get settled in…” He looked around awkwardly as if trying to remember whether he had forgotten anything. “We’re currently between scientific advisors,” he recalled. “Should have said. We do go through them at the most frightful rate, since Dr Webber left. I’d have begged him to come back, but…”
“I remember Dr Webber,” Bambera mused, recalling him now. “I’m sure I’ll find somebody,” she said.
“I’m sure you will.” Ashcombe visibly remembered something else: “Ah yes, Torchwood…” He looked up at her, very seriously. “Don’t give them an inch or they’ll steal the silverware.”
“I’ve seen some of the Institute’s work at first hand,” she assured him, grimacing at the memories. “I won’t be giving them a millimetre, let alone an inch.”
“Good to hear it,” he nodded, approvingly.
“Not unless I give them nine millimetres of copper-jacketed lead, anyway.”
“That’s the best policy, I find,” Ashcombe replied. “Our main contact over there at the moment is a greasy little oik called Harrison, if that’s his real name. Mobile telephone and red braces. He’ll no doubt want to arrange a meeting when he finds out you’re in command now.” And won’t that be fun? Bambera thought. “Just treat him with the contempt he deserves and you won’t go far wrong.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” she told him.
“And the other thing…” He frowned, leaning forward slightly in his seat and dropping his voice. “The other thing is the Doctor.”
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“The Doctor?”
“Yes, I’ve heard a lot about him of course, from the old hands like Kennedy and Evered, but he’s a bit hard to pin down. Keeps disguising himself too, if the reports we get about his activities are anything to go by.”
“I’d heard that about him,” Bambera agreed.
“Quite. Last couple of sightings mentioned some short chap with a Panama hat and an umbrella…doesn’t match his previous description at all. If you do see him,” he told her, “take a photograph or something, just to prove he’s real and not some sort of story made up by the old sweats. I’d be grateful for the confirmation.”
“I’ll try to remember,” she assured him. “I nearly said I was eager to meet him one of these days, but as I seem to remember, he has a reputation for turning up just when things are about to go seriously pear-shaped.”
“He has that reputation,” Ashcombe concurred. “And now, I really shall be on my way.”
“I’ll see you out, Colonel,” she suggested, rising as he did.
“That’s quite all right,” he replied. “I’d like to take a moment to say goodbye to Miss Lonsdale, Sister, some of the other civilian staff. They tend to get a bit forgotten at moments like this when us military types do all of our silly saluting and relieving each other of command and so forth.”
“Of course,” she nodded. “Take as much time as you need, and then I’ll have someone drive you home.”
He nodded again, approvingly. They saluted each other again, and then he grasped her hand, shaking it firmly: “I’d say good luck, Colonel Bambera, but I don’t think you’ll need it.”
“Everybody needs good luck,” she answered. “If UNIT’s taught me anything, it’s taught me that.”
“I can’t argue with that,” he told her, and left the office.
Bambera stood and watched the door close behind him, then turned and surveyed her new office. The window behind the desk looked out over a rather poorly maintained lawn and gravel driveway to the tall brick wall surrounding headquarters. Her old office had looked out over Lake Geneva. Still, she hadn’t been in command there. That made up for the lost view.
She sat, perching on the edge of Colonel Ashcombe’s chair, and rearranged the pencils on her new desk blotter, considering what she was going to do next and whether her new command was going to like it. Not that she cared overmuch - she would make them like it.
A lot of things were going to change around here, she thought, with all due respect to Colonel Ashcombe and his predecessors. It was time.
The first thing that was going to change, though, was this bloody chair.
END
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Oh, my. Well, that was fun. Of course you can do what you like with it; although with the rider that everyone else will probably think you've gone crazy. I have some continuity (:lol: talk about pompous - my 1980s personal UNIT canon, yes... Or maybe UNIT would rather have a cannon?) but first: I was always rather guilty that I never got time to do more than sketch in Col Ashcombe, but you have him down perfectly here - the straight-forward army type, who nevertheless gets on with it (and he likes being able to shoot at aliens rather than other people for a change), so :-D Also Harrison being in charge at Torchwood was v funny (you're more than welcome to him, if you want him) and also perfectly in-keeping with my idea of what brought 1980s TW crashing down (temporarily anyway). This does clash with some of my own ideas, and I have a reason for wanting to retain that. (You'll have recalled our many conversations on your timeline of TW and my 1980s UNIT, so you won't be shocked). This is as follows:
By the end of 1987/early 1988 Kennedy leaves, and Evered returns to the regular army (although him and Bambera in Peru sounds like immense fun, so never mind that) - but I'm pleased about the promotion. He seems the sort who would. (And in my head he doesn't get killed till about 1993/94, so that's okay, too.) but also something happens to curtail the Colonel's secondment to UNIT by late spring 1988. I don't know what - I hadn't worked out details, but this is quite important.
However, there's no reason why he hadn't returned later, following some crisis (and that could give you a later date for Bambera taking over, if you wanted it - I always think it feels like she hasn't been in post for that many years in Battlefield; I don't know about you) - And I sort of thought there must have been some breakdown in continuity at the very least between each incarnation of UNIT & this might be another little TW shenanigan (although they'll have their teeth drawn in the summer of 1988). But if he had returned, that would tie in with that little remark one of them makes about whether any of them are allowed to retire.
And he would have asked Dr Webber but... what?!!! (And really? :lol:)
And, darn it, I was trying desperately to pretend there would never, ever be anything more on this theme (it won't be like the others & I won't post it for a good while, but... it's all down to you talking about Silurians, believe it or not.)
As for Miss Lonsdale, I don't think she or Angela would have stayed long after the disbanding of the team - I feel Miss Lonsdale would have finally handed in her resignation for good about then, and the incoming whoever replaced Angela with a proper doctor. :-)
But, you can see it can still fit. It's up to you; it's amazing that you wrote it and I've got a nerve to sit here, going "It wasn't quite like that" about fictional worlds that don't belong to me. Colonel Ashcombe does, I suppose, though. :-)
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Hehehe - you've got another 80s UNIT story planned! XD (Although, as you say, it'd be something different with most or all of the main cast of OCs having moved on - and possible Silurians! - but still...)
And no, I'm not surprised at all that you know what happened to all of your characters afterwards - I mean, I know what all of those retro-TW types were doing up to and including WW2 and beyond (the ones who lived that long) :D, so...
Thanks for the thumbs-up on Col Ashcombe! I didn't know if I was pitching him right. And 80s TW was almost certainly populated by creeps like Harrison...so if I ever ventured there, I'd definitely have people like him...
Heh - yeah, in the story, Kennedy did sound as if he was moving on sooner rather than later, so they'd probably have a new Sergeant about the place by then... I sort of have Evered down as the high-flying type, really - very competent. And him going back to "proper" soldiering makes sense - UNIT was probably just a career step for him really (or he would have thought so when he first went there). Sorry to hear how it ended for him, but I can see that too based on what we see in the stories - he's the sort to lead from the front and get in harm's way, so...
Uh-hum, wink-and-a-nod etc on Ashcombe being gone by '88 as it seems a plot point in your story...
But yeah, I suppose he could be back in a caretaker capacity in the wake of some crisis or other. Yeah, I don't really think Bambera had been in charge too long in Battlefield either - she didn't seem to have met the Brig before or to know too much about the Doctor... I still think Battlefield took place in about 1995 or so (pretending I didn't quite hear all the daft near-future references like having a king and £5 coins). So I was trying to split the difference between that and the end of the 80s UNIT crew circa 1997...
And good call on UNIT discontinuity - the (90s?) UNIT in Battlefield seem like a very different organisation to the 70s UNIT of the Brig and Benton - most of the personnel are foreign, it seems much more under UN control (blue berets and everything), so some sort of new broom had swept through. Maybe it was something as bad as British UNIT getting more or less wiped out in some alien incident gone wrong and they had to rebuild? Yikes.
And I think the Unified Intelligence Taskforce of NuWho is a completely different organisation, even if people like the Brig were apparently still involved with it in some semi-official capacity. I think the original UNIT may have been disbanded after that whole blowing-up-Downing-Street-with-a-missile incident (thanks, Nine and Mickey!).
I sort of thought that after Nat they'd go back to the revolving-door scientific advisers, because he was far better at the job than he ever realised (they didn't seem to have one at all in Battlefield - good job the Doctor was around!).
I don't know, I think if I do post it, I'll change a couple of lines (and maybe the date) to avoid treading on your toes any (because it would bother me, really - I'm like that). I will see. But thanks for the feedback and info, and thanks for being okay with me playing with your toys! XD
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Heh, I'm glad you agree with me re Bambera - make the date as late as you chose; that'll suit me (not so much the fic, as continuity-in-my-head, because around 1990-1992ish the Webbers are trying to get some help from UNIT and not having much luck managing to get in touch for a while. (Yes. Am crazy. *cough*)
The fic, I should explain is not like that at all, it's just that in response to our discussion I said something like: 'What could you do with Silurians that was different?' and then answered my question, and it was going to be Seven and Ace, but then it wanted UNIT, and then there was one of those story-collisions that seal the fate of things (in a Silurian-UNIT-Torchwood-Kilve !!! lightbulb sort of way). So it's an odd fic, with no actual UNIT, Torchwood being worse than usual, part in 1988 and flashbacks to 1955 and 1968... and you can see where that's going, can't you? I left a loose end flapping about, and it came back and got me.
(But, shh, don't tell anyone else. There aren't going to be any more actual UNIT fics, though, not unless one day in the future I fill in some gaps - I think Stardust might have been a lot better had I accepted I was always going to write more and written the Feb/Mar 1986 stuff with Aunt Milly and the alien poltergeist story, but there. But I feel safe from that at present. And what I'm talking about is hopefully something that is much more like a one-off thing.)
Yep. That's how Evered is, definitely. I wanted to find a reason for him to leave the army, but I couldn't. (I only worked half these things out because I was feeling ridiculously guilty that I hadn't killed people off after all - and had to keep asking myself how they did die, then. Which was slightly depressing. :-D Except for Nat. I always knew that, barring any unexpected alien/TW/UNIT related accidents - I'm pretty sure I gave him his eventual cause of death in Lonely House...)
Hah - I expect they all got killed off, like they were joking about in Strange Weapons. "Not another one..." Or something, anyway. :-)
No, I thought it was pretty amazing that you wrote it, and I don't blame you if you don't want to post it. Yr readers will be asking themselves who these people are? :lol:
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So, circa 1990-92ish, British UNIT (The UN seem to love long unwieldy acronyms - if they founded UNIT in real life, they'd probably call it something like UNINTTFOR or something...) are unavailable?? Due to nasty incidents unknown? And then Bambera arrives say 1993-4ish to whip them back into shape? Just trying to get a timeline straight in my head...
Hmm, so there's at least one more Nat and Tilly story to be told, then? but you'll resist the urge to write it? :D But no, the Silurians thing sounds very interesting indeed, and I look forward to it when it eventually sees the light of day!
Aw, poor Nat... And poor Evered, but at least it would be kind of in the course of his job.
"Sir, we need another scientific advisor!" "Another one?! Be more careful with them in future, Sergeant!" "Yes sir!"
Probably... As I say, I'll look at it again and see what needs changing. I think it might end up being more about how 70s UNIT gave birth to Bambera-era UNIT than anything (I dunno, I just picture her as the "things are going to be a bit different around here from now on!" incoming boss, rubbing people up the wrong way all over the shop but not really caring about being popular as long as the job got done).
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By mid 1988 my UNIT team has completely disbanded (I always had this in mind, but then it also became a plot point for a story I am actually writing, even if I shouldn't be)
This could be TW-related, but in summer 1988, thanks to the story I'm talking about, they get rather a serious shake-up - giving Harrison every opportunity to end up being more or less in charge - it's that bad. :-)
Whatever the reason from c.1989-1992 UNIT are either changing guard a lot (entirely possible: everyone keeps getting eaten/killed/can't cope) or simply got someone who's finally making an effort to be Official and Secret, instead of posting great TOP SECRET boards outside the HQ and having stuff about their reunions and pics of the CO in the daily papers... And the HQ moves again, in grand UNIT tradition. Which makes it difficult for the Webbers to get in touch directly (this has nothing to do with any fic, just my head-continuity. *cough*)
Then comes Bambera - the new broom, as you say - she definitely seems like that in Battlefield. (I felt a bit guilty putting her in 1980s UNIT at all, but it was fun & I think Crichton would have needed someone like her around.)
And, then, of course, she and Ancelyn after leading UNIT in style, steal Bessie and run away to the alternate universe to fight dragons. Obviously. :lol:
UNIT Discontinuity, indeed - they must have frequent occurrences where there's a staff turnaround and everyone's been killed / turned into something green and so on to account for it. Or all that moving HQ just puts things out of their heads. (In The Five Doctors the desk Sgt and Crichton have only five minutes, but even in that time they swap over which of them has actually heard of the Doctor... Yet in Time-Flight, UNIT were up enough on the Doctor to okay his presence at Heathrow with a mere phone call from an incarnation they've never met. You gotta love UNIT. No one can ever put them into neat continuity. Unless, of course, The Five Doctors, actually takes place before Time-Flight for UNIT, which might make sense, but then again, probably not if you factor in mawdryn Undead... :lol:)
Heh, I don't plan on filling in the gaps; it would have been a lot easier if I'd written that particular missing story, as it would have explained a lot. :-) This one; if I've not made it clear is a sort of summer holiday fic that finally explains what happened to Nat's Dad. With Silurians, and Torchwood. I can't believe I've written something with Silurians. (Oh, and no need to aw Nat - I said eventual death, but what happened to him in that story was the sort of thing to cause problems in later life, I always thought, providing nothing else got him first. :-D)
I think that was slightly less babbly - I've recovered from the nice shock of yesterday.
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That makes a lot of sense, for TW and UNIT. The TW seen in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday didn't seem like a 130-year-old organisation to me - or at least not one that hadn't undergone some sort of massive reorganisation/rebuilding in the recent past, and yeah as I say it's hard to see how the EXTREMELY British Brig-UNIT got to be the slick, international Bambera-UNIT without something along similar lines happening.
So, the way I see it, due to something or other (either extreme failure in the field, or as you say deciding to take a lower profile and keep things more secret, or maybe just because the British government doesn't want to pay for it any more in the context of the post-Cold War "peace dividend"), UNIT as we know it has become more or less defunct. So Bambera comes in to put British UNIT back on its feet, including bringing in foreign UNIT troops etc... And Col Ashcombe is given the unenviable job of managing the handover as the most recent ex-CO who's still regarded well by the powers that be (it would have been the Brig, as ever, but Doris really dug her heels in that time!). That could work.
And then off to Camelot in Bessie, of course! :D
I think it makes sense for Bambera to have prior UNIT experience at a lower level - I sort of see her as having been seconded to UNIT for quite some time (horrible thing to say, but it's hard to see a woman getting where she seems to be c.1995 had she spent all her time in the ordinary army).
But yes, a lot of things about UNIT and their continuity don't make a lot of sense - all of the things you say, and then there's that Polish sergeant in Battlefield who appears to have personal recollections of both the Doctor and the Brig - because there were so many foreign troops knocking around in the Brig's day!
Sounds good - Nat's dad and Silurians sounds great actually. I look forward to it. And yes, I didn't think Nat was slated to keel over any time soon, but still it's all TW's fault, darn them!
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And, yeah, TW are to blame for a lot... in my fics, anyway. :lol:
We own UNIT and TW respectively, clearly. Or you own TW, and I've just staked a claim for the 1980s for both (but mainly UNIT). Isn't possession 9/10s of the law?
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And yes. Yes, they are. More than you know (in my fanon, anyway! ;D)
Well, I feel like I own them *morally*...the BBC and RTD may disagree...but they're wrong. Clearly. ;D
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You know, I think there's another name for that, and it's either insanity, or stealing, depending. But as long as the BBC don't hear about it, I won't tell. I think you're more than welcome to TW. :-D
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"either insanity, or stealing"
Yeah, that's about the size of it. ;D
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And by 1990, Harrison might be wearing a shell suit. 8-o
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And - urrgh - you may well be right about that... O.o
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