Fic Commentary: UNIT Transition
Fic commentary for UNIT: Transition. Spoilers for the story and also for Image of the Fendahl. Requested by jjpor.
I started writing this sensibly last night and then John posted the suggestion of character commentaries and being used to writing for This Time Round, I’d already been having hard work squashing, and well, this is what happened (probably in a back room somewhere in the Round):
Me: This came off the back of the AU Remnants, which left the question of what happened in the ‘real’ world when Torchwood turned up and tried to make trouble?
Belfort: If things are going to continue in this vein for the whole thing, you‘ll be hearing from our lawyers. I think you’ll find our actions were actually quite reasonable.
Crichton: Well, I quite enjoyed it, too, even though it had its stressful aspects. Rather a while since I’d had anything much to do, so it made a change. I seem to have developed a character. *coughs* Isn’t Professor Colby joining us? He is pretty much the main character.
Reynolds: He will, sir, he says, when he’s recovered from the extra 2,000 words in the final chapter that nearly sent him right round the bend. I’m here in the meantime.
Me (continuing as best as possible): Colby spies for UNIT seemed the immediate answer, but I needed someone to keep him out of trouble. So Aunt Mildred appeared, fully formed with back story and everything, which was a problem in itself.
Mildred: I had no idea I was such a nuisance. Why, dear?
Crichton: I think it’s do with your not being canonical, Aunt Milly.
Mildred: Well, I never claimed to be a saint. I don’t think anyone would believe me.
Me: It was more the fact that military COs don’t usually wheel in their aunts in a crisis, not if they want to be taken seriously. So I contemplated (having pencilled in Liz and Sarah, as reasonable people to appear ) having Sarah be the one to help him, but that didn’t work out.
Crichton: And, talk of the devil, here is Colby.
Colby: Hello. Yes, we did have a brief rehearsal, but, as I recall, Miss Smith was a bit of a flirt.
Me: So were you, Professor.
Colby: And the author then slapped us both round the heads and fetched Aunt Mildred back. Which, considering she’d already murdered the dog, seemed a bit much.
(Everyone looks at the author).
Me: Yes, well, I’m sorry about Leakey. I had Remnants hanging round my head and I had to make a change of mood. Then it got plotted in. In Image Ted Moss seems to think there are spare coven members hanging about, so I kept it.
Reynolds: Poor old Leakey. I think the Professor and I definitely preferred being in your other story.
Crichton: Well, let’s make a proper start here:
One: Lies Sound Just Like Truth
Me: The irony of this is that Belfort spends most of the time telling the truth, or at least part of it and Colby thinks he’s not, while Our Heroes end up lying to Belfort and others to defeat him.
Belfort: Exactly what I was about to point out. I feel I’ve been much maligned in this piece of shameless UNIT propaganda.
Crichton: Of course, this chapter was interesting, because I had to do the end section twice, while keeping in mind what happened in the other story that didn’t happen in this story.
Mildred: Charles, I’m not sure you’re making sense.
Crichton: Well, the scenes at the police station are only related in Remnants, but presumably happen in this one, too. And I had a couple of scenes added in, with Allen and got to meet Mrs Tyler properly for the first time. If you’ll notice, while everything’s a bit problematic most of the way through, she calls me Captain and I believe, at the end, once I’ve got my hands on the reins, she’s referring to me as the General. I think she does something similar with you, Reynolds?
Reynolds: Yes, sir. Kept calling me ‘sergeant’ she did. I’d like to know what she called the Captain, because he wasn’t very happy about talking to her.
Me: That’s because you’re going to leave the army and join the police.
Reynolds: Oh, am I?
Me: I don’t normally even attempt accents, but Mrs Tyler has the same West Country pattern of speaking (well, nearly) as my Devon granny. And as Aunt Mildred is partly based on my other Granny, I was amused about that when I was typing it up.
Colby: Your Granny is like Mrs Tyler?
Me: No! Well, maybe a little bit.
*
Two: Don’t Ask Me For Answers
Me: I named Shipley after the art gallery in Gateshead - just because it sounded more real that way. And those faceless Georgian terraces on Gower Street are so clearly not lived in, but I think really most of them are UCL buildings, but they gave it a bit more reality than my usual stuff.
Belfort: I’d like to make another complaint here. When I started work that morning I had a chatty but amoral secretary called Heather. I left her questioning Colby and when I returned, she’d turned into a lethal android from the future who’d fallen through the Rift in Cardiff and been found in a skip somewhere. Again, this is tinkering with the facts in order to make Torchwood look worse than it is.
Crichton: Is that possible? Yes, I know the young woman you mean. I’m having to deal with her at the moment. She’s a menace; you’re well shot of her.
Me: You’re right, of course. Allen’s motivation was originally intended for the Bambera story. They swapped, which worked better. Miss Andrews was just… I really didn’t want anyone thinking this was going to turn romantic, after all those Happy Endings.
Colby: Your opinion of me is alarming. By the way, Leela was looking for you earlier. She’s feeling a bit put out about the Happy Endings. And that Blind Date episode, too.
Me (hastily): And now Liz Shaw has joined us.
Liz: I seem to be in rather a bad mood in this, don’t I? The author only seems to be capable of writing me dialogue with the Brigadier, which isn’t terribly impressive. Also, I made a rather witty insult about Professor Colby, which you seem to have got rid of. I hope in future that you can manage a UNIT story without interrupting my work. This came at a very inconvenient moment.
Me: Yes, well, you weren’t coming across that well as it was. I’m sorry, because it turned out that my suspicion about him being from Cambridge, too, was probably right, so Liz being a bit dismissive would have been fun.
Colby: Well, that explains an awful lot. You don’t like me much, do you?
Me: No, no. Did I say that?
Liz: A pleasure to meet you, however, Colonel.
Colonel: You too, Dr Shaw.
Mildred: I have to say I rather enjoyed the code bits. The author was a bit careless - didn’t have any of that to start with, but I insisted. Anyone could be listening in.
Colby: Yes, that was probably the only fun I had in the whole story. Remnants, well, there was Leela, which was surprising, but I wasn’t complaining. And I got to do something useful. This one starts off in a pretty hopeless place and gets worse.
Me: That’s not all my fault.
Reynolds: You did kill the dog.
Me: Well, yes, but it was the Doctor who went charging off from Image of the Fendahl without bothering to go back and tell Colby that actually he and Leela didn’t get blown up along with the Priory, which he must have been left wondering.
Colby: Not until you wrote this, thanks.
Three, Four and Five
Crichton: Ah, yes, here is where things start to get tricky with UNIT. Of course, I suspected Jeffries all along - never seemed quite at ease with the rest of us. Allen, I have to say, came as a bit of a surprise.
Me: I thought they were both too obvious, but what else could I have done?
Crichton: Written me some more men?
Me: Well, yes, but it was long enough as it was.
Reynolds: I quite enjoyed my little detective bit. I see. Is that why I’m going to end up in the police?
Me: Probably. Anyway, Allen, I’d like to say, wasn’t intentionally evil, he just made a bad decision and followed that up by repeatedly making the wrong choices. He didn’t mean to shoot Reynolds.
Reynolds: That makes me feel a lot better, that does.
Me: And he would have fetched help, but he was seen by John or Jack Tyler, which Mrs Tyler or someone -.
Crichton: I believe Corporal Kennedy - the one whose characterisation consists of ginger hair and freckles - informed me of that fact. However, its significance wasn’t clear at the time.
Me: It didn’t have to be. It was in there, anyway.
Colby: And in the meantime, I’m stuck in a room, losing my marbles. Does this happen to all your main characters or is it only me?
Reynolds: Well, I’m not a main character and I got shot.
Crichton: Count yourself lucky, Reynolds. Most minor characters who get shot actually die.
Mildred: I know I kept phoning in these parts, Charles, but really, it’s quite nerve-wracking when all you can do is sit there and worry without being able to do anything practical.
Crichton: Perhaps you’d like to explain why that bothered you so much you had to get on a train to London and save the day?
Mildred: Don’t be silly, Charles. I merely tried to be useful. Obviously, I ended up in the SOE during the war - went into the FANYs first - they recruited a few of us that way. A lot of the time, it was typing and so on, but you do get to know what it can mean when the other end of the line goes silent, so to speak. It happened rather more times than I care to remember. Your comment was helpful in letting me see that I didn’t have to sit there on this occasion. I had plenty of contacts, as we’re probably fairly well-to-do, wouldn’t you say?
Crichton: It seems likely.
Belfort: I’d like to point out here that I categorically did not sell my soul to the Devil for a paperclip and I resent these continued insinuations. What’s more my behaviour towards Captain Allen here is greatly exaggerated.
Colby: Exaggerated? You destroyed his mind right in front of me.
Belfort: True. However, I disagree with the presentation of my aims as ’petty’. Neutralisation of UNIT as a threat to national security - which it undoubtedly is - is no light matter.
Me: Right, and here’s Sarah. As I said, I wrote this cameo because it fitted and as a reference to a DWM article where Sarah did write a piece about Fetch Priory. And because I was looking for a situation in which the two of them wouldn’t flirt.
Colby: Again, your opinion of me… And then I steal a screwdriver. Was that the most exciting thing you could manage?
Me: I know. I had a feeling you couldn’t unscrew the hinges of a door anyway, and ended up wandering round examining a lot of doors closely and I was right. So what you do with the door handle is exactly what my Dad did when, after he told us for a year there was nothing wrong with the front room door, we all got locked in it except my younger sisters. Only he used a credit card to get out in the end. A screwdriver - you just get a useless hole in the door when you take the handle off.
Colby: Well, thanks.
Six: Bring About the Peace
Colby: I still feel peeved about this section, because we managed to get through the whole thing and just when I was feeling relieved to have escaped with my life and my sanity, you added in another 2000 words and it was suddenly a lot less fun.
Mildred: Yes,and then we had to try and skirt round him being well enough to make the phone call immediately after because you didn’t make many changes to the rest of it.
Me: Um, well, it seemed narratively wrong to go through the story threatening to unleash the power of the machine and not do it. And I did write a few bits round it to cover it.
Belfort: If you ever want to work for the Insititute, I might put in a word.
Crichton: It is a shame that you didn’t give me cause to shoot him. It would have saved a lot of trouble, considering the current circumstances, don’t you think?
Colby (thinking): I did enjoy the phone call. There you are. I quite enjoyed making three phone calls in this. The fruit cake at the end wasn’t bad either, but otherwise, if you’re thinking of putting me in a story again, I’d rather be excused.
Crichton: Then there was that last bit with Reynolds. To be frank, did we go through with it in the end? It was in and out of the various versions so often I’m dizzy thinking about it.
Me: I put it in. I thought it rounded things off and that the Colonel might tell him what was behind Allen’s behaviour, unofficially, this once. I was just unsure for a long while, whether you would have that sort of conversation with an ordinary soldier.
I started writing this sensibly last night and then John posted the suggestion of character commentaries and being used to writing for This Time Round, I’d already been having hard work squashing, and well, this is what happened (probably in a back room somewhere in the Round):
Me: This came off the back of the AU Remnants, which left the question of what happened in the ‘real’ world when Torchwood turned up and tried to make trouble?
Belfort: If things are going to continue in this vein for the whole thing, you‘ll be hearing from our lawyers. I think you’ll find our actions were actually quite reasonable.
Crichton: Well, I quite enjoyed it, too, even though it had its stressful aspects. Rather a while since I’d had anything much to do, so it made a change. I seem to have developed a character. *coughs* Isn’t Professor Colby joining us? He is pretty much the main character.
Reynolds: He will, sir, he says, when he’s recovered from the extra 2,000 words in the final chapter that nearly sent him right round the bend. I’m here in the meantime.
Me (continuing as best as possible): Colby spies for UNIT seemed the immediate answer, but I needed someone to keep him out of trouble. So Aunt Mildred appeared, fully formed with back story and everything, which was a problem in itself.
Mildred: I had no idea I was such a nuisance. Why, dear?
Crichton: I think it’s do with your not being canonical, Aunt Milly.
Mildred: Well, I never claimed to be a saint. I don’t think anyone would believe me.
Me: It was more the fact that military COs don’t usually wheel in their aunts in a crisis, not if they want to be taken seriously. So I contemplated (having pencilled in Liz and Sarah, as reasonable people to appear ) having Sarah be the one to help him, but that didn’t work out.
Crichton: And, talk of the devil, here is Colby.
Colby: Hello. Yes, we did have a brief rehearsal, but, as I recall, Miss Smith was a bit of a flirt.
Me: So were you, Professor.
Colby: And the author then slapped us both round the heads and fetched Aunt Mildred back. Which, considering she’d already murdered the dog, seemed a bit much.
(Everyone looks at the author).
Me: Yes, well, I’m sorry about Leakey. I had Remnants hanging round my head and I had to make a change of mood. Then it got plotted in. In Image Ted Moss seems to think there are spare coven members hanging about, so I kept it.
Reynolds: Poor old Leakey. I think the Professor and I definitely preferred being in your other story.
Crichton: Well, let’s make a proper start here:
One: Lies Sound Just Like Truth
Me: The irony of this is that Belfort spends most of the time telling the truth, or at least part of it and Colby thinks he’s not, while Our Heroes end up lying to Belfort and others to defeat him.
Belfort: Exactly what I was about to point out. I feel I’ve been much maligned in this piece of shameless UNIT propaganda.
Crichton: Of course, this chapter was interesting, because I had to do the end section twice, while keeping in mind what happened in the other story that didn’t happen in this story.
Mildred: Charles, I’m not sure you’re making sense.
Crichton: Well, the scenes at the police station are only related in Remnants, but presumably happen in this one, too. And I had a couple of scenes added in, with Allen and got to meet Mrs Tyler properly for the first time. If you’ll notice, while everything’s a bit problematic most of the way through, she calls me Captain and I believe, at the end, once I’ve got my hands on the reins, she’s referring to me as the General. I think she does something similar with you, Reynolds?
Reynolds: Yes, sir. Kept calling me ‘sergeant’ she did. I’d like to know what she called the Captain, because he wasn’t very happy about talking to her.
Me: That’s because you’re going to leave the army and join the police.
Reynolds: Oh, am I?
Me: I don’t normally even attempt accents, but Mrs Tyler has the same West Country pattern of speaking (well, nearly) as my Devon granny. And as Aunt Mildred is partly based on my other Granny, I was amused about that when I was typing it up.
Colby: Your Granny is like Mrs Tyler?
Me: No! Well, maybe a little bit.
*
Two: Don’t Ask Me For Answers
Me: I named Shipley after the art gallery in Gateshead - just because it sounded more real that way. And those faceless Georgian terraces on Gower Street are so clearly not lived in, but I think really most of them are UCL buildings, but they gave it a bit more reality than my usual stuff.
Belfort: I’d like to make another complaint here. When I started work that morning I had a chatty but amoral secretary called Heather. I left her questioning Colby and when I returned, she’d turned into a lethal android from the future who’d fallen through the Rift in Cardiff and been found in a skip somewhere. Again, this is tinkering with the facts in order to make Torchwood look worse than it is.
Crichton: Is that possible? Yes, I know the young woman you mean. I’m having to deal with her at the moment. She’s a menace; you’re well shot of her.
Me: You’re right, of course. Allen’s motivation was originally intended for the Bambera story. They swapped, which worked better. Miss Andrews was just… I really didn’t want anyone thinking this was going to turn romantic, after all those Happy Endings.
Colby: Your opinion of me is alarming. By the way, Leela was looking for you earlier. She’s feeling a bit put out about the Happy Endings. And that Blind Date episode, too.
Me (hastily): And now Liz Shaw has joined us.
Liz: I seem to be in rather a bad mood in this, don’t I? The author only seems to be capable of writing me dialogue with the Brigadier, which isn’t terribly impressive. Also, I made a rather witty insult about Professor Colby, which you seem to have got rid of. I hope in future that you can manage a UNIT story without interrupting my work. This came at a very inconvenient moment.
Me: Yes, well, you weren’t coming across that well as it was. I’m sorry, because it turned out that my suspicion about him being from Cambridge, too, was probably right, so Liz being a bit dismissive would have been fun.
Colby: Well, that explains an awful lot. You don’t like me much, do you?
Me: No, no. Did I say that?
Liz: A pleasure to meet you, however, Colonel.
Colonel: You too, Dr Shaw.
Mildred: I have to say I rather enjoyed the code bits. The author was a bit careless - didn’t have any of that to start with, but I insisted. Anyone could be listening in.
Colby: Yes, that was probably the only fun I had in the whole story. Remnants, well, there was Leela, which was surprising, but I wasn’t complaining. And I got to do something useful. This one starts off in a pretty hopeless place and gets worse.
Me: That’s not all my fault.
Reynolds: You did kill the dog.
Me: Well, yes, but it was the Doctor who went charging off from Image of the Fendahl without bothering to go back and tell Colby that actually he and Leela didn’t get blown up along with the Priory, which he must have been left wondering.
Colby: Not until you wrote this, thanks.
Three, Four and Five
Crichton: Ah, yes, here is where things start to get tricky with UNIT. Of course, I suspected Jeffries all along - never seemed quite at ease with the rest of us. Allen, I have to say, came as a bit of a surprise.
Me: I thought they were both too obvious, but what else could I have done?
Crichton: Written me some more men?
Me: Well, yes, but it was long enough as it was.
Reynolds: I quite enjoyed my little detective bit. I see. Is that why I’m going to end up in the police?
Me: Probably. Anyway, Allen, I’d like to say, wasn’t intentionally evil, he just made a bad decision and followed that up by repeatedly making the wrong choices. He didn’t mean to shoot Reynolds.
Reynolds: That makes me feel a lot better, that does.
Me: And he would have fetched help, but he was seen by John or Jack Tyler, which Mrs Tyler or someone -.
Crichton: I believe Corporal Kennedy - the one whose characterisation consists of ginger hair and freckles - informed me of that fact. However, its significance wasn’t clear at the time.
Me: It didn’t have to be. It was in there, anyway.
Colby: And in the meantime, I’m stuck in a room, losing my marbles. Does this happen to all your main characters or is it only me?
Reynolds: Well, I’m not a main character and I got shot.
Crichton: Count yourself lucky, Reynolds. Most minor characters who get shot actually die.
Mildred: I know I kept phoning in these parts, Charles, but really, it’s quite nerve-wracking when all you can do is sit there and worry without being able to do anything practical.
Crichton: Perhaps you’d like to explain why that bothered you so much you had to get on a train to London and save the day?
Mildred: Don’t be silly, Charles. I merely tried to be useful. Obviously, I ended up in the SOE during the war - went into the FANYs first - they recruited a few of us that way. A lot of the time, it was typing and so on, but you do get to know what it can mean when the other end of the line goes silent, so to speak. It happened rather more times than I care to remember. Your comment was helpful in letting me see that I didn’t have to sit there on this occasion. I had plenty of contacts, as we’re probably fairly well-to-do, wouldn’t you say?
Crichton: It seems likely.
Belfort: I’d like to point out here that I categorically did not sell my soul to the Devil for a paperclip and I resent these continued insinuations. What’s more my behaviour towards Captain Allen here is greatly exaggerated.
Colby: Exaggerated? You destroyed his mind right in front of me.
Belfort: True. However, I disagree with the presentation of my aims as ’petty’. Neutralisation of UNIT as a threat to national security - which it undoubtedly is - is no light matter.
Me: Right, and here’s Sarah. As I said, I wrote this cameo because it fitted and as a reference to a DWM article where Sarah did write a piece about Fetch Priory. And because I was looking for a situation in which the two of them wouldn’t flirt.
Colby: Again, your opinion of me… And then I steal a screwdriver. Was that the most exciting thing you could manage?
Me: I know. I had a feeling you couldn’t unscrew the hinges of a door anyway, and ended up wandering round examining a lot of doors closely and I was right. So what you do with the door handle is exactly what my Dad did when, after he told us for a year there was nothing wrong with the front room door, we all got locked in it except my younger sisters. Only he used a credit card to get out in the end. A screwdriver - you just get a useless hole in the door when you take the handle off.
Colby: Well, thanks.
Six: Bring About the Peace
Colby: I still feel peeved about this section, because we managed to get through the whole thing and just when I was feeling relieved to have escaped with my life and my sanity, you added in another 2000 words and it was suddenly a lot less fun.
Mildred: Yes,and then we had to try and skirt round him being well enough to make the phone call immediately after because you didn’t make many changes to the rest of it.
Me: Um, well, it seemed narratively wrong to go through the story threatening to unleash the power of the machine and not do it. And I did write a few bits round it to cover it.
Belfort: If you ever want to work for the Insititute, I might put in a word.
Crichton: It is a shame that you didn’t give me cause to shoot him. It would have saved a lot of trouble, considering the current circumstances, don’t you think?
Colby (thinking): I did enjoy the phone call. There you are. I quite enjoyed making three phone calls in this. The fruit cake at the end wasn’t bad either, but otherwise, if you’re thinking of putting me in a story again, I’d rather be excused.
Crichton: Then there was that last bit with Reynolds. To be frank, did we go through with it in the end? It was in and out of the various versions so often I’m dizzy thinking about it.
Me: I put it in. I thought it rounded things off and that the Colonel might tell him what was behind Allen’s behaviour, unofficially, this once. I was just unsure for a long while, whether you would have that sort of conversation with an ordinary soldier.