Fic Commentary: Five Times Liz Shaw and the Brigadier Saved the World
Fic commentary for Five Times Liz Shaw and the Brigadier Saved the World. Spoilers for the fic (should anyone care) and some mild spoilers for Season 7 episodes. And I really, really can't do sensible non-character commentary this afternoon. Mind you, I really think this story says what I wanted to say well enough, for a wonder. Requested by persiflage_1.
Me: This was my first attempt at ‘list fic’, which was new to me. It’s also one I’m still quite pleased with. It came out of writing all these all-but Doctorless Season 7 stories, claiming it would have been interesting without him, except the world would have ended several times. Of course, then I started wondering if it really would.
Liz: Well, if it’s any consolation, I think we both enjoyed it.
Brigadier: Hmm. Yes, although you’ve got to admit the Doctor is a useful chap to have around when there’s an alien invasion.
(Liz pauses.)
Brig: Not that I don’t have every confidence in you, Miss Shaw.
One (Spearhead from Space)
Brig: Ah, yes. This one was much simpler - blew the Nestenes up, didn’t we?
Liz: Not so much of the ‘we’. I seem to remember that I didn’t take you seriously and then spent an awful lot of time washing my hair, since your little explosion covered me in alien gunk.
Brig: Obviously that wasn’t the intention.
Two: (Doctor Who and the Silurians)
Me: This was a bit harder to work out.
Brig: Yes. Mind you, unlike some people, Miss Shaw doesn’t wander round giving away our location to passing Silurians.
Liz: And I find myself more in sympathy with you in this, Brigadier, than with a fellow scientist - despite all the arguing there's more of an understanding between us than in the previous chapter. Although your inability to see that scientists aren’t actually interchangeable was irritating.
Brig: Well, as I believe I said at the time, I always did enjoy our discussions, Liz.
Me: I quite liked including Captain Hawkins, just because of the Brigadier’s line in the original on how many men he has - something like: “Five - and Captain Hawkins!”
Liz: Some people have commented on my callousness here. I thought it was perfectly obvious that I'd had a long and stressful day and they'd just tried to wipe out the entire human race as well as murdering that convenient non-canonical virologist I wheeled in. Would you say I was being callous?
Brig: What? Wanting to blow up the aliens? No, seemed reasonable to me. Nice not to have the Doctor hanging around lecturing about it for a change. He only wanted to get his hands on their technology, you know.
Liz: Now you're being callous.
Three: (Ambassadors of Death)
Liz: I rather enjoyed shouting at you in this one.
Brig: I thought you always shouted at me.
Liz: True.
Brig: The awkward thing in this one was that we originally used Bessie to race to the rescue, so we had to improvise.
Liz: Improvise? You stole some poor man’s car!
Me: I went on the internet to find the silliest vehicle available in 1970 that you could get more than two members of UNIT into.
Brig: Benton tells me the Morris Minor pick-up was a nightmare to drive.
Liz: Are you going to talk about cars all day? We might as well have the Doctor back. Of course, this one is all about me being in denial about my feelings for you. There’s only a passing acknowledgement to how I managed, quite impressively, to fill the Doctor’s role in this. Have you ever tried following an alien DIY instruction manual to build yourself a communicator while being threatened by some gun-toting criminal? I really do feel that should have been of more importance to the story.
Brig: I thought you enjoyed the argument?
Liz: Well, yes.
Me: You both do your duty; there’s a line you don’t cross.
Liz: That makes us sound pretty dull! And I’m not sure I’m ready to listen to the opinion of an author who spent more time worrying about what book I was reading than how I managed to decode alien messages at the space centre.
Brig: Eh? What book?
Liz: Good question. I went home and had a nightmare -.
Brig: I had no idea. Are you all right?
Liz: It was some time ago, Brigadier, but thank you. I picked up a book to calm me down and one second it’s a science textbook - please, I do have a sense of humour - and next it’s a Georgette Heyer, although it kept changing. Very frustrating when you’re trying to read something. I’m glad you’ve finally decided to settle on An Infamous Army, although I could point out that I was half way through The Grand Sophy when you made your alterations.
Me: I thought that was the right one.
Liz: Why I couldn’t have had an Agatha Christie or something, I don’t know.
Four (Inferno) & Five
Me: Inferno without the Doctor is the simplest of all, because he creates a lot of his own problems.
Brig: He did enjoy winding Stahlman up a bit too much for his own good - or anybody else‘s, as it turned out.
Liz: It was more straightforward, which was a relief, after the last two, where I think we were quite worried we weren’t going to manage to stop the aliens without him.
Me: And, of course, this is the one where -.
Brig: *coughs* I think I should leave at this point. Benton!
Benton: Yes, sir!
Brig: Sit here and comment on the end of this story, will you? I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an alien invasion any minute now. I shall be needed, possibly in Geneva.
Liz: Oh, honestly. Of course, at the end here, I'd just like to point out that, actually, nothing happened. Unfortunately.
Benton: Yes, sorry about that, Miss Shaw.
Liz: Not only because of you, Sergeant. That was part of the point of the story and why I left.
Me: Yes. Exactly.
Liz: Not of course that we didn't get some snogging in between chapters. The author left us plenty of gaps. We made the most of them, let me tell you. At one point we had a little mishap with the moustache and we had to hastily draw it back on, but luckily she isn't much into descriptive passages and no one noticed the difference.
Me: Hang on a minute -.
Benton (reading through the reviews): I know I have this habit of turning up at the wrong moment - quite an art that, you know, because it's got to be exactly the right wrong moment or it doesn't come off. People don't realise that - well-.
Liz: Sergeant?
Benton: Would you really describe me as a 'walking contraceptive'?
Liz: It wouldn't have crossed my mind, no. Let me see that. (Raises eyebrows) Well, Sergeant, you’ll have to start listening at doors and being a little more sensitive, won’t you?
Me: I was really pleased with this story until today. I thought it worked out well and summed up Liz and the Brigadier and their relationship in about as few words as possible. And, of course, that the Fifth time they save the world is by Liz leaving, which is possibly the worst out of the five. And I think I’m going to go now.
Liz: Oh, no, I said, we enjoyed it, or most of it, anyway. It’s not every day you get to save the world without some smug Time Lord turning up, swiping your job, being patronising and taking all the credit.
Benton: Miss Shaw!
Liz: Not that I’m not very fond of the Doctor, but you have to admit, Sergeant, he can be completely impossible at times. And as for the way he treats the Brigadier -.
(The author leaves at a run).
Me: This was my first attempt at ‘list fic’, which was new to me. It’s also one I’m still quite pleased with. It came out of writing all these all-but Doctorless Season 7 stories, claiming it would have been interesting without him, except the world would have ended several times. Of course, then I started wondering if it really would.
Liz: Well, if it’s any consolation, I think we both enjoyed it.
Brigadier: Hmm. Yes, although you’ve got to admit the Doctor is a useful chap to have around when there’s an alien invasion.
(Liz pauses.)
Brig: Not that I don’t have every confidence in you, Miss Shaw.
One (Spearhead from Space)
Brig: Ah, yes. This one was much simpler - blew the Nestenes up, didn’t we?
Liz: Not so much of the ‘we’. I seem to remember that I didn’t take you seriously and then spent an awful lot of time washing my hair, since your little explosion covered me in alien gunk.
Brig: Obviously that wasn’t the intention.
Two: (Doctor Who and the Silurians)
Me: This was a bit harder to work out.
Brig: Yes. Mind you, unlike some people, Miss Shaw doesn’t wander round giving away our location to passing Silurians.
Liz: And I find myself more in sympathy with you in this, Brigadier, than with a fellow scientist - despite all the arguing there's more of an understanding between us than in the previous chapter. Although your inability to see that scientists aren’t actually interchangeable was irritating.
Brig: Well, as I believe I said at the time, I always did enjoy our discussions, Liz.
Me: I quite liked including Captain Hawkins, just because of the Brigadier’s line in the original on how many men he has - something like: “Five - and Captain Hawkins!”
Liz: Some people have commented on my callousness here. I thought it was perfectly obvious that I'd had a long and stressful day and they'd just tried to wipe out the entire human race as well as murdering that convenient non-canonical virologist I wheeled in. Would you say I was being callous?
Brig: What? Wanting to blow up the aliens? No, seemed reasonable to me. Nice not to have the Doctor hanging around lecturing about it for a change. He only wanted to get his hands on their technology, you know.
Liz: Now you're being callous.
Three: (Ambassadors of Death)
Liz: I rather enjoyed shouting at you in this one.
Brig: I thought you always shouted at me.
Liz: True.
Brig: The awkward thing in this one was that we originally used Bessie to race to the rescue, so we had to improvise.
Liz: Improvise? You stole some poor man’s car!
Me: I went on the internet to find the silliest vehicle available in 1970 that you could get more than two members of UNIT into.
Brig: Benton tells me the Morris Minor pick-up was a nightmare to drive.
Liz: Are you going to talk about cars all day? We might as well have the Doctor back. Of course, this one is all about me being in denial about my feelings for you. There’s only a passing acknowledgement to how I managed, quite impressively, to fill the Doctor’s role in this. Have you ever tried following an alien DIY instruction manual to build yourself a communicator while being threatened by some gun-toting criminal? I really do feel that should have been of more importance to the story.
Brig: I thought you enjoyed the argument?
Liz: Well, yes.
Me: You both do your duty; there’s a line you don’t cross.
Liz: That makes us sound pretty dull! And I’m not sure I’m ready to listen to the opinion of an author who spent more time worrying about what book I was reading than how I managed to decode alien messages at the space centre.
Brig: Eh? What book?
Liz: Good question. I went home and had a nightmare -.
Brig: I had no idea. Are you all right?
Liz: It was some time ago, Brigadier, but thank you. I picked up a book to calm me down and one second it’s a science textbook - please, I do have a sense of humour - and next it’s a Georgette Heyer, although it kept changing. Very frustrating when you’re trying to read something. I’m glad you’ve finally decided to settle on An Infamous Army, although I could point out that I was half way through The Grand Sophy when you made your alterations.
Me: I thought that was the right one.
Liz: Why I couldn’t have had an Agatha Christie or something, I don’t know.
Four (Inferno) & Five
Me: Inferno without the Doctor is the simplest of all, because he creates a lot of his own problems.
Brig: He did enjoy winding Stahlman up a bit too much for his own good - or anybody else‘s, as it turned out.
Liz: It was more straightforward, which was a relief, after the last two, where I think we were quite worried we weren’t going to manage to stop the aliens without him.
Me: And, of course, this is the one where -.
Brig: *coughs* I think I should leave at this point. Benton!
Benton: Yes, sir!
Brig: Sit here and comment on the end of this story, will you? I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an alien invasion any minute now. I shall be needed, possibly in Geneva.
Liz: Oh, honestly. Of course, at the end here, I'd just like to point out that, actually, nothing happened. Unfortunately.
Benton: Yes, sorry about that, Miss Shaw.
Liz: Not only because of you, Sergeant. That was part of the point of the story and why I left.
Me: Yes. Exactly.
Liz: Not of course that we didn't get some snogging in between chapters. The author left us plenty of gaps. We made the most of them, let me tell you. At one point we had a little mishap with the moustache and we had to hastily draw it back on, but luckily she isn't much into descriptive passages and no one noticed the difference.
Me: Hang on a minute -.
Benton (reading through the reviews): I know I have this habit of turning up at the wrong moment - quite an art that, you know, because it's got to be exactly the right wrong moment or it doesn't come off. People don't realise that - well-.
Liz: Sergeant?
Benton: Would you really describe me as a 'walking contraceptive'?
Liz: It wouldn't have crossed my mind, no. Let me see that. (Raises eyebrows) Well, Sergeant, you’ll have to start listening at doors and being a little more sensitive, won’t you?
Me: I was really pleased with this story until today. I thought it worked out well and summed up Liz and the Brigadier and their relationship in about as few words as possible. And, of course, that the Fifth time they save the world is by Liz leaving, which is possibly the worst out of the five. And I think I’m going to go now.
Liz: Oh, no, I said, we enjoyed it, or most of it, anyway. It’s not every day you get to save the world without some smug Time Lord turning up, swiping your job, being patronising and taking all the credit.
Benton: Miss Shaw!
Liz: Not that I’m not very fond of the Doctor, but you have to admit, Sergeant, he can be completely impossible at times. And as for the way he treats the Brigadier -.
(The author leaves at a run).