Fic Commentary: Only Visiting This Planet
For stellastars, a commentary on my story Only Visiting This Planet.
This was me trying to do something different - be a bit angsty, be nice to the Third Doctor (instead of side-lining him) and without sounding pretentious for a bit of fan fic, write about loss. Moving on without quite realising what the cost will be, I suppose. (And, despite much of my fic, it’s not really about Liz regretting leaving the Brigadier, whether or not she does.)
I’m guilty about Janey, who is a construct-a-character. (“She can have these bits of me - clumsy, ordinary looking, does history, and she can be a 1970s Student. There. Instant character.”) Oddly, now that I come to think about it, she’s not unlike my friend, who did collapse in the middle of Colonial America (but not with something fatal, thankfully), only I didn’t think of that then. (It was me however that sat down on a lecture theatre seat that wasn’t there, much to the amusement of another friend.) And I made her up purely to kill her. Then people went and liked her and I felt bad. It’s like committing fraud or something.
Of course, it didn’t end up all that miserable all the way through, with seeing UNIT through a stranger’s eyes and Jo and Liz wary of each other and the Doctor playing about with technology, as he does.
And I like writing Jo. You can look at the world in a slightly different way:
“Do you mean really, actually an alien in your head?” asked Jo, recovering her breath. “How big is it? How did it get in there?”
“Jo!”
I kept it quite tight and the one casualty of that was the Brigadier’s loss of Liz (not, again, especially in a romantic way, here, but he doesn’t really have anyone left to talk to as he could to her). This is why I ended up writing UNIT: Unfinished as well. (Back to being mean to Three, as usual).
In this one (Part 3), the Doctor and the Brigadier argue and I let the Doctor be right and win this time. As I said, I wanted to show Three’s better side and also look at his relationship with Liz, which was also quite close in many ways, although different again to the one he has with Jo.
And I did at least have a go at trying to imagine a properly alien alien race, for a paragraph or two. (I really should stick to other things, because aliens bore me by and large. Or else I make them psychic. I’m trying to stop doing that, but it’s difficult. I’m very impressed by primsong’s interesting aliens.)
In Part 4, Jo gets to be innocent-clever, cheering the Doctor up in that way that she has. And he comes to Liz’s rescue with perfect timing:
And in that moment of complete hopelessness, he turned up in that familiar, old-fashioned yellow car. He stopped Bessie right in front of her and leapt out.
She tried to smile, but couldn’t. Somehow, underneath everything, she wasn’t surprised to see him. The Doctor, coming to her rescue.
I suppose, all my waffle, it’s about how you give up saving the world and go back to living in it, a question Liz isn’t the first companion to have to address and won’t be the last.
(Of course, not that the story doesn’t have an underlying Brig/Liz thing, because it was me that wrote it…)
It is also slightly a tribute to Larry Norman (who’d only recnetly died when I wrote it), but trying to explain that takes forever. I get that and know why and how and everything. For everyone else, I just took the whole mood of the piece from his song I’ve Got To Learn To Live Without You.
So that’s Only Visiting This Planet. I must admit I was half hoping no one would pick this one! (“Hmm, that one’s a little bit too personal - let me keep my secrets, thanks.”) ;-D
This was me trying to do something different - be a bit angsty, be nice to the Third Doctor (instead of side-lining him) and without sounding pretentious for a bit of fan fic, write about loss. Moving on without quite realising what the cost will be, I suppose. (And, despite much of my fic, it’s not really about Liz regretting leaving the Brigadier, whether or not she does.)
I’m guilty about Janey, who is a construct-a-character. (“She can have these bits of me - clumsy, ordinary looking, does history, and she can be a 1970s Student. There. Instant character.”) Oddly, now that I come to think about it, she’s not unlike my friend, who did collapse in the middle of Colonial America (but not with something fatal, thankfully), only I didn’t think of that then. (It was me however that sat down on a lecture theatre seat that wasn’t there, much to the amusement of another friend.) And I made her up purely to kill her. Then people went and liked her and I felt bad. It’s like committing fraud or something.
Of course, it didn’t end up all that miserable all the way through, with seeing UNIT through a stranger’s eyes and Jo and Liz wary of each other and the Doctor playing about with technology, as he does.
And I like writing Jo. You can look at the world in a slightly different way:
“Do you mean really, actually an alien in your head?” asked Jo, recovering her breath. “How big is it? How did it get in there?”
“Jo!”
I kept it quite tight and the one casualty of that was the Brigadier’s loss of Liz (not, again, especially in a romantic way, here, but he doesn’t really have anyone left to talk to as he could to her). This is why I ended up writing UNIT: Unfinished as well. (Back to being mean to Three, as usual).
In this one (Part 3), the Doctor and the Brigadier argue and I let the Doctor be right and win this time. As I said, I wanted to show Three’s better side and also look at his relationship with Liz, which was also quite close in many ways, although different again to the one he has with Jo.
And I did at least have a go at trying to imagine a properly alien alien race, for a paragraph or two. (I really should stick to other things, because aliens bore me by and large. Or else I make them psychic. I’m trying to stop doing that, but it’s difficult. I’m very impressed by primsong’s interesting aliens.)
In Part 4, Jo gets to be innocent-clever, cheering the Doctor up in that way that she has. And he comes to Liz’s rescue with perfect timing:
And in that moment of complete hopelessness, he turned up in that familiar, old-fashioned yellow car. He stopped Bessie right in front of her and leapt out.
She tried to smile, but couldn’t. Somehow, underneath everything, she wasn’t surprised to see him. The Doctor, coming to her rescue.
I suppose, all my waffle, it’s about how you give up saving the world and go back to living in it, a question Liz isn’t the first companion to have to address and won’t be the last.
(Of course, not that the story doesn’t have an underlying Brig/Liz thing, because it was me that wrote it…)
It is also slightly a tribute to Larry Norman (who’d only recnetly died when I wrote it), but trying to explain that takes forever. I get that and know why and how and everything. For everyone else, I just took the whole mood of the piece from his song I’ve Got To Learn To Live Without You.
So that’s Only Visiting This Planet. I must admit I was half hoping no one would pick this one! (“Hmm, that one’s a little bit too personal - let me keep my secrets, thanks.”) ;-D