Doktor Wer, or: Which Doctors and Companions in Frederician Times?
felis asked: which Doctor and companion(s) are going to show up in Friderician times? Who gets pulled into an adventure and who else do they meet?
Ah, now there' s a challenge! A couple of scenarios that spontaneously came to my mind:
- remember that dashing young Englishman, Charles Hotham Junior, already experienced traveller, whom Lehndorff the diarist crushed on and wanted to leave Prussia with to escape his job frustration (he was chamberlain to Frederick's unwanted Queen, which meant his career was going exactly nowhere) and his big unrequited passion for Frederick's younger brother Prince Henry? Hotham Jr. who when that fell through let Prussia and never shows up in the diary again, leaving one to conclude he never contacted Lehndorff again? (Lehndorff got over it, not least because the torch he still carried for his Prince was really eternal, and also the 7 Years War started.) Well, I now can reveal the truth: "Hotham Jr." was really the Tenth Doctor, who was undercover in Berlin because he'd promised Reinette, aka Madame de Pompadour, in a previously unseen scene from "Girl in the Fireplace" that he'd retrieve Plot MacGuffin Thingie X for her which Frederick's agents' had stolen. Turns out Fritz hid that MacGuffin at a place none of his enemies would think to look, i.e. at his wife's palace. The Doctor did retrieve it, but felt bad about Lehndorff whom he'd gotten to like and offered to take him travelling for a while. (Lehndorff, nice, curious, loyal, affectionate, good storyteller, good at getting other people to talk, would make a great Companion.) Lehndorff did go along for some adventures and enjoyed himself. However: the regular Companions at this point are Rose and Mickey. Finding "Hotham's" primary affections elsewhere engaged was something of a downer (been there, done that, thinks Lehndorff), though he bonds with Mickey on this. And with his Prince, he at least gets to be friends with benefits. Also, he finds out that shortly after he left, the 7 Years War starts, meaning this is a big existential crisis for Prussia in general and for both his King and his Prince in particular, so he decides to return, and the Doctor does deliver him back on time so Lehndorff can have his reconciliation with Henry and be moral support in the war. However, he doctors his diaries and all entries relating to Charles Hotham, Jr., since he doesn't want his descendants to think he's crazy.
- The Twelfth Doctor wants to meet Johann Sebastian Bach, who is one of his musical idols. Bill wants to meet more historical people who aren't straight. Both aims are accomplished by showing up for the famous When-Bach-met-Frederick encounter of 1747. There are inevitably complications and at least one massive verbal sparring battle between the Doctor and Frederick, but also a heartwarming scene when Bach confides to the Doctor about his impending blindness and the Doctor (this is post the relevant episodes) can empathize for real, and Bill gets to flirt madly with Frederick's musical youngest sister Amalie. The whole thing culminates in Frederick, Bach and the Doctor playing a trio, though both Bach and Frederick are somewhat curious about the Doctor's choice of instrument - an electric guitar.
- The Seventh Doctor and Ace have an adventure that involves them befriending a young Moses Mendelssohn in 1742/1743; Ace's fearlessness and the fact that the Doctor, outwardly a small, inconspicious man, is able to outwit and defeat the menace of the week is what inspires shy but gifted fourteen years old Moses to take the radical step of following his teacher, Rabbi Fränkel, to Berlin (this meant five days on foot, but perhaps the TARDIS gave him a lift for some of it), thus changing German philosophical, literary and musical history forever.
- the Third Doctor during the time the TARDIS and he are more or less stuck on Earth courtesy of the Time Lords somehow ends up in Cirey with Voltaire, Émilie and a broken TARDIS. Turns out Émilie was present at the masque ball in Versailles where Ten saved Reinette, but of course for the Doctor, that hasn't happened yet. She does figure out the Doctor is a time traveller, has a passionate discussion about force vive with him, and ends up being helpful in repairing the TARDIS but not before Sarah Jane Smith has gotten her Voltaire interview. Voltaire has to promise not to tell anyone, but it's Voltaire, who is really not good at keeping secrets, which will cause trouble in the long term, see last scenario.
- The Thirteenth Doctor for reasons XYZ ends up in Sanssouci, summer of 1786, near the end of Frederick's life. He recognizes the TARDIS both from the Bach episode and because Voltaire blabbed, and somehow (perhaps through alien plot device ABC) manages to trick/persuade Yaz to give him a lift back to the past so he can change his own history. Yaz thinks he wants to save Katte's life and enable his young self to escape, and since she believes this means Prussia will never be a superpower and draws the simple conclusion that this also means no world wars in the 20th century, she's all for it. The Doctor, otoh, has a somewhat darker view of Old Fritz (she believes he'll give his younger self a few Machiavellian tips on how to incapacitate his arch nemesis Maria Theresa early on so he won't have to duke it out in three wars with her) and also is aware that changing history this much might wipe a lot of people out of existence. In the course of the ensueing two parter, it turns out they're both right and wrong. ( For starters, removing Frederick from the time line would not mean cancelling the rise of Prussia as dominating German state and budding European superpower, because while the guy who then becomes King, younger brother August William, is no ambitious issue ridden military genius, brother No.3, Henry, is, and with him as closest advisor and AW's unofficial PM the rise of Prussia happens more or less exactly the same way.) In the end, Katte still dies but Old Fritz is able to talk with him in the night before his death, young Fritz gets what he'll later believe is a vivid hallucinatory dream while being sick but in reality is the trip to Paris he was never able to make along with his sister Wilhelmine (who will also believe it was a dream), young Maria Theresa declines offers from wooing Prussians (turns out Old Fritz' does deliver tactical advice, but it's not "never mind Silesia, march on Vienna early on" but "marry her instead = territory won, Habsburg dynasty ended, since you won't have sex and thus there won't be kids") and decides that whoever she marries, she'll be able to do her own governing - and there is one person saved from the entire 1730 tragedy, the one whose future life will have no impact on history. Neither Katte nor young Frederick, but Doris Ritter, the sixteen years old choirmaster's daughter who had a few chaperoned strolls and concerts with the young Crown Prince and whom his father ordered whipped as a whore and locked up in the workhouse for that reason. (Incidentally, he had her checked by midwives who told him she was still a virgin. He had her whipped anyway.) Doris never goes through that ordeal because when the Doctor and Yaz are looking for Old and Young Fritz, they meet and befriend a helpful Doris who thus never gets to meet the Prince the way she did in the original timeline, which in turn means she is off his father's radar when the escape attempt happens. The last but one scene is Old Fritz returning to his time and dying in peace (Yaz gets to keep his dog thereafter), the last scene is the Doctor and Yaz discovering Doris had a long, unwhipped and happy life and never got troubled by any royal again.
- Bonus Adventure: Jack Harkness, needing to retrieve Plot Device MNOP stolen by his former Partner Captain John Hart, has to go undercover as Francesco Algarotti. Both former Time Agents pursue each other (depending on who has the plot device) from 1739 onwards to Algarotti's historical death in 1764 (at which point Jack has the plot device for good and destroys it); they take turns at impersonating him, which is one of the reasons why Algarotti has no idea what Lady Mary Wortley-Montago is talking about when she says they agreed to meet in Italy, why Hervey and she both think they have a date with Algarotti at the same time, and how Algarotti manages to have sex with Andrew Mitchell, Lord Hervey and some less famous candidates at the same time while also flirting with Frederick at Rheinsberg.
The other days This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1476753.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.