Doctor Who fandom overview
Alright, people, we’ve got 43 years and counting of canon to get through here, so bear with me.
This
Is the Doctor.
Confused? Good.
The Doctor is from the planet Gallifrey, which is very far away.
Members of the ruling class on Gallifrey are known as Time Lords. They are very highly technically advanced and have acquired the ability to travel through space and time in machines called TARDISes. That stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. These machines are rather nifty. They are dimensionally transcendental, meaning that they are bigger on the inside than on the outside. They also can, by means of “chameleon circuits”, transform their external appearance in order to blend in with their surroundings.
The Doctor, however, traipses around in an elderly type 40 TARDIS and, in addition to its being nearly impossible to steer, its chameleon circuit is broken and it is stuck looking like this ->
. TARDISes are sometimes almost like sentient creatures, and seem to have a sort of symbiotic bond with their Time Lord.
Time Lord society is kind of a decaying oligarchy. They are extremely powerful and rich in knowledge, but they very much enjoy bureaucracy, enforcing rules, putting people on trial, that sort of thing. One of the rules that they are strictest about is their policy of non-interference in the affairs of other beings. The Doctor is of the opinion that this is a load of crap and that the Time Lords are rather full of themselves and that it would be a lot more fun to go explore the galaxy than sit around being self-important at the Capitol, so he decided to get the hell out. Or he may have been kicked out, we’re really not sure.
Time Lords, in addition to being able to travel through time and space, have the ability to regenerate rather than dying when their physical bodies fail. But we don’t know this yet. They can regenerate a total of 12 times (resulting in 13 Doctors, max. Nine to date.) and then they die for real. Since no fic author worth their salt would be so lazy as to refer to their Doctor by number, you usually have to rely upon physical descriptions (so pay attention to the pictures) or mention of the companions traveling with the Doctor in order to know which of the vastly different versions of the character you are dealing with.
The First Doctor (1963-1966)
In 1962, a rather strange girl named Susan Foreman
showed up at a school in London. She seemed to know a lot more than she should, just in general, which made her teachers, Ian
and Barbara
rather suspicious. So, one day they followed her to a junkyard to the blue police call box that she and her very strange grandfather (the Doctor, of course) lived in. In those days the show was supposed to be rather pedagogical and history based, so the Doctor took Susan, Ian, and Barbara to see things like how the cave men lived, the siege of Troy up close, and that sort of thing.
This doctor was a kind of eccentric and crochety old man. He was extremely clever, and good at getting people to underestimate him so he could get the upper hand. He said “Hmmm…” and “goodness, gracious me!” a lot.
Most of the episodes from the first and second Doctors’ eras got thrown out when the BBC cleaned house in the early seventies. While quite a few of them have since been recovered, many of them haven’t, so details of these eras are a bit sketchy, and I might skim over a lot.
It was with this configuration of the TARDIS crew that the Doctor first encountered one of his most fearsome enemies, the Daleks!
At the time, they were really scary, because they didn’t look like guys in suits like most other sci-fi baddies did. They do have deadly lasers and scream out their desire to exterminate things a lot, but they are easily run away from. They didn’t figure out how to climb stairs until 1989. Although, apparently now they can fly.
Susan decided to remain on earth, after a nasty battle with some Daleks, when she fell in love with… some guy. She was the first companion to leave the Doctor.
After Susan left, Vicki
joined the TARDIS crew. She was a survivor of a crashed spacecraft. While in ancient Troy, she fell in love with a guy named Troilus, changed her name to Cressida, and stayed behind.
Other companions who traveled with the first Doctor were Steven
, a courageous type who had been prisoner to some evil robots and later became leader and peacemaker for some warring factions of some people someplace; Dodo
, whom there isn’t much to say about, but people who have seen episodes involving her say that her name was a pretty accurate description of her character; Sara Kingdom
, a hard-ass army girl; Katarina
, handmaiden to the prophetess Cassandra, and who was the first of two companions ever to die while helping the Doctor save the world (from the Daleks in this case); Polly
, strong-willed secretary to a mad scientist; and Ben
, a sailor. Ben was in the habit of affectionately referring to Polly as “Duchess”.
Polly and Ben were with the Doctor when he first encountered the Cybermen
. The Cybermen originated on Earth’s twin planet Mondas, which got flung out to orbit beyond Pluto, somehow. In order to survive in that environment, the people started replacing their physical bits with robot bits. Think of them as the proto-Borg, if you will, although resistance is useless rather than futile and they convert people rather than assimilating them.
Anyways, it was during this adventure that the Doctor’s body sort of wore out. Polly and Ben were there to witness the Doctor’s first regeneration, which the viewers didn’t know he could do until it happened.
A lot of the fic about the first Doctor concerns how he got off Gallifrey in the first place. Much of it is just gen adventures (most of the fandom is, really), but pairings you tend to see are Ian and Barbara; and Ben and Polly.
The Second Doctor (1966-1969)
This Doctor was a bit younger, a bit brasher, a bit more batty, really. He liked to play the recorder, wore a yeti-fur coat, and came equipped with a sonic screwdriver, which is Who-ese for Deus Ex Machina.
Ben and Polly helped the Doctor through his regeneration trauma, then the three of them ended up at the battle of Culloden, where they picked up a young Highlander (not that kind of Highlander) named Jamie
. If you enjoy men in kilts, Jamie is your guy.
After Ben and Polly left, Jamie and the Doctor picked up an Edwardian demoiselle named Victoria
, following another nasty encounter with the Daleks. Victoria was a very accomplished screamer, but she was pretty useless in other respects, and soon decided that life in the TARDIS was too much for her.
It is the second Doctor who first meets young colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
, who was later promoted to Brigadier, which is the title by which he is generally known. He is the man in charge of UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, which will be much more important later. The Doctor was appointed scientific advisor to this operation and the two became good friends, working together on many occasions.
Shortly thereafter the Doctor and Jamie encountered a young librarian/mathematician named Zoe
on a space station a couple of centuries from now. The three of them traveled together until they got plopped down in a war zone where soldiers from various wars were being made to fight each other. Here the Doctor encountered another renegade Time Lord and he has to call upon the Time Lords to put an end to the chaos that has been unleashed. This is the first we’ve ever heard of the Doctor’s people and home world. As thanks for his troubles in stopping intergalactic carnage, the Time Lords find the Doctor guilty of interference in the affairs of other races and decide that he is to be punished by a forced regeneration and exile to 20th century Earth. Jamie and Zoe are sent home with no memories of their adventures.
Pairings in this era tend to revolve around Jamie, because, well, he was kind of hot. We’ve got Jamie and Ben, Jamie and Victoria, Jamie and Zoe, Jamie and the Doctor… I’m pretty sure there is some Doctor/Brigadier, as well.
The Third Doctor (1970-1974)
The Doctor’s third incarnation was sort of a James Bond type, with his big white hair and fashionable velvet coats and lace cravats, not to mention his mad Venusian karate skillz.
With a sabotaged TARDIS (part of his punishment) the Doctor is mildly stuck on Earth. Luckily, his friend the Brigadier over at UNIT is still in need of a scientific advisor. And there are plenty of alien invasions that need thwarting, so things stay interesting. In attempting to repair the TARDIS, the Doctor ends up reversing the polarity of the neutron flow rather a lot. This is as common a phenomenon of techno-babble as messing with dilithium crystals or tachyon pulses or whatnot.
UNIT
The Brigadier
is in charge of UNIT. He is first and foremost a military man. His first reaction to any new alien threat is to try to shoot it, which doesn’t usually work too well. He is the Doctor’s longest standing companion, although he isn’t seen all that frequently after this era. If you count the books and audio books as cannon, the Brigadier has had at least one adventure with every single incarnation of the Doctor.
Sargent Benton
is one of the core members of UNIT. He’s a good guy and gets stuff done. Mike Yates
is the Brigadier’s right hand man and the other member of UNIT that we are most familiar with. He’s also queerer than a three-dollar bill. Just watch The Daemons, you’ll see what’s true.
Liz Shaw
was originally supposed to replace the Doctor as UNIT’s scientific advisor, as he had disappeared for some time, but when he showed up again, the Brigadier gave him his job back and Liz became his assistant. She’s a real no-nonsense type and is a useful sort of person to have around, but before long she decided to leave UNIT and go back to Cambridge to do research.
The Doctor also went head to head with his arch-nemisis The Master
during this era. The Doctor and the Master were friends, once upon a time, they were at school together. Cannon is not clear on why they became mortal enemies, but whatever. The Master is suave and clever, as well as being a bit of a meglomaniac, always trying to gain control over various planets, often with the help of other fearsome beings. The Daleks have been his minions. Or he’s been theirs. Or both. There are theories about the Master being the Doctor’s evil brother, but evidence is scanty. I think they might just be the same person, myself. The ins and outs of their relationship is another hot topic for fic.
Liz was replaced as the Doctor’s assistant by Jo Grant
, who had a bit of training as a spy, but got her gig with UNIT through some convenient family connections. She was a bit of a ditz and had a tendency to need rescuing rather a lot. She eventually left the Doctor to go travel the Amazon with her fiancé.
During this time the first three incarnations of the Doctor are pulled out of their various time streams in order that they might combine their forces to defeat a dangerous exiled Time Lord named Omega. I mention this to show that in extreme circumstances, different versions of the same Time Lord can come together without things exploding like they do when different versions of normal people meet each other. This is important also because it lets people slash the Doctor with himself, which they sometimes do. With varying levels of success.
Shortly thereafter, an intrepid journalist named Sarah Jane Smith
managed to infiltrate UNIT for a story. She stowed away in the TARDIS and got caught up in the Doctor’s adventures. Sara was a definite feminist, all about being a strong independent woman, but she did manage to get herself in trouble rather frequently nonetheless. She and the Brigadier witnessed the Doctor’s third regeneration after he got bit by a giant spider, or something.
Surprisingly, there is very little Doctor/Assistant smut, which, given the onscreen relationships between the characters, one might well expect. On the other hand, this Doctor does tend to get slashed with the Brigadier. And the Master.
The Fourth Doctor (1974-1981)
This is the incarnation of the Doctor that most people are familiar with and many people think that he is the only Doctor that counts. Those people are missing out. I hope this overview will convince you that there is more to Dr. Who than Tom Baker, as fabulous as he is.
This Doctor is very capricious. He’ll be deadly serious one moment, throwing jelly babies at people the next, pouting about wanting to be childish, then tripping up baddies with his ridiculously large scarf.
This Doctor mucks around saving worlds and trying to prevent the Daleks from ever existing in the first place along with Sarah and Harry Sullivan
a naval medical officer who is a bit dim sometimes and rather chauvinistic. He never has much confidence in Sarah and insists on calling her “old girl”, much to her annoyance.
Harry departs after a short period of time and Sarah rather shortly thereafter when the Doctor gets summoned to Gallifrey and accused of plotting the assassination of the Lord High President. This is the first time we’ve ever seen Gallifrey, and we learn a lot about the Time Lords here. The whole thing is a set up by the Master, who has used up all his regenerations and is angling for the presidency in order to gain access to the Eye of Harmony, source of the Time Lords’ power, and manage a thirteenth regeneration.
After this, the Doctor ends up on a planet where his own image has been put forth as the image of evil itself. Here he picks up Leela
, a “primative” of the Sevateem tribe. She’s sort of a Noble Savage type who misunderstands technology all the time. They also acquire a very clever mechanical dog named K9
.
Leela ends up falling in love with a Gallifreyan Chancellery guard and stays on Gallifrey to be with him. K9 stays behind with her, but the Doctor somehow has another K9 to be a companion to him.
The Doctor goes on vacation, but gets tapped by the White Guardian
to retrieve the pieces of the Key to Time, which are needed to restore balance to the cosmos. The White Guardian sends him a Time Lord named Romanadvoratnalundar
. Or, Romana for short. So, they and K9 find the pieces, save the universe, etc. While searching for the last of the pieces of the Key to Time, they get involved with a princess named Astra. Romana thinks she is rather pretty and elects to regenerate in order to look like Astra, which is a rather frivolous use of a regeneration, really.
Here is Romana II
.
Eventually, they get stuck in E-Space, which is a different universe. (The normal universe is called N-Space.) There they meet a young Alzarian named Adric
. Adric is sort of the Wesley Crusher of Dr. Who. He’s supposed to be a spritely artful Dodger type, but he’s really just annoying as fuck. Romana and K9 decide to remain in E-Space, while Adric elects to go to N-Space with the Doctor.
They end up on a planet called Traken, which is governed by a Keeper
, whose body the Master steals because his own body is too decayed to be useful and he has no regenerations left.
The Keeper’s daughter Nyssa
, a brilliantly scientific and serious girl, joins the Doctor and Adric in the TARDIS.
Just after this, an Australian flight attendant named Tegan Jovanka
wanders into the TARDIS by mistake and gets caught up in the intrigue. The Master is after them and the Doctor ends up falling off of a radio tower to his doom. An entity called The Watcher, which has been hanging around a bit, merges with the Doctor’s body, allowing him to regenerate.
In this era, Harry gets paired with people rather a lot. The Doctor and Romana make a whole lot of sense, but you don’t see all that much of it… A lot of the fic is very New Adventure-ish, written like episodes of the show without so many of those introspective, emotional qualities that tend to constitute fanfic. It is almost a bit too… legitimate. *shudder* :)
The Fifth Doctor (1982-1984)
The Doctor has a difficult time recovering from this regeneration. This incarnation has quite a bit of the crochetyness of the first Doctor, while appearing younger (and hotter) than he has heretofore. This Doctor doesn’t always have all the answers. He is fallible, vulnerable, and tends to need rescuing about as often as his companions do.
There is a lot of chemistry in this TARDIS crew. It was at this point that they began showing the character’s bedrooms in order to prove that they weren’t all sleeping together. So far as that goes, Tegan is obviously hot for the Doctor, and he seems to be in love with both her and Nyssa. (The actor who played this Doctor once said he thought there might be a little something-something going on with Nyssa.)
Adric acquires the distinction of being the second companion ever to die while traveling with the doctor (And the people rejoiced. Yay!) when he crashes a Cyberman freighter into the earth, resulting in the extinction of the dinosaurs. Way to go, Adric.
Meanwhile, a nasty… thingy… called the Mara worms its way into Tegan’s mind, on multiple occasions, resulting in a rather thorough mindfuck for her. This is frequently a point of departure for fic.
Vislor Turlough
is a Trion political exile to Earth trapped as a young man in the British school system. He wants desperately to get out.
The Black Guardian
offers to spring him if he’ll kill the Doctor. Turlough insinuates himself into the TARDIS crew and tries to blow things up. The Doctor exhibits no suspicion and treats him kindly. Turlough soon decides that he doesn’t really want to kill the Doctor, but the Black Guardian insists. They end up on a leper colony, and Nyssa decides to stay to help the people. Turlough eventually manages to throw off the influence of the Black Guardian.
Then comes the episode in which the first five incarnations of the Doctor all come together to battle evil (called “The Five Doctors”, strangely enough). I might recommend this episode for newbies, as it gives a good overview of Doctors, major companions, baddies, etc.
Tegan then decides that she has had enough of the killing and decides to remain on Earth, although she seems to have second thoughts about that a minute too late. The Doctor and Turlough then pick up an American student named Perpigulliam Brown, or Peri
on a fire planet. Pleasant. She says a lot of very British things in an unfortunately incongruous American accent. Turlough meets some of his own people and learns that he has been granted amnesty on his planet, so he goes home.
The Doctor and Peri soon find themselves in mortal peril and the Doctor sacrifices himself in order to save Peri. Cue the regeneration. Which seemed so very promising at the end of the fifth Doctor’s last episode…
This era is kind of a fanfic pairing free for all. Peri is a negligible influence, but there is much fic concerning any and every permutation of the others.
The Sixth Doctor (1984-1986)
This Doctor first seemed amusingly nasty, but turned out to be excessively brash and to have appalling fashion sense. The manner of the Doctor’s most recent death is used to explain his extreme change in personality.
He and Peri ran into the second Doctor and Jamie, on one occasion and encounter The Rani
on another. She is a nasty Time Lord in league with the Master and who has meglomaniacal tendencies of her own.
The Doctor then gets sucked back to Gallifrey and put on trial again for interference. He is prosecuted by The Valeyard
. The evidence is presented by the Matrix, which is a machine that records everything that happens to all Time Lords everywhere and everywhen. The Doctor is made to believe that Peri is dead. Turns out the Matrix had been messed with and she had gone off to be a warrior queen. She is about the only companion never to get a proper goodbye.
In the evidence, the Doctor suddenly finds himself traveling with Mel
, a red headed, carrot juice drinking, aerobics crazed health nut. There is no explanation of where she came from. The trial continues! The Doctor is nearly convicted! But he argues that the evidence that the Matrix is giving has been tampered with. Turns out the Matrix was being messed with by the Master who had cut a deal with the Valeyard. Who exactly is the Valeyard, you ask? He is an evil potential future incarnation of the Doctor! The Valeyard promised the Master the rest of the Doctor’s regenerations in return for a conviction of the Doctor. They duke it out in the Matrix. Trippy.
The Seventh Doctor (1986-1989)
Next thing we know, the Doctor has fallen over in the TARDIS console room and starts regenerating. We have no idea how long it has been since the last episode we’ve seen.
In this incarnation, the Doctor has a lot of the battyness of the second Doctor, but he also has a dark side that we haven’t seen before. There are all sorts of hints at bad things that he did or was involved in long ago, perhaps before we ever met the character. People tend to either love or hate this Doctor.
On Ice World, the Doctor and Mel encounter a sixteen year old waitress called Ace
. (Her real name is Dorothy, but if you call her that, she might break your kneecaps.) Mel decides to stay on Ice World and Ace goes off with the Doctor, who she insists on addressing as Professor.
Ace managed somehow to conjure up a timestorm in her bedroom, which is how she ended up on Ice World in the first place. She is a tomboy and a bit of a punk kid. She likes to blow stuff up and carries cans of nitro 9 explosives that she makes herself in her backpack. She has major issues with her mother and the town she came from, so the Doctor becomes sort of a father figure to her. But, I think she is a little bit in love with him too. Anyways, they have great chemistry.
The original T.V. series ended with the Doctor and Ace going off to thwart more evil. And this is where things begin to get complicated. You see, after the show was put on indefinite hiatus, several series of books appeared. The Missing Adventures, which take place in between stories that we already know; The New Adventures, taking place after the last TV episode; the Past Doctor Adventures, self explanatory; and the Eighth Doctor Adventures, involving… the eighth Doctor. Also, a series of audiobooks, starring Doctors 5, 6, 7, and 8 are floating around. I am not familiar with much of the material from any of these. If anyone reading this knows what they’re talking about and would care to contribute to this outline, please please do. And, if I have things wrong, please correct me.
Anyways, I’ll tell you what I’ve gleaned from reading fic (which is clearly the important stuff anyways.) So, apparently Ace eventually leaves the Doctor, but comes back at a later point in Warrior!Ace mode, having spent several years fighting Daleks. The Doctor also, along the way picks up an archeologist named Bernice “Benny” Summerfield. She also has adventures with the 8th Doctor, who we’ll get to in a moment, and was sufficiently well liked to have spawned her own series of books and audio adventures.
The Eighth Doctor (1996)
In 1996, an attempt was made to revive the show by means of a TV movie. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to Americanize the show in order to catch a bigger audience. Somebody was wrong. It was a piece of crap. The one really good thing about it, however, was Paul McGann playing the Doctor. (That’s right, Hornblowerettes. You heard me. The dark side is just over here, step right this way.)
In the movie (TVM) Doctor the seventh steps out of the TARDIS into gangfight crossfire and gets shot. He is then inadvertently killed by a cardiologist named Grace
who doesn’t realize that he has two hearts. Doctor the eighth wakes up in the morgue. Rather traumatic.
This doctor is generally fabulous. He has a sense of wonder like we haven’t seen before. He’s fascinated with life and loves every bit of it. He’s so much more emotional than he’s ever been and so open to these emotions that he *gasp* kisses Grace. Twice.
That’s hot.
But then we have two divergent paths. If you read the books, this doctor ran around with Benny. Then later on there is a girl named Sam, a girl named Anji, and a guy from the 60s named Fitz who everybody seems to have decided is in love with the Doctor. These last two companions, so far as I can tell, traveled with the Doctor at the same time. Also, at some point, the Doctor’s memory was wiped and he was exiled to Earth for 100 years.
On the other hand, if you listen to the audiobooks, this Doctor runs around with a young 1930s socialite named Charlotte “Charlie” Pollard
who was supposed to have died on an exploding zeppelin, but got mixed up with the Doctor instead.
Also, if you’re going to read fic about this Doctor, it is useful to have an idea of who Zagreus is, as people like to bring him up all the time. (He’s referred to in the audiobooks mostly, I think.) Just google the name. In addition to some Greek mythology, you’ll turn up one of the creepier pseudo-nursery rhymes ever, which tells you pretty much all that you need to know.
The Ninth Doctor (2005)
The show has been revived, yay! The BBC has begun making new episodes that are being shown in the UK, Canada, and Australia, but as of now it has not been picked up by any stations in the States. Come on, PBS, get on the ball!
This Doctor is kind of dark. The story is that, in some as of yet undocumented chunk of time since we last saw the eighth Doctor, there has been a massive Time War that has wreaked havoc upon the universe. Gallifrey has been destroyed and, so far as he knows, the Doctor is the only Time Lord to have survived. So, he’s dealing with some shit. His concern is very much for the big picture rather than for individual lives at the moment, making him seem a bit callous and cruel at times. He can be enthusiastic, and exclaims that things are “Fantastic” quite a lot, but it sometimes seems a bit forced, which is understandable. Planet in cinders and all that.
His one soft spot is for his companion Rose
a 19 year old girl who’s life wasn’t going much of anywhere until the Doctor saved her from some monsters and offered to take her traveling with him. She just up and left her mom and her boyfriend and we’ve seen some of the repercussions of that. Rose and the Doctor have great chemistry and do a lot of desperate hand-holding. The shippers have been going mad. There was even a Dalek that called Rose “the woman [the Doctor] love[s]” which has made it the official Doc/Rose shipper mascot.
Rose’s rather ineffectual boyfriend Mickey
turns up in fic once in a while, as does Adam
, a self-described genius who traveled with Rose and the Doctor for a short while, before being unceremoniously dumped back at home for being a greedy opportunistic twat.
During World War II, the Doctor and Rose pick up Capitain Jack Hotness Harkness
, a conman from the 51st century, large swaths of whose memory have been erased. He’s a very sexual creature, hits on anything that moves, and when faced with mortal peril, he kisses the Doctor goodbye with just as much enthusiasm as he does Rose. Enter the threesome fic.
The term “Bad Wolf” has come up in every episode in the new series so far leading to massive amounts of speculation about who exactly is the big bad wolf and what that means. This is the current mystery. (update: obviously we know what this is now, but I'm still not telling)
Beginning in 2006, the Tenth Doctor will be played by David Tennant
. All we know about this Doctor so far is that he is rather fascinated by his own teeth. (Update) This Doctor is very manic a lot of the time. He also displays some rather surprising streaks of cruelty. As he says in one episode "I used to have so much mercy."
As for plot, the Doctor and Rose start letting Mickey help them out with stuff and he turns out to be a lot more awsome than we thought he was. They team up with the Doctor's old pal Sarah Jane
at one point and Rose realizes that she might not be quite as special as she thought she was where travelling with the Doctor is concerned. This is the beginning of the Character Assassination of Rose Tyler. Whereas she used to be spunky and awsome, she now starts to define herself entierly by her relationship to the Doctor. Bad writers, no cookie. Sarah refuses the offer to rejoin the TARDIS crew, but Mickey winds up becoming an official time traveler.
The Doctor, Mickey, and Rose find themselves on a spaceship that is full of windows into 18th century France. Specifically into the life of Mme. du Pompadour
known to her friends as Reinette. She's way in to the Doctor, and as an experienced courtesan, she knows how to get what she wants. He's interested too, rather shockingly, but since time moves differently on the French and Spaceship sides of the windows, she's dead of natural causes before he manages to whisk her away into the TARDIS.
The Doctor, Mickey, and Rose get sucked into a parallell dimension in which there are cybermen! Oh noes! However, there seems to have been a cyberman/dalek personality swap of which I disapprove entierly. Now the cybermen are interested in conquest rather than survival and the daleks in survival rather than conquest. Bad writers! No cookies! Anyways, in this universe, Rose's dad is alive, a sucessful businessman, and she was never born. Also Mickey's grandma is still alive, and his counterpart is Ricky, a resistance fighter who gets killed and whose place Mickey decides to stay and take up. People have theories about how influential M/Rickey's friend Jake was in this decision. (nudge nudge) At the end of the season, that universe starts to map itself on the regular universe and the Doctor has to do some extreme stuff to separate the two again permanently. In the process, Rose and her mom (whose counterpart has died) get sucked into the other universe. So at the end, months later, Rose has her mom, her dead dad, her boyfriend, and a new sibling on the way and all she can do is cry about the Doctor. Yawn. Good riddance.
The Doctor is going along when a woman in a wedding dress materializes in the TARDIS. This is Donna
who I mention because rumor has it she'll be back. She's bossy and loud and doesn't like the Doctor very much. He saves her from some aliens and then offers to take her traveling and she says hell no, piss off.
I hesitate to say much of anything about season three because what with the global fanbase and the wildly differing airing schedules between countries, there is no consensis in this fandom about when things stop being spoilers. Anyways, for fic purposes, you will probably want to be aware of the existence of these people:
Martha a med student. Generally a very sensible person. She has an unfortunate crush on the Doctor and gets annoyed when he keeps mentioning Rose. Her family is pretty well connected politically, but I don't think we're sure why.
Harry Saxon New Prime Minister? or the Master back again? Both, of course! Whereas before the Master was your general meglomaniac, now he seems also to have almost completely lost it and is a bit on the batshit crazy side. Despite the crazy he is quite attractive (this is what happens when you go casting John Simm) and the sexual tension between him and the Doctor drips off the walls. Or the phonelines, as the case may be.
Lucy Saxon Harry Saxon's wife. If he's a little crazy, she's a lot crazy. She knows what he is and doesn't care. Whether she's motivated by hunger for power, love for Harry, love for chaos, or just under a lot of mind control is not clear. That eventually goes a bit sour, but she's delightfully deranged until then.
Also, for the last couple episodes of this season, Cap'n Jack is back. (Between Torchwood seasons 1 and 2, for anyone who might be counting)
Useful Links:
Basic Show Stuff
The BBC Official Website is quite good. They have episode guides, character guides, the complete text of several ridiculously out of print books, and webcasts (being animated episodes… quite amusing).
For transcripts of the missing episodes, go here.
Want to get episodes on tape/dvd? ebay is your friend. For books your local used bookstore is probably your best bet.
Interested in the Big Finish Audio Adventures? Try here. Or, if you’re in the states, they’re cheaper over here. And, if you are just looking for a little preview, to see if you’re interested, try the Big Finish Trailer Theater.
Fannish Resources
Your friendly neighborhood LJ communities are doctorwho for general fannish concerns, the dw100 which is a rather active challenge driven drabble community, dwfiction, which is for longer fic and could always use more traffic. nudge nudge, dw_slash for the slashers, Time_and_chips for the 9/Rose shippers (lots of vids, if you like those), rose100 for Rose drabbles, new_who for discussion of the new series, sortofyeah for more new series stuff, sarahjane_fic for Sarah-centric stuff, ipswich for darker themed fic, dwliterotica for... erotica? Usually good stuff, dwicons and whoicons (self explanatory), doctorwho_forum for sex-free fannishness, ihasatardis for teh macroes, two_love for the two love, who_otp for unusual pairings (ie, not Dr/Rose), galactic_conman for all your Captain Jack needs, 500year_diary for fanart, and many many more.
The major archive for this fandom is A Teaspoon and an Open Mind. Better with Two is an archive of 9/Rose fic. There is an online fanzine series called Dreamtime which is worth checking out. You can always try the Pit of Voles, but anything worth reading on there can probably be found at the Teaspoon as well. Outpost Gallifrey has an Archive that I haven’t really gone through, so I can’t comment on its quality, but it is large. There are also some personal sites that are worth looking at, such as Always the Third Doctor and others that I will stalk down and add to this overview when I get a moment.
Good general fanpages include Outpost Gallifrey, which is excellent. They have really handy guides to the books and the audios as well as the show. Pretty much anything that you want to know about this fandom they can tell you or tell you where to go to find out.
Nitro9 is also good and has a bunch of FAQs towards the bottom;
The soundbites that I’ve peppered through this introduction came from the Doctor Who Wav Archive, which is pretty darn nifty, if not quite exhaustive