I mean, was it just eight years ago when Nev Fountain's The Kingmaker was considered revolutionary for its wacky cameos from the Fourth and Ninth Doctors? (It sure as hell didn't earn any credits for its dramatic content). Now Tom Baker's BF credits outnumber some TV Doctors and while Eccleston may not be headed anywhere near a microphone, they have resurrected the Third Doctor. For BF the vastness of equity is no obstacle, and their garden is a whole universe of BBC light entertainment.
There was a time Gallifrey 6 was pushing the boundaries by having bronze Daleks on the cover plus tip-toe-hints Narvin started the time war. Now we have the Fifth Doctor fighting Weeping Angels, Kate Stewart versus the Autons, the Eighth Doctor flirting with River Song, Torchwood now an official Moat Studios production and then, then...
 |
| did NOT see this coming... |
Yes.
I shit you not.
We thought that Dark Eyes was going to be as close to Eight in the last great time war, but no! BF have announced a five-volume box set with PMG and John Hurt on either side of The Night of the Doctor. I'm glad it has come out during Mental As week coz right now I be fearing I ain't taken my meds.
People, we didn't even JOKE about this. And now it is real.
Of course, the whole "dude, the time war is for the fans to imagine" stuff is out the window and thus a shedload of my own fiction is now highly, highly likely be decanonized. (But not CERTAIN to be decanonized, given that B7: Jenna's Story fits better with my Season E than the rest of the Liberator Chronicles). Still, given more Hurt Locker Doctor and PMG - dare I dream of Eight turning into a Harvy-Scorpius type sidekick of the War Doctor? - who can complain?
In fact, let us take this moment to celebrate the fanfics that have been thrown onto the eternal firepits of unauthorized Chathamologicalcanon...
The Doctor's TARDIS flew through space on its pre-set co-ordinates to the Seriphia Galaxy, in close formation with its two comrades. It didn't travel in time or anything sensible like that, what with it being a time machine et all. It just flew like a spaceship. A very slow spaceship.
Because it was a very slow spaceship and also had a limitless interior dimension, it had also been redecorated in Ed Thomas potato chic (2005 period RTD time band) because it the ramshackle coral look certainly befits a highly-technological temporal empire at the height of its powers. And also a bunch of Chancellery Guards were standing awkwardly packed in the console room because, again, it would just be stupid of them to do anything but stand ridigly to attention for five hours doing absolutely sod all.
Our Byronic hero Dr Who was standing next to deadparn snarker Narvin (who you might remember as redshirt # 45 in Torchwood II: Sleeper) at the console as they headed to the Seriphia Galaxy. In space. Very slowly. Despite all those times the TARDIS could travel five billion years in three minutes if it was particularly important and the bicycle pump worked.
"I was just sneering at the decor," said the Doctor, in a very credible and naturalistic manner.
Narvin didn't smile because why the hell would he?
"Well yes, it's depressing isn't it? Don't you think? If it isn't broke why fix it? The steampunk design was wonderful, why change that? I mean just look at those walls, look at that colour scheme. It's absolutely ghastly. It's not even remotely pretty. What was so wrong with the old interior? Even on a tactile level, it was nicer. I loved having a warm carpet under my feet. I could have walked barefoot in it, not this metal grill that digs into my heels..."
"Shut the fuck up you liberal hippy!" Narvin spoke over him firmly, driving his words at full speed. "How dare you complain when we've decided to make your museum piece shitbox a troop transporter, pile all your personal belongings into the zero room and covering everything in bloody coral! Gallifreyan soldiers have different tastes to you, you stupid wuss, and you must act like a soldier now instead of a wishy-washy, namby-pamby ineffectual homosexual!"
"I sense you are trying to tell me something," said the Doctor, hugging a teddybear like the loser he was.
"You've enjoyed your life as a freeloading renegade, but now that life is over. You have responsibilities now to your fellow soldiers. So you'll have to be that bit more conscientious and compromising from now on, because things are required of you. You can't hang on to personal wants, wishes, politics or agendas anymore."
"Freeloading renegade? I've saved each and every one of you useless pricks a dozen times. I mean, Rassilon himself thought I was so awesome he made me an extradimensional hitman! What have you ever done with your life, you gonad? Actually, aren't YOU the one that started this time war anyway?"
Narvin pressed on, holding his finger in the air to punctuate an example. "For instance, you clearly don't like guns, but from now on you're going to have to be handling guns and using them because you and your fellow soldiers are going into combat and they're relying on you to watch their backs and be ready to shoot to kill to protect them. And if you can't live up to that responsibility to them, then you'll be to blame for their deaths. So it won't do to get squeamish about killing Daleks."
"I blow up solar systems with Daleks in them, Narvin. When was the last time you actually faced a Dalek?"
Narvin smirked a little to himself before making a comeback "Y'know Doctor, it amazes me that someone as mild mannered as yourself lasted so long out there with the savage lesser species without getting torn to shreds. You must have gotten involved in one of the many penny a dozen wars and conflicts out there."
"Yeah, so surely my expertise should have greater weight than yours, you massive shrunken testicle." The Doctor looked at him sympathetically. "The last time you actually got off your backside, you lost two civil wars, unleashed a zombie plague, lost all your regenerations, oh and you actually started the Time War!"
"I beg your pardon?" Narvin seemed affronted by the suggestion.
The Doctor wasn't deterred. "You are a verbose, sanctimonious, bigoted loudmouthed old fool."
Narvin sucked the air. "I see. Romana told you then."
"In fact, I'm amazed you actually think you have some kind of authority when logically everything you've done suggests the best way you could help Gallifrey is to lock yourself in your room and blow your brains out. Why the hell am I even helping you losers? Just go back in time and nuke Skaro before Mr. and Mrs. Davros got a bit frisky one night."
Narvin snorted. "You know Doctor, I never understood your ridiculous and supercilious notions of being a radical symbol of egotistical, freeloading individualism."
The Doctor stared at him. "Did we turn over two pages at once?"
"Well I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to symbolize exactly, but frankly all you really symbolized to the people of Gallifrey was an eternal, stunted adolescent and an embarrassment."
"Yeah. Ouch. If I hadn't run away from you and spent every waking hour avoiding you retards like the plague that would actually suggest I have the slightest interest in your three-fifths of an opinion."
"But there was one exceptional time when you single handedly defeated the Sontarans when they invaded us, and briefly you became a much talked of hero for that, a living legend. But that's a long time ago now, and nothing you've done since then has impressed us."
"Not when I overthrew the entire government while never leaving a courtroom?"
"Apart from that."
"Or when I stole Gallifreyan WMDs for shits and giggles and wiped out alien battlefleets?"
"Excluding those?"
"How about the time I single-handedly stopped Morbius from conquering the entire universe and then also prevented his stellar manipulators from letting Gallifrey be overrun by some centipedes."
"Anyone could have done that?"
"Saving the web of time from the Neverpeople?"
"Fluke."
"Stopping Kortis from retconning the entire Time Lord species?"
"Jury's out."
"Or preventing the Master from using the Eminence to take over all sentient life?"
"Look, most of the time your victories are reset buttons."
"Unlike your failures, Narvin, which are just the gifts that keep on giving."
Narvin curtly brushed down the air. Whatever that means. "Maybe, but no-one apart from the President, the Castellan, the Chanceller, the entire population of Prydon Academy and the Shaboogans think you've done anything special. A man becomes a hero not through one person loving him a lot, but because a lot of people love him a little. It just didn't make you a hero in the eyes of the masses, I'm afraid. Nor did destroying the Master, when you finally got round to it. Perhaps if you'd done it back when he was a feared, evil menace that every time tot had nightmares about, when he was destroying planets, assassinating our president or threatening to destroy us with the Doomsday weapon, you would have been a heralded hero for it, vanquishing our little boogeyman."
"Wow. Not a proportional response."
"But you left it too late. The Master had already become a far worse has-been than you, so no-one cared about him by then. It was the age of Jaded Nurturing Transference or JNT where everything you did sucked completely and frankly should have ended in 1979." He then put his hands together, stressing a self-proclaimed wise point "But you see Doctor, this war could be your chance to recapture that old glory. To be the Doctor that Gallifrey really admired again. The Doctor, the forgotten hero who destroyed the Sontarans now leading the valiant front line fight to vanquish the Daleks forever. Think about that."
The Doctor smiled nonchalantly and then kicked Narvin in the balls.
"Speak another word, Narvin, and I will shove hexachromite up your arse and turn it on full bore."
"OK!" Narvin squeaked.
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