Fic: Protect and Survive

[jjpor]

Fic: Protect and Survive, Part VIII: Protect and Survive

The conclusion! Answers, though they may not be the ones the Doctor wants to hear, and a solution, of sorts; here's hoping it makes sense. More past Doctor cameos too. All of the quotations I have used as chapter headings in this fic are from the movie Dr Strangelove, and some dialogue in this part is taken from the Who stories Genesis of the Daleks by Terry Nation and Resurrection of the Daleks by Eric Saward. The Daleks belong to the Terry Nation estate. None of these things belong to me!

The link:

www.whofic.com/viewstory.php

Comments

[clocketpatch]

Deliberate was it? Eh? Lol. I think that that was the only typo I spied in the whole thing speak volumes for your proofing skillz.

As for the NAs, I've got to get into those one of these days. Don't know what it says about me, but I'm rather fond of dark stories, and quite especially ones where there is a possibility of the hero going evil or being possessed.

Ace-in-name-only; would that be a poorly written Ace, or an off-screen Ace?

And Benny... I know less about her than I would like. She seems interesting, just from what I've heard, but she's over-rated you say? But she IS an archaeologist, so...

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Well, they...did things to Ace. Probably in a misguided attempt at being gritty and grown-up. I don't want to drop any spoilers on you in case you read them one of these days, but after a while she wasn't really the same character any more. I'm not saying she wasn't interesting or well-written some of the time, because she was, depending on the author, but it wasn't Ace anymore. You know, as if she hadn't already gone through her big growing-up character arc in the course of her TV stories.

Anyway...I think Benny is all sorts of amusing and a likeable companion (and I like the couple of her solo adventures I've caught up with just fine), but I don't know if she was the bestest companion ever as she was often thought of back in the 90s; she may well not be as overrated any more as she perhaps was then. She is in the Dying Days though, my possibly-second-favourite NA; my first favourite is Timewyrm:Revelation by Paul Cornell, which was early on in the range, before the "character-development" Ace went through. I like it because firstly, it's a twisty-turny hallucinatory sort of story, a bit like the Mind Robber or something, and secondly it's possibly the definitive portrayal of Seven and Ace, in any medium. And it has cameos from One, Three, Five, Four that I can think of, and I think Two and Six at least get a couple of lines. So, it's great all round, really. Or so I think, anyway...

Mind you, I also really like Transit, which is the NA that sort of split the fandom; all of the guns and violence and non-stop swearing put a lot of people off, but it was a cracking story, and Seven was great in it.

Anyway, enough of that. If I drop any cash on secondhand Who books in the near future, I think it'll be on some of the Missing Adventures/Past Doctor Adventures, because I never kept up with them as well as I did with the NAs (and my NA keeping-up-with was patchy after the first couple of years), and it has come to my attention that there are some crackers there too.

[clocketpatch]

Ah, I've heard tell of this tough-and-gritty ace arc. Though, doesn't she have about ten different arcs depending on the medium, all of them spiralling away in vastly different directions? Like motorcycle Ace, and Timelady Ace (??), etc. etc.

I've heard Benny in one or two audios, and read her in several fics, I really do have to bite down and read Dying Days since it *is* free after all. Also, I need to actually get myself better acquainted with Bernice before I go off accusing river of being a poor substitute for her. From what I've read/listened to though, I think I rather like Benny. She acts suitably archaeologisty; running off for the nearest drinking establishment at any opportunity.. and getting down and dirty with Eight, apparently.

As for Doctor Who literature and spending $$, I've heard *interesting* things about the title 'Blue Angel' and I think I need to find a copy just to confirm that it really is as weird as all that... Apparently the Doctor's mother is a mermaid, and Eight give birth to a fairy via his leg!??

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, there was Time Lady Ace in Death Comes to Time (and, allegedly, Season 27 if it had ever been made); no-longer-alive Ace in the comics (which was a bit rough, I think); Motorcycle Ace was tough-and-gritty Ace a few more novels down the line, when they decided to redeem her a bit and cut her loose; that was around the time that Seven picked up two more new companions called Roz and Chris, who were futuristic police officers belonging to whatever futuristic police force the Master is pretending to belong to in that Three story where he wears the shiny uniform. I didn't read as many of the later NAs, though, so I never really had a strong opinion on those two one way or the other.

I think the online version of the Dying Days is a bit different from my old battered paperback copy, but still well worth a read; the Brig out of retirement yet again, Ice Warriors taking over Britain (they make it clear to the rest of the world that they only want Britain, and the rest of the world decides to let them keep it!), Eight being quietly awesome (the bit with the homemade hot air balloon/parachute thingy is just great; really). And Benny's great in it too; I think you may have a point there with regard to River, actually.

I will say one thing; the plot is suspiciously similar to Aliens of London/World War Three, but with Ice Warriors. Possibly the single greatest thing I've ever read in Who fiction, though, is the bit where the Ice Lord is being crowned King of Britain and isn't too enthusiastic about the oath he has to swear ("Who isss thisss Jesssusss Chrissst?? I challenge him to sssingle combat!" etc.) Either that or the bit where Eight's saying to Benny something like "Well, the Martian spaceship's been hovering over London for twenty minutes now and hasn't blown anything up; must be a good sign," and she replies with something like; "those big Martian cannon take twenty-five minutes to charge up."

Yes, some of the Eight novels are a little bit weird; Iris Wildthyme shows up in a couple of them, and then there's Larry Miles's Time-War-before-there-was-a-Time-War arc which they brushed under the carpet about halfway through the range.

There's one book which I can't remember whether it was one of the MAs or the PDAs, because I read it but never owned it; called "Rags"; it's basically an attempt to do something dark and horrible and character-torturing with Three and the UNIT family, who aren't really the obvious choices for such a treatment, if you ask me. As a Three fan, I don't know what you'd think of it, but if you ever get the chance to read it...

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

I remember 'Rags', and vaguely remember thinking there was an awful lot of sex and violence, and Three forgetting who he is in a moment that seemed so unlike him. I agree that it was a curious choice of Doctor and associates to use for a dark, vicious extended homage to punk rock and exploration of its potential to provoke genuine and shocking violence. The Ragman himself was quite an intriguing creation, though, even if I can't see him and Three together without my brain revolting and saying THIS SHOULD NOT BE. He'd have worked a lot better opposite Seven, I think, just because 'dark but slightly ludicrous' is basically Seven's taste in adversaries right through.

I still enjoyed it, though: it's not badly written, the Ragged Army is an interesting conceit, and I admit to a little parochial thrill when the action kicked off in Princetown and the closest it came to the Home Counties was Glastonbury.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I remember enjoying it too; as you say, the concept of it was intriguing, but at the same time it is hard to shake the feeling that sex+violence+Three=DOES NOT COMPUTE! I mean, Three from Season 8 on is about as cosy as Doctor Who gets (and I mean that as an observation rather than a criticism, Three fans).

I think it highlights one issue that the MAs/PDAs ran into; where writers tried to make them more than novel-length professional-standard fanfics, the effect was always a little bit jarring. On the one hand, people like Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts were writing spot-on pastiches of Two-era historicals or Three-Master Shenanigans or Season 17 hijinks, which were great reads, but unambitious. On the other hand, the stories that tried to actually do significant things to the characters came off as a little bit strange, slotted as they were into gaps in the onscreen continuity. I can't remember now whether they had some sort of reset button in place, but it stretches credulity that the UNIT posse could go through something like "Rags" and then all be back to cosy-cups-of-tea-in-the-lab and bantering-with-the-Brig the very next week.