Fic Commentary: Thirteen Steps

[nonelvis]

elliptic_eye asked for commentary on "Thirteen Steps," so off I went into my fanfic folder to find previous drafts of the story. Instead, I found a document with notes I'd made to myself about each drabble – essentially, the DVD commentary Elliptic had asked me to write. Weird.



This story began as something completely different – it was meant to be thirteen drabbles exploring my cracked-out theory that the Doctor switches between dom and sub with each regeneration. After all, if you accept the fanon (and partially canon, at least in the case of Ten's accent) explanation that the companion present at the Doctor's death partially influences his next regeneration, my theory isn't all that much crackier. NO, REALLY.

Anyway, by the time the story was about a thousand words long and only consisted of partially completed Eight/Romana and Ten/Reinette porn, I realized that the original concept was just not going to fly. So I backed it out to a series of character studies, all with the same original pairings I'd planned (except for Three, who switched from Jo to Liz), but without the constraint that there had to be a dom/sub relationship. And suddenly things started to come together.

1) The TARDIS
They aren't the last two of their kind – yet – but they need each other to survive. The old-looking young man and the living machine: the former unsuited for a life of tedious non-intervention, the latter discarded in favour of newer and shinier toys.

The Doctor pounds hard and inexpertly on the controls to bend her to his will, but eventually she complies; after all, a fugitive's life is better than none. Hundreds of years will pass as man and machine bicker, commiserate, laugh, kiss and make up, as married as any couple.

It's symbiosis, or maybe love at first sight.

Doctor/TARDIS: the only Doctor Who OTP I believe in. But even with that, I wasn't willing to go as far as writing a One/TARDIS sex scene.


2) Jamie
The Doctor is still relatively new to this body when he meets the young Scotsman and his fellow soldiers. Jamie is brave, brash, and loyal, some of the Doctor's favourite human characteristics, but in the midst of battle, there's no time to waste on foolish attractions.

He's had many friends since he came to this world, and Jamie will just be another, he tells himself. A hand on his companion's shoulder is merely reassurance of his presence; a light touch, a lingering glance, are protectiveness, surely not something more.

How strange, how delightful, to find that Jamie's thought the same.

I had no notes about this one in my document, probably because I hadn't written the drabble yet; the Two and Six drabbles were the last to be written. I haven't seen many of Two's episodes, but he and Jamie obviously cared about each other, and I wanted to show the first moment when they realized that for themselves.


3) Liz
The lateral molecular rectifier would fix everything, he tells Liz, if only he could fetch it from his locked TARDIS. Though she's suspicious (rightly so, clever girl), she nicks the key for him anyway.

After his futile, chastening escape attempt, there's nothing for it but to throw himself into his work with Liz. Analysis, experimentation, investigation, saving the Earth – all the more exhilarating when shared with someone who loves science and mystery as much as he does. (Her short skirts are a pleasant distraction as well.)

There's no substitute for freedom, but captivity, it seems, has its own advantages.

One of the last three drabbles I completed. As with Two, I was severely hampered by having seen so few of Jon Pertwee's episodes. Fortunately, though, I had watched "Spearhead from Space" just a couple of months prior to writing this story, and since I'd already planned to use this drabble to explore the Doctor's feelings about being trapped on Earth, I figured I might as well start at the beginning.


4) Romana I/II
Life is fine, better than fine, just him and K-9 tramping cheerfully about the universe, when Romana gets dumped in his lap.

He resents her intelligence, her youthful arrogance, her unavoidable reminder of the world he abandoned, but there's no choice but to travel with her.

She learns to appreciate his recklessness. He learns to appreciate her cool confidence. And atop the Eiffel Tower, introducing Romana to Paris and its bouquet, the Doctor realises he's fallen in love.

She outgrows him – they all do – but he carries her in his hearts still.

Because she is Romana, and she's superb.

I don't know that I'd call myself a batshit Doctor/Romana shipper, but along with Doctor/TARDIS, Doctor/Romana is about as close to an OTP as I ever get. Romana is smart, tough, no-nonsense, and unafraid to call the Doctor on his bullshit; she learns from him, and he learns not just to respect her, but also to trust completely that not only will she find her way out of a difficult situation, sometimes she's better at it than he is.

Like the Doctor says in "Warriors' Gate" – Romana is superb.


5) Tegan
She's unquestionably the most infuriating woman he's ever met, with her constant complaints, whines, and insults. Each day he considers dumping her on some out-of-the-way planetoid; each night her nails claw his back, her whines become screams of "more, faster, now, please," and he knows he couldn't let go if he tried.

He never intended to take her for a lover, and she's always half-in, half-out of his bed, longing for the normalcy of home yet unwilling to give him up. They orbit like moons bound by each other's gravity, unable to escape until a violent event drives them apart.

Four and Five were my Doctors growing up, and I adored Tegan, because she was a strong female character who gave him all kinds of hell. Watching Tegan and the Doctor interact was also the first time I started to ship him with someone – it seemed so obvious to me that they had a love/hate thing going. She kept prodding him about not being able to get her back to Heathrow, but still seemed to enjoy being around him, and he seemed so devastated both times she left. How could I not ship them?


6) Peri
This regeneration's gone all wrong. It isn't Peri's fault – he's risked his life to save a human's many times, and this likely isn't the only time he'll die for one – but the spectrox has left him off-balance, even violent. Best to distance himself from Peri, keep her safe.

She makes it easier with question after irritating question. What's the point of fishing? Can't we go somewhere else? Leading him to another: Is she worth the trouble?

When he discovers her death's only a trick, he has his answer. So relieved she's alive, and happy, and far from him.

Oh, God, Peri. One of my least favorite companions, but it was either her or Mel, and I think I like Mel even less. I watched "The Two Doctors" before writing this drabble so I could get Six's voice down, and since it had been a good twenty years since I'd last seen it, I'd forgotten how annoying Peri was, and how snide Six could be in return.


7) Ace
"Ace, you're not carrying any nitro-9, are you?" he asks.

"No, Professor," Ace replies. The Doctor knows she's lying, and knows Ace is equally aware of his knowledge, but this mutual deception is an unspoken ritual they share: Ace pretends she'll try to domesticate herself, and the Doctor pretends he doesn't need her to stay undomesticated.

As deceptions go for him, it's tame. He guides Ace with schemes and incomplete truths, manoeuvring her along the path he's set, a faithful parent steering his wayward, wilful child.

Is this how fathers should behave? After so many years, he no longer remembers.

One of the other reasons I dumped the original premise for this story was that there were certain pairings I was just not willing to write, and Seven/Ace was on that list. I don't believe they had a relationship other than (manipulative) foster father/daughter, and having read so few of the tie-in novels, I had no other companions I could write Seven with.

I do miss Ace, another one of those kick-butt female companions.


8) Romana II (again)
The Doctor knows it's only a matter of hours before the Daleks complete their assault on Gallifrey, yet he's lying in bed with Romana.

They should be fighting – neither is accustomed to surrender – but this close to the end, selfishness overpowers patriotism. Besides, the Doctor's mission will be sacrifice enough for both.

They twine together, sharing kisses and whispered secrets and reminiscences, until at last Romana orders him to go.

Later, as he lies crushed and bleeding in the TARDIS, he wonders whether dying, finally dying, will feel different from all the other times.

He loves Romana anyway.

The original Eight/Romana story I started to write had the premise that back when Romana and Four got together, he was such a sub that he would literally do anything for her, and that this carried over to Eight, also a sub incarnation. Thus blowing up Gallifrey could have been the Doctor's final act of submission to the woman he loved. (As they say on otp_probably, "Nothing says 'I love you' like blowing up her planet.")

Eventually I realized this was just going way too far; even I didn't fully believe the premise. There's still a hint of it in the story, but it feels more realistically couched in the Doctor's sense of personal responsibility and love for/loyalty to President Romana.


9) Jabe
They had barely an hour together, so his memories of her are few and precious: the cedar scent of her skin, the cool breeze of absolution that wafted through her leaves. She alone recognised him, and in exchange for his friendship she was incinerated, reduced to ashes and charcoal.

Gallifrey, Jabe, the Earth: whatever made him think an afternoon of destruction could serve as entertainment? Are he and death so familiar now?

Fire has claimed enough today, he decides. He kneels outside Rose's room, his palm pressed to the door, hoping he has the strength to protect one tiny human.

I've written (cracky) Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose, and wanted this story to flow more naturally out of Eight's Time War segment. Poor Jabe, who only wanted to help Nine and died instead, seemed like the right way to bring in the theme of how much the destruction of the Time War had affected the Doctor.


10) Reinette
Reinette's kiss leaves him shocked, breathless, exhilarated. Just a few seconds long, that magnificent kiss, but sufficient for the voice inside his head chiding but you love Rose to be drowned out by one saying you love them all.

It's even more shocking that Reinette can stroll through his mind so casually. The secrets he conceals have never needed to be locked away from humans, crude emotions their only tool to pry at him. Having one draw open the barred door to his past is unsettling, and yet unspeakably seductive.

When she leads him to the dance, he follows willingly.

This one's here because, as I mentioned before, one of the only two pieces I wrote for the original concept was Ten/Reinette porn. I saved the 500+ words I'd written, and they eventually became "Opportunity."


11) Martha
"So good to see you, Martha," he chokes out before screaming, exploding in golden sparks to shed the battered husk of his tenth body. He collapses in her arms without warning or apology.

The Doctor awakes on the couch, a cool cloth on his forehead.

"You dropped by to die on my front steps," Martha says. "You're flattering me, right?"

"I knew you'd take care of me."

"How many more times am I going to have to save your life?"

"Hopefully, none. But you're awfully good at it."

Martha sighs, kisses his cheek. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Smith."

Ten was such an ass to Martha in S3 that I really didn't want to write a story with the two of them in it, but I also wanted the Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen stories to include known companions rather than original characters. The idea that a dying Ten might show up at Martha's doorstep to regenerate, knowing that she'd be one of the few humans capable of caring for him, was compelling to me, and (sadly) in-character. After all, if Ten can convince Martha to live as a maid for three months in 1913, and walk the Earth for a year as his prophet, it's not much of a stretch to imagine he'd assume she'd drop everything to help him when he's at his weakest.


12) Rose
He lands the TARDIS at the playground where Rose is watching her grandchildren shriek and squeal on the roundabout. Rose's face is lined, her hair silver-white, but her smile still makes his hearts leap.

"You're about sixty years late," she says. "For a Time Lord, you always did have rubbish timing."

"I'll have you know I passed transtemporal navigation. Eventually."

"You realise I won't go with you. That part of my life's done and gone."

"Yes," he acknowledges. "But I came anyway. Because I could." He reaches for her hand, and for a few moments, they are in love again.

Before I wrote these drabbles, I'd been trying to keep all my stories within my own internal continuity. "Thirteen Steps" is the first time I strayed from that, because this drabble can't really coexist with the events of "Unpacking." But I still liked the idea of Twelve finally happening upon a way to cross into Rose's universe even though he knows there's no chance she'll go with him again, just because he wants to see her one last time.


13) Jack
A hundred years they've travelled together, facing death in its worst forms, and what finally fells him is a venomous creature no bigger than his thumb.

He stops Jack from wasting time dragging him to the TARDIS. "Don't go," Jack pleads. "There's so much left to do."

"We'll meet again," the Doctor croaks, "but you'll have quite a swelled head by then." Breathing feels like swimming through mud, but there's one thing left to say, one creature remaining who needs his protection. "Take care of the old girl. She loves you too."

He closes his eyes, and sleeps at last.

Rose promised the Doctor forever, but there's really only one person in the current DW universe who could actually follow through on that, and that's Jack. Since the Doctor seems to have gotten over his anti-Jack prejudice by the end of LOTTL, I thought it would be nice to bring the two of them together in a relationship with a proper Gallifreyan timespan of more than a hundred years.

What's important about this drabble, though, is not so much Jack's presence – though it's important, and allowed me to make an awful pun based on the stupid, stupid revelation about him in LOTTL – but rather that the Doctor's final thought is of the TARDIS, the one love who's stood by him nearly his entire life.

Comments

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

I have to say, if you ever do anything with the original concept, I'd love to see it. I can only imagine it as a chimera fic that's half serious, half purest crack, but I bet it would be shiny.

After all, if you accept the fanon (and partially canon, at least in the case of Ten's accent) explanation that the companion present at the Doctor's death partially influences his next regeneration, my theory isn't all that much crackier. NO, REALLY.

There's… something in that.

I wanted to show the first moment when they realized that for themselves.

Compact as it obviously is, I think this is actually one of the best treatments of that moment I've yet seen. ♥

Oh, God, Peri. One of my least favorite companions, but it was either her or Mel, and I think I like Mel even less.

As excruciating as I know you find her, I thought this drabble did an excellent job of saying something about her (and her influence on Six) without sounding forced or without betraying animosity toward the character (well, more than even her fans will grant that she deserves). I feel quite differently about the Six/Peri dynamic than you do, but this still captures it fabulously for me.

As deceptions go for him, it's tame.

Randomly, this is my absolute favorite of all these.

Eventually I realized this was just going way too far; even I didn't fully believe the premise. There's still a hint of it in the story, but it feels more realistically couched in the Doctor's sense of personal responsibility and love for/loyalty to President Romana.

It's very interesting to know where this chapter originally came from, though. The idea of the Doctor accepting the M.A.D. mission not because of a submissive relationship to Romana, but rather for the simpler reasons and with that as the character background, coloring it, is very compelling. It didn't come through here for me, simply because there wasn't room in the very compact format to cover the dom/sub tenor you were thinking of, but damn would I like to see a time war fic set up that way.

The idea that a dying Ten might show up at Martha's doorstep to regenerate, knowing that she'd be one of the few humans capable of caring for him, was compelling to me, and (sadly) in-character.

This was a fabulous drabble, though now I don't know whether to find it skeevy or not—I didn't when I first read it; it was just plain lovely to me. The Doctor's certainly capable of taking advantage of Martha's good nature, but it seemed an acceptable circumstance in which to do it? Anyway, brilliant chapter.

What's important about this drabble, though, is not so much Jack's presence – though it's important, and allowed me to make an awful pun based on the stupid, stupid revelation about him in LOTTL – but rather that the Doctor's final thought is of the TARDIS, the one love who's stood by him nearly his entire life.

[nonelvis]

Someday I might do something with the original concept. The thing I should be working on right now is based on another prompt you gave me ("Doctor Who and the Timey-Wimey Shotgun Nuptials ('Cause He's Rubbish at Weddings, Especially His Own)"), so I suspect that will keep me occupied for a while, what with it needing a plot and everything. Er, and I am supposed to be reviewing my friend's 100,000+ word novel. Yes, it might be a while.

The Six & Peri drabble: I'm glad it worked for you, because despite the fact that I'm not a Peri fan, I didn't want to bash her. That isn't fair to either character. She was obviously bugging the crap out of him during the fishing scene, so I worked some of that in ... but you can still care about someone who drives you nuts, so that's what I tried to show.

Eight/Romana: I just reread the 500 or so words of this I still have, and you know something? They're still pretty good. I should clean it up a bit and post it somewhere.