a conspiracy of cartographers

a vry srs question

2008-06-11T02:37:42Z

So in my bits of free time, which are sort of legion when I travel, I have been considering S5 fic in the vein of dwseason4. The thing is, my question now is not "Do I want to sacrifice myself to the madness of another season project?" because the answer is a resounding "HELL YES;" rather the question is "Do I want to pick up where the s4 project left off, or do I want to pick up after the real s4 ends?" And um. I am unsure!

OPTION 1: Picking up where dwseason4 left off, PROS: I already know where the characters are emotionally! I have my own universe to play in. A sizable number of people asked me if I was planning to write a continuation piece that was a virtual s5, so I assume they would not be adverse. I like the format. I am curious as to what happens in New Cephei. I really like my s4's Martha and she can still be engaged to Tom Milligan, who is not invisible.

CONS: I already know where the characters are emotionally ie I have already worked out my (somewhat extensive) issues with s3 and I now have a whole new shiny set of issues with real s4. Wouldn't I rather deal with the new issues, which I cannot logically do if I do not take real s4 into account? After s1 Torchwood I wrote decent Torchwood characters but now that I have seen s2 Torchwood which was astonishingly good I sort of hate the way my s4 project treated Torchwood (which was ... basically as set pieces for Jack to move amongst). How would I fix/address this tragedy? Also I would want to involve Donna somehow and I have no idea how I would do this thing.

OPTION 2: Picking up where the real s4 ends, PROS: I would probably recycle bits of fear of the dark in order to bring the Master back but bringing the Master back is sort of overwhelmingly easy and there are a great number of ways to do it. I have lots and lots of fun writing Doctor/Master when they are angry and codependent and have not really confessed any of this to themselves or consummated it in any way. As mentioned above I have worked out my s3 issues and since I now have lots of s4 issues to tackle I can do so! Also I can make Tom not the invisible fiancé and one assumes bring Donna in a bit more easily.

CONS: We still have four episodes to go. For all I know Rusty will bring the Master and Gallifrey back and Martha will turn out to be Davros and kill Donna and Rose will come back as Queen of the Weevils and also Romana and then what the hell would I do. By which I mean the season finale could either take some of the ideas I already have since they are technically ideas that have to do with a plausible season arc, or I will actually be satisfied enough by the finale to want to play in the continuation of my own s4's sandbox.

I am vaguely leaning towards Option 2 [a] because the s4 project is self-contained and cuddly and I am satisfied with it as it is and [b] because I am easily seduced by an element of unpredictability, but who knows, maybe you want more of my universe instead. Thus it is POLL TIME.

View Poll: #1203033

Inquiring minds want to feverishly brainstorm all the possibilities.

it's like the bees, yeah?

2008-06-05T06:14:11Z

So I did this thing where I was writing weird surreal Life On Mars fic and being wistful about being a good girl and waiting to write more Doctor/Master until after s4 was over. And then at around ten I found myself with this blank Word doc and thinky thoughts and ... ended up just typing for four hours. I am not sure I would call this "Doctor/Master fic" so much as I would call it "weird reflections on regeneration and yet another way for the Master to not be very dead". Plus it has Donna!

All my research comes from wiki and Chaucer, and all the language bits are definitely initially inspired by this fic of fahye's. It was far too good an idea not to play with a bit. In fact, don't bother reading mine, go read hers instead.

Anyway: fear of the dark.

and I have 'doomsday' stuck in my head

2008-05-28T00:21:27Z

I have no idea when "attempt Life On Mars fic and wait until s4 is done airing" became "start plotting season arcs and coming up with episode titles and write a fecking page of episode possibly six" but it ... did.

I think pretty much the only way I won't be writing this is if I am internetless at the apartment. I've just. I've really missed writing the Master.

Have some contextless Master from episode maybe six!

The grief coming off the Doctor is ebbing, mixing now with hope. It's a little dizzying. But all the Doctor says is, tinged with suspicion, "And what would you want in return?"

He's learning.

The Master's nearly tempted to say something half- (or, well, a third) joking about sexual favours, but his plans are a little more ambitious than that. "Open favour," he says. "I haven't decided yet." He knows that if the Doctor tries to examine this statement for a lie, he'll hear only the drums, and the drums never feel like a lie; they're the one truth the Master's got.

"I --" the Doctor says. He hesitates. He nods slowly.

So perhaps he hasn't learned so much as all that.

meta meta meta

2008-05-13T19:44:59Z

Okay, I have a question. Actually, what I really have is a big bundle of related questions. For the sake of clarity, though, my question goes: as far as pairings you like in your TV shows go, are you usually content going with the text and the stuff the writers explicitly say, or does the text make you uncomfortable and wanting to go someplace else with your interpretations?

I ask this question specifically about TV because TV fandoms are a fairly new thing for me and consequently extremely fascinating. Now, in book fandoms, you've got basically two things, the actual text on the page and whatever the author chooses to say about that book in interviews &c; so you either go with textual reading and supplements or you take the text's subtexts and gaps and fill in your missing scenes or backstories or futurefics, thank you and goodnight.

With TV you have this whole other monster: there's the script itself -- there's your text -- but then there's the music cuing you to what your emotions should be, and the blocking telling you how a scene should be read, and the kicker, which is the actors. They are not description and dialogue on a page to be filled in by your own inner voice. They are living people who are coming between you and the script and deciding what this character means and deciding in turn what the characters around them mean also. Here when you make your interpretation you have the scripted text and a whole riot of voices telling you what they think x character's action about y means, and your subtext is visual: angle shots, how close one character chooses to stand to another, &c.

When I watched Buffy the first time, I was not well-versed in the ways of reading TV. Now, I had already seen Firefly and was fairly on board with the "Joss is brilliant" concept, so I just went with the flow. Xander and Cordy? Hey, sure. Willow and Kennedy? I guess so. I'm more or less sold on the pairings, moving on. The second time through, I had already gone through various epic struggles with reading Doctor Who (see below, I'll get to that one also) and knew how to watch skeptically. This time, though, I was not watching Buffy alone, but with my friend Ray. I haven't had the meta-text/text/subtext talk with Ray ever, so I cannot claim knowledge of the way she reads the show; what I do know is that her Buffy OTPs are Buffy/Angel and Willow/Tara, and this makes her one happy camper. Why? Both the text and meta-text of the show support her.

(I warn that all my various following quotations, whether from episodes or interviews, are probably paraphrased and definitely uncited, as this is not a premeditated post and I only have all this info in my brain.) Buffy at one point says that she loved Angel more than she will love anything in this life. Of course one could validly point out that she hasn't met her other lovers yet and is a dramatic teenager, and one could snarkily point out, uh, which life exactly are we talking here, Buff? It remains: Buffy says that she loves Angel more than she will ever love anything again. Text. On the Willow/Tara front, in my meanderings through the wonderful world of the Buffy fandom I have discovered that Joss said Willow has always been gay and it just took her a while to realise it. Crushing blow to the Willow/Oz camp? Well, yeah. Ridiculously confusing for those among us who hold out bisexuality as a valid identity in life? That too. But there's your meta-text, and despite the hearsay that is my knowledge of the comics, the text of the show itself sets Tara up as Willow's One True Love and Kennedy as the rebound chick.

Watching Buffy with Ray was therefore all sorts of enjoyable for me. It's fantastic to watch something with someone who is genuinely enthusiastic and supportive of all the text and meta-text, because enthusiasm is catching and it is very nice not to struggle against a show. Now, don't get me wrong; I like these pairings fine. I like Buffy better when she's not with anyone, which happily the text of the show also supports re: Buff's cookie-dough speech, but -- here's the thing. The first time around, I just found Buffy/Spike a lot more interesting than Buffy/Angel, if only because I am a sucker for really fucked-up fictional people. The second time around, due in large part to [a] newfound love for David Boreanaz re: the show Bones and [b] Ray's catching enthusiasm, I really enjoyed the Buffy/Angel. I still found the Buffy/Spike plain more interesting, but I was more or less on the B/A OTP Bandwagon.

Here's what the text of the show gives us: Buffy is, or at least has been, in love with Angel. Let's make that 'is', since when she sees him briefly in s7 she makes out with him like there's no tomorrow -- although, in all fairness, impeding apocalypse. Buffy spends most of s6 insisting that she doesn't have feelings for Spike and it's just the sex. She also tells him she loves him, but the textual response and final word on the subject is "No you don't, but thanks for saying it." Here's what the subtext of the show gives us: brooding guilt-ridden vampire meets cute teenage Slayer. Brooding guilt-ridden vampire sees the face of his salvation; cute teenage Slayer sees tall, fanged, and angsty, which, let's face it, she's seventeen and there's a great Romeo & Juliet thing going on here. Bam, instantly in love. Now, far as we know Buffy never knows that Angel dances like a colossal dorkface and likes to sing 'Mandy', nor does Angel really know anything about Buffy after she really starts becoming an adult. Logistically of course this was to avoid too much show crossover, but what we've got is two people who really love the idea of each other and want to know each other but never really have. Meanwhile we got Spike, who, unlike the Angelus we all know and, uh ... know, starts being all White Hat before going out to get a soul of his very own. Note the lack of gypsy curses. Angel is unhappy and conscience-ridden; Buffy only knows him, really, when he is all Angelcakes, and absolves him of all his awful Angelus stuff. Spike, well, Spike was a bit of an evil fucker and he does seem to feel a bit twitchy about it, but with his kinda itchy new soul he is still recognisably Spike; therefore Buffy does not feel compelled to absolve him of anything (see: attempted rape, end of s6; let's weigh this one against Angelus' various sins), although to be fair to Buffy she is all about the Let's Not Kill Spike Please, Giles. Anyway, the subtext gives us something a lot weirder than the text does, despite the text's half-arsed attempt to make the choice between Angel and Spike any sort of contest. Obviously the solution is a threesome. (What is that you say? The comics sort of went there? Jolly good.)

I was also going to talk about how the early subtext of the show makes me cry because Xander is totally the gay one and meta-text, ie logistics and Seth Green leaving, damn yoooou Seth Green, mean the text made Willow the gay one instead despite the fact that it is obviously Xander, but the Angel/Buffy/Spike thing ate up a lot of space and if I start in on Fictional Portrayals of Gayness I will go on for ... a while. So in conclusion Buffy is a good enough show that I will both willingly embrace its text and want to poke the subtext with sticks. At length. And possibly demand of Joss what he means about Willow being gay all along.

I was going to talk about Doctor Who also, but it would have felt weird and tacked on and my companions rant is also a whole other post, so: are you at peace with the text of your show? Do you prod the subtext and demand of the various writers, "What are you talking about, clearly x is not true at all!" ? I think it is lots of fun to be at odds with the text, because where would fandom be without wacky non-canon pairings that are nevertheless supportable with the material, but there is only a certain degree of at-odds that is fun. I am not invested enough in who cookie-Buffy ends up with for this to upset me, but if I were to extrapolate upon my experiences in Who fandom, I would say at a guess that not wanting Buffy and Angel to end up together would kind of, ha, suck.

Give me your thoughts, please? I would prefer if they were TV thoughts but they do not have to be Buffy thoughts. ~~Unless they are thoughts about how Xander is the gay one. Those thoughts I want to hear.~~

storyteller

2008-04-20T16:50:31Z

Now is not the time for epic novellas of any sort. Nevertheless, besides the ~25 page Dark Is Rising epic novella that is stalled because I have come up against the immovable object, or: plot, I also seem to have turned vague tentative Xander/Andrew scribblings into, uh, an epic novella post-Chosen. Yay me, this is mostly for my own fun/indulgence of insanity/&c, but I am also curious as always to see if anyone else would want to read it. Um, right now besides five pages and a tentative plot and absolute disregard for the comics but not Angel s5, I have THEMES like storytelling and cookie dough and &c, and also not Willow/Kennedy and definitely Buffy/her delicious baking self. Um. Yes.

View Poll: #1174200

(Things were a lot easier when I just wanted to write The Doctor And Master's Adventures In Time And Space.)

here come the drums

2008-04-04T15:22:15Z

Will I actually finish this before Real Season Four airs? Probably not, but I'm giving it my best go.

4x03: The Quantum Room

(Kigkrywui, Theta Eridani, 27,003,957)

I am probably going to say this a few more times during commentary, but let's get it out of the way: this is one of my favourites. I am not going to categorically state it is my very favourite -- that honor probably goes to ep 7 -- but it's definitely one of the best.

I love it in part because it was the only idea that came to me absolutely whole. I had been sitting in front of my computer, typing out things like "historical episode?" and "fob watches" and "needs more Torchwood", and I had all sorts of thematic fragments but no real episode plot ideas beyond the one I used for Bliss. I stood up to take a break from my brain and there, across the room, was my salvation: a framed poster completely covered in photographs of doors. Bam, I had the quantum room in my head along with the whole episode outline.

Originally my conception was a lot more complex and included Susan and other old school things, before I realised that sticking to New Who [a] covered everything I wanted to say, [b] would not confuse any members of the audience who didn't hang around old school, and [c] would not warrant any additional research.

This world is a cold and desolate place.

A red giant star hangs sullenly in the sky, bathing everything in bloody orange light. The sky is deep indigo and a chill wind whistles through the orange-tinged grey heather.

Credit for the general atmosphere of the planet goes to CS Lewis and the world of Charn. Aren't you glad the Master never met Jadis?

This place is where the TARDIS has landed them at random: the console read Kigkrywui, year roughly 27,004,000, give or take a few centuries.

Aria's Planet-Naming Method: keysmash until something likely turns up. So was born the world of Kigkrywui.

The whole place appears long since abandoned. From the Doctor's lack of reaction when he saw the TARDIS' readout, from the way he's striding curiously through the heather, he's never heard of this planet before, nor been to it.

The Master has.

Sometime around the year 100,000, long before the Time War, long before his first set of regenerations ran their course, and only shortly after he had started calling himself the Master in his own head, he had happened to come to this place.

I have in my head a fairly complex personal history of the Master. It has huge gaps in it that I have not made any attempt to fill, nor do I feel a need to write it down, but it's a fun thing to have. I imagine the Master went through his first set of regenerations so quickly out of a mix of scientific curiosity, recklessness, and sheer vanity: will I still care about the same things when I have my new body? does regeneration feel the same every time? is there a pattern to the changes? &c. Assuming that Delgado was Master 13.1 -- assuming Simm is somewhere around 3.2 -- I'd put the Master on Kigkrywui around 4.1, after he'd leveled out with the body experimentation and was on to psychological self-discovery.

Okay, maybe I lied, and I do want to write this down.

The light had been yellower then, but the planet much colder, everything covered in a light powdery snow.

There had been no grey heather then. The Kigkry warmed and fueled their small stone cities with hot springs below the planet's surface, and although their technology was primitive at best, they were not surprised at the Master's appearance, and moreover only dipped their ears in polite Kigkry smiles when the Master offered them certain technological advancements.

My favourite thing about writing aliens, as opposed to designing them for the screen, is that I can say something about how they are furry and emote with their ears and absolutely nothing else, and let the reader's imagination fill in the many blanks.

Somehow in my head the Kigkry ended up looking a lot like less terrifying, brown Furbies, but please continue to imagine whatever you were imagining instead.

They had seen the devastation those technologies could bring, they explained to the Master, and when he asked them how they knew, their ears went up and they clicked a little with nervousness and finally one of them said, Show him the Sacred Room.

What the Master saw there he will never forget.

Another secret of Aria's writing process: at the point when I wrote this sentence, I knew what the Master saw was definitely important, but I had absolutely no idea what it was.

He crunches along calmly after the Doctor. His feet aren't yet used to the funny shoes the Doctor has lent him, but their dirty off-white cloth is far more suitable to this terrain than his polished black dress shoes, so he makes no complaint.

I have the feeling that deep down inside all I want out of life is John Simm in Ten's Converse. This is probably very wrong of me.

In the distance he can see the low hive-like bumps of a ruined Kigkry city, and isn't surprised: the Kigkry Sacred Room, as he understands it, is as eternal as can be expected, and will preserve its physical home. A mutable fact.

"Out of curiosity," he says, coming up next to the Doctor, "do you have any idea where you're going?"

"Exploring," the Doctor says, squinting up at the stone hives. "There's no one alive here but us, but the TARDIS did pick up some funny energy readings." He turns and gives the Master a grin. "Could be interesting."

Unbelievable, the Master thinks. The Doctor's been alone so long he's nearly forgotten how to keep his thoughts contained, and the resultant fallout is incredible. It's composed entirely of white noise and occasional flashes of sheer misery, but sometimes something else, too: a strong flare of something not quite lust and not quite hope, that the Master finds impossible to catalogue.

Love, of course, unquantifiable because the Master has never been able to quantify it. Whether the Master is able to recognise it by the end of the season is the question, which I will probably go about answering in a meandering fashion. Right now the answer is a flat no.

In any case, it's quite remarkable, the way he's nearly able to beat the Doctor down, but can't quite manage it. If the Doctor would just stop forgiving, could just give up for one moment--

"What sort of energy readings?" he asks.

"Funny fluctuations in spacetime," the Doctor says, starting to walk a little faster. Evidently funny fluctuations in spacetime put a bit of a spring into his step. "Quantum stuff."

"Doctor," the Master says, and catches briefly at his coat sleeve so that the Doctor turns to look at him, startled. The Master gives him an utterly disdainful look. "I'm not one of your humans. I can feel the 'funny fluctuations in spacetime'."

The Doctor actually stops walking, and goes very still. "Oh," he says, and swallows. "Right."

"What sort of quantum 'stuff'?"

The Doctor drags in a breath and says, quite rapidly, "Something here is playing with the n-space possibilities. The TARDIS calculated it at something approaching an infinite number of permutations, but contained, except that the possibility matrices are horribly degraded, and if there's a lot more decay some of the permutations will escape into this reality."

I think this is the biggest burst of technobabble I give in the whole fic. I know nothing about quantum mechanics and next to nothing about normal-person math, but since Who proper knows less about science than I do sometimes, I feel zero guilt.

The Master sucks in a breath. Evidently a few hundred thousand years makes quite a difference in the safety of the Kigkry Sacred Room-- although 'safety' was a relative term to begin with. Perhaps one of the possibilities destroyed the Kigkry themselves; unsurprising, but a pity nonetheless. They may have been completely useless in the grand scheme of the universe, but they were intelligent custodians. And abominably furry.

The latter half of this paragraph now strikes me as slightly awkward, although I don't think it should. The Master certainly has the same capacity the Doctor does for recongising the intelligence and intrinsic worth of other creatures, but I don't think his self-awareness extends to any sort of internal monologue on said worth. On the other hand, the Master does have the capacity to care about whatever pet project, at least judging from his seemingly genuine attachment to the future humans in SoD/LotTL. Anyway, he likes Teletubbies, it's not a terrible stretch that he'd like Furbies too.

"They called it their Sacred Room," he says, and is nearly as shocked to hear himself say it as the Doctor is. He's learning, though, because the shock on the Doctor's face morphs at once into suspicion.

"You've been here before," the Doctor says.

"A long time ago," the Master says softly, and resumes walking.

"So what does their... sacred quantum room do?"

Draws you in and pulls you apart. Shows you what might have been and is and what might be. Tempts you terribly. Changes things.

Changes things, the Master thinks, and feels his pulses race.

Again with my unreasonable affection for the Time Lord two heart thing. Heartsbeat, pulses.

The point here is that the Master lies to himself just as much as the Doctor does. He has absolutely no reason to share any of his knowledge of the planet with the Doctor, but of course he does. Because he's fucking with the Doctor. Obviously. He has no other motivation here.

"It offers possibilities," he says quietly, nearly under the crunching their shoes make on the brittle ground. "If it leaked-- Everyone would be offered possibilities. It would probably take all of thirty seconds for the universe to collapse."

The Doctor thinks about this for a moment; then a grin lights his face. "Time to save the universe, then," he says.

The Master groans. Save yourself, save the bloody world, he thinks, but that might not be necessary.

I bet the Master could think up a way to kill Claire Bennet permanently. This is a lot funnier to me than it should be.

If he's offered the right possibility... He follows the Doctor wordlessly on up the hill and at length they reach the tunnel that leads down into the city. Cold radiates out from the dark doorway. The Doctor, unsurprisingly, produces a small torch from the pocket of his trenchcoat and shines it down into the gloom: smooth stone descends into blackness. They set off down into the heart of the city, walking carefully-- the stone is worn-down and slippery, and a false step might send them into an undignified slide. The Master hopes, with vague petty vindictiveness, that the Doctor will lose his footing. He could do with a laugh.

The Master pretty much always feels trapped around the Doctor, this feeling coming from a long and complex history of the Doctor repeatedly kicking his ass. At this point the Master has at least four plans to defeat the Doctor going at any one time, ranging from "take over the universe with the quantum room" to "mess with the Doctor's head" to "escape at first given opportunity" to "relish the schadenfreude if the Doctor falls over". If some of these strike you as a little pathetic, well, he's trying, all right, he doesn't have a lot to work with here.

They walk along the dark echoing tunnel (which flattens out eventually, but gets no warmer; the hot springs, evidently, have vanished, which might also account for the absence of the Kigkry) and some twenty minutes in, both stop abruptly. It's like a buzzing in the fingertips and a light in the mind and voices whispering on the edge of hearing, and for a horrible moment the drums in the Master's head go absolutely deafening. They stand for a moment in front of the blank stretch of stone wall.

"How does it work?" the Doctor asks in a whisper. He could figure it out in an instant, but he's still asking. The Master nearly doesn't catch the surge of hatred in time; his nails dig hard into the palms of his hands and he barely manages to not slam the Doctor right through the wall.

And why doesn't the Master just allow himself to violently throw the Doctor through the wall? Because, just as the Doctor is assuming the Master is trying to punish him with kindness, so the Master is assuming the Doctor is trying to provoke him. Basically they are both self-centered morons.

"You walk through," he says. "Just walk right through."

"No," the Doctor says, turning to look at him intently, the torch lighting his face from below and making his eyes glitter strangely. "How does it work? How many people can it calibrate? If we both go in, does the whole thing go boom? What happens when a possibility is chosen? Why--"

The Master holds up a hand, and the Doctor stops talking abruptly. The Master's eyes drift shut briefly with the thrill of being obeyed, but he says, quite calmly, "The Sacred Room, to my understanding, was used as a method of observation. The Kigkry told me that the first of their kind to use it-- to find it, it wasn't made-- chose to use it carefully. Fortunate he did, wasn't it?" The Master stares at the blank stretch of stone and frowns. "They told me... They were only allowed inside their quantum room in pairs. Both to see: one to choose, and the other to mediate. To say no if they found the choice dangerous."

"Clever," the Doctor murmurs, his eyebrows going up. "But they're all gone now."

"And with no one to choose stability it's breaking down," the Master says. "At a guess. Or it just has a flawed energy field and we're all about to die." He grins.

The Master is pretending to himself that he wouldn't mind dying. If I am going to allow the sentiment behind the Master's death in LotTL to be canon even if the action itself is not, he still does assume that the best way to escape the Doctor is to escape everything. Possibly that's true, but I figure that if the Doctor can go through everything he goes through and want to keep on regenerating and going on, the Master can suck it up and do the same, no matter what he tells himself he wants.

"And when a possibility is chosen?" the Doctor asks, ignoring this last.

"It becomes so, as I understand it," the Master says. "A lot of Kigkry discoveries were made in that room. Central heating. This really delicious bright blue food-- pity they're gone, I would have liked to have some more."

The blue food is a Young Wizards joke. Whenever the wizard Kit and his dog Ponch go to the Galactic Crossings on Rirhath B, Ponch wants to eat some of the blue food. Much like the Life On Mars references, the Young Wizard references will turn up again here.

"So we'll have to make it stable," the Doctor says. "Refuse all the choices until we find the right one."

The Master's lip curls a little. "So who chooses, and who mediates?"

The Doctor glances at him. "I'll choose," he says, as though this is perfectly obvious. "And you don't want the universe to end, so when I find some way of making this thing stable you'll allow the choice to be made."

"You'd trust me with that."

The Doctor fixes him with a steady look, chin tilted up a little, deadly serious. "I have to," he says.

The thing is, the Doctor is taking a genuine risk here. At least consciously the Master has no real incentive to save the universe from destroying itself in a microsecond. It's not terribly classy, but it does get the job done.

Together they walk through the wall, which presses back at them like stone and then like rubber and then like soft clay before yielding. For a moment they're standing in a dusty dark cavern; then the Doctor's torch goes out. Darkness. The drums beat under the Master's pulses and he can hear the Doctor breathing next to him, calm and even. Slowly, as though a very great distance away, a point of light flickers and glitters to life. After a moment it's followed by another, and then another, and more and more glowing into existence, like faraway stars, except that the points of light are entirely at random, even underneath them, without a point of reference for the floor. The Master can feel his feet standing solidly on nothing, and he's a Time Lord; it isn't disorienting, but neither is it comfortable. More and more pinprick lights appear, exponentially multiplying, until there is more light than darkness. For a moment the Master catches a glimpse of the Doctor's face: his mouth is a little open, in something like a smile, pure wonder in his eyes, and the Master nearly has time to think it beautiful before the blinding white light eclipses his sight entirely, and--

What I would not give to see this as an episode. I don't even care, it can be the Doctor and Donna do quantum. Either way this would be a great episode for Ten; the Master is just bonus material.

They're standing on a suburban Earth street of the twenty-first century; the TARDIS is to the Master's right, a brick house to his left. The Doctor's wearing his blue suit, and he's staring in some astonishment at Martha Jones.

"Come in for tea," Martha says.

"What?" the Doctor says.

"Tea," Martha says. "Mum really wants to thank you properly."

"But we-- had this conversation," the Doctor says, with some difficulty. The Master smiles a little. He remembers the utter confusion. He remembers not quite knowing where he was, having a peculiar sense of déjà vu, glancing around as though certain someone was watching him-- yes, the Doctor does it now, his gaze sweeping unseeingly over the Master. The Master remembers, too, what he chose, and he remembers the quivery-eared horror with which the Kigkry shunted him out of the room and off of their planet as politely and quickly as possible.

Again, Aria totally bullshitting. I had no idea what the Master chose.

"First time I've had this conversation," Martha says, grinning. "What, can Time Lords get déjà vu?"

"No," the Doctor says. "I-- I don't have time to come in for tea."

"All right," Martha says, shrugging, and the scene dissolves into whiteness.

Interesting, the Master thinks. Another thing the Kigkry told him: since there are infinite possibilities, the room sorts through probabilities first. It rummages through your head and finds what you want and puts those possibilities ahead of lesser ones. Interesting.

Or: the room is offering him freedom from responsibility. Choosing Martha over the Master, in a small and undramatic way. I never bothered deciding exactly how sentient the quantum room is, but if it has sentience right here it is testing the figurative waters.

Fade in: the TARDIS, going haywire around them. The whole place is pervaded with the sense of a recent regeneration, like cinnamon and copper under the Master's fingernails and inside his eyes. A blonde girl is clutching at the console. "But what about Jack?" she asks.

What is it about Time Lords that makes me think of cinnamon? I have no idea. Also, this scene is a bit off; I'm pretty sure the Doctor and Rose's dialogue here is less straightforward on the whole "what about Jack" issue. Oh well.

Confusion passes briefly across the Doctor's face, but he's still going as haywire as the TARDIS and shakes it off in a moment. "He needs to stay behind and rebuild the Earth!"

Dissolve.

Try harder, the Master tells the room in annoyance, but when the next scene fades in Rose Tyler is still there, standing in front of the TARDIS, staring up into the sky. It's nighttime, and a fine rain of ash is sifting down from above. The Master grins to himself. Oh, that Christmas had been perfect. When he turns his attention from the sky, the Doctor is staring at Rose, with a look of confusion and pain.

To his astonishment, this reality starts solidifying around them.

I remember a few people commenting in confusion about this particular choice, which saddens me because it means I was not doing my job as a writer. The Doctor is here knowing what will happen to Rose if she stays on with him -- sobbing her eyes out on a beach in another universe, anyone? -- and wants to spare her the pain of that parting. Whether I actually conveyed that, here and in the next few lines, I am sadly unsure.

"No," the Master snarls. "Whatever he's choosing here, I'm not allowing it."

The Doctor sighs and reaches out and takes Rose Tyler's hand, and the scene fades into whiteness. Then--

Everything is blood red and searing hot and, to the Master's absolute astonishment, they're standing in the Panopticon. He is, at least; the Doctor is on his hands and knees on the floor, shaking madly. There's an uncertainty to his form; he has the same hands and hair and face as he did when stepping into the quantum room, but the posture is different, the clothing entirely wrong. At the edge of hearing: screams, explosions. And... the Master turns to see what the Doctor is staring so fixedly at, and sees the Eye of Harmony.

Picture here David Tennant in Eight's clothes. It's awesome, I promise.

This scene was my absolute fucking favourite to write in the entire season.

"You didn't," he breathes.

But of course, it's quite brilliant: by the time the Master himself had fled, Skaro had been blasted to charred dust and the Dalek Emperor had taken on a full offensive directed towards Gallifrey itself. The Time Lords had been, impossibly, losing. That was when the Master had gone; stolen a chameleon arch, stolen a TARDIS, and fled to the end of the universe, to a time where neither Daleks nor Time Lords would ever think to look. He refused to be used again. And meanwhile the Doctor had been here, below the citadel, knowing: a universe with the Time Lords dead is far better than a universe controlled by Daleks.

How much of this is actually canon? I'm sure very little. The Dalek Emperor had at that point taken control of the cruciform or something, but I am of the increasing suspicion that Rusty sometimes writes in the same lazy way I do, ie tosses out random bits of information that sound cool without knowing any of the surrounding context. Until he gets his act together, the above is my definitive situation re: the Time War.

He kneels next to the Doctor in fascination, the stones almost red-hot under his knees. The Doctor's teeth are clenched and his eyes are over-bright and he looks as though he's in almost unbearable agony, and this time the Master does have time to appreciate the beauty, because the moment stretches onwards and onwards; not solidifying yet, because the Doctor hasn't decided.

The Master realizes, with a faint thrill of surprise, that if the Doctor chooses to let the war play out another way, he will not stop it.

Whether the Doctor made the right decision here is entirely up for debate. One assumes that there must be better solutions to conflict than double genocide, even if Daleks are involved; part of the point of the season is that people not the Doctor did have backup plans, even if they got slightly screwed.

The fact that the Master is willing to let it play another way is something else entirely. Again there is the simple explanation: he just wants to see what happens, because he doesn't care enough either way. The other part of this, though, is that the Master's feelings about the Time War are very complex; is it a good thing everyone was destroyed? is it a good thing that the Doctor orchestrated that destruction? what sort of different place would the world be?

But the Doctor reaches a trembling hand into his pocket and pulls out something absurdly simple: a hand grenade made for skirmishes early on in the war. When thrown, the grenade would distort the time field for a ten foot radius, freezing the victim to a fixed point in time. It would also, the Master thinks, be entirely suitable for completely destabilizing the nucleus of a black hole and effectively burning up an entire planet and every single Dalek fleet surrounding it.

How bad is my skience? I mean, I guess it's okay. No one has ever tested out what happens if you throw a time freeze grenade into a black hole. Or the nucleus of a black hole. Anyway, two almighty civilizations burning &c &c.

The Doctor stares at the hand grenade for a long, terrible moment. Then he pulls out the pin and lobs it at the Eye of Harmony.

Whiteness.

They're standing on the wind-torn side of a gravelly cliff above an expansive plain full of missiles, and the Doctor is coming towards him, slowly, as though he's a cornered dog. "Weapon after weapon after weapon," the Doctor says.

It takes the Master a moment to realize that he's holding something out at arm's length, and that this is what the Doctor must be talking about.

"All you do," the Doctor says, "is talk and talk and talk."

"What?" the Master says.

"What?": the Time Lord verbal tic of choice.

"But after all these years," the Doctor says, "and all these disasters, I've always had the greatest secret of them all. I know you."

Rusty, this is a silly line. Of course the Master fucking knows the Doctor knows him.

It's not supposed to work like this, the Master realizes. The observer is never a part of the scenario, never.

"Explode those ships," the Doctor says, staring out over the world and back at the Master, "you kill yourself. That's the one thing you could never do." He holds out a hand, slow and careful, so damn sanctimonious and right, and says, softly, "Give that to me."

"No," the Master says. "This isn't real. This is a trick."

Confusion flickers across the Doctor's face.

"I know how it goes," the Master says, laughing a little. "All right? I know. You thought you were going to die and you still had the guts to blow up Gallifrey."

The Doctor stumbles backwards as though the Master has slapped him.

"But I couldn't even blow up this stupid little planet," the Master says. The drums pound in his head and the wind roars across the cliff top and he nearly has to shout to hear himself. "I gave in and I ran. And back on Gallifrey I ran. And you-- you always run too. You ran when you saw the vortex, and you ran to the vortex. How stupid can you be? And you just-- keep-- running--"

I feel I should say something insightful here, but all that comes to mind is: the Doctor and the Master are a lot alike. The Master's just the bigger coward. And he hates it.

The Doctor has gone very pale. "Stop talking," he says. "We need to find a way to stop this thing. Can't you feel it? It's breaking all its parameters."

"But you didn't run from Gallifrey!" the Master shouts at him. "And you didn't run from me! Why didn't you run?"

"I couldn't!" the Doctor screams back, shaking. "Someone had to end it-- you're my responsibility--"

The Master grabs the lapels of the Doctor's coat furiously, his doomsday device dropping into the gravel, forgotten. "Am I the Time War?" he snarls. "Am I Romana? Am I your friend? Am I something you can fix, am I something you can save--?"

Soapbox moment: I believe all the Doctor's endless pining for Rose during s3 was an extension of his horrible guilt about Gallifrey. Similarly his determination to save the Master is about saving something from Gallifrey, no matter what. The Master recognises this and it offends him to the core of his egotistical being.

Something they both have to recognise, over the course of the season, is that the Master isn't the Time War, and their investment is absolutely personal.

"Yes," the Doctor says, furious, fierce.

"Forgiving me won't solve anything!" the Master yells, shaking him. "Loving me won't make everything better! After the Time War-- when you were all that was left-- Jack loved you! Rose loved you! Martha loved you! Did it change a thing?"

Of course the Master loving him is something else again, because -- thanks, Rusty -- the Master knows the Doctor, too. The Doctor has tried for human forgiveness, but Rose and Jack and Martha can't genuinely forgive him because they can't conceive of what he did. If the Master forgives him, he does it in the full knowledge of what the Doctor has done.

Essentially the Master is still winning because he has something the Doctor desperately wants. Give him another point on your scoreboards.

The Doctor swallows. "No," he whispers.

The Master slowly lets go of his coat.

They're not on the cliff anymore, but in the white nothingness; it flickers, like a bad film projection, nearly unreal. They're both breathing too hard and the Master wants to break something, the Doctor's nose or fingers or neck, but he can't. All of the room's possibilities have been useless. Not one of them has tempted the Doctor sufficiently. Not one of them, even the last, can rid him of the Doctor, not really. The whiteness is fading into grey and the walls of the cave are appearing back around them.

"This," the Doctor whispers, echoing a little. "I choose this. Just an empty cave on a dead world. No more possibilities here."

But the Doctor is choosing what he does have, even if it seems hopeless; give him a point, too.

The Master can feel it solidifying. "Yes," he says.

The room deposits them, gently, back into the dark corridor, and goes, with absolute awful finality, silent.

The Doctor switches on his torch. They walk wordlessly back up along the tunnel to the surface. A chill, blood red sunset greets them, and they set off back down the heathery slope towards the TARDIS. The crunch of brittle plant life underfoot nearly drowns out the drumming, and the Master hates everything in the whole universe with a terrible vicious ache.

Because he knows that despite everything, he's not winning, just as he has never won, and he needs to rethink his strategy entirely. The worst part for him, of course, is that although he and the Doctor have known each other forever and been more or less on par intellectually, they used to want very different things out of life, and see it very differently. Then the Time War happened, and now they're essentially heading for the same place from moral opposites. Empathy is the worst thing the Master can experience.

"Why didn't it kill you?" he asks.

The Doctor glances over at him, eyes wide with remembered pain. The light here is almost exactly as it was before the Eye of Harmony. "I ran," he says, soft and simple. "It didn't destabilize right away. It-- froze. And I ran. I ran to the TARDIS and I hit the first coordinates I could find and I spent a week getting drunk in a bar on Betelgeuse because I couldn't hear anyone anymore. And then I went back to look, and it had burned. There was nothing left. No one."

In the middle of this depressing speech, the Doctor knocks back Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Ford Prefect. You know the Guide exists in the Who universe.

They walk on in silence.

When they reach the TARDIS, the Doctor pauses for a moment and runs a hand up her wooden side before going in. The control room hums soothingly. The Doctor won't even look at the Master; the Master watches him go up one level, but doesn't hear him go up any more. He pauses over the TARDIS' controls, his hands itching to try them and knowing it's quite useless.

He goes upstairs and finds the Doctor sitting on a couch the Master's rather fond of. He's leaning back and staring blankly at nothing, and without probing at all the Master knows the Doctor is slowly taking all the choices and memories and shoving them down and down until he can pretend none of them matter.

Does he recognise this because he does it too or just because he knows the Doctor? It's probably more the latter; in a lot of ways the Master is more self-aware and doesn't go around repressing events the way the Doctor does.

The Master sits down next to him on the couch and digs for a moment between the cushions; he finds a few shortbread crumbs and a penny from 1896 before his hand closes over the white bag. He turns to the Doctor, knowing it's hardly worth it, knowing the look on the Doctor's face will make him want to gouge his eyes out with a blunt spoon, and knowing, too, that despite all the things he's said, the Doctor will still cling to false hope, and that is today's victory.

Except the hope is not entirely false, because even if the Master does not repress as much, he still lies to himself.

Give them both one more point.

The white bag crackles when he pulls it out; a bit squished, but it will do.

"Jelly baby?"

it's supernatural, i'm coming undone

2008-04-03T20:32:52Z

This episode, warning for Torchwood s2 spoilers.

4x02: The Illusive Ms. Ingram

(Cardiff, Earth, 2009)

A few people asked me whether I'd not meant "elusive" instead of "illusive". No, the pun is indeed intentional.

Here begin our human-centric episodes. I don't actually recall why I decided I wanted Torchwood in my season; it's entirely possible that, post-s2 Torchwood, I would not have had the urge. I think it had something to do with my conviction that crossover between Who and Torchwood would be fun, and I don't think I'd yet heard that Martha would have a guest spot.

The thing is, I wanted Jack and Martha to interact but, having only s1 Torchwood to work with, the poor team more or less ended up as scenery.

The first time Jack Harkness sees Martha Jones again, it's about a year after they bid each other farewell.

The first thing Jack says to Martha is, "Most folks get in here by delivering the pizza."

The first thing Martha says to Jack is, "Delivering the pizza. Really."

"Yeah," Jack says.

"Into your secret government hideout," Martha says.

On the other hand, I seriously wish Martha had turned up at Torchwood in an unofficial awesome infiltration way. Not that there is anything wrong with working for UNIT and being let in by Ianto, of course.

She's wearing a jean jacket and black slacks and a low-cut grey top and heels, and Jack thinks she looks more beautiful than ever. "Yeah," he says. "Come on, meet the team."

"How the hell did she get in?" Owen wants to know, from down in the surgery theatre where he's dissecting their latest find. "She doesn't have a pizza."

"That's Owen," Jack says. "Martha Jones, Owen Harper. You're both doctors."

"Really," Martha says, and gives Owen an up-and-down once-over and turns back to Jack. She doesn't seem bothered by the alien Owen's dissecting; Jack figures he should probably just be grateful she makes no comment, because, although the creature proved to be pretty dangerous before they killed it, now that it's dead it looks remarkably like the thing from Alien Autopsy. "Right," Martha says, "who else, then?"

I am probably the only person in the world who has seen Alien Autopsy. It's, uh, this, from a film of the same name, and I was forced to sit through it in high school conceptual physics because my teacher was a total dorkface.

Jack sees the face Owen makes behind Martha's back, angry astonishment at her absolute dismissal of him, and Jack isn't too worried; Martha is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. All the same, he makes a quick mental note to watch Owen carefully while Martha's around.

I am happy to say that in the time since writing this I have [a] decided to ship Owen/Martha, [b] been briefly delighted, and [c] had all my hopes and dreams crushed. This, however, was written back in the day when I sincerely believed that I was one of the very few who could even stand to watch Owen for more than five seconds, so I tried to more or less avoid him.

It's not the first such mental note he's had to make, either. All of his team are rattled, and understandably. From their perspective, in the space of a week they'd nearly seen the end of the world, thought they'd lost Jack for good, had Jack awaken only to vanish on them, been called off to the Himalayas, and returned in great confusion to find Jack awaiting them with enthusiasm. He can tell none of them quite know what to make of him now.

Still feeling surreal, I take this time to say that I like what Torchwood actually did better than what I did here. Bloody Torchwood.

In all the time they've known him, he's been silent and efficient and as closed-off as he can possibly be, and it's always been for a good reason: he's responsible for them. Or he'd been telling himself that, but he's had time to think, and he's come to realize, it hasn't been about responsibility, it's been about fear. If you live forever, you don't want to get attached to anyone. That was the real reasoning, but seeing the Doctor again-- and having a year in chains to think things through-- well, that can really give a guy perspective.

He can't help wondering about the year that never was. If any of them survived. He's really damn glad they don't remember it.

"This is Tosh," he says, going across the catwalk to the computer bank. Martha follows him, her heels making small clanging noises on the grating. "Toshiko Sato. Tosh, Martha Jones."

Tosh looks up from her computer at Martha and gives her a quick smile. "Hello."

"Hi," Martha says. "So you're the one I go to for computer things?"

"Yes," Tosh says, looking a bit surprised. "Me or Ianto." She glances at Jack. "Um, Jack--?"

Does one go to Ianto for computer things? Maybe I needed to give him something to do. We of course now know that one goes to Ianto for Sheer Fucking Badassery. On reflection it is perhaps fortunate that I wrote this before Ianto acquired a personality, or I would have had him and the Master make quips at each other and forget about the plot entirely.

"Actually," Jack says, grinning, "I have no idea why Martha's here. Martha, why are you here?"

"For computer things," Martha says, rather dryly. "But no rush, I'd like to meet the rest of the team."

"Ianto and Gwen went to get takeout," Tosh offers, with another quick smile. "If you like we can do the computer things you need now and you can stay with us for dinner."

"Yeah," Martha says, grinning. "Yeah, I'd like that." She goes to the bank of screens and leans over Tosh's shoulder. "Right, there's some organizations I need you to look up. I tried it on my own, but--" She glances over at Jack and makes a helpless hand gesture. Jack grins lopsidedly. "Nothing. At least nothing useful. I thought using the secret government agency computers might up my chances a bit."

If I'd known Martha was with UNIT, would I have even had her come to Torchwood? I am unsure. I do know that I wanted at least Martha and Jack in the same scenes, but I probably would have had Jack-without-Torchwood scenes instead.

"Right," Tosh says, keying in the search engine. "What sort of organizations?"

"Prydonian Labs," Martha says. "Used to be Lazarus, so that's not what I'm looking for. John Kaster Foundation. But there's no one named John Kaster in connection with the foundation, at least no one real. There's pictures of him, funny-looking bloke, but when I searched elsewhere for the same bloke-- nothing."

If you have any knowledge of old school Who at all, Prydonian Labs should have set off the bells right away. John Kaster was also a reference, although in the vague cheating way wherein Gallifrey is located in the constellation of Kasterborous and I bastardized it for my own nefarious purposes. I guess Lucy was bored?

She pulls a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and sets it on the desk next to Tosh. "Here's a few others, but they might be unrelated." Tosh turns her chair to look at Martha properly, and Martha gives her a little smile. "I have some theories, but I figured two places aren't enough to get accurate data. So that's what the others are for."

"All right," Tosh says, looking a little taken aback, and starts a search. "Prydonian Labs-- used to be Lazarus Labs, you got that--" Her fingers fly over the keyboard, and new windows pop up. "As an ultimate failure, Richard Lazarus' research into genetic coding to increase lifespan indefinitely was abandoned... Prydonian Labs hopes to create a new and better future... More thorough background research and controlled experiments before a project of Lazarus' magnitude can again be attempted... Although the funding from Saxon was pulled, financial backers in connection--"

"Stop," Martha says. Jack realizes he's gone very tense, leaning forward over Tosh's left shoulder as intently as Martha is over her right. "Who are the financial backers?"

"Just a moment," Tosh says, frowning in concentration; a few more windows and a password-hack later and she's pulled up a list.

"There," Martha says, tapping the screen. "Lucy Saxon."

This would be the point wherein I windmill my arms and beg you to stop reading right now if you haven't read the actual season, because I am about to spoil your pants off. Okay.

The plotting process of the season is all a little blurred together in my mind; it consisted of frantic pages of notes and hours of bouncing ideas off deutscheami very late at night, so it's a bit fuzzy. However, I do know I determined pretty much right away that the villain of the piece wasn't going to be the Master. If the Master simply stayed the same sort of evil and tried to take over the world yet again, I'd probably get bored, and bored writers generate incredibly boring writing. In addition, while there is certainly a time and place for Doctor/Master with world-destroying in the mix, I'd determined that it was not going to be here on a season-arc scale.

And I really, really wanted more Time Lords.

Bringing Romana back never crossed my mind, not because I do not love her but because in a world with both Romana and the Master, I don't believe the Doctor is actually fucked up enough to choose the latter. (Or maybe he is, but if so it is an idea for another story entirely.) But bringing some other Time Lords back seemed like a good idea; I wanted to deal with the Time War, since the show proper is being so coy about it.

So here we had Lazarus Labs and all of its wacky technology, and we had this convenient plot device that made Time Lords human, and I thought: crazy scientist Time Lords-turned-human totally seem to be the way to go.

"The politician's wife?" Tosh glances at their grim faces, confused. "Well, that's not surprising, is it? Mr. Saxon dies and he leaves all the political money in his wife's hands-- of course she'd carry on some of his work--"

"Can you cross-reference?" Martha asks. "I dunno, pull up all the organizations I gave you and see if Lucy Saxon is funding any of the others?"

"Sure," Tosh says.

"I don't understand, though," Jack murmurs, watching Tosh work. "She looked awful by the end. And she said his name with the rest of us."

I am sure there is plenty of dialogue out there about the psychology of Lucy Saxon. For the purposes of this story, she was power-hungry and when it turned out dear Harry just wanted to take over lots of planets instead of poking their inhabitants a lot, she became incredibly disenchanted.

The Master physically abusing her makes me intensely uncomfortable and I didn't really address it here at all, but the fact that she is pretty evil too makes it no less uncool and I am still intensely uncomfortable with it.

"I know," Martha says, frowning. "But you've got to wonder why she married Saxon in the first place, don't you? Maybe he didn't need Archangel to get to her. The Do--" Jack gives her a warning look and she stops abruptly, startled, then says, more carefully, "He said Saxon's always been a bit hypnotic. Maybe he did something to her."

"Do you want me to look at the Archangel network too?" Tosh asks, and turns. "I'm sorry, Martha, that's the only other thing Mrs. Saxon's name is mentioned in connection with."

Martha frowns. "You sure?"

"Just Prydonian Labs and the defunct Archangel network," Tosh says, and glances at Jack. Jack gave his team an accurate enough explanation for Archangel-- psychic network in the satellites, attempted brainwashing of Earth's population, alien influences-- before they blew all fifteen satellites from the sky, but he never explained the nature of the alien influences or what the attempted brainwashing was supposed to accomplish.

Something s2 Torchwood didn't address at all, that I am now sad I didn't take the time to go into either: besides destroying the Archangel network, what we have here is a situation in which the British PM kills the American President on international television and then dies -- or in this case is mysteriously spirited off -- moments later. How 'bout that ensuing international crisis, guys.

Of course his team thought at the time that Jack had given them all the information he knew, but Tosh isn't stupid, and she's caught on that there's more to this than Jack first told them. All the same, all she says is, "I can cross-reference the names of all the other people who are giving Prydonian Labs backing, and see if there are any matches."

"Yeah," Martha says, sighing. "That would be great."

"What's this about, anyway?" Jack asks quietly, watching Tosh's computer whirr its way through a search.

"My sister," Martha says. "Tish. She usually has secretarial jobs and that-- she likes 'em, too-- and sometimes she does PR, organizes events. Thing is, though, last year she had two jobs in four days." Jack glances over at Martha, and she gives him a wry smile. "Take a guess which four days."

One does have to wonder why Tish keeps taking these jobs. I briefly entertained giving Tish a bigger role, but couldn't really think of anything Martha couldn't investigate more competently.

"Hah." Jack considers her for a moment; she looks back at him steadily. He hadn't known she wasn't still off traveling the universe until he got the phone call this morning. I texted the Doctor, Martha had said. He gave me the number. Silly of me not to have asked for it earlier. Jack isn't surprised Martha's not still with the Doctor-- not with the Master to consider-- but he was surprised she can still contact the Doctor. Although, in retrospect, this is the girl who saved the world. Jack supposes the least the Doctor can do is let her send the occasional text message.

There was a certain point in the first Torchwood ep with Martha in which I thought "I wrote an episode like this once". I love that both Jack and Martha can know that the Doctor is incredibly important to them and still manage to be entirely living their own lives, and I love that it's been acknowledged in-show too.

"So," he says, "where did she work?"

"Head of PR for Lazarus Labs," Martha says grimly, "and at 10 Downing Street, although when they hired her they were vague. Apparently Saxon told her she was just supposed to-- stand there and look pretty. That's what Tish told me."

Jack sees the look on Martha's face and knows that she wants the Master dead just as much as he does. All he says, though, is, "So what's the work been since?"

On the other hand, the process of coping with the Doctor being gone when it is just the Doctor being gone, and you have made your own empowering decision to live your own life, is just a bit different from the process of coping with the Doctor being gone because he is off babysitting the person responsible for your year of hell. The fact that the coping process is not so very different perhaps says something about the Doctor: the issues are going to be there, and a bit awful, whether or not the Master is dead. The Master still living is just a kinder situation for the Doctor than otherwise.

"She got a few jobs," Martha says. "All the ones on my list. But she hasn't been able to keep one of them. It's weird, it-- This one place, she was working in the human resources department, and when she went to get her stuff at the end of the day, her purse had been looked through and all her phone contacts had been scrambled. Another place, there was a bomb planted in her department. The Kaster Foundation kept tapping all her phone calls, even though she was just doing secretarial stuff. And the best bit is, a lot of places would call her in for interviews, and they'd ask her funny questions. Stuff that had nothing to do with PR, with reception, nothing. And then they wouldn't hire her, obviously. Tish is getting pretty freaked out, so I tried doing research, but all these places look completely normal." She shrugs. "I thought trying you lot would be the next thing to do."

Why is Lucy doing this? I would give myself more credit for plot forethought than I deserve if I had an answer besides "I wanted to give Martha and co. a heads-up that something was going on". Having everything written, however, I can say that it is because Lucy is motivated by at least some of the same things the Master is: your work is no good at all if no one notices it. Obviously Lucy is there for the science, not the spectacle and suffering, but she wants the Doctor and the Master to pay attention because they are the only ones who are going to understand her work.

"What about you?" Jack asks. "Has anyone been doing this to you? The rest of your family?"

"All got stable jobs," Martha says, shrugging. "Not a weird thing in sight." For the first time in minutes, she smiles again. "And I got snatched up by a hospital in central London the moment I passed my exams."

In some small way I am embarrassed that I just put Martha in a plain old hospital instead of UNIT. Martha is far and away kickass enough for UNIT and once again kudos to the show for recognizing this.

Jack laughs. "That's fantastic!"

"Got it!" Tosh puts in.

They crowd back around the monitor.

"The one person funding every single one of these organizations," Tosh says, highlighting the name, "is a Ms. Rosamund Ingram. Ever heard of her?"

Do you know what I love about the Doctor Who fandom? It remains the Doctor Who fandom even when it is reading your slapdash manic fanfic of doom. So of course in just the way various fen saw "Mister Saxon" and deanagrammed it to "Master No. Six" in record time, so someone (an anonymouse, unfortunately, so I cannot give due credit) saw "Rosamund Ingram" and immediately came up with "Rani among drums". I then had the harrowing experience of actually feeling like Rusty; just as he claims to have had no idea about the Saxon anagram, here I was feeling quite startled that someone not only guessed the Rani but made it coherent.

Of course I was not anagramming at all, but rather had decided to call the Rani Rosamund Anne Natalie Ingram, name not due to turn up for another few episodes.

Both Martha and Jack shake their heads blankly.

"Owen!" Jack calls. "Have you ever heard of someone named Rosamund Ingram?"

Owen emerges from the operating theatre, pulling off latex gloves. "No," he says. "Who is she, a little old lady with radioactive cats?"

Witness here the one Owen line I absolutely love. If I could generate Owen like this all the time, I would write the Epic Of Owen. It is perhaps fortunate I cannot.

"Maybe a really rich old lady," Jack says. "Tosh, run a general search, will you?"

Tosh nods; the sound of her typing is overrun by the sound of the round door of the main entrance grinding open. Gwen and Ianto come in, both of then laden with bags full of takeout cartons. Jack makes the introductions: Gwen Cooper, Martha Jones. Martha Jones, Ianto also Jones. Gwen gives Martha a cheerful grin and Ianto gives her a slightly cautious one, and five minutes sees them sitting at the table in the room off the kitchen, eating wontons. Owen and Gwen engage in a brief battle over the sweet-and-sour sauce, in which Gwen triumphs, so Owen turns to Martha.

"How'd you get in, anyway?" he asks.

"Through the roof," Martha says. The team stares at her. Jack is amused to note that she looks as though she's quite enjoying their astonishment. "Your paving-stone elevator works both ways, you know," she says when the silence has stretched sufficiently. "Thought it was pretty funny, there being patches of Cardiff I just didn't want to notice." She grins at Jack. "How'd you make that perception filter, anyway?"

"Um," Jack says, sudden visions of unforeseen consequences of Martha's visit crowding into his head. "It got put there. I didn't do it."

Unfortunately I don't have Martha's actual Torchwood episodes on hand, but I have a vague recollection that Martha and Jack perhaps team up to be super mysterious and never let the team in on the whole Doctor business. Obviously for this story to work, the team did have to find out about the Doctor. I am unsure now how cagey Jack would have bothered to be. Nnngh s2 Torchwood, why did you have to be good. Now I am uncertain about my ability to write any Torchwood whatsoever.

Martha's eyebrows go up, but all she says is, "So Jack told me you lot were in the Himalayas last year. How was it? I've never been."

Yeah, one of the few places in the universe you've never been, Jack thinks with a rush of affection.

"Cold," Owen says.

"But beautiful," Tosh adds. "We got a tip-off about problems in Tibet."

Martha frowns. "I don't understand, though. I thought Torchwood's jurisdiction was only Britain."

"Technically," Owen says, "but it was fallout from our Rift. Cardiff. And no one there knew how to handle it."

One has to wonder if there are Torchwood-esque organizations all over the Who world, working diligently to arm the human race against the future &c &c. Or I guess this season they are fighting for the future on behalf of the human race. I am still bewildered as to how Saxon managed to trick Torchwood into going to the Himalayas in the first place.

"Except that there turned out to be nothing," Gwen puts in. "Pass the rice, Ianto? Thanks. Just this funny old temple and a lot of clues that led nowhere."

"Clues?" Martha asks.

"Like a quest or something," Owen says in disgust. "These funny Tibetan scriptures Tosh ran through our decoders, but they just read a load of rubbish."

"'Follow the infinite road'," Tosh supplies. "There was a lot of information about mandalas and sacred rings and sacred knowledge, but we never found our alien."

In retrospect I should probably have elaborated on this. But you know how Time Lord writing looks? It's something like this, and while it does not look very much like mandalas it is definitely sacred rings and sacred knowledge and it was the Himalayas so I went with what I could work with.

"So you just came right back here," Martha says, and smiles a little, sadly. "Must have been a nice little vacation."

No one seems to quite know what to make of this, and Jack's throat inexplicably closes up a little. He doesn't have anything to say either.

"I made pie," Ianto says quietly into the silence. "It's probably quite chilled by now. If you want me to--"

Despite Ianto's onset of personality -- in fact, despite the entire team's onset of personality and a little less compulsion to be srs biznes about everything -- I am still fond of this scene, and Ianto's awkward pie.

"No, no, I'll get it," Jack interrupts, standing. "In the fridge?"

Ianto nods.

Jack leaves the room, door swinging shut behind him. The pie, which he finds on the top shelf, looks wonderful. Bless Ianto, he thinks, and goes back to the door, then pauses. It's still dead silent in the other room.

Post s2, this would be the point at which Ianto and pie and Jack in the same sentence should mean some awful American Pie joke. Clearly at this point I didn't even know I was supposed to be shipping them.

Okay, here it comes, Jack thinks, and sure enough, only a few seconds later, Gwen's voice: "How do you know him?"

"Jack?" Martha says, in some surprise. "I-- was hitching a ride with a friend. My friend and Jack's. Jack hadn't seen the friend in a while, so he decided to come too."

Owen snorts. "You're as bad as he is. Stop being cagey. Let's have it."

Nor that I was supposed to be shipping Owen's thing for Martha, although this latter is my own fault; I should have given in to my shipping urges.

"But Jack hasn't told you," Martha says, quieter (Jack has to lean back against the wall and listen very hard). "It's not my story to tell. Jack's my friend; that's all."

"Good," Owen says. "It's nice to know that sometimes Jack has people he's just friends with."

"You mean the flirting?" Martha says coolly. "That's him being friendly."

Right, Jack thinks, and comes back in with the pie. "Who's being friendly?"

Martha sucks her cheeks in a little and looks at Owen with a raised eyebrow, then says, "Owen. He's really great company."

"We were asking about you," Owen says, looking up at Jack, face hard. "And about how you never tell us a single bloody thing. Where'd you go off to that week? You'd only just come back and you vanish, and we had to go to the damn Himalayas without you and apparently in your week you were off with Miss Jones here and some friend--"

"Owen," Jack says quietly, and Owen shuts up.

On the other hand, I wish like crazy there was really a scene like this, although perhaps not in the sense that Owen makes a scene. I just think that Owen has more abandonment issues than Gwen and therefore should have been the one to call Jack on his mysteriously-vanishing bullshit.

Ianto silently cuts the pie and hands everyone a piece. For a moment no one moves. Then Martha taps her fork gently against the side of her paper plate and says, staring down at her hands, "Why have you never told them, Jack?"

"Torchwood catalogues and classifies aliens," Jack says. "If they have sufficiently advanced technology, the official policy is to take the alien or aliens in for questioning and to confiscate all of their technology for Torchwood to study."

Martha stares at him. "But you wouldn't--"

"Hold on, your friend's an alien now?" Owen demands.

"Yes," Jack says heavily, and breathes out. Give me strength. "We're talking about the Doctor."

He sees Tosh look at him, shock flashing across her face. "Hold on," she says, "but I've met him-- I was doing some forensic work, on that thing that crashed into Big Ben-- it's on my résumé, you know that, Jack, but it's what got me hired, and I met him!"

Oh do I wish they had hired Tosh for her Doctor experience, back in the days of the old Torchwood regime. It makes sense and does not involve demonizing UNIT.

"Great," Owen says, stabbing viciously at his pie. "Is that why Gwen got hired too, Jack? God knows she's not good for anything else."

Martha stands up, her chair squealing back against the concrete floor. "You can leave this table now, Mr. Harper."

Owen tilts his chin up a little and considers her. "No, thanks," he says. "I think I'll stay."

"Now," Martha says, in a voice like steel.

A long moment: Owen fiddles with his fork, and Jack holds his breath far past the point of asphyxiation. "Sorry, Gwen," Owen mutters.

She won't look at him. "Who's the Doctor, Jack?" she asks.

Martha sinks slowly back into her chair. Jack remembers that unless he wants to collapse and wake up with a pounding headache, he should probably breathe.

This line: still funny to me. I bet Jack does this all the time.

"An alien," he says. "The-- one of the last of his kind. Humanoid. He can travel in time."

"I think sometimes he saves the world," Tosh puts in.

"--He did," Ianto says unexpectedly, and blushes a little when everyone turns to look at him. "At Canary Wharf. He-- tried to get everyone out."

And now that Torchwood has personality I wish I could rewrite some of the Torchwood-and-Doctor-interaction scenes. The Doctor and Ianto together would perhaps make the world explode from a delicious combination of emo and awesome.

The look on Martha's face, some peculiar mix of surprise and sadness and understanding, tells Jack that she hadn't known this particular bit of information before.

It is probably worth noting here that there are lots of things Martha doesn't know about the Doctor: Canary Wharf and how the Time War ended, for instance. One only hopes that if she is ever told these things in the show she will react with more or less the grace I write her to.

She doesn't say anything, though, so after a pause Jack says, "Yeah, that's what he does. And we've run into each other a couple of times. Last time, Martha was with him too. That's how we know each other."

Martha looks around the table and offers a smile. "I'm not an alien, though," she says. "Completely human, I swear."

Another silence.

"Want to see what the database has come up with?" Tosh asks her.

"Yeah, I'd love it," Martha says, standing again, and follows Tosh out of the room. Jack looks around at Ianto and Gwen and Owen, and says, "Owen, you're on cleanup duty tonight. C'mon, guys, let's go see what Tosh has found."

The others are out, and Jack's nearly in the doorway, when Owen grabs his arm and spins him around and glares at him and says, quiet and fierce, "Jack, that wasn't out of order and you know it. You just hired Gwen because you like her--"

On a reread, I find that apparently one of my hidden deep-seated desires in life is to write Jack/Owen fic. I am setting this one aside for later.

"Stop right there," Jack says, shaking loose from Owen's grip. "Not today, Owen. Clean up the damn food." A sort of stubborn hurt flashes across Owen's face, and Jack wonders how many goddamn times Owen will need to be forgiven. Just as long as he never shoots Jack with real intent again, he decides. He can forgive a lot of Owen's crap. "Just clean up the food," he says again, more gently.

Owen's shoulders don't relax, but he nods a little and gets to it.

Jack emerges to find Toshiko looking frustrated and Martha looking triumphant and both Gwen and Ianto looking mostly puzzled. "But it should turn up something," Tosh is saying. "Even if it's a fake name, there should be things like account history. There's nothing outside these organizations. Rosamund Ingram doesn't exist."

"It could be code," Martha says. "Or someone being sloppy and not bothering to create a backstory for this name. But I think it's a message."

"What sort of message?" Gwen asks.

"I dunno," Martha says, eyebrows going up a little as she contemplates the screen. "But someone this careless obviously wants to be found."

"By the really suspicious people like you," Jack says, slinging an arm over her shoulder. She grins up at him. "Got what you wanted?"

"I think so," Martha says. "I should probably drive back to London tonight."

"You sure about that? It'll take hours. What's the rush?" Jack asks, but he follows Martha over to the paving block.

"I have a date tomorrow," Martha says, grinning as she steps onto it, Jack stepping on after. She grins at Tosh and Ianto and Gwen. "Thanks for dinner, by the way. Nice meeting all of you."

"A date, huh?" Jack says as they rise. "Who's the lucky... guy, right?"

"Tom Milligan," Martha says, smiling into the middle distance. "The Master killed him right in front of me." She glances over at him. "I called him first thing to make sure he was still alive, and-- well, the hospital that hired me? He's a pediatrician there."

Imagine me doing a little dance of "haha I totally called this". Although I guess Martha could be dating someone in UNIT who has no relation to Tom Milligan at all. Despite this he is more or less my canon now.

Jack laughs. "How 'bout that." The paving slab reaches ground level, and he offers her his arm; they step off it together into the growing twilight. She smiles up at him, and Jack reminds himself that she's apparently dating Tom Milligan and probably wouldn't like it if he kissed her, so he asks, "How'd you get hold of the Doctor, anyway? To get my number, I mean."

Martha's smile turns into an outright grin. "I had his number. I can call him anywhere in the universe."

Jack briefly considers feeling horribly jealous, and then decides not to; if he's going to live forever, he's definitely going to run into the Doctor again sometime. "So how is he?" he asks.

"I don't know," Martha admits. "I thought I'd give him a bit of time, you know-- So I just texted him asking for your number, and that's all I got back-- just the number. I hope he's all right."

"He's always all right," Jack says bracingly.

The smile Martha gives him for this pronouncement is uncomfortably knowing. "And so are we," she says.

Is another theme of season! how to be really all right in the face of adversity and all the crazy things life sends your way. I think the point here is that Martha and Jack are all right, because they've both had this shared experience with the Doctor; meanwhile the Doctor needs someone else, and his own shared experience, if he's ever going to get to the point Martha and Jack have already reached.

Jack laughs. "That's the spirit."

"Listen," Martha says, "if any aliens turn up, give me a call. I can come give you my professional opinion."

"You sure you don't want to work for us?" Jack asks.

"Nah," Martha says. "I like being a doctor."

"World always needs more doctors," Jack agrees.

"Then I'll see you, Jack," Martha says, and reaches out, taking his hands and giving them an affectionate squeeze. Her palms are warm and dry and Jack knows he'll miss her like crazy and probably call her next week asking her to forget about Tom Milligan and come on a date with him, if only to hear her laugh at him for suggesting it.

He watches her walk off towards the car park and goes back inside, grinning.

Next: the Doctor and Master's adventures in quantum! Because it is quantum I will both do commentary and not do commentary tonight, and you will not know if I have done it until it is posted.