(no subject)

[doyle]

Outpost Gallifrey is such a gigantic timesuck. Where have the last four hours disappeared to? Vanished in a flood of wank, obsessive continuity, people throwing strops over things that happened, didn't happen and may or may not one day happen, and gratuitous Adam Rickett references. I love it and hate it both and it consumes me.

Random DW and Torchwood stuff:
- I rewatched The Christmas Invasion on BBC3 and was reminded that I really loved Ten/Rose in that episode, confirming that Tooth and Claw killed the ship for me, killed it dead, then the bitchiness to Mickey at the end of School Reunion set fire to the remains. But I could so go for Ten/Rose/Mickey fic. Or AUs! I'm in a very AU mood. I'd like to see one where he doesn't come back to make the second offer in Rose and she goes on as Donna did, her outlook on life improved by meeting him, and a few years down the road when she's all but forgotten it Ten turns up with Jack/Lynda/Ida/Martha in tow. And then it all goes Rose/Mickey/[Martha or Lynda or Jack or whoever]. I'd like that.

- of course, I'd also like fic where Donna's honeymoon (she might as well go on it, she's paid for it) is interrupted by aliens. Really rubbish ones. Like an army of Quarks, or the return of the Kandyman. And she and Ten meet again and make with the snark and the shagging

- I've seen that "Top ten canon source moments" meme going round and am trying to do a list of the greatest and most cracktastic Doctor Who stories. Except even limiting it strictly to the TV series, I'm having trouble getting it down to ten. This is the problem when your canon has giant maggots, plasticine dinosaurs, trips to the Land of Fiction, a monster made of liquorice allsorts, and attacks by evil trees/seaweed/giant lobsters/jelly monsters/shop window dummies/troll dolls/rocks.


- I may be downloading Torchwood 1x12 purely mostly to squee over Toshiko, who is adorable and my new TV girlfriend. I hope they give her a nice, non-evil girlfriend. She's too good for Owen by a laughable degree, Gwen is only occasionally interesting already has too many people to potentially cheat on poor Rhys with... I could go for Jack/Tosh or Tosh/Ianto, except I love the slightly big brotherish thing she has with Jack, and I'm into my Jack/Ianto anyway. Yep, following my usual pattern of starting off in a fandom with the most popular/obvious ship then becoming bored with it as it becomes canon in a way I don't like and drifting off to minor pairings and unliked characters. See also: every fandom I've been in, ever.

- Except in Torchwood the most unliked character in fandom would be... Owen? Argh. It's a testament to the actor that I've gone from actively wishing the character's death to just finding him an irritation.

- Speaking of popular ships, I wouldn't have predicted at the beginning of this season that Jack/Ianto would be more popular than Jack/Gwen. I think this assumption was coming from the vastness of the Doctor/Rose OTPing in the mother-fandom, where there's comparably little boyslash considering the Canon Gay and all the other pairings added together wouldn't touch the amount of Doctor/Rose fic produced. I'll be interested to see if that switches to Martha and if it'll follow the same pattern as the Ray V/Ray K switchover in Due South fandom, back when I was a wee differently-named Doyle.

- The last two episodes have made me want to write fic for Torchwood, not an urge I've had before (well, I've written alt!Gwen). This is good as I owe something for tw_exchange. I'm surprised there aren't rafts of Jack/Ianto missing scenes and Jack/Ten reunion fics by now. Maybe there was a perplexing wave of fic-writer blackouts across the country as the TARDIS sounded. Anyway, I am fond of the team being useless - Owen's left in charge for a couple of hours and he starts the apocalypse, FFS - so I hope there's a surge of "everyone takes turns in charge while Jack's gone and they're all rubbish at it so Rhys or Detective Swanson has to be drafted in" fics.

- I had some plot problems with End of Days - why does Tosh go along with the others on no more basis than a vision of her mother telling her to open the rift? If Bilis has all these powers and can teleport in and out of the Hub why can't he teleport in when no-one's there and open the damn rift himself? - but overall thought these last two were a vast improvement and they've actually made me feel fannish and eager for the next series. Which is nice.



ETA: 'Captain Jack Harkness' made me think of the EDA The Turing Test. Actually, if you rammed it together with Girl in the Fireplace you'd pretty much get The Turing Test since that book's about a romance (possibly unrequited, possibly not) between Eight and Alan Turing during the Second World War and has the GitF lonely angel stuff (although interestingly I'm nearly sure Turing says something like "I never believed, as Greene did, that he was an angel; I knew him as a man, loved him as a man" which I can't check the exact wording on as it's one of the EDAs I don't have). This is during a series of books called the Earth arc, where Eight wakes up on a train in the 1880s with no TARDIS, no idea who he is, and a note in his pocket telling him to meet someone called Fitz... in 2001. So he has to live through the next 120 years, an idea I'm a bit in love with, which is why I geeked out so hard when Ten broke that mirror in GiTF and why I'm so interested in all the peripheral Jack stuff on the Tochwood website. Angsty-trapped in time-Eight/Jack would win.

Comments

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

- I rewatched The Christmas Invasion on BBC3 and was reminded that I really loved Ten/Rose in that episode, confirming that Tooth and Claw killed the ship for me, killed it dead


Me too! Except it was NE that killed it for me *g* TCI seemed so promising when it ended on that shy handporn as well *sighs*

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

The end of TCI's lovely. And I feel so bad for Harriet and will laugh evilly if (as people are speculating) the PM who replaced her turns out to be next year's big bad.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Donna vs The Quarks would rock.

Though so would Donna vs The Giant Maggots.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest Donna vs the Sontarans but I think they're sensitive to high-pitched noises and it'd be cruel.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

But the snark potential is awesome. "Call that a face? I've got a potato peeler, you know!"

[that_mireille]

that book's about a romance (possibly unrequited, possibly not) between Eight and Alan Turing during the Second World War

I had no interest in reading the EDAs (and was relieved, as they're not cheap or easy to get my hands on over here) until I read that sentence.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

*g* It gets a bit less interesting after the first third, when Turing's narration gives way to Graham Greene's and then Joseph Heller's, but the very fact that it's published RPF interests me, and the three different voices makes for some fascinating unreliable narration: the Doctor's a different person in Turing's account than in the other two and it's not clear if this is what Turing wants to see or if Eight's being a manipulative bastard because he needs the state secrets Turing can get him, or something else. (A couple of mentions in later books imply that either something did happen - he tells his companion he and Alan were "more than friends" and I'm pretty sure he cries over him in the same book - or Eight's retconned it in his own head so he doesn't feel as guilty over his death.)

I need to buy a copy because it's one of those books where you think "wait, that couldn't possibly have happened, could it? I must be confusing it with fanfic?" Like that Short Trips story where the whole series is a delusion of Barbara's after one of her pupils, Susan, was abused and murdered by her grandfather and her body dumped in a box in a junkyard. I sort of love the fact that the BBC licensed that.

[livii.livejournal.com]

Like that Short Trips story where the whole series is a delusion of Barbara's after one of her pupils, Susan, was abused and murdered by her grandfather and her body dumped in a box in a junkyard.

::blinks::

::blinks again, rapidly::

That's the craziest thing I've ever heard about DW, and with DW, that's saying a lot. Is it any good? Geez, I have to find that.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

It's called Nothing At the End of the Lane and it's in Short Trips and Side Steps: I loved it, thought it was the creepiest DW I've ever read. There's lots of build-up to the point where it becomes an AU of An Unearthly Child, so there's plenty of Ian/Barbara (and Barbara's quite different but it still works for me). The ending's a bit OTT but thinking about the story has creeped me out a few times when walking home by myself at night.

[livii.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info, I'm going to try to track it down! I'm totally intrigued. (There really isn't enough creepy stuff done for DW, despite the fact that it's totally plausible with the canon).

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed, re the increased sense of fannishness after 2 rather-bloody-good-actually episodes. I was feeling gloomy about my own lack of glee over the silly thing, and now I feel enthused and willing to buy that, their recent cock-ups quite evident, they can make a decent go of a good second series. And yes, opportunity for lots of plotty genfic, woo!

(I done committed reunion fic, but it is wonky and self-indulgent and quite mean. And also no one will know what I'm on about, maybe. But someone had to write that one, so at least it's out of the way now.)

I am amused that the only really convincing example of Ten/Rose is the episode in which they barely speak to one another. It is easier for them not to annoy me when he's unconscious, apparently. But actually Ten himself is much more marvellous in that, with his big daft Srthur Dent speech, than in most of his episodes. This makes me sad.

Kandyman Honeymoon, though. Oh yes :)

[cosmic.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I am fond of the team being useless - Owen's left in charge for a couple of hours and he starts the apocalypse, FFS - so I hope there's a surge of "everyone takes turns in charge while Jack's gone and they're all rubbish at it so Rhys or Detective Swanson has to be drafted in" fics.

Hee! This is true. Although I do think Ianto might be extremely efficient in charge. And if anyone complains or doesn't do as he tells them to, he can just shoot them (in the shoulder). Then again, it's not like anyone EVER did anything Jack ordered them to do.

[gwynnega]

I rewatched The Christmas Invasion on BBC3 and was reminded that I really loved Ten/Rose in that episode, confirming that Tooth and Claw killed the ship for me, killed it dead

Me too. Even though I loved Tooth and Claw, the vast smugness of Ten/Rose killed the ship for me.

My Torchwood OTP? I'd have to go with Jack/Real!Jack... :-)

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I could very much go for Jack/real!Jack, yes. Kudos to those brave souls who attempt fic, though, the names are confusing enough in discussion.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

First-person POV, it'd have to be. Or anything that'd let the author refer to our Jack as "James."

[elke-tanzer.livejournal.com]

Angsty-trapped in time-Eight/Jack would win.

*brain asplodes*

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

Speaking of popular ships, I wouldn't have predicted at the beginning of this season that Jack/Ianto would be more popular than Jack/Gwen. I think this assumption was coming from the vastness of the Doctor/Rose OTPing in the mother-fandom

I had the same prediction, for the same reasons. There are several possible explanations for the proliferation of Jack/Ianto in spite of everything, including but not limited to "well, they like pairing the 'fearless leader' with the 'assistant' character" and "Ianto is a more interesting character than Gwen... and so was Rose, for that matter."

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

That would be why i never post at OG and only occasionally read there.. Uugghh...

[the2weirdo.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one to love Jack/Ianto! Jack/Real Jack would be good, too, but nothing beats the secret smiles and the in-my-office-later look-conversations (for anyone less sqee-y than me, an 'eye-conversation' is when two people stare at each other and they're having a sort of private conversation. Sweetness itself.). I spend half the programme jumping up and down on the sofa yelling "Just snog him, just SNOG him!"