Calufrax

Well, these two weeks have gone by just as quickly as they usually do, which is to say in a flash, and my reccing stint is nearly over. I didn't get the chance to post as many recs as I would have liked, but I hope there'll be a next time to remedy that. In the meantime, allow me to leave you with this excellent fic:

Story: Nor Grave Nor Bed Denied
Author: LizBee and Branwyn
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2,343
Author's Summary: In the wake of the destruction of Skaro, Romana receives a visitor.
Characters/Pairings: Romana II, The Doctor (7th)
Warnings: None

Recced because: As you may have noticed only the other day, I remain as obsessed by Doctor/Romana as I ever have been, and by that murky period between Survival and Rose which presumably led up to the Time War and which may or may not have been accurately depicted in the 90s novels. This ticks all of those boxes, as well as hinting strongly at Seven/Romana, which as far as I'm concerned is second only to Four/Romana in terms of being right up my fannish alley. ...so to speak.

This fic also takes its lead from the audio story The Apocalypse Element, with which you may or may not be familiar (it's very good, btw, if you ever get the chance to listen). I don't think you need to be to work out very quickly what the backstory is. In some ways not knowing and going only on the hints provided in the fic makes Seven and Romana's somewhat difficult conversation here even more strained and effective. And what a conversation it is; I love the way the two characters are portrayed here, both older and wiser and more damaged than they were in their heyday together, still with that connection but with so much pain and baggage by now to go with it. I think there's an understandable tendency in fanfic to idealise the character relationships that appeal to us and to disregard the fact that real relationships, however idyllic, invariably have their ups and downs and messy patches. This treatment of the Doctor and Romana is all the more commendable for not falling into the trap while also clearly having a lot of affection for both characters and their shared history.

There may be a hint of the far more difficult relationship the Doctor and Romana had in the EDA novels, which isn't one of my favourite choices that those novels made, but even that shows and honesty and willingness to face up to the less comfortable part of Who "canon" that adds to the strength of the story. Most of all, they are portrayed as two characters who are at the point in their association where they cannot fool each other at all, however much they might want to, and who are both well aware of that fact.

All this and numerous little nods to various bits of Who lore established in several different versions of continuity. You may know by now that I'm a sucker for that sort of thing and prepared to award all the bonus points to anything that acknowledges the weirdness that is LOOOMS!

So once again I urge to you head over to the Teaspoon post haste and read this rather spiffing fic, and then to be sure to leave words of appreciation for the author. And that, for now, is my work here done.


( An Excerpt )

Story: World's End
Author: Doctor Tam
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 1,327
Author's Summary: The end of the Time War.
Characters/Pairings: Romana II, The Doctor (8th)
Warnings: Some violent war/disaster imagery.

Recced because: This fic takes me back. It speaks very clearly to my inner fanboy, who remains obsessed with Doctor/Romana and unhealthily interested in just what the heck went down in the Last Great Time War.

It's a bit shocking to think that it's almost a whole two years since the 50th Anniversary, and now more than ten years since the revival of Who in 2005. And for most of the time in between those two milestones, those of us who were interested in the Time War, arguably the main innovation introduced by RTD in terms of shaking up the Whoniverse, didn't really know much about it. There were hints, vague suggestions of things like the fall of Arcadia or the Nightmare Child, that intrigued more than they explained. So we thought about it, and extrapolated, and made things up, and wrote a great many fics about it that were pretty much comprehensively Jossed by The Day of the Doctor. Which was not a bad thing because if you ask me The Day of the Doctor was absolutely fantastic. Being Jossed was a price well worth paying for that.

And I'll bet Steven Moffat didn't ask himself whether he had that right before he did it either...

So in that sense this fic is a blast from the past (indeed it dates from 2009). In another sense, if you squint a bit, the Doctor portrayed here taking his leave from Romana in Gallifrey's last moments could just as easily be the War Doctor as Eight. I think a lot of us always thought though that the idea of Eight of all Doctors being placed in that terrible position just seemed right, in some poetic sense, just as the notion that it would have been the Lady President Romana sending him on that fatal mission seemed too terribly perfect not to be true. The End of Time Jossed that one, of course, and while I personally don't hold that story in the same regard as The Day of the Doctor, that too was a price worth paying for the possibility of a still-living Romana, out there, somewhere...

Enough about my fannish predilections anyway. This is a very nice fic indeed, and extremely well written. It puts you the reader right in that hellish moment before the End and manages to explore the characters of the Doctor and Romana, their thoughts about and differing relationships with regard to their homeworld and their duties to it within a very economical word count. It explores the Doctor's role in and responsibility for the War and associated events, and how his association with Romana has affected both of them and led directly to the position in which they currently find themselves. As a fan with a lot of affection for that particular relationship, I find this story and its portrayal of what is almost certainly their final parting very touching indeed.

There is one line (no, not the one about Ace; as much as it pains me, thinking up horrible fates for Ace is pretty much a standard feature in all fiction, official and fan, set in the Survival-Rose gap) that I can imagine many fans would find contentious. Don't let that turn you off what it by any other measure a great fic. I hope you will all go and read it right now and leave some words of appreciation for the author.


( A Moment )

Story: If Found, Please Return
Author: Llywela
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 31,474
Author's Summary: Crossover between Classic Who and The Professionals. UNIT and CI5 would have been around at about the same time in the late 1970s. CI5 weren't keen on other agencies treading over their perceived jurisdiction and UNIT were learning to cope without the Doctor after his departure from Earth. So what happened when they found their investigations overlapping?
Characters/Pairings: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Harry Sullivan, Sergeant Benton, UNIT, plus crossover characters
Warnings: Some violence

Recced because: I don't know about you, but I love a really well-done crossover.

For the uninitiated, The Professionals was a British crime/action series that first aired on the ITV network between 1977 and 1983. Martin Shaw played Doyle, a "sensitive" (by the admittedly low standards of the average late 70s British male) former cop with an astonishing perm; Lewis Collins was Bodie, an ex-military hardman with a murky past and huge shirt collars. Together, they worked as agents for "CI5", a fictional crime-fighting department headed by the tough, no-nonsense George Cowley (Gordon Jackson out of Upstairs, Downstairs and The Great Escape). They regularly cut pesky legal corners and "fought fire with fire" in order to settle the hash of various gangsters, terrorists and anybody else foolish enough to tangle with them. They always drove cars with reckless abandon and frequently got into fisticuffs and shootouts with that week's villains before invariably "getting" the girl. They were even more reprehensibly macho (and unintentionally slashy in their relationship) than you might imagine, but the involvement of Brian Clemens, of The Avengers fame, meant that the self-consciously gritty proceedings were often lent a certain wry humour and sense of quirkiness.

In other words, crossing The Professionals over with Doctor Who, and even better teaming Bodie and Doyle up with the post-Terror of the Zygons UNIT lineup of the Brigadier, "Mr" Benton and Harry Sullivan, is as far as I'm concerned a stroke of fanfictional genius. Not only is it fun to see how the latter-day UNIT go about trying to deal with an alien threat without the Doctor's assistance, and to see how the agents whose day job involves dealing with human crimes react to one of their investigations suddenly colliding with otherworldly happenings, but all of the characters are portrayed deftly and true to themselves. You don't need to be familiar with the crossover to appreciate how well Bodie and Doyle are delineated from each other very economically via dialogue and the ways they respond to events, while at the same time the Brigadier and Cowley, on the face of it quite similar authority figures, are revealed to be very different in outlook and approach. One of the real strengths of this story, though, is that as well as everything else it is an excellent portrayal of a post-Doctor Harry Sullivan, who gets plenty of opportunities to do stuff and to shine while he's doing it, as well as the author taking time to think about some of the obvious and not so obvious ways that his time aboard the TARDIS may have left its mark upon him.

On top of the characterisations, there is also a genuinely complex and well thought out plot to be going on with, beginning with a pair of linked mysteries and gradually coming together to resolve itself neatly in the end. There are very well-written action sequences and some neat detective work by our teamed-up heroes, and the author-created aliens around which the plot revolves manage to be menacing and sympathetic at the same time. Throughout, the author demonstrates a keen eye and ear for the various tropes and distinguishing characteristics of British TV shows of the era in which the fic is set, and not just the obvious, endlessly-parodied ones either. I will say only this; there is one moment involving a car seat which had me shaking my head in admiration at the vivid period feel of this piece.

So, as you can see, I liked this one very much and I hope you will too. Take some time to read and absorb this fic, and then (I hope) tell the author what a fine piece of work it is.


( A Taste )