Calufrax

Story: Making It Stranger
Author: Bad_Dickens
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 26,771
Author's Summary: The Doctor arrives in Arkham Asylum while Jack Harkness meets Batman. Cardiff must brace itself for a visit from the Clown Prince of Crime. A Batman/Nolan!verse cross over with Doctor Who and Torchwood.
Characters/Pairings: The Doctor (10th), the survivors of Torchwood S2 (Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Captain Jack Harkness), Martha Jones, Mickey Smith, plus crossover characters.
Warnings: Some violence, both physical and psychological and all of the attendant creepiness and tastelessness you'd expect from The Dark Knight version of the Joker.

Recced because: Who doesn't like a good crossover? Well, some people probably don't, but I'm not one of those people. I love a good crossover, and this is a very good crossover indeed.

Cast your minds back to the distant, heady days of 2008. We'd just picked our jaws up off the floor, for a variety of reasons, after watching Journey's End. We still had the festive rollercoaster thrill-ride that was The Next Doctor to come in a few months' time. How to kill some time while we waited? Well, the announcement that David Tennant would be leaving the role of the Doctor, eventually, and the attendant media scrum did that to an extent, but before that a lot of us, in the UK at least, went to the cinema and watched... Mama Mia. Not me, though - I was in the screen next door watching The Dark Knight and loving it.

This was before it made a squillion dollars at the box office and the fan backlash set in, before last year's rather Marmite-ish conclusion to the Nolan Bat-trilogy muddied the waters still further. At the time, TDK was the hot ticket (it had Eric Roberts from the Eight TV Movie in it!) and the late Heath Ledger's nightmarish Joker was burning up the screen just like Jack Nicholson's had back in 1989 (scarily, I can remember the hype around that one when it came out too). Good stuff. Even better, though, when my enthusiasm for the film and its world was still at its height, this excellent crossover fic was posted to the Teaspoon. I remember following it avidly, checking every day for updates, and generally lapping it up.

Essentially, this story takes the Batman and his rogues' gallery from the Christopher Nolan films and, via a bit of Rift-related jiggery-pokery throws them up against the Tenth Doctor and Captain Jack's much-depleted Torchwood Three team, with Mickey and Martha thrown in for good measure. Everybody's in-character, and gets nice character moments to boot, but it's also all hung on a good, well-plotted story in which everybody gets things to do and a chance to shine. The Joker is, as you would expect, a force of nature, using the villainous plot-armour that is basically his non-super superpower to throw a spanner into our heroes' works and put them through the wringer. And, to be honest, who doesn't think the idea of the Joker versus a Dalek is a good idea? Oh, right. Well, I do.

All this and Weevils too! Seriously, even if you're not a Batman fan, or a fan of the Nolan/Bale movies, go and read this just for the Who and Torchwood characters and their reactions to the off-the-wall situation. You won't regret it. And when you're finished, please leave your words of appreciation for the author.