Calufrax

From comedy to dark AU's... one of of the most fun (and disturbing) questions in fanfiction is to ask what might have happened if things went differently for the Doctor and his companions... and here's a decidedly dark turn on one of my favourite Doctor Who stories ever written. I hope you've liked my fic recs and I hope to take up the post again down the line sometime. Til then! :)

Story: Plaything
Author: Daystar Searcher
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3502 Words
Author's Summary: Pyramids of Mars AU: The Doctor is forced to take Sutekh's offer and save Earth, at the price of the rest of the universe. This is the aftermath.
Characters/Pairings: Four/Sarah, Brigadier, Sutekh.
Warnings: Lotta Angst plus some self-harm, character death and dub con. Hankies at the ready people.

Recced because: Yikes. This is a moving and powerful one-shot which sees Four go through the grinder as he lives with the consequences of saving his favourite world and of course his dear Sarah Jane at the expense of his very people and the billions of worlds he has travelled to before. The Doctor gets decidedly dark in this one but he's still definitely the Fourth Doctor we remember, abeit a haunted one - a tribute to this fine writer. Add one of the most heart-felt Doctor/Sarah moments I've ever read and this is a must for all Fourth Doctor fans.

Welcome to Day Five of the fic picking from me! If there's one aspect of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe I adore it's the Big Finish Audios with their grand epic new adventures for the surviving classic Doctors. And as well as several old favourite companions returning like Nyssa, Peri and Ace, we also get some new ones who are every bit as entertaining and engaging. Of all of them I'd say my two favourites are Evelyn Smythe and the companion in this story, Charley Pollard!

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Story: Coming Home
Author: Howlcastle
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 3867
Author's Summary: Charley Pollard's first introduction to the TARDIS. Set after Storm Warning.
Characters: Eighth Doctor, Charley, 'Ramsay'
Warnings: None

Recced because: As the author here writes and for myself for many years I bemoaned the fact that Charley - an self-proclaimed Edwardian Adventuress who'd joined the Eighth Doctor onboard the airship R101 in 1930 together with a flying reptile named after a Prime Minister - never got to view the TARDIS for the first time on audio - by the time we heard her next she'd got used to the ship. So Howlcastle here wonderfully takes that idea and makes a lovely lengthy one-shot with her learning all about the TARDIS and its occupant. Suffice to say that if you haven't heard Storm Warning it might not appeal to you as much but for Charley fans like me it's a real treat!

Hello and welcome to another day of fiction suggestion. Some of my favourite pieces of Who fiction probably have to be those which feel like they’re taken right from the midst of a season itself with an established TARDIS crew and the influences of previous and later television stories maybe creeping in. This happens to be one of them!

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Story: Collector’s Item
Author: wmr
Rating: All Ages
Word Count:  6006 Words
Author's Summary: The Doctor understands how multiple timelines work. Rose wants to.
Characters/Pairings: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, OC's.
Warnings: None

Recced because:  Wmr writes almost solely for the Ninth Doctor and she knows how to write both him and Rose Tyler well. This story is set between Aliens of London and Dalek and not only feels just like an actual TV adventure but the tendrils of Father’s Day are foreshadowed.  There’s also the usage of a famous historical event which I’m amazed the show has never adapted before! I don’t want to say any more for fear of spoiling it, so please read it and imagine its 2005 all over again…

Hello and welcome once more to another week of fan fiction picking here on Calufrax! I am James or ‘Derek Metaltron’, your guide for the next few days. It really doesn’t seem that long since the last time I took this awesome responsibility back in early September when Doctor Who and Torchwood were both rounding off and I was a lot freer than I am now, as since then I’ve started my rather extensive postgraduate degree. Still, can’t be so difficult to find some quality fics from all eras of Who, right?

Now to begin we’ll start with some episode tweaking within the still much loved Tenth Doctor era…

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Story: A Complicated Event In Time And Space
Author: Aldanon
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 53,493 Words
Author's Summary: It took almost twenty hours to tow the Earth back home after saving all of reality from the Daleks. Set during Journey's End, this story is a compilation of events that took place in the TARDIS and on the Earth in those hours.
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose, Martha/Mickey, Tenth Doctor,  Donna Noble, Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler, Rhys Williams, Sarah Jane Smith
Warnings:  A fair potion of Angst and Hurt/Comfort for certain characters and a mild case of Whump.

Recced because: As a fan boy and someone who came into Who in the days before the New Series and the suggestion of certain pairings and the like, I tend to view certain kinds of fan fiction warily. However, whilst I’ve always loved the idea of Martha and Mickey getting together I came to love Aldanon’s protrayal of setting up Rose with the duplicate Ten – here, she’s elected to suggest that rather than mere minutes it took many hours for the Earth to be dragged back to its rightful position, leading to the possibility of talks and interactions which Russell denied us. While Ten II/Rose and Mickey/Martha are the main focuses here all the TARDIS crew get a piece of the action. Better yet, this lengthy fic expands into two sequel works which focus on the lives of these two pairings afterwards. In short this is a big read but well worth it!

It’s my penultimate day of fiction gathering and of course Doctor Who is on tonight (well for me anyway). But since we’ve already had a visit from Amy and Rory, let’s see what the Fourth Doctor and Leela are up to instead!

Story: Running All The Time
Author: Sigyn
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 1908
Author's Summary: The Doctor had been treating Leela like a student, trying to teach her history and her heritage, how to see the universe through the lens of scientific truth, rather than superstition and ritual. He was slowly stripping away a lifetime of savage brutality, in an attempt to reveal the brilliant and singular woman he knew her to be. But he began to suspect his one-side training was robbing her of something just as precious as her intellect.
Characters/Pairings: Fourth Doctor, Leela
Warnings: None

Recced because: Leela was one of those Companions which as a child I didn’t totally ‘get’ at the time since I saw her in the odd story as merely ‘some sort of savage type’. Whilst this is the case the truth is that if you look past that and her appeal for the Dads in the audience she’s a fantastic companion because of her view on the universe. Leela isn’t stupid but merely ignorant of aspects of society she has never seen and yet often some of her lines on the show demonstrated a keen mind interested to understand and give her own opinions. This story is great because Sigyn takes the Doctor’s desire to educate her as seen during the show and display that it is important that Leela should retain parts of her old life as much as embrace new ones. In short - the Doctor can learn from Leela as much as she can from him. This very idea has made Leela one of my favourite companions as an adult and this fanfic a clear demonstration of that fact.

We’re onto day four of the Metaltron Marathon of Whofic picking. The penultimate episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day is on today for those in Blighty (whilst you lucky Americans get to see the final one tomorrow) so I figured I should pick something today of a Torchwood number. And what’s better than a nice dose of AU harking back from the very first series?

Story: Live In Infamy
Author: livii
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1425
Author's Summary: Things did get worse after Pearl Harbour. AU for 1x12, Captain Jack Harkness.
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Tosh, Owen, Gwen, Ianto.
Warnings: Some Angst and eventual Character Death.

Recced because: This is actually an AU I considered writing myself once but never got round to, but in all honesty I’d say livii had done as great and sombre a take on this logical AU – what if Jack and Tosh had to remain in 1941 after all – and sees these two characters go through the slow path together, tearful and happy moments both. It’s a dark story but it also has one of my favourite rare pairings – Jack/Tosh. This very episode this story branches out of gave them some nice chemistry together and it forever made me wonder afterwards what this would have been like as a pairing, much as I adore Owen/Tosh and Jack/Ianto.

Hello for Day 2 of Metaltron’s marvellous fiction picks! Yesterday we had Ian and Barbara’s attempts at dress-up - today we zoom from the first Companion/Companion Pairing to the most recent doing something not wholly dissimilar!

Story: Dressing Up
Author: RobinC
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 4909
Author's Summary: They’re on their honeymoon, having fantastic sex, and travelling the universe with a 900 year-old alien as their pilot and tour guide. Do they really need to pretend to be other people?
Characters/Pairings: Amy/Rory
Warnings: References to past pretend dub-con/non-con, violence and a dash of angst. Spoilers for The Pandroica Opens/The Big Bang.

Recced because: I adore Amy/Rory through thick and thin and whilst I tend to avoid adult fics for the sake of uncertainty over content, RobinC writes this pairing really well and here takes the basis of the newlywed couple’s off-screen antics in the ‘Honeymoon Suite’ just prior to the start of A Christmas Carol and reveals why exactly Rory was back in the Roman Centurion outfit. Suffice to say without spoiling things that it larks back to Rory’s decisions in The Pandorica Opens and paints it all in a retrospective light for dear Amy. I love this couple and long may their sexy zany relationship appear in fan fiction! :)