Fill: Challenge #28 (DW)

[shivver]

I knew what I wanted to do but could not come up with a duo in canon that fit the bill. So, here's some canon divergence. General Cobb did not fire at the Doctor, and the Doctor and Donna left Messaline with Jenny.


“I did not!” Donna exclaimed, swiping playfully at Jenny’s shoulder as they strolled among the crowd in the bazaar on Last Rock. The Doctor loomed protectively behind his companion and his daughter. “I’d never say anything like that, in a million years.”

“You just did!” Jenny retorted, her bouncing ponytail broadcasting her indignation. “You handed the cloth back to the merchant and…” She stopped and blinked hard, trying to clear her thoughts. Donna’s words and actions of a moment ago now seemed like a distant dream. Her father’s hands closed over her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” asked Donna, leaning in close to peer at her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Jenny murmured. “I thought… I was so sure you said that…”

“That’s because she did,” said the Doctor.

“I did not!” Donna hissed, brandishing her hand for a promised slap.

“You did,” he repeated, “in a different timeline.”

“What?” the women asked in stereo.

“Last Rock’s really the last rock, balanced equidistant between three enormous black holes,” the Doctor explained in full professorial mode. “Time runs differently here, in fits and starts, as one singularity pulls more than the others for a bit. Sometimes repeats itself, even.”

Donna glanced back at the merchant’s stall. “I didn’t notice anything back there.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t. You’re only human.”

“Oi!”

“But I would?” asked Jenny, staring up at her father behind her.

“You’re a Time Lady,” said the Doctor with a grin. “It’s not just a name, you know.”

Comments

[romanajo123]

:D

Excellent! I love Jenny. Glad she got to leave with them ( her family :))

Is she technically a Time Lady?

[shivver]

Probably not. Ten says in the episode that she's not, that she's just an echo. My understanding is that Time Lord is a profession that Gallifreyans can try to train for - there are billions of Gallireyans on Gallifrey, but only a few become Time Lords - but the show seems to waffle on that and often implies that the species is Time Lord, not Gallifreyan. So I just went with it. On the other hand, Gallifreyans are time-sensitive, too, so one way or the other, Jenny would be time-sensitive.

[romanajo123]

Yeah I think it depends on the era/ writing. And Time Lords just sounds cooler in some cases.
But you're right, I wish they;d make up their minds of whether it's a profession /rank or the species.
I mean you have stuff like how the Time Lords are shown as these all-powerful things in The War Games and then there's the "he will never be a Time Lord" line in Listen, which I remember causing a lot of complaints.

(Though the problem is worse now...thanks to the recent Big Reveal)

[shivver]

It's really tough to take as canon a lot of the things that happened during the First and Second Doctor's runs. The War Games was the first time that the Time Lords were even mentioned as the Doctor's race or profession, and the next episode, Spearhead in Space, the first time having two hearts is mentioned, so it's likely that anything before that wasn't really planned and not worth giving much credence to.

That said, I feel that by the time the show was cancelled, it was assumed Time Lord was a profession. I like to think that they got to "The Deadly Assassin" and realized that having everyone on Gallifrey be Time Lords was kind of absurd - that's billions of Time Lords, and you really think that any member of this pompous species would settle for being a hot dog vendor for thousands of years? :) So Time Lord became something that only the smartest, most driven Gallifreyans could achieve, and the rest of the Gallifreyans formed the supportive society.

Also, I understand that one of the plans, if the show hadn't been cancelled, was to have Seven get Ace into the Academy to study to be a Time Lord - evidence that either JNT or Andrew Cartmel felt it was a profession other races could aspire to.

Then the new show came around, and I bet that RTD decided to simplify it to the ambiguous "the Doctor is a Time Lord" - at the very least, it's easier for the Doctor to mourn the loss of his species without having to explain the difference between Time Lords and Gallifreyans, and I wouldn't be surprised if he thought that making it too complicated would alienate new viewers (or the BBC forced him to him do it). Ten does allude to it being a profession in "The Doctor's Daughter", saying that it's more than a race, it's "a shared history, a shared suffering" (typical RTD pathos), but in general, the Doctor doesn't really disabuse anyone of the notion that it's a race, probably simply because no one else in the universe knows how it works and it's just easier to go with it.