A bit of meta on my last story

[shivver]

I only just realized that the majority of readers would think my last story is just a rehash of the 60th from a different point of view, which it's not. This is a good thing, by the way: I absolutely love writing stories that most people won't actually understand, because it's doubly enjoyable for the ones that do. (Also, I love being obscure.) But, since this is my blag and I can talk about whatever I want, I thought I'd talk about what I intended it to be.


The reason why this isn't a rehash of the 60th is that it's stated clearly in the show. Sutekh told the Doctor that he latched onto the TARDIS as he was being banished into eternity and spent the time bending her to his will. The TARDIS didn't have the capability to do things beyond what Sutekh allowed her to do. She couldn't have done what she did in my story.

This story came out of the many discussions my husband and I had about questions unanswered and odd things that we noticed. A few of them...

• Why, in a meta sense, did the Doctor go to the Dalek Dome? Unlike the three TV episodes, the comic story didn't seem to have any actual purpose.
  
• How did the Doctor end up on Skaro with Mr. Castavillian? It's a strangely precise landing, to end up on Skaro that far in the past.
  
• Why did the TARDIS play a war song? Especially when it was totally out of control?
  
• We laughed about the fact that if the TARDIS hadn't landed on the ship in WBY, the bomb would have gone off and destroyed the not-things without endangering anyone. And thus, if we assume that the TARDIS took the Doctor there for a reason (like she said she does in "The Doctor's Wife"), then either she's sadistic or she had a reason she needed him to fight the not-things.
  
• When Donna spilled her coffee, it really looked like she deliberately threw the coffee into the console. She didn't just slosh the liquid over; she flipped the cup. Catherine Tate is not that bad an actress and we can't imagine that Donna was trying to break anything (or make an excuse to go on another adventure), so why? (Honestly though, I expect that there was a receptacle that CT had to hit so that there wouldn't be coffee all over the newly-constructed set.)
  

My husband suggested that I write a story to answer these questions, and thought that maybe the TARDIS - who'd let Sutekh think he controlled her - had wanted to warn the Doctor about Sutekh waking up and train him to fight gods so that he'd be ready, but she had to be covert and subtle so as not to tip Sutekh off.

This did make me have to reread Liberation of the Daleks, which was not fun, but I did find some things to work with there (such as, the "whaa-uw" sound at the very beginning that the Doctor just assumed was the automated distress-call response system; come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure who at the Dalek Dome sent that distress call), and the final panels gave me a great reason why the Doctor ended up on Skaro. (Also, it was fun dumping the Doctor in the Dalek Dome to keep him distracted while the TARDIS thought about what to do.)

But basically, I constructed the concept that the TARDIS knew exactly what she was doing and, while making it look like she was out of control to keep Sutekh in the dark, she chose a companion for the Doctor and then dumped them on the WBY ship to give him the opportunity to fight two god-like beings while also making a door for the Toymaker and Maestro to enter the universe, to provide two more opportunities.

Thus, not a re-hash of the 60th. It's a re-imagining of the 60th.

Comments

[romanajo123]

It is always fun to get insights like this. :)

I skimmed the Wiki article about that comic story, and I accept the TARDIS brought him there. Since I really can't see any version of the Doctor wanting to go to the Dalek Dome on purpose.


I had actually forgotten about Donna spilling the coffee!