Comments | clevertoad: Alien Wine

clevertoad

Alien Wine

May 29, 2006 10:00

ALIEN WINE (slightly revised)
by Atlanta Lea circa 1987

It had started out as a rather dull afternoon for the Brigadier, but that rare condition wasn’t destined to last. The arrival of ex-Captain Yates at UNIT HQ just happened to coincide with that of a racketing blue police box. As a matter of fact, the police box had the advantage of the Captain ( Read more... )

doctor who

Comments 6

rabidsamfan May 19 2007, 15:36:26 UTC

*snicker* And now I'm happily rereading... I love some of the phrasing in this.

frankymole May 19 2007, 20:25:03 UTC

Yes, excellent! And it includes a delightful syllepsis (or is it a zeugma? I always confuse the two) to boot!

Fun story! Especially as Harry and Sarah were so well-drawn, just as I remember "my" TARDIS team.

clevertoad May 19 2007, 21:14:43 UTC

Which syllepsis in particular...? (Drat, now I have to go look up 'zeugma'). My favorite TARDIS team too! I must admit to being a major Harry fan, as well as president of the Unofficial Harry Sullivan Fan Club for seven years.

I posted a few other short and semi-short stories on LJ for rabidsamfan's delectation, all written back in the mid-80's when we were running the UHSFC. I've changed one other to public, called The Last Time I Saw Paris. If anyone's interested, I can change the settings on some of the others.

Do please let me know if you see any inaccurate Britishisms or inappropriate Americanisms? Always difficult to write in a second language, and now at a 30-year remove from the original slang.

frankymole May 19 2007, 22:37:15 UTC

There were so many good Britishisms that - and this is a "compliment" that I haven't ever extended to any writer (even in published stories) - I thought the writer of the story *was* British.

The only tiny "deviation" which is probably more due to my ignorance of how slang is used elsewhere in the country, is "“Thank heavens for small favours,” said the Brigadier. " We say "thank heaven for small mercies".

There is so much brilliance here - Sarah calling dinner "tea" is accurate, "a bit more of that" for the wine, everything Harry says (and the 1970s Who already used older idioms for Sarah, not like the 1960s "hip" companion dialogue)...

All really convincing. I love it.

zeugma frankymole May 19 2007, 22:08:53 UTC

"“Oh, er… This,” Mike pulled his jaw off the floor and himself together"

And there is the most wonderful line I've heard in 33 years of being a Who watcher...

“You’re not too old, Doctor! You’re in awfully good shape for seven-hundred-and-some. Could pass for forty at midnight on a dim planet.”

Wonderful!

clevertoad May 21 2007, 17:25:34 UTC

Thank you, it's always nice to have a precise term for how one is misusing the language. And thank you as well for one of the nicest compliments I've ever gotten! Ask rabidsamfan, I was floating for hours ( ... )