Round Three Reviews - Part 16
Today's Featured Stories Include:
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Make Me A Match by mimingdonna
Categories: Donna Noble, Genfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Donna, Tenth Doctor
Rating: G
Details: One shot, 4700 words. Donna’s first night on the TARDIS.
Why It Rocks:
Mimingdonna is one of my favorite authors because she captures the essential elements of the relationship between Donna and the Doctor, and she does it with crisp stories and in-character dialogue as well as a marvellous sense of humor.
This story, set during Donna’s first night on the TARDIS, opens with them enjoying a meal. Of course, the Doctor wants to show off a little, so not only does he provide an exotic first meal, it’s exotic takeaway from another galaxy.
“First tea in the TARDIS, Donna Noble,” said the Doctor with a grin. “Verdict?”
“Verdict would have to be … any more of that kung pao dodo left? There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”
Donna, being Donna, can’t resist making a dig at him about his cooking abilities, given the fact that he ordered takeout on her first night. Being the Doctor, he has to defend his honor, and produces a giant chocolate cake, and this is when their conversation really gets interesting. They make a pretty good dent in the cake, with Donna giving up before he does.
“Feels like I’ve known you for ages,” said Donna dreamily, picking up and licking her spoon.
The Doctor looked back steadily, jaws working on his mouthful of cake as he wondered what she was getting at. He’d learnt pretty early on that copious amounts of cake tended to be an inhibition-lowerer for humans.
When he generously allows her to ask him “anything,” she starts off with an easy question: What’s his favourite color. And his quick answer of “ginger” leads to a discussion of past companions, regeneration, and his eventual mortality. I love the easy conversation between them that can go so quickly from the mundane to the profound. Donna acquires some necessary information, but the Doctor gains something more: he learns that Donna is different from prior companions, and he’s touched by her concern for his well-being and her quick grasp of the ramifications of a limited number of regenerations.
Of course, being the Doctor, he ruins the mood almost immediately by being abrupt with her when she asks about his real name. He feels instantly guilty for making her feel bad, and surprisingly decides to tell her his name - after a fashion. In a lovely piece of consistency with old-school Who, we learn that his name, his real name, means “Noble.” (The Third Doctor used Noble as an alias.)
...the Doctor actually felt glad that he’d told her about his name. It was beginning to dawn on him that it was easier being honest with Donna than not, and he also knew that he was so secretive by nature that this whole honesty thing might take some getting used to.
There’s also a lovely thread running through the story of the Doctor becoming aware he might have feelings for Donna that go beyond being “just a mate” - and he’s more than a little concerned about it. Donna, overcome by the long day and the chocolate cake, falls asleep at the table. After he puts his coat over her shoulders, in a nice nod to “The Runaway Bride,” he can’t quite resist her ginger hair.
…and couldn’t for the lives of him resist delicately trailing his fingers over her copper hair. Halfway down, he blinked in surprise and snatched his hand away as though it were touching hot coals. He looked at his fingers and then back at Donna, now smiling in her sleep. A moment later he was treading noiselessly as a cat across the tiles, deciding to make a start on lugging her possessions - at the moment piled up in the corridor - to a room for her.
My favorite part of the story, though, is the suggestion that the TARDIS not only loves Donna, but also thinks that Donna and the Doctor should be more than just friends. The Doctor does not appreciate his ship being quite so meddlesome. The TARDIS demonstrates her affection for Donna by providing a lovely bedroom for her, something she reluctantly did for prior companions. Donna appreciates the gesture, and wins the ship over to her side even more.
“This gonna be my room?” she asked, looking around in wonder. “Your ship is beautiful, you know. I mean, really beautiful. This is miles better than any posh hotel.”
The TARDIS made a low rumbling sound somewhere in her engines and the Doctor wondered if Donna knew that with those words she’d just won herself a devoted semi-sentient slave.
I love this story for how it conveys their easy friendship, despite only knowing each other a few hours, and giving us the beginnings of what we know their relationship will be. The Doctor is clearly happy to have someone travelling with him again, and Donna is grateful for the opportunity as well. The dialogue is spot-on, and the humor is sprinkled generously throughout, particularly in the last few paragraphs, which would not be out of place in a Douglas Adams’ script. In short, Make Me a Match has everything that makes the Doctor-Donna relationship wonderful, plus a matchmaking TARDIS, chocolate cake, and exotic takeout. It certainly is deserving of your vote.
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Night Monsters by qthelights
Categories: Jack/Ianto and PWP
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating: Adult
Details: Jack and Ianto engage in some exhibitionist hijinks on Roald Dahl Plass. 2300 words.
Why it Rocks:
The story begins with our fair heroes stumbling across the Plass, both of them quite drunk. First of all, I love the way their drunkenness is described both in their interactions with each other and their interaction with the world around them. The author captures perfectly how I would imagine Jack and Ianto drunk.
The railing props up their arms, pushes back against the sloping heaviness of their bodies and keeps them from toppling into the murky black liquid below.
“Are the stars blurry?” Ianto asks, squinting doggedly up at the swirling pinpricks of incandescence.
“Some.” Jack smiles fondly at the slur in Ianto’s voice in the superior way that only someone who erroneously thinks they’re still sober can.
I think my favorite thing about this fic is the way the setting is like a third character. You can almost feel the damp chill of the night, hear the cry of a gull out on Cardiff Bay or the laughter of some passing teenagers, see the sheer face of the water tower. (The water has been turned off for maintenance, allowing the author to use it for sexy purposes later.)
In the midst of this iconic Cardiff setting, the author deftly steers Jack and Ianto from silly to slightly sentimental and romantic to horny.
Ianto groans and the sound is startlingly loud in the silence of the night, not even slightly competing with the waves that crash and break against the wall below. It is as if Cardiff has fallen silent to better eavesdrop on the increasing ragged breaths and mewling whimpers they begin to drag from each other.
Jack is the one who initiates the outdoor shenanigans, suggesting they have sex on the invisible lift behind the protection of its perception filter, but Ianto takes it to another level, leading Jack over to the non-functioning water tower for some real exhibitionism. Again, the setting is front and center, almost like a third participant in the sex.
Jack’s head drops back with a muted metallic thud that ripples up the tower in a depraved echo.
The sex is very well done, and it’s very hot. It’s also fairly graphic, but in the best of ways. At the same time, I’m all about slash fic that doesn’t automatically default to anal sex, which certainly has its place, but also isn’t the be-all and end-all of m/m porn. The desperation of hands and friction in this story is perfect for the circumstances.
The setting makes one final appearance in the afterglow:
They stay there, still again, until the sounds of distant traffic and the fog-horn of an unseen boat filter back into conscious recognition. The teenagers from earlier are also back, brazen voices clearly distinguishable from the far side of the plass. Metres from moving past the shadow of the tower that shelters them from view.
This fic is a strong contender in both the PWP and Jack/Ianto categories. Sexy, funny, and evocative, I enjoyed this fic very much. I expect I’ll probably be reading it again. ;)
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Opening the Watch by Paladin Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Tenth Doctor, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: John Smith & the Doctor
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot missing scene fic, set during the latter half of Family of Blood.
Why It Rocks:
We never see it on screen. We never even get a hint of how it happens. There's no reference, no flashback, and we only find out it's happened after the Doctor has laid his trap.
And yet - it's probably one of the greatest, and most difficult, sacrifice the Doctor has made yet. We don't know what made John Smith open the pocket watch that contained the Doctor - in fact, we have ample reason to believe he might not. After all, he'd seen what he could have had with Joan Redfern - love, marriage, children, grandchildren, a long and happy life, followed by a peaceful death with everyone well. It's the life he could never live - but he'd have lived it.
All he wanted now was that simple life the Doctor had shown him, then cruelly took away, leaving him feeling like a starved child with his nose pressed up against the bakery window. Only allowed to look, to smell, but never to have.
Why did John Smith open the watch? He couldn't have taken very long to consider it. But surely something in him knew there was something particular about that timepiece - and as I recall, John has had a somewhat odd relationship with it, either frantically keeping it close, or shoving it away and forgetting it on his mantle in turn. It's a bit like his dreams, really, the way he treats that watch - he clearly enjoys the dreams to the point that he writes down what he sees when he wakes, pours over what they might mean, broods over the faces he sees. But the next instant, he'll dismiss them as dreams, call them impossible.
Kind of like believing in ghosts, I think. You might admit to yourself that you believe in ghosts, but faced with a pretty girl (or boy) who you're trying to impress, and no way are you that silly!
So the idea that this watch is a part of himself - well, it fits, doesn't it? And Paladin reminds us that of course John would realize that it fits; he looks at the watch, and doesn't just recognize it as his watch:
The watch was glowing, the asymmetrical design of circles and lines becoming clear. It was writing, he suddenly realized, writing he should know and understand, but didn’t want to.
The more John holds the watch, the more it speaks to him. And in a way, the less John is torn.
[The watch] told him he would be better, whole; that feeling of something missing would be gone.
That was the problem. He no longer felt like there was anything missing.
What would you do, if you held that watch? I have to think, any of us who bought the reproduction copy, or held the Book of Impossible Things in their hands - you think about it for a moment. You hold the watch, and maybe your heart catches in your throat the first time you open it, because what if???
And maybe, just maybe, you were a little bit disappointed that nothing happened.
Or maybe you were relieved.
Paladin's story isn't an AU - and I won't make you wonder if it is. John Smith opens the watch - but the story doesn't end there. We don't just see him become the Doctor - we feel it happen to him. The quiet merging of two men, becoming one again - becoming whole. Because you see, just as the Doctor lacked the moral fortitude of the Doctor - the Doctor lacked the love that John had found in Joan.
[John] feared the judgment of the being he was becoming. He felt its moral courage and its sense of outrage at his actions.
Then there was a change, a shift in emotion, as he felt the longing of the Time Lord to have the kind of love he’d had with Joan. The hope that it might remain, survive the transition.
We never see it on screen. We only hear about it afterwards. But I think that in those episodes - and mind, they're among my favorites - we missed one of the best parts of the story. Not the death of John Smith, or the birth of the Doctor - but the creation of something else entirely. Because John Smith had felt love, both given and received - and that means in a round-about way, so had the Doctor.
In short, vote for Opening the Watch. It's exactly the right story with exactly the right tone, told in exactly the right way. It's exactly what must have happened, on that cold field in a little English village, and it's exactly right. And believe me when I say that it absolutely exactly deserves your vote.
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Memory Lane, Aydrdoon Valley by Katta Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Short Story
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Jack, Ianto, Donna, Lee
Rating: Teen
Details: The Doctor and Donna take Ianto and Jack on holiday, only to land in an unexpected (and for Jack, uncomfortable) place. They become embroiled in local interspecies relations and Donna meets someone she thought she’d never seen again. 20,000 words, AU after “Midnight.”
Why it Rocks:
When I first started reading this story, I thought it was going to be a fairly fluffy romp - the Doctor and Donna take Jack and Ianto on holiday to allow them to decompress. Not that I was terribly shocked when the TARDIS took them somewhere they didn’t expect; namely Jack’s home planet. What I didn’t expect from this story, and was pleasantly surprised by, was the depth of the world that the author created and the complexity of the plot. The planet is given an intricate history in which the war that we get a glimpse of on Torchwood (when Jack and Gray are separated) is woven in, interesting original characters are created, and a plausible explanation for Jack becoming the Face of Boe is offered. Any author who can manage that is to be applauded.
Over the course of the story, we learn that there is a great deal of tension between the dwellers (the amphibian, shape-shifting natives of the planet), colonials (humans, albeit surgically augmented ones), and hybrids between the two races. There is a history in which nothing is black and white, and in which none of these groups is without fault. Here’s how the Doctor sums it up:
“It's so wrong, and it's the wrong kind of wrong, the kind of wrong I don't know what to do about. Daleks and Cybermen, those are the easy kind of wrong. Plans of world domination or world destruction, no problem, they can be averted. But this planet is seeped in tiny little wrongs, bad ideas just marinating the place, and I know it'll all be better soon enough, but meanwhile we're having a holiday here, and it's depressing.”
While Jack is witnessing this and struggling with his past, the Doctor and Donna have a different problem: they are being held because there is a warrant for them on the planet. But it turns out that the reason they are being detained is not a bad one. It’s because someone has been looking all over the galaxy for Donna. The handy thing about Moffat’s penchant for the 51st century is that all of his characters are contemporaries of each other, or close to it.
“Hello!” the Doctor said, smiling at the man, who looked rather nervous. “Who might you be?”
“I-I'm Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian,” the man said, reaching out a hand. “I'm l-looking for D-d-d...”
There was a piercing shriek from the bathroom that made the Doctor jump, though the man smiled as if it was the most beautiful sound he had heard in his life. Seconds later, Donna burst into the room, holding her dress in front of her still nude body.
“Oh my God!” she shouted, grinning just as widely as their visitor. “Lee!”
Donna and Lee are in the odd position of having never actually met in person, even though they were married and had children together, at least in their own minds. Clearly their feelings for each other are still intense, and their reunion is lovely. It seems the least that Donna deserves after her experiences in “Forest of the Dead.”
All in all, this is a well-plotted short story, combining an object lesson on classism and the potential consequences of it with a nice exploration of both the Jack/Ianto and Donna/Lee relationships, as well as the friendship between the Doctor and Donna.
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I Loved a Woman With a Heart of Amber by blue_fjords
Category: Gwen Cooper
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, other TW characters
Rating: PG
Details: Single-part ficlet, complete, 5600 words approximately
Why It Rocks:
Being the new boy, or girl, in a workplace can be exciting. It also offers very many pitfalls and traps for the unwary. So much to get accustomed to: standard protocols and business rules, the workplace culture, personality styles of your new colleagues, and of course the office politics. Workplace culture varies so much from one environment to another, and even more so when moving from a large, bureaucratic organisation with extensively documented procedure to a much smaller, more secretive organisation which is dominated by its charismatic manager and staffed by - let’s face it - at least a couple of social misfits. So easy to make mistakes, get off on the wrong foot, misinterpret signals, make the wrong assumptions and completely miss the indicators that you might be barking up the wrong tree.
It’s hardly surprising that Gwen might take a while to get used to Torchwood, for all these reasons. Even by the time Cyberwoman happens, when she’s been there for a couple of months, she’s still settling in, trying to learn the politics and understand the personalities, let alone get to grips with the work. And then she’s faced with a completely different sort of Torchwood internecine warfare:
The morning after she first deliberately fired on another human being with the intent to kill, and her eyes are wide open. She never knew Lisa Hallett. She still doesn't have a grasp of Ianto, and she's seen him every day for the past month
The story’s written from Gwen’s perspective, but the reactions of other characters are clearly shown, and I just found myself wincing for her whenever she put her foot in something or failed to anticipate the way things happen around Torchwood. It’s such a familiar feeling, that sense of trying to find your feet, the uncomfortable awareness that people around us are rolling their eyes at our ignorance; but most of us aren’t doing it in this kind of situation:
“What about Lisa?”
Tosh’s eyes widen and Owen shakes his head at her, exasperation showing through his exhaustion.
“The cyberwoman has been taken care of,” Jack answers evenly.
...
“We killed the woman Ianto loved. Aren’t we going to talk about that?”
...
Jack takes a sip of his coffee before answering. He looks her in the eye, and Gwen is temporarily silenced by the ghosts in his eyes that he lets her see. “No. We’re not going to talk about that.”
And so it continues, though we do see Gwen start to gain awareness of how things work, hesitating before saying or doing things that she would have before. We also see others, particularly Tosh and Owen, letting down their guard a little around Gwen: the gradual coming of acceptance. Tosh goes with Gwen to Lisa’s funeral - and Gwen thinks twice before taking Tosh’s arm the way she might with her female friends. Owen and Gwen go to get sandwiches for the Ianto-less team, and Owen lets Gwen rope him into helping a distressed child - though when she thanks him he’s typically gruff:
“Wouldn’t have had to if you’d just minded your own business,” he replies.
And in the quiet moments in between Gwen reads Ianto’s and Lisa’s files, trying to understand these two people and the reason why Ianto did what he did, in the four weeks of Ianto’s suspension from work. She also starts to figure out the roles each of the team members play, and notices the gap left by Ianto’s absence - and observes the other team members’ reaction to it.
I really like this story for the insights it gives into Gwen. blue_fjords doesn’t paint her as perfect, but not as useless either. Warts and all, Gwen is shown as a human being who makes mistakes - as everyone does - and, on being thrown into a strange organisation, takes a while to find her feet. It’s just that not everyone has to cope with their colleague’s Cyber girlfriend rampaging around their workplace while they’re still on probation!
There are plenty of fics set in the gap between Cyberwoman and Small Worlds, but I Loved a Woman With a Heart of Amber really is unique because of its use of Gwen’s perspective. And, for that reason, even if you feel that you’ve read enough post-Cyberwoman stories, this one is definitely worth a look.
If you’ve ever been that new person in the office, the only one who feels as if you’re not in the loop, you don’t have a clue what’s going on and you’ll never understand how things work here, you’ll empathise with Gwen. If you’ve ever felt stunned beyond belief at the actions of a colleague, at a loss to understand why they did what they did, this story will resonate with you. In any event, it’s a fic worth reading, and it’s definitely worthy of your vote.
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Interagency Hostility by Settiai Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Multi-Era, Humor
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Jack Harkness, Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton
Rating: All Ages
Details: Humour, Slash (Hinted at)
Why It Rocks:
It's Jack Harkness meeting and teasing the Brigadier.
This fic is part of my personal canon as it's exactly as I'd expect both Jack and the Third Doctor-era Brigadier to behave on meeting for the first time, and Jo's and Benton's reactions are also very characteristic.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Third Doctor UNIT-based era, Jo Grant is the Third Doctor's second assistant (joining him in Terror of the Autons, after Dr Liz Shaw's off-screen departure after the end of Inferno). Sergeant Benton is a very loyal, reliable and good-natured member of the Brigadier's staff, and a lot of the time he acts as the Brigadier's right-hand man, even when Captain Yates (who is senior to Benton) is assigned to the Brigadier's staff.
Jack has turned up at UNIT HQ for some information on Axons - or so he says - although he seems more interested in eyeballing Jo than in reading the paperwork he's found. Since he turned up four hours earlier, he's managed to turn the place upside down, and the Brigadier's patience is wearing very thin by now. So thin, in fact, that:
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's hand slipped down to rest on his gun. Again.
"Sir," Benton muttered warningly, "someone would notice if you shot him, even if he is with Torchwood."
There's an implication there that not even Torchwood are so incompetent they would fail to notice a dead operative - however, it's quite probable that neither the Brigadier nor Benton are aware that Jack's immortal, so Torchwood actually would not notice!
Jack, of course, teases the Brigadier, observing that he's under discussion:
"Talking about me," the man asked, grinning broadly at them. "I'm touched."
Jo giggled.
The Brigadier shot her a disapproving look, and she quickly stifled her laughter. Then he turned his gaze toward the American. "Mr. Harkness," he said dryly, "that much is quite certain."
Poor Benton and Jo can barely contain their laughter at this point, and the Brigadier becomes ever more irritated, his hand again drifting to his gun. But there's a small sombre note in this fic too, when Jo asks in disappointment if Jack's leaving before the Doctor returns:
An odd expression flashed across Harkness's face for just a second. It was there and gone so quickly that the Brigadier almost thought he'd imagined it. Only the startled expression on Benton's face, proof that the other man had noticed Harkness's reaction to the Doctor's name as well, kept him from doubting what he'd seen.
Jack, of course, doesn't dare to meet the Doctor at this point because the Time Lord doesn't know him yet - he's still six reincarnations away from being the man who first met Jack in WW2, and for all his apparent carelessness and insouciance, as a former Time Agent Jack knows better than to meet the Doctor before the Time Lord's first meeting with him. So, much as he regrets it, he says he won't stay to meet the Doctor. The moment passes quickly as Jack returns to his usual flirty self, pausing for one last teasing gesture towards the Brigadier before he departs:
Harkness brushed past him, and Alistair jumped slightly when he felt the American pinch his ass as he walked by.
At which point the Brigadier asks Benton to shoot Jack on sight the next time he appears. When Benton coughs in a pointed way, the Brigadier amends his instruction:
The Brigadier sighed. "Point taken," he agreed reluctantly. "Next time, simply shoot me."
Vote for this fic because it's amusing, witty, a lot of fun and all the characters are spot-on.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
time_converges: Make Me a Match
unfolded73: Night Monsters; Memory Lane, Aydrdoon Valley
azriona: Opening the Watch
wendymr: I Loved a Woman with a Heart of Amber
persiflage_1: Interagency Hostility
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Make Me A Match by mimingdonna
Categories: Donna Noble, Genfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Donna, Tenth Doctor
Rating: G
Details: One shot, 4700 words. Donna’s first night on the TARDIS.
Why It Rocks:
Mimingdonna is one of my favorite authors because she captures the essential elements of the relationship between Donna and the Doctor, and she does it with crisp stories and in-character dialogue as well as a marvellous sense of humor.
This story, set during Donna’s first night on the TARDIS, opens with them enjoying a meal. Of course, the Doctor wants to show off a little, so not only does he provide an exotic first meal, it’s exotic takeaway from another galaxy.
“First tea in the TARDIS, Donna Noble,” said the Doctor with a grin. “Verdict?”
“Verdict would have to be … any more of that kung pao dodo left? There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”
Donna, being Donna, can’t resist making a dig at him about his cooking abilities, given the fact that he ordered takeout on her first night. Being the Doctor, he has to defend his honor, and produces a giant chocolate cake, and this is when their conversation really gets interesting. They make a pretty good dent in the cake, with Donna giving up before he does.
“Feels like I’ve known you for ages,” said Donna dreamily, picking up and licking her spoon.
The Doctor looked back steadily, jaws working on his mouthful of cake as he wondered what she was getting at. He’d learnt pretty early on that copious amounts of cake tended to be an inhibition-lowerer for humans.
When he generously allows her to ask him “anything,” she starts off with an easy question: What’s his favourite color. And his quick answer of “ginger” leads to a discussion of past companions, regeneration, and his eventual mortality. I love the easy conversation between them that can go so quickly from the mundane to the profound. Donna acquires some necessary information, but the Doctor gains something more: he learns that Donna is different from prior companions, and he’s touched by her concern for his well-being and her quick grasp of the ramifications of a limited number of regenerations.
Of course, being the Doctor, he ruins the mood almost immediately by being abrupt with her when she asks about his real name. He feels instantly guilty for making her feel bad, and surprisingly decides to tell her his name - after a fashion. In a lovely piece of consistency with old-school Who, we learn that his name, his real name, means “Noble.” (The Third Doctor used Noble as an alias.)
...the Doctor actually felt glad that he’d told her about his name. It was beginning to dawn on him that it was easier being honest with Donna than not, and he also knew that he was so secretive by nature that this whole honesty thing might take some getting used to.
There’s also a lovely thread running through the story of the Doctor becoming aware he might have feelings for Donna that go beyond being “just a mate” - and he’s more than a little concerned about it. Donna, overcome by the long day and the chocolate cake, falls asleep at the table. After he puts his coat over her shoulders, in a nice nod to “The Runaway Bride,” he can’t quite resist her ginger hair.
…and couldn’t for the lives of him resist delicately trailing his fingers over her copper hair. Halfway down, he blinked in surprise and snatched his hand away as though it were touching hot coals. He looked at his fingers and then back at Donna, now smiling in her sleep. A moment later he was treading noiselessly as a cat across the tiles, deciding to make a start on lugging her possessions - at the moment piled up in the corridor - to a room for her.
My favorite part of the story, though, is the suggestion that the TARDIS not only loves Donna, but also thinks that Donna and the Doctor should be more than just friends. The Doctor does not appreciate his ship being quite so meddlesome. The TARDIS demonstrates her affection for Donna by providing a lovely bedroom for her, something she reluctantly did for prior companions. Donna appreciates the gesture, and wins the ship over to her side even more.
“This gonna be my room?” she asked, looking around in wonder. “Your ship is beautiful, you know. I mean, really beautiful. This is miles better than any posh hotel.”
The TARDIS made a low rumbling sound somewhere in her engines and the Doctor wondered if Donna knew that with those words she’d just won herself a devoted semi-sentient slave.
I love this story for how it conveys their easy friendship, despite only knowing each other a few hours, and giving us the beginnings of what we know their relationship will be. The Doctor is clearly happy to have someone travelling with him again, and Donna is grateful for the opportunity as well. The dialogue is spot-on, and the humor is sprinkled generously throughout, particularly in the last few paragraphs, which would not be out of place in a Douglas Adams’ script. In short, Make Me a Match has everything that makes the Doctor-Donna relationship wonderful, plus a matchmaking TARDIS, chocolate cake, and exotic takeout. It certainly is deserving of your vote.
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Night Monsters by qthelights
Categories: Jack/Ianto and PWP
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating: Adult
Details: Jack and Ianto engage in some exhibitionist hijinks on Roald Dahl Plass. 2300 words.
Why it Rocks:
The story begins with our fair heroes stumbling across the Plass, both of them quite drunk. First of all, I love the way their drunkenness is described both in their interactions with each other and their interaction with the world around them. The author captures perfectly how I would imagine Jack and Ianto drunk.
The railing props up their arms, pushes back against the sloping heaviness of their bodies and keeps them from toppling into the murky black liquid below.
“Are the stars blurry?” Ianto asks, squinting doggedly up at the swirling pinpricks of incandescence.
“Some.” Jack smiles fondly at the slur in Ianto’s voice in the superior way that only someone who erroneously thinks they’re still sober can.
I think my favorite thing about this fic is the way the setting is like a third character. You can almost feel the damp chill of the night, hear the cry of a gull out on Cardiff Bay or the laughter of some passing teenagers, see the sheer face of the water tower. (The water has been turned off for maintenance, allowing the author to use it for sexy purposes later.)
In the midst of this iconic Cardiff setting, the author deftly steers Jack and Ianto from silly to slightly sentimental and romantic to horny.
Ianto groans and the sound is startlingly loud in the silence of the night, not even slightly competing with the waves that crash and break against the wall below. It is as if Cardiff has fallen silent to better eavesdrop on the increasing ragged breaths and mewling whimpers they begin to drag from each other.
Jack is the one who initiates the outdoor shenanigans, suggesting they have sex on the invisible lift behind the protection of its perception filter, but Ianto takes it to another level, leading Jack over to the non-functioning water tower for some real exhibitionism. Again, the setting is front and center, almost like a third participant in the sex.
Jack’s head drops back with a muted metallic thud that ripples up the tower in a depraved echo.
The sex is very well done, and it’s very hot. It’s also fairly graphic, but in the best of ways. At the same time, I’m all about slash fic that doesn’t automatically default to anal sex, which certainly has its place, but also isn’t the be-all and end-all of m/m porn. The desperation of hands and friction in this story is perfect for the circumstances.
The setting makes one final appearance in the afterglow:
They stay there, still again, until the sounds of distant traffic and the fog-horn of an unseen boat filter back into conscious recognition. The teenagers from earlier are also back, brazen voices clearly distinguishable from the far side of the plass. Metres from moving past the shadow of the tower that shelters them from view.
This fic is a strong contender in both the PWP and Jack/Ianto categories. Sexy, funny, and evocative, I enjoyed this fic very much. I expect I’ll probably be reading it again. ;)
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Opening the Watch by Paladin Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Tenth Doctor, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: John Smith & the Doctor
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot missing scene fic, set during the latter half of Family of Blood.
Why It Rocks:
We never see it on screen. We never even get a hint of how it happens. There's no reference, no flashback, and we only find out it's happened after the Doctor has laid his trap.
And yet - it's probably one of the greatest, and most difficult, sacrifice the Doctor has made yet. We don't know what made John Smith open the pocket watch that contained the Doctor - in fact, we have ample reason to believe he might not. After all, he'd seen what he could have had with Joan Redfern - love, marriage, children, grandchildren, a long and happy life, followed by a peaceful death with everyone well. It's the life he could never live - but he'd have lived it.
All he wanted now was that simple life the Doctor had shown him, then cruelly took away, leaving him feeling like a starved child with his nose pressed up against the bakery window. Only allowed to look, to smell, but never to have.
Why did John Smith open the watch? He couldn't have taken very long to consider it. But surely something in him knew there was something particular about that timepiece - and as I recall, John has had a somewhat odd relationship with it, either frantically keeping it close, or shoving it away and forgetting it on his mantle in turn. It's a bit like his dreams, really, the way he treats that watch - he clearly enjoys the dreams to the point that he writes down what he sees when he wakes, pours over what they might mean, broods over the faces he sees. But the next instant, he'll dismiss them as dreams, call them impossible.
Kind of like believing in ghosts, I think. You might admit to yourself that you believe in ghosts, but faced with a pretty girl (or boy) who you're trying to impress, and no way are you that silly!
So the idea that this watch is a part of himself - well, it fits, doesn't it? And Paladin reminds us that of course John would realize that it fits; he looks at the watch, and doesn't just recognize it as his watch:
The watch was glowing, the asymmetrical design of circles and lines becoming clear. It was writing, he suddenly realized, writing he should know and understand, but didn’t want to.
The more John holds the watch, the more it speaks to him. And in a way, the less John is torn.
[The watch] told him he would be better, whole; that feeling of something missing would be gone.
That was the problem. He no longer felt like there was anything missing.
What would you do, if you held that watch? I have to think, any of us who bought the reproduction copy, or held the Book of Impossible Things in their hands - you think about it for a moment. You hold the watch, and maybe your heart catches in your throat the first time you open it, because what if???
And maybe, just maybe, you were a little bit disappointed that nothing happened.
Or maybe you were relieved.
Paladin's story isn't an AU - and I won't make you wonder if it is. John Smith opens the watch - but the story doesn't end there. We don't just see him become the Doctor - we feel it happen to him. The quiet merging of two men, becoming one again - becoming whole. Because you see, just as the Doctor lacked the moral fortitude of the Doctor - the Doctor lacked the love that John had found in Joan.
[John] feared the judgment of the being he was becoming. He felt its moral courage and its sense of outrage at his actions.
Then there was a change, a shift in emotion, as he felt the longing of the Time Lord to have the kind of love he’d had with Joan. The hope that it might remain, survive the transition.
We never see it on screen. We only hear about it afterwards. But I think that in those episodes - and mind, they're among my favorites - we missed one of the best parts of the story. Not the death of John Smith, or the birth of the Doctor - but the creation of something else entirely. Because John Smith had felt love, both given and received - and that means in a round-about way, so had the Doctor.
In short, vote for Opening the Watch. It's exactly the right story with exactly the right tone, told in exactly the right way. It's exactly what must have happened, on that cold field in a little English village, and it's exactly right. And believe me when I say that it absolutely exactly deserves your vote.
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Memory Lane, Aydrdoon Valley by Katta Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Short Story
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Jack, Ianto, Donna, Lee
Rating: Teen
Details: The Doctor and Donna take Ianto and Jack on holiday, only to land in an unexpected (and for Jack, uncomfortable) place. They become embroiled in local interspecies relations and Donna meets someone she thought she’d never seen again. 20,000 words, AU after “Midnight.”
Why it Rocks:
When I first started reading this story, I thought it was going to be a fairly fluffy romp - the Doctor and Donna take Jack and Ianto on holiday to allow them to decompress. Not that I was terribly shocked when the TARDIS took them somewhere they didn’t expect; namely Jack’s home planet. What I didn’t expect from this story, and was pleasantly surprised by, was the depth of the world that the author created and the complexity of the plot. The planet is given an intricate history in which the war that we get a glimpse of on Torchwood (when Jack and Gray are separated) is woven in, interesting original characters are created, and a plausible explanation for Jack becoming the Face of Boe is offered. Any author who can manage that is to be applauded.
Over the course of the story, we learn that there is a great deal of tension between the dwellers (the amphibian, shape-shifting natives of the planet), colonials (humans, albeit surgically augmented ones), and hybrids between the two races. There is a history in which nothing is black and white, and in which none of these groups is without fault. Here’s how the Doctor sums it up:
“It's so wrong, and it's the wrong kind of wrong, the kind of wrong I don't know what to do about. Daleks and Cybermen, those are the easy kind of wrong. Plans of world domination or world destruction, no problem, they can be averted. But this planet is seeped in tiny little wrongs, bad ideas just marinating the place, and I know it'll all be better soon enough, but meanwhile we're having a holiday here, and it's depressing.”
While Jack is witnessing this and struggling with his past, the Doctor and Donna have a different problem: they are being held because there is a warrant for them on the planet. But it turns out that the reason they are being detained is not a bad one. It’s because someone has been looking all over the galaxy for Donna. The handy thing about Moffat’s penchant for the 51st century is that all of his characters are contemporaries of each other, or close to it.
“Hello!” the Doctor said, smiling at the man, who looked rather nervous. “Who might you be?”
“I-I'm Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian,” the man said, reaching out a hand. “I'm l-looking for D-d-d...”
There was a piercing shriek from the bathroom that made the Doctor jump, though the man smiled as if it was the most beautiful sound he had heard in his life. Seconds later, Donna burst into the room, holding her dress in front of her still nude body.
“Oh my God!” she shouted, grinning just as widely as their visitor. “Lee!”
Donna and Lee are in the odd position of having never actually met in person, even though they were married and had children together, at least in their own minds. Clearly their feelings for each other are still intense, and their reunion is lovely. It seems the least that Donna deserves after her experiences in “Forest of the Dead.”
All in all, this is a well-plotted short story, combining an object lesson on classism and the potential consequences of it with a nice exploration of both the Jack/Ianto and Donna/Lee relationships, as well as the friendship between the Doctor and Donna.
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I Loved a Woman With a Heart of Amber by blue_fjords
Category: Gwen Cooper
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, other TW characters
Rating: PG
Details: Single-part ficlet, complete, 5600 words approximately
Why It Rocks:
Being the new boy, or girl, in a workplace can be exciting. It also offers very many pitfalls and traps for the unwary. So much to get accustomed to: standard protocols and business rules, the workplace culture, personality styles of your new colleagues, and of course the office politics. Workplace culture varies so much from one environment to another, and even more so when moving from a large, bureaucratic organisation with extensively documented procedure to a much smaller, more secretive organisation which is dominated by its charismatic manager and staffed by - let’s face it - at least a couple of social misfits. So easy to make mistakes, get off on the wrong foot, misinterpret signals, make the wrong assumptions and completely miss the indicators that you might be barking up the wrong tree.
It’s hardly surprising that Gwen might take a while to get used to Torchwood, for all these reasons. Even by the time Cyberwoman happens, when she’s been there for a couple of months, she’s still settling in, trying to learn the politics and understand the personalities, let alone get to grips with the work. And then she’s faced with a completely different sort of Torchwood internecine warfare:
The morning after she first deliberately fired on another human being with the intent to kill, and her eyes are wide open. She never knew Lisa Hallett. She still doesn't have a grasp of Ianto, and she's seen him every day for the past month
The story’s written from Gwen’s perspective, but the reactions of other characters are clearly shown, and I just found myself wincing for her whenever she put her foot in something or failed to anticipate the way things happen around Torchwood. It’s such a familiar feeling, that sense of trying to find your feet, the uncomfortable awareness that people around us are rolling their eyes at our ignorance; but most of us aren’t doing it in this kind of situation:
“What about Lisa?”
Tosh’s eyes widen and Owen shakes his head at her, exasperation showing through his exhaustion.
“The cyberwoman has been taken care of,” Jack answers evenly.
...
“We killed the woman Ianto loved. Aren’t we going to talk about that?”
...
Jack takes a sip of his coffee before answering. He looks her in the eye, and Gwen is temporarily silenced by the ghosts in his eyes that he lets her see. “No. We’re not going to talk about that.”
And so it continues, though we do see Gwen start to gain awareness of how things work, hesitating before saying or doing things that she would have before. We also see others, particularly Tosh and Owen, letting down their guard a little around Gwen: the gradual coming of acceptance. Tosh goes with Gwen to Lisa’s funeral - and Gwen thinks twice before taking Tosh’s arm the way she might with her female friends. Owen and Gwen go to get sandwiches for the Ianto-less team, and Owen lets Gwen rope him into helping a distressed child - though when she thanks him he’s typically gruff:
“Wouldn’t have had to if you’d just minded your own business,” he replies.
And in the quiet moments in between Gwen reads Ianto’s and Lisa’s files, trying to understand these two people and the reason why Ianto did what he did, in the four weeks of Ianto’s suspension from work. She also starts to figure out the roles each of the team members play, and notices the gap left by Ianto’s absence - and observes the other team members’ reaction to it.
I really like this story for the insights it gives into Gwen. blue_fjords doesn’t paint her as perfect, but not as useless either. Warts and all, Gwen is shown as a human being who makes mistakes - as everyone does - and, on being thrown into a strange organisation, takes a while to find her feet. It’s just that not everyone has to cope with their colleague’s Cyber girlfriend rampaging around their workplace while they’re still on probation!
There are plenty of fics set in the gap between Cyberwoman and Small Worlds, but I Loved a Woman With a Heart of Amber really is unique because of its use of Gwen’s perspective. And, for that reason, even if you feel that you’ve read enough post-Cyberwoman stories, this one is definitely worth a look.
If you’ve ever been that new person in the office, the only one who feels as if you’re not in the loop, you don’t have a clue what’s going on and you’ll never understand how things work here, you’ll empathise with Gwen. If you’ve ever felt stunned beyond belief at the actions of a colleague, at a loss to understand why they did what they did, this story will resonate with you. In any event, it’s a fic worth reading, and it’s definitely worthy of your vote.
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Interagency Hostility by Settiai Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Multi-Era, Humor
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Jack Harkness, Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton
Rating: All Ages
Details: Humour, Slash (Hinted at)
Why It Rocks:
It's Jack Harkness meeting and teasing the Brigadier.
This fic is part of my personal canon as it's exactly as I'd expect both Jack and the Third Doctor-era Brigadier to behave on meeting for the first time, and Jo's and Benton's reactions are also very characteristic.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Third Doctor UNIT-based era, Jo Grant is the Third Doctor's second assistant (joining him in Terror of the Autons, after Dr Liz Shaw's off-screen departure after the end of Inferno). Sergeant Benton is a very loyal, reliable and good-natured member of the Brigadier's staff, and a lot of the time he acts as the Brigadier's right-hand man, even when Captain Yates (who is senior to Benton) is assigned to the Brigadier's staff.
Jack has turned up at UNIT HQ for some information on Axons - or so he says - although he seems more interested in eyeballing Jo than in reading the paperwork he's found. Since he turned up four hours earlier, he's managed to turn the place upside down, and the Brigadier's patience is wearing very thin by now. So thin, in fact, that:
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's hand slipped down to rest on his gun. Again.
"Sir," Benton muttered warningly, "someone would notice if you shot him, even if he is with Torchwood."
There's an implication there that not even Torchwood are so incompetent they would fail to notice a dead operative - however, it's quite probable that neither the Brigadier nor Benton are aware that Jack's immortal, so Torchwood actually would not notice!
Jack, of course, teases the Brigadier, observing that he's under discussion:
"Talking about me," the man asked, grinning broadly at them. "I'm touched."
Jo giggled.
The Brigadier shot her a disapproving look, and she quickly stifled her laughter. Then he turned his gaze toward the American. "Mr. Harkness," he said dryly, "that much is quite certain."
Poor Benton and Jo can barely contain their laughter at this point, and the Brigadier becomes ever more irritated, his hand again drifting to his gun. But there's a small sombre note in this fic too, when Jo asks in disappointment if Jack's leaving before the Doctor returns:
An odd expression flashed across Harkness's face for just a second. It was there and gone so quickly that the Brigadier almost thought he'd imagined it. Only the startled expression on Benton's face, proof that the other man had noticed Harkness's reaction to the Doctor's name as well, kept him from doubting what he'd seen.
Jack, of course, doesn't dare to meet the Doctor at this point because the Time Lord doesn't know him yet - he's still six reincarnations away from being the man who first met Jack in WW2, and for all his apparent carelessness and insouciance, as a former Time Agent Jack knows better than to meet the Doctor before the Time Lord's first meeting with him. So, much as he regrets it, he says he won't stay to meet the Doctor. The moment passes quickly as Jack returns to his usual flirty self, pausing for one last teasing gesture towards the Brigadier before he departs:
Harkness brushed past him, and Alistair jumped slightly when he felt the American pinch his ass as he walked by.
At which point the Brigadier asks Benton to shoot Jack on sight the next time he appears. When Benton coughs in a pointed way, the Brigadier amends his instruction:
The Brigadier sighed. "Point taken," he agreed reluctantly. "Next time, simply shoot me."
Vote for this fic because it's amusing, witty, a lot of fun and all the characters are spot-on.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
time_converges: Make Me a Match
unfolded73: Night Monsters; Memory Lane, Aydrdoon Valley
azriona: Opening the Watch
wendymr: I Loved a Woman with a Heart of Amber
persiflage_1: Interagency Hostility