App part deux
Character name: Fitz Kreiner
Genre (TV/books/etc): books
Fandom: Doctor Who
Canon point: roughly halfway through the book The Deadstone Memorial.
Why this Character and Canon point?:
I miss him rather a lot. I miss having a scruffy Everyman who will go out and do stuff and be a genre-savvy derp. By this point in the canon (the third to last book) Fitz is at his most entrenched in the time-and-space traveling life and fully expects to knock around in it forever. He's accepted his role as the hero's sidekick, the one who'll get his hands dirty and do what needs to be done to save the day. This is a time when he's reached his full potential and possesses a sort of confidence that was sorely lacking previously. Yanking him out of that will rattle him, and I want to explore how he'd cope with that.
Also Fitzilla.
Programmed Possession:
The disreputable flat he was living in when he first met the Doctor. It's a third floor bedsit with a dilapidated brown armchair, a rubber plant, an electric guitar with orange amp, and a radio on the mantle. Up in the attic bedroom there's a single mattress on the floor, a lamp with a red bulb for "relaxation" purposes, and the stripey flag of the Fitz Free State pinned to one wall. It positively reeks of cigarette smoke and there's no way in hell he's actually staying there, but it serves as a reminder of ~how far he's come~.
Abilities/Weaknesses:
Skills-wise, Fitz has worked many odd jobs but mainly considers himself to be a musician. He can sing and play guitar very well, and also knows several other instruments. As a baseline human (okay a clone of a baseline human) he does not have any special powers, but when the TARDIS reconstructed him she augmented his memory and cognitive skills, making him very good at puzzles like crosswords and anagrams. He also has a knack for impressions and accents which he uses to defuse tension with a joke, or to get into a character. When in peril he can think on his feet and talk his way out of many situations, and if that doesn’t work then many years as a companion of the Doctor has taught him the art of running and hiding.
Running would be easier if he would quit smoking, something he has attempted occasionally but without any long term success. Women are another weakness, and on numerous occasions he’s dropped everything to aid a damsel in distress, and he can be easily distracted by a nice rack or a shapely pair of legs. He has a lot of insecurities stemming from a life of cynical self-doubt, and while much of that has been alleviated in his travels Fitz’s confidence can still be rattled. His general immaturity and inability to take things seriously can also get him into trouble.
Psychology/Personality:
Fitz's personality was largely shaped by his early childhood. As a half-German growing up in London during the second world war, he had to develop many defense mechanisms to survive the abuse he and his family were subjected to. Beneath his flippant, apathetic surface persona is a core of cynical disillusionment, and at the center of that core he's internalized much of the hatred that's been flung at him.
For most of Fitz’s life he has wanted to be anyone but himself. He tends to vanish into fantasies where he's the suave, dashing hero who always gets the girl, instead of the hopeless, scrawny loser who never had a chance. Traveling with the Doctor, being the hero (or the hero's loyal sidekick) and saving people and planets has helped him realize his own worth. The Doctor gave Fitz a chance to start over and heal some of the scars of his youth by helping others, and to a degree it has worked. Sticking up for the downtrodden comes naturally to Fitz, and he is especially protective of children and animals.
He's quick with a wisecrack and generally doesn't take things too seriously, very much an overgrown kid. If given the choice he would rather mooch around parties, get smashed, and chat up girls than fight alien baddies. That said he's hardly the womanizer he makes himself out to be, if anything he's more of a hopeless romantic who falls in love too easily. He's looking to fill the lonely void in his life but still isn't quite sure how to go about it.
Very, very quietly, Fitz is also a bit of a nerd. He makes many references to the fantasy and early science fiction books he read in his youth, and when choosing an alias he tends to go with the names of famous spies and detectives. He possesses a surprising amount of common sense and a practical sort of intelligence, not that he'd appreciate hearing that. No matter how long he hangs around with (and hero-worships, and wants to be) the Doctor, Fitz still firmly believes it is better to be cool than smart.
History:
Fitz was born in London in in 1936, his mother English and his father a German liberal who fled his homeland when Hitler came to power. When the Blitz started he and his family were tormented mercilessly by their neighbors, to the point where his mother refused to send Fitz to the countryside for fear of what would be done to him. Even so, the neighborhood kids celebrated V-E Day by kicking him down the street, and he suffered persecution for his heritage well into his adult life.
His father died when he was quite young and his mother was institutionalized for her mental illness when he was in his teens, forcing Fitz into foster care. He finished school and began an inglorious career filled with dead-end jobs which he supplemented by playing guitar under the stage name "Fitz Fortune." His life was going nowhere slowly, until the age of twenty-seven when he met the Doctor and Samantha Jones. Through a complicated series of events it was discovered that his mother's madness was the result of alien interference. The ensuing adventure left Mrs. Kreiner dead and Fitz a prime suspect in her murder. What better way to leg it than in a time machine? It took a while for Fitz to adapt to life aboard the TARDIS. He frequently felt left out of close bond the Doctor and Sam shared, to the point where he left for a while (1967-1969) to be with a girl.
Then there was a confusing mess involving Faction Paradox, the chaos-worshipping Time Lord voodoo cult. Yes, really. They captured Fitz, and while the Doctor was too busy to rescue him he...joined their ranks. A copy of Fitz was also created, and when this copy died it was "remembered" back into being by people who had known the copy. This process was repeated until the Doctor met the many-times-diluted and only vaguely Fitzish Fitz-clone and, thinking the original Fitz was dead, had the TARDIS remember him back into all of his Fitzy glory.
This pissed off the original Fitz quite a bit, but he's dead now so whatever. It should be noted that canon is noncommittal on exactly why Fitz 2.0 is so much more agreeable than Original Recipe, but it is hinted that the TARDIS may have just remembered him nicer.
At roughly this point Sam left and the Doctor carried on traveling with Fitz and a bitchy redhead named Compassion who...turned into a TARDIS. Which was handy since the original TARDIS got destroyed. The Doctor and Fitz traveled around in Compassion while being pursued across time and space by crazy flapper President Romana, who wanted to use Compassion to breed more humanish TARDISes to fight a time war. No, not that one, another one. In any case Gallifrey still got exploded (or erased from time, depending on the author), the Doctor got dumped in the 1890s to recover, and Compassion left Fitz in 2001 to wait for him before buggering off to parts unknown.
There is good news and bad news when Fitz finds the Doctor: on the one hand the original TARDIS has regrown itself. On the other the Doctor has amnesia and doesn't remember Fitz, or how to operate his timeship. However he is Doctorish enough to take on Anji Kapoor as a new companion, and the three of the continue on knocking about the universe. The Doctor wants adventure, Anji wants to go home, and Fitz wants to make sure the Doctor's lost memories STAY lost as the trauma of remembering might kill him. Fitz takes this time to come to terms with the fact that he is a clone of himself, with marginal success.
The trio go on to have many adventures, visiting planets of cartoons and fairy tales, places where time is used as a weapon, and spend a year and a half in an eighteenth century brothel. They ended up in Spain during its civil war to find out who or what was changing how events were perceived. Fitz went to Guernica to get a first hand account, turned thirty-three, and decided it was time he had an adventure of him own.
He got his chance when they visited Victorian England and Fitz decided to join an expedition to Siberia to look for fossils, which the Doctor knew was doomed to failure. Of course.* It was harrowing, what with the rift in space-time opening and the explorers getting hunted by velociraptors, but Fitz managed to survive by hiding in an ice TARDIS and basically being Schrodinger's Fitz for roughly 115 years. Thankfully things get sorted out and the travelers continue on, with stowaway mistress-of-disguise Trix MacMillan joining the crew.
The next several adventures find the TARDIS crew visiting many alternate Earths to find the "real" one so the Doctor can return a book (it's more important than it sounds), resulting in the chance that yet ANOTHER identical-but-not-the-same Fitz ended up on the TARDIS** but I'm going to ignore that possibility like subsequent authors did. Anji left, Fitz and Trix stayed on (and at least one joke was made about the silliness of their names), there was an incident in which Fitz and the Doctor swapped personality traits (curiosity and self-confidence in exchange for swearing, nicotine addiction, and RAW HUMANITY), and then they ended up in Lancashire, in a story that was later more or less ripped off by Russel T. Davies and renamed "Fear Itself".
* "Time Zero", by Justin Richards - http://www.drwhoguide.com/whobbc60.htm
** "The Last Resort", by Paul Leonard - http://www.drwhoguide.com/whobbc64.htm
Arrival Post (Third Person)
He'd helped save scores of worlds and dozens of universes, he'd beaten Elvis in a death match (sort of), he's wooed more than one alien princess, and now Fitz was going to die in a garage. In Lancashire. The ghost-monster thing screamed again and bore down upon him, its many eyes gleaming, its jaws wide in preparation for biting. Fitz closed his eyes and pressed himself harder against the swing door in a futile attempt to escape--
--or perhaps not so futile, as in the next instant he found himself flat on his back in a strange metal room, staring up at some alien contraption. He blinked and frowned before carefully sitting up.
"Ta for the rescue, there," he muttered and got his bearings. Metal walls, metal floor, stairs going down, pedestal with a fancy mobile, all of it suddenly familiar.
The word "Taxon" cheerfully sprang to mind and he groaned. How the hell had he forgotten this place?
"Oh, flipping heck!" Fitz struggled to his feet (which were tied together with nylon rope) and awkwardly hopped over to pick up the tablet. "Is there a Doctor in the house? I'm not picky, any one will do. And if whoever comes to meet me would be kind enough bring something sharp, I'll get you drinks for a night."
Additional Third Person Sample:
"This place has the most amazing view," Fitz said conversationally. He hoped the redhead he was chatting up thought he was referring to the actual view and not the one he had down her blouse. By the way she glanced down he was sure he was rumbled, but then she glanced back up with a smile and he grinned back. This one was in the bag.
"It is spectacular," she agreed and actually did look to the domed ceiling. They were in a space station orbiting a moon, which in turn was orbiting a brilliant green gas planet, which in turn was orbiting a red giant sun. In the distance a cat's eye nebula dominated the wash of stars, and Fitz...remained in awe of the redhead's cleavage. He took another sip of his drink and decided it was time to go in for the kill.
"So, I've got some time before my mates come back, any chance we could head back to your quarters and-"
At this moment the lighting in the bar switched to emergency red, the bulkhead doors slammed shut, and an ear-splitting siren started up. It was unclear which of them leaped at the other first but but in any event Fitz and the redhead found themselves clinging to each other in fear.
Through the din, the distinct sound of the Beatles' "Help!" could be heard emanating from the pocket of Fitz's leather jacket. He fished out his mobile and sighed. The caller ID simply read "The Doc."
"Time Lord my arse. More like lord of bad timing." He flipped the phone open with a long-suffering sigh. "This had better be good, Doctor!"
Genre (TV/books/etc): books
Fandom: Doctor Who
Canon point: roughly halfway through the book The Deadstone Memorial.
Why this Character and Canon point?:
I miss him rather a lot. I miss having a scruffy Everyman who will go out and do stuff and be a genre-savvy derp. By this point in the canon (the third to last book) Fitz is at his most entrenched in the time-and-space traveling life and fully expects to knock around in it forever. He's accepted his role as the hero's sidekick, the one who'll get his hands dirty and do what needs to be done to save the day. This is a time when he's reached his full potential and possesses a sort of confidence that was sorely lacking previously. Yanking him out of that will rattle him, and I want to explore how he'd cope with that.
Also Fitzilla.
Programmed Possession:
The disreputable flat he was living in when he first met the Doctor. It's a third floor bedsit with a dilapidated brown armchair, a rubber plant, an electric guitar with orange amp, and a radio on the mantle. Up in the attic bedroom there's a single mattress on the floor, a lamp with a red bulb for "relaxation" purposes, and the stripey flag of the Fitz Free State pinned to one wall. It positively reeks of cigarette smoke and there's no way in hell he's actually staying there, but it serves as a reminder of ~how far he's come~.
Abilities/Weaknesses:
Skills-wise, Fitz has worked many odd jobs but mainly considers himself to be a musician. He can sing and play guitar very well, and also knows several other instruments. As a baseline human (okay a clone of a baseline human) he does not have any special powers, but when the TARDIS reconstructed him she augmented his memory and cognitive skills, making him very good at puzzles like crosswords and anagrams. He also has a knack for impressions and accents which he uses to defuse tension with a joke, or to get into a character. When in peril he can think on his feet and talk his way out of many situations, and if that doesn’t work then many years as a companion of the Doctor has taught him the art of running and hiding.
Running would be easier if he would quit smoking, something he has attempted occasionally but without any long term success. Women are another weakness, and on numerous occasions he’s dropped everything to aid a damsel in distress, and he can be easily distracted by a nice rack or a shapely pair of legs. He has a lot of insecurities stemming from a life of cynical self-doubt, and while much of that has been alleviated in his travels Fitz’s confidence can still be rattled. His general immaturity and inability to take things seriously can also get him into trouble.
Psychology/Personality:
Fitz's personality was largely shaped by his early childhood. As a half-German growing up in London during the second world war, he had to develop many defense mechanisms to survive the abuse he and his family were subjected to. Beneath his flippant, apathetic surface persona is a core of cynical disillusionment, and at the center of that core he's internalized much of the hatred that's been flung at him.
For most of Fitz’s life he has wanted to be anyone but himself. He tends to vanish into fantasies where he's the suave, dashing hero who always gets the girl, instead of the hopeless, scrawny loser who never had a chance. Traveling with the Doctor, being the hero (or the hero's loyal sidekick) and saving people and planets has helped him realize his own worth. The Doctor gave Fitz a chance to start over and heal some of the scars of his youth by helping others, and to a degree it has worked. Sticking up for the downtrodden comes naturally to Fitz, and he is especially protective of children and animals.
He's quick with a wisecrack and generally doesn't take things too seriously, very much an overgrown kid. If given the choice he would rather mooch around parties, get smashed, and chat up girls than fight alien baddies. That said he's hardly the womanizer he makes himself out to be, if anything he's more of a hopeless romantic who falls in love too easily. He's looking to fill the lonely void in his life but still isn't quite sure how to go about it.
Very, very quietly, Fitz is also a bit of a nerd. He makes many references to the fantasy and early science fiction books he read in his youth, and when choosing an alias he tends to go with the names of famous spies and detectives. He possesses a surprising amount of common sense and a practical sort of intelligence, not that he'd appreciate hearing that. No matter how long he hangs around with (and hero-worships, and wants to be) the Doctor, Fitz still firmly believes it is better to be cool than smart.
History:
Fitz was born in London in in 1936, his mother English and his father a German liberal who fled his homeland when Hitler came to power. When the Blitz started he and his family were tormented mercilessly by their neighbors, to the point where his mother refused to send Fitz to the countryside for fear of what would be done to him. Even so, the neighborhood kids celebrated V-E Day by kicking him down the street, and he suffered persecution for his heritage well into his adult life.
His father died when he was quite young and his mother was institutionalized for her mental illness when he was in his teens, forcing Fitz into foster care. He finished school and began an inglorious career filled with dead-end jobs which he supplemented by playing guitar under the stage name "Fitz Fortune." His life was going nowhere slowly, until the age of twenty-seven when he met the Doctor and Samantha Jones. Through a complicated series of events it was discovered that his mother's madness was the result of alien interference. The ensuing adventure left Mrs. Kreiner dead and Fitz a prime suspect in her murder. What better way to leg it than in a time machine? It took a while for Fitz to adapt to life aboard the TARDIS. He frequently felt left out of close bond the Doctor and Sam shared, to the point where he left for a while (1967-1969) to be with a girl.
Then there was a confusing mess involving Faction Paradox, the chaos-worshipping Time Lord voodoo cult. Yes, really. They captured Fitz, and while the Doctor was too busy to rescue him he...joined their ranks. A copy of Fitz was also created, and when this copy died it was "remembered" back into being by people who had known the copy. This process was repeated until the Doctor met the many-times-diluted and only vaguely Fitzish Fitz-clone and, thinking the original Fitz was dead, had the TARDIS remember him back into all of his Fitzy glory.
This pissed off the original Fitz quite a bit, but he's dead now so whatever. It should be noted that canon is noncommittal on exactly why Fitz 2.0 is so much more agreeable than Original Recipe, but it is hinted that the TARDIS may have just remembered him nicer.
At roughly this point Sam left and the Doctor carried on traveling with Fitz and a bitchy redhead named Compassion who...turned into a TARDIS. Which was handy since the original TARDIS got destroyed. The Doctor and Fitz traveled around in Compassion while being pursued across time and space by crazy flapper President Romana, who wanted to use Compassion to breed more humanish TARDISes to fight a time war. No, not that one, another one. In any case Gallifrey still got exploded (or erased from time, depending on the author), the Doctor got dumped in the 1890s to recover, and Compassion left Fitz in 2001 to wait for him before buggering off to parts unknown.
There is good news and bad news when Fitz finds the Doctor: on the one hand the original TARDIS has regrown itself. On the other the Doctor has amnesia and doesn't remember Fitz, or how to operate his timeship. However he is Doctorish enough to take on Anji Kapoor as a new companion, and the three of the continue on knocking about the universe. The Doctor wants adventure, Anji wants to go home, and Fitz wants to make sure the Doctor's lost memories STAY lost as the trauma of remembering might kill him. Fitz takes this time to come to terms with the fact that he is a clone of himself, with marginal success.
The trio go on to have many adventures, visiting planets of cartoons and fairy tales, places where time is used as a weapon, and spend a year and a half in an eighteenth century brothel. They ended up in Spain during its civil war to find out who or what was changing how events were perceived. Fitz went to Guernica to get a first hand account, turned thirty-three, and decided it was time he had an adventure of him own.
He got his chance when they visited Victorian England and Fitz decided to join an expedition to Siberia to look for fossils, which the Doctor knew was doomed to failure. Of course.* It was harrowing, what with the rift in space-time opening and the explorers getting hunted by velociraptors, but Fitz managed to survive by hiding in an ice TARDIS and basically being Schrodinger's Fitz for roughly 115 years. Thankfully things get sorted out and the travelers continue on, with stowaway mistress-of-disguise Trix MacMillan joining the crew.
The next several adventures find the TARDIS crew visiting many alternate Earths to find the "real" one so the Doctor can return a book (it's more important than it sounds), resulting in the chance that yet ANOTHER identical-but-not-the-same Fitz ended up on the TARDIS** but I'm going to ignore that possibility like subsequent authors did. Anji left, Fitz and Trix stayed on (and at least one joke was made about the silliness of their names), there was an incident in which Fitz and the Doctor swapped personality traits (curiosity and self-confidence in exchange for swearing, nicotine addiction, and RAW HUMANITY), and then they ended up in Lancashire, in a story that was later more or less ripped off by Russel T. Davies and renamed "Fear Itself".
* "Time Zero", by Justin Richards - http://www.drwhoguide.com/whobbc60.htm
** "The Last Resort", by Paul Leonard - http://www.drwhoguide.com/whobbc64.htm
Arrival Post (Third Person)
He'd helped save scores of worlds and dozens of universes, he'd beaten Elvis in a death match (sort of), he's wooed more than one alien princess, and now Fitz was going to die in a garage. In Lancashire. The ghost-monster thing screamed again and bore down upon him, its many eyes gleaming, its jaws wide in preparation for biting. Fitz closed his eyes and pressed himself harder against the swing door in a futile attempt to escape--
--or perhaps not so futile, as in the next instant he found himself flat on his back in a strange metal room, staring up at some alien contraption. He blinked and frowned before carefully sitting up.
"Ta for the rescue, there," he muttered and got his bearings. Metal walls, metal floor, stairs going down, pedestal with a fancy mobile, all of it suddenly familiar.
The word "Taxon" cheerfully sprang to mind and he groaned. How the hell had he forgotten this place?
"Oh, flipping heck!" Fitz struggled to his feet (which were tied together with nylon rope) and awkwardly hopped over to pick up the tablet. "Is there a Doctor in the house? I'm not picky, any one will do. And if whoever comes to meet me would be kind enough bring something sharp, I'll get you drinks for a night."
Additional Third Person Sample:
"This place has the most amazing view," Fitz said conversationally. He hoped the redhead he was chatting up thought he was referring to the actual view and not the one he had down her blouse. By the way she glanced down he was sure he was rumbled, but then she glanced back up with a smile and he grinned back. This one was in the bag.
"It is spectacular," she agreed and actually did look to the domed ceiling. They were in a space station orbiting a moon, which in turn was orbiting a brilliant green gas planet, which in turn was orbiting a red giant sun. In the distance a cat's eye nebula dominated the wash of stars, and Fitz...remained in awe of the redhead's cleavage. He took another sip of his drink and decided it was time to go in for the kill.
"So, I've got some time before my mates come back, any chance we could head back to your quarters and-"
At this moment the lighting in the bar switched to emergency red, the bulkhead doors slammed shut, and an ear-splitting siren started up. It was unclear which of them leaped at the other first but but in any event Fitz and the redhead found themselves clinging to each other in fear.
Through the din, the distinct sound of the Beatles' "Help!" could be heard emanating from the pocket of Fitz's leather jacket. He fished out his mobile and sighed. The caller ID simply read "The Doc."
"Time Lord my arse. More like lord of bad timing." He flipped the phone open with a long-suffering sigh. "This had better be good, Doctor!"