I was Thinking Deep Thoughts
aka dozing off over a textbook
and I had a plot bunny for Doctor Who
There's this thing got said about why Rose didn't get a spin off series that was like saying that the only fun bit of her life had to be when she met the doctor
which is very dumb.
Only very small people make sure people around them are smaller and weaker and need them for everything. Great people make sure everyone can manage without them perfectly well, the better for having known them.
The Doctor is, obviously, a great person. Right?
Because if instead he wanders around using people to feel like people and leeching out their humanity and leaving them all broken... that's a really nasty sort of vampire.
Compare/contrast adventure!
So I don't know how they got there yet but the Doctor wakes up in a big glass jar. And he's covered in, like, shrink wrap, all over. Shiny clear stuff. Even on his face, like he's been varnished. He isn't suffocating but he'd really like to know why not. Quite urgently.
And as well as the shrinkwrap he's in a big glass jar. Well, I say big - he can stand up in it, or lie down flat, or... stand up at a different angle. He can even stretch his arms. Straight up. If he keeps his hands flat.
So he can't get at anything in his pockets, because they're under the plastic, and he can't get out of this jar, because it's just one big bit of clear stuff, no seams, no doors, nothing.
This one's going to be tricky.
Someone walks into the room, and they look shrinkwrapped too. And like they're wearing a clingfilm toga. Because this is kids TV and my initial idea, whilst logical, would involve a lot of tricky camera shots with things in the way.
The new person also looks rather see through.
So they talk, and explain how their world was so small until their wonderful boss dude lifted them up, and now they get to see everything, all the wonders. And they'll live forever and never leave him.
Which the Doctor thinks sounds just a teensy bit dodgy.
So then the boss dude walks in - I should probably think of some weird alien name for him, like 'Professor' in a language most English people don't speak. What's 'Professor' in Welsh?
He looks kind of like cut crystal, like a big glass full of person, with patterns on. Only he looks a bit translucent too, not quite all there.
Anyway, he starts chatting up the Doctor, inviting him to stay and join them in the great work, the usual thing.
And then it gets to be lunch time, and his assistant volunteers to feed him, and she goes glowy and light comes out of her mouth and goes into him and when they're done she's almost all see through and he's almost all solid.
And where before the feeding he was kind of dull and she was lyrical, now he has the chat and she loses the fancy words.
So the Doctor gets mad at him and does Being Very Angry, and the boss dude goes away.
So the Doctor's companions are in other rooms, but the same situation. They probably get different views. Different temptations, y'see. The Doctor could see... a big elegant city-castle, possibly in a dome, far below because they're in this ivory tower sort of thing. What the others could see depends on who they are. Could be Jack and Martha. Martha could see... a sunset with lots of moons giving way to a ringset or a nebula or something jeweled and alien like that. Jack would get the kind of view you really want to take a hang glider off, maybe valleys and rolling hills and stuff, with little villages in. Maybe. If they're meant to be temptations they'd be sort of revealing. But tricky.
The TARDIS gets a jar too. And a chat-up speech. But the TARDIS does not deign to reply.
The only view it gets is a plain night sky and some shadows.
Like this silly little crystal man could offer the TARDIS anything.
So time passes, and they start to see things floating around in the rooms outside their cell-jars, only if they look real careful in just the right light they can see they aren't floating, they're being carried by see-through people.
Doctor gets to see it next lunch time - when the crystal guy finishes a person they're all empty and he's all full. And they don't die, you just don't see them any more. And they get to stay with him forever. And they never wander off and they always do what they're told.
So, the solution to all this obviously has to be that the Companions rescue the Doctor, by wandering off and doing everything they're told not to, and also having Learned Things.
Because the point isn't that they'll stay with him, it's that their lives are better, and they're better, for having known him.
Which is why Jack needs to be in the story, because he did say better off as a coward, but he was lying, and he needs to say that properly or there's, like, guilt and stuff.
And maybe people get killed - in some cases, killed a lot - but again, not the point, because they *live* more.
And then they rescue the Doctor and probably resonate the crystal guy until everything he got given falls out again and people are all a bit grey and still shrinkwrapped but now they've got minds of their own again. As you do. Or, possibly, the crystal guy resonates into glowy pieces that go up in the sky to join in the glowy night sky show he was offering Martha. Because there's a difference between showing and being part of, and since the crystal guy only showed them everything through glass (like TV screens, ysee) and the Doctor gets people out there to be part of it the Doctor is win. Yes. And resonating the crystal makes all the glowy people stuff inside go out to be part of everything like they were promised.
And then there's a planet that lost it's dictator and maybe could do with a free person with some knowledge of the universe to give them a hand up, but (a) doesn't sound like Martha... only I'm not sure she's the best one to use anyway, because space wasn't the tempting thing and she's been all meeting people and stuff and (b) it feels a bit arrogant to fanfic a companion-leaves story. Except... the point of my point that wants to make a story is companions leave and have bigger better lives for having known him, so, well, leaving is the point.
Maybe not a Martha story. Or anyone I can think of at this precise moment. But inventing a companion is, well, unlikely to go so well, or make the point either.
... puzzler.
ANYways
that was my pbunny.
I like the crystal guy.
I'd have to work on the temptations.
And the actual action plot would only logically follow from who the companions are exactly...
come to think, with Jack there, and a crystal guy that feeds on other people's lives? He's going to go glowy and go boom. We know this. The getting there from here therefore loses some suspense. But it could still make a point along the way, if I was really clever.
... again with the tricksyness ...
I shall go away and have a think.
And possibly sleep.
It being late and tomorrow being college again.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}