stunt_muppet

I've mentioned how every single time I watch a Doctor Who serial that I've not yet seen, it spawns a plotrabbit (too large, snarly, and frightening to be called a plotbunny), right? Inferno was no exception. As soon as the Doctor mentioned Krakatoa (where he'd previously heard the voice of the Primords), I started thinking, "Wait. Didn't someone mention Nine showing up at Krakatoa? Wasn't it Clive, in "Rose"? That's not exactly a large timeframe right there...maybe he went there on purpose, since he knew he'd already be there?"

I started trying to write a piece based on that (on Nine meeting One, specifically, since I figured that this would be a pre-series adventure), but then I remembered that piece I kept trying to write with Ten meeting Three in 1969 during "Blink". (Of course, I didn't realize until later that I couldn't actually have Three recognize Ten, because otherwise Five would have known who he was in Time Crash.) And so, I figured maybe this was the beginning of a Five Things fic. I've never written one of those before. Five Times the Doctor Gave Himself Advice (And One Time He Didn't), maybe? Yeah, that sounds good!

Of course, it didn't help that I could only think up those two scenarios in which he might give himself advice; I was totally at a loss for the other three and the one time he didn't. Not to mention my grasp on writing the earlier Doctors is shaky at best. No other canonical instances of the Doctor crossing his own timeline, besides the multi-Doctor adventures, came to mind, although I'm sure there are some.

I thought about doing just Two Times instead of Five Times until I remembered that that'd be really lame of me.

I kind of copped out for the third Time: I figured since the Valeyard technically was the Doctor, any cryptic 'advice' or hints he might give Six within the Matrix as to how he became who he is might qualify. However, this meant that each installment would no longer have two Doctors, and thus either someone was going to get neglected or one Doctor was going to be used twice. Of course, I still wasn't sure I was even going to do five.

The "And One Time He Didn't" I figured would probably be immediately post-Time War, and thus the Doctor (Eight, in this case) refraining from giving one of his previous selves advice on how to stop it from happening. But if the seeds of the Time War were sown in Genesis of the Daleks (a theory I'm not sure I like but which is narratively convenient in this case), then Eight would have needed to not give his warning to a pre-Four Doctor, since Genesis was so early in Four's tenure that there'd hardly be time for him to talk to Four about it. One and Three were already taken, so that leaves us with Two. Of course, that also leaves Two with very little to do in that segment, since it'd be told from the POV of a (probably dying) Eight, and I feel sort of bad for neglecting him. Also, I'm just not sure how Two, in character, would respond to a future version of himself who's deeply injured and probably skating the edges of sanity (I do want Two to recognize him).

Perhaps, if the Valeyard managed to allude to the Time War in Six's segment, that could come to mind in Eight and Two's segment, providing incentive for him not to warn Two? I originally wanted to have Jamie and Zoe peeking into Eight's TARDIS even though Two told them to stay outside, and for the memory of them - and the knowledge that their worlds will in all likelihood cease to exist if he starts screwing with extratemporal continuity - to provide Eight with a reason to keep his mouth shut, but that sounds horribly cheesy.

The next segment, per usual, came to me late last night, whilst I showered (I call Shower Law): I remembered that Three knows what Four looks like in The Five Doctors even though he's never met him. Natural setup for another segment, but what are the circumstances? It'll seem a bit contrived if the two of them just bump into each other. Not to mention I already used Three for the Ten-and-Three segment, though to be fair that segment is from Ten's POV. 

Maybe it could take place post-The Deadly Assassin? After all, there's a bit of a gap between that serial and The Face of Evil. Perhaps he was trying to pick up Sarah Jane again and return her to her home properly rather than stranding her in Aberdeen, travels a bit too far back into her timeline (or overshoots the date, or something), runs into Three, and then - what? Wouldn't he try again? Maybe on his way back to Aberdeen he gets distracted? I don't know.

That leaves Seven and Five for the last Time, but I've got no clue what to do with them. I thought for a while about maybe having Seven stop by Five's timeline on purpose to tell him to repair the Chameleon Arch (which has become dysfunctional from disuse). Of course, why he couldn't repair it himself is entirely beyond me - maybe by the time Seven's era rolls around, the Arch hasn't been used in so long that it's irreparable? Not to mention I'm not sure why Seven would even want the Arch repaired - it could be a tie-in to the Human Nature novel, but in light of Ten's "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" arc, is that even canon anymore? My original thought was for the repair of the Chameleon Arch to alude to Eight's being semi-fobwatched as a disguise, perhaps even Seven being half-fobwatched as a way to do...something (something to do with the human-eye lock on the Eye of Harmony, maybe?), thus explaining away the "half-human" line as a clever, clever scheme of Seven's. But that is not only dubiously possible in canon, it's also needlessly complicated, especially for a short piece in a Five Times fic. 

(Also, I love how Doctor Who canon makes "fobwatch" a verb.)

Any ideas? Why would Five and Seven interact? What about Four and Three? Do any of these make any sense at all?