stunt_muppet

So Jesse L. Martin has left Law & Order. I'm upset about it, but okay. Nature of the show. I can deal with it. Really. I can. I'm most certainly not pouting and refusing to watch anything but Orbach/Martin-era reruns in protest, no ma'am.

And Gary Dourdan's leaving CSI. Given that the one of the reasons I started watching CSI was Nick and Warrick's banter and partnership and mad slashy subtext, I am rather mad about this one. In spite of the fact that we've BARELY SEEN WARRICK for the past two seasons, I'm going to miss him when he's gone. 

Diane Neal and Adam Beach are both leaving SVU. I hate to sound snide, but I never really got all that attached to Chester Lake, and he never really felt like he fit with the rest of the team. Plus, he was yet another reason for the writers not to give Munch any screentime whatsoever, which isn't good. So I can't say I'm up in arms about that. But Casey? Like it's not bad enough that she's been criminally underused for the past three seasons. Heck, I'm half-worried that they won't bother to replace her - it's not like SVU has gone in the courtroom at all recently, what with all the Drama what's been happening. I miss Casey already; it'll only get worse when she's actually gone.    

Also, the showrunners appear to be trying to convince us that Benson is, you know, straight. To which I say pffft. You keep thinking that, Wolf et al.

And now? Now, like all that's not bad enough, rumors are circulating that Khandi Alexander - who remains one of the only consistently good things about CSI: Miami - is taking leave of the show. Which I suppose makes sense, since she's been getting maybe five minutes an episode lately and that must be quite un-fun as an actress but...Alexx. No more Alexx. I'm not sure I can even imagine CSI: Miami without Alexx.

It's like the world wants me to stop watching TV. Which...makes sense, actually.

Well, despite my best efforts to work on the fic what's actually got a deadline (which, at the moment, means  unusuallygenand churchontime), I ended up all but finishing Chapter 1 of The Memory Always Lies. I like to think it's my apology/I-still-love-you note to Liz after all the Jo-fic I've been doing. :)

The trouble is that I really can't finish a fic unless I've planned it all out ahead of time, and Memory has very abruptly gone from "carefully plotted beforehand" to "making crap up as I go along". It now involves a completely unanticipated robot, for starters. And I think I can even manage to work Jamie and Zoe into it, because everything eventually comes back to Jamie and Zoe. 

I mean, I get why I had to fix it, since it was veering dangerously close to the plot of "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood", and there's really very little point in just rewriting the episode with a different Doctor (especially considering the episodes are already a rewrite of the novel with a different Doctor). But it's really disconcerting to finally gather up enough of the plot for the fic to actually be viable and then suddenly have it change.

See, at first I was just going to have Corporal Smith flat-out refuse to open the fobwatch after the alien menace had been dealt with, and to continue to live as Smith (in spite of the Doctor rapidly intruding into his consciousness) until Liz, essentially, tells him that it doesn't matter what he wants; he's the Doctor, whether he wants to be or not. Which is...pretty much the episode. Yeah. Obvious problem.

But then two ideas came to me. For starters, I know in the novel (which I haven't read, for shame, for shame), the character of "Verity", John Smith's lost love, was supposed to appear in his consciousness as a way of reminding him of when he needed to be the Doctor again. What if something rather similar happened here, only with, say Jamie and Zoe, or Susan, as his reminder figure? What if John Smith eventually, as his time ran low, started to remember the watch, but remember it in the context of his own life - as a gift, say, from an old friend named Jamie? And as he started to reach the end of his lifespan he'd become more curious, and remember more of Jamie, and start to seek out the watch until he found it and opened it?

But then I got a better idea.

See, what if the transformation angst wasn't the climax of the story at all? What if, about midway through, Smith opened the watch - but didn't become the Doctor again? See, Memory takes place late in Season 7, so the Time Lords' tampering with the Doctor's memory is fairly recent. And since his memory is still altered - still potentially unstable - messing with his memory via the Chameleon Arch has some unanticipated effects?

See, before he opened the watch, he didn't know he was the Doctor, but he knew he was Corporal John T. Smith. After he opens the watch, he's biologically a Time Lord, and he knows he's not Smith...but he doesn't know he's the Doctor either. His mind's full of two sets of jumbled memories with a few common figures in between, and he's not sure which one's fiction and which one isn't because he can remember both of them. And then, of course, there are some memories from both personalities that are twisted, scrambled, or just gone, lost behind the Time Lord's mental blocks.

I'm a bit worried that this'll be too TVM, but it's not that he doesn't know who he is so much as he doesn't know which one he is, or if he's a little of both, or neither, or what. 

One of the figures common to both his memories, of course, is Benton, who gets stuck with the task of helping the semi-fobwatched Doctor sort out what's real and what isn't. But Benton only encountered the Doctor twice before he arrived at UNIT, so there are a lot of gaps that he can't fill in. 

Interestingly, experiments in writing this particular plot development ramp up the Smith/Benton subtext to a rather odd level, considering I didn't even mean for there to be subtext there in the first place. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Also, while I think the dilemma could work, I have no idea how they'd end up fixing the Doctor. I suspect there'd be Skience involved, but precisely what kind of Skience is lost on me. (I could still work Jamie into it, though, expecially since Smith's Jamie would be the friend who gave him the watch - he could be another common figure along with Benton and Liz and the Brigadier. I'm less sure of what I'd do with Zoe.)

And there's still the whole Every How-To-Write Guide Ever Written Has Told You Not To Do Memory-Loss Plots mantra scrolling like breaking news through the back of my mind. 

Baaah. I turn to my Church On Time Prison in Space AU in consternation.

Also, I'm contemplating publicly posting "Block Transfer Computations". I'm rather proud of it, considering I wrote it in an hour with only four Adric serials under my belt. On the other hand...it's Adric fic. I can't imagine who'd read it.

I keep meaning to set up a Teaspoon account and I never do.