Lost In Translation

[charamei]

Title: Lost In Translation
Rating: PG for sesquipedalianism
Characters: Four, Romana II
Pairing: Doctor/Romana
Spoilers: What, you didn't know that Four turned red?
Wordcount: 1197
Disclaimer: Alas, for I am no closer to owning Doctor Who. It's still all for fun and practice. English translations are at the end: thanks to torn_eledhwen and alligatorade for correcting my French errors.

Summary: Romana learns French, while the Doctor loses a sock and ponders the nature of the Gallifreyan language. There are some quite important things that you just can't express in it, after all.


/\/\/\

Gallifreyan was a famously difficult language to learn, primarily because of the way its tenses and pronouns shifted. Of course, what most aliens viewed as a secondary complaint was really, the Doctor reflected, the real trouble: 'random fluctuations in the time-space continuum' was a concept that had been compressed into one short swear-word, and yet, in the time it took to ask, "Romana, have you seen my left sock?" he might as well have searched the TARDIS again.

"Beg pardon, Doctor?"

She was pushing buttons again, which could only mean that she was up to something. Oh, dear. Last time she had been near the console, he had come back to it to find all its innards neatly wrapped in colour-coded cable ties, which would have been perfectly all right if only she hadn't failed to understand that he already had a system. He'd quoted Hamlet. She had raised an eyebrow. The cable ties were staying, for now.

"Have you seen my left sock, I said – and what are you doing to the console?"

"Oh, just turning off the translation unit," she assured him, and turned to face him, giving it one last pat. "I'm hoping to learn a language this afternoon, and it would be helpful if the TARDIS wasn't translating things for me. I haven't seen your sock," she added, as an afterthought.

Romana, he noticed, was wearing pink again. Romana had been wearing pink rather a lot lately. He hadn't liked to say anything, but really, he was beginning to wonder if she was perhaps suffering from some hideous disease which rendered her only able to see one part of the spectrum. Hopefully there would be a cure.

Still, he was quite an expert on languages, so perhaps Romana's hypothetical colour-blindness could wait a while longer.

"Oh, languages? I'm quite good at languages; any one in particular?"

"I thought perhaps French."

"French? Oh, no, no, you can't learn French; it's so tediously predictable of you. I recommend English. It's the official language of two of the three Great and Bountiful Human Empires, after all. Besides, we would be able to communicate then."

"We're communicating now, Doctor," Romana pointed out, her logic as impeccable as ever.

He waved this away. "Yes, yes, but we would be able to communicate better. Gallifreyan is hardly perfect, you know."

Romana sighed. "And English is?"

"Well, no, obviously, but for everyday conversations I find it much easier. Do you know how long this conversation has taken us?"

"Three minutes, forty-seven point eight seconds," she said promptly, and in five syllables. Well, to deny that Gallifreyan was anything but the very best language in existence for discussing the passage of time would simply be wrong.

"You see? In English it would have taken half that. And besides, there are concepts that just don't translate." One concept in particular, in fact, which had been irking him for centuries.

"Such as?"

The translation unit was definitely turned off, he was sure of it, which was just as well, because it would butcher this sentence. The Doctor took a breath. "Well, such as that I love you."

There was a moment of silence, then Romana wrinkled her nose in a particularly delightful manner. "Three syllables?"

"Yes." The closest thing he had found in Gallifreyan was I rather enjoy your company, which was a sesquipedalian twenty-one syllables and had a tongue-twisting alliteration right in the middle.

"What does it mean?"

He was quite sure that he was blushing, so he ducked behind the console under the pretence of resuming the quest for his sock. "Well, if you learn English then you'll find out, won't you?"

Romana made a small huffing noise and left the console room. Moments later, her voice drifted back up the corridor. "Have you checked the bath-house?"

"Fourteen syllables," the Doctor said to the TARDIS floor. "Ours is a very sick culture."

Romana spent the whole afternoon in the library. By the time she was finished with French, the Doctor had given up on finding his sock – it would turn up, one day when he least expected it – and retreated to the library himself, to catch up on his reading.

The library was outfitted as a library should be, with towering oak bookcases, leather sofas and some of those funny green lights that you never saw anywhere else. It had also recently spawned a number of chaise-longues, because this body liked to stretch out when given an opportunity to do so; they were mostly in alcoves, and the Doctor, being a practical sort, had taken the one nearest the door.

He was therefore, and completely accidentally of course, in a prime position to spot Romana making her way over to the reference section, then coming back a moment later with an English-French dictionary. There followed ten minutes of furious page-turning, then Romana came out again, this time returning with a proper dictionary in French, and an encyclopaedia.

There was some muttering, then four minutes after that she emerged again, this time heading not for the reference section but for him. He almost stopped breathing, but managed, somehow, to put his book down on his chest as she approached, still looking rather bemused.

"Well?"

"I see," she said calmly. His hearts sank.

"You do, do you?"

"You're quite right. There is no way to express that concept in Gallifreyan. It's a terrible shame; it sounds quite... nice."

"Yes, humans seem to enjoy it."

"Of course, humans aren't telepathic. I imagine a species would require more words to explain a sense of emotional attachment if its members were incapable of simply projecting the sensation to their fellows."

It occurred to the Doctor that this explanation had never occurred to him before. "Well, perhaps," he allowed. "Although I'm not sure if you're thinking of quite the same concept as I am, hm?"

Romana half-smiled, and sat down on a nearby sofa."Oh, Doctor, really. While it is nice to be able to say je t'aime, I can hardly say that the concept is new."

The telepathic sensation hit him at the same moment as she said it, a sudden wave of affection and warmth. He couldn't help but smile as he responded, I love you the Gallifreyan way, all emotion and no words, and simultaneously wondered how he'd managed to miss it up until now and really rather wished he hadn't, because it was entirely beautiful.

"You know," he said, slowly and carefully navigating the verbal minefield, "I rather enjoy your company."

Romana smiled. "Our mutual telepathic field is pleasantly harmonious is shorter, I think. Now, perhaps you could explain to me why it is that ta TARDIS délabré teint continuellement mes vêtements en rose?"

The Doctor frowned. There hadn't been anything wrong with the laundry as far as he was concerned, except that his sock was still missing.

His new red sock, to go with his new red outfit, he thought, as he gazed down himself at his bare foot, its rather magnificent big toe wiggling innocently at him.

"Ah..."


/\/\/\
ta TARDIS délabré teint continuellement mes vêtements en rose – your dilapidated TARDIS keeps dying my clothing pink

He'd quoted Hamlet - Act 2, scene 2, line 206: 'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.'

/\/\/\

People may also be interested in my Ten Rules for the Gallifreyan Language, which spawned this little fic in the first place.

/\/\/\

Comments

[jinxed_wood [journalfen.net]]

And that was rather wonderful :-)

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you :)

[(Anonymous)]

I enjoyed this very much! Lovely.

As a sidenote, I'd translate the French differently: "Votre TARDIS délabré teint continuellement mes vêtements en rose." "To dye something x" is "teindre quelque chose en" rather than "à", and while "habillement" is used often for shops in speech it rings wrongly to my ears.

*Eledhwen (torn_eledhwen on LJ)

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you, for both the review and the translation. It's de-Babeled now.

[(Anonymous)]

That was really sweet! I love Four/Romana stories, and this one was especially clever. (My favorite part was the laundry denouement.)

My only nitpick is that I think Romana would use "ton TARDIS" instead of "votre TARDIS" (or "ta TARDIS", if a TARDIS is a feminine-gendered object), since votre is reserved for someone you are more formal with.

Anyway, great job! =)

--Ally (alligatorade on livejournal)

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you.

French: argh. Fixing, thanks for pointing that out. Man, why couldn't I have had her learning ancient Greek, then I could have done the translation properly myself...

[(Anonymous)]

Now there's a question - is a TARDIS feminine or masculine in French? Interestingly the French for boat and ship are masculine, whilst in English those are about the only things we do assign a gender to.

Eledhwen

[(Anonymous)]

That was entirely wonderful! I love your version of Gallifreyan.

- akashasheiress on Livejournal.

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

Very sweet and funny! Very them!!

Persiflage_1 on LJ

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you.

LIZAMANYNAMES ON LJ

[(Anonymous)]

I am a phychoticly happy whovian linguist right now. (And, being able to speak french, started laughing before I saw the translation.)

Re: LIZAMANYNAMES ON LJ

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

As a linguistic geek myself and fervent Doctor/Romana shipper, this is ridiculously adorable. I love that Romana is able to learn French in only an hour and all of the discussion on Gallifreyan grammar (a pet subject of mine if I ever had one)... and the explanation for the Doctor's new outfit! I love it. Romana and her colour-coding delights me.
-skyway on LJ

[charamei [journalfen.net]]

Thank you :)

I'm intrigued as to what the epxlanation for the new outfit that you inferred was, though... the outfit being red (and not yet colour-fast) was the reason for the pink, but I've no idea what the reason for the outfit was.

[dbskyler]

This fic is sweet and happy-making.

[charamei]

Thank you :)

[rbmifan]

Adore this. Romana and the Doctor are lovely here, and I love your thoughts on the Gallifreyan lanugage (and your Ten Rules). Totally my headcanon now.

[charamei]

Thank you!

And yay, headcanon!

[charamei]

Starting a new thread because the old one's getting difficult to read on my screen :)

Yes, that's what I was thinking, too. Maybe some kind of erasure? So, as long as the house was...whereever it was...nobody could remember it ever existing? And Braxatiel was trapped in the laundry room or something, and similarly erased from everyone's memories.

It was sunk inside Mount Lung, but I guess it could still work. (The Brax thing doesn't, though. He's out and about and doing things in the EU from the First Doctor's era. The erasure would have to have affected him as well.)

But oooo, that's a good idea. I mean, I suspect the Doctor would be off somewhere else debating with himself about what to do anyway.

I think it would probably come down to who provoked whom, in the end. If the two planets actually managed to coexist, he wouldn't have a problem to deal with. But the odds of that are slim...

But meanwhile UNIT would have scrounged up an old chameleon arch (that may or may not be working perfectly, because they can only analyse it so much with Earth technology), and fiddled with it. Things would definitely go wrong. So many things! But of course Martha knew that would probably happen when she signed up for this.

Would Martha have any Time Lord instincts, or would she be figuring out all these new senses on her own? The chameleon arch by default erases the memories of the user and stores them in a pocket watch - does UNIT bypass this part of it somehow? And if so, do they do it properly. I could see Martha having memory lapses on top of everything else.

Oh, quite naturally she doesn't have the instincts XD That'd be far too kind. Besides, as I said - human brain. So she's got telepathy that she can't control or mask, extra senses that don't make sense, and who knows what else lurking in there.

The memory lapses are a really excellent idea, thank you! I'd been waffling between UNIT bypassing the memory loss and having it intact, but neither quite worked (one shortens the plot too much, while the other defeats the whole point of the subplot which is to watch Martha trying to work around this stuff). Compromise works, in this situation.

It's definitely a possibility. I wonder whether the Doctor thought of it and discarded the idea, though. Maybe because it's not supposed to work in that direction. Which ties in with your Martha plot, actually.

Indeed!

The biggest problem with Donna's situation is the sheer number of ways in which it could potentially be reversed. Even if you limit yourself to the first four series of New Who and ignore everything else, there are plenty of potential fixes for her in the episodes. Which makes it... slightly problematic that she's apparently unfixable. I blame Rusty.

But Donna building it herself? Ooo. And it wouldn't be exactly like standard chameleon arches, because all she has is the theory behind it and also she's using human intuition. And the subconscious can be a bit funny with intuition. Maybe she starts temping for an engineering firm, or for one of UNIT's branches, and starts tinkering as a hobby. She assumes that nothing she builds will work, but for some reason she can't stop. And it gives her something to do besides think about the strange dreams she's been having lately. Hmm.

And of course every time she starts to think too hard about what she's building, she falls asleep :p Her family would learn not to ask, but Wilf and Sylvia would suspect, and try to help without making her suspicious...

There are a real lack of fic about characters who aren't the Doctor or a companion in general, which is such a shame. I adore outsider POV, and the Ood would have a unique take on the Doctor's whole situation (less of an all-knowing, mysterious alien and more of a dangerous, lonely person who's lost his own hive mind - and they'd recognize that as the tragedy it is. I wonder if they've sort of adopted him, trying to ease that pain just a little).

I would hope so. It seems to be the sort of thing they'd do - in fact, they kind of try, at the end of Planet of the Ood.

Damn it, now I want to see Ten and an Ood companion, in addition to Eleven and his Silurian/Sontaran Team TARDIS having proper adventures.

They could go to the Middle Ages and try to blend in (and fail), save small children from evil zombifying lollipops, have Words with tentacle monsters about letting the side down, and then, since David Tennant appears to have been contractually obligated to do so, exchange at least one kiss for ambiguously unromantic reasons that would end in them both being hideously embarrassed.

I like to think the Time Lords are very much a fluke of the universe. They evolved the way they did because of their proximity to the untempered schism. I've got this image of ancient Gallifrey full of time distortions and unstable temporal fields and stuff - mostly inspired by chapters 3 and 4 of this fic - and how anything that evolved on Gallifrey by necessity had the ability to detect and navigate through them. And that's the reason why Gallifreyans, alone amongst all corporeal beings that live in 'our' 3 dimension universe, have the ability to perceive temporal dimensions and comprehend non-linear time.

Oooh, thank you for the fic! I'd been working with a similar set of ideas about Gallifrey, but I've never seen that one before. That's given me some more things to think about.

In Gallifrey (as usual) there are at least five or six time-travel-capable species, but I'm struggling to think of one that doesn't fit your theory. The most commonly-seen one, the Monans, have... uh, problems... with their planet and all their people existing in several timezones simultaneously. And there's another race that I don't remember the name of, who are noncorporeal beings that inhabit alien host bodies.

Then there are humans, of course. But the Time Lords tend to stomp down hard on human time travel during the Classic Who eras; it seems to have only been once they disappeared that the Time Agents were able to start operating properly.

Well... and the Guardians, sort of. In the EU, the Guardians are said to have been the Time Lord equivalents from the last universe, who ultimately ascended to a noncorporeal existence and, apparently, decided that wearing dead birds on their heads was a sane and sensible thing to do. Which explains why the Time Lords, even the Doctor, treat them with a bit of respect despite said dead birds.

Every other species that can do this (like TARDISes) exists in dimensions other than ours (and so we percieve them as being non-corporeal). (And I've got this budding theory about how the TARDISes came to serve the Time Lords. Way back when, they were this old race that lived in 9 dimensions - none of which overlapped with ours - and they happened upon the Time Lords by chance. Maybe they happened upon Rassilon. They could communicate with the Time Lords, kind of, because of the Time Lords' special senses. And they were curious about this whole new universe that the Time Lords lived in that they couldn't really perceive. So the Time Lords build the TARDIS shell around them and integrated them with it in technobabble-y ways, so that they could (so they now existed in 11 dimensions, as has been stated in the show). And stuff.)

Hmm. It's an interesting theory. I'm not an immediate fan, but that's more to do with me than the idea itself XD It could work? It explains Idris, and I seem to recall reading something about a humanoid TARDIS in an obscure corner of the EU

I think it's the bit about the TARDISes serving the Time Lords that doesn't work for me. If it were like this, I'd expect a more equal partnership... although saying that, there's always the possibility for a TARDIS rebellion!

And that's a very long and convoluted way of saying probably the Ood aren't the next Time Lords. They can see the future, yes, apparently, or at least some of them can. But we've seen that before in the Doctor Who verse. I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea that, throughout history, the Ood actually make a point of never travelling in time. Because while they can sometimes see...ripples from things in other spots on the timeline, it's not part of their everyday life. It's not ordinary like it was for Gallifreyans, and they recognize that messing with it is more trouble than it's worth.

Which makes them a good deal more sensible than humans :p I kind of like that. Heck, maybe travelling in time would mess up their hive mind... aaaand there goes my Ood companion idea. Bye-bye, little bunny.

Which is all totally speculation on my part, but there you go. This is what I do in my spare time, apparently :P

Welcome to the club! XD

Some fans spend their time contriving ways to get their favourite character to kiss. And then there's us, sitting in our shadowed corners of the Internet, saying things like, "But hold on, if Gallifrey has two suns how is it colder than the Earth, and does the transduction barrier have anything to do with this?", and, "What are Time Lord exams like, anyway, I mean these people are total arseholes," and, "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR TELEPATHY PLEASE."

It is by far the best part of the fandom. But then, I would say that, I'm biased XD

(Do please let me know if you start writing fic. I'd love to see what you come up with.)

That fic sounds absolutely lovely. I'll have to keep an eye out for it - maybe I'll link it here if I ever find it.

I'd love it if you did! :)

[rbmifan]

*sneaks in a month later and slides a reply under your door*

"Yes! Martha's disgusted and confused, the Doctor is deeply embarrassed and hiding it by shouting about the Master, and then there's Jack, who's mostly unbothered and wiping himself off like, 'Oh, not again, I just had this coat dry-cleaned last week!'

And then Martha's like, hold on, this is a regular occurrence? And Jack's all like, yeah, there's poo in the vortex, nobody knows how it got there, and the Doctor will clear his throat very loudly and march off in a random direction, because he can't trust the Master not to stab him in the back but he can at least trust him to keep the secret of the origins of Time Poo."

Hee, yes, exactly!

Or, can you imagine Jack's first year in Time Agent training? Assuming he's always been as concerned with his appearance as he is in the show, I'd like to see his reaction the first time he hits poo while time travelling.

"I was actually trying to work this out while I was writing that fic. I think we have to assume that it is all still floating about up there? The disappearance of the Time Lords hasn't undone any of the previous messes they'd made with Time, that we'd seen. Characters like Jo and Sarah-Jane still remember them, for example. So... yes. Random free-floating time poo, confusing Time Agents since the beginning of modern time travel."

Right. Time in general seems to get a bit wonky when it comes to the Time Lock. On the one hand, Time Lords themselves are now nothing more than legend. (And I remember reading somewhere that the Time Agency was very different before the Time Lock, since they'd have had the Time Lords and other Temporal Powers breathing down their necks to make sure they didn't do anything funny.) On the other, we've got random Time Lord stuff floating around still.

(I wonder if Braxatiel's collection is still around. And whether the Doctor's taken it upon himself to protect it in Brax's absence?)

"I'm torn on the question of multiple copies of his outfits vs excellent dry-cleaning, to be honest. For Doctors like Nine and Ten the latter makes more sense (especially Ten, who has a whopping two suits!), but for Five and Six it seems more likely that there's just one extremely well-cleaned coat. Especially Six. Doesn't Peri threaten to hide his a couple of times?"

True. On top of dry cleaning, the TARDIS would have to repair any damage to his clothes as well. (And I imagine he accumulates quite a bit of damage in his travels).

It's possible the TARDIS *could* make multiple identical copies of his clothes, but the Doctor is sentimental and insists on keeping the same one and just repairing it.

"Me too XD Doctor Who is great for this sort of thing. It has a (very loose) set of rules for how the universe works, but beyond that? Go anywhere, do anything. Take this minor canon point to its logical conclusion and you'll have sentient gummi bears dropping on the heads of alien kangaroos! It is so. Much. Fun."

Yes, exactly! *spins around in the Whoniverse*

"(Also, you now have gift fic on AO3.)"

My first ever gift fic~ Thanks!

[charamei]

*sneaks in a month later and slides a reply under your door*

Oooooh, mail! *gloms*

Or, can you imagine Jack's first year in Time Agent training? Assuming he's always been as concerned with his appearance as he is in the show, I'd like to see his reaction the first time he hits poo while time travelling.

Hah, indeed. He was warned about it, of course, but he assumed it was a joke they haze the newbies with. And now there's poo on the Face of Boe! Alien poo! Unidentified alien poo, at that!

He will find his way to a rooftop and brood prettily (if pongily) while staring down at the city below. It's good practice for Torchwood.

...I wonder if his enhanced pheromones make him superattractive to any creatures besides humans and human-descended aliens...

True. On top of dry cleaning, the TARDIS would have to repair any damage to his clothes as well. (And I imagine he accumulates quite a bit of damage in his travels).

Yes, quite probably. Just look at all the things Four uses that scarf for! I don't care how advanced your textile technology is, you can't use a length of wool as a rope to help you climb a quarry wall without it taking a beating.

It's possible the TARDIS *could* make multiple identical copies of his clothes, but the Doctor is sentimental and insists on keeping the same one and just repairing it.

Heh, very possibly. It'd certainly be like him. He is such a sentimental old goat.

How did you find the finale, by the way? (Assuming you've caught up by now.)

My first ever gift fic~ Thanks!

You're very welcome!

And may the next one not be about poop.

[rbmifan]

Starting a new thread :)


"Hi, my name is Charamei and I'm a completist :p

I will probably have to do that, though. Ten series of Benny. Aaaargh.

This is a really, really bad fandom to be completist in, by the way XD."

Not a fan of Benny? :)

XD I noticed that, yeah. You could be at it your whole life.


"My plan is succeeding *evil grin*

How are you finding Gallifrey?

8DA is awesome, though. I'll try not to spoil it..."

I'm liking it! Season 1 wasn't bad, but didn't really pull me in. But seasons 2 and 3 were great (I'm on the last ep of season 3). And surprisingly, Narvin's managed to become one of my favourite characters (along with Leela, K9 and Brax).

Was very happy when Darkel died, and that doesn't happen too often.


"(It might be worth listening to An Earthly Child between series 3 and 4, though. It's a Christmas special, not a part of 8DA, but it sets up a few things that turn up in S04.)"

Okay, thanks for the suggestion. I'll buy it when I get season 4~


"True. I could see the institution existing, but the parents just getting waylaid. And then there are the one or two eager beaves who actually track down the tutors and demand to speak about their children, which annoys the tutors immensely. They're here to socialise, not to work! Honestly.

Entirely. As much of a coincidence as that time one of the TARDISes in the labs went missing and they turns up later that day with alien fruit. Not related at all."

Of course, I could also see them being two of the parents who track down the tutors at parent night. Because who cares about socializing - they're all a bunch of stuck up politicians anyway. They're here for someone important.

Of course not. Total coincidence. Or that time their daughter disappeared during lunch and showed up again for her next class in different clothes and smelling faintly of smoke.


"I'm not 100% sure that's true, but it's not as if we have any proof either way. *shrugs*

What we do know is that Time Lord bodies seem to have a higher tolerance for the ruins of age than human ones. Miniature Ten in the S03 finale is the first canon depiction of an idea that already existed in the EU - that as Time Lords grow old their bodies wither away to incredibly tiny and frail nothingness before finally regenerating. By that standard, One's 'elderly' body really wasn't. It was simply no longer able to sustain his very active lifestyle."

I'm still not sure how I feel about that scene, actually. Do Time Lords ever actually get that old? In any case, we know that each body should last several hundred years. Possibly as long as a thousand years, if we've got 10,000 year old Time Lords running around. And it seems a bit unfair that a Time Lord who gets a string of old bodies will end up with a much shorter lifespan. It just makes more sense if the bodies don't age. I mean, in School Reunion Ten flat out states 'I don't age; I regenerate'. Which you could interpret in a couple different ways.

Of course, probably most Time Lords have more control over their next body than the Doctor (I have a feeling he was skipping class when they covered that in the Academy). So maybe getting an older body is something that happens when you don't have a lot of control?


"Seven is explicitly stated to be old in the intro to the Eighth Doctor movie, IIRC (and I'm not positive, but I suspect they made Sylvester McCoy up to look older than he was for it). Although it does make a lot of sense that the first body ages faster somehow."

Hmm. I rewatched the intro to the movie. He says he's 'nearing the end of his seventh life', and he is older. That seems it. And he's not as old as the First Doctor looked when he regenerated due to old age. He's clearly still sprightly. So I find it hard to believe he's expecting to die of old age soon. More likely he's referring to his imminent death by gunshot/surgery, since it's the Eighth Doctor telling the story.

But who knows?


"That's definitely possible, assuming a slowdown and not a complete halt. Susan... ehhhh. Maybe? She is definitely written as young, but young does not necessarily mean sixteen. I get the impression she's young enough that she still ought to be in school, but that could mean she's in her eighties...

(Which, if you want a rough equivalent to sixteen, would make sense. Old enough to be in the final phase of schooling, to be almost ready to go out and engage with the world as an adult - young enough to still be technically a child.)"

Right, I meant the relative age of her body in human years. Obviously her actual age would be quite different :)

PS: Saw Caves of Androzani. It was awesome! Possibly my favourite Classic Who episode so far :D

[charamei]

Starting a new thread :)

Good call :p

Not a fan of Benny? :)

I haven't 'met' her yet, but what I know of the character doesn't... entirely appeal. More in a 'sounds boring' way than an 'I object' way, but still.

I'm liking it! Season 1 wasn't bad, but didn't really pull me in. But seasons 2 and 3 were great (I'm on the last ep of season 3). And surprisingly, Narvin's managed to become one of my favourite characters (along with Leela, K9 and Brax).

I think the ways Narvin and Brax evolve is probably one of my favourite things about that series. By S03 they've almost completely switched position from S01, in regards to how Romana and Leela relate to them.

Sounds like you'll be overtaking me soon, then. I'm still at 4.1. Need to do more knitting...

Was very happy when Darkel died, and that doesn't happen too often.

Yes. Good God I hated that woman.

Of course, I could also see them being two of the parents who track down the tutors at parent night. Because who cares about socializing - they're all a bunch of stuck up politicians anyway. They're here for someone important.

Yep! They are caring, interested, engaged parents. And that terrifies the tutors more than anything else they could possibly do. If they'd only ignore the child, she might have a hope of turning out normal...

I'm still not sure how I feel about that scene, actually. Do Time Lords ever actually get that old? In any case, we know that each body should last several hundred years. Possibly as long as a thousand years, if we've got 10,000 year old Time Lords running around. And it seems a bit unfair that a Time Lord who gets a string of old bodies will end up with a much shorter lifespan. It just makes more sense if the bodies don't age. I mean, in School Reunion Ten flat out states 'I don't age; I regenerate'. Which you could interpret in a couple different ways.

Of course, probably most Time Lords have more control over their next body than the Doctor (I have a feeling he was skipping class when they covered that in the Academy). So maybe getting an older body is something that happens when you don't have a lot of control?

That's very possible, actually. Opinions are varied (hahaha when are opinions ever not varied on this subject) as to whether the Doctor's inability to control his regenerations is due to him being from an oldblood House with a Mk 1 Loom or due to him not paying attention in class, but he definitely has substantially less control over it than Romana. And he tends to regenerate under stress. It would explain a lot if that's the cause of some of his older bodies. (Because they definitely do age. And going by Deadly Assassin, they spend a proportionately longer amount of time as elderly people than young ones - which would make sense if it takes longer for a body to become unusable due to age.)

Also, Time Crash: "In the beginning I was always trying to be old and grumpy. You know, like you do when you're young."

Hmm. I rewatched the intro to the movie. He says he's 'nearing the end of his seventh life', and he is older. That seems it. And he's not as old as the First Doctor looked when he regenerated due to old age. He's clearly still sprightly. So I find it hard to believe he's expecting to die of old age soon. More likely he's referring to his imminent death by gunshot/surgery, since it's the Eighth Doctor telling the story.

Ah, possibly.

But who knows?

Nobody! Everyone has a different theory. Only the Time Lords know for sure, but it's probably horribly complicated.

PS: Saw Caves of Androzani. It was awesome! Possibly my favourite Classic Who episode so far :D

Yessssss. Second-best death in the entire series. Nothing quite beats The War Games for me, but Androzani comes close.

Are you jumping to Six next? If so, good luck. You're about to hit The Twin Dilemma.

[arcanetrivia]

Arrrgh, at the end... I sighed aloud. Bad jokes ahoy!

But I love all the language stuff in this. Our mutual telepathic field is pleasantly harmonious is shorter, indeed. (having read your Ten Rules post, I get why!)

Being "sesquipedalian" merits a PG...?