Blink of an Eye Commentary

[earlgreytea68]

In response to this post, np_complete requested Blink of an Eye. 


EdgeOfWorld requested a Nine episode re-told with Ten. It was actually an interesting episode, since I read somewhere once that RTD insists he wrote both Doctors the same. My goal, however, *was* to write them differently, not to rely on their physical differences to get the point across.

People will tell you that your whole life can change in the blink of an eye. People tell you that all the time. Or maybe that’s just my mum. You never know, she says. Tomorrow you could be hit by a car. She says that because that’s what happened to my dad, when I was a baby. On a day like every other day, he was hit by a car, and my whole life changed in the blink of an eye, when I was too young to even know it. People tell you things like this, all the time.

You don’t believe them.

I have no idea why I chose to open this fic this way. But it is one of my favorite passages ever, because I find it very true to life. This opening paragraph came from a very personal place inside of me, which might be why it's a weird moment of first-person narration for me.

***

The Doctor was an alien who knew things about blinks of eyes. He knew that, in a human being, blinking occurred to lubricate the eye and rid it of irritants. He knew that an average adult human being should blink around ten times a minute, but that human beings sometimes got distracted--by the flow of a good plot in a story, for instance—and forgot all about blinking and dried their eyes out and it was all a bit of a mess. The only time a human being should avoid blinking was if there was a Weeping Angel hovering about but the Doctor hadn’t seen a Weeping Angel for centuries now and he wasn’t sure if they had managed to survive…

I think I may have just read an article about blinking before I wrote this story. Certainly that's not information I *know.* I may have done research, but it's ringing a bell that I'd just read about this recently, and it may actually be why the "blink of an eye" imagery got inserted throughout this story.

But that human expression, “blink of an eye,” had always irritated him. Things did not happen in a blink of an eye, not when you stopped to think about them, not really. Maybe he had pressed the button in a blink of an eye, but the actions leading up to that had taken forever, they had gone on interminably, there had been a million opportunities where the action could have been avoided. It had not been a blink of an eye.

I like that this is the Doctor's view of things, because this is another thing that came from a very personal place inside of me. I do think human beings tend to distill things down to single moments, not giving their due to the millions of moments that made the culminating moment possible.

And anyway it had been forever ago.

It's a Ten who's still much more outwardly raw about the Time War. Not that Ten was exactly *over* the Time War, but I was trying to convey the impression that he was much more of a open wound.

The point was that it wasn’t a blink of an eye that was about to change the life of the young blonde who had wandered into the basement full of Autons, because she had made a whole series of decisions that had led to this moment, but he supposed he could excuse her feeling like it was, or that she had been saved in the blink of an eye in which he leaned over and grabbed her hand and said, “Run.”

And now we know we're in "Rose."

***

Her name was Rose, she’d said. And so, when the door swung open on the small flat in this housing estate in London, he was able to say, “Rose.” And then, “Oh, of course.”

The difficulty of this fic was following "Rose" and not following "Rose" all at once. What pieces of dialogue would I keep intact? Which would I fiddle around with? What would Nine say that Ten wouldn't say?

She stared at him for a second. “’Of course’ what? What are you doin’ here? Did you follow me?”

“No. But I followed this.” He gestured with his sonic screwdriver. “Which led to you.”

“And what’s that? Oi,” she protested, when he zapped it at her, and snatched it out of his hand before he could react.

“Give that back,” he protested.

“Get in here. We need to talk.” She pocked the screwdriver and stalked away from him into the flat.

I wanted to keep the same kind of banter-y interplay between Rose and the Doctor, I wanted them to click immediately and effortlessly.

The Doctor, frowning and grumbling, had no choice but to follow her.

“Who is it?” called the voice of someone else in the flat.

“It’s about last night,” answered Rose. “He’s part of the inquiry. Give us ten minutes.”

“She deserves compensation,” the voice retorted.

The Doctor paused in the bedroom doorway, looking at the woman sitting at the dressing table. Mother, he thought. Had to be. “Compensation for what?” he asked.

The woman gasped and looked at him. “She was almost killed!” Then she paused and smiled. “I’m in my dressing gown,” she purred at him.

The Doctor’s smile widened. “So you are,” he remarked, winked, and then went in search of wherever Rose had disappeared to.

I felt it would be more Tennish to wink there.

She was in the lounge, hurriedly trying to straighten it up.

“D’you think you could give me back my sonic screwdriver now?” he asked.

“What is that?”

“It’s my…secret…weapon…device…thingy.”

Oh, to me, this is a total Ten line.

“Oh.” She pulled it out of her pocket. “You mean this thing?”

“Yes—“

“Then no.” It disappeared back into her pocket. “You’re not getting this secret weapon device thingy back until I get answers.”

The Doctor leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and his ankles. “You’re holding me hostage here.”

“You can leave whenever you want, without your—what’d you call it?--sonic screwdriver? Or you can really tell me what a sonic screwdriver is. And then you can tell me exactly what went on last night, with the mannequins.”

“You don’t think it’s a student prank anymore?”

She gave him a look. “There was an explosion.”

“Wellllllll. If you want to know all that and the scientific description of a sonic screwdriver, we’re going to be here for a while.”

The "wellllll" was meant to be another giveaway.

“Fine,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

He gave her an appraising look. “Yes. Coffee. Might as well.”

Ten's a seducer, I think. The way he gets Martha onto the TARDIS proved that to me. I tried to write this to be like how Ten got Martha aboard the TARDIS, only with Rose replacing Martha and with Ten not suffering from the heartbreak that would keep him from following through on all his flirtation.

She disappeared into the adjoining kitchen. He wandered around the lounge, poking randomly into the belongings scattered about.

“So? Going to tell me?” she called from the kitchen.

“Tell you what?” He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, adjusted the careful haphazard of his fringe.

And here I resort to physical description finally. But I lasted a long time!

“Sonic screwdriver.” She over-enunciated the words, as if he was being thick, and he smiled at his reflection.

“It’s a screwdriver. Only sonic.”

He heard her mutter something about him. He didn’t quite catch what, but he could imagine.

“Done fussing with your hair?” she inquired, and he realized she’d re-entered the lounge.

He whirled around and tried not to look like he had been caught in the act, digging his hands into his pockets. She raised an eyebrow at him, and then, abruptly, she grinned at him, her tongue catching between her teeth.

The Doctor, suddenly, understood the expression blink of an eye.

I love this line, because I love the idea that the Doctor, for all the moments he's known, couldn't foresee this one coming at all.

“D’you hear that?” Rose turned from him, and from the coffee, frowning.

He did, now that she mentioned it. A scuffling sort of noise. “Have you got a cat?”

“No,” Rose answered, slowly. “Sounds like it’s coming from behind the couch.” She took a few steps backward, away from the couch, cautiously, not taking her eyes off of it.

“Give me the screwdriver,” he said, holding out his hand and also keeping his eyes on the couch. “Now.”

She didn’t hesitate, putting it into his hand. He twirled it in his hand for a second, then dropped to his knees and peered under the couch. “Aha,” he exclaimed, just as a plastic arm shot out at him. Rose uttered a small squeal of surprised alarm, but he pounced on the hand and sonicked it into submission, then stood and pocketed it. “There you go.” He smiled at her brightly. “Nothing to worry about.”

Twirling the sonic screwdriver! Another attempt at a giveaway! And I didn't go through the whole comic scene that Nine goes through here. The scene felt quintessentially Nine, and I couldn't quite see Ten doing it.

She was staring in the direction of his pocket. “How did that…?”

He winked at her. “Now. I’ve got to be off.”

Ah, another wink!

“Wait, wait, wait.” She scurried after him as he walked out of the flat. “Off? Off where?”

“The plastic,” he said, not pausing as he jogged down the stairs. “It’s living.”

“Living plastic?” she repeated.

“Yeah. There’s this thing, called the Nestene Consciousness, controlling all the plastic. Thought control. You cut off the control, you cut off the living-ness of the plastic, but there’s too much plastic on this planet, and I can’t cut the control off of all of it until I get to the Nestene Consciousness. So that’s what I’m looking for. The Nestene Consciousness. Don’t supposed you’ve seen it?”

“I don’t know,” Rose answered. “What does it look like?”

He hadn’t expected her to respond, and he stopped and turned and looked down at her for a moment. Then he grinned. “It’s like a big pile of…gobbledy-gook-goo-smush-liquidy-glowing…stuff.”

Another very Ten sentence. I feel like I almost exaggerated the way he speaks, to try to make it more obvious who it was.

“Ah,” said Rose, thoughtfully. “Can’t say I’ve seen anything like that.”

“Doesn’t matter.” The Doctor pulled the arm out of his pocket. “I’m going to reverse the polarity.”

“What?”

“Reverse the polarity, get the thought control back, figure out where the Nestene Consciousness is broadcasting from, and get there.”

“And how will you do all that?”

“It’s all very complicated. It involves sonic waves and the time-space vortex and a transdimensional semi-sentient being.”

“You talk a mile a minute, you know,” remarked Rose.

He chuckled. “Here’s the short version: I’ve got a ship.” And then, because it seemed like a good idea, he lifted one corner of his mouth up in the smile he’d learned to perfect since waking up with this particular regeneration. “Want to see it?”

I've always thought that Ten knows he's good-looking and uses it to his advantage.

***

“It’s bigger on the inside,” said Rose, and the Doctor said, “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He walked past her, putting the arm on the console and zapping it with the sonic screwdriver, getting a lock on the thought control. Then he looked back at Rose.

She was laying her hands on the coral.

“What do you think?”

“’S beautiful,” she breathed.

“Want to go for a ride?”

She looked at him, and he could tell she was slightly alarmed but mostly intrigued and excited and delighted. “Where?”

“Welllllllll, anywhere you want, eventually. But right now: Nestene Consciousness.”

It was back again, that teeth-tongue smile. “Okay,” she said.

***

“I would add ‘wobbly’ to your description,” whispered Rose, as they looked down at the Nestene Consciousness. She looked at him. He was pulling out a vial. “What’s that?”

I kept skipping around in this fic. I had a word-limit I was trying to keep to, so I was only hitting the high points.

“It’s a stopper for semisynthetic amorphous organic solids, polymers of high molecular mass. ‘Anti-plastic,’ to put it more simply.”

“Anti-plastic?” echoed Rose.

“Yeah, you sound like you don’t believe me. From the same blokes that make anti-matter. Fantastic company.”

Rose shook her head a bit. “Okay, well, pour it in.”

He shook his head. “No. It gets one chance.” He turned to her. “Stay here, stay out of sight.” Then he stood and walked confidently toward the Nestene Consciousness, hands in his pockets. “Am I addressing the Nestene Consciousness?”

One chance. No second chances.

The blob of plastic answered in what Rose assumed was the affirmative.

“Excellent. So. Here on a spot of planetary destruction?” The Doctor sounded almost casual, but, upon the blobbering of the plastic, turned sharp, and Rose shivered in reaction. “Don’t blather about constitutional rights, this is an invasion. And you are going to stop it. Right now. Stop it and leave or you won’t like what happens next.” There was a pause while the plastic blobbered again. “I’m the Doctor,” he spat out, and then paused again to listen. “If I were you, I really wouldn’t bring that up,” he said, his voice dangerously low. He reached into his pocket, at the same moment that Rose realized two mannequins had come up behind him.

Ten is terrifying, isn't he?

“Doctor!” she shouted.

He looked up at her, startled, and the mannequins grabbed hold of him. There was a bit of a scuffle, and Rose didn’t give herself time to think. She grabbed the chain nearest her and swung out over the glowing liquid plastic, solidly catching one mannequin and dumping him into the swirl of the blob. The Doctor, staggering slightly but one side now free, succeeded in grabbing his vial of anti-plastic and dumping it into the Nestene Consciousness.

I also simplified this whole showdown scene. I actually think this scene goes on WAY TOO LONG in the episode itself.

Then he turned to Rose in amazement, catching her on her backswing.

“Bronze medal,” she said, grinning at him. “Jericho Street Junior School under 7s gymnastic team.”

“Molto bene,” he grinned back. “Now.” He slid his hand into hers. “Run.”

Another Ten-ism!

***

He was waiting for her, leaning up against his ship that looked like a box, hands in his pockets. His face was in shadows, and it was impossible to discern anything but the fact that his eyes were locked on her intensely.

So this is definitely meant to remind you of the scene where he invites Martha.

“Everyone safe and sound?” he asked, as she came up to him.

She nodded. “What’s a police public call box?”

“Oh.” He glanced up at his ship. “It’s a disguise.”

“So.”

“So.”

“Did we save the world today?”

“We did.”

“Yeah. Pretty typical day, really.”

He smiled. “Come with me.”

She went still. “What?”

“Come with me.” He nodded toward the ship he was leaning on.

“Are you mad?”

He said nothing. He tipped one of those lethal smiles at her.

“What are you?” she asked.

He pushed off of the ship, walked over to her, took her hand. “The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. Can you feel it?”

Ah, yes, I moved the planet speech to here. Because that is *totally* a seduction speech!

She stared up at him. “No,” she whispered.

“I can. Come with me.”

“I have a…” She was going to say boyfriend. She settled for, “life.”

“You do. So why not live it? Anywhere in space and time, anywhere you like, we can go.” He paused. “In the blink of an eye.”

And so it ends. Actually, the only reference to physical description was his fringe, wasn't it? Not so bad, as my goal was to keep away from that stuff as much as I could!

Comments

[glorious-clio.livejournal.com]

I love this fic. I can *see* it, in my head. Perfect.

[earlgreytea68.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This makes me so happy to read!

[crimedoc1.livejournal.com]

Oh! I don't think I read this fic before! A new one for me!

I love when people put Nine into Ten's stories, or Ten into Nine's. If they do it well, and don't just repeat everything; I don't care what RTD says - they ARE different. You really show that here but you don't change everything because different though they may be, they are still both the Doctor. Really excellent. And I love your commentaries, too. ;-)

[earlgreytea68.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm glad you got to discover a new fic!

I think they're different, too, and that was part of the challenge, to pull that out when even their originator refused to acknowledge that it existed, and still keep them recognizable at the same time.

I'm happy you enjoyed my commentary!

[jellybean728.livejournal.com]

Ten's a seducer, I think. The way he gets Martha onto the TARDIS proved that to me. I tried to write this to be like how Ten got Martha aboard the TARDIS, only with Rose replacing Martha and with Ten not suffering from the heartbreak that would keep him from following through on all his flirtation.

Interesting. I wonder, is Ten a seducer just naturally? Or is it because of his experience with Rose and then Donna that made him that way? As Nine, when he invited Rose along, he was so insecure, and she said no, he had to ask her twice. And then when he regenerated, Rose was so unsure of him that he had to ask her again. And then Donna refused him because he scared her too much. It makes me wonder if that insecurity he felt, and then scaring Donna off, if that wasn't part of why he was such an awful flirt with Martha when he never had any intention of following through.

[earlgreytea68.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's interesting, actually. It's a chicken-and-egg problem!

[np-complete.livejournal.com]

I always visualize Ten in this wearing the overcoat he wore in the publicity stills for Hamlet. Still wearing black, still moody, but with touches of mania and a charm he's not afraid to use.

In some ways he's more desperate than Nine, here. He wants Rose on board, and he's willing to turn on his charm, play on human body language and gesture, to do it. (Or does he intend to seduce her from the first, and wants her on board in order to facilitate it?) One wonders: would he be as diffident as Ten was in the Chaosverse, as slow to act, or would he turn the charm up to 11 and start closing the distance immediately?

I remember noting in my original comments to this that we don't have the "is it alien? Are you alien?" exchange. Perhaps it happened and we're just not shown, or perhaps this Ten is willing to let her assume he's human.

[earlgreytea68.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I like the idea of him being a slightly darker version of himself.

And I agree, I think he is more desperate than Nine here. Nine was fairly resigned to his fate, and Rose was this unexpected bright point he'd never thought he had again. I don't think Ten has given up, I think he's desperate to find a bright point and terrified that one might never come. And I don't actually think that he wants to *seduce* her in a conventional sense so much as he wants her on board. (Much in the same way that Brem is never just interested in a shag.)

I don't think it takes place overtly, but I think I assumed that Rose knows he's not quite human.