I have been recced!

[kerravonsen]

Whee! I was wondering why I was getting comments for Tempus Fugit (see also on my fic site) when it was posted a couple of years ago, and apparently it has been recced as one of a series of recs celebrating awesome female characters: http://siljamus.dreamwidth.org/113098.html

Yay!

It makes me want to write more about those two, except for this BIG problem: Carter would NEVER agree to travel with the Doctor, because she would consider it a dereliction of duty, an absence-without-leave. And it's no good saying "oh, make it like with Tegan and have him pick her up and then find it impossible to get her back to the right place-and-time" because she's so tech that she'd insist on helping to mend the TARDIS to fix whatever the flaw was that was preventing her return.

So I can't think of any GOOD reasons for Carter to stay, and that means I can't make her a companion, and that means I can't write any more.

So do any of you have workable ideas to get around this problem?

Comments

[cheyinka]

Atlantis needs to get flown back to its galaxy, and she's considering going with it so she can be there to solve problems when it arrives, but it'll take a while to get back there. The Doctor suggests that instead of hanging out on the city waiting for it to arrive, or waiting at the SGC for the gate to be available, she go with him for a few months, see more of the universe, and he can drop her off at wherever Atlantis ends up.

She could consider it continuing education! (+ a rest from saving Earth...)

[sinanju]

It seems simple enough. If the Doctor shows up at the SGC (with or without Carter in tow), and they realize (via Carter's reports or just from observing him) how much Carter could learn from hanging around with him...

I don't think a temporary assignment to travel with the Doctor is out of the question. Then it wouldn't be dereliction of duty or being AWOL. It would be her JOB to travel with the Doctor for a while. The SGC's brief IS to find potential allies out there, and the Doctor is certainly a good guy to have on your side....

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I don't know about workable, but suppose your plot revolved around something that was a legitimate interest of both parties? Suppose she got assigned to work with him on it? It doesn't lend itself to very long-term companioning, perhaps, but it would at least support a directed plot.

[kerravonsen]

Hmmm, that's an interesting thought. Certainly the SGC wouldn't be averse to assigning her to liase with this advanced alien... the difficulty there is that I doubt that the Doctor would want to get involved with the military.
But it's worth allowing the idea to percolate.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I made the same suggestion on you dreamwidth journal. Temporary detached duty with the Doctor seems like a good way to allow Carter to travel with him and learn...oh, all sorts of things. Not just the technology. Think of the history she could learn, to say nothing of the innumerable alien species the Doctor has met.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

He tells her he can get her home seconds after they leave?

[kerravonsen]

I think she'd have a bit of trouble believing that. She'd still want to go home first.

[kaffy_r]

My first thought was similar to everyone else's: have her seconded, for a (linear) 12-month period of time; that could be plenty of time for adventure.

As for the whole military/ewww thing with the Doctor, perhaps the Doctor's distaste for the military doesn't need to be quite as pronounced as it might seem to outsiders. Despite everything he said, and no matter how loudly he said it, he appreciated many UNIT officers and enlisted folks during his time as Three. He might drive the bargain that Carter's secondment would be for purposes of cultural and political observation, *not* for the purposes of figuring out time travel. (I'd imagine that Jack might snort and say "no, we'll figure out time travel on our own, thanks; if we want that kind of trouble, let it be our own fault, what do you think of that?" And Ten might appreciate that.)

You could also do a bit of business in which the Doctor does manage to bring Carter back to two minutes after she leaves ... only she's not impressed, having already been with him for six months of the 12 month period, and pretty much echoes Jack's "Oh, no, I want nothin' to do with travel!" attitude.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

Ooo, yes, this. Because it's the SGC, it's just plausible, given a good initial reason, to have Carter sent along, I think.

Anyway, it wouldn't take too much handwaving for me to buy it, were I reading the fic. :)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I see we all had the same idea. Sam would have no problems at all if she was ordered to go. And a person who knows she's travelled in time clearly needs investigating.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

While she's unquestionably brilliant (I may dislike her, but I'm not blind :) I really doubt she could fix something a Time Lord couldn't... so we could have heaps of fun with her insisting of mending it, thinking she's got it right... and finding out she hasn't when they end up on Planet Omigodwherearewenow????

Just about any of the Doctor's reaction to that would be even more fun :)

Alternately, one of the little souvenirs the Doctor picked up on his travels, somewhere in the bowels of the TARDIS, turns out to be a quantum mirror...

[kerravonsen]

True, you do have a point there. And it would be somewhat amusing.

[dreamflower]

Or: she gets stranded somewhere the other side of a Stargate, and is surprised to be rescued and picked up on the other side of nowhere by this fellow she met once on Earth at a scientific conference -- in his blue box which is bigger on the inside than the outside.

Whatever difficulties led to her stranding might also have led to TARDIS difficulties in returning her straightaway.

[kerravonsen]

Or: she gets stranded somewhere the other side of a Stargate, and is surprised to be rescued and picked up on the other side of nowhere by this fellow she met once on Earth at a scientific conference -- in his blue box which is bigger on the inside than the outside.
That was more or less how I figured they might meet again; what I was having difficulty with was how to keep her there.

[dreamflower]

Well, she'd have to figure out what happened with the broken Stargate while the Doctor tried to figure out what happened with the TARDIS not working-- they'd have to cooperate to get back, and in the meanwhile (especially given the Doctor's love for trial-and-error) might end up other places than they meant to go-- like back to Earth!

Or it could be something cataclysmic: if she doesn't go with the Doctor and help him, something horrible would happen, oh, like say the destruction of Earth or an invasion of Daleks through a Stargate, or some other disaster that he would need her help to prevent...

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought too - to invert the story. But it occurs to me that there is no need to actually travel together when he can take the TARDIS and she can take the Stargate.

This was how I envisaged it

[kerravonsen]

I wrote this fragment not long after the original story was posted; it basically stalled after this, because, while I got Sam into the TARDIS, I didn't know where to go from there.
Note that I didn't feel the need to strand Carter; just getting her temporarily separated from the others was enough.

The staff-weapon blast hit the wall a foot above Samantha Carter's head. Damn! I've been spotted! When the Jaffa had turned up at the ruins, it had taken SG-1 by surprise. The team had scattered, hoping to lose the Jaffa in the maze of streets and broken buildings.

"This way!" A brown-haired head poked around a corner. "Run!"

He wasn't one of her team, but he wasn't a Jaffa either. She ran. He led her a fast pace, the certainty of his steps indicating he had a definite goal in mind, not just running away. Brown hair, brown suit, British accent - "Dr. Smith, what are you doing here?"

He grinned at her. "Nice to meet you again, Major Carter." A staff blast missed them by inches. "A bit more exciting than a conference, don't you think?"

"You might say so," she said dryly.

He dashed through a crumbling doorway, and she followed. He'd implied, the first time they met, that he had a time machine; she hadn't believed him at the time, but his presence on PX372 shredded her assumptions. If he had a time ship, or a space-time ship, could that be what they were heading for? Two doorways later, a splash of blue, glimpsed through another door across a hallway. Incongruous, anachronistic, a blue wooden potting shed with English lettering across the top. Dr. Smith - the Doctor, as he called himself - skidded to a halt in front of it, and brought out a key.

"This is your time machine?" Sam gasped, coming up behind.

He flashed another grin. "Yep," he said. "The TARDIS." He beckoned her inside.

She followed, and stopped short as she stepped across the threshold, jaw dropping. Metal at her feet, a squat and soaring toadstool out of a steampunk novel, columns of branching coral, golden and green light... impossible space. As she caught her breath at the paradox before her, he leapt for what was plainly a set of control panels, pushing buttons and turning dials. There was a rumble, the floor shook, and the lights inside the glass column in the centre of the room started moving up and down.

"There, we're safely away," the Doctor said.

His words dislodged her stunned silence. "It's bigger on the inside!" she gasped. "That's impossible! How does it work?"

The Doctor smiled. "It's dimensionally transcendental."

"But how does it work?"

The Doctor opened his mouth and closed it again.

Sam sighed. "You aren't going to tell me, are you?"

Doctor shook his head. "You might actually understand it. That would change history."

"And this is one of those times when it isn't safe to change history," she said.

"I'm afraid so."

Re: This was how I envisaged it

[dreamflower]

Oh, you've got a great start there-- now it just needs a little trouble with the TARDIS going where he wants it to.

After all, THAT'S been known to happen before!

[dreamflower]

Except the Stargate would be broken; or some peril would prevent her from getting to it. And then when the TARDIS is used to escape the peril, then they find out *its* not working quite right.

OR they could use the TARDIS to get to another Stargate location. And the Doctor's casual knowledge of where most of the Stargates are located rouses her suspicions and she decides to hang around and find out if he's a threat or not...though that's not really a Sam thing...

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Sam would be MIA and want to get back from that scenario.
I suppose getting her back could become "interesting" if the TARDIS got damaged from say a Glider shot.

What if Carter was supposed to have been killed or captured but wasn't , thanks to the Doctor's intervention? Time paradox and its resolution might make an interesting story.

[kerravonsen]

What if Carter was supposed to have been killed or captured but wasn't , thanks to the Doctor's intervention?
Now, that's an interesting thought. Hmmm.