crack_van | ALL THE KING'S HORSES by RobinC

Hello. Somewhat late, due to very limited internet access until this week, I am your

crack_van reccer for Doctor Who this month.

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO
Pairing: Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble
Length: novella
Author on LJ:

lindenharp
Author Website: LJ story index
Why this must be read: This is a plotty, well-written gen gem. The tenth Doctor, still recovering from the Year That Wasn't, and Donna Noble, newly minted space traveller, arrive in the ancient empire of Paalgiou, which is being menaced by a deadly and ancient creature.

That's a summary of the plot but it does little justice to this story, which achieves a texture, detail and depth seldom seen in long fanfiction. The writing is unshowy but very smart; continuity is pleasingly present but not overpowering; the secondary characters are intriguing and well-drawn. Best of all, this gets the friendship between the Doctor and Donna spot on. He is drawn as believably alien and she is bolshy, curious, caring and funny.

* * *

… the Time Lord is ignoring her and staring at the flowerbed. “Do you see that?” he demands.

“Yeah, flowers. Noticed them, thanks. Are you listening to me, Spaceman?”

He jabs an emphatic finger, just in case she has somehow managed not to notice a garden the size of a football field. “That pattern is a Trojeborg.”

“A what?”

“A Trojeborg,” he repeats. “Caertroia? Jatulintarha?”

“Speak English. Eng-lish,” she says with elaborate slowness, as if he is a dim-witted foreign waiter at a holiday resort.

“It’s a unicursal labyrinth pattern. Very ancient. They’re found on planets all over the cosmos. On Earth they’re laid out with stones, carved into cliffs, that sort of thing. The ones in Britain — mostly gone now — were cut into turf. I must say, I’ve never seen one done in flowers. Very fetching. The Earth names mostly translate as ‘Troy Town’. For some odd reason, you humans associated labyrinths with the city of Troy.”

She seizes at something familiar-sounding. “Troy? The one with Brad Pitt? And the weird-looking giant horse?”

The Doctor squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, as if in pain. “Thirty-one centuries of literature and history, and all you can think about is three hours of your incredibly brief life wasted in a cinema.”

“Three hours with Brad Pitt is never wasted, beanpole.”

“Achilles didn’t look anything like Brad Pitt, I promise you.”

Before Donna can ask how the hell he knows that, the Doctor is rambling again through archaeology, semiology, paleosociology, and a bunch of other ologies that she can’t pronounce, let alone understand. “–and in Sweden, the local fishermen believed that the laybrinths could be used to trap the smågubbar, evil spirits who would otherwise follow them out to sea and cause bad luck–”

Donna gives him a full two minutes before jabbing an elbow into his side.

“Ow! Blimey! What was that for?”

“That,” she says severely, “was for being an inconsiderate git. If you must run your mouth, then say something useful. For starters, you never answered my question, before.”

“What question?” he asks cautiously.

“How can something eat memories?”

* * *

There are a few errors of idiom in there if you want to be churlish, but that would be like saying you don't like a wonderful present because there's a centimetre of the wrapping paper that doesn't look quite right. Go, read, enjoy.

All The King's Horses [link goes to full version on Teaspoon]

ALL THE KING'S HORSES by RobinC

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