Doctor Who
It frustrates me that some of the Doctors are "blocked off" from having new companions in fanfic.
As an example: the 1st doctor always gains a new companion before the previous one leaves the TARDIS, which means that one of the companions in the TV show must [i]always[/i] be there. I can't write a story which is "the First Doctor travels with my fan characters Viola and Vermi and no-one else".
The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Doctors are all "blocked off", but...
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Doctor Who
@lizardsquid The first Doctor had John & Gillian in the comics. Prose (novellas, short stories in Annuals, etc.) featured at least seven different non-TV 1st Doctor TARDIS teams, one including a bulldog. Big Finish also has a non-TV companion. The Doctor's timeline is something of a multiverse onto itself.
Of course, you can also unblock by separating from companions (Twice Upon a Time) or extracting from timeline (Three Doctors, Five Doctors). How many adventures will Clara yet have?
Doctor Who
@beadsland I had forgotten about John and Gillian!
The main thing for me is that I just wish the TV series left more gaps where you can insert stories without having to be like "and then the Doctor was kidnapped and had some adventures off screen in the middle of this episode but you didn't notice and they didn't mention it at all".
(also: didn't the Big Finish companion travel with the 1st Doctor AND Steven?)
Doctor Who
@lizardsquid Add to that the very timey-wimeyness of the Whoniverse—you've got to ask the question of whether, by the time later incarnations and their adversaries got done mucking with timelines, the events chronicled in the early series still happened, or at least happened just that way?
That was a timeline, but the Doctor doesn't live in that timeline anymore. For all we know, that timeline doesn't exist anymore. Today's Doctor's history might look little like what we saw on TV.
Doctor Who
@lizardsquid As an example: Did the Doctor's Wife TARDIS ever travel with the 4th, 5th or 6th Doctor?
In a New Adventures novel, the 7th Doctor lost and subsequently destroyed his TARDIS. At the end of the story he was traveling in the TARDIS of a deceased alternate-timeline 3rd Doctor.
It was the same TARDIS that stole the Doctor from Gallifrey, and yet it wasn't the TARDIS shattered by meteors on Frontios or that traveled into eSpace.
It is THE TARDIS, and yet its history differs.
Doctor Who
@lizardsquid Yet "off screen" stories in the middle of an episode that you didn't notice and they didn't mention at all aren't unheard of. Consider "Romans Cutaway", an entire story that falls between the first and second scenes of The Romans. This is a common trope in The Companion Chronicles.
And yes, Oliver Harper traveled with Steven and the Doctor. Yet there have been stories where a companion was dropped off or left in the TARDIS, so an Oliver-only adventure is not unthinkable.
Doctor Who
@lizardsquid Yeah, well, the model of storytelling was more serial than episodic then, and fanfiction really only took off in the era of episodic stories.
But what John and Gillian, and the Annuals, and, heck, the Cushing films, tell us is that canonicity also wasn't really a major concern of the time either. Characters were archetypes more than histories. You did with them what you would.
When in the Doctor's history did John and Gillian happen? Does it matter? They had adventures.