App to Ruby City

[goesagainst_thegrain]

PLAYER
Name: Alex
Age: Old enough to drink and drive
Personal Journal: tarnera
E-mail: fightingfrogz@gmail.com
AIM/MSN/etc: Aim: fightingfrogz, plurk: chocoballs

CHARACTER
Name: The Sixth Doctor
Canon: Doctor Who
Age: Roughly 900-950
Timeline: Audio book Patient Zero, right after being rescued from a fiery lava death by Daleks.

Personality: When the sixth Doctor first appears to the audience, it is right after regeneration. As with all regenerations, there were a few kinks to be ironed out—in this case, the Doctor was violent, melodramatic, confused, and (more or less) rational by turns. In a few cases, during his violent moods, he even went so far as to attack his companion (Perpugilliam, or Peri, Brown) as well as another Time Lord, and he didn’t always remember doing it after.

But as all such things do, the sickness passed quickly enough and he stabilized into someone much easier to deal with, not that that’s saying much. He was still arrogant, brash, abrasive, boastful, and all in all something of an acquired taste. As time went on, however, he started to mellow somewhat. When he first regenerated it seemed that he could barely stand his companion, and even after he got over that he only seemed to keep her around so she could admire his brilliance. It wasn’t until some episodes after his introduction that he seemed to care for anyone but himself—he notes that he was always ‘especially fond’ of a former companion of his, Jamie McCrimmon. Even after that it’s kind of difficult to tell how much he really likes Peri, but when the Time Lords later trick him into thinking she’s dead, his grief is genuine. As is his joy and relief when he’s told that it isn’t true, and that she’s living her own life now.

Perhaps one of the things that changed his personality most significantly was his relationship with a woman named Evelyn Smythe. She really was the person that made him better; between her no-nonsense attitude and delectable chocolate cakes, she got him to mellow out even farther, until he was downright tolerable. Perhaps the most telling is his reaction to a later companion, one we get to see ahead of time in a very time line-bending adventure--before Evelyn, he would never have submitted to exercise bikes and carrot juice, but though he offers up a token complaint, he actually does as his future companion asks.

He’s still rude and quite aware of his own importance, and he truly detests being pushed into anything… he has little patience or time for either liars or fools, and he remains quick to pass judgment and make snap decisions, whether or not he always fully understands the situation. But to balance that he’s compassionate, passionate, stubborn to a fault, and not unwilling to admit when he’s made a mistake--often to his great grief and personal pain, though he doesn’t always show that in ways other people can see or understand. But for the most part… he’s rather a tolerable person to be around, as long as you don’t insult the coat.

Background: Much of the Doctor’s early life is relatively unknown. He had what seems to be a very typical Gallifreyan--or more accurately, Time Lord--childhood, spending time in his family home and with childhood friends when he wasn’t in school, and going to the Academy between the ages of eight and probably the early one hundreds the rest of the time. He barely scraped by with a passing grade on his second try there, though whether that was on purpose or because he just didn’t pay attention is anyone’s guess. It is somewhat interesting that several of his classmates or close friends later became renegades along with him; most notable of all of these, a Time Lord later going by the title Master, features heavily in the Doctor’s childhood as well as his adult years as a renegade.

The Doctor stayed on Gallifrey for a few centuries after graduating; the true amount is anyone’s guess, really, but it was enough time to have a family, and indeed a granddaughter--implied to be in his care well before the show ever started--by the time he was forced to flee the planet. It’s fairly clear he always intended to leave one day, but it was his brother tipping him off to a death threat for both himself and Susan, his granddaughter, that got him to actually leave. And since he was doing it with the intention of throwing off the Time Lords, he actually took a TARDIS that wasn’t his original--one that he stole from the Time Lord equivalent of a repair shop. He also most likely gave up his original name at this time; it’s not been confirmed by anything officially, but one thing all renegades have in common is they pick a title or some name not their own to go by. It’s very likely that once they give up their status as a full time resident of Gallifrey they give up their original name as well, either voluntarily or they are somehow forced to.

One of the first planets he travelled to, or rather arrived on (one of the things that this TARDIS had been in the shop for was a wonky navigational system) was Earth, of course. The TARDIS promptly took the form of--and was consequently stuck as, since the chameleon circuit was also on the blink--a blue Police box, something commonly seen at the time. Susan actually went to school here, perhaps because the Doctor thought it was a safe place to hide for a bit, and they attracted the attention of two teachers… that the Doctor promptly kidnapped when they found their way to the TARDIS because he was paranoid that this somehow compromised the safety of himself and Susan. In any case, this started a pattern that lasted all his lives: taking people with him, either accidentally or on purpose, and showing them the wonders of time and space.

Not at first, though; much of his original body’s time was spent trying to get used to this new life of rattling around in an old TARDIS with people he didn’t always care for, making enemies and friends wherever he went. Most notable of these enemies would be the Daleks and the Cybermen, species that would pop up time and again and help shape his personality and personal mission easily as much as, if not more so, the companions he travelled with.

Over the years he got better at not kidnapping people, but no better at returning them to the same place and time he got them from. He did get better at steering his TARDIS… more or less. He also got more used to his life as a wanderer, thanks in part to his second self’s cheerful demeanor and being stuck on Earth as his third self for a few years. By the time Six rolls around he’s downright happy to wander, and chafes at spending too long in one place--even if one of Six’s first actions as himself was to declare that he and Peri (his companion at the time) ought to become hermits and penitents for the rest of their lives. He didn’t follow through with that thought, obviously.

He travelled with Peri for a bit, having a collection of adventures, but the Time Lords soon put a stop to that when they attempted to pin the blame on him for a few of their little mistakes (like transferring the Earth a great distance across space and inadvertently wiping out most of the life on its surface in the process, just by way of example) by setting up a trial... where he was tried by a future, dark incarnation of himself, also the Time Lords’ doing. He was quite incensed by this, as anyone might be; though he was acquitted, he held the entire procedure against his people for quite a long time, possibly even for the rest of his time as himself.

Peri was left behind in the place he’d last been, also thanks to the Time Lords’ interference, but it seems she got married to one of the people they’d met there. Whether that was true or not, he never went back for her, not even to check if she was alright. Perhaps part of him didn’t want to know, in case she really had died as he’d first thought; in any case, his next companion was a woman named Evelyn, and she was really mostly responsible for mellowing him out and making him grow up a bit in this body. He also had a shapeshifting penguin for a time, a species properly known as a Whifferdill, who is mostly notable for being among the very few companions the Doctor has ever admitted being lonely to. And after all these years, he is. It’s no fun travelling around with no one to talk to, when it comes right down to it.

Audio canon is confusing, so he may or may not have had one or two other people here, but honestly it doesn’t matter terribly much if he did. They all affect him, of course, but really for the most part one companion is much like another, with a few notable exceptions. Charlotte Pollard is certainly one of those.

He found her, alone on Earth, in the year 500,002, a year most notable because there were no humans on Earth at that point. She seemed to know him instantly, or at least know his TARDIS, and that had him on guard around her from the very start of their relationship. If he’d had his way he would have dropped her off at the nearest star port or hospitable planet, but she managed to persuade him to let her stick around for a bit. He grew to care for her, warily, though he never fully trusted her, because it was clear she was constantly lying to him and hiding something from him. They went on a few adventures together, and he did his best to look after her, but things rather came to a head when she tried to get her hands on another woman’s time machine, ostensibly to go back in time and fix the current situation they were in before it could start. The Doctor was flabbergasted by her reasoning, since Charley had consistently displayed a startling grasp of the idea of time travel, and he couldn’t understand why she would do something any time traveler worth their salt would know was a bad idea. Before he could force her to tell him what she was doing and who she was, however, she unexpectedly (and very conveniently) fell ill.

He spent several years--it’s unknown how many--searching for a cure for her, while she languished in a coma in the Zero room of the TARDIS, a place that was able to keep her alive and cared for while she slept and he got on with things. Eventually this search lead him to Amethyst station, a strange place that was stockpiling viruses and other diseases for a mysterious race known as the Viyrans. There, the station controller (a strange creature that seemed to be made up of multiple smaller creatures, able to separate themselves at will) decided he was an intruder and attempted to destroy him by flinging him into an active volcano, at which point he was rescued… by Daleks.

And that’s where he stands at this point in time.


Abilities: The Doctor, like all Time Lords, possesses an innate sense of time itself. It means he can sense it, though that seems to mean he can tell when he’s not allowed to fool about with certain points in history, and will have little bearing in Ruby City (unless someone has time manipulative powers, I suppose). He has two hearts, which means he can do certain things like surviving in low oxygen environments longer than a human could. He also has a respiratory bypass system, which is never explained but seems to be some kind of filter allowing him to breathe oxygen despite whatever toxic or other gasses might be in the atmosphere--‘with difficulty’, apparently, but he can still breathe.

The Doctor also possesses a wide range of both technological and bookish learning, though it must be admitted that this particular incarnation of him seems to have lost a great deal of the technical side of things. He knows just about every human language there is and a good number of the alien ones, though I’m sure he doesn’t know every one. At the very least he certainly has an above average intellect.

His people have a natural immunity to extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, though it doesn’t mean he won’t freeze to death if he gets cold enough. He seems to have slightly better senses than a human, and his extra heart means he can run a touch faster and he’s a bit stronger than he looks. And finally, in the case that he’s badly injured but not badly enough to regenerate, he’ll slip into a coma that induces fast healing--or in Six’s case, injured at all. He doesn’t have a very high pain tolerance, it seems. Finally, as with all his people, he possesses low-level telepathic abilities that allow him to read the minds and connect mentally with others--if they allow him access, that is. It isn't anywhere close to strong enough to allow him to go around reading people's minds willy-nilly.

First Person: [At first there’s only a voice, and the sound of someone walking.]

Hello? Oh... no, that doesn’t seem to be it... perhaps if I... hmm...

[The sounds cut off for a moment before the feed comes to life once more, this time with a blond curly-haired fellow whose face is briefly creased with concentration. As soon as he realizes he’s done what he was trying to do, his expression morphs into a pleased one.]

Aha! There we are, now then, ahem. Hello! I’m known as the Doctor, and I’m seeking information--though mostly, I’m seeking my TARDIS. Hopefully whomever brought me here brought that as well... blue box, oh, about nine feet tall, not terribly large. If anyone’s seen it, I’d be most grateful if you’d tell me.

And if anyone knows anything about the train schedule here, that would be quite useful as well.

[Since he really doesn't plan to stay long. Feel free to disabuse him of that notion, everyone.]

Third Person: The place he had found himself in was… decidedly odd, to put it mildly, and that was without taking the train he couldn’t remember boarding it into consideration. The Doctor wasn’t sure what to make of it all, really. The watch he’d found on his person--that he also had no memory of, before he’d found it just now--showed him dozens of people who were apparently content to make a life for themselves in this world, dimension, universe, whatever it truly was. He almost couldn’t believe it; certainly, humans and several other species were good at adapting, but he’d also thought they chafed at confinement than he saw in his watch. Perhaps it was a show, put on for whatever dragged them here…?

In any case, the Doctor spent a bit of time examining the ‘you are here’ poster located on the wall of the train station, and, for lack of anything better to do, set off toward the police station. More information was always good, and he could use a better map... then perhaps he’d explore the rest of the town. What he could see of it so far was interesting, to say the least. The few houses he passed seemed… not precisely dilapidated, but abandoned, certainly. There was an empty feeling to them, as though they were waiting for people to fill them with life once again… perhaps this town had once had more people in it? And there seemed to be ruins, though he couldn’t get a good enough glimpse of them to see exactly what they were ruins of. Perhaps he would go there first, after the police station.

Or, on the other hand, perhaps he would see something that would knock all his plans clear out of the way. Like a little old blue box, familiar in every way… his TARDIS was sitting next to the police station, fittingly enough. He only had to change course very slightly, picking up his pace a tad in order to hurry over to her side. What in the name of Kasterborous was she doing here…? He certainly hadn’t piloted her to this strange little place, so unless whoever had brought him had also brought the old girl… well. Questions could wait, and in fact could probably be circumvented altogether. It was an interesting place to be sure, but he didn’t take especially kindly to being kidnapped, as a rule. He just had to get inside her, and then they could both leave.

He fumbled in a pocket for his key, producing it after only a little frantic searching and made as though to insert it into the lock, when he… stopped, tilting his head slightly at the thing he thought was his ship. No… it was still her, but… someone had cleaned her up, it looked like. Given her a new paint job, repaired a few scratches and dings… and was that a new light? Everything looked fresh and new, and while he was sure the old girl appreciated looking so pretty, he was equally certain that this wasn’t the TARDIS he’d left… well, however long ago he’d left her. His key didn’t even match the way the lock looked anymore, and he wasn’t entirely certain it would still fit. However, if what he suspected was the case… he was going to do this a bit differently, even if the key worked.

Key clenched in his raised fist, he thumped it loudly against the door. “Hello! Hello, I know you’re in there, whichever one of me you are, so open up immediately!”

He had to get back to Charley as soon as he could, Daleks or no Daleks, and he wasn’t about to let himself stand in the way of that.