Dwseason4
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| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Dwseason4, Doctor Who Season Four |
| Author(s): | ariastar |
| Date(s): | |
| Length: | 50540 |
| Genre: | slash |
| Fandom: | Doctor Who |
| External Links: | LJ link, Ao3 link |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Dwseason4 (Doctor Who Season Four) is a Doctor Who virtual season written by Aria. This fic is notable for been one of the first and best known season 4 AUs. It was widely recced in Doctor Who fandom, with many fans enjoying the fluffier than usual (at least for New Who) depiction of a classic enemyslash pairing, Doctor/Master.
- In which the Doctor and the Master have dysfunctional adventures in time and space, Martha becomes a fully qualified doctor, Leo Jones wonders what all the fuss is about, the Torchwood team recounts Himalayan hijinks, and Lucy Saxon refuses to let the averted end of the world sideline her.
This series goes AU in the final episode of Season 3. The Master lives and ends up traveling with the Doctor. This was a popular fix-it storyline following the season finale, "The Last of the Timelords". Aria posted dwseason4's prologue the day after this episode aired. This fic inspired many other stories and is probably responsible for many LoTL fix-it fics been referred to as S4 AUs.
Reactions and Reviews
I’d recommend reading this in its original context on LJ. This is another S3-Master-Didn’t-Die-AU (which, for brevity’s sake, I’ll henceforth refer to as an S3 AU) and it is stunning. It’s a believable season with the Master as a companion, set up with an arc and discrete episodes. It’s funny, it’s engaging, it’s slow-burn and brimming with glorious chemistry and unresolved sexual tension. You’ll hi-five the screen when the tension snaps, I promise you will! This work absolutely deserves your readership and is one of the best-known fics of the era.[1]
If I was asked to rec just one Ten/Simm fic (and had reason to believe New Dawn Fades would be slightly too heavy going) ariastar’s alternate Season Four (and Five!) would be it. The story kicks off from the usual popular conceit where the Master fails to escape his sentence of Tardis-arrest at the end of S3, and while it’s obviously working towards for a happy ending, it doesn’t sugar-coat the trouble the Doctor goes through cohabiting with the Master at all. Personally, I found the chapters focusing on Martha and Torchwood a little dull, but the climatic chapters are so very much worth the wait to get to, and there’s great use of some of the key themes and concepts introduced in the canonical season 3 driving much of the plot. A few dangling plot points in the villain’s elaborate scheme don’t quite add up at the end, but like so much of Who canon, the story is so much fun you don’t really care.[2]
Why I love it: EVERYTHING COMES TOGETHER. You will not believe it until you read it. The tiniest thing may come back up later and just leave you "OMGing" over the fact that it does. I am not generally a fan of this pairing, but this... it just works. And the plot? Well thought out, and well used. The only problem I see with this story is that you can't pick a favorite chapter to go back and read after you've finished - there's far too much to choose from! HONESTLY. IT IS A MUST READ. I only wish the author would do a 'season five.' [3]
- Aria did write Doctor Who Season Five, a different virtual season, the following year. This work was not a sequel to season four. Aria herself explained, "The s4 project was a fix-it for Last of the Time Lords; this is my fix-it for Real Season Four, and Journey's End particularly, and will more or less chronologically follow that ending."
References
- ^ Ultimate Doctor/Master reclist by Tumblr user Track-three, 2018
- ^ DoctorMaster-recs post, Tumblr, 2015
- ^ Fic recs by LJ user justsleepwalkin, last updated 2010.