The author of the Draka/Stargate crossover fan-fiction I've been reading posts his stories in several forums beyond my main alternate history one, and I visit those when he posts updates to see what other people think or if he's dropped any hints about what the world is like beyond what we see in the text.
(Among other things, I learned that the serf concubine belonging to the alternate timeline's Bill Gates, to whom the Draka gave Citizenship for his technical skills, is actually spying on him for the Security Directorate.)
I went to one of the sites yesterday and found another thread about what would happen if the Doctor (of Doctor Who), the time-traveling Sufficiently Advanced Alien from British television, were to arrive in the Drakaverse during the Eurasian War (WWII). During the thread, someone suggested different scenarios be written in the style of different writers.
Probably the coolest response to this was done in the style of H.P. Lovecraft. Here goes:
"While like a man he was not one for his appearance contained too much of a mollusk, most especially in the eyes. They gazed out with nebulous intellect that peered into the unwelcome angles. His voice was clear, but its accent was of no mortal nation. North he said he came from. But north of where. More northerly than all the others as he walked out from his abomination of transport, that degradation of the divine that was and was not, that contained and contained not, and stood fixed amongst all of five plus five plus one dimensions.
He came upon their primitive unknowing world with alien judgments brought forth from blasphemous conclusions of the most profane logic. To him all men, negro or woman were equal, and should be made equal. For what are the differences of one bacterium to another from the perspective of the keen researcher gazing down upon them through warped lenses of worked glass, examined and dissected by their terrible minds before and without a single incision so great is the work of their taxidermist art.
Their armies made claim to all creation, but they did not yet know of the terrible forces out of time and space who had once ruled over all known spaces. He came, tall and gaunt as no man should be, dressed like one escaped from an asylum, to enforce the will of their absent gods. For he was the most honored of Yog-Sothoth, the lonely god, the Oncoming Storm."
You'll need to know about Doctor Who in order to get some of the references, like "lonely god," the crazy clothes, and "Oncoming Storm." If you know the inside jokes, it's awesome.
Here's the thread from whence it came, which includes some darker permutations like Draka armies being trapped in inescapable spheres where they suffocate or starve to death.
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=164439
For those of you needing background, here is the word of the Most Sacred Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(Doctor_Who)
I found the portrayal of the Doctor as an Eldritch Abomination in the style of Lovecraft's horrors particularly interesting, since although he looks and acts like a human being, he's an unbelievably ancient extraterrestrial. Although he's pleasant most of the time, he sometimes gets VERY nasty.
(Inflicting eternal punishments on a group of lesser aliens who sought to steal his immortality, killing an alien leader in a duel for Earth and then ruining the political career of a human leader who ordered the retreating alien ship destroyed, etc.)
481: Underworld
5 days ago
The Doctor can be extremely harsh.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of his charms.
It's inconsistent. He does some very nasty, questionable things, and then starts moralizing about Harriet Jones ordering the retreating Sycorax starship blasted with a giant laser.
ReplyDeleteNever mind that they're probably off to go enslave and terrorize some other species or the possibility some other Sycorax leader will take power, decide he isn't bound by the results of the prior leader's duel with the Doctor, and go back to Earth for revenge.
Nope--apparently humans are the real monsters, not an entire civilization of slavers like the Sycorax.
Continuing my point from your other post: I think a lot of the problems like this arise because Doctor Who is ultimately aimed at a "family" audience, whatever precisely that means, and thus can't show harsh reality all the time. It's also written by multiple writers, some of whom are willing to be dark and others who unfortunately prefer to make political points about the War on Terror or the Falklands War or whatever in a sci-fi series dealing with different issues.
ReplyDeleteA fair point.
ReplyDeleteI was mostly going for the whole "his actions and motives are incomprehensible to lesser minds" Lovecraftian thing, but your explanation provides a real-life basis.