Gemini
is a Doctor Who Elsewhere Fic about a team of time travelers consisting of: Arachne, a Morningstar-class Sapient Ship capable of traveling through space and time; Nathan Durst, a computers expert who dabbles in mechanical engineering; Damien Mitchell, a trained soldier and the team’s tactical advisor; and Captain June Harper, a dishonorably discharged former Time Agent now on the run from charges of police brutality and serial murder.
Having been detained for trespassing on the land surrounding a secret military base, the time travelers initially try to convince their captors to release them, but Arachne soon discovers that the purpose of the base in question is to kidnap innocent victims and subject them to horrifying medical experiments for the purpose of creating super-soldiers for the war against the Daleks.
Abandoning their original plan of trying to find the fastest way out, the time travelers fight their way into the depths of the base in their search for the captives who are in the most immediate danger: Time Lords, a brother and sister cloned from the genetic code of a race long believed by time travelers to be a myth, who have been slated for life-threatening injury later that day as a test of their intended Regenerative powers.
This Fanfiction contains examples of:
- Big Damn Heroes: The Morningstar crew’s future selves arrive to break themselves out of the super-soldier facility, and the second half of the time loop reveals that an entire squadron of Shadow Proclamation cruisers have followed them back
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Shanjik (a Malmooth) sees social isolation the same way that humans see death, while the Judoon officers see changes of plan in the same way
- Charles Atlas Superpower: June Harper’s superhuman speed, strength, and hand-eye coordination are described as her simply being from the 51st Century rather than from any technological augmentation
- Combat Medic: Skeerse, the Lizard Folk nurse held captive by the super-soldier facility, eagerly treats Nathan’s injuries when the Morningstar crew commandeer the sick-bay. He then takes up arms when June Harper convinces him to join the escape plan, and reveals that before he came to work at the super-soldier facility, his home-world had been caught in the middle of the Dalek Civil War and he had fought against the Imperials and the Renegades alike
- Exposition Beam: The Shadow Proclamation squadron download Kyra’s memories of captivity so that the Judoon leadership can experience the crimes against her from her own perspective. Deconstructed in that the sheer length of Kyra’s captivity makes the download take far longer and traumatize the Judoon officers far more than it would’ve in the case of an isolated crime
- Expy: June Harper is an Extreme Omnisexual former Time Agent who goes by the title of "Captain", similarly to Captain Jack Harkness.
- Famed In-Story: The inversion is Played for Drama in that one of the things that worries June Harper at the beginning of the story is the fact that the people holding her haven’t heard of the Time Agency despite their base being built so close to a Time Rift
- Guns Akimbo: Zig-zagged, Damien tries to dual-wield a pair of handguns and misses the shots, but June Harper dual-wields high-end assault rifles and makes her shots.
- Half-Identical Twins: The last surviving Time Lord test subjects are a genetically-identical man and woman.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: June Harper pulls of numerous trick shots that Damien tries to replicate (unsuccessfully)
- Oh, Crap!: Many such moments, including Leeson finding out that Arachne knows about the mad science experiments, Shanjik and Damien finding out that Jacob poisoned Nathan, June Harper hearing the Judoon commander use her pre-Time Agency name
- Pet the Dog: June Harper becomes genuinely worried when Nathan gets shot and starts passing out, she apologizes for making Kyra witness a violent murder, and she comforts Skeerse after her prodding about his military experience makes him relive the horrors of the Dalek Civil War
- Playing with Syringes: the military want to create soldiers that can fight at the Daleks’ level. By any means necessary.
- Pop-Cultured Badass: June Harper makes multiple references to Firefly, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, and a “Taska Venkman” series; Nathan comes up with a battle tactic based on The Dark Knight; Damien discusses the entire super-spy genre when trying to comfort the First Alpha that regenerating into the Second Alpha is not going to kill the person he is now, inspiring Alpha to start calling himself “The Agent”
- Psychic Powers: Kyra gained remote mind-reading powers when she fell through a Time Rift from 21st Century Earth, and the Time Lords are capable of making psychic connections with other people through physical contact.
- Sad-Times Montage: the story opens with a montage of Kyra experiencing a variety of tortures in the super-soldier facility, losing more and more of her identity as time goes on. The last chapter reveals more details about the same experience in a second montage when the Judoon officers re-live Kyra’s captivity via memory download.
- Sailor Earth: in this story’s version of the Whoniverse, the Time Agency gives many of their agents “Captain JH” names, and the Villain Protagonist used to be one such agent before being kicked out for Police Brutality (although she still uses her Agency name instead of her original name). Nathan also brings up the legends about Time Lords taking titles that start with “The,” inspiring Alpha to rename himself “The Agent”
- Sapient Ship: Arachne, a spaceship/time ship carrying heavy cannons, black hole powered engines, and who is described by June Harper as being a huge science-fiction nerd.
- Serial-Killer Killer / Smiting Evil Feels Good: June Harper takes great pleasure in killing and maiming the people that she decides are threats to the innocent
- Soldier vs. Warrior: Damien and Arachne are just as willing to kill people as June Harper is when they or the people they are protecting are threatened, but they do not enjoy killing people the way June Harper does
- Stable Time Loop (Defied) / Timey-Wimey Ball (Invoked): It’s easier for the Daleks to change the past than it is for anybody else, so the military is trying to create super-soldiers that can change the timeline as easily as the Daleks can. It worked: during the first half of the Time Loop, the Second Alpha from the future calls his present self “Alpha” and his sister “Beta.” Later on, Alpha renames himself “The Agent,” Beta renames herself “Kathryn,” and Damien’s memories of the time loop change into the Second Agent telling his past self and sister from the get-go what their new names are going to be
- Supervillain: The Ax-Crazy serial killer Captain June Harper is capable of running 120 to 150 meters in five or six seconds, a kilometer in one minute, 10 kilometers in 15 minutes, breaks out of high-tech handcuffs through brute force, snaps another villain’s neck with one hand, and has the hand-eye coordination to pull off trick shots with her firearms that no other soldier on-screen is capable of replicating
- That Woman Is Dead: Subverted, June Harper is caught off guard by a Judoon commander knowing her original name from before she joined the Time Agency, but it turns out that she’s more worried about the changes to the timeline in general than she is about the name itself
- Token Evil Teammate: Exaggerated; the Evil Teammate is the team leader and the Good Teammates follow her lead.
- Unscrupulous Hero: Captain June Harper, vigilante serial killer
- Violence Is Disturbing: Zig-zagged, violence is shown to be exciting to June Harper and to the officer who first interrogates her, but not to anybody else
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: the officers and scientists of the super-soldier facility believe that the Daleks could eventually wipe out the universe if nobody else figures out how to change the timeline as easily as the Daleks can, and June Harper believes that the officers’ and scientists’ intentions do not justify kidnapping test subjects and torturing them with genetic experiments.
- Wet Ware CPU: Arachne’s computers are biological rather than mechanical. This is discussed by June as being the reason why Arachne should be treated as a person rather than as a thing.
