Fanfic / You Are Not Alone

"You're not even human! You're a homosexual alien from outer space!"

—Sam Tyler, not realizing he's also describing himself.

An extremely lengthy Doctor Who fan fic on FanFiction.Net and Archive of Our Own centering around Sam Tyler (no, not that one), a completely normal guy who finds himself the Doctor's new companion. The two travel together for a long time, becoming best friends and slowly, lovers. Sam suffers from dreams and visions that are, unbeknownst to him, memories of his previous life as a Time Lord. More specifically, as the Doctor's childhood best friend and later on arch nemesis, the Master, who wiped his own memory after the Time War and assumed a human life on Earth. It's only a matter of time until Sam rediscovers who he is, which will only mean trouble and heartache for the Doctor.

The fan fic was started in January of 2014 by FF.net user IAmTheRedLady (and later cross-posted to Archive of Our Own) and was finished on Christmas Day 2019 at a whopping 97 chapters. It is essentially a comprehensive re-write of the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, with Sam in place of Rose Tyler, beginning with the events of "Rose" and ending with "The End of Time", with an epilogue taking place over some of the episodes in the Steven Moffat era. It is over 200,000 words long.

• Read on AO3 (this is considered the better version, as there are less typos, a lack of annoying author's notes, and extra content not included in the FF.net version)
• Read on FF.net (this is basically the beta version, but it does contain some of the author's thoughts while writing the story, if one is interested in that sort of thing)

This fan work includes examples of:

• All the Good Men Are Gay: Rose says this when Sam tells her that the Doctor is gay.
• Amicable Exes: It takes Sam and Annie awhile to get to being this after Sam essentially leaves her for the Doctor, but they part on relatively good terms.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Sam and the Master couldn't be more different. So different that the Master immediately burns his street clothes and gets a haircut.
• Berserk Button:
  • When Sam becomes hurt during the encounter with the Racnoss, the Doctor responds with setting the whole facility on fire and then flooding it with water (even though the Racnoss actually had nothing to do with Sam fainting).
  • When the Master's personality is finally released from the fobwatch, he's furious that his human self spent all this time as the Doctor's pet...and proceeds to do some pretty nasty things to the Doctor and the Earth's people.
  • The Master HATES it when the Doctor tells him he forgives him.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • Sam and the Doctor have two, one when the Doctor saves Sam from being sucked into the Void between universes, and when Sam finally admits his feelings to the Doctor after he puts away the Family.
  • The Doctor and the Master FINALLY get this when Rassilon's Evil Plan is revealed and it turns out the Master's evilness was never his fault at all.
• Book Ends: Chapter 5 begins with a young Doctor promising a young Master to take him with him when he leaves Gallifrey to explore the universe, and the chapter ends with Sam running away with the Doctor.
• Call-Back: The Master leaves a bomb in Martha's flat for the Doctor to find. The first time Sam and the Doctor met, the Doctor blew up his place of employment with a bomb.
• Camp Gay: The Master is guilty of this. He acts pretty flamboyant (especially when it comes to his Villainous Crush on the Doctor), whereas his human self counts as more of a Straight Gay.
• Closet Key: The Doctor, for Sam (but if the Doctor is the key to Sam's closet, then Jack Harkness is at least a lockpick).
• Completed Fic: After nearly six years, 97 chapters, and over 200,000 words...yes. It is done.
• Death of Personality: The Doctor repeatedly refers to Sam becoming the Master as Sam's "death".
• Detect Evil: The TARDIS senses that Sam is secretly the Master and is constantly shocking him when he gets too close to her controls, even though Sam is actually quite nice and sweet.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue skims the entire Eleventh Doctor run, which spans the course of several centuries and shows the Doctor and the Master finally reuniting when the Doctor's coming to the end of his eleventh incarnation.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Sam Tyler's counterpart from the Alternate Universe, Harry Saxon, who has been pretty gone on the Doctor up until this point, gets awkwardly shoved together with the Doctor's clone by the Doctor. Harry tries to rationalize the situation by saying that just because Tentoo looks just like the Doctor doesn't mean he IS the Doctor, so he can't be expected to just automatically have feelings for him...only to immediately make out with him.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Sam is pretty ineffective most of the time, but when he absorbs the heart of the TARDIS, he briefly becomes the most powerful force in creation.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Jack Harkness is almost hot enough to make Sam forget that he's straight (this is before he admits to himself that he's really bisexual.)
• Everyone Can See It: Anyone who spends more than five seconds with the Doctor and Sam immediately clock them as a couple (even though they're Just Friends...for now).
• Fake Memories: Sam Tyler's entire identity is a lie, as is "John Smith's" when the Doctor is forced to hide from the Family.
• The Glomp: Sam and the Doctor are prone to this upon being reunited after being separated from each other by enemy forces, or when one of them was in potential mortal danger and they thought they would never see each other again. Sam's a hugger by nature, but his embraces with the Doctor are especially charged because of their simmering romantic tension.
• Good with Numbers: Sam is able to do complicated maths in his head at lightning fast speed when the Doctor is trying to figure out the code to a door on a spaceship (probably due to his manifesting Time Lord identity).
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Sam, constantly.
• Interspecies Romance: Averted with Sam and the Doctor, as Sam is also a Time Lord, as it turns out.
• Late Coming Out: Sam is estimated to be in his mid-thirties, and has identified as straight all his life...until he meets the Doctor. (Although, Sam's "life" is a total construction to mask his real identity, so who even knows?)
• Long Game:
  • The plot: during the Time War, Rassilon and the Time Lord Council came up with an elaborate plot to turn the Master into their perfect warrior. This involved torture and reconditioning, as well as manipulating the Master's entire life so he would be driven away from the Doctor and turn evil.
  • But also the story itself: the author knew from pretty much chapter 3 that Rassilon was the mastermind behind everything, and that his machinations were what originally drove the Doctor and the Master apart. This was revealed about 90 chapters later.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Subverted. Sam is described as a "shaggy mop."
• Love Confessor: Technically, Sam confesses his love for the Doctor to the Doctor...it's just that in that moment, the Doctor is human schoolteacher John Smith. (Don't worry, once he goes back to being a Time Lord, the Doctor remembers everything.)
• Love Triangle: Sam, Annie, and the Doctor. Sam and Annie are a loving couple in the beginning, but Sam quickly falls for the Doctor and running off with him, leaving poor Annie to pine (until she meets a new guy and gets Put on a Bus).
• Love Will Lead You Back: The Doctor and the Master always find each other again, eventually.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: The Master, in spades. Sam prefers casual street clothing, like band t-shirts and hoodies, but upon becoming the Master, he quickly discards his lower class duds for a designer suit. Black, of course.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Sam knows that the Doctor is literally hundreds of years older than him, and will live on well past the end of his short human life. It's part of the reason he's so gunshy about starting a real relationship with the Doctor. Oh, if only he were a Time Lord as well...
• Motifs: In the Shakespeare episode chapters, appropriate quotes about love by the Bard himself are used for transitional breaks, as a Shout-Out to Shakespeare (only to be expected).
• No Bisexuals: Subverted. Sam tends to classify pretty much everyone as either straight or gay, before finally admitting he's bi. (The Master himself is pansexual, or rather, Doctor-sexual.)
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: After Sam turns into the Master, the entire tone of the story changes. Even the point of view changes from Sam's to the Doctor's.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Donna gets one of these when she realizes her fiance never intended to really marry her, has just been using her, and has been in league with a giant alien spider this whole time.
  • Jack also gets one when the Doctor admits to having abandoned him because of his Fantastic Racism.
• Psychic Powers: Sam has somewhat vague psychic ability, more than the average human (because he is secretly a Time Lord).
• Put on a Bus: This happens to Annie when she decides to leave her universe to live in Pete Tyler's World with Mickey Smith which turns out to be part of the Master's master plan to get rid of everyone who's remotely connected to his human self so he can run for Prime Minister.
  • Tentoo is also a victim of this, as the Doctor pawns him off on Sam's alternate self from the other dimension.
• Reincarnation Romance: The Doctor and the Master. They've been in love since they were in school together as young people, and their (admittedly tumultuous) love for each other has never gone away. Even when the Master is human and has no memory of his past lives, the Doctor falls for him anyway.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: When Sam and the Doctor finally consummate their relationship, the prose fades to black, as the author wanted younger fan fic readers to be able to enjoy their work (that, and FF.net isn't as friendly to adult content as Archive of Our Own).
• Shipper on Deck: Donna is absolutely this for Sam and the Doctor. Well honestly, MOST characters are this for Sam and the Doctor, but Donna is easily the most outspoken about it.
• Ship Sinking: RIP to readers who thought Doctor/Sam was endgame.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sam Tyler, his girlfriend, his co-workers, even the name of the store he works in, are all references to Life on Mars (2006), which itself is a British TV show about time travel and stars John Simm, even though the creator maintains that the story is not a crossover.
  • Sam and his friend Jimmy Stone were members of a British garage band called Driveshaft.
  • Sam is dumbfounded when Jack comes back to life, saying, "I don't get it. He was dead. Stone dead. He was an…ex-Jack!"
• Significant Anagram: The Master has a history of hiding his name in plain sight. Rearrange the letters in "Sam Tyler" and you get...masterly. When the Doctor finally realizes it, he can't BELIEVE he didn't see it before.
• So Happy Together: After finally getting together after ages of pining, the Doctor and Sam are still in their honeymoon phase when Sam turns back into the Master.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Sam is brought to tears at the realization that he's been a Time Lord all along. It's a stark contrast to his more stoic acceptance of his real nature earlier in the story, before his mind is conveniently wiped.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Sam and the Doctor are OOZING with this. It takes them over 50 chapters to finally do the Do.
• Walking Spoiler: From the very first chapter, Sam experiences the Master's memories. It should come as no surprise to the reader that he was actually the Master all along.
• Went Crazy When They Left: When the Doctor seemingly runs away and abandons the Master during their boyhood, it's a catalyst for the Master's evilness to emerge.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sam, when he finds out that the Doctor plans to murder the last living Dalek (even though he later wipes an entire Dalek fleet from existence with his mind).