FANFICCER'S FRIEND - "ACE & THE CURATOR"

I consider publicity pictures and promotional photos to be valid sources of inspiration for fan fiction and can be used to illustrate the stories which they inspired.

Screencaps, on the other hand, wouldn’t be acceptable on Toobworld terms.  Those are moments which have already happened in the Toobworld timeline, frozen in Time.

This is the screencap which I always use as an example of why they should never be used to represent other characters.  Seen here are Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo and Gene Barry as Dr. Flemming in the first pilot movie for the TV series, “Prescription: Murder”.

That is all that it could be.  It can’t be re-used as an example of Daniel J. O’Brien (‘Trials of O’Brien’) with Captain Amos Burke (‘Burke’s Law’); we can’t even claim that it could be Lt. Columbo with his boss, Captain Burke, when they met to talk about a case at the LAPD’s Homicide Division.

So with that in mind, I present to you this publicity photo from 1990 which shows Tom Baker and Sophie Aldred on a museum exhibit celebrating ‘Doctor Who’.

Their characters – the Fourth Incarnation of the Doctor and Dorothy “Ace” McShane, respectively – never met in the course of the series.  In fact, she didn’t enter the Doctor’s life until several regenerations later.  (Ace was the last Companion to the Doctor – in his Seventh Incarnation – during the original run of the series.)  

The main O’Bstacle would be that the Fourth Incarnation should be time-locked to look as he did when he was on the show from 1974-1981.  As he appeared here from nine years later, Tom Baker looks more like the character he played in an episode of ‘Miss Marple’.

But!  This photo could be the inspiration for a fanfic adventure for the Curator teaming up with Ace, one year after we last saw her in Toobworld (“Survival”), and 23 years before we officially met the Curator at the end of the 50th anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor''.

What that adventure could be is not for my conjectures.  The point of the Fanficcer's Friend feature during the "Who's On First?" blogAthon is to provide my readers (hopefully, there are a few) with inspiration to create those adventures themselves.

I will point out as a suggestion that the Curator's TARDIS chose as "her" holographic decor the console as it was best remembered from the series original run.  Might be good for an O'Bservation by Ace?

I just ask that if you do come up with a story based on this photo, you might send me a copy to read.  (I always ask with each "Fanficcer's Friend", no matter the show, but so far I have yet to see any returns....)

It’s sort of comforting to see that some future incarnation of the Doctor took on the task of being the curator for the Under-Gallery at a younger age than we first met him, before he supposedly gave up gallivanting across the galaxies.  (At least, that’s according to sources outside the Toobworld canon, which is anything telecast in any of the TV dimensions.)