PATRICK TROUGHTON @ PEBBLE MILL

GAME OF THE NAME: SPARROW & STEED

When the 'Leverage' crew pulled off "The White Rabbit Job", Sophie Devereaux assumed the alias of "Sally Sparrow". It's a unique name, but not so unique that it doesn't already exist in Earth Prime-Time.

Sally Sparrow is a young woman in London who runs a DVD shoppe with her best friend's brother, Lawrence Nightingale. In 2007, she ran afoul of an alien race, deadly assassins known as the Weeping Angels. This eventually brought her into contact with a Gallifreyan Time Lord known as "The Doctor".

But this doesn't mean that Sophie was making a reference to 'Doctor Who' and its episode "Blink". How could she? This is the Toobworld Dynamic, where Sophie and Sally should be sharing the same TV dimension.

As such, I'm going to suggest that Sophie used that name because she actually knows Sally Sparrow.

If I say that they grew up together, I don't mean that they were the same age. I think they grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools, but there's nearly a full generation span between them in age. I think it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble that Sophie Devereaux - whatever her real name is - grew up with Sally's Mom (whoever she may be.)

That Sophie bandied about Sally's name so cavalierly doesn't seem to have been a concern. This is probably due to her "mark" thinking that he was seeing her in a dream. There was no fear that he'd try to investigate Sally Sparrow. If anything, he'd try learn the dream significance of her name.

As you can see from the above Tumblr gif, Sophie also bestowed an alias on one of her partners, "Mr. Steed".

Mr. Steed - at least for the Trueniverse audience - is nothing more than a tip o' the bowler to John Steed, Patrick Macnee's character with whom he is most identified since the early 1960's and into the late 1970's. Perhaps even into the 1980's - if "John Steed" was just a cover identity for the man who would eventually be in charge of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City - Sir John Raleigh. (Macnee played that role in the 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' TV reunion movie.

It's my contention that Sophie knew of top professional John Steed as well. In this case, she worked with him at some point in the 1980's as his current "talented amateur". And it was while she was in league with Steed that Sophie learned many of the tricks that made her such a great grifter later on.....

BCnU!

THE TROUGHTON YEARS

LADY MOLLY & THE LIZARD LADY

Unlike his assistant, Dr. Simeon was not fooled by the Doctor showing up at the Great Intelligence Institute in the garb of Sherlock Holmes.  He sneered that Holmes was nothing more than a fictional character in the Strand, created by Dr. Doyle.

This is the thinking that left many people confused back in the Victorian era.  Because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's name was attached to the stories, they just assumed that it was all made up.  But Dr. Watson wrote the stories and Conan Doyle was the literary agent.  That his name would be so prominently attached was obviously a clerical error at the Strand, but one which Sherlock Holmes perpetuated so that he might be left alone to concentrate on his work.

Earlier, Dr. Simeon also suggested to Lady Vastra and Jenny Flint that Conan Doyle based many of the adventures of Holmes and Watson on "the Veiled Detective" and her "fatuous companion".  Again, that's a mistaken belief on the part of Simeon as it was with so many of the period.  However, he did make suggestions to Watson to change the details in order to protect innocent (a practice continued with 'Dragnet').  As we saw when Conan Doyle visited Toronto in 1895, he planned to suggest that the climax of "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" take place on the moors rather than at the edge of a cliff.

If anybody used the cases of Lady Vastra and Jenny for inspiration, it would have been Baroness Orczy.  Having already chronicled the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel from earlier in the 19th Century, the Baroness wrote a series of short stories about Lady Molly of Scotland Yard and her close female associate.  Unlike the situation between Vastra and Jenny, Lady Molly and Mary Granard were just crime-fighting companions.  (Lady Molly had a husband who had been framed for murder.)

Lady Molly is a resident of Earth Prime-Time as well, so the Baroness didn't create the character but merely chronicled a dozen of her cases.  However, it could be that some of those were based on what happened to Vastra and Jenny instead.  (It just was easier to claim that the protagonists were both human females working together rather than a lizard woman from the dawn of Time and her human female lover......)

BCnU! 

A TRIBUTE TO THE SECOND DOCTOR

THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY: THE LATIMERS

One of the featured characters in "The Snowmen" was Captain Latimer, father of Francesca and Digby.

The story took place in 1892, approximately. So I'm thinking it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that the Captain remarried a few years after the events of the Christmas special and had another son, named Timothy. Timothy was sent away to the Farringham School for Boys in the Norfolk area and had his own encounter with the Doctor in 1913.

If for some reason this theory of "relateeveety" doesn't work, it could still be that Tim was the nephew of Captain Latimer.

BCnU!

THE RETURN OF IAN CHESTERTON

I consider this to not only be canon, but proof that Ian Chesterton is a serlinguist in Toobworld....

And it counts towards Ian Chesterton's eventual induction into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

William Russell is still alive and from the looks of this video, he seems hale and hearty. So I'm hoping that at some point in the fiftieth anniversary of 'Doctor Who' during 2013, we'll see "Sir Ian of Jaffa" return once more to the show!

BCnU!

A TIP O' THE DEERSTALKER

When the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor first confronted Dr. Walter Simeon in the Christmas special "The Snowmen", he tried to pass himself off as Sherlock Holmes.

It's my contention that the costume he was wearing was part of the wardrobe which the Fourth Incarnation of the Doctor brought back with him from Evil Toobworld where he resided for a few years while he took the place of Sherlock Holmes (who had perished at some point before he ever met John Watson.) The Fourth Doctor would wear one of those outfits himself in Earth Prime-Time while investigating "The Talons Of Weng-Chiang" case......

I wrote about that missing period in the Fourth Doctor's life here.

BCnU!

"DOCTOR WHO" & "BACK TO THE FUTURE" - THE TRAILER

My thanks to Kelvington.....

DOC BROWN MEETS THE DOCTOR

The many Facebook pages about 'Doctor Who' have been a gold mine for me when it comes to mash-ups and photoshopped pictures of the Doctor, in situations that have never been - nor probably ever will be - found in the TV series.

Here's a good example - a series, and probably not connected, of pictures suggesting that 'Doctor Who' co-exists with "Back To The Future".

Although the original movie trilogy does exist in the Cineverse, the Toobworld Dynamic has its own televersion of Doc Brown, from the live action intros to the Tooniverse adaptation of the characters from those movies.  So it is possible that Doc and the Doctor could have interacted in a shared adventure.

Based on just these pictures, it would have been an adventure in which Doc encountered two incarnations of the Doctor - Tennant's Tenth and Smith's Eleventh, a perfect tale to be told during the fiftieth anniversary.

Here's how I think it could play out - because of the chance encounter between the TARDIS and the Time DeLorean at some point at the beginning of the new millennium, a later anomaly in the time-stream was created.  And it took the next incarnation of the Doctor to make things right, with the help of Doc Brown.

Here's an idea for a further complication: at some point during the story, the two time travellers had to take command of each other's time vehicle.  I'm sure the Doctor would have had no problem mastering the DeLorean, but Doc Brown would have had to wing it at the controls.  This is why I think this adventure would have needed River Song along for the ride so that she could help Doc out as his companion.  

(More Wish-Craft: the Doctor would be teamed up with the now adult Marty McFly.  And because of the Parkinson's tremors that Michael J. Fox has, they might delve into a temporal cause for his affliction.  This could be why the Doctor had to get involved with Doc Brown again.)

It's just an idea.  If there's a fanficcer out there who wants to run with that idea, feel free.  Just make sure to send me a link to your final effort(s).....

BCnU!