(no subject)

Passing on a fic rec: Simple Gifts. The original link was to ffn, although after work I'll see if it's on Teaspoon.

The Doctor is convinced he ruins his companion's lives. Four people show him how wrong he is. I like this because the author picks the last companions I would have considered. But more importantly, I love it for this speech:

You're my oldest friend, Alistair, maybe my last friend. Let me get you and your wife away from this."

"No," said the Brigadier firmly.

"But you could die here!"

"I can die anywhere," the Brigadier reminded him. "I'm mortal and I'm human. You seem to enjoy forgetting that, since you've managed to know me for hundreds of years. But I'm only human, Doctor, and I'm dying every day, have been since I was born. That's our fate, just as this constant changing is yours. But I only have one death - it's mine, the only thing that is wholly mine, that no one can take from me. It's mine to spend however I choose, and if I want to use it to save the world or change it, that's my choice. I won't let you take that from me, not for any reason."

Oh, for the love of-!

Warning. Foul-mouthed ranting ahead.

The amount of sheer shit that poor Freema Agyeman has to soak up continues to astound me. The latest is an article - I'm not going give it the hits that a link would cause - speculating that she has left Torchwood "in the lurch" because the author "[does] not see how they could have rewritten the scripts and/or added a new character in the short time since she abandoned the show."

There isn't enough *headdesk* in the world for this, there really isn't.

One more time for the slow class:

There is no official confirmation that Freema is out. First of all, let's be very clear on this. Nobody in fandom, including the people posting the fandom news, knows for sure if she is in or out. There has been no official word from the BBC on the matter. (At this point, I will laugh like a hyena if she is in the miniseries and proves all of this to be much sound and fury signifying nothing.)

Second, Freema acts for a living. It's shocking how many people seem convinced that working in a video store was her "real" job and that as some Cinderella picked by Prince Davies to be lifted out of that life, she owes him eternal fealty. Like anyone who works for a living - and at a job that has low employment in general and spotty employment for even the most popular of workers - it is in Freema's best interest to weigh job offers and everything they can do for her long-term career. There are a variety of reasons why it would make sense for her to pick Law and Order over Torchwood - not that my opinion of them counts, because even if the reasons don't make sense to me they obviously are good enough for her to literally put her livelihood on the line.

Her career. Her decision. And if it's the same decision that Billie ultimately made - to leave the Whoniverse to take a different, non-children's series on ITV - why is it that of the two of them making the exact same decision, only Freema is being portrayed as a dirty rotten low-down double-dealing sidewinder?

Third, the OP seems to be more than a little fuzzy about the business side of show business. You know, the part where you don't count your actors before the contracts are signed. And that if you do, or if you get a signed contract and then something happens (hello, do you think they PLANNED for John Ritter to die?) it's time to start rewriting madly. The month before filming, the day before filming, hell, rewrites normally happen all the time during filming, so the staggering ignorance of saying that it's too late before filming even begins is... well, staggering.

Hell, all they really have to do is a one-minute search-and-replace rename of the character so Dr. Maria Johnson shows up. (They do it in Doctor Who all the damn time with companions, after all!) Take another two to replace all the mentions of the Doctor with extra scenes of Jack and Ianto pawing each other. Problem solved before the tea gets cold.

But way to go to suggest that she is not only disloyal but has outright broken contracts. Slimy framing like that is worthy of the Presidential campaign.