me, reading aloud a post i just saw on a Queen fanblog: okay but Aziraphale and Crowley are ‘car friend/gay who can’t drive’ solidarity
my roommate, Amias: bold of you to say Crowley can drive
me: him having a car is literally critical to the plot of the book
Amias: doesn’t mean he can drive.
me: are you saying Crowley’s belief that he can drive is the only reason he can?
Amias: yes that’s exactly what i’m saying.
me: if he suddenly was deprived of occult powers and got into a car he’d be like “what the fuck is this”? that’s what you’re saying?
Amias: yes!! look, he goes 110 miles an hour in the middle of London and things rearrange themselves around him, he couldn’t pass a traffic test if his life depended on it. crowley can’t actually drive he’s just doing magic constantly
Ok so I had an epiphany the other night and I’m pretty much 100% certain I know what the mysterious creature in Midnight was. But first off, let’s review what we know about the Midnight entity.
It was able to survive at least in some form on the surface of the planet where the x-tonic radiation vaporized any living thing in split seconds.
It communicated by repeating what the people in the transport were saying, first with a lag-time, then instantaneously.
It was able to inhabit the body of a human.
It was able to take over the mind of the Doctor.
There was something about the transport that it was drawn to, but it had never attacked a transport previously.
So that’s what we know, and it’s not much to go on. But there is one significant other entity in the Doctor Who canon who exhibits all these traits. Ready for it?
The Midnight Entity is a Tardis.
If a Tardis were somehow to crash onto the surface of Midnight, one could assume that the x-tonic radiation would effect it in the same way as it would any other living creature, vaporizing it instantly. However, the interior of the ship exists on a different dimension than the exterior so we can safely assume that only the exterior would be destroyed, while the interior was preserved. Without a physical exterior however, a Tardis would loose the ability to materialize in another location, essentially trapping it both on, and equally not on the planet.
Aside from It’s human form in “The Doctor’s Wife” we never hear the Tardis speak directly. However, this is not completely true, in another sense we nearly always are hearing the Tardis speak… through the translation matrix. Translation, a Tardis’ main form of communication, is in essence, simply listening to what someone says and repeating it after them. Typically this is done in another language, however, if the Doctor’s Tardis was already translating instantly we wouldn’t hear this, instead it would just sound like an echo. As the Midnight Entity, superseded the link of the Doctor’s Tardis, we would lose the echo first of the other passengers, then of the Doctor. Once the mental link to the Doctor is fully established the translation would become instantaneous, however since the entity is still inhabiting a physical body it would be physically voicing the words as well.
In the Doctor’s Wife, we see that it is possible for a Tardis to inhabit the body of a human.
We know that a Timelord has a mental link that enables him to pilot a Tardis. However, a Tardis is an incredibly powerful entity and one would assume that were it’s motivations malicious, or were it particularly desperate, the same link could be taken advantage of to enable a Tardis to essentially “pilot” a Timelord. In fact, it’s hard to imagine any creature besides a Tardis, having that sort of power.
So under the circumstances I’ve described, a trapped, and damaged Tardis would need two things to escape the Midnight planet. Firstly, it would need an external hull that could withstand the x-tonic radiation. This it found in the transport ship itself. However, there would have been no point in attacking any previous transports until it found the second thing it needed to escape, a Timelord to pilot it. In this light all the creatures actions make sense. The first thing it does is remove the driver’s cabin, because it needs to sever the shuttle controls in order to replace them with itself. Secondly, it finds a way to get it’s consciousness inside the cabin, it does this by taking over Sky’s body. Next it forges a mental link with the Timelord, this process is complicated by the fact that he is already linked to another Tardis. Once that is done, the entity would need to get the Timelord out of the transport and into it’s own interior. I believe that while the exterior of the entity Tardis was lost, there would still be a non-physical portal of some sort to the interior. This would be the shadow the Mechanic sees on the surface of the planet. The if the entity could convince the crew to throw the Doctor out of the transport, then it could line it’s portal up with the door so that they were essentially throwing him into the ship’s interior. Once that was done, then the final step would have been to take on the outer hull of the transport and dematerialize out of there. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Anyway, so there you have it. The Midnight Entity is a Tardis.
Absolutely brilliant. Also, somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Midnight is the only episode of New Who to not feature the Doctor’s TARDIS at all. The Doctor frequently gets separated from his ship, but here we never even see it in the first place (or at the episode’s end). The lack of the conventional narrative framing in this episode that shots of the TARDIS usually provide adds to Midnight’s general eerieness – but I am completely on board with the suggestion that its place has been usurped by another more malevolent model.
I just realized that Clark Kent probably works at the Daily Planet because it means he and his super-senses are planted right in the middle of a bunch of investigative journalists all day long. He probably knows more about Metropolis’ corruption and abuses of power than anyone else in the world, just by virtue of existing in the Daily Planet’s vicinity.
I imagine also that he works there for the reverse reason. Think about all the things he knows about the people in positions of power in the city that Really Should be made known to the public, but he can’t figure out a way to legitimately excuse having that knowledge? Well, all he has to do is drop a hint of a thread in the lap of someone like Lois Lane and his coworkers and friends will be on it like bloodhounds, with a firm air of legitimacy that he himself would never, ever have. Because honestly? Clark Kent probably knows that “I heard about it with my magic alien hearing” isn’t and SHOULDN’T be admissible in a court of law or public opinion. But aiming some good old fashioned investigative journalists in the most competitive news organisation in the city at it? Perfectly legitimate.
Villain: “Hah! What are you going to do, punch me for tax evasion? Lock me up for conspiracy? With what court-admissible evidence? Admit it Superman, there’s nothing you can do here.”
Superman: “Guess not.”
Later, Clark Kent at the Daily Planet watching his colleagues work: “My god, they’re like bureaucratic piranhas. They went through his entire IRS filings for the last eight quarters in thirty minutes flat.”
i mean, canonically it’s so he’ll have a reason to be on the scene whenever something is happening, and if it requires super-help he can duck around the corner and do a quick change. but in the era of internet and smart phones, he could just set up a bunch of google alerts or whatever. so the secondary purpose of being in the middle of all the information is more primary now.
Concept: Kirk likes memes (because ofc he does). Spock tries to communicate with him through memes. Spock doesn’t actually understand it and now the crew creates Enterprise specific memes based on Spock’s meme fails.
Clark Kent is not a coward, he just hates Superman. The reason he runs off every time disaster occurs is cause he knows Superman will be there soon and he can’t stand the guy.
Oh lord, the idea of a running gag of Clark having to come up with more and more elaborate reasons to hate the most beloved guy on Earth would be comedy gold.
“I loaned him thirty four bucks three weeks ago and he STILL hasn’t paid me back”
Some headcanons because I don’t really have the TIME to write an entire series but I DO have the time to rhapsodize about my Love for this concept.
So the new girl’s name is Chihiro and she’s weird and charming and friendly and fearless. She always wears a lucky purple hairtie and she stops to bow to every shrine she comes across and she takes her time writing her name, every kanji clear and precise and unmistakable. She goes from new to popular in about a week and her teachers tell her parents that their daughter has a natural gift for making friends, open and cheerful with anyone who’s civil to her. She doesn’t have answers for anyone about those two months that her family was just kind of missing, but other than that she’s an open book.
Chihiro is known for being open, even.
So when a girl in a salmon uniform shows up at the school looking for her sister Sen, a year after Chihiro’s arrival, and Chihiro launches herself into the stranger’s arms with a whoop of delight, everyone is…a little lost.
Chihiro’s sister is scary. One of the older boys hit on her and she broke his wrist. Chihiro told her to behave and her sister waved a hand and said, “Relax, Sen, he had it coming.” She moves like a bulldozer–if you’re in her way, your choices are to get out of it or get flattened. Within the day, it’s been firmly established that Lin, whoever the hell she is, is some kind of thug. She comes by every few months and brings Chihiro brief letters from “Young Master Haku” and from “Granny” and “the boilerman” and everyone walks a little warier around Chihiro because her sister is clearly a yanki and not to be toyed with. Chihiro’s an easygoing person, but honestly Lin absolutely radiates “they’ll never find the body” and it handily resolves any issues that Chihiro might otherwise have.
When Chihiro is fifteen she leads an ecological initiative that is…absolutely absurdly successful, largely because she looked around at the other students in her class and said “This is something I really care about, who wants to help me” and every hand went up. Probably half of them actually care about the environment, and half of them are doing it to cover their community service requirement. Half of them are hoping to woo Absurdly Charming Local Student Ogino Chihiro over the next few months. There is some overlap between these groups.
Over one year, they raise an astonishing amount of money to contribute to a campaign to tear down some abandoned apartments in Chihiro’s old town and restore a river, and at the celebration they throw at the end of it all, she gets up and speaks and smiles and about three quarters of her class sighs in unison.
“I never expected to raise this much, thank you all so much for your help,” Absurdly Charming Local Student Ogino Chihiro says, beaming.
“Oh no,” her classmates say, dismayed. Turns out finishing the project means being done with weekly meetings led by Chihiro.
Lin needles Chihiro about Young Master Haku and Chihiro blushes furiously every time and changes the subject to how her grandfather is doing.
The things that are Known about Chihiro’s grandfather are as follows:
Generally known as “the Boilerman”
Has a great many pets, all called “Sootball”
Likes Chihiro very much
Does not like Lin nearly as much
Smuggled Chihiro out of her great aunt’s house once
Does not like blood on his walls
Once hid Young Master Haku for an entire night, possibly related to the blood situation
There are some serious concerns about what the Boilerman does and why he has such strict opinions about blood on his walls.
The next year, Chihiro’s parents are out of town on Parents’ Day, which is how everyone meets the Boilerman and also Granny, who do not seem to be married and bicker constantly about everything except Chihiro and Granny’s sister, who seems to be Lin’s boss and also the great aunt who necessitated the smuggling. Granny mutters about Chihiro’s river fundraiser and Chihiro scolds her for almost killing someone, apparently Young Master Haku, and Granny scoffs that “he was fine” while the Boilerman complains about blood on his walls. Chihiro asks after an old friend and Granny says “Well we almost had bandits but he took care of them and we won’t have to worry about that anymore” and goes on to praise this person’s spinning.
So, everyone concludes, they’re terrifying.
By the time Young Master Haku actually shows up, Chihiro is seventeen and she’s managed to convince the school to send her whole class to see the un-damming of the Kohaku River, and her class has pretty soundly hashed out what’s up. It goes like this:
Chihiro’s great aunt runs a yakuza clan and Young Master Haku is her heir and Lin is one of his direct underlings, and after a falling out Granny and Great-Aunt split the clan and now hate each other, and the Boilerman works for Great-Aunt and saved Young Master Haku’s life after Granny tried to bump him off to put Chihiro in his place.
Chihiro seems pretty well out of the family business, though, and went and fell in love with the guy she was supposed to be replacing, and although Great-Aunt doesn’t care for Chihiro as much as the rest, her son likes her and her heir likes her and so does everyone else, so the two clans play nicely for Chihiro’s sake.
Young Master Haku, once he shows up, is almost as terrifying as Lin in his coolly remote way, but he obviously dotes on Chihiro and she wears river pearl earrings that are probably worth more money than anything else she owns and grins, silly with glee, whenever she sees him.
No one tries to get Absurdly Charming Local Yakuza Daughter Ogino Chihiro to go out with them anymore because can you fucking imagine.
I like to picture Sora as crafty. Like he took woodshop, he would make things with/for his mom.
Made his own fishing nets, spears, maybe even his own boat for going to the island!
Those masks and lil robot, and especially the mini ship with the dolls.
And as he traversed worlds, he would continue to make little things. Any down time they had, grab a hunk of wood and carve something in the world around him that inspired him.
He was never much of a buyer, so he would make gifts.
Before leaving for the next world, if he made a friend, he’d give what he made to them.
It could anywhere between a miniature of them, or related to their journey. Their connection.
As he continues, he gets better and more intricate.
If he visits the same world again, he’d gift them something he had been working on because he was thinking of them.
Donald and Goofy would encourage it, though Donald would certainly make sure he only used materials familiar in that world for his gifts. You know. “Order”.
So even though he has connections through friendship, a tiny piece of him is everywhere he has ever been, even if there wasnt anyone to gift it to, he gave it to the world itself.
DarkestElemental616 