Pensioners
Introduction AND DISCLAIMERS |
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It's been almost five years since I've been able to write a Doctor Who story.
My fan fiction reached its limited height of popularity in the late 1990's, when my site averaged about 1,000 hits per month. But after I started to act as an advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse from Christian Fundamentalist clergy, my mind changed. My ability to think of stories, and to stay focused enough to write, evaporated over about 18 months and then disappeared entirely. The psychologist I consult on church abuse cases told me that the brain under stress shuts down certain areas in order to keep blood flowing in "emergency zone" areas, and as I was constantly embroiled in controversy and was frequently accused of outrageous, unlikely, but horrible sins as I documented abuse cases, I was likely operating in that type of partial shut down mode.
I started Pensioners as my own story to please myself. Some days I could write only one line. There were weeks when the story seemed to have died in my mind. But I wanted to keep trying. I didn't want to lose the habit of story writing entirely. But Pensioners, ultimately, is a story unlike my previous. It lacks action. It relies heavily upon my previous stories for reference, and it is definitely, openly Christian. I do not think it is as good, in terms of being a Doctor Who story, as its predecessors. I do think it is a valuable story about mercy and suffering and the way things work out.
Prerequisites
If Third Doctor fans have recommended my website to you, please do not start with this story. For one thing, the Doctor never appears. This story is about life after the Doctor, as his former friends recover from his greatest blunder, a mistake he never even knew he made (we assume).
Next, the only way you'll get this story is to first read Insiders, which I think is one of my best stories ever. If you like Insiders, please return here. If you don't like Insiders, I will never please you. But I guarantee, you will not "get" this story at all without first reading Insiders.
Finally, this story, unlike my other Doctor Who canon, is openly Christian. No, nobody "gets saved," but the main characters endorse and refer to a clearly Christian outlook, and mty POV is that as they age (well past 100), they convert (or, in the Brig's case, remain in the faith). The rest of my canon, as one reviewer noted, is Christian but not to the point of altering characters or the look and feel of the original Third Doctor era. When this reviewer commented upon the latent Christian outlook in my previous Who fiction, several readers wrote to say they had never noticed a distinctly Christian slant, which was fine with me. But believe me, you will notice a Christian slant in this story. So if that offends you, go no further.
So, On With The Show...
It's never wise to refer too much to yourself, nor to try to talk readers out of reading your story, so enough said.
Click here for Pensioners
Click here for Episode
One
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to go to back to Jeri's Dr. Who Fiction page
mailto:whofic@jeriwho.net
I live for feedback and welcome criticism on my writing and story
development.