The Taking of Planet 5

[kindkit]

I finished re-reading The Taking of Planet 5 tonight (yes, I am re-reading the EDAs at quite a pace). I liked it much better the second time around, although I'm still not sure I understood all the plot. There's a lot of quite funny writing as well as some geeky sff allusions (e.g. the Doctor considering time as a helix of semi-precious stones), and lovely little details like the Doctor's fictionalized adventures being at the center of a samizdat-fuelled personality cult in wartorn future Gallifrey.

But mostly, there's characterization. Oh, such gorgeous characterization for the Doctor (his craptastic manual TARDIS controls as a deliberate attempt to give his TARDIS free will!) and Compassion (I increasingly love her blunt practicality, and a spinoff series in which she and Hume/Homunculette went off to have amoral adventures together would've been amazing) and of course Fitz. Reading Planet 5 right after Interference (I skipped The Blue Angel because I've re-read it recently and because it doesn't deal much with what happened in Interference) makes it crystal clear how much Fitz has been affected by his separation from the Doctor and his time as Kode. He's struggling to define himself, to remember and re-create himself, in a way that's different from his previous playacting. I love the moment at the end when he chooses to spacewalk not "because he had to save face, because he wanted to be the kind of man who didn't know fear," but just because he wants to save the Doctor. "If he didn't go, the Doctor was going to die." Fitz experiences it as joy, as liberation, and while he doesn't keep that absence of self-consciousness in future books, it's fascinating that he feels most authentic in a moment when he has in some sense doubly lost his own identity, first through the events of Interference and then, arguably, through a newly selfless devotion to the Doctor.

There's also been a major shift in the Doctor and Fitz's relationship. It's much closer now than it used to be, partly because of Sam's absence, partly because new!Fitz has explicitly chosen the Doctor and the Doctor has chosen him, and partly, perhaps, because of the way Fitz was reconstructed in the Remembrance Tank. For all that Fitz is now, in some ways, the Doctor's creation, their relationship is much more equal, with a lot of bickering both affectionate and tetchy, and with the Doctor genuinely trying to include Fitz and make sure he understands what's going on, and listening to what Fitz has to say. And of course Fitz rescues the Doctor at the end, yay!! The Doctor, for his part, is coming to depend on Fitz emotionally:

The Doctor watched the central column rise and fall. Fitz had wandered off into the depths of the ship, to have a long bath, then retire to bed. He had earned it, and the Doctor would let him sleep for a good twelve hours before he even considered waking him.

This is partly the Doctor making allowances for human frailty, but I also read it as the Doctor counting the hours before he can have Fitz's company again, and patting himself on the back for not being too demanding. (In my head, this eventually--by no means immediately--turns into a thing where the Doctor sometimes comes into Fitz's room while Fitz sleeps and just sits there for a while, because he gets lonely. Fitz is slightly creeped out the first time this happens but quickly grows to accept it. To like it, in fact, although he doesn't always admit that to himself.)

In conclusion: Fitz and the Doctor are in love now the EDAs make so much more emotional sense if you read them in order! Who'd've thought it?