Eighth Doctor Adventures/Characters

The Eighth Doctor
"The Doctor didn’t even slow down. One part of his brain started madly calculating velocities and trajectories. Another part started advising him strongly against this course of action. Another part was sticking its arms out and making aeroplane noises.

The Doctor leapt from the pier. There was a moment, almost a silent moment, when he was sailing free through the air, unconnected to anything.

Then he was vaulting easily over the railing of the ship, landing smoothly on his toes on the other side. The tourists on board the boat burst into a round of applause. The Doctor broke into a smile, and gave a little bow, letting them take photos."

- Unnatural History

The one, the not-so-only. The Doctor received a lot of Character Development throughout the EDAs, making him a much more complicated person than he was in the TVM.

"Sam: ...The way he looks at certain people. Women and men. But he never acts on anything."
 * Absent-Minded Professor: Even more than usual for the Doctor.
 * Adaptational Attractiveness: He was very attractive to begin with, yet is sometimes described to sound younger, taller, and thinner than he was in the TVM.
 * Ambiguously Gay: In normal canon, he's pretty much overtly bisexual and occasionally effeminate. In the Obverse segments of The Blue Angel, he likes cooking and old movie soundtracks and his Ambiguously Jewish Mother seems to take a particular interest in his love life.
 * Bi the Way: Quite overtly so; he has implied romantic relationships with both men and women, and at least one character noticed.

""Rescuers turn up. Weapons jam. Your companions, who, if you will forgive me, don't strike me as more than usually competent, save the day. Buildings explode immediately after you find the way out. Cities fall just as the TARDIS dematerialises[...] Electrical currents short-circuit. Evil masterminds make foolish errors. If you fall out of a window, there’s something to catch you. If you’re drowning, a spar floats by. You find your way unsinged out of burning houses[...] In short, in your presence, the odds collapse.""
 * Bizarre Human Biology: The Blue Angel features an Alternate Reality Episode in which the Doctor's theoretically human. He has two hearts, no navel, and an unusual aversion to the cold. It's probably related to the fact that his mother's a mermaid.
 * Born Lucky: Discussed at surprisingly-great length by Sabbath in Camera Obscura. The Doctor apparently doesn't like to talk about it, apparently because, for one thing, Sabbath can come up with more examples than he should know and the Doctor remembers, and it also reminds him of the fact that when things go wrong for him, they tend to go disastrously wrong.

"The Doctor was standing with his eyes closed, absolutely absorbed in his playing. He looked every inch the devil's fiddler, thought Karl — his slender body carelessly slouching, long fingers flashing, aristocratic face taut with concentration, long copper-gold hair flying. His audience's appreciation was more than musical."
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: This is the Doctor we're talking about. He's a bit crazy, but he gets the job done.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: "So that's what he keeps us around for, [Sam] thought, blowing out a long cloud of smoke. He can't think in a straight line without us."
 * Combat Pragmatist: He once stuck his fingers up an opponent's nose.
 * Creepy Good: Sometimes. Anji occasionally has an Uncanny Valley reaction to him, particularly in Camera Obscura when he faints and she notices that his "muscular-skeletal frame" is unnaturally flexible. Also, his emotional responses are often a little bit off -- he's sometimes not upset by things that upset everybody else, and even when he is upset he tends not to show it. And there's the Stealth Hi Bye thing he often does, and he didn't have a shadow for a while... he even kept a couple of pet bats in the TARDIS at the beginning of the series, one of which almost scares the crap out of someone in Vampire Science.
 * The Dandy: Subverted: he dresses like Oscar Wilde on his way to a wedding and is often actually described as dandyish, but seems not to actually take much of an interest in his physical appearance: his hair is usually wild and messy, he doesn't give a damn for the effects going through hell and high water would have on all that fancy velvet and silk he wears, and he has to take others' word for it that he's good-looking, because he doesn't personally notice or care apart from having a vague sense that maybe he should be able to charm people into doing things for him.
 * Darker and Edgier
 * Deadpan Snarker: Every now and then.
 * Ditzy Genius: He understands time travel just fine, but time zones are beyond him. He commits major displays of absentmindedness on what must be an almost daily basis.
 * Elegant Classical Musician: He's apparently particularly good-looking when he plays the violin.

"‘Do you want some food? You haven’t eaten in days.’
 * Forgets to Eat: In Camera Obscura, Anji has to remind him:

‘That’s right,’ he said wonderingly, as if she’d made a point that hadn’t occurred to him. ‘You know, I bet that’s one reason I feel so bad.’"

""Someone," Compassion said, "has been watching too much Saturday-morning TV."
 * Geek: While on Earth, the Doctor became a fan of Transformers. No, really.

"There was a time when it always seemed to be Saturday when I was on Earth, and the children's programmes were excellent, if my memory doesn't cheat." He made folding motions with his hand and muttered something that sounded to Fitz like "robots in disguise". The Doctor grinned, disarmingly."

"The Doctor had sat on the high-backed chair with his feet on the console, idly flipping through Marvel Comics. It turned out he was a big X-Men fan."
 * As well as comic books:

"(Anji has just found a box of model train things) Though she had hurriedly, if somewhat guiltily, hidden this even further back in the cupboard, she suspected it was only a matter of time until the morning arrived when she couldn't cross the console room without having to step over miniature tracks and leap tiny buildings."
 * And, of all things, model trains:

"He placed his foot on the Doctor's injured leg. The Doctor gasped. "How long until this heals? A few days? A few hours? Twenty minutes?[...]"
 * Gentleman and a Scholar: He has certain gaps in his understanding of human social skills, but he manages to be very polite despite stumbling on a few of the finer points. If he drops the politeness, it's generally well-deserved, whether because someone's genuinely malevolent or just an asshole. (And he's sometimes rude to Fitz, but it's in more of a fraternal way than a mean-spirited way.) And, of course, his appearance and intellect also match the Trope to a tee.
 * Good Thing You Can Heal: He gets injured in almost every single book, usually multiple times. He's been shot, stabbed, squished flat, beaten almost to a bloody pulp, etc., and unless he's been Brought Down to Normal it rarely takes more than a couple days for him to heal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he tends to take advantage of this fact by treating his own body as a meat shield, doing irresponsible and foolhardy things while bleeding all over the place, and just outright acting like a masochist.

"Well, you're right of course," said the Doctor tightly. "And since it heals so quickly, why not do this?" Teeth clenched, he began to wrench his leg free. There was a nasty, tearing, butcher's-shop sound."


 * Gorgeous Period Dress
 * Idiot Hero: This merits a mention although it's not strictly true. Some fans have referred to him as "the congenital idiot", or "the congenial idiot". He gives the impression of having less Obfuscating Stupidity and more genuine, guileless foolishness than most Doctors, but he is regularly shown to actually have brains he just doesn't always use.
 * Innocent Fanservice Guy: He seems to consider life clothing-optional, although recognizes that the preference is for clothing. Good thing he's attractive.
 * Kaleidoscope Eyes: Usually blue (sometimes described as Icy Blue Eyes), but sometimes Gray Eyes or green. Depending on the Writer and his own mercurial personality, a lot of the associated characteristics of each eye color apply.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: Suggested that it might be justified by the fact that when he starts to get his memory back, he still finds it useful to pick and choose the things he lets people find out he remembers.
 * The Mentally Disturbed: His mental health is somewhat variable. He's usually sort of a high-functioning Cloudcuckoolander, but he has moments of being certifiably insane. The Slow Empire plays this for fairly dark humor and mentions that after developing Trauma-Induced Amnesia, he occasionally couldn't distinguish between TV and reality, and so had attacks of being able to be Driven to Suicide by the utter depressingness of Eastenders, and due to watching Superman he got some odd ideas about disguises and "the relative position of the trousers and underpants". He also seems to think that someone who was having a nosebleed four days ago may still need a handkerchief. He even had what may have been a momentary Axe Crazy blackout in City of the Dead. In The Blue Angel he has an alternate self who apparently suffers from schizophrenia, completely averting Funny Schizophrenia; it's reasonably understated and not Played for Laughs at all.
 * The Mad Hatter: In Eater of Wasps, Anji asks him rhetorically if he's insane. He replies that he "must be". However, he seems to go back and forth on this.
 * Muscles Are Meaningless: Bony fingers, all the better to stab you with. He doesn't even blink at Bridal Carrying grown men such as Fitz.
 * No Sense of Personal Space: Even worse than other Doctors.
 * No Social Skills: He clearly has them; he's often very polite and charming, and often uses social engineering to achieve his goals. It's just that there are certain gaps in his social skills and times when he just doesn't feel the need to use them. Almost every conversation he has has some element of weirdness in it, he's occasionally Sarcasm Blind, and he sometimes hurts people's feelings by mistake or has inappropriate reactions to things that shock everyone else. Most people are shocked if they find a dead body, even if it's no one they know; he's just pleased to have a mystery to solve.
 * Playful Hacker: Particularly in Seeing I. Apparently he's even better with computers than you might expect, and uses his skills to distract a Mega Corp while he uses its information to search for Sam. Aside from making it appear that employees are being laid off at an astonishing rate, he also assigns one of the executives to read one of his friend Benny's books, and orders a bunch of sandwiches for a non-existent seminar. One of the employees suggests it might be a "weird prank", and another says, "It’s like a huge kid has broken into IXNet."
 * Political Stereotype: It's occasionally suggested his political beliefs are a bit out there in some ways, although they're never firmly defined and rarely taken seriously. He gets offended at being called a "plutocrat" and claims to be "probably the least plutocratic person you are likely to meet" at one point, is accused of being a "libertarian" at another, and the beginning of Revolution Man vaguely implies some Marxist leanings.
 * Rail Enthusiast: He doesn't seem to be all that interested in actual trains, but he owns a model train set, and he's quite pleased to get the opportunity to drive a tractor and a double-decker bus.
 * Real Men Get Basically Pulverized In Several Nasty Ways
 * Real Men Wear Pink: It's hardly even a "real men" thing at times; Anji apparently thinks of him as effectively almost a girl.
 * Super Strength: A fairly low-key case. It's clear that he's stronger than he looks and can do things most humans can't, but just how strong is never really explored, and he very rarely uses it.
 * Team Chef: Very much so. While Fitz is also said to be a competent cook, it seems the Doctor's an accomplished chef. In Camera Obscura, he stress-bakes a Lady Baltimore cake, although he just worries more because of its "very complicated icing"; in The Year of Intelligent Tigers, he makes a massive picnic for his friends and is said to hold several dinner parties in his flat; his Alternate Universe counterpart in The Blue Angel also makes a large meal for his visitors and frets over ruining the potatoes. Mind you, this doesn't include small moments when he happens to just carry food with him (apples, bits of candy, etc.) to give his companions on a moment's notice.
 * Through His Stomach: That said, the Doctor only seems to cook for his Nakama and people he cares about. In Timeless, he makes Anji a very nice omelette but immediately after won't do the same for the current One-Shot Character, claiming to be bored with cooking.
 * Telepathy: He sometimes responds to things his companions are only thinking, or seems to. It doesn't seem to have any more practical applications than making everyone a little unsettled.
 * Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Which he never quite gets over.
 * Unskilled but Strong: Actually, this is pretty much how he fights. Maybe because he doesn't like to fight, he doesn't even seem to really know how. However, he's really quite disproportionately tough. In To the Slaughter, he lifts a woman in an office chair over his head. In Frontier Worlds, he kicks someone in the head and stubs his toe quite badly.

Samantha "Sam" Jones
The Eighth Doctor's first companion in the EDAs. She's 16 years old at the beginning of her run and comes from 1990s England — a cheerful, goody-goody blonde girl who hates drugs!


 * Audience Surrogate: In a let's-try-to-appeal-to-young-girls kind of way. It more or less worked.
 * Bi the Way
 * Granola Girl
 * Innocent Blue Eyes
 * Plucky Girl
 * Soapbox Sadie: She's a vegetarian, supports Amnesty International, etc.
 * Spiritual Successor: It's easy enough to see her a spiritual successor to Ace, as well as a sort of prototype for the new series companions.
 * Token Wholesome: Not that the Doctor isn't rather wholesome himself, considering the fact he really only swears once in the whole series, is often impeccably polite, and usually seems to be more or less a Chaste Hero, but Sam approaches being wholesome like it's a job; Fitz even feels required to sub in for her when she's not around to do it. She's introduced as a sixteen-year-old, so she's not really allowed to get involved in any sordidness at first, but she's basically wholesome in every sense of the word; she doesn't even drink soda.
 * Unrequited Love: With the Doctor, predictably enough.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist

Fitzgerald "Fitz" Kreiner
""This is Fitz," he said. "This is Fitz Kreiner's life encapsulated in an instant.""

- Unnatural History, after being mugged in a San Francisco alleyway by a unicorn for his chocolate.

The Eighth Doctor's second companion and the one who stuck with him the longest, originally introduced in The Taint. Fitz was born in 1936 to a German father and an English mother in London. His entire life was a bit of a Trauma Conga Line, but he maintained a cheerful, laid-back attitude despite it. He met the Doctor in 1963, when he was 27. He's an easy-going but intensely loyal guitarist whose personal timeline got a bit confusing. He's possibly the longest-running companion in Doctor Who history and was in a BFA in Summer 2009. He's Trope-tastic.

"‘Fitz,’ Anji hissed. ‘Are you telling me you really don’t mind trotting around starkers in a collar and lead?’
 * Action Survivor: He starts out this way -- he didn't even really want to go with the Doctor that much, but he didn't really have any other choice. But eventually he embraced the whole adventurer thing. He still has almost all the additional traits mentioned under the trope, though: stubbly, non-actiony, uncommonly decent, etc.
 * Affectionate Gesture to the Head: He ruffles the Doctor's hair at the end of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and does the same thing to Anji in The Book of the Still, making her angry. It seems like he might be more comfortable showing affection this way than by hugging, since he tends not to initiate hugs.
 * Audience Surrogate: He's sort of a bookish geek with some kind of crush on the Doctor, and he thinks he's cool and sometimes is.
 * Backstory: Fitz's backstory is elaborated on often throughout the series. Let's just take this from his birth to his introduction into the storyline:
 * But Not Too Foreign: Was born to a German man and an English woman...
 * Kids Are Cruel: ... during World War II, and had to deal with anti-German neighborhood kids and...
 * Book Dumb: ... equally racist teachers, meaning he didn't try too hard in school.
 * Parental Abandonment: His father died when he was young.
 * Children Raise You: His mother went crazy shortly afterward and he had to take care of her.
 * Foster Kid: He also spent some time in foster care.
 * Fauxreigner: To avoid being spotted for the "Kraut bastard" he is, he pretends to be French.
 * Burger Fool: When we meet him, he's working at a plant shop and surreptitiously harassing an old woman who tries to compare a lawn gnome to a hobbit and gets it wrong. He's too clever for the job, but can't get his act together enough for anything better.
 * Big Eater
 * Bi the Way: Implied from his very first scene onwards. Mentioned in The Blue Angel, when he admits via internal monologue that he wants to "get laid by" the Doctor, and flat-out admits to loving him in The Book of the Still. The Doctor merrily snogs him, is quite willing to discuss the matter and isn't exactly averse to all the Ho Yay.
 * His relationship with George Williamson has quite a bit of Ho Yay as well.
 * Brief Accent Imitation: German and French sometimes.
 * Broken Hero: If you were to simplify Fitz's character into a single trope, it would be this one. His history is fraught with more terrible and heart-breaking events than most companions you could name. And yet, he maintains a snarky but fun-loving attitude.
 * Butt Monkey
 * Camp Bisexual: More than a bit. French accents, Greta Garbo impressions, male renditions of "(I Wanna Be) Bobbie's Girl", swordfighting in a wedding gown, "Ohmigod", "Oh. My. God", his terrible dated jokes when pretending to be Frank Sinatra, most of his acting in The Banquo Legacy, leather trousers, a purple velvet suit, a metallic gold suit...
 * Casual Kink: In Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It's a little ambiguous whether he really has an unusual kink or he's just being flippant.

He grinned. ‘Are you kidding?’"

"Fitz became much more animated as the Doctor read from the guide. He circled the Doctor and Anji, eyeing the natives with a wicked twist to his mouth that showed far too many teeth.
 * Character Development: He has a bit of an early-middle-age Coming of Age Story going on. Initially, he's a True Neutral Lovable Sex Maniac looking for the first chance to bunk off with the Girl of the Week despite being often impeded by his tendency to be a little sexist, although he obviously has a heart of gold deep down. By the end of the series, he's a Big Brother Mentor to all sorts of characters, can pull off a Bavarian Fire Drill just as well as the Doctor, has a knack for keeping a calm head in a crisis or failing that shows great courage in situations that make him shake like a leaf, occasionally functions as the Doctor's Morality Chain, puts others before himself, is loyal almost to a fault, and is generally competent, responsible, and heroic.
 * Character Name Alias: He's pretended to be called Frank Sinatra and James Bond, and there's probably more.
 * Based on his rant to in "The Ancestor Cell", he's also used Simon Templar.
 * Cheshire Cat Grin: He does this semi-habitually, but generally just in anticipation of a good time rather than anything you should really be worried about.

'A planet where the party never stops. I was born to land here.'"

"Shame about his nose - it was a bit too long, but at least it matched the rest of him."
 * Chew Toy
 * The Chick: He's clumsy and almost useless in a fight, and also more likely to cry than most of the other EDA companions. He also often calls the Doctor out for getting nasty, and serves as a reasonable, levelheaded presence.
 * Chivalrous Pervert: He'll ogle almost anything female, in addition to fancying the Doctor and coming pretty close to betraying interest in quite a few other men. But he has a definite penchant for falling in love with people who are even more troubled than he is and trying to fix their problems. And he reserves a particular dislike for men who bully women.
 * Cleopatra Nose: Well, Sam doesn't exactly think so.


 * Cloning Blues: Complicated. See Loss of Identity and Replacement Goldfish below.
 * Combat Pragmatist: As he's skinny and clumsy, it's very pragmatic for him to go for the eyes when he gets into a fight.
 * Cowardly Lion: It's surprising just how much time he spends shivering. Also, he once had to rescue the Doctor from the living personification of Future Me Scares Me, not to mention his own scary and almost Axe Crazy future self and a bunch of other scary and menacing types, and expressed relief that the sprinklers had gone off and no one would notice that, well... But he's still constantly risking life and limb for others or a good cause, even though he thinks he's a coward.
 * Daydream Surprise: Who's this private eye all of a sudden? Fitzwilliam Fort? Do we know him? Oh, yes, we do!
 * Death Is Cheap: He's "died" at least twice (three or more if you count Father Kreiner). Once, he only survived because the Doctor, Anji, and the TARDIS loved him very, very much and believed in him. He did the Tinkerbell Jesus routine first, without the Narm.
 * Deceased Parents Are the Best: Double Subverted: his mother dies in his first book. However, she became psychotic after his father died, so she couldn't raise him, and once he was of age he had to take care of her. However, they were still apparently very close and he still misses her years later. The advice she gave him when he was younger is part of what made him such a good person.
 * Designated Monkey: In the Lance Parkin stories, at least.
 * Drives Like Crazy: Almost every time he's behind the wheel of a car, he hits something with it. It's usually intentional, but sometimes it's not. Is there really any call to "crunch" the gearstick?
 * Erudite Stoner: The personality without the pot. You can't make him angry without a serious effort, his thought processes are often not exactly normal, he eats like it's going out of style, and as the series goes on he becomes a bit of a Big Brother Mentor to Anji and then Trix, and the Doctor too in a way, not to mention all the One Shot Characters he tends to take under his wing. Also, he's been calm and philosophical about the end of the world. Suddenly becoming a tangled-up noodle person merely inspired in him dismay about how long it'd take to untangle himself. He once had a couple shots of liquor and fell fast asleep while right under Sabbath's nose — Sabbath being the guy who once ripped out the Doctor's heart bare-handed (well, glove-handed, but is that any less scary?). Sure, Fitz can be scared easily, but he's just as likely to be extremely calm about terrifying things.
 * Five-Finger Discount: He knows how to pick pockets, although it's never revealed why. The rather boring explanation is that the Doctor taught him, but it'd be more interesting if he was a street urchin at some point in his childhood. He also carries a lockpick (possibly stolen) because he got tired of picking locks without one.
 * Friendless Background: In Frontier Worlds, he mentions having only had one friend during primary school. By the time he's introduced, he doesn't actually seem to have any real friends. It's certainly not that he isn't likable -- even before all the Character Development kicks in he's quite charming -- it's just the half-German thing. It's quite possible that almost two decades after the war ended, plenty of people wouldn't have had a problem with it, but he was sufficiently embittered by a childhood of being physically attacked for his heritage that he was afraid to let anyone get too close.
 * Geek Physiques: He's quite tall and almost comically scrawny, and a bit of a Lord of the Rings Fan Boy. He also seems to know from Star Trek, makes a reference to H.P. Lovecraft, and generally really likes to read. The Doctor probably out-geeks him, though, but doesn't really fit the trope, because he's slender but not awkwardly so.
 * Genre Savvy
 * Girl of the Week: He has a girlfriend in about half of the novels. It basically never lasts.
 * Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He's from the 1960s and halfway fits the "sexy", "cool", and "tough" criteria.
 * Goofy Print Underwear: With one big carrot on the front.
 * Gray Eyes: Although his eyes are described as his most attractive feature on a couple of occasions, none of the symbolism...er, suits him.
 * Hell-Bent for Leather: Okay, it's just a jacket, and apparently a rather scruffy one, but still cool. He also gets a kick out of wearing leather trousers, even playing with a band just for the excuse to wear them.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: With the Doctor, except for the fact neither one is heterosexual.
 * Hidden Depths: Anji assumes he's only interested in things he can "drink, inhale, play, dance to or –", but she's only pointing this out because he suddenly seemed to have developed an interest in science while in Victorian Britain. He's also generally a bit of a Bookworm, and enjoys reading Sartre.
 * The Klutz
 * Loss of Identity: Long story. Basically, an alternate version of himself is turned into his usual self, and he's not sure whether he's still the same person or what that even means, anyway. The original became a member of Faction Paradox as well.
 * Man Child: Well, sort of. He likes doing very childish things, but is actually fairly emotionally mature, probably less gullible than most people, and can be responsible when necessary. He's still childish enough that others (especially Anji) often comment on it, and he's referred to as a "boy" when he's in his thirties.
 * Messy Hair: His hair is described as "unkempt", "fluffy", "squiggly", "straggly", etc. Between his laziness and the fact he's the kind of musician for whom just-got-laid hair is de rigeur, it's to be expected.
 * Meta Guy
 * Metaphorgotten: "Pleased with his metaphor, Fitz tried to extend it."
 * Nice Guy: The only way you can really make him lose his temper is by being cruel or insulting his friends. He had a good relationship with his mum while she was alive and still remembers the advice she used to give him. Sure, he drinks and smokes and swears, and there's that time he was seeing three girls at once, and he thinks of himself as a selfish coward, but he actually seems to develop almost a reflex to stick his neck out for others, especially those who can't fend for themselves. And he's generally more sympathetic and tactful than the Doctor, despite occasional forays into the land of total immature unhelpfulness.
 * Nobody Poops: For some reason, he's the only character in the series who's ever mentioned to occasionally have to take a leak, which kind of creates the impression he has the world's smallest bladder. It seems to mostly come up in situations where it makes the reader sympathize with him even more, ie., he's in a stressful situation which is made worse by there being no loos for miles, or all that beer he had earlier is messing up his attempt to keep a vigil at the injured Doctor's bedside.
 * Non-Action Snarker: He once fell down what seemed to be a Pit Trap and clapped sarcastically when the Doctor fell in after him while trying to rescue him.
 * Perma Stubble
 * Pet the Dog: Not only does he like children, he seems to care a lot about animals, and not just the cute, cuddly ones: robot canaries that bite him, evil monkeys with guns, worms, etc.
 * Replacement Goldfish: Fitz is in about fifty books. In the eighth, he apparently dies (he's actually brainwashed by a cult and becomes Father Kreiner, but we'll ignore that bit for now) and the Doctor implants his memories into a clone of a clone of a clone (etc.) of the original Fitz. It's this duplicate who remains the Doctor's companion for the rest of the EDAs.
 * Sad Clown
 * Sarcastic Devotee: Less so as his relationship with the Doctor improves, although it never quite lets up, as he has at least a modicum of common sense and the Doctor basically doesn't.
 * Serial Romeo: He generally falls head over heels with each new love interest, but he'd almost always still rather keep traveling with the Doctor, and if he starts getting any ideas about settling down catastrophe generally strikes, so it never lasts long.
 * Sir Swearsalot: Apparently, the fact Fitz is very much this trope is a bit of a bad influence on the Doctor. On the other hand, his good upbringing comes out in the fact that he seems to distinctly prefer minced oaths, and would rather use "shag" as a swear word than drop the f-bomb.
 * Smoking Is Cool: No, it's not; Fitz is cool in his own way, and he smokes, but he makes smoking look kind of dorky. In Demontage there's a very awkward scene where he realizes too late that he's not allowed to smoke, gets very apologetic, and ends up putting out his cigarette on his hand. Ouch. He's constantly annoyed and frustrated by how hard it is to smoke after the late 20th century. And in pretty much every other book he's shown to be less physically capable than most other characters because of his smoking, and his friends don't hesitate to give him a hard time about it. So, don't smoke, because it's not allowed in the future, you'll end up wheezing and red-faced all the time, and also all your friends will constantly nag you to quit.
 * Trauma Conga Line
 * Trenchcoat Brigade: But, really, not half as edgy as most. Still, he's got something in common with John Constantine that most examples don't have.
 * Unfazed Everyman: When he finally meets the Doctor, his mother really snaps, tries to strangle him, and is finally killed by the Doctor. He's also wanted by the police due to a misunderstanding, leading him to join the TARDIS crew. Instead of having a Heroic BSOD about his new status as an orphan and wanted man, he's pretty sanguine about the whole thing. Then again, he's canonically a fountain of denial.
 * Unfortunate Names: Yes, his name really Fitz him. Sure, he's Never Heard That One Before. His last name is still a nuisance, but less of an entertaining one — in recently-post-WWII England, having a German surname is apparently enough to make him worry about getting his head kicked in, so he goes by Fitz Fortune when first introduced. It's mentioned that, since "Fritz" is such a stereotypical German name that it's used to refer to all Germans, the other kids used to call him "Fitz the Fritz". This also leads to newbies who see the German surname, get confused, and call him "Fritz".
 * What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Since he's an Artificial Human, he can impress computers with his brain, generate anagrams, play guitar and do crossword puzzles better than he used to, and maybe some other things not even worth mentioning. Apparently, his thoughts have a "deeper structural underpinning" which computers really dig, or something. Considering the fact he's the closest thing you can get to being an Erudite Stoner without ever being implied to be on any illegal substances, this is kind of funny.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: When he was a child, he was stung all over by wasps and is thus scared of basically all bugs. Subverted in that he pretty much keeps his composure in Eater of Wasps which, as you may guess, is about evil wasps.
 * Wife-Basher Basher: If you bully women in front of him, he's likely to hurt his fist on your face.

Laura "Compassion" Tobin
Introduced in Interference. A former member of a people known as the Remote, who were essentially a big exercise in playing with Aliens Steal Cable. She was originally born on Earth in the 26th Century, but then things got weird.


 * Catch Phrase: "Obviously."
 * Deadpan Snarker: And how!
 * The Friend Nobody Likes: And she doesn't like anybody either.
 * Gray Eyes: Unlike Fitz's, hers are symbolic. She's steely, and all brains and no heart.
 * Hates Being Touched: She hates a lot of things, though.
 * Ironic Nickname
 * Jerkass
 * Pet the Dog: It's quite touching when she demonstrates the ability to feel happiness that doesn't come from schadenfreude. When she, she ends up "on a damp grassy hillside, having her face licked by a giant singing butterfly. Nice, for a while." By her standards, that's a big deal.
 * Sugar and Ice Personality: Subverted. She sometimes seems to show her softer side, but if it's ever genuine, she does an amazing job of denying it afterward.
 * Token Evil Teammate
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: While Fitz and Sam are almost this Trope, her original full name of "Laura Tobin" was only established in a Bernice Summerfield novel by Dave Stone. But Compassion isn't Laura Tobin, she's a replica of her.
 * Token Evil Teammate
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: While Fitz and Sam are almost this Trope, her original full name of "Laura Tobin" was only established in a Bernice Summerfield novel by Dave Stone. But Compassion isn't Laura Tobin, she's a replica of her.

Anji Kapoor
"What I learned in Outer Space by Anji Kapoor — impressive pause — They have bigger cows."

- Vanishing Point

A twentysomething-ish futures trader who joins the Eighth Doctor in the 21st Century. To date, the only companion of Asian descent. Her first book is Escape Velocity.

"It must be a bummer to be short. Maybe that was why Anji shouted so much."
 * Badass Bookworm
 * Bollywood Nerd: She's a bit of a geek about economics; she's been known to watch documentaries on the subject.
 * Brown Eyes: Unsurprisingly. However, she's perhaps the most sensible and normal character in the main cast.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Like Brother and Sister: With the Doctor. Her relationship with him is so chaste that she can acknowledge he's attractive without actually being at all attracted to him. She doesn't mind changing her shirt in front of him, because "he seemed to count in her head as another girl", so they're almost just like sisters. The Doctor seems more inclined to discuss his feelings with her than with Fitz, even though he and Fitz are practically married.
 * The Napoleon: At least in the opinion of tall, laid-back Fitz.
 * The Napoleon: At least in the opinion of tall, laid-back Fitz.


 * Not So Above It All: She tends to disapprove of Fitz and the Doctor's childish antics, but on rare (and funny) occasions, she comes across as a little bit of a Cloudcuckoolander herself.
 * Only Sane Man
 * Platonic Life Partners: With Fitz. They're basically each other's Not Love Interests; they have relationship drama and occasionally act irrationally because of their feelings for each other, but the only flicker of attraction between them is wholly on his side. She seems to get a little possessive of him, perhaps actually in a wholly non-romantic way, when Trix flirts with him.
 * Unfazed Everywoman: Moreso than any other companion.
 * Unusual Dysphemism: Once addressed the Doctor as "You useless otterfu-" To be fair, he was being quite useless.
 * Waif Fu
 * White Collar Worker: She's a futures trader, and so good at it that when she tries to cheat by taking notes from the Financial Times of the future, she finds it's just unnecessary because she could've predicted all that anyway.
 * Women Are Wiser
 * You Can't Go Home Again: Because the Doctor just sucks at navigating. No wonder she has some choice expletives for him.
 * You Can't Go Home Again: Because the Doctor just sucks at navigating. No wonder she has some choice expletives for him.

Sabbath
A recurring villain starting from The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. He was born in the 18th Century, and wants to clean up the space-time continuum, which tends to make him a bad guy as it's doing just fine the way it is.

""Working as I am for unspecified higher powers, the nature of my misguided plans remains frustratingly obscure, ha ha!""
 * Above Good and Evil
 * Always a Bigger Fish: He manages to save the Doctor at one point in an unintentional and rather unconventional way.
 * Antiquated Linguistics: Occasionally, and combined with Sophisticated As Hell to fairly odd effect. He picks up the phrase "been there, done that" from Anji, but his speech patterns are almost always quite formal, and he sometimes uses idioms which are very obviously Older Than Radio.
 * Anti-Villain: A little more intentionally nasty than most, though.
 * Author Avatar: There are certain similarities between him and Lawrence Miles, the author who came up with him, in terms of appearance and personality. Not that Miles is an amoral destroyer of universes... but they are both clever, introverted, and cynical.
 * Badass Normal: He is somehow capable of, then doing nothing about the big hole in his chest before he makes a dramatic exit while carrying a fully-grown woman. Also, he can throw off the effects of a Tranquilizer Dart through sheer willpower. And he once threatened to break someone's hand just by squeezing it very hard. He didn't go through with it, but there's no reason to believe he couldn't have done so if he'd wanted to.
 * Bald of Evil: Well, okay, more like Extremely Close-Cropped Hair Of Evil.
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Most of the people he allies himself with tend to turn on him first, although one must consider who's the common denominator in all these situations.
 * Day of the Week Name: Interesting in that he chose it because a major event in his life occured on a Saturday; he's quite interested in Jewish mysticism.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Very deadpan.
 * Enemy Mine: He works together with the Doctor about as often as they work against each other.
 * Enigmatic Minion: Heavily lampshaded when Fitz, Trix, and Anji make a short film about the plot developments so far. Trix, playing Sabbath, declares:
 * Enigmatic Minion: Heavily lampshaded when Fitz, Trix, and Anji make a short film about the plot developments so far. Trix, playing Sabbath, declares:

"His face was pale and fleshy, but not at all unattractive as he entered early middle age. In his youth he was, allegedly, a master of seduction..."
 * Everything's Better with Monkeys: Monkey henchmen!
 * Expy: Of the Master. He's far from the same character with the Serial Numbers Filed Off, but they have a lot of similar personality traits, such as pedantry, a fondness for elegant dark clothes, snarkiness, etc.. They both function as a recurring villain who often collaborates with the Doctor against a more immediate menace, occasionally of their own making. In general, their relationships with the Doctor are quite similar: they often get along civilly, are Not So Different, and have a ton of Foe Yay, despite the fact they're, you know, arch-enemies. Also, Sabbath was originally supposed to have been working for the Daleks, something the Master's done once or twice. Where the Master had Ogrons (ape-like aliens) as henchmen, Sabbath just has regular old apes. Interestingly, Lawrence Miles, who came up with Sabbath, objected to Sabbath's gradual drift into Suspiciously Similar Substitutehood, as he intended the character as more of a Darker and Edgier version of the Doctor.
 * Larry intended Sabbath to take the Doctor's place as the hero, turning into him via the Doctor's biodata or...something. Thankfully, that didn't happen.
 * Fascinating Eyebrow
 * Genius Bruiser
 * A Glass of Chianti: Anji earns his respect by knowing the right way to drink brandy.
 * The Good, the Bad, and The Evil: The Bad.
 * Ignore the Fanservice: His sidekick du jour in Camera Obscura Shows Some Leg to convince him to help her get out of the Bedlam House where she's locked up, but he doesn't even look. She has a fairly low opinion of men and considers it strange that he's nice to her without showing any sexual interest in her. So, on the one hand, he claims to be amoral; on the other, he does have some standards.
 * Kavorka Man: His kavorka powers seem to work on narrators just as well as on attractive women, considering the poor narrator's three-paragraph tortured attempts to make him sound good-looking upon his introduction:
 * Kavorka Man: His kavorka powers seem to work on narrators just as well as on attractive women, considering the poor narrator's three-paragraph tortured attempts to make him sound good-looking upon his introduction:

"Anji: [...] a posturing ham like Sabbath. If he pulls that sinister, mysterious act on me again –"
 * Kick the Dog: He wastes basically no time doing this. He starts out The Adventuress of Henrietta Street giving the impression he's going to be hardly antagonistic enough to count as a Friendly Enemy. And then he rips out the Doctor's heart. Also, since he considers himself Above Good and Evil, he doesn't hesitate to kill if doing so has sufficient utility. In The Last Resort, Fitz has to talk him out of stabbing a nursing mother who wanted to kill him for seemingly having killed her husband but probably wouldn't have been able to anyway. And in The Domino Effect, an alternate version of him even
 * Large Ham: In sort of a quiet, mysterious way, anyway.

""What the wraiths were warning you about," Anji chipped in when it became apparent Sabbath still wasn’t speaking. The Doctor waved a hand in front of Sabbath’s eyes as if to break a trance."
 * Made of Iron:
 * The Man Behind the Man: It's revealed that he's acting on someone else's orders.
 * Manipulative Bastard: He enjoys it, too.
 * Man of Wealth and Taste: He's often very well-dressed (i.e., "a beautifully tailored dark suit"), although he sometimes wears a military-style coat which is big even on him and which he feels the need to justify by saying he wears it "in a spirit of irony".
 * Morality Pet: He runs through them pretty fast, though.
 * Not So Different: The main difference between them, morality-wise, is that the Doctor feels more remorse when he has to Shoot the Dog or do anything else dubiously moral, and when he doesn't it's because of his Blue and Orange Morality tendencies. But Sabbath is only slightly more likely to think the ends justify the manipulative or murderous means.
 * Not So Above It All: Apparently, he's seen The Wizard of Oz. Well, it's clearly relevant to his interests, what with the monkey henchmen.
 * Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Hand Waved: he's not wealthy, but he's resourceful. He also might be using Time Travel for Fun and Profit. Anyway, he somehow manages to get a Big Fancy House in the Victorian era (while the protagonists have to settle for subletting Sherlock Holmes' flat), apparently just because a classy villain has to have his creature comforts.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: There are a lot of these, aren't there?
 * Oxbridge: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street mentions both that he went to Cambridge and.
 * Pet the Dog: In both The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and Camera Obscura, he has a Little Miss Badass as a Sidekick, and seems to care about them quite a bit. Also, he becomes more likable as he and the Doctor become more like Friendly Enemies, and his civility towards Anji demonstrates that he has good taste.
 * The Quiet One: Relative to the Doctor, at least, and the Doctor tends to get kind of grabby to get his attention when he seems to have decided to let the Doctor's Motor Mouth run out of fuel on its own:
 * The Quiet One: Relative to the Doctor, at least, and the Doctor tends to get kind of grabby to get his attention when he seems to have decided to let the Doctor's Motor Mouth run out of fuel on its own:

"‘You think of yourself as Time’s Champion, Doctor. You believe everyone should subscribe to your cosy, libertarian values. [...] The universe would be a nice, safe place if only everyone followed your proper, civilised code of conduct. [...] You couldn’t be more wrong. Everything you believe is a lie. You’re an anachronism, a leftover from a previous reality – I see that now[...] You don’t hold the solution to anything any more – you’re part of the problem. The sooner you step aside, the better for all concerned. A new history is coming!’"
 * Staying Alive: Once or twice, just enough to elicit grumblings from the audience about how much of a Master-expy he is.
 * Steampunk: He built a time-traveling boat sort of thing in the 18th century. It's about as good at clanking and steaming as it is at time-traveling.
 * The Stoic
 * Stout Strength
 * Sue Donym: Close enough, anyway: almost all his aliases are terrible, obvious, and related to his usual pseudonym, such as Holiday, Mistletoe, and Mr. G.K. Thursday (the Genius Bonus just makes it worse).
 * Super Not-Drowning Skills
 * Surrounded by Idiots: Justified: they're not idiots, they're apes, and it wasn't his idea to hire them.
 * Übermensch: He certainly seems to be aiming for this trope, in a less mindlessly destructive way than the typical villainous Nietzsche Wannabe. He's surprisingly charismatic, considers himself Above Good and Evil, and thinks the Doctor is old-fashioned for having a strong moral code. In The Domino Effect, he gives quite a lecture about how the Doctor's values and the Doctor himself are hopelessly outdated:

"Anji: So, Sabbath will be up to another of his dopy schemes, desperate to ally himself with the next nasty to come slinking out of the vortex with a bunch of hollow promises."
 * The Unfettered: Yeah, we've kind of gone over this already. He's pretty clearly against taking pointless immoral actions, but morality isn't going to stop him achieving his goals. His morality contrasts with his conduct; he's much more straitlaced than the Doctor, who likes bothering him with immature humor.
 * Wicked Cultured
 * Wild Card:
 * Wild Card:

Faction Paradox
Essentially a cult of Time Lords devoted to causing temporal paradoxes through voodoo. Following the events of their final encounter with the Eighth Doctor, they now exist in a separate timeline. They also fought Sutekh.
 * Cult: Albeit one powerful enough to eventually invade Gallifrey. Successfully.
 * Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Compare the Faction Paradox of the earlier Eighth Doctor and stand-alone novels to the Gallifrey- and time-destroying Complete Monsters in The Ancestor Cell. They barely seem like the same organisation.
 * Hollywood Voodoo
 * Mind Screw: They were created by, and largely written by, Lawrence Miles, so this is only to be expected.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Did we mention they wear black robes and animal skulls?
 * Powers as Programs: A strange sort-of-inversion in that the Faction makes extensive use of biodata (the importance of which was established in The Deadly Assassin) in the "rituals" that fuel their technology.
 * Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Their armor is carved from the bones of impossible creatures, as seen [[media:armour.jpg|here.]]
 * Timey-Wimey Ball: They're doing their best to smash it into little bits.

Beatrice "Trix" MacMillan
A rather mysterious young woman who comes from sometime after the 21st Century and used to work for the villain. (It doesn't stop her making fun of him, though.) Talented at disguising herself and had a rather entertaining habit of appearing in disguise before she was officially introduced. Her first book is Time Zero.
 * A-Cup Angst: It's not a very prominent trait, but she does on occasion bemoan her lack of anything resembling cleavage.
 * Ambiguously Human: She claims to much older than she looks and from a reality without humans, and it sounds almost plausible. Then she adds that her kind ate all the humans and she's had her flesh-devouring jaws surgically reduced, and it starts to sound like she's just lying her head off.
 * Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: She has a notoriously short attention span, and the Doctor becomes resigned to the uselessness of telling her to not wander off. She once ate most of a box of chocolates because she said chocolate helps her concentrate, and after eating them said she couldn't concentrate because of all the caffeine.
 * Broken Bird
 * Character Name Alias: The name she goes by is almost certainly not her real name, and it's surprisingly close to Tricia McMillan.
 * Femme Fatale: Not as much as some examples, but she's sort of mildly antagonistic when first introduced, she's far from trustworthy, her alignment can generally be best described as Chaotic Selfish, and she gets Fitz wrapped around her little finger (although she scares him on occasion). And she enjoys dressing glamourously (often in black) as often as possible.
 * Green Eyes: Her green eyes are often described as "catlike", and she's a rather untrustworthy Tsundere.
 * Heel Face Turn
 * The Hedonist: For her, saving the universe is almost as important as money, clothes, and chocolate.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold
 * Master of Disguise: Usually with a dose of Wig, Dress, Accent.
 * Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She's a cute, quirky, mysterious, larcenous young woman
 * Mysterious Past / Multiple Choice Past: Because she lies her head off about it all the time.
 * Pet the Dog: She's a little greedy and, shall we say, acquisitive, but uses Time Travel for Fun and Profit to send money to an orphan.
 * Tsundere: