Time and Twinford (the unlimited rice pudding remix)

ANNOTATIONS

Chapter One

The 'Carrots' nickname - in her first episode, Ace makes friends with a character called Melanie Bush, who is very much a healthiness enthusiast (and drinks rather a lot of carrot juice). Bizarrely, Ace calls her 'Donut' through the entire story, with no real explanation given. Ruby's nickname here is the inverse, because it amused me.

Bob - this is goldstarsforall's OC. I love her indiscriminately.

Chapter Two

In another draft of this chapter, the song I Am My Own Grandpa was playing on the radio in the background of the café, as an allusion to the bootstrap paradox that makes up a secondary plot of the story. I cut that because it seemed a bit nonsensical and there's no actual grandfather paradoxes in this story.

"Is it so much of a stretch to think that there could be greater things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy?" - yeah, that's Hamlet

Occam's Razor - a scientific/philosophical concept stating that the simplest solution to a problem is most likely the correct one.

Chapter Three

"I definitely don't have a bag full of high explosives" - sure you don't, Ace

"Last time we met them, the Daleks had found a way to copy people" - reference to the Big Finish Audio, The Genocide Machine, in which Ace is cloned by a bunch of Daleks in order to infiltrate the biggest library in the world. Her clone ends up snapping someone's neck and throwing them off a waterfall.

Ace's explanation - partially adapted from an explanation the Fourth Doctor gives in one of his serials. I'm not original.

"There was a planet where being sad was illegal" - this is The Happiness Patrol, by the way. Great episode, go watch it, etc, etc

Chapter Four

"Once I forgot to return a book to the greatest library in the world for nearly three lifetimes" - another reference to The Genocide Machine. It was a book on juggling, if I recall correctly.

Baseball - yeah, I have no idea how to play.

Chapter Five

Ace's scattered directions on how to make nitroglycerin and its various components - all completely correct, to the best of my (very limited) knowledge. It's also very dangerous. This does not mean you should try to do it at home (I am SERIOUS do NOT do it I will get arrested and you will maybe die).

"Back in a tick?"/"Maybe two or three" - v e r y oblique allusion to logic circuits and oscillation frequency. I (the sane version of myself writing this right now at 9.30 in the morning) do not know as much about this sort of thing as much as my sleep-deprived, 11PM self does (she did the research and probably has a PhD in it if I'm honest), but as far as I can remember, it's some kind of metaphor. Or maybe some sort of cosmic joke. I never really worked that bit out. This part marks the bit when both I and the Doctor dive headfirst into obscure references and don't actually emerge, by the way.

"Metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology" - he's referencing the novel Candide (by Voltaire), in which a character called Pangloss is said to be a professor of it. He's using the term utterly nonsensically; it's not meant to mean anything (or is it).

"Never! - well, hardly ever" - an often-quoted lyric from one of Gilbert & Sullivan's more famous works, HMS Pinafore. I love British humour.

"Tell me, what do you think of the assertion (...)" - this is nonsense. Literally nonsense. Quoted word-for-word from the serial Dragonfire, from the scene where the Doctor is holding a mock-philosophical conversation with a security guard. It's apparently lifted straight out of a pretentiously-worded academic work about Doctor Who, according to the writer.

The magic trick - ...a strange but fun headcanon among some fans is that the Doctor is secretly a terrifying eldritch entity and maybe even Nyarlathotep from the Lovecraft Mythos. It's somewhat supported by canon, too. It's referred to as 'Dr Nyarlathotep', if you're curious - I don't know why I decided to include it in this story, but it felt like it fit the theme rather well.