Incarnations (a.k.a. A Legacy Story for Doctor Who Day)

At one point in their lives, both my parents were Time Lords. Well not just Time Lords, the same Time Lord.

            As in all things, my mother went first. Katherine Canavar joined Doctor Who in 2027 as the fifteenth incarnation. Her costume was not completely unlike her personal style: brown leather dress and crimson shawl. She did make her hair more extravagant, darkening the natural red and curling it.

            "For my look, I turned to past companions," she explained in an interview once. "I settled on the sexy savagery of Leela with Mel's fiery head of hair."

            Her performance was described as Earth Mother, a look that was generally agreed as being very new for the role. Nevertheless she managed to strike a balance between witchy and alien, moving about the TARDIS like it was her own walk-in crucible.

            The most recurring villains for her time were the Autons.

            "It just made sense," she said. "My Doctor couldn't stand the unnatural getting in the way of the natural. She was a true environmentalist surrounded by plastic fakery. Of course, she would try to recycle it into something better."

            In 2032 she regenerated into my father. Bilal Zaro not only met Canavar on set, he did so in the same outfit as her.

            "The shawl doesn't suit," she remarked, "but the dress matches the brown of your eyes."

            He would have laughed more had he not been so nervous. My Dad was a consummate professional but still this was his favourite show from childhood. His first Doctor had been Matt Smith but my Mum had never really followed the show before or even much after.

            "You'll be fine," she told him. "The fans will be glad testosterone has finally returned."

            At this my Dad did laugh. "Not quite what I'm going for."

            As the sixteenth incarnation, Zaro was much quieter than most of the previous Doctors, Canavar especially. He preferred tinkering with machinery to talking and made a fraction of the rousing speeches that his immediate predecessor had.

            His eventual costume featured Paddington-inspired toggle coats and glasses with extra microscopic lenses. The majority of his adventures came to feature the Doctor discovering a piece of tech that he fiddled with until the third act where its use became apparent. He needed an intellectual sparring partner and, with the Master on a well-earned rest, the Rani returned.

            "Part of me thinks that the show runners saw an opportunity with my casting," he once mentioned to me. "An actual Asian in the TARDIS to make the Hindu Queen relevant and not racially offensive. However I was raised Muslim and I'm not even that anymore."

            When my Dad called Mum up for advice on the role, they got to talking about a lot more than method. To this day Mum insists that she asked Dad out.

            The announcement of their love affair was, of course, a coup in both fandom and media. Mum basked in it, but Dad was far more reserved. He was still in the role after all and already had to contend with remarks that Mum was the far better Doctor. And yet this only proved a point of contention long after he had given up the role and I was born.

            "It was your fifth birthday when we had the idea," Mum explained when I was in my early teens. "Your Dad and I still had our respective sonic screwdrivers from our times on the show."

            Dad shook his head. "I knew it was a bad idea from the start."

            Mum shushed him. "It was a symbolic gift-giving."

            "And an experiment."

            She rolled her eyes. "We gave you them at roughly the same time to see which you would play with more."

            "And?" I asked.

            Mum glanced at Dad. He sighed.

            "Your screwdriver was more tactile. Of course a toddler would want to play with it."

            "Yours was too simple."

            "It was a classic design! Like Troughton's!"

            She turned to me. "You didn't let go of my screwdriver for the rest of the day."

            "Well, yes. It was firmly wedged between the girl's teeth."

            Mum nodded. "I should have taken it off you sooner."

            "A choking hazard."

            "A choking hazard that would have paid for your college education. And then some."

            I had just started college when I truly began to see my parents for who they were. I had also watched their respective runs on the show without them eagerly pointing at the screen whenever they subtly emoted or delivered a brilliant line.

            Their performances did actually speak a lot to their personal characters. The fifteenth Doctor was more than a little hammy and you could always hear her coming. I couldn't go anywhere in the house without hearing Mum mangling Dusty Springfield from the kitchen.

            The sixteenth Doctor was a little unsettling with his small gestures and rarely saw people for the pieces of the puzzle they held in their hand. I stopped bringing friends over for dinner when Dad interrogated Tina about her dental degree studies.

            You would think I would have instead focused on the seventeenth Doctor and all who came after her but, well, I honestly couldn't get into the show. Of course, that revelation made uni life fun: the theme’s sting playing whenever I walked into common rooms. I should never have told Julio on that first night in halls. I always made sure the place was empty before allowing my parents to pick me up in the holidays.

            In that time though the cracks that I'd tried my best to ignore finally spread through their relationship.

            "We need time apart," Dad said. Still he was holding his head in his hands. "It's just your Mum doesn't let up about the roles I choose. She keeps interfering with my career. I know she doesn't mean to, but she does."

            Mum's side of the story was inevitably different: "I don't like his silences anymore. He doesn't realise how hard it is for a woman my age to find work. The conventions are a boon. I just wish he understood and gave them a try."

            When the split was official, the media had long since moved on. A borderline incestuous sci-fi romance wasn't so interesting when the stars had faded.

            They managed to be civil even after all was said and done. Mum kept living on the convention circuit, Dad found plenty of character work on ITV primetime.

            And while I very much remain a postgraduate History student, I have finally succumbed to acting. Julio managed to mount a student production of the lesser-known stage show Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure. Though there were many contenders for the lead, he firmly believed that no-one would be more appropriate than the lovechild of two canonical Doctors. My costume borrowed Mum's crimson shawl and Dad's specialised glasses. I picked my own sonic screwdriver design though.

            They watched from the audience together, laughing, crying, squabbling over whose acting method mine best resembled. And I watched them in turn, wondering at which point I stopped being a midpoint between the two of them and became the next incarnation of myself.

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This is a fan fiction story about Doctor Who. All rights to characters and concepts mentioned are reserved by the BBC and relevant parties.