Doctor Whooves: The Reimagining

The Doctor and Romana come to Equestria after an act of sabotage by the Master. They are both 'reborn' as unicorns. The Doctor is immediately drawn into a Ponyville crisis with the new unicorn in town, and must investigate a mystery of the past in order to save the present. Speculation on my part. Hope you like it.

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EquesTRON

EquesTRON #1 · Jan 22nd, 2014 · 2 · ·

While I like the idea of one of the Doctor's other incarnations appearing in Equestria (there were other Doctors before David Tennant, guys! ), I think you would have been better served to write a more original adventure for him, instead of simply working him into the events of the series premiere and retelling Friendship is Magic, parts 1 & 2 point-for-point.

The major problem with the "retelling" approach is that there's no real drama or uncertainty; since the story has all the major events playing out the same way as in the "original" version (Twilight recognizing the signs of Nightmare Moon's return, calling her out when she appears in the town hall, finding the elements, etc.), the story quickly becomes predictable long before it reaches what should be its dramatic conclusion.

Also, a direct retelling that has everything ending up in the same place as the original reduces the Doctor to mostly observing and tweaking things in the background, which weakens his character and presence in the story. This just doesn't quite "feel" like the same Doctor who, after being roughly shoved through the doorway by one of Count Scarlioni's thugs, promptly picks himself up off the floor with his trademark grin and, without missing a beat, cheerfully announces "I say, what a wonderful butler, he's so violent. Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is Romana, you must be the Countess Scarlioni, and this is a delightful Louis Quinze chair. May I sit in it? I say, haven't they worn well?" ("City of Death") It also makes some of his and the other characters' actions feel forced or contrived.

(This sort of thing is one of the main reasons Doctor Who stopped doing the purely-historical stories, like "The Aztecs" or "Marco Polo", shortly after Patrick Troughton took over. With the Doctor not allowed to actually change anything in Earth's past history, those serials often devolved into a lot of wheel-spinning, repeated chase-capture-escape-repeat ad infinitum sequences, and contrived explanations about why the Doctor and his companions couldn't use the obvious, simple solution to extricate themselves from whatever situation they ended up in because it would "alter history" somehow.)

Not a bad first effort, though! Just give your characters something more to do next time, with bigger conflicts and higher stakes, by putting them in a situation where the outcome isn't already pre-determined.

neorenamon

neorenamon #2 · Jan 22nd, 2014 · · ·

Hey, thanks for the review. It's really well reasoned, I must say. The story was mainly written as an introduction of sorts, mainly to get some of the characters to know the Doctor. Hopefully, the next story will move into the uncertain territory you spoke of. Thanks for the read and review. I was also trying to avoid the "let's make derpy hooves/twilight sparkle as the companion" thing.

The Infinity Doctor