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.
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 JewishMother 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.
Sam: ...The way he looks at certain people. Women and men. But he never acts on anything. *
(He does eventually, when Bernice Summerfield pounces him, but even then it still took a while before the authors were allowed to clearly state what happened.)
(Since Sabbath's quite adept at catching the Idiot Ball despite his supposedly impressive intellect and is usually the Doctor's enemy, this is either Self-Deprecation or a surprising lack of self-awareness.)
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: This is the Doctor we're talking about. He's a bit crazy, but he gets the job done.
Chaste Hero: Not absolutely, but he often seems rather oblivious, The Blue Angel talks about him being "a virgin" in a sort of general metaphorical and literal sense, and in Interference this is his response to being asked whether having two hearts means he "can be in love with two women [...] at once":
‘Good grief. Do you know, that had never struck me before? I’ve never even thought about being in love with one woman, let alone two. Well, not much.’
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."
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.
Cuddle Bug: He's so affectionate that he tends to kiss people on the lips with apparently platonic intent.
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. 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.
The Doctor was standing with his eyes closed, absolutely absorbed in his playing. He looked every inch the devil's fiddler, thought Karl *
(with whom the Doctor ends up having a heavily-implied romantic relationship)
— 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.
Forgets To Eat: In Camera Obscura, Anji has to remind him:
‘Do you want some food? You haven’t eaten in days.’
‘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.’
Geek: While on Earth, the Doctor became a fan of Transformers. No, really.
"Someone," Compassion said, "has been watching too much Saturday-morning TV." "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.
(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.
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.
(broken and, considering the fact he's not up and walking on it, probably quite badly so)
leg. The Doctor gasped. "How long until this heals? A few days? A few hours? Twenty minutes?[...]"
"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.
Innocent Fanservice Guy: He seems to consider life clothing-optional, although recognizes that the preference is for clothing. Good thing he's attractive.
In Touch with His Feminine Side: Long hair, fancy clothes, enjoys cooking and baking. In Timeless, it gets him called a "poof".*
I'd bet that there's at least one time he gets called a ponce.
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.
Man Child: When it matters, he can generally be counted on to act mature, but his mannerisms and interests are often childish. He likes picture and comic books, cartoons, model trains, tractors, ducks, and so on. Once in a while he'll casually sit curled in a ball like almost no middle-aged human man ever. Nonetheless, he doesn't really suffer any of the drawbacks, aside from usually being totally baffled by the topic of romance. And it's at least sometimes a deliberately annoying and/or disarming act.
Master of the Mixed Message: With Sam and with Fitz. It's possible that he's deliberately trying not to encourage Sam's attraction to him, and he has the good grace to let her know how dangerous he is. Yet he still has a bad habit of kissing her, or ending up half-naked in bed with her and being her "back-rub slut". He also kisses Fitz without qualms, but avoids talking about all their Unresolved Sexual Tension.
, 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. (Also, his POV in The Blue Angel is occasionally written in a subtly strange way — for example, he tends to bring something up which doesn't make a lot of sense without further explanation and then drift away from the topic, which resembles some symptoms of schizophrenia.)
The Mad Hatter: In Eater of Wasps, Anji asks him rhetorically if he's insane. He replies that he "must be". And in The Slow Empire, he and Fitz share a worried moment in which they realize he seems to be "unbalanced" to the point of schizophrenia (and one of the things that worries Fitz about the Doctor's breakdown du jour is that the Doctor is aware of it yet unconcerned by it). However, at other times he definitively states he's quite sane enough.
Meta Guy: Rather prone to Leaning on the Fourth Wall without breaking it or seeming blatantly aware of it. It's not that he knows he's an ex-TV-character, but he manages to complain about it nonetheless.
‘How do you do!’ The Doctor beamed. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. You must be very important, very special indeed, for some as yet unknown force to have possessed the minds of those who know you and targeted you for death.’
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.
Obliviously Beautiful: It eventually seems to dawn on him that humans consider him rather attractive, but he tends to think about it in rather skeptical terms.
Parents as People: To Miranda. He means well, dotes on her, and loves her with all his hearts, but he's still fairly clueless, and ends up being part of the reason she runs away from home when she's sixteen, because he never explained to her she's an alien like him. She turns out all right, though.
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 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 True Companions 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.
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! (Except she isn't — she was supposed to be a dark-haired drug addict, but got altered into the "perfect companion" by the TARDIS/the Doctor's subconscious. After reality starts falling apart, she's replaced by this original self...who ends up sacrificing herself to bring this version back to save the Doctor.)
Audience Surrogate: In a let's-try-to-appeal-to-young-girls kind of way. It more or less worked.
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's not perfect, but she's very wholesome. And significantly her hair is only blond because the Doctor accidentally messed around with reality to change her appearance and personality to make her an ideal companion. The original version is dark-haired and much edgier.
Smitten Teenage Girl: Towards the Doctor. He's a bit Oblivious to Love, but he catches on soon enough when she gets him out of his shirt and simply snogs him. He returns the kiss before telling her to think really hard about whether or not she wants to shag a centuries-old mass murderer.
Soap Box 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 *
(his version of a Dirty Harry impression in Seeing I, as described at Fruit of The Loon, is actually so wholesome and polite it makes you want to introduce him to your grandmother)
, 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. In Unnatural History, we're introduced to an alternate universe version of her who does hard drugs, and it's really quite shocking. And kind of refreshing, honestly.
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, and promptly developed a lot of very confusing homosexual emotions for him despite identifying as straight. 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.
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.
Ambiguously Bi: Or not so ambiguously: The Blue Angel makes it clear that he's attracted to the Doctor, and he has some sexual tension with a few other male characters. But aside from that, for some reason, in the very first lines of his very first scene, in 1963, he's already thinking about gay marriage, while daydreaming about the slightly more interesting lives of people who aren't him:
Life was a never-ending series of dramas, some big, some small. The same dramas, experienced again and again by different people all through history. Only the trappings and circumstances changed. You got a job. You bought a house. You met someone. You got married and moved into their house. You had an affair. You got the wrong person pregnant and they married your best friend. You wished you could marry your best friend.
Whatever, the point of it was [...]
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:
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.
British Rockstar: Usually he's approaching the trope but not quite there: he plays electric guitar and a few other instruments, sings, and writes some of his own songs; he has a rather active sex life; he smokes and drinks; he's got a less-than-posh London accent; and he meets the Doctor just before the start of The British Invasion era; but he misses it by being fundamentally mild-mannered and also not a star. Except when circumstances grant him some sort of temporary stardom, as in EarthWorld and The Slow Empire, and he turns into this trope. Particularly in the latter, where he turns into a subversive and uncharacteristically Jerkass-yMad Artist before suffering a Heroic BSOD, since he's subconsciously aware it's virtual reality and it's driving him temporarily nuts. He's sort of themed around this trope in a toned-down sort of way.
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. *
(It may be significant that the first thing Fitz is ever shown doing is pretending to be someone else. It's very obviously a coping mechanism. Possibly, his cheerful happy demeanor is a bit Becoming the Mask, in that he seems so undamaged by his past because he's spent so long pretending not to be.)
CampBisexual: 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...
Cant Tie His Tie: In The Last Resort, he doesn't seem to be doing a good job tying a tie when he's forced to pass as a respectable businessman, so Anji helps.
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.
‘Fitz,’ Anji hissed. ‘Are you telling me you really don’t mind trotting around starkers in a collar and lead?’
Character Name Alias: He's pretended to be called Frank Sinatra and James Bond, and there's probably more.
Based on his rant to Father Kreiner 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.
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. 'A planet where the party never stops. I was born to land here.'
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.
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.
Cool Big Sis: Spear Counterpart. He often takes care of Innocent Bystanders who get pulled into the plot in pretty much this sort of way, especially if they're particularly confused, vulnerable, or young, and he's generally good with kids. And in accordance with this trope, he tends to indulge in more "mature" activities (eg., sleeping around, getting drunk) than the rest of the cast and serves as comic relief, but he's actually rather sensible and practical. And he's just in the series a long time and is therefore generally more experienced than a lot of other characters. Plus he's at least a bit older than any of the other EDA companions (not counting Compassion). He's more this trope than the Big Brother Mentor, who's generally more authoritative and not someone whose "younger siblings'" admiration is often mixed with amusement. Also, in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, he's seen chilling with some teenage prostitutes during their obligatory monthly time off.
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 he might or might not have pissed himself with terror. 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!
Deadpan Snarker: To say the least. Constantly making cynical wisecracks is such a central part of his personality that in The Blue Angel, in one of his first appearances after he was more or less cloned in the previous book, his attempt to reassert his identity manifests as being so constantly sarcastic that the Doctor gets cross with him.
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.
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.
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's had to replace his jacket once or twice, and makes a bit of a to-do about it. He also gets a kick out of wearing leather trousers, even playing with a band just for the excuse to wear them. In The Last Resort, he rides a motorcycle and wears silver leathers.
Not-so-Heterosexual Life Partners: With the Doctor. Apart from all the snogging and sexy dreams and such.
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.
Iconic Outfit: Fitz often wears leather coats, which is probably mentioned more often in Fanon than in canon.
Lazy Bum: Before he meets the Doctor, he's incredibly lazy. After he meets the Doctor, there's a lot of monsters chasing him most of the time. He regularly gets told off by the Doctor and others for being lazy, even though there is the chance that if something seems really fun and/or important he'll get off his lazy arse and do it.
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.
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 conflicting with his attempt to keep a vigil at the injured Doctor's bedside. The Slow Empire has a scene where everyone gets put in a virtual reality machine with some undignified practical details which are only mentioned regarding Fitz waking up in it, which seems to prove a point about him being the most likely to have his dignity sacrificed to such things. And that's all I'm going to say, because a Lotus-Eater Machine where your physical body is just sat on a toilet is a bit gross.
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.
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 Swears-a-Lot: 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.
Sleepy Head: Occasionally. In both Interference and Camera Obscura, he naps during rather important meetings.
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.
Stepford Snarker: He's a lot more broken, and also a lot sweeter, than he wants to let on, so he hides it by being almost constantly sarcastic.
Street Smart: He has a fairly decent amount of common sense to begin with, but eventually develops an ability to handle strange and dangerous situations almost as well as the Doctor does, which sometimes surprises people. He's book-smart too, but not in a way that tends to prove useful.
Surrounded By Smart People: Compared to the Doctor and Anji, he's not remarkably intelligent. Although Trix seems to be more cunning than intellectual, Fitz describes himself as the "resident thicko" in Sometime Never when she's keeping up with the Doctor's Technobabble much more ably than him and he's forced to request a simpler explanation.
Tall, Dark and Snarky: Literally, but he doesn't really tick all the boxes. He seems to aspire to the aloof, superior aspects occasionally at first*
'People,' sighed Fitz lazily, watching her go. 'They're all so... stupid!'
, but his naturally friendly, awkward personality betrays him. Appearance-wise, he's apparently not bad, and according to his official bio*
to which I have sadly lost the link, but fortunately not before memorizing an embarrassingly large portion of it
he has a "quiet intensity which both sexes find attractive".
Unfazed Every Man: 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. Traveling with the Doctor eventually grants him rather spectacular powers of only minimally freaking out about things:
Either the Doctor, as Fitz sometimes suspected, projected a kind of aura which helped people deal with any and all manner of utterly horrendous situations – or his time with the Doctor had simply blown half of the fuses in the parts of him that would react to such things.
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.
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.
Pet the Dog: It's quite touching when she demonstrates the ability to feel happiness that doesn't come from schadenfreude. When she becomes a TARDIS and gains a Randomiser, 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.
Spaceship Girl: And how — she eventually turns into a walking, talking TARDIS!
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.
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.
Badass Bookworm: Not to the same extent as the Doctor, but she's better in a fight than you'd expect, and neither alien monsters nor evil geniuses scares her very much.
Berserk Button: "Berserk" may not be the correct term, but she instantly becomes severely annoyed if anyone mentions her Indian heritage in any way. Offensive remarks, of course, make her angry, but since she doesn't like her cultural background much (especially early on — she chills out about it on and off, especially as time goes by), she just doesn't want to be reminded about it at all.
Bollywood Nerd: She's a bit of a geek about economics; she's been known to watch documentaries on the subject.
Brainy Brunette: It turns out that she's such a whiz at her job that trying to take advantage of Time Travel for Fun and Profit just slows her down. She also has enough common sense to fairly well cover for Fitz and the Doctor's lack thereof.
Brown Eyes: Unsurprisingly. However, she's perhaps the most sensible and normal character in the main cast.
Children Raise You: In a strange way. Suddenly this Creepy Child is thrown at her! Geez! She doesn't even really want it!
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.
It must be a bummer to be short. Maybe that was why Anji shouted so much.
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 Cloud Cuckoolander herself.
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.
Sarcastic Devotee: Towards the Doctor, setting off Fitz's tendency to hero-worship the Doctor more in inverse proportion to how highly everyone else seems to think of him. She gets a bit fed up of Fitz's relentless optimism about the Doctor's ability to save the day no matter how powerless, clueless, injured, missing, or dead he may be.
Waif-Fu: In Timeless, it becomes a bit of a running gag that she keeps being obliged to kick people's asses.
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.
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.
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 ripping a heart out of his chest, 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.
Evil Is Bigger: He's initially described as big but not especially tall, but eventually is mentioned to be huge and looming and unable to fit comfortably in small attics and so on. Maybe villainy (although not exactly evil, since he believes his intentions are good) allows middle-aged men to grow taller? Contrasts significantly with the Doctor, who's always fairly slight, but more than usual during the Sabbath arc, due to being rather poorly. His timeship is also bigger than the Doctor's, at least on the outside.
Ignore the Fanservice: His sidekick du jour in Camera ObscuraShows 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:
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...
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.*
Although generally when he does gratuitously vicious things like that, it's implied that it's part of some Batman Gambit that tends to come very close to paying off by the end. For example, he probably hadn't actually killed the woman's husband, but he wanted Fitz to think he had, and coming across as Ax Crazy would play into that.
Made of Iron: After deciding that the whole transplant-the-Doctor's-heart-to-himself plan wasn't such a good idea after all, he rips the Doctor's heart back out of his chest while standing up, then makes a dramatic exit while carrying his deceased Morality Pet.
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.
Mysterious Past: Justified by his short-lived career as a secret agent.
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.
Oxbridge: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street mentions both that he went to Cambridge and has him participating in what's apparently a fine old Cambridge tradition of party-crashing in a gorilla costume. Except he was invited. But he still had to be an enigmatic, incognito jerk.
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:
"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.
Redemption Equals Death: When he finally renounces working against the Doctor for once and for all, he ends up effectively killing himself within a few chapters.
Staying Alive: Once or twice, just enough to elicit grumblings from the audience about how much of a Master-expy he is.
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*
although it's rather interesting how well it all fits, if you think about it.
‘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!’
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.
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. *
(Does This Remind You of Anything?? You suspect that Anji wants to explain to him that no one buys the evil cow when they can get the evil milk for free. They're just going to break your heart again! Villainous dating advice from Anji Kapoor...)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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). *
(He probably finds it unusual that in this list, he gets to top for once!)
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.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She's a cute, quirky, mysterious, larcenous young woman who falls in love with Fitz because he's dependable. But despite being a bit of an Everyman, he's also already quirky and adventurous and, unlike her, has his life together about as well as can be expected. In short, it looks like the normal guy is going to be fixing up the weird girl's life, and they try to settle down together and use Time Travel for Fun and Profit to be rich yuppies.
Replacement Flat Character: For Fitz. After he became more trustworthy, responsible, and emotionally stable, and stopped hiding behind literal and metaphorical disguises, Trix eventually showed up to be sketchy, feckless, moody, and constantly in disguise. (But even though this means he's clearly more mature than she is, he still tends to defer to her.)
