The Choices of Earth
by Halenie Delial is an alternate take on Torchwood: Children of Earth, which diverges from canon when Jack Harkness decides to call Martha Jones to ask if she could not only help them investigate what happened to the children, but also if she could call the Doctor for his help. As a result, the Doctor and Martha join the Torchwood team in investigating what is happening to the children, changing things both for the investigation and their own relationship.
The Choices of Earth contains examples of:
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Doctor calls out the 456 for acting as though they can’t understand the value humanity places on their children by threatening one of their own young to make a point.
- Create Your Own Villain: Discussed; Martha calls the Doctor out on focusing on what Jack did during Earth’s last contact with the 456 by pointing out that if someone respected keeps telling other people that they did something wrong, eventually it will reach a point where the other party will either come to believe it or decide that they might as well do something wrong anyway.
- Death by Adaptation: In canon, Dekker was only one of two people to survive the virus unleashed by the 456 after it is unleashed into Thames House and manages to make it to the end of the series alive. Here, he is the only fatal victim of the virus.
- Demoted to Extra: Unlike in canon, the Torchwood team don’t go after Timothy White, AKA Clement McDonald, the Doctor arguing that there are various reasons why an adult may be picking up the signal and it’s more important to identify the source than establish why only one adult is receiving it.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The Doctor is able to deduce that the 456 will need a specially prepared location from which to conduct negotiations as they can’t survive in Earth’s natural atmosphere.
- Everyone Has Standards: Jack makes it clear that there is to be no flirting with the Doctor while he and Martha are in the Hub, although Gwen wonders if that rule isn’t at least partly for Jack as well as for her and Ianto.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: While the Doctor allows Tom Milligan to stay with them to investigate what's happening to the children, it's made clear that nobody forgives him for cheating on Martha and he's mainly there because they don't dislike him enough to want him dead.
- Guilt Complex: Jack is clearly ashamed of what he did when he gave the original twelve children to the 456, particularly when he has to tell the Doctor about it.
- Iconic Outfit/Paper-Thin Disguise: At one point Jack and the Doctor catch Johnson off-guard just by showing up in the distance and wearing each other’s coats, drawing her off long enough for their allies to rescue her current hostages.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: None of Torchwood Three knew that Martha’s wedding had been called off, and the people trying to eliminate Jack and Torchwood are completely unaware of the Doctor.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: The 456 are this as in canon, with the Doctor countering that attack by abducting an infant version of a famous ruler from the 456’s home planet a century in the past.
- It's All My Fault: The Doctor has a brief moment where he basically does this as he wonders if Jack and Martha take greater risks to keep him alive than they would for anyone else, but eventually accepts that this isn’t his ‘fault’.
- Locked Room Mystery: From the perspective of the government team tracking the families of Torchwood Three's members, they're faced with several of these at once, as they have no explanation for how so many people could vanish from houses that were locked from the inside and under observation without being seen.
- Morton's Fork: The Doctor attempts to invoke this when he abducts the infant form of the SharKann prince Rtthed; not only did Rtthed save his people from a brutal war, but he also drew up the treaty that allowed human adolescents to be traded as drugs on their homeworld, so killing him as an infant would end the current threat one way or the other, even if the Doctor obviously doesn’t want to mess with history in that manner.
- Named by the Adaptation: The Doctor is able to identify the 456 as the SharKann.
- Non-Action Big Bad: As in canon, the 456 don’t need to do much to be terrifying.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Doctor is so concerned about the current situation that he has no objection to Martha carrying a gun in the hospital even before they identify their enemy.
- Point of Divergence: The fic basically diverges from canon because Jack concludes "It won't kill Martha Jones to put her knickers back on long enough to make a phone call", rather than accepting Gwen's 'warning' not to interrupt Martha's honeymoon.
- Put on the Bus: In order to keep them from being used as hostages, Rhys, Ianto’s sister and her family, Martha’s family, Gwen’s parents, and Alice and Steven are taken to an alien resort in the TARDIS and ‘ordered’ to just stay on the site for the next two days.
- Remember the New Guy?: Dekker, the government’s expert on the 456, has worked with UNIT in the past, to the extent that he collaborated with the Third Doctor on a few projects.
- Sherlock Scan: The Doctor guesses Alice's relationship to Jack by noting the various minor similarities between them and ruling out the idea that she could be from Jack's home time.
- Ship Tease: Martha and Mickey’s canon future marriage is hinted at when Mickey is about to invite her to join him in hunting aliens before the Doctor shows up, although Martha’s interest is soon focused on the Doctor once again.
- Spanner in the Works: Agent Johnson and the Torchwood team’s other government contacts are completely caught off-guard by the Doctor’s involvement in the situation.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Not only does Doctor Rupesh Patanjali survive Johnson’s planned ambush, but Ianto and Steven also survive (Clement McDonald is also spared death, but the Torchwood team never even meet him).
- Spotting the Thread: Doctor Patanjali’s attempt to set a trap for Jack on Agent Johnson’s orders backfires when he returns to the hospital with the Doctor and Martha, as Martha examines the body first and can confirm that it isn’t a victim of the alien hitchhiker Jack was initially tracking.
- Take a Third Option: Basically the reason Jack let Doctor Patanjali into the Hub even after the man took part in an attempt to kill him, as he’s certain Rupesh will get killed or try to double-cross Jack if he’s left alone, neither of which Jack wants.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: This fic clarifies how Martha ended up married to Mickey rather than Tom Milligan in “The End of Time”; Tom basically called the wedding off because he felt that Martha had a deeper relationship with the Doctor than she had told him, and Martha met Mickey on the first day of the 456 crisis, with the implication that he would have talked Martha into going freelance with him without the Doctor’s involvement.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Jack gets one from the Doctor about his role in the original deal with the 456, but Martha in turn calls the Doctor out on how he will criticise Jack for his past actions but offered to try and help the Master or Davros when they’ve done far worse, the Doctor trying to defend himself by arguing that he expects more from his companions than he does from his enemies.
- Would Hurt a Child: Aside from the obvious example of the 456, the Doctor at least pretends he’s willing to go that far by threatening an infant version of a historically significant prince from SharKann to make a point to their enemies.
