Fanfic / 3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by CaitlinJ1021 is a fanfic series branching off from the Doctor Who universe. It starts with a glitch in the TARDIS, which causes all of the Doctors and companions from the past 300 years (aka the modern series) to be teleported into the Eleventh Doctor’s TARDIS. This causes their universe to branch off from the main Doctor Who continuity, although they do cross over from time to time.

This series is a long one, with each of the first two fics clocking in at 500 chapters and the third at 247. There are also multiple spinoffs within the same universe, which are shorter but still novel-length. The most recent fic, Retrograde, is still ongoing and (as of October 2023) has 70 chapters.

Works in the 3D9C series:

• 3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

• 4 Doctors, 12 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

• 5 Time-Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong?

• The Lost Echosodes

• Jenny Who?

• Spooky Hollow

• Scattered Thoughts from Around the Cosmos

• Retrograde

3D9C contains examples of:

• Age-Gap Romance: As with any Doctor-Companion romance, there is a noticeable age gap between Clara and Eleven, and between Rose and Ten.
• Alien Invasion: It’s a Doctor Who fic. There are too many to count.
• Bookends: 3D9C starts with a lot of characters appearing on the TARDIS, shortly followed by a Vegas wedding. At the end of 5T13C (well over a thousand chapters later) those same characters depart from the TARDIS to live their own lives, although they promise to keep in touch. Also, Ten and Rose get married in the final few chapters.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: River does this a handful of times in the first fic. By later fics, the author seems to have phased this out.
  River: I'm sure readers were getting sick of you hacking everything anyway, it's a little dull.
  Eleven: Fourth wall, River! It still exists!
• Breakout Character: Oswin, who appeared in only one episode of the source material (and died at the end of it!) was never meant to appear in the fic. The author threw her in as a joke during Clara’s second wedding, intending for her to only be there for a few chapters. The readers loved it, and so she was kept on due to popular demand. Eventually, she became one of the most important and beloved characters in the entire series, despite her humble beginnings.
• Character Death: Although none of the main characters die permanently within the first few fics, several of them (notably, Martha and Mickey,) have passed away by the time of the Distant Sequel.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The Eleventh Doctor. He’s a lovable goofball most of the time, but if you threaten his wifey…
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: zig-zagged. The TARDIS crew crosses over into a parallel universe where they meet with Alternate Clara and the Twelfth Doctor, both of whom are very much alive. After meeting with them a few times, the characters are eventually stunned to learn that Alternate Clara has passed away… and so they find a way to bring her back to life. Sort of. She stays on as a recurring character.
• Dead to Begin With: Oswin Oswald is dead prior to the start of the fic, but her consciousness is transferred into a hologram.
• Distant Sequel: Retrograde takes place fifty years after the events of the other stories in this universe, and follows a happily married Clara and Thirteen, along with adopted daughter Matilda after they have settled down 2064 Brighton.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Clara and Oswin (when she is eventually introduced) start out as the sci-fi version of identical twins, complete with matching personalities. This is justified in-universe, but as the series goes on, their personalities begin to develop more and more on diverging paths. In particular, later stories’ exploration of Oswin’s traumatic past (and the PTSD that stems from it) serve to set the two characters apart considerably.
• Dream Episode: The entirety of The Lost Echosodes.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In early chapters of the fic, Clara speaks about the lives of her echoes as if she experienced them herself. Later on, especially after the addition of Oswin as a main character and the spin-off fic The Lost Echosodes, it is very clearly established that Clara does not know everything about her echoes' lives, and in fact they seem to be more akin to identical twins or clones than to "Clara's past lives," despite having been treated as such in the earliest chapters.
• Emergency Impersonation: often used with Clara and Oswin. In one memorable instance, Oswin has accidentally turned herself into a baby, and Clara must pretend to be her in order to convince her many brothers that everything is fine. Despite never having met said brothers. Needless to say, it does not go as planned.
• Ensemble Cast: At first, the story focuses heavily on Clara Oswald and mostly ignores the other characters when they aren’t interacting with her. After a couple hundred chapters, though, they become a true ensemble cast with every member of the TARDIS crew getting their own POV and storylines.
• Everyone Is Bi: Maybe not everyone, but the vast majority of characters are either implied or outright stated to be bisexual.
• Everyone Meets Everyone: The first five chapters or so focus on the new arrivals to the TARDIS, most of which arrive within minutes or hours of one another.
• Experienced Protagonist: Pretty much every major character in the series (Adam Mitchell excluded) is already somewhat of an expert on aliens and time travel before the first fic begins. This is justified as the characters were all introduced to these concepts during the actual show that this series stems from.
• Eye Scream: Jenny, during the Alien crossover. She gets xenomorph blood on her face and has to undergo emergency surgery by someone who is not trained for it.
• Friendly Scheming: Rose and Jack do a lot of this to help out with their friends’ relationships. When Clara and Eleven have their first big fight, they arrange their whole honeymoon, complete with a ‘complimentary room upgrade’ and lots of cameras. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Later, they do a similar thing to get Adam and Oswin together, only for it to go horribly wrong. Things still work out in the end, though.
• Gamer Chick: Oswin Oswald is very smart, very hot, and very into video games. She’s good at them, too.
• Girls vs. Boys Plot: The final prank war of the first fic features two teams: one with all the girls, and one with all the boys.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Clara, after gaining her Healing Factor and Immortality. She is repeatedly injured in increasingly horrific ways; in The Lost Echosodes, her arm is broken in four different places within the span of a few hours. In other fics in the series, she is impaled by a tree branch during a crash-landing and at one point even pulls a crossbow bolt out of her own face. If she couldn’t heal, she would be dead five times over by the end of the first fic- at least.
• Grand Finale: 5T13C ends with Rose’s wedding, which serves as a touching end for the characters as well as a chance for them to face off against multiple of their greatest foes (Daleks, Slitheen, etc)... at a wedding.
• Handicapped Badass: Oswin, after she loses her leg. At first she uses a prosthetic or crutches; in later fics, she spends much of her time in a wheelchair. She is also a badass genius who will not hesitate to kill.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Clara in the first fic in the series, although she eventually grows out of it.
• Healing Factor: Clara Oswald gains this due to Nanomachines.
• Healing Potion: Odeon’s invention of Miracle Medicine, which cures anything.
• Horrible Camping Trip: The TARDIS crew goes on several of these. On the first, Rose and Clara are abducted by Daleks; on another, they are all attacked by a swarm of rabid animals.
• Immortality: Various characters have this in various ways. Timelords are quasi-immortal due to their slow aging and ability to regenerate. Captain Jack is already immortal at the start of the fic due to canon events. Clara Oswald gains immortality due to Nanomachines. Oswin Oswald could be considered immortal due to her status as a hologram; she may not be truly alive, but she doesn’t age or die, either. Adam Mitchell becomes a non-healing immortal when he is cryogenically frozen by his own superpowers.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Clara, with a tree branch. Even with her impressive healing factor, she’s a bit out of it for several chapters.
• Intrepid Fictioneer: Due to the multiversal nature of the series, characters make several crossovers. The most memorable ones: Alice in Wonderland, Alien, and Bioshock. They even cross over to our universe at one point and end up on the set of Doctor Who, shocked to learn that they themselves are fiction in at least one universe. Eventually, Oswin gets herself set up with multiversal Netflix and watches Doctor Who to catch up with everything and keep tabs on Alternate Clara.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Clara/Eleven starts this way, but she soon becomes immortal herself.
• Mutilation Conga: Clara suffers from this. First it’s the repeated black eyes, then the debilitating space flu, then the broken arm… and it keeps getting worse. Luckily, she gains a healing factor fairly early on.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Martha and Mickey's child is conceived normally. However, due to the effects of travelling through the Time Vortex while pregnant, the baby is not quite an ordinary human once she's born. This is at least partially based on show canon, specifically the origins of River Song.
• Named After the Injury: Eyeball, who has a cybernetic eyeball.
• Never Win the Lottery: Averted. Prior to the start of the fic, Donna did win the lottery. She doesn’t tell anyone, though, and continues to mooch off of Adam’s illicitly-gotten wealth just like everyone else. Eventually, when he finds out about the lottery ticket, Adam calls her on this.
• New Superpower: Basically every human character, besides the already-immortal Jack and the dead-but-a-hologram Oswin, are dosed with superpower-inducing chemicals in their coffee. Some of them twice.
• No Social Skills: Oswin has this due to her upbringing and high intelligence level.
• Older Than They Look: As per Doctor Who canon, all Time Lords are this; specific to this fanfiction, the character Matilda, the daughter of Martha and Mickey, ages significantly slower than regular humans due to her parents' exposure to the time vortex during pregnancy. This leads to the tragedy of her parents growing old and dying while Matilda is still mentally and physically a young teen.
• Pair the Smart Ones: Oswin and Adam end up together. Both of them are geniuses.
• Paranormal Episode: There is a storyline in which a few members of the TARDIS crew investigate sightings of black-eyed ghost children. Despite how much certain characters insist that ghosts aren’t real, it turns out that they are. Later, the spin-off fic Spooky Hollow focuses almost exclusively on the supernatural.
• Really 700 Years Old: As per Doctor Who canon, all time lords are this; all of the Doctors are close to or older than 1000, and Jenny is in her 200s. By the time of the sequel fic Retrograde, Clara is presumably in her seventies, but due to her immortality she still appears to be in her mid-twenties.
• Rich Genius: Adam Mitchell.
• Shared Dream: Clara and Oswin in The Lost Echosodes.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Oswin counts as this due to her involvement in the Dust War. She suffers from PTSD and survivor’s guilt, which becomes especially apparent after the loss of her leg causes her to break down. Although she recovers somewhat, she never quite goes back to the way she was before, and her PTSD symptoms are on full display.
• Super Fic: After the superpower-inducing coffee is introduced midway through the first fic, several major characters gain superpowers. Later on, so do the rest. Some recurring characters, like Esther, end up becoming actual superheroes that fight crime.
• The Smart Guy: While many of the characters are smart (Adam Mitchell, for example, has a genius IQ), it’s Oswin who is truly The Smart Guy. She is, as she likes to boast, literally the smartest human being ever to exist. And no, that’s not an exaggeration.
• Too Much Alike: Clara and Oswin, at first. That changes.
• Twin Telepathy: Clara and Oswin. While they’re not literally twins (Oswin is more of a clone, if anything), they are generally referred to as such, and they do have a Psychic Link. This link is not naturally formed, but was deliberately created.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: In the title. Spoiler alert: quite a lot goes wrong.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: In chapter 14, all of the characters wake up in strange situations, most of them with no memory of what happened the night before. They find out that, for some reason, they had all gone to Space Vegas and gotten very drunk. Clara and Eleven got married, Amy and Rory stole a baby (they give it back!) and River has turned herself into a walking disco ball. Among other things.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Adam Mitchell after his superpowers activate. Being cryogenically frozen stopped his aging, but at the cost of his regular human healing ability. He may be immortal, but so is his sprained ankle; any injuries he gains will not heal, even with Oswin’s Miracle Medicine, so he has to try very hard to avoid getting injured.