Here's How You Get the Chance to Be Someone Else

[itsallovernow]

I alternately love or despise episodes where the characters get to be someone else for the duration, to inhabit an alternate life, lead a different path, feel different feelings. Those eps can be glorious wish fulfillment, devastating what-ifs, or alternately, a wasted hour with a reset button.

Having watched (last night) Season 3 Doctor Who's "Human Nature/Family of Blood", and having found myself all weepy at the end of it in spite of myself (partly hormones, partly… WWI will get me every time), I wanted to take a look at "be someone else" eps that worked and those that didn't.


Episode wise, I did find this terribly compelling, rich in the way that many of the eps that explore the less than stellar effect that the Doctor's presence has on humanity and individuals have been. Season 3 was a lot about the Doctor's loneliness, his isolation (both chosen and not). He keeps his emotional distance from Martha, who can't hide her own connection to him, which is a type of tragedy, or would be if Martha weren't keenly aware of the problem and the dichotomy, if she weren't active about saying, "Yes, I love him. But, I know better, and I'm not going to be… foolish. I'm still acting on my own agency here." But he also has the inevitable distance of being someone beyond time, someone who knows the heartbeat of the universe and how small everyone's tragedies and heartbreak's really are.

He's never going to have the sort of empathy necessary to love like a human because in the end, it fades, it disappears, it becomes meaningless. It's not forgivable, actually, but then, my sympathy for the Doctor falls more in the sympathetic with reserve category. He's selfish in his need for companionship, in his manipulations and cruelties and joys. It's a game to him, although a serious one, and while I adore him, I don't always like him and I think the show is doing a sort of beautiful job showing that there should be multiple views of him and his choices.

One of the many, many things I loved about Farscape was the way in which we were never allowed to forget that while John Crichton was the hero of the show, he wasn't necessarily a hero to the universe. His actions had consequences, and more often than not, those consequences were negative for the people around him, often people whom he didn't meet or know.

In "Family of Blood", when Joan asks if they'd chosen someplace else, would anyone in the village have died, that's the key. The doctor doesn't just change history for the better. He changes it, and fallout is inevitable.

I, myself, often have the desire to be someone else, more in the "run away from my life and start up a business in small town with a handsome sheriff" kind of way than looking at an actual individual's life and wanting to take over that, so I'm predisposed towards them, however... I am not a fan of the reset button.

So the question is, what are your favorite "alternate character or timeline" eps in any fandom?

Comments

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

Easily one of my favorites is the fifth season TNG ep "The Inner Light" (and how frickin scary is it that I not only know the season but also the title without having to look it up and it has EASILY been 12 years since I last saw it)... Picard thinks he's living the life of Kamin. The things he does while living that alternate life... living the life of a culture long since died... carries with him. The recorder he keeps with him for the rest of the series, for example.

(Ok, I will also admit that fifth season TNG is my absolute favorite anyway, so remembering the episode is really not that big a surprise)

[kernezelda]

That was a terrific episode, rich and lovely. Do you remember that his son, erm, Daniel, was in it, playing Kamin's son?

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

poor daniel; already following his father into male pattern baldness!

[kernezelda]

I am awfully fond of Trek's Mirror universe, particularly Mr. Spock in the original episode, "Mirror, Mirror".

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

DS9's Far Beyond the Stars (http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/DS9/episode/71932.html) blew me away the first time I saw it, and I adored it for the "Oz" ness of it ("And you were there... and you were there...", but it got so so dark in "Shadows and Symbols (http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/DS9/episode/103345.html)".

Also, the New Adventures of Wonder Woman fan in me will always have a soft spot for Xena's "The Xena Scrolls". Someday, I really need to write that WW/Xena crossover where Ares uses the Spear of Destiny in 1942 to get out of that damned tomb in Macedonia, and ends up opening a portal to the WW universe (where Heracles was a baddie, and the Amazons ended up on Paradise Island because of his army. Take one look at Xena/Herc's Aphrodite and tell me she's so TOTALLY not based on the WW Amazons).

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously, "The Wish." And, um, "Superstar"! Hee.

And since you mentioned Farscape, "A Human Reaction" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" (the latter especially).

I'm sure there are more, but they're not coming to me right now.

In "Family of Blood", when Joan asks if they'd chosen someplace else, would anyone in the village have died, that's the key. The doctor doesn't just change history for the better. He changes it, and fallout is inevitable.
I really liked that moment. I think I found the two-parter more compelling than you did; I really liked the way it concluded. Joan's description of him was particularly apt. And Martha's.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I actually really loved the two parter. I found that it worked kind of beautifully, and moved me far more than I expected to be moved.

Honestly, for some reason, none of the Jossverse AUs work for me terribly well. I like them well enough, but am not... blown away by them, except for the one when Angel becomes human because it's so... ordinary, such little stuff.

Farscape's work better for me because they all having lasting consequences, I think.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I have to say the Angel one works so well for me because of David Boreanaz--it's when I realized he could *act* and not just brood. When he's so damned puppy-happy and you know it's going to end and end badly...oof.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

Having watched (last night) Season 3 Doctor Who's "Human Nature/Family of Blood", and having found myself all weepy at the end of it in spite of myself (partly hormones, partly… WWI will get me every time), I wanted to take a look at "be someone else" eps that worked and those that didn't.

Dude, I think everyone cried at the end of Family of Blood.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect too. Because I wasn't crying for the Doctor. I was totally crying because of those damned poppies!

[butterflykiki.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. (here through a random link from cofax7.)

*points at icon* The last ep of SG-1, with everyone living out their lives in 10 minutes... except Teal'c. No reset for Teal'c. The rest of it was nice and sweet, or poignant character stuff, but I liked that for once, someone *did* get to remember the AU. And was probably going to hold it over everyone's heads forever.

I adore AU's and such, but yeah, they're difficult to do right. I agree with whoever mentioned the ST:TNG ep up above, because again, even if it wasn't real, it had consequences, if only for one person.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

For all that it didn't cover any new territory for an SF show... I thought SG1's _2010_ was very well-done.

Now, what else... okay, I was still in college when TNG did its *first* alternate-history episode. Not the Mirror Mirror one, but the one with the Federation at war. _Yesterday's Enterprise_. "Surrender? That'll be the day!" That was fantastic. 1990, sure, but fantastic.

Sheesh, I gotta come up with a less mainstream answer. Well, I just finished Gene Wolfe's _Pirate Freedom_, which is a terrific time-travel story.

But the best one ever was _The Green Futures of Tycho_.

Here via <lj user=cofax7> making a shameful admission

[serenada.livejournal.com]

It's not just one of my favourite canon AUs, it's one of my favourite clip shows. And I hate the clip shows.

Hell, it's Andromeda, starring Kevin Sorbo--The Unconquerable Man.

What if...what if Sorbo's character wasn't the winner of the fight between the captain and the first officer as the ship slid towards the event horizon? What if it's the Nietzschean who lives when they're pulled out, who decides it's his duty to put the Commonwealth back together to atone for what he'd done, for his part in breaking it up all those years ago?

Sadly the show doesn't pick up from there and continue with Bacic in the lead instead of Sorbo. In fact, it demonstrates that it has to be Dylan Hunt trying to put the pieces back together. But it uses clips from the preceding seasons put together with newly shot scenes in such a way that I felt I had to go watch them all again, just to be sure--because it all seemed so plausible. They all worked so well in this new more dystopic light.

It was easily their best episode, and easily the last time they didn't stink to high heaven.

[gwspeanut.livejournal.com]

I've fallin' in love with "Torchwood", just watched the "Captian Jack Harkness" ep. A timeline thing that carries consequences.

[baranyandi.livejournal.com]

I am totally in love with Torchwood. It has that grown-up TV vibe that I found so compelling in Farscape. And the episode you mention made me cry. Also, while I hadn't been a slasher before, now that it's canon there, I haven't got the slightest problem with it :)

And that Dr Who Trilogy, YES. Heartbreaking, bold. Both shows are pure televised art.

[gwspeanut.livejournal.com]

Your right there on all accounts. I totally sobbed during the follow up ep. "End of Days" Some of the consequences are happening.

I definitely need to check out Dr Who.

[projectcyborg.livejournal.com]

always and forever, Voyager's "Killing Game" arc.

but Xena's uber eps are also amazing. in class Lynne shows the self-reflexive one where the characters have been reincarnated as contemporary Xena fans.

but nobody has mentioned Quantum Leap!