Author: Brightbear
Rating: General
Summary: A set of drabbles about the 4th Doctor from Harry’s P.O.V.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and associated persons.

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At times, I find the Doctor bewildering. Sometimes I don’t understand him and I feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole. At other times, I think that there are some things about him which nobody else notices but me. Things that are so frustrating because I do understand them but I can’t do anything with that knowledge. I can see that he’s both brilliant and compassionate and a little insane and no matter how many adventures or dangers he faces, he isn’t cynical or jaded about the ability of good to conquer evil. All these people we encounter briefly see only one aspect of him and they can’t comprehend how he can survive like that. They don’t understand that what they are seeing is just one aspect and that there is more to him. I’m a helpless observer because I think I know how he does it but I don’t know how to tell other people what it means.

* * *

The Doctor can be extremely childish sometimes or at least he appears to be. I think people only describe it as childish because they assume he behaves that way because he doesn’t know any better. The thing is, he’s been around for longer than most people (at least most humans) can comprehend. You can see it in the way he can name so many alien threats that seem so... well, alien to me. He knows the Sontarans and the Daleks by sight and he knows their abilities. Even when he hasn’t encountered a creature before, like the Wirren, he can very quickly make conclusions about their species. The Doctor isn’t ‘childish’ because he doesn’t know any better. He’s seen the other options and for some reason, that is the attitude he has chosen. I still don’t quite know why.

* * *

Sometimes I think about how the Doctor has changed since we left Earth. One of the first conversations we had was me trying to force him back to the infirmary on Earth. Certainly his behaviour was erratic and unpredictable and he’d just recovered from a massive dose of radiation... He seemed at first like any other patient suffering from a mixture of trauma and cabin-fever. He wanted to get out, to go away. He didn’t remember his previous regeneration and he showed little interest in trying to remember. He did remember in the end and he resumed his role as UNIT’s scientific advisor but it was temporary. As soon as the danger was gone, he left Earth and he took Sarah and I with him. After we left Earth the Doctor quickly settled down and there was more method to his madness. He was still eccentric but he seemed calmer and in control. I sometimes wonder if it was the radiation that made him unstable or if it was the fact that he was on Earth. Did the Earth and the Brigadier make him uncomfortable? Did he remember Earth and UNIT as the place that belonged to his third incarnation? I wonder sometimes if he left because Earth was driving him crazy with the ghost of a man he no longer was.

THE END