#daniel joyce

From a little-viewed thread posted to rec.arts.drwho by Stephen Graves on September 15, 1999:

Right. The obvious explanation is that Joyce is the Doctor’s father, as portrayed by Sean Connery. That theory adds up quite nicely - his backstory matches that of the Doctor’s father in the Nth Doctor script "The Time of My Life," and his name - Joyce - is a play on Ulysses (the Doctor’f father in the Fathers and Brothers script), written by James *Joyce*. That’s all very well - Joyce may well be the Doctor’s father, but I think there’s a little more to it than that…

His son’s origins and timelines changed with every regeneration, every biodata twitch and genetic temporal kick. At one point, the Doctor became a Time Lord without a father, without parents, a God reincarnated and sewn on a singing wooden loom laced with twitching and fleshy threads. 

With a sigh, a man made temporal impossibility simply shuffled out of his cryo-chamber or dreamscape. The prison at the heart of History itself, watching it as a secondary Eye of metal and rock, did not see a non-existent concept, and he merely walked out of Shada. 

Later, Professor Daniel Joyce entertains a guest, allowing himself to be open and curt regarding his relationship with the Doctor and his tangled history.

“His... shall we say his narrative, it tends to shift and change. Not just present and future, but his past. It becomes something as fluid and conceptual as Gallifrey’s, really. Legends and myths, all conflicting and contrasting and impossible. I managed to slip through one of these narrative blips. A break in my need to be there for him.” 

“... I wonder...” 

 “Mm?” 

 “You act, of course, like you’re the original. The real thing. The true history, always there when his biodata... erm...” 

 “Acts out?” He smiled at her. “Of course. Fathers are always there at the end of a bout of teenage rebellion.” 

 “... but have you ever considered that all of that, your history, your... perception of his, is just one of those narrative blips?” 

 He raised his eyebrow. 

 “Like, this Doctor. My Doctor. Velvet and curls and sandalwood.” She bit her lip, wondering if she’d gone too far. Might as well see it through. “What if you... only exist and have always existed just because of his narrative shift?” 

“Of course I’ve considered it.” His voice was soft, kind, and his smile was still warm as a tea mug. “It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?” 

 “... I s’ppose.” 

 “But I have too much to work on and focus to dwell on existential theoreticals. I prefer to think, either way, that I’m just here when he needs me.” 

“I always assumed there was some tension.”

"Of course. As in any family." 

 “... doesn’t he, like... have to clean up temporal messes and chaotic experiments you leave behind on occasion?” 

Despite the copious in-story hints and behind-the-scenes confirmations from the authors that Ulysses aka “Daniel Joyce” was the Doctor’s father, the Eighth Doctor books themselves never provided any explicit, definite proof. As a result, the Tardis Data Core Wiki splits its information about the Doctor’s father across three pages: “the Doctor’s father”, “Ulysses”, and “Daniel Joyce”. This creates a total headache, with page telling only a fraction of the one united story.

To fix this I’ve created my own version of what the three pages would look like (linked above), and while doing so I managed to find a whole lot of little connections that I’d never noticed before. Every day we inch closer to a complete picture of the Parkin Masterplan...

1) The way this scene is written, highlighting Joyce’s adult daughter with his second wife Anne (because remember, he’s Ulysses, so there’s Penelope to keep in mind) before he launches into a grumpy tirade about the Doctor’s companions, one can 100% read an implication that Joyce’s daughter was a TARDIS companion at some point in the past or (the Doctor’s) future. And I love that idea a lot. The Doctor traveling with a younger half-sister and showing her the universe is a really sweet idea and has so much potential to be absolutely angst ridden. 

2) The idea of Joyce needing to be a father figure, starving for that sort of relationship with someone again, actually adds such a sweet element to the Doctor asking Joyce and Anne to care for Eric, a young telepath, in Jonathan Dennis’ The Killing of a Flash Boy (an absolute forgotten gem of a story that is one of my stranger picks for top ten Eighth Doctor short stories). 

The Doctor met up with Grace for absolutely no plot related reasons only to fuck, send tweet. 

The universe getting smaller feels absolutely like a further nod to the Greyness from The Infinity Doctors mentioned earlier in the book, and Joyce’s comment can be seen as either a lovely canon-welding nod to the City of the Saved or the Post-War Universe.