#shardovan

@incomingalbatross asked for

any fic or meta from you, especially in the field of Doctor Who

Tall order, very open-ended, little to no direction.... fortunately I have had an Idea, which is to talk about one of my very favorite lines in all of Doctor Who.  It's not the one you're thinking of.  No it's not that one either.  It's this one:

You made us, Man of Evil, but we are FREE

These are the last words of Shardovan, the librarian of Castrovalva.  He's tall and sinister and wears all black and a very silly hat) and the goatee of a criminal mastermind.  He's so antisocial and villain coded - and he's the only one able to see through the illusion that is his entire life.

Castrovalva is a construct, brought to life by sheer mathematics via block-transfer computation.  The power of True Creation out of the fundamental logic of the universe.  (The books are old - but they chronicle the history of Castrovalva up to the present day...)  All its people are constructs - they cannot escape the collapse of their reality because they are part of the program in a fundamental way.  Shardovan is a construct and knows it - and yet!  He is ultimately a real person, with a will of his own.

One of the finest things in Doctor Who is that everyone is Real, even when they shouldn't be.  From D-84 to Auton!Rory to Kamelion to Handles to the Extremis!Doctor and the Flesh - everyone is Real and everyone matters.  Aggedor matters, Cordo matters, people in aborted timelines and doomed timelines matter - Greg & Petra, Samurai Amy, the Dalek Controller: "who knows - I may have helped to exterminate you."  And Shardovan matters!  He is a mathematical construct and he is free.

@paulgadzikowski has a Hero of Three Faces comic on this theme which I will not try to find at this moment, but the punchline was: it is almost as if people have immortal souls.

This statement is so intensely powerful to me because it is both deeply existentialist and professes that morality is objective and knowable.  My epigram is: "Faith is not the belief that God exists, it is the trust that God is Good."  The Goodness of a creator god is not a necessary truth.  And weilding the power of Creation is not sufficient to make the Master a god, nor render him worthy of reverence.  Shardovan is the one person in Castrovalva capable of seeing Truth, and he sees the Master for what he is - a Man of Evil.  Powerful, yes, but still a man as other men are.  His personal creator, but answerable to a higher morality.

You made us - no existential crisis, no doubt or confusion about what he is, what their realationship is - BUT We Are Free

The ultimate expression of defiance, and of Truth.  Yes, you created me, and you can uncreate me just as easily.  You can turn me off with the click of a button.  But in between we are free.  It's like Aulë's creation of the Dwarves - he gives them form and substance but Eru gives them Freedom, and they become more than the work of his hands and cower before him.  But of course Aulë loved his works and the Master doesn't.  He uses people and discards them.  Castrovalva is just the ultimate expression of this.  A creator that has no love for his creation deserves no deference from them in return.

In Tolkien's work, Evil cannot Create and nothing is Created Evil.  In Doctor Who - at least in this instance - Evil can Create (with stolen power) but still nothing is Created Evil.  Just as mankind is free to Fall, Shardovan, created in evil, is free to Stand, and he does.  The Tesh and the Sevateem, products as they are of another practically all-powerful mad "god," are nevertheless free to Stand against their Creator and they do.  Xoannon can take their will at will - the Master can do that too - but only by overpowering what is already there.  They ultimately default back to Free...

Doctor Who at its best is about people deliberately choosing the Good.  Even if they aren't "really" people.  Even if they cannot win.  It's about people not being defined by the circumstances of their creation.  

Looking your creator in the face and saying "you made us, man of evil, but we are free" is about the most powerful statement it is possible to make.  It's the point "Extremis" was hamfistedly trying to make, and it's the best elements of River Song's story condensed into a single line.