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The Taint
(Michael
Collier) |
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 Name: Fitz Kreiner
Format:
Book.
Time of Origin: 1963, Roley Institute,
Outskirts of London.
Appearances: The
Taint - The
Ancestor Cell, Escape
Velocity - The
Gallifrey Chronicles.
Doctor: Eighth
Doctor.
Fellow
Companions: The
Brigadier, Sarah
Jane Smith, 3rd
Romana, Samantha
Jones, Compassion, Anji Kapoor, Trix MacMillan and K9.
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Parallel 59
(Natalie Dallaire and
Stephen Cole) |
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History: When Fitz met Sam
and the Eighth
Doctor, he wasn't really getting anywhere fast in his time. As
Sam put it, he was just lying back and seeing where life took, although
he didn't seem to be doing well at it; he was working in a garden
centre owned by a doctor that ran a mental hospital where his mother
was, and made a living at night by playing at a club under the pseudonym
of 'Fitz Fortune'. However, after taking Sam out for a night on the
town, he witnessed a murder, got accused of it by the police, found
himself trying to help The Doctor defeat the patients of his boss,
and ended up travelling with them in the TARDIS
to keep himself safe.
Although from the same time as the First
Doctor's companions Ian and Barbara,
Fitz was from a different lifestyle than they were, being more of
a relaxed slacker rather than a professional, never
daring to fully explore his talents out of fear that he would fail.
Even after he left his time, he retained an occasionally unfortunate
habit of falling for women, such as (to a certain degree) his fellow
companions Sam and Anji, although Compassion was never an object
of his affections due to his initial discomfort about his past as
a member of the Remote and her later status as a TARDIS. He also
enjoys playing his guitar whenever he can, playing miniature concerts
on such occasions as when keeping up the spirits of the colonists
in "The
Year of Intelligent Tigers", continuing to enjoy giving
performances even up to his departure in "The
Gallifrey Chronicles",
adding various unique songs to his resume such as songs sung by the
Beatles in alternate realities. He also had a very unique way of
coping with terror - he tries to distract himself by checking out
the ladies, such as in "The
Ancestor Cell", when, while
Faction
Paradox launched an attack on Gallifrey, he tried to keep
his mind off it by constantly admiring the bodies of Romana's
third incarnation and a Faction Paradox agent called Tarra. (Before he
witnessed her true decaying appearance and learned of her real allegiance).
As well as all this, however, his time with The Doctor has made him
fiercely loyal to his friend; even when faced with a woman who his
mind had been engineered to love, Fitz couldn't deny the need to
help The Doctor when his friend was threatened by a strange alien
race ("The
Book of the Still'").
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Earthworld
(Jacqueline
Rayner) |
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Although seemingly a cynical slacker getting by in a
fantasy world where he pretended to be other to escape his own life
when he first met The Doctor, as time went on Fitz displayed significant
depth of character. His old interest in history was mentioned more
than once, showing enthusiasm when he thought The Doctor was taking
them to join an archaeological dig - although The Doctor instead
took them back to when the site in question was habited, concluding
that attending the dig itself ‘would be boring, and require
the wearing of mittens’ - ("The
Taking of Planet 5"),
while on another occasion he briefly left The Doctor to participate
in an expedition to the Antarctic as the expedition’s chronicler.
While never expressly learning anything about the nature of time
and reality, Fitz, like the Second Doctor’s old companion Jamie
MacCrimmon, has demonstrated a useful knack for spotting simple solutions
to problems that The Doctor would never have thought of, such as
using an analogy of comparing a system of perpetual reincarnation
to a driver’s exam ("Vanishing
Point"), and helping
The Doctor track the Council
of Eight - who existed on a space station
outside of time - by asking where the TARDIS was on a diagram that
displayed the entire universe ("Sometime
Never...").
Although essentially a coward and unused to sticking his neck out
for others, Fitz nevertheless grew into a capable companion, his
dedication to The Doctor prompting him to defend his friend against
such diverse criticism as new companion Anji’s belief that
The Doctor fought monsters because he could rather than because he
cared ("Eater
of Wasps") or Sabbath’s claims that
he and The Doctor were the same, constantly stating his belief that
The Doctor didn’t kill unless all other options were exhausted
("The
Last Resort").
Unfortunately, Fitz's time with The Doctor hasn't been
easy; after only a few adventures with The Doctor, Fitz was captured
by The Doctor's old enemies Faction Paradox and taken back in time
200 years, to become Father Krienier, head of the Remote the Faction
sent to Dust, the very edge of the human space empire. When he arrived
there, Krienier battled none other than the Third Doctor, shortly
before his unscheduled regeneration, which was unintentionally caused
by the Eighth Doctor when we met his past self while he was in prison.
However, the Eighth Doctor later met another version of Fitz created
by the Remote's memories of him, and, with the help of the TARDIS
- since the Fitz-copy, known as ‘Kode’ for Fitz’s
talents with the machine codes he wrote on Anathema, recognised that
he couldn’t spend his life wondering how close he was to the
original - restored the original Fitz's memories to Kode, making
him the genuine article again, in a sense; as The Doctor put it,
when it came to memories people physically changed all the time,
but continuity was all that mattered.
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To The Slaughter
(Stephen Cole) |
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This ‘new’ Fitz, while retaining the ‘original’s’ fondness
for fantasy lives, generally seemed more comfortable in his own skin,
his skills at deception being used more regularly simply to blend
in to the new worlds he found himself, such as when he posed as a
colonist from Mercury to inhabitants of a futuristic city ("The
Space Age"), rather than simply being assumed for the sake
of it, such as when he posed as a James Bond-style individual and
ended
up getting accidentally hired as an assassin to kill the owner of
a casino (Later revealed to be the Fourth
Doctor,
who had won so much during his last visit the casino had to sign
ownership to him
or face bankruptcy) ("Demontage").
Father Krienier was later killed in a battle with the Eighth Doctor
in "The Ancestor
Cell", slain by Grandfather Paradox - The Doctor’s corrupted
future self - for his treachery when he tried to help The Doctor,
leaving Fitz the only ‘true’ Fitz Kriener. However, as
a result of his confrontation with his ‘template’, Fitz
suffered from a temporarily identity crisis in "Earthworld",
which he managed to deal with thanks to his memories of his lover
Filippa from Mechta in "Parallel
59", given form by a memory
machine, who reminded him that he was still Fitz despite his origins.
Since then the issue of his origins has generally been ignored, with
Fitz thinking of his ‘recreation’ at the hands of the
TARDIS whenever he thinks of it at all - as him being restored to
health after an ‘accident’ rather than him being cloned
or copied ("To
The Slaughter").
Another notable fact about Fitz is that he
appears to spend quite a few adventures with his brain wired up to
some kind of gadget at some time or another - an alien leech in "The
Taint", the TARDIS itself in "Interference
Book Two",
(Well, technically, it was wired up to Kode, but Kode was Fitz, so
it still counts.) virtual reality generators in "Parallel
59", the
memory machine in "Earthworld", and once he was plugged
into a machine that would have almost wiped his memories in "Vanishing
Point", but by this point his brain had apparently been through
so much stuff that it had built up a resistance. As time went on,
Fitz even displayed a greater independence from The Doctor, such
as when he investigated a group of cyborgs called the Brotherhood
of the Silver Fist in "Hope" despite their clearly ruthless
nature. However, his most notable solo ‘victory’ was
when he was captured by a rhino-like race called The Onihr, who thought
he was The Doctor and sought the secret of time travel. With the
aid of a hand-held information computer given to him by the Onihr,
Fitz managed to sabotage the Onihr's EMP cannon and teleport away
from the ship as it exploded, casually informing The Doctor and Anji
upon arrival at the warehouse where they were currently hiding that
he had ‘just saved the world from a race of invincible would-be
time-travelling space-rhinos' (A sentence that The Doctor was certain
had never been uttered before, much to his satisfaction; he had recently
been hearing a great deal of cliché statements such as ‘Doctor,
look out!’ and had been worried he’d never hear an original
sentiment again) ("Trading
Futures").
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The Gallifrey Chronicles
(Lance Parkin) |
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Despite his successes as a solo operative, however, Fitz
nevertheless began to feel very dependent on The Doctor, reflecting
how frustrating it was at times to depend so much on The Doctor and
accomplish so little on his own merit. With this in mind, he briefly
left the TARDIS to accompany an archaeologist’s expedition
to the Antarctic in 1899, only to result in him spending almost a
hundred years frozen in time in an ice version of the TARDIS ("Time
Zero") before The Doctor and Anji discovered him. Although he
continued to feel very out of his depth during their subsequent attempts
to set history on its proper course - resulting in Fitz being arrested
and beaten as a terrorist in an alternate London ("The
Domino Effect") before his biodata was contaminated due to exposure
to an alternate timeline ("Reckless
Engineering"), followed
by multiple alternate versions of himself and his fellow companions
being forced to sacrifice themselves to preserve reality ("The
Last Resort"). After this, however, his time became easier,
working alongside The Doctor and new companion Trix to track down
the beings responsible and avert the damage they had done to reality.
Following The Doctor's defeat of the Council of Eight
- mysterious beings who gained power by predicting the future - Fitz
continued to travel with The Doctor and new companion Trix MacMillan for nearly year - on one occasion even briefly ‘absorbing’ some
aspects of The Doctor’s personality after their memories were
erased and subsequently improperly restored so that they each retained
some of the other’s personal quirks ("Halflife")
- before he and Trix decided to leave in "The Gallifrey Chronicles",
having realised that they loved each other. However, things apparently
fell apart before they even got started when Fitz seemed to give
his life to save Trix from the alien species known as the Vore, a
fly-like race that could travel through hyperspace. However, it turned
out that Fitz had merely been covered with a chemical that made any
humans in the vicinity think he was dead - or, if they didn't know
about him, just not register his presence. Being a Time Lord, The
Doctor was able to perceive the 'dead' and bring them back in sync
with humanity's perceptions, before he, Fitz and Trix headed off
to confront the Vore in their new fortress, the novel ending as The
Doctor leapt into the mountain to confront them. How things went
from there is unknown; presumably the three of them somehow defeated
the Vore before The Doctor left Fitz and Trix to make a life for
themselves.
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