After the events of their last adventure, Ginger had realized she'd allowed her defenses to come down and made the appropriate moves to rectify that mistake. She requested a five day break from the rest of the group in order to repair her walls, so that's how they came to be meeting on a Saturday afternoon.
"There she is!" Jack said, upon arriving. "Our killer queeeeeen!"
"Gunpowder, gelatin!" Alex chipped in.
"Dynamite with a laser beam!" the Doctor contributed.
"Guaranteed to blow your mind!" the three of them teased, together. "Anytiiiiime!"
"Enough, enough!" Ginger said, urging them to pipe down. She was doing her best to not seem the least bit amused by these antics. "Will I never live that down?"
The other three exchanged a look. "Never!" they agreed, in unison.
"Alright, what are we doing today?" Ginger asked, exasperated.
"Nice clean change of subject, I like that!" the Doctor said, clapping his hands together.
"So where to?" Ginger felt she had to keep him on track. "We could go join the American civil rights movement or go on a tour of the origins of Riot Girl or-"
"Or we could go somewhere that you haven't prepared an opinion on," the Doctor cut in.
This stopped her in her tracks. Her eyes narrowed. "Like where?"
"We could go to another planet, if you want a suggestion."
She considered this option, being sorely tempted. All she'd ever wanted as a kid was to leave this cesspool of a planet, but she felt hesitation now. "I think I'll keep my feet firmly on the ground for now," she asserted. "Besides, then you'd get to be Mr. Know-It-All."
"Ah so you admit that you only want to travel to places that make you sound smart?" he teased.
She couldn't immediately think of a retort, so she just fumed for a moment. "I...I don't need to sound smart."
Jack leaned over to mutter to Alex. "Do we actually get any say?"
"It's better not to interfere with their process," Alex said in a hushed tone of her all. "That would just make it take longer. Let them hash it out and at some point they'll remember they're not the only ones left in the universe."
"You don't need to sound smart?" the Doctor was asking. The two of them were totally oblivious to all of this.
"No, that's right, I have nothing to prove!" was Ginger's retort.
"So prove that, then," the Doctor replied. "Let go for just a little while and just enjoy a trip."
"Well if I'm going to do that, then so will you!" she said, crossing her leather-clad arms.
"How?" he asked.
She groaned. "I don't know!" Then she seemed to land on an idea. She reached in her pocket and fished out the iPod the Doctor had given her. "Put it on Shuffle!"
"Shuffle?" he asked, totally stumped.
"Yeah! There's a shuffle button on my TARDIS, shouldn't there be one on yours?"
"Doc gave her that iPod and told her to call it TARDIS," Alex explained to Jack, who of course hadn't been in the loop when this was happening.
"I see," he replied.
The Doctor still didn't quite understand.
"Look, it's simple," Ginger said. "Set the TARDIS to pick a random place in space-time and take us there. Then we can both prove that we don't have to have a plan and we can exist with spontaneity."
"I don't-" the Doctor was regretting his earlier teasing.
Ginger silenced him by raising her eyebrows. "This was your idea," she reminded him. "In the immortal words of my true love, Dark Helmet: What's the matter, Colonel Sanders? Chicken?"
There was a moment of tense silence while the Doctor debated this.
"Alright, fine," he conceded.
"Fine?"
"Brilliant, in fact. If it's good with you."
"Course it is, it was my idea! Molto bene!"
"Hey that's my line!" the Doctor said, put out a bit by that.
"Whose line is it anyway?"
"Are you trying to tell me that you speak Italian?"
"No, just old-school Latin in this case..."
Ginger and the Doctor started taking off towards the exit.
"See, I told you they'd sort it out," Alex said to Jack. "They always do."
She and Jack hung behind them a few paces, because they didn't want to get caught in the whirlwind of banter whipping up around them.
"Wait, what's this thing about Dark Helmet being your true love?" the Doctor teased.
"I always relate to Rick Moranis characters," Ginger shrugged. "They're dopey and relatable."
...
"You know, you're right," Ginger said. "I don't know what I was thinking. Being nervous about not having a plan. Pre-World War I Germany is so boring that it really justifies jumping all in."
"I'm sorry, Doc, I have to agree with her," Alex said. "There's nothing really excitin' about this at all."
They were meandering through the University of Vienna, and try as they might they could find nothing noteworthy happening at all.
The Doctor was just about to give up and suggest heading back to the TARDIS when he noticed an interesting plaque.
"Hey Ginger?" he asked, teasingly.
She sighed. "What?"
"You still feeling Underjoyed?"
"It's a permanent state of being, though you do exacerbate matters slightly."
"Well I might be the Doctor, but I think I found you a specialist."
She looked up at him quizzically and followed his gaze to the plaque on the wall.
"Oh no way."
"What?" Alex asked.
"You want to meet Sigmund Freud?" the Doctor asked.
...
They went up to his office door, but got no answer and found it to be locked when they tried the handle.
"He must not be in there, we'll have to come back later," the Doctor said, disappointed.
"Or," Ginger proposed. "We could break in."
"I don't think-"
"Oh come on, Doc," Alex said, rolling her eyes. "Just sonic us in."
"He could be back any second-"
"If you won't help us break in, I can pick locks and do it myself," Ginger said, getting to work.
"Fine, okay, I'll do it," he said.
...
He wasn't in there when they opened the door, so they just began exploring on their own.
The Doctor took the natural role of lookout as Ginger, Jack, and Alex began rifling through Freud's things.
"For the office of someone so famous, these notes are all super boring," Alex complained, holding up a paper she'd found.
"What are you doing looking at papers?" Ginger asked. "Freud was a hack, help me find his drugs."
"His drugs?" the Doctor repeated, in disbelief.
Ginger noticed how they'd all come to a stop to stare at her and rolled her eyes. "Oh come on. Be grownups. I don't want his coke, but he's got to at least have some weed around here somewhere. I haven't gotten high since I was Alex's age and I intend to liberate some harmless drugs from him if I can."
"You used to get high?" Jack asked, amused. "Wouldn't've pegged you for the type to let loose like that."
"You trying to tell me you've never lit up?" Ginger asked him, raising her eyebrows. "Like, okay, Alex and Doc are way too uptight to get high on purpose, but you've got to have tried something at some point."
"Once or twice," he admitted.
"I don't think I was sober for much of my teen years, to be honest," she said.
"Hey!" the Doctor said, wanting to be included. "I've experimented once or twice when I was young too!" They all raised their eyebrows at him. "Which...Alex should obviously not do, so we should stop talking about it."
Ginger's eyes fell on the sofa that patients were meant to lie on, and decided to lay herself down on it as if languishing. "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doc - do you believe in the aliens?" she sang, teasingly.
"First of all, that's not the right lyrics, though I get how it would sound that way," he replied, amused. "Second, how do you know that song? Thought you were from 2015."
She looked at him quizzically again. "I am," she replied. "It was on the iPod you gave me." Then her eyes widened and she say upright. "Wait. Did you...You loaded this up with...FUTURE MUSIC?"
He looked pleased with himself. "Took you long enough to notice."
"Woah," she grinned. "It's like a sneak peak, I dig it."
"You dig it?" Jack asked. It was his turn to tease now. "What decade did you say you were from again?"
"Wait, what's the lyric if she's not saying doctor?" Ginger wondered aloud. "Never mind, I like my lyric better."
"You know an awful lot of songs about being queen for someone who is anti-establishment," the Doctor said, ignoring Jack. "Queen of Pain, Killer Queen, Queen Universe, Saline the Salt Lake Queen..."
"When I am Queen, Snow White Queen, Bank of Boston Beauty Queen, Queen of Peace..." she continued listing. "Yeah, suppose I do." She decided to lay back dramatically on the seat again to quote the song again. "Maybe maybe maybe maybe you should believe in the aliens!"
"Excuse me?" a voice said from the doorway. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my office?"
Jack sprang to action first. "Sorry to intrude, Mr Freud. I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he said, coming forward to shake his hand as he thought up an excuse. "We're with the police. There were reports of office break ins and I arrived just in time to find these people going through your things. Was just about to take them back to my police box to arrest them."
"And as I was explaining, we were waiting for him to return!" the Doctor took the bait running. "It's an honor to meet you, Dr Freud. I'm Doctor Smith, and this young lady is my secretary Alexia."
"And the young lady on my lounge chair?" he asked.
"Oh her?" the Doctor said. "I specialize in psychosis and she's my case study. I brought her for your expertise. She's the Queen of the Universe."
Ginger was mildly ticked off and used that to cover her amusement at the introduction. She decided to use this as an acting opportunity by latching onto another one of the future songs the Doctor had put on her playlist.
"The Doctor tells me I'm connected to the weather," she said, slipping into a bad imitation of a cockney accent. Alex had to try very hard not to fall into fits of laughter.
"She's English?" Freud asked.
"Only if it suits her," the Doctor responded.
"I rather think it doesn't," Alex giggled.
"I don't Adam and Eve this!" Ginger grinned, earning more groans and laughter from Alex.
"I haven't got time for this," Dr. Freud said, turning back to Jack. "They're free to go, if they wish. But you say you're with the police?"
"That's right," Jack replied.
"That's good, because I require police protection," Freud said. "My life is in danger."
This dramatic declaration was broken by Ginger saying in a sarcastically oblivious voice: "Now that sounds like a delusion brought on by your sexual urges towards your mum. I diagnose you with secretly wanting it. Tell me: How does that make you feel?"
...
"Now you see that I have no choice but to ask for protection in this case," Freud said, finishing up his story.
"What I'm hearin' is more like someone's havin' hallucinations and needs to lay off the blow," said Ginger, who still hadn't bothered to get off the couch.
"But you'll protect me, won't you?" Freud plead, obviously desperate.
"Of course-" the Doctor began.
"Wait, wait, wait a minute," Ginger said, finally rising to her feet. "Group meeting. Now."
...
"I actually believe him," the Doctor said. "That sounds like a couple of different things could be happening here-"
"That's not what I'm concerned with," Ginger said.
"Oh good, you've dropped the accent," Alex said, chuckling. "That's mainly what I was concerned with."
Ginger rolled her eyes. "We are not protecting Freud."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"Because he's a misogynist who cemented harmful ideas about women, for just one of many reasons I have," she replied, crossing her arms.
"Unbelievable," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "We come to a place specifically so that you won't be a know-it-all and you still manage to find something you have a strong opinion about!"
"If we let whatever monster of the week this is have its way with him, maybe we can save some other lives," she persisted. "Emma Eckstein, for instance."
"Letting one person die to save another is not what we do," the Doctor reminded her. "This week it's 'let's abandon Freud' then that's a slippery slope to 'let's kill Hitler!'"
"And why not?" Ginger replied. "That is also a fantastic plan, which I support!"
"These are fixed points in history," he said, with just a touch of amusement. "Anyway, Emma Eckstein only died for a second and was disfigured. Without the experience she might not have become the first female psychoanalyst. You know all this about fixed points in history, you're just intentionally being difficult to prove how knowledgeable and morally superior you are."
Her jaw dropped and there was a brief moment of silence.
"If I might weigh in," Alex interjected. "You did say this was supposed to be a group meeting and so far you haven't cared to know what Jack and I think about it."
"Groovy!" Ginger said. "You two can be tie breakers. What do you think?"
"I'm kind of with the Doctor on this one," Jack said.
"Ouch, okay, betrayal, but I wouldn't expect the men in the room to understand," Ginger said, pretending to be wounded by this. "Alex?"
Alex hesitated. "I'm sorry, but yeah. Morally we have to try to keep him alive."
"Et tu, Alexia?" Ginger was slightly wounded by this.
"And now she speaks Latin!" the Doctor said, clapping his hands together.
"I already told you I do-"
"Come on," the Doctor said. "Accept your defeat. I'll tell you what - if we keep Freud alive then I'll give you a treat."
She crossed her arms, sulking a bit. "What kind of treat?"
"Have you ever heard of Nellie Bly?"
Her jaw dropped again, but for an entirely different reason. "Have I heard of! Of course I've heard of her! Celebrated journalistic pioneer Nellie Bly! I'm a huge fan!"
He looked infuriatingly smug now. "Nellie and I are casual acquaintances so if you can get through today without directly or indirectly causing the death of Sigmund Freud, then I'll introduce you."
She considered this for a moment, looking infuriated by the conundrum it posed. She groaned. "You drive a hard bargain."
"Brilliant!" the Doctor said, taking this for a yes.
...
Ginger opted to stick with the overblown cockney act for the entirety of her interactions that day, much to Alex's amusement.
"If I might offer a suggestion," Freud said at one point. "I think it might simply be negligent to bring these young women into the field of battle. If things are to get dangerous, it could further regress your patient, Doctor, into her hysteria."
Ginger called up more song lyrics, and gestured as if she were as hysterical as he was making her out to seem. "The Doctor thinks I'm fine! He thinks I'm making up lies! The Doctor thinks I'm fine! He leaves me here to die!"
"It might be more prudent to restrain her for the time being, for the safety of all involved," Freud asserted.
"Oh you don't want to do that," the Doctor said. "Part of my diagnosis of her particular deviance was made based on her liking restraints."
Alex and Jack were shocked that he was the one to make that joke, but Ginger took it in her sarcastic stride. "You mustn't leave me to my own devices, sir. Left alone too long and I might just lapse into a fit of chronic masturbation, which from your writings you say is the root of female hysterics."
"You read my work?" he asked, surprised.
"Blimey, no!" Ginger responded, as if scandalized. "A woman should not read, sir! I am properly illiterate, as befitting my gender!"
"My daughter can read," Freud responded, as if scandalized by her old fashioned thinking. "She's very well educated, as a matter of fact. She lives with her close female friend while she pursues her education." He turned to the Doctor. "I'd also venture a guess that she's suffering from classic symptoms of penis envy - seeking to emasculate in order to gain a phallis of her own."
Ginger lurched forward. "Can I hit him?" She was barely restrained by Jack and the Doctor in time.
"Woah, Nellie," the Doctor said, giving her a meaningful look. Then he looked back at Freud. "Sorry about that. Hysterics."
...
The Doctor was extremely amused by Ginger's lackluster response to Freud's presence. "You're really not impressed at all to meet such an influential figure?" he asked in a low voice.
"He's left an impression, but that doesn't mean I find him impressive," Ginger hissed back. "I don't think he deserves to have the influence he does."
...
"This one is a curious case," Freud remarked about Ginger at one point. "Her particular madness and delusion seem to fluctuate, almost on whim. I'd suspect lack of a strong father figure."
Ginger was unable to bite back her sarcastic remark. "It wouldn't matter at all if I told you I'm sane, because you've already decided by my behavior that anything I say should be confirmation of your own theories!"
Freud ignored her, with a look instead at the Doctor. "Women never properly reach moral maturity and need a firm male hand to guide them through life. She's clearly unfit for marriage in her state. Therefore, if no father figure is to become available, she should be confined for treatment and further study."
Ginger reached for a separate song this time. "For the good of our society, they oughtn't reproduce! So while they may pretend propriety we'll never let 'em loose!"
"Don't allow her to have any effect on your secretary, sir," Freud continued. "She's still young, yet. If dangerous ideas aren't sewn into her head, she might still be marriageable."
"Okay, can I hit him now?" Ginger said, rising to anger again.
...
This outing would make Alex appreciate the bickering that Ginger and the Doctor always performed, because the way Ginger and Freud lost patience with each other was so much worse.
"Your theories are based on nothing but abject misogyny and a disregard for the safety of your patients!" Ginger snapped at one point. "Addiction is a serious disease and I'm not trying to downplay that, but your ideas are extremely detrimental to the well-being of the people in your care!"
"I will not be lectured by a psychotic woman!" Freud snapped back. "You talk of matters that you cannot possibly fathom, since you are not at all educated!"
This seemed to strike an especially thin nerve of Ginger's and she was once again restrained from hitting him.
...
"Are you alright?" Jack asked when they had one minute of peace while Freud was just slightly out of earshot. Alex and the Doctor also looked a bit concerned.
"I'm fine, of course I'm fine," Ginger snapped. "Don't psychoanalyze me."
"You know this was your choice, right?" the Doctor reminded her gently. "To play dumb. We all know you're a know-it-all, this was the point of coming here. You don't have to prove anything to us, remember?"
"Yeah, just lay off it, okay?" she snapped, turning away.
...
There was indeed a plot by one of Freud's colleagues involving an alien species that the group helped to foil. After the heat of battle abated, it seemed that Freud still had one more thing he was dying to say.
"You never did say, young lady," he referred this time to Alex. "I do presume you have a strong male influence in your life, but I might be presumptuous in assuming you are not already bound for marriage?"
"I don't think so," Alex said, clearly uncomfortable with the question.
"You just seemed so moral and level, I had to assume it was under the guidance of a young gentleman," Freud continued. "Not like the ladies today, who get caught up in the immorality of taking on female companionship."
"And what do you mean by that?" Alex asked, having a nasty feeling where this was going.
"The plight of the homosexual woman is a sad one," Freud lamented. "Unable to reach fulfillment through childbearing, she will inevitably decline as she is only working with a child's emotional capacity."
"Now hold on there!" Jack said, getting angry himself.
"There is still hope for you, child," Freud said, clearly getting to the core of his argument that he'd been building to. "You must forfeit clitoral stimulation and refocus your efforts elsewhere, lest you never develop past this stage."
This time it was Jack that lurched forward as if to hit him, but the Doctor stopped him.
"Hold on, Jack," the Doctor said, his eyes betraying his own anger even though his voice was calm. "We can't go around hitting people in front of Alex, we have to set a good example. But since Ginger isn't a role model, she doesn't have that problem."
There was a moment where this statement sunk in. Ginger turned to the Doctor then, shocked. "I can hit him?"
"Just this once, make it count," he said. "Might I suggest his nose? Avenge Emma Eckstein, be a metaphor for his coke addiction, whatever gets you going."
She grinned, clearly pleased with this result.
"Hold on, now, this isn't civilized at all," Freud said, clearly thinking they wouldn't go through with this.
"I'm not civilized," Ginger said. "I'm a hysterical woman."
She then punched him straight on the nose. The Doctor was the only one who caught the resulting fluctuation of her feelings about this act. For the moment after punching him she felt satisfied before conflicting feelings of guilt washed over her with one of her brief flashbacks. This lasted only for a second, and she was back to acting her version of fine.
...
"Did you catch all that about Freud's daughter and her 'female friend'?" Jack asked, after they were back in the TARDIS.
"Oh yeah," Ginger said. "He was trying so hard to make it sound like his daughter wasn't an unmarried slut that he was convincing me instead that she was-"
"Gay," the Doctor said, as if this were a neutral statement. "Anna Freud was very gay."
"Really?" Alex said, having not considered this.
"It was never confirmed, and she denied it," the Doctor said. "But she and her 'friend' that Freud mentioned lived together for the rest of their lives."
"Did Anna Freud ever marry?" Ginger asked.
"No, but she helped her 'friend' raise her children."
"Gay," Ginger agreed. She turned to Alex. "Sweet, simple, naive Alex. You must learn that any time a history book says two women lived together for decades and never married that always means they were gay."
"Anna Freud actually became a prominent child psychologist, you know," the Doctor said, pointedly.
"That's right!" Ginger said, as if she couldn't believe she'd forgotten. "Her work actually meant something!"
"I didn't know that!" Alex said. "Why don't we learn more about her in school?"
Jack, Ginger, and the Doctor all exchanged a look before saying in unison. "Gay."
Alex laughed. "Point taken."
"Best part is that we got out of there alive without Freud prescribing us any cocaine," Jack said.
"And Ginger can go back to being the smartest person in the room, as it should be," Alex replied.
"Well, not the smartest-" the Doctor cut in.
"Doctor, let her have this," Alex said.
Ginger looked a little put out by this, which wasn't at all what Alex had intended.
"Look," Ginger said. "I don't want to be the smartest. I mean...I do. But..." She sighed, clearly struggling to get words out. "The problem is that I was brilliant as a kid. Actually kind of genius category in language and reading. Never could do math, though, so I developed a bit of an insecurity about it since it's the one thing I'm not good at. But I had to leave school early and it made me think poorly about myself so I try to make up for it by being the loudest, most opinionated person in the room."
"Lots of people don't finish college, though, Ginger," Alex reminded her. "You're always the one saying how formal education is a classist barrier to education when you can learn more online without paying."
Ginger hesitated. "I didn't even make it as far as college."
Alex was still oblivious. "Well, you were a genius so you probably didn't need to go further than secondary school-"
"You don't get it!" Ginger snapped. "I left school when I was 15. It wasn't my choice and I never went back. Can we drop this, now?"
"Yeah, sure," Alex said, a little stunned. "Sorry."
...
The Doctor managed to raise everyone's spirits by introducing them to Nellie Bly, then taking them out for ice cream after. Alex finished her cone and decided that she needed another and dragged Jack back up to the counter to find a new flavor. This left the Doctor and Ginger sitting down at the table alone.
"How are you feeling?" the Doctor asked her, a bit nervously.
"Feelings?" she replied. "I don't do those."
"You do," he said, wondering if he was stepping over a line here. "I saw your face just after you hit Freud. You didn't look alright. It was just a fraction of a second and everyone else missed it, but I saw your face."
"Now you're a believer?"
"Without a trace of doubt in my mind."
"This is going in a weird direction," she said, waving her hand. "My fault, I apologize."
"You're distracting me from the topic," the Doctor replied. "Very intentionally."
"Just got a bit of a headache," she sighed, before singing under her breath. "The Doctor tells me, 'show me where it's hurting'...Doctor, won't you think I'm fine?"
He slightly modified the lyrics. "I'm here to tell you that you're breaking this time. Powdered bruises getting deeper with lies and the plasters are not working this time."
She hesitated, before sighing. "I used to be so good with the violence," she replied. "I want to stand up and be all punk rock and loud and defend what I believe in. But when it actually comes to it, I feel...I don't like violence. So there's a disconnect."
"There is a bit of a cognitive dissonance with you, I have noticed that," the Doctor mused.
"How so?" Ginger asked, with a touch of her old defensiveness.
"You've told Alex so many times that it is important to educate herself," the Doctor said. "Because institutions will hand out information in a disingenuous way and try to, as you say, brain wash her. You talk about how schools disenfranchise the differently abled, you rail against the school-to-prison pipeline...But most importantly you talk about how your school performance is not an indicator of your intelligence."
"Yeah, so?"
"So, you know all this," he continued. "You know that there's no such thing as smart people, only insecure people who can cleverly steer conversations back to subjects they're more comfortable with. You use facts as an act of self-defense. You know so much, logically, but you don't believe nearly so much. You are surprisingly introspective, almost to a fault. You know yourself so well, but you seem to be the thing that you believe in the least. You run from faith, even at the cost of faith in yourself."
At that moment, Alex returned with her ice cream and Ginger changed the subject.