A/N: So, while I've known & loved large stretches of the classics & the entire RTD (I) & Moffat eras, I've never watched the complete show in order back to front, and I always wanted to do that at least once.

For the while I've had this idea to motivate me to watch the whole thing in order I would write a little coda/ snippet based on the impressions from each serial or episode, and I think I'm going to just do it now.

First, as a warning, some personal taste choices that not everyone may vibe with:

On the question of what the Doctor's OG backstory was before Toymaker „made a jigsaw of it", I am very strongly in the camp that he was a regular average joe timelord & had a family. (As opposed to looms, half-human, timeless child, human from the future, or that one version where Leela ends up being his mom, & what have you.) TBH I strongly dislike the timeless child thing in particular for thematic reasons & am only grudgingly able to stomach it as part of some „multiple choice/ all the backstories are true because timey wimey ball" setup & that general ‚blurring logic & myth' arc they're doing.

Shipping: Not per se the main focus, but will be present roughly where suggested in new series canon; For the classics I'm gonna be interpreting those pairs as love interests that ppl kinda already ended up shipping because of chemistry between the actors. I won't pretend that I don't have a favorite (Clara), but I'm generally a multishipper & there will be no bashing.

(An Unearthly Child)

On some days, the girl who would later become known as Susan Foreman genuinely enjoyed some of the wondrous things that she got to see on her travels.

On other days, however, she might arrive through the doors of the type-40 time capsule which she dwelt in, and find her grandfather fiddling with the console, ostensibly getting ready for takeoff.

His words only served to confirm her suspicion:

„That's quite enough of Ankhaten, don't you think so my child?"

The suddenness of it caught her very much off guard:

„We're leaving already?"

„Of course, of course. Why shouldn't we be leaving, hmm?"

„It's just- uh- we only just got here…"

„And now, we shall go somewhere else! How about the planet Quinnis?"

„Well, there's nothing wrong with Quinnis, but-"

„What? What is it?"

His tone didn't seem alltogether too patient, so, the girl grew reluctant to voice her objections, presenting them more as an idle sort of speculation than anything much firmer than that.

„I was just thinking… why don't we try staying in the same place for some more time for once? Just a little, at least?"

As expected, her grandfather blew her off, not too harshly, really, he seemed much more befuddled than anything else: „Now whyever would we do that? We've been stuck in one place all our lives, haven't we? I say that was more than enough of that – and there's so many places to see. We've only just started! Besides, they could find us if we go around making waves or staying in one place too long. Someone's bound to notice..."

„...Nevermind then. It was just a thought."

…

Later, when she was older and wiser and somewhat grown in confidence or maturity, she may have described her longing in a more differentiated way, and might have named what exactly she wanted and why, but back then, on the tail end of childhood, she couldn't really articulate it.

She couldn't say she was completely happy or satisfied with their current lifestyle, yes, but at the same time, it wasn't as if she particularly longed to return to where she came from…

The girl hailed from a world where the average citizen could expect to live more than ten-thousand years, but the rate of maturation wasn't much different than similar humanoid peoples – a young child from Gallifrey would not differ so greatly from one of Sto or Earth or Trion, but as that stage of their existence made up a rather brief fraction of their lives, childhood wasn't really valued or afforded high status – the swifter that a new member of society subordinated themselves to their duties, the better.

While individual did know and interact with their parents and extended webs of relatives (of which there were often many generations alive at the same time due to their long lifespans), many influential families kept any offspring born to them in communal rooms and facilities shared between all their house. The children so housed together were usually more or less distant cousins of some description, siblings were usually further apart in age, often being adults already when the next child was born. For the ordinary people, further education might well take place in their hometowns, but for offspring of highborn families it was still generally expected that they would be carted off to military school or the Time Lord academy in the great citadel, if they could pass the corresponding exams – a feat that was then rewarded by being made to stare into a space-time fissure.

One could imagine this rite going back to some tribe of primitive humanoids making a ritual out of the bizarre rift found on their world, ignorant of how this would steer their people's evolution. According to some stories, the initiations used to be even harsher in the Dark Times – initiates might have been outright thrown in up to their ankles, and it is said that not everyone survived back then…

Now such a case hadn't been heard of within living memory, but the girl had always been quite frightened by the stories of these earlier, wilder days.

She had not come to any physical harm during her own initiation, but she had been the one student in her group who was knocked into a healing coma from the sheer shock… at first, she had been interested in learning new things, having been of a curious and astute disposition from birth, but she instructors had no patience for her timidity or her sensitive nature and she soon found herself terribly lonely and miserable in the comformist, reglemented environment.

She had supposed then that, in theory, she should account herself luckier than some other students, seeing as she had family working in the capitol, including her parents, her great-grandparents and one great-uncle – but in practice, most of these venerable Time Lords proved far too busy with their political careers and various going ons to spare much time for visits.

Her father was looking to run for president around the time that she came to the academy, and her mother was embroiled in supporting him to the point that some may have considered her the brains of the operation as much as her husband was its charming face.

Their daughter, it was understood according to the customs of their people, was not supposed to need them as much now that she'd been given over to her instructors at the academy.

It was mostly due to this constellation of circumstances that she ended up spending a lot of time with her maternal grandfather, a gruff, eccentric scientist.

It was her mother's suggestion that she visit him, one day when she had to leave her daughter's dorm rooms fairly soon after arriving there and, at the time, it was probably her idea of slaying two birds with one stone: She expressed that she had been a bit worried about her silly, stubborn father ever since he'd been widowed – for all that he could be standoffish and abrasive, she'd said, he was rubbish at being on his own and spending some time with his granddaughter might do both of them good.

The girl recalled him, of course, from family functions – a wiry yet short, dignified figure with long white hair, certifiably an oddball – the girl remebered that she could never really tell if he was joking or exaggerated or telling the truth.

She did not remember his wife, that is, her own maternal grandmother, beyong a few dim memories from early childhood. She'd been gone for a good while now.

The girl had of course seen pictures of the two, both recent ones, and others taken from their youth – much later it would occur to her that most humanoid observers would have assumed them to be about the same age by their looks, or they might even think the lady younger, but that was not so. One of them had yet to experience his first regeneration; The other was already on her final incarnation when they met, a contemporary of some of her husband's old professors, though she had not looked the part.

The images showed a smiling, red-headed woman, before she and her husband both went gray. She was apparently gifted in telepathy, which, as some gossips like to whisper, might have been how she learned of the abrasive, closed-off scientist's secret affection for her.

She had perished in a simple, mundane accident, mostly because there was nobody there to find her while her husband was at a conference with his fellow researchers; Had she gotten treatment swiftly she need not even have died, even without any regenerations left.

Her malcontent spouse, difficult at the best of times according to his reputation, was deeply stricken. The distinctive gem-studded ring that he always wore, it was said, had once been a present from her. It was speculated that he held on to his worn-out form past the point where most younger Time Lords would have gotten fed up with it for concern that the trinket wouldn't fit anymore – most of his classmates back from the academy had reportedly since discarded the forms they were born with, either by choice or force of circumstance.

Sometimes, the young girl had overheard her relatives discussing that he'd had designs of running away when he was younger, wondering if he was now reconsidering it, since his wife was gone and his children grown.

Little kept him here. Once, it was told, he planned to leave with a friend from the academy, but though they kept in contact, that once close friendship had been on the rocks for a while, apparently they didn't quite agree on advocating the same kind of heretic interventionism, though the distinction seemed immaterial to most Time Lords.

There were other stories, too, of one incident of him breaking into the cloisters as a youth, of all places. Of a hefty, foreboding future. Desperate to escape from fate, he may have found himself tangled up in a greater, even harsher fate.

But in the end there is seldom just a single reason for why a person decides to do something; Often there are multiple, equally valid ones, that finally lead to action once the many reasons to leave were outweighed by the many reasons to stay…

But those were just rumors, as far as the girl was concerned. It wasn't the sort of thing that anyone would explain to a youth such as her.

Much was spoken about him, but when his granddaughter began to spend more time with him, she came to form her own opinions - she would see him live up to his cantankerous reputation with almost everybody else that had been unlucky enough to walk into his study or his laboratory, the girl found him to have a rather playful and mischievious side as well.

She'd mention the latest subject she was being taught at the academy, and he'd always manage to explain it in such a way that it was actually interesting and engaging.

He liked to talk and tell stories – be it of his scientific studies, facts he'd read of other worlds, or tales of the girl's mother and her siblings as children, or even his stint as something of an activist when he tried to get miniscopes banned by the shadow proclamation. His favorite tale always seemed to be of his boyhood trip to the medusa cascade, though he also delighted in passing on scary stories that he and his brother had once been told by one of their own grandmothers, completing the circle of life, perhaps.

He told them with excited glee, but if she was honest, the girl was a bit unnerved by those.

Still, he liked having someone to listen, and both of them could use the company, so, they ended up becomming quite close. They never once fought.

And thus, she set in motion the chain of events that led to her following him that fateful day when he went to make off with a stolen TARDIS and a bigger-on-the-inside trunk filled with various mementos and dubiously procured ancient artifacts. She didn't want to let him go alone, and he only discovered her when it was too late to send her back without jeopardizing his escape.

It was down to an incredible string of luck that they escaped at all; Perhaps his elder brother's position in enforcement had something to do with him being allowed to leave, or the lucky fact that they found themselves an old vessel that was likely deregistered so that it would not be tracked across the transduction barrier.

It helps that the girl's grandfather was friendly with a young technician at the TARDIS repair shop, who pointed him to a particular exemplar, which then, as if by the unlikeliest of coincidences, just happened to spring open as if of its own accord.

Perhaps it wasn't really coincidence but the conspiring of various forces yet unknown, things they may never find out about.

But be that as it may – and she would have to let it be, since her grandfather had not, in fact, explained all his purposes to her – the fact remains that the two of them did sucessfully make their escape.

...

„Here we are, the Homeworld of the Humans!" he declared, flinging open the doors as he postured out.

In theory, the girl knew that the perception filter should disguise their presence, but she was still reluctant to step out from the interior into the bustling plaza outside, where a multitude of people was going on their daily business.

If her grandfather had noted her timidity, it didn't give him pause – he simply kept explaining: „It is from this little blue rock that they would spread out all across the cosmos, filling almost every corner – though, at this point in time, they wouldn't even have shot the first craft to their moon. They will soon, however."

As he spoke, the girl observed the crowd, mentally trying to associate his words with the various figures crossing the streets. Normally, she would often be very interested in his various explanations, always happy to learn new things, but this once, this was made a little harder – the place they found themselves in looked perfectly strange and alien to them, from the clothing and the architecture all the way to that strange blue sky, but still…

„It's hard to believe that they're really aliens. They look just like us…"

„Parallel evolution," he surmised, predictably cloaking it in unsentimental scientific terms, „It's just like when a protein is folding itself – there is a great number of conformations that are possible, but only a certain few that are energetically efficient. Local minima in the great optimization algorithm of nature. This is why completely different, unrelated organisms can wind up having similar shape – notice that the Trees here also have a similar shape to the ones we have back home – indeed, on this planet alone, the tree shape indepenently evolved more than four separate times from completely different lineages..."

„They're green, though…"

„Yes. Adapted to the wavelenghts of light given off by their star."

…

When the girl returned inside the spacecraft, she couldn't help but notice that the interior had been augmented by the addition of some old chairs and timepieces, most of them likely taken from the junkyard outside – not that a mechanical clock would be much use on a time machine, but, she supposed that it was chosen for decorative value.

Looking around for her grandfather, the girl found him dusting off a hatstand, making the bright mechanical interior of the ship look a little more like some semblance of a home. A ray of hope at last, perhaps.

A notion of something like rest which at last gave her the courage to speak:

„...grandfather…? Can I say something?"

„Now why wouldn't you?" he responded, without really looking away from his handiwork. She wondered again if he could be made to listen.

„No reason really, it's just… I was thinking… remember what I said earlier, about staying in one place for some time?"

„Yes, what of it?" He sounded surprised, if not irritated, that she would bring it up again.

Still, the girl made herself keep talking, trying to appeal to the sort of reasoning that he would respect: „I think we ought to think about it some more.… After all, we are here because of your scientific studies, right? Because we want to fin out for ourselves what it's really like to live in other times and places. But how can we really do that if we always leave right away? I think there's some things you can only learn if you stay in a place for longer, if you really take your time to get to know it and its people, so…"

Seeing her grandfather's expression fail to shift much, the girl grew uncertain,.

„We don't have to stay there all the time!" she assured, half pleading already, „We just have to get the TARDIS back before anyone can notice we're gone..."

„I do not think this is a good idea."

„Grandfather, please!"

„Very well." he relented, at last. He never could bear for long to hear her sounding desperate. „But we have to be careful. If anyone spots the ship, we shall have to take off at once."

„Oh thank you, grandfather, thank you so, so much!"