I can't quite believe it, but I have physical copies of Interference now!
Naturally this put me into an Interference mood, so I flipped back and forth through the books, rereading the good parts (which is pretty much the whole thing.) Miles' text is so dense with meaning that every time I do this sort of thing, I find something new.
And this time I found another reason to be emotional about Fitz! 🥹 I haven't seen it mentioned before, so I have to point it out here for anyone else who hasn't noticed it.
So in the first 'Foreman's World' segment, The Lord of the Rings gets a mention.
‘And this Sam person,’ I.M. Foreman cut in, before he could start getting wistful on her. ‘You think he’s connected to what happened on Dust? Is that it?’
‘She,’ said the Doctor. ‘“Sam” as in “Samantha”.’
‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry, I’ve just read The Lord of the Rings. “Sam” makes me think of little hairy people with funny accents.’
The Doctor stopped walking. I.M. Foreman stopped, too.
‘The Lord of the Rings?’ he queried.
‘That’s what I said. Is there a problem?’
‘No. It’s a bit of a coincidence, though. Fitz was talking about The Lord of the Rings the first time I. . . well, never mind. Not important.’
This is a reference to the first time the Doctor met Fitz in The Taint, where Fitz is at his day job making a joke about The Lord of the Rings at a customer's expense (because he's a dick and also a nerd.) Of course, their first meeting also gets a heartbreaking and plot-important reference much later in Interference. But back in the prologue, the Doctor asks:
‘So what did you think?’
‘Lord of the Rings? Too long. My attention span only stretches to about three hundred pages. I liked the last line, though.’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Just the last line.’
‘It’s the details that make things interesting.
When I read that, I realised I hadn't actually looked up what the last line was before. So I found my family's copy of The Return of the King. The final page features Sam the Hobbit returning to his home and his family after watching the departure of his travelling companion of many years—just as Sam Jones does in Interference. And the last line is:
He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.
And I immediately realised exactly where I'd read that before. So I picked up Interference Book Two, and flipped to the twelfth and final 'Travels with Fitz' interlude—a series which has chronicled the tragic series of journeys that change Fitz forever. It ends with:
‘Are you all right?’ asked the Doctor.
The memory vanished as soon as the Doctor opened his mouth. Fitz found himself back in the twentieth century, back in the remembrance tank. He looked up, and saw the Doctor’s face hovering over him, peering at him through the glass panel of the tank. The Doctor was smiling. Fitz thought about smiling back, but it was too much of a strain, really. After everything he’d been through. After coming all this way.
‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.
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