Can we please ship Mickey Smith and Reinette? Just do yourself a favor for a second and imagine:
- it’s Mickey’s first trip to outer space in the TARDIS. They find the fireplace, and good old tin-dog Mickey knocks the wrong thing and wheels around into 1700s France
- he sees this little girl (and Mickey is good with kids), and he hears the clock—and he’s a mechanic, he knows a six-foot sound when he hears one—he is scared out of his mind, but Mickey Smith is not one to leave scared little kids, his grandmother taught him better than that
- and there’s THE AUTOMATON. Mickey Smith, panicked in trying to protect this kid and not get killed in his first outing, catches the Automaton’s attention and gets it over by the fireplace and hooked to the ledge
- Frantic, he smacks the thing that got him here and he’s back at the spaceship, automaton in tow, Ten mildly shocked but happy to play with more robots if Mickey will go get them
- Ten is so distracted by the robot that he doesn’t notice a certain somebody pressing the thing again—Mickey wants to make sure the little French girl is okay—Rose’s “wait!” falls on empty air.
- and oh shit, Mickey is met by this gorgeous woman, who calls him her imaginary friend and seems to remember him as a hero, an angel, not a scared guy—and oh no, this woman is Madame de Pompadour, isn’t she?!
- quite a start for your first adventure
- And when Mickey gets back through the fireplace, Rose and the Doctor have wandered off—of course they have, that’s what they do—so Mickey, looking for them, wanders through another door and into France again, and meets Reinette some more
- and more automatons, of course; but Mickey’s a mechanic, he knows his way around those; delicate parts snap easily
- Reinette is a delicate part, and wants to dance
- Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose are working it out from the ship—Reinette being 37 is what the droids want; and oh, no, the droids are about to strike.
- Mickey doesn’t consult them. He has a horse (after all, he’s let Rose keep the Doctor), he has a mirror, he has Reinette—
- Reinette.
- Reinette, the only woman who has focused on him, and seen the hero he could be.
- Reinette, so loyal that she rejoices even if he only shows up every few years.
- Reinette, who is treated as an object by the droids just as much as he is treated as a tin dog by the rest of his life.
- Reinette……
- Mickey Smith jumps through the mirror, riding a horse. He and Reinette drink wine, and count the stars they would like to visit but never will now.
- One wrong fireplace and Reinette is gone forever. Mickey reads her letter in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Rose leave him alone (alone, again). Mickey decides he will be the hero Reinette saw him as.
- Next adventure, Mickey defeats thousands of Cybermen.
I actually wrote a Mickey/Reinette fic back in 2006!