PPC deep lore: the "Tangled Web" fiasco

Subject: PPC deep lore: the "Tangled Web" fiasco
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2021-08-25 18:00:39 UTC

I never know what's going to randomly jump up and seize hold of my brain. This time, a conversation with Lily about STWWX prompted me to be curious about the first megacrossover on record, the one that required the intervention of the entire DIC at the time ("some dozen" agents) and the transfer of Jay and Acacia to the DIC to handle crossover missions while the rest of the department was *ahem* tied up.

This is referred to in TOS mission 17, "Darkness Awakened," as "the Tangled Web fiasco." Yes, "Web," singular. I double-checked. It's been incorrect on the wiki forever, probably due to association with hS's better-known website, Tangled Webs, which was named after the fiasco. Whoops! I've now corrected that, and I've also corrected the year said fiasco took place. It was said to be in 2003, but since we discovered publication dates for so many TOS missions, we now know that "Darkness Awakened" was released on June 29, 2002, so the fiasco surely took place in 2002.

Knowing that, I couldn't help but wonder if it might be possible to track down the story. I checked Fanfiction.net, and there are several existing fics from about the right time period with about the right name, but none that look like good candidates at a glance. To qualify, the fic has to involve Doctor Who, Touched by an Angel, Xena: Warrior Princess, James Bond, and all the Star Trek series. Undaunted, I turned to Google, and I found the page Mega Crossover/Fanfic Recs on a wiki called The True Tropes Wiki. Near the top of the page, you'll find a description of a series called "A Tangled Web."

Right off the bat, the summary ticks off half the boxes: Doctor Who, all the Treks, and Xena. The links are broken, but I plugged them in to the Wayback Machine, and I was not disappointed (see below). Turns out parts 1-4 and the first chapter of Part 5 all existed as of mid-2002 (tick), and that first chapter of part 5 includes both James Bond (tick) and Touched by an Angel (tick).

This looks like a mighty promising candidate, folks. My one reservation is that, in my quick skim of parts 1-5, I haven't yet spotted more than one Doctor in play (the fourth one). This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, though. Here are the relevant lines from TOS:

For the first time in five minutes (a fair duration, with Jay), her partner spoke. "That's Doctor Who!"

"Eh? Where?"

"There! Ooh, there's another one."

We've assumed Jay was referring to the Doctor, when she says "Doctor Who," but that assumes Jay is unaware or doesn't care that he isn't actually called "Doctor Who." If we instead assume that Jay would know better, she may have been referring to the continuum or a character from that continuum. In that case, "another one" could refer to another continuum or another Doctor Who character. The Fourth Doctor, Leela, and K-9 are all present in the story.

That said, I feel like my reinterpretation is a bit of a stretch. I would really like this fic to be THE fic, but it may not be possible to definitively confirm it unless someone actually remembers it from 20 years ago.

If you want to check it out, here are the Wayback links:

And, as a bonus, the author is still active and has rewritten versions of parts 1-6 on his account. I can't speak to whether or not they're an improvement on the originals, or indeed whether the originals are even bad, since I haven't read them closely.

I was very amused to spot the mini-Reaper TARSIS at one point, though. It reminds me of the tarsus, the collection of small bones in the foot, but apparently Tarsis is also the name of fictional locations in Dragonlance and Warhammer 40,000. So that's fun. ^_^

If you do look into it, let me know what you think!

~Neshomeh

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PPC deep lore: the "Tangled Web" fiasco by Neshomeh on 2021-08-25 18:00:39 UTC

Strange and uncomfortable moments from Part 2. by Neshomeh on 2021-08-29 18:58:22 UTC Reply

So, the Borg invasion of the multiverse has begun. Q and Q2 (who is basically there to be annoying) have assembled the first team to start fighting back and sent them to a randomly picked starting point: Coruscant in the Star Wars universe. Do they pick anyone from Star Wars for the team? No. Don't be silly. The team consists of characters from Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and The Greatest American Hero. Because reasons.

Anyway, somewhere in the underbelly of Coruscant, this conversation happens:

Bill scrutinized the black Vulcan. "I always thought that aliens would look a lot different that humans. I've been around aliens before, but I just never got the opportunity to see one." Bill stepped back and decided to accept the man's claim to being an alien. No human could be that much of a stiff! he decided. "Well, I'm disappointed. I thought there would be more to aliens than pointy ears and slanted eyebrows."

At that Tuvok's eyebrows raised. "Indeed!"

"Actually," perked up Jamie, "Steve and I just saw an alien rowing an old boat across an underground lake. It was a light greenish color with big eyes. Kept muttering about looking for his 'precious'." Jamie paused in her description. "I think it might have been insane, whatever it was."

That's... it... but... what?!

For those who might not be aware, this is clearly Gollum from the Rankin-Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit:

Why is he on Coruscant? This isn't brought up again for the rest of the part, and I seriously doubt it'll be brought up again in the rest of the story, either. It's so random! Why? {X D

For that matter, I don't know why this part is set on Coruscant at all. The only connection to Star Wars is a droid they rescue (who does almost nothing) and Stormtroopers who show up to provide an extra nuisance (as if the Borg weren't trouble enough), and the action is confined to a walkable area. Seems to me that any sufficiently technological city with a derelict undercity would have worked just fine.

I also could have done without the mangling of the Buffyverse characters, whom I know well enough that I noticed and it bothered me. There's a whole thing where Quark tricks Buffy into oo-mox, and then she finds out what that is and proceeds to throw him to the ground and beat him up to the point of drawing blood. Look, I could understand smacking him once, because ew, but beating him bloody? Nuh-uh. It's brutal, and it's not like Buffy. What's worse, everyone waiting in the wings on Deep Space Nine, who are able to watch thanks to Q-based contrivance, all find this hilarious. It's gross. I know Quark is a cretin most of the time, but he doesn't deserve this. {= /

And then the fic goes and kills off Spike after messing us about over whether he's an evil Vulcan-eating monster or a conflicted antihero with confusing feelings for Buffy somewhat ahead of schedule. It's just weird.

Oh, and there's the bit where Giles sleeps through Q being in his house because he has the flu. I don't remember whether or not Giles actually gets sick at some point in season 4, but even if he does, it feels like a copout, and I Do Not Approve of the copout sidelining of Giles.

~Neshomeh

There's one other possibility: by Huinesoron on 2021-08-31 11:43:34 UTC Reply

Smeagol makes a tiny cameo in Witches Abroad, shortly before Nanny Ogg gets a house dropped on her and her red boots almost nicked. Is there a Discworld presence that might have dragged him in?

Actually, what kind of fic is this? I've been assuming it's a "multiverse all mashed together" thingy, but some things you've said suggest it could be as simple as "the Borg (and everyone else) discover multiverse travel". The latter would give His Gollumishness no excuse at all, whichever version he is.*

[*Though a story where Gollum accidentally discovers that the Ring will let him shift between parallel worlds might be kind of hilarious if done right - by which I mean, if Gollum remains completely Gollum. He lands on Dagobah, turns invisible, tries to eat Yoda, is immobilised with the Force and given a stern talking to which he shifts away in the middle of. Lands on the Enterprise, hides in a Jeffries tube for three days, then shifts away when Geordi finds him. Etc etc. Actually it sounds kind of tedious.]

One reason I like Sergio's World Without Authors setting is that it neatly avoids a lot of the pitfalls you talk about. If a character's too powerful, or knowledgable, or you just don't know how to write them - forget sidelining, they just didn't make it across. Simple as that. ^_^

hS
The sidelining and irrelevant setting seems inevitable, in a fic like this by Cicada on 2021-08-30 04:47:11 UTC Reply

When it's cramming in as many things as possible just to Do it instead of for legitimate narrative reasons, I guess it's natural that the fic would have to then get those characters to leave, or not really have anything to do with a person or place.

By Jove, I think she's got it! by Huinesoron on 2021-08-26 08:44:25 UTC Reply
The fact that the right eclectic selection of canons is involved would probably be enough for me regardless, but the clincher is the publication dates: the reviews for Part 5 show that the second chapter came out in July '02, and so only the first chapter of Tangled Web 5 was out when J&A posted their mission. It can't be a coincidence that the chapter introducing both "Touched by an Angel" and "James Bond" came out, and then Jay saw both of those in the fic.

I don't think you need to worry about not seeing multiple Doctors. Bond doesn't actually appear in person in 5:1, only as a mention, and Xena isn't even in that chapter. I think J&A were just viewing the whole fic as a sort of collapsing spiral of madness. They describe it as a "chaos zone", which doesn't actually describe the events of the chapter - but perfectly describes the feel of the flurry of references. They were just riffing on the entire thing, not writing themselves into a specific scene.

This is some seriously impressive detective work! :D

I'm wondering now if we have any named Untanglers who would have been part of the team who got stuck in there. Looking through the category... turns out yes! There's a bunch of agents who show up around 2008 with unclear start dates (Ketay the Cardassian, for example), but there's also several early ones:
- April Halloway is confirmed to be DIC in 2002, either before or after her partner Dmitri's death.
- Nia and Shelley, both featured in the last Despatch story, are confirmed, because that story took place in May 2002.
- The Disentangler and the Agent are almost confirmed, since Dis is confirmed in the PPC three years earlier, and they have the Doctor Who knowledge to be useful.
- Narto Telyan. He would have to be 14 and very new, but it's possible.
- Random. She recruited Death in 2004, so this would be about right for her to be operating as a solo agent (before partnering with the chameleon). The chameleon is a possible too, but he was transformed for being useless in 2004, so probably hadn't been around for long.
- Most intriguingly of all: Elisabeth, the First Agent. We know she was still active around 1992, and Osbert isn't claiming to be the First Agent (Apart From Makes-Things) until 2009. Could it be that the Tangled Web was what finally drove her out of the PPC?
Chuck in the likes of Ketay, Alan, Allison Brown, Bart Ronson and Canta Enqueo - all of whom fall into the 'not confirmed to have started later' category - and we could actually make up the "some dozen" out of confirmed agents! That's kind of cool, actually.

(No, I do not now have plans to try and write the failed mission. It would have to be a cowrite anyway, and I am abysmal at those.)

hS

...Allison Brown? o.O by Zingenmir on 2021-08-27 07:42:20 UTC Reply

That can't possibly be my agent of that name (she was DIC, but definitely wasn't around for this), but I could've sworn there wasn't another listed on the wiki. Who is she?

...unless you do mean my Allison Brown, in which case I'm afraid she showed up after 2010 (2013, if I remember correctly, though I'm now considering 2012 because Why Not).

Theoretically, Edgar Sullivan could've been around. I don't have a start date for him. He doesn't strike me as someone who's been around consistently since 2002, but I could see him being around then as a very young agent, who subsequently left for a while to go to school and so on, and ultimately returned around, say, 2010. I think that could more or less fit with his age--he's been hovering around thirty for a bit, unless I settled on a specific age and have forgotten. But him as a teenager or a very young teenager back then could fit.

There's no guarantee he was involved in this, but imagine if he was and it was what made his parents or guardians decide that no, actually, maybe he'd better go back to normal life for a while...whatever exactly that looks like for him. I'm not entirely convinced he's from World One. Mysterious kind of character; I came up with him in 2013 and his development has been both slow and slowly more interesting. I'll have to think more about this. But certainly, he could have been around in 2002 as a newbie (maybe toward the end of his first year there, which he didn't get to finish). Allison, though, definitely wasn't if it's my Allison you're referring to.

~Z, apparently doing spontaneous character development today!

Ah, yeah, I did mean yours. by Huinesoron on 2021-08-27 07:57:08 UTC Reply

Her Wiki presence goes no further than saying she's dead; it places a vague end date on her presence, but not a start date. I figured you'd say something if she wasn't around, which, in fact, you have! ^_~

hS

Mysterious Ghost Allison Brown! :P by Zingenmir on 2021-08-27 10:03:54 UTC Reply

Wow, I guess I've been even slower about finishing and putting up pieces of her story than I realized! She's pretty much got The Earther and a handful of nameless references, doesn't she? I came up with her in 2011 (she predates my time as a Boarder), but she's gone through a good few changes, especially in the past...five years? Yikes, she was supposed to show up in PPC stories about eight years ago now. A few months more, actually. It's probably a good thing she didn't, but wow, that itch to get moving on the interludes of her and Kozar is returning. Annoyingly, I even have a whole outline and title naming scheme and everything; I just don't have much that doesn't need to be rewritten, or drafted for the first time. I'll...get there eventually...?

Anyway, yeah, she definitely wasn't around yet! Edgar could easily have been, though. I kind of like that for him. It fits the mildly chaotic vibe he has going on.

~Z

Kids in the DIC. by Huinesoron on 2021-08-27 11:12:39 UTC Reply

It's feeling more and more like the DIC is one of the places the Flowers dumped all the young kids they started getting after LotR came out (to keep them out of the assassination field). Narto would have been 14, Nia was 12, and you have Edgar as a 'very young teenager'. So perhaps the reason for the Tangled Web fiasco was that The Some Dozen consisted of Elizabeth trying to wrangle the fairly-newly-regenerated Agent and Dis and half a dozen kids! And possibly a chameleon too.

It's actually sounding like it went the same way as Suedom - a mission ran into problems, so they just sent more and more inexperienced agents in to fix it by weight of numbers. What could possibly go wrong?

hS

Sounds pretty neat, for a backstory thing! by Zingenmir on 2021-08-29 18:40:33 UTC Reply

I like it for Edgar.

Also, thanks to this coming up, I sat down a couple days ago and reworked my outline for the Allison and Kozar stories! The series makes more sense now - it's more in line with what I know I'll be able to write without much trouble and with what I want to write, now. It'll be five relatively short interludes, is the current plan as I remember it off the top of my head right now, with scenes or an entire story (in one case) to rewrite for 2-3 of them. I don't know exactly how quickly I'll get there, but it suddenly looks much more doable! So thanks for prompting that, however annually.

~Z, looking forward to maybe, finally, nudging this arc properly into shape sometime in the next year or two.
Agent and Dis' last regeneration was in the Reorganisation. by Lily Winterwood on 2021-08-27 11:58:16 UTC Reply

So they've actually been in their third bodies for a while at the time (my personal timeline has them getting Krytos in 2006). Dis III was "practically mute" and Agent III was very protective of her, so there could be some miscommunications between them and Elizabeth, especially if Dis's handwriting or sign language was all done in Gallifreyan. There could also potentially be some interpersonal clashing between them and Elizabeth in general given differences in origin. And... I think Gallifrey's going through the Time War at this point since the destruction of Gallifrey is circa 2005 HST, so they're not in a great headspace to begin with, probably very irritated by the megacrossover featuring all these incarnations of the Doctor while Gallifrey's supposed to be invaded by Daleks (and then what are they doing not going back to fight? etc).

Anyway that tension with Elizabeth + HQ sending in more backup in the form of very young, very inexperienced agents = untangling this web takes longer than normal.

Well, it's probably just the one Doctor. by Neshomeh on 2021-08-27 14:35:31 UTC Reply

I don't think all of them show up until Part 8, which didn't exist yet in 2002. Could still be wrong, since I still haven't read the whole thing, but I did read the scene in Part 8 where they gather and complain about how they shouldn't be doing it. Doesn't seem as though they've crossed paths with each other before.

Speaking of Part 8 and "failed mission" (per hS): I guess the existence of more and more chapters after 5.1 is evidence that the 2002 mission failed, huh? I suppose HQ just didn't have the resources to contain it... and I guess they figured that out before doing the smart thing and sending more experienced agents in? I guess?? Flower logic is not like our human logic, eh?

~Neshomeh

Considering it was a "fiasco", by Lily Winterwood on 2021-08-27 15:41:25 UTC Reply

...yeah it does sound like it was a failed mission. I was actually a bit befuddled by Jay and Acacia... stepping into it briefly? Did the Lichen just sorta keep a portal open on the mission the entire time to keep an eye on the shenanigans?

I mean, in between potential miscommunications and two quite possibly grouchy Time Lords not quite wanting to play ball, it's no wonder the thing couldn't get contained. Also, each instalment seems to be a separate fic, so there's also the possibility small teams of agents got sent into separate parts and some were more successful than others?

Multiple fics, single continuity. by Neshomeh on 2021-08-28 18:52:07 UTC Reply

It's definitely a single story, just divided into parts that, except for Part 2 for some reason, are further subdivided into chapters. I don't know if it would work to tackle it fic by fic rather than picking an intervention point or points chronologically, since main characters such as Q and the Doctor seem to appear throughout.

The impression I get from J&A's look is that they're seeing the attempted mission in progress, hence a bunch of characters that don't share screen time in the fic being seen together. My guess is the agents on the mission have started rounding up characters, but things are not under control, hence the "chaos."

I've actually read all of Part 1 now and started on Part 2. It's... interesting. I don't know if it's exactly bad. It's definitely not good, since the writing is peppered with minor errors (resulting in plenty of minis), the characters I'm familiar with feel ever so slightly off, and the plot is powered by stupidity, but all that isn't enough to completely put me off the idea. I'd love to hear what someone familiar with the Fourth Doctor thinks about it, since he features pretty heavily so far.

I will say I think Q is getting pretty shoddy treatment, to the point that he might welcome the PPC's intervention. There is potential for an interesting mission here.

Am I going to attempt it? Haha, no. But I am going to keep reading and thinking about it.

~Neshomeh

I, uh, think I forgot the year 2000 existed. by Huinesoron on 2021-08-27 13:08:48 UTC Reply

I definitely had 1999-2002 down as a two-year span in my head. I don't... really know how that happened.

Anyway, yes. :) Word Worlds being Word Worlds, I don't think they can know about the Last Great Time War (since it hadn't been written yet), but causality is a murky thing with Time Lords. They could definitely be feeling ripples from it before it technically exists. That would mean they basically spent their entire third regenerations feeling irrationally cranky, up until the series aired in 2005 and they realised they were rationally cranky.

Come to think of it, wasn't there a Time War in the books or audio plays? Huh, looks like there were several, but Romana III presided over the destruction of Gallifrey in 2000. So A&D (and Morgan, though she was still hiding her species) were in an uncomfortable situation where their planet might or might not be dead, with rumours of a new series already in the air (not NuWho, but the Scream of the Shalka version), plus the temporal ripples from the Time War. Zoinks!

hS

Sounds like someone got caught up in Y2K! by Lily Winterwood on 2021-08-27 15:46:27 UTC Reply

(/bricked)

Yeah, that scans. Again, Dis III did not talk a lot in that body. I imagine at least some of that could be attributed to stress and anxiety over the Time War meta resonance. Agent III was protective and possibly a bit fixated on routines, possibly as a coping thing for that same Time War meta resonance.

Either way, not the best mental state to be doing missions!

What intrigues me about the "some dozen" is the Handbook. by Neshomeh on 2021-08-27 00:34:56 UTC Reply
Our (current) best date for the Handbook is an incredibly vague 2003-2004, but can it be a coincidence that the List of Departments just so happens to show eleven agents in the DIC? As follows:

LotR/Tolkien
- Agent Kit
- Agent Rumor
- Agent Talisa
Jossverse
- BK the Irregular
- The Lovely Beta
- Agent Jack
- Agent Annie
Freelance
- Agent Dez
- Agent Seren
- Agent T'Pira
- Agent Gon
... I mean, yes, it totally can be a coincidence, and I think it is. But it's kind of a neat one. {= )

Either way, Annie and The Lovely Beta can probably be ruled out of having participated in tackling "A Tangled Web." They have one mission posted in three parts from September 21 to October 9, 2003, and it sounds like it's their first foray into a megacrossover, since Beta drags in Annie to help with some of the canons, many of which overlap with "Tangled Web." I'm starting to get the impression the early 2000s were rife with these things. "Tangled Web," Wanderverse, Journeyverse, whatever fic Iskillion is supposed to have come from...

(The Journeyverse is mentioned by BK the Irregular in a comment on the Wanderverse mission as "the other Crossover from Hades." I guess it got the better of them and probably-their-partner Agent Jack?)

Lily said something about how it might be fun to do some memory/flashback scenes of this with Dis and the Agent, so I think we can say they were there. {= )

And, well, if we decide as a(n interested subset of a) community that this fic is likely enough to be the fic, I guess that's good enough to canonize it as such?

~Neshomeh

HMM. by Huinesoron on 2021-08-27 08:28:44 UTC Reply

I did originally have a list of 'sadly not possibles', which included Annie and Beta (along with Death, I think? Don't remember), but the post was already growing unwieldy.

The List of Departments is an interesting... coincidence? It's possible that Annie and Beta 'already existed' at this point, in the same way that Agent Huinesoron of DOGA existed for Suedom long before he did anywhere else. If Nenya was asking people for volunteers, she could have compiled this list as early as 2002.

... but she would have had to do it on the mailing list, because that mission predates the Board.

Another early source is Araeph's archival, by Meg of Despatch, which likely dates it to 2002. She only lists four Untanglers - Nia and Shelley (her own pair), and Jay and Acacia! Not a lot of help, but it confirms that there wasn't a widely known list of a dozen.

And then there's the fabled "official PPC document" with subclauses, source of the flying pig patch. That... could actually be an earlier version of Meg's website, with her having corrected it to include the Lichen. Huh. Looks like the 'correct' version existed by October '02, and the whole thing appeared on her webpage between August and December, so... maybe not after all? Or maybe she sent it to the mailing list before she put it on her website. :)

-- OH NO WAIT I figured it out! ^^ ^^ ^_^ Meg has a review posted from Architeuthis, dating back to at least August '02, in which she says:

"Oh, your reference sheet lists poor, overworked Sub Rosa as the Director of both Intelligence AND Implausible Crossovers. I'm HOPING that 's not really the case...."

So there you have it: at the time J&A wrote "Darkness Awakened", the Sub Rosa was listed as head of DIC. Nothing like as big a find as yours, but it's nice to know what they were on about at last.

hS
It would be fun if I actually knew any of the canons involved ahaha by Lily Winterwood on 2021-08-27 04:58:58 UTC Edited Reply

Because ofc it's not the Star Treks I'm familiar with (TNG/VOY/DS9, while I'm TOS/AOS) or the DW I'm familiar with (Classic Who, while I'm NuWho) or even the Battlestar Galactica I'm familiar with (70s version that's basically just the Book of Mormon in space, while I'm 2003 Reboot)! So I don't know how much I can comment on regarding the fic itself, but I do fully plan to have Dis and the Agent reference handling Tangled Web during the STWWX mission.

Any flashbacks I write would probably be more exploring the Third Disentangler and the Third Agent, since the current Agent mentioned liking that body and it would be fun to just generally flesh out their older bodies as well! But yes, since they've been around since the Reorganisation (I think I actually put them arriving in HQ like a couple years after Morgan?) they would have been in the DIC at the time of this and thus involved in untangling it :P

oh my goodness by Cicada on 2021-08-25 20:16:20 UTC Reply

I can't believe it's actually real! Holy crud.

Well, it's not 100% confirmed. by Neshomeh on 2021-08-25 21:24:36 UTC Reply

Maybe about 90%.

But I figure, why would they have made something up when TOS was always based on real fanfics? {= )

~Neshomeh

That reminds me that there was an ancient Greek city called Tarsus. by ClaireBook1 on 2021-08-25 18:06:10 UTC Edited Reply

I think that the city of Tarsus is mentioned in some of the Greek myths.