Ships (short story)

Ships was a Brief Encounter short story published in DWM 185. It was the only such story to feature Dodo Chaplet and details a possibility for Dodo's post-TARDIS life quite different from that in Who Killed Kennedy.

The title plays on the phrase "ships that pass in the night". It details an exceptionally brief encounter between Dodo Chaplet and Sarah Jane Smith in which they never recognise each other as people who know the Doctor.

Summary
Walking home from her secretarial job, Dodo Chaplet's mind wanders back to her days in the TARDIS. As she encounters reminders of her mundane existence on the way home, she increasingly castigates herself for having left the Doctor so abruptly. Lost in thought, she turns a corner and runs into a young woman. Their respective armfuls are dumped onto the ground. In the haste to collect their belongings, Dodo accidentally grabs the young woman's diary. It's too late to return it to her, though — she's long gone. Dodo examines it to determine something that might identify the owner. Luckily, there's an address — and the name S. J. Smith...

Characters

 * Dodo Chaplet
 * Sarah Jane Smith

Continuity

 * This story appears to contradict the novel, Who Killed Kennedy, which kills off Dodo after seeing her institutionalised immediately after her departure in TV: The War Machines. Dodo here is portrayed as being a quite functional member of society — a secretary, with all the normal sorts of concerns of adult life. She claims to be "older and wiser" and speaks of her TARDIS life being "such a long time ago", which suggests that she's alive long after her death in Kennedy. However, no actual dates are given. Because of this, there's also no guarantee that Sarah Jane has even met the Doctor yet, since she claims to be from 1980 at one stage of her televised career – namely, TV: Pyramids of Mars. The story could be set in 1972 just as easily as 1992. However, this still makes it impossible for it to makes sense concurrently with Who Killed Kennedy, as that story suggests Dodo spent years in bad conditions and mental institutions, including the Glasshouse, and spent years being homeless — thus contradicting this story's claim of her good life. Therefore, it would perhaps be best to class Ships as being "imaginary".
 * Dodo mentions the way in which Cyril 'died' in TV: The Celestial Toymaker and Steven Taylor's departure in TV: The Savages.
 * The Doctor Who Reference Guide sets the story for Sarah Jane as taking place after TV: The Hand of Fear.