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“It doesn’t explore grief”

*proceeds to discuss how it explores the Doctor’s grief*

Like you get how grief is what drives the Doctor in Heaven Sent, yeah? None of it makes sense except as an exploration of the way the Doctor’s grief leads him to do all of this (Moffat’s point about the crucial scene in Heaven Sent actually being in Hell Bent, i.e. the difference between the Doctor’s imagined Clara and her real response).

Whatever, I’m not even sure who this is for. Like this analysis is either preaching to the choir and being annoying about it, or somehow assuming everyone who likes Heaven Sent hates Hell Bent and so winds up complaining about anyone who likes the episode! Very strange approach, would not recommend.

everyone gets heaven sent wrong. youtube essays will describe it as “a masterpiece that explores grief,” but it doesn’t really. sure, the abstractization of the theme is there to contextualize the mood of the story, but it doesn't actually explore grief in any specific manner.

there’s little examination of emotional fallout, no real psychological depth, no attempt to reflect the social or personal dimensions of loss. the portrayal of grief is flattened into a metaphor—the doctor hitting a wall for two billion years—and that's intentional.

this common interpretation actually causes people to misread the episode. like here, fullfatvideos describe the doctor hallucinating clara encouraging him to fight and win as a beautiful testament to their love and how she's always there to pick him up.

but that's the complete opposite of the intended effect. clara specifically told the doctor not to be a warrior, to not "win," to not hurt himself over her. he’s twisting her image to have the girl he loves the most tell him what he wants her to say.

in fact, hell bent directly contrasts his imagined clara with what the real one says when she realizes what he’s done (which isn’t encouragement, but horror). the doctor doesn’t process his grief. he doesn’t get better. he gets worse. he twists her memory to betray her wishes.

he's not healing—he’s mythologizing. the story turns grief into performance, presenting the doctor as an ideal: the solitary hero who never gives up, who endures beyond human limits. but that’s not a story about processing loss. that’s a story about refusing to.

on its own, it actually lands better as a story about persistence rather than grief—the draining, repetitive effort of clawing your way forward with no clear progress. that lines up more with how it feels.

but even then, it’s stylized to the point of detachment (because that's what the doctor is doing). it’s about the concept of struggling, which is why it abstractly fits grief, but could just as easily be read autobiographically as moffat’s experience as showrunner.

and that abstraction—while effective—also makes it easy to project onto. i think that’s part of why it gets picked up as this grand, universal statement on grief. it’s vague enough to seem profound, clean enough to feel “serious”, and emotionally restrained in a way that flatters a particular kind of viewer.

the doctor doesn’t cry. he endures. he outsmarts. he wins. and for a lot of people, that feels like emotional depth—because it’s presented with enough slow motion, voiceover, and gravitas to seem like it must mean something profound.

and it’s also why a lot of fans like this one but dislike hell bent (if you love both, you’re good). because it appeals to fans who idealize “pure” sci-fi. fans who resent the show when it centers women too much, or gets too political, or dares to be camp or comedic.

for them, this is the dream: one man alone in a gothic castle, solving a puzzle, stewing in stoic, masculine pain. the woman is dead. the feelings are controlled. the story is self-contained. it’s “adult,” but not actually mature.

but that version of the doctor—the invincible, lone genius punching through time—isn’t the real doctor. it’s who he wants to be: the doctor as myth. hell bent interrupts that, pulling us back from the fantasy to someone who broke everything because he couldn’t let go.

when people call this the best episode of doctor who ever, it’s worth asking: best at what? what kind of doctor who is this? it’s broad and professional enough to feel like a perfect episode, and open enough to support whatever interpretation you want.

moffat specifically wrote it to be a crowd pleaser, with a tone that appeals to everybody. it's everyone’s favourite episode. and of course, that is what it is. it is a professional and perfect episode—that’s the appeal.

in fact, it’s probably, on a pure executional level, the best episode there’s ever been. it’s a technical showcase first and foremost. fifty-five minutes of television with everyone involved executing at the top of their game.

and that’s part of why it appeals so strongly to a certain kind of fan: the ones who want doctor who to be “serious” and “clever,” without the mess of something more difficult. it’s self-contained, self-justifying, and built to be admired rather than interrogated.

except it's not. it’s my second favourite episode of the entire show, but it doesn’t actually work without hell bent (my actually favourite episode of the entire show), which is what allows it to be interrogated.

because despite everyone loving heaven sent but not loving the follow-up as much, despite people calling it moffat’s masterpiece—it’s hell bent that’s the masterpiece. and it’s necessary. not just as a follow-up, but as a challenge.

it reframes everything the doctor does not as noble, but as obsessive. it takes the fantasy that he endured because of love and reveals it as denial. nothing about heaven sent is him overcoming or processing anything. nothing good happens and he only gets worse.

it only looked like a victory because we were watching the story he told himself. heaven sent isn’t actually about anything truly profound on its own. it only becomes meaningful because it’s the middle of a three-part story. so it only tells part of it. hell bent tells the rest.

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Short review of Superman (2025) [long review will come later at some point] -

James Gunn does nothing to revise my rule against cishet white men from a culturally Christian background writing Superman

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Finally catching up on Strange New Worlds, like two years late. Couple thoughts after two episodes:

1. Genetic engineering ban was probably a stupid idea back in the day, but it’s especially a stupid idea if the writers aren’t going to consider the difference between eugenics and turning off the cancer gene

2. We should ignore continuity to make things less stupid. Instead, this show consistently obsesses over its place in “canon” (Christian nonsense) while failing to find its own identity

Also Gilbert & Sullivan wrote operettas, not musicals. Something Spock would know the difference between.

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I’m seeing speculation (based on people tracking everything from background extras to Millie Gibson’s eyebrows) that the TARDIS scene was the original ending, with Ruby remembering Poppy and a patented RTD sad Doctor scene because he remembers and Belinda doesn’t.

But that makes the rewrite even worse! It really is “how do I write out this companion? Give her a baby!” And that’s exactly that quote from Conrad. Fuck.

What is with the RTD2 obsession with motherhood? First there's Donna literally being saved through halfing the metacrisis with her daughter. Then there's Carla being spiritually saved through adopting Ruby because she's miserable in the timeline where she didn't have her. And there's Ruby being immune to the god of death because... of her normal human mum? Then there's that wish god baby who got dumped with Carla and whatever the fuck was up with Poppy and Belinda's entire character being reduced to motherhood.

There seems to be a running theme of motherhood, especially to daughters being someone's salvation, someone's reason and purpose. There's no questioning of "do I want this child?" It's just assumed they do. Of course Ruby's bio mum wanted her, she was just a scared teenager but now she's happy to have her in her life. Of course all Carla needed was to adopt a kid for real rather than just fostering. Of course Carla's happy to adopt another child as an older woman without even being asked before the paperwork is signed off. Of course Belinda not only wants a daughter that was forced onto her by a heteropatriarchal dystopia world, but she immediately becomes her entire purpose. And of course none of these mothers, bar Donna, have any men in their support network actually shown helping them raise their child. I guess Belinda has a dad and her mum and dad come over sometimes, but it's probably her mum doing the work given everything else we've seen. It's just women looking after children. Am I tripping or is this weird?

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But also, at best, Wish World and Reality War are in conflict about what they’re telling the audience about Poppy. In the former, her being recognizable to us as a space baby is part of signaling the Wrongness of the rewritten world. We know they don’t have a child together. We know this specific child is someone the Doctor met before and in fact wished he was parent to.

I don’t know what the original plan was for Poppy, either the presumed original plan Ruby-only version or the pre-reshoots Belinda version. But in the episode as broadcast, there’s a switch to “this child is real” that is unexplained in the particular sense that its narrative logic is not of a piece with the previous episode. That’s what’s jarring about the Doctor rewriting the timeline. If the episode was meant to communicate “Poppy existed prior to the Rani and Conrad messing with reality, and the episodes you’ve seen are the Doctor and Belinda’s false memories created by the reset timeline having slight differences” well sorry, but for many of us that did not come through at all. For one thing, that story doesn’t require Poppy! I mean, that story requires Belinda to have a child, but it does not require her child to be played by the child actor from Space Babies. Why make Belinda’s child into Poppy? Well right, because it’s a way of communicating the false reality of Wish World. But it’s unnecessary and confusing if the idea is that this is her real child. The narrative intent doesn’t track from one episode to the other.

Belinda knowing she’s lost something but she doesn’t know what, having vague memories of a child now erased from the timeline, and the Doctor sacrificing himself to fix it. That works. But that’s not what we got. Because it’s Ruby who remembers (that Amidala meme that’s going around points out the absurdity of this).

(that’s also why I think the original cut of this episode would have been weird in its own right. The Doctor sacrificing himself as above could work as a conclusion to the presumed original Ruby-only idea for the two series. But Ruby remembering while the Doctor and Belinda go clubbing seems off as well. So how much of this was in the first edit and how much is reshoots?)

Anyway, the All Part of the Plan people are wearing rose-colored glasses (sorry. Too soon?) about the structure of these episodes. But good lord to go from “here’s a reading of the episodes that makes them make sense” to “you’re anti-feminist mum-haters for criticizing the ending” what are we even doing here

“No you don’t understand she was always a mother”

Ok this is not communicated well in what was clearly a rushed script edit, and it is in no way the obvious reading of the episode, which

“And if you have a problem with Belinda being a mum your criticism is suspect because you don’t think of your own mum as a full person who can have a life outside of being a mother”

Jesus I never thought Tumblr would be the reasonable platform for Doctor Who takes. I suggest avoiding Twitter

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“No you don’t understand she was always a mother”

Ok this is not communicated well in what was clearly a rushed script edit, and it is in no way the obvious reading of the episode, which

“And if you have a problem with Belinda being a mum your criticism is suspect because you don’t think of your own mum as a full person who can have a life outside of being a mother”

Jesus I never thought Tumblr would be the reasonable platform for Doctor Who takes. I suggest avoiding Twitter

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billie piper returning isn’t an awesome feminist moment or “haunting the narrative” or the story going full circle. It’s keys being jingled in front of our faces like babies

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Yes the defeats of the Rani and Omega were supposed to be comically anti-climactic. Yes it's supposed to be disturbing that Belinda's whole independent life and the job that gave her purpose was wiped away in favor of housewifery, because the Doctor couldn't let go of his delusion-baby. Yes something is very very very wrong, and only Ruby has noticed, but even her noticing only managed to shift the delusion slightly to the left. But also if they don't start doing promo for the Every Ninth Word episode virtually immediately, I am going to start throwing rocks at bad wolf studios from across the ocean, because I will not be in the trenches about this for months! plural!

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Tbh still annoyed that people hold up Clara Oswald as proof that Moffat's companions were mysteries who were kept mysteries forever to avoid developing them. Clara had a mystery arc for half a season, and its conclusion was "she isn't a mystery, she's just a normal girl who decided to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor's life". There's two whole seasons after that where she's not a mystery. It's just wrong on a basic level and it's constantly stated as fact

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I do not like to consider behind the scenes stuff when talking about Art, but I do think that this episode fully sealed the deal on the 'Millie Gibson left the show unexpectedly for Some Sort of Reason so they had to cast someone else as a new companion on short notice and quickly rewrite completed episodes to compensate' theory.

That whole maternal bit with Belinda? Out of nowhere. Nothing to do with Belinda. Belinda got very little characterization overall, but none of it was that.

But let's say instead that the companion for this season remained Ruby. We get a little timeskip in between the two seasons, in which Ruby dates Conrad. Maybe the Robot Revolution initially featured him. Then we have a whole season in which none of the other stories (except a new version of Lucky Day) center around her, which makes a lot of sense because the previous season was all about her. She doesn't feel undercharacterized, because she had a whole-ass season of characterization already. Most of the season could have her in the place of Belinda with literally nothing changing, which, well.

And then we get to this finale. The Doctor and Ruby get magicked into a world where they have a magic baby, who looks just like a baby they met previously. Despite the fact that the baby and their life isn't real, Ruby can't possibly find it within herself to abandon - or forget - a child. It doesn't matter whether the child is really hers or not. It matters that someone needs to take care of her and that Ruby steps up to do it. That's a core Ruby character value! That's something that would follow up on a previously established theme!

So, the ending in which she raises the child isn't weird, it's the conclusion to Ruby's character arc. There's no extra character who needs to be shoved into a literal box. The UNIT reunion is a reunion of characters who actually know each other, unlike Belinda, who doesn't know any of those guys. Space Babies is retroactively vindicated.

I cannot believe this was not the intended model of the series. We know these two seasons were written and filmed concurrently. There's no reason for the result to be so awkward if there wasn't some bullshit afoot, given that there was ample opportunity to plan it properly. When Belinda was announced, RTD explicitly said that Varada Sethu was cast because they had already filmed 'Boom' and they knew she had good screen chemistry with Ncuti. She herself said that she was just offered the role out of the blue. This was a rush job. I really liked Varada Sethu as Belinda. She did a lot to disguise the patch here, and it's too bad that she couldn't do more. But we shouldn't think of these seasons as something that was designed to be this way. I'm pretty sure they weren't.

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also shitposting aside it should've been a horror movie. belinda chandra should've looked down at that child and known she would've died for her. she would've killed for her. and known also that those aren't her feelings. this isn't her child. fifteen wanted this dream so badly that he rewrote belinda's whole life. this ending isn't just a tragedy for the doctor

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The thing I don’t get is why this is how you write the ending when you’re losing your leading man and the show’s renewal is in doubt (the same complaint about Power of the Doctor, tbh - I don’t find either open-ended regeneration or stunt casting to be a good idea). Why not keep Gatwa and then have a regeneration in next series episode 1? Have him bump his head on an exercise bike if he can’t come back for one more episode.

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Reality War things, roughly in order:

But… Poppy is from the future? The spaceship with the fucking space babies? Why are the Doctor and Belinda still going “this is our kid” after being pulled out of the fake reality? And if this isn’t Space Babies Poppy, why aren’t the Doctor and Belinda more freaked out by sudden baby? Neither of them going “I have a kid now?”

Too many characters. Stop it with the “we want a UNIT spinoff” characters. They take up time. Worse, it means every present-day story becomes a story with all these useless characters. And while you’re at it, can we write Kate Stewart as anything other than “remember my dad was is Doctor Who?”

You know what? I’m with the Rani here. Fuck these people I want the Time Lords back.

If I had two nickels for every time RTD brought back a good villain and turned them into a stupid CGI creature easily defeated, etc etc.

Murray Gold release the fucking S10 soundtrack stop reusing cues release the fucking S10 soundtrack already.

“We’re not going to settle down” to reality being rewritten to force Belinda to settle down and “I can’t travel because I have a kid.” Hey Ruby if you care about Poppy why don’t you become mum to her. No but seriously: why isn’t the ending to this that Ruby takes care of Poppy? Why, if she’s the one who cares so much about this kid, why doesn’t she take Poppy in? It even works coherently with her caring about this child because she herself is an orphan. But no, let’s rewrite Belinda’s history so she’s now happy having a child and always had a kid. And the thing that RTD just doesn’t seem to understand is how weird fucking what it is to suddenly have a child. A biological child? Belinda should be freaking the fuck out from the moment reality is re-established. But oh well, her happy ending is the same reality that the fashy podcast bro wrote for her. Okey dokey time for Rose to come back I guess.

Oh you know what? Replace Ruby with Belinda in the climax, her confronting Conrad instead (“you made me have a kid! With the Doctor! He’s gay, mate!”)

Jesus Christ but Jo Martin was right there. Paul McGann would have been nice too. Matt Smith, if we’re doing stunt casting in numerical order. It’s pretty clear that Gatwa deciding to leave was last minute. But people have been talking about a surprise regeneration for years, going “hey wouldn’t it be cool if we get Famous Actor for an episode?” And instead of like, Helen Mirren, we get David Tennant for the 60th and now Billie Piper?

I genuinely want to know the behind-the-scenes of these past two years. Why say goodbye to Ruby last season only to bring her back and sideline Belinda this season? How much with Mrs. Flood, all the gods bullshit, mavity, etc. was planned in advance? And what in this episode stands from whatever it originally was before Gatwa decided to leave? (the pictures of them dancing for example)

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I think the other reason I don't really get into ships as portrayed by fandom culture is that it seems like the mindset is more like. "I want these characters to be in a Romantic Relationship(TM)" instead of "I want these characters' relationship to be romantic"

What I mean here is that, so often I see pairings enacting romance tropes to the point of heavily altering or downright replacing their original dynamic - as if the people behind it only understand romance as a series of checklists to tick off. Couples like to kiss and sleep in the same bed and flirt with each other, so it doesn't matter who the characters are, if they're a couple then naturally they'll do those things, right??

And that's where the whole thing starts to lose me, because I would assume that the appeal of shipping characters is, y'know... the characters? Rather than just, the idea of a couple? If I'm thinking about how it'd be cool for them to be in love, my first thought is always "so how would they show it," because just like everything else about a person, the answer is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

Maybe the characters involved aren't really into kissing, but they like arranging date activities. Maybe they aren't committed to the structure of dating at all, and just want to be around each other whenever they can. And even if they are the types to like doing traditionally romantic things, that doesn't suddenly erase whatever else they had going on before they started adding that on top of it.

I'm not saying that the more typical romance tropes and activities are bad, just that they're applied kind of excessively, regardless of whether or not they actually work for the characters involved. I want to see my favorite characters having relationships that are true to who they are, not what the stock depiction of a couple says they should be.

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Why did the worms not win? I liked the worms

I’m not through the cold open yet and I already hate this episode, mainly because it’s about Space Eurovision, which might manage to be even more annoying than the regular thing

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I’m not through the cold open yet and I already hate this episode, mainly because it’s about Space Eurovision, which might manage to be even more annoying than the regular thing

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I keep seeing that stupid post about Orpheus on other sites, I hope you’re happy. But I’m sorry (no I’m not), but “turning around” is in no way definitional of love. What do you mean turning around is what it is to love someone. That doesn’t make fucking sense! This is why Socrates gets mad when people half-ass examples instead of giving definitions. It’s trite garbage for the witless, which is why it sounds profound to so many people.