#DW negativity

[causalityparadoxes]

Also not sure how i feel about Sutekh "always being there". Like on one hand, its an average lore changing finale. But on the other, eeehhh?? K??? Like obviously Unnatural History, time always shifting, canon fake etcetc.

But idk man i don't know what to do with that yet. Like fr Russell? he was there the entire timewar? During Satan's pit? Did he cling onto Idris or House in The Doctor's Wife?

I know looking for logic in something this ridiculous is silly. But like whats up with this, man?

[dandelionjack]

saw this on the forbidden app could not resist reposting because it’s true. “the one who waits is almost here” is lazy LAZY writing. stop dangling lore in front of our faces… make it SUBTLE. show not tell…

did russell go to the chibnall school of bad screenwriting before his return because these episodes do genuinely feel like they’ve been created by a different person entirely than the emotionally intelligent, thoughtful showrunner who gave us the first four series

[intuitive-revelations]

I don't know if I'm excited or frustrated at the 'future children' angle for Susan's origin. On one hand... I'm very interested in the possible links to the likes of Miranda, the Other etc.

On the other hand... ok confession time: This may make me a minority in the fandom, but I actually really dislike the 80s-90s retcons of Susan's origin. (Birth of a Renegade, Lungbarrow etc.)

I kinda just like her and the Doctor being some of the last surviving members of what was once a family on Gallifrey. I find the mystery and tragedy of what happened on Gallifrey, with implied student uprisings and political assassinations, far more intriguing than any twists saying "actually she's not really his granddaughter". Fortunately, some things can be canonwelded into that (eg. Susan really could be also related to the president / descended from Rassilon), but stuff that actually gives her an origin elsewhere is always a pain.

Idk. I just see once being a parent (and losing it all tragically) as such a crucial part of the Doctor's background and Susan fits very well into that as far as I'm concerned. Anything disconnecting her from that, or worse erasing it completely, ultimately damages what I find to be one of the most compelling things about the Doctor and Susan. :/

The few posts I've already seen talking about this suggests this is an unpopular opinion, but I'd be interested to know what people think, and if they agree or disagree...

[ssaalexblake]

Why is 13's regen abt a white dude and why is 15's regen abt a white dude when do we get rid of that white man that just Cannot let other people have their own moments I swear this is so old, like really, it's a tale as old as time where white dudes are the center of the narrative and universe and everyone caters to them, and I'm so bored of it being celebrated. It's not innovative, it's not new, it's not brave.

[sol1loqu1st]

my thing is just like. even if all the theories about why this season has been mediocre so far (minus boom. boom was great) turn out to be true and we get a great finale that totally justifies the rest of the season being disneyfied and lacklustre. it doesn't like. retroactively make the season not disneyfied and lacklustre. the greatest payoff in the world (and tbh none of the theories are, like, that good anyway) would not justify rtd rehashing all his old material But Worse This Time and robbing ncuti gatwa of a good first impression

[bingqiv]

hundred percent believe that if moffat or chibnall had written that finale more fans would be willingly to admit that it was shit.

[faeleven]

the other thing about space babies is that it fucking sucks as an introdution episode. whiplash from boring contextless exposition to "ooooh look at our shiny CGI" is not my idea of fun! "season 1" my ass if this was my introduction to dr who i never would touch it again. compared to episodes like rose or the pilot that allow themselves to sit with the characters before jumping into plot, are confident enough to leave things unexplained because they know they can keep the viewer coming back for more regardless... we used to have real television

[doccywhomst]

About your last post.

I understand because I too used to throw every bit of 13 criticism into the right wing bin. It is only recently that I started to accept that some criticism of that era were reasonable. It was this video by verilybitchie about the women in Doctor Who that made me do a 180.

I think the insular nature of fandoms and the way the DW fandom is scattered around and formed by VERY different kind of fans only worsen the situation. It’s hard to know how good intentioned someone is when there’s a part of the fandom actively sabotaging the show since 2004.

(referencing this post) it was a video essay that changed my mind as well - i was super resistant going into it, but as i watched, i realized that i didn’t actually object to anything being said, only the idea of something i love being criticized. i felt sick to my stomach because the longer i watched, the more i realized they were right, i couldn’t defend my viewpoint, and i knew i wouldn’t be able to unsee the flaws in thirteen’s writing.

since then, i’ve also pulled my own 180° - i went from not tolerating criticism (because i thought it was all in bad faith) to openly and thoroughly criticizing doctor who, explicitly because i love it. it’s my favorite thing in the world and i shouldn’t have to lower my standards to enjoy it. the flux was what nailed the coffin shut for me, i couldn’t believe how sloppy the plot felt…. it went nowhere and many of its consequences went unresolved.

all of this is to say, i’ll always love thirteen and there’s a home in my heart for her, but honestly, the criticism is valid. she deserved better. i hope jodie works with big finish to make audios worthy of her effort and skill, because i know we all want the best for her! and i would LOVE for thirteen to have many years of terrific audio series :)))

[captainsjack]

i don’t think moffat should be allowed to write christmas specials anymore that was… terrible

[leikeliscomet]

What was the point of casting Ncuti if you're just gonna see/write the Doctor as a white character anyway? What's the point of using Black Brit, Black American & Rwandan aesthetics if you're writing/seeing them as a character w/ 0 understanding of racism & the Black experience?

Writing/seeing the Doctor as an inherently white human character who can't help but support racists & be ignorant about racism instead of an *alien* who can change appearance from a society without Earth's racial hierarchy is a choice. A real shitty one.

For a while I've been thinking how the need to characterise the Doctor as a romantic/sexual being to "humanise" them holds them back & this is the same but in terms of race.

For a character that can be anything & anyone, u lot *really* want them to fit 'normal' human ideals.

[causalityparadoxes]

maybe if rtd had let more guest writers handle the regular episodes, he would have had time to properly script that finale. Send post.

[dandelionjack]

sutekh was a fantastic villain in 1975. sutekh was a compelling and frightening antagonist for one serial. it’s okay that his motivation was just “destroy everything, i hate all living things”because he was only around for one serial before tom baker sealed him in a temporal sarcophagus forever. and it should have stayed that way, with the exception of, maybe, a few big finish excursions, since they love to reanimate the corpses of dead characters.

sutekh is NOT a compelling enough villain to be refitted as the big bad of a nuwho series. “kill everyone now” is the most generic motivation a bad guy can have. “i bring death” ok what else do you bring? do you represent anything? do you have any subtextual value, do you have symbolic meaning beyond “lol, die everyone because i said so, i’m an evil egyptian god”. there’s no substance to him, nothing deeper. a character like the master is practically made of substance, his history and the doctor’s are entwined from the start and that’s what makes him so fascinating as a threat, but even lesser iconic villains — daleks, cybermen, weeping angels, ood, the silence, the great intelligence, the fucking fisher king from before the flood — all have complex and intriguing motives and philosophies of their own. okay, maybe not the angels, but they represent something. they stand in for a concept (in the case of angels, for example, the very meta concept of being glued to your screen, physically unable to look away).

what does sutekh stand in for? he’s just death. he wants all life gone. that’s not interesting, that’s not exciting beyond the scope of one serial or one episode. he’s not nuwho material, he’s definitely not nuwho finale material. you may as well just plop the grim reaper there, scythe and all, go full torchwood (derogatory), instead of embracing the dated, orientalist egyptian imagery russell has insisted on doubling down on. i’m feeling pessimistic. i’d really been hoping for the “stuck-in-a-tv-show” theory to be proven right. how naïve of me.

[badxwolf]

It’s so funny to me that people are freaking out about which characters got killed by Sutekh when Russell hit the reverse button and nobody actually died. Like yeah Pete’s World probably got nuked as well but does it matter??? I stopped feeling anything after Mrs. Flood died bc it was obvious that wasn’t going to last. 99% of what happens in the show makes me think about Rose Tyler but Russell managed to write the one thing that didn’t make me care about what happened to her. I’m almost impressed.

[mulderscully]

this fourteenth doctor shit is soooo ridiculously stupid and redundant and cheap and i did not believe rtd could write something so deeply disrespectful to jodie and to ncuti, to every companion after donna and to everything he himself did with journey's end. i absolutely hate it.

[bingqiv]

that ending was utter shite. so no explanation for the snow that she could miraculously create? her parents end up being some random people and don’t get me started on the bad cgi pointing. the doctor abandons ruby because she has more family (despite a lot of companions juggling family and the doctor)?

like sutek’s death was unexplained? are we supposed to believe that the absolute god of death was able to get killed and as simple as that? also the doctor going “you’re making me be like you and making me kill a living thing 😠😠😠”like babes you’ve literally committed mass genocide before and killed so many people but go off i guess. like you aren’t this pure angel who is only being forced to be a monster now, you’ve been a monster all along the oncoming storm timelord victorious the predator the valeyard

all that build-up this season for NOTHING AT ALL with a rushed ending

[sygzie]

i’m just fucking BAFFLED that the guy who created the journey’s end ending (which i’ve always thought made the s1-4 storyline THE most beautifully crafted thing ever) just completely disregarded the whole thing? the audacity to call that the one adventure he’s never had when that was the line used to foreshadow tentoo’s ending with rose. an ending which was made to juxtapose time lord ten’s ending because those two simultaneous truths are (were?) genuinely the entire point of rtd1 era to me. but watching the special made it feel like those things that to me were so important never even happened and i’m honestly confused