#I don't even care that he explained himself later the idea of retconning his own comic to make later conversations

[llycaons]

ugh I can't believe parks and rec is over 10 years old

[scifinal]

DW s12e10: It's Quite Unfortunate That This Child Keeps On Regenerating

It's only fitting that the first post on a blog called "SciFinal" should be about a season finale.

Not that fitting is the fact that in said post I'm going to begin where it all started for me.

Part One: How I Even Got into This Mess of a Show in the First Place

While I call myself a huge Doctor Who fan, even a – *gasp* – Whovian, I must admit I am not as familiar with the franchise as I would like to be; I've seen the new show, I've seen Torchwood (though, admittedly, I had to force myself to finish the fourth season – but that's a story for another day), I've listened to a handful of audio dramas (including Kaldor City, which I consider to be canon for both DW and Blake's 7) – mostly Torchwood audio dramas, but who cares, – I've read a couple of comics, I've got a novel or two somewhere on my bookshelf, I've seen the first couple of seasons of the classic show, but that's about it. I can't say I grew up with it – it wasn't on TV when I was a kid, there isn't an official Ukrainian dub, et cetera, et cetera. I first heard about it when I was about thirteen, when my classmate did a project about something they liked – and was pretty dismissive of my peers' hobbies at the time, believing myself to be somewhat above them, so I didn't pay much attention.

Then somebody finally pressured me into watching it (I believe I was fifteen or something back then) and I loved it. The first two episodes of the first season, I mean. I watched those, texted my friend something like "consider me a Whovian now!" and abandoned the show completely only to return to it maybe several years later.

I loved it. This time, for real.

Doctor Who has been with me ever since that time, it has a big soft spot reserved for each and every Doctor ever in my heart, and for each and every companion. I know full well it's cheesy, and it's stupid, and it's technobabble-y, and it's glorious in all of its cheesy technobabble-y stupidity.

And I hate this finale.

Part Two: Doctor, Why

I hate this finale – because I hate Chris Chibnall. Mind you, not the gentleman himself (I don't even know what he looks like, and I can't be bothered to Google), I hate what he did to Doctor Who.

Now, when it was revealed that the would replace Steven Moffat I felt... nothing. What did you expect? I had no idea who the man was. I know now he's made Broadchurch, and I know he wrote a bunch of stuff for Torchwood back in the day, including Cyberwoman. I had to drop Broadchurch because of how well-handled the depressing atmosphere was, and I love the flawed, dumb, sexy-cyber-bikinied, almost-fifteen-minutes-of-Ianto's-whining-including (I know because some time ago I literally cut almost every single moment of Gareth David-Lloyd whimpering, moaning, groaning, screaming, and mugging at the camera out of the episode and made those bits and pieces into a beautiful clip show called "I HATE THIS" to explain exactly why his face was and still is so punchable) mindless fun that is Cyberwoman (this is also one of the two episodes in which they actually do something fun with the pterodactyl living inside Torchwood's underground base). The latter also led to the creation of one amazing in how it develops Ianto's character audio drama entitled "Broken". I love Broken. I am now forcing you to look at its cover because of how much I love it.

Here we go. Now, back to the point of me rambling pointlessly

In his video "Sherlock Is Garbage, and Here's Why", a well-known YouTuber hbomberguy pointed out how Steven Moffat's problem is that he is more than capable of writing a good one-off episodes, but ultimately fails at managing multiple complex, overarching stories, as visible when you look at the difference between Moffat's individual episodes and his run on the show.

Now, I believe that Chris Chibnall suffers from the same affliction: he's a good screenwriter but a terrible, terrible showrunner. Sure, he's made Broadchurch, but Broadchurch, in its essence, was a complete singular story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There were no bigger, incomplete arcs expanding at the expense of other episodes, and the show did exactly what it was originally designed to do: it told an uninterrupted story.

Here comes Chris Chibnall's run on Doctor Who.

Now, while Steven Moffat was ultimately not very good at managing overarching stories, he tried to do so nonetheless, and the fans seemed to like his attempts. And while I can't be sure as to whether it was Chris' original vision for the show or he and his co-writers were merely trying to emulate Moffat, he attempted the same. A friend of mine has even pointed out how, to her, it was painfully obvious how the writers of the finale were desperately trying to copy Moffat's style (to give you some context, she grasped it from a 30-second clip of the CyberMasters' reveal, and that clip basically consisted of me filming my laptop's screen and laughing at their design, making the video wobbly and the audio distorted). At the time of writing this post this friend hasn't seen a single episode of Chibnall's era and, as far as I know, has no wish to do so – mainly because of two reasons that both have something to do with the finale:

Somebody's already spoiled it for her, so who cares;

I ranted to her about how shit this finale is and now she hates everything about Chibnall era.

I am very sorry for the latter, since I genuinely believe there are some nice episodes in these seasons, and I especially like the "historical" ones, they really are quite a lot of fun, I like Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison fighting badly CG-ed alien scorpions, I love Lord Byron and Mary Shelley running around a haunted house trying to escape from a Cyberman (even though it's all too similar to the Agatha Christie episode from Russel T Davies' run), I adore that episode about Rosa P–– oh, wait, no, that one was crap and ripped off Blake's 7... Anyway, I love Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, I am a big fan of Graham, I like Ryan just fine, and I can put up with Yaz, even though it's been two seasons and I've still got no idea what's her personality supposed to be, and I absolutely love the new Master (he reminds me of a cute little pug with a big Tommy gun). There is plenty of good stuff in these two seasons, they are lots of fun to watch, but this finale... Oh god, this finale.

Part Three: We Had All of Time and Space at Our Fingertips and We Ended Up with This

We are getting to the point of this whole thing. I would love to begin with the obvious, the twist, but there's so much wrong with this who-cares-how-many-parter than this one big thing.

It is inept. It is impotent. It is incompetent. It is bad at almost everything except its okay camera work, somewhat good (for a British TV show, I mean) effects, and its really solid performances.

Its editing is tone-deaf to the extreme. There is a moment in the final episode where Ko Sharmas asks who will be the first to cross the Boundary and step into the unknown, and immediately it cuts to Yaz walking towards it, all fast and silent. I would love to show you a clip of it, but I don't have one and I can't force myself to download the episode and sit through this shitshow again just to present you with a ten-second clip. Nonetheless, that part is not edited like a dramatic moment. You edit comedies this way. Bad comedies. Bad editors edit bad comedies this way.

Its plot is incoherent. There are several plot threads in this finale, and they're managed in a way that doesn't make the viewer care about all of them at the same time, rather the viewer goes "oh, I've completely forgotten this was happening" and then, before they can even begin to care, the show cuts to something else. It's all over the place and oh so annoying.

The plot armour is painfully obvious despite every attempt to disguise it. There wasn't a single, solitary second when I believed the Doctor was really going to sacrifice herself and, lo and behold, here comes the old guy ex machina to do it for her. The only questions I was asking at that moment were "How are the writers going to prevent the Doctor's death now that they've seemingly created themselves a way to go on forever?" and "How can Whittaker care so much about her performance in this scene she's literally almost crying?". I wholeheartedly related to the Master asking "So why are we still here?" and shout–– hiss–– mumbl–– whatever-ing "Come on, come on, come on!" – at that point I've suffered through at least forty-five minutes of utter nonsense, people going preachy, religious Cybermen with Dalek motivations, that absolutely ludicrous scene in the previous episode when the show was trying its worst to make me perceive autonomous flying Cyber-heads with laser eyes as a serious threat, a shit twist and... Oh.

I've got to finally touch on the shit twist, haven't I?

It doesn't make sense. No, I mean it. I guess it makes sense from the show's writers' standpoint to retcon everything in a way that would allow them to go on forever without having to come up with a way to circumvent limited regenerations, yes. And I won't be touching upon all the lore people say this twist has ruined. No. It doesn't make sense as it is.

The twist is revealed to us by a madman that claims to have hacked into a database, claims to possess control over the Doctor's mind, and gives the Doctor and the audience no actual solid proof that the Timeless Child is, indeed, the Doctor. We have Ruth, sure, and she's nice enough (damn, I want that vest), and she's a Timelord that happens to own a TARDIS that looks like a blue police telephone box, and she calls herself the Doctor. Here's Ruth:

I really like Ruth. She also makes no sense from the show's timeline standpoint, since the Doctor's Type 40 TARDIS only got stuck looking like a police box in 1963, so there's no reason for the Doctor to not remember being her.

We also know that the Judoon have identified Ruth as "the Fugitive"... except in one of their previous appearances in the show they weren't able to identify their targets exactly and thus were seeking out non-humans. There is a possibility that they were only looking for a Time Lord on Earth.

You know what? It's possible that Ruth is actually the Master messing with the Doctor. I have just as much proof of this as I have of the fact that the Doctor is some kind of an endlessly regenerating superbeing.

But this is not the most maddening thing here. I loathe it, but I don't loathe the twist itself: I loathe its lifelessness, I loathe how empty, how unemotional, almost robotic it feels. When somebody'd spoiled the finale for me, I got angry, and I started asking questions, and when later I saw the actual thing...

This gif. I can't even explain how accurate it is. I stood there, in the middle of my kitchen, episode paused, holding a cup of cold tea and desperately looking around as if in my surroundings I could somehow find that emotional reaction that this show failed to evoke. I was ready to burst into tears of how empty it felt, and how empty I felt, and how the same show that has Christopher Eccleston go from literally foaming at the mouth with pure hatred to shocked silence in a matter of second because of one sentence that you, a viewer, can't help but be astonished by failed to make me feel the tiniest speck of literally any emotion. And slowly, I felt that vast void in my chest fill with sheer, pure, flaming hatred for the person who made me feel nothing, for the story that left me not bored – but empty.

And the next moment, in its own unique way of being absolutely tone-deaf, the show introduces the CyberMasters, looking ridiculous, being asinine in concept, making me burst into laughter with their dumb design. Wow.

So.

Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who is no longer a show. Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who isn't even, as somebody on Stardust said, a fan fiction. It's a rollercoaster. A lackluster rollercoaster that lifts you from the vast caverns of frozen hell, devoid of any life whatsoever, soulless and abandoned, to the heavenly torture of being so bad, so utterly awful and ridiculous, that you can't help but laugh as you watch something you used to love be distorted and deformed to the point where you can't recognise it anymore nor really care. This is what Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who has become. And I'm going to continue my ride on that grotesque rollercoaster. I'm going to pirate that ride and get on it again. Because I'm a masochist. Because I want to feel something, even if it's hatred towards those that make me feel nothing.

Because some time ago my fifteen-year-old self watched the first season and learned a lesson that I hold dear after all these years – that I can't abandon hope, and that someday, somehow, things are going to get better. That the future is being written right now. That the future can change.

[snserendipity]

Uh man...If Kishi really don't write Boruto,and if it's all in sp hands,what will happened with Naruto characters?More important,what will happened whit sasuke and naruto? Kishi is the one who created their bond and now when he is out of boruto,do you think that sns moments are officially over???I really hope that I have wrong opinion...

I actually don’t think that Kishimoto is working on Boruto. He, most likely, gave basic ideas of how the story should go and obviously we know that he wrote Gaiden. But, honestly, I don’t think he did any more than that. He definitely isn’t looking over every single episode which SP is making (especially these filler-type episodes) and SP also doesn’t have any manga material to follow, which gives them more freedom to do what they please. They do have the Boruto manga which Ikemoto is working on, but more than half of that manga is the Boruto movie and the rest is set after. That’s why it’ll be a while before we see any of the manga getting adapted.

What will happen with Naruto characters?

Not much, I guess. But it also depends if you’re looking at the old gen or new gen. It’s only been like 3 episodes, yeah? That’s why it’s difficult to judge the characters in this short amount of time. But, I’ll do a quick analysis.

Naruto - Okay, so we haven’t actually seen that much of Naruto (which is strange) but it’s been made pretty clear that he’s often made to look worn-out because of his work as the Hokage. We know he doesn’t spend time with his family and the one time that he does come back home early, he goes straight to bed without getting anything to eat. You’d think he would be happy to see his family after not seeing them for some time or he would at least greet them? It gives me a feeling that Naruto doesn’t particularly feel the need to spend time with the family that he often neglects because of work. 

I don’t find it strange that SP could be ruining Naruto’s character, or generally pushing him away from the spotlight because we all know what they did with him in The Last. There are major hints that Naruto might die, later on in the Boruto series, and maybe the reason for pushing back Naruto is so that we will focus on Boruto and forget about Naruto? They might be doing this so that fans start loving Boruto and don’t get overly upset when they do kill off Naruto. It’s all up to debate for now, though.

Hinata - Where do I even begin? -sigh- 

So, apparently, SP felt like retconning Hinata’s character and make her into a ‘scary mum’ as Boruto describes. I honestly feel so tired about talking about this over and over again so I’ll share two links which perfectly explain what happened: 1 & 2.

Since this is SP’s doing and Kishimoto isn’t involved then I’m not surprised that they’re doing all of this. They’re putting her into every episode to make her look somewhat ‘important’. But what she’s doing when she is actually shown is either taking care of the house or taking care of Boruto or Himawari. And that’s not anything important or entertaining. They’re just trying to shove her down people’s throats in any occasion which they can because she’s SP’s favourite.

Temari - I hate what they did with Temari. She is shown hitting Shikadai or pulling him by the ear because he did something at school. Like, she can just talk to him? And when Shikamaru tries to just stay calm and let go of the situation, Temari says that Shikamaru is being too lenient and that’s why Shikadai is behaving that way. But what way? Seriously, Shikadai is always shown to be good and he’s the one who watches over Boruto to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. So, he’s the sensible and responsible one. Yet, Temari is still complaining about him not behaving well. It’s like she doesn’t know her own son. She didn’t even let them have dinner because they were both thinking ‘what a drag’. Isn’t that going a bit too far…?

Sasuke and Sakura - I’m going to write about the two of them of them because it seems like they’re both being treated like side characters. I know that they aren’t playing a major role right now but it’s strange to see that these two really important characters are getting thrown off to the side like they’re nothing (kind of like Naruto, though he did get some screen time). But, for some reason, Hinata gets the most attention out of all of the old gen. Again, obvious favouritism. We’ve seen Sakura in both the opening and ending of Boruto but Sasuke was only shown in the ending. I’m not sure when we will see Sakura, but I think that Sasuke will be shown when they start to animate Gaiden. 

 What will happen with SNS? 

I honestly don’t know. It looks like SP is in charge of everything right now so we have to wait and see what they will do. 

There’s just one thing which worries me and that is Ikemoto’s take on the Boruto manga. I did a full analysis of how he removed the SNS moments or changed them to make it look platonic, which you can check out here. I don’t think SP dislike SNS and they might give us fanservice but that’s just not the same. Hopefully, SP doesn’t do the same thing as Ikemoto. There were plenty SNS moments in Gaiden so hopefully, SP doesn’t mess that up. But, we just have to wait and see. 

I just want to say that you shouldn’t worry because, as you said, Kishimoto is the one who created the SNS bond. That’s why we shouldn’t worry so much about this Boruto crap because we’ve already got the upper hand. We have all those moments that Kishimoto created himself. Whatever SP try to do, they won’t be able to destroy that :)