#NuWho had series

[imaginita-est-omnibus]

No idea if this’ll catch on or not, but I am officially nicknaming the new era of Doctor Who…

DWho

Y’know, we have OldWho, NuWho, and DWho. D comes from Disney bc it’s got that Disney money now. But also it stands for Doctor. And it continues the pattern of each getting shorter.

[zazrichor]

B A D W O L F

[thespidersfrommarz]

"Rose, before I go, I just want to tell you you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I!” | The Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler

---

@/roach-works // Doctor Who (2005) 1x01: Rose // All I've Ever Known - Eva Noblezada and Reeve Carney // Doctor Who (2005) 1x03: The Unquiet Dead // @/dimpledthings // Doctor Who (2005) 1x02: The End of the World // @/comfortfrogblog // Doctor Who (2005) 1x02: The End of the World (again) // Eurydice - Sarah Ruhl // Doctor Who (2005) 1x13: The Parting of the Ways

[redbuckethat]

Top funniest things Sutekh had to experience whilst hanging on to the TARDIS

Melody Pond's conception

Captain Jack's time vortex hug

Being exploded (multiple times)

The awkward Thasmin ice cream date

Clara and Twelve being toxic

River Song joyrides

The fuckery with the paradox machine

Nardole

The entirety of Journey to the Center of the TARDIS

The Doctor having at least three fake out deaths

[anthony-crowleys-left-nut]

rory williams aka the greatest partner who ever lived (stills from @eIevenriver on twitter)

[causalityparadoxes]

With BOOM shaping up to be a darker episode, its interesting to me how little death these first 3 episodes have actually had.

There's the Goblin King (Janice also implied iirc?), Timothy Drake, and I suppose the unnamed piano lady. Sure we see the destroyed earth and its implied the Maestro killed other people. But very few named characters with lines or presence have died.

Its not unprecedented. Its similar to S5, which only had the deaths of unseen fighter pilots and Prisoner Zero. However, compared to RTD 1.0 it is a stark difference.

By episode 3, Series 1 had: Clive, Raffalo, The Steward, Jabe, Cassandra (technically), Mr. Sneed, and Gwneyth.

There was also: The Nestene, the passengers on Platform One, Mr Redpath from ep 3's cold open, and the Gelth. I wasn't sure if i should count those on the same level though (even if they are arguably on the level of some aforementioned S14 deaths). Also not counting implied deaths or Wilson as they were not seen.

Thats 1 important sympathetic character death per episode. 7 characters who were introduced, had a good number of lines, and died. A character death at least every 20 minutes. Kind of wild. You can see why no one dying felt so impactful in The Doctor Dances.

To be clear, death (or lack there of) doesn't mean anything about the quality of the stories. A bad story can have a lot of people die. A good story can have no one die. But its interesting to see how different RTD 1.0 and RTD 2.0 have started off.

I'm also now wondering if BOOM will be narratively similar to S5's Time of the Angels. Because that was a massive shift in tone. From light hearted stories, with rather fairytale endings, to a very stressful two parter where basically everyone died (Around 8 named characters with 2 especially important ones). It definitely marked a shift in the series.

So with Moffat writing BOOM and only a few hours until it airs, I'm wondering how the ongoing tone of series 14 will play out 👀

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

the way all of ten's companions leave the doctor in journey's end thinking he's going to be more than fine because he's got his best friend with him and they've all got that just-saved-the-world glow only for ten to look like that when rose kisses tentoo when just before (in a deleted scene) donna had assured rose that she would be there to keep the doctor company while the doctor is already anticipating that he's going to have to wipe donna's memory?? oh idk what rtd was feeding us to make us go this feral because he sure as hell wasn't feeding us happy fucking endings

[master-missysversion]

I was actually starting to look forward to ncutis seasons again but the fact they're apparently calling it season one is putting me off. Why would they do that

[boypussydilf]

getting worked up over Doctor Who Lore is just so funny “but this thing is contradictory!” “this new lore drop is gonna ruin everything forever!” “oh that thing can’t happen that’s too absurd” guys the doctor’s abilities include being able to fully understand babies and animals & also straight up flight. who cares

[ariminiria]

as sad as regeneration tends to be, I do enjoy seeing the next Doctor wander around in the previous Doctor’s clothes, and tbh most of them don't do that for nearly long enough

[amysstarlesslife]

why did steven moffat suddenly become good at writing as soon as amy & rory left why couldn't they have had some of that...

[dandelionjack]

We Invest Things With Significance, or: Why Sutekh Isn’t Sutekh, But Death Itself. alternative title: Fear Is the Mind Killer.

the Doctor Who Series 14/1 thesis statement

i don’t think that sutekh has literally been attached to the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars. i think that the salt at the edge of the universe — the grievous mistake that caused all myths to become a reality — was what made him appear. and he’s not the same character as sutekh the osiran, a powerful alien that delusionally believed himself to be a god. he *is* a god. nuwho-Sutekh is Death Incarnate.

ergo, this version of Sutekh is the literal psychic manifestation of the Doctor’s deep-seated, guilt-motivated fear of the idea that his arrival brings death wherever he treads. this death-anxiety was turned into a physical presence, haunting the TARDIS all through the Doctor’s timestream, because of the salt. that’s the reason why the Doctor didn’t spot any Susan Twists before Wild Blue Yonder…

there are two timelines in Doctor Who — relative time and universal time. universal time is the history of the universe. relative time is how the Doctor experiences it. in universal time, Sutekh has supposedly been hitchhiking through the vortex for millenia. in relative time, he has only been doing so since Fourteen accidentally invited myths back into the world.

the Doctor was insecure and afraid and believed the above quote (from the very first episode!! spoken by the very first named character in nuwho to die on screen, no less!) to be true. but until WBY it had only been true on a symbolic, metaphorical level. myths, legends, concepts and stories becoming real after the salt caused the Doctor’s anxiety about being a death-bringer to take the shape of a black dog — a universally recognised symbol of death — wearing the name and voice of his most formidable enemy, Sutekh.

in a way, this plotline mirrors The Woman from 73 Yards similarly being a manifestation of Ruby’s worst fear — that of being abandoned by everyone she loves for something intrinsic and incorrigible inside her that she cannot change. Ruby fears being left completely alone, so “The Woman” causes everyone in her life to leave her. the Doctor fears that his coming always heralds mass destruction (“maybe i’m the bad luck”), so “Sutekh” makes sure that the TARDIS literally becomes an altar of death.

ever since Wild Blue Yonder, stories in doctor who have become sources of immense power. the worst, most potent stories we tell ourselves are the lies that our sick brains whisper to us — secret anxieties that we’re not good enough, that all our loved ones will inevitably leave, that we carry nothing but bad luck in our wake. what better clay to mould a monster from than the protagonists’ own neuroses?

and if anybody’s still in doubt, here’s the plain text, all laid out below:

we invest things with significance. that’s what the salt at the edge of the universe really meant. that’s what almost every episode this series has been about, thematically — the imaginary kastarions, the cosplaying chuldur, the bogeyman written into life because kids need a scary story. myths become real to us because we believe in them, love and death and monsters too.

[justletmeramble1701]

Do you guys subscribe to the theory that (at least, starting in NuWho) the Doctor can, somewhat, subconsciously control his regenerations?

Like, of course, 8 wanted to be a warrior, so he became the War Doctor (I know that he drank a potion for that, but that might’ve just been lemonade according to the Target Novelization).

War wanted to be the hero, to earn the title, the Doctor, again, so he became 9.

9 wanted to be someone who was the perfect partner to Rose (human), so he became 10.

10, in his vanity, wanted his final regeneration to be young, so he became 11.

11, after all the heartache, wanted to be more distant (and also what they said in series 8), so he became 12.

12 wanted a kind, fresh start, so he became 13.

13 wanted to open up to someone, so she became 14.

14 wanted time to heal, so he split off 15.

This is not an original theory, and I'm not even saying that I buy into it fully it, but it's interesting. It would be interesting if the Doctor had a tiny bit of control over their regeneration (Romana did, somehow) and most of the time his wants either backfire or only half work.

What do you think?

[txttletale]

how would you recommend watching doctor who? there are so many different guys idk how it works.

so the thing about doctor who is that there's two shows -- classic who (1963-1989, doctors 1-7) and new who (2005-2023, doctors 9-14). due to a renumber of the seasons and a change in production company, i think it's fair to call the upcoming version of who (2023-??, doctors 15-??) its own, third show. the reason it's been able to run for so long is that when the show's lead actor, (william hartnell as the titular doctor) had to step down in 1966 due to failing health, they made up some sci-fi bullshit: the doctor's species can 'regenerate' instead of dying, instantly healing but changing their appearance and some of their personality. this means that every time a lead actor has walked away (or, in one unfortuante case, been fired) the show's just recast the doctor and moved on, often with notable changes in tone and format.

the easiest option if you don't want to backwatch anything is to start with this year's christmas special, the church on ruby road (2023). it's an obvious jumping on point to the series, introduces you to all the basic stuff (the doctor, the TARDIS, the fact that it's a silly sci-fi show about fighting weird rubber prop critters), and presumably sets up the upcoming season 1 of the disney-bad wolf version of the show that's gonna come out in may 2024.

if you do want to backwatch, you have to decide if you want to start with new who or classic who. i personally would recommend starting with new who, because there's less of it, it's got higher production values, and (imo this is the biggest obstacle to getting into classic who) it's paced in a way that makes much more sense to a modern TV viewer (self-contained 45-minute episodes). also once you're invested in the show, its main character, and some of its classic elements, you get to soyjak at the screen whenever you're watching classic who and you get to see the oirign of a monster you already recognize. you can also skip classic who entirely and never watch it, they don't bring up anything from it in the new series without giving it a new explanation, but if you do this you hate fun.

anyway, starting points for nuwho: the most obvious one is rose (2005). it's the pilot episode for the new show and imo it holds up brilliantly -- it introduces all the most basic concepts of the show, but ultimately it's really all about billie piper and cristopher eccleston's performances and they deliver. the special effects are gonna be pretty terrible for a while because it's early 2000s cg. there's no jumping on point like it for the whole of RTD's run of the show (imo, the best run of nuwho) so if you want to watch seasons 1-4 you've gotta start on rose.

another episode that's written as a jumping on-point is (heavy sigh) the eleventh hour (2011). as well as introducing matt smith's doctor and his companion amy, this also does the whole rigamarole of introducing the show's core elements, giving a nutshell recap of its history in the form of the doctor's rooftop speech, and also signal what the oncoming moffat era is going to be like (whimsical, full of complex time travel plots, way more misogynist). i'm biased -- i'm a hater, one of this episode's central plot conceits sucks real bad and i also hate the eleventh doctor's whole run. but it is meant to be a jumping on point.

there won't be another one of those in nuwho until the pilot (2017). this begins moffat's final season with which he made the odd but extremely welcome decision to jettison all his convoluted continuity shit from the last five seasons and refocus the show with the doctor being a professor at bristol university with a mysterious secret. i think season 10 is a hidden gem and if you find starting from rose daunting this is the next best place to pick up. capaldi's doctor is a delightful abrasive eccentric with a heart of gold at this point in his run & the stories are wall-to-wall bangers with only a couple misses.

finally, you could start on the woman who fell to earth (2018), the first episode to feature jodie whittaker's 13th doctor and head writer chris chibnall. i'd recommend this even less than the eleventh hour, because while i actually like it more, i think it's a much worse preview of what the upcoming era is going to be like than that one. if you watch the woman who fell to earth and keep watching from the start of whittaker's run on the show off the back of it, you're going to be severely disappointed as most of the more promising aspects of the episode get instantly abandoned.

so, summary, if you're starting with nuwho, there's five jumping on points, which i'd rank:

rose > the pilot > the church on ruby road > the eleventh hour > the woman who fell to earth

but i want to start with classic who because i'm a contrarian

alright. classic who also has a few jumping off points -- before i mentioned them, let me just talk about that format thing i mentioned earlier. classic who doesn't have self-contained episodes for the most part, but rather for most of its run told each of its episodic narratives across between two and seven 20-minute episodes. this leads to a lot of weird pacing, forced cliffhangers, and infamously a lot of filler shots of the doctor running up and down identical corridors. so obvsies i'm recommending entire stories here nad not individual episodes. that said, let's look at where you could jump on:

an unearthly child (1963). this is, like, the start of the show. that said i don't recommend it as a place to start (funnily enough), for a couple reasons. firstly, because of dreadful fucking archiving by the BBC, a lot of episodes from the show's first six seasons are straight up missing. some of them have been animated by the BBC from surviving audio recordings, but some of them are just straight up lost -- due to the format, this means there's very few full complete stories, which makes this whole era really hard to navigate. if you don't mind that and really want to start in the black and white era, i'd still recommend the tomb of the cybermen (1967) instead -- hartnell's portrayal of the doctor as a haughty, slightly impish old professor is great, but troughton basically defined the character's core traits for the next sixty years.

spearhead from space (1970) is a pretty big format upheaval for the show and so serves as a pretty great classic jumping-on point. it's the first episode to be in colour, and sets up a new status quo for the doctor as being trapped on earth and working for an elite paramlitary organization called UNIT that operates out of a ratty office. it's an interesting premise that the show gets some great stories out of. the special effects are bad in the best way. pertwee has instant charm in the role and it's all around a banger by classic standards.

if you want to jump right to the one all the boomers are nostalgic for, you can also start with robot (1974). i wouldn't recommend it, though--tom baker is electric in the role from the start, but the episode itself kind of assumes a lot of the context of the third doctor's setup and supporting cast which you're not gonna have.

i wouldn't recommend anyone start at any point during the fifth or sixth doctors runs because i want them to actually like the show, so i guess the last jumping on point i could really recommend after robot would be, like, dragonfire (1987), which heralds the show's short-lived renaissance with the seventh doctor and his best companion, ace. but although you'd be watching some of the absolute best the classic show ever gets, it feels like it would be a weird and disorienting place to start.

finally, you could watch tales of the tardis (2023), a limited series produced to celebrate the show's 60th anniversary. each episode follows the same format: through a vaguely handwaved Palace of Memories plot, two much-aged characters from the classic series meet up and fondly remember one of the adventures they shared. the bookends with the original actors are mostly shameless fanservice, but the episodes they're reminiscing about are superbly edited down into a much more watchable format -- it works as a good 'sample platter' for most eras of the show (although, weirdly, there wasn't anything from tom baker's run!) and i think it honestly wouldn't be a bad shout to just start from tales of the tardis and then keep watching from whichever of the stories featured in it you liked most. that all said, if you want to start with classic who, i'd rank these jumping on points as follows:

spearhead from space > tales of the tardis > tomb of the cybermen > dragonfire > robot > an unearthly child

all that shit said it's fundamentally a very episodic show with very few exceptions like trial of a time lord and whatever moffat was doing seasons 6-7 so in the end you can basically just start with any episode and more or less get some of the idea. have fun and make sure to do the most important job of a doctor who fan, update the tardis wiki page for penis whenever one is mentioned

[bloodstained-ballgowns]

i just rewatched ‘the woman who fell to earth’ a couple of days ago for the first time since it aired back in 2018 and the more i think about it, the more i like it.

thirteen is the only doctor for whom i feel a tangible, rose-tinted nostalgia. she wasn’t my first doctor, but she was the first doctor i watched live, the first doctor that i spent an actual extended period of time with over the episode rollout. her intro episode has middling parts (as can be expected with most episodes of Who) but there’s also so much good that i really want to highlight.

first of all, there are some really great character dynamics set up here. much more interesting than i remember, tbh. ryan is a guy who loves mechanics but is stuck in a warehouse job he hates, a guy who obviously wants to connect to people, a guy who by the end of the episode has lost both his mother and grandmother in the space of a couple of years and the step-grandfather he didn’t really want is all he has left (minus his absent father). that’s interesting.

yaz has a keen sense of justice and this raw, intense yearning to help people, to do something worthwhile, something more - the way she has chosen to express that is through law enforcement, but it’s not quite giving her the satisfaction she wants. that’s interesting.

graham’s experience with cancer means that he constantly feels like he’s living on borrowed time. meeting grace gave him purpose, gave him family, gave him the will to fight when he fought it was all but over, but now grace is gone. he and ryan aren’t related, but they’re family, and now they’ve got to figure out how to care for each other without the very lynchpin that brought them together. once again with feeling: interesting!

“i’m just a traveller. sometimes i see things that need fixing. i do what i can.” i like that they circle back to the ‘just some guy’ portrayal of the doctor here, both because it’s the one i’m partial to and because it feeds particularly well into the whole ‘the doctor is an unreliable narrator’ aspect, especially in the wake of the increased deification in the moffat era. it's a nice set up, even if it gets completely overhauled circa series 12/13. in fact, having thirteen keep this as a persistent attitude throughout the Timeless Child of it all could have been really effective re: her reticence with her companions and refusal to address or deal with her past.

the scene where thirteen builds her sonic screwdriver might be one of my favourite sequences in nuwho. i love that it’s a hybrid of alien tech and sheffield steel. i also love that they highlight the ‘mad inventor’ side of the doctor here (her teleportation circuit is based around a microwave?) and wish that they had carried it forward more. it would have been the perfect basis for her to bond with ryan over. jodie also pulls off the humour of the episode well, considering the significant shift from moffat dialogue.

i enjoy thirteen's outfit: the vibrancy of it as mirroring her childish excitability, but also as another part of the mask - if i dress all colourful then maybe i can ignore/outrun/masquerade my great capacity for darkness! etc etc. the shopping trip with yaz and ryan is a bit shoe-horned in at the end but it's cute that she finds it in a charity shop. (back in 2018 i bought a t-shirt with a couple of stripes across the chest solely because it remotely resembled the one she wore lol. nerd from a young age, me.) jodie also looks soo hot in capaldi's outfit though so a spin on the traditional suit would also have been appreciated.

some miscellaneous points: i like that she tells Karl off (“you had no right to do that”) right after saving him. i like that she gets it wrong at first and makes it clear that she’s working on the fly. she’s following her instinct, and that instinct is to help people. doctor who has been beautiful before but the cinematography takes such a huge step this era. “it’s been a long time since i bought women’s clothes” i am choosing to believe this is about river thank you and good night.

[preciouslandmermaid]

I’m thinking about Amy Pond this morning and how Moffat didn’t give her any identity outside of The Doctor (and Rory).

Like series 5, we go through this whole thing where Amy “gets her parents back” and we literally NEVER see them again. And then Amy’s childhood friend, who we had never heard of, is revealed to be tied to the Doctor as well.

She’s shown to be a successful model during series 6, but that fact doesn’t go anywhere. We don’t see her friends. We don’t even know if she HAS friends.

River Song also has a similar problem—her story is intrinsically tied to the Doctor. And although Amy and River are technically mother and daughter, we don’t really get to see that, like does River come around and visit her parents when not traveling with the Doctor? What do they talk about ??

And on the note about children, iirc, Amy can’t (?) have any more children due to what her kidnappers did to her. But, on the same hand, it was never said that Amy wanted children or was upset that she missed out on the opportunity to raise Melody (it’s literally never mentioned again).

All the of NuWho companions, save for Martha, wanted to travel with the Doctor forever and ultimately their stories end in tragedy. I get that.

But then other companions, like Rose, Martha, and Donna - they all had people OUTSIDE the Doctor, which grounded them, tied to their humanity, to their earthly humanness.

I love Amy, but she is subjected to some poor writing choices. I know the viewers can fill in the blanks - we can assume she and Rory have lives outside traveling with the Doctor. But without seeing these people, it’s hard to connect when let’s say Earth is threatened. When the cyber men were trying to take over, Rose was concerned about her mum ! And we were too! Because we saw her mum and saw how much Rose loved her.

I know Amy’s arc ultimately ends with her “choosing Rory” (I guess because idk this wasn’t made clear when she married the guy idk).

But, consider this, consider how much more impactful her story would’ve been if she had like - I dunno - a sweet grandma who would tell her bedtime stories. The grandma gets some quips in about The Doctors fashion choices.

Rather than the Doctor realizing the Ponds are getting older (Amy’s glasses), it’s Amy realizing that her grandma is getting older, and the allure of traveling the stars is fading. She realizes that she wants to have her own child to tell stories to. And she wants her grandma to be alive to share in those stories. Hell, maybe she still finds a love for writing and becomes an author.

Amy makes the choice (much like Martha did) to leave the TARDIS. Rory comes too (I do think Moffat disliked Rory but that’s another topic). The Doctor is welcome to visit.

And when he does, he sees a slightly older Amy Pond, carrying a child that looks just like her, towards her grandmother in a wheelchair in the garden.

They let each other go. Unlike Rose and Ten who simply couldn’t let go because of the deep love they had for another.

The Doctor and Amy (or maybe it’s just Amy) have “grown up”. Amy has made a choice FOR HERSELF. After everything she’s seen, endured, all the trauma and suffering and grief - she creates her own happy ending.

It’s 8:00am right now - so who knows if this makes sense.