#The Girl Who Never Was

[crystalromana]

[Having lost one companion in Absolution, the Eighth Doctor was about to lose Charley Pollard, too. After an incredible journey of adventures, The Girl Who Never Was arrived. However, before deciding on the final story, Alan Barnes- who had introduced Charley in Storm Warning – had several plots in mine. He said: “There must have been five or six very different outlines for this one, as it changed an awful lot. Gary Russel had asked me to come up with a ‘writing out Charley’ story, which I was very happy to do.”

The original version featured the third Pollard sister, Peg, who had become a Secret Operations Executive spy but had gone missing in occupied France, so Charley took her place. It would have been set largely at the Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris and been purely historical. But Alan was never happy with it. A later version relocated the story to Singapore in 1942, and featured a character called Alex Grayle- related to Sebastian Grayle, from Seasons of Fear.

Alan said; “There’d been some talk of doing a Charley spin-off series, hence the Alex Grayle character- I thought we could do a wartime Avengers with Charley as a sort of Emma Peel, so they were going to go off together at the end.”

That ended up having a Philadelphia Experiment feel to it, in which the main villain of the story was a parallel universe Eighth Doctor whose own Charley had died- and he’d come to Singapore looking for a replacement. But then The Age of Steel came along, which had a very similar ending- companion Mickey going off to fight Cybermen in a parallel universe- so Cardiff didn’t really want Big Finish doing ‘parallel universe’ stories for a time.]

-The Big Finish Companion Volume II page 19

[do-you-know-this-dw-story]

the girl who never was (audio: 2007)

[drwhowatch]

The Girl Who Never Was

I didn’t follow the multiple timelines exactly and the character crossovers between them but on the whole (may have been the dialogue) I did enjoy this a fair bit. Cybermen are relatively minor villains, they are there slightly but it’s more about the situation and the other characters. Charley leaves the Doctor after all this time which is a shame but I know we’re back with her and Colin shortly! Her leaving was more of a tiff than anything but I guess there was a tad of emotional weight. The Doctor seems a bit out sorts not hanging out with his friend (or should-be lover) and won’t see much from Paul here on out even more unfortunately.

[mariocki]

Man in a Suitcase: The Girl Who Never Was (1.9, ITC, 1967)

"Well, my fee's usually three hundred a week, plus expenses, but... you I'll charge double."

[thedoctorwhocompanion]

What Are the TARDIS' HADS in Doctor Who?

What Are the TARDIS' HADS in #DoctorWho?

Last mentioned in the Wild Blue Yonder when the TARDIS needs to recover from having coffee spilt into its systems, the Doctor talks about the HADS — a defence mechanism that engages when the TARDIS is under attack and moves itself and or its occupants to somewhere safe. But what exactly are the HADS and when did the Doctor first mention them? The HADS, which stands primarily for the Hostile…

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[roppiepop]

Typical role dustribution

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

main take aways from Halloween (1978) rewatch:

michael myers is canonically 21??? this bitch should be at the club

*sees tiddies* ***MURDEROUS RAMPAGE NOISES***

that's it that's the movie

outside of the fact that everyone who has sex is murdered by the narrative, this is a surprisingly chill portrayal of female sexuality? these teen girls are horny and actively enjoying Getting It On with their boytoys. no pushy boyfriends sneaking in through their bedroom windows--these ladies are taking the initiative to sneak out and GET SOME. one of them gets laid and then immediately orders her boyfriend to get her a beer. (yes she gets Slashered soon afterward, but so does the boyfriend so honestly, gender equality.) yes the Final Girl is the only one not having sex, but she's not bullied for that, nor are her friends slut shamed except possibly by being murdered by the narrative

actually the only character who is shown being morally condemned on-screen is michael myers. specifically FOR his violent overreaction to other people's sex lives. (people he is spying on). metaphorically, the villain is American Puritanism sticking its judgy nose into other people's business.

aka Michael Myers Is A Republican

but actually the real villain is the doctor. guy's a judgemental, shaming, pathologizing asshole. and he's been in charge of michael's care since he was SIX YEARS OLD? kid never had a chance. i'd go on a killing spree too

also the parents. where are the parents? it's halloween night and all the teenage girls are home babysitting their younger siblings? come to think of it, michael's first victim was his own older sister, whom he killed while she was babysitting him. teen girls are really shouldering a labour burden here. maybe parentification is the true villain

side note: mike commits his first murder wearing a clown costume...which is never referenced again? his 'iconic' costume is a generic mask and wig and jumpsuit, when we coulda had a Killer Clown Michael Myers??? travesty

i like how the Final Girl and her friend casually smoke weed in her car. yeah she's an honor student and her friend is the sheriff's daughter. yeah they smoke weed. so what it's 1978

(to reiterate, mike is 21 and should be at the club. im not saying he shouldn't be rampaging, im saying it's sad that he broke out, tasted freedom for the first time in his life, and immediately snuck back into his childhood home to go rampaging. let's have a remake where he goes to a nightclub and has a few beers. maybe some slutty dancing. then rampage)

oh no he's hot

[cymk8]

her hair so CRISPY

(commission!)

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny's type in FNAF is so obvious...

[crystalromana]

OK so I saw Titanic in the theater earlier this month and it had ignited so many Charley thoughts in me. That movie would mess her up so bad, she would be a bawling mess by the end.

There's also gets progressively more and more painful and resonant with her as time goes on or depending when she watches it. Pre-neverland, after the Divergent arc or after The Girl Who Never Was.

I can see her coming across the two tape VHS set in the TARDIS library (the Doctor is a VHS guy and Becky Lee taught Charley about VHS players) and being curious about it since she does define herself by being born on the day it sank.

It's a romance, adventure, and tragedy all in one. She would eat that up! Plus we have

+ "If you jump I jump" Charley following eight into exile

+ The upperclass girl feeling trapped and running away with an "unsuitable" man

+ This gifset

+ "...he saved me in every way that a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now only in my memory" <- Charley about Eight post-Girl Who Never Was and Blue Forgotten Planet. Also specifically in the end of The Viyran Solution.

[empressofthewind]

what's funny to me about Death Note is how casually the authors will drop the most insane lore you've ever heard and then just move on as if it never happened. like here's a girl whose parents were killed in front of her and who also would have been murdered by a crazed fan if he hadn't mysteriously dropped dead before her eyes. yes we WILL proceed to call her stupid and annoying for the rest of the series and never address how this affected her. btw did we ever mention that L is an orphan who has been working as a detective since he was 10? and that the orphanage where he grew up is now dedicated to raising child prodigies on the principle that their entire existence is worthless if they can't live up to L's standard? no? well he's dead now so here are his successors. yeah one of them joined the mafia at 17 and commits violent crimes because he believes it's the only way to prove that he's worth anything. yeah the other one had to take on the only case L couldn't solve entirely from scratch at age 13 with no prior detective experience. no the implications of this won't be addressed. also one of the new anti-Kira investigators has a vendetta against Kira because someone close to her was killed by him. will that ever be explored in canon, you ask? well you're not going to believe this-

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[demigods-posts]

i'm one hundred percent certain that after percy and annabeth made out underwater. and he wanted to make their relationship official. the question was not "will you be my girlfriend?" but "can i be your boyfriend?" i don't care what the canon says. percy gave annabeth the space to take the lead in the relationship. because after a lifetime of being abandoned by everyone she dared to care for. and then watching her on the brink of a panic attack at the thought of losing him the last four years. he wanted to honor a new beginning between them by follow her lead and moving at her pace.