#The Woman Who fell to earth

[evviejo]

thirteen's era appreciation: 338/?

[thespianwordnerd]

"I watch the woman who fell to earth for the plot"

The plot:

[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.

[hey-there-22]

13th Doctor newly regenerated: why are you calling me madam?

Yaz panicking thinking she just misgendered someone: I'm sorry... sir?

13th Doctor not giving it too much thinking and continuing with her regeneration drama: :)

Later that day

13th Doctor looking for a new outfit in the TARDIS, finding out about her new body and going out of the TARDIS where Yaz is waiting: I need new clothes, I'm a woman now, you coming?

Yaz assuming the Doctor is gender fluid: yeah, cool.

And they continued to be mutually confused for an entire regeneration.

Yaz doesn't know when to use each pronoun so she just uses them randomly when speaking about the Doctor. The Doctor is so confused on why she does that at the begining but she doesn't care enough about her gender to correct Yaz. They never ask eachother about it. They just chill.

[idkaguyorsomething]

Even accounting for how erratic their behavior can be normally, the Doctor gets extra bonkers after regenerating. ¡¡Reblog and explain your pick in the tags!!

[thetorturedlovergirl]

Today in this holy day, the anniversary of “The Woman Who Fell To Earth”, we will celebrate by staring for 24 hours at 13 in 12’s clothes

[dimensionwho]

Hey lovely, folx. Can you believe it’s ONLY 10 sleeps to go until DOCTOR WHO DAY.

Who’s excited?

💙💙🎄

[ancientfrozenglaciershark]

oops i The Woman Who Fell to Earth-ed my pumpkin :)

[doctor-the-13th]

The Custard Cream Pedal was the TARDIS's way of apologising for throwing Thirteenth out mid-regeneration, having her crash through the roof of a train and shatter every bone in her body.

[foolishlyzephyrus]

the woman who fell to earth is a really solid episode, i don’t know what some of y’all are on about

[evviejo]

thirteen's era appreciation: 412/?

[sentientsky]

can u hear that? the sound of my little lesbian brain short-circuiting?

[tastetherainbow180]

Six years since the release of The Woman Who Fell To Earth. Wow time files.

[phyrexian-lesbian]

watched the woman who fell to earth right after twice upon a time last night and let me tell ya that was an experience.

First of all i did it so the Doctor would smoothly become one person in my perception (it worked). i do this with all doctors (another reason i hate bigeneration)

And i noticed something: 13 is so 12-coded. i could imagine capaldi saying all her lines, and vice versa.

also the Doctor saying “im so sick of losing people” and then watching yaz graham and ryan standing over graces body- you could see it in her eyes. the pain that they felt that she knew all too well.

[idkaguyorsomething]

2018 was one for the charts as far as doctor who shippers go. yaz was having her gay awakening over a goblin in a tuxedo the same year that jamie was having homoerotically charged scenes with two’s evil dictator twin.

(IMAGE ID: two screenshots taken from separate episodes of Doctor Who. The first is from The Woman Who Fell to the Earth, with Yaz staring at the Thirteenth Doctor with an expression of confusion. The second is from The Enemy of the World, with Jamie McCrimmon also staring at something in confusion. I don’t know what he’s staring at. Both of them look like they could use an “Am I Gay?” quiz.)

[ssaalexblake]

Doctor Who (2005) || The Woman Who Fell to Earth (11x01)