#amy and rory i will never forget you

[oceanwithinsblog]

someone liked this post so it is my duty to give you all an update on my doctor who first watch speedrun.

i'm slowly reaching the end of s7, i'm watching episode 11 as i'm writing and might i add this season is nothing like what i had imagined :) :) :) both in a positive and negative way

still, i've got a couple more episodes to catch up on so my final verdict is currently pending.

only one certainty remains: i freaking love eleven and the ponds may be my favorite companions so far (<3)

yoOO guys i'm about to start s7 and I'M SOOOOO HYPED !!!!!!!!

[seaweedstarshine]

Thinking about the convolution of Eleventh Doctor's expressions of love for River Song in Season 7B. He does not trust Clara. He is utterly (wrongly) convinced that he and Clara are playing a grand manipulative game together. “What are you, eh?! A trick? A trap?!!”

So naturally, the last thing he should do in this game is to clue his opponent in on something that could be used to hurt him. Something like River, so painfully near the end of their time together, whose data ghost he can always see, who “it would hurt too much” to acknowledge. He can't let Clara know of the loss which constantly floods his senses; (“You are always here to me. And I always listen, and I can always see you,” he professes, once Clara has vanished into his timestream).

And yet. River fills his every moment (irregardless of any sneaking out for dates with increasingly-young Rivers while Clara is asleep like he did while the Ponds slept, which would explain his absence when the TARDIS is hiding Clara's bedroom). Even though it's not strategic, he can’t help but tell Clara about her. The best defense he can manage is to phrase it as if River isn’t as important to him as she is. Not only is avoiding her first name in his grief; he's also completely avoiding pronouns; which seems extreme given that he's still mentioning her as often as: “Oh yeah, of course he has! Professor Song! Sorry, it's just I never realized you were a woman.”

Leave out the emotion — leave out the details — don't show the cracks in the armor — play the part — win the game.

“Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. JUST TELL ME WHO YOU ARE.”

[killjoygem]

Currently obsessed with both Speak Now (TS album) and Doctor Who, which means every Speak Now song is a dr who song now

[besidesitstoowarm]

so i'll talk about this more tomorrow when i put up my "amy's choice" write up but i am thinkingggg about moffat's characterization vs davies

like with rory and mickey. rory is obviously the mickey, the back-home boyfriend getting ditched in favor of the doctor. but the thing with mickey is like... he's a good reason to leave, not to stay. he's kind of a loser, implied in the first episode to be cheating (telling rose not to check his email) before she even meets the doctor! he's the tin dog, mickey the idiot. he represents everything rose is tired of. she straight up never seems to care about him ever, and the doctor openly mocks him, and even the narrative doesn't seem interested in giving him interiority or sympathy

vs rory. rory is a legitimately good option: good career, kind, gentle, intelligent, handsome (mickey was also handsome, to be fair). he's the antithesis of the doctor, but he's not presented as the worse option, just very different. he has the doctor dead. to. rights. immediately! "you make people a danger to themselves" and that will carry on, past "you forget that not every victory is about saving the world" he's like the Reasonable One

the potential danger of traveling with the doctor is treated as an inevitable minor footnote in the davies era, i feel like. it's always there but it's rarely Real. rose was so borderline suicidal i'm amazed she only got trapped in another dimension, martha dipped cause his ass was pathetic, donna was literally railroaded and never had a real choice. but amy? amy feels like she's in real danger of losing rory, she does lose her daughter, she DIES in the end. and clara dies. and bill– like the consequences are real. they make their choice, and their choice makes them. obviously all of them are in danger in any given episode but it feels like the moffat companions really play that out to the inevitable conclusion

and i feel like his companions have faults and traits that actually... matter? like with davies companions we do learn a lot about their lives in terms of jobs and skills and family, but less about deep character flaws, about ethos. i do love them but halfway through s5, the obvious impact on the story that amy's abandonment issues have feels genuinely unmatched by earlier companions. she's savage! she's nasty! she is given a trolley problem and chooses murder suicide bc either her life is a lie or her husband is dead and life isn't worth living. it's deranged. in the davies era it felt like i was piecing together characters and arcs on my own, picking up my own observations, it feels far more passive than it does with amy so far. amy is deliberate, her character arc and growth is very active. clara and the doctor get so codependent she tries to kill him and then dies horrifically. like it's insane

none of this is meant to shit on the davies era. i enjoyed it a lot and love all his companions (except adam but he doesn't count) and obviously the moffat era couldn't have been what it was without davies preceding, but i'm really remembering why moffat's era is my fave. it feels so intentional, so rich, it is exactly what i personally want out of a story. i love s5 so much

[doverstar]

A paltry 3 people have asked me to expand on my opinion that Clara (who I like) is bad for the Doctor, so here I go below.

Strap in, this will be long. I disliked Clara back when her tenure was happening live, but upon rewatching the show now, with my husband, I completely changed my mind and grew to really appreciate her and cried when she died. I like Clara. But I came to this conclusion you’re about to read during that rewatch. In a nutshell, Clara and the Doctor’s relationship is unhealthy. Stop wait let me explain-

*hands you the nutshell* First. The show itself acknowledges that this Doctor/companion relationship is something unprecedented and ugly and bad for both of them towards the end. Why? Is it Clara? YES AND NO children. Clara as a companion, personality-wise, is not any different or special than many Classic Who companions, and Jenna Coleman is ridiculously likeable as Clara. I know Clara is The Impossible Girl (because Moffat can’t write 100% ordinary people), and I know she has met all of the Doctors up to Twelve at least once, but take away her decision to throw herself into his timeline – take away the fact that the Master literally orchestrated events so that Clara and the Doctor would travel together because their personalities would create something dangerous and unhealthy in the end – and Clara herself really is just a twenty-something who wants to travel and acts like she’s the coolest person in the room. So Clara herself on the surface wasn’t the catalyst for the relationship becoming unhealthy. At least not the way she was written in the beginning. At first, it’s the Doctor making big Red Flag decisions. And I say that with so much love towards Matt Smith’s Doctor, who is dearly missed in these trying times. The Doctor meets the first version of Clara (from his perspective) as a barmaid/nanny in 20th century London. She’s exceptional (and unnecessarily flirty because Moffat can’t write women who don’t lust after the protagonist) and the Doctor invites her to travel with him. This is huge because the Doctor has just spent who-knows-how-long mourning the Ponds, who he was not ready to lose and who he had grown increasingly afraid of losing before he lost them. He sits on a cloud and has sworn off of travelling or helping anyone because he is that sick of losing people. He’s hurting and he doesn’t want to go through something like that again. The Ponds were just the latest in a very long line of lost people—remember, directly before Amy and Rory, the Doctor had to say goodbye to Donna, Martha, Wilf, Mickey, Jackie, Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith oh my goodness, and Rose Tyler. And then he loses the Ponds. It’s agony. And it just keeps happening to him over and over again, and the Eleventh Doctor is especially vulnerable because he’s so tender-hearted and raw from Tennant’s losses, and this is the first time he’s lost companions with this face. The Eleventh Doctor is literally described by Moffat as the incarnation of the Doctor who chooses to forget. He’s consistently not addressing things like Gallifrey, the Time War, Rose, Donna, Martha, etc. When he’s reminded of them, the only thing he really reacts with is a strained admission of guilt (Let’s Kill Hitler and The Doctor’s Wife, anyone?). Eleven does not focus on what he has lost and worked really, really, selfishly-at-times hard to preserve the safety of the Ponds in particular. And then he loses them and throws a Doctor pity party on a cloud in a top hat.

Enter Nanny Clara, and she reminds him of what he’s missing and how things should be and helps him get his mojo back. Great, good. But she also reminds him of this one chick in the Dalek Asylum who begged the Doctor for help and was already dead. And the Doctor not only loves a mystery, but hates losing (losing people in particular). So he invites this Clara to come away with him and begin his never-ending adventure all over again, because she seems perfect for the job. And then she dies. Just like Oswin the crazy Dalek. Just like Amy and Rory, and the DoctorDonna, and Rose Tyler on the list of fatalities during the incident at Canary Wharf. Like Adric. But the Doctor doesn’t give up and pout in the 20th century this time. Instead, he gets determined to figure out what is connecting Nanny Clara and Dalek Clara, and determined to find a version of this mystery girl who can travel with him and not die this time. Third time’s the charm.

He finds Clara Oswald in the present, saves her life, freaks her out with his desperation to befriend her, and then she finally comes away with him. It’s played incredibly sweet specifically because it’s the Doctor trying to entice a companion and working for it, because he’s already seen she’s the one—twice—and is determined to keep her. This is an inversion of what usually happens, which is that the companion has to prove themselves worthy of the position to the Doctor during a meet-cute adventure. Classy. Fun. But we see from that point forward that the Doctor is kind of…weirdly obsessed with Clara. And not just because she’s appeared as three different-but-the-same people in his life lately, but because he’s the man who forgets and he lost people and never deals with that, and now he has this girl who he’s been unable to save twice before and he wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again. What’s worse, Clara becomes “the ultimate companion”, saving the Doctor throughout all his lifetimes by jumping into his timeline so she’s technically companion to all of him at one point. This is bad because not only is it not fair (as the gamers call it, it’s OP, yes I’m hip with the kids) it solidifies to the Doctor that she is the culmination of all his past failures in companion tenures.

She’s not the ultimate companion; she’s the ultimate do-over.

He’s obsessed with keeping Clara safe. He’s obsessed with keeping her with him. It’s not because Clara is this gorgeous, super-special, Not Like Other Girl(s). It’s not because he’s madly in love with her (though Moffat wants repeatedly to be able to imply that without properly saying it because he can’t write a female who is not in lust with the protagonist, hey let go of my soapbox I’m using that-). It’s not even because he lost two Claras previously and he feels really bad about that. It's because he’s projecting every single failure to keep a companion onto this one girl. The Doctor is trying so hard not to be controlled by the circumstances around him. He is trying so hard to keep this one, just this one, with him this time that he kind of turns into a withdrawal maniac when she’s in danger or choosing to do anything other than travel with him. The Master (Missy) orchestrated events so that Clara and the Doctor would be able to travel together because it was obvious the two of them would destroy each other in the end. The Doctor was such a person (Eleven) at such a time in his long life that could not stand the idea of losing one more friend and would do anything to keep history from repeating itself. He has to have Clara. He can’t quit Clara. She’s all of them. She’s everyone. And poor Clara—Clara is great, but being with the Doctor brings out only the worst in her. The woman is obsessed with herself. She was better off before he came around! Keeping pace with the Doctor, traveling the universe with him, feeling like she had something with him no one else could touch—all of that inflated her sense of importance; she has to be special. She has to be in control. She’s bossy and confident and as long as the Doctor is around, she’s the most incredible human being in her species and he is lucky to have her. That’s how he makes her feel—because it’s obvious he can’t let her go. (“Traveling with you made me feel really special.”) And worse, Clara can’t let him go—but not even specifically the Doctor. The Doctor, to Clara, is only as valuable as he makes her feel. It’s very sad because the two of them are kind of convinced they’re best friends and that’s why they’re together, but that’s not it. They’re not best friends. They’re toxic.

(Best friends do not trick other best friends, lie to them, threaten their way of life and only home to get their boyfriends back and then say “I’m sorry but I’d do it again”. Best friends do not notice that their best friend is there for them in spite of that line of action and then still disregard their best friend’s safety and needs in order to get what they themselves want above all else. Death in Heaven, I hate you.) And! Clara was so rattled by Eleven changing into Twelve. The sweet young man who flirted with her and made her feel so romantically important was gone, now there’s this grisly old fella who is rude to her and makes disparaging personal remarks about her physical appearance, and who doesn’t like hugs. But they’re not done. Because now the relationship has changed even further—we went from “he likes me and he should because I am Important” and “she’s staying with me and she should because I am gonna keep her safe and it won’t be like last time(s) and that’s why she’s special, that’s why she’s Impossible” to “I’m with him because he needs me and because I am Important like he is” and “she’s staying with me and she should because I am gonna keep her safe and she’s still special and she’s still Impossible and I can’t lose her no matter what”.

Clara is controlling and the Doctor is controlling. Missy would have you believe the Doctor won’t be controlled, but that’s just another form of control. The Doctor can’t stop travelling with Clara. Twelve will not let her rest, Twelve will not let her die. Clara will not stay home, Clara will not put anyone or anything else before herself, before traveling and saving the day and feeling special. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where the Doctor treats Clara with such reverence, she actually believes she’s 100% his equal and should be him. That was not a typo. I did not say she should be like him. I said she thinks she should be him. It gets worse and worse as time goes on. Clara thinks she can be the Doctor. She can travel anywhere, she can do whatever she wants, and she will always win. Because she’s important. Because she’s special. She doesn’t realize that she can’t, and that that’s not who the Doctor is anyway. And the Doctor watches Clara get eaten up by this addiction to travel, addiction to heroics. Clara loses Danny and that’s her last tether to normal life. It’s sad because Danny was twice the man anybody expected him to be and he was almost there, almost good enough for Clara to stay and be safe with. But the Doctor and time and space are a tough act to follow, and when Danny died, Clara felt she was owed better. She wasn’t angry because Danny was young and she loved him and she wanted better for him. She was angry because as a time traveling hero, she deserved to have her boyfriend alive and not hit by an ordinary car in the middle of an ordinary day on Earth. (But she wouldn’t have stayed with him anyway, and she wasted so much time with him treating him like he wasn’t special enough and then it was too late. If the Doctor had not been part of the equation, treating her like she hung the stars and making her believe it, they could have been happy. She could have been okay.)

More adventures, more close calls. At this point everything likeable about Clara in the past has faded away because she is just not the same person anymore. She’s ruined. And it’s her fault, and it’s the Doctor’s fault. Clara isn’t addicted to travel or heroics. Now she’s addicted to feeling important. She’s addicted to being special. And she needs to feel that so badly that she decides she is the Doctor and can do what he does and ignores the danger and ignores the rules and the risks and what it might do to the Doctor to lose her, and she faces the stupid raven. This girl legit dies a painful, scary death because she thought she could do whatever she wanted, control every situation, and it couldn’t possibly turn out badly because she’s Clara Oswald, the Impossible Girl. Did the Doctor ever give her any idea that that wasn’t true? Didn’t he worship the ground she marched on? She dies for it. And the Doctor, bless his poisoned hearts, cannot handle it. No way, it is not happening again. Not Clara! He’s avoided her death every other time. It’s not even about Clara anymore—Clara is actually a pretty rotten friend to the Doctor at this point; he’s nothing to her, not really, just a means to an end (and you can tell because when push comes to shove, she will choose herself and time and space over him, and over any sense at all, but if anyone asks, that’s her best friend and do you know why? because it’s very special to be the Doctor’s best friend). It’s not about her, it’s about them. About Adric, and River, and Rose, and Donna, and Tegan and Susan and Ace and Vicki. It’s about Ian and Barbara and Wilfred Mott. Not this time, universe! Not this time, Clara! "I have a duty of care." "Which you take very seriously, I know." Twelve goes through the most contrived, horrendous, comically-lengthened torture Moffat can think of (Heaven Sent) and comes out on the other side only to bring Clara back from the dead. Think of that. The woman is actually very long dead at this point and the Doctor braves literal Gallifrey to pull her out of the moment before the end. He breaks every single rule he has ever, ever had. And he does it violently, are you telling me for real that Clara is the best companion for him? She drives him to do right, to be the greatest he can be? She helps, she brings him back to who he’s always tried to be? No she doesn’t. She drives him to total depraved madman status because they can’t quit each other, and no, not the cutesy quippy Madman With A Box type of madman.

What makes Clara so different from all the other people the Doctor had to lose and who remained lost? Nothing at all. Nothing except that the Doctor decided this one isn’t going anywhere. Because she is every companion to him. This poor woman has a sack full of the Doctor’s past-companion baggage tied to her back but to her it feels light, because he treats it outwardly like a pedestal. So he “brings her back” and she figures out what he’s done and what he went through to do it, and they both learn that their relationship is actually so toxic that together, they would destroy the universe just to have what they want. Because that’s what they bring out in each other. The Doctor has to keep Clara safe, and Clara has to be special. They’re so unhealthy it affects everything around them, to the point where the Time Lords literally have a name for their destructive dynamic in their prophecies called the Hybrid (go lie down, Moffat). And the Master knew that because Time Lord…stuff…and deliberately ensured that Clara and the Doctor get together.

Luckily the Doctor is still, somewhere, miraculously, himself—so he recognizes at last that this is going too far and it’s bad, it’s all bad. The only solution, because he still can’t just return Clara to her fate, is to wipe her memory (hello Donna) of him so that they aren’t together but she also doesn’t have to die. So that he still doesn’t have to deal with losing people. And then the very worst part, writing-wise, happens. Clara complains and decides she must be allowed her memories, she’s entitled to them (too special to lose her memories!) but goodie for her, she doesn’t lose them. The Doctor, instead, loses his memories of her. Now, this is ultimately a good thing for him because of the horse I beat to death over there, don’t make eye contact, but—how sad is it that he still has to lose? That he still can’t keep someone, even after all that carnage? The healing process is beginning and he’ll be a better man than ever after this, but take a moment to mourn because that really sucks for him.

Okay here’s the worst part—Clara lives. And not only does Clara live, Clara lives forever. Clara is immortal. Clara gets her own Tardis. Clara gets her own immortal companion! (Ashildr.) Who learned something? Anyone? Not Clara! Who grew as a person around here? No one? Not Clara! Poor Clara Oswald, who started out nicely enough and likeable enough, at least on level with Classic Who companions, is ruined in the end. She gets exactly what she wants. She’s the Ultimate Companion! She’s met all the Doctors. He even fancied her at one point, well, how could he not? She didn’t die, she didn’t learn anything, she didn’t even really grow, she just got worse. Danny died and the Doctor lost, but Clara got to keep her memories, lose her mortality, and gain her own infinite time travelling machine. She became the Doctor. Yippee. Neither of them were made better by the other’s company. Rose Tyler said more than once, at least in three different ways, that the Doctor’s influence, that the opportunity to travel in time and space and help, brings out the extraordinary qualities ordinary people already have. He taps into their potential to be better, even better than him sometimes. The human factor, I call it. And they inspire him to be better, which is important for someone who is essentially immortal and can essentially go anywhere and do anything he likes. Wilfred said it, too, that Donna was better with the Doctor. But the codependency, the noxious way the Doctor and Clara interacted with each other—their whole relationship—it’s devoid of that improving quality. It wasn’t at first, at least not on Clara’s side, but that’s what it turned out to be. At least Moffat acknowledges that in Hell Bent, but he does it more in a way that is trying to communicate to you that that’s how deep and special the Doctor and Clara’s relationship is, isn’t it so important, isn’t it the best companion/Doctor relationship ever? Isn’t she hot, isn’t he whipped? Have you ever seen such devotion? Gag me. He doesn’t say it like it’s a bad thing. He’s just trying to win the 60-year-long companion race. And Clara and the Doctor both suffer for it.

I still like Clara. I blame the writing entirely for how things turned out, because I genuinely, really enjoyed her this last rewatch, and I wish that she’d met a better end. I wish she’d stayed with Danny and figured out what Danny was trying to tell her all along—that normal life is precious and worth it, and worth giving up the big sparkly universe for if you find someone else to live for besides yourself. I wish she’d sacrificed herself to save the Doctor in the present, not just throughout his past, because she proved that at one point she was capable of that. I wish she’d come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t control everything, couldn’t have what she wanted every time, and then chose to learn from that and use what she could control for the benefit of others (including the Doctor). I wish she’d gotten out the way Martha had gotten out. And I really, really wish the Doctor hadn’t had to prolong the pain he was always going to feel when someone else had to say goodbye. Anyway, that’s the essay a trifling three lovely people asked me for. Not really an essay, just word vomit. If you read it all, please let me know what you think! I could be wrong.

[butchtwelfthdoctor]

thinking a lot about time horror and how it relates to doctor who recently. like idk if 'time horror' is a thing as such but you know what i mean right. starts off small. rose discovers she missed a whole year of her life & had no idea. martha lives through the year that never was, and then it never was. she's a whole year older and has lived through so much, so did her family, lucy saxon and jack, and no one will ever know. donna thinks she has years of married life with lee only to discover that that time wasn't real either. in one of teh audios ten spends 7000 years trapped inside his own head in a time dilation that only took ten minutes for everyone else.

amy and rory get it constantly - rory dying in angels take manhattan in that apartment building, in the broken tardis hallways when amy thinks rory spent his whole life waiting for her. amy waiting 36 years for the doctor in that parallel timestream. the girl who waits - the inherent tragedy of waiting for a time traveller. rory spending 2000 years as a plastic centaurion. he can only half remember it but it was very real while he was living it. the pandorica. eleven spending 200 years avoiding his own death. river knowing that every time she sees the doctor he may know her less and less.

clara lives and dies thousands of times. she sees the doctor live and age nine hundred years and then regenerate over the course of one evening. she is ripped from death to discover the doctor spent four and half billion years, an incomprehensibly long time, trapped in a loop in order to get her back, and he doesn't remember that but it happened. ashildr lives so long she forgets who ashildr is. bill waits ten years for the doctor to come back, watches him spend weeks raising his eyebrow, only for him to miss her by two hours. yaz waits ten months for the doctor not knowing where she is, and jack spends nineteen years trying to get into a jail cell beside her to break her out. jack harkness lives for billions of years too. he is changed in every way possible and becomes somewhat of a lonely god himself. he gets stranded in the past and has no choice but to keep living it, hoping he'll see the doctor again

we see sarah jane, mel, ace, teagen, who spent decades thinking they would never see teh doctor again - thinking they were abandoned, or in sarah janes case, that they never even got to say goodbye. by the time the doctor sees donna again, its been around a thousand years for him. fifteen years where she didn't remember and a thousand years where he very much did.

[noforkingclue]

Remembering (11th Doctor x reader)

Summary: sometimes remembering is the most painful thing to do

Warnings: mentions of genocide

“I-”

The Doctor held up a hand. The hand that was still holding that damned fob watch. That simple watch that started this whole thing off. The Doctor had been so excited to see it. To think that there was another of his species out there.

And now look where it had got you.

“I didn’t know,” you said, “Doctor please-”

“All this time I thought I was alone, that it was now just me out there.”

You flinched at the tone of the Doctor’s voice. Amy and Rory stood awkwardly off to the side, not entirely sure how to react.

“So let me guess this straight,” said Rory, “that… watch made y/n a time lord.”

“Yes and no,” you said, “it’s part of the chameleon arch. It… rewrote my DNA. Made me human.”

“So you were never a human.” said Amy

“It rewrote my DNA. I was but now I’m-”

“Why.”

The three of you looked over at the Doctor.

“Why did you do it?”

“The War.”

The three of you flinched as the Doctor slammed the watch against the TARDIS console. He gripped the side of it and you continued,

“I had enough of it. All the killing so I ran.”

“You ran.” the Doctor said coldly

“Yes.”

“From everything.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I told you,” you snapped, “I was sick of everything. After what you did-”

The Doctor finally turned around and marched over to you.

“What I did?” he said coldly, “I did what I had to. To stop the bloodshed.”

“By committing genocide.”

“And how many more people would’ve died if I hadn’t done it.”

“There it is! Do you regret what you did! Do you care about destroying our home?”

A thick silence fell over the two of you. You were breathing heavily, angry tears threatening to spill over. A pained look crossed the Doctor’s face and for a second you wondered if you had gone too far.

“I know you were hoping for anyone else,” you said quietly, “or, more accurately, weren’t expecting it to be me.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, clearly unamused.

“But surely you can see why I did it? I wanted to forget.”

“And you don’t think I didn’t?”

You winced at the harshness of the Doctor’s voice. The previous excitement (and slight nervousness) was gone from his voice. He walked over to you and handed you the fob watch. He put it in your hand and closed your hand around it.

“Feel free to run away again,” he said, “if it gets too much for you again.”

He walked off into the TARDIS. You tried to walk after him but Rory stopped you.

“Give him time,” he said, “he’ll come around.”

“I doubt it,” you said, “I seriously doubt it.”

[expectiations]

Idk bout you all but between the Doctor and River, River cannot cook to save her life. She's just chaos in the kitchen. She was raised to be a weapon. Weapons don't cook. And during her uni years, there's the school canteen but she doesn't think it's cool enough. OH WAIT–considering she's such a huge nerd, she's probably one of those who are so caught up in reading/studying that they forget to eat and drink.

The elder Ponds stage an intervention (the Doctor took them to Luna after being thoroughly threatened by Amelia). Amy remembers how Mels would be picky with her food but ate anything offered to her by Rory and Brian. And true enough when they get to the library where River has been cooped up in, River hasn't eaten nor drunk water for a good while now. When asked about it, she complains that the canteen never gets the dishes right (Luna's canteen has one of the best chefs in that era. River just said that because it wasn't cooked by Rory or Brian).

They make sure she constantly has a steady supply of her favorite dishes afterwards with the Doctor in charge of ensuring it never runs out. Which he does with all seriousness, never once missing. He'd definitely deny that the gleaming sword on display in the elder Ponds' living room helped. A LOT. He even enlisted the TARDIS' help by setting reminders.

He missed a couple of times (he's the Doctor after all) but another version of him would swoop in to save his ass. River notices of course and calls him out on it. He pleads mercy. She makes him pay by dragging him to help her study firsthand. And by firsthand, she meant him taking her to the actual events. He learns early on not to grouse about archeology in front of her that young because she goes 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 and then refuses to talk to him afterwards.

River:

The Doctor also upgrades the elder Ponds' phones so they can call River despite having literal millennia between them.

Older versions of River learned a few dishes but the Doctor is so used to being the one who cooks her meals that he sulked and had a tantrum when she refused to let him cook. (Years later on Darillium, the Doctor would bring it up. River: THAT WAS JUST ONCE. ARE YOU NEVER LETTING THAT GO? GIVE A GIRL A BREAK 🙄)

But then it would be fun for River to have something she can never be good at. Like she aces everything else EXCEPT for that one thing. And I vote for cooking. It's just funny to me that she's this ultracool being–the daughter of the Last Centurion and the Girl Who Waited, the Child of Death and Time–but simply cannot cook to save her life.

She's just spoiled bbgirl. Give her a break.

[aq2003]

the beautiful version of the 11th doctor that exists in my head. he has no romance subplots and this actually makes the "he keeps meeting his companions as children and this ties into his imaginary childhood friend vibe w/ amy/how he adopted a childish silly outlook on life to cope with his insurmountable loss after being the 10th doctor" theme hit, and also gallifrey actually still exploded so his arc about how forgetting is not the same as acceptance and how after hundreds of years he's able to really grow up and face what he'd been running from, has some real actual bite to it. like bc series 7 plants some really great seeds of him having to leave behind his "if-i-shut-my-eyes-it-never-happened" mindset and really truly confront everything, w/ a town called mercy being about how the doctor's timewar guilt is still very much there, how he tries so so hard to deny amy and rory's inevitable deaths in angels take manhattan, how he thinks of clara as a ghost/mystery and not a person in s7b (bc if she was a person that would mean having someone to lose again). you also don't need to retcon the doctor not destroying gallifrey to begin with bc there's a million other ways you could somehow bring it back for future stories without changing all the "the doctor has to live with the guilt of their decision" stuff to "the doctor is sad about how they THINK gallifrey is gone but actually it isn't lol :) they saved them all actually :)" and taking away a lot of the impact re: eleven facing who he truly is. just generally eleven my sweet tortured son i wish your head writer was not doing all of that to you. free my boy fr

[canyousonicme]

Doctor Who's Alex Kingston on hiding River Song's biggest spoiler

"I'm very good at keeping secrets."

"She's not a companion, she's a wife!" Alex Kingston is quick to correct about her beloved Doctor Who character River Song.

And she's completely right. River Song is unlike any other Doctor Who character, first introduced in 2008's Silence in the Library and spanning multiple eras in one of the most complex and glorious timelines to ever grace the show.

"She's the most incredible character to play, and certainly when the role was offered to me, I had obviously no idea of the journey that both she and I would be undertaking - because obviously in the very first Silence in the Library story, she dies," Kingston exclusively tells RadioTimes.com.

"So, I just thought it was a two-episode job. Little did I know! I also didn't really know the personalities of Russell [T Davies] or Steven Moffat, and if I had, maybe I would have had an inkling that there must be more than this."

River's had countless adventures since she was first introduced more than a decade ago - she's appeared on-screen with three different incarnations of the Doctor and, in her work with Big Finish, Kingston has collaborated with every single living actor to have played the Time Lord.

But there's one particular scene that many fans will never forget. In the emotional season 6 episode A Good Man Goes to War, River reveals to Karen Gillan's Amy and Arthur Darvill's Rory that she's their daughter, Melody, providing a plot twist for the ages.

In an incredibly apt turn of events, showrunner Moffat told Kingston about the reveal a good six weeks before everyone else, with the actress having to keep the explosive secret to herself because... well, spoilers.

"On this particular occasion, I was asked whether I'd be available, and Steven also contacted me and basically gave me the rundown of the storyline ahead of anybody else knowing," she recalls.

"He didn't want [the other actors] to know, because I think he didn't want their performances in any way to be altered with that knowledge - and also, in a funny sort of way, in the episodes that we had filmed prior, I didn't know either.

"The performances that you get from all of the actors are incredibly true, because there is no knowledge about who you really are or what you're going to reveal.

"I quite liked that, because you literally play - and, in fact, one always has to do this with Steven because he has so many threads that he's just tossed out to drift on the wind, until he decides to pull that thread back in and tie it up with something else. So you just have to literally play the moment all the time and not think about anything else.

"So, when Steven did give me this insight, I had a very big secret that I had to keep. The other actors, Karen, Arthur and Matt, they knew that I had a secret and I just wasn't going to tell them.

"There were bribes and all sorts of things... but I wasn't going to give the secret away. Even on the filming day, the script didn't have the reveal in it.

"Steven didn't put it in the script because he didn't want any of the crew to know and he didn't want that storyline and that secret to somehow get out before the audience actually saw it for the first time on television.

[radio-ghost-cooks]

a dw headcanon

first of all, we're ignoring the timeline because i want these two to be happy. second, headcanon that Time Lords have extremely extravagant New Year's parties/festivities

when time is in the palm of your hand, it's easy to forget the passing of it. to forget that Gallifrey isn't free from the bonds of the clock. so, they set everything aside for one night to revel in the sound of time marching on.

since the fall of Gallifrey, the last person to hold such parties is the Doctor.

the Doctor rounds up everyone he can find. Jack, Martha, Donna, Rose, Mickey, Amy, Rory; they all cram themselves into the Tardis to celebrate together. there's cake and wine and champagne (and ginger) and treats from around the universe and dancing and music and everyone just enjoys each other's company. the Tardis decorates herself accordingly, dripping in gold and silver in every single room. no saving the universe, no attacks, no mysteries, just the Doctor and those he holds dear.

and sometimes, if he's lucky, the Master will attend.

Martha isn't too fond of it. but she doesn't really need to worry, because it isn't fond of large parties anyway, and it doesn't even like the Doctor, and it just slinks off to some distant corner of the Tardis. but the Doctor never leaves it out.

once everyone's either gone home or passed out in one of the bedrooms, the Doctor will gather up a couple glasses and a bottle of whatever liquor strikes his fancy, a plateful of food, and a handful of ginger candies, and quietly make his way to the farthest room the Tardis where the Master awaits.

it's almost always made itself a nest of the softest things in the room and curled up in it, purring so softly you have to strain to hear it. the Doctor flops down into the pile next to him, and they split the bottle as the Master eats his fill. they're always together as one year shifts into the next, no matter what. it means everything to the both of them (even if the Master won't admit it).

[quizmasterfred]

13 in 'The God Complex'

I saw a Reddit post a while ago asking 'what episode would you like to see a different Doctor tackle', and now it's been ages but i had some thoughts, and can't stop thinking about it, and just desperately need to write them down somewhere so here if you're seeing this: sorry, you've got to deal with my ramblings now.

This could replace ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ wholesale. It was most people's least favourite centenary special, so hopefully we’re not losing much. OR, if you want to wrangle 4 specials in that year, it comes between ‘Eve of the Daleks’ and LotSD, which I’ll elaborate on later.

Arrival:

13 genuinely intends to follow through with “that moment on the beach where you tell me everything”, directly says as much at the end of EotD. Instead of fobbing it off with “whatever happened to the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar”, they ARE going to San Munrohvar, which Yaz is ecstatic about.

In the OG God Complex (quick reminder: 11/Amy/Rory originally), it’s Amy’s faith in the Doctor which brings them there, and it’s the same now. Except it’s not just the generic faith of a particularly attached companion, it’s the exact specific moment of Yaz knowing she’s about to get that conversation.

Her faith is both restored, and about to be rewarded. After years of asking, and wondering, and being fobbed off, finally the Doctor is opening up. And right after Yaz’s coming out to Dan? Wow - what if!

They aren’t there because Yaz “has faith in the Doctor”, they’re there now because in the exact moment the TARDIS launched, that faith was higher and more intense that it has ever been.

Dan:

Common complaint is that Dan’s a bit of a blank slate – Diane, Liverpool, nice bloke. Fun moments, but not enough time to really develop as a character. I’m not going to make a spectacular reveal here and give him an amazing arc, but at the very least we have a chance to make that blank-slatedness really work. He takes on Rory’s role in the story:

13’s Room:

We never see 11’s room, only hear the TARDIS’ cloister bell as he looks in. The implication, of course, is that he’s afraid of dying – permanently. Trenzalore, no more regenerations. Very nice and subtle for 11’s arc/personality – the old man disguising himself as a 20-something.

13 has a very different problem: she’s the Timeless Child, she’s been alive for potentially a billion years before her memories begin, and she’s still regenerating. 11 is afraid of regenerations running out; 13 is afraid they’ll never run out.

It’s harder to convey my idea here with just a noise, not showing the inside of the room itself, so I will describe what I imagine the room to look like, but if there’s a way to do this without showing the viewer, that’d obviously be great.

Her room is a field of graves: “Susan Foreman”, “Sarah-Jane Smith”, “Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart”, “Donna Noble”, “Amy + Rory Williams” (an exact copy of the grave from ‘The Angels take Manhattan’), “Clara Oswald”, River('s Screwdriver/Neural Relay sitting on a Library server?), “Bill Potts”, “Yasmin Khan”, even one written in Gallifreyan (could be inferred to be the Master, but not directly stated). Only a brief look, but enough for someone to pause it and read a bunch of companions’ names.

Many are faded, symbolising a fear that one day she’ll be so old with so many lost loved ones, there simply won’t be room for all of them, and she’ll starting to forget their names and faces. Thousands more we can’t read, the people she’s yet to meet across all her future lives, and they will age and die all the same. In the centre, she’s still there. Alive, young, never dying. Maybe it’s not even Jodie standing there – maybe it’s Ncuti Gatwa, or some completely other actor: ‘generic future self’.

This is the moment of tragedy for her. After her own chat with Dan, the fireworks, seeing Sarah + Nick happy, she had decided to give it a try with Yaz. But seeing this room is what changes that. This is the moment she says to herself:

In OG, this happens immediately after 11 effectively invites Rita to join the crew, but maybe we can swap these around. So 13 sees this, completely psyches herself out of pursuing a relationship with Yaz, knows in her heart that her biggest fear is losing more and more and more people, but seeing Rita being a little bit brilliant again makes 13 invite her along anyway. She can’t help it – a clever little human working their way in, no matter what. Bittersweet.

Speaking of:

Rita:

Another young Muslim woman who’s a little bit brilliant and a little bit too brave? In all of time and space, it’s a bit weird for a bottle episode to have someone who, on the face of it, is basically a carbon copy of our main companion, right? We’ll see.

13 gets along with Rita just as 11 did. Maybe Dan is the butt of the ‘with regret, you’re fired’ joke. Maybe in a moment alone, Dan can crack a line to Rita that ‘she’s got a thing for clever Muslim gals’. But of course, most importantly, Rita and Yaz have a bit of bonding over their shared faith. Rita mentions ‘Jahannam’ in the OG, and we can use that to get some insight to Yaz’s faith. We know she’s practicing-enough to visit a Mosque (mentioned in Rosa), but really we get very little exploration of what Islam truly means to her throughout Chibnall’s run. Give Yaz something personal that isn’t tied to the Doctor, y’know.

Then, the phone call when Rita is about to die. Like 11, 13 tries to talk her into coming back: maybe she can save her, she really wants to save her. She can’t convince Rita, but Yaz takes the phone off of her. Two young women of the same religion have a heart-to-heart about faith and rapture and Jahannam. They both start off thinking Yaz was brought here for the same reason Rita was (and the viewer does too) – stealing their religion from them.

BUT, Rita gradually realises that isn’t true for Yaz. She realises that Yaz’s faith in the Doctor is stronger: “if you come back, the Doctor can save [you/us]”. That brief, shining moment of beauty that Yaz felt when the Doctor confirmed she would follow through on ‘tell[ing] you everything’ was so powerful, it eclipsed her religious faith. Not forever, she hasn’t become an atheist, but the novelty, the cocktail of love, and rewarded patience, and anticipation, and trust – for a tiny moment, it out-shone her other faith, and that’s why the TARDIS was pulled in by the eponymous God Complex.

Maybe Rita says it explicitly, or maybe she doesn’t. Either way, Yaz also realises what Rita has seen, but the Doctor isn’t privy to Rita’s side of the conversation (because… phone). They hang up, turn off the cameras, and Rita dies. If Yaz hadn’t let the Doctor take over her life and heart, could she have saved Rita? Did someone die because she failed as a Muslim? (Obviously the answer is no – that’s not how faith/religion works, and Rita was dead anyway because that is how the minotaur works, but the point is Yaz has a total crisis here)

As with the OG, the very next scene is the Doctor’s ‘I figured it out’ moment.

Yaz is hit with a whole fresh wave of guilt. The whole reason they’re here, the thing that killed Rita – and the Doctor agrees with that assessment (the Doctor couldn’t hear Rita, so this obviously isn’t actually the Doctor saying ‘you’re right, you got her killed’ – the Doctor would never think or say something like that – but that’s what it feels like to Yaz).

Yaz’s Room:

Now this is what’s really beautiful about the change from 11 to 13. Amy and Yaz’s rooms are the same thing. Amy’s is a little girl waiting by a window for her Raggedy Man to come back; abandoned. Yaz’s is a young woman in a basic white TARDIS console room, surrounded by sticky notes and sheets of paper, after hundreds of failed attempts to make it fly, waiting for the Doctor to come back from Gallifrey; abandoned.

[Quick side-note: the moment between Amy and Gibbis where she says ‘I thought that room was for me’ about the Weeping Angels still works for Yaz. In her only meeting with the Angels, what was the result? They took the Doctor away from her for 3 years]

11’s speech to Amy, tearing down the image of him in her head – saving her life by pretending he can’t – absolutely stunning. But 13 has even more to work with here: Amy/Rory, Clara (died because she became too much like the Doctor – hello Yaz), River. The added tragedy of breaking not just a friend, but someone who is actively in love with her and who she shares those feelings for, and the only way to save Yaz’s life is to shatter those feelings.

AND: Bill. "Remember that man who tried to kill you, Graham, and Ryan in a plane crash the instant he met you? The man who tried to kill us all on Gallifrey, and is ultimately the reason I left you, vanishing for 10 months? The man you’re most afraid of, of every villain we’ve met together? I TRIED TO HELP HIM. I put his redemption above Bill and Nardole’s safety because ‘[he’s] the only one person that I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me’ (direct quote, btw(!) – ‘World Enough and Time’), and it got her mercilessly killed and converted. That’s the sort of person I am, and now I’m about to get you killed too."

Falling Action:

Because Yaz is a little bit brilliant, and coming into her own as “becoming like the Doctor”, like Clara did, she later works out that the speech in her room was ‘the plan all along^TM’ to get rid of the minotaur, and starts to patch herself up by telling herself that the Doctor didn’t really mean not to trust her. So Yaz presses, once again, asking for the Doctor to tell her something about herself.

The Doctor, of course, actually was being genuine, because her own room – the field of graves – scared her that much. 11 rebuffs Amy’s question, continuing with his exposition about the prison. 13 does the same to Yaz. The episode started with Yaz being elated that the Doctor would finally open up, and ends with 13 reverting back to closed-off, and refusing to answer a personal question. Because 13 saw what was in her room, and decided, against everything they both wanted 45 minutes ago, that she can’t fix herself.  So back in the box it goes.

Then:

From 11’s perspective, this could be perceived as bittersweet. He’s still afraid of death, but at least there’s someone here and now commiserating with him. Maybe it would be a gift, and maybe he can accept it in time, and go to Trenzalore in peace. But for 13, it’s just bitter. 'Yes, it would be a gift – if only I could ever have it. But at least I can grant it to you.'

We can either do the beach scene now, ‘can’t fix myself’…

(and then in my ideal world, alter Power of the Doctor to give us a slightly happier end / opening up / explaining 13's hotel room / Thasmin kiss, because god knows us gays need someone to throw us a bone – but that’s not important right now, not relevant to 13!GodComplex)

Or this is where the Doctor goes ‘let’s fuck about looking for the Flor de la Mar’, cue LotSD. Again we see the contrast between her genuine intent to be honest with Yaz 45 minutes ago vs fobbing it off now. Yaz’s heart is broken for real, just after she managed to convince herself that the Doctor’s speech in the hotel room was all a trick.

I can't stop thinking about it, because Doctor Who has consumed my every waking moment for the last 2 months...

[spoofymcgee]

Rating Various Companion Exits in Terms of How Objectively Sad They Are

because if we do my personal opinions it'll just be donna donna donna bill rose jack everyone else

Least: Martha

i don't think it's an unpopular opinion that martha's exit was the least sad. like, she retires to take care of her mental health and for her family's sake, gets her doctorate, continues being an absolute badass who is also in touch with her emotions and super nice. she finds a partner who sees her for how incredible she really is and appreciates her.

personally i do believe that she and the doctor clear the air at some point–though i don't think martha holds anything against him still–and she'll just call up the TARDIS when she's having a bad day and one of various doctors will come do a girls night with her and paint their nails and talk about the wild shit they've each been up to lately.

(i don't think martha ever stops being in love with the doctor a little bit. but it's not a tragic kind of love–it's a comfortable one, the kind of love you can have once you understand that love will never be perfectly symmetrical and it can be nice without being reciprocated. in the same way that the doctor loves their companions in a way that they can never fully return for how vast and unending and universe-ending it is, martha can love the doctor in a small and quiet and steady way that never fully goes away even when she does hate them.)

(and if you keep to canon with mickey as her husband you get some fun angst about that! okay, martha digression over.)

Second-Least: Rose

look. i know this is an unpopular opinion. i know the doctor is haunted by rose leaving and the narrative is haunted by rose leaving and everyone and their grandma is haunted by rose leaving.

but. girl got sucked into a parallel universe. she got to say goodbye to the doctor, even if he had a stick high enough up his ass that it kept him from saying he loved her. she moves to a different world to retire in a mansion with her mom and her dream guy and has a baby and spends the rest of her life being awesome and cool and saving the world.

yes it is sad that she left. but her method of leaving itself is not sad. she gets a happy ending and the doctor knows about it and no one dies! so i think maybe that's my hot take. first of a few.

Third-Least: Clara

idk how unpopular this is but i'm not entirely certain it's correct because.

look. clara does technically die. the doctor watches her die and spends four billion years smashing diamonds with his fists to save her. as pissed i am that those two episodes basically made her retroactively superfluous before getting rid of her, i can admit that that's a pretty epically tragic way to go out.

but the thing is, she spends the rest of time running around the galaxy with me in a TARDIS, and the doctor only forgets her for, like, seventy years and then he's fine with it again.

so her exit is sad but it's undercut by the fact that she gets at least a bittersweet ending and also that she should have left a season before she did and also the episode after she dies establishes that the doctor hasn't needed her for a while.

so worse than martha and rose who have a happy end and don't die, but better than everyone else.

Third-Most: Amy and Rory

this is why i wasn't sure where to put clara, and i'm sure this is not a popular opinion but. i don't think amy and rory's exit was so sad.

like, i can acknowledge that the course their story was going to take was amy having to choose rory over the doctor. i get that now. i understand that.

and their exit is sad! it is! it is mathematically engineered to be sad. but. and i don't want to go cinema sins about this. is there a really the doctor couldn't have picked them up and brought them home a year later? like, the year is the problem, yes?

and maybe if i didn't have spoilers and also had no media literally or ability to understand foreshadowing i might have been more affected by the real death right after the fake-out death, and the doctor running across the bridge to the book is a nice scene and the bit with river is excellent but.

i just think it's missing something. i think it feels like it's designed to put them in an impenetrable plot prison in a way that was totally unnecessary because they want to leave anyway. it feels like it wants me to be sad–and then move on right away.

Second-Most: Bill

first off! bill dies! because if you really think about it. nearly none of the nuwho companions do? and bill technically becomes space oil yes but

a) the entire downslope of world enough and time and the doctor falls is so fucking sad. she dies and she wakes back up and she has to live in a body that is clunky and awkward and painful and doesn't fully feel like hers and is slowly failing her and that everyone treats as not having a chance despite the fact that its doing its best. and eventually even that gets taken away from her and she is being slowly deconstructed, everything that makes her who she is sawed off piece by piece until she can't even get angry because it's too dangerous, and everyone is scared of her, and she is clinging to the edge of herself because the only thing worse than being a walking rotting weapon is hurting her friends.

b) the doctor only like, 50% knows that she survives as space oil. the glass people don't fully know, so he might not trust them and from his perspective she's dead and he got her killed.

c) no other companion's death affects the doctor's next regeneration so deeply. thirteen throws herself between people and guns, she drops the monologues and the arrogance because her overconfidence is the reason why bill died. what the fuck is that. insane.

anyway bill is so high up and it's been weeks since i watched world enough and time and i'm not over it. bill potts my beloved you made me so happy and then crushed my heart to bits.

Most: Donna

i mean this is just canon. what can i say here that has not already been said.

the doctor has to take donna in his arms, donna who is finally seeing how brilliant she is, who saved his life and her life and the universe, who is brilliant and ruthless and burning.

her takes her in his arms and he kills her while she's begging him not to, begging him to let her go because she'd rather die as herself than die knowing that (from her perspective) the shallows cruel, self-hating voice in her head will replace her and talk like her and look like her only she'll be dead and that will be all that's left.

donna knows who and what she is without the doctor, without her memories, and it is her worst nightmare. and the doctor sends her back to that because he can't bear to lose her, because she is donna even if she doesn't show it, because he thinks that she will figure out how to do so again–and it's so easy for him to make excuses for the fact that he cannot stand by and let her die in his arms when he can do something about it.

god.

[mysticaltora8276]

Is it really bad that when I saw the giggle and the main premise was that the Toymaker was making everyone crazy by “everyone’s opinions being right.” And the first thing I thought it was not “oh how horrible” it was “oh so like in Internet discussion group, talking about certain franchises.” I wasn’t so much as terrified, just more of annoyed, because anybody who’s been on the Internet with certain franchises knows that this more or less is the constant state of things in certain areas. As was the Giggle wasn’t that bad but then again, there were some erasure that really ticked me off. Firstly, Toymaker, didn’t mention Rory the Lone Centurion. You know, one of the big central factors of Amy’s life and a big factor of Eleven’s run. River isn’t mentioned at all. Then they completely ignore Nardole. NARDOLE, the guy who stuck with the Doctor for 70+ years, and was the only one authorized by River to kick the Doctor’s butt if he got out of line. That’s not getting into the fact that ignored Yaz, Ryan, Graham, and Dan the more recent companions that all left on their own terms. I felt so annoyed on their behalf, because all I could think was “excuse me, there were other people there are you deliberately forgetting that fact?” To make matters worse the Doctor doesn’t even bother to correct him. I did like the ending said that he will see how long he stays in one place. I’m guessing a few weeks at most before he gets antsy. Not to mention the fact of another thing that grind my ears was I got the severe impression of Avengers envy. You know about 11 years too late….yeah. Also, the whole thing about “having a family, the one adventure I can never have.” Excuse me, does the name Susan mean anything to anyone? Anything at all? Doctor’s granddaughter? His first companion? No? Well, then that’s not fine then let me remind everyone that the Doctor did indeed have a family and did settle down. He decided to leave with his granddaughter for reasons which they never gotten into but that’s OK that’s part of the mystery. But the point in the matter is acting like “oh the one adventure I can never have.” Yeah, sure show let’s ignore Susan.

Edit: What was up with the weird German accent with Toymaker? I mean yay they got rid of Yellow Peril stuff so they went with stereotypical German……weird

[piglet26]

A Year In the Mess and the Millennial Cross Rory Bears. WINTER

Let's address the elephant in the room while I have you front and center. Rory in A Year in The Life was a commentary on millennials. Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator, confirmed this was the inspiration for Rory's turn in AYITL. Rory was saddled with all the complaints the previous generations have of millennials such as millennials are spoiled, entitled, privileged blah blah blah. Hey now, now that we have not one but two generations under us I do understand the desire to complain (and be terrified). Gen Z and Gen Alpha general aesthetic is to be Billie Eilish lite as in angry, depressed, violent, or, antisocial. They have the lowest attention span recorded in human history and Taylor Swift is their greatest philosopher. Jesus take the wheel

The problem? None of this was in Rory Gilmore 1.0-character DNA. Matter of fact who the hell was Rory in the revival?! What the hell happened to her? We don't know. The Palladino's don't even bother expanding on it, but who does?! When it comes to Millennials we're to be mocked not understood. Most millennials came of age where there was a horrible job, house market and were in an economic recession. Our lives were being taken over by technology and social media. Rory picked a profession that was still mostly print at the time of her college graduation.... this is an entirely digital market now and one readers now pay for if they want something of substance. How lucrative is a real authentic journalism career? Not just think pieces or a seat on CNN or Fox News roundtable?

This is why A Year in the Life was a Mess

Believe me, I wanted to love it. This is my childhood we're talking about here. I loved Stars Hallow. Love my Gilmores. Yet, when I finally tuned I did so when just a hint of dread.....gradually all my fears were realized. Thus after 6.2 hours concluded somehow, we got somewhere, nowhere, found out little, nothing at all, were satisfied and just plain frustrated. So, let's break this mess down by episode. While mainly I will cover how the revival failed Rory - I will mention other frustrations because I can.

Winter

Why is Rory only in town for a day?! She's gotta leave for London soon. What has she been doing?! Ok, she's written a piece in the New Yorker, but how does that work?! Are you on staff? Do you submit freelance pieces and they choose them? She's a good writer, she's always been a good writer, and she's shown she is capable of running a paper - why is she struggling?! They doubled down on the millennial annoyance by having Rory abandoned Brooklyn as it was going condo and Lena Dunham. Subtle.

Super-Proud Luke is and always will be cute and Rory is so his kid. He's now a subscriber to The New Yorker which he reads every week just to support Rory. Also, he's attached her article to his menus so everyone can read it. Which she treats as cringe instead of sweet and supportive, but I'll let it go. Luke, Lorelai and Rory really are found family and super adorable.

Yes, the bit about everyone forgetting Paul is funny but THIS ISN'T RORY?! Paul seems genuinely sweet and thoughtful not just to Rory but her whole family so why are we doing this? Again, this is someone's depiction of a millennial. I guess we're really shitty to great guys. Rory had never been previously depicted as self-centered jerk just slightly oblivious as well all are.

It's a thrill to see all the old characters make a cameo.

The loss of Ed Herrmann was a gut punch to his cast. You can tell. It's also serves as a gut punch to the audience. We will miss you old chap. Rory following Emily around at the repast is the first hint of old Rory we've seen on this show yet.

It also serves as another wasted opportunity. No one except Emily seems to be genuinely affected by Richard's passing. The Gilmores are a small family, but a tight one. The patriarch passing surely would've affected all three gilmore girls deeply. It would've been better had we found Rory on a cooperate writing staff in London (employed by Logan) that she quit to spend more time at home to support her mother and grandmother. It would've been nice had Richard's passing compelled her into finding meaning beyond professional success. It would've been nice if they showed her pursuing something related to Richard from a journalistic perspective. They could've showed her on the road chasing a story to run into Jess or Dean or hell any of the countless characters. SOMETHING. Instead, we got spiraling millennial which is continuing to just seem misguided.

Berta and her roving family is trash and I didn't need them.

Emily starts in on Rory current state of homelessness which bring me to my next point of contention..... How is Rory broke?! She's had Trixie/Gran, her grandparents, Logan, Luke and her father?! I don't care that she's privileged unlike a lot of the privileged but not as privilege youtubers who enjoy spitefully and bitterly complaining. Despite what these grips say no, Rory's success has never come easily to her. The reality she was studying and investing her teenage years in academic pursuits while Rory's haters were partying or watching TV. Rory's always been resourceful and yet can't find a way to make a steady income in addition to writing. What's going on?

April/ Knock-off Rory is annoying, and it doesn't escape me that Luke prefers Rory. I'm glad hehehe. I mean he has a kid biologically and yet he considers going to Rory's graduation as going to his kids graduation. Side note: I know the creators would like to pretend that season 7 never happened but what are we doing here?! LnL have seriously never talked about having kids in the last 9 freakin' years?! Well at least we know why..... miscommunication and we needed a way to write medical Paris Geller into the story. Surrogacy is actually perfect for a medical student that doesn't actually like sick people.

Paris Geller ah I love this cold-hearted little psycho.

Okay Rory is writing a book with a queer drunk brit who steals food from other people, this is who she wrote her New Yorker piece on. This is the depiction of the feminist on the show.

I love Logan and I Love Rogan, but WHAT ARE WE DOING?! Why are they both having affairs with people they don't care about. Rory cheated once? twice?......okay Rory is a cheater, but why?

Paris and Doyle but of course they did! Can't have a happy couple in Stars Hallow or anywhere near it for long. I can see them having problems though because they've always had problems and sexually resolved them. Plus, in Paris's ideal functioning world she's married to Rory and Doyle.

WHY DOES RORY GILMORE HAVE ALL OF HER SHIT ACROSS FIVE HOMES?! How much stuff does she have? Honestly. Rory was always organized. At this point we've just got a personality transplant.

Once again, this is the main problem with the revival. None of this is behavior or characteristics we've associated with Rory. It's insert millennial here from a jaded baby boomer.

This is exhausting....................................... and I'm gonna have to take this in shifts. Next up spring.

Side note: Christmas here would be amazing and so charming.

[okay-j-hannah]

Teatime

Doctor Who : Drabble

Rory Williams x Reader

Word Count: 714 

Warnings: just Rory being the supportive friend that he is ✨

Request: “if you'd want to write it, id love a platonic rory x reader fic, i loved the dance scene between rory and the reader (in the dying girl fic, if i remember it right), it was really sweet and now its making me crave platonic fics of him! the reader can also be dating eleven but it doesn't matter, I just need some fluff comfort with rory!” Anon

A/N: Nights with Rory usually include a cup of tea and a healthy rant about the oblivious Doctor

Rory peeked his head around the entryway to see the living room. The back of (Y/N)’s head could be seen sitting on the couch, staring at the blank television screen.

He popped back into the kitchen to pour some tea, “I’ve got some biscuits if you want some.” He didn’t expect her to reply, “I’ve pulled out my mother’s teacups just for your visit. She was always so particular about who carried her teacups – only the finest for the finest.”

He came back into the living room, handing over a cup and saucer. He nudged her knees, feet curled up beneath her, and sat himself down. She let her legs fall across his lap and took the tea graciously, “Thank you.”

Rory waited until she took a sip, “So… this business with the Doctor.”

(Y/N) rolled her eyes, “He’s so ridiculous sometimes.”

“It’s times like this when we must remember that he’s an alien. A thousand year old alien.”

“You would think all that time would make him less of an idiot.”

“I think all that time just lets him slip closer to insanity.”

(Y/N) laughed, setting the cup down, “I don’t understand him most of the time. He’s stubborn and childish and scatterbrained and completely wonderful.” She put a few fingers to her temple, “And if I hadn’t completely fallen for him then maybe I could move on with my life.”

Rory grabbed her leg across his lap, “It is very cliché of you.”

She gave him a look, “What do you mean?”

“Oh, just every girl falling for the mysterious, handsome adventurer that’s not quite like all the other guys. He’s different and brooding and broken in a way. It’s very cliché of you to fall for that.”

(Y/N) smacked his arm, “You don’t have to be so mean about it.” But she gave him a smile, “I should find someone more like you then.”

“Naturally,” he puffed out his chest, “I’m dependable and simple and completely willing to settle down and be in love.”

She nodded to herself, “Amy is very lucky indeed.”

He gave her a long look, watching how she stared at her knees and tangled her fingers together. It wasn’t unusual for the Doctor to dump his friends in one location, forgetting that (Y/N) had her own apartment outside of the Ponds’. She normally stayed the night where they spent the evening watching movies or checking on the garden or cooking a splendid dinner.

There was more often than not the conversation of how (Y/N) was smitten with the Doctor, and though the Time Lord shared some romantic notions with her, he never made a move past kissing her forehead or grasping her hand in a moment of danger.

It made for some lowly nights where Rory, the loyal best friend, attempted to patch everything up. “There’s got to be a time when you’ll tell him. I mean, tell him plainly.”

“He is rather clueless.”

“When it comes to love, yes. I think he tries to avoid it because he knows how much it hurts to lose someone you love. After so many centuries dealing with that pain, I’m not surprised he avoids saying he cares.”

“Do you think he does?”

Rory smiled softly, squeezing her leg, “Do I think he cares about you? I think he cares immensely. And it terrifies him.”

She sat a little straighter, “Really?”

“He just won’t allow himself to feel it fully. If he tells you then it’ll be too real, especially if he ends up losing you.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” she frowned, flicking his arm.

Rory winced but laughed, “And you’re avoiding the obvious. You have no idea how many times Amy and I have tried talking to him about it. The way he stares at you like a sick puppy. The way he can’t ever say no to you no matter how much it frustrates him. The way he tries to have you play husband and wife whenever we’re undercover…”

“I have noticed a pattern there,” she laughed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Rory said, “And maybe if I could crack that thick skull of his, maybe he’d see I’m right too.”

She smiled, “You did always know how to cheer me up.”

~~~

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