#and someone made it into a group solely for the mess? what parallel universe are we in?

[ujuro]

Wait I read more about reactions to him and the common consensus is that he was always like this on purpose and the people who voted him into the group know this and did it because they like an entertaining asshole and this is also wild to me cause I’ve seen people like that in cpop (which he tried and failed to break into already) and to a lesser extent jpop but I genuinely didn’t think someone with this image could even get a foot in the door in kpop

I thought that k-soul dude with sanitize himself once he made it into that fantasy boys group since most kpop idols who are messy pre-debut realize that it’s in their best interest to Not be like that once they’re actually in the industry (at least openly) but no my guy just continues to cause problems like it’s almost impressive

[eirenare]

“The Rise of Kylo Ren” + TROS theory (with TROKR pics)

I’ll probably look like a clown in 16-17 days when “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #2 releases but whatever lol—after TROS I believe even more that the former leader of the Knights of Ren (Ren) is Ben from another timeline or a future gone (more) wrong

Anyways, my thoughts on this:

1) remember the outrageous “Ben sets the temple ablaze and runs away” from the Visual Guide? I’m sure it’s probably just even more retconning (like a ton of stuff from the VD), but what if it’s literal—except it’s just that the Ben who does it isn’t the Ben we know, therefore making it true while retaining “our” Ben’s innocence. Another option (painful but, I think, absolutely plausible) is that Ben himself accidentally set on fire the temple with his rage and sorrow unleashing a Force storm. However, the way the “prologue” of TROKR #1 ends (I’ll talk about later on in this post) seems kind of like a foreshadowing that Ben (well, “our” Ben) didn’t do it...? Kind of interesting, and hopefully we won’t have to wait until issues #3 and #4 (february and march) to know about that important detail

2) this interview with Charles Soule (the writer) and Will Sliney (the artist) dedicates, curiously, the first 3-4 paragraphs solely to talking about Ren—and the article, which is from the official SW webpage (an article called “Introducing ‘Ren’ in Marvel’s The Rise of Kylo Ren”), starts like this: “they call him Ren, but that wasn’t always his name”. Which is also how the comic starts:

... Tell me this doesn’t sound suspicious as kriff and like foreshadowing

And the interview keeps going like this: “Born out of the flames,” as artist Will Sliney puts it, the leader of the Knights of Ren in the opening pages of the new comic Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #1, arrives battle-scarred and wearing a fearsome, featureless mask — a blank expression save for a smattering of claw-like gouges. Concealed within is a charismatic leader, the exact type of person who would be able to seduce young Ben Solo away from the path of the Jedi.” Then they basically proceed to spend the first 4 paragraphs talking a lot about Ren besides talking about Ben (and then, lastly, about Snoke—and, fun fact: they knew about the Snoke twist of TROS beforehand), although I think they talk less about Ben even

3) Ben being compared to Anakin while Ren is compared to Darth Vader, except Charles Soule wanted Ren to read “like a more charming Darth Vader. “A Vader who is charismatic and who is appealing. That’s why [Ren’s] skin is burned and he sort of looks the way that he does. He’s embracing the seductiveness and the damage that the dark side does. Darth Vader, as impressive and imposing and terrifying as he is, is remote and cold and distant because he has the suit surrounding him. Whereas Ren isn’t hiding behind it. He’s someone you could have a beer with, in theory.”

4) more interesting interview stuff. “Designed purposefully for the new comic series, with issue #1 out now, Ren feeds the evolution of Kylo Ren. “The entire seductiveness of the dark side poured into one character engineered for Ben Solo is Ren,” Soule says. “He’s sort of a charming evil rascal that can be really fun to write and I really like where he goes in the series. But if Kylo Ren is going to take over the Knights of Ren, which we know that’s what happens, there should be some transition.”

Also: “I think the key to writing Ben Solo is to write him as a lost teenager who is deeply in touch with emotions that teenagers often feel,” Soule says. “He feels like no one understands him, no one sees him the way he actually is, he’s utterly alone and there’s no one else out there in the universe. So when he sees Ren, he’s like, ‘Wait a minute — maybe there is somebody like me in the universe. Maybe there is a path for a guy like me. Look at the choices he’s made. I could make those choices, too, and I could be cool.’”

So... This is interesting. We have Snoke manipulating Ben to go to him, at first making himself appear friendly, while on some measure Palpatine’s pulling the strings from Snoke (I don’t think he would be like a puppet with Palps’ voice, though, given that chapter of the TLJ non-junior novelization that has a lot of stuff from Snoke’s perspective, but who knows). But then, Ben Solo’s basically obsessed with Vader... and, apparently, this Ren’s a walking dark side temptation for Ben. Well... We’ll see what happens, I guess

Also, crying inside at reading that “wait a minute—maybe there is somebody like me in the universe. Maybe there is a path for a guy like me. Look at the choices he’s made. I could make those choices, too, and I could be cool”. If Ren really was Ben from another time seeking to change things (probably something related to Rey): the implications that this has, the emotions that this has, the power that this has

Interesting, too, that it hasn’t been said if it’s Snoke who’s “the master” of the KoR (yes, they do have a master on top of their own leader), but that only gets weirder because the KoR were revealed time ago to be only loyal to their leader and to the “Ren philosophy” (which also makes possible ties with Snoke alone impossible)—so, if Snoke and the First Order aren’t, then who is it? Palpatine? Still, again, there’s the philosophy thing of following only their group leader...

Oh and: the Ren philosophy sounds very intriguing and I’m liking it a lot

(For context of the next pics: there are two brothers, being one of them Force-sensitive, and both the KoR and someone called SecSec are trying to recruit them—but the non-Force-sensitive one kills the other, which means the KoR doesn’t accept him, and Ren kills him)

5) just after that panel, in this pic below they talk a bit about “the master” here, being Ren who says it. Also it’s interesting that, after that happens, the KoR part ends with Ren saying "let’s go find something to burn”:

After that there’s a page as if this kind of prologue has finished, showing a page with the logo of the comic and all that... and then, next page it’s Ben standing in front of the fire and ruins of the temple all shocked (a note here: on that page it reads “now” and the name of the location, and the “prologue” happened “long ago”). I’d say that really looks like foreshadowing...

Now the thing is... If the KoR are not affiliated in any way with the First Order nor Snoke, and the KoR is only interested in recruiting Force-sensitives for their ranks, then how come they could’ve arrived in Luke’s Jedi temple... just at that right time to burn it down? I mean, right, there can be coincidences, but— uh, that might be a bit too much of a coincidence, perhaps? Who knows...

6) interview intensifies. “Born out of the flames”, is how Sliney describes Ren—well, thought it was worth mentioning this because guess what mythological being is born out of the flames too. Also, funny the parallel between that and the publisher’s summary of “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #3 (scheduled for February 12th): “Soon, BEN SOLO'S path will end in a place of fire and blood, and a shadow will rise to take his place. He is with the KNIGHTS OF REN now, and they will welcome him, if he can pay their price.” Well, given that “our” Ben starts becoming Kylo Ren after what happens at the temple, and that they describe Ren (referring to the former leader of the KoR) like being “born out of the flames”... this does nothing to deterr me from believing this theory, to be honest

7) more from the interview. “ The creative team engineered some surprises for this charming dark sider, a foil in many ways to Darth Vader hiding beneath his protective covering. “You expect the dude hiding his face under a mask like that to be all messed up, particularly with his body looking the way it does,” Soule says. But in issue #2 we’ll see what he’s truly concealing, a reveal that speaks to Ben on a whole other level” … This whole paragraph, I swear. Sounds like when they talked in the times between TFA and TLJ about Ben’s face behind his mask, and about his unmasking. Also, the talk about the face reveal…

What kind of “reveal that speaks to Ben on a whole other level” could it be? I don’t think they’d be referring to that with something more going on in his face, as in, scars or charred skin. In fact, it wouldn’t make sense for Ren to cover that up given that he shows with pride his scarred body

And faces of men he might know? The probabilities just lower and narrow soooo much here. We have yet to see, however, if Ben gets the reveal as a kid or an adult, which could make a difference. Still, back to “what man could this guy be”, I just can’t think of someone that he’d recognize and have this impact on him... ... And now it’s when it’s a Ben clone from another timeline, lol

8) that big panel on “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #2 where the KoR and Ren are facing Luke, Ben and Lor San Tekka, and Ben and Ren seem to mirror poses:

9) this is jut something that came to my mind, but… It still bugs me to this day the phrase “it is you” that Ben says regarding Rey on the TFA novelization (when she calls forth the Legacy lightsaber), because Ben didn’t know back then about them being a dyad, nor have we seen any mentions to him having dreamt of Rey before or anything—so maybe Ben’s encounter (encounters? Still not sure about it) with Ren involved Ren telling him something that will happen in the future? Something which could also tackle that random “which girl?”

The sad thing, if Ren was really Ben from the future? Like I said in my previous post about this teory (pre-TROS): ... that Ben would’ve literally killed himself, and therefore made true what he told Han that his son is dead and that he’d killed him (which then is reversed in TROS with that “Kylo Ren is dead, my son is alive”). That would be such a kriffing trauma for Ben that I don’t know if I could stomach it, after seeing Ben’s death in TROS... I mean, we would literally be seeing another Ben die... even if somehow his actions meant a worse future would have been avoided

Anyways my brain seems to find fuel in angst (why), because now reading “Ren” only makes me think of Ben’s name but taking on the “R” from Rey if in that future something happened to her...  (Or that the Knights would be called “of Ren” in reference to Ben and Rey)

... And now it’s when we’ve been played like a fiddle all along and the novels, with their differences/expanded material as hints (like the “it is you” in the TFA novelizations), are but one of the timelines. Can you imagine? To cite the TLJ non-junior novelization: “time is a circle. The end is the beginning”. At this point I believe anything could happen, specially after seeing TROS and how wtf it’s all that surrounds it...

10) to finish the post, the thing that made me start thinking Ren could be Ben: the hair that peeks from below the helmet looks apparently like Ben’s both in shape and color (an interesting detail is how the color of their hair seems to match in tone: in issue #1 it’s brownish for the both of them even though one’s surrounded by fire and the other by ice, and on the preview pages of issue #2 their hair is shown black). And in a universe so diverse as SW, and given that Ren and Ben are characters so connected, that’s a pretty... interesting choice. Here are some more images for comparison between Ben and Ren:

[gayregis]

I read “A Little Sacrifice” and now I am a MESS

fun fact: i read the books out of order on purpose because i am very focused on instant gratifaction, so i read all of the hansa parts first and then went back to all of the rest of the books, thus i read the assault on castle stygga before a little sacrifice

so when i backtracked and read a little sacrifice, i had a very spiteful look on my face, like sapkowski fucking did it again, huh...

a little sacrifice has a lot of depth and it has a beautifully written sad ending but the first time i read it (with the fan translation from reddit) i didnt quite know what was being translated and what wasnt so i didnt know if i was missing any context, plus when i read, i skim and then go back a thousand times to reread it if i liked it, so i was just extremely confused as to what the fuck the relationship geralt and essi was supposed to be like, and then you get to the end and it’s like well i guess their relationship doesnt even matter after all because she’ll never show up again

also i remember being physically nauseous at reading that essi couldn’t be over 18, especially since i was like 17-18 when i read it a couple of years ago. yeah that basically was the closest i ever got to leaving the witcher fandom entirely, i had like this whole conversation with myself at 2 AM about the decision to stay in the fandom if i have to deal with this being canon, the solution i have come up with for it is that i simply do not acknowledge that part as canon and essi is like 25 in my mind and also she never fell in love with geralt

on one hand i think the story of unrequited love/doomed romance is interesting solely because it is something that you’re not meant to be like “aww cute i hope they get together” at, it’s a terrible fucking relationship in context. and geralt mentions this multiple times because he’s So Monogamous all he wants is yennefer, and this was an interesting way to develop your main romance, sapkowski does this like ten times in the series, where geralt and yennefer are fucking miles apart but somehow their romance gets developed during this period. i think it’s the embodiment of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and it’s something that realy flew over CDPR’s heads, like they didn’t have a “hot and cold” / “on again off again” relationship, they both had a lot of issues relating to intimacy and committment and self-image which prevented them from true intimacy even though they had become very vulnerable with one another

on the other essi’s purpose in this story is literally just to fall in love with the main character and then die. like. i was genuinely mad because it wasn’t even a valorous death for a symbolic reason, such as with the hansa who die to demonstrate that an exchange of lives has occured. essi just dies because it’s sad and there’s not much place for her later in the series. i was genuinely mad because she had this really great relationship with dandelion and seeing that expanded on was something i felt we got cheated out of. all of the geralt and essi scenes we got i think should have been proportioned in a 1:2 ratio with scenes with her and dandelion / her and dandelion and geralt as a group, because she really didn’t get enough development of her own but had a lot of potential. 

plus sapkowski was just like “actually dandelion isn’t always incredibly self-absorbed and blinded by arrogance, let me demonstrate situations in which he cares deeply about the people involved and acts appropriately” and then immediately tossed that concept out of the window until we get to the end of time of contempt/roll into baptism of fire. like you’re really going to throw away the potential for depth and development for one of the main characters that’s the constant contrast to your main character. idk it was just nice to see how dandelion’s character changed to be more mature with essi in the room bc that’s his little sister ;w;

also can i just say the subplot with sh’eenaz and duke agloval annoyed me to no end. the message of the main plot is supposed to be that a little sacrifice for love is actually a really large sacrifice, and geralt refuses to hold any resentment against yennefer anymore because he realizes that she has sacrificed a lot for him and he hasn’t in return:

“A little sacrifice isn’t enough here; you’d have to sacrifice everything, and there’d still be no way of knowing if that would be enough (...) Now I know that a little sacrifice is a hell of a lot.” 

but then sh’eenaz loses her fishy tail for duke agloval ON TOP of all of the sacrifices she has made for him before? i can’t deal with this, i call bullshit. the duke has NO redeeming qualities and i still can’t see them as a couple because he was such a dick. so this relationship being part of what demonstrates “a little sacrifice” really just serves to muddle the message of the short story

i have an idea to rewrite the whole thing so to make essi x sh’eenaz real (there is potential in this ship) and the message clearer. i think there should be no romance between essi and geralt because it’s weird and for a character who is basically just Younger & Female Dandelion to immediately fall hard and fast in love with geralt is eye-rolling. i get that it’s about the message and themes of the story and not about the characters, i understand this, the characters actually matter very little, but the message would even be clearer if sh’eenaz had left the duke for essi, because it would show that sh’eenaz has already sacrificed, she’s already done so much, and because the duke never reciprocated, she left him and found love with a better person. and that could be geralt’s wakeup call that a little sacrifice really is a hell of a lot, it would send him hightailing to apologize to yennefer or at least communicate to her that he appreciates her sacrifices that she has made for him, because if you don’t appreciate the sacrifices, you will lose your loved ones.

also ofc i’d involve gerlion and all of this because i feel like there is this weird, buried trail of gerlion vs geryennefer running throughout the sword of destiny, here is my “im looking at this too closely” analysis of the path of how gerlion and geryennefer both get to exist:

bounds of reason - geralt is of course still on good terms with dandelion, but needs to mend things with yennefer, and he manages to do so by the end of the story, also dandelion and yennefer are mildly antagonistic to each other (i also cross out That Comment/Joke/Scene from my mind just fyi, its really just horrible and out of place so i cant consider it as canon)

a shard of ice - geralt and yennefer still have feelings for each other but end up separated by the end of the short story because of insecurities relating to their capacities for love and their relationships with others: there is this contrast between yennefer and istredd, which is a long relationship of friendship and istredd is someone yennefer goes to when she needs security that she will be loved, geralt is someone in contrast that she is very passionately in love with and isn’t really thinking about longtime reliability with

eternal flame - geralt and yennefer have called it quits for now, dandelion also just broke up with his girlfriend, geralt and dandelion meet in a city and decide to get smashed together. that situation alone calls for a single eyes emoji. but id like to point out the parallel here between yen/istredd and geralt/dandelion, dandelion is someone geralt goes to for security in that he will be loved, that his company will be liked and appreciated. also one of the stupidest things ive come up with is that “eternal flame” does mean some romantic interest who’s been in your life seemingly forever and you’ll always love, and the story IS called... ok anyways.... at the end of the story we are presented with this weirdly emotional scene as dudu changes into dandelion because from being geralt for a few seconds, he knows his thoughts and knows that geralt will never use violence against him & that he’ll let him go... this is a very interesting scene because of how comic the rest of the story is in tone

a little sacrifice [rewritten] - so my take on this would be that geralt and dandelion have unresolved and unacknowledged closeness and it’s eating at the both of them. geralt is just annoying because he doesn’t think he’s ‘normal’ enough for love, basically nothing really needs to change except the last 3 to 4 chapters... they still have the argument in bed, they still go to investigate the dragon’s teeth together. just instead of essi randomly confessing the all-consuming, obsessive romantic feelings for geralt that she developed in less than 35 pages, dandelion and geralt are the ones sitting down just discussing what is going on with their relationship that has been developed in-depth for i guess five short stories now (including the voice of reason) and around 15 to 20 in-universe years that have not had any affect on their ages because that’s narrative for you. instead of geralt having to console a lovesick girl crying over him and thinking that he can’t make this little sacrifice, the theme of sacrifice for love is carried over by a discussion of how much they have already sacrificed for one another over the years, and contributes to the redux theme of “sacrifice for love needs to be reciprocated.” simultaneously, after sh’eenaz leaves the duke for a better option, geralt realizes the meaning of a little sacrifice and realizes how he has acted poorly towards yennefer, and seeks to make things right with her again. THUS we can have both ships and they wont conflict.

the sword of destiny - holy shit none of this romance drama shit matters AFTER ALL. actually it’s the CHILD which has been important all of this time, and it’s time to be responsible or invite doom across the threshold... ah wait okay doom has already entered the house. doom is eating tostitos and bean dip.

something more - following consequences of the end of the sword of destiny. obviously about ciri but yennefer and dandelion also have incredibly significant scenes in this short story and i think it’s just to represent that they’re also important in geralt’s life

beginning of blood of elves - yennefer and dandelion actually have a good conversation about everything including geralt and they basically matrue up and agree to never be hostile towards each other ever again. they both see that the others give him something that they cannot, and they’re not in competition with each other at all

tl;dr

[feynites]

What do you think of half elves in the DA universe?

This has come up before!

In essence, I think it’s a creative misstep to handle them the way that canon does. If they didn’t want visibly mixed race characters, for whatever reason, then they should have just made the two groups reproductively incompatible. That would have locked elven wardens out of conceiving Kieran with Morrigan, but honestly DA:O does not shy away from a certain degree of unfairness if it suits the world-building - elven, dwarven, and mage wardens also can’t marry Alistair and sit on the throne, either.

Instead, what they did was walk right into an allegorical mess. That happens sometimes, when you’re writing fantasy and you’re paying more attention to your fantastical world-building than you are to the real-life scenarios which this stuff is drawn from. Because going ‘people who are mixed race can only actually belong to one half of their heritage’ is tied in with a ton of terrible real life ideology. It’s a concept that, in and of itself, is bad, regardless of whether it’s being applied to fantastical races or not. Though at least by being fantasy, there is a degree of separation that means it’s, at least, not targeting specific races or racial combinations that actually exist.

Small mercies.

But it’s sort of like the ‘mages are dangerous and therefore the templars aren’t totally wrong’ approach to the narrative. The problem is that in real life, any time someone has gone ‘mixed race people only belong to one half of their heritage’, or ‘these people are just inherently dangerous and need to be locked away from moral and upstanding folk’, they have been among the worst of humanity. That kind of thinking is terrible, and attempts to justify it in fiction will always create really uncomfortable parallels to real life propaganda and instances of terrible violence. It’s not the same as just directly telling a story where real life groups are maligned, but it’s still relying on the same kinds of thought processes that defend real life hatreds.

So basically, I prefer the idea that Thedosian society, being the font of ignorance and hatred that it can be, is entirely wrong about the particulars of elven heritage and genetics. Because that changes things from being ‘the story is built so that this very bad idea is Irrefutable Truth’ into ‘this is just more in-world bullshit’. So what actually happens in Thedas is, if you have rounded ears, people decide you’re human. If you have pointed ears, they decide you’re an elf. They don’t think the two can be mixed because they have a very limited understanding of biology, and are judging solely by appearances. Rounded ears are a genetically dominant trait, so they’re much more likely to occur, and elves are widely hated, so babies born with unexpectedly pointed ears thanks to recessive genes are either disposed of in some tragic way, or else altered or encouraged to disguise their ear tips. Mixed race babies born with rounded ears in alienages have the opportunity to go and assimilate into human society, to try and make a better living. And it’s less common among the Dalish, because they by and large try and avoid contact with humans.

Although human-looking children spotted among the Dalish could also account for stories of the Dalish stealing babies.

(Also, to disclaim, I am aware that statements have been made to the tune of ‘being an elf is not linked to genetics’. There is, apparently, some lore connected to this, presumably to do with magic. This does not make the overall concept less bad, and it also, from what little info has been provided, doesn’t make any sense. That could change come DA4, but I personally can’t see any way for this whole idea to escape the root problems it has. So I’m mostly hoping that they just ditch it. I love a lot of DA’s world-building, but this and a few other elements are things that I consider bad ideas.)

(Also, also, fandom needs to leave people alone when they decide to disregard this bit of canon. People cherry pick their canon all the time, and for things that are much less inherently offensive than a bit of throw-away racial purity world-building. The point of transformative works is to transform them, after all, and some people like to transform them by taking part of canon they hate and slam-dunking it into the nearest trash bin.)

[willidleaway]

Doctor Who, series 12, mid-series thoughts

In short: series 12 right now is looking like a real mess, but I’m honestly not sure if in a good way or a bad way. Chibnall has been bringing back a big chunk of RTD-era elements (and seemingly destroying a few Moffat-era ones), after the decidedly continuity-nod-averse series 11. It was fun at first but is now starting to look like Chibnall could end up amplifying the worst excesses of RTD and Moffat’s tenures.

In the span of a single episode, we have gone from ‘god I hope Chibnall doesn’t mess up the space rhino police’ to ‘god I hope Chibnall doesn’t mess up the entire show forever and ever’, because the arcs that he’s set up ... well ...

Moffat may have implicitly threatened to reveal the name of the Doctor in The Name of the Doctor, but to his credit he knew not to actually show that card. Chibnall, I suspect, feels too clever to show such restraint. What he’s getting up to may well permanently ruin the character of the Doctor for me, and I don’t think I’d be alone.

Spoiler-filled further thoughts behind the Read More break.

Overall thoughts on where series 12 is going: Boy do I not know where it’s going, but I know where it needs to not go.

OK, so thinking about where series 12 is going basically requires thinking about Fugitive of the Judoon. We get two major mystery points set up:

Captain Jack (who I am not entirely sure I’m glad to see back) has this warning about the Lone Cyberman.

Jo Martin plays an incarnation of the Doctor that cannot possibly exist.

I say I’m not entirely sure I’m glad to see Captain Jack back not because I don’t think his character is delightful or because John Barrowman is older, but because of the way he seems to solely exist to pull the companions out of the interesting story and set up this mystery point.

One of my problems with Moffat-era Who was all of the Doctor worship—and perhaps in retrospect it’s really unfair when it was RTD with his series 3 finale (a key example of RTD’s mixed legacy in terms of the direction RTD took new!Who in his later years, and the ways in which I genuinely think it encouraged a lot of trait that Moffat gets so much flack for in the fandom) and all the Oncoming Storm-type stuff that really started the show on that train. But in my defence, Moffat treated Clara as a living MacGuffin for much of her tenure—with a central plot point being innumerable split existences that revolve entirely around the Doctor—in a way that RTD never treated any of his era’s companions.

With Chibnall at the helm, I had hope that perhaps we’d return to compelling, active companions—especially after Moffat gave us series 10 with Bill and Nardole—and the series 11 premiere looked quite promising in this respect. But series 11 ultimately had at best mixed success on this front, partly because Bradley Walsh is in such a different class from the other two that it doesn’t even make sense. And series 12 so far has simply reverted to a group dynamic where the Doctor has all the answers, Graham has all the quips, Ryan has none of the dyspraxia, and Yas (Yaz? never sure about that one) has nothing.

And when it feels like the companions are doing nothing or even getting in the way of the narrative rather than actively driving it—to the point where you have Captain Jack literally scooping them away from the main thrust of the story—then something’s not right with this show. Why even have a companion, then, let alone three?

All that aside, let’s talk about Ruth!Doctor, who I’m going to assume is actually an incarnation of the Doctor, rather than the Master or the Rani or the Meddling Monk or some other Time Lord simply disguised as the Doctor. Having ‘Introducing Jo Martin as the Doctor’ in the closing credits sure seems to dispel that alternate notion—but certain past show runners have definitely taken part in circulating falsities!

First off, no matter what happens: Ruth!Doctor needs her own EU material. Books. Radio plays. Overpriced cheaply-made replica props. Yes. All of it. We’ve only gotten a couple dozen minutes of this Doctor so far and yet I am already utterly convinced.

Second: has post-RTD Who just completely forgotten about parallel universes? I mean, pocket universes, sure—Gallifrey was in one for a good while. But the Turn Left-style parallel worlds? The kind of parallel world seen in Rise of the Cybermen? Sure, the latter ep sets up the fact that the Time War fallout made it impossible to travel freely between parallel worlds, but with Gallifrey returned (well, before Chibnall burned it all down again), you’d think that would have changed. It doesn’t even seem to occur to 13 that Ruth!Doctor might be a parallel existence, which strikes me as astonishingly odd.

Third: if Ruth!Doctor is an actual incarnation of the Doctor in the prime timeline, then where does she fit? Pre-1 is the actual worst idea, because the TARDIS is already shaped like a police box and only like a police box, and Moffat already showed the TARDIS being stolen by 1 in capsule form. Granted, maybe the Doctor was captured by the Time Lords at some point, regenerated into 1, and stole another TARDIS that also had its chameleon circuit fried, but it seems needlessly complex.

I like the Season 6B idea a little better—the 2/3 interregnum—and maybe Ruth!Doctor is an extra regeneration granted by the Time Lords as reward for 2′s services to the CIA or whatever. One other possibility is simply that Ruth!Doctor had her memory altered—but this is possibly the least interesting idea and thus the least likely, because Chibnall clearly wants to provoke rather than catch a breath and be actually thoughtful with all of his twists this series.

Whether Ruth!Doctor fits in before Hartnell or after Troughton, it will represent a major shift in lore. Moffat was competent enough to make 8.5 work, arguably making better use of RTD’s Time War than even RTD ever did. But we are on shakier territory where Chibnall isn’t really building on anything. And if Ruth!Doctor is the Zeroth Doctor, and Chibnall really wants to provoke, well ...

Part of the fun of the Doctor, at least for me, is that at the end of the day, the Doctor really is a mad man in a box, an idiot that wants to be kind and help out along the way. They’re a Time Lord, sure, but amongst Time Lords they don’t have some overriding power that does not arise from their own initiative. For all of Moffat’s faults, I think he knew this to be at the core of the character. If he didn’t always show it, he at least always tried to tell it, even alongside all of the most egregious Doctor-worship.

And the Doctor’s origins are vague, even mysterious, but only because the Time Lords as a whole are rather mysterious. Their social psychology is eccentric, to be sure. Their control of time and space is unparalleled. But we’re not sure whence they arose and that’s fine. It’s not necessary, because the show was never about the Doctor, but about how the Doctor affects those around him. Much of Moffat-era Who had maybe a more Doctor-centric tilt to this, but nonetheless it was never quite all about the Doctor!

Meanwhile, in the Chibnall era, now we’ve got the Master talking about the Timeless Child and lies about the history of the Time Lords, and Captain Jack scooping the companions out of the way so that we can get all this new Doctor lore set up. And, well ... forget RTD’s Oncoming Storm. Forget Moffat’s literal origin of the word ‘doctor’. I think we’re about to see Chibnall elevate the Doctor to being literally the Genesis of the Time Lords, and it makes me very, very uncomfortable.

Hmm, I do wonder if we will get an episode actually titled Genesis of the Time Lords, only I want it to be about Gallifreyan prog pop-rock.

Additional thoughts, episode by episode:

OK, so I already said my bit on Spyfall and the latest ep. So that leaves two.

—Orphan 55: I think everyone’s had their curb-stomp on this one. I’d just like to say that it was particularly disappointing because Ed Hime’s previous contribution to Doctor Who was ‘It Takes You Away’, by far one of the most brilliant episodes of Series 11. It was ambitious and witty, and the characters were interesting and compelling, and basically it succeeded so well at everything that Orphan 55 fails at so badly.

Orphan 55 is like Midnight except the villain all along was man. It just feels like Ed Hime was playing a bunch of Metro games and then Chibnall told him to write a Very Special Episode about climate change, and everything suddenly clicked together. At least someone thought it did.

Was it really that bad? I’d say it was no less messier than Fugitive of the Judoon, honestly. I think with time, people will either look more kindly on it or completely forget about it, because frankly its reputation can’t get worse. The fact that Orphan 55 did not have the blockbuster Who-lore reveals and twists of Fugitive of the Judoon will be either the reason it becomes forgotten or the reason it becomes more favourably looked upon.

—Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror: My main qualm with this story is the over-romanticisation of Tesla. The show acts as if Wardenclyffe was this amazing proto-Wi-Fi apparatus that would have worked if only JP Morgan hadn’t pulled his funding, when in fact it was the epitome of this big wireless tech bubble and a folly in the most literal sense of that word. They mention the Gilded Age right near the start of the episode and somehow view Tesla as this pure-minded inventor and almost a human Doctor for the 20th century, rather than someone who basically lived off of Gilded Age capitalist money, and a shrewd man knew how to game the press and public opinion in his time.

Don’t get me wrong. Tesla was legitimately wronged very badly, both by Edison and by Marconi, and he seems to have had a real intuition for electrical engineering in ways that few in his time did. But intuition is not the same as scientific enquiry, and that seems to me to be no small part of why Tesla after Wardenclyffe never enjoyed the success and admiration that he did before, and why he was rather badly forgotten for so long.

And then Edison seemed a bit too softened??? Caring for his workers at some level, sure, but surely he would absolutely never be the sort of person to offer Tesla a job with him ... ?

That said, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better actor to cast in the role of Tesla, and generally I found the episode pretty good. I believe others have sufficiently pointed out the mild hypocrisy of the Doctor’s criticising the scorpion!Racnoss for stealing technology (still can’t be bothered to remember what they actually were, sorry), but I generally found it more amusing than problematic.