#anti eleventh doctor

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Nine and Ten talking to literally the most random person:

You are so important! Humans oh how I love you!

Nine and Ten interacting with Rose/Martha/Donna like 95% of the time:

🧡 🥰 😀 🧡 🥰 😀 🧡

Eleven talking to River in the episode they get married:

It's not funny, River. Reality is fatally compromised. Tell me you understand that.

I don't want to marry you.

River! River, this is ridiculous. That would mean nothing to anyone. It's insane. Worse, it's stupid. You embarrass me.

[azurecanary]

1-6, pls! for dr who ask

1. What was the first episode you watched/remember?

Probably Christmas Invasion? My parents were massive Tennant fans.

2. What was the first entire series you watched/remember?

Series 4 i think was the first one i watched fully. For a while it was just watching random episodes up till that point.

3. Who is your favourite Doctor? Why?

Peter Capaldi. He was just the best actor out of all the Doctors i watched and he just brought this sense of authority and eccentricity to the role that i really think fitted the Doctor. He also had the most incredible speeches.

4. Who is your least favourite Doctor? Why?

I'm going to catch heat for this but i didn't really like Matt Smith's Doctor. I think because he came right after Tennant and was followed by Capaldi that he had a lot to live up to that he couldn't quite manage. His acting and character was just too exaggerated to where it kinda felt like a caricature.

5. Any complaints about the show?

I did not like most of Series 5-7. I didn't like Smith's Doctor, i did NOT enjoy the character of Amy or her relationship with the Doctor or Rory, especially the end of Stone and Flesh. I still love Karen Gillan tho, but i just did not like Amy.

6. NuWho or Classic Who? Why?

I grew up with NuWho and i didn't get to watch as many Classic episodes growing up so it would have to be NuWho. But eventually i do hope to watch more Classic Who.

[khruschevshoe]

There's something about how the costuming of Amy Pond (always in miniskirts/heeled boots even when the circumstances actively call against it, never getting to wear period wear except for once in Vampires of Venice for a one-scene disguise before immediately moving into a nightgown and once in a cutaway honeymoon monstage) is directly linked to the more sexist aspects of her storyline writing and that tie is most likely the interviews with Steven Moffatt where he admits to wanting to make Doctor Who "sexier." In this essay I will-

[ghost-bison]

Doctor Who - Opinions

-the ninth doctor was the best. no one will ever be as good as he was

-same for donna, best companion, no one will ever compare

-imo 9th > 10th > 12th > 14th > 11th > 13th (dunno about 15th yet, haven't seen enough of him)

-donna > rose > jack > martha > nardole > bill > river/clara > rory > graham >>>>>>>>>>>>>> amy (idk about yaz and ryan I honestly dont see any distinctive personality traits apart from the fact that ryan is always complaining and generally unpleasant)

-ninerose >>>>>>>> tenrose

-clara is a cool character, it's just her plots that made people dislike her

-i don't get the obsession people have over thoschei. or the master in general and his relationship with the doctor? apart from missy and twelve ofc

-i could never warm up to amy, nor do i get how people can like her. she was abusive, not a girlboss. didn't deserve rory

-i have mixed feelings about river. like obviously, slay my goddess, but also, she's everything that's wrong with moffat's writing of women? she's actually dependant and praises the doctor and never makes a decision for herself? never questions the doctor? that's not ok

-idc how good moffat's storylines get, i'll choose rtd any day. i'll refer you to this post as to why.

-chibnall's era feels flat. i don't hate 13, she's adorable, but I used to laugh and cry several times an episode during the first ten series. now it's like twice a series if we're lucky.

-i liked the campy effects way better than the disney-style expensive cgi they now use to try and balance out mediocre writing (I'm sorry but wtf was that Space babies episode and how did they manage to make it even more cringe than the series one Slitheen two-parters?)

[phyrexian-lesbian]

tired of rtd fans going “god forbid a character have a happy ending”. he did. when he was regenerating he had donna and mel beside him to see him off. he was content and he even said “it’s time.” and he was ready to go this time. that was a perfect and happy ending for him. and tbh the only thing i really expected from the giggle was the regen scene. i had no standards other than that.

the toymaker was brilliant and ncuti was brilliant. but thanks to rtds inability to get rid off DT, we got a colossal amount of fan service for a mediocre ending and having DT eclipse both Ncuti and Jodie because now the NMDs will say that 15 isn’t the real doctor. now i’m started to dislike david’s doctor because rtd is just beating this dead horse for 19 years.

11, 12, and 13 are now my favourite doctors. the incredible dw anniversaries were the Day of the Doctor for the 50th and the Power of the Doctor for the 60th.

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

don't ya just love it when you're really vibing to one of the most compelling character designs you've ever seen and your fun is completely ruined by the most 2010 sexist jokes/writing in the world?

[dandelionjack]

continuing yesterday’s discussion, the only card-carrying hypocrite in this house is, apparently, me. why do i resent how river (and to a lesser extent amy) are written to have their whole lives revolve around the doctor, but it’s completely fine by me when clara’s whole life does too? no idea. drawing from my own previous opinions i should hate the impossible girl arc. however, for some inexplicable reason, it fascinates me in a way the others didn’t. after all, consistency doesn’t really matter when discussing a show that doesn’t value it

but i do have an answer of sorts. the fact remains that clara’s s7b arc is not gender specific. she could have, in a hypothetical gender-neutral world, been the impossible boy, and nothing would have changed plotwise (the touches of sexist attitude towards her bear no relevance on the narrative). amy, on the other hand, with her schroedinger’s pregnancy, marriage dilemma (‘should i take my husband’s name?’) and ‘love triangle’, as well as river’s highly sexualised ‘wife’ role, are gender-specific and therefore misogynistic. yes, you could say that being the impossible girl makes clara a “manic pixie dream girl”, unrelatable to the average viewer and a Walking Plot Device, predestined by fate itself to meet the doctor, etc etc, but that doesn’t fall under sexism, and it’s not out of place in a series in which moving the story forward takes priority over anything else. nobody says this stuff about rose, despite her bad wolf impossible goddess of time arc being in fact quite similar! tl;dr obviously i haven’t gotten to later seasons yet, and my thoughts on her might change, but for now i stand by clara oswald. her arc coheres. her unreality makes her real

[ebenelephant]

oh it's so bad but all I remember from late 11/early 12 era is that I really disliked clara. don't know why, just did.

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Disclaimer: This post is going to be Anti Moffat for anyone who’s reading and is a fan you’ve been warned.  

“The Wedding of River Song” is the thirteenth episode and aside from being a boring episode it was, unfortunately, also my least favorite season finale.

The Good: I haven’t watched Classic Who, but I do know the Brigadier is a very important person in the Doctor’s life and I saw his character in one of the episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Having his death in the show to reflect that of the actor’s was incredibly beautiful, and I liked that it seemed to be the moment the Doctor realized it was his time reminding me a lot of Ten and Wilf. The different settings where time is happening all at once looked really cool, and there were some funny jokes especially with Emperor Churchill.

The Bad: I think the reason I feel like I don’t know Amy and Rory that well is b/c instead of developing them as characters for two seasons now we keep getting fake/different versions of them, there’s always a plot twist of “oh actually that wasn’t the real version of them” and frankly it’s tiring. This finale felt like a rehashed poorly done version of previous concepts. All the “voices” saying they’ll help reminded me of everyone thinking of the Doctor at the end of S3, and the different realities reminded me of the end of S5. The Doctor leaving Dorium’s head again in that place was horrible, why not take him to his home or at least some fancy hotel? 

The River storyline being the absolute worst:  That comment about how River spends her days in prison and her nights with him was disgusting, if she didn’t really kill him why on earth is the Doctor making sure she’s serving time?? The fact that we’ve seen her slip in and out of prison easily so many times leads to the horrifying implication that the Doctor just takes her out whenever he pleases like she’s some sort of...idk but that was awful. I genuinely did go into Moffat’s era trying to keep an open mind when it came to her character b/c I was under the impression it was going to be an interesting love story with their timelines not matching. But this has fallen apart in the most horrible ways with everything regarding River seemingly being tacked on w/o any actual thought. How in the world did River convince Ten to trust her in the library? He said that she knew his name, but here he didn’t actually tell her his name...unless later he tells her to fulfill that paradox. But even then I really thought that he would grow to love her in his own way, but the way he treated her here was awful “I don’t want to marry you” and “you embarrass me”. The fact that she loves him when he acts like that with her is probably my least favorite thing Moffat could have ever done. On that same note River saying no one loves the Doctor more than her would feel far more impactful if we actually saw them interacting more in a healthy way, instead we’re just constantly told that they are going on trips and we’re to assume they enjoy spending time with each other when on screen I’ve never once gotten the sense that he actually cares for her. She wanted to rewrite time itself instead of killing him which I suppose I could understand her doing if they’d had a more believable love story, but her relationship with him seems more obsessive and toxic than anything. She knew them touching would cause time to move forward and fix itself, but she wouldn’t allow it until he married her essentially blackmailing him. And Eleven only marrying her to whisper his escape plan seemed horribly manipulative as well, it’s obvious it matters far more to her than him and for him to play into that obsession seems really dark. And I’m not even sure if that counts as their wedding if he didn’t tell her his name? I don’t know enough about the lore, but I was under the impression from the library episode that it was a requirement. 

The Unresolved: Apparently there’s a bigger story to tell with the Trenzalore stuff.

Overall I feel disappointed, I have now watched six series of DW and my biggest concern is that I was so unbelievably bored during this episode and several others in this series. The Doctor telling Churchill how everything played out felt like someone was reading the script out to me instead of me watching things play out on screen. I had a really rough time getting through these episodes, but I’m still staying optimistic that it was a dud and next series is better. I think the thing I feel the saddest about is that I don’t find myself loving the characters as much as I used to in the past, Amy has really grown on me, but even then I don’t feel the same attachment I do to the other companions I’ve seen.  

[readitwatchitwriteit]

Personally, I never cared much for Clara. I think it would have been more interesting to see more of River or Bill. They both brought more interesting things to the scene and to the doctor's personality.

[khruschevshoe]

Just rewatched The Girl In the Fireplace for the first time in about nine years and Steven Moffat really read the Time Traveller's Wife one time and decided that every single woman companion he was going to write on the show (with the exception of Bill, and since she's a lesbian, she literally couldn't fall for the Doctor) was going to meet the Doctor as a child and then fall in love with him later on, didn't he? Reinette snogged him when she met him as an adult. Amy snogged him the day before she was getting married. River had, well, every single thing about her arc, birth to death. Even Clara, after being introduced as just friends, is revealed to have met the Doctor as a teenager and then is revealed to fancy him in the regeneration episode. Like, it's an absolutely bizarre and a little bit uncomfortable recurring plot point that these women met a man briefly as a child, imprinted on him, and fell in love/had a sexual interest in him/were obsessed with him as an adult, making large portions of their lives from childhood revolve around this man. Like...a bit of a yikes.

[ghost-bison]

hot take maybe but i'd definitely have a crush on eleven if he'd been written by rtd

[slippingbetweenthestars]

Heads up to those interested and in the appropriate countries (USA for sure, not sure if this is running elsewhere): Best Buy is running a sale on Doctor Who DVD sets. As far as I could see, there are three discounted option: the Eccleston/Tennant era, Smith seasons, and Capaldi seasons). Not sure about how many places have BB, but prices are about 17 USD per set compared to 34-45 USD. If this is of interest, check if your local store sells DVDs. If they don’t or don’t have them in stock, you can have them shipped for a fee.

(just wanted to pass this on because I learned about it from some discord folks, and I’m really happy to be able to have a copy of my own and want to share the opportunity with the interested)

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=doctor+who&_dyncharset=UTF-8&_dynSessConf=&id=pcat17071&type=page&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=&sp=&qp=&list=n&af=true&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&keys=keys

[seaweedstarshine]

Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Sins of the Flesh is really good. Really really good. Experience with certain attitudes can be so isolating, surrounded by people who won’t bother to understand the impact of growing up in that environment (because the world's so progressive now, right), and so — I'm so glad it exists. I also liked the discussion in the interview commentary about how being a monster and doing monstrous things are not mutually exclusive. Like most things, homophobia is pervasive because it is structural. Religious fervor is not inherently bad — “your god is love,” Valarie says to Lily — but as soon as hellfire is brandished around, it's used routinely to empower monstrous things, in a way that becomes unsafe to debate. Especially for young & dependent people who can't escape it.

Conditional love. Moral panics. Purity culture. Self-hate. Mob mentality. This audio. It's timely.

I appreciated what they said in the interviews about not only about the research, but the four rounds of sensitivity readings. I wish the TV show had that level of care sometimes…

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Eleven/Amy/Rory Writing Update

Me, sneaking acknowledgements of the fact that the Doctor seriously and completely loved Rose Tyler, that Eleven still grieves Rose and Donna's losses, an actual arc involving said grief, a little bit of Bad Wolf tinkering out of order, and an apology to Martha all the while building up a serious romantic relationship with Amy and Rory, allowing them both shenanigans and character-development, giving the Eleventh Doctor a chance to maybe even have a family of his own while still occasionally dropping in on old friends AND getting to heal? Actual continuity from Nine and Ten to Eleven AND cutting out a lot of the sexist under-and-over-currents from the River Song plot? More likely than you'd think.

(Also, I started this project at 12:10 a.m. yesterday and I already have 16k total. So I think we can say that I've officially fallen back into my middle school Doctor Who hyperfixation that consumed me for the first semester of eighth grade. It's amazing what rewatching old shows can do to your brain.)