#doctor who is in a tv show theory

[piersb]

Genre / Show

So I've been thinking about this idea that Doctor Who Season One might be about being a TV show, and wondering if the episodes might map onto genres, or perhaps even directly to actual TV shows.

Here's what I've come up with so far...

Christmas Special: Christmas Special / Long Lost Family

Space Babies: Childrens TV / ???

The Devil's Chord: Musical / ???

Boom: Suspense / Danger UXB

73 Yards: Folk Horror / Inside Number 9

Dot and Bubble: Science Fiction / Black Mirror

Rogue: Regency / Bridgerton

Some of these are obviously a bit of a push (looking at you in particular here, Danger UXB) but I'm wondering if there might be something in it.

[ovenproofowl]

So... d'you think Cherry remembered the absolute batshit stuff Mrs Flood told her before they got dusted or we just sweeping that under the rug?

[dandelionjack]

antiGRAV? it’s antimav doctor, everyone knows this, you claim to be a tech whiz and yet

[ragnorfalling]

spearhead - pertwee ref

bad wolf & bells - TV 📺THEORY📺CONFIRMED

good man goes to war - big ass reveal

church on ruby road - self explanatory

[anovertureinyellow]

I think it's really interesting that Fifteen's sonic was used to mute and unmute something again like in the Devil's Chord. Add that fact to all the complaints that it looks weirdly like a TV remote. Truman show theory truthers how are we doing

[mwagneto]

no but like normally the doctor disappearing would've been when the intro played like ruby would've looked around frantically and said doctor?? doctor!!!! and then bam. intro. but instead we didn't get one at all... no doctor no intro.... like he's connected to the show itself......

[rowanthestrange]

Layer 1: The Doctor and Ruby do a song and dance number styled as a non-diegetic/non-canon one unusually (in fact uniquely) for the show.

Layer 2: The song involves doing the twist and talking about a twist in terms of narrative.

Layer 3: End usually means “end of the story” and the song is at the end of the episode but also portending events presumably at the end of the season itself.

Layer 4: The song is actually happening diegetically i.e. in-universe.

Layer 5: Murray Gold is playing the piano in-universe.

Layer 6: So in-universe the Doctor is thinking of things being like a story which has a twist in it and is inspired to sing and dance that.

Layer 7: There’s an actor at the end, in the credits, called Susan Twist, who’s been popping up sometimes multiple times an episode as different people.

Layer 8: Her name genuinely is Susan Twist and Russell cast her specifically for that purpose.

Am I missing anything?

[heresmyfiddlestick]

alrighty so

Bridgerton, Strictly, and James Bond all mentioned, adding onto Davina McCall, Star Trek

“Cushy”, “okay”, ���TV” all interesting words to Emily, adding onto foundled, spoor, smelt, chapping

The vitamin string quartet-ass covers of pop songs really fucking with whether we’re supposed to understand the music as diegetic or not, especially when we’ve been told there’s a tenuous distinction in The Devil’s Chord

direct references to an earlier character intro (Rogue paralleling Jack) just like I’m Space Babies (Ruby paralleling Rose)

aliens that are lured in by plot twists

also flashbacks to reveal previously unknowable information

it’s bringing up The Distancing Effect for me, being forcibly pulled out of the spectacle of something through uncanny elements and asked to reevaluate it. What happens when the characters in a tv show get dissociated from their show and have to reevaluate their existences? Who the fuck is Susan twist

this is to say nothing of Rogue’s reference to his “new boss”, harkening back to the Meep’s cryptic message…

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

crack theory number two: Jack Harkness is Ruby Sunday's father. Mother. Whatever. We know he can get pregnant, it's canon, 51st century biology and all. Who's the dad? Eh, fuck it, insert your choice of randos here. The Doctor's her dad and/or stepdad. Rogue's her other stepdad. Rose and River can both be stepmoms by proxy. LOVE WINS.

[truebluewhocanoe]

73 yards reaction

ngl after finishing that episode I went from "What the fuck even was that" to "That was dumb and made no sense at all" to "Oh, Russell says it's supposed to be a Welsh folk tale, okay, huh" to "Wait no that's actually great."

This episode did something that none of the other Supernatural Things(TM) episodes did: it committed to making no sense. Church on Ruby Road made perfect sense, The Giggle and The Devil's Chord made just enough sense to not really make satisfactory levels of sense, but this episode was just... inexplicable. Where did the Doctor go? What was the woman saying to everyone? What was the woman signing with her hands? Why were all the Welsh people such jerks?How did Old Woman Ruby go back and become the semperdistans? My first thought was "there was a TON of crucial details lost somewhere in cut drafts" but no, it's a folk tale, it doesn't have to make sense and it shouldn't make perfect sense. It makes poetic sense, maybe (the fairy circle is made of hopes and dreams, Old Ruby finds hope at the end of her life that no one will abandon her, she becomes the very thing that never abandons herself) but it doesn't make scientific sense, it doesn't even try. And that's how you really commit to a fantastical turn in a sci-fi show.

(Also: doing an episode that is based on folk tales, that is, it's not just fantasy but a fantastical story, is excellent fodder for tv show theory. For some reason, Ruby's life consistently tends towards fiction...)

(Also also: the episode did a good job of feeling really long, which is impressive because it's very hard to create a false sense of time when experiencing fiction, so, good job. Cutting out the intro in particular was a clever move.)

[pitynostars]

so. are they seeing the camera crew behind ruby

[cerulean-renegade]

made this post a few weeks ago about the shot with ruby looking like a tv with visual snow.

intentional or unintentional, i think the visual parallels between these two shots are interesting. both are related to ruby’s snow and her past too

[macbethz]

I think roads are pointing to Susan atm but I want Ruby to be an artificial “perfect companion” a la beta rose sooooo bad…the very deliberate rehashing of other companion’s intros especially Rose’s…Russell’s description of her as fundamentally just a “classic companion” is so interesting because who sets out to make a generic character?

[dandelionjack]

is it just me, or does that sound like a reminder a director would give an actor right as they’re about to launch into a scene?

“and, from the top, Ruby, you’re standing in the street, on the phone to your own mother.”

or stage directions in a screenplay: RUBY, standing in the STREET, on the phone to MOTHER.

nothing to do with me.

we’ve been thinking susan twist is “The Director”, but what if she’s not? what if she’s a helpful member of the crew, trying to get through to Ruby and the Doctor in whatever ways she can; and The Director is actually Mrs Flood?

[ragnorfalling]

does this mean we've had a title name drop in every episode this season for the first time ever in doctor who history

[buzzybee26]

I've seen people saying that this season marks a transition from serious with silly elements to silly with serious elements (particularly after the 1st 2 eps) but now that we've had a lot more of the season, I think this is wrong. This season isn't silly with serious elements, it's a serious season wearing the mask of a silly season.

Spoilers under cut

Space Babies looks like it's just "lol babies running space station, lol snot monster, lol farting space ship" at face value, but there's a lot more to unpack from how The Doctor relates the Bogeyman and being the only one of his kind to the underlying themes of abortion legislation and honestly a lot more to unpack than I don't have the brain power to write rn.

Devil's Chord keeps the silly tone, but destroys the world and does some important foreshadowing about Ruby and The One Who Waits. This is the one that leans most into the silliness, but it has the stakes to work with this analysis.

The plot of Boom is "The Doctor steps on a glowy land mine" which is a hilarious sentence and the next time preview for it was absolutely left us with a lot of questions pertaining to how that was going to be a full episode, but it ended up being a thesis on how organised religion, capitalism and war are some of greatest threats to humanity and they all make each other worse. Boom is played straight for pretty much the whole episode, but it looks like a pretty silly premise before you watch it.

The 73 Yards next time preview, whilst creepy, made the episode look a lot cheesier than it ended up being and they ran with this until the reveal that the pub goers were just messing with Ruby, after which we don't get any more stuff like uncomfortable close ups or characters expositing about local folk lore. The horror b-movie is a lie.

And now Dot and Bubble. The brightest episode of the season has the darkest ending so far. At first glance it certainly looks a lot sillier than it is with its bug-eyed monsters and "phone bad" aesthetic. This episode is all about deception. Ricky lies about the home world, Lindy lies about Ricky being alive, but there's more. The residents of Fine Time get the lie of Fine Time. The whole thing is about them looking past a vale to see what's really going on around them. The Doctor and Ruby get the lie that they will save these people. They go in, they try to help and the get cooperation for a bit, but the rich kids' pride and prejudice stops them. We as the audience receive the lie that these characters could be saved in the first place. The episode sets itself up to have a hopeful ending where the rich kids start learning to improve themselves as people in a new home that the Doctor brought them to. We get so focused on that narrative structure that we don't step back and look at the bigger picture. These people think they're so amazing because they don't waste resources with their consumerism and they have followers and they're stuck in a n environment that affirms their egos yet they can't even walk without their bubbles and they mostly get annoyed when the disappearances get brought up. Their egos are so overinflated and they're so used to being in an environment where they can only talk to other people who think and act like them, of course they're not going with the Doctor. They'll use him as long as they think they need him but they refuse to accept that they can't do anything by themselves if they're not in absolute immediate danger because they think they're so amazing. This feels like it should have a somber ending where we mourn the losses and look to a brighter future in the moment because of the tone and structure, but take a step back from it and there was no other way it was going to end.

This whole season has been a tonal lie that's been breaking down as we go and I really hope they do something cool with that idea.