#doctor who rtd

[ncutii-gatwa]

really makes me laugh seeing some people complain doctor who is gay now. babe THIS aired in 2005. doctor who has been gay a long damn time get with the program

[itsclydebitches]

Love it when the kinda half-formed observations you make about an episode finally come to the forefront.

Watching the start of "Dot and Bubble": Hmm, everyone in this episode is very... white.

Halfway through: The Doctor certainly continues to stand out, especially in that bright red sweater amongst all the pastels

Lindy freaking out about the Doctor and Ruby being in the same room together: I suppose that could be due to some cultural taboo about interacting in-person when everyone is supposed to communicate via bubble, but that doesn't track with what we've seen of her work day...

The "twist" that the chronically online, all white, super rich, entitled to the point of satire, willing to sacrifice others without hesitation, oh so eager to colonize people living in a literal bubble (TWO bubbles) are *gasp!* actually, devastatingly racist...

Yeah, that's not a twist. That's all deliberately interconnected. The episode didn't suddenly move from an argument about social media use to an argument about racism; the two historically go hand-in-hand.

[mwagneto]

the companion will go oh god doctor who is that?? and the doctor will get all serious and somber and say listen. he's the most evil creature in the universe. he's the worst enemy i've ever faced. he's horrible and unpredictable and you can never ever let your guard down. and then the villain will walk into the room like this

[justarandombrit]

I don't know

[paradox-n-bedrock]

me in big fandoms: oh cool, it's so active and there's so many people to vibe with, this is amaz-

*finds my niche angle that appeals to approximately six people*

me: okay, folks, it's you and me now

[claraoswalds]

The Giggle // The Devil's Chord

+bonus

[ace-whovian-neuroscientist]

it feels like this season, doctor who is dealing with the fundamental rules changing. it was strictly sci-fi, you could always logic your way out of any problem with technobabble and a clever plan.

but it feels like so much of the plot is wrapped around poking at the medium of being a television show, of being a story. we have multiple characters looking at the viewers, we have the maestro playing the theme tune, we have such clear parallels to season 1 (2005) that it feels like a universal coincidence. like the whoniverse itself is recognizing its a medium and playing with its tropes.

the genre is changing too - we are leaning more and more into fantasy, rules like you would see in stories about fae, not sci-fi. musical numbers out of nowhere that no one seems to question, with rain inside and musical sidewalks. the vocabulary of rope and power in coincidences. hell, even the way that time travel works is changing! suddenly stepping on a butterfly (specifically a trope in scifi that has been mocked/debunked previously) has consequences. the doctor swiping away the translation circuit's effects with the wave of a hand and breathing life back into a creature without breaking a sweat.

not to mention the way that space babies foreshadows to a universe that creates a story with all the ingredients it knows are supposed to be there (re: bogeyman - there's supposed to be a villain so it made one)

something IS going on. there is a bigger player - bigger than tecteun, bigger than the toymaker. could it be rtd just having a grand ole time using canon as is playground? maybe. but i hope it's something cool.

[uncharted-constellations]

I’m Me

[ymnfilter]

everytime the doctor gets out of a pinch, everytime he somehow survives, everytime he somehow meets the right person at the right time who says just the right thing and helps him save the day, all I can think about is bad wolf and rose tyler and how all that one ordinary nineteen year old girl wanted, was for the man she loved to be safe and so she saw everything thing that ever was and everything that ever could be and rearranged time itself so that he would always survive and now he's still out there, having lost her a millennia ago, but still safe somehow because that's how she wanted it to be.

[anthonygaycrowley]

did y'all know that donna's husband in forest of the dead was meant to be a trans man, and they just couldn't find a way to make it explicit in-text

donna noble manages to get herself a trans family in every version of reality huh

[artronenergy]

I keep thinking about the not-things (and the midnight entity, the scherzo creature, the solitract, etc.), and how they all, in their own ways, specialize in mimicking people. Copying voices and faces and thoughts and mannerisms is ubiquitous for creatures that live in the fringes of spacetime. Which makes sense; how else is a kinless creature from an empty place supposed to learn and evolve if not by latching on and copying the first tangible thing they encounter? What's a better way to escape into that wider universe than looking like the people there, encouraging them to bring you back to their world? Integrating into our universe is functionally their equivalent to leaving the nest and learning how to fly, whether that be malicious or harmless, conscious or instinctual. So, on that note: Consider the Doctor, another being found on the fringes of the universe. Consider how they imprint on people after regeneration ("like a chick hatching from an egg", to quote a deleted line from the Christmas Invasion). The way one time lord in the audios regenerates into a bird after spending years on a bird planet, and the Doctor, after spending so much time on earth, has been described as half human. Consider the way the child Tecteun found just happened to look Gallifreyan, the way this is directly paralleled with the Qurunx, a creature that takes on a form that "we instinctively want to protect, as a defence". Consider this:

The Time Lords view regeneration as a conduit for immortality, but what if the actual purpose, the naturally evolved trait that would matter to a lonely creature from outside the universe, is mimicry?

[crystal-mouse]

Ok but can we please talk about how groundbreaking it is for THE 60th anniversary episode to be SO trans positive- like yes, it was a little heavy-handed in places in the way that cis writers write trans dialogue and think about gender, but in considering how the climate is *especially* in the uk rn, for Doctor Who to go, no actually- trans rights, acceptance and love/support?? To normalise trans people as normal people and that a trans woman is INTEGRAL and FOREFRONT to the narrative and saves the day on prime time television on the longest running drama AND highly awaited episode?? It's massive.

[lackadaisycal-art]

Six days until the 60th anniversary specials and I cry every time Bernard Cribbins is on screen <3

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

The Ninth Doctor is notable because he may not be the most widely loved Doctor (although he is loved by many), but I think he might be one of the least hated. Doctor Who fans are a divisive bunch and every Doctor and companion has people that love and hate them. Yet I have never seen anybody hate on the ninth doctor even once. He has zero haters which is good because he deserves zero haters

[toweringclam]

Everyone trying to make sense of 73 yards is kinda missing the point, IMO. It's a faerie story. It's dream logic. It's the Twilight Zone. It's running on pure vibes.

We're not in the realm of science fiction anymore. This is Occult.

[gallifvrey]

catherine tates lack of doctor who knowledge to this day is my absolute favorite thing