#even the fugitive doctor wasn't planned

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

I've seen this argument made a few times and it really doesn't hold much water because pretty much everything Chibnall did during his era was just a rehash or remix of something that had been done before like the War Doctor, Season 6B, the Cartmel Masterplan, the Celestial Intervention Agency, etc. The whole Timeless Child arc feels like Chibnall desperately trying to get those with Big Finish subscriptions on his side by creating new lore that exist mainly to explain old lore (like the Mobius Doctors) while trying to set the Doctor's origins back to a 1963 status quo. The Chibnall era was just not some great leap forward in terms of storytelling potential, if anything it was the exact opposite, weighing the show down with new forms of its already extensive lore that even the Chibnall himself quickly lost interest in.

[heycupcake]

Been sporadically rewatching 13 lately, and I need to ramble because my god.

(disclaimer: I'm still not caught up with nuwho, missing 12, 11 and half of 10's run. eu-wise, I've only delved deeply into 5's era)

Starting off with the Fugitive's episode, because it almost made me cry. I had no idea of what was going on the first time I watched it; 13 was my first Doctor, so all the lore used to be lost on me.

Now tho? Absolute cinema. Goosebumps all over. 13's world crumbling all around her, I felt it to the bone. Her total rejection of Ruth's Doctor when she rigged that blaster weapon? It was a plan that many incarnations would have come up with, but in that case, she latched onto it like her whole identity was at stake. Maybe she always despised that cruel aspect of herself throughout regenerations, a trait that kept persisting despite not feeling properly hers. Now she knows it comes from a completely unknown part of herself, and it scares her to no end.

"A man is the sum of his memories, a Time Lord even more so." I love how this has become a reoccurring theme for the Doctor. They all are extremely protective of their identities when it comes to memory tampering. They latch onto what they've got and categorically refuse any change.

10 (Human Nature), Ruth and 13 all had to face the same scenario on that regard. When confronted with the choice of becoming someone else, to recover memories from their past that would make them whole but inevitably change them forever, they all tried to keep away from them and stay as they were. 10 and Ruth ultimately didn't have a choice and had to eventually comply, but 13? Nobody was there to force her, and she threw the damn watch in the depths of the TARDIS.

About the TARDIS, what an absolute treasure. 1 believing he stole her when in reality she was his all along. No wonder he chose that old type 40 out of all the other ships he could have taken (either out of reflex or because of some telepathic tampering). An old, abandoned ship that had been waiting for her owner for probably centuries.

The Timeless Child (not the episode). Such an origin story could have made the Doctor a deity; instead it made her a lab rat, kept her "humble". The power balance is still fully on the Time Lords' side, and I love that. She's no chosen one, she's not The Other, she's not a mastermind of any kind. Any unique ability that she had was copied and possibly improved on, making her either standard or obsolete among her peers (like, for all we know, the ability to control one's appearance during regeneration could an update that Tecteun worked on).

So, she's just another alien (sort of like Adric: comes from another universe, has good regenerative abilities, can mutate). I personally wasn't very thrilled with the implications made during 7's run, so i found this a nice way of recontextualizing them, making them more true to the earlier Doctors' nature, but without retconning them. Everything that 7 kept hinting at (in the tv series at least) still works, without losing any importance. And, the Doctor gets to stay the underdog they've always been.

Also, I mean, this alien child, just wandering off and getting kidnapped as a result is the most on-brand thing ever for the Doctor. (I could go on a separate ramble on how many companions found themselves in the same situation, often being kidnapped directly by the Doctor, but I digress. It's hilarious tho. Maybe some unconscious part of the Doctor uses it as a way to deal with their own kidnapping. Who knows)

[paulgadzikowski]

There could be any number of points in the timeline where the Fugitive Doctor could belong, but we deliberately haven't said, 'She sits here.'

I read somewhere that Chibnall's reported he knows where in the Doctor's timeline the fugitive Doctor sits, but hasn't said. (I'm pretty sure he has said, in-text, but that's beside the point right now.) It wasn't a direct quote I saw and this was before he left, and I was left with an impression that he maybe intended to make a reveal someday. It didn't come before he left and this direct quote rather suggests he never intends to make a reveal. I'm good with that, because then the view I wrote into my cartoons' continuity won't be contradicted. Even if a subsequent showrunner retcons it (which sure doesn't look like Davies' plan), to do it in-text will mean it'll have to take the form "yes it happened, and" rather than "no it didn't happen". An alternate explanation or a subtle contradiction rather than an outright denial, the same way no showrunner yet who doesn't like the half-human thing (if any) has explicitly denied it.

"It’s really important, I think, in any era of Doctor Who, for the Doctor to have an emotional journey, to have an arc and go on a voyage of discovery through their time on the show. I always knew this was going to be the arc for Jodie’s Doctor."

CHRIS CHIBNALL ON THE TIMELESS CHILD

[cosmicallyavg]

i really don't know how to lead into this theory/meta post but it's been on my mind since fugitive of the judoon so i have to share because it's becoming relevant again:

the time lords wiped the doctor's memory because they were starting to figure out the corrupt nature of who they were serving.

like... i imagine the doctor didn't really have memory of what happened to them as a child, most of us don't, especially if a bunch of traumatic stuff happened. such as.. i don't know..... being experimented on and abused?? so even if the doctor could remember being the timeless child, the time lords more than likely did some sort of memory wipe before hiring the doctor for the division. i like this post here that theorizes that the division was suppressing the doctor's memory constantly throughout their life to prevent any memories from staying long enough to piece it all together.

i think lee maybe came along during the division, they became good friends (or more 👀) during their time working together on missions and doing the time lords' dirty work. i really like the trope where two people are in love doing dangerous work together and so their emotions for each other fuel them to be like.. the most badass team ever so i just really like to imagine that they were in love don't question me.

(which i also theorize that lee is the master and that the two of them were best friends/lovers during this life like they were/are in their current ones. but i know not everyone wants to hear about that so i'm only going to mention it briefly here because i love thoschei)

maybe lee had knowledge of the child but didn't know the child was now the doctor whom they now work with/associate with/etc. like an urban legend, a folktale that they maybe didn't realize were true until they got to know the doctor and pieced the puzzle together.

so lee and the doctor just become a super powerful duo, like ... the top ranking agents. which i would imagine the division leaders probably held the two to a high regard but also at arm's length away because high performing and smart agents make for self-aware agents who can figure out the agencies' secrets. maybe make big plans to overthrow the corrupt system or what have you.

or maybe they just make plans to run away in hopes of never being found again.... run away to a faraway planet, making use of the time lords' own technology to hide out as humans..... as ruth and lee clayton.

but lee wasn't hiding as a human in fotj, maybe he was afraid that something would go wrong if they both forgot everything. one of them needed to be aware in case danger came around, which more or less worked until gat came along. the judoon weren't looking for anyone but the doctor, so even if lee wasn't disguised as human, he didn't get captured because he wasn't the actual fugitive.

hence i think why gat teased him about being sentimental, and calling him "faithful companion" because im sure word got around that him and the doctor had disappeared, and if gat and lee were part of the team from the flashback scenes in once, upon time, then surely she would have known how close her teammates were, etc, etc. which if you like my idea that they were lovers then im sure the time lords didn't like that they were together and wanted to take every measure possible to separate them and this was their chance.

so after lee was (allegedly) killed, the doctor was alone and probably ended back on gallifrey, where maybe they got another chance before the full memory wipe/life restart. (i can't remember if they showed in the timeless children what the doctor looked like when their memory was wiped? there was only the recreation of it with brendan? so ruth could have been the one to get the memory wipe or there could be one or more regenerations after the fact) which also lee (the master) would have gotten the memory wipe as well since he also knew too much.

and i think that is ultimately why the time lords did what they did. i feel like the alleged memory suppressants were the original plan and it clearly didn't work so they had to take drastic measures to ensure that the doctor or lee never even thought about the timeless child again.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/4/2021: THE RAVEN (1935)

Part of me wishes I had known earlier that this was part of a Universal Poe trilogy with THE BLACK CAT and MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, when I watched the former a few Blogtobers ago...but then again, THE BLACK CAT may have so dominated everything else that it could be best to put a couple of years after that experience, so I could assess THE RAVEN on its own terms. And THE RAVEN is, like, pretty zany.

t appears that the censorious Production Code Administration went after this film pretty aggressively for "running the risk of excessive horror" in its "stark realism", and I am unfortunately ignorant of what grisly delights earlier drafts may have contained. What remains is mainly horrific in concept rather than execution, but that concept allows characters to spew a whole lot of perverted, ridiculous nonsense, and that was good enough to keep me amused. The plot involves a Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi), who has retired from his service to humanity in order to concentrate on building an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired torture dungeon in his basement. When he is pressed to save the life of an injured ballerina, he falls in love with her, and sets about punishing anyone who threatens to stand between them. His chief tool in this endeavor is Edmond Bateman (KARLOFF!), a violent fugitive who Vollin deliberately disfigures as a means of blackmailing him into smiting the doctor's enemies.

Just after Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds) warns Vollin to stay away from his daughter Jean (Irene Ware), the brutish Bateman fortuitously arrives at the doctor's home to beg a favor of plastic surgery. Having murdered two prison guards and burned off a banker's face with a blowtorch, Bateman has concluded that his real problem is his looks: "Ever since I was born, people look at me and say: 'YOU'RE UGLY.' ...Maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things!" Once Bateman is on the slab, Vollin makes him look even more absurd, promising to restore him to a normal state once he has killed Judge Thatcher. At this point I'm thinking, ok, now Bateman looks like nobody who has ever existed, so probably he'll sneak up and snuff out the judge, and no potential witness will be able to finger him OR Vollin...right? But actually, Vollin's plan is a little weirder than that.

In fact, Vollin is such a weird guy that it's hard to imagine missing the fact that he's dangerously nuts. He is at all times lurching, leering, and lingering over some helpless person while making declarations like "Death is my talisman!" and "(I am) a god with the taint of human emotion!" and "A doctor is fascinated by death, and how much pain a man can endure!" Still, Jean brings her fiancé (Lester Matthews) and her father to Vollin's for a weekend slumber party, where their main gripe is that his deformed "servant" Bateman won't stop wandering in and out of their bedrooms, standing behind them, and breathing down their necks while making little frankengroans. It's virtually impossible for Karloff to show off his superior acting chops under these circumstances, but there is something hilarious about him being not exactly threatening, but as awkward as humanly possible at this party full of rich prissy douchebags. You can't help but relate to him: I mean, he's not really a butler or anything. He doesn't even know how to pretend to be one. He's supposed to assassinate one of these guys, but now they all know who he is, and he's totally unmissable even in a dark room. Where's he supposed to go? What's he supposed to do? The whole thing is a nightmare.

Eventually we all make our way down to the torture dungeon with its inevitable pit and pendulum, where Lugosi gets to deliver some of the craziest dialog in the movie. He has moved on from wanting to possess Jean, to just wanting to murder everybody there, and he explains that the mental torture he experiences can only be soothed by physically torturing other people. And sure, we all get the concept of revenge, but it you've never heard it like this: "I tear torture out of myself by torturing YOU!", or, "I'll soon be rid of my torture, and I'll be the sanest man who has ever lived!" The actual presentation of torture in this movie is nowhere near as interesting as the way Vollin talks about it, but luckily for me, he is almost always talking about it.

I don't have any big conclusion to draw about this iteration of THE RAVEN, so I'll just say this: Am I the only person who has been walking around incorrectly assuming that Karloff was a lot taller than Lugosi? I mean I probably got some of that impression from the former's FRANKENSTEIN lifts, but he wasn't always rigged up like that. Maybe it's Karloff's languorous limbs and elongated features that made me think he was just a lot longer of a person than Lugosi, who actually had an inch or two on his rival. But even having seen this movie, in which Lugosi is taller than virtually everybody else on the screen, I'm still having trouble accepting the truth. Maybe in another year or two I'll watch MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and see if Lugosi is taller than all those people, too.

[racketyoldtype40]

the numbering thing (semi-rant)

okay... i know we all have issues with the numbering of the doctors but honestly... are there really that many issues??

for me it's honestly not a big deal listing 1-8, then War, then 9-15 like that. and there's also fugitive but we don't know where she falls in the timeline for certain. if it's between two and three (where she belongs imo) there's still no issue saying "fugitive doctor" like "war doctor".

we can all argue about how the numbering is irrelevant at this point and then trying to find ways to refer to them without finding something that fully works and then circling back to the numbering/titling and round and round we go... so i just stick with that lmao (if it's not your cup of tea though that's completely understandable! to each their own!)

also i get the sentiment of calling ncuti the fourteenth doctor but as far as we know there's really no reason to honestly. this isn't a war doctor situation where we learn of an incarnation between two existing ones. this isn't a meta-crisis situation where there's an offshoot of the doctor that isn't an incarnation. it's a weird regeneration! certainly! but unless there's justifiable reasoning (like if the toymaker/nph *really* messed with it or something) then tennant is also fourteen. i'm sorry. he is what came right after jodie. the next incarnation. the fourteenth doctor (even tho it looks like he's essentially the same as ten). depending on what happens in the narrative, i might feel differently, but it's not looking likely tbh

also i know people have talked about the implications and undertones of everything but... i really don't think it's that deep. it is TRULY unfortunate, but it's not some scheme or anything. anyone can say "rtd is undermining ncuti gatwa with david tennant and therefore he's racist" but with the way this all unfolded (which is so doctor who) that statement gets murkier (esp when rtd has been championing and praising ncuti left right and center!)

rtd made it clear to the bbc that david and catherine wanted to come back and asked if that was something they could fit into their plans. after that there were talks and russell became the next showrunner. they cast a new doctor, but ncuti wasn't going to be available for anything in 2023 - the big diamond anniversary year

rtd refused to choose someone else just because it would be more convienient for filming. so what does he do? he takes his previous idea of a short-term stunt cast, mixes that with the fact that david and catherine want to come back, and boom there's three specials for 2023 before his pick for the doctor comes in and leads the new era.

ncuti was announced when/how he was because the casting was about to leak. david was announced when/how he was because he was going to be seen in public filming for the show. they couldn't spoil power of the doctor so they had to keep the context secret.

i'm not saying this is ideal, it's far from it, but it's not like rtd is a racist for having david tennant as the fourteenth doctor. there's more context behind the way this unfolded then how the public was told these things via social media. besides, there's plenty of actual stuff to examine with his previous tenure as showrunner that's genuinely problematic, especially with race

no matter what your thoughts are, keep it respectful pls and ty <3