#gallifrey time war 4

[trailmixtime]

the chicken reviews

after time war 3 i began rating gallifrey episodes based on how many chickens appeared in them. last night i found the reviews again, so i figured i'd post them here so i can continue the tradition when war room 2 comes out :D

(quick disclaimer: these are just fun reviews, not to be taken too seriously)

enjoy :)

time war 4

time war 4.1: deception

no actual chickens, but there is a reference to a Large Beast when leela's trying to get back to the tardis. no description is given, so it is entirely possible it was a Very Large Chicken. but, given the lack of description, we can't know for sure. 1/10.

time war 4.2: dissolution

once again, no chickens, despite them being on a luscious green planet. no chickens are mentioned. if you listen carefully, you can hear some birds chirping in the background, but none of them are chickens. disappointing. 0/10.

time war 4.3: beyond

no physical chickens yet. however, it's made clear the ravenous can possess characteristics of that which they eat, so it's possible a ravenous that ate a chicken has characteristics of a chicken, but we don't know for sure. 0.5/10

time war 4.4: homecoming

no chickens appear. no chickens are mentioned. there aren't even any animals i could try to headcanon as chickens. rassilon probably killed all the chickens. -100/10.

war room 1

the last days of freme: -100/10

no chickens, and whatever chickens may have been there previously, died. very disappointing.

the passenger: 0/10

no chickens. no places there could plausibly have been chickens :( once again left disappointed.

collateral victim: 0.01/10

once again, no chickens :( however, there was the POTENTIAL for chickens, and i will give it .01 points for that.

the first days of phaidon: 0.01/10

same as the previous story: no chickens, but there is potential for chickens, and therefore it gets the .01 points.

[false-anomaly]

ALSO ALSO okay i just finished Damned If You Don't and that ENDING!!! Part of me hopes they retcon The Time Vampire and let him find her alive so they can get through the War together & part of me hopes they leave it canon,, like. Do I actually want Leela/Narvin to be happy and to survive YES of course but...... I am a sucker for a tragedy I Fear.........

[notthetraveler]

At this point I am speedrunning through Gallifrey let's be honest

[doctor-who-binge]

Davros speaking to 10: The Doctor, the man who keeps running never looking back, because he dare not, out of shame, this is my final victory Doctor

..... This face coming back, is it perhaps The Doctor finally looking back? Mature enough to handle pride and shame equally.

[intuitive-revelations]

Random headcanon I came up with early this morning, because I’ve been thinking about Gallifreyan language recently:

The reason why so many Time Lord things are decorated with circular Gallifreyan, often too impractically to actually be read (eg. on the Moment), is because it’s a cultural touchstone that remains from pre-/early-Pythian Gallifrey’s use of magical runes and sigils.

Presumably it was more typically Old High Gallifreyan used in that time (though The Timeless Children does seemingly confirm circular Gallifreyan existed at least as far back as Rassilon's time, if not earlier), however. Twelve describes it as ‘the language of the Pythia’ in The Lost Magic, and as Eleven says in The Time of Angels:

ELEVEN: There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.

This is obviously very reminescent of the Carrionites' (themselves from the Dark Times too) "word-based science" from The Shakespeare Code:

MARTHA: What did you do? TEN: I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic. MARTHA: But there's no such thing as magic. TEN: Well, it's just a different sort of science. You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. Carrionites use words instead.

In other words, while they probably weren't actually intended as such and may have their own specific meaning, whether they be poetry, namesakes, histories, instructions, whatever... these are basically protective wards:

[ID: Five screenshots of Circular Gallifreyan in New Who.

1. Rassilon's Inner High Council meeting in The End of Time Part 2. The table and headrests are inscribed with circular Gallifreyan.

2. The Moment in Day of the Doctor. Gallifreyan writing bends round the edges of the wooden frame.

3. The 'whirligig' rotar in Eleven's second TARDIS, inscribed with individual Gallifreyan symbols.

4. Set photo of the glowing Gallifreyan writing on the steps of Thirteen's TARDIS.

5. Tecteun's laboratory in The Timeless Children. Circular Gallifreyan lines the light above her, and a door in the background.]

As a side note - if they actually are kind-of intended as a form of protection, perhaps this is why we were only introduced to Circular Gallifreyan in New Who, despite it seemingly existing through Gallifreyan history. Because it was retroactively inserted into Gallifreyan culture as a form of defense during the War in Heaven / Last Great Time War?

Regardless, this also opens up questions how many other Time Lord traditions are holdovers from the Dark Times.

For example, who's to say that the renegade naming tradition didn't begin as a form of protection from hexes - either from hostile forces in the pre-anchoring universe, or from oppressive magic-users back on the homeworld? This may also be connected to the change in Gallifreyan name format before and after the Intuitive Revelation (eg. ancestral -sti and -sor names), though shifting power structures, gender roles etc. presumably played a role too.

Heck, is this one reason why Gallifrey's own name has changed over its history? From Jewel to Gallifrey in Rassilon's time to try and protect it from vengeful Pythian curses. From Gallifrey to just 'the Homeworld' in the War to protect it from new rituals of alternative histories and paradox?

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

Whenever I think about how the Doctor and Donna causing the eruption in "Fires of Pompeii" narratively functions as a parallel/microcosm to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey in the Time War I go insane and have to lie down.

Because this time he isn't alone, Donna is with him and he says the words out loud "Push this lever and it's over. Twenty thousand people." and he is waiting for her reaction and she puts her hands on his and they pull the lever together. And this time he doesn't have to make the choice alone, so he subsequently doesn't have to carry the burden of guilt alone.

And maybe, just maybe, this can be seen as his first step into his healing journey regarding his Time War guilt. Donna Noble - a woman who he grows to love and admire and regard as his guiding light - made the same choice (yes on a much smaller scale, but functionally the same choice) he did when he destroyed Gallifrey. He will never ever forgive himself (at least during his time as Ten), but maybe when he realizes that he doesn't blame her and doesn't want her to feel guilty for what she did in Pompeii he starts to be a little kinder to himself. For Donna's sake.

I really believe that during season 4 both Donna and the Doctor are on a healing journey. They make each other better, they begin to heal the wounds of the other person. Donna's self-esteem grows and the Doctor's guilt complex gets a little less heavy. Just a little. Baby steps. But they are walking them together.

And then Journey's End happens, and their healing process gets interrupted and without Donna nothing makes sense and he almost turns into Time Lord Victorious (this arc is so insane)

Because why should he stick to the rules of a universe that took Donna from him?

But he gets stopped. Adelaide stops him and later he himself recognizes that he's lived too long.

And he turns from the man who regrets into the man who forgets.

And then day of the doctor happens. And Gallifrey falls no more. And yet, he still has to live with the memories of 4 incarnations (war, nine, ten, eleven) and hundreds of years during which he believed he killed his own people. But now he has an excuse not to face that.

Anyway, thesis statement: Donna helped the Doctor confront his Time War guilt complex in a way no companion before or after her did. (shoutout to Martha though for making him open up about Gallifrey!!!)

And neither the character of the Doctor in the show or the show itself narratively ever continued to truly confront the trauma of the Time War guilt or continued the healing process Donna started.

Until now.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 3

The Master's father, Marnal, wrote an episode for Star Trek but took his name off it after they changed it too much.

The Fifth Doctor took Tegan back and time to kill that same would-be-dictator as a baby but was also unable to go through with it.

Nyssa once turned the Fifth Doctor into a vampire.

The Time Lords created the Were Lords, a species of lycanthropic soldiers who could regenerate, to fight for them in the Vampire Wars.

The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors have different enough blood that the Fourteenth Doctor was able to resist blood control that used the Tenth Doctor's blood.

The Garvond is a monstrous entity in the APC Net of the Matrix composed of all the demented, evil sides of the Time Lords.

The First Great Time War was between the Time Lords and the Order of the Black Sun.

The Veil was fond of the Twelfth Doctor and considered them to be companions. The Veil hoped that the Twelfth Doctor would take them with him when he escaped from the confession dial.

Jack Harkness described the Midnight entity as someone who could eat its way into a person's brain and steal their voice. Given that it is unknown where he got this information, this suggests that Jack might have had an encounter at some point.

Both the Doctor and the Master have used the name "Merlin" before.

The final incarnation of the Master was a highly destructive entropy wave in one timeline.

The Eleventh Doctor once returned to the Library with Amy Pond, but he never mentioned River Song. They encountered Book Monsters.

The Doctor's first TARDIS was a Type 50, but they were left behind when the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey. This left them angry and hurt that the Doctor had replaced them, so they ran off from Gallifrey to find him.

According to the Seventh Doctor, the Rani and her giant rodent came to his graduation party.

There exists a canned drink called Sontaran Up that a Sontaran was seen drinking.

The Sixth Doctor's method for fighting the Weeping Angels included winking one eye at a time, so the Angels were always being observed. Given that he was almost immediately sent back in time where he encountered the Tenth Doctor, this isn't a very good method.

Due to similarities between the life stories of the Doctor and the Devil, there are many races who believe they are the same being.

The Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz, and Dan once watched a production of Cinderella. While trying to make it more exciting, the Doctor accidentally replaced all the characters and props with the real versions, who began to attack each other and the audience.

The Doctor had thirteen children before running away on Gallifrey who were all killed (or perhaps a better word would be 'culled') by the Watch after Susan's birth.

The Doctor has had other children over the years (although they did not recognize all of them as such) including but not limited to Miranda Dawkins, Edward Grove, the Sound Creature, Daqar Keep, Jenny, and the Sapling.

Gostak was one of the First Doctor's tutors who he admired very much, but similar to Borusa, he went mad and had to be stopped by several incarnations of the Doctor.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

[sadcoms]

AU where Rose stayed with the Time Lord Doctor after Journey’s End and they start to argue more like they did in S1 because the Doctor is doing his “I never would” thing and Rose is now saying “but sometimes you HAVE to” which causes him to start down another Davros-inspired spiral about how he’s “turned her into a weapon” and she’s like...actually travelling across dimensions trying to fight eternal darkness brought about by a ton of genocidal aliens will do that to you regardless!

Because Rose was never for pacifism-above-all-else. The episode before Dalek Harriet Jones straight up says she’s a very violent young woman because Rose (not unreasonably) wants the Slitheen to be blown up after they murdered countless people. Same with the Nestene Consciousness - but the Doctor says he has to give it a chance, and that is what she mirrors back at him in Dalek. This is usually why the pair works, because if one doesn’t have mercy on or compassion for someone the other one usually will (eg Cassandra). That’s why Ten is even willing to give Davros a chance, though it’s exacerbated by a lot of guilt around the Time War, especially when it kicked off in-part because of what he did, and failed to do, in Genesis of the Daleks.

And that is what Davros never got - that Rose had already seen the Doctor’s soul and loved him anyway; that part of their souls are the same because they helped each other grow. And it’s the same for all of the companions this era, whether it’s Jack saying he never doubted the Doctor would kill him, or Donna seeing him murder the Racnoss and still regretting not travelling with him, or Martha (somehow) forgiving the Doctor for the year that never was and for everything he burdened her with.

Because I think what Davros and the Doctor came to see as him turning people into weapons was actually just people willingly taking on the burden he carried. Again, a lot of people sort of write Tentoo and Rose off as the dalek genocide couple, but what exactly was the alternative? Let them destroy the universe? The Doctor is a coward, any day, and that makes complete sense as a reaction to already bearing two genocides on his shoulders, but it’s also that cowardice that makes other people step up and be brave, which usually means sacrificing themselves, and the Doctor carries that too. That is why Martha gets the direct parallel to the Doctor with the Osterhagen key - both are willing to burn their planets to save the rest of the universe, and Martha already spent S3 being more like the Doctor than he was because he was so broken by grief. By Season 4, the Doctor is already so self-destructive and so self-loathing that only he, the "true" Time Lord, can be the arbiter of genocides and who can’t be. Even when it comes to Martha, or to another exact replica of himself.

(Never mind that he makes essentially the same decision the Metacrisis Doctor and Martha did again in End of Time when he sends Gallifrey back into hell, but hey, he got there in the end.)

And it’s one of the reasons why the Doctor’s so reliant on the Master. I’m not sure he would have gone to get his ‘reward’ had some of that weight of destroying Gallifrey again not been shared with another Time Lord. Ten does, ultimately, put humans on a pedestal and does his best to protect them even when they are willing to share his burden (note that Tentoo destroying the Daleks means Donna doesn't have to take on any of the burdens Rose or Martha did, so she stays the least militarised companion). He simultaneously wants that other Time Lord judgement while needing humans as another perspective.

All of this to say that, I think most people understand that Ten being with someone but especially with Rose would have stopped him going Time Lord Victorious, but they don't necessarily understand why. TLV comes from his desire to save everyone, because all the loss he's seen and has caused is too much. Not only does having Rose help soothe that, but she also specifically could have helped ground the Doctor back to where he was morally in the first two series, which is quite different from where he is by S4.

(Also The Next Doctor would have been an absolutely wild story for Rose and the Doctor to have gone on next. They arrive thinking they might have a fun Christmas and then they have to confront the fact that the Battle of Canary Wharf is still following them and how when they lost each other they lost everything. And how the villain in that is defeated by the Doctor showing her herself, which is what Davros tried to do the Doctor.)

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Companions Ranked by how Much the Rest of their Life was Ruined

Not included: companions who only went on one or two adventures or popped in and out of the story on their own

Also not included: Dan and Ruby (not enough info on the aftermath)

Also also not included: Mel (not to the end of her run yet) and Ace (not to her at all yet)

1. Bill: had a good time traveling but then was kept prisoner in a creepy hospital for 10 years and then turned into a cyberman so she still wins

2. Adric: blew himself up at like 15 trying to impress the Doctor, who had been a decent parental figure but then changed and was never around when he was needed and not at all supportive. Also he got tortured a lot

3. Romana: held prisoner and tortured for 20 years and then had to lead Gallifrey through some of their most chaotic episodes with no trauma support at all. To be fair that wasn’t really the Doctor’s fault, but he also didn’t offer the support she needed

4. Peri: had a terrible time traveling where he insulted her constantly and never took her discomfort seriously. Then was not just left behind she was straight up abandoned mid-adventure when she was about to be killed for science. And then she didn’t get an explanation and he didn’t come back and she had no way to get back to her own planet or time so really her only practical option was to hitch a ride from the sleazy blood thirsty warlord who wanted to marry her. And this was only supposed to be a fun 3-month trip, not even a way of life for her

5. Stephen: this isn’t really the Doctor’s fault, but the eu is awfully hard on him. He was a king and had a family only to lose a child, see the others tear the family and kingdom apart, and become a depressed hermit

6. Dodo: the eu is just as hard on her. Apparently she ends up institutionalized, interrogated by the Master, homeless, and then assassinated

7. Martha: gets points for having been completely alone in a hellscape that never happened for a year, and for having to recover from that with her family, but the rest of her life was pretty alright actually

8. Zoe: she was smart enough to realize she’d aged two years and pretty much destroyed her own life and ended up at the center of an experiment conspiracy because she was so desperate to remember

9. Clara: honestly she’s only this high because of the making the Doctor forget her bit. Being stuck dead is awful, but also she has a companion and a tardis and full run of the universe first and that’s really the only way her story could end without her actually staying dead

10. Nyssa: her life was hard but in a way she chose and she got to help people

11. Amy and Rory: It sucked being thrown back in time but they got to stay together and live out full lives

12. Sarah: she’s the type of person where regular life could never bring her joy again after everything she’d seen. Also she did pretty regularly get stalked, kidnapped, and shot, but she brought most of that on herself

13. Donna: gets some points for the initial impact of her ending where she lost all the confidence and experience she had gotten and went back to an aimless and unsatisfied life. But she did find love and have a kid and eventually get her memories back so she ended up alright

14. Susan: she’s in the middle because she did live a decently full life but she also lost her husband and son in horribly violent ways and then got drafted into a universe-wide war where a lot of people saw her as untrustworthy because her grandfather was a draft dodger

15. Rose: got trapped in an alternate dimension but like, with her mom and dead dad and eventually fake version of the guy she loved. Overall it wasn’t that bad for her

16. Jamie: he lived a fairly normal life but apparently as an old man ended up the weird guy on the edge of town that everyone thought the war had driven mad because he’d remembered the Doctor

17. Vicki: she was sort of fine, but also living that far in the ancient past had to be pretty hard on a daily basis

18. Harry: I don’t think the Doctor had really any effect on his life. He’s only this high because he did vanish fairly young

19. Tegan: by all accounts the rest of her life was completely uneventful and she hated every moment of it

20. Yaz: it was sad but in the way you know she’ll be ok and find happiness

21. Polly and Ben: their lives were kind of rough but in very normal human ways so it’s fine

22. Turlough: literally nothing ever happened to him again. I think the eu forgot he existed

23. Victoria: lived a pretty quiet and normal life

24. Jo: there are differing canons on whether or not she got divorced and how many kids she had, but she was alright

25. Graham and Ryan: they were good. They got to be each other’s family and the world’s heroes

26. Ian and Barbara: they were fine actually. I don’t even think their careers suffered

27. Liz: I think she actually ended up better off because of her association with the Doctor

[thethirdromana]

I'm watching the edited version of the War Games (it's on BBC4 right now and my parents wanted to see it), so, have some thoughts.

I'm normally a bit iffy on colourisation but this is genuinely very well done. The titles are gorgeous.

Squishing it into 90 mins makes the opening very zippy. The pace feels a shade too quick if anything.

It also gets a bit weird when the cliffhanger is turned into continuous action.

This is despite the fact that they only cut about 10 mins of episode one.

They drink a lot of tea in the War Games but it comes across as even more when you cut out of the non-tea-drinking bits.

OK, there's some very fun editing around the redcoat and Buckingham remembering the mist coming down. (Dare I say possibly an improvement on the original?)

But then it goes back to feeling too zippy, but least because episode 3 is brutally cut. Very little of it left.

Gah, I'm trying to like this, because it's clearly been lovingly made and the colourisation is genuinely superb, but the grinding relentlessness of the War Games has been replaced by rattling through the plot at a frenzied pace and it's not really working for me.

Ooh, Murray Gold's Master theme has been added over the War Chief's appearance. Not sure how I feel about that, but it's certainly an interesting choice.

They've dealt with the cliffhanger issue at the end of episode 4 by taking it out entirely.

The little added CGI bits are not hugely successful - they look oddly plasticky. Which is a bit disappointing, because have I mentioned how good the colourisation is?

It's taken my dad until the episode six cliffhanger to note the place where the original cliffhanger was.

(My mum has given up because she doesn't like how much fighting there is. Not sure if the original edit would have been any better on that score.)

Episodes 6 and 7 are so thoroughly chopped up that it's tricky to trace the original storyline. It's neatly done but it's not really the War Games any more.

More of the Master's theme when the War Chief admits to knowing the Doctor.

My dad comments that this bit seems like it was inspired by the Prisoner (which he also watched when it first aired).

It feels a bit weird when it switches from Murray Gold to 1960s incidental music.

This really centres the War Chief et al over the rest of the storyline.

"Complete loyalty and devotion" - oh, Jamie. This loses a lot of character beats in favour of the Time Lord-centric storyline, but not all of them.

Oof, their last desperate attempt to escape is still just as grim and desperate in the edit. Like there's still part of me wondering if they might somehow get away this time.

There are new Who-style images of Gallifrey on the view screen.

"Is the next episode The Trial of a Time Lord?" asks my dad, who has seen all of Doctor Who, but mostly not very recently.

The middle bit of episode 10 is cut, which means that I can watch the ending without crying for once.

Lots of establishing shots of Gallifrey.

The too old/too young/too thin shows a series of New Who Doctors. Not entirely sure how I feel about that choice either.

And it ends with the Doctor regenerating in the TARDIS - again, New Who style - before the date ticks back and forth erratically between 1970 and 1980, a joke that will appeal to a small number of people that includes me, and finally the very opening scene of Spearhead from Space.

I think if you accept the premise that a 90-min version of the War Games could be done, it's about as good as it could be. A few of the choices make it pretty clear that this is primarily for a New Who audience - particularly that it becomes a very Time Lord-centric story - not really for existing fans of the War Games.

Still, I wasn't expecting to love the colourisation as much as I did, and it made me wish I could watch a colourised version of all 10 episodes.

[waffowo]

While Donna Noble will always be my favourite companion in NuWho, Clara will always be the most multi-faceted and complex (as of now). I think that a lot of divisiveness surrounding Clara stems from 5 common criticisms:

1. Clara’s characterisation in 7B and how Moffat treats her mostly as a mystery box first and character second.

2. The length of Clara’s tenure and how some may have been fatigued due to the many times “she should have left.”

3. The emphasis on Clara’s flaws in Series 8 and how it kind of paints her as unlikable over her Series 7B depiction as at least kind.

4. Clara’s departure in Hell Bent as something that ruins her ending in Face The Raven.

5. The belief of Clara as the most important character in the Doctors life inherently devaluing other companions.

I think while I can understand the reasons leading up to these criticisms, I also think that it does help to look back throughout the Moffat and RTD era as it does help explain a lot of these points imo.

Actually, the character Clara most prominently echoes is Rose. Rose, like Clara, helped the Doctor through a time of extreme emotional vulnerability (for 9th, Time War trauma) and developed a relationship of co-dependency with him (as 10th) which never really went away even after Doomsday. Clara had the luxury of time however, and has undergone more events with the Doctor (Impossible Girl, Trenzalore, 50th Anniversary etc) but also how 12th was undergoing an extreme identity crisis of figuring out whether he’s a good man post-Trenzalore and saving Gallifrey. Clara was the one who facilitated his character growth through the turbulence of the arc in instances like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, Mummy on The Orient Express, Kill The Moon, Last Christmas etc and would naturally result in the Doctor developing an extremely unhealthy reliance on Clara as being his “carer,” his anchor to being The Doctor (refer to her whole “Be A Doctor” spiel in the 50th Anniversary). Series 9 already heavily implied the Doctor’s willingness to engage with destructive measures by choosing to separate Clara and The Doctor almost every episode (Magicians Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar) as the stakes rose and cumulated in Face The Raven.

RTD has also once said when paying tribute to Moffat:

“And nestling at the heart of the show is Doctor Who's very own problem category, the Companion, a title inherently subordinate to the Man. Until Clara comes along!”

Imo, while poorly phrased, I think does also hit another nail on the head to explain how Clara can be so compelling to someone like me but also extremely polarising. RTD is talking less about the companion being “weaker” or “submissive” but how Clara is the NuWho companion that wishes to obliterate the boundaries between the power dynamic of companion/doctor. Series 8 for instances plays on the recurring motif of, “Do as you are told” which the Doctor firstly uses to threaten Clara to keep her safe. However, Clara actively retaliates by parroting the phrase back in an attempt to attain parity. This escalates to the events of Dark Water where she attempts to maintain control of her circumstances by forcing the Doctor to be on equal ground with her. What is so fascinating is that Clara while changing and emulating more of the Doctor’s heroism, she equally begins to absorb his flaws which intensify throughout Series 8-9. Clara becomes more deceitful, egotistical, reckless and cunning as she begins to become more and more like him. The means she lies to Danny, her ability to think more and more like him.

However, what people (fans and haters) also ignore is how nuanced the circumstances are. While Clara’s flaws become more heightened, it is also a fact that she wants to be like the Doctor because of his kindness and heroism. Episodes like Robots of Sherwood, Last Christmas or even Rings of Akhten reveal a lot about how Clara reveres the Doctor as a mythic and heroic figure. Clara’s attitudes towards the children in Forest Of The Night, Name Of The Doctor and Into The Dalek reveal that in spite of her ego and selfishness, she is someone who desires to help people. Thus, her desire to become the Doctor becomes more explainable. What a lot of people can’t really accept is that she can be both egotistical, reckless and kind at once. Her actions in Face The Raven were driven out of the fact that it came from a place of ignorance and impulsiveness (not stupidity, the Doctor would do something similar, it’s just that Clara did not have all the clues) in what she believed would be what the Doctor would do and that she was confident she could match the trickery of the Doctor, and yet it was also driven by her compassion towards Rigsby and her while impulsive, sincere desire to save her friend.

Clara is punished because of this, she forgets that she’s far too human. The Doctor is less breakable. She pays for it and as Ashildr says in Hell Bent:

“She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful.”

She died due to her physical fragility, her ego, her ignorance, her impulsiveness/recklessness and yet she also died because she was too brave, she died like the Doctor, who she loved (literally look at how her arms were outstretched as though she was mid-regeneration and how the black smoke parallels the orange glow of regeneration). However, this leads to the fourth main criticism I prior stated, so how does one answer that in relation to her character?

The answer is what Clara does and what the Doctor says towards the end of Hell Bent. Clara after being extracted and is with the Doctor in the TARDIS, spies on him because she is instantly suspicious of his erratic behaviour. Again, Clara shows how much she has become like him, she immediately picks up that he is hiding something because she has begun to think like him. Of course, the Doctor was planning on wiping Clara’s memories similar to what he did to Donna. But what does Clara do? She immediately reverse the polarity of the device that the Doctor was going to use on her and challenges the Doctors actions. Clara states:

“Tomorrow’s promised to no one, Doctor. But I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.”

Clara’s language indicates her assertiveness and also a kind of last hurrah in her game of parity. She is refusing to submit to the narrative of being reduced to merely a companion that the Doctor moves away from. But more importantly, the Doctor after pressing the device and is losing his memory, states:

“Run like hell because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it’s always funny (…) Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends (…) Never eat pears. They’re too squishy. And they always make your chin wet. That one’s quite important. Write it down.”

I think on initial viewing when the show was airing, this wouldn’t make much sense but this really shows the crux of how Hell Bent completes Clara’s arc and the necessity of her resurrection. In Face The Raven, the Doctor tells Clara that she’s more breakable as she questions why she can’t be as reckless as him. However, now the Doctor is instead telling her what would later be repeated in Twice Upon A Time, his regeneration speech. In his eyes, Clara has succeeded in graduating from the Magicians Apprentice and into becoming the Magician herself. He’s instructing her how to properly be The Doctor. As I said, Clara was also motivated by her desire to be kind when she engaged in her reckless gambit but what is so wrong about the desire to be kind? And why should Clara be punished for it? Thus, while Clara MUST die, her final act of kindness at the end of her arc enables the Universe to allow for Clara’s final transformation into the Doctor.

Clara is still dead, it is an unchanged historical event. However, to challenge the status quo and allow for Clara’s ascension, Clara becomes a fairy tale herself. Her body is caught in a permanent form of stasis, signalling her departure from the limits of her physicality (subverting her physical fragility) but also as seen through her last words to the Doctor:

“You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”

Clara has successfully become what she admired, a myth, a fable. She has become a symbol in a story, a story that would go on to have an infinite number of other stories. She has become the leaf she raises to the monster in the Rings of Akhten, she sails off into narrative ambiguity but also infinity. Clara is so polarising because she challenges the definition of what it means to be The Doctor on a pure metatextual level. It’s a logical progression from the introspection of the question from the Doctor himself in Series 8. To want to resist, I argue, is natural.

I could explore further about her adrenaline addiction in Mummy On The Orient Express or these traits I raised explored in Flatline which I may do another day, but I hope I have provided a new perspective on Clara Oswald.

[natequarter]

random ideas for a four-part series à la gallifrey series 4:

retirement: the gang land on a gallifrey superficially similar to their own, only to run into... the fifth doctor? a rather aged version, as well. as it turns out, at the end of the key to time arc, this doctor was convinced to go back to gallifrey, rather than dragging romana further away from it. gallifrey in this timeline is mostly fine, but it's alone amidst a devastated universe; without the doctor in action, the master's attempt to destroy the universe through accelerated entropy has succeeded but for gallifrey, which sits alone in an empty expanse of dust and loss. the doctor appears to have made peace with his former career as renegade (and has settled down with romana, of all things)... that is, until he sees leela again.

a quieter apocalypse: this gallifrey appears almost identical to their own, except that romana is actually happy. (as is leela.) in this timeline, she was never subjected to the events of the apocalypse element - rather than sending the president, the time lords sent one cardinal braxiatel. tormented and finally broken by his captivity, his lack of meddling in time lord politics has created a power vacuum that the cia eagerly exploits... and more than a few familiar faces are missing from this gallifrey, not least of all narvin's.

hero: this is a gallifrey scarred by civil war. (it seems to happen quite often.) with the citadel a radioactive heap of rubble, the time lords have moved their base of power to arcadia, and are working to rebuild society from the ground up. at their head is the up-and-coming romana - now in her third incarnation. the kicker here is that this romana is genuinely idealistic, and refuses to tolerate any of the corruption or trickery that the main timeline romana ii would guiltily admit to. seeing a sincerely, straightforwardly heroic, in some ways rather naive version of herself really drives home how far romana has drifted from her youth.

the archives: the doctor is still in his fourth body, and still in the role of president. in fact, he refuses to give the office up, and his increasingly bizarre whims and tendency towards dictatorship are driving the rest of his people slowly mad. meanwhile, in the archives, romana - in her fourth incarnation, but with no memory at all of ever having been romana ii - is still working as an archivist, never having left the seemingly menial (all things considered) job. the picture becomes increasingly sinister when the gang discover that she's not the only time lord with more regenerations than memories...

[ofutopia]

HIV-AIDS metaphor in series 1-4 of Doctor Who (2005)

Fair warning that you have to accept that there is at least homoerotic tension between the Doctor and the Master to understand this post.

The Time War was first and foremost a narrative device used by RTD to answer a plot hole he had created himself in his pitch to the BBC to revive Doctor Who. Indeed, he suggested “no baggage” which meant no Time Lords & no Gallifrey. (T is for Television by Mark Aldridge and Andy Murray)

That doesn’t mean we can’t question what it symbolises in the show and in its time.

(Two important caveats:

The AIDS epidemic is still very much happening.

Any depiction of the AIDS crisis / any metaphor will be fragmented and very much subjective because a writer and a reader / viewer watches from a specific point of view)

I’ve considered a few key episodes but truthfully you can consider all of series 1 to 4 as part of this idea. Of course, the series 3 finale trilogy has a key place in this.

The End of the World

Dalek

Father’s Day

New Earth

School Reunion

Gridlock

Utopia

The Sound of Drums

Last of the Time Lords

End of Time part 1

The Doctor finds himself the only surviving member of his planet. “I lived. Everyone else died. - What do you mean? –  Everyone died Sarah.” (School Reunion, Doctor Who, Series 2) And he’s left fending for himself in the world. Then there’s guilt, RTD didn’t bother to make it subtle. Survivor’s guilt and are recurring theme of first 3 series of Doctor Who. It starts to make sense with Dalek and it’s an ongoing theme from then on.

Many queer people found themselves the only surviving person of their group of friends. If they were HIV-positive a lot of them wondered how they managed to survive it, if they were HIV-negative they sometimes wondered how they didn’t get it. Trauma in long term survivor of AIDS has been studied both through psychological and sociological lenses, enormous loss and guilt always come up. And it’s something that you can find in memoirs and autobiographies.

Outside of the Utopia - The Sound of the Drums - Last of the Time Lords there is one scene I want to discuss in depth:

Gridlock is an interesting episode. The conversation between the Face of Boe and the Doctor mirrors the one he will have with the Master later in the series (and we will talk about it). But more than that the conversation between Martha and the Doctor at the very end of the episode is fascinating.

“I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else. – What happened? – There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.” (Gridlock, Doctor Who, Series 3)

The Doctor and Martha’s relationship has been analysed in many ways and I won’t try to argue with them here. However, I think at that very moment we can see the Doctor as an old(er) gay man talking about the loss not only of his friends but of the places he had come to call home.

All this in an episode where we’ve seen a city devastated by an epidemic.

Now about the finale three episodes of series 3:

I won’t go too much into the Doctor/Master relationship because the relationship between Ten and Simm has been analysed thoroughly before. However, in Utopia the Doctor tells him two things, that they are both alone and he is sorry.

One of the last scenes of Last of the Time Lords features the Master dying in the Doctor’s arms while the Doctor begs for him to stay alive “You've got to. Come on. It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. (…) We're the only two left. There's no one else. Regenerate!” (Last of the Time Lords, Doctor Who, Series 3).

Someone is begging his friend to stay alive. He is asking him to use a treatment available to him, a treatment that has been shown to be painful and traumatic but it’s the only way to stay alive. It’s also the only way his friend won’t be alone again. Real life translation – HIV first effective treatments did work but people were sometimes burnt out.

I have wanted to make a post for a little while but hearing RTD talk about Queer as Folk and It’s a sin made me want to write about this.

I hope you found something interesting here.

(finally wrote this @roxannepolice )

[gotyouanyway]

tagged by @sircarolyn thank you!!

last song i listened to: fever dolls - the distance. one of my all time favourites i loooooove fever dolls

favourite colours: purple pink green!!

currently watching: almost finished my gallifrey relisten :') i don't really watch shows anymore.. after this it'll probably be back to dark eyes or other time war audios

last movie i watched: phantom of the opera 2004 😭 idk what came over me

currently reading: beyond the deepwood by paul stewart and chris riddell, unnatural history by kate orman and jonathan blum <3 but very slowly

sweet/savoury/spicy: sweet or savoury depending on the mood!! spicy isn't my fav

last thing i googled: sims 4 chased by death (trying to figure out if the trait is blocked for children or something lol)

current obsession: baseline doctor who/gallifrey obsession always always always. nothing really on top of that though i got a lot going on

currently working on: trying to nail down this fuck ass job!!! and gally transcripts as an ongoing project <3

tagging @whycellothurr @the-worms-in-your-bones @presidentdisastraofgallifrey @lerios if you want! :)

[st4rshiptr00per]

VNAs skip/read list (my opinion...) made based off my reading of my buddy Rachel's recommended skip/reads. putting this here so i can share it on discord easier lol

4 Timewyrm: Revelation - Paul Cornell

Stands alone pretty damn well tbh and the Doctor and Ace characterization makes me insane

5 Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible - Marc Platt

Not required reading but its more Platt doing more of his Lungbarrow shit, first mention of looms, really great ancient gallifrey stuff

9 Love and War - Cornell

The romance plot isnt for everybody but I love it and this is a really important book to the shape of the series to come, especially for what happens to Ace and her relationships/characterization. PLUS: Benny’s very important introduction!!!

10 Transit - Ben Aaronovitch

Has a semi-earned bad reputation, but it introduces Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and I think it’s good to read if u want the full VNAs experience, including a taste of all its flaws and the breadth of the genres the series contains. Also I just love the hard scifi world building

13 Deceit + #14 Lucifer Rising

HAVENT READ THESE ONES YET SHHH but these also contain important Ace character arc stuff

[ALTERNATE HISTORY ARC ZONE]

19 Blood Heat - Jim Mortimore

Beginning of an arc, very enjoyable (minus a couple slow spots) and has a great jurassic park/Inferno/the last of us setting. Post apocalyptic and hopeless, includes UNIT stuff (!)

21 The Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman

The ancient Aztec stuff is predictably clumsily handled, but this is where Orman starts and it already has some extremely good hurt/comfort shit going on. Undead color-out-of-space wizards, rogue alien-hunting UNIT employees, and Friendship.

22 Conundrum - Steven Lyons

This one wasn’t for me pacing-wise, but is very well loved. Very successful return of beloved concept from 60s Who…

23 No Future - Paul Cornell

Finale of the Alternate History Arc ft. A returning 60s Who villain. A big chaotic mishmash of a ton of different ideas in a Moffat-era sort of way but I think it pulls it off shockingly well, a lot of fun.

26 Theatre of War - Justin Richards

A Shakespearian space adventure romp… Benny in her element AND the first on-screen appearance of Irving Braxiatel and the Braxiatel Collection. A lot of fun.

27 All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane

The Sherlock Holmes/Dr Who crossover special :) a lot of fun, with multiple unreliable narrators. Highly recommend.

30 First Frontier - David A. McIntee

Military thriller ft. The Master in the american southwest. I wasn’t big on the prose, but u gotta be excited to see the Master again…

35 Set Piece - Kate Orman

ORMAN BACK AT IT AGAIN. Ace’s big exit story, and the return of Kadiatu. They could not have picked a better author to handle this one. Very sweet, a must-read.

37 Sanctuary - David A. McIntee

A pure historical in 13th century france! Introduction of Benny’s beloved Guy.

38 Human Nature - Paul Cornell

Honestly the superior version of Human Nature. Scarier, sadder, and spookier. A lot more pared down and straightforward than a lot of the previous books to great effect. More of Cornell’s great fantasy-element writing in here.

39 Original Sin - Andy Lane

NEW COMPANION INTRO… Funky and gritty far future setting with fun world building, and our beloved Chris and Roz

40 Sky Pirates! - Dave Stone

This one is fucking bizarre. You just have to try it. Deranged Fritz Leiber pastiche that gets way more thoughtful about the source material than expected. No rating properly communicates the quality of this book. Really excellent eldritch Time Lord stuff in here.

43 Head Games - Steve Lyons

Sequel to Conundrum. A bit of a hot mess, but so much fun. Mel and Ace return(!)

44 The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch

PEAK aaronovitch worldbuilding fully harnessed here. A must-read for Roz characterization, and especially neccessary if you plan on reading the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures afterward. A cozy murder mystery beach episode full of summer romance…

46 Just War - Lance Parkin

Nazi-punching WWII historical. A grimy split-up-team story. Beautifully written and well loved for a reason, even if its a bit messy around the edges.

48 SLEEPY - Kate Orman

The beginning of the lovely besieged community stuff Orman’s going to keep coming back to in future books (see: Vampire Science, Intelligent Tigers). Just beautiful to read, as usual.

49 Death and Diplomacy - Dave Stone

Stone does a “normal” DW plot. Introduction of the very important Jason Kane, don’t read the next book without this one. Really entertaining tonal whiplash from the previous book, a lot of fun.

50 Happy Endings - Paul Cornell

THE WEDDING EPISODE… cameos from characters from nearly every previous book, a gigantic ridiculous slice-of-life with lots of anxiety about what the future will hold…

[ok after this point I haven’t read any of these yet lol]

53 Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman

Important Benny lore/previous storyline resolution AND jason content

55 Damaged Goods - Russel T Davies

Much loved, very grimy and gritty. Now you get to see RTD without the constraints of an all-ages rating.

56 So Vile A Sin - Orman + Aaronovitch

VERY well loved. Was supposed to be #56 but ended up being published late, so it contains some references to the TV movie… Roz’s big exit. A tragedy.

57 Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones

A special TV companion return :) another book that takes place in a historical queer community

59 The Room with No Doors - Kate Orman

Supposedly one of Orman’s best in this series… Chris Moment.

60 LUNGBARROW -Marc Platt

You know this one.

61 The Dying Days - Lance Parkin

Eight and Benny time :)

[intuitive-revelations]

FLUXES [Celestis: Engineered Participants / Technologies] Example: "DOCTOR, The"

[Image description, courtesy of @quailfence: a series of pictures of text, alternated with screencaps and gifs from Doctor Who.

1: Text: Fluxes: [Celestis: Engineered Participants/Technology] Individuals transposed backwards in time but not too far in space, using a very high chaotic limiter setting and tied to their home period by a thread of biodata

2: The Eleventh Doctor stands in the future corpse of his TARDIS, looking and a pulsing stream of light that has replaced the console. He says, "That is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe. My path through time and space."

3: Text: He raised a finger. 'Look. There.

Now she could just make out the thread in the moonlight. It was just a faint reflection, maybe a foot or two long, about a metre off the ground. A taut strand of spiderweb hanging in the air, not attached to anything.

'What is it?' Fitz asked.

'It's only partially rotated into three dimensions,' he said. He pushed his finger right through the glimmering line, without affecting it. 'That's why it looks one- or two-dimensional. The rest is still perpendicular to what we can see - woven into higher space, or the time vortex…'

'Yes,' said Fitz, 'but what is it?' 'It's what your friend mistook for a ley line.' The Doctor was scuttling around the silver thread, peering at it from every angle, getting more and more agitated. 'It's part of the fabric of space-time itself. What DNA is to your genetic code, this stuff is to biodata. And it's all just exposed here now. Personality, history, memory, perception, all vulnerable…'

'I'm going to have to ask you again, aren't I?' said Fitz.

The Doctor said, 'It's me.'

4: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth doctors in the TARDIS. 14: "But you're fine?" 15: "I'm fine, because you fixed yourself. We're Time Lords, we're doing rehab out of order."

5: Text: The subject is turned loose in his or her own history, and the limiter setting allows tiny actions taken by the future version to have considerable effects on the past version. The biodata link then transfers these changes to the future version, which alters it, and thus alters the changes made to the past version. Therefore, the individual's history is kept constantly in flux.

6: The Fugitive Doctor says, "Let me take it from the top: Hello, I'm the Doctor."

7: Text: Let me finish. Think back to that time when you went to see your previous selves.

8: Ten, Eleven, and War talk to each other. Ten: "You're not actually suggesting that we change our own personal history?" Eleven: "We change history all the time. I'm suggesting far worse."

9: Text: 'Maybe there's no one home on Gallifrey,' said the boy softly. There was just the one of him.

The Doctor looked at him, cupping the small white cube in his hands. The boy said, Maybe they all left. Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment.

10: The TARDIS by the ruins of Gallifrey

11: Text: 'It's impossible,' said the Doctor. 'It's impossible for my people. Our past is unreachable. What's written can't be unwritten.'

'Who said your history can't change?'

Another boy answered, 'Someone from his history.'

And another: 'Maybe it's the second-biggest lie in Time Lord history.'

12: Dhawan!Master tells Thirteen, "You are the Timeless Child."

13: Thitreen stares at a ruined house. Swarm whispers in her ear and tells her, "All the memories you've lost, all the people you've been. It's all in there, contained within that house."

14: Text: And it was like the Doctor's home. As if his ship understood the loss of the House and had compensated to fill the emptiness. Shadowy corridors, alcoves and stairways, a secret at every turn. Like being in the Doctor's head. Like his life, for that matter, the details of which were strewn like flotsam across the floor.

15: Text: 'Sweet,' said the little boy. 'That's my favourite of your origin stories, too.'

The Doctor opened his eyes. He had been laughing, he realised, he felt that lightness in himself. The boys had all moved away, behind him, leaving him facing the empty dark of the warehouse.

'What do you mean?' he asked. His voice sounded very small.

'Is this the version where they banned all mention of his name, and yours, for consorting with aliens? Or the one where he got every record of himself deleted from the files?'

'Feel free to believe either of them,' snapped the Doctor, 'or both of them, or neither of them. If you're curious about my past, I want there to be as many wrong answers as possible.'

16: The Eighth Doctor tells someone, "I'm half human. On my mother's side."

17: Text: 'Well he's a hybrid, you know that. A Gallifreyan not born of Gallifreyan, the one who unites the two races and brings good old human niceness into their alien society. Aliens need that, y'know.'

'A human hybrid? She saw the contempt in his curling lip. 'Pseudoscientific nonsense. There's no evidence,' he repeated.

'He's allowed to be different. He's got a prophecy and everything.'

18: Lady Me says, "By your own reasoning, why couldn't the Hybrid be half Time Lord, half human?"

19: Text: Someone giggled. 'Let's play pin the tale on the donkey.'

'Maybe you didn't use to have a father.'

'Maybe you're living in the middle of a time war. Maybe there's an Enemy out there -'

The Doctor shouted, 'I'm not listening!'

'- who's rewriting you when you're not looking!'

'Maybe you weren't always half human.'

'But now you've become always half human.' 'Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord.'

But now you've always been a Time Lord.'

'Maybe you originally came from some planet in the forty-ninth century. Fleeing from the Enemy who'd overrun your home -'

'I said I'm not listening! Laa laa laa laa laa -'

'- and you've just been written and rewritten and overwritten, ever since.'

'Pin the tale!'

'How d'you know it's not true?'

'How could you know it's not true?'

The voices crowded in. 'How would you know, huh?'

'How would you know?'

'How would 'How would you 'How 'How would you know? you know? you know? know?'

'Why would I care?' shouted the Doctor.

The boy fell silent.

20: Lady Me asks, "Am I right? Is it true?" Twelve replies, "Does it matter?"

21: Text: However, the one group from the Homeworld which has excelled at flux-engineering is the Celestis.

22: Two asks the Time Lords, "Now then… what about me?"

23: Tecteun tells Thirteen, "Which is ehy we engineered the Fluyx: Shut the universe down and you within it."

24: Text: Even Mictlan itself can be considered a kind of enormous flux, an endlessly-shifting realm so cortosive to the rest of history that its heartland has to be kept on the outer skin of the universe

24: The Fourteenth Doctor tells Donna, "I invoked a supersition, at the edge of the universe, where the walls are thin and everything is possible."

25: The space station from Wild Blue Yonder

26: Text: There are suggestions of a stable middle-ground between the two fates, in which the physical matter of the flux is lost but the meaning of the subject/ victim is retained, a series of memetic connections with no flesh to support it. Yet this entity exists only on a purely theoretical level, relying on the perceptions of others to survive at all.

27: The Twelfth Doctor walks up to the TARDIS console. He says, "Can't wait to hear what I say." Glancing at the viewer, he adds, "I'm noting without an audience."

28: Text: You know what Sam represents. If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? Stop me if I'm getting too abstract here, but if a Time Lord saves the world and nobody witnesses him doing it, does history care? She's your witness. The thing you need to make you whole.

29: The First Doctor looks at the viewer and says, "Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!" End description.]

[Plain text: Fluxes [Celestis: Engineered Participants / Technologies] Example: "Doctor, The". End plain text.]

@dw-described