#i know i JUST made a post about not having got to the delgado master bits yet BUT SHUT UPPPP

[peecrank]

I will forever insist that the ultimate doctor master pairings are 3 and delgado and 12 and missy

[corallapis]

Hi <3 No obligation to answer, I know dw lore is really convoluted and there's a lot of expanded universe material, but you've mentioned a few times that you think the War Chief is the Master. I'm also a War Chief/Master truther because I think that makes the contents of The War Games more fun and interesting (& also could count as another time the Master got the Doctor killed <3 romance <3) but I wanted to know if you had more reasons/examples from canon that supports that idea

ETA: i have made an updated version of this post here!!!

anon i’d be delighted to talk abt the war chief!!! he’s My Guy <3 and (dare i say it?) possibly even one of my favorite incarnations of the master. i’ve got lots of quotes for you under the cut, but to give a short summary of So Why Do People Think the War Chief is the Master, Anyway?:

the war chief was introduced in the war games, written by malcolm hulke and terrance dicks. (dicks, it should be mentioned, was also co-creator of the master, with barry letts.) when hulke & dicks novelized the serials colony in space, terror of the autons, and the war games, they dropped several hints that the war chief and the master were the same man. so, the creators of the characters were the first to suggest a connection between them.

but, i hear you cry, didn’t dicks go on to write timewyrm: exodus, which shows us a future incarnation of the war chief that isn’t the master? yes, because the official editorial line for the vmas & vnas was that the war chief & the master were two distinct characters. this caused more than one writer that personally believed them to be the same to write otherwise professionally. however, i think dicks still dropped hints linking the two despite this editorial limitation.

and what about magnus, the guy who’s well-known in current fandom as the “academy era” version of the war chief? conceived of by gary russell, magnus was originally written as a young incarnation of the master, not the war chief. in flashback, goth opera and invasion of the cat-people, the character of magnus is a young master. so why did russell retcon his own character in divided loyalties to be the war chief instead? he did so out of respect for david mcintee, who had recently written a different backstory for the master in the dark path, using the name koschei. despite divided loyalties’ portrayal of magnus and koschei as separate characters, it actually in large part serves to conflate the two further, due to said retconning.

in faction paradox lore, the war king is a version of the master (i don’t need to make a post on that, do i?) that also was once the war chief.

and now we’re really getting murky canon-wise, but craig hinton’s rejected pda time’s champion (ultimately completed & published after his death, by chris mckeon) explicitly depicts the war chief as an incarnation as the master, as well as reasserting that magnus was the name the master used at the academy.

even with all this Evidence, i’m like you, anon — i just think it’s Fun. i mean, just look at the guy lmao. if you can’t see the way that future incarnations are riffing off him, idk what to tell you. and ultimately, it just makes the most sense to me. three & delgado’s first meeting doesn’t really strike me as a First Time Seeing You Since You Left kind of affair, but the way two & the war chief react to seeing each other? and the conversation they have abt it…? yeah. love it.

the ‘70s target novelizations

doctor who and the doomsday weapon (aka colony in space) was the first novelization to feature the master, and was written by malcolm hulke in 1974. it begins with a scene that doesn’t occur in the tv story, where a senile old time lord tells his apprentice about the theft of two tardises by a pair of time lords now calling themselves the doctor & the master:

“There have been two stolen, you know.” The younger Time Lord didn’t know. “By our enemies?” he asked. “No. By Time Lords. They both became bored with this place. It was too peaceful for them, not enough happening.” The old Keeper smiled to himself, as though remembering with some glee all the fuss when two TARDISes were stolen. “One of them nowadays calls himself ‘the Doctor.’ The other says he is ‘the Master.’”

if there have been only two tardises stolen (at this point), then where does that leave the other renegades we've seen on tv? well, the answer to that is that the target novelizations were meant to be self-contained, without prior knowledge of the show needed or past episodes taken into account. it’s easier and cleaner to present the doctor & the master as the only two renegades. except the older time lord continues, and a little further on says:

“There were tens of thousands of humans from the planet Earth, stranded on another planet where they thought they were re-fighting all the wars of Earth’s terrible history. The Doctor” — he interrupted himself — “I told you about him, didn’t I?” “Yes,” said the young Time Lord, now used to the old Keeper forgetting what he had already said. “You mentioned the Doctor and the Master.” “No, it wasn’t the Master,” said the old Keeper in his confused way. “The Master never does anything good for anyone. He’s thoroughly evil. Now what was I saying?”

despite the self-contained nature of the novelizations, the events of the war games (which had yet to be novelized, when this was written) have occurred and are specifically brought up in relation to the doctor & the master. what does ‘it wasn't the master’ mean? the keeper’s confusion leaves it open to interpretation, but the fact that it’s brought up at all is quite a hint.

terrance dicks then wrote doctor who and the terror of the autons in 1975. additional info is added to the scene between the doctor and the time lord who comes to warn him about the master’s arrival on earth:

“As a matter of fact, I’ve come to bring you a warning. An old friend of yours has arrived on Earth.” “One of our people? Who is it?” The Time Lord pronounced a string of mellifluous syllables — one of the strange Time Lord names that are never disclosed to outsiders. Then he added, “These days he calls himself the Master.”

he uses the master’s gallifreyan name first, as if the doctor doesn’t know the name he’s now going by yet. then, we’re given a description of the master, including:

Already he had been behind several Interplanetary Wars, always disappearing from the scene before he could be caught. If ever he were caught, his fate would be far worse than the Doctor’s exile. Once captured by the Time Lords, the Master’s life-stream would be thrown into reverse. Not only would he no longer exist, he would never have existed. It was the severest punishment in the Time Lords’ power.

which brings to mind the war games, as the punishment described here is exactly what the time lords did to the war lord & what they would have done to the war chief, if he hadn’t died/escaped. and, speaking of that escape, the doctor asks:

“Is his TARDIS still working?” “I’m afraid so. He got away before it could be de-energised.” “Then he was luckier than I,” said the Doctor sadly. He had never really got used to his exile.

unlike the doctor, who was unable to get away from the time lords at the end of the war games, the master was ‘luckier.’ this could, of course, mean a more general escape from the time lords by the master, but i’d say all the hints here are pointing in the same direction.

in 1979, malcolm hulke wrote doctor who and the war games. the first conversation between the doctor and the war chief is slightly changed, and again it’s reiterated that there have only been two tardises stolen. first, the war chief teases the doctor about who he must be:

The War Chief took the Doctor into his private office just off the war room and told his bodyguards to leave. “Now,” he said, “a traveller in a time-space machine. There is only one person you can be.” “I had every right to leave,” said the Doctor. “And to steal a TARDIS?” The War Chief smiled. “Not that I am criticising you. I left our people too. We are two of a kind.”

and later, he summarizes that their empire (their empire <3) will be secure because, again, they’re the only two with stolen tardises:

“Now I understand,” said the Doctor. “It’s my TARDIS that you want. But surely you have one of your own?” The War Chief smiled. “No more mine than yours is really yours! We are both thieves, Doctor. Yes, I do have a TARDIS hidden away. But are not two better than one? While I rest and enjoy the spoils of victory, you can patrol our empire. And I shall do the same for you.” “Our empire?” “We shall rule the galaxy without fear of opposition,’ the War Chief said confidently. “For we shall be the only two who can travel through both space and time.”

this (very romantic imo) proposal is also, of course, very reminiscent of delgado’s ‘half-share in the universe’ proposal to three.

timewyrm: exodus by terrance dicks

in 1991, terrance dicks wrote a vna, timewyrm: exodus. in this novel, the war chief appears as a botched two-bodied regeneration after his death at the end of the war games, called dr. kriegslieter. no mention of the master is made. as i said before, i think this is down to virgin’s editorial policy, and i think there are hints connecting the two nonetheless. like when the doctor realizes who kriegslieter is:

And behind them, aiding them, manipulating them, giving them the time technology they needed, the Time Lord renegade who called himself the War Chief. Or, in German, der kriegslieter. “Well, he couldn’t have spelled it out for me much more plainly,” muttered the Doctor.

like, c’mon. it’s just classic master shenanigans to have your alias be an extremely obvious translation of your name. and then there's also kriegslieter’s plan, which is to steal the doctor's body to use as his own (complete with sexual innuendo):

“Once I have wrested from it the secret of the TARDIS, your mind will be of no further interest to me. But your body…” “Please,” said the Doctor, looking embarrassed. “Ladies present.” “We are both Time Lords, Doctor, our brains and our bodies are compatible. Regeneration therapy is far beyond the War Lord’s scientists, but even they can manage a simple brain transplant.” Kriegslieter studied the Doctor with detached, clinical interest. “To be honest, it isn’t the body I would have chosen but it’s infinitely superior to the one I have. When all this is over Doctor, I shall be you — and you, or whatever shattered gibbering remnant of you is left, will be me. Appropriate, don’t you think? A crippled mind in a crippled body…”

how many times have we seen the master do that? maybe only once when this book was written (in the keeper of traken, of course) but at least three more times since then, by my count. in addition ‘we are both time lords’ is an echo of both two & the war chief's conversation and three & delgado’s (in the mind of evil, the claws of axos, and colony in space).

kriegslieter also calls seven ‘my dear doctor’ throughout, which is not a quirk of speech that the war chief has been ever shown to have. i can't claim it's unique to the master, but i think there's a certain history there. (did you know ainley says it five times in one 50 min long serial?)

magnus, as the master

as said before, the character of magnus was introduced in comic flashback, which appeared in the doctor who magazine winter special for 1992 and was commissioned and edited by gary russell (& written by warwick gray). it depicts seven and benny viewing a scene from the doctor’s past, where two old friends, thete and magnus, are at odds.

magnus was, at the time of this comic's creation, meant to be the master. there is no connection to the war chief in this story. which is why when goth opera, written by paul cornell, is published in 1994, magnus is the name used for the young master when listing out the doctor's school friends:

“That was when I was young and wild, Doctor. My contemporaries and I grew up to take our responsibilities seriously.” “Ah…” The Doctor nodded. “Unlike my year. I begin to see.” “Yes.” Ruath warmed to her subject, sipping from the goblet. Her eyes never left the Doctor’s. “Mortimus, the Rani, that idiot Magnus. And you, Doctor. All graduates of Borusa’s Academy for scoundrels.”

and, in 1995, when gary russell wrote invasion of the cat-people, he again used magnus as a name for the young master, referencing the master running out of lives far more quickly than the doctor by the time of the deadly assassin:

Polly smiled. “I’m glad you’re completely recovered, Doctor. You had us worried, you know.” “Regeneration’s a tricky thing,” he said. “And it was my first one. Always the trickiest. They’re supposed to get better as they go on, so long as you don’t flitter them. Always used to say to my academy chum Magnus, ‘Magnus,’ I’d say, ‘Magnus, don’t throw old bodies away like you would a suit. They don’t grow on trees.’ Or something like that. Never listened though.”

when gary russell wrote divided loyalties in 1999, he followed mcintee’s lead in using koschei as the name for a young master, and instead retconned magnus a younger war chief, showing the two of them interacting during the doctor’s academy days — the final nail in the coffin of our lil theory, right? well, all i’m going to say to that is that all the academy era stuff we see is actually a nightmare the fifth doctor is having. so who’s to say he didn't dream his best friend as two different people? (he forgot which one of them killed a guy with a rock, after all...)

the war chief king

in the book of the war, the 2002 faction paradox ‘encyclopedia’ edited by lawrence miles, the entry on the war king states:

His personal assistant notes that his office is brimming with official business, but devoid of decoration. The only concession he makes to sentimentality are the components of a hypercube, twelve white squares stacked neatly on his desk. Its significance is unclear, but it’s thought to be the War King’s last remaining link with his unfortunate past.

the very first use of a hypercube was, of course, at the end of the war games, when the second doctor called the time lords in. if that's not concrete enough for you, the war king spells it out even more clearly in the 2021 audio sabbath and the king:

THE WAR KING: I have failed to introduce myself. I am— ah, but as we have just seen: names have power. I do not think I shall grace you with one of my true names, Sabbath, no, not yet. Let’s see. The Deathless? Oh, let us not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Chief and Master, Minister and Magistrate, President and King… I have been many things.

time’s champion

and finally we have time’s champion, originally written in the '80s(?) by craig hinton, completed and published by chris mckeon in 2008. first, we have mel stumbling upon a corridor of portraits in the tardis:

Her first impression was that the Doctor was at the end of a long, thin corridor. And then she realised what the corridor was. An art gallery, the length hung with paintings, from the doorway to the far distance. As she started padding silently along the corridor, she looked at the paintings, and saw they were all portraits. Portraits painted in a variety of styles, from photo-realistic to impressionist, and everything in between. And she recognised some of the subjects. […] Moving on, Mel had hoped for something a little less depressing, but it wasn’t to be. The atmosphere had changed again: it was still cold, but a sterile light was now bathing the area. Then she realised why: the sterility, the coldness — trademarks of the Time Lords. This must be the Doctor’s own people. Pride of place was given to the Master — or rather the Masters: the familiar, music-hall villain in his velvet penguin suit had been captured in all his melodramatic glory, but there was also a suave, older man, his eyes radiating a fierce, evil intelligence wrapped in charm, next to which was positioned the portrait of a young, satanically handsome man with long, sharp sideburns and a thin, beard-length moustache, whose hand vainly clutched at a strange medallion hanging around his neck, as if clinging to the only power in his possession. And then there was an image of the cadaver, that rotting corpse that Mel knew was all that remained of the Doctor’s oldest friend and oldest enemy, animated by nothing but pure malice and spite.

the description of the ‘satanically handsome man’ is obviously the war chief. and then, the doctor remembers events from his past:

The night time vanished into the shadows of light, as new images, all familiar, threw themselves past the Doctor’s eyes: his tedious years at the Academy, his rise in the Time Lord hierarchy, his flight from Gallifrey, the early years of his exile, the planet of the War Games and his reunion with the Master, the lost years of imposed servitude to the Time Lords, all his memories and so many more impressed their way across the Doctor’s vision, even up to the moment of the present day. Then, abruptly, the vision ended. The Keeper began to speak again.

his reunion with the master occurs during the war games and precedes his exile (which is when his meeting with delgado’s master occurs). and magnus is once again used as a name for the young master:

The Doctor and Benton managed to glimpse him as he raced past. He was young, with a curving moustache and a dark, haughty face accustomed to obedience but now shadowed and twisted by fear. He ran onwards without even pausing to acknowledge their presence. He seemed desperate to outrun something. Moments later, a group of well-armed and uniformed men rounded the corridor and also hurried past the Doctor’s party, following the fleeing man in their wake. Steadying himself against the cool stone wall at his side, the Doctor watched the squad pass, recognising them as members of the Chancellery Guard, but clothed in armour and dress from the long departed era of his days in the Academy. The Doctor paused, wondering where he had seen that face before. “Magnus?” the Doctor whispered. Benton stepped over to the Doctor. “Who was that bloke those boys were chasing after, Doc? He looked a bit like the Master.” The Doctor gazed into the distance. “That he did, and for good reason.”

[koscheicore]

More doctor/master analysis from classic to tensimm ahead because they're sending me

Long post ahead ofc

THINKING OF THEM AGAIN... I still have a lot of the 3rd Doctor's last season left to watch (starting the sea devils now) and all of decayed!master but.

It seems to me so far that 3 is really clinging to this friend he knew yk? As compared to 5 later.

3 enjoys the presence of the Master and wishes to see him again, and of course it's been so long since he saw his friend from his home planet. You can see this from his body language, the closeness they convey, how he thinks he knows him. Damn he outright expresses with words several times that he hopes to see him again. He's fascinated by him still. Idk how things will develop but it seems to me he thinks he knows him so well and that these evil schemes are just little games, situations for him to solve, but he is realising how far he's gone and that it's not that much about him. The Master really wants power and universal control and ultimately doesn't mind who dies in the process. The Master even offers him this power. The differences between them and their worldview and wants are strengthened with every episode I watch. And yeah at first it's like... 3 is done with being trapped on Earth, he does want to protect this planet but he doesn't mind that much if this is their playground it's even *fun*. As the episodes progress he seems to snap out of that a bit. 3 loves his friend. 3 has issues reconciling this fascination with the fact that he's not a person he agrees with anymore, the direct opposition to his values. Even when 3 traps him in a time loop he's got the hope he'll survive and escape, he trusts he will, I doubt he made that too hard for him because no, he doesn't want him gone.

Flash foward to Keeper of Traken/Logopolis (I haven't watched any of 4 except for this so yeah I'm missing lots of context) but from what I remember 4 is already so done with the Master. By here he's realised he's irredeemable. Lost cause. He seems really pissed off at him whilst the Master is clearly having a lot of fun here. Then he is finally fucking mURDERED by the Master, who has tried to steal his body and who knows what else (not me. others reading will. I shall know eventually). The Master manages to get a new body but also to almost destroy the entire universe. Holds it at ransom just to get control of it. Destroys Nyssa's home planet. Murders Tegan's aunt. Plays with the Doctor's companions as if they were his very disposable chess pieces. Nah the Doctor is so fucking done with this guy now. He messed up with his regeneration and that was a really scary one. He thought he might fail to and finally die. The Master still makes a little town for him to recover only to, when he does, attempt to murder him again. Nope he's insane.

Fivey realises he doesn't want him anymore. He is a threat to the Universe as a whole. He's not happy to see him around. He's repressing a lot of shit here too, he's been hurt, his loved ones too, deliberately, just so the Master could see him suffer? Just so he could prove his values were... weak? To prove that owning and controlling the Universe is what one should strive for because survival of the strongest? Many see fivey as this nice one, but he let him burn in a fire. Not without remorse, but he did. Fivey does show his anger, his hurt, how he's been betrayed.

BUT he also knows him way more than 3 does! He can trust him partially in the Five Doctors whilst 3 can't because he knows the Master wants to show HIM he's right, he wants HIM to suffer and he wants HIM to try and stop him. Delgado might have wanted to show the Doctor he's right too, but he didn't do it with such an obsessive passion and focus towards showing the Doctor specifically, he wanted to build his power, he was rather playful, but he wasn't so obsessed that he'd foil his own plans just to show the Doctor. Fivey has accepted that the Master is irredeemable. He trusts his word a bit merely because of his attitude, his lack of prepared elaborate scheme, his lack of passion and joy regarding his demise, not because he believes he can do good. The good intentions is what he refers to as "impossible" I think. And still can't trust him fully because well. What if it is acting all along, what if it is indeed part of a plan? Anyways... Fivey knows him but he's angry and has lost any hope in recovering his friend, really. He resorts to not helping him so he can see how much he's let him down, and to call him out on his actions, on his warped sense of justice. He doesn't know how to handle him anymore.

And if you take the "Master" audio as canon, then we get 7 trying to "fix" him. First trying to give him the opportunity to not suffer when he's decayed, then seeking that goodness desperately. He wants to help his friend. He wants him to live and he wants him back, but not evil. He sees that he is capable of good. There's a lot to talk about this audio and I won't get into Death and stuff rn but...

So pretty much this grieving process

...10 trying to "fix" the Master, to save him, after seeing how good and in line with his values Professor Yana was... After all that his past incarnations saw of him he's seen him be how he wishes him to be twice, and he tries to save him, because he knows him so well, yes he does! He knows him so well! He knows there's good in him! He's not that angry anymore, he's desperate to get this friendship back, now there's the time war and the time lords are not there to order anyone to go save the other or to interfere at all, and they're the last two. There's his saviour complex. And he thinks he knows him so much. He could be beautiful they could be beautiful. He's also dangerously becoming more. The Master must be doing all of this to keep playing games, to have control, he must be as obsessed with him as he was, yeah he does atrocities but maybe it doesn't matter that much anymore, maybe he'll stop, maybe he can get his friend back, he's clearly doing this for his attention, right? If he can win this one game and show him...! Only for Simm to say no you don't know me, you have never, and finally, I win. The way I can win is by dying. I will never be who you want me to. And I want you to suffer.

My friend is back I love him but he's evil, I don't like who he's become. -> He's too evil and can't be good and I don't know what to do. Maybe he does deserve to die? I can't get my friend back. I really can't. -> No actually let's try. He can be good. Maybe if he wasn't suffering. -> He HAS been good. I can save him. I can have him back. -> AAAAAAAAAAA

I could continue but. Another day

AND THAT WAS GAY.

[plethora-of-imagines]

Then can i just tell you a little idea i have, if you don't mind. You don't have to write anything i'm just too shy to post it on my blog. You're in the master's tardis, he planed to trap the doctor and you got split up from her while you were being chased by something. You've only seen the master a couple of times and not for very long. He saved you and carried you to his ship, you should be afraid of being this close to him but you felt so nice and safe. 1/2

He was holding, fingers gently scratching your scalp. You were sitting on his lap, cuddled as close as possible, your face was nuzzling his neck. He had the most fantastic smell, campfire, strong coffee, something like cigars or cigarettes, and something alcoholic, probably alien. He was purring like crazy and scenting you. "She's always so careless, dragging an omega around like that, i didn't sense you were one or i would have intervened sooner, poor frightened little thing" 2/2

I'm so sorry if me hoarding this for so long caused any negative feelings! I've been super busy and I knew that I did want to write something for it. I chose to make it Delgado!Master however because the dialogue really stood out to me as something he would say. Dhawan!Master would definitely do something like this too!!

---------------------------------------

Limp in the Master’s arms you were almost surprised at how safe you felt. Normally your instincts would be screaming at you to fight and run from any alpha that you didn’t know well. Yet, at this moment you were as content as you could be. Traveling with the Doctor was always incredible. The spectacular sights making up for how tense you always felt every single moment of your travels. You were an omega- it was natural for you to be anxious about how much danger you were always in. Which is why this reprieve from your constant vigilance and anxiety was so surprising. 

You were almost purring as the Master’s hands trailed through your hair. The moment they pulled away you found yourself following, aiming to keep as much physical contact as possible. You had never been so relaxed and needy before. For a brief moment you worried about if he had hypnotized you. The Doctor had warned you that he was an expert hypnotist. That even other alphas fell prey to his will. Yet with how kind and soft he was being to you, you didn't believe he had.

Taking a deep breath in you nuzzled closer into his neck. The scent of alien alcohol and cigars making you slightly dizzy. Not in the lightheaded way, but more of a sleepy, content way. Your instincts wanted you to burry yourself in his arms and sleep. Safe and protected from all the stress and anxiety that had consumed you for what felt like enons.

The Master nuzzled into the free space of your neck, marking you with his scent. You chirpped happily at the sensation. Acceptance made the Master bolder, lifting your hands he kisses and rubbed against your wrists. Further marking you as under his protection.

"Alpha," you mouth moved on its own forming the statement with a quiet plea for more. It was a statement, he was an alpha that you were submitting to without question.

"The Doctor's always so careless, dragging an omega around like that. I didn't sense you were one or i would have intervened sooner, poor frightened little thing."

His hands guided your head back, letting him look over your hazy eyes.

"This must be the most you have been able to relax in months with how deeply unconcerned you are at the moment," he sighed fondly. "While I'm certain you can take care of yourself, you shouldn't have to. The rare treasure that you are should be protected from all harm and coercion. Be assured that I will be the perfect gentleman to you while you are in my care."

"Alpha," you whined.

Too much talking when you wanted nothing more than to melt into his embrace. His lap was cozy. You reburied your face in the crook of his neck. The solid black collar of his shirt would keep you from accidentally scent marking him back.

"Of course, precious omega. I will provide anything you need, my dear."

You smiled, you never wanted to leave his protection.

(506 words)

[being-of-rain]

I've been enjoying the Time Lord Victorious series so far, and since I caught up with a lot of it recently and we’re about half-way through it, I thought I'd post a bunch of thoughts on it here together.

I’m fascinated by the idea of a Doctor Who series made up of lots of different interconnected media, which feels like a natural thing to do when you consider how much history the franchise has with so many different formats of storytelling. And it’s wild to me that, contrary to what I first assumed, it was actually conceived before the whole global pandemic thing happened; it felt like almost perfect timing to give Doctor Who fans something to think about during lockdown.

One of the series’ greatest shortcomings was its promotion, which seemed to consist entirely of the title and that one promo visual. The lack of a clear, simple, all-encompassing premise from the start means that I still see fans reacting to TLV with confusion. Using ‘Time Lord Victorious’ as the only promotion also feels a little misleading - I think many people imagined the series being an Evil Ten AU (similar to the timeline glimpsed in the Four Doctors comic), when really most of the content is either building up to that or just tangentially connected to it. On the other hand, the series was clearly lovingly designed for Who fans (who are all about piecing together timelines and consuming a large range of stories) instead of a wider audience, so the unclear promotion feels more like a miscalculation than a fatal error.

Defender of the Daleks: Titan’s comic is easily the weakest link of the series for me- it didn’t have a meaningful part of the series to fill, I was bothered by a lot of the page layouts, and it felt like a lot of it was made only for Dalek superfans. Well, I genuinely hope the Dalek superfans enjoyed it.

Monstrous Beauty: It’s really nice to see BBC give Nine some love in the series, and you can tell writers like Scott Gray and Steve Cole enjoyed writing for him and Rose. The extreme gothic aesthetic for the Dark Times, the Great Vampires, and the coffin ship is lots of fun, even if the story itself is a little straight-forward and meandering. Rassilon turning up felt very unnessecary to me, at this point I wish authors would leave the Time Lords’ founders alone unless they have something genuinely interesting to add. Admittedly, seeing the Cucurbites return and Nine make an explicit reference to the ‘90s Eight comics made my day. Y’all know I’m an Eight comics nerd.

Master Thief/Lesser Evils: Honestly, both of these stories left me a little confused to what actually happened in them, and what the point of them were. The first one didn’t even seem to tie in to TLV at all. Despite that, I’m really happy to see the Delgado Master and Ainley Master get some audios to themselves. Both characters were captured wonderfully by the stories and were a joy to listen to.

He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not: I was really surprised by this just being an out-and-out Western, but I loved it! Brian sticking close to his hostage while the other characters slowly pieced together what was going on and what they should do about it made for a very different kind of tension to the usual Who story. Brian’s explanation about killing with a thought made me properly nervous about him being around any other characters. I’m glad they got to do some non-formulaic stuff with Eight before the Daleks turned up at the end. Overall, the Daleks have a larger part in TLV than I’m happy with, since it makes it feel like the series is split between experimenting with new ideas and retreading old ground.

The Knight, The Fool and The Dead: The novels are definitely the heart of the Time Lord Victorious story, and so I’m very happy with the choice of authors for them. This first one was great. I really liked Ten’s characterisation of being at his limit but trying to continue on as normal and do what’s right.

His temporary companion Brian the Ood Assassin is every bit as fun as the concept sounds. I love how Brian doesn’t (usually) try to hide that he’s a merciless murder, but is still very polite and dresses in a tux. The little descriptions of him commanding a space fleet of mercenaries like a headwaiter running an expensive restaurant are hilarious. I can’t wait for more stories with him.

The villains of the piece, the Kotturuh, are surprisingly and delightfully eldritch, with their tentacles and their symbols in the sky. Not to mention their plans for the universe written on the cave walls of the planet that acts as a gateway between their cosmos and ours, writing which make people who look at it go mad. The Kotturuh, or Kotts, spread the effects of a natural lifespan to every species in the universe, ending an era of immortality for most of them.

This leads me to the heart of the story, and the premise of the series as a whole; is the Doctor doing the right thing by trying to stopping natural death from spreading in the Dark Times? But there’s a problem here. The concept of death being unnatural is one that TLV introduces to the Doctor Who universe without warning or really giving you space to process it. If all death by old age is something artificially added to the universe, and isn’t a natural part of life and change (as has been part of the heart of basically every other Who story), then is it really wrong to oppose that? Surely that would make the Kotts the uncontested biggest mass murderers in the history of everything. It feels like we need to develop a whole new moral compass just to reckon with this. And it doesn’t help that the other side of the argument is about if it’s right to change time, something the Who franchise has never been super consistent about and another thing that we don’t have morality established to deal with in the real world.

It feels like far too complex a set-up to be explored in just two short novels and a collection of tie-ins more interested in Daleks and Ood than the Time Lord Victorious himself. I’m a little worried that the moral question will be boiled down to the ‘killing is inconceivable even in the face of genocide’ stance that the franchise has held before, and practically never handled well. But needless to say, I’m very interested in what will happen in the future stories, especially second novel and series finale All Flesh Is Grass.

[ryttu3k]

I want to have them all on Tumblr, so. Here are my reaction posts, in order, for Resolution of the Daleks and season 12, part 1!

Resolution of the Daleks

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Resolution! Spoilers, obviously!

Okay, negative first, just to get it out of the way. Doctor Who, I really appreciate that you consistently have queer minor characters and queer couples. Just super casual and all, as it should be. Now can you please stop killing off half of said couples? Angstrom's wife, Frankie, now this young guy? It's really not cool.

Don't think the voiceover worked. I feel the prologue would have worked better with just visuals.

Again, Yaz didn't have much to do. The Doctor got a ton of action, Ryan and Graham both had significant interactions with Aaron, Yaz was... just kind of there. I'm hoping that when the show comes back in a year, now that Ryan has largely dealt with his issues, Yaz will get more attention?

UNIT was killed by Brexit?! Fuckin' rude!

Okay, on to the positive!

The Dalek was, frankly, fucking scary. Despite knowing that the Doctor would beat it, obviously, it caused huge swathes of damage and racked up a... rather high body count. Like it felt like a proper threat. Also, its ability to stop the TARDIS tracking it and stuff. Lin's terror felt extremely genuine and it was just nice and horrific overall, like - if it wasn't for the Doctor, it would feel like a genuine threat to the entire Earth.

(Also, it shut down the wifi. On New Years Day. What a monster!)

Oh man that Dalek laughter. Creepy as fuck. The Doctor dragging it in via hologram to dare it to laugh in her face? Fucking iconic.

"I've learned to think like a Dalek." Oof.

Doctor vs Dalek. Not just the physical aspect, but the mental part - the Doctor recognising the seriousness of it, but also having that element of cockiness ("Oh, mate") because, frankly, she's dealt with bigger threats. She's right when she points out that the biggest problem will be if regular humans try to engage it!

Elements of Dark!Doctor when she asks the team - almost desperately - if she gave it enough chances, if she was nice enough. Because the Doctor can get fucking scary around Daleks and she knows it. She's nice. She's friendly. But she's also the Doctor, and the Doctor has done some really damn questionable things to stop the Daleks, and she knows that. Fantastically done and I still desperately want some proper Dark!Doctor.

Really liked the parallels between the Doctor using scrap to make her sonic screwdriver, vs the Dalek using scrap to make its armour. The Doctor makes a tool, the Dalek makes items of war. Of course, well, the Doctor is probably more dangerous just with a swiss army sonic than a Dalek blaster...

I love how the whole, "Dads are complicated... so I've heard" bit could refer to either the loom thing or the Doctor having actual parents or the Doctor being a shitty dad themself XD

Graham was so excited to show off the TARDIS! Like he's just going, "How cool is this?!"

There were some legitimately funny moments! Graham's chair, "I suppose... we'll have to have a... conversation?", "Junkyard chic"... UNIT was killed by Brexit like that's so awful but. But in a kind of funny way.

Okay, now the unsure. Ryan, Graham, and Aaron. Ryan and Graham have sorted out their issues - but Aaron is still such a big overshadowing part of it that it's a bit of a shock when he comes back in. As someone with a similarly shit biological father, I was completely empathising with Ryan in the coffee shop conversation. And I do understand why they wanted reconciliation, so they showed Aaron as acknowledging his bullshit and Ryan ultimately choosing to forgive and save him.

But it's just... not that easy. It's not all going to be perfect just because they stopped a Dalek together. Aaron's neglect hurt Ryan really badly, and it just felt... too easy? Like it helped that Aaron was genuinely contrite, and that he had that good stepfather talk with Graham, but just... yeah, not sure how I feel about it, honestly.

The Doctor's first words to him being, "You weren't at Grace's funeral. Ryan waited for you, you let him down" were so, so good. Like the Doctor is just going "fuck you I'm his father now". Like tbh I think she was 100% prepared to yeet him off the TARDIS and be done with it. Like damn don't emotionally hurt one of her crew.

Some wonderfully savage lines, though. The Doctor's, "You're almost making up for your parenting deficit!"; Aaron and Ryan's, "Is that how you talk to your dad?" "I don't know, he's not been around"; Graham's fucking smirk when Ryan pointedly calls him 'Gramps'.

I did see a suggestion that would have made it much better - instead of the Dalek capturing Aaron, it captures Ryan. First, it ups the threat in the mind of the Doctor and Team TARDIS - this isn't some dickhead, this is one of them. And instead, it's Aaron who reaches out to Ryan, Aaron who risks his life, Aaron who has to come through for Ryan, instead of the other way around. Also would have tied in beautifully with, "Family isn't about DNA, or a name. It's about what you do, and you haven't done enough."

Also, 'srs tech skillz'. With a Z. Doctor why.

In conclusion, I am going to fight Nigel Farage for killing UNIT.

-

Spyfall part 1

Current response to Doctor Who: making a near-literal SDKFJHGSDASDKFH sound, grabbing a cushion, nearly throWING THE CUSHION.

More intelligent commentary when my brain comes back online.

-

Okay. Am calm. Am good! We're good.

MAJOR SPOILERS for Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 1!

So yeah I actually literally screamed (kind of... scream-laugh-holy-shit-yes). Like, even before Dhawan finished speaking the, "Or should I say spy... Master?" line because of the way he had said 'spymaster' in full in the line before and there's nothing that grabs my brain like that one word in that one context. It wasn't quite as mindblowing as the Utopia reveal, since, let's face it, it's only been a season since we last saw that magnificant arsehole, but still.

(Actually, since I didn't watch Twelve's run, the last time I saw them was exactly a decade ago in The End of Time, broadcast New Years Day 2010. And I still fucking cry over, "Get out of the way." So. That may have been why I literally screamed lmao)

I mean. It's the Master. I can't not. They're my favourite jerk. This is probably slightly concerning.

Anyway. Comments!

The good

Episode was just flat-out exciting. It reminded me both of the Three and Ten eras, a bit? Fun gadgets, fancy suits, and what ends up being a giant game! Did start wondering when they were talking about spies and codes and stuff. It's basically a puzzle that's been set up for the Doctor to solve. Plus, the way she was pretty much enlisted into it! Thirteen and Dhawan!Master might end up having a more Pertwee-Delgado-esque dynamic, maybe? I would be down for that!

(My introductory episode to the Master was The Mind of Evil. Let's just put it that way XD)

"I'm her best enemy." <3

I mean, in retrospect, isolated house full of high-tech stuff and a wall full of books about the Doctor... oh honey. Long, looong game of playing Spies and Conspiracies just for, apparently, the sheer funsies of it. Oh, honey. They're such a disaster and I love them.

The reveal scene, Jodie's acting. The way she just... freezes and hunches in on herself. She's been hiding her past more than other Doctors have in the past, and suddenly, here is her past!! Right here!! Laughing and joking and right there in front of her! And she's just like, "Ohhh shit, I was not ready to have this conversation again..."

Yasmin and Ryan's dynamic. I do like that they split up the usual combos of Thirteen-Yasmin and Graham-Ryan for once, because I do like seeing the way they play off each other! It makes them feel more cohesive as a group. I liked Ryan trying to comfort Yasmin after her experience.

Post-reveal, I'm now wondering if the weird zappy forest thing is the Master's TARDIS? Something to do with changing and processing DNA into something else? Something based around neurons, with the electric travelling system? Am also wondering what happened to Yasmin while in there, since she seemed to be processed in some way, and I'm wondering if she had part of her DNA rewritten as well - or maybe if she's been replaced entirely, like she's currently piloting an alien version of her own body while her actual self is still in there. They did already do that with Flesh!Amy, though.

Once this arc is over, I think Thirteen is definitely going to have to sit down and tell the Fam who the hell she actually is. Graham is having some serious questions, and the Master was definitely egging that on, pre-reveal.

How much do I love that even in a tux, the Doctor still has the culottes and boots? A lot, that is how much. Also, how much do I love the Doctor in a suit and on a motorbike? A lot, that is how much.

"I've had an upgrade." <3

Thirteen playing Snap. It's okay, Thirteen, you still win my heart <3

"Worst! Uber! Ever!!"

"Kisses!" Yes, we know ;) They've been texting! Someone write me a WhatsApp chat fic with plenty of subtext and double meaning, I require it. Also, memes. You know it's true. The Master isn't a Time Lord, they're a Meme Lord.

"Everything you think you know is a lie." Season hook? :o

The hmm

Main concern is how they're handling the Master's characterisation? Last we saw, they were so ready to jump the Doctor ship. Now it's back to games. Kind of wondering if that means the Master is just at the point of being resigned that they and the Doctor just don't work and so is going back to games because at least it makes them happy, but I'm happy to wait until next week to see how things play out!

Did see a suggestion that this is the Master from one of the alternate universes (or at least that seems to be the general consensus on why there were multiple maps), so not actually necessarily the same version as Missy. Alternatively, this could actually be a pre-Missy version! Maybe between Simm!Master and Missy, since we never actually see that regeneration?

Actually, if this is the one immediately before Missy and this two-parter ends with the Master regenerating and we actually do get Thirteen and Missy together on screen I may cry.

(Like I'm aro-ace and agender but I'm still so gay for both of them. There is no word other for this emotion other than 'I'm gay'.)

I kind of wish someone had double-checked the name of the company because VOR running the world is. Is. "Right now, VOR is more powerful than most nations." Just. *pinches bridge of nose* Like okay you know how we say 'oh yeah just google it' 'yeah I googled it' are they really gonna say 'yeah I just VO

'I'm going to V

I can't say it. I can't.

Apparently the Australia scenes were filmed in South Africa. Kind of assumed it wasn't really Australia as soon as I saw actually greenery in the background h e h.

Highkey wish I could have seen Missy and Thirteen together. Dhawan!Master is very fun so far but. Missy and Thirteen. See comment above about the Master's characterisation!

...ABC are you really going to keep to Thursday night broadcasts even after the UK switches their Sunday nights / our Monday mornings? Well that's a good way to guarantee I'll be watching them online first! I was happy to wait twelve hours or so so I could watch it with Mum, but like hell I'm going to wait three and a half days!

In conclusion, am dead, send help, is it Monday morning yet?

-

Spyfall part 2

Thoughts on Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 2!

GALLIFREY LOOOOORE.

Oh man I'm hyped. We got a teeny teaser to the Timeless Child way back last decade but now we may actually get to see what the fuck is going on. And hell, if nothing else, at least the discovery is being teased to be so devastating it did undo Missy's characterisation. If this incarnation of the Master is after her, at least. Still not necessarily anything to suggest that. The Master will likely be recurring over this season, so we'll find out more, at least!

God, the Master is so fucked up. Like. He's seen something apparently so massively traumatic that he had to destroy his own planet and legitimately does look broken by it? Unless he was acting, but I did not get that impression from the message at the end. And the only way he can think of to get the Doctor's attention is to start his old tricks? Not sure if it's better or worse for him to be pre-Missy tbh.

It's just... such an interesting dynamic. Also I really want to read into the whole... scene where the Master asks the Doctor to kneel and call him 'Master' in front of everyone - then, when she does (defiantly! Stubbornly!), he... kneels to be at the same level as her. Like, "I'm going to play these BDSM-esque power games with you but when it comes down to it, I still consider us equal."

Anyway the Master is def a service top.

This comment from Tumblr user upslapmeal:

"'why would it stop? I mean how else would I get your attention’ what did I say about the Master being like a cat knocking things off shelves"

I mean. Yeah.

"Contact." Old school.

The Companions! They get a capital C because they were rad as hell. I love them all deciding that what they do next is: carry on to save the world. Like they're all heroic af without the Doctor and it's so good.

"Don't make me do a soft-shoe shuffle!"

And questioning at the end, oooh man. There are some Implications there, yeah. They've found out some surface information, yes, but no real hint at the deeper trauma. And given what this coming season is hinting at, I strongly suspect we will indeed be getting that deeper trauma and maybe even Dark!Doctor. Gallifrey does tend to bring it out of them...

The whole on-the-run thing seemed to definitely be a callback to Sound of Drums. Uh, what's that going to do long-term? Send out a worldwide message saying, "Sorry, our bad, they're fine"? I mean, last time that happened... okay, Jack was already with Torchwood and so is used to Not Really Existing, but Martha definitely couldn't go back to fuckin' medical school. She ended up at UNIT and then went independent. They did not return to their normal lives.

Barton: needs a goddamn punch. He killed his mother what the fuck. On the plus side, at least he seems to have thoroughly destroyed his career? Be interesting to see if he reappears later, you don't go from the most powerful person on the planet to massive pariah overnight without Repercussions.

On to our guest characters! I hate to brag but I guessed who Ada was as soon as I heard her first name and saw her outfit. I mean the computers theme was already there, who else would she be? :D And I admittedly didn't know who Noor Inayat Khan was except in passing, but still. Little upset about the erased memories (Donna ;_; ), but I can see why the Doctor did it and like... this way, I'm glad they were able to avoid the implications of, "Ada only developed computing because she had already seen the future." Like people said that with Rosa Parks even though the Doctor said explicitly to only ensure there were enough seats filled and the act itself was all Rosa, so they may have wanted to play it safe.

I... really want to comment on how Ada definitely was crushing on the Doctor (and really, who wouldn't?), but she was a real person so I shall avoid those implications. (But really though!)

Doctor how many times have you been in someone's liver. This is some Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body bullshit and I love it.

Doctor's recording: "First of all, you're not gonna die! Second of all, don't talk back to the screens, obviously I'm a recording and I can't hear ya. Third, don't panic. Especially you, Graham."

Graham, panicking: "I'M NOT PANICKING!"

Doctor's recording: "Yes, you were! And I did just say, don't talk back to the screens!"

Graham: "????!?!!"

I want an entire series of the Master having a really infuriating seventy-seven years on Earth. Please.

Comments on continuity issues regarding that, "It's worse than Jodrell Bank!" "Did I ever apologise for that?" "No." "Good." exchange XD;; Like people are going, "Continuity error!! It was the Pharos Project, not Jodrell Bank!!" and like. Pharos was a project. Jodrell Bank is an observatory. You can do projects at observatories. Also, you can refer to projects by location, too. Am I referring to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Project or Tidbinbilla Station? Both! They refer to the same thing! In the Whoniverse, they likely did the Pharos Project at Jodrell Bank, and just had some lighthearted bantz about that time where the Master killed the Doctor, no biggie.

So, onwards to... an apparently unrelated episode for next week! Also, the Kassavin? Still there. Like. The Master only gave suggestions. They still have all those agents everywhere! They're still ready to act! And yeah, now they have the Master in their hands, so... I wonder if they'll make the Timeless Child a long, ongoing arc, and have the much more immediate threat of the Kassavin as the season finale?

-

Orphan 55

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Orphan 55!

...whew.

First thought: anvilicious, but some anvils need to be dropped, because, uh, have you seen the world lately.

It feels like quite a brittle episode? Even beyond the immediate tension of 'there are large angry creatures trying to kill everyone', there's just this sense of... like, tension. There's the tension between Benni and Vilma, which at first is kind of a sweet tension then becomes a life-threatening and sad tension. There's the tension between Roger Parslow Silas and his dad, with Silas not being taken seriously (although I do think him running out while they're in life-threatening danger is a bit much). The obvious and major tension between Bella and Kane that drives the whole episode, yes.

And there's also the tension amongst Team TARDIS! The episode starts with the Doctor still in Some Kinda Way about last week, and I felt a bit of tension between Yaz and Ryan? She seemed rather unimpressed by Bella, at any rate. I do like how organic the relationship between Ryan and Graham feels, at least. "It ain't the aliens that are gonna kill me, it’s worrying about you!"

Set and costume building, I felt, was kind of... eh? I liked how Tranquility itself looked, but the tunnels looked Very Generic, and some of the looks I felt didn't really work. Silas and his dad's green hair just looked very obviously fake, and I saw a description of Hyph3n-with-a-three looking like a cross between a Jellicle Cat and John Candy in Spaceballs (which... yeah, honestly). And I'm not sure about the Dregs, although I did initially have the thought that whatever the original inhabitants of the planet were, they must have been humanoid was amusingly accurate...

"I just pulled this out of a friend of mine! >:("

"Oh! ...We do not make any judgments on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquility Spa! ^_^;;"

"... ... ...It wasn't recreational! o.O"

God you could feel Hyph3n-with-a-three's embarrassment...

"If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch!" Excuse me I am at least Tofurky.

Also a logical issue on the whole journey to find Benni, because frankly, it just wasn't... sensible. Okay, bring a kid. Father of the year right there. Okay, bring an old woman. Granted, she could have insisted because it was her man-friend they were looking for, but surely she would have known she would slow them down? Her 'heroic sacrifice' felt very wasted, because dammit, she could have survived if she had stayed in the Dome where it was at least a bit safer!

"At least three eighths of a plan, right here! ...Two eights. I'll be honest, all I've got is the letter 'P'..."

So the Doctor is almost at the point of passing out from oxygen loss but hang on, let her first indulge her curiosity...

The sheer existence of orphan planets is very depressing. The sheer fact that there's at least fifty-five is very depressing.

There's an interesting comment about how straight after discussion of the reveal, the first shot of the preview is the Statue of Liberty. Very Planet of the Apes! (No apes next time, just Tesla vs Edison!) Also feeling a strong connection to Midnight (stunning resort on dangerous planet with a very personal enemy), and I saw a comment about Thirteen unintentionally The-End-Of-The-World-ing the Fam (and making a connection between 'very angry trees' and the Forests of Cheem). Bit of Ravolox. Bit of... fuck what was it... Curse of Fenric.

Although, we know that the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun, and it was done in a way that was like... it was its time. This was not its time, was a colossal fuck-up on a planetary scale (and the Doctor continues to be 'eat the rich'), but it's also only one potential future. Which is good, because that got dark. Even more than The End of the World, even more than Utopia, even more than fuckin' Frontios, because this is the near-future. The shots we saw of the destruction were modern day! That was the Dome of the Rock you saw getting bombed!

"Be smarter than what made you." PAGING THE GOVERNMENT...

Going to put it on a solid... maybe 7/10? Some really good elements in there, but also some clunkers, and unfortunately not a patch on the same writer's It Takes You Away, which was one of the strongest of the last season.

-

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror!

Opinion before episode: man, Tesla's cool. Opinion after episode: man, Tesla is fuckin' cool! :D That was a well-done personality-based historical, absolutely - I think it's my second-favourite personality-based historical only to Rosa (there are other pseudo-historical based ones set in the past that I love, but they're not personality-based; the Human Nature duology is a good example).

But yeah, Tesla just came across as a really, really cool character. Genius and he knew it, yes, and the real Tesla did have some questionable views (sexism, mostly), but otherwise the archetypal Idealistic Genius who wants to change the world for the better. Contrast with Edison, who was... a businessman. With, like, a really punchable face. Still pretty intelligent, but... very, very punchable. I've read about the Tesla-Edison feud before and always sided with Tesla, and let's face it, so did the writer XD

Good mix of character combinations - with a lot of characters, it's easy for someone to get sidelined, but this managed to handle Thirteen and the Fam, and Tesla, Dorothy, and Edison, pretty well. There were some neat combinations, like Ryan and Dorothy bonding over the sense of adventure, and Graham and Edison's confrontation; I also really loved the whole conversation between Thirteen and Tesla on the joy of just... creating. There's actually a very nice overlap between arts and sciences.

Antagonists - not bad? I feel a lot of people were expecting the Racnoss, and there was such a similarity that I would have liked at least a throwaway line about how the Skithra were related or something. Ooh man she definitely brought out Dark!Doctor, though. Teleporting the queen back to the ship, specifically so she can be fried? I mean, she might have survived it. Might. And just that fantastic little change of expression when the queen asks the Doctor if she's ever seen a dead planet before! Whittaker pulled that one off.

There's a very interesting compare and contrast between the Skithra and Edison, I found. Thirteen has her speech about how once the Skithra are gone, they won't be remembered. Caput. Forgotten. They left nothing behind. Compare and contrast to Edison, who was openly accused of using other people's work, but who's able to learn from his mistakes, end on an even(ish) setting with Tesla, and who does get remembered. Which kind of stings, honestly, if you look at Tesla's actual history.

Like. Apparently that, "The man just didn't understand the American sense of humour," line was an actual historical line, according to Tesla's own records. The absolute main reason for the difference in fame and recognition is that Tesla was a genius who didn't know how to market. Edison was a marketer who could invent a bit. So in conclusion Edison is a dick and Tesla needs more respect, the end.

Favourite lines and scenes:

Tesla: "Is - is this your own design?" Thirteen: "I made it! Mainly out of spoons! :D" Tesla: "You're an inventor! :D" Thirteen: "I have my moments." Tesla: "I knew it! So you... so, you can understand how it feels, you know, when you have an idea, and - and to make it real. I don't think there's any greater thrill!" Thirteen: "I couldn't agree more." Tesla: "You... you spoke of aliens. People here laugh at the very idea." Thirteen: "But not you." Tesla: "Well, apparently I'm not like other people. It can be difficult, you know, to feel no one else sees the world the way you do. It's like you're, uh..." Thirteen: "...out of place."

Graham: "Yeah, still. I bet you'd jump at the chance to have him back working for you, wouldn't ya?" Edison: "Yeah?" Graham: "Yeah!" Edison: "How d'you figure that?" Graham: "'Cause I had a supervisor like you at my old depot. And men like you don't pay a bloke that much attention unless you think there's a payout comin'."

Thirteen: "I wouldn't go killing me and Yaz. 'Cause Yaz... can tell you what this is." Yaz: "It's a camera!" Thirteen: "Bingo!" *FLASH!*

Edison: "I couldn't figure it out either." Tesla: "The internal dimensions transcend the external." Thirteen: *GRIN* Edison: ._.

Thirteen: "You do realise, it's killing Edison that they want you and not him? ;D"

Graham: "Don't worry. This ain't our first rodeo!" Ryan: "We've never been to a rodeo." Graham: "...you're not helping, Ryan..."

Thirteen: "And what are you queen of, exactly? A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A queen of shreds and patches. You're not a ruler, you're a parasite." Queen: "And what are you? So clever, stealing onto my ship, taking what I claim as mine. But where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind." Thirteen: "No, we are way past that. I gave you your chance." Queen: "A chance to be like you?" Thirteen: "A chance to evolve. But you were too stupid to take it. When you die, there'll be nothing left behind - just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

(Side note: I love that this speech was actually in front of the companions. They're starting to see that things are Not Okay.)

Thirteen: "Don't give up." Yaz: "Whatever anyone says." Tesla: "Well, let them talk. The present is theirs. I work for the future... and the future is mine."

Favourite incorrect lines:

Thirteen and Tesla, firing at the ship: "VIBE CHECK!"

-

Fugitive of the Judoon

I'M GONNA... NEED A HOT MOMENT TO PROCESS THAT...

-

WELL I. UH. OKAY.

lmao I'm serious I don't even know where to begin.

Uh, some very disorganised comments on Doctor Who - Fugitive of the Judoon!

I squealed when I heard Jack's voice then saw him in the flesh. I gasped audibly when 'Ruth' broke the glass. I yelped when we saw the buried TARDIS. I MAY HAVE SCREAMED A LITTLE WHEN 'RUTH' INTRODUCED HERSELF.

(Also can we talk about her outfit. That was on point.)

I'm getting a very... very early vibe? She didn't know what the sonic screwdriver was, and that was introduced with Troughton. Since we saw the Hartnell-Troughton regeneration, she must be pre-Hartnell? Maybe a Doctor whose memories were rewritten to the point that they thought the Hartnell incarnation was the earliest? Not to mention that was a pretty old-school-looking TARDIS!

Alternatively, maybe between Troughton and Pertwee? Either option has some inconsistency - if she's post Troughton, she should have known what the sonic was, although it admittedly did look very different. Plus, her TARDIS is already its police box shape, which was implied to have set in the junkyard. Also, we never actually do see the regeneration between Two and Three, and it could explain why Gallifrey was after her - she escaped after her trial after The War Games!

Definitely early, though.

Alternatively alternatively, Thirteen actually does say 'time is swirling around me'. Maybe an alternate timeline. Something to tie back to the Timeless Child?

"I've lived for thousands of years, so long I've lost count. I've had so many faces. How long have you known me? You don't know me. Not even a little bit."

That wasn't just aimed at the companions. I feel that was aimed at the Doctor themself.

(Related: the response from the fam was flat-out beautiful. Doesn't matter who she was or who she'll be. They know her now, and they love her.)

Just. Wow. Wow.

Really cool note from Twitter - disguised name was Ruth Clayton. Ruth = 'friend, companion'. Clayton = 'of the Earth'. She literally named herself 'friend of the Earth'.

"You're probably a bit confused right now."

I mean. Yeah. Confused and intrigued and what.

"Don't do points! I do points! Points are my thing!"

Jack. Jack. Smooching Graham, hitting on all the companions, getting into Shenanigans! The Lone Cyberman - I wonder if that's a totally different crisis that isn't even related to the current Gallifrey-Timeless Child one? The more important part is Jack's presence - the presence of another time traveller with a... unique relationship with the universe. The actual warning could be a red herring, but Jack showing up anywhere in the first place is a sign that something is happening with time?

Orphan 55 had a timeline that may or may not have been the 'real' one. Being only a potential future kind of doesn't work with what we know of established DW continuity, so I'm liking the 'alternate timeline' theory, maybe?

Ryan: "I liked him. Kind of cheesy."

Yaz: "But good cheesy."

Thirteen, smiling: "That's Jack."

Graham just standing there going, "He kissed me tho? ...Wasn't bad, actually."

"Is she safe?" Jack, honestly, is she ever safe?

"When she needs me... I'll be there." Oh yeah, he's so coming back later this season.

Also, Judoon, chameleon arch, the Master, Jack - getting big season 29 vibes here and that's a big thumbs up for me because that's my favourite season. We just need Martha to make an appearance now!

...hehe honestly, between Jodie's entire existence, and now, in the span of five episodes, introducing Dhawan!Master, Gat, and now Jo Martin as the first black female Doctor, and reintroducing Jack, one of the most overtly and openly queer characters on the series, the 'Doctor Who is too PC!' bunch are going to be so mad XD

"A platoon of Judoon... near the moon." / "Look at you, your platoon of Judoon near the... that lagoon..."

Man. The close-up in the very first shot of the watch. Nice tie-in.

"The Doctor never uses weapons!" "I know! Shut up! >.>"

Where do the Kasaavin come into play? Is this something they've done by integrating themselves throughout time and space? Maybe they're fraying the fabric?

My mind is blown. I can't wait for the rest of this season :D

-

[Part 2 - Praxeus to The Timeless Children]

[kuramirocket]

Carlos Muñoz, Jr. remembers when he first began to ponder the meaning of his Mexican roots.Muñoz, now 80, was living in the crowded Segundo barrio of El Paso, Texas. His family—like thousands of other émigrés—had settled there decades earlier, refugees fleeing violence spawned by the Mexican Revolution.Neither of his parents had made it past elementary school, but they wanted more for their son. So young Carlos walked across town every day to an Anglo neighborhood where the local school had more resources than barrio campuses.In that world, Carlos became Charles—rechristened in fifth grade by a white teacher in an attempt to “Americanize” him.

His school records were altered to label him Charles. But nothing else about him changed. “I began to wonder about what that meant,” he recalls. “That was the first time that I started thinking about identity and culture and that kind of stuff.”

It wouldn’t be the last.

The next year his family moved from El Paso to Los Angeles, where they hopscotched among barrios from the Eastside to Downtown to South Los Angeles. And no matter whether his teachers called him Carlos or Charles, their ingrained attitudes about his Mexican heritage narrowed his path.

The counselors at Belmont High School steered Charles away from college prep and toward vocational ed, even though he was an honor student. They suggested he become a carpenter, like his dad.

“If you were Black or Brown and a male at that time, you automatically got to be an industrial arts major,” he says. “You take the basic courses in English, history and government, but you don’t get the algebra and the biology courses.”

He didn’t realize until after he graduated with honors in 1958 that those courses he missed were required for admission to California’s public universities.

It would take six years for Charles to navigate a route—through community college, military service and a white-collar job that paid well but left him unfulfilled—to the campus of Cal State LA.

There, in the midst of a nascent Chicano rights movement, Charles reclaimed Carlos and played a key role in a history-making venture that would create new paths for Latino students: the creation at Cal State LA of the first Mexican American Studies program in the nation.

Its launch five decades ago—which Muñoz, then a graduate student, helped lead—would usher in a new era of ethnic studies across the Southwestern United States and ultimately around the country. Today more than 400 universities have programs dedicated to the study of the history, circumstances and culture of Latinos in America.

“Right now, there’s an awareness of ethnic studies. … But the beginnings of ethnic studies, as a discipline, were right here at Cal State LA,” says Professor Dolores Delgado Bernal, chair of what is now the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies.

“The discipline offers a lot to students, in terms of their identities, their intellect, what interests they pursue. Taking these courses allows students to say, ‘I can claim and be proud of who I am, and that allows me to better understand and accept others who are not like me.’ ”

“It’s becoming increasingly important to have that interdisciplinary background, and an understanding of other cultures and races,” Delgado Bernal says.

Today Muñoz is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He’s an author, political scientist, historian and scholar, specializing in social and revolutionary movements.

But the challenges Muñoz encountered on his journey from the barrio to the ivory tower typify the struggles that many Latino students still face today—and illustrate why Chicano Studies was necessary decades ago, and still has an important role to play.

In its early years, the Cal State LA program was a resource for local students who felt intimidated by college and invisible on campus.

The spotlight on Chicano history and culture allowed them to see themselves through a new lens, one scrubbed of stereotypes. And its sweeping scope connected them to other marginalized groups, illuminating struggles for equality that students found ultimately empowering.

“To me, the thing about Chicano Studies is that it was eye-opening to the truth and history,”  Carmen Ramírez, an Oxnard city councilwoman who attended Cal State LA for two years in the 1970s, says. “If you don’t know the truth, you can’t fix the future. … We need to know our history.”

And the dividends spread far beyond the campus, the student body and local communities. By its very existence, the Cal State LA program gave national credibility to the concept of ethnic studies as an intellectual pursuit.

“Chicano Studies opened the door to possibilities of employment on university faculties,” said Raul Ruiz, professor emeritus in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, which hired him in 1970. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State LA in 1967, and went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. at Harvard. Ruiz died this year at 78 years old. 

“Chicano Studies gave us opportunities to teach at the college level. And that was very significant in an era when many of us never had a Latino professor.”

At that time, “there were only about five Mexican Americans in the country with Ph.D.s in the social sciences,” recalls Muñoz, who earned his B.A. in political science from Cal State LA and a Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School.

Like Ruiz and Muñoz, several of the campus movement’s leaders went on to become college professors and scholarly experts in the field.

But even when they were offered faculty positions in Latino Studies, their contributions were often minimized or disregarded.

“Now we’re very visible at universities across the nation,” Muñoz says. “But during my career, I often had to face that perspective— you’re just ideologues, not scholars—from conservative faculty. It was not an easy path.”

For students like Ruiz, the path was equally challenging.

Ruiz had moved to Los Angeles from El Paso as a child in the 1950s. Told he wasn’t “college material,” Ruiz enrolled in Trade Tech, studied mechanical drawing and took a job drafting engineering plans for aviation systems. A year of that made him miserable, so he quit and in the mid-’60s applied to Cal State LA as an English major.

Then, as now, the Cal State LA campus was walking distance from one of the largest urban Mexican American communities in the United States. But few students in that community were being prepared for college.

The university experience seemed so remote that Eastside parents who could see the hillside campus from their yards thought “the building on the hill was the Sybil Brand Institute” for incarcerated women, Cal State LA Professor Ralph C. Guzmán told the University’s College Times newspaper in 1968.

Guzmán, who helped draft early Chicano Studies proposals, was one of just a handful of Latino faculty members then.

Ruiz was the only Mexican American kid in most of his classes, he said.

“I remember as an English major, the sense of me being up against everything. I remember making a presentation and the other students came at me hard with criticism,” Ruiz said. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Next time you’re going to know more than everybody else.’ ”

Ultimately, that would motivate him to develop a rigorous background in research. But as a new student, he found the social isolation to be a destabilizing experience.

After a professor told him he was smart “but basically illiterate,” Ruiz spent hours alone in the library—after classes and before his post office job—teaching himself to write.

“I would practice writing sentences and improving them until I could write a paragraph, and then an essay,” he said. It took him six months to develop the skills he needed. The skills he should have been taught in high school.

Cal State LA already had a robust interdisciplinary program of Latin American Studies, with classes that focused on Mexican culture but had little connection to the American experience.

“It was a marvelous program. It opened up my consciousness,” Ruiz said. But he came to realize that he knew more about Mexicans in Mexico than he did about families like his, “Mexicans in my own community.”

Beyond the University, in his own community, unrest and outrage were brewing. Mexican Americans had found their voice and were beginning to challenge the status quo. And nowhere did that coalesce more vividly than in the neighborhoods around Cal State LA.

“It was actually right here in the city of Los Angeles where the Chicano movement started,” noted legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, when she visited campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chicano Studies in September 2018.

The Chicano Studies program helped empower young activists and bring national attention to the challenges and concerns of Mexican Americans, she said.

Ruiz remembered what that felt like. “We were becoming part of this growing social movement that was sweeping the country, with massive anti-war protests and civil rights marches,” he recalled.

Community organizers rallied Eastside families to join the demonstrations. Student groups on campus worked together behind the scenes for change.

“I was not a radical person,” Ruiz said. “But you couldn’t help but become involved, or at least think about it.”

In March 1968, that awareness came to a head, as thousands of students at five high schools within a six-mile radius of Cal State LA walked out of classes and took to the streets, to challenge an educational system that didn’t recognize their worth or value their needs.

Thirteen adults would be arrested, jailed and charged with conspiracy for helping organize the walkouts. Muñoz—who’d proudly changed his name back to Carlos—was among them.

By then Muñoz was a Cal State LA graduate student and a U.S. veteran, who understood why students were walking out. The kid whom counselors steered away from college prep classes in high school was now on his way to becoming a university professor—and he was on the front lines of the battle to improve education for younger Latinos.

Police arrested Muñoz at gunpoint three months after the walkouts, as he sat at the kitchen table in his apartment doing his political science homework, and his wife and two young children slept upstairs. Muñoz spent two years on bail and faced a possible prison term of 66 years, until an appellate court dismissed the charges as a violation of the defendants’ First Amendment rights.

The walkouts alarmed the educational establishment, but energized the local community and moved education to the front of an activist agenda.

Cal State LA students, faculty and administration partnered with community groups to help broaden opportunities.

That summer Cal State LA’s student government voted to allocate $40,000 for an Educational Opportunity Program that would provide the support needed by students who were motivated but underprepared. Sixty-eight Latino and Black freshmen were admitted through the program that first year.

And University leaders agreed to work with student activists to get the Chicano Studies program up and running. The pioneering program was launched in the fall of 1968—with four courses and funding from student government.

Muñoz wound up teaching the program’s introductory course in the fall of 1968: Mexican American 100. Graduate student Gilbert Gonzalez taught Mexican American 111, a course on Mexican American history, and Professor Guzmán taught two upper-division classes.

“I was a first-year grad student in political science,” Muñoz recalls. “I had no teaching experience. I didn’t even know how the University worked. … We were very, very fortunate that there were progressive people in the administration. They were very helpful in generating support.”

In fact, the Chicano Studies movement at Cal State LA created a blueprint for collaboration—in an era when campus clashes were the primary tools of social and academic change.

Students worked with parents and with University leaders. Chicano and Black student groups supported one another. Both groups wanted a voice, a bigger presence on campus and a curriculum that reflected their culture and history.

Today, the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies offers more than 150 courses, taught by scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Its academic legacy is strong and its graduates have contributed immeasurably to the University, the region and beyond.

The number of students majoring in Chicano Studies has grown by almost 40% over the past 18 months, said Department Chair Delgado Bernal at the anniversary celebration.

“Maybe that’s because of the political climate,” she surmised. “Students are looking to understand it, and to have the skills, knowledge and rhetoric to respond.”

Over the years, the department has opened new career paths for students, elevated the status of Chicano scholarship and empowered successive generations in ways that only understanding your culture and history can do.

Its success reflects the foresight of its founders and the University’s ongoing commitment to academic rigor, inclusion and equality.

“Our whole purpose was assisting our community, supporting the aspirations of students and asserting our right to be here,” Muñoz says of the department’s creation a half-century ago.

“We said let’s do something so our younger brothers and sisters won’t be victimized by racism, the way we were.”

[sclfmastery]

Liveblogging and meta under the cut.

--Did the Master leave Ryan that note? If so why is he trying to spare the Companions? If not then I’m guessing the Doctor did it somehow by going back in time and planting the instructions, but this seems like a Mastery contrivance. 

--The Doctor talking to herself to stay calm is a mood. The liver thing lol.

--Okay yep it was the Doctor. 

--Especially you, Graham LOL. 

--”Couldn’t ride a bike but I can fly a plane” made me cry bc SPOONIE FISTBUMP!

--The Master’s TARDIS has red lights and I have headcanoned that for YEARS. 

--The Master’s TARDIS is so messy and admittedly that is NOT what I’d expect, I would expect exacting immaculacy. But the way he says “you should’ve seen me” to this guy who is just his ad-hoc ally is very saddening.  He’s lonely, even if he doesn’t realize it consciously himself. 

--”All our efforts will come together in a moment of beauty.” That is certainly Mastery, it conveys a deep seated romantic affection for the almost deified design of things, for the nautilus shell of perfectly machinated schemes.

--”A little chaos is a wonderful thing.”

--”Watch you tone, Mr. Barton, I’m not your employee.”

--Not to nitpick but he is extraordinarily calm and serene for a Master.  Shades of Delgado I suppose?

--The way he has a childish tantrum at the alarm going off is interesting and is shades of Simm. This combination of evolved intellect and underdeveloped emotional range. 

--He’s in pain. Oh no. Why’s he cringing. Oh no baby. 

--Lol at how the Doctor still calls herself a man. I love that for more reasons than I can iterate in this post. Soon I shall meta! lol.

--”A renegade from my home planet,” lol, my muse just  bridled proudly at that.

--HAHA! LMFAO HOW DID HE GET THERE! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL THAT'S PERFECT KOSCH YOU GO MOONLIGHT AS A RINGMASTER.  --the look she gives him when he walks in looooool --want to be  smaller ladies? YOU CAN 8D”  Okay but I LOVE this moment  because he’s got all of the chaotic energy of Simm’s first big scene, “it’s a gas mask!” and “funny is like this.”

--God the just, ANIMAL growl.  This Master has much more discretely split personalities--and NO I am NOT  saying he has Dissociative Identity Disorder, that’s like...massively ableist as a trope--but he seems capable of switching the violent rage on and off much more abruptly than any other Master including Simm, who is kind of always a sneering chaotic little shithead. like missy is always kind of coldly whimsically cruel, simm is always kind of a volcano of rage and snideness.  this guy is like, two people at once. I can work with that.  --”My mistake,” lmfao, asshole. 

--this has to be after Simm or Missy.  “When I kill them, Doctor, it gives me a little buzz, right here, in the hearts. It’s like, how would I describe it--like knowing I’m in the right place doing what I was made for.”  This line, this line, I am gonna write a novel on this line.  

--Kneel oh jesus. 

--Call me by my name/Use my name. It’s a direct parallel to TenSimm.  

--I’m a little ambivalent about him making her say his name while on her knees based on the gender dynamic, but I’m trying to also see it as the Doctor and Master foremost and basically him wanting her to orgasm to his moniker which is...very hot....

--HE GOT DOWN O NTHR FLOOR WITH HE>KJHSD>R? ?!khjlsdf

--Her face when she realizes he’s an idiot and not controlling his allies lol.

--SHE GOT MAD WHEN HE GOT SHOT BECAUSE SHE REMEMBERS BEING TEN AND HOLDING HIM WHILE HE CHOSE TO DIEEEE RATHER THAN TRAVEL WITH HERRRR--

[annakie]

It took three and a half months, but I’ve finished my Doctor Who Rewatch.

It’s time to talk about seasons 10, 11, overall wrapup thoughts and some best/worst lists.  Very long post below.

I started doing this back at the end of August as more of a joke when I was going back and cleaning the terrible cringe stuff off the first few months of my blog, then ended up taking that project from when I started the blog in May, 2011 until late 2016.  I realized that I had too much going on IRL right now to revisit my life at the end of 2016 when things took a sharp turn the wrong way, so I haven’t picked that back up again.  I still might at some point.

After the start of the nostalgia tour I:

Cried about Doomsday

Still hated the Manhattan episodes but renewed my love for one of my favorite characters of all time.

Reflected about Martha Jones and being an overly-zealous defender of a fictional character

Cried a lot over meeting and losing River Song in the span of an hour and a half.

Made my way through Season 4 and found myself still mostly loving the show.

Finished Season 4 and was starting to tire of Ten but knew I had more content to get through.

Didn’t post again til I was done with Amy and Rory.  Loved Amy, Rory and River even more, especially Rory.

Watched an episode I remembered I didn’t like just because of the guest actors.  Only marginally helped the episode.

Disliked the second half of season 7 even more than I used to.  Felt meh about Clara.

Warmed to Clara more in seasons 8 and 9.  Still, was ready to see her go.  Loved Twelve, though the first half of season 8 continued to be rough.  Adored the Husbands of River Song for the 6th+ time.

 Took a brief moment to love Bill.

Full disclosure on the rewatch: I skipped most of Fear Her except the first and last few minutes, and actually haven’t gotten back to Waters of Mars or the one 11 Christmas Special with the kids who’s father dies.  I may or may not pick those up in the next week or two.

So tonight I finished rewatching all of Thirteen’s episodes and wanted to talk a bit more about Bill, and then a lot about Thirteen, and some general thoughts about the whole rewatch.

Bill Potts is too good for this world.  I remembered loving her during her season but was blown away on the rewatch with how much I loved her, and almost all of her season.  Her energy, her story, her smile, it’s infectious.  It’s infuriating that so many people didn’t watch Bill because wow she deserved a lot more attention that I feel like she got, and also I feel like the show itself turned a real corner that season.  Season 9, yes, definitely better than 8 and 7.5.  But It’s like Moffat or the writers in general kinda grocked into several important things and made the show more progressive and less cringe?  

There wasn’t an episode I thought was bad, even the more filler episodes like the one in space with the air being a commodity was tense and fun.  I’m not sure I’d skip a single episode.

And then Bill, I think, ends up getting an even shittier deal than Martha in her season.  Left alone for ten years in a shithole mopping up floors, only to be turned into a cyberman and get left extremely traumatized, and sacrifice herself.  A very good story.  A very sad and frustrating ending.  Except that she does get to “transform” and travel the universe with Heather.

Maybe she did eventually go back home and finish living her life from not long after she left in the TARDIS the last time -- it’s entirely possible.  The Memory-Bill in Twice Upon a Time (the Twelve & One crossover) remembered traveling with Heather, which means her memory was taken from some point AFTER.  So maybe she got to be an ethereal being for a long time, and then eventually went home to Earth.  Or maybe she’s still out there traveling the stars with Heather.  Either way, she deserves a good life, and a good ending, even if we never know the true ending.

Twelve -- I love him.  Again, he had a really rough start but Capaldi is an amazing actor and he owned the role. I don’t think it’s actually possible to rank my favorite doctors from the new Who era, they’re all different, all great.  And Missy -- such an amazing villain.  Paired with Simms-Master was so, extremely fun, but even on her own, I think she’s now my favorite incarnation of The Master.  (I’ve only seen a few episodes of Old-Who with Delgado, and I really love Delgado’s Master as well.)  

Nardole was also a fun addition to the season.  I know technically he was considered a full companion and enjoyed him when he was there, but tbh, to me it was all about Bill.

But hey, when Twelve left, it was a good time for him to go -- I really think three seasons is the sweet spot for length of a Doctor.  I was so ready for Thirteen and The Fam.

I remembered loving Thirteen when her episodes were airing and, I was right to.  Jodie Whittaker is so good -- I never doubt for a second that she’s The Doctor.  The show one again feels very different with a new doctor / companions / showrunner.  I honestly loved the lack of Doctor-Angst in the season.  Thirteen is so much more brightness and sunshine and I think it was a good way to swing the Doctor after Twelve.  I also liked that there were a few comments about changing genders, a little bit of frustration from noticing how people treated her differently, but it was neither an earthshattering thing that made EVERYTHING DIFFERENT nor was it a non-event.  I really think they handled it well.

I will say that I think some of the critics were right, that the season itself could have used a bit more of an arc.  Not a heavy arc, like seasons five and six had, but a bit more than Tim Shaw showing up in the first and last episodes of the season.  It looks like next season is going to have that.

The arc that was there though really came from Graham and Ryan’s grief about Grace and their relationship growing.  Honestly, I remember when we learned that one of the new companions was going to be a 60-ish year old dude I wasn’t looking forward to that at all, but honestly, I love Graham.  He’s an actual good guy, he loves deeply, he’s allowed to show his emotions, he handles things WELL.  He’s not perfect but also I felt like they wrote his character so well, he wasn’t an arrogant guy expecting everyone to follow his orders, he cares deeply for Ryan and even had some great scenes with Yaz.  

Ryan and Yaz are both also just so fantastic.  I loved getting to spend time with Yaz’s family both current and past.  I actually learned a little history in the episode that took place in Pakistan (and loved having a benevolent alien storyline there, love that episode so much).  I also loved that they allowed Ryan to show grief and sadness, and vulnerability too.  

I was definitely feeling the 13/Yaz vibes on the rewatch, and although I wouldn’t say I’d be upset if they did end up doing a Ryan/Yaz storyline, I also wouldn’t be upset if they didn’t do any romance storylines at all.  I didn’t miss it this season, and 13/Yaz seemed more likely than anything.

I also loved that they took on racism in a couple of big ways this series.  I felt like the only big swing-and-miss episode was Ker-Blam! where they were so close to really hammering down a good message in the episode and then it felt like Jeff Bezos himself came in and rewrote the last 10 minutes.

TBH there were a couple of episodes that I had COMPLETELY forgotten about, especially the one with Chris North and the big spiders.  Like while I was watching it I had a vague memory of seeing it before, but not up until then.  I’d also forgotten about the New Year’s episode last year with Ryan’s dad.  I only remembered to watch it because after the final episode I was like “Wait, wasn’t Ryan’s dad supposed to be in this season?” and so I went to hunt for the episode.

SO... that’s it.  I was actually a little shocked last night when I finished up the New Year’s episode and realized... I was DONE.  I made it back through eleven seasons and... it was worth it.  

Some final thoughts... and I’m just picking a few things out here off the top of my head, I wasn’t keeping a list all the way through so I’m sure I’m going to think of other things after hitting Post, but here we go.

---------

COMPANION RANKINGS: God Tier: Martha Jones

Faves: Bill Potts, Rory Williams, River Song

I love you so much: Donna Noble, Amy Pond, The Fam (All together!), Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Wilfred Mott

Very very Good: Rose Tyler, Nardole

I Still Like You: Clara Oswald

---------

FAVE SEASON: I mean, it’s still gonna be Martha’s season with an honorable mention of the second half of 4.

If you take Martha Jones out of the equation, it’d probably be either 6 through 7.0, or Bill’s season.

LEAST FAVORITE:  The second half of 7, for sure, and the first half of 8 is kinda rough.  It’d be easy to say season 1, as well, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair, as I think the age of the show really shows there and there was a lot of getting-on-their feet they had to do.  There’s still a lot of good there, you just have to look for it harder.

---------

Favorite Specials: 

The Husbands of River Song, #1 favorite no question

The Day of the Doctor a close second. 

Honorable mention to the Night of The Doctor for the canonical return of Eight.  Seriously, the first time I saw that it may have been the single most joyous moment of New Who for me.

Least Favorite:

I mean, I haven’t rewatched two of them yet since I remember not liking them.  

Also Voyage of the Damned was just even worse than I remembered it.

I Cried The Hardest:

Amy and Rory’s leaving in The Angels Take Manhattan

River’s death in the Library

The end of Doomsday

Danny’s death

The end of Vincent and the Doctor

Prem’s death in Demons of the Punjab, maybe the only single-episode character death that hit me that hard.

Happiest Tears: 

Martha leaves the Doctor

The group in the TARDIS towing Earth home in Journey’s End

Twelve and River get 24 years together

Ryan calls Graham “Grandad”

Jackie and Alt-Pete meet/”reunite”

Heather shows up and... “saves” Bill, they go off on adventures.

Best Twists: 

John Simms Return at the end of season ten.  

YANA is the Master

Oswin is actually a Dalek

Heaven is run by Missy, and the Cybermen. (Damn I really love twists concerning the Master don’t I?)

Bill discovers she IS a Cyberman

Loudest cheers: 

Mickey showing up in Doomsday

Martha laughs at the Master

Rory’s speech at the beginning of A Good Man Goes to War

The Doctor punches a racist who insulted Bill

Best dramatic moments: 

Jack and the Doctor talk about Rose in Utopia

Twelve takes several billion years to punch through a wall

Just This Once, Everybody Lives!

Turn Left

The Doctor says goodbye Idris in The Doctor’s Wife

Missy and the Master’s mutually assured destruction.

Biggest Laughs for a good reason: 

The entire poison scene in the Unicorn and the Wasp

Basically everything about the Doctor attempting to be normal in The Lodger.

Right, putting Hitler in the Cupboard.

Doctor, when I’m on a date, do not put the Pope in my bedroom.

Biggest Cringe: 

Penis-head half-human Dalek

Concrete blowjobs

Anytime a lady slapped/hit a guy not in self-defense

Old goblin Ten / Jesus Ten in Last of the Time Lords

Most of The End of Time part 1

Eleven forces a kiss on Jenny in The Crimson Horror (THAT deserved the slap.)

There’s a lot of things I could point out in season 1 but I’m grading season 1 on a curve.

Favorite non-companion recurring characters: 

Danny Pink

Brian Williams

Jackie Tyler

Worst Villians: 

“Love And Monsters”

“Fear Her” 

The eye-crud sleep monster with Twelve

I kinda wanna say the Daleks are so overdone it’s hard to get excited about them anymore, though I did kinda like what they did in “Resolution” (13′s New Years episode last year.)

OK I honestly don’t know if I want to put “A sentient universe who is in the form of a large frog and just wants a BFF” in best or worst but I feel it belongs SOMEWHERE.

Best Villians:

Missy

Whatever the fuck that thing is in Midnight

House

Got a Raw Deal award:

Adam (Seriously, he was told nothing and did nothing wrong via what he’d been told?!

Donna

Bill (Seriously, TEN YEARS SCRUBBING FLOORS? only to not be saved by 2 hours and then turned into a cyberman and killed again?)

Most Bothersome Lack of Continuity:

The rules for meeting yourself / interfering in the past.

Uh so who was the Not-Danny astronaut in “Listen” anyway?

Most Improved on a Rewatch:

The Fires of Pompeii because... ten and twelve?  It used to be one of my least favorite eps of season 4.

the Daleks in Manahattan episodes I guess just because I liked them more this time though they’re still not great. 

Seeing all of River’s timeline in such a short period of time

Gotta say I enjoyed Planet of the Dead a normal amount when before I used to really dislike it.

Best Premiere of a Doctor:  The Eleventh Hour Roughest Premiere of a Doctor: Deep Breath, since I’m grading season 1 on a curve. Best Exit of a Doctor: Honestly?  I’m gonna give this one to Nine.  He sacrificed himself to save Rose, and he died too soon.  It seemed a fitting end, if too quick.

Roughest Exit of a Doctor: I’m going to go with Eleven here.  It came at the end of what I felt was the worst period of New Who.  The episode itself was... I kind of felt like it was overwraught and didn’t pack quite the same punch as the other three.  Say what you will about the “I Don’t Wanna Go” line with Ten and Twelve needing to be convinced to regenerate at all.  Matt Smith did the best with what he was given, but he wasn’t given much in the entire last run of his episodes after having some of the BEST episodes the previous two and a half seasons.

Best Premiere of a Major Companion: Honestly?  Still gotta go with The Eleventh Hour, for both Amy and Rory and the great way they were both set up and the mysteries of the season.

Worst Premiere of a Major Companion: If you don’t count Asylum of the Daleks (which I thought was great) as Clara’s premiere, then it was definitely Clara’s “The Bells of Saint John”.  No contest.  I don’t think ANY of the rest of them were done poorly, TBH.  I guess I’d have to go with “Rose”, because the Autons themselves are pretty meh and the plastic wasn’t great.

Best (Main) Exit of a Major Companion: This one is more difficult. Doomsday deserves a nod.  Martha Jones walked the world and ended on her own terms.  Journey’s End saw the end of an entire era of companions we loved.  River showed up and died on the same day, but her final appearance is one of my favorite episodes ever.  The Angles Take Manhattan was SO GOOD.  But The Doctor Falls was exciting and tense and tragic.  Hell, even Clara’s final episodes were great.

Honestly, this shouldn’t even be a question.  I can’t choose.  I can’t think of a single one I didn’t love.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, if you got this far!  Know what?  Doctor Who is still a great show, even if it’s not an obsession anymore.  I can see myself doing this rewatch again in a few years, and I’m super looking forward to the next season starting in a couple of weeks!

[that-shamrock-vibe]

TV Review: Cloak & Dagger (Spoilers)

Episodes 1-2: First Light/Suicide Sprints

Marvel Formula:

You know you have to hand it to Marvel Studios, and Disney by extension, they are pretty good at giving us shows that nobody asked for yet once aired they develop a following. Yes when it comes to comic-book properties in television, DC has always had the upper hand both in animation and live-action but true Marvel fans have stuck by the studio and the shows they have released. Now like DC TV they are spread across the platforms covering Netflix, Fox and ABC, even Hulu.

But this isn’t a surprise turn for Marvel because the entire MCU begun with characters only die-hard Marvel fans cared about due to the fact that Fox had the franchise’s best characters. So Marvel Studios turned around and said “We know you love the X-Men and Spider-Man, but we have Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk and are planning a universe beginning with them”.

I wasn’t really aware of Iron Man prior to RDJ donning the armour in 2008, I was aware of Thor and Cap through their appearances in the 90s X-Men animated series and Hulk because of that god awful 2003 movie. But also I was unaware of the characters introduced in these Marvel Television shows; obviously Phil Coulson and Peggy Carter I knew from the movies but the Inhumans, Runaways and now Cloak and Dagger I had not heard of before. Yet both the Runaways and now Cloak and Dagger intrigue me, I am trying to catch-up on Runaways but have started Cloak & Dagger and I love it.

Initial Thoughts:

I understand why these characters earned their own series, I really like the twist on the everyday term “cloak and dagger” which is a term used to describe espionarge and secrecy, and turned it into two distinct characters who give new meaning to the term “cloak and dagger” as rather “shield and sword”. Reading the comics, I enjoyed the first episode so much I bought the Cloak & Dagger issue of the Marvel’s Mightiest Heroes graphic novel collection, I understand the relationship between the two characters with Cloak being the shield and Dagger being the sword.

The show gripped me with the opening scenes which acted as the characters’ origin within the MCU. A deviation from the comics where they were experimented on whereas here it was a freak accident that also involved the deaths of Tandy’s father and Tyrone’s brother...I guess some Disney tropes never die.

I do feel this show and the style of it slots in very well to other Marvel Television shows, maybe not so much Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. but Runaways definitely and maybe even the Marvel Netflix shows, especially considering the characters are based out of Hell’s Kitchen in the comics whereas here they’re from New Orleans...a very muted New Orleans at that.

Also when I discovered that the showrunner for this series was Joe Pokaski who worked as a writer for a number of episodes of Heroes i was optimistic, although not too overly as the episodes he wrote weren’t my favourite, not horrendous either but not the best.

Characters:

I do think that Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph are the right choices for these characters. Aubrey definitely has that righteous brooding nature that Cloak has and Olivia has a very teen angsty attitude that works with Dagger.

I found Tandy’s character very believable from witnessing her dad die and having a mother as an addict to living rough and doing what she needs to do to get by. I also really liked the twist on roofying someone not to take advantage of them sexually but instead to steal from them.

However I applaud the show for showing that Tandy’s actions had consequences and that guy Rick did corner her at the ballet recital that she stole his ticket for, also the scene before did show that Tandy is smart because she saw who I’m presuming was Rick’s parents sitting in the seats next to his vacant one and so knew if she sat there then there would be problems so she sat in the scaffolding looking down just to see a glimpse of her old life. I am however very happy she unwillingly stabbed him with a Lightforce Dagger.

I also love how there is somewhat of a role reversal with the two characters, as is the norm it would be Tandy who is the white privileged one and Tyrone who is sleeping rough, but I love how they’ve flipped that and made Tandy somewhat of an addict like her mother and Ty being the privileged one. It showcases the other half of what Luke Cage represents in the sense of growing up on the streets of Harlem.

With regards to Tyrone, I love exploring his darkforce powers, and darkforce has been used multiple times in Marvel Television as has Roxxon where they got their powers, but I love how pretty much any shroud he uses teleports him to places. My only negative is keeping up with what is really happening and what is a vision.

In terms of supporting characters, I haven’t really focused on them because first time watching I was fixated on the titular characters, but the two standouts for me was in Episode 2 when the show introduced Father Delgado and Officer Brigid O’Reilly. I read half of my graphic novel before watching Episode 2 because I’m watching it with my partner so was introduced to the two characters in the comics first and I have to say I really don’t like the redesign they have given Brigid. In the comics she has a short red haired messy bob akin to how The Wasp had hers famously in the comics before they besmirched it in the MCU. Here they have essentially styled her as every single supporting female character in Marvel Television shows; Jemma Simmons, Bobbi Morse, Karen Page, all of them have this slender Plain Jane appearance about them and that is what Emma Lahana looks like here.

I haven’t heard much from her yet which is why I didn’t automatically click with this like I did for Eka Darville on Jessica Jones but Emma like Eka is a Power Rangers alum appearing as the Yellow Ranger in Dino Thunder. I know both Dino Thunder and RPM fall under the Disney-owned Power Rangers serials but does that mean they’re easier to cast in shows like these under the same umbrella just in different universes? I mean it is good to see Emma acting again and hopefully she’ll do the character justice.

Hopes Going Forward:

In terms of where this season goes and if it continues beyond, I would really like to see a crossover either with the Netflix shows or Runaways. Once Ty masters his abilities as Cloak he should be able to control his teleportation powers so going from Louisiana to New York or California should be easy. Also both Cloak and Dagger were once members of the Runaways and their comic story talks a lot about runaway kids as it is but also Dagger has been a member of the Secret Defenders which could be a potential future incarnation of the Defenders on Netflix.

But the one thing I want to see happen is Cloak & Dagger meet Spider-Man. That is by far and away the best intro to the two I could have got in the comics and I think it could work rather well, also all we know about the timeline is that their present day is 8 years after they got powers so that may not be current present day.

Overall I am excited for what this series has to show me and I am really hoping for some amazing and surprising crossovers down the line. I haven’t been this excited about a non-X-Men Marvel TV series since Jessica Jones.

So those are my thoughts on the first two episodes of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more TV Reviews as well as other posts.

[digitalvalkerie]

I posted 279 times in 2021

26 posts created (9%)

253 posts reblogged (91%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 9.7 posts.

I added 43 tags in 2021

#own art - 10 posts

#tmnt - 5 posts

#streaming - 5 posts

#art by op - 4 posts

#tmnt bayverse - 4 posts

#tmnt fanfiction - 3 posts

#long post - 3 posts

#digidestinedweek - 3 posts

#digimon - 3 posts

#self promotion - 3 posts

Longest Tag: 86 characters

#he smells like lavender which i dont often get to smell because my mother is allergic.

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Artlocke Episode 1 Rundown

Alright so, there were a couple technical difficulties with the stream at first, but it was quickly remedied, and we got started.

Our first starter choices we’re Starly, Arcanine, and Chinchou. I picked the Chinchou, and named her Blippy. 

Her ability was Illuminate, which i didnt know was a thing, and it attracts more wild pokemon. ... not good when trying to rush to the pokecenter

Blippy was great. the only downside... was that all we ran into was tangrowths that knew ingrain and constrict... she did good for a while, but killed the only other pokemon we could have caught...

... and then, lost to the same species of pokemon... She was hit with confusion by a lunatone, and hit herself to death... RIP Blippy.

All Blippy wanted.. was to make more friens... with her bright personality. ... and it cost her her life. 

... and since she was my only pokemon at the time... i had to start all over with a rerandomised game.

That brings us to our next starters. a Spheal, A Magby, and a nidoran (M), and being in a hurry for going through the first part of the game again.... I accidentally chose Nidoran (M). I named him before even getting the chance to.

4 notes • Posted 2021-01-29 08:11:53 GMT

#4

Digi-see, Digi-hear, Digi-know it's that time of year again!

Tamersona week, or as it's called this year, Digidestinedsona week, is here again, starting tomorrow ill be posting some stuff I may or may not still be working on tonight >>;

But because I loved this last year, my determination levels are through the roof. And because I'm still proud of what I managed to get done last year, have a little mini master post of last years content~

First Ref/Warm-up

Day 1: First Encounters

Day 2: Way to Grow!

Day 3: Hero's Guidebook

Day 4: Digital Devices

Day 5: All About the Mon

Days 6 and 7, never saw the light of day, sadly.... but you know, that's okay, sometimes you just need to stop when you're at your limits~

Here's to another fun time where I can push myself out of my comfort zones and grow like a digimon~

8 notes • Posted 2021-09-16 02:38:32 GMT

#3

Whats this? Fan Character Relatives?~

Baron Draxum... is a mutant yokai, right? ... so somebody possibly made him like he made the turtles? ... and hes the self proclaimed protector of mutant kind, which means theirs more than him... ... so possibly he could have... I dunno... Siblings?~ >w> Say hello to the Draxum Family, or at least Baron's siblings. All five represent a different creature type, and each have their own unique power, and quirk about themselves~ All of them are trained warriors for the most part, though some like it more than the others. Aviator, is the Oldest. He represents Birds, as, its hard to tell here since I did not include the wings in his image... he is very harpy like in structure, with an extra pair of more human-like arms. He has a knack for figuring things out and thinking things through, as well as an ability to see things others cannot! ... So the logical option? Become a detective, because god knows the HCPD are absolute shite at their jobs... He's very flighty with a love of dramatics, but also has a sense of Noir energy to him. Baron would be next on the age scale, but is considered to be twins with Delgado, since the two held a very close bond as children. He represents mammals, as he is mostly goat. Baron is scientifically and alchemically inclined, with a power of accelerating plant growth, as seen with his vines in combat. Hes cold at first glance, and to those he doesnt like, but eventually will warm up, especially if its for his kids. Delgado is a complicated mess of a man with serious abandonment issues. He takes things people say very seriously, which as a child left him very susceptible to bullying. He represents Fish and amphibians, although with Shapeshifting abilities, he could represent what ever the hell he wanted to, hes mainly Anglerfish. When it comes to people he feels have wronged him, he will not hesitate to tear them apart if he can, but if someones helped him in a time when he really needed it... he feels honor bound to keep his peace with them. Edit is the Second youngest, representing insects and arachnids as, simply put as possible, he is a large spider man. While a crafty fighter, he prefers the library, helping out by putting books back where they belong, and just chilling for days on end, reading fictional books. Like most spiders, he can produce a web of which to get around the library, but his unique gift is that of being able to replace small details of things, much like a copy/paste function on a computer. He can use this for things like typos in books, or cleaning up messes by replacing objects with "air". He needs glasses for most reading, and his farther back eyes are more sensitive to light. Courage would be the youngest, representing reptiles as she is a lizard. ... what kind of lizard is unclear. But her ability is that of stealth, being able to blend into shadows, much like a ninja, to the point where not even her brother Aviator can see her. She has a strong sense of justice, and much like Aviator, has noticed the HCPD's Lacking performances, taking on the role of vigilante. While she is rather small compared to her brothers, her strength and vigor matches that of Baron's. All five siblings were once as close as the turtles, but Baron, the leader at the time, gave up his and (most of) his siblings memories of each other, in order to protect them. Delgado was protected from this fate, but had to live in a debatably worse fate... knowing your family no longer knows you. Each sibling has an unknown attachment to children they would consider their own, likely due to the fact that there is a hole in their hearts where their siblings once resided.  ... and that my dear friends, is my long winded headcanon about fun mutant RotTMNT ocs/fan relatives to canon characters! woo that was a doozy of a doozy. Baron Draxum/RotTMNT (c) Nickelodeon

9 notes • Posted 2021-03-14 09:23:20 GMT

#2

My piece for the 2021 Crossing Paths Zine, dedicated to Sonic the hedgehog and a gift for his birthday~ 25 other artists joined me for this zine, Hosted by @superemeralds @gottafollowmyrainbowzine

It can be found for free here: https://t.co/jR8ZHOufWn

This is mainly a bit of a... Slice of life piece between my three main OCs for the Sonic universe, and honestly I am so happy with how this turned out!~ You can find more detail on each image in the zine itself.

Happy Birthday you groovy little hedgehog, you've really helped me in my life, man~

12 notes • Posted 2021-06-23 19:47:54 GMT

#1

Intro Day (September 16)

Introduce yourself!

My name is Vick.

Your Digivice?

The D.P.B.

Any Crests/Spirits?

Creativity and Harmony

Have any rivals?

None as of now

I’m just in time for this to not be late~ I’m really really happy with how it all turned out this time around. I’ve really come a long way, haven’t I~

13 notes • Posted 2021-09-17 05:45:29 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[leonawriter]

Earlier I reblogged a post by @haruspis which linked to other posts, which all talked about how things had gone so badly wrong - and why - in The Lie of the Land. OP suggested having had the Doctor only pretending to work for the Monks, and anyone send to ‘labour camps’ were actually being sent to be deprogrammed of the Monks’ brainwashing. The Memory Police could have been UNIT.

That would have been good - it’s certainly something I’d have preferred to what we did get.

Funny thing is, when I’d first started seeing the trailers for Extremis and TPatEotW, I saw Missy outside of the Vault. We’d already been starting to figure that it was her in there for a while, so that wasn’t a major spoiler, but... I kept, for some reason, mixing up how it would happen. 

Even after watching Lie of the Land, I had a general impression of disappointment that she hadn’t needed to come out of the Vault for the adventure - and looking back, I started thinking about how interesting that would have been, narratively, and how it would have fitted in with the rest of her story arc.

For one thing, to lead into this, we could have had a Doctor who truly had been brainwashed just like everyone else had been, who had somehow been made to believe everything. Perhaps, the consent that the Monks required gave them the ability to create an entirely new timeline somehow, meaning that they’ve had all that time to mess with humanity, and the Doctor has only been on the sidelines. He’s hardly even the same person. He might feel flashes of feeling ‘something is wrong’, but the Monks might be able to push his thoughts back to ‘safer’ territory.  Remember - they healed his sight, why not make them this capable, now that they’ve got consent to do whatever they want? Not to mention, being the person that the entire consent was aimed at, they could have been able to do things to him more than anyone else!

Because of this, Nardole would have been far more front and centre of the plotting, since he wouldn't have been spending six months plotting with the Doctor, but trying to figure out his own way of saving the Doctor from the Monks, and himself. 

Bill’s six months spent fighting to keep her memories intact could have been the result of her having travelled through time so much - which would mean that others who’ve done so would have similar resistance. Her fight wouldn’t be for nothing, since there is a real threat, and the despair weighing down on her and everyone seeing the Doctor saying those things is real. She won’t look back on this and think ‘why was I going through that, what was the point?’, because the point was that she survived, in order to save people.

Which... if we’re going by how things went in the canon episode, here would be about where Nardole came in and said ‘we’re busting the Doctor out of jail’, except here Nardole knows that’s not going to work. So, what does he do? What’s anyone to do?

Well, there is one person who’s also not affected, and that’s Missy, safe in her Vault. And she’s go every reason to not want the Doctor dead (remembering her original characterisation in previous incarnations where he did actively save the Doctor’s life, and did sometimes find himself in over his head and helping to reverse the damage he’d done). 

So, we could have had an episode which had been lead into with the Doctor saying through the Vault doors to Missy that he was afraid, that this was the worst threat humanity had faced so far, and he might end up asking for her help - and then it concludes with him unable to ask for her help, but someone else (Nardole, not liking it but for the sake of the Doctor, going through with it) asking instead.

Missy, here, could have shown herself as toeing the line between ‘her past self’ and ‘wanting to be good’, by actively leading the effort to save the Doctor and undo all the Monks’ work, but also having the episode end with her having a human death count. Here, we’d see her making massive mistakes, and the Doctor being rightfully angry when he realises what’s happened - angry with Bill for consenting, angry with Nardole for letting Missy out and run havoc, angry with Missy for ‘breaking’ the promise and coming out of the Vault but also for killing people when she’d said she’d ‘be good’ (even though they needed to be dealt with somehow, it was unnecessarily cruel) - but mainly angry with himself, for what he has done, and forced others to endure.

Which, I have to say, would make a certain scene of a certain scene from late on in the episode, where Missy is seen crying, and when asked what’s wrong, she says that she’s realising that she ‘knows the names of the people she’s killed’. If you think about it, do you expect Delgado!Master, Ainley!Master, or literally any of the others to even learn the names of the people they’d killed? I certainly don’t. The others never saw the people they killed as worth the effort. They were disposable. So why imply she remembers every death that’s been at her hands? It would make so much more sense if there’s been something more recent, fresh in her mind, at a time when empathy is beginning to be a thing for her. 

It would also be a point of understanding between the Doctor and Missy, as they have a common ground. Both of them would have been responsible for the deaths of many people, but how do they deal with that information? Do they feel guilt? The Doctor only says he cares because - as either he or someone else has said he’d think like - ‘no one ever gets anything done by caring’. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. And then there’s Missy, who’s only just starting to figure herself out, who doesn’t understand much about how the Doctor’s sense of right and wrong works yet. Here, they’d be able to have a more or less frank discussion of ‘what I did was wrong, and for these reasons, do you understand why what you did was wrong?’ on both sides.

In relation to the above, there could also be narrative mirroring of ‘the Doctor doesn't and couldn’t know the names of the people he had killed by encouraging people to send their friends/family to labour camps’ versus ‘Missy does know the names of the people she killed’, and see how that affects them both in different ways.

With this in mind, our ending moment, of Bill talking to the Doctor, could have elements of ‘how much of what you were saying comes from you, and how much came from the Monks?’, which, again, could lead to a greater understanding of the Doctor by Bill, even if he’s hedging his answers. 

Missy pretending to be the Doctor here could even have led into the idea of the Doctor suggesting she make a second, more successful attempt, later on in World Enough and Time, tying in the continuity of the episodes, and truly showing her character development - as well as causing a fair few brick jokes! If Missy had killed people the last time she was out of the Vault, then it would have been even funnier when she says ‘Please stay a few feet away, I’m really trying not to kill someone today’, because there’s context to her failing before.

I guess what I’m saying is that there are so many ways that this episode could have gone right, where it could have understood the weight of what it was trying to convey, but instead it seemed far more like it was trying to emulate episodes such as Last of the Time Lords and Turn Left in showing a dystopian world without the Doctor, and all of the responsibility and repercussions of the episode’s events ended up disappearing like water off a duck’s back, and Missy’s line of growth instead seems sudden, having come out of literally nowhere.

[nekona-the-geokitty]

Random Stupid Facts From/About The Geokitty

So my brain is failing me at studying so I am going to post random things about myself and other stuff 1. My future father-in-law really *really* looked like The Master from Doctor Who when he was younger. Like seriously so much like Roger Delgado that I did a double take. I wish I could post a picture but can't for reasons. I did a double take at the photo because I was like "why the heck is there a photo of The Master in their house?" It is now a joke that Missy regenerates and now lives near a lake to go fishing all the time and checking boats for mussels. I told his friends and now they can't unsee it. We joke about this a lot and it made "The Doctor Falls" and "The Curse of Fatal Death" slightly hilarious for my fiancé. 2. California Teacher credential programs are in no way, shape, or form geared towards science teachers. It is alllllll Common Core, and you get to translate your assignments to NGSS standards. This is frustrating for me as not only a science teacher but a Geosciences teacher extra frustrating. Geology is important. Why are we not teaching it and Geography again? 3. My dog once got his blanket wrapped around his head and ran into the fence and put a hole in the screen door before we could get him out of the blanket. He is simultaneously incredibly intelligent and incredibly derpy at the same time. He also must pee on *everything.* 4. Blue Oyster Cult still sounds awesome live after so many years. 5. I accidentally knocked a rock onto a famous geologist during a field class and it was hideously embarrassing. The head of the department called me an idiot for that one and I'd agree. ;_; 6. I have PTSD with unfortunately common triggers I can't avoid. I'm learning to deal but if I see someone in scrubs and a hospital badge or an EMT I am both "hooray for health care people" and reliving horrible memories of how cruel they can be to psychiatric cases (My case turned out to be the fault of my doctors for cold turkeying me off medicine you should never, ever cold turkey. I didn't sleep for 9 days straight and unsurprisingly went off the deep end and tried to kill myself. Benzodiazepines are seriously dangerous. Sometimes necessary to get things under control but only a short term solution!) It was horrific and yes I relive those memories pretty much every day and because psychiatric care in my county is a joke I have no treatment but my antidepressant. I'd love to start dealing with my mental health issues but I don't really have anyone to work on CBT with. 7. I really, really have a strange desire to go to Antarctica. I know I'm no good at geologic fieldwork but I just feel a strange pull there and dream about it often. 8. You can see an inactive Fault contact at Pismo beach between two types of tuff and it is really cool and I have stuck myself in the fault for photos. I jokingly call it "Little Amigara" for this reason. (Thanks Junji Ito) 9. To me Natto tastes the way old coffee grounds smell 10. When I hear metal scraping metal, like a fork on a metal pan, I taste a metallic taste and can't stand it at all.

[bewarethewolfarmy]

literally.. you missed out the entire meaning of the post dear. i played a whole damn lot of original characters and canon characters, i seen a lot. generally, if an oc has a faceclaim that it's over-used, they are 'bonkers; or 'only copying other ocs with that face' but if some canon character uses the same fancast all over again it's ok. if a canon character becomes canon divergent, it is a good thing, but if an oc changes something in their bio they are deemed 'not stable characterization'

(First thanks for telling me XD It’s always good to know what people honestly mean when they write something and I prefer to not make asumptions but it can be hard. Also this topic is one I think about a lot and getting different opinions is important to get a stronger view of it.

Based on my own personal experience as an online roleplayer for thirteen years, this is my point of view and why I disagree with the assessment in your post. Read-more for length:

-“ generally, if an oc has a faceclaim that it's over-used, they are 'bonkers; or 'only copying other ocs with that face' but if some canon character uses the same fancast all over again it's ok.” While there are some faceclaims that are used very often, primarily based off of the popularity of the faceclaim themselves, the actual hate I at least have seen those muns get over their faceclaims is not based off of being “bonkers” or “only copying others”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone be called crazy for having a faceclaim; if you have then a) I am so sorry you have had to deal with that and b) it might be important to recognize that not all fandoms are created alike. While MANY are full of assholes (ex-Classic Who fandomer and watcher of the madhouse that is Gotham fandom), many also do not go into a screaming fit about a faceclaim. As long as they are live action if a live action fandom/animated if it’s an animated fandom; now THAT, considering my primary muse had an anime based faceclaim because of an unique aspect of hers, is something I know that fandoms do in shades and will scream about for ocs while also accepting a canon who happens to use an animated faceclaim because they happen to BE Animated (Shalka Master/Doctor was a huge example; I as a DW-primary oc got a lot of hate and dismissal and advice to “change my faceclaim” because my fc was Kanra from Durarara, meanwhile Shalka Doctor was accepted and still loved though because it’s a short ANIMATED episode set has to have animated icons (despite being heavily physically based on his voice actor Richard E. Grant and thus under the same laws should have been made to use his face instead)). I have since changed my fc because I got tired of being hated on for being “a cartoon”. But once more, I really have never seen any oc in any of the massive amount of fandoms I follow (I highlight because I recognize that I do not follow all and I do not see all and there might be many accounts of it; I simply talk on the level of what I see and know of as a roleplayer) and interact with (being a temporal/dimensional traveler is always useful for making new friends) be hated on for being a popular/over-used fc. In addition I’d like to point out that canons do get hurt by using the same faceclaim because that goes into the idea that “all canons are alike” and thus can make the roleplayer feel replaceable because they are for instance an Oswald Cobblepot using Robin’s face but there’s like ten or fifteen others and they are suddenly not special enough to pay much attention to

-”if a canon character becomes canon divergent, it is a good thing, but if an oc changes something in their bio they are deemed 'not stable characterization'“ I would like to bring up once again my canon character Robert James Finn also known as RJ and the argument I still have to have about him being a druggie. I don’t know why I have to do this but I have to constantly remind people that no, RJ does not smoke weed, he is not high, my headcanon for him is as someone who is naturally a bit loopy and immensely intelligent; he admits himself that he often talks the way he does to confuse his enemies which denotes to me someone who recognizes the usefulness of acting a part and his part is the man who no one suspects. Now I don’t get straight hate but does everyone respect my choice in having RJ not do drugs and make sure to actually keep that in mind talking to him? No. And in general “canon divergence” is a very weird term; canon by nature is highly about interpretation. For example: The Doctor and Master. There is many interactions between them since the introduction of Delgado!Master back during Jon Pertwee’s era and especially then the relationship is shown to be a very give and take. There is many points, then and throughout time, where you could say that the Master at the very least is in love with the Doctor and even argue that the Doctor does share this feeling; the famous Mind of Evil “You were within an inch of dying” scene is one of the best examples of evidence for this. BUT similarly there are other interpretations to this; the Master could simply be a sociopath not wishing to lose his best “toy” for example. Which is canon? I have most of my muses as non-hetero, Merrick Baliton being the biggest example; Merrick canonically has never shown interest in boys, only being in love with the princess Shayla, yet mine has fallen in love with and been with multiple males, primarily males at this point. Merrick would be canon divergent and I have no doubt that there are multiple people who dislike my Merrick, my Dillon, my RJ, my Riley, my Bigby (who goes completely against his canon love for Snow by not having her be his True Love like in the comics), my Karone/Astronema, my Sarah or any of my companions’ own interpretations of their muses; people may not be as vocal about it but the fact of the matter is that it does happen. (added while writing the oc portion after this) I can name at least one very good example of an canon who is HIGHLY divergent and has not been allowed to get away scotfree over it; the mun plays an underaged muse from a certain Disney movie involving superheroes and plays them in an incredibly sexualized and discomforting way, to the point that my talking about canon divergence being interpretative? Yeah that doesn’t apply to this guy. His muse regularly from others I have seen gets called out on the disgusting behavior the mun has him engage in and is not dismissed as okay and while there are those who do roleplay with them, I would note that while following them (because I rarely unfollow) I have never seen any of the other muses from his fandom so much as come near him. He is a pariah in his own fandom.

As for ocs being seen as not having stable characterisation, this I can understand but once more I debate the idea that it is so much more rampant than with canons. There are cases in which a mun might change things because they decided they found an easier or simplier way to explain it or because of pressure because of a variety of things (Mary Sue accusations, peer pressure, trigger issues, further education that ended up contradicting something, or simply because their muse did not agree with the mun’s interpretation and they didn’t find out until during a roleplay which has happened to me a lot and is fucking annoying, muses, stop it); these I think are generally accepted, primarily because the change makes sense or the mun explains what they did and why.  Now once more fandom-may-vary but even within the DW fandom (which is my go-to “WHAT THE FUCK” fandom in terms of treatment of members by members) a change when it fits well with the character is seen with a grain of salt but does not cause an explosive blowup. On the other hand there are incidents in which yes, there is bad or unstable characterisation; it is almost always bad roleplayers who are creating characters without care to actually making them something to roleplay with. You know the type and no, it’s very rarely the ones who actually get called out about it; it’s weird but they almost always also get away with it because they find people who don’t really care and just want to roleplay with them. They constantly change their muses and while occasional change is something we expect (all muses and all mun change with time), the sheer number of changing is often the bigger issue. Having a character that you cannot keep track of what their past is, not because they have none but because the mun every day or so is changing something, can make for problem in interacting, especially when you are trying to discuss important points about the muse and work through issues and grief but the traumas keep changing or disappearing completely. Stable characterisation in general tends to be a difficult thing to do at times and if someone does throw around the term “unstable characterisation” at an oc, then it’s perfectly right to throw back at them two words: “the Joker”. Then move on because that clown should and can shut down ANY argument about bio changes and characterisation. Just say your oc is the Joker and laugh your head off.

In closing, basically: I do believe OCs have it inherently worse than canons. There are prejudices against them, ranging from not liking the wording of the about page to disliking a specific faceclaim because it’s a person you hate/animated/too attractive/not attractive enough to fearing a pre-established relationship if their about does include mentionings of your muse to not feeling comfortable with certain genders/sexualities to just plain not liking ocs. OCs by nature do have to work harder to get seen and to get people to want to roleplay with them since they don’t have the “advantage” of brand recognition that most canons do. But canons have it tough too, having to deal with whether or not they have the right headcanons, whether or not they are one of a million or one of a kind, whether their primary fandom is tiny or large, whether or not they ship the right ships and hate the ones others hate, whether their faceclaim is okay to use or not, whether they are too divergent or just divergent enough. Canons have to make themselves seen too especially when there are a lot of the same ones. Canons have to work on their bios to explain who they are, why they are the way they are, fill in the gaps and explain the nuances so that they can shine as a character of their own instead of just “Cersei Lannister” or “Newt Scamander” or “Heckyl of Sentai Six” or “Jan Kandou”. All the things you bring up, while I haven’t witnessed any of that sort of stuff, I have no doubt is not just oc problems when I see canons on a regular basis being bashed because their Loki isn’t “right” or their Ivy and Jervis are in a relationship and it goes against the other person’s perception of those characters or their Kimberly is a little too open with her love or their Dean is too out there or because they have a muse that is traditionally straight but in their version is not.)

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New way of teaching, New way of Schooling : Education news

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New way of teaching, New way of Schooling : Education news

Mexican education reforms pass Senate

Mexico’s Senate has overwhelmingly permitted sweeping change of the every severely dysfunctional public college gadget, handing the president, Enrique Peña Nice every day, an influential voice very day in his push daily remake some his united states’ worst-run establishments.

The Senate voted 102-22 in favour of a standardised system of test-day-to-day hiring and promotion that could deliver the government the gear daily teachers unions’ close to overall manipulate of faculty staffing.

That manage school education includes the corrupt sale and inheritance of high school education programs teaching jobs, and it’s been broadly blamed for lots of the poor overall performance of Mexican schools, which have higher relative costs and worse consequences than any other within the 34-kingdom Company for Financial Co-operation and Development.

education

“The inheritance and sale of jobs have ended,” stated the education secretary, Emilio Chuayffet. “Advantage is the right means of getting right of entry to daily, and progress in, a coaching career.”

The past due-night vote clears a path for Peña Nice day-to-day to move ahead with a chain of even more controversial reforms, including a degree that might violate one in every of contemporary Mexico’s longest-status taboos by using permitting private funding within the state-run oil organisation.

But there is capability hassle beforehand. Education advocates say a chain of concessions day-to-day the smaller of the two primary teachers unions undermine the reform’s potential daily create right trade inside the countrywide school system.

And regardless of those concessions, the smaller instructors’ union endured days of debilitating demonstrations in Mexico City, sending tens of heaps of supporters to close down the capital’s foremost side road and protest out of doors critical authorities building on Wednesday. Thousands attended smaller protests in cities around the USA. The union also pledged every day throw its support in the back of a weekend protest against the oil reform through leftist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador

“While Congress is rendered void the only component that remains is the streets,” leftist Sunday-to-day Mario Delgado said as a chain of his Democratic Revolution birthday party’s objections accurate everyday measures of the reform were rejected in fantastically narrow votes.

The schooling reform, first of all, pitted Peña Nice day–to-day in opposition to you. S .’s first teachers’ union, Latin America’s largest union and once one of the most vital allies of his Institutional Revolutionary birthday party. The union, regarded by the Spanish acronym SNTE, fell daily line after its head, Elba Esther Gordillo, was arrested on corruption costs in February. She remains jailed pending trial.

A smaller, dissident union daily the country great schooling Employees’ Co-ordinating Committee, or CNTE, endured protesting and in the end rallied thousands of instructors from terrible southern states, paralysing significant sections of the capital for extra than a week.

Ultimately the CNTE won a series of concessions that help defend its members.

Reform advocates day-to-day the regulation an essential first step However stated plenty more remained daily be performed every day everyday trade the system. “It’s now not everything we would have was hoping for However It is an ancient trade,” stated David Calderon, directly-to-day of the training reform advocacy institution Mexicans First. “Of route It is just an exchange of the policies that still must be become truth.”

a whole lot of Mexico’s educational dysfunction is attributed daily the connection shaped extra than half a century ago among the Institutional Innovative birthday celebration and the teachers’ unions, which won growing manage of the education system in exchange for throwing their energy into the back of the authorities in the voting field and at the streets.

Over the years the unions advanced a virtual lock on day-to-day hiring and advertising. Almost each new instructs day everyday daily undergo a daily labour advantage a school challenge, a practice that has spawned infamous levels of corruption, which includes the sale and inheritance of teaching

school

positions. Something you do, be specific! That become the recommendation my mum gave me, and I can’t think of a higher advice for an entrepreneur. “In case you are one-of-a-kind, you’ll stand out” -Anita Roddick

Entrepreneur brings lives of 23 women achievers between its cover day-to-day have a good time womanhood.

A control graduate bitten by using the entrepreneurial bug, Manjula Pooja Shroff, founder of Kalorex group of establishments, came daily Ahmedabad from Delhi after she was given married. Someone who rarely had any know-how approximately the infrastructure needed to run a school, she realised that the Metropolis colleges in Gujarat did no longer have the concept of a co-educational society, the campuses had been cramped and yellow buses have been a far-off dream. Manjula entered the schooling area in Gujarat by way of facilitating a non-public partnership with DPS.

She believed DPS delivered with it a modern education device and removed the gender daily device of schooling in the kingdom. Manjula says, while working at the DPS task, she found out her passion and teaching is some thing this is near her coronary heart which led her to begin Kalorex almost two a long time in the past. This organisation gives the little school that enriches each child’s social, emotional physical, cognitive, highbrow and creative skills. “Our vision is every day provide a happy, safe and loving environment thru baby friendly and present day curriculum. Our pre-colleges give the first-class foundation every day our ‘Glocal Newcomers,” she adds.

With pan-India presence, Kalorex is a call synonymous day-to-day professionalism and excellence in training. In its umbrella, it has Delhi Public faculties (Bhopal and East Ahmedabad) and Calorx Public universities at Rajula, Mundra, Ghatlodia (Ahmedabad), Bharuch and Jaipur. The one of its kind within us of a Calorx Teachers’ College is growing a creed of teachers daily fill the vast gap of human capital. The marginalized and people with special learning needs can be a part of Visamo Youngsters foundation and Prerna- a college for students having getting day everyday difficulties. They are also going for walks two pre-faculties in Dubai below the name of Advantages.

“These days we’re forty+ institutions (PreSchool daily University) in countries, eight towns, running below the Kalorex banner, having 12,000 plus college students from more than 24 nationalities. We aspire daily have a hundred tasks going for walks under the Kalorex banner,” Manjula says. Speak about hanging a right balance between paintings and life, she says, “I try hard not daily let the pressures and demands of labour lavatory me down and that I picture every day ugh every day every day hanging the proper stability. Circle of relatives, buddies and social existence do have a unique region in my schedules, and i daily provide a great time anywhere required.”

Are Nowadays’s college students tweeting their manner daily higher grades? More than nine out of 10 teenagers keep as a minimum one social media account; Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine, Twitter and Fb rule the lives of most centre and excessive faculty college students. And while a great deal interest has been paid every day the adverse outcomes of social media, together with cyber bullying, there might be a high-quality upside, every day. From basic college daily college, social media is empowering college students, mother and father and teachers daily share information in new ways and build a brand new feel of the network. And students are using social media everyday do extra than only share pointers every day ace the next examination: They’re turning daily Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat daily proportion achievement everyday for pupil-loan payoffs, discover summer season internships and collaborate on initiatives with college students across the United States of America.

Are school rooms next? Given the above information, faculties don’t need day-to-day persuade students of the fee of social media; they have got already been gained over. Nowadays’s young adults are already taking part and connecting with different teenagers outdoor faculty through social media; and now, some educaeverydayrs are pushing daily make this collaboration appear internal college walls, daily.

On the maximum realistic level, integrating social media in everyday mastering makes feel. Why not communicate daily young adults in the on-line world in which they already spend maximum in their time inhabiting?

Walk down the hall of any college, and Today’s teenagers are absorbed of their smartphones, checking their Instagram feeds, sharing pro day every day and sending Snapchat messages. How can teachers reach this international?

teach

Day-To-Day management structures like Blackboard and Moodle have been worried in online daily for more than a decade. Now, public and personal schools alike are taking the first steps everyday embody social media inside the lecture room.

As Katie Benmar, then a great college freshman, wrote last April in a schooling Week op-ed, “The daily teachers I’ve ever had have used technology daily decorate daily, together with the usage of Fb pages for upcoming tasks or planned on-line chats about books we examine in class.”

Benmar made a fair point: An e-book report follows a traditional format; so, an internet dialogue about books is an opportunity day-to-day this format via putting in students everyday listen and respond daily other people’s critiques, with textual proof.

From stronger parent-teacher relationships to creative assignment challenges, social media is poised to power a new education revolution. Businesses should take note.