#i want to fight moffat so bad

[tardxsblues]

Doctor Who 8.08 || 8.11

[txttletale]

how would you recommend watching doctor who? there are so many different guys idk how it works.

so the thing about doctor who is that there's two shows -- classic who (1963-1989, doctors 1-7) and new who (2005-2023, doctors 9-14). due to a renumber of the seasons and a change in production company, i think it's fair to call the upcoming version of who (2023-??, doctors 15-??) its own, third show. the reason it's been able to run for so long is that when the show's lead actor, (william hartnell as the titular doctor) had to step down in 1966 due to failing health, they made up some sci-fi bullshit: the doctor's species can 'regenerate' instead of dying, instantly healing but changing their appearance and some of their personality. this means that every time a lead actor has walked away (or, in one unfortuante case, been fired) the show's just recast the doctor and moved on, often with notable changes in tone and format.

the easiest option if you don't want to backwatch anything is to start with this year's christmas special, the church on ruby road (2023). it's an obvious jumping on point to the series, introduces you to all the basic stuff (the doctor, the TARDIS, the fact that it's a silly sci-fi show about fighting weird rubber prop critters), and presumably sets up the upcoming season 1 of the disney-bad wolf version of the show that's gonna come out in may 2024.

if you do want to backwatch, you have to decide if you want to start with new who or classic who. i personally would recommend starting with new who, because there's less of it, it's got higher production values, and (imo this is the biggest obstacle to getting into classic who) it's paced in a way that makes much more sense to a modern TV viewer (self-contained 45-minute episodes). also once you're invested in the show, its main character, and some of its classic elements, you get to soyjak at the screen whenever you're watching classic who and you get to see the oirign of a monster you already recognize. you can also skip classic who entirely and never watch it, they don't bring up anything from it in the new series without giving it a new explanation, but if you do this you hate fun.

anyway, starting points for nuwho: the most obvious one is rose (2005). it's the pilot episode for the new show and imo it holds up brilliantly -- it introduces all the most basic concepts of the show, but ultimately it's really all about billie piper and cristopher eccleston's performances and they deliver. the special effects are gonna be pretty terrible for a while because it's early 2000s cg. there's no jumping on point like it for the whole of RTD's run of the show (imo, the best run of nuwho) so if you want to watch seasons 1-4 you've gotta start on rose.

another episode that's written as a jumping on-point is (heavy sigh) the eleventh hour (2011). as well as introducing matt smith's doctor and his companion amy, this also does the whole rigamarole of introducing the show's core elements, giving a nutshell recap of its history in the form of the doctor's rooftop speech, and also signal what the oncoming moffat era is going to be like (whimsical, full of complex time travel plots, way more misogynist). i'm biased -- i'm a hater, one of this episode's central plot conceits sucks real bad and i also hate the eleventh doctor's whole run. but it is meant to be a jumping on point.

there won't be another one of those in nuwho until the pilot (2017). this begins moffat's final season with which he made the odd but extremely welcome decision to jettison all his convoluted continuity shit from the last five seasons and refocus the show with the doctor being a professor at bristol university with a mysterious secret. i think season 10 is a hidden gem and if you find starting from rose daunting this is the next best place to pick up. capaldi's doctor is a delightful abrasive eccentric with a heart of gold at this point in his run & the stories are wall-to-wall bangers with only a couple misses.

finally, you could start on the woman who fell to earth (2018), the first episode to feature jodie whittaker's 13th doctor and head writer chris chibnall. i'd recommend this even less than the eleventh hour, because while i actually like it more, i think it's a much worse preview of what the upcoming era is going to be like than that one. if you watch the woman who fell to earth and keep watching from the start of whittaker's run on the show off the back of it, you're going to be severely disappointed as most of the more promising aspects of the episode get instantly abandoned.

so, summary, if you're starting with nuwho, there's five jumping on points, which i'd rank:

rose > the pilot > the church on ruby road > the eleventh hour > the woman who fell to earth

but i want to start with classic who because i'm a contrarian

alright. classic who also has a few jumping off points -- before i mentioned them, let me just talk about that format thing i mentioned earlier. classic who doesn't have self-contained episodes for the most part, but rather for most of its run told each of its episodic narratives across between two and seven 20-minute episodes. this leads to a lot of weird pacing, forced cliffhangers, and infamously a lot of filler shots of the doctor running up and down identical corridors. so obvsies i'm recommending entire stories here nad not individual episodes. that said, let's look at where you could jump on:

an unearthly child (1963). this is, like, the start of the show. that said i don't recommend it as a place to start (funnily enough), for a couple reasons. firstly, because of dreadful fucking archiving by the BBC, a lot of episodes from the show's first six seasons are straight up missing. some of them have been animated by the BBC from surviving audio recordings, but some of them are just straight up lost -- due to the format, this means there's very few full complete stories, which makes this whole era really hard to navigate. if you don't mind that and really want to start in the black and white era, i'd still recommend the tomb of the cybermen (1967) instead -- hartnell's portrayal of the doctor as a haughty, slightly impish old professor is great, but troughton basically defined the character's core traits for the next sixty years.

spearhead from space (1970) is a pretty big format upheaval for the show and so serves as a pretty great classic jumping-on point. it's the first episode to be in colour, and sets up a new status quo for the doctor as being trapped on earth and working for an elite paramlitary organization called UNIT that operates out of a ratty office. it's an interesting premise that the show gets some great stories out of. the special effects are bad in the best way. pertwee has instant charm in the role and it's all around a banger by classic standards.

if you want to jump right to the one all the boomers are nostalgic for, you can also start with robot (1974). i wouldn't recommend it, though--tom baker is electric in the role from the start, but the episode itself kind of assumes a lot of the context of the third doctor's setup and supporting cast which you're not gonna have.

i wouldn't recommend anyone start at any point during the fifth or sixth doctors runs because i want them to actually like the show, so i guess the last jumping on point i could really recommend after robot would be, like, dragonfire (1987), which heralds the show's short-lived renaissance with the seventh doctor and his best companion, ace. but although you'd be watching some of the absolute best the classic show ever gets, it feels like it would be a weird and disorienting place to start.

finally, you could watch tales of the tardis (2023), a limited series produced to celebrate the show's 60th anniversary. each episode follows the same format: through a vaguely handwaved Palace of Memories plot, two much-aged characters from the classic series meet up and fondly remember one of the adventures they shared. the bookends with the original actors are mostly shameless fanservice, but the episodes they're reminiscing about are superbly edited down into a much more watchable format -- it works as a good 'sample platter' for most eras of the show (although, weirdly, there wasn't anything from tom baker's run!) and i think it honestly wouldn't be a bad shout to just start from tales of the tardis and then keep watching from whichever of the stories featured in it you liked most. that all said, if you want to start with classic who, i'd rank these jumping on points as follows:

spearhead from space > tales of the tardis > tomb of the cybermen > dragonfire > robot > an unearthly child

all that shit said it's fundamentally a very episodic show with very few exceptions like trial of a time lord and whatever moffat was doing seasons 6-7 so in the end you can basically just start with any episode and more or less get some of the idea. have fun and make sure to do the most important job of a doctor who fan, update the tardis wiki page for penis whenever one is mentioned

[akajustmerry]

I haven't seen chibnall but I have a hard time imagining being worse than moffat. I'm sure it's possible but that man... he was bad. also out of curiosity what's the problem with eccleston? or did you just use his name as a reference for which era was rtd. feel free to ignore this if you like, I hope you have a good day!

hellooo!

look, you won't hear me arguing moffat wasn't bad but believe me Chibnall was worse. He wrote an entire sequence where the Doctor tricks the Master (then played by British-Indian actor Sacha Dhawan) into being caught by the Nazis, knowing what the Nazis would do to him. Like, the Doctor, presenting as a white woman, handed over the Master, her best friend presenting as a Brown man to the most notorious white supremacist regimes in history. And that moment was framed as a successful ploy!! As a "win" for the Doctor.

I'm sorry but, to me, Moffats fucking decrepit cringe Gen X Misogyny did nowhere near as much damage as thoughtlessly portraying the Doctor as someone who will literally use Nazism against a poc and framing it as clever girlboss behaviour. Like, it's not fun that these are the people we have to choose from but one of these things is not like the other.

As for the Eccleston stuff, I was referring to Christopher Eccleston's conflict with the BBC and by extension implied conflict with RTD. The full details of the conflict have never been fully made public but Eccleston has always maintained he quit the show due to the culture created by the show runners and producers. He's said he'd never work with RTD again. Eccleston implied that one of the reasons the relationship between himself and RTD broke down was Eccleston's desire for the Doctor to be a role model whose intellect wasn't inherently tied to being upper class English and had to really fight to use his natural accent. It's worth noting that the we wouldn't have a Doctor without an RP (received pronunciation) accent again until Capaldi. David even mentioned Russell's "enthusiasm" for DT to speak in RP not his natural accent in his interview with Jodie in 2020.

I want to believe that RTD has grown since the mid 00s, and perhaps this time around things will be different. But I think a lot of people point to Moffat as the worst because his bigotry is the most visible and easiest to critique. It's more popular and acceptable to critique sexism against white women than it is to critique racism and classism. But in reality all of these showrunners are white British men who have pulled white British bullshit and I won't stand for Chibnall and Davies shortcomings being scapegoated via Moffat.

Also, this is not a defense necessarily but a lot of people who hate moffat era who did NOT watch Capaldi's seasons and did not watch season 10 with Bill Potts. So their critique often lacks the perspective of Moffat's best season that proves he's capable of writing something genuinely compelling that's not gross and sexiest. Like it genuinely infuriates me when people talk about "moffat who" but they're only really talking about Matt Smiths seasons. Again none of that is a defence but it's just to say that most people who say Moffat is the worst are people who a) are really talking about Sherlock, which, fair enough that was shit b) people who just think 10th Doctor best Doctor and don't actually care about anything after that era in any meaningful way. Or c) people who have a pretty incomplete view of the series was and where it currently is.

omg this is long sorry I hope I don't sound rude I'm not trying to be I just have so many thoughts about this. I hope this answers your question, please let me know if I need to clarify anything <3

[sauntervaguelydown]

every time people on the internet are like "everyone in comics is gay EXCEPT the JOKER lol" (although thankfully they do this less now than a few years ago) I want to go into a category 4 Well Actually event

DC as a franchise has been queercoding the Joker since the Bronze Age of comics--literally every time they want to make him "ooh scary crazy watch out" they layer on the queercoding again

look at this comic cover. LOOK at it.

Look at the gargoyle posturing--

His body is skinny and "effeminate" in comparison to the chunk of beef super hero, grotesquely displayed in contrast. He is lightweight and yet he is dominating, subverting the correct order of nature. Thigh garter, women's shoes, drawing attention to the red lipstick in a way that makes it look less "clown" and more "crossdresser". Boxers, so you know he's a man, increasing discomfort. But I want you to notice the pink hearts. In the early 00's that sort of thing WOULD get you called gay. In real life.

This is all the ugly bad homophobic short of hand you can shove into one character, only a little bit more in-your-face than whatever Moffat was doing with Moriarty in the BBC show, but for the same reason--when you want to make the audience uncomfortable about your "crazy" character, but the "craziness" is just aesthetic, you have them violate the social order. And queercoding is a free & easy way of violating the social order, bonus points because it makes your straight male audience viscerally uncomfortable. That audience wants the good and natural order restored.

The downside of this is, of course, that your audience may also contain a sleeper cell of women, queers, and queer women, who think this is very interesting and would like to talk a little bit more about that, please

I could go on but I think you get the picture. Literally look at the picture, why did I even bother to write this.

Truthfully, the point behind this point is that I don't want homophobic-queercoded-Joker to be whitewashed out of the records of popculture only to be replaced with Straight Wife Beater Joker. I like the gay ass joker in this horrible art. I like that he's dangerous and confident and unstoppable, I like that he's flamboyant. Supervillainy is drag, fight me about it.

They (the franchise, the artists, the writers) made their bed and now they have to LIE in it. They buttered their toast and now they have to EAT it. Commit to the bit, you cowards.

The joker is for ME now, and you can't take him back. If you want to make amends so badly, let your heroic chunk of beef have a turn in heels.

[sometimesraven]

The fact that I went through most of my life experiencing, processing and healing from my trauma alongside The Doctor only for RTD to go “lol the last 15 years of character growth didn’t happen actually” is a slap in the face actually

Thirteen’s era was bad in a lot of ways but one of the first things I noticed was that her brightness and her optimism were such a natural progression of the healing Twelve did throughout his regeneration. And as someone who had also gone through the same growth and was learning to accept and love and Just Be despite everything that was huge to me, it was such a hopeful message just as Doctor Who has always been for me.

I’ve been thinking about it and I realised we’ve already seen what happened in The Giggle. In Moffat’s era, but it was over time and it was earned.

Twelve was carrying So Much trauma. He was tired and bitter and angry, carrying the expectations he’d learned in the previous incarnation (that people see him as far higher than he sees himself, that he’s a god and a warrior and a healer and he doesn’t want that, he just wants his friends and his box). He’s fighting between who he is and who he’s expected to be and he can’t run away from it any more.

This all comes to a head with Heaven Sent/Hell Bent where he loses his best friend. The woman who had guided him and supported him through this trauma, the one who was there to help him learn that the preconceived pressures of “good” and “bad” he put upon himself were bullshit and he’s just Some Guy Doing His Best and that’s okay, he doesn’t have to be more than he is even if the universe tells him so. He thinks he’s responsible for her actions (which arguably goes all the way back to Davros accusing him of turning his companions into weapons) and he relapses into trying to control everything, brings her back, does all of this shit for her that she never asked for.

And that’s when he learns his inability to let go and actually face the pain rather than running from it is hurting people and himself. He’s faced with what he did to Donna at long last and given the chance to not repeat that mistake. Clara teaches him one last lesson.

Then he settles. He takes care of Missy and spends some time as a professor, meets a new companion and by the end of his regeneration he learns to let go.

This is the point where I realised RTD had somehow rehashed something that had already been done.

He lets go. He passes the torch into a brighter, more optimistic Doctor less burdened by the previous incarnations’ trauma and ripe for a whole heap of NEW trauma, still remembering all she’s lost but able to put it behind her and focus on the happy memories and the love. She has a family.

The Doctor had healed in a meaningful way, and more importantly a way those watching could see and realise that yes, it’s possible. Yes, it’ll still hurt sometimes, but it’s possible to heal from the terrible things that have been done to you. It’s possible to live a full, happy, bright existence even if the past doesn’t truly go away.

Obviously it all goes downhill again and yeah, the unfortunate writing means that Thirteen had some really unhealthy coping mechanisms that were never addressed. Yeah, the Flux happens. Yeah, Gallifrey dies again.

But.

Imagine this for a second: Rose and Donna’s “let go” statement, ignoring the gender essentialism. It turns out they’re actually harkening back to “Doctor, I let you go.”. Thirteen bigenerates and Fourteen (Ncuti) gives the “therapy in the wrong order” speech, but this time it’s because they’ve already been through the same trauma.

They’ve already seen their planet die, they’ve already lost so much and felt responsible for so much death, but because they’ve already been through that trauma from 9-12 and been through that healing combined with the Toymaker’s wibbly wobbly laws of physics, the bigeneration came from a subconscious recognition that they’re relapsing into those bad habits (compartmentalise, put it away, keep running) and that they need to slow down and stop to process this again.

It would be an excellent way of doing what Rusty wanted and soft rebooting while also showing the audience “hey, sometimes when you think everything is okay it’ll fall apart again, you’ll relapse, things will seem shitty, but because you’ve done all this healing and have all these tools and learned to trust people it’ll be easier to bounce back from, just have patience with yourself” rather than coming across as just completely retconning 15 years of character growth in favour of cheap fanservice

Idk I just have so many issues with The Giggle and I thought they’d get smaller over time as I get over the initial what the fuck but I’m only getting angrier lmao. Like acknowledge the previous writers or don’t, you can’t acknowledge them and then try to gaslight an entire audience into thinking it didn’t happen

[bethanythebogwitch]

Doctor Who - the Empire of Death

This was honestly one the better season finales written by Davies, but that is a very low bar. None of the new series show runners have been anywhere near as good at writing long-running storylines as they think they are. Sutekh was kind of wasted as a villain. He got less to go on than in the original story, where he was obsessed with ending all life out of paranoia that eventually something might evolve that could surpass him. Here he's just a generic bad guy who wants to kill everything for no real given reason. His defeat was also pretty silly. You're telling me that the god who scared the piss out of the Toymaker couldn't get out of a rope? Yeah it's a science rope, but its still a rope. The Toymaker and the Maestro could casually alter reality but the guy who scares both of them is beaten by a hook. Also, Sutekh survives being dumped into the time vortex the first time and the big solution to him returning even more power is to dump him in the vortex again. Brilliant plan. The Toymaker and Maestro were beaten in a way consistent with their godly domain (losing a game and finding a specific sequence of music). It would have been a lot cooler if Sutekh's defeat followed that trend. Use some kind of symbolic defeat of death to undo his actions.

Calling back to 73 Yards without even attempting to explain what in the sam hell was going on in that episode is kind of annoying. You could have tied the blatant magic of that plot into the pantheon, but nope.

The reveal of Ruby's mom's identity was silly. I guess I can buy Suteks thinking she was pointing at him and his paranoia of thinking she somehow saw him resulting in him accidentally imbuing her with powers by believing she had powers. That's not really what the show went with, but I can pretend.

Ruby referring to her bio mom as her real mom was a big oof moment. A real slap in the face to her adoptive mom.

Davies is so obsessed with giving bizarre hints to future stories he's now doing it as a season-ending cliffhanger. "Ooh, who is the mysterious neighbor? You'll just have to keep watching to find out!". Moffat did that too during 11's run and he ended up having too much hanging plot threads with the Silence, church, Kovarian, Trenzalore, etc that he had to slam it together in one absolute mess of a finale. Please don't do that again. That being said, it really speaks to how awful of a head writer Chibnal was that Davies can still write circles around him.

Consistently through the new series the season-long story arcs have been my least favorite part of each season. I much prefer the standalone episodes. The classic show almost never did running plotlines. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the key to time and trial of a time lord arcs, the latter of which was so bad it almost killed the show. I would love a season of nothing but standalone episodes with maybe a two-parter or two.

If you want a (in my opinion) better take on the Doctor fighting gods, the Big Finish audio drama elder gods storyline is a better one, consisting of the dramas House of Blue Fire, Protect and Survive, Black and White, Gods and Monsters, Afterlife, and Signs and Wonders. There's some backstory involved, but I didn't listen to most of that and still followed the story just fine. A Big Finish story featuring Sutekh that I liked better than this episode is the two parter of Kill the Doctor!, and The Age of Sutekh, found on the Fourth Doctor Adventures season 7 volume 2 collection. And if you haven't seen Sutekh's debut in the Pyramids of Mars, drop everything and go watch it now.

This season only getting 8 episodes was criminal. Next season better be at least 12. Fucking Disney+. 15 is a fantastic Doctor and Ruby ended up growing on me a lot even after the Christmas episode put a bad taste in my mouth. I do think the show has pulled itself out of the hole the late Moffat and Chibnal eras dug for it. Not saying there's weren't good episodes in those eras, but I do think this season helped bring new Who back to its late-RTD/early Moffat high point.

[bahoreal]

man i just dislike steven moffats writing so much. i did not enjoy that episode, i could see the messages he wanted to send but the execution of it made me feel like he was blanket-condemning all people with faith in a religion, and using a reset plot to solve a WAR, and wars are famously and historically not things that are fixed by even a declaration of peace (for example: look up how world war 1 led to world war 2, and how world war 2 led to the cold war). there was no thought about the governments or the church that led them into the war and why they might have justified that to their soldiers, no reasoning for the war being fought (the arrived, announced themselves, and then started fighting? why? are they colonising? why do they want that planet?) nothing given to the people fighting the war to let them have a belief that it's a good or a bad thing (just "i dont have enough divinity to decide that" like ok, sure, but why is she there? does she want to move up to get more divinity? whos orders is she following? does she trust those orders? or is her lack of romantic feelings for some guy more important than the reason shes out on a literal battlefield willing to die for a faith she never expresses any fealty to or belief in) but i get and understand and agree with the war profiteering point - someone is always making a profit off of war, and a never ending war is a great source of profit, but like, there was so little substance to it?? think about the doctors daughter where the point was also the war, and it had been going on for longer than anyone could remember and became their reason for producing more people - to fight, even though there wasnt a reason for it. that message was, why are you really fighting? who are you really helping? what is propaganda telling you to do vs what is the truth? but boom... idk it was a good concept but poorly executed with moffat typical pointless killing then reviving of a companion and a reset plot storyline that felt cheap, weird writing of female characters (after space babies the kid in this episode felt very off) and a poorly executed message

i will say tho he did go off with the "thoughts and prayers" thing. like he really nailed that *someone who is actively contributing to killing people* thoughts and prayers.... so sorry for your loss... thoughts and prayers......

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

NINE PEOPLE YOU WANT TO GET TO KNOW BETTER ♡

I was tagged by@unsettlingcreature

and in return I am tagging: @marke-the-silverlion (bc why not) @eyezehuhh @theonyxranger @echoshour @adrianspoison @samfparker @twilitzelda

favorite color. green! i love growing things. fighting for the top spot for years was purple and yellow, but these days i think orange is steadily rising.

last song. Butchered Tongue by Hozier. I'm listening to music right now but paused to focus bc the song was. making me too sad and feelings-heavy to write this out

last movie. oh man. I've been to a ton this year but haven't watched as many at home as I wanted... I think it was Barbie. Missed The Last Voyage of the Demeter bc I was too busy w wedding planning but I wanted to go see that

currently watching. I'm doing the hard work of catching up on Dr. Who... I wanna watch Ncuti Gatwa when he's the doc but I stopped watching back in series 8 bc i was burnt out on the Moffat of it all... Now I gotta get thru a lot of Moffat. Nearly caught up tho!

currently reading. Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, Seahorses as Pets by Edward Eldington and also RoTK by Tolkien. There's many of them bc I will read a bit and then leave and do literally everything else under the sun, go "I should read!", pick out a new thing, read a bit, go "Oh I need to read the other one too!" read a bit of that. Repeat... hell cycle.

current obsession. man I was really obsessed with writing OCs for a bit. Then became obsessed with Skyrim again. Then modding Skyrim helped me discover a power supply fault in my computer so I can no longer safely play modded Skyrim. So I keep having Skyrim dreams (literally) but I will not play unmodded anymore... So I suffer. Guess that means I'm in between fixations?

sweet, savory, or spicy? Savory!! Salt good!! It also stops me from fainting and being dizzy all the time, but I've always liked it even before I became Afflicted with the Condition.

currently working on. I am midway through a lot of things. I'm beginning to think I'm approaching everything like the reading. I have "The Heart Beats Again" I have four other projects of varying sizes and I am thinking of maybe doing kinktober so. I am busy and bouncing around

[transgenderdoctorwhomst-old]

I eat up fics so much when they touch on the issues! Like given how much the doctor has been possessed/taken over I feel should def give them PTSD or a traumatic response to telepathy. Eg: 13 scared to contact the master after their only interactions with telepathy in the past years being hostile or life threatening.

Let them beat daleks to shit with their bare hands for everything they've done, including the war and such. (In my mind the doctor did destroy Gallifrey I'm sorry I hate the retcon they did in the special that they saved it because it devalues somuch of them imo)

Also I was thinking more about Mr clever (I'm saying that and not cyberplanner bc it's silly) and like how that'd affect the doctor and the story. And just the process of the doctor losing more of themselves, maybe small behaviors and quirks up to wardrobe changes and such. And I think what could be interesting ish is like Mr Clever is hiding how much he's taken over from River or something but what gives it away is how well he pilots. Because obviously the cyberplanner would pour over memories and books and learn the most optimal ways to pilot a time machine. And then you get that sweet sweet realization from River of that's not who I think it is. That is not the man I know. (I love those reveals)

Anyways im so normal sorry for rambling

i think it's incredibly funny that moffat unblew up gallifrey and then chibnall just went and blew it up again. the tradition of writers fighting over whether or not gallifrey is blown up continues and i am eating it up. the doctor definitely blew up gallifrey though even if they went back and changed it. time is an illusion everything is canon even the tv show

also TASTY TASTY angst yes!! he's a robot/ai designed to optimize everything possible, of course he's going to try and optimize piloting. the doctor just kind of wings it, and it works, but the cyberplanner wants fast and reliable results.

i also think its really funny that the cyberplanner mantains the cyberman belief that emotions are weak and bad and need to be removed, and completely and utterly fails to recognize the fact that he has gained very strong emotions and very little ability to process and manage them. like, he's super excited to have a time lord body, he gets angry and starts yelling when things don't make sense, he takes great joy in fucking with people, he's absorbed a lot of 11's physical mannerisms and expressions of emotions. dumbass mr clever has completely not realized that, and i think would continue not to.

so river would find the "doctor" is actually putting effort into piloting the tardis efficently, without the typical loving affection, isn't exactly hiding his emotions that well (11 is. very good at this actually), and is in general expressing what his feelings should be about people just wrong for the doctor. because he can see what those emotions and feelings are, but doesn't understand the complexities of it. 11 struggles to be intimate. he isn't good at using his words for his feelings for people. the cyberplanner assumes the correct tactic is to spell out what feelings he's supposed to be expressing, which is a notable tip off for river.

there are just all these things slightly wrong with the doctor that she's slowly realizing.

(also you can ramble as much as you like, i love rambling-)

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

 Disclaimer: This post is going to be Anti Moffat for anyone who’s reading and is a fan you’ve been warned.  

“A Good Man Goes to War” is the seventh episode and it was my least favorite episode to watch so far.

The Good: Amy being a companion that’s married and pregnant is a rather inspired and interesting storyline, but I just wish it didn’t have to be connected to River. Strax had some funny lines especially when he was talking about meeting in battle, I was sad to see him die. We caught a quick glimpse of the captain from a few episodes ago with his son, that was surprising! Amy and Rory had a beautiful moment together where Rory was talking about how he wanted to be cool regarding being a father, my favorite Amy/Rory moment so far.

The Bad: They kept insinuating with certain lines that the Doctor was the father, and I’m at a loss as to why that angle keeps getting pushed. Amy and Rory are married and the two actors have great chemistry with each other, it feels incredibly weird to keep pushing that narrative when you can have a lovely story about married companions traveling with the Doctor. The Marines that didn’t have names?? Umm it was such a weird moment pointing out they were fat/thin/gay etc. and then one gets his head cut off. 

The River: She breaks out of prison whenever she wants and lets her guards know when she’s breaking in, WTF, honestly what sort of prison is this?!? In S5 she was taken away in handcuffs (I think the Weeping Angels episode), the implication being that she was dangerous, and I’m pretty sure the story is that she kills the Doctor so I don’t understand why it’s so easy for her to do that. I’ll wait and see if that’s explained later, but Amy had more people keeping her in her cell in this episode than River ever does. I knew River was Amy’s daughter already, but I don’t know the fallout of the reveal.

The Worst: I like Matt’s portrayal but I’ve hated how the Doctor is written in S6. At the end of S4 he was distressed that his friends were fighting on his behalf even though it was their choice. Martha once said the lovely thing about the Doctor is that he doesn’t go around asking to be thanked, and it rubs me the wrong way that here he went to get people to help him because they have “debts” and he was raising an army. Amy said the Doctor always holds out on them regarding information and asked him not to this time as it involved their daughter, Eleven doesn’t seem to acknowledge her concern or explain anything and then just leaves!! Mind you, this is Amy who just went through a traumatizing situation and is supposed to be his best friend, he just never seems to genuinely care about her. The Captain and Madame Kovarian said at one point that it had been a month and the Doctor hadn’t showed up, I’d sincerely hoped for Amy’s sake that it wasn’t true because...he has a time machine! How could he just leave her there for a month?? When Ten went through the Midnight episode you don’t see him talking to Donna onscreen, but you can obviously tell that he told her what happened. In the episode with Jenny you see Ten and Donna walking together and he reveals he’s been a father before. It just feels like a very different character, Eleven is always running from place to place and never seems to talk to his friends. 

The Moffat: I can suspend my disbelief at times but there were a lot of poorly written moments in this episode. It seemed like they really wanted the Doctor dead but didn’t shoot him when he appeared instead leaving him to give a speech then as soon as he was gone a soldier went and shot a monk. Amy asked him if he has children when she said in “The Doctor’s Wife” episode that she knows about the time war. Why would she ask if she knows he’s the last of the Time Lords? They’re called the Headless Monks, why did it seem like it was supposed to be a huge deal that they are...headless?? They gave a speech about it and everything like it was a huge reveal lol. The Doctor’s “army” led  everyone away but they actually left behind a bunch of armed Monks? Rather conveniently Eleven brings the cot outside instead of them going into the TARDIS. Why was that done? Oh it’s because there’s going to be a force field leaving them unable to get to safety. If Amy went through such a horrifying situation to me it would seem to make the most sense that she would go inside the TARDIS asap to get some rest and they would all try to get to the Time Vortex immediately. Lorna meets the Doctor as a girl and becomes a soldier because she wanted to see him again--another repeating Moffat theme.

The Unresolved: Madame Kovarian’s motivation seems to be that there is a war against the Doctor, lets see what her next step is. In “The Doctor’s Daughter” Ten gives Jenny a very emotional speech about what it takes to be a Time Lord, I don’t know enough about the lore to understand how River has Time Lord DNA just from being conceived on the TARDIS, and it seemed even Eleven didn’t know. Amy and her Ganger were somehow still connected even though Eleven seemed to imply when his own Ganger was made that that’s when there was a sort of “split”, maybe that will be explained later. Was Vastra the same one from S5 I think Silurians were the species name?

Overall I felt very disappointed with the way this episode was written, and even if some things are explained later this was one of my least favorite episodes of the entire 5.5 seasons I’ve seen so far. Perhaps the worst thing for me was that I was bored watching it, that’s something that’s only very rarely happened. 

[gryfflepuffinthetardis]

Who I'm Willing To Write For

I don't know if I'm being paranoid but people seem to be not liking my posts as they usually do. So I'm going to simplify my Masterlist because I haven't written for most of these.

So I'm going to add these here. Remember the characters are color-coded by what Hogwarts house I think they're in and since Tumblr removed the yellow color, Orange will represent Hufflepuff except in the condition of Good Omens' Crowley who I am stuck between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. If you disagree, please give me your best argument and I'll offer my insight of David Tennant's Crowley.

Ninth Doctor - Brooding Time Lord Who Tries To Hide His Light with Darkness

Tenth Doctor - Hyperactive Time Lord Who Is Always Being Slapped Born From His Love For a Human Who Tries To Hide His Darkness and Trauma With Light

Metacrisis Doctor/TenToo (My Headcanon is that he chose the surname "Noble")

Fourteenth Doctor - The Face That Returned, now arguably more Hyperactive and Traumatized

Campbell Bain - Bipolar Nineteen-Year-Old Walking Ray of Sunshine That Somehow Doesn't Do Well With Girls

Alec Hardy (Broadchurch) - Grumpy and Broody Scottish Detective With a Heart Condition yet a Heart of Gold (Doesn't Know He's a DILF)

Emmet Carver (Gracepoint) - The American Version of Alec

Crowley (Good Omens) - A Hyperactive Drama Queen "Vaguely Sauntered Downward" Angel Turned Only Demon with an Imagination

Barty Crouch Junior - The (Possibly Bipolar) Misunderstood Boy Who Never Got His Father's Love and Was Manipulated By Voldemort (I think I read that he was actually a Ravenclaw but I do see a lot of Hufflepuff in him, his insistence of a fair fight and honesty and loyalty)

Peter Vincent (Fright Night) - Hyperactive Alcoholic Magician/Vampire Hunter with a Heart of Gold

Dave Tiler (Single Dad) — The sweetheart dad with too many children with so much love in his heart who fate was so cruel to.

Kilgrave (I've never seen Jessica Jones, I just feel like with him having the same accent and looks the same, it might ruin David Tennant's Doctor for me, and I love David Tennant as the Doctor.)

Cale Erendreich (Bad Samarian; Haven't Seen This Either)

Steve Harrington (Stranger Things) - The Hair; Nomenee for Mother of the Year

Isaac Lahey (Teen Wolf) - The Abused Puppy With a Heart of Gold Who Only Wanted the Power to Defend Himself and To Not Be Scared

Spencer Reid (Criminal Minds) - The Genius Pretty Boy

Raymond Wadsworth

Chip Taylor (68 Kill)

Kyle Orfman

Lesley Juniment-Smith

Thornton "Thorn" Adams (King Knight)

Joe Harper (The Band of Robbers)

Fred Weasley

Yes, there are a lot of David Tennant characters. I don't want to write for the actor himself, I just feel a little creepy doing that. In my numerous Steve Harrington fics, the more recent ones (The OC is always Dustin's older sister, except in one) I think he is the best Doctor and I think he should officially be titled as the biggest Doctor Who Fan ever. (He became an actor because of Doctor Who, he says he thinks he underplays how much he loved Doctor Who, he became the first regenerated Doctor and the first one to last more than one season on the revived Doctor Who, he met his future father-in-law, like a year before he met his wife, Ty Tennant, Georgia's oldest son and David's now adopted son, in 2008, considered the Tenth to be his favorite, and hilariously, his grandfather was nowhere on the five-year-old's list--then David Tennant met Georgia (at the time) Moffat on the set of Doctor Who as she, the daughter of the Fifth Doctor, played the daughter of the Tenth Doctor, I heard that David Tennant met Ty on the set, and according the Peter Davidson, Georgia didn't even realize that he liked her when they started going out (apparently he was offended when she said she hadn't seen any Shakespeare), then David Tennant counts as the unofficial twelfth regeneration (there was the War Doctor who the Doctors deem as not worthy of having the name of the Doctor), then he adopted Ty Tennant and married Georgia; he returned for the 50th and 60th anniversary (and I hope he never stops returning), now is the Fourteenth Doctor, that's three official regenerations, and Good Omens is full of Doctor Who references. I don't think anyone can beat him for the biggest Doctor Who fan. His life like revolves around Doctor Who in a way that every fanboy/fangirl dreams of. *(Can't pinpoint what house Alec Hardy and therefore Emmet Carver would be in, the only blog I've found on it, discussed how he may be a burnt Hufflepuff (just google it, it'll send you to the tumble immediately) but discusses his desperation in season two suggests Gryffindor, also implying his ignoring of his heart condition but he's aware that he has it, so he's gone to the hospital and he takes pills, he's just aware that the doctors told him that he may not survive his surgery to have the pacemaker put in and he feels like he owes it to the families to get the closure they deserve, so it doesn't strike me as impulsive but more dedicated, determined, and "unafraid of toil". Then the blog argues that his need to protect people he views as in his care and how he related to the Sandbrooke case as Slytherin but I don't see that. I think perhaps a "Burned Hufflepuff" is accurate.*

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

The two hour video is by hbomberguy and titled:

Sherlock Is Garbage, And Here's Why

and it is glorious

Go watch it XD

Also, yes, do yourself a favour and

Anyway - go to YouTube and search “Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes” and clear your brain of Moffat.

While I personally think like with the doctor there has never been a bad actor playing Sherlock Holmes ... there are better and worse adaptions out there

The Grana adaption with Jeremy Brett is one of the best ones out there

The show run for 10 seasons and did pretty much almost every sherlock holmes story that is out there?

ANd jeremy Brett was BORN to play sherlock holmes

I love him!

He is amazing AND Jeremy Brett did fight tooth and nails on set to keep the stories as close to the originals as possible <3 <3 <3

ALso, his character is allowed omething that sherlock holmes rarely is allowed ... he is allowed to be kind ...

Becasue sherlock is kind ... and he does not really understand vanity ... if he makes a mistake he never bothers to waste time to cover it up

In "the adventure of the yellow face" he even tells watson:

Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.

He accepts the fact that he is only human with ease and humility ...

I love him so much <3

By the way, I really wish we could have an adaption of "the sign of four" (my favourit) by an Indian writting room, I personally feel like that would be very intersting and would make the story very current even if the adaption was a period piece

Because you can do sherlock holmes deep if you so choose ... but no one wants to do that ... they just want to do him "edgy" ...

On that note

I personally would like to see "the house by the copper beeches", "the solitary cyclist" and "the specled band" in the context of "me to" and a female/queer writting room, ... I will nevet get that, mind you ... but it would be glorious ...

If you wnat something of the beaten path I'd say

Which has ages suprisingly well

Which hasn't aged that well ... especially considering one side character tha is either a trans women or a gay man dressed as a women (it is never really made that clear)

I personally feel like it is watshable if you cut the movie some slack. since the character is usually not the but of the joke ... buuuuut YMMV ...

honestly it was a red flag when bbc sherlock went “well obviously the word written in blood isn’t the german word for revenge, it’s clearly the beginning of the name ‘rachel’, what absolute idiot would fail to see that” when in the original novel it is, in fact, the german word for revenge, which sherlock points out gleefully to a roomful of policemen who all figure it’s the beginning of the name ‘rachel.’

and by red flag I mean it was a clear sign that the adaptation was trying to one-up the source material, instead of engaging with it with love.

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 343

Revolution of the Daleks

“Revolution of the Daleks”

Plot Description: the Doctor is locked away in a high security alien prison. Isolated, alone, and with no hope of escape. Far away, on Earth, her best friends have to pick up their lives without her

What bad thing will befall this man? We spent a lot of time with him before he FUCKING DIED. Looks like the lady in the cafe food truck poisoned him because she’s either working with the Daleks or is one of those Daleks in disguise

Ugh, the hotel owner who was planning on running for president is back

Dude…….we do not need to be creating Daleks of our own to BE COPS

I hate everyone in this room for making this a thing

Why is the Doctor taunting the other prisoners??

Oh god. Thank you, other prisoner, stopping her from reciting all of the first book of [fandom redacted]

And thank YOU, Ryan and Graham, for getting Yaz out of the Maater’s TARDIS

Jack’s back again?? To break the Doctor out of prison. Oh I’m glad he just went for a hug

Oh. Good. Now we’re CLONING DALEKS. What could possibly go wrong??

Oh. Is this one of the ones that can control you??? Yeah, sure is. Donna should have counted herself lucky she only had that beetl

I like that their definition of getting on with their lives was “do a lot of the same things that they did with the Doctor just without the resources”

I will admit it is kind of funny to hear Jack tell the trio about what happened to him with Nine and Rose (it’s a nice rounding off of this year long journey for me)

Just because there’s nothing in the “security drones” you’re building NOW doesn’t mean there CAN’T be later

It is weird that Jack just stopped showing up in Moffat’s time…

The lines about Jack possibly feeling insecure and needing a lot of praise hit different after Barrowman’s comments about the 60th and his non-involvement

I don’t trust these drones. I don’t…..trust the prime minister either

Are we gonna lose some companions for next season? Ryan seems to kind of want to stay on Earth, but he’s having the first real heart to heart with the Doctor ABOUT the Doctor this whole time. He’s so emotionally intelligent. I wish we’d gotten more of this

The way they’re still surprised that the Daleks can do reprehensible things. Liquifying humans to feed to your growing Dalek clones seems quite normal for them

Well, two of the three people who were involved in creating the new Daleks are dead. Can we get the third??

Are the true Daleks about to kill the new ones?? The Doctor really sent out a messages to the Dalek death squad to take care of it

Man, I hope they do kill this guy, especially with the way he’s acting

What happened to the Doctor being president of the world? Or was that just the deal when the Doctor was an older white man??

Ah damn. I so wish the guys hadn’t saved the hotel guy

SHE LET DALEKS INTO THE TARDIS??? Oh good. It was the spare one

Omg I hate him so much……

Ryan? Are you having more thoughts about staying on Earth?? I’m proud of him though.

Graham telling Ryan “I don’t want to miss out on you” I’m SOBBING.

Ok but why do I want 15 seasons of Ryan and Graham going round the world fighting aliens?? Saving the world, hunting aliens, the family business (that’s what it’s implied they’re doing in between Ryan learning to ride a bike)

[teacherintransition]

More Past Than Future

Liberation from obligation isn’t a cure all

“Here, thar be monsters!” - old saying from ancient mapmakers

Typical day: (circa. 1988-2014) awaken at 5:30 am, commute to work 6:15-7:00, work from 7:15-4:00, commute home 4:10-4:45, coach baseball, soccer, Boy Scouts 5:00-7:00/7:30, eat dinner 7:30-8:00, help with homework of my three sons 8:00-whenever, grade papers and line out the next day 8:30-10:00, everybody to bed, but me 10:00, sit in recliner and read or play guitar or more often than not veg out in front of the tv, have a cocktail(s) and fight insomnia until about 1:30 am. REPEAT for thirty years.

It was fun, rewarding, challenging, loving, stressful, exhausting, anxious, and a bunch more adjectives! Patience and energy start to wane as age increased; but thirty years of service and attaining the age of fifty four equaled the number eighty four. When age and service reaches eighty of more, an educator may retire with a full pension. I did. Now, a typical day is …well, uh …not typical. Written have I ad infinitum, of the calming pace of life post career. “Knock on wood,” it’s been a great ride. It’s been fun, rewarding, challenging, loving, stressful, exhausting, anxious, and a bunch more adjectives! When mind and spirit are freed up there is much needed rest for both; but beware, the liberated mind has a lifetime of memories to peruse, and here, there be monsters.

The renowned Scottish historian and writer, Alistair Moffat, in his book To The Island of Tides, looks inward at the emotional and spiritual scars and unfinished business one can accumulate over decades of living. The human mind wants, needs closure on situations when they occur; but often due to work, obligations, stresses, distractions the closure doesn’t always happen. With the lessening of distractions, these “bad” memories begin to resurface. Moffat describes his experience…*

With much more past than future, I have found myself dwelling not so much on good memories as on the darkness, all that went wrong, bad mistakes I made, people I hurt, people who wronged me or ignored me. In the half light of early morning, drifting in and out of sleep, the ghosts of disappointments, mistakes, slights and regrets flit through my mind too often…**

Spot on. I can honestly say that many of the conflicts of my mind and spirit were dealt with some years ago through therapy sessions. Often I’d choose to toss the toxic relationships and situations, but I guess I didn’t get them all. I agree with the conclusions Moffat ponders; if you’re not in peace in your own mind, you’re in peace nowhere.

None of us get out this life without regrets, this we know; but events that hurt us or when we hurt someone else, these sometimes can’t always be put to rest without confronting them. I’ve had heartbreak that can only be lived with …there is no respite. That needn’t sound so dismal, realization of unavoidable sadness can be balanced with focus on what my good buddy Fant said, “were the shiny times.” A balance is good to achieve, necessary for the deserved peace of mind when retired. Short of a lobotomy, we keep the scars.

What fills my mind are the slights, one sided relationships, betrayal and lack of acknowledgment of devoted actions I took for many people. Confrontation? Oh, it floats around in there, but I’m reminded of an old, wise adage: “half the folks you’re upset with don’t know and the other half don’t care.” Damn. If you’re not careful, your self worth can take a hit, a big one. Peace of mind can be found if you want to avoid a brawl.

It sucks that we have to deal with these things during the golden years, but if wisdom, forgiveness and enlightenment is your goal then deal with it you must. A place where one can resolve these past regrets is going to be different for ever person. I often find mine by accident and others by determined plan. This morning I knew I had to get off my arse and get some work done (writing, illustrations). I was out back drinking coffee and I looked down at my dogs, heard blustery gusts of wind moving the huge, gnarled oak limbs… I realized this was just the spot to sit awhile. Here was a contentment that was so significant it made me realize that holding on to embers of anger could rob me of untold moments of this nature. No ****** way.

Other times I purposely seek places of calm and magic; “locus spirituum “ as they say in Latin or the thin places as described by the Irish. Travel, for me, removes intrinsic bitterness as I connect with the spirits found in old, exotic locations. Sadness has been reconciled an unknown numbers of times in an unknown number of lives in locations that call to our soul. It is at such places where my mind can draw on the healing and wisdom found in these unique spots. I find myself sitting quietly by myself as my mind connects with minds and spirits of those who went before me and found a solace that we all seek. This may sound freaky, but it’s where I live. Where does your place of peace reside? Seek it out. Find your balance. Reconcile when you can, where you can’t, find the wisdom others have found. Don’t seek it from a state of desperation, if you can avoid it, but seek it as your reward for living life the best you could. You, I, we knew there’d be regrets and slights; but we needn’t live them over and over. The bad memories are there, but just give them a slight nod and move forward to the hopes and dreams in the time we have. “Buon viaggio!”

*Moffat, Alistair; To The Island of Tides; Canongate Books LTD.; Edinburgh, Scotland 2019

**IBID. p.11

[shkspr]

hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

[aion-rsa]

Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor

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As recently as September 2020 David Tennant topped a Radio Times poll of favourite Doctors. He beat Tom Baker in a 2006 Doctor Who Magazine poll, and was voted the best TV character of the 21st Century by the readers of Digital Spy. He was the Doctor during one of Doctor Who‘s critical and commercial peaks, bringing in consistently high ratings and a Christmas day audience of 13.31 million for ‘Voyage of the Damned’, and 12.27 million for his final episode, ‘The End of Time – Part Two’. He is the only other Doctor who challenges Tom Baker in terms of associated iconography, even being part of the Christmas idents on BBC One as his final episodes were broadcast. Put simply, the Tenth Doctor is ‘My Doctor’ for a huge swathe of people and David Tennant in a brown coat will be the image they think of when Doctor Who is mentioned.

In articles to accompany these fan polls, Tennant’s Doctor is described as ‘amiable’ in contrast to his predecessor Christopher Eccleston’s dark take on the character. Ten is ‘down-to-earth’, ‘romantic’, ‘sweeter’, ‘more light-hearted’ and the Doctor you’d most want to invite you on board the TARDIS. That’s interesting in some respects, because the Tenth Doctor is very much a Jekyll and Hyde character. He’s handsome, he’s charismatic, and travelling with him can be addictively fun, but he is also casually cruel, harshly dismissive, and lacking in self-awareness. His ego wants feeding, and once fed, can have destructive results.

That tension in the character isn’t due to bad writing or acting. Quite the contrary. Most Doctors have an element of unpleasantness to their behaviour. Ever since the First Doctor kidnapped Ian and Barbara, the character has been moving away from the entitled snob we met him as, but can never escape it completely.

Six and Twelve were both written to be especially abrasive, then soften as time went on (with Colin Baker having to do this through Big Finish audio plays rather than on telly). A significant difference between Twelve and Ten, though, is that Twelve questions himself more. Ten, to the very end, seems to believe his own hype.

The Tenth Doctor’s duality is apparent from his first full appearance in 2005’s ‘The Christmas Invasion’. Having quoted The Lion King and fearlessly ambled through the Sycorax ship in a dressing gown, he seems the picture of bonhomie, that lighter and amiable character shining through. Then he kills their leader. True, it was in self-defence, but it was lethal force that may not have been necessary. Then he immediately topples the British Prime Minister for a not dissimilar act of aggression. Immediately we see the Tenth Doctor’s potential for violence and moral grey areas. He’s still the same man who considered braining someone with a rock in ‘An Unearthly Child’. 

Teamed with Rose Tyler, a companion of similar status to Tennant’s Doctor, they blazed their way through time and space with a level of confidence that bordered on entitlement, and a love that manifested itself negatively on the people surrounding them. The most obvious example in Series 2 is ‘Tooth and Claw’, where Russell T. Davies has them react to horror and carnage in the manner of excited tourists who’ve just seen a celebrity. This aloof detachment results in Queen Victoria establishing the Torchwood institute that will eventually split them apart. We see their blinkers on again in ‘Rise of the Cybermen’, when they take Mickey for granted. Rose and the Doctor skip along the dividing line between romance and hubris.

Then, in a Christmassy romp where the Doctor is grieving the loss of Rose, he commits genocide and Donna Noble sucker punches him with ‘I think you need somebody to stop you’. Well-meaning as this statement is, the Doctor treats it as a reason to reduce his next companion to a function rather than a person. Martha Jones is there to stop the Doctor, as far as he’s concerned. She’s a rebound companion. Martha is in love with him, and though he respects her, she’s also something of a prop.

This is the series in which the Doctor becomes human in order to escape the Family of Blood (adapted from a book in which he becomes human in order to understand his companion’s grief, not realising anyone is after him), and is culpable for all the death that follows in his wake. Martha puts up with a position as a servant and with regular racist abuse on her travels with this man, before finally realising at the end of the series that she needs to get out of the relationship. For a rebound companion, Martha withstands a hell of a lot, mostly caused by the Doctor’s failings. 

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Series 4 develops the Doctor further, putting the Tenth’s Doctor’s flaws in the foreground more clearly. Donna is now travelling with him, and simply calls him out on his behaviour more than Rose or Martha did. Nonetheless the Doctor ploughs on, and in ‘Midnight’ we see him reduced to desperate and ugly pleas about how clever he is when he’s put in a situation he can’t talk himself out of.

Rose has also become more Doctor-like while trapped in another reality, and brutally tells Donna that she’s going to have to die in order to return to the original timeline (just as the Doctor tells Donna she’s going to have to lose her memories of travelling with him in order to live her previous life, even as she clearly asks him not to – and how long did the Doctor know he would have to do this for? It’s not like he’s surprised when Donna starts glitching). Tied into this is the Doctor’s belief in his own legend. In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ he holds a gun to Cobb’s head, then withdraws it and asks that they start a society based on the morals of his actions. You know, like a well-adjusted person does.

What’s interesting here is that despite presenting himself as ‘a man who never would’, the Doctor is a man who absolutely would. We’ve seen him do it. Even the Tenth Doctor, so keen to live up to the absolute moral ideals he espouses, killed the Sycorax leader and the Krillitanes, drove the Cybermen to die of despair, brought the Family of Blood to a quiet village and then disposed of them personally. But Tennant doesn’t play this as a useful lie, he plays it as something the Doctor absolutely believes in that moment, that he is a man who would not kill even as his daughter lies dead. It’s why his picking up a gun in ‘The End of Time’ has such impact. And it makes some sense that the Tenth Doctor would reject violence following a predecessor who regenerated after refusing to commit another double-genocide.

In the series finale ‘Journey’s End‘, Davros accuses the Doctor of turning his friends into weapons. This is because the Doctor’s friends have used weapons against the Daleks who – and I can’t stress this enough – are about to kill everyone in the entire universe. Fighting back against them seems pretty rational. Also – and again I can’t stress this enough – the Daleks are bad. Like, really bad. You won’t believe just how mindbogglingly bad they are. The Doctor has tried to destroy them several times by this point. Here, there isn’t the complication of double-genocide, and instead the very real threat of absolutely everyone in the universe dying. This accusation, that the Doctor turns people into weapons, should absolutely not land.

And yet, with the Tenth Doctor, it does. This is a huge distinction between him and the First Doctor, who had to persuade pacifists to fight for him in ‘The Daleks’.

In ‘The Sontaran Strategem’ Martha compares the Doctor to fire. It’s so blunt it almost seems not worth saying, but it’s the perfect analogy (especially for a show where fire is a huge part of the very first story). Yes, fire shines in dark places, yes it can be a beacon, but despite it being very much fire’s entire deal, people can forget that it burns. And fire has that mythical connection of being stolen from the gods and brought to humanity. The Time Lord Victorious concept fits the Tenth Doctor so well. Of all the Doctors, he’s the most ready to believe in himself as a semi-mythic figure.

Even when regenerating there’s a balance between hero and legend: the Tenth Doctor does ultimately save Wilfred Mott, but only after pointing out passionately how big a sacrifice he’s making. And then he goes to get his reward by meeting all his friends, only to glare at them from a distance. His last words are ‘I don’t want to go’, which works well as clearly being a poignant moment for the actor as well, but in the context of Doctor Who as a whole it renders Ten anomalous: no one else went this unwillingly. And yet, in interviews Russell T. Davies said it was important to end the story with ‘the Doctor as people have loved him: funny, the bright spark, the hero, the enthusiast’.

It’s fascinating then, that this is the Doctor who has been taken to heart by so many viewers because there’s such an extreme contrast between his good-natured front, his stated beliefs, and his actions. He clearly loves Rose and Donna, but leaves them with a compromised version of happiness. They go on extraordinary journeys only to end up somewhere that leaves them less than who they want to be, with Russell T. Davies being more brutally honest than Steven Moffat, who nearly always goes the romance route. Davies once said to Mark Lawson that he liked writing happy endings ‘because in the real world they don’t exist’, but his endings tend towards the bittersweet: Mickey and Martha end up together but this feels like they’re leftovers from the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. The Tenth Doctor doesn’t, as Nine does, go with a smile, but holding back tears.

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It’s a testament to how well written the Tenth Doctor is that the character has this light and shade, and with David Tennant’s immense likeability he can appeal to a wider audience as a result. It’s not surprise he wins all these polls, but I can’t help but feel that if the Doctor arrived and invited me on board the TARDIS, I’d want it to be anyone but Ten.

The post Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor appeared first on Den of Geek.

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