#just after lotsd

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

it'd just be really nice to have a fucked up thasmin kiss to parallel with this

[nightmanatee]

thinking about the underwater date again and about how after 13th almost joke-ish "not a bad date am i?" yaz doesn't joke back or brush the answer off but honestly answers with her quiet "no".

she's so much more brave that i've thought about her before (not that i've ever thought that yaz is not brave; she is, she very much is but this moment...). imagine you're standing in front of a 2000+ years old alien creature that's "seen more, loved more, lost more". the creature that is so like... infinite, so much more than just a friend someone you'll put on a pedestal and still STILL after this "not a bad date am i :D" you don't hesitate you don't go silent but you're honest and you admit something (that you didn't even want to admit to yourself a couple of hours/days ago). it's not "did dan tell you to say that" or "no you certainly is a bad date, we could've drowned!!!" or "where's the ship tho?" no it's an HONEST answer.

it makes me respect chibnall's writing more with each rewatch bc yaz IS special but in ordinary/everyday things you wouldn't think as special before moments like this. bc like admitting your feelings is huge but normal but admitting them to the doctor?

i wonder about how/will this lead to something in potd? in a way of yaz being brave one last time.

[cosmicallyavg]

im Not going to be able to finish my rewatch in time for tpotd and im sad

[quizmasterfred]

13 in 'The God Complex'

I saw a Reddit post a while ago asking 'what episode would you like to see a different Doctor tackle', and now it's been ages but i had some thoughts, and can't stop thinking about it, and just desperately need to write them down somewhere so here if you're seeing this: sorry, you've got to deal with my ramblings now.

This could replace ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ wholesale. It was most people's least favourite centenary special, so hopefully we’re not losing much. OR, if you want to wrangle 4 specials in that year, it comes between ‘Eve of the Daleks’ and LotSD, which I’ll elaborate on later.

Arrival:

13 genuinely intends to follow through with “that moment on the beach where you tell me everything”, directly says as much at the end of EotD. Instead of fobbing it off with “whatever happened to the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar”, they ARE going to San Munrohvar, which Yaz is ecstatic about.

In the OG God Complex (quick reminder: 11/Amy/Rory originally), it’s Amy’s faith in the Doctor which brings them there, and it’s the same now. Except it’s not just the generic faith of a particularly attached companion, it’s the exact specific moment of Yaz knowing she’s about to get that conversation.

Her faith is both restored, and about to be rewarded. After years of asking, and wondering, and being fobbed off, finally the Doctor is opening up. And right after Yaz’s coming out to Dan? Wow - what if!

They aren’t there because Yaz “has faith in the Doctor”, they’re there now because in the exact moment the TARDIS launched, that faith was higher and more intense that it has ever been.

Dan:

Common complaint is that Dan’s a bit of a blank slate – Diane, Liverpool, nice bloke. Fun moments, but not enough time to really develop as a character. I’m not going to make a spectacular reveal here and give him an amazing arc, but at the very least we have a chance to make that blank-slatedness really work. He takes on Rory’s role in the story:

13’s Room:

We never see 11’s room, only hear the TARDIS’ cloister bell as he looks in. The implication, of course, is that he’s afraid of dying – permanently. Trenzalore, no more regenerations. Very nice and subtle for 11’s arc/personality – the old man disguising himself as a 20-something.

13 has a very different problem: she’s the Timeless Child, she’s been alive for potentially a billion years before her memories begin, and she’s still regenerating. 11 is afraid of regenerations running out; 13 is afraid they’ll never run out.

It’s harder to convey my idea here with just a noise, not showing the inside of the room itself, so I will describe what I imagine the room to look like, but if there’s a way to do this without showing the viewer, that’d obviously be great.

Her room is a field of graves: “Susan Foreman”, “Sarah-Jane Smith”, “Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart”, “Donna Noble”, “Amy + Rory Williams” (an exact copy of the grave from ‘The Angels take Manhattan’), “Clara Oswald”, River('s Screwdriver/Neural Relay sitting on a Library server?), “Bill Potts”, “Yasmin Khan”, even one written in Gallifreyan (could be inferred to be the Master, but not directly stated). Only a brief look, but enough for someone to pause it and read a bunch of companions’ names.

Many are faded, symbolising a fear that one day she’ll be so old with so many lost loved ones, there simply won’t be room for all of them, and she’ll starting to forget their names and faces. Thousands more we can’t read, the people she’s yet to meet across all her future lives, and they will age and die all the same. In the centre, she’s still there. Alive, young, never dying. Maybe it’s not even Jodie standing there – maybe it’s Ncuti Gatwa, or some completely other actor: ‘generic future self’.

This is the moment of tragedy for her. After her own chat with Dan, the fireworks, seeing Sarah + Nick happy, she had decided to give it a try with Yaz. But seeing this room is what changes that. This is the moment she says to herself:

In OG, this happens immediately after 11 effectively invites Rita to join the crew, but maybe we can swap these around. So 13 sees this, completely psyches herself out of pursuing a relationship with Yaz, knows in her heart that her biggest fear is losing more and more and more people, but seeing Rita being a little bit brilliant again makes 13 invite her along anyway. She can’t help it – a clever little human working their way in, no matter what. Bittersweet.

Speaking of:

Rita:

Another young Muslim woman who’s a little bit brilliant and a little bit too brave? In all of time and space, it’s a bit weird for a bottle episode to have someone who, on the face of it, is basically a carbon copy of our main companion, right? We’ll see.

13 gets along with Rita just as 11 did. Maybe Dan is the butt of the ‘with regret, you’re fired’ joke. Maybe in a moment alone, Dan can crack a line to Rita that ‘she’s got a thing for clever Muslim gals’. But of course, most importantly, Rita and Yaz have a bit of bonding over their shared faith. Rita mentions ‘Jahannam’ in the OG, and we can use that to get some insight to Yaz’s faith. We know she’s practicing-enough to visit a Mosque (mentioned in Rosa), but really we get very little exploration of what Islam truly means to her throughout Chibnall’s run. Give Yaz something personal that isn’t tied to the Doctor, y’know.

Then, the phone call when Rita is about to die. Like 11, 13 tries to talk her into coming back: maybe she can save her, she really wants to save her. She can’t convince Rita, but Yaz takes the phone off of her. Two young women of the same religion have a heart-to-heart about faith and rapture and Jahannam. They both start off thinking Yaz was brought here for the same reason Rita was (and the viewer does too) – stealing their religion from them.

BUT, Rita gradually realises that isn’t true for Yaz. She realises that Yaz’s faith in the Doctor is stronger: “if you come back, the Doctor can save [you/us]”. That brief, shining moment of beauty that Yaz felt when the Doctor confirmed she would follow through on ‘tell[ing] you everything’ was so powerful, it eclipsed her religious faith. Not forever, she hasn’t become an atheist, but the novelty, the cocktail of love, and rewarded patience, and anticipation, and trust – for a tiny moment, it out-shone her other faith, and that’s why the TARDIS was pulled in by the eponymous God Complex.

Maybe Rita says it explicitly, or maybe she doesn’t. Either way, Yaz also realises what Rita has seen, but the Doctor isn’t privy to Rita’s side of the conversation (because… phone). They hang up, turn off the cameras, and Rita dies. If Yaz hadn’t let the Doctor take over her life and heart, could she have saved Rita? Did someone die because she failed as a Muslim? (Obviously the answer is no – that’s not how faith/religion works, and Rita was dead anyway because that is how the minotaur works, but the point is Yaz has a total crisis here)

As with the OG, the very next scene is the Doctor’s ‘I figured it out’ moment.

Yaz is hit with a whole fresh wave of guilt. The whole reason they’re here, the thing that killed Rita – and the Doctor agrees with that assessment (the Doctor couldn’t hear Rita, so this obviously isn’t actually the Doctor saying ‘you’re right, you got her killed’ – the Doctor would never think or say something like that – but that’s what it feels like to Yaz).

Yaz’s Room:

Now this is what’s really beautiful about the change from 11 to 13. Amy and Yaz’s rooms are the same thing. Amy’s is a little girl waiting by a window for her Raggedy Man to come back; abandoned. Yaz’s is a young woman in a basic white TARDIS console room, surrounded by sticky notes and sheets of paper, after hundreds of failed attempts to make it fly, waiting for the Doctor to come back from Gallifrey; abandoned.

[Quick side-note: the moment between Amy and Gibbis where she says ‘I thought that room was for me’ about the Weeping Angels still works for Yaz. In her only meeting with the Angels, what was the result? They took the Doctor away from her for 3 years]

11’s speech to Amy, tearing down the image of him in her head – saving her life by pretending he can’t – absolutely stunning. But 13 has even more to work with here: Amy/Rory, Clara (died because she became too much like the Doctor – hello Yaz), River. The added tragedy of breaking not just a friend, but someone who is actively in love with her and who she shares those feelings for, and the only way to save Yaz’s life is to shatter those feelings.

AND: Bill. "Remember that man who tried to kill you, Graham, and Ryan in a plane crash the instant he met you? The man who tried to kill us all on Gallifrey, and is ultimately the reason I left you, vanishing for 10 months? The man you’re most afraid of, of every villain we’ve met together? I TRIED TO HELP HIM. I put his redemption above Bill and Nardole’s safety because ‘[he’s] the only one person that I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me’ (direct quote, btw(!) – ‘World Enough and Time’), and it got her mercilessly killed and converted. That’s the sort of person I am, and now I’m about to get you killed too."

Falling Action:

Because Yaz is a little bit brilliant, and coming into her own as “becoming like the Doctor”, like Clara did, she later works out that the speech in her room was ‘the plan all along^TM’ to get rid of the minotaur, and starts to patch herself up by telling herself that the Doctor didn’t really mean not to trust her. So Yaz presses, once again, asking for the Doctor to tell her something about herself.

The Doctor, of course, actually was being genuine, because her own room – the field of graves – scared her that much. 11 rebuffs Amy’s question, continuing with his exposition about the prison. 13 does the same to Yaz. The episode started with Yaz being elated that the Doctor would finally open up, and ends with 13 reverting back to closed-off, and refusing to answer a personal question. Because 13 saw what was in her room, and decided, against everything they both wanted 45 minutes ago, that she can’t fix herself.  So back in the box it goes.

Then:

From 11’s perspective, this could be perceived as bittersweet. He’s still afraid of death, but at least there’s someone here and now commiserating with him. Maybe it would be a gift, and maybe he can accept it in time, and go to Trenzalore in peace. But for 13, it’s just bitter. 'Yes, it would be a gift – if only I could ever have it. But at least I can grant it to you.'

We can either do the beach scene now, ‘can’t fix myself’…

(and then in my ideal world, alter Power of the Doctor to give us a slightly happier end / opening up / explaining 13's hotel room / Thasmin kiss, because god knows us gays need someone to throw us a bone – but that’s not important right now, not relevant to 13!GodComplex)

Or this is where the Doctor goes ‘let’s fuck about looking for the Flor de la Mar’, cue LotSD. Again we see the contrast between her genuine intent to be honest with Yaz 45 minutes ago vs fobbing it off now. Yaz’s heart is broken for real, just after she managed to convince herself that the Doctor’s speech in the hotel room was all a trick.

I can't stop thinking about it, because Doctor Who has consumed my every waking moment for the last 2 months...

[13thdoctorposts]

The way 15 has been crying in damn near every episode he's actually in, running away consistently, abandoning Ruby all over the place (including to fuck some stranger in the latest ep), is annoying because its very not Doctor behaviour and because 13 was unjustly accused of all of this shit and absolutely raked over the coals for it but somehow when it's a male Doctor who is actually literally guilty it's all cool. Not even getting into people creaming themselves over the Doctor being canonically maintextually queer like 13 doesn't exist. I am done with this show and fandom, the misogyny is galling.

The hypocrisy, and the complete lack of the acknowledgment of the hypocrisy is insane.

With the crying, I think this is frustrating a lot of people, because it’s been every ep except 73 yards, which he basically wasn’t in. And while I do think its fine for the Doctor to cry and I think it’s good to see men cry on screen to normalise it, I feel nothing when he does it now because I know it doesn’t need to be that deep to make him cry, basically it’s just lost any impact. Like it should have had more of an impact at the end of Dot and Bubble and while I understood his frustration the crying didn’t have the impact it would have if I hadn’t seen him cry almost every episode before. You’ve seen everything, lost everything, and you’re crying every adventure. Clearly it’s doesn’t need to deep to make him cry so it doesn’t pull at my heart strings. No like that 1 tear that slips down 13s cheek after talking to Yaz at the end of Flux, because I know for that to happen, 13 is really feeling something and her mask has dropped for that moment and she’s being really vulnerable.

We haven’t heard the end of the 13 locking spiders in a room with 6 months worth of food and water (Jack Robinson tells us this when they are in the room) but it was fine for 15 to send the Bridgeton bird aliens to another dimension? Also perfectly fine to kill a whole ship of goblins?

Also perfectly find that Rouge kissed the Doctor and stole and hit the switch so the Doctor doesn’t have to… but 13 was horrible when she let someone else hit the button in TTC and LotSD.

Honestly at this point the people who claim 15 era is amazing but are still bashing on 13 era I think are more disingenuous than the right wing pundits because at least they are consistent about what they hate in the show and why, so despite being terrible at least aren’t being hypocritical.

There is a very clear double standard between the female doctor and the male doctors but they completely refuse to acknowledge it because then they would have to admit their misogyny and they don’t want to admit they are they problem they want to demonise the woman and make her the problem.

[elliesgaymachete]

Genuinely torn between wishing thasmin had more closure in POTD and the same treatment as past doctors/str8 yt ships, and actually really loving the bittersweet ending and thinking that it made sense for both characters

Like obviously the biggest comparison is tenrose, they kissed multiple times for various reasons. Rose actually confessed her feelings. And even if Ten technically didn’t, his duplicate likely did and it ended with a kiss. Their arc had emotional closure.

Thirteen did basically tell Yaz how she felt in LOTSD that left so much open, and Yaz never got to actually tell her. Their romantic arc felt like there was no closure, like there was more left to be said. Plus Thirteen is the first doctor who didn’t kiss someone even once. what’s the difference here? Why didn’t we get that? Because they’re both women? Because one of them isn’t white? Both?

But ON THE OTHER HAND, after Thirteen talked about her feelings in LOTSD, I think she still feels bad about that and doesn’t want to pour salt in the wound when she can’t give Yaz what they both want. She wants them to just enjoy their time together. And I really think deep down both of them know that it won’t be the same with another regeneration. Yaz said herself, thirteen is “my doctor”. It makes sense that’s why the Doctor wants to be alone and it makes sense why Yaz gives her that, so Yaz chooses to leave. She leaves because she loves her Doctor and respects what she wants, even though it hurts. Yaz gets to live out the rest of her life, and that is enough to make the Doctor happy. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful, they loved each other and that love meant everything, even though they ran out of time.

I love the story, and the nuance and heartbreak is on brand for DW, but as someone who’s very passionate about representation in media it’s very conflicting when you look at the glaring differences between some of these relationships

[syazthidw]

The LotSD episode just hits different. The Doctor is different. She looks happier, more open and I just love how she acts around Yaz. How she looks after her, how she flirts with her (intentional or unintentional). It's like the Doctor had forger that she's dying and all she wanted was to be happy and live of what she and Yaz had - love.

Even if the episode itself isn't the best, it's still one of my favourites, because of them.

[none-ofthisnonsense]

zjufuee power of the doctor j'ai bien aimé zjfjf its like after chibnall's countless attempts at a complex multilayered plot, he finally succeeds ! Same for eve of the daleks, where it more of a weird timey wimey plot, and legend of the sea devils is more of success at mixing history and aliens. I'm glad he FINALLY succeeded at doing what he wanted to do.

Dunno if you re there yet, but the doctor and yaz definetly should ve kissed on that beach. I mean they should've kissed anytime but especially on that beach. Or underwater. But I prefer the beach. Though I like thz scene underwater a little better. But I'd rather they had kissed on the beach. If you haven't seen it this must sound incredibly confusing.

Je shippais pas du tout thasmin avant les 3 specials, et je comprenais pas trop la hype, MAIS MAINTENANT AAAAH CHIBNALL I AM IN YOUR WALLS.

Mais trop content que les personnages ont eu la place d ETRE DES PERSONNAGES a la fin. Dommage que ça a pas été le cas pour Graham (bebou) et Ryan (moins bebou mais c parce qu'il est mal ecrit le pauvre)

ANYWAY if you have any thoughts I'm right there zkejejzue

j'ai vu EOTD+LOTSD but not POTD

AND YES. YES. YES. c'était à l'épisode 5 de flux que j'ai commencé à me dire that there was something there? but nothing deep juste je comprenais why people shipped is

OH MY GOODNESS YESSSSS LA SCÈNE SOUS L'OCÉAN WHERE 13 JUST TALKS TO YAZ AAAAARGHHHHH

Oui that was what was missing dans les 2 1ères saisons it was GOOD CHARACTER WRITING

Graham je t'aime I miss you 😭 Ryan was nice mais juste mal écrit

I have thoughts mais pour demain 😂😭 la je vais me coucher

[oodlyenough]

anyway here's some power of the doctor thoughts from someone who phased in and out of thirteen's era very casually and only saw like a cumulative 10 episodes of it, maybe

honestly i enjoyed it more-or-less/more than i expected, lol, maybe because i had no particular expectations riding on it i just wanted to see what would happen. i don't think it was the tightest or most coherent script but no showrunner's finale ever has been LMAO so... it is what it is.

the master's entire plan seemed overly convoluted and i don't entirely follow why we had half the plot elements we had, but i'm also always willing to accept the master doing fuckshit for reasons that don't really go beyond wanting to ruin the doctor's day and get their attention. so like. sure. i can roll w that lmfao. the daleks and cyberman stuff seemed totally superfluous too but... whatever idc

dhawan's master isn't my fave master but he's enjoyable to watch, imo. the most bonkers one of the 3 modern i think? which considering the competition is a high bar, lol.

i think a bigger crit, for me, of 13-era master is more on jodie's end, where i don't get as much conflict and whatnot from her, which in turn makes it a less interesting dynamic than the other modern master+doctor combos. the push-pull mutual obsession is what makes them fun! i don't believe 13 would cradle his body sobbing and begging him to regenerate after he tortured her for a year, so really, what's the point

it was nice seeing ace and tegan. i think i maybe once saw a serial with each but it was so long ago, so i won't pretend any kind of authority in terms of how they were written. but i liked having them around lol

i think it was a bit of an odd choice to have dhawan 'take over' the doctor's body or ...whatever... in jodie's very last episode. it would've been a better showcase for jodie whittaker, and accomplished the same basic plan, if somehow HE regenerated into HER, and jodie got to play both the doctor and the master. ah well, because...

i really liked the old doctor cameos! I was not spoiled for it at all and i thought it was very sweet, especially giving five+tegan and seven+ace their moments together.i'm sure the actors appreciated a chance to be together too. just nice :) and i love my man eight lmao... king

also the mishmash outfit of all the past doctor outfits was cute

i thought the "tag you're it" line was a cute ending line! (although it would've been better if she regenerated into ncuti ...lol. i'm sure it was written and acted long before they settled on the 60th plans so i guess it can't be helped.)

the big downside to me was: yaz and thasmin

thasmin isn't a ship i'm invested in personally but i did start watching again after they canonized yaz's feelings in EOTD because i was like oh, how far will the show go with this? and the answer is apparently "nowhere". LOTSD felt totally unresolved and then we just never brought it up again. i can live without a kiss or a happily ever after, but when you've spent nearly a year patting yourselves on the back for a queer doctor/companion relationship, only to not do the barest minimum to address it, that's fucked up. why canonize your accidental-by-admission subtext if you're not going to DO ANYTHING? sorry to the shippers who really got jerked around by this show for no reason.

and then, even setting aside that irritation, the most egregious thing of all...

yaz's exit. just absolutely flabbergasted they did yaz/mandip so dirty that they didn't even TRY to come up with and articulate a reason for her to leave. ludicrous!!! she spends her whole time swallowing her feelings for the doctor's comfort and that extends all the way to leaving because the doctor kicked her out with nary a hug? what the fuck? one of the longest running companions ever and this is the sendoff she gets, kicked out because the doctor decides, sans explanation, she "needs to be alone" to regenerate despite having regenerated with many companions prior? lmao... yaz sweetie i'm so sorry. she doesn't even get to give the speech to the companion support group. my god. martha jones you need to call her up immediately

[yellowech0]

I found some old Thasmin fanart I did just after lotsd.

(Just a quick one, It’s pretty trash tbh)

[evviejo]

in case anybody’s interested and missed the fact that i sometimes write fic, i thought i’d make a sort of masterpost of what i’ve written for thasmin so far. they’re one-shots and pretty short things that just needed to get out of my head, and are mostly canon-compliant.

candy floss (post-rotd, in which the doctor and yaz are on a trip where they eat a lot of candy floss and yaz is struggling with her feelings)

the earring (set after grace’s funeral, the story behind the doctor’s earring)

the phoenix (there is stargazing with a side of mutual pining)

flying lessons (the doctor teaches yaz how to fly the tardis, and inadvertently they end up having dates)

not a honeymoon (written and set post-lotsd, the doctor and yaz go on a space cruise, stumble upon a murder and end up sharing a bed)

the most incredible people (what probably happened on the beach after the credits rolled in lotsd)

(un)familiar (yaz coming to terms with her new, doctorless life at unit)

enjoy 💖💖

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

[the-bi-fangirl-biatch]

go bestie expose your feelings about the ending😔✌️

before i say anything, these are my OWN opinions! no one take them as me speaking for everyone. you can either respectfully discuss in the reblogs/replies or make your own post if you disagree that much, thank you!!

everything else is under the cut bc oh gosh this is actually pretty long lmao (dw, I have a TL;DR at the end)

let me start with the LOWS of the episode and work my way to a more positive light :)))

first off, we had no resolution to the fob watch/timeless child arc. I can still understand this bit because it's part of the mystery, but it feels like there's so much plot whose ends they still haven't tied together. did she just drop the fob watch containing ALL HER PAST MEMORIES inside the TARDIS and ignore it?? did the doctor really not tell yaz about the memories? did she do that offscreen? like- what? they set up so many plots and didn't even end up continuing them like they deserve

next is how they handled sapphic ships, specifically lesbian ships. I don't know much about the classic companions but from what i've seen, tegan and nyssa are supposed to be together and ace is lesbian-coded, but what we got was retconned tyssa and ace flirting with graham?? and I also disliked how they implied that tegan's life was so dull after being left by the doctor.

they also didnt resolve thasmin at all like?? they gave yaz SO MUCH character development and it looked like her relationship with 13 was gonna have a better resolution because of how they added more of it in EOTD and LOTSD but no?? what happened to "I want to tell you everything" and "if it was gonna be anyone it would've been you"? they just ended it with a nod and walking away silently? now here, I can understand that they both don't want to say goodbye (the doctor bc she hates goodbyes and yaz bc she's holding out hope that they may see each other again) BUT we deserve more than just that. (maybe this is bc I was imagining a killing eve s3 finale-esque goodbye wherein both yaz and the doctor stop in their tracks and turn around for a final goobye kiss, but that's on me lmao)

in addition to that, why is it that the first sapphic doctor is the only one who didn't get a kiss in her entire run, when she had so much chances to kiss yaz? and please don't say "we know it's confirmed to be romantic so we don't need the kiss" bc we have had enough shipping based on subtext and post-show confirmations. i agree that physical touch doesn't define a relationship but can't we have it this once? would it be so hard to give us this on their final day?

finally, imo they hardly gave enough time for jodie to say goodbye to her role properly. it would still have been ok if the episode was only filled to the brim with classic who nostalgia, but then they made her regenerate to 10. instead of giving her (the first female doctor) or ncuti (the first black doctor) the spotlight, they decide to bring back the most popular (and most used) doctor, david tennant. don't get me wrong i LOVE david as a person, but there's a difference between bringing someone back for a cameo and overusing them. with all honesty, I'm tired of him and ten 🤷.

and not only that, they took their most popular (white male cishet) doctor, aka the one that most if not all NMDs compare jodie to, and put him at the end as a cliffhanger? like he was the one they should have been waiting for? they must know that they're diverting people's attention away from appreciating jodie's ending and ncuti's beginning. I keep seeing stuff on twitter like "finally, the good doctor who! they're gonna restore doctor who back to its formal glory! this will prove that the female doctor was a mistake!" which is UTTER BULLSHIT

now here are the HIGHS of the episode because there were a lot of them too:

I LOVED how this episode gave closure to some of the classic companions, aka tegan and ace. I squealed when ace called the doctor "professor" and I'm glad they didn't shy away from showing that a previous companion was (rightfully) upset with the doctor. and all the callbacks! the nitro 9, ace's jacket, and her bat, too. don't even get me STARTED on the "support group for former companions" because that was amazing. IAN WAS THERE?!?!? and it gives such a good open end to them, not only for future projects but also for fanfiction lmao.

the plot of this episode was impressive and fun. its length contributed significantly because it defo wouldn't have worked if it wasn't as long. I really wasnt expecting it to make as much sense as it did because it was a great undertaking, but I'm glad it did. it showed the best parts of chibnall's take on doctor who (utilizing iconic classic who elements well and his own take on history).

THE CHARACTERS!!! gahdamn I loved how they gave the characters their own jobs that only they can handle, like kate and tegan with the cybermen (bc of their history with them), ace with the daleks (same reason, her history) and yaz saving the doctor (bg their PARALLELS here I wanna bawl).

I was also obsessed with the master in this episode!! Sacha played him as such an unhinged little pathetic brat man (affectionate) but he also proved that he was more than capable of delivering powerful scenes. compare the humour of the rasputin dance sequence vs the master so desperately wanting to be the doctor because he feels lonely. he's one of the consistently great things about this episode. i will be hearing RA RA RASPUTIN on repeat in my head for the foreseeable future (as well as thirteen's theme 😭😭😭).

Yaz taking charge!!! my little badass who's grown from being unsure about facing a potential threat in s11 to kicking (the master's) ass, saving ace, flying the tardis like it was nothing, and reversing a regeneration?!?! and not to mention Mandip's acting. she's proven that she has the range of badass action, deep emotion, hilarious comedy, and just raw heart. she's amazing, showstopping, phenomenal. and out of my favourite companions, yaz is the one I connect to the most, both with her struggles (in her mental health, in growing as a person, and in learning she's queer) and her strengths (hopefully her heart, her love for friends, her courage), so to see her grow at the same time as I have is so special to me.

finally, people may disagree with me on this, but I love thirteen's regeneration speech, due to the fact that she did not do it on her own, she didnt just talk to herself on that cliffside (that was just the last bit). most of her speech was to YAZ, her companion, her friend, the one who's supposed to be the viewer's stand-in. her entire message of "goodbyes only hurt because what came before was so special, and it's been so special. no body else got to be us, no body else got to live our days, no body. and my hearts are so full of love for all of you" was not just the doctor to yaz, but jodie and mandip to us. and idc if yall don't like her last words, "Tag, you're it" is SO THIRTEEN and is instantly iconic.

TL;DR I disliked: the abandoned fob watch plot, how they handled sapphic/lesbian characters, the way they hinted at thasmin but never properly resolved them, nostalgia overtaking Jodie's time to say goodbye, and yet another doctor played by david tennant, who I think is overused I LOVED: the closure this gave to tegan and ace, both of them and kate being given unique spotlight, the Former Companion Support Group™️, Sacha Dhawan as the Master, Mandip GIll as Yaz, seeing how much yaz has grown, Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor, aaand 13's regeneration speech (which was directed to yaz and to us, not just to herself)

[rosenkranz-isnt-dead]

PotD thoughts

okay now that it's been a couple days and I had some time to think things through, I'm going to put all my thoughts in one place. first, I want to ask people bashing chibnall's era to not interact with this post. it's had some ups and downs, but overall it's been my favorite era so far, and yes, not all the things I'm about to say are kind, but I'm still grateful for those four years.

I'll start with the things I liked.

the Master. oh I can't believe I'm saying this, the Master is my less favorite recurring character, I did enjoy Missy but that's it. however, Sacha Dhawan's performance this episode was spectacular. the Rasputin dance? 100/10, incredible, I choked on a custard cream and nearly died because i laughed so hard, unforgettable experience.

Ace. I was looking forward to her coming back, and I wasn't disappointed (except for one thing which I'll mention later). she calls 13 "professor", wears her famous jacket and bashes daleks with her bat. she even upgraded her Nitro 9 to Nitro 999. I love her so much.

All the callbacks to classic who. The Master taunting Tegan and Ace, and Ace reminding him that last time she saw him, he was a catboy. "I am your Master, and you will obey me." The Master (and then the Doctor too) wearing a bunch of classic doctor's outfits at once and playing Two's flute. that was great.

Previous doctors showing up, including 8, who only ever appeared twice before. I liked 5 and 7 getting some closure with their respective companions too.

Fugitive doctor. even as a cameo, and as a hologram, but still I was happy to see her.

Mandip Gill's glorious performance as Yaz. I'm so glad she got her doctorificarion to the next level: flying the TARDIS, saving the day, getting everyone home. carrying the Doctor in her strong arms like a damsel in distress. absolutely fantastic, love that.

Regeneration. I'm glad 13 found peace at the end of her journey, after repeatedly getting traumatized for three seasons. it was a very beautiful scene (if you don't count what comes after, which I'll elaborate on later).

Things I didn't like:

the refusal to acknowledge that Ace and Tegan are wlw. no mentions of Nyssa or Karra, but instead Tegan mentions her husbands and Ace flirts with Graham. as a lesbian, this stung.

all that stuff about the paintings. what was it for? just for the fun of it? it had no ties to the plot, and I fail to see why the Master's face in all the portraits was necessary.

historical inaccuracy. I'm not talking about Rasputin here, but rather about the winter palace, which in 1916 certainly didn't look like it does in 2022. they didn't even bother to change the flag, which was hilarious. but i do appreciate the representation, lol.

everything leading up to Yaz's exit. it was awful and just plain lazy writing. she never got the chance to tell 13 about her feelings. she never got to express her opinions (except for that one scene with "make time" which i hoped would lead to her finally getting all the answers but alas). after she just silently agreed to everything 13 said in lotsd, i was hoping she would get a chance to talk in the last episode, but no. still nothing. Yaz, who's been waiting for 13 to come back for 10 months and then getting stranded in the past for 4 years, Yaz whose character developed so much in Flux, Yaz who's been patient with all the doctor's mood swings, Yaz who saved the doctor's life and never even got a "thank you", let alone an "I love you" without 13 pulling the no homo thing and saying how important all the companions are to her. it's like eotd and lotsd never happened. like 13 didn't promise, teary eyed, to tell her everything. the Doctor told Ryan more on his last day, in fact she did tell Ryan everything, and Yaz was left with nothing at all, except some ice cream, which i would've understood if it was a reference to some of their earlier adventures, but it wasn't. no goodbye hug, no kiss, no answers. and when 13 says "I'd rather do this next part alone", Yaz simply accepts it. she gets dropped off in Sheffield, and just nods without saying goodbye (which, again, is for 13's benefit), and then gets invited to a therapy session with a bunch of seniors she barely knows or doesn't know at all. my friend @nightmanatee pointed out that it would make sense for Yaz to say the speech reminiscent of Graham's in twwfte, where she would talk about the Doctor. but this, too, was taken away from her. and so Yaz gets reduced to one of many, just another companion dumped by the Doctor. notice how all the companions in that room were the Doctor's friends and nothing more, and they all left willingly. Yaz, who's been with the Doctor since day one and devoted 10 years of her life to her, Yaz who was in love with the Doctor (and loved back, no matter how much that episode tried to convince me that the previous two specials didn't happen), is not the same as any of them. If we go this route, fine, give me Clara, give me Martha, who loved the Doctor like Yaz did, they at least would understand her. So please don't tell me how "right" it was, how "beautiful", because there's nothing right about a brown woman not having a chance to speak for herself and taken for granted, there's nothing beautiful about a relationship, slowly developing over the course of two seasons, suddenly taking a 180 turn and becoming a friendship again. back to square one.

and one last thing: 13 degenerating back into 10. do I even need to add anything to that? well I'm going to anyways. Jodie Whittaker was the first female doctor, she's received a lot of negativity, she's been constantly compared to Tennant, held to a higher standard than her male counterparts. Ncuti Gatwa is about to become the first Black doctor (official that is, I'm not forgetting Jo Martin). And who are we seeing at the end of the episode? fan favorite white man, stealing both Jodie's final moments and Ncuti's spotlight. all the praise RTD has said about Jodie is reduced to nothing, because he gave nmds exactly what they wanted. and okay, let's say Ncuti is still busy and they needed an in-between Doctor to temporarily fill his shoes. but guess what: Jo Martin is right there. how much more sense it would've been for 13 to regenerate back into the fugitive doctor, whose storyline was not tied up? Sacha Dhawan, whose Master messed with the Doctor's regeneration, is right there. and if they wanted the viewing figures to raise, fine, they could still bring Tennant back for the 60th, it's been done before, multiple doctors specials are a regular occurence. but they pulled the cheapest trick of all, which is super disappointing.

Anyways, I'm sad the grand finale left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I'm immensely grateful to Jodie, Mandip, Sacha et all for having been in my life for these 4 years. I'm looking forward to their next projects and holding out a hope for future DW cameos and Big Finish audios.

[quizmasterfred]

Thinking about Flux and Thamsin again, so as per usual I'm dealing with it by typing a full stream-of-consciousness into the nothing :D

Enjoy! (or, more likely, don't 🤷‍♀️ it's really long and I am prone to rambling)

Let me preface this by saying this is NOT a Dan Lewis Hatepost. He's fine (and John Bishop is a darling), but I think he's a bit bland and takes up a lot of screen time that could better serve our main duo if we just... didn't have to include Dan.

In Hallowe’en Apocalypse, he’s great. He’s the hook 13 + Yaz need to get into Karvanista’s ship and kickstart the main plot.

WotS

he gets sent back to Liverpool immediately, infiltrates a sontaran ship, and Skypes 13 to shut down their Tempura Shrimp plan.

Either, you could then have 13 (at the end of the episode) make sure he’s okay and alive, Karvanista says the Lupari are taking care of earth for a bit, and Dan now stays home, because y’know this is all really fucked and he’s some normal guy who shouldn’t be whisked off to fight ancient paranormal demons when he’s barely aware of space travel.

Or K takes over his role. Towards the end of HA, 13+Y can drop Dan off before they go looking for the flux. In WotS, K can board the Sontaran ship as he does in canon anyway, except instead of looking for Dan, he’s now there on an active mission to sabotage the Sontarans, and isn’t worried as much about Dan, since the Lupai have changed tack to defending earth rather than their original 1-to-1 human taxi plan. This allows 13+K to get on each others nerves a bit as they work together to stop the Sontarans, and interrogate their (forgotten) relationship from the Division days before 13(+Y) goes AWOL for three episodes.

Either way, Dan is now out of the picture. He’s a fun celebrity cameo/comedic relief role that doesn’t outstay his welcome and is just there to get the ball rolling. In the Karv-centric version of WotS, we get more info on Division, which is the Doctor’s driving goal for this series.

O,UT

Canon!Dan spends this episode in the time storm with everyone else. Without him, you can explore the other three characters more; that simple. Yes, Dan’s face is taking Karvanista’s spot in 13’s visions, but since we never find out the identities of Y+Vinder in those visions, we can cut one face without any change to the plot.

When they’re out of the storm, Dan has a moment with Holo-Diane in the Passenger, but this could have been one of the Khans! The Ravagers clearly know enough about Yaz, and that extra strain on 13+Y’s relationship would be more interesting than with Dan. Canon!13 yells at Yaz in her post-storm delirium, and now Yaz gets to push back because her family is in danger because of her relationship to the Doctor, which isn’t something the Khans have faced up to this point.

The Khans are SO well set-up in s11/12:

Sonya is the one who saved her sister when she ran away, and now Yaz has “run away” again in a different way

Najia will not stop interrogating 13+Y’s relationship, which creates tension with Yaz not wanting to freak her family out with the knowledge of aliens etc

Hakim is a CONSPIRACIST whose daughter has now run off with an actual real time-travelling alien!!!

But they don’t get the payoff for any of it. Each one of them is primed for an incredible reaction to the Doctor/Time Travel/Aliens reveal and we never get it! If we can’t get the full family episode-2.0, then at least putting one of them in the passenger gives us payoff for that character. (And ideally LotSD gets replaced with KhanFamily-2.0, but i'll get to that later)

Point is, a known 2ndary character related to one of our leads is more compelling than a tertiary character we don’t know related to a 2ndary character we also barely know. We get some major strain between our two leads because of it, but also, after the initial shock has settled, we see Yaz’s genuine trust in 13 to save her family, AND 13's care for Yaz + family in promising to save [whichever one]. They’re almost at each other’s throats because of 13 keeping secrets, Yaz pushing her too much, big pressure cooker episode, but at the end of the day, they trust and care about each other, and 13 WILL protect her companions' families.

VotA

Canon!Dan spends this entire episode with Yaz. He doesn’t have a unique plot role at all. If he's not here, Yaz can have a taste of a solo mission, again showing 13’s trust in Yaz to perform under pressure, but of course it goes wrong because they’ve underestimated/couldn’t predict the Angels’ plan.

Script-wise, we get more reliance on Yaz’s detective skills, and unspoken context clues for the audience, rather than bouncing off Dan. She can talk to herself a little bit (picking up a habit from 13), but the point is it focuses more on Yaz alone working things out. And once she finds the kid, there's someone to dialogue with anyway, so it's not like it'll just be a silent role for half the episode or something.

SotF

Now here’s where it gets interesting. We all know this is THE doctorification-of-Yasmin-Khan episode. Jericho and canon!Dan are very much her companions, and she is the doctor in 13’s absence.

Dan’s role can be taken on entirely by Jericho. The companion role can be absorbed without any major changes - canon!J already does half of that work anyway. Dan’s main character scene here is comforting Yaz after she watches the hologram. But I think we can retool this and even make it more effective with Jericho.

A surprisingly common headcanon is that J is gay, and here we have an opportunity to make it canon (though not explicitly stated - bear with me). In the canon version, JDY have all known each other for the same amount of time, so the strength of familiarity + friendship can be directly translated from Y+D to Y+J. J is perfectly able to tell how badly Y misses 13, and while he didn’t see HA, WotS or OUT like Canon!Dan, he did get a good look at 13’s brilliance and magnetism in VotA, so he kinda gets it. This woman is a bit mad, but clearly more than the average person, and these two have clearly developed a stronger-than-average friendship, so he’s just as capable of delivering the comfort that canon!Dan does.

And if we make gay!J canon, it creates a beautiful extra layer. J knows 13+Y are extremely close, so recognises that spark of atypical attraction in Yaz that he knows from his own life, but maybe can’t be certain. Certainly Yaz hasn’t come to terms with it herself at this point, so J has to tread carefully because he doesn’t want to force Yaz into any self-revelations before she’s ready.

But more importantly! J is from the 60s! His only experience with talking about LGBT stuff is mired in the risk of rejection and ostracism - he has NO IDEA that Yaz would just be accepting because she’s grown up in a better time! So he can’t come out and say it, he HAS to tiptoe under threat of losing his only friend in a terrifying time-adrift situation. Similarly, Yaz is both not ready to acknowledge her own sexuality, and couldn’t say anything to J directly anyway because he’s from the 60s! He’s “probably deeply homophobic”, so there’s no way Yaz could risk bringing it up even if she were ready to (which she isn't)!

J has to tiptoe around the suggestion because on the one hand, he can see that spark, but can’t risk losing his friend/lifeline, and Y has to pick up on something much more subtle than she’s prepared for (but won't - yet!). All wrapped up in the simpler ground layer of Yaz just needing some comfort - any comfort - as she’s been bearing the brunt of the work since taking on the role of “the Doctor” for an extended time now leading the pair of them through this insane mission to get back to their times, and just... because she misses her best friend.

This conversation now has the dual role of canon!Dan’s pep talk AND forming a bedrock for Yaz’s coming out as she can have a hindsight-realisation about what J was hinting at (during one of the 2022 specials).

Vanquishers

Canon!Dan is again with the group the whole time, so he doesn’t have an individual plot purpose for us to replace or work around. Canon!Karvanista doesn’t even care about Dan at this point, so his role doesn’t change either. The only conversation they have is a payoff to “fetch your dog”, which can easily be one of the (multiple) 13s going to fetch him for more 13+K dynamic, rather than both 13s going to Bel.

Obviously we get the Passenger rescue in this episode too, so our chosen Khan has the appropriate freak-out moment. Pick your favourite:

Sonya yelling that “this is where you’ve been and you didn’t tell me” + a sisterly ribbing about the romantic tension between 13+Y

Najia going into full “this is my daughter you’ve taken off to god-knows-where and I expect her back in one piece” @ 13 + “are you sure you’re not seeing each other?” @ Yaz

Hakim HOLY SHIT ALIENS ARE FUCKING REAL YAZ CAN YOU BELIEVE IT

2022 Specials

Dan's biggest contribution here is the “I know what you are” talk @ Yaz in EotD and playing (failed) matchmaker in LotSD, and then he fucks off for PotD anyway, so that doesn’t even need any changing.

In my ideal world, we would actually replace one of EotD or LotSD with KhanFamilyEpisode-2.0 (KFE2), continuing on from the post-passenger-rescue revelation in Vanquishers. I LOVE EotD, so I would replace LotSD and that’s the direction my ramblings will go from now on. But it could be either way round (or in magical get-everything-we-want land, it's just an extra 4th episode)

EotD doesn’t need to have Dan pushing Yaz to come out to herself. Admittedly, this is the dodgiest consequence we get from stripping back Dan so much, but bear with me. Combining the Sarah/Nick romantic B plot and Yaz pulling on that aforementioned hindsight to her conversation with Jericho, we can get the same effect without having a straight man effectively force a closeted lesbian into coming out. (As much as canon!Dan is trying to be nice, and I respect him for that, the actual result is cornering a closeted young woman into coming out to him, and then immediately outing her to someone else, which is not… the best thing to do)

We can replace it with more reaction shots for Yaz to S/N’s relationship and bickering, sprinkle in a bit of flashback to her conversation with J with new context, maybe an almost-confession that she chickens out of in the heat of the moment during one of the later loops. Something like 13 being reckless and Y yells at her for it and goes off about how she cares about 13 a lot and can’t just lose her if shit goes wrong - a direct mirror to 13’s “I will not let you die for my mistakes” moment. They each get an admission of care now. If we’re desperate, Yaz can have a self-annoyed talking-to-herself moment berating herself for said chickening out, but this is a bit heavy-handed and shouldn’t be necessary if the rest of it is played right.

In KFE2, one of the Khans of course has appropriate characterisation from Flux. I think Sonya works best here, since she’s the most likely to accept Yaz’s inevitable plea to “don’t tell the others anything about alien bullshit” (potentially including blackmail wherein Yaz has to promise to do sonya’s chores for a month or something, classic sibling hijinks).

Obviously Doctor Who shenanigans ensue and it probably results in the whole family finding out the truth about the Doctor. But the B plot is Sonya needling at Yaz over her now-obvious crush on 13, culminating in the equivalent to LotSD’s beach talk.

ALTERNATIVELY:

Swap KFE2 and EotD. The B plot in KFE2 ends in Yaz coming out to Sonya (instead of Dan), who is on the one hand, a typical sibling response of “yeah obviously duh, and i'm gonna make fun of you for being a dumbass about it” but on the other hand is fully supportive because she knows Yaz’s mental health history (+ potentially already suspected her sexuality from school years) and is, at heart, an actually good sister.

EotD can then have Yaz actually confessing to 13 during that aforementioned stressful late-game time loop, mirrored by moving 13's confession from LotSD to this episode as well. And then the equivalent beach talk.

Diane

Final note: I didn’t want to just delete Diane completely, because I do really like that she just exists as a disabled character who gets shit done. We definitely don’t need the will-they-won’t-they if we’re stripping back Dan’s role, so if you really want, we can just have them be an established relationship for that little bit of world building. Maybe D+D can have minor roles in Vanquishers as part of the finale if you rejig it a bit

OR we can just give Dan’s role to Diane wholesale. Diane’s actress was perfectly good, she can carry that role easily, and we get to keep a semi-prominent disabled character. I quite like what little we see of Diane, so I like the idea of keeping her over Dan, but narratively speaking it’s not important either way.

[13thdoctorposts]

I know narratively the Doctor telling Yaz in LotSD that they can’t be together because it will eventually hurt makes sense.

But Chibs could have also narratively justified them being together since his Doctor is meant to be a hopeful Doctor, it would have totally made sense for her to choose Love despite the heartbreak that would follow… because heartbreak always follows love for at least one partner. And since he’s a big believer in Doctor Who being for kids as well, it would have been cool instead of the message being don’t do love because it eventually hurts, the message could have been love hard while you can.

He wouldn’t have actually have had to really change any of the story in Power of the Doctor either because you can effectively read them as a couple, though the acting and script points like the Doctor screaming Yaz’s name as she essentially dies, Yaz not giving up on getting her back even though she knows the Master has taken over the Doctor and doesn’t know enough about regeneration to actually know if it’s possible to bring the Doctor back. She wasn’t giving up for anything… that’s love.

The way they interact in the episode could be easily taken as friends as I’m assuming was intended but so easily as lovers as well so if Chibs had the Doctor choose to throw caution to the wind at the end of LotSD after Yaz’s little speech on Courage have the Doctor say… ok, I want to try and end that episode with basically saying they are going to be together, Both LotSD and PotD could play out exactly the same but you could put a kiss in at the end and it would make sense. Story wise you would only have to change a line in LotSD and add a kiss in PotD, it probably would only had 15-30secs of screen time to each episode.

It also would mean there could be extended universe story’s for between LotSD and PotD were other story tellers could play with them being together.

This is just one of many thoughts I’ve had about the 2022 specials of which I love all of them this is just a different path that could have been taken that I often think about.