#like I … don’t like Chibnalls era very much

[buildoblivion]

listen as much as I didn’t really like the whole timeless children thing I do respect rtd not just ignoring it and rolling with the drama instead

[seaweedstarshine]

Late to the game as I’ve kinda been kinda non-here for a minute but I scrolled through the Dot and Bubble tag, and thought I wanted to write this post into existence.

There's this part in Doctor Who Unleashed where RTD says this:

“What we can’t tell is how many people will have worked that out before the ending. Because they’ve seen white person after white person after white person, and television these days is very diverse. I wonder, will you be ten minutes into it, will you be fifteen, will you be twenty, before you start to think, everyone in this community is white. And if you don’t think that — why didn’t you? So, that’s gonna be interesting. I hope it’s one of those pieces of television you see, and always remember.”

And I'm like. Yeah. But the reason this works even as well as it does is largely thanks to the work of the previous showrunner with the previous creative team, which was notably the first era to have any writers of color (amongst other firsts in terms of inclusivity in directors, composer, actors). While Chibnall fumbled whenever he tried to write about race himself, he did have the self-awareness to have Black and South Asian writers writing the episodes where race is the focus (and a female writer for the episode where sexism is a focus; my point is, he seemed to know his shortcomings).

I wonder what the current creative team looks like? (not really, but I wasn't 100% sure for all of them)

To quote RTD:

“...before you start to think, everyone in this community is white.”

This is pretty non-self-aware, right? It's pretty “It is said, and I understand this, there was a history of racism with the original Toymaker, the Celestial Toymaker, who had ‘celestial,’ and I did not know this, but ‘celestial’ can mean of Chinese origin, but in a derogatory way,” right? (from The Giggle Unleashed) It's pretty “and I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that: associating disability with evil,” right? (from Destination Skaro Unleashed)

—none of which are issues that should be overlooked, but think how much exponentially better they might’ve been addressed if he’d consulted with Chinese writers and wheelchair-using writers before going straight to giving the Toymaker weird fake accents and making Davros walk?

How many Black or non-white people do we think saw the Dot and Bubble script before it landed in Ncuti’s hands?

And this just keeps happening.

And like, from some of the shocked responses I've seen from white viewers to the ending of Dot and Bubble, maybe the episode's unsubtlety was needed? From the way RTD talks about it in Unleashed, the episode was written with a white audience in mind, Baby's First Microaggressions (where of course the microaggressions come from people who are pretty self-admittedly white supremacists). Ricky September, a more seemingly normal depiction of someone in the racist bubble of Finetime, seemed like an interesting element, up until the way he died.

The ending worked for me, because I do think the Doctor's reaction is true to how the Doctor would react. I just keep thinking of how much better the core themes could've been handled by someone with actual lived experience on the subject matter.

[13thdoctorposts]

Reading that people were complaining about 13 era Who in the Women in Doctor Who panel at Dragon Con is very telling. 

If you cant have a Woman in Doctor Who panel without people complaining about 13 era Who I almost don’t even know what to say. 

The era that had the first female Doctor, the first South Asian companion who was also female, it highlighted numerous female historical figures including Rosa Parks, Ada Lovelace, Noor Inayat Khan, Mary Shelly, Mary Seacole and Madam Ching. Plus it had more female writers in 3 series, then the rest of Who… there is so much positive you could talk about with 13 era Who on the topic of Women in Doctor Who even if the writing wasn’t for you.. It was a good time to be a Woman in Doctor Who. 

So if a panel on that topic cant see that, if a large part of an audience at a panel can’t and would prefer to complain about 13 era Who and make the environment feel hostile to 13 era fans please don’t tell me its just ‘bad writing’ and not misogyny. If you personally feel like you aren’t a misogynist and it is just ‘bad writing’ good for you but you are still in bed with the misogyny that runs rife in this fandom.

Also when it comes to 13 era Who the way the women are written is actually far more respectful and not sexualised unlike the previous eras so unless you think all female character should be sexualised in Who you cant really complain about 13 era Who on that writing front.

Also I feel sorry for the fact that you had to spend each episode working out what people were going to hate about it instead of just enjoying it before going online because you knew if you ever had a positive opinion the fandom would eat you alive for that opinion. Who knows maybe it wasn’t Chibnall or the other 9 writers who were supposedly so terrible at their jobs that made you hate the show sooo much maybe it was the fact you knew you couldn’t go online and ever say you loved something without getting piled on so instead you had to find everything wrong with it so you could be in with the in crowd. Maybe the fandom conditioned you to hate the show more so than the writing. 

If you put the same over analytical glasses on and watched the RTD and Moffatt eras you could find just as many things to hate about the writing, but they didn’t have a female Doctor did they? So all their short comings are irrelevant. Theres so much to love in all the eras I’m sorry you were conditioned not to see the good in this era and could only see the bad.

[timeagainreviews]

The Eve of the 60th Anniversary-ish

My ability to name things isn’t the best. I overthink and end up with a five-year-old blog called “Time and Time Again.” Terrible name. “I should change it,” I’ve said for five years. Well, I am going to do just that. But in the meantime, I need to find a name for this type of article. As is tradition around here, I like to write a short article about my predictions, expectations- nay, hopes for the incoming series or era of Doctor Who. I usually label them as “Thoughts Leading Up to…” which is fine. But is there a word or phrase out there that says it succinctly? A sort of Whatchamacallit, Marsupilami, Raxacoricofallapatorius? If I do find a better name for this series, do I call it part five or part one? Davies is calling season 14 “Season 1.” Why can’t I?

In considering a new name, I have decided to return to the very first article of this type- “The Eve of the Thirteenth.” So from now on, I’m calling this my “Eve of Series.” Hopefully, you’re reading this article on the Eve of the 60th Anniversary special “The Star Beast.” Or you’re way late to the game and it’s August. In that case, enjoy your view from Hindsight Bias Tower, as you laugh at my fatuous forecasts or marvel at my prognostic aptitude. So in no particular order, here’s a list of some shit I’ve been thinking about.

RTD2

Where else to start but the man himself? And what a controversial man he’s been (especially this week!) Not five minutes into the new RTD era and we’ve already had a massive retcon in the form of Davros. While, the discourse on this situation has been its usual abysmal self,  I expect this to be par for the course. From Chibnall stans hoping their aggressors end up with egg on their faces to the far worse transphobes and ableists decrying every decision thus far, Davies is right there in the centre of it. Pushing people’s buttons. He seems like a man on a mission and if I had to guess, it is to shake the cobwebs out of our collective Doctor Who-themed sheets and duvets. 

Davies has a monumental task ahead of him. Make something both the Chibnall stans and his haters would like to watch. He could ignore the haters, but they help keep the lights on. And just as important, you don’t want to alienate the people who have enjoyed the show for the last five years. In many people’s eyes, mine included, Chibnall left a broken show in his wake. It’s my opinion that Russell T Davies plans to break it further. I’ve thought about this a lot lately, and I think it may be time for us as a fandom to question why the Doctor has so many rules. Because let’s be honest, Doctor Who’s canon is a mess and it barely matters. Why not embrace that? You think the Cushing movies and the Past Doctor Adventure books are canon? Sure, why not. You still incorporate the Faction Paradox into your version of Doctor Who? Go for it. We all have our own version of Doctor Who, why not embrace that?

The Whoniverse

Considering the popularity of muti-verses in media right now (get ready for multi-verse fatigue) it makes sense that this new Whoniverse may start embracing the many directions Doctor Who branches. This is an opportunity to explore different avenues of the Whoniverse while simultaneously fueling the ever-ravenous Mouse’s need for Content™. In other words, Doccy Who is about to get crammed down our throats like nobody’s business. If you’ve ever had someone’s business down your throat, it can be nice but can also wear out its welcome. Short breaks help.

If you’ve read this blog, you’ll know I’m a rainy-day fan. I’m here for the long haul. I am not so much worried about overexposure to Doctor Who as I am the diluting of story. So long as the stories are good, I’m happy. So far, the Whoniverse has extended in the form of “Tales of the Tardis,” a sort of saccharine introduction to classic Doctor Who for beginners than an actual series in its own right. But in its short span, this unassuming nostalgia trip introduced us to an aspect that may just be integral to the Whoniverse at large. When Ace notes the Seventh Doctor’s older appearance he replies- “Timestreams are funny things. In some, I regenerate. In others, I don’t.”

Every time Data returns to Star Trek, we have to ignore the fact that Brent Spiner is ageing. Why does the Second Doctor have grey hair in “The Two Doctors?” These issues have bogged Doctor Who down for its entire run. It’s a rigid aspect of an otherwise malleable narrative. Not only does this dialogue explain the ageing appearances of Doctors, but it also gives writers carte blanche to do as they like. In this way, the Sixth Doctor gets a better costume. The Seventh Doctor has grey hair. And Davros has always walked. It’s a show about time travel and we as fans keep treating it like we’re the Time Lords. Time travel should be weird and confusing. As the Eleventh Doctor said- time travel is damage. Perhaps the Whoniverse will allow us to see some of that damage in its own time.

Fourteen’s Familiar Face (and Teeth)

When I had originally heard murmurs of David Tennant returning, I wrote them off as the worst idea possible. It’s not that I dislike David Tennant, but rather it felt like a step back for the show. I’ve always admired the show’s capacity for change and this felt stagnant. No Doctor should be the Doctor forever. Rather cleverly then, the show introduced us to Ncuti Gatwa before David Tennant. Already my curiosity had been piqued. Tennant was returning, but only for a moment. You have my attention, Russell. They knew we would see Tennant filming in his slick new threads, and they got ahead of it. It feels like equal parts stunt casting and clever writing. It would be unfair to any new Doctor to carry the weight of the 60th on their shoulders, so let’s revisit some of the old favourites, eh?

The Children in Need special was our first look at this Doctor, and as my friend Taryn put it- it was great until the Doctor showed up. It was a joke, but the stuff with Davros was genuinely interesting on its own. As soon as the Doctor showed up, the tonal whiplash was jarring. This isn’t to say it was bad. It’s for the kiddies, it should be lighter in tone. The joke about the Kaled anagram that went on too long was evidence early on that we were about to slip into the realm of panto. The main takeaway is that David’s still got it and that Ian Levine needs very little reason to turn on you. Neither of which was unknown to us before.

Donna and Rose

One of the more annoying traits some Whovians possess is the tendency to see a selection of Doctor Who characters and say “You left out so and so.” And usually, more often than not, that so and so is Rose Tyler. There’s always someone out there ready to see more David and Billie. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see the return of Donna Noble. But as a nice little nod to what came before, we get her daughter Rose. I love the entire idea behind this Rose. As Sharon Davies, Doctor Who’s first black companion was first introduced in “The Star Beast,” it’s delightful to know Doctor Who’s first trans companion will be introduced in “The Star Beast.” There’s a nice symmetry to that.

I also like what Rose implies about Donna’s story. When we last saw Donna, she was getting married and about to win the lottery. Her husband Shaun and her are still together all of these years later, and they have a daughter named Rose. As a trans person, I latched on to the name aspect of Rose’s character immediately as trans people name themselves. If she picked the name Rose out of nowhere, is it possible that a dormant Doctor Donna somehow passed attributes onto her progeny? Is there more to the name than coincidence? I certainly hope so. Russell T Davies seems dedicated to telling trans stories and our names are a huge part of our journeys. If he turned that aspect of the trans experience into a wibbly wobbly timey wimey phenomenon, I might love him forever.

I’m also just stoked as hell to see the return of Donna and her family. They’ve been hush on Wilf in the trailers. I suppose they’re trying to keep some surprises for the people out there who haven’t had Doctor Who news pumped intravenously for the last year and a half. I hope that they don’t forget Donna and Shaun’s lottery winnings. It would be a shame to see Donna bumbling around trying to find temp work after all this time. I hope she never had to work another day in her life. What I want for Donna, is a lot of what the trailers seem to imply- for her to feel whole again. Her adventures were stolen from her. I hope they don’t just bring her back to kill her. Donna doesn’t need to die to leave the TARDIS, she has a family. Give her a happily ever after!

Disney+

While we here in the UK will see no Doctor Who on Disney+, the rest of the world will. This is pretty big as many younger international viewers resort to piracy as they don’t have cable and no one in their right mind would pay for HBO Max or whatever the hell they’re calling it now. Recently a bunch of the usual shitty diaper babies shat their shitty diapers over the idea that people in other countries might be able to watch Doctor Who before the UK. I highly doubt that will be the case. Just because time zones exist doesn’t automatically mean that they won’t wait to drop the episode once it becomes available in the UK. I don’t know that for certain, but what I do know for certain is it hardly matters.

I’ve also seen some people worry that Disney will have too much say in Doctor Who’s content. And while they have given RTD the occasional note, it is still Bad Wolf making the decisions. I would like to think that Disney knows to leave well enough alone. They’ve not exactly had a great year at the box office, so it’s not like their advice is valuable these days. They could tell you a hundred ways to tank a franchise, which is technically helpful. Add to that the year they had with SAG-AFTRA and I think they’re probably hurting for a bit of help from their friends in Britain. Disney’s biggest contributions will likely be calling season 14 “Season 1,” as to not confuse subscribers and a higher budget.  We appreciate the cash injection, Mickey, but please piss off.

Murray Gold replacing Segun Akinola

I wrote the exact opposite of that sentence five years ago. It’s weird how many aspects of Doctor Who have returned, but this was the first one that actually felt like a step back to me. Murray Gold is a great composer. His theme for The Face of Boe is a gorgeous piece of music. Matt Smith’s theme song might be my favourite Doctor Who theme song ever. But I am a fan of the Radiophonic Workshop and Segun Akinola was tapped into that in an exciting way. I’m just not sure what more Gold can do than more of the same.

Gold’s new intro was the second time I was disappointed by RTD’s Doctor Who. While many people were living for it, a few of my friends and I were disappointed. It gets a bit meandery and the parts you want to go hard simply don’t. I’m going to chalk this up to the poor sound of a live performance and hold my final judgement for the fully mixed version. As it stands, it’s standard Murray Gold. Nothing new. Underwhelming in its sameness. However, as I was tufting a Doctor Who rug the other day, I listened to the first six season soundtracks back to back and found myself pleasantly surprised by some of their offerings. Gold was always doing his best work when it was atmospheric and electronic. That’s the Murray Gold I’m most interested in hearing more from.

The Specials Themselves

For the most part, I’ve stayed away from fan speculation. Even in this blog, I’ve tried to stray from speculating actual plot points (save for Rose). I mostly hate it because it’s all hearsay and ultimately bullshit. There have been the supposed “leaks” about bi-regeneration and even if they’re true, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. Good writing can make just about any concept work. If you were to read out the plot synopsis of any story, it could sound awful. What a synopsis lacks is gripping dialogue, compelling scenes, and filmmakers coming together to achieve the correct tone. You can't gauge how good something is going to be by description alone.

What I can see is Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker, pulling the strings of the Doctor’s fate. Is he the reason for this familiar regeneration? Is Beep the Meep’s status as a comic book character part of it? How meta will this go? Will the Doctor remember Beep the Meep from his Fourth Doctor days or will the Meep be brand new to him? I’ve said before that you don’t want audiences asking the wrong questions. I feel like every question I’ve had since filming began was one of curiosity as opposed to confusion. I’m excited to be excited over Doctor Who again. When they revealed the three posters for the specials, I literally jumped for joy. I was ecstatic. These posters were creative, fun, and they left you wanting more. Fantastic.

My Own Relationship to the Show

My version of Star Wars is the original trilogy. I can’t stand the prequels. But lately, I’ve tried to take a lighter attitude toward them. While I still think they stink, I also recognise that they’re here to stay. That’s kind of where I am with the Timeless Child. I still hate the concept, but I accept it’s here to stay. And I am actually trying to be more open-minded about it. Now that we have better writers at the helm it might even turn into something interesting. As I stated above, the fandom is due a shakeup. As it stands, I am pretty open to a shakeup. This doesn’t mean that I don’t secretly hope Susan will show up and be revealed as the actual Timeless Child, but I’m realistic.

Recently someone also pointed out to me that the Doctor’s watch could have turned the First Doctor into a normal Time Lord, with the usual number of Time Lord regenerations. While this doesn’t explain why the Doctor being the most important Time Lord ever was necessary, it at least helps plug a plot hole. It’s ironic that Chibnall’s questionable writing may actually lead to Doctor Who’s canon being blown wide open. Equally ironic is the fact that he has actually improved my enjoyment of Doctor Who. I call it the Chibnall Effect. After the Chibnall era, middling episodes of the Davies and Moffat era have been bumped up considerably. Sometimes it takes a bad film to help you recognise a good film. 

There’s a wrongheaded notion floating around these days that RTD fans are living off of nostalgia. While I don’t doubt there will be someone out there chasing a feeling lost to the winds of time, I should also point out that not all of us watched the Davies era as children. I was in my late 20’s when I got into Doctor Who. I have no little kid nostalgia for it. I was a junior in film school. I’ve been taught how to view art critically and I can say that the Davies era has its flaws and its strengths. I think for an atheist, he has a weird obsession with the Doctor as Jesus. And I found the schmoozy romance between Ten and Rose nauseating. But the man knows character development. He understands human emotion better than Moffat’s stunted women or Chibnall’s stunted everyone. What I’ve found in revisiting the RTD era is a consistent focus on characterisation. Without that, all of the clever writing and stellar effects amount to nothing. I love when Doctor Who is great, but at this point I’ll settle for competent.

A Personal Note

As I stated in my Monster Makeovers article, I will be covering the new episodes as they release. However I have recently started a bit of a project. I have taken up rug tufting and hope to eventually make a living out of it. Because of this, I will have to budget my time. My hope is that I will always have time after episodes to write reviews, but they may occasionally be a day late. If you’re interested in following my rug tufting journey, I started an Instagram account under the name pipedreamfasting. Feel free to drop me a follow.

In other news, I am actually planning on changing my blog’s name. I’ve been mulling a few ideas over, but nothing is final. Maybe I’ll do a poll, that is if my reader base is large enough for a poll to matter. That being said, I hope your Doctor Who anniversary special experience is a happy one! There’s been so much vitriol in the fandom lately that we could all use a positive experience. Happy anniversary to the greatest show in the galaxy!

[insufferableburnout]

Some Thoughts About My Doctor Who (2005) Rewatch:

-LOVE Nine (always have)

-Rose Tyler the woman you are

-I still think 10 is my favorite and 10 and Rose together are *chefs kiss*

-Can’t lie though they did Martha so dirty

-10 and Donna are everything to me. Tennant and Tate are probably one of the best comedic duos. I still laugh every time I watch their Red Nose Day sketch

-I like the 11th doctor better this time around. I think I was too hung up on 10 to fully appreciate 11 before.

-Capaldi is still the goat. 10 is still my favorite but I love Punk Rock Grandpa. I always thought he was a good doctor with bad writing but actually the writing isn’t that bad. Sure there are some bad episodes but that’s true of any era.

-I actually like Clara a lot more now. I’m still not sold on her in season 11b but her whole time with 12 is genuinely really good. Face The Raven is still one of the best DW episodes of all time. The way that it’s followed up by Heaven Sent is also incredible. That whole season had so many bangers.

-Now 13 is the doctor who is a good doctor with bad writing. I love Whittaker and thought she did an excellent job. I think my biggest issue with Chibnall’s writing is that it doesn’t feel like Doctor Who and feels very disconnected from the rest of the show. Specifically, it feels like a lot of character development from season 10 was forgotten. Especially for The Master.

-Let’s talk about The Master. I LOVED Missy. I found her so complex and interesting and added new layers to Doctor/Master dynamic.

Now I love Sacha Dhawan (He was incredible in The Great) and I think his performance is fantastic and I love his interpretation of The Master but it doesn’t make sense looking at Missy character arc. I know new Regeneration means new personality but each Regeneration is still supposed to have the memories of all the Regenerations before and some feelings carry over. This is true for both the Master and the Doctor and with Chibnall I don’t really see the through line. I understand how much of a challenge this is for the writers, directors, and actors but it was really disappointing to watch Missy’s arc and then then go to DhawanMaster because it felt like that whole thing was totally ignored. There wasn’t even a reference to Bill or the Cyberman ship. It just didn’t feel connected to the previous seasons.

I feel like I could see more of how 11 could regenerate insto 13 than 12 into 13.

And the whole Timeless Child thing. I still hate it. It makes no sense within the context of the show and contradicts so much established lore (from both new and classic who). It makes everything 11 did on Trenzalore pointless. It puts so many plotholes into Clara’s Impossible Girl arc. It doesn’t make sense for motivation for the Master imo. It’s so inconsistent and confusing.

That whole Timeless Child arc really felt like “lets confuse the audience as much as we can” “even if it doesn’t make sense?” “Especially if it doesn’t make sense!”

Now before anyone says “oh well in this issue of the comic” or “In this episode of Big Finish” I haven’t consumed either of those. And personally I think that the continuity and lore of the show should stay consistent within the show and audiences shouldn’t *have* to go to other places for it to make sense.

-About to start season 13. This is the last season I watched before doing this rewatch (i’m showing dw to my partner for the first time) so everything after this season will be new to me which is really exciting!

[variousqueerthings]

DINOSAURS! ON A SPACESHIP!

it's the episode Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and I feel like it's the best and the worst of this era in one 45min package, so let's see what it gets right and what it gets wrong

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 2/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored): 5/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 8/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 5/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 7/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 9/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 6/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 1/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 8/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 2/10

FULL RATING: 53/100 (if I can count….)

A note: this episode was written by Chris Chibnall and what the hell dude?

OBJECTIFICATION: so where this episode loses me is its near-constant sexual harassment of Queen Nefertiti, who is portrayed as a sultry sexual temptress in the very first scene (trying to get in the Doctor's pants -- there is no context), reacts to misogynistic commentary from a random Edwardian Gameshunter that's in this episode for no reason as if she's turned on, and is then threatened pretty explicitly with sexual assault from the episode bad guy

she then also definitely has sex with the aforementioned Gameshunter, even though - and I cannot stress this enough - almost all his dialogue is truly vile

he's introduced making a sexist throwaway comment to the Doctor about how he'd run off after their last adventure (what is the Doctor doing with a man like this??? idk) and "I had two very disappointed dancers on my hands… not that I couldn’t manage" and right upon meeting Amy and Nefertiti, delivers this banger of "I don’t take orders from females"

seriously why is he in this episode and why would the Doctor be friends with someone like him???? it's an unfathomable choice

all of this is doubly uncomfortable, because he is An Edwardian White British Big Game Hunter From Peak Coloniser Era and she is A Black Woman (who, again, is mostly portrayed as domineering but in a sultry "I want to be tamed" kind of way)

Nefertiti upon getting captured by the bad guy says some shit again about how no man will speak to her like he is, and he pins her to the wall (btw, I will note this in politics, but important to say he is an elderly man walking with a massive space-cane, very much disabled villain Trope) with his massive space-cane and says this in the most leery tone: "I like my possessions to have spirit. It means I can have fun breaking them. And I will break you in with immense pleasure"

of course she gets saved and "takes back" her power by later on defeating him by tripping up his cane, and then her last scene is her with her hair undone coming out of Edwardian dude's tent in [idk the Sahara I guess?] with the big space gun he had

PLOT-POINT: OKAY so originally I was writing here that Amy's story ended in The God Complex and that it was a good ending, and that this felt like they were rehashing old concepts that were already done with

However I do think there's something interesting in Amy being... fine... she worries about the Doctor and would like it if he checked in from time to time so she knows he's not dead or smthin, but at the end of this story Amy and Rory are like "actually we'd like to go home now pls" and the Doctor respects that wish and takes them back and sends them a postcard from his next port of call

so yeah, I think Amy's internal life does matter here, even though I do think her narrative could have all ended on The God Complex and this part of it so far has yet to justify itself (we shall see though!), and I changed my scoring to reflect it. but why isn't it highe-

QUEEN NEFERTITI THAT'S WHY!!! so consistently throughout this episode, we have Amy being quite a capable, fun person and we of course know her and her relationship with her husband and where she is at this point (forget the last episode)

Queen Nefertiti is brought into this episode in order to make a series of sex "jokes," get her kidnapped by the bad guy, and threatened with sexual assault. what does she want? she wants to F***! what's so interesting about her as a historical character? That She Was Sexy! what does she feel about things in the episode? That She's A Powerful Sexy Woman Whom No Man Will Tame And Is No Man's Possession

how did this... do this??? it feels like M*ffat gave Chibnall the note to put in one of his sexual fantasies and Chibnall rolled the dice and landed on Nefertiti on a whim OR WORSE, that he thought she'd pair up well with a British colonialist

it's literally The Thing that makes this episode -- otherwise kind of lowkey a banger -- one that I would never ever recommend, and it's very very disappointing that this kind of racism and sexism was in any draft of the story, let alone the one that got filmed and show on TV

COMPLEXITY: It's got Dinosaurs! and they're pretty great! and it all connects together pretty well -- some Silurians who were trying to escape what they thought was the impending doom of earth and brought different parts of species with them, like an arc, and at some point during the cryosleep journey a malicious exotic trader who literally killed all of the Silurians in order to sell off the dinosaurs

except he can't steer the ship and so it plotted a course back to earth and now it's crashing and they need to find a way to stop him and it!

the only downside is that they didn't make a link between "malicious exotic trader" and "edwardian big game hunter" because the latter absolutely should have been a villain to even mildly justify his presence in this story

Amy even (rightly) says, in answer to him grandstanding about his apparent historical importance: Men who hunt defenceless creatures just don’t impact on history

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: there's some cute stuff with Rory's dad and I can forgive him being introduced in this episode and never before, because it's actually showing him as active in the episode, and gives you an insight into why Rory is the kind of man he is (in a good way)

there's the aforementioned showing how Amy and Rory have kind of grown past the Doctor -- I kind of wish forever that Amy and Rory were more grounded as characters (especially Amy) but at least there's a father-in-law now. I say this because grown past the Doctor into... what? what is their life about? we still don't really know (well, lies, Rory is still nursing, which is great)

it's mainly this set-up -- that the Doctor is going to be increasingly lonely -- that the narrative serves, but it does do it by actually showing Amy and Rory being happy together

COMPANIONS MATTER: they kind of do, yeah. Amy is very competent over on her side of things, in a way I wiiiish we'd seen way back in s5 already, and Rory is the emotional tie to his dad, which makes sense

it is a very "too many characters in one episode" feeling on the whole, but that's because of Nefertiti and the Big Game Hunter, both of whom didn't need to be there, because the bad guy could have stolen the Doctor (I know, I know, the mysteriouuus Oswin has somehow "deleted" all record of him, but could have still scanned him as an unidentified alien or whatever) or the Tardis? and then had Brian and Rory figure out the solution which is what they do anyway and they all team up to save the Doctor or the Tardis....

point being, yes, but there was room for even more, easily

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: actually not! he does make the decision to let evil guy get blown up, and you know, there's trajectory here, there's precedent so to speak... how one feels about it, ehhh it's up to you, but it's not out of character for this Doctor to do

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: not much of any of that in here -- Silurians again ofc -- and there doesn't have to be

“SEXINESS”: HA. bad. ties into the above points about Nefertiti, truly heinous. introduced trying to have sex with the Doctor/seduce him against the Tardis, and it's sooort of hinted they may have already had sex before??? unclear

also here's some dialogue for you:

Coloniser Dickhead: Egyptian queen or not I shall put you across my knee and spank you [Nefertiti here replies that she will kill anyone who tries, I didn't manage to transcribe it] Coloniser Dickhead: You’re a firecracker          [Amy responds to this asking the two of them to stop flirting??????????????????????????????????????????]

later on Nefertiti asks Amy of the Doctor has a queen. Amy asks her isn't she married, to which she responds "male equivalent of a sleeping potion." Coloniser Dickhead then replies that she needs a real man with a Big Weapon, while cocking a massive laser gun

AMY THEN SAYS THAT HE'S A WALKING INNUENDO, BUT LAMPSHADING YOUR OWN SHITTY UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER OR META??? IT JUST MEANS YOU KNOW IT'S FUCKING STUPID!!!

and of course after her whole adventure being a Sexy Damsel who gets threatened with sexual violence, she's last seen coming out of Coloniser Dickheads tent with a huge gun and a "come-hither" demeanor, but get it... get it she's holding the gun now, so she... idk she doms or whatever, Sexually Confident Girl Power Get That Racist Sexist Mediocre Fuckwit

maybe she's just pretending to seduce him so she can shoot him

(he CANONICALLY kills big animals, presumably the kinds that they sell the tusks of for ivory or can hang the fur of in living rooms or whatever and it's CANONICALLY framed as bad, what is his purpose in this?????????????)

one minor shitty one with Amy (also with this guy????) is they're surrounded by dinos and need to slow them down by stunning them while other shit is happening and he says: Dinosaurs ahead. Lady at my side. Ship about to blow up. not sure I’ve ever been happier

to which Amy simply grins and goes: shut up and shoot

WHAT! IS! HIS! PURPOSE!?!?!?!?!!!!!!

INTERNAL WORLD: it's a fun spaceship that really gives little tidbits to its passengers and their journey (not too much, because they're all sadly dead, and everyone is reconstructing events best they can). nothing complicated, but enjoyable

POLITICS: so we've got a disabled villain, we've got an Edwardian Gameshunter (as a good guy), and we've got some of the most overt objectification of a Black woman I can remember seeing on this show... not a great look for an episode where the plot is simply about none of this, it's just... set dressing on top of what is actually happening

the episode just simply... I mean, look no episode needs to do these things... but this episode didn't even need two of these characters!

if you wanted to bring in Queen Nefertiti, why not do something about her history? about her reign? about her in any meaningful way? why was she here, other than for the sexual content?

why was Coloniser Dickhead here other than to be the perpetrator of most of that harassment and then get rewarded for it? what did we learn about Games Hunters in Edwardian times? what did we learn about British colonisation? and if nothing, what did he bring to the table in any other way? (not everything has to be a learning opportunity after all, but there has to be a reason for a whole fucking character to exist in a thing)

FULL RATING: 53/100 (if I can count….)

this episode could have had such a high ranking for its genuinely fun plot, and for giving us an interesting (if so far unnecessary, but We Shall See) denouement on Amy's and Rory's storyline

as it stands the rampant racist sexism makes it one I just wouldn't recommend unfortunately

[kendrixtermina]

Space Babies

I did not like the overly silly & unserious beginning sequence, but once they landed on the spaceship it got solid, & there’s an actual sense of exploration, mystery, sensowunder & familiar thematic beats since the persistence of humanity, the solving things by talking („just creatures you haven’t met yet“), the Doctor as confident, enthusiastic & very experiened.

Ruby just had more emotional reactions in 2 minutes than all the Chibnall companions did in the entire opening two-partner. She’s woved by space. She’s showing concern for the Doctor. She’s awed at seeing humanity’s survival. She’s guessing & thinking.

UGH im just so glad.

Like she manages to seem like a person while continuing to be established as someone who rolls with crazy very well, as in the previous episode. It’s the little subtle reactions & questions that still make her seem like a person / functional audience surrogate.

That opening dialogue is a good summary of the Doctor as an explorer.

Ovsly they’re expositioning a lot of the lore of the Doctor’s backstory for any new fans who are only starting to watch wth this ‚era‘, but they’re also showing us where he arrived at as a character after his time with Donna.

He’s still rushing from place to place & being a tad blunt at it, he’s still glossing over heavy serious stuff by saying it lightly, but he’s come a long way since Martha had to forcbly drag the backstory out of him, and found a renewed sense of joy & purpose.

I love how they’re doing his reactions of being excited by the weird. Like, there’s the character I like again! (I suppose run with RTD’s patchup of explaining 13s OOC-ness with burnout, I don’t think that’s what Chibnall was doing, but it’s the best they could do & an unboring concept. I kinda wish we could just ignore the timeless child nonsense completely but I realize why that’s not possible, at least they’re actually showing him having an opinion about it. (‚the adopted one was the one to survive‘)

Like they’re actually trying to give it some meaning & have the character say what it means to him (exactly the thing Chibnall just never did with the twist for the sake of twist) & tying it into some celebration of diversity, which like strikes me as how the Doctor’s character would react to such a thing. They’re steering it away from ‚specialest little boy‘ & having him still identify with the culture he grew up with. (it probably lands better than it could have otherwise because they’re having someone from an immigrant family like Gatwa perform it. Like he’s got other roots but probably also sees Britain as his home & part of him? More sort of how many immigrants in europe tend to see themselves rather than the US American culture = genes nonsense. ‚In Germany I‘m the Turkish kid but when I go to Turkey I notice I’m very German’ type of thing. )

I still hate the timeless child thing with a passion & still wish it didn’t exist, but this is probably the best way to salvage it.

It’s telling that they’re not even using the fancy mary suey title „timeless child“ but having him say he was randomly found & no one knows where he cae from etc. that’s a different framing/flavoring less eviscerating of the character & less invalidating of all the previous stuff.

Well. I got the time jigzaw line, im grateful for it, its explicitly ambiguous what the og backstory was.

Especially in the context of the current arc with the rewritten universe, it does make sense that he doesn’t even know what his original backstory was, he’s kind of outlived not just Gallifrey, but his OG timeline, his OG version of the universe, sort of a unaligned unmoored chaotic existence. Theres some pathos to that, and you can see Ncuti channeling a bunch of his own feelings into it.

Though this makes me wonder how they’ll handle the Master when he comes back, if he’s now the one that did it in place of the Daleks. )

A speaking baby is unexpectedly funny, especially since they move their lips XD

I also love how much Ruby & the Doctor are obviously having fun together and acting like actual friends.

I keep being excited over low bar things but, like, UGH Chibnall traumatized me.

Still, they ARE actually doing a good job at showing Ruby & the Doctor behaving like friends, especially in the way they’re making jokes & gesturing.

They comitted to the ‚kindergarten meets space accident‘ aesthetic…

I love how Ruby immediately kicks into Big Sister Mode. The last episode we mostly got to know her family but there wasn’t so much on Ruby herself so in these episodes we’re probably going to focus on her.

The babies act like a mix between serious astronauts and actual babies xD

I love how sucinct & archetypical the answer of „The Bogeyman“ is. No uneccessary Fluff.

And though he’s warmer & more open, the doctor is still distinctly his a tad insensitive, big ego self.

So that’s the reveal.

I like this. This kinda miscarriage of justice situation and a random accountant who doesn’t know how to run anything being the one who stayed behind. „they won’t stop the babies being born but won’t care for them“… badum tsch.

Ohh, ohh the refugee line. That’s SO on point. That’s all the shit I’m mad about in current european politics. That’s not pulling punches.

I love how Ruby is the one to piece together the fairytale logic.

Like the Doctor’s excited to be learning the ‚new physics‘, but he’s the physicist. Ruby is kind of a fairytale protagonist, crazy number of siblings included.

Erics’s little toy sword :(((

Ruby’s actress NAILED this one. Like her concern & everything.

(oh thank fuck there are feelings in this show again)

RTD was rather good at world building, wasn’t he? Like making unique little one-off settings. Yeah, he had his flaws with the resent button endings & overblown pathos at times, but I always thought he did worldbuilding & flavor text pretty well. I like Joycelyn.

So yeah, we’re definitely getting to know Ruby in this episode and she’s pretty proactive & rolling with the punches a lot. Like she improv’d the distraction, she decided she was going with the Doctor etc. like, a lot of companions would have stayed with the babies (for different reasons), or gone with the Doctor mostly out of worry for him and have an emotional moment here, but Ruby’s like, just casually deciding here. She’s very ‚cool‘.

And she's embroiled in some kind of never-seen-before phenomenon. But after Donna, Amy & Clara that's just average tuesday for the Doctor at this point. Unknown Phenomena go Brr!

Must be wild for Ruby that this super-experienced time-traveller guy can't explain her.

Like I’m already getting a sense of ‚what would Ruby do if you throw her at a given situation‘ which fucking Chibnall couldn’t give us with 3 seasons and 3 characters to contrast off each other.

I love how they save the monster, too. I love the TARDIS key scene and how the Doctor’s actually excited to have Ruby on his team, & actually asking her. (war flashback to that compilation of prev Doctors inviting their companions enthusiastically except for the very awkward chibnall scenes or how 13 barely showed any emotion when any of them left)

it’s fucking Doctor Who again. The HUMANIST THEMES! The xenophile eccentric nerd protagonist. The friendship & humanity & shit.

It’s the show that I used to like that I didn’t fucking recognize in Chibnal’s trashfire except for, like, the one stray good-ish ep per season.

I’ll take it. I’m like, the Dad from ‚the Prodigal Son‘ today.

I lost it & it came back, I’ll take it.

Love also how this time the Doctor has the 'no undoing the past' convo right away to pre-empt a repeat of 'Father's Day'.

[death-by-sc0tland]

I am really curious about your contradicting opinions about dw showrunners. If you dont mind sharing 😊

helloo sorry for the really late reply but yeah!

so my fav thing about rtd is how he writes the characters and their relationships, they just feel so organic and realistic. like the companions are really the main characters in his era and he makes sure we get to know them and their life even outside of the doctor. however i will never forgive him for the treatment martha got and other poc characters in general (i hope this gets better in this new era). also in this second era so far, even tho he includes a lot of rep, i don’t love how some of it has been handled so far? like for example even tho the star beast was focusing on rose’s (and the doctor’s) trans identity, it was really giving “cis person writing trans characters” and idk it was kinda weird (idk if there were trans ppl in the writer’s room but wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t). like yes i’m glad trans people got so much focus there but you know it’s not exempt from criticism!

then moffat’s era has this really magical feel to me and i can’t deny he writes a lot of really good stories, also the 12th doctor is my favourite so yeah. but obviously there’s the whole issue of how he writes women thinking that feminism means when women sexy, shoot gun and slap men. also his companions are not as well rounded as rtd’s imo and their life kinda revolves around the doctor (maybe except bill). then this was an issue mainly in 11’s run, where the doctor was treated like the most important being in the universe, which i personally don’t like, but thankfully that got better with 12. he also introduced all these big ass arcs like the silence or the hybrid but i don’t think he was able to satisfyingly tie them up.

chibnall was def taking a lot of risks with the show and i liked that he was doing something different. the 13th doctor is very dear to me and i will always be number 1 timeless child defender. also sacha dhawan was by FAR my favourite part of his era he absolutely ate and his master is my fav doctor who character now!! but otherwise i can’t deny that his era was kinda.. meh? like he had a lot of interesting concepts but i don’t think he really delivered on most of them. the companions were okay but didn’t really stand out to me too much compared to past companions. like honestly i didn’t feel like yaz really got to shine until like flux, which is wayy to late for a companion that was on the show for that long.

so yeahh that’s all i can think of rn! dw is my fav show ever so there’s something i love in each era but yeah still a lot of other stuff i don’t love so much. obv this are just my opinions and if you disagree that’s fine!!

[dandelionjack]

hiya! have you watched torchwood and the sarah jane adventures? or do you plan to? have a good one :)))

i have watched neither so far, as you may have realised: if i’d watched torchwood i would be, you know, posting about it. as one does. almost finished with s13 though, and then after i’ve rewatched the newest specials i’ll see torchwood before i move on to classic! you can never have too much captain jack fucking the universe up in spectacular ways with a gang of bisexuals, even if i am wary of the fact that a lot of it seems to have been written by chibnall. whatever, bring on the exposition dumps and stupid aliens

now for sja… the problem is that it’s a kids’ show. as much as certain individuals like to claim that doccy who itself is, it very much markets itself as a family show, and that leaves me worried that sja is genuinely… kiddy. i don’t know how much of that i can take. i actively enjoy a lot of children’s media (obviously) but from what i’ve seen it’s a bit. eh. idk, never say never, might decide to return to it after i’ve watched three’s+four’s eras and know a bit more about the character of sarah jane. as for now most of what i know about her comes from school reunion and that bit in the stolen earth/journey’s end

:)

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

The Very Belated 2023 Awards!

Ha! I bet you fuckers thought I’d forgotten about the End of Year Round-up from 2023. Nope! I was just lulling you into a false sense of security. As though I’d miss the opportunity to take a massive, steaming shit on an entire year’s worth of human culture. So, what can we say about 2023? It definitely fucking happened, we know that much. But was it good? Was it bad? Was it a little bit of both? We know from my previous blogs that it produced some real cinematic and televisual gems, but are these a sign of culture self-correcting after the wilderness years or just aberrations bobbing about in the usual sea of viscous dreck? Well, 2023 is dead now, so if we want to find out, the only way is to split open its bloated carcass and start rummaging around in a bleak parody of the autopsy process. As always, I’ll be handing out gongs to things, artefacts and events from 2023 itself, but also just to shit I discovered in the relevant year. Here we fucking goooooooo!

The Birthday Cake Full of Puppies Award for Loveliest Surprise… … Goes, jointly, to Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle, the two Doctor Who specials that weren’t the fucking Star Beast. See, after The Star Beast, I was thoroughly disappointed. A virtue-signalling, nonsensical mess that, while briefly entertaining, failed miserably to reach the giddy heights of Russel T. Davies’ initial run on the show and desperately needed a strong editorial hand to stop characters repeating themselves or needlessly referencing the hot pile of garbage that was the Chibnall era. I wasn’t expecting great things from the two follow-ups and only really watched them because I thought RTD had earned himself more than one chance to impress me. And whaddaya know? We got two fucking perfect Who episodes- one a big, genuinely unsettling slice of cosmic horror and one a bombastic, energetic extravaganza that resurrected a lot of fan-favourite characters, introduced a new threat for the upcoming Gatwa-era and just generally fucking rocked. Yes, I know the Xmas Special that followed was a bit crap (nautical-punk Goblins in Doctor Who? Piss off.), but it’s not fair to judge any season of Who on its associated Xmas Special, so we’re just going to let that slide.

The Throwing Keanu Reeves Down a Lot of Stairs Award… … Goes to John Wick 4, which threw Keanu Reeves down a lot of stairs. And was also a very good movie. But mainly this award is about the stairs.

The Blind Archer Award for Missing the Cocking Point… … Goes to the whole bloody stupid debate around A.I., which is broadly divided into two equally slappable camps. In the Soulless Silicone Silver corner, we have a bunch of hooting tech bros who think that they’ve invented a tool that obviates the need for talent and spirit and artistic vision because it (technically) allows any yeehaw with an internet connection to vomit out ill-conceived content ordered up from a computer terminal like the intellectual equivalent of an underwhelming drive-thru burger. Meanwhile, in the drippy, wishy-washy grey no-colour corner, we have a swarm of whiny, for-profit ‘creatives’ (and I use that word with enough sarcasm to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool), terrified that their soulless, talentless content will be replaced by the equally soulless, talentless content of fucking Skynet, thereby doing them out of a revenue stream they don’t bloody deserve. Nobody seems to be talking about how the new technology can be leveraged to create actual, meaningful art, not just content. Case in point, I’ve always fancied creating a TV series or film, but I don’t know any actors and can’t afford to pay professionals, nor can I afford the filming equipment and green-screen studio rental I’d need to bring one of my sci-fi or fantasy concepts to life. AI allows for the creation of virtual environments and actors based on original ideas, sketches and descriptions plugged into machine-learning-guided rendering software. These can then be assembled using a human-provided script (mine, duh) to create footage which can be edited into something cogent and compelling. It’s a terrific amount of work involving a wildly steep learning curve, but it’s an example of how AI allows working class creators without the resources of our middle-class wanker peers a way into visual mediums that we simply haven’t been able to access or utilise. Incidentally, I hope to start uploading short films made using this method sometime in the next month or two. Pluuuuuuuug!

The Award for Special Services to Doom… … Goes to the impending collapse of AMOC (or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), which includes part of the Gulf Stream and several other important ocean currents. It’s due to cease functioning within the next 100 years due to man-made climate change, most probably by the year 2100, when many of us will still be alive (albeit old as balls). Once it goes, the northern hemisphere will become colder, making agriculture functionally impossible in parts of Europe; the ocean-level will rise up to a meter in some places, drowning many coastal cities; the wet and dry season of at least one rainforest will flip, with the result that said rainforest may die, unable to adapt quick enough, which would make climate change even more extreme. Basically, if you’re rooting for the collapse of civilisation in the not-too-distant future, you can start polishing your Mad Max cosplay outfits, because shit’s about to go doooooown, boi! I mean, unless governments actually listen to climate scientists for a change and somehow avert this looming catastrophe. Ha! Yeah. Dream on.

The Lex Luthor Award For Pure Fucking Evil... … Goes, once again, to the Tories, who are always evil, but seemed to make a special effort to ruin everything for everyone forever in 2023. Aside from engineering a decline in the NHS so severe that people with agonising mouth infections can’t access dentists at short notice, they also tried to pass a bill that would allow them to monitor the bank accounts of people on benefits as a matter of course and continued to allow the dumping of waste directly into the sea, turning the coast of Blackpool brown with human excrement (it was, of course, they who repealed the environmental protection laws that used to make this sort of thing illegal). You really couldn’t make these people up. It’s like someone drew the word ‘CUNT’ on a whiteboard and then got a whole room full of cunt-experts to make a mind-map around it. Then they loaded the results into ChatGPT and the result was the Tory Party of Great Britain.

The Confused Mountaineer Award for Picking the Wrong Hill to Die On… … Goes to Disney, which spent 2023 losing money hand over fist. Even when its films and telly shows technically made some money, they represented such a reduction in the value of the associated IP that the company might as well have time travelled into the future, stolen all its own shares, and flushed them down a giant toilet. Obviously, I hate Disney and I’ve always hated them- I didn’t just jump on the band-wagon when the Internet collectively realised they were a bunch of tossers. I’ve hated them steadily and continually for most of my life for the very simple reason that they use fucking slave-labour. Their merch is made in fucking sweat-shops! Which is why it’s particularly hilarious that their loss of relevance as a producer of culture owes so much to their flimsy pretence at wokeness (which manifested itself as a series of interchangeable, tedious girl-bosses photoshopped inexpertly into franchises like Star Wars and Marvel whose profitability largely came from grumpy nerds who were never going to fall for that shit). Shoulda stuck to making family films for people with very low expectations, Disno! It’s what you’re good at! And yes, this award does only exist so I can laugh at the slow death-by-a-thousand-cuts of some dipshits I dislike. It’s just so fucking dumb! Like, these are people who regard anyone from a developing nation as a disposable component in a big machine for making underwhelming crap- an interchangeable cog to be instrumentalised and dehumanised until death. And yet the hill they chose to fucking die on was pretending to give a shit about inclusivity. Yeah. Disney are real fucking inclusive… they want everyone to buy their ill-conceived swill, not just pasty, dick-owning Americans. Brilliantly, in their mad scrabble for new audiences, they seem to have lost the one they had… while utterly failing to convince anyone else to jump on board. Because, let’s be honest, if you want to watch a film about the black experience in the US or about smashing the patriarchy, you’re probably going to go to Jordan Peele or re-watch The Perfection (not just a great feminist film, by the way, but a fucking balls-to-the-wall brilliant film full stop). You’re probably not going to rely on a string of bland, cookie-cutter studios owned and operated by the arsewipes still desperately still trying to wring the last few pennies out of pissing Star Wars.

The Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year Award… … Goes to my wife, who recently went to see that Barbie movie that people inexplicably decided to shove in the same bracket as Oppenheimer. I don’t really object to the existence of this flick in and of itself, because it’s not really taking anything away from me- it’s just not for me, and that’s fine. Obvs, I did think it was slightly icky that Matel were putting so much effort into re-framing their plastic Anorexia Generator as a feminist icon and it was super weird that the message it ultimately lands on is ‘sex-based oppression is fine if you gender-flip it’, but I don’t have to care so, for the most part, I don’t. I certainly didn’t have any problem with my missus taking her daughter from a previous relationship and her/our kinda-sorta adopted daughter to see it. Because I’m not a sack of shit who demands that other peoples tastes precisely match my own. However, I really didn’t like the hype around the movie. I don’t like brightly-coloured, disposable dreck that only exists to sell toys giving itself airs and graces, especially not when that means 1-for-1 comparisons to, say, a really important film about the invention of the nuclear bomb and the political scheming and manoeuvring that surrounded it. Which brings us to the Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year. After returning home from her cinematic excursion, my wife had this to say about Barbie: “I don’t understand what all the fuss was about- it was a pile of shit, really.” Bonus points for the fact that she still quite enjoyed it and this wonderful piece of commentary was delivered, in musing tones, as an assessment of its objective merits rather than a statement of personal preference. I married the right woman.

The Circus Midget Genocide Award for Gratuitous Punching Down... … Goes to the song ‘What Have We Become’ by Paul Heaton, who I usually like. The Beautiful South are one of my favourite bands (despite the fact they no longer exist), but ‘What Have We Become’, one of Heaton’s subsequent solo efforts, makes me genuinely uncomfortable. In tackling the Americanisation of British culture (which I agree is a problem), Heaton seems to take aim as much at the ordinary folks on the receiving end of this neo-colonialism as at the phenomenon itself. I don’t think that whether or not something ‘punches down’ is a meaningful criticism relating to a cultural artefact’s artistic merit. Sometimes, it’s necessary to call out the bumbling normal on their slack-jawed bullshit. But this just feels mean-spirited and indiscriminate. Yeah, Heaton, people enjoy the convenience of US-style fast-food chains and, as a country, we’re probably a bit addicted to the cult of needless enthusiasm that started in the States, but I’ve never met anyone whose more of a miserable cunt for eating a takeout pizza while watching a happy-go-lucky comedy like My Name is Earl, so maybe get off your high horse for a minute. Your music’s great for the most part, but I think I can answer the question ‘What Have We Become?’ based purely on the song itself. A prick. You’ve become a prick.

The Pluggity McPlugface Aware for Most Exciting New Press… ... Goes to X Press, which is technically the new fiction imprint of Poetry Bus Press, I think. They’re still getting established and the name is subject to change, but I met the couple behind it at this year’s T.S. Elliot Prize and… er… okay, this is the bit where I have to admit I have a horse in this race. See, the reason I’m so excited by this new press getting off the ground is that I’m kinda the reason it exists. I pitched the publishers a sci-fi novel I had loaded and ready to fire off, not really expecting anything to come of it since they’ve only done poetry collections before. But hey, it’s not every day you meet someone in the publishing world while surrounded by gold-leafed rococo architecture and canapés, so I felt I had to go for it. Anyway, just a couple of months later, they’re putting together a whole new imprint and my novel, Warning: Infohazard is going to be first thing to roll out of it! So yeah… I’m chuffed about that. Stay tuned for further updates.

The Nick Clegg Award for Accomplishing the Square Root of Fuck All… … Goes to the AGA and WGA strikes that swept through Hollywood like a damp breeze this year. I’m usually on the side of striking workers, even when I’m being personally inconvenienced. Tell me the bus drivers are going on strike and, even if I need to catch a bus that day, I’ll pretty much root for them to win the battle- the poor fuckers are woefully underpaid for a tedious and demanding job. Teachers’ strike? Abso-fucking-lutely: these people work hard to ensure the next generation actually know things and deserve far more respect and accolades than they’re accorded (except the fuckers who worked at Marpool Primary during the 90s- those loathsome reptiles can choke on dick for all I care). NHS Doctors and nurses? Yup: they literally save lives and we, as a culture, still fail to give them their due. Dustbin men? Fuck yeah. Warehouse workers? Definitely (if anyone ever lets the poor fucks unionise). You get the idea. But I have my doubts about the Hollywood Writers and Actors Guilds mob. At the end of the day, even the working schlubs of Tinsel Town mostly deserve a thick ear more than a raise. We’re talking about people who drive past Skid Row (the most impoverished ghetto in the States, the lives of whose citizens they could actually improve) on their way to work, then get there and, as part of their social media management, tweet a load of shite about the Cause of the Week in order to look switched on and progressive. We’re talking about people who will do long-winded interviews about how important their casting or hiring is for the direction of our society while, two blocks away, a homeless dude overdoses on smack because it’s slightly quicker than starving to death.We’re talking about people who sold out their souls to a studio system that only wants and only seeks to produce derivative dreck when it was paying them well and only seem to have noticed it’s fucking them in the arse with a strap-on the size of the Empire State Building now that it’s no longer scattering coins in front of them. Of course, there are good, honest people working in La La Land who absolutely don’t deserve the fucking the studio system is giving them and who don’t walk around thinking they’re Zod’s Gift to the Enlightenment, and- for their sake- one slightly wants the strikes to succeed. The problem is that it’s very hard to spot them, obscured as they are by an ocean of absolute raging bell-ends. All of which is slightly by the by, because this award isn’t about whether the strikes deserve to succeed… it’s about the fact they made no appreciable difference to the media landscape of 2023 whatsoever. We still got Oppenheimer; we still got John Wick 4; we still got Luther: the Fallen Sun over on Netflix; we still got that unexpectedly fucking delightful Slumberland thing and a whole raft of really excellent, joyous family films; we still got some pretty ace telly. Basically, the only thing there seemed to be less of was absolute shit-swill, but it’d be a poor lookout for the strikers if that was their doing and not just a statistical anomaly. Imagine that on a placard: “We fucked off and culture improved by 150%!” So yeah: sorry WGA and AGA- as much as my socialist principles want any strike against a large, corrupt corporate system to succeed, you’re just not very sympathetic and you’ve done the square root of fuck all to help yourselves here.

The Special Award for Unbridled Excellence... … Goes to What We Do in the Shadows (the TV series- there was also a movie that was pretty good, but that came out ages ago). Technically, the telly series started in 2019, but it was still going in 2023 and that’s the year I finally got around to watching it, so I think I can justifiably slap it on this list. A mockumentary about three vampires, an energy vampire and a familiar flat-sharing on Staten Island, its one of the most hilarious, off-beat, filthy, brilliant things I’ve seen in years. It’s also surprisingly well-meaning and, mixed in with all the really, really funny jokes (which I’m not going to spoil), the violence and the gratuitous fucking, there are some genuinely sweet, heartfelt moments about found family, the bonds of love and friendship and the redemptive qualities that can sometimes surprise us in the darkest of people and places. I’m not saying it’s high art or anything like that- it’s as daft as a brush and any stab it takes at greater, more grandiose meaning is somewhat undercut by all the other shit that happens in it, but it is one of the most entertaining things on telly and deserves your attention. Just don’t tell the normals, they’ll only fucking ruin it like everything else. Let’s keep this one just for us freaks, okay?

The Smurf Viagra Award for Bluest Balls... … Goes to Dune: Part 2, which was supposed to come out in ‘23 and didn’t. Which is a shame because it the first part was a fucking banger. Maybe we could credit its delay to the writers’ and actors’ strike? I mean, that probably had nothing to do with it, but it’s important to boost the self-esteem of the simpler members of the international community. Great job, guys! You got one!

So that was 2023, then: a year of malice and incompetence just barely redeemed by a few shining cultural gems. Now we’re two months into 2024, and it’s time to look forward before we collide with a brick wall. Until next time, I’ve been Secret-Diary and you haven’t. Bye-bye.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #618

Top Ten Things 2023

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but another year has been and gone. Now we’re in the far-flung future of 2024; that’s after Blade Runner but before Demolition Man, if you’re keeping score.

Anyway, looking back, it was a funny old year. I managed to score the longest-term contract I’ve ever had since going freelance, which was nice. One of my kids went to secondary school. There were a bunch of wars. But what about pop-culturally? Because this is the point when I list my favourite things that happened that weren’t, you know, actually serious or important.

Even looking at “arts and entertainment”, it was still a bit of a weird year. In terms of film and TV, the various strikes hugely impacted everything, grinding productions to a halt, disrupting release schedules, and really having an almost Covid-like influence on the next couple of years. And even at the cinema, there was an almost-universal downswing in box office, surprising many and leading to tons of films – from Mission: Impossible to Indiana Jones to almost every superhero movie – underperforming; the counterpoint, of course, was Barbenheimer, of which more later.

In videogames, there were a ton of future classics – almost all of which I didn’t play – marking 2023 out as a potential banner year alongside, say, 2007 (Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Portal, etc). However, the whole industry was rocked by repeated mass layoffs, making it hard to celebrate.

But – hey! – there genuinely was a lot of cool stuff. I do feel a bit weird that some of the things I was really looking forward to – the new series of Ghosts, the Transformers reboot – I still haven’t gotten around to checking out yet (but my comics are on their way!). So with no further ado other than a belated “Happy New Year”, here are my favourite (non-important, non-real-life) things that happened in 2023.

Tune in next time, when despite the year being about one-twenty-fourth over already, I highlight what I’m looking forward to in 2024!

Doctor Who Returns to Glory: I don’t want to get too down on the Chibnall era, but it’s fair to say that my love for Doctor Who had waned somewhat in recent years. However, it returned to form in a huge, huge fashion, once more under the stewardship of Russel T. Davies. The three-part anniversary specials, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate unleashing their amazing chemistry again, were a delight; then we got the effortlessly cool Fifteenth Doctor in the form of Ncuti Gatwa. The Christmas special was as fast-paced and charming as you’d expect. I don’t think I’ve been this excited about TV in a long time, and it was absolutely the best thing all year.

Barbenheimer: I spoke briefly about the disappointing box office this year, but two films that bucked the trend were Barbie and Oppenheimer. The second of these films is a dark, introspective, mesmerising look at a man and a moment in history; it’s terrific but I think we were already expecting something very good from Nolan, so it wasn’t so much of a surprise. Barbie, on the other hand, was a revelation, not just funny and light but also incredibly deep and thoughtful and about stuff. Plus it had one of the performances of the year and a terrific musical number. Together these films lifted each other up, becoming a zeitgeist juggernaut and just demolishing the competition. And they’re both great! Really, really great!

Things That Technically Came Out in 2023: when talking about films, though, my favourite is the exquisitely beautiful and magisterially produced The Fabelmans. It’s not just a heartbreaking introspection on one family falling apart despite there being a lot of love around, but it’s also in its own way a love letter to cinema and a deconstruction of the artist. And it has my favourite final shot of, well, maybe any film I’ve ever seen. Now, this film actually came out in 2022 in America, but we got it in 2023, so it counts. Similarly, on TV, the incredibly good – funny and heartfelt – Our Flag Means Death was a delayed arrival on these shores. So three cheers for things that still, technically, came out this year!

Great Gaming Remakes: end-of-year gaming lists are going to be wanging on about Baldur’s Gate 3 or Tears of the Kingdom or something. However, I can’t deny that for me the gaming highlights were expertly re-released old games. GoldenEye 007 finally – finally! – made its way onto modern consoles, and remains a masterpiece. And then Quake II arrived in one of the most impressive remasterings I’ve ever seen, with options galore to fiddle and tweak. Both of these games retain their excellent gameplay and have manged to still look good despite the passage of time. Also a shout-out to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition which made its way to the Xbox this year, and is also great.

The Underdog MCU: if you were to read almost anything about the Marvel Cinematic Universe this year, it would be about how it’s a busted flush, on the way out, and how everyone is overcome with superhero fatigue. Now, for a start, I don’t think superhero fatigue is a problem; almost every mainstream, big-budget blockbuster suffered this year. But the MCU was the big dog so to see, say, The Marvels return a frankly shocking box office would naturally generate headlines. Despite this, though, I think Marvel had a really good year. Quantumania was a fun adventure movie whose biggest failing was that it tried to be too different from the low-key films that preceded it; The Marvels was a frankly excellent buddy-movie with some inventive action and three great leads; Loki provided the best finale Marvel has done and might be their best work on TV; and Guardians Vol. 3 is just a mini masterpiece. Yes, Secret Invasion was catastrophically disappointing, but I’m really happy with the overall quality at the moment.

A Great Year for Animation: it really was another terrific year for animated movies. Elemental – another alleged box office disappointment – was a tender and attractive romcom, even if it didn’t set the world on fire. Puss-in-Boots: The Last Wish was gorgeous and hilarious and really a lot better than it needed to be. Across the Spider-Verse added a healthy dollop of maturity and complexity to the gonzo wackiness of the first film. And there were loads of cool films dropping on streaming too. This is just the tip of the animated iceberg! It was a great year!

Happy Birthday Disney: speaking of animation, Disney celebrated their 100th birthday. It was quite nice following along and seeing the little teases and releases. The highlight was the new short film, Once Upon a Studio, which was hagiographic and back-slappy but also a nerd’s delight, spotting tiny cameos and in-jokes. It culminated in Wish which – I’m gonna be honest – I’ve not seen yet, but it’s still really nice how they built a big animated movie around aspects of their cultural history.

Microsoft and Activision Providing Drama: I’m not sure how much we should celebrate an enormous company hoovering up another enormous company, but the ongoing saga of Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard dominated gaming discourse across the year. It feels like this saga has been rumbling on forever, and it had enough twists, turns, roadbumps, and 180s to fill a streaming drama series. Ultimately it landed where I think most of us expected – with Microsoft now owning one of the largest publishers on the planet, albeit with a few interesting concessions. I’m not too fussed about getting Call of Duty on Game Pass, but I do hope the acquisition will allow for a healthier workplace culture at Activision, as well as more variety in the games they produce.

The Beatles Released a New Song: I’m gonna keep this one very simple, but in a year dominated by pop music – I mean, let’s be honest, it was really the year of Taylor Swift, even if the song that stuck around my brain the longest was Bad Idea Right? by Olivia Rodrigo – but The Beatles released a new song. The Beatles! A new song! Kinda! All, like, high-tech and cut up and smoothed out, with a video by Peter Jackson! I mean, really.

A Great Year for Indie Games: so yes, finally, I talk about new games – ones I played, too! Because for all the huge, Starfield stuff that dominated headlines, for me the best games were probably the much smaller ones. This is one of the things I love about Game Pass; trying out these littler titles that I don’t know I’d have rolled the dice on otherwise. So we have Venba, Cocoon, Thirsty Suitors, Sea of Stars, Jusant… all terrific, idiosyncratic titles without mega-budgets. Also quick shout-out to Star Trek: Resurgence, which won’t set the world on fire but does feel like you’re playing an episode of The Next Generation.

[13thdoctorposts]

Went to a Doctor Who con today and between panels while waiting the people in front of me had to complain about Jodie’s era. The guy goes I have this female friend and she’s a huge Jodie fan even outside of Doctor Who and when I bring up that some people don’t like the era she gets really defensive and starts telling me all the reasons why it’s actually good and I just say some people don’t like it.

2 things… 1. The way he spoke about this female friend was super condescending very much in the tone of oh woman/jodie fans get unnecessarily over emotional about Jodie…. As if they, the haters don’t get overly emotional 🙄 and 2. It clearly never dawned on him that maybe the reason she might get so defensive is because something she loves and a person she admires is constantly and unhingingly attacked all the time which over a period of time… like the last 6 years makes people a little more defensive.

If someone outside the fandom started attacking all the things they loved about the show they too would get defensive… if they had to put up with a never ended tide of people telling them how shit the parts of Doctor Who they loved were they too would get defensive… if they had been dealing with that for over half a decade how defensive do you think they would be by now? & how do we know this because they act like Chibnall ate their babies just for not writing the show how they wanted it written, and get super defensive over the show.

Also this same person being a writing bad Jodie’s fine as the Doctor person was also like I’d love for her to come back in a multi doctor special under another writer. Do these people not realise if they watched every episode of her era they have already watched her under a number of different writers? FFS if you don’t think the numerous writers who wrote for her wrote a good version of 13 what makes you think a different random writer would in a multi Doctor story? They aren’t going to fundamentally change who 13 is. There was like 9 different writers/co writers in the Chibnall era including Chibs, if you think none of them gave her good writing what makes you think a random 10th writer would? It makes no sense.

[sadcoms]

Moffat wanted McGann. The BBC said no, they wanted a ‘big name’. The Moment was supposed to be Susan, but the BBC said no because they wanted Billie Piper back for ratings. Clara also went into the Doctor’s timestream because for a very long time while Moffat was writing the 50th he didn’t have a cast signed up and the backup plan was to have Clara and some other former companions rescue the Doctor from his own time steam.

You don’t have to like him or his work. But many of the choices you’re ascribing to his ‘ego’ because you don’t like him were actually ‘production restraints placed on him by BBC managers’. Chibnall dealt with many of the same restraints. RTD 2.0 is the first era where creative control is outside of the BBC.

Thanks, this is good to know. I haven’t heard this before, can you please let me know where I can read more details about this?

Edit: still haven't found much about some of these so I wanted to make a note:

Moffat wanted Christopher Eccleston back, but Eccleston declined because the script "didn't do [his] Doctor justice".

In fact, Moffat specifically said: "I also had trouble, I have to be honest, imagining it being Paul McGann's Doctor."

The closest I have found to Moffat wanting Susan is a bunch of reddit posts saying the Moment should have been Susan.

I still hate the timestream thing but I take your point about the 50th and the lead up to it being a production mess and I did find a source for the other companions being involved.

[higheldertala]

wild blue yonder commentary

okay im done being dramatic about this episode, it was fine i guess

the isaac newton scene was very random. sure the joke was funny but does the scene have a point? idk, does it matter if there’s a point, is it fine just being a joke? im over thinking this

‘he’s got a time machine which means he can blame me for all eternity’ 😂

‘isaac newton that you above all others can appreciate the gravity of the situation’ theyre so unserious 😂 i love them

‘is it knackered?’ i love how british that was

i love how we got rid of the sonic for the episode! 🎉🎉🎉 slay

the green screen is very noticeable unfortunately

doctor companion arguing!! we love to see actual conflict again

hand kiss!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰 this is my roman empire. there’s something so tender about it, i love it so much. can david tennant kiss my hand like that?

‘once spent three years in orbit’ is this a reference to something? bc nothing is coming to mind

i didn’t say this out loud so you’ll just have to trust me but i called it that donna named the robot jimbo

‘can you still hear me? no.’ i love their banter. no other doctor companion duo banters like they do

‘it’s okay, im here, i’ve got you’ 🥺🥺🥺 i love how doctor actually cares about his companions (side eyes a certain era)

when the ‘non-things’ have the warped body parts i don’t see this is as body horror more just goofy to me. not that dw can’t be goofy i suppose

but it’s good to know they used at least some practical effects rather than just wholly cgi

the bit where both doctor and donna go into different rooms is clever directing, definitely keeps the audience guessing who’s who

i don’t like the idea that donna saw the past ‘15 years’ of the doctor. as it would implies there’s a constant link between them as the doctordonna which just seems unnecessary to me. and if she just forgets it anyway what’s the point?

not sure how i feel about rtd referencing the timeless child and flux arcs. (from a writing perspective) the emotional impact should really have been 13’s and not 14’s and so in a way feels unearned. anytime this gets mentioned by russell really just highlights how chibnall never addressed/ emotionally completed these arcs. i feel like rtd should focus on 14’s arc escpecially since we only have a few episodes with them. it shouldn’t be rtd’s responsibility to mop up the mess from the chibnall era and i wouldn’t hold it against him for not bringing it up again. i suppose russell has more fondness for his friend’s work than i do lol

but from an in universe perspective it’s a good emotional scene for the doctor i guess

‘it destroy half the universe because of me’ so the universe WAS destroyed and not repaired from the flux? i don’t want to do this discourse again 😭 please russell don’t make me think about flux again, haven’t we suffered enough?

‘donna is that you? all those years. i missed you’ 🥺🥺🥺 so cruel for the doctor to be baited by the non-thing as he so desperately wants that comfort from donna 🥺

i fear the ‘who’s who’ gimmick gets a tad repetitive

‘i look quite good’ war flashbacks to moffat selfcest jokes 😭🤮

i appreciate the comedy of the revolving door with the doctor and donna thinking they’re safe for it to immediately rotate back around

i fear this has very chibnall-esque the doctor just tells us the solution rather than the audience being shown :/

i don’t understand why slowness confuses the ‘non things’ but sure

you always look goofy running on a green screen im sorry

i’ve never heard the wild blue yonder song before so the tardis appearing all ethereal playing it is so random to me

catherine tate always brings out her best acting for doctor who

i never believed she was gonna be left there and die though, i don’t know why people thought this?? was it just a stressful episode for people?

hug!! 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

there’s nothing better than the doctor kissing donna on the head. this is how i always want the doctor to be 🥹🥹🥹

WILF!!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 it’s so lovely to see him and the dedication to bernard cribbins at the end

‘now i feel better, now nothing is wrong, nothing in the whole wide world’ 😭😭😭

the heavy breathing in the end theme tune is awful, who added this in? 😭😭😭 i beg they get rid of this for ncuti’s era.

concluding thoughts: upon a rewatch, the episode is fine, but i don’t think it’s anything groundbreaking. why they made a big deal of keeping this episode secret is puzzling. perhaps intentional marketing to cause hype/ speculation? i think it would work better if this was just a standard episode in the middle of a season but i don’t really understand how this fits in with the anniversary celebrations. as always the doctor and donna are great and i love their dynamic, with all the emotional beats and banter. i enjoyed the star beast more, perhaps it had more of a novelty to david tennant as the doctor and donna returning and the star beast works as a somewhat call back to the franchise. maybe the horror aspect didn’t land for me like it did for other people. i wouldn’t say it was bad overall but rather just okay it’s get 6/10. and maybe for an anniversary special i wanted something with a bit more oomph. and yes maybe i would be partial to a bit of fan servicey cameos i won’t deny it, but i recognise im not entitled to as a fan so we’ll take the L. i hope the giggle will deliver on the oomph but we shall see.

[dreamerwriternstargazer]

This is something we have to infer for ourselves though and it’s not actually like. Something that seems to be intentional on Chibnall’s part (just as everything pretty good in 13’s era isn’t)

Like I don’t think Chibnall specifically created 13 to be that detached and closed off in comparison to 12, if he did then he only intentionally adds that far later re; Sea Devils and “i don’t really go on dates anymore”

S11 I mostly skipped (although I’m thinking of going back and watching the witch episode? That looked kinda decent) but s12 we get the sense that 13’s character is actually being discovered by Chibnall as well as us

There’s a lot of testing the boundaries, how silly can she be, how serious, how dark, from Spy!Master plot all the way up until the Timeless Child episode. The best of this is Villa Diodati where we see 13’s range in full, we see JODIE’S range as she is fun, light, but this is the episode that really drives home that she’s detached emotionally from her companions

That is the episode where it is properly acknowledged by Yaz that this friend won’t let her in and she wants to be let in

That is the episode where we see this play out in action between 13 and Byron, the Doctor is notorious for attracting and even encouraging flirty and intimate behaviour with *anyone* so the fact that this Doctor doesn’t? I mean sure 12 was detached with most people but he was still a LITTLE flirty (*coughs* Sexy dinosaur + Scottish scientist in LC)

And yes we could say that it’s possibly a political move, first woman Doctor having a flirt with Lord Byron, known womaniser wouldn’t be very feminist? Or rather, political in the sense that there’s a very powerful message in having the first woman Doctor get pursued by a womaniser and reject him over and over. Putting a Doylist perspective on it, there was no way they could have had 13 pursued by Byron the way previous Doctors were pursued by people because it would make it more blatant (and I do say make it blatant because it’s true even for previous Doctors we just don’t pay attention enough because men don’t get harassed) that it’s harassment and with the mask of a woman on the Doctor know, it would be something that would prompt outrage and otherism with Jodie’s era.

However in universe this little back and forth side conflict is used as evidence for Yaz’s internal conflict, and the fact that Byron is the guy that the other woman is ignored and shunned by is the connecting factor. They’re both watching their crushes who are emotionally detached from them and seeing their different coping mechanisms; Byron of superficial connection and 13 of avoidance. Funnily enough Byron is an echo of the Doctor’s past selves in that sense so there’s several layers to the Byron/Doctor conflict that implicitly addresses the idea that this is a commentary on the Doctor’s character changes - they’ve always been detached on some level as this alien, eldritch being but now they seem to be completely isolating themselves. Alongside that, the villain of the week is a Cyberman, a monster who is created by shutting off emotions and humanity, and we know that the Doctor’s life is going to be analogised through the cyberman concept in the final episode so the foil the Cyberman poses to 13 is pretty obvious. This episode gives us 13’s avoidant behaviour as it has done for all the episodes leading up to it, but instead of just having it as this “quirk” of her character the way it kind of was for 12 (I wouldn’t say 12’s avoidant behaviour had as much to it as 13’s, it just seemed to be in line with the Doctor’s usual detachment and more than anything was linked to his limited trust; his trust was Clara’s only so we get the sense that while he’s keeping everyone else at a distance it’s not necessarily because of the same intensity of grief and loss that 13 has, 13 is that way BECAUSE Clara was lost. It’s a a character choice for 12 wherein it’s less about highlighting his distrust and more about highlighting his trust.) this quirk has so much meaning behind it, it AFFECTS her companions emotionally and practically, it’s noticeable, it’s harsh even as she smiles and bubbles away all supposedly carefree, and the entire episode is structured to be about her conflict in being the only one to be her, the only one in the end who is left with the impossible decisions, and while it’s an emotionally vulnerable moment for her to say this to them it’s not one of closeness, she lashes out and then closes back up again. So the explicit, plot conflict is greatly intertwined with the characters’ internal conflicts and I think the episode shows perfectly how purposefully 13’s detachment was explored and prodded and poked at.

The fact that the same idea is used in the Timeless Child and the Timeless Child plotline is woven throughout Flux shows that this, this version of 13 that was forged and carved slowly through s12 and defined in HoVD, became Chibnall’s idea of 13, but it certainly didn’t start that way and something to also consider is that… HoVD wasn’t written by him, Flux, for the most part wasn’t written by him, so if OP’s ideas can be said to be something that are actual choices and purposeful decisions made by the writers… unfortunately I think we can hardly credit that to Chibnall. The fact that Chibnall’s writing followed suit with the rest of these writers and in particular stuck with the HoVD blueprint suggests to me that he saw the response to that episode or he saw the potential in her character going in this direction, the bubbly vivacious Doctor who is in fact the most cut off of all, and learnt from it and THEN started to FINALLY flesh it out even more in s13 which is why, I would argue, s13 was so good and s12 was middling.

So…. This ramble got away from me XD but TL;DR I totally agree with OP it’s just an idea that didn’t start on purpose by Chibnall because s11 and most of s12 is just quirky fun, socially dense and awkward Doctor, at best we can attribute her no nonsense behaviour through those seasons to political representation as the first woman Doctor but the writer who really took it and made something of it was Maxine Alderton, and who was it who did some co-writing on Flux with Chibnall?

Maxine Alderton.

Chibnall apparently wrote most of it (I just did a quick google so correction on my earlier statement) which astounds me and proves the guy can write if he just has some decent foundations to work with and I think Maxine Alderton really gave him some with HoVD, because from then on the focus on 13 was this continuous exploration on her detachment and trauma and what that means for her. It was just the element Chibnall needed to make Timeless Child half decent as a plot point (even if it’s trash thematically)

Thinking about how the 12th Doctor's characterization is often "genuinely open about their feelings and self doubts in such a way that it's confronting and alien and makes their relationships difficult to maintain" and how 13 in turn has become "aggressively distant and unwilling to open up to other people to the point that it's confronting and alien and makes their relationships difficult to maintain"

[praxeus-13]

I don’t think I’ll be able to shut up about how awful Yaz’s send off was for a while. I’m so sorry for the negativity but Yaz is my favourite companion, and I love Mandip so much, they both deserved so much more than what they were given!

Yaz has been with The Doctor for at least 10 years, Yaz is in love with The Doctor. There is no way you will ever convince me that she left The Doctor - her Doctor - without putting up a fight! That’s what Yaz is all about, she’s feisty and she’s so full of love, she has grown so much as a character but it felt like she’s just gone full circle. Right back to the start when she was a 19 year old who lacked confidence in herself.

And, as I mentioned, Yaz is in love with The Doctor! It was portrayed so well throughout series 12 and Flux, and acknowledged brilliantly in EOTD and LOTSD. But it was not concluded in LOTSD like Chibnall seemed to think it was? For most of the conversations between her and 13 about their feelings, The Doctor was the one doing most of the talking. That just doesn’t feel believable, Yaz speaks her mind, that’s a huge part of her character. I just don’t believe she wouldn’t fight to keep her Doctor in her life.

I didn’t need a kiss, hell they didn’t need a kiss, but more acknowledgement was necessary. They should have held hands more, they should have hugged more, it wouldn’t have been hard to fit into the episode. At the very least they could have said ‘I love you’ ! All that build up, all the hope Chris gave to us queer fans, and for what? Seriously what was the fucking point? Because it feels like all that build up was just ignored right at the end, right at the moment where it should have meant the most.

I’ve grown up disappointed by representation, there are so so many shows I have watched where there are two women so clearly in love that most of the fan base ships them, only to have it never acknowledged. I got used to that. But then I found Doctor Who! The first episode from 13’s era that I watched was Revolution of The Daleks, and that got me to watch all of modern Doctor Who just so I could catch up. Do you know why? Because when I first watched that episode I 100% believed that The Doctor and Yaz were canonically in love! I was so happy! Then I caught up and got disappointed again, it hurt but I expected it. But then, they became canon! I was ecstatic! Finally I found another show where they actually listened to fans, where the queer characters were acknowledged. Only to have it end like this?

Not to mention Tegan, Ace and Kate - all of who are so clearly queer. Not a single one of them got any notion of queerness. It’s just not right, queer people exist in real life, let us exist in media, let us see loud and proud queer characters!

Yaz deserved more, 13 deserved more, but honestly the queer fans deserved more. This episode was meant to be one for the Whovians, and I loved it, truly I did, but the ending makes it feel like the queer whovians were left out.