#maybe chibnall's writing of the doctor's character was so off i just got used to it and gave up on the whole idea until watching new eps

[tacagen]

gotta say, the new dw intro really scratches my brain just the right way

[sclfmastery]

Quickfire hot take but, even though I totally grasp each of us having favorite regens of the doctor and the master, both individually and together, as symbols of their ever-evolving positions along their personal and relationship journey.... I will never ever understand fan (or canon...) portrayals that draw such a sharp line of favoritism from the characters themselves.

Missy said "they're all the Doctor to me" when recalling a memory to Clara, and to me that encapsulates the enduring nature of their intense bond. To me that is THE line. Regeneration is a form of death and rebirth, but certain core traits are immutable, particularly to two people who are narrative foils, who have known each other for centuries (or possibly millennia) and keep being thrown together by fate again and again and again.

Bottom line is, every Doctor is the same person, and so is every Master. Acting as though one of them only cares for select versions of the other is just so strange to me. They aren't us. To them, it's just like loving (or hating, or both) someone through the eras of their life. Their same life, broken down into stages od evolution and devolution. It's the same person.

I can point to the exact episode (a lol very polarizing episode in Series 10) where I think this "they're not the same person from face to face" trend got exponentially more pronounced, but anyone who knows me knows what that episode is. I truly believe it's a disservice to every version of every Doctor and Master involved.

And I really don't think that Spydoc, which came soon thereafter, is just the playing-out of the consequences of a MASSIVE miscommunication between soul mates. It IS that, but not JUST. I think all of the writing about Thoschei that followed the exacerbating episode was trying to force this inaccurate distortion, this illusion of separateness, which is part of what made the events in Power of the Doctor so painful to Thoschei fans. The Doctor walked away from the Master (literally and figuratively, ironically inviting his inevitable despair--and her own demise) partly out of understandable hurt and rage and caution, but also out of a cold, repulsed misunderstanding: "Missy was willing to change and you regressed, you're a different person than she was, and you have angered me to the point of indifference; I am able to turn off caring about you because you are unrecognizable from her, the version of you that I could control save."

Maybe Whittaker's response is intended by Chibnall: we're supposed to recognize that she's wrong but HAS to be in order to survive another betrayal by the Master, which is what makes it all so tragic.

But I think fan reception has taken the whole thing ( "each Doctor and each Master is an entirely discrete self-contained being") too far, and it bothers me, so much, I think, because it's a trope that enforces the idea that love is transactional and contingent (in such a way that also perhaps unwittingly targets the socially, culturally, and economically marginalized). If you're the "good, small, manageable version" of yourself, then you're easier to love, and it's worth the investment. Otherwise, "you gambled and you lost," and you deserve to die lying in the filth of your own poor decisions. I get why that's an appealing, vindicting plot device, from the POV of an audience member who has felt hurt or even abused IRL. I understand it, I've BEEN the Doctor many times. It just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's just me. I could be at peace with that, as a Whovian :P.

But, in-universe, it's based on a premise that's factually erroneous! Dhawan's Master IS Missy IS Delgado IS Simm IS Jacobi IS Ainley IS Roberts IS Beevers etc etc etc. Just as Whittaker's Doctor is a RESPONSE to Capaldi's, but ALSO still IS Capaldi's. And Tennant's. And Baker's (x2). And Eccleston's. And Gatwa's. And Pertwee's. Etc etc. Dhawan's Master was the Prime Minister of the UK and also made chairs that eat people and also cried remembering the names of people she killed. It's the SAME PERSON.

Lol, not quickfire at all. It's an old bone to pick, I know. I just can't stop finding the whole trope...very itchy.

(ok to reblog...dunno if anyone would, LOL, but feel free to reblog and to comment).

I'm gonna tag some ppl I know I've chatted about this with before to see if there are new insights. And feel completely free to disagree with me on any count. @natalunasans @mostincrediblechange @drummingncise @modernwizard @nickcagestrufflehog @rearranging-deck-chairs @koschei-no-more @likeacharacterinamusical

[omnisvirlupussicfiatdraco]

Any canonical final death of the Doctor means that whoever decided to write that is either putting a moratorium on the one piece of media that should by definition never have one, which, really why would you do that? I can think of two reasons why, off the cuff;

You're in dire need of a cup of tea and a blanket, some cake, maybe a hug. In which case I will up to and including the cake, tea and blanket.

You think that someone is going to fuck up your favourite show by taking it in a direction you don't like. Which, how do I put this politely? It's Doctor Who, it's supposed to go places you wouldn't expect, that's the point, deal with it or stop engaging.

Before I go any further or hijack this post any more (which I'm going to) @silvermaple6 one hundred percent best ending.

@type-40-nightingales awesome post, I love all of it, I wanna add this but if I'm wrong or have misread I don't want to ruin your post so all props it is awesome.

"A doctors falls was the perfect ending for their charecter-" Seriously who said this? It's a brilliant ending for the 12th Doctor, in my opinion it's one of the peak episodes of NuWho and Doctor Who in general. It nails exactly what and who the Doctor is behind all the faces, I reckon. But if the suggestion of ending the character on that is just... bonkers. I didn't like a lot of what Chibnall wrote with the Timeless Child et al. but one thing I think is absolutely fantastic is that it said "We Can't Kill The Doctor In Any Way That Matters, As An Idea." We can have an Infinity of Doctors now. (Pun fully intended, come at me.)

The only reason I can see someone on the fan side wanting to end this is because they're scared of the direction someone is going to take the Doctor and by extension, Doctor Who. Now I can see why someone on the production side would be worried about it, because they've got demographics to cater to and targets to hit and budgets to account for, but us? We're fans.

Before I was even born they tried to kill Doctor Who and it got even weirder and more brilliant than the TV show ever could have been on it's own and now we've got OCEANS of content; deep, complex, clashing continuities that ebb and burst and just don't stop. Audios, Fanvids, Books on Books on BOOKS. I nearly cried when I found out about the Classic Series, and I was floored when I found out about the Wilderness Years, Big Finish took me out at the knees. When I met older fans who'd read the Virgin New Adventures when they came out I was so jealous I could've wept. There's a picture somewhere of Kylie reading Camera Obscura! Sorry I'm rambling now but this in brief is my point; If you want the Doctor to die a final death, then you want Doctor Who to stop.

If you want Doctor Who to stop, then it seems to me what you actually want is to stop it changing. If you want to stop it changing then you have missed the point.

It was said best when it was said first; "Life depends on change and renewal"

The Second Doctor 05-11-1966 "Power of the Daleks", Patrick Troughton

"A doctors falls was the perfect ending for their charecter-" why?? I dont care how good or bad the episode is if the doctor ever truly dies or quits travelling permanently its gonna suck??. The doctor is not designed to die!! If they die, what's the point!!?? The doctor is a symbol for hope. Like if they die thats not exactly hopeful. And it means no new media can be created about the doctor past that point or the canon will have to be a lot more convoluted from there on and yes the canon is messy but it will jsut be like annoying ykk?? Any canonical final death of the doctor is gonna detract from the story!!

[gotyouanyway]

13 in general seems to have such warped morals compared to some other doctors like she lets a dude blow himself up where she wasn’t willing to in the Timeless Children and way back in Aracnids in the UK the american business guy is like “i’m going to shoot the big monster spiders” so she’s like “no these are living creatures and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect; i’m going to lock them in a room and starve them to death instead” queen of having no morals

ok i put this off because i wanted to fully catch up and then go back and recontextualize a bit and this got really long and maybe not that coherent but YEAH here we go ----

i totally agree, her morals are very shaky and i think i actually like it! at first i didn't like it because i had gotten so used to the doctor being obsessed with morality, sometimes to the point of overcompensation (mostly 10 lol). and with the thesis of 12's final season being "without hope, without witness, without reward" etc. and goodness being the thing he died for, it felt kind of like a betrayal for 13 to equivocate on her morals so heavily

i mean, i personally love when the doctor isn't perfect and it made for some really interesting character moments like letting that old guy do the dirty work AND die for her in the timeless children. but i wasn't sure about it as a writing choice because it seemed weird after all of that. but then i started rewatching season 1 and like.. there she is though! it was obvious when it was 9, fresh out of the time war, still thinking like a soldier and not as ashamed of it yet as he would be. definitely not as interested in hiding it (or hiding from it). 9 let multiple people die for him without too much protest or guilt, he did his best and he felt for them but he didn't obsess over every loss or take all the burden on himself the way he would later on. he was going to gladly take the slitheen woman home to be executed, he had to be physically stopped from killing the last living dalek on sight LOL. a soldier, and nothing like the goodness-obsessed person we see later. and THAT is the morality i see in 13.

so that could definitely be a lapse in character continuity and i (petty) don't really want to praise chibnall for anything. but to give the benefit of the doubt for the sake of having a good time here: the things that 9 and 13 have in common are that they've both just experienced recent, devastating, violent loss of [checks notes] literally everyone they knew and cared about, and they didn't want to regenerate and keep living at all (or likely didn't want to). basically if we're talking about patterns of behaviour here, i think in both 9 and 13 we're seeing the doctor at low points, and specifically low points where they're doubting their morality and their identity as the Doctor. they're both literally born out of experiences where their morality failed them (12's goodness failed to save anyone he cared about - in fact, it specifically got bill and missy killed) or it failed period (the war doctor was not Good in the doctor's usual sense). so i like to think, again mostly for the sake of enjoying the show lol, that consciously or subconsciously 13 is going through something similar to what she went through after the time war - extreme distress and an identity/morality crisis, leading to her making some very questionable choices :)

the fun thing about 13 though imo is that this time she's trying to hide it from herself and from others a lotttt more. she's gone right back to being bouncy and fun to hide the distress (like 10/11) but she's also very clearly hiding it from herself and equivocating TO HERSELF. 9 took this stance of basically "war is hell, people die, i'm not god". now though, after spending a few hundred years reforming that mindset until he basically became a saint and martyr, 13 feels much more guilty about making questionable choices and she has to lie to herself about it. y'know, "maybe i let that old man get the blood on his hands and die so i could escape this situation, but at least i didn't stoop to the master's level".. ma'am you're fooling no one <3

anyway sorry this got so long i've been thinking about it for like 2 weeks love u xoxo

[dippersbirthmark]

doctor who under chibnall was actually not written well, and thats very disappointing. the show had some very interesting episodes but the execution is just not it. (for example, i was really pissed off about fhe ancient syria episode because the whole plot or resolution or whatever had nothing to do with ancient syria lol??)

but i love thirteen okay? i love her fam. i love team tardis. as cheesy and slash or awkward as it can get (mainly because of the writing). there was promising character development for everyone, including the doctor herself. but it fell short, lots of telling not much showing. not enough balance between character arcs as things to drive the overall plot and the episodes' individual plotlines. and why the fuck would anyone write about ancient syria, but there was nothing ancient syrian about the whole fucking episode. and you could have done something more with the conscious universe, fit it in the whole timeless child arc or something right?

bro speaking of, i actually love the timeless child arc. it just brings a whole differrent dimension and huge possibilities for who the doctor is. it brings extra flavor of pain (lol sorry) to the fact that the doctor always felt lonely, but always hungry to explore and run and help.

they could have done so much with thirteen and ryan and graham and yaz. lots of opportunities for representation! ryan with his disability and his disastisfying deadend job in a warehouse, graham as an aging man who lost his wife recently, yaz as a pakistani woman who isn't being taken seriously in the workplace. my god, thirteen and her thing with being unable to be fully open and vulnerable to her friends. you know, maybe, learning to be vulnerable again to a group of people and finally seeing that she isn't alone even through all the stuff about the timeless child thing and about timelords and all that stuff. she's always got her companions, as with her past lives too.

so disappointed. i still love the show. i love ryan, graham and yaz. and i fucking love thirteen.

(also i think the show did daleks and the cybermen a great terrifying take. i used to not get excited when new who episodes were about daleks or cybermen because i found them way too campy if that is the right word for it--although i did love the thing in previous series where they humanize daleks and cybermen. it was tragic and heartbrwaking, but not scary. but thirteen's episodes with daleks and cybermen actually terrified me!! hello? they actually showed how fucked up frightening the daleks and cybermen were! wow?!)

[ishouldreallybeelsewhere]

Review: Episode 1: The Halloween Apocalypse.

Spoilers under the cut

Okay, so, a lot is happening in the opening sequence with Yaz and the Doctor, and not a whole heap of it is spectacular. First things first, the special effects look really quite good this season, so unless everything is about to get a whole lot worse, they've bumped up the budget (or maybe it's cuz they're no longer paying Bradley Walsh). As far as a season opener goes, it's nice. Leaves you with 'How did they get there?' and maybe the answer will be told through a flash back or natural sounding dialogue or perhaps the villain would be like 'And you thought you could get past my guards? As if they wouldn't get you' or something that sounds threatening but at least tells us everything we really need to know in a natural sounding way.

Nope Yaz just lists out all the events that we know both of the characters know. So... I've gotta say, it was kinda natural sounding, so the dialogue has improved a bit, but a lot of it sounds very first-draft-y, which isn't really what you're after in a released episode of TV, but that's okay. Following the exposition dump, we have a pointless timer. If the person who captured the two of them knew anything about the Doctor, you'd think the last thing they'd do would be to prolong the amount of time she has to escape. Regardless, they did, and then the Doctor was able to come up with a plan and let them escape. The plan was fine, I guess, I mean, trapeze? Really? (I think it was a joke, just not a very funny one). The voice activated hand-cuffs are really stupid, on the same level as the clicking-activated cigar, especially because the person who's cuffed can activate them, instead of it being only the person who cuffed them.

I'm not going to go scene by scene, mainly because that would take forever and I didn't manage to memorize the whole episode and I only wrote three pages of notes. I promise not all of them were complaining about mediocre dialogue. Alright.

Dan's introduction was fine. It set up, uh, not a whole heap about his character. He likes the museum, loves Liverpool, has a few friends, and is struggling. I have a feeling that Chibnall isn't going to go too deep into class struggles, based on what we saw in Kerblam. However, the character himself is pretty nice. I'm looking forward to learning more about him. I hope we do. He's kind, not taking anyone's shit, and is, uh, not that shocked to be on a space ship. I mean, there was a reaction, sure (which is a nice change) but it still feels very lacking. Maybe that'll be a character trait or maybe he's got something in his past. Either way, Chibnall really underplays what it's like to just randomly end up in space. (Not that I would know. I've, uh, definitely never been to space). The dog thing is unique, but kinda weird. Hopefully there'll be more of an explanation later.

The split between the 5 (???) different settings was a bit off-balance. Some of them felt very much chucked in there for set-ups sake without having much to do at all. Though I did like the Sontaran's disgust at one of their own growing old, because it's likely that dying of old age is not honourable at all, as that's no war, so I like the idea of old Sontaran's being looked down on, because why haven't they died in battle yet? And also sets up Sontarans as absolute assholes. I mean, not that the Sontarans need setting up. It's clear that this season is not at all new-fan-friendly, so there'll be plenty of nostalgia bait old villains turning up again. As long as it's not the Daleks, cuz Chibnall can't write good Dalek stories.

Parts of the dialogue felt like the characters were talking down to the audience somewhat, like I can see what's happening, you don't have to describe absolutely everything this is not an audio-only medium. That's a real issue with Chibnall, cuz he forgets that yes, we can see the Flux changing course and Dan doesn't have to describe everything he can see.

The pacing was pretty alright, well, it was fast, and had a lot of action which was good. Only there was really only one instance of character time (because for some reason there can't be character time and plot time happening simultaneously) which was Yaz telling the Doctor that the Doctor had been obsessing over following one alien, which I would assume the Doctor would do pretty often if they were a danger to Earth. Anyway, the way the dog guy stated where he was going was reminiscent of the Demons of the Punjab, which is to say, giving no indication that their actions are anything other than hostile. Like saying 'The final hours of Earth' instead of 'saving the human race' to the one person who's likely to get in the way of the former.

Overall, there was a lot of action, a lot of set-up, and not much else. The dialogue and writing had improved, somewhat, but the relationship between Yaz and the Doctor feels pretty weak, like Yaz still questioning if they're even friends (also did Yaz quit the police? I hope so), which seems very out of character, since the Doctor is usually pretty clear that they care a lot about their companions. The Doctor herself was still slightly too nervous to be fully in character, which is unfortunate. Also when things start messing with the TARDIS, showrunners have to be very careful, which Chibnall often is not...

Also while a lot of good stuff was set up (yes I'm completely ignoring the Timeless child I still think it's stupid) I feel like it's gonna all fall through. I think we're gonna get more questions than answers, and none of the answers will be the ones that really matter. Also why are the angels back? Who let that happen? Let them die in the only episode they were good in, Blink.

The direction and cinematography was still very odd and didn't feel like it was conveying much more than to look cool, which isn't what you want at all. Lots of close-ups that weren't necessary, and weird shots which meant the scene didn't feel quite there.

While there was a lot of set-up, not all of it was informative, or helpful, or seemingly relevant at all, and I would've liked it if Dan had more of a reaction than pointing out the obvious. I won't be able to look at the characterization properly for a few episodes yet, but my hopes aren't high. Not at all.

[mymoonjin1]

Chris Chibnall ruined Doctor Who

Doctor Who sucks now. I’m sorry for starting this off with such a blatant statement, but we all know it’s true. And this angers me so, so much, because it used to be one of my all-time favorite shows, and now with a female lead it had so much potential, lost in shitty writing. Here we go.

I have to admit, I used to be one of the people against changing the Doctor’s gender. I thought it would be weird, that they were only doing it for PC reasons, etc. I changed my mind since then, but needless to say, I remained disappointed. I think that a female Doctor would have been a refreshing take on the character, it would have shut up people (like me at the time) and it would have made a lot more people take interest in Doctor Who. Jodie’s era could have been amazing, magical and revolutionary. But alas, here we are.

Jodie Whittaker’s first episode was watched by a little over 14 million people if I recall correctly. But why did the show fail in keeping that number? Simple: the writing sucks. Chris Chibnall is not a good showrunner. He took elements he knew of Doctor Who and tried to copy them, without understanding what made them special.

Let’s start with character development. The Doctor. There was a moment in Spyfall when Yaz says: “what would the Doctor do?”, and for the longest moment I thought… “what would this Doctor do?”, which is NOT something I should be thinking this far in Jodie’s run as the Doctor. It’s all been oh’s, wow’s, unnecessary exposition and not a single truly emotional moment, one that makes me feel like I know or relate to this Doctor. I feel like they tried to make a sort of female Eleven without everything that made him special. Jodie said multiple times “yeah, I can play an alien”, and of course, she could have. But the problem it’s not just about playing an alien. The Doctor is an extremely complex character, with extremely complex emotions. Emotions we are yet to see from her. And I am not saying she isn’t a great actress. I absolutely loved her in Broadchurch, a show that was also run by Chibnall. She is capable of showing emotional range. So why hasn’t she? Shitty writing. My guess? Chibnall is scared of criticism saying that this Doctor (a woman) is too emotional, criticism that wouldn’t have existed in previous Doctors' incarnations. Which is bullshit, and also leads me to my next point: the companions.

Having three companions may have sounded good in paper, but the reality is that none of them has had enough screen time to properly develop as characters. My guess? In the eyes of Chibnall (and probably the BBC, I don’t know), a team would lessen the controversy around the new Doctor. But they didn’t bother with them.

If someone asked you to describe Yaz or Ryan’s personality, what would you say? …Exactly. The only one worth watching is Graham, and even he hasn’t had a proper storyline. They tried to show more of their struggles in Can You Hear Me?, but here’s the thing. It is far too late in their arcs for this. At this point, it just felt way too forced. As someone with depression, It would have been great to see more of Yaz’s struggles with it, but just one episode is not nearly enough. Also, she connected with a police officer who we are never going to see again! Don’t you think it would’ve been better to see this development in her relationship with the Doctor? NONE of them have a strong friendship with her. They just say she’s amazing because she takes them places and shit. Not because they actually want to spend time with her. What are Yaz’s reasons to be there? She wanted to be more than just a cop that gave tickets, she wanted to help people, yet she just…left? And she has mentioned being a cop like, once since then. How does this make any sense?

Ryan was supposed to have dyspraxia, which hasn’t been mentioned since the bike thing, I think. It would have been great to see this being an actual part of his character and seeing him coping with it whilst traveling around in space and having dangerous adventures. But nope, they completely forgot about it, as well as his Youtube channel. Also, what are his motivations, his ambitions? Why is he there? In Can You Hear Me? we learn about his friend’s struggles with mental health, but again, shouldn’t it have had more impact coming from Ryan? A character we are supposed to care about at this point?

As for Graham, like I said, he’s the one with a more formed personality. He’s a goofball, he worries about the “kids” of the group, he’s a father figure. Great. But the problem is they presented him as wanting to travel with the Doctor to get over his grief, but they hardly show any of it. And there wasn’t any hint throughout the first season of him having any sort of thirst for revenge, so him wanting to kill Tim Shaw just came out of nowhere. But my biggest problem this season, was when he was opening up with the Doctor about his fear of his cancer returning and she just… said: “I’m sorry, I’m still socially awkward”???? WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? There’s been plenty of times that we’ve seen this awkwardness. It is ALL we’ve ever seen from this Doctor. This was NOT the time to say this. This could have been a beautiful way for them to connect, to show more of the Doctor’s emotional side, yet what we got was a “suffer in silence bro, I’m so awkward lol”. REALLY? The Doctor has always shown compassion. Even if they don’t understand what their companions are going through, they are always there for them. Why would the writers think this was a good idea? It’s infuriating. 

I’ve been watching a LOT of Youtube videos talking about why Chibnall’s run has been a disaster. I really liked one called “Is the Doctor a hypocrite?”, by B-WHERE. In the video, they essentially say that this Doctor’s moral compass is a mess. In Arachnids in the UK, for example, she somehow thinks locking up all of the spiders and letting the queen die suffocating is more humane than just killing them quickly, which is what the villain does in the end. Ummm? Okay? Listen, the Doctor has always faced difficult moral decisions, even scary ones, like in the Family of Blood two-parter. But as the video says, they’ve never claimed to have moral superiority. And maybe this could have been a more distinctive flaw in the character, a flaw that maybe her companions saw and disagreed with. Like Ten’s wake up call at the end of Waters of Mars. But no. Again, it’s just plain shitty writing.

Ok. Now... The Timeless Children. Jesus Christ. There are so, so many reasons this was the worst thing to ever happen to Doctor Who, but y’all are probably wishing for this rant to be over, so I’ll just mention two.

In over fifty years, we’ve NEVER needed an origin story for The Doctor. The show is called “Doctor Who” for a reason, the question that should never be answered. And they just go and shit all over one of the most beloved sci-fi shows of the twentieth century in a single episode. Again, this is mentioned in several videos, but I thought the same thing right after watching the episode: making the Doctor another “chosen one” goes against everything the show represented. The Doctor was an ordinary alien who was not very good at the Academy, ran away with a stolen TARDIS because he disagreed with the Time Lords way, and couldn’t even control where the TARDIS would go at first. The Doctor is an idiot in a box. The Doctor helps because he wants to; because it’s decent and kind. ANYONE could be like the Doctor. And now, it turns out he’s always been special. The Doctor is the reason why Time Lords regenerate. The character is basically a god now. Why is this a bad thing? This changes EVERYTHING, and yet, it WILL CHANGE NOTHING going forward. Ruth’s Doctor says so herself, it doesn’t change who the Doctor is. Oh, but it does. It changes who the Doctor WAS. None of it matters now, none of their sacrifices, it meant nothing. That’s what makes this so heartbreaking. And I had so much faith in this season. I actually enjoyed a few episodes, like Nicola Tesla’s Night of Terror. I thought they were going down the right path. But Chris Chibnall has ruined my favorite show in just one episode. My only comfort is that there’s still plenty of Classic Who episodes I haven’t watched. Those will be the ones I’ll look forward to. 

(Also, that’s nOT HOW REGENERATION WORKS! IT DOESN’T BRING TIME LORDS BACK TO LIFE! IT HEALS/PREVENTS THEM FROM DYING WHEN THEY’RE IN PHYSICAL DANGER. GOD, CHRIS, WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID!) Okay, rant over, deep breaths. Thanks for reading!

[valyrfia]

okay so I am a defender of Thirteen and her era but I felt like this episode really highlighted some problems with Thirteen’s era so let’s have a little roundtable meeting

Why is Chibnall so afraid to venture off-Earth?

Let the Doctor off-Earth 2k20

The TARDIS was used as a major MacGuffin throughout the episode. Remember when the Doctor used to get the landings wrong? When landing the TARDIS in the right place at the right time was extremely difficult? Yeah me neither

And the TARDIS can magic up an antidote, and save someone from death by exploding spaceship. RIP Ace

The direction as a whole is just off. It looks beautiful but there are far too many close-up on faces. There were very little group shots and as a result, I never really got the sense of the relationships and dynamics between everyone

Leading on from this the fact that as a whole, the dynamic of the TARDIS team is a failure

hear me out

I felt more connection to Gabriella in this episode than I felt to Yaz, Ryan and Graham in one and a half seasons. That should not be happening. 

Chibnall has a frightening tendency to bite off more than he can chew when it comes to characters. Large TARDIS teams can work, think the Ponds or Bill/Nardole/Missy, but we need to see them grow organically, need to see their relationships with each other. Right now it honestly still feels like four strangers in a box. 

In fact I think it did highlight that Chibnall has major issues with character. Not character-creation itself per se, but the fact that often the plot is driven by external circumstances and not the choices and actions of the characters. Thinking about it, there’s not a single character-choice by the companions that has impacted any storyline in a major way this series. The companions really are just along for the ride.

These huge world-threatening ideas are all well and good, but unless we can emotionally connect to them through the characters involved, they are unfortunately going to have very little impact.

Apart from Grace, Chibnall deals with character and plot very separately and it doesn’t really make for good writing

Yaz choosing to hit the teleport for example, could have come from a growing distrust in following the Doctor’s orders, as a result of the Doctor’s outbursts earlier in the season. Instead it seemed to come from almost a Clara-esque place? I wasn’t complaning but there seemed to be little precedent for this in her character. I want to see Yaz grow to that place, rather than just see her there. 

Combine this with the recurring issue of too many characters at once (another major issue with Praxeus) 

I would have been very happy for example if Praxeus had only followed Gabriella as the extra companion, or Suki, or Adam and Jake. Instead the episode insisted on trying to deal with five new characters and as a result I wasn’t really invested in any of their stories. Gabriella wasn’t given time to grieve over her (girl)friend, Adam and Jake were mad at each other for what 20 minutes before they kissed and made up, Suki was a desperate alien scientist and then she was dead. The story could have maybe worked as a two-parter with more emphasis on the characters (think the time given to the teams in The Satan Pit, or The Waters of Mars)

Chibnall let your characters breathe 2k20

Would also like to see some darker Doctor, or mention of some other wacky shit that’s gone down, just so we can have some series continuity, but that’s more personal preference than anything

Discuss 

[ask-the-almighty-google]

Saw a long ask thread someone did where people submitted suggestions of what OP would do if they were a Doctor Who showrunner and I’m pissed off at S12 right now so I figure I’ll just write what I would do if I were a showrunner... feel free to reblog with your own honorable mentions and discuss in chat.

Constantly leave Classic Who Easter Eggs like P. Jackson does for Silmarillion fans in Lord of the Rings. Doesn’t detract anything for non-Classic viewers but makes the Classic fans feel appreciated rather than ignored.

BRING IN IRVING FREAKING BRAXIATEL.

Reference Eight’s Adventures a tiny bit more.

POSSIBLY BRING IN EIGHT WITH LUCIE FOR A MULTI-DOCTOR STORY COME ON GUYS. Plus, Lucie would be a very bad influence on the poor current companion(s) and I am 100% here for it.

Bring in more Classic and early New monsters. Not all the time, as new content is important, but if done right old content can be just as fulfilling.

Trauma would actually get addressed. Maybe not visibly, like a proper sit-down, but you’d see it in jumping at loud noises or previously not having a problem with tunnels and then afterwards not being able to go near one.

UNIT needs to come back. Definitely not be as huge a deal as it was, let’s not have it be the answer to every modern Earth problem, but just being there. Logos on fenced off areas, the Doctor casually saying they got a call to check something out as a favor. Only pull out the big entrances for stories that really, REALLY matter. Background UNIT please.

History where you get to learn something, like the show intended. It’s not just about being tourists of the past. It’s also educational.

The Doctor as a tourist and enjoying not being tour guide every once in a while, or actually getting to relax for at least five minutes once a season. Let the poor thing rest. Part of the Doctor’s character is that they love to explore, to see new things. You don’t automatically know everything when you go somewhere new. And generally...

Perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t do huge story arcs and not leave things resolved. Loose story arcs are fine, particularly the “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” types, but I had an IRL friend tell me they couldn’t keep up with the show because they got lost in the plot during the Moffat Era and were never able to recover. I want adventuring for the sake of adventuring, that doesn’t need a huge story arc.

Confirming more facts about Gallifreyan physiology by cherry-picking some things from EU so that it doesn’t wreck fandom perception too badly. Confirming things especially related to Respiratory Bypass (as it was never properly mentioned in New but was in Classic), telepathy - drawing especially from Classic and the RTD Moffat years to complete a full picture, and making the six Chapters of Gallifrey canon once again. The Doctor is a Prydonian. Get used to it.

No more resurrecting and destroying Gallifrey. If it’s there again when I take over the show, let it live. If I take over and it’s destroyed, let it die. No more waffling one way or the other.

The Doctor doesn’t have to be special to be the main character, just a Mad Lad in a Box with a complicated past. Companions don’t have to be special to be a main character either, but can become extraordinary if they need to. Making them relatable is what the audience loves about them.

What’s with the dramatic deaths and exits? The traumatic departures? Can we not have the school teachers who want to get back home, or the Uni student who took a “gap year” and now wants to go back to get their degree? We’ve had too many deaths recently and it’s getting old. Trauma, makes sense. With the Doctor’s lifestyle, a given. But just. Stop with the endless death exits. Please.

The Master will never be good, but can we talk about the immense progress Missy made towards being at least semi-SANE that may or may not have been erased without explanation in the Chibnall Era. Off the rails crazy can be sorta fun I guess, but you know what I miss? I miss the Pertwee-Delgado banter. The RIVALRY. Ainsley!Master may have been going a little Cookoo for Cocoa Puffs, but he was still more like an old school rival to the Doctor than a total enemy that needs to be stopped. I got that back with Missy, but it seems to have been erased again, and if the Master shows up - not as villain of the week or even the season ender, but just to make the occasion special in the series maybe a mix-season two-parter only, I’d like to be getting back to that banter.

Showing life inside the TARDIS. Lazy mornings and burning dinner and showing the ship caring for her passengers, especially for her pilot. Just tiny slice of life, like the episode starts with the Doctor trying to figure out what milk brand to by in the store and then something happens outside and they go “eh one of the companions will get the milk later” because they weren’t too invested in the first place.

Ending the episode with everyone remembering that it was the dreaded Laundry Day and or them actually getting to go see that concert they were interested in. Just. Tiny 1-2 minute slices of life as openers or closers to the episodes.

The Doctor having to go by their wits rather than just their screwdriver or psychic paper. Mix it in with the fancy tech as the solution. Keep things fresh.

Getting in, experiencing the local culture... and the Doctor discovering they don’t like it, but the companion loves it. Leading to the companion dragging the unenthusiastic Doctor around the fair or whatever in a role reversal every once in a while.

Letting the Doctor heal too. Trauma doesn’t wash over them like water. It seeps in. It sticks. And they bottle it up. And letting that out, maybe in an ashamed admission or a breakdown or whatever with an old, trusted friend, is not only healing but also part of a well-rounded character development. Let them grieve. Let them be hurt, and cry - even if all of this takes place in the privacy of their bedroom. Let them FEEL, and not be afraid to feel. Why is this such a hard concept for show-writers to grasp??

Tbh the most important thing to me is character development, proper reaction to trauma, and living, breathing characters who FEEL THINGS. Character-driven plot. Not everything has to be flash. The tiny, seemingly-insignificant moments are just as important if not more so as well.

[kendrixtermina]

Sigh. Chibnall.

Jodie Whittaker and demographic realism

So I want to make clear that I have no problems whatsoever with Jodie Whittaker’s performance - the character seamlessly kept walking across the screen, she has great energy, love the steampunk goggles. 

Honestly I’ve always believed that giving existing characters a demographic change is not really as revolutionary or helpful as ppl think; New characters and stories (esp. told by writers of those samedemographics) solve the problem much better. Keeping specificity is often better than losing it, and the character still has a background (from an “advanced” civilization that used to do dirty deeds and is still kind of uppity attitudes, a character who’s decided to be against that attitude but still needs to be knocked own from the occasional uppity moment; It makes sense for them to look like a british dude, and they have the freedom to go wherever problems like sexism and racism don’t exist so... ), and will be linked to its origin.  But at worst something that will look dated in a few years like the 80s outfits, the show’s done dated and crowdpleasing before; There’s no hard reason not to do it and I expected no quality dip. 

It certainly worked as as attention grab, the premiere drew a lot of attention but that only lasted as long as it took for the reviews to go sour. But one of the main good things its proponents said could come of it was to help the lack of female anti heroes. So far she really didn’t get to anti hero much; It’s not Whittaker, it’s the scripts. 

I want to make this clear: Varied demograpics are good; 

This is why I kind of hate the term “diversity” is one of those vague euphemisms if you mean “demographic representation”, “social equity” or “demographic realism” just say that. 

In a way this is a good thing, it used to be only the best boldest writers who could get away, noadays it has become acceptable to have varied casts. And that’s how it should be artshouldn’t have to have to pass some arbitrary quality standard to simply reflect reality. But as the rebootverse and star trek discovery should’ve proved realistic demographics can’t replace good writing. Sometimes lack of realistic demographis is associated with bad writing because both come from play-it-safe more-of-the-same consummerism focussed sameyness, often someone who goes against the formulas has a solid vision which makes them good, and focussing on ignored topics and perspectives can yield new ideas (consider stuff like Wonder Woman, Get Out, Black Panther... which were just good, novel movies) but you could have a super interesting memorable story where everyone is a medieval european monk, but the characters are differentiated by personality, attitude, beliefs, or something where the cast ticks all sort of all demographic boxes but the characters are 1D and the story trite and predictable

On the one hand you get those gamergate adjacent fanboys who make “diversity” and “good writing” out to be enimical opposites and then you have the purists/antis who treat any critique of writing to be founded in having something against realistic demographics. You need both! 

Series 11

There were good things about it: An attempt at leastto do more of your classic thought provoking space operas or going back to the shows’ pulp fiction roots, covering some historic periods/topics other than the classic historical fiction tropes (they got a pakistani writer, had Yaz and Ryan discuss social topics among themselves etc.), the emotional story centered around this family coping with a loss, having Ryan sort of be the “main” companion and the one the rest of the team is protective of

But overall the reason I didn’t rush to watch s12 as soon as it came out is that it was a bit... bland. The team interacted mostly with each other; The Doctor had more charge with one shot characters like King James or the Solitract than she really did with the companions. Graham was such a missed opportunity. Remember how everyone loved the dynamic with Wilfred? No attempt to strike a bond over how they’re the older party members, or the professional xenophile trying to nudge the bilbo baggins like reluctant hero? We’re told the Doctor really likes Yaz, and I believe it cause she always liked people like that, but are we shown?

For all that Moffat and RTD were very different writers with different strenghts and weaknesses, both were very character-driven writers, and that was really missing here a bit. 

Some ppl said they didn’t give Yaz enough screentime or personality - but the thing is, they did try. They just failed. They let her make little remarks here and there about her homelife, they just never really assembled into a whole beyond buzzwords and inspirational platitudes and the Standard Companion Traits. I didn’t get a read on what she’s about or who she’s like until the pakisan episode where she unlike Barbara, Donna etc. immediately accepted that the past can’t be changed. Ah, I finally thought, she’s a very responsible dutiful person.

Everything lacks edges and defining moments. 

So far, I didn’t sweat it. I though, ok, not everything can be the high-concept character driven spec fic epic type of story that is my personal favorite. Every time there was some addition to the mythos in any way someone cried ruined forever. When the time lords first appeared. When the time war was introduced. 

The classics too were lower on the character driven ness; Still good pulp fiction content. (imho the character concepts themselves were often pretty good, just not used to the fullest and some of the actresses were treated crappy backstage)

I thought “okey, it wouldn’t be good to break with the tradition of making the sussequent incarnations contrasting”

I did think that there was much liberty with the additions which the others did do only towards the end when it feltmore earned, but, the addition of say, sisters, isn’t too disruptive

Series 12 and the Timeless Child Nonsense

The frustrating thing about this is that it COULD have been good. 

The Master teaming up with the cybermen to try and take over Gallifrey is precisely the sort of story the classics would’ve done. 

“Your society is founded on a shady secret and exploitation of the innocent” is a good plot twist especially in these times. The Master finding that secret and using it to his advantage - also very him. 

Imagine what it could have been like if it had been approached from the perspective of someone who, for all that they were a rebel, still sort of profited from being part of that society, someone who wants to take responsibility for that past and would maybe have to make some tough choice to let the exploitation victim go because it’s right even if it has cosequences for themselves and their civilization. 

but then you ruin that by immediately taking the protagonist out of that society. They and they alone are the victim. 

like this plot could have been good except for the twist that the Doctor and the timeless child are the same. 

Not connecting it to existing lore about the earlier war game days, everything with Omega and Rassilon, that bit about the Time Lord becoming what they were through exposure to the untempered schism... that might be forgiven. Even if it does stretch the suspension of disbelief that every single piece of sci fi scanning equipment in the show didn’t pick anything up; Not to mention that it destroys the stake on every heroic sacrifice or death prophecy plot, every time a companion or oneshot character took the bullet, the whole “out of regens” plot...

This is not me being mad about things being added or changed, but this being done in such a way that undermines the philosophy, the whole flavor... 

Yes, the MC is mysterious, the 7th Doctor arcs did a lot with this etc. but doesn’t spelling something out this clear not deplete rather than add to that? It#s a definite answer even if the final origin isn’t clear. 

But they’re so much else.

The trickster hero accomplishing great deeds with planning, guile, improvisation and duct tape, the implicit value that ressourcefulness trumps raw power. 

The rebel, different because they chose to be or made themselves to be such through their adventures, sticking to their own values in a close-minded society - who embodies & encourages thinking for yourself in every situation and universal plot, who battles enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen that represent comformity

Yeah they have many names yeah they take out gods... but all this was the result of their actions & path in pursuit of knowledge, and also, as Moffat once stated, the funny part is that behind all the fearsome reputation is wit and duct tape. 

The fish in a small pond who started out a misfit, failed their tardis driving exam... etc. and often made a point that they didn’t want immortality or endless godlike power. That’s meaningless if they had it to begin with. 

The explorer who wanted to see more than their corner of the world. 

The ANTI HERO that’s made alltogether too tragic here, too absolved from their uppity civilization

All that is wiped away if they were this special creature to begin with.

Where WAS the philosophy, rly? The big humanist speeches that made me love the show. 

Going Forward

So I think - I HOPE - that this in particular will be treated like the “half human” thing from the TV movie or the now josses additional origin stories from the audios, or be handwaved under the “you cant get it wrong cause everything is in flux” carpet

It’s the Master effing with her to pay her back for the half broken chameleon arch thing. 

It’s possible the Child actually existed, long dead or trapped somewhere - again, dirty mystery at the bottom of a stck-up society is a good twist. but this shouldn’t be more than another maybe in the multiple choice past not a definite answer. 

Also, i hate this line of thought but I can’t stave it off: Why is is now that the MC looks female that we get this vulnerable, passively victimized tomato surprise rather than something with an ugly but definite choice in it. 

I will probably ignore it - parts of me resents this cause “your civilization is based on a lie” could be such a good plot twist (then again the existing twists to that end from the classics and End of Time do enough rly) but if i have to choose between that and the basic meaning of the character....

[mw-draws]

Hey just got a question cause I've been really concerned for a while but why do you think s12 ratings been so low? I'm very scared BBC might just say "fuck it, this isn't working" and pull the plug on Jodie which would make me hella sad. Think it's because of the time of year? Early January + waiting for long time? Do you think she can pull up with the cyber men episodes and other ambitious ideas they still got in store? I don't want 13 to go if she's gon be replaced again by a man :c

honestly, I have no idea and it's scaring me as well. 3 episodes in and it's scraping by 5 million (1 week consolidated figures), this is what it was like at the end of series 10 (which in itself is an absolute crime). I mean, nowadays, overnight ratings don't matter too much, but seeing that the show is gaining just about a million more viewers in a week is concerning to me as well. I hate seeing that already, series 12 is gonna be the lowest rated series of all who basically and it doesn't deserve that at all. I don't think it's just the fact that the Doctor is a woman, (here we go), I'm placing it on chibnall.

I understand what chibnall is trying to do, honestly. have the fun, non deadly adventures in her first series, get to know the characters and then we get into the nitty gritty, but I dunno why, but his writing just hasn't been strong. he's good with broadchurch and torchwood, but his episodes in series 11 have been the weakest eps. I think, to a lot of people, it just ain't Who anymore and that saddens me. Chibnall should have done better with series 11. I really liked series 11, but it should have been stronger. by half way through the series, it had lost half its viewers, so loads of people tuning in have missed the best episodes of series 11. I think a tonal mix of high stakes and low stakes would have helped series 11 and series 12.

I also think it's down to advertisement. series 11's advertisement? Great. amazing! had series 11 ads popping up on YouTube, billboards, SDCC, NYCC, Build, loads of interviews, lots of hype. but series 12? I have only seen one (1) series 12 advert live on TV and that was for Orphan 55. yeah, I don't watch TV a lot, but I've never seen an ad for the whole of series 12 on TV. with series 11, I saw loads of ads on TV. I remember seeing an advert for The Ghost Monument on TV and I remember seeing loads of adverts for series 11 as a whole. they also had a teaser in the middle of a football game (I think it was in the middle of the world Cup), so it obviously got loads of attention.

also, another thing, the 'next time' trailers for series 12. they're shit. plain and simple. they are shit. literally 15 seconds at the very end of an episode and then we wait like, a day to get a longer one that's like 20 seconds. the next time trailers used to be really long, like at least 45 seconds to a minute long. I think they used to play just before the end credits started so that you don't miss what's gonna happen next, now, they're at the very, very end of the episode, by then, people will have switched over to other channels, or just switched off their TV. I just wish they would prioritise advertising, that's how you get people's attention, y'know? yeah, we had the Judoon in Victoria Station, but that's honestly been the biggest thing. it's just, there's something missing

honestly, series 12 is so good and doesn't deserve these ratings. series 10 didn't deserve the ratings that it got and apart from series 4, the best series are getting paid absolute dust and its just not fair.

will they go back to a man? I don't know, I personally don't give a fuck if the doctor is a man or a woman, at the end of the day, they're still the Doctor. it's just the horrendous bigotry from some of the fans, which is weird, as they are fans of,,, Doctor Who.

also, I think it's also the Sunday slots. I'm not a fan of the Sunday slots. I'm always tired afterwards and I've got school the next day, so the euphoria of knowing Doctor Who is on only lasts for a short while. Saturdays work a lot better imo, it's prime time for Doctor Who and why Chibnall moved it to Sundays, ill never know. I have no idea why he done it and why he thought it was a good idea. People would have less time on a Monday to catch up, rather say than a Sunday. I think that's the biggest thing, Sunday is really not great. for 54 years, Doctor Who had been on Saturday's and this sudden change to Sunday just makes no sense at all.

what I'll say here, anon, is that I don't think you should worry too much. yes, it's worrying, I don't like how the viewing figures have dropped from last series. maybe the year long wait did have something to do with this, but they should have advertised it better. overnights don't matter like they used to. back in like, 2008, we weren't able to record shows and it would only be on iPlayer for a short amount of time. People nowadays watch TV differently. People would watch it on catch up, they'd watch it later with friends, or they'd even wait until the whole thing is out to watch it. 28 day consolidated viewing figures are the ones that matter most, I'm not sure what it's been for Spyfall yet, I think we'll find that out tomorrow, but don't lose hope. my dad keeps saying that the BBC care too much about Doctor Who, just to axe it like that, they definitely won't just cancel it straight out.

[the-desolated-quill]

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds blog - Episode 1

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I was very much looking forward to the BBC’s adaptation of the H.G. Wells sci-fi classic. How could I not? It’s the definitive alien invasion story that jump-started an entire genre of science fiction  Not to mention this is the first adaptation made by a British film company and actually set in the time period it was written. I was very excited. Nothing could possibly dampen my spirits... until I learned who was writing it.

Peter Harness is a writer I’ve been less than kind to in the past. For those who don’t know, he wrote some of the worst episodes of Doctor Who. Remember that stupid story about the moon being an egg? Yeah, that was him. He also has a penchant for writing painfully forced and thinly veiled allegories with all the grace and subtlety of a ballet dancing rhino in a glow in the dark tutu. Kill The Moon, for example, was a pro life metaphor that portrayed the other side as being irrational baby killers, and his Zygon two parter was about Muslim immigration and integration, with the slimy repulsive Zygons being used as stand-ins for Muslims and non-white immigrants.

Harness’ ability to write allegorical stories about sensitive topics is... under-developed, to say the least. So naturally he’s the perfect candidate to adapt one of the most beloved sci-fi stories ever written. I mean, why not? The BBC have already ruined Sherlock Holmes, courtesy of Steven Moffat. Why stop there?

In all seriousness, while I wasn’t excited about the prospect of Harness getting his grubby mitts on War Of The Worlds, part of me hoped that maybe he could pull something out of the bag. You may recall I held a very similar negative view toward Chris Chibnall, and his first series as showrunner of Doctor Who was an extremely pleasant surprise. Maybe Harness could achieve his own metamorphosis.

He doesn’t.

The first episode of War Of The Worlds was fucking tedious to sit through. It actually looked quite promising initially. We get some nice moody shots of the surface of Mars as Eleanor Tomlinson recites the famous opening lines of the book. But then just after the opening titles, it all goes downhill.

I was sceptical when it was announced that this would be a three parter because that just seemed too much. A feature length film you could do. Maybe a two parter, at a push. But three episodes? Each an hour long? That’s going to require a lot of padding, and that’s exactly what Episode 1 is. We see the Martian cylinders launch from the planet at the beginning of the episode and it’s not until the forty minute mark where we get our first proper glimpse of the Tripods or the heat rays. So what do we get in the mean time? Mostly pointless shit.

The original War Of The Worlds book isn’t exactly remembered for its characterisation. Outside of the astronomer Ogilvy, none of the characters even have names, but to be fair to Wells, the characters themselves weren’t really the driving force of the narrative. The Martians were. The narrator, a journalist, was merely there to relay and facilitate the plot, giving us a first hand account of the subjugation of Earth. Fine for a book, but somewhat harder to get away with in a film or TV series, which is why most don’t even try. Every single adaptation of War Of The Worlds attempts to expand on the central characters to varying degrees of success, and the BBC version is no exception. But where Harness really miscalculates is in anticipating how much the audience is going to care about the characters, to which the answer is ‘not that much.’ We don’t want them to die obviously, but we’re not so interested in who they are or where they come from because they’re not the main focus. The Martians are. So to have a significant chunk of the episode focusing on their day to day lives is quite baffling. Not to mention unbelievably boring.

George, played by Rafe Spall, is living out of wedlock with Amy, played by Eleanor Tomlinson, which causes their neighbours’ tongues to clack and net curtains to twitch. The only person supporting their union is Ogilvy, played by Robert Carlysle, which is how they learn about the mysterious goings on the surface of Mars. This is all established in the first five minutes, but as I said, the Martians don’t properly show up until the forty minute mark. Until then we’re subjected to painfully forced and tediously dull ‘right on’ posturing and irrelevant social commentary that adds nothing to the core narrative.

Here’s the thing. I’ve got nothing against the idea of expanding the characters. I definitely have no problem with giving the narrator’s wife from the book more development and screen time. In fact I’m all in favour of it. What I do have a problem with, however, is when that expansion and development comes at the expense of the plot.

A man and a woman shacked up together in defiance of society is all well and good, but what does any of this have to do with War Of The Worlds? It’s not even as if Harness tries to connect this back to the story’s main themes of imperialism and colonialism. It’s mentioned that Amy was born and raised in India. Maybe if she was an Indian woman, it could have been more thematically relevant, but no. Once again we have a period drama with no people of colour because, as we all know, non-white people weren’t invented until 1962. Also, while I get that society at the time was very strict, I’m not entirely convinced George and Amy’s relationship would have been that scandalous to the point where it would have affected his career as a journalist. That just seems like a step too far and is merely there to add some artificial tension... in a story about Martians invading the Earth.

In the end it all comes down to this. Why the fuck should I care? What’s the bloody point of this? Yes it expands the characters, but it doesn’t contribute anything to the narrative. It just wastes time. Again, I must stress, we don’t get our first Martian until forty minutes into an hour long episode. Previous adaptations never felt the need to bore the audience to death with pointless shit because they knew what audiences came to see. Martians blowing shit up. Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War Of The Worlds from 2005 didn’t piss about giving us needless exposition about Tom Cruise and his family. We’re given the basic info about the characters and their relationships within the first ten minutes before the Tripods emerge and the action gets going. The BBC version, in contrast, is just painfully slow, dictating every tiny thing about these characters even when it’s not relevant to the plot.

And the thing is, once we actually get to the bits from the actual book (you know? The bits people actually want to see?), it’s actually pretty good. The Tripod looks incredible, as was the scene in Horsell Common where we saw people getting killed by the heat ray. Unfortunately we have to slog through all this other crap before we can get to the good stuff.

Eleanor Tomlinson probably gives the strongest performance as Amy. It’s just a pity the character is so utterly uninteresting. Like I said, I’ve got nothing against giving her a bigger role than she had in the book, but it feels like Harness is more interested in showing off his feminist credentials than actually telling a story or creating a believable or likeable character. Her being an assistant to Ogilvy I think is a great idea, but it soon becomes clear that this was only done so other male scientists could comment on how unusual it is to have a woman digging up a crashed cylinder, which is kind of ridiculous because I’m pretty sure female scientists did exist back then and you don’t exactly need a penis to use a fucking shovel. Then things turn really stupid when George’s brother, played by Rupert Graves, starts blaming her for the Martian invasion, saying that everything was going fine until she came along. Exploring 19th century sexism is one thing, but this is just daft. There’s no interest in actually exploring the root causes of sexism back then. Instead Harness seems content with portraying men as being the equivalent of cartoon caricatures foaming at the mouth.

George, meanwhile, goes from being a fairly boring character to a downright hateful one when it’s revealed that he and Amy aren’t just living out of wedlock, but that he cheated on his missus because she was infertile. So not only do I not care about him, I now straight up want him to die because what the actual fuck?! And this is not helped by Rafe Spall’s incredibly wooden performance. Seriously, I’ve seen corpses with more life in them. When the Tripod first emerges, we see him stare at it in what I assume was supposed to be shock, but instead he just looked gormless. It’s honest to God one of the worst performances I think I’ve ever seen. There’s no emotional range to him whatsoever. He just blunders around wearing a confused frown on his face. It’s as if he had just wandered onto the set by mistake.

The biggest problem with this first episode is that Harness is focusing on all the wrong areas. A large segment is dedicated to George investigating the Dogger Bank incident, which seems to be an attempt at making a parallel between the UK’s tenuous relationship with Russia then and now. What this has to do with War Of The Worlds, I don’t know. There’s so far been no attempt at exploring the themes of the source material as we’re too busy with this shitty romance. There’s even a moment where we see the characters dig up the cylinder and take a photo only for the same exact scene to happen five minutes later. I mean for fuck sake!

And then there’s the pointless plot twists. First we get the cliched pregnancy reveal, then it’s revealed that the scenes we thought were on Mars turned out to actually be a post apocalyptic Earth with Amy and a seven year old kid who is presumably her son. Wait, how long has this fucking invasion been going on for?! It only lasted a couple of weeks in the book! What happened? Did the Martians get vaccinated? This just highlights to me how inept Harness is as a writer. He can’t just do a straight adaptation of War Of The Worlds. He has to engineer these pointless and utterly idiotic cliffhangers to get people to keep watching because the story and characters clearly aren’t doing that.

If I wasn’t committed to reviewing this mini-series, I honestly wouldn’t watch the rest of this. This first episode is legitimately terrible. Boring, poorly thought out and utterly, utterly clueless. Just like everything else Peter Harness has ever written. I don’t understand why he was chosen to adapt War Of The Worlds and I don’t understand why he chose to adapt it in this way. Why so much focus on pointless exposition? Why over-complicate the lives of the main characters? Why can’t they just be a normal married couple living a life of privilege until the Martians come and trample all over it? It makes no sense! Some could defend this saying it was building tension until the Martians emerged, but there’s a significant difference between making an audience nervously anticipate the Tripods arrival and making them wait impatiently for something, anything, interesting to happen.

[whos-satan-now]

My Problem With S11&12 So Far

Okay so I don't write on here much but my parents are sick of hearing me rant and my best friend is yet to watch the latest episodes (Get to it Tia) so here I am. 

UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT (You might not like what I have to say - Please please convince me otherwise RESPECTFULLY in the comments or in dms) 

Okay, so my problem with Jodie Whittaker's stint as the doctor so far is layered and mostly uninvolved with Jodie herself. Personally, I think that when the opportunity arises Jodie can act and do so well - she just doesn't get the chance within this particular script. If you ask me, her doctor would (sadly) go down as the most unmemorable new who doctor if not for the fact that she was the first female to take the role. 

Now as I said I don't think that this is majorly her fault. The script restricts this doctor to largely a functionality role to the plot. Any emotion she displays is largely carried by dialogue and much of her own thoughts, feelings and reasons for what she does what she does is overlooked as an expected knowledge of doctor who. She has not been developed as separate from the past doctors almost at all and unfortunately, it shows. Horrifyingly it has made me not care about her that much nor feel the wonder that I feel around other doctors. 

Now I’m not saying its all bad, I loved her in Skyfall part 1, it was the first time that I have really started to feel any connection to her especially with the masters reveal. But it came with a cost as I was so disappointed with the New Years Special. Her reaction to the Dalek was almost non-existent. She showed almost no emotion other than straight-up saying that she was afraid of it before promptly forgetting about even that. Dalek episodes have always been used (especially in New Who after the destruction of Gallifrey) as an opportunity to challenge the doctor and their morality. They terrify the doctor not because of the damage they could inflict but because they are a reflection on the doctor at his/her worst. My point is that this episode was a clear opportunity to establish the doctor as her own. To challenge her and for her to overcome or not. This was just blatantly not the case in this episode and left me bored and unfulfilled. 

Now I don't think that my disconnect to s11 & 12 is on the doctor alone, it has to do with the companions. Now in vague terms, I like all the companions. I do. I have no major personality issues with them they seem like the kind of people I would want to get to know some more. But that's the issue in itself. I don't know these characters hardly at all and its been a season already. In the 12 episodes that I have watched of them, I feel almost zero connection to them or the doctor. When compared to Donna Nobel who was in for 14 episodes but remains one of my favourite (if not my favourite) companion of all time. 

However once again I don’t think its the actor's fault, I think it was simply doomed from the start. That many new characters in the TARDIS and a new doctor all at the same time means that none of the characters has the opportunity to be developed to the point they need to be. Yas has absolutely no character in most of the episodes past squeezed in functionality which I am always disappointed with. The only character who I feel at all connected to is Graham because he gets all the best lines and because of his relationship with Ryan (which is the only relationship that has been built on at all but I'll get to that). Graham has at least some of his own personality and struggle. While I also sympathise to a degree with Ryan because of his struggles his character is still majorly shafted for most of the show so I never get to see any significant personality or character development more than his relationship with Graham. And even then it is reduced to only a few scenes. 

Overall the relationships between the characters feel almost non-existant, once again because of the number of main characters (and also because of the largely plot focused episodes but I won't get into that right now). They have been travelling together for quite some time now but the doctor still feels like their leader with them following behind like little puppy dogs. They never challenge her or feel like her equal like my favourite characters always did. Because in the past while the characters always knew less than the doctor, they kept him human and challenged him when he stepped out of line (one of my favourite examples of this probably being ‘the beast below’ because say what you will about 11 and Amy but that episode was the perfect way to set up her character and the doctors relationship past imaginary friend) but now they just function as more plot points to follow the doctor around until eventually the problem is solved. You never really get to see them solving anything without the doctor because they are very rarely alone or need to problem solve at all. 

Further, the relationships between the characters have been completely forfeited. Yas seems to have very little connection to any of them in the TARDIS except for occasionally the Doctor, Graham and Ryan are always focused on each other and the doctor is focused on the plot. It's sad but every time an episode ends and a new one begins it feels like just that. I never get the feeling that there are shared offscreen developments or experiences, they simply stop until they get a message for another issue for them to solve. The relationships, therefore, are entirely undeveloped on and off-screen and thus the season is missing what interested me about Doctor who in the first place. 

The fix to this issue was a simple one which is sadly too late to do so.  This was to simply have patience. Introduce the characters slowly, or even all at the one time but maybe Ryan and Graham need a little time after Grace’s death before they decided to go with the doctor so that Yas and the doctor got the chance to be established as characters and develop a relationship before Ryan and Graham are added back into the mix. This is something that was done brilliantly by 9, 10 and early 11. 9 with rose, then jack. 10 with stolen earth/ journeys end (for all its major plot floors) still being one of my favourite episodes simply because I loved to see all these characters meet and get along. And by the patience of slowly introducing River and Rory after Amy. Honestly, I think the solution to this problem might simply to be to leave a few characters at home or even have a solo doctor episode to establish the characters separate from each other and then focus on building the relationships between them. Just whatever they do needs to be done fast before I lose one of my favourite series.

Finally, Chris Chibnall and the writers are the ones I think who are to blame for my lack of love for the latest seasons. I was hoping so so much that I would love it and I hope that Skyfall is a gateway onto greener pastures but unfortunately at the moment, the fact remains that there is a blatant lack of character and development with these characters in season 11 and 12 so far and I really hope that they can move past that. 

[scifinal]

DW s12e10: It's Quite Unfortunate That This Child Keeps On Regenerating

It's only fitting that the first post on a blog called "SciFinal" should be about a season finale.

Not that fitting is the fact that in said post I'm going to begin where it all started for me.

Part One: How I Even Got into This Mess of a Show in the First Place

While I call myself a huge Doctor Who fan, even a – *gasp* – Whovian, I must admit I am not as familiar with the franchise as I would like to be; I've seen the new show, I've seen Torchwood (though, admittedly, I had to force myself to finish the fourth season – but that's a story for another day), I've listened to a handful of audio dramas (including Kaldor City, which I consider to be canon for both DW and Blake's 7) – mostly Torchwood audio dramas, but who cares, – I've read a couple of comics, I've got a novel or two somewhere on my bookshelf, I've seen the first couple of seasons of the classic show, but that's about it. I can't say I grew up with it – it wasn't on TV when I was a kid, there isn't an official Ukrainian dub, et cetera, et cetera. I first heard about it when I was about thirteen, when my classmate did a project about something they liked – and was pretty dismissive of my peers' hobbies at the time, believing myself to be somewhat above them, so I didn't pay much attention.

Then somebody finally pressured me into watching it (I believe I was fifteen or something back then) and I loved it. The first two episodes of the first season, I mean. I watched those, texted my friend something like "consider me a Whovian now!" and abandoned the show completely only to return to it maybe several years later.

I loved it. This time, for real.

Doctor Who has been with me ever since that time, it has a big soft spot reserved for each and every Doctor ever in my heart, and for each and every companion. I know full well it's cheesy, and it's stupid, and it's technobabble-y, and it's glorious in all of its cheesy technobabble-y stupidity.

And I hate this finale.

Part Two: Doctor, Why

I hate this finale – because I hate Chris Chibnall. Mind you, not the gentleman himself (I don't even know what he looks like, and I can't be bothered to Google), I hate what he did to Doctor Who.

Now, when it was revealed that the would replace Steven Moffat I felt... nothing. What did you expect? I had no idea who the man was. I know now he's made Broadchurch, and I know he wrote a bunch of stuff for Torchwood back in the day, including Cyberwoman. I had to drop Broadchurch because of how well-handled the depressing atmosphere was, and I love the flawed, dumb, sexy-cyber-bikinied, almost-fifteen-minutes-of-Ianto's-whining-including (I know because some time ago I literally cut almost every single moment of Gareth David-Lloyd whimpering, moaning, groaning, screaming, and mugging at the camera out of the episode and made those bits and pieces into a beautiful clip show called "I HATE THIS" to explain exactly why his face was and still is so punchable) mindless fun that is Cyberwoman (this is also one of the two episodes in which they actually do something fun with the pterodactyl living inside Torchwood's underground base). The latter also led to the creation of one amazing in how it develops Ianto's character audio drama entitled "Broken". I love Broken. I am now forcing you to look at its cover because of how much I love it.

Here we go. Now, back to the point of me rambling pointlessly

In his video "Sherlock Is Garbage, and Here's Why", a well-known YouTuber hbomberguy pointed out how Steven Moffat's problem is that he is more than capable of writing a good one-off episodes, but ultimately fails at managing multiple complex, overarching stories, as visible when you look at the difference between Moffat's individual episodes and his run on the show.

Now, I believe that Chris Chibnall suffers from the same affliction: he's a good screenwriter but a terrible, terrible showrunner. Sure, he's made Broadchurch, but Broadchurch, in its essence, was a complete singular story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There were no bigger, incomplete arcs expanding at the expense of other episodes, and the show did exactly what it was originally designed to do: it told an uninterrupted story.

Here comes Chris Chibnall's run on Doctor Who.

Now, while Steven Moffat was ultimately not very good at managing overarching stories, he tried to do so nonetheless, and the fans seemed to like his attempts. And while I can't be sure as to whether it was Chris' original vision for the show or he and his co-writers were merely trying to emulate Moffat, he attempted the same. A friend of mine has even pointed out how, to her, it was painfully obvious how the writers of the finale were desperately trying to copy Moffat's style (to give you some context, she grasped it from a 30-second clip of the CyberMasters' reveal, and that clip basically consisted of me filming my laptop's screen and laughing at their design, making the video wobbly and the audio distorted). At the time of writing this post this friend hasn't seen a single episode of Chibnall's era and, as far as I know, has no wish to do so – mainly because of two reasons that both have something to do with the finale:

Somebody's already spoiled it for her, so who cares;

I ranted to her about how shit this finale is and now she hates everything about Chibnall era.

I am very sorry for the latter, since I genuinely believe there are some nice episodes in these seasons, and I especially like the "historical" ones, they really are quite a lot of fun, I like Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison fighting badly CG-ed alien scorpions, I love Lord Byron and Mary Shelley running around a haunted house trying to escape from a Cyberman (even though it's all too similar to the Agatha Christie episode from Russel T Davies' run), I adore that episode about Rosa P–– oh, wait, no, that one was crap and ripped off Blake's 7... Anyway, I love Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, I am a big fan of Graham, I like Ryan just fine, and I can put up with Yaz, even though it's been two seasons and I've still got no idea what's her personality supposed to be, and I absolutely love the new Master (he reminds me of a cute little pug with a big Tommy gun). There is plenty of good stuff in these two seasons, they are lots of fun to watch, but this finale... Oh god, this finale.

Part Three: We Had All of Time and Space at Our Fingertips and We Ended Up with This

We are getting to the point of this whole thing. I would love to begin with the obvious, the twist, but there's so much wrong with this who-cares-how-many-parter than this one big thing.

It is inept. It is impotent. It is incompetent. It is bad at almost everything except its okay camera work, somewhat good (for a British TV show, I mean) effects, and its really solid performances.

Its editing is tone-deaf to the extreme. There is a moment in the final episode where Ko Sharmas asks who will be the first to cross the Boundary and step into the unknown, and immediately it cuts to Yaz walking towards it, all fast and silent. I would love to show you a clip of it, but I don't have one and I can't force myself to download the episode and sit through this shitshow again just to present you with a ten-second clip. Nonetheless, that part is not edited like a dramatic moment. You edit comedies this way. Bad comedies. Bad editors edit bad comedies this way.

Its plot is incoherent. There are several plot threads in this finale, and they're managed in a way that doesn't make the viewer care about all of them at the same time, rather the viewer goes "oh, I've completely forgotten this was happening" and then, before they can even begin to care, the show cuts to something else. It's all over the place and oh so annoying.

The plot armour is painfully obvious despite every attempt to disguise it. There wasn't a single, solitary second when I believed the Doctor was really going to sacrifice herself and, lo and behold, here comes the old guy ex machina to do it for her. The only questions I was asking at that moment were "How are the writers going to prevent the Doctor's death now that they've seemingly created themselves a way to go on forever?" and "How can Whittaker care so much about her performance in this scene she's literally almost crying?". I wholeheartedly related to the Master asking "So why are we still here?" and shout–– hiss–– mumbl–– whatever-ing "Come on, come on, come on!" – at that point I've suffered through at least forty-five minutes of utter nonsense, people going preachy, religious Cybermen with Dalek motivations, that absolutely ludicrous scene in the previous episode when the show was trying its worst to make me perceive autonomous flying Cyber-heads with laser eyes as a serious threat, a shit twist and... Oh.

I've got to finally touch on the shit twist, haven't I?

It doesn't make sense. No, I mean it. I guess it makes sense from the show's writers' standpoint to retcon everything in a way that would allow them to go on forever without having to come up with a way to circumvent limited regenerations, yes. And I won't be touching upon all the lore people say this twist has ruined. No. It doesn't make sense as it is.

The twist is revealed to us by a madman that claims to have hacked into a database, claims to possess control over the Doctor's mind, and gives the Doctor and the audience no actual solid proof that the Timeless Child is, indeed, the Doctor. We have Ruth, sure, and she's nice enough (damn, I want that vest), and she's a Timelord that happens to own a TARDIS that looks like a blue police telephone box, and she calls herself the Doctor. Here's Ruth:

I really like Ruth. She also makes no sense from the show's timeline standpoint, since the Doctor's Type 40 TARDIS only got stuck looking like a police box in 1963, so there's no reason for the Doctor to not remember being her.

We also know that the Judoon have identified Ruth as "the Fugitive"... except in one of their previous appearances in the show they weren't able to identify their targets exactly and thus were seeking out non-humans. There is a possibility that they were only looking for a Time Lord on Earth.

You know what? It's possible that Ruth is actually the Master messing with the Doctor. I have just as much proof of this as I have of the fact that the Doctor is some kind of an endlessly regenerating superbeing.

But this is not the most maddening thing here. I loathe it, but I don't loathe the twist itself: I loathe its lifelessness, I loathe how empty, how unemotional, almost robotic it feels. When somebody'd spoiled the finale for me, I got angry, and I started asking questions, and when later I saw the actual thing...

This gif. I can't even explain how accurate it is. I stood there, in the middle of my kitchen, episode paused, holding a cup of cold tea and desperately looking around as if in my surroundings I could somehow find that emotional reaction that this show failed to evoke. I was ready to burst into tears of how empty it felt, and how empty I felt, and how the same show that has Christopher Eccleston go from literally foaming at the mouth with pure hatred to shocked silence in a matter of second because of one sentence that you, a viewer, can't help but be astonished by failed to make me feel the tiniest speck of literally any emotion. And slowly, I felt that vast void in my chest fill with sheer, pure, flaming hatred for the person who made me feel nothing, for the story that left me not bored – but empty.

And the next moment, in its own unique way of being absolutely tone-deaf, the show introduces the CyberMasters, looking ridiculous, being asinine in concept, making me burst into laughter with their dumb design. Wow.

So.

Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who is no longer a show. Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who isn't even, as somebody on Stardust said, a fan fiction. It's a rollercoaster. A lackluster rollercoaster that lifts you from the vast caverns of frozen hell, devoid of any life whatsoever, soulless and abandoned, to the heavenly torture of being so bad, so utterly awful and ridiculous, that you can't help but laugh as you watch something you used to love be distorted and deformed to the point where you can't recognise it anymore nor really care. This is what Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who has become. And I'm going to continue my ride on that grotesque rollercoaster. I'm going to pirate that ride and get on it again. Because I'm a masochist. Because I want to feel something, even if it's hatred towards those that make me feel nothing.

Because some time ago my fifteen-year-old self watched the first season and learned a lesson that I hold dear after all these years – that I can't abandon hope, and that someday, somehow, things are going to get better. That the future is being written right now. That the future can change.

[purest-love-deepest-pain]

aight so I have a lot of (mostly non-positive) thoughts on the new episodes of Doctor Who so lemme rant for a bit because I’ve been wanting to do this for ages.

(if you enjoyed the new episodes and liked the storyline/execution/whatever or you just don’t want to get into The Discourse TM, I wouldn’t recommend reading this post, but do what you want):

This rant is mostly for myself to rant a bit, but also to see if anyone else feels the same way, which, is kind of the point of Tumblr anyway but akshjajsa 

this isn’t an attack on Jodie as the Doctor or a “Chibnall ruined Doctor Who!!!!1″ type of post, but a measured critique on the aspects of the premiere of Series 12 that I really didn’t like.

This is only discourse on Spyfall Part 1 and Part 2, as I haven’t watched Orphan 55 yet.

Here we go.

First things first, the things I actually did like:

I actually only watched a few episodes of Series 11, so I’d just like to note I love Team TARDIS with my whole ass heart ahsjahsja they are great companions and have a great dynamic

I liked the concept of the mission they had to deal with it, even if I didn’t like the execution

Sasha Dhawan was EXCELLENT in this. The way his demeanor changes completely when he stops pretending to be O, his portrayal of the Master, everything about him here was great

The plot twist scene was great. The Doctor’s reaction, the Master’s child-like attitude and excitement, Team Tardis being confused af, it was really good from start to finish and Jodie and Sasha’s acting truly made it click. 

Jodie was also really excellent here btw. The way she portrayed the Doctor’s feeling of being frozen during the reveal scene perfectly, her finally getting to show off the Doctor’s darkness, her dynamics with the Master, her seeing Gallifrey in shambles, etc. She killed it

Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan were GREAT additions and I kinda wish they were full-time companions lmao. Also I ship Thirteen and Ada a lot tbh

The whole scene with the back-and-forth between the Doctor’s message and Graham and Graham landing the plane was hilarious. Graham used to be my least favorite new companion but I think he’s one of my faves now

Part 2 was overall much more fun than Part 1, and the characters were more entertaining as well

I mentioned this before when talking about Jodie’s acting, but seeing Thirteen finally go dark is great. I’m excited to see where this is heading towards, and from what I’ve seen, it’s gonna cause Team TARDIS some conflict, which was kind of overdue. I just really hope Chibnall can lower his ego and allow other writers to execute these concepts in ways he can’t throughout the series

I was also left genuinely intrigued by the whole Timeless Child thing and am looking forward to that so. Yeah.

Now, what I didn’t like:

First of all, it’s written by Chibnall himself and he’s the only writer. ‘Nuff said

The episode seems to take a bit too long to introduce the characters once more and show their daily lives before we get to the point or even first see the Doctor. Maybe that’s just me but idk

Like I mentioned, I like the potential of this mission. A CSI-esque episode but make it sci-fi/Doctor Who. My problem lies with the execution. It wasn’t a fun storyline, and after the Master reveal, it just feels like it’s sidelined and simply there as “oh look Doctor, you looked away and the Master started using ANOTHER alien race to get your attention AGAIN”. It didn’t feel fun either, since there was just. So much info-dumping and not enough answers. The problem isn’t that it was unoriginal, it’s that it was uninspired and boring

Not to mention the Kasaavin ended up being sidelined so much that everyone was just ??? kind of confused about them. Also I’ve seen some people say they are literally just the Cybermen 2.0 and I kind of agree

I got the vibe that “O” and Yaz were flirting and just. Ew. I do not fuck with that

Part 1 in general just felt completely boring and the storyline was so generic you could replace the conflict with literally anything else and keep the twist and it wouldn’t change a thing lol

Also, as happy as I am that we have a POC incarnation of the Master, I’m...conflicted. I am going to miss Missy a whole lot, and the Master going back to being a man is...kind of boring, but that’s not my issue. I understand that, after what happened with her, Missy might’ve given up on redemption and decided to go back to her old Master-y ways, specially with the whole Timeless Child thing, that was so traumatizing the Master felt obligated to destroy Gallifrey, BUT it feels like it just inutilizes Missy’s entire character arc during Capaldi’s run and introduces a new plot element just to make the Master go back to their old villanous ways. It’s sorta cheap

Speaking of cheap plot elements just introduced to retconn things Moffat did, we’ll get back to Gallifrey later

The scene with the Master telling the Doctor to kneel made me uncomfortable. Having Thirteen be the first female Doctor (and arguably the gayest Doctor at that) and then have the Master, her antagonist, be a man...meh. But then have him tell her to kneel and to essentially humiliate her by telling her to call him “Master”, that had my stomach a bit uneasy. Like, yeah, Simm!Doctor did much worse to Tenth, but the implications are much, much, different in this context. Idk, I personally was left uncomfortable by that scene

The Doctor turning the Master over to the N*zi officers was so, so fcking shitty like. I’m not mad at the Doctor, I’m mad at Chibnall for putting that in the fcking script. WHY DID HE THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?????

The Doctor wiping Ada and Noor’s memories just felt so...unnecesary. Like, the Doctor has interacted with historical figures in the past and kept their memories intact (Agatha Christie comes to mind as an exception, though that was accidental). And besides, what for? Ada and Noor having memory of what happened interfered with nothing (I might be wrong on this as I kind of erased anything the Doctor said in that scene from my mind involuntarily lmfao but even so, I can’t come up with any good excuses that could be used there anyways, but if I am missing something notify me in the notes) and they don’t seem like the type to tattle about it or smth

Ah, and now we get to Gallifrey, or what I like to call, both the best and the worst example of what a retconn is. Listen, it doesn’t matter whether you liked Moffat and/or his decision to bring back Gallifrey, but you have to agree this is ridiculous. Chibnall didn’t want to have to deal with what Moffat left him with (a restored Gallifrey and the implications of that) so he had The Master just destroy Gallifrey by himself and discarded it like a chess piece, like. Am I the only one legit dumbfounded by this???? First of all, it took the Daleks an entire war to attempt to destroy Gallifrey, and they actually failed in the end, and yet the Master destroys it by himself, no stress. I legit don’t get it. Listen, I have mixed thoughts on Moffat’s decision to do so and I hate Hell Bent as much as the next person, but this is Chibnall discarding yet ANOTHER arc. That’s two arcs in one premiere. Wow. It legit sealed the deal for me that this premiere was a hot mess.

That’s it (that’s it, she says, after writing a whole essay). Again, this is not an attack on Chibnall’s Doctor Who, Jodie as the Doctor or me telling you how to feel about this episode. My opinion seems like an unpopular one from what I’ve seen but I stand by it lol. 

As a closing statement, fingers crossed that Chibnall lets other people write too this series lmfao.

(This is my first indepth critique of anything here so, hum, if you disagree, please be kind akhjahsjahs I doubt this will get much notes anyways but)

[willidleaway]

Doctor Who, series 12 as a whole

In short: [looks up if the last SW:TCW season will be out on Blu-ray]

Oh hi, didn’t see you come in. I was trying to distract myself from the fact that series 12 of Doctor Who went there.

I mean, the show’s gone up itself a bit, hasn’t it? And I do mean that quite literally. It’s gone upstream in canon and I just don’t know why Chibnall bothered. It’ll teach me to complain about Moffat’s new!Who for taking Doctor-lore so seriously, I suppose, given everything that’s happened now.

Things I liked about series 12: I do feel that with Chibnall as showrunner, each series feels more cohesive in a way that they did not with Moffat, and really not even necessarily with RTD. Plot elements get set up and paid off all throughout the series, and it’s a nice thing to see.

Sacha Dhawan was pretty great to watch, and I rather think maybe his introduction in this series brought out a bit more in Thirteen as well.

Things I can’t say I liked about series 12: just about everything else. This is not equivalent to saying I hated everything else about series 12. But this is me saying that at the end of the day, I found the plotting too exhausting with not enough heart to get me to care much about the story or the characters. The show’s starting to feel like a caricature of itself, in many ways.

In less short: again, I don’t mean to say I disliked everything about series 12 apart from the new Master and the improved cohesion, but I ended up pretty indifferent about much of it, and did start to get a bit irritated by the increasing defiance of ‘show, don’t tell’. But I’m really disheartened by the fact that series 11′s focus on the companions seems to have been just a passing whimsy in the overall picture of Chibnall’s master plan.

But what exactly was the godforsaken point of this master plan anyway? Why bother plotting this series so tightly and cohesively together if the message at its heart is ... basically nothing but a revelation about our protagonist, and one that ultimately (not at first, but ultimately) holds no emotional weight by the protagonist’s own admission? Great, you’ve woven this giant earth-shattering twist into the Doctor Who canon. But is that all that the show is good for? Editing its own lore?

Of course, part of this is that I’m old. (As far as you know.) The show that returned in 2005 is not the show that’s airing now in 2020, and as someone who was sold on new!Who based on the vision it had in RTD’s time, I’m bound to connect less strongly with Chibnall’s vision for the show. This sort of evolution is fine in principle—even necessary—if it’s actually still good television, competent storytelling, with its heart in the right place and an audience that it speaks to. I’ll admit that series 12 is spectacular television in the literal sense of it being a right flashy spectacle of a show—Spyfall should have convinced everyone of that—but is it good? And the serious doubt I have after watching this finale—I had an inkling of a doubt back in episode 3 but by god it’s a serious doubt now—is: is Doctor Who, under Chibnall’s supervision, actually a competent show?

I’ve seen multiple people across subreddits compare this finale to Episode IX of the increasingly incredulous Star Wars saga, and I can’t say I disagree. I’d honestly almost extend the comparison to all of series 12—you have to, in a sense, because the series just functions that cohesively.

And I’d make the comparison a tad favourable to The Rise of Skywalker, actually. There is a case to be made that JJ Abrams, for all his faults and overambitious gambits, was trying to say something beyond just ‘oh Palpatine never died and Snokes grow in jars’ or ‘oh here’s the skinny on Rey’s ridiculously dark past’. I genuinely saw attempts—gestures—at broader messages like ‘you are not alone’ and ‘together we can overcome anything’. I’m not saying these are particularly novel or insightful messages to try and convey, and I’m not saying they were even conveyed that competently. (Episode IX fell into the same more-tell-than-show pit of quicksand that series 12 has found itself in, for one.) But by god there was at least an attempt, whereas I don’t see that here.

If you want a study in contrast, look no further than Moffat’s series 9 finale in comparison to the finale we got tonight. There was an actual character arc! Twelve’s obsession with his ‘duty of care’ bit back on him! He was forced to recognise loss as part of events! Granted, Moffat still pulled his ‘everybody lives’ gambit so Clara only technically died and for all intents and purposes lives a fairly exciting life for many years after we say goodbye to her. But there was an actual emotional resonance that was there!

The point is that Moffat, for all his lovely diversions into past show lore and Time Lord social psychology, never forgot about human relationships and human emotions and how they drove the audience’s investment in new!Who. I mean, sometimes it was played up in a rom-com way (you can take Coupling out of the TV schedules, but never out of Moffat’s writing, I suspect), and there were times when it worked and times when it definitely didn’t work. But it was always there. You could find it. You could see yourself in it, sometimes.

This? What was the point of this? The Doctor is the Timeless Child. It turns out this was a carefully guarded secret known only to the highest echelons of Time Lord society and certainly to the ominously named Division. A large chunk of the Doctor’s life is basically missing, possibly forever.

From a lore point of view: sure, this has massive implications! And Chibnall is at least smart/restrained enough not to spell it all out, and at the end of the day there’s still some mystery—at least, for as long as Chibnall doesn’t proceed to smash that to bits as well in the remainder of his tenure.

But from a storytelling standpoint? Ruth!Doctor even spells it out: ‘have you ever been limited by who you were before?’ The Doctor’s past, ultimately, just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to the companions. It doesn’t matter to the Doctor. It doesn’t matter to (I would wager) a large part of Doctor Who’s audience. Chibnall knew this and yet built the whole arc of series 12 around this revelation, which was totally irrelevant to the heart of the show by his own indirect admission.

It doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that you build a 10-episode run around. It feels like something you drop like a mic at the end of a two-parter, and then pick up the pieces of the next time around. In fact, you know, I think series 12 would have been better if we started off with this revelation, giving us time to have any meaningful emotional fallout, some space for it to breathe.

Series 1 had the revelation that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Last Great Time War, but we didn’t build to it. It was given to us near the outset, in episode 2. And new!Who was richer for it, for treating the Time War not as a culmination of some arc, but something that impacted so many subsequent events in the Doctor’s life and by extension in the companions’ lives. The big surprise in series 1 was the Bad Wolf, because it was Rose all along—basically your average Londoner whisked away into extraordinary circumstances and doing extraordinary things. There’s some value in seeing that sort of thing on screen. I don’t find any such value in seeing the Doctor’s past rewritten on screen.

Chibnall, I suspect, overestimates the level of patience everyone else in the world has for tedious lore unfolding, and sees this as only the first half of a grand multi-series plan for reinventing the show. I suspect we will learn that RTD and Moffat were both wiser to attempt no such thing.