#moffat spawns

[immortalclarareborn]

"But in doing so, another aspect of the era’s core flaws becomes clear. We’ve already talked a lot about the notion of a female Doctor, and about Chibnall’s Davison revivalism of a more passive Doctor. Another key aspect, however, is that Whittaker is tasked with playing a much more childlike Doctor than we’ve had. Even Matt Smith, the previous record holder in this direction, cut his Doctor’s manic glee with a sense of weight and age. Whereas Whittaker is just playing a relatively infantilized Doctor. And Dawson picks up on this. That’s not especially surprising, because it’s one of the things about Whittaker’s Doctor that you could get off of little more than the publicity photo of her costume that dropped in November of 2017—a costume that always looked like a child slightly ineptly playing dressup.

There’s a case to be made that Doctor-as-child was always a mistake—the rotten spawn of how charming Tom Baker is when he delivers that “there’s no point in growing up if you can’t be childish sometimes” or of Patrick Troughton playing with the Daleks in Evil of the Daleks in much the same way that Kerblam! is the poison fruit of  the successful in its time Moffattian liberalism. Certainly childishness is the axis upon which the Matt Smith era began to go a bit wrong. There’s something to be said for the idea that part of the engine that makes Doctor Who work is the fact that the Doctor is sympathetic to children even as they’re not actually like a child—that this is why the show can function simultaneously as a children’s show and as an adult drama peer of Star Trek: Discovery that’s made by the same people who made Broadchurch, It’s a Sin, or Inside Man. Disrupt the balance, whether in the direction of making the Doctor too grimfaced or too childish, and the show falters.

But there’s a particular flavor of the error that comes in falling into this specific trap alongside the idea of the first female Doctor. It’s not that childish Doctors are unpopular—although ultimately Smith’s three years, for all that I’m quite partial to them, feel like the cracking of the new series’ imperial phase. But it is that childish Doctors are in a real sense lesser. If you put Whittaker next to Capaldi she is diminished, in the same way that Capaldi was enhanced in key ways by coming off the at times facile mania of Smith. At the end of the day, equating someone who was at the time the only female Doctor with being a literally more infantilized version of the character was an egregious and fundamental mistake."

You Were Expecting Someone Else: The Good Doctor by Elizabeth Sandifer

[dandelionjack]

if we’re going as meta as mr cowan is clearly asking us to go while engaging with his text… what does a ‘dictionary contributor’ actually do? they ‘add to the lore’ and, by doing so, seem to make tweaks and amendments to the history of the universe itself. they alter the fabric, a stitch unraveled here and there.

take a fictional universe, one very particular fictional universe even. a ‘head dictionary contributor’, then, becomes a showrunner/head writer. ‘assistant dictionary contributors’ can be read as being the authors of individual episodes or EU content

remember the law? the current showrunner is always the worst, always the most hated.

during moffat’s era you would hear endless tirades about how he can’t write nuanced character dynamics (a shameless lie) or his writing’s too convoluted (not untrue, but not a negative either). then chibbers came along and he was treated like the spawn of the devil who ruined the show (somewhat fairly, that aside). everybody expected rtd2 to be the cure-all end-all be-all, but now, according to most of the fandom that populates twitter, the star beast was the worst of the worst and “chibnall wasn’t that bad actually”. and now most people think moffat was the best writer to ever grace the new era of the show with his presence…

the cycle goes on. the old Head Dictionary Contributor gets metaphorically torn to shreds and replaced, the new Head Dictionary Contributor builds upon the old lore and redacts and rewrites and erases and constructs a new mythology. his contributions get added to the ever-changing, ever-growing annals of history — known to some as TARDIS.wiki . a brand new starry-eyed Caretaker knocks on the door of the Internal Reference Room, starts scribbling in the book. it’s been laying on that wooden desk for sixty years, or six billion.

the Assistant Dictionary Contributors keep assembling our Tower of Babel. it’ll never crumble if we’re not constructing it with the intention of toppling the Gods themselves, right? and what’s a little hubris between friends?

peak postmodernism. this is what happens when a media universe becomes so large and expansive that it gains a will of its own. Borges would love Doctor Who. Mark Z. Danielewski too, maybe. don’t tell them. well, one of them’s dead. not like that matters in the grand scheme of things :)

[limelocked]

weird idea but. yknow how there's rifts in DW welllllll

what if.... Grian's rift accidentally connects to the one in Cardiff.

now you could be boring and put normal person hermits in the middle of cardiff

however you could also put the fanon hermit designs in the middle of fucking cardiff

the first thing that happens is the connection, then the hermits go through, then cardiff becomes very chaotic because the rift in space and time should never be opened again and it should damn well stay closed

the hermits flee the chaos and has to learn how to cope real quick with how weird our world is in comparison to minecraft, cant craft anything, sleeping doesnt skip the night which well thats kinda expected since thats a rule they decided on but bdubs is still not happy about it, but theres no monsters spawning either

tango impulse grian and doc are among the hermits who are on the permanent stay in the shelter we managed to scrounge up list, the uk is neck deep in alien stuff but a fire sprite and a demon walking around is still not a great idea

ive not watched a lot of moffat and chibnal so i cant say if like... torchwood is still a thing, but im guessing they get picked up by Someone as aliens and they have to insist that no theyre not from space, they came from cardiff and hermitcraft before that and no thats not a dimension really, its just another server and can we go back please? we were just about to start a new season

[distort-opia]

You said you didn’t enjoy Tom King’s writing, especially his take on the Joker. Most Batjokes fans avoided it because of BatCat, and personally I find his dialogue abysmal. But, what are some of your valid criticisms?

Hi! I've criticized aspects of King's writing before, when I was asked about his portrayal of Selina. You can read those discussions here, and here. As you will find though... I'm pointing out flaws but also admitting that I find his writing compelling. Because it's not quite accurate to say I don't enjoy King's writing at all. It's because I'm a masochist, and some of his stories turn me into Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the conspiracy meme. (Here's me writing a whole-ass essay on just one issue he wrote.)

The thing is, King has stuff to say. The concepts he wants to convey can be deeply compelling. When it comes to his Batman run, I Am Suicide, Cold Days and Knightmares are some of my favorite arcs when it comes to Bruce characterization... but I will also admit there's much to be desired in execution. King often falls into the trap that in my head is named after Moffat-- trying to seem deep, without actually delivering on the foreshadowing and ideas introduced. (Can you tell I'm a Doctor Who and Sherlock BBC survivor.) Also a lot like Moffat, King can be great at telling short self-contained stories, rather than long ones that spawn multiple narrative threads and a large cast. Most of the time secondary characters suffer dearly under King's pen. They become an extension of the protagonist and lose individuality; speech patterns bleed into each other, behaviors become interchangeable. King could benefit so much from an editor who actually ensured that the dialogue doesn't feel so repetitive and choppy, and that the voices of the characters feel distinct. It'd help a lot with making it less grating.

But leaving that aside (and other more story-specific criticisms I have)... at the end of the day, to me it feels like King cares-- something that sadly doesn't apply to a lot of writers at DC. He's got many flaws as a writer, but at least to me, it's clear that Bruce Wayne means something to him. He demonstrates a deep understanding of the character on more than one occasion, which redeems him in my eyes at least partially. Even when it comes to Joker, I dislike some of the writing, not all of it. Joker in Batman (2016) #48-49 is very interesting, and the "I need him to stop me" speech is beautiful. To be honest, I think I dislike the way Mikel Janin draws Joker more, and sadly I've come to associate his art with King's Batman stuff.

[denimbex1986]

'Russell T Davies is taking a big narrative swing with bi-generation, and while Doctor Who's latest twist has more than a passing resemblance to the Timeless Child in terms of its sweeping consequences and divisive response, the main problem it causes is a mirror image of the fallout from Chris Chibnall's big gamble. 2020 was a volatile time for Doctor Who, as Chibnall presided over an era beset by critique and controversy. His pièce de résistance came in "The Timeless Children" - the lore-shaking revelation that the Doctor was secretly from another universe, and had been used as both the foundation of the Time Lord race and a clandestine Gallifreyan agent.

The Timeless Child was, by a comfortable distance, the most significant addition to Doctor Who canon since regeneration in 1966. Three short years later, the concept of bi-generation is just as seismic. Instead of changing bodies, David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor miraculously divides, retaining his own form, but also spawning a Ncuti Gatwa-shaped successor, thus allowing both Doctors to coexist. According to showrunner Russell T Davies in the BBC's episode commentary, Doctor Who's bi-generation is actually an even bigger deal than first assumed. It creates a ripple effect, meaning every single past Doctor survives their regeneration and goes on to have further adventures. Doctor Who lore has redecorated. I don't like it.

The Timeless Child Was Damaging To Doctor Who's Past; Bi-Generation Hurts Doctor Who's Future

Rebranding the Doctor "the Timeless Child" was a way to restore some semblance of mystery to Doctor Who's titular protagonist after more than 50 years of backstory and exposition. Writers had been attempting this for years beforehand. Steven Moffat cast an enigmatic shroud over the Doctor's real name, Russell T Davies invented the Time War, and the Seventh Doctor's era casually dropped clues that would have ultimately led to the Doctor being revealed as a secret Time Lord founder known as "the Other." If those three examples were attempts at gently easing the "Who?" back into Doctor Who, Chris Chibnall's Timeless Child was a question mark-shaped sledgehammer.

Rampant speculation and endless theories over the Doctor's true species have been constant ever since "The Timeless Children" landed in 2020. In that sense, the twist was a roaring success, re-injecting Doctor Who with a sense of the unknown and inciting feverish discussion over the quirky time traveler's real identity. Endless possibilities for the future opened up, but at the steep cost of damaging Doctor Who's past.

Sympathizers will point to "The Brain of Morbius" and the aforementioned Seventh Doctor hints as signs the Timeless Child was there all along, lingering in the air like forgotten cheese at the back of the refrigerator. That argument ignores the vast swathes of Doctor Who lore the Timeless Child contradicts. Whatever the Morbius Doctors and Cartmel Masterplan may suggest, the remaining 98% of Doctor Who mythology fits the Timeless Child like the Fourteenth Doctor fits his suit - awkwardly, and with much chafing.

Dethroning William Hartnell as the First Doctor, raising questions over Susan, muddling Clara's presence throughout the Doctor's timeline, debunking the mystery woman Russell T Davies intended to be the Doctor's mother - the Timeless Child dropped a vault full of inconsistencies and plot holes into Doctor Who's past. Skip forward three years, and bi-generation does the exact opposite. The Timeless Child made Doctor Who's future more intriguing by trampling over its past. Bi-generation is a narrative salve for the wounds of Doctor Who's past, but to the detriment of its future.

Doctor Who's Bi-generation Made Ncuti Gatwa's Job More Difficult

Traditional Doctor Who regenerations involve the outgoing actor being replaced, quite literally, by their successor - one Time Lord in, one Time Lord out. The moments in the immediate aftermath of a regeneration sequence are vital for the newcomer, allowing the incumbent Doctor to stake their claim, show off their persona, and make a strong first impression on an audience still reeling from the previous version of Doctor Who's beloved hero departing in a hail of golden light.

Ncuti Gatwa doesn't get that. The Sex Education actor is magnificent in his Doctor Who debut, with every line of pure sass a breath of fresh air. Gatwa simultaneously feels like the character Doctor Who fans have known all along, and an incarnation like no other, which is testament to the actor's sheer ability and undeniable charisma. The inevitable consequence of bi-generation, however, is that David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor and Nucit Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor spend the final act of "The Giggle" jostling for prominence. Those final minutes are tasked with ending one Doctor's story while beginning another's - a balance even a writer of Russell T Davies' caliber struggles to find.

As effervescent as Ncuti Gatwa may be in his first scenes as the Doctor, his introductory splash is muted by the looming shadow of David Tennant - arguably the most beloved and popular actor to ever portray the Doctor - to his immediate right. It's like an up-and-coming chef trying to cook a meal with Gordon Ramsay already in the kitchen; it doesn't matter how good a job they do, the spotlight is being dragged away. Ncuti Gatwa's time will come in Doctor Who season 14, but "The Giggle" ends without truly establishing his Doctor, and not even the TARDIS allows a second chance at a first impression.

Doctor Who Can Never Have Another Major Crisis On Present-Day Earth Without David Tennant

Doctor Who's "The Giggle" ends with David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor living alongside Donna Noble's family on present-day Earth, still in possession of his TARDIS, and still making the occasional trip through time. As a result, Doctor Who can never have a future story that puts 2020s Earth under threat. The Fourteenth Doctor may have slowed down in his old age, but if a spaceship cruised over London and started causing chaos - not an uncommon occurrence, if Doctor Who history is anything to go by - would Fourteen really sit back sipping tea in Donna's garden?

For the very first time since the Third Doctor's brief exile, Earth is permanently protected by a Doctor, and while Fourteen's retirement likely means he won't be investigating any mutant spiders or strange mannequins, Tennant's character would undoubtedly jump into action if Earth faced a major apocalyptic scenario - especially since he has the TARDIS on standby. For Ncuti Gatwa and Doctor Who season 14, therefore, adventures taking place on contemporary Earth are now utterly pointless. Fifteen and Ruby's time would be better spent protecting planets that aren't lucky enough to have a Doctor permanently parked on them.

It's no secret that Doctor Who is strangely fond of present-day Earth, and if the Fourteenth Doctor's retirement was a way for Russell T Davies to ensure every single story in Doctor Who season 14 and beyond was set elsewhere in time and space, that would make perfect sense. Doctor Who's 2023 Christmas special, however, heads straight back to present-day Earth, while location shoots from season 14 confirm it will be business as usual in terms of Earth-based episodes. Either the villains in these stories aren't dangerous enough to warrant Fourteen's intervention, or David Tennant must somehow be incorporated into the Doctor Who season 14 cast.

Ncuti Gatwa Is "A" Doctor, Not "The" Doctor

Speaking on Doctor Who: Unleashed, Russell T Davies was unequivocal in proclaiming Ncuti Gatwa as "THE Doctor," and this will be the company line coming out of Doctor Who, as well as the BBC and Disney, moving forward. Unfortunately, it simply isn't true. The single biggest question emanating from Doctor Who's bi-generation twist is what happens when the Fourteenth Doctor dies. Will he regenerate or has he become mortal? If the Fourteenth Doctor does still possess powers of regeneration, labeling Ncuti Gatwa as "THE Doctor" is false advertising.

For all its temporal loop-de-loops and spaghetti-like continuity, Doctor Who has always followed the Doctor's individual timeline. Whatever else was happening with River Song's timeline, the Daleks, or Gallifrey, the story of Doctor Who was the story of the Doctor's life told from one era to the next. Whichever regeneration Doctor Who was following at any given point represented which chapter in the character's personal tome the show had reached so far. This meant there was only ever one Doctor at a time. Even when past Doctor Who actors returned for Big Finish audio stories and the like, they were merely expanding their own preexisting eras, not carving out new ones.

Bi-generation threatens that because the Fourteenth Doctor could potentially now regenerate into a totally different Fifteenth Doctor - one that may or may not have Ncuti Gatwa's face. Previously, there were three categories of Doctor in Doctor Who - the current Doctor, past Doctors, and unseen future Doctors. Even after the Timeless Child came along, it merely increased the number of names in the "past" category, leaving Jodie Whittaker still unquestionably THE Doctor of her era. Bi-generation changes the number of "current" Doctors, and this is why it's so harmful to Ncuti Gatwa's reign in the TARDIS. RTD's elaboration that every version of the Doctor has now retrospectively bi-generated only amplifies the issue.

One might be tempted to suggest that Doctor Who can easily solve this dilemma by confirming the Fourteenth Doctor does not have the ability to regenerate, but even that causes major problems. For starters, a mortal Fourteenth Doctor would essentially be a rehash of RTD's metacrisis Doctor, and would leave Martha Jones as the only Tenth Doctor companion not to get her own cuddly version of David Tennant to take home. More importantly, the Fourteenth Doctor will remain a "current Doctor" for as long as he survives, meaning the problem of undermining Gatwa doesn't disappear by simply stripping away Fourteen's capacity to regenerate.

Why Bi-generation Is Great For Doctor Who's Past

The big problems concerning Doctor Who's bi-generation all affect the future. The twist casts doubt on Ncuti Gatwa's status, limits Doctor Who season 14, and has the potential to cause major franchise headaches going forward. In stark contrast to the Timeless Child, however, bi-generation is very good news for Doctor Who's past. The idea that one version of the Doctor is allowed to settle down, put their feet up, and mentally unwind after centuries of death, stress, and endless running pays off 60 years of the character being a lone adventurer. For all its faults, bi-generation is probably the closest Doctor Who's eponymous hero will ever get to a truly happy ending.

If, as Russell T Davies claims, bi-generation retroactively applies to past Doctors too, the plot device is a huge win for the likes of Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann, as well as ex-stars from Doctor Who's modern era. Those Doctors now have unlimited futures before them and, in hindsight, the older Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors glimpsed in Tales of the TARDIS were likely products of Gatwa's bi-generation. Russell T Davies can now bring back any past Doctor without needing to fret over continuity, making cameos from the classic era much easier.

Doctor Who Now Has The Same Problem The Avengers Caused The MCU

With its shiny new "Whoniverse" branding, Doctor Who makes no secret of its ambition to expand into an MCU-esque shared universe. Alas, Doctor Who has already slammed headfirst into a problem Kevin Feige and co. have been having nightmares about since 2012. The Avengers was the movie that cemented the MCU's status as a shared universe, but every subsequent entry has been forced to tackle the inevitable question, "why doesn't someone just call the Avengers?" If Ncuti Gatwa encounters a truly terrifying, universe-ending threat in Doctor Who's upcoming episodes, audiences will now be justified in asking the similar question, "why doesn't he just call Fourteen for help?"

Previously, Doctor Who had this plot hole covered. Multi-Doctor stories from previous years tirelessly pointed out how different regenerations of the Doctor meeting each other was a paradox that could threaten all reality. The Doctor could never - well, almost never - call upon his alternate selves for assistance, or else risk making a dire situation exponentially worse. Bi-generation appears to bypass that issue completely, as Gatwa and Tennant working together bears no negative consequences on the fabric of space and time. This means the Fourteenth Doctor can always lend a (severed) hand in times of great danger. If he does not, future Doctor Who stories will, just like the MCU with the Avengers, need to address why.

Russell T Davies' Doctor Who return was hailed as a masterstroke by some, and with only three episodes under his belt, it would be grossly premature to condemn season 14 on the basis of bi-generation alone, no matter how massive the ramifications may be. Of more importance is what Doctor Who does with its expansive new layout from here. It is strange, however, that for the second time in three years, a Doctor Who showrunner has felt the need to shake the franchise's foundations, when all those foundations needed was a little fixing-up.'

[imaginefear]

adding on to this post here since i don't want to put it on a personal blog's post and risk exposure to the larger fandom:

I these are all things that contribute to why I have it that the Imagineer is the origin of the Weeping Angels, they're creatures of thought and imagery which works so well with the idea of someone who's whole power is making their imagination and thoughts real.

they're also a very good example of how these things can take on a life of their own and mutate after their inception. I use Moffat's own inspiration story for their creation as part of Alice's. She passed a graveyard on the way to and from school, saw an angel statue in it once day all chained up and then the next day it was gone which sparked her imagination. Those wonderings mixed with other thoughts/fears/hopes/etc in her head then floated off like dandelion seeds into the cosmos. Because while they were the idle thoughts of a human(ish) child the reality is this is still an entity far beyond that existence and isn't limited to things like time or space and has been in this universe since its formation.

“What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if, one day, our dreams no longer needed us?”

This is one of the cardinal concepts of this blog, literally exploring this. Alice represents this idea in its darker aspects while the Imagineer errs more towards the positive or at least intentional aspect.

As this person says "They are living ideas who exist on the periphery of perception." When we consider it from the angle as the angels as born from the idle fancies of a daydreaming god it just vibes really well. The Imagineer/Crystal Guardian gets called things like "the Guardian of Thought in Time, the Guardian of Dreams, He Who Walks in Dreams" which just --

like the Angels are creatures of living thought semi-outside of time who literally eat time/possibility and can exist in anything that captures their image decently enough. It just works so amazingly well as something spawned from the mind of a god who's whole thing is related to the mind, imagination, creativity and imagery and existence-shaped-by-rules (games and the 'can only move when not seen). Also the idea of them being like photon -- a wave when unobserved and a particle when observed -- is one of the things i use to conceptualize the Alice-Imagineer thing.

I had more and tbh like a pretty different and more coherent post in mind earlier but ofc once I started to write it all went away.

[405blazeitt]

whether the new moffat show is good or not, it's going to spawn some ungodly discourse that i'm not strong enough to endure

please, i'm begging everyone... stop hatewatching things... there are better uses for your time....

[bitter-as-wormwood-13]

Listen I love Sherlock is garbage and here's why as much as anyone and I know its because Moffat did Jeckyll but its very funny to me that Hbomberguy identifies Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and DOCTOR JECKYLL AND MR HYDE as the 3 biggest bits of English pop cultural exports like. ok Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who I can believe but like... weren't Mary Shelley and Brahm Stoker both British??? I could be wrong about that but I feel like in terms of Halloween monsters spawned from gothic literature Dracula and/or Frankenstein's Monster are a lot more iconic than Doctor Jeckyll and Mister Hyde.

[spaceintruderdetector]

The Quatermass chronicles

"Dr Who collaborators Mark Gatiss & Stephen Moffat, academics Una McCormack & Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale join Matthew Sweet to celebrate Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1953 BBC TV sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment, which spawned two late 1950s sequels and an ITV final run in autumn 1979."

[morganas-pendragons]

justifiably angry. 

I'm going to preface this by saying that I haven't been able to watch Jodie's goodbye episode yet (I can't find a place to watch it :( ) but of course I saw spoilers. I don't usually care about them, so I subjected myself to it.

Oh boy, I'm angry.

Spoilers beneath the cut for the power of the doctor. Read at your own discretion!

First of all, I have been watching this show faithfully since 2012. I have stuck around through the garbage eras of Moffat's era, and I have stuck around through the equally more terrible garbage era's of Chibnalls. I consider myself a loyal Doctor Who fan. It made me fall in love with so, so many things. It brought me my best friend.

So let me tell you the truth: I am emotionally invested into this show. I have seen myself portrayed in the last three incarnations of The Doctor rather well. Doctor Who is an extremely relatable show that millions have loved over nearly sixty years of being on the air.

That was, however, until Jodie came along with Chibnall and "ruined it.'' which is why so many fans stopped watching.

I know fans who stopped watching when Capaldi was casted. Capaldi, who to this day stands out as the best incarnation of The Doctor for me.

Did I enjoy all of Thirteen's run? No. I didn't. But despite that, I always knew that Jodie Whittaker was going to give the performance of her life because long before I saw her as The Doctor, I saw her as Beth in Broadchurch with David Tennant.

That being said, if you haven't seen it, go watch it. That show portrays the exact caliber of what Jodie could've done with The Doctor if she were given good scripts.

Chibnall wrote a handful of good episodes. I think he's a decent writer (THE MAN WROTE MOST OF BROADCHURCH FOR GOD'S SAKES) but he's appallingly bad at sci-fi. He was never set to write well for this show.

Despite that, I remember quite well when Jodie was cast. I was sitting in the sound booth of my church in June of 2017 and yelled when that teaser trailer crawled across my Tumblr feed. You all know the one.

A woman doctor. Sixty years of tradition broke the glass ceiling with the casting of a woman doctor.

A woman doctor who perfectly embodied her previous counterparts.

Her opening scene in The Woman Who Fell To Earth won me over to her. I haven't rewatched Season 13, but there were so many scenes in her most recent season where her anguish was so palpable. I think we all knew to some degree that she would be special. That she had something to give.

And oh... she did. She really did.

Now, to the point of this post. They broke the glass ceiling by casting a woman to this role in 2017.

And then they went even further and cast a black man in 2022! Fantastic! Wonderful! I was elated to see him brought to this role. I haven't seen Ncuti in anything either, but I hadn't seen any of the Doctors in previous roles before. That's why they usually cast ''no-body's'' in the role.

So imagine my surprise when I find out that RTD is coming back, and he's bringing Catherine Tate and David Tennant with him!? AND MURRAY GOLD?!!?

Accomplishing what fans who loved the duo in 2008-2009 have wanted for over a decade, some closure for 10 and Donna!

But wait, then the rumor starts about Jodie regenerating into David. I laugh it off. It absolutely has to be a joke.

AND THEN. TODAY. TODAY I COME INTO THE TAG TO FIND OUT THAT IT WAS REAL, AND IT REALLY HAPPENED.

Yeah, to be quite honest, it's stupid. At the very least, they should've kept with the tradition of the doctor regenerating in their former incarnations clothes -- not spawning new ones.

Someone in the comment section on Facebook pointed out that The Curator in 2013's fiftieth anniversary special mentioned seeing familiar faces along the way (or something along that line) which, I get. I do. But bringing back David as obvious fan service took away THE WHOLE LITERAL POINT OF CASTING NCUTI AS FOURTEEN.

Another record was broken by casting a black man to the role, and you bring back literally the most iconic doctor for... for what?? Three episodes in 2022? And then you tie it off by telling the fans that HE is actually fourteen?

are you kidding me??!!

Here's my opinion on this, and then I'm done. You're free to disagree with anything I've said in here. I love David. I love 10, but he's not my favorite Doctor. It's 12. 10's era was very clearly over with the 50th anniversary special, and it should've been left there. Just like 11's being done with his exit episode.

Would I have loved to see 11 or 12 return for the 60th? YES.

Ten, however? He has literally gone down in history as the most iconic Doctor. The one everyone loves. Why would you bring him back if he's obviously going to overshadow the newest incarnation we have yet to love??

Make it make sense?? Please??

[bardqueenofgallifrey]

why do people have to pit RTD and Moffat against each other when they’re little scheming shits of best nerd buds who write Mastercest/Best Enemies crack fic over the phone to each other

like they’re both great writers who love the show and have done amazing things for it, and they love each other and each other’s work

RTD would be the first to defend everything Moffat has done on the show, let these nerds live

[vimesbootstheory]

the end of arkham knight (so like, spoilers I guess) has this gorgeous set piece during which, for Reasons, you play as the joker for a bit, but the problem is like, the game was clearly thinking that I would revel in some joker roleplay for a while but the pacing kept breaking down because I’d get an obvious prompt to do something violent and I would simply Not Do The Thing

a memorable part -- you’re in this courtyard and statues of batman keep popping up whenever you turn around, facing you, a la moffat who, and the game clearly expects it to be a high octane sequence of the joker blasting apart all the batman statues with his shotgun as they continue to spawn, but I was just spinning in place, gun stubbornly unfired, going “yes. YES. MORE SPOOKY BOYS. bruce you are the SPOOKIEST BOY YES.”

[antagonistchan]

some fandoms, i am way more willing to stretch my disbelief than others.

Transformers, Doctor Who, and Mass Effect are kinda my Big Three fandoms where i’m deeply invested in the world and legacy (with StarCraft as the occasional fourth member), and the suspension of disbelief varies on all three.

Transformers? my disbelief is so suspended that i’m willing to accept just about fucking anything. it is very hard for Transformers to make me go “what the fuck that makes no sense” because Transformers is nonsensical to its core, and honestly, if you DID try to make it make sense, it’d lose a lot of its charm. it’s GOOD that it makes no sense, if it made sense it wouldn’t be Transformers. why do Cybertronian vehicles have windshields? in real life, the answer is “because they’d look stupid if they didn’t”; in-universe, the answer is “shut up”

Mass Effect? my disbelief is only a little bit suspended, so much of Mass Effect’s appeal to me is how grounded it is in reality and the fact that most of it makes sense is important. there are some things that are just stupid and i just go “yeah that’s dumb i’ll just pretend that means anything”, like how FTL travel works, but for the most part, it’s solid and i like it to stay that way.

Doctor Who is in kinda a middle-ground, but it is definitely far closer to Transformers. the difference is that Doctor Who doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t make sense in a very specific way and if something stops making sense in the wrong way, it becomes a problem (lots of Moffat’s decisions have extremely rubbed me the wrong way); and also, there are times when Doctor Who admits that it makes no sense (“Time is like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff”) whereas Transformers’ nonsense is just an unspoken agreement based on the fact that this franchise largely spawned out of a goofy 98-episode-long commercial from the 80′s.

and then StarCraft is..... average. it’s not like Mass Effect where i’m deeply invested in it making sense, nor is it like Transformers where i’m deeply invested in it not making sense. it probably leans closer to Mass Effect because i’d rather it make sense than not make sense, but i don’t tend to think very hard about its worldbuilding beyond cataloguing bits of trivia. i definitely admit that lots of it doesn’t really make sense, and i extremely disliked pretty much all of Legacy of the Void’s worldbuilding retcons (LotV is a good game I just don’t like the retcons). that’s kinda all i have to say about it.

looking at the rest of my main fandoms?

Touhou, Jojo, Lyrical Nanoha, and Symphogear fall into the same category as StarCraft- i don’t really care much.

RadioTV Solutions doesn’t apply because it’s not fiction. SCP can’t really be categorized due to its collaborative nature.

Haruhi Suzumiya kinda falls into the same category as Doctor Who and Mass Effect simultaneously, because it’s all ABOUT trying to make sense of absolute insanity.

Bandori falls into the same category as Transformers, absolutely. not as extremely, since it’s a much more mundane series for the most part, but when it does break away from mundanity, i definitely prefer it to not make sense.

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #14: Dealing with changing Doctors

The main incarnation of the Doctor in my project is the Fifth Doctor, who is largely based on the BBC Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors. After Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi announced that they were resigning from the series, I decided that it would be time to begin planning the endgame to my project. This also meant that I would not be adapting the BBC Thirteenth Doctor.

Since my project relied on the BBC episodes, I had to find ways to transition the Doctor into a different character without regenerating him. Take a look at how I got around the regeneration storylines for my project.

For context, the picture at the top is meant to show the Fifth Doctor’s appearance in the Moushouden Series, which is essentially Matt Smith’s face on Peter Capaldi’s costume. I remember someone posted something like this on Facebook years ago. Saving it never occurred to me and by the time I wanted to find it, it was either lost or deleted, so that’s why I decided to recreate it myself. I may not be an artist, but I know a thing or two about putting transparent PNGs on other backgrounds.

Eleventh to Twelfth

The Next Gen Series largely takes place between The Day of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor, but without Clara. Clara was dropped off at home just after Hiroki and Akari’s wedding and she would not return until Series 10.

So how did I deal with The Time of the Doctor? The Siege of Trenzalore happened concurrently to the events of the Series 9 finale, which was a lot shorter than the 900 years as shown in the original episode.  Like in the original episode, the Daleks ended up being the only aliens fighting against the Doctor and the Silence; the downscaling of the timeline makes the other aliens look like absolute jokes. Hiroki would have interactions with the Doctor in between his involvement in the Battle of Sekigahara and the Ōsaka Campaign.

At the same time that Hiroki and his comrades are attacking Honnōji and Nijō Castle, the Daleks are unleashing an all-out attack on Trenzalore. A Dalek confronts the Doctor at the top of the clock tower and accidentally taps into his hatred for the Daleks after scanning him, leading the Dalek to begin exterminating some Daleks before being exterminated himself. Handles dies when a Dalek shoots him.

The Daleks only retreated from Trenzalore after Hiroki enters an Osterhagen Station some distance away from Honnōji. The Time Lords also close up the crack in the wall as well. The Doctor heads back to Earth as it is destroyed and restored by God in a literal deus ex machina. He goes back to Earth to find Hiroki and the story continues from there.

That was the first part of the transition which I did in 2014. The second part of the transition took place in 2017 with the first episode of Series 10, The Advent of the Doctor, which was partially inspired by Deep Breath. Clara rejoined the Doctor when she answered an ad in a newspaper (that was placed by Missy). When Hiroki and Akari were firing cannons at each other, the Doctor threw his coat in the way, causing it to be destroyed. His new costume debuts at the end of the episode.

The regeneration scene in the TARDIS did not go to waste as I used it in an alternate telling of Hiroki’s regeneration into his final incarnation. In the original version, I used the War Doctor’s regeneration to show Momoka’s regeneration into Hiroki, but in the alternate version, the regeneration reset Momoka into her previous incarnation before he went back home to say goodbye to Akari.

Twelfth to Thirteenth

This was a bit more complicated to plan out, but the execution is less complicated because unlike the last section, it doesn’t involve a lot of things happening at the same time. I also aimed to answer a question that was raised with The Name of the Doctor – if the history of the Siege of Trenzalore was changed, how could the Clara echoes have existed?

The background to this stems from the fact that the Fifth Doctor’s incarnation is the final one. With the Doctor being born from Hiroki, a pocket of regeneration energy remained in the latter, which he would use to regenerate into his various incarnations and prototypes (using up portions of that pocket in the process). When the First Doctor was forced to exile, he was forced to regenerate even though his subsequent incarnation was still considered the same as his previous one. Additionally, as stated in #2, timeline splits caused Doctor Whooves, the Pony Doctor and Jee Gun to be spawned from the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration into the Fifth. They were given a pocket of regeneration energy each, which would allow them to regenerate once (the Pony Doctor gave his to Doctor Whooves, so he could regenerate twice). As a result, the Doctor was only able to regenerate six times (including the War Doctor’s regeneration), though he had enough regeneration energy to spare, which he used to heal River Song’s hand and give strength to Antoni (who would attempt to steal it to give to the Daleks).

In order to set up the transition, we need to go back to the Series 11 (BBC Series 9) finale, Hell Bent. In that episode, the Doctor had Rassilon and the High Council banished from Gallifrey. They ended up on Earth in 2003 just in time to bear witness to the start of the Last Great Time War on Earth. While three members of the High Council stayed in Hong Kong to observe the Time War, Rassilon and the remaining members inserted themselves into higher positions at UNIT Central Control in Geneva. They ensured that the authorities would turn a blind eye to the chaos going on as a result of the Time War (because children fighting in wars is an issue in other countries but not in my project).

We then move to the third Space Squad movie, which takes place following the end of Gokaiger. In 2018, Rassilon became obsessed with getting his revenge on the Doctor for banishing him from Gallifrey and allied with Fūmakūdō, the villain group of the Space Squad movies (Fūmakūdō is the project’s counterpart of Genmaku and the name is derived from the villain groups of the three Space Sherriff series, namely Makuu, Madou and Fuuma). He goes to UNIT HQ and tells them that they are decommissioning the Superhero Project. At the same time, he has the Doctor’s TARDIS taken from the UNIT hangar (as he was on the GokaiGalleon for the duration of the series) before he brings it into the Makū Dimension.

Rassilon then uses the TARDIS’ Eye of Harmony to power up the Axis Converter, causing the console to explode and expose the heart of the TARDIS as the Makū Dimension expands throughout time and space, opening up portals everywhere. Later, Rassilon confronts the Doctor in Trenzalore. Before the Doctor can morph, however, Rassilon uses his gauntlet to freeze him in place before fast-forwarding time around him. The alien fleets attack Trenzalore and the TARDIS becomes the tombstone the Doctor saw when he first arrived on Trenzalore. Rassilon lets go of time and disappears.

The Doctor goes into his TARDIS and discovers that its history has been damaged along with the console. He decides to merge himself with the exposed heart of the TARDIS, causing the centre column to become a direct link into his timestream. At the same time, he also discovers that the TARDIS’ timestream has been split in two between himself and Hiroki, allowing Hiroki’s version of The Name of the Doctor to happen alongside the original version.

Being inside the heart of the TARDIS for too long is no better than looking into the Time Vortex. The Doctor plans to use his regenerative energy to repair the TARDIS and the timelines, but he is forced to stop when the events of the episode happen. The Great Intelligence damages the Doctor’s timeline, but Clara undoes the damage. When the past Doctor goes in to save Clara, the present Doctor uses his strength to maintain the stability of his timeline. The Doctor’s timeline has been fixed, but there is still a little damage that the Clara echoes forgot to fix, specifically around the start of his current incarnation’s life.

It is then that Ritsu Tainaka learns of her alternate self’s status in 1968 New York as an echo of herself. By the time everyone meets at the damaged TARDIS on Trenzalore, the Doctor’s past self has already left. She goes into the Doctor’s timestream and sends an echo of herself to patch the last of the damage. With his timeline repaired, the Doctor repairs the TARDIS and brings Ritsu out of the heart as they join with their comrades to defeat Rassilon for good.

Following the Monk invasion (which Australia managed to fend off for six months), UNIT summons the Doctor as they need the TARDIS to process the physical checkups of all Rangers and Riders. They discover that the Doctor is in his final incarnation and that he had built up a resistance to severe injury through fighting as GokaiRed. He passed on his powers to Kai following Rassilon’s defeat, meaning that he has now lost that resistance over the seventy years he spent guarding the Vault.

The events of the Series 12 (BBC Series 10) finale happened and the Doctor regenerated, but his appearance didn’t change. Upon crashing into the Barrier Base’s core (without damaging the Base itself), he is met by Hiroki, Akari and Brigadier Cheng Xieyun. The Doctor is taken to the sickbay, but when three generals from UNIT Central Control (namely the three members of the High Council) take over, they have the Doctor teleported to Geneva.

During a fight with the High Council, who were working with Madame Kovarian of the Silence, the Doctor is shocked by a group of Silents before being finished off by Kovarian. The Doctor is killed, but he comes back to life, now knowing what happened to him and why he didn’t change his appearance when he regenerated. When the Doctor merged himself with the TARDIS to repair it, it knew the Doctor had no regenerations left and so, gave him energy from the Time Vortex to repair both itself and the Doctor, but the full potential of his abilities wouldn’t be awakened until his regeneration, of which an extra one was gifted to him by the TARDIS.

As a result, the Doctor and his TARDIS are now one with each other. The Doctor is immortal as long as the TARDIS isn’t destroyed, although the same can’t really be said for the opposite because it would be too overkill. The chameleon circuit has been repaired so that the TARDIS can change its internal or external appearance at will. At the same time, the Doctor has also become a part of the chameleon circuit, meaning that he can also change appearance at will. However, the Doctor can decide to keep his and the TARDIS’ current appearances for the sake of familiarity.

Following this bout of exposition, the High Council are defeated and Madame Kovarian was taken to the Papal Mainframe, where she was tried for her crimes before Mother Superious Tasha Lem. The Doctor rejoins the Gokaigers and alternates between the TARDIS and GokaiGalleon. Technically, this new incarnation is known as the Infinity Doctor, but for all intents and purposes, he will continue to be known as the Fifth Doctor.

This has been my way of getting around the Doctor’s regeneration storylines for the sake of my project along with an alternate interpretation of what happened to the Doctor after Twice Upon a Time. Timeless Child, eat your heart out. I’d take this over that confusing storyline about the Doctor’s ascension and descension from absolute godhood.

[nightcoremoon]

there's lots of tiny brained bad takes of the far left branding things as Bad™ based solely on their association to other things or certain aspects of part of their fanbase.

this isn't to discredit the shit idiot brain fungus plaguing everyone from centrists, the moderate right, the far right, and the alt right, and even some of the moderate left, where they label everything that isn't about a Cishet White Male American Capitalist Bootlicker who's stateist, ambiguously christian/atheist, neurotypical, able-bodied, has "aryan" facial attributes, is an insufferable asshole, and the like, as "SJW garbage".

but see, prejudice and judgment is bad even if it's not motivated by minority demographic. being a rude dismissive asshole is, you know, bad. maybe making fun of a furry or whatever isn't as bad as being a racist, but you're still a fucking dickhead either way. fuck both of you but fuck the racist more. I'll punch both of you but punch the racist twice (maybe a third time for good measure). do y'all understand what I'm trying to get at here with the tiers of badness? the shades of grey? the steps down the path of evil from "kind of rude" to "literally hitler"?

bigotry is not the only bad thing in the world. yeah it's one of the worst, but you can talk about other bad things without discrediting that, which I know is next to impossible for teenagers (or people who never bothered to mentally progress from such) to comprehend.

anyway what sparked this is all the fuckin joker memes. now I went into it expecting, you know, literally taxi driver 2 followed by a silly horror movie about a clown murdering people. which is what the joker of the comics is all about. if I never watched the movie and only saw, what, the killing murray scene, the stairway dancing scene, the trailers, and joaquin phoenix sitting in a padded room and laughing, that's exactly what I'd had gotten.

but like. I fucking watched it because my dad wanted to watch it with me and he fucking loves all things batman (except Ben Affleck). and wolverine but mostly batman. he's a comic nerd. so yeah I went to watch it with him.

and it was legitimately terrifying from a purely psychological perspective. it's LITERALLY the best scary movie I've ever seen without being horror in the slightest. the acting, the writing, the score, the pacing, the cinematography, it was well put together without being a moffat level overproduced mess. it was a good movie. you're allowed to not care for it or not like it but to objectively call it a bad movie is not only a logical fallacy (eye of the beholder) but it also discredits the opinion of every single person who didn't hate it and makes you come off as a pompous fucking asshole rather than having different tastes.

it's about a guy with severe mental trauma in a bad situation trying to make the best of it and care for his family and hold down a job but he gets fucked over from literally every angle and eventually he snaps and makes a mistake and kills the misogynist rich asshats on the train. oh fuck. he could have gone to the police and said self defense and go through the court system but wait, society in gotham doesn't allow for a clean system of justice when you aren't rich. so instead he proceeds to be a major creepazoid turned murdering lunatic blaming everyone else for his own bad situation instead of the whole deal where he did stupid shit like taking a gun into a fucking children's hospital and stuck his fingers inside a child's mouth and stealing shit and falling further down the rabbit hole. until finally, he says fuck it and seeks revenge. the whole bloody mess that follows is his own fault. he chose to kill people. he chose to murder for petty reasons. he made his decisions and he suffered the consequences for it. all of the festering rotten crime in the city spawned by waynecorp's supreme negligence heralded him as a hero and so begins batman's story.

arthur fleck is not a fucking hero. he is a villain through and through. his circumstances were unfortunate but he made the wrong decisions. the world fucked him over and he said okay and retaliated. joker is exactly the fucking same as breaking bad. arthur and walter white are both evil people through their own decisions. but they were once normal people. and that's the point. the scariest monsters in the world are usually the white men angry at the world for their own shortcomings. oswald. ruby. dahmer. bundy. gein. manson. klebold and harris. white. fleck. they're all the filth stuck in the gutter of society that, if left unchecked, has deadly results.

I'm not kidding at all when I say joker was an important movie for myself personally to see exactly when I saw it. because that first half, I'm not gonna lie, it got me. the therapy didn't work and then it was taken away. he didn't eat most days because he had to support his mother. the people he worked with were dickheads, the people he commuted with were dickheads, his boss was a dickhead, people treated him like garbage on the streets. he couldn't remember the trauma inflicted on him when he was a baby but it still warped every aspect of his life. he had aspirations but lacked the skills. he was sad. alone. empty. he was suicidal. he was me.

then he started killing people and using the neighbor girl as a tulpa and I realized oh no oh god oh shit OH FUCK I need to change from this. and I did.

joker is a perfect template of how not to react to the world when it kicks in your teeth. it's a perfect template of a dark movie. just enough to sympathize with the bad guy but not enough to excuse his actions. the opposite of star wars with kylo ren. a good movie. a good character. an amazing actor. a terrible person.

if you watched joker thinking you're watching the story of the protagonist, you're right, but if you conflate protagonist with the good guy, yeah you won't like the fucking movie because it'll leave a sour taste in your mouth. you'll feel slimy. disgusting. unless you're a megadouche shitlord piece of human fucking garbage who wants to cosplay arthur fleck because he's so damn cool like walter white and eric cartman and rick sanchez and bojack horseman and tyler durden and all those FUCKING HORRIBLE LOATHESOME HUMANS TO NEVER EVER TRY TO EMULATE OR YOU ARE AN UNEMPHATIC ASSHOLE AND A MORON TO BOOT.

if you hated the movie, that's fine. you're kinda supposed to hate it. and if you loved the movie, that's fine so long as you understand what the message was. but if it's one of your favorite movies of all time ever made holy shit please go to therapy jesus christ.

still the point of this post is, discrediting the movie as a steaming pile of shit is incredibly ignorant. and as for the "good movies made by white men are only liked by other white men and are therefore bad movies" thing... if y'all can thirst over eddie brock in the trainwreck of venom and admit that the standards of good movie vs bad movie are all subjective, you're a goddamn idiot if you can't apply the same logic and reason to every movie just because some white boys like edgy clowns (even tho joker is way less edgy than pennywise but go off) in abusive relationships with harlequins. oh and assflash newshole, I'm not a white man.

I swear this bandwagoning bullshit is exactly the same mentality as "hurr durr nickelback worst band ever" even though nickelback is ripe with musical talent underneath a few pop songs that they wrote for the record label as part of their career so they can make a fuckin living BECAUSE CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL and also because of all the misogyny that bled its way into the music industry in the 2000s but that's a topic for another day. 'joker bad' and 'nickelback bad' are products of the same mental decay that social media wrought upon us all, inflicting mass mob mentality and incapacity for individualistic rational thought. which is exactly why there's a war between camp 'joker is bad' and 'joker is amazing' and nobody acknowledges the group in the middle that's like 'joker was good objectively but also terrible subjectively and content-wise'. polar. I could make a political statement and also say how the neoliberals and the fascists are at war while the people in the middle are caught in the crossfire and forced to fight like pawns on a chessboard, but the moderate right, dumbass centrists, pastel commies, and pockets of the moderate left, but that just throws everything into chaos.

tl;dr learn to think for yourselves omg

[multicolour-ink]

I’ve finally figured out what I found disappointing about Doctor Who Season 11....

While I support the idea of standalone episodes (and they were good episodes) having the majority of them be standalone was a BIG mistake on Chibnall’s part.

And like I said, I loved the episodes we got, but the main problem was there wasn’t anything to tie them together (not counting episodes 1, 2, and 10).

I was looking back through some of Matt Smith’s episodes and I realised that, while I wasn’t a big fan of Moffat’s big story arcs that I felt spawned across a couple seasons too many, I did enjoy the little arcs he did in the seasons, the ones that let you know that something big was being hinted at for the finale. The best example I can put down was SPOILERS the reveal at the end of “The Almost People” in Season 6 that Amy was a Ganger the whole time; the subtle moments of Amy seeing a woman looking at her through a window, was actually the real Amy, and what she was seeing was connecting through her Ganger double.

The same thing happened with Russell T Davies as well. Season 1 had the recurring Bad Wolf dotted around the episodes. Season 4 had The Bees Disappearing, which was revealed to actually tie in with the series finale.

Season 11 built up the Stenza in episodes 1 and 2, only to completely forget about them until episode 10. It didn’t make the finale as epic and instead rather awkward, like we were supposed to care about what was happening but instead it was like “Oh yeah you remember THIS villain from episode 1? Well he’s back surprise!” Well yes it would’ve been a surprise, but why not have Tim Shaw built up much more? Why not have hints throughout the rest of the episodes that planets were being stolen or taken over by the Stenza? In fact, why not have the entire Stenza race come into the finale? As a genocidal alien species, I like the idea of. But Tim Shaw is weak on his own.

Anyway, I’m getting off track, the point is that Season 11 didn’t have a lot of weight or urgency to it. It didn’t feel like you were watching important stuff, but instead watching a slice of life. And again, THAT’S FINE, but Doctor Who has never really been about slice of life. In Modern Who, stakes have to be raised to keep the audience invested.

I do hope that Season 12 takes notes from this and does at least tyake the time to build up its finale.