#nor am i an rtd anti

[thylacinetears]

Listen... I liked The Giggle. It had some nice moments, I'm always happy to see more of UNIT, and I thought it was a solid way to resolve RTD kinda writing himself into a corner.

...but if it was exactly the same except for saying "Written By Chris Chibnall" in the credits, Doctor Who fans would be saying it was the worst episode ever made.

[cipher-fresh]

Hey, I am watching Doctor Who for the first time and I have reached Twelves last episode. One of my favorite Doctors so far for sure, and I'm procrastinating watching the final ep because I dont it to end but also because I have only heard bad stuff about Thirteen's seasons :/

What are your (spoiler free) thoughts on Thirteen?

putting this under a readmore because I hate reading chibnall salt if i'm not seeking it out specifically. i do have a lot of positive things to say though. no spoilers 👍

the 13th Doctor era frustrates me immensely because while it is not nearly as bad as the "anti-woke" crowd makes it out to be, but also nor is it as actually turbo-progressive as dudebros complain about. I like the Thirteenth Doctor, but I think moreso the idea of her or the way she is in fanon than canon. Like, the era has like, 80% great stuff, that then aren't brought to their full potential or have frustrating misfires or missed opportunities. Not that the other eras don't have the same, but I think it's compounded by the fact I don't like the companions as much. I can be entertained by an episode that has a nonsensical or boring plot if I'm enjoying the character interactions, but, for example, Ryan Sinclair is not much more expressive than a cardboard cutout. And that's frustrating! (And also, not Tosin Cole's fault.) I want him to have more personality and a life and character! I'm even writing a fic for that, right now.

(Applying criticism to only the 13th doctor era is misogynistic. Acting like RTD or Moffat were perfect but the Chibnall era sucks uniquely is stupid. Every era has problems in its own way.)

(Chibnall's also done stuff like hiring the first writers of color on the show, having a significant amount of female writers and like, I don't know, cast a woman as the Doctor or something. Big if true. /j)

For 13 specifically, I love the way Jodie plays her, I think the way she plays with gender in the narrative is fun, I love that 13 is flawed and an intelligent inventor and looking for fun in the world, that she's funny and awkward and sincere.

I sort of fell out of love with her (or stopped being starry-eyed about her) after series 12. I had been certain that the majority of the era's criticism was just disguised misogyny, but I came to a point where I was constantly thinking "This doesn't make sense" or "that's a horrible rhetorical move." or "What a big missed opportunity!" And I hate sounding like the dudebros who say "Not my doctor!!" or who think Chris Chibnall is the source of the world's problems. There's also a lot of things that were external factors in the era that were downgrades, like the decreased episode count and having to film with pandemic restrictions for series 13.

I do think the 13th Doctor era is a net positive, and there are some really fun and high-quality episodes like Demons of the Punjab and Eve of the Daleks, but this era frustrates me beyond belief. the 13th Doctor era is one of the few places where I prefer fanon to canon. Believe me, that does not happen often.

[variousqueerthings]

Rating Jodie Whittaker first season episodes, best to worse? yeah best to worse. subjective, of course:

1- Demons Of The Punjab

Clear winner for me, beautifully written and shot, with the science fiction element really interacting with the plot. I have some things I wish for this episode -- I wish it was even more explicit how much this situation came out of British colonialism, I wish Yaz had wanted to know about the origins of the watch even though she was there, because I kind of felt like it was for her grandmother more than for her (I would looove to pick the brains of the writer and actress), I wish the science fiction element had tied just a tad more explicitly to the plot, but to be honest considering how hamfisted and sometimes fully off-base the politics has been this era, especially in the next season but in this one occasionally too (THE SYSTEM ISN'T THE PROBLEM!) I am happy to take simple witnessing. But it's a great episode, it comes together well, it's... a rare... episode... about Yaz

2- The Woman Who Fell To Earth

I think this is a great introduction to Thirteen as a mad professor type Doctor. Simple. My favourite Doctor intros are the RTD and RTD2 eras (Nine, Ten, Fifteen), but I think Thirteen is fantastic in this, and it does introduce the companions well -- my one thing I'd change, probably grows gradually as I go through the era, and it's simply that I like Grace as a character more than Graham, and I did not like how she died, and especially not how throughout her death seems to be centred more on Graham than on Ryan

3- It Takes You Away

Frog. Frog. Frog. Also Scandinavian softcore horror for the intro. I mean generally this episode is just a fascinating little ride. So many twists and turns for something that's also so contained. And FROG! -- I do think this episode faltered just a tad on exploring why the dad stayed there, I mean, grief yes, but he's only in this one episode and so you're left with this guy who abandoned his daughter and played spooky noises to keep her inside a hut, while he lived it up in his fake reality with his fake wife, and initially I thought there was a bit of alien hypno or something involved, but no. Just a mess of a father, and then we move on. And also again, Grace only interacts with Graham and not with Ryan. BUT LISTEN! FROG! UNIVERSE FROG!

4- Rosa

Rosa is suuuuch a tricky episode to pull off and I think it being made at all is such major props. It's one of the (if not the) episodes where I genuinely have felt so much real-life fear for one of the companions, and it not shying away from that while attempting to balance it for kids, and having it educate people on Rosa Parks and that history, and Rosa is a fantastically written character as well. it's something I think really is indicative of consciously thinking about who matters in history/for the history episodes than dead white British guys. I rate it further down (although not far down) because I don't know if it was able to nail the ending properly. there was a fatalistic element to the idea of them having to stay seated so that Rosa could protest, and structurally I have questions about the villain, who is very thinly written, and the build throughout the episode being kind of anti-climactic to me. It's kind of pivoting around Rosa as the really interesting part of the episode and I'm glad that she is what works for me, but I don't think it works as an episode of science fiction, nor am I sure about what the ending in the bus is meant to tell us. it also features the first of the "feels like it's spoken directly to the camera" type speeches at the end, which we see more of in the next season.

5- The Ghost Monument

I mean, the ending where the Doctor speaks to the Tardis is it for me. I've heard some people don't like this episode, I think it's solid. it does suffer from Chibnall era sl-o-o-o-o-w pacing at times, which is a thing I've been finding more and more throughout and having checked which episodes feel like major offenders to me, they are ones that tend to be written by him. did just look back at previous seasons episodes by him, and actually he didn't do that many, but some of them are similar in structure, but perhaps not so noticeable when couched in other writers/showrunners. there was some mistake made in the ending of this episode when the companions finally see the Tardis and either the writing or directing decided that they needed to react to this with an understated "wow." Be big! this show is Big!

actually I wonder if that's at the core of some of the things I don't vibe with with Chibs (that and the trying to appease everyone appeases no one and the centre politics with some serious missteps), but structurally I don't think he quite accepts the Doctor Who-ness of it and sometimes tries too hard to turn it into Serious Scifi. sometimes I like that, and often DW is serious, but it's also silly and Camp. it's soul is Camp and Chibnall in his era is not (this the man who wrote Power Of Three, sir!)

but I'm ok with this episode not being so camp. it's serviceable, it gives us back the Tardis and she is Be-a-utiful and gives me one of my favourite little moments between the Doctor and the Tardis

(oh the other thing is Chibnall in his own era has Important Backstory come in oddly artificially and off to the side of the plot/doesn't smoosh the two together well enough. does that in a fair few of these, not just this one)

6- The Witchfinders

I enjoy this one. Alan Cumming plays James I as suitably gay and unhinged with an evil bent to it, there's some wild tree alien zombie witch action, the Doctor namedrops Houdini, I just quite enjoy it -- also it goes more off the rails than I feel like this era allows itself. This is "bad" but it's of the enjoyable kind in my opinion. I may actually in my soul put it one higher/switch it with Ghost Monument, but I'm too lazy to

7- The Tsuranga Conundrum

I like the lil alien in this. I think it suffers froooom... Pacing issues again! And it's another Chibnall written episode! I think I do enjoy the male pregnancy, I mean, I know several men and nbs who've been pregnant so I'm coming at it differently than I'm sure a large swathe of the UK audience, but it (from memory) didn't do any weird "now a man can know what this feels like" type commentary, it's just a planet where men give birth to men, and women give birth to women (sidenote on that, I read this as a Tardis mistranslation or a "close enough" type translation -- so it's just that one part of the species gives birth to one part of the species, and another to another, and Ryan and Graham and Yaz read that as Man and Woman so that's how the translation does it, cos they're not up on the queer lingo... makesya wonder about how dimorphism and potential intersex and trans ideas look on that planet too)

but yeah, a lot of this episode drags for me. I don't not enjoy it, but I think it comes at a point in the season where you wanted something a bit more adrenaline-filled. After the first episode we had the quiet Rosa, then the somewhat messy and also downstated Arachnids of the UK and then I felt kind of owed a big space to-do, which it did seem to start as, but then tapered out a bit. that being said I like a lot of the space ideas (neurological spaceship piloting!!!) and yeah. I don't dislike it

8- Arachnids Of The UK

ARACHNIDS IN THE UK THEY JUST LOCKED YOU IN A ROOM AND WAITED FOR YOU TO DIE I GUESS!!!!??? I think this is the... not the first episode, I think Rosa was the first for me, where it felt like the Doctor sometimes just doesn't act. As if the resolution is "things happen the way they happen and all we can do is hang about I guess"

which is a bit of a Chibs Politics issue and of course most obvious in our bottom rung, but yeah. Not so much of a fan of centrist Doctor, I need me some of that anarchic energy of the past!

we do meet Yaz's mum (hi Yaz's mum!) who asks if Yaz and the Doctor are dating and the Doctor is like... "is that what this is? if you say so" which is kind of hilarious, and Ryan's grime playlist. but overall a bit of a miss

9- Resolution

this was the first episode I hadn't seen before, and it featured one of my faves in the single episode lead and she was great. Unfortunately it felt to me like a rehashed Dalek plot that we've seen done better several times before

we did get Ryan's dad, which I appreciated, because I was under the impression we'd never get to see any of that. I like that he saw the Tardis and decided not to come, but is happy to see his son is cared for, and also that it's a complicated relationship that's being fixed. and I just grab at all the Ryan plot I possibly can!

10- The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos

IIIIIIIIII thought this episode was boring (aahhhh sorry). which feels so damning in such a terrible way, almost worse than things I've said about M*ffat but maybe I should've said more of his episodes were boring, because many of them were, but they were like. maximalist boring, because he thought if he just blasted you full of enough images you'd not pay attention to whether or not there was any plot or character development, whereas this episode to me just... drags

I like the duo alien species, I think they're very cool. I don't think Tim Shaw was compelling enough to come back as a finale villain, I feel like they banked wrongly on that and that's why this episode suffers (well, that and the pacing)

it also shows a bit to me that there's a struggle in this era to do long-form character development at times. A lot of things get brought up in one episode and immediately dealt with within that episode through just... deciding to deal with it. sometimes this isn't the case (Ryan's dad was set up in episode 1 so we could sit with that for a bit, and he featured a lot in the episode he was in, Grace's memory has appeared several times throughout the season in some form or other) but Graham going "I'm gonna shoot this guy -- no never mind I thought it through and I won't" is a bit weak

there's also not a whole lot of this finale that deals with any of the companions or the Doctor in any deep way, they don't reaaally change or grow in a way that makes you go "ah yes, I see where you've come from and potentially where we're setting you up to go next." To be honest this was also a problem with M*ffat, specifically with Clara, who was three different characters depending on season, but in this one again it's not a mad forgetfulness of his own lore that's making Chibnall do this, it's just kind of static

11- Kerblam

aaaaand Kerblam. Honestly. opening salvo of this? Great. and then. it loses the fucking plot. and calls space Amazon alright actually. and just... I mean all of it's a mess. Capitalism Propaganda, from the characters to the resolution. make you blink a few times and worry perhaps that despite episodes like Demons of the Punjab and Rosa that ol' Chibs (who to be fair didn't write this one, but would have had final say on it and potentially commissioned the idea) is not the guy to be writing Progressive Doctor Who... maybe... who knows...

[familyparadox]

You make a valid point it is just I fear that one day there will be no new (as in new material) Doctor Who stories in any media. Doctor who has alway been there for me. As it has been for many. And in a world with out who I don’t know who I am. And yes it is not FP vs Nu Who. But it is more a personal thing. Time War represents RTD and Moffat and whilst I enjoy both of them I feel some of the RTD and Moffat fans are really anti Chibnal and whilst Chibnal is now gone I fear the damage they have done has doomed he TV show. I myself enjoyed most Chibnal’s stuff but the fans in there loathing and sometimes sexism I fear will create a new wilderness years. To me this poll is a between my fear and my hope. The people involved are neither good nor bad they are people but my fear and my hope has turned them into devils and angles. Those who will damn the show and those who will save it. I know it is not but my fear has conceptualised and corrupted the logical part of my brain. And whilst I know this I still this poll as showing the future of the show in a kind of superstitious manner. The War is my hope and the Time War is my fear. Of course this is silly.

[televisedbirdwatching]

North Boulder versus South Front Range

I work in a specialized retail store that is lucky enough to attract clients from all over our area. This is at least partially due to the fact that we offer some services and products that aren’t generally available at your average bike shop- but even given this caveat, I am consistently surprised by the distances clients often travel to see us. However, this shouldn’t be so surprising: supercommutes (commutes longer than 90 minutes) are on the rise, and a visit to our bike shop might only be half the time of someone’s daily drive to work.

My roommate works in a large building on a corporate campus, and many of his coworkers easily qualify as supercommuters. Many of them travel in from the towns that satellite the Denver area- but he has heard of one person commuting in from Castle Rock, CO; over an hour each way, without traffic. Some commuters that live geographically closer to the office may face similar commute times if they use the bus system (currently, light rail doesn’t serve the Broomfield area- and even if it did, I’m still not sure it would be a time saver).

In Victor Gruen’s 1965 Essay “New Forms of Community,” he writes: “In spite of our population explosion and of the flight of rural population into urbanized areas, most of our cities actually show a shrinkage of population within their boundaries. We are in fact confronted with the emergence of a new type of inhabitant, whom I shall call the “regionite.” Regionites are neither country folk nor city folk. They live outside of the boundaries of the city, but within the sprawling metropolitan regions. They live a detached life in detached houses, disinterested in the political, social, and cultural life of the city with which they keep contact only through the thin umbilical cord that is necessary to earn their livelihood.”

I think this “regionite*” mindset is really powerful. Through purely rational and economic terms, it seems like it would be a hard sell to convince someone a job so far away from home was worth it. Not only would it be hard to rationalize the gas money (or transit pass money), it’s also hard to imagine that spending so much of a day commuting is the most valuable use of one’s time. However, I think the regionite mindset provides the emotional influence to convince people to obtain sub-optimal ends. For example, although a job might require an hour of commuting one-way, if this commute takes place within the same region, it may not seem so far. Castle Rock is, geographically, a long ways from Broomfield; but if you’re instead thinking of them as two towns within the Denver Metro area, they might feel a lot closer than a map may suggest.

We draw these regional boundaries ourselves and use them to judge huge life decisions. For example, questions like “what jobs are available to me?” and “can product X be purchased near me or will I buy it online?” are all shaped by these mental geographical regions. And, it seems to me that many of these regional boundaries are expanding. Perhaps twenty years ago, Boulder felt like a distinct region, and Denver felt like a distinct region. As the land between these cities was developed, there’s no visual distinction and no regional boundary. Now, cities as far away as Arvada are widely considered part of the Denver Metro area. In addition, I sometimes hear people refer to “the Front Range” (from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, CO) as though it were some sort of contiguous megalopolis.

In fact, these attitudes have become so much the norm that sometimes it surprises me when I hear of someone who conceives of a city or a town as a micro-region in itself. For example, I sometimes hear friends grumble about driving to “South Boulder” or “North Boulder” as though Boulder was anything but a 30 minute drive (with traffic) from South end to North end. Or, people look at me strangely when I assert that I won’t look for jobs in Denver because I’m unwilling to make the commute. For me, working in Denver (especially South Denver or the Denver Tech Center) is outside of my personal regional boundary. If I wanted access to these jobs, I would move within their region.

As regional identities strengthen, I wonder if we’re not losing something. Last week, I wrote about Boulder Junction, a planned community the city of Boulder has designed to serve people who want to live in Boulder but commute elsewhere in the Denver area. I have serious concerns about whether people who live commute-centered lives will develop any interest or concern in local political issues. Boulder Junction’s development and existence rides on a specific tax collection structure and partnership with RTD. Even in matters that directly concern them, will a Boulder Junction resident take ownership of their own community? And why should they, given the percentage of time that they spend outside of Boulder Junction?

Second, I wonder if what Gruen calls our “detached” lives can help explain things like the defeat of California’s SB 827, in which NIMBY-ist concerns defeated YIMBY-ist (great acronym, not mine) activists who wanted to bring affordable housing to their communities. In the end, the NIMBY side won out, citing a number of (mostly bunk) reasons. I think that instead of detached identities, we can think of these as convenient and valent identities. It’s not hard to imagine someone making statements like “as a resident of the greater L.A. area, I care deeply about increasing affordable housing supply” but also “as a resident of Glenwood, I oppose the construction of new apartments in my neighborhood.”

Gruden concludes that “instead of the city with its rooted citizens, we have urban sprawl with its drifting, nomadic inhabitants.” Gruden was primarily concerned that the rise in regionist thinking would rob cities of their sense of place, or “there-ness.” I think he was right to be concerned on this front. But I also think regionist thinking is dangerous in rationalizing supercommutes and encouraging nimby-ist thinking. Have we so thoroughly embraced regionist thinking that 90-minute commutes will be the norm in the future?

*A quick google search for “Regionist” yields lots of results about a libertarian anti-state movement with the same name. To be clear, I am using the word congruent to Gruden’s original definition, which apparently never caught on.

[thirddoctor]

I think you misunderstand the “writers” this post was aimed at. I wasn’t talking about anyone in the fandom at all---I was talking about writers for the show and EU.

I too think the Master isn’t necessarily mentally healthy and said as much in my original tags (I don’t personally headcanon any particular conditions---nothing against people who do, I’m just not a psychologist and the Master is not human so it would feel a bit odd to me to be trying to diagnose them with anything, but again that’s just my preference and I’m happy for other people to approach the character differently). I also think insanity is a useless term.

It is, however, the term RTD used. This post was in response to some research I was doing awhile back on the writing process behind his take on the Master. It was very interesting---I read every interview I could get my hands on, poured through The Writer’s Tale, listened to all the commentaries, etc.---it really gave me an insight into why RTD made the choices that he made, and it was a lot of fun because RTD’s always a fun person in interviews.

He sure does say some Things though:

“I needed a couple of years to work out how to write him. I twigged it about 18 months ago, the whole thing suddenly clicked—he’s insane! And I don’t mean that lightly; I don’t mean he’s ha-ha-barking mad; I mean genuinely, profoundly, clinically insane, a psychopath, or more probably a sociopath, and a high-functioning one at that. As soon as I understood that, I was dying to write him.” — RTD, DWM 384.

--- RTD after meeting with John Simm about TEoT, The Writers Tale.

I have no problem with the Master being mentally ill, or fans exploring that. For example, as someone with OCD, I love seeing OCD traits in characters. This post isn’t about that. It was specifically about Doctor Who writers simply writing the Master as crazy instead of trying to analyze their actual motivations. In fact, the initial prompt for my decision to research RTD’s conception of the character actually had nothing to do with him or Simm---it was about my distaste for this bit of characterisation from a short story in Twelve Angels Weeping about a young Master and Rani:

“The girl just looks at me, and I realise I was wrong. The boy isn’t the insane one. He’s just the one who wears it like a heart on his sleeve. She’s the one who looked at everything sanity had to offer, and wrote it a polite and reasoned rejection. He had no chance to be right in the head, but she had every chance – and, as I outlive my usefulness, I realise I have no chance at all.”

I enjoyed Dave Rudden’s other Master story in the anthology (and Dave Rudden himself seems a lovely person), but this bit really riled me and got me thinking about this unfortunately common interpretation of the Master as totally unhinged. (It’s something that’s put me off a lot of Missy’s EU stories as well, because they just take her bonkers act at face value and it results in very shallow characterisation.)

On a Watsonian level, I think it’s quite easy to dismiss the insanity thing as a performance, because imo all the Masters come across as 100% knowing what they are doing and in control of their actions (with exceptions like Roberts in the movie, who is slightly out of it due to being executed, turned into a snake, and taking over a new body, but even he is still aware of what he’s doing). I don’t personally view any of the Masters as insane, and again, I think that’s a rubbish label anyway.

On a Doylist level, though, some writers have chosen to write the Master as insane. RTD is writing Simm under that assumption---he’s explicitly stated this multiple times. I don’t think what we see onscreen necessarily supports that interpretation, especially as it’s not the only facet RTD explores the character through, but the intention was very much to write him as mad. We’re both disregarding that intention and coming up with our own interpretations, which I’m sure are very different, but I think we’re actually both fundamentally in agreement that "the Master = crazy” is bad and inaccurate.

Again, this wasn’t about the fandom or reading mental illness into the character---I’m not opposed to that at all. It was about show/EU writers using mental illness, or more specifically the broad, useless, and ableist concept of “insanity” as a substitute for giving the character more interesting and concrete motivations that align with their past behaviour and actual stated philosophy. I’m sorry if you thought it was about any particular subset of the fandom.

Besides being ableist, insanity is just such a lazy explanation for the Master’s actions. I don’t know why Master stories seem so terrified to actually let the Master choose to be evil, but it’s always got to be drums or a deal with Death or telepathic influence from future incarnations or just straight up insanity. How hard is it to accept that they’re an ambitious, selfish person who made bad choices and kept compounding those with even more bad choices?

Is it because some writers can’t grasp how someone so similar to the Doctor could’ve gone down such a different path? Do they think the Master can’t be sympathetic if the terrible things they do are entirely their fault? Do they think it will make the Doctor look bad for still caring about them? Are they just too lazy to give the Master genuine motivations? Why does anyone think simply slapping the label of insanity on the character is in any way satisfying, interesting, or accurate?

Now, to be clear, the Master does have a habit of doing incredibly rash and just plain dumb things, but so does the Doctor—the Doctor’s just better at pulling them off. It doesn’t make either of them ““”crazy”““.

The Master also becomes less controlled over time in how they express their emotions, but I think that’s in part a result of their experiences fighting to stay alive after they run out of regenerations, and also a facade of its own. The Master has always been prone to extreme emotions—Delgado frequently has to hold himself back from violent outbursts—but they used to try to present a more controlled, dignified image. Dignity is hard to hold onto when you’re a walking corpse, though. They don’t abandon that persona altogether, but it’s not as important to them from Crispy onwards. However, that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped curating how they present themself. The Master likes disguises, they like playing a part, and much of what they do is an elaborate performance. That doesn’t mean it’s fake, necessarily, just that they choose how they want to be seen by everyone. Why do you think Crispy wears a tatty, grim reaper-like cowl? He could dress any way he wants, regardless of his physical appearance, but he knows he can’t pretend to be suave and charming anymore so he leans into the horror instead.

Becoming more extreme and manic is just another performance. They exaggerate themself and play the part of the insane villain because they enjoy it, because it throws people off balance, and because it acts as a mask for whatever they’re genuinely feeling. Look at Missy—she delights in being absurd and unpredictable, but can switch it on and off at will. The moments when her emotions are at their strongest are also frequently the moments when she’s quietest, because she’s not performing anymore.

You have to look past the Master’s surface presentation, because not everything they say and do is actually representative of their feelings/mental state. This is where a lot of writers get the Master wrong, imo (it’s especially a problem with Missy’s EU characterisation). It’s easy to write them off as mad, but the Master is consistently shown to be in control of their mental faculties (barring outside influences like the Cheetah Virus), and it’s complete nonsense to say you have to be insane to make immoral or irrational decisions.