#on the offset though: missy's purple thing is Bad and it is Bad

[silvermarmoset]

i'd love to know more about your thoughts on Missy's costumes this in particular (silvermarmoset*tumblr*com/post/158396006074/doctorwhogeneration-missy-season-10-official#notes). I didn't even know there were patterns(?) to the shirt until I saw this brightened version, & what was it about Missy's s8&9 that bothered you? Did Missy dress deliberately in contrast to 12? (btw, if you've seen a few bts of 13, what did you think the unexpected addition to her look?).

i can’t do a full or good analysis of missy’s costume without really studying it first! (so come back and request it later on.) But I can justify my earlier opinion: I thought the whole ‘Mary Poppins’ scheme in the costumes didn’t make sense for the Missy we were seeing at the time. I’m sure fans will come after me with their own analyses and textual metas on this, but for me, I was distracted by the costume’s connotations of traipsing-nanny—Missy’s arc doesn’t seem to connect to Mary Poppins very well; the nanny visual more easily relates to other characters of the horrifying-caretaker type (i.e., Madame Kovarian: a true nightmare of a mother figure). Besides those issues of connotation, the visual language of the costume didn’t connect Missy to our long history with the Master—who notably, despite numerous regenerations, did tend to keep an unchanging fashion sense. This detail was one I enjoyed, as it made an obvious contrast to the ever-changing Doctor: while good can and does change, evil remains stagnant. A powerful idea!

But the nanny thing diminishes that, and diminishes the raw power Missy could have. She’s a returning archnemesis! She’s a scary sonofabitch! She’s simmering and campy and blessed with Gomez’s incredible fluid physicality—but then we’re dumped into a purple dress she can barely move in, with nanny/edwardian/mary poppins connotations that go nowhere, and it all vaguely feels to me more like a “what if the doctor was female?” sort of badly-done sketch than an attuned-to-character, richly developed costume for the Top Villain Of The Season™.

You can argue what the nanny costume is actually doing, but for me, departing from the history of the character so completely in favor of a weird visual was a mistake that downplayed her completely. And that’s before mentioning that it made the lovely Michelle Gomez look hideous.

It’s not an analysis, but it is an angry nerd opinion.

To end the rant on a good note: I do love her Series 10 costumes. They play MUCH more firmly into who Missy actually is, and show a deeper connection to her than some weird nanny-gimmick. I’d love to do a more thorough analysis of her sometime (and would probably recognize in the process the mistakes & misreadings all over this post), but that’s the short of it, to answer your Q.

(P.S. don’t spoil me on 13!!! she’s going to hit my screen in an explosion of weird newness and i’m excited to keep the lid on her until she does.)