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biglisbonnews · 2 years ago

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This Scottish Dark Sky Town Decided To Go Even Darker On a chilly January night, a pale yellow moon shines down on the small Scottish town of Moffat and two teenagers standing outside a cozy, candlelit pub. The pair wait with handmade, triangular paper lanterns that glow from within. A boisterous group exits the establishment and one of the teens steps forward. “Do you need a link?” asks Sarah Rogers, 15, ginger curls poking out from under her woolen cap. The party pauses, a little confused. “A what?” asks one of them. In Victorian-era London, links—back then known as link boys—provided a kind of mobile lamppost service, escorting middle- and upper-class customers through the city's dark, foggy, and sometimes dangerous streets. Historically, links were usually destitute children trying to earn a living: A customer might pay a single farthing, a quarter of a penny, per trip. In Moffat, Rogers and her fellow modern links have other motivations. “We do it for tips and donate what we earn to the charity of our choice,” says Rogers. “I’m going to give mine to Friends of the Earth this year.” Moffat is a quaint market town of old stone buildings with a population of about 2,400. It sits in a valley in the hilly southern uplands 60 miles southeast of Glasgow, and first gained attention as a Victorian-era spa town known for its sulfur-rich springs. More recently, the town’s fame has taken a darker turn—literally. After upgrading its public lighting, in 2016 Moffat became the first European town to receive International Dark Sky Place certification. As link girl Rogers and her friend escort the group of pub goers to an afterparty, their lanterns are the only sources of light along the narrow lane. One of their charges stops to admire the stars; the Milky Way is easy to make out in the midnight sky. Rogers points out The Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades—her favorite—and a cluster that can be difficult to see. Here in Moffat’s dark sky, the stars seem almost near enough to touch. It’s so dark in Moffat, in fact, that it’s almost as if the power has been cut. And it has. Sort of. Inspired by the town’s Dark Sky recognition, two of Moffat’s lifelong residents, friends Carol Rogers (Sarah’s mother) and Evelyn Atkins, conceived of something much more radical. After spearheading the opening of a town astronomy center in 2021, “We caught the darkness bug,” says Atkins. “We wanted to try—if only for two weeks a year—to live almost entirely without artificial light.” The pair believed the experiment could show that natural darkness is good for health and wellbeing, and even helps bring a community together. It could also, they reasoned, become Moffat’s newest claim to fame. Rogers and Atkins began by urging friends and neighbors to turn off lights in yards, gardens, driveways, and even inside houses, eventually expanding their campaign to the entire town. “I think I met every single resident of Moffat,” says Atkins. “Some think I’m mad." “Darkness is good for us.” Moffat now turns off nearly all of its public lights for two weeks each winter. It’s an experiment to rediscover life before artificial lighting stole the darkness from us. Town officials encourage residents to turn off porch lights and even interior lamps. They call it the “dark weeks.” But not everyone was onboard at first. Some residents were hesitant, says Mayor Tracey Little. “They’d heard the stories about criminals coming out in the dark,” she says. “But that hasn’t happened here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.” During the annual January dark weeks, community spirit comes alive. Residents host bonfires in backyards, organize community theater by candlelight, and join night walks to observe owls and the stars. “It’s the most fun time of the year,” says Carol Rogers. “It’s also the coziest. I feel my best during the dark weeks. I just know it’s healthier. I stop wearing my glasses. I go to bed earlier.” “Darkness is good for us,” says Agata Łopuszyńska of the Polytechnic University of Wroclaw. The urban planner specializes in helping cities embrace darkness. When she heard about Moffat’s plans to change its lighting several years ago, she visited to create a before-and-after series of photographs that shows just how striking the changes are. “The people there are nuts about darkness. If only other towns were as open to it as Moffat, the night time would be much more beautiful.” Astrophotographer and dark skies advocate Josh Dury thinks that Moffat’s approach should be an inspiration to other communities. “If you squeeze the whole of human evolution into a single day, artificial lighting has been around for a minute,” says Dury. “Exposure to light at night can have serious health implications.” He adds: “It can particularly affect our body’s hormones, including the production of melatonin, which is responsible for maintaining sleep patterns and nocturnal rhythms.” There’s also evidence, he says, of a link between artificial light use and the development of certain cancers. Light pollution is also bad for wildlife, especially nocturnal wildlife—including protected species in Britain such as barn owls, bats, and hedgehogs—and migratory birds. “They tend to breed less and less successfully in light polluted environments,” says Dury. Carol Rogers says maybe it’s time to rethink the overuse of artificial lighting in our lives, too. “Maybe we should be headed back to a darker, cozier time. Maybe that’s better for us. I know it’s better for me. It would certainly put the links back in business.” On that chilly January evening, her daughter Sarah, her face brightened by the lantern glow and her enthusiasm for her role as a link, brings her group to their destination. She's still bubbling over with tidbits of link history. “The word ‘link’ is the name of the cotton wick of the torches they carried,” Rogers says. “The service is even mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry IV: ‘Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern.’ Brilliant, right? "Oh, one more," she exclaims as she heads into the darkness. "You know the saying ‘you can’t hold a candle to somebody’? It means you weren’t even good enough to be their link boy…or girl.” The lantern Rogers carries fades into the winter night as she looks for more customers to light their way, much as Moffat may be illuminating a new path for us to embrace the darkness of our ancestral past, and to see where that path leads us. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dark-sky-moffat-scotland

#Blair Mastbaum #Atlas Obscura

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the-desolated-quill · 4 years ago

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WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad.

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

#anti wandavision #anti marvel #anti mcu #anti disney #quill's scribbles

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mizgnomer · 4 years ago

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Behind the Scenes of The Girl in the Fireplace - Part 9

Excerpt from David Darlington’s interview with Steven Moffat in Doctor Who Magazine #364 - January 2006 (and Darlington’s official site):

DWM: Given that it [discovering that Christopher Eccleston was leaving the show] happened the day you were sitting down to start work [on the script for The Girl in the Fireplace] - did you still sit down and start work that day?

DWM: Yes, I did. Because there’s a certain amount of Doctor Who work that is going to be the same whoever is playing the Doctor. 'They walk out of the TARDIS and something dreadful happens to them’… it wasn’t a huge adjustment. I had my chat with Russell, which wasn’t very long, about how things were going to be with David Tennant now playing that part. So: still not posh, still none of that faux-eccentricity. I sat and watched Casanova, and got used to the idea of him being the Doctor, and I wrote my episode completely separately from Russell writing his, and when we compared episodes we’d written the same Doctor, it was very similar. In fact, I think we’d written, on one occasion, the same line. I think David maps very easily onto that part - so much of what he does is a bit Doctor Who-ish, you know?

DWM: And have you seen him in action yet?

Moffat: I haven’t seen film, but I was at two readthroughs, including the readthough for mine, and it was amazing. On readthrough performance alone, David is the best Doctor ever. He’s one of those dazzling technicians, in that he can do anything with a line, he really can do anything with a line. Now, a certain amount of Doctor Who dialogue is inevitably going to be 'There’s a spaceship over there, let’s go and look at the spaceship’, and David can find ways of undercutting it and spinning it. He puts a lot of very good spin on his dialogue, and I think he’ll be astonishing. I think he will conquer the world as the Doctor. But you’ve always got to wait and see - one of the things with David is… do you know David?

DWM: Actually, yeah, I’ve worked with him!

Moffat: …of course - one of the things is that David in person is just an incredibly nice bloke, an extremely courteous, kind, pleasant man. With a Paisley accent, which is kind of weird. Have I told you my funny story about his Paisley accent?

DWM: Not that I recall…

Moffat: Sue [Vertue, Steven’s wife and noted TV producer] and I were at a wrap party for Sue’s sitcom, and we got back very drunk. So I staggered upstairs to get my messages, and I hear this message that I assume is from me! It’s this Scottish voice going 'Hello, it’s very late…’ - and I assume I’ve left a message for Sue and forgotten about it. ’…Ah, Steven, yes..’ - and the voice starts raving on about my script. And I think 'F**king hell - I’ve phoned myself about how good I am! My ego has got so big it’s phoned me! This is unhealthy, I’ve got to see someone…’. And then at a certain point he remembers, in that scatterbrained David way, to say 'Oh, it’s David Tennant, by the way…’. But then, of course, I was incredibly thrilled to have a message on my answerphone from Doctor Who himself. Saying I was clever! But anyway, as I was saying - in person David is this very pleasant, quite good-looking bloke. On screen, a whole new thing happens, he becomes quite mad, quite dangerous. His eyes become different, and you think he’s actually got a touch of the Chris thing, of being slightly scary. There’s something odd about his eyes, and his edgy, brittle manner that I think becomes very arresting and quite powerful…

DWM: It’s really noticeable in Blackpool, where it’s a very small performance in physical terms, he’s not throwing himself around like on Casanova, but you can’t take your eyes off him.

Moffat: Exactly. And he was up against David Morrissey, who’s fantastic, and stole the show from him. He is absolutely making his presence felt, which is just astonishing. And even as Casanova where he’s playing a loveable, affable bloke, underneath it he’s got this dangerous thing. It wouldn’t surprise you if he turned round and was quite mean to you - and I think that’s probably quite close to his Doctor. I think the Doctor should have that thing that he’s not just 'nice’, although he is very nice he’s also slightly dangerous. What I liked about Chris was that there was something about Chris that was slightly mental - his Doctor, you’re not quite sure where you are with him, 'I like you but I don’t quite know where I am with you’. There’s a moment in The Long Game where he’s saying goodbye, and then as they turn away he suddenly becomes serious - and it’s not an ordinary actor that can do that, that can just turn the temperature like that. And I think we’re going to see David doing the same stuff - that’s what he’s got to rise to, but I think he will. More humour, obviously - he’s funny, David, and it would be daft not to use that.

Link to [ part one ] of this post, or click the #whoBtsGitf tag (I’d link it but that seems to break Tumblr), or the [ full episode list ]

#david tennant #billie piper #doctor who #rtdedit #the girl in the fireplace #tenth doctor #steven moffat #sophia myles #steven moffat saying lovely things about david tennant #doctor who magazine #dwm #david darlington #stuff i posted #whoBts #whoBtsGitf

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ssaalexblake · 4 years ago

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it’s controversial tuesday again, so like... time lord victorious is basically the doctor’s entitled ‘i am the last of the time lords, i am entitled to what i want b/c i’m hot shit’ moment, he’s thinking he’s better than everybody else and is entitled to certain privileges the rest of us mere mortals aren’t by virtue of being like, Him. You know, last of the time lords, the uncoming storm.

The Lonely God.

And that’s like, Super popular as a story line in fandom.

Which is why it’s so ironic that the timeless child thing, a story about the doctor being abused and medically tortured as a child refugee is perceived and then judged poorly as a story about the doctor being special and chosen and superior because of their biology and abilities.

Now don’t get me wrong, i Hate that ten phase, it’s immature, babyish, and about as far away from cool as possible to get and it’s infuriating because he never pays for it, and i pray the doctor will never sink as low as he did there again, but that story is legit an Actual example of what is Apparently bad about s12′s finale, but instead of being slated it’s lauded as brilliant even though ten never faces Actual consequences of any note for his massive superiority complex that is based on little more than his ego as The Doctor, Lonely God, Last of the Time Lords. Him being Special.

the doctor doesn’t become a hero until they escape the cycle of abuse they were put in when they ended up on gallifrey, which does not happen until the first doctor has some decency yelled into him by two school teachers in the 60′s, biology has Never been what makes the doctor great and their ‘i am better than others b/c of my species’ bs is exactly that, bs, because even if the doctor started out a child refugee Or if they were living their first childhood with the master, they never become a hero until they Leave and put effort into being better. If the doctor is ever better than anybody in the show, it’s because of their newfound ideals making them the better person in a situation, that’s all. Not because they’re a time lord/whatever species they are revealed to be now.

The timeless child plot is about abuse, about gallifrey’s using and abusing and throwing away of a refugee, they stole a child’s abilities, claimed them for their own and then ditched the kid and Hated them and Ostracized them and lauded themselves as the Very best in the universe, superior, and erased from the narrative the child they abused and stole from to achieve their great feats. Gallifrey has always been a metaphor for the british empire, put all of the above in context of said real life empire (and you know, modern day country, it’s still relevant) and see the biting criticism. This child was not Chosen, they were a refugee abused by a society that did not care for them beyond how they would benefit them and then thrown away and then denied the credit for their own abilities. See again, the entire history and actions of the british empire.

The tragedy of the timeless child story is, really, it’s not about the kid. The kid whose name we don’t know because it didn’t matter to the people who were supposed to be loving and nurturing them, not using them. We know nobody saves this child because we know they save themself.

Time Lord Victorious, though, is very much ten acting like your average time lord. Pig headed, superior, better than everybody else because he’s a time lord. a ‘the doctor is better than everybody else because of their biology and their perception as some kind of chosen one’ story Does exist in dw, but it’s not a 13 era plot, it’s with Ten. But apparently when it’s Him it’s fun?

The thing is, dw is kind of based upon the doctor being no better than humans because they’re a time lord, the doctor being special and better because of their biology and abilities Is a terrible take, which is why time lord victorious isn’t cute, cool, edgy or in any way fun, tbh, it’s a breakdown of the doctor and while that’s not bad in itself, it ends up being so because ten is never Actually taken to task for it, they portrayed him acting that badly but neglected to truly make him face consequences for it. So i agree with the assertion that ‘the doctor is special because of their biology and smarts’ is an awful take, but that is Not the what the timeless child plot is saying At All. You’re looking for Ten.

(eventually dw does kick the doctor in the pants with their superiority complex, but we have to wade into moffat era for that and Ten never learns and He needed to face his own ego, tbh, not ones down the line)

#dw shit #this makes no sense #no biting pls it will be ignored tbh i am just Frustrated #ten can do no wrong apparently #but it's freaking annoying seeing s12 get slated for something it never damn did #while a plot which Does do that gets lauded Still because it's cool???#s12 actually has some very biting commentary on the use and abuse of refugees but... nope not abt that apparently #also i don't necessarily object to the doctor having an ego fit it's jsut you have to follow through!!!! they didn;t #it was bad writing not necessarily a poor storyline

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Doctor Who: Flux Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/3Dt3K3R

The massive, deranged, ‘packed to the gills with plot and lore and side plots’ arc that has made up this season is finally at an end. It is fair to say this has been the most epic Doctor Who story since ‘The Stolen Earth’ (yes, Moffat blew up the universe a couple of times, but even at his most bombastic it was usually a metaphor for a smaller stakes emotional story than to go for Big Universe Spanning Epic Action). It also has the plot of about 18 Doctor Who episodes crammed into six, so now that we’re looking back on it, you could be forgiven for having a few unanswered questions. So here’s our best stab at untangling the Flux (if a Flux is something that can be tangled?)

First, let’s go back to the start and figure out what everyone was actually trying to do.

What was Joseph Williamson’s Plan?

Joseph Williamson was a real person, and much like his Doctor Who counterpart, he spent a large part of his life digging a massive and elaborate network of tunnels beneath Liverpool, for reasons that were not exactly clear to anyone. You can go and have a look, if you like.

The Doctor Who version of Williamson found a selection of strange portals around Liverpool, connecting to different places and times throughout the universe, and began digging tunnels to connect them. Through one of those doors he saw the end of the universe, and so worked to expand his tunnels into an underground city, where future generations would be able to hide in the face of the cataclysm.

What was the Division’s plan?

The Division, or Division (the “the” seems optional), has been the main driving force behind the Flux storyline, if not the 13th Doctor’s tenure as a whole. A secretive division, originating from the Time Lords but outsourcing operations to everyone from Lupari to Weeping Angels, they have grown to operate as a kind of dark mirror to the Doctor, interfering in alien worlds to bring about the best outcomes. They have a lot in common with the Celestial Intervention Agency (or CIA, yes, really) but seem if anything older and more nefarious, and were once led by Tecteun, the Doctor’s adoptive mother.

When the Doctor found out about the existence of Division in ‘The Timeless Children’, Division were so scared of her (because of her ability to inspire people) that their response was to release the Flux to destroy the universe and everyone in it while the Division hopped into the next universe (although, for some reason they also offer the Doctor the chance to come with them).

To be honest, I cut a lot of jokes from that summary because I wanted to make clear that this is explicitly what Tecteun said the plan was.

Swarm and Azure: what was the Ravagers’ plan?

The Ravagers are the Doctor and Division’s ancient enemy, from back in the very dark times of the universe. The war that they fought in appeared to be between Space and Time, with Azure and Swarm serving Time, and presumably, Division serving Space. Division won the war, restrained Time (an actual anthropomorphic entity, we’ll get to that later) in the Temple of Atropos, which is on the planet Time, and jailed Swarm and Azure in an impenetrable jail on the ruins of his last battlefield and in a house in the Arctic Circle, respectively.

Swarm escaped from his prison and went and freed his sister, and they set about their plan which was to hop around the post-apocalyptic ruins of the universe, scooping up survivors in “Passenger”, their big mute Darkseid-looking humanoid prison.

Swarm and Azure then used all the people they stole to build a “psychic bridge” to Division’s inter-universe ark/seedbank, where they killed Tecteun and planned to wipe out the universe, release time, and then rewatch it over and over again like Doctor Who fans in the nineties.

Doctor Who: Flux Episode 6 Review – The Vanquishers

By Chris Allcock

Doctor Who: It’s Dalek Déjà Vu in 2022 with New Year Special ‘Eve of the Daleks’

By Louisa Mellor

What was the Sontarans’ plan?

Okay, the Sontaran plan is fairly straight forward. They made an alliance with the Grand Serpent- who apparently isn’t the Master even though he has two pulses and his pseudonym “Prentis” is a rubbish anagram of “Serpent”. Come on!

Anyway, the Grand Serpent infiltrates UNIT, disabling Earth’s defences and allowing Sontar to conquer Earth for the second time in the space of five weeks, which makes you wonder what they took UNIT’s defences down for anyway.

Having conquered the Earth, Sontarans gather up humans with psychic abilities and use them to pinpoint the exact moment and location of the final Flux. Then they phone up the Cybermen and Daleks to say “Hey, let’s make a peace treaty, no kidding. Bring all of your warships.” and invite them to the place the psychics said the Flux would happen. You see, the Flux is actually a massive wave of antimatter, so throwing lots of matter at it, like two huge war fleets, will “slow it down”.

Now, I’m sorry, I know it’s Doctor Who, a show that makes you look a bit silly if you complain about accuracy. But antimatter is actually a real thing. It is matter where the particles have an opposite electrical charge to matter. If matter and antimatter meet in large enough quantities, they cancel each other out, potentially releasing loads of energy and radiation. So “matter” wouldn’t “slow the Flux down”. It would reduce it, and whatever was left over would still keeping coming at Earth at the same speed as before.

How did the Doctor stop the Flux?

The Sontarans’ plan is obviously evil, and possibly genocidal, which is why the Doctor enacted her own plan: ‘The Sontaran Plan, But Also Throw the Sontarans at the Flux As Well’. Then, using Di’s scheme, she brought a Passenger, who she convinced to help her by telling him he’d been used and abandoned, and used him to absorb the rest of the Flux, after which she presumably set him up with a small business loan and sent him a Christmas Card every year.

So that is all the major beats covered, now let’s get into the nitty gritty.

Why were there three Doctors?

According to the episode, because she removed her conversion plate at the exact moment that Swarm touched her on the head, the result of which was to move her outside the normal laws of physics on her trip back to our universe. That tri-sected her into three places at once, allowing her to be present at all the crucial plot points.

Why is it daytime in Chile when the planet is covered in Lupari craft?

In fact, why does the surface of the Earth appear to be in daylight even though it is behind an opaque wall of spacecraft? Let’s say all of the Lupari craft had perception filters so everyone just thought they were in daylight.

What was going wrong with the TARDIS?

Whatever was going weird with time was fixed when the Temple of Atropos was fixed.

Talking of Time, Time’s a person now?

Yes, Time is a planet, and now it’s also a person, whom Swarm and Azure both worship. Time punishes Swarm and Azure for their failure (although Azure apparently thinks of this as “Ascension”) while warning the Doctor that her own Time is almost up.

If you were a fan of Doctor Who during the Dark Times (not the primordial age of the universe, but the period when the show wasn’t on air) you might have come across time as a person before. The idea first popped up in the novel, Lungbarrow, itself an adaptation of the script that would eventually become the famously bizarre Ghost Light.

Indeed, a lot of the Seventh Doctor novels for this period concern him acting as “Time’s Champion”, arranging all kinds of devious schemes to try and prevent a coming war that would destroy Gallifrey (That went well).

One wonders if this means that somewhere out there is a bloke called “Space” as well.

So… is the universe okay?

Near the start of Flux this website predicted that it would end one of two ways. The universe would be destroyed, with only the Doctor or perhaps the planet Earth surviving and moving to a new universe, letting Russell T. Davies start his next series in a brand new, continuity free, universe-sized blank slate. Or the Doctor would find a magic reset switch and put everything back to normal. We were wrong on both counts. The universe has not been wiped out – or at least, what’s left of it hasn’t. When the Ood showed the Doctor the entire universe, what we saw was something much, much smaller than the Observable Universe, the amount of space light has had time to travel since the Big Bang, and the furthest we are capable of seeing.

The planets that are left are ravaged by a combination of the Flux and various Dalek, Cyber and Sontaran armies stamping all over them. Frankly, it’s the kind of destruction that makes Thanos seem like a moderate centrist.

Will the Doctor fix it? There were clues, not least from Azure and Swarm themselves, that she could. Azure and Swarm’s power used a similar effect to the Flux, and they had the ability to dis- or reintegrate people at will.

Or maybe the destruction of most of the universe will go the way of the world turning into a forest and multiple global alien invasions, and just be sort of brushed over and forgotten about?

Where was everybody left?

The Doctor, Yaz and Dan are off to adventures unknown in the TARDIS. Karvanista, Bel, Vinder and Tigmi are off to adventures unknown in Karvanista’s ship. Kate, Claire and Di have all been dropped back on Earth (sadly, without Professor Jericho, who perished in the Flux), the Sontarans, Daleks and Cybermen have all been disintegrated by the Flux, Swarm and Azure are ascended/dead, and the Grand Serpent has been exiled to a lonely rock in space.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Doctor Who: Flux is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

The post Doctor Who: Flux Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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riallasheng · 5 months ago

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Haven't been able to think of what to do for the 'Free Space', so rather than doing the middle row (and thus The Show Got It Wrong! that was your second request @edutainer2022), so doing the second from the right one instead! ^_^

As always, I got verbose, so readmore deployed! ^_^

(also, I am SUPER open for suggestions on what to do for the free space XD)

Not Enough Screen Time

TOS: That's an easy one. John XD I love John in the few scenes / focus he gets in the original series (and the biggest chunk of that is in the comics and ONE episode, poor boy) In my fanworks timeline / fanfics (most of lost to the ethernet now), something that I'd done since I wanted to see John more and have Alan have a bit LESS focus is that I have it where Alan doesn't join IR off the bat, initially sticking to his racing career before choosing at the end of my season 1 / start of s2 to join IR. Which meant that John basically got Alan's 'early' plotlines. I also had it where even after Alan joined, John still occasionally 'stole' his plotlines, plus my original fanworks I tended to give more focus to John - he's pretty much always a primary character in said fully original works.

2004: Another easy one... Gordon, Virgil, and Scott. The trio are basically secondary / support characters who could have easily been written OUT of the film and that is not something I want XD

TaG: Many of the secondary / supporting new Original Characters, I adored most of 'em. Moffat, Casey (I know she's using the og Casey's name, but she IS an OC really), Ridley, Taylor, Reeves, Tedford, and I ADORE Rigby (The Pendergasts are a bit hit or miss for me. I like them as characters but don't really like their two episodes. Arkel is in the exact same boat. I like her as a character / her story potential, but I don't like either of her episodes) Heck, I even a lot of the characters I tend to see people disliking / hating / finding annoying and the like... simply because I think they can / did create interesting situations which is important for fiction. I like Lemaire and his wife, I like Fischler, and I even like the Chaos Crew. (I do find Berrenger and Cavanaugh meh / annoying though. I like the CONCEPT of the Mechanic, but I have issues with his execution and plotlines)

Headcanons You Love

With a qualification that old fanwoman is old, and as a result I use the original definition of headcanon. That is, it should be supported by canon or at minimum must not CONTRADICT canon. If it contradicts canon / isn't supported by canon it ISN'T a headcanon but is instead a fanon, anticanon, etc

That said... Hmmm, I think I've done headcanons a few times now, so I'll see if I can think of some that I don't THINK I've said prior to this.

TOS: Virgil went straight from college / university to working as an engineer at Tracy Industries, and he started on the ground level / entry level and has earned every promotion he's gotten; maybe even using his mother's or grandmother's surname (possibly alongside his middle name, which is Buzz in my fanworks) at least initially so that people didn't realize who he was. Gordon was involved in building Stingray to at least a small degree - the time frames line up for it, since Stingray was built somewhere in the 2060 to 2063 timeframe and Gordon would have still been in WASP at that time frame. He came up with his revlutionary rebreathers in that time frame after all... which leads to a related headcanon that the rebreathers we see being used in Stingray are the ones GORDON designed.

2004: Fermat's mother is still alive, but she and Brains are divorced and Brains got full custody of his son. (if you want nightmare fuel, look at how Fermat interacts with women compared to men, esp ADULT women... because it's almost textbook for abuse, specifically abuse from an adult female authority figure / from his mother)

TaG: Hrm... IR was originally a branch of the GDF, basically the Coast Guard, but after Jeff 'died' IR was shut down and when the Tracys started it up again, they did it as a independent 'company'. Scott was the only one who was part of IR prior to Jeff's death / while it was a GDF branch, although John and Virgil were in training and very close to joining it

I Want More!

TOS: More stories like we saw in the comics and ESPECIALLY the novels. The show was a bit formulaic and the comics and novels changed the formula more often than it followed it. Above all else, let them LOSE or fail on occasion (which the novels and esp comics did)

2004: Hmmmm... I really liked Fermat and his subplot, so I'll go with that. At least we got more rescues in this film then we did in the original two TOS films? (which is hilarious when you think about it)

TaG: The Kayo and Hood subplot from s1. I *HATE* that it was basically dropped post s1 as it was easily my favorite plotline in TaG straight up

I Won't Read That!

Smut / Explicit sexual fiction for all of them. This one isn't really due to me being aroace. I used to be alright with reading it (bored by it like I am bored by most romance) but in my midteens I had... well, two bad incidents. So as a result I'm sex repulsed and smut / anything more intense then orange / lime can and has legit triggered panic attacks or flashbacks Other than that... I generally won't read fiction that has the characters too OOC or is basically just original fiction with names carrying over. I also generally don't read pure fluff or super heavy romance works simply because I am bored by them. Also I generally don't like works where OCs are main characters as they tend to have less focus on the canon characers I'm IN the fandom for, and annoyingly often the canon characters are OOC to one degree or another, which is something I dislike.

How Do You Feel About Injuries?

I tend to like 'em in writing and reading / watching works ^^

I'm doing the ask game! Hit me up.

(I'll answer in character if you want the author lady send it to her)

#bingo #ask game #thunderbirds 1965 #thunderbirds 2004 #thunderbirds are go 2015

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thattimdrakeguy · 4 years ago

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i see thta you like Doctor Who. So who's your favorite Doctor? Or five or 10 or whatever you wanna answer. I'd love to know!

I like the Tenth Doctor the most! Like I really like the Tenth Doctor. Before Bat-Family that was basically my main thing. I used to be able to do a really great David Tennant impression too, but nowadays I do it and I’m incomprehensible cause I don’t do it nearly as much anymore, but I could’ve freaking done the audio dramas while I was at my peak for it.

Even lately I’ve considered buying that suit, but, I never wear suits, and I’d rarely wear it. Not that it stopped me from getting the homemade Spider-Man suit from the MCU.

The Sonic Screwdrivers I even own all the modern ones, besides Whittaker, cause money wasn’t so plentiful to just buy stuff like that anymore by her, and oh well I guess cause I wasn’t a fan of series 11 and haven’t gotten to watch series 12 yet.

David Tennant’s interpretation of the character was really great though, and I think really why he’s my favorite is because I can see myself in him, and even in the moments where I can’t, he just brings such great drama and cadence that he’s show stealing each time.

Like what’s funny is I started watching the show just by buying some Tenth Doctor DVD’s randomly at Wal-Mart like three or four years after the shows peak relevancy, where at the time when it was at it’s peak I was such a fake fan that literally just pretended to like it cause I had no idea how to get online friends yet. Not that I do now or anything.

And the episodes I got where the least favorite in all of Doctor Who until Chibnall, but I just liked Tennant. It was such a campy show but I loved it. I liked how the Doctor was fun, hyperactive, geeky, dorky, ridiculous, and fun-loving, but yet when the mood changed he’d be this commanding, vein individual, that clearly thought very highly of himself, and you know he’s rude doing what he’s doing but it makes him extra interesting because it keeps you on your toes, and David was able to do the switch so well when he saw people doing wrong that it was believable when he turned.

The writing sometimes left a lot to be desired though, some of the episode concepts were lame, mainly cause of budget, the visuals where clearly cheap, but that was Doctor Who from the beginning.

I like Moffat’s (early) run as showrunner cause it had bigger concepts, better visuals, that kept my brain a little more stimulated, cause they clearly had a bigger budget. But while I do like Matt Smith, he just isn’t in my top three cause I felt like, even though he was really similar to Ten, he just couldn’t pull off the switch as much. And the writing and performance got very flanderized.

I preferred the earlier more serious-ish, awkward grandpa in a 20 something’s body, who had no sensee of how people acted anymore, but didn’t care, because he had a problem to solved, and didn’t care how silly he looked doing it. It just felt like after a while they turned that young eldelry man trying out his new legs and new enthusiasm from his new lease on life into more of a ridiculous childish personality. More times it felt more forced than genuine as it went on. And so I’m left mixed on 11 cause sometimes he’s amazing but other times he falls flat. I wanna love him, but there’s just these things--and so I’m constantly changing on him.

Love Eccelston and Peter Capaldi. Eccelston was a freaking natural who just preformed everything spot-on and felt like he embodied the role. Capaldi stole the show, and made even the worst episodes feel like they had some kind of wise, challenged cynisism vibe. A more realistic yet still darkly whimsical kind of Doctor. Something more foreboding and complex, but then he’d also play gutiar, and I didn’t really mind. Cause it felt like his Doctor was always a couple steps from losing his mind and he’s just trying to deal with it the best he can that it never actually felt that off-putting to me cause they made it work, In my head he’s kind of the “I’m constantly having a crisis” Doctor. An angsty teen in a middle aged man’s body I think someone described him once and I think that fits.

Jodie’s series that I have watched was just really boring, and the writing for her was so inconsistent. So it was hard to like her. I felt like she got better playing the character as it went along, and she could be great, but man, the writing is just so empty and superficial it’s hard.

So that’s me on the Doctor’s. i don’t dig myself 50 miles into every thing I’m into. So I only mainly watched the modern series besides for a few episode of First Doctor, and Fourth Doctor. Who I also love.

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charcubed · 4 years ago

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Frank Hudson, Greta, Margaret, & Mary

(PSA: If you’ve been tagged in this post, it’s because I’m crediting you or linking to a meta you wrote! I particularly linked a lot of things at the end I think could be tangentially related. No pressure to read all of this!)

Please allow me to take you on a journey in which I present a theory:

Mary is Frank Hudson’s daughter from a relationship with another woman, and part of her motivation (as a villain, as Moriarty’s agent/possible successor) is to get revenge on Sherlock for having killed her father all those years ago and ruining the drug cartel empire.

I was calling this a crack theory, but uh, given that I’ve now written thousands of words connecting weird dots, I’m gonna say maybe this is potentially not as far-fetched as I initially thought.

Before Sherlock series 4 came out, we were given this delightful niche little “clue” in a Youtube video on the official channel:

It’s always struck me as odd that this was specifically shown in a video advertising / leading up to series 4... when it seemingly never connected to anything. Why this, of all things?

Let’s review what we know about Mr. Frank Hudson.

• He was sentenced to death in Florida; Sherlock ensured his execution. (ASiP)

• He was executed for double murder and the execution was via lethal injection. He was arrested for “blowing someone’s head off.” (TSoT)

• According to Mrs. Hudson, about their relationship: “It was just a whirlwind thing for us. I knew it wouldn’t work, but I just got sort of swept along. And then we moved to Florida. We had a fantastic time, but of course I didn’t know what he was up to” and “It was purely physical between me and Frank. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” What Frank was “up to” included a drug cartel and “all the other women.” (TSoT)

• Mrs. Hudson was a typist in Frank’s drug cartel (and an exotic dancer, which is in YouTube videos in-universe). This is also the scene where she’s present to hear enough to figure out that Mary shot Sherlock; in the original script, it’s made obvious that she was eavesdropping even after walking out. (HLV)

• We’re also given repeated reminders in TLD that Mrs. Hudson was/is somewhat of a badass. She tells Sherlock “you’re not my first smackhead, Sherlock Holmes,” and whether or not any of that (the revolver, the kidnapping of Sherlock, the car) is actually literally real, I take it mostly as a blatant reminder that Mrs. Hudson has a past filled with “not good” people.

A lot of this info is given in more comedic moments... but I think because it is repeatedly mentioned with consistent detail, especially largely in season 3 when Mary arrives (partially to mirror John/Mary’s doomed relationship), it shouldn’t be swept aside.

Speaking of Mary, let’s get into it.

In ACD’s The Sign of Four, Mary Morstan’s story centers heavily around the loss of her father. That’s also the story that involves the Agra treasure, and Mary notably receives 6 pearls in the mail as part of the mystery. Keep all of this in mind because it’s going to be relevant as we go.

First, let’s roll all the way back to The Abominable Bride.

(All transcripts I will be quoting are from the inimitable Ariane DeVere.)

Giles, & Morse Hudson

The abominable bride herself–who I trust we all know mirrors Mary at this point lol–stands on the balcony and aims her guns at people on the street while saying “You?” / “You, or me?” One of the people she aims at is this man, who is listed in the credits as Giles. I always found it odd that he was named, so I decided to look him up in relation to Sherlock Holmes.

“Giles” connects to Giles Conover, the criminal in the 1944 Sherlock Holmes movie The Pearl of Death. That movie is loosely based on ACD’s The Adventure of the Six Napoleans. In the movie, Giles (who is not in the ACD story) stole the Borgia Pearl and hid it in a bust of Napoleon. In case there’s any doubt, we can know for a fact that Moffat and Gatiss are familiar with this movie because they referenced it in TGG previously; the Golem assassin is a nod to The Creeper.

So I was like, why that movie specifically? What’s significant, and how would that connect to the bride?

And as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now... they later referenced that movie again in TST. The writers called back to both the ACD story and the 1944 movie, very specifically.

Referenced movie details I noticed in TST include the following: Sherlock calls Lestrade “Giles.” The Borgia Pearl (movie phrasing, as opposed to “the black pearl of the Borgias”) is mentioned multiple times; we’ll go back to that. We are also pointedly told by Ajay that one of the members of AGRA was killed via a broken back, which is how a murder happens in the 1944 movie.

As for TST’s references to the original Napoleon story by ACD... there are many, but there’s one thing they pointedly didn’t reference (unless I missed it) that I find interesting: in the ACD story, 3 of the 6 busts were at the shop of a Morse Hudson. Beppo, the criminal in the story, worked at Morse Hudson’s shop to have access to the locations of those 3 busts. Even in The Six Thatchers version on John’s blog, Beppo is the criminal but Morse Hudson was not mentioned.

So I thought... alright, Morse? What morse code have we seen in the show? Well, there’s UMQRA, from The Hounds of Baskerville.

I poked around and some genius anon on @inevitably-johnlocked‘s blog once said that if you encode UMQRA with HOUND using a vigenere cypher, you get BAKED. Mary bakes her own bread, according to Sherlock’s deductions in TEH. The abominable bride, in the above scene, shoots at/into a bakery.

Edit: @rosie_ww on Twitter aka @silverybees pointed me to this, from THoB:

SHERLOCK: You’ve been to see Mr Chatterjee again.

MRS HUDSON: Pardon?

SHERLOCK: Sandwich shop. That’s a new dress, but there’s flour on the sleeve. You wouldn’t dress like that for baking.

(Friendly reminder that shortly thereafter we find out that Mr. Chatterjee has other women)

Does this morse code / BAKED business necessarily mean anything by itself? No, and of anything in this post, it’s the biggest stretch. But it’s still kind of wild, because let’s recap so far:

• We have Morse Hudson in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, a story which is heavily referenced in TST

• TST heavily connects to Mary / AGRA (we’ll get to how specifically)

• TST also heavily connects to The Pearl of Death, which connects to TAB

• And not only that, but The Pearl of Death connects to the exact scene in TAB where the bride shoots @ Giles and the bread shop. The bread shop could connect to the UMQRA morse code in the show... meaning “Morse” (code, and therefore Hudson) could then connect to Mary.

Morse Hudson -> The Six Napoleons -> TST -> The Pearl of Death (“Giles” etc.) -> TAB (“Giles”) -> Mary, the bride

Oh what a tangled web we weave. That’s a Hudson to Mary.

But let’s keep going. Better stuff to come.

The Black Pearl of the Borgias In TST

Let’s play the game of following the trail of the Black Pearl. Shout out to @miadifferent and @impossibleleaf, because their combo post here I came across was very helpful for showing me the best way to write this out to make it easily understandable. I will be quoting / paraphrasing them below!

The first time we hear about the Pearl, it’s from Mycroft, who connects it to Moriarty’s final activities:

MYCROFT: In the last year of his life, James Moriarty was involved with four political assassinations over 70 assorted robberies and terrorist attacks, including a chemical weapons factory in North Korea and had latterly shown some interest in tracking down the Black Pearl of the Borgias, which is still missing by the way, in case you feel like applying yourself to something practical.

We also learn that the Pearl is somehow connected to London.

HOPKINS: Interpol think, the case of the Borgia Pearl trail leads back to London, so..

So we have Moriarty -> Black Pearl -> London...

And next up, there’s Sherlock’s “fake” deduction about Greta Bengtsdotter (who has always very obviously made us all think about Mary.)

SHERLOCK: Your wife is a spy. That’s right. Her real name is Greta Bengtsdotter. Swedish by birth and probably the most dangerous spy in the world. She’s been operating deep undercover for the past four years now as your wife for one reason only: to get near the American embassy which is across the road from your flat. Tomorrow the U.S. president will be at the embassy as part of an official state visit. As the president greets members of staff, Greta Bengtsdotter, disguised as a twenty-two stone cleaner, will inject the president in the back of the neck with a dangerous new drug hidden inside a secret compartment insider her padded armpit. This drug will then render the president entirely susceptible to the will of their new master, none other than James Moriarty. Moriarty will then use the president as a pawn to destabilize the United Nations General Assembly which is due to vote on a nuclear non-proliferation treaty tipping the balance in favour of a first strike policy against Russia. This chain of events will then prove unstoppable thus precipitating World War 3.

The name “Greta” is derived from the name Margareta, which comes from the Greek word margarites. It means pearl. Further versions of this name are Margarita / Margaret / Maggie.

Thus, we add her in: Moriarty -> Greta -> Black Pearl -> London

So when Sherlock finds the AGRA stick in the busts of Margaret Thatcher, he says to Mary...

SHERLOCK: I was so convinced it was Moriarty, I couldn’t see what was right under my nose. I expected a pearl.

Sherlock expected to find a pearl (Greta / a spy), but instead he found AGRA/Mary’s identity. He actually found what he was looking for, but he just didn’t recognize it.

And it actually still makes sense:

Margaret Thatcher’s bust -> Black Pearl -> Greta (“pearl”, spy) -> Mary (spy) -> AGRA memory stick

That’s how it went in the plot. It’s a subconscious connection.

So what’s ACD have to say about all that then?

This is the point where I remind you...

So all of this does have connections back to ACD canon; who is surprised?

But what do we know about Mary’s past from the show’s canon in His Last Vow? Let’s look at some other reminders.

SHERLOCK: By your skill set, you are – or were – an intelligence agent. Your accent is currently English but I suspect you are not. You’re on the run from something; you’ve used your skills to disappear; Magnussen knows your secret, which is why you were going to kill him; and I assume you befriended Janine in order to get close to him.

MAGNUSSEN: All those wet jobs for the CIA. Ooh! She’s gone a bit... freelance now. Bad girl.

Mary’s not English; she could be Swedish, she could be American, but regardless–Sherlock deduced she’s a linguist in TEH. And either way, she’s worked for America.

Americans crop up a weird amount in BBC Sherlock (and ACD canon too really), and usually in negative contexts. I just want to highlight one American connection from The Abominable Bride, about Emilia Ricoletti:

SHERLOCK: So she decided to make her death count. She was already familiar with the secret societies of America and was able to draw on their methods of fear and intimidation to publicly – very publicly – confront Sir Eustace Carmichael with the sins of his past.

HOOPER: He knew her out in the States. Promised her everything... marriage, position – and then he had his way with her and threw her over, left her abandoned and penniless.

Also, where was it that Mr. Hudson had his drug cartel? Oh yeah. Florida.

We’ll go back to that.

More Margarets In BBC Sherlock

So we’ve officially got one connection where Margaret relates to Mary. TST makes that pretty clear.

Now, where else have we encountered the name Margaret in the show?

Three places (at least, that I’ve caught):

1. A Study In Pink.

The first victim of Jeff Hope the serial killer is Sir Jeffrey Patterson. He was having an affair with his personal assistant Helen, despite being married to his wife Margaret Patterson.

It’s a well-known fact in this fandom that the victims in ASiP are considered mirrors for John Watson, highlighting things that would lead to his own unhappiness/death–possibly even by suicide. (TJLCE video) So, let’s say Jeffrey Patterson is a mirror for John.

Helen the personal assistant (who says “I love you”) is, perhaps, a mirror for Sherlock. She’s wearing a deep purple shirt.

Does that connect Margaret Patterson, who insists her husband was happy, to Mary?

MARGARET PATTERSON: My husband was a happy man who lived life to the full. He loved his family and his work – and that he should have taken his own life in this way is a mystery and a shock to all who knew him.

[looks at John’s unhappiness in HLV after a month of marriage, looks at series 4 theories about John faking his suicide / trying to commit suicide, laughs nervously]

Well. Moving on.

2. The Hounds of Baskerville.

Project HOUND was a CIA Classified / American project that Major Barrymore was involved in. The Major is apparently a fan of Margaret Thatcher, and the password to his laptop is Maggie. Sherlock types “Margare” then hesitantly backtracks and writes Maggie and it works. It’s worth noting that in the script it was drafted to just be Margaret.

3. The Sign of Three.

MRS. HUDSON: My best friend, Margaret – she was my chief bridesmaid. We were going to be best friends forever, we always said that; but I hardly saw her after that. [...] She cried the whole day, saying, “Ooh, it’s the end of an era.” She was probably right, really. I remember she left early. I mean, who leaves a wedding early?

So in BBC Sherlock, the name Margaret is connected to...

• The Margaret Thatcher busts in The Six Thatchers, which connects to Mary/AGRA/pearls/Greta the Swedish spy

• Margaret Patterson, the wife of a mirror for John who was the victim of murder that masqueraded as suicide. This Margaret insists that the John mirror was happy in their marriage, but the John mirror was having an affair with a Sherlock mirror

• Project HOUND, of the CIA. I find this exceedingly interesting because the name "Margaret” has connections to Moriarty/Mary, and this could mean it’s safe to guess that this case is/was connected to the wider Moriarty web. We see Sherlock hallucinate Moriarty when drugged by the fog, sure, but otherwise Moriarty’s handiwork supposedly isn’t involved in this case... but maybe it was indirectly, by Mary in the CIA. Just ruminating.

• Margaret was Mrs. Hudson’s best friend, who left the wedding early when Mrs. Hudson and Frank got married

Re: that last bullet point, here is what I am suggesting as a possibility: Margaret was one of Mr. Hudson’s “other women.” Margaret left the wedding early because she was sad about the marriage, obviously, but maybe she wasn’t in love with Mrs. H like we would naturally assume (per Sherlock leaving the wedding early because he loves John). Maybe Margaret was in love with Mr. Hudson.

Maybe Mary is the daughter of Margaret and Mr. Hudson, and (as previously stated) she’s motivated to get revenge on Sherlock for killing her father and ruining the drug cartel empire. Who knows what would’ve happened to her mother Margaret, in that case, too.

This is speculation, of course, yes. Yet [waves to all the ridiculous web of connections I’ve delved deeply into, and the Frank Hudson hangman] can you blame me?

But, maybe you’re wondering... why would I think she’s the daughter of a Hudson specifically, even aside from all this Margaret stuff?

Well.

Hudsons In ACD Canon

Where is the name “Hudson” used in ACD canon, other than for Mrs. Hudson?

Three places (that I’ve caught; my ACD canon knowledge is limited):

• Morse Hudson in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, as discussed above; not mentioned in BBC Sherlock canon for some reason, yet strongly tied to the story that inspired TST.

• A name drop of “Hudson” in The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips.

Quick run-down of some aspects of this case: the client, John Openshaw, asks Holmes for help because a series of mysterious letters seems to be connected with the recent suspicious deaths of his uncle Elias and his father Joseph. The letters included 5 orange pips, and KKK on the envelope. When his uncle received his letter, he burnt a bunch of secret personal papers. One paper survived; it’s on that paper that we see Hudson’s name, associated with the KKK, and otherwise oddly unrelated to the case.

Holmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper, which showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from a book. It was headed, “March, 1869,” and beneath were the following enigmatical notices:

“4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.

“7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain of St. Augustine.

“9th. McCauley cleared.

“10th. John Swain cleared.

“12th. Visited Paramore. All well.”

Here are other ~features of interest~ in this case to me: Openshaw’s uncle Elias was a planter in Florida for many years. Florida is mentioned by Holmes as a “notable” state where the KKK formed a branch; the others are Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, and Georgia (hello to Tbilisi, Georgia being in TST seemingly at random). It is also mentioned that the fear of someone or something is what drove Elias from America to England. There’s also a very random name drop of “Mary” in this story that doesn’t relate to the case, told as part of Openshaw’s story, in which I can only assume Mary was a maid?

OPENSHAW, QUOTING UNCLE ELIAS: “They may do what they like, but I’ll checkmate them still,’ said he with an oath. ‘Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my room to-day, and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.’

The fact that the name Mary manages to be in this cracks me up.

The orange pips / secret societies in America / etc. all heavily tie into The Abominable Bride, and the women’s hoods were visually reminiscent of the KKK. Sir Eustace’s line in TAB of “Death” (when he receives the pips) is a direct quote from Elias in this story when he receives his pips–and a quote that Mary echoes in TST when she completes Vivian Norbury’s sentence in the aquarium.

VIVIAN NORBURY: I’m just like the merchant in the story. I thought I could outrun the inevitable. I’ve always been looking over my shoulder; always expecting to see the grim figure of...

MARY: Death.

So, in summary we have: a name drop of Hudson in a story that factors in Florida, Georgia, pips, secret societies, the KKK, and even a name drop of Mary.

• Hudson is the criminal in The Adventure of the Gloria Scott.

This case is the one Holmes credits as his first case, and it inspired his future profession. He’s telling Watson the story. It happened in his university days and centers on his friend Victor Trevor (TFP says hi, lmao). More specifically, it centers on Victor Trevor’s father. I won’t go into all the details, and the plot summary on Wikipedia is good if you’re curious, but–

A quick run-down of some ~features of interest~ in this case: Mr. Trevor the elder is being blackmailed by the criminal Hudson because of their old criminal past together with others. Hudson is threatening him with exposure / public shame, and Mr. Trevor is forced to employ him. Victor gets pissed about it and eventually upsets Hudson enough that Hudson leaves in a very “this isn’t over” kind of way. Later, Mr. Trevor dies from a stroke after receiving a letter that threatened him via a skip code. It is a skip code of specifically every third word, beginning with the first.

Full skip code message: "The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen pheasant's life."

Decoded message: "The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life."

(It’s not a game anymore...)

Who do we have in show canon who recognizes a skip code on sight of specifically every third word, beginning with the first?

All together now: Mary.

(Bonus points for “Save John Watson” being the phrase Mary says in her creepy posthumous DVDs. Bonus points x2 for the fact that this text was sent by Magnussen, the “Napoleon of blackmail,” to Mary when he was supposedly trying to find Sherlock’s pressure point. But anyway!)

Another feature of interest about the Gloria Scott case: Holmes deduces that Mr. Trevor was once connected to someone with the initials J.A. whom he wanted to forget, guessing it was an old lover. Mr. Trevor momentarily faints in shock. Holmes guessed this based on an old arm tattoo that Mr. Trevor had tried to get rid of, where the initials are blurry. This later turns out to be wrong, because Mr. Trevor’s previous name was James Armitage–J.A.–when he was a criminal, and that is the reason behind the tattoo. (JA? AJ / Ajay? Much to think about)

The J.A. tattoo deduction was referenced in The Six Thatchers, when Sherlock deduces that the client had a Japanese girlfriend he is now indifferent about.

SHERLOCK: You’ve got a Japanese tattoo in the crook of your elbow in the name ‘Akako.’ It’s obvious you’ve tried to have it removed.

KINGSLEY: But surely that means I wanna forget her, not that I’m indifferent.

SHERLOCK: If she’d really hurt your feelings, you would have had the word obliterated, but the first attempt wasn’t successful and you haven’t tried again, so it seems you can live with the slightly blurred memory of Akako, hence the indifference.

I’m bothering to highlight this in TST because after Sherlock explains it, the client remarks upon it being “simple”... and that’s when Sherlock immediately launches into his ~fake~ long-winded deduction about his wife being Greta the spy, as I already talked about above. Wild.

One last fascinating thing about the Gloria Scott: this case is referenced in 2 other ACD stories–The Sussex Vampire (John texting in TST), and The Musgrave Ritual (TFP). Gotta love that.

So, uh, what if Mrs. Hudson’s “case” (getting her husband executed) was one of Sherlock’s “firsts” that inspires him to become a consultive detective full-time? We’re told in ASiP that he ensured Frank Hudson’s execution “a few years back.” The inexactness of that year amount drives me bonkers, but I think it’s potentially plausible.

Short Coda: Ghost Stories...

In Mr. Trevor’s reply to Holmes’ (incorrect) J.A. tattoo deduction, he includes the following line:

“Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

Mark Gatiss talked a lot about ghost stories. In the Sherlock Chronicles book (which I own) teasing series 4, he said, “I can certainly give you one word. Ghosts...” and in this interview he said “There’s a conspiracy theory about everything and they’re almost the modern equivalent of ghost stories. And the great thing is, you can have all the tropes of a ghost story. . . There are lots of people in happy marriages who turn out to have terrible secrets or to have done some awful deed in the past that must be paid for in the present. In Doyle’s stories, those are the ghosts you need to worry about.”

And here are the lines we get from Holmes in The Abominable Bride about ghosts (that aren’t literal):

You may, however, rest assured there are no ghosts in this world... Save those we make for ourselves.

We all have a past, Watson. Ghosts – they are the shadows that define our every sunny day. Sir Eustace knows he’s a marked man.

The avenging ghost – a legend to strike terror into the heart of any man with malicious intent; a spectre to stalk those unpunished brutes whose reckoning is long overdue.

While typing, I’ve now galaxy-brained my way to the realization that Mrs. H was canonically an “abominable bride” to Frank Hudson and literally murdered him (with Sherlock’s help), just like the women in the special. She’s also shown as one of the women ignored/disparaged in the special (”I’m your landlady, not a plot device”) but just isn’t shown in the crypt/society. So that’s, uh... interesting.

In (Semi-)Conclusion: A Summary

We have the following significant points at minimum:

• A Frank Hudson clue in a series 4 video

• One reference where Mary is undeniably connected to a Hudson who was a criminal in ACD canon (skip code)

• One ACD Hudson who was heavily connected to The Six Napoleons story, aka The Six Thatchers

• One ACD Hudson name-dropped in a story that heavily connects to The Abominable Bride, and Florida

• A bizarre pile of evidence that all Margaret mentions in the show could relate back to Mary the ex-CIA spy, in some way or another

• A Margaret connected to Mrs. Hudson who could’ve been in love with Frank Hudson (in Florida)

• The overall theme of s4 being ghosts from past deeds and un(happy) marriages coming to haunt people. And lest we forget, “ghost” Mary literally haunts Sherlock and John after her “death.”

Does that cover it? I feel like that covers it.

Of course, I absolutely could be reading into a ton of things that are unrelated, but... Who is to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Random Related Stuff

Not required reading, but while poking around, I’ve found other things that could or could not connect to the above theory. I’m just gonna... info dump it right here. It could all be meaningless, it could all connect, it could be unrelated! You decide! Lots of meta links involved below, so credit where credit is due.

• I knew I wasn’t the first to come up with this concept/possibility of Mary being a Hudson. While building this post, I ran a search and came across this old one by @the-7-percent-solution, who posited there’s a letter game at play of AEIOU involving Mary’s monstrous regiment of various characters and connects Amo/Love to Mary. I love this concept, and while I do think there are other elements/aspects in play for the plot besides just this, that post still has pieces that can work nicely; doesn’t matter that it was written before TFP aired.

• Frequently thinking about how Sherlock said “Mrs. Hudson? Leave Baker Street? England would fall,” because what does Mrs. Hudson do in TLD? She leaves Baker Street.

• All of the above cursed elements haunt me. (Arwel’s Instagram post was April of this year.) Note: there’s another tweet Arwel jokingly posted of this photo years ago, but that tweet’s caption was connected to Brexit based on dates / my memory (i.e. “England has fallen”), so I’m not including it lol.

• In TFP, when Mrs. Hudson is vacuuming, she’s listening to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast.” The lyrics we get are “666, the Number of the Beast. Hell and fire was spawned to be released.” The other time 666 is mentioned was by Mary in TST, in reference to Rosie.

• Mrs. Hudson is in the center of the 221B promo pic for series 4, as noticed by @sherlocks-salty-blog.

• This cursed pic of Mary’s "ring from her past” on top of a series 4, episode 3 script (??) that Amanda took has haunted me since she tweeted it. Mary wears this ring on-screen in TEH, and you can see it when Sherlock deduces her.

• The Gabrielle Ashdown passport (in TST) is from America.

• Janine (who many of us notice is likely involved with Mary / Moriarty of course) often wears pearls, as @sherlockmeta noticed. Mary also wears pearl earrings in series 4 promo shots but never in s4 episodes (that I can find/remember). I also always think that Mary and Mrs. Hudson are dressed very similarly in s4 promo images (see all promos here).

• @raggedyblue discussed how Sherlock’s window deduction in TLD sounds a lot like Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen in 221A, and how a sheet of paper being pinned/folded is an opposite element in ACD’s The Sign of Four. The re-folded paper was a map leading to the AGRA treasure, and Mary found it in her father’s desk. Brilliant catch. Of course, in the show, the paper says Miss Me which is also heavily connected to Mary.

• The mystery of the little girls with blond and braided hair, as compiled by @ebaeschnbliah, is also going to haunt me. I suggest reading the post, but minor summary: during s4 setlock, there was filming with Ben and Mark at Ogmore Castle with a little girl "wearing a skirt or dress, and her hair was blonde and in pigtails,” and she was running circles around Sherlock. There are two separate reports from people who saw this and mentioned it had to do with Mary; at first glance it bears similarities to Eurus scenes we got in TFP, but seems different in description. This also brings to mind the little girl with blonde braided hair in TEH at the bonfire, who notably wears a bright red jacket just like Mary. And there’s also a doll with blond braided pigtails in Magnussen’s mind palace.

• @gosherlocked has posts about “The Children of Sherlock” (part 1)(part 2) that highlight how children are frequently victims in this show. Metaphorically, I find this interesting if Mary plays a role of a “wronged child” avenging her father, regardless of age.

• Let’s talk music in TLD–or at least, one piece of it. When Mrs. Hudson drops the teacup, Mozart’s “Andante From Piano Concerto #21” plays. That specific second movement was used in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan. Sweden, of course, immediately reminded me of Greta the spy (aka Mary) being Swedish. After I realized this info, I ran a search to see if anyone else had mentioned this movie and I found this post, where @tjlcisthenewsexy and @possiblyimbiassed discussed how it’s a story of 2 doomed lovers who die via suicide-by-revolver. This is significant because Sherlock drops a revolver to catch the tea; death replaced by (gay) love?

• Speaking of Sweden: in The Game Is Now, Sherlock is abroad in Sweden. This is mentioned more than once: first, in this audio message between Sherlock and Mycroft (“Sweden sends its regards.” “It does?” “No, not really.”). This audio message also includes “This is not an international game of sardines.” Fish reference? Aquarium?

The second Sweden mention is visually, in this video. See below. (Also, in both, the characters say “real people,” which I can’t help but feel is a fourth wall break of them being fictional?)

I hate this Sweden stuff specifically. Thank you.

This post is so much longer than I expected it would be, thank you for reading all of this if you did, Johnlock is real, Mary is a villain, etc.

Come yell at me on Twitter @CharCubed!

Also, I made a secret sideblog @frankhudson to just reblog meta or info I might want to be able to find later lmao. Feel free to poke around if you want.

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hypexion · 4 years ago

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Demons run when A Good Man Goes to War. So does the quality of the plot, coherence of the plot, and the viewer’s understanding of what the hell is going on.

The premise is of this episode is as follows - Amy has been kidnapped by a group of religious fanatics, who want to steal her baby for reasons that probably hadn’t be decided when the episode came out. The Doctor gathers up a group of new characters, and goes off to save Amy. Via the power of a Doctor speech, he drives away the baddies and saves the day! But then it turns out it was a trick and actually the Doctor is a loser.

This brings me to my first problem with A Good Man Goes to War. It’s basic main arc is exactly the same as The Pandorica Opens. The Doctor spooks the villains, but actually it was all a trap. The only different is that in A Good Man Goes to War, the alliance of aliens are good, and the human army is bad. Such an amazing use of the idea of the Doctor assembling an army out of people he’s helped - the last series finale, but the sides are different.

There is at least a vaguely interesting set of characters here. There’s Strax, the Sontaran nurse, which is apparently the worst fate the Doctor could find for a Sontaran. Then there’s the Silurian Vastra and her... friend, Jenny, all the way from Victorian England. Finally, there’s Dorian, who is blue. Plus a bunch of Silurian soldiers who do all the work before getting killed off. There’s a decent idea here, and the character interactions work pretty well. It’s enough to trick you into thinking A Good Man Goes to War is going to end well.

What should really clue you into the issues with A Good Man Goes to War is the scene where the Doctor is trying to find out why the baddies stole a baby, because at this point he, Vastra and Dorian start noticing the holes in the story they’re part of. Why do the baddies want to steal a baby? Well, it turns out baby Melody has special time powers, maybe. Why do the baddies want a special time baby? It is not explained. Not now, not at the end of the season, and not even when the post-hoc justification for this entire plotline occurs. Korvarian just felt like stealing a baby for the laughs, I guess.

Of course, all these mysterious magic powers Melody might have are just a “build up“ until Moffat’s dumbest reveal until Eurus Holmes - River Song is Melody Pond! What a twist! How could we possibly guess, given that she never acts in any way that suggests Amy and Rory might be her parents. Please also ignore the gigantic plot hole this opens in Series Five, where River’s father is erased from reality, yet River herself is fine. You can handwave a lot of issues away with “timey-wimey“, but not something that undermines the central arc of a series. This is never really engaged with either - the reveal that RS = MP is right at the end of the episode, so we don’t get Amy or Rory’s immediate reaction to this. What’s the point of River being their daughter if it doesn’t affect them as characters? In the end, this is just a twist for the sake of a twist, that was probably concieved after Series Five. Also Amy is remarkably untraumatised for a women who’s baby melted in her arms.

Really, the problem is that while River Song is mysterious, she’s not a mystery. There are no clues. If anything, she’s a tragedy, as the man she loves knows her less and less each time they meet. But that’s mostly ignored in favour of “what’s the deal with River Song?“, when the deal is pretty obvious - they kiss. Except now the Doctor is kissing the daughter of Amy Pond, who he originally met as a child, who has her own issues with the Doctor and someone really should have enforced an editor on Moffat. It’s like the “get better material” meme, except all of his cards say “transtemporal grooming“. Bleh.

So that’s A Good Man Goes To War. Some interesting ideas, except they’re all pushed aside in favour of the arc plot. Which is an issue, because the arc plot is bad. And we’re not off of Moffat’s wild ride yet, because the Doctor will return in Let’s Kill Hitler.

Remember when this show was stupid, but in a good way?

#doctor who #eleventh doctor #a good man goes to war #doctor who rewatch

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doctorhoe · 5 years ago

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rating all the nuwho kisses (part 1: rtd era)

1. Rose and Mickey

a peg...on the lips.... it is cute on first sight but in retrospect it's just very bittersweet. probs noel and billie for managing to really make it look like a kiss between two people who have been dating for a long while. 4/10 it makes me sad

2. Rose and Jack

i love this kiss because while it's not romantic it still shows how much these two love and care for one another. they are still my official brotp of season 1 and you can’t take this away from me. 10/10 i,too, would let captain jack kiss me

3. Jack and Nine

can you believe that the first doctor/companion kiss in the revival was between two men?? and how it was full of mutual love and respect?? how it showed that jack loves all genders fully and equally?? 15/10 the way nine leans into the kiss makes me soft

4. Rose and Nine

this kiss redefined the meaning of love. just... everything here: ‘I think u need a doctor', the tender look in nine's eyes, how long we have been waiting for this moment. it is all so SOFT. this is by far my favorite dr.who kiss of all time. 1000/10 the final act of the time war was LOVE

5. Rose and Mickey - round 2

i'm sorry I thought u kids broke up..? seriously, rose, why keep leading him on?? this whole thing raises so many red flags, especially when he says I love you and she just responds with 'goodbye' (just wait till doomsday, rose, then you’ll know what that feels like *sobs*). like rose herself said in season 1: he deserves better!!! 0/10 they should have cut that out

6. Cassandra/Rose and Ten

ok ok. is it a good romantic kiss? no. does it make any sense? no. but is it a valuable tenrose moment? also no. BUT billie piper did us all a solid and we WILL be thankful for all eternity. 9/10 the fact that we didn't get a full shot of their bodies is homophobic

7. Reinette and Ten

i almost forgot this kiss because i usually just ignore that this episode exists. i hate everything about this but I don't have the energy nor the time to go on a rant. -5/10 good thing sexual assault charges weren't a thing in prerevolutionary france...

8. Jackie and Ten

Jackie could literally murder someone and I'd forgive her so I will also forgive her for kissing Ten despite him telling her not to (ok, now that i think about it: it’s kinda yikes-y) this is just comic relief and I needed that to get through the episode... 5/10 I can't believe this is how the two parter that destroyed my life started

9. Martha and Ten

even though tenmartha stan I have mixed feelings about this one as it is the start to a canonically very unhealthy relationship but also an amazing character arc about taking care of oneself and letting go of people that hurt us, even if we love them. I also like how the music swells so we as an audience can understand what Martha is feeling at this very moment. 7/10 'genetic transfer' my ass

10. Martha and Riley

i... almost forgot about this one lol. all i can really say here is gO GET IT MARTHA! 5/10 a sweet kiss of gratitude while the guy who should be grateful keeps you in the friendzone and compares you to their ex at the same time.

11. Joan and John

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DI

-100/10 this is what my sleep paralysis demon looks like

12. Astrid and Ten

cool, i guess? gotta be honest i don’t care for this ep. but what makes me mad is that he just spend an entire season friendzoning martha just to go off and do this? fuck you, doctor. 4/10 did David kiss the air for this one?

13. Donna and Ten

like literally every interaction between donna and ten this, too, is pure comedy gold and i’m impressed that they managed to have a kiss between the two that so completely fits their whole dynamic. 10/10 harveywallbanger (one word) is still iconic to this day.

14. Rose and Ten(too)

i used to like this kiss better before t*rning of the t*de kinda ruined it for me. but you know what? i am so happy rose and a part of the doctor got their happy ending. shut up i am just a sucker for tenrose kisses and there aren’t enough of them. let me have this. 8/10 alexa play kissed by a rose

15. Lady Christina and Ten

so... unpopular opinion (?) but i really liked this ep. and i didn’t have anything against that kiss either. i wouldn’t have cared either way. i enjoyed the flirting throughout the ep because ten is just having a mental breakdown 24/7 at this point and it’s nice that she distracts him for a while. fun fact: she is the first brunette to ever kiss the tenth doctor and also the last. 6/10 moffat stole the whole ‘i hate u’ thing from this ep

#dw #doctor who #rose tyler #mickey smith #jack harkness #ninth doctor #tenth doctor #martha jones #joan redfern #donna noble #tenrose #ninerose #tenpetals #timepetals #doctor x rose #tenmartha #tendonna #nine x jack

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myhistoryread · 4 years ago

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i’m going to join your anger!!

i haven’t been involved in the spn fandom in a long while so idk what the jensen thing is about but they definitely blatantly queerbait. they’ve spent years setting up dean to be bi with a lot of obscure references and pretty sure a writer said something about how they purposefully direct the destiel moments to be like that (it’s been a few years so idk where i heard that exactly) and then just did nothing. sure you can excuse other cases as fans reading too far into it but making an obscure reference to a historical gay bar isn’t exactly subtext. personal opinion is that spn has gone downhill a lot in these last few seasons. i can only watch this so much stunted character growth and poorly used plot devices as a cop out for the writers.

as for sherlock. gods i feel sorry for anyone who was heavily into that fandom. everyone on that show did you dirty. the queer baiting they passed off as haha guys it’s a no homo joke, making fun of their fans in canon, pretty much gaslighting fans by telling them to look for clues they had no intention on doing things with and telling them they were stupid for caring.

and then doctor who.. yeah that Moffat guy who decided to make the lesbian in Sherlock be attracted to him because he’s special? he also wrote the lesbian couple in doctor who where one of them kissed the doctor before even getting to kiss her own girlfriend for the sake of oh but he’s special

anyways sarah z has good videos covering past fandoms and queer baiting in media and i highly recommend watching her if you’re bored and want to fuel your anger. i definitely stole some of her arguements because i was like 10 when some of this went down

HAHAHAHAHA anon i love you this anger game from watching sarah z’s video about johnlock!!! but also i only vaguely remember this so someone can correct me if i’m wrong but i remember at a fan meet up someone straight up asked jensen ackles about destiel and he reacted very badly and for some reason people tried to blame the fan?? for like breaking the fourth wall?? about a queerbaited fictional ship?? ugh icky they mentioned the fact that queer people exist!!

superwholock fans deserved better than superwholock and i stand by that!!

#yelling into the void #ask

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synge-street · 5 years ago

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honestly a big difference ive noticed between moffat and russel t davies was the way they portayed moral arguments on the show thats Meant for Kids

now, just so you know, doctor who is Supposed to be a kids show, and the best kids shows Almost Always end up tackling big ideas and moral arguments and painful moments and breaking them down in a digestable way for kids (atla, shera, the dragon prince, fucking sesame street, Steven universe, etc)

knowing it’s a kids show, the whole part of breaking things down and explaining heavy topics is sort of where russel t and moffat breakoff (and many other differences ofc)

in a lot of rtd episodes, he comes up with some bs “future science” things that dont make sense but the episodes still have an impact because of the moral argument behind them

for example, in world war three and the other episode, we have a pig being stitched together, we have giant green aliens that Zipper themselves into humans that also fart a lot ??? as u can see , this is the silly part meant for kids

but behind all of this you have the argument, greed kills and drives people to be terrible and acting only for money and prestige can not only hurt yourself but the people around you (also im p sure they were scavenging the planet for oil, which, Not Subtle bruv)

however, with moffat, a lot of the bullshit space science that isnt even supposed to be the interesting part is sometimes at the center of things for no reason ????

like the vashta nerada episode where if u turned on the light these micro creatures would slow down a little and then we’re introduced to river song who explains the time travel that doesnt really make any sense and we also have CAL and stuff like that (this is supposed to be like a darker scooby doo episode i guess)

and honestly that wouldnt have mattered if there were a Bigger driving force behind it. maybe showing Children that destroying someone’s or your own planet has repurcussions (the vashta nerada’s trees were cut down w/o their consent) which would be an Incredible thing kids can learn from

with moffat, science and reason are usually at the forefront. sure he’s had some Very well done concepts that havent revolved around a moral issue (blink is cool but its also just that. its interesting) and some that have (how doing wrong and trying to win no matter what causes unseen damages from the empty child)

eventually theres also something that a lot of kids shows deal with and thats Death. and honestly my fav kids shows have almost always dealt brilliantly with that topic (in atla, people tell aang that killing and death are sometimes necessary but he decides that u have to always try to be better. in steven universe, death is talked about as something inexcusable but also something that has unforseen consequences)

anyways, lets start with moffat for once. moffa t doesnt really, Kill anyone. which for companions, i understand. its tricky to kill off a companion. but the way he does it ? it sucks. he treats death as something people just come back from. the “lesson” is : hey u dont have to Fucking mourn because death isnt actually real its something i use to scare the audience than revert because its more “interesting”

and other than that, the second message is who Gives a Fuck if u kill some meh bad people. like seriously thats it. we see the doctor fool the human race into commiting genocide because the silence stole One baby ? the purpose/moral arguments behind those episodes dont exist except murder is bad unless that person sucks, then Treat yo Self.

this isnt even the only time the doctor does this, like in Dinosaurs with a Spaceship. just straight up fucking murder. and its not even called out or really explained why the doctor Had to make that choice. nothing. (also murder isnt even that interesting for a while. to me the harshest and one of the lowest points for the doctor was when he granted Immortality to the family of blood and also saved the people from Waters of Mars.)

with russel t tho, he tries to explain to the audience (FUCKING CHILDREN) that “everything has its time and everything dies.” and i fucking Loved that. i really did. one of the episodes that Really deals with that, is the School Reunion. we see a beloved character come back (which is also to have more things an older audience can relate to) and its about these creatures that evolve and are trying to take command of reality by using a school etc etc whatever its kind of interesting but shhh

anyways one of the reasons this episode is So Fucking Good is because it uses that as a set up for tackling something So Important with kids. which is Loss and death. loss doesnt always mean death of a loved one but it can also mean just losing someone close to u. with sarah jane, we see the effects of losing an important relationship and how its impacted her life (showing u should be considerate in who u end up ghosting, jk jk i jape and i jest) but it also shows how thats Alright. losing a relationship, no matter what kind, is and Can be tough but its inevitable. its something u can learn from and the relationship shouldnt be seen as tragic but rather a part of ur life where u learned and loved and gave u hope

it also shows how fear of losing a relationship is something thats normal and okay to deal with but also something u should talk about. the doctor and rose end up talking about Both the doctor and rose’s fears of losing one another, whether it be to rejection or to time. it shows that people make mistakes but communicating and expressing ur love is Encouraged. people have a past and have made mistakes but thats something that makes them knowledgable and wise and open. loss for the doctor and sarah jane has made them sad and lost and anxious. but it also caused them to grow and to love

an episode that Greatly deals with death (especially that of a loved one) is Fathers Day. rose changes something in the past and now reapers are coming out and people are dying etc etc (also Really interesting but im not talking about that)

the forefront, the true Focus and purpose and the Lesson of the episode is rose (the audience pov) coming to terms with her fathers death and learning to cherish their small moments. rose tries to save her father but that has untimely consequences. (aka people die and u cant change that thats not up to u). during the term in the church, she learns about her father and about how normal he was. and since its 2 am and idk how to explain it, rose comes to terms with the fact that some people die. thats how it works. she’s allowed mourning and she doesnt get told down for that and she learns about it but she Gets it Now. she learns that losing someone is terrible but that doesnt mean its a waste. doesnt mean u cant grow. u will always have what u shared with that person and thats beautiful. fantastic even

in the end, i genuinely believe some shows are so good not Only because of how interesting their ideas were, but because they Teach you and show you and give u hope. and when i watched moffat, i didnt get any of that. all i got was lying can be good and murdering when convenient is encouraged. and it makes me Sad becuase dw used to be so much more you know ? ive learned a lot from this show and it saddens me how some kids might not get the silly stories with all the life packed into them

#dw #doctor who #steven moffat #rtd #russel t davies

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