#the fuck happened with the Toymaker

[neighbourhoodtwo]

Sorry for the ask but you’ve seen the giggle!?

I wish there was a way to hide what I wanna say for people who haven’t seen it but I unfortunately don’t think so,

Okay so, the toymaker was amazing! I loved seeing Ncuti, and I’m genuinly so excited for his stuff! I was a lil disappointed by the specials, they didn’t really feel like a celebration of the show, they felt like an expression for s4, if that makes any sense??

god i've got mixed feelings on that episode and it really annoys me bc it's the right kind of fun ridiculous episode that i should love and yet. hm. like first off the toy maker was sooo good, i love a campy villain and his whole vibe was spot on. ncuti really feels like the doctor to me, like he nails the vibe right away and i'm kinda disappointed we didn't see more of him in the episode. also your so right about them feeling more like parts of series 4 than general specials like ik they brought back the meep and the toymaker but to me it felt like when they brought back the macra in s3. like. modern episode but also these old guys are back. which isn't a bad thing it's just not the vibe I think they were aiming for. imo they should've focused wayyy more on ncuti's doctor, like this is his introduction, this is where he makes his first mark as the doctor but he's stuck playing second fiddle to 14 and it does a bit of a disservice to him.

[moonlitlex]

okay the giggle is hands down the worst episode of doctor who ive ever watched bringing rtd back was 100% a mistake none of this ever happened on god

[9hikers]

spent the last few weeks trying to figure out why the episodes after 12's run don't hit as hard and i cannot make a coherent argument for the life of me

[detoxed-retox]

Today... isn't a good day. Already, they've dropped three things and there's a dull pounding in their head, below their ears, that won't go away. But they're fine.

They're fine until they aren't. They can't quite remember if they were heading to or from the kitchen, if they were coming in or leaving the living space above the flower shop. Not now. Not when their legs tremble and give out underneath them on the stairs.

Why does everything hurt now of all times? Why does it feel like their insides are burning?

[innocet]

There’s a move that RTD has been doing recently that I don’t really have a Judgement on, like I can’t say if it’s Good or Bad, but it is FASCINATING to my specific dr who preoccupations

He is (selectively, only sometimes) bringing racism that has always been present in dr who into the diegesis. I first noticed it with the Toymaker; instead of being a racial caricature in the same way his ‘65 appearance was, the 2023 toymaker is a character who poorly appropriates the signifiers of real-world cultures as part of his style of Play. He’s not just an East Asian caricature non-diegetically played by a white man. He is, within the diegesis, a white man who intentionally disrespects earth cultures by imitating and parodying them. We only see him directly do this to white/western cultures (the German, French, American, and British accents he takes), but he’s clearly textually racist to characters of color in the episode.

Racism and racial stereotype are some of the Games the toymaker plays. They’re not erasing racist production/narrative decisions. They’re placing them in a new context.

“Dot and Bubble” is the same; it recontextualizes previous adventures with all-white casts, not by reimagining them as more diverse, but by making that lack of diversity diegetic. I’ve seen some point out that previous episodes had, unexamined in the narrative, few characters of color either as a critique of “Dot and Bubble”. How can RTD expect us to notice that the cast is all-white as something with narrative significance when we’ve seen the exact same not ten years ago portrayed as a completely normal state of affairs? But I think part of the specific narrative moves that this episode is doing is that we can also examine those past episodes through this same new context. That the white Doctor, and his white companions, were not forced to encounter the circumstances that made the situation they’re in all-white, and so they did not at all engage with them. This is not to say that these previous episodes were intentionally saying anything at all about racism; they were the product of racist writing and casting, and that can’t be changed or ignored. But fan analysis as a school of thought is often far more concerned with the watsonian than the doylist, and RTD is aware of this as someone who grew up in fandom. This provides a watsonian path to exploring the racism of the show’s history, without sugarcoating or ignoring it.

It’s worth noting when he doesn’t do this as well; he seems far more willing to engage diegetically with racism than ableism, for example. Davros does not get any sort of redemption or examination as one of the only wheelchair users we see in the vastness of time and space; instead, he is simply no longer a wheelchair user. I think we should be paying a lot more attention to what gets folded in narratively and what doesn’t because it seems very clear that RTD is intent on continuing doing this and it’s something I’m keeping my eye on. Again, I don’t know whether it’s Good or Bad that this is happening, but it sure as fuck is interesting

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

The Toymaker: (Arrives)

(Initiates a musical number)

(Kills two people)

(Explains nothing)

(Leaves)

Kate: ............

..........................

what the fuck just happened

I also love that the Doctor's reaction to hearing pop music at this point is "I can feel my skin tightening my fight or flight response has kicked in"

[lady-raziel]

so if we kind of do some creative extrapolation here (since obviously there are still a lot of episodes in this season of doctor who)-- the line of salt trick the 14th doctor did in wild blue yonder is pretty heavily stated to be the thing that let the toymaker back into the universe, and ever since then...things in the whoniverse have been very weird. narratively the whole universe seems self-aware now (particularly the doctor themselves) and lots of strange things seem to be happening. idk what the endgame is here but i do think it would be VERY FUNNY if the line of salt WAS the thing that opened the door to all this crazy stuff. like the universe got fucked up because the doctor was doing a bit and that is EXACTLY what doctor who is all about

[thebusylilbee]

I keep rewatching the bi-generation scene bc it's so fucking good, it's so surprising and funny and Ncuti Gatwa is so instantly likeable ! also I love the way he immediately starts leading the scene, the fact that they made him explain what's happening (bi-generation) and made him find solutions (using the toymaker hammer) really legitimized him as The Doctor very quickly imo in a way that 13 for example did not get because she was thrown as a new face in a new environment with new people so adopting her as the new doctor was a slower process... so yeah basically 15 really got a good fucking introduction !

[starleska]

Maestro, Ms. Flood and non-diegetic sound: a theory on what the fuck is happening in Doctor Who

okay my brain is still tremendously scrambled after everything we just saw but i have a theory...HUGE spoilers for the new Doctor Who eps (especially The Devil's Chord):

so we know by know that Maestro is the Toymaker's child...and it seems that the Toymaker's Legions may well in fact refer to his children. in The Devil's Chord, there's an interesting throwaway line from the Doctor which could be read as a joke: "I thought that was non-diegetic." The Doctor here is referring to the rising crescendo of background music: non-diegetic sound is sound that we, the audience, can hear, but doesn't exist within the film's universe. so when a couple are embracing and a beautiful love melody plays in the background, we can hear it, but the characters can't. now, this implies that in general, the Doctor is able to hear non-diegetic sound...but he understands that other people can't. the fact that Ruby is able to hear this non-diegetic sound is a violation - it's not supposed to happen. you know what else isn't supposed to happen? the way Maestro speaks to, and winks at, the audience. we see that Maestro has inherited quite a few traits from their father, and we know from The Giggle novelisation that the Toymaker is capable of fourth-wall breaking and metacommentary (e.g., writing a book in the Doctor Who canon, for instance). similar moments include Maestro playing the Doctor Who theme for the opening credits, and playing a distorted version of it later in the episode. there is one other character who has spoken directly to the audience and broken the fourth wall: Ms. Flood. here's my theory: i believe that Ms. Flood, like Maestro, is one of the Toymaker's children, and therefore one of his Legions. i also believe that she embodies some sort of form of storytelling, the way Maestro does music, and this gives her the ability to transcend form and break the fourth wall. and i absolutely believe she is directly responsible for the snow which keeps filtering through Ruby's memory. something about her presence and existence is melting the boundaries between fiction and reality. now, there are a few loose ends. i don't know what role Harbinger (the small boy from the beginning of the episode) plays...Maestro describes him as their 'prelude', and Harbinger calls Maestro their 'daddy'. it may well be that Maestro is Harbinger's parent the same way the Toymaker is Maestro's father. however...because we see him still around at the end of the episode, i believe that Harbinger is a prelude to another character. perhaps he is, in general, a Harbinger of doom. and a prelude to a Flood? [edit] i nearly forgot - i am convinced this melting of the boundary between fiction and reality is why we had a musical at the end, and the Doctor and Ruby didn't notice

[txttletale]

(Other than the really weird bit about "Male presenting Doctor") what were your thoughts about the specials?

pretty mixed bag, pretty messy, but good overall. i think they were very obviously a nostalgia trip for people around my age lol and it worked! i loved seeing tennant and tate back onscreen together, their chemistry hasn't aged a bit, and honestly just watching doctor who that wasn't written by chris chibnall was a breath of fresh air. they weren't boring, like seasons 11 and 12 were, and they didn't go too far off the other end into nonsense like flux did. characters want things again! the show can let itself just be silly! i was literally cheering out loud when donna and the doctor were just saying random scifi gobbledegook at each other for like a solid several minutes during the star beast.

the structure of the specials kind of baffles me. i love wild blue yonder--i think it's definitively the best of the specials as a standalone, it's absolutely fantastic, creepy and atmospheric and bringing things around to RTD's strength, which is well-written characters interacting with each other and letting good actors just act. but at the same time i dont understand why it exists? it feels like...idk. imagine if you watched the star wars original trilogy but instead of the empire strikes back the middle film was just a feature length film about luke and han surviving on an ice planet with no reference to anything that happens in the last film except the two characters' relationship. and then the next film was still return of the jedi, unchanged. it felt like that

i liked all the weird campy silliness of the star beast and the giggle, and they were both very fun! neil patrick harris gave a fantastic performance, there are a lot of very memorable sequences from the giggle, but it's very very all over the place. so many threads get kind of picked up and go nowhere. the toymaker's haunted house dimension goes nowhere. RTD's eyerolling social media commetnary goes nowhere (thank god tbh but yknow im illustrating something here). even the toymaker kind of goes nowhere, after ncuti gatwa shows up he's bascially an afterthought who loses by dropping a ball. obvious parallels to david tennant's first episode with that ball scene could be made, but just... aren't. it feels like load-bearing sectikons of the plot and themes were cut out to make room for a backdoor pilot for the stupid fucking UNIT spinoff

oh and it goes without saying i fucking hate all the UNIT wank in the star beast and the giggle. i hope space nine eleven 2 happens to their stupid fucking avengers tower i cannot stand kate stewart who is constantly a murderous bonehead (in the giggle alone she gets two pepole killed by not listening to the doctor and assuming that this teleporting godlike entity could be restrainted by Two Guys) who is both in and out of universe just a boring nepo baby with no merit of her own

um. i still dont know what happened with the regeneration. i think the implication is that when david tennant dies hell time travel back to become ncuti gatwa inside himself--at least the rehab dialogue seems to make that implication. but it's not really explained or explored? baffling. i do think that fourteen getting to settle down and live a peaceful life with his friends is cute.

oh yeah and the ask said other than that but goddd there was some good stuff in the star beast and honestly with the state of the UK media i will take any perspective on trans people that includes baseline human erespect but some of those lines made me cringe so bad. anyway overall i am cautiously optimistic for the future of the show--oh ncuti was fucking great did i mention that i instantly bnought him as the doctor he owned the scene, the moment he was there it was clear he was the protagonist, and i liked the church on ruby road well enough too--i am cautiously optimistic but i worry that a big UNIT-shaped tumor will devour huge chunks of it and it'll be annoying. also russel t davies is like 60 and i just dont want to hear what he has to say about twitter so im not looking forward to dot and bubble

[sam-keeper]

Susan Twist: Word Lord?

Many* people** are wondering about the theory held by certain Doctor Who fans*** online that the actress Susan Twist in the new season of the long running franchise is playing what's known as a "Word Lord".

Now, granted, many more are wondering whether she might, in fact, be Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter. That, my friends, is exactly the kind of question a Word Lord would want you to be asking.

Lemme break this theory down for you.

Throughout this whole new season of Doctor Who, the protagonists have been haunted by the recurrence, in different roles, of a stage and character actor who happens to have the delightful name Susan Twist. Like, not in the show, in real life. According to Russel T Davies, she was the only actor they could get due to an "actor shortage", which seems like a pretty terrible and even implausible dilemma, but luckily Davies has made lemonade out of this very real production constraint! Twist popped up in every episode this season, in some form or other. That's versatile writing! No wonder they brought Rusty back as showrunner.

But perhaps there's more to the story than just the unfortunate realities of filming in a country ruled by a failed regime...

The Doctor and his companion Ruby started noticing Twist's recurring roles over the past few episodes, though the plot of each episode intervened before they could put anything definitive together. It's one of a number of nods to the metatextual content of the show--literal winks to the audience, another character (Mrs Flood) directly addressing the viewers, a whole musical number about how there's "always a twist at the end"--that suggested maybe some authorial tomfoolery was afoot, that maybe something a little tricky or tongue in cheek was happening.

But what could the explanation be? Could Susan Twist really be playing THE Susan, a relative of the Doctor's that hasn't been seen in the franchise since the 60s? That seems a little silly, surely! Or could she be playing another character, like... the Rani? or the Monk? Both of them got namedropped alongside Susan at one point. Or maybe she's the portended head of Maestro and the Toymaker's extracosmic family. I guess there's a theory this is Sutekh, the evil alien god from Pyramids of Mars? Sure, seems fun.

But no. Fuck all that noise. I know what's really going on here and it just coincidentally involves a character that I'm feral about, and that no one else has even heard of, a guy called, somewhat fittingly, Nobody No-one.

No-one shows up in just one and a quarter stories by Steven Hall for Big Finish's series of audio dramas, first as a minor opponent (in 45) and then as a much more motivated and fearsome one (in A Death in the Family). In the latter story, he manages to--no points if you worked this out from the title--kill the Seventh Doctor. How did a character with such a low profile manage such a feat? Well, Nobody No-one has powers comparable to a Time Lord: he is a Word Lord.

Word Lords are one of the most delightfully bonkers concepts to come out of the early exciting and experimental period in Big Finish's line of audio dramas. Hailing from another universe, they're the equivalent of Time Lords for a reality where narrative rather than chronology drives all existence. It's like if the Anchoring of the Thread established not linear time but, I guess, TV Tropes instead. Nobody No-one regenerates like the Doctor, and has his own equivalent to the TARDIS: the CORDIS, or Conveyance Of Repeating Dialogue In Space-time, which is a memetic construct transporting the Word Lord through repeated phrases, jokes, coincidental number recurrences, and so on. The CORDIS is heralded by the number 45 popping up, and you'd better believe I sat up and noticed how many times that number recurred in the code pattern in Dot and Bubble! In Death in the Family there's a whole military organization the Doctor's mucking around with--No, not UNIT. No, not Torchwood. A different thing, one run by a human supremacist vampire hold on we're getting off topic--and Nobody casually reveals at one point that his CORDIS was bouncing around inside their "For King And Country" mantra for years.

Nobody No-one's real fun as a villain comes from his special Bullshit Powers. He's a Word Lord, so he's basically a memetic being, right? He IS language in some sense. Like, apparently his CORDIS crashed into the alphabet after his first encounter with the Doctor, annihilating the 27th letter of the alphabet and causing the English Great Vowel Shift. This story does a ton with the concept of "what if a guy was words".

But what makes him so dangerous is a quirk of his own identity. To grasp what a Word Lord can do, you have to think linguistically, dialogically. Imagine someone haplessly says: "but, nobody could have gotten into that locked room to kill the ambassador!" What would that allow a Word Lord to do? And imagine further:

"No-one tells the sun whether or not to shine." "Nobody could survive that!" "Nobody could just kill the Doctor!"

One slip of the tongue, that's all it takes for Nobody No-one to gleefully command godlike power.

That's Nobody, though. I don't think Susan Twist is just Nobody. I mean, No-one could seriously ask you to believe that this character who appeared in an (unfairly, given its quality) obscure audio adventure, written by an author who only ever wrote those two stories for Doctor Who, with a bunch of wild over the top and no doubt difficult to write around powers, is going to suddenly come back as a major character in the third tv revival of this 60 year old franchise. Like, Nobody would expect Davies to start referencing, I don't know, the Shalka Doctor either, surely. And I wouldn't ask you to make that kind of totally absurd leap, not even if I happened to be writing some sort of tongue in cheek article.

No, what I'm--I mean, what the fans are suggesting is that this concept of a Time Lord but for stories, who comes from a Borgesian narrative dimension, appearing in one and one quarter obscure audio dramas by an author who never wrote anything else for Doctor Who... what the theory proposes is that there's a SECOND one of those guys.

Just think about it, think about it like a Word Lord. What has the fandom asked itself about this season? Surely, one of the foremost questions is simply: what about Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter? She's been name dropped a few times, the Doctor doesn't say she's definitively dead... could there be some reveal here that Susan is alive? There's got to be, right? That's what they're leading up to!

There's just got to be a Susan Twist.

That, my friends, is exactly how she snuck into this reality.

Now, maybe the "Susan Triad" slated to appear next episode isn't this Word Lord proper but a kind of, I don't know, fictionsuit or vessel or entry point. I'm also not sure what a "Susan Twist" would even want, what the grand scheme would be. Unlike Nobody No-one, there's not a lot of word games you can play with "Susan Twist" beyond the obvious. But, maybe that's part of the point. Nobody No-one was a megalomaniac, a guy who really did just want to watch the world burn. The Doctor's companion Hex accuses him of being "proper mad", and he responds, "Mad? I'm FUUURIOUS!" followed by an explosion from the grenade he had tossed into the duck pond. Nobody is a brash, arrogant, chaotic, and... probably not that bright guy, who has the advantage of his CORDIS's many tricks and his incredibly versatile name. Perhaps this new Word Lord wants something other than chaos and destruction. Maybe she simply wants what we've already seen her achieve in the show: universal ubiquity. There's always a Twist at the end.

Actually, this would weirdly parallel another beat from Death in the Family. In order to trap Nobody, the Doctor weaponizes his own narrative against the Word Lord, tapping into the universal internet and googling himself in order to build a whole proxy universe based on his own life. From another perspective, he basically uses the entire narrative of Doctor Who--all the episodes, all the Big Finish audios, all the Doctor Who Monthly comics, all the Virgin New Adventures--as an ideatic missile. This is such a cool concept I'd feel guilty about giving it away, only it happens about a fifth of the way through Death in the Family. Seriously, this audio GOES places. Anyway, the suggestion is that the Doctor is so entangled with the history of the universe, so threaded throughout all these other narratives, that his history effectively is a world unto itself that a being of narrative like Nobody might get completely lost in.

That's a kind of narrative ubiquity if there ever was one. If I was a Word Lord I'd be sorely tempted by that. Nobody is: he appears a perverse counterpart to the Doctor (and personally I think David Tennant would do a GREAT job playing him if he ever appeared in the show). I can't help but notice, incidentally, that we just got an episode where the shapeshifting Chuldur quickly became obsessed with cosplaying as the Doctor, and Wild Blue Yonder also introduced a couple of not-things trying to copy him. Could this Word Lord be seeking to build a narrative as strong and inescapable as the Doctor's?

It would be an interesting way of incorporating some of these meta elements without slipping too far into a kind of self-referential morass. It feels like Davies has been dancing right up on that line this entire season in a way that's exhilarating, but that also has been a bit nerve wracking for me. The more metatextual storytelling has exited the realm of weird independent art and entered the mainstream, the more cloying it's started to feel. Like, when you engage the audience, entreat them directly to care about the characters or write tearful paeans to the necessity of the Hero as a Symbol, the more it can start to feel like a bit of a desperate exercise in brand management. Clap if you DO believe in fairies, and all that. Doctor Who certainly has some history of guilt here--sorry, Steven Moffat, but sometimes it does get to be a bit much. And it does risk standing the purpose of literature on its head, where ironically through characters lauding the virtues of storytelling within society, the virtue of having participated in a transaction consuming art becomes the foundation of fandom, and the actual literary content is assumed, but treated as an afterthought.

Davies has thus far instead treated the meta content in two ways: as a unique physics to be solved, and as a way of exploring a particular bit of social commentary (sometimes more than one at once). Goblins use a "language of luck" and a physics of rope and knots, the Toymaker brings the world into a State of Play, and Maestro introduces a State of Musicals. To challenge these beings, the Doctor must understand their particular ontology and exploit it. As soon as the Bogeyman in Space Babies faces real peril, all the children who were afraid of it rally to its defense, which doubles as both a commentary on the "Teatime Terror for Tots" charge thrown at children's media like Doctor Who--children LIKE scary stories and creepy, gross monsters!--and reinforces Davies's acidic anger at social and political abandonment of people who are inconvenient to the bottom line. Rogue plays gleefully with fanfiction tropes, and its positioning of the Chuldur as "cosplayers" would riiight up to the edge of being a little too navel gazing about toxic fans... if not for the fact that the Doctor and Ruby are also explicitly cosplaying as Bridgerton characters, and the episode is still giving fans exactly what they want in the form of a whirlwind gay Doctor/Rogue romance. This season is concerned with these sorts of metatextual games, without being subsumed by them and becoming entirely about self-referential brand building.

A Death in the Family is also, notably, only partly about Nobody No-one and his machinations and the counter-machinations required to stop him, set into motion by the Seventh Doctor and carried out beyond his death by companions Ace and Hex. Like I said, a lot of the seismic action of the story is over within the first 25 minutes. The Word Lord is really just used as a jumping off point to talk about a bunch of other stuff: truth, lies, choices made for ourselves or made for us by others... we see multiple information-worlds built in the story, some of them more subtle than others. At one point Ace tearfully proclaims that traveling on the TARDIS with the Doctor "is the only life I've ever wanted!" The Seventh Doctor retorts, with some audible guilt and distress, "No, it's the only life you've ever HAD!" In a very real sense, the Doctor has created the notional worlds that Ace and Hex inhabit, defining the contours of Ace's life since she was a teenager, and deliberately staying silent about Hex's traumatic family history, deciding for both of them "what's best". Nobody No-one in that sense is a pretext, in the best tradition of Doctor Who, to dig into questions about power.

The metafictional is risky, but it's a narrative tool like any other, and it fits with a long history of Doctor Who as a franchise reflecting on itself and its place in culture, with everything from the Mind Robber's suggestion that the Doctor himself might be an escapee from fiction, to Vengeance on Varos and Trial of a Time Lord's dramatization of Doctor Who's conservative culture war critics, to the Last Great Time War as metaphor for the show's cancellation. In a sense, behaving as though cosplay or fandom or whatever don't exist and couldn't possibly be the idiom through which characters--even weird alien characters--interpret their reality and act upon it might equally alienate the show from being about any wider culture beyond itself, endlessly, the same dalek and cybermen and Master stories recycling forever. My hope is just that as Davies barrels into the finale at full speed, it's this sense of a meaning for Doctor Who beyond its own lore driving him. The anger we've seen from him about social issues, the commitment to changing the show where it needs to grow, and the willingness to take big swings at continuity all give me some reason to feel confident.

Confident, of course, that he has seen the wisdom and logic of building his arc around Susan Twist being a Word Lord. What? That's what this article is about, remember? That didn't stop being a thing. Anyway, I'm excited for friday, when all of us pulling for this theory will be proven indisputably right, and you will all, in deference, subscribe to my Patreon.

* alleged ** hypothetical *** me, specifically

[paulrobinsonshotel]

I love RTD's writing, and it was his era that made me fall in love with the show as a kid. When it was announced he was coming back, my reaction was nothing short of ecstasy.

When the rumours began to swirl that we'd be getting a Tennant-centric special with the Doctor regenerating BACK into him, I was very much "please no", but also thinking "surely, RTD wouldn't actually do this. There's NO WAY he'd actually do this".

Then Ncuti Gatwa was announced, amazing, wonderful. He'll be fantastic, no doubt about it.

Then we got the Tennant and Tate 60th announcement. At that point, the cracks began to show. Yes, my favourite companion and one of my favourite Doctors. I was excited, but I was waiting for more. We've already seen David Tennant's Doctor and Donna Noble written by Russell T Davies, and it was great. But for an anniversary special, the things that bring different eras of the show together in celebration of its history... pretty underwhelming.

Then the thing I was dreading most, the Doctor regenerating back into Tennant - something that had been the refuge of obsessives making badly edited fan videos from 2010 onwards - actually happened. And not only that, but he regenerated straight out of Whittaker's outfit into a Tennant-esque one. Ostensibly because RTD didn't want the image of Tennant in Whittaker's outfit to be used to whip up anti-drag or transphobic hate. Despite the fact that 1) Whittaker went out of her way to make her outfit gender neutral, so that all fans would be able to dress up as her Doctor and feel included and 2) surely it's more important to broadcast the message that anyone of any gender can wear any clothes they want, and there's nothing wrong with it?

The initial Tennant/Tate announcement was in May 2022. My initial dissatisfaction was met with responses like "The episodes are ages away, just wait and see". We're fifteen months on, and no further returning characters have been announced. As far as we know, these specials will still be primarily focused on Tennant, Tate and Donna's supporting cast (that said, the one thing in all this I'm happy about is seeing Bernard Cribbins again).

Of course, that doesn't mean there's been no announcements about the episodes at all. Segun Akinola's decided to leave, so we're getting a new composer. That's exciting, I wonder who it'll be? Oh, brilliant, it's Murray Gold. Again. In RTD's own words, "is anyone surprised?". Surprised? No. But fair to say my enthusiasm went from very low to absolute zero.

Gold is great as what he does, but we just had Akinola, an incredibly skilled composer who poured his heart and soul into the show, but was never given a chance by a chunk of the fandom because he tried something different to Gold or just because they didn't like the Chibnall era as a whole. So RTD could've brought in some new talent, with a completely fresh take, but instead chose to bring back yet another person from his era, who did 10 seasons on the show, and the one person the fandom needs to move the fuck on from the most.

So that's a special meant to celebrate 60 years of the show, but specifically focused on one era of it? Coincidentally, the era of the guy writing it?

And for those who dismiss any criticism of this being RTD centric with "But Beep the Meep/The Toymaker!!!", ask yourselves this: If Chibnall stayed on and did the 60th as nothing but a Thirteen and Yaz story, but with Beep/Toymaker, or if Moffat come back and done the same with his characters, would there be anything other than across the board outrage? Classic villains do not an anniversary special make, since we've had them in every season since the revival.

I'm sure the episodes will be genuinely good, and I'll certainly be watching. Any DW is better than no DW, but of all the things they could've done for an anniversary special, this is practically an insult to the show's history.

I'll be patiently waiting for Ncuti Gatwa's era, which looks genuinely new and exciting.

Rant over.

[dawnagustd]

the misfit toymaker || myg

The queen has made her list and checked it twice. She’s visiting those who have been naughty, and punishing them in ways that are oh so nice.

- Part of the Unholy Night Series.     

➻ title: the misfit toymaker  ➻ pairing: toymaker!yoongi x f!reader  ➻ genre: fantasy | holiday | magic | smut  ➻ word count: 1.8k  ➻ rating: 18+   ➻ warnings: unprotected sex | infidelity | soft dom!yoongi | sub!reader | Sir kink | controlled orgasms | big dick!yoongi but wbk | slight edging | spitting/spit play | belly bulging | sex toys(swings, vibrators, suctions) | creampie | cum play | rough sex | light impact play | dirty talk | degradation | dungeons | bdsm | pet names | fingering | multiple orgasms | crying (the sexy kind) | rejection(i’m sorry) | impreg kink | suspension play | clit stimulation | oral sex(female receiving) | begging | overstimulation      ➻ author’s note: Part 3 has arrived. No lie this is one of my favs!! Once again, I won’t hold you. Thanks @taechwitaaah for beta reading and screaming with me. I hope y’all enjoy this as much as we did lol.

It wasn’t hard to locate your next stop. A toy store on Christmas Eve is like a flashing billboard sign. Especially when the only toymaker loves to burn the midnight oil.

Yoongi searches for any excuse not to go home to his estranged wife. The only reason they’re together is because of his kid, who just so happens to be one of Mr. Park’s pupils. 

He loves bringing smiles to all the youth’s faces, but Yoongi’s no saint. Mrs. Min wants nothing to do with her lowdown cheating spouse, and Yoongi couldn’t give a bigger shit.

He’s never been a monogamous man; whenever he finds a new playmate, the old one is no longer interesting. 

But you, however. You just might be his favorite. He couldn’t wait to drag you down to his dungeon of misfit toys and show you all of his erotic creations.

“Are you comfortable, doll?” he asks. “Your restraints aren’t too tight, are they?” 

You don’t hear him because your attention is set on the image of the toymaker’s veiny hand wrapped around his cock. He pleases himself while drinking in the sight of you, his delicate pink lips parted slightly as small, labored breaths slip past them. Each time his palm slides over his similarly textured shaft, arousal oozes from the tip. Suddenly, your mouth is dry, and the urge to fill it with–

“Hey. Eyes on me when I’m talking to you, beautiful.” 

He uses the other hand to lift your chin, gently demanding your undivided attention. The authority in his voice places you back in reality.

Your eyes wander up his figure, admiring his skin while getting drunk off of his touch. 

“Sorry about that, Sir.” You tug on the straps lightly to ensure they’re secure. “Yes. This feels nice.” 

Yoongi insisted on putting you in one of his many “swing sets” hanging from the ceiling. 

It’s thrilling being suspended feet in the air, your legs spread wide with your weight only supported by rope. Your wrists are bound also, leaving you entirely at Yoongi’s mercy. 

But mercy, is not a term the toymaker is familiar with.

“I promise you, doll. You’ll feel even better once I stuff my cock inside of you.” 

Yoongi spreads your folds and reveals your wetness. The cold dungeon air hits your center, intensifying your sensitivity.  

“Damn, you’re wet,” Yoongi comments.

“Make it wetter, Sir.” 

You respond with so much need that he can’t resist the temptation. He’d rather drag this out and keep you down here for as long as possible, but the growing urge to fuck you senseless is too demanding.

Yoongi leans forward and allows his spit to drip into your opening. He watches in awe as your cunt accepts it graciously. Using two of his lengthy digits, he enters your pussy and prepares you for his throbbing cock. 

“Fuck, Sir!”

Yoongi’s thumb rubs your clit while he fingers you slowly, relaxing you so he can continue to stuff your dripping crevice.

“Take one more for me, doll?”

On your command, he adds another finger. 

“That’s my good girl,” he whispers.

The room begins to fill with the lewd sounds of your squelching juices, gushing out of you and covering Yoongi’s hand and wrist. He twists and curls his digits inside of you, searching for the spot that’ll have you falling apart. You cry out for him once he finds it, and he responds with a cocky smirk, knowing he’s about to ruin you before he even fucks you.

“Sir.”

“Come if you need to, doll,” he says. “I won’t get mad at you.” 

His voice is so gentle and sweet, a contrast to the dark lust-drunk eyes staring at you.

You can feel your core tightening with each passing second. Moans leave your lips, but the pleasure is so intense you cannot hear how loud you are. Eventually, you have no other choice but to let go.

His fingers guide you through your orgasm while he praises you with the sweetest words you’ve ever heard. He bends down to suck your pulsing clit between his lips, and your mouth falls open. Nothing comes out; you’re just reacting on nerves. Your brain has yet to catch up with the moment.

You slump over once you’ve finally calmed down, but you’re only given a few seconds to recharge before Yoongi’s cock is teasing your entrance.

“You ready to tap out, doll?”

You shake your head.

“Please,” you beg. “Continue. This is light work for me, Sir. Do your worst.” 

The toymaker wipes the smirk off of your face with his thumb; you know you’re fucked but you still play along.

“I sure hope you know what you’re asking for, baby doll.”.

His cock enters you slowly, not stopping until he’s filled you with every inch. Your pussy constricts and he’s unable to move. You both struggle to adjust to the tight fit.

“How are you so fucking big?” 

“Maybe you just can’t take dick like you think you can, doll.” His tone is condescending, making your face heat up. “I prepped you and you’re still having a hard time. Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Bullshit.”

You speak out of turn and earn yourself a slap on the thigh.

“Now, don’t get disrespectful, doll.”

You bite your tongue and settle into your position. When Yoongi starts moving, the fullness becomes more bearable. The sensitivity ebbs away, and pleasure replaces it. The chill in the room fades as your body begins to heat up, and your sweat does little to keep the feverish desire at bay.

“You’re still so tight,” he points out. “Let’s loosen you up, doll. This won’t do.” 

Yoongi surprises you when he grabs one of his little toys. He flips the little switch, making the object buzz in his hand. “This one’s going to fuck both of us up.”

He places the vibrator directly onto your clit, and instantly, you see stars.

“Fuck! Sir, I can’t!...” 

You beg him to turn the settings down, but Yoongi only chuckles.

“Baby doll, I really haven’t turned it on yet.” 

A press of a button, and it reveals another feature that has your mind scrambled within seconds. The suction pulses around your sensitive bundle of nerves, stimulating you in ways you’ve never even dreamed of.

Your babbling gets you mocked and teased by the toymaker. All while he’s still stuffing you with his cock.

“Look at my sweet little doll,” he tsks. “So confident in thinking she could handle my cock but can barely keep it together. The nerve; what were you trying to achieve, baby?”

As if you weren’t already a mess, he turns up the settings. If the entire town didn’t hear your scream, then the room has to be soundproof.

“I’m going to come!” 

You sob and tremble as your body dangles in the air. Yoongi’s thrusts send you flying, but the hold on your waist never allows you to slip through his fingers.

“Oh, yeah? And what are you gonna do for me if I let you?” he grunts.

He intentionally touches your cervix, making your eyes roll back. You don’t miss the twinkle in his eyes when he notices the outline of his dick each time he enters your guts.

“Anything, Sir,” you promise. “Please. Just let me come!” 

You aren’t sure what sound is filthier, the noises your cunt makes as your juices gush onto the floor, or Yoongi’s wet sticky sac slapping your ass with every impact.

“Well, when I fill this cunt… You better not spill a drop. Understand?”

“Okay, I won’t. Now, please.”

“I hear you, doll. I hear you.” 

But relief doesn’t come as quickly as you thought it would. He turns the toy to the highest setting, making you lose your mind in seconds. Yoongi doesn’t hold back. When your orgasm hits you like a ton of bricks, he keeps fucking you like you’re a rag doll, bouncing you up and down on his hard shaft.

“You feel so good, doll,” he growls, slowing his pace. “I should keep you all to myself and pump my cum into you every night.”

“Sir, fuck!”

You try to calm down but hearing his deep voice filled with lust makes you hotter.

“Ahh… You like that. You wanna get knocked up, huh?” 

His cock starts twitching inside of you at the thought.

“Please.” At this point, you can’t even recognize your voice, but you continue to fill his ears with everything he wants to hear. “Sir, fill my pussy. I promise I won’t spill any.”

This is probably the closest Yoongi has ever been to finding true love because the look he gives you tells it all. He’s never met anyone so perfect, so willing to accept him. His orgasm snatches him out of his reverie, reminding him of a reality he’ll have to face very soon.

A moment later, ropes of his warm cum paint your womb, drawing pleasant sighs from your lips.

“Goddamn it, doll,” he whispers while his cock slips out of you. “You’re a fucking slice of heaven, you know that?”

Yoongi uses his finger to stop the seeping cum from dripping to the floor. He pushes it back inside of you repeatedly until he’s satisfied. He lowers you and then carefully helps you out of the swing, so you don’t fall.

“You’re quiet, doll. Are you okay?” 

You don’t respond but Yoongi still takes your hand and guides you up the stairs. Your palm feels so warm wrapped in his, and he can’t stop a smile from spreading across his face.

He takes one look at you and realizes he’s in deep shit.

“What’s on your mind, doll?”

Doll. 

He thinks that name is perfect for you. You may be a goddess, but you’re so delicate and cute. He wants you. He wants to keep you to himself despite knowing that he can’t.

“I’m hungry.” He wasn’t expecting that reply, but he doesn’t mind treating you to dinner after the things you just allowed him to do to you. “I want something… Sweet.”

“Well, there is a bakery across the street. He’s closed, but I know him so he’ll—”

You’re already heading to the door before he can finish his sentence. Yoongi quickly grabs his coat so he can cover your body. However, you turn around and place a hand on his chest to stop him.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“You said you wanted to get something to eat.” 

Yoongi is slightly confused, but he laughs it off.

Those beautiful eyes stare into his soul, and he has no choice but to accept the fact that he’s whipped.

“Yeah… but not with you, hun.”

Your words leave him in shock, and he can only stand there frozen, watching you walk through the door and head over to his best friend’s store. The toymaker is heartbroken, and sad. But what can he say when this is how he carries on? You’ve got him, and you’ve gotten him good.

He laughs to himself, basking in the sweet smell of you that still lingers in the air.

“Damn, that was one wild sleigh ride.”

[koolaidoverliving]

random candymaker rant

these two live in my head rent free... they are straight (gay) chaos. both of them are highkey insane so their relationship matches that.

they've known each other for ten years, or more. candy pop and the toymaker have a mutual understanding of each others' powers. they acknowledge each other as "equals" and though they had a rivalry in the beginning parts of their relationship, that fell apart. candy pop was more than overwhelming with his traps and tricks. it became a one-sided thing that jason has to suffer from. 

their first encounter involved jason fixing candy pop's hammer. only pierrot had been able to fix it in the past, so candy pop was impressed. unfortunately, jason's arrogant personality pissed off candy pop. he tried to kill him the moment he got his hammer back.

despite this, they have some friendly ties to each other. they're frenemies!!! candy pop always celebrates jason's birthday. even when jason doesn't ask for a celebration, candy pop still brings 1-2 people and a cake. also, candy pop doesn't have a birthday of his own. so when jason asked for candy pop's birthday, he didn't have an answer. for that reason, jason made up a date for him. candy pop forgot about it a few minutes later, but jason remembered it. sooo thanks to the toymaker, candy pop's birthday is july 12th. 

candy pop refers to jason as his personal chef. jason buys him food, makes him food, teaches him how to make food. it was super cute at first but now jason wants to fucking kill himself. why can't this jester just learn how to FUCKING COOK. it doesn't help that jason's the only one with an actual job so he has to pay for basically everything. 

jason overworks himself all the time so candy pop runs errands for him. just so he doesn't fall over and die from something that isn't his hammer. "nothing is allowed to kill you except for me!" candy pop also tries to make jason some food but it goes so terribly wrong. he just gives jason some candy instead. jason does NOT thank him. this shit is the bare minimum. candy pop is constantly trying to get the toymaker to do things other than work in his workshop all day.

candy pop sets up traps to "catch" the toymaker. they rarely work. the one time it did work, the toymaker was so disappointed in himself he had to drink ten bottles of wine just to forget about it. the toymaker barricades his door so candy pop doesn't enter his workshop, but candy pop finds a way in no matter what. whether it's climbing in through the window or digging in from the floor, he will find a way in.

jason finds candy pop's crying to be really fucking annoying (or funny, it depends). candy pop cries a LOT. he has such terrible mood swings. he's like a girl on her period. but jason is one of the two people candy pop goes to when he's upset (the other being nathan), so jason has to deal with it. candy pop just bugs him till he breaks down. and now they're BOTH on the verge of tears! HOORAY!!! 

when candy pop has a genuinely good reason to be sad, jason will give him ice cream and tell him to sit in a corner while he works. if that doesn't work, he shows him some cool magic tricks. speaking of magic tricks, candy pop is always amazed by them. no matter how basic they are. candy pop's magic tricks are NOT as good as jason the toymaker's. 

the way the care for each other is really confusing. candy pop acknowledges that jason's a manipulative piece of shit dickhead and jason acknowledges that candy pop's a disrespectful loudmouth freak... but at the same time, they work together pretty efficiently... which is saying a lot because they both hate working with people.

smaller headcanons that i will not elaborate on unless asked

candy pop and the toymaker gang up on the puppeteer, taking turns calling him poor and homeless. usually happens when they're drunk.

jason only uses handmirrors due to candy pop's fear of mirrors.

jason loves his reflection though he'll always stop in front of store-windows just to see himself. 

candy pop is one of the only ones to see jason's true form. this is simply because he's pissed jason off so much.

jason the toymaker probably thought candy pop was a girl when they first met. he was another victim to the feminine jester.

rivals... with benefits. it's not gay if he looks like a woman

jason throws out all the "birthday shirts" candy pop gives to him. he does NOT want 10 shirts with candy pop's face on it.

jason is a famous and popular toymaker. candy pop is an unemployed homeless man who tries to ruin his career by posting ads calling him a misogynist and an abuser.

candy pop spreads the worst rumors about jason. it's actually crazy. 

there are too many people out there who think candy pop is jason's son. and another group of people who think candy pop and jason HAVE a son. 

THE TOYMAKER IS A WOOD EATER. HE EATS WOOD. CHEWS ON WOOD. EATS SAWDUST. 

jason had to make an entire new email and hide it from candy pop because he kept enlisting jason into the US army.

list of candy pop's names for the toymaker

jason

jas

jacey

toyboy

the toymaker

toymaker

the

redhead

favourite redhead

leprechaun

jason t. toymaker

misogynist

whiny bitch

annoying narcissistic asshole

list of the toymaker's names for candy pop

candy

GET OUT OF MY WORKSHOP

LEAVE

PLEASE 

HOW DID YOU GET PAST THE BARRICADES

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS

I AM GOING TO KILL YOU

[bnxxshthealien]

We have NOT had answers about “the one who waits”. We know that it’s sutekh, and that’s it.

What is he waiting for? “He waits no more” like huh???? why did he need to wait? Why not just jump outa the tardis n kill everyone whenever he wants, if he’s so powerful?

and. we were told that this was all caused by the salt, instilling superstition outside the universe to bring back the toymaker and his legions (including the one who waits). But the TARDIS groaning (because it was possessed), first Susan Twist appearance (presumably because of Sutekh), and mavity (possibly related?) happened first. So, one question: the fuck?

and who is mrs flood? why does she keep breaking the fourth wall? she’s gotta be part of the pantheon, right? is she one of the new ones (incensor/reprobate)?

oh yeah also wtf is going on with the harbinger’s list of gods

[tenderlywicked]

I got so impatient that I started filling my own prompt. Wild Blue Yonder AU: the Doctor and the Master get stuck with the Not-Things :)

It’s not like the Master has something against eldritch beings per se. Arms that are too long or a dropping jaw—it’s not as disturbing for him as it clearly is for the Doctor. He’s been an eldritch horror himself, not just once, so he can sympathize. Moreover, appreciate the ability to adapt and survive at any cost. It’s a matter for envy rather than scorn or dread. He’s not even that shocked to see his own face on someone else: after all, there had been six billions of him once.

But it’s plain ridiculous that one of these not-things is able to imitate his speech patterns almost perfectly, and yet gets it wrong how many hearts and knees he has. It’s a sign of hackwork, and he despises that. On the other hand, in the current circumstances such incompetence is in his favor. It means the creatures aren’t unbeatable, they tend to miss the most obvious things.

He’d be more content and optimistic about it, though, if the Doctor hadn’t been clumsy enough to get separated from him, ending up on some other level of technical corridors. It’s nothing but irritating because without the Doctor there’s no way out: the TARDIS will come back for him. He isn’t to blame for the spaceship’s baffling reconfigurations of course, but still, he should have been more careful.

To the Doctor’s credit, he’s now probably rushing about, trying to find his missing companion, despite the row they’d had before the TARDIS had run off on them both. (The Master is still of opinion that this time the Doctor’s indignation had been apropos of nothing. Yes, he’d summoned the Toymaker into the universe, so what? He’d played his final game and won, he’s alive thanks to that, and the blasted universe is fine too, more or less, despite a few tiny time paradoxes all of this had caused. Should he have just died from a stab in the back instead? No, thank you very much.) Anyway, no matter their disagreements, the Doctor will be looking for him, desperately, the Master is sure of that. Instead of doing the same, he unhurriedly goes searching for something else.

They’d discovered the bridge and the control rooms, but surely, there must be living quarters somewhere on the spaceship. It’s not as big as the Mondasian one, so it doesn’t take the Master much time to locate them, along with what he’d been hoping to find—another set of surveillance equipment. He turns it on, and there it is, the second dot on the screen, the Doctor still braving the labyrinthine corridors on his own.

The Master fumbles with settings and finally finds the right camera in the hall the Doctor is about to pass…right in time to see him stumble across the false Master. And is it really that surprising what happens next? There’s no sound, but the Doctor’s face is quite expressive—it’s easy to see when wariness turns into wavering. Then, sequentially, come incredulity, hurt…and hope?

“Oh for fuck’s sake, still falling for sweet talk,” the Master mutters aloud as the Doctor takes a timorous step towards not-him, only for what he must expect to be a reunion hug to turn into a chokehold.

The creatures won’t kill him, they know he might regenerate, the Master tells himself, switching between the cameras as he follows the Doctor being dragged back to the bridge. They are more likely to keep him for further research.

What had his doppelgänger told the Doctor to earn his trust so quickly? Theta, I missed you so much? The Master tries to persuade himself it’s just curiosity, but also, deep inside, he knows there’s a bitter feeling too, akin to jealously: he never seems to say the right words that would convert the Doctor to his side so easily. One of his silly regenerations had wanted to stand with the Doctor, but would the Doctor ever stand with him?

Maybe he’s not entirely fair, maybe that’s just his old resentment speaking. In his place, the Doctor would undoubtedly rush to rescue at once. In his own place, the Master chooses to see what happens next. He just has to find out how to turn on the sound.

That's the first part, more horrors are to come ;)