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DOCTOR WHO • 'The Church on Ruby Road'

#they were over 2000 years old #they should have been at the club

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Basically Each Doctor

I love doing these so I thought I'd do another one.

First: Grandpa will throw hands and kidnap girls that look like his granddaughter.

Second: Hobo and his boyfriend achieve mischief, until hobo's parents return to send him to the mega gay zone.

Third: Rebellious child is sent to time out, and he takes over local military organization. Becomes a superhero and car dad.

Fourth: Man with teeth that could blot out the sun accidentally starts the biggest war ever.

Fifth: Man who is always out of his depth tries to keep his gaggle of children alive while they drag their leashes in 20 different directions.

Sixth: Sweetest man in the universe pretends to be a dick, and flashbangs people with his shear audacious style.

Seventh: 200iq giga-brain becomes the ultimate 5D chess-master to kill gods, and gets shot as soon as he steps foot into America.

Eighth: The happiest little rambunctious puppy gets repeatedly kicked in the stomach till he gives up via the pavlovian response.

War: "We don't talk about granddad warcrimes"

Ninth: Man comes back from war and becomes a PTSD ridden uber hippie.

Tenth: The most vain man in the universe kisses everyone and is unable to get over his ex.

Eleventh: Ancient demigod looks 25 and is going to make it everyone else's problem, especially for his in-laws.

Twelfth: Your college professor casually mentions all the cool shit he did in the 70s, all while saying ACAB and dismantling capitalism.

Thirteenth: Woman shoots longing glances at another woman for three seasons, all while lying about how much everyone else is contributing.

Fugitive: Woman's appearance completely breaks established canon, but honestly worth it because she's that cool.

Fourteenth: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA happy 60th AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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What do you think about Ryan's character development? I think I really like it but I always have trouble putting it into words

I love love love LOve Ryan's entire A-Z, we witnessed a whole ass coming of age story and it was so nice to see him grow into the person he is when he says he's done and wants to stay at home.

Because like, both Yaz and Ryan's arcs are coming of age stories, but they have one key difference that meant Ryan was always going to choose to leave and that Yaz was always going to wait till she had no choice but to leave. That difference is, of course, that Yaz saw travelling as a way to grow up, to gain independence as an adult and gain that power to help people she had craved for years. A way to escape the cage of home that was limiting her, she saw it as an increase in responsibility. Ryan, however, saw travelling as a break from growing up. Ryan saw it as a fun pass time, because to him, growing up was going back home to his responsibilities. To be present for those around him and be reliable. To him, in the end, traveling became irresponsible, and irresponsibility is Ryan's worst fear.

They have similar narratives, but that one key difference in perspective leads them to taking totally different paths in the end.

Because we meet Ryan and he has his mates and all, and he's a friendly guy and obviously cares a lot about them, but his person is Grace. His mum dies, his dad leaves him high and dry and who was there for him the whole way through? It was is Gran. To a kid who has basically suddenly lost both parents, one to a sudden death and the other who abandoned him in his grief, having a rock like her would have been a lifeline. And then she dies.

Now, at that point, it's clear Graham does care about Ryan but from Ryan's perspective he's basically just lost everything suddenly, Again. I think it would have been fair for him to think Graham would just leave at this point, he's never liked him and it's not a great relationship and if even his actual dad packed up and left and didn't even bother to go to his own mum's funeral, then why on earth would Graham stick around?

But. He did. Graham didn't care that Ryan didn't like him, only that Ryan would let him help him anyway. Graham stuck around and looked out for him and cared for him even if really, very few people would have judged him had he not managed to make a good relationship with his late wife's grandson who notably did not like him. Graham wasn't morally, legally or for fear of overt judgement required to stick it out for him and he still did.

And Ryan, he's a smart dude. He notices this and he notices it pretty quickly, and he reacts to that by softening on Graham and deepening their relationship, and letting Graham guide and mentor him in a grandparental way. He talks to him about his frustrations with his dad, that he's annoyed he's acting that they can be a happy family now, when he's never put in the work and is putting Graham down when Graham Did and Has put in all that work. Then they get interrupted by a gargantuan spider, but nvmd.

A few episodes worth of Graham proving he's not gonna up and leave and will be there, even if he's not perfect, and Ryan's learning that that's what family really does for you. He's learnt that family isn't always what it's supposed to look like and that the people who show up for you are important, even if the people who show up aren't who you were expecting them to be. He continues to learn from Graham through the two seasons, his conflict resolution skills improve vastly through his tenure and he sure didn't learn it from anybody but Graham. He puts in sincere effort into being there for people as the most important thing you can do and he learnt this from Grace and Graham.

In Can You Hear Me? His fear is not Only that earth is wrecked and destroyed, it's that he wasn't there to help! He ran off and abandoned the planet and it died! He wasn't responsible enough. He was irresponsible like his dad and look what happened! In the same episode he's also hit with the fact that despite the fact that he's been off galivanting the universe, life at home had gone on without him and maybe he left people who needed him there for a bit Too long. Like, nobody's gonna begrudge a guy just out of school his gap year travels and that's basically what went on, but after a while it's not being on a fun trip for a while, it's shirking to a point. And like, you can live a life where it's not irresponsible and you're not beholden to one place and its people, but Ryan is categorically NOT this person because he has no urge to be this person. He's not the wine aunt who drops in every few months with cool gifts and wild advice who swans off again without a care. He saw his friend was really suffering in his absence and could have used his help and presence and is suddenly hit with the fact that he's running away, kind of sort of like his dad. A bit. and That hits him hard.

Can You Hear Me? Is when Ryan decided he's going to leave. His talk with Yaz about this demonstrates their differences but kind of makes it clear he's had this revelation, he probably was going to give it an adventure or two more and bow out, except the next adventure was the haunting of villa diodati and it snowballs and at the end they're all forced home anyway. He's not okay with the situation, but he can do being at home, he wanted it anyway.

(and damn, Ryan being the one who was strong in the face of 13 going off to be responsible for her actions and blow up the planet (and herself) kills me. It hits me in the face. He's used to losing people he loves. At least this is her choice. At least she's being responsible for her actions. At least this is an act of saving people. The least he could do is not make it harder for her to do. He can be strong. Yaz couldn't, she's not used to this, and Graham was clearly having a harder time here, but Ryan can be that guy for her. It just eats me up inside in all the good ways that storytelling can do.).

This whole thing with 13 ending up in prison and not being able to go back to them, and his disappointed but not over-reaction to it also showed us he'd learnt an important lesson in the arc with his dad as he's handling this very maturely. His dad didn't abandon him out of cruelty or apathy, he didn't fail to show up because he hated him or wished him ill. Not everybody who isn't present for you is being malicious. He sees in with Hanne's dad in it takes you away and he sees it with his own eventually in resolution. They were two men who failed because they couldn't do it, weren't strong enough to step up. The lesson that not everybody is Trying to hurt us is painful and not always one we want to hear, it can be comforting to make the other person the Malicious guy, but that just isn't always realistic. He learnt his dad was swimming in his own grief and it was too hard and he didn't step up from the pain. It had nothing to do with Ryan. This is not good, but it's also him being human rather than not caring for Ryan. So when 13 appears 10 months later... He can take it. He doesn't react how Ryan of S11 would have. He knows better now. He grew. He's sad, but he knows she didn't try to hurt him. He sees she's sorry and knows she's not often sorry, so that has to mean something.

There is also his Doctor arc, which is different from Yaz's in flavour because he's not trying to be her, he's trying to be him inspired by her, he's taking inspiration from her and graham and taking what he needs. He takes in what she has to teach over the era like a sponge. Ryan who thinks guns are cool in TGM and goes to shoot those robots to live out a gaming fantasy has it blow up in his face and gets his ass chewed out by 13 for it. He learns from her, takes in her lessons of compassion and care, appreciates her guidance even though she's a massive weirdo.

She teaches him the kids guide to the universe, in effect imo. No violence, no guns, we are peaceful, we do not hurt people and we live the idea of pacifism, which is the height of goodness... But the thing is, that's a very reductive view of the world, isn't it? In reality, The Doctor is a pacifist till they're not, which is code for they're not a pacifist (kind of an all or nothing thing). When it gets down to it, the Doctor Will do bad things in the name of good even if they hate themselves for it (or sometimes when it doesn't pass their mind to fell bad at all). In The Timeless Children, the master takes the doctor out of play and the fam have to -in effect- join forces to be the doctor, Yaz and Graham have different roles, but Ryan's final personal lesson in doctor school is that when it gets bad and the doctor is the last line of defence, they take up arms.

When Ryan is confronted with the choices the doctor makes every day he does what she'd have done, and blows up the cybermen in defence of himself and the people around him. He lost her protection and had to be the 'adult' here and he steps up, and to Ryan stepping up is The most important thing.

13 had shown him the nice parts of the universe, and gotten her own hands dirty instead of making his dirty over and over again. But she wasn't there this time, and he had to grow up and take the mantle. And was not warning him harsh? possibly, but it was also an act of love. We don't (ideally) tell our young people the harsh realities of life until they get to have a childhood for a reason. It is a gift, one she tried to give him, but he had to 'grow up' before he left and that he did.

by the time revolution of the daleks happens, Ryan knows absolutely that he is done. He will help save earth because he's one of the few people in the know and he views it as his responsibility, but he doesn't want to travel the universe anymore. He has important things to do at home, things that are just as important as anything out there in the big universe. He went travelling as a young adult, saw how vast and wide the world was, and went home and hunkered down and got to making the world He has a better place.

What a charming arc.

What a good person, and what a beautiful man.

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MOFFAT: River's not just his wife - she's his widow. somewhere in the terrible future, on a battlefield, the 45th Doctor dies in her arms and makes her the same promise she once made him - it's not over for you, you'll see me again. So River buries her husband and off she goes to have lots of adventures with his younger selves and confuse the hell out of them. Until, of course, she ends up in the data core of the library planet, and realises she'll never seem him again. And then she starts to wonder why anyone would call a moon "Doctor". Ah... Yeah, some version of that could still work. The Doctor worrying that she'll get lonely in the library, and popping his dying mind inside a moon. God, look at those words. I actually typed those words.

RTD: I've never forgotten that Doctor Moon thing, it's so clever. Every time i watch that story, I think, it's him, it's The Doctor, and no one knows.

DWM #551

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DOCTOR WHO | FLATLINE

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“I do what I do because it’s right. Because it’s decent. And above all, it’s kind. It’s just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many and maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point in any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do, so I’m going to do it. And I’ll stand here doing it till it kills me. Who I am is where I stand. And where I stand is where I fall.”

PETER CAPALDI AS THE TWELFTH DOCTOR (2014-2017)

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the thing about doctor/river is that the blatant romance is a defense mechanism. it’s playacting it’s how they sketch out the boundaries of their relationship because they can never be sure of how the scales of intimacy are balanced - they love each other, sure, but they are so rarely in a place where they both know enough about each other for mutual trust. so you get these really interesting juxtapositions like how eleven is in full flirty mode for impossible astronaut/day of the moon to the point where it feels like they’re about to make out every time they’re in the same frame but at the same time he dismisses her with “trust you? seriously?” and is shocked when she actually kisses him goodbye. in let’s kill hitler they flirt like hell when she is literally trying to murder him but not at all when they save each others’ lives. in the wedding of river song kovarian complains about them being lovey-dovey in front of her but right after that the doctor attempts to reset the timeline and river has to drag him kicking and screaming into respecting her enough to tell her the truth. in angels take manhattan we get both “just you wait till my husband gets home” (flaunting their relationship to grayle) and “never let him see the damage” (she doesn’t trust him to love her as a flawed, mortal person). they’re out of sync all the time, so sincerity is off the table except when it’s a necessary shortcut to trust that doesn’t exist yet - river whispering his name to him in the library when he doesn’t know her yet, their literal wedding being a tool the doctor uses to convince her to let him “die.”

the thing about “hide the damage” in particular is that river was responding to the doctor’s own fear of seeing the damage. she lied to him because she was trying to give him what he wanted, even if he couldn’t admit it. and it applies both to the broken wrist and to their relationship in general. every time he looks at her all he can see is the pain of her death, and she can see that he’s holding back even if she doesn’t exactly know why. this was always going to be a barrier to true intimacy between them unless they could be linear for long enough to know and see each other as they are, not as they’re going to be or as they were.

that’s why husbands of river song is such a perfect resolution for them. the only way river would ever be honest enough to let him see her insecurities is if she didn’t know who he was, so it had to be twelve and not eleven. and it specifically had to be twelve fresh from losing his memories of clara, so that he’d stop running away from confronting her death and just give them those 24 years together on darillium to really get to know each other, to see the ugliness and the imperfections and stay together anyway. it makes perfect sense that after that they could reach the level of love and trust river has for “her doctor” in the library, in a way that just isn’t possible with a relationship built on whirlwind dates done out of order and nothing else.

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DOCTOR WHO | season 10 deleted scene 

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“Because something seems impossible. We try, it doesn’t work, we try again. We learn, we improve, we fail again, but better, we make friends, we learn to trust, we help each other. We get it wrong again. We improve together, then ultimately succeed. Because this is what being alive is. And it’s better than the alternative. So come on, you brilliant humans. We go again and we win. Deal?”

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DOCTOR WHO | 10.06 “Extremis”

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Happy birthday Karen Gillan - 28 November 1987

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danny honestly stole the show on rewatch of s8. I remember when he was introduced it was like “oh great another black man gets to be the left-behind and ridiculed boyfriend” and then (although I’m not going to pretend the writing was completely beyond reproach) he became one of emotional hearts of the season? a narrative foil to both clara and the doctor and the hero of the finale. the way he and clara love each other but were always destined for ruin. the way he’s completely correct about the doctor but through her lies clara inadvertently makes him think that she’s a victim of the doctor, when in reality he’s a victim of both of them. the disaster of their relationship is perfectly summed up in the scene in “in the forest of the night” where she tries to get him to come see the solar flare with her but he simply has no interest. because she WANTS the adventure and the danger while he’s seen too much of the horrors that come with it and just wants to rest, wants to enjoy the smaller things in life (the way that’s also continuity from amy’s internal conflict but played out explicitly between two different characters). and then transitioning from that directly to the opening of dark water when the one time clara tries to do him right he just fucking. dies. for those two episodes they are closer than they’ve ever been but he’s dead. danny pink’s story is the biggest tragedy of s8.

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thirteen’s face appreciation: 15/?

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Love, in all its forms, is the most powerful weapon we have, because love is a form of hope and, like hope, love abides in the face of everything.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, DOCTOR WHO! MAY YOU NEVER END.

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Eucatastrophe and Doctor Who

I have probably had this post sitting in my drafts folder since like 2014, but I think I’m finally going to finish it now for a bit of a belated Moffat Appreciation Day 2022. When I was originally writing this post I was thinking of this concept in regards to New Who as a whole at the time, but I think that I would like to instead focus on on specific story in Moffat’s era now that I have had the chance to get a firmer grip on both the concept of eucatastrophe and the overall tone of both Davies and Moffat’s eras.

So first of all, the concept of “eucatastrophe” was discussed by JRR Tolkien as being “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears”. Tolkien also argues that this effect of eucatastrophe is “the highest function of fairy-stories to produce”.

Essentially, it is a point in the story where all hope seems lost but then out of that hopelessness, something magnificent occurs. To be clear, a eucatastrophe is not necessarily a straight forward happy ending and it also isn’t necessarily without tragic elements. It almost requires them, actually.

I think the absolute clearest, though not the only example, of Moffat using this same concept is in “World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls”.

Right from the start in this story the doctor, Bill, Missy, and Nardole discover that they have entered into a situation that is incredibly fraught with tension. It quickly deteriorates with Bill being shot and moved away from the main group, casting her into extremis, as the episode might call it. But even in the deep pits of the ship, Bill remains hopeful and full of goodness. She believes and hopes that the Doctor will come for her. And he does. But as we all know, he is too late by mere hours to save her from what appears to all the characters to be a hopeless situation from then on.

And the situation only deteriorates further with the unveiling of the Master and the plans of the Cybermen. By the time we get to The Doctor Falls, the story has so many tragic elements to it that it is difficult to see how it could have an outcome that is anything but tragic. The Cybermen are not primarily trying to conquer, simply trying to survive under horrible, inescapable conditions on a ship far too close to a black hole. Without access to the TARDIS, the doctor can do nothing for the villagers aside from buy them time. Missy’s entire arc of growth is under threat of totally unraveling due to the appearance of her former self, and Bill is utterly trapped as a Cyberman. Oh, and the doctor is dying but holding back his regeneration so that he can help everyone else survive this desperate situation as best as he can.

The fleeting moments of hope offered in this episode are also almost all either snuffed out very quickly (such as when Missy chooses to stand with the Doctor, solidifying her arc, but is quickly taken out by her former self, leaving them both to die) or seem like they are nearly foolish to hope for at all given the circumstances (the doctor is given a small degree of hope by Bill’s crying real tears as a Cyberman). The most realistic hope that they have and what the doctor, nardole, and Bill are working towards for most of the episode is the hope of moving the villagers a few floors up and slowing down the cybermen, even if they can’t stop them for good. This small kindness is what the doctor’s whole speech to the master and missy is about. He knows he can’t win. He knows he is trapped and will die here. But he is going to do what he thinks is right regardless, without hope, without witness, without reward. Bill by this point has also lost all hope that she can be saved and make it out of this tragedy and she plans to go down fighting the Cybermen as well alongside the Doctor because she doesn’t want to live if she can’t be herself.

However, as dreadful as all that may be, the absolute most hopeless and tragic part of the episode comes when the doctor appears to have died in the explosion that takes out most of the Cybermen, choosing not to regenerate. He utters possibly the saddest line the doctor has ever said and the next time we see him, Bill has found his body in the wasteland left behind by the explosion. Bill is in complete and utter despair at this point, crying over the doctor’s body, looking up at the “sky” (really the top of the ship) practically begging, nearly praying for help with her tears. She has nothing in this moment. There is nothing she can do and as far as she knows there is no help coming.

But then, suddenly, help does come. At the point where the episode reaches peak despair, a corner is turned. Bill is saved by virtue of exactly the doctor’s earlier foolish hope. Her tears have called Heather to her and Heather takes Bill from the cybersuit and reforms her, giving her new life and even the choice to be human again in the future if she wants. They save the doctor and bring him back to his TARDIS and while it is unclear to them whether he will survive, Bill continues to hope that she will see him again and leaves him her tears as a reminder of that hope.

When I first watched this episode, I very much experienced the feeling that Tolkien describes in his definition of eucatastrophe. Bill had been through so much that seeing her be saved by Heather and save the Doctor in turn brought me to tears. I mean, I was already in tears because of the peak despair moment, but these were different tears. They were hopeful, nearly joyful. And something that solidified the way I feel about this story was Moffat’s later interview where he says quite plainly that “Doctor Who is a big hearted, optimistic show that believes in kindness and love and that wisdom will triumph in the end. I don’t believe it’s the kind of show that says there are bitter, twisted, nasty endings because it’s not. It’s not gritty; it’s aspirational. It says, ‘It can work. And wisdom and kindness will triumph. And love will always come through in the end.’ I think there aren’t enough people or enough shows saying that and I’m damned if Doctor Who is going to join in with the general chorus of despair.”

Moffat masterfully managed to produce the “highest function of fairy-stories” in this episode. It is a masterpiece of emotion, tragedy, ethics, and hope against despair and even 5 ½ years later I still cry about this episode every time I think of it. We need more stories with these kinds of endings in the world.

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