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"You've redecorated! I LOVE it!" (At least Jodie got some good moments from time to time.)
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Nov 3, 2023 00:36
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Vinylshadow posted:I wonder if with Disney money the Whoniverse could fully buy the rights to the Rani and start using her more Someone with better graphics skills than I needs to edit a screenshot of the mark of the Rani to add two mouse ears to it.
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Nov 8, 2023 05:49
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I was thinking the actual mark, but I’ll accept this. Clearly we’ll also need the blingy/sparkly mouse ears on the Cyber Lords. I guess if you were to swap them in to the Time Lords formal robes you’d need to match the chapter colors. Or just go whole hog and replace Time Lords with Disney characters. Gold Usher = Winnie the Pooh! Five Doctors Rassilon = the Genie! Hell Bent Rassilon = Bob Iger!
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Nov 8, 2023 16:28
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Yes, the Chibnall era is characterized by watching an episode and feeling the increasing urge to shout WHY ISN"T THIS EPISODE BETTER? at your screen. While in other moments of the show's history, you wouldn't do that because it was pretty obvious why that episode wasn't better. Contrasting with the "this plot/concept/character has no potential" is Chibnall's "look at all the wasted potential" model of the show. Best improvement: The Dominators into The Mind Robber. I wouldn't argue for these myself, but I could also see someone arguing for The Invasion of Time into The Ribos Operation or Terminus into Enlightenment.
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Nov 10, 2023 19:27
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The_Doctor posted:Paul McGann Time War miniseries with Jacobi as the War Master. They manage to never meet for the entire series. Eh, let them meet up. Everyone knows Eight suffers from memory problems.
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Nov 15, 2023 01:42
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Sydney Bottocks posted:In DW-adjacent news, if you're one of those people who can read the words "Steven Moffat" and "cancel culture dramedy" in the same article about his upcoming new TV show, and still look forward to watching it, well you have my sympathies. You've buried the lede: also starring Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston. I do look forward to "reading ITV cancels cancel culture comedy drama" at some point in the future, too.
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Nov 17, 2023 19:45
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Open Source Idiom posted:Speaking as someone with a disability I hate this idea that disabled people can't be villains (or "evil", in Davies' words). That sucks. I get that there's a bigotry inherent to the character -- alterations to human body = scary stories for reactionaries -- but I think the character transcends anything that simplistic by virtue of being the focus of several nuanced and interesting takes over the years. I think meaningful progress is about writing towards nuance and complexity, rather than restricting characters to decorous and contemporary "taste" (again, Davies' words). How many disabled performers have played disabled villains previously in Doctor Who? Is it zero? Everyone is also missing the “disfigured” portion of RTD’s statement. Only representing disfigured human beings as evil is a really big deal and any move away from that is welcome. Davros may implicitly be disfigured because he is evil, but I don’t think that’s much of a help if the question is how we portray a range of possible characterizations versus “all disfigured characters are bad.” The other big question: what did the thread think of Bleach’s performance without the make-up and the chair? Out of curiosity, I went through Three and Four’s stories asking whether the villains were disabled or disfigured people. (Human or human-like only, so Broton and the Zygons don’t count, for example.) Three Inferno: mutation equals disfiguration. Evil Brig is missing an eye. Colony in Space is ambiguous as it gives us disfigured aliens. Day of the Daleks and Frontier in Space I’m dinging for the Ogrons, which is basically equating ugly humanoid features with stupidity. The Curse of Peladon arguably gives us Arcturus as a disabled villain. The Mutants does an explicit “ugly is violent and beauty is a higher-order of being” trope. I have no idea how to score Omega in The Three Doctors but he certainly has a unique problem with his body. The Green Death invites us to consider the madness/villainous linkage in Doctor Who, but I’m going to skip listing all the mad scientists and mental illness is a separate question. I don’t recall Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ villains well enough to include or exclude it. Four The Ark in Space: man turning into monster is disfigured (I know this is complex, but Noah in transition is a villain). Genesis of the Daleks isn’t just Davros, but some of the “mutos” as well, though we do get a positive depiction of at least one. Planet of Evil: mad scientist turns into deformed monster. The Android Invasion gives us a not-really-disfigured lackey. The Brain of Morbius maybe gets a pass for Morbius, but not for Condo. The Seeds of Doom is another body horror transformation story. The Deadly Assassin (and Keeper of Traken) give us a disfigured Master. Talons gets both yellowface and a disfigured villain. I’m dinging The Invisible Enemy for a disfiguration indicating Swarm infection. The Sun Makers has a villain in a wheelchair. Underworld has disfigured robot-men? Credit to The Ribos Operation for Binro, who is disfigured and a hero. The Pirate Planet has the Captain. I’m unsure whether to list The Shadow from The Armagaddon Factor. Destiny of the Daleks is Davros again. Meglos is borderline. Full Circle is hugely arguable, but I think not nearly as tropey as The Mutants was. Perhaps 19 episodes out of 65? That seems to me like a lot. How many heroic characters in Who have had disabilities or specifically been in wheelchairs?
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Nov 18, 2023 16:26
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The_Doctor posted:Sil, arguably. Played by disabled actor Nabil Shaban, carried everywhere by his two black muscular slaves (Sil, not Shaban*). Discussed down-thread: the question is whether the alien he played is supposed to be “normal” for his species. Probably Sil isn’t in the category of “disabled = evil” but I finessed the question by stopping with Four. It also saved me from having to post a rant about Black Orchid. I’d think at more length about the new series, but at some point that means considering Love & Monsters in terms of disability and disfigurement and I don’t wanna.
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Nov 19, 2023 01:49
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FreezingInferno posted:I am infinitely more respectful of people discussing this sketch on the grounds of accessibility and representation and whether or not it's good or bad to have Davros be in a wheelchair than I am for the nerds yelling in outrage because RTD dared to change some made-up bullshit about an alien fascist from 50 years ago and now their precious VHS tape of Genesis that they watched when they were 10 isn't canon any more!!! Davros, with access to time travel, opts not to save himself from a lab accident for “reasons.” Genesis Davros didn’t think aliens existed, anywhere in the universe. And he died near the end of the story, at least until Nation brought him back in a retcon in Destiny of the Daleks (where he was found in a different location than where the dalek shot him). His entire story has been a constant revision of what’s canon.
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Nov 19, 2023 15:59
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Astroman posted:If that's how Davros has evolved to be perceived that's a fair point. But as was said earlier ITT, Davros didn't become disfigured as a result of his evil or hubris. He was hurt in a war. To his own people, he was a hero trying to save them, despite his scars (much like Palpatine in Star Wars, who would be another candidate for revision in that case). He also is portrayed as a genius who overcame his injuries through sheer intellect (designing his life support unit) and continued to participate in his career in science and as a high government official afterwards. He would be a positive portrayal of a disabled person if he wasn't a meglomaniac who decided to betray his own people, get them killed, and then kill his enemies so his creations could become the supreme lifeform--but that had nothing to do with his disability. OK, let's first look at what RTD actually said: RTD posted:...there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there’s a very long tradition of this. I’m not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well. So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair, or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair. I say, this is how we see Davros now, this is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they’re not in black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by. So it's pretty strange to be arguing that RTD's saying "this is how Davros always looked" when he explicitly says "Davros used to look like that." Nobody is going back and editing out Davros from earlier stories, or even putting up a "this was wrong then and it is wrong now" title-card on the streaming versions. And the two salient points here: RTD says (accurately) "there's a very long tradition of this." It would be true to say, for example, that a Jewish actor should be allowed to portray a Jewish villain, but you can't say that while ignoring the number of explicitly antisemitic "Jewish" villains in plays and stories across centuries, or the moment of history we're living in right now. Not everyone is going to agree, but it's a plausible argument to say "this is 2023" and refuse to write or portray a stereotypical Jewish villain on stage or screen. Given that this show, in particular, has a long history of portraying disability and disfigurement as a sign of "evil," it's a reasonable argument even if it isn't one you personally accept. The second point: it is RTD's show. He and "a lot of ... the production team had problems" with this kind of depiction. So they've made a decision to change it. If you become Who showrunner one day, you can bring the old Davros back. I could see an argument here if Bleach were himself disabled and this change required a recasting with a performer who isn't in a wheelchair, but in fact, zero of the performers to play Davros have needed to use wheelchairs (or been blind, or been disfigured), so the big opportunity of "I am a performer in a wheelchair and I can play this meaty villain part" simply isn't a thing at all. Maybe we'll get an explanation; maybe not. Davros and the daleks have the capacity to time-travel; maybe someone else made the change and Davros will have no idea he ever looked any different. One last point: saying the Master must be played by a white man is clearly racist and sexist. Saying Davros must be played by a fully-abled performer pretending to be disfigured and in a wheelchair isn't clearly prejudiced against those with disfiguring injuries or who must use wheelchairs. And it's especially reasonable when pointing to the general portrayal of people in wheelchairs or disfigured people as heroes or villains: they're substantially overrepresented on the "evil" side of things. You can't equate these two instances.
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Nov 20, 2023 01:54
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Open Source Idiom posted:Totally, though I believe by the time Davros was around the Kaleds were heavily invested in their purity regime -- generationally so -- so it's not early stages for them. The Kaleds and the Thals appear to be human; if that distinction is the driver of racism on Skaro, then skin color needn't be a thing. For that matter, while there were some non-white Nazis, there are lots of fascist dictators who weren't white, so you can tell as story about fascism and hatred without necessarily placing a restriction. If you want to go after making the message less clear, Genesis of the Daleks can itself be accused of that: Davros and the Kaleds come across as Nazi-like, I think we'd agree. And yet, only some of Davros' hand-picked researchers end up siding with him, while the rest demand the dalek program be shut down. Isn't that sending a clear message of "not all Nazis" and suggesting that plenty of Nazi scientists were OK chaps in the end? Either you admit that the whole analogy was deeply flawed and compromised from the beginning, or you accept that when writing a science-fiction allegory you can't expect a strict one-to-one correspondence in the way you seem to be demanding here. In a broader sense, there is (and quite rightly) grounds for differences of opinion in terms of representation, not just a concern about depicting a Kaled elite as played by a PoC, but even things like Uhura in Star Trek: TOS as either effective representation, or tokenism in service of a futuristic, white and American-centric dominated "Federation" that generously admits to having non-white people around as well as aliens, but has a token "half-human, half-Vulcan" as the only regular alien on the crew, and keeps hammering away at his "mixed race" status. I generally think TOS did more good than harm, but it wasn't alone in taking these brave stances and it didn't always get things right. In my experience working on similar issues of representation, diversity, and their lack, being willing to have the conversations is a minimum starting point. Doctor Who hasn't always been willing to have these conversations. So there's been progress.
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Nov 22, 2023 04:57
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Open Source Idiom posted:It's been a while but I seem to remember that everyone involved were fascists and they basically underwent a violent schism in terms of how they interpreted their fascist doctrine. Just because some scientists didn't support the dalek program doesn't mean they didn't believe in racial purity and the destruction of the Other -- there's a racial purity argument to be made both for the creation of the dalek (it's the ubermensch) and for the destruction of the dalek program (#notmyubermensch). They're all bad, to the point where it's not worth working out who's better or worse. I don’t believe Genesis is allegorically talking about white supremacy, but I think it is talking allegorically about fascism generally and maybe Nazis specifically (though as you say, this is probably about aesthetics and not so much ideology). If you don’t, either, I don’t understand where there’s an argument about casting a non-white performer as a Kaled scientist? Sydney Bottocks posted:The claim that Uhura was a "token" minority on the show is laughable. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself begged Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show when she was considering leaving it; he told her that Uhura was a positive role model for young black children on American TV, at a time when those role models were few and far between (or, as Whoopi Goldberg said to her mother when seeing Uhura for the first time, "there's a black woman on TV and she ain't no maid"). If one of the key figures of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s felt that Uhura was a vital positive image for black Americans, claiming she was just a "token" is wildly misunderstanding the context of the era in which the character was created. If you want to discuss a complex issue, beginning by being dismissive, mocking, or even bullying is not a sign of that. I don’t myself think Uhura is a “token” black woman, and don’t really want to argue that point, but MLK doesn’t define what was or was not true for all Black people in 1967 (or now). Uhura’s role and her treatment on the show is subject to scrutiny and disagreement, especially when it comes to a cultural depiction. If Uhura, from a united Africa, had been depicted like Chekov was as a Russian, is that an improvement because it makes her African heritage central to her identity, or would it have made her a painful stereotype? Is Uhura written “white” across the series, making Roddenberry’s egalitarian vision of a post-racial Federation one where non-whites behave as if they were white? I can acknowledge complexity and grounds for debate, and even if I think on balance the show was a positive for representation and a blow against racist practices and depictions on TV, I can do that without being scornfully dismissive of arguments to the contrary. Babylon 5 had Dr. Franklin, whose actor repeatedly stated that he liked being able to play a character who was a doctor, not “the black doctor,” and who was defined by his profession, his status as son of a military man, and his flaws, not his race. At the same time, ST: Deep Space Nine had Sisko, who across the series had a central identity as a black father, and Avery Brooks worked hard to make him “the black commander” and to depict him within a specific racialized and cultural context. Was B5 whitewashing its main black character? Ivanova’s Russian Jewish heritage matters in multiple episodes, but Franklin’s blackness could be argued as not mattering at all. I think rather that there’s room to disagree about what kinds of depictions are better, but that it’s best when there’s enough representation that you have this range to argue about, and it’s best to see a range from cultural preservation to cultural assimilation. Get enough representation and there’s room for the gamut because nobody is resting the weight of “defining blackness” on a handful of characters. And times change. Uhura in TOS was from “Africa”; was that bad because they had her come from a continent or good because in the future Africa is united? Post OS, she’s gotten further development and is specifically from Kenya. But how much does that matter compared with Sisko being from New Orleans? That Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has developed Uhura’s background and identity far more richly than TOS doesn’t make TOS racist or bad, it illustrates how far things have come since it aired. But in turn, we can acknowledge where TOS was and discuss how, in its attempts to intervene positively in a broader context of civil rights, it wasn’t able to entirely transcend history. Of course, it’s likely that elsewhere on the Internet, there’s Who fans outraged at Davros being “canceled” who are attacking RTD for casting Mawaan Rizwan as a Kaled (“RTD is racist!”) without discussing, say, British history and Rizwan’s Pakistani heritage. They might be suspected of making a facile and bad faith argument because they don’t like change. It’s good we can have a more grounded discussion here, and if it’s sucking the oxygen out of the forum it’s because we have to wait until Saturday to have more to discuss.
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Nov 22, 2023 17:50
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Big and enthusiastic and fearless and mad and going a mile a minute! Both RTD and the episode. Well, we got the “good scientist in a wheelchair” in the first story, and while the gamemaster in me is thinking “RTD, do you really want to make the Sonic even more effective,” I prefer this fearless boldness over Chibnall’s timidity any day. quote="Jerusalem" post="536159644"] Big ups to Shaun, who loves his wife and daughter very much and just takes absolutely everything in stride  I loved the little aside between him and Donna when they were in the attic. Doctor: This is a Sonic Screwdriver, one thing it's great at is resonating with concrete. Shaun: That's not concrete, it's mortar. Donna: Thank you, Bob the Builder. [/quote] Shaun drives a cab in London. I’m pretty sure he always takes everything in stride.
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Nov 26, 2023 05:18
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Early to predict a trend at this stage, but... RTD1 gave us some suspect elements, like Last of the Time Lord's "everyone believe very hard and Doctor Jesus will save you from the bad man" or Children of Earth's presentation of how well humans do without the Doctor's help. Davros' accusation that the Doctor turns his companions into weapons wasn't entirely fair, but RTD clearly saw how Moffat answered him in the character of Clara and has rethought himself. Because where RTD did also acknowledge how the Doctor makes people better, he seems to be doubling down now. The DoctorDonna/Rose thing suggests a reversal of Last of the Time Lords: maybe one human being alone can't be as wonderful as the Doctor, but together, we can. And it suggests an extension, where those different from the Doctor (as he's being presented) contribute something of value that the Doctor might not always be able to understand. The point didn't land very gracefully at the end of this first episode, but it's RTD: he'll keep making the point until he manages to make it gracefully.
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Nov 26, 2023 19:55
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The_Doctor posted:Chibnall did write a decent non-passive upfront female Doctor, unfortunately it was the one whose name wasn’t in the titles. Just seeing the picture makes me want more. Imagine Chibnall writing something that elicits that response! OK, so the Doctor's comment about superstition suggests that he may have allowed the Toymaker in by suggesting you can cross the salt after counting it. And RTD might be doing something interesting with the idea that there's a lot of "once-was universe" post-Flux that may now be "not-universe" spaces like where the Toymaker and the Master (not that one, the other one) and the Eternals come from. But what I'm really thinking about is "Wild Blue Yonder." It's a war song. The TARDIS played it at both book-ends of this episode. Was the TARDIS declaring war on these particular not-things? Or more broadly even than that?
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Dec 3, 2023 03:57
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Doctor Who Podcast: RTD says he based this episode off of Underworld, but he rattles off some classic episodes prior to saying that and includes The Timeless Child as the last on the list. RTD trolling? Sure, but I bet he has specific plans for “The Doctor is from somewhere else”.
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Dec 3, 2023 04:17
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One observation or linkage I've not seen yet: the Love and Monsters connection. That RTD episode was about fannish social groupings, but I think Wild Blue Yonder is in part about fannish caricature and hate of the object of their fannishness. (That makes it an apt 60th celebration, too.) The episode gives us actual caricature's of the Doctor and Donna (who, at times, behave like a caricature of the character), in ways that can intersect with the sorts of actual caricatures toxic fandom can produce. My favorite is the episode's sly deployment of the classic (if rarely used) companion twisting her leg, but what we're getting is an attempt to represent the characters and show in distorted ways, driven by emotions of hatred and a desire for combat and cruelty. I know the "play" aspect is pointing towards the next episode, but it also suggests that these not-beings are trolls, playfully cruel instead of being driven by clear trauma or need. They don't have to eat to survive; they're consumers, and their pleasure in consumption has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with generating fear. Notice the way the show plays with the meta-considerations of Who fandom: the "bad edits" fairly early on that can conceal the deliberate trick that's being played, the "continuity error" with the Doctor's tie that makes much more sense in this cinematic space than it would in real life, the ways in which the episode encourages the kind of "trivia quizzing" to prove genuineness and demonstrates that the hateful duplicates are more concerned about fitting all the pieces together than the real characters. The Doctor asserts that a superstition about salt is real (Image of the Fendahl, anyone?) and it's not clear whether that's true or he's making it up. The story takes place in a huge ship that keeps changing its interior for no explicable reason; Donna brings up the sorts of meta-questions viewers ask in mentioning Venom the movie and the question of mass; the barrage of questions thrown the Doctor's way when he's trying not to think is like the kinds of questions fans might throw at an episode that doesn't answer them to show it's bad. The Doctor's not-really-solution is even "try not to think about it!" And I believe there's a subtle logic connecting these elements and the "slow" aspect at the center of the story. These symbolic representations generated out of hate can't make sense when things change slowly. No wonder they get so upset at the obvious and "fast" changes (the Doctor's a woman; the Doctor's not white), because they can't see how the show has been slowly changing itself all along. The "taking the wrong Donna" bit at the end, I think, provides a contrast to this sort of cynical, click-baiting hate-fandom. The Doctor asks the Donnas a question and grabs the one we also think is the right one, but then the show stays with the other Donna. Is she the real one? Is this the fake but so duplicating the real one she's traumatized at being left behind? Switch to the TARDIS, where Tate skillfully misplays Donna's reaction to being rescued: not relief, but triumph. We see it: we see the inconsistency and figure it out, but the Doctor isn't looking. We're hoping that he does what he does. And when he rescues the real Donna, he doesn't get tipped off by the clear indicator the show gives us, but because of a tiny inconsistency between that Donna and the real one. Set aside that he doesn't just remember how Donna likes her coffee, he knows the precise length of her arms, and notice instead that RTD isn't condemning fans who obsess over tiny continuity problems or inconsistencies within episodes: he's implying that when they're driven out of love and a desire to save, they're vital to fandom because that's how to tell the difference between the hate-filled fan and the loving fan. The not-things want to know all about the Doctor and Donna, but they hate them, too. And cut to a scene of Wilf and Tennent's Doctor, loving fans of one another.
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Dec 3, 2023 18:37
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MikeJF posted:Honestly, I feel like instead of shooting Amy and Rory off into the past, they could've just had them say 'enough is enough' after having to mutually commit suicide at the end of Angels take Manhattan to survive. They'd been building TARDIS fatigue on them for a while. Arthur Darvill could have totally sold a mini-Rory rant about how many times he's died or been plastic and maybe next time he finds out Amy is his great-great-grandmother or something and he'd just as soon not take the chance. It's telling in the Moffat run that he can see the Doctor repeatedly killing himself for over a billion years to save Clara but not the Doctor repeatedly visiting retired companions. "He never did that before" isn't a great excuse on a show like this, that wouldn't still be on the air if it weren't about "the Doctor can do that?!"
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Dec 4, 2023 17:43
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I for one would applaud a showrunner with the courage to have the Doctor show up in a past companion's current life, have them sit down to tea, and then slowly over the course of the episode realize that, aside from their adventures, they absolutely cannot relate to each other. No monsters or aliens or mad scientists or universe-ending peril. Just two characters who figure out that there's no real reason for them to stay in touch any more. Like that one episode of Frasier where he and Woody meet up and then realize they just have zero things in common apart from spending time at Cheers. Guess Who's coming to dinner Open Source Idiom posted:I think that script's making a misdiagnosis argument. Poorly. I know too many people who need to be on medication who are convinced they would feel better if they get off their medication, and too many cases where someone did discontinue medication with consequences that will never completely go away as the result. Creating a justification for people who need medication to discontinue it does active harm, and arguably doesn't address misdiagnosis and its causes at all, because that's a problem with doctors and the medical establishment and the ways in which they relate to patients poorly. You'd need to show the person who made the diagnosis and establish that it was wrong in this case, and frankly I'm still not sure whether that justifies the consequences for those who were properly diagnosed but falsely believe otherwise. A better Ker-Blam! wouldn't have ended capitalism; Forest, as-is, has probably done real harm to a small number of people. Jerusalem posted:The thing that really gets to me is that the Doctor doesn't just excuse the System literally murdering a completely innocent person, she uses it as an example that proves why the System is.... good? I don't think she quite endorses it as a necessary action but given that was even a potential interpretation of something the Doctor does is madness to me. There's an incoherent point in there somewhere about the AI having better ethics and morality--despite being constrained to act as it does--than the people responsible for it (or hacking it). Except that the total lack of a capitalist villain to set against the anarchist, coupled with the System's apparent acceptance of all the bad things happening in this workplace related to labor, means that the AI's morality is so distorted it looks like an actual villain. Maybe if we were meant to see that the System (AI) has been hopelessly corrupted by the System (capitalism) there'd be some irony in all of this, but the Doctor's missing of it guarantees the point can't land and it's clear neither of the people involved in writing the episode thought they were doing that. Contrast to The Sunmakers, which turns into a much broader criticism than Holmes supposedly aimed at originally. I think you don't walk away from that episode thinking "government taxation is bad" and that's all, even if that's pretty clearly where Holmes started out. The government in question is so clearly coded as a corporation and not a government ("The Company") that the critique lands in a very different spot. Whereas Ker-Blam! seems set on disarming any aspect of criticism with some weird combination of "blame people, not the system" and "human beings should be happy to have any work at all" that's worse in the "Disney is going to spoil the show" sense even though it's before Disney had any involvement in Doctor Who at all.
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Dec 5, 2023 21:18
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I really appreciate how NPH played the Toymaker like every accent he used was "put on" and not natural, because he himself isn't natural and he's always playing a part. I also appreciated the "Kate strides straight towards Fourteen and maybe she's about to slap him in the face but instead she gives him a big hug" moment. Rochallor posted:Bi-generation is absurd and I think it's really silly there's just another Tennant and TARDIS out there (the second TARDIS is really pushing it!) but I do love RTD going full fanwank on the idea. I suppose the original Ten-2 was just a pre-manifestation of that then? And the Curator as well? And David Bradley oh god how deep does this rabbithole go Bi-generation is really a huge gift that sorts out all sorts of things and creates a lot of new opportunities. And it isn't any better or worse nonsense related to regeneration than, say, the K'anpo/Cho-ge thing or Four and the Watcher or Romana's "select-a-body" regeneration (not to mention the Valeyard). If it means every future regeneration involves a scene where the new Doctor gets to give a big hug to the old Doctor, I'm all for it. What a great moment. There's always been many other TARDISes out there (or at least, on Gallifrey), so the only change is that this one is the "real" TARDIS. But it's a time-space machine that can be in multiple space-time positions simultaneously while being the same device, so having two separate Doctors who each have their own TARDIS is quite literally the default condition. The only difference is that possibly it's easier for them to co-exist than it used to be. It really does look like RTD is doubling down on Chibnall's ideas while driving them in directions that he finds interesting: Flux leaving 50% of the universe vacant opens up two possibilities, that of something out there in the void that suddenly wakes up, but also space for nothing/something to potentially expand into. If the Toymaker isn't alone and the show is embracing myth more fully, then we're getting "the Land of Fiction colonizes the real world" coupled with the possibility of developing or bringing back myths like the old series vampires (or Fendahl?), and there's a non-zero chance that RTD can fit the Timeless Child into the structure, either by having the Doctor originate in the universe that the Toymaker comes from (fiction that became real; this has been suggested in the past) or by making that origin, itself, a myth that crept into the world to fill in space that had already been opened up. The idea that the Time Lords themselves are no longer a distinct group of people from a single planet but rather a huge mythic thing that overwrote the actual people who once existed is the kind of mad idea that opens up lots of room to tell stories without being bothered by all the things RTD obviously isn't that bothered by. I will be very happy if we get a The Three Masters episode at some stage. Delgado first appeared on-screen in Jan 2, 1971, so we missed the 50th, but it's an idea whose time could have come.
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Dec 10, 2023 06:05
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Wolfechu posted:Apparently in the commentary RTD says as far as he's concerned, the bi-regeneration is basically like a timeline split, one where he regenerated, one where he didn't, except they're both still there. “YOU get a Season 6b! YOU get a Season 6b! Everybody gets a Season 6b!”
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Dec 10, 2023 16:10
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LividLiquid posted:Second black Doctor. With the combination of writing and performance, Jo Martin absolutely upstaged Jodie Whittaker (made her revealed Doctor seem more like the actual character than Jodie ever got a chance to be). And frankly, assuming Tennant returns to the main series instead of potentially guesting on a UNIT spin-off once or twice, I expect the same thing we just saw: a great actor and popular Doctor being eclipsed by Gatwa's ridiculous charm. As I said to my mother on Saturday, he hasn't even really switched on the charm yet. He was operating at about a six. I'm prepared to see how things go. Jodie got screwed over by the writing during her tenure, not because Chibnall wanted to sabotage the first woman to play the Doctor. I don't think RTD wants to sabotage Gatwa and if Tennant doesn't return I don't see how the bigeneration undermines things any more than happens with any multidoctor story (Three and Two sparring while One treats them like children; Five getting to be the hapless straight-man against Two and Three; Eleven getting a whole new Doctor added played by John Hurt on top of Ten). Between streaming and other media, all the Doctors exist at the same time anyway.
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Dec 11, 2023 02:19
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LividLiquid posted:I'm with you on just going with it because Gatwa is already perfect, but I have to say, it really doesn't matter whether somebody intended to do damage if they did that damage. Comparing the bigeneration to accidentally shooting someone in the face seems pretty extreme at this point. Where is the equivalent harm to Gatwa? I think a reasonable case can be made that Martha, as companion, was actively harmed and undercut by the one-two punch of loving Ten and Ten loving Rose. But it takes a retrospective look at her season (with the extra cherry on top of her ending up with Mickey) to make that case convincingly. So maybe, over time, a case will emerge here. I see no evidence yet. Bigeneration doesn’t mean RTD can replace Gatwa with Tennant: beyond Gatwa being Fifteen (as avowed by Fourteen), Tennant is very busy and can’t just come back and do seasons of Who again. I don’t recall anyone suggesting Moffat was being ageist by having Eleven call Clara in Twelve’s first episode, and frankly, that felt a lot more anxious than Fourteen and Fifteen hugging and being genuinely delighted with each other. I wish we’d had as much celebration of Thirteen across her entire tenure as we have for Fifteen already (though Thirteen did get to have some).
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Dec 11, 2023 16:11
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2house2fly posted:It will always baffle me that the "Timeless Child" reveal which profoundly alters the whole backstory of the entire series rendering multiple previous stories retroactively devoid of stakes (remember when the Doctor was about to die for real on Trenzalore? Remember the flashforward to after that time where the characters saw his grave??) not only hasn't come up much since, it wasn't even particularly important to the plot of the episode it was revealed in. The whole reveal was just to keep the Doctor busy while the Master got on with Cybermen bullshit! You really thought while watching that Trenzalore arc that the show would kill the Doctor for good and then end? I’d have been more upset at the unresolved nature of the reveal if we hadn’t seen: 1. The reveal that the Doctor saved Gallifrey instead of destroying it, seemingly setting up Eleven and Twelve to go looking for Gallifrey, something Eleven didn’t do and Twelve gave up on. 2. The reveal of the new series Daleks, who quietly disappeared without explanation on-screen. 3. The reveal that the Daleks could just steal planets from all over without anyone else noticing or tracking them, and stick them in one place, without widespread devastation on said planets, to be used to destroy everything. The Daleks had previously attempted to dig to the center of the Earth to put engines there and drive the planet around, successfully. If they could just relocate planets, why not drop them all into suns and kill their enemies selectively? Moffat was the worst of the three showrunners for “here’s a new premise, now let’s forget this ever happened” while RTD definitely had a “wild idea you shouldn’t think about” penchant. “Timeless Chilld” seems to have been a bigger upset than even “half-human on my mother’s side” but the show basically takes an attitude of “nobody should care and the Doctor should just choose to ignore it all”, which makes me really interested to see what RTD plans to make of the idea. (People ITT convinced he won’t, and I admit he may have just been trolling when he called “The Timeless Child” a classic episode, but I think he’s running with “the Doctor is a mythic figure” in a whole new way.)
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Dec 17, 2023 16:10
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Warthur posted:The Weeping Angels come back early on in Amy's stint as a companion. They break people's necks and eat critical bits of their faculties to speak with their voices and whatnot, because shunting people back in time stops being threatening when the Doctor has the TARDIS available to just go collect them. (Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda, fixed points in time, can't go back on your own timestream - whatever, even if you find an obituary for someone you can just rescue them anyway then plant the fake obituary.) Then Weeping Angels show up who are shunting people back in time again and Amy and Rory get themselves shunted and don't simply put a classified ad in the paper wherever they end up so the Doctor can come collect them. Weird. Just have anyone temporally displaced by an Angel age rapidly if moved artificially through time again. If Mawdryn Undead could manage the effect, the new series can. It’d actually be an interesting way to anchor the Doctor to a particular point in time for a few episodes before he leaves the displaced companion or companions behind. Of course, the original Blink saw the Doctor and Martha displaced in time, and they time-traveled again, so maybe not? I don’t think the Angels as originally written actually work as recurring enemies, and I kind of liked that they weren’t even so much monsters as beings forever isolated from other people. There’s a lot that could have been done with them that we didn’t get with the hard turn into “they are cruel monsters.”
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Dec 18, 2023 16:19
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PriorMarcus posted:RTD just spoke on the Radio about Helena Bonham Carter and said she was joining the Whoniverse soon. 2021 was the announcement RTD was returning. I suppose she might have read for something on RTD’s production but he told her to wait?
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Dec 19, 2023 21:05
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Updog Scully posted:I rewatched the episode and I noticed some weird issues with the script. Remember when Ruby's mum comes home and the Doctor and Ruby cover up Lulubelle's doorway? That move implies that they're hiding her absence, even though Lulubelle is safe in the room so there's nothing to hide. They also bicker between each other but what they're actually bickering about isn't established. Have I missed something here? They were bickering over the Doctor’s cover story.
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Dec 26, 2023 06:22
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armpit_enjoyer posted:Another thing I really appreciate: when Ruby is erased from the timeline, the Doctor clearly remembers her, even though everyone else doesn't. Her mum tries after he tries making her remember, just like Amy did when Rory got himself ate by a crack in time. Like others here, I suspect the "mavity" thing is going to set us up for a later character saying "gravity" in a context where we might otherwise ignore it and therefore signaling that they're a time-traveler. Either that, or the Doctor notices when it changes back because some time-traveling villain got pissed off at the change. McSpankWich posted:I'm sorry this is rambly I'm just afraid Disney is going to Disney all over this franchise and it will never be the same as it was. Yes, I'm sure Disney intervened to make sure the episode had someone of ambiguous gender singing near the beginning, as well as making certain that instead of just stealing back a baby again, the Doctor instead impaled a grotesque Goblin King on the steeple of a church right before Christmas Eve became Christmas. All in the best Disney tradition. RTD is a very experienced producer and I'm confident he's capable of playing the "putting in something really outrageous you're willing to drop to preserve all the other poo poo" that the best showrunners do when they're being interfered with. If Doctor Who survived Ian Levine, it can survive Disney.
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Dec 26, 2023 19:45
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