new-nu-Who: RTD2 (Doctor Who on telly 2023-?)

For discussion of the second era of Russell T Davies writing & producing and Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter producing Dr. Who.

So far 01: four wraparound "Tales Of The TARDIS" intros for streaming repeats of Earthshock, first one here

(wraparounds for Mind Robber and Fenric were written by Pete McTighe, wraparounds for Varos, 3Docs and Time Meddler by Phil Ford.)

So far 02: A comedy sketch for Children In Need

Today: The Star Beast (adapting elements of the Mills & Gibbons strip from 1980, based on a rejected Mills & Wagner TV pitch, collected in The Iron Legion paperback), the first of three weekly 60th anniversary Tennant/Tate specials, now on BBC iPlayer and now or soon on Disney Plus anywhere else that has Disney Plus.

(A Christmas special with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead is likely to air one month from today, but not confirmed yet.)


Previous chitchat here.

we kinda thought this was trash

I really loved it, not just for nostalgia, and even the bits that I rolled my eyes at (binary/non-binary) I was at least aware that it would be winding up the worst people in the world.

it all felt like setup

maybe we should have just waited to watch until next week

There were six Tales of the TARDIS episodes.

Fun! Liked it.

Eyeroll/winding up OTM

Thought this was run of the mill RTD as a story without any particular lols but otherwise doing its job and the TARDIS interior was pretty cool.

Agree it was run of the mill in some ways but what a relief after the last lot. And it still leaped over the low bar set by Chibnall.

I am looking forward to (allegedly) however RTD lampshades Flux destroying the universe.

There were six Tales of the TARDIS episodes.

I believe if you tally the six that I listed, they will add up to six

four wraparound "Tales Of The TARDIS" intros

If only I had thought to include any other words in that sentence, or post.

this was fine, perhaps even good - my 11 year old watched happily (although I think he slumped over a bit during that last TARDIS chat)

was surprised by how continuity-heavy it was, i thought they might try and make a tidier jumping-on point for a new Disney audience

This was great

Somehow I completely missed that Rose was trans in the promo run-up; I thought they handled that very Whoishly

Somehow I completely missed that Rose was trans in the promo run-up; I thought they handled that very Whoishly

as someone who likes, essentially, two of RTD's first-round episodes (and hugely enjoyed or admired every piece of his output since), I went into this expecting to at best quietly respect his ability to craft broad, populist entertainment that isn't to my taste in same.

that said, twelve seconds in: omg the recap, the exposition, the emotion, what a piece of craft for that returning anniversary audience

thirteen seconds in: AN OLD DOCTOR WHO MATERIALIZED DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM CYBERDOG rusty you pop whore ilu

murray can fuck off tho

12.5 seconds in: mills AND gibbons story credit IN THE OPENING TITLES heart eyes emoji

one hour later: what a delight. playing the nostalgia mystery both as a completely new riff on old-doctor-for-anniversary trope and drawing back the casual general audience. madeley/tennant chemistry not only immediately on the level of pertwee/unit (in a way the TV version of KLS never approached) but also reminiscent of the only good thing abt Partners In Crime. the meep/wrarth twist handled fantastically by both the script and Margolyes. every time I eyerolled at something being handled way too obvi, I was won over to the big emotion play within seconds. Talalay getting to play comedy in a way that suits her but she's not been given on the show before (could have been much more of this but it was still nice to see). Tate absolutely COOKING. Shaun new MVP of the family-used-as-exposition-through-character. (and after Bill looked SO like Sharon that I wondered if it even occurred to Moffatt, there are enough connex in the Sharon -> Bill -> nu-Rose sequence that it adds extra anniversary fan-candy nuance)

lol @ me: during the crawl through the terrace attics, I was like "now THIS is how you use this setting for stakes, unlike in my possible favourite ep of all time" then it being overturned TWICE in a way that would have made me go triple-aldo in the OG RTD era.

and oh yeah the new TARDIS interior! I rarely care much about the revisions, but as an '80s Who baby, huge white walls that are mostly roundels FEELS "right" in a way that also pushed happy buttons for the anniversary.

otoh “just let go”.

TARDIS interior was cool tho.

was surprised by how continuity-heavy it was, i thought they might try and make a tidier jumping-on point for a new Disney audience

I didn't see anything of the Chibnall run but have seen all of the first RTD and the Moffat series. Is anything Chibnall necessary or advantageous to jump back in with the new specials?

All you need to know is that the Doctor was a woman at one point, really

(two points?)

ha nope not required, you are well-advised to stay away from the chibnall era! new ep really only refers back to the end of the Donna run - and there are plenty of (slightly awkward) refreshers - i guess the basic setup is basic enough and simply explained - donna can’t remember the doctor - but all the extra detail and lingo was quite confusing for the very casual viewers in my house

i, as usual, lost interest about 30 minutes in. and having watched a dozen or so of the old 25 minute episodes i think a large part of what's missing, for me, is the cliffhangers (along with the more digestible length)

nice to see DT back though. thought new tardis was too big if anything, not that it matters given the nature of the thing.

murray can fuck off tho

Honestly think this guy has ruined Who far more than Chibnall. The new theme is terrible and within minutes was sick of the usual overblown score.

Although it was trailer-spoiled I did like the ET bit. Don't suppose there was a bit like that in the comic story so it turns out Spielberg ripped it off?

And I am looking forward to the NPH/Celestial Toymaker one honest.

So RTD technobabble is back in a big way huh?

This was mostly decent, Tate and Tennant are such a fun team.

i may have to watch that ending again but i don’t know how I feel about the implication that the metacrisis made Rose trans, and that was also maybe why she chose her name. (Also I don’t buy that she wouldn’t get into the Tardis with Donna and the Doctor at the end.)

I harp about this a lot, but in his New Adventures novel, RTD had a character from the future bone a bone a gay character in the middle of a stakeout at the height of the AIDS epidemic so that the 80s character could develop HIV-immunity from an injection of 30th-century sperm so that whole denouement read to me like someone was reining RTD’s worse storytelling impulses in a bit

I guess it was a blowjob rather than full-on anal but still wildly out of character

holy shit

I must have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome with Murray Gold, because although he's still very annoying, it feels much more like "real Who is back" when he's clodding over everything.

The new theme tune is multiple squares of OTT, but sort of exciting too? The original Ecclestone theme is still his best one.

My personal cringezone with New Adventures is Ace storming off at the end of "Love and War", a very terrible bit of writing (by Paul Cornell)

This was merely boring instead of an immediate hate watch which is a clear improvement over the last couple seasons. 50-something minutes felt long, and some of the scenes (rescue from Chez Noble) could have been edited way down.

I really enjoyed this

I loved the pacing, like backstory/new alium invasion/old characters/new characters; it’s all moving along on rails simultaneously in an adept way

Donna/Doctor moments were all gold, such good emotional moments throughout from all of them honestly

A timely reminder that once upon a time even generic Doctor Who episodes were very entertaining!

murray can fuck off tho

His action cues are no worse than standard Hollywood scores really, but when he goes for emotional or god forbid comical it's unbearable.

Yeah was watching unicorn and the wasp last week. Very generic but lots of fun. It has a certain ease with just existing on simple terms, which Moffat’s period struggled with

when he goes for emotional or god forbid comical it's unbearable

I counted at least three scenes where I essentially thought "There's some really good acting here with stakes. Sure wish I could pay attention to it because of all the fucking sonic glop over it."

(Fun episode, I'll add.)

Also, a massive bravo for choosing his first episode back to send an unequivocal message to young trans fans.

And enjoyed how Rose's identity was actually used in the plot resolution rather than just being a thing her character was (Admittedly in a slightly hokey way, but hey it's Dr Who)

a LOT of oof in the resolution, but the Doctor's "oh, I do that!" re pronouns earlier was such a beast line that it outweighs anything else.

agree w those last three posts

I had a disparaging comment about RTD’s usual mode of subtlety that read as mean to unintended targets when I started typing it but suffice to say it could have been about a billion times more awful, so I’m relieved that I only ended up rolling my eyes a bit

xxpost yeah i liked that line !

Tennant is extremely comfortable in this role, it’s a joy to watch him just dominate the screen even when taking the sonic screwdriver to new levels of wtf

on dr who confidential there's a great bit where the writers of the original comic are visiting and DT basically interrupts to tell them how much of a fan he is

(Dave Gibbons was the artist - equally important as an author, just noting ftr.)

(and wagner wasn't there. yeah, was using shorthand)

I am seeing some absolutely DERANGED ranting about this harmless, charming episode, mostly centered around the “men can’t let things go” line which honestly I didn’t even register when I watched it, possibly because I was also wrangling my kids

I liked this: https://open.substack.com/pub/philipchristman/p/a-show-for-dorks

Now Russell T. Davies, who revived the show in 2005, is in effect reviving it again. A prickly, opinionated Gen X gay man of a distinct sort, Davies has been responsible for some of the best episodes the show has ever done. Who knows if he’ll pull it off again, but I at least feel safe in assuming that if he fails, he’ll do it in an interesting way.

and wagner wasn't there

(as noted in the opening post, Wagner did not contribute to the comic strip — where Mills was credited first on DWM, he was the sole writer)

Men unable to let go of the idea that men can't let things go

Dave Gibbons meets the Meep:

Me and the Meep! pic.twitter.com/LCO0WUnKTe

— Dave Gibbons (@davegibbons90) November 27, 2023

Pat Mills meets the Meep:

https://iconoblast.substack.com/p/all-hail-the-meep

So far 03: apparently RTD wrote some snippets of bridging Dalek VO for the 23/11/23-TXed colourised 75-minute edit of the 7-part first Dalek serial, recorded by surviving 1963-65 Dalek voice actor David Graham.

Nice little BTS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWnPxke0row

my issue with the “let things go” line was not the implication that men can’t let things go, but more the classic RTD lack of constraint resolving deadly problems in favour of feels.

i don’t think that matters in general, especially if people enjoy it - it’s a show! but personally prefer a sense of the magical and wonderful and slightly terrifying being taken seriously (i think this can create problems in another direction - i’m just talking personal taste here) rather than HOOT!!!

Rewatching The Runaway Bride and seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more (this is also why I really liked Dan’s departure; he got to a point where he was just tired of always being in mortal peril and fucked off back home, which is super relatable)

I read this and thought “my vague recollection is that Dan was kidnapped once, met the Doctor for about 15 minutes, then spent several months bouncing around space and time trying to save her, then went back to his life as soon as she could drop him home” before realising there were several episodes after Flux

Flux

or as iirc Chibnall thrillingly hyped it, “the story of a man… a man named Dan.”

I read the original Star Beast comic today, amazed that RTD chose to cut the section where the Wrarth knock the Doctor unconscious, strip him naked, and then perform surgery on him to hide a bomb in his belly!

recorded by surviving 1963-65 Dalek voice actor David Graham

https://i.ibb.co/VY6nYr0/grahamdalek.jpg

link to a reply with one of his lines embedded

seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

ratingswatch for Tracer: 5.08 milli VOSDAL, the highest overnight for a BBC drama launch in 2023**; nearly 2 million on iPlayer Sunday (1.62 recorded by BARB*) and another million Mon/Tues, per Jane Tranter (Grade also asked his scintillating opinion); highest Audience Appreciation Index since the first half of Capaldi's two-part finale in June 2017.

*which puts the 2-day figure above the 7-day final of, eg. Blink

** twenty-four episodes of six dramas have consolidated over 7m in 2023 on seven-day; Happy Valley S3 is the top six of those 24, with 7.9 for ep 1, and 11.08 for ep 6. (Call The Midwife S12e03 is 24th, with 7.01; its highest-ranked episode is the finale at 11 with 7.45)

Always helps to have National Treasure David Tennant back in the Tardis of course but yes they have to be pleased with this

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

Yes! Another fantastic departure, absolutely heartbreaking.

(A Christmas special with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead is likely to air one month from today, but not confirmed yet.)


Russel Tinsel Davies confirms: “From Day One in this job, I wanted Doctor Who back on Christmas Day! And with Ncuti, Millie, Davina and the Goblin King, I hope it’s a feast for all the family!”

OK, got around to watching the new episode today. I don't watch TV by myself, and the person I usually watch TV with was going through some stuff.

I had some trepidation about watching it, honestly. Stuff like TV shows are a really social thing for me. Half the fun of watching something is being able to talk about it. That's just been really hard for me lately. I don't have a lot of trust for communities, particularly fan communities. I've never really known how to talk to other people about Doctor Who, the way I see it, what it means to me.

Anyway. Full spoilers ahead.

I knew nothing about it going in except that RTD was showrunner again and that David Tennant would be involved and the new companion was going to be a trans woman named Rose Tyler (apparently that's not actually her character's name tho) and at some point David Tennant regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa. And that Donna was going to come back and they were going to resolve her arc.

So actually I knew a hell of a lot about it going in, considering I actively avoided reading anything about the episode.

The name of the episode rang a bell and as soon as I saw Pat Mills' credit I was like oh shit, this was based on a comic story. Have I read this? Do I know this one? And then the Meep showed up and I was all "OH SHIT IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKIN' MEEP"

And maybe this is why I have such a hard time talking to other Doctor Who fans

The Meep is such a _perfect_ RTD character, honestly better than any of the other characters RTD previously created in that mold. Kind of an Ewok-ET-Mogwai kind of thing except that it predates all of those characters, hahaha...

I went back to the story after watching it to see what the episode took from it. Surprisingly little, and not the stuff I thought. Aside from the Meep... meepself? (seriously, cute pronoun joke but this is why we say things like "she/her/hers" - in real life pronoun usage is distressingly similar to Douglas Adams' digression on tense conjugation in time travel) and the, uh, Wrarth warriors (big props to the actors for actually finding a way to pronounce "Wrarth"), the biggest influence I see is actually the influence of Sharon and her family on Rose and her family. I was pretty surprised to learn that "Fudge" is a character from the comics. I think I know a non-binary person named "Fudge". (Also a great non-binary name: "Keebler". If I had a child I'd argue with my co-parent that we should name them "Keebler" and my co-parent would very sensibly say "no".)

It's... the show I remember watching when RTD was running things the first time. Not the show I see when I watch it now. I remember the special effects, in 2005, looking genuinely impressive and not janky, the plots being exciting and fresh, the missteps easy to overlook. I remember it being a big action-packed family show with corny jokes and messaging that wasn't always perfect (looking at you "Unquiet Dead") but was...

I mean, Chibnall, right? I hate to mention his name. I don't know what happened, how David Tennant showed up again, any of that. I dropped that show like a hot rock after "Arachnids in the UK". Nothing particularly bad about that episode, I just figured, you know, this show isn't going to get any better from here.

Anyway, the trans thing. I thought it was... it was clearly an example of "cis-writing-trans". RTD gets it better than a lot of cis people. Sometimes, you know, sometimes a person knows just enough to be dangerous.

The idea that Donna and Rose could just "let go" of the, I don't know, magical time lord power (that goes back to Shada, right? What Chronotis does to Claire? God, I don't think I ever thought of that before)... that was good and authentic. Them saying that a "male-presenting" time lord couldn't ever _understand_ that is gender-essentialist bullshit, IMO. Cis guys... they sometimes put themselves down. Judge themselves in ways that I wouldn't dream of judging them.

It's something that I was taught. To hold onto things that I thought were important, but aren't. You don't have to transition to learn to let go of those things.

My girlfriend liked the corny "non-binary" joke/reveal. I liked it too, I mean, RTD is corny in a way I like. I eye-roll but it's all in good fun, for me. My girlfriend genuinely felt seen. And this is an example of... when I say RTD gets more than most people, Rose being both non-binary _and_ trans... that's me, that's my girlfriend, that's a lot of the people I know. I appreciate that a show run by a cis person sees that.

The thing about these stories is that... the stuff that gives me the trans feels isn't always the trans stuff. Rose is a great character, it was great to see her, and I just felt Donna's arc so deeply in my heart.

It's kind of echoes of... I wrote this whole story about how for me, "Human Nature" (the TV story, I never read the book) gave me particular trans feels. Donna's arc gives me that feeling but moreso. And it's not a trans story. This was an arc that was set up when, 2008? A lot of the stuff I've felt, I've experienced, isn't exclusive to trans people.

Donna lost 15 years of her life. The Doctor thought he was helping her. Thought he was _saving_ her from certain death. Thought... he could seal off that part of her and she'd be fine. She'd live a happy, normal life. Plus, she had a lot of money. It was OK that she couldn't think about those things she did, couldn't acknowledge those things she did, or the pain would fucking kill her. It was OK that everybody around her had to lie to her in increasingly obvious ways, stop talking about things that were incredibly important to them. Nothing is wrong. There are no aliens. You don't know this man at our front door. They're acting stupider than those asshole kids who deadname Rose.

Which is, again, a clear sign of cis people writing trans characters. Cis people talk about trans characters and the first thing that happens is you hear our deadnames. I don't want to know anybody's deadname. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter. It's a lot easier to just not fucking say it in the first place than it is to unhear it. Now I'm always going to know this character's deadname, whenever I think about her, and I would fucking prefer not to. A lot of cis people just don't seem to get that.

Anyway, Donna. "The Star Beast" shows, very well, the cost of that. Doesn't pass any judgements because there's no point. It doesn't matter whether the Doctor was right or wrong in doing what he did. It hurt. She spent fifteen years missing some important part of herself, not understanding, not knowing why or what was wrong with her, and whenever she asked about it people lied to her, tried to keep her from knowing the truth. _He_ tried to keep her from knowing the truth. He didn't want to be responsible for killing her. No. He couldn't accept that he was _already_ responsible for killing her. No blame. No guilt. The life he lives... people around him die, sometimes. People he cares about. Sometimes you can change that. Sometimes you can't.

I guess he learned that in "The Waters of Mars", in "The End of Time". By that time he'd already done what he did to Donna. I don't know. Maybe he thought sacrificing himself for Wilf atoned for that. It didn't. Nobody _asked_ him to atone.

Wilf's still alive, the show tells us. It's not... we'll never see him again. Bernard Cribbins died last year. I don't care if Wilf is living on a nice farm upstate with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

So he comes back, 15 years later, after spending a long, long lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time going to ludicrous lengths trying to keep anyone, ever, from dying, and then... we don't like to talk about what happened after that. Atonement? No, he just couldn't keep going on like that, the way she'd been going.

-

It was... nice. It was really nice to see Donna after she demanded, DEMANDED, that the Doctor stop trying to protect her from herself. Donna wasn't... she wasn't _dead_ before, exactly, but she was so much more _alive_ after the Doctor said those words. It was so easy to see and hear, just like it's easy to see the difference in me before and after. And she didn't regret it. Anything. Fifteen years that... for all the joy, still felt empty somehow, and then one minute of being alive in a way she didn't know she could be. Of doing amazing things. the lesson of the moth by archy. I have a friend who talked about... wanting to be that moth. And then doing it, diving straight into the flame and...

RTD always does this thing, right? Moffat pulled all kinds of shenanigans to keep anyone from dying except from old age, and maybe not even then, while RTD would destroy that world and then have Superman fly around the world backwards and everybody's fine now. It was my least favorite thing about Moffat endings. It seemed cheap. Using a time machine to re-edit a serial cliffhanger. Here, though? No, again, he's right. I dived into the flame expecting it to burn me up and I still don't know what the hell happened but I'm still here and everything I wanted from that flame I feel now in every moment of my life. It's such a queer thing.

-

Here's what I love most about this episode. Early in the episode, after Rose gets deadnamed, Donna says something like "I would burn down the world to protect you." And my girlfriend and I looked at the screen and said "Yes! Do it. Do it for us." She doesn't... well, she doesn't need to. But she also doesn't know that. I don't actually want to see the world burned down. Someone like Donna, though... that's what I want in an ally. Someone who would burn the world down to protect us.

I don't know. I'll say it. I'll share it. I've said enough stupid shit on this thread that... well, if I had anywhere else to say this stuff, I'd say it there instead. I guess.

thanks for that kate, that was beautifully said & deeply otm in ways that hadn’t occurred to me til you said it

and i agree re moffat, was the thing i liked least about his run

<3

That is lovely - though I haven't heard anywhere that Rose was the companion (for these three specials - I know Gatwa has his own companion) rather than Donna?

I definitely did see Rose described as a new companion in some of the earlier news stories around the 60th specials, but I think it was just people jumping to conclusions rather than quoting directly from what RTD was announcing, eg here, where they also decide she's a "new version of Rose Tyler".

Not that I think companion needs to be a very specifically defined term anyway, none of the "not a companion unless they travel in the tardis" or "not a companion unless they're in at least X episodes" etc nonsense is helpful. Rose meets the Doctor and helps him with something, that's probably enough to meet the companionhood threshold I reckon, it's arguably as much as Liz Shaw ever did.

haha yep that's the thing i'm just... out of touch in some weird ways, so much of what i "know" about the show is muddled fanlore that's since been corrected, except that i never picked up on the correction.

re: companionhood... see that's the thing, not only is the gender-essentialist take donna and rose give at the end wrong, there's a lovely bit in the episode that directly contradicts their claim

tennant is talking to someone... the current scientific advisor, maybe?... about donna... i can't recall what he says but it's really emotionally vulnerable and caring, and at the end he says "i guess i talk like that now?", and, if i'm wrong on this i'm wrong, shirley anne bingham says "that sounds like a good thing."

on a nerd sense it's very much in who tradition, new doctors who've just regenerated taking on some of the characteristics of their last incarnation (as far back as troughton in "power of the daleks")

it's more than that, though... the whole thing where chibnall declared that the doctor was no longer going to have "companions" but "friends" seemed like a genuinely good idea to me, although i'm sure chibnall managed to fuck it up and get it all backwards somehow. the doctor having been a woman for a few years is more than just the wrong gender on a taxicab license (and christ i feel the doctor's pain on that one... i hope updating the gender on his psychic paper is easier for him than updating my paperwork was for me. it probably isn't. given what i've seen of the doctor's approach to technology, the psychic paper settings UI is probably a fucking nightmare.)

the doctor is _changed_ by his experiences. it's why donna and rose refer to the doctor as "male-presenting". last episode the doctor was female-presenting, so... last episode she could have done it but this episode he can't? like, he can reach items on high shelves and pee standing up but he can no longer process trauma in an emotionally healthy manner?

it makes sense that the doctor doesn't know how to let go, not because he's "male-presenting" but because he's the DOCTOR, he's an alien who... this was the big revolution RTD brought into the show, the thing that made the show so much _better_ than it'd ever been before. companions weren't just people whose job was to scream and have the plot explained to them. she or he (yes, mickey was a companion, nobody gives a fuck about adam) was someone the doctor needed to _listen_ to, someone who undersood things he didn't. i grew up watching the original show, and my role model was mostly the doctor. (i mean, when she was in the show it was lalla ward, but i think that was mostly a me thing.)

the protagonist of the revived show, for me, that was rose, and not in a "i wish i was a girl" sense. it was her _character_. she was the strong one. she was the one i looked up to. the doctor's alien nature didn't make him some kind of unstoppable superhero. (mostly it made him act kind of autistic a lot of the time, down to literally carrying stim toys around with him in his pockets. can't imagine why i found the doctor so relatable as a kid.) when he tried to act like a superhero he hurt other people and he got hurt himself. his first companions, way back in the beginning, were teachers, and maybe that was less of a coincidence than it seemed.

-

some more serious spoilers for the ep in this next para, about shirley anne bingham:

i loved shirley anne bingham from the first second, that "oh she'd better show up again" love. (i looked up her name - i avoid researching writing stuff about doctor who for the same reasons i avoid capitalizing my posts, but i want to get characters' names right at least - and of course she fucking will... you don't create a character that good as a one-off.) this character... i don't have the lived experience of using a wheelchair, and someone who does will probably see things in the portrayal that i don't. i loved the character. i loved the actor, i loved the way the hectic pacing of the show made it a genuine surprise to me when she showed up again at the end. i loved the way the show recognized that hey, it's not just daleks who can't climb stairs. i loved her saying "don't make me the problem". i loved the way it gave a plausible plot reason for her to not be affected by the meep's bisexual lighting. i loved the way her disability affected what she could do in ways that were meaningful in the story but didn't make her a liability or a weaker character. and yes, i loved that she had a pimped out james bond wheelchair that could shoot RPGs.

she had _agency_, in a way that moffat's female characters didn't (i do think that verity ritchie convincingly makes the case that moffat's female characters are nearly all cis-male-fantasy versions of bisexual dominatrices). loved loved loved this character.

so glad you're watching again kate!

Yeah - and yes of course otm that 'companion' is a vague title

I thought some other deeply RTD beats in this were the whole military carnage in suburbia thing and the repeated cuts to the youngest bitparter, in this case Fudge, not really involved but gawping at what they could see of the carnage in a direct nod to younger viewers.

Enjoyable in a totally different way from last week's!

Also enjoyed 'The Star Beast' all the more on rewatch earlier (including good lines missed the first time).

It was fantastic just watching that shift gears through silly history - the two of them in a room - mysterious 2001 / Hitchhiker's guide spaceship - the mounting unease of the changelings - surreal chase - the two of them in a room redux - the four of them in a room. The "they don't handle slow well" could have been better set up, but that feels like the best episode of Doctor Who I've seen in a long time.

Wow that was outstanding

Loved it — feels quite emotional having the show return from a long lull with an episode as good as that. And no cop-out ending either.

really good, and i loved it was still really gripping whilst also me having no fucking idea wtf was going on until almost the end

That was amazing, genuinely creepy, suspenseful and fun

Instant top 10 episodes potentially which after the Chibnall era I didn’t think was still possible.

loved the use of RTD1-looking CGI effects on the not-Doctor and not-Donna to create a horrifically unheimlich sensation, contrasted with an entirely modern-looking CGI set

great ep, but will have to dock a point for acknowledging chibnall era lore - quite apart from the personal disappointment, my family were baffled by this bit and I couldn’t really explain it because i stopped watching chibnall during his first season

AND - I remember this used to be something I saw mentioned a lot online but I found the dialogue was mixed very low under the music - consensus seems to be something to do with surround mix being pushed into 2-ch setup (watching on Disney+, perhaps there is a settings thing somewhere)

it doesn't really need explaining, he exposited everything you need to know (basically it means RTD can treat the last three years of Chibnall's era as a slate-clearing traumatic event, the way the 1989-2005 "wilderness years" were represented as the Time War when RTD/Eccleston started)

also I promise it makes much more sense in two sentences/ten seconds than in ten non-consecutive episodes over five years

cosine on the sound mix when pushed through a prologic setup but we just turned it up a little

TERRIFIC episode

xp i feel as though “there was a big war and i am sad” is more instantly comprehensible than “there was a big flux? and half the universe is gone and i am owning it? and also not from gallifrey anymore?” (albeit it was - as mentioned- tricky to hear exactly what was said over Murray’s expository tootling)

The Doctor's background has been rebooted at least ten times in sixty years on telly alone - this is just telling casual and returning viewers "ah, (his) past is a mystery" the way the Eccleston series did. Fingers crossed that's the last we hear of either Gallifrey or Flux tbh.

I’m waiting for a “oh for Flux sake” joke

AND - I remember this used to be something I saw mentioned a lot online but I found the dialogue was mixed very low under the music - consensus seems to be something to do with surround mix being pushed into 2-ch setup (watching on Disney+, perhaps there is a settings thing somewhere)

― meat and two vdgg (emsworth)

this isn't a doctor who specific thing, happens all the time... i've seem memes about it. boomers complaining about millennials having subtitles on all the time and millennials are like "let's talk about your fucking sound mixing here". so yeah. i just put subtitles on and pretend like i'm watching a US print of _trainspotting_. my girlfriend likes watching her shows with subs so both me and her other girlfriend watched it with her.

-

it doesn't really need explaining, he exposited everything you need to know (basically it means RTD can treat the last three years of Chibnall's era as a slate-clearing traumatic event, the way the 1989-2005 "wilderness years" were represented as the Time War when RTD/Eccleston started)

― bae (sic)

i didn't even know that was a reference to chibnall-era lore... i know a lot of people were really upset about the "timeless child" shit and i have no idea what it was all about. the show was bad under chibnall. i didn't feel like i needed to know. and in fact i don't. if people needed to know what happened in the chibnall episodes in order to watch the show nobody would ever watch it again, because god almighty who on earth wants to watch that crap? i don't.

this is, like... ok, i'm not saying the b&w seasons were crap like the chibnall seasons are, because they're not, i fucking love them, but the #1 reason nobody gets into the old series these days is probably because people keep acting like they have to watch the whole thing from the beginning, and no matter how much i tell them "no seriously if you're new to the show just skip the first six years, you literally do not need to know any of that stuff, you can come back to it later." no, they try to watch it from the beginning and give up in the middle of episode four of "the daleks" if not before, and then they get imposter syndrome about not being "good enough" to be a fan of the classic series or some shit.

rtd basically defined my approach to continuity in the first episode with the farting aliens where unit showed up and the doctor said "oh yeah, unit. i used to work with them in the '70s. or maybe the '80s. i can never remember which."

-

my feelings about the actual episode are complicated and in line with one of the themes of the show i am going to take my time to figure them out. i guess if i'm gonna talk about anything in the episode now it's the tag.

For the past... well, for me, for the past seven years... it's felt to me like Doctor Who is a show from a parallel universe. In 2008 or so RTD did that show "Turn Left" and he depicts the nightmarish descent of Earth into a fascist dystopia without the Doctor and, like. I watch that now and I think "Yeah, but that happened." So when I look at the tag, I basically see the Doctor visiting the world that i _feel like_ we live in. I... I trust RTD to understand that and to tell that story well.

also i suck at tags and i used spoiler tags instead of quote tags for sic's post, that's not actually a spoiler

Typically detailed and insightful review of Star Beast from Darren Mooney here - https://them0vieblog.com/2023/11/25/doctor-who-the-star-beast-review/

I think RTD did a great job of turning the Flux/Timeless stuff into an intriguing actual mystery instead of "oh fuck what's Chibnall going to fuck with next".

People seem obsessed with THE LORE and making shows Accessible for New Viewers but I remember, as a kid, it seemed like we started every show in media res - not just sci-fi stuff but sitcoms and cop shows and whatever - because the first episodes were never repeated, and the mysteries and allusions and unexplained continuity blips became part of the fun. It meant even rubbish like Juliet Bravo could have an intriguing air of mystery. ("Did you know there was a DIFFERENT JULIET BRAVO in the first seasons, but she DIED" being a common playground rumour.)

Echo the above re lore. I also think there’s been a sea change in storytelling expectations in the last couple of decades - where lore and backstory are embraced as exciting things for a new audience to delve into rather than off-putting baggage.

Personally I’m not a fan of the MCU-isation of everything and prefer my stories standalone. But it’s interesting that in 2005 they put so much energy into holding the classic series and its continuity at arms length (two years to MENTION Gallifrey!) whereas a huge part of the 60th has been bringing the whole run under one brand/roof.

I really wish I'd loved this week's episode as much as everyone else did, I'm jealous of everyone else's enjoyment! It was good, I liked it, but Midnight is still possibly my favourite RTD story ever, and this felt like a diminished retread of that.

- The core "out there in an unexplored region lies an unknowable entity which wants to imitate then destroy you" idea was basically the same.

- Something stealing your voice/thoughts was just a much scarier idea than something stealing your appearance/knowledge (not that I can explain why!).

- The extra layer which lifted Midnight from good to amazing was "humans become monsters too if you scare them enough" and that was completely absent here (or at least, it was shifted to an "all sentient beings are monsters" and was described instead of being shown).

- "Identify the doppelganger" is a fun old trope but hard to land, I think? It's never easy to come up with a satisfying answer to "I knew it was the real you because X". And here RTD not only struggles with that, but he includes three (arguable five) runs at that scene in this episode, none of the resolutions quite ring true, and then in the last of them he intentionally has the doctor make the wrong choice before resorting to "when I double checked, I knew it wasn't the real you because your arm was a few milimetres too long" or whatever. Perhaps that was all intentional "Donna and the Doctor don't quite know each other as well as they think" theme? But I couldn't quite tell one way or the other.

- Mrs Bean could've done with a different vegetable name, because when she first got mentioned I got the impression they were just referencing Mr Bean (which felt odd but ok) and then when that came back as a core plot element at the end and wasn't actually about Mr Bean at all that just seemed weird and wonky. "Why is X funny" is just a bad question to base your doppelganger identification on, but even more so when X wasn't that funny anyway, and perhaps that was meant to be a "doctor is fallible under pressure and ends up asking the wrong question" thing? But I just came out of it a bit confused.

also i suck at tags

Me too!

Great critique tho I'm not sure I was feeling more than 'It was good, I liked it' myself, certainly if the trade-off was for greater spectacle than what 'Midnight' offered.

the gusto and delight that tate and tennant take in each other is so great

Me too!

― JimD

nah the spoiler tag only spoils one paragraph, for spoilers longer than one para you have to do a new tag for each para :(

or put a space on the empty lines between paragraphs

oooh i'ma try that and see if it works

OK. I've slept on it. I'm going to try and reflect back what I saw and heard yesterday.

The Doctor and Donna arrive on a spaceship. There's nobody else there. They're in danger. That's all they know. That's all we know.

My favorite parts of classic Who were the first episodes. Classic Who had a tendency to be... glacially paced. Often the Doctor and his companions wouldn't even meet or get involved with any of the other characters in the first episode. In some cases, like "The Edge of Destruction" or "The Ark in Space", there wouldn't be any other characters at all in the episode. Those were my favorites. I didn't really care about whatever drama was happening on some alien planet to some boring humans. I liked _not knowing_ what was going to happen any more than the TARDIS crew did. I liked the sense of uncertainty and unease.

When I was in my 20s I worked for a while in a warehouse. 12 hour shifts, three days in a row. I was the only one there. I was there in case there was an emergency and somebody called and needed something from the warehouse. Nobody ever did. I thought it would be a perfect job for me. I was an introvert and didn't get along with other people.

It was not a perfect job for me. In that empty, silent, cavernous, brightly lit (the lights turned on automatically wherever I went) place with nothing to do - I wasn't allowed to bring in anything from outside because it might be a "security risk" - I started to feel like I wasn't alone. Like there was something else there.

Time and again in Doctor Who, the Doctor would come up against a doppelganger of himself. Maybe it was an evil Time Lord with a goatee who listened to King Crimson. Maybe it was an imperious prosecutor in the ridiculous robes that passed for "gravitas" among his people. Maybe it was a cynical snarker with a ridiculous bowtie who called himself the "Dream Lord".

I can't remember Donna ever coming up against a doppelganger of herself.

One of the things most associated with Doctor Who, next to cheap special effects, is corridors. Endless corridors. Whenever they needed to pad out the episode, they'd just run through some corridors. Well, the same corridor, shot from different angles. Over and over again. In liminal spaces, all corridors are the same. The studios where the show was shot weren't nearly as spacious as the places they depicted. The titular "Ark in Space" seemed to be a vast, empty ship. The set was bigger than the show's usual studio sets, but a lot of it was the brilliant set design of Roger Murray-Leach, who did things like using mirrors to make it look as though the pods full of people in suspended animation extended up hundreds of feet.

I've had a great deal of opportunity to think about body horror and what it means to me. For me, it has a lot to do with mirrors. It's not about who we are. It's how we _see ourselves_. My arms are too long. My hands are too small. I can't get the jaw right. I have the brow ridge of a caveman. Sometimes we look at ourselves and see these distorted, grotesque _monsters_.

When I think of monsters out of shape, out of proportion, I think of "Flatline". The Doctor has become tiny, Clara is normal-size, and they're running through tunnels trying to talk to _communicate_ with these creatures, _talk_ to these creatures, who aren't _like_ us. Who exist only in two dimensions. And they try the best they can to communicate with the creatures, to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the creatures keep trying to hurt them. The creatures never communicate back. Never say why they're doing it. So when the Doctor is back to normal size, when he's come back through the looking-glass, he gives the creatures a monster's name and he destroys them.

The Doctor and Donna's shadow selves tell the Doctor and Donna where they came from and what they're doing. They're traumagenic. The war, the suffering, and the pain made them who they are. The love letters, they say, didn't reach them.

But they know what a love letter is, don't they?

The Doctor and Donna are on one side of a bulkhead. Their shadows are on the other. They shadows are learning. The Doctor (or Donna - the two are more alike than they are different, here) observes that an hour ago, they would have smashed through the bulkhead. They've become more like the Doctor and Donna.

I _know_ these monsters. I've lived with my own version of this monster for decades. There's this creature that knows everything I know, can do everything I can do. My equal in every respect. And it hates me. It wants me dead. The only way I can destroy it is to destroy myself.

I can relate pretty strongly to what the Doctor and Donna are experiencing at this point. Their thoughts are racing. They're spiraling. The faster they think, the stronger the shadows become. Slow down, the Doctor says. Slow down your thinking. Don't think of anything at all. Not even Mister Meringue.

At this point I'm yelling at the screen for them to use their TIPP skills. Literally I'm shouting "PAIRED MUSCLE RELAXATION!" like I'm watching a horror movie and the killer's behind the door. It does seem that sometimes the Doctor forgets things between incarnations. The Third Doctor had lots of practice in Buddhist meditation. He was a lot more able to slow himself down.

The Doctor and Donna's minds are racing so fast that... it doesn't seem like they've had the opportunity to take in the implications of what's happening, in its fullest sense. Their shadows, these creatures shut out, cut off from all light, all warmth, all hope, see what is happening where the Doctor and Donna are and they are filled with hate. They want to destroy it. They want to destroy all of it. Everything the Doctor and Donna love.

At the same time, they are becoming more and more like the Doctor and Donna. And the Doctor and Donna do, in fact, love. It can be easy for them to forget that. Easy for them to define themselves by some of the things they have done. Tennant's Doctor, for instance, showed the Family of Blood the fury of the Time Lord. You know what he did to the girl, right? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror.

She let the girl out later. Most people probably don't know that. The girl didn't apologize. The girl said she had nothing to apologize for. I guess I agree. The girl was a child. She was doing what she'd been taught to do. Guilt or blame have nothing to do with what she did. So the Doctor smashed the mirror and let the girl out. Even though the girl sneered at her, even though the girl told her she would do all sorts of horrible things if the Doctor let her out, and it would all be the Doctor's fault. She let the girl out anyway, and took the girl home, and the girl wanted to eat the Doctor's face but didn't. That didn't happen on TV, but it happened. The Doctor would probably remember it happened, if he gave himself the time. If he gave himself permission.

All over the universe, people are afraid of the Doctor. They say the Doctor brings death and destruction and ruin in her wake. He is a bad omen. And Donna? Well, the Family of Blood did not fear the Doctor. Similarly, humans who are cruel as the Family of Blood is cruel do not fear Donna. Because they are foolish. Donna said it herself. She would burn down the world to protect her child.

The Doctor and Donna's shadows, the traumagenic shadows, they're twisted reflections of those desires. Of that fury, that hatred. The Doctor and Donna look at those shadows and they believe. The shadows would do this, if they were to get free, because they believe this about themselves. The Doctor and Donna believe that they would destroy everything they loved. So the shadows cannot be. They must be destroyed. Slow down? No. They will speed up. They will put themselves at risk, in mortal peril, to destroy these monsters. Before it's too late.

Ah, but what if they had slowed down? What might they have discovered? The shadows know what love letters are. Did they know what love letters are a year ago? Two? These shadows know everything the Doctor and Donna know. Feel everything the Doctor and Donna feel.

The Doctor talks about a paradox within Donna, where she thinks she's stupid but at the same time thinks of herself as being frightfully intelligent. I know this paradox. I've lived this paradox. In me, I don't think it's a paradox at all. The heart of the paradox is believing that I exist in a state of _exception_. If I'm better than everyone else, then I don't deserve the kindness and grace that other people do. I'm better, and therefore what's good enough for others isn't good enough for me. If I'm worse than everyone else, than I don't deserve kindness at all - I am rotten, foul, detestable. Whichever direction the exception is made in, the result is the same.

Donna hates herself. The Doctor hates himself. That's what I saw when I watched the show. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I saw.

The Doctor and Donna love each other. Last episode Doctor said Donna was his best friend in the whole wide universe. He talks like that now. And that's important because the shadows aren't the only mirrors in the episode. The Doctor and Donna are mirrors to each other. So many times people have said to me, "I wish you could see yourself the way I see you." They _could have_. If they'd waited. If they'd slowed down. They fucking _could have_. When the shadows truly became like the Doctor and Donna they _wouldn't_ have destroyed everything the Doctor and Donna loved. They would have _loved_ what the Doctor and Donna love, the _way_ the Doctor and Donna love it. That's what it _means_ to become.

There is no DoctorDonna. Donna let that go. There is the Doctor, and there is Donna, and they see each other, they love each other. With that love, that love and time, they would - not could, _would_ - learn to love themselves.

But instead they sped things up so they could blow up the monsters. It didn't work. Of course it didn't work, though it looked nice on TV. You can't blow up your shadow, any more than you can run from it. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor muses. He lied to them. He lied to them, because it would stop them. It didn't stop them. They _learned_. He wonders if maybe he made a mistake. And when he takes Donna back to earth, he finds a world where we have all become monsters. Where we all destroy each other.

I don't think it's that he lied to them. I don't think it's anything to do with him personally at all, really. The lie that really matters, the lie that causes the most pain, is the one he tells himself.

I don't know if that's what happened or not. That's just what I saw.

ratingswatch for Star Beast: 7-day fourscreen at 7.61m (220k on other devices), making Dr Who 10th-most-watched episode of the week (Bake Off at 11), the third-most-watched programme (after four episodes of I'm A Celebrity My Name Is Nigel Farage, two of Strictly Cumdancing, and three more of I'm A Celebrity) of the week, and the third-most-watched scripted series of 2023. 4th-largest timeshift for Who ever. BBC3 linear repeat not counted, but Doctor Who Confidential Unleashed got 468k on Three and c. 650k on One.

ratingswatch for Wild Blue Yonder: only dropped 250k on overnights from week before, AI of 83, was 11th overall and top scripted show for the week on overnights, had a 34.2% live share (peaked at 41% and 6.3m), was 1.6m more than the BBC slot average, Unleashed had 5x the BBC3 slot average.

I think this could be my favourite console room design of all time. Just breathtaking.

Fun again. NPH excellent.

Felt the Toymaker was dealt with too quickly in the scramble to get to the super feels of the last 15.

I would've maybe had the gold tooth fall off the building and be picked up off the ground by someone we could see as that bit was so knowingly a nod to Last Of The Time Lords as to be groanworthy. Be cool if it was Missy rescuing herself tho.

Amazing, 10/10, peak RTD (that spice girls scene my god!) and I loved it.

https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/part-missing-adventure-the-celestial-toymaker-to-be-completed-with-new-animation

I don’t know whether this is really what’s happened but I love the idea that until now there’s been a sense of “well it’d be nice to do an animated version of this story but, you know, we can’t because it’s just too fkn racist” and that RTD has now come along and said “hold on, I can fix that! Let’s make the toymaker himself racist! And then that’ll explain all the racism in the original story and make it safe to release again!”. It doesn’t quite make sense but it makes enough sense, it’s just an endearingly audacious retcon, and clearly comes from such a place of love that it’d feel super churlish to start picking holes in it.

And in that context, again, the spice girls scene! Because yes OF COURSE this version of the toymaker would be drawn THAT specific spice girls song!

yeah that pretty much ruled

<3

all the bits about salt and superstition in this and the last episode was a nice reminder that RTD is a massive fan of Supernatural lol

ncuti is such a joy on screen

bigeneration for the bi generation

so the first black doctor gets relegated to being only half of the current drs

not half - same doctor, different time. It’s implied that when 14 finally goes, after all the healing he gets with Donna and family, he’ll still end up regenerating into 15 in 2023 (“doing rehab out of order”) . I thought it was a convenient way to get past all the emoness of the previous seasons so that the new era can start fresh.

but yeah, i can see how it’s nagl to be doing it here, and the thought they will always be keeping Tennant around somehow

I did side eye Donna’s “do you come in a range of colours?” though… like she has a black husband and daughter, wtf RTD

What a surprisingly fun set of episodes. Enjoyed Tennant a lot more as 14 than 10, and was pleased he’s been given an excuse to stick around.

It ain’t feel to me like the new one is a “half-doctor”, more like he’s a new number one.

Enjoyed the completely uncommented upon lack of trousers.

*it didn’t

by far the best of the three tho share the view that the celestial toymaker matter, which was beautifully set up, was squandered somewhat, and resolved weakly.

still, loved ncuti gatwa’s freshness, poise and intent - his fairly brusque dismissal of dr and d and wanting to get on with things was perfect.

The fake accents were a nice way of getting around the racism of the 60s character.

I think it's a good thing that doctor who has largely avoided this type of god-character -- but one special episode in 20 years is a nice change of pace.

At some point I said “are they going to let him put on some pants?” and my partner said “ I hope not”

i love that it went unaddressed the whole time

Well, he was wearing British pants!

i love that it went unaddressed the whole time

they each had half the clothes, nothing to address!

Pleasing that he kept his Scottish accent.

they each had half the clothes, nothing to address

Wait so Tennant was commando?

cmon we were all thinking it

Fifteenth got the raw deal there.

lmao

The weird thing is Neil Patrick Harris has already played the Emcee in Cabaret (because of course he has), so I didn't understand why we got an audition-roll for it.

Actually the weird thing is that at no point during this story setting up a spare Tennant Who free to live their life, does anyone mention that they already already have one? Particularly Donna! she was there, it'll be the last thing she remembers.

I agree Ncuti Gatwa started off strong, established himself well - from "I have bigenerated - there's no such thing" onwards I thought he's got the stuff - more direct than Tennent, who would have stuck in "uh, the thing is" in there.

Hard not to view the new-series companion and the old-series companion literally pulling Doctor Who apart as some kind of metaphor, but - for what?

The "He's present in every screen" reminded me of the position about Doctor Who being fantasy in sci-fi clothes - the sonic screwdriver never not a magic wand.

Noticed that rtd is following the first season in episode order: present day britain, then far future, then haunted house. Although this one also borrowed the s2 gatiss episode with the killer tvs.

Wonder where they're going with mavity and the cab replacement word.

Nitpicks: the "everyone thinks they're right nowadays!" virus and the Doctor's speech about how us humans are always doing a cancel culture, the eyes they rolled. Thankfully this subtext was quickly ignored for the rest of the ep.

At one point I did double-take on whether Logie-Baird was actually Gatiss again in his beloved prosthetics.

I loved the 'Spice Up Your Life' bit but curious that RTD went with such a golden oldie given previous forays into this kind of thing used something more contemporary (Rogue Traders, Scissor Sisters). Not that I could proffer a worthy equivalent from recent years myself.

bit on the nose but Dua Lipa’s Hallucinate obvs (bonus points if it’s the BBC remix)

can i be the voice of opposition about the musical number shoe-horned into the episode? thanks. the lip sync wasn't even good (plus he was singing all the parts himself...)

(he said in the after show thing that he wasn't familiar with it, being American and all)

I enjoyed the song! I enjoy all the classic "RTD annoys Ian Levine" moves.

Note: If you're going to build a really big gun, don't build it to TURN BACK ON YOUR OWN BUILDING

lol let's say The Toymaker just manipulated it so it could

was it an in joke for fans that Mel the computer programmer was there and they needed a computer program... and so Donna coded it up?

Donna was the hyper-typer so that made sense in the moment.

I also laughed every time Tennant said "the vlinx" with total sincerity, it was very cute

In general I like this pivot (finally!) away from Watchmen-style "how would this be if it really happened, it would probably be DARK" to "fuck it let's have fun with it"

Chibnall and Nathan-Turner were probably the worst offenders with this approach, although I guess Nathan-Turner did a lot of "fuck it let's have fun", just very badly

RTD1 and Moffat tend to be better measured episode-by-episode because they're so gleefully all over the map

One thing about The Toymaster in this is that he seemed wholly uninterested in playing games unless someone forced him to; I thought his whole thing was about putting people into games that could/would kill them nit, not goofily torturing people until they forced him into a game.

That said, the goofy torture was very fun to watch

lol that was a bit myxlplytkian, like he’s this all powerful reality shifter with one extremely well known method of just forcing him into a situation where he holds no advantage

presumably he's off the leash in this new universe, compared to his own realm (and he cites mind games as a particularly human thing)

(plus he was singing all the parts himself...)

note that they carefully excluded one particular line, even though this version of the Toymaker was extensively calibrated to contextualise the racist elements of the first serial

so the first black doctor gets relegated to being only half of the current drs

tbf the previous black doctor was also only half of the current doctors (and the very first white-passing one was so relegated that they brought in an extra fake white one to reduce him to only one quarter of them in the anniversary special). also in both the first and second regeneration stories ever, future incarnations of regenerating timelords ran around interacting with their current selves. and this is the third time that there has been a bonus David Tennant doctor sharing the timeline with a current doctor.

ratingswatch: dropped less than 250k from WBY on overnights, tied for highest AI in the last decade*, this run of specials has the highest average AI since Series 7B.

*with Mummy, Flatline, Dark Water and WEAT.

7-day for Wild Blue Yonder projected to be 7.1M on TVs, again around 200k on devices.

Yeah but he isn’t playing mind games, he’s just killing people like a superpowered version of The Joker

in order to FUCK PPL UP MAN (including you, pwned by the NPHmaker)

Star Beast ratingswatch: two days RTD said it was up to 8.7 million, and today on instagram said 9.0. That puts it, on 19 days, higher than the +28 for anything since Rosa (Chibnall's third episode, October 2018).

(Chibnall's debut, on 11.46, was the highest consolidated since +28 started being recorded with Last Christmas.)

7-day for Wild Blue Yonder projected to be 7.1M on TVs, again around 200k on devices.

7.142M - beaten by I'm A Celebrity stripped and Saturday Strictly; beat the Sunday Strictly and the Bake Off final. 9th most watched episode, 3rd most watched programme for the week. TV-only details: 2.752M live, 2.118 catchup same night, 1.992 same week and a 41% share.

Star Beast is the 9th (behind all of Happy Valley, and two of Death In Paradise), and WBY the 22nd, most watched episode of drama on +7 for 2023, and Star Beast's 28 only expires at the Christmas weekend, so we might see timeshift on the other two leap up after Xmas special tx.

Is +28 the ratings in the first 4 weeks?

maybe i should have paid more attention since i didn't understand half of this episode. i guess it's using the crack in time to do its version of it's a wonderful life? but the character never regretted their life so it just seems odd.

Yeah the goblin storyline seemed very poorly thought through - RTD spent all his narrative logic on the specials.

Ncuti is top though.

I liked all three of the Tennant episodes, but found something off about this one, the goblin song was really bad, just sounded very generic and unimaginative. Ncuti was great throughout, yes.

Christmas specials have always been so-so? The first ever Tennant one is the only I can remember liking that much.

Most of Moffat’s were great, a few were big flops. (Chibnall of course didn’t do any.) Rusty’s were usually an excuse to make even less joined-up sense than usual.

I had seen so much Goblin Song in previews that it made a fab opportunity to grab a cup of tea and check the status of items cooking.

Other than that, with a fair amount of Xmas Zubrowka in me, really enjoyed that and love Ncuti Gatwa. He’s already nailed it.

As a Doctor Intro this lacked something imo, certainly compared to The Eleventh Hour which also had to introduce companion(s) and may be unparalleled in that but not sure what exactly - some more meta-commentary from the Doc maybe just to flesh him out more (we didn't see him picking out trousers)...glad he mentioned being adopted at least. Liked everything else more or less. Completely failed to recognise Anita Dobson.

She's got to be The Rani, right?

Probably although feels a bit off to cast someone in that role who also could've played them in the late 80s! But you could say the same of Jacobi...

i think rtd is following up on the mystery woman subplot in "the end of time". although the name mrs. flood suggests she could be related to the pond/river clan.

hate the Rani but a new version might be better I suppose

Rani...rain...flood...RTD you dunnit agane.

Apart from the Christmas Carol and maybe The Husbands of River Song (and that's just for seeing Alex Kingston and Capaldi together) I think they've generally been a bit naff, but they're Christmas fare - singing Goblins and "The Doctor's first chart hit" are about par for the course.

I did like the quick mention of "rent controlled" as a reason how you can afford a flat like that in Notting Hill on one-ish salaries (did they mention what Ruby does?)

I'm looking forward to finding out more about Ruby, she seems just a reset of Clara right at the minute.

Also notable in actual use of science-fiction (ish) as a plot resolver!

Last Christmas was absolutely the best Christmas one and also actually good. I generally enjoyed Moffat’s except for the superhero one which I found unwatchable.

Agree with those who said this was lacking something, but watchable enough. Eleventh Hour still the masterclass for new-era Doctor intros but unencumbered by need to be Seasonal I guess.

Still trying to work out their strategy for new viewers but thinking maybe there isn’t one? I figured this might be the jumping-on point but it didn’t really feel like it - partly the Xmasness and partly the fact that it was billed as “Doctor Who Special 4”. Although I read somewhere (perhaps here?) that the actual new season will be referred to as “Season 1” so perhaps now everyone is introduced the can get on with having some good solid adventures.

As a Doctor Intro this lacked something imo,

pfft, what more could a viewer want to wrap up an intro episode where Ncuti Gatwa has said "I am the Doctor" five to twelve times already, than him replying to a final question "explain your premise quickly to new viewers please?" with "...I ...am The Doctor!!!!!"

Moffxmas: A Christmas Carol, Last Christmas and Husbands Of River Song are all megabangers, superhero one and Woman/Wardrobe are disasters, The Snowmen is a really fun way of threading the casuals/n00bs/fans needle in multiple directions and leaning into the hegemonic Christmas imagery via time travel...
and for all their respective awkwardnesses:
Time Of The Doctor does an astounding job of cramming an entire planned Season 8 narrative arc into one hard time limit of 60 minutes*, letting Smith play an entire emotional arc largely solo, and turning The Doctor into a sun god at the pagan holiday;
Twice Upon A Time falls back on comedy runarounds and normie-fanservice in a way that Moffat usually tried harder than -- but he had to rush this one out as his THIRD return to the series since resigning less than 18 months earlier, so making it two old men feeling exhausted with Dr Who and preparing to FINALLY give it up, really has resonance.


* when Chibnall was given 50-65 mins for his regular series episodes, and up to EIGHTY-SEVEN for his specials in which nothing happens, imagine how much more of a year's plot Moffat could have worked in at that length.

This was not very good and I’m extremely annoyed

Nobody posted this! Felt a small number of genuine human emotions, probably due to the music as much as anything - but it looks kinda fun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoyV65HoRFA

He's back! and it's.. season 1.

I give that until mid-April

now that Ned’s gone should we re-poll whether to include spoilers in these threads

(checks watch) okay it’s been a decade and there’s probably only nine of us still reading / watching so it probably wouldn’t be conclusive

I haven't seen it mentioned here but they've announced that Moffat has written an episode for the new series
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/doctor-who-steven-moffat-julie-anne-robinson-new-season/

now that Ned’s gone should we re-poll whether to include spoilers in these threads

...just use the 'hide' tags as per?

Nice to see no classic adversaries in the trailer although you know they will, plus a fucking Ood will show up by the end of the year

Also Ned last posted, like, seven hours ago?

Hmmm

i mean, this is the devil’s bargain you make when you get RTD back

but that Captain Poppy babby was super cute w the Doctor

Well it can improve. So hope it does.
2nd episode had some sartorial excellence. But is increased budget going to mean more dance numbers. Didn't find the music there memorable or particularly early 60s.

Just hoping it isn't overly conscious of very young audience. Though elements of 2nd episode were pretty creepy. But that has been true throughout the show's history.

Yeah it does feel like a pivot to young-uns again - burping bin and rubber arm territory - which is ok ofc! I will be interested to see if it lands a co-viewing audience in the streaming space… also interested to see what Moffat does next week

Spaceship powered by nappies and bogeyman made of bogeys was awful. The second one was also hokey as fuck but redeemed by an excellent villain.

I'd be hating on all this fourth wall breaking had I not only recently watched a few T Baker stories where he does it a bunch.

Space Babies got better as it went on but The Devil's Chord started strong then kinda lost it at the end.

i set the video for the making-of bits but neglected to set the video for the actual show... it's repeated tonight on bbc3 though.

i guess anybody who doesn't like it has the whole history at their fingertips now so they can go whistle.

I'm trying to resist the temptation to over analyse this, cos tbh you'll either enjoy the gonzo space fantasy energy of it all, or you won't. (I don't think there's a critical read on this that goes "this would have worked better if x, y z..."). I was charmed by the manic energy of it all, but I can fully believe that tons of people, fans esp, will hate it. Second episode obviously significantly better than the first. I absolutely salute the refusal to be "respectable sci-fi".

One thing I think's interesting is that RTD clearly believes that the format/formula of Doctor Who takes care of itself. Moffat was (is? we'll see next week) far more concerned with the untapped narrative potential of the show's time travel macguffin, and Chibnall clearly has incredibly fixed/conservative/by the numbers views of what a Doctor Who story *is*. Whereas Davies sees it as a method to inject madness into other televisual settings - Hollyoaks/Strictly/Ant&Dec in 2005, Marvel-inflected space fantasy in 2024.

Only real downer for me is the excessive faith in what Murray Gold brings to the table. The choreography in the Ep 2 dance number was delightful, but the song just sounded like a library track tagged with the keywords "brassy showstopper". In a story about the restorative power of music, that's a real flaw. I'm relaxed enough in my fandom to have no issue with song and dance numbers, I just don't want Gold to be writing the songs.

I find the music extremely intrusive and distracting. Every conversation has a background of syrupy Muzak behind it.

I very much enjoyed how loony both episodes were

I would've had a scene with Ringo where he reveals he thinks music sound better now.

was 1st episode a deeply unsubtle pro-choice comment?
won't turn allow baby farm to be turned off but won't do anything for the babies born.

yep, totally fine with it

Likewise the blatant 'homages' to Alien Resurrection's perhaps most horrific scene (except here no doubt to the newfound delight of the space babbies the bogeyman just grew its lower torso back no problem) and It respectively.

“Space Babies” had almost no subtext, it was great

i watched space babies. episode was fine, but aimed at a younger viewer than i. did they ever explain why the babies remained babies? every other plot point got repeated around 4 times. how many times does the doctor need to say he was scared of the monster?

Space Babies was fun for what it was but i would probably never want to watch it again. the doctor intentionally making all the babies cry seemed out of character but also... lol

The Devil's Chord would've been fine without the musical number which was really truly awful ugh

i quite enjoyed Devil’s Chord! jinx a great villain - agree that the finale song was naff. wish they’d somehow given jinx a closing number instead.

Space Babies was pretty annoying, but at least annoying in a far more imaginative way than someone like Chris Chibnall could ever conceive of.

And yes, what blackmail material does Murray Gold have on RTD?

Reddit absolutely loves Murray Gold from what I’ve seen; it’s baffling

I don't know ilx poster Left watches Doctor Who, but I hope they appreciated the universe being saved by shipping John and Paul

I think the showmakers got their 60s styles a couple of years early at least.
But do love that Recency suit. Just think it would have had at least one pleat at back or sides. & now the Doctor invented the Afro.

i was genuinely confused for a while if the song at the end was supposed to signify that music had returned to earth or not because it didn't seem any better than the beatles' or cilla's dismal efforts earlier

I was confused by the bit where Ruby turned into a different species (even tho it was in the trailer) and babbled about something that sounded integral to her arc. Good confusion I guess, but it's probably the only bit of the episode I want to rewatch.

I only watched the first 15 mins or so of the babies one but I was struck by how GOOD everything looked - everyone’s skin, the colours… every pixel was poppin

i was genuinely confused for a while if the song at the end was supposed to signify that music had returned to earth or not because it didn't seem any better than the beatles' or cilla's dismal efforts earlier

Music has returned and it’s still shitty!

i was genuinely confused for a while if the song at the end was supposed to signify that music had returned to earth or not because it didn't seem any better than the beatles' or cilla's dismal efforts earlier

...and why is the new Sonic screwdriver not remotely screwdriver-shaped?

Just make the Doctor permanently Scottish and be done with it.

...and why is the new Sonic screwdriver not remotely screwdriver-shaped?

I think I saw something about how RTD had seen kids in playgrounds pointing toy sonics at each other as if they were weapons and he didn't like it?

Another odd thing was the reappearance of the schoolboy from the opening scene during the musical number at the end.

I thought harbinger pretty much meant Herald. So the kid was totally subordinate to the maestro. So is there a different meaning to that I'm missing. Or did they just want to be inclusive.

anyone else find it distracting how gatwa does the american R sound in his british accent? taRRRRdis

his sometimes-scottish/sometimes-not accent is v charming

anyone else find it distracting how gatwa does the american R sound in his british accent? taRRRRdis

yes! v confusing

the rs don't sound scottish to me really though i realise i am maybe not best placed to be the judge of this

That's not American, it's Scottish.

Also what is a "British accent"?

yeah, it's scottish - definitely an east coast sound

He definitely sounds Scottish. There are more Scottish accents than just Glaswegian and Gatwa absolutely sounds east of Scotland (is it Dunfermline he's from?)

Thankfully he doesn't sound too much like a Fifer.

There was a bit where he rolled his Rs that sounded to me like a McCoy homage...

Edinburgh most of his childhood, didn't move to Dunfermline until he was 15 so too late to do any real damage to his accent

xpost

Just as well as we'd have Americans saying, "Why is doing that Canadian "eh" at the end of every sentence?"

A lot of "who's Ken and why is the Doctor asking him questions all the time?" too, I'd imagine.

As an actual Fifer I can say he definitely does have a touch of Dunfermline about his accent.
I also don't get why you're making stereotypical Fife accent jokes. There was none of that type of thing about Capaldi's accent

Just joshing, treefell. I think Capaldi has what non-Scottish people think a Scottish accent sounds like, and Scottish accents are a broad church - Karen Gillan's went unremarked on as well but generally there are so many Glasgow-ish accents on telly that actual Scottish accents don't sound "Scottish" to outsiders

(I do have a mate who ends every single sentence with ken? so I base all east coast accent things on him despite knowing many east coasters who do nothing of the sort)

gatwa literally was ken in the barbie movie, doesn’t get much more fife than that

Yeah Devil's Chord was too shrill, wacky and glib for me I'm afraid. Seems so far that RTD used up all his creative juices in the specials.

I see there's only two he's not writing this season; I feel exhausted already.

Jinkx Monsoon's performance was something though.

The trouble with screen depictions of that era of the Beatles is you have to be as good looking as the Beatles to pull off that haircut without looking completely dopey.

Ncuti looked amazing with the afro, on the other hand.

Ok well that was good

Agreed, I enjoyed that a lot

like even a sliiiightly subpar Moffat effort is still a glittering masterpiece compared to most of the last 5-6 years - just so relieved to watch doctor who being good again AND being ABOUT something again

Whenever they mentioned the secret chord needed to banish Maestro, I kept thinking it had to be 'the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift' - doubt I was the only one.

la boîte diabolique...

“everywhere’s a beach, eventually” was so very Moffat/Capaldi

Of course Larkin didn't actually say "what will survivie of us is love", but thinking he did is very Moffat.

Bits I loved and bits I hated in there, Ncuti was consistently great though.

ep3 was a notable step up from the first two, big rogue trooper energy

was so much easier when Tom Baker stood on that land mine in Genesis

Does seem to be getting better. Hope it continues.

"I'm Anglican."

think this would have worked better if they shot it in a real quarry instead of a cgi quarry. The whole thing seemed predicated on building up tension but also failed to build up any tension, not sure why exactly, but I don't think Murray Gold's music was helping. I wish they'd done more with the idea of the unseen enemy that is possibly hiding in the smoke or the mud, this is an intriguingly spooky concept and would have made the eventual payoff that there is no enemy have more of an impact.

I know the whole point of this episode is them intentionally doing something more static and restricted than usual, but it felt like a drag to me after the freewheeling inventiveness of the last few episodes. The creepiness of the AI recreation of the dead soldier is weirdly undermined by the ending's suggestion that there is some spark of the 'real' solider remaining that allows him to defy his programming, at first it seemed like the reason we were supposed to find it ghastly is because it's a convincing looking/sounding imitation of someone who no longer exists, the same as how the Doctor seems to agree with the kid's belief that "he's not gone ... he's just dead"

what are the best film anticapitalist doctor who episodes? this one, oxygen, what else?

think this would have worked better if they shot it in a real quarry instead of a cgi quarry. The whole thing seemed predicated on building up tension but also failed to build up any tension, not sure why exactly, but I don't think Murray Gold's music was helping. I wish they'd done more with the idea of the unseen enemy that is possibly hiding in the smoke or the mud, this is an intriguingly spooky concept and would have made the eventual payoff that there is no enemy have more of an impact.

jfc I thought the new series would be a good chance for my son to start watching, as he's been watching some of the Tom Bakers ones. anyway we're watching the Devil's Chord and it's so boring and plot-free, it's making me really dislike Who. I stopped watching around the Capaldi ones and I don't think I can slog through more. Kid likes it enough though.

the long arms in space one was good I guess.

Yeah Wild Blue Yonder and Boom are my favourites so far. 2/7 ain't bad - still a better ratio than most of Chibnall's run.

One thing I've disliked so far about this series is that it repeats one of the most tired RTD/Moffat tropes: the companion with the mysterious backstory. After Rose became the Bad Wolf, suddenly it wasn't enough for the companion to just be a regular person anymore - Donna became the Doctor-Donna, Amy was followed by the cracks in the universe, River Song was River Song, Clara had all her reincarnations through time. They're doing it again with Ruby, but worse because they're repeating it every episode now instead of just sprinkling it in every now and then.

also, not really a spoiler since it was announced earlier but Varada Sethu, who played Mundy, is going to be the new companion next season and so far no explanation has been given about her early appearance in this episode.

Could be just a Martha/Amy/12 situation where they liked the person so much during shooting they decided to bring them back for a larger role, but could also be intentional like Clara, where their initial appearance is tied to some future plotline.

the heavy handed anti-capitalist stuff and the heavy-handed pathos with the innocent little girl all reminded me of a Pat Mills scripted strip from 2000ad, the killer ambulance robots that repeat customer-service bromides as they execute you were straight out of Ro-Busters or ABC Warriors. I think the heavy-handedness usually works better in those comics though, Mills leans into the lurid and grotesque stuff, but this just came out feeling tepid.

https://i0.wp.com/thetryingscotsman.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/screenshot_20240417-1619172050267769768839738.png?w=1200&ssl=1

new-nu-who and starlord

The pro-choice line was followed about 2 minutes later by the line about refugees literally having to show up on people's shores before they have to let you in - I agree the very RTD lack of subtext is enjoyable

Another odd thing was the reappearance of the schoolboy from the opening scene during the musical number at the end.

Sadly, another very RTD thing is that he always needs to seed "maybe this villain will return!" - he had the Dalek burbling about "Emergency Temporal Shift" in Doomsday, as if without it there'd be a riot the next time they reappeared.

That was unnerving in spots

Pretty good! No idea if it actually made sense but it felt satisfying enough - nice mix of (lite) Ghost Story For Christmas vibe and DW timeline shenanigans

my favorite so far - unnerving, like you say. obviously paradoxical in that the best thing about doctor who at the moment - ncuti gatwa - wasn’t in it. i got a sense in the first three episodes of a splendid doctor trying to find a centre of gravity and consistency in some mediocre stories. and his absence in that means gatwa still feels slightly out of place, through outshining and being more vivid than the material.

still don’t like the way it looks but it would take a tv professional to tell me why i think. the faces are too clean and the eyes too vivid, and the landscapes all feel either synthetic or a million miles away as if they’ve had some sort of rendering or or bokeh effect applied to them.

of course in the best episode with the 10th doctor, he was also barely in it.

That was good creepy fun although bit of a pointless appearance for 'Mrs Flood' and lmao putting big glasses on to look 40

ending gave me logopolis vibes. it almost makes sense, like if you squint from a distance....

this was the first visually well-told one, I thought ten minutes in, and looking forward to the same director next week

by thirty minutes in I was “third-best RTD ep ever?”

That episode was very good on ~vibes but I’m not sure it really held together plot-wise. 

If the old lady was Ruby all along, then why did (she make) everyone who approached her run away? I've seen some theories saying that it was Ruby's fear of abandonment personified... but if that was the case, then why did the Doctor disappear without the old lady nearby? 

It also implies that Mad Jack will continue to launch the nukes, since she doesn’t stop him in this timeline and the Doctor still mentions it happening. Who knows what will happen to Marti the campaign volunteer either? :(
 
I hated the bit near the end which seemed to imply that Ruby put Marti in Roger’s path so she could prove he was a monster (which she already knew because the Doctor said so!), and then later had the gall to be like “sorry you were abused, I’m gonna go save the day now”. Weirdly out of character and gross. 

idk most of this was great especially the first half - I really loved the rural horror creepiness, the hilariously mean Welsh pub, the bit with UNIT etc. And I'm fine with leaving stuff unexplained but this just didn't really make much sense in the end.

And again, we get it, Ruby is special/magic and has abandonment issues, can we please give her some new character traits already?

SIÂN fucking PHILLIPS!

yep! had my usual 'is that Sheila Hancock?!' moment tho

That episode was very good on ~vibes but I’m not sure it really held together plot-wise.

https://i.ibb.co/f0T5KWQ/rtdbb.jpg

"I'm so back, baby!"

73 Yards has restored my faith! esp "your magic phone" lol.

Couldn't quite shake the thought throughout that RTD had been upcycling past top episodes: "how about creepy unmoving figures who get closer further away when you're not looking..."

are there gonna be tons of memes of what the Herald was saying to cause people to run away shrieking now

because if so, send them my way

also, this happens in our house now:

me: I'm enjoying this so far!
me kinder: I should warn you that this is a RTD one

*mr kinder, that is
he jane

Wonder why it skipped the opening credits - and hope it won't become a regular thing.

because the Doctor disappeared from the story before the opening credits would have appeared

(and Gatwa joined the production after this ep — having still been on Sex Education previously — so I wouldn’t expect any other Doctor-lite episodes in the remaining four, no)

like when Clara’s eyes replaced Capaldi’s after she bluffed the cybermen that she was the Doctor

It could have, like, opened with the opening credits?

Not that I am miffed by their absence or anything - but I did find it a curious choice

I thought it was an effective way of throwing off the tone of the whole show to make one more unsettled as a viewer, leading into the creepiness of the apparition

I'll buy that!

As a one off in that context it's fine - I just hope it's not part of an attempt to rebrand the show as more 'prestige' or whatever.

I didn't even notice the lack of titles lol but yeah, going straight to them can have its own 'this one's intense, strap in' power.

Two fun sort-of-fake-outs for me were briefly thinking (hoping) the Herald was going to be whizzing along in parallel with the train somehow and, less amusingly, also that she might appear in the same position as Gwilliam causing them both to explode.

I just hope it's not part of an attempt to rebrand the show as more 'prestige' or whatever.

it's TWO WEEKS since an episode called "Space Babies" had talking babies with CGI mouths and a farting monster made out of snot :)

yeah i liked that one
no thoughts just vibes

Just noticed this new season is numbered as..... Season 1?

That’s a Disney+ thing

It m shows up that way on iPlayer too, which is.. weird

As I understand it, part of the Disney deal was rebranding this season as Season 1

and yet there's a lot of background-filling-in, him referencing previous adventures.

I am not defending the Season 1 nonsense, mind you

There'll now be three ways to number each future season, that's fun.

It also implies that Mad Jack will continue to launch the nukes, since she doesn’t stop him in this timeline and the Doctor still mentions it happening.

The Doctor can be quite timeline-flexible (and he's still in the old one when he says it) - in the new timeline they don't loose Mad Jack. (Also the Doctor just says that he led the world to the brink)

I hated the bit near the end which seemed to imply that Ruby put Marti in Roger’s path so she could prove he was a monster (which she already knew because the Doctor said so!), and then later had the gall to be like “sorry you were abused, I’m gonna go save the day now”. Weirdly out of character and gross.

That feels like a bit of a stretch - "I had to make sure I was right" makes more sense referring to being sure ap Gwilliam has the means motive and opportunity to launch nuclear weapons.

(Does anyone still call the last season season 40 or whatever?)

Personally don’t think they use someone good like Aneurin Barnard for roughly 10 minutes/one episode so there must be another timeline where someone else lets Mad Jack out, but not them.

finally saw this and even my jaded 15-y-o was instantly on his phone looking for theories afterwards, gotta tip your cap rtd you done did it again

There was a lot odd (tho v RTD at his polar opposite to 'lolol imagine a literal bogeyman' writing and some of the darkest tho true to life waters the show's ever ventured into) about the introduction of Marti. Why didn't Gwilliam just approach her directly? Why no interest in Ruby? I took it as him seeing the latter as 'stronger' of the two and maybe also wanting to charm Marti with knowledge of her name (tho what was up with the 'boy's name' comment?). But yeah...surely Ruby did not set that up so much as just realise after what was going on but decide she could not jeopardise herself (or Gwilliam's intended fate) by intervening.

he asked ruby about her so that we could see things through ruby's eyes imo. no interest in ruby, who knows, men are strange. I don't think ruby put her in roger's path, all she did was tell him her name. the rest was just pure sleaze. It was good to see this, so he was a proper monster privately as well as publicly, so we could really hate him. Otherwise you might get some people like 'damn right we need a strong nuclear deterrent, fuck ruby'.

still no idea what the herald eg Old Ruby, was saying to people to make them run away in horror. but i really like that i don't know! The uncanny doesn't work if it's all explained

She was saying “she thinks Drake won the beef”

ha ha

One episode not so far mentioned as comparison is Turn Left - a similar "without the Doctor" show, but with a grimmer ending (and middle).

A friend, who is more on the "Ruby threw Marti under the bus" vibe, frames it as all of the non-Doctor actors that try to fill the void (Ruby, Torchwood, UNIT) have to make decisions about how and when to hurt people - "While the Doctor might be able to find a way to solve the problem that doesn't involve hurting people, or allowing people to be hurt, the people who are trying to stand in for him are more limited, and cannot."

I’m not sure what Ruby was supposed to do there - not tell Roger Marti’s name? What would that have accomplished?

Okay THAT was WILD

not every ep this season has totally landed for me but I am so happy that Doctor Who is trying to do things again

three banger episodes in a row

so weird to see posts about this show on Fri night/ Sat morning

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/b2/b4/eeb2b4d4e8c6493174242d37a3b79361.gif

this was the first visually well-told one, I thought ten minutes in, and looking forward to the same director next week

by thirty minutes in I was “third-best RTD ep ever?”

this guy knows what's up

V Black Mirror - felt it set up some interesting ideas but didn't really go into them enough (their jobs, the mum - although I expect that will come back) and what was going to be outside? kinda fizzled out tbh.

"oh it's in alphabetical order" was some "oh it's ~mirror writing~" davinci code nonsense lol

and

Why have the monsters if the dot could just bust through your skull anyway

Perhaps it was dot zap first, scavenging monsters second?

OK boomers.

Perhaps it was dot zap first, scavenging monsters second?

It wasn't.

The old woman who keeps popping up as different ppl is like the fourth background mystery going on now (after big boss referred to by previous villains, Ange, Ruby's origin and the snow) and tho maybe all connected it all seems lower key than usual.

that was pretty good! kooky & creepy af but also kinda funny

but also like WOW WTF

a wild ride, if you will

I’m undeniably a sucker for “RTD talks shit about humans” stories but this might be my favourite example of it yet. Its main flaw I guess is that the target audience is really just well meaning but still blinkered white privileged bozos (like me), because I think the reaction he really wants from you at the end is “ohhhh urgh they’re all racist, shit, I didn’t see that coming…shit, how did I NOT see that coming?”

And that core metaphor, he’s not stupid, he knows full well that “everyone’s in a literal bubble and can’t see the horrible stuff outside it” is a dumb and clunky metaphor for social media, and he’s happy to let us roll our eyes at him for that (and maybe even knows he can get away with it specifically because 20 years ago quite a few of his central metaphors really were that dumb and clunky) up until the point where he makes it clear that no, you tit, the bubble is YOUR whiteness and the horrible stuff YOU can’t see outside it is all those many microaggressions that were happening all the way through the episode without you picking up on them, duh.

Its main flaw I guess is that the target audience is really just well meaning but still blinkered white privileged bozos (like me), because I think the reaction he really wants from you at the end is “ohhhh urgh they’re all racist, shit, I didn’t see that coming…shit, how did I NOT see that coming?”

I'm white and privileged but this episode worked in a different way for me: I kept wondering why the hell I should care about Lindy or any of those people because they were all pretty unlikable, self-absorbed and detached to begin with. Her reluctance to even speak to Ruby or the Doctor & her inability to function without her bubble, hardly even wanting to, only made her seem worse. But I thought that was the strength & core of the Doctor: the Doctor cares. He always cares and does whatever he can to save humans in need. It would have been very interesting to see the Doctor's response if he would have found out what had happened to Ricky.

another fun one! nice to have both leads properly back and giving good doctor/companion - sorry chibnall "fam" but you were lamentable - still celebrating that the show survived that era

shaping up to be a pretty excellent SEASON or SERIES of the television show doctor who - it's a shame that Space Babies was a misfire, if that had been a banger I reckon Devil's Chord would've hit different/better too - at least for me

also lol at Richard E Grant - excellent bit of random continuity bomb-throwing

which reminds me of that random robot we saw for five seconds in UNIT HQ in one of the Tennant specials - very funny moment! HERBIE or 7-ZARK-7 vibes - would be even better if we never saw it again

Hey don't diss...*squints*...The Vlinx.

o no I intended no disrespect to the vlinx - he burned brightly in his brief screentime - just meant it would be an excellent gag if it never reappeared

I thought this one was kind of a letdown but probably anything would have felt like a letdown after Dot and Bubble

i liked this one!

I’m not at all Bridgerton-pilled but am fully Jonathan Groff-pilled and Regency-pilled so it was v enjoyable for me

loved the Kylie Minogue bit

also those bird masks were ~incredible~!

does anyone know if the writers were influenced by Bridgerton at all?

the really fun thing about REG being canonised as a former doctor is that we have no hint as to whether he's the Shalka Ninth Doctor, a Curse Of Fatal Death 8th or 9th Doctor, or a splinter of the Great Intelligence in the Doctor's timeline. #trigeneration

There was another face in that scene I didn’t recognise, in between Davison and Troughton. Looking at it again now I guess it must just be McGann, but it looks nothing like him. Perhaps they just chucked another Morbius doctor in there instead.

Ooohh it's yer man from Mindhunter

Little too daft for me that one.

Mystery baddies in perhaps the first half of a finale next week WHOEVER COULD IT BE

Is it BOK

vlinx

B-52s

luckily my kid had watched the relevant old episode so could explain to me what that was

yeah i had wondered how that reveal would hit if you were not familiar with the 49-year-old story in question

i mean i guess it probably effectively conveys something bad is going down?

i wasn't familiar but it was the first one i looked up

also Susan Triad is supposedly Susan from series A, 1963

Only just up to Rogue, will catch up properly tomorrow. It did seem tonally odd to go from "remember, all-white societies are probably pretty racist!" To "nah, regency high society, you'll be grand!"

Also I'm pretty sure that if they'd mentioned Dungeons & Dragons in the pitch, they could have got Actual Henry Cavill.

it did sort of look like it would come down for a bowl of its favourite treats. in fact a few of the effects were charmingly old school. the acolyte masks for instance wouldn’t have looked out of place from the earlier era. and the time window control panel! looked like something out of 1975 itself! not a control touch surface to be seen.

the time window glitching ringu cctv fx as always put a chill up my spine.

lot of introductions at the beginning. it was like one of those meetings where you realise you’ve used up a third of your time just getting people to introduce themselves.

that’s an xpost obv

on rogue - it’s explicitly bridgerton cosplay not a self-designed racial purity dome so it makes sense i think.

enjoyed the new one, good old -fashioned whovian stuff! and some very RTD technobabble for good measure lol

Sutekh! nice blast from the past! figured i’d give Pyramids of Mars a rewatch this afternoon to refresh my memory, it’s been a long time since i saw it. It really is good fun!

This whole season has had pacing issues where things just dragged, and it was particularly acute in the latest episode. Maybe Rusty has lost his touch or maybe the internet has broken my brain and I just don't have the attention

commented the same last night but think it is a RTD thing. Will spend ages on one thing (anagram! it's an anagram, look!) or introducing people, oh you'll LOVE this person, then gallop past anything that might actually be pertinent (what even is "the tech" that's being released at 15.00 - are we meant to assume it's the Terminator Genisys operating system? why was she doing a big speech to an empty room?)

Time Window was a nice touch.

pretty crude means of distraction? normally practised a lot more subtly,look over here not over there, then reveal.
bad illusionist.

I very much liked that they completed the circle from showing Maestro’s devastation of the future a la Pyramids of Mars by bringing back the malevolent force from Pyramids of Mars

YANA was one thing (and it kinda works as Master mischief vmic) all those years ago but this was the Bombalurina of anagram hijinx. Excruciating. 7/10.

Maybe I'm looking at his initial run through Rose-colored glasses but Rusty kept things moving at a better pace back then than he has since the Doogie Howser special.

It's very classic-RTD to set up an anagram, explain it's an anagram, then change it to something that's NOT an anagram and say "ha ha fooled you, my anagram was too complex for you!"

If the Doc could at least say something like the TARDIS translation service can also manipulate on screen text to explain why and how it's all moving around like that.

Similarly 'sure Ruby we COULD just matarislise inside UNIT HQ but nah watch THIS'

As soon as Ruby started bonding with that one dude I was like “don’t get too attached”

Loved the giant sergeant dude's "I get busy!"

But where was Shirley Anne Bingham?

Replaced by a younger model, it’s a tale as old as time

I reckon my vague fanxiety re the reveal would have been assuaged by having 13-yo genius ask “who the hell is that?” and have the Doctor reply “the most dangerous thing in the universe… and we are now 100% fucked!!!” [cue theme]

https://i.imgur.com/zkxZSlL.jpeg

he does also say in that article that there are very obvious ones he can't say or it'll give it away...

bbc4 tonight seems to be a Pyramids of Mars revision aid ahead of the weekend

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020crw

which… if you are going for a global Disney audience here, wouldn’t you find a way to put it on YouTube?

they didn't even put it on bbc2! it went out against the football and the leader debate.

(it's on iPlayer and i guess anybody (in the uk) who cared could watch it for free that way)

Disney do not have a license for C20th Who, and dozens of other companies do, so “find a way” would likely take far more effort and expense than would justify it

especially as Disney probably don’t want their partner in a global license to actively train audiences to seek content elsewhere, nor the Beeb want to devalue it by giving it away before they have the chance to license it to Disney

heh how did I know I was about to be Who-splained in this thread

<3

you asked a question tbf

(which I took as genuine!)

hmmmm

hmmmmmmmmmmm

yeah

i liked parts of the finale but i also felt like it did ~too~ much? which i mean yes thats RTD. but it felt like it was maybe too much even for him idk

also sutekh thought ruby’s mum was special because …ruby thought she was special?? FOH
no the SHOW told US she was special and then you couldnt think of a good reason why so we got that naff answer instead

Another plus for Chibnall here lol, didn't bother so much with these big season-long mysteries that tend to disappoint or just be too nonsensical. Actually did find the reunion pretty touching though.

halfway through the final episode and a) crt ipads should be a (slightly impractical) thing and b) I'm guessing Mel is the mother

Hiding this quote for the very spoiler averse:
Showrunner Russell T Davies also later confirmed: "We’re heading into season 2, and my God, Ruby Sunday is important to that. There’s good stuff to come."

I didn't get much out of this season tbh, though I'm still immensely thankful that it was never a hate watch.

When UNIT were first trying to shoot Sutekh, I had a mild chuckle because Rose looked like she was scrolling Instagram or tiktok.
The whole death thing was a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for HIV, right?

i have enjoyed new woke doctor who more than i thought i would tbh.

yeah i love him. he has a very infectious enthusiasm but can also bring the gravitas, he’s great!

thing that annoys me most about new doctor / new tardis interior is HE NEVER PLAYS THE FUCKING JUKEBOX. don’t have it, or license some bloody music ffs.

I have loved both the new Doctor and the companion. Tremendous performances by both actors.
The individual episodes varied so much in quality but it was never less than fun to watch in the moment.
Which was not something I could have said for Chibnall's run
Cautiously looking forward to the next season

otm

yeah i have gone thru an accelerated version of RTD1 feelings over the specials and the Ncuti eps - from Rose-style “gosh wow YEAH Dr Who is back!” to Stolen Earth-level “I am pretty sick of this kind of shit” - like, Empire of Death was pretty preposterous, albeit often in interesting (but unsuccessful!) ways

but it does feel like Doctor Who again, is still trying new things, has a good heart and isn’t squandering the premise - i felt like it would have been a mercy to cancel it during Chibnall but I am glad this season happened

would be interested to see what it looked like with someone younger at the helm tho (and someone who wasn’t steeped in classic who)

anyone else been watching The Responder the entire last week and get mildly confused at the end of this Doctor Who finale? no?

usual RTD utter bollocks but enjoyable enough.

ie what Veg said in her spoiler.
also anyone else half expecting Ruby to rickroll Sutekh on that ipad

omg yes i thought it would be a spice girls video lol

thought Millie Gibson was particularly good in this

this & the ruby christmas episode were ghe weakest episodes of the season. not actively bad, just kinda (shrug).

I think both Gatwa and Gibson were tremendous this season and in the finale, but the writing let them both down.

I like the idea of Ruby and her mother being just ordinary people (and I appreciated RTD saying this was his response to Rey’s arc in The Rise of Skywalker - I too much preferred the ending in TLJ), but the way we got there felt like the audience was being played and not with the usual dumb misdirects/red herrings like S Triad.

Like what was the deal with the snow? What was Ruby’s “hidden song” that scared the Maestro? Why did the Doctor’s memory of the night changed? And who the hell turns to point at a sign to choose a name like THAT when there’s no one else around? chalking it all up to everyone including sutekh just being curious and nosy about a mystery was so goofy (also lol at the thought of 15yo girls going around wearing oversized black hooded capes in 2004)

I said it upthread but please, enough characters/companions who are also riddles- especially if these are the kind of answers we’re going to get. I don’t give a fuck at all about who Mrs Flood is and the thought of her being the mystery next season is already tiring me out

good season overall though. As others mentioned, it’s nice that it feels like Doctor Who again and is trying to do different things even if not all of it works

would be interested to see what it looked like with someone younger at the helm tho (and someone who wasn’t steeped in classic who)

I would love for them to pick Kate Herron (co-writer of “Rogue” this season, former Loki showrunner, also directed several episodes of Sex Education)

“Rogue” was silly but very enjoyable, which is true of everything I’ve seen of her work - she’s good at balancing sci-fi and comedy, and knows when to let episodes breathe with quieter character moments

Still wish it had been Mathieson-with-Dollard-as-regular-star-writer from 2012, presumably-Dollard from 2015 or ‘17, and an unknown-in-2011 female writer now. but mainly it’s insane to think that the show has been in both a post-Moffat holding pattern slash retrenchment AND a consistent ratings success in that mode for t h i r t e e n years now! longer than nearly every programme in the history of television human communication

Roz otm about the mother resolution being a total cop out, while the general RTD “ordinary people” principle being sound. but he’s never been bothered by constraints (unlike moffat who perhaps loves building up constraints too much)

for some reason the cape and the pointing bothered me more than any of the other factors.

also, killing everyone then bringing them all back to life is a bore.

other than that i enjoyed it! gatwa is incredible.

Moffat's writing science fiction, RTD fantasy IHIBIDTAE

I get the comparison to The Last Jedi, but that was an act of criticism - RTD is both Abrams and Johnson here.

As an adoptee who met their mother in later life, my hair was standing on end for the last bit - there's a long process, for a reason, why you don't walk up to someone and say "Hi, I'm your kid!"

There's a few people on Threads giving it "aha the cause of your heightened expectations is yourself and the modern internet" - this would be a stronger argument if the previous episode wasn't titled "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"

I do agree with the point I saw over there that this would be a better season if it was 12 episodes or so - and if RTD (or other writers) took the time to do more with Ruby that isn't about the Mystery. People liked Clara, but they liked her a lot more after she stopped being the mysterious girl. I uh understand that this lesson doesn't seem to have been learned for the next season.

xp at me: 2016 for Mathieson, nine years of holding

I enjoyed this but for most of the episode I kept imagining my younger self making a Disney Who drinking game where one of the rules is “drink every time the Doctor cries”

It was strange to hear Ruby saying she was from Tameside. I’m from Tameside and I’ve literally never heard anyone else on tv say they were from Tameside…but I’ve also literally never heard anyone in real life say they were from Tameside either, because it was only invented in 1974 and nobody really believes in it, everyone just describes themselves as being from Ashton or Stalybridge or whichever county their town was in before it got amalgamated into a Metropolitan Borough. Millie Gibson is from Broadbottom though, maybe that’s why she didn’t want to be more specific.

Anyway yeah I’m usually fine with RTD doing vibes over plot logic, I still think 73 Yards was a great example of that…but it means if the vibes are shit (as they were for both parts of the finale, everything turned up to MAX OVERWROUGHT without feeling earned) then the whole thing collapses. There have been worse RTD season endings though! I’d argue the only one that wasn’t fundamentally bad was Eccleston’s.

So I have never in my life watched a single episode of Dr. Who. I have a general awareness of its premise, and the level of fandom it sparks, but I've just never watched it.

My 11yo son for some reason got excited about it a few weeks ago so we decided to watch. At first we tried the first episode of the Christopher Eccleston season (someone rec'd that we start there). It was OK - a little goofy, bad special effects, and just generally... dumber than I expected it to be. My son liked it fine but he decided he just wanted to watch the new season, so we started with the Church on Ruby Road. It was better - better effects, Gatwa is magnetic, and Ruby was very good too. But it was still kinda dumb with the cheeky goblins and the musical number? But my son liked it so we kept going and went to Space Babies -- still dumb! And the Beatles episode... getting better but at this point I am really scratching my head at the level of fandom this show inspires, as it really felt to me like a kids show. I even told my son that I'd keep watching with him, but he could just start watching it on his own too if he wanted to really devour it. (It is summer vacation after all - he has time on his hands!). He wanted to watch with me so we settled in to watch BOOM and I was NOT ready for that episode. The tension! And the doctor's visceral anger at the soldiers for believing in god! So now I'm thrown. Next night we watch 78 yards and we both were on the edge of our seats. He has definitely never watched a show that was that creepy. I thought he was going to have nightmares that night.

So, we just kept going and watched the rest over the last few days and we both got very sucked in. I agree with a lot of what's said upthread - namely that you REALLY can't spend much time trying to suss out the plot logic or how some of these harrowing situations suddenly resolve themselves. I think I'm actually glad not to know all the back story this first time around, nor to be weighed down by comparing to past seasons or being distracted by continuity holes. It's just a fun ride while you're on it and especially fun to watch through my son's eyes as he feels like he's really discovered something (which had not already been discovered by his older brother).

My son now wants to go back all the way to the first episode from 1963. So wish me luck on this journey, however long it might last....

My 15 yo has lost all interest in this show but I did manage to snag him at the right moment for 73 Yards and he liked it a lot.. but I think he's starting to define himself against it, as something he used to watch when he was younger. Which is a shame because this season is so much better than the Chibz era

That story is the essence of Doctor Who and one of the reasons why it has endured for so long. The framework supports every type of story you can imagine from the goofy to the terrifying.

I will warn you that the pacing of the classic series is GLACIAL compared to the new series, where the typical story length is half to a third as long, but if you allow the stories to unfold at their own pace rather than being impatient with them, you end up with some absolutely fantastic stories, and the standalone “An Unearthly Child” episode IMO stands up as the pilot that introduces you into the world of the Doctor.

great post pgwp - really captures something good about the series. and as you say gatwa is magnetic. will revisit BOOM on your post alone as first time round i didn’t like how it looked and didn’t really enjoy it as much as some others, but yeah yr post has encouraged me to go back.

and DJP otm about An Unearthly Child.

DJP OTM of course. I will say that one of the most memorable of the classic series is "Wargames" which is in TEN parts. I don't think it dragged, but the final episode is just so weird and memorable, even by modern standards.

pgwp, my 9yo has recently been watching the old series (Tom Baker) but his dad found a list of sort of 'must-see' type episodes and is running through those. Kid LOVES them, loves the arch wit and the little clues and baddies and the basic effects. You may well find it dull for a lot of the time. He's also concurrently watched a couple of the recent Tennant/Donna ones from this year and all the Gatwa ones.

When they're good, they're really good but the dumbness pisses me off too much sometimes - like the Toymaker one, had almost psychopathic levels of disregard for any satisfying aspects to the resolution, with BOMBASTIC to compensate for it.

first Doctor is a bit unpleasant as he’s very grumpy - it’s hard to square with any enthusiastic seeming Dr’s you have already encountered

mr veg has never seen old Who. I rewatched Pyramids of Mars the other weekend & he sat through it and I was like “wasn’t it great?” and he was like “the story is good but it’s 2/3 just them running around or hiding”

and i was like how dare

great post pgwp - really captures something good about the series. and as you say gatwa is magnetic. will revisit BOOM on your post alone as first time round i didn’t like how it looked and didn’t really enjoy it as much as some others, but yeah yr post has encouraged me to go back.

― Fizzles, Thursday, June 27, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Well just to reiterate, you have to go into the episode feeling confident that you are watching a show for children. That's why it riled me so much - the tension caught me off guard big time because I'd never experienced another episode that tried for that tone.

But I do think the thing that will stick with me the most from this season is how mad the Doctor got at people for being religious. I don't think I've ever seen such an unapologetic pro-atheist stance on TV before.

pgwp, my 9yo has recently been watching the old series (Tom Baker) but his dad found a list of sort of 'must-see' type episodes and is running through those. Kid LOVES them, loves the arch wit and the little clues and baddies and the basic effects. You may well find it dull for a lot of the time. He's also concurrently watched a couple of the recent Tennant/Donna ones from this year and all the Gatwa ones.

Perhaps such a list would be helpful, as those early series seem dauntingly long. 40+ episodes in a season. I don't think my kid will have the stamina for something like 700 episodes of Dr. Who.

pgwp be extra-warned that the three-part Tribe Of Gum story that’s bundled with An Unearthly Child is one of the slowest in all of Who history. Plenty of “sampler platter” recommendation lists in other DW threads if your kid is up for jumping around to get a flavour of how the style and Doctors change over the years though!

(Especially as it’s literally impossible to watch all of it — 97 eps from the 60s are missing, and most of the 1963-73 episodes only exist in poor copies)

xp hah

or if you want to jump back to a part of the revival series that feels more "current" than the Eccleston season, Matt Smith's first episode (The Eleventh Hour / Series 5) is a great place for kids + older co-viewers to start...

I feel like I've heard so much about the David Tennant era...

xxp think we started with City of Death but then he decided he wanted to watch all the Tom Baker ones so is doing that. so the list got forgotten!

opinions will vary, but a lot of folks here will agree that nearly every episode in Tennant's first series is kinda bad*, while even the couple of duds in Smith's first are pretty okay.

but for you two specifically, the things you didn't like about the style of Eccleston's first ep are in most of Tennant's, and his run is not written to work as a jumping-on point (that also rewards existing viewers), which Smith's first year is. if you and the son dig that one, I'd suggest a highlights run through Eccleston and Tennant before going on through Smith and Capaldi. (you personally will like Capaldi a lot, I'm guessing.)

*has one GREAT standalone, and one great one that only works if you've seen a bit of older Who before.

watching the very first episode from 1963 next is still a tops idea btw! that one is great, and will feel like time-travel in and of itself to the kid - basically taped as live in one studio, with voice-over scene transitions done by the actors simply standing off-camera... and still works as showing the origin point of where the premise of the modern show came from. but if he doesn't vibe with that one, it's probably a lost cause to try any other six-part B&W stories :)

Thank you for the advice!

Which one is the great standalone from Tennat’s first season? The Girl In The Fireplace?

Yeah, I think so. By a fairly clear margin actually, looking at the others.

(i quite liked the satan pit iirc)

I figured it had to be but even that one has its problems

Your reminder that sic is (correctly) a Love and Monsters fan.

(So am I, but I’d definitely hold back from recommending it to a newer viewer).

I suspect sic was actually referring to School Reunion though.

^ Yep.

“The Eleventh Hour” is great for newcomers, I’ve converted many friends and family members to the show from it. Still the best season opener of nu-Who imo

Ah okay yes, I can get behind School Reunion

(Fireplace as the main great one, Reunion as the one that requires at least an affection for the series in general to hit properly.)

Excited for pgwp+kid to watch every Moffat-written one up to and including The Eleventh Hour frankly

I appreciate everyone’s advice. Apparently my son has been doing his own research and I’m letting him lead the way - so we are back to the Eccleston season as he wants to see it how it transitions into the Tennant era, which his internetting tells him is a great era.

I won’t bog this thread down with our entire watch but we are now three eps into Eccleston. We just watched “The Unquiet Dead.” When we saw a few advance scenes of this ep I said “oh this looks like it will be a creepy one like 73 Yards.” He says, without missing a beat, “yeah but remember this show is really old so it will be creepy like Indiana Jones, so it will probably actually just be funny.”

Anyway, I know my perspective is severely limited but yeesh, Eccleston does not hold a candle to Gatwa (and Rose does not hold a candle to Ruby either). Also I feel like I’m picking up on a subtle romantic tension between them which I am finding very creepy.

Oh PLEASE keep giving your impressions of these stories

concur with Dan: here's a thread for it!

direct link means you don't have to see Dan laughing about infoginas at the top. spoilers!

Ha, thanks. I had started reading that thread and find it hilarious how much folks there flipped for the show when it came out. Clearly there is a well-earned loyalty (with a degree of blindness) that comes with this show.

I’ll keep posting in this thread if folks don’t feel like I’m bombing it. I don’t plan to go on at length about every episode. I am getting more joy out of my son’s reactions than I do from the show itself, so his responses are more what drives me to share.

The latest - we watched two-parter about a group of aliens who faked an alien invasion, and I got to educate him about George Bush and Tony Blair and the completely corrupt invasion of Iraq.

i love yr posts, no complaints here!

Your posts are good, they form part of the weft and weave of ILX - but it makes more sense for them to go on the thread about those seasons, and not this one which is specifically not?

mmm idk i don’t wanna be opening up a lot of threads, man

Haha okay I confess I didn't see that there was an 18-year gap, in my head there was one or two old Doctor Who threads, but that one was the second one (of three) that season! Here is fine.

also interested in whatever updates pgwp deems worthy of offering - so strange to think that "new Who" is nearly 20 years old, if I consider that is the difference between the Five Doctors (when I was 9) and the Harnell era it blows my mind - one of those personal timeline calculations that you need to have a little lie down afterwards - like working out that the gap between now and Nirvana is the same as the distance between the Sex Pistols and Vera Lynn or whatever (possibly inaccurate calculation there)

anyway we will need something to do in this thread while we wait for Christmas or [checks notes] ...a Sea Devils spin-off? WTF?

I’m sorry, a what

there's a five-episode Bad Wolf production with a working title of The War Between The Land And The Sea (phrase used by Gatwa in 73 Yards) that ppl are assuming is a UNIT vs Sea Devils miniseries. finally, Kate can finish the genocide her dad half-arsed in 1970.
.
But it hasn't shot yet, so definitely won't exist before either Christmas or RTD2S2.

anyone watch the new xmas special

The Moffatiest Moffat to ever Moffat but i also enjoyed it & it had some v good joeks ie plunger, also LOL @ tardis being all big inside but no chairs, etc

i really do love Ncuti’s Doctor but my god he really does cry at the drop of a hat doesnt he

When it got to the end, I was staring open mouthed at the screen as the uplifting music swelled because that was some outright bleak shit they were passing off as a triumphant heartwarming ending

Moffatt writes for Ncuti wayyyy better than RTD does imo, really enjoyed him being mean to Joy for a bit there

Yeah, that was *not* heartwarming xpost

Also Joy tells him he needs a friend. He's made a lovely friend in Anita, so what does he do? Sends her a note telling her he's got her a job doing exactly what she already does, but in a place that's basically killed everyone across the course of the year he spent being her friend. He doesn't *deserve* a friend. He's really bad at it!

I did really like the “there no wrong way to save a life” line

liked it a lot on the whole, but typical of RTD to do some unbearable weird overblown mawk at the end. Still a 6.5/10 or so.

I enjoyed the open dig at Boris Johnson, not particularly daring in late 2024, but as political as I've seen on Dr Who, especially on a Christmas episode.

did I miss something or did the military power source that hypnotized and killed people really become the star of Bethlehem?

Yeah that was the idea. Not sure if the implications are deliberate or not.

typical of RTD

they put the writer’s name in big letters after the episode title

missed the start lol

Murray Gold just keeps getting worse and worse, he more less completely ruined this. Tempted to start watching with subs and sound off.

Christmas special chart positions:

2005 -- Christmas Invasion -- 9th place
2006 -- Runaway Bride -- 10th place
2007 -- Voyage of the Damned -- 2nd place
2008 -- The Next Doctor -- 2nd place
2009 -- The End of Time Part I -- 1st place
2010 -- A Christmas Carol -- 4th place
2011 -- Wardrobe -- 3rd place
2012 -- The Snowmen -- 9th place
2013 -- Time of the Doctor -- 3rd place
2014 -- Last Christmas -- 7th place
2015 -- Husbands of River Song -- 8th place
2016 -- Doctor Mysterio -- 9th place
2017 -- Twice Upon A Time -- 9th place
(2019 -- Resolution -- 14th place)
(2020 -- Spyfall Part 1 -- 8th place)
(2021 -- Revolution of the Daleks -- 10th place)
(2022 -- Eve of the Daleks -- 26th place)
2023 -- Ruby Road -- 3rd place
2024 -- Joy to the World(s) -- 6th place

Coughlan beat King Charlie's Chat on 7-day figures.

New season April 12

:D

Something to look forward to in the middle of tax season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN7nAyeeN5Q

Animation episode?

Okay I REALLY enjoyed that premiere

No spoilers until 7pm UK time pls!

SPOILER: I thought it was fun

:))))

Rusty subtle as ever.

My kid and I are very happy to have this show back.

a good one, with one of rtd's better resolutions

The climax was a bit shit I thought but everything else was delightful. Varada Sethu is instantly one of my favourite companions ever. Does not take shit from anyone, calls the Doctor on his, willing to take the hit for the team, and there's this alert perceptiveness in her eyes, she just seems alive to everything.

i enjoyed this one! Rusty Rusty’d

Yeah, my fave episode since the Tennant specials. A clever bit of fun.

I watched it inattentively and enjoyed the silly robots - thought new companion good and had more interesting relationship with Doctor than unearned “gosh wow!!” dynamic of the last one (already forgotten her name).

Thought it was far better than Goblin One and Space Babies but still have this sense that it isn’t quite stepping into the Disney opportunity - like, I feel it doesn’t nail the broad appeal needed to be a success on a global streaming platform.

Maybe that is good? Like, I don’t want DW to be bland and generic. But I also think they took a big swing with this Disney deal and it hasn’t really worked.

My kid and I never watched DW before until it showed up on Disney, and since then we’ve caught a couple of older seasons and Ncuti is by far the favorite Doctor in this household.

he really has incredible warmth & charm

Genuinely pleased to hear!

It was the first time my youngest has watched Nu-Who - eldest has watched all the Ncuti ones and is working through all 3rd/4th Doctors, and now also re-watching them with youngest. I think he kind of liked it but didn't really understand what was going on - he's 7.

I liked a lot of it but it wasn't clear whether the main guy had choice over what he was doing or not? I liked the '9th word' thing but as always it was put in as a 'fun thing to have' with no real use (we're about to rebel...)

I didn't like the fact they seemed to drop buzzwords 'coercive control' and 'incel' into it, shows a very superficial understanding of what those things are (didn't seem like Belinda cared about any attempts the guy was trying to control her).

I don't quite get why the little polishing robot had to pick up the certificate and then they got it straight back - possibly I missed something. Was it just so it would be in place to sweep up the remains later?

Belinda is cool. My eldest is DESPERATE to find out who Mrs Flood is (neighbour lady). I was slightly hung up on the difference between it being a star or a planet as they seemed to use both terms...

the certificate missing a corner seemed 'important' somehow, but i didn't catch how

I think that was just to prove it was the exact same thing as the duplicate one.

I'm sure there's some old time-travel/sci fi movie which hangs on two time-travel-duplicated objects exploding when they touch - or people, iirc. Probably lots of them but one in particular I'm trying to think of.

In Back to Future you pass out from shock if you see your future/past self...

Also the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in classic DW! Notably the end of Mawdryn Undead.

re: star vs planet names, of a star has planets, those planets usually are named after the star, and if there's more than one planet, you add a number after it indicate which one is closer to the star.

*waves from Sol 3*

xxp it was Timecop with Jean-Claude Van Damme! I just watched the ending on YouTube and it's lol

I didn't like the fact they seemed to drop buzzwords 'coercive control' and 'incel' into it, shows a very superficial understanding of what those things are (didn't seem like Belinda cared about any attempts the guy was trying to control her).

I mean, it’s explicitly why Belinda dumped him in the first place so I don’t think it’s fair to say she didn’t care. You can even get subtextual and infer the whole reason she was so quick and eager to sell him out to the robots in the first place was her lingering distaste for him.

"The nicest thing anyone's ever done for me" was a sort of sad admission imo

I must've missed that. I thought it was because he kept trying to tell her what to do, and she wasn't having any of it.

what I mean is, any threats or behaviour to force her to stay against her will didn't seem to have any effect, she didn't seem to struggle with leaving him.

We are saying the same thing but coming to different conclusions. My take is that he tried to control her and she told him to fuck off, he sulked about it up until he was kidnapped by the robots, at which point he wired himself into their infrastructure, turned it into his own psychotic playground, and sent the robots back to Earth to kidnap Belinda and force her to submit to him.

tbh i don't think the initial scene on the bench quite carried what it was required to carry in the rest of the episode. i must admit i spent a lot of it going 'so is this that old cybermen plot?'. as always with RTD and +++++ with Ncuti Gatwi, the character on display is incredible, and same with Belinda - why the hell is she called Belinda? weird old soap opera instinct in RTD i think? - actor and character are great tho.

as always caveats about really not being its target audience, i felt like i'd seen it a thousand times before and it felt thin, the only thing - but a big thing - marking it out being the quality of the central actors.

on the wider picture, most of the US studio-streaming-broadcast-rights nexus is in such meltdown its hard to see how the BBC won't need to think about how they continue to fund it without big studio money. nothing wrong with the idea, but co-pro... co-production... seems like it's not going to be seriously viable for UK creative IP in any sort of stable way.

xp yes sure!

looking forward to next week's.

I agree that they didn’t make him unpleasant enough in that initial scene, although the “are you married?” line and her reaction to it did make me think “oh I see, he’s a jackass”

As always with Murray Gold and any scene which doesn't involve running and blowing up, the score did a lot to distract from any intended emotional nuance.

He (the doctor) did turn off a hospital, though. I mean, I really liked the episode, I agree she's a great new companion, and I really liked a) Cronenberg for kids and b) Rusty coming out swinging for incels, but he did very much turn off a hospital.

I'm not 100% clear on whether there's still supposed to be a mystery about Belinda?

His first lines include "I know girls aren't good at maths" - he seemed unpleasant enough to me.

(his second paragraph including "I think, how can I capture this?" is a great example of Rusty laying it on in a way that I read as knowingly inducing "I already dislike this guy, am I reading too much into this?". I mean, the answer is always no, but the question is open)

the behind the scenes thing on bbc3 seemed to suggest he was going to tie in her previous appearance somehow, and maybe expand on that.

i could tell right away that she was not feeling him at all. and he was (to me) playacting at having a relationship without doing anything to show they were connected in any way at all, like any remarks truly directed to her were always corrective

so the incel thing made sense bc so much of that incel shit is all icebergian ie 95% is what is unseen/internalized

like idk, maybe that she didn’t squeal with delight and kiss him when she got the (checks notes) star cerificate - to him that’s a demerit, thats why women dont deserve xyz, whereas to us and her that is kind of an arms length gift given in an arms length way and naturally received in kind

but there isnt ~much~ given in that scene, granted so i’m not questioning anyone else who couldve done w more signifying

it was a gift about something he cared about, not something that she cared about, and he uses it as a chance to indulge his own inner brian cox! SHUDDER

and even then she’s gracious enough to say it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done ❤️

lol agree the turning off of dialysis machines and iron lungs etc played for laughs was a little uhh

booooo at yet another companion with a mysterious backstory

I guess I don’t really think there’s a mystery behind Belinda, despite what the Doctor thinks? This is the third time he has encountered the relative of someone he’s interacted with in a previous adventure since the reboot, you’d think he would be less like “MY GOD WHAT ARE THE ODDS”

The thing that doesn't make sense is that, after rightfully dumping the weirdo, she then proceeds to frame the dumb diploma and keep it on her wall for 10+ years.

well it is an actual star named after her! she can enjoy that regardless of what chumpy mcchumpson is or isn’t to her

I guess...as you said it's something HE cares about not her, and also I'd find it hard to dissociate something from context like that, but good for her if she can I guess.

I thought the incel characterization was unsubtle in the extreme, kinda cartoonish, but they had v little w/ the character and it's not like the story's about him so I didn't mind.

v/ little time

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I loved Lux a lot

excellent review of E01 by darren mooney, per usual. he also has a review of the new one up but i've not seen it yet

There is a sense that Belinda sees through the Doctor so quickly because she has experience with these sorts of relationships. It is very telling that one of the cornerstones of that confrontation in the TARDIS concerns boundaries and consent, the Doctor testing Belinda’s DNA without checking with her first. It is obviously very different from Alan trying to dictate what clothes Belinda can wear, but in both cases there is a male character who assumes that they know better than their female companion, acting in an obviously paternalistic manner. Alan is even introduced giving Belinda the stars, albeit in a much less impressive way than the Doctor can.

https://them0vieblog.com/2025/04/12/doctor-who-the-robot-revolution-review/

murray fuckin gold.

This was a lot of fun! Honestly feels a lot fresher so far than the previous season, which often came off as remixes of past hits.

really dug this one
Alan Cumming = goat

it was a lot of fun, though i really don't think the harbinger stuff adds anything - like when the letters drop off the cinema are we supposed to draw a big intake of breath?

A description that includes a sigh!

"Don't make me laugh" = ha(ha)r binger

just off to blow the mind of RTD with that one

lol

murray fuckin gold.

Yeah!! The bit with the fans was wild but maybe it was some kind of meta-textual self-aware thing? Like he was just going ultra-fuckin-ballistic ironically?

oh, yes, that was the bit i was thinking of. maybe! it was particularly egregious. like, completely detatched from and incompatible with the script. so yes, maybe!

It was fine. the animation was extremely well done, though I started to lose interest in the plot around the point that we found outhe was another bloody god from beyond time. That concept is starting to feel kind of lazy, even if the execution of it in this case was anything but.

I've said it before, Murray Gold is perfectly serviceable when scoring explosions or scary monsters. When he does comedy or pathos he's unbearable, seriously on the cusp of ruining the whole show.

Thank you chap - someone close to me worked a lot on the VFX. I enjoyed this one very much, silly shout-out to the fans and all.

xp 20 years of trad orchestra tho...Who of all things should've embraced a broader palette

Is it just me or do people not really understand Nelinda Chandra?

I keep seeing all of these complaints that she’s 100% eager to travel with the Doctor now and that is just not what I got from the episode at all.

Yes, she does want to go see the 50s because she’s never traveled in time before, but after the Doctor gets his reading she’s like “okay time to go” and only agrees to investigate the theater because it’s clear the Doctor won’t let it go. Also, the Doctor explicitly stated that he would need multiple readings to triangulate with in order to force the TARDIS back to her home, so there are multiple stops baked into the overarching plot driven by that. She also seemed mostly horrified and annoyed for most of the adventure with her only real “oh wow” moments coming from stepping into the past for the first time and encountering a being made of living light, which I’d think would wow anyone.

Anyway that’s my take on it; she does not seem like she’s turned into Ruby 2.0 to me. I still think her primary priority is to get home.

I liked the idea of this ep and enjoyed plenty of bits of it, but overall not as much as everyone else seemed to (if you'll indulge the self-promo - I reviewed it on my Who podcast here or on Youtube here).

That said, xp kinder - the animation was outstanding, and I particularly enjoyed how precisely Mr Ring-A-Ding captured the slightly grotesque nature of those early Disney animated characters. Some genuine expertise and passion for the form on display there.

DJP otm re Nelinda. It adds a good tension to their relationship that she’s always kind of mildly reading him for dragging her in further, like “THIS now?” … and drives home that “Doctor Is A Saddo” lol

Belinda!

Belinda

sry

typing is hard

the grafting on of the harbinger... thing... is annoying me the more i think about it. it meant some explanatory cut shots regarding the giggle, and just bent the nice central conceit - beautifully executed - out of shape. also, i'm sorry, if the cinema is going to go up in flames and the projectionist dies, i don't think you're allowed to get all those people trapped on celluloid back out into the land of the living without some extremely nifty footwork.

I swear my fingers hate me

This season is firing on all cylinders IMO

Yeah this was good (though not as good as the original Midnight, which is top 5 RTD imo)

Enjoyed seeing Roddy from Slow Horses in this

It was good tho it does seem like referencing past episodes/villains in this way is a crafty way of boosting iPlayer views of the archive (I don't really have a problem with this and as my partner hadn't seen the ep in question having missed p much that entire era I was practically begging her to watch it afterwards).

We did watch it immediately after

first and third episodes both have women with a strong sense of duty dying for the doctor and his companion. too much in three episodes imo. especially with the miraculous reappearance of the celluloid prisoners in ep 2.

I'm liking it okay - certainly miles better than the Chib era and S2 feels more bedded in than S1 - I mean, not starting with Space Babies is an enormous plus

But I'm also pretty unenthusiastic about DW at the moment - there is cancellation talk in the breeze and I wouldn't be devastated if it had a little break at least

The Capaldi era remains a high watermark of this show for me (happy to fight about it if you disagree!)

Just started a Capaldi era rewatch and it's just such a different beast (some aspects of both it and the Smith era I still can't help wishing RTD, tho clearly better at certsin things, could adapt more into his).

You know, while I understand the frustration of having a lying sack of shit ruin everything you stand for, I think attempting to murder someone on a livestream might be something of an overreaction

must Ruby cry ALL the time?

Also having the secretive paramilitary organization being the good guys who were right all along. This was probably worse than the "Yay space Amazon" episode a few years back.

it wasn't as clunky / end betraying the text as McTighe's space amazon, so I held out hope that this is set up for his upcoming UNIT miniseries to play the Silurians ep 7 note

not much hope now, mind, but

Ah I liked this one as an introduction for my kids to online bullshit. They didn't think it was a very good episode though and wanted to see more of the Doctor!

Hah hadn't realized this was the same writer as space Amazon. This is a really good take on the latest: https://them0vieblog.com/2025/05/03/doctor-who-lucky-day/

i knew we were off to a bad start when the episode opened w a podcast lol

Leee, I think that is a valid complaint in the abstract. The problem is this episode specifically sets up an antagonist that is denying the reality in which the show exists for his own personal gain; the only axis the show gives you to question the military solution is within the context of the military-aligned characters, very few of whom are going to say “maybe we shouldn’t exist” when the conflict isn’t about the type of response to the threat but whether there’s a threat at all, and even within this constraint you see that many of the characters are giving Kate the benefit of the doubt even while being extremely uneasy or even outright opposed to what she’s doing. I find that narratively consistent in a way that Kerblam! just wasn’t, from any angle you viewed it.

I'll have to chew on your post longer DJP but I also just wanted to add that all of Ruby's mom and grandma's googling never turned up Conrad's while deal because I guess they were distracted by his thirst traps.

out of interest, would most non-UK viewers know what "being on benefits" means?

I inferred from context