The Giggle

[winston @winston]

I have to wait for the new episodes so I am not reading all your comments yet but I just wanted to say how nice it is to see so many of you back and to even see some new names. Whovians from all over, discussing the show we all love. What could be better?

The trailers looked great so I can’t wait to watch them all. I look forward to reading all your comments and bonkers theories.

stay safe

[Robert Caligari @robertcaligari]

Can we all agree that RTD’s “just let it go” message from STAR BEAST looks a little bit hypocritical in light of this episode? I mean, Good Lord…his flat-out refusal to EVER let go of David Tennant has become downright comical. The next time someone chides me for never being able to get over the Tom Baker years, I’ll fling this story right back in their face.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@robertcaligari

I admit to some reservations when I heard that RTD and Tennant were returning – my concern being that the show was in such deep trouble that it could only be saved by bringing the band back together. And that bringing the band back together is never as good as the first time around.

However, I think it’s all worked out very well, and I liked the bi-regeneration (Bi Generation?) as it moves the show on into a new era. Let’s not forget also that Steven Moffat had great difficulty in killing off characters: Clara, Amy and Rory and even 11 all died-but-didn’t-die-really on his tenure. And then there’s River who died in the first story we met her only to have her whole story told out of sequence. Point is: all showrunners have their favourite characters and sometimes struggle to let them go. The writers are fans remember and we also sometimes struggle to move on.

I do wonder if RTD was making this point (a bit) in the “Well that’s all right then” puppet sequence in the Giggle. Probably me overthinking it again….

[Robert Caligari @robertcaligari]

@whohar I’d have less of a problem with the “bi-generation” concept if it wasn’t so creepy. And gross. (Not just because it strongly reminded me of a similar moment from my favorite Sam Raimi movie, either.) I mean, what’s stopping RTD from revisiting this idea over and over again? Is this going to be a recurring thing now, with the Doctor “splitting” like an amoeba every time he’s mortally injured? If I was in Kate Stewart’s shoes, I’d start looking at the Doctor as less of a friend, and more of an ungodly abomination. But that could just be my inner Conservative talking.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@robertcaligari

what’s stopping RTD from revisiting this idea over and over again? Is this going to be a recurring thing now, with the Doctor “splitting” like an amoeba every time he’s mortally injured?

I guess the answer is nothing, but I suspect it won’t happen again, for a while at least. Could be wrong, probably will be.

And, talking about Bi Generation: until the modern era the regenerations were often….inconsistent: 4 to 5 being a prime example here with The Watcher, which is almost a reverse bi-generation if you think about it (two into one does go in this case, it seems. Then again, the moment had been prepared for).

What Raimi movie is that btw?

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

So after a rewatch last night I noticed this line from The Toymaker: ‘I made a jigsaw puzzle of your past – did you like it?’

We know the flux stands, revelations about The Doctor’s origins and the genesis of the Timelords stand. But I wonder about this. Is this a little seed that can be used when needed? Something not dissimilar to the Time Monks in the Discworld – if the chronology of the Discworld ever seems off, it can be put down to the Time Monks. Can this relate to the fugitive Doctor?

 

taken literally, he cut up the doctor/the timecard’s history, shuffled it, and made sure there was a really big area all the same colour and put at least two pieces inside the vacuum cleaner at one point. (At least that’s my experience of jigsaws). But does the Doctor have the full picture yet?

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@whohar indeed, and in fact the puppet show scene kind of made a point about Moffat’s companions all dying but not dying. Seeing it all summarised like that did feel like quite a theme. And then… the Doctor doesn’t actually die at regeneration. And all the companions ended up with their own companions – Rory, Ashildr, Heather. And he gets to live with his best mate and her family.

the WELL THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN repetition did seem pointed. Sarcasm? They were all… quite all right without him, in the end, as it turned out. I was expecting a call back to River maybe, ‘River’s consciousness was uploaded’ WELL THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN because that’s the one that probably… wasn’t, really.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

@whohar this comment has been stimulated by one of your comments over on the blue yonder thread about series 15s potential big bad. But because my response is in part stimulated by some of the events in the Giggle in particular The Toymakers reference to an entity he ran away from,  I’m actually wondering if he was possibly referring to the Black Gaurdian. Now those of us who  are (ahem) old enough to have watched BG Who the first time round will remember that He is the celestial representation of Chaos and quite generally evil, also when the Doctor “rants  “ about the human races tendency to do the stupid and also mentions about the universe being more than just Order and Chaos.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@miapatrick

Sarcasm

Definitely. It called back also to Davros’s rant (that word again) at 10 about the Children of Time, and how the Doctor made them his weapons.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@devilishrobby

The Black Guardian is another good call for a recurring BG villain.

The Key to Time was one of the earliest DW series that had a through thread I think. Maybe the earliest? There was also the 3rd Doctor’s Master series but this was rather more loosely held together. More of a theme I think, but let’s go with it.

The first Doctor’s The Chase maybe an even earlier threaded series? I’m not all that familiar so will defer to the greater knowledge of the Forum hive mind on this one…

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

and also Rory at one point: “You know what it’s dangerous about you? <b>It’s not that you make people take risks, it’s that you make them want to impress you</b>. You make it so they don’t want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you’re around.”

And at this point, with Donna, the Doctor is right there. All he can think about is keeping Donna safe, make her go back to the Tardis, how is he going to save her. To take Kipling a little out of context, he really is forever giving his heart to a companion to tear.

Still, I think maybe this ending undermined the sarcasm. The Doctor dies! uh, technically not yet. (I’m still not sure if he does become the Curator, or work through his stuff, die peacefully, and regenerate back into that scene on the Stark, sorry, UNIT tower).

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

Another observation: the Doctor and the Toymaker cut cards. The Toymaker cuts The King… make of that what you will

The Doctor cuts 8… Paul McGann?? Human on his mother’s side? Or it could it have been any card lower than The King. 14 didn’t cut 10 for instance.

So, is the King, Rassilon? Or just a high card?

Ooh Rusty, the Toyshop is a rich theme.

I’ve said it before but I could without Guardians of either shade. 2nd law of thermodynamics says the less reflective one wins. You might as well explode The Reality Bomb.

The BIG stories are the meh ones.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@scaryb @juniperfish “you get a prize, honey” was just so beautifully delivered.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@whohar

Keys of Marinus was the fifth ever serial. Got to watch it… trying to… it’s a struggle. The Chase was in the 2nd series

[Robert Caligari @robertcaligari]

@whohar Army of Darkness. Give it a watch, and you’ll see what I mean. What you saw in The Giggle was basically the kid-friendly version with less body horror.

Fun Fact: The scene from Army of Darkness was inspired in turn by a 1959 b-movie called The Manster, where the protagonist also undergoes a radical “split.”

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@whohar

Very good point about The Watcher. And yes, there was indeed a lot of inconsistency with the regenerations in the pre-gap years. To be honest, I sometimes think that inconsistency is part of the DNA of the show. I loved Hartnell-era Who when I saw it as a kid, and Tom Baker Who when I saw it as an undergraduate, and I thought The Giggle was a hoot when I saw it as a creaky old geezer on Saturday. They were all different, but they were all Who.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@blenkinsopthebrave

They were all different, but they were all Who.

Indeed they were and continue to be.

As already indicated, I rate this episode pretty highly and I’m not sure what my further musings are worth, but here goes anyway.

The Giggle had a nice mix of who-ish ingredients. There was plenty of action with an occasional joke, and the behind-the-sofa quotient was more than adequate, though more creepy and alarming than outright scary; an infinite regression of ill lit, dark panelled corridors and doors leading to more corridors is the stuff of nightmares, not to mention murderous, cannibal puppets – ‘babbies want to eat’. There were also moments of reflection and, touched on at the core, a major social issue

In the dissemination of the time bomb planted by the Toymaker, from Logie-Baird’s mechanical system, trialled only in a few initial pre-war BBC broadcasts, to cathode ray to LCD, plasma and LED, TV to computer monitor screen, the technology changed but the transmission was all, culminating in the internet and the world wide web with all their potential benefits. Except that the means for every individual on the planet to express themselves to a global audience has also given a voice to all the worst and most toxic nastiness in humanity. We are all too ripe for the exploitative games of a Toymaker, and the Doctor’s accusatory catalogue of these worst of human characteristics had echoes of the 12th Doctor’s magnificent speech in The Zygon Inversion.

When it comes to the portrayal of the Toymaker himself, Neil Patrick Harris conveyed perfectly that air of sinister and lethal playfulness, even if there was a hint of Batman’s Joker in the ‘Spice Up Your Life’ interlude – and whether the latter is a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion.

The bi-regeneration is clearly seen as controversial in some quarters and may be a self indulgent cop-out on the part of RTD but, as the Toymaker said of the similar cop-outs in the deaths/non-deaths of Amy, Clara and Bill, ‘Well that’s all right then’, and I see no harm in having the 10th/14th Doctor in reserve, with the possibility at least of a very occasional outing in future. I doubt if there is any danger of a full blown spin-off, because I can’t see Tennant being up for it. Meanwhile the sentimental side of me thinks the old Doctor deserves to stop running for a while and enjoy a taste of a more or less normal family life. Long ago he was a grandfather and before that, presumably, a father – or mother, and later on he had a clone daughter though he didn’t get to enjoy her company for long; now he has a best friend, an honorary niece and, for better or worse, a mad aunt .

In a wider context the bi-regeneration of the Doctor – not to mention the twinning of the Tardis – seems to fit in with a general theme of singularity and doubling, unity and duality, binary and non-binary. Key quote in the episode: the Doctor to Kate and the assembled UNIT staff; ‘The universe is not binary’, though even the Toymaker, an agent of chaos, is bound by the rules of the game, and it takes two to play. It also takes two to defeat him – two individuals who are paradoxically one person. And prior to this, when it came to dealing with the metacrisis, where one person could not contain the Doctor/Donna it took two linked people, mother and non-binary daughter, to cope and realise a solution.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I guess it’s consistently inconsistent. Good to have something in life to rely on…

And, regarding your mention of Mel earlier, I’d maybe expect her to feature again somewhere – otherwise it seemed a bit of a shoehorn. Maybe a UNIT spin-off with Donna also, in an episode called Code Redhead, or something.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@robertcaligari

Thanks. Is that the Evil Dead spinoff / continuation? The ED movie scared the bejaysus outta me when first I saw it, although I was pretty young at the time. ED II didn’t have the same impact, although I clearly remember the scene with the detached hand that was trapped under a bucket with a pile of books hastily applied to ensure the thing (!) couldn’t escape. The topmost book being A Farewell to Arms. Great joke.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@miapatrick

I noticed this line from The Toymaker: ‘I made a jigsaw puzzle of your past – did you like it?’

We know the flux stands, revelations about The Doctor’s origins and the genesis of the Timelords stand. But I wonder about this. Is this a little seed that can be used when needed?

This is a good spot. There was also the Toymaker’s comment about toying with the Master, which made my ears prick up for a similar reason. I wondered if it was RTD2 planting a soupçon of an allusion of a hint of a rebuttal to some of the past aspects of DW he’d like to change.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@ps1l0v3y0u

The Doctor cuts 8…

Definitely need a full and thorough analysis of the potential meaning behind the cards chosen. And I’m sure we are in the right place for that 🙂

Actually, that was my only real quibble with this ep – I was expecting the games, such as they were, to be more cerebral, with puzzles or logical conundrums to be solved, rather than physical challenges to be overcome.  Or maybe a mix of the two.  I guess throwing a ball around on the top of a tower was more visual, but even so.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

<span class=”useratname”>@whohar Yes! I’d missed the Master comment.
</span>RTD definitely isn’t ignoring the timeless child etc, he’s making use of it – but he might not be tying himself to it completely in the form it is there.

sometimes I feel any new Doctor Who/time Lord information is picked up by the next showrunner  in the spirit of improv: ‘yes, and’. In some cases it’s slightly ‘yes but’ but it can be used as a springboard for their own ideas.

[gallifreyanking88 @gallifreyanking88]

In the scene in which the Doctor and Donna are trapped in the Toymaker’s I don’t know – is it a maze or something? – I think it felt like we were back in the previous episode. While not entirely similar, and of course Dr Who does this frequently, with the Empty Child and 42 as well as various others, two episodes in a row with a quick-paced chase in which the Doctor is sometimes separated from companion felt like a bit much. However, I enjoyed it and the Giggle is one of the best episodes to date in my opinion.

[Robert Caligari @robertcaligari]

@whohar Correct, AoD is indeed the third movie in the Evil Dead series. Evil Dead II probably didn’t leave as much of an impact on you because it was meant to be horror/comedy rather than straight-up horror like the first one.

Speaking of which:

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@whohar

The Toymaster did go full Prince Ludwig from Blackadder @ps1l0v3y0u, @phaseshift. But showed his sinister side with that “sunnier climes” comment. With the excellent “I was born in Cheltenham” as the response.

I thought that was particularly well handled myself, and although RTD went for it in the behind the scenes stuff I think he should get bonus points for using “Celestial” in the script as “amongst the stars”.

Funny how these things work out. My two nieces used to sing Spice Girls stuff when they were young to annoy me. 🙂 I had a reprisal of that when watching this with the youngest (who is now almost 30). She was belting it out, including a line that was faded out for some dialogue. The line was “Yellow man in Timbuktu”, which made me laugh heartily.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@whohar

Definitely need a full and thorough analysis of the potential meaning behind the cards chosen. And I’m sure we’re in the right place for that…

Oh you know that is just catnip…

The Doctor picks the Eight of Clubs. Cartomancy (fortune telling with a deck of cards) equates clubs with the Tarot suit Wands. Eight of Wands in the classic Rider Waite tarot deck means change, direction and travel – so we can see this as a foreshadowing card for the Toymaker induced regeneration, which happens later in the episode.

It is also interesting to think about the card, as @ps1l0v3y0u suggests, as a call-back to the Eighth Doctor, because the McGann Doctor, in The Night of the Doctor, in the middle of the raging Time War, took the Sisterhood of Karn’s resurrection elixir and chose to regenerate into a warrior, The War Doctor.

If we are reading this card as an Eighth Doctor call-back; in the context of the episode, the conversation Donna and the Doctor have immediately prior to this card game is all about Fourteen as exhausted and traumatised. Donna confronts him and says that he’s wearing himself out by never talking about his past companions (and by implication, all his grief). The Eighth Doctor’s choice to become the War Doctor is, in Nu Who, the origin-point of all the subsequent Doctors’ trauma.

And boy does the Toymaker’s puppet-show deliberately focus on the Doctor’s trauma, messing with him by foregrounding his guilt (about being dangerous to travel with) depicting not only the death or near-death of several companions, but of the multitudes of worlds in the universe brought on by the Flux (all intent on erasing the Doctor’s own maverick influence).

So, the eight of clubs loses against the Toymaker. Let’s suggest that means the eighth card, the way of the warrior, will absolutely not be of use to the Doctor in what’s coming next – a struggle with the Toymaker, or with whomever the “One Who Waits” “hiding at the edge” may be (whom even the Toymaker ran away from) who may, or may not, be the same as “The Boss” the Meep speaks of.

The Toymaker picks the King of Hearts and wins with it. Hearts are equated with Cups in the Tarot. The King of Cups represents mastery over the realms of emotion, creativity, and the unconscious.

So, to “win” the Doctor needs to lay down his war trauma, from the Time War, from the Flux mundicide (genocide of planets) and become…. more emotionally literate? A King of his own hearts?

Looks as if Gatwa Doc is already that, judging from the tender way he immediately comforts his previous incarnation.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@juniperfish wow! Not expecting that level of analysis. Really thought it just signified McGann. If hearts/cups signifies a change, might it be a return to four’s more subversive methods?

@whohar … is it that we’re enthused by these new stories, to pick at these details, or is this another example of Chibnall’s inability to spin a yarn?

Also interested to see who RTD brings in as writers. Five episodes of series 14 yet to be announced says Wikipedia. Chibnall seemed to break with all the old writing crew from series 11. I was reminded of Robert Holmes extended break under Jonathan Nathan Turner.
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[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

And just to add to the cards analysis, note the cards featured in this promo image

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

King of hearts and 8 of clubs are much in evidence. Comparing the other cards with the cards on the image at the start of this thread, they seem to be random cards: various combinations of suits and numbers.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

The Flux… still not watched that series. Definitely on my bucket list… probably somewhere toward the bottom.

The Timeless Children: observations…

I suspect Chis Chibnall was surfing tv tropes one day and discovered ‘I am become Woobie Destroyer of Worlds’ and thought ‘that looks like fun!’ What with the Logopolis farrago and The Reality Bomb, never mind the business with Trenzalore episode and Amy Pond’s disappearing Pandorica universe, it’s a wonder there’s anything left out there.

‘Big’ stories. Meh.

Also ‘flux’ sounds distinctive in a South Yorkshire accent. You need flux to solder yer plumbing. Flux was the medieval term for dysentery.

Oh well. Canon now. BUT… one reason exposition doesn’t work is that the audience can say ‘oh yeah. Sez who?’

The Master is a liar. The Master is a loon. The Master may have been led up the garden path.

And where did this Timeless Child come from anyway before he/she/it/they got sliced, diced and spliced?

[VickyMallard @vickymallard]

Hello everyone from the newbie – both to this forum and DW. Guess I picked the perfect time to join, there was so much stuff in these three episodes where I thought “I presume there is a background to this that I don’t know about…” – in other words, there is a whole universe that wants to be explored! I admit I started watching because of David Tennant, so for now I’ll focus on 10 and 14. That being said, I loved 15 and his energetic positivity – quite a force of nature in his pants! And I am very happy with Tennant being parked for the next ten/twenty/whatever years.

There are so many things in this episode that I feel like my head’s exploding, but I guess I have to just rewatch it and write that down one by one. For now, one of the things I’m trying to get to grips with is this bi-generation (I’m probably not alone in that.) I do love the concept, and I’m really happy that 14 – who appears to have carried the weight of the universe on his shoulders since his return – gets a happy ending and doesn’t have to say goodbye to Donna once again. However, if 15 is the same person as 14, wouldn’t he also have “inherited” (or however you call that) all this feeling of guilt, etc.? Was he simply able to leave those bits behind in 14?

The other thing (okay one of the other things) that confuses me is this concept of “retrospective bigeneration”, that all the previous incarnations are now also running around again. That fact in itself I find quite intriguing, but how does that practically work? Do they all just get up and pick up where they left? At the same spot? I mean, if 9 had still been around after regeneration, I am fairly sure Rose Tyler would not have run off with 10 in the first place? Or did 9 simply wake up in an equally regenerated Tardis all by himself? Wouldn’t he then simply go and look for Rose? And 10, who really didn’t want to go – wouldn’t he have returned at least to Wilf? (Okay, maybe it would have been too painful for him to be anywhere near Donna, always risking she might remember him and die – and to be there without ever being able to go near her). And even now… will retired 14 one day simply run into a 15 year older version of 10? Do they all still share memories, or does everyone make their own memories after regeneration that the others no longer share? Will 9 then ever know that Rose Tyler is actually still alive in Pete’s World? In the “normal” world (if such a thing exists in Doctor Who) she has been declared dead, if I remember correctly.

And to these bi-generated Doctors continue to regenerate? Or do they just grow old and die? That would probably be a reason for them to settle down rather than saving the universe and getting killed in the process. If they continue to regenerate, or bi-generate, there would soon be quite a number of timelords running around….?

Long story short, I guess RTD has achieved his goal – he set my mind spinning with questions!

[Oblique @oblique]

David Tennant is the safety net should the show’s rating need bucking-up. Ratings, ratings, ratings. It’s all about ratings. There’s a lot riding on no# 15. There’s no way no14 is going to stay put when the Earth is once again under threat (checks fobwatch) I think this is the BBC not having the courage of its convictions when casting a black lead. The casting is well overdue anyway and smacks of tokenism. (Sooo late to the party BBC). I hope the casual viewer, like the many who ridiculed me back in the day for being a “Doctor Who nutter” and gushed unashamedly over David Tennant, dropped Smith, and have gone all goo-goo again in recent weeks about “the good old days” will stay tuned, but – and there’s aways a but – I can’t help thinking with no14 waiting in the wings with Donna, a sonic screwdriver and a fully operational TARDIS Ncuti Gatwa is going to  play second fiddle: Understudy to Tennant’s (be it resting)Lead to grace the stage once more.

 

 

[Whisht @whisht]

Hi all,
No real thoughts to add that others haven’t said better (and many many thoughts I’d not even considered!).
@juniperfish (catnip!) not only dissected the cards they merely cut, she stitched a whole wormhole to be lost down!
I’d just thought “ah, he lost” and “is 8 meant to be infinity?”

The only thing I can add that I haven’t seen mentioned (forgive me if it has – this is a long episode thread already!), is that The Doctor has found a family to be with, rather than scooped up a bunch of unrelated people into a ‘fam’.
Which… is nice.

In terms of spin-offs etc etc I’m ok with it even if it will probably suffer diminishing returns.
Andor must be the most tenuous spin-off within the Star Wars universe, but its strength is actually that – ignore the Skywalker lore and just tell a story.
So, you never know.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@vickymallard

Hello, and welcome.

My assumption from watching the ep was that the Bi-generation allowed 15 to “shed” all his angst, leaving it in 14, which then 14 would work through in his (more) sedentary retirement. And 14 would not be able to regen / bi-gen again, so would age “normally” and presumably die of old age / accident or illness at some point in the future. This new era is meant to be a soft reboot, so that makes sense, in my head at least.

Regarding every previous regeneration being a bi-generation, then I don’t really have a definitive answer here. I understand RTD2 said this, but there is no in-show evidence (yet) that the previous regens were bi-gens. If anything the in-show dialogue seemed to go against this. I’d have to watch it again but 15 (?) made a comment along the lines of “I’ve heard this [bi-gen] was a possibility but….”, from which I infer the bi-gen was a) unusual, and b) never experienced by the Doc before.

Your analysis of the implications of every regen being a bi-gen highlights a number of problems with this in terms of in-show DW logic, and I don’t have any answers that make sense (yet!). I’m sure the Collective will come up with something though….

 

@oblique

I think this is the BBC not having the courage of its convictions when casting a black lead. The casting is well overdue anyway and smacks of tokenism

I am intrigued by this comment, particularly the first part. While I can easily envisage a situation where 14 sticks around, with a spin-off (assuming lots of boring stuff like: is the actor up for it, do they have the budget for it, who would be assigned to write it etc….is sorted out), in reality they could have brought Tennant back as 10 at any time., and still could. OK, he’s aged somewhat but this can be “handwaved and vibed” away quite easily in-story. I think the reason for the creative decision to do a split like the bi-gen was to give the soft reboot a fresh-ish slate to work with, and that’s all.

I’d be surprised if the BBC thought a black Doctor would drive audiences away, even with the ratings experience they had with a female lead. If anything, I’d say that RTD2 is more of a recognition that the stories that 14 had to work with did not engage well with the audience. The Doc’s gender then just became a stick that some of t’Internet thought they could use to beat the show with. As for tokenism, I think there’s plenty of evidence that the BBC have not done that here (being sensitive to the changing audience is not the same thing).

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

 

@whisht

As I was watching, I wondered if the cut cards would yield anything meaningful. When the 8 Clubs came up, I was a bit stumped, but knew someone here would have an in-depth view.

For my part, it seemed to be a bit of foreshadowing, and with “Eight” sounding like “Ate” and a Club looking a bit like a Brassica, my suspicions were confirmed right at the end, when Cauliflower Cheese was served up at the meal. Expect this dish to turn out to be the Big Bad of 15’s first season. 🙂

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

<span class=”useratname”>@oblique To be honest, much as I’ve enjoyed him in these three episodes, Ncuti’s bounding energy made Tennant’s Doctor seem, if anything, ripe for retirement. (Don’t you think he looks tired?). And I don’t mean that in a snide way – he needs to rest and recuperate. If I’d known ahead of time how the episode would go I absolutely would have worried he was being kept as a back up just in case. But having watched it, it just felt as though fourteen is being given a happy ending. </span>

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@wishit I agree. I actually really enjoy the Star Wars spinoffs- and as a rule, the further they move from the Skywalkers the better (though I liked that Hayden got a bit of a revival.

I think I just like spin offs, I like seeing the wider implications of the created universe explored. I never watched the Sarah Jane one, but I liked Torchwoid (up to a point), I liked Class. I’m usually here for extra content.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@whohar

“Eight” sounding like “Ate” and a Club looking a bit like a Brassica, my suspicions were confirmed right at the end, when Cauliflower Cheese was served up at the meal. Expect this dish to turn out to be the Big Bad of 15’s first season.

The Cheese Wheel of Time?

Planet of the Cheesey Wotsits?

 

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@oblique

There’s no way no14 is going to stay put when the Earth is once again under threat (checks fobwatch) I think this is the BBC not having the courage of its convictions when casting a black lead

Well, if RTD is to be believed, that isn’t the way they are thinking at the moment  https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-david-tennant-return-newsupdate/

The way I understand it, the bi-generation, allowing the old version of the Doctor to hand over responsibility and retire, was a gentle and symbolic way of putting the past of the show with all its accumulated complications to bed before a reset – and the fact that it is intended to be a complete reset  has been trumpeted for months.  Naturally RTD and everyone concerned have been keen to promote the show, but to all appearances they really do have great confidence for its future with Ncuti Gatwa. Judging by what we have seen of him so far he looks completely right as  the Doctor and, as @whohar says, and for the reasons he stated, there is no sign that tokenism has been a factor in the casting.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@juniperfish @whohar

Androgum chef prepared succulent half dressed nubile human companion Thermidor

Eric Seward’s cheesy Dalek surprise ala ‘Soylent Green’

Oi! You’re Scottish! Fry me some cheese!

Cardiff Bay Monterey Jack Welsh Rarebit

Cheese and Purple Celery

Carrot Juice

[WhoHar @whohar]

@juniperfish @ps1l0v3y0u

A Gouda Man Goes to War

The Parting of the Wheys

Captain Colby Jack Harkness

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

Wild Danish Blue Yonder

[Whisht @whisht]

@whohar – ha ha!
I really will have to rewatch The Giggle as I missed the hate of cauliflower cheese.
It’s a marvellous dish!

Though The Macra(ni and Cheese) Terror is a bit much.

I also realise that I really really shouldn’t try and delve into sifting through the semiotics of Who.

;¬)

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@whisht

cauliflower cheese. It’s a marvellous dish!

Can’t argue with that, it made me the Mudlark I am; likewise the Macra(ni) Cheese, regarding which the only terrors were my best friend and me when it appeared on the school dinner menu 😜

Looking forward, maybe the Toymaker’s phantasmagorical legions to come will include that well known Greek/Gallic hybrid the Gorgonzola

 

[BobbyFatv2 @bobbyfatv2]

The Cheese of Morbius

 

The Cheese of Fear

 

The Cheese of Doom

 

The Talons of Wensleydale Chiang

[GraemeLewis @graemelewis]

ARMAGEDDON TRIVIA-TIME (lords)!
Re. Russel T. Davies’ short 2023 TV Season of “Doctor Who”.
In order to boost audience ratings, actor David Tennant was resurrected as the good (if occasionally ET genocide-making) Doctor (he did do genocide to the innocent children and relatives of hostile Alien Spiderwoman, the Rachnos): he is restored for four episodes and then unlike all his predecessor-selves, instead of REGENERATING into a single new actor, he bi-generates into two. But methinks, given that it’s real women’s bodies which co-produce new life and do all the actual Childbirth, it would have been smarter if the first-recorded FEMALE had been brought back to do the BI-GENERATING, rather than a male one bigenerating into two men. Let us not be femmophobic about this.
Although many Dr. Who fans were not smart enough or imaginative enough to appreciate the mainly brilliant Whovian storylines starring Ms. Whittaker, and viewer ratings reportedly dropped significantly during her tenure, that audience figure would have surely climbed again for one more episode starring her in which SHE bi-generated. (After all, every good Whovian would want to check out Mcuti Gatwa’s debut, especially given that he’s the first-recorded male Doctor of colour). Personally, I think the low appreciation of the Jodie Reign was mainly down to the plain old-fashioned sexism and misogyny, given that there’s nothing wrong with her acting skills. The bi-generated David Tennant went on to live happily every after with Donna Noble’s family – well (had she wanted), the bi-generated Jodie Doctor (who as Woman, really SHOULD have been the Bigenerator) – let’s not be femmophobic!!) could have gone on to live happily ever after with lovely Yorkshire policewoman Yaz, who clearly fancied her, Etcetera etcetera ad triviam.

Russel T. Davies went slightly downhill in my mere personal estimation when he used the “Zeedax” armbands critics AS MOCKERY OF so-called covid “anti-vaxxers” in his Dr. Poo episode “The Giggle”. This man would go ballistically bananas if anyone mocks gay men, or lesbians, or middle-sexuals, or persons of colour, or persons of any persecuted minority in the world – except (it would seem) that minority who have the intelligence to question the safety of so-called covid “vaccines”. RTD (if he survives this!) may yet come to regret such mockery of a minority as the officially documented numbers of injuries and deaths, caused not by the renamed flu called covid-19 but by its pharmaceutical pseudo-“cure”, continue to grow. As, alas, they probably will. Don’t wear that Zeedax!

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@graemelewis

this is all very well and good but give us some jokes about cheese…

[winston @winston]

It ain’t easy being cheesy!

[Robert Caligari @robertcaligari]

I wish this “Fourteenth Doctor” nonsense would just stop. Like…completely.

This is not an entirely separate and unique incarnation unto himself. It doesn’t act any differently from Doctor 10. (At least, Tennant doesn’t perform the part like it is.) Neither John Hurt or Jo Martin have been canonized as part of the “official” line-up; why David Tennant 2.0? What’s wrong with simply addressing him as the “Glitch Doctor,” just as Hurt is referred to the War Doctor, or Martin as the Fugitive Doctor?

To me, this smacks of Tennant favoritism gone into hyperdrive.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@robertcaligari

Who is to say 14 is gratuitous? Who is to say he a positive incarnation? This is the same Timelord Invictus who wasted a whole regeneration to preserve himself. His metacrisis version commits genocide and is viewed by the original as ‘born of battle full of blood and anger and revenge’ just as he was. Perhaps he contains an ‘amalgamation of the darker sides of his nature??’

The War Doctor and Fugitive Doctor were in The Rogue scan but 10/14 only appeared once. The shock face was REG. REG/GI insinuated himself into the Doctor’s timeline at Trenzalore.

What exactly is the Vlinx… the ‘V’ link??

By the way the only regeneration NOT seen on screen (if you don’t count McCoy in the Colin Baker wig) is 2/3, a regeneration forced by the Timelords… or was that actually The Division? It could have even been another bigeneration. btw Bernard Horsfall, the chief Timelord in The War Games, turned up again as Goth in The Deadly Assassin…

The Fugitive Doctor’s Tardis is a police box; why if Ruth predates 1?

 

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