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@scaryb – Good thought on the resonance of Larkin to the story arc via his most famous “they f- you up” poem on the difficult relationship between parents and children:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse

I agree “Splice” is a very odd name for a kid, and I wonder if her name is also meant to resonate with the story-arc, because what do we commonly think of when we use the word “splice”? Gene-splicing.  And now we know the Time Lords were created by Tecteun by gene-splicing the Timeless Child’s (the Doctor’s) DNA into Shobogan DNA.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that those great foes in The Time War, the Daleks and the Time Lords, now turn out to be species which have both have been genetically engineered by Mengele-type immoral scientists (Davros and Tecteun respectively).

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@blenkinsopthebrave

Yes re the ambiguity of the last lines of the poem:

Our almost-instinct almost true: 
What will survive of us is love

And I’m back to thinking about the Master and the Doctor and their relationship.

We’ve got the Chekhov’s gun of finding out in The Giggle that the Master was imprisoned inside a gold tooth by The Toymaker (which we see being picked up by someone unknown in that episode, after the Doctor banishes the Toymaker). So we know the Master is getting out of that sparkly tooth, right? And coming back at some point in the Gatwa era.

The Master’s genocide of Gallifrey seems, in The Timeless Children,  to have come from a narcissist rage that the Doctor (thanks to Tecteun’s unethical genetic experiements) was revealed as the origin of all the Time Lords.

But I wonder… what if in all this twisted once-upon-a-timey-wimey, something terrible happened to the child (children) the Master and the Doctor once had together? Something so painful neither of them ever speak of it, but it’s what eats away at the toxic core of their relationship – the canker in the rose. And finding out the Doctor is, technically, the parent of all Timelords (when they’ve lost their own child/ children) sends the Master over the edge.

What will survive of us is love, but love can be very tainted love – “There’s always a twist at the end”…

Obviously my bonkerising is over-heating and I’ll have to go and have a my tea to calm down 🙂

If Moffat was showrunner I think I’d be on the money, as Moffat loves a family drama, but not so sure this is where RTD2 is going with it…

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@ps1l0v3y0u

Is Ruby human or Timelord? River only became a Timelady because she was exposed in vivo to The Vortex.

Well Rory believed/chose to accept that.

 

Well I snorted at that – poor faithful old Rory – but of course if what you imply were the alternative, the Doctor would, in marrying River, have actually married his own daughter so… yikes…

So Ruby may manifest as human but….

Yes, quite – and of course now I think about it, the Doctor, as The Timeless Child, is in some sense the “parent” of all the Time Lords because Tecteun gene-spliced the child-Doctor’s (alien) regenerative powers into the DNA of Gallifrey’s native Shobogans to create the new “race” of Time Lords.

A more directly biological descendant of the Doctor’s (daughter, granddaughter etc.) would have more of the Doctor’s unknown origin-species DNA, than most Time Lords, and perhaps, like the Doctor, unlimited-to-twelve regenerative powers. Which might mean Ruby, if she is a direct descendant, is a lot older than she looks!

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Apologies for the double-post above folks – @craig please do delete one of them – not sure why it duplicated?

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I went back for a rewatch and am thinking about the “hidden song deep inside her soul” that Maestro discovers with some shock that Ruby has inside her, Carol of the Bells, the song that was playing the night she was born.

“How can a song have so much power, and power like him… the oldest one… he can’t have been there… the night of her birth…what for, what for, what for?” Maestro says.

Snow starts falling in the room as the song erupts from inside Ruby.

So the Oldest One, is that the oldest of the Toymaker’s legions? Perhaps that is also Beep the Meep’s boss?

Carol of the Bells was originally a Ukrainian song with different lyrics which are:

“Bountiful evening, bountiful evening, a New Year’s carol;
A little swallow flew into the household
and started to twitter,
to summon the master:
“Come out, come out, O master,
look at the sheep pen,
there the ewes have given birth
and the lambkins have been born
Your goods [livestock] are great,
you will have quite a sum of money (by selling them)
If not money, it is worth nothing (literal translation “money is chaff from all the grain”)
You have a dark-eyebrowed beautiful wife
If not money, it is worth nothing
you have a dark-eyebrowed beautiful wife.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchedryk_(song)

Let’s just notice that “The Master” is summoned in these lyrics… hmmmmm….

I’m warming up to my theory that the Doctor and the Master once had children together.

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@scaryb

Re The Skye Boat Song – that’s also a call back to the Troughton era (the Yeti in London (recently rediscovered and revitalised)) – Troughton plays it on his flute.

Someone on T’Other place mentioned that the Great Intelligence (whom we meet for the first time in that Troughtn story) is associated with snow. so there’s a possible link to Clara, as she scattered herself through the Doctor’s timeline in Moffat’s The Name of the Doctor to defeat the Great Intelligence.

Someone else on T’Other place pointed out that snow, as frozen water, suggests a possible link to Amy Pond and River Song.

I think RTD2 and Moff are determined to leave as many diversionary breadcrumbs as possible to keep us guessing regarding the mystery of Ruby’s parentage.

So far we have:

1) Related to the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, either as a descendent or (in timey wimey fashion, as a parent) because of the Susan Twist actor who seems to follow Ruby through time

2) Related to Amy/ River via different forms of water association

3) Related to Clara because Clara jumped into the Doctor’s timeline to defeat The Great Intelligence, who is associated with snow

4) Possibly seeded by The Great Intelligence as a trap for the Doctor

Any others?

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@blenkinsopthebrave Yes, and the Doctor quotes Philip Larkin at the end of the episode; “What will survive of us is love” which is from the poem An Arundel Tomb:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47594/an-arundel-tomb

which is about a lovers’ tomb and contains a reference to snow:

“Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity…”

and the last verse is:

“Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.”

I’m definitely getting tingles about the idea of beloveds separated through time – whether those beloveds are parents and children or lovers or both remains to be seen… but Ruby is pulling snow, ephemeral beautiful snow, through time and space and memory.

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And there is singing in this episode again – the Doctor sings the Skye Boat Song.

Obviously that’s a nod to Gatwa’s Scottish self. It’s also a song about an exile (Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Stuart would-be King) and one who tries to return home, but cannot, and must ultimately live the rest of his life in exile. So perhaps that song resonated with the Doctor as he contemplated his mortality (pretty sure you can’t regenerate if you get blown to smithereens) now that Gallifrey has been destroyed (again).

Apparently, the Skye Boat Song is a 19thC adaptation of an older 18thC Gaelic song, Cuckoo of the Grove, in which a man laments his lost love:

Chuachag nan Craobh, Cuckoo Of The Grove

Who is the other parent of the Doctor’s child/ children? Are we circling that?

We don’t, of course, know whether the Doctor was in a female or male incarnation when they became a parent (or indeed, whether the Doctor’s child/ children were grown in the Looms).

Then there’s the ditty the Doctor recites:

“I went down to the beach

And there she stood,

Dark and tall, at the edge of the wood.

‘The sky’s too big. I’m scared,’ I cried.

She replied,

‘Young man, don’t you know there’s more to life

Than the moon and president’s wife?'”

A beach at the edge of a wood put me in mind of Edward Lear’s wonderful poem The Owl and the Pussycat:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43188/the-owl-and-the-pussy-cat

which my child self loved, but which I didn’t realise, until much later, was a queer love song (no gender revealed for either the Owl or the Pussycat).

Who is the mysterious “she” in the Doctor’s ditty?

Apparently (I’d forgotten this, so credit to others on the interwebs) Missy tells Clara in The Magician’s Apprentice (9×01) when Clara asks how long she’s know the Doctor: “Since always. Since the Cloister Wars, since the night he stole the moon and the president’s wife, since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie; can you guess which one?”

So I’m back to wondering whether Missy/ The Master and the Doctor were once lovers and parents together.

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Wow Gatwa is excellent, isn’t he! And Gibson held her own beautifully.

Those tense exchanges as the Doctor balances on the landmine – the fear, the stress, the emotion and the thinking calculation arising from the depths of our very old Gallifreyan friend, as he deals with his very young Earth companion in this deeply dangerous spot he’s got them both into – wonderfully gripping.

Delighted to have Moff back aboard the Who train.

The Doctor is as scathing about capitalist war-for-profit as we would wish him to be.

And who could have forseen that this episode would, in bitter tragedy, be resonating quite so heavily in our world as it is now. If you haven’t heard of “Lavender” and “The Gospel”, Israel’s war AIs controlling their drone-strikes see here:

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

@scaryb  Yes, the determination of RTD2′ s Who to bop Disney audiences on the nose with food for political thought is definitely a relief. And Moff really exposes that perennial platitude, “thoughts and prayers”, heard from religious pro-gun Republicans whenever there is another hideous school shooting, with targeted venom here.

The Doctor referring to himself openly as a “Dad” is definitely intriguing and made me wonder if, in some timey wimey manner, Ruby will turn out to be his daughter and hence Susan’s mother.

The snow fall, combined with this series’ theme of the world of fantasy bleeding into reality, has made me think of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Will the Doctor end up with a splinter of ice in his hearts, with Ruby’s love required to save him?

 

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@whohar – Addendum – I think this was the interview Gatwa did with the gay magazine Attitude which caused ire in certain quarters:

https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/ncuti-gatwa-attitude-interview-464142/

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@whohar <waves> I like Martin Bellam as a successor to our sadly missed Dan Martin, but the comments section closes so early on T’Other Place now it’s ridiculous, and it’s always been a bit of a hornets’ nest – hence @craig our Emperor’s creation of this excellent and well-moderated space.

The thing is, the Guardian’s Doctor Who fandom is just one particular slice of (grouchy older) fandom (I like to think we’re the sweeter side of that).

RTD2 has the extremely difficult task of getting the show to appeal to existing fans (across 60 years of the programme!) and ensure the show continues by attracting new young fans, including being “family friendly” (including in Disney terms now) for parents watching with their kids.  His own RTD1 era is “Old Who” (the revival began in 2005, twenty years ago!) as far as fans who were kids when they watched it, and are now in their 30s, are concerned.

I’ve had a look at the official BBC Doctor Who channel on TikTok, where Gen Z are likely to be and yes, there are “No thanks Disney Who” comments but there are also lots of enthusiastic comments saying things like, “Oooh love Jinkxs Monsoon – loved them in Steven Universe” and “loved Ncuti Gatwa in Sex Education”.

It’s difficult to find Disney-per-programme viewing data. I think it may be available via Nielsen, but I can’t find anything yet. And we don’t have figures for BBC viewing yet which captures everything yet (including viewing on catch-up in the 7 days following broadcast):

UK Doctor Who Ratings (2024) Accumulator

Key takeaway is we can’t accurately gauge reaction to the RTD2 era based on one or two comment spaces, but have to look across a range of them, always bearing in mind the way t’internet borks everything because of rage-gagement – the way negative click-baity headlines and takes so readily capture eyeballs, and are thus incentivised by the online engine.

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An interview with Moffat which might count as spoilery as it’s partly about his episode Boom coming up next:

https://www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/tv/doctor-who/the-big-interview-doctor-whos-steven-moffat/

He reflects on what it’s like coming back “full circle” (he didn’t use that expression, but he should have) to being an episode writer on RTD’s show.

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@ps1l0v3y0u  I wonder if SLC stands for the material the 45s and LPs are available on? Perhaps it is short for “shellac” which was of course the material records were made of before vinyl.

As vinyl replaced shellac from the 1940s, perhaps this is another sign that we are in alternative time-line/ universe, one in which vinyl has not been invented to “our” time-sequence. Obviously, shellac records were 78s, so 45s and LPs are vinyl-format in “our” timeline, but perhaps that’s not the case in “this” timeline.

I think we’ll have to look out for more of these little signs that the timeline has branched. We already have “mavity”.

@mudlark and @scaryb you’ve both pointed out that the Doctor and Ruby’s outfits are a bit “off” for 1963. @scaryb you mentioned a Motown influence for the Doctor and nice spot that Ruby’s hair is more 1950s @mudlark.

Of course, this in-episode timeline has been altered by Maestro, and is (presumably) restored when they are defeated so the shellac records and the slightly off outfits may be resolved now we are back to the “original” timeline.

But the bleeding of imagination/ fantasy into “reality”, especially epitomised by the snow falling in the Doctor’s memory that then materialises on the Space Baby ship, is already a through-line.

 

 

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@bunface @craig @scaryb – loving the Chris Waites and the Carollers spot and Easter egg pointing to Susan again.

@blenkinsopthebrave

I seem to recall the Doctor telling Ruby that they are in London at the same time as The Hartnell Doctor and Susan. (Or words to that effect.) And at some point a bit later he stares wistfully across at where his earlier incarnation, Susan, Ian and Barbara would be. (Or did the romantic in me imagine that..?)

No, you didn’t imagine it – I saw that wistful look as well. Makes me wonder how often the Nu Who Doctor has been tempted, since the destruction of Gallifrey, to go back in time and see Susan again in 1963. I suspect, many times.

Now – why is 1925 the year the Toymaker and Maestro pick to start messing with Earth? Yes, in The Giggle, this was tied to the invention of television, as a new medium for propagandistic control.

1925 was also the year that Mussolini declared himself Dictator of Italy, so it was the beginning of European fascism. I reckon RTD2 is likely to want to comment on fascism, given its awful contemporary resurgence, and Doctor Who’s long engagement with such commentary, beginning in 1963 with Terry Nation’s The Daleks.

@jimthefish <waves> Well Whedon wanted to be Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, whose Xena musical episode The Bitter Suite (3×12) did it first, and brilliantly. Buffy really owes a lot to Xena – the quippy combination of comedy, action and drama. Lucy Lawless was absolutely superb at executing all three, as was Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The thing is, you have to earn a musical episode, in my view. The Doctor and Ruby singing in The Church on Ruby Road worked as it was part of the Goblins’ own ritual. And I enjoyed the ’60s twist dance-off at the end of The Devil’s Chord, but I’m not sure I can handle a singing/ dancing number in every Who episode this series. On the other hand, I understand that if you’ve got two stars who can sing and dance as well as Gatwa and Gibson can, the temptation to utilise their talents is undeniably there.

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@scaryb

I’m also a huge fan of the fishes in this Forum!

Awww, right back at ya, Scary.

@miapatrick

Yes to your point about the episode’s commentary on reproductive rights, parenting and refugee rights. And all perfectly in keeping with Doctor Who’s long tradition of being political science fiction, from the Daleks-as-Nazis-metaphor to the consideration of religion as a regressive force opposed to collaborative politics in The Curse of Peladon, to the unethical biological experiments of the Cat Nuns in New Earth, to name-check a few of many, many examples over sixty years.

(Indeed, I still can’t get over the audacity and brilliance of RTD1 in making The Doctor, our lovely Doctor, responsible for the genocide of his own people [as far as we, and he knew until The Day of the Doctor] at the start of Nu Who, so the audience could queasily contemplate whether genocide was ever, ever, justified).

But reproductive rights/ parenting and refugee rights are both such big issues, and I think Space Babies suffered from trying to cover both in one opening swoop. I supposed RTD2 tied them together because they are both directly relevant to this incarnation of the Doctor, who is, we know now, an abandoned (or refugee?) baby adopted by Gallifreyans (sadly, by an abusive adoptive Gallifreyan mother). And then on the meta level, whereby Gatwa is himself a baby refugee, whose parents arrived in Scotland from Rwanda, fleeing the genocide there, when he was only two years’ old.

I think there was also something meta going on in terms of the snot-monster. I wonder if Disney was a bit queasy, in negotiations, about the long Doctor Who tradition of monsters so scary that kids had to hide behind the sofa. So RTD2 opened with a story about how monsters are actually essential to child development (as Nan-I knew) because they develop the imagination and help children experience fear and overcoming it.

The ideas were there in Space Babies but the execution just felt… clumsy.

@mudlark – love your scientist’s brain wondering how the baby-methane propelled space station was going to be successfully decelerated into orbit at the refugee-welcoming planet!

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@scaryb – Ah thanks for clueing me in to the Susan Twist mystery – love it.

I agree, @janetteb , given the Doctor’s line in this episode, “There’s always a twist at the end” and the fact that his granddaughter Susan is also given a mention in-episode, it seems perfectly logical to wonder whether the “twist” is Susan. Perhaps Susan is Ruby’s birth grandmother…

Of course the showrunners are fully au fait with the speculative element of their fandom, so they’ll no doubt be enjoying immensely sending us off on various bits of bonkers theorising and misdirection across the timelines.

As for people making accounts on here merely to trollsplain why Doctor Who, a speculative fiction show chock full of aliens, needs more “normal straight people” – my eyes are rolling so far back in my head:

I wonder what gender/sexuality Daleks are, or the Nestene consciousness, or how “normal and straight” the Alzarian tripartite lifecycle is (Alzarians/ Marshmen/ Marsh-spiders) or Gallifreyans, given their gender-fluid regenerative capacities etc., etc., etc…

 

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So we begin with a literal butterfly effect… Ruby steps on a Red Admiral in the Jurassic and the timey wimey ripple effect transforms her into an alien, one who somewhat resembles a Star Trek Andorian crossed with Bjork.

We already know, from the “mavity” incident, that the butterfly effect is going to be an RTD2 Series 14 theme. And RTD2 has many fine qualities, but subtlety is not one of them.

Honestly, the space babies and their bodily fluids humour (the snot and the nappy methane the Doctor used to fly the station) made me cringe so hard I nearly fell down the back of the sofa. I had a similar reaction to RTD1’s farting Slitheen.

Luckily, Gatwa and Gibson’s acting was top-notch and carried me through the absurdity.

Did I mention subtlety is not RTD’s thing? But that’s OK, as he has other fine qualities which he brings to writing Who; passionate humanism, egalitarianism and an abiding faith in the power of love. His dig at the pro-life lobby who insist babies must be born but then won’t look after, them raised a smile from me, as did his passionate defence of refugees and the kind of planets and places which do welcome them. Coming from a Doctor played by a Rwandan refugee to the UK, that’s moving and meaningful, particularly in the currently vile “anti-migrant” “stop the boats” rhetorical political landscape Britain is engulfed in. I am a huge fan of RTD’s full-chest Doctor Woke.

The theme of fairy tales entering the universe and becoming materially manifest, evident already with the goblins at Christmas, continues, with the baby-farm space station’s created-for-children monster in the basement. I love this theme for Gatwa era Who – the liminal space between reality and imagination.

And this altered reality in which imagination manifests materially was also clearly present in the falling snow which emerged onto the space station from the Doctor’s memories of Ruby’s birth.

RTD2 seems to be “doing a Moffat” in making Ruby a mysterious girl/ entity/ puzzle whom the Doctor must figure out. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed River as the Time Traveller’s Wife mystery that she was, I was less enamoured of Clara’s “impossible girl” and I am now decidely over any more woman as the “dark continent” Freudian stuff in my Who.

However, because the Doctor and Ruby are now both mysterious orphans whose genetic parents are unknown, and their bond is clearly partly forged by a shared sense of personal displacement, I’ll allow it.

 

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Like you, @scaryb <waves> I’m optimistic overall, despite hoping the bombast dial gets turned down just a smidge going forward. Gatwa and Gibson are both excellent, and charmingly believable in the Doctor and Ruby’s newfound excitment at hanging out together.

I love ’60s style and thought the Doctor and Ruby were also smoking in their era outfits. Enjoyed the joyful dance-off at the end in block-colours in the studio canteen and corridors too.  We need some of the optimism of the ’60s in our own currently miserable era, and maybe that was the point of the episode.

No actual Beatles songs in the episode.  Too expensive, apparently, even with Disney’s money.

The Doctor mentioned one or two, Lady Madonna being one, which paen to a single Mum trying to make rent with babies to feed, fits with the theme of orphans and abandoned babies running like a neon streak through the Gatwa era.

I think the first song which the Doctor and Ruby should have heard the Beatles recording in a Maestro-free universe (rather than the soul-sucking dirge about a dog) would have been Besame Mucho or Love Me Do, but the musicologists on here will know better than me.

Jinkx Monsoon, playing the Toymaker’s non-binary daughter Maestro, clearly had a blast chewing the camp scenery to the max. RTD2 is absolutely determined to make Gammons’ heads explode this time around isn’t he – refugee babies followed by drag queens.

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@dentarthurdent Oh dear – well spotted! Good old Grauniad 🙂

For anyone feeling stressed by the New Year (and aren’t we all) here is an oldie but a goodie (particularly if you are not a fan of the “mindfulness” trend):

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Hello All,

Lovely interview with Capaldi in The Observer today:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/14/i-like-more-trouble-peter-capaldi-interview-criminal-record

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@ps1l0v3y0u

So, are we looking at an exploration of the Doctor’s origin prior to Tecteun and The Division, do you think?

I think there’s a lot which could be done with this theme, even without the plan being that the Doctor actively goes looking for his origins pre-adoption by Gallifrey, or finds them.

Gatwa’s Doctor has already been drawn to a fellow foundling, in Ruby, so the psychological ramifications of the Doctor’s sense of themselves as an orphan of unknown descent, are clearly on the table.

Tecteun was a very malevolent adoptive mother, so perhaps some of the Doctor’s adventures with Ruby will involve situations with cruel parents, or other abandoned or experimented on children, of whatever alien form.

If Fourteen’s mistake in invoking myth at the edge of the universe (with that salt line) has let the Toymaker back into the universe, perhaps it has had other effects as well. Are we dealing with a branch in the timeline of the universe? So the universe Gatwa’s Doctor now inhabits is one where mythological creatures and figures have become embodied in reality?

That would explain why goblins are now manifest on earth.

And it fits with the timeline altering effect of Fifteen and Donna’s encounter with Newton too (a universe where “mavity” not “gravity” now holds the heavens in place).

The Doctor’s bi-generation itself can be seen as a symbolic bifurcation of reality.

As for Mrs. Flood,  your suggestion @ps1l0v3y0u about a link to the Capaldi episode Before the Flood, is interesting, because that episode was about a bootstrap paradox. And “mavity” I think will turn out to be a time-altering “butterfly effect”, so I wonder if  “the flood” in Mrs. Flood’s name is an allusion to the time-alteration initiated by Fourteen at the edge of the universe, whereby myths now “flood” into reality.

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Well I loved it – Gremlins meets It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s fresh, it’s a little bit timey wimey, and the Doctor is a huge dandy who enjoys eating up the dancefloor in a kilt!

Just how many times did he change fabulous outfits in that episode?

Intrigued by all his jewellery and what meanings it might hold.

And who is the mystery lady neighbour who knows what a TARDIS is? A Time Lady?

Plus, looks like Fourteen and Donna’s butterfly effect meeting with Isaac Newton is still rippling through earth’s timeline – “mavity” is still go. What else has been altered?

Merry Christmas all.

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Merry Mid-Winter Solstice to all!

Thought you might enjoy this naughty clip with Tom Baker and Mary Tamm (Romana 1)

It’s from the “for cast and crew” outtakes/ blooper 1978 White Powder Christmas

You can find out more about it here:

https://archive.org/details/WhitePowderChristmas

 

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@oochillyo Sorry to hear you and your family are not well. Sounds like a nasty flu or Covid to me, with cough and a fever.

Get some rest. Once you feel better, I think you might enjoy Kurt Vonnegut’s writing (if you haven’t already read him).

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Sneaking out of work briefly to wonder whether a 6oth Anniversary “What’s Your Favourite Who Series/ Story/ Episode from 60 years of Who” topic might be nice @craig for Yuletide? Seeing as the BBC has kindly made so much of the back catalogue available on iplayer at present…

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@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?

 

 

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@phaseshift – Oh that’s lovely background on the comic story of the Star Beast (I’ve never read it).

The new version of Doctor Who Confidential is called Doctor Who Unleashed, available on IPlayer, one episode of “behind the scenes” for each of the specials. In The Star Beast associated one, David Tennant meets Dave Gibbons and Pat Mills on set and gets them to sign his original Beep the Meep comic, which he’d kept all these year – give it a watch – happiness all round.

On class and Doctor Who, I watched a great For The Love of Sci-fi panel with Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper (it’s really recent – 2023) speaking about their time on the show, and Ecclestone talks a lot about being working class and entering the world of acting. They also discuss the snobbery (and frankly, hate, in some corners of Who fandom) Billie Piper encountered when it was first announced she would play Rose (Ecclestone implies some of that was class snobbery and I’m sure he’s right):

(I’ve forgotten how to embed video here, but this is the link).

RTD and Chris and Billie are all from working class backgrounds and RTD’s determination to expand Doctor Who’s class life-worlds on screen, as something fundamental to his revival, gave Nu Who an incredible fresh start.  That long shot in Rose where the two of them talk as they walk through Rose’s estate, and the Doctor gives his spine-tingling speech in response to her  question, “Who are you?”:

“I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That’s who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”

is iconic, and a far cry from the historic upper-middle-class-ese of the Time Lords (“my dear chap”) affected (as well as rebelled against) by the Fourth Doctor (the first to have a story set on Gallifrey – The Deadly Assassin) when in the company of his own people.

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The Goblin Song:

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

Music by Murray Gold and lyrics by RTD2 – all the proceeds are going to Children in Need, which in this miserable Britain where so many children are currently going hungry, is absolutely very Doctor, and made me quite teary actually, because RTD2 is really intent on using his regenerated Dr. Who platform (and Disney’s money) with his whole chest.

@mudlark You deduction sounds solid, and as the Doctor was a foundling too (and probably still processing that) – Ruby and Fifteen are kindred spirits. Tecteun was a kind of Goblin King really, wasn’t she, gobbling up her adopted Timeless Child, for her own genetic experiments.

The name Ruby Sunday made me think of The Rolling Stones Ruby Tuesday:

“There’s no time to lose, ”

I heard her say

Catch your dreams before they slip away

Dying all the time

Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind

Ain’t life unkind?”

What does the Doctor dream of?

 

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@jimthefish

Really enjoyed reading your Cathode Rave article.

And yet, it would be wrong to say that the Baker era, for all its metatextual playfulness is wholly apolitical. The lack of seriousness in the Fourth Doctor is a political play in itself and, like his predecessor, there is always an edge of mocking disdain in any of the Doctor’s dealings with authority and he is far less indifferent to injustice than the First and Second Doctors appeared to be. You just have to dig a little deeper with this Doctor.

Baker’s Who often really reflected on questions of power. It was just, very often, rather more implicit than explicit about it. Take The Face of Evil, for instance (a fantastic story) where essentially the Fourth Doctor’s own arrogance and carelessness (in repairing Xoanon but forgetting to wipe his own memory print from the process, causing the computer to develop psychosis) caused enormous suffering on a planet the Doctor simply flew away from and forgot about. Generations of the descendants of the original space-ship expedition were experimented on by Xoanon as a result of the Doctor’s error. The Doctor’s intervention was intended to be kindly, but it directly caused Xoanon’s eugenics experiments, and shaped the lives of Leela’s people for generations.  The story is implicitly critical of colonial arrogance, embodied in the Doctor himself.

But – I probably should be commenting on your Cathode Rave blog directly, rather than here….

@scaryb and @jimthefish – definitely love the new sonic and what a great motto. Ncuti Gatwa is going to slay (with words).

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@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.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Red was the Rani’s signature colour; she was given to wearing red gloves as I recall, to go with the rest of her red sparkly outfit. But as @phaseshift and @mudlark point out, the red nails might be a reference to the more recent “Cult of Saxon” which recalls RTD1 era’s John Simm Master.

I rather hope we’re not getting a retro-reincarnation of the Master; Simm was not one of my favourite incarnations. If RTD1 has a fault as a Who writer, it is when his melodrama shades into the bombastic, and the Simm Master really ended up embodying that (for me, at least).

Thanks @scaryb for the H. G. Wells story link – lovely – magical and creepy at once. And definitely feels like an inspiration.

If I had a quibble with The Toymaster/ Doctor face-off this time, it was that Donna was a lot more canny about the fact the Toymaster was likely to cheat, than the Doctor was. From watching the Hartnell era Toymaster, it was clear he was a dirty rotten cheat and not at all above fixing the “games” in his favour.

@ps1l0v3y0u

We all saw the fun The Toymaker had with the puppets of the Doctor’s friends

Yes indeed. I know some folks on Twitter were complaining that Yaz wasn’t mentioned, but Yaz made it safely back to Earth, after parting ways with Thirteen at her regeneration. The Toymaker deliberately picked companions who had more difficult fates because of their travels with the Doctor; Amy, Clara, Bill (even though each of them got a work-around happily ever after – Amy with Rory, Clara with Ashildr, Bill with Heather).

The idea the Toymaker will return to play puppet-master to some of the Doctor’s companions, is definitely one to watch.

@scaryb and @mudlark

Binary, dopplegangers, bi-generation

Indeed we might add, non-binary/ bi-gendered and bisexual.

In human terms, the Doctor is explicitly bisexual (bi-romantic) now, as rather tentatively explored in Thirteen/ Yaz by Chibnall.

RTD2 having Fourteen exclaim Isaac Newton is hot in Wild Blue Yonder, is going to go somewhere, I am guessing.

Gatwa Doc has already established himself as a huge, campy flirt in The Giggle, and the combination of RTD2 and Ncuti’s Doctor (gay showrunner, gay actor) and RTD’s unabashed belief in representation as one of the moral goods of Doctor Who, and I suspect Fifteen getting involved in some male companion flirting/ romancing this incarnation around (at some point) is likely on the cards.

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Martin Belam on T’Other Place suggests that the red-nailed hand picking up the Master’s gold-tooth compression-prison is the Rani.

I do wonder if it is indeed, she.

If Ncuti-Doc has tried to heal his past selves’ traumas through “bi-generation”, giving Fourteen a family to rest with, it begs the question as to whether the new Doctor has really just skipped off trauma-free.

Whit-Doc found out her adoptive mother was both the originator of the Time Lords and also a Mengele-level child torturer/ experimenter. That means the Doctor now carries the new (as it was previously mind-wiped) knowledge that they are both an orphan and an abused child.

The Rani was also a profoundly immoral eugenicist experimenter, so I’m wondering if these themes of cosmic eugenics and abusive parents will be a thread in Fifteen’s narrative.

 

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Bi-generation? In his knickers?

Ncuti’s Doctor is as charmingly full of charisma as I knew he would be. He’s going to eat up the role.

I suppose the bifurcated regeneration is the Marvel-isation some were worried about, in that, should Tennant-Doc want to get back in his bi-generated TARDIS (and take Marvel’s money) there’s no reason why parallel adventures can’t take place. The Whoniverse expanded, in the way Disney has expanded both the Marvel and Star Wars universes on TV.

I think you’re right @craig, that RTD can’t quite ever let Tennant go. But honestly, what’s not to love about that?

In Ncuti’s world, the Master is back, in a gold tooth, and the legions of the Toymaker are still coming…

I was wondering if the Toymaker would turn out to be a member of the Doctor’s own (unknown) species. But, for now, the Toymaker’s origins remain mysterious.

Salt, the Doctor’s game with the salt line and the dopplegangers at the edge of the universe in Wild Blue Yonder, did indeed turn out to be pivotal, both allowing the Toymaker into our universe, and also being used to contain him, in his playing card box prison, inside a ring of salt, in UNIT’s vault at the end.  For now…

I do love that, in these dark times, which RTD2 very much foregrounded in the madness of “everyone thinking they’re always right” and a Government which doesn’t give a bleep about us (all of which The Toymaker merely turned up the dial on) Fourteen and Donna get to eat mac n cheese with Rose and save the moles from Wilf and live happily ever after.

 

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@whisht

… there’s an entire comment of yours on this thread I should link to as I want to hug it.

Awww shucks 🙂  I’ve been enjoying having you and @scaryb back in the DJing box, and actually some of the lyrics to that Tom Waits song you posted, Who Are You, combined with @phaseshift ‘s musing on the “Celestial” element of the Celestial Toymaker got me thinking:

“Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Well I fell in love
With your sailor’s mouth and your wounded eyes.
You better get down on the floor
Don’t you know this is war”

I just watched Tom Baker in The Deadly Assassin and the Time Lords have a CIA (which I’d completely forgotten about) – Celestial Intervention Agency –  it’s called in that episode; a “secret service” specifically charged with meddling in time. I presume, in present canon,that’s equivalent to The Division.

I also just watched the only Hartnell episode of The Celestial Toymaker, as recommended by @blenkinsopthebrave and Hartnell’s Doctor refers to the Toymaker as “immortal”.

So – some wild spec just before we all settle down for The Giggle. What if The Toymaker is a member of the Doctor’s original species. The Doctor, according to post The Timeless Children canon, is essentially immortal themselves? With an indefinite number of regenerations. Perhaps The Celestial Toymaker is back to do battle with a member of his(her) own species…

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Hello Sofa denizens,

I stumbled on this “A Life in the Day of Tom Baker” from the Sunday Times 1978

A Life in the Day of Tom Baker, 1978

Utterly charming and utterly neurotic, and far too many drinks in one day.

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@jimthefish

I love both of those ideas – “the imprinting” in particular.

Body-snatcher wise, you might wonder why the Time Lords only pick humanoids to copy, with the whole of time and space and alien forms to choose from. But I guess regeneration is plastic only within core Shobogan DNA variations.

The revivification of the Timeless Child is making me think again about how this narrative founds Time Lord origins in colonialism and eugenics.

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@mudlark

The outrage it would cause in the ARSE brigade and beyond would be delightful to witness

It really would 🙂

Yes, you’re right that Gethenian and Time Lord physiology are clearly somewhat different, but I suppose I think of Gethenians as “gender fluid” in their own way too because, as you say, at the time of kemmer, they either foreground female or foreground male for the purposes of reproduction, and any Gethenian can foreground one or the other, which is why the same individual can be both a mother and father over their life-course.

That is similar to Time Lords, although, as you say, they present female or male (or possibly sometimes intersex/ non-binary) in a fixed way, per regeneration.

In the extended Whoniverse (outside the TV show) there seems to be both the asexual reproduction Looms scenario, but also the suggestion Gallifreyan children were, at least at some point, born via pregnancy:

https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-origins-gallifrey-time-lord-children/ 

So, The Doctor could, in the Fugitive Doctor incarnation or another earlier one, have given birth to children.  I bet some showrunner, at some point, will go there.

A whole other interesting concept we haven’t really discussed yet is the fact that, by human standards, Time Lords are also “race fluid” (bearing in mind the human concept of “race” is itself a cultural construct). We’ve now seen the Doctor with black skin (Fugitive Doctor) and the Master with brown skin (Dhawan Master) as well as a lot of white (really, more accurately, pink) Docs. And of course, Gatwa-Doc will be Black. However, we don’t know if different skin tones have different cultural histories, in Gallifreyan society, or not.

Was Gallifrey ever inflected by histories of racism, as Earth has been? Or, for Time Lords, is skin colour just (for those, like Romana, with control over the process) something they take a fancy to at regeneration (I fancy darker skin this time, or lighter skin this time) or a totally insignificant detail they don’t bother thinking about at all?

 

 

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@scaryb – lovely to see you and @whisht back in the DJ box!

I’d missed the detail that it was the TARDIS that clocked Clone-Donna’s long arm at the last – clever old thing.  And yes, definitely a play on AI and its current weirdnesses with the human body. AI is terrifying frankly, so a very modern form of body horror.

I had forgotten ARSE – I’m sure RTD2 would be tickled by the concept of ARSE, and recognise it deeply.

@phaseshift – another old comrade clocking on <waves> Of course I remember Image of the Fendahl, because a) it was a Leela story and I was a big Leela fan, and b) it scared the living crap out of me. Something about the engulfment by the gestalt, and the monstrous maggoty component entities…  I was a regular reader of Terrance Dicks’ Target Doctor Who novelisations back in the day; still have collection and that’s one of them.

Yes and Fendahleen hated salt, of course.

Salt has a long religious and folkloric history, in many cultures, as a purifier and repeller of evil (probably because it was so central to the early technology of being able to cure meat).  If you’re a Supernatural fan you’ll know that salt circles are used to repel demons in that piece of modern horror Americana.  So the sacred nature of salt has travelled a long way, in human history, over several thousand years.

Drawing a line in salt at the edge of the universe, and then watching your doppleganger break through it, has got to be a psychological head-frack for the Doctor. It’s his(hers) modus operandi really, as a maverick rule-breaker, crossing lines. But The Doctor is also fundamentally an agent of kindness, rather than an agent of chaos. And yet, genocidal forces (The Time War, The Flux) have converged around him. He is haunted by himself as a result, and Wild Blue Yonder physically manifests that haunting.

@bobbyfatv2 and @jimthefish Yes, thinking about body dysmorphia and transitioning IS an interesting through-line in this episode from The Star Beast  and “Binary, Binary, Non-Binary” (Rose as the trans/ non-binary child of the Doctor/Donna metacrisis) and this emerges out of the first regeneration sequences we’ve seen in which The Doctor transitions gender; from male-presenting Capaldi to female-presenting Whittaker to male-presenting Tennant 2. Of course, that’s not the first gender-transitioning seqence for The Doctor, given the female-presenting Fugitive Doctor, and who knows how many incarnations, and of what genders, prior to her.

The Doctor has often exhibited some body dysmorphia post-regeneration, in the strangeness of  getting used to new face, new hair, new teeth etc. But, one would imagine, gender dysphoria isn’t a thing in Time Lord society, as gender transitioning (every now and then) is a natural part of Time Lord regenerative biology. Or, for those Time Lords who prefer one kind of gender presentation to another consistently (and why should there only be two?) that’s in their control? The Doctor never has much control over who he ends up as next, but Romana 1 was able to try on several possible bodies before selecting her form as Romana 2, in a very accomplished fashion.

RTD2 is, with relative subtlety, asking us to retro-imagine Time Lord society in light of the new canonicity of Time Lord gender fluidity. Stuffy patricians in the regalia of Rassilon by day, Rocky Horror Timewarp dancers by night? But that’s hidebound by our own gender “norms” and gender “transgressions”. My favourite Ursula Le Guin novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, probably captures it better; a society of gender-fluid people.  I’ll look forward to future Who where we see that version of Gallifrey.

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@thane16 Hello Puro and son!

There’s just been a really good exhibition on the Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain in London – notable for exploring Christina Rossetti’s work and Elizabeth Siddal’s work, and for bringing the class dynamics of the so-called “brotherhood” to the fore in a way earlier exhibitions of this kind would not have done (middle class men like Rossetti and Morris and their working-class models/ muses, whose own artistic contributions have been previously sidelined).

I can’t remember the reference to the Goblin Market from Smith-Doc’s tenure but his was definitely, as we discussed at the time, the most “fairy-tale” oriented run (and my favourite Nu Who to date).

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@mudlark That is incredibly cool – just read the article on wobbly spacetime.

They haven’t done the experiment suggested yet (re tiny mass fluctuations) to prove or disprove it – so the galactic jury is still out!

@jimthefish I feel your “Controversies in Dr. Woke” article should also be posted here!

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@craig That’s brilliant – times are indeed horrendous – the Doctor would be proud of you 🙂 (donated)

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Nipping back to say, that seeing your doppelganger was considered an ill omen and a harbinger of your death, in Gothic literature, as in Poe’s poem Silence (1833) here:

There are some qualities—some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence—sea and shore –
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name’s “No More.”
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!

https://poets.org/poem/silence-4

and also in Rossetti’s spooky doppelganger painting How They Met Themselves (1864) modelled on himself and his wife Elizabeth Siddal on their honeymoon (when she was also dying of consumption and laudanum addiction).

https://www.leicestergalleries.com/browse-artwork-detail/MTY5OTA=

I really did lose a breath in Wild Blue Yonder and consider that actual Donna might be left behind on the exploding space-ship with doppelganger Donna having fooled the Doctor longer term.

It’s not a spoiler to say we already know Fourteen is heading for “death” (regeneration). Whether that will tie back to the faerie lore he unleashed with that line of salt tale at the edge of the universe or not remains to be seen:

“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”

Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti (1862)

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@robertcaligari  Well, representation, casting and identity are certainly complicated contemporary questions, on several fronts, so, having a discussion about it is perfectly acceptable!  The people I have contempt for on this question are those with no interest in thoughtful debate, who just want to scream that some cultural artefact or other is “woke” because it no longer centres people like them and/or, more cynically, because it garners them attention in the outrage economy we all, unfortunately, inhabit.

In the case of Wild Blue Yonder, I wonder whether Donna and the Doctor are in the same universe as the one they left, given that the ship the TARDIS ended up on after the coffee spilling incident “fell down a wormhole” to the edge of space.  So, one intradiegetic (in-story) explanation is that Newton is mixed-race in this alternative universe.

Extra-diagetically, Netflix’s Bridgerton (not really my cup of tea, but very popular) and its bodice-ripper Regency fantasy world seems to have pioneered what is often called contemporary “blind casting” with respect to ethnicity in (loosely) historical drama.  What is great about this is it allows actors from diverse ethnic backgrounds to fully participate in this kind of drama. And it should be noted that the whiteness of fantasy (see the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films) has also been somewhat transformed as a result (see the, later, Amazon Lord of the Rings, which has some POC elves and hobbits).

What is perhaps most “fake” about Bridgerton’s kind of “historical” drama is that racism is erased. There were about 15,000 Black and brown people living in Britain in the Regency period, but they mostly worked in domestic service and their lives would have been impacted by the transatlantic slave trade and the concatenation of white supremacist “racial theory” associated with it:

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/sites-of-memory/black-lives-in-england/#:~:text=In%20the%20latter%20half%20of,service%2C%20both%20paid%20and%20unpaid

https://www.linnean.org/learning/who-was-linnaeus/linnaeus-and-race

I tend to think that dramatic license is absolutely fine in entertainment (and positive. as it also means contemporary POC actors do not have to play parts constantly inflected by the trauma of racism in historical fiction) as long as we’re not erasing such history in serious historical spaces. Often, in fact, the opposite is happening, and contemporaneous history is taking a serious look at the history of race and racism. The Linnean Society would not, fifty years ago, have explored the racist implications of Linnean theory!

Casting Hugh Grant as Martin Luther King would clearly not be acceptable today, but that’s not equivalent to blind-casting Newton as someone British mixed-race in Doctor Who, because a foundational part of King’s story is his struggle, as a Black activist, against racial segregation in a US which discriminated against African Americans. “Race” (a persistent social construct, as all geneticists will tell you) is central to King’s story.

Historically, of course, “blind casting” has gone the other way. For much of the 20thC, as earlier, Othello was played by white actors in blackface; another practice that we would not find acceptable now (given the racist history of blackface).

Nathaniel Curtis was a lovely Newton, and no doubt his appearance in Doctor Who will have encouraged lots of folk to read Newton’s Wikipedia page and learn a bit more about the actual historical figure, which can’t be bad. Newton, incidentally, was probably, to use our modern categories, asexual or gay.

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Back for breakfast…

@blenkinsopthebrave and @miapatrick <waves>  I’m guessing “mavity” isn’t just there for fun, but it’s going to be a butterfly effect, which will come back to haunt them in the next episode?

Newton uttered the word after Donna left in the TARDIS, but although she didn’t hear it, it would have been written down as such by Newton in his <i> Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica </i>and taught subsequently down the centuries. You can see the Doctor clocking the change with a quizzical look when Donna says, “At least we’ve got light, air, and mavity” on the space-ship at the edge of the universe.

But what else will flow from that small change, in terms of ripple effects in time?

I had a look at Twitter (unfortunately, Musk’s ever descending cesspit, X, now) last night, after the episode aired, and of course a certain contingent were spluttering and screeching into their cups that Newton was depicted by Nathaniel Curtis, who has a British Indian Dad.  At least there were plenty of funny replies along the lines of, oh really, an outsize gonk with the voice of Miriam Margolyes doesn’t strain your credulity but this you’re stuck on etc.

Curtis was in It’s a Sin, and I’m always a fan of writers/ directors who develop relationships with actors and recast them in their work over time. I’ve just been on a Mike Flanagan watch-a-thon and he does this, e.g. with the incredible Carla Guigno.

Of course, second on the list of the Who outrage machine, was Fourteen describing Newton as hot:

Donna: “Was it me, or was Isaac Newton hot?

Doctor: “He was so hot… Oh? Is that who I am now?”

Donna, “Well it was never that far from the surface, mate… I always thought…”

This is the second time Fourteen has asked himself who he is now. Last week he said out loud to Unit’s Shirley Bingham (with her Q’d up wheelchair) that he loved Donna, and then pulls up in surprise:

Doctor: “Well, that’s what I’m worried about. Because I’ve got this friend called Donna Noble, and she was my best friend in the whole wide universe. I absolutely love her. Oh. Mmm. Do I say things like that now?”

Shirley: “It sounds like a good thing to say.”

I think the implication, in both these cases, is not that the Doctor didn’t have such feelings before (pansexual attraction, and love for his travelling companions) but, as we know, Ten was too buttoned up to say such things out loud. After the experiences of Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, all of whom went through a lot of love (platonic and romantic) and pain, in relation to their various travelling companions, it seems Fourteen has aquired a greater degree of spoken out-loud emotional literacy than the previous incarnation with the same face.

I really like this differentiation between Ten and Fourteen.

And I’m also delighted that, from RTD1 through Moffat and Chibnall to RTD2, we’re arrived at a Doctor Who fit for the twenty-first century, where the Doctor can regenerate as any gender, any ethnicity, and love anyone.

And each showrunner has built this in incrementally over the arc of Nu Who to date, from Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife (6×4) when we first hear about Time Lords regenerating in a gender-fluid manner, via discussion of The Corsair, to the appearance of Jo Martin’s fabulous (and first Black) Doctor, The Fugitive Doctor, in Fugitive of The Judoon (12×05).

 

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Dopplegangers are unfailing scary, as gothic fiction knows, and these double-walkers from the universe’s edge with their too long arms, were certainly that.

And why not, when you’ve got two great actors, with great chemistry, and only three episodes, stick them in the black emptiness at the edge of everything and watch them spark together.

I enjoyed the episode a lot for the pure fizzing chemistry; the Doctor and Donna picking up the threads of their friendship and deepening it in extremis. Superb work from Tate and Tennant.

I was also very intrigued by the fairy-tale counting salt and the vampires and the Doctor’s cryptic remark worrying about the mythology he’d unleashed in the plastic space of the universe’s edge. Did anyone else think about E-space from Tom Baker’s day, and the Great Vampires?

Loved the idea of slow bomb too and the clever equine-skeletoned captain and her last clever act.

 

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@craig  – I know absolutely nothing about back-end web design, but please let us know if we can help e.g. a crowdfunder if funds are needed? Sounds like a good idea to do it in the fallow period between the specials and before the start of Ncuti’s run proper.

I suppose I’d say – keep the archived threads of old, if possible, and keep the tag line “theories even more insane than what’s actually happening…”

Thankyou 🙂

 

 

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Den of Geek has a nice article identifying as many as possible of the Who aliens fashioned in Rose 2’s Toys:

Which Doctor Who Monsters Were Hidden Among Rose’s Toys and Childhood Drawings?

I think they missed one though – top left in the dark corner, The Face of Boe, right?

https://images.app.goo.gl/mKd8kgWupvp6TMm2A

@craig I couldn’t get the image to insert.

I’m wondering why, in universe, Fourteen has returned with the Face of Ten.

What did Ten leave unfinished?

Perhaps answer enough is that he’s undone the great wrong perpetrated against Donna originally, now the reverse mind-wipe has restored her memories.

His other misdeed,  which also, interestingly, involved denying free choice/ free will to a companion,  is sealing Rose 1 into the parallel universe (with Ten 2) without really giving her a choice in the matter.

@jimthefish Yes, I would expect Rose 1 to appear perhaps on the TARDIS scanner or, briefly, in a rift between the universes or something – enough for an emotional exchange.

 

 

 

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It’s great to see the band getting back together , old and new, to our delightfully over-analysing space!

@scaryb <waves>

I enjoyed Pat Mills’ review of The Star Beast – many thanks for that.

@jimthefish <likewise waves>

RTD2 is indeed a perfect moniker, and all power to the hive-mind of the interwebs for creating it. I am interested to see how much RTD2 differs from RTD1. I adored It’s a Sin, which I thought vastly superior to the earlier Tofu, Cucumber and Banana. What I’m hoping for is a bit of mystery as well as the big emotion we know RTD knows how to bring, and we’re off to a nice start on the mystery front.

@mudlark and others re The Boss – Mystery Number One – I see we’re discussing The Celestial Toymaker, which I hope doesn’t count as a spoiler, as it’s already been in the specials’ trailer and the Beeb publicity that Neil Patrick Harris will play him.  The Celestial Toymaker’s previous incarnation was rather like a cross between Star Trek’s Q and Squid Game, so whether he and The Boss are one and the same or not, let the games begin (and may the odds be ever in our favour).

My other note of speculation is the Chekhov’s Gun of Donna’s daughter’s name. I mean, sure, RTD2 used the name congruence between Billie Piper and Yasmin Finney’s characters to drive interest in the 60th specials (and troll the toys-out-of-pram, “They’re-turning-Rose-trans” brigade) but, is RTD2 really not going to follow through on this massive neon flashing sign? We all saw the way the script had Tennant Doc react to the name “Rose” in The Star Beast.

So, I wonder, are we going to see Billie Piper’s Rose 1 again, before Tennant Doc becomes Gatwa Doc? Can RTD2 really resist the great love story of his RTD1 tenure getting a final outing?

[Juniperfish @replies]

The password the Doctor created to Donna’s mind-wipe:

Westerly, Pelican, Dreams, Tornado, Clifftops, Andante, Grief, Fingerprint, Susurration, Sparrow, Dance, Mexico, Binary, Binary, Binary,

I suspect, knowing RTD’s mischevious side, that he can’t wait to watch its hyper-analysis by fandom, trying to “crack” said code, when it’s probably the Doctor’s equivalent of a Google-generated “unguessable” password.

Because RTD, unlike Moffat, was never a Who writer much given to “puzzle-Who” (apart from the premonitory “Bad Wolf”).

However, it does seem somewhat more of a poem, rather than either a more literal, or a randomly-generated, code; a kind of mood-map of the way the Doctor felt about Donna?

What sort of mood?

Westerly – well I did think about Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind (as well as thinking about the R4 Shipping Forecast, and the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch of the West):

“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing”

which isn’t just a nature-poem, but is imbued with Shelley’s desire for revolutionary change and his role as a poet in igniting it:

“…make me thy lyre…

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Which certainly fits with RTD’s evident zeal to continue the progressive representational work which his original Nu-Who was proud of, broadening the Whoniverse to include British working-class companions (in Rose and Donna), the first Black companion (in Martha) and the first LGBT characters, from Captain Jack to the cat-people wives, Alice and May, in Gridlock and on. 

Donna is a bit of a pelican, a gobby kind of bird, and also no doubt (as all humans must seem to Time Lords) a bit of a sparrow too, flying fast and short-lived.

Pelicans and sparrows both have a long history of symbolic meaning in literature. Pelicans in Ancient Egypt were associated with death and rebirth, and Shakespeare mentions pelicans’ symbolic meaning in Hamlet, commonly understood in his time as a Christ-symbol (supposedly sacrificing her blood for her young):

Laertes: “To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms, And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood”.

Sparrows have a long history in mythology. They were one of the birds associated with Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love, and they appear in the Bible as illustrative of God’s care for even the smallest of creatures: Matthew 10:29-31 – “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care”.

There’s something musical in “andante” and “dance”, something whirlwind in “tornado” and “clifftop” and something tinged with loss and the fleeting nature of connection in “fingerprint”, “grief” and “susurration”; all of which, we may agree, speak to the Doctor’s feelings about his time with Donna in the TARDIS.

Besides the words, the fact a code exists at all, adds a nice undercurrent of darkness to an otherwise upbeat revivial, which undoes the horror of Donna’s original fate of forgetting her Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Tennant-Doc used a reversible code when he wiped Donna’s mind, as if squirrelling away the contingency to revive the Doctor-Donna in just such an emergency as presented itself thanks to Beep the Meep’s genocidal tear in London, even knowing such a revival would kill her.  I am always pleased to see a little darkness in the Doctor.

[Juniperfish @replies]

Hello Everyone <waves, wearing a big scarf>

Ooh I’ll have a jelly baby @craig. It’s been a minute, but here we are – sixty years – what a wonderful Whovian life.

I’ve just watched the new behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Unleashed on I-Player and it was lovely to see RTD back in the saddle and supporting Yasmin Finney, talking about trans representation and her role as Rose.

I didn’t realise, until I watched Unleashed, that the Meep story was based on a Doctor Who comic.

David Tennant and Katharine Tate’s enthusiasm was just enormously infectious, and I loved the new TARDIS console as a tribute to the original Hartnell one.

Overall, my anxieties about Disneyfication have been allayed, so far, as the show remains happily true to its British roots, apart from the fact that surely the TARDIS should be serving tea, not coffee.

Cue, nonetheless, lots of screaming headlines about “Doctor Woke” in The Daily Fail etc. next week, which you just know RTD will chuckle delightedly over in his slippers.

It’s been wonderful diving into the Whoniverse archive the BBC have put on I-Player for the 60th. I’m currently tickled by the Hartnell era, particularly the far-shots of various space ships and Dalek saucer craft clearly made of washing-up liquid bottles and silver gaffer tape, wobbling on string in the galactic sky. I’ll forever love the homespun low-fi origins of Who, but excited for the next chapter.

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