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So I’m as intrigued as anyone about who Mrs Flood is. Theories I’ve seen so far: River (Flood), the Rani (it’s never the Rani like it’s never lupus. Until it is?). The Master. Ruby’s biological mother. Ruby herself. What about The Doctor’s adoptive mother? What about the Doctor’s biological parent when it comes to it?

But why was she so angry – and with her neighbour at that – about the Tardis originally? I mean in terms of angrily accusing him of putting it there, not the location. I did have to smile slightly at the fact that the Doctor now has ramps in the Tardis – and yet parks it on the pavement. Parking in a way that blocks the pavement is a full, crossed arms tutting offence over my way, and probably for anyone who uses or knows anyone who uses a chair…

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@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.

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<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>

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<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.

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

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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).

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@whohar yes, regarding the ‘I’ve seen her walking’ rant – my partner really liked that they put that in.

 

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@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.

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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?

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And as for mr ‘I don’t want to go’ not going, I don’t know. He might become the Curator. He might get more stories. He might genuinely retire, live, work through the new dump of trauma , then die and regenerate into fifteen, wobbly wobbly etc. But meanwhile we see Fifteen adventuring around as a energetically zen madman in a box. And I think I’ll enjoy that.

 

It might be interesting that right now, when we discover the Doctor cannot trace his ancestry, and doesn’t know exactly where he comes from, is when we get our first black doctor, potentially evoking diaspora, (specially before mainstream DNA tests) and the need to hold and maintain an identity without far reaching genealogy.

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NPH as the Toymaster was wonderful in a string of wonderful here. Great casting, based partly on him working with RTD before, partly on this being a role involving a musical bit, magic tricks, terrible accents, repeated acceptance of a challenge, charisma, and raised eyebrows.I might have been looking forward to NPH here as much as I was Tennant.

amazing disability representation, building on something I greatly appreciated in the first episode. To explain my thoughts on why showing someone in a wheelchair standing up, but not as the result of a miracle: some  years ago my partner was only using gutter crutches as a mobility aid. Some time before, he had been in a chair – his legs didn’t move at all. So, a few years ago we we’re watching one television series where the joke – at which we laughed – was a character, not even in a chair but a mobility scooter, which she’d been in constantly, gets out of it for it to be sent back to the hire place. Fast forward to nowadays, when he uses at different times: a manual chair powered by his arms, a clip on front wheel for this chair powered by battery, an electric peddle bike with stabilisers, and an electric wheelchair.  He did have a mobility scooter but it broke. In his electric chair in particular, he has drawn comments for standing up when he’s in it. We still cringe at laughing at that. Normalising standing and ambulatory wheelchair is important.

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This is strange to me, really. Because I only actually quite liked RDT’s original run. I fell in love when Moffart took over – denomintionwise, I am a Moffatite through and through. I quite liked Chibs’ run, and probably had a higher tolerance than a lot of people (I’ll return to that somewhat in a second) because I never really rated, for example, the Bad Wolf arc (my laptop has caught the Christmas Spirit and autocorrected Wolf to Elf, which is cute) as an arc, all that highly. I did like Donna though, so I was looking forward but still, as I think I said in reaction to the first soft re-reboot episode, managing my expectations, because stuff happened that in Moffat era, would definitely mean something (if nothing quite as complex as the stuff this website throws up) more than it would in RDT. And I’m… still there, but maybe less so. Because if we got a three story arc, it was Fourteen working through some of the new trauma Chibs gave him, helped by Donna, and beyond that, hints of a really big, really big bad that actually scares the Toymaster, rather than being the Toymaster himself. WELL THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN. And it actually is.

 

Is it better or worse to spam the website with a sequence of comments, or to post one really, really long one? I’m going to go with the former option for now.

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I watched this too late after too many beers to trust myself to get all my thoughts down but I will say this: going head to head against Tennent and NPH (who I’m surprised didn’t actually do his own vocal) and Tate, Ncuti Gatwa burst into this episode with beautifully energetic charisma. Stunning debut.

now I’m going to do the mature thing and Go To Bed rather than hop on T’other place, even though I know comments will doubtless be closed not too late in the morning. So obligatory thank you to @craig, and see you all Sunday.

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@robertcaligari it’s interesting that ‘what if a white man was cast to play Martin Luther King’ is the example so often used, because it’s a really, really bad example. Unless Newton was campaigning against racist laws and politics applied against white people by people of Indian heritage.

@jimthefish plus there is the largely under explored debt Newton and his work owed to Indian and Arab scholars… @thane16 the irony is that it was coming in contact with Islamic scholarship and accent texts preserved by the Eastern Roman Empire and then the later Islamic that lead to the establishment in Europe of Universities as we know them.

 

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@juniperfish yes the differences – and his awareness of them – are interesting. I mean, metacrisis Doctor was pretty much sold to Rose on the basis of his being able to say he loves her (I believe that’s what he whispered to her to make her kiss him like that). Each Doctor incarnation is a distinct personality influenced by the same (and making new) memories. Doctors Eleven through Thirteen, and their experiences, have clearly left a mark.

I saw someone say elsewhere that after Moffart undid the trauma of the time war (I think they exaggerated the extent of this, HurtDoctor clearly had a lot of other scaring experiences) Chibnell did remake it somewhat with the Flux and the Timeless Child – and now rather than the last Time Lord, we have the first Time Lord, who still doesn’t know where he came from. Ah but the difference was, the Doctor had friends with her this time.

@robertcaligari I mean they’ll watch it anyway to complain about it, so there’s that, for the ratings… but we were so very spoiled with the Tennant this week. My Doctors are McCoy, Smith, and Capaldi, but I really enjoyed it. And double Donna.

@jimthefish it’ll be interesting to see if (try to imagine Donna saying this here) the Newton thing was just a passing joke, or has minor or more mave consequences.

 

 

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@blenkinsopthebrave I think for Donna that is now the word. Not gravity but mavity. I noticed the Doctor looked at her when she said it, noticing that something had changed.

</span>

I mean that’s how important a person Donna is. Changing English vocabulary with a mum joke. And it was so much fun just watching her make it. I almost feel Tardis travel is wasted on everyone else.

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@juniperfish chemistry was the name of the day here. regarding the salt – I think that’s calling forward. But I also really enjoyed the idea of weaponising English ideas regarding the Fae in a Pratchetian way (varies are terrific, they begat terror) and Other Donna Donnaring it.

 

Also what is harder? counting grains of salt, or correctly identifying your mate from an imitation?

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So, last episode bought us back the double act, the Doctor and Donna, whilst solving the Doctor-Donna crisis, with a lovely reference back to 1980s comics.

 

This episode lingers on their dynamic, even to the point of sinister and tells us that it all, the flux, the timeless child, remains canon.

 

One thing I love here is that the casting – the two main stars – and a confined space -evokes a bottle episode. Even though they were doubled and we really saw some of that sweet Disney money. (And I do think it’s sweet. The Doctor’s greatest enemy has always been the BBC sci-fi budget. And I honestly think Disney are mostly after the prestige. Plus I honestly like what they’ve done with Star Wars, principally via tv). But it was a bottle episode all the same, it did the things those do. And not too much. He had a much needed conversation with Donna. Only it wasn’t Donna.

And so they’re not as close as they could be. As they would be if she knew.

 

I don’t know why this episode felt so much like coming home. I like old who – which is previous to MY Doctor, who is McCoy. I liked RTD who. I fell in love with Moffart Who. I don’t quite know why this episode made me quite so happy. Maybe the conceptualisation of maverty.

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@whohar oh thanks for the ear worm!

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hello everyone!

I still need to do a sober re-watch of the episode, though I loved it not sure how much detail I remember.

There are some things I really, really loved. The pronoun scene (my sibling is non binary, and, yup), and little things like Shirley Anne Bingham very much on screen moving her legs somewhat (it’s amazing how many people still give people weird looks if they show any mobility of their limbs whist in a wheelchair). I think if I was in Unit much as I’d like the extra armoury I’d be putting in a request form for hovering Dalek technology though. I enjoyed guessing the Meep was evil, and you’ve got to give the smaller children a few nightmares…

less sure about the damage to the streets just getting healed up. I didn’t mind London Town as I’ve come across it in the odd 19th century context (though that doesn’t mean it’s not an Americanism of course) and it rings a bell from older Ballards. Also wasn’t there a London transport campaign that used it?

 

I’m kind of… trying not to look too much for through lines. I always found RTD seasons to be rather loosely tied together, so I’m reminding myself this isn’t a Moffart Narrative Mystery. But I do feel this is supposed to be a trilogy and it ought to work as a trilogy (but that, rather than a very long somewhat episodic single story).

 

I’m still intrigued as to why (apart from the obvious) Ten again? I wonder how the combined memories of Eleven, Twelve,  and Thirteen will affect Fourteen? The main thing he left undone was, well, Donna, is that sorted now? Will we see more of her daughter? Will we see Wilf? But see paragraph above. Using an 80s storyline is a great touch, and I’m hoping we get lots of references back – this episode has beautifully, I think, returned us to the RTD days – but this are the 60 years specials after all. And I think it did it very well here – I gather that having read the comic might operate as something of a spoiler, but people who had got the satisfaction of inside knowledge. It didn’t really matter how quickly you guessed that he wasn’t a nice, friendly little Meep, because the tension was really about Donna (even if that was rather more of a how than a will).

 

Regarding Rose’s name, I’d think, like @mudlark, it’s probably a case of Doctor memories. Or even as simple as, she’d heard from childhood that Donna would have named a daughter Rose. And as it’s a nice name and as it turns out Donna did have a daughter… if anything, new Rose makes old Rose seem less likely to me. I feel like we’ve got the tribute to the character. Obviously the Doctor-Donna storyline is the metacrisis-Doctor, and there’s some interesting stuff that can be done there but… again, we’d spend too much time in RTD’s original run.

(there’s been a lot of online talk about the binary-binary-nonbinary thing, and whether Rose is non-binary as in femme non-binary, or if she’s binary trans but non binary as in she represents a third factor – Donna-Doctor-Rose, or whether its simply that the existence of a gender-spectrum/scale even when someone crosses over from one side to a distinct other side, it contradicts simplistic binary thinking, which I’d need to think about a bit more but the latter doesn’t quite work with the fluidity of the Timelords…)

 

 

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@charlie-cook I did wonder because it sounded close in concept, and it’s weird how the brain jumbles things while keeping the essence. I’m definitely going to look for it, it looks very interesting. I do like me a time loop!

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@charlie-cook it sounded intriguing so I did a quick search and couldn’t find it (as I’m sure you’ve done) I did however find out about another film about time travel from Spain, Timecrimes (<i lang=”es”><b>Los Cronocrímenes) </b></i><b></b>only he goes back in time an hour and it’s someone else who dies. <b></b>

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@blenkinsopthebrave oh absolutely me too. I did watch and like Who with RTD, enough to feel a little apprehensive at a change. But Moffat made me fall in love with it. But I’m reminded of one of my A level class back at school. I thought the teacher was excellent, I thrived in that classroom. Another student got so overwhelmed she burst into tears half way through taking the A level.

The thing about RTD is that he has, indeed as you say grown as a writer, and he really is extraordinary. My sister in law, who for years was perfectly nice to but refused to let it be publicly known about her son’s boyfriend raved about It’s a Sin. My partner and I were shocked when we watched it, not because of the content but because she wasn’t shocked by it. ‘what, Sharon, ‘this is my son and his roommate’ Sharon loved this?’ Very conservative doesn’t drink turns up for visits at 9 am on a Saturday morning Sharon? (we live two hours away from her). Plus he’s worked with Neil Patrick Harris now. I’d love to see NPH in Who. Something glorious. He can even do a musical number.

I’m hoping, with a fair amount of faith, RTD will incorporate some Moffat elements, because there are some things Moffat did so well. And even some of the stuff Chibs has done, patchy and disappointing as he’s been, he’s also done some interesting things. And something new. Because that’s what he did last time.

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@devilishrobby interestingly, to me, The Flux story worked, for much of the run, precisely because it was about the archiest arch following I’ve seen in a long time. He’s not as good at Moffat at stringing together independent stories into an overall story, but the less independent the stories, the better his work seemed to play out. And even with the New Years day episode, some of the strongest elements (besides an absolutely cracking use of a time-loop with twist) was, again to me, a sense of the episode as a kind of bridge between the Flux and whatever he’s going to do to wrap his run up. She’s in some sort of conflict with Time, Yaz’s feelings for her, consequences for her slaughter of the Daleks.

About the wrapping up of the run, I’m not entirely confident, for the same reason I felt the Flux fell a little flat and frustrating at the end- he hasn’t been very good at endings to his stories. And this does make the use of a longer-form story all the more problematic because it makes it more frustrating.

While I agree about the brilliance of Moffat, I think he might often have been particularly brilliant for a particular kind of viewer. People willing and able to keep up, recognise call backs, who wanted puzzles to try to solve. Which is why I think the return of RTD is a good thing for the program in general. I prefer Moffart, I don’t mind Chibs, but Russel is what’s needed.

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@dentarthurdent not at all, it is helpful. The main thing to remember is not to worry about writing anything ‘good’, just write something, and then you can make it good. Theoretically.

One problem is I have three printed out drafts (as a rule I re-word better when I’m typing the whole thing out again) but I still haven’t landed on exactly what I want the conclusion to say. I’ve got a week, I’ve done the bloody footnotes (you’ve just made me realise how very grateful I am for word processors, especially regarding footnotes), I’ve re-written a chunk of my third chapter today and I do have about three hundred words of conclusion-ish that I’m more or less happy with. about 1,200 more to go, or, 6,000 words of drafts to condense into 12,oo words.

It’ll be fine…

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(sorry again about the ramble I seem to be able to write on for ages about absolutely anything under the sun, anything, other than the conclusion for my dissertation).

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@winson – so glad for the good news about your granddaughter

I really feel for children and teenagers at this time, this is becoming such a chunk of their developing years. I also have two friends with even with two shots and a booster have little to no protection. One had cancer the year before Covid and was still having treatment earlier this year, one has an autoimmune condition. Their lockdowns have never ended, and they live in small flats in cities, and my heart aches for them. My partner and I have been quite lucky re covid, though my partner is vulnerable, but not on the shielding list, we live in a seaside town and have a pretty decent size garden, pretty good sized house, my mother was retired, I’m at home looking after my partner anyway so neither of us go out to work and I was studying online anyway, so lockdown was nothing like the chore for us it was for many people. I also got all jabbed and boostered up at the same time as him, there ain’t many perks to being a carer, but there are some. (Well, to be fair, I also don’t pay to go to places and the cinema when I’m with him, which is kind of nice).  And my mother didn’t want a funeral in the first place, so that’s not been a factor for us.

Our problem in the UK is that the government insists on relaxing things as much as possible, more than advisable, for mainstream christian/post Christian times (Christmas, Easter, Western Calendar New Year) and only these, and while the Welsh government limited pubs and gatherings and closed nightclubs for New Year, England didn’t and a lot of people went over the boarder, so that if Omicron wasn’t where we are now, it might well be now. Meanwhile people of other cultures and religions get no leeway whatsoever, last year the government violated its own rules. Unfortunately the devolved governments, at least in Scotland and Wales have to balance being as cautious as possible with the fear of provoking a backlash that could lose them the next election, and this should not be a factor but I can see how it is. At the same time, I’m a little jaded, family style traditional Christmases make me deeply uncomfortable, going out for New Year is my idea of a nightmare, so it’s very easy for me to say ‘we should all just sit tight and give it up for another year, it’s silly to relax and go out and meet en mass when this new variant is spreading like mad and could easily mutate’ because I don’t like the things I’m talking about giving up. But I know these things mean a lot to people. Also I’m a hypocrite, we had a couple of friends over for New Years which we both felt was a little risky. Actually one friend got in touch and said ‘are you still having a party?’ then informed us this other friend was setting off for ours in an hour, other friend when he arrived also had no recollection of said party, think the first friend pulled a fast one on us. But I also think he decided the two of them ought to come over for New Year because they knew it was also a difficult time for me anyway, and would be worse this year. (Yes, I am so unsociable having two friends over fully counts in my head as a ‘party’. Sometimes it’s as many as four, and I feel positively dizzy).

Anyway, happy new year everyone and thank God for t’internet eh? For the forums like this (and thank Craig for this), and zoom and other video chat methods are available, and for the possibility for online study and working from home for many, and cheaper calling options so that people who are alone don’t have to be quite so alone, and streaming, and video games, and all the things that are helping people get through the day, and friends we’ve never met in person and friends who live all over the globe, and thank the human capacity and desire for connection that is able to use wires, and chips, and programs to connect over distance.

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@nerys that last line – that is <i>precisely </i>the problem I encounter when proofing my work.

@devilishrobby my main problem with spell checkers is that at one point I kept accidentally clicking ‘add word’. Which didn’t even have the effect of eliminating the squiggly lines, because I rarely misspell a word the same way twice.

Although we might be a little off topic, so to summarise: The Doctor and Amy’s relationship was, apart from a very brief blip, platonic. The Doctor and the Master’s relationship is Plutonic. That between Yaz and the Doctor might well be neither. And this is an excellent way for me to remember the difference!

 

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@dentarthurdent having just spent a fair part of the day peering at the most readable scans of books by Haywood and Defoe I can find, with nothing but chaos in the plain text offering I greatly appreciate your efforts.

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@dentarthurdent yeah that would be more like the relationship with the Master…

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@devilishrobby though I’ve noticed they seem to have changed their comment to the more innocuous but deeply ironic given the nature of their original complaint ‘role on Russel’. A switch so provocative it definitely seems to confirm troll.

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@nerys plutonic/platonic, I think. I never noticed my spelling was so atrocious till the ubiquity of typing. My handwriting was always so bad no one noticed 😉

(Ironically a chapter of my dissertation revolves around the significance of switched vowels, either as misspellings or miss pronunciations or works with common origins  (virtue/vartue, person/parson). Proof reading is really, really not fun.

 

 

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@dentarthurdent heh, not sure I can actually blame that on a typo, my brain insists on thinking vowels are pretty much interchangeable. Took me a few minutes to find it even when you pointed it out!

Yes, the Flux season especially bought her out a bit more.

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I think this was a very good episode. Pretty stand alone, but with two important threads from what’s happened before.

I noted about the last flux episode about how she rather skipped over that line, not that what she didn’t wasn’t clever and pretty justifiable in a battle sense, but that was rather the Doctor’s line – although they seem a little to have softened it here, at the time I got the impression that that, there, was all the Daleks. (Not that, as I said, genocide means anything with time travelling races) Now it’s a chunk of their battle fleet. However, there was something new and interesting in that conversation, the first sense I think I’ve had of the Daleks going after her, not tactically, not out of a sense of a historical war with Time Lords, or with the Doctor in particular as a legacy or expression of the Doctor’s history with Davros, but because of this particular thing the Doctor had done to them. And the Doctor is taking responsibly. Not that wiping out millions of battle Daleks (is there any other kind?) is objectively speaking a Bad Thing To Do, but it’s interesting to see some of Eleven’s hubris theme returning. As well as the fact, as Rory pointed out, the Doctor is dangerous to be around.

Secondly, the set up of conflict with Time itself. I did think the Doctor was a little slow in working out ‘I’ve just put the Tardis into a massive reboot. While I was setting it up the Tardis, who sees everything in the past and present, as I know, I’ve spoken to her, took me here. Now we’re engaged in a fight with the Daleks in a time loop, where, for the first (then second, then third etc) time, the Dalek’s have actually managed to kill me. The Tardis reboot is probably causing the time loop’. I am rather interested in how the rest of her conflict with Time will play out in the following two episodes this year. Though I am being cautious about how well it will be wrapped up.

Thirdly, Yaz and the Doctor. This was quite nicely done, including the Doctor’s evasive reactions. To be fair, her wife only died one reincarnation ago (and while their relationship wasn’t entirely monogamous especially for River but to an extent, for Eleven, it was very much, especially for Twelve, the primary relationship). To be fair also, romance with the companions has tended to be messy. How the Doctor feels about Yaz is to an extent unclear. Of course she loves her, she’s close to her in a way she wasn’t with the others on the Tardis. But as someone on here once said, Eleven imprinted on Amy like a little baby duck, and apart from Amy’s panic flirting and snog when she first met him as an adult, and even before he realised she was his mother-in-law, it was plutonic. So the question is, is this a Rose situation or a Martha situation? Yaz being a woman can’t come into it, it defies logic that reincarnating as a woman suddenly wipes out the Doctor’s attraction to women, or, if it’s technically feasible it’s absolutely not something I would expect this show to do. Likewise, several versions of the Doctor just haven’t appeared Romantically inclined at all, but again, this isn’t the context in which I expect to see that reintroduced. But nor has there ever been a fully fledged, in action, romantic coupling within the Tardis, Rose had to wait and end up with the copy of the Doctor. River didn’t travel with him all that often, not that we saw. I like Dan for clearly thinking ‘yeah, she’s never going to tell her. I’ll tell her. Because she already knows’. Given that RTD is returning to the helm, it’s interesting to see Chibs potentially introducing the first explicitly, canonically same-sex attracted Doctor (Ten definitely read as bisexual, but Captain Jack’s feelings for him also kind of read as unrequited).

(sorry about the rambling, I’m supposed to be doing footnotes, so naturally…)

Overall as well, lovely concept, a time loop getting tighter, genuine tension, threatening Daleks, a proper puzzle to sort out. Chibs is extremely patchy, to a frustrating extent, and vastly improved with the right co-writers But I really think future generations of watchers, even in some cases, the same watchers, will be much kinder to his run. (While complaining about whatever is happening and whoever is running Who at that time.

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@juniperfish yes there was, behind the exuberance, a kind of cold pragmatism behind the Doctors actions. Rather than prevent two genosides, make it three. a heartfelt sorry to Karavanista and the realisation that the Doctor abandoned him (there was a double meaning I think when he said ‘if I talk about it I’ll die’, literally, I have no doubt, but other kinds of pain as well) soon turns into ‘whelp, off you go on adventures with these two, you’ll learn to like it’ when if there is one thing the Doctor understands feeling (even if it was never quite true) is that you are the last of your kind. If this was under RTD or Moffart, a companion would have pulled the Doctor up over all of this by now. It’s interesting, though, if Chibs has balanced out Moffat’s presentation of the first female Master being in a sense the most redeemable and emphatic (even if she hadn’t turned GUD!) with the first female Doctor (and a second bonus past female Doctor) one of the most disturbing and problematic. I’m not completely confident that’s what he’s getting at though.

So all he’s really done so far with the Timeless Child is present it from the Doctors prospective – less Messiah, more kidnaped and abused child, and yes, that’s helped. And set up that interaction between Time, and the Timeless child who is also the creator of the Time Lords, and there is a lot that can be interesting in that, I just wonder what he’s going to manage in three episodes, widely spaced, one of which is a New Years Day one featuring Elves.

Yay we saved the universe. Only they saved what was left of the universe. Does the universe now end just beyond that side of the earth? And why have that whole thing about reversing and replaying the flux, if the damage the flux had done so far wasn’t going to get reversed?

One thing I did like was quite good use of humans, even if there were so many, so quickly, it was hard to bond with them. This felt like the final series of a somewhat different run. I liked Graham and Ryan’s story very much. But it didn’t do so very much for the overall story arc, and then you get a whole bunch of people extremely important to this who we barely know. But I like that the humans were resilient, clever, and I like that there was more to saving the day than the Doctor telling them what to do. If this was all his plan from the beginning he didn’t do much other than seed ‘Timeless child, missing memories’ reveal what it meant at the end of the last series and then put most of the story into these episodes

@jimthefish re the Grand Serpent. I liked the character, I actually checked he wasn’t an old who thing, he seemed quite retro, down to the name, but I agree that he didn’t do much in the story. And yes this did rather have the feel of the last season of a cancelled series. Rather like the last few episodes of Dollhouse.

Overall, like a few of you, I enjoyed this series. It was a massive improvement, it was magnificently made. It did not resolve the story but apart from that the individual parts worked pretty well. I have a little more respect for Chibs for at least rising my expectations though I might have over-stated his ambition, he’s done a lot here, and a lot of the flaws I see are only flaws if he doesn’t tie them up over the next year. But I’m all too aware of the very strong possibility that he won’t in fact tie them up over the next year. I’m looking forward to binging it. I maintain, that this series tips too far towards binging to completely work as Doctor Who, and I don’t think that’s me and my viewing habits, the Disney MCU shows work fine week by week. I think even binged it will be a very long film with a slightly disappointing, but enjoyable last act.

But it’s been fun watching and talking about it. I’ve a lot of criticism, but I’ve had a good time.

 

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Mmmm.

Doctor’s parentage theory still, I stubbornly assert, yet to be disproved. Nor have my hopes of a RuthDoc regeneration scene completely died. With her encounter with Time, I’m assuming what we’ve been given instead of a tying up of threads is a set up of her final crisis. I wouldn’t expect more than another hint from the New Years special, as those tend to be determinedly lighter, so that gives us two episodes, quite far apart, if Chib’s does intend to resolve the bulk of his story line himself.

There was some agreeable darkness to the Doctors decision. ‘Should we warn the darleks and Cybermen?’ ‘nah, we’ll just wipe out the Sontarens with them’. Obviously it has been made repeatedly clear to the Doctor, and us, that there is no such thing as genocide when there’s time travel but she did rather skip over that line with a grin.

 

 

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@bluesqueakpip I agree Chibs is very much building on Moffart here. But if your comment about the Master – also somewhat on RTD. (of course every one would be to an extent), particularly the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. I think RTD showed them looking into the time vortex, as something baby timecards had to do, and both Doctor and Master had an extreme reaction, the Master ‘went mad’, and the Doctor started running. I might be misremembering but don’t many Time Lords just carry on, or be inspired by it, some go mad, some run away. From that I always had a sense (many many evil acts by the Master notwithstanding) the Timelords we ought to really be concerned about is the ones who didn’t have a negative reaction to it. This did establish the cruelty in their childhoods. This does also give a less egotistical reason for the Master’s reaction to discovering about the Timeless child as the Doctor, as they’ve been presented as a victim of the Timelords in a sense since The Sound of Drums. Discovering his frimesis was responsible not only for what he saw as his greatness, but also his suffering.

@jimthefish I would absolutely like to see more Ruth Doc. And given that we’re looking at a cannon reset, it would be nice if they covered, even briefly, the original reset that bought us the original Doctor. What’s kind of cool about this is all the inevitable contradictions, because the series evolved over the first years, can now be explained. The Doctor had undergone a major memory wipe, after running away from the Division. He’d probably blocked out what of the Timelords he could remember for a while, she’d gone into regeneration perhaps with a determination never to interfere, but interfering is in her DNA, and it came out. And he might have been happy just to hole up in London with his granddaughter (though that part still leaves questions…) acting out a normal childhood though she hardly needed to attend an earth school. As regenerations progressed, the gap in the memories recedes, and the Doctor is able to think about the rest of the Timelords more without noticing it, or entirely noticing it.

 

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@mudlark this is interesting because to me Moffart’s conclusion, assuming it was a conclusion and not just a breathtakingly effective bluff of the hybrid prophesy didn’t quite work for mewas one of his least satisfying conclusions. As you say, the existence of Me made it ambigious – but only because she was a human who had been changed, and we were able to think that the hybrid referred to that. It could all the more apply to the Doctor now that the Doctor is revealed to come from some other species, but is also the baseline of the Timelord’s genetic make-up. I would have a lot of respect for Chibs if he does pull this off.

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@scaryb good point!

don’t get me started on the closing of the Graun thread. Only one time has it still been open in the morning. If they don’t want to mod it overnight, I can’t for the life of me see why they can’t, as sometimes has happened, reopen it later.

And yes, very Chibs, it’s good to know he seems to have hit the mark over the adoption thing though.

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@jimthefish yes I feel that it ‘fixes’ in a way that part of eight’s film. I’ve always been happy to see eight included in AG Who, but that revelation has always been kind of sitting there, tactfully ignored.

And yeah, Chibs – I didn’t think I’d be saying this after his first run of episodes, but ambitious is definitely the word. His second gave me mixed feeling, which remain mixed, but I’ve liked what he’s done with his storyline this time out. In his second, it might be because the revelation came from the Master the focus was a bit ‘oh god, the Doctor turns out to be indescribably special and important’, but now it’s more a case of ‘the Doctor got snatched and experimented on for lifetimes, but hey, silver lining, might be able to get properly mentally free of the Time Lords’ . Perspective is a wonderful thing.

I got a little sense of the themes of adoption, especially international adoption here. In that sometimes it’s problematic. Tecturn assumed this small child was abandoned and up for grabs, even assuming she was just feeling a bit broody at the time or genuinely thought she was doing a good thing, it’s interesting that the Doctor points out she didn’t know, maybe she was waiting. Maybe she’s always been trying to get back there.

@scaryb you’re right of course that we don’t know that they’re, or that they’re both human. My own theory is that Bel at least is, but the two hearts is a stumbling block to the ‘Doctor is human in origin but vortexed’ because River only had one heart, and it appears two hearts aren’t necessary for regeneration (though she didn’t regenerate all that many times, as far as we know).

 

I think you’re right about the fob watch for defeating Swarm and Azure. They were gloating at the start about having the advantage of memories of their last encounter.

Oh hey, the Doctor has yet another real name. I hope River gets told it at some point.

What I’d like for next week: Ruth Doc, at the point of leaving the Division (I’m sure it’s Ruth who leaves). Oooh, maybe a glimpse of Ruth regenerating into Hartnell? The Doctor meets her parents (assuming they are), and achieving a sense of resolution and of who she is. The Flux reversed is inevitable though how that would tie in with the Doctors origins (if this theory is correct) remains to be seen. Karvanista is finally reunited with his human, at which he grumbles and growls but is actually pleased (and I’m sorry, he’s just my Oliver in my head, grumps and all) and is very important in whatever they do to save the day. The actual saving of the day won’t make perfect sense and will be a little frustrating, but the emotional resolution will be more satisfactory, that’s more of a prediction than a hope.

I didn’t think I’d say this (not that I hated his first series, but I wasn’t so enthusiastic) but I’m glad we have a little more Chib coming next year.

 

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@winston so interesting that so many anxiety dreams centre in on childhood, adolescent childhood at that. Says something about what our schooldays can do to us. Here we are, with bills in our names, tax due, having to make rational decisions to keep ourselves in homes with food etc. And what do we return to for stress dreams? The so called ‘happiest days of our lives’.

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@juniperfish and now I’m thinking of the Never-ending story, with the serpent on the book cover and the endless progress of destruction and re-creation. You’re right, it makes the serpent some lovely imagery.

@jimthefish re: going forward, it would be possible to spin this in a positive way for the Doctor, I suppose. The Doctor now knows who she is, she’d have met her parents, it could be made a kind of healing of wounds (Amy was still filled with sadness at losing her baby, but was somewhat healed at finding River again. That said, she did get to grow up with her, so it’s a bit different). The Doctor might be freed from some of the guilt and unease of her relationship with the other Time Lords, and also maybe Elevens dangerous tendency to lean into ‘I’m a Time Lord’ on occasion. Being the Tmeless Child could potentially make the Doctor more aware of their difference, or sense of their importance (If the others are the Time Lord Empire, the Doctor has often been something of the Time Lord Saviour, not as Saviour of the Time Lords, though sometimes that, but the Time Lord who swoops in to save poor humans), but at the same time, knowing that they’re human, and losing a lot of their sense of obligation towards the rest of them, this could be a positive thing.  Re: Vinder – depends if this is going into Eight’s revelation about his mother. He says his mother is human. If this does link to that, it suggests the Doctor as a child might not have ever met him before now. Supposing that was some Primal memory that somehow emerged during that version of the Doctor for some reason a shadow of his brief time with his mother and he knew enough to know that brief memory was of a human. But no memory of anything she’d have told him, including about his father. I’m not saying it’s probable, but it’s possible so far.

@blenkinsopthebrave I think this is the most fun we’ve had with Who for a while. I don’t know if he’ll tie it up effectively, but I’m enjoying myself much more than I expected.

 

 

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@janetteb I also love the work and hate the deadlines, and yet I rarely produce a thing worth any effort, let alone finish it, without a deadline

@dentarthurdent see I’m the complete opposite. But mostly because I’m much better at the work than I am at social atmospheres. Mind you, I’m in humanities for a reason, I’m ridiculously right-brained dominant, so creativity and connections, sure, great fun. Sequences etc… run screaming in horror.

 

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OK I’ve said something on these lines before but, if he has nothing else, he has the audacity.

How interesting to hear much of the same story from a different perspective – first a heartbroken Master realising his beloved, loathed frenemie is the most important figure in Timelord history, to the shattering of his ego and sense of self. And now the Doctor who has realised she was possibly denied her real life and family by a person she had then learned to trust and been missused by. And then her mother, because like it or not, that’s her mother, as the Doctor’s reaction to her death (even without any of the memories) showed, made a dreadful but pertinent point. What did she do? She found someone, gathered them up, changed them.

I did think last week the Doctor was very much moulded by the Division. The urge to interfere. And she knew it at least from the moment she made the comment about Division’s mission being against Timelord protocol. As I recall – it’s been nearly a year before I watched the first episode – the Doctor did start off talking about how he must not interfere – and was swiftly interfering all over the place.

I think we have seen the Doctor’s parents, and they’re human, which explains a lot, might be twisted to retcon eight’s vague Spockification – his mother was human after all. If Chibs is incorporating any of that, then that implies the Doctor, as a child, before mummy dearest found them, never knew their father. If for some reason eight grasped a faint memory of his mother.

I mean, it’s a lot to do with the lore. I’m broadly relieved if the Doctor’s origins turn out to be human. There is precedent, in terms of regeneration power, I’m not sure why the two hearts in this case, is that part of a greater mutation during whatever gives the baby Doctor their powers, that was then engineered for the Timelords? I don’t particularly mean I’m glad if the Doctor is human in origin, as much as I’m glad if they’re not of another, mysterious, powerful race. It’s a reason why the Doctor always frantically imprinted on humans, at least humans willing to head off through time and especially space. It’s not better than the original idea, but it is better than the alternatives.

I still think we can return to the mad man/woman/person in a box after this. RTD will just have a different kind of trauma for the Doctor to deal with, but nine did, for all the overall light heartedness for much of his run, come in with trauma. First we had the death of all the Timelords, then I think Moffart made it guilt over his role in the death of the Timelords. Chibs has made it very complicated adopted relationship with the Timelords. And as always they’ll pop up from time to time to varying effect.

I think there’s an article on here, by @jimthefish? about the diminishing returns of the TimeLords. I’m impressed that Chib managed to do something fairly new and interesting with them, with a whole other aspect of them that manages to cut them down to size, but also stay true to the old British Empire evocations. I’m pretty sure Ruth Doctor is the one who breaks away from the Division, and I’d like to see that.

Again very much looking forward to watching this in one gulp. Even considering revisiting the whole run, which hadn’t particularly interested me before. I noticed that the date Yaz is looking for is December 5th, next weeks episode. I realised as soon as the words were: fetch your dog, it was Karvanista. Who must then be told to fetch his human.

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@dentarthurdent I don’t know so much about campus’ – my undergrad and my current Masters are with the OU. I have almost exactly the same dream, only it’s about going back to school for some strange reason, I can’t find the room, or the timetable… or actually quite work out why I, being the age I am (which is always my current age in the dream) am going back to school in the first place…

regarding university study, I personally find it’s (especially at this point), as the saying goes, like hitting your head against a brick wall, it’s so pleasant when it stops. But it’s also very UN-like hitting your head against a brick wall, in that whenever you stop you find yourself missing it, and you even end up taking out loans to build a new wall to hit your head against.

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@scaryb I have of late discovered that if my diss work is becoming disheartening and tiring, doing a little work on probate application (without will) and estate valuation reminds me how, overall, and relatively, fun academic work is…

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@janetteb, @winston, @blenkinsopthebrave, @dentarthurdent, @nerys, @mudlark, @missy,  thank you all. And yes, I live with my partner, who actually found her (I didn’t see her) and he’s been fantastic, doing most of the sorting through of things in her rooms upstairs (she was something of a hoarder) while I try to plug on with finishing my dissertation. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I was here alone, I’m very lucky.

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@scaryb oooh, Claire as Timelord! I like it, especially the idea of an Angel possessing a Timelord- either knowingly or unknowingly. I suppose it might be possible that she’s had a very through mind wipe of some kind, and the visions are being used to supply information she needs to know, memories hidden as visions – so that in some way she really does know them when she first meets them, but thinks it’s a vision in the latest episode.  Or maybe she’s talking about the first time she met them, which they haven’t experienced yet, and that point in the first episode hasn’t happened for her yet, timey whimey etc, it is an Angels episode after all…

@blenkinsopthebrave – yes I like the Ruth Doctor as the pre-Hartnell Doctor theory. But then how does Susan turn up? Did Susan rescue her grandparent?

 

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@mudlark oh I like your Moffart explanation, and it would fit with the overall theme of lost memories. But I agree, Chibnal might just leave it at ‘it was just the premonition’. But the premonition really doesn’t match how she responded to seeing them, in my book, so I will be a little irked, if so. I could have sworn she reacted particularly to seeing Yaz.

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@jimthefish I think Chibnal has been, if nothing else, audacious and ambitious in his run, though it didn’t show as much in the first season (which I like, but I like mostly for the storylines that didn’t really depend on being in Who). I can imagine RTD dialling it down a bit and restoring the madman in a box, @mudlark. But I don’t know how much I’d put past Chibs right now. He’s got two episodes to pull it all off, he’s absolutely got my attention.

What I didn’t think he’s done so well with overall has been the week by week, even season by season thing. I think his run will stand up better when it’s all completed and watched together. I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way, I know this season is a continuous story, he is providing individual stories within them, more so really than a lot of the MCU TV which I was happier with week by week. I do think he’ll be reassessed significantly in a decade or so.

But this was a really good angels episode that had just about every fan chanting ‘the image of an angel becomes itself an angel’ at the TV. And that’s some good Doctor Who.

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