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A dance that never ends

[Prints available here]

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if you've never fantasized about killing your father than I just don't really know how to talk to you I guess

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oh huh! it turns out there's a difference between "growing up" and "waiting around so long you're not technically a child anymore"

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Syberia (2002)

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The Longest Journey (1999) ↠ Metro Circle

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Mystra

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greta thunberg, liam cunningham, rima hassan, and everyone else on that ship, thank you, and i hope you succeed. i really hope you succeed. you know what you are risking, and i wish for you to come back safely, having done what you set out to do.

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I do not like to consider behind the scenes stuff when talking about Art, but I do think that this episode fully sealed the deal on the 'Millie Gibson left the show unexpectedly for Some Sort of Reason so they had to cast someone else as a new companion on short notice and quickly rewrite completed episodes to compensate' theory.

That whole maternal bit with Belinda? Out of nowhere. Nothing to do with Belinda. Belinda got very little characterization overall, but none of it was that.

But let's say instead that the companion for this season remained Ruby. We get a little timeskip in between the two seasons, in which Ruby dates Conrad. Maybe the Robot Revolution initially featured him. Then we have a whole season in which none of the other stories (except a new version of Lucky Day) center around her, which makes a lot of sense because the previous season was all about her. She doesn't feel undercharacterized, because she had a whole-ass season of characterization already. Most of the season could have her in the place of Belinda with literally nothing changing, which, well.

And then we get to this finale. The Doctor and Ruby get magicked into a world where they have a magic baby, who looks just like a baby they met previously. Despite the fact that the baby and their life isn't real, Ruby can't possibly find it within herself to abandon - or forget - a child. It doesn't matter whether the child is really hers or not. It matters that someone needs to take care of her and that Ruby steps up to do it. That's a core Ruby character value! That's something that would follow up on a previously established theme!

So, the ending in which she raises the child isn't weird, it's the conclusion to Ruby's character arc. There's no extra character who needs to be shoved into a literal box. The UNIT reunion is a reunion of characters who actually know each other, unlike Belinda, who doesn't know any of those guys. Space Babies is retroactively vindicated.

I cannot believe this was not the intended model of the series. We know these two seasons were written and filmed concurrently. There's no reason for the result to be so awkward if there wasn't some bullshit afoot, given that there was ample opportunity to plan it properly. When Belinda was announced, RTD explicitly said that Varada Sethu was cast because they had already filmed 'Boom' and they knew she had good screen chemistry with Ncuti. She herself said that she was just offered the role out of the blue. This was a rush job. I really liked Varada Sethu as Belinda. She did a lot to disguise the patch here, and it's too bad that she couldn't do more. But we shouldn't think of these seasons as something that was designed to be this way. I'm pretty sure they weren't.

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This has got to mean something...

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He’s the only doctor to not meet the Daleks, Cybermen or the master

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So mad at Doctor Who I came back to this website

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I'm so sorry for ever saying anything nice about you RTD, what the fuck was that?? Get behind me Belinda and Fifteen, you didn't fucking deserve that shit

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In my folk art era ✨ Some last unicorn art ✨

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Fenris stays silent, just running his fingers over Hawke’s letter.

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The worst of all blessings,

the best of all curses.

Based on Springtime by Pierre Auguste Cot.