hypexion

[hypexion]

Like before, Series 15 of Doctor Who only having eight episodes is bad for it. Series 14 just about held it together, but that's because the finale didn't strongly hinge on the Doctor-Ruby relationship. In constrast, the Doctor-Belinda ends up being a big deal. The problem is that said relationship does not develop in a way that actually makes sense or feels organic.

Let's review the Belinda situation in each episode:

The Robot Revolution - Belinda is kidnapped to another planet by evil robots sent by her ex-boyfriend. She watches a woman who trusts the Doctor implicitly die right in front of her. By the end, she's not fond of the Doctor and his dubious ways, and wants to go home.

Lux - Belinda gets caught up in a fight with a malevolent god, on her second "adventure". She immediately admits that the Doctor's life terrifies her. In return, the Doctor says he might not be able to get her home. Overall, she is still not thrilled.

The Well - Belinda literally almost dies, because getting shot in the chest is the only way to save her from a parasitic monster that would otherwise drive her mad. She is directly confronted with her mortality, and is again terrified.

Lucky Day - Belinda isn't really in this episode.

The Story & the Engine - Belinda has apparently mellowed out enough to be okay with the Doctor visiting his buddy instead of proceeding with getting her home (tangent: how does this make sense in the Mother Belinda timeline?). She laughs at a guy and seems to have gotten over her previous worries. There's the hook that she sympathises with the Doctor's need to find a place where in fits in, but that would be more effective if she were already warming up to him.

The Interstellar Song Contest - Belinda spends most of this episode believing that the Doctor is dead, and thus she is permanently trapped in the future. In the Mother Belinda timeline she presumably has an even worse reaction. Then she sees the Doctor torturing a genocide survivor, and still ends the episode by saying she thinks the Doctor is cool. This should lead into the nadir of Belinda's relationship with the Doctor, but instead it gets brushed off and woah finale cliffhanger.

Stepping out of the reviewing for a moment, and I think it's already clear that Belinda undergoes a sudden personality shift between The Well and The Story & the Engine. Part of this is probably just poor management where the "not hyped about the Doctor" aspect of Belinda's character wasn't passed onto the non-RTD writers. But it still ends up mangling the overall character progression. If you want Belinda to start liking the Doctor, there needs to be an episode that can make that happen.

Moving on:

Wish World - Belinda... isn't meaningfully in this one. She's been hollowed out to act as one of Conrad's perfect housewives, a fate that is both horrifying and yet somehow very boring. Other than having a bit of a scream, Belinda does nothing proactive, being pulled around by the plot. When she "betrays" the Doctor to the doubt police, it's because she's playing out a role. Rather than, say, her having a subconcious distrust of the Doctor because of all the bad times she had travelling with him.

The Reality War - Belinda remains hollowed out, her entire character being compressed down to "Mother". After sitting half the episode out, she's suddenly super buzzed to be hanging out with the Doctor and having his fake baby. You know, the guy she watched torture someone the last time she was actually herself. Although Belinda might still be in wish mode while Poppy was around so Real Belinda is even less in this episode. Then finally we get Mother Belinda, a character who didn't exist until the Doctor invents her (theories to the contrary are wrong).

Overall, Belinda has a highly disjointed "arc" if you can even call it that. She doesn't develop, but rather shift between several characterisations, and it's rather jarring. And the worst part is, you could probably fix it with two more episodes, and wouldn't you know it, Belinda isn't in one episode, and is replaced with a puppet in another.

There is too much trying to happen in Series 15 compared to the actual amount of time to make it happen. (I'll even tick everyone off by saying Flux worked out better than this, and that only had six episodes while originally being planned for ten.) I also think the episode ordering adds to the problem, as Belinda gets the worst end of adventures with the Doctor first, which should be enough to put anyone off. But no before the finale even starts she's suddenly cool with the Doctor.

I suppose the conclusion is that Belinda ends up being more of a plot device than a character, which is bad. I don't even know what else to say because this is really more of a rant than an "essay".

[hypexion]

At the end of The Reality War, the Doctor rewrites Belinda's timeline without her consent to make her into the mother of Poppy. I think this is badly written and quite sexist. I'm sorry, but there's probably no way to suddenly flatten out a character into "mother" without it being those two things.

But what if, actually, Belinda was actually a mother all along, and the Doctor fixed the timeline?

Well if that's true, the writing is even worse, and it's more sexist. Hooray! Also: there's a bonus horrifying implication.

I'm going to start with the quality of writing angle first, because that's the main thing that initially aggravated me about the "Belinda was always a mother" theory. To be blunt, there is simply no strong textual evidence for it. Nobody was posting theories that Belinda had a child before The Reality War, because there was no reason to think that. If the evidence can only be found post-hoc, as random pieces of subtext, then it hasn't been presented well. And since Belinda being a mother all along should be a signifigant aspect of her character (if only in a negative space kind of way), then it needs to be presented at that level.

While it's certainly tempting to claim that the audience is stupid and Just Doesn't Get it, there's a point where that stops working. If the intention is that Belinda was a mother, then wasn't, then the Doctor fixed things, for most viewers that was not conveyed. The most common reading is that Belinda wasn't a mother, and then the Doctor rewrote her timeline to make her one. If the theory is true, then the series as presented utterly failed to make that clear. You cannot hinge this kind of thing on random background details and the running gag of "mavity". You actually have to build it into the text.

The Well presented the perfect opportunity for this. Aliss' motivation is to return home to her daughter. Belinda has absolutely zero reaction to this. Sure, she wants to help Aliss, but that's clearly motivated by her generally being a good person. Even a single line of Belinda bringing up Aliss' daughter as a reason not to leave her behind would be far more than the entire season actually gives.

The Story & The Engine provides a similar chance. Now, "Belinda sees Poppy for no good reason" does not count as foreshadowing for what happens in Wish World or The Reality War. It definitely doesn't suggest that Poppy is Belinda's secretly erased from reality daughter. But what The Story & The Engine does have is Abena, who has a less than happy relationship with her father. A child seperated from a parent by the parent's own choice. And again, this passes without comment from Belinda. It would only need one or two lines when Belinda is talking with Abena about what Anansi did. A reaction along the lines of "I would never do that to my daughter (pause) I mean, if I had a daughter" would be enough. Especially if the first part is said conversationally, and the second part as if Belinda is trying to reassure herself that such a thing is true.

Of course, this analysis mostly gets eaten by the Occam's Razor of "the obvious reading is true, there was no original Belinda is a mother timeline". Communication is key, and if the "original mother timeline" theory is true, it's only a theory because it was so poorly communicated.

So that's the writing angle. But the theory also amplifies the existing sexist resolution to be more sexist.

By positioning the timeline where Belinda is a mother as the correct timeline, the theory implicitly states that the non-mother Belinda is incorrect. You can word it however you want, but the theory is saying "a correct woman is a mother". This is an uncharitable reading, but the theory is an uncharitable sexist reading of Belinda's chatacter, so I will continue.

The extended problem is that the theoy also implies that motherhood is the only legitimate reason that Belinda would not want to travel with the Doctor. That her insistence on wanting to return to a specific time is only valid if she has a child waiting for her. Which is simply not true. Going missing, even for a few days, runs the risk of derailing Belinda's life. "My evil ex-boyfriend sent robots to kidnap me to another planet" is not a reasonable sounding excuse for missing work. But if the Doctor has a time machine, her problem is seemingly solve - he can drop her back the next morning, and her life continues seamlessly where it left off.

As an aside, there is nothing wrong with Belinda being a mother. If The Robot Revolution had ended with her saying "No, you need to bring me back to the day I left because my daughter is waiting for me", that would have been a fine character hook. Once you start throwing in extra timelines and suggesting Belinda as a mother is better off in everyway, that's when things get dodgy.

Anyhow, I promised a horrifying implication. So, it's suggested a few times in The Reality War that the reason the Doctor and Belinda's wish child is Poppy the space baby is due to the Doctor's (and maybe Ruby's) memories of the space babies. But if Belinda had a child in an "original" timeline, that child wouldn't be Poppy. Because Poppy is only there because of the Doctor.

So Belinda's real child was erased from reality.

And the Doctor didn't save Belinda's child. He saved his own, effectively overwriting yet another person's life to achieve it.

Belinda won't know the difference? Well that's alright then.

[hypexion]

I wouldn't describe Miraculous Ladybug as having a release schedule. I'd describe as having release events, probably in the manner of a worried scientist in a disaster movie.

[hypexion]

The Reality War is the final episode of "Season 2" and features reality-shattering stakes. So much so that this post is going to have paragraphs rather than being a list of bullet points. Oh no?

My super-quick opinion on The Reality War is that it's the core of a good episode weighed down by all the bad things that happen in it. Good ideas are used badly, while bad ideas get to go full steam ahead. And like Omega in The Three Doctors, it ends up being more than a little hollow.

But I'll start with the good parts. Overall, I think the Rani's goals matched up fairly well with her concept, an evil biologist trying to rebuild Gallifrey by acquiring the original template for the species. Her dismissive, yet almost passive contempt of humanity also works to set her apart from the Master. She's willing to let humanity live if the Doctor helps her, because there's no reason for her to go out of her way to destroy them. It's a more clinical evil compared to the Master, running the same day over and over not out of malice, but simply because that's the best way for the Rani to achieve her goals.

Some of the characters definitely pulled more weight than others, but the ones that did certainly made an impression. Anita returning to help out using the Time Hotel doors was fun, and it felt earned. Ruby also does a lot of work, and she ended up being the most compelling part of the post-wish parts. She does anguish incredibly well, although it would nice if for once someone reacted to her having a mental health crisis nicely.

Plus since I think Thirteen is cool, her showing up to bother Fifteen was fun. It was worth the vile wretchedness of implying Fourteen was going to be needed to make things work out. A pleasant surprise, especially since I think this era of Doctor Who leans on the past in ways that aren't always great.

Which works as a fine lead into the problems. Which start not with the alpha, but with Omega.

Omega is a character with a certain sense of narrative weight. But as a pre-existing character, including him also comes at a cost. People who know about Omega have certain expectations, and people who don't will need some level of explanation. If you take on that cost, you have to make it worthwhile.

Which means not turning the character into a CGI monster that gets defeated within five minutes of actually showing up. The Rani might as well have been looking for a new Legendary Guy in the Underverse, because Omega is not Omega. Hell, when you think about it, the Rani needing Omega's body directly contradicts a key property of Omega - he has no physical body. Omega is essentially used as Sutehk round two, which honestly feels like the annihilation of creativity. The potential horror of Omega being overwritten by the Underverse into what people think he is gets ignored, because that aspect of the plot only seems to exist so that RTD can ignore Omega's established character traits in favour of rehashing Saturn snacking on his kids. There's also the fact that this squanders any interesting interactions in regards to the Timeless Child, since Omega might have had opinions on that particular secret!

Speaking of the snacking, the Rani's previously great performance is rapidly undermined when she gets eaten. She has been built up over two seasons, and then she just dies instantly, while Mrs. Flood exits stage left. On the one hand, it's very "evil scientist Gets Got by her experiment", but on the other, it means she essentially defeats herself. I'd also be amiss if I didn't point out that it's the version of the Rani played by a non-white actor who Gets Got. Real smooth there Russel.

Conrad, meanwhile, gets some level of dignity in his defeat, with Ruby trying to talk him down, and she even wishes him into a better life using Desiderium (again with the overwriting people). It's kind of weird for Ruby to describe Conradworld as nice, given that all transgender people were erased from reality and disabled people were forced to live in camps, but I guess for everyone else it's not entirely awful. Bit of a weird conflict with what happened to Alan, given Conrad ended up in this situation entirely of his own will, while Alan did technically get abducted by robots and may have started regretting the whole "become cyber man" thing.

Finally, there is Belinda. Having been mind controlled in Wish World to fufill a role designed by Conrad, the Doctor and Belinda are now highly invested in Poppy staying alive. This might work better if I were invested in Poppy staying alive. Except the entire setup of Wish World prevents that investment, because the audience knows that Poppy is a space baby from space. The conclusion to this issue is that the Doctor rewrites a signifigant part of Belinda's life, without her consent, and this is presented as basically fine. Which has an interesting parallel to what happened to Omega, with both characters getting overwritten based on someone else's perception of them. Which is nightmarish and ultimately uncommented on.

The idea that this plot was initially drafted for Ruby makes a lot of sense. While there are definitely some holes, it's notable that Ruby is the one most affected by Poppy disappearing, while the Doctor and Belinda, the parents of said disappearing child, don't really care. And prior to the disappearance, Belinda's opinion on the Doctor has effectively flipped from her initial opinion, with very little to prompt it. It just doesn't feel earned. The fact that the Doctor doesn't remember Poppy is also kind of strange given he has such a strong investment in her, but I guess it does avoid the yikes of him rewriting Belinda's life entirely for his own desires.

I'm not quite sure what the conclusion is here. Perhaps the super-quick opinion is right: it's ultimately hollow. Which seems to be something of a reoccuring issue. The shiny surface of the episode is there, but when you try to dig into the details, they aren't many there. And the details that do exist? For some of them, it would be better if they didn't.

[hypexion]

Thasmin Is Real 2025

[hypexion]

The Master should escape from the tooth then regenerate into Uncle Deadly (from the muppets)

[hypexion]

It's time to make a Wish World. But if you doubt, your mug will noclip through the table.

The Rani now steals magic babies. Sure, why not.

The resolution to the cliffhanger is that the Doctor and Belinda are married

Also one of the space babies is their daughter now

Belinda didn't even meet the space babies

Ruby and Mel are also in this episode because the present day now has a dozen supporting characters

The real villain is heteronormativity. Plus you aren't allowed to doubt, or wonder. Sounds kind of like a religion.

The Rani is now famous but don't think about her too hard

Getting big Phyrexia vibes from the Rani's bone castle and her creepy minions

Conrad Clark wished big but his wish kind of sucks

It's actually pretty cool that the whole point is that the wished up world is janky and wrong

The Rani wants people to apply logical thinking which is connected to scientific reasoning so it is a Rani plani

Belinda runs out into the forest to scream. Then presumably goes home again after freaking out?

Conrad Clark forgets disabled people exist, but presumably has a "people are fine" wish going on so they don't keel over. Or it's just leftovers from pre-wish times.

Ruby and Shirley failed to achieve much of anything other than padding the episode out it seems

Susan jumpscare

Rogue regular scare. "Thanks for that, by the way"

Anyway the Rani explains the plot, and it turns out she does have a good reason to stalk the Doctor: to use his cosmic doubt to crack open the fabric of reality

sure throw Omega in here as well stories don't need to be coherent in 2025

Honestly overall this has what I'll call "Series 9 syndrome" where very little actual plot development happens in part one

I could definitely exploit the powers of Desidirium better than Conrad

next time: based on previous performance, a lacking lack of answers

[hypexion]

woah it's The Interstellar Song Contest with songs almost as bad as actual Eurovision.

I don't know what the starting point for the list should be for this episode

So let's first meditate on the fact real person Rylan is cryogenically frozen for the purpose of hosting a contest. This happens sometime next week. Sure.

That lizard lady can't be a Silurian because of Earth going bye-bye

Dugga Doo is pretty much a Muppets sketch put into Doctor Who. It would do numbers in real life.

So, the actual plot

It's an Idiot Plot, which will also feed into other problems with the episode

Starting with the nitpicks: why is the there a big switch in the control room that kills everyone? This is jarringly stupid.

The failure of Kid's plan can be directly linked back to him flipping the "kill everyone" switch and I don't think it was written that way on purpose

Kid's ultimate plan is to kill a lot of people in a display of undirected retributive violence after hijacking the contest broadcast

It seems like it would be more constructive to hijack the broadcast to spread your political message and use the "kill everyone" switch as leverage

This is because I am understanding terroristic violence as a means, rather than an end unto itself

Some people are calling this episode "Kerblam! 2". In terms of its handling of terrorism and the motives thereof, it's more like "The Zygon Inversion 2". (which is not a good thing)

The Hellions did get given an actual motivation beyond "they're just doing a tantrum", but also the Doctor says "well you just like killing"

Thus even if you could divorce this episode from specific recent real-world events, you would then fall back to specific less recent real-world events where Eurovision's attempts to be apolitical become very political

Really this is unsalvageable unless you are willing to seriously consider the question of when political violence is okay, and how a just cause does not always justify specific acts

The Doctor also tortures Kid because he thinks Belinda is dead, which is in-character but doesn't get treated well

Belinda absolutely should not be brushing this development off. Her initial wariness towards the Doctor has evapourated, in spite of nothing happening to justify that.

Because of the vindicator, we know this is adventure number five, so there's definitely no time for Belinda to have become a generic fawning companion.

At this point, it would be much more reasonable for Belinda to be afraid of the Doctor

Yeah overall this episode ends up being very stupid in very bad ways. The terrible moral message never ends.

If it was about stealing the Eurovision diamond or something it would be a better than average base under seige episode, but it is instead what it is

Also it turns out that it actually is Susan for once

Oh yeah and one more thing unrelated to the actual episode

why the fuck is she the rani

[hypexion]

My SCP opinion is that the worst kind of SCP article are the ones that are evidently based on the author's hatred of a real-world person. In addition to being kind of tacky they often elevate the target to a position of overblown importance. Even in cases where I might not like said target there's a sense of "yes but they aren't a supernatural font of infinite malice". Then this overblowing sort of overflows round to downplaying their negative qualities by replacing them with the supernatural malice.

There are definitely SCPs that use real people in a good way but for contemporary figures the bar is very difficult to clear. Historical ones get more leeway as always.

Second worst are probably paint-by-numbers Group of Interest based articles that are effectively the same as many other GoI articles. Especially for the groups that seem to have a soft rule that they aren't actually allowed to lose, which sort of takes the wind out of things. If the page theme tells me the ending do I really need to read any of the words??

Anyway those are my thoughts that are no longer rattling around in my head.

[hypexion]

The Story & the Engine is one of those stories about stories being important. Writers can keep getting away with it!

Let's go to Lagos

The Doctor has buddies now

Hair-growing effect is kind of goofy

However there is definitely a sinister bend to the Barber. Especially given the whole "harvesting stories from hostages" thing.

Window stories are cool

Return of the mysterious person who the Doctor knows but not us with Abena

Remember: it's never Susan

The chance of the Rth Doctor appearing are small but never zero

Sometimes you do have to laugh at the guy pretending to be The Legendary Guy. Much better than doing The Legendary Guy how it is normally done.

Gods are real now though, in a "made from human stories" way

Cool folklore usage in this one

We also get Belinda information although not from Belinda. How long has the Doctor been following her?

The Doctor can blow up a story-ship in six words. Impressive!

The ultimate metaphor of the Barber is clearly how the creations of labouring artists are controlled by corportations, who can then continue to use and benefit from the product of said labour without the original creators

The bit where the Doctor gets mad at Omo feels a little out of place. "Man I hope the Doctor will show up and help" is a sentiment share by many people the Doctor has helped

Has Belinda really known the Doctor long enough for hugs? Problems of eight-episode series strike again.

Honestly overall I think having an episode that's more of a stage production is fine. Embrace the range of the medium.

[hypexion]

If you like Doctor-lite episodes, it's your Lucky Day. Otherwise, it's not.

In the opening we visit the historical time of 2007. This is a week after a lot of people got mind-controlled by space aliens and then the aliens got blasted by a super-laser

Once again the Doctor accidentally bamboozles a random child. Surely this will have no consequences

Anyway this is a Ruby Sunday episode. She's back!

yeah I don't have much to say about the whole dating sequence

I wanted Conrad to Get Got when he revealed he hadn't taken the antidote. Like you could hang a whole episode off of this guy just being sort of not great in that way.

Ruby has more Clara vibes here in terms of "being like the Doctor but not perhaps not safely"

It's very immoral but my first reaction to Evil LINDA was "just shoot them"

Really it's quite lucky that neither of the guys wearing the monster suits got shot and/or wacked. Surely the whole village wasn't in on it?

Ruby is out of this guy's league by several divisions yet he finds the time to complain about dating her

Anyhow the BBC immediately platforms Mr. Alien Denialism. Remember when the Prime Minister was killed by Daleks on live TV? That happened!

Really the central conceit of Evil LINDA sort of falls over when accounting for the weird negative continuity going on with "present day" episodes. If anything, they should be trying to expose the existance of aliens.

Current Doctor Who: Against bad things, confused as to the cause of bad things and it's position on said causes

I thought if you livestream yourself breaking into a building and shooting a guy they turn off the livestream. What even is Conrad's plan at the end?

Everything is set up to hype us up for "Conrad Gets Got". But we must consider: Kind of messed up for Kate to do that.

Also while chomptime is fun, UNIT continues to take Ls. Why are they not running background checks on employees before they turn evil?

This all could have been avoided if Ruby knew about the companion support group. Ten million Yaz/Ruby fics likely being written off of that idea right now.

Doctor shows up at the end to bully Conrad. If Doctor Who told me I was special in all the wrong ways I'd probably give up right then and there.

As soon as Conrad in the prison scene started I immediately called that Mrs. Flood would show up to invite him to join the Avengers

Anyhow this was written by the same guy who did Kerblam! and yeah that checks out

[hypexion]

Well well well, it's The Well.

Firstly, this is a good one

Strong atmosphere from the start

It's a very classic sci-fi setup

Nice build up as the team finds the victims and discovers they've been killed in two different ways

Then they find Aliss, the also classic lone survivor

I managed to spot the behinder exactly once. There's a certain kind of dread when you're thinking maybe Belinda is just losing it

Ironically Belinda ends up losing it the least, and works out the behind rules pretty quickly.

Cassio, who has powerful "dies first" energy, manages to get multiple people killed before Getting Got

Kind of funny that the guy who supported Cassio taking over bit it first

There's definitely a kick to "this planet used to be Midnight", although, well, 400,000 years is a very, very, very long time

Plus I'm sort of on the side that this didn't need to be a sequel to Midnight, and episode from 17 years ago

Another clever solution to the monster, even if it didn't completely work

The arc stuff with the space people not knowing about Earth or humans was actually fairly well done. "woah it's Mrs. Flood" in the future less so. Literally this is just Susan Twist again??

Maybe it was a different entity that went on the spaceship. A nice one! woah!

Or perhaps it's just good old fashioned paranoia...

[hypexion]

Lux promises good things from its punchy one-word title, and it delivers. Now to beam out some thoughts about it:

Mr. Ring-a-Ding is one of the more compelling RTD2 villains, even thought he's literally two-dimensional

All the side characters speak like they're in a movie which I guess is appropriate

Meanwhile Belinda accelerates into being okay with wacky and dangerous adventures pretty quickly

The transition from the Doctor going "wow this is super cool" about Mr. Ring-a-Ding to "oh no this is super dangerous" was pretty good

Sequence where Doctor and Belinda get flattened is funny, especially once it starts getting into the funky Duck Amok zone

Meet the fans! Funny meta scene but it also managed to cut on the right side of things with them being not real.

You can tell the fans are fake because they all agree on the best episode

Clever way to defeat Mr. Ring-a-Ding

Mrs. Flood escaping containment to advance the cryptic mystery nonsense. oh no

And of course, another way to describe a Chaos Pantheon might be The Pantheon of Discord

[hypexion]

woah time for my thoughts on The Robot Revolution. Still in list form, even as that becomes more and more unwieldy.

The new companion is introduced: Belinda Chandra

Belinda would prefer to not go on a sci-fi adventure, which given what happens is a reasonable position

Advancements in character writing techniques means Belinda can dislike the series arc instead of thinking it's a good idea

Not accepting the Doctor's weird Time Stalking is also a strong position

Overall she is a high point of the episode. Except for being attached to the mystery, but hey Belinda doesn't like that either.

However, this episode also has a plot, and an attempt at themes

It starts with a decent concept of "well what if those star owning scams had consequences" but doesn't really do much with it

The villain is the "AI Generator", which does exactly zero things related to AI, generation, or Generative AI. It's literally just the buzzword.

This is perhaps because of the big twist: It's actually the AL Generator. Alan is inside.

Thus we pivot hard into Alan the off-brand Cyberman, and his lack of strong character motivation. The episode "needs" to set up the mystery arc so there's no time for even a weak motivation.

Like he accelerates from "controlling boyfriend" to "mass murderer" with little to no explanation.

The "Planet of the incels" line doesn't really make sense? First up it's just Alan, and Alan is not really an incel since he had a relationship. Not all types of misogynist are interchangeable.

"Incel utopia" is perhaps not what you want for Saturday evening TV but a cat did also get vapourised and the Doctor did also cut power to an entire hospital for a gag soooo

Again it's just hitting the buzzwords without really engaging with them. This kind of spelling out the moral sort of dulls the impact. We can tell Alan is not a good guy. With a little restructuring I think the obsessive stalker angle could be a lot sharper.

Also there's the bit where it's implied Alan is actually a victim of the machine but that only lasts for a scene. You've really got to pick a lane with this thing if it's just one guy.

As an aside I feel like the eight words thing only mattered when it mattered and not otherwise. Hmm.

Sasha 55 new record holder for "I'm Doctor friend" to dead?

Overall this episode had good bits and bad bits and I think if it were a little more focused it would be much better.

Still far better than Space Babies.

[hypexion]

I am just completely burnt out on Doctor Who mystery arcs. And RTD2 ones are being pushed so aggressively. woah look it's Mrs. Flood and Belinda looks like the future and oh nooooo end of the world just please stop.

Like compared to this the Moffat-era stuff was as subtle as a feather landing on a mattress.

[hypexion]

For some reason there is a theory bouncing around that the Tarkir Dragonlords will show up on Arcavios and found an allied-colour school. I don't like it for a few reasons.

Now, it's clear that Strixhaven's five colleges provide a complete set of five enemy colour pairs, with nothing missing. The plane does not need, and will never need, a set of allied colour colleges. That would just be making Arcavios into Ravnica: School Edition.

Less clear outside of the Planeswalker's Guide to Strixhaven and other materials is that Arcavios, as a plane, is enemy-coloured down to its very bones. From the guide, we learn this about the origin of Arcavios' Elder Dragons:

At the birth of the plane, as the mana of two planes overlapped in conflicting ways, many forms of life adapted to the new structure and many new forms of life were spawned. Five particularly powerful vortices of overlapping mana became luminous spheres, from which were hatched five dragons. These dragons have become emblems of the magic of the plane, living symbols of the clashing forces of the five dichotomies.

The information provided on the Snarls is also interesting in this regard:

Mana flows through all the plane of Arcavios. But in certain sites, the mana becomes knotted and tangled. At these places, magic and spells can be at their most powerful—and at their most dangerous. These places are known as Snarls. According to the Archaics, the Snarls are places where two conflicting sources of antagonistic mana overlapped together at the birth of the plane.

The tension and conflict between enemy colours isn't just restricted to Strixhaven - it permeates the very structure of the plane. You can't add allied-coloured factions to the plane because they simply don't belong.

Of course, those are mostly aesthetic objections. Now, I could point out that since Strixhaven is also has a mechanical enemy-colour focus, there's no room for the Dragonlords. The same issue that got them kicked out of Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

But I think there are a few blindingly obvious reasons why the Dragonlords will not be founding a school together.

Atarka and Kolaghan do not have the temperament to found a school. Also, Silumgar eats people, which is unlikely to go down well with the locals. Theoretically Dromoka might be able to do it but given she exterminated the Abzan for practicing entirely ethical necromancy, she'll probably be too busy getting killed after attacking Lorehold.

That leaves Ojutai, who might just decide to enroll in the existing school.

In conclusion: Founders rule, Dragonlords drool.

[hypexion]

A mildly amusing thing is that if set boosters were still around for Tarkir: Dragonstorm, that would be a perfect place to stick a new cycle for the Dragonlords. That would be outside of the requirements of main set structure. But, alas, that was not an option.

(technically there is another kind of booster you could make them exclusive to, but I won't speak that evil into the world)