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someone pointed out that there are no iconic monsters from rtd2, in rtd1 season 1 we had autons, slitheen, daleks, empty child, in season 2 we had werewolf, krillitane, clockwork droids, cybermen

most of them were SO iconic to doctor who even if you hadn't watched an episode you'd be able to see one of these and think "doctor who"

as a kid i remember being soo obsessed with the lore for all of them, slitheen were interesting because they could be anyone, krillitane were interesting because they took features of the different species they conquered

they were interesting because they felt real, and scary, and threatening, so after 20 years I can still remember names like sycorax or the gelth, but i cannot give you the name of a single monster/alien from rtd2, and i think anyone who is a casual watcher wouldn't be able to either, because rtd2 would rather have something look expensive and cgi and stylish than giving it some good writing

and no child is running around the playground pretending to be chased by the robots from the robot revolution, the miscellaneous alien in the interstellar song contest, or...conrad ?

actually no children are watching doctor who now because rtd2 isn't written for them it's written to go viral on tiktok

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Can't believe I'm finally saying this but ALISTAIR MCGOWAN came on our podcast

(That's Piero de Medici himself!)

Listen in as Alistair talks through everything you’d ever wanted to know about Piero, from what it was like playing the villain and the experience of filming Leonardo in South Africa.

Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts!

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Something cool I discovered while recording for the podcast...

Mac and Leo's secret handshake (which I may have tried to pressure my friends into doing with me as a teen) is something Mac also does with Carlo in The Lightning Box.

You remember Carlo? The Scottish friend from Mac's past, who tries to steal the Lightning Box and also pushes our boy Lorenzo into a wall?

Which either means Carlo invented the shake, taught Mac who then taught Leo, or baby Mac invented the shake, taught "big brother" Carlo then found Leo and taught him too.

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This theory is SO fun to me, because it's so clear to anyone who watched Leonardo that he gives VERY tenth doctor vibes! I can absolutely follow through with the logic.

However, it's important to note the show Leonardo was actually proposed first as a book by Dan Danko and Tom Mason, so I wonder if both projects 1) OG book that never ended up being written and 2) OG Young Doctor show idea were combined in some way?

I do love Mac as the Master and Leonardo as the Doctor ?? It makes SO much sense to their dynamic!

I've never seen all the OG Doctor Who episodes but I wonder if this is why Lisa's character has so little to do in Leonardo at times? Because she was supposed to be an enemy type character but couldn't be a villain in this world?

Anyway! If you are a Leo fan and want a deep dive into the show me and my friends made a podcast about it - FantasticoPod - you can follow on Instagram for updates)

Did you know the BBC wanted a young Doctor spin-off, but the Doctor Who production office shut it down, so all the ideas for it became the CBBC show Leonardo?

or,

You want a Deca spinoff? We’ve had one all along!!

It’s well-known that CBBC had planned a young Doctor spin-off before they commissioned The Sarah Jane Adventures. As RTD put it in The Inside Story (2006), “Children’s BBC approached us. They wanted to do a drama based around the idea of a young Doctor Who, but I said no to that. Somehow the idea of a fourteen-year-old Doctor, on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers, takes away from the mystery and intrigue of who he is and where he came from. So instead I suggested doing a series with Sarah Jane Smith, because she’d been so popular in School Reunion.”

But is it possible that CBBC didn’t throw out the idea, and “a fourteen-year-old Doctor on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers” became “a fourteen-year-old Leondardo da Vinci in 15th century Florence inventing new futuristic technologies”? Many thanks to my friend Poseidome for pointing me to this connection, which came from the same rumorhound who told me about the Dalek rights situation and abortive BritBox reshoot plans:

Leonardo is what the young Doctor spin off was going to be. “Fantastico!” as his catchphrase. The series would follow the Doctor, Master, Rani, and friends uncovering a conspiracy within the Academy and Time Lord society. The Doctor and the eventual renegades at the heart of it all. The Doctor’s ideas being stolen, his future has been foreseen, Time Lords trying to stop it, etc. All that kind of stuff. There’s even a Borusa stand-in played by Alistair McGowan!

(More under the cut…)

Keep reading

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Hi everyone,

I've been a fan of Leonardo since it aired in 2011 and I made a podcast (Fantastico) where I watch the show with my friends who are seeing it for the first time.

There’ll be laughter, historical fun facts, and some VERY special guests along the way so tune in on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

The first episode is out now!

I will mostly be posting updates on Instagram (@fantasticopod) but just wanted to check in with any Leo fans that exist here!

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Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in WICKED (Part 1)

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MERLIN | 2.01 The Curse of Cornelius Sigan

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sorry i’m just thinking again about kaz brekker, perpetual cynic, and his surprisingly optimistic view of fathers and sons. just. kaz knowing that the one thing that would ruin pekka rollins, the man he hates more than anything, who he couldn’t think less of, would be to threaten the safety of his son. kaz telling jesper that his father cares more about him than any farm. kaz saying “call me sentimental, but i didn’t believe a father could be so callous.” kaz’s fatal misunderstanding of van eck being that he couldn’t conceive of a world in which fathers don’t love their sons. thinking about what all this says about kaz’s own father, and everything he lost before he and jordie ever stepped foot in ketterdam.

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Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf - it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” - meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.

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my favourite olympics subplot is this norwegian swimmer’s public love affair with chocolate muffins and his increasingly manic tiktoks about them... romance of the summer

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when talking about how the timeless child twist was revealed and set up at the end of s12, youtuber full fat videos said "for a central mystery to be set up and teased across the series only to be promptly thrown in the bin feels very cheap and insults the commitment the audience have given to the plot arc".

and that's how I feel about the conclusion to ruby sunday's arc

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alright well maybe my first review last night was too harsh but i still stand by my words that utopia + army of ghosts + bad wolf + the stolen earth all hold up as individual standalone exciting episodes with character development and conflict, worldbuilding, a real sense of place and time — the legend of ruby sunday felt like an exposition dump copypasted straight out of the tardis wiki with an uninteresting setting, uninspired direction and all in service of a lead-up towards what? a cheap anagram reveal of a one-off villain from 1975 whose motivations don’t stretch far beyond “kill everyone now because i’m evil and bad”.

don’t you dare compare it to utopia. utopia is one of the best, most nuanced and layered episodes of the entire show.

i feel like russell has been replaced by a zygon.

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Some Dot and Bubble thoughts (some unhinged, some perfectly hinged):

I don't think Susan Twist was Lindy's mum I think her title is "Mummy" - Lindy and her friends only refer to her as "Mummy" and I think this season has been really heavy handed on Ruby's abandonment issues so it won't surprise me if the series big bad is called The Mummy.

The guy at the end who says he's going to be the leader (gross) says his name is Brewster Cavendish, which is obviously at the start of the alphabet which makes me think he's coming back (which I don't like! Gross!)

Susan Twist is in Blue AGAIN ! She's been in blue the majority of her appearances (ambulance screen was blue / she had a blue hiking jacket on / the background behind her was blue this episode), maybe it's her favourite colour or maybe it means something! Is /she/ The Wild Blue Yonder?

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number one truther of simon drools in his sleep and baz finds it terribly charming

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I love an episode where everything is wrapped up neatly at the end