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geekmedium · 4 years

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Favorite Doctor/Companion Teams

Because I want to spread some Doctor Who good cheer for Christmas. Also, I’m not doing the 9th or 13th doctor because they’ve really only had one team. Anyway...

1. The Original Team

The ones who started it all. They would win by iconography, but even with that, they’re just a lot of fun to watch. This is the doctor at his most curmudgeon; he’s rude, fairly detached, and very much not the hero we’re use to. So they gave him a granddaughter who he cares for, and two teachers who act as the parents and honestly more noble, likable people.

It’s a family dynamic, one which we don’t see often. I appreciate that they were a team who grew to care for each other, but still had radically different approaches to whatever situation they found themselves in. And it is through this team up that the Doctor could mellow out and be a more straight up heroic figure. He learned from them just as much as the reverse.

2nd, Jamie, and Zoe

Where the first team had a family dynamic to it, the second doctor had a more “bro” relationship with his team. He and Jamie are famously close, and if I’m not mistaken, Jamie is still one of the longest lasting companions. They joked around, had each others backs, and were just great pals. While Doctor Who was meant to be a teaching show, I believe these two turned the tone from edutainment into one full of Wonder.

As for Zoe, well I just like her. She was probably the first companion who could be considered of super intelligence. I like the Doctor and Jamie as two bros hanging out, but Zoe can be in there to keep everyone from getting along too well. Her intelligence could lead her to be smug, but she was truly loyal to the Tardis team. And I loved her interactions with Jamie as brother and sister.

3rd and Jo Grant

I kind of like the Doctor with a ditzy companion. Despite not being remembered very well, I think Jo was able to occasionally pull her weight and she worked well with the Doctor. Plus their last scene together, when he says goodbye? Man, you could tell how sad that made not only them, but their actors as well.

4th and Sarah Jane

There were so many choices, but ultimately I can’t help thinking of this one as the best. Not only is Sarah Jane still considered one of the best companions, her dynamic with the Doctor was one of equal love and exasperation. She would often debate with him, grow frustrated with him, but still be with him through some of the most terrifying threats any companion had to deal with. And when it was time to go, she took it with good grace; she would always remember her time with the Doctor fondly, and only asked that he do the same. Magical.

5th, Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa

Here we have the family dynamic back again. I just really like the Doctor acting like a mentor to Adric, with Tegan and Nyssa as best friends who act like the big sisters of the group. I feel that while the first Doctor’s family was a generational thing, with each passing something to the next, the fifth Doctor’s family was a group of siblings. They were kind of equals with each other, and they got into plenty of small arguments, constantly annoying each other, but with a kind of affection that made them want to be together even when they were mad.

I know it’s hard to write Doctor Who with more than 1 or 2 constant companions, but I personally like family dynamics the best. With the 2nd through 4th, there isn’t a ton to say because they got on very well. There were disagreements sure, but for the most part, they were great friends and always happy with each other. A family dynamic, like with the fifth ensured a lot more dynamic back in forth bickering, with everyone's different backgrounds playing off each other in a way unique to Doctor Who, that could bring people from different timelines and planets together.

6th and Evelyn

I’m going to cheat a bit by going off the grid into the audio dramas. No offense to Peri fans, but Evelyn is everything a companion should be. Tough, strongly opinionated, and incredibly empathetic, she provided a good foil to possibly the most selfish Doctor.

But what I loved most about her was that she was elderly. It provided a different dynamic to the Doctor, who occasionally acted the part of student to her mentor, instead of the usual status quo which is the reverse. Even more than that was her role in the story; she wasn’t there to be a young companion who realizes her potential under the Doctor. She was there to show that even if your bones don’t work like they use to. Even if you’re not most people’s ideal of good looking. Even if you’ve lived a life full of joys and sorrows, you’re never too old to start over. To gain new experiences, new joys, new pains, and new love.

I think that’s really beautiful.

7th and Ace

I struggled with if I wanted to add Bernice Summerfield to this team, because she’s great. But then I realized so much of what I like about the 7th Doctor and Ace works when they are a two person team.

The 7th Doctor is believed to be the most manipulative, actively using his own loved ones for the greater good. He can be cold and calculating in a way few other Doctors ever approached. And so that made his relationship with Ace all the more heartwarming. Here was this little delinquent of a girl, who thought she was worthless, and yet she was the only person in the universe who could bend the 7th Doctor to her whim; he loved her like a daughter, and the scenes where they interact is all the more special when you contrast them with the cold Doctor.

Having another companion kind of intrudes on this very intimate bond. I think Ace should be special to this Doctor. The one person who he would sacrifice himself before he sacrificed her. A companion who can be horrified with his more manipulative acts, but nevertheless stuck with him out of a loyalty to the first person who ever took a chance on her. Hurt Ace at your peril; the 7th Doctor will come for you.

8th and Izzy (plus Fey)

Ignore that Izzy’s a fish, she isn’t usually.

This one is pure nostalgia. The 8th Doctor’s comic strip adventures were my first real introduction to the WHO-niverse. So while I’m sure Izzy is probably last on most people’s list (if they know her at all), she’ll always be my companion. She was probably the first pop-culture savvy companion who could offer a quip that stumped even the Doctor with how contemporary it was. She was finding herself on her journey with the Doctor, and had a character arc that I think inspired RTD when it was his time to reboot the series. Plus, from what I’ve read of other 8th Doctor material, he tends to be romantically linked with most of his other companions. Some people might like that, but I think you can tell from this list, I like my Doctor as a more celibate fellow.

Fey is someone who I think of as an intermittent companion. She helps out the Doctor a great deal, and her position within the universe is very unique and imaginative, but I wouldn’t want her in for more than a story arc or two at a time before moving on to another spatial-temporal James Bond style adventure.

10th and Donna

Like the fourth Doctor before him, I had plenty of options. I was even gonna pull a fast one and pick another comic strip companion, the self-centered businesswoman Majenta Pryce. But the 10th Doctor and Donna are special.

Not only is she one of the only companions the Doctor has called his best friend, when you get down to it, she was who he needed at the time. After the last two companions had ended in a sort of tragic romance, the Doctor was walling himself off again. Donna, however, came into his life as purely a friend. Someone to pal around with and banter with. For the Doctor, this must have been a godsend. No drama, no hassle, just true companionship in every since of the word. And she still has possibly the saddest exit for any companion to date.

Goodbye Donna Noble. You definitely lived up to the name.

11th, Amy, and Rory (plus River Song)

The last family companionship on this list, and quite honestly, my favorite Tardis dynamic in the whole series. Why? Because it’s such a glorious mess that should collapse in flames but becomes something that’s just so interesting to think about.

The Doctor was Amy’s childhood crush she never quite got over. She eventually grew to love Rory, but both she and the Doctor were kind of dismissive of him. But does Rory angst and get into a love rivalry with the Doctor? Not really. He grows into himself, faces numerous dangers for them both, and by the end both Amy and the Doctor love the guy to pieces. And then you have River Song, who should turn the whole thing into a kind of Jerry Springer prize winner. I won’t go into spoilers, but what could have seemed creepy is actually a very interesting relationship with the Doctor. Though like Fey above, I think she works best as an intermittent companion who often goes off on her own adventures.

Still, they are the best family and if that’s controversial, it is the hill I will die on.

12th and Clara

The final companions are another friendship. In a lot of ways, this is pretty fun, because the 12th Doctor is an old curmudgeon like the first. But with all that he’s been through, it is interesting to see how they contrasts, especially in their companions. Because while the 1st Doctor was happy to play the cranky grandfather type, 12th had a genuine friendship with Clara.

They didn’t always get each other. They frequently disagreed, and could even be resentful. But when the chips were down, they would follow each other into hell together. The Doctor always tried to be a little more considerate for her than most others around him, and Clara tried to defend him against his critics. And while the end to their companionship could have been handled better, it was still an impactful parting between two friends.

So do you agree or disagree? Who are your favorite teams? I would love to know.

#Doctor Who #friendships

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internetremix · 5 years

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So this is something I thought of not too long ago. If your ocs (D&D or other game/fandom) could give you some words of wisdom that you think could really help you out in rough times, what would they say to help motivate you or other people to not give up and keep fighting on?

Alex: knowing the type of ocs i make i don’t think advice from them would be very helpful

Queen: Well a lot of my OCs are associated with war, so they would definitely talk about companionship and teamwork. But they’d also remind me to make sure I’m okay as well as those around me.

Adric: Of my OCs honestly probably Tommy would be the best to give advice with where he is now of “just hold on, things can’t be as bad as you think, even if you can’t see it right now”

Other OCs would probably have similar things as I like having good boys/girls who are optimistic. Can’t think of any other OCs atm though.

Considering my orcs have always been dumber than a box of rocks, I don’t think getting advice from them would work to well. Especially my main Orc that I had; party convinces bad guys they have head lice to get past the guards by killing them, my orc, who was in on the scheme, failed his insight and thought they had head lice and became a “doctor” by chopping off heads. So I don’t think his words of wisdom, “if you have head lice, just remove head!” Apply here.

Jojo: Momo is not in the right mind to be giving this kind of advice, but if he had to cheer up someone then he’d probably say “just take deep breaths, just know it’ll pass soon.”

Bro: Junior would acknowledge that lows are inevitable and bad times are going to come, but living in the good times are worth it and are also inevitable. He would very much emphasize that even though the world is dark and dreary, that’s not all it is, and that’s worth moving forward for.As for a non streamed character, my Earth Genasi Fighter Hunk would be a lot more forward and would push that he expects better, but in a loving way, not as a put down. You’re stronger than you think you are and you can make it through whatever it is, even if it seems bigger than you.

Juno: Zephi: if someone is bothering you eat them

Alex: Zephi: If someone is, eat themFixed

Ann: I know one in particular who would give a crap ton advice about continue to go even in rough times. He would say that friends and people you care about are always there for you when you need a shoulder to lean on. And I know another who would say to never give up hope and keep a positive attitude. (Not saying names because they’re aren’t part of IR.)

Juno: Aight as for my own characters…

Jane would say that there’s always something worth fighting on for, whether it’s a person, or a goal, or even a hobby. She’d also say to be there for your friends, your family, your pets, anyone you care about.

Rie would cheer you on because that’s the kind of person she is, and she’d aggressively assert that you can do anything you put your mind to, and to use your energy to do the things you love. She also would say to release your stress somehow every once in a while.

Stephanie does canonically give advice in my story, so I’ll summarize what she says: give people a chance and open up to them, and trust that they will be open to listening to you. As a caveat, she’d say if they didn’t listen to you, they aren’t really worth your time.

I haven’t talked about them on stream, but Kirby would say that always be yourself, and the happiest way you think of yourself is the way you truly are.

#ask the ir crew #whole crew #Anonymous

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averyextraordinaryscene · 5 years

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Ad Lucem

This is my Classic Who Secret Santa gift for @4thdoctorjellybabies who was looking for some AU’s involving Adric’s brother Varsh. I decided to write a fic that could have set up an adventure for Varsh on the TARDIS instead of Adric and came up with this twist on the Full Circle storyline.

I hope they will enjoy it. :)

Warning: referenced violence and character death.

Ad Lucem

“Not here.”

“I’ll be…somewhere else….”

A chill ran through Varsh’s body. Could Adric have known? Could he have seen something in those numbers he was so fond of? What was it his little brother called it once…odds? The chances of a thing happening in the flesh and blood world? Was that what he had seen? Could Adric’s numbers have told him his future?

Varsh felt a hand on his shoulder. Keara? Yes, it must be. Tylos was already….

“I’m sorry, Varsh,” Keara said.

Varsh felt like he should say something, but what was there to say? His little brother, the only family he had left in the universe, was dead. Dead because he hadn’t made the right decision. Because he hadn’t moved fast enough.

Because ….

------

It all started with MistFall. That stupid, impossible thing the Deciders had droned on and on about for his entire childhood. Varsh was sure that it was just a story, a way for the Deciders to keep everyone else in line. He might be considered young within the larger group, but he was old enough to know that fear was a great way to get people to do whatever you wanted and not question it.

After the death of his parents, Varsh finally understood this. The worst thing that could happen, one of the biggest fears he had as a child, had happened and he was faced with the choice to meekly fall into the care of others in the village or decide his own fate from then on.

Varsh had looked over at Adric scrawling numbers onto a paper between bouts of crying and made his choice.

Eventually, Varsh realized that it was easier to deal with the pain of his loss by breaking away from the life he had before. He became an outsider. He gathered others who had their own reasons to leave their homes and families. He made a new tribe, a new family for himself, and led them as best he could.

But in the background, there was still Adric. Adric who could speak through numbers and who become one of the Elite and yet would still choose to never be far away from his older brother.

Varsh knew in some long neglected part of his heart that it was wrong to want Adric to be a member of his tribe. Adric was meant for other things. For the StarLiner. To guide others with his numbers. But that selfish, lonely feeling that never completely faded after his parents’ death persuaded him that it could be all right. Adric could be part of the group and could be an asset to them.

Then MistFall came...and with it, the MarshMen….

No one had told him about the MarshMen, but then again, Varsh doubted that he would have believed in them even if he had been told. Such horrible creatures with blank, black eyes that held no traces of a soul. Creatures that killed like they had no other purpose in the world. Varsh had wanted to destroy every last one of them.

Thankfully the Doctor, that odd, possibly mad, stranger from the stars, had known what to do. He always seemed to know what to do. Varsh wondered if he had a guiding knowledge like Adric did with his numbers.

More than that though, the Doctor was a leader. People listened to him. He cared about others, even those awful MarshMen. Perhaps that was what a leader had to be, that combination of wisdom and caring. Not just having the strongest will and voice.

It had made Varsh wonder if he had ever been a leader at all. And that doubt grew with Tylos’ death.

At the time, Varsh pushed the familiar grief that was welling up inside him aside. The MarshMen were still on the StarLiner, out of control and killing people, with no solution in sight. The Doctor seemed to have ideas about how to stop it, and thankfully, they had stumbled onto a weapon to drive the MarshMen back: gas canisters.

Tylos’ loss would have to be felt later. Varsh had shoved every thought of it into the place where he kept the wounds his parents’ death left behind. For now, he had to focus on stopping the MarshMen.

He had to at least try to lead so he wouldn’t have to lose anyone else.

-------

“The Doctor needs this. Give it to him.”

Adric had thrust a small, cubical device into his hand and then went back to spraying the MarshMen with his canister. Varsh’s canister had already run out and he was about to grab Adric’s from him so his brother could run and get a fresh one. But before he could act, Adric had pulled that thing out of his pocket and given it to him. Then, he ran over to stop another MarshMan from entering the area.

“Adric, no! I’ll take that and you….”

“Go! Hurry!” Adric shouted at him over the sound of rushing air. “Give that to the Doctor and get another canister. I’ll hold them off.”

Every instinct Varsh had screamed at him that this was wrong, but he was also certain that wasting time arguing about it could get them both killed. He squeezed the device in his hand and shoved it into his pocket as he ran down the corridor to find another gas container.

It turned out to be the last time that he saw his brother alive.

-------

The chill inside Varsh had dissipated into a numbing sensation as he placed his hand onto Adric’s still arm. He had believed that he wasn’t able to feel grief like this anymore. That he had spent it all on mourning his parents.

Unfortunately, he was wrong about this too. Just like he had been about allowing Adric to tag along with him, about MistFall, about not acting sooner to rejoin everyone else on the StarLiner.

About letting his brother be the leader he had tried to be.

“Here,” Keara said, pressing something into his hand. “You should hold onto this now.”

Varsh looked down at his hand. In it was Adric’s star, the star for mathematical excellence. It had been the proof that his brother belonged with the Elites. But more than that, it represented how Adric had chosen to direct his life: through his intimate understanding of numbers.

Varsh closed his fingers around the star on his palm. The pin on the back was sharp, the points of the star blunt pressure against his skin. It was a good reminder of the pain he felt over his brother’s loss.

He put it into his pocket, already knowing that he would always have it on him for as long as he lived. Which, if they could not find a way to stop the MarshMen, might not be all that long anyway.

------

Of course, Varsh should have known that the Doctor would find a way.

The MarshMen had left the StarLiner. Most of them were still alive, but Varsh figured the Doctor would tell them how to make sure that they wouldn’t return. The Doctor had so many answers, surely that would be one of them. Maybe he would even tell them how to finally leave Alzarius and find a new home away from the recurring threat of MistFall and MashMen.

But…was that what Varsh truly wanted for himself?

“I’ll be…somewhere else….”

Varsh slipped his hand into his pocket and traced his finger along the edges of the star there. That was his brother’s prediction for where he would be when the StarLiner left. It wasn’t meant for anyone else, but Varsh had related to what his brother had said even if he hadn’t understood it.

He and Adric…they had never belonged to the rest of them. Not after their parents had gone. Varsh had always thought that the answer was to strike out on his own. To create his own tribe and find a new sort of life on Alzarius.

But maybe his brother was the one who had gotten it right. Of course he would be. Probably was able to find the answer somewhere in his computations and figures. Maybe if Varsh had had some of his brother’s gifts…or maybe if he had been more of a true leader…he would have realized what Adric had tried to tell him.

Voices in the corridor pulled Varsh from his thoughts. He had snuck onto the Doctor and Romana’s craft and the device Adric had wanted the Doctor to have onto the control console. Varsh had been determined to honor his brother’s last request even if it meant little to anyone else. Doing so gave him the tiniest measure of peace.

But now, standing here on the bridge of this ship, Varsh suddenly realized he had been given another choice. He could heed his brother’s words and find a new way to live. Or he could go back to the StarLiner and betray every ideal he had tried to follow.

It only took seconds for Varsh to make his decision.

The voices in the corridor were getting closer, so Varsh dashed away to find a place to hide. He didn’t know where the Doctor would be going next, and he didn’t care. Maybe he would get off at wherever the next destination ended up being. Or maybe he could persuade the Doctor to let him travel with him and Romana for a while.

Varsh pressed himself into a dark corner, hunching down and gripping the star in his pocket again. He had no idea what would happen next. Still, whatever it was, Varsh was sure that he and Adric’s spirit would take the journey together.

#Doctor Who #classicwhosecretsanta #My Fic #Fourth Doctor #4thDoctorJellyBabies

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hollowempire · 5 years

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Help || Ainley!Master x Reader

Request: Ainley!Master is trying to be all incognito and stalk The Doctor, and TR spots him instantly but waits until The Doctor’s gone and just pops over like “what are you doing you nerd he’s gonna see you” and he’s like “???” And she’s just like “You’re cooler than The Doctor, I like you, and I don’t want you to die so don’t be stupid”. And he’s just like “human??? Help??? Care about me??? What??? Does not compute???” And she helps him and The Doctor kinda compromise and Not Die™️

Summary: Angery to softy

Word count: 952

Y/n sighed, fanning herself with the cheap plastic fan she bought at a souvenir shop back on earth. She sat on one of the many rocks, trying not to melt under the double suns.

The Doctor paced back and forth, talking about ransoms things that have to do with the planet. Nyssa and Adric listened carefully, hanging onto every word. Tegan looked almost as bored as y/n did.

Looking around, y/n spotted something moving quickly behind a rock. She saw the Master peeking out moments later, trying to remain unseen. He wasn’t doing so well with it, but the Doctor hadn’t seen him yet, and neither had the others.

“Doctor, I’m gonna go sit behind that rock, there’s a bit of shade and I’ll take anything I can get,” she said, making up an excuse to go talk to the Master without giving away his position. The Doctor nodded and kept talking.

The Master seemed startled at her sudden appearance.

“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping behind the rock and sat down in the sand, continuing to fan herself. The Master looked at her in confusion and sat down when she pat the ground next to her. “He’s going to see you, you fool,”

The Master still said nothing, only looking at y/n in confusion.

“If the Doctor finds you, it’s very unlikely you’ll have the freedom to roam around like this anymore,” she continued.

“Why are you telling me this?” he interrupted, y/n immediately shushing him so as not to attract the Doctor’s attention towards their hiding spot. “And what does the Doctor think you’re doing back here?” he said, quieter.

“He thinks I’m hiding from the sun in the shade, which I am,” she explained, waving the fan a little more aggressively. “And I like you better than the Doctor, so don’t be an idiot and get out of here,”

The Master didn’t move. “I don’t need to listen to you,”

“Why are you so stubborn? Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? I don’t want you to get yourself into a bad situation!” she exclaimed, the Master shushing her this time.

The Master stared at her. In the time that y/n had quietly yelled at the Master, they had moved closer together.

“Would you kill me if I-”

“No, do it,” the Master said, leaning in. Y/n grinned and kissed him, pushing him back into the rock. He put one had on the ground to steady himself, the other on y/n’s cheek.

“Y/n?” the Doctor asked, peering over the top of the rock. Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric all stood behind him, trying to understand why he was making such a disgusted face.

They never got a chance to see, because the Master pushed y/n off him, making her fall back into the sand. She stood up after he did, trying to brush off all the sand from her clothing and hair.

The Master and the Doctor eyed each other, angry looks on their faces.

Y/n stepped between them, chucking awkwardly. “Okay, uh, lets mybe work out a compromise so that no one gets hurt?” she suggested. Lucky for her both the Doctor and Master were fond of her, so they agreed.

It ended up like this: they had originally planned to actually discuss something, but y/n was quick with her own plan and got the Master away almost immediately.

“You we’re heavily favoring the Doctor’s ideas back there... what are you doing now?” the Master said, stepping into his TARDIS behind y/n.

“I was on your side the whole time, you surly cretin.”

“Not many people dare to say such things to me,” he said in a threatening tone.

Y/n raised an eyebrow. “Oh, what are you going to do about it?”

The Master smirked before lunging for y/n and pinning her up against the wall. She couldn’t tell if the look in his eyes meant he was gonna kill her or kiss her.

Soon enough, his lips were on hers and she soon relaxed under his touch. Y/n’s arms snaked around his neck and his slid down to her waist.

“So...” y/n said, taking a look around the Master’s TARDIS. “This is basically the Doctor’s TARDIS but emo.”

The Master scoffed. “Are you going to continue insulting me?” he asked.

“If you’re going to kiss me everytime, then yes.” she said with a smile.

“Insult something more important to me and you might be getting more than just a kiss.” The Master said and winked, y/n smacking him with her fan.

The Master gasped and looked away, freeing y/n of his grasp. She raised an eyebrow as the Master crossed his arms. Y/n sighed and stepped in front of him, mimicking his pose.

Y/n reached out her hands and tried to take his hands, causing him to pout even more. She gave him and pointed look and uncrossed his arms, letting her lead him into the library. She plopped down on the couch and the Master looked at her in confusion.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She propped herself up on her elbows, giving him a look that told him he should know this. “The couch is comfortable, we must cuddle.” y/n stated.

The Master shook his head, but y/n aggressively patted the space beside her and he walked over.

Y/n grinned as the Master poured at her. She threw her arms around him and brought him closer, the Master slightly relaxing when he realized this was supposed to be affection. He allowed himself to close his eyes, resting his head on her chest.

It wasn’t long before y/n found that he fell asleep, and just moments later she drifted off into slumber as well.

#the master x reader #ainley!master x reader #the master #ainley!master #doctor who #classic who

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tartantardis · 5 years

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Big Finish? Big start!

This blog is normally my old Doctor Who-related interviews, but hey, it's my blog, so I can do what the hell I like with it.

I had a fantastic time over the weekend, with the Big Finish live stream on the BBC YouTube channel, listening to great audios, accompanied by some gorgeous videos (created by the super talented Tom Webster), and best of all, there was the live chat.

I won't claim to understand or get memes. I just didn't find "fruit juice", "plum pudding", "shed", etc, funny. Maybe it's just my age...

Anyway, something I noticed were the large number of newbies, who had never heard Big Finish audios before, and were looking for somewhere to start. So, I might as well suggest a few full cast adventures, given that I know a wee bit about Big Finish...

Fourth Doctor

It's easy enough to pick up a Tom Baker release. His stories with the late, great Mary Tamm have a loose theme linking four of the stories, but really, any of them are good to go with (Especially The Auntie Matter). Personal favourites? Oh, I don't like to pick out too many, because I'm friendly with so many of the writers. Perhaps I'll make an exception and single out one, Wave of Destruction, as it's got the Doctor, Romana and K9, my favourite TARDIS team on TV. And it's coming soon to vinyl! Also, the Lost Stories box set is great, with two stories that were imagined for TV, but never made. I'd also recommend the Fourth Doctor novel adaptations.

Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor range... oh, there's some great stuff in here. Spare Parts and Loups-Garoux spring to mind (Marc Platt x 2!), and there's plenty of stand-alone stories that you can dip in and out of. The Fifth Doctor box set is a good place to go, with Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, with one story set in the immediate aftermath of Castrovalva and the regeneration. Also, I'd recommend Creatures of Beauty once you get the hang of Big Finish audio drama - it's confusing, with a non-linear structure. And I rather like it. There’s also The Eye of the Scorpion, which introduces a new companion, Erimem, an Egyptian Pharoah.

Sixth Doctor

Colin Baker's Doctor is wonderful on audio, given a chance that he was never allowed on TV, to shine, be compassionate, show his brilliance... and without the need to see the coat. There's some great new companions for the Doctor - Evelyn Smythe, Flip Jackson and Constance Clark, as well as Frobisher from Doctor Who Magazine given a voice (The Holy Terror - brilliant). The One Doctor is great fun, with the Doctor and Mel, and I rather like ...ish - a clever story based on wordplay for the Doctor and Peri. The Hour of the Cybermen is another favourite - featuring the return of David Banks and Mark Hardy as the Cyberleader and Cyber Lieutenant from the 80s! I also recommend The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure (four linked stories that reveal just what happened to cause Colin to regenerate).

Seventh Doctor

There's a lot to go through with the Seventh Doctor. For example, the Lost Stories, starting with Thin Ice (not to be confused with the Peter Capaldi story) follows on from the end of the TV series, as planned out by script editor Andrew Cartmel. Or there's the Big Finish direct continuation, which takes Ace on a journey, and introduces a new companion, Hex (Philip Olivier - a gentleman and a great laugh in real life, and a fantastic companion). Highlights? Bang-Bang-A-Boom (a Eurovision spoof), The Harvest (Hex's introduction), UNIT: Dominion (a box set with a future Doctor), and Damaged Goods (a brilliant adaptation of Russell T Davies' New Adventures novel from the 90s).

Eighth Doctor

Oh, crikey. This is the one where it can be a bit difficult. With Paul McGann's Doctor, all you need to know is that it's one man and his TARDIS to start with. There's a couple of obvious joining points - Storm Warning is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories of all time, in all media (thanks Alan Barnes!), as it introduces us to the breathless, brilliant and bouncy Charley Pollard (NOTE: CharlEY, not CharlIE). Or, move on a bit, and there's Blood of the Daleks, bringing us Lucie bleedin' Miller (NOTE: LucIE, not LucY). There's a few other easy jumping on points - the trilogy with Mary Shelley (especially the fantastic The Silver Turk - Marc Platt again!). Dark Eyes is great, but it gives away the ending to the Lucie run, and introduces another fab companion, Liv Chenka. Ravenous picks up from the end of Doom Coalition - with the Doctor and Liv searching for their missing friend Helen. Also, give Shada a go - it's great fun!

The War Doctor

Oh, it's easy enough. Pick up box set one, Only The Monstrous, and off you go! Easy! Sir John Hurt is wonderful, with that rough as gravel voice bringing new depths to the character we only briefly met onscreen.

The Tenth Doctor

Pick one up. Seriously, any of them. If you know your Tenth Doctor on TV, then that's all you need. Adventures on audio with either Donna or Rose - that's all you need.

#DoctorWho #BigFinish #audiodrama

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paigenotblank · 5 years

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Adric x Nyssa My AO3 account is 4thDoctorSpaceBohemian

Sorry for the wait, I’ve been working extra hours the last few days. I’ll post this to AO3 tomorrow.

who hogs the duvet - Adric. He never really learned how to share, but when Nyssa is having a bad day and all she wants to do is snuggle in a toasty bed with her boy and said boy steals all her blankets, Adric better watch out because Nyssa is not above kicking him out of bed (and I mean literally kicking him).

who texts/rings to check how their day is going - Nyssa checks in with Adric because she genuinely likes chatting with him and if she also gets to make sure he isn’t doing something foolish, well then win/win.

who’s the most creative when it comes to gifts - Adric tries, but he sees things from the perspective of a teenage boy. Sorry, but Nyssa doesn’t think a hyperboloid coffee cup with his face on it is as cool as he thinks it is.

who gets up first in the morning - Nyssa had responsibility drilled into her from when she was young, and one of the things that never left her was a penchant for rising early.

who suggests new things in bed - Adric always wants to try things he sees on his computer or on an intergalactic cable channel (or once in the Doctor’s browser history!), but there was one time that Nyssa suggested they try something and he may have literally passed out from the pleasure of it.

who cries at movies - Nyssa, she is a sweet and pure soul.

who gives unprompted massages - Nyssa would always rub his back when he was stressed, but it wasn’t a massage per se. Adric one day decided he wanted to surprise Nyssa and took a class in the art of Whifferdillian shiatsu. Nyssa is a very happy companion.

who fusses over the other when they’re sick - Nyssa is very nurturing in general, but it doesn’t come close to Adric’s overreaction when Nyssa is sick for the very first time of their acquaintance. He spends 6 hours researching in the library, the best and most successful remedies in 8 star systems. To his credit, Nyssa’s 72 hour virus only lasts 41 hours.

who gets jealous easiest - Adric gets jealous when someone appears to be smarter than him.

who has the most embarrassing taste in music - Adric. I’m not saying it’s because he was raised in E-space, but it’s because he was raised in a marsh.

who collects something unusual - Adric has a collection of abacuses...abaci? Yeah, he’s got nerd cred.

who takes the longest to get ready - Nyssa. She is like a sprite or a fairy princess and Adric wears the same thing every day.

who is the most tidy and organised - You would think that Nyssa would be a free spirit and Adric would be left-brain orderly, and you would be right. However, Nyssa is tidy to Adric’s organized. And he is sloppy to her contained chaos.

who gets most excited about the holidays - Adric has never celebrated any holiday before and thus gets very excited for the experience, but it totally gets Nyssa into the spirit of wanting to show him the best time ever.

who is the big spoon/little spoon - Adric likes to be the big spoon, and Nyssa frequently allows that.

who gets most competitive when playing games and/or sports - Adric hates to lose. Nyssa is a more clever opponent than he is used to.

who starts the most arguments - Adric starts them, Nyssa finishes them.

who suggests that they buy a pet - Adric thinks Alzarian spiders are cool. Nyssa now avoids any talk of pets.

what couple traditions they have - on their anniversary they make an effigy of the master and light it on fire on a little boat in the nearest body of water they can find (it might be the toilet to no one’s bother).

what tv shows they watch together - Only Connect, QI, and Strictly Come Dancing.

what other couple they hang out with - The Doctor and the TARDIS.

how they spend time together as a couple - travelling the stars, annoying people, helping people...

who made the first move - Adric. He thought he had a chance and he went for it. Turns out he was right. Who knew?

who brings flowers home - Nyssa brings them in from her garden to brighten up her room. Adric brings bouquets for Nyssa because the Fifth Doctor told him women like that sort of thing.

who is the best cook - Nyssa is a better instinctive chef. Adric rocks at following a recipe.

#adric x nyssa #doctor who #classic who #asked and answered #nice people being nice #4thdoctorjellybabies

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hellostarlight20 · 6 years

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Beyond the Sea 5/8

Catch up here (chapter 2 and 3 and 4) or here

Nine x Rose Island AU angst, fluff, romance, rated Teen+ All my thanks to Mrs. Bertucci for her beta and extensive knowledge of scuba diving. And to @kelkat9 for her fun, completely mad ideas you’ll see later in this fic. Also involves environmental commentary, the problem of plastics in our oceans, endangered fish, and drug running.

“The Doctor found an octopus.”

Rose blinked up at Bill, pulling her mind from the tedious paperwork to her friend. She blinked again as the words slowly sank in. “What do you mean, he found an octopus?” Rose looked around Bill to the expanse of blue-green water behind her. “Aren’t there loads of them in the Caribbean?”

Bill rolled her eyes and yanked Rose from the charts she filled out. Probably wrong. Luckily, Bill was a good friend and made it a point to look over her work before she filed it with Lucy. She never said anything—Bill not Lucy—but Rose knew she’d owe her a major explanation at the end of this mission.

Which sounded far more James Bond than it actually was. Well, less cloak and dagger and more women in bikinis on beaches. Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. Where had James Bond come from?

“And where are we going?” she asked. Bill tugged her along the sandy shoreline, hand firmly around Rose’s wrist.

“I know you don’t like wandering into the Doctor’s camp.” Bill shot her a curious look her sunglasses couldn’t hide. “You really do miss out on the best nights. I don’t know what you do here, but the Doctor’s lectures are fantastic.”

How could so simple a word as fantastic burn such yearning in Rose? The Doctor used it all the time, and it didn’t surprise her Bill picked it up. But to hear it from Bill instead of her husband physically hurt Rose.

This whole separation for the sake of arresting Harry Saxon needed to stop. She hated it.

“You tell me all about his lectures,” Rose reminded Bill.

It wasn’t the same and they both knew it. Then again, Rose could listen to the Doctor talk for hours. Had done—their first date lasted nearly the entire day as they talked and wandered London.

After Jack’s introduction, they’d enjoyed lunch but when their mutual friend headed for the bar, the Doctor had offered his hand and Rose never looked back.

“This is different,” Bill protested. “This you have to see.”

“An octopus.”

“Not just any!” Bill looked at her as if she were the daft one. “This one has powers.” Rose snorted a laugh and Bill joined in. “All right, not powers, but she’s got sass.”

“She? How do you know it’s a woman?”

How did one tell octopus genders? They had genders, yeah? Rose had no idea. To be fair, she’d never seen an octopus up close, either. Pictures and nature documentaries, but never one first hand. Not even in an aquarium. Not that she’d ever been to an aquarium.

But she was certainly not about to confess that. She was supposed to be an oceanology major. Surely an oceanology major had spent time around water and sea creatures and had, at least once, seen an octopus in real life.

“The Doctor named her. Calls her Idris. She had a plastic straw imbedded in a tentacle and he took her onboard to extract it.” Bill looked at her excitedly. They walked side by side now, and Bill gestured widely with her hands, clearly thrilled over this latest happening.

Or possibly for the chance to visit the Doctor’s camp. Rose couldn’t tell.

She’d purposely avoided the camp, unwilling to give into temptation. Each night she ached to see the Doctor before climbing into her bed, alone and lonely. Each morning, before the sun rose, her feet insisted on walking toward his camp.

They hadn’t been caught. Not yet. That didn’t mean Saxon or Lucy didn’t spy on her. Rose felt the creep’s gaze whenever he left his little tent.

Considering she actually knew Saxon’s purpose on Moore’s Island—officially—and what she knew the Doctor did on this island, Saxon shouldn’t be spending more than an hour in his tent a day.

How no one else knew of his extracurricular—and illegal—activities Rose didn’t know. She knew Bill didn’t, her friend was far too suspicious about the couple. But she hadn’t said a word to Rose. Adam, well, he liked to brag too much for Rose to really think Saxon involved him at all.

Can’t be involved in illegal exotic animal trading and drug running if you couldn’t keep your gob shut.

Rose saw the Doctor the moment they rounded the curve in the island. He stood there, in that damned wetsuit that shouldn’t look sexy but hell. Then again, everything he wore looked sexy to Rose. His scowled down at what, Rose presumed, was the octopus. She couldn’t see the creature, could they live out of water?

He looked up, caught her gaze for the slightest moment. No more than the blink of an eye, if anyone actually paid attention.

Rose had a feeling Bill did. She saw everything.

The group surrounding the Doctor looked like the entire student population plus at least half the island. Rose saw Jabe there and couldn’t help the sting of jealousy.

It wasn’t Jabe’s fault she was allowed to be so open with her affection. Or that most of the students and Saxon thought the Doctor’s affections lay with Jabe and they were romantically involved. She provided information to the Doctor and coordinated with international authorities in their quest to stop Saxon.

It was Saxon’s fault.

“Oi, shift!” Bill pushed her way to the front, dragging Rose with her.

Rose watched the Doctor from the corner of her eye but reminded herself with every breath and each beat of her heart not to look at him.

Once she did, everyone would know she loved that man more than life itself. All right—plus their covers would be blown, Saxon would figure them out, and all Jabe and Jack’s work would be shot.

“Oh!”

“Where’d she get the necklace?” Someone asked, Rose didn’t know who.

“Took it off the Doctor!” Another called back. Ace McShane, Rose thought, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the octopus.

“She blinked up at the Doctor, grinned—I swear to you she grinned—” Ace continued with far too much glee in Rose’s opinion— “and slipped her tentacle into his wetsuit. Took the necklace and rings right from around his neck!”

“Who’s are they, Doctor?” Someone else shouted.

One glower from the Doctor, who looked ready to single handedly tear apart the camp, shut everyone up.

“I do not see how that is any of your business, Adric. Nor do I see why an octopus is so fascinating to a group of oceanographic majors. I’m sure,” he continued, voice dripping with callous condensation, “you’ve seen one before. And if you haven’t, I want to know why each one of you lied on your fieldwork papers.”

It did not surprise Rose, still in a state of semi-shock, that the group quieted and slowly drifted back to their own work. Bill tugged her arm, but Rose couldn’t move. She stood, bare feet rooted to the sand, and stared at the octopus the Doctor had rescued.

There, in a glass aquarium, clearly reveling in the attention, if an octopus could revel in Human attention, swam the octopus the Doctor had divested of plastic straws. Idris the Octopus swam with Rose’s necklace clutched in one tentacle, her wedding rings trailing through the salt water.

“I’m going to kill him.”

#Nine x Rose #ficandchips #idris #endangered species #romance #adventure

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

https://ift.tt/35el4vd

Graham and Ryan have left Doctor Who, and it was sad/joyous/on telly (delete as applicable), but where do their departures rank on the all-time list?

The question of “Who counts as a companion?” is a tricky one. Overall it’s an ad hoc combination of different criteria, with allowances made for the exceptions that are intended to fulfil the companion role on a one-off basis. The ranking system is based on whether the departure makes sense for that character, how well it’s built up to, and what it says about Doctor Who in a larger sense. The article only covers TV stories because I value what remains of my sanity.

That’s all the exposition. Please enjoy this non-linear history of production compromises.

47. Peri

Peri spends almost her entire time on Doctor Who being miserable, scared and under threat (even Big Finish doing a timey-wimey farce with Peri has abuse as a plot point), but there’s no compassionate release for her. Her mind is erased so her body can host another. She dies scared and alone, and it’s unlikely the Doctor could have saved her. While this is horrible, it could function, very bluntly, as an indictment of the Doctor and his treatment of Peri, but then it is revealed that this didn’t happen.

Peri is instead married with a pink love-heart around the flashback (the Matrix is corny AF apparently). This is because producer John Nathan-Turner changed his mind about killing Peri after they’d filmed her death.

On one hand: yay, someone not dying. On the other: she only goes to a slightly better place, and when companions return from the dead it tends to require some cost to the Doctor. Here, any previous suggestion that the Doctor mistreated his companion is abandoned. Peri’s happy ending, rather than death, is that the Doctor abandons her without explanation and her new husband is an angry warlord who doesn’t seem the type to understand PTSD.

46. Leela

Producer Graeme Williams hoped that Louise Jameson would stay on in the role of Leela, despite Jameson insisting that she was leaving, and so didn’t write the character out. Leela was a warrior, intelligent but steeped in tribal superstition, and the investment in making a potentially problematic character work in her earlier stories gave way to more generic writing, hence Jameson’s departure. At the end of ‘Invasion of Time’ Leela abruptly announces that she wants to marry the Captain of the Time Lords’ Guards.

To borrow a term from critical theory: this is total f****** dogs***.

Jameson was happy for the character to be killed off but instead she ended up married on Gallifrey. We never see her again. It’s a lazy piece of writing; disrespectful to the actress, the character and the viewer.

45. Dodo

Poor Dodo never really stood a chance. Originally intended to be from Sixteenth Century France, producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh remembered that previous historical companions had been deemed unworkable and so another was probably a bad idea. Instead, Dodo started off Cockney until the BBC told the Doctor Who team that she had to speak in Received Pronunciation English.

A happy-go-lucky soul, the production team never warmed to their creation and Dodo is sent away to recover from hypnosis halfway through ‘The War Machines’, and we never see her again. Polly tells the Doctor “she’d like to stay here in London and sends you her love” two episodes after her final appearance.

44. Sergeant Benton & 43. Harry Sullivan

Sergeant Benton and Harry Sullivan appear in ‘The Android Invasion’ as if it’s just another story for them. Benton last appears as an android duplicate and Harry says nothing during the final fight scene. They never appear again. For all of the strengths of early Tom Baker stories, emotional resonance is not one of them.

42. Katarina

Katarina was brought in for the final episode of ‘The Myth Makers’as a replacement for Vicki, and then sacrificed herself in ‘The Dalek Master Plan’. The production team had decided that, as a Trojan handmaiden, Katarina’s ignorance of modern and future technology meant she’d be hard to write for. This makes sense to an extent, except that her death involves her activating an airlock. So we have a production team creating a problem but solving it by suggesting that it wasn’t insurmountable anyway. As the Doctor says at the end of ‘Dalek Master Plan’: “What a waste.”

41. Sara Kingdom

Having killed off Katarina, the production team needed a new companion to fill her role for the rest of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, so Terry Nation wrote in a Space Security Agent inspired by The Avengers’ Cathy Gale. After killing her own brother, believing him to be a traitor, Sara Kingdom joined the Doctor and Steven’s attempts to stop the Daleks from using the Time Destructor. Ultimately Sara is killed by the device, ageing to death. As the planet around them turns to dust, Sara’s body does likewise and is blown away by the wind.

It’s a horrific fate, to the extent that cuts were made to the sequence. Sara Kingdom was always designed as a short-term companion, and actor Jean Marsh wasn’t interested in joining the show permanently.

Companion deaths aren’t intrinsically a bad idea, it’s just that they can’t be regular, expected events or else the show becomes ‘Come with me for an adventure, you’ll probably die. Yes I’m a psychopath’. They’re usually short-term solutions to mistakes but the momentum of the Doctor’s failures here could have gone somewhere. Instead, the show casually resets itself to the status quo on a flimsy pretext, so these deaths mean little. If Doctor Who doesn’t care about their impact, why should the audience?

40. Liz Shaw

New producer Barry Letts had decided that Liz Shaw was too intelligent to be a Doctor Who companion, and the interpretation most generous to Letts here is that Liz wanted to continue her own work rather than be drafted by UNIT as an assistant. While I hope this was the intention, it’s still a move that implies a reductive take on the role of the companion (that they’re a function rather than a character) and reinforces the paternalism of the Doctor: fatherly, yes, but also dominating and controlling.

39. Polly and Ben

Polly and Ben follow the Doctor into the TARDIS in ‘The War Machines’ and discover at the end of ‘The Faceless Ones’ that they’re back in London just when they left. They ask the Doctor his permission to leave, saying they’ll stay if he needs them. The Doctor is sad to see them go but doesn’t stand in their way, although he does suggest that Ben can go back to the Navy to become an admiral and Polly can… look after Ben.

It’s a pat, patronising little scene that comes and goes suddenly, especially as Polly and Ben haven’t actually been in the story since Episode Two. Polly and Ben leave and the Doctor and Jamie immediately start talking about their next adventure. The production team had decided the characters weren’t working, and the best you can say is that they were given slightly more ceremony than Dodo.

38. Astrid Peth

The thing about Astrid’s death is that it’s impossible to type ‘She pushes a mugging gold-toothed businessman down a ravine using a fork-lift truck (in slow motion)’ in a way that conveys any sense of pathos. People talk about Andrew Cartmel’s time on Doctor Who influencing Russell T. Davies’ approach, and while they’re wrong (RTD would have written it like that anyway, even if the Cartmel era didn’t exist, but fair play to Cartmel for being on that wavelength) few ever mention ‘Time and the Rani’as an influence. Russell T. Davies’ writing sometimes feels like he’s gleefully trying to combine the tone of Sylvester-McCoy-playing-the-spoons-on-Kate-O’Mara-while-Kate-O’Mara-is-dressed-as-Bonnie-Langford, with the opening ten minutes of Up. Sometimes he actually does it! This was not one of those times.

37. Adric

The Davison companions tend to get good leaving stories that are apparently based on some unbroadcast version of Doctor Who in which they’re completely different people.

So on one hand obviously the death of Adric was a memorable piece of television that affected people deeply on broadcast, but on the other hand it’s a glorified jump-scare. Adric is on board a space freighter about to crash onto prehistoric Earth and cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. He doesn’t know about that last bit, so instead of getting into the escape pod he attempts to solve a logic puzzle that is stopping him from controlling the ship. His bravery in going back to the ship doesn’t achieve anything. In fact if he had succeeded it would have changed history dramatically, so he dooms himself for nothing.

It’s brutal, in comparison with earlier companion deaths the emotional fallout is poorly handled, and it doesn’t pay off anything we’ve seen earlier. Consider Adric’s character up until his final story – a reckless know-it-all who keeps joining the bad guys – and it doesn’t join up with his final story and fate. The initial setup of Adric feeling like an outsider is swiftly resolved rather than used as motivation for his death. There’s no redemption, just a cruel and unlucky moment of bravery for the sake of a semblance of drama.

36. Amy and Rory

Steven Moffat’s first companion departures are not his best work. Initially Amy and Rory broke a trend: companions leaving as they get married off. Only then Moffat wrote a poorly handled pregnancy storyline where the characters’ emotional responses felt implausible, and unlike his softening of the Twelfth Doctor’s character the attempts to address this were bumpy. Then for Amy and Rory’s departure he has River Song, the Doctor’s wife who he rarely meets in chronological order, tell them that he doesn’t like endings and “never let him see you age”.

This reminds you that the Doctor isn’t only manipulative and scheming on an epic scale, and the fact that he tries to convince Amy not to try to go after Rory continues is more in-your-face selfishness (another example of the Seventh Doctor era being on similar wavelengths to the post-2005 show), rather than feeling like a genuine concern for her safety.

Now, I love Doctor Who, I like that the hero is flawed but that they try to be hopeful (and Moffat addresses this successfully elsewhere). The issues with giving the Doctor flaws are whether they’re dealbreakers for people watching, and whether or not they’re deliberately done. This feels like it’s aiming for a commentary on the Doctor but goes too far, and I can understand people finding this hard to watch.

As with many of Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

35. Kamelion

There are a lot of cases of a companion leaving because the production team can’t make them work, but this is a bit on the nose.

Like Adric’s death, Kamelion begging the Doctor to destroy him would have much more impact if it followed through more substantially on previous stories. Unfortunately Kamelion’s character was that of a shape-shifting robot where the robot prop didn’t work, and rather than have him just assume a human guise they simply never wrote him back into the series until his final story. As a result, there’s no real relationship in play when the Doctor grants Kamelion’s wish. On the other hand the robot’s plight is consistent with what little we know of him.

While it’s never fun to watch someone beg for death, it’s more of a testament to Gerald Flood’s acting and Peter Grimwade’s script for ‘Planet of Fire’ that his death scene works.

34. Donna Noble

Everyone remembers the sequence in ‘Journey’s End’ where the companions pilot the TARDIS and drag the Earth back to the right place while “Song for Freedom” builds and Freema Agyeman looks directly at the camera. It’s joyous. It’s huge. It’s wonderful.

The 10 minutes that follow are bleak.

Rose gets her compromised happy ending, then it’s the fate of Donna. She gets given some of the Doctor’s mind, becomes even more brilliant, but then comes the turn: this will kill her. She can’t be this brilliant, she can’t have any more adventures with the Doctor. As she shouts “No” the Doctor wipes her memories of their time together.

33. Lady Christina de Souza

Flying off in a knackered double-decker bus to further adventures is a really good way to go. This would rank higher if it weren’t for the fact that the character is hard to warm to. Unlike Donna Noble’s first appearance in the show, Christina’s role in ‘Planet of the Dead’ doesn’t allow for much pathos or depth, and the character never returned on television to show these. As it is we’re left with a bored member of the aristocracy flying away in some very British iconography, but without the promise of a Barbara Wright figure puncturing their ego.

Doctor Who: Why Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Needs an ‘Everybody Lives!’ Moment

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who: how Ace set the template for modern companions

By Andrew Younger

32. Mel

It’s worth stressing that any critique of Mel as a character has to firmly centre on the inadequacy of her creation. She was devised as a computer programmer from Pease Pottage who was into keep-fit, and that’s her entire character. It seems churlish to criticise Bonnie Langford for playing the part as “Bonnie Langford in Doctor Who” because there was nothing else for her to go on.

Mel leaves the series because she decides to travel with Glitz, a mercenary. Does this follow on logically from her character? All we know about Mel is that she’s wholesome and enthusiastic and seems extremely unlikely to go off with a violent intergalactic Del Boy.

However, she gets another leaving scene that would be wonderful if it reflected a recognisable character. We get a sense of the Doctor’s affection for Mel and a series of wonderful melancholy moments: the Doctor shutting the conversation down so he doesn’t have to deal with human emotion, his obvious sadness at another friend leaving because that’s what his life is. Mel’s last line about putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into space (“It’ll reach you. In time”) is brilliant.

This scene bears comparison with Sarah Jane’s leaving scene, specifically because it wasn’t in the original script but the lead actor insisted it be added in its place. It was the scene Sylvester McCoy read when he auditioned for the role.

31. Adam Mitchell

Adam joins at the end of ‘Dalek’ and leaves at the end of ‘The Long Game’, the next story, and has a piece of future technology in his forehead so whenever someone clicks their fingers a little door opens up and you can see his brain.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things this is unfair. Other companions have done stupid things and the Doctor has helped them. The Brigadier flat out murdered people. But Adam was deliberately rubbish and this is reminder that the Ninth Doctor is a damaged man who lashes out. When he says ‘I only take the best’ it seems more like an excuse to get rid of Adam than anything factual, but then the Doctor starts acting like it’s true.

30. Vicki

Vicki left the series because producer John Wiles heard actress Maureen O’Brien complain about her dialogue in ‘Galaxy 4’, so decided to let her go when her contract expired one story later. This led to her being paired off with Troilus at the end of ‘The Myth Makers’, set during the fall of Troy. A late decision requiring rewrites, this is quite an enigmatic fate. We see Vicki fleeing Troy after its fall with Troilus, the Doctor hopeful that she’s safe, but we never see her again. Given the TARDIS’ translation gifts, one imagines she suddenly has to learn Luwian.

29. Nyssa

Nyssa, a scientist/fairy princess mash-up whose entire family and planet was destroyed by the Master (who took over her father’s body) could be a great character. Her innately calm, generous and curious nature contrasted with all the horrors of her past is full of potential, and indeed her choice to stay behind at what is essentially a space leper colony is consistent with this. However, because none of this is ever seriously addressed in the show, the potential pathos of her leaving is greatly reduced. As is often the case we have to make do with a sad leaving scene, where Tegan flat out says to her “You’ll die here” to which she replies “Not easily. Like you I’m indestructible.”

As with Adric’s death, there’s the vague shape of something weighty and dramatic there but without the substance to fill it. John Nathan-Turner hated soaps, but actually using their techniques might have given us a stronger sense of Nyssa and Tegan’s relationship, meaning the audience wasn’t left to fill the gaps.

28. Jackson Lake

Considering during the course of ‘The Next Doctor’ Jackson Lake is in a fugue state, has a breakdown, remembers the death of his wife and the abduction of his child… he seems quite well adjusted by the end of the story. Reunited with his son and suggesting a Christmas dinner honouring the people they’ve lost, Lake seems to be in a better place than the Doctor.

27. Steven Taylor

Steven went through a lot: Wounded in Troy, witnessing the deaths of Katarina, Sara, and the Huguenots of Paris. Initially conceived as a replacement for Ian, meaning he took on most of the action sequences, he leaves in ‘The Savages’ to mediate between two societal factions after a story designed as a more cerebral alternative to biffing. It’s a good place to leave for a character who had stagnated (which, as you can see, happened a lot).

26. Graham and 25. Ryan

Ryan didn’t get killed or converted by Cybermen, so that’s progress. What did happen is that the Doctor accidentally returned to Sheffield ten months late. Yaz is hurt and Ryan returns more comfortably to his old life. Graham is also there.

The returning character of Robertson, an American tycoon with interests in becoming President functions as both a Doctor Who villain and a Donald Trump analogue (in a story universe containing Donald Trump) and this version of Doctor Who isn’t currently capable of dealing with that. Ryan watches Robertson on telly, unpunished by the Doctor and resolves to do something. This is a good reason to go, especially given the concerns of the Chibnall era (at its best focussing on the impact on well-drawn individuals, at its worst expositing over abstractions and sketches).

Graham decides that he will stay with his grandson after Ryan’s sudden announcement. This pays off their development in Series 11, where they had the main character arc of that series.

So far so good, but we also see Graham and Ryan deciding that, actually no, they’re not going to deal with real world problems, just Doctor Who-style adventures instead. It’s a useful microcosm of the era: good ideas present but not followed through on, being not shown Ryan’s reasons for leaving, and not successfully tethering the characters to either the forced whimsy of Doctor Who or the contemporary societal issues it wants to highlight.

And a final issue, which may be resolved: why is this the break-up of The Fam?

This ending doesn’t preclude the Doctor coming back to visit them in any way. In this respect it’s a classic companion departure: practically speaking actors aren’t always free for a cameo or a return visit (for example William Russell wasn’t ultimately available to play Ian Chesterton for ‘Mawdryn Undead’, so the Brigadier was written into the role of a school teacher instead), which means the Doctor not returning for their friends becomes a feature of the character. So while Ryan and Graham are choosing to leave, rather than being drastically and permanently separated, is the Doctor is still making the decision to cut them out of her life?

24. Mickey Smith

Mickey is given, in ‘The Age of Steel’, a proper old-fashioned companion exit, by which I mean some plot points are introduced at the start of his final story and by the end they’ve caused him to leave. Here it’s based on the Doctor and Rose’s behaviour and Mickey’s worth being dismissed until he does something heroic. He’s finally able to say to Rose that she doesn’t need him anymore and move on. Broad brushstrokes stuff in a busy episode, but it continues the idea that the Doctor makes people better that was emphasised from 2005 onwards.

Sure, he does it by being a bit of a prick here but the point stands.

23. The Brigadier

What is the Brigadier’s final story? I’m looking for a story that is written as a final departure, ideally after sustained involvement in the show. For the Brigadier that means ‘Terror of the Zygons’ doesn’t quite work, it wasn’t meant to be his final story (he was unavailable for ‘The Android Invasion’). ‘Battlefield’might have been his final bow, but writer Ben Aaronovitch set up the Brigadier’s death then found he simply couldn’t kill him off. The episode the Brigadier is initially written out of the show in is ‘The Wedding of River Song’ – where the Doctor receives news of his death by phone – and this is swiftly retconned with the divisive Cyber-Brig from ‘Death in Heaven’.

These two were written after Nicholas Courtney’s death, and the first one is used for dramatic weight but is over with too quickly. The latter does show the Brigadier, even in death and converted, saving the life of his daughter and helping the Doctor before going on to possibly eternal life – as seems right and proper – but as it involves the Brigadier’s buried body being reanimated there’s an invasive element connected to a beloved figure. As with many of Steven Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

22. Turlough

Peter Grimwade deserves credit again. Given the job of writing out Turlough, Kamelion and potentially the Master while also writing in the new companion Peri, Grimwade actually makes the brief for ‘Planet of Fire’ work. Here Turlough realises early on that his home planet is involved, and by involving his family Grimwade makes the stakes personal. Turlough also gets to use his brains here, rather than just wander around with a gun looking scared.

Turlough’s departure is developed through this story, and the farewell scene is a low-key goodbye as he admits that travelling with the Doctor has made him a better person. Again, it doesn’t follow from previous episodes, as Turlough isn’t developed as a character after ‘Enlightenment’, but in the context of this story it works well.

21. Mike Yates

An example of Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks addressing how being a regular Doctor Who character might make you feel, Captain Mike Yates is shaken by his hypnosis when undercover at a petrochemical company and becomes concerned about the environment. He falls in with a plot to reduce overpopulation and restore Earth to a golden age by time scooping dinosaurs into central London, because Doctor Who, and is discharged from UNIT. He goes to a meditation centre to recover, and uncovers a sinister plot – because Doctor Who– and ultimately gets better. Yates gets an arc and closure, especially in comparison to his fellow UNIT soldiers.

20. Nardole

Nardole, chiefly a comic relief character with moments of depth, is entrusted with the task of evading the Cybermen for as long as possible while keeping a group of humans alive (a continuation from his assigned role of monitoring the Doctor). It seems likely they will eventually fall, and though this is de-emphasised to stop an already tragic episode from overloading, it’s quietly harrowing. Adric’s death shook up the children watching, Nardole’s affects the parents: the feeling of being a guardian to children in an uncertain, dangerous world is all too familiar right now.

19. Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane’s departure in ‘The Hand of Fear’(written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin) comes out of the blue. An early outline for the story involved the Brigadier’s death, sacrificing himself to save the world. This was lost in development, and the story delayed while it was simplified. In the meantime Elisabeth Sladen asked to leave and for Sarah not to be the focus, married or killed off. Sarah was going to be killed off though, in a story called ‘The Lost Legion’. Script Editor Robert Holmes disliked the story, so a simplified version of ‘The Hand of Fear’returned to replace it with Holmes writing Sarah’s leaving scene. This was rewritten by Sladen and Tom Baker, with Holmes unavailable to do further rewrites. This is why Sarah’s departure is sudden. There’s no huge focus on her and then unrelated to the rest of the story the Doctor receives a summons to Gallifey where humans are not allowed (and given what happened last time he went he probably doesn’t want to take Sarah). What the scene does have is a strong sense of the unsaid to it, a sense of wistfulness akin to seeing someone else living in your childhood home.

Doctor Who Series 13: What To Expect

By Louisa Mellor

10 Doctor Who companions that might have been

By Alex Westthorp

18. Wilf

Essentially, if Bernard Cribbins is crying then I’m going to cry. It’s Bernard Cribbins, for god’s sake. He’s so lovable its actually weaponised against the audience, and while ‘The End of Time’ might not be to everyone’s tastes, Cribbins makes every scene he’s in work, so you’re thoroughly invested in Wilf and his responses. However, this is harks back to Susan’s departure. It’s undeniably moving that the Doctor is making this man cry with happiness… after lying to him (no mention of the safeguards he put in Donna’s mind, or that Donna didn’t want her memories wiped anyway) and who he emphasises is “not remotely important” before saying it would “be my honour” to save him. It’s said of the Doctor “words are his weapons” in ‘Hell Bent’, and the pattern emerging here is that they’re weapons he uses on his friends; when the Doctor says “I only take the best” this is not only another weapon, it’s asking the question: the best for what?

17. Bill Potts

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe keep the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. Bill follows the Brigadier in becoming a Cyberman, and Clara in returning from the dead to travel the universe. The images of Cyber-Bill carrying the Doctor, the reaffirmation of who Bill is, the arrival of Heather: all of these are great.

Steven Moffat was right that the show hadn’t been diverse enough in its casting, but presumably no one behind the scenes understood that there are unintended connotations to a white man telling a black woman that she can’t be angry if she wants to be accepted – as happens to Bill in ‘The Doctor Falls’ – or that Clara got a gore-free death compared to the lingering shots of Bill’s gunshot wound. There’s also ambiguity in ‘Twice Upon a Time’as to when Bill dies – in that episode she is represented by an avatar taken from a moment near death, but given everything that’s happened to Bill this could be tomorrow or in a million years’ time – so overall this one has some extreme highs and lows.

16. Romana and K9

After Mary Tamm left the show, feeling similarly to Louise Jameson that despite a strong start her character was reverting to the stock companion figure (a damsel in distress, tripping ankles, screaming for help to advance the plot that’s being explained to them) Romana regenerated with Lalla Ward taking over the role. Ward left the show as new producer John Nathan-Turner came on board, and while Romana’s departure was foreshadowed well in advance, Nathan-Turner didn’t want any soap opera elements creeping into Doctor Who, and so Romana’s farewell scene was understated and rushed against Ward’s wishes. Otherwise it’s a good exit for Romana, who refuses a summons to Gallifrey and, finding herself in another dimension, decides to go off on her own journey after her travels with the Doctor.

K9 goes with her because John Nathan-Turner hated K9. Compared to ‘School Reunion’ this is just completely dismissive, but there is at least a coda: another scene at the end of ‘Warriors’ Gate’ where K9 and Romana face their future together with optimism, and Adric asks the Doctor if Romana will be alright: “Alright? She’ll be superb.”

15. Susan Foreman

The first companion departure, and something of a template. Susan falls in love and stays behind. Actress Carole Ann Ford left as she was unsatisfied by Susan’s lack of development.

It’s the Doctor’s decision to leave Susan, his granddaughter, behind. He locks the doors on her, believing that she stands a better chance of happiness staying on Earth rebuilding after a Dalek invasion. William Hartnell didn’t want Ford to leave and channels that into his performance. A clip of this scene was used to represent Hartnell at the beginning of the twentieth anniversary special ‘The Five Doctors’, and with Susan’s fate unconfirmed after The Time War his line ‘One day I shall come back’ lands even heavier: we know he never did.

No wonder he never comes back for anybody else.

14. Captain Jack

‘The Parting of the Ways’ is Jack’s departure story as it’s his last as a regular companion before moving to Torchwood.

Torchwood was not announced until after Series 1 of Doctor Who, and so when it became clear that Jack – with his cheesy grin and action hero posturing – was going to die, it was unexpected. There’s a sense of inevitability about the Daleks killing him when everyone else is dead but, because this was a new series, it was never clear how far it would go. Maybe there’d be a last-minute reprieve. Ultimately there was, but as far as self-contained character arcs go Jack’s journey from con-man to sacrificial hero works, and if it had ended there, it’d have been on a high.

13. Adelaide Brooke

In Base Under Siege stories we have the stock character of a distrusting commander who doesn’t get along with the Doctor. A fun idea in ‘The Waters of Mars’ is ‘Hey, what if they were the companion for one episode?’

One of the less fun but still powerful ideas is also that the Doctor’s behaviour be so unnerving that this stock character would kill themselves in response. So here we have someone standing up to the Doctor as he states the laws of time “are mine, and they will obey me!” What’s interesting is that this is not dissimilar to the standard companion departure, but operating in the epic register rather than a more intimate one. The Doctor has previous on saying that companions have to leave and not giving them a choice, but here the controlling behaviour is scaled upwards to time itself. Possibly the show was not ready to explore this explicitly in a smaller scale just yet.

12. Grace Holloway

Sneaking in unnoticed is the fact that Grace Holloway, the one-off companion for the 1996 TV Movie, ends the film by kissing the Doctor at midnight under the fireworks but refusing to go with him because her experiences have given her renewed self-confidence. Grace is that rarest of things – a Doctor Who companion who gets to leave on her own terms without the Doctor being a dick about it.

11. Ian Chesterton

Ian and Barbara are the first humans in Doctor Who to explore the universe in the TARDIS, taken away by force when the Doctor kidnaps them. Initially they want to return home, but this desire fades. However, when they’re presented with a chance they take it. As a contrast to Susan’s departure, Ian and Barbara’s departure is joyful as it turns out that you cantravel with the Doctor and leave on your own terms as richer, fuller people.

10. Rose Tyler

Rose and the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose. It’s easy to lose track – amidst the melodrama, epic gestures and various tensions – of the way Series 2 sets up Rose and the Doctor being torn apart almost straight away. They’re so wrapped up in how much fun they’re having that it stops them from noticing other people’s feelings. It becomes clear that had the Doctor and Rose done this, the Torchwood Institute wouldn’t exist, so Harriet Jones wouldn’t have had a weapon to fire at the Sycorax in the preceding Christmas episode. However, the show is also telling you that Rose and the Doctor being split up is a colossal tragedy; performances, visuals and music tell you this is incredibly sad while the stories are reminding you they’ve contributed to their own downfall.

This is a companion departure with the heartbreak turned up to 11, to the point where the pretty loud “Brought this on themselves” track can get lost in the mix. Here’s the beginnings of companions burning out rather than fading away.

There’s also the unfortunate business where Rose Tyler, the beloved character who helped bring Doctor Who back as a critical and popular success, rips holes in the universe to find the man she loves.

Said man takes her back to the place she had the worst time of her life, gives her a genocidal sex clone and then quietly leaves when she’s making out with it.

9. Ace

Bearing in mind that Ace has left Doctor Who in so many different canons over the years, it’s specifically her departure in ‘Survival’ that I’m taking as her final story. I’m heavily indebted to Una McCormack’s book on ‘The Curse of Fenric’ here, as it makes the very good point that for everything that could happen to Ace – whatever fates spin-off media has in store for her – there’s nothing quite as perfect for where Ace has reached at the end of Season 26 as the promise of further adventures, the possibility of joy rather than darkness, an ellipsis rather than a full stop.

8. Barbara

Why is Barbara’s departure better than Ian’s? Because:

In ‘An Unearthly Child’ the Doctor asks them “What is going to happen to you?”, the single most important question in the entire series. Firstly because that is half the format of Doctor Who, and secondly because the other half is the same question in reverse. If Barbara Wright doesn’t happen to Doctor Who, then Doctor Who is a short lived 1960s sci-fi show about a cantankerous old git who kidnapped some school teachers (Missing presumed wiped).

7. Zoe and 6. Jamie

Zoe and Jamie both leave suddenly at the end of ‘The War Games’. Patrick Troughton was leaving and the actors decided to go with him, and that sense of an era ending bled into the fiction.

At the end of ‘The War Games’ the Time Lords are named and appear for the first time, represented by a group of solemn men in robes who wield immense and ineffable power. The Doctor is put on trial for stealing the TARDIS and interfering on other worlds. His companions are returned to a time after their first meeting with the Doctor, their memories of their travels erased. This isn’t built up to, but there’s a general sense of unease in the final few episodes and the Time Lords seem aloof enough to mete out this sort of punishment.

Jamie and Zoe try to escape with the Doctor, but when they’re recaptured he gives up. With Patrick Troughton’s Doctor this is especially shocking, and it’s only his melancholy resignation that convinces them to give up too. Zoe ends up back on a space station, and knows there’s something she can’t quite remember, but with Jamie – who has been with the Second Doctor for almost the entire incarnation – he ends up back at the aftermath of Culloden, charging a redcoat. In a kind touch, the redcoat turns and flees, suggesting Jamie might be alright in the aftermath of the battle.

Doctor Who wasn’t really huge on tearjerkers until 2005, but it was very, very good at quiet melancholy.

5. Martha Jones

Martha is in love with the Doctor. The Doctor spends the entire series pining for Rose and being oblivious to this fact.

Martha Jones puts up with a lot, looking after the Doctor while in his human John Smith guise and having to restrain herself while being continually patronised, racially abused and treated like an idiot. She then spends a year travelling the Earth avoiding capture as the Master enslaves and murders the population, holding Martha’s family captive while she does this.

So frankly when Martha says she’s leaving and the Doctor still doesn’t understand why (“Is this going anywhere?”) it’s hugely cathartic for the audience and for someone who deserved better. Some people do get to choose when being with the Doctor stops, and it’s usually great when they do.

4. Jo Grant

However muddled the reasoning behind Jo Grant’s existence, the casting was inspired. Essentially a remix of Jamie (which suggests that Jo and Liz could have worked if Jamie and Zoe did), Jo Grant wasn’t the brightest but wasn’t stupid, and was incredibly loyal and brave.

With the Doctor’s paternal streak fully activated, the production team decided that Jo falling in love and telling the Doctor “he reminds me of a sort of younger you” would be exactly what the Doctor didn’t want to hear. In contrast to Victoria’s departure and the Doctor’s selflessness there, the Doctor doesn’t do what Mike Yates does when marriage is announced (looks upset and does his best to mask it) but instead quietly slips out and drives away by himself. The fact that he leaves in a way that suggests jealousy or loneliness is a huge change; now we see the Doctor closer to Susan’s position and he does not like it.

3. Tegan

Coming at the end of ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’, where she’s seen a lot of people killed and the Doctor pick up a gun and announce that he’s going to kill Davros (who Tegan presumably hasn’t heard of), Tegan’s leaving scene is very close to being perfect.

Firstly there’s the line “It’s stopped being fun”, which begs the question of when it started being fun for her, but that’s ignorable. Secondly, and this is more about personal taste than an inconsistency in characterisation, there’s a case to be made for Less is More here. Tegan runs from the Doctor and Turlough as he begs her not to leave “like this”, which causes the Doctor to consider his actions before he and Turlough leave in the TARDIS. As it’s dematerialising, Tegan runs back in has one final line. For me it’s just a line too far, and Tegan being unable to say anything at all would have been more powerful, especially for the self-described “mouth on legs”.

However, that’s more window dressing rather than substance: the reasons for Tegan leaving are excellent: it’s a commentary on the stories and Doctor we’ve seen recently, and a plausible emotional response to them. It sets the Doctor on his way to ‘The Caves of Androzani’ where the show comes even closer than ever to paying off a sustained period of grimdark storytelling. Adric’s death might be more famous, but Tegan’s departure is much better writing from Eric Saward and deserves more plaudits for it.

2. Victoria

Actor Deborah Watling wanted to leave, and so Victoria goes in ‘Fury from the Deep’. Here the character has a plausible response to screaming at monsters and getting into trouble: she leaves. She says that she’s having a miserable time screaming and getting into trouble, but isn’t sure if she can go: her father died saving the Doctor, she’s an orphan out of her own time. The Doctor intervenes and suggests a family she can stay with.

Most importantly, the Doctor and Jamie stay an extra day to give her time to think it over, and the Doctor stresses that it must be her decision. On top of this, the final scene of the episode is the Doctor quietly trying to make Jamie feel better about her leaving. Rather than the usual one scene and gone deal we have something drawn out, stemming from character, full of warmth and empathy.

1. Clara Oswald

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe lose the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. ‘Hell Bent’ is a divisive episode (referential meta-commentary on Doctor Who isn’t what everyone was looking for from a season finale) and the ideas in it are incredibly pointed: the grieving Doctor overthrows Rassilon, shooting a potential ally to retrieve Clara from a moment before her death, and tries to wipe her mind to save her life, addressing the long-term trends of companion departures head on.

Rather than a Gallifreyan epic, this is focussed on one relationship and the shade it casts on the Doctor’s behaviour, all the while dancing in and around threads from other plotlines. The Doctor wanted Gallifrey back so badly, but now it’s simply a means to an end for him to bring Clara back.

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Clara’s final story is often compared to Donna’s departure because of the mindwipe element and the idea of Clara being a Doctor-like figure in her own right – here realised rather than excised – but looking at this list you can see how it harks back all the way to Susan: the Doctor thinks he knows what is best and often gets it wrong, and what seems like extreme behaviour in this story is actually pretty standard. Here he gets properly called out on this behaviour, the show finally able to address this in an intimate rather than epic setting.

The post Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Humans Are Space Orcs, “Psych Eval.”

I know some of you were hoping for the stuff going on in between, but I needed to get us moving for purposes related to the 23rd, so I think you guys can forgive me. I hope you like it.

A lot of you were calling for something similar to happen, so I hope it all works out. The last little bit was super fun to write.

Dr. Adric Jakande wasn’t entirely sure what he had signed up for. When he had moved from The coastal African provinces, it had been to attend the school of his dreams, and from there his path had led him to the UNSC where he had spent most of his time counseling veterans of the Panasian war. Then a letter had come across his desk looking for volunteers brave enough to take on a very new, and dangerous mission.

He had planned on ignoring it because his life here was stable and comfortable, but there was something about it he just couldn’t get out of his head.

It would be the hardest thing he had ever done: and it wouldn’t be just humans he would be dealing with.

Somehow, however, he found himself writing his name on the contract that signed away five years of his life to the crew of the Harbinger.

There was no turning back now, so might as well get to work.

He wanted to understand the dynamic of the ship and so had filtered through a hundred or more psychological evals. He didn’t read them all, and he wouldn't interview them all, but there were a select handful he was very interested in, and planned to take a look at himself.

He pressed the button on his desk causing the call light above the door to blink on in green inviting his first patient into the office. Footsteps followed, and a young marine, not too much younger than himself, slipped into the room walking over and sprawling out in the seat across from him, a smile pulled taught over his olive-tan face.

“Cprl. Angel Ramirez?”

“Yes, Sir, that’s me.”

He glanced down at the stats on the eval. The corporal seemed in pretty good shape except, “Tell me corporal, on your evaluation you reported higher elvels of anxiety than normal, Would you be willing to tell me why?” The corporal sat up sraighter his dark amber eyes narrowing a little.as he thought.

“Well, sir…. It has nothing to do with me really…. But a friend of mine has been having some problems lately, and I’m not sure if he will be able to get it together before we are on our way. It would pretty much ruin my life if he was….uh…. Not allowed to com .”

“Ruin your life? That seems pretty serious.”

He shrugged, “He holds the ship together, everyone loves him, and I don’t think we would make it in deep space without him.”

“Do you find deep space to be mentally taxing?”

He frowned a bit forced to think about it, “No, not really but I think that has to do with this friend of mine. He does a lot of stuff to get us to come together, activities, holidays, group meals, it really keeps crew morale and I’m not sure we would have it without him.”

“Is there anything particularly bothering you corporal, besides that/”

“No, I guess I miss my family a little, but I was just there, so that is expected. I’ll video chat them from orbit, so it will all be cool.”

He let the corporal go with a nod. The man was stable, happy, and well-adjusted. He would use him as a baseline.

The call light came on again, and another figure stepped into the room, at first he assumed they were a man, though turning around he could see that wasn’t the case. She had very short hair, and a face that could have gone either way, not unpleasant just different.

She took a stiff seat in the chair opposite him.

“Sgt Maverick Morozov…. Russian?”

“My family was a long time ago.”

“Says here you are the ship’s Chaplain.”

“Yes, sir/”

“Do you have a lot of work on the ship?”

“Not really sir, most of the crew is Agnostic, though some come and visit me to talk, though now that you’re aboard the ship that will probably trickle off.”

“Does this bother you?”

“No, not really. I will help people if they need it, but I don’t actively try to solve other people’s personal problems.”

“I am assuming you have a good relationship with your religion?”

“Yes sir, it saved my life once.”

“Do you think this has helped you cope with being in deep space?”

“Deep space feels safe to me/”

“Why is that.”

She shrugged, “I don’t know, its one of those feelings like maybe nothing has touched that place other than you and the will of some kind of creator. Space isn’t malevolent to me, its empty and dark-- in a comforting way.”

“Do you often experience malevolent things when you aren’t in space?” She paused frowning, “This makes me sound insane doesn’t it, but yeah, and don’t ask me why I don’t know. It doesn’t bother me that much, I can handle it, I just don’t like to.”

Interesting, he would have to take a look into that later.

“And your reported anxiety levels have been high lately. Why is that?”

“On the behalf of a friend of mine.”

Interesting.

“Someone on his ship.”

“Yes sir, if he can’t come with us, I will probably quit.”

“That’s a lot of loyalty.”

“I’ve no doubt he would do the same for all of us, so….. Yeah.”

He let her go thinking about this friend of there who seemed so important to them. He had no doubt she was talking about the same person they all were. He had picked this group of people very intentionally.

The door opened again, and a very, very large figure ducked through the doorway. Adric had to sit back in his seat to contain the surprise. The Drev was HUGE, he had never seen one in person before, and this creature was just massive. Six limbs, and bright red carapace. It almost had to duck to avoid hitting its head on the ceiling.

It ignored the chair, which made sense, and happily kneeled on the floor before his desk still coming into eye level with him even as he sat on his chair.

“Kanan?”

“Yes Kanan Lumnus’s son though all my human friends call me Cannon.”

“Forgive me, I have never interviewed a Drev before.”

“I have never been psychologically evaluated either, so I suppose we share a commonality.”

“Your file is a little sparse, but it says here you were a veteran of the Drev war, and that you were injured during that time. Do you experience any psychological symptoms related to the event.

“Not to the war itself, Drev don’t respond to trauma like humans, mostly because we do not perceive it as trauma. The worst part came after the war when I was exiled.”

He blinked, “Exiled?”

“Yes, i received a grievous injury during the war and my mother banished me from the clan to sacrifice myself to the burning spirits.”

He simply blinked, “Your mother wanted you to……”

“Throw myself into the volcano.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No I betrayed our traditions and left Anin. I nearly died starving a month later, but the humans took kindness on me, and I was recovered.”

“Feel free not to answer this question, but it says here that your…. Mate died during the war.”

His golden eyes saddened a bit, “She did, but she died in glorious combat, so I am not sad for her death. I am sad because of how little time I got to spend with her. Nechal and I would have had a strong brood, but we never got the chance.”

“How does this affect your daily life?”

He shrugged, “It does not, but i think about her sometimes at night before I sleep. And I do my best to honor her memory, and the memory of my father who died during the war as well.”

The Drev had plenty to be psychologically unstable about, but otherwise he seemed fine. He wasn’t sure yet just what a stable Drev looked like though, so he would have to do some more digging, “Thank you, Cannon, you may go.”

He met with a few other humans before moving on to his next patient Both of the humans were fine aside from concerns abut this unnamed friend of theirs, which seemed to be a recurring theme.

The door opened again and looked over confused at first when he did not see anyone , however a sharp scuttling across the floor caused him to look over his desk where a small, almost spider like alien was skittering across the floor.

As he watched it inflated a flap of skin at the back of it’s head and floated up onto the chair turning to face him. Its large orange prismatic eyes watched him cooly.

“Dr. Krill.”

“Yes, and you are Dr. Jakande.”

He glanced down at his paper and blew out through his cheeks. He wasn’t sure how to go about this. The anxiety this creature was experiencing nearly broke their scale, and on a scale of neuroticism he almost broke that as well. If he saw this in a person he would be very concerned.

“You seem anxious, doctor.”

“I am always anxious, it is a proclivity of my species. If you want an accurate reading on your test, you should lower the levels to a halfway point”

He glanced down at his paper, “That is still pretty high.”

“I am the commanding physician on a ship where all you humans are bent on getting yourselves killed, and even when you aren't I have to worry about whether or not you will choke on a grape because your larynx are so poorly placed. I am constantly surrounded by creatures that don’t understand the meaning of caution.” he looked very seriously at Adric just then, “These are my humans and I do not want any of them to die if I can help it though they seem to defy me at every opportunity.”

“Your humans?”

“Yes , my humans, my responsibility therefore they are all MINE.”

Ok this little guy was a bit on the crazy side. If he saw this out of a human he would be concerned, but i the creature was already prone to neuroticism than he wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

“Not to mention a friend of mine may not be returning to the ship, and if he doesn’t I will be out of a job.”

He paused, there was mention f that friend again, “Why would you be out of a job?”

“Because he is the only reason I am on this ship in the first place. He holds my loyalty.

Very interesting.

He let the little doctor go taking mental notes to talk more with him later.

A woman stepped into the room next,her long dark hair falling about her shoulders, large glasses glittering in the overhead lights as she adjusted her coat.

“Dr. Katie Keddrick you are the second attending physician on the Harbinger.”

“Yes, I was brought in to ease some of the burden from Dr. Krill.”

“And how are you coping with that.”

“Oh I am doing very well. I love it aboard the ship. Its just one big family honestly, very nice and homey.”

“That ‘s good. Tell me is your reported anxiety to do with a friend of yours who may or may not be able to return to the ship?”

The doctor paused her eyes wide, “How did you know.”

“A common theme.”

“Well yeah actually. He has a tendency to take all the burden on his own shoulders, so he doesnt cause issue to anyone else. He likes to control things though I don’t think he knows that. It never bothers any of us, but it is getting to him, and we are all worried that they won’t let him through.”

“This friend means a lot to you.”

“He brought our little family together, so yes.”

“You see the crew as family.”

She smiled, “Well doctor, yes but you will find that out there in the galaxy humanity survives by creating families. Everything that makes us human is magnified under the lens of space, our power our weakness, our goods and our bads.”

He talked with her a little more, she was intelligent and insightful about the workings of the crew, information that he found valuable before letting her go.

He only had one more evaluation before the big one.

This Drev dd not have to duck through the door as she came in. She was very small though the color of her carapace was a pleasant electric blue. She was able to seat herself on the chair tilting her head to look at him.

He wasn’t sure what to make of her evaluation.

“Chalan.”

“Call me Sunny.”

“Chief weapons officer.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to be honest, I was not sure what to make of your evaluation. You come across as someone trying very hard to prove they aren't affected by something very important.”

She tiled her head. She had the same gold eyes as the other Drev, “My mother didn’t like how short I was, or that I was not as talented as my brother, she treated me poorly and my father died during the war, so forgive me if I still have some unresolved conflicts.”

Very blunt, interesting.

“”How do you cope with those.”

“I remind myself that I beat my mother in open combat, also I have friends now.”

Hmm yeah they were going to have to talk some more for sure. This was less of a healed kind of thing and more of a stick it to the man sort of attitude. She was still trying to prove something, probably more to herself than to others.

“And you are anxious about a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because if he does not board this ship again, I don’ think he will live to see next year, and if that happens, I doubt I will either.”

That was…. that was kind of concerning and intense.

“Who is this friend of yours.”

She shook her head, “No, I will not be telling you.”

Aggressive loyalty, very, very interesting.

He tried prodding a little more out of her, but she didn’t budge, and he eventually let it go allowing her to leave.

He had one more evaluation…. The big one.

***

It was late, this evaluation had been scheduled for the last possible second, and he was curious to see what would come through those doors. He heard the clatter of UNSC issued dress shoes long before he saw anything coming steadily up the hall. He left the light on, and waited at his desk for the person to pass through the doors.

It paused outside his door and then slowly opened inward.

The light fell on a man much, much younger than he had expected. In fact, he could have passed for early twenties, if the uniform he wore hadn’t suggested at least seven years of service, which would make him, at minimum, in his mid twenties. He wore the uniform well, almsot comfortably as he crossed the room.

The look on his face was pleasant like it was just about to break into a smile. His one visible green eye was curious flickering around the room with some interest.

He made his way to the desk and held out a hand, “Dr.”

He took it, the grip was strong, “Commander.”

He sat in the seat just opposite and Dr Adric stared at the eye patch that covered his other eye.

He nodded to it, “I thought you had a mechanical eye.

“I do.” He said softly lifting the eyepatch up, so he could see the workings of the cold metal ball and its black aperture.

“Why do you still wear an eye patch?”

“Because, the eye has better vision than my normal one, and it can be overwhelming. I generally only use it when I need binocular vision.”

“Why not just shut it off, why wear the eye patch.”

He paused thinking head tilted, “It was a gift from a friend after losing the eye in a moment where I wasn’t sure I would make it through the injury. It lightened things up for me reminded me that there is always a way through.” He smiled, “Plus I think it makes me look dashing.”

The two of them laughed together for a moment.

“Why did you call extended leave like this, commander.”

HE sighed leaning back in his seat, “I had to work on myself for the good of the crew. I mean I saw how surprised you were, probably based on how young I am, right? Well due to that I am a novice at leading. I haven't had the time to cultivate how things work when commanding a crew, and I have made some mistakes that have almost cost me my job in the past.”

He listened.

“People tell me I shoulder too much burden and take on too much guilt. I recently learned that I have a tough time relinquishing control on things.”

“Why is that/ Do you often feel out of control.”

“No, but I think that’s why. The last time I was out of control is when I was a child and didn’t know how to fix it, so I assume bad habits formed from there.”

“Your family was stable?”

“Yes very, but school was…. Less than easy for me. I joined the flight academy after my freshman year of high school, so I don’t think I really had the life experience that most other people do when it comes to interacting with people my own age. The point is moot now, but it did hold e back a little maturity wise, I think.”

“You left due to extreme anxiety and stress?”

“Yes, I wasn’t handling it well.”

“And how are you doing now. I don’t see any records here saying you went to see someone .”

The man sighed, and for the first time Dr Adric noticed the German Shepherd sitting at the man’s side resting her head in his lap. She was wearing a service vest.

“I didn’t. I have done therapy before but the first time it didn’t work and the second time I was left with more questions than answers.” He patted the dog’s head, “She helped me the most and I decided that it might be prudent for me to try other avenues. I realized while I was gone that I was neglecting time for myself, and so I have developed a schedule to combat this.”

“Oh.”

“My average working day should be around nine hours, I only need about six hours of sleep. IN that case that gives me eight hours of free time, one of those I will use for exercise in the morning, and another for flight time.”

“Flight time?”

“My greatest stress relief, there is no better way to feel in control in an out o control way than flying, so I have worked it into my schedule and into budget in some way or another so that I can do what this fleet and the UNSC needs.”

“So, you have given up some responsibility, found yourself some free time, discovered stress relieving alternatives. Have you changed the way that you command in general?”

“I have made some changes to the command structure including a panel of advisors, which was just a good idea anyway.”

“You talked about maturity in your earlier statement. Do you feel that has increased much in the past few months?”

The man smiled and sighed, “As it turns out doc, that is the one thing I couldn’t fix at least in part.”

“Oh?”

“I can handle conflict and issues like an adult, but I have decided that some of that isn’t a maturity thing, it is simply a product of personality. So if the UNSC has an issue with a commander that makes too many Star Wars’ references and listens to 2000 year old rock music on the bridge, then I guess maybe I am not the man for the job.”

They talked a bit more until eventually Dr Adric stood.

The commander followed, he looked openly nervous now, though that was to be expected, this was the moment of truth.

Dr. Adric held out a hand, and the commander took it tentatively though his grip was still strong.

“I look forward to working with you and your crew.”

The near smile broke on the man’s face into a pleasant grin that sent little crinkly lines up through his eyes.

“You are in for a good time, Dr. Make sure to read the rules before you come aboard”

Dr Adric stood confused for a moment before glancing down at his hand.

He had not noticed the Commander slip him the folded piece of paper. He glanced up towards the door as the man’s foot vanished around the corner.

He stood in stunned silence for a moment before looking down and tentatively opening the note.

Welcome Dr. Adric Jakande to the UNSC Harbinger,

On behalf of my crew, we look forward to having you, and I am pleased that you are here to help my men with whatever they may need. You will be an amazing asset to our team.

There are a few ground rules I would like to lay out first. Of course, you know the UNSC code of conduct which I will not repeat, but I have a few personal rules that will make our lives all the much easier.

Rule number 1: Don’t chuck Marshmallows at Neutron Stars.

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years

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Nightmare In Silver - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Neil Gaiman writing a Cyberman story? What could possibly go wrong?

...

Fucking EVERYTHING!

I... You... Wha... What the hell happened?! This came from the same guy that wrote The Doctor’s Wife, Coraline, The Sandman and American Gods? This piece of shit came from him?... THIS?!?!

Look, the Cybermen are very precious to me. They’re my all time favourite Who baddies due to their timeless themes and limitless potential. Which is why it breaks my heart whenever I see them mistreated like this. I mean... Jesus Christ!

Nightmare In Silver picks up where The Crimson Horror left off with those two kids blackmailing Clara into getting a free ride in the TARDIS (yeah, that didn’t make sense in and of itself. The girl Angie says she’ll tell her dad that Clara is a time traveller, but what are the chances of her dad actually believing her? Come off it!). Normally I despise children (both in real life and in fiction) and this episode very handily reminds me of all the reasons why. God I hate these brats! The little boy (Arty I think his name was) is this big wooden dork and Angie is quite possibly the most spoilt, arrogant, ungrateful little shit I think I’ve ever seen. She’s travelled to another planet in a spaceship that’s bigger on the inside, and what’s her reaction? ‘Oh this is so boooooooring! Oh Clara you’re so stupid! You always spoil everything! I want to go home!’ Oh go fuck yourself, you moaning little bastard! What’s worse is that these kids don’t actually play any sort of role other than needing to be rescued. You know characterisation has gone seriously wrong when their personalities are actually improved by Cyberfication.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about the new Cybermen. While I do prefer the RTD Cybermen in terms of design, these new ones are quite cool. More robotic looking this time around and I’m fascinated by the suggestion that at this point in their history they’re less cyborgs and more biomechanical, converting flesh directly into metal. It’s been a running thing that each new Cyber design in the series represents another advancement in their evolution, and this feels like a very logical leap to me. I also really like the Cybermites. Much prefer them to the Cybermats, which I’ve never liked. What I really don’t like however are the superpowers. My jaw hit the floor when that Cyberman started running at super speed like the Bionic Man, not just because the effect looks like shit and there’s no way Angie would have survived being hit with such speed and velocity, but because it’s a leap too far. Same goes for Cyber body parts detaching and operating by themselves, as well as Cybermen being immune to lasers and upgrading themselves so that they can’t be electrocuted. They’ve effectively become an army of Cyber-Supermans. They can just do anything now. They’re way too overpowered to the point where it all starts to become laughably absurd, and because we no longer know what their limitations are, they become more vague as a threat, and therefore more dull. (Also how come the Cybermen never use their super speed ever again? That ability could have come in useful multiple times).

Actually I tell a lie. They do bring back one limitation from the classic series. It’s... hmph... their weakness against gold.

For those of you who don’t know, in the classic series they introduced the idiotic and nonsensical idea that the Cybermen were vulnerable to gold because it’s a non-corrosive substance that can clog up their breathing apparatus and suffocate them. First of all, since when did Cybermen need to breathe? Second, what does being non-corrosive got to do with clogging up anything? And third, why specifically gold? Couldn’t you clog up their breathing apparatus with something else? Like water for instance? And it just got worse and worse when it developed from gold suffocating them to gold just affecting them in general. Despite being bulletproof, apparently you can kill a Cyberman with golden arrows. Rubbing Adric’s gold badge on the Cyberleader’s chest plate in Earthshock was enough to hinder it, and there was one really low moment in Silver Nemesis where the Cybermen were destroyed by Ace using some gold coins and a slingshot. It’s quite possibly the most embarrassing aspect of Cyber lore and it makes me cringe whenever I think about it, so you can probably imagine my relief when the Cybermen first arrived in New Who back in 2006 and there wasn’t a single mention of gold anywhere.

Now imagine my horror and disappointment when the Doctor is able to briefly incapacitate the Cyber-Planner inside his head by slapping a golden ticket on his face. And somehow Gaiman managed to make it even worse by implying that cleaning fluid can have the same effect. Yes. Cleaning fluid. So the Cybermen are an unstoppable force that will not rest until they’ve hunted you down and converted you, and you should be very afraid of them... unless you’ve got a bottle of Toilet Duck to hand, in which case you’re basically fine.

Yes the Cyber-Planner makes its first appearance since The Invasion way back in the 1960s. It’s no longer a brain inside a giant metal apparatus however. It’s now a Cyber hive mind/network that assimilates other beings into its consciousness, mostly children in order to use their imaginations for military strategies. Until it catches sight of the Doctor that is and tries to assimilate him. Which leads to quite possibly the worst thing about this episode. Mr. Clever.

The Doctor being cyber-converted could be legitimately frightening, seeing this manic, warm hearted adventurer become a cold, calculating menace. Unfortunately that’s not what we end up getting. Instead we end up getting more of Matt Smith’s goofy bollocks. Mr. Clever (ugh) is just too emotional. He’s not his own character. He’s just the Doctor but evil. What’s even weirder is that the Cyber-Planner talks about how emotions are useless and that everyone is better off without them whilst it’s displaying emotion. It’s really inconsistent. I was astounded by the number of critics at the time praising Matt Smith for his performance because I honestly thought it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Watching him yelling and gurning his lines like an insecure pantomime villain was just embarrassing, and it shows a complete lack of understanding of who the Cybermen are (and I don’t just mean the whole emotions thing). As I’ve said numerous times in the past, the Cybermen aren’t evil like the Daleks. They’re altruistic foes. They honestly believe what they’re doing is helping us. That’s what makes them so frightening. By making the Cyber-Planner the default cackling baddie who’s evil just because, it makes the Cybermen less interesting and, as a result, less scary.

Speaking of actors giving bad performances, Jenna Coleman, I know you’ve been lumbered with a really shit character, but can you at least try to deliver your lines in a manner that isn’t smug or smarmy. Every single line has this air of snugness about it, which is irritating in and of itself, but there are occasions where it becomes really inappropriate. There are Cybermen about to breach the comical castle and the kids are in danger, and yet Clara is wandering around without a care in the world. Um Clara, shouldn’t you be panicking? Just a little? And there’s one really shocking moment where one of the soldiers informs her that someone has died, and Clara doesn’t even so much as react. In fact she’s surprisingly glib about the whole thing. I don’t know if it’s bad acting or bad directing. All I know is somebody fucked up. (Also I could have done without the bit at the end where the Doctor describes Clara as a mystery inside an enigma wrapped in a skirt that’s a bit too tight. Just... ew).

Beyond that, there isn’t really a whole lot to discuss. The theme park setting is nice, but we don’t really get to explore much of it. Jason Watkins is always good in everything he’s in, but he’s barely in this before he gets converted and is left to stand silently in the background with the kids. In fact the whole thing feels really rushed and under-developed. The punishment squad could have been interesting to explore, particularly in the context of the setting. It’s 1000 years after the Cyber Wars. The Cybermen have become the equivalent of mythological bogeymen, and now this rag tag group of failures and rejects are about to come face to face with their worst fear. The return of the long thought extinct Cybermen, now more powerful than ever. Think of the drama you could wring out of that. Instead they barely get a look in. They’re just a bunch of nameless redshirts that we don’t give a shit about. Same goes for Porridge. Warrick Davis gives a decent performance, but his character just isn’t very well developed. You could have expanded his character greatly. Given him a whole arc with him coming to terms with the horrible decisions he made in order to end the Cyber Wars (wait. He’s over a 1000 years old? Well I suppose if Liz 10 can survive well past 300 years in The Beast Below, I guess it’s possible) and finally reaccepting his position as Emperor. Instead it just feels like he’s going through the motions. He never actually changes or evolves. He just returns to being Emperor because... the script said so.

Nightmare In Silver is bad. Like Revenge Of The Cybermen/Silver Nemesis bad. The plot is weak, the characters are under-developed, the kids are annoying, the Doctor and Clara are still just as obnoxious as ever, and they completely botch the Cybermen. I pity anyone who tries to write a Cyberman story in the future after this disaster.

#nightmare in silver #neil gaiman #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #clara oswald #jenna coleman #cybermen #steven moffat #bbc #review #spoilers

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internetremix · 6 years

Note

Hi so this to everyone apart of DMP what is your favorite moment from the first season.

Kikyo: I guess mine would be the halloween town one and the christmas elves one (cuz I love Stabby, he is a good)

Alex: I really liked the part where Dr. McGillicutty was revealed as Fartzor, Ancient Demon of Farting, and to banish him he had to be beaten in a freestyle battle to the death

Kristen: That was also my favorite episode, wow.

Kikyo: Wha-

Alex: or that one where grace recited the complete works of william shakespeare so well a single tear rolled down murder god's cheek and she agreed to stop littering

Kikyo: I'm too tired to question these

Alex: I can't believe you don't remember these moments, they were so heartwarming

Kristen: Indeed, some of the best work we've ever done.

Queen: A part I like to go back to a lot is just before Vincent’s awakening when he confronts and shoots Rose, it’s so tense and heart racing.

And Grace exposing McGillicutty in the western scenario is a personal favourite, because I’d been paying really close attention to Alex’s portrayal of the Doctor for the whole session, which help me suss out quickly he was the murderer, and the moment I realised I got it right I thought, “fuck me, that actually worked, IM THE ULTIMATE DETECTIVE”

Jojo: honestly, probably Murder god's breakdown

Kristen: Aw that's nice to hear.

The parts I relisten to most are Vincent's Awakening and the finale, both of which I'm very proud of. I love pretty much every story scene however and I could write novels about how much I love everyone's performances.

To me Vincent's Awakening is just such an important moment and I think Split sold Vincent's intensity so well. I knew the "My name is Vincent Marshall Reid" bit was coming and I still get chills every time I hear it.

The finale just has so many great things about it- how sweet and satisfying Tommy finally being happy is, how Uprising sells how much Angalena loves Tommy, how happy Vincent is to see that going right and the bit where he pushes Tommy into her arms. I love the scene with The Host and McGullicutty so much because the whole "no one can fix you but you" theme is extremely important to me and Alex and Queen did such a good job. I love Vincent shooting MG cause it's such a big move after how awful she's been and I adore McGillicutty's big speech at the end and I just. Also admittedly I'm proud of MG's breakdown, it wasn't perfect but it was pretty close to what I wanted and I think it showed marked improvement from my previous work.

Anyway I'm a huge dork, no one is a bigger fan of the DMP cast than me.

Juno: Dedede

Jojo: I swear you'd fuck Dedede if given the chance

Brodingles: I'VE cried multiple times in the audience for DMP, (I was pacing the floor with my phone in my hand for Vincent's Awakening haha, DMP episodes give me stress bumps) but I can't think of a particular moment.

That said, I'm a ho for good comedy and the Camp Streamix scenario was the right amount of hilarious for me. I was dying relistening to it. Deceased. Dead as a door nail. Everyone who was playing support that scenario really showed their chops and I loved it.

Juno: HUGE AKU will always have a special place in my heart

Kristen: I regret

Brodingles: Never regret Huge Aku

Alex: N E V E R

Kikyo: Never forget Frederick, he still breaks our hearts to this day

Uprising: My fav moment to play was Angelena in the finale that was baller. I also liked when grace killed her uncle.

Adric: Favorite moment is probably either Graeme getting murdered or white Russians. Although the hosts awakening is pretty close too.

Kristen: Oh God white russians. "WHAT WHAT ARE WE VOTING ON? CHAD!? IS CHAD ALIVE!? OKAY SURE FINE WHATEVER."

Alex: okay honestly i forgot what exactly that was referring to for a few seconds. transformation into dr. mcgillicutty 15% complete.

Kristen: Oh no

Scott: My favorite moment will always be getting to play as the interns in the Reality Island scenarios. I've always had fun with those characters. Otherwise, The Host's reveal is definitely up there! Seeing a completely different side of Grace that takes every emotion and turns them up to 11 is terrifying, and I love it!

#discord murder party #dmp #dmp cast #ask the dmp cast #drmetalwarrior

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circular-time · 7 years

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Spare Parts Liveblog 6 - Disc 2

Dinner break! Okay, the Doctor and Nyssa leave after the ep 1 cliffhanger, and they never get into any trouble at all. JUST KIDDING.....

Track 2.1 “Necessary Force”

Part Two opens with something that’s a stock scene in new Who, but rare in classic Who, especially with Nyssa of all people: the companion and Doctor in a shouting match. I remember when Tegan was dissed by many fans because bossy/outspoken women were not popular. Then again, she did it all the time; Nyssa saves it for special occasions.

“And if you won’t get involved, then I must stay behind and do it by myself” —Nyssa

Every time I hear this bit, I cheer and wince all at once.

Never forget that Nyssa. Has. GUTS. The moment she realizes it’s the homeworld of the Cybermen, after she’s seen just how miserable and horrible and hopeless life is there, and knows she’ll probably die of starvation or consumption or be carved up for spare parts— that is where she, child of privilege who grew up in an idyllic paradise, decides to end her days. To help. Which is the sort of thing she does: she did it on Terminus. Big Finish keeps hammering home this basic aspect of her character.

While fighting, she and the Doctor run smack dab into the recurring dilemma of Doctor Who: you want to help, and you have a time machine, but you can’t alter history. Nyssa: I want to give these people some hope! I want to stop the Cybermen from coming into existence! Doctor: Yes, very laudable, but you can’t do it on your own! You’re not an army! You can’t turn the whole of history around on a sixpence! Nyssa: I’ve seen you do it!

(Again, Nyssa has guts, and also, long before Clara was doing it, Nyssa had a very dangerous habit of trying to be Just Like the Doctor).

The whole scene is so well-acted by Peter and Sarah. Chills down spine.

Also we get a chance to hear them face their pain about Adric’s death at the hands of the Cybermen, something Earthshock and Time-Flight really didn’t address.

[Doctor talks about running after disasters with a stretcher.]

“A pity that didn’t occur to you before when it came to sacrificing Adric!” Ouch, Nyssa. Ouch. [she’s still mad they didn’t run after Adric with a stretcher.]

Which gives her an additional motive for wanting to stop the Cybermen from coming into existence: it will save Adric’s life. Oh, Nyssa.

Doctor, after she finally lashes out: “So much that never gets said. Bound to boil over sooner or later.” Yeah, with scriptwriters who actually think about the story’s impact on the characters.

However, they are very dear friends and rational people, and by the time Nyssa’s collected her belongings to leave, they’ve both cooled down; Nyssa apologises for that barb.

And the Doctor honors her wishes and lets her go.

Or would have done, if she hadn’t mentioned bringing a cybermat into the TARDIS. At which point he goes all angry-squeaky-Five:

YOU BROUGHT A CYBERMAT INTO MY TARDIS!!!!!!

oops.

Track 2.2 “The Thousand Natural Shocks”

Oh FINALLY. I had a huge crush on this badass lady when she played a space pirate and crack pilot on Blake’s 7:

(hooray for farrah fawcett hair)

So I’m stoked that Sally Knyvette playing Doctorman Allan, the morally-grey-area scientist developing the Cybermen.

She’s cynical. She defies the Committee and laughs when she hears about the Doctor’s troublemaking— she’s about the only person with enough privilege/power to risk thinking for herself. She’s alcoholic (because Mondas is too horrible to deal with sober— and so is her conscience). She really is trying to save her people, but she’s got a brutal way of doing it: turning the weak and sick into a cyber-workforce to serve the strong. Eugenics ahoy. And she’s too damn proud of her creations, a standard Ethically Challenged Scientist trope.

She teases Sisterman Constant at every opportunity, making fun of her hypocrisy, (e.g. calling the Hartleys her “patients” when they’re just terrorized citizens). Sisterman Constant is a religious type, but actually she’s just another version of the secret police.

So anyway, we get Allan’s first scene treating “crewmen” from the surface and arguing with the Sisterman.

When I first listened, I had trouble with of “-man” used as a suffix to denote profession. A Sisterman is a nun (Constant prays to the “sky above” at one point, their heaven), a Doctorman is a doctor, an Electriman is an electrician, and so on. Sounds odd, but then so does the universal “he.”

I also appreciate how many female characters are major players in this story, typical of Big Finish especially when Gary Russell was director. They don’t fall into stereotypical villain/victim female roles. (While Yvonne is a victim, she has a rather atypical part to play too.)

Got to meet Sally Knyvette a few years ago at a signing in Barking, but alas I took the worst picture AND stuck my foot right down my throat. Ah well. Good thing is that actors meet so many fans they’ll forget your foolishness.

(still with the great hair, damn her)

Track 2.3 “Onto the Carpet”

Back in the TARDIS, testy!Doctor is frantic about the cyber-pest loose in his TARDIS. Just as bitterness about Adric’s death made Nyssa lash out at the Doctor, Nyssa endangering his TARDIS makes him lash out at her.

And go all squeaky. Of course.

He blows up at her, but once the Cybermat shorts out and she’s apologized again, he apologizes as well. Typical deflection: he rather awkwardly asks her to see what she can do to fix the damage: “Please, take a look. You’re good at this sort of thing. I’m going out for some fresh air.”

Exactly as he used to do when Tegan got under his skin and he needed to calm down. Have I mentioned how good Platt is at capturing the nuances my favorite TARDIS team?

Except this is the moment when the Doctor makes a FATAL mistake: HE GETS INVOLVED and leaves Nyssa, who is not going to stay safely put for very long. (And I note that it is partly Nyssa’s fault he gets involved, and/or her compassion makes things more difficult. See also: Creatures of Beauty, Emerald Tiger, trying to rescue the Doctor in Masquerade and screwing up the interface, etc.)

Scene jump to Doctorman Allan arguing with the ominously robotic voice of the Committee. She wants to slow down their Cybermen program and try to improve the process to save lives. The Committee, ignoring her pleas, decide the city is consuming too many resources and must be shut down. Why look after the interests of the people you represent when you could just eliminate them?

A parable of Tories shutting down UK social services over the past 20 odd years? Not sure, but the GOP is voting on Trumpcare in the US this week.

Allan: “What could possibly be more important than saving people?!” Committee: “We. must. survive.”

Every time i hear a new Who Cyberman say “delete” or “upgrade,” I shake my head. They just don’t have the Scary Motto down like their predecessors.

Outside the TARDIS, the Doctor finds a Cyberman, Allan’s drone. I think it was Platt’s idea to make them used for surveillance.

Frank shows up at the TARDIS to inform Nyssa that Dad Hartley is all sad; his daughter’s been called up for the work crews. Again, tying into Nyssa’s backstory; she knows what it’s like to lose a family member (and she guesses Yvonne’s being cyber-converted). Whereas Frank’s oblivious and angry he didn’t get what he thinks is a glamorous, well-paying job.

He’s been pretty angry and self-centered through the story so far. Then again he lost his mom pretty recently, so he’s suppressing grief.

Track 2.4 - “Bones to Pick”

Act II means taking action, although not necessarily effective. The Doctor is upset that the riot he started last night seems to have died off.

He wants to stir up the resistance some more. (Not realizing the cost they’ll pay, or else knowing the cost will be 100% fatal if they don’t do something soon.) This time he’s trying to draw attention to the graverobbing by hijacking a lorry and scattering its shipment of bones all over the street. I love his pre-smart-device kettle and ball of string approach to grave danger, although it doesn’t always work.

Meanwhile the Committee’s decided to cyber-convert the remaining population. Or at least that’s what Allan guesses. She’s drinking to keep from thinking. Sisterman Constant, selfish git, says the Selectors (the nuns) should be exempt; they’re the ones who choose “recruits” to be processed, making them elite. Whereas Allan can read the writing on the wall.

Track 2.5 - “Processing Credit”

Poor Yvonne. Constant blesses her while sending her to the slaughter. The victims being taken for Cyber-processing have their clothes stripped, exactly like prisoners in Nazi interment camps. Deny them their humanity before taking it away, whee.

Scene switches to the Committee (one thing I don’t like about BF -- too many modulated weird voices I have trouble understanding). Moment of doom (if it wasn’t before): They’re recalling Commander Jeng from the surface to take over. Military coup in progress.

But bringing Jeng down endangers the project on the surface, which has hit a critical juncture: radiation’s really high; laborers die off quickly, They’re caught on the horns of an impossible dilemma, and unfortunately a soulless Committee with no compassion is in charge of choosing. Sound familiar?

At LAST. Back to Dodd, disreputable rogue, being mean to Mr. Hartley who’s signing away his own organs just so he can feed his son.. Mondas is so horrible.

Mr. hartley passes the Doctor on the way out. Tells him Nyssa will make a good doctor, considering how she helped him.

“Oh, really?” the Doctor says, a bit dubious. But she will, in both senses: as a doctor on Terminus and, once she’s older, she starts behaving more and more like him. (Jupiter Conjunction, Mistfall, Entropy Plague to name a few examples.)

But that’s to come. Now the Doctor is pestering Dodd again.

Track 2.6 - “Taking Stock” (the track names on this audio are great)

The Doctor wants Dodd to help him break into the Committee’s central HQ. Dodd has other ideas, involving locking him in a freezer with the other spare parts.

Meanwhile Nyssa handily beats off a swarm of Cybermats with her nerdy smarts, electrocuting them.

Frank: It worked! Amazing! Nyssa: Not really. But worryingly satisfying.

She’s a gentle soul. Usually.

Sure enough, the Doctor’s been gone too long, so Nyssa grabs some food to go help Mr. Hartley.

Doom. Doom. Doom. JUST STAY IN THE TARDIS.

___________

Poor Yvonne. We get to hear her final moments as a human, begging for her Dad. Heartbreaking. Ugh: sound of a dentist’s drill just to trip all the horror nerves.

“You will join us. We are the future.”

Again, the Cybermen in this story are so much scarier than shiny robots saying “delete” and “upgrade.”

Because they are like the Borg— long before the Borg— people being assimilated into walking corpses. No wonder Death in Heaven tried to bring back this aspect of them, remind us what’s inside the armor.

____________

Doctor escapes Dodd and a random Cyber-policeman, and promptly tries to steal the guy’s horse. Using his Tristan credentials, the Doctor tries talk to the beastie.

Shades of Black Beauty in this bit, I think, although I haven’t read it in so long I’m not sure. “the whips are hard, the feed stale....”

Alas he doesn’t succeed in escaping; Allan rescues him from being executed, but requisitions him.

Track 2.7 “A Cracking Holiday”

Poor Mr. Hartley is in shock after losing Yvonne a second time, watching her last shreds erased before his eyes.

I love the way Big Finish often uses the sound of a teakettle going off as a sort of shorthand alarm: it’s warning of imminent danger, but the heroes are being too British and Keeping Calm and Carrying on

And now everything goes to hell. The power cuts out, the Cyber recruits escape in the confusion, the roof cracks, the lights go out, the cyber-police are trying to herd everyone into the Committee Palace for processing, and rioting breaks out— it’s apocalyptic.

Amazing how an audio with just a few voices and sound effects can suggest the death throes of an entire world... this hollow, terrifying world, the claustrophobic city in a cavern. It’s epic.

Because our imaginations are still a damnsight scarier than CGI.

DOO WEE OO.

#spare parts liveblog #long post is long

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timeflies1007-blog · 6 years

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Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 3, p. 4

Please note: these reviews contain spoilers about various seasons of the reboot, and sometimes contain references to the classic series.

Season Three Overview: Smith, Jones, and Tyler

Going into its third season, the show had to contend with some fans’ doubts about whether it could retain its appeal without Rose Tyler. This was an important moment for the show, a chance to make clear that while the reboot was deeply indebted to Billie Piper, it wasn’t completely dependent on her. Some absolutely sensational episodes show that it certainly could get by without her, but Rose’s absence hangs almost suffocatingly over the season, suggesting a sense of total bewilderment about how to move on. It makes sense to give a lot of attention to the Doctor’s grief at her loss; Rose was such a hugely influential companion that I can understand the more long-term grief than what was typical in the classic series. The show invests so much into this perspective, though, that it comes across as defeatist, as if it’s admitting that “yes, you’re right, skeptical fans—no one will ever be as good as Rose.” The result is an interesting if frequently annoying look at the Doctor’s emotions, but it crushes a lot of the spirit out of what should have been a wonderful Doctor-Companion pairing, and this turns a potentially great season into just a good one.

Part of the problem is that the Doctor never really gets a chance to fight his own propensity for moping about the past instead of embracing the present. In next season’s “Partners in Crime,” he has clearly thought about the problems that he caused for Martha, and is putting some effort into avoiding a repetition of his mistakes. This introspection seems to have happened during the break between seasons, though, because there is very little evidence of him actually dealing with his problems here. He destroys the spider people in his first agony of post-Rose trauma, he’s not very nice to Martha, he gets a reminder of how cruel he was to Jack, and then he irritatingly gets to defeat the Master by embracing his role as the savior of mankind. A brief scene in “Gridlock” and the excellent conversation between the Doctor and Jack in “Utopia” are the only times that suggest he is confronting any of the massive flaws that we see in him this season, and after Season Two’s repeated glossing over of a lot of these same flaws, it’s getting awfully late in the game for him to remain so oblivious about his impact on other people. Granted, once he fully embraces a sense of his own problems, he becomes sort of an angsty mess, as can be seen in “Journey’s End” through the conclusion to his time on the show. Early Season Four, though, features the most likeable version of the Doctor, who is maintaining a positive, upbeat persona while thinking carefully about his behavior, and I wish that this season had built up to that a bit more instead of giving him a sudden leap in conscience once Donna turns up.

Martha was a very good idea for a companion—perhaps, on paper, the best concept for a companion of the entire reboot. Not only is she the first person of color in this role, she’s also a doctor-in-training. There’s certainly plenty of value to showing the obstacles facing working-class people of color, but it’s important for television to have a range of characters of color, including highly-educated professionals, so I love the choice to make the first black companion an advanced medical student. She’s also very much not the “sassy black friend” stereotype that we’ve seen a lot on television, and I really appreciate that the show avoids that kind of cliché. There was so much potential here, but the show never really takes advantage of it. I don’t think that Davies has anything whatsoever against smart female characters—Rose, Martha, and Donna are all sharp, insightful, quick-witted people. He does seem a bit hesitant, though, to invest in knowledgeable female leads, and that really hurts this season. In the classic era, there were a lot of companions with vast amounts of scientific knowledge—Zoe could do anything with computers, Liz was a hugely accomplished scientist, Romana was a highly educated Time Lord, and so on. There were some companions whose advanced knowledge tended to get annoying, especially Nyssa and Adric, but I liked that the 26 seasons of the classic series had a good range of approaches to science, with some characters knowing very little and some knowing a huge amount. Martha is the most scientifically-accomplished companion of the new series, but she’s written as if Davies had taken to heart the criticisms one can find on the internet that Liz Shaw was “too smart” to be a companion. She gets to use her scientific knowledge a little bit on occasion, but the general formula seems to be that for every teaspoon of science/medical wisdom that she gets to display, we need a heaping tablespoon of “watch Martha make sad, jealous faces about the Doctor’s preference for her predecessor.”

Davies is very committed to creating relatable female characters, which is generally a good thing, but it can become a problem if it turns into minimizing the things that make a character unique for fear that they will become too distant from the average viewer. Most of the show’s audience is not going to have had the experience of going through most of medical school (or, really, of having that much education in any field), and so there are lots of things that Martha knows and can do that aren’t really part of most of our lives. It’s a lot easier to connect to a character on the basis of an unrequited infatuation, which is something that nearly everyone has experienced. It’s possible to see unrelatable moments, though, as an opportunity to let viewers empathize with experiences beyond their own, and I would have loved to see the show allow Martha’s background to inform her story a bit more. Someone in medical school would have had to study things like chemistry and biology, and the impact that encountering something like the TARDIS would have on someone who has put a lot of effort into studying how the physical world works is fascinating. The Doctor opens up new worlds for all of his companions, but this might be a more shocking experience for someone who had put a lot of time into figuring out the physical workings of life on Earth, and this creates a potentially fascinating character. It might pull her away a bit from being “just like us,” but it would make her different from the other companions and would give us insight into a mindset that many of don’t share. Instead of being centered on what it’s like for an almost-Doctor to travel in the TARDIS, though, Martha’s story is framed around her unrequited love for the Doctor, and this does a huge disservice to her character. With the lovely “Expelliarmus” moment in “The Shakespeare Code” as an exception, even her main contributions to the plot tend to take shape around the unrequited love dynamic. The kiss is a huge moment in “Smith and Jones,” she saves the day in “The Family of Blood” by declaring her love for the Doctor, and she saves the world in “The Last of the Time Lords” by traveling around and telling everyone to believe in how wonderful the Doctor is. She’s allowed small victories that make use of other facets of her character, but the big, climactic ones are all about her romantic feelings.

The lack of interest in Martha as a medical student also means that we get very little about her life on Earth. After “Smith and Jones,” she seems to have mostly forgotten that she’s enrolled in medical school, returning to the idea only in her annoyance with Joan’s racism in “The Family of Blood.” This means that the only sustained connection that we get to Martha’s regular life is her family, and none of them are written with as much depth as Rose’s family was. Francine is a charismatic presence, and her concerns about Martha traveling with the Doctor are portrayed very well, but there’s so little else to the character this season—really, the only other thing we learn is that she doesn’t like Martha’s dad’s ditzy girlfriend—that she doesn’t ground Martha’s story in a detailed reality in the way that happened with Rose. The rest of the family is just completely underwritten, including, sadly, the sister played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who could have been marvelous if the show had given her anything to do. I could picture what clearly what Rose’s life would be like without the Doctor, but it’s a lot harder to do that with Martha.

The biggest problem with Martha as a character, though, is the decision to make her mostly unwanted from the Doctor’s perspective. It makes sense that he is grieving for Rose, but even in “The Runaway Bride,” which is set seconds after his goodbye to her, he seems more willing to treat Donna as a person than he generally is with Martha for the rest of the season. There are moments in which he tries to get over this—the end of “Gridlock” sees him at least trying to talk to Martha on her own terms instead of seeing her as Not Rose—but there are far too many occasions this season in which he is very obvious about the fact that he wishes Rose was there instead of her. This leads to a lot of scenes of jealous moping from Martha, and it makes the Doctor look extremely insensitive. From his lament that “Rose would know what to do” in “The Shakespeare Code” to his almost total lack of acknowledgment of everything Martha did in “The Last of the Time Lords,” the Doctor never really appreciates Martha enough. By the time we get to “Utopia,” Martha is (understandably) pouting every time someone mentions Rose, and watching the main companion be jealous of her predecessor just doesn’t make for an enjoyable season of television. It also means that both of the two main black characters of the Davies era (Martha and Mickey) spend much of their time pining away for white people who reject them for other white people, which is not ideal.

The misguided Doctor-Companion dynamic this season is especially unfortunate because it mars a season that has some tremendously creative storylines and a plot arc that is impeccably set up, even if it does crash and burn in its final minutes. The early mentions of Harold Saxon introduce him as a vaguely threatening presence long before we realize who he really is, and the humanizing potential of the fob watch is integrated so smoothly into the season that I had no idea the concept would turn up again until we saw the watch in “Utopia.” The Master himself is very well portrayed, both by Derek Jacobi and by John Simm. Simm’s Master is going to go off the rails a bit in his return, but having to pretend to be Prime Minister for a while restrains him just enough that he generally works very well this season. He’s also having a terrific time, especially in his musical introduction of the Toclafane. He and Tennant have terrific chemistry, and watching him take over the world is an absolute delight. It’s disappointing that he comes across as intensely stupid in the last episode—the Master always gets crushed eventually, but Roger Delgado and Michelle Gomez managed to continue to look like geniuses even in defeat. Still, his interactions with the Doctor and his show-offy evil behavior are among the bright lights of this season. While there are plenty of frustrations this season, there really are some sublimely good pieces of writing, from the Doctor’s brief spell as a human to the Weeping Angels to the energetic new Master, and my frustration with the season’s problems stems mostly from the sense that if a few things had been written differently, this would have been an absolutely phenomenal season.

Planets: There is some good work with contemporary Earth in “The Runaway Bride,” “Smith and Jones,” “The Lazarus Experiment,” “Blink,” and “The Sound of Drums,” all of which look much better than many of the modern-day scenes in Season Two. We get some really lovely historical scenes in “Human Nature/The Family of Blood,” some decent ones in “The Shakespeare Code” and the end of the universe looks smashing in “Utopia.” New Earth continues to be almost entirely without interest, New York looks like it was filmed by someone who had never directed anything before, and the moon is a bit of a disappointment in “Smith and Jones,” but on the whole it’s a successful season in terms of settings.

Monsters, Aliens, Etc.: This is the main way in which this season is an improvement on Season Two. While it does make an absolute mess of the Daleks, probably more so than at any point in the show’s history, it also has some absolutely splendid villains. The Weeping Angels are magnificent, the Family is terrifying, the Judoon are fabulous Rhinoceros Police, the Master is giving a beautifully hammy performance, and the Toclafane are a horrifying depiction of the last remnants of the human race. Not everything works—the sun in “42” is an awfully odd villain, and the witches in “The Shakespeare Code” are awfully unsatisfying, but the monsters and aliens who do work well are more than enough to offset a few failures.

Female characters: I’m not sure whether this season is a step up or down from Two. On the one hand, it doesn’t use female authority figures as incompetent plot devices, and no one gets turned into a concrete slab. On the other hand, Martha’s potential as a character is mostly wasted, and the only real stand-out female guest characters are Donna, Sally Sparrow and Jenny/Mother of Mine. Joan does get some good material toward the end of “The Family of Blood,” but I still think of her as the weakest part of a generally excellent two-parter, and Chantho also gets a couple of good moments that don’t really offset the general lack of interest I have in the character. The actress playing Lucy Saxon has a good vacant stare, but she’s never quite as fun as I think she could have been, the women of “Gridlock” and “42” are massively forgettable, Martha’s relatives are underwritten, Tallulah and the Empress of the Racnoss are absolute messes, and generally female characters with anything resembling depth or memorability are few and far between. It’s a disappointing season for women, although that is about to get better. L

Overall: If Davies had figured out how to make the Martha/Tenth Doctor dynamic work better, this could have been one of the all-time great seasons of this show. There are some really great stories and some fabulous new monsters, but it can be so unpleasant to watch these two characters interact that the season is weaker than it should be. B+/B

Up Next: There are still plenty of problems, but there is also Donna, so everything gets better pretty much immediately. Davies has some absolutely brilliant ideas in his final full season as showrunner, and also some intensely bad ones, but the Tenth Doctor and Donna are one of the very best Doctor-Companion pairings of all time, and their wonderful friendship substantially raises the quality of the season.

Episodes Ranked So Far:

1. The Satan Pit

2. The Doctor Dances

3. Blink

4. The Family of Blood

5. The Empty Child

6. Dalek

7. The Parting of Ways

8. School Reunion

9. Utopia

10. Human Nature

11. The Impossible Planet

12. The Sound of Drums

13. Doomsday

14. The End of the World

15. Father’s Day

16. Smith and Jones

17. Rose

18. The Unquiet Dead

19. Christmas Invasion

20. The Runaway Bride

21. The Girl in the Fireplace

22. Aliens of London

23. The Shakespeare Code

24. The Lazarus Experiment

25. Tooth and Claw

26. New Earth

27. The Age of Steel

28. Bad Wolf

29. Rise of the Cybermen

30. Boom Town

31. World War III

32. Army of Ghosts

33. 42

34. Gridlock

35. The Last of the Time Lords

36. Idiot’s Lantern

37. The Long Game

38. Love and Monsters

39. Evolution of the Daleks

40. Daleks in Manhattan

41. Fear Her

#doctor who #female doctor #tenth doctor #Martha Jones #russell t davies #david tennant #freema agyeman #season 3 #reviews

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