One thing New Who doesn't really have that Old Who did was the thing where everyone (audience included) thinks the Doctor is this amazing genius from space with the best spaceship of all time, and then someone else from Gallilfrey shows up and goes "Oh, it's you. Did you get expelled from our university or did you just fail your degree? Is THAT what you're driving around the universe in? How does that thing even still work? And why are you dressed like that?"
this is sort of pathetic, but when you were younger, you were sort of puzzled by the cartoon representations of fathers: how a kid would be outside with a mitt, waiting to play catch.
it's not that your father never played catch with you, but you also didn't like when he did. something about a hard ball coming quickly towards your face doesn't seem exciting. not that you'd ever say you don't trust him. you trust him, right?
it's not like he never tried to teach you anything. or never tried to parent. on rare days, a strange person would walk in your father's skin. bright, happy, magnificent. this version of your father was so cheerful and charismatic that you would do anything to keep him. and this is the version of your father that would laugh and gently coax you try again. this is the version of your father that would break down the small elements of a problem and point them out so you have an easier time with them.
as a kid, those days happened more often. but somewhere around 11, you started being too much of a person, and he was often cross about it. when he'd try to sit you down to learn something, you spent the whole time with your shoulders around your ears, nervous, uncertain. terrified because you didn't immediately understand how to navigate something. worried you will run out of his goodwill and then you will have the Other Father back, and you will have ruined a good day for your entire family. something about you being visibly afraid - it just made him angry. he would accuse you of not wanting to learn and storm away.
on tv, it's not like there's a lot of versions of men-who-are-mostly-fathers. they can be good dads, but usually their stories are not told in the household. so it's normal that your father is there, but he's never around. you know he was in the house, somewhere, it's just not that you guys ever... "hung out". he just seemed to get kind of bored of you, annoyed you weren't made in his perfect image. frustrated with how much energy it took to raise a kid. over time, you kind of adopt a bittersweet band around your throat - he knows nothing about me. he says at least i never abandoned my family.
and it's technically - technically - true. he was there for you. sometimes he even made an effort and made it to the big moments; the graduations and the dance recitals. he grins and tells everyone that he taught you. it almost erases the days in between, where he complains because you need a ride to school. the weeks that go by where he doesn't actually ever speak to you. the times you say i am struggling and he says figure it out on your own. i can't help you.
and that's fine! that's all fine. you can call him if you are having a problem with your car. or if you need a ride to the hospital. he loves playing hero, he just doesn't like the actual work that comes with being a father. and you've kind of made your peace with that; because you had to, because you don't want to live your life like he does; the whole world at a managed distance, a little rotating and controlled orb he can witness and take credit for but never truly love.
as an adult, you are rewatching some dumb cartoon - and again, the child standing in the rain, with a mitt, waiting for their father to come play catch. as an adult, there's this strange creeping dread - this little thing? this little thing, and their dad can't even show up for that? oh god, holyshit, it's not about the mitt, is it. oh god, holyshit, your father spent most of your life leaving you hanging.
"Disney's princess needs to have more diverse personalities!" Yes true, sure, but also
Disney's first three Princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora) are all graceful, sweet, like singing songs about dreams and wishes, and do not actively fight: "omg they're such anti-feminist caricatures!!!"
Disney's next princesses have more established emotions and personalities, alongside the establishment of the "I Want" song as applied to motives outside of love (exploration, adventure, making their family proud): "OMG Ariel traded her voice for a man, how stupid!" "Belle's so stuck-up!" "Jasmine's just a spoiled brat!"
Tiana's a dedicated hard worker, loves her family a lot, and wants her loved ones to be very happy even at her own expense and gets... totally ignored in this conversation, gee I wonder why
Rapunzel, Anna, and now Asha are a little bit awkward, silly, but exuberant and get written off as "stupid adorkable" despite the other tenets of their personalities setting them apart, like Rapunzel's creativity, Anna's dedication to her family, and how Asha strives to help those around her
Moana gets called a disobedient brat for seeing beyond her father's narrow-mindedness
Disney Princesses have many wonderfully different personalities. It's just that people are dedicated to misinterpreting them, and that's why I never take the "Disney Princesses need more diverse personalities!" comment at face value.
you're an exorcist. You're supposed to kill demons. You're an angel. All you're life you've followed the first man, and heard tales about the dangers of questioning heaven. Tales about Lucifer. You know he's not to be messed with and that he's the king of hell. That heaven FEARS him to a degree.
then you show compassion to ONE demon once, against Adam's orders, and boom. Now you're cast out. You're stuck in hell. Oops this cute girl shows up??? She's taking care of you?? Clearly your intuition that maybe the sinners didn't all deserve to be killed were correct. She's nicer than a lot of people in heaven-WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS PRECIOUS BEAN IS LUCIFER'S DAUGHTER???
clearly heaven was wrong about a lot of things, so if the big bad lucifer has a daughter this sweet, maybe something is up with him???
And then you meet him, and like, meeting your partner's parents is already nerve wracking and this is supposed to be THE king of hell, THE fallen angel, THE GUY THAT HEAVEN FEARS and the first thing he does is completely flub his words out of excitement, mispronounces your name, hugs you and calls you pretty???
of ten’s companions, if the doctor couldn’t handle losing them and crossed his own timeline to trick them into traveling with future!him instead of past!him so that he’d have a little more time with them:
rose would do it. first because bless her but she has the situational awareness of a rock, and legitimately would not realize this isn’t her doctor until his facade starts to break down and he starts bleeding grief-laced love for her at every turn. but once she does realize it, she’s both deeply sympathetic and a little scared that she could make him into this. it’s a lot to be confronted with having that much power over someone, to break them so thoroughly. rose would try to get back to her doctor, but while she’s with the future version, she tries to do what she can to ease his pain. (she also tries to figure out a way to subvert her fate. she fails.)
i think martha would be harder to trick. she can smell desperation on the doctor like a bloodhound. she is so tapped into the fact that this man wants to off himself so bad and that she’s 90% of his self-restraint, so present her with a doctor who is lacking that and she’s onto him immediately. however, assuming he gets her to come with him, explains why he’s doing this, there’s like. a minute where she’s kind of. not flattered exactly, but surprised, giddy with the realization that he’d come back for a little more time with her, especially if this is early season 3 martha. which would all come crashing down around the time that he reveals that he wasn’t pushed to this by losing her to some tragedy or her death or anything- but that she chose to leave. that is the point at which martha goes ‘oh i need to get the fuck off of this tardis right now’ and ghosts the past!doctor that she was also traveling with because holy shit, man.
donna, like rose, is easily bamboozled into following the wrong doctor home, provided that he shuffles her along into his tardis too fast for her to argue. but she catches on far quicker than rose does. like, three minutes tops of watching the doctor move through the tardis in a way that’s definitely not enthusiastic piloting and looks more like guilty panic. and then she yells at him for lying to her. and she yells at him for kidnapping her. and then she stops yelling because he’s gone sort of still and quiet and his eyes are just broken. and he doesn’t explain himself, he confesses. donna is going to try to stay with him after this btw. because how do you go back to looking your best friend in the eyes when you know he’d take everything you’ve become away from you, even to save your life? and this is still the doctor, he still did that to her, but he regrets it. regrets it so much that he can’t live with it, he’s breaking time and space just to hear her say his name again. and donna doesn’t want to lose him anymore than he wanted to lose her.
Every time I see advertisements for the third season of Bridgerton I'm forever thankful I gave up that liberal covid escapism show after season 2 when I realized that we were actually supposed to be rooting for the main character who exposed a black pregnant teenager and a feminist activist, and that there would be no lasting consequence for that because this show is really all about preserving social order and maintaining the nuclear family. why look at class segregation when you can look at these shirtless colonizers.
George was the one who disclosed what the title of the og series actually means. It is a Targaryen prophecy. A legacy handed down to each heir. Much like the Stark's Winter is Coming. I have never read Fire and Blood, so I don't know if Rhaeger was the one who discovered this legacy after ages or if Aerys knew too. But regardless over the years Winter is Coming became more and more related to the hardship of surviving the land, than a warning about the cold dead things that go bump in the night.
Like okay think about it! You have these two houses, right? And one passes on the ominous message through generations: be careful, be aware, winter would come again and with it would come death. And on the other side we have another house where they are like: be prepared. Be prepared for the song of life and death. If you aren't prepared all hope is lost.
And so we have one raise a Wall, a shield to guard the men. And if the Starks ( the lords of winterfell who have been given the knowledge; whose moral obligation was to make sure that those at the Wall were ready) are the first line of defense, the Targaryens ( the lords of fire) are the sword. You can only do so much with a shield, and without a shield how do you safely wield the sword?
And so to think! To fucking think!!! you have Jon Snow at the Wall and Dany in the East and both of them coming together to be the shield and the sword! Like oof!! Oof!!! Ooooof!!!!
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Thinking. Abt this but with Bones. Like. Post-Tholian Web? Post-Mirror Mirror?
For AOS, could be after Into Darkness and/or Beyond.
A Bones who's just. So anxious. So stressed. So overwhelmed that it starts taking a toll on his health. Maybe he doesn't even realise - or maybe he does and tries his best to push through it until it knocks him on his ass. Kind of in the vein of "You don't actually know how tired you are until you stop. And then you just physically cannot start again." It becomes his new baseline, a problem that just brews and storms in the distance.
And he just carries on. And keeps going and going and going until one day he realises that 'Oh fuck, I'm not okay' and has about 5 seconds of warning before he straight up collapses, doesn't matter if it's on the bridge, in the madbay, on a planet - he's going down. (Maybe a repeat of Tholian Web where he just straight up faints into Spock's arms? Full whammy, why not)
Maybe it's a high-tension situation getting resolved that does it. The pure relief of it reminds him of how tired he is. How tired he's been for a while. His body sees that momentary rest and goes "More of that, please. And I'm not asking."
And he's so rendered by it that he doesn't grumble about being coddled like he normally would when he wakes up. He knows not to fuck with the medbay staff - they're just as firm as he is on recovery, and that's not by accident - and he knows that Spock and Kirk will be hovering, because they see any problem as something they, too, should shoulder the burden of.
...And because they're some of the most protective people in the damned universe. And that goes for pretty much all the people on board the Enterprise.
In some scenarios, it's just a case of letting his body and mind rest properly. In others, there's a lot more recovery involved than anyone initially expects. Luckily for him, he has a found family who are determined to be there with him at every step. It just takes a couple reminders, every once in a while.