#and the first one is with four and sarah jane and kate and osgood!!!

[expelliarmus]

[dw-companion-bracket]

A Doctor Who Companion Bracket

Yes, that's right, I'm jumping on the trend late and making one of these, but with one key difference: I'm making it more complicated. Not that much more complicated, you still just click on your favourite whenever you see a poll, but I'm going to be starting with an elimination round featuring every single TV companion, a few EU companions, and some extras that I like just to round the numbers out properly.

The first round will have 11 groups, divided up by era. The top half (rounding up) of compnions in each the group will then go through to the brackets, and from there it'll be business as usual and exactly the same as these have all been run.

The first polls (the group stage) will go live on Sunday, and then after those have been inputted the brackets will go out every day until we reach the final. I'll also make a masterpost of every poll

Breakdowns of the groups under the cut!

First Doctor Companions

Four will be chosen from Ian, Barbara, Susan, Vicki, Steven, Katarina, Sara, and Dodo!

Second Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from Ben, Polly, Jamie, Victoria, and Zoe!

Third Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from the Brigadier, Liz, Benton, Yates, and Jo!

Fourth Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from Sarah Jane, Harry, Leela, K-9, Romana I, and Romana II!

Fifth Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, and Kamelion!

Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctor TV Companions

Two will be chosen from Peri, Mel, Ace, and Grace!

Big Finish Companions

Two will be chosen from Frobisher, Evelyn, Charley, and Lucie!

Ninth and Tenth Doctor Companions

Four will be chosen from Rose, Adam, Jack, Mickey, Martha, Donna, and Wilf!

Eleventh Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from Amy, Rory, River, Vastra, Strax, and Jenny!

Twelfth Doctor Companions

Three will be chosen from Clara, Nardole, Bill, Kate, Osgood, and Missy!

Thirteenth Doctor Companions

Two will be chosen from Graham, Ryan, Yaz, and Dan!

May the best companion win (or at the very least not get knocked out immediately)

[anotheruserwithnoname]

My hopes for Doctor Who in 2017

With the first month of January half over, this is as good a time as any to put up my (latest) wishlist for the Doctor Who franchise as 2017 progresses. Of course this year will see Series 10 arrive, and who knows what other surprises lay in store (the Class spinoff announcement came out of nowhere, for example so maybe we’ll get another out-of-the-blue announcement).

So here’s my Top 10 list ... after the break:

1. That Series 10 reflects the fact that Steven Moffat and his writing team have taken a break and come back refreshed. The Husbands of River Song was a clear example of writer fatigue (not helped by Moffat saying he actually thought it was going to be his final episode at one point). Doctor Mysterio was a promising sign, especially considering it was filmed midway through production of S10.

2. Don’t make the series all about River Song. I got some disturbing feeling that Nardole’s mystery is going to be tied into River Song. River is dead and as others have pointed out it’s disrespectful to not only fans of Clara but also fans of the Eleven-River relationship (of which I am one) to keep undermining the character....

3. ... Not unless there is at least one solid reference to Clara in S10 to give us balance. It’s been reported that Missy may appear in Series 10. We may or may not get a Jenna Coleman cameo - depending on what happens with #4 - but all we need is for a character like Missy to address Clara and give us a follow-up to what we saw in the first episode of Class. Prove to us that while the Doctor may have “forgotten” her, the show hasn’t. (And, sad for the fans, but Class appears destined to be a short-lived branch so I’d hate for the only direct reference to the Doctor’s memories and feelings for Clara post-Hell Bent to have been wasted on an episode that was viewed by roughly the equivalent population of Saskatchewan.)

4. Peter Capaldi to stay on for Series 11. There are a few reasons for this. The first one is obvious - it’s Peter Capaldi, for heaven’s sake. ‘Nuff said, to quote Stan Lee. Second reason is a lot of people are leery about Chris Chibnall taking over from Moffat (if there’s one TV producer who has more online haters than Moffat, it’s him) so having Capaldi (and Pearl Mackie and even Matt Lucas) stay on would make the transition smoother (for the record I have open mind on Chibnall; I liked his DW episodes though I was less keen on his Torchwoods, is all). Third reason is a pragmatic one for us Whouffaldi fans: I do not believe that they will be able to get Jenna Coleman to appear in any S10-related production, or even the 2017 Christmas special, if they don’t get something done with her before Victoria S2 filming begins in February. But we’re only really under the gun if Capaldi leaves with Moffat at the end of the year. If he stays on we can at least hope that Chibnall develops a storyline that brings her back, or at least agrees to have her appear in Capaldi’s regeneration story. But there’ll be more time to play with, anyway. I do not want to see this play out with the Thirteenth Doctor, otherwise it’ll just be a repeat of the mess that we just went through with River Song improperly being tied in with the Twelfth Doctor, retconning away her previously established farewell to Eleven.

5. That Bill is a better character than she’s portrayed in the trailer. Sorry not sorry - I did not like what I saw in the trailer. But let’s see how she fares in a full episode, not a bunch of random buzzwords and sound bites.

6. That the Twelve-Bill-Nardole team gives us a return to the Four-Sarah Jane-Harry Sullivan dynamic. It has that potential.

7. That we get a Series 9 soundtrack. And a proper CD release too, not just some B.S. download/streaming thing like they just did with Victoria’s soundtrack.

8. That Big Finish starts doing Paternoster Gang stories. All three actors - Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey - have done Big Finish audios over the past year. Starkey has already played Strax in one (and he’s even writing scripts for them now). There is no excuse for us not to get the Paternoster Gang spin-off we never got on TV.  They’ve already given us the Kate and Osgood UNIT spin-off we should have had, and the River Song spin-off a lot of people wanted, and even a bunch of stories now with the War Doctor and the Time War-era Eighth Doctor.

9. That the powers that be allow the expanded franchise to begin telling officially licensed stories featuring Clara and Ashildr, post-Hell Bent. I can understand them wanting to wait to see what Moffat does in S10. But once it becomes clear what he has planned, I’d like to see Titan Comics or BBC Books or somebody pick up the ball and run with it. (Big Finish would be amazing but I know they don’t have the rights yet to anything specific to the Capaldi era, and #10 takes precedence anyway.)

10. In the wake of Big Finish reuniting David Tennant and Catherine Tate for a series of audio dramas - something that many thought would be impossible - for Big Finish to pull another rabbit out of its hat and help resolve Matt Smith’s one regret about leaving Doctor Who - that he didn’t get to do more stories with Jenna Coleman. Last year, Jenna took time out from Victoria to record a relatively minor voiceover for Thunderbirds Are Go, and later recorded a part for a digital version of A Christmas Carol. And she’s still officially available to record voices for commercials and the like through one of her agencies. Matt Smith is on record as saying he’d love to do Big Finish if invited. Come on, Mr. Briggs, it can work - please make an Eleven and Clara reunion happen!

[fangirlinglikeabus]

i finished the day of the doctor novelisation today and i literally cannot stop thinking about it. i had a few small issues with it but here is a (very long oops) list of the things i loved:

the chapters are in a completely bonkers order. it starts with chapter 8. there is no chapter 9 (well. the curator claims there is, and leaves a handy blank sheet at the back so you can mark when you read chapter 9. it’s completely covered in marks with ‘help me’ scrawled over it)

Sometimes he missed the monochrome world of his first two incarnations. It had felt like a simpler, cleaner time; so many centuries had passed before he realised he’d just been colour blind.

the potion that eight drank was actually lemonade and dry ice...the sisterhood of karn just gave him a way to pretend that he was a warrior due to outside influence

He’d just had another massive falling out with the Master, who typically had gone and turned everyone in the world into a copy of himself (’Yes, even you, Clara, shame I missed that’), cleverly saved an old friend from dying of radiation poisoning, said goodbye to all his best friends because he was dying of radiation poisoning, died of radiation poisoning, regenerated, made a mental note to apologise to all his best friends for possibly overstating the situation with the radiation poisoning, destroyed a garden shed which had stupidly collided with his TARDIS during a largely successful emergency landing, met a new friend with orange hair, invented fish custard, had a stern word with some giant flying eyeballs who were mucking about on Earth for no good reason, and put an end to the mysterious plans of Prisoner Zero (plans so mysterious, in fact, that no one ever found out what they were) before finding time to dash back to the TARDIS and spending seven and a half frustrating hours looking for a mirror. 

the doctor apparently regularly calls up coal hill school like ‘hello yes i am a Totally Normal Human who wants to know when my friend clara will be free to hang out :)’. the headmaster knows he’s an alien because ian is the governor. also ian and barbara are on their fourth honeymoon...the doctor asks to tag along

the running gag that the eleventh doctor is apparently slightly terrified of his own hands. he keeps hitting things with them accidentally

flashback to the brig telling kate that the doctor is a genius and also an idiot. this happens while four is getting his scarf caught in a door, complaining that he’s been trapped by a force field while sarah calmly untangles him.

IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY SPLIT INFINITIVES, PLEASE DON’T PANIC, IT’S A STUPID RULE ANYWAY.

the doctor has a bath with river........fully clothed. then it quickly swings to sad because this is ten and he’s thinking about how her death gets more painful the further he gets away from it because he’s getting to know her more

a footnote that reads ‘see Doctor Who and the Silence in the Library, available in all good alternate realities’

“This way,” Kate said, with the determined calm of a woman who had successfully not punched someone.

IF ANY ASPECT OF THIS BOOK IS MAKING YOU ANGRY, PLEASE KNOCK YOUR HEAD LIGHTLY AGAINST A WALL TO RESTORE PERSPECTIVE.

the bit in the tower is very very good...the concept that the doctor is fundamentally alone because after all they’re all the same person...the seeing it through 3 different versions of himself and just going through the role that he knows is his job

actually all of the river bits are Good. i just reread another one of them and i’m like. i’m in love. also the therapy robot? good shit

osgood’s pov bits are Good

advice from sarah jane: scream all the time you’re running away and then fall silent and double back so that the person chasing you thinks you’ve gone further than you have

i’m not sure there are any straight people in this book, actually. obviously there’s the doctor, but clara claims she made out with elizabeth and is also into kate, and osgood mentions not wanting kate to fall on top of her in case it causes ‘inappropriate sexual tension in the workplace’.

I was just thinking about Alistair again. I do that a lot, because I enjoy smiling.

if you listen closely you can hear my tears at that

the elizabeth i/doctor marriage ceremony is almost definitely a sham on her part to manipulate the doctor’s ego

MORE osgood pov, with some good good setup for the zygon invasion/inversion 2 parter.

the peter cushing dr who films exist in the doctor who universe. the dr apparently lent a waistcoat to him for the second one.

all the doctors have tea together. the seventh leaves behind his umbrella, which the curator considers ‘rather stylish’

some of the last lines in the book are almost word-for-word the seventh doctor’s closing speech of the classic series

there was So Much i enjoyed on top of that which i didn’t include because this was getting very very long, but god if this didn’t remind me exactly why i love moffat era who. plus: i think him bringing back gallifrey is very in line with his idea of the show as fundamentally hopeful and optimistic. idk how to put this exactly into words but it’s like...you can keep this promise to yourself. there is another way out. you don’t have to sacrifice your morals and your sense of being to desperation. idk man i just vibe heavily with it