#anti chibnall

[skeletonsinboth]

No bc thirteen/chibnall was always SOOO weird with ~oooh is the doctor Gay™??? The doctor is a little Gay™ sometimes....... more Gay™ other times....... but is she.... Gay™??????? We may never know......~ and it always bugged me so much bc BRO SHE'S A GENDERLESS SEXUALITYLESS ALIEN!!!! why are we confining her to our stupid little tiny binary human minds????? And then Russell T Davies came back and said the Doctor is male and female and neither and more and oh is Isaac Newton hot??? Yes of course he is. immediately within two episodes like it's the most normal thing in the world because IT IS!!! HES THE DOCTOR!!!! HES SO BACK!!!!!

[box-dwelling]

Shit that I don't think is RTD being passive aggressive about the other show runners because they're his colleagues and he seems like a nice dude but deserved to be passive aggressive jabs because he is not a hack fraud from The Giggle.

The only thing from chibanls era being brought up by the toymaker being the emotional fall out of the flux, a thing chibnal had no interest in exploring despite clearly being the most interesting thing in his run

Spice up your life, being a reference to the Rasputin number which is the only other good thing chibnal ever did but that RTD still beat his ass with

Having 90% of the supporting cast be women, all written distinctively and empathetically and non of whom showed any interest in the doctor a thing moffat could never do

This is pre his era but actually writing a proper arc and personality for Mel.

Honestly the entire you are running from your trauma arc seems like a chibnal slight because he really did not care to write that shit at all

Bigenerataion. Feels like he just decided the timeless child fucks with the lore enough he can have Ncuti break it in his underwear with a comically oversized hammer. Which is deeply correct of him.

The Clara was killed by a bird line

Please tell me if I missed anything

[thefiresofpompeii]

lines that are awesome when divorced from context. as in, yes, this is technically true, but not because of the fucking timeless child. all he is is because of her — and all she is is because of him. to say i’m pissed off at this retcon would be an understatement. in one fell swoop it negates all of the history between them, the way their childhood shaped them and their rivalry, only to say “yeah the doctor is special and more important than the master because they’re the Chosen One” cheapens everything. makes it generic. defeats the point. how do you miss the point this horribly as a SHOWRUNNER

[khruschevshoe]

Thasmin & How the Changing of Showrunners Handicapped Their Story

You know what? I'm going to rant about it. I've been thinking about Doctor Who from a Watsonian versus Doylist point of view on a constant basis, especially when it comes to showrunners and how the doctor is handed over from showrunner to showrunner and how the exit of Yaz from the show is it possibly the clearest example in the world of this feeling of a showrunner being switched. I'm not talking writing differences, I'm not talking stylistic differences, I'm talking the way that she left the show. Because I would put all of my life savings on the fact that if Thirteen and fourteen had the same show runner, Yaz would have been able to stay around for 13's regeneration. You can feel the writing of the show STRAINING to justify why Thirteen would dump her/leave her behind. It feels abrupt because it IS. Rose got to continue her story with 10 until its organic end. Same with Clara. Hell, even River, though her circumstances were slightly different. There is literally no reason why Fourteen wouldn't go after her the moment the 60th specials end except for the fact that for some absolutely weird reason RTD didn't mention Yaz ONCE despite 14 being more "emotionally open" than the Doctors before him.

Like, I'm going to be honest. I'm mostly ambivalent on Thasmin. I think they're sweet and had potential and got screwed in the build up in seasons 11 and 12 (up until Revolution, even). But if I was y'all I would be PISSED. Because that kind of treatment of Yaz and Thasmin as a love story sucked from both the Power of the Doctor AND the 60th anniversary specials. No closure. No real explanation. No acknowledgement of the main love story of the last showrunner. (Even Steven Moffat name-dropped Bad Wolf/Rose in the 50th special, though he did also have the whole 10th Doctor running around with Elizabeth I thing so maybe that cancels itself out.) The mechanics of the show and how it's run screwed you over. And I'm sorry. I hope y'all get some acknowledgement in 15's Era. I'll be pleasantly and happily surprised if we get a cameo (or some miraculous wrap-up of the storyline ala Husbands of River Song), but seeing how the most logical place for a mention (the toymaker) came and went without a peep I'm not hedging my bets.

(Going to go check out some fanfic, though- and imagine that fourteen took off towards Sheffield the moment the 60th anniversary wrapped!)

[eleonkraken]

Ignore this post I'm just going insane about Chibnall era Doctor Who again.

These characters are so empty of heart and they go nowhere and essentially everything they do or say they only do in the capacity of being plot devices. It's like once the writers had the plot figured out they had to shoehorn the characters into it. Every single episode.

In Rose's first episode she's the one who takes out the nestene consciousness when the Doctor is incapacitated. In Donna's first episode, despite being a bit of a plot device herself, she's the one who sees that the Doctor shouldn't travel alone and alerts him to that. In Martha's first episode, she's the one who actively chooses to sacrifice her last breaths to save the Doctor so he can save everybody in the hospital. In Amy's first episode, she gets to be angry and hold the Doctor accountable for making promises he couldn't keep. In Bill's first episode, her curiosity and stubbornness is what essentially pulls the Doctor out of hibernation.

They all have thoughts and feelings and drives and motivations that shape the stories they're in and the decisions they make. They grow over the course of their tenure. They're not perfect characters, but they have a distinct core personality which drives them to do things that make a difference to the story they're in.

You'll notice I didn't mention Clara's first episode, and that's because series 7 is badly written compared to s1-6 and s8-10. That Clara is a plot device, and her character flip flops between different character traits largely without reason as it befits the plot of each episode. But in s8, they mostly fix that issue by settling on an arrogant, ambitious, fearless version of her. And when they take away someone she loves in the series finale, we get to see what that specific kind of character is capable of under those circumstances. Who she is, who she has been that whole season, is what makes that story happen.

That's compelling. That's engaging. That makes you care.

Are there equivalent moments for Chib's companions? How do their feelings and motivations make a difference to the story? How do those things progress from where they start to when they leave the Doctor?

Martha realizes she needs to leave because staying with someone she loves who doesn't quite love her back is harmful. Amy has to leave because she loves Rory so much that even the risk of not ending up in the same place or time is preferable to staying with the Doctor and not even trying. Clara's own hubris is why she ultimately has to leave the Doctor (yes, it should have killed her, but either way it's a punishment because she has to leave him forever).

Why does Yaz leave?

What is Yaz's Face the Raven moment? What's her Parting of the Ways moment? What's her Fires of Pompeii moment? What's her Forest of the Dead moment? What's her Pyramid at the End of the World moment? Please let me know if it exists and I've missed it.

[kendrixtermina]

Another thing where Chibnall fucked up is that unlike previous showrunners, he never really tried to sell us on the companions as important deuteragonists who have cool stories in their own right.

I mean the classics sometimes had the problem that they would come up with cool character concepts but then under-utilize them / not think of anything better to with them than having the villains kidnap them again, but still it was attempted to have them be interesting & contrasting, for example they would follow up a sour snarky character with a cheerful one.

And in the pre-chibnall new series in particular, they've always had distinctive dynamics planned-out arcs. You couldn't swap one new series companion for another & still get the same episode. They were damn near the main characters.

With most of the companions we've had so far you could say what they'll do if you throw them at a given situation:

Donna would stay grounded & look for the common sense solution, Rose would usually comfort someone who's upset & discover crucial info that way, Martha would keep a cool head, start trying to puzzle things out and try to help, Clara would take charge & try to get the situation under control, Amy would just charge into it based on intuition, Rory would remain unfazed, tag along but also point out the danger, Bill would be curious and voice some unusual question or observation...

What do Yaz, Graham, Ryan or Dan do? Mostly just make corny jokes & follow the Doctor around, defaulting to whatever she does... You could swap 90% of their lines with none the wiser cause it exists mostly to prompt exposition while failing to imbue it with meaning & stakes..

They rarely ever act of their own accord, make important, plot-changing decisions or even react much to what happens to them. Nor do they really get one on one scenes with the Doctor or bond emotionally (except Ryan and Graham, sometimes, in the stiffest, corniest way possible), and no just having the characters TELL us they like each other is no substitute.

And if the characters don't seem to care, well, the viewers won't care either.

Even the Yaz having a lesbian crush thing which you'd think would be a really big aspect of her character, was apparently a suggestion by Mandip & Whittaker themselves, which means that Chibs had absolutely no plan for his characters expect just being... there, until it was time for them to go. So little plan he could just throw in a major thing like that. I mean I'm glad he did cause else it would have been ever blander, but still.

You'd think that with a big group of characters you could flesh them out by having them disagree about what to do, play different roles and react in contrasting ways, but that idea never occurred to Chibnall.

Let's compare the introduction of the "fam" to... not even the new series, but the very first serial from the 60s. Some aspects of it seem dated in hindsight, I could've done without the screaming & the Red Indian line, but still all four main characters are distinctly established & make meaningful decisions. The story would not turn out the same without any of them present:

Barbara is introduced as being worried about a student & shown to be responsible & intuitive. She decides that they should check on Susan, and later that they should save the caveman rather than just escape, more or less setting the story in motion.

Ian is introduced as brave, unflappable and inquisitive. He's the one who proposes taking bold action, moving the plot forward, but he is also more calm about it the whole time & continues to do so in a scary unfamiliar situation.

The First Doctor is introduced giving nonsense answers and trying to bullshit his way out of a situation. We see that he is quite cocky & guarded, but also tends to think his way out of situation. While he tends to respond to fear & pressure by bluffing, we see that he is still frightened underneath. (it is when he admits this that we get the first bonding moment between him & Barbara) His contributions to the plot are to take off with the teachers on board (half to avoid being discovered & half cause he's offended they don't believe he had a spaceship), and then later he solves the caveman murder.

Susan is shown to be quite smart, but also very timid, and she describes her time hiding out on earth as the happiest in her life, showing that she would maybe prefer a quieter, more stable life than the one she leads. She's probably the most passive character, seeing as she's the youngest, but since she likes and trusts both the teachers and the Doctor, she's essential to keep the group together until everyone else starts trusting each other.

Note that at no point does anyone say "Ian is brave & unflappable" or "Barbara is responsible & intuitive", rather we are shown, not told.

Now, what are we told about the fam, and just as important, how are we told?

Yaz wants more challenges than her job offers. We are told this because she just states it out loud.

Ryan & Graham don't get along, but Graham would like them to. We know this because Graham explicitly tells us.

Ryan is frustrated because despite ppl's encouragement, his disability presents real limits. We know because he tells us so.

..okay? Kinda unsubtle delivery, but it's a start. All of this could have potential if it's developed more, especially the last thing. You could make interesting characters with these basic points.

But what happens then?

The plot is advanced not by character decisions, but by a bunch of random coincidences: The Doctor just crashes into them, Ryan just happens upon the onion, Yaz just happens to be on duty when he calls etc.

The main characters learn that they've been implanted with bombs... and barely react. Ryan reacts more when his phone is erased for the sake of a "phone obssessed millenial" joke than to learning he's about to die.

Imagine if they had Ryan complain about how he'll die & that is yet another unfair thing in his life, or: Graham chooses at this moment to act protective on Ryan. Or: Yaz tries to keep a cool head & control the situation, maybe having some friction with the Doctor's attempts to do the same but also impressing her. Just gimme any character/emotion, Chris!

Notice how they show Ryan having a youtube channel... and it's the blandest, most generic thing ever. This was THE opportunity to characterize him: What videos does he watch, what videos does he make, does he have a distinct username? No, it's just his name with some numbers. They just wanted the video framing device, so he has a youtube, but they don't think about what it says about him.

Remember for example, how Clara picked 'Oswin' as an username (short for Oswald for the Win), & how this shows that she is confident and a bit vain.

Now imagine if they had Ryan pick something with a relatable downtrodden millenial vibe, or had him reference internet culture. Just anything that characterizes him in any way.

When we get character scenes at all they feel sort of tacked on & removed from the plot, like the plot stops 5 minutes for Ryan & Graham to have a scene, and while the plot is happening everyone becomes a plank of wood walking from location to location.

That's the worst thing to do, especially in sci fi when you have wild fantastic things happening! The plot and the characters should always be connected: The plot is made to challenge the characters, and the characters reactions give the plot weight.

Any time a Dalek showed up in RTD's run, everyone panicked, even the normally level-headed characters - and that's how they sold that these pepperpots are a big deal. Donna being needed to save the universe is designed as a counterpoint to her self-esteem issues. Martha has a problem with prioritizing herself, so the plot throws her in taxing situations untill she realizes that she can't keep doing this.

We care about River meeting the Doctor out of order because she emotes about it. We would care much less about the puddle person if she wasn't Bill's girlfriend trying to keep her promise. We wouldn't care as much about the timecrack if it hadn't eaten Amy's fiancé. As phantastical as the impossible girl thing is, on the character level it has a pretty simple meaning: The Doctor owes clara a debt & wants to thank her but is also suspiciou cause he's jaded from past losses, and we then explore how his character responds to this situation.

In Chibnall's writing, this connection is absent, and so neither the plot nor the characters manage to really land emotionally. So much ppl stopped watching cause it was just bland flavorless & not exciting anymore.

[walks-the-ages]

Everyone always says Doctor Who needs to be constrained to a shoe -string budget to be good again, but no one ever articulates *why*.

It's because show runners, without access to ~beautiful amazing stunning CGI~ to prop up their episodes would instead have to rely on actually telling meaningful, coherent stories , not just having CGI scenery.

Good writing and characters can make a cardboard set held up with duck tape meaningful and heartrending because the writing brings meaning to the setting.... But the most beautiful, breathtaking CGI in the world can't save a boring and unintesting story or it's flat characters.

You could have the most breathtaking special effects, but if your story is shallow people are going to be snoozing during the climax or so bored they "watch" the whole thing twice over but still can't remember the plot.

It's not a bad thing that Doctor Who has a higher budget than it started out with, but it DOES allow writers to hang onto the coattails of CGI effects and looking pretty instead of being able to hold meaning and significance by the weight of the writing and performance.

[raywritesthings]

something about how the first black female doctor was just a subplot in a white female doctor’s story and how the first black male doctor’s regeneration has been subverted by a previous white male doctor literally getting a second regeneration scene… really really just highlights how little doctor who and the bbc have improved from 2007 when the first black female companion’s story was all about how she wasn’t that other white female companion, and i’m not gonna even pretend i am anything but disgusted about it

[mulderscully]

the power of moffat and chib ignoring rtd's era so deeply for over ten years that it feels like the return of christ or something now

[stompandhollar]

i’ve literally just decided that the timeless child is the master & not the doctor. 🎀💗🌷like what’s chibnall gonna do i’m just choosing to live in the better timeline in my head and the man can’t stop me

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

It's pretty ironic in the Haunting Of Villa Diodati when the Thirteenth Doctor chooses to save Percy Bysse Shelly even if it dooms humanity because Shelly created great works that will last forever, even though Shelly's most famous work is "Ozymandias" a poem about how thinking your great works will last forever is foolish hubris.

[gnougnouss]

13 era lovers are convinced people who think previous seasons were superior do it because of nostalgia and it's so funny because like. There isn't even a year between the last episode of 12 and the first of 13. What nostalgia ?

Sorry some people just hate bland ass dialogue where 90% is the most character-less expositional technobable you could possibly think of and the 10% left is repetitive empty bland dialogue where they sound like they are in a therapy session rehashing their one and only character trait <3

[thefiresofpompeii]

i think one of the main reasons why i’m not connecting to thirteen’s companions is that they don’t get put through the wringer by themselves, they aren’t given the chance to prove themselves outside of the doctor’s immediate influence. amy was constantly being turned into a doll or a vampire or a flesh copy of her body or staying in an alien health facility for 30 years or falling pregnant or being possessed by a weeping angel or having her memories extracted to build a mythical prison for her best friend or falling pregnant or being cloned by a tesselecta or. you get it. clara was always being locked inside a dalek or uploaded to the cloud or travelling through the doctor’s timestream or being left to fend for herself against dimension-shifting creatures or being locked inside a zygon pod. you get the gist. they were vital to the plot both in one-off episodic stories and overarching arcs in a way that reached beyond giving the doctor pep talks to cheer them up and following them around asking questions.

what exactly has ryan done by himself apart from following the instructions on the plane which had been left by the doctor anyway? what exactly has graham done apart from grieving for his dead wife? what exactly has yaz accomplished on her own apart from that one 2-minute sequence in spyfall where she got transmatted to the kasaavin realm?

they hardly serve any purpose to further the story. they just hang around. space tourists, not companions. even in danger they just seem to rely on the doctor’s intelligence to clever them out of it and save their lives, not once so far (i’m halfway through s12) have any of them shown proper initiative or any distinguishing traits beyond a corny sense of humour tbh

[higheldertala]

doing a little rant about the doctor and gender. i gather this discourse is getting stale but im gonna give my two cents anyway.

anyone who’s read my opinions on the ch*bnall era will know i really didn’t like how the doctor’s gender was represented during this era and unfortunately that seems to has passed on to the rtd2 era. not that the topic of gender in doctor who is new, i would say the topic of specifically time lords and gender became more prominent with our favourite misogynist st*ven m*ffat when he introduced missy, explicitly claiming that she could never call herself the master while being in a woman’s body. thanks m*ffat!

i think it’s safe to assume that time lords shouldn’t care about gender. at least not in the way humans do. they’re aliens, they wouldn’t follow human societal gender constructs. that would seem like a simple conclusion but apparently not to the white boomer men writing the show. even within the show the doctor has stated that time lords don’t ‘obsess’ over gender as written by said m*ffat (before of course immediately contradicting this just one episode later, showing time lord do actually obsess over gender to the point where it’s literally ever other line of their dialogue).

okay back to the point. as within the ch*bnall and now the rtd2 era the doctor’s gender is ascribed upon by others. no where in these eras does the doctor ever proclaim their own gender, it is simply assumed by other characters and then never questioned or challenged, much to my frustration. and sure perhaps the doctor doesn’t care what human gender humans assign to them but for me this greatly robs their character of agency. even from a genderfluid or agender perspective, if the doctor just says this out loud then that would be enough for me to be satisfied that the doctor gets a say in it.

secondly the doctor’s gender is still just being used as a joke. the doctor’s gender (and ability to change bodies) isn’t treated seriously and more just a funny little quirk the audience can point and laugh at, being presented as ‘lol i was a man/ woman 5 minutes ago isn’t that so funny’. not only is this such a cisgender/fixed binary way of viewing gender it’s also really insulting to actual genderfluid people who do change their gender. their gender and the ability to fluctuate gender isn’t a joke, it’s a person’s identity and should be treated with respect.

in the star beast, gender comes up in the resolution of the episode where it has no place to be. it’s makes no sense to add gender to the equation as it provides no further explanation of the resolution. and the line about the ‘male presenting time lord’ is completely baffling in every single way. rtd has clearly shown he understands the existence of the spectrum of gender and non binary gender yet with this single line contradicts this by resorting back to gender stereotypes and essentialism stating ‘a man could never understand emotional intelligence of letting something go ’. in an attempt to make GirlBoss™️ moment, rtd has just created average sexism. truly two steps forward then one step back. and to further bring this back round, again timelords would not care about gender and are unlikely to perform gender sterotypes this way so why bring it up at all. the doctor’s emotional vulnerability whilst present as a flaw in their character, is in all incarnations regardless of the gender of the actor playing the doctor. to suggest that the 13th doctor would be immune to this flaw is again sexist and also a fundamental misunderstanding of the character, with 13 has been one of the most emotional constipated and closed off incarnations. it honestly makes me question whether rtd has even seen the 13th doctor’s era at all.

unfortunately i think my desire for gender to be discussed and explored within the show seriously is not gonna happen any time soon, and honestly to prevent further frustrations i would rather the topic is not raised at all, if it is gonna be treated so carelessly and flippantly.

[roadimusprime]