#certain names and episode titles are omitted from these tags per blog policy

[anotheruserwithnoname]

I got a PM asking my opinions on the Who finale tonight. Didn’t watch it; preferred to play Grand Theft Auto Online with my dad who lives by himself 700 km away, and one of the cable nets is running an Austin Powers marathon. Both those were of more interest to me, tbh. I have read detailed spoiler synopses and the like, so I do have a few comments (naturally after a spoiler break, and it’s wordy):

* Many of us predicted the outcome of the regeneration, including Tennant doing his signature “What what what?”

* Gatwa gets a brief appearance in the trailer for an episode that may not air for more than a year. I stand by my Matt Smith vibes assessment.

* There’s quite a bit of buzz about the return of Tennant, especially those who never saw all the media reports in the spring and were caught by surprise. Or assumed it would be Gatwa, with Tennant’s ep being a flashback or something. Not all of it is positive, but whatever. I’d prefer to have seen this announced as the Christmas 2022 special, rather than in November 2023.

* Some people are outraged over an apparent retcon in the episode (The Timeless Children stands in the corner, pointing at itself and grinning like Jerry Lewis on speed; oh, we will get to you in a moment, Skippy). The retcon is allegedly that there was a romance between Tegan and Nyssa. Uh ... it’s only a retcon really if it actually happened on screen. I remember the Peter Davison era vividly and there was nothing of the sort; if anything, it more strongly implied that Nyssa and Five were soft on each other (something I think was reflected in some Big Finish audios). Maybe something happened in a novel or a Big Finish I’m unaware of, but TV canon still takes precedence so I really can’t see people being worked up about something that didn’t happen on screen. Especially given Nyssa doesn’t even appear (and they apparently never bother explaining how Ace and Tegan teamed up, and they probably had forgotten about A Charitable Earth from Sarah Jane Adventures).

* Apparently a bunch of old companions and even Classic Era Doctors (but notably, not modern era - Tennant notwithstanding) appeared in cameos, including 97-year-old William Russell reprising Ian (unavoidably in the process retconning another Sarah Jane Adventures story that said he hadn’t aged a day since the 60s, assuming they didn’t de-age William). That’s all cool, but it should have been saved for the 60th. I’ve seen a few people say now that it smacked of dangling memberberries to try and win people back, and I can’t disagree. Mind you, the exact same thing can be said for the return of Tennant, so...

* Apparently at one point in the special the Master (played again by Sacha Dhawan) does something that results in him briefly becoming the Doctor. There’s apparently a charged moment between him and one of the outgoing companions that had some folks saying HE should have played the actual Doctor. I’ve been saying that since he played pioneering DW director Waris Hussein in An Adventure in Space and Time.

* As a result of that plot twist, it’ll be interesting to see how the numbering works out - is the Master!Doctor the true 14th? Is Tennant playing the 14th, making Gatwa the 15th? Or will he be the 16th? Or because of Timeless Children (I see you still grinning in the corner, Skippy) will RTD abandon the notion of counting altogether and every Doctor going forward will be officially unnumbered like the War Doctor (and the Journey’s End-regenerated 10th Doctor who technically was the 11th but has never been called that)?

* Not sure where they’re getting it from but I’ve heard some people suggest there are clues within the Next Time trailer hinting at some sort of retcon of The Timeless Child (which is still standing in a corner, but with its grin fast fading, now; run along now, Skippy; if an official retcon doesn’t get you, fanon will). There will never be consensus on the 2017 casting decision, and if the stories of the now-ended era sucked, well, other eras had stories that did, too (Season 22 nearly killed DW back in 1985, and Series 10 in 2017 was far from Moffat at his best either). Timeless Children is one of only a few things of this era that cannot be left to stand. Apparently they screwed around with how regeneration works too in this episode.

Anyway, I hear there are a lot of people upset tonight, either because certain agenda items were skipped over on the to-do list, or they aren’t fond of the 2022 casting decision (Tennant and/or Gatwa), or because the story was just ... there. Fact is, the era has ended. Some fans will exit now, and others will join or rejoin. That’s how it always happens, though the sense was the quit/join ratio was a bit out of whack this past era, with substantial attrition. The challenge Russell T Davies faces now is winning back those who jumped ship in 2017 or (more profoundly) after the Timeless Children episode, which marked the point where the show’s ratings really fell into a sinkhole, while also trying to keep as many fans as possible who came on for the now-ended era. That may be a bit of a trick; I saw a tweet from someone calling the casting of Tennant “misogyny.” It’s funny, if people had used terms like “misandry” back in July 2017, they’d have been run off the Internet on a rail.

Whatever, it’s done and over with. I remain undecided if I will be among those who RTD is able to win back. The return of Tennant has piqued interest, but I really don’t want to just nibble on the memberberries only to get indigestion later. I want to see a) what Gatwa brings to the table; b) how RTD handles the Doctor - does he still have the touch or will he crash and burn? (Note I’m talking RTD here; Gatwa, as with his predecessors, will work with what he’s given to work with - far as we know he’s not writing for the show); c) and the quality of the stories RTD and his team come up with. It may be a case of me watching the season after it airs. (So it could be 2 years before I get around to seeing it.) Lots can happen in 2 years.

But the memories I take away from the past 5 years are pretty negative. I went from loving the Who franchise to the point where I compiled a 2,000-page chronology of the show’s history and wrote some 75 fanfics, to the point where I had no interest in watching an era’s finale, have saved thousands of dollars in merch I have not bought over the past half-decade (not a negative - that money had other uses), and even the fanfic writing has become something I’m less enthused about than I used to be. Maybe RTD and Tennant/Gatwa will be able to rekindle that spirit (even if Timeless Child - who right now has left that corner and is running down the block at a cheetah’s pace - isn’t retconned away). Time will tell, a wise man once said. It always does.