#doctor who side characters

[silvermarmoset]

because I'm insane, I'm putting together a polls bracket to determine the best side character in Doctor Who. (I'm limiting it to NuWho so I don't go insane.) If you're interested head over to @dwsidecharacterpoll, where I'll be posting seed brackets next weekend! And please feel free to send in your favorite side characters so I can be sure they're included.

[dwsidecharacterpoll]

welcome to dwsidecharacterpoll, an insane offshoot of @silvermarmoset. Seeding brackets will be posted March 18th!

If you'd like to submit a character to be considered, please send an ask. I’ve tried my best to remember every minor character I could, but please send me an ask with your favorite's name and episode title so I can make sure they're on the preliminary bracket!

Guidelines

To be included as a side character, the character must:

Be featured in a live action Doctor Who episode since 2005

Have decent, semi-memorable screentime

Have some spoken lines

Not be the main villain of the episode

Not be a historical figure (no Churchills or Byrons)

Not have a significant impact on major storylines or reoccur over several episodes, i.e. no “major” side characters like Kate Stewart, Jackie Tyler, Danny Pink, or Grace

Not be the “lead” side character of an individual episode—i.e. no side characters who are clearly serving in the Doctor/companion role (Jackson Lake, Sally Sparrow, Adelaide Brooke) or who are third wheeling with the Doctor and companion to the point of being the third lead (this one is more nebulous but Vincent in Vincent and the Doctor is the prime example).

Not be a kid. There's absolutely no reason for this except the brackets are already enormous.

I have devised the first round of seeding brackets to try to balance heavyweight contenders with more minor folk, but this is my first time ever bracketing something of this immense scale so please go easy on me!

When unsure if a character belongs in the bracket I will go with my gut on whether I think they are minor or not.

See you guys March 18!

[thankstothe]

[thirddoctor]

You would question my decision?

[davidtennussy]

mabli appreciation post because we should have seen more of her ??? quite obsessed with her actually. this whole episode hit me like a truck i'ma be real but her specifically as a character did something to me idk. never saw anybody appreciate mabli, somebody do fanart of her please because she !!! she's so good !!! we ... we love mabli come on guys rewatch the episode and focus on her because SHE DESERVES IT ...

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

Billie Piper fighting for her life, sitting next to Christopher Eccleston while he says that Russell T Davis, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson would have to be sacked before he ever has a Doctor Who cameo, like the child of divorce that she is.

[quietwingsinthesky]

sometimes doctor who really does focus too much on how the doctor is feared or hated or worshipped. there should really be more moments where they are loved. where a good thing comes back around. an off-hand mention from a side character that the doctor saved their great great grandma, so of course they’ve come to save the doctor now. more like the end of s6, where the whole universe heard “the doctor needs help” and the whole universe answered back, “we’re coming.”

not for the hero or the god or the idea, but for the man. someone who did a kind thing for you and yours once, and you’d do anything to give it back if you can. you know?

[starleska]

i would apologise but you guys know the drill by now 😭😭😭

[akajustmerry]

new doctor who can have every gay member of the actors guild in its cast for all I care but i'm not budging on my distrust of rtd. I REMEMBER martha and mickey and how they were written/treated, and it still brings freema to tears in interviews to this day, so I'm not gonna give a shit about cast announcements until I know there are people capable of writing characters of colour with empathy in that writers room and the cast of colour are going to be looked out for in the writing of the show.

[mummer]

still sorting out how to feel about it but fuck ncuti was just insantly beyond all expectations. King

[foolishlyzephyrus]

ah man i was liking harriet

[causalityparadoxes]

The thing about Ricky is that if he had unlearned all of white supremacy through reading a few books? That he easily got access to under a white supremacist system? That would be twee and stupid.

Like yeah, no shit the rich kid with a vague sense of 'doing the right thing', hasn't unlearned all of their bigotry by isolating themselves in their room and reading propaganda. Its almost like that applies to real life too.

Doesn't mean he could've never grown if given the chance and outside information. Or maybe even then, he would have never looked beyond his ingrained bigotry. We'll just never know.

[dwsidecharacterpoll]

We should make a love-and-monsters-style basement club for all of the rejects in this round. I know we've still got a week left but I will roll over and die if we lose Clive AND Ursala AND Mrs. Moore AND everyone else in my heart

we actually should, my heart is breaking for bennett

[all round 1 polls over here for those just joining us]

[aerithisms]

SLURPING this tweet about the "just see me" scene in deep breath. the way eleven and twelve both refer to themselves in the third person, because even though they are begging clara to understand they're still the same person even they still view each other as someone else. they both are the same person and they aren't.

[thirddoctor]

Reblog this and tell me about some of your favourite Classic Who/EU female characters ♥

[moonlitlex]

honestly i could write essay after essay about everything that made that finale bad. and i will. however comma i genuinely do not care about any of these characters enough to want to do that. i don't want to spend my time critiquing and analysing a show where all the characters are boring and the plot is all deus ex machina.

LIKE. WHO IS RUBY. WHO IS SHE. WHO FUCKING IS SHE.

she's done with the whole SEASON. she was in EVERY episode. and we literally don't know anything about her apart from the whole mom mystery thing which is all for the big reveal at the end anyway?

and i can talk about the ways in which that was unsatisfying and so on. but like what does that tell us about RUBY? what do we know about HER

and the answer is honestly very little. ruby is such a stock doctor who companion that it's just kind of boring. she gets a big mystery, because of fucking course she does, and who is she outside of that? nice?? sweet?? does as she's told?? (this one is fucking boring btw) kind of like the chibnall companions, she's whoever she needs to be for the situation at hand. the writers say ruby needs to be shocked by landing on a planet after 6 months of travelling with the doctor, so she is. she isn't a person. she has one desire, which is to find her mother, and the only reason she gets to have that is that rtd needs to set up whatever the fuck was going on with her mom for the finale. that's it.

and the doctor. like why should we care about this doctor specifically, outside of the fact that this is the character we have been following for the whole show? who is he??? like seriously who is he? he doesn't get any character development? what makes him different from other doctors? who the fuck is this guy????

i said earlier that ncuti's doctor is what you get when you throw all the doctors in a blender and i stand by that. he's definitely the doctor, but he's like an average of all the other doctors with nothing particularly unique or special about him. ruby is what you get when you throw all the companions in a blender. definitely a companion, with nothing unique or special about her either. much like chibnall's companions, all she gets to do is stand around and watch.

and the crucial missing factor is we don't get to see what they see in each other. which from the companion's perspective is still excusable because here's a dude with a spaceship time machine and that sounds kind of sick so lets go and travel with him is an understandable motivation. but what does he see in her? because there's always a moment where you can see the doctor sort of think, oh yeah, i should travel with this person.

but there isn't really this moment with ruby. it's kind of like with how thirteen meets her companions. she just sort of runs into them, and now they're stuck together. and ncuti does get to emote more than jodie, so at least you can see that ruby and the doctor do like each other, but their relationship isn't really fleshed out ever. and like i can buy ruby risking her life for him, because that is just sort of what happens on doctor who, but it's not based on anything. we don't see them develop this trust of each other. their relationship doesn't get developed. it just appears fully formed.