#hire me chibnall

[querade]

late night analysis

thinking about how the doctor (2005) had never fallen in love with a companion aside from rose and river—well river sort of picked him out instead of vice versa, so it's really only Rose...

and that they have such a track record of things going horribly horribly wrong and they've been going down this *path* of closing themselves off to their companions that started off after Rose.

of COURSE they kept their companions at arm's length. They probably think themselves selfish for still having companions around at all when every single one has gotten hurt or worse all because of them.

look at Eleven and how he treats Rory and Amy. 'Don't wander off'. With Twelve he could finally shed his facade and focus on how old he is, and then he found his match with Clara and we know what happened to her.

So Thirteen is back with the same sort of 'life is performance, life is fun presentation' energy that never felt genuine—

because we know what the doctor truly is behind it. And it's not...fun. It's terrifying and hollow and ancient. But of course Thirteen's regeneration is young again, though like Vastra says, that's not for her it's for the sake of those around her. God Vastra is the best. Right on the nose. Thematically a lot of the newer shit in the Flux was about the doctor being pulled in a million different directions and trying to figure out who she, personally, is.

She's lost her sense of self—literally lost her memories and so she's absolutely obsessed solving with this identity crisis…Honestly, the doctor wants to go back to when they were just having fun, so it has to be presented as 'just another puzzle.

Thirteen loves Graham and Ryan and Yaz, oh, she loves Yaz, but knows simply how dangerous the love of the doctor can be.

the thasmin confession works. cause the doctor says they wouldn’t be with anyone but Yaz is close, and that’s does NOT mean the doctor didn’t like her—only that for a being with two hearts, it’s twice the pain when they’re broken.

[captaincleverusernamehere]

Things i need from the Centenary Special:

- For it to be played completely straight, but every so often it cuts to a scene of Donna doing completely normal human stuff, while daleks run (roll? float?) rampant in the background, and her turning around to talk to her husband or something, just as we see the daleks turn around a corner, out of view. Or the Doctor running past her house, yelling to her companions, and Donna just turns around to complain about the noise they’re making as they run past, only seeing the companions, and not the Doc, through her window.      Her appearance cannot contribute to the plot of the episode in any way, except at the end when she, in again, doing something completely normal and having no context for the events happening around her, saves the day by like throwing out her garbage and it landing on a dalek’s head because it looked enough like her trash can or something.

[13thdoctorposts]

People who say, people who like 13 era Who must be new and never watched any other era so don’t know what good writing is, annoy me. So what? that isn’t the amazing argument you think it is.

The point of a woman Doctor was to bring new people into the fandom, it does that, then people think its ok to patronise newer fans, its not.

Just because people may have come in at 13 era Who doesn’t mean they don’t know what good writing is, if anything maybe they know better because they didn’t go into the show with any bias or preconceived ideas of what to expect. If the writing was truely as terrible as people claim those new fans would know too. Amazingly enough Doctor Who fans of 15-60 years are not the only people in the whole wide world who know what good and bad writing is, shocking I know. 

Writing is subjective and Chibnall didn’t do it all he had a number of writers through out his era, in order to help bring in new fans and help tell stories he couldn’t alone. So when you say he’s a bad writer you are actually saying 10+ people are bad writers… and that just comes across like a person who has a different gripe, that isn't actually the writing but doesn’t want to say it out loud because they don’t want to have to own their misogyny or racism, because it is highly unlikely that every single writer Chibs hired was ‘bad’. 

When stories are written by diverse people not every story is going to be for you… that isn’t bad writing, you’re just not the target audience for that episode. 

Not all characters are there to represent you specifically, hence the new audience, so just because you don’t like them or their story arcs, that doesn’t make them bad, again they aren’t for you and they often speak to the people they are meant for. Again thats not bad writing you’re not the target audience.

If you think the rest of Who is way better you’re having a revisionary history, the show has always been good and always had problems. 13 era Who isn’t worse then any of them, it's different, just like 11 and 12 were different to 9 and 10 and 9 and 10 were different to 8 and 8 was different to classic who. Different isn’t bad, and different is what keeps the show going.

[ssaalexblake]

At some point y'all have to admit that you can't trust anybody who is that saying They're not the ones being sexist in their dislike of 13, bc literally nobody is going to admit that out loud unless they're one of Those people, and most people aren't.

At some point you have to realise that people are ragging on at Chibnall bc he's a "safe" target for them to slag off Without being potentially called on what they're saying because people aren't thick, they often know the script of the "correct" progressive thing to say even if they lack the critical thought to examine Why that it's correct.

Fandoms Always hide their biases behind an acceptable excuse, both knowingly And subconsciously. Probably more subconsciously.

dw is now that thing where you can sit around and analyse fan reception when it's got diversity and when it hasn't and the results are depressing. Everybody is claiming it's got jack to do with any diversity, and do we Actually believe that? Are we actually naive and stupid enough to think that's true? Were we all born yesterday? This issue did not magically disappear when Whittaker got hired to make all comments about her doctor objective critique.

(and I have, more than once btw, seen people say they loved episodes by Chibnall totally unaware that he wrote them when harking back to the ~good old days~ of dw, so l o l)

So why should I believe You specifically when you tell me it's Just taste? In what world have fandoms not always shown excessive bias? In what world have fandoms Not been weird about media that doesn't give them a white man 35 or younger? Why should I trust that You are the one totally void of unconscious bias just cuz you said so? May I point out that a metric Ton of people are all claiming the exact same thing and then, when asked to specify why, are vomiting absolute rancid sexism without even noticing?

I hate just ranting into the void but like, it's the 'not all men' of media analysis. There is most definitely a problem, that is irrefutable. Statistically not All haters are coming from a place of prejudice. But you've got to realise that even if you're not doing it out of prejudice, a bunch of your buddies Are and we can't tell the difference because you're not bothering to call them out on it. Or you feel the same thing as they do and Are, in fact, the ones we're talking about and still just haven't noticed.

[kendrixtermina]

It baffles me that some ppl will still defend Chibnall because we actually 100% know for a fact, as in explicitly said in interviews, that:

Chibnall didn't even want the job, executives just thought of genre fiction as lesser BS anyone can do

He submitted first drafts

He had no plan for plot or characters

He decided to "simplify it for children"/ dumb it down (...by not thinking about the moral implications of anything??)

He explicitly told Whittaker NOT TO WATCH PAST EPISODES

As a writer, I am so angry because imagine getting such a big chance & then being so cavalier about it... If I got to be in charge of a beloved big-name sci-fi franchise, you bet that I would put in some fucking effort!

Like I've always been baffled by how ppl keep saying Whittaker was so good in her other shows when I only saw her being aggressively bad & forgettably meh in Doctor Who, especially considering that Colin Baker consistently managed to be the most interesting thing on screen even with bad script & hostile execs, to the point that he's one of my faves - and no, it's not to do with gender. I really liked Gomez' performance because she actually bothered to, you know, play the Master. You really bought that she's a dangerous inhuman creature but at the same time she still had nuance & depht going on like the Delgado incarnation.

but... now I realize that Colin Baker had the advantage that he was a fan before he got the job.

He knew what Character he's supposed to be playing; Whittaker only had Chibnall's superficial-ass scripts to go on, no wonder we ended up with what feels like a completely different character.

I wonder if Chibs wanted a lead author that wouldn't argue with him, especially given how he insisted on writing 80% of the episodes, the rumors that he turned down Capaldi's offer to stay longer & that he brought in someone who had previously worked for him. Capaldi would have called out OOC stuff. So would a new hire who was actually familiar with the show.

It's such a difference from having super-fan like Capaldi or Tennant on the job who deeply cared. (This is also why hearing that Gatwa had a similar background was actually the main thing that made me give the show a chance again)

But that said, Eccleston & Smith were new to the show when they got hired & still kicked ass. The difference being that, of course, Matt Smith DID watch past episodes & quickly decided that he loved & wanted to emulate Patrick Troughton.

As much as Whittaker sucked, there's no doubt in my mind that ANY actor in the world would have done better if they had seen past episodes, especially if she really is so much better in those other shows.

[billpottsismygf]

That was a really well written episode, with some great sci-fi concepts and amazing character work. It obviously gives a slightly Midnight energy, with these mysterious creatures copying people, but it manages to be completely its own thing. The only place it really fell down were the effects, which is such a shame.

To get that out of the way, the body stretching stuff could have been really effective and creepy, but it mostly just came off very silly. After the incredible production values last episode, it's such a jump down. My suspicion is that The Star Beast and The Giggle were incredibly expensive, and that this was the budget-saving episode - just our main two actors and a spaceship set - but they tried to combine it with a story that required body horror to work, and sadly that element just didn't. Funnily enough, I noticed as the opening credits rolled that it was directed by Tom Kingsley, the original director of Ghosts, and I remember that the reason Ghosts hired him was because of his ability to do special effects on the cheap. Sadly, while I think he could get away with ghosts walking through walls in a budget-saving manner, here it just looks like David Tennant and Catherine Tate have been messed around awkwardly in photoshop and it totally took me out of the horror and the tension the episode was trying to build. It would have been far better, and still would have saved money, if we had barely been shown what they actually looked like and instead focused on Donna and the Doctor's reactions. Once the creatures started to stabilise and to look basically human, it was a fantastic episode, though.

Catherine Tate and David Tennant were on top form throughout, bringing so much comedy and also drama when necessary. I love the subtlety of their performances as the entities. When Donna started monologuing about how her family would react to her being gone, I thought it was an odd acting choice for the Doctor to be slightly smiling, but it turns out it was a genius acting choice.

Speaking of genius choices: Flux! Ahhhh, I cann't express how pleased I am with the way this episode tackled it. Trust RTD to do what Chris Chibnall totally failed to do and actually give it weight (gravity, one might say). Actually seeing the Doctor express emotions about it and have a complicated guilt over the whole thing was so goddamn cathartic. I've posted extensively in the past about how disappointing it was that the Flux seemed to not matter at all once it was over (Half the universe was destroyed, hello? The Doctor committed triple genocide without batting an eyelid, and both that and the destruction of the universe might as well have not happened by the next episode???), and RTD just swooped in and made it work with one scene. I also liked the acknowledgement that the Doctor doesn't know where they're from. I think that was perfect. I know there are people who want Chris Chibnall's run to be ignored, but I'd much rather the approach RTD is taking, which is to take those things and turn them into character moments.

This is one that I'm really looking forward to rewatching. Despite the goofy effects taking me out of what are meant to be suspenseful moments, it was a really effective episode, and what a joy to see David and Catherine at the height of their abilities bouncing off each other for an entire hour.

Small things:

Not so small, but Wilf! Wilf! Wilf! Wilf!!!! I'm so happy to see him <3 And the episode was dedicated to Bernard Cribbins' memory <3

Seeing Donna getting left behind genuinely had me terrified. I'd seen people speculating about Donna dying in these specials, which I rejected as not going to happen, but oh boy I really thought they might just do it here. My headache ramped right up as my heartrate did!

I loved seeing the Doctor having to get by without the TARDIS and the sonic, especially given how many new powers the latter was given last week.

The TARDIS was so extra this episode. Why was she playing Wild Blue Yonder as they arrived and left? I liked the anti-war discussion with Donna's teacher vs Wilf, echoed somewhat in the entities' experience of the universe, but I wonder if it'll have any further relevance.

The whole 'mavity' thing was very silly, but I also kind of liked it. Newton going for 'mavity' over gravity doesn't really make sense, given that gravity had an etymological reason to be called that - as my friend said, something like 'gravitude' or whatever would make more sense - but whatever. It was silly and kept making me laugh. I wonder if, as with the salt thing, there's an implication that messing with history might have a hand in summoning the Toymaker...

Oh, on the topic of Newton! Canon queer Fourteen! I like that the Doctor continues to be canonically queer now. I mean, my personal favourite Doctor headcanon is aro-ace all the way, but if I can't have that I'm overjoyed to have him think Newton is hot.

[thirddoctor]

hi uhm what are your feelings on chibnall, moffat and rtd i really like your blog btw thanks

Thank you! I feel like my opinions on these three are pretty obvious at this point, but here we go:

RTD: Truly excellent storyteller. Even when the stories themselves aren't good, he still knows how to reel you in. I actually don't see eye to eye with him on a lot of things, but I have a lot of respect for his work and I'm curious to see the direction he's going to take the show in this time around.

Moffat: Also a fantastic writer, and his takes on the show and the themes he likes to explore tend to resonate with me far more than the other two. I can't count the number of lines from his era that have stuck with me over the years and helped shape how I think about the world. Twelve means so much to me and is without a doubt my favourite part of New Who.

Chibnall: I've got nothing against the guy as a person, in fact he seems very nice, but I just don't think he's a particularly good writer. He has some interesting ideas but has consistently fumbled the execution, going all the way back to Torchwood. I also don't think DW was a good fit for him tonally or in terms of what he wants to write about. I've got to give him credit though for actually putting real effort into diversifying the show creatively as well as onscreen. A lot of people would stop at the latter, but he seems to have been passionate about hiring women and people of colour behind the scenes as well and I really respect that.

anyway I'm Team Verity forever

[evviejo]

what's ironic is that RTD is doing this because he usually works with a lot of transpeople (i think he was the first person to hire a trans actor to play a trans character on television or smt?) and speaks out against transphobia, yet his era is shaping up to be really transphobic. Meanwhile Chris Chibnall wrote really homophobic and sexist material in the past but his era has way better female writing than the rest of Doctor Who & the best LGBT+ romance I've ever seen

i don't know about rtd's hiring history (if anyone can corroborate that info, i'd be grateful!), but i sure am looking at everything that he's been doing and saying surrounding his return with a lot of trepidation. i would be cautious calling him transphobic right now, but there are some things that i really can see as at least ill-informed.

as for chibnall, where i think the difference lies between the two of them, is willingness to learn and listen to others. because it looks to me like chris has actually taken the time to reflect and made an effort to include writers of different background to his, and that benefitted the show, regardless of what some people may be saying about his era.

so, to conclude, what i think might be rtd's downfall is his conviction of his own immunity to wrongdoing, as he does things wrong.

[aslanscompass]

The Return of Russell

When Russell T. Davies stepped down as Doctor Who showrunner, the heir was obvious: Steven Moffat. Moffat had already written six Hugo Award-nominated episodes in the four series of the revived show, as well as having experience as an executive producer on other award-winning shows.

On the other hand, Moffat's successor was far from obvious. The announcement of Chibnall produced baffled shrugs and ambivalence. He'd written several episodes for Torchwood and the main show in the past, but none of his previous offerings stood out.

Chibnall's era was full of chaos and controversy. With only one Doctor and three series, spread over five years, he wrote or co-wrote 21 of the 30 episodes.

I'm not going to rehash all my thoughts on Chibs or Jodi in this post; suffice it to say a significant portion of the fandom was turned off by Chib's stories. I also don't want to go back and look at viewing stats either. I'm an English major; statistics scare me. However, the compiled viewing figures and the reduced episode count have contributed to a lower 'profile' for the show overall.

I'm not privy to bureaucratic politics, but the implications of Russell's return are blindly obvious. The BBC is scared. They know Doctor Who is losing ground with scifi fans; the cash cow is drying up. Who better to turn this ship around than the man who brought it back in the first place?

However, my initial response was "Don't they know what 'new' means?" Russell left on good terms; a small portion of his fans have been begging for his return ever since. While I am not one of them (I started with s5 and am a firm Moffat devotee), I find him to be a capable showrunner, even while I disagree with his politics.

RTD returning is one thing, especially in the lack of other viable options. Bringing back Tennant and Tate, on the other hand....I side-eyed that decision when it was announced. Now that the 60th-anniversary specials have aired, I'm even more ambivalent about the choice.

There's no way of knowing who suggested what element(s) of the sixtieth, especially now that Disney has a finger in the pie (although I've heard that Disney wasn't a player in those specials.) Tennant (and Piper) returned for the 50th, but Day of the Doctor was deliberately and consciously a multi-doctor special, with 11 retaining incumbent status.

Having Whittaker regeneration into Tennant... yeah... a poor choice. I've already posted here about an alternate, Big Finish-inspired take on the reappearance of that face. And of Tennant's companions, Donna is the natural choice for returning (both narratively and in terms of actor availability)

I'll go into more detail about the 60th anniversary specials in another post, but the upside of hiring a known quality is exactly the same as the downside: you know what you're gonna get.

[cipher-fresh]

Hey, I am watching Doctor Who for the first time and I have reached Twelves last episode. One of my favorite Doctors so far for sure, and I'm procrastinating watching the final ep because I dont it to end but also because I have only heard bad stuff about Thirteen's seasons :/

What are your (spoiler free) thoughts on Thirteen?

putting this under a readmore because I hate reading chibnall salt if i'm not seeking it out specifically. i do have a lot of positive things to say though. no spoilers 👍

the 13th Doctor era frustrates me immensely because while it is not nearly as bad as the "anti-woke" crowd makes it out to be, but also nor is it as actually turbo-progressive as dudebros complain about. I like the Thirteenth Doctor, but I think moreso the idea of her or the way she is in fanon than canon. Like, the era has like, 80% great stuff, that then aren't brought to their full potential or have frustrating misfires or missed opportunities. Not that the other eras don't have the same, but I think it's compounded by the fact I don't like the companions as much. I can be entertained by an episode that has a nonsensical or boring plot if I'm enjoying the character interactions, but, for example, Ryan Sinclair is not much more expressive than a cardboard cutout. And that's frustrating! (And also, not Tosin Cole's fault.) I want him to have more personality and a life and character! I'm even writing a fic for that, right now.

(Applying criticism to only the 13th doctor era is misogynistic. Acting like RTD or Moffat were perfect but the Chibnall era sucks uniquely is stupid. Every era has problems in its own way.)

(Chibnall's also done stuff like hiring the first writers of color on the show, having a significant amount of female writers and like, I don't know, cast a woman as the Doctor or something. Big if true. /j)

For 13 specifically, I love the way Jodie plays her, I think the way she plays with gender in the narrative is fun, I love that 13 is flawed and an intelligent inventor and looking for fun in the world, that she's funny and awkward and sincere.

I sort of fell out of love with her (or stopped being starry-eyed about her) after series 12. I had been certain that the majority of the era's criticism was just disguised misogyny, but I came to a point where I was constantly thinking "This doesn't make sense" or "that's a horrible rhetorical move." or "What a big missed opportunity!" And I hate sounding like the dudebros who say "Not my doctor!!" or who think Chris Chibnall is the source of the world's problems. There's also a lot of things that were external factors in the era that were downgrades, like the decreased episode count and having to film with pandemic restrictions for series 13.

I do think the 13th Doctor era is a net positive, and there are some really fun and high-quality episodes like Demons of the Punjab and Eve of the Daleks, but this era frustrates me beyond belief. the 13th Doctor era is one of the few places where I prefer fanon to canon. Believe me, that does not happen often.

[eleonkraken]

Good morning time for some Doctor Who opinions tm

Even people who criticize Chris Chibnall are too kind to his Who. All episodes under his showrunning have one thing in common: they bore me. Overlooking everything else that's bad about his Who (the characters, the Doctor, the plot, the butchering of the lore, the cinematography, the themes/ideologies, etc) that fact still remains. I watch it like a chore so that I can have opinions about it. There's nothing in it that entertains me. It's such an incredibly low bar to clear and it doesn't even come close.

And when I say the themes/ideologies suck, please don't take that to mean I think it's too "political", or whatever euphemism the alt rights are using. I mean it's too capitalist, too conservative, too neo-liberal, too tone deaf. Compared to Chibnall's Who, even Steven Moffat's final series looks like the pinnacle of progressivism.

I appreciate as much as anyone that they hire more poc both on screen and behind it, that they set episodes/scenes in more diverse places, that they explore narratives taking place in different cultures. They're finally taking advantage of the endless potential of DW that could place it in so many contexts other than the UK or some other part of the Anglosphere. I love that!

So I get why people find things to appreciate with Chibnall Who. Partly, they're superfans of the show, so they want to like it. Partly, they appreciate some of these positive turns the show has taken. But I still don't understand how any of these things make up for how insulting it is to see someone run something you love into the ground with their incompetence and carelessness.

And I'm not a Chibnall hater just for the sake of it. I never minded his previous DW episodes, though they weren't my favorites. I loved Power of Three despite the meh ending because it was charming as fuck. And some of his Torchwood episodes were fantastic. Countrycide is still one of my favorite episodes of television ever. Fragments is full of gorgeous character stuff. I was excited when he was announced as the new showrunner after Moffat, because of episodes like that. None of that changes the fact that his era of Doctor Who has been some of the most incompetent television I've watched in the past 10 years.

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who 10 for 10 Part 9/10: Series 9

2015 marked ten years of the revived series’ premiere and by this point, most of the world knew about Doctor Who again, if not for the first time, even if various countries dropped in and out during that time. While my personal project would go on hiatus for two years so I could focus on my high school studies, the spirit of the series never left as I awaited new episodes and wrote more of my own in preparation for the end of the hiatus.

With Series 9, Jenna Coleman was set to narrowly beat Karen Gillan for the longest companion tenure of the revived series (counting the Clara echoes into the mix). The series would also see the consequences of Clara’s newfound dynamic with the Doctor that had developed throughout Series 8. Let’s jump into the retrospective for Series 9, where I’ll try to follow the format from Series 1 and not have it be essentially a recount of every story in the series.

1. The two-parter shake-up (and writer credits)

Series 7 entirely consisted of standalone episodes, which was also the case for Series 8 with the exception of the two-parter finale, the first of its kind since Series 5 in 2010. Series 9 shakes this up as most of the episodes are paired into two-parter stories with another two-parter finale that is really a three-parter, leaving a single standalone episode. The fifth and sixth episodes, while paired as a two-parter, are really just two standalone episodes loosely tied into each other.

Looking back at the writer credits of previous revived era episodes, I can say that making the series with entirely two-parter stories doesn’t really make a difference to the stress on the production team in terms of having to deal with different writers and directors, particularly since in this series, standalone episodes are still a thing and there are different directors for each production block. I would say that hiring less writers/directors would lessen the stress on the production team, but we’ll never know because each series has an average of 7 writers (including the showrunner) and the showrunner still has to be more involved in the production of the series.

Also, Steven Moffat has been sharing co-writer credits on certain episodes from Series 8 onwards. Apparently, the reason why Steven Moffat did this was because one writer whose story he essentially rewrote completely (possibly Stephen Thompson) tried to use it to get into Hollywood. He was unsuccessful, for better or worse, but Moffat was determined to not let something like this happen again.

In the RTD era, RTD wrote the final drafts for every episode except the ones written by Moffat, Chris Chibnall, Matthew Graham and Stephen Greenhorn before sharing co-writer credits in the 2009 specials. Then in the Chibnall era, the Series 11 finale was a first draft because Chris Chibnall was too busy rewriting other episodes and helping rookie writers. Who knows what other episodes were only first drafts?

2. Changing of the sonic (and the punk rock Doctor)

In the first part of the series premiere two-parter, The Magician’s Apprentice, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to save a child, only for him to reveal himself as a young Davros. This traumatised the Doctor so much that he just left his sonic screwdriver there and by the end of the next episode, The Witch’s Familiar, he decided to switch to sonic sunglasses, apparently swearing off sonic screwdrivers even though some extended media set during this series depicts the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver, not to mention that he has another copy of that particular screwdriver at the start of Series 10. At the end of the series, the Doctor gets a new sonic screwdriver and in the next series, uses it alongside his sonic sunglasses.

To be honest, I’m a bit meh on the sonic sunglasses. It harks back to when the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors had to do without their sonic screwdrivers and it apparently fits his “punk rocker” image, but it feels kind of cheap for me. As for the new sonic screwdriver, I seriously love it. The design looks cool because of the square emitter, chase sequence and green setting, though I wish it had a red setting and more secret sounds when you pull or push the switch up to four times. The longer size and balanced design of the screwdriver lets you hold it at the middle in a fist (like this scene), a cooler way that can’t really be done with the Eleventh Doctor’s model because of the clamps near the emitter, not to mention the first model toy’s tendency to extend itself when activated. It’s such a shame I wasn’t able to buy the toy and make good use of it because I was in my final year of high school when it was released and I probably would only have been able to get one or two uses out of it that year.

Steven Moffat decided to introduce a new sonic screwdriver because he felt that the previous version was too closely identified with the Eleventh Doctor, something which I seriously didn’t mind. Given that Steven Moffat would announce his 2017 resignation a month after the series finished, I think the Twelfth Doctor’s new sonic screwdriver was a waste of time because it only got used for one series, not to mention being used alongside the sonic sunglasses, but even with things the way they are, it seriously looks cool and I would have loved to have the toy of it.

Speaking of the Doctor’s “punk rocker” image, there are scenes (in both this and the next series) where the Doctor plays an electric guitar, alluding to Peter Capaldi’s role as the lead singer and guitarist of The Dreamboys alongside drummer Craig Ferguson. Now, in my personal project, I cast myself as the Doctor (along with many other characters, some who I outsourced only to cast myself as more characters again) and my incarnation combined the stories of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors. Since I didn’t know how to play the guitar, I had to cast a “guitar stunt double” because it wasn’t like I couldn’t learn how to or pretend to play the guitar in the scenes where the Doctor played the guitar. I could have picked literally anyone else to be my guitar stunt double, but the guy who I cast was Ryuta Yamamura, the lead singer and guitarist of the Japanese band flumpool (who I did collabs with lmao).

Bit of a funny thought I shared in 2015 that alluded to my personal project: If Moffat’s replacing the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver with the sonic sunglasses, then I might as well replace the TARDIS with the GokaiGalleon/Skyship from Gokaiger/Super Megaforce, because in one of my future story arcs (Gokaiger), the Doctor is GokaiRed.

3. The Confession Dial (and that was my Dalek)

So back to what I was saying about Davros. Having survived the destruction of the Crucible, a sick Davros was brought to Skaro, having kept the sonic screwdriver the Doctor left behind, and sent his servant Colony Sarff to search for the Doctor. Although he misses sighting the Doctor on Karn, Ohila knows he is there and helps him confide with her (in a deleted scene released as a prelude that should really have been in the episode) as she is given a Confession Dial to give to Missy.

Once Missy receives the Confession Dial, she engineers an event to catch Clara’s attention before taking her to where the Doctor is in medieval Essex, having a party with the locals. Soon after, the Doctor is found by Sarff and taken to Skaro alongside Missy and Clara.

The Confession Dial is the equivalent of a last will and testament for dying Time Lords, allowing them to make their peace before their mind is uploaded into the Matrix on Gallifrey. The Confession Dial doesn’t have any more significance until the end of the series, where it becomes a key element of the series’ story arc. And we’ll get to that towards the end of this retrospective.

Like Asylum of the Daleks before it, The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar contains homages to numerous types of Daleks from the show’s history as the story celebrated the 40th anniversary of Davros’ debut story Genesis of the Daleks, even bringing back Davros himself from his apparent death in The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, with Julian Bleach reprising his role from 2008. A fan called David Hobday, who had won a grey replica Dalek based off the designs used in Remembrance of the Daleks as part of a BBC competition in 1995 when he was 13 years old, was invited to contribute his Dalek to the story and even act as its controller. A record of his experience has been published online on Blogger.

And once again, I must express my disdain at the lack of representation from the New Dalek Paradigm. On David Hobday’s Blogger, he did appear to confirm from fellow Dalek controller Nicholas Pegg that they were quietly being phased out due to the poor reception they received. They were on the set during the filming of the two-parter but they never ended up being used, apparently being relegated to the same level as the Daleks from the Peter Cushing movies.

4. I am Me

Series 9 introduced a recurring character played by a special guest star. Ashildr, later known as Me, was played by actress Maisie Williams, who was known for her role as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. Ashildr originally appeared in The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived before being asked to reprise her role towards the finale; the production only managed to fit the filming schedule around her as at that point in the production of this series, Williams was also filming the sixth series of Game of Thrones.

The Doctor and Clara are captured by Vikings after landing on 9th century Earth. After being taken to their village, the Doctor claims himself to be Odin only for what appears to be Odin’s face appears in the sky. The Mire land on the ground and teleport the strongest warriors in the village with them, but Clara and a girl named Ashildr are teleported with them as well due to them having a half of the Doctor’s sonic sunglasses. The warriors are reduced to dust with their adrenaline and testosterone made into a nectar which Odin drinks. Clara tried to persuade Odin and the Mire to leave, but Ashildr declared war on them instead and Odin gave the village a day to prepare.

After trying and failing to train the rest of the villagers to fight, the Doctor conjures up a plan to combat the Mire; they steal one of the Mire helmets and give it to the imaginative Ashildr, who then used it to project a vision of a sea monster on a wooden puppet she made. As the Mire retreat, the Doctor reveals to Odin that this had been recorded on Clara’s phone and threatens to upload it to the Galactic Hub if they don’t leave; with the Doctor teleporting Odin back to his ship, the Mire decide to leave without any further conflict. However, Ashildr’s heart was drained as a result of using the Mire helmet, killing her.

As the Doctor laments about losing people, he suddenly remembers where he got his face from and is reminded that his role is to save people. He modifies a battlefield medical kit from a Mire helmet for human use and uses it to repair Ashildr. Knowing that the kit would keep repairing Ashildr forever, he leaves her a second one to use on whoever she wants before he and Clara leave.

Over the next 800-so years, Ashildr was left to live her immortal life. Her memories were unable to contain all her experiences so she began writing them in diaries. Though she took on other names over the years, she eventually forgot her original name and just called herself Me at one point, which to be honest is frankly bullshit because her original name is a part of her identity. As such, I’ll keep addressing her as Ashildr for the rest of this post.

In 1651 England, Ashildr crosses paths with the Doctor again while trying to steal the Eyes of Hades from Lucie Fanshawe. The Doctor is taken back to her house and she learns about the lives she lived over the past 800 years. Ashildr manages to get the Eyes of Hades from the Fanshawes’ house before the Doctor is introduced to Leandro of Delta Leonis, who intends to use the alien artefact to travel the galaxy; Ashildr intends to leave as well so she can leave the life the Doctor trapped her in when the Mire repair kit made her immortal.

As the Eyes of Hades requires a death to open a portal, Ashildr intended on killing her butler until she learnt that Sam Swift, a rival highwayman, was captured and was to be hanged in Tyburn at noon. Ashildr had the Doctor locked up before rushing to Tyburn with Leandro, however the Doctor manages to get himself freed before heading to Tyburn as well.

Arriving in Tyburn, the Doctor manages to stop Sam’s hanging, but Ashildr uses the Eyes of Hades on Sam anyway to open the portal. It is then that Leonian ships appear on the other side as Leandro reveals his deceit to Ashildr and the Doctor. On the Doctor’s suggestion, Ashildr uses the second Mire repair kit to reverse Sam’s death and close the portal, resulting in Leandro being executed for his failure. The Doctor later speculates that the power of the portal may have drained the Mire repair kit so Sam may not be immortal like Ashildr. Ashildr promises to look out for the Doctor and protect Earth from him as he leaves. Sure enough, in the 21st century, the Doctor manages to spot Me in a selfie Clara took with one of her students as a thank you for the Doctor helping them with their homework.

5. Who frowned me this face?

Since Capaldi’s casting as the Twelfth Doctor, there was a clear intention to acknowledge his previous roles as Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii and John Frobisher in the third series of Torchwood. Deep Breath begins this mystery by having the Doctor briefly recognise his face as he looks at reflections of himself, but the mystery isn’t resolved until The Girl Who Died, where the Doctor remembers his face from his encounter with Caecilius and is reminded that his role is to save people.

Peter Capaldi wasn’t the only actor to have previously played a bit character in a story before becoming the Doctor. This accolade was previously held by Colin Baker, who played the Time Lord Maxil in Arc of Infinity before being cast as the Sixth Doctor. David Tennant did several Big Finish audios and the 40th Anniversary webcast Scream of the Shalka along with narrating the Doctor Who Confidential prelude episode A New Dimension before being cast as the Tenth Doctor, so he still counts in this category if you count the extended universe as a source for previous stories.

6. I support the current thing

Unpopular opinion, but I don’t think the Doctor’s speech at the end of The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion aged well, given the state of current affairs in the years following the episode’s premiere. Nonetheless, it is still an amazing speech from the Doctor and I highly recommend you watch the 10-minute speech extract without the background music score because it really highlights how important this was for the Doctor after healing from the trauma of nearly committing genocide at the end of the Time War to save time and space.

The two-parter covers the Doctor and UNIT dealing with a splinter group of Zygons who demanded the right to be in their undisguised forms amongst a populace that would be horrified at their appearance and thus, opposed the ceasefire. The leader of the group, Bonnie, took the form of Clara, attempted to kill the Doctor and the surviving Osgood (once again, the human version) and forced a Zygon back into its original form in front of some people who were largely indifferent (because they were Zygons themselves, leading to the scene not really having the intended effect I think it was supposed to have).

Through information from Clara, Bonnie found the Osgood Box in the Black Archive and was surprised to learn that there were two of them, hence why it was called the Osgood Box. The Doctor and Osgood arrive with Kate, who goes to the box opposite to the one Bonnie was standing at. The box on Kate’s end would revert the Zygons to normal by making them revert to their true forms for an hour or cancelling their ability to change form which would make them permanently human, while the box on Bonnie’s end would kill the Zygons by releasing Harry Sullivan’s Z-67 gas or detonating the nuclear warhead beneath the Black Archive which would destroy London. After fifteen attempts of the Doctor trying to convince Bonnie to stand down and making her and Kate forget each time she failed to do so, Bonnie is finally convinced to stand down as she realises that the boxes do nothing. The minds of Kate and Bonnie’s followers that entered the Black Archive are wiped, but not Bonnie herself because she was able to think up of a better solution thanks to Clara, just as the Doctor did himself. This leads Bonnie to order her group to stand down as she takes the other Osgood’s place in maintaining the ceasefire.

When the two-parter aired in 2015, the “current thing” of the time was Islamic terrorism as terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State, or ISIS/ISIL (who overshadowed the Taliban thanks to their beheadings of enemy soldiers and foreign nationals) and the Islamophobia caused by it (going back to the 9/11 attacks in 2001), thus it was a heavy influence on the story. Now, I am an Asian living in Australia with family from Hong Kong and thus I also identify myself as a Hongkonger (on top of being ethnically Chinese). Occupy Central was fresh on Hongkongers’ minds when this story premiered, what with it being a year since said protests that formed the overall Umbrella Movement of 2014; not only that, but a few months later in February 2016, there would be a brief bout of civil unrest as government officials oppressed unlicensed hawkers when the government themselves refused to grant new licences or build new markets for them. This civil unrest was co-opted by the people behind the Umbrella Movement as they condemned the same police brutality that happened to them 15-16 months prior.

Fastforward to 2019 where Hong Kong had the many demonstrations and campaigns against the proposed extradition law, a movement that put the spotlight on Hong Kong only for it to be derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests and then, utterly defeated by the implementation of the national security law in the region. People’s attention turned to the first two of those things along with the apparent rise of racism towards Asians as a result of the pandemic. Eventually, Hong Kong was all but forgotten by the time Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 presidential election, neglecting that if it wasn’t for his administration, Joe Biden’s administration wouldn’t even be taking a stance towards Beijing.

Ever since 2014, supporters of the Umbrella Movement (and subsequent pro-democracy movements) were being gaslighted by hard-r n-words and hard-r n-word lovers into believing that Hong Kong was doing fine, the police were doing a good job and that this was a CIA-funded operation advocating for Hong Kong independence, which by 2019, people were convinced was the only viable option when it was clear that neither the Hong Kong or Chinese governments would see reason. People found viable alternatives to the CNN-esque fake news mainstream media outlet that was TVB only for former executives of their news department to take over the news departments of two pay TV outlets, Now TV and i-Cable, making them no better than TVB themselves. Old men in white shirts were beating up young people in black shirts with the help of a fake lawyer n-word. Some guy’s ear got bit off and fake news TVB claimed that it actually fell off. The content of public broadcaster RTHK was sanitised and “wokeified” with Chinese characteristics. Pan-democracy politicians were ousted from the Legislative Council and District Council, leading to more of them resigning in solidarity. And to cap it all off, our last bastion of real journalism, Apple Daily, was forced to shut down following the arrest of its founder, Jimmy Lai, and the government freezing all his assets.

And let’s not forget that these anti-government sentiments didn’t just start in 2014, they were the result of many factors, particularly government neglect, that has been happening since the handover in 1997. Combine that with things like the attitudes of the Chinese government and the behaviours of Chinese Kens and Karens coming down to Hong Kong and not respecting the civilised culture there (which has been a meme way before Kens and Karens were a meme in the West) and you get Hongkongers not wanting to identify themselves as Chinese (in nationality).

From 2020 until now, I was astonished at the amount of people (particularly on the left) supporting things like Black Lives Matter, Roe v. Wade, climate protests, the war in Ukraine and trans rights when they barely made as much noise for Hong Kong when it was the “current thing”. I saw myself siding with the right because the left wouldn’t stand up for freedom when people needed it the most. And now, after all this, I’m just apathetic to the whole situation, making fandom posts like this as a form of hopium and copium. Also, I wasn’t big on the #StopAsianHate trend because, in my opinion, racism towards Asians (at least in my neck of the woods) isn’t as much of a problem as it was compared to before the 80’s, and also because Asians around the world didn’t stand up for Hong Kong when they needed it the most. You know, thinking about it, I think Hongkongers are the black people of Asia while mainland Chinese people are the white people of Asia, and I’ll admit that I lowkey think that Asians deserve the “hate” they whinge about because just as SJWs and POCs think white people should take responsibility for the horrors of imperialism and colonialism committed by their ancestors, Chinese people (in general) should share the guilt for the behaviour of (some) mainlanders because their imperialism and colonialism are happening right now in our generation.

After reading this ramble, do you know why I don’t think the Doctor’s speech in the episode aged well? Because politics has become so polarised that forgiveness towards the people who would seek to harm us is no longer an option. Putting aside how Bonnie’s objective changed from wanting Zygons to freely live as they were to wanting war between humans and Zygons, Peter Harness should be lucky that he only made the Zygons the aggressors (with no idea what they would do after they took control) and UNIT acting in defence, because to apply the Doctor’s words to Hongkongers would be like telling a beaten-up wife to give her abusive husband another chance. Frankly, if the pro-democracy side were successful in the 2019 movement, I would advocate to have anyone who ever stood against real Hongkongers, whether it be old and middle-aged people, the politicians who neglected the needs of the people, or n-words and n-word lovers who ever stood against Hongkongers in real life or on social media, publicly lynched as a retaliation for all the hurt they caused or let happen.

By now, you might be thinking that I missed the point of the Doctor’s speech, or even offended because you’re mainland Chinese or that I used the phrase “hard-r n-word” in place of actually using the word not because of my attempt at self-censorship for trigger-happy content flaggers, but because I even dared to use a slur towards people the slur isn’t actually referring to, but let’s not kid ourselves here. If you supported Black Lives Matter, Roe v. Wade, climate protests, the war in Ukraine or trans rights, I think you’d be feeling the same things towards people like the police, pro-life Christofacists, rich corporate executives, Russians, or transphobic Nazi bigots. Hell, even if you’re an anti-vax cooker who just wants to live life without entitled lefties expecting you to do your bit for the community by taking a vaccine that neither prevents infection or transmission with your job and livelihood on the line if you have any doubts about it, you’d be feeling the same way as well towards those entitled lefties. Honestly, I wish it were (still) socially acceptable to use slurs in a manner that is not hateful towards the people those slurs are referring to.

If this story aired during the Chibnall era when these things were happening, I would have deemed it utterly offensive and insensitive, particularly when you consider how Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor has been known for lecturing people. To reiterate in summary, this story didn’t age well and Peter Harness should be lucky that ISIS was the “current thing” when he was writing this episode. And I thought this retrospective series wouldn’t be as political as the main series itself.

UPDATE - 20 July 2023: Linkara recently answered some asks from fans about his thoughts on the Doctor’s speech in this two-parter, which I have reblogged and can be accessed through these links.

7. The truth or consequences that could have been

While looking into this episode in preparation for writing the long-winded ramble about how the Doctor’s speech didn’t age well, I read about Harness’ original vision for the episode and wanted to share it with you because it was quite interesting.

The original episode would have included the involvement of McGillop from The Day of the Doctor along with Zygon versions of Courtney Woods and Danny Pink from Series 8. In the town of Truth or Consequences, a Zygon named Clyde Orson had copied Danny’s appearance and after Danny’s death, began believing himself to be Danny, which led to the Zygon leaders executing him to maintain the ceasefire. Police officer Bonnie Carter, who had already copied Clara’s appearance, who was already sensing the tension between the Zygons and the Americans that lived in the town, became radicalised after being called to investigate Clyde’s death.

The Zygon splinter group captured Osgood from a UNIT safe house in London and brought her to Azerbaijan (which was replaced with the fictional Turmezistan in the actual episode). One of the leaders was called Blinovitch and had copied Courtney’s appearance. She was the captured Zygon onboard Boat One who would escape her bonds and attack the Doctor, only to be stopped by Osgood who was also a Zygon as well, confirming that it was the human original who was murdered by Missy. Clara ended up being fatally injured after being shot during the failed attack on the Zygon hatchery.

Later, the Doctor discovered that the splinter group was being manipulated by a human cabal who was trying to wipe the Zygons out and take over the UK (yeah nah, this version is offensive to me already, but we’ll carry on), which led the Doctor to bring Bonnie together with the United Nations Security Council to forge a lasting peace treaty. Following this, Bonnie would sacrifice her physical form to allow Clara to live on as her real body succumbed to its injuries, which would likely make her part-Zygon (oh great, another hybrid), but I guess we’ll never know because the story turned out the way we got it.

Now obviously because of Big Finish, the Zygon Osgood was actually the one who was killed by Missy, but before then, the answer, like the Doctor’s name (I’m sure the Doctor calling himself Basil was a joke, besides, we all know he’s actually Hiroki Ichigo) was purposefully left ambiguous which was a bit annoying, but understandable given the premise of the Osgood boxes.

8. Silent spiral into madness

Throughout Series 8, we see Clara being driven to become more like the Doctor. This character development continues into Series 9, where Clara goes even further into becoming the Doctor to the point of recklessness. Of course, this was to prepare for her eventual departure as the Doctor’s companion.

In Face the Raven, Rigsy (from Flatline) calls the Doctor and Clara when he finds himself having a tattoo on the back of his neck which is counting down, unknowingly being targeted by a Quantum Shade in the form of a chronolock. The Doctor and Clara investigate and they are led to a trap street in the middle of London, where Ashildr is the mayor of an alien refugee camp. They learn that Ashildr was the one who put the chronolock on him as he was suspected of the murder of Anah, a Janus. While the Doctor investigates the murder further, Clara learns that the chronolock can be passed to someone else and takes it from Rigsy in an attempt to buy more time. Eventually, they realise that the murder was a ruse to bring the Doctor to the trap street and that Anah is actually alive and held in stasis. With the TARDIS key taken from him and a teleport bracelet attached to his arm, the Doctor is forced to hand over his confession dial. Ashildr attempts to take the chronolock off Rigsy, but when she learns that Clara took it from him, she is unable to remove it from Clara because Clara cut her out of the deal. In the end, Clara is left to face her death, the Doctor is teleported away and Rigsy paints a tribute for Clara on the front doors of the TARDIS.

The story continues in Heaven Sent, a surreal episode from Steven Moffat with a one-man act from Peter Capaldi. The Doctor ends up in a kind of prison where he finds himself being pursued by the Veil, who is seemingly stopped by the Doctor telling it a secret that he knows as he works out that whoever put him in this prison is trying to get him to talk about the Hybrid. Every time this happens, the rooms in the prison are rearranged and eventually, after managing to evade the Veil for enough times, the Doctor is led to Room 12, where he discovers a 20-feet thick wall of Azbantium, which is 400 times harder than diamond. Reminded of the story about the shepherd’s boy, the Doctor begins punching through the wall before he is touched by the Veil, which burns him and leaves him dying. After this, the Doctor manages to make it back to the teleporter and use himself as an energy source to activate it, summoning a new copy of the Doctor.

These loops continue for at least two billion years, with the rooms returning to normal after some time away from them. There is a mystery of how the Doctor had clothes at the fireplace in the first loop and given how a short story about the Veil explains how the Veil has to return the rooms to normal (and prepare the Doctor’s food) by its own hands, I think I can theorise that the Veil had clothes prepared for the Doctor in the first loop as well.

During this episode, we also see the Doctor monologuing inside the TARDIS as a kind of mind palace, showing the way he thinks not just under pressure, but in the split seconds before the next thing will happen. This one-man act also explores the Doctor’s grief following Clara’s death, something that was rather glossed over in Series 7 with Amy and Rory’s deaths.

Eventually, as the Doctor finishes the story of the shepherd’s boy, he finally manages to punch through the Azbantium wall. With the Veil collapsing, the Doctor walks out onto a desert world which he quickly learns is Gallifrey; the prison he was in was actually the inside of his confession dial. After telling a nearby boy to alert the city of his return, the Doctor says, “The Hybrid, destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins, is me.” Some people think he was referring to Me as in Ashildr (possibly in denial of himself being the Hybrid), which is apparently corroborated by the official script release, but some people actually think he was referring to himself, which makes the line sound cooler with the way the Doctor puts on his sonic sunglasses.

9. The Hybrid

Before I go on, I’d like to tell you about the Hybrid prophecy, which is the subject of this series’ story arc. Supposedly, the Hybrid is a creature crossbred from two warrior races that would stand over the ruins of Gallifrey and unravel the Web of Time, breaking a billion billion hearts to heal its own. The most popular candidates for the warrior races are the Time Lords and Daleks, something that Davros took advantage of when he attempted to give some of the Doctor’s regeneration energy to the Daleks, only for it to backfire. Other candidates, speculated in the series or in the book A Brief History of Time Lords, include the part-human part-Mire Ashildr, the human and Zygon Osgoods, the “part-human part-wolf” Rose Tyler, the DoctorDonna and River Song, however none of those quite fit the prophecy. We’ll come back to the speculation later.

As Hell Bent picks up from where Heaven Sent left off, the Doctor heads to his childhood barn, where a woman recognises him (her identity is left ambiguous, but one theory could be that she was the same woman, the Doctor’s mother, in The End of Time). The Doctor is offered soup by an entire group of villagers, but when bowships come to pick him up, he draws a line in the sand (literally) and retreats into the barn. Despite the General and the High Council offering an audience with him, the Doctor only comes out when Rassilon arrives to confront him. The Doctor banishes Rassilon and the High Council from Gallifrey before using an extraction chamber to retrieve Clara from the moment before her death. During this he knocks back the General, takes his gun and shoots him with it, causing him to regenerate from a white male into a black female. The General’s first words post-regeneration note her relief at being female again and her disdain of the male ego, which has apparently become one of the more obvious signs of the SJW wokeification of the series even though I didn’t really think much of it at the time.

The Doctor escapes into the Cloisters with Clara. The General follows with Ohila and Clara learns that the Doctor was trapped (and tortured) in his confession dial for 4.5 billion years. Clara manages to distract the Time Lords while the Doctor unlocks the maintenance hatch, steals a TARDIS from the repair shop and leaves.

Despite leaving Gallifey’s time zone or heading to the end of the universe, Clara’s heartbeat does not return, meaning that she is stuck between the last two heartbeats of her life. As someone knocks on the door four times, the Doctor heads out into the Cloisters of the far, far future and confronts Ashildr about the Hybrid; Ashildr theorises that the Hybrid isn’t one person, but two, namely “a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him”, obviously referring to the Doctor and Clara. The Doctor invites Ashildr into the stolen TARDIS as he prepares to use a neural block to wipe her memory of him. Clara is defensively resistant at the prospect, claiming that she used the Doctor’s sonic sunglasses on the neutral block to reverse the polarity so that it would erase his memory, though it’s never known if she actually did it. The Doctor and Clara decide to take a gamble and activate the neural block together; the Doctor ends up having his memories of Clara erased as a result, saying goodbye to her before he is found by a man in the middle of the Nevada desert.

After apparently going to London and back in search for his TARDIS, the Doctor finds himself at an American diner in the middle of the Nevada desert (which seems like a waste of time and effort, but we gotta account for the guitar somehow), with Clara working there as the waitress (she was rumoured to be another Clara echo until we saw that it wasn’t the case). The Doctor tells Clara the story of what happened on Gallifrey and plays a song he composed for her. The diner then disappears as Clara and Ashildr decide to have their own adventures in the stolen TARDIS, effectively reversing the consequences of Clara’s death and giving her many, many more opportunities to become the Impossible Girl again. The Doctor finds his TARDIS nearby and heads inside, puts on a new coat, reads a message left to him from Clara, receives his new sonic screwdriver and sets off, the graffiti from Rigsy falling away as the two TARDISes fly off into time and space.

While Heaven Sent was great and the first part of Hell Bent was good, the rest of the episode I didn’t feel lived up to expectations. There were hints and rumours that the Twelfth Doctor’s appearance in The Day of the Doctor would be accounted for, but it never happened. It’s not like they couldn’t stick in a little bit at the end where the Doctor gets a signal from his previous incarnations and goes with them to help save Gallifrey (using archive footage and audio from the episode) before finishing the episode with the shot of his eyes staring at the camera.

We never really get a definitive answer to the Hybrid except for everything implying that the Doctor and Clara together are the Hybrid, and even then Steven Moffat confirmed it as a sort of meta-joke. I thought the Hybrid was going to be someone going up against the Doctor and acting as a danger to the universe - since my idea of Hiroki Ichigo being the Hybrid has the threat already taken out of him because the threat had gone by the time I came up with the idea, I would have liked a similar idea where an autistic man, revealed to be part-Time Lord, goes out with a female distantly related to the Daleks, then somehow, the guy gets some Dalek DNA mixed up in him, the girl betrays the guy and he goes on a rampage while the Doctor tries to stop him. Of course, that would require Clara to have left the TARDIS at the end of Series 8 and even then the whole story of Series 9 would be different.

At the end of Series 12, some people were saying that the Master became the Hybrid after destroying Gallifrey and absorbing the Cyberium, but like with the theory of the Timeless Child being the Master, I think that’s just copium because these people just want the Doctor to be the Doctor (just a Time Lord), plus Series 9 had been four years gone at that point.

Clara’s “resurrection” in Hell Bent felt like Moffat apologising for Amy and Rory’s “deaths”. It would be understandable given his intentions for the Hybrid, but in the next series, he does the same with Bill Potts (spoiler alert). I think he was maybe trying to curry some favour with fans before leaving since he really let loose and burnt himself out after working on Series 5-7.

And another thing; director Rachel Talalay hoped that Timothy Dalton would be able to reprise his role as Rassilon from The End of Time, however he was busy working on Penny Dreadful and his schedule would not allow for his return to Doctor Who, so Donald Sumpter was cast as a new incarnation of Rassilon.

10. Return to the Singing Towers

The 2015 Christmas Special, The Husbands of River Song, was originally meant to be Steven Moffat’s final episode as showrunner before he decided to continue for one more year. In the special, the Doctor finds himself reunited with River Song as he learns that she has married King Hydroflax for a valuable diamond inside his head. Nothing that River hasn’t met him in his current face yet, the Doctor decides to play along with her to see how she does while he struggles to explain the truth to her. Through various antics and encounters, King Hydroflax’s head is brought into the starship Harmony and Redemption and the diamond is offered to the Shoal of the Winter Harmony, who turn out to be worshippers of Hydroflax.

During the ensuing confrontation, River finally realised the Doctor has been there with her all along. As the starship is hit by a meteor strike and Hydroflax’s head is disintegrated, the Doctor and River get to the bridge in an attempt to stabilise it; despite either of them offering to sacrifice themselves to let the other escape, the starship ends up crashing on Darillium, though the two of them manage to escape the impact in the TARDIS. Having evaded their final date at the Singing Towers for so long, the Doctor gives the diamond to a rescue worker looking for survivors and suggests that he build a restaurant on the site. Finally, the Doctor and River are able to have their final date, with the Doctor giving River the sonic screwdriver that would appear in her “final” story.

The Husbands of River Song is considered part of Series 9 due to there being no new series premiering in 2016, however given Nardole’s debut in this episode and his role in the series following it, I consider it part of Series 10 for the purposes of my personal project. Nonetheless, it was a great special to round off the darker tones of the two series before it.

Series 9 is a fairly great series that got a little disappointing right at the end. Due to the series also serving as the tenth anniversary of the Doctor Who revival, we got some throwbacks to various elements from past series along with some from the classic era. This series also introduced some fear to even more innocuous elements in life, like random symbols on a wall or sleep dust (or sleep paralysis demons). And in spite of some elements that we could have done without, we had a good sendoff to a companion who was beginning to overstay her welcome before her death got undone and Moffat let her overstay in spirit.

I hope you’ve been enjoying this series so far in spite of my rant about the state of things in Hong Kong that didn’t make the Doctor’s amazing speech age well (and all my other rants throughout this whole series). Stay tuned for Part 10 as we send off the best days of modern Doctor Who with my 10 takes on Series 10.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Thank Fuck That’s Over

WARNING: The following blog is offensive to sex workers, BBC employees, fans of Doctor Who, men, women, the victims of Geoffrey Dahmer, Geoffrey Dahmer himself and anyone who didn’t want to picture me in slutty heels getting romanced by a Mariachi band. You’ve been warned. Also, yes, it does contain another totally unnecessary reference to people having sex with watermelons.

So, it’s been a long time coming, but Chib-fail and Piss-taker are finally fucking off into the sunset like Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. I only hope they go on to have fulfilling post-Who careers… as skinless trophies on a serial killer’s bookshelf. I know that, sometimes, I exaggerate my hatred for comic effect, but if I found out those two talentless, culture-fucking hacks had run afoul of Geoffrey Dahmer’s ghost, my only thought on the matter would be ‘get in, my son!’, directly at the Milwaukee Cannibal with the paternal pride his actual father never fucking felt for him.

The truth is, I probably wouldn’t bring it up at all under normal circumstance. Although I often mention the BBCs systematic ruining of Doctor Who as an example of the slow death that popularity and virtue-signalling can bring about- or just as a punchline when I need some low-hanging fruit to widdle all over- my actual, personal relationship with the show has changed. I’ve slowly managed to transition from hating it as something that betrayed me to regarding it as just another crap show for casual twats that I don’t watch. Unfortunately for my long-cultivated cynical detachment, the BBC have brought back Russel T. Davis, the mastermind behind Doctor Who’s original return to screens in 2005 and David Tennant, the second best actor to ever play the Doctor (the first is, obviously, Tom Baker). And now I kind of have to give it one more go. Frankly, I feel a bit like a battered prostitute who’s just come home to discover her abusive pimp has cooked a lovely bolognese and hired a Mariachi band. I’m not sure I trust this sudden attempt to apologise, kiss and make up, but if I don’t at least give ‘em a chance, then I’m the arsehole. I mean, more so than usual.

I tell you what, though, I do feel a bit sorry for poor Ncuti Gatwa (or ‘Cunty Gateau’ as he’s known in the wonderful world of predictive text. Or possibly just the predictive text on my phone, which knows those are two words I use quite often). My point is that he thought he was going to be following Whitaker, which would have been a leisurely walk through a breezy park full of pre-sliced cakes, and now he’s got to follow David Tenant instead. Fuck me. I’m not even sure what to compare that to. Maybe being a male stripper and being told you’re on after Noam Chomsky only to learn you’re actually following the Chippendales and they’re being led by that dude from Zardoz. You know- the bloke in hot pants with the porn ‘stache that oozes erotic tension like he uses it for moustache wax? No? Am I literally the only person in the world who’s seen fucking Zardoz?

I’ve just realised that ninety percent of this blog is just jokes about different types of sex workers having surreal experiences. But what am I supposed to say? I can’t exactly celebrate the fact that Whitaker and Chibnall are leaving, because a) they hung on for so bloody long and b) they’re sadly only leaving the show, not the planet. In an ideal world, they’d be getting the fuck off of Earth by strapping themselves to a nuclear warhead and aiming it at the sun. But they’re not doing that: they’re just walking out a building. What do they want- a medal? Am I supposed to be excited that David Tennant’s getting his own little mini-series playing the Doctor again? Well, I am a bit, but since the BBC’s incompetence and venality knows no bounds, it’s entirely possible they’ll make a bollocks of that, too. I mean, you’d think that’d be impossible, but I also thought it was impossible for them to accidentally hire the troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff to be political editor… then they did and Andrew Neil was around for ages before anyone even noticed the mistake. My point is, there’s no point getting jazzed over this until its actually happened and has proven itself to be good.

Am I cautiously optimistic? Yes. Will I be remotely surprised if that optimism turns out to be groundless? Nope. And that’s that. The BBC might have found a way to unfuck the big, tasty sci-fi melon they let Chibnall stick his cock in… or they might not. At the very least, I’ll get to hear David Tennant say ‘What?’ again in that really specific way and that’s not nothing.

In other news, Star Trek: Picard Series 3 looks genuinely fucking epic. Go be excited about that instead, maybe? Patrick Stewart’s not actually immortal, you know: go appreciate him before he’s dead.

[13thdoctorposts]

chris chibnalls era was the most conservative nuwho has been. remember when he made the first non-white master dress up as a nazi, and the white protagonist purposefully reveals his race with the intent of getting him sent to a concentration camp? or when he queerbaited thasmin? or when the female protagonist knelt down to a man and called him her master? or when yaz instantly shut down ryan when he was talking about his struggles as a black person? or the concept of a pregnant man being used as a joke? please try to see through the performative activism.

Thanks for the question. I think most of the questions are rhetorical because obviously I’ve watched the show and saw these things, I think the question is just asking me to see through the performative activism. I don’t think it was performative activism but I thought we could go though each part of the question together as I’m happy to breakdown my thoughts on the situations mentioned. This might be TLDR for some people just warning you now 😅

chris chibnalls era was the most conservative nuwho has been.

I find it interesting the asker is saying the show is conservative while also saying its performative activism so essentially that it was trying to be woke.

Personally I don’t think Chibbs was trying to make a ‘Woke’ show, I also don’t think he was trying to make a ‘conservative’ show. I think he was trying to make a show with diverse stories. I think series 11 did this best. The ending of Keblam! was definitely not ‘Woke’ so all the talk about the show itself being ‘Woke’ I don’t think is correct but I also don’t think the show was trying to be actively conservative either since it was talking about issues like racism and partition of India and Pakistan, and making fun of a trump like figure, for example. It’s just a show about time and space, sometimes you see politics in it sometimes you don’t. I’ll talk about my thoughts on ‘performative activism’ during the Chibnall era at the end.

I think its important to remember Chibbs is just a dude going to work doing a really big job trying to use his position of power the best he can… it doesn’t mean every decision is going to be right… sometimes I make a bad calls at work, we all do… people are human… I can empathise that people can try their best and sometimes get it wrong but also often get it right, the world is nuanced not black and white. However this doesn’t make a whole show bad, can anyone name a show with 3 series that doesn’t have any bad decisions… can anyone name a different Doctors run that was perfect and no mistakes or mis-steps were made?

remember when he made the first non-white master dress up as a nazi, and the white protagonist purposefully reveals his race with the intent of getting him sent to a concentration camp?

I most definitely do remember this, and I think it was a bad call. However I can also acknowledge that Sacha was hired when everyone was already in South Africa a week before shooting Spyfall, which means the script was already written and pre production was well under way so they probably didn’t have the ability to change a major chunk of the script, thats just the logistics of shooting a TV show. It would have been great if Chris had unlimited money and time to change things but thats just not the case. I would think this logically means they couldn’t change the fact that they had the Master in a Nazi outfit… I also think its possible when writing the episode Chris probably wrote it with the subconscious bias that he was going to have a white male as the Doctors Master. Although Chris was very good about hiring diverse actors, subconscious bias sits in us we aren’t always aware we are doing it, hence the subconscious part. This isn’t great on Chris’s part but I don’t think he was being deliberately malice either. I think they also thought once they had Sacha that they needed to acknowledge race… and they did in the worse way possible, it was unnecessary and was a terrible look for the Doctor.

or when the female protagonist knelt down to a man and called him her master?

Yeah I do also remember this, it was uncomfortable to watch, I think the purpose of the scene was meant to make us really dislike the Master, to kill any good will the audience was having towards ‘O’. Him killing people is horrible but its the Master its expected and random characters who are extras that we as an audience aren’t attached to isn’t going to have the same effect as him doing something horrible to a character we are attached to like the Doctor. I wish what he had done wasn’t this. I don’t think it’s a good look, a female Doctor having to be submissive to a male in this way. It’s not appropriate. However I have to praise Jodies acting here because she acted this scene in the most unsubmissive way possible. This is just a decision I don’t agree with, it doesn’t make for a bad show overall.

or when he queerbaited thasmin?

Thasmin wasn’t queerbait because the characters canonically admitted having feeling for each other. You can be disappointed with the way it ended… I am… but a bad ending isn’t queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is implying their might be something queer happening only for it to be dropped and often a heteronormative ending is what is actually depicted on screen and was primarily used by shows as a rating kick. I would say it would be the opposite for Doctor Who, since people were vocal about not wanting a female Doctor, not wanting the Doctor to ever have a love interest etc. it likely wouldn’t have given the show a ratings kick in the same way other modern era TV would hope to get when queerbaiting. Thasmin isn’t queerbaiting its just a disappointing end

or when yaz instantly shut down ryan when he was talking about his struggles as a black person?

I don’t think this is what Yaz’s intention was but people can read the scene as they wish.

or the concept of a pregnant man being used as a joke?

I don’t think it was being play with as a joke. I think Ryan and Graham’s reaction in this episode was how a lot of people would act and through the episode seeing them coming to terms with the idea a male can be pregnant is a reflection of society and you see them work through being uncomfortable, not really being sure how to act or what to say but in the end they get to where they need to be, seeing the miracle that is life. This also touches on Ryans father issues so theres a lot going on in this situation and although theres some comic relief moments I don’t think it was trying to make the whole situation a joke.

please try to see through the performative activism.

I don’t think the Chibnall era was performative activism because he wasn’t all words, he was actions. There were more diverse voices in major positions, in the cast, in the writers room and with Directors.

So what do I mean by this? Well we didn’t have a white man write ‘Rosa’ and then have an all white TARDIS team take on racism in 1955 and defeat it. That would have been performative activism.

First of all and most importantly we had a woman of colour hired and paid to write a story that was in a very well known TV show giving the story a huge audience on a platform its never had before… thats not performative, that’s actively doing something, Chris hired, paid and gave a platform to a person of colour to tell their story.

Giving people real opportunities in areas they haven’t had opportunities before on a large scale like Doctor Who and trying to create an environment where that is normalised and diverse voices are a common place has to start somewhere, it doesn’t just happen fully formed and Chibbs was clearly and deliberately trying to normalises having voices of women and people of colour in front and behind the camera in senior positions like actors, writers and directors.

I think it’s important to remember Chibbs was trying to be the beginning of this change so its not a fully realised idea, there aren’t as many writers and directors who are women and people of colour, so you bring in as many as you can, which I think Chibbs did, then you try and grow it from there. If more show runners did what Chibbs did in years to come we would have more minority writers, directors and show runners. It has to start somewhere and the more opportunities that open up the more people will enter these professions and so more voices will become normalised in the industry and more representation will be found in media for all of us. The fact he was trying to build this systemic change clearly demonstrates this isn’t ‘performative’ activism.

[elliesgaymachete]

Ok but what if Yaz tells the Doctor how she feels at the beginning of the next special and the Doctor is like “I care about you so much, but—“ and Yaz just assumes she doesn’t feel the same and stops her and says they can just forget she ever mentioned anything but that’s not what the Doctor was trying to say so they spend the rest of the episode with this awkward tension where Yaz is kind of heartbroken and the Doctor is trying to figure out a way to tell her how she feels while also telling her that romantic relationships never end well with her and that’s what she was trying to say before and it’s like a whole episode of angst and tension where they butt heads and don’t work well together because of it, and eventually the Doctor just blurts it out and kisses her or something at the end

[paternostergays]

something that never fails to make me go absolutely feral is the idea of like. the doctor regenerating after/during a really intense or emotional confrontation and they look down at themselves or touch their face and theres. blood or tears or something and someone asks they're there and the doctor goes 'i don't think they're mine' that gets me EVERY time i would do anything for something like this to happen in a regeneration