#the haunting of villa diodati

[burningvelvet]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “laudanum-dosed wine at the villa diodati on lake geneva in 1816” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever i don’t feel shit

5 minutes later: dude i swear i just saw mary shelley and claire clairmont talking about reanimation and vampires with lord byron

my buddy percy pacing: dr. john polidori is plotting against us and my wifes nipples have been replaced by eyeballs

[evviejo]

thirteen's era appreciation: 368/?

[notyoujamie]

[tonsillessscum]

Thasmin || Doctor Who 12x08 - The Haunting of Villa Diodati

[13thdoctorposts]

Watching the Doctor Who Series 12 Closer Looks with Jodie bringing up the Doctor losing Bill, can’t believe people claimed she knew nothing about what happened previously on Doctor Who just making up bad faith arguments to slander such a good person actually makes someone a really shit person. She frustrated by the way people treated Jodie so unfairly with ‘facts’ that only existed in their own heads.

From the Haunting of Villa Diodati

[thefiresofpompeii]

i love you houses that confound and mislead. i love you the doctor falling into an inevitable trap despite jack’s forewarnings because she was always going to give the lone cyberman what he wanted, the story could never have transpired any other way. i love you unhinged threatening thirteen so full of compassion for a single historical figure that she risks the future fate of history itself to save his life — that’s the most doctor-y decision she’s ever made, short term kindness over long term heroic sweeping gestures no matter where that leads, no matter who it sacrifices (and it’s morally questionable in the utilitarianism vs personal feelings way; similar to some of twelve’s moral dilemmas, not in the shallow ass “guns are bad so we’ll just suffocate these spiders to death” way). i love you hyperbolic-but-accurate portrayals of the geneva squad authors and co. i love you the implied possibility of ghosts being real. i love you thirteen asserting her authority and committing a sneaky little telepathic time lord atrocity (showing percy shelley his death which incidentally gives a fictional explanation to his real-life obsession with death by drowning, which eventually led to his death by drowning. i digress) — something she hasn’t been given the opportunity to do before. i love you cybermen-as-the-inspiration-for-frankenstein. i love you “she was the universe”. i love you claire clairmont standing up for herself and realising what a manipulative prick byron was to her. i love you the haunting of villa diodati

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

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

[justahumblememefarmer]

Ultimate Doctor Who Poll Round 2 - Matchup 9

Episode Summaries under the cut:

14: The Haunting of Villa Diodati - Season 12, Episode 8: The Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan go to visit Mary Shelly on the night she got the idea for Frankenstein. The Doctor notices that Percy Shelley should be there, but is missing. They notice that the villa seems to be haunted as strange things begin to happen. A figure appears, which seems to be a partially converted Cyberman, which Captain Jack had previously warned the Doctor's companions about.

The Cyberman is looking for the Cyberium, which holds all the knowledge of the Cybermen. The Doctor finds that Percy has become the host of the Cyberium and was hiding, while defense mechanisms mixed with his mental projections caused the strange disturbances. The Doctor takes over as the new host, but the Cyberman threatens to bring a ship to destroy the world if the Doctor does not give it to her. She gives it over, and the Cyberman leaves to rebuild the Cyber-armies. The Doctor and her crew take off to stop it.

142: Into the Dalek - Season 8, Episode 2: The Doctor brings Clara to a space station in the future where they are treating a "good" Dalek, who has seen the error of the Daleks ways and seeks to destroy all other Daleks. In order to treat it, the Doctor, Clara, and some soldiers must shrink down and enter the Dalek's casing, where they fight off Dalek antibodies. The Doctor and Clara are still getting used to the Doctor's newest incarnation and his lack of empathy and morality at some points. They find what is wrong with the Dalek, a radiation leak causing the Dalek's change in morality.

They accidentally fix it, restoring the Dalek to it's former self and it begins to attack the crew of the space station. They manage to restore some of the Dalek's good memories and the Doctor creates a psychic link with it, giving it visions of the beauty of the universe, but also all of the Doctor's battles against the Daleks. The Dalek stops attacking the crew, and all those inside it are restored to their original size. The Dalek leaves, vowing to bring about the destruction of all Daleks.

(Beat #115: The Vanquishers in Round 1)

[billdecker]

Doctor Who Rewatch | The Haunting of Villa Diodati

[wayward-wren]

Alright, Bad Writing aside, Thirteen isn't a bad Doctor her raging about cyberman and 'I will not lose anyone else to that' with almost-tears in her eyes convinced me

[burningvelvet]

tfw an episode of doctor who was a thousand times more historically accurate about the romantic poets than the actual mary shelley (2017) biopic despite having a plot about an alien robot creature trying to kill percy shelley

[evviejo]

all of thirteen's looks ever: 45/?

[paternostergays]

idiots. dorks, even. giving them both the biggest forehead kisses

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

As someone who is, themself, a writer, I hate the tendency of writers to exalt the importance of poets, writers, and storytellers. "Words matter!" wrote the author, whose business is words. […] Here, the emphasis -- [The Doctor] may say 'Words matter,' but she's saying it while pointing at [Percy Bysshe Shelley] -- "We can't let this man die! We can't let this writer die!"

"Writers are too important!" wrote the writer.

Source: The Haunting of Villa Diodati (is overrated) - Take Two Doctor Who Review (YouTube. Uploaded 25 January, 2023. Transcribed from auto-generated captions, starting at 13:36. Eye contact).

The thing is: Stories are important -- I believe they are the central trait to our humanity.

But that means that every human is a storyteller -- not only the ones who get their stories written down, and get paid for them.

That's a weak point of Doctor Who's history episodes: it tends to fall into the trap of the Great Man theory of history. The unknown people around the famous person are allowed to die, to raise the stakes, and make the story scary. But no harm can come to the famous person at the center, lest "History is changed."

[thefiresofpompeii]

there’s ghosts and romantic poets and the architectural uncanny and frankenstein. percy shelley is having a mental breakdown on his own somewhere. byron’s full of himself and flirting with everybody. polidori’s afflictions suspiciously resemble those of a “vampyre”. the companions are in period-appropriate costumes for once. thasmin subtext in yaz’s conversation with claire clairmont is akin to that clara/maisie chat scene from mummy on the orient express. gothic horror atmosphere to the gods, slightly unsettling mary notyetshelley, the doctor going directly against her own rules within 5 minutes of establishing them, what more do you need ?

[neeneeeeeee]

I just googled all my favorite Thirteenth Doc episodes so far and all the writers were NOT Chibnall 😭🤣😂🤷‍♀️

Demons of the Punjab

The Witch Finders

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror

The Haunting of Villa Diodati

My observation is that Chibnall has a good concept of his story concept but does not really execute it well, like the lone Cyberman story was so lacking in the end in my opinion. What made the lone cyberman story so intriguing was because it was introduced with such mystery in the Mary Shelley episode, and that episode was apparently NOT written by Chibnall. I was disappointed about the Master inserting himself in the trilogy tbh, when they could have done something otherworldly about the lone cyberman.

Anyway, I didn't know ALL the episodes I actually LOVED during Thirteenth's first 2 series were NOT written by the showrunner. Goes to show a lot tbh...