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possiblyimbiassed · 4 years ago

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The lying liars who lie

Years and years late to the party, I’ve finally gotten my hands on all the DVDs of BBC Sherlock, and I thought it would be fun to watch the extra material carefully, one piece after another, and also listen to at least some of the show makers’ commentary of the episodes. But at this point, after S4 where DVDs seemed to be a constant lying device in general, I tend to look at them with a bit more suspicious eyes...

I still love the show of course, but now that I’ve taken this deep dive into all the special features, I find them a truly hard thing to try to wrap my head around. Even this long after the fact, I’m amazed by the amount of shameless, self-congratulatory BS in the DVDs, where the people involved can’t have enough of complimenting each other and their show, while they skillfully avoid to discuss anything actually meaningful about the plot line. ;) For example, Moffat claims in the S2 DVD that “In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one”. But if we follow their light-hearted commentary, which basically takes the show at face value, I’d call that not just hyperbole, but an outright lie. If you want to see the ‘authentic’ stories from ACD’s work in this show, you’ll definitely need to go much deeper into the subtext and meta levels - neither of which are mentioned on these DVDs of course. Here’s my own (rather subjective) ‘review’ of the whole thing, trying to pinpoint why I view most of the commentary of the show from its own makers as an advanced art of deception.

(My musings under the cut)

Series 1 - a wealth of extra material

First of all - as many of you probably knew already - the whole of the Unaired Pilot is added to the DVD of S1. In the extra material about the making of the series, they (Sue Vertue, Mofftiss and others) talk about what things they changed between the Pilot and ASiP, claiming that many changes were necessary improvements once they knew that they had a whole series and a lot more time at their disposal.

Which I can perfectly understand and agree with in general. But I think what’s missing in their discussions is more interesting than what’s actually there (”Mind the gap” ;) ). Things that I would expect from the show makers when they go to the trouble of comparing the pilot version with the aired product. There’s not a word, for example, about the fact that they added both Mycroft and Moriarty to the story in ASiP - two characters who later turn out to play major roles and appear in almost every other episode until the end of TFP. Or about the choice that one of the screenwriters would play Mycroft.

Neither do they discuss why they chose to relocate the place where Sherlock was challenged by the cabbie from 221B to Roland Kerr’s School of Further Education. Instead they focus on the details, like for example the new design of the interior of 221B.

Not to mention the fact that almost every scene in the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP (as pointed out long ago by @kateis-cakeis X), but at Angelo’s in the Pilot Sherlock follows the events with the cabbie while looking in an actual mirror. I even noticed that in the Pilot the cabbie is offering Sherlock dark-coloured bottles with the pills in them, while in ASiP those bottles are transparent, as if the cabbie is offering Sherlock to play Black or White in the chess game that he is simulating. What’s with all these mirrors, though? Not a word on the DVD... ;)

Now, even though these rather remarkable choices are neglected together with a great bunch of minor ones, I still think that the most interesting fact about all this is that they actually included the whole pilot version within this DVD, which is sold by the franchise. Why even do this, when it raises far more questions than it answers? The only logical reason I can come up with is that they’re laying out a track of little hints that anyone with a deep enough interest in the show to actually buy the DVDs can try to follow. And it seems to me that lying by omission is one of the first steps in the long line of cryptic and misleading author comments on this show. But at the same time, they clearly want the fans to have access to it all, even the abandoned version.

Moving on to Series 2, time for bigger lies

In the extra material of this DVD Benedict himself describes how his character "faces one of his deadliest enemies in the shape of Love, and it comes in the form of Irene Adler, who is this extraordinary dominatrix [insert here a bunch of superlatives regarding Adler]...”. And then we see how Adler whips Sherlock with a riding crop (without any kind of consent, I have to add) while he’s lying on the floor, and we have Lara Pulver telling us how it was to have a go at Benedict on set. So Holmes whips dead bodies and Adler whips living; seems like a match made in hell! :))

Gatiss claims, grinning with his whole face, that “they’re clearly, absolutely made for each other”. OK, so I think we can see Sherlock being intellectually impressed by Adler, and even trying to protect her from Mycroft, and we can see John acting jealously. We can also see her being dressed and styled as a perfect, female mirror of Sherlock. But I’m still at a loss what all this has to do with love on Sherlock’s part? Especially since he’s not even responding in any fashion to her various attempts at seducing him.

And there’s more: Paul McGuigan, the director of ASiB, claims that the scene where Sherlock has a conversation with Adler inside his Mind Palace about the crime case with the car that backfires "is a part of a kind of love story, if you like...” No, I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, but if their aim really was to convey to their audience a love story between Sherlock and The Woman, I think they failed miserably. All I see is a guy ’mansplaining’ to a clever woman how to use her brain, while she’s trying to flirt with him by expressing her admiration (to no avail, though) and make deductions at the same time. Nothing new under the sun, really. John did the same thing repeatedly in ASiP (without making own deductions) and got far more attention from Sherlock, but I’ve never heard any of the show makers call that ”a love story”. But by ’lie-splaining’ the scene with Irene to the audience, they try to manipulate us all to see it as such...

In all the direct commentary of this episode, where Steven, Mark, Sue, Benedict and Lara are present, I get the impression that every time they even touch on the relationship between Sherlock and John, they hurry to add the term “friendship” or “man love” or similar words in case they forgot them at first, avoiding even the tiniest possibility that there could be anything more going on between them. They even explain that when Irene calls them “a couple” she does not mean anything romantic. This whole approach feels almost paranoic in the midst of all the laid-back jokes and light-hearted talk about the filming. It’s as if a sort of restrictive, heteronormative filter or blanket is being constantly applied, to teach the audience the ‘no homo’ lesson of it all. And the more I listen to this, the more tiresome it becomes.

In the commentary Moffat does reveal an interesting detail, though: that the ‘Flight of the Dead’ in ASiB was inspired by a cut out scene in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. To me this is just one more reason to question the ‘authentic’ quality of this scene, as opposed to possibly taking place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. But I digress...

Listening to the commentary in general, it’s like it’s aimed to distract the attention from what’s going on at the screen rather than highlight it and try to explain their intentions. They do mention that Irene didn’t actually ‘beat’ Sherlock in the end of ASiB, but there’s no explanation of this obvious deviation from canon, where Adler does indeed fool Holmes, taking advantage of his prejudices.

The rest of the extra material of S2 is mostly about technical stuff, special effects and such, and also about filming techniques and Benedict’s delivery of fast deductions. But the part I really do love is the one where Andrew Scott talks about how much he enjoyed playing the scene where Moriarty dances before breaking into the Crown Jewels. That’s one of my favorite scenes of he whole show. :) Also, the takeaway message from this DVD is Moffat’s words at the end:

“These are still the formative years of Sherlock Holmes, and the most important thing about this series is not that it’s updated; it’s the fact that those two men are still young and they’re still at the beginning of what they don’t yet know is gonna be a lifelong partnership”.

And then comes Series 3...

...and its extra material, with the most blatant attempts at deception so far, I believe. At this point Sherlock is called a “psychopath” by both the show’s characters, John’s blog, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as if it were true, which is a big deviation from ACD canon. That simply doesn’t happen there; while Holmes is sometimes described as eccentric, no one in the books is ever claiming that Sherlock Holmes has some kind of mental illness leaning towards cruelty and egotism - not even his enemies say this about him. In the show, however, they begin in ASiP with making him torture a dying man for information (something that is not included in the Pilot). And in S3, where they avoid discussing the reason why they turned Mary Morstan into a ruthless assassin, this major shift is glossed over by the fact that in the same episode (HLV) they also turn Sherlock into a murderer, who cold-bloodedly blows the brains out of a blackmailer for threatening to make said assassin’s crimes public.

But without ever getting into the “why” of it all, the cast and crew seem overly happy and smiling describing these rather morbid choices as something positive; “fantastic”, "fresh and new” and "amazing” are their choice of words. Benedict claims that Mary, who has literally shot and almost killed Sherlock in HLV, is now "a new best friend of Sherlock’s”. Amanda claims that Mary “is protecting John” when she shoots Sherlock in the chest. Now they’re both psychopaths, and poor little John is forced to stomach them both because he’s addicted to danger. In Amanda’s words, Mary also “kind of gets in between the two of them, but she wants them to be together as well”. Which is a load of BS considering that Mary tries to kill the protagonist of the story.

Lars Mikkelsen thinks it’s “such a good script” because “you’re mislead as an audience”. But he never gets the chance to expand on what the misleading actually contains, because then Mofftiss cut in to express how much they love playing with “what ifs”. As if this whole mega-budget project of a show were just a big experimental playground without any actual story to tell.

Benedict repeats his line from HLV that Magnussen “preys on people who are different” and Moffat also says he “exploits people who are different”. Which is really confusing, considering what we can see Magnussen actually do in the show. Lady Smallwood and John Garvie are two well-established, powerful governmental politicians whom Magnussen blackmails by finding their respective pressure points. In Garvie’s case his pressure point seems to be alcohol problems in his past, but according to media he’s later arrested on charges of corruption. Lady Smallwood is blackmailed on the basis of her husband having sent compromising letters to a minor many years ago, in spite of later claiming that he thought she was older and stopped when he found out the truth. And then Magnussen is blackmailing an assassin who recently threatened to execute him but shot Sherlock Holmes instead, in order to try to get at Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, another powerful governmental figure.

But what does media seeking out dirt on certain people in power and their families have to do with “people who are different”? Despicable as the method may be, isn’t this unfortunately how political power play usually works in our society? Or are TPTB somehow a repressed minority group now? Unless this whole “people who are different” accusation is actually about something entirely different, something that none of the show makers even cares to mention... ;)

In these DVDs, none of the involved persons is ever discussing the change of roles with regards to canon, though, or the (lack of) logics in this turn of events, or even a hint about the narrative motivation behind them. It’s all about the great Drama, the extraordinary visual effects and the aim to endlessly “surprise the audience”. Which is fine by me to a certain extent, but when this is all that’s being said, it feels extremely superficial, as if the audience is merely seen as a bunch of consumers that have to be triggered more and more by horror, special effects and cliff hangers to be able to appreciate the show. (“Warm paste” indeed, like Gatiss has later criticized some viewers of wanting...) While the "why”; the idea behind this surrealistic adaptation, made by self-proclaimed fanboys of ACD, is not even touched upon. Around this, the silence is total and therefore totally confusing.

Maybe I shouldn’t even go into Series 4...

...but why not, since I’ve already started? :)

First of all, there’s a lot of extra material on this DVD and I particularly love the parts about the music and composing and Arwel Wyn Jones’ work with the design and build-up of John’s and Mary’s flat and the interior of 221B. Those bits are truly enjoyable. What I could live without, though, is the leading commentary that kind of instructs us, the audience, how we should interpret the show.

Benedict is on it again on this DVD, telling us that in TST they picked up where they left off in S3 and “It’s a very happy unit of three people that then become four.” Why does he feel the need to make this statement, considering how S3 ended? Actually, if there’s anything I totally fail to see in S4, it’s happiness. The banter between the three of them may seem entertaining for a while, but who could have a relaxed, warm relationship with someone who tried and almost succeeded to kill you less than a year ago? Without any sign of remorse? Now there’s a dark tone of discomfort and mean jokes that feels forced and not even a bit happy to me.

But Martin tells us how excited John and Mary are about starting a family and Amanda mentions how much they’re looking forward to the baby. Again and again it’s repeated, as though trying to rub it in: “they’re in a good place, they’re a loving, married couple”. Yeah, right - a child that (judging by TSoT) wasn’t at all planned and now with an assassin for a mother... Twice we see the new parents complain that their daughter has the mark of Satan on her forehead and debate which horror movie she’s from. The clichéd hypocrisy of it all is sickening, and I’m willing to bet that it’s really meant to be. ;)

But Gatiss chimes in, deciding for us all that the christening of Rosie is “a funny scene” and “they’re enjoying each other, enjoying being on adventures as a three”.

An interesting detail is that Gatiss also tells us that the working name of this episode was “The Adventure of the Melting power Ranger”. So this little blue guy was that important? :) And - even more interesting - is when he says: “Cake is now the code for violent death”. So how should we interpret Sherlock, John and Molly going out to have cake in TLD then, on Sherlock’s (supposed) birthday?

These might be jokes, though, but when they tell us that Sue cries every time she sees Mary’s death I strongly believe they must be joking. How could anyone feel truly moved by this overly sentimental long monologue where far more efforts are put into reacting to Mary’s speech than saving her life? And John’s mooing like a cow, is that also moving? :)

One thing Martin says about TLD that actually disgusts me is regarding the morgue scene where John assaults Sherlock and Sherlock lets it happen: “From there, really, their relationship can only sort of rebuild, that’s the absolute worst it can get”. As if outright physical abuse would be something that makes you want to rebuild a relationship? Wow - just wow... How far can they go with this crap?

Anyway, when we finally arrive at the absurdity of TFP and Sherlock’s ‘secret sister’, everything is of course discussed as if she actually does exist on the given premises, and everything she does is ‘real’, no matter how impossible it would be in real life. The abandonment of any attempt to have the story line make logical sense is skillfully covered up by more distraction with fascinating technicalities of the film making process. This is where Gatiss makes his now almost classic statement that after Sherlock and John jump out of the window at 221B when a grenade explodes there, it’s just “Boop! And they’re fine.”

Of course there’s no serious attempt at explaining this logically. Except perhaps Gatiss claiming that they both landed on Speedy’s awning - whatever good that would do to them, since the awning is leaning downwards, but never mind... But we never even saw that happen, did we? A great deal of time is then dedicated to show all the precautions to have Martin and Ben jumping safely at low level onto a madras supported by empty cardboard boxes.

Sian Brooke did say something interesting about Sherrinford, however, that got me thinking. She said that Eurus “wants revenge for the years and years that she has been held captive” there, isolated, and that in TFP the Holmes children are now “lab rats” and “it’s an experiment”. On a meta level, I think we can indeed see this episode - and maybe the whole show - as a kind of experiment, but maybe we, the audience, are also lab rats? Since Sherrinford is slightly shaped like a film camera (not commented in the extra material, of course), it leads my thought to all the adaptations through the years and years where Holmes and Watson have not been allowed to be together. A whole century when Sherlock Holmes has been held captive, restricted by the very same sort of heteronormative filter that all this extra material imposes; it’s like Sherrinford, isn’t it? Which gives all the more meaning to Moriarty’s arrival to the island, accompanied by Freddy Mercury’s “I want to break free”...

I think I’ll let the final words in this little exposé come from Mark Gatiss in The Writers’ Chat (my bolding):

“Moriarty is a fascinating thing in that in our sea of ongoing lies, one thing we’ve genuinely been completely consistent about is telling people he’s dead. But no-one believes it! And it’s a rather brilliant thing.” Again - self-congratulatory statements. But instead of providing some actual evidence of the death of this character, who has kept popping up in almost every episode since his supposed demise, they think that the more a confirmed liar repeats something, the truer it gets? And the more we’re supposed to believe them? Well, all we can do is wait and see. :)

Tagging some people who might be interested:

@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @lukessense @sagestreet @thepersianslipper

My earlier meta on a similar topic (X)

#bbc sherlock dvds #Deception in BBC Sherlock

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time-forum · 3 years ago

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TIME's UP!

Why does Doctor Who completely suck? I’ll try to keep this brief. It seems to have begun with Moffat’s takeover as show runner. While there were good stories and bad alike, and while he tended to keep within the realm of the Doctor’s general narrative, he left loose threads all over the place and gaps with the size and strength of black holes everywhere.

For instance, bringing in John Hurt to be the canonical 9th Doctor because Russell T. Davies wouldn’t bring 8th Doctor Paul McGann in for at LEAST a regeneration cameo back on ’05… SO unnecessary. McGann was never called in for the 50th anniversary until near post production as a sort of after-thought to cement Hurt’s incarnation into place. WHY didn’t Moffat simply put McGann back in the TARDIS for the 50th? Answer- because he’s a narcissistic bastard who thinks he’s clever.

To be fair, the move WAS very clever. However, it was also stupid, insufferable, and has proven that much of the fan base if filled with morons, psychopaths and mental defectives. Not counting Hurt as the 9th Doctor??? Seriously? Tough shit, kids; it’s canon. You SAW the show, right? You DID listen when he did, in fact, call himself “The Doctor”, didn’t you? Capaldi was called “The Doctor of War”, but that’s not an isolating moniker, now is it? Seriously, kids; get a grip!

Despite this infuriating shit-fuckery, fans have also neglected the fact that David Tenant portrayed two, YES TWO incarnations of the Doctor. In “School Reunion” he did tell Sarah Jane Smith that he’d regenerated ‘half a dozen times’ since last they met.

They last time they canonically met was in ‘The Five Doctors’ with Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor. Add six more- Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, and at the time, Eccleston… that’s only 5, right? Well, Hurt makes 6, baby. That’s just basic math. Need more? Alright, let’s include Matt Smith’s explanation to Clara while he was on Trenzalore. He told her that he was done and couldn’t regenerate anymore and that he was the last of “THIRTEEN SILLY DOCTORS”. Point and set. Done. Canon. Etched in dwarf star alloy. There’s no debate here, children. It’s fact, not your perception, your “truth” or skewed point of view. Fact.

Regeneration, for you novices out there who can’t be bothered with canon material, is when a Time Lord’s body is repaired to cheat death by replacing every single cell with a fresh, new one. Often, this also creates a change of appearance but it is not mandatory or conducive to the process. Anyone who is ‘old school’ and recalls former companion and Time Lady ‘Romana’ already knows that form change can be controlled at will, at least when it isn’t during a time of duress.

Perhaps the Doctor was never good at controlling his regeneration process. Perhaps it’s because he’s half human, according to canon from the 1996 movie. Perhaps his faces were from memories of random people that leapt to mind during the near-fatal instance that triggered the regeneration. Colin Baker played a Time Lord before he was the Doctor and he shot then-Doctor Peter Davison on Gallifrey. Right after, the Doctor wore that face. Perhaps Pertwee’s 3rdDoctor had met the young Curator of the Undergallery, hence changing into Tom Baker’s face as inferred in “Day of the Doctor”. Even Capaldi acknowledged his Doctor’s facial origin.

What we do know for sure and beyond doubt is that when you have something like a coffee mug and it breaks and you follow up by buying a new mug that looks exactly like it, you simply cannot claim that they’re both the same mug and in the case of the Doctor, this simple, cognitive avenue of thought applies as well. All new body- same shape- new incarnation. Period.

While we may live in the Era of Anti-Intellectualism, what with the Americans having elected Trump and the Brits putting that ass-scab Johnson into top political offices, it’s no wonder that the Doctor Who fan base cannot accept these things. They’re still crying like infants; screaming at those of us with working brain cells that Jodie Whittaker is the 13th Doctor.

So while the show may have had its issues, part of the problem is that “Newvians” think they’re oh-so-smart-and-facts-be-damned attitude is somehow valid. It isn’t even a pleasure talking ‘Who’ with others. Too often there’s the resounding risk of being attacked or ostracized as a heretic for calling them out on their bullshit. This isn’t to let the BBC, marketing divisions and “bling” makers that don’t want to change their packaging off the hook. They’re very much part of this problem and it’s an issue that wouldn’t BE an issue had Davies clarified to the unwashed masses that Tennant was two incarnations and had Moffat simply hired Paul McGann to be the Doctor for the Time War in the goddamn first place.

Moving on, this brings us to the post-Smith era with the 14th Doctor, Peter Capaldi. I had very much looked forward to his time as the Doctor as he was a long-time fan of the show and he knew his stuff. That seems a little trivial to some, but if you’re going to play a role, you should KNOW the character you’re going to portray. I really have no complaints about Capaldi’s era; his Doctor was a bit like earlier incarnations and it was Capaldi’s interpretation of how the character should be, but thinking back, not too many of the stories from his time were… memorable. Part of what made Davies’ time as show runner was that most, not all but most of the stories done during his tenure as show runner were not only memorable but worth revisiting.

I’ve binged Eccleston and Tennant’s stories, starting with “Rose” straight through until “End of Time” with a lot of enthusiasm. During that stretch, I found that one of the best; nay THE best one-off writer was Moffat. I was looking forward to his legacy when it was announced that he was taking the helm when Davies stepped down. However, he initially turned the show into “The Amy Pond Show featuring Rory and some guy called The Doctor with special guest star River Song”. The lead character, the one the show is named after, seriously took a back seat for the first few seasons. The “Suck Factor” came into play, not just on a story by story basis but for a whole season where Moffat couldn’t hold a story arc together if his life depended upon it while Davies was a total master of it. Moffat refused to listen to suggestion on criticism, and that egotism make the suck factor worse.

During Capaldi’s time it only got worse. Add to that the same horrific fuck-ups that were done during the show’s original run began bubbling up like they did back then. Egos began to run the show. The “PC” police started poking at it, chipping away and changing it so that it took a lot of the fun out of things. The writing got bad. The filming schedules were sporadic and there were large gaps of time between shows. It was a death spiral for Doctor Who back in the 1980’s, and we’re seeing it again. At least Capaldi’s time as the Doctor ended will and introducing ‘Missy’ was a welcome surprise which was obviously a warm-up for the introduction of a female Doctor (which was a concept that had been around since 4th Doctor Tom Baker left the show and before they’d cast Peter Davison as his successor).

With that said, I get asked “Why a woman? What’s wrong with having a decent male role model that doesn’t carry a gun?” Well, the answer is- nothing. I rather prefer a male in the role, but have never, EVER been adverse to a female actor in the lead. This is a science fiction show, after all, and if it is to grow, new ideas and concepts will come around for better or worse and there’s never been an issue for me having a female lead. I just wish it wasn’t Jodie Whittaker. Holy. Shit.

She’s an alright actor, but she’s clearly out of her bailiwick when it came to Doctor Who. She’d barely heard of it and new NOTHING of the character or the show’s history. She went into this with ZERO research and it shows. She’s NOT Doctor material on any level and cannot act the part for shit. This era already began in the crapper and of course, having Chibnall as show runner made the show’s inevitable demise more concrete.

To begin with, let’s just start with some basics, shall we? I’ve made it clear that I loathe Whittaker in the role, especially when there’s someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge out there who’d simply and totally own the role and make it so much better. However, the show kicked off trying to run like an Olympic sprinter and it ended up staggering like a drunk on meth attempting to navigate a dark, foggy back alley in a heavy snow on icy tarmac covered in wet leaves.

The outfit. Holy mother of god, what the fuck? If you thought Colin Baker’s ‘technicolour dreamcoat’ was a disaster, what the unholy hell did the wardrobe department put Whittaker in? It looks like something from a “Mork and Mindy” reject bin. The first female incarnation and THAT was the best they could come up with??? Seriously?

Then came the crystal-tipped dildo of a sonic screwdriver. Need I say more on this? Your first woman Doctor and you give her a sonic screwdriver that’s sure to hit the ol’ G-spot every time? What the hell were they thinking?

And the TARDIS. Sweet Jesus, who the hell let props DO that to the TARDIS???? A biscuit dispenser? I thought Smith’s initial ‘brassworks’ console room was horrible at first but it did grow on me after a while but Whittaker’s “Crystal Fuckery On Ice” console room is simply the singular, worst of all the TARDIS sets ever made since the show’s inception.

To compliment the already uninteresting new Doctor, let’s talk about the companions. Not much to say, really. Not interesting. Not exciting. Not memorable in any way other than the fact that they cast everyone from ‘the north’ and if it wasn’t for captioning, most Americans can’t understand most of what any of the main cast is saying. Hell, I’m an American and my family mostly British and my kid has to keep asking me what the hell is being said most of the time and I can’t even tell half the time.

First season… What can I say? I’ve got nothing, mostly because I can’t really recall it without looking it up or watching it again. It was totally unmemorable until the very end when it perked up a tick with the desperate yet irrelevant stunt of bring Captain Jack Harkness in for a cameo out of sheer desperation for rating because things were just THAT boring and unmemorable. Add to that a ‘mystery Doctor’, or ‘Doctor Ruth’ as she’s sometimes called, dressed FAR better than Jodi and man, could Jo Martin command the role, upstaging Jodie on every level. She was more The Doctor in her few and short scenes than Jodie was in her entire time in the role. There’s no solid explanation as to who Jo’s character really was at time or writing. Then again, no solid anything is Chibnall’s signature in Doctor Who. Nothing is consistent or sacred to this fop. This brings us to…

Whittaker’s final season- thank fuck.

While I was all for a more inclusive and diverse cast for DW, and having a woman in the lead, putting a twat like Chibnall in charge became a real deal breaker. I knew his type back in school. He tipped his hand as one of those angry little jerks who say the 4th Doctor’s story “The Brain of Morbius” back in the summer of 1977 and lost his mind in the process.

In this particular story, the Doctor visits Karn, meets the Sisterhood, and discovers that a villainous renegade and war criminal Time Lord named Morbius, who’d been executed on Karn long ago, lived on in the lab of a ‘mad scientist’. Only Morbius’ brain survived and was kept in a jar to be placed in an amalgamation of alien body parts found in different crash sites on the barren plains of Karn. The scientist even has an ‘Igor’ sidekick to help him. Eventually (spoiler alert) the brain of Morbius gets put inside the “Frankenstein’s Monster” of a body and the Doctor faces off with him in a game Time Lords call “Mind Bending” which is, as the Doctor explained to Sarah Jane Smith, a sort of Time Lord wrestling, mind-to-mind.

With the Doctor and Morbius at the controls of a mind scanning machine, the two duke it out, trying to push each other back into their own memories, risking death if pushed too far. We saw the faces of Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell appear on the monitor as well as eight others. No actual, solid declaration was initially made at the time but behind the scenes, writers and producers inferred that the Doctor could be older than we thought and his story having begun far before Hartnell came along… BUT!

THEN came “The Deadly Assassin” which flushed that notion down the shitter. It was two stories after when the 4th Doctor had to return to Gallifrey (first time on screen) and he’d left Sarah Jane back on Earth (apparently nowhere near her home in Croydon). In this story, it is plainly and definitively cast out there: The Rule of Twelve. A Time Lord could regenerate twelve times for a total of thirteen incarnations. This meant that given that there were already eight “Morbius Doctors” revealed on top of the four we knew of from the show already, that put Tom Baker at incarnation number twelve and that his successor would be the last one.

Given that this would complicate matters and/or kill one of the BBC’s biggest cash-cow, they amended the prior narrative that inferred that the other faces were the Doctor and changed it to those of Morbius before he was executed. It wasn’t a detrimental fix, but one that was needed to clarify things. Thus it was clarified, settled, and that was that, right?

Wrong. There were and are still fans who will tear your face off like a maddened monkey if you tell them otherwise; they are firm that those faces were of the Doctor. “Take your facts and get fucked! It’s the Doctor!” Wild, right? You’d think that people who persisted with it would be considered the bloody village idiot and ignored, ostracized and put into a mental health facility before they hurt themselves of others or do irreparable damage to something… Something like Doctor Who… by making one of these deranged arseholes show runner someday… like Chibnall. Yeah, he was one of the village idiots. You can tell because he specifically and intentionally showed a very brief flash of the Mind Bending scene when “Doctor Karen” was having flashback as the whole “Timeless Child” horse shit was being shoveled around.

Speaking of “Doctor Karen” and Whittaker’s Doctor is known in some circles… While I had no complaints of grief over a woman actor taking the role… I thought the point of feminism was to being all people to a respectful, common level of existence. People who fear feminism because of misinterpretation just had their fears affirmed when Doctor Karen told Stephen Fry’s character that she’s “had an upgrade”… UPGRADE???? Really? Now Doctor Who is pitching that women are an upgrade from being a man? Moffat did the same thing after The General regenerated into a woman and she complained about how men cope with all the testosterone. Jesus Horatio Christ. What a defeat for Doctor Who right there. So much for the assertion that women aren’t trying to make themselves out to be better than men and the really shit thing is that it was MEN that put that out there in the Whoniverse. Yeah; fuck you, Moffat and ESPECIALLY Chibnall, you ball-less wonders.

As this whole “Timeless Child” shit-fuckery rolled out, I could see that Chibnall was trying to push his own views out into the show with no regard to established canon or respect for all those who worked so hard on the show for over fifty years. He was going to burn it all down and try to remake it in his own image. Unfortunately, that image is akin to an angry monkey throwing its own shit around the zoo and he clearly thinks he’s clever and even funny. Hell, he seems to be having a grand old time while the Whoniverse burns to the ground irreparably.

So what hope does Russell T. Davies have as he returns as show runner in charge of all the creative powers while the BBC is left sitting in a damp puddle of it’s own shart-fest?

Part of the magic of Doctor Who was the lead character being a good-guy shrouded in a bit of mystery. We weren’t meant to know exactly who he was in his past before leaving Gallifrey. Having a little slice of his past come to light on rare occasion was gravitas; a bit of sweet delight added to an already delightful meal for the mind that was as subtle as a chocolate covered cherry. Davies knew this when he re-imagined the Doctor as a sort of PTSD stricken, post war veteran of the Time War and he left that time a mystery to slowly be unfurled over the course of years that led up to the 50thanniversary story eight years later. During that time, the Doctor revealed a bit about his origins but not really a lot. It was more of a revelation into the people of Gallifrey, really.

During the Classics, Hartnell never specified why he and his granddaughter Susan were exiled. Troughton revealed that the Doctor’s family was “gone” and that he’d still think of them but we don’t actually know if he meant that they were dead or lost somewhere or if they were the ones that sent the Doctor away and didn’t want him around anymore. Much later, during McCoy’s story “Remembrance of the Daleks” it is revealed that when the Doctor first stole the TARDIS and ran away with Susan that he’d brought with him a relic of the Ancients of Gallifrey; the Hand of Omega. Still, he wasn’t totally clear on how he got this relic or specifically WHY he made off with it. All we know is that when the Doctor first arrived at Totter’s Lane, he hid the Hand on Earth and that McCoy came back to just after that time in order to reclaim it so that the Daleks wouldn’t get their plungers on it.

The Doctor is, or at least WAS a character with a mostly untold, mysterious past and that defined the character immensely. It was a common consistency from the first episode right up until the show died with Peter Capaldi’s incarnation. The entire “Whittaker Era” destroyed any semblance of Doctor Who. While everyone was once free to imagine what the Doctor’s past was all about, that’s now been utterly annihilated by Chibnall’s maniacal, childish and outright desperation to be loved as he crammed a nonsensical, boorish, and very forced storyline out of his arse in order to make his own fantasies and dreams the final, end-all-be-all of Whovian Canon. There is no longer really a “Who” in “Doctor Who” anymore. It’s now Chibnall’s wet dream; a foul-tasting scheme for revenge for all the times he was told to sod off over the Morbius Doctors and all the times he’d been beaten up by bullies for being such an argumentative, geeky asshole. Well, that’s what I’d wager this all is, at any rate.

There’s only one real fix to this problem and sadly, it sucks and yet it’s the only path to redemption for my beloved Doctor Who. Davies has two solid paths to take from here on out and either choice is going to piss off a lot of people. To restore Doctor Who to its former greatness, he’s going to essentially have to do a major retcon job and start over with Capaldi’s regeneration. Maybe getting Jo Martin to return as the REAL post-Capaldi Doctor and making Jodi a stray bit of regeneration energy that went astray or something would do it… Perhaps Phoebe Waller-Bridge… Helen Mirren, anyone?

The other path Davies could take is literally to do nothing. He could try to soldier on and hope ignoring the issue like he did in clarifying Tennant’s two incarnations and push by it in hope we’ll ignore or forget about it as well. That seems to be the 21stcentury way of dealing with things in “polite society”; turning things into “alternative facts”.

In closing, I can only say this- this sort of thing is EXACTLY what the 4thDoctor was driving at when he said:

"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

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misscrawfords · 5 years ago

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educate me on the subject of moffat? i dont get the hate :3

Ahahahaha well, “hate” is a strong word. I’ve never met him so I can’t hate him but I certainly have very little respect for him as a writer and his continued success is infuriating.

Here are some articles that explain some of my problems with him:

Why does the man behind Doctor Who and Sherlock still have a job?

@stfu-moffat

The finale of Sherlock Also here

My base line is that he has certain writing ticks that are Bad and he is unapologetic about them. Mainly he is a misogynistic.

His breed of female characters are “strong” and “sexy” and ultimately exist to please the male viewer-insert. In Doctor Who before Moffat’s tenure the companions were the main character who went on journeys to self-determination. Rose went from being a shop girl to being Bad Wolf and being a genuinely equal (platonic?) love interest for the Doctor. Martha realised she could stand on her own and voluntarily left him. Donna’s down-to-earth attitude kept the Doctor in check and she became the “most important woman on earth” by virtue of her humanity. On the contrary, Moffat’s women are all “special” and only exist to point out how amazing the Doctor himself is. Amy has a crush on her childhood imaginary friend and ends up with her arc revolving around pregnancy and motherhood which is quite problematic. River Song is or could be a powerful Time Lord, but instead her entire existence from beginning to end revolves around the Doctor and her relationship to him. She literally does not exist apart from him. As a basis for romance, this is very sketchy.

In Sherlock, Irene Adler becomes a dominatrix obsessed with the uninterested Sherlock despite apparently being a lesbian, which is also pretty problematic. Molly is another pining girl who for some reason is willing to give everything up for a man who is rude and dismissive towards her.

Moffat’s heroines may be “special” and superficially powerful, but look below the surface and very quickly they become one-dimensional male fantasies in high heels and skimpy skirts. Don’t forget that Amy in the beginning isn’t a police officer, she’s a sexy police officer. Nothing wrong with that in itself, except the context.

And then there’s the queerbaiting of Sherlock and John.

My other problem with Moffat’s writing is that his tendency is to write plots that are so complicated that you can’t follow them for no other reason than a kind of masturbatory cleverness. Sometimes in the early seasons of Sherlock that works and is fun and his early season one-off episodes of Doctor Who remain excellent. (See “The Empty Child/Doctor Dances” and “Blink” which are truly fantastic.) But when he becomes a show runner and has to sustain these arcs over a season or longer, they become messy and nonsensical. Everything has to fit together with everything else, time becomes meaningless, changes are made rapidly with no opportunity to absorb them. Moffat has a habit of resetting the story so many times that there are no consequences - nothing sticks. “Everyone lives!” is glorious in the context of DW S01, but when it happens over... and over... and over again, you can just shrug and assume whoever just died will find a way of surviving. There’s no emotional reality in Moffat’s stories. The plot becomes trying to understand who River Song is, how Sherlock survives... not engaging with a human and relatable emotional connection to any of them. And then his climaxes become bigger and bigger every season until they are ridiculous. The threat becomes larger, the deus ex machina needed to resolve it becomes even larger and ultimately none of it means anything.

And honestly, anyone who writes a series finale like the Sherlock finale deserves to never write again.

#anti Steven Moffat #Anonymous

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inevitably-johnlocked · 5 years ago

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Hi Steph! Considering that I read your recent post on Season Five, this isn't a good question because you already kind of answered it, but do you think there is much of any chance at all that they (Mofftiss) are trying to confuse us and drive us away from the idea that maybe, just maybe, we will get a surprise or they already have it alllll mapped out or something like that?

(referencing this post)

Hi Nonny!!

Sorry for the delay in a reply... I drafted this with a link to the post as soon as I saw it come in so I knew which post you were referencing, and then it got lost in my ridiculous amount of drafted asks LOL LOL

ANYWAY, I’ve discussed this idea before in the past under the ‘secret episode’ tag, and most recently on this post here, and I’ll mirror my response with that one: I’d like to hope so, with the possibility of it airing around the 10th Anniversary in July, with it made up of deleted/secretly filmed scenes from all the seasons or S4, and will play out as the TRUE S4. That’s what my heart wants.

My head, on the other hand, REALLY doesn’t think it will happen. They’re not “trying to be clever”, that’ I’m very certain of... they were genuinely shocked that S4 got such a poor reception, and they couldn’t believe everyone disliked TFP. They literally were going to nominate TFP up for an Emmy until the reception of it was so poorly received and they did TLD instead. That’s ego, not cleverness. When S5/secret episode is announced, if ever, of COURSE they’re going to say “yeah we planned it like this all along”... no one likes to admit they’re wrong, least of all someone like Moffat.

Now, I do believe at one time they did have something all mapped out with the idea of Johnlock in mind, and I do think that Ben and Martin at the very least believed they were playing a Gay Sherlock / Bi John dynamic. Something happened along the way, whether it was studio or BBC interference, certain people not wanting it to go that way because of their ridiculous jealousy / desire to be made famous like Ben and Martin, Mofftiss’ egos, or pettiness about the fandom made up of primarily of people Moffat has a history of shitting on figuring out TAB before it aired, we will never know unless someone says something after an NDA or something expires.

I really REALLY do get why people want there to be more... S4 felt like such a slap to the face of the fandom, but sometimes we have to step back and look at things logically. Being a fence sitter like myself is fine, if only because we need to keep our mental health in check. Staying too deep into it to the point of gatekeeping and being a right arse to anyone who doesn’t “believe” is really unhealthy and worrisome. It’s okay, Nonny, to hope and to believe, it really is, but for your mental health, know that if nothing happens around the time of the anniversary in July 2020, we’re probably not going to see much of anything Sherlock-related episode-wise until 2022 the EARLIEST, and that’s just based on checking everyone’s IMDb pages.

Love you Nonny! <3

#steph replies #s5 shitposting #s5 and beyond #secret episode #my thoughts #sherlock s5 #chatting with nonnies

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freebooter4ever · 6 years ago

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For the fml thing... I don’t know if you even know these but Spike (Cowboy Bebop), Amy Pond (Doctor Who), and uhm idk Calcifer (Howl’s Moving Castle).

OH This Is A Good One

I do know who Spike is and oh boy (have you been stalking john cho’s instagram for spike costume/hair teases too or is that just me???) i think probably i’d have to put spike as the enemies to lovers. It’d probably end up more like friendly rivals to lovers, but really im not picky. Spike is the type of character that I would have gone crazy over as a teen but i didnt realize existed until last yearish thanks to hearing the cowboy bebop theme song for the first time ever on a mccree playlist. And im not saying id be able to do the job, but i feel like his character type needs a good rival, equally clever and able to slither out of sticky dangerous situations to win the day. One of those classic they keep running into each other and teasing the audience with ust until finally FINALLY the dam breaks. Anyway talk to me about how excited i am about john cho playing an older version of spike in the live action series because i know im not active in the fandom at the moment but OH BOY. Im excited.

Amy Pond I actually dont like too much. Like she’s hot but thats literally her whole role in the damn show. I was much more of a Rose and Martha and Donna fan. I could go on for hours about how much I despise the sexism and gross objectification and lack of proper character development in steven moffats shitty writing. :/ If I could rewrite Amy Pond better I’d proabably pick fake dating? Au where Amy Pond is actually Eliza Dooley in disguise cause of witness protection program where there was some kind of big pharma scandal and she decides to escape into time and space rather than face a reality where she loses her twitter follower count. In this scenario I’d be the doctor, because imagining the doctor trying to save the universe while also dealing with Eliza would be some kind of magic.

CALCIFER. MY BABY FIRE DEMON, my cerulean blue teardrop, my freedom loving falling star. I am so glad you asked about Calcifer. Who would obviously be slow BURN. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. He’d burn my bacon for that. Good thing I dont like bacon. In the my-aunt-moved-to-ingary after she read my ex howl the riot act but then discovered magic is a thing scenario, i imagine with royal wizards being a very small social circle, id have to forgive howl rather quickly, since he and my aunt would probably end up working together from time to time. And i’d probably take out my pent up frustrations by crying to calcifer as seems to be the trend, like with michael and sophie. And like I know Calcifer came back to the castle after sophie released howl and him from their bond, but he secretly is still full of wanderlust, i mean he is a star, he is used to having an entire galaxy to explore. So after we bond at howl’s fireplace over our mutual hatred for bacon and breakfast foods, Calcifer would clearly shape shift into car form and we’d become world travelers. And when we’d hit anywhere without a priper road, like oceans or some shit, he’d just transform back into a magic carpet. And im not saying this is the origin story of my car but this is totally the origin story of my car.

#spacepandar

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youknowmymethods · 6 years ago

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Content Creator Interview #5

Welcome back again folks! This week in our fifth interview @vermofftiss chats to @mizjoely about her love of lists, her fantasy season five finale, and reveals the truth about who really writes her stories...

Hi, @mizjoely here, chatting with @vermofftiss about my sherlolly writing and fandom experiences, and answering some questions submitted by a few other folks. I’ve been involved in fandom in one way or another since the early 1980s, which is also when I started writing fanfiction - for classic Doctor Who and Star Trek in its various incarnations.

@vermofftiss here, putting forward the aforementioned questions. I’ll also be trying to weasel some advice out of @mizjoely that I can use for my own writing, which has been a casual ongoing thing since I published my first sherlolly fic in 2014.

Vermofftiss: I think our first encounter was in the Sherlollychat in the fall of 2014, around the time I got onto AO3. Which means series 3 was five years ago. How does it feel knowing that series 4 was already two years ago? What’s changed in the time since it aired?

Mizjoely: Oh, I miss the sherlollychat, or at least I did until Channy came up with the discord version! It’s hard to fathom that so much time has passed since I joined the fandom! (I became active on tumblr in November 2013 after discovering Sherlolly earlier that same year, btw.) Series 3 was five years ago. Series 4 was two years ago. Crazy!

As for what’s changed since then, I’d have to say one positive thing is that the fandom wank has calmed way the hell down since S4…. Another change that I’ve seen is probably common to all fandoms over time - new writers and content creators have joined the fandom while (sadly) many others have moved on to other fandoms. Of course, that’s to be expected when your show is essentially over, but it’s still kind of sad to lose folks completely to other fandoms.

V: Which series was your favourite to play with as a writer? When did you really get into writing Sherlolly?

M: I would have to say Series 4 has definitely been a great series to write for - so much angst! The I love you! Mary Watson’s very sad death, Rosie Watson becoming a character, Mrs. Hudson showing us what a badass she is, and of course Eurus Holmes entering the picture. We might not have gotten as much Molly Hooper as we wanted, but the scenes we did get with her were tremendous and gave so much inspiration to me and many other writers.

I really got into Sherlolly as a ship after seeing TRF, as I’m sure is true with many folks - especially the “what do you need” scene. And it was so much fun to dive into the possibilities of life after Sherlock’s ‘death’ between Series 2 and 3, I consider that a real golden age of Sherlolly writing. My first published Sherlock/Sherlolly fic was “Conversations With A Dead Detective”, set Post Reichenbach, which according to fanfiction.net I published on 04/11/13 (so I’m nearly at my five year Sherlolly- versary, woo hoo!).

A quick look at my spreadsheet (don’t judge me, I love my lists) shows that I wrote or at least started 37 fics that year (one of which I’m still working on, yikes! - The World As We Know It, a vamp!lock fic). I’m currently sitting at almost 500 fics for Sherlolly, which still amazes me, that I could be that inspired by a pair of fictional characters! (For comparison, my second most prolific fandom is Doctor Who, for whom I wrote a total of 25 stories over a period of 20 years. And of those 25, only about a dozen were for my main ship, Five/Tegan).

V: A couple of questions from @ohaine -

1) Based on the sheer volume of your work, I have this theory that you’re actually some sort of artistic collective rather than just one person, please tell me I’m right!

M: You have discovered my secret: I'm actually four raccoons in a trenchcoat! Seriously though, until I was bitten by the Sherlolly bug, my output was much, much lower, even though I've been writing fanfics since the early 1980s. For example, I love the Zutara ship for Avatar: Last Airbender, but I only wrote three fics for that. I wrote about 25 fics for Doctor Who, and about the same amount for the various Star Treks (not including Khanolly). Nothing set my writing muse afire like Sherlolly, and I doubt anything ever will again.

and, 2) You write a lot of AUs, and I’m wondering what inspires them?

M: Considering that I started off as a strictly Canon Universe/Canon Compliant writer in all of my other fandoms, it still seems funny to me how much I enjoy writing and reading AUs now. I started reading them after finally running out of canon compliant fics to read and discovering how much fun it was to transplant the characters into a different universe. And that, of course, made me think about what sort of AUs I could fit Molly and Sherlock into.

In fact, the very first BBC Sherlock story I started to write (never finished or posted) was an AU because I was nervous about trying to write Sherlock and figured no one would complain too much about him being OOC if it was a fantasy setting. (I ended up taking the plunge on a canon universe post Reichenbach fic and posted that and a lot of other canon universe fics before returning to AUs.)

Wait, that doesn't answer the question! What inspires them? The same things that inspire all my writing: wanting to read a specific kind of fic and not being able to find it; fics that other authors have written that make me itch to put my own spin on the idea; dreams; books I've read or movies or TV shows I've watched...inspiration is everywhere when you really, really, really love a ship. (Gawd that's cheesy but it's true - no love, no writing fanfic, period end of paragraph.)

V: This past spring I finally got the nerve to start working on my first proper AU (not CC, CU, or UA) after sitting on the idea for about 3 years. Have you ever had to wait to be “ready” to start working on a concept? How much do you need to know about a project to get going on it?

M: I have absolutely had to wait to be ready to start working on a concept. My very first attempt at a Sherlolly fic (never finished or published) was going to be an AU because I was so intimidated by the idea of writing Sherlock Holmes in the canon universe set up by Moffat & Gatiss. I was terrified I wouldn’t get his voice right, that he would be too OOC for folks, that I wouldn’t be able to make him clever enough or that I’d mess things up a dozen different ways. So I started writing the AU instead, and in doing so (over a course of several months), I finally realized that no, I wanted to start off in the canon universe. Just trying to write him at all, in any setting, made me a little less intimidated by him. But I might never have written anything if I hadn’t started that abandoned AU. (And I look forward to seeing your AU when you’re ready to post it!)

V: Does reader feedback ever impact the plots of your stories or the building of your AUs?

M: It absolutely can, especially when someone leaves a comment that makes me think about my story in a different light. I won’t go so far as to say comments have caused me to redo anything on a larger scale (such as change the ending) but certainly I’ve thrown things into the fic or expanded on ideas expressed in a comment to make the story that much richer.

That’s one of the best things about being active in fandom - the interactions between readers and writers. Of course, the reverse can also be true - I remember needing a LOT of fan-friend coddling when some folks were unhappy with the ending of my story ‘Abandoned’ (i.e., my Molly let my Sherlock get off too easily). But you have to have thick skin to be a creator, and remember that not everyone likes the same things. And you also have to be able to say yes, I could have done this better, or if I had to do it over I’d do it differently. It’s all part of the creative process.

V: Are there any scenes or aspects that were cut from a story that you regretted leaving out at the end?

M: Not really. Most things that I cut have been vetted by my betas (shout-out to ALL betas for being willing to help you make your story better!) and jettisoning those things has always made my stories better. (Plus I keep a folder of scraps that got cut and periodically review those scraps to see if I might be able to salvage them.)

V: On top of being one of the better-known Sherlolly writers in the tag, you’re also the single person behind the Sherlollbrary. As much as I love to organize my life and everything else I can get my hands on, that’s not something I think I’d ever actually want to do. So what made you decide to start cataloguing Sherlolly fics?

M: My love of lists. Seriously, that’s it. I love making lists of things - like, how many stories did I write in 2013 for Sherlolly (37, as you now know!), how many one-shots have I written vs. multi-chapters, how many were prompts...and then I started seeing people doing lists of various tropes. The one that made me decided to start my Sherlollilists side blog was one put together for Sherlolly omegaverse stories. As more and more lists were created, edited, and added (I’m currently at 140 official lists, with more than a dozen unofficial lists), I decided it would nice to organize them all (not realizing quite what I was getting into!) as one spreadsheet, with other tropes and tags and keywords for folks to help narrow down their searches. It always give me a little thrill when I open the library and see folks are browsing, so I like to think it’s a useful tool (although I am looking forward to finishing it someday!)

@writingwife-83 asked: You work tirelessly to organize all the multitude of writing this ship produces, but how do you feel that affects you as a writer? Does it make you less interested in writing your own fics? Or does it tend to help get the wheels turning and inspire you?

M: I have to admit, sometimes curating the lists can completely put me off writing, simply due to feeling oversaturated. This is especially true when I am reading or skimming over fics that are, shall we say, not the best of the bunch. Or the times when I'm just pushing myself even if I'm not really enthusiastic about doing it. Those times, I've learned to just step back, which is why sometimes the lists don't get updated very quickly.

On the other hand, rereading a favorite or a forgotten gem can really get my creative juices flowing. At times like that, I fall back in love with the ship and the fandom all over again.

V: When you’re stuck with writer’s block or just a lack of motivation, does it help you more to reread an old fave or to go back through some of your own works? Have you noticed your style has changed much?

M: It does help, absolutely. It reminds me why I love this ship so much, and helps me reconnect with others in the fandom. People think of reading as passive and writing as solitary, but to me it’s an interactive process. Reading great fics, new can old, helps feed your creativity. And nowadays the internet helps so much as well - there are awesome resources and fandom spaces to talk to other folks about their works and your own, reminding you that you’re not creating in a vacuum. (And I REALLY love the cheerleading section of the Sherlolly Discord site. That can help unstick my creativity like nobody’s business!)

As for my style changing - yeah, it definitely has. I feel like my writing has become more streamlined and less clunky since I first started. I still do a lot of semicolon abuse but at this point I’ve decided that’s just my style and will likely never change.

Thanks for the excellent questions and for letting me ramble on!

V: I’m sure we can do a lot more rambling if left on the trail. How about one last one: In the currently hypothetical series 5, how would you continue the story from where it left off?

M: Oooh, good one! If I was in charge we would see that Sherlock and Molly are continuing their relationship, culminating with a wedding at the end of the third episode. But since I’m not in charge, I’m thinking that Mofftiss would give us some subtle hints, like John casually mentioning to Sherlock that he and Rosie can’t join ‘them’ for dinner that night for whatever reason. And maybe some small changes to 221B to show hints that someone else spends time there other than Sherlock and the Watsons - a cherry patterned pillow, perhaps? A Bart’s ID card with a woman’s picture to show that no, it isn’t one Sherlock nicked to get access to a place he otherwise couldn’t get to? A woman’s coat hanging next to Sherlock’s? Something like that. And some private smiles between Sherlock and Molly, little things like that. Enough to give us hope but not enough to give us proof! They do like to tease that way!

Non-shipwise, I think Eurus would make a return because come on, how do you leave a character like that catatonic? I also think they would return to ACD canon to revise a few more cases for the modern age, and maybe (maybe!) have John start dating again (especially if they’re so married to canon that they killed Mary off - since John seems to have been married at least twice, they would probably explore that option).

I know, that last part is a bit vague but honestly? I hope they surprise the hell out of us in a good way if we ever get that fifth series!

Next Week, Friday March 22nd, @ashockinglackofsatin talks to @sunken-standard

#content creator interviews #sherlolly #Sherlock #mizjoely #vermofftiss

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tillthenexttimedoctor · 7 years ago

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The Character Development of River Song

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

The story of River Song twists and turns as it runs through time and space. It forces its way through the harsh landscape of her beginnings, bends around the Doctor, until one day, it will meet its end at the Library. A worn book in the biography section, incomparable memories saved on the biggest hard drive in the universe. Arguably, some answers may only be found – or, indeed, questions may only be asked – if we try to follow River’s path in its actual order for once.

Hence, I will resurrect a series which began with Let’s Kill Hitler and has since pursued River’s life through Closing Time, The Wedding of River Song, and A Good Man Goes to War. Until now, River has revealed who she is to her parents and the Doctor, but the next time she encounters them, this knowledge will have already been washed away. The tides of time are merciless.

In The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon*, this is still a new kind of pain and flirtatious smiles can only hide so much. Around her, her past is colliding. An astronaut in a lake, tears running down her face. A child in a suit which swallows her whole, calling for help. It is a punch to the gut, but River Song would never have become River Song if she did not have the strength to bear it.

It is strange to watch The Impossible Astronaut with the awareness of how much River knows. An invitation to Utah does not pose a mystery for her and never holds the promise of a carefree family outing. Even if she truly forgot what she went through on the beach of Lake Silencio, she would be able to recite the historical facts by heart. “Some say this is when the Doctor dies.” The time and place are noted in pencil in her diary. They likely grace the pages of her PhD dissertation. And they would have been mentioned in her sentencing, for the supposed crime she committed there.

River knows what fate awaits the Doctor when he gets up to walk towards the lake. (Herself. A certain death. Maybe a clever escape?) When she fires at her own receding figure, she knows she will not hit her target. For a younger River, seeing herself might be a promise of forgiveness. For an older River, it is a cruelty, and so is making her parents witness the Doctor’s death. Amy, sobbing over his body. Rory, with what for River must be a familiar steadfastness, doing what needs to be done to give the Doctor a fire burial. It ends in a well-deserved slap, that will never be able to express the full pain of those moments.

“Now, I love a bad girl, me, but trust you? Seriously.” There is a slap in her face, too. Because however fraught their history, whatever half-truths and secrets lie between the Doctor and her, he was the person who defended her even as she was poisoning him. The moment she chose to give him her regenerations in Let’s Kill Hitler, she gifted him her trust in return. Whatever life has put her through, that trust in him is as much part of her rebellion against her fate as her refusal to kill the Doctor in The Wedding of River Song.

And so River will dive off rooftops without any hesitation, knowing that he will be there. And this Doctor will catch her. But he also doesn’t quite know her yet. There’s a sense of fascination and growing affection that makes it easy to forget occasionally. River can lose herself in the familiarity of flirtation and banter. But her future is haunting her just as much as her past is. Time looms, in all directions.

River’s fears fully rise to the surface in her conversation with Rory. She might have thrown a suggestive comment at the Doctor just moments earlier, but here we see just how strong her trepidation about the future is. She paints a romanticised picture of a young innocent girl instead of the young woman hell-bent on murder, but her future looms ever so truthful. The Doctor has already forgotten who she is. It is only a matter of time before he does not remember her altogether.

There are many turning points in River’s life, with so many crucial decisions. Time never truly stands still. River and the Doctor choose each other, over and over again. Now River’s ghosts have come back to haunt her. Because this is not when her own mother pointed a gun at her, not knowing the suit hides a child, not knowing it is hers. This is not when Melody Pond rescued herself from the Silence. This is not when River Song killed the Doctor. This is not when she refused to do so, all of time stops in its tracks. This is the time she must watch it all happen and that might be the worst of all.

She walks the winding paths of her past, almost to its beginning, to a little lost girl who is already trying to break free from the chains her supposed destiny put her in. “I’m scared of the spaceman,” says the little girl, but she is already in the space suit. It’s likely that another being from space stars in her nightmares and, unknowingly, her cry for help has reached the very person she was made to fear. The Doctor is coming for her. In a race to save a little girl, he cannot know that he might be the monster.

When it comes down to it, The Impossible Austronaut/Day of the Moon is an episode in which the task at hand is not achieved by its heroes. They never save the child. Melody Pond must claw her own way out of the space suit and run away. “She must be incredibly strong,” River observes, looking at the remains of her prison and it’s true in more ways than one. All alone in the word, with magic at her fingertips, Melody Pond will survive and find her parents eventually. It will take many years until she faces her kidnappers on even footing. By then, her name will be River Song.

After being forced to watch her fate unravel for two episodes, the moment they rescue Amy is the first time that history releases its holds on River and allows her to take revenge on those who stole her agency from her. The Silence formed her into a weapon and now her abusers, her owners, find themselves on the other side of her gun. River Song has reclaimed love for herself. She will reclaim kindness and wisdom, too, eventually. But River never tries to hold any claims to morality. Like time itself, she is not a merciful creature. The Silence played with fire and they will burn in it, too.

At the end of this adventure, we are privy to a private moment between River and the Doctor, full of familiarity, for the characters and for us. There is the back and forth with hints of a future, of a past, we have not seen yet, that echoes the goodbyes in Amy’s garden and at the Byzantium. There is also the sense that River has done this many times before, in her knowing smile, in the comfortable way she reaches for the Doctor’s bowtie. We might watch their romance in fragments, but scenes like this hint at the intimacy and love that are written between the lines.

Until River Song kisses the Doctor, just once more, and realises that it is the first. That this could even be the last. However much she has already lost, whatever pain she witnessed in these previous months, River did not even consider that this too would be taken from her so quickly. She knew this Doctor was much younger than the one she had countless adventures with. No Easter Islands for him. No Jim the Fish. But even as she saw his trust erode, she clearly thought she would not lose their relationship so soon. But that, too, might be slipping away from her now. River’s world is breaking apart further.

At the time when the Pandorica opens, she has taken the role of the mystery for granted. At the Byzantium, she has become well-versed in throwing herself into adventure – and, of course, a good deal of flirting – without letting the pain seep through. She will start teasing him about the future ahead, the adventures and revelations still to come for him. That time she is truly scared of, is still much, much farther away. But that too will happen one day.

This meta was started on November 13, 2016 and completed for Moffat Appreciation Day 2018.

*I’ve seen different version of River’s timeline and I think some switch this two-parter with The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. This is the one I like best though.

Other parts in this series:

Part 1 - Let’s Kill Hitler

Part 2 - Closing Time

Part 3 - The Wedding of River Song

Part 4 - A Good Man Goes to War

#dwedit #moffat appreciation day #river song #riveralwaysknew #dw meta #alex kingston #doctor who meta

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nymph1e · 7 years ago

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I am going to say it right now: I was one of the people skeptical over a female Doctor. Now, before you all get out your torches and pitchforks, at least let me say why.

Steven Moffat ruined Doctor Who. He really did. He completely destroyed internal consistency and his focus was so hard on the hype of what was happening, he ignored the actual story. It snowballed with him, because I think that’s what he does. He tricks you into thinking he’s a good writer by setting out an interesting and entertaining early premise, but then he needs to make the story more and more fantastical as he continues. So, Matt Smith’s Doctor was alright, and so were Amy and Rory. But as Moffat’s reign continued, the characters, story lines and Doctors all got steadily worse until I couldn’t stand 12 OR 12′s companions.

Now one of the staples of Moffat’s era was his “feminism”. And by “feminism” I mean, he’d take a female character and make her witty and amazing in every way. She’d “show up” all the men at every turn because she was Just. So. Amazing. She wouldn’t really be much of a character outside of being Perfect “because all girls are Perfect don’t you just love how sassy I am?” I honest to god hated how female characters were written on the show.

So when I heard Moffat was booted off, I began to show interest again. When I heard that the next Doctor was going to be a woman I was interested in what they were going to do with it. When they showed said Doctor shattering a glass ceiling with the caption “it’s about time”, I grew worried. Because it’s not about time. The Doctor is a male character, there’s never been any obligation to make the Doctor a woman. You’ve always had amazing female characters on Doctor Who, so there’s really not a need to add diversity.

That’s not to say that I don’t want a female Doctor! I do! But I want it because I thought it would be an interesting way to shake up the character. I wanted a non-event, I wanted the Doctor to regenerate as female, go “oh, that’s new” and then go on to be a normal character. I didn’t want a Perfect, “woo girl power!” cliche. And that’s where it looked to be going.

But I decided to give the new series a go, as I said I would when Moffat left. And oh boy I was not disappointed. It might only be two episodes in, but these episodes really feel like the Doctor Who I remembered as a kid. Just stories about shit happening to people.

And the Doctor herself? She’s had a few moments of weirdness at being a woman now, but so far it’s not made a big deal of. Yes, she’s clever and competent, but no more then any other non-Moffat Doctor. I know it’s only two episodes in, and I could be super disappointed, but so far, so good.

I made this post for two reasons: the first is to try and explain why SOME PEOPLE were really cautious of the idea of a female Doctor. These people weren’t Sexists, they were just used to Moffat’s particular brand of disappointment. True, there are some dicks who are whinging for no reason, but I think a lot of people were like me.

Second, I make this post in the hopes that some people like me will read it and give the new season a go. I honestly think it’s gotten better guys.

#doctor who #thirteenth doctor #13th doctor #anti steven moffat

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years ago

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ASM vol 5 #9/810 Thoughts

I wrote this before the arc had finished so please bare that in mind if you read on because I recognize some of it might seem weird or redundant in the wake of the conclusion tot he arc.

Kinda sorta mixed feelings for this issue.

Okay so here are the aspects I DIDN’T like.

The recap page implies that the general public is starting to forget Peter ran Parker industries and that the heroes all think Spider-Man is in the pocket of the Kingpin.

Now recap pages aren’t actually part of a story so they don’t exactly count per se.

But if that is the intention of the author then the series has done a poor job of conveying the former. It’s just ignored the elephant in the room that was Parker Industry.

And whilst Spencer was saddled with that mess a mess it was nevertheless and he’s cleaned up a lot of other things. Whilst I didn’t consider it a mess necessitating any cleaning up nevertheless when Steven Moffat took over Doctor Who in 2010 (technically 2009 but that’s not important) very early on he established that the massive global Dalek invasion everyone on Earth knew about had been erased from everyone’s memories (mostly) meaning that now alien invasions could happen and new characters would react as though they were sceptical of the existence of wider alien life.

Again, this wasn’t necessary but the point being was that Moffat put the work in to fix something he perceived as a big problem that resulted from the prior regime. Spencer has been doing some of the same here but not addressed that biggest of elephants in the room that from it’s mere announcement the fanbase was collectively calling out as something that would fuck over the series going forward. Because absolutely not would the general public just forget who Peter Parker was in regards to PI, let alone the company itself.

As for the Kingpin thing, I never thought about it until just this issue but I kind of have issues with it now. Because even if the other heroes do not know Peter’s identity surely they DO know Spider-Man and/or Kingpin well enough by this point that they’d not presume Kingpin and Spider-Man to be buddies.

I mean there ARE ways to explain their feelings, like if they presume Spider-Man to be an imposter or something but him being on the outs with the other heroes merely because Fisk put on an appearance of them being friends in spite of their years of animosity shouldn’t make the heroes automatically resentful towards Spider-Man.

Again, it can work but Spencer needs to better elaborate upon it.

Moving in I did have a few issues with Felicia here. At first Spencer seemed to have her acting vindictive akin to stupidity of Slott’s run after SpOck sent her to jail. But then he explained why she was actually miffed at him and it made more sense.

Well sorta.

On the one hand Felicia has always been in love with Spider-Man and so if in character Felicia should jump at the chance to sleep with him if he propositions her. On the other hand though she does say Spider-Man was being creepy which and we get a mere snippet of what he was doing, so presumably he might’ve gone further than that.

The other thing I didn’t like was Peter’s attitude to Felicia. Hey I’m all for ignoring stupid continuity if you are trying to fix things, but here...that isn’t happening. Peter is treating Felicia as an old friend but she hasn’t been that since 2009 and he’s still lying to her. Maybe that will be fixed next issue and their old relationship established but right now it is problematic.

Oh and also the issue seemed to treat their old relationship as being messed up due to Felicia’s criminal tendencies when that wasn’t it. They hooked up in a monogamous relationship 3 times and whilst that was why they broke up the first time that wasn’t what happened on the second or third occasions.

Finally I wish Spencer wasn’t maintaining Felicia’s tendency to be evil. Being a Robin Hood style character okay sure. But here she is basically what she was like in 2009 (except not made into a vessel for Joe Kelly’s midlife crisis sexual fantasies) but if she’s still like that her character is still in need of repair.

Now this isn’t to say I hated every moment they interacted. Far from it. it was more on point than it’s been in a long time and much improved over BND and Slott’s run. So within the context of post-OMD Spider-Man it was good but within a wider context there are still problems. It is at least written better than before, I especially loved the acknowledgment of them making for a good team.

Finally I disliked the art. Common criticism by this point but it stands.

That’s everything I disliked but on the more positive side of things I felt that the general plot of the Thieves Guild is still a fun idea.

The Thieves Guild are an X-Men/Gambit concept but Spencer has put enough distance between them that this NYC chapter of them can be played enough as a ‘Spider-Man thing’. And the notion of them swiping all the paraphernalia of superheroes through the power of super thievery is a fun superhero plot.

I also don’t mind Felicia being a member of their ranks. I mean I feel like if she always had that tattoo Peter would’ve noticed by now, but there are numerous ways to explain that. If nothing else I love the scene between Felicia and her Dad, because it humanizes her, touches on her origin and allows her to be more her own character. I feel there is so much potential to be exploited from exploring Felicia’s relationship.

Now in spite of all those complaints I actually loved this issue because of the Mary Jane subplot. There are some feelings I’m wrestling with in regards to it though but on balance I think this was ingenious on Spencer’s part.

Okay first thing’s first. The artwork by Michele Bandini looked really nice. If you are going to have two artists work on the same story dividing them up based upon the subplot and the main plot is actually a pretty clever idea. I didn’t know there was going to be two artists actually and so when I checked out the preview pages before the issue’s release I was confused as to why Ramos’ style looked so much better from one page into the next. I wish Bandini had done the whole story to be honest.

But onto the subplot itself.

To begin with it’s just lovely seeing Spencer actually give MJ a subplot of her own and focus upon her. And it’s good focus too. So far he’s not really mishandled her in this story at all so Spencer seems to be a decent MJ writer. I hope this trend continues and the relative lack of Mj/his use of MJ within his first two arcs was more about building up Peter and also paying tribute to Superior Foes which landed him this job in the first place.

I didn’t see the Carlie twist coming. Honest of all characters that reveal could have been she was the farthest from my mind. For some reason my mind was fixated upon Bobby CCarr or Jonathan Caesar somehow.

Now Carlie is...controversial of course.

Carlie was one of the many lame Brand New Day era characters with her status made worse than many of the other ones because

a) She was at times a Mary Sue

b) She was pushed hard as the new love interest. I mean really, really, really pushed hard

c) She had an inconsistent character design

d) She was at times bland and at other times just...not nice. See her considering getting a Green Goblin tattoo to piss Peter off. Yes she was drunk but I don’t care how drunk or angry you are that’s like considering getting a Nazi tattoo to piss off your Jewish boyfriend. You are just nasty at that point

e) She was an idiot during Superior despite being the most sceptical person of Otto

Carlie to say the least was HATED by the fandom.

Now look let’s not sit here and pretend the fandom hate went beyond what was warranted by the character. She was treated as an 11 on the ‘this character sucks’ scale.

But that doesn’t mean she didn’t score a very solid 7 or 8 if you catch my drift.

Here though she is arguably written better than ever before, not in the least because most of those problems listed above are being avoided or addressed.

Rather than being an overcritical and judgemental asshole like in her last appearance who either attributes blame to Peter for the horrible things happening to her or else makes it clear the nature of who he is means he’s doomed to misery because no one could put up with that, here she acknowledges none of it is his fault and he deserves happiness.

Spencer does drop his continuity ball though by listing off the wrong reason for why Peter and Calrie broke up. According to him Carlie couldn’t handle dating Spider-Man but in reality it was the fact that he was lying to her that was the problem.

Whatever though, nobody cares why Peter and Carlie broke up, so long as they did.

Similarly, if Spencer wants to try and rehabilitate the character who neglected to inform her ‘friend’ and roommate that she might be dating a villain without realizing it, okay let’s give him and this character a second chance. If Carlie wants to say she always liked MJ in spite of her douche actions lets draw a line under it and try again.

Now we move onto the meat of the subplot. The support group for superhero supporting cast members.

This idea gives me some mixed feelings and it somewhat depends upon how it is handled going forward.

On the negative side, I do not want this to turn into a subtextually critical evaluation of how MJ handled life with a hero in a past or how older runs did. Also the story is somewhat ignoring how MJ DID have people she could talk to about this in the past, like Felicia and Aunt May. But currently neither character knows his secret, might not be finding out anytime soon so okay I guess I understand why Spencer is treating it this way.

I think Spencer’s putting in little lines of dialogue and presents a resistance within MJ to joining the group which makes it clear to us that, whilst Carlie felt alone and unsafe keeping Peter’s secret, MJ doesn’t feel quite like that even though it might be a struggle all the same.

Which is in character, remember she kept his secret for years beginning with AF #15. Similarly MJ has had issues opening up to people in the past and has seen first hand the cost of exposing Peter’s secret.

Now in spite of all I’ve said, I cannot tell you how much I ADORE the idea of a support group for super hero friends and family.

If Spencer plays this right it could wind up as one of the mainstays of the Marvel Universe’s architecture, like Night Nurse or what have you.

It just makes sense as a piece of world building for the Marvel Universe and is an emotionally engaging idea that ANY comic book series can pick up.

Moreover it highlights the innate quiet awesomeness that is Jarvis. Jarvis is like Alfred but to the whole Avengers and one of the most bad ass bad ass normals in the whole Marvel Universe so highlighting him as this proactive, helping and caring individual is appreciated.

This idea is a great addition to Peter and MJ’s relationship too as it gives Mj something to do aside from wait by a window and counters one of the most frequent weapons in the anti-MJ/marriage brigade’s arsenal.

“MJ can’t be with Peter because it’s worse than being with a cop because they get to talk to other cop’s families. It’s just so toxic for her!!!!11!!!”

See Fred Van Lente’s piece of shit MJ story in ASM #605 for proof of this.

But right here Spencer finds a solution to that complaint (which I’m sure the anti-MJ brigade just love him for) and one that makes justifying breaking them up again a lot harder.

Also guessing who all the people in the meeting was turned out to be really fun.

Over all I loved this issue because in spite of my problems with the Felicia end of things the MJ end was brilliant.

p.s. Isn’t it a little weird for Spider-Man to not remember what ‘Spider-Man’ did when they were separate people?

I guess you could argue that his memories from ‘Peter’ might be hazy too. Or that this weird science comes with ‘rules’ like that, e.g. one side has to dominate the other.

#Spider-Man #Black Cat #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mj watson #mjwatsonedit #Felicia Hardy #peter parker #Nick Spencer #Michele Bandini #Humberto Ramos #Marvel #Marvel Comics #Marvel Universe #X-Men #the Black Cat #Amazing Spider-Man

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nellie-elizabeth · 7 years ago

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Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth (11x01)

New Doctor! New show-runner! Something to get excited about!

Cons:

One of the new companions, Ryan, starts off the episode making a video blog about the most amazing woman he's ever met. He starts the story with how his grandmother was helping him ride a bike, and then tells the whole adventure with the Doctor and aliens and all that. In the end, his grandmother Grace ends up dying trying to help save the day. Turns out, the video diary was about Grace, not about the Doctor, as we are led to assume at first. Only, it's such an obvious subversion of expectations that it came across juuuust a little bit cheesy. I felt emotional when Grace died, but something about Ryan's words pushed it too far into campy territory for me.

I'm sure this will come with time, but thus far I'm not getting much of a read on Yasmin, or "Yas", as a character. This story really was about Ryan, Grace, and Graham, and their family dynamics, which is totally fine and lovely. So Yas, who will round out the trio with Ryan and Graham, felt a bit one-dimensional to me in this particular episode. All we know about her is that she's a new cop who wants more excitement. Maybe we don't need to know more than that right away, and it is of course a little unfair to make a judgment based only on the first episode. I'm sure I'll learn all about her in time!

As thrilled as I am to be moving away from all things Moffat, this episode contained a remarkable lack of connection to anything that came before it. No companions, no setting, no nothing. The most we got was the Doctor making a few little remarks about how she used to be a Scotsman, and that her legs used to be longer, that sort of thing. These "soft reboots" that we get when there's a new doctor and new companions all at the same time, can be a good way to reinvigorate the show. But they can also make it difficult to find the coherence in these stories.

Pros:

Honestly, though, this episode was just lovely. The first thing I really noticed was how simple and Doctor Who-like the plot was. The Doctor finds herself abruptly thrust into a strange situation, with a couple of odd alien sightings, some scared yet brave humans, wacky humor, and a somber yet hopeful ending. It feels like just the "back to basics" story we desperately needed to untangle ourselves from the mess of recent years. It wasn't an episode destined to be remembered for anything other than a new Doctor's first appearance, but maybe that's okay.

Jodie Whittaker is doing a great job. She's funny, but not too whimsical. She's recognizably the Doctor, a person who always helps when people need it, but she's not a "bad-ass" in the traditional sense of the word. She's afraid of the alien threat enough to run away when things look bad, but she'll stand between the danger and her new human friends too. She's charming, and clever, and willing to role her sleeves up and do what needs to be done.

I could see how some people might think this episode was a little tame, but I rather liked the simplicity, as I mentioned above. It lent itself to some hilarious moments, like the Doctor being unable to understand the alien introducing himself, so she ends up calling him "Tim Shaw" for the rest of the episode. There isn't some big alien invasion, just a single dude on a hunt. The wackiest that this episode gets is that the target of the alien's hunt is a crane operator, so the climax takes place up high on precarious beams. I also liked the dude who was being targeted by the alien. He obviously has some self esteem issues, but he uses motivational tapes to remind himself that he is special and valued. I liked that little quirk.

Appropriately for this premiere, things don't get too serious or dark, until the end, when Grace falls to her death. Her passing is a catalyst that brings Graham and Ryan into a new chapter of their lives. Obviously the Doctor's arrival is part of that big change as well. We see that this step-grandfather and step-grandson relationship isn't on the firmest footing, so one of the journeys of this season will be to see if Grace's death can bring these two closer together as they go on adventures with their new friend.

I also enjoyed the hints we're seeing of the Doctor's lasting principles. She tries to give "Tim Shaw" a chance to redeem himself and make the right choice, and when that doesn't work, she still plans only on returning him home, not killing him. His would-be victim actually attempts to kill him by pushing him off of the crane, but he teleports away before he can fall to his death. The Doctor tells the man: "you had no right to do that." It reminded me a bit of the 10th Doctor's first episode, when humans made a choice to kill an alien threat instead of letting them leave, and the Doctor expressed his displeasure at that choice. Here, obviously it was a much smaller, more muted example, but it's good to know that some key character traits are consistent throughout.

I'm really encouraged by what I've just seen in this premiere. It was a muted, simple episode, but it did what it needed to do. It served as a spring-board for a new Doctor. We got to see her heart and her comedy and her principles. As we move forward, I'm sure the stories will be more adventurous, and the companions will become more well-rounded and interesting.

8/10

#review #doctor who #doctor who review #dw #jodie whittaker #13th doctor

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timetravelbypen · 6 years ago

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Some thoughts on Doctor Who

Now that it’s over, I thought I’d muse a little bit on this season!

Firstly: I LOVE JODIE WHITTAKER. I LOVE this incarnation of the Doctor. She is fun and she is clever and she is excited - everything I love about this character. Everything I *missed* about this character as the Moffat era dragged on. The wonder is back. The cleverness-without-having-to-shove-it-in-your-face is back. The *joy* is back. And I am so, so pleased. I also love the companions, especially Yaz and Ryan. It’s been cool to have a whole team to play with! (And yes I ship Yaz and the Doctor a little bit what of it.) I do have some quibbles with this season - and some bigger Annoyances. I’m a writer, not a film or tv person, so I often have a hard time figuring out what it is that bothers me with film/tv and where it comes from, but here, the problems have been very definitively writing problems and the actors are all great. Critical thoughts below the cut for spoilers and rambling.

Smallest first - I feel like 90% of the episodes this season would’ve benefited greatly from being ten minutes longer. A lot of them, even the ones I liked, felt very rushed at the end where they tried to pull off the whole grand explanation. Next - and this folds into my biggest issue as well - I don’t think they really let the Doctor be angry this season. The Doctor is fun and clever and joyful and wondrous, yes, of course they are, but if you threaten their friends, if you threaten other people, if you threaten worlds, then they can burn with the fire of a thousand suns and they will stop you. Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor was furious just under the surface all the time. David Tennant’s Doctor could be downright vengeful if he had to be. I wonder how much of not letting Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor get truly, properly angry at her foes is because she’s a girl now. And lastly - the fridging. SO. MUCH. FREAKING. FRIDGING. It’s lazy writing, and it serves no one. I need to mail the Doctor Who writers’ room a copy of The Refrigerator Monologues for them to read before next season so they can STOP PULLING THIS SHIT. In the first episode, they did a good job of showing the actual diversity of the UK... and killed off two men of color onscreen, one woman of color offscreen, and one woman of color onscreen (I’ll get to that). If I’m remembering correctly, no white people died. And Grace. Oh, there were SO MANY WAYS they could have written this season without having killed Grace. Tim Shaw (I’m sure that’s not how that alien’s name is actually spelled, but that’s how my American ears heard it and frankly a very White Bro name is fitting for the Final Boss villain of the season so let’s go with it) could have hurt Grace but not killed her, so she was hospitalized when the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham first go off adventuring and she doesn’t come. She could have been totally fine, but decided she’d had enough excitement for one lifetime / she was needed where she was as a nurse so she’d stay behind / she was at work while Ryan, Yaz, and Graham were free to help the Doctor set up her machine just then / “go bond with your grandson and loosen up for a change Graham.” There was no need to kill her just to fuel Graham’s emotional arc and just for Ryan to lose yet another person in his life. In “It Takes You Away,” Grace didn’t need to have been dead for that episode to work. Ryan’s lost his mother and his father is absentee. One of his parents could’ve been there in the mirror world, which would thematically tie him more strongly to Hanne and would still achieve the bonding moment between him and Graham needed by the end. I’ll get to Grace’s tie to the finale in a second, but first, the other Major Fridging Incident - the Kerblam episode. This was perhaps the most textbook case of fridging I have ever seen, but what made it exponentially worse is that the Doctor herself handwaved it (again, blaming the writing here, not Jodie). “The system,” which has been keeping track of Charlie the maintenance guy’s foul plans and called the Doctor for help, killed Kira to prove a point. It knew her - it knew she had only ever received one present in her whole life and used that to manipulate her, to lure her to her death just to make Charlie watch. And the Doctor praises the system. The Doctor tells Charlie “this is how you’ll make all those families feel” if he goes through with his plan. She tells him to “learn from this feeling” and stop. She says the system is clever, that it’s been trying to stop him, that it knew all along - but Kira is still dead. Kira was a person, and the Doctor should have been angry that she died. The Doctor should have been angry that the system killed her just to prove a point - and Charlie wasn’t even convinced! And at the end, no one mourns Kira. They travel to give the news to Yaz’ friend’s family, but no one gives Kira, or her death, another thought. They stopped Charlie, yes, but they should’ve stopped the system, too. It should never have been allowed to kill someone. And then finally, the finale. Where the Doctor continues to only dip her toe into anger once in a while, when she should be well and truly furious. Tim Shaw has stolen people, he’s stolen whole planets, and he’s about to steal Earth - the planet that the Doctor has put under their protection for decades and lifetimes and many, many faces. But also, the Doctor has killed, many times in the past. The important distinction is that they try very hard not to. They always offer the villain a choice. They say “I can’t let you do this. Walk away now. You can still walk away. But if you keep going, I will stop you.” Instead, Graham gets a lecture on how he’ll be no better than Tim Shaw if he kills him for killing Grace. There was an opportunity for a throughline here that was missed in favor of killing off a woman of color character. When Tim Shaw is introduced in the first episode, he says he and his people have been hunting victims for centuries, I believe, and those victims are kept in stasis pods forever. And the Doctor barely bats an eye. She doesn’t promise to rescue them. She doesn’t promise to put an end to that practice. She just carries on, and Grace dies, and eventually Graham and Ryan face Tim Shaw but don’t kill him. Instead, what she should have said as she pushed him through that portal, was that he should warn his people, that the Doctor was coming for them, that she was going to save each and every one of those people and bring them home. Because that’s what the Doctor does - they protect people. They stop harm from being done. They get angry when people do harm, and they stop them. We could have spent the whole season wondering off and on about where those people were, how to find them, how to rescue them. And then, instead of Grace dying and the Doctor telling Graham not to take vengeance, and Ryan telling Graham to be the bigger man, the argument could be about how to take down evil. Graham could want to go in guns blazing from the start, and the Doctor could say “no, we have to try and stop him another way first” because that is what the Doctor does. The Doctor tries to be peaceful, to always, always find another way, until there is no other way left. Granted, in 2018 — the year of people saying with a straight face “hitting Nazis makes you just as bad as them” — I am a bit wary of the argument that stopping evil makes you evil too. There was a better way to handle that. Putting him in his own stasis pod is a fitting end, yes, but Grace didn’t need to die to put him there. Grace didn’t have to die at all. And if the writers had thought a little further outside the box, they could have saved her.

#Doctor Who #13th Doctor #Thirteenth Doctor #Jodie Whittaker #Chris Chibnall #Ryan #Yaz #Graham #STOP FUCKING FRIDGING #IT'S BAD WRITING AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD #Jodie Whittaker is a goddamn delight

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truthbeetoldmedia · 7 years ago

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Doctor Who 11x01 “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” Review

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting and watching whiny white boys make Reddit threads about a female Doctor ruining the entire genre of science fiction, we have a new season of Doctor Who! And, to be honest, it feels like a whole new show compared to the recent dark and moody seasons that were much too interested in their own perceived cleverness than making television that’s actually enjoyable. We have a new Doctor, three new companions, and a new showrunner; the possibilities are endless. I’ll jump right in by dividing my review into two sections: what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

What I Enjoyed

Jodie Whittaker

My first impression of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor is a good one: she’s funny, quick witted, and she already seems comfortable playing this new character. Fans of Doctor Who know that first impressions are crucial for a new version of the Doctor, and the nature of the show doesn’t make it easy. The Doctor has just regenerated, not quite her old self but not yet fully transformed into her new self, either. Whittaker has to play an established character and a new one all at the same time, with the added pressure of being the first woman to do so. She has to transform from an echo of Peter Capaldi’s twelfth Doctor into her own, which she does masterfully.

And, personally, I’m looking forward to a young Doctor. At age 36, Whittaker is the third youngest to play the Doctor after Matt Smith at 26 and Peter Davison at 29. There’s something really effective about a two-thousand-year-old time lord staring at you from the eyes of someone in their 30s, and if we’re lucky enough to have a great actor in the Doctor’s shoes, that will shine through in more dramatic scenes and add real depth to the show. Matt Smith did this better than anyone, and you can fight me on that.

The most recent seasons of Doctor Who have been quite dark, with the Doctor being played by a shouty, fed up British white man in a constant state of angst. Peter Capaldi did a good job playing the Doctor during the past three seasons, but it can definitely be argued that this three season long trend was a bit too long for this kind of Doctor. Every season had at least five moments that all were framed as “the Doctor’s darkest hour,” trying to add depth to the story which instead was interpreted by many as the show being too obsessed with it’s own “cleverness.” Steven Moffat’s show Sherlock is guilty of the same thing, and it’s easy to see how Doctor Who was able to join Sherlock in the way of being a little too pretentious; a little too dark for the sake of attempting to be clever, and the show suffered for it.

Now, with Whittaker (and new showrunner Chris Chibnall), echoes of a more balanced Doctor Who are once again the core of the show. This new Doctor is cheerful in the face of danger, quick to defend her friends (or anyone, really), with the ability to be stern when the moment calls for it. This episode also allows Whittaker to shine through as the Doctor without a grand story or circumstance: she has no TARDIS, no sonic screwdriver (until she fashions one herself), and there is no travel in time or space. It’s just the Doctor on her own with a group of unassuming humans, trying to save lives.

It can be difficult for the audience when someone new plays the Doctor; there’s always a bit of a transition from the version of the Doctor that we’ve learned to appreciate and have grown used to. It’s a testament to Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall that when she finally declared, “I know EXACTLY who I am. I’m the Doctor,” I not only believed it, I was already cheering for her.

The Companions

As with a new Doctor, new companions sometimes need getting used to, especially if the previous companion was a fan favorite. In this episode we’re introduced to Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yaz (Mandip Gill), and Graham (Bradley Walsh). We learn that Ryan and Yaz know each other from school, and Graham is Ryan’s step-grandfather.

We’re introduced to our new companions when they’re struggling; a classic introduction and a perfect way to introduce the Doctor into their lives. Ryan is struggling with a disorder that affects his coordination and is working a dead end job, knowing he’s not satisfied with his current circumstance but not knowing what to do to fix it. Yaz seems like she’s the most successful of the bunch, working as a police officer, but we learn early on that she’s been assigned to working traffic disputes and is met with refusal when she asks her superior to put her on more interesting cases. Graham, who has been married to Ryan’s Nan, Grace, for only three years, is finding it hard to connect with Ryan.

These three (and Grace) all work surprisingly well together in this first episode, and I’m already excited for their dynamic. We learned the most about Ryan this week, but I’m ready to learn about the others as the season progresses. I’m especially intrigued by Yaz; she’s extremely clever and I can’t wait to see that translate into adventures with the Doctor.

Choosing When to Address a Female Doctor

We all know that Jodie Whittaker’s turn as the Doctor is a historic one, marking the first time in over fifty years that the Doctor won’t be a British white man (she’s still British and white, mind you). Immediately following the announcement that the Doctor will be played by a woman, hoards of distraught men threw what can only be described as a tantrum. We all know what white men throwing a tantrum via the internet looks like, so I won’t go into detail. I will say that I’m THRILLED at the treatment that this historical casting got in the season premiere.

The Doctor’s gender is only mentioned once, quickly, and then immediately pushed to the side in favor of the actual substance of the episode. The Doctor hasn’t seen herself since regenerating, and when Yaz refers to her as “Madam” her response is a simple “Am I? Does it suit me? An hour ago I was a white haired Scotsman,” and then moves RIGHT on. Yes, The Doctor is a woman. Women belong in science fiction. A woman INVENTED science fiction, and there won’t be any kind of justification needed for a female Doctor.

The only other time the controversy surrounding Whittaker’s casting was addressed was later on in the episode, indirectly, and by the Doctor herself while giving a signature uplifting speech during the climax of the episode. She says that “We are all capable of the most incredible change. We can evolve while still staying true to who we are. We can honor who we’ve been, and choose who we want to be next.” Honestly, I was waiting for her to pull a Jim Halpert and stare right into the camera.

Back to the True Essence of Doctor Who

I mentioned this earlier on in my review, but it is such a relief to watch an episode of Doctor Who that actually feels like Doctor Who. The show has definitely gotten away from what made it special in the first place: extraordinary events in a perfectly unassuming location with ordinary people, and an alien that happens to have two hearts.

When I’m trying to explain Doctor Who to someone who hasn’t watched it (a tough job, I know), I always feel like I have to include that line from Season 1 when the Ninth Doctor (played by Chris Eccleston) says, “Nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the best part about Doctor Who is the notion that the ordinary is extraordinary. Doctor Who is best when it’s simple, when it uplifts everyday people, and when it doesn’t try to be some grand display of cleverness. The Doctor makes her new sonic screwdriver out of Sheffield steel. She calls herself “just a traveler.” We haven’t seen this show like this in awhile, and I’m grateful.

What I Could Have Done Without

As you can tell from the first part of this review, there wasn’t a lot that I didn’t like. There is, however, one major event I take issue with, and that’s the death of Ryan’s Nan, Grace.

Grace is a part of the group that joins the Doctor early on in the episode, and she ends up dying while fighting the “monster of the week,” an alien dubbed “Tim Shaw.” It seemed so unnecessary, especially for a season premiere with a new Doctor, a new showrunner… something like that sets the tone for a new season and a new era, so it’s an odd choice to put in this episode. Fans of Doctor Who know that the show is no stranger to soul crushing sadness, but that’s usually reserved for the exit of a companion or a season finale. They even went so far as to show the funeral, touching upon death in a way that the show hasn’t done before.

We all know that good people die, but this seemed like an odd choice. It’s also pretty evident that Grace’s early demise was a way to push her husband, Graham, into being a better person, but it’s never a good choice to sacrifice a woman to insert meaning into a man’s emotional journey, especially since we only just met Grace and she didn’t have a chance to do anything else. Her relationship with Ryan seemed much more important, but we were robbed of that as well.

Overall, I really loved this episode. I’m genuinely looking forward to the new season, something that hasn’t happened for me since Matt Smith left the show. Here’s to hoping this season is Doctor Who as it should be.

Alyssa's episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

#Doctor Who #The Woman Who Fell to Earth #Jodie Whittaker

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templeofgeek · 7 years ago

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What makes Gallifrey One so special? What makes it the hot ticket for Whovians and DWeeks? We are going to give you a general overview about what Gallifrey One is, what you can expect there and tips on how to get your hands on these hard to get tickets!

Gallifrey One is the world’s largest and longest-running annual Doctor Who fan convention. It is a fully non-profit event founded in 1989 by active fans in local Los Angeles science fiction fandom. Gallifrey One boasts some of the best Doctor Who celebrity guests while still maintaining its small con feel. This convention is completely fan run. It features one of kind panels, guest from all walks of science fiction and the non fiction science community, not just the Doctor Who universe. Taking place every February over Presidents’ Day Weekend at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel, this con is an experience not to be missed.

2018 Highlights:

Gally (as it is often called) is one of those cons that have a jammed packed schedule. Programming goes from 10:00 am until 10:00 pm. And even after there are after parties, screenings, dances, masquerades, karaoke events and so much more. There is probably way more that went on at the 2018 event than I could possibly list. I recommend checking out the 2018 Gallifrey One Wrap Up on the convention website. But for now, here are some attendee photos of some of the guest highlights from the con!

The Great Steven Moffat. Showrunner for #DoctorWho, #Sherlock and soon #Dracula. Still highly passionate about his work and at times combative. Struggling mightily against those who might accuse him of writing the same female characters over and over again and promoting a false image of sexism against the first Doctor. An extremely entertaining panel. #whovian #scifi #timelord #tardis #gallifreyone #thedoctor #gally1

A post shared by Ming (@franklin778) on Mar 21, 2018 at 3:27pm PDT

The beautiful #JemmaRedgrave #KateLethbridgeStewart enjoying herself at #Gallifreyone #DoctorWho #tardis #Timelord #whovian #brigadier #zygons #gally1

A post shared by Ming (@franklin778) on Mar 20, 2018 at 6:03pm PDT

#RachelTalalay speaking on #metoo #DoctorWho her work with #CW shows and her desire to helm a #Starwars film. Always generous and wonderful and such a pleasure to have at #Gallifreyone #gally1 #drwho #sherlock #supernaturaltv

A post shared by Ming (@franklin778) on Mar 17, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

Beware when #DavidBradley shows up to your event especially if it’s a wedding. Here at #gallifreyone talking about his experience portraying the first #DoctorWho. No thoughts on #WalderFrey and #GameOfThrones. Spoke about his early days acting and meeting the family of #WillaimHartnell before he portrayed him. The great fun they had with the humorous cutting banter at the beginning of #TwiceUponATime #Tardis #gally1 #Timelord

A post shared by Ming (@franklin778) on Mar 18, 2018 at 3:48pm PDT

Sophie and Sylvester. ❤️❤️ • • • #doctorwho #gally1 #photography #portraitphotography #seventhdoctor #ace #sylvestermccoy #sophiealdred

A post shared by Katie Be (@katiebe_photography) on Mar 2, 2018 at 9:21am PST

Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) was impressed with my Cyberman. I think he’s seen one or two in his lifetime.

A post shared by Rick Callender (@rickamplified) on Mar 3, 2018 at 8:21pm PST

OMG, I'M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW YOU GUYS!!! xD ———- Gallifrey One: Day 3 ———- #drwho #doctorwho #twelfthdoctor #12thdoctor #firstdoctormarkii #petercapaldi #claraoswald #jennacoleman #billpotts #pearlmackie #nardole #mattlucas #nardolecosplay #dwcosplay #doctorwhocosplay #cosplay #screenaccurate #replica #tardis #whovian #whovians #gally1 #gallifreyone #gallifreyone2018

A post shared by #DoctorWho – The Doctor (@doc_in_the_box) on Feb 18, 2018 at 3:26pm PST

I had the absolute pleasure to shoot with @BigFinishprod writers Matt Fitton and John Dorney while running around #GallifreyOne last weekend. Matt and John were the highlight on the panels they were featured and as you can see above, they brought their unique brand of mirth to these portraits! Be sure to check out their work by supporting #BigFinishProductions and a HUGE THANK YOU to both John and Matt for taking the time to work with me. • • • #mattfitton #johndorney #portraitphotographer #writersofinstagram #bigfinish #portraitphotographer #gally1 #doctorwho

A post shared by Katie Be (@katiebe_photography) on Feb 23, 2018 at 9:33am PST

Outside the Con:

The convention is held at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel. It is just steps from LAX international airport. There are plenty of hotels in the area, as well as a variety of places to eat within walking distance.

Child Friendly:

This is probably the most child friendly convention I have come across. There is a ton of children’s programming available as well as babysitting available. Children programming does fill up quickly, so I suggest keeping signing up as soon as the programming is announced. There is a courtyard just outside of the convention floor that gives children some room to run around and wind down a bit. There are plenty of food options available at the convention as well as in the nearby neighborhoods. I was able to find food options for even the pickiest of eaters.

Pros of this Con:

There is so much great programming that there really is something for everyone. There are guest from the audio series, from the comic book creators, there are even guests from other fandoms. If you are interested in cosplay, there are panels on cosplay as well. There are writing workshops, discussion groups, ribbon trading, meet ups of all types. There is a bar and lounge area on the main floor of the hotel that is lovingly referred to as “Lobby Con”. At this 2018 Convention Steven Moffat and Sylvester McCoy were both spotted in the lobby with fans, interacting and hanging out with fans. The con takes place in the same hotel that many of the guest stay in, so seeing the guest walk around is very common. They are not guarded by security like they are at larger conventions. This gives the convention a more intimate feeling and allows for experiences that would not normally happen at other conventions. One of the benefits of a convention that is specifically geared towards Doctor Who fans is that everyone at the convention is a Doctor Who fan. You are in a safe place to express your total love for Doctor Who. It creates a very welcoming and open environment. You are all there to celebrate the thing that you all have in common. The thing that you all love.

#Gally1 nights

A post shared by Monica Duarte (@thisdorkynerdgirl) on Feb 17, 2018 at 11:23pm PST

Cons of this Con:

The Vendor/Dealer’s room at Gallifrey One is pretty small compared to most Southern California conventions. It boast only a few rows of vendors. It seems fine for a convention that holds less than 4,000 attendees and despite being small you can still find some truly unique merchandise that you wont find anywhere else, but it would be nice to see an artist alley with a nice variety of Doctor Who art for sale. The con takes place during a holiday weekend and it takes place at the same time as a gaming con in a neighboring hotel. This can make it difficult and pricey to find both room accommodations and parking. If you plan to stay at the hotel from Thursday until Sunday night, be prepared to spend upwards of $800 for the 4 days, 3 night stay.

A fullsize volunteer owned TARDIS on display at the end of the Dealers Room.

Rubber Toe Replica Booth at Gallifrey One 2018

Cosplay:

The Cosplay is pretty top notch at Gallifrey One. The fun thing about cosplay at this convention as opposed to other pop culture conventions, is that because it all centers around one fandom, you find some of the most clever, creative and even obscure cosplays. At any given time you can fins cosplayers portraying characters from all walks of the Doctor Who universe. You can find cosplays from Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures, Class and even the Big Finish Audio Series (yes, they even cosplay from audio cover art).

Con Costs:

$110.00 Adult Full Weekend $50.00 Teen Full Weekend (Ages 12-16) $20.00 Child Full Weekend (Ages 3-11) Note that the above prices do not include a small EventBrite processing fee, which will be added to each order ($6.22 per adult ticket, less for the others).

Gallifrey One only sells weekend badges. Single day passes are no available.

Parking for locals:

Parking can be reserved in advance (AND YOU SHOULD). Parking ranges anywhere from $15 a day to $35 a day. General airport parking lots are available within walking distance of the convention. Arriving early is highly recommened.

Hotel Accommodations:

Hotel rooms at the Marriott are in high demand and are filled up almost immediately after reservations open. There are many hotels within walking distance near by. *See YouTube Video Below*

Pro-tip:

We recommend turning on post notifications for the Gallifrey One Twitter and Facebook accounts so that you stay up to date on hotel announcements, ticket sales, guest announcements and programming information. If you are trying to get tickets or hotel room accommodations on the day they go live, don’t give up on the first sold out screen. try again for the first 20 minutes. Many times the systems just need to refresh and catch up, and you may be able to score the tickets/room that you need.

Overall Impression: It can probably best be explained in this quote from veteran Con-goer and Temple of Geek photographer, Nathaniel Peinado, “Gally isn’t just a convention experience. It’s a family. A yearly reunion, if you will. A chance to see your closest friends that come from distant places, and an opportunity to make new ones. It’s a place where everyone and everything is celebrated and it doesn’t matter if you’re there in an old TARDIS t-shirt or a screen accurate costume. The amount of joy and love you receive from this convention will leave you wishing the next one wasn’t another year away. It’s definitely an experience that makes you believe things really are bigger on the inside.”

My babies ❤

A post shared by Monica Duarte (@thisdorkynerdgirl) on Feb 17, 2018 at 12:28pm PST

Gallifrey One RETURNS February 14, 2019 – February 17, 2019. Tickets go on sale April 14th, 12:00 PM PST!

How to get tickets?

Check out our pro-tips from our whovian friend, Lady Of Time Cosplay. She gives a really great and really informative review on how to get tickets to Gallifrey One. If you are a first timer to Gallifrey One and serious about getting tickets, the video is worth the 15 min watch.

https://twitter.com/gallifreyone/status/983380455838793728

https://www.facebook.com/events/169029780387728/

Unless otherwise stated, photos provided by Temple of Geek photographers Monica Duarte and Nathaniel “Doc In The Box” Peinado

Gallifrey One: The Ultimate Whovian Convention What makes Gallifrey One so special? What makes it the hot ticket for Whovians and DWeeks? We are going to give you a general overview about what Gallifrey One is, what you can expect there and tips on how to get your hands on these hard to get tickets!

#bill potts #Doctor Who #doctor who cosplay #gallifrey #gallifrey one #gally #gally1 #Jodie Whittaker #matt lucas #Matt Smith #Pearl Mackie #Peter Capaldi #Steven Moffat

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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TV’s Most Confusing Episodes From Doctor Who to Westworld

https://ift.tt/2WAmL4r

There has to be some confusion in a TV drama, a procession of things not-yet-understood. That’s the deal: accept temporary bafflement in the expectation that at some point, all will be revealed. Or even if it won’t be, at least there’s a reason it’s been left unsolved, like a Sudoku you’ve got jam on.

Enough, Scrappy-Doo! The TV Dogs Who Need to Chill the F Out

By Alec Bojalad and 3 others

TV’s Most Stressful Episodes From Battlestar Galactica to The Handmaid’s Tale

By Alec Bojalad and 2 others

What doesn’t work is when a TV show that’s supposed to be taking you along with it, leaves you behind. That could be your fault (Did you stay awake? Skip an episode? Were you checking your phone? Was your dog doing that weird thing with the curtains so you had to get up and miss a bit?). Or it could be the fault of a TV show either too ambitious or inaccessible or illogical for comfort. We’ve chosen the episodes that left us scratching our heads; you can judge who’s to blame.

Doctor Who ‘Twice Upon a Time’ (2017)

So named because twice is the minimum number of times you have to watch the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas special before you have the weakest grasp of what’s going on. Considering that most will have only watched it once, and that, from inside a boozy, gravy-based fug, it’s staggering how esoteric this one is – impressively so. As showrunner Steven Moffat’s farewell episode, it’s a distillation of the sort of clever, complicated, ambitious, self-referential writing he’s known for.

There are two Doctors (three if you count the post-Regeneration glimpse of Thirteen), two overlapping Doctor Who stories, a Dalek, an ancestor of The Brigadier, a ship’s pilot made of glass, a moving historical WWI moment and three companions who aren’t really there. (Or are they?) It’s about regret, or reminiscence, or saying goodbye. It’s definitely about something and is doubtless very meaningful and poignant once you crack its shell, but there’s the sense that, unless you’re one of the Who hardcore, it doesn’t really care for you to try. Why be so aloof? It’s Christmas. Let the rest of us play too. LM

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 4 Episode 8 ‘I’m Not the Person I Used to Be’

This was a bold move from a bold show. When Santino Fontana chose to leave Crazy Ex-Girlfriend after his one year contract ended, the character of Greg – assumed by many to be lead Rebecca’s romantic endgame – was written out in early season two. Then in the fourth and final season, Greg returned but this time played by Skylar Astin. Instead of glossing over the casting change and pretending as though nothing had happened (like when, say, Ross’ ex-wife Carol on Friends or mercenary warrior Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones changed faces), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hit it straight on.

This smart, innovative series had always been filtered through the unreliable perspective of lead Rebecca Bunch (hence the extravagant musical numbers that take place in her head). So when Greg’s character was recast, the show used it to comment on our impressions of other people. ‘I’m Not the Person I Used to Be’ lampshaded New Greg with a psychoanalytical reflection on changing perceptions and personal growth. It was brave. It was innovative. It was admirable. It was… really confusing and distancing. However great Astin was in the role, and however clever the idea was, New Greg was the point at which some Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fans began to peel away from a show clearly unafraid to leave viewers behind. LM

Westworld Season 3 Episode 8 ‘Crisis Theory’

The Westworld season one finale was confusing in a delicious, grinning ‘Oh, you clever devil’ kind of way. The Westworld season two finale was confusing in an exhilarating ‘Blimey. All right then!’ kind of way. The Westworld season three finale was confusing in a way that made you feel like you’d watched the entire Terminator trilogy on fast-forward while downing a 12-pack of Red Bull and trying to rewire the electrics in your house. It wasn’t a good feeling.

I still don’t know which world-dominating AI was which, who was fighting who, what the evil French guy wanted, how many people were secretly Dolores, whether Maeve still only existed in the Matrix, and why Jesse from Breaking Bad was the new Jesus. If free will still exists by the time season four comes, I’m using mine to either get a valium prescription or change channels. LM

Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 6 ‘Never Ricking Morty’

“Never Ricking Morty” is a particularly divisive episode of Rick and Morty – even at this very website! Some of us loved it, while others weren’t big fans. One thing that’s undeniable, however, is that this midseason 4 episode is the show’s most complicated narrative endeavor yet. “Never Ricking Morty” takes place on a “Story Train,” meaning that the plot initially goes through your typical three-act storytelling structure.

Once Rick and Morty realize where they are, however, Rick understands that the only way out of the Story Train is to reject the conventions of storytelling altogether. This means that any natural storytelling inclination must be resisted. It also means that the show burns through about nine series finales worth of epic nonsense right at the end as Rick and Morty’s “canon” is sucked right out of them. It’s tremendously challenging to watch, much less understand, and the episode wants it that way. – AB

Russian Doll Episode 7 ‘The Way Out’

Like many other Groundhog Day-style “time loop” stories, Netflix’s Russian Doll goes out of its way to establish the “rules” of its sci-fi premise. Every time Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) dies (which happens with disturbing frequency), she returns to the night of her 36th birthday party, washing her face in the bathroom as Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up” plays. That much is easy to understand, and Russian Doll has fun seeing how far it can make Nadia last before perishing and returning to the night in question.

Once she meets another person stuck in a time loop, however, things start to get wacky. Russian Doll’s seventh episode, “The Way Out,” is about as off-the-wall an experience as you’ll find on television. Nadia’s loved ones start to disappear. Then she flashes back to memories of her mother. Before you know it, teeth are bloodily falling out. Russian Doll settles in for a relatively logical ending in its eighth episode, but this penultimate installment is pleasantly incomprehensible. – AB

The Nevers Episode 6 ‘True’

The Nevers’ premise is bold enough to begin with. The HBO series is set in a fictional Victorian era where a select portion of the population (most of them women) have been “Touched” or blessed with supernatural abilities. Apparently, however, bold wasn’t nearly bold enough. The Nevers’ sixth episode, which serves as a de facto season finale due to a COVID production delay, upends everything.

Sky Atlantic’s The Nevers Proves That Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

By Lacy Baugher

The Nevers Part 1 Finale Is The Most Surprising Hour of TV in a Long Time

By Alec Bojalad

This episode begins not in 19th century London like every other installment thus far, but in a far flung dystopian sci-fi future. Earth is barely habitable and humanity is on the ropes. The only possible hope that the human race has left is in the form of a powerful alien species known as the Galanthi. If this all sounds complicated, you don’t even know the half of it. “True” is notable for not holding the audience’s hand through this disorienting experience at all. The episode makes no attempt to tone down its futuristic jargon and it’s not entirely clear what’s even happening until halfway through. By episode’s end, it’s apparent how “True” connects to The Nevers’ original concept, but no one would be blamed for needing multiple rewatches to really get it. – AB

Farscape Season 4 Episode 7 ‘John Quixote’

Let it never be said that Farscape was a TV show afraid to take a big creative swing. In season 4, we get this trippy and confusing episode (written by series star Ben Browder), which sees Crichton and Chiana trapped in a virtual reality game based on the memories of Black-T Crichton (because, yes, this was after the storyline that saw the show’s main character split into two, equally valid humans) and a neural template from Stark. The game is designed to keep C & C trapped in the gameworld until they die so their consciousnesses will be trapped in the virtual reality—wait for it—forever.

This hour of TV actually holds up quite well upon rewatch, probably because it is packed to the brim with clever pop culture references, but an initial watch of this series installment is absolutely bonkers, featuring Aeryn as a southern belle, Rygel as a version of Monty Python’s Black Knight who can shoot fire out of his ass, and D’Argo as a lederhosen-wearing Hansel who, at one point, eats baked beans out of Jool’s intestines. I can only imagine what someone watching this episode out of context would imagine this show is actually about. – KB

Fringe Season 2 Episode 11 ‘Unearthed’

Some episodes of television intentionally challenge the viewer’s ability to interpret what the hell is going on, and some episodes of television are broadcast wildly out of order, seemingly bringing back a character killed off in the previous season for a humdrum monster-of-the-week installment. You may have guessed that I have a specific example in mind for that second category and, if so, you would be right. Written and filmed to be the 21st episode of Fringe’s first season, “Unearthed” was instead recycled to be a mid-season installment in the second season of Fox’s usually pretty great sci-fi drama.

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This might have worked—it’s a basic episode that sees the Fringe team exploring the mystery of a teen girl who is pronounced dead, only to wake up screaming an alphanumeric code while doctors are working to remove her organs—save for the fact that it features a Fringe team member who was killed at the end of the previous season. Honestly, I can laugh about this now, but, at the time, it was jarring and confusing, with the network (Fox, if you were wondering) offering no pre-episode or in-episode explanation offered for why the aforementioned deceased character might be up and walking. For this to happen in an episode that also features a guest character thought dead revealed to be alive is icing on the cake. – KB

The OA Episode 8 ‘Invisible Self’

The OA is one of the most aggressively bizarre shows in Netflix history. Created by and starring Brit Marling, this two-season sci-fi series is fit to bursting with strange, at times difficult-to-comprehend concepts. The storyfollows Marling as Prairie Johnson, a young woman who resurfaces after disappearing – only now she refers to herself as “The OA (or original angel)”. Prairie/The OA recruits several disciples who she promises to take to another dimension. In “Invisible Self”, the final episode of the show’s first season, it all somehow culminates into…well, into this:

Yes, what you’re seeing there is a group full of cult weirdos engaging in an interpretive dance to stop a school shooter. And mostly succeeding! The OA‘s second season gets even stranger in many respects but it’s hard to top the confusing majesty of this first season finale.

Twin Peaks: The Return ‘Part 8’

Legendary filmmaker David Lynch has absolutely no concerns about being dubbed “confusing.” In fact, when it comes to Lynch’s filmography, that’s kind of a feature, not a bug. In-between crafting mind-bending classic films like The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive, however, Lynch took some time to stamp his name into TV history with the surprisingly straight-forward Twin Peaks. Sure, Twin Peaks was frequently abstract and strange throughout its two-season run but it had a coherent plot, which is more than many Lynch movies can claim.

That sense of narrative coherence all ends during a particular episode of the 2017 revival Twin Peaks: The Return. “Part 8” is absolutely bonkers. Episode co-writer Mark Frost described it as “what you might describe as a Twin Peaks origin story, [showing] where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from.” In Frost and Lynch’s world, that sense of darkness comes in forms including but not limited to: the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945, oodles of primordial ectoplasmic fluid, a frog/cockroach creature, woodsmen manifesting out of mid-air, and of course: a performance by “The” Nine Inch Nails. It’s one of the most confusing episodes of television in history…and one of the best.

Dark – Every. Single. Episode.

When trying to pinpoint one episode to highlight for this article, Dark fought back and I came to the conclusion that every single episode of German multigenerational sci-fi series Dark is borderline impenetrable. Just when you think you have finally wrapped your head around what’s happening in the small town of Winden, Dark will throw in another layer to this timey-wimey, multiversal story that assures that you, in fact, have no idea what the hell is going on.

That being said, unlike some of the shows on this list, the confusing nature of Dark’s narrative isn’t a bug; it’s an intentional feature. This is a show that asks a lot from its viewers, but gives us satisfying answers in return. And it’s OK if you only ever have half an idea of what’s going on—if that’s the case, you’re doing better than most of Dark’s characters. – KB

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