#what kind of doctor is he

[omeg-ami]

I need Law’s caffeine addiction to be canon. Please Oda I’m begging you.

[ocean-returns]

You couldn't do a straightforward Human Nature plot set in the 12th Doctor era bc if 12 got fobwatched Clara would immediately steal his identity. Missy would also steal his identity. Absolutely insane Doctorfication possibilities.

Also, 12's forgotten memories canonically manifest as songs AND he's faceblind, so he wouldn't even have a dramatic dream journal full of half-remembered portraits, he'd just be hanging out in his university office shredding guitar solos while Bill (who he just met) is like "Wow, sick riff Professor Smith!" and he's like "Thanks, it's called I Dreamt I Rode a Dinosaur."

[greencarnation]

eleven is fascinating to me because he came right off the back of tens horrible traumatic breakdown after he lost everything and he immediately tried to establish himself as the opposite of that. he is funny and goofy and almost childlike, and he bulldozes on in his adventures with amy like nothing happened at all. but then something happens and his masks slips and it's like oh! the core of this man is still anger. he is so so angry all of the time and this façade is the only thing stopping him from being consumed by it. he isn't over any of it and he hasn't moved on. he is wearing a fez and laughing but under that all that exists is age old anger and grief and it is going to consume him

[slfcare]

dealing with embarrassment is not about erasing the moment, but rewriting its impact. consciously decide to not care as if it's really that easy and after enough practice, you'll find that it actually will be.

[claraoswalds]

The Girl Who Died // Hell Bent

[sparrowlucero]

Even if a creator is a bad person it's still okay to like their work. People need to mind their own business.

Honestly it's not really that sort of situation. I'll actively defend Steven Moffat here.

There was a huge hate movement for him back in the early 2010s - which, in retrospect, formed largely because he was running 2 of the superwholock shows at once, one of which went through extremely long hiatuses* and the other of which was functionally an adaptation of an already well regarded show**, making him subject to a sort of double ire in the eyes of a lot of fandom people. Notably, his co-showrunner, Mark Gatiss, is rarely mentioned and much of his work is still attributed to Moffat (and yes, this includes that Hbomberguy video. Several of "Steven Moffat's bad writing choices" were not actually written by him, they were Gatiss.)

People caricatured the dude into a sort of malicious, arrogant figure who hated women and was deliberately mismanaging these shows to spite fans, to the point where people who never watched them believe this via cultural osmosis. It became very common to take quotes from him out of context to make them look bad***, to cite him as an example of a showrunner who hated his fans, someone who sabotaged his own work just to get at said fans, someone who was too arrogant to take criticism, despite all of this being basically a collective "headcanon" formed on tumblr. Some if it got especially terrible, like lying about sexual assault (I don't mean people accused him of sexual assault and I think they're making it up, I mean people would say things like "many of his actresses have accused him of sexual assault on set" when no such accusations exist in the first place. This gets passed around en masse and is, in my opinion, absolutely rancid.)

On top of that a ton of the criticism directed at the shows themselves is, personally, just terrible media criticism. So much of it came from assuming a very hostile intent from the writer and just refusing to engage with the text at all past that.

Like some really common threads you see with critique of this writer's work, especially in regards to Doctor Who since that's the one I'm most familiar with:

A general belief that his lead characters were meant to be ever perfect self inserts, and so therefore when they act shitty or arrogant or flawed in any way, that's both reflective of the author and meant to be viewed as positive or aspirational.

An overarching thesis that his characters are "too important" in the narrative due to the writer's arrogance and self obsession

A lot of focus on the writer personally "attacking" the fans or making choices primarily out of spite.

A tendency to treat the show being different to what it's adapting as inherently bad and hostile towards the original

Just generally very little consideration of the themes, intent, etc.

This one's a little more nebulous and doesn't apply to all critique but a lot of it, especially recently, is clearly by people who haven't seen the show in like 10 years and their opinion is largely formed secondhand through like, "discourse nostalgia". Which. you know. bad.

I think these are just weird and nonsensical ways to engage with a work of fiction. I also think it's really sad to see the show boiled down to this because that era of who is, in my opinion, very thematically rich and unique among similar shows, and I hate that it's often dismissed in such a paltry way.

This isn't to say people aren't allowed to critique Steven Moffat or anything, but the context in which he basically became The Devil™ to a large portion of fandom and is still remembered in a poor light is very tied to this perfect storm of fan culture and I just don't agree with a ton of it.

* I'm sure most people have seen the way long running shows and hiatuses will cause people to fall out with a show, with some former fans turning around and joining a sort of "anti fandom" for it while it's still airing. That happened with both these shows. ** Doctor Who will change it's entire writing staff, crew, and cast every few years, and with that comes a change in style, tone, theme - the old show basically ends and is replaced by a new show under the same title. As Steven Moffat's era was the first of these handovers for the majority of audiences, you can imagine this wasn't a well loved move for many fans. *** I know for a fact most people have not sought out the sources for a lot of these quotes to check that they read the same in context because 1) most of them were deleted years ago and are very difficult to find now and 2) many of them do actually make sense in the context of their respective interviews

[arostormblessed]

Don’t talk to me about doctor who the magicians apprentice/witch’s familiar dont you fucking EVER talk to me about it. You have one weakness and it’s your compassion for your loved ones. There is a little boy on a battlefield and you tell him you’re going to save his life because that’s what you do, you save people. Your oldest enemy who is responsible for the slaughter of your people calls out to you to tell you that he’s dying. Your oldest enemy who has known you for centuries, who is one of the only people left who has known you that long, sits down with you and talks to you and for just a moment it feels like you’re friends. Like there is something redeemable in him. It’s a trick, you’ve known it’s been a trick the whole time, and he’s going to kill you. There is a little boy on a battlefield and you know what he will become and you run away, you let him die, because what’s the alternative? Your enemy tricked you into coming here, he lied to you, but it doesn’t matter because there is always mercy. You save the little boy because he’s a little boy, even when you know what he grows up to be, and hundreds of years later the manufactured race that slaughtered your own knows what mercy is. Your enemy does not kill you because your greatest weakness, your loved ones, come to save you. I didn’t come here because I’m ashamed, a bit of shame never hurt anyone, I came because you’re sick and you asked. And sometimes on a good day, if I try very hard, I’m not some old time lord who ran away, I’m the doctor. Compassion, then. ALWAYS. It grows strong and fierce in you, like a cancer. I hope so. It will kill you in the end. I WOULDN’T DIE OF ANYTHING ELSE.

MERCY. ALWAYS MERCY. You walk the little boy home.

[autisticaradiamegido]

thoughts on dave and aradia (<>)?

day 356

BIG fan tbh. in this house we love and respect timerails

truly yall read this log and tell me theyre not cute

[aq2003]

really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:

(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")

this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks

i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:

(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)

freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

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

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

what if I told you fifteen is actually suicidal? what if I told you his little speech about having felt everything and having experienced everything is the main source of his trauma? what it I told you he feels lost, aimless, thinks he has no purpose? what if I told you he's fucking bored with life? what it I told you he is almost definitely going to start engaging in impulsive thrill seeking behavior just to feel something? and what if I told you that, just like how rose was there to pull nine back from his anger, ruby is there to pull fifteen back from his apathy just by being so alive?

[princeloww]

When will we as a SOCIETY stop sleeping on this dorky ass DT role. I'm WAITING.

[call-me-corvid]

Seeing “The Devil’s Chord” has only solidified my opinion that the Doctor is whatever the hell the Toymaker and the Maestro are

[lost-tardis-room]

tenth doctor being aroace is so important to me and i don't even know why. i love rose tyler so so much but i don't think the right end to her arc was 'kissing tentwo to show people they love each other' like YES THEY LOVE EACH OTHER. did rose want to kiss him, yeah sure i just don't think she wanted to be romantically involved with him yknow?? he'll love rose forever but that doesn't need to be romantic. like yes ten *gets kissed* a fair bit but idk. i just think he's aroace. and that's part of why i think he is so sad about river in the library episodes because he knows it's not *him* that she loves. that's why it's important that martha left him to be with her family and get married because she fancied him but she knew he 'didn't look at her' because he just... couldn't feel that. that's why it's so so so important about donna. that they both knew they were best friends. the ending of the giggle made me so so happy because he's living with donna because he loves her because they're friends. he didn't need to be *with* her to be part of her family or to love her completely.

[twelvemartha]

the doctor's dynamic with his companions is like the beating hearts of the show, yet for some reason the doctor is so tightlipped about his feelings for martha in particular. it's maddening. sure, the narrative will give us tiny moments of the doctor showing his appreciation of her and acknowledging her presence. martha jones i like you. martha jones you're a star. but what does he think about her? how does he view her? what is her significance to him?

we learn a lot about what martha thinks the doctor thinks about her. he's not seeing me he's just remembering. sometimes i think he likes me but sometimes i just think he needs someone. he doesn't even look at me but i don't care. it's never outright confirmed, but so many signs point to this being the case. the doctor is constantly putting up walls between the two of them, which martha tries so hard to break through. and there are times where it seems like she manages to, where the two of them have genuine moments of connection! only for the next episode to come along and destroy that progress, as if it never happened, and the doctor goes back to being distant and overlooking her.

this wouldn't be as big a deal as it is if there was some sort of comeuppance or catharsis at the end of s3. but in the final speech martha gives to the doctor before she goes, the focus is put on her unrequited love. again. the issue, rtd wants us to believe, is that the doctor doesn't reciprocate martha's romantic feelings for him. but that's not it. the real issue is that the doctor doesn't even treat martha as a proper person, a companion in her own right, a friend who he cherishes and wants to travel with because she's martha jones. instead, he acts as if she's just someone to keep around because he gets lonely on his own.

and so instead of the doctor rightly being called out for his callous treatment of martha, we just have the show brush this under the rug and act like the matter is resolved come s4. because at the end of the day, neither martha nor her relationship to the doctor matter. they never did to the show or its writers. they were just a vehicle to tell the true story, which has nothing to do with martha at all. (this is absolutely rooted in misogynoir btw.)

[shima-draws]

Anyway speaking of poly trios. Have any of you considered Lawlusan because MANNNN.