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Fourteen and his sonic shields (again) 😌

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redraw 2021 > 2025

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Art by Alariko

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wave shapes / print

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danger approaches 🚨

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A few more for MagicCon Vegas, why not, I’ll have plenty

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somebody needs to pay for taking him away from me so soon

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Did Doctor Who forget that Omega, since his first appearance back in 1972, doesn't have a body? Like, how did the Rani hope to use his "pure timelord DNA" to make a new Gallifrey? The dude was literally held together by sheer willpower, there was nothing under that helmet. In his only other televised appearance he has to steal the 5th Doctor's biodata extract to give himself a body, so if anything the DNA she was going to get was Peter Davidson's.

It seems this character trait, along with generally being a tragic character in the sense that initially all they ever wanted was to survive and come home, was completely forgotten. Instead, he now has an undead giant baby body for some reason. The Omega that appears in The Reality War is the character in name only.

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16 should never meet 14, that shit would be weird.

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It's actually very sad 15 didn't get to encounter daleks once. Every doctor except 15 has encountered daleks on screen, even 14 in that minisode special.

it’s only been two series :(

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Omega was a dud, pretty sure RTD only wrote him in was to name drop and say he was there because he did absolutely nothing in his one minute of screentime besides eat a Rani. He was a big skeletal baby man. Guy didn't even have his silly hat.

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Did they like forget Belinda's core character motivation for a scene there? She finally got back to Earth, the Rani is beaten and the world hasn't ended. Sure she has a wish child with her best friend, but she still wanted to get home, no? NO? She hadn't even seen her family yet (outside of the wish world) (also her dad is never seen on screen). First day back on Earth and she's ready to leave again without even saying hello. What?

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Wait was I actually right???

Another bi-generation, something's in the water.

I like to imagine that this is a biological reaction to the time lords being decimated. Like, last time they were secretly in a bubble universe and not dead, so no bi-generation, but if this time they are actually dead and the Doctor and the Rani are the only survivors they need to mitose to increase their numbers.

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Acid Death Fantasy (2019) is a setting book for Troika by Luke Gearing and illustrated entirely by the aggravatingly talented David Hoskins.

The Troika rulebook strongly implies its chaotic core setting through its myriad character backgrounds, which nest nicely in the dream/nightmare of Fronds of Benevolence. Together, they demonstrate a specific sort of play. But what if you don’t want to play Troika that way? How do you do the same basic thing, but with a different flavor? Gearing shows you.

ADF consists of a brief introduction that lays out the barest frame for the setting — desert, a plastic sea, a thousand petty sultanates, a fallen high-tech civilization. At the end of the book are three tables for sketching out a sultanate and some adventure seeds. The rest of the book is split between character backgrounds and enemies. Reading through them, a handful of Gearing’s inspirations quickly becomes clear: Dune, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Fallout, Gorilla City, Arik Roper’s Dopesmoker cover, a smattering of real-world cultures and historical eras. There’s also plenty of original weird stuff too, though it is a bit more regimented by the setting themes.

By peppering the setting with stuff I recognize, even if those things are subverted or otherwise tinkered with, it provides hand holds I can work with to run a game here, perhaps with greater ease than core Troika (sometimes there is something to be said for having constraints!). Not only that, but seeing the familiar interact with the new and weird also teaches me how to make my own setting, should I desire.

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Turning the Rani from a cool, detached, single-minded amoral scientist into a flirty, chaotic villainess with romantic designs on the Doctor is something I would expect from Stephen Moffat.

But RUSSEL?!

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I love the different ways different Time Lords interact with their other incarnations.

The Doctor starts off in competition with themselves. Arguing or dismissing them because they think they're the smartest person in the room. But eventually they realise that "yes, they are also me, so we are the smartest in the room" and then get on with it to save the day together. Like squabbling siblings who know each other are right but don't want to admit it.

The Master acts as the Master in every incarnation. They think they're the best, the one in charge, trying to use each other like tools, often leading to self sabotage through inter-incarnation conflict. They treat their own life as the only one that matters. "Your life isn't mine, so it matters to me if you die as much as if anyone else did." They will sacrifice one another for personal gain.

The Rani is deferential to their latest incarnation, acting like a senior/assistant relationship. They end up with a clear ranking system depending on which incarnations are present at any given time, resulting in very little conflict. "The older incarnation has the most experience and thus probably knows best what to do," kind of thing.

It really shows a core aspect of their character when they meet themselves and I love that.