whendermere-peaks

[whendermere-peaks]

so well said. they did my nurse so wrong.

I’ve seen some posts floating around saying things like, “Belinda was always a mom, the Doctor just corrected the timeline,” and I genuinely cannot stress enough how little that addresses the core issues people have with how her story was handled.

First of all, if that was the intention—if the idea was that Belinda was always meant to be a mother and the timeline just needed to be “set right”—they did a poor job of executing it. A twist that major, one that fundamentally alters a character’s identity or arc, requires setup. Foreshadowing. Emotional groundwork. You can’t just spring something that massive on the audience in the last five minutes and expect it to feel meaningful instead of disorienting.

And here’s the thing: Doctor Who has done that kind of plot before—successfully. A great comparison is Amy and Rory. The show literally did the “someone you love was erased from time and the universe needs to be corrected to bring them back” storyline already. And while I’ve got my own qualms with how Amy’s arc was handled overall, that particular beat actually worked.

Why? Because there were signs. The cracks in time. The missing memories. A sense of loss Amy couldn’t place. Little inconsistencies that made the audience lean forward and feel that something was wrong. Not to mention: Rory was introduced before he disappeared. We knew him. We saw his dynamic with Amy. We cared about him. We barely see Poppy in these two episodes, other than "child missing bad" we really have no attachment to her.

Now imagine if we never met Rory. If Amy had been introduced as a fierce, independent woman with no attachments, someone whose refusal to be tied down was a defining trait—and then the show suddenly revealed, in the finale, that actually she was about to get married the whole time to a man we’d never seen, and now she’s a devoted wife. No buildup. No context. Just surprise! emotional transformation. That would feel bizarre, right?

That’s exactly what happened with Belinda.

The final minutes of the finale reframe her not just as someone who once had a child, but as someone whose true self is supposedly defined by that role—and we’re meant to believe that this identity has now been “restored” to her, and we’re told it’s been restored to her as a reward. But it doesn’t feel like a revelation. It feels like a contradiction.

It’s like they wanted to write her as fierce and independent, but didn’t also want to imply that she wanted kids or thought about kids—because society still tends to associate maternal longing or caretaking instincts with weakness, or with not being a “strong” woman. So instead of exploring that complexity, they just didn’t. They wrote her as a fully autonomous character, with no visible yearning or absence, and then stapled a child onto her arc at the end.

And just to be absolutely clear: the problem is not that Belinda is a mother. You can write a fierce, independent, female-presenting character who’s also a parent. Those things are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that the story didn’t earn it.

Writers often avoid giving powerful women maternal traits because they assume femininity and strength can’t coexist—but that’s a separate conversation. The real issue here is that the show never showed us that this part of Belinda was missing. It never laid the groundwork for that emotional restoration to resonate. It didn’t feel like they revealed who she truly was—it felt like they replaced her with someone else.

It’s not that you can’t tell a story where a forgotten child or a missing family is recovered from a broken timeline. That kind of emotional twist can be powerful. But if that’s the story you want to tell, you have to earn it. You have to make the absence felt before you try to fill it. You have to let us sense the missing piece and ache for its return. Without that, it doesn’t feel like a twist—it feels like a contradiction.

And no, Poppy showing up once in The Story & the Engine is not proper setup. If this was truly the intended arc from the beginning, then it needed clues. Give us subtle signs. Let Belinda hesitate when asked simple questions. Let her glance at a photo and seem unsettled. Let her correct someone’s memory and then immediately second-guess herself. Plant a sense of wrongness in her own life that even she can’t quite name.

There’s even a interview with RTD about reshooting the beginning of The Robot Revolution to give Belinda roommates, because he thought no one would buy her owning an entire house by herself.

But if this twist with Poppy was truly planned from the start? Then leave her in that big, echoing house. Let it be part of the unease. Let there be a child’s toy tucked into the back of a drawer she doesn’t remember buying. A room she avoids, too pristine and untouched. A lullaby she hums under her breath without knowing where she learned it. Give us texture. Give us silence that feels too quiet.

Let us feel the shape of what’s missing before you tell us what it was.

That’s how you write a twist that resonates—by trusting your audience to notice the gaps, to feel the ache, and to recognize the truth when it finally appears. Not by pulling a rabbit out of a hat and calling it destiny.

[whendermere-peaks]

On the topic of the Doctor Who Christmas special ending on a shot of Bethlehem, I feel like it's an apt time to remind everyone that for a second year in a row, the real-life Bethlehem has canceled their Christmas in a show of solidarity with Gaza, which is continuing to face heavy bombardment and genocide by the Israeli forces

[whendermere-peaks]

One of my genuine favorite parts about agatha all along is the realization that Agatha's very real and legitimate powers come from simply annoying the shit out of people until they try to murder her

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— Arthur Miller, The Crucible

[whendermere-peaks]

I have always liked bad weather but if you grow up in a third world country and start to be aware of the damage it can leave in your land, it will be hard to find the peace you once found in it, back when you didn't know any better.

Does anyone else love bad weather? Like the kind that’s loud and dark and draws attention to its self like pounding rain drops and thunder and lightning that seems just so close. And you can sit near a window and it’s dark outside and maybe you’ve got a candle lit or a lamp and it’s so warm inside and you’re wearing you’re favourite sweater and watching a good show or reading a good book and it’s beautiful outside the rain and the clouds and the sound of it all and you’re just so content and cosy and happy

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losing my mind over this in the middle of class i'm totally fine guys

twenty years across the sea

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TARDIS dragons

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Why the good pizza great pizza game keep calling me The Ovenist like I'd go

Ceaseless Muncher, turn your crave upon this sloppy thing

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salesa, probably

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Oh my GOD 😔👊

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[whendermere-peaks]

That's what I'm saying

every iteration of the doctor can be categorized into two categories: dyke and twink

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😭😭😭 no because this isn't even as crazy as what is actually happening to our world right now

i’m spiraling

[whendermere-peaks]

I love doctor who having such a huge potential for fuckery like this 💜 keeps me young

God, I love Doctor Who. Where else are you going to get end credits as bananas as these?

[whendermere-peaks]

My interests bleeding into each other once again 🙏💥💯

Reimagining Doctor Who episodes as TMA pt. 5: Praxeus as the Extinction. I considered doing Orphan 55 instead, but 1. this had better imagery and 2. I didn't want to rewatch Orphan 55. Honestly this episode was really good for Extinction aesthetics as well as content; deadly microplastics, gas masks, and moldering seagulls carrying an apocalyptic plague? Yes please!

Bonus aged version under the cut

[whendermere-peaks]

Real 🤰

"I watch the woman who fell to earth for the plot"

The plot:

[whendermere-peaks]

Booping newbie here. When the boops I've received are lower than what I've given, I get sad. When the boops I've given are lower than what I've received, it's also not right. Is this normal?