So we are watching Broadchurch, here are some sketches! 😊

I will not accept this jodie Whittaker slander!!/lh shes an amazing actor and you can see it in anything she has been on, and even with chibnall she still had some really good moments as the doctor. Chibnalls writing just overuses easy drama and angst to overcompensate for how chibnall doesnt know how to write the essence of doctor who, so her lines are 90% garbage

For context the

“I’m sorry, she’s not a good actress. it’s just official. it’s not just the shitty scripts, it’s her too.“

post was inspired by the two second clip at the end of the newest episode where she’s falling and she’s just. acting so bad.

it’s so bad.

it’s so fake.

I cannot believe for a second that this is a character who is actually experiencing emotions and not an actor being paid to do these things. it’s just hilariously bad.

Like I’m sorry but even with the terrible scripts, there should still be some level of delivery that we are just not getting. Even in episodes written by Moffat, David Tennant still puts emotion into the character. Even he who shall not be named puts emotion into the character. 

I’ve seen the Peacekeeper Wars. I know that terrible scripts can ruin great actors. 

But all she had to do for that little clip was pretend to be falling and it’s just. it’s embarrassing, lol.

I’m not trying to be mean to her or anything but like, either she’s just completely given up on actually acting to her full ability in Doctor Who (and given the shittiness of the scripts, I wouldn’t blame her) or she’s just not that good  of an actor.

And at this point I’m leaning towards the latter, because there’s just....no depth to her portray at all, and like I said, even actors given scripts by Steven Moffat at least feel like real characters, instead of actors being told to play a character. 

If you can point me to other things she’s in that I can find somewhere for free so she can show off her acting ability, I might change my tune, but right now it’s just not looking good lol. like. I wish I could save that clip as a video because it’s only five seconds of acting required and it’s just so bad.

I’m not mad or anything, btw, you can think she’s a good actress, I’ve just yet to see it myself.

Hot Takes

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an okay series made by a terrible creative (in a lot of ways). Joss Whedon is absolutely horrendous at writing women.

Xena Warrior Princess is only a guilty pleasure of mine. I fully recognize how terrible the writing is, but Sam Raimi is amazing at making camp enjoyable.

I really liked Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. She did an amazing job as portraying a non-binary character who can literally shape shift. Her episodes just sometimes had terrible scripts. She was the second best portrayal after David Tennant in my opinion. On the topic of Doctor Who, Clara is the worst companion in my opinion.

Sometimes dubs far exceed the quality of the source material. Ghost Stories was originally this really boring, trope ridden anime, its dub was hilarious in a completely politically incorrect manner that made it something unique and fun. Cowboy Bebop’s reliance on references to western pop culture lent itself really well to having an English speaking voice cast. Norio Wakamoto is the better Vicious but the rest of the western voice cast fits a lot better. Hamtaro’s original Japanese is a really boring children’s anime, the dub is exceedingly passive aggressive in the vocal performances, which leads me to enjoying it more. Even Hetalia’s stereotypical accents really lend themselves to the characters.

On the topic of Hetalia, you don’t have a historical education from Hetalia. Not an unpopular opinion, just thought I’d mention it.

Pokemon Sword & Shield are fine games and spending $30 for two DLC expansions is a better deal than having to buy another, slightly altered, version of the same game. Stop with your tantrums already.

Diamond is Unbreakable is poorly written and lacks narrative direction until Kira comes around. It also has characters that take a complete 180 on a dime. It glorifies abusive relationships as long as the abuser is an attractive woman. Golden Wind is boring. I’ve been enjoying Part 6 though.

The short film Silent Hill Restless Dreams (released late last year) was poorly written and acted. And while the bad acting could have been intentional, it was obvious that the actress playing both Mary and Maria was extremely uncomfortable around Vic. The director has also been acting pretty awful to critics who bring up Mignogna’s legal history, but due to the reason I mention prior to this sentence, it’s obvious that history had an affect on the end product. While the best actor in it, Mignogna also wasn’t really well directed either. That said, the only parts I enjoyed were the parts with dialogue because it was so stilted and uncomfortable that it honestly made me laugh.

While the writing was good, the animation in Invincible was absolutely awful. Like, there were some moments where I could do better, and I’m terrible at animation.

The argument over whether Star Trek TOS or Star Trek NG are the best is irrelevant, DS9 is the best Star Trek and I honestly don’t think anything will every come close to reaching the same level of quality within the franchise.

Skyrim is the best entry point for people new to the Elder Scrolls franchise, but Daggerfall is my personal favorite.

Our seeming constant need for positive LGBT+ or Neurodivergent representation in media is constantly being hindered by the fact that we’ve been fighting against the idea that LGBT+ or neurodivergent people can also be bad people. We need to write complex characters rather than always needing them to be good people out of a fear of being called homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ect. Insinuating that gay people or trans-people or autistic people don’t have the capacity to do wrong through only writing them as these perfect little cinnamon rolls is just as bad of representation as portraying somebody who’s sociopathic because they’re autistic or a sexual deviant because they’re LGBT+.

To off-set that last comment. I’ve noticed that there are very few non-white background characters in fantasy or futuristic sci-fi. This is always confused me, like... in a world where real world racism doesn’t exist, why don’t we see more racial diversity in the background cast? This is less an unpopular opinion and more a question or comment directed toward the industry.

I’ve yet to see a deepfake that actually looks good. The independent production group Corridor Crew currently has the best deepfake, which is half based around performance, costume, and make-up and half special effects. Disney’s looks absolutely awful.

Gatekeeping a hobby does more harm to the hobby than allowing anybody to do it.

Anita Sarkeesian had a lot of good points but a few really poorly worded ones. She was not a public speaker when she started out, she was a journalist who was used to being able to write and re-write her points.

Filmmaking isn’t easy. In fact making a good film is very difficult. But I hold the opinion that any group of people can make a film if they have the work ethic for it. The gatekeeping on independent filmmaking is absolutely terrible. Our capacity for storytelling is what makes us human, I mean other people say it’s civilization but even ants and cockroaches have social structures. No, we’re the only species that we know of that actively tells stories as a means of entertainment, relaxation, or even as a means to process experiences we’ve had (anything from a novelist writing about his trauma to a young kid telling her father about a cool cloud she saw). Taking that ability to tell stories away from another human being is actively hindering their ability practice humanity (even people who can’t physically talk can tell stories, we have multiple systems dedicated to non-verbal communication).

The concepts of sex and sexuality should be normalized toward children. We should teach our children about gender identity as well, as it could allow them to experiment with gender identity in their teens rather than being forced to do so in their adulthood. I genuinely feel like this would make for a more accepting society.

Billie Eilish is the modern day Kate Bush. She started at 17 with the help of her brother who still acts as a creative partner. She creates music that’s different yet commercially successful. Writes and directs her own music videos that are often strange. Is a feminist activist.

jodie whittaker could’ve been so amazing as the doctor (i mean her being a fan of the show might’ve helped, but john hurt was still phenomenal and he didn’t rlly watch it either) if only she’d been acting scripts written by a competent writer 

and if there had been a clearer line of communication between her and chibnall, because somewhere along the line, neither realised that jodie was trusting the writing and acting it out, whereas chibnall was trusting jodie to enhance the writing so he, uh, so he didn’t have to be good i guess

honestly everyone (apart from graham fuck you graham i don’t like you i’m glad you’re gone) could’ve been so much more had they only been written well, or like, written by someone who understood how characters work

Fugitive of the Judoon rewatch time babey

oh no

"don't lie to us" oof

"the master" OOF

13 taking with the master's theme playing over >>>>>>>>>

:(((((((

"why? why not with us?"

"cause you ask too many questions!" jesus doc

"Judoon?" "you just saying that to shut us up?" fuck sake Graham skhskjs

"Judoon platoon. near the moon" her dedication to this joke is fucking sending me. I love her.

most inspiring quote of the episode "BO"

oh no, the wee old lady

rip blanket I guess

"language - human" I mean, okay

oof, rip

let Graham eat his cake, mans just wanna eat.

one day, Graham O'brien will get a chance to eat

"look at you and your platoon of Judoon near the.... that lagoon" well done

"more of a canal" yaz, let her try

"that article is overwritten by local earth law... 12" good try

"we can sort this, woman to woman" you what

AHHH

"HAHA, MISSED ME, RIGHT?" YES I HAVE JACK, IT'S BEEN 10 LONG, LONG YEARS. I'VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH

love how graham's immediate reaction to getting kissed by Jack was "have we met?" bi Graham rights

Graham O'Bien

kshdkdhd Jack talking about Ibiza 13

got, Gat is hot

how much do you wanna bet she's an AU version of the Corsair?

Ryan and Jack? I ship it

"like biological cloaking" you'd think she'd maybe connect the dots

"you received a message just before you changed into Jackie Chan" KJKKDHDJDHIDHD 13 IS ON A ROLL

nanogenes, hell yeah

bring back Jack PLEASE

he's just returned, I know, BUT HE JUST FUCKS OFF AGAIN

the fact that 13 and Jack don't actually meet is a crime against the universe and must be rectified

"to defeat them, the alliance sent this thing back through time, across space" what, what thing, Jack, what thing? you can't JUST LEAVE WHAT THING? WHO'S THE ALLIANCE?! JACK, DON'T GO

God, Jodie looks so hot in this car. what is it with her being in cars and looking amazing?

I get Broadchurch vibes from 13 on that lighthouse

"those are Danny's trainers!"

DUDE THE BREAK GLASS THING HAS GALLIFREYAN WRITING ON IT

I swear, theres a few motifs from This Is Gallifrey when Ruth becomes the Doctor and I ADORE IT

I'm still as confused as 13 at this point WTFFFF

"all rainbows and trousers that don't reach" she really called 13 out for being a walking pride flag skhdkdj

"trust me, I'd remember, especially if I had that shirt" POP OFF BITCH LSHDKDH

13 acting as if she knows any fashion,, bitch, who you fooling?

she's got to be an AU doctor, it doesn't make any sense otherwise

this Gat lady and 13 should bang

skhdkdhd

oh no 13,stop being sad please oh fuck

"so you're only serving at the glory of Ash and bone" HOLY SHIT

"BUT YOU KNEW SHE WOULD" ooof, angry!13, yes please

hnhgg angry 13

nooo, 13's so sad, I can't deal with this.

STOP THIS

OH GOD SHE'S SO BROKEN SOMEONE HUG HER OR I'LL FUCKING DO IT

"ha.. that's Jack..." PLEASE

ohhh I'm not ready for the cyberman ep

either Bill will get mentioned or she'll be forgotten about and I really don't want the latter

chibs, the Doctor wouldn't forget Bill just like that

"Ryan... I've lived for thousands of years, so long I've lost count. I've had so many faces, how long have you been here? you don't know me, not even a little bit" JESUS, 13 REALLY ISN'T FEELING IT

when will we get 13 saying that's she's killed thousands, if not millions of people

omg, let 13 shoot someone PLEASE

nah, but I'm really loving this new insight to the fam. 13's been nothing but rude to them and it's understandable, she's been through so much shit, but deserting your fam to mope over your dead planet and snapping at them ain't it chief. PLEASE, get some help. get a hug, something, please.

"oi, don't talk to Ryan like that!" fukcing go off yaz

this is the conflict I've been needing yeeeaaassss

Jodie Whittaker fucking kills it every time. she's so fucking good as the Doctor, I love her so much.

"nEED SOME HELP OVER HEEeEeeRReEEe!" I'm sorry but that fucking kills me everytime ldhxldhxkdh

anyway, this ep was amazing, 9/10

so far me it's been

Spyfall Pt 1 - 9/10

Spyfall Pt 2 - 8/10

Orphan 55 - 7.5/10

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror - 8.5/10

Fugitive of the Judoon - 9/10

every episode just slaps in one way or another, this series is so good. absolutely God tier

Doctor Who Q&A!

Who is your Doctor?

Matt Smith! Funny story about him actually-he was the first doctor I ever watched-it was Time of the Angels, but at the time I watched that episode, Matt Smith’s run was over. I went back and watched Nine and Ten, and then rewatched Eleven before hitting Twelve up. Eleven has always had a special place in my heart

Your favourite Doctor?

Funnily enough, Twelve. He faintly edges out Eleven in this regard. I think I just really enjoy his humour, dry and sarcastic, and the character arc of wondering whether he’s a good person or not really spoke to me. Yeah, stinky eyebrow man wins in this regard

Least favourite Doctor?

Either Nine or Thirteen? I found Nine to be somewhat boring, I liked his humour, but most of the time was spent setting up his backstory, or that weird romance thing with Rose, and since romance has never interested me, except in certain areas *shrugs*

Thirteen isn’t anything to do with Jodie Whittaker, it’s just that the best moments of Doctor Who are when the Doctor is sad, or vulnerable or angry. The Oncoming Storm is a big part of it all. And it seems that she never really has the oppurtunity to be emotional in this yet. That’s the scriptwriters fault, not hers, and I’m happy they’re starting to change it with the new season.

Best regeneration?

Oh god, that’s actually a tie between Ten, Eleven and Twelve for me

Ten dies alone and it is awful. His last lines brought me to tears, and there’s something so sad about him being killed protecting one of his friends. 

Eleven had me sobbing. Out of the three, he’s the only one who met this whole thing with acceptance, and he’s the only one to not be alone when it happens. His was the nicest out of the three, but because he was MY Doctor, I was bawling like a baby. When Amy appeared I  b r  o k e

Twelve is heartbreakingly realistic. He’s not resisting change like Ten is, he just wants to rest, for once. Like Ten, he dies alone, with only memories to comfort him, and I remember tearing up when he told Thirteen what he told Clara

Who is the most human Doctor?

Either Ten or Twelve. Both of them are conflicted about their morality and whether they should do the right thing or not, both of them try and fail and try again. Twelve is just the one to realise he’s not good or bad, he’s an idiot.

Best Companion?

Donna Noble or Amy Pond and Rory. 

I am a sex repulsed ace-aro, this means I would rather stick my hand in a woodchipper than be in a relationship with someone. Platonic friendships and family have always been my bread and butter and these three are perfect for the Doctor.

Donna Noble? Bold, sassy, determined. Her mom is constantly putting her down, and yet she’s the saviour of the Universe. She doesn’t hesitate to call Ten out on his bullshit, and her departure hurt me on so many levels. I have loved her ever since Pompeii, and I will decry the erasure of her character as unfair until the end of bloody time

Amy Pond and Rory. I’m putting these two together, because I only really started to like Amy when Rory came in. I love their character arcs, growing and changing. Their relationship is also fun to watch, once you get over the drama. I like relationships like Chandler and Monica, natural, fun to watch, not Ross and Rachel, dragged out, on and off again, and after a brief buffer period, these two sorted out their differences and their banter was amazing to watch. Also, the fact that they’re the Doctor’s in laws? They are the epitome of found family and I am LOVING IT

Shoutout to Martha Jones btw, runner up as always. I wish we got to see more of her when she WASN’T enamoured with the Doctor, watching her call him out in the Poison Sky was magnificent.

Worst Companion?

The Companions relationships with the Doctor are the most important thing in the show; what they think of him, how much they trust him, what extent are their feelings towards them, and to me, none was quite as boring as Rose and the Doctor.

I HATE will they-wont they plots, and that basically sums up their entire run together, getting jealous of eachothers partners, vaguely alluding towards their attraction to eachother, but not saying it, it drained all of the fun out of Rose. Her making out with a clone of the Doctor, in front of the Doctor was the final thing for me.

And while I’m all for the return of a Companion, she seems to linger throughout Ten’s run. I can understand why for Martha’s; that was her entire character arc after all, learning to expect better of yourself, but she didn’t need to be there for Donna’s; they very easily could have thought of another way to create DoctorDonna. Her presence was everywhere throughout David Tennants run, and I found it annoying

Favourite Doctor Who Ships?

River Song with Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen. As I said, banter and comedy is how you establish a good relationship, it shows how relaxed two people are together, and River with whichever Doctor she’s with at the time always has this flirty back and forth going on between them. They’re very open about their attraction to eachother, and I love it. Also, Thirteen and River because if you don’t think Thirteen is a raging pansexual then I have news for you.

Amy and Rory for the reasons I listed above; they sort through their issues, have good repartee and are a very enjoyable couple to watch

(I briefly shipped Eleven x Amy x Rory before I found out they were in laws, so shoutout to that.)

Least Favourite Doctor Who Ships?

Rose x Doctor. It would have been fine if they ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING WITH IT INSTEAD OF JUST HINTING AT IT

Martha x Doctor. Martha’s whole arc is about learning that the Doctor is treating her badly and that she doesn’t need him. To go back to him would invalidate that whole thing

Controversial Thought?

I know a lot of people hate Clara, but to be honest, I’m more apathetic/warm towards her. I loved her relationship with Twelve, and how she was almost a caretaker towards him. She starts to act like the Doctor after a while, but then that’s what the Companions DO, they become more versatile, more able to handle tough situations. I’m not happy how they made her immortal and gave her her own TARDIS, but other than that, I’m pretty mild towards her

Best Two-Parter Episode?

Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. It was one of those episodes, ones that are genuinely, deeply horrifying. I got chills when I realised how long the Doctor had been trapped in the Confession Dial. I wasn’t really happy with how the brought Clara back from the dead, but I was okay with it, because watching her read the High Command the riot act for how they treated the Doctor was so, so worth it

Best Doctor/companion pairing?

Ten and Donna. Loved their brother-sister duo relationship

If Two Doctors could meet, who would you choose?

Thirteen and Four would be fun; they have similar energy and scarves after all. Think that would be fun to see. Thirteen and Twelve would also have a nice energy between them I think. Maybe throw in some height jokes.

If any Companions could meet, who would you choose?

Donna and Amy would probably end up flirting with each other. But, at the same time, I think Donna may help Amy come away from her hero worship of the Doctor. 

Martha and Rory would bond over how they sometimes feel like third wheelers and probably share medical knowledge. Martha and Clara would be fun, caring for the Doctor’s health.

If any Companions could meet any Doctor, which would you choose?

Martha meets Twelve. Twelve is actively trying to figure out whether he’s a good person, and I can see him trying to make amends for the way he’s treated her.

Thirteen meets Amy and Rory. She probably wouldn’t tell them who she is, but she would be so excited to see them again

Donna meets Nine. They would spend the entire time snarking at eachother

The Fam meets Ten. He would be so overwhelmed when he sees how many people are joining him right now

I just want to shout some women who have done amazing acting that has helped me and moved me and made me go MAGIC. 

Natalie Dormer: like honestly her Anne Boleyn is...genuinely helped me save my life. Genuinely (which is probably pathetic but it is what it is). Also the way she fought for her and cared and OH MY GOSH SO GOOD. 

Anya Charlota: Honestly I will also say all the women of The Witcher but she is so amazing. 

Sonequa Martin Green: HOLY FUCK MICHAEL BURNHAM SCIENCE PRINCESS OF MY HEART BEST AND MOST FAVOURITE. 

Jodie Whittaker: Somehow manages to become a thousand plus year old fae alien immortal being who is So Tired and So Done but also so kind. Bought me back to Doctor Who. Actual favourite Doctor. Is doing amazing amazing work. 

Please feel free to reblog with more/with examples (including the above ladies. Please feel free to include the above ladies)

This was actually a good episode ! still have some big problems, like pointless blabbing that goes nowhere, I Think that are a lot of scenes of the doctor talking technobabble that previously they just say is some science dangerous stuff and move on, or just explain with a little more energy then just looking backwards while explaining said stuff !!. 

Captain Jack Harkness makes his return to since the end of season 4 (Whoa !! That was a long time ago !) and just make a cameo in some scenes where he interact with the Doctor’s companions just to drop a hint for a future episode ! (They used him just like the Face Boe in season 2 & 3) that was kinda disappointing ! I was waiting to have scenes with Jodie Whittaker and half way though I realize that was not gonna happen ! Man I do Hope that he is on the season Finale, because just bring him back just to do that is just bullshit !! he was in this episode just to announce the return of the Cyberman Dun dun dam to the audience.( I swear that was something like that in the soundtrack !!) 

Jo Martin plays Another version of the Doctor in this episode, Finally they make the Doctor a Black woman !! Now they can move on from this and make the Doctor a white guy in the next season !! That’s not I think by the way ! But is the though of someone !! Joke aside, this whole plot that appears in this episode is gonna tie in with the whole mystery of the Timeless Child, My Guess is that Jo is a Doctor from a parallel Universe and they gonna bring a parallel Gallyfrey on this season finally, to make the return of the Time Lords ( Oh look they die and return in the season, no worry’s there anymore ! ) Because this sound way better then “The Doctor has a super super secret regeneration that even she doesn’t know about uuuuuuuuuuuh” that is just crap ! also great scenes with Jodie and Jo, the two of then are great in this episode, Jodie is getting better as the Doctor for me in this season, It is amazing how she is good when they bother to give her a good script !! and have act with some else then her dopes of companions (honestly ! I think in all this episodes, they make the Doctor act with some else the entire episode then have her act with her “Friends”).

So really good episode !! Hope they keep like this ! and just to mention, the Introduction of the Judoon is the same scenes from Smith and Jones the episode where they are introduce ! same stuff ! I was actually expecting to have the same plot ! 

Tagged by @wonders-of-the-multiverse love u

1. Favorite Doctor: Used to be David Tennant and I loved him so much I thought I wouldn’t like the show after he got replaced. But then Matt Smith joined and I lost it. When I saw the announcement with Jodie as 13 I thought I wouldn’t be able to fall in love with her because she was a woman hahahaha silly me. I love her beyond sanity. My bi ass can take how beautiful she is and how great of an actress she is. So definitely Jodie.

2. Favorite Master: Sacha is and always will be my favorite Master. His acting is unbelievable good. I just love him so much.

Sacha choke me pls

3. Favorite Sonic: Eleventh’s. I’m sorry. Its just something I can’t get over.

4. Favorite TARDIS interior: I can’t decide! I love the tech vibe Eleventh’s Tardis has but I LOVE Thirteen’s tardis as well. The crystal details and how it changes colors always amaze me but I miss the seeing-through floor. I don’t really know why.

5. Favorite companion/s: Amy is my favorite by far but I love how funny Donna was as well.

6. Favorite Story: Orphan 55 is my favorite episode but I have to say is not because of the quality or the story itself but because I live where it was filmed. My house is literally at a 10 min ride from the “hotel” in Orphan 55 and in summer I go to the “hotel’s swimming pool” (which is simply a public swimming pool” almost every day. So yes, I can’t stop watching it because of how familiar the place is to me.

7. Favorite soundtrack: Series 12, definitely. 

8. Dream actor for next male/female doctor: Seeing back my history with the whole “I love this actor/actress so much and I just won’t like any other” thing I have in my head, I really don’t know. I hope Jodie stays forever but I know that's not possible so please I hope she breaks the three-series curse at least. I need her a little bit longer and I’m not ready to say goodbye.

9. Dream Story: I agree soooo much with @wonders-of-the-multiverse here! I need more content of the master and the doctor realizing they won’t survive in a certain situation unless they team up! I think I just need them to realize they cannot live without each other. I mean, they are the last time lords in the universe! Please! Just make up already!

10. A companion you’d like to see again: I’d love to see Amy’s reaction to the first woman doctor! and River’s as well! Omg

Obviously, like everyone, I really need Jack to see her. I just need to see his reaction. please Chisnall!

11. An enemy you wanna see again: the master obvs

And an enemy I’d like to see would be Whittaker!master as well. I’d lit lose it.

12. If you could set a story in any time period what would it be? : No idea, actually. They have exploited almost every time period haha. I’d love to see an episode in prehistoric earth though.

13. If you could travel with any doctor which would it be: THIRTEEN OBVIOUSLY.

okay so I’m gonna tag... @queerconfusionthings  @captianjackscurshes-and-co @twelvethirteens

Doctor Who “Orphan 55″ had so many good quotes, I can’t even begin, I’m just tossing likes at so many GIFs people put up, right now. The lawnchairs are the last defense. Graham’s vacations plans. The animal person attendee who is very non judgemental about how you decide to spend your time. Like every minute, an incredible one-liner was thrown at us.

Overall, the ep was.... I mean, pretty good. Very “Midnight” from Series 4 ish. Very “stare into the camera and remind us about impending climate change”. Which, since I’m usually involved in matters relating to climate change, thanks? Also very, “who is going to be killed off.... ah, the older couple, specifically by offering themselves as a sacrifice.... this seems like it hits a lot of problematic boxes...” and “The WoC character is setting up bombs and violently lashing out like this? Look, writers/casting directors. Just. this is a white boy thing, much more than a brown skinned woman thing. You were doing this in ‘spyfall’ when you cast a black man as your evil google/zuckerberg -- who are also white men doing evil things. Just maybe think about your diversity decisions, a little more.”

Anyway rather than the overall story, I kind of like the amazing one-liners, dialogue, and small moments through the ep.

Ooh, nice moments from 13 esp. The odd reactions when she saw that sign, the few-too-many-milliseconds of staring and her fluster with Yaz and the others. I’m usually bad at picking up good or bad acting, honestly (just not my strongest skill). But I think I can say, I’ve really been enjoying Jodie Whittaker’s acting. Like when she finally saw the Master in “Spyfall part 1″ and put her fist to her mouth with an expression of... so much.

There remains a stigma attached to the word ‘breakdown’, when actually it’s a very legitimate response to life in the early twenty-first century. We are not designed for the non-stop world we live in, the pressures put upon us, and those we bring upon ourselves. For young people, especially, those pressures are becoming ever more intense. Social media, the battle for jobs, the speed with which we judge – it’s a lot easier for kids now to be made to feel inadequate in so many different ways. I worry about what any child picks up in their subconscious just through their daily interaction with the world. Societal pressure has got worse for children, and I hope my own experiences will make me better able to help my children tread that difficult path.

*

Billie was magnificent as Rose. I knew she was good at the time but looking back now I can see her absolute brilliance. It reminds me how much we loved working together, which is palpably obvious on screen. Actors work at chemistry; it doesn’t just come with a snap of the fingers, but we were fortunate enough to have something there from the start. We were also professionals and knew how to achieve on-screen banter. What truly amazes me is I know how nervous Billie was at the start. She thought I was some big serious performer and she didn’t have the belief in herself as an actor. She proved herself, of course, to be way better than any of the rest of us. Her luminosity on screen comes from herself, not those around her, and instinctively she made Rose exactly the person she should be. When Doctor Who won a BAFTA for Best Drama, it was Billie for whom I was truly delighted. The reception she got when the show was screened made any lingering reservations on her part about her ability evaporate. It was admirable in her that she had zero arrogance that she could do it. The work she has done since has shown her to be worthy of every accolade that comes her way.

Watching our characters now reinforces what I concluded at the time: Russell enjoys writing more for women than he does for men. If so, I’m glad – there’s been a lot of writing for men. Rose arrives on screen fully formed, one of the strongest female characters of any show of any year, painting a solid line leading directly to Jodie Whittaker. If you think about it, the relaunch in 2005 was actually the chance to create the first female Doctor. Why not do it then? Perhaps, really, we should be looking back on Billie Piper not as Rose but as the Doctor.

*

The attitude exists that, in the relationship between producer, director and actor, they are the adults and we are the children. I agree, actors can behave like children, they can be spoilt – but not this one, and not a lot of others I know. A working relationship can’t operate on a basis of master and servant. If a director, or anyone else on set, comes in and has bad manners, then chances are they’ll hear from me.

This idea that actors can be manipulated and pushed around to suit the agendas of others irritates me. On Shallow Grave, prior to the shoot, myself, Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox lived in a flat together for a week. We rehearsed, read scenes, and got to know each other. I considered it to be a budgetary and practical arrangement, but after the film came out Danny talked about it as being a social experiment, which I objected to because to me it was like the director playing God. If Danny wanted to conduct an experiment to gauge our reaction and interaction to one another, he should have told us. Had I known, I would doubtless have gained something from the situation. Danny, I expect, would argue otherwise, that the actors wouldn’t get it. Well, I’m more intelligent than that. As it turned out, Danny’s plan was counterproductive because all it did was give myself, Kerry and Ewan a week to realise we didn’t like each other very much and didn’t get on. We had entirely different backgrounds, approaches to acting, and sensibilities. All three of us were also very, very ambitious and insecure with it. Danny would probably argue that that tension then manifested itself on screen. I think that’s bollocks. This idea of pitting one actor against another is dangerous, manipulative and patronising. The film would have been better without all that nonsense.

I’m not alone in feeling dismayed at misplaced directorial interference. Anthony Hopkins once arranged for the cast of Frankenstein to go for a Chinese meal during rehearsals. Anthony received a message from Francis Ford Coppola: ‘Francis doesn’t want you to go for a Chinese meal,’ it read, ‘because he feels it would break the atmosphere.’

Anthony Hopkins’ reaction was simple – ‘Bollocks, we’re going for a Chinese meal.’

*

In a way, Let Him Have It was an example of the British film industry bowing to American values. I hate Forrest Gump. I would like to burn every single copy of that film for the way it treats both mental health issues and women. A sexually free female character who ends up with AIDS? That tells you everything. I wanted to make an angrier, more polemical, more complicated film about a young man who deserved more than just to have the label ‘simple’ pinned to his lapel.

*

That presence, that intensity, that some people, not just Peter, have identified again comes from growing up, like most working class children, with the institutional message, ‘You’re stupid’, as did my father, as did my brothers. If you’re working class in this country, you may be able to shovel shit or push a trolley, but, ‘You are thick. You do not emote.’ ‘You are thick. You are not worthy of a decent education.’ Those central messages of unworthiness become so ingrained that they are self-perpetuating. Come up with a big word and not only are you mocked – ‘Oh, where did that come from?’ – but you mock yourself. So yes, I am intense, and that’s because there’s a lot of fierce concentration on trying to be articulate, rather than that laid-back public-school attitude to intellect that some people seem to have.

*

My dad had definitely shared with me a very visible masculinity. His appearance and actions shouted standard maleness, but the way I viewed him was different. It seemed obvious to me that, at his core, causing his outward behaviour, was a great femininity and vulnerability. My view of maleness was formed from how tyrannical my dad could be and yet how gentle. Through him, I learned to accept that the two things could coexist. I too have a masculinity allied to an intensely female side. Perhaps the difference is I’m aware of it. Dad, I think, found his sensitivity a source of conflict. For many years, I was the same. I resented it. I resented the part of me that made me different. If you are a late-twentieth-century male, traditional working-class, you are not going to like that side of yourself. I wanted to be black and white. I didn’t understand that it is the sensitive side that offers true insight in life – intuition and empathy.

*

Similarly, there’d be no bunches of flowers from Dad – none of that – and he didn’t like dancing – he was too self-conscious, too embarrassed – so Mum would always dance with somebody else.

I once went into my mum and dad’s room and saw a book, The Sun is my Tormentor, a Mandingo-esque novel of love and adventure, by Mum’s side of the bed. Seeing my mother in middle age and her desire for romance moved me deeply. It made me cry. I felt for her emptiness and also because I knew there were greater romantic novels that, because of her conditioning as being unworthy of such literature, she perhaps felt she couldn’t venture into.

*

We wrapped the production on Friday, had a party, and then on Saturday morning I’d arranged to go to Old Trafford with my dad. I was really looking forward to it – and he turned up with the season tickets from two years before. I’m disgusted with myself thinking about it now, but I gave him a bollocking. I was pissed off because I couldn’t go to the game. More than that, though, I was pissed off because he had dementia. That is shameful on my part, but genuinely that is the case. Maybe that shame is something others in the same position will recognise, an occasional presence of a selfish internal voice, one that so desperately craves ‘normality’.

I put my anger at his illness down to coming straight off the back of Flesh and Blood, with its fictional narrative so unflinchingly similar to my own non-fiction life. Amid that emotion, present as he always was whenever me and my dad knocked heads, was that little boy who was frightened of him. I definitely harboured residual anger towards him, a straight reflection of the anger he’d exhibited towards me. Sounds harsh, but he was getting back the temper he taught me. I was in control now. I’m not proud of that, and I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s how I justified it to myself.

I looked into his eyes and could see him trying to process what was going on. He was staring at the season tickets, semi-computing that they were the ones from two years ago, while trying to work out what the situation meant, and what should happen next. For ten seconds, my peripheral vision was blacked out, blinkered. All I saw was this big, fierce bird-like face looking around lost in confusion. I put Dad on the bus home, the route being familiar to him, and walked away. I rang later and explained to my mum what had happened. And then I started crying. I cried for four hours. That night I had a date with my girlfriend. I told her about it and cried all over again. I broke my heart like I’ve never broken my heart since. That moment of seeing his confusion had left a mark – not a bruise, but a deep, lasting weal. Until that point, I’d understood intellectually that my dad had dementia because we’d been told. But emotionally I hadn’t understood it at all. And then there, in the street outside Old Trafford, I’d been given a window into somebody going mad. Becoming demented. That’s the truth of it – demented. It’s a shocking word. We used to talk about demented dogs, and we shot them. When we say dementia, there’s no hiding the truth. It means people are demented. We can dress that up however we want, but there’s no denying the naked reality beneath. That day I had been presented with the stark vision of a man floundering in a maze of his mind’s own making. Not knowing who and where he was. And I’d just been horrible to him. And he was my dad.

*

Esme asked me the other day, ‘Daddy, do you like Mummy?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘when me and Mummy met, we fell in love and had you. Having two children very quickly is hard on parents in a relationship and then Mummy and Daddy started to not like each other. Now, Esme, as you’ve seen, we are trying to be friends.’

As a child, I would have liked that level of honesty and candidness with my parents, but it was no more part of Ronnie and Elsie than it had been their parents, and so on and so on before. I completely understand that the openness switch was neither at their fingertips nor was it socially reinforced. Emotion could hold a working-class child back, make them unready for what was to come – what they were for. I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to have a more grounded relationship with my children. Before Albert and Esme, playing football, wrestling, doing a crossword or mock-boxing with my own dad were the happiest things I could ever imagine in my life. They go right to the heart of me. Now, I have a new happiness with my own children. And it is a happiness born of honesty.

The blight on that happiness is that I don’t live with them. I know I’ve yet to come to terms with that fact. This book will help, the increasing distance from the hospitalisation will help, but it’s something that will always hurt inside. The legal system could certainly help deliver balance for parents and children involved in separation and divorce. Hopefully, we are in the dog days of the Victorian view of men and women and their role in their children’s lives, which has led to institutional and historic bias. In the twenty-first century, an authentic emotional relationship can come from a man as much as a woman.

*

I wanted to throw a spotlight on the generations, the millions and millions, for whom ‘success’, defined as anything other than the basic survival of themselves and their family, was a concept of which they were denied to the extent that they were chained, leg, wrist and neck, to an institutionally blessed mindset of zero expectation. To those in charge of those institutions, the working class is as it describes. A production line of workers, nothing more, nothing less. People? With character, hope, intelligence, ambition? Forget it. Get back in your box and shut up.

I was asked a few years ago to go on the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? I agreed and they started looking into my family tree. It says everything that the project went nowhere. They tugged aside the leaves on those branches and concluded, ‘Nothing to see here.’ Generations of working-class people dismissed. Individuals with their own hopes, dreams and stories. Not army generals, industrialists, vaudeville singers, but factory workers, farm labourers, cleaners, nothing in any way ‘sexy’ enough for TV.

No doubt if someone like me had popped up in the dim and distant, all would have been good. But why? My father had all my abilities, linguistically, physically, and then some. So, no doubt, did generations before him. I get that my life has been far more fulfilled than my father’s and those before him, but for me that makes him the far more interesting story. What do I know of life? I’m not driving stacker trucks all day at Colgate-Palmolive and then going to Bulmers and driving stacker trucks there all night. I’m not cleaning floors in a launderette like Mum. And yet how often is the story of the working class ever told on TV? I don’t mean the dross that is soaps. I mean properly told? The answer is less and less. Working-class stories don’t fit in boxsets. They don’t make money. They don’t fit the business model of selling to global TV. And yet they are the lives that talk to me, define me. They are the lives I find endlessly fascinating.

Christopher Eccleston, I Love the Bones of You

People are such asses that they are spreading rumors that Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker are leaving Doctor Who after next year. That next season will only have six episodes. I’m honestly so fed up with these fake fans saying that Jodie isn’t the Doctor. That she doesn’t feel right, that she can’t act. Don’t watch the freaking show if you don’t enjoy her! Because I guarantee you that Jodie not only feel like the Doctor in every way, but this season as a whole has been amazing. Every season is gonna have it’s less than stellar episodes. Getting used to a new reincarnation is always hard. It took me until Capaldi’s last season before I warmed up to him fully. I get that not everyone is gonna be happy. That’s fine. But that in no way gives you the right to shit on this beloved show and make other feel bad for enjoying it. If you like it, good. If you don’t, then that’s fine as well. But seriously, just stop bitching.

The Tsuranga Conundrum - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Ugh. I suppose it had to happen eventually. After four great episodes on the trot, it was only a matter of time before Chris Chibnall ran out of steam and returned to his usual output.

Okay. That’s not fair. The Tsuranga Conundrum isn’t that bad. It’s not like Cyberwoman or his Silurian two parter. In fact had this come out during one of Moffat’s series, I probably would have considered this episode a highlight. But Series 11 so far has been a true return to form for the show, with episodes like The Woman Who Fell To Earth and Rosa featuring some amazing moments of characterisation as well as intelligent and quite often powerful writing. Somehow Chibnall has managed to defy expectations and demonstrated just what you can do with a show like Doctor Who if you were to actually put the time and effort in. It’s for that reason why I feel like The Tsuranga Conundrum is such a spectacular dud.

It’s funny how i mentioned Moffat’s tenure as showrunner because this honestly feels like an episode from that era just as The Power Of Three felt like a throwback to RTD. All the episodes so far this series have had slow deliberate pacing, giving the audience time to truly get to know the characters and the setting. In fact the characters are clearly the main focus this series with the plot and monster (if there even is a monster at all) being secondary. This I feel is what has made this series so strong. It’s what made even a weak episode like Arachnids In The UK have an emotional kick to it. The Tsuranga Conundrum on the other hand feels like the complete opposite of this. Everyone is dashing about, spouting exposition, with the characters becoming almost an afterthought. Obviously if you’re into this kind of plot driven, fast paced Who, then more power to you. It just feels really out of place after the previous four episodes.

What also affected my enjoyment were the character inconsistencies and general stupidity. I have had nothing but praise so far for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, but this... I don’t know what has happened, but this is not a good episode for the Doctor. For starters the episode opens with Team TARDIS on a junk planet and coming across a sonic mine, but instead of doing something sensible like running away, the Doctor just stands there like a twit waiting for the thing to detonate. Then when she regains consciousness four days later on the Tsuranga, she tries to hijack the ship so she can get back to the TARDIS. Yeah! Fuck the other patients! It’s not like their lives matter or anything! That has got to be one of the most unDoctorly things I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry, but the Doctor would never do something like that.

But wait! A UO breaches the shields and enters the ship. The Doctor’s doctor Astos, having just ordered her to return to her bed, demands she checks the much safer port side of the ship while he takes a look around the more dangerous starboard side. It was his tone and manner that really got to me. Can you imagine him saying that to a male Doctor? And do you know what the worst bit is? She actually does what he tells her to do. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. Again, there’s no way the Doctor would do something like that. I don’t care what gender they are. The Doctor in any of their incarnations wouldn’t have submitted to someone else. They would have taken charge. And yeah, she eventually does once Astos gets killed, but that scene still irked me. When I first heard the words ‘Chris Chibnall is going to be writing the first female Doctor,’ this was the kind of thing I was afraid we would get.

I’ve got nothing against Jodie Whittaker of course. She’s still giving it her absolute all, but there’s just very little for her to work with here. Another scene that really stood out as weird was the scene where she asked Yasmin to pick a number to set the bomb timer to. Why?! That just seems like such a callous and inappropriate thing to do in that situation. Matt Smith’s Doctor I could buy doing that. That’s just the kind of dickish and plonkerish thing he would do, but Whittaker’s? It just feels like an excuse to do weird, kooky shit. And here I was hoping we’d left that behind with Peter Capaldi and the dreaded sonic sunglasses. Not to mention all the moments where the story stops dead in its tracks so that the Doctor can witter on at length about hope and anti-matter. Again, Jodie Whittaker does her best, but there’s a time and a place. It’s hard to marvel at an anti-matter drive when there’s a fucking alien eating the spaceship.

Let’s quickly discuss the Pting. I liked it. It’s a good design and a different kind of threat for Doctor Who. I’m impressed this series how Chibnall so far has managed to stay away from the usual ‘alien invaders wanting to take over the world’ schtick, finding different kinds of threats and motives for each episode. The Pting isn’t evil. It’s just hungry and looking for something to eat. That’s so innocent for a Who antagonist that’s almost charming. Unfortunately it’s undermined by yet more stupidity. The Doctor is alarmingly slow to catch on to the fact that the Pting isn’t interested in killing the crew. It just wants to eat the ship. I would have thought the computer describing it as ‘strictly non-carnivorous’ and seeing it scoffing down her sonic screwdriver would have been a bit of a giveaway, but there you go. She acts like this is a big revelation, but we knew this from the start, didn’t we? If the audience are further along than the Doctor, something has gone spectacularly wrong. And then Chibnall drops the clunker that the Pting feeds on energy. Wait... huh?! If it feeds on energy, why was it eating metal earlier? And if the Pting ate all the energy in Astos’ life pod, how did it explode?

Characters are another issue. Because the episode is zipping along at a hundred miles an hour, there’s barely any time to really get to know anyone. Lois Chimimba’s medic character I thought had potential, having to take charge of the ship after Astos’ death and maybe taking inspiration from the Doctor and following her example, but she’s too busy dealing with a comedy male pregnancy (that I didn’t much care for by the way. I didn’t think it was particularly funny and it just felt like Chibnall came up with it at the last minute to give Graham and Ryan something to do). You’ve got this famous general and her engineer brother who aren’t particularly interesting. There’s the usual sibling rivalry you’ve seen done millions of times before the eventual reconciliation where the two spout ‘I love yous’ over slushy music (this is the closest composer Segun Akinola has gotten to Murray Gold territory and I very much hope we don’t come any closer). Then the general pops her clogs due to Plot Contrivance Syndrome and the engineer ends up saving the day piloting the ship... which begs the question why didn’t he just pilot the ship in the first place if he knew how to do it? Makes the general’s death seem a bit silly really.

Whereas previous episodes managed to tug at the heartstrings with subtle, but effective moments of characterisation, The Tsuranga Conundrum goes the RTD route of bashing you over the head with gaudy sentimentality and melodrama. Nothing can be left to chance. Everything has to be spelt out so that even the idiots at the back of the class can understand the emotions on display. The Doctor’s speech about hope. Ryan talking about how his mum died and how his dad was never there for him. Ryan then using that experience to tell Yoss how to be a dad. The android giving the final eulogy about stars guiding you through bollocks (I’m paraphrasing obviously, but that was the gist of it). It all just feels incredibly forced and not in the least bit affecting. The one moment I think sparked a genuine emotion out of me was Graham and Ryan laughing about how Grace would react if she saw them delivering a baby on a spaceship.  That was a nice human moment that. I liked that.

It isn’t a bad episode. It’s certainly not the worst thing Chibnall has ever written. If I close my eyes and cover my ears during the stupid and annoying bits, I’d probably enjoy it. But compared to the previous four episodes, it’s hard not to see The Tsuranga Conundrum as a massive step backwards.

Who Reviews

Doctor Who: The Witchfinders, written by Joy Wilkinson. In the history of Doctor Who we've had three stories both written and directed by women. The last was Barbara Clegg's Enlightenment in 1983, an unusual story which stands out from its era and is easily one of the best of the 80s. The Witchfinders is a very solid tale, and you might say it succeeds as a traditional Doctor Who story more than any other this year. I've seen someone on Twitter call it the best so far and I can't concur with that, but this is a good opportunity to look at what's really been happening with Doctor Who this year overall.

Chris Chibnall as showrunner has brought us a Doctor Who which functions better as Genuine Adult Drama (GAD) than the Davies and Moffat eras did. You can feel the influence of Davies, but they've shaved his trademark silliness off the whole thing for a more muted feel to the proceedings. This is paired with an anamorphic desaturated feature-film look to the visuals. At times the series even feels bland and flavorless, but at its best we feel the weight of the adult concepts the TARDIS team are faced with - American racism in "Rosa" and the British-sparked conflict between Muslims and Hindus in "Demons of the Punjab." The Witch trials of the King James era are a weighty, depressing subject, and it seems a little bit of a shame to bring traditional Doctor Who alien monsters into it. To the episode's credit, it goes full horror movie with this. There's some CGI but it's mostly makeup straight out of a zombie film - specifically the Evil Dead series. It feels too scary for kids, and Doctor Who should occasionally feel like that. And oh, let's talk about King James. Russell T. Davies established the traditional of the "celebrity historical" where The Doctor meets a well known historical (or sometimes fictional) personage, often played by a recognizable guest-star actor. So here's Alan Cumming, a big-name actor coming in to play his part as an absolute lark. Openly gay and affecting a comical upper-class Scottish accent of some kind, he's a delight throughout, whether flirting with Ryan or trying to learn The Doctor's secrets. The half-comedic performance does undermine him a bit as a threat, but it's nice to see a guest actor having fun with a part. Cumming is a smart enough actor to never go fully over the top with it, pitching his performance at the right level so that it doesn't break the scene. The three companions have been reliably good, but not in a showy or cartoonish way. They only occasionally get standout moments. There's a lot of humor and energy to Jodie Whittaker's performance as The Doctor, which is not unlike David Tennant's popular Doctor, but it often feels like that energy is muted by everything else around her, as if she's acting in a tank of water. The Witchfinders is the first episode to show The Doctor struggling to get anyone to take her seriously, due to her gender. King James doesn't recognize her as being in charge, and she's sentenced as a witch and drowned. I'm glad an episode dealt with this, but it also speaks to a fundamental, and peculiar, powerlessness inherent to Jodie Whittaker's version of The Doctor. In the 60s-80s series, it was common for The Doctor to be mistrusted by everyone at the beginning of a story, and locked up until he could prove his worth. Jon Pertwee's Doctor spends much of Frontier in Space going from one prison cell to another. The faster-paced post-2005 series rightly dispensed with that as padding they didn't have time for. Psychic Paper was introduced to give The Doctor credentials and credibility at the beginning of a story, along with other tricks often involving the Sonic Screwdriver - which by this point is an all-purpose tool but can also be used for its traditional purpose of opening locks to get The Doctor - and the writer - out of a dead end. The Psychic Paper fails The Doctor in this one, as King James doesn't respect a woman's authority. It was usually easy for The Doctor, as played by Eccleston, Tennant, Smith or Capaldi, to talk his way into a position of authority, and Whittaker's Doctor managed that in her first scene. But increasingly it's become apparent that The Doctor is not doing an amazing job of solving every problem in an episode like an all-powerful God, or kid's TV hero. The Davies and Moffat eras often wanted to show you how amazing and powerful The Doctor is. This Doctor keeps ending up with endings in which some immediate threat has been vanquished, but larger societal problems linger, and people we care about are dead. Last week's episode, Kerblam!, set up an apparently dystopic capitalist future, where an Amazon-like retailer had replaced 90% of employees with automation, and was required by law to keep a 10% human workforce. The employed workers were treated like machines, and were miserable, and the unemployed were apparently living in even greater misery and poverty. The episode couldn't, or wouldn't, imagine an automated future where the unemployed are cared for. Capitalism can't imagine that either. The Doctor sees that misery and doesn't do much to help. She solves the immediate problem that is killing workers, so that the company can keep on running, more or less as it did before. This has been something of a running theme. The Doctor doesn't fix anything for citizens of this galaxy at large. The Doctor can't improve the racism of 20th Century America, only observe it and make sure that Rosa Parks' protest happens as scheduled. You could say the same about the border dispute tearing India apart in 1947. History isn't changed, only observed and mourned, and the role of the colonizing British in creating his situation is not dealt with in any overt way. Grace dies in the course of The Doctor's first adventure. The Doctor feeds the dangerous Pting, calming it for awhile, but sets it loose afterward. We never see The Doctor deal with the giant spiders or, more importantly, the toxic waste that created them. That waste was itself the product of deregulation under the laissez-faire rule of Chris Noth's Robertson, an uber-capitalist narcissist psychopath who is compared to Trump (though not as vile). The Doctor and Ryan are seen to trap the large spiders for a natural death, but what happens after that is not dealt with onscreen. Instead we get this companion team officially joining The Doctor in the TARDIS. In every episode this year, we witness a very messed-up situation, often caused by some intersection of capitalism and racism. But it's not a situation The Doctor can fix by the end of the episode. She can only mitigate the stranger, monster-based elements, the threat that they're facing immediately in the moment. She removes whatever is gumming up the gears of progress so that the actual horrors of the society in question can continue unchallenged. Of course in the more historically-based episodes it's too much to ask that The Doctor Solve Everything, in capital letters. Is she supposed to solve racism? But the more fantasy-based episodes like Kerblam! have much less excuse. It's telling, I think, that these episodes overall are better at dealing with America's failures than Britain's. The Doctor is powerless to deliver a truly happy ending, or even to show she's trying for one, and I wonder if that's intentional or due to a lack of political consciousness on the part of the writers and showrunner. This year on Halloween, the leftist Youtube channel Philosophy Tube did a piece about the horrors of the witch trials, and how they were used to break the power that women had in a feudal agricultural society, including traditional medicine, and how this led to modern capitalism. He covered the same material on Twitter, and I'll link to that here. https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/953277894813536256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmk47kh7fiE "The Witch-Hunt is classic Divide and Rule: paint women as dangerous so the new proletariat are busy fighting 'witches' instead of joining together and fighting the rich. There are massive rollbacks of women's rights … Records were often kept of how much land or money was seized from them, but not how many were murdered." It's an interesting take on just how bloody the transition to an industrial capitalist society was, and how the people and their "old ways" had to be broken for this to happen. It was a means of controlling women's options, and the options of the average worker, something that's still relevant to today's society. In some ways we still live, today, in the cages that the witch-hunters built. Today's politicians like Mike Pence are just witch-hunters in different clothes. And that's something this Doctor Who story doesn't deal with. I've mentioned this, but when the Rosa Parks story was announced, I saw a lot of people on Twitter, who aren't Doctor Who fans, assuming that a Doctor Who take on Rosa Parks would by nature have to be a disgusting exercise in tastelessness. Maybe they thought The Doctor would be taking on some kind of Racism Monster. Apart from introducing The Doctor and a villain into the proceedings, "Rosa," as an episode, was tastefully done. While it didn't show clearly that Rosa Parks planned her protest beforehand, it did show that Parks was an activist who planned her actions alongside others (including Dr. King), which is more than many history books do. But their fears were not unfounded. It's common for pop culture to create extended and elaborate metaphors about bigotry as if they're making some grand statement, but also reinforce that bigotry as somehow justified along with it. In Disney's Zootopia, there are classes of predator and prey animals, and the predators are discriminated against and find it difficult to get ahead in society. This is a metaphor about racism, but it would be entirely justified for a rabbit to be afraid of a fox. In the wild, a "predator" would eat the "prey" animal. If this is truly taken as a metaphor for white racism against black people in America, it's an offensive one. Race is a social construct, and racism as we know it was created to enforce slavery. It established people with dark skin of African descent as an underclass, to exploit in order to grease the wheels of capitalism in the centuries before the Civil War (and afterward, if we're being quite honest). Black people and white people are genetically identical, and without the shadow of slavery (created by the rich to enrich themselves) would have identical rights. Foxes and rabbits are not genetically identical. One is likely to eat the other. In the X-Men series, mutants are feared and shunned by society. They have superpowers from birth, and are genuinely extremely powerful and potentially dangerous. So if the public fears them, that's actually entirely justified. The mutants are different from "normal" humans and could assert their power in very dangerous ways if they wanted. Wolverine is virtually an immortal with knives for hands. Phoenix could easily destroy the earth. The endless comics, TV series and films featuring the X-Men have positioned Xavier and Magneto as the "Dr. King" and "Malcolm X" of their story, in that Xavier wants mutants to have equal rights and is more palatable to the mainstream, while Magneto is "too radical." But this is an offensive metaphor when you break it down. Of course neither Xavier nor Magneto are black Americans. Both Dr. King and Malcolm X were considered extreme radicals in their time, and they agreed on many concepts. Dr. King spoke out for worker's rights generally, and for class consciousness. He was murdered for his beliefs. Magneto has magnet powers and runs a club called "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" which seeks to dominate over humanity. He's a bad guy who does bad things and constantly emperils the world in general. Comparing him to a 60s civil rights leader is an offensive metaphor, unless you accept that the X-Men series just wants to touch on the history of bigotry in America as subtext without accepting everything that comes with it, which is fair enough. It's not a history lesson. But like almost all sci-fi stories, it makes no sense without our understanding of how black people and other groups have been marginalized in America, but makes the story about white people instead, like a cartoon fox played by Jason Bateman. The history of slavery, oppression, bigotry, Nazism, fascism, and so on is the subtextual backstory for pretty much all sci-fi media. So many villains are based on the Nazis, but this rarely takes into account the racist ideology behind fascism. Hitler came to power after Germany's economy had collapsed, partly due to the Great War. The average worker was living in hopeless poverty, and either they were going to develop class consciousness and tear down capitalism, asserting their rights as a worker, or they were going to need someone to blame. Hitler gave them someone to blame. He rounded up the socialists, communists and Marxists who were preaching against capitalism. He blamed it all on the Jewish people, who traditionally had been excluded from many professions and were often involved in banking. It was apparently easy to make up conspiracy theories about them Actually Being in Charge of Everything. He rounded up the LGBT people, burned gay and trans literature. He targeted the Romani "gypsies" who had been marginalized for centuries. There was no logical underpinning behind this. There never really is, with racism. Hitler only wanted power, and he saw that the people had lost faith in the world, with capitalism and their government. They were being oppressed by economic depression, and had a general unfocused rage. He used that anger and directed it toward groups that were already marginalized in some way. He distracted the people and consolidated his power by giving them something to hate. He slaughtered six million Jewish people in an apparent bid to wipe an entire religion off the face of the Earth - the religion which gave us Christianity, for that matter. Since the 80s, Capitalism and greed has gone unchecked by any desire to actually help people and have a functioning society. After George W. Bush's trillion-dollar wars for oil, the economy has crashed and not really gotten better. People are noticing. The rich are getting obscenely so, as if they're being gifted the equivalent of a brand new car every few seconds. The poor are begging for scraps. There is a general unfocused rage. Donald Trump, a fake billionaire, has gotten a large chunk of America to blame it on non-white minorities, such as people from Mexico. This is what Hitler did. I've gotten way off topic, but for a reason. The people who burned witches in the 17th century and thereabouts were not actually killing people who had any magical powers. They were murdering their neighbors, and consciously or not it helped the world change. The world's economy was changing. Land was being seized. Power was shifting. People were losing rights and property they had previously been entitled to, as part of a series of steps which led to factory work in the 19th century. They killed women to kill off the old ways. And I'm watching a rather good Doctor Who episode about that, about killing witches to "fight the powers of Satan," and it turns out that in this episode they actually have good reason to be killing off their neighbors, or to fear the powers of Satan, because there's actually some evil alien stuff going on, and it's infecting people and raising people from the dead and it all looks very scary and supernatural. If you're in the mood to be offended it does feel a little like a Witch Trial but with Actual Witchcraft, portraying the witch-hunters as absurd and awful but also somewhat vindicated by the events of the story, not unlike our X-Men and Zootopia examples. So it's a good Doctor Who yarn, but as a metaphor it doesn't even get started. The episode isn't that interested in the larger societal issues at play here, although it does deal with sexism, which covers a lot of that territory in a general sense. It largely focuses on female characters (except for King James), and both the writer and director are women, for the third time in Doctor Who history. And that's been due to sexism. There haven't been a ton of women writing Doctor Who, or directing it (despite the big-name appeal of Tank Girl director Rachel Talalay). And that's a problem. And it's a problem the show has temporarily solved, by hiring women for this week only. The larger cultural problem remains. And the show keeps fighting for diversity, this year. British writer Malorie Blackman OBE handled "Rosa" with real sensitivity. And Vinay Patel handled "Demons of the Punjab" with full awareness of its historical background. Between them they've probably delivered the two best episodes this year. Indeed these have all stood above the episodes credited to Chris Chibnall. The diversity this year has been welcome, as it's resulted in some good television. But like The Doctor's actions in these episodes it's just a band-aid placed over any larger cultural issues. She can stop the problem of the week, but she really can't fix everything. Which is fine. Realistic, even, which fits the tone of this year in general. My question is, does she want to fix everything? Are The Doctor and her writers socially aware enough to use these larger issues responsibly? So far, in terms of social consciousness, this year's Doctor Who raises a lot of questions it can't actually answer. Not in a way which satisfies the kids, or the adults - for different reasons. It's still very good television, and I'll give it points for asking some of these questions in the first place.

Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument (11x02)

I'm pretty happy so far!

Cons:

I'm still finding the companions, particularly Yaz, a little bit one-dimensional. It's not a huge distracting problem or anything, but I'm not instantly connected to them the way I remember being with Rose, with Martha, and with Donna. Of course, it's dangerous to try and recapture Russell T. Davies-era Doctor Who, so I'm trying not to use that as my yardstick. Still, hopefully an episode coming up can shine a spotlight on who Yaz is as a person. We learn she has a sister. Maybe we could explore some of her familial relationships a little bit more!

The two characters racing to win prosperity for themselves and their tribes were really interesting, but I found the ending where they tie to be a little unsatisfying. Not the end result - that makes perfect sense to me. But the path to get there. We see them argue with each other throughout the episode, but it seems kind of like good-natured ribbing. But as we learn more of the truth, you get the sense that these two really hate each other. It felt odd that it took almost no convincing to get them to split the prize. In fact, we don't even get to see the convincing - it happens off-screen. There was something a bit uneven with how these two interacted with each other throughout the episode.

Pros:

The atmosphere and sets in this episode were really cool! I loved the desert planet, I loved the weird tent, the cool space crafts, and of course the long awaited reveal of the new TARDIS design. Each set felt cool and unique and distinctly alien, and it was really interesting to see.

One thing I really liked about this episode that's a bit difficult to pin down specifically, was how... Doctor Who-ish it felt. A pretty basic story, with lots of running, aliens, sonic screwdrivers, creative problem solving, quippy dialogue, and a few great introspective character moments. This is what I want from a weird alien TV show. This is what I want from my Doctor.

To get more specific, I think my favorite moment of the whole episode was when the creepy whispy things were talking to the Doctor, and a cigar saved the day. See? What a weird sentence. The effect on the voice was cool, the insight into the Doctor feeling like an outcast was cool, the solution used a simple Chekhov's Cigar maneuver, and the whole scene was tense and well-shot, directed, and acted.

Another favorite moment was of course the iconic TARDIS scene. Nobody said "it's bigger on the inside" this time around, but they did marvel at how she fit all that stuff in a police box, and it was so satisfying to watch these companions get one of their first legendary Doctor interactions. Shows with patterns work because the audience likes feeling in the know. The challenge with Doctor Who is to keep things fresh and interesting while still falling back on these familiar tropes. This episode did that wonderfully, even better than last week's premiere, in my opinion.

Jodie Whittaker is doing an amazing job. There are the more serious, intense moments, like her dislike of guns or her fear and despair at not being able to save her new friends. But even in the lightest, simplest of lines, Whittaker is charming and charismatic, and just so nice to watch and follow. I like her immediately. She's the Doctor, through and through.

Not much more to say with this one. Another standard, fairly grounded, episode of Doctor Who. I feel like we're setting the stage to show that this show-runner and these actors can carry the basic premise of the show, before we start doing some really wild and fun stuff. I'm looking forward to that!

8.5/10

Mark Gatiss: ‘The League of Gentlemen was a premonition of Brexit’

After a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EU 

by Arifa Akbar

Mark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and forth on the sofa as he talks. It is an “extraordinarily vivid” moment from when he lived opposite a psychiatric hospital in County Durham. The institution was central to his childhood, a “colony” in which his mother and father worked, where he went to swim, to trampoline, to see films. Except, on this occasion, he was left on one of the wards with his brother to wait for his parents. “I must have been around five. There was a boy rocking on a bed. As I remember it, he had an empty eye socket. He had his thumb in it and he was just rocking – like this.”

Gatiss takes his thumb to his eye and rocks some more. It is a baroque vision, creepy enough to make you squeal, and befitting for one of the creators of the stage show and TV series The League of Gentlemen. As Gatiss says: “You can’t get more northern gothic, can you?”

It is clear he enjoys playing up the northern gothic. His Twitter tagline reads: “Actor. Writer. Strangler.” In person, there is no hint of gloom. He is sweet and sunny, an optimist by his own admission. Still, an unprosperous northern childhood and those years of observing mental illness – and the world’s responses to it – continue to serve him at the age of 52. He is currently in Nottingham, in rehearsals to play the titular lead in Alan Bennett’s 1991 play, The Madness of George III, at the Nottingham Playhouse. The play – which was adapted for a 1994 film, The Madness of King George, starring Helen Mirren and Nigel Hawthorne – dramatises the monarch’s mental illness.

“It was very interesting [to grow up opposite the hospital]. I have a lot experience to draw on for this play. And it’s interesting to think about mental health in the 18th century … It’s a challenge to chart the king in his ‘normal’ state, as it were, and then what happens to him. You have to make sure there’s a journey into his condition, so you have somewhere to go.”

Brexit is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning’

Since the TV version of the League – which followed the tormented outcasts and oddballs of the fictional town of Royston Vasey – landed in 1999 and earned Gatiss and his co-stars a legion of fans, he has helped to create some of the most popular shows on TV. These include the revived Doctor Who (as a writer and an actor) and Sherlock, a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes as a 21st-century detective, which he co-created with Steven Moffat and in which he stars as Holmes’s brother, Mycroft. In between, he has worked on films and written books and plays. His stint in Nottingham follows a nationwide tour ofthe League, an Oscar-tipped film (The Favourite) and The Dead Room, a yet-to-be-aired Christmas ghost story starring Simon Callow, which he wrote and directed. After The Madness of George III, he will team up with Moffat again for a BBC/Netflix adaptation of the vampire classic Dracula. “I do work hard and I think that’s a good thing,” he says. “Work hard, be kind, that’s my motto.”

Filming for Dracula will start next year, but Gatiss does not plan to act in it. He will not be drawn on who will be cast as the vampire, but says he and Moffat thought carefully before deciding to set the series in its original period, the 19th century: “We said when we started Sherlock that we briefly got custodianship of the keys to Baker Street and we felt: ‘It’s our go.’ So, we wanted to have ‘our go’ at Dracula and with that we wanted to do all the treats – a big, spooky castle and the rest of it.”

Sherlock was set in the modern day for the opposite reason: “We felt it had become so swamped with Victoriana that people had lost sight of what it was – which is essentially a flat-share story of two unlikely friends, one of whom solves crimes. That was the really exciting thing, to just go back to basics.” While the series has been a runaway success, there have been criticisms: one Guardian article lamented that his Sherlock was morphing into James Bond; it vexed Gatiss so much that he sent the Guardian a rejoinder in rhyme, outlining the differences between his hero and Ian Fleming’s.

There have been other charges of “unfaithfulness” in Gatiss’s adaptations, but he is adamant about his right to play with an original story. “I feel very strongly about not just drearily reproducing the book. You are duty-bound to think: ‘Here’s an idea, why don’t we flip this round,’ especially if people know it well. It doesn’t spoil the original. No one burns the manuscript … the Tardis would never have left the junkyard in the 1960s if it wasn’t about change.”

And what greater change than a female doctor? The new series is the first with which Gatiss has not been involved since Doctor Who relaunched in 2005. How does he feel about Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor? “First, it’s lovely that I’m enjoying watching it on a Sunday night and not knowing anything about it. I have even tried to avoid the trailer for the next time. And I have said for a very long time that there should be female Doctors. As soon as you watch it, you say: ‘Of course, why not?’ All you need, ever, is for the right person to be playing the part. Jodie is instantly likable, funny, delightfully odd.”

If that is the case, can we – should we – stop at Doctor Who or extend a gender-blind, colour-blind policy to all period dramas? It depends how literal we want to be, Gatiss says, but he balks at the prospect of a female Bond. “Doctor Who is an alien with two hearts who lives in a dimensionally transcendental phone box and can periodically change his or her appearance. James Bond is a man. There’s no way out of that. It becomes a very reductive argument. If you want to create a really kickass new heroine or hero, then do something else.”

If you were to create a female Bond, he adds, would you then follow Fleming’s blueprint of making her a sexist lothario? “What is it about James Bond you want to change? Is it just the sex or is it everything else? In which case, you’ve got a different character anyway.”

Gatiss was not long out of studying theatre arts at Bretton Hall College in West Yorkshire when he co-wrote the League with Jeremy Dyson, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, whom he met there. It has been a long, loyal partnership, even though they went their separate ways – and thrived – before returning after 13 years to take the show back on the road. “We never fell out, we just stopped doing it,” Gatiss says. “We had been doing it virtually day in, day out for 11 years. So, we decided to do other stuff. The extraordinary thing about the tour was that it felt like no time had passed, which is what great friendships are about.”

The League began as a stage sketch show in 1994, when standup was more dominant in comedy. Gatiss and the others were enlisted to fill a slot at a fringe festival. “We did it for five nights and it went down really well. I remember a friend of mine saying: ‘You should do something with this.’” They did – and won the Perrier award at the Edinburgh fringe in 1997. “We did what made us laugh. All the things we loved ranged from proper horror to the horror of embarrassment; Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood, Mike Leigh. It was very much about our northern upbringings, too – we were identifying our own experiences of the world of the north. It was real anger and despair and oddness.”

Bennett turned out to be a huge fan of the League. “It’s how I came to meet Alan and it was just astonishing to think that he liked The League of Gentlemen. We have always said what a major influence he was for us. I remember so well the first thing I saw of his was a play called Our Winnie [from 1982]. I only watched it because Winnie was my mother’s name. It’s a half-hour drama where Elizabeth Spriggs takes her mentally disabled daughter to the crematorium on a Sunday. I just remember looking at it and thinking: ‘How does he know all this?’ It was just like my life! The way people spoke, the colloquialisms and the amazing sense of oppressive Sunday tedium.”

Two decades on, Royston Vasey’s turned-in world seems to resemble Britain more than it did when it was conceived, I suggest – the local shop for local people, the suspicion of the outsider taken to its freakish, inbred, comic extremity. “Yes, I look at it and think: ‘It’s a bit like a premonition,’” he says. “The idea that: ‘There’s nothing for you here, go away.’ That’s why we pushed it a bit in the specials last year. We were never satirical, but we found it irresistible and deliberately got [the character] Edward to say: ‘It’s time we took back control.’”

The tour took Gatiss to 47 venues around Britain. Did he sense a change, post-Brexit? “Yes. Some places are rust-belt Britain. They’ve been abandoned. I thought constantly of Disraeli and ‘two nations’ [“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”]. It made me think that some people must look at the events in Westminster as if they’re taking place on the moon. That’s why, when they were finally given the chance, they kicked back. And that’s why we’re in this fucking mess.”

It is not just the rising intolerance of the “immigrant” outsider that he fears, but also the erosion of other liberal, humanist values. As a gay man – he is married to the actor Ian Hallard – he has never felt personally threatened in London, where he lives, “but you go out of London and it’s very different. You go to certain parts of the country and you think: ‘I would modify my behaviour here.’”

The regions around his birthplace were the heartland for leave voters, but Gatiss is proud to have grown up in the north and in a working-class household: his father was the chief engineer at the psychiatric hospital and his mother was a carer and secretary. “I think my background did me an awful lot of good. There’s a very good line from Doctor Who: ‘Never lose sight of your horizons.’ There’s nothing wrong with coming from one place and moving to another place, but it’s good to know that and honour it. And also to acknowledge its flaws – it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Brexit upsets him immensely. He speaks of it in irate exclamations and bloody analogies: “Brexit, to me, is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning.’ I’m a sickeningly optimistic person and that’s what worries me about how depressed I am about it all. The temptation is to totally disengage because it’s so frightening and debilitating, but if you do that they’ve won.”

The Madness of George III is at Nottingham Playhouse until 24 November