So I pretty consistently watched DW through Nine, Ten, and Eleven. I started watching Twelve, and then fell off like near the end of his first season. Then I watched a few episodes with Twelve and Bill, but again fell off. Then watched almost all of Thirteen’s first season except the last special, then jumped back in and watched her last two episodes in prep for these 60th specials.

And really, I’ve always wanted to go back through and watch the whole thing. Even back through Eleven’s since aside from a few episodes I pretty much only ran through his seasons once. But obviously motivation hasn’t been there for me to sit down and do it, and I kind of found all the little bits that I’ve learned through the years about the Gallifrey stuff a little daunting to try and get my head ready to wrap around.

Here’s the thing though. Fourteen’s emotional breakdown in this second special, talking about the Flux (which I have no idea what that’s about) and timeless child and idk even what else make me so want to go back and watch so badly, just so I can fully understand and appreciate these scenes and emotions.

And honestly I can’t think of a time I was watching a new regen’s season or special and thought that.

One of the aspects of the regens (especially when it’s a new show runner) that I’ve always been a little sad over is that there’s very little reference to the Doctor(s) they were before, and especially the companions and events they went through. I get that they want to distinguish these new chapters as their own, and that the Doctor is not the same Doctor as they were before. But it just feels like such an amputation and makes me so sad.

Like don’t get me wrong, I’m over the moon that David specifically is back to have this adventure with Donna. But it would just make me swoon to see another of the Doctor’s faces speak with the same love for their former companions. Another example of this is in Thirteen’s last episode with the classic companions, we just got a bite of Thirteen’s face with them before it switched to their personal Doctor’s faces (which again, I’m more excited as a fan watching knowing these are actors who are so excited to work together again and that we’re so lucky to still have these actors appearing, than as a follower of the story seeing the current Doctor with their old friends).

Anyway, that’s not my point here. My point is that the carry over of story and influence of previous Doctor(s) emotions/thoughts/feelings is something that I adore and it motivates me to go back and learn more and get the whole story. Because if RTD is giving us this for just the specials, I look forward to his approach for the next Doctor and season so much!

2018 was one for the charts as far as doctor who shippers go. yaz was having her gay awakening over a goblin in a tuxedo the same year that jamie was having homoerotically charged scenes with two’s evil dictator twin.

(IMAGE ID: two screenshots taken from separate episodes of Doctor Who. The first is from The Woman Who Fell to the Earth, with Yaz staring at the Thirteenth Doctor with an expression of confusion. The second is from The Enemy of the World, with Jamie McCrimmon also staring at something in confusion. I don’t know what he’s staring at. Both of them look like they could use an “Am I Gay?” quiz.)

“least favorite” isn’t anywhere close to bad. it just shows how damn hard the competition is going, but we’re talking about gold medals all around for each actor i’ve seen portray the doctor so far.

also slowly turning around in my brain how rose said she was going to stay with the doctor forever, and then later donna says the same thing (to martha!! the doctor doesnt even hear or know!!! it would make him so happy but hurt him so much if he did!!!!!!), and then when she tells the doctor shes going home in sontaran stratagem he immediately assumes it means shes leaving him for good and accepts it but also launches into all the things he still wanted to show her.

and i know its played for a joke like haha silly martian thats not what i meant! but this is the same man who, when he needed to turn human, loved someone SO DEEP AND HARD that he didnt think he'd ever fall in love again. ever. even with his memory erased. so when you take that moment of "oh you're just popping home for a visit" and like ACTUALLY look at it you're like. this man gets so so so attached to people, and is so incredibly scarred by losing these people he loves that he has no choice but to let them go when they want to leave on good terms, because he knows how bad it could get for them if they stay, no matter how much he wants them to stay.

anyway donna's forever and rose's forever are just different flavors of the same "i need you as much as you need me, so im in it for the long haul, bad stuff included" and its chefs kiss

The thing about NuWho is that, sooner or later, the Doctor will inevitably end up have a tragic romance with a companion.

The thing about classic Who is that, sooner or later, the Doctor will inevitably end up pseudo-adopting a random adolescent.

watches a five hour recap of the entirety of doctor who. a show which i am already familiar with the entirety of.

A Theory About the Doctor’s Species of Origin

So usually in NuWho, whenever anyone asks if they have a name other than “The Doctor” or “Doctor,” the Doctor replies something along the lines of “nope, just the Doctor.” However, Fifteen has broken that pattern: when Ruby asked him about that, he responded that “the species that took me in uses titles like [rattles off a bunch]. Use ‘The Doctor’ for a thousand years and that becomes your name.”

The thing about RTD’s writing is that you can sometimes tell when something has extra emphasis, like the thing about the Bees in Donna’s season. And the Doctor repeats this bit of information twice, once completely devoid of context, making absolutely certain that you understand that “Time Lords use titles.”

Who else uses titles? Specifically, who in this season is big on titles?

Well, the Pantheon.

The Toymaker. The Maestro.

Hell, in Classic Who, the Toymaker was originally supposed to be part of the Doctor’s as-yet-unnamed species before Michael Gough died and became unable to reprise the role. The Maestro even gives the Doctor another title! “The Lord Temporal.”

The Toymaker uses doors to step from one end of history to another. The Maestro uses pianos. In both cases, they’re bigger on the inside—doors to extradimensional spaces. What if it wasn’t just Regeneration the Time Lords engineered from the Timeless Child—what if it was all of their tech? What if that’s why nobody can reproduce TARDISes properly—it’s not science, it’s play?

Last bit of evidence: the Maestro is aware of the background music and the fourth wall. They open the episode by playing the Doctor Who theme, intentionally triggering the opening credits. The Doctor is the only other character so far who’s proven to be aware of the fourth wall (the Beethoven’s Fifth rant in Before the Flood, for example), to the point that he even mentions during The Devil’s Chord that he thought the background music was non-diegetic—as in, he can hear the background music. He knows he’s in a show.

The Doctor, the Lord Temporal, might very well be one of the Pantheon.

hi i have some disorganized thoughts/hcs abt the found family human doctor au

(one of the thoughts being i should really give it a better name. another being YES this is only the nuwho doctors atm bc that's the only series i've watched so far apologies. if i ever get around to watching classic who i will add them trust)

BEHOLD my random, not at all in-depth headcanons

nine is the only one with a car out of all of them. they all keep bugging him to drive/pick them up from places -- he has mixed feelings about being the assigned taxi driver

both twelve and eleven are teachers -- college professor and preschool teacher respectively. twelve's students love them because he will say the most stupid, hilarious shit with a straight face without even knowing and eleven's students love him because he is the only teacher at the school that will dance with them during musical chairs (he doesn't even play the game. he just dances)

i want to make one of them an actual doctor but i don't think any of them could handle it unfortunately

they all share an an apartment flat on the same level -- nine, twelve and fifteen live in one room, ten, eleven and thirteen live in the one across from them. of course there are other people in the building too but they're all used to the strange loud hyperactivity of that particular flat. i think i'm using the right terminology here. yall know what im talking about

(i'm so tempted to make some companions be their neighbors)

nine and ten are the most insomniac of all of them, so they're used to bumping each other in the dead of night on their way to raid each other's respective fridges or something. very rarely thirteen will join them and they're like "WELL FANCY SEEING YOU HERE"

twelve does sleep, but like. he's nocturnal

eleven and ten hate each other in a sibling kind of way (see: day of the doctor). they are constantly sending each other death threats or tripping each other over. everyone is sick of it

sometimes when they're out shopping you'll hear ten yell "GET OUT OF THE FROZEN FOOD YOU NUMPTY WE ARE NOT BUYING FISH FINGERS" over the aisles and you'll hear eleven whine "WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH" back

(if you're lucky you'll be able to catch fifteen mumble "why did we put them in the same apartment. are we asking for an eviction notice")

eventually eleven will pick a random stray cat off the side of the road, take her home, and name her bowtie, which is a stupid name, so everyone just defaults to calling her kitty

kitty's favourite person is twelve, to eleven's absolute despair

(my original idea for this was to initially have ten hate the idea of living with a cat, since he's stated full on in the show that he doesn't like cats, but apparently there is some very obscure doctor who comic run in which he falls into a depressive spiral and adopts a cat whom he names rose-the-cat, so he might actually like cats idk?)

anyway ten hates her until he doesn't lmao. he vents to her when there's no one else home and she will Stare at him back and it is a very nice friendship

kitty and nine watch shitty romcom together

they have a joint groupchat together -- half of it is just thirteen and fifteen assigning everyone outfits they find on pinterest and the other half is eleven asking where everyone went (he keeps getting lost when they go out)

nine doesn't know how to download pictures off the internet and so resorts to manually editing memes together to send to the groupchat and everyone's like "girl that's so much more effort........."

(yes he doesn't know how to press save image to camera roll but he knows how to use a photo editor flawlessly. such is the logic of the idiocy of the doctors)

eleven and thirteen get along very well i think. they're the only two of the group to play video games and so they bond over that. they also have ridiculously similar clothing taste

sometimes they'll succeed in getting fifteen to play pokemon with them and then they'll proceed to not see him until the next day when he comes out of his room and goes "you didn't tell me plusle couldn't evolve i've been levelling it up all fucking night"

friday is assigned movie night (it's always big hero 6)

eleven is the only one to actively seek out physical affection, usually really abruptly like clinging to thirteen's back as she passes him in the hall or bapping ten with the palm of his hand until he sighs and gives him a hug. he does expect a platonic kiss on the forehead from anyone before he goes to bed and will complain if he doesn't get one

anyway thats it i'm sick in the head and really sad. if this keeps up i may be forced to actually write a fic

Doctor Who report!! We are all caught up with NuWho and in time to watch the new season when it comes out!! mission accomplished, It took us around 6 months total and we loved every minute of it 🥰

Now that we have watched all eras I can share our tastes and opinions nobody asked for under the cut 😌

We can confidently say RTD's era is our favourite and for Doctors 10 (and 14) followed by 12, but honestly there isn't a single Doctor (or Master!) that we didn't love.

We've also started rewatching the first four seasons now with more context and there is just something so special about them. They almost feel like a different show from all the later ones. The silliness and the way the story doesn't take itself seriously at all until all of a sudden it does and then the pain hits you twice as hard because of it. How with just with a line or deed and it's implications the Doctor can be so unbelievably inspiring. The way the narrative seems to place you in the role of a companion trying to catch up with the Doctor and figure him out yet never quite managing to do so creates this distance but also admiration and reverence in you too and you can't help but adore him flaws and all. It has just the right amount of room for every side character and relationship to develop and feel human and the right amount of exposition to keep the pace quick and don't hold your hand. The glimpses behind the doctor's cheerful childish façade into an unsettling calculating alienness and immeasurable trauma but also a weary wisdom. The complete selflessness to the point of martyrdom. The reckless irresponsible acts of devotion from both the companions and the Doctor. The near apotheosis of the companions the closer they get to him. The contagious feeling of awe and wonder and hope for life. The way it's so unabashedly centered around love of every kind 😭 ARGHH I don't know man there is nothing like it!! Ultimate comfort show for us, just.. healing really. There is so much more I can say and gush about but I'd be here typing all day so I'll draw more about it instead!! We would also like to get started on classic Who soon! and try to get our hands on the audio episodes and comic books and all the extra stuff as well 😊

We also watched more David Tennant works since the last report!

Blackpool was hilarious, infuriating and horny, the singing was a choice but overall so fun!! The Escape Artist was great, very sad and tense, would have loved for it to be longer, these miniseries are always so good but so short!! Mad to be Normal is so underrated? we enjoyed it a lot!! RD Laing's portrayal was so compelling, it's beautifully shot and the 60's setting is really immersive and well done. Einstein and Eddington was also really good, incredibly accurate historical setting!! the costuming was fantastic, one of the best I've seen!! These last two films are biographical and sort of no plot just vibes so maybe this is why they are not everyone's cup of tea but we enjoyed them very much. David just never misses, I'm sure we can watch anything with him in it and we will love it no matter what lmao what a guy 😭

Anyway that's all for now! I hope you are all doing well, spring/autumn is almost here! best bits of the year 😊

doctor who resources compilation!

a collection of multitudes of images of classic who merchandise, comics, magazine clippings, etc.

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a website that lets you track all the doctor who media you've seen including books and audios, rate them, view your own stats and more

.

wikipedia page listing all the classic who episodes in order, organized by doctor

(and the one for nuwho as well)

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wikipedia page listing all the doctor who audio plays made by big finish

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a website that lets you search the doctor who transcripts for keywords, showing you all the appearances of that word/phrase and letting you filter by classic or nuwho or both

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those aforementioned transcripts (including doctor who spinoffs) which yes is a very very long and good comprehensive site of doctor who episode transcripts <3

the thing is, this is all running into a soft reboot for the show, it's RTD closing the chapter on 'Time War veteran, Lonely God' Doctor, which we've had for 18 fucking years and honestly there's not much more you can squeeze out of it for angst without repeating beats and elements and what have you

cos like, that's how he reinvented the show for the time he was bringing it back to - it couldn't be just be a silly, slightly manipulative dude in a box pottering about and solving mysteries and arguing with a bloke covered in bubblewrap and stringcheese, this was when a lot of sci-fi and fantasy shows were all about drama and action and sex. so RTD throws in a big lore event, the Time War, the Doctor is now a battle scarred, traumatised figure who has a reputation so big just invoking it can scare monsters away

there's only so much you can spin in circles before it starts getting repetitive (and in another 8 years NuWho will have been running just as long as Classic Who). so we get these specials to celebrate the history of the show, both classic and new, which also serves to introduce new lore, revisit old faces and pack the Time War shit in a box and chuck it in the attic. it's over, we've moved on (for real, this time)

people are gonna get shirty about the lore. because they always do. and here's the thing, everything about the 'lore' of Doctor Who is retcons stacked on retcons. the Doctor was never originally planned to be a Time Lord from Gallifrey, both of those terms were added in later (Gallifrey didn't get named until 1973). this show runs on stupid shit, it's meant to be fun before it's anything else

as a general rule, don't take shit more seriously than the idiots making it

oh, yeah, another thing i noticed that was odd about s5 in comparison to earlier seasons was how much they relied on like. not the history of the doctor, exactly, but the image of that history. whether from little easter eggs of the first doctor’s picture popping up everywhere to i think the two(?) times in the season we get a montage of past doctors. and i honestly can’t remember anything like that happening earlier (with the exception of the time crash short, which felt more substantial to me and was also like. 7 straight minutes of david tennant being allowed to fangirl.)

and i say ‘the image’ because hell knows the RTD era was pulling from doctor who past left, right, and center, but it rarely felt like a moment of ‘look at this old thing, you remember old thing? old thing was cool and so are we for continuing it.’ and more like ‘here’s a species/character/etc from classic who. and here’s how they’ve changed and fit into the new world we’ve built for the show.’

I guess, the difference here for me is that. i haven’t watched classic who. s5 shows me a slideshow of doctors and to me, those are the guys i once ranked by how sexy i think they are. and not much else. i don’t have an emotional connection to an image. but take, say, school reunion? an episode that was my favorite even back when i was a kid specifically because i adored sarah jane? i had no idea who she was then, i only just figured out a little bit ago which doctor she traveled with, and exclusively all i’ve watched of her is that episode in s2 and the sarah jane adventures. and yet, that episode, without the context there for me, managed to make sense to me. i’m sure it was probably even more impactful to fans of sarah jane from classic who, but it didn’t lose its impact without that knowledge.

so, that’s a shift. i don’t want to say it’s a negative one, exactly, because maybe people who have seen classic who like these references and i’m missing something. but, to me, it feels a little more shallow.

Masters, coyotes and reset buttons

Ok, so this has been going after me for a few months now and probably won't end up as coherent as I'd like it to, but this is also a warm up for finally fixing that stupid article that everyone tells me is good but has been halted by journal paperwork since 2020, so... As always, because there be salt, putting everything under a cut.

There's been this debate on whether the Master should be given a break from appearing for a while and, as always, it's usually taken somewhat hostile as an attack on the character or a particular actor (which. look if this was about acting skills BBC should have never moved from sir Derek Jacobi, period). And I would say the problem lies entirely elsewhere. Namely, circularity vs. linearity.

There has always been a mythical or commedia dell'arte element to the whole concept of regeneration, an archetypal thing in characters going by titles as names and having a certain set of characterisics and narrative functions that go along with those. Hell, commedia dell'arte even has a literal "Il Dottore" whose whole thing is embodying science and education - more often than not mockingly. When you employ Zeus rather than Poseidon in your story that's probably because there be weird sex rather than disproportionate fury. When you choose a paladin class in your rpg that's because you're going to have different skills and make different choices than if you were a rogue. Galahad and Lancelot will go on completely different journeys of nunnery/brothel and rescuing a prince from forced marriage even while they both seek the Holy Grail. When you want your children to have different properties you'll use your mantra to invoke four different gods.

The thing about archetypes, though, is that they are, literally, timeless. Or better yet, outside of time. But stories, narratives are, by nature, linear and timed. There's the beggining, the middle and the end. And of course, the whole fun is toying with the archetype, tweaking and reinterpreting them in specific contexts and stories. And DW has been doing a phenomenal job of it throughout its history, even if occasional nitpicks can be made. Classic Who was perhaps more circular and repeating in its storytelling and - sorry, posession by Marshall McLuhan - this makes sense in a medium where a story airs just a couple of times. There were arcs for each Doctor, though significantly more so for companions. NuWho became much more clear in this, but still mostly managed to keep a neat balance between the timelessness and timeliness.

Take the Saxon's story, which is what kickstarted me spilling here. Not to come off as a canon snob, but I think if he was an introduction to the character it may not be clear just how shocking him dying on the Valiant was. This is the character that was a skeleton, a gooey body snatching snake and a cat to go on living, and has been the Doctor's prisoner, in fact begging them to save them. Ten is 100% justified in his assumption that he'd never kill himself. His death introduced a major shift to their dynamic, especially when framed as fuelled by hatred. The finale in EoT is largely a return from this shift. No, the Doctor didn't only care for the Master because he wanted another Time Lord. No, the Master doesn't wholeheartedly hate the Doctor. They can and will always cooperate when there's a common enemy. As has been the case throughout all of Classic Who.

Enter Moffat era. Now, it's a bit of a cliche to say Moffat is a better episode writer than showrunner, but it being cliche does not make it incorrect. His poetic definitely works better when there's an ending, a specific goal in sight. In singular episodes this works like a charm. It worked terrifically in season 5. But later on there definitely came this element of "keep watching, because this is all heading somewhere, trust me". And all too often the answer was proving less interesting than the question. This was particularly clear in seasons 7-9, with return to Gallifrey being hyped up repeatedly, only to fianlly fall flat. And I guess Moffat realised that and decided to go for a soft reboot in season 10.

Which brings me to Missy and redemption arcs. Now, in our completely not puritan era there's way too much talk of whether characters deserve redemption, and what would account for a redemption, and how that differs between different legal systems, and too little appreciation that redemption narrative is as linear as they get. You get the starting point of sin and have a clear goal of that sin being repaid or undone. Sure, you can dig into that, and question that, and reinterpret that, and cynically cut that, but it always relies on that clear line. And it's obvious that Moffat was aware of how linear he wanted Missy, and indeed the Master in general, to be. The fucking text says that: "where we've always been going". The disagreement is only what that where is. Now, if the story was meant to be lieanr, then it really does make infinitelly more sense to view the events of EoT as a turning point in the thoschei relationship, but the story explicitly shuts that down. Nah, it was more infitely more important to have the initial sin embodied to be killed in the ultimate act of redemption. #symbolism

A slight tangent here. I know that the original plan for Delgado!Master was to have a redemption arc where he sarcifices himself for the Doctor, so I guess it can be argued this was indeed where the story was going all along. But things turned out how they did and people generally don't introduce Moriarty into their sherlockiana to have no actual screentime (literal or metaphorical), as was the original plan.

Aaaand then there's Spymaster. I've seen dozens of explanations of why he is the way he is, and whether that follows logically from Missy's story or not, and whether he might be before her, and whether he undoes her redemption, and blah blah, but the bitter truth is: Chibs hit the reset button. He hit it hard. No, we are not meant to keep in mind the events of s10 when we analyze the spydoc relationship. Again, a comparison to Moffat explicitly bringing up the events of EoT with Saxon, if only to brush them aside as meaningless for both parties. More importantly, if those were meant to affect Thirteen's hostile attitude towards the Master, then she shouldn't have been so shocked with his appearance. She might be surprised he regenerated, but like the whole reason for bitterness over being abandoned would go along with the expectation the Master did survive, that's why they left Twelve in the first place ffs. So, it would look like Chibnall tried to go back to a circular status quo after a linear redemption, and that's certainly what the writing thinks it's doing. Except now that the whole TTC can of worms has been opened, the relationship is deeply imbalanced. Imbalanced in a way that cannot be easily undone. Like, I know the fandom is trying to frame the Master's sense of inferiority as somehow mistaken and fanon!Thirteen certainly thinks so, but that's not what the text is saying. There is a misundertanding going on here, but a misunderstanding that goes on unresolved gets tiresome and frankly masochistic pretty fast. Either the Master should get to the point of understanding that the Doctor is not inherently superior to them because of past or magic of friendship and that they're Kenough, or accept the Doctor as their lord and saviour and martyred god who died so they may live and spend the rest of their days as a lapdog. Which, I understand the fandom may enjoy, but doesn't make for a very exciting story. So yes, there's definitely a linear narrative going on here. One that does need some time in a fridge and exposition of how the Doctor themself feels about their relationship before the character is brought back. Right now we are not in the The clown always gets up again, no matter how often he has been knocked down paradigm only No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world.

Butbutbut, of course, what about Ainley!Master being brought back again and again seemlessly? That's just the thing - Ainley!Master existed in a completely different poetic. He was purely circular. He was the most circular of the Masters. He was as circular as you can get without actually being a cartoon coyote who only falls down when he realises he's midair. I'm not entirely ironic here - there is an inherent trickster element to the Master as a character! Perhaps more Goethe's Mephistopheles that Native Americans' Coyote, but between constanct scheming, shapeshifting and falling into the pits they've dug the elements are all there. And a trickster either endlessly travels between Olympus, Earth and Hades or gets killed by Heimdall.

And before a gotcha of me insanely hoping for a Saxon cameo either in the 60th anniversary or, that being off the table, somehow meeting Fourteen - yeah, in an anti-linear bubble. I've seen speculations that RTD wants to do another soft reboot, hence there's no knowing what Master will pop out of that tooth. As far as I wouldn't like it to be one of pre-Delgado Masters and for the record I wouldn't mind if it is Spymaster!, there's definitely something to the idea there's a soft reboot in The Giggle, with the Doctor "going home". Because you don't necessarily want to know what Odysseus' tax policies were once he reached Ithaka, but you do want to know that he's been a year on Circe's island.

Okay, I said some of this in tags of another post but that post doesn't actually have to do with this issue so I'm making another post.

Disney is not part of the production and writing of the new episodes and season of Doctor Who. Doctor Who is currently being produced by Bad Wolf and BBC Studios Production. Disney+ has exclusive streaming rights to new Doctor Who episodes for audiences outside the UK and Ireland. This is to make the show more accessible to international audiences (whether it's doing that is definitely debatable). They have streaming rights in the same way that Max (formerly HBOMax) has streaming rights to S1-Flux of NuWho. Disney doesn't have control over the content of the show, just what they stream on their platform. (Considering HBO used to have a minority stake of shares in Bad Wolf before their shares got bought by Sony in December of 2021, a year before they started producing the 60th anniversary specials, I don't think they had any influence on the production of the RTD2 episodes.)

I'm clarifying this because a lot of people are complaining that Disney is affecting the show even though both BBC and Disney, in their announcements of the streaming deal have paragraphs where they specify exactly who the producers, studios, and writers are for the new specials and season.

Whether or not you liked the writing and subject matter of the 60th specials, you should know who is actually making the show. (In my personal opinion, I don't think Disney should get credit for RTD genuinely trying to have good trans and bi rep in Doctor Who when they can barely give us crumbs in their media. Whether or not y'all think he's successful at that is your opinion.)

I also want to address Whoniverse. Whoniverse is the BBC giving the overall Doctor Who Franchise an official name and logo. If you access BBC iPlayer, you can now find all the episodes (NuWho and Classic), behind the scenes videos, spin-offs, specials, and commentaries in one place.

That's kind of it. Whoniverse is just the same stuff we've been watching and talking about and interacting with for decades but now they're all on the same page on an official website. And they have a new logo.

TLDR: BBC makes Doctor Who. Disney Branded Television distributes it internationally. Whoniverse is basically a logo.

not gonna lie saving gallifrey was such a boring asspull to bring other time lords back in the mix. & the way the time war was portrayed took all the genuine horror out of it. like, think instead about how interesting it might have been to bring in gallifreyan refugees or something as a way of having time lord stuff to play with without undercutting the horror of the time war and the the doctor’s genocide. honestly the fact that gallifrey got brought back at all kills the really interesting implications of the doctor being the one to singlehandedly end the war, & what that means for their character. and it also kills the horror of the end of time, and how to bring gallifrey back, in any form, would bring with it all the horrors of the time war, war crimes and weapons to terrible to be described, with names like the nightmare child. and in one episode, they just. bring it back and everything is FIIIIINE. the doctor never committed genocide, bringing gallifrey back has no real repercussions the likes of which were implied in the end of time. (like, imagine the creations of a society like the time lords primed for war. even if all were stripped of weaponry, consider the terrible knowledge of such things that might be unleashed, the repercussions of such a war on time lord society & thought.) give us the skaro degradations, the horde of travesties, the nightmare child, the could-have-been king with his army of meanwhiles and never-weres. like, show us the hell that the doctor himself said the war had become by the end!! the doctor only takes the gun from wilf when he realizes the time lords are returning. that holds meaning!!

like, imagine if they actually HAD explored the full implications of how the time war had been lampshaded in previous episodes, gave us a full arc of the doctor dealing with the fallout of the timelords returned, weaponized and wielding horrors unimaginable. bring back the rani! explore the full implications of the doctor’s willingness so commit genocide upon both his people and the daleks. what was so terrible that the doctor decided that for the universe to live, both must die?? there’s so much to work with in that idea alone!!

or like mentioned, give us gallifreyan refugees! surely not all died or were trapped, surely there were other time lords, if even a few. and like, i know that house thing kinda explains that away as “any remaining time lords got eaten by the house” but frankly, i just think that if that’s the excuse you go with as to why there’s no other time lords besides the doctor &the master until gallifrey returns, you’re handwaving it. that could be fascinating!! you could tie it into the audio dramas, or the novels, give us characters from those, bring back characters from classic who! hell, you could bring in the valeyard as a doctor from a timeline that spooled out of the time war, a vesion of the doctor who was never meant to exist, and who practically doesn’t.

at the end of the day, i’m just never getting over the wasted potential of the time war in nuwho. it makes me feel absolutely bonkers, because there’s so much there!

Watching Classic Who is making me cry simply because of the Lethbridge-Stewarts.

I wish someone had told me going in that Kate is the spitting image of Doris.

Kate is one of my very favorite NuWho characters and she is the best parts of both Alistair and Doris. I really didn’t think I could love her more but here we are.