for the love of god THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FLUFF WHY AM I CRYING

hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

A Comparison of RTD and Steven Moffat: Saving The Day

So for this analysis I’m going to compare when Moffat and RTD save the day well and when they save it poorly. There are a few bits of criteria I need to explain.

 First I will only be including main series, no Torchwood, no spin-offs, and no mini episodes.

Second, I have to define what makes a good and a bad ending (my examples will come from episodes written by neither of them): 

Bad endings include when the sonic saves the day (see The Power Of Three) (there are exceptions, see below), when a character spouts some useless technobabble that doesn’t make any scientific sense/when it doesn’t make logical sense in general, when the Doctor invents/presents a machine/equipment that miraculously stops the baddy and is never referred to again (see Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS), and any other ending I deem to be bad (see The Vampires of Venice)

Good endings include when the sonice activates a device that has been well established to save the day, when technobabble is used that actually makes some scientific sense, and just generally when the baddy is destroyed in what I deem to be a creative manner that makes sense with all the things that had been set up in that episode (see The Unquiet Dead).

There will also be cases where there isn’t really a day to be saved, however this happens more often with Moffat.

Let us begin (obviously there will be spoilers but the last episode in the list aired nearly 4 years ago so what you doing with your life).

RTD:

Rose: Bad

What even is anti-plastic?! Like seriously, he’s faced the Autons loads of times and has never thought to use it any other time.

The End Of The World: Bad

The Doctor just goes up to the appearance of the repeated meme (ha meme) and rips its arm off. He then just summons Cassandra back by twisting a knob which apparently everyone can do if “you’re very clever like me”.

Aliens Of London/World War Three: Good

Just nuking them all was a bit dodgy but I’ll give it to him purely because it had been set up earlier in the episode and it is a genuine option that could have been taken.

The Long Game: Good

The heating issue was set up within 2 minutes of the episode starting. It’s always good to see the Doctor using his enemies weakness against them.

Boom Town: Good

Only just. It’s technology that hadn’t been showcased ever before and came out of nowhere, but I’m allowing purely because it was setting up The Parting Of The Ways.

Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways: Good

See above. It was set up the story before so it works.

The Christmas Invasion: Bad

This was so close to being good. If RTD had just let the Sycorax leader be honourable then everything would have been fine. Instead he had to let him be dishonourable and then the Doctor through the Satsuma at a random button that for no apparent reason caused a bit of floor to fall away.

New Earth: Bad

It only makes sense if you think about it for less than 10 seconds as just pouring every cure to every disease ever into a giant tub and then spraying said supercure onto them all, then having them hug each other to pass it on. That is suspending my disbelief just a bit too far.

Tooth And Claw: Good

Everything is set up in the episode so I’ll allow it but I fail to see how Prince Albert had the time to ensure that the diamond was cut perfectly.

Love And Monsters: Bad

It’s Love And Monsters. Need I say more?

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: Good

It was very clearly set up throughout the episode.

The Runaway Bride: Bad

I don’t like how a few bombs can supposedly drain the entire Thames.

Smith And Jones: Good

All the events were well established

Gridlock: Good

It’s a fairly bland way to save the day, just opening the surface to all the drivers. But how else could he have done it?

Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords: Bad

As much as I like the idea that he tuned himself into the archangel network, he basically turned into Jesus. It is arguably the least convincing ending in modern Doctor Who history.

Voyage Of The Damned: Bad

Why was he the next highest authority? If he’s the highest authority in the universe why didn’t they default to him in the first place? If not then why not default to Midshipman Frame? And if he’s somehow in between them then why? Also Astrid killed herself for no reason when she easily could have jumped out of the forklift.

Partners In Crime: Good

It works in the context of the episode, but I don’t see why they needed two of the necklace things.

Midnight: Good

It’s human nature, you can’t get more well set up than that.

Turn Left: Good

It works logically

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End: Bad

Donna just spouts a load of technobabble whilst pressing buttons and then the Daleks are magically incapacitated.

The Next Doctor: Bad

Why do the infostamps sever Hartigan’s connection with the Cyberking? As far as I remember it ain’t explained.

Planet Of The Dead (co-written with noted transphobe Gareth Roberts): Good

A good couple scenes are dedicated on getting the anti-gravs set up.

The Waters Of Mars (co-written with Phil Ford): N/A

The day isn’t really saved cause everyone still dies anyway.

The End Of Time: Good

Using a gun to destroy a machine is much better than using the sonic to destroy it.

Summary for RTD:

Out of 24 stories written by him, I deem 10 to be bad endings with 1 abstaining. That’s 41.7% of his episodes (43.5% if we don’t count any abstaining).

Steven Moffat:

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Good

You’ll see this a lot with Moffat, he knows how to explain things without stupefying levels of technobabble. “Emailing the upgrade” is a perfect example of this.

The Girl In The Fireplace: Good

Some basic logic, the androids want to repair their ship, but they can’t return to it, they no longer have a function so they shut down.

Blink: Good

Always loved this one, getting the angels to look at each other, however they do look at each other sometimes earlier in the episode.

Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead: Bad

This is more of a problem with the setup of the episode, I don’t like that he can negotiate with the Vashta Nerada. I’d rather see them comprehensively beaten, but I guess it’s good for the scare factor that they can’t be escaped from.

The Eleventh Hour: Good

He convinced the best scientists all around the world to set every clock to 0 all in less than an hour. In the Doctor’s own words “Who da man!”

The Beast Below: Good

The crying child motif pretty much ended up saving the day (well for the star whale, life went on as normal for pretty much everyone else).

The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone: Good

The artificial gravity had briefly been set up earlier so I’ll allow it.

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang: Good

Everything had been set up perfectly, the vortex manipulator, the Pandorica’s survival field thingy, the TARDIS exploding at every moment in history.

A Christmas Carol: Good

Literally the entire episode is the Doctor saving the day by convincing Kazran not to be a cock.

The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon: Good

The silence’s ability to influence people is their whole thing, so using it against them is a good Doctory thing to do.

A Good Man Goes To War: N/A

The day isn’t really saved, Melody is lost, but River shows up at the end so is all fine? I love the episode it’s just the day isn’t really truly saved (yes I know Amy was rescued but she still lost her baby).

Let’s Kill Hitler: N/A

There isn’t really a day to be saved. They all get out alive but no one is really saved other than maybe River but we all knew she was gonna live anyway.

The Wedding Of River Song: Good

Whilst opinion is divided on the episode, the ending still works. the Tesseracta was established in Let’s Kill Hitler, and the “touch River and time will move again” was established well in advance.

The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe: Bad

I don’t like how the lifeboat travels through the time vortex for no reason but to rescue the dad. It don’t make no sense and I don’t think it’s explained

Asylum Of The Daleks: Good

Oswin had access to the Dalek hive mind so of course she should be able to link into the controls and blow everything up.

The Angels Take Manhattan: Good

Paradoxes really do be something powerful, and they even acknowledge how nobody knows if it’d work so I’ll let it slide.

The Snowmen: Bad

Lots of people cry at Christmas, why are the Latimers anything special?

The Bells of Saint John: Good

The whole episode is about hacking so why shouldn’t the Doctor be able to hack the spoonheads

The Name Of The Doctor: Good

It was the story arc for the season pretty much, so of course it was explained well in advance.

The Day Of The Doctor: Good

Both the storing Gallifrey like a painting and the making everyone forget if they’re Human or Zygon works in the context of the episode.

The Time Of The Doctor: Bad

Since when were the Time Lords so easily negotiated with?

Deep Breath: Good

I like the dilemma over whether the half-face man was pushed or jumped.

Into The Dalek: Good

It’s set up well with this new Doctor’s persona of actually not being too nice of a guy (at first).

Listen: N/A

There isn’t a day to be saved. It’s just 45 minutes of the Doctor testing a hypothesis and I low-key love it.

Time Heist (co-written with Steven Thompson): Good

It works logically so I’ll allow it however it isn’t very well set up at all.

The Caretaker (co-written with noted shithead Gareth Roberts): Good

The machine to tell the Blitzer what to do was set up well in advance so I’ll allow it.

Dark Water/Death In Heaven: Good

The fact that Danny still cares even as a cyberman is set up fairly early on after his transformation.

Last Christmas: Good

He does use the sonic to wake up Clara but he convinces the others to wake up through talking so I’ll allow it.

The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar: Good

It’s set up well with that little scene from actually inside the sewers.

The Girl Who Died (co-written with Jamie Mathieson): Good

IDK why the vikings would randomly keep electric eels but they’re set up well so I’ll ignore it. 

The Zygon Inversion (co-written with Peter Harness): N/A 

Not including this one as it’s only the second part and I’d argue the ending is most likely Harness’.

Heaven Sent/Hell Bent: N/A

Again there isn’t really a day to be saved, yes Heaven Sent really is amazing but it’s only the first part and, being completely honest, he dies several billion times before finally getting through the wall.

The Husbands Of River Song: N/A

Again there isn’t really a day to be saved here.

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio: Good

He gets Grant to catch the bomb which is good. But he does just sonic the gun out of Dr Sim’s hand and says UNIT is on its way which just sort of wraps it up very quickly.

The Pilot: N/A

No day to be saved here.

Extremis: Good

You could technically call it the sonic saving the day, I consider it to be the Doctor emailing the Doctor to warn him of the future.

The Pyramid At The End Of The World: Good

The fire sanitising everything makes sense and it’s in character for Bill to love the Doctor enough to cure his blindness in return for the world

World Enough And Time/The Doctor Falls: Good

Yes it is the sonic just blowing the cybermen up, but it’s blowing them up with well established pipelines so I’ll allow it (also the story is amazing).

Twice Upon A Time: N/A

No day to be saved here. Just Doctors 1 and 12 getting angsty about regenerating.

Summary for Steven Moffat:

Out of 39 stories written by him, I deemed 4 to be bad with 7 abstaining. That’s 10.3% of his episodes (12.5% if we don’t count any abstaining).

Conclusions:

Moffat was much better at saving the day than RTD

Moffat liked telling stories where the day didn’t actually need to be saved

I’ve spent way too long on this and I need to sleep

If I spent as much time on this as my coursework I’d probably pass

If you’re still reading this, you probably need to get a life

Reappraising Companions

Years after having watched every available episode of Doctor Who, I've had plenty of opportunities to rewatch episodes time and time again. As with most movies and television, I've found revisiting certain stories and eras has caused me to see them in a different light. A story I may have once reviled is suddenly more interesting. I even came to appreciate Peter Davison's performance as the Fifth Doctor for its subtle nature. But what about companions? Are there any companions I didn't care for at first, which I've softened toward over time? That is the question I wish to explore.

Below I've chosen a selection of companions of whom I had initially disliked for various reasons. They span across multiple eras and both the classic and modern versions of the show. With each companion, I have endeavoured to be fair in my reappraisal, but this doesn't mean I've changed my mind. I would also like to state that none of these appraisals are about the actors. My goal is to evaluate companions by the way they were written. The performance will come secondary.

1. Danny Pink

I chose Danny Pink to kick this list off because he is the reason I am writing this article in the first place. Recently, I took to rewatching a selection of Danny Pink episodes, in hopes that I may find something I didn't initially see. When Samuel Anderson was cast as Danny, I was excited. I've always been a big fan of male companions. They offer a different dynamic to the TARDIS that we don't often get to experience. However, in the wrong hands, they can be exhausting. Enter Steven Moffat.

When Steven Moffat took the reins of Doctor Who, he introduced us to Rory Williams. A smart, loyal, and combative male companion, not at all enamoured with the Doctor's mystique. At his worst, Rory was made to compete with the Doctor for Amy's affection. At his best, Rory held the Doctor accountable for the lives he brought aboard the TARDIS. With Danny, I felt like this is what Moffat was trying to do again, but this time, it wasn't as successful.

When we're introduced to Danny, we watch him and Clara fumble over their words like teenagers. It's meant to be cute, but their chemistry is non-existent. It feels like watching an episode of Coupling, in that it's painful and causes me to scan the room for exits. Their adorkable awkwardness is supposed to endear us to their relationship, but it seems forced. This is compounded when the Doctor enters the equation. Forcing Danny to fight for something very few of us in the audience believe in the first place.

Once again we find the male companion being forced to compete with the Doctor for the affection of a woman. But in this instance, instead of holding the Doctor accountable, Danny seems to hold the Doctor in contempt. Coming from his own history of military training and PTSD, Danny projects all of his inner struggles onto the Doctor. Which is unfortunate, as Danny's inner turmoil is his most humanistic trait. This wouldn't be the first time in Moffat's era where the Doctor's nature as a hero was called into play. The problem with Danny's appraisal of the Doctor as a general, barking orders, is that he's wrong. And we as an audience know it.

Not only do we know it, but so does the Doctor. The Doctor even gets a character arc over the identity crisis Danny gives him, wherein he realises Danny is wrong about him. Danny, however, never comes around to the Doctor's side. Even in his final moments on screen, he remains combative with the Doctor, in an exhausting refusal to grow as a character. We're supposed to believe he's come to some sort of character growth of self-acceptance by sacrificing his chance at a new life, for the life of a boy he mistakenly killed. Instead, he carries the same chip on his shoulder to his grave.

Danny is a companion wholly failed by writing. Even at his most heroic, it seems in service of making the Doctor look like a buffoon. His mimicking a soldier while yelling in the Doctor's face is embarrassing for everyone involved. Imagine this is your boyfriend meeting your friends. You would be mortified by his behaviour. Now imagine you have to lie about hanging out with your friends because it might make your boyfriend upset. Now imagine this friend is a very dashing person who constantly puts the lives of others before him. Danny and Clara's courtship is a romance by gaslight.

2. Clara Oswald

Clara is a whole other can of worms. I could probably dedicate an entire article to her character. I should clarify that my initial dislike for her character is somewhat mired in personal disappointment. By the time Clara was introduced, we had seen a string of modern human companions. We got the occasional tertiary companions from the future, such as Captain Jack or River Song. But we hadn't had a main companion from the past, future, or another planet. So when Jenna Coleman was introduced as Oswin Oswald, Junior Entertainment Manager of the starliner Alaska, I was very excited. Finally, a companion from the future! I was so ready for the Doctor to go on a quest to save Oswin from the cruel fate of becoming a Dalek. What an exciting storyline that was going to be.

And then we see her as governess Clara Oswin Oswald. Ok... Well at least she's still from a different era, right? Oh, she's dead now too? Oh. Much like Moffat's Dracula, all of this great promise was suddenly dashed against the rocks of a contemporary setting. Sigh. I was so excited. What we're given in “The Bells of St. John,” is a new character with less direction than either Oswin or the governess before her. So much that Moffat had taken to literally modulating her brain with an app. Maybe she's really good with computers now? Sorry friends, much like Rose Tyler's gymnastics and Peri Brown's botany, it's never going to come up again.

And this is the biggest issue I have had with Clara Oswald. She spends most of her screen time fluctuating between what character they're writing her as this week. The writers simply didn't know what to do with her while the Doctor tried to figure out why she's so "impossible." One week she's wacky, one week she's stern, another week she's bisexual queer bait. Her characterisation is all over the charts, which sadly, tracks with her entire storyline. She's a woman, fragmented across time, and so is her personality. And don't even get me started on that impossible girl nonsense.

Steven Moffat once said in an interview that one or two people usually guess his big reveal ahead of time, but that no one had guessed Clara's. Perhaps that's because nobody's fan theory was "It's going to be absolute shite." Instead of just being a woman who gets to be her own person, she has to become the most importantest companion. She has to save the Doctor by being planted throughout his timeline, saving him from the Great Intelligence. You know, by sometimes being born as herself, and other times being born as a Time Lord. Sometimes knowing who the Doctor is, other times having no idea whatsoever. Sometimes having a name that is a play on of Oswald, or Oswin, or Clara. And at no times did it make any kind of sense.

The funny thing is, that for me at least, Clara's character doesn't really become interesting until all of that nonsense is behind her. The Clara I find most compelling is the Clara in mourning. Clara post-Danny Pink is a Clara with focus. Her mood swings seem more from a place of destructive behaviour in the wake of great loss. Watching her hold the TARDIS keys hostage above a volcano was some seriously gripping stuff. Aside from the gross digs at her appearance, I found the Twelfth Doctor's relationship with Clara far more endearing than that of the Eleventh Doctor. It may have taken them until her final moments as a companion, but they did get her right, in the end.

3. Melanie Bush

Back in 2015, I had the opportunity to meet Louise Jameson, who played Leela, my all-time favourite Doctor Who companion. I also got to meet Colin Baker, who was all charm. Also in attendance was Bonnie Langford, aka, Doctor Who's Mel. After having gotten autographs from Louise and Colin, and having circled the convention hall a few times, I decided "Sure, why not. Let's meet Bonnie Langford. It's only 10 quid for an autograph." Upon meeting her, she was a very kind woman, and even still, I was racking my brain for something nice to say about Mel. To save face, I lied a very simple lie. I said, "I really liked you in Doctor Who." She smiled, said thank you, and signed my picture. And I walked away, taking my shitty liar mouth with me.

Because the fact is, I didn't like her in Doctor Who. I found every moment she was onscreen excruciating. From her poodle haircuts, to her 80's disaster attire, to her fat-shaming the Sixth Doctor, to her constant screaming at every little thing, she depressed me. I spoke in my review of "Terror of the Vervoids," just how weird it was that we're never actually introduced to her as a character. Instead, Peri is written off, and suddenly, Mel is there, already chummy with the Doctor. You guys know Mel, she's the Doctor's friend, because we told you she was! Instead of getting to know Mel slowly, we're thrown into the deep end, forced to sink or swim within the curls of red hair piled high. Mel doesn't just come out of nowhere, she comes on strong. Fitness expert Mel here to get your fat Doctor Who loving asses into shape. Drink this carrot juice you geek pig!

Not even in Big Finish audios was I finding myself warming up to Mel. When Ace was introduced, they couldn't have pushed Mel out quicker. I found everything about Ace immediately refreshing. Here was a calm and collected badass rebel that I could get behind. It's ironic then; that it was in the Seventh Doctor era that I have begun to find something likeable in Mel. Much like Clara Oswald,  a changing of Doctors enriched my appreciation for her character. This appreciation didn't come immediately, mind you, it came about around my third or fourth watch-through of "Paradise Towers."

Perhaps it's the influence of Andrew Cartmel, but with the Seventh Doctor, I have begun to appreciate Mel in the snarkiest manner. Mel is best utilised as a commentary on the Doctor/Companion relationship. She's precocious to a fault, she chews scenery, she screams at the drop of a hat, and she is oftentimes a naive idiot. Yet in "Paradise Towers," it becomes hilarious. Like much of the 80's era of Doctor Who, there is a very "2000 AD," atmosphere to the stories, and I could easily see this as a setting for Judge Dredd to drudge through, busting skulls and filling bodies with bullets. Setting the sunshiny persona of Mel against this backdrop is so brilliant that I can't imagine another companion in this story. Where she would usually grate against me, her sharp contrast from the things happening around her is exactly why I began to soften toward her.

Not even the ire from the Kangs could shake Mel's confidence, which is oddly what makes her cool. Or "ice-hot," as they would say. For the first time, Mel's headstrong sense of self makes her a rebel. She doesn't need to follow a crowd to feel accepted. Sadly, very few writers were able to find this core to Mel, but it was enough for me to be able to look at her in a different light. I could finally look at Mel and say I did like her in Doctor Who. Even if it was just for a moment, and even if it was somewhat at her expense. From a very cynical perspective, Mel can actually be pretty fun.

4. River Song

I know a lot of you are probably aghast to see River Song on this list, but I assure you, I have my reasons, and they are not without consideration. I should begin by saying some good things about River. She's smart, she's competent, she's got a healthy grasp on her sexuality, and she's cool. Why then did I not like her very much the first few times I watched her? Well, if you hadn't noticed, the bulk of this list are characters written by Steven Moffat, and once again, it all comes down to writing.

We're first introduced to River in the Tenth Doctor two-parter "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead." At first, she's just one of a team of forgettable space scientists on an expedition. However, as she finds out the Doctor is who he is, her entire demeanour changes. Like Mel on steroids, we're given a heaping dose of "Who does this bitch think she is, being all familiar with the Doctor?" Only, instead of it lasting one episode, it's every interaction we have with her character beyond this point. Instead of getting to watch River and the Doctor grow as a couple, we're forced to watch them meet in opposite directions. It is the antithesis of "show, don't tell." Everything about the Doctor and River's relationship is implied. "You're going to love me someday," she promises. Couldn't we just see it play out naturally? Spoilers.

This idea is one that can only really be done on a show like Doctor Who, where things are wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. The problem is, this doesn't mean that the idea is worth exploring, or even successful. It's made even worse when the relationship implied is one deeper than friendship. The Doctor is famously chaste, married only to his TARDIS and what lies ahead. Because of this, the idea of a person the Doctor will someday trust enough to share his real name and eventually marry carries with it a sizeable amount of convincing. Such a huge shift in the show's dynamic requires a lot of character development. Sadly none of that is to be seen onscreen. Who is Jim the Fish? Who cares? Steven Moffat's joke of "I'll explain later," became painfully prophetic of his time as showrunner.

I've got no complaints about River being a Time Lord, or even her being the child of Amy and Rory. Those elements are fine, really. It's the way in which she is presented which I find most detrimental to her character. I never did buy into the idea that the Doctor loved her as a wife. Their wedding seemed necessary to save the universe, as opposed to a union made out of love. Any kind of enjoyment I've ever gotten out of River stems mostly out of my love for Alex Kingston's performance. Where the show fails to establish her, she more than makes up for in style and substance. I grew to like River Song, despite the show's failure to ground her properly. River grew on me as she always said she would, but by no effort on the part of the writers. River is cool because River is cool, not because it was inferred that she was.

5. Susan

If you’ve followed this blog long enough, you’ll know I’ve already mellowed on Susan. In my reviews of the First Doctor era, I’ve had mostly good things to say about her character. This doesn’t change the fact that I found her utterly irritating at first, and it feels appropriate to talk about it here.

My initial dislike for Susan is a lot like my intial dislike for Clara. A lot of it was wrapped up in my own expectations of the character. Susan is the Doctor’s granddaughter. She is a Time Lord, therefore she should also be brilliant. And we get a lot of that in her first episode. She is mysterious, she’s enigmatic, and she is brilliant. Even her teachers at school found her perplexing. But the show doesn’t continue down that line. In fact, there are times when they make Susan borderline stupid. But how much of this is clouded by my own preconceptions?

For starters, Susan wasn’t a Time Lord. At least, not then. She was just a young girl. She may have been smarter than her fellow students, but this played more into how she was raised. So when the show depicts Susan screaming at every little thing, grabbing her hair dramatically, it smashed apart my mental image of a Time Lord. I couldn’t appreciate that they had her act this way to help sell a bad effect. Oftentimes Susan, like many Doctor Who companions, had her character sacrificed to make the baddies scarier. It was a product of her time, and even still I feel her character suffers for it.

However, one of the things I have discovered through repeat viewings of the First Doctor era is the surprising amount of character development among the TARDIS crew. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan all go through deep character development that was sadly often secondary in classic Doctor Who. Before the nature of the Doctor and companions was transient, there was a feeling of a family bond forming. Through this, I have come to find Susan to be a rather deep and sensitive person.

When it comes time to say goodbye to Susan, I can’t say I exactly agreed with the method. The Doctor locking her out and deciding she was mature enough to set out on her own felt hasty. But I would be lying if I didn’t agree that Susan had gone from a little girl to a young woman at that point. When you stop expecting Susan to be the Doctor, and allow her to be a kid, she grows on you instantly.

6. Adric

Let's be honest; it's not really original to hate on Adric. It's nothing new to point out what a bad companion he is, but here we are. Something I constantly endeavour to do on this blog is to be fair. One of my biggest complaints about the Doctor Who fandom is the proprietary attitude people take toward the fandom. The "I don't like it; therefore you shouldn't like it," attitude spat with such vitriol is one of the worst parts about being in the Doctor Who fandom. So when you say "Adric is my favourite companion," I'm not devising an argument for how wrong you are, it's fine. Like who you like. This doesn't mean I'm not also thinking in my head "What? Why?" Because I honestly, without malice, do not understand.

The most I ever enjoyed Adric, was in his introductory story "Full Circle." Setting him against a group of fellow Alzarians dilutes his lesser qualities. In fact, when paired with Varsh, he almost seems likeable. Sadly, we have to say goodbye to Varsh, and it's downhill from there. We're forced to watch a contrarian boy genius butt heads with the Doctor while he waddles around in a toddler's outfit while showing off his pound shop sheriffs badge for "mathematical excellence," to anyone who will listen. Adric is so obnoxious that he makes Wesley Crusher seem likeable in contrast.

However, it's not just his contrarian nature that makes me despise Adric, he's also disloyal to the Doctor and his friends. He's so susceptible to bad ideas as long as they a presented logically, that I've dubbed him the Ben Shapiro of the TARDIS. He's a smarmy little shit who believes himself superior to women, and he's really got no justification for his ill-placed self-confidence. Constantly demanding respect while giving very little reason to deserve it, he's like a poster child for incels. To make matters worse, he's oftentimes wrong and easily duped into taking the side of evil, turning him into more of a liability than an asset.

Recently, the idea that the Thirteenth Doctor could save someone from sacrificing themselves by using the TARDIS at the last moment to save them came under fire. "Why didn't the Doctor do this for Adric?" they said, forgetting conveniently when the Twelfth Doctor did the exact same thing in "Into the Dalek." But yes, why indeed? Why would the Doctor ever let a duplicitous, argumentative braggart die by their own stupid need to solve a math problem? My headcanon is that the Doctor got better at flying the TARDIS. The real reason is that people hated his character. The silence over the credits after Adric dies isn't out of respect for the character. The real reason is that the BBC couldn't secure the rights to Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate Good Times," before it aired.

Listen, I am not unsympathetic toward Matthew Waterhouse. He never should have been given such a big role, considering his utter lack of ability at the time. I imagine it was his own insecurity that fuelled his on-set antics. Giving unsolicited advice to veteran actors is cringey, but also the actions of a young and naive boy, in over his head. I know I said I was going to try and treat the performance as secondary, but in this case, it goes hand in hand. He has the stage presence of a fake. Every moment he's onscreen is disingenuous. The fact that he is present at the death of my favourite Doctor, stinking up the scene is genuine pain to me. If he has been made better in Big Finish, I've not yet heard it. As of now, there is nothing I've seen of Adric that has changed my opinion. But I'm glad if he makes you happy.

Rosa - 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)

It comes as a massive relief to say that I really enjoyed this episode. There are a number of ways Rosa could have gone wrong and while Chris Chibnall has managed to crank out two surprisingly good Doctor Who episodes so far, it’s hard to shake off old fears. Oh my God, I thought to myself, a historical episode about Rosa Parks and the Black Civil Rights Movement. Is Chibnall biting off more than he can chew? 

Thankfully Chibnall had the good sense to hire a co-writer that can keep his white privilege in check. Malorie Blackman. Author of the critically acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series of books depicting an alternative reality where Africans developed a technological advantage over Europeans and where white people are segregated under this world’s version of the Jim Crow laws. It’s safe to say that Blackman knows a thing or two about exploring racism and, being a black woman, she’s much more qualified to talk about issues of race and to represent Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole than Chibnall is. The result is, without a shadow of a doubt, some of the best Doctor Who I’ve seen in years.

One thing I’m glad about is the way Rosa Parks is depicted. Historical stories (particularly New Who historical stories) have an unfortunate tendency to go completely over the top with it. It’s just not enough to have a character who played a significant part in human history. Oh no. They’ve also got to be the specialist, most important person in the whole wide universe. The result is that we’re often left with a wafer thin episode that completely romanticises the period of history the story is trying to depict, waters down all the more complicated and unsavoury parts of the historical setting and turns the famous historical figure into a shallow caricature of themselves (see Agatha Christie in Unicorn And The Wasp, Winston Churchill in Victory Of The Daleks and Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent And The Doctor). Rosa, thankfully, doesn’t fall into the same trap. Rosa Parks isn’t treated as a god among mortals. She’s treated like an ordinary person, thus making her actions that much more powerful.

Vinette Robinson (who appeared in a previous Chibnall penned story 42) does an incredible job playing Rosa Parks. Again, more emphasis is placed on how ordinary she is rather than how historically significant. Nowadays we of course view her as the genesis of the Black Civil Rights Movement and she has rightly been praised and immortalised for that, but it’s easy to forget that she was a real person behind the legacy, which is what the episode really delves into. We get to see her fear, sadness and frustration in this oppressive society. And it really brings home how mundane her actions really are. Sure we can see from hindsight how her actions would influence others and change the course of history, but she wasn’t some heroic freedom fighter taking a stand. She was a woman who just wanted to sit down on a bus after a hard day at work. And the fact that she, Martin Luther King and other black people actually had to fight for the right to do something so trivial is utterly ridiculous.

Some have criticised the episode saying that this is too heavy a subject matter to deal with at 7pm on a Sunday evening. I couldn’t disagree more. For one thing, this isn’t the first time Doctor Who has handled difficult subject matters (Nazism and genocide have frequently cropped up in past stories after all). But I think the criticism mostly stems from people (white people) being left feeling uncomfortable by the story and are trying to avoid having a serious conversation about it NRA style, claiming that this isn’t the right time for it. Well... when is it the right time? Nobody wants to have this conversation, sure, but we’ve still got to have it. And as uncomfortable viewing as it is, it’s important that it is not sugar-coated and that we’re reminded of how difficult things were for non-white people so that shit like this never happens again. So no, I didn’t think the use of violence against black people or racially charged language up to and including the n word were inappropriate. It was an accurate depiction of the environment at the time and if you felt uncomfortable by that, then congratulations, that’s precisely what you’re supposed to feel.

In fact I honestly thought the episode’s depiction of violence against black people was quite restrained, making the acts of discrimination that much more despicable in my eyes. Using gratuitous violence would have been a cheap shot and Chibnall and Blackman mercifully avoid that route. What makes the episode so chilling to watch isn’t the things that white people do, but rather the oppressive atmosphere they create. It’s not the arrogant tosspot slapping Ryan across the face for touching his wife’s glove that had me on edge. It was the scene after that where everyone is just silently staring at the TARDIS crew in the cafe that really made me feel queasy. The threat is implied, yet constant, which is infinitely scarier. After the likes of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss boasting about how their episodes were going to be ‘the scariest Doctor Who stories ever’ only for them to amount to a hodge-podge of tired horror cliches and a dumb monster going ‘boo’, it’s a relief to see writers take a more subtle ‘less is more’ approach. I’m sorry, but the bus driver glaring angrily at Rosa is much more terrifying than a Weeping Angel. Period.

Which brings me to Krasko, played with smug charm by Joshua Bowman who succeeds at making you want to reach through the screen and punch his racist face repeatedly. Again, some have criticised the episode for its ‘one dimensional villain’ and, again, it only seems to be white people making this criticism. Not to make sweeping generalisations here, but non-white fans seem to be largely happy with how Krasko was written and depicted, probably because they’ve had to deal with pricks like him at least once in their lives. I’m guessing the source of the criticism comes from him not having a backstory or concrete motivation other than he hates black people. But my response to that is... does he really need one? Would Krasko have really been a more interesting character if it was revealed that he was bullied in school or a black kid had stolen his My Little Pony lunchbox? Does there really need to be a reason for why he hates black people and wants to ‘put them in their place’? I would have thought him being a racist white person would have been enough reason to hate him frankly. Let’s not forget what happened when Star Wars and Marvel respectively gave their villains Kylo Ren and Kilgrave tragic backstories to provide context for their despicable actions, at which point the fans proceeded to romanticise the fuck out of them, calling them misunderstood. Maybe (and this is just my opinion) giving Krasko a backstory wouldn’t have made him more interesting, but instead would have been seen as an attempt to justify and excuse his shitty behaviour, and maybe, just maybe, we’re better off without one. Just a thought.

Besides, it’s not as if we don’t learn anything about Krasko. We’re given enough information to work with. He’s a time traveller from the future. He was put in prison for murdering two thousand people (quick side note, did anyone else laugh when the Doctor said the Stormcage was the most secure prison in the universe? Remind me, how many times did River Song break out again?). He’s clearly intelligent, as demonstrated by him coming up with a non-violent plan to ruin the lives of generations of non-white people in order to circumvent his neural inhibitors. While it’s never overtly mentioned, he’s clearly some future version of the alt-right and is there to act as an extension of the true villain of the story. Because that’s the thing the people criticising his character have overlooked. Krasko isn’t the villain. White people are. The society Rosa Parks lives in is the true villain. Krasko is there not just to get to the plot going, but also to subtly demonstrate that while things do get better for non-white citizens, there will always be that racist element within our society. Hell, Ryan and Yasmin even spell it out for you in their conversation whilst hiding from the police. While people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King made a huge impact and helped change things for the better, racism and prejudice hasn’t just magically gone away. It’s still around. There are still people who cling on to these extremist and bigoted views. Some might argue that racism has become so entrenched in Western society that it will never fully go away. That there will always be some remnant hanging around. That’s what Krasko represents. So if you thought he was a rubbish villain because he had ‘no backstory or motivation’ then I’m afraid you’ve completely missed the point.

I should also applaud Chibnall and Blackman for resisting the urge to shove in some pointless alien like other historicals have. Not only would that have distracted from Rosa’s story, the racist white people are scary enough thank you very much. While there are sci-fi elements in here, the episode quite rightfully focuses on people.

Speaking of people, let’s talk about the TARDIS crew. Yeah! They’re in this episode too! Haven’t really talked about them much, have I? The Doctor largely takes a backseat in this one, which I know some people have a problem with, but I think it was the right thing to do. We don’t want an alien white woman coming in and stealing Rosa Parks’ glory. Jodie Whittaker graciously lets Vinette Robinson take centre stage while she busies herself with other things like confronting and intimidating Krasko and organising fake raffles with Frank Sinatra. I really like the balance they’ve struck between light and dark with this Doctor (something Moffat tried to do with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and failed at miserably). She’s funny, compassionate and caring, but there’s a little bit of Sylvester McCoy’s devious cunning in there too, which really comes to the forefront here. Did anyone else find it really disconcerting seeing the Doctor try to maintain history? Influencing events so that Rosa Parks had no choice, but to give up (or refuse to give up) her seat. While we know she’s doing it for the right reasons, in order to keep black history in check, she’s still nonetheless actively contributing to Rosa’s misery, which is actually a clever way of exploring how white people all contribute to a racist status quo, directly, indirectly, intentionally and unintentionally. And of course it all culminates in the Doctor and co refusing to give up their seats in order to keep history intact. The look on Thirteen’s face as events unfold says it all. The look of sheer sadness and self loathing, knowing she played a part in this, is haunting. Same goes for Graham’s realisation. The widower of a black woman and step-grandfather to a black teenager being forced to contribute to this racist institution is utterly heartbreaking.

But the standout of the main cast has to be Ryan. Tosin Cole truly shines in this episode, giving an incredibly powerful and moving performance. This in many ways is his episode as he comes face to face with the racist prejudices of the time period and Cole rises to the occasion. My favourite scene has to be when Ryan talks with Rosa, thanking her for everything she will do in the future and promising that things will get better. It’s incredibly emotional and I actually started tearing up with him. I’m also so happy that he was the one that got to beat Krasko at the end rather than the Doctor. I stood up and cheered. And his reaction to seeing Martin Luther King has got to be one of the most charming moments of the series so far.

Rosa is unquestionably one of the strongest episodes in all of Doctor Who. It’s incredibly well written and performed and it’s extremely powerful as well as being very subtle and nuanced. What’s more, I’m now completely sold on Chris Chibnall being the showrunner. Any lingering doubts I’ve may have had are now completely evaporated after this episode. Rosa proves that not only does Chibnall respect and value diversity both in front of and behind the camera, but that he’s also committed to creating something truly special with his tenure, using the Doctor Who format to explore hard hitting and difficult subject matters with care and respect. Truly excellent television.

ASM vol 5 #9/810 Thoughts

I wrote this before the arc had finished so please bare that in mind if you read on because I recognize some of it might seem weird or redundant in the wake of the conclusion tot he arc.

Kinda sorta mixed feelings for this issue.

 Okay so here are the aspects I DIDN’T like.

 The recap page implies that the general public is starting to forget Peter ran Parker industries and that the heroes all think Spider-Man is in the pocket of the Kingpin.

 Now recap pages aren’t actually part of a story so they don’t exactly count per se.

 But if that is the intention of the author then the series has done a poor job of conveying the former. It’s just ignored the elephant in the room that was Parker Industry.

 And whilst Spencer was saddled with that mess a mess it was nevertheless and he’s cleaned up a lot of other things. Whilst I didn’t consider it a mess necessitating any cleaning up nevertheless when Steven Moffat took over Doctor Who in 2010 (technically 2009 but that’s not important) very early on he established that the massive global Dalek invasion everyone on Earth knew about had been erased from everyone’s memories (mostly) meaning that now alien invasions could happen and new characters would react as though they were sceptical of the existence of wider alien life.

 Again, this wasn’t necessary but the point being was that Moffat put the work in to fix something he perceived as a big problem that resulted from the prior regime. Spencer has been doing some of the same here but not addressed that biggest of elephants in the room that from it’s mere announcement the fanbase was collectively calling out as something that would fuck over the series going forward. Because absolutely not would the general public just forget who Peter Parker was in regards to PI, let alone the company itself.

 As for the Kingpin thing, I never thought about it until just this issue but I kind of have issues with it now. Because even if the other heroes do not know Peter’s identity surely they DO know Spider-Man and/or Kingpin well enough by this point that they’d not presume Kingpin and Spider-Man to be buddies.

 I mean there ARE ways to explain their feelings, like if they presume Spider-Man to be an imposter or something but him being on the outs with the other heroes merely because Fisk put on an appearance of them being friends in spite of their years of animosity shouldn’t make the heroes automatically resentful towards Spider-Man.

 Again, it can work but Spencer needs to better elaborate upon it.

 Moving in I did have a few issues with Felicia here. At first Spencer seemed to have her acting vindictive akin to stupidity of Slott’s run after SpOck sent her to jail. But then he explained why she was actually miffed at him and it made more sense.

 Well sorta.

 On the one hand Felicia has always been in love with Spider-Man and so if in character Felicia should jump at the chance to sleep with him if he propositions her. On the other hand though she does say Spider-Man was being creepy which and we get a mere snippet of what he was doing, so presumably he might’ve gone further than that.

 The other thing I didn’t like was Peter’s attitude to Felicia. Hey I’m all for ignoring stupid continuity if you are trying to fix things, but here...that isn’t happening. Peter is treating Felicia as an old friend but she hasn’t been that since 2009 and he’s still lying to her. Maybe that will be fixed next issue and their old relationship established but right now it is problematic.

 Oh and also the issue seemed to treat their old relationship as being messed up due to Felicia’s criminal tendencies when that wasn’t it. They hooked up in a monogamous relationship 3 times and whilst that was why they broke up the first time that wasn’t what happened on the second or third occasions.

  Finally I wish Spencer wasn’t maintaining Felicia’s tendency to be evil. Being a Robin Hood style character okay sure. But here she is basically what she was like in 2009 (except not made into a vessel for Joe Kelly’s midlife crisis sexual fantasies) but if she’s still like that her character is still in need of repair.

 Now this isn’t to say I hated every moment they interacted. Far from it. it was more on point than it’s been in a long time and much improved over BND and Slott’s run. So within the context of post-OMD Spider-Man it was good but within a wider context there are still problems. It is at least written better than before, I especially loved the acknowledgment of them making for a good team.

 Finally I disliked the art. Common criticism by this point but it stands.

 That’s everything I disliked but on the more positive side of things I felt that the general plot of the Thieves Guild is still a fun idea.

 The Thieves Guild are an X-Men/Gambit concept but Spencer has put enough distance between them that this NYC chapter of them can be played enough as a ‘Spider-Man thing’. And the notion of them swiping all the paraphernalia of superheroes through the power of super thievery is a fun superhero plot.

 I also don’t mind Felicia being a member of their ranks. I mean I feel like if she always had that tattoo Peter would’ve noticed by now, but there are numerous ways to explain that. If nothing else I love the scene between Felicia and her Dad, because it humanizes her, touches on her origin and allows her to be more her own character. I feel there is so much potential to be exploited from exploring Felicia’s relationship.

 Now in spite of all those complaints I actually loved this issue because of the Mary Jane subplot. There are some feelings I’m wrestling with in regards to it though but on balance I think this was ingenious on Spencer’s part.

 Okay first thing’s first. The artwork by Michele Bandini looked really nice. If you are going to have two artists work on the same story dividing them up based upon the subplot and the main plot is actually a pretty clever idea. I didn’t know there was going to be two artists actually and so when I checked out the preview pages before the issue’s release I was confused as to why Ramos’ style looked so much better from one page into the next. I wish Bandini had done the whole story to be honest.

 But onto the subplot itself.

 To begin with it’s just lovely seeing Spencer actually give MJ a subplot of her own and focus upon her. And it’s good focus too. So far he’s not really mishandled her in this story at all so Spencer seems to be a decent MJ writer. I hope this trend continues and the relative lack of Mj/his use of MJ within his first two arcs was more about building up Peter and also paying tribute to Superior Foes which landed him this job in the first place.

 I didn’t see the Carlie twist coming. Honest of all characters that reveal could have been she was the farthest from my mind. For some reason my mind was fixated upon Bobby CCarr or Jonathan Caesar somehow.

 Now Carlie is...controversial of course.

 Carlie was one of the many lame Brand New Day era characters with her status made worse than many of the other ones because

 a)      She was at times a Mary Sue

b)      She was pushed hard as the new love interest. I mean really, really, really pushed hard

c)       She had an inconsistent character design

d)      She was at times bland and at other times just...not nice. See her considering getting a Green Goblin tattoo to piss Peter off. Yes she was drunk but I don’t care how drunk or angry you are that’s like considering getting a Nazi tattoo to piss off your Jewish boyfriend. You are just nasty at that point

e)      She was an idiot during Superior despite being the most sceptical person of Otto

 Carlie to say the least was HATED by the fandom.

 Now look let’s not sit here and pretend the fandom hate went beyond what was warranted by the character. She was treated as an 11 on the ‘this character sucks’ scale.

 But that doesn’t mean she didn’t score a very solid 7 or 8 if you catch my drift.

 Here though she is arguably written better than ever before, not in the least because most of those problems listed above are being avoided or addressed.

 Rather than being an overcritical and judgemental asshole like in her last appearance who either attributes blame to Peter for the horrible things happening to her or else makes it clear the nature of who he is means he’s doomed to misery because no one could put up with that, here she acknowledges none of it is his fault and he deserves happiness.

 Spencer does drop his continuity ball though by listing off the wrong reason for why Peter and Calrie broke up. According to him Carlie couldn’t handle dating Spider-Man but in reality it was the fact that he was lying to her that was the problem.

 Whatever though, nobody cares why Peter and Carlie broke up, so long as they did.

 Similarly, if Spencer wants to try and rehabilitate the character who neglected to inform her ‘friend’ and roommate that she might be dating a villain without realizing it, okay let’s give him and this character a second chance. If Carlie wants to say she always liked MJ in spite of her douche actions lets draw a line under it and try again.

 Now we move onto the meat of the subplot. The support group for superhero supporting cast members.

 This idea gives me some mixed feelings and it somewhat depends upon how it  is handled going forward.

 On the negative side, I do not want this to turn into a subtextually critical evaluation of how MJ handled life with a hero in a past or how older runs did. Also the story is somewhat ignoring how MJ DID have people she could talk to about this in the past, like Felicia and Aunt May. But currently neither character knows his secret, might not be finding out anytime soon so okay I guess I understand why Spencer is treating it this way.

 I think Spencer’s putting in little lines of dialogue and presents a resistance within MJ to joining the group which makes it clear to us that, whilst Carlie felt alone and unsafe keeping Peter’s secret, MJ doesn’t feel quite like that even though it might be a struggle all the same.

 Which is in character, remember she kept his secret for years beginning with AF #15. Similarly MJ has had issues opening up to people in the past and has seen first hand the cost of exposing Peter’s secret.

 Now in spite of all I’ve said, I cannot tell you how much I ADORE the idea of a support group for super hero friends and family.

 If Spencer plays this right it could wind up as one of the mainstays of the Marvel Universe’s architecture, like Night Nurse or what have you.

 It just makes sense as a piece of world building for the Marvel Universe and is an emotionally engaging idea that ANY comic book series can pick up.

 Moreover it highlights the innate quiet awesomeness that is Jarvis. Jarvis is like Alfred but to the whole Avengers and one of the most bad ass bad ass normals in the whole Marvel Universe so highlighting him as this proactive, helping and caring individual is appreciated.

 This idea is a great addition to Peter and MJ’s relationship too as it gives Mj something to do aside from wait by a window and counters one of the most frequent weapons in the anti-MJ/marriage brigade’s arsenal.

 “MJ can’t be with Peter because it’s worse than being with a cop because they get to talk to other cop’s families. It’s just so toxic for her!!!!11!!!”

 See Fred Van Lente’s piece of shit MJ story in ASM #605 for proof of this.

 But right here Spencer finds a solution to that complaint (which I’m sure the anti-MJ brigade just love  him for) and one that makes justifying breaking them up again a lot harder.

 Also guessing who all the people in the meeting was turned out to be really fun.

 Over all I loved this issue because in spite of my problems with the Felicia end of things the MJ end was brilliant.

p.s. Isn’t it a little weird for Spider-Man to not remember what ‘Spider-Man’ did when they were separate people?

I guess you could argue that his memories from ‘Peter’ might be hazy too. Or that this weird science comes with ‘rules’ like that, e.g. one side has to dominate the other.

Johnlock: Two years on

I posted the following on a Sherlock fan forum in August 2016. I’ve just found it again and revisited it. It thought it might be interesting to reflect on how things have panned out in the Sherlock fandom: 

OK if you can bear with me, this is a long one! I wanted to set down some thoughts on this whole situation, which - frankly - I think has become a bit of a mess. Whether it can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction at this stage I think is unlikely, but who knows?! As far as I can see it, there are two entrenched sides now: TJLC shippers on one, TPTB on the other, and other fans - both non-Johnlockers and Johnlockers who don’t want or don’t expect their ship to become canon - caught somewhere in the middle. This is just my personal interpretation. I realise others will see things very differently so please accept that my intention is only to try and set things out in a non-inflammatory way. I will set my cards on the table from the start. I don’t think it is or has ever been Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss’ intention for Sherlock and John to enter into a romantic or a sexual relationship in their version of this story. I take at face value what they have said about addressing the fact that, in the 21st century, two close male friends living together would make some people question whether their relationship was more than platonic. And that, combined with the fact that both Moffat & Gatiss’ careers began in comedy and sitcoms, the way they have explored this in ‘Sherlock’ has mostly been through humour. That humour, incidentally, is never at the expense of gay people or gay relationships. If anything it’s a gentle mockery of any characters (Mrs Hudson, Angelo, the innkeepers in THOB) who make erroneous assumptions. In fact, humour is derived from the notion that homosexuality is so unremarkable these days. Therefore characters automatically jump to the conclusion that what Sherlock and John are gay, simply because such a close male friendship is more unusual! Do I think the “gay jokes” are always successful? Not entirely. Even Gatiss is on record as having said maybe they overdid them. However, I don’t think for a moment that they ever expected any section of their audience to interpret these occasional moments in each episode as hints or subtext that Sherlock and John would actually get together as a couple. So what happened way back in 2010? The show airs and becomes a bigger hit than Moffat & Gatiss could ever have imagined. At some stage it becomes clear to them that the show is attracting a very devoted collection of predominantly young and predominantly female fans. And via social media interaction, the creators become aware that for this fanbase, the largest part of the appeal of the show is the relationship between John and Sherlock. I’ve no idea if they’d heard of slash fiction and shipping before it became such a phenomenon in the Sherlock fandom, but presumably they became aware pretty rapidly. In the early days, the cast and crew responded in different ways whenever the fourth wall was broken and they were confronted with the Johnlock-related stories, photo manips and artwork that the fandom was producing. Initially they seemed amused and even played along. However, their responses to some of the more explicit, NSFW stuff that was shoved in their faces - either by fans or by journalists such as Caitlin Moran or Graham Norton - was less genial, and you got the definite sense that they weren’t entirely comfortable. The image of these fans that was being presented then was that they were hysterical, teenage, heterosexual girls: unable or unwilling to have physical, real-world relationships of their own, and fantasising about two men getting together for their titillation in much the same cliched way that straight men fantasise over lesbians. (Note: I’m not saying this was the reality - just the perception which was promoted all the time and which presumably TPTB also inherited.) So their responses began to shift. The creators have always said that fans are absolutely at liberty to write or create whatever they like. To my knowledge they have stood by that. No legal action of any kind has ever been threatened against any of the Sherlock fanbase for anything they have written, drawn or photoshopped. They have even expressed admiration for some of the artwork. However, they definitely took a step back and cooled on this stuff. Over time, both Gatiss and Moffat’s attitude towards and relationship with online fanbases has definitely suffered. They are fans themselves as they frequently remind us. Massive fans. And although there was no ‘Sherlock’ when they were younger and growing up, there was of course the other big TV show that has shaped their careers: ‘Doctor Who’. Remember, they are from a different generation. When they were kids, teenagers, even young men, the fan experience was totally different and almost entirely passive. You couldn’t post your opinions on a massive global forum, there was practically no way to contact other fans outside your immediate geographic locality, and there was no way of contacting the people who made the series, or at least certainly no way of guaranteeing they could see what you wrote or elicit a reply from them. Maybe this means that they haven’t adapted to the way modern fandom works. Maybe it means that as middle-aged men, they expect their fanbases to be more respectful and more passive, and ultimately to accept what they are given or, alternatively, exercise the only other option: stop watching and walk away. So what do they experience in this brave new world? Steven Moffat takes over the show-running job on ‘Doctor Who’, and has a colossal amount of vitriol flung at him by its fanbase. So much so that he decides to quit twitter altogether. He’s also routinely accused of misogyny, to the point where he is forced to give interviews rebutting the notion. I’m not going to get into whether or not the claims have any validity, I’m just trying to make the case for why he he may appear prickly or thin-skinned when it comes to criticism in general. Fan interaction also complicates matters just because the vocabulary that fans use is different. Young fans tweet “u lil shit” to Mark Gatiss in the way they would to their friends, and this is unsurprisingly not interpreted in the way it is intended. Offence is caused, people are blocked, and more barriers are erected between TPTB and the people who love and are inspired by their work. At some point, attitudes within fandom began to shift. Rather than just shipping two characters whose relationship nobody ever believed would become canon, many of the online/tumblr fanbase began to believe that Johnlock could and should do so. The notion took hold that if Gatiss were solely in charge of the show, this would indeed happen, and it was only Moffat - the nasty heterosexual - who was getting in the way. Gatiss was tweeted countless times to this effect. Only recently, someone on tumblr discovered an old League of Gentlemen sketch where Gatiss plays a gay character whose relationship (and its subsequent break-up) is fetishised and patronised by an overbearing straight woman called Tish. Whilst this sketch is problematic and can certainly be viewed as being misogynistic on some level, I don’t think it’s stretching credulity to speculate that ‘Tish’ is probably based on a real-life person and that Gatiss was indulging in some therapy by yelling at her on stage night after night. Did Gatiss connect this person with the Johnlock shippers? Did it seem to him that he was now having his professional career diminished by a bunch of pubescent teenage girls with a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch who counted him amongst their number “shipping Johnlock”? It also presumptuously placed him in the position of junior partner to his straight colleague Moffat, banning him from writing what he really wants. Another patronising assumption. This is total speculation, but I wonder if John’s vehement “I am NOT GAY!” to Mrs Hudson in the Gatiss-penned “The Empty Hearse” was provoked by all the online speculation directed at Gatiss via his twitter feed. Was this intended as the ultimate response - to shut down the Johnlock debate once and for all? Ironically, of course, it had the opposite effect. It was interpreted that Mrs Hudson was the ultimate Johnlock shipper, and she of course could see the fact staring in her face that John and Sherlock were simply made for each other! Then we come to Mumbai in 2014. And Gatiss - in a departure from the creators’ habitually evasive and jokey means of answering questions about forthcoming plot points - embarks on a lengthy and heartfelt explanation/justification when he is questioned about Johnlock. I’ve watched this video more than once and I can’t interpret his speech as anything other than sincere. And this is also why I think Gatiss and Moffat’s reactions to whenever Johnlock is raised are becoming more irritable, more frustrated and with none of the playfulness they exhibit everywhere else. Gatiss must be aware of the accusations of “queerbaiting”. They have appeared on his twitter feed, apart from anything else. And just as Moffat feels hypersensitive to accusations of misogyny, Gatiss must surely feel the same way about being accused of effectively betraying his community and having internalised homophobia. He tries to set the record state but what happens? He still isn’t believed. Of course, a big part of this is a problem entirely of Moffat and Gatiss’ making. When you spend the bulk of interviews smugly declaring that you lie to protect future plot points, you can’t then be surprised when your fans don’t then believe you about other things: no matter how impassioned or frustrated you might sound. They really have made a rod for their own backs. The With An Accent journalist detected a difference in tone and attitude to the Johnlock denials compared to other obfuscations about plot, but if you’re not in the room, AND it’s not something you want to hear, why would you believe them? Johnlockers have varying degrees of expectation of their ship becoming canon, ranging from those who want it to remain strictly in their own heads and never be actualised on the show, via those who think it would be nice but is unlikely, through to those who desperately want it to be but remain unsure. And then we have TJLC. TJLC is a conspiracy in the truest sense of the word. Every piece of data is viewed through the prism of an utter conviction that not only should Johnlock happen, it will. Costume choices, set designs, drinks, lighting, everything is presented as evidence of confirmation of Johnlock, and some of it in the most convoluted way, with no acknowledgment that there could be any other possible interpretation for what appears on screen. A coincidentally commissioned survey into LGB representation is cited as conclusive proof, as well as a quote from Gatiss from an interview years ago that the way to introduce more LGBT representation is “softly, softly”, so as not to frighten the horses, so that everyone just sees it as mundane, everyday and normal. Ironically, if the conspiracy is true, and Johnlock is ultimately going to be the ‘big reveal’, that would be precisely the opposite approach to what Gatiss describes. It would make gay representation into a sensational shock twist, just like Mary’s reveal as the assassin or Jim from IT being Moriarty. That’s not treating LGBT issues with the respect they deserve in my eyes, and maybe that’s what Moffat is getting at when he describes that approach as ‘trivialising’. The TJLCers express the certainty that such a shock reveal would shake the foundations of society to its core, and it would be such a landmark, water cooler moment, that TV and gay representation, and indeed society itself, would never be the same again. Even if I remotely believed Johnlock were on the cards, I actually think the reverse would happen. The show would be universally derided as having ‘jumped the shark’. Not because its viewers are homophobic or resistant to the idea of gay couples, just because it would genuinely come out of nowhere for them. It would be perceived as pandering to a tiny minority of its fanbase - that is for those few of the general audience who are even aware that this is what some of the fans expect from the show. And for the vast majority of the audience it would come completely out of the blue and be utterly confusing. After all, in their eyes, at no point in the show, have John or Sherlock ever exhibited any kind of sexual attraction to another man. And this is another problem, and I’m sad to say, feeds into the sense of entitlement which some fans do exhibit. ‘Sherlock’ is a massive, mainstream, worldwide hit show. It is very easy to forget that in the little bubble of tumblr where you’re speaking to a self-selected group of people who all feel the same way and all agree with you. But the online fanbase is a tiny minority of the people who watch the show. Threats to ‘desert it’ and expect that to hold any weight with the creators really are meaningless. It’s not a niche, cult show where a fan can expect to stamp her feet and automatically get her wish. To put it bluntly, when your worldwide viewership is in the hundreds of millions, if a few thousand storm off because their ship is not actualised, it really makes no difference. What really makes me sad is that I can’t see any way that this is not going to end horribly for some people. I don’t think Gatiss and Moffat realise that - whatever it may have been to begin with - the fanbase now, or at least the ultra-ardent TJLC part of the fanbase, contains a number of young people who identify as LGBTQIA. For these young people - again predominantly women but also with a number of trans, non-binary and gender queer members - they feel their sexuality, their gender and indeed their whole identity has been helped and in some cases shaped by ‘Sherlock’: specifically by their conviction that Johnlock will be realised in the show. Watching the youtube video TJLCExplained Episode 25 “Why it matters” gives a glimpse into the passion and the desperate certainty these people have. It grieves me to see these bright, passionate, articulate and intelligent young people ploughing their energies into this conspiracy. They’re politically aware: educated in and fired up by gender politics and sexual awareness. So why waste all that energy and passion on two white, middle-class, middle-aged fictional men who - if the conspiracy is correct - are so far into the closet they have been unable to express their true feelings emotionally or sexually for many years to the one person they have shared a home with in all that time? I wish Gatiss and Moffat could see these inspired yet vulnerable people. I wonder what they would think. Would they be gratified that their show has had such a profound and positive effect on their fans? Or would they be sad or bewildered that these young people’s convictions have foundations built on sand? I’m not sure how or when it will end. Of the TJLCers who were fully signed up theorists before last week’s interview dropped, I have observed a couple of reactions. A few of them seem to have now been convinced that it isn’t going to happen and have already expressed disappointment and anger that they were duped or queerbaited. Presumably if they do feel so betrayed, this marks the end of their relationship with the show. However, most of the fan responses I have seen on tumblr have assimilated the new data as ‘yet more lies’ and rejected it, along with anything else that does not fit the conspiracy, whilst at the same time reserving some anger at the way Moffat and Gatiss spoke in order to protect their great ‘lie’. So what happens in five months’ time when Series 4 airs and - as I fully expect - Johnlock doesn’t happen? Will there be an explosion of rage and bitterness which will make last week’s little flare-up look minor in comparison? Or will the conspiracy continue on the basis that Series 5 is the ultimate destination? Or the special after that? Or the one after that? Until sufficient time elapses and everyone moves on? Only time will tell. It just makes me sad that fandom - which should be a positive, happy place - and which, when everything works, means friendships are made and creativity flourishes - can and has become such a toxic environment for both fans and creators. I’m sorry this has been so long and I apologise if I have offended anyone with either what I said or the way I said it. I guess I wanted to lay out my position - to clarify it in my own mind if nothing else!  

On July 23, 2010, three nights before the UK Sherlock premiere, executive producer Steven Moffat sat dowm with host Gavin Esler and playwright Mark Ravenhill on the BBC’s Newsnight. Esler: Travel to Baker Street any day this summer and you'll see a line of tourists, many of them from the Far East, waiting to get into 221B. It's the address of someone who never lived there because he never lived at all. Sherlock Holmes. And yet, Holmes remains one of the most enduring characters in world literature. Now, more than 120 years after he first smoked his pipe, Holmes and his sidekick, Dr Watson, have been reimagined, not just in a Guy Ritchie movie, but also for a BBC series, which starts on Sunday night, created by the man who's currently also behind Doctor Who. In this very modern Holmes, the relationship with Dr Watson is, you might say, very 21st century. Here's a clip of the old and the new. Holmes: A convict, thank heaven! Watson: What? Watson: That's the man I shot at the night we arrived, the man Barrowman was signaling to. Who is it? Holmes: The Notting Hill Murderer. He escaped from prison last month. John: People don’t have arch-enemies. Sherlock: I’m sorry? John: In real life. There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen. Sherlock: Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull. John: So who did I meet? Sherlock: What do real people have, then, in their ‘real lives’? John: Friends; people they know; people they like; people they don’t like ... Girlfriends, boyfriends ... Sherlock: Yes, well, as I was saying – dull. John: You don’t have a girlfriend, then? Sherlock: Girlfriend? No, not really my area. John: Mm. Oh, right. D’you have a boyfriend? Which is fine, by the way. Sherlock: I know it’s fine. John: So you’ve got a boyfriend then? Sherlock: No. John: Right. Okay. Esler: Well, I'm joined now by Steve Moffat, the executive producer of Doctor Who and co-creator of the new Sherlock Holmes series, and by the playwright and Doctor Who fan, Mark Ravenhill. Um, Steven, what is it about Holmes that 123 years on still gets us. Moffat: I think, I mean, he's honestly the single best fictional character ever created. It's a marvel. I think the one thing that got me and I think still gets people to this day, he's got the one explainable superpower that's out there. (Esler chuckling) When he deduces things, when he looks at someone, he looks at Dr Watson and deduces he's been in Afghanistan or Iraq, he actually goes to the trouble to explain it. Now, Superman never tells you how he flies, The Doctor, trust me, never tells you how the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. Esler: And you should know... Moffat: I've tried to find out... Esler: Yeah, nobody knows. Moffat: ...he won't say a word. But Sherlock Holmes tells you how the trick is done. Esler: Ah. Moffat: And when that works, Um, and it works beautifully in the stories, and we've tried to duplicate that element of it, it's so exciting. Esler: That, I think we all agree, that is the really exciting bit of Sherlock Holmes. But what about bringing the character up to date? Nicotine patches instead of smoking, texting, and so on, does that work for you? Ravenhill: Absolutely, I mean, I just watched the preview of the show tonight and it's absolutely so exciting and so witty. Um, and I think one of the things about Sherlock Holmes, he does explain what he does, but also there's an elusive quality about him. We never quite get to know him. He is a mystery. And I think that's what's so fascinating about the Watson-Holmes relationship. Often in movies and in TV, the buddy relationship, as you know if they're not your buddy, they're easier to know than the women around you. So you retreat to your buddy. But, actually, Holmes and Watson... Watson's never gonna quite figure out who Holmes is. So he... Here is an element of mystery about him, as well... Moffat: That's right, yeah. Ravenhill: ...as there is with The Doctor. Moffat: Mmm-hmm. Esler: Yeah, 'cause there's strong, um, similarities, there's some similarities, at least with The Doctor. They're, sort of, better than us, they deduce things, they need to have a sidekick to explain things and plot turns. Moffat: Yeah, they do, but they're also, sort of, opposites. I always think of The Doctor, oddly enough, strange enough as a thing to say, but as more human. I was thinking he's more like that... Esler: But he wants to be, doesn't he? Moffat: Yeah. Esler: I mean, he's a Time Lord. Moffat: He's like an angel who aspires to be human. Esler: Hmm. Moffat: Whereas Sherlock Holmes is a... is a human being who aspires to be a god. So they're, um, he's rejecting the very things that The Doctor embraces. But they sort of meet in the middle, 'cause neither succeeds in their aspirations. Ravenhill: Well, they're both very English, and they're both really draw on this tradition of the kind of Edwardian amateur scientist. Um, and in this programme of Steven's, Sherlock keeps on saying, "I'm not an amateur, I'm not an amateur." But they draw on that same Edwardian tradition. And they're both the people who say the most in the room, which I think makes them very different from a lot of American heroes. The John Wayne character or the Arnold Schwarzenegger character is the person who says the least in the room. Whereas The Doctor and Sherlock Holmes are firing out brilliant words all the time. Moffat: Mmm. Esler: How far, how far is this a buddy movie? I mean, it is about the relationship between these two men. Moffat: You know, I think the Sherlock Holmes stories have always been about the friendship. I mean, the surface level is the detection, but what you fall in love with is these two impossible opposites who adore each other. And it's a very male friendship, in that they never sit down and ever, ever talk about it. And there's only one instance in the entire canon of the show that comes to where Sherlock Holmes admits he likes Dr Watson, one occasion, when he thinks Dr Watson is about to die. That's it! A totally male friendship, you only say anything nice if someone is dead in front of you. Esler: But where does the gay bit come in? I mean, are you playing with it? Are you teasing the audience? Moffat: Do you know what? It doesn't really. Even in that scene, what we're doing there is kind of dismissing it. Who knows who Sherlock Holmes fancies? I don't think he fancies anyone except himself. Esler: Except himself. So, that's part of the mystery that Mark was talking about. Is that how you saw it? Ravenhill: Yeah, I think on one level it's not gay at all, and that scene brilliantly dismisses that. And yet, as I said, it does play with this thing of normally the male-male relationship is you're with somebody more comfortable and more safe than females, who are strange and mysterious to straight men. And yet, Dr Watson finds himself with this kind of elusive, changeable, mysterious person. And in a lot of fiction, it's the female character. So there is something about the male-female relationship, alongside the buddy thing, which makes it much more complex than most buddy-buddy relationships. Esler: Is it, is it true that both characters, um, appeal to a gay audience particularly? Doctor Who has got quite a big gay following, you can see it on the internet, and so does Sherlock Holmes. Ravenhill: Doctor Who, certainly, for some reason, which I've never quite fathomed, you know, me included, get... Young gay men, as they're growing up, really tie into that Doctor Who story. And I think, as gay men, we partly identify with The Doctor. He's this flamboyant, bohemian character. And we partly identify with the companion, as well, who's been rescued from a dull life and whisked away by this bohemian, gay character. (chuckling) Esler: He's also a bit of an outsider. Ravenhill: But I think, Sherlock Holmes I think, as far as I'm aware, maybe Steven knows different, has less of a gay following. Moffat: I don't actually know. I don't even know if it's true, in either case, if whether it's not... just, there's an awful lot of people who watch it therefore there's a lot... Esler: But the big picture I thought, though, is that both characters are extraordinary in the sense that they are one of the few characters in literature, or on TV, that can relate to anybody. They can quite credibly meet a dustman or a duchess. Moffat: Yes. Esler: And that's very useful... Moffat: Exactly, yes. Esler: ...for Conan Doyle or for you... Moffat: 'Cause they can go into anyone's life and do anything. They can go any place and they can be the exceptional person they are with that person, yes. Esler: So, as a writer, that's great fun, 'cause you can do anything. Moffat: It's good to have both, I'll tell ya, yeah. Esler: Do you agree that that is the genius of Conan Doyle, actually, to create this, one of these very few characters that can do that? Ravenhill: Yeah, and it's amazing that there is something elusive, and that we'll never quite understand. And that's great about the Sherlock Holmes character. That every actor can reinvent him, and that he can appear in all sorts of different disguises. He can be in a comedy version of Sherlock Holmes, he can be in an up-to-date version of Sherlock Holmes, as Steven's done. And yet, there is something essentially Sherlock Holmes about him that we recognise even though we can't identify. And that's the same with The Doctor. There are certain characters who've got this mystery about them, but they can keep on reinventing themselves, completely change, and yet, at core, there's something mythic and heroic about them. Esler: Great stuff. Thanks both very much.

A study in representation: Why bisexual John Watson matters.

I started writing an angry rant about sherlock queerbaiting and bisexual representation in television and it turned into a short essay about why John Watson is the bisexual hero we all deserve. Read under the cut if you want.

For many of us the strongest media product that occupied our minds in january was BBC drama Sherlock. In the course of 7 years this masterful piece of television taken over our hearts and minds in what we could call only a expertly crafted mystery. Not really a crime show or a police drama, Sherlock was always focused more on wrapping psychological metaphors into what appears to be “the case of the week”. It took fans years to decode very carefully crafted clues about the relationship between the self-called sociopthic detective and his blogger. Or so we thought we did.

If you take BBC Sherlock, remove the emotions played on the show and the carefull progress of relationship between John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the only thing that would remain, is a very propostrious and self-indulgent crime show. The creators showed us this in the last episode of the season, where they virtually removed any and all shown ties between Sherlock, his brother and John.

Sure, there were emotionally draining scene between some characters, but they all served to the fact, that the three characters that remained locked together in a room, didn’t show a geniuine emotion towards each other trough the whole episode. This could clearly be seen on moments when Sherlock points a gun to himself and either of the two characters by his side does not react. It’s not as they couldn’t, but if they did, it would ruin the nartative where Sherlock gets hit by a tranquilizer dart before he can kill himself. During the course of the whole episode they sacrificed the trustwortiness of characters and their personality for the sake of the plot.

In the end, fans remained disapointed in the confusing ending of something that could be called a luke-warm homage to every horror movie ever made, rather that episode of Sherlock. The most disapointing was perhaps the idea, that the most hard-working part of the fandom got laughed at for their work. The fans that took their free time to crack the coding and every metaphor in the show all thought they have it all figured out. Even the creators of the show played into our cards with certainly strange but, what remained the most insightful episode in terms of looking into brains of Sherlock Holmes- The Abominable Bride. This special episode, being all part of Sherlock’s imagination, clearly draws few disturbing yet exciting clarifications about what the detective really thinks of his friends and coleagues. Some really toughtfull theories link Sherlock’s and John’s adventure in this episode to the unfortunate marriage of real John Watson to Mary Morstan and Sherlock’s own feeling for his friend. There’s really no other sound explanation for the infamous scene where Holmes and Watson are hiding in the shadows, waiting for the bride to appear, talking about romantic entanglement and impulses.

They even noded to certain conspiracies presumed by the fandom with the secret society that formed in the mids of Victorian London and planned to turn what we know upside down. There was a number of nods to the theories and the conclusions people from the fandom drawn from previous episodes. This whole process left us feel hopeful that we finally cracked the enigma behind the writers intentions.

Even creator Steven Moffat did assure fans that he is coding the show in such manner that in the end we would be able to predict future events in the Sherlock universe. By decoding all previous information we received, there was only one output; BBC Sherlock is a love story in its core. It’s a story of a man drained of his own feeling and sense of self, that is slowly coming to embrace the fact that he is in fact capable of emotions. And the one pulling him out of his shell is no one other than John Watson.

That’s the reason why the core fandom of the show stayed so shook after the last episode. Those of us identifying away from the heterosexual spectrum felt even more betrayed. Because Sherlock was promising us long deserved representation on a show that wasn’t primary understood as romance in the first place. There was potential for normalising a queer relationship in such manner that wouldn’t be disturbing to the show, nor a shockingn factor. Rather it would tie everything together and make sense of so much unexplained acting choices.

For me, it’s not really Sherlock Holmes being gay, that seemed that revolutionary. From the first moment on the show Sherlock was heavily queer coded for the audience. The infamous dinner at Angelo’s, pink phone, bathrobes, or -as Sherlock himself observes- ammount of product in his hair and the way he takes care of his appearance. Nobody would be surprised by this revelation.

The alluring part was John Watson and the group that he could represent. If the finale we all hooed for, would have happened, John Watson would become pioneer in bisexual representation. As a middle-aged white male with military background and mostly average skills John Watson represents the group world often associates with power. His doctor training even gives him a note of credibility, stating him an inteligent middle class that made something of himself. The poster picture of heterosexual man within him and his average cold-headed personality makes him the perfect candidate to break all the rules of this idea how queer people should look like. John Watson is the hero we all deserve by this point in history of television or only in context of recent political climate.

For me, BBC Sherlock had an opportunity to shatter the image we have about bisexuality and how average queer person behaves. They would create a character that already appeals to straight and queer alike and make him the face of normalising lgbtq+ people everywhere. They just had to take that one step further.

But they failed. That sunday night, the group that wanted most to root for this show, stayed dissapointed. We felt cheated, shattered and not enough to be acknowledged by the show we are grown to love. Show, that presented itself on their advertising for this season and all over social media as queer positive, wasn’t brave enough to make the difference, to land that plane and bring us all home. And for what? For getting higher viewing numbers?

So many viewers felt dissapointed and ridiculed in the season finale. It was one of the biggest cases of queerbaiting in the recent history. BBC One even tweeted about Sherlock being in love this season prior to s4 airing. There was countless nods and jokes about how love conquers all and we should just hope and see if it’s our cup of tea. In the end, there was no romantic ending, or not an explicit one. Even thoug we got an image of Sherlock and John living together, if we want to be bolder even being happy together, the ex-wife narative gave it a strange mood of displacement in that moment. The last scene didn’t fit the episode as a whole in the slightest and put off the viewer even more.

The other problematic part can be the fact, that most villains on the show expressed, one way or the other, very dangerous predatory behavior toward a same sex at some points in the show. Though it could be understand as John’s or Sherlock’s own consciousness battling with their sexuality, there’s so many dangerous ways this plays into spreading homophobia and negative stereotypes about queer people. Contrasting this with an openly gay heroes in a loving and normal relationship could have erase such precedens this show has had on portraying queers as dangerous and vile sexual predators. But instead of taking this matter into acciunt, they yet again introduced another predatory queer character that wasn’t even ashamed of confessing to rape.

What they didn’t realise is the impact. Not only the one they could have if they made our wishes true, but the one they made on their viewers. Not only they portrayed queer people in unnaceptable light to straight following of the show, but they send a message to young queers everywhere watching and hopping to see themselves on the screen. And the young LGBTQ+ community asked themselves: Is this really us?

When I was young, I didn’t have any tv show or a book that would showed me it’s ok to be what I was. It took me a long time to realise that the feeling I developed for some girls around me was actually attraction and not just wishfull thinking to be them. It started with young Emma Watson in Harry Potter movies and I dismised it because I already knew I liked boys, so there wasn’t more to it, right?

It was the hit series Glee that helped me made peace with my struggling sexuality. I simply wasn’t straight or gay, I was bisexual. And since that moment I kept searching for that one character that would make me proud, that could put a face to my sexuality and maybe show some basic explanation I could point at and say “he’s like me, that’s how I feel”. I desperately wanted that representation, that magical piece of storytelling that I could show to my family and friends and make them understand. Most character I came across were very problematic in clearly defining their sexuality. There were either gay or straight and there wasn’t any middle ground allowed to land me as a person that discovered she doesn’t want to put herself in either cathegory. If I found a character that could cross into that middle ground, there was always some problem. It was often them being a butt of a joke, problematic relationship with one of the sexes, or even really weirdly framed relationships that weren’t healthy. Or simply they were defined as gay or straight depending on the relationship they ended in on the show.

John Watson was my white whale among the sea of character I couldn’t really embrace as representation for me. He was a mediocre, normal man with positively crafted personality. He wasn’t the shining star of the show, Sherlock always was. He was the friend that probed usefull to have, loyal to the last bit, caring for people around him, in an estabilished relationship with a woman and yet portrayed trough the show as romantic interest of a man. John Watson was the opportunity to show that ones bisexuality doesn’t get erased the moment he enter a monogamous relationship with either sexes. He could also diminish the popular belief that bisexuals are really inconstant and fickle people, often frivolously changing partners. There’s so much stereotypes we believe queer people to be that John Watson simply isn’t. He was everything I ever searched for in merits of breaking the stereotype and represent what being bisecual really means to me. Just being as everybody else.

Representation matters. It might not matter to the fandom, that will always view the story of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as a tale of untold love, but it matters how our views are presented to the world. The world generally sees but does not observe. Showing an explicit romantic entanglement between these two characters would make the world open their eyes to the possibility that queer relationships are just relationship after all. Portraying two of the most famous characters in this light would be a huge step for queer portrayal in the media.

It pains me to think that bisexual representation lost such a valuable opportunity. This chance to show queer love in show that has such a massive following with both leads played by international stars, was one of a lifetime. And though I haven’t really given up the hope there could be something more still in the horizont, The Lost Specia if you will, that would tie all the lose ends of this series and give us what we as a community deserve, my hope is slowly fading. I will wait untill next Sunday and then I will put my tinfoil hat to rest and resume my search for the white whale elsewhere.

Dear Steven and Mark, this is a plea to you, don’t let us down.

Sincerely,

Your queer fandom.

"IT'S ALL FINE" - QUEERBAITING IN BBC'S SHERLOCK... By J. Elizabeth The stage is set. The curtain rises. We are ready to begin. Series four of BBC’s Sherlock, that is. We are only a few weeks away from the promised land. After three years, not including last year’s special "The Abominable Bride," we will finally see our favorite consulting detective back in action. The fandom is certainly in need of some beekeepers because we are abuzz right now. As we celebrate this award winning, international hit show, it’s only fair we talk about its flaws. And there are flaws, let’s not kid ourselves. From how it handles female characters to its lack of people of color, it could be better, despite the best intentions from the showrunners. The flaw I’d like to talk about now is the excessive amounts of queerbaiting. What is queerbaiting? Well, it’s a term used by queer fans of media to call out TV shows/movies/comics/etc that intentionally insert queer subtext or "add homoerotic tension between two characters to attract more liberal and queer viewers with the indication of them not ever getting together for real in the show/book/movie." So how does Sherlock do this? Let’s talk about the obvious "jokes" first. In the very first episode, Sherlock Holmes mistakes John Watson’s questions about his relationship status to be a come on, or that’s how mainstream audiences are supposed to perceive it, anyway. And I laughed when I first saw it four years ago before I realized what it was I was laughing at: the absurdness of a gay relationship between iconic literary characters. John having to defend his "not gay"-ness becomes a running joke that appears in literally every one of the nine episodes. And every time, Sherlock, the man who John himself has stated has to have the last word, never corrects anyone’s assumptions about them. In that very first conversation over dinner where John questions his sexuality, Sherlock says women are not his area and that he doesn’t have a boyfriend. The whole thing is written to keep his sexuality ambiguous. If it were just jokes, that would be one really crappy thing, to poke fun at homosexual relationships in that way. But there are genuinely stark, emotional moments that cannot be a joke, and if they are, that is exceedingly cruel. For example, in the original canon, Irene Adler was Holme’s one exception to his disinterest in women. In the BBC version, Adler is a lesbian dominatrix. She has a conversation with John in which she accuses him of being jealous of Sherlock’s attention on her. John, once again, defends himself by exclaiming “I’m not actually gay.” Irene responds with “Well, I am. But look at us both.” John doesn’t respond to that. Is that a joke? I’d like to note that John repeatedly says he’s not gay. Which he’s probably not but, guess what, gay and straight aren’t the only sexualities. Later on in the series, John flips his lid when he finds a woman, Janine, in 221B after he’s moved out to be with his wife, Mary. This is a very funny moment, because John and I had the same expression at seeing Sherlock kiss a woman. This funny moment gets a little harder to laugh at later on, before John knows it’s a sham, when he sees Sherlock propose to Janine. He looks so happy for him! I can’t get into all the nuanced exchange of looks or phrasing or how they costume Sherlock’s parents the same way Sherlock and John dress (whoops, I guess that one snuck in there), but there are overt references to a perceived relationship by characters within the world. Mrs. Hudson believed them a couple for years, and she is the Queen of the Foreshadow. But I don’t have time to mention how Sherlock pasted John’s head on the body of the Vitruvian man, or how he literally brought himself back to life after being shot by Mary to save John, or how he was reading John’s blog post on how they first met when he O.D.’d on the plane ride to his inevitable death (I did it again, dang). Of course, how we perceive acting or costume choices are objective. The Kuleshov effect proves that. So it makes sense that if a bunch of queer people were watching this show, they’d see parts of themselves in it. And guess what, a lot of queer people are watching this show. Queer women, to be more precise. A show as massively popular as Sherlock attracts a very diverse audience. But if you look at the hardcore fandom, a vast majority are women and/or queer identifying people. What results in all these queer people being attracted (or baited) to this show is a space for them to exist without the social constraints of being out in normal life. What fandom has done for me, personally, has given me a space to think in terms of queerness as if was not something strange about me but the norm in that environment. It rewired my thinking and helped lessen my own heteronormative behavior in my art and life. This space is full of artists and writers who are exercising their craft where they feel safe to do so. This space is full of academics who study media and LGBTQA+ issues within it. And that is a beautiful, amazing thing. So it hurts all the more when the showrunners, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (the latter being a married gay man) dismiss the queer side of the fandom. Sometime after the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Moffat and Gatiss did an interview that directly addressed the perceived relationship between John and Sherlock. It wasn’t pretty. Moffat, clearly passionate about the topic, and frustrated at the way his words have been twisted, “It is infuriating frankly, to be talking about a serious subject and to have Twitter run around and say oh that means Sherlock is gay. Very explicitly it does not. We are taking a serious subject and trivializing it beyond endurance.” - With an Accent Trivializing it. I wish to express to Moffat that this level of representation of a bisexual character is far from trivial to me. I get a distinct feeling that the creators see the John and Sherlock pairing fans as straight, young girls who want to fetishize male queerness. I can’t help but wonder if the creators would be more accepting and less harsh to fans if we were queer men instead of queer women. Mark Gatiss goes on to say: “Don’t blame us for things that aren’t there. It is infuriating. We get pilloried for these things as if our show [...] has to have the shoulders to bear every single issue and every single campaign point. You can’t do that. It’s our show, they’re our characters, they do what we want them to do, and we don’t have to represent absolutely everything in that ninety minutes.” Gatiss is correct in saying they don’t have to represent absolutely everything. He’s right that they don’t have to bear every issue on their shoulders. I believe that’s what every other show would say as well. But because of that, everybody is saying “We shouldn’t have to be the only ones to tackle these issues,” and nobody is actually doing anything about it. Sherlock has a real opportunity here to have its own chapter in queer media history, but why should they bear that weight on their shoulders, right? Even if they go with the flow and stay safely in the status quo of straight relationships, I’d be able to handle that if they didn’t talk to fans who wish otherwise so harshly. Also, is anyone going to remind them that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes aren’t really their characters? They’re writing and producing high quality fanfiction, but they’re men, so it’s not trivializing when they do it. Moffat says the whole pairing is making a serious topic into “something extremely silly.” My sexuality is not silly. Wanting to see a major television and literary character portrayed with the same sexuality as me is not silly. Maybe they’re right. Maybe everything we see isn’t actually there. Maybe they were all just gay jokes. Maybe we’re the assholes for blowing these jokes out of proportion. Then again, maybe this is some next level form of gaslighting, telling us we’re a bunch of wackadoos for interpreting this little exchange at John’s wedding... as anything but a happy look between best friends at one’s wedding. Look at these guys, totally thrilled about all the life decisions that led them to this point. No pain or regret here. You don’t even have to make it canon, just don’t talk to us like we’re stupid, teenage girls insulting you with our enjoyment of your show. Enjoying it so much, in fact, we are dying to see a part of ourselves validated in that world. And even if this was some elaborate ruse and they really are planning on making this pairing canon, this treatment of the queer and/or female fans isn’t justified. You can't talk down to us like that for the sake of a storyline reveal. It’s much more likely this is just a textbook case of queerbaiting. I hope I’m wrong and Sherlock ends up on the right side of queer media history, but that interview made that hard to believe. Sherlock will end up in queer media history, though. That much is certain, and the fandom can take credit for that. It’s up to The Powers That Be to choose which context it will be discussed in. Regardless, series 4 is coming and no matter what happens, no matter what Moffat and Gatiss say, this is our show too. Not just theirs. Nothing can take away the art we’ve created, the stories we’ve written, or the friendships we’ve made. No matter what happens, your identity is valid. Let this be an inspiration to all you future creators out there, to bear on your shoulders the issues others are afraid to. To challenge the way stories are told. To challenge whose stories get told. Be inspired to do more. To do better. One day, you and I both will be leading the industry, will be the future rulers of media, and... http://www.thefangirlinitiative.com/2016/12/its-all-fine-queerbaiting-in-bbcs.html?m=1#comment-form

Day Of The Moon - 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)

I usually watch episodes twice before writing a review in order to absorb every detail. With Day Of The Moon, I actually watched this a grand total of five times for the purposes of this, and that’s because I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether or not I liked this episode or not. Every time I thought I was enjoying it, I suddenly remembered something that’s inconsistent or doesn’t make sense and that kind of dampened the mood a bit.

It’s certainly not a bad idea for a story. As I mentioned in my review of The Impossible Astronaut, I find the premise to be both intriguing and suspenseful. Day Of The Moon is equally engaging. The opening certainly got my attention with the action taking place three months later, the Doctor chained up and his companions on the run. Later we realise this was just a ruse to fool the Silence while they investigate what’s going on. Then it’s off to an abandoned orphanage, which was so damn creepy. It’s all very dark and atmospheric with the confused warden guy who has been under the influence of the Silence for two years, and the scribblings on the walls warning trespassers to get out while they still can. Then it gets even creepier when Amy starts wandering around upstairs on her own. The door locks behind her and you hear all these creaks and rattles all over the place, then all these tally marks appear on her face and HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE MILLIONS OF THE FUCKERS ON THE CEILING!!!!!

The Silence are unbelievably cool and have so much potential. I love how the Doctor manages to outwit them in the end, using the moon landing and their post hypnotic suggestion to order humanity to turn against the Silence. It’s all very clever... provided you don’t think about it too much.

I suppose that’s what it all boils down to in the end. Day Of The Moon only really works if you don’t apply logic to it. The minute you switch your brain on, the whole thing begins to... not fall apart as such, but deflate ever so slightly.

Let’s start with the Silence themselves. Conceptually they’re great, but there are quite a few logic holes. They have the ability to make you forget you ever saw them, including pictures and videos and stuff like that. The minute we can’t see a Silent, we forget about them. So... how can the Doctor and co plan their little rebellion with this in mind? Think about it. It doesn’t add up. I’m assuming what starts all this off is Amy seeing the photo of a Silent on her phone and telling the Doctor. But surely the minute they stop looking at the photo, they immediately forget there’s a photo in the first place, right?  If they can’t remember the Silence, how do they know what to look for? They can’t even remember what they look like.

Okay, so the Doctor and co somehow manage to retain some knowledge of the Silence’s existence and the Doctor assumes that the Silence must be in control of the whole world. That seems quite a bit of a stretch to me, but whatever. Let’s go with it. So he sends Amy, Rory and River off on a Silent hunt for three months. Every time they see a Silent, they mark a tally on their body. But... wait a minute. That doesn’t make any sense. They don’t remember what the Silence look like, so what are they looking for exactly? Are they just hoping to come across something that looks slightly alien and then just assume it’s a Silent? And if they can’t remember Silent encounters, how do they know what the tally marks are supposed to signify? And how were they able to obtain a vast body of knowledge about the Silence when they can’t remember them? Surely one sighting forgotten is the same as many sightings forgotten, knowledge-wise, right?

The nanorecorders implanted in their hands don’t help neither. It’s not as if hearing a Silent encounter brings any memories back. Also, why nanorecorders? I get that it’s sci-fi, but wouldn’t a camera be better? In fact has nobody on Earth, upon seeing a Silent, ever whipped out a camera to record one?

Maybe I’m overthinking this a bit too much, but it was really bugging me all this. It feels like Moffat is just changing the rules again like he did with the Weeping Angels. Initially the characters couldn’t remember the Silence, and now apparently they can remember a bit of them for the purposes of the plot. It’s just really inconsistent.

Also Moffat seems to have forgotten a few teeny, tiny things about writing villains. Like plots and motivations. As creepy as the Silence are, what’s their plan exactly? Why have they been influencing humanity for so long? What’s their goal? (Yes I know their main goal is to kill the Doctor, but why not just kill him? They don’t need to manipulate human society to achieve that, do they?) In fact there isn’t even that much evidence to suggest that they’re actually evil. We know they’ve been manipulating humanity, but we don’t know why. And neither does the Doctor for that matter. He seems a bit too quick to jump to conclusions, doesn’t he? What if the Silence are actually benevolent and have been trying to help humanity? It’s unlikely, but it’s a distinct possibility. The Doctor talks about the death and suffering they’ve caused, but there’s no actual onscreen evidence supporting this. The only truly evil thing they do is kill that woman in the previous episode, which is obviously not a very nice thing to do, but for all we know they could have had a good reason for it. Hardly justifies genocide, does it? It just seems strange that the Doctor wouldn’t be asking these kinds of questions. He just immediately jumps to the worst case scenario, that the Silence are invaders, when there’s no real evidence to support this.

And if that’s not enough, the Doctor’s plan to kill them is a bit dodgy too. Yes it’s cool how he uses the Silence’s abilities against them, but it’s not exactly a watertight plan, is it? So humans have now been conditioned to kill any Silence on sight. The episode makes this look so easy as we see President Nixon’s security guards gunning a couple down, but how many people are going to be packing heat at any given moment? What about the people who don’t have guns? Are they just going to throw heavy objects at the Silence? And let’s not forget the Silence have countermeasures of their own. This hardly seems like a slam-dunk for humanity.

Other things annoyed me too, like how the pregnancy subplot is handled. After its extremely clunky introduction in the previous episode, it’s reversed just as awkwardly at the beginning of this one. Then it turns out her pregnancy is rapidly fluctuating between positive and negative (blimey, I’d hate to have her uterus). Surely there must have been a more subtle way we could have introduced this subplot other than just belching it out at random.

Then there’s the forced love triangle, which I really could have done without. For fuck sake Moffat, it wasn’t very good the first time. Can we drop it now? It doesn’t even make sense. Why would Amy refer to Rory as someone who has ‘dropped from the sky?’ Who talks about their boyfriend like that?

And then there’s the girl in the spacesuit. Still don’t know anything about her and her inclusion in this episode is largely pointless other than to propel the series arc. if she’s not going to become relevant until later, why include her in the first place? All she does is distract from the Silence who could have used the screen time to get some much needed development. And once again I’m looking at the Doctor in disbelief when he says he could find the little girl or just go off and have adventures. What the actual fuck?! Has Steven Moffat ever actually watched this show before? The Doctor wouldn’t abandon a little girl like that without making sure she’s okay!

So who is this little girl? This little girl in the spacesuit. This little girl in the spacesuit that kills the Doctor. This little girl in the spacesuit that kills the Doctor and who only ever seems to show up when Amy’s pregnancy is mentioned.

I mean it could literally be anybody, couldn’t it? No, but seriously, it’s DEFINITELY the Rani.

Overall I feel pretty ambivalent about this two parter. Perhaps if this wasn’t tied into some convoluted series arc and was given the time and development to be its own standalone adventure, it could have been truly amazing. While there are definitely things to like about The Impossible Astronaut/Day of The Moon, it just doesn’t work as a cohesive whole.