Just because Moffat decided to be a spoilsport this season
and get rid of all the twoparters doesn’t mean we have to. Welcome to the new home of my Doctor Who
musings, “The Horror of Fan Blog.” We’re
going to start things off here with a two-part introduction to the season in
the days leading up to the March 30th premiere. I had so much to say about the 50th
anniversary season, that I had to chop it up into separate pieces.
SPOILERS!!!
Okay, so, in retrospect, I realize now that Moffat might
have had the 50th Anniversary on his mind for longer than we
thought, because, if you think about it, he’s been rolling out the whole rogues
gallery this season. First we started
off with the all time most iconic villain of the series, the Daleks
themselves. Then we had sort of a
Silurian episode, albeit without many actual Silurians appearing on
screen. But it was still
Silurian-centric. Then we saw, once
again, the most popular recurring villain to have originated in the new series:
the Weeping Angels. Hell, even the
Christmas Special was actually the return of an old recurring villain, The
Great Intelligence, even though they only revealed it to be The Great
Intelligence in the last seconds of the episode. On top of that, the special even had a
Sontaran and a Silurian (as good guys!).
Now, in the second half of the season we’re going to see the return of
the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors, and who knows what else is there to surprise
us. Because, on Doctor Who, there really
should always be surprises. That’s what
the classic series was always about. But
that won’t stop me from trying to guess what those surprises are going to be.
First, let’s talk about Villains
We Know Are Coming:
The Cybermen:
We’ve all been getting bored with the Cybermen, to be honest. Frankly, how the series has ever had room for
both Daleks and Cybermen has always baffled me.
You’d think they’d be so similar that people would lose interest in the
Cybermen. But since their appearance in
the 1st Doctor’s final episode, their popularity has endured.
Moffat, realizing that the Cybermen had grown dull, decided
he wanted to make them scary again.
While Moffat is really good at making something scary out of something
mundane, he doesn’t really seem to have much desire to try to do that with
classic Doctor Who villains too much.
So, what did he do?
He called Neil Mother Fucking Gaiman, that’s what he did.
That’s right, “The Last Cybermen” will be the Sandman genius
himself’s second episode of the series.
Keep this up, Neil, and hopefully you’ll take over the series after
Moffat leaves (#anyonebutgatiss). If
there’s anyone who can make the Cybermen scary again (or, well, creepy anyway),
it’s Gaiman. He’s said that he took the
Cybermen from their first two appearances in the black and white era (“The
Tenth Planet” and “The Tomb of the Cybermen”) and tried to bring back that
style, but without forgetting everything that’s happened with them since.
The Ice Warriors:
The Ice Warriors were introduced in the 2nd
Doctor era and were last seen in the 3rd Doctor era, although they
haven’t appeared as a villain since the 2nd Doctor era. Rumors have been floating around of their
return forever. If the classic series
hadn’t been cancelled in 1989, the writers said they would have brought the Ice
Warriors back in the next year in an episode on a college campus in the
1960s. In deleted material (that I wish
they had never deleted) it would have been revealed that what happened in “The
Waters of Mars” was actually a trap set by The Ice Warriors (it still probably
was). And they’ve appeared many times in
expanded universe material. If you
wonder why they haven’t been around much, it’s probably because they’re a
little too much like the Silurians and, even though the Ice Warriors came
first, the Silurians seem to have captured more people’s imaginations.
The Ice Warriors are the ancient inhabitants of Mars who had
a flourishing civilization 250 million years before even the most basic forms
of life formed on Earth. That’s why
there is no sign of life on Mars: It’s
been so long, the civilization has faded to dust. Somehow or another some of their race were
frozen (I don’t remember how) and, over time, they eventually thawed out with
the intention of turning Earth into their new home so their race can survive.
Also they hiss a lot.
Like snakes. It sounds really
cool.
The Ice Warriors episode, called “Cold War,” is going to
involve an Ice Warrior stuck in a submarine.
That sounds awesome! It’s written
by Mark Gatiss. That sounds much less awesome. (#anyonebutgatiss)
The Trickster:
A promotional poster about this coming second half of the
season was released recently and it has some clues hidden in the image. The image shows the Doctor and Clara crashing
through a giant window and, if you look at the images in the reflections, you
can see some of the villains who are going to be in this second half of the
season. The largest version of the image
I’ve been able to find was right here (click to enlarge):
Now, there aren’t too many things that this taught me. There are some Cybermen and Ice Warriors who
are very visible, but we already knew about them. There are creatures in the bottom left and
right of the image (who look like they might be the same creature) but I don’t
recognize them, although they look vaguely like the Sycorax. The middle right and left have some strange
image in them that look like old gas station pumps with oval heads coming out
of them. Don’t ask me what that’s
supposed to be.
But then, up in the left corner, not all the way up, but
more than halfway up, and all the way up to the top right you see a man in a
top hat without eyes. Creepy looking,
ain’t he? That, my friends, is The
Trickster.
For those of you who haven’t heard of the Trickster, that’s
because, for the most part, you’re not supposed to have heard of the Trickster,
because he’s not a Doctor Who villain.
He’s a villain from the Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures,
which was a fun but much more kid-based show than Doctor Who. SJA was a very wholesome show about a
journalist and a group of very age inappropriate children who hung out at her
house and went on life threatening adventures with her without their parents
knowing about it. As much as we all love
Sarah Jane, when you think about it, that show was really weird.
As most of you know, SJA was cut short by the shocking death
of Elizabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith, after her long but very
silent battle with cancer. She died
around the same time that Nicholas Courtney, who played an equally iconic
character in the same era as when Sladen started out (The Brigadier), and the
show has made two in-universe tributes to the Brigadier. The first in “The Wedding of River Song”
where the Doctor tries to call the Brigadier and finds he’s dead, the second in
“The Power of Three,” when the Brig’s daughter is now in charge of UNIT. Hopefully, the appearance of the Trickster
means that there will be some sort of tribute to Sarah Jane. It would be offensive to try and suggest that
Sarah Jane died of anything other than natural causes, but bringing in the
Trickster might mean the Doctor is extra motivated by the death of his old
friend.
And, while I haven’t watched much of SJA (just the pilot and
the two episodes the Doctor is in), I’m sure there are some loose ends to clear
up. The show didn’t get a finale since
the lead actress died unexpectedly.
Maybe we’ll see some of the characters from SJA show up to give the show
its real finale. That’s a pretty old
tradition with spin-offs and shows from the same creator: to finish off your story on your other
show. Remember that horrible show from
the creator of the X-Files called Millennium?
Since that got cancelled early and they didn’t get to finish the story,
they tied up the loose ends of Millennium in an X-Files episode. Same with the X-Files spin-off, The Lone
Gunmen.
The Trickster has been forced outside of time and space and
can only barely push his way into our world sometimes. The only way he can gain access back into our
universe is to feed off of the chaos that he creates. The Trickster created The Trickster’s
Brigade, a group that seeks to make changes in history simply to feed off of
the ensuing chaos it creates in the timeline.
You’ve actually met a member of the Trickster’s brigade on Doctor
Who: she put the scarab on Donna’s
back. It was only mentioned in passing
dialogue at the end of the episode that the scarab was part of the Trickster’s
brigade, hence why there was this woman who seemingly had no motive to change
time. She wanted to create chaos.
Now, the fact that the Trickster’s never been on Doctor Who
doesn’t mean that the Doctor has never met the Trickster. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors both made
guest appearances on SJA, and the Tenth Doctor was in an episode called “The
Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith” where the Trickster tricked Sarah Jane into
thinking she was in love with a human and about to get married, but there was
some sinister plot behind it. I don’t
remember the whole thing. SJA wasn’t
very good.
Still, I’m excited at the idea of an SJA crossover. The Trickster’s a cool idea for a villain,
someone who cares about nothing other than creating chaos in the universe. He could be a force to be reckoned with. Some people have already suggested online
that, perhaps, Clara’s splintering across the timeline was something the
Trickster did. Far fetched, but not more
impossible than River being Amy and Rory’s daughter.
Villains I Think
Might Be Coming Back
The Master: Okay,
okay, okay, hear me out! I know some of
you are bored with the Master, and frankly I don’t understand why. He’s the anti-Doctor. Sometimes it’s fun to see a hero up against a
villain who plays to the heroe’s greatest weaknesses. The Joker is chaotic, and Batman can’t
understand chaos. Lex Luthor is an
intellectual villain, and Superman is a brute force hero. But sometimes it’s fun anyway to see a hero
matched up against someone who has his exact same strengths but uses them for
evil.
Now, John Simm has denied rumors that he’s returning, but we
all know what denial means on this show.
But here’s the reasons I think the Master is coming back anyway:
1. The Master doesn’t
have to be played by John Simm. Simm
was, more or less, the 6th Master.
(The Masters are a little hard to count because, in the classic series,
he was out of regenerations so he didn’t regenerate, he just stole bodies to
stay alive. The first Master we ever saw
was, presumably, the 13th Master.
Then there was the Master in “The Deadly Assassin” who was supposedly
the same Master as the one played by Roger Delgado, but he was shown as being
burnt to a crisp like a piece of overcooked bacon, allowing another actor to
play him. Then there’s whoever played
the imprisoned Master at the beginning of the 1996 movie, and we have no idea
what incarnation he’s supposed to be.
It’s all complicated.) In the new
series, he’s regained his ability to regenerate, so he can be played by whoever
they want. Also, last year reports were
coming out that the rumors that Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Sherlock Holmes
in Moffat’s 21st Century adaptation of Sherlock) was going to be the
new Master were not just rumors, but that he was in serious conversations with
the producers about replacing Simm.
Personally, I can’t think of a better actor to play the Master.
2. Like I’ve said,
the entire rogues gallery is coming back this season. The Daleks, the Cybermen, The Silurians, The
Sontarans, The Ice Warriors, the Weeping Angels, and even the Great
Intelligence. This isn’t an accident.
This is an anniversary celebration, for certain. Moffat’s trying to make this season a full on
celebration of everything that makes Doctor Who great. Where Davies did a good job of bringing the
original unholy trinity of Doctor Who villains (The Daleks, The Cybermen, and
The Master), Moffat’s done a lot to bring back all the recurring villains, even
the minor ones. With such a parade of
classic villains, it seems hard to believe that Moffat would overlook The
Master.
3. The Master’s
appearances should always be unadvertised surprises. This was especially true of the 5th
Doctor era. In every episode in which
the Master appeared, he spent at least the first 30 minute segment in
disguise. Unlike Dalek, Cybermen, and
Sontaran episodes, his episodes were never labeled with his name in the
title. Sometimes, Anthony Ainsley would
even volunteer to not be credited in the first episode so that it wasn’t
obvious that he was in the episode in disguise.
Not only does it make sense to bring back The Master, it makes perfect
sense for his return to remain a surprise.
The Rani: No villain
has received so much demand from fans to return without the fans wishes being
fulfilled. She only appeared in two
episodes, one Sixth Doctor episode, “The Mark of the Rani,” and the Seventh
Doctor’s first episode, “Time and the Rani.”
Still, she seems to have made quite of an impression on fans, perhaps
because she was the one to kill the least popular Doctor in the history of the
series. The Rani was a Time Lady who, in
her youngest years, was part of a popular social circle at the Gallifrey
Academy which was made up of her, The Master, The Doctor, possibly the Meddling
Monk, and a few others. The Doctor seems
to be the only member of this group to come out of it with a conscience. At the end of “Last of the Time Lords,” one
of the producers called the hand that took the Master’s fob watch “the hand of
the Rani,” completely as a joke that he thought nobody would take seriously because
he thought nobody would remember who the Rani was. He was wrong, and had to apologize for giving
them a false hint.
And there was a very large segment of fans who thought River
Song was going to turn out to be a regeneration of The Rani. Thank God that isn’t true.
The Rani is a brilliant concept for a villain. Not so much a megalomaniac (although she kind
of was in her second appearance), but her main purpose was as a
biochemist. She studied the chemicals in
brains. The problem was, she had no
sense of scientific ethics. She would
play with people’s minds as an experiment without any regard for how it would
affect the subjects. While she became
more bent on universe domination in her second appearance, her first appearance
made her very interesting in that she wasn’t immoral, merely amoral. That can make for a pretty dangerous villain.
The problems with this are that The Rani does come from the
least popular era of Doctor Who history, the notoriously reviled, gruesome,
dark, and generally rejected Season 22.
While the show wouldn’t be cancelled for a few years after that, the
show was forced into hiatus for about a year because of the complaints about
how violent the show became and the meaner attitude of the new, Sixth
Doctor. While they squeezed a few more
seasons out of the show, I honestly believed that those were just a courtesy
and that Season 22 was the reason the show was cancelled. The producers might be reluctant to bring
back a villain from that era.
Additionally, as a Time Lady, she can’t return unless we find she
somehow avoided the Time War, which would contradict the Oracle’s prediction in
“The End of Time (Part 2)”. But, let’s
face it, there will be more Time Lords somewhere down the line, and so, sooner
or later, somebody is going to have to contradict the Oracle. The plus side of bringing back the Rani, of
course, is that, as a Time Lady, you could cast literally any woman in the
world to play her.
Omega: Before the
Time Lords were the Time Lords, they were just the Gallifreyans. Three men—Rassillon, Omega, and The
Other—came up with an idea that they thought might give them the power of time
travel. This idea involved harnessing
the power of a supernova. Obviously,
that was dangerous. Rassillon and The
Other survived, but Omega was sucked into the black hole, putting him in a
universe of anti-matter. Twice he tried
to escape his universe, but anti-matter and matter, when they touch each other,
create a huge explosion (which is one of the few instances of Doctor Who being
scientifically accurate). He still
desires revenge on the Time Lords for abandoning him and not trying harder to
rescue him after he gave them the gift of time travel.
(Most of this story was only hinted at in the series, and
more fully articulated in a short comic called “Star Death” by Alan Moore.)
In “The Big Bang,” many fans thought that the voice that
said “Silence will fall!” and then cracked the Doctor’s viewscreen in the exact
pattern of the cracks in time, was Omega.
It’s possible that some still believe it since, once we saw a Silent, we
could hear that their voice didn’t sound like that voice in “The Big
Bang.” I’m more inclined to chalk that
up to the producers not having decided yet, by the time they made “The Bing
Bang,” what the Silence should sound like.
Omega is another character a lot of people want back. And, if they’re going to finally acknowledge
that the Doctor is really a reincarnation of The Other, which I think they’re
going to (more on that later), then a great plot line could be made out of
Omega. Of course, if the Doctor is the
Other, and Omega is coming back, you need to bring back one more person…
Rassilon: In the
classic series, Rassilon was long dead.
He was a great historic figure in Time Lord history, by far the most
honored. He had managed, somehow, to
leave a form of his own consciousness behind in his tomb to warn those who
would disturb his tomb (and other stuff, long story), but he was still dead.
In “The End of Time,” Rassilon was alive again with no explanation. I think the only thing that established him
as Rassilon was the Doctor saying it at the very end, as Rassilon was being
sucked back into the time lock. So now
you’ve established, twice that the Time Lords can somehow bring people (or, at
least, other Time Lords) back to life.
The Master flat out said that that’s what they did to him, and now
somehow they have the ability to resurrect their greatest historical
figure. All of this seems to have been
just for the Time War. Where the fuck
did they get that technology? Do the
Time Lords have a Lazarus Pit? I guess that's why Rassilon became evil only when he came back from the dead.
