Look, she's already put together a better workshop than Peter Cushing ever had
Okay, listen motherfuckers, it's been a long time since I've done a blog post about something other than an episode, but the fandom is officially in crisis. The news of the 13th Doctor has come out, and I couldn't be more ecstatic, and I'm ready to learn as much about her as I did about Peter Capaldi shortly after his announcement as Doctor. It's such big, earth shattering news that people who do not watch or particularly care about (or for) Doctor Who are weighing in. And what are they seeing when they look at our fandom? Utter, blatant, vile misogyny, from period jokes, to jokes about women drivers, to the Sun putting out a disgustingly sexist editorial about how bad the decision was to pick a female Doctor, immediately followed be a collection of nude pictures of Jodie Whittaker from her movies. I thought that was the kind of flagrant sexism that anybody would recognize, but when I posted about this on Facebook, and made the mistake of making it a public post, I got this advice on how I should properly react as a real feminist:
"A smart feminist here says 'so what, she's lovely and talented, now can we discuss something important'. I recommend you try that"
I don't know what's harder: holding back the urge to vomit or holding back the urge to correct his grammar. Apparently, according to this guy, the pictures are okay because they were taken with consent in the first place, and there's no way that consensually taken photographs can be recontextualized in a way that humiliates and degrades the person in those photographs. Men who are not seeing this right now because you're men, this is the level of misogyny we're dealing with here.
Here's some examples of fucked up things author Aaron Gillies saw people writing on the Daily Mail website about just the (then, seemingly remote) possibility of a female Doctor shortly before the announcement:
I'm sure their mothers would be so proud of them. You see, this announcement has brought out the worst MRA bullshit you could possibly imagine. This is Ghostbusters to the 100th power. This is still not about ethics in video game journalism. And when it isn't vile sexism, it's just garden variety sexism like claiming the Doctor is a father figure and that means he can never change because only men are fathers, which is a wonderful way of saying "I don't love my mother" and "I have inappropriate thoughts about my father." And is it true that I was once on the other side of this debate? Yes. But, I also once held the belief that I could only ever be male as well, and I have done a complete 180 on that as well.
Now the people on the anti-woman side are complaining that those of us in favor of the casting choice are being just as venomous as the anti crowd. Here's the thing, a) no we're not and b) long hair, don't care. I spent all day Sunday, and a good part of my time since, mocking the haters who are running around saying the sky is falling. I'm not apologizing for one second of it because, you see, it's not like this is an argument between two rational point of view. This is an argument between one side with a rational point of view, and the other side whose whole argument boils down to "Girls are icky!" And yes, I'm including all the self-hating women and my former self in the girls are icky crowd.
The anti-female Doctor crowd are mostly represented by people whose responses would put Milo Yinnapoulos to shame. And as a trans woman, I resent the implication that a man changing into a woman is the worst thing in the world. So I'm not sorry if my celebration of the Doctor somehow hurts your feelings. It shouldn't; get over it. I'm not sorry that you think that I'm gloating. I'm not sorry that I literally spent all day on Saturday mocking the haters. We don't live in a PC culture where all the liberals want to be coddled, we live in a sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture where those who are spewing the hate expect to be coddled with the mantra of "Everyone is entitled to their opinion." Yes, and I'm entitled to express my opinion that you should be ashamed of your opinion.
The future is all girl. The Doctor is a woman. Get over it. I'm done.
If you met yourself, as a different gender, would you not spend all your time fucking?
I know I'm in the minority in saying this but, despite thinking this was a good season (albeit not as good as Capaldi's other two seasons), I thought the two part finale was just so-so. I mean, it's got some great moments, and the first two-Master episode is a certainly a prospect that I was excited to see, but "The Doctor Falls" set up a lot of expectations that it didn't deliver on. The two Masters together were woefully underused, and I think there could have been a lot more fun interactions with those two. Also, I expected this episode to explain the Master's motivation for turning Bill into a Cyberman, and the answer in the end seems to just be "to be a dick." Frankly, I would rank this as the weakest Moffat finale, as even Moffat's disastrously weak 7th Season still ended strongly (even though I said it didn't at the time).
They keep calling this the origin of the Cybermen, which makes little sense because it's been well established that Mondasian Cybermen come from...well, Mondas, not a Mondasian colony ship. Even if this isn't explicitly stated in their debut episode, "The Tenth Planet," it is in what is generally considered the best of the Doctor Who audio stories (which, remember, are canon) Spare Parts, in which the 5th Doctor visits Mondas just before the creation of the Cybermen to see their real origin. Moffat tries to fix this in the dialogue by saying that the Cybermen start a lot of places, here, Mondas, Telos, Earth. Okay, not only does that not explain the fact that these Mondasian Cybermen are identical to the ones in "The Tenth Planet." Also, the Cybermen never started on Telos. Telos is the planet that the Mondasian Cybermen moved to, displacing (or killing, I don't remember) the residents because their home planet of Mondas had been destroyed by their own stupidity.
And what does the Doctor accomplish with this episode, anyway? He manages to leave Nardole behind to continue to help protect the people from the Cybermen for eternity. Good luck with that Nardole, you useless lump. But there's really no climactic scene in this episode. There's a big, muddled scene of the Doctor battling the Cybermen (and the sonic screwdriver is used as a weapon, which is breaking a rule of Doctor Who) and the Doctor is basically killed and then he spits out a 1st Doctor quote that's based on a 4th Doctor quote, but nothing really feels like a climactic moment of the episode, and I think that's what I disliked about this episode the most.
I also didn't feel satisfied with the interactions between The Master and Missy interactions. In "Day of the Doctor," I felt like Moffat hit all the right notes of everything I wanted 10 and 11 to say to each other. I didn't get that from the Master and Missy. I did love the Doctor's speech to them to stand with him, and that, at the end, Missy tries to but the two Masters kill each other. But I didn't get why the Master was so opposed to standing with the Doctor. The last we saw the Saxon Master, he was standing with the Doctor against Rassilon. And then he got sucked into the time lock and cured of being Skeletor (which seems unlikely, but okay) and this is him after the events of "The End of Time." So why has his tune changed so much? Missy's right in "The Magician's Apprentice," the Doctor and the Master have always been as much friends as enemies, and the Saxon Master is no exception. There were plenty of moments where he and the 10th Doctor had a mutual respect and admiration for each other. Where'd all that go?
I thought it was a shame that the Doctor never explained the concept of regeneration to Bill (even though he demonstrated it to her) so she just leaves him not knowing she could stick around and wait for him to regenerate. Although, she does repeat the Doctor's line about it being a big universe and hoping she'll run into him again. And I've been having the same argument about this episode that I had about "Time of the Doctor": Heather showing up is not a deus ex machina. Something that was set up previously cannot, by definition, be a deus ex machina. It's just another one of Moffat's methods for killing off a character but not really killing them off (but really killing them off).
The Doctor then wakes up and starts babbling phrases from other Doctors before him, and people are already complaining about this Doctor not wanting to regenerate and it being like 10's big whiny speech about not wanting to go at the end of "The End of Time." But that's not a fair comparison. My problem with 10's speech was that a man was about to die if the Doctor didn't spend a regeneration. That's not happening this time. Very. Big. Difference.
Me every morning before work.
And then the 12th Doctor runs into the 1st Doctor (played by a new actor, of course, because Billy Hearts is long dead) and the 1st Doctor repeats the same 1st Doctor line that the 12th Doctor said earlier. Moffat couldn't leave us without lying one more time, because he said like 6 months ago that there would be no more multi-Doctor episodes, and he's clearly just set us up for a 12th Doctor/1st Doctor Christmas Special. It looks like a lot of fun. But I have to say, what right does the 1st Doctor have to be criticizing the 12th Doctor about not wanting to regenerate. He's the 1st Doctor. He hasn't regenerated yet. As old as he may look, he's a child compared to 12. He should shut the hell up.
Well, that's it. My last blog entry for Moffat's final season. I put together Julie's Punk Rock Doctor Who Playlist Season 10 of songs that represent season 10 for me, partially based on my blog titles, partially based on what I would have titled the blogs I skipped, and a little editing to make sure no band gets used twice. I can't throw up a link to it like last season because I'm on Apple Music, not Spotify, now and I don't know how to do that, so I'll just write it out. Feel free to put it together on your device and play along with me:
1. The Pilot - Drown With the Monster by White Lung
2. Smile - Smile Smile Smile by The Dollyrots
3. Thin Ice - The Unseen Tears of the Albacore by The Vandals
4. Knock Knock - Safe European Homes by The Clash
5. Oxygen - For Your Lungs Only by Alkaline Trio
6. Extremis - Bad Catholics by The Menzingers
7. The Pyramid at the End of the World - Pyramid Scheme by Mad Caddies
8. Lie of the Land - Die for Your Government by Anti-Flag
9. The Empress of Mars - God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols
10. Eaters of Light - All My Best Friends Are Metalheads by Less Than Jake
11. World Enough and Time - Hospital for Heroes by Direct Hit!
12. The Doctor Falls - Original Me by ALL
That's it until Christmas, where I'm going to be really sad because we're not just saying goodbye to a great Doctor, we're saying goodbye to the best showrunner Doctor Who has ever had. Fuck the haters. Until next time:
Nice job bringing back the original design, Moffat, but somebody forgot about the crotch flashlights
I've missed a whole chunk of the season on this blog, including what I call The Pyramid Trilogy, one of the weakest Moffat episodes in a while, a mediocre Gatiss episode, and the first episode of the new series to be written by a classic series writer, "The Eaters of Light." Overall, the season has been pretty good. Not as good as the other two seasons of the Capaldi era, but both of those seasons were just extraordinary. Oh, and I guessed a major plot point. I guessed, not only that Missy was in the vault, but that she was in there because the Doctor promised he would guard her if she was spared from execution. The only thing I guessed wrong was that I guessed it was the Time Lords trying to execute her, but other than that I think I was pretty dead on with that. Now, onto this week's episode.
I feel like I'm the only one with mixed feelings about this episode. Not saying it wasn't better than an everyday old throw away like "The Eaters of Light," it was definitely a good episode, but I didn't get the thrill out of it that I thought I could have. I largely blame this on the BBC announcing the episode's big surprises months ago. Sure, if they hadn't said that the original Tenth Planet Cybermen were coming back, I would have guessed it halfway through. It was hard to miss that design. But they not only announced, before the season started, that John Simm would be returning as the Master, they made sure to tell us that it would be in this damn episode. So I'm a little surprised to find that some people didn't see what was coming when John Simm removed his disguise. That was a bit obvious to me. I'm like "Well, I'm looking for John Simm to show up in this episode, this guy is vaguely the same height and weight as John Simm, sounds kind of like John Simm, and the Master did love disguises like this in the classic series. That's probably John Simm in a bunch of makeup." Sure enough, it came out that Brian Minchin wanted a twist pulled straight out of the classic series, and John Simm pulled off the dupe as well as Anthony Ainley ever did. But Ainley used to have his name taken out of the credits sometimes to avoid spoiling the surprise. The BBC made it blatantly obvious that this guy was John Simm, and if they hadn't made announcements about him, I never, ever would have guessed what was happening.
If you notice, in one scene where the Saxon Master is still in disguise, the music in the background is the same used in some of John Simm's other scenes as the Master during the 10th Doctor era.
I'm so glad that when they brought back the Tenth Planet Cybermen, they kept their bizarre speech patterns, because that's what I loved most about those Cybermen. It's creepier than any Cybermen that have come since. It also underscores the creepiness of Bill's death in the final scene as a twisted robotic voice informs the Doctor of who she is. I think Bill is pretty clearly dead at this point, as there's never been anyone in any episode, or even any expanded universe materials, who has become a fully converted Cyberman and was brought back to human. But of course, Moffat likes to kill off characters, but then give them some sort of weird, extended life like River being saved in the library and Clara having a TARDIS and some adventures with Me before she actually returns to her moment of death, and I imagine Bill will get something like that. Perhaps that's where Heather, the girl from "The Pilot," will come back in "The Doctor Falls," as everything in "The Pilot" pointed to the Cybermen being involved, and pointed towards her coming back, and we're running out of time for her to come back.
Some people I've been talking to have been saying that the Doctor has little connection to Bill and doesn't really care about her, and that he might have sacrificed her in a larger scheme to save Missy's soul. I find this theory extremely suspect because I think we've seen plenty of signs this season that the Doctor cares about Bill. I think he's going to be really torn up about Bill, seeing as how he lost Clara and River Song. Moffat is getting pretty kill happy in that he's killed off two companions in a row, whereas there had only been one long-term companion before the Moffat era to die while traveling with the Doctor. The 12th Doctor is officially the worst babysitter of any of the Doctors.
Why the hell is the Doctor regenerating at the beginning of the episode? Obviously it takes pace at some point in the future. The Doctor's hair is a lot longer than it is in the rest of the episode, suggesting it's very far off in the future for him. But is this from the end of "The Doctor Falls"? I think "World Enough and Time," "The Doctor Falls," and the Christmas special are all going to be a three part episode, and either that regeneration scene from the beginning of "World Enough and Time" won't actually come to pass until the end of the Christmas special, or else he's going to somehow begin regeneration in "The Doctor Falls," but not fully complete his regeneration until the end of the Christmas special, which has already been confirmed to be Capaldi's last episode. That or it's all a fake out; this is the second time we've seen him "regenerate" this season, after all.
There's this one scene in the trailer from next week with the Doctor, the Master, and Missy all standing together on a clifftop pointing their screwdrivers (or in Missy's case, an umbrella) at the same target, which gives me hope that maybe the Doctor brings out the good in both of them, not just Missy. It occurred to me that Moffat writes Missy more like an antihero than a true villain, and I wonder if this finale is actually going to end with Missy's redemption and transformation into full-on good guy...who's still an antihero. Someone will inevitably reboot it in the past, because the Master is too good a villain to waste on redemption, but it would still be a great ending for the time being.
Well, we'll see today as we brace for Moffat's final season finale as showrunner. I think this one could be a real doozy. Until then:
Okay, I have a few apologies to make. First of all, I promised myself I wouldn't use two song titles from the same band in the same season, because I think of it like a playlist. But Alkaline Trio's "For Your Lungs Only" is too perfect of a title for this episode. The second apology is that I'm monumentally late with this blog. Another episode has already aired since this episode aired, and another one airs today. I was moving into a new apartment and my life became chaotic for a few weeks there and I didn't have time to blog. Believe me, it was not out of disinterest in the episode, "Oxygen," because honestly, "Oxygen" may be my new favorite episode of the Capaldi era.
We haven't had an episode as dark as "Oxygen" since at least "Dark Water," if not longer. Actually, the only episode I can think of that's as grizzly, dark, and horrific as "Oxygen" isn't even a new series episode. We have to go all the way back to the 6th Doctor serial, "Vengence on Varos." "Vengence on Varos," a disturbing dystopian nightmare about a reality where people are tortured on live television and politicians put their proposals up to a reality show style vote and if they lose the vote, they could be killed. "Vengence on Varos" was so violent that it became the first time fans of the show started to agree with parents' groups that called the show inappropriate for children. The show survived a few years after "Varos," but I believe that the slow death it suffered began with viewer outrage over "Vengence on Varos." Now, Jamie Mathieson, Steven Moffat's only true peer on the Doctor Who writing staff right now, gives us an episode that leaves the viewer deeply disturbed, and with a haunting political message to go with it.
Can you imagine if an American television show had an episode where a character said "And that was it for Capitalism"? Yes, Star Trek basically lives in a socialist utopia and does talk about how unfair conditions for the poor put an end to Capitalism, but they go out of their way to avoid using words like "Capitalism" and "Socialism" and somehow people fail to notice that that's what happened in the Star Trek universe. Jamie Mathieson's script said the word "Capitalism" multiple times. And before you go thinking that it's absolute absurdity for a company to sell us the air we breathe, is it really any different than charging for food, water, shelter, and clothing? This is why I work in the non-profit sector.
And how about "Oxygen"'s cold open? Have we ever cut to the opening credits on a darker, more violent note? A woman trying to tell her husband she wants to have a baby is attacked and murdered and turned into a zombie that, along with other zombies, tries to kill her husband. Jesus Christ, you couldn't just make her eight months pregnant to really make it horrifying. I like when I get scared by an episode's setup because I know it's just going to make me even happier when the Doctor stops the bad guys. This time, the real bad guys were a big corporation off screen, but those are the bad guys in real life so it was still satisfying.
The fluid link hasn't been mentioned on the show since the Second Doctor era, but in every mention of in in canon, it has always been essential to the function of the TARDIS. The 1st Doctor met the daleks when he lied to his companions that fluid link K7 (as opposed to fluid link K57 that Nardole steals, because the naming conventions on these things are completely random) had run out of mercury and needed to be refilled as a ruse to get them to go out and explore the planet of Skaro. It's hard to believe, because of the history of fluid links, that they aren't all essential to the function of the TARDIS. It's more likely that, when the Doctor says that he lied about the link being essential to the TARDIS taking off, I'd guess that what he really means is that he lied about the thing Nardole took out being a fluid link.
Speaking of Nardole, I still hate him, but thankfully so do the writers and the Doctor himself. Nardole's entire function in the show seems to be to be a stick in the mud and to try to stop the plot of the show from happening. "Oxygen" has more of Nardole than any episode so far in the regular season, and I still love it in spite of that. When Nardole isn't trying to ruin everything, he's giving explanations that the Doctor could have easily given if he wasn't in the episode, or making really weird jokes about an ex-girlfriend that don't really pay off.
The only thing I didn't like about this episode was the hyperbolic, overacted, soap-opera-style overdramatic way that the Doctor announces he's still blind at the end of the episode. I don't know who directed the great Peter Capaldi into that terrible performance, but they need to be fined for that stupidity. I'm sure the blindness is a setup for something big in the overall plot, but I can't for the life of me guess what it's going to be. It's interesting that it happened because of how long the Doctor was exposed to the void of space, because a Fifth Doctor episode that I can't remember the name of right now established that the Doctor can survive in the void of space longer than humans can. But perhaps that's why that other character said that he should have died; it's almost as if he isn't human.
But the blindness will be discussed in the next overdue blog. So until then...
"Now that we have a black person, we're officially a Benetton ad!"
Once upon a time, in the Russel T. Davies era, Season 4, there was a plan for a Cops-style episode, where the Doctor goes on a reality show like Cops and solves a mystery while Donna watches the episode from home. Davies, however, scrapped the episode because he felt like it was too similar in tone to "The Unicorn and the Wasp," even though the two episodes would have taken place approximately 82 years apart. Instead, he quickly wrote "Midnight," his best episode, and put that in its place. I tell you this story because I don't understand how Davies could see the similar tones in what sound like very dissimilar stories, and Steven Moffat (admittedly, one of my heroes) couldn't see that within three weeks he had two episodes with similar monsters with the exact same way of killing people. In "Knock Knock," the monsters are tiny creatures that make up the very structure but can come loose to form a swarm that eats people. Where have I heard of that before?
The two robots represent the old man
This was a pretty mediocre episode, with a lot of plot holes. Why does he need to let the bugs eat people in order for them to keep his mother alive? Those seem like pretty unrelated things. As Shelley pointed out, why does the mother only restore this particular group of young people and not the hundreds of others that he's done this to? Why do the bugs kill everyone else but for the mother they keep her alive? Why did everyone accept the Doctor as Bill's grandfather without asking the inevitable racist question, which is easily answered by anyone with half a brain, but still would inevitably be asked in that situation?
This was an interesting to see, though, in the week before I move in with some new roommates. Oh, and it was the week before Mother's Day. Ew.
Is it my imagination or, when Bill claims to be the Doctor's granddaughter, it's on a day where her clothes and hair look rather Susan-ish? They've been trying to remind us a lot of Susan this year. Could they finally be hinting at some sort of return?
After this episode, I'm more certain than ever that the Master is in that vault, and it's probably Missy. I mean, could that have been a more obvious hint? It's someone whose company the Doctor enjoys who delights in the suffering of others. That's Missy. I know that John Simm is coming back to play the Saxon Master at some point this season, but I can't imagine Simm's Master playfully communicating with the Doctor through piano music. I'm thinking that Simm is just back to film a flashback scene where we see his Master regenerate into Missy. I don't want to see him steal Missy's spotlight. He was a great Master, but his Master was very much designed to play against David Tennant's Doctor, and Missy was just made for Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor.
That's going to have to be it for now. I've got packing to do for my move this weekend. Next week we have an episode from Jamie Mathieson, so that looks promising. Until next time:
Sorry I'm late this week. I'm packing to move next Saturday (13th) and I was a little behind on my reviews over at Punknews. (Go check out my reviews of Conor Oberst, Kendrick Lamar, and Cayetana from this week, because I'm weirdly eclectic.) Also, there's this show on Netflix called Girlboss that I'm already on my fourth time through watching, so I've had things to do. So I'll probably get this out after the new episode airs in England, but before it airs in the US. So here we go!
I liked this episode a lot, even though others thought it was was a knock off of "The Beast Below." I admit that there are similarities. Most notably that you could just as easily call this episode "The Beast Below" is the name wasn't already taken. Of course, the beast in "The Beast Below" didn't eat the children. But the biggest similarity between "Thin Ice" and "The Beast Below" is that the monster is almost a B-story to the more important story of the Doctor bonding with his new companion. Bill had to deal head on with the darker realities of traveling with the Doctor. It's something everyone eventually realizes about the Doctor. But as Bill is likely to be a one-season-and-done companion, she needs to learn it faster than the others.
I'm glad they addressed the fact of Bill's race. They did it a little bit with Martha's first trip into the past with "The Shakespeare Code," but the 10th Doctor seemed oblivious to her concerns. The notoriously oblivious 12th Doctor understood it a lot better. I know some people who found it too preachy, but I loved the moment when Bill pointed out there were more black people there than in the history books, and the Doctor said "History, it's a whitewash." My hope is that when they finally hire the first black Doctor they address these sorts of things. I'm really hoping that happens next season and that despite the rumors it's not this guy:
I'm bringing fugly back.
But this guy:
Have you tried turning the Dalek off and on again?
Last week, I had a theory after I published the blog that what was in the vault was Gallifrey, since the creatures trying to destroy it in "Time of the Doctor" presumably don't know it's back yet and that confrontation is yet to happen. But "Thin Ice" seemed to imply from the interaction with Nardole (who was thankfully in this episode very little, and only to be the big fuddy-duddy) and whatever's in the vault, that there's a single creature in that vault. My new theory is that one of the versions of the Master we're promised to see this year, was sentenced to death by the Time Lords and the Doctor negotiated with them to put him/her under his custody.
Next week's episode (which isn't really next week because it's airing in the UK as I type this) is by a brand new writer, so who knows what it'll be like. So until next time:
It's basically an early predecessor to the sonic screwdriver, yet the Doctor always looks at a smart phone with such contempt.
I made myself a rule last year that I was going to make the rest of my overanalyses in Peter Capaldi's tenure from that point on were going to be named after punk songs, in honor of the 12th Doctor's guitar playing and Peter Capaldi's actual punk band he had with Craig Ferguson. (Except I already know what I'm going to call the overanalysis of this year's Christman special, and it's alternative, not punk, but I have to use it because it's so perfect.) Hey, guess what? Do you know how many punk songs have the word "smile" or "happy" in the title? Very, very few.
But this episode was goddamn amazing, especially considering it comes from the writer of "In the Forest of the Night"! This is good, old fashioned sci-fi. Machines coming after humans, entirely because of a lack of understanding of human emotions. This is like something pulled out of I, Robot, only with more action. There's an old classic series serial called "The Happiness Patrol" about a society that policed happiness and punished sadness severely, and I was worried that this episode would turn out too much like that. But, where "The Happiness Patrol" is about the political suppression of negative emotions, "Smile" was about robots making a mistake that lead to them suppress negative emotion, so it didn't actually feel anything at all like "The Happiness Patrol."
It also didn't have The Candy Man, which is simultaneously the most goofy and most fucked up villain the classic series ever created.
I missed a lot of hints and clues and build ups for the bigger story arc of the season last week and I'm kicking myself for it. For one thing, I completely ignored all of the Doctor's talk about an oath he swore. Why did I skip all that? Because honestly, he said it with so much conviction I actually thought it was something I was supposed to already know about. Me, the girl that writes a literal "overanalysis" blog, thought she missed a big oath the Doctor swore at some point. Yeah, that sounds like me. So, now, we do have an ongoing question of the season: "Why did he make this oath, and what the fuck is in that vault?"
I loved that Nardole was barely in this episode. Let's keep it that way.
I love in this episode where the colonists figure out that The Vardy killed their families, so they start grabbing guns. You're inside an enormous building made out of them, what's a half dozen laser guns going to do?
How long until Think Geek starts selling Bill's rainbow top?
I loved the Doctor pointing out that there was an evacuation of Earth, and that he's run into a few of their ships over the years. Besides running into one in "The Beast Below," there's also the classic series episode "The Arc in Space," and probably several others I can't think of right now. But if he even points out that there were multiple ships, that he's been to a few before, why does he literally say that The Vardy are threatening to kill what's left of the human race? You've already explained in episode why that's not true, Doctor. Pay attention!
This week, I got a Facebook message from some of the members of my old podcast, The Mile High Who Podcast. It's been on indefinite haitus for a while, and that will probably be a permanent haitus now that Shelley, the founder of our whole group and the originator of the podcast, moved back home to Kansas City. But as soon as we finally got a new episode last week, Shelly wished we could still podcast. So she messaged us all to talk about the new episode, and she pointed out to me something that I missed:
Okay, so my disagreement with Shelley over terminology here is that I, and I think a lot of other people too, use "Mondasian Cybermen" to differentiate from Russel T. Davies's idiotic invention, the "Cybus Cybermen," or "Pete's World Cybermen." It's been implied that "Nightmare in Silver" was a return to (what I call) Mondasian Cybermen instead of Cybus Cybermen, primarily because the former are the only ones ever shown to have a weakness to gold. But other people, like Shelley, and apparently all the press that's come out about this season, us "Mondasian Cybermen" to refer only to Cybermen from the era before Mondas was destroyed. That encompasses only one serial of the classic series, The First Doctor's final serial, "The Tenth Planet," and one Big Finish Audio story called "Spare Parts." My argument is that they're still Mondasian when they're homeless, and they're still Mondasian when they forcibly take over the planet Telos and make that their new home, in the same way that I'm Irish even though I don't live in Ireland. So a lot of reports have come out lately about "The Mondasian Cybermen," but I'm going to refer to those, in this blog, "Tenth Planet Cybermen."
Yes, the reports have confirmed that the Tenth Planet Cybermen are coming back this season, and boy am I excited to see them. And with the clue that Shelley showed me, it implies that they're going to be the main villain of the season. The original, Tenth Planet Cybermen had a much campier design than the sleeker, modern Cybermen, and they were much easier to defeat, but there was something really retro cool about their look. I also really loved their bizarre speech patterns, but if the voices coming from the puddle in "The Pilot" were any indication, they won't have those speech patterns.
But what are they up to? The Mondasian Cybermen come from Mondas, which is a twin planet to Earth that drifted away from the sun and needed to augment their people to continue to survive. But when that proved to not be enough anymore, they came to Earth for...some reason. Invasion? Spare parts? I don't rewatch First Doctor serials very often. But it resulted in Mondas being destroyed. This is why I prefer Mondasian Cybermen, because they actually have a very sympathetic back story. Everything they did, they did to try to survive. They were just willing to kill innocents to do that, something the Doctor will never abide. If they've jumped forward 11 Doctors to come for the Doctor's 12th incarnation, I'm guessing their goals are back to what they were in their first few appearances after "The Tenth Planet": changing the timeline to bring back Mondas. But why did they need a pilot who was made of water and not metal? She's definitely coming back.
The ending, where the Doctor landed in the wrong place and time and that leads us into the next episode, is a very Classic Series style ending. The first two Doctors didn't have the ability to steer the TARDIS, and once the third Doctor figured out how to do it, he and his successive regenerations were still not great at it, and the accidental landings often set up for the next episode. Next week's episode is written by Sarah Dollard, who gave us the beautiful first part of last season's three-part finale, "Face the Raven," so I trust it will be pretty good. Until next time!
These are actually all companions, including the Dalek
Last time we were starting a new season, things were very different. I was deeply in love with a girl named Tanya who loved me back. Tanya doesn't speak to me anymore. Last time I was a man named Trevor, and now I'm a woman and prefer you call me Julie. Last time the President of the United States of America was Barack Obama, and now we're all going to die. The year 2016 fell into utter and unadulterated chaos from which we may never recover, and coincidentally, who wasn't here to save us? The Doctor!
But now it's two years later and we finally get a new season, as we say prepare to say goodbye to both Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat, both of which will be missed by anyone who isn't an Internet trolling twatwaffle. And how appropriate that for Moffat's last season as head writer, exactly like his first season back in 2010, starts on the day before Easter. It's going to be a sad goodbye to both of them, and I'm going to cry more than usual for this regeneration. But before that happens, we have a whole season of the 12th Doctor and his new friend, a girl named Bill. Bill Potts, to be exact. A Bill P. who's not a Piper.
Bill was announced as the first openly gay companion recently, to the consternation of many people who were obviously watching the show with their eyes closed, with the sound off, or while coked out of their minds, because, much like when we saw Vastra and Jenny's kiss in "Deep Breath," I have to ask "Why the fuck were you surprised?" Since Russell T. Davies, the motherfucking creator of Queer as Folk, brought the show back in 2005, he and his successor, Steven Moffat, have both gone out of their way to make the show aggressively LGBT friendly. Jack was pansexual, River was at least bisexual, Clara was implied to be bisexual and Jenna Coleman refused to deny it, there's an interspecies lesbian couple, there are background gay characters in "Midnight" and "The Rule of Three," and you can argue me on this if you want, but both Missy and The General are transgender. So not only are the people who are complaining about Bill's sexuality ignorant bigots, but they don't know what show they're fucking talking about.
Amy and Rory when the Doctor's not around
Pearl Mackie, who plays Bill (brilliantly), said that Bill's sexuality would be brought up in about her second line of dialogue on the show and that it wouldn't be treated as a big deal. And she's right, Bill's sexuality isn't treated as if it's unusual, as if it's a big deal that she's not straight, that she's anything but just another companion. And yet, simultaneously, it was central to the whole story. It was a small-scale love story (I guess you could call it a "like" story, since Bill and Heather didn't get to know each other very well) that could have just as easily been told with heterosexual characters, but it simply wasn't. Because it's 2017 and you can do that sort of thing.
I still hate Nardole.
I'm Matt Lucas and I'm a big, racist, human chode.
Am I the only one who thought "Waters of Mars" in this episode? Heather didn't react exactly like the infected in "Waters of Mars," but there was a definite similarity in the way she dribbled water from the mouth. And then there's the other episode it reminds me of: "The Lodger." It's kind of a really chopped and screwed, highly postmodern version of "The Lodger," with the ship looking for a new pilot, but unlike "The Lodger," this is nothing like a normal ship.
I was curious about the picture on his desk. Not River, that's understandable, he just lost her. But there's a picture of Susan on his desk. He hasn't hardly mentioned Susan since the 1st Doctor era on the show. There are some (canonical) 8th Doctor audio stories where he meets up with her again, so he has seen her somewhat recently, right before the Time War. But I still feel like Moffat wants to do something with Susan. It's still strange, though, because he's been hinting at it his entire run, and this season is somewhat of a "clerical error," to quote the Doctor from last season. Season 9 was designed to be Moffat's last season because he didn't know he was going to need to make a 10th one to give Chibnal time to finish up Broadchurch. So everything we're seeing now wasn't planned that far in advance.
For those wondering which Dalek war the Doctor brought them to, it wasn't the Time War. Those people they were fighting who looked like Milli Vanilli were a robot race called the Movellans from the 4th Doctor episode "Destiny of the Daleks." They got stuck in a stalemate with the Daleks because each side could predict the others' moves perfectly, and neither had the imagination to come up with something the other side didn't expect.
I read an article that said that the stakes are low for this season because everyone knows that they're going to throw out the Doctor, the head writer, and most likely the companion at the end of the season. But if there's one thing that "The Pilot" showed, it's that Moffat isn't writing this season like nothing's at stake, or like it's a "clerical error," but he's writing it as brilliantly as he always has. I was a little worried that this might fall short the was Season 7 did when a lot was changing on set and Moffat was depressed and the writing suffered. But Moffat seems to be writing from a place of confidence as he heads out the door, and I think we're in for another great season.
I'm continuing my rule this season of naming every blog after a punk song, and so:
