The Doctor is Not Your Boyfriend: An Overanalysis of "Deep Breath"

It was much easier last year when each episode had its own unique movie poster.

It's been a long time.  I've been a little lax in the Doctor Who off-season the past few months.  Sorry about that.  But the season's started back up, and much like the Doctor, I'm not quite dead yet.  So let's kick off another season!

First and foremost, I have to bring you my new Doctor Who podcast that I'm a part of.  Ever since the collapse of The 900 Year Diary (RIP), I've been hoping to find a good place to be able to discuss Doctor Who in a group setting with really funny people.  I finally found that place when I got the chance to start a new podcast with members of the Mile High Who Meetup Group in Denver.  Check out the Mile High Who Podcast with my friends Shelly, Scott, and Somer.  "Shit, Trevor, your name doesn't even fit the alliteration scheme!"

Now, onto the blog...

There is only one unwritten, yet highly important, rule when it comes to the first episode for a new Doctor:  this is no time to get fancy.  A debut episode of a new regeneration is not a time to come up with some sort of overly complicated plot.  In the new series, Davies started out by using the Autons to introduce the new Doctor, much the way they were used to introduce the 3rd Doctor (and the first Master, for that matter).  The Autons are always a great villain to use to introduce a new Doctor, because they don't have the most complicated powers or agenda.  Davies's choice to keep the 10th Doctor in bed for most of his premiere episode is still one I strongly disagree with, but the Sycorax were still not that complex of a villain with a fairly simple plan.  And Moffat knew the rule very well with his first episode as show runner, where he had to introduce both a new Doctor and a new companion, and he used a pretty simple plot when the Atraxi simply wanted to blow up the Earth to stop Prisoner Zero.  The reason for this rule is that the first episode is about establishing the character of the new Doctor, not showing off what you can pull with your imaginative, complex science-fiction twists.  This isn't to say that the rule is never broken, simply that you're off to a pretty bad start when you do break it, as was learned with the stillborn relaunch of the series in 1996 in a plot that was somehow dumbed down yet too complicated to allow a proper introduction of the Eighth Doctor to a new generation of fans.

"Deep Breath" isn't the most simple plot that Doctor Who ever produced, but it's simplified somewhat by bringing back an old enemy, albeit one that only appeared once before.  In fact, in both episodes that Moffat wrote to introduce a new Doctor, he seems to have stolen a part of the plot of "The Girl in the Fireplace."  Allowing the episode to rest on a villain that has already been explained six seasons ago gives the script plenty of time to focus on the introduction of a new regeneration of the Doctor--and his relationship with his companion.

While I'm not a Clara hater like many of the fans, I know I've yet to really bond with her and I know that many others have been even more disappointed than me.  A few months ago, my girlfriend pointed me towards an article called We're Losing All Our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome that she thought I could learn something from.  The article has apparently even caught on enough that I saw it mentioned in the New York Times review of Guardians of the Galaxy so that the author of the article could try to hold up Gamora as an example of a great female character (proving that the author of the review clearly misunderstood the point of the article). The tl;dr of this article is that it's not enough to create a strong female character if she ultimately doesn't do anything to advance the plot (like Trinity in The Matrix) or if her ultimate point in the plot is to be rescued by the male character or to simply make the male character look better as he surpasses her.  There are ways in which the basic structure of Doctor Who unfortunately resists the recommendations this article makes, the same way Doctor Who, by virtue of being about a man traveling around with a woman, can almost never pass the famous Bechdel Test (despite an article of questionable accuracy that recently came out claiming otherwise).  That being said, that doesn't mean that you can't do something to improve the strength of the female characters on Doctor Who, and Clara, while admittedly not following all of the recommendations this article makes, certainly becomes a much stronger character.

When Clara is seemingly abandoned by the Doctor, she's not crazy to despair.  Regeneration is a lottery.  While the core of the Doctor's character is always good, there's no guarantee that every regeneration will come out as kind or as moral as previous regenerations (The Valeyard) or that a newly regenerated Doctor is necessarily to be relied on to protect you (The Sixth Doctor).

You look tense, Peri.  How about a nice throat massage?

This is the first time when Clara really does have reason to despair that the Doctor might not be coming back to save her this time.  And that is when she shines the most!  While the flashback to her first day as a teacher certainly seemed like a bizarre non-sequitor at first blush, it tied into the plot quite nicely, and led her to a tactic that no companion has ever really thought of before:  daring the villain to kill her.  Her logic is sound through and through, and she overcomes a superior physical force with nothing but wits and sheer force of will.  And then the Doctor comes to save her and yadda yadda, but the point is, she kept herself alive long enough for that to happen.  While maybe not a shining moment for feminism, it was certainly a strong moment for Clara.

And Clara's other main role in this episode--the stand-in for all of the shallow fans who have complained about the new Doctor being too old--didn't make me dislike her either, even if it reminded me how much I hate the fans she's representing.  Her flaws in judging the Doctor's new face reminded me that she's not perfect, but never made me feel like she was a bad companion or a bad person.  Just a flawed person, like anyone else.  At first, I wondered why she was so confused as to why the Doctor had changed.  Her insistence that he change back to the Eleventh Doctor seemed bizarre in light of "Time of the Doctor," where she met literally every regeneration of the Doctor.  But it soon became clear that her insistence wasn't based on a misunderstanding, but sheer denial.  She was always aware that the Doctor had past faces that looked older, but she never cared as long as his current face was young and attractive.  The Doctor, as he reminded her and the fans, is not your boyfriend!

I didn't even mind the Eleventh Doctor's not-so-surprise cameo to remind her to stand by the Twelfth Doctor.  Like it or not it was just the kick int he pants that Clara--and the fair-weather fans--needed.  My favorite moment was when Clara accused the Twelfth Doctor of listening in on her phone call, and he had to remind her that he wasn't listening in...he made the call himself!

As for the Doctor himself?  While Peter Capaldi was brilliant in this episode, I still feel like I've yet to meet the new Doctor.  The first episode of a regeneration is always incomplete.  The Doctor is confused and still developing his new personality.  It's usually not until his second episode that he's truly stable mentally, and even then he's still figuring his new personality out a bit.  Ten and Eleven showed this instability a little bit, but not as much as some of the classic series Doctors.  The Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors each suffered a severe case of amnesia, while the Sixth Doctor attempted to strangle his own companion.

I'm sorry, I just have to post this again because I think it's ridiculous that this ever happened.

By comparison, spending a whole episode in bed is pretty mild.  Twelve really showed the most serious regeneration confusion of the revived series, which is part of why so many fans were confused by Capaldi's first moments at the end of "Time of the Doctor" when he seemed to forget how to fly the TARDIS.  Capaldi played this regeneration effect with true brilliance, particularly his first scene where he seemed confused by basic things like trying to tell people apart by color, gender, or even species.

Yet, the defining moment of the episode for Twelve seems to be when he threw the clockwork droid out of the hot air balloon, killing him.  The Doctor said that killing went against his "programming," and his retreat on that statement may look like the Doctor is going into much darker territory.  The Doctor has always been a strong pacifist...to a point.  True, the Doctor's famous pacifism has developed over time, and has moments of lapsing.  I don't only refer to the Time War--although that was perhaps the most significant lapse--but the Sixth and Seventh Doctors both had their violent streaks.  The Sixth Doctor had moments where he seemingly abandoned pacifism altogether, even shooting a gun at Cybermen, something that would seem to go against his "programming."

Also, this!

Seven was known for being the master manipulator and, while he did not like to kill people, he seemed to find a moral loophole in that he was fine with tricking others into taking their own lives.  Even Nine, Ten, and Eleven, who are supposed to be the true pacifists of the Doctor's regenerations, have lost their tempers against such villains as Cassandra, The Family of Blood, and Solomon the Trader, respectively.

Yet, at the same time, we have to remember that the person he killed was not a person...entirely.  While the clockwork droids had adopted a lot of human parts, they weren't really human.  They weren't really humanoid for that matter.  Whether they constituted true "life" is a question up for debate, and they had reached a point where their death could almost be considered a mercy.  Still, that doesn't seem to negate the fact that the act of killing the clockwork droid was...dark.  The look Peter Capaldi shot directly into the camera right afterwards was proof enough of that.  The Doctor is venturing into darker territory, but don't imagine yet that he's that far removed from his past incarnations.  Yes, it was hinting at a potentially darker Doctor--something Moffat has made very clear that we should be ready for--but we haven't really seen him stray too far from his "programming" yet.

I watched this episode with my friends from the Mile High Who group, and one of the members told me he read that this season wouldn't be as "arc-y" as the last few seasons; this season was to be a return to the one-off style of the Davies era episodes.  While he was delighted by this news, it disappointed me.  Everyone who knows me knows that I love a good, long plot arc.  But thankfully, the episode itself proved that either my friend there misunderstood what he read, or Moffat was simply being Moffat again.  Rule 1.  If there was any question as to whether or not this was going to be an arc-y season, that was answered swiftly at the end of this episode.  And that gives me plenty to theorize about.

First, there's the mystery woman, who IMDB seems to refer to as "Missy."  Her insistence that the Doctor was her boyfriend rang of River Song, but there are too many problems with that--the sheer lack of a place for her in River's timeline, not to mention the fact that this woman seems to be evil.  Another friend of mine suggested she may be the Rani, a classic series villain that many fans have been clamoring to see return, despite the fact that she only ever appeared in two serials of the classic series.  While this is an interesting theory that I refuse to rule out, this barely seems to fit the Rani's modus operandi.  The Rani was, first and foremost, a scientist (a neurochemist to be exact) and, in her first appearance, she showed no signs of wanting to conquer or kill other creatures, but simply to perform experiments, with no regard whatsoever for the intelligent humanoid test subjects she tortured and killed to carry on her experiments.  It wasn't until her second appearance that she took on the normal universe-dominating attitude of a Doctor Who villain.  Furthermore, I can't see why the Rani would refer to the Doctor as her boyfriend.

The Rani attempted to take over the Universe by creating a giant brain,
and it still wasn't the silliest plot of the 7th Doctor era.

I realize there's a good chance that she's a completely original villain, and there's good reason to believe that as Moffat usually prefers to create his own villains rather than pull them from the classic series.  That being said, he has been more warm to the idea of reusing classic series as of last season, where he not only wrote a Dalek episode, but used an obscure 2nd Doctor villain as the season's primary villain.  So I submit my own theory:  with all the rumors that the Master is returning this season, I submit the possibility that Missy is the first on-screen example of a Time Lord regenerating between genders.  I think she could be a female incarnation of the Master.  While this may seem strange considering how seemingly hostile Moffat has been to the idea of a female Doctor, remember Rule 1.  His seeming hostility could be a mislead, and let's not forget that Moffat, for all his professed resistance to the idea of a female Doctor, is actually the first person to really lay the groundwork for the possibility of Time Lord's regenerating between genders.  In the Eleventh Doctor's first scene--which Moffat wrote without accepting a credit in the episode--he fears that he has regenerated into a woman, suggesting that it is possible.

Only on a family show would someone check their Adam's Apple first
when trying to determine if they've changed genders.

Neil Gaiman may have written "The Doctor's Wife," in which the Doctor talks about an old friend of his who regenerated between genders, but it was written on Moffat's watch.  And, most importantly, "The Night of the Doctor" establishes without a doubt that, at least with artificial technology, Time Lords can regenerate between genders.  Also, let's not forget that Moffat's 1999 official Doctor Who parody sketch, "Curse of the Fatal Death," actually shows the Doctor regenerating into a woman.  Is it possible that the Master has taken The Sisterhood of Karn's potion that could have allowed the Doctor to regenerate into a woman?  If so, Moffat is treading on shaky ground.  After all the accusations of sexism, he's not likely to win a lot of fans for creating a female Master before creating a female Doctor...even if he handles it very carefully.

The last question we have before us concerns who is trying to keep the Doctor and Clara together.  At the end of the episode, the Doctor references that--between the woman who gave Clara the TARDIS number in "The Bells of Saint John" and the person who placed the newspaper ad in this episode that brought the Doctor and Clara back together--someone clearly wants to keep them together.  I always operated under the assumption that the woman who gave Clara the phone number was either River Song (God I hope she comes back) or a future version of Clara, or a less likely possibility of it being a surprisingly well disguised Madam Vastra.  We now also face the possibility of it being "Missy."  The interesting thing is that, whoever it is, both allowed Clara to enter the Doctor's life, allowing her to save him from The Great Intelligence, but also led them to the restaurant that was the headquarters of the clockwork droids.  This leaves us in an unusual situation of not only not knowing who is trying to keep them together, but also not even knowing for certain if this mysterious party is friend or foe!

The performance of Peter Capaldi in his first outing as the Doctor, like I said, is truly brilliant, but also doesn't feel like the definitive Twelfth Doctor yet.  In the coming weeks, I hope to learn more about who the Twelfth Doctor is, and what sets him apart from his predecessors.  But one thing is for sure:  despite all the memes and jokes about Peter Capaldi's playing the Doctor like his most iconic role of Malcolm Tucker in In the Loop, Capaldi didn't feel like he was playing Malcolm Tucker.  He felt like he was playing a new regeneration of the Doctor, one that is very different but still tethered to the basic tenets of the Doctor's character and philosophy, and one that I'm looking forward to getting to know better!

SCOTTISH EYEBROWS!

Master Baiting: Some Thoughts About the New Rumors Regarding the Master's Return

Okay, I don't actually have anything to say about the new rumors about the Master, I just wanted to use that title.

Just kidding, I have things to say.

So, some of you may have heard that, a few days ago, the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, pictured here dressed like a hobo...

Wait a minute, that's not hair gel!

...said at a Newcastle Film and Comic Book Convention that the Master was coming back this season and that he knew exactly who was cast in the role.  Since, as we all know, the executive producers of Doctor Who always share casting information with former cast members who haven't been involved in the show in any way for 18 years, this was deemed to be very credible information when it was then tweeted by reliable sources who heard him say it.

Some people then put 2 and 2 together and came up with 7.  Since this rumor emerged right around the time that news came out about Samuel Anderson joining the show as a recurring character named Danny Pink, clearly this meant that this Danny Pink character was the latest regeneration of the Master.  As someone pointed out on Twitter, "Daniel Pink" is an anagram of "Pain Linked," which somehow clearly means he's the Master.  I figured out that "Daniel Pink" is also an anagram of "Deli Napkin," which I think means that Danny Pink killed Laura Palmer.

I'm making no claims that Danny Pink is definitely not the Master, just that this is circumstantial evidence at best.  Furthermore, McCoy said that the actor was very scary, and as Samuel Anderson is known primarily for a soap opera and a drama about a private school in the early 80's, I don't see how he could be characterized as "scary."  Other rumors are throwing around the name of Charles Dance, which is a little more feasible, as he is scary, and they tend to try to cast an actor to play the Master who is the same age as the actor playing the Doctor.

But, let's pretend for a minute that I believe McCoy is actually telling the truth and knows that the Master is coming back and who it is.  It's not likely that he learned this from anyone on the Doctor Who production staff.  It's more likely that someone he knows outside of Doctor Who got the role and called him up to tell him about it.  Think about it:  If you got cast in Doctor Who, and you knew a former Doctor, wouldn't you want to call them up and talk to them about how excited you are?

This makes Charles Dance more likely than Samuel Anderson, as McCoy is more likely to be friends with Dance than Anderson as they're closer to the same age.  Still, McCoy has never appeared in anything (at least on screen) with either Dance or Anderson.

But, what if, say, McCoy was working with someone on a major, big-budget motion picture?  What if that person already knew Steven Moffat because they worked together before?  What if Moffat cast this person as the Master, and then that person called Sylvester McCoy to tell the one Doctor Who actor he knew how excited he was?  What if this was that person?:

If I'm right, please, please, please let him grow back the porn stache!

Now, I'm not claiming to know anything.  I'm guessing as much as any other idiot on the Internet.  But, c'mon, doesn't my idea at least make more sense?

Everybody Hates Clara: Why The Impossible Girl is Really The Impossible Girl to Like

I'm noticing a large trend amongst Doctor Who fans that I know:  Everybody hates Clara.  My girlfriend calls her weak.  Others call her uninteresting.  Some say that she still needs something to do.  And yet...why?

In her short span of time on the show so far, she has:

-Saved the Doctor, Rory, and Amy from the Daleks
-Forced her way into the TARDIS and the Doctor's heart when the Doctor didn't want any friends
-Figured out how to locate Miss Kizlet's headquarters
-Defeated Akhaten
-Talked an Ice Warrior warlord into showing mercy on the Earth
-Saved the Doctor from the Great Intelligence, assuming she would die in the process
-Talked the Doctor into saving Gallifrey
-Got the Time Lords to give the Doctor a whole new set of regenerations, keeping him from dying permanently

And that's not counting the 4 episodes in the middle there that I honestly don't care enough about to remember.  She's actually...an incredibly strong companion.  And yet, yeah, I kind of feel what you all feel too.  I haven't bonded with her yet.

Part of this, I think, is because she's following Amy Pond.  At two and a half seasons, Amy has clocked in as, not only the longest running companion of the revived series, but the longest continuous companion in the series since Tegan Jovanka travelled with the Doctor from the 4th Doctor's last episode in 1981 until one of the last 5th Doctor episodes in 1984.  I was fucking born in 1984.  That means it's been nearly 30 years since anyone's stuck around as long as Amy Pond.  And even in the revived series, Rose, the next longest running companion, managed to wedge herself so firmly into viewers' hearts, that it took someone as strong and amazing as Martha Jones to convince fans that anyone else could take the companion role.  Still, none of the companions since Rose have made people forget her.

But then Amy wasn't travelling alone with the Doctor.  Rory was the first full-time male companion to travel with the Doctor since Turlough, who literally left the TARDIS one episode after Tegan did back in 1984, those few months before I was born.  1984 was also the last time there was more than one companion travelling with the Doctor full time.  And don't give me any shit about Captain Jack or Mickey.  I mean full-time.  The Ponds created a unique dynamic that we haven't seen in the TARDIS in 30 years.  And 30 years ago, the male and female team travelling in the TARDIS together weren't popping out babies, either.  Amy, Rory, River, and the Doctor were literally a family.  Mother, Father, Daughter, Son-in-Law.  The TARDIS has never been a home to something like that before, ever!  Moffat created the most tight knit team to ever grace the screens of Doctor Who before:  a girl who literally grew up with the Doctor's memory, the boy she grew up with, and their daughter, who they also grew up with.

Then they leave and are replaced with one girl.

Seriously, how is any one person supposed to live up to everything that Amy, Rory, and (to a certain extent) River built in this show for the past few years.  How were we possibly supposed to go back to the old formula of Doctor and companion?

Well, I give Moffat credit, because he tried to create a companion with as much of a tie to the Doctor as Amy ever had.  A companion who has literally known the Doctor for all his lives, she just didn't know it yet.  And neither did he.  And therein lies the problem.

What I think people have been mistaking for weakness of character this past year is actually a lack of chemistry.  Jenna-Louise Coleman is an excellent actress playing an excellent companion who has absolutely no chemistry whatsoever with the Doctor.  And that was on purpose.  It wasn't really until "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" that the Doctor fully came to realize that, whatever was happening with Clara, she had no hostile intentions towards him.

DOCTOR: Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. Just tell me who you are.
CLARA: You know who I am.
DOCTOR: No, I don't. I look at you every single day and I don't understand a thing about you. Why do I keep running into you?
CLARA: Doctor, you invited me. You said
DOCTOR: Before that. I met you in the Dalek Asylum. There was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving my life, and she was you.
CLARA: She really wasn't.
DOCTOR: Victorian London. There was a governess who was really a barmaid, and we fought the Great Intelligence together. She died and it was my fault, and she was you.
CLARA: You're scaring me.
DOCTOR: What are you, eh? Are you a trick, a trap?
CLARA: I don't know what you're talking about!
DOCTOR: You really don't, do you?
CLARA: I think I'm more scared of you right now than anything else on that Tardis.
DOCTOR: You're just Clara, aren't you?

This is the whole problem!  Up until then, he literally thought she might be a trap.  He had to keep her at arm's length because, for all he knew, she was just a really pretty Dalek.  So he avoided really bonding with her.

We're only about 5 episodes in to Clara and the Doctor starting to trust each other.  What's their excuse for those 5 episodes?  I don't know.  The first two sucked ("The Crimson Horror" and "Nightmare in Silver") and then the next three had a lot of plot to get through.  There wasn't a ton of time to really start to delve into Clara's character.  Clara's first scene in "The Day of the Doctor" was the most chemistry I've seen between those two at all.  When she first arrives in the TARDIS in that episode, and a little bit in their walk through the museum, I finally started to see two people who knew each other and cared about each other.  And just as they're finally starting to click, guess what?  It's time for a whole new Doctor.

Luckily, what that means is that Coleman has a whole new Doctor to create some chemistry with.  Great!  I hope she does it, and I hope she does it fast.  But I hope that Whovians everywhere can give her a little bit of a chance.  She's doing the best she can but, up until just a few episodes ago, she had to play a girl who was a plot device first and a character second.  She needs some time to slow down and really show us who Clara is and how she relates to the Doctor.  So far, she hasn't had much of a chance.

The Doctor is Dead; Long Live the Doctor: An Overanalysis of "The Time of the Doctor"

Not what I expected the severed head of a Cyberman to be.

Regeneration episodes are desperate.  The Doctor, more or less, dies.  So it has to be a story that is at least partially about defeat.  The Doctor saves the day, but at the cost of his own life.  The Doctor, therefore, is usually in an extra-desperate situation, because that's the kind of situation where he's likely to die.  It's something you don't get in most shows:  a hero that is, at least partially, defeated every few years.  Superman died once.  Imagine if Superman died every few years!

But Steven Moffat has never been one to follow past patterns, and so he decided to do something that had never been done before.  For the first time in the history of Doctor Who...the Doctor's very death itself was his victory, not his defeat.

I have some friends (from the now defunct 900 Year Diary) who like to criticize a lot of things as "Deus Ex Machinas."  I've heard these same friends of mine use those three words for tons of Doctor Who episodes, as well as other things like Dexter.   They use it so often, I'm starting to think they don't know what those words mean.  So, in the spirit of Inigo Montoya, I'd like to explain that this phrase might not mean what you think it means. From Dictionary.com:

1.   (in ancient Greek and Roman drama) a god introduced into a play to resolve the entanglements of the plot.
2.  any artificial or improbable device resolving the difficulties of a plot.

The key point of a Deus Ex Machina is that it has to be introduced at the time that it resolves the plot.  Otherwise, it's been set up already, and not only is it not a Deus Ex Machina, there's really no reason to even complain about it.  The Doctor-Donna is a Deus Ex Machina.  The Time Lords were not.  The Time Lords were in the episode from the very beginning, and not just because they were necessary to save the day at the end of the episode.  The Time Lords were necessary to the plot of this entire episode.  It couldn't have happened without them.  As for their power to hand out more regenerations, while it may have been rude for Moffat not to re-explain this to those who have never seen the classic series, it doesn't change the fact that the Time Lords' ability to hand out new regeneration cycles was established already in "The Five Doctors."  So nothing about it was a Deus Ex Machina.

Now, were there holes in the plot?  Yes.  The regeneration energy does seem to be a little more destructive than it was before "The End of Time," and I always took the destruction in "The End of Time" to be due to him releasing the radiation he absorbed.  But you could explain that away in a million ways, including it being some sort of help that the Time Lords gave him or the side effect of it being such a long time since the last regeneration, or it being a by-product of it being his first of a new cycle of regenerations.  The thing that would have been a little more satisfying to me is if Clara saved the day by giving the Time Lords the Doctor's true name, which she should know!  I thought that was going to be the solution, and it would have been much neater, and might have shut some people up to boot.  Of course, that would have brought the Time Lords right back into a battle with the Daleks, and then everything that happened in "The Day of the Doctor" would have been for nothing.

It might also seem unsatisfying that Gallifrey wasn't released from the crack in the end.  For a moment, I thought maybe the Doctor had fought this whole war for nothing.  But really, that's not the case.  Had any of the Doctor's enemies gotten to the planet, they could have gone through the crack and destroyed Gallifrey at its most vulnerable.  The Doctor didn't succeed in bringing Gallifrey back in this episode, but he did keep it hidden and protected to be found another day.  That's still a big victory.

But even if you weren't satisfied with how the end of the episode resolved the situation set up in the beginning of the episode, how about the way that this whole episode resolved all of the Matt Smith era?  Because it did that very well.  I was completely wrong about why the Doctor's name was dangerous to say.  I never imagined that it would be a situation in which the Doctor would want to say his own name.  It proved that Moffat had taken the 50th Anniversary special into account when he started writing "The Eleventh Hour."  Everything has been planned for the past 4 years, and that became glaringly obvious.

Except for the fucking cot!  Moffat promised to solve all of the mysteries.  He even solved the mystery of what was behind Door 11 (I still like my friend Gary's theory about Adric better).  But not the cot!  What the hell was the deal with the cot?  Did he forget about it?  Because it's still dangling out there, waiting to be solved, Steven!

It became clear that, while Moffat had the idea for this episode from the beginning of the 11th Doctor era, he never intended it to be the Christmas Special.  But I think he did a good job of making it Christmassy.  Setting it in a town where it's Christmas all the time may have seemed a little forced, but at least it was better than "The End of Time" where someone has to suddenly remember every 20-30 minutes or so "Oh yeah, we haven't mentioned for a while that it's Christmas."

The Silence, my favorite villains, return and we find...that they are nothing like what we thought they were.  Really, they were priests.  Priests!  I had my best Doctor Who nightmares ever about priests!  I guess, as a former Catholic, that's strangely appropriate.

Truly, a lot of the stuff about the Papal Mainframe and the Anglican Marines was really confusing before this episode.  In "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone," they not only seem to be helping the Doctor, but are participating in the punishment of the woman who killed him.  Then, in "A Good Man Goes to War," they are fighting against him and supporting those that created the woman who killed the Doctor.  This was easily explained away in one line "The Kovarian chapter broke away."  Simple, yet satisfying, explanation.  Most of the events of Season 5 and 6 were the result of one small sect within the Papal Mainframe going rogue and trying to stop the Doctor by going back in his timeline.  It's unclear, though, why this sect was referred to, in the Tesselecta's computer, as "The Silence," where Tasha Lem, in narration, referred to the creatures themselves as "The Silence."  The naming is super confusing now.  So let's just call the creatures "The Silence," call that sect "The Kovarian Chapter," and assume that the Tesselecta was just talking out of its ass.

Most of the spoilers that I knew about that had been printed in the Sun turned out to be accurate, which means somebody is a huge dick and really did tell all the plot points to a newspaper, which actually had the nerve to print the damn things.  Why would someone do that?  That's not journalism.  That's just being a douche.  The only spoiler that I know that they got wrong was that they said the Doctor would lose a leg before he regenerated, which would have been extra dark.  The spoilers also claimed that the episode would take place over 300 years.  That was partially true.  The first time we checked back in with the Doctor, 300 years had passed.  But who knows how many years had passed for him at the end.  It could have been another 300, 500, maybe even 1,000.  My guess is that the Doctor is now around 2000 years old, making the 11th Doctor the longest living regeneration the Doctor has ever had.

And it confirmed that the Doctor can age within a regeneration.  I mean, we already knew this to an extent, as the 1st Doctor couldn't have been born looking like William Hartnell.  But we've never seen him significantly age within the same regeneration.  But there's one big advantage that this gives us, and, as the guy who had to write and cast the 50th Anniversary special, I'm sure that Moffat did this intentionally:  Matt Smith can now be brought back for future specials no matter how old he is when the special airs.  For the 75th Anniversary Special, for example, they can simply bring him back and his increased age can be chalked up to him being taken from a point in his own timeline during "The Time of the Doctor."  Was it a little bit of a cop out to reset the Doctor to a younger version of himself for his final speech?  Sure.  But didn't we all want to see that anyway?  And I thought it was cool that a very old 11th Doctor looked a lot like the 1st Doctor.

The cameo from Amy was awesome and unexpected.  Two actors wearing wigs because they shaved their heads for other roles stood across from each other: one with a believable wig, the other with a very fake looking one.  But there was one thing about that brief cameo that bothered me, and that's the weird way that the Doctor and Amy touched each other.  It looked like they were going to kiss each other.  Russel T. Davies did away with Jonathan Nathan-Turner's classic series "no hanky-panky in the TARDIS" rule by bringing the Doctor and Rose together.  This angered a lot of the classic series fans, as well as some of the actors from the classic series.  Colin Baker said at this year's Denver Comic Con, he didn't believe the Doctor and his companion should even notice that they're of different genders.  Moffat has done a nice job of kind of playing both sides.  Amy and the Doctor had romantic overtones, but they had to do more with Amy's fear of commitment than any real romantic feelings towards the Doctor.  Amy ended up with Rory, as she was always supposed to.  Even Clara's attraction to the Doctor, which was brought to further light in this episode, is a fleeting thing we know will never come to anything, especially now that she'll be opposite Peter Capaldi's Doctor.  (Somehow, I don't think any young twentysomethings are going to be kissing Peter Capaldi on this show.)  So the way that the Doctor and Amy touched each other in that scene seemed just...inappropriate.  I would have preferred a good, tight, friendly hug between them.

Were there flaws in it?  Yes.  After the episode, I had a debate (which I alluded to above) with some friends from The 900 Year Diary who I almost never agree with.  They loved "The Name of the Doctor," where I hated it (although it's still growing on me).  I loved "The Big Bang," where they found that to be (surprise) a Deus Ex Machina.  (We all liked "The Day of the Doctor," though.)  They pointed out some things to me that I had to admit they were right about.  But, to be honest, not one of those things popped into my head during the episode.  The flaws didn't get in the way of my enjoying my favorite Doctor's last episode.  And, unlike them and some other people, I had no complaints about the episode's pacing.  Moffat hooked me in with his typical hyper-imaginative and complex plot (and the mental image of Clara naked), and kept me hanging on through to the end with the 11th Doctor's greatest speech ever:

“We all change when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay. That’s good, you’ve got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.”

And then, we were given the greatest Christmas present of all:  Peter Capaldi's first few lines as the Doctor!  They weren't much, but they were enough for us to see how much fun he's going to be.  Was it my favorite episode?  My favorite 11th Doctor episode?  My favorite Christmas Special?  No on all accounts.  But it was one hell of an episode, nonetheless.

So may I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a wonderful new Regeneration!

We Must Not Be Afraid to Criticize Our Heroes: An Open Letter to Steven Moffat About Sexism

RIDDELL: You know what I want more than anything?
AMY: Lessons in gender politics?
RIDDELL: A dinosaur tooth to take home. Dinosaurs ahead, a lady at my side, about to be blown up. I'm sure I've never been happier.
AMY: Shut up and shoot.

Dear Steven Moffat,

My all time favorite television writers are as follows:  you, Joss Whedon, and Aaron Sorkin.  Your versatility between genres shows great range and scope.  I fell in love with your writing when I saw the American version of Coupling, and grew to love it even more when I watched the original British version and realized that all of the trite, obvious jokes in the American version of the show were the ones added in by the American writers.  On the night my mom died, I wanted to watch something light to take my mind off of the most traumatic event of my life, but yet still smart enough to engage my mind and make me laugh.  I chose Coupling episodes.  It just seemed to fit perfectly.

Your work on Doctor Who has taken the show to a level that surpasses literally every era in the show's history.  "The Time of Angels," "Flesh and Stone," "A Christmas Carol," "The Impossible Astronaut," and "Day of the Moon" transcend the entire series.  Even Douglas Adams, a true legend in science fiction, didn't write episodes that are on par with any of the episodes I just listed.

But in the past few years, you've been accused of sexism on many occasions.  I've tried to defend you sometimes, as best as I could as a straight white male.  And I stand behind some of the things I've said before.  I do think you've made some incredibly strong female characters, like River Song, who you should be completely proud of.  But I've reached a point where, sometimes, I can't defend some of the things you've done.  I'm trying, Steven.  I'm a pretty big fanboy of yours right now.  So when you write an episode where the gender politics make me cringe, I experience cognitive dissonance.  I find it hard to reconcile how great of a writer you are with how obviously sexist some of the things you do are.  I don't think you hate women.  I'm hoping you're not really a misogynist.  I'd like to think you're lacking some self-awareness right now in a way that is making you come off as a different person than you want to be seen as.

The first time I found myself unable to defend you in any way was in "Let's Kill Hitler":

AMY: I don't understand, OK? One minute [River]'s going to marry you and then kill you.
DOCTOR: Ah, well, she's been brainwashed, it makes sense to her. Plus, she is a woman. (Amy scowls at the Doctor.) Oh, shut up, I'm dying.

Sometimes, at parties, people tell really offensive jokes because they're in an environment where they know that all of their friends will understand that they don't actually mean it.  Their friends know they aren't sexist, racist, homophobic, etc., so they know their friends won't take it seriously when they tell this sexist, racist, or homophobic joke.  Whether or not this sort of thing is okay is a discussion for another time, but I would tend to lean towards "not."  This line from "Let's Kill Hitler" felt like a situation where you were treating the entire Doctor Who viewing public as if they were at one of these parties with you, like you thought that the entire viewing public would see this and say "Oh, well, Moffat's not really sexist, so it's okay."

Steven, people don't all think that, nor is it okay.

People today often put racist/sexist/homophobic comments in the mouths of characters they intend to be stupid, so as to parody that ignorant strain of thinking.  I think of Archie Bunker as one of the greatest examples of this tactic.  You might be more familiar with the British Character he's based on:  Alf Garnett.

You did the exact opposite in this moment.  The Doctor is, arguably, the smartest being in the Universe and is, usually, the most enlightened.  But you showed that, in moments of desperation, he reverts to negative stereotypes about women.  When all niceties have worn off, the smartest man in the Universe thinks that women are moody and vindictive.  That's not an okay message to send to anyone, especially the younger viewers of what you yourself have called a "children's show."

A similar moment happened in Steve Thompson's "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS":

DOCTOR: Take the wheel. Not the wheel. I'll make it easy. Shut it down to basic mode for you.
CLARA: Basic? Because I'm a girl?
DOCTOR: No. (The Doctor snickers)

It wasn't an episode you wrote, but it happened on your watch.  As the head writer, it's your job to watch for offensive little things like this.  It's such a little thing.  The line isn't even sexist until the Doctor gives that little snicker and that look that turns his "No" into an obvious "Yes."  Just like your line in "Let's Kill Hitler," it's such a throw-away line that you would have literally lost nothing by cutting it out of the script.  It takes no effort to say to Thompson "Hey, man, we're going to cut this.  I know you're not sexist, but it's going to make people think that you--and, by extension, all of us on the writing and production staff--are sexist."

I think your predecessor, Russel T. Davies, created the most pathetically weak female character in the history of the show: Donna Noble.  Peri Brown seems like an Amazon warrior compared to Donna.  Donna Noble is a Cathy cartoon with less backbone, and only the great comic talents of Catherine Tate were able to give Donna a few vaguely redeemable moments.  But you gave Donna two of her worst lines in the two-part episode you wrote for her:

(Donna kicks in the door)
DOCTOR: Nice door skills, Donna.
DONNA: Yeah, well, you know, boyfriends... sometimes you need the element of surprise.

This struck me as a pretty strange line. It almost makes Donna seem kind of rapey. We've already seen that she's so desperate to get married that she chose her job based on where she's most likely to find a husband, and then literally begged a man to marry her. So now you're saying that she's such an obnoxious girlfriend that she has to bang down locked doors to get to the men she wants who are trying to hide from her? Or are you saying she has so little trust in her boyfriends that she has to break down their doors to check and see if they're cheating on her? Either way, it makes her pretty weak and pathetic.

DONNA: Wait, no, just... hang on. So... this isn't the real me? This isn't my real body. But I've been dieting!

This is so sexist it borders on the absurd. A woman has just found out that everything she thought was her real life, including her two children, were illusions created by a malfunctioning computer program, and her first thought is "Then I could have had that slice of cheesecake anyway?" You were stuck with a horribly offensive character here who is literally a cobbling together of the worst female stereotypes in Western history, but you didn't have to make things worse by making her out to be clinically narcissistic in horribly stereotypical ways.

In all of these little lines, I wonder how many people these scripts had to go through without anybody convincing you not to keep these lines in the episodes. Especially the one from "Let's Kill Hitler," and the similar exchanges from "The Wedding of River Song" and "The Bells of Saint John":

MONK: Is it an evil spirit?
DOCTOR: It's a woman. (The Monk crosses himself.) 

CHURCHILL: Tick tock goes the clock, as the old song says. But they don't, do they? The clocks never tick. Something has happened to time. That's what you say. What you never stop saying. All of history is happening at once. But what does that mean? What happened? Explain to me in terms that I can understand. What happened to time?
DOCTOR: A woman.

Some of the others might have slipped by past some people who were not particularly sensitive or who were too afraid to question their boss, but I find it hard to believe that not even one person told you that these particular exchanges from "Let's Kill Hitler," "The Wedding of River Song," and "The Bells of Saint John" were not okay. And I wouldn't be surprised if that person was Alex Kingston or Karen Gillan. What did you tell them? Did you tell them to calm down? That they were being too sensitive? That it was only a joke? They were right to tell you not to put that on the air. Maybe they weren't even doing it for their own sake. Maybe they were doing it because they cared about you and they didn't want you to make yourself look like a jerk in front of the entire world.

The first time an entire episode's plot gave me pause was an episode you didn't write, but which you should have vetoed. When I first saw "The Girl Who Waited," I found it to be the most sexist thing to happen in the franchise since Katy Manning put together an entire character based on an old joke book about blondes. I'm sure neither you nor the writer, Tom MacRae, intended this to be the case, but it's what happened.

OLDER AMY: The me version of you. I refuse to help them. I won't let them save myself.
AMY: Why?
OLDER AMY: If you escape, then I was never trapped here. The last thirty-six years of my life rewrites, and I cease to exist. That's why old me refused to help then. That's why I'm refusing to help now. And that's why you'll refuse to help when it's your turn. And nothing you can say will change that.
AMY: Three words. What about Rory?
OLDER AMY: Rory?
OLDER AMY: I called my robot Rory.
AMY: You called your robot Rory?
AMY: Oh, so you didn't call it the Doctor, or Biggles. Our favourite cat?
OLDER AMY: Do remember that summer when he came back to school with that ridiculous haircut?
AMY: He said he'd been in a rock band.
OLDER AMY: Liar. And, and then he had to learn to play the guitar.
AMY: So we wouldn't know he couldn't play it. Mmm hmm.
OLDER AMY: All those boys chasing me, but it was only ever Rory. Why was that?
AMY: You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful. And then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick? Then there's other people, and you meet them and think, not bad, they're okay. And then you get to know them, and their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality's written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful.
BOTH: Rory's the most beautiful man I've ever met.
AMY: Please? Do it for him.
OLDER AMY: You're asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself, for a boy.
AMY: You're Amy, he's Rory, and oh yes, I am.
(Rory has been waiting outside all this time.)
OLDER AMY: I am going to pull time apart for you.

I once lost a Facebook friend trying to defend your writing.  I tried to defend you from her accusation that Amy is defined solely by the men in her life, Rory and the Doctor.  I still think this isn't the case in every episode, but in this particular episode, it is the case.  Here, Amy is defined solely by her relationship to Rory.  Old Amy won't save herself for herself, so she'll save herself to ensure that Rory has a wife.  Old Amy, in this scenario, has no sense of her own internal worth for herself.  She doesn't want to erase the past decades of her existence to rescue her younger self from this horrible fate, but she'll do it for Rory's sake.  For Rory.  In this moment, her function becomes that of being Rory's wife, and nothing else.

That is a degrading and humiliating message to send to women.  Would you put together a safe driving campaign with the slogan "Buckle up for your husband's sake"?  Amy and Rory's relationship is one of the few love stories in the Doctor Who franchise, but it's by far the greatest because both characters are so strong.  In this moment, though, Amy becomes so weak, and it disappoints me as someone who admires her character.  If she's not willing to save herself for herself, then she becomes less than a person.  She becomes someone's wife and nothing more.

Where "The Girl Who Waited" struck me as incredibly sexist on first viewing, "The Doctor, The Widow, and The Wardrobe" made me a little uncomfortable on first viewing, and it took a few more times viewing it for me to figure out what bothered me about this very problematic episode.

LILY: The stars are going inside her. She's taking the whole forest.
MADGE: Oh, this is marvelous. Oh, this is really quite wonderful.
DOCTOR: Madge? Are you all right? Talk to me. Madge, can you hear me?
MADGE: Yes, I can hear you. I'm perfectly fine, thank you.
DOCTOR: Fine? You've got a whole world inside your head.
MADGE: I know! It's funny, isn't it? One can't imagine being a forest, then suddenly one can. How remarkable.
DOCTOR: You're okay. She's okay.
MADGE/QUEEN: She is strong.
MADGE: Ooo. That wasn't me. This is all really rather clever, isn't it?
DOCTOR: She's strong. She's strong. Ooo, stupid me. Stupid old Doctor. Do you get it, Cyril?
CYRIL: No.
DOCTOR: Lily, you do, don't you?
LILY: No.
DOCTOR: Course you do. Think about it. Weak and strong. It's a translation. Translated from the base code of nature itself. You and I, Cyril, we're weak. But she's female. More than female, she's mum. How else does life ever travel? The Mother ship!

A friend of mine referred to this as Madge steering the ship by the "power of feminism."  Frankly, I feel it's quite the opposite.  The forest wants to leave and it needs a vessel with which to escape.  So it needs a woman.  It turns down the Doctor and Cyril because they are male, but kind of accepts Lily because she's female and completely accepts Madge, either because she's already been a mother or because she's of childbearing age.

Maybe you meant this to be that women are strong because they can give birth.  But what it really felt like was "A woman's primary function is being a mother."  Lily and Madge's gender is boiled down to one thing:  its ability to carry life.  They are walking wombs waiting for something to pick up and transport.  I'm not a woman, but I can only imagine that, as a woman, it might become humiliating after a while to be told by the media that my main function is as a baby maker, and that all of the other things I do are inferior to my function as a potential mother.  That I'm a machine, not a person with a soul.

Still, that part of the episode was far less offensive than this:

DOCTOR: That's it, focus on Reg. Be careful, but focus on him.
MADGE: Oh, I don't know.
DOCTOR: How did you meet? You and Reg. Tell me how you met.
MADGE: He followed me home. I worked in the dairy. He always used to follow me home.
LILY: Look at Father. He looks so young.
MADGE: He said he'd keep on following me till I married him. Didn't like to make a scene.

There's a certain school of thought that would think of this as romantic, as Reg was so in love he put in all this effort to win over this woman.  Another school of thought, however, would say that Reg doesn't respect Madge's right to consent.  And, right now, the second school of thought is starting to become more popular in some circles, and its making some much better points.

When people talk about the phrase "rape culture," they're referring to a culture that doesn't value a woman's God given right to say "no" to a man.  You didn't invent this problem.  Centuries of both works of fiction and advice we've passed on to both men and women over generations have left us with this idea that, when a woman says "no," she's just playing hard to get.  That women are being told to play hard to get, some say (and I agree with them) is dangerous.  I encourage you to read more about this in this great Rachael Kay Albers article from Feminspire.com.

Reg took Madge's "no" as a "yes."  Nothing about what she said even suggests she was intentionally playing hard to get.  On the contrary, she seems to have had no interest in him, and he continues to push to try to turn her "no" into a "yes."  This is the kind of thinking that tells young men "When a woman says no, she might mean yes," and that's when some mentally disturbed men start to turn a woman's "no" into a "yes" by force.

I'm not blaming you for the rape of any women, here, but I am blaming the rape culture you contributed to. I'm saying you passed on a very bad cultural norm that needs to be stopped if we're ever going to be able to bring down some of these horrifying rape statistics in this world.

Other people have accused you of being sexist for reasons I disagree with.  Still, I encourage you to look into their criticisms, think long and hard about what they're saying, and try to keep it in mind when you write your episodes.

I don't think we should be afraid to criticize those we respect.  I am an American who voted for Barack Obama twice and, while both my country and my president have disappointed me--and have disappointed me more than you ever could--I still love both of them.  And I believe that to call them on their errors is not a sign of disrespect, but actually a sign of love and respect.

My girlfriend was telling me she felt the same way recently when reading East of Eden by one of her favorite writers, John Steinbeck.  I've heard the most ardent feminists I know bemoan the unfortunate sexism in what they admit is the great writing of Charles Bukowski.  "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" asks feminist electro-punk group Le Tigre in their song of the same name about filmmaker John Cassavetes.  "Misogynist!" and "Genius!" are the replies they shout back to each other, demonstrating how difficult it is to believe that the same two things are true of the same man.

Maybe you don't deserve this kind of respect.  I never met you.  You might just be a jerk and a misogynist.  As someone who so respects your writing, I'm choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt, and hope that you're just misguided.

So, when I say these things, it's because I respect your work so much.  Your writing is too good for this, Steven.  You are possibly the smartest writer in the history of the greatest science-fiction franchise in history.

So, for the love of God, start acting like it!

Sincerely,
Trevor Byrne-Smith

There is, You Know, Surprisingly, Always Hope: An Open Letter to Matt Smith

Dear Matt,

I have a Doctor Who blog.  I'm known now for my love of Doctor Who.  I wish I could say that I grew up on this show, because you'd think I did based on my fervent love of this television show.  Sadly, it's a relatively new obsession.

Let me explain:  I've always been a nerd.  First it was Star Trek in grade school.  Then I got into Star Wars in junior high around the time that the movies were re-released in theaters in the 1990s.  Then The X-Files in early high school.  I became obsessed with Kevin Smith movies in late high school, which is kind of a meta-nerdism, as it's being a nerd about things that are about nerds.  But his works still create an interconnected Universe that you can follow.  In college, my girlfriend got me into Lord of the Rings, and subsequently Harry Potter.  In all of these, the appeal was that there was a large, interconnected Universe that I could explore and imagine.  The more there was that was available to be learned within that Universe, the more fascinating it was.  I loved finding connections and bizarre, obscure facts.

Frankly, anything that offered me a large amount to explore and learn from appealed to me.  Rock music was the same way, too.  I became a particularly big fan of punk rock, as you seem to be yourself judging by the t-shirts I see you wearing in interviews.  Punk is a much wider and more complicated genre than people think.  There are different types of punk, from crust punk to pop-punk, and various off-shoots from post-punk to alternative rock.  Punk is the basic DNA of all rock music since the 1980s, and I spent countless hours of my life deconstructing that double-helix to look at what it's made of.

In 2007, my mother died very suddenly of lung cancer.  It's the most tragic event in my life, and by far the one that most defines my adult life.  People who know me know how hard this hit me.  I was a momma's boy, plain and simple, and I lost my mom.  The world was suddenly less predictable than I previously thought it to be.  It was chaotic and painful, not orderly and kind.

Suddenly, many of my passions died away.  I didn't want to dig through large Universes of fantasy and science-fiction.  I didn't want to listen to music because it left me in my own head too much.  I started listening to sports radio and podcasts because I prefered it to any form of music.  The basic, primal love of music that had driven me since I was very young had disappeared.  All music started to sound boring to me.  Even punk.  The world was dark and grey and dull and it was something I just walked through with little joy.

After my mother died, the first times I started to get excited about sci-fi or fantasy again were when I stumbled Johnny-come-lately into two major nerd fandoms.  The first was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  A great show, I poured through its 7 seasons quickly, finding much to relate to in the tales of loss and sorrow, as well as the redemption of characters coming from places of darkness and regret.  But with only 7 seasons to sift through, all of which had already aired, I found myself making very quick work of Buffy.  I couldn't find the intense joy I used to find from reading the Star Trek Encyclopedia or the expanded universe novels of Star Wars.

I turned to an ex-girlfriend for suggestions.  My college girlfriend, who I now spoke to very rarely, made me some suggestions for good sci-fi.  I wanted something that I might be able to find that joy and passion in again.  Something that could light the fire I once had for science fiction and fantasy.  She made me two recommendations:  Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who.  The former I tried and found dull.  Years later, I'd give it another try and enjoyed it, but wasn't thrilled by it, and I found the finale utterly stupid.  Doctor Who, on the other hand, was just what I was looking for.

This was just before you started as the Doctor, but after you had already been cast.  Most of David Tennant's episodes had been released.  I started with Eccleston's episodes, which I found silly at first, but which I grew to appreciate more as I worked my way through that first season.  Tennant, on the other hand, was a Doctor I could really grow to love.

Confidence has never been my strong suit.  But, like many men, I've always looked for inspiration in male characters who possess the confidence I often lack.  I think this is the real reason that men gravitate towards action heroes and superheroes.  It's not that they are big and strong, but that they are confident.  It's why less action-oriented characters, like Sherlock Holmes, sometimes draw the same sort of obsession and fandom.  More than strength, I think men value decisiveness, self-assuredness, and the ability to make quick decisions.  The Doctor--and, in particular, David Tennant's Doctor--demonstrates that sort of strength without ever needing to throw a punch.  The Doctor is the pacifist action hero.

But where Tennant sold me on the show, you're the one that made me fall in love.  You were the first Doctor that I got to watch starting from the first episode, in real time.  I watched "The Eleventh Hour" the day it came out, where I had watched most of the other episodes much later than they were released.  Where Tennant's Doctor was as cool as a cucumber, yours was awkward, uncomfortable, and often missed social cues.  My girlfriend, recently, has suggested that I might actually have a mild form of Aspergers that has never been diagnosed, especially in that I sometimes find myself saying things that I think are perfectly kind and polite that other people are offended by.  Perhaps this is why I so relate to the 11th Doctor.  If the 11th Doctor doesn't have Aspergers, then nobody does.

But where the 11th Doctor struggles in social situations, he has as much confidence as any other Doctor when it matters.  No, he doesn't know the first thing about talking to women, but when facing down a legion of Daleks, he won't even flinch.  This is nerd empowerment at its finest.  It makes some of the geekier amongst us feel like, maybe, in a clinch, we might be as brave and as confident as the Doctor.  And, just like Tennant's Doctor, the 11th Doctor never needs to throw a punch. "It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

Your Doctor lit the flame in me that made Doctor Who my new obsession.  I went back and watched every episode of the classic series that still survives, as well as the reconstructions of all the lost episodes.  Every Doctor, every actor, every companion, every villain, every episode.  I've seen them all, Matt, and it was because of the love of the show that you triggered in me when I first saw you climb out of the TARDIS.

It was the first time, since my mom's death, that I found something like this that brought me so much joy.  It was a level of joy I didn't think I would ever find again.  The grey world I used to trudge through now had as many colors as Colin Baker's hideous coat.  I can't say that I don't still struggle with depression, but there's a brightness in my mind and imagination that was lit by the Doctor.  The Doctor has seen darker days than I ever have, but he still assures those around him that "there is, you know, surprisingly always hope."

There is hope, Matt.  There is always hope.  And it's in the joy that you've brought to the hearts of millions of people of all ages around the world.  When you leave the show, I'll continue to watch, because I've fallen in love with the character of the Doctor at his very core.  Even my least favorite incarnations, William Hartnell and Christopher Eccleston, are still part of my great hero, the Doctor.  And it's all thanks to you.  But, while I'm sure I'll love Peter Capaldi, and all the incarnations that come after him, you will always be my Doctor, Matt.  And I thank you so much for that.

Your Fan,
Trevor Byrne-Smith

The Clock is Striking Twelve's: An Overanalysis of the "Time of the Doctor" Trailer (and Other Tidbits)

If this Silent isn't actually singing in this pose in the episode, then that's just a wasted opportunity.

I haven't talked about "The Time of the Doctor" lately, mainly because of the spoilers that were leaked in The Sun a few weeks ago.  I haven't read the entire list of spoilers, just the summary on Zap2It.com.  If there are more spoilers in the actual article than what I've read, I don't want to know about them.  I regret what I've read so far.  Granted, a lot of the things in the Sun have been confirmed by the BBC since then, but a few things have not been confirmed.  So I know of about two things that are alleged behind-the-scenes spoilers that have not come out from official sources.  I decided not to put them in this blog.  This blog has a spoiler warning, but that's because I try to dig out things that have been released by the BBC and the producers, not stuff they're trying to save as surprises for us for when we watch the episode.  I trust that if it's been released by the BBC, then it's not something that's going to truly spoil my enjoyment of the episode.  Just the chapter titles, like River would say.  Then I try to guess what's going to happen next.  But I'm not going to try to ruin episodes for you.

Also, whoever told the Sun these spoilers failed to even mention the Silence, who are clearly in this episode, so take the Sun with a grain of salt anyway.

But that doesn't mean there isn't still a ton of shit to analyze.  The recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine, which is completely legit, gives me plenty to work with.  Not to mention the new trailer.

It's Not Susan

In my last blog, I insisted that the actress Orla Brady was going to be playing Susan in this special.  This is because her character, named "Tasha Lem," is supposed to be someone from the Doctor's past.

Well, DWM squashed that hope in my heart.  This is what it said:

"Tasha Lem is an old friend and someone from the Doctor’s distant past. Someone who knows him very well, but we have never met. She’s the Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe."

So it can't be Susan or Jenny.  But...Susan's mother, perhaps?

The Trailer

The trailer is badass.  It confirms the basic plot revealed in the Sun spoilers:  The Doctor must fight a siege on a town called Christmas (the town's name has been confirmed elsewhere) on Trenzalore from a combined onslaught from the Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, and Silence.

I have to give Doctor Who TV credit for figuring out something about the trailer that I should have found blatantly obvious:  the Daleks say "The Doctor is regenerating."  Why is this weird?  The Daleks shouldn't know who the fuck the Doctor is!  Totally forgot about that.  What's changed since the end of "Asylum of the Daleks."

Why are these 4 species working together in the siege?  It seems highly improbable.  The Daleks and Cybermen don't get along, as seen in "Doomsday"--although they worked together well enough in "The Pandorica Opens."  The Angels don't really communicate with other species, and they have to murder someone and rip out their voicebox to even do that.  And the Silence are supposed to be trying to keep the Doctor from ever getting to Trenzalore, so I don't know why they're joining in.

On a more symbolic level, though, they represent the best of the old and new villains.  Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure that the Daleks and the Cybermen are the only active villains remaining on the show who originated in 1st Doctor episodes.  The Angels and the Silence are probably the most iconic of the villains that have originated from the new series, or, at the very least, from Moffat's episodes.  It's pretty appropriate that these four should be the ones to take down the Eleventh Doctor.

The Silence

The Silence are my favorite Doctor Who villain of all time.  They terrified me in the most fun way imaginable.  I had nightmares about them, and then tried to go back to sleep so I could continue the nightmares because I was really enjoying them.  So I was thrilled to hear that they were coming back.  There are still a lot of questions about them that have yet to be answered.

And one that I thought was answered, that apparently was not.

Moffat has told us recently that we should be asking why they're called The Silence.  Um, I thought we covered that.  They're a religious order, or sect, named after their primary belief, that "Silence will fall when the question is asked."  Wait, there's more than that?  I have no idea what that could possibly be.

Nudity?!

Doctor Who Magazine says this episode will have a "fair bit" of nudity.  Uh...say what?

Regeneration Breakdown

It seems that, almost daily, I see another new article on my Facebook feed about an interview with Moffat where he either confirms that Matt Smith is the 13th Doctor, technically, or he re-explains the numbering to us.  Maybe some casual fans might still be confused, but if you're enough of a fan that you're looking up interviews, haven't you figured this out a while ago?  Eccleston was the 10th regeneration, but since True 9 didn't call himself "The Doctor," True 9 doesn't count in the numbering.  Tennant's Doctor regenerated without actually changing his face, which makes him technically the 11th and 12th regenerations.  Matt Smith is 13, and therefore the final regeneration, so the regeneration problem will have to be addressed in the special.  Doctor Who Magazine even confirmed this by releasing a small section of the script:

CLARA: But you don’t die. You change – you pop right back with a new face.
THE DOCTOR: Not forever. I can change 12 times. 13 versions of me. 13 silly Doctors.
CLARA: But you’re number eleven, so -
THE DOCTOR: Are we forgetting Captain Grumpy? I didn’t call myself the Doctor during the Time War, but it was still a regeneration.

 There's not even a question of it anymore.  The 13 Doctors Problem will be addressed this Christmas!

She Will Be Home for Christmas: Some Initial Thoughts on "The Time of the Doctor"

We didn't even get a chance to get over the brilliance of the 50th Anniversary special before the information about the Christmas special started pouring out.  First, we got a teaser trailer at the end of "The Day of the Doctor," which revealed a few key things:  Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Silence, Trenzalore.  Knowing Moffat, the inclusion of these four villains doesn't necessarily mean that any one of them is going to be a central villain.  They could all play a very small role in the episode, much like "The Pandorica Opens."  However, a recently released poster showing the Doctor holding a severed Cyberman's head in his hand suggests that, at least the Cybermen will play a major role.

That the episode takes place on Trenzalore is not a surprise to anybody who's been paying attention.    The plot of the Eleventh Doctor's final episode has been obvious since "The Wedding of River Song."  "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered."  The Doctor's going to be on Trenzalore, in a situation where the entire planet acts as a sort of truth serum, and then he's going to be asked his name (which is, for some reason, dangerous for him to say) and this will lead to his regeneration somehow.

Then the title was released, which is "The Time of the Doctor."  This suggests that Moffat thinks of this episode as part of a sort of trilogy with the two episodes before it, "The Name of the Doctor" and "The Day of the Doctor."

Then, Moffat finally came out and said, the Doctor definitely has only 12 regenerations, not 507 (fuck you Davies!), and that he is currently out of regenerations!  Obviously, the show's going to continue as there's already another Doctor waiting on deck, but the Doctor is supposed to be out of regenerations right now and that will be addressed "head on" in the Christmas special.  His interviews have heavily implied what I've already guessed:  That he used up a regeneration in "The Stolen Earth" without actually changing his face.  The pervading fan theory seems to be that River fixed the whole thing when she gave him her remaining regenerations in "Let's Kill Hitler" (presumably that's 10 more regenerations, unless there's another River regeneration we never saw).  This seems a little obvious but, remember, every now and then with Moffat, the easy answer is the correct answer (e.g. "Who is the impossible astronaut?")

However, would this mean that River's in the Christmas Special?  Nothing has said that she will be, but I can give you a list of about 100 reasons she fucking should be.

Then came the most intriguing news, at least to me.  Irish actress Orla Brady will be appearing in the special.  Who is she?  I don't know and I don't care.  Here's the part of the announcement that entices me:

"Brady's character is someone from the Doctor's past, with the plot of the festive episode revolving around her."

She's Susan.  She's Susan, she's Susan, she's fucking Susan Fucking Foreman!  If there was a bookie who took obscure bets on Doctor Who, I'd put a lot of money down on this woman being Susan.

Show your work?  Sure.

1.  I've been saying for a long time that the Doctor's role as a father (or grandfather) is going to come around in a big, big way.  The biggest hint is the cot in "A Good Man Goes to War," which Alex Kingston (River Song) told us in a Doctor Who Confidential episode, is a big hint.  The Doctor says it's his cot, but Kingston told us that someone else slept in it.

2.  The Eleventh Doctor has had a pretty self-contained story.  I don't think Moffat wants to wait until Capaldi's Doctor or later to unravel what he's started.  Right now, it looks like the hunt for Gallifrey is the only thing set up in the Matt Smith era that's going to be resolved in the Peter Capaldi era.

3.  In "The Day of the Doctor," there's a scene where Clara takes a nice big, long look at the picture of Susan on Kate's board that she has put up in the Black Archive with all the information about the Doctor.  It's a set up for a scene where Clara acknowledges that she knows who Susan is.

Now, "The Night of the Doctor" made the audio stories officially canon, which means the Doctor has reunited with Susan since her last appearance on the show in "The Five Doctors" (presumably the most recent we've seen her in her timeline is "The Dalek Invasion of Earth").  But the show is still long overdue for the return of the first ever companion, especially since she's related to the Doctor and, therefore, should have come up in some way, shape, or form by now.

A Doctor's Carol: An Overanalysis of "The Day of the Doctor"

Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. One day. -The First Doctor in An Unearthly Child

Once upon a time, an old man got bored.  So he ran away from home, and shit got crazy.  It's a simple story, and it's held up for 50 years, and now thirteen different actors playing the titular role.  The infinitely flexible premise could potentially go on forever.  No show has ever proved as flexible and as durable.  And yesterday, the whole world celebrated how powerful, flexible, and ultimately endearing the show has become.  16 years of cancellation failed to kill it.  Much like the title character, the show has proven infinitely regenerative.  And just because it's hit the 50 year mark doesn't mean it shows any signs of stopping.  This was far from a finale.  This was a statement to the world that the show is still going strong and has many more stories to tell.  I regret that I'm a late-comer to this fandom, but, in case you haven't noticed, I'm damn well dedicated it, and was glad to join in on the celebration.

The old saying goes that bad writers steal, good writers borrow.  If that's the case, then Moffat is very good at borrowing from Charles Dickens.  Because that's what this was.  I mean, I'm not the only one who got that, right?  Billie Piper as Bad Wolf as The Moment as The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.  It's a 12 Wonderful Lives!

The 1963 opening titles?  Nice touch.

I have to admit one thing I was completely wrong about.  Some people suggested that Billie Piper would be playing another role other than Rose.  Their reasoning was that her outfit was bizarre and she was only seen talking to True 9 in the trailer.  I insisted that the stuff about her only talking to True 9 in the trailer was a coincidence, and that Rose had often tried out some bizarre outfits that didn't quite work (like the Union Jack shirt).  I was wrong, but I have to admit that I was happy to be wrong.  Billie Piper as the guide was a way more interesting idea than somehow awkwardly trying to put Rose into an episode where she clearly would not have belonged.  And, while I'm not crazy about Rose, I loved Billie Piper as The Moment.  Her first few moments as The Moment were probably the best acting she ever did on the show.  She played a sly, sexy, wise, and powerful entity that was ultimately smarter than the Doctor himself.  Bad Wolf as the Doctor's savior.

I was going to write a big Eve of the Doctor write up to go up on Friday and give some of my opinions on things you should know for the episode, as well as a few predictions.  Unfortunately, I pulled a back muscle at work, and it's hard to write a blog while you're lying with your back flat on the floor to try to realign your spine.  I was going to try to give a little explanation of the Zygons.  Actually, at one point, I wanted to write one of my Doctor Who Book Reports on the Zygons.  But there's not enough information--or enough interest in me--to fill up one entire blog about them.  They're not a bad villain, but they're mostly unremarkable.  The only significant thing about the Zygons is that they have the technology--not the biological ability, mind you, but the technology--to turn themselves into other living creatures.  I knew that there was nothing else Moffat could possibly want them for other than their ability to shapeshift.  And boy, did he use that one.  Although, I don't understand why they needed to keep some humans hooked up to their machine to turn themselves into humans, and some of them they could pull it off on the fly.

There was a poll I saw asking people what they were most looking forward to in the special, and one of the options was the return of the Zygons.  It got the least votes, but I fail to see how it got any votes at all, or why it was even included on the list at all.  Who cares that much about Zygons?  Even Moffat didn't intend to use them for anything particularly big.  The Zygon plot was a parallel story designed to do nothing else but show the Doctor what he needed to do.

I was about 20 minutes from the end of the episode and thought "Why is Moffat focusing so much on this mediocre Zygon storyline?"  Then came the moment where Kate asks the Doctor if he's ever had to make the calculation of sacrificing the few to save the many and he said that he did it once, but that it was the wrong decision, that's when I realized what Moffat was doing.  I realized that this was the story that was going to teach the Doctor that he had to save Gallifrey, not burn it.  It was a parallel story to teach a lesson.  And I realized it was going to result in the Doctor saving Gallifrey.

That's when I started crying.

The other thing I was going to do in my "Eve of the Doctor" blog was remind you all about the significance of Queen Elizabeth.  Trust Moffat to take a one-off gag and turn it into a major plot point of the most important episode in the history of the series thus far.  Gareth Roberts, one of the better writers on Doctor Who right now, introduced the joke in the end of "The Shakespeare Code" where the Virgin Queen is ready to kill the Doctor for reasons that he didn't know because he was meeting her out of order.  Davies and Moffat seemed to appreciate the joke, as they both took it and ran with it.  Davies had the Doctor marrying Queen Bess in "The End of Time (Part 1)," and Moffat brought it up in "The Beast Below" and "The Wedding of River Song."  Not only is it hilarious to blow up such a small joke into something big like that, it's also the only thing that tells us where this episode takes place in the 10th Doctor's timeline.  Presumably, this has to take place, for him, between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time," as that's when he said he married Queen Elizabeth.

Similarly, the "it doesn't do wood" line, which began way back in "Silence in the Library," became such a major plot point, it actually resulted in the ultimate outcome of the episode.  The Doctor finds a way to finally take down a wooden door using his screwdriver, just that it would take 400 years to pull it off.  It turned out that that wasn't necessary, but it was the inspiration for the end of the episode.  Because the same exact logic used in taking down that door was used to save Gallifrey.  If anyone is going to come in and try to tell me that saving Gallifrey was some sort of "Deus Ex Machina," I will again direct them to the fact that the definition of a Deus Ex Machina is a solution that comes out of nowhere and was not set-up in the episode.  The scene with the screwdrivers and the doors is what set up the plot to save Gallifrey, and that, by definition, is not a Deus Ex Machina.

In related news, I want a smaller word or phrase to have to type out than "Deus Ex Machina" because it comes up a lot when writing about Doctor Who.

The last thing I was going to predict in my post--and I swear this isn't just 20/20 hindsight--was that the Time Lords would be re-established in the Universe by the end of this episode.  I was half right.  The cool thing is that he saved Gallifrey (probably), but now has a new mission in life:  to find the planet he saved.  But there's a problem now, and one they never addressed in this special:  In "The End of Time (Part 2)," the 10th Doctor says that he had to kill the Time Lords because they wanted to basically destroy all of time, space, and existence itself and ascend to a higher plane of existence.  It could be that they were only planning to do that to destroy the Daleks, but it sounds like the kind of megalomaniacal plan that wouldn't change once its original justification is removed.  So basically, I think they would probably try and pull it again once they're removed from stasis.  This means the Doctor has a pretty tough task ahead of him when he does find Gallifrey:  he still has to deal with some crazy ass Time Lords after he's rescued them.  That's not entirely unprecedented.  Honestly, the Doctor's relationship with his own people is a strange one, one of antagonism, but not hatred.  He disapproves of his own people's actions, and they disapprove of his.  But that doesn't mean he wants them to die.

My friend Dawn pointed out that Osgood is probably, somehow, Clara's sister.  I didn't think of this until Dawn told me, but now it makes perfect sense.  Her name sounds a lot like Clara's last name (I'm assuming Osgood is a last name), and her Zygon copy said she was jealous of her more attractive sister.  But, while Osgood and Clara didn't share much screen time, they did see each other enough that, if they knew each other, one of them should have said something.  The most likely scenario I can imagine is that Clara doesn't know she has a sister, and Osgood knew but kept it a secret for some reason.

Speaking of Clara, the idea of her teaching at Coal Hill School was a stroke of genius.  I mean, is it a bit of a stretch for her to go from being a nanny to a teacher?  Maybe a little.  But she's teaching at the same school as the Doctor's first companions, Ian and Barbara, and a sign says that Ian is now the Chairman of the Governors at the school.  So, clearly, it was a little nepotism that got her the job, with the Doctor calling in a small favor.  Still, a great idea.  I hope she's still working there when we see her next.

I'm not touching the part about Clara meeting Kate out of order.  I can't think of a less interesting or important mystery to bring up in the episode.

I have one apology to make.  Months back, I did a write-up of a trailer that turned out to be a fake.  I didn't realize this until yesterday when I realized that not a single shot from that trailer appeared in this episode.  I don't know how a fan made trailer was that deceiving.  I didn't recognize a single shot or line from the trailer from a past episode.

Peter Capaldi's brief cameo made me stand up and applaud.  (I was watching this with a group of Whovians on a projector at a store that was primarily used for Magic: The Gathering tournaments, so it was not that weird to stand and applaud at a science fiction show.)    It was a brief moment, but it was a glorious moment.  As the Doctors unite, 12/13 won't stand idly by.  He's certainly going to lend a hand.  I like him already.

When the girlfriend saw the mind eraser devices in the Black Archive, she thought this was going to be the convenient way to make it so the 3 Doctors don't remember each other.  She thought this was a little lazy, but she didn't find it nearly as lazy as what actually happened.  She thought they were going to intentionally erase True 9 and 10's memories because, otherwise, the 11th Doctor couldn't ever get involved in this situation and keep himself from destroying Gallifrey.   Cool idea, but the show's never really been that worried about that type of paradox.  And the simpler explanation that, once the timelines cross, the memories of the other Doctors were erased, has two benefits:  1) It explains all the other multi-Doctor episodes (except "Time Crash," which it actually contradicts directly) and 2) It allowed for the 13 Doctors United scene without anyone having to stop off and erase 8 other Doctors' memories.  (The girlfriend found the Doctors United scene lazy as well.)

The Doctors United scene was beautiful and touching.  Yes, it required a bit of a stretch in logic.  Yes it was a little cheap to bring in all the Doctors in stock footage rather than in live action.  But, come on, that scene was fun!  For the first time, all of the Doctor's regenerations worked together.  The man who has saved so many worlds is finally able to save his own, united with all of his selves.

Tom Baker's cameo, however, was a little bit more interesting of a moment.  Rule 1, Rule 1, Rule 1!  Why do I let Moffat convince me that he's not lying about things?  He's proven himself to be a big fat liar before, and then he does it again and I believe he's not lying this time.  He's kind of like my ex-girlfriends in that way.  So I let him convince me that he was telling the truth when he said there would be no classic series Doctors in the special.  He's going to try to couch this into language, saying that "No, he's not playing a Classic Doctor," and he'll be wrong.  He knows what we really meant when we, the fans, bombarded him with questions about which past Doctors would come back.  He knew full well that we didn't think that past Doctor actors playing different parts (which may or may not be future Doctors) didn't "count."

So Tom Baker is a future Doctor?  The character of The Curator was left very ambiguous so as to explain the significant difference in age between Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor and Tom Baker now.  But basically implies that, somewhere in the distant future, the Doctor will "revisit" some of his old faces.  But only his favorites.  A bizarre idea, to be sure, but one that makes a little more sense than pretending Tom Baker is the same guy he was in the 70s.

The return of Tom Baker is so significant simply because of his obstinate refusal to return for decades.  It was 2009 before he agreed to come back to do audio adventures.  Hell, he even refused to do the 25th Anniversary special!  Thankfully, Moffat must have been more persuasive than the late Jonathan Nathan-Turner was.  I'd have to look this up, but this might give Moffat the record as the person to have written for the most different Doctors in the series:  4, 5, 8, True 9, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

Moffat has said that the next regeneration, Peter Capaldi's, is going to be dark.  I thought this made sense, as Season 7 was pointing the show in a darker direction.  But, after this episode, I don't see it.  This should be the happiest and least-dark era of the Doctor's life since before the Time War started.  The Doctor will always have blood on his hands, but now he has gallons less than he thought he did.  Why would the 12th Doctor go darker?  It seems like he should be facing the Universe now with a much lighter heart than he has for the past 7 seasons.

I guess it all depends on what happens on Trenzalore.