A) Have seen the most recent episode of Doctor Who (as of its UK airdate!)
B) Want to know about rumors and theories of what's coming up in future episodes
ALSO...
While this blog is not meant to be overtly lewd or pornographic, it is aimed towards adults and may occasionally be inappropriate for children(despite being a blog about what is, ostensibly, a children's show).
One thing I love about the Chibnall era is the focus on historical episodes. There’s this term fans use, “pure historicals,” which describes an episode where the only science fiction element is the TARDIS and otherwise the episode is just about the Doctor and their companions getting swept up in historical events. Now there haven’t really been any pure historicals since all the way back in the 1st Doctor era (although some argue that there’s one in the 5thDoctor era) but the 13th Doctor era has come close a few times, particularly with “Rosa” and especially with “Demons of the Punjab” where the aliens in the episode turned out to be benign and basically inconsequential to the plot. There’s also a focus on historical accuracy that hasn’t been seen perhaps ever in the history of the show. “Rosa” is probably the most historically accurate episode of Doctor Who ever made. “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror” is not as close to a pure historical as “Rosa” or “Demons of the Punjab,” but there’s a huge emphasis on the real life history of Tesla and educating people about him, harkening back to the show’s original intention of being an educational show for children when the show started in 1963.
That being said, I thought there were a few flaws in the episode, the biggest one being that the strictly non-violent 13thDoctor seems all too eager to blast the Skithra queen with electricity and kill her. Why is blasting her ship with a bolt of electricity any better than shooting her with a gun, Doctor. Also the show has finally reached the point where it’s ripping off itself, because the Skithra were an absolute carbon copy of the Racnoss from “Runaway Bride.” If you’re going to put the Racnoss in an episode, just call them the Racnoss. Or was the idea that they’re such thieves that the Skithra stole their appearance from the Racnoss? If so, that should have been made clearer in the dialogue. And one more nitpicky complaint: the British actor who faked an American accent to play Edison did a pretty good job, except he kept using the British pronunciation of the word “patent” with the long a sound instead of the American pronunciation with the short a.
But complaints aside, it was still a pretty strong episode, especially compared to last week’s disaster, “Orphan 55.” Goran Višnjić, a Croatian-born actor living in America, does an excellent job portraying Tesla, a Serbian-born man living in America. The episode went out of its way to educate people on the forgotten history of Tesla (although I think that he’s making a resurgence in public consciousness anyway. And it’s always fun to see the Doctor get excited about meeting a celebrity. Jodie Whittaker again does a good job or depicting a Doctor who is still recovering from the events of “Skyfall,” as the Doctor seems closer back to her old self but not all the way there yet.
I’m excited for this coming week’s episode, partially for the return of the Judoon, but more so because the BBC has been teasing a bigger reveal than the return of The Master in this week’s episode. I’m really hoping they’re not full of it, but we’ll see. Catch you next time!
Every now and then an episode comes along that’s so god awful that you pretty much have to pretend it never happened. The last time this happened was three seasons ago with the Gatiss-penned disaster that was “Sleep No More,” an episode so bad it comes with a warning at the beginning not to watch it. “Orphan 55” might be irredeemably bad, but it’s at least a half step above “Sleep No More.” In “Orphan 55,” not only does the main plot fail, every single subplot of the episode fails to work as well. First of all the Dregs, who look like the Ood on steroids, are not scary. The twist that the planet is actually Earth both fails to be interesting but it also contradicts established continuity. The episode can’t seem to decide if it’s about global warning or nuclear winter, so it kinda does both and hopes you won’t notice. Then the heavy handed message at the end, which I wholeheartedly agree with by the way, is lacking in any remote semblance of subtlety. The whole episode hits you over the head with a message that it didn’t really think out.
Then there’s the terrible subplots. First there’s the aborted romance between Ryan and Bella which, after every single scene shows Ryan striking out with her, ends with probably the most unearned kiss in the history of Doctor Who.Vilma and Benni’s story could have been really sweet if the episode hadn’t killed them off in such a callous fashion. Nevi and Sylas, two characters that barely have a plot line, seem to fight and make up based on what the script needs, not based on any particular motivations. Similarly, Bella’s plot line about her estranged mother seems completely chaotic with characters’ emotion changes coming from seemingly nowhere.
There was very little that this episode got right. Graham’s giddiness at being on vacation is earnest, endearing, and amusing. Jodie Whittaker does a good job or keeping a cloud over the Doctor’s mood, showing none of her typical joy and light following her discovery about Gallifrey. Other than that, there’s nothing redeemable about this episode, which is surprising considering how good Ed Hime’s last episode, “It Takes You Away,” was. Here’s hoping that “Orphan 55” is the low point of the season and not par for the course, because this was easily the worst episode since “Sleep No More.”
As much as I think it was too soon to bring back the Master this soon, I can’t get over how truly magnificent Sacha Dhawan’s performance is as The Master. He’s possibly the most terrifying and most sinisterly playful Master to date. I really want to see the regeneration from Missy to Sacha Dhawan’s Master, simply because I think Dhawan would absolutely rock that dress.
Now, I brought that up in a Doctor Who Facebook group and several people suggested that Dhawan is playing an earlier version of the Master, perhaps even from the Master’s first set of regenerations back in the classic series, citing his obsession with killing the Doctor as well as his use of tissue compression, both of which are more indicative of early Masters than they are of Missy. Nice theories, but there’s a fatal flaw in them: the Master knows that Gallifrey is in a bubble universe, which places him after “Day of the Doctor,” meaning he has to be at least a later version than John Simm’s Master. It’s possible that this Master is between Simm’s Master and Missy, but I doubt it. I think that this is probably the next Master after Missy, which, as I pointed out last week, means Chibnall is essentially ignoring the redemptive arc that Missy was on. But then again, regeneration can change a lot of things, like when the 12th Doctor became a much angrier man than his predecessor. Others bring up that Missy was supposed to be unable to regenerate after the Master shot her with the full blast of his laser screwdriver, but that’s a ridiculous and petty complaint as the Master has easily escaped much worse fates than that and I can imagine several ways they could have survived. I would have liked an explanation for how the Master survived, but I can understand why the Doctor didn’t ask since the Doctor wasn’t there for Missy’s death.
It’s hard to believe that Doctor Who is a children’s show sometimes, and this is one of those times, as Barton killing his own mother and the Master posing as a Nazi are pretty dark even for the show that suggested once that we might be fully conscious when we get cremated after death. I said I missed the show’s darkness last season, and it was sort of nice to see it return. Still, it was a little frustrating to see Gallifrey gone again after the Doctor (not to mention Steven Moffat) went through so much effort to bring back Gallifrey and the Time Lords. I really hope that we find that some Time Lords survived (and some promotional images from later in the season suggest they have).
And oh yes, the Timeless Child. Finally, a new season-long mystery to unravel and speculate on. Who is the Timeless Child? While it has echoes of “An Unearthly Child,” it doesn’t make sense for Susan to be the stuff of legends around the founding of Gallifrey. Omega would make a bit more sense, as he’s supposed to be the founder of Time Lord society. Could we finally be getting into some Cartmel Madterplan stuff? Probably not, but a girl can dream. But it’s nice to see Chibnall taking a deep dive into the show’s mythology.
Chibnall seems to be doing much less writing than last season, and next week we get an episode from Ed Hime who gave us last season’s brilliant Norwegian string theory mystery, “It Takes You Away,” so I’m looking forward to it. So see ya next time!
The fuck was that? I love The Master more than anyone, but the show needs breaks from its greatest villain. We had three seasons jam packed with Missy, so we needed at least two or three seasons with no Master whatsoever. But nope! We get the Master back again and, after the magnificent gender swap and the incomparable performance of Michelle Gomez, and at a time when the Doctor is finally a woman, the Master has regenerated back into a man. He’s also regressed from the character that The Doctor almost turned good in “The Doctor Falls” and seems to have returned to his old schtick of trying to kill the Doctor. I’ll give them credit for making the Master’s identity a twist at the end, like it always should be, unlike John Simm’s not-so-surprise appearance at the end of “The World Enough and Time” that was spoiled by all the trailers, but this just feels like going back to the well way too soon.
That being said, if the character has to be brought back and downgraded back into a man, Sacha Dhawan is a perfect casting choice. I think some tabloid got ahold of the news that Dhawan was the new Master, but tabloids have been reporting a lot of wacky nonsense lately that has turned out to be horseshit, so I didn’t necessarily believe that. Dhawan goes from innocent and friendly and even flirting with Yaz only to turn on a dime and letting his deliciously sinister side out. His expressions on the plane are absolutely priceless, and were frankly my favorite part of the episode. While I have some problems with the way this Master was handled, I have nothing but praise for the casting choice.
But that’s the problem with this episode: it’s mostly just killing time until we get to a pretty mediocre reveal at the end of the episode. The whole thing was fairly dull, to be honest. The episode plays around with some tropes from the Daniel Craig Bond films, which I have to admit a certain prejudice against. I fell asleep during Skyfall, so when I heard that this episode was going to be “Spyfall” you could color me less than thrilled. And by the time we get to the big cliffhanger, I’m left with more questions than answers, but I really don’t care what the answers to those questions are going to turn out to be in part two. Why are these aliens attacking spies and dumping them in some creepy forest? Why is the Master involved in this? Why was Stephen Fry brought in only to be killed off after about three minutes?
Actually, let’s touch back on this one, why bring in Stephen Fry for so short a time? Rumor has it he was offered the role of the Doctor during the classic series, and it’s known he wrote a script for the revived series in season two that never got made, so after years of almost getting one of the greatest comic actors of all time on the show we finally get him for an extremely minor role that’s over too quickly.
So pretty much the only saving grace in this snoozer of an episode was Sacha Dhawan’s brilliant performance. The rest was a snoozer of an opener to this season and I can only hope that part two picks up the pace and delivers something a lot more interesting than part one.
Oh, and like all good Who villains need to be resurrected, welcome to the resurrection of (the slightly redesigned) Horror of Fan Blog! I tried to retire it last season in favor of posting on the Mile High Who website. But I got sidetracked, and now the MHW website is no more. So this season my reviews will appear in the blog and as notes in the Mile High Who Facebook group. Let’s get ready for what, I hope, will be a better season than that episode suggests.
Senioritis: A condition peculiar to high school seniors, hence the subword "senior" in senoritis. Symptons include a general apathy towards classes, homework, future i.e. college applications, restlessness and a "cannot do" attitude to surmountable school load. - Urban Dictionary
Despite all the hullabulloo about "Twice Upon a Time" being Peter Capaldi's last episode, we're forgetting another goodbye here. It's also Steven Moffat's last episode writing for Doctor Who. Moffat always kept an open invitation extended to Russell T. Davies to come back and write a one-off episode, but Davies never took him up on it. All signs point to Chibnall holding out the same invitation to Moffat, but Moffat has indicated he doesn't intend to take advantage of the invitation either. After six seasons as showrunner, 47 episodes, four minisodes, and one licensed parody, Steven Moffat is finally done (so he says) with the Doctor Who franchise. (Of course, Rule 1.) And for the conclusion off all that work, the greatest writer Doctor Who has ever known (fuck the haters) caps off his run on the show with possibly his biggest limp dick of an episode.
"Twice Upon a Time" can't really be called a "story" in the traditional sense. The elements of a story are considered to be character, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution . "Twice Upon a Time" lacks conflict. Hell, I'd argue it barely has a plot. The episode even goes so far as to point out its own biggest flaw when the Doctor shouts out "It's not an evil plan!" More or less, the Doctor happens upon a perfectly innocent science project, mistakes it for something evil, realizes it isn't, and moves along on his way. That's distinctly not a story.
But the episode is an excuse to have some interesting conversations between the 12th Doctor, the 1st Doctor, Mark Gatiss for some reason, and Bill. Here's the thing, I hate William Hartnell's 1st Doctor. He played the character as a pompous ass, and Hartnell couldn't remember his lines to save his life, which was especially difficult when they couldn't afford to reshoot anything. Steven Moffat has talked about how, looking at David Bradley's version of the 1st Doctor is like looking through a time machine and seeing William Hartnell's Doctor in the flesh.
The fuck is he talking about?
Bradley's voice is distinctly deeper than Hartnell's, for starters. His face looks nothing like Hartnell's, as the 12th Doctor comments on. He doesn't act like the 1st Doctor at all. While the 1st Doctor had a general air of superiority about him, that was always directed towards men and women equally. He never showed himself to be the rampant misogynist that he appears to be in the "Twice Upon a Time." Either Moffat hasn't watched the black and white episodes in a minute, or else he wanted to show everyone who accused him of sexism what sexism actually looks like. Also, bragging about sexual exploits? No Doctor does that. The first Doctor had presumably one partner that we've never met, since he has a granddaughter, and he had a brief romance with an Aztec woman that probably amounted to nothing. Either way, he's never been one to kiss and tell. Remember that just because the 1st Doctor lived in the 1960s and his era aired in the 60's doesn't mean that he's a man from the 60's. Any regeneration, and the Doctor is still an alien who has travelled all of time and space and is millennia ahead of simple human prejudices.
There are only a few things that "Twice Upon a Time" gets right about the 1st Doctor. One is that he always holds his damn lapels whatever he's doing. The other is that the 1st Doctor is not truly a hero. He's surprised by the notion of the 12th Doctor declaring the Earth to be "protected," because the 1st Doctor didn't see himself as a protector of the Earth. He was just an explorer bumbling about, much like 12's speech at the end of "Death in Heaven." I did love the 1st Doctor's explanation of what he was running to, though, that he was trying to realize why good so often triumphs when everything suggests that it shouldn't. He went out in search of the source of that balance in the Universe, and accidentally became the balance he was looking for.
If I let go of my lapels, my neck will fall off.
I loved the line "To be fair, they cut out all the jokes" and it is my nw go-to response for everything now:
Why are the DCEU movies so boring?
Why wasn’t Two and a Half Men ever funny?
Why was Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s press conference so weird?
Why didn’t Kevin Spacey’s apology speech go over better?
Honestly, some of the banter between the two Doctors was amusing, but the fact that the 1st Doctor wasn't the 1st Doctor spoiled it for me. Although I did like that 12 could steer 1's TARDIS which confirms something I've always suspected: The 1st Doctor's TARDIS didn't have a broken navigation system, the 1st Doctor just never had any fucking clue how to steer the damned thing.
While Rusty the Good Dalek is a great name for a Saturday morning cartoon show (RIP), I don't understand why Rusty is so intent on killing the Doctor. They seemed to part on good terms, they have similar goals, what do they have to hate each other over? It seemed like Moffat didn't go back and watch his own episode before writing this one.
I did like the moment of the Christmas Armistice, which is a fascinating point in history, and I don't know how I didn't see that one coming. That being said, it annoyed me that that was the only part of the episode that had anything to do with Christmas! Moffat once said he hated Christmas specials that didn't actually have anything to do with Christmas. Well, he's written two back to back (this and "Mysterio") that only feature one scene on Christmas. I was sad to see his last one lacked any real Christmas to it.
Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land...
The Doctor's regeneration scene, however, was better than the rest of the episode combined. The goodbyes from Bill and Nardole felt hollow since we knew they weren't really them. Admittedly the same could be said of Clara's goodbye, but I think the main point of that moment was to give the Doctor back his memories of her, not for her to say a real goodbye to her. The speech he gives his future self is some of Peter Capaldi's finest work, and a reminder of why he will always be one of the finest actors to ever play the role.
Speaking of actors, hello Jodie Whittaker, who I'm so excited to see taking on this role. The Girl Who Was Hated. I honestly expected they wold make a joke about her noticing she's not ginger before she realized she was a woman now. The revived series has this annoying pattern where, every time the Doctor is about to regenerate, he punches in coordinates and starts the engines right when he is about to regenerate. Think about it, it's happened every time: War to 9, 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and now in this episode we can not only say the same about 12 to 13, but also about 1 to 2. Smartest man in the universe and he can't figure out that it's a bad idea to start up the most powerful vessel in the universe right before he's about to come down with massive amnesia and confusion. "I'm about to go blind, now's a good time to go for a drive." This time it ended more disastrously than ever before, as the 13th Doctor pressed one button, catapulted herself out the door, at which time the TARDIS dematerialized, leaving her both plummeting towards the ground and stranded without her TARDIS. (The first person I hear make a joke about women drivers, I will detach something valuable from you.) . She'll probably survive the fall because she's technically still regenerating and therefore can heal her injuries, but I'm really excited to see Series 11 start off with a Doctor in a new gender, confused, lost, stranded, with no companions. It's likely to be her most desperate situation upon starting a new regeneration, and I can't wait to see it. Sadly, rumor has it we won't see the next series until September or so. I can't wait.
While we're waiting, I might post in here once or twice. I have been watching all of Jodie Whittaker's other roles and intend to make a post about that at some point. Maybe I'll make another post or two in the meantime. So, until then, fuck you, get pumped, the Doctor is a woman and this is gonna rock!
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.
