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Jack Kirby, “Incan Visitation”

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Jack Kirby

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The doctor being against AI art (1979)

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Star Wars: Dark Empire II #4 - Modular Taskforce Cruiser by Cam Kennedy

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Sushi Bedroom by Daisuke (2023)

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What I love about Twice Upon A Time is the emotional layer it gives the First Doctor’s regeneration.

This is something that is… really quite absent in The Tenth Planet - which is understandable given the context, but also makes it feel so weirdly separate from the rest of the show.

The only reason we even had a clip of the First Doctor’s regeneration is because Blue Peter showed it once, some decades back. On top of all the early Doctor Who stuff that has been lost from the BBC’s archives, this vital piece of the show’s DNA was almost lost to history as well…

I’ve primarily seen the talk about the First Doctor’s usage in Twice Upon A Time revolving around how the episode addresses the character’s casual misogyny and… not much else.

Nothing about how scared he was to be facing regeneration, to be grappling with the idea - for the first time - of becoming a new person.

Nothing about how, on top of that, he comes face-to-face with the legacy of his future selves, presented in the negative way they are, as ‘the Doctor of War’. An idea that he finds unthinkable, even as he hasn’t yet found himself truly stepping into the role of ‘The Doctor’.

And certainly nothing about one of my favourite scenes in the episode - that profoundly philosophical discussion he has with Bill, reframing a piece of the show’s mythology from a new angle by asking a different question. There were many reasons why he ran away from Gallifrey, but it has never been asked before what exactly he was running to…

And we get to have the First Doctor say his piece on that, subtly tying back into a famous quote of his from the end of The Daleks:

“You wanted advice, you said. I never give it. Never. But I might just say this to you. Always search for truth. My truth is in the stars.”

Indeed, this is something of a recurring motif, as he says this again to Susan in The Reign of Terror - the last serial of the first season.

“Our lives are important - at least to us - and as we see, so we learn… Our destiny is in the stars, so let’s go and search for it.”

So what the First Doctor says to Bill about pursuing an answer to the question of good and evil, trying to understand how good can prevail when it requires things that are inherently selfless - things such as sacrifice and love - and evil should, in theory, always win, fits in beautifully with his established character. He learns to hope, in a way that he didn’t quite before, in saving the Captain’s life and witnessing the Christmas truce.

He previously said that the universe rarely turns out to be a fairy tale, but he learns that it’s up to him - to us - to try to make it one.

The Tenth Planet wasn’t the First Doctor’s story, it was Ben who was largely put forward as the main character - William Hartnell’s illness leaving the Doctor on the sidelines for the most part, save for a few key scenes.

I feel that Twice Upon A Time managed to give us that - a proper final send-off for the First Doctor, one that doesn’t just work with the limits of The Tenth Planet but embraces them. When David Bradley enters the TARDIS, accompanied by Murray Gold’s Vale, and it transitions back to William Hartnell lying on the floor as we see his face morph into Patrick Troughton’s while the music swells to a triumphant climax… it emotionally recontextualises something that has, for so long, existed purely to serve the function of keeping the show going when its lead actor was too ill to continue.

The First Doctor got to have the explosive fanfare of regeneration the way every other Doctor has had without changing a thing, save for his final line - no longer “Keep warm” to Ben and Polly, but a promise to himself to go about living his life the long way round.

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I ramble a lot when trying to explain the eerie and striking energy I get from Hartnell/Troughton Who’s visuals and atmosphere, and what I’m trying to get at is, like… 

Hartnell’s Gallifrey would be Susan’s beautiful description in The Sensorites, and then just purely 1936′s Things to Come…

and 1946′s A Matter of Life and Death (kino)…

… a world of humming mists that had become little more than a museum to history, the Big Bang to Earth to the end, in which one of their number could grumpily sit on massive steps and continue researching his favorite period in un-rewritable, inarguable history… The French Revolution.  

(And then with just a dash, just a DASH, of Maurice Noble.)

And then meanwhile, Troughton’s Gallifrey would be the glimpses we see in The War Games but expanded to the scale of 1966′s The Time Tunnel, in stark black and white. 

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SUSAN: “I can’t, Mister Chesterton. You can’t simply work on three of the dimensions.”

IAN: “Three of them? Oh, time being the fourth dimension, I suppose? Then what do you need E for? What do you make the fifth dimension?”

SUSAN: “Space.”

“DOCTOR: Yes, the planet Quinnis, of the fourth universe.”

VICKI: “Time [fourth dimension], like space [fifth dimension], though a dimension in itself, has dimensions of its own.” 

THE RILLS: “Though we are beings of separate planets, you from the solar system and we from another space, our ways of thought, at times, do not seem all that different.”

MALPHA: “Suppose they send a message through this universe?”

[…]

MALPHA: “This is indeed an historic moment in the history of the universe. We six from the outer galaxies, joining with the power from the solar system, the Daleks!”

Revisiting this post of mine after rewatching Galaxy 4 and fixating on the Rills’ phrasing a little. Playing with the Hartnell era’s outdated (often intentionally) or kitschy, already rusted “space-age” approach to cosmology. 

The outdated way of viewing galaxies as “island universes,” the idea of “galaxy” and “universe” being interchangeable terms. “Space” as something just as surreal, strange, as “Time,” with multiple dimensions of its own. The reverberation, the haunted humming, of evil and machine monsters tapping into a sort’ve “cosmic unreality.” The night sky endless “island universes” drifting past, beside, and through each other. Different galaxies, sure, but evidently equal as different dimensions, entirely different definitions of “space” and “universe.” Different properties. Dreamlike. Child’s logic. 

And this approach to space sort’ve slips away textually with Troughton, replaced with the eerie, spooky sense of vast space, of whole worlds and universes hidden in the folds of humming velvet black, but it still… I dunno. 

And it’s all so… empty. 

Perhaps, to jump a few eras and (extreme) aesthetics later, distressingly empty. 

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The Troughton era’s shift from the more dreamlike radiophonic fog of Hartnell “surrealist kitsch” into flatout B-movie trappings constantly portraying the sheer dizzying size of empty and desolate outer space is so good. A haunting artifice familiar from every 50s and 60s B-Movie trope checklist creating gorgeously offbeat tone. 

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I am slowly losing my mind over the shift towards video as the default media format.

I do not find this to be an efficient way to absorb information. I am bored and distracted by the time the largely unnecessary introduction is over. I can't use ctrl+f to find the specific information I'm looking for. If there are instructions to follow, I don't want to have to constantly pause and back up to the part I need.

At least give me a fucking transcript.

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cursed to forever mourn 9 not being in day of the doctor

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Well, this certainly reframes the Time Lord Victorious speech somewhat:

“Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realise the Laws of Time are mine and they will obey me!”

A while back, I reached the conclusion that the majority of canon evidence points to the Doctor having been a Gallifreyan lawyer. Every time I remember this it unsettles me again.

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Prince of Darkness by John Carpenter.

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The John Carpenter collection

Prince Of Darkness (1987)

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message to all bitches

please survive