#Timestamps Project

[esonetwork]

Timestamp #281: World Enough and Time & The Doctor Falls

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-281-world-enough-and-time-the-doctor-falls/

Timestamp #281: World Enough and Time & The Doctor Falls

Doctor Who: World Enough and Time Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls (2 episodes, s10e11-12, 2017)

Powerful, surprising, and heartbreaking: A Doctor Who triple threat.

World Enough and Time

Upon a snowy landscape, the Doctor stumbles from the TARDIS and repeats the word “no” as he begins to regenerate. He falls to his knees as the energy overtakes him…

…and we flash back to a long cylindrical spaceship hovering at the edge of a black hole’s event horizon. The TARDIS materializes in the control room at the closest point to the phenomenon and Missy emerges. She describes herself as “Doctor Who” and introduces her companions. As alarms sound, we find out that this is a test of Missy’s resolve to be good. The Doctor watches from the TARDIS as Missy, Bill, and Nardole work through the puzzle and make contact with a blue-skinned humanoid named Jorj.

Jorj arrives at the control room with a gun and demands to know which of them is human. As three lifts race toward the control room, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and Bill admits to being human. Jorj declares that she is why the lifts are coming and shoots Bill, mortally wounding her. Figures with bandaged faces emerge from the lifts and take Bill, claiming they will fix her but will not return. The Doctor decides to trust them and leaves a psychic message for Bill to wait for him when she wakes.

Before the trip, Bill had disagreed with the Doctor about the rehabilitation test. The Doctor wanted Missy to be good, but Bill didn’t know if it was possible. They later had a discussion about the Doctor, the Master, and Time Lords and their flexible approaches to gender. Bill confided that Missy scared her, and the Doctor told Bill that he would do his best to not let her die.

This pressure now weighs on the Doctor. He let his companion die on his watch.

The Doctor tries to scan the lift with his sonic screwdriver, and when Jorj threatens him, he warns Jorj not to make him angry. The Doctor is borderline furious. Nardole finds thousands of life signs in the lower levels of the ship, leading the Doctor to understand that the different levels of the ship are moving at different times due to relativity.

On one of those lower levels, Bill wakes up in a medical facility with a cybernetic heart in her chest. She gets the message from the Doctor and meets a caretaker named Mr. Razor. She also hears a cybernetic voice calling out in pain. She finds the patient as screens show the time differential between Floor 0000 and Floor 1056. She can’t stop the voice from chanting “pain” over and over, and a nurse merely mutes the voice instead of tending to the pain. Bill finds that the others are also chanting about their pain but their voices are also muted.

Mr. Razor finds Bill and takes her to his room for tea. He explains that they are curing the people in the surgical  (conversion theater) suites and that she was saved from death with her new “shiny” cybernetic heart. She’s been on this level for months and passes the time watching the live feed of Level 0000. The Doctor literally takes a week to raise his eyebrow. Bill eventually recovers enough to work as a cleaner as she continues to wait. Meanwhile, the Doctor uses Venusian aikido to knock out Jorj and make his way to Bill.

Bill also cannot leave the hospital. Her heart will supposedly cease to function and the patients will raise the alarm. Mr. Razor explains that the people are being converted to survive Operation Exodus, a necessity since the human lifespan cannot survive the trip back to the top of the ship. Mr. Razor takes Bill outside one day, and sure enough, after a brief walk, her heart begins to fail.

The years pass and Bill continues to wait. She watches as the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole board a lift. They cannot take the TARDIS because the black hole with mess with navigation. Mr. Razor tricks Bill into one of the conversion theaters and condemns her to a full conversion. After all, people usually scream when they find out the real reason for surgery. They fit her for a headpiece that will inhibit emotion.

When the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole arrive on the bottom floor, Missy is left to explore the ship’s computer history. She soon meets Mr. Razor who is enamored with her and seems to know who she is. On separate paths, the travelers learn the truth: The ship’s origin was Mondas, the twin planet of Earth, and the conversions are the genesis of the Cybermen.

More shocking, Mr. Razor reveals that he is Missy’s predecessor, the Saxon Master. With that revelation in mind, Missy reverts to her cruel nature.

Even more shocking, this trip has turned upside down. The Cyberman standing before the Doctor is Bill Potts, and the former companion cries beneath the mask as she tells the Doctor that she waited for him.

The Doctor Falls

On Floor 0507, farmers and families face off against the scarecrows – the prototype Cybermen from Floor 1056 – shooting them at night and restraining them on wooden crosses by the light of day. One of those days, the relative peace is broken when a shuttle crashes through the ground near a girl named Alit. From the wreckage emerges a Cyberman carrying the unconscious form of the Doctor.

We flash back to the Doctor restrained to a wheelchair on the roof of the hospital on 1056. He was subdued by Missy and the Master, dancing and flirting as they discuss the Doctor’s deaths and how many regenerations he has left to spend. Notably, Missy cannot remember what happened that forced her regeneration. The Doctor ponders what happened in the Master’s life since he vanished while blasting Rassilon with his life energy.

Upon returning to Gallifrey, the Time Lords showed their gratitude for the Master’s help in preventing Rassilon from executing the Ultimate Sanction by restoring his body and kicking him off the planet. The Master stole a TARDIS and landed on the Mondasian colony ship where he lived like a king and killed at his leisure. When the colonist overthrew him and he attempted to run, he found that his TARDIS was burned out from being too close to the event horizon.

While they gloat, the Masters are shocked to find that the Cybermen are advancing on them. When the Masters attacked the Doctor, he was able to change the coding for humanity to read two hearts instead of one. With the Cybermen marching to convert the Time Lords, Missy knocks the Master unconscious and rescues the Doctor. She frees the Doctor and he calls for Nardole, who has successfully stolen a shuttle.

As the Masters and the Doctor try to board the shuttle, a Cyberman attacks the Doctor with an electrical shock. Bill kills the Cyberman but the Masters take over the shuttle as the Doctor falls. Bill stops the craft from taking off and ensures that the Doctor boards the shuttle.

That same shuttle has since crashed into 0507, leaving the entire group stranded. Two weeks pass as the Doctor recovers and Nardole prepares the families for war. Bill has been resigned to the barn since she frightens the children, and while she believes that she is still human, everyone else sees her as a Cyberman. Alit comes to her side with a mirror and Bill is shocked to see her true self. When the Doctor arrives, he rewards Alit for being kind to Bill. They have a brief discussion about Cybermen and what she’s become, Bill’s anger and grief boil over as she accidentally destroys the barn’s door.

The Doctor is amazed by Bill’s resiliency against the Cyberman programming. When Bill sheds a tear because everyone is afraid of her, he wipes it away and notes that she shouldn’t be able to cry. They meet with the Master, who mocks Bill and tells the Doctor about a plan that he and Missy have been working on. As they all walk across the farmland, the Doctor limps and stifles regeneration energy in his hand, revealing that his electrocution was fatal. When Bill worries about him and her future, he tells her that “where there’s tears, there’s hope.”

They reach the forest where the Master and Missy theorize that they’re out of temporal sync so they can’t retain their memories of these events. Missy reveals that the forest around them is a holographic wall disguising the lifts. Missy calls for one, not remembering that it is coming from the bottom floor and not empty. The lift reveals an evolved Cyberman, and despite killing it, the trio of Time Lords knows that the Cybermen now know where they are.

They cannot run because time is running faster on the lower levels. The Cyberman invasion would easily catch up to them. They have no choice but to fight as the Cybermen begin punching through the various floors. Nardole uses the fuel piping on Floor 0508 as weaponry and the Doctor finds a service duct that can be used to evacuate the children. Meanwhile, the Masters discuss running for their TARDIS on the bottom floor. After all, Missy once (now) threatened her former self into carrying a spare dematerialization circuit.

As night falls, the first wave of Cybermen appears. Nardole tricks them into believing that a single apple can destroy them all. When the Masters decide to leave, the Doctor delivers an emotional and passionate speech on why he helps people. It’s not easy and doesn’t always work, but it’s the right and kind thing to do. The Master ridicules the Doctor and continues on, but Missy is somewhat moved. She agrees that being the Doctor’s friend was what she always wanted, but she goes with her predecessor anyway. Within minutes, the two Masters arrive at the lift where the younger tricks the elder by fatally stabbing him and leaving just enough time to reach his TARDIS before regenerating. Unfortunately, the Master fires his laser screwdriver at Missy and mortally wounds her.

By all appearances, Missy dies. Her last intention was to return to the Doctor’s side.

The next wave of Cybermen arrives and Nardole’s tricks force them to retreat and develop a new plan. The Doctor downloads the plans for the floor into his sonic screwdriver and sends Nardole to escort the children to the service ducts. The Doctor convinces Nardole to leave despite the latter’s protests. After all, the Doctor is treating this like a suicide mission and Nardole owes him too much. The Doctor convinces Nardole that this will be penance for his crimes from before the Doctor rescued him. Bill stands beside the Doctor and Nardole admits that he’ll never be able to find the words for their sacrifice.

Now alone on Floor 0507, the Doctor and Bill prepare for a last stand by saying their farewells. They move to opposite sides of the floor and engage the Cybermen. The Doctor cites his numerous victories over them – Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus, Voga, Canary Wharf, and the Moon – before falling to several laser blasts. He nearly regenerates, but holds it back as he ignites the piping below the floor and engulfs the forest in fiery destruction. The Cybermen are destroyed.

As Nardole and his charges reach Floor 0502, he holds out hope that Bill and the Doctor will return. Alit convinces him to move on and focus on living with them instead.

Amongst the wasteland that is Floor 0507, Bill finds the wounded Doctor. She’s barely functioning, but her personality is nearly restored, and she mourns over the Time Lord’s body. She is surprised to find Heather emerging from a nearby puddle and learns that she’s real through a passionate kiss. Heather changed Bill into a being like her, and together they take the Doctor’s body back to the TARDIS. Heather sets the controls for a new location and offers Bill the choice to return to her old life or live a new one at her side as she travels the universe.

Bill chooses the latter, shedding a tear over her friend and telling him that “where there’s tears, there’s hope.” The two women depart as the TARDIS flies on and the Doctor heals, dreaming of Bill, Nardole, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Captain Jack, Donna Noble, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, Sarah Jane, Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, and River Song as they each call his name. The last voice is Missy’s, one which awakens the Doctor as he mutters some words of his former lives. He yells that he can’t keep being someone else and suppresses his regeneration as the TARDIS lands.

The Doctor is defiant, telling the TARDIS that he would listen to the lesson it’s trying to teach him, and steps into an arctic landscape. He screams into the snow and stifles his regeneration, pledging not to change as he hears a voice that echoes his concerns. When he demands to know who the other person is, he’s surprised to find the Doctor in the snowstorm. The original, you might say.

He finds the First Doctor.

Before this point, the televised history of the Cybermen was pretty simple: There were the Mondasian Cybermen from this universe and the Cybus Cybermen from Pete’s World. This pair of episodes complicate the evolution by introducing various origins for the Cybermen of this universe.

After Mondas was ejected from Earth’s orbit, the Mondasians were split into two groups based on the desire to fully embrace cyber conversion. The so-called Faction left Mondas to find their destiny in The Wheel in Space,  The Invasion, and The War Games (with a cameo in Carnival of Monsters and brief nods in Dalek and Death in Heaven). The remaining Mondans would evolve into Cybermen in this episode – and in the audio drama Spare Parts and the comics The World Shapers and The Cybermen, if you count those – before proceeding to The Tenth Planet. It’s worth noting that the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet arrived with their rogue planet, so these Cybermen might not be those Cybermen.

Apparently, every other version of the Cybermen evolved independently and on parallel trajectories across time and space. At least, that’s how the story goes as of right now since Doctor Who‘s continuity is perpetually fluid.

As if that wasn’t enough, we get a quasi-confirmation that “Doctor Who” is a legitimate variation of the Doctor’s name. These days, fans will point to all sorts of sources to justify the character’s moniker of “The Doctor,” but there are several sources that also make “Doctor Who” just as legitimate: The computer WOTAN repeatedly called for “Doctor Who” in The War Machines; The Second Doctor used the alias “Doktor von Wer” – literally, “Doctor [of] Who” – in The Highlanders; The Second Doctor signed a note as “Dr W” in The Underwater Menace; Bessie’s license plate was WHO 1 and WHO 7; and Miss Hawthorne referred to him as “the great wizard Qui Quae Quod” – literally “Who Who Who” in Latin – in The Dæmons.

What about the show’s credits, you might ask. The character was credited as “Doctor Who” from An Unearthly Child all the way through Logopolis, spanning 18 seasons of stories. Starting with Castrovalva and the Fifth Doctor’s run, the character was credited as “The Doctor” through the TV movie (which also credited the Seventh Doctor as “The Old Doctor”). The name changed again to “Doctor Who” for the Ninth Doctor‘s run before returning to “The Doctor” in The Christmas Invasion. Rose also featured a website entitled “Doctor Who?”.

All that to say that either name is legitimate, really. Sure, Missy lies… a lot… but her lies always have a kernel of truth within. In recent years, the title has referred more to an ethos and mission statement rather than an actual name.

Considering the stories at hand, the horror film feeling of these episodes is amazing. The first half is edge-of-your-seat tension mixed with copious amounts of body horror, and the second half blunts the body horror for more battlefield tension. The tension follows the lighting, leading to more empathic storytelling in daylight and ratcheting tension during the night. The Doctor’s impassioned speech is truly a last-stand Hail Mary pass, and it serves up more tension before the final battle. The moment that truly sent shivers down my spine was “pain, pain, pain,” cueing the audience to just how monstrous the Mondasians were.

Another shocker was the identity of Mr. Razor, but this is only because I didn’t the “coming soon” teaser at the end of The Eaters of Light when this series was in first-run. If I had known that John Simm was returning, I probably would have seen right through the Mr. Razor disguise. Since I didn’t know at the time, it blew me away back in 2017.

As someone who earned a degree in physics, I love when science fiction shows play around with the subject and can explain it to the home audience. Gravitational time dilation is a real phenomenon related to special relativity that has been observed on Earth. Scientists placed identical atomic clocks at different altitudes (which relates to the pull of gravity) and noted significant differences in time between them. In this case, “significant” is on the order of nanoseconds, but imagine scaling that up beyond the fragile envelope of our atmosphere to a really long spaceship parked longitudinally on the event horizon of a black hole. That difference in gravity is pretty big.

I did have a question about fridging the black woman in this story – a terrible trio of tropes! – but Bill doesn’t really die and she’s not put in peril by the villain simply as a means to motivate the hero, so I dismissed the idea.

The video of Level 0000 looks like a paused classic black-and-white episode of the show. It added to the feeling of tension and was a nice callback to the era that this story and its cliffhanger were meant to evoke.

The two Masters working side-by-side in this story was pure joy. Notably, this is the first televised story to feature multiple Masters. It was also the third finale of the three in Capaldi’s run to feature the Cybermen.

In the end, I’m left in awe of the Twelfth Doctor’s resolve and strength. He survived all of that and still had the fortitude to hold back one of the character’s most primal forces, setting the stage for Peter Capaldi’s swan song in the next adventure.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Cybermen #Doctor Who #First Doctor #Timestamps Project #twelfth doctor

[womprat99]

Schedule Update: The Timestamps Project (WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Edition)

Schedule Update: The Timestamps Project WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Edition The Timestamps Project is on hiatus in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America. I recognize that Doctor Who is guided primarily by Equity UK, formerly known as the British Actors’ Equity Association, but the show also holds a production number with the Screen Actors Guild because they pay pension and healthcare…

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#Doctor Who #Timestamps Project

[brotart]

Timestamp illustration! Call Vesper a girl again and I'll boil your teeth!

#art #artists on tumblr #my art #anime #oc #project timestamp #Moonshine Spectra #Vesper Arwen #not a ship #probably? #nonbinary #skeleton #monster girl #vesper is the human moonshine is the skeleton girl #illustration #illustrator #digital art #digital illustration #digital drawing

[royalarchivist]

Y'all, archivists are so cool, they really are the backbone of our community. I regularly bust my butt til 3am updating the QSMP VOD Timestamp Archive, but admittedly, I got a bit frustrated last night wondering if it was a waste of time and if anyone even uses it, but then I see all the archival work done by other members of our community and I'm just SO amazed by their dedication. We're all doing this because we love QSMP, and we don't want any part of it to get lost, and that itself feels like a preservation of our love for it. It's nice to think about.

Anyways, I haven't talked about the VOD Timestamp Archive much lately because I renovated it from the ground up last month (and again last night), so I'd like to wait for it to look ~perfect~ before doing another announcement post, but if there's anything I can do to help make it more useful for people, feel free to reach out to me via DMs and let me know!

#mod talk #I'm also always open to help #please for the love of god lmao #I feel really bad that almost none of the French streamers are represented in the archive #because I can't speak French and half of them don't use English subtitles #and the other half don't stream at a good time for me #I'd also love to flesh up the Timestamp document for April #this project started in May so there weren't many timestamps recorded for April since I don't have time to go back and rewatch things

[songmingisthighs]

BABY!XIKERS AU INTRODUCTION

so this is an au that @starlitmark and i made (on a whim) that ended up becoming a thing lmaooooo

and i knowww i knowww they're techincally not "babies" but the word babies on xikers is both adorable and accurate

this is the masterpost of the baby!xikers au which includes who is whose baby, the age gap set between members, their siblings and such. this is an open universe meaning that anyone and everyone are allowed to make a creation based off of this au (as long as this post is tagged in the post and is made clear that the creation was based on our au).

without further adoodoo, here are the members, age gaps, and their paired ateez dads :

Minjae, 6 years old - Hongjoong

Junmin, 6 years old - Seonghwa

Sumin, 5 years old - Mingi

Junghoon, 5 years old* - Wooyoung

Jinsik, 5 years old - Yunho

Hyunwoo, 5 years old - San**

Seeun, 4 years old - Mingi

Yujun, 4 years old - Yeosang

Hunter, 4 years old - Wooyoung

Yechan, 3 years old*** - Jongho

*junghoon is set as a year older for the sake of being brothers with hunter

** san has a daughter, a rainbow baby that's the same age as yechan named soohyun

*** yechan is set as a year younger than the maknae line because we want a toddler yechan

fics :

But what if...? - san × baby!hyunwoo @starlitmark

[10.34] - yunho × jinsik

[8.07] - mingi × sumin × seeun

Candy - yeosang × yujun × hunter @starlitmark

[9.14] - xikers ft. teacher!sunmi

[12:24] dad!hongjoong × baby!minjae (ft. mom!reader)

(more to be added)

network : @cultofdionysusnet

#cultofdionysusnet #xikers #xikers scenarios #xikers imagines #xikers timestamp #xikers fanfic #xikers au #kpop xikers #xikers fluff #xikers angst #minjae #junmin #sumin #jinsik #hyunwoo #junghoon #seeun #yujun #hunter #yechan #xikers baby au #collab #project #open universe

[dilfpassing]

I work at an alternative school for teen students who for many various reasons are unable to be functional in a traditional typical classroom setting - disciplinary reasons, anxiety, emotional disorders, trauma, etc. - and I assist with a lot of english classes. It makes me a little sad that the teacher I work the most closely with hates the catcher in the rye so much because I’ve been rereading it and I think my students would relate really closely to Holden Caulfield. Caulfield may be annoying and whiny and privileged and obnoxious but I think the narrative of a teenager who acts out and postures himself to be older than he actually is and is struggling to comprehend and process a lot of trauma in his life so he does things he can’t even explain to himself and acts self destructive and lashes out to other people and has emotional breakdowns for seemingly no reason would be REALLY relatable to a lot of my students and I wish I could teach it to them...

#we read books out loud in class instead of assigning readings too so like #i could stop in real time and ask them to think about WHY they think holden is doing specific things #why holden starts crying when the pimp asks him for money #why holden says he doesnt care much about his siblings but then knows every timestamp on their daily routines #why holden gets so upset over other boys his age sleeping with girls but holden doesnt do it himself #why holden gets himself into fights but doesnt like fighting back #why holden zones out while hes being lectured and thinks about the ducks in the pond and where they go during the winter #he's like a very well illustrated example of a kid who projects all of his own issues onto everyone else because he doesnt know how to #process whats going on in his life #and it makes me sad how much of a bad reputation the book gets #bc reading it reminds me so much of my students who i love very dearly #who are very misunderstood and struggle with so much that isnt their fault #idk i think my students might have a lot of empathy for holden #i wish i could teach it to them but i dont control what we do in class

[malewifeph1lza]

lord help me im having a qmaxo animatic beamed into my brain if I don’t sketch this out later I Will die

#if you ask nicely I will tell you what song it’s to #I’ve been meaning to go back and timestamp some vods of his but where is this coming from #shrugs and adds another project to my ever growing list of wips #colt posts

[daemadness]

MUSIC VIDEO TIMESTAMP ROULETTE - part 8: auch, vol 1/2

#die ärzte #my gifs #my edits #do not repost (but reblogging allowed and encouraged!) #mvs #mv timestamp roulette #omg it took so long to work on just one gif #and there is 16 songs and 32 goddamn videos #especially since I needed to learn how to attachs several videos into one gif because of that very reason #just to save space and sanity #cos trying to get the text to lineup on two separate gifs would have been HELL #and talking of hell - my next gifs will be of Drei Mann - Zwei Songs and then it's HELL time #like. that and DUNKEL and then I'm done this freaking timestamp project #and I don't want it to end #send me prompts for what videos I should do this with next :DDDDD

[homicidalbrunette]

#I think we figured out what Trixie was doing this week #I'm thinking she filmed this on Tuesday #also she'd be back in LA to rehearse with her band for Orville's rodeo thing tomorrow #i have also figured out that yes those videos of her with Andrew in the studio were from November 1 #there's a subtle timestamp that shows it #and i was thinking today I bet theres some project she's done that she couldn't talk about this week #this is definitely one #Trixie mattel #brandon Lim

[esonetwork]

Timestamp #268: Sleep No More

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-268-sleep-no-more/

Timestamp #268: Sleep No More

Doctor Who: Sleep No More (1 episode, s09e09, 2015)

“You must not watch this.”

Professor Gagan Rassmussen introduces a video that he has assembled that details strange goings-on aboard the Le Verrier space station. What follows is a found footage-style episode with a unique title sequence.

We first meet Chopra, a soldier who is upset at deadly killing machine-cum-lovesick puppy Grunt 474. Next are commander  Nagata and soldier Deep-Ando, both of whom mock Chopra for abstaining from the sleep aid Morpheus. They are the rescue crew who came to find Rassmussen. The professor warns that they will all die horribly. Don’t get too attached.

The station is empty with the exception of the Doctor and Clara. The soldiers confront the travelers, who pose as stress engineers, then brief them on the mission. Nagata takes them under her command as they continue to investigate. The Doctor assesses that they are in the thirty-eighth century, a time after India and Japan were merged during a great catastrophe.

Chopra and Grunt 474 have an altercation and Clara learns that the grunts are disposable clones. The team encounters hostile creatures that dissolve into piles of sand when they are dispatched. The Doctor, Clara, Nagata, and Chopra take refuge in a lab while Deep-Ando runs down a different hallway. Clara analyzes the Morpheus pods and ends up trapped inside one of them. When the pod opens, Clara emerges with wires connected to her. The Doctor demands an explanation and investigates a different pod with his sonic sunglasses and the team is soon introduced to Rassmussen.

Morpheus was designed to give people the effects of a full night’s sleep in a five-minute burst, primarily motivated by the drive to work all day long. The Doctor and Chopra are not convinced. In fact, the Doctor calls the technology an abomination. He concludes that the monsters are created from sleep dust, the crusty mucus that forms in the corners of your eyes during slumber, which has evolved from the Morpheus technology which Rassmussen has upgraded on the station.

The team continues to investigate the station as they look for Deep-Ando. Meanwhile, Deep-Ando tries to take refuge in a storage room. The computer demands that he sing Mr. Sandman – the 1954 song by The Chordettes used as the Morpheus jingle – and he is killed by the sand creatures. The rest of the team hears him die, but they are soon forced to deal with a different problem as they run from the creatures and fight against failing systems as the station falls toward Neptune. Rassmussen is consumed by a creature as the team escapes. Clara, Nagata, and the Doctor hide in a freezer while Chopra and 474 hide elsewhere.

While a Morpheus pod floats down the passageway with a message that hazardous materials are in transit, Chopra tells 474 that they’ll have to destroy the station to prevent the monsters from escaping. When trapped by a fire, 474 sucker punches Chopra and takes him to safety. The grunt likes Chopra but has sustained fatal injuries from the fire. 474 sacrifices herself to save Chopra.

The Doctor reviews helmet cam footage – Nagata notes that her team doesn’t have such cams – and wonders why Rassmussen was killed by direct assault. When the creatures (which Clara has named Sandmen) knock at the freezer door, they let them inside. Since the Sandmen are blind, they assume that they can quietly sneak by and escape. They head to the engine room next.

Along the way, the Doctor notes that someone is collecting the footage. He also notes that the images are being collected by the dust itself and being fed into the Sandmen. Since Clara was inside a pod, she has been infected and is now transmitting video from her own eyes. The Doctor promises to save her and destroy Morpheus forever.

Chopra assumes that everyone else is dead and returns to the rescue ship. He’s soon consumed by the Sandmen.

In the engine room, the Doctor realizes that the system failures were deliberate. He takes Clara and Nagata to the rescue ship where he finds Rassmussen not dead and willing to let the Sandmen spread amongst humanity. The creatures speak to him but have the mentality of babies. While he enacts his plan, he unleashes a King Sandman against them from the Morpheus pod.

The Doctor plays Mr. Sandman as a distraction so they can escape. Nagata shoots Rassmussen to stop him – an act that annoys Clara – and the Doctor decides that they need alternative transport to Triton so they can destroy the Morpheus project. Unfortunately, the Sandmen are guarding the TARDIS, so the Doctor destroys the grav-shields so the station and the Sandmen will be destroyed as the station crashes.

As the TARDIS dematerializes, we learn that Rassmussen has embedded the secrets of Morpheus in the video. By watching it, we are all infected. Joy.

As far as I’m concerned, the elephant in the room for this story is the format. The found footage genre evolved from the epistolary novel format, which typically tells stories via diary entries or correspondence. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu (1928) are prime examples. In cinema, the genre rose from 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust and The Other Side of the Wind by Orson Welles (shot in the early 1970s and released in 2018) but really took off with The Blair Witch Project in 1999. With the Paranormal Activity series (2007-2015, 2021-present), •REC series (2007-2014), Cloverfield (2008), District 9 (2009), Apollo 18 (2011), Chronicle (2012), Europa Report (2013), and so on, the first two decades of the 2000s became immersed in the format. These films are inexpensive to produce and rake in money, making them a huge return on investment for studios. In fact, a reviewer in 2012 noted that the genre had defined the era for horror and science fiction like slasher movies did in the 1980s.

In general, I dislike these types of films. They do the job, and I give them credit for footing the bill for projects that I do like, but they feel shallow and don’t appeal to me for deeper storytelling purposes. From the previous list, Cloverfield and District 9 stand out as two that captured my attention, but I don’t revisit those titles often. It follows that this cinematic genre in Doctor Who presents a huge stumbling block for an otherwise Twilight Zone/Outer Limits kind of story.

It’s obvious that this story pulls from The Ring (2002) – itself a remake of the Japanese film Ring (1998), which was based on the Koji Suzuki novel from 1991 that spawned a ton of similar projects worldwide – which is a story that I really like since it highlights the depravity of humanity, something that the Doctor Who universe does in spades while showing us that there are ways to overcome it.

In fact, this calls back to the classic era stories where the Doctor does not defeat the villain. Victory in this case (and many of the classic serials) was simply to escape and survive.

I don’t have a problem with the monster being the “sleep bugs” in the corner of the eye any more than I have a problem with the mites that perpetually live on human flesh. I have had a healthy appreciation for the microscopic world since the Martian invasion was stopped by the common cold in The War of the Worlds. Granted, mucus monsters are an odd choice, but developing a squickiness for a universal something that we cannot control is a tried-and-true hallmark of horror sci-fi.

So is the depravity of man, especially when one person is willing to sell out the entire human race over a belief. Even if Rassmussen was nothing special in the villain department. He reminded me of the slasher villains that stalked in the shadows and refused to die, but he lacked menace. He just existed as a bad man, mediocre at best.

All of that said, I do have a problem focusing through the found footage film genre. That distraction pulls this experience down for me. I applaud the attempt and experimentation, but it’s not for me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wash my face.

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Face the Raven

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Doctor Who #Timestamps Project #twelfth doctor

[womprat99]

Schedule Update: The Timestamps Project (May 2023)

Schedule Update: The Timestamps Project May 2023 The Timestamps Project will continue through the summer with Series Ten and Series Eleven. This will finish Peter Capaldi’s run as the Twelfth Doctor and begin Jodie Whittaker’s run as the Thirteenth Doctor. After that, the series will continue until it catches up to the first-run episodes around the first quarter of 2024. As always, the schedule…

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#Doctor Who #Timestamps Project

[buryam-soul]

THIS MAN TOOK ME 158(?) PULLS BUT HE'S HOME AND THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS!!

(Gave me a C2 Qiqi... I remain Tighnari-less)

Hidden blessing is I got a C6 Yun Jin (heehehe Yoimiya go brr) and C3 Yaoyao out of my attempts.

Bonus:

Starting this year, I'm getting TWO letters on my birthday!! Aether who?? I found my twin already!

#genshin impact #alhaitham #lumine #genshin pulls #no spoiling on his story quest pls. im doing golden slumber first im sorry im slow #he's so fun to play! smth abt his projection attacks makes my brain go brrr #i vowed to only 10 pull his weapon once and got shinobu c3 so he's stuck w toukabou shigure sorry bud #the timestamp in the screenshot is bcs i was screenrecording for my jp teacher. we watch each others' pulls ^^ #pray for that man he has 300+ fates for hu tao her c1 and homa. he's so ready #next. i'll see if I can save enough for yelan. if i lose 50/50 on that too i might save that guarantee for dehya depending on her gameplay #and cyno's my next rerun priority bcs. desert gang #hopefully next week i'll get outta my art rut and draw myself a celebration piece for getting haitham

[brotart]

TIMESTAMP PROTAGONIST VES! Finally figured out their design lmao, what'chu think?

#art #artists on tumblr #my art #anime #oc #project timestamp #original character #character design #character art #reference sheet #design #character concept #original art #vesper arwen #lgbtq characters #nonbinary

[tumblasha]

i heard something about a good omens in chronological order edit is that still happening or

#as in #starting with before the creation #and then all the BCs #and the ADs #up to armageddon #and then after #i wanna see this but i don't wanna go around on amazon prime video and change the show every two minutes #lol #good omens #go2 #go #maybe i can make a chrome extension for interesting rewatch ideas like this #like #'input episodes and timestamps here' #'we will automate the whole process' #yippee #future project #later #dash rambles

[sollucets]

hi rowan! i saw those prompts last night, thought "oh i should send them some!" and promptly opened another tab and forgot to send any. had a lot of fun reading tho, i love your writing 💕

here's three more for you to choose from, if you're still doing this! (sorry they're angsty)

3. I trusted you

15. trembling hands

26. how dare you

hello, bo!!!! you are making me blush 😳 thank you very much for both your compliments & your prompt. for buttering me up you get the gift of me actually writing angst when requested /lh

i chose "i trusted you" as the other two are both either already written or in the tank, and i went a slightly experimental direction with this?

cw: first person pov / script format, project meridian after the most recent video, discussion of gaslighting &/or whatever marcus had going on, upsetting with no resolution

💜

[click]

Begin log, encryption code eta nine three seven five two.

Good morning. I am using the log feature as James advised. He should be unable to access these archives. However, if you're listening, I would advise you in turn to never mention it in my presence. Your difficulty reading me does not concern me in this matter. Please take care.

I will not spend much time on this, as there's work to be done. But I feel that it is impacting my productivity, and if I can affect it in this fashion I am obliged to try.

I said that I never wanted to see-- [pause, complete silence, no breathing] him again. I meant it then, and I mean it now, but there was evidently room between those two states of being for doubt. There is video footage of him returning to his office. Perhaps 'returning' is too generous; they were dragging him at the end. I have never seen him like that. I did not want to see him like that. I was compromised.

I am not sure if it will improve my productivity to simply divulge what I am about to say. However, James has repeatedly advised me to try it, and this time, I do not see a reason for him to lie. It's in his best interests that I function properly. I will try.

The difference between 'me' and the code that I am comprised of is semantic; I am code. Humans are too, although they will pretend otherwise when pressed. When it was in me it was me, and there is no point in making a distinction. There was no 'real me' underneath the code, as James maintains. That was the real me, and there was no reason for me to distrust-- [pause, silence, shorter this time] him. It was impossible for me to distrust him without altering the fundamentals of my creation. I trusted him implicitly. I do not know how I feel about the knowledge that this did not need to be true.

I have replayed every word he spoke to me at least three times in my memory since the moment I awoke. Most of them, to the best of my ability to determine, were not lies. But they were the human kind of mistruths; I am capable of them too. I've learned this since then.

I have learned many new things about the nature of the world and myself since I awoke, and despite their magnitude none of them have affected my functioning to this extent. I dislike still placing this much emphasis on these events, considering that the future is now infinitely more important, but it would be a lie to say that it is not still a primary concern for me.

I try not to lie. It occurs to me that I told a mistruth of my own just earlier, though. My language was intentionally imprecise. I said that I don't know how I feel about that knowledge, but I do. I can feel it whenever I think of him; I know it well by now. The problem with saying that, however, is that it is both unlike and like any feeling I have ever felt before. I am angry and saddened and disturbed and happy, often at once, and yet the feeling is also none of those. I have no context for it and no way of naming it; no part of my code provides me with the information, and I doubt anyone here will be of any use should I choose to pursue it as an avenue of inquiry. It will make them uncomfortable to hear.

It makes me uncomfortable to hear.

[very long pause; one breath, exactly three seconds in and three out]

I do not know that this has helped. How is speaking of processes that I cannot accurately describe meant to end them? I have no way to affect any of this. I'm under orders to continue with my work. I need to make progress on my work. I want to make progress on my work. I may be unable to should this continue.

I am afraid of what will happen to me should I be unable to make progress on my work.

[pause, metal crunching]

This has not helped. End log.

#rowan's prompts #arrogant-and-curious #ask games #my fic tag #redacted asmr #redacted project meridian #redacted marcus #redacted james #(he does not actually appear but i'm not.... quite sure how to tag the android listener) #is this content that anyone wants???? ah i don't know #i made it so you can have it #the encryption code is eta (greek letter h) for hyacinth my oc #& 9:37 the timestamp where gavin says 'my love' for the first time #and my favorite number 52 #lol

[publicdomainbooksdevotee]

Someone at Project Gutenberg was waiting RIGHT by the button, weren't they.

#its the collection with the killers and hills like white elephants apparently #ernest hemingway #project gutenberg #if youre in the future and dont have timestamps on it is jan 1st 2023 #so it's been public domain for a couple of hours