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takaraphoenix · 7 years

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Has anyone asked you about Dr Who yet?

First of all, let me apologize for just how fucking long this has been laying around. But I have expected it to take… A While to answer. So, sorry for the wait.

I’m a Whovian. Which people who avidly read my PJatO fics probably know because I love to slip it in there.

Doctor Who ranks fourth on my fop five of all-time favorite TV shows.

I’ve only seen New Who though, to make that clear. I just… I dunno? I like color? I tried Classic Who, but I just really can’t go through the black and white - and the New Who does work so well on its own too, even though it factors in Classic Who.

So I will be only talking about New Who here.

I started to watch Doctor Who when it made its way into the Saturday morning program. It really didn’t impress me at all. Literally the only thing that stuck was Jack Harkness - back then, we only did get the first two series, mind you.

So when it just… stopped airing, I didn’t particularly care too much. Because they had written Jack out of the show a series ago and I was more than miffled by the concept of them constantly replacing the main characters. After all, it’s only been two series but I already had two Doctors. And? What? No. What? As a teen, I so did not have the patience for a show that changed main actors more often than some people change their socks.

So I put that out of my mind and actually kind of forgot about it. After all, it had stopped airing in Germany too, so, well, it was canned and done.

But then series 3 ended and I heard that Captain Jack actually made a return to the show. And that coincided with me getting invested in learning how to English. Literally, at the time I sucked. I only brought home 4s, 5s and 6s - Ds, Es and Fs. I copied all my homework from my half-American friend and couldn’t give less of a shit about that language. What would I even need it for? I live in Germany, we speak German, for heaven’s sake.

But I really liked Jack and I had been trying to better my English somehow. So, why not by watching this British TV show with German sub-titles? I started rewatching series 1 and 2 and then watched series 3.

I fell in love with Doctor Who with series 3. It is, to date, a masterpiece to me.

The main reason is the removal of Doctor Who’s most unlikable character. Rose. Good heavens above, I hate Rose Tyler.

Yes, she was a brilliant companion for the Doctor. Yes, she saved the world and galaxy and whatever. Yes, she was the companion the Doctor needed at the time.

But she was a shitty human being.

She was a good companion, because the Doctor was literally the only thing that mattered to this girl. And that’s a good quality in a companion. It’s a crappy quality in a girlfriend and daughter though.

The way she kept stringing Mickey along, even having the audacity to be jealous when he tries to move on but she goes out into the universe with a total stranger, was just petty.

But the one thing that I will never forgive her for and the main reason why I hate her is the way she literally disappeared for an entire year Earth-time - her boyfriend and mother and everyone believing her to be dead, Mickey even being accused of having killed her. And she just up and disappears again.

She didn’t take the time to go to the officials to clear Mickey’s name.

She didn’t even take the time to stay for one lousy dinner, or to say goodbye. Her mom believed her to be dead for an entire year and she can’t even stay one fucking evening to eat dinner with her mother? Or at the very least give her a proper, heartfelt goodbye? No, as long as I can run after the Doctor, I’m happy! I don’t need anyone else!

Not to mention that she’s a barely legal gal being shipped off with a 900 year old alien. It’s just creepy, is what it is. The fact that the Doctor and Rose were never explicitely together is one of my biggest blessings on this show. That he never even said the words had me cheering in my seat, to be honest. Because, no, Doctor, you do not need to fall in love with a 19 year old human, no. Just no.

So yeah, I fell in love with the show after Rose left.

Martha Jones is also my favorite companion. Yes, she is also in love with the Doctor - but she never turned her back on her family, she always had her priorities straight. And she was one-sided in love with him. If he had returned her feelings? Yeah, I’d be creeped out by that too then.

Not just Martha and the return of Jack though, also the plots are what made me fall in love with it.

I have to admit, the Bad Wolf plot of the first series was ,when I rewatched it, really cool. But the second series… still feels more like a filler-series, really. The plot was just so… meh. And the single episodes too - I consider “The Idiot’s Lantern” and “Fear Her” to be two of the show’s weakest episodes.

Martha brought something fresh to the table and I actually love the plots of most of her episodes. “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks” was so cool. “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood” are, to date, probably the creepiest episodes to me.

“Blink” is literally the most perfect episode of all in this entire show.

And I’ve rewatched just the three-parter of “Utopia”, “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords” more often than I care to admit or remember.

It introduces the Master to New Who and the Master is brilliant. A brilliant enemy.

I hate that Martha only stayed for one series, but her successor sure was worthy, because Donna Noble is my second favorite companion.

Her dynamic with the Doctor is probably the best dynamic written so far in New Who. They’re just friends, in a beautifully uncomplicated way where both of them are deeply aware of the pain in the other.

Not too many outstanding episodes, aside from “The Sontaran Stratagem”, “The Poison Sky” and “The Doctor’s Daughter”, but the pure dynamic of 10 and Donna totally made even the weird plots work well.

Not to mention Donna’s grandpa, who yes. All the yes for him. He was an amazing half-companion (never really know what to call the “male character who only tags along due to the female companion”),

And then the “Journey’s End”. It was such a pay-off. The way it brought everything of the past four series together was just intensely awesome. To unite all of his companions from those four series, to have even Sarah Jane back - I love Sarah Jane, I consider The Sarah Jane Adventures the best of the three Doctor Who spin-offs and her character is amazing. I didn’t even mind the return of Rose, because she was an important part of that life.

And then the entire show changed, because Russell T Davies was replaced by Steven Moffat.

Part of me was over the moon about Moffat at first, because he created Captain Jack Harkness, who is literally why I found my way to the show. And he wrote some of the best episodes of Doctor Who - “The Empty Child”, “The Doctor Dances” and “Blink”.

I have a deeply seated hatred for Moffat at this point, fyi.

I consider “The Girl in the Fireplace” to be the first warning-sign of things, really. Moffat’s intense need to ship people off. To ship the Doctor off.

I do not want my over a thousand year old alien to be shipped off with humans? Honestly, I don’t want him shipped off with anyone, at all, because I watch this show for the SciFi extravaganza and the scales, not the fucking romance.

River Song, close second after Rose on my list of characters I don’t like. Though I’ll get back to that later on when we discuss 12, because she’s currently being re-evaluated by me.

I didn’t like the 12/River plot that Moffat was hyping so hard, because… it completely hijacked the show.

Though, strike that, I didn’t like the River plot in total.

It was way too complicated. And I’m not just saying that because it was “a bit confusing”. I’m saying that because it all only fully fell into place after literally five years. That’s too long.

I do like a complex plot. I like when a plotline stretches out over a course of more than just one season. But if your plot is a messy knot of something that no one can quite figure out where it begins and makes sense until five years later, that’s just… a mess.

“Silence in the Library” aired in 2008 and the real pay-off for the River Song plotline and where it was coming from and going only aired in 2013 with “The Time of the Doctor”. I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t compute for me.

With the first four series, each of them could stand beautifully on their own too, even though in the end all four spanned together and had one pay-off.

Series 5 didn’t make a lick of sense, even after rewatching it two times. It started making a bit more sense with series 6, and then a little more sense with series 7, but come on, if you have to wait three years and then watch three series in one go to make actual sense of stuff you watched three years ago, that just can’t be it for a TV show. That’s ridiculous.

Getting a bit more into details instead of just critizing the overlaying plot, because for its sub-plots, I really did like 12′s arc.

Amy Pond is… an okay companion. She ranks among the six main companions New Who had so far - Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill - on a solid four. But the literal best thing Amy Pond did for Doctor Who was introduce Rory Williams to us.

Rory Williams is a national treasure and needs to be cherished.

Seriously, if there’s one thing I’m really-really hyping about 12, it’s Rory. He was so adorable, relatable, sweet, cute, caring, amazing. He was the best. I will forever live to regret that Rory and Jack never met, because the idea of Jack hitting on a totally confused Rory while Amy goes protective lioness over her husband is just beautifully hilarious.

Though, for me series 5 also marks the point of oversatuation on Daleks and Cybermen.

Daleks started out, in series 1, as those great enemies who were extinct and look there is only one left. And then there’s a fleet in the next series and it’s a shocker and really effective.

At this point, it has become an obligatory thing. “Ah, there’s this series’ Dalek-episode. Can cross that off my Doctor Who bingo then”. And, honestly, the Daleks are not that great as enemies? Like, they’re great foes, but they don’t do for the most intriguing plotlines because they literally just want to exterminate. An enemy with an actual goal and motivation makes for far better story-telling.

And while I understand that they are the most iconic Who villains and that we can’t get rid fo them entirely… Can we like, reduce them? Maybe have them not appear for one whole series? Because they stopped bringing something new to the table a while ago.

And this series also marks when Cybermen and even the Weeping Angels also just become… bingo-marks, really. It becomes obligatory from here on out that we have to have at least one episode featuring those particular villains. And that just becomes… so predictable.

Now that I complained again, let me return to the praising.

“Vincent and the Doctor” is one of the more emotional episodes of this show and I love it. I’ll never not cry during it.

But “The Lodger” is just plain awesome. “The Lodger” and “Closing Time” are my two favorite episodes for 12, because he had a brilliant dynamic with Craig and I also loved that Craig did get to return for a second episode. I’d love to see him again some time, maybe now that Stormageddon is older. It’d be amazing.

Series 6 was, aside from “The Lodger”, quite the let-down for me personally. I greatly did not care for “The Rebel Flesh”, “The Almost People”, “Night Terrors”, “The Girl Who Waited” or “The God Complex”. And that’s nearly half the series.

Series 7 was better again. Though I still feel conflicted about changing companions mid-series, to be honest.

Clara Oswald is a companion I have… conflicting feelings about.

I really liked her at first, but she definitely overstayed her welcome.

In series 7, she was very much welcomed. She was a nice change of pace, she was witty and I really liked the mystery of “How is Oswin still alive?”. The plot was cool; the pay-off of that was a bit ridiculous, but hey.

Oh, before I forget to mention it! I love Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax! And they deserve a spin-off so much. Honestly. I still don’t get why they green-lit the boring-ass premise of Class over a spin-off about that trio (note: Class is far better than its boring-ass premise and I enjoyed the show very much while it lasted, but that they got a show with such a lame premise green-lit over a more substantial spin-off is completely beyond me).

We gotta talk about “The Day of the Doctor”, of course.

John Hurt as the War Doctor was amazing, but I still hate that Christopher Eccleston didn’t return for that role. It think it would have weighted so much different if he did and if the plot could have continued as intended. But the War Doctor was a great way to fix the lack of 9.

And 10 and 11 playing off of each other will forever be the singularly best thing on this show, hands down.

The only real problem is that it was just Clara. This was so huge. The scales of it were so great and it was the damn anniversary. We managed to team up all the former companions for the series 4 ending, how did we not get a single additional companion for this huge-ass anniversary special? How did Captain Jack and Torchwood not show up? How did freelancer alien-hunters Mickey and Martha not help them? At the very least. That Rose and Donna and Sarah Jane and Amy and Rory couldn’t, yeah, obvious, but… At least some of the former companions should have been honored in this anniversary special.

I want to say that the pay-off for that was great, but… Honestly, it wasn’t so much a pay-off as more of a “tease for something that still hasn’t been cashed in four years later”. Gallifrey stays… but we kinda accidentally misplaced it.

Danny Pink and series 8 was what really ruined Clara as a companion.

She should have been written out with “The Name of the Doctor”, or at the latest after the anniversary episode considering that it’d have been troublesome to introduce a new companion there.

But when she started to prioritize her boyfriend over the Doctor and literally tried to murder the Doctor, that was just when her character needed to go.

Also, not to forget, series 8 features the singularly dumbest and worst episode of the entire New Who. “The Moon”. Fuck this episode, fuck it hard and square. The moon is an egg and it hatches and immediately lays a new “moon egg”. And literally everyone saw it but opted to immediately forget it. Fuck you. Just… really, were you drunk when you wrote this episode and high when you green-lit it?

And 12 did not make a good first impression in his first series either.

I saw a lot of memes of Classic Who fans pointing out how “other Doctors needed an adjustment phase too”. I get that. Yeah. 11 had that for one episode of finding himself and adjusting. But two entire series can not be the way to do it.

He had zero emotions and was thus zero relatable. 10 and 11 felt so much and so strongly, that is what made you grow attached to them. 12 couldn’t even grasp the most basic of human emotions and it wasn’t even in a funny running-gag kind of way either. It was just annoying and disorienting.

However, the pay-off for series 8 was good. The Master returning as Missy was awesome. Time Lords regenerating into Time Ladies too is awesome and also makes me think that maybe their race is called Time Lords because they are all primarily male and only have occasional female regenerations for reproduction purposes, but not as primary, designated genders. But that’s just me.

I feel similarly let down by series 9. Honestly, I can’t even really distinguish series 8 and 9. They both have the 12th Doctor who is unable to know how to human and Clara, who is growing more and more unlikable and unnecesary by the minute.

Granted, series 9 was a bit of a redemption arc for Clara, but she still felt… rather pointless, because by now she literally finished two story-arcs in this show. First through her original plot and then with the Danny plot.

I don’t like their solution for the “Three Peter Capaldis in this universe” that they came up with that series though. The whole “The face is a reminder” thing is just utter bullshit. I mean. He rescued so many people at this point of whom so many had more emotional value than Caecilius. Why the heck his face?

Honestly, if they’d just retconned it into “12 took a trip to Pompeii and was missing with 10″ it would have been a better solution that would have been more fun…

And I genuinely don’t know how I feel about Arya Stark. Her plotline is kind of intriguing, but she feels like another Captain Jack Harkness. That is to say; another immortal created by the Doctor who then gets abandoned by the Doctor and will be randomly forgotten at one point. Not to mention the cock-teasing of “There could be a spin-off about Me and Clara”, about which I still haven’t decided how I feel.

I adore Osgood. I do have to say that though and I love seeing her back, even though I’d still have loved for her to become an actual companion.

Now.

Now is the time to get back to River Song. Because the Christmas special “The Husbands of River Song” was actually the first time I truly liked River.

And it made me realize why I normally dislike her. She’s a badass and awesome, actually, but that has always been overshadowed by her school-girl crush on the Doctor and the way she’d bat her eyelashes at him and urgh, it was so annoying. In this special, she didn’t know he was the Doctor for half the time and her behavior was awesome. She was awesome. Until she realized he was the Doctor and went back to her school-girl-crush behavior and I went urgh again.

Not to mention - and this is my hardest knock on River Song and her plotline - you can’t keep writing heartfelt goodbyes. They lose all meaning.

“Forest of the Dead” had this grand, epic finale to her plotline before she was even properly introduced and that really pays off when rewatching it.

Then she was introduced.

Then we got a really heartfelt goodbye in “The Wedding of River Song” in series 6, where you thought “Wow, that’s it”.

Then you got a really heartfelt goodbye in “The Angels Take Manhattan” in series 7, where you weeped additional tears for Rory and Amy, but you’re kinda sure that this must be it now, right?

But it happens again at the end of series 7 with “The Name of the Doctor” - and this has to be it, right? It’s like the biggest goodbye yet and it has to be the final.

But oh no, look. Another heartfelt goodbye episode in the Christmas special “The Husbands of River Song”. And at that point, them saying goodbye really just made me roll my eyes.

You just… You can’t make epic goodbye episodes if you don’t plan on fucking finally writing the character off. Either stop pretending to say goodbye, or stop bringing her back, but you can’t do both, it’s just ridiculous and quite frankly also sad.

Now, moving on to series 10.

Series 10 made me fall in love with the 12th Doctor. Finally he was THE Doctor. Finally he started caring and being properly there, instead of requiring his companion as an emotional crutch. This series makes me mad that Peter is already leaving again. He barely to to actually be the Doctor as he ought to and now he’s already being replaced. Urgh.

Bill was actually a really cool companion. I didn’t undestand a single word she said for the first two episodes before I got used to her way of speaking, but after that, I fast grew attached to her.

Heck, I even grew attached to Nardole, and Nardole was the thing I hated most about “The Husbands of River Song”. But he had great character development over this one series.

I’m not sure how I feel about Missy, to be honest. Because I don’t want a redemption arc for the Doctor’s greatest foe. It was fun, but also really weird.

Now, before I wrap this up, I guess it’s impossible not to talk about the 13th Doctor.

I couldn’t give less of a rat’s ass about the casting. Literally.

I mean, as long as the actor does a good job and does the Doctor justice - not like Peter did in two out of three of his series - I couldn’t care less if the Doctor is male, female, white, black, Asian, for all I care they could have the Doctor regenerate into an agender green alien considering he doesn’t have to be human looking but humanoid. I just want an actor who captures the essence of the Doctor.

For that, of course, the actor is not the only one responsible.

The writing is too.

If they go an overly “We now have a female Doctor!!” route and start treating the Doctor different just because he is now a she, I will go batshit crazy.

If the Doctor now, all of a sudden starts actively persuading a male romantic interest (and I use the term “actively” here because the Doctor not limiting himself to females has been canon for a long time), just to keep things “straight looking”, I’ll be mad. How about we leave the romance just out? Something I’ve been pleading for for years now.

If the Doctor now, all of a sudden will for the first time in New Who take a male companion just to “keep it even”, I will also be mad. Because so far, the Doctor only took male companions as add-ons to his female primary companion. Have her take two companions, one male and one female, okay. That is what works best anyway, in my opinion.

But if the Doctor now takes a male companion and will require to be saved by The Man, then I’ll just be disappointed.

And I wish I wouldn’t have to worry about this, but I feel like… replacing Moffat and the Doctor and the companion all at once… Might change New Who completely and there’s no telling into what direction it’ll go.

So, for now, I’ll just be anxiously awaiting the new series and praying that the female Doctor will do the role justice, both as an actress and as its written part.

#Doctor Who #Ask me a show and I shall rant #TV Rants #Fandom Rants

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