bro i wanna hear all about the caverns pls info dump at me
Okay y'all Buckle Up
This is about the Beforan Caverns.
I'll be going into this A Little More in the rewrite itself, but I've got all this Extra Lore too so here we go.
Jadebloods don’t have to join the caverns on Beforus, but training for the caverns is compulsory for all jades, even those who don’t want to.
Porrim Does Not Want To.
Had she actually completed her training, she would’ve went on to join the caverns as a junior caretaker- doing the more menial jobs under supervision of an older jade, Eventually, she’d eventually work her way up as her skills improved and specialize in some area- tending to the mothergrub, working in the nursery, teaching at a training center, etc.
The training centers are mostly text books and lectures and the like- with very little actual grub interaction (saved exclusively for those who pursue actual training.)
This is because, unlike humans, trolls do not feel an inherent affection or protective instinct for the young of their species- including their own spawn (if you could even track them down.) Instead of finding them cute, the overwhelming majority of trolls find grubs disgusting and creepy- in all, absolutely repulsive creatures. This is a major factor as to why many jade trainees don’t move on to the caverns. Porrim is no exception to this rule, and she hated every minute of training.
The actual training centers themselves aren’t actually inside the caverns, but fully above ground, with an entrance to the underground caverns somewhere within the building.
The buildings are usually rather plain-looking; being of a relatively average size with nothing in particular striking them as particularly different, with the exception of being entirely bathed in jade and many older locations being covered with windows.
There is one exception.
[Key: 1: Adult Troll, For Scale; 2: Entrance Way, General Room; 3: Living Quarters For Resident Jadebloods and Dormitories For Studying Jades; 4: Lecture Hall and Library; 5: Unspecified Room; 6: Rooftop Platform; 7: Pre-Lusus Screening Hall; 8: Sea-Grub Pond; 9: Exit To Lusi Area; 10: Entrances/Exits To/From The Caverns; 11: The Caverns; 12: General Storage, Stairs; 13: Observatory]
The training center Porrim studies (and Kankri lives) in is the Oldest Training Center on Beforus, with entrances to the Original Caverns. This place is absoiutely Fuck Huge and Old As Hell.
Central to the Empire, this center was once solely responsible for the processing of all reproduction on the planet.
Now, it’s still operating, but is functionally little more than a lecture hall.
Being as old as they are, most of the Original Caverns have since been lost to time and excessive use, leaving comparatively little left of what it was in its prime. Consequently, this has placed the responsibility of actual processing and grubrearing largely onto surrounding facilities- though, the Empress insists that sea grubs, at least, continue to be processed through this Original Location. As rare as sea grubs are among the population, many land grubs end up hatching here as well- though, the majority get transferred to other centers.
A center, given their purpose, operates at all hours, but lessons occur in the daytime, due to the jadebloods’ resistance to sunlight. This is less about security and more about efficiency. Consequently, the opposite schedule means that the majority of caretakers and teachers do little other than caretake and teach.
Visitors are unwelcome, but no one really wants to visit, anyway. The only exception would be to returning jadebloods, coddlers, or Her Imperial Benvolence; who, unlike her Alternian counterpoint, does make occasional visits to the Training Centers.
The general process is mostly identical to the Alternian Caverns- with the exception of the DIscharge of Mature Grubs. Those deemed fit will be matched with a lusus, as on Alternia. Those deemed unfit, but acceptable, will be matched with a highblood, for coddling. They may be matched with a highblood either in addition to, or in place of their lusus, depending on their level of quality. All others are dealt with as seen fit.
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“But We Love Martha Jones!” - The Doctor Who Fandom’s Selective Memory of Racism
Be aware that this article contains explicit examples of anti-black racism and misogynoir.
Chapter 2 - Utopia-ish
The constant nitpicking of Martha Jones for reasons white female companions could get away with was blatant anti-black racism. Let’s get that bit clear first and foremost. As a Black person in fandom, watching Black characters get torn apart while never being given the grace of their non-Black castmates is an experience that’s too common. Microaggressions are more subtle so the easiest way to shut down any mentions of racism is to accuse Black fans of making things up or telling us “Well it’s not like REAL racism”. Luckily Doctor Who Tumblr birthed the Martha Jones affirmative action and Aunt Jemima “memes” so I can cross both covert and overt racism off the list. As mentioned in extensive detail in the previous chapter, plus the various Martha Jones articles written before me, the treatment Martha experienced was racist. I don’t care if you personally didn’t like her. I don’t care that you missed Rose. I don’t care that Ten is your smol bean. Martha’s treatment was racist. Freema Agyeman’s treatment was racist. It might not have been everyone. It might not have been you personally. But it was there. The fandom can never be a safe space for POC, specifically Black people if this elephant in the room can’t be addressed over a decade after it arrived.
On paper, you’d assume Martha’s rep was good because “at least she wasn’t a Black stereotype”. Some fans praised her for having a present father, not speaking MLE and not being from the ends. This goes into respectability politics but the fandom’s weirdness about Black Brits and class is not the point of this article. The point is the revisionist history of how Martha was really treated and to do that it helps to know what Black tropes are. The Mammy trope is a Black woman whose main purpose is to serve her white counterparts and during slavery, she mainly cared for the slave owners' children. She is usually fat, dark skin and asexual, not as a representation of those things but as a statement of how if she isn’t used for sexual exploitation like the Jezebel (the promiscuous, reckless, sexualised Black woman), she has no sexual value at all. Her value is serving the needs of others only. Martha doesn’t fit this trope in theory but in practice, she fulfils the sub-categories of this trope both in show and fandom: the disposable Black (girl)friend trope. She is used as Ten’s emotional punching bag before he’s ready for Donna and then Rose again. She had to endure edgy moody S3 Ten so no one else had to. She’s the excuse people use to deflect any critical analysis of how race was handled in RTD1. She’s the fandom’s excuse to deflect from their own racial biases. Racism? No way! Everybody loves Martha Jones! What do you mean?
Some parts of the fandom have tried to mend things by suggesting Martha be paired with other doctors or romantically shipping her with other characters a bit better than Mickey Smith. But does this hold up? As much as I’m a big fan NineMartha as a concept and as someone who honestly saw one-off characters like Riley Vashtee from 42 or Tallulah from Daleks in Manhattan having way more romantic chemistry with Martha than Mickey ever did, simply re-shipping Martha isn’t enough. Doctor Who’s racism isn't exclusive to one doctor, one series or one era and new Martha pairings suggest the issue was “right person, wrong doctor” instead of what the issue actually was: racism. Moffat and Chibnall’s eras weren’t full of golden Black representation either so I doubt the Martha issue would’ve magically disappeared under those two. From Nine’s hostility to Mickey, to Twelve’s hostility to Danny Pink to Thirteen handing a South Asian Spymaster to the Nazis and Eleven only travelling with POC in comics most fans haven’t heard of and being besties with Churchill, simply putting Martha with another Doctor isn’t the serve fans think it is. Even RoseMartha seems like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. If it's not enough for Martha to be compared to Rose, put down in favour of Rose, told she isn’t Rose and told she's worse than Rose in fandom and in show over and over and over, she has to be shipped with Rose too. Martha’s a great character… as long as you can tie her to Rose… again. Even in my own article I have to talk about Rose because Rose is centred in what was supposed to be Martha’s story. A doctor-to-be Black girl from London with a hectic family meets a Time Lord and gets abducted by space rhino police at work in one day. Her main conflict isn’t balancing work and time traveller life, or fighting to get her family back together, or seeing what’s out there in the universe - it's that she isn’t “Rose” enough. The Mammy and her sons’ main thing in common is simple; how well they serve and centre the white characters. In attempts to mend Martha’s treatment she is still only valued in relation to white characters. She should’ve been with Eleven because he would’ve fucked a Black woman. Or maybe Dilfy Twelve. Or a sapphic romance with another female companion who she saw twice or doesn’t actually know. Or maybe Ten in an alternate universe where he supports #nubianqueens. None of this is done to explore sexuality or romance with Black women and is definitely not to centre Black lesbianism and bisexuality. It’s Mammy with a dash of Jezebel. It's adding romantic and sexual value on top of physical and emotional value like a crappy meal deal.
I’m tired of Black women being treated as extensions of white women both in media and in real life. I’m tired of our value being determined by how well we serve white people emotionally, physically, platonically and sexually. And I'm even more tired of white feminism especially in this fandom. It would be so easy to label this article as anti-Rose, anti-Ten or anti-Tenrose to invalidate my whole racial analysis because it's the easy way out. I’ll admit I like both characters individually but not the ship but this isn’t something I decided on since birth - it's my conclusion as a Black fan in a predominantly white fandom, watching a predominantly white show, watching the first companion of my race be told she isn’t good enough compared to the white characters, and that the hatred of her is justified for the greater good of its popular white ship. Black fans can never have this conversation without being told we’re “pitting women against each other” and that Martha and Rose hugged once in S4 so everything's hunky dory. Martha’s happy that Ten found Rose again so what’s the problem? It sends a clear message that Black women’s pain will never matter a much as white women’s feelings. “Rose is amazing! Martha’s amazing! Stop pitting women against women!” but who was pit against who in the first place? These faux girl power posts fail to acknowledge the overlap of race and gender which separates the treatment of Black and white women. It fails to acknowledge Martha’s hate was rooted in anti-black racism. It fails to acknowledge the anti-Rose pushback was in response to how the show and fandom convinced us Rose was the untouchable bar this Black woman failed to meet. It fails to acknowledge Freema Agyeman the actress was targeted not just her character. It fails because the female empowerment rhetoric that leaves the Black ones at the bottom of the pile only “empowers” women of a certain demographic.
The harassment Martha experienced was swept under the rug of “stan wars” but it was so much deeper than that. I’m not saying Martha stans are angels but there was no “Great Stan War” because the sides were never even. At the end of the day no amount of “Martha’s better than Rose” tweets will ever compare to the fact that Martha hate was rooted in misogynoir. Rose was and still is considered the greatest companion of nuwho, whilst Martha is constantly erased and undervalued. Rose’s video views and hashtags have always been bigger than Martha’s. Amy and Clara came after Martha but still surpassed her in popularity and got plenty of fan edits of “The Girl Who Waited” and “The Impossible Girl” whilst Martha was conveniently skipped in the companion lineup. The fandom’s bias still shines clearly in favour of Rose over Martha. Rose’s jealousy towards other women is justifiable and just the ups and downs of a 19-year-old whilst Martha’s is entitled bitterness. Rose’s flaws are compelling character moments and depth, Martha’s are “holding her back from being a good companion”. Hell, even Donna calling out Ten’s BS was entertaining accountability whilst Martha was just the angry Black woman. Fans will weaponise Rose’s working-class roots to imply a pro-Martha bias, failing to acknowledge the working-class to poor background of the average Black Brit, the anti-blackness middle-class Black people are not spared from, the many working-class Black characters of the show like Mickey, Bill, Rigsy and Ryan or how most fans don’t consider Martha middle class because she doesn’t fit the white British cultural stereotypes. You can't be the most loved and hated at the same time. The hard truth is Billie Piper wasn’t racially abused by Martha stans but Freema was absolutely racially abused by Rose’s and the effects of this are still around. Go into Martha Jones tags today and you’ll see snarky posts of how Ten could never love another companion like Rose. Even when Freema bravely shared her experiences of literal racism, fans were quick to yell “But I wanted Ten and Rose though” as a justification for years of misogynoir. Again, we need to address the elephant in the room instead of covering our eyes and ears to act like it’s not there. A Black character and actress was collateral damage in order for a popular white ship to rise and whilst I’m not an anti, I as a Black Doctor Who fan, I’ll never be a supporter. At the end of the day, only one of these actresses is still carrying the burden of misogynoir over 10 years since RTD1 ended. A lonely walk across the Earth yet again.
<- Chapter 1
Chapter 3 ->
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Tumblr Dr. Who Poll vs Doctor Who Magazine Poll
It's been just over a month since the end of @adventure-showdown 's monumental survey of how Tumblr feels about individual Doctor Who adventures. Across ten rounds, we sorted the wheat from the chaff, the Quarks from the Rills, and the Cousins from the Looms. I wanted to compare the results of that huge bracket with the results from last year's Doctor Who Magazine poll, which ranked each Doctor's stories individually.
The methodologies for these two were quite different (though adventure-showdown did seed the bracket with a pre-poll that used the same methodology as DWM, but I'm looking at the final poll results for my data here), so comparing them is really interesting! I'm not a statistician, I just like making spreadsheets for fun. I think what can be seen from the trends and data below is a really unique picture of two somewhat overlapping but seriously demographically distinct fragments of the fandom.
Methodologies
Poll Methodologies
The DWM poll asked readers to rank as many televised Doctor Who stories as they liked from 1 to 10. The editors then took the resulting scores for each story and put them in a ranked list for each Doctor.
adventure-showdown began with a series of Google Forms with the same method as DWM, asking internet users to rank stories from 1 to 10. adventure-showdown lumped and split stories differently to DWM: The Key to Time was included as a distinct Four story to each of its individual parts, and each of the individual parts of Trial of a Time Lord and Flux were included alongside the overarching story. Utopia was also split from The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords.
adventure-showdown used the resulting rankings to create a series of Tumblr polls, moving from a group stage into a series of head-to-head matchups. They matched stories up roughly by obscurity (keeping advertisements and musical numbers separate from audio dramas and comics, which were separate from TV spin-offs, which were separate from the TV show itself), then Doctor or era. With each new round, the matchups were scrambled within melded groups, which ultimately led to a diverse distribution of all different eras and media under the umbrella of Doctor Who throughout the tournament.
My Methodology
In order to turn adventure-showdown's poll results into something that can be compared to DWM's, I created a spreadsheet tracking how each Doctor's stories were doing, separating them first into tiers according to which round they were eliminated in, then within those tiers by how many votes they had in the matchup where they were eliminated.
In the case of some particularly tough matchups, this means that the story that got the most points throughout the entire competition is not necessarily the highest-ranked story for that Doctor. For instance, The Happiness Patrol finished #3 of the Seventh Doctor's stories according to my reckoning of the Tumblr poll, being eliminated in the fifth round with 400 votes, less than the two stories above it (which were eliminated in rounds where they got 147 and 107 votes, respectively). The Happiness Patrol saw a vigorous campaign to increase its vote count, since it was up against Blink. The post for the matchup that eliminated it currently has 304 notes as of this writing. This is one of the fun quirks of this execrise.
General Trends
Where We Agree
The Ninth Doctor shows very stable story rankings between DWM and Tumblr.
On average, the difference in rankings for each episode of 9 is 5%, with only 2 out of 10 stories actually moving up or down the rankings at all. The Sixth Doctor is similar: only 3 of his 8 stories (included in the DWM poll, meaning not counting the individual parts of Trial) moved by more than 1 ranking. The Seventh Doctor only had 4 of his 12 stories move by more than 1 ranking.
On the flipside, Tumblr's opinions differ from DWM most regarding the First, Fifth, and Eleventh Doctors. The only stories that stayed relatively stable across both rankings for these Doctors are as follows.
For the First Doctor, only 4 out of 29 didn't shift by more than 1 ranking: #2 The Time Meddler, #5 The Tenth Planet (#6 in DWM), #18 The Keys of Marinus, and #20 The Reign of Terror (#19 in DWM)
For the Fifth Doctor, we agreed only 5 times out of 20: #1 The Caves of Androzani, #2 The Five Doctors (#3 in DWM), #11 Frontios, #14 Black Orchid, and #17 Arc of Infinity (#16 in DWM)
For Eleven, 5 of his 39 stories stayed relatively stable: #1 Vincent and the Doctor (#2 in DWM), #4 The Eleventh Hour (#3 in DWM), #9 Amy's Choice, #14 The Snowmen (#13 in DWM), and #39 The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.
As you'll see further below, there is usually agreement between both polls about at least one episode that is in the top and bottom 3 or 4 for each Doctor, so these extremes represent the battle over ordering the ones generally ranked in the middle.
We Hate Daleks
As a general trend, Tumblr seems to think less of Dalek stories than the general DWM readership.
Out of 26 stories with Daleks as the primary antagonist, only 8 did not drop by more than 1 slot between the DWM poll and the Tumblr bracket (that is The Chase, Genesis of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, Dalek, Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar, and Eve of the Daleks). DIM/Evolution actually ranked 3 slots higher on Tumblr than the magazine, while TMA/TWF and Eve finished significantly higher on Tumblr than in the magazine, cracking into the top 5 for their respective Doctors.
We Love The Master
Meanwhile, out of 26 stories featuring the Master, either as the primary antagonist or as an important character, only two dropped by more than one place in the rankings (The End of Time and The Power of the Doctor), while the others either stayed put or increased their positions, some by quite a lot (e.g. The Time Monster (up 20 slots in the Third Doctor rankings), The Keeper of Traken (up 8 slots in the Fourth Doctor rankings), Planet of Fire (up 6 spots in the Fifth Doctor rankings), and The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar (up 9 spots in the Twelfth Doctor rankings)).
We Have No Easily Observable Feelings About the Cybermen
Out of 18 Cyberman stories, 9 fell in the rankings between DWM and Tumblr, while 5 stayed within 1 rank of the DWM poll, and 4 rose. If I had to venture a hypothesis based on my unscientific qualitative analysis, it looks like Tumblr marked down most of the Classic Who Cyberman stories (only The Tenth Planet, The Invasion, and Attack staying within 1 rank of the DWM poll), while the only ones that rose in the ranks were New Who stories (Rise/The Age of Steel, Closing Time, Nightmare in Silver, and Dark Water/Death in Heaven-- though of course this last one is also a Master story, which we know we love).
Superlatives
Here are the stories that showed the biggest positive and negative difference in their rankings between the DWM poll and the Tumblr bracket, for each Doctor:
First Doctor
Biggest jump: #10 The Sensorites (up from #27 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #28 The Crusade (down from #13 in DWM)
Second Doctor
Biggest jump: #8 The Highlanders (up from #16 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #14 The Evil of the Daleks (down from #14 in DWM)
Third Doctor
Biggest jump: #4 The Time Monster (up from #24 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #21 Day of the Daleks (down from #11 in DWM)
Fourth Doctor
Biggest jump: #7 The Horns of Nimon (up from #40 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #36 The Talons of Weng-Chiang (down from #5 in DWM)
Fifth Doctor
Biggest jump: #8 Planet of Fire (up from #14)
Biggest fall: #15 Resurrection of the Daleks (down from #6)
Sixth Doctor
Biggest jump: #1 The Mark of the Rani (up from #5 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #6 Revelation of the Daleks (down from #1 in DWM) [NB: not counting each part of Trial, since DWM didn't include them - though The Ultimate Foe ranked #10 on Tumblr while Trial itself ranked #4 in DWM, so that could be another option for this superlative]
Seventh Doctor
Biggest jump: #3 The Happiness Patrol (up from #7 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #12 Silver Nemesis (down from #9 in DWM)
Ninth Doctor
Biggest jump: #5 The End of the World (up from #7 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #7 Rose (down from #5 in DWM)
Tenth Doctor
Biggest jump: #17 42 (up from #31 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #29 The Girl in the Fireplace (down from #7 in DWM)
[NB: adventure-showdown split Utopia and The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords where DWM didn't, which both placed above these two stories.]
Eleventh Doctor
Biggest jump: #13 The Rings of Akhaten (up from #34 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #36 The Crimson Horror (down from #18 in DWM)
Twelfth Doctor
Biggest jump: #20 The Eaters of Light (up from #30 in DWM)
Biggest fall: #18 The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion (down from #7 in DWM)
Thirteenth Doctor
Biggest jump: TIE #1 Demons of the Punjab (up from #5), #2 Spyfall (up from #6), and #3 Eve of the Daleks (up from #7)
Biggest fall: #15 Rosa (down from #4) [NB: not counting each part of Flux, since DWM didn't include them - though The Vanquishers ranked #29 on Tumblr while Flux itself ranked #12 in DWM, so that could be another option for this superlative]
Definitive Bests and Worsts
Here, then, are each Doctor's commonly agreed-upon best and worst stories: that is, those stories ranked in each Doctor's top/bottom 10% (minimum 3) in each poll, and where both polls overlap. Lists are alphabetical.
First Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: The Time Meddler
Tumblr: The Edge of Destruction, The Romans
DWM: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Daleks' Master Plan
Worst
Tumblr: The Crusade, The Savages, The Smugglers
DWM: The Sensorites, The Space Museum, The Web Planet
Second Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: The War Games
Tumblr: The Enemy of the World, The Mind Robber
DWM: The Power of the Daleks, Tomb of the Cybermen
Worst
Both agree: The Dominators, The Space Pirates
Tumblr: The Krotons
DWM: The Underwater Menace
Third Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: The Green Death
Tumblr: The Dæmons, The Three Doctors
DWM: Inferno, Spearhead from Space
Worst
Both agree: The Mutants
Tumblr: Death to the Daleks, Planet of the Daleks
DWM: The Monster of Peladon, The Time Monster
Fourth Doctor (top/bottom 4)
Best
Both agree: City of Death, Genesis of the Daleks, Robots of Death
Tumblr: The Horror of Fang Rock
DWM: Pyramids of Mars
Worst
Both agree: The Power of Kroll, Underworld
Tumblr: Nightmare of Eden, Revenge of the Cybermen
DWM: The Horns of Nimon, Meglos
Fifth Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: The Caves of Androzani, The Five Doctors
Tumblr: Enlightenment
DWM: Earthshock
Worst
Both agree: Time-Flight
Tumblr: The Awakening, Four to Doomsday
DWM: The King's Demons, Warriors of the Deep
Sixth Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: Vengeance on Varos
Tumblr: The Mark of the Rani, Trial of a Time Lord (considered as a whole)
Worst
Both agree: Timelash, The Twin Dilemma
Tumblr: The Ultimate Evil (specifically)
DWM: Attack of the Cybermen
Seventh Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: Remembrance of the Daleks, Survival
Tumblr: The Happiness Patrol
DWM: The Curse of Fenric
Worst
Both agree: Delta and the Bannermen, Time and the Rani
Tumblr: Silver Nemesis
DWM: Paradise Towers
Ninth Doctor (top/bottom 3)
Best
Both agree: Bad Wolf/The Parting of Ways, Dalek, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Worst
Both agree: Aliens of London/World War Three, Boom Town, The Long Game
Tenth Doctor (top/bottom 4)
Best
Both agree: Blink, Midnight, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Tumblr: The Fires of Pompeii
DWM: Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Worst
Both agree: The Idiot's Lantern, The Lazarus Experiment
Tumblr: The Next Doctor, The Shakespeare Code
DWM: Fear Her, Love & Monsters
Eleventh Doctor (top/bottom 4)
Best
Both agree: The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens, Vincent and the Doctor
Tumblr: The Doctor's Wife
DWM: Day of the Doctor
Worst
Both agree: The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe
Tumblr: The Crimson Horror, Night Terrors, Victory of the Daleks
DWM: The Curse of the Black Spot, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Nightmare in Silver
Twelfth Doctor (top/bottom 4)
Best
Both agree: Heaven Sent, Mummy on the Orient Express, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls
Tumblr: The Husbands of River Song
DWM: Flatline
Worst
Both agree: In the Forest of the Night, Kill the Moon, Sleep No More
Tumblr: The Lie of the Land
DWM: The Woman Who Lived
Thirteenth Doctor (top/bottom 3)
[Villa Diodati gif included because there is no overlap in the two polls' top 3 for Thirteen, however this episode ranked #4 on Tumblr and #2 in DWM, so it is the closest overlap at the top.]
Best
Both agree: None!
Tumblr: Eve of the Daleks, Demons of the Punjab, Spyfall
DWM: Fugitive of the Judoon, The Haunting of Villa Diodati, The Power of the Doctor
Worst
Both agree: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, Orphan 55
Tumblr: The Vanquishers (on its own)
DWM: Legend of the Sea Devils
...What about Eight?
Who said that? I thought you had all gone. You shouldn't scare me like that. Well, you see, the Eighth Doctor only has two televised appearances in which he features, and only one of those was included in the DWM poll. This post is about comparing the two polls. I can't really do anything...
Ah, alright.
Televised Appearances
We ranked The Night of the Doctor above the TV Movie. Night made it all the way to round 6, while the TV Movie was out in Round 2, losing with 266 votes to Jubilee, which then lost to Scherzo in the next round. Night lost to Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, which had 344 votes to Night's 204.
Audios
Scherzo made it to the quarter-finals of the Tumblr poll! It lost out to Midnight 435 to 581, the first TV episode it encountered in adventure-showdown's very intricate media-segregating bracket.
Caerdroia made it to round 7, losing to Scherzo after it had beaten out Father's Day in round 6 (299-280) and the much-loved SJA episode The Curse of Clyde Langer in round 5.
The Natural History of Fear made it to round 6, finally losing out to Blink (253-352), and making it the top-scoring Eight audio to go out in this round.
The Chimes of Midnight also got to round 6, finally just losing to Remembrance of the Daleks (163-166); in the same round, Zagreus lost to Scherzo (131-210) just after it had beaten Genesis of the Daleks (132-103) in round 5.
The next highest-ranked Eight* audio is Solitaire (a Companion Chronicle, hence the asterisk), which was eliminated in round 5, losing to Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (180-43).
It's worth noting here, that Doctor Who and the Pirates also made it to round 6, making it the highest-ranked non-Eighth Doctor audio. It lost to City of Death (170-78). The next-highest ranked audios are The Marian Conspiracy (lost in Round 5 to The Wedding of Sarah-Jane Smith), The Holy Terror (lost in Round 5 to The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances), and A Death in the Family (lost in Round 5 to The Natural History of Fear). Congratulations to Evelyn Smythe.
Novels
The EDA Alien Bodies managed to make it to round 6, finally being eliminated by Turn Left with 145 votes to 264. It had just beaten out Time Crash in the previous round. This makes it the highest-ranked Doctor Who novel overall, according to this Tumblr tournament.
The next-highest novel for the Eighth Doctor was Unnatural History, which was defeated in round 5 by The Chimes of Midnight.
Below that, there were five EDAs eliminated in round 4:
Interference (lost with 41 votes to Scherzo's 85)
Mad Dogs and Englishmen (lost with 38 votes to The Marian Conspiracy's 56)
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (lost with 28 votes to A Death in the Family's 54)
Camera Obscura (lost with 27 votes to Lungbarrow's 47)
The Scarlet Empress (lost with 22 votes to The Chimes of Midnight's 102)
Comics
I hadn't actually been tracking any of this Eight stuff, so I'm having to squint through the backlog and this is already much too long. So you're only getting two: The Land of Happy Endings is the Eighth Doctor comic that made it the farthest in the Tumblr competition, being eliminated in round 3 by An Adventure in Space and Time (46 votes to 95). The Flood also made it to round 3, where it was eliminated by the Thirteenth Doctor comic Old Friends, gaining 39 votes against Old Friends' 47.
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