#just feel like rtd should have known better. PEOPLE DIE. make 10/14 die!! i will hate it but make me deal with it!!

[silvermarmoset]

your tags are SO true like it was one thing to bring tennant back pre-ncuti, since the whole point of that was quite transparently to increase viewership FOR ncuti, but to be like "actually tennant!doctor gets to go have his own life and ncuti is a totally different offshoot" is like ....... well.

i'm screaming a lot in the tags but i'm guessing you meant these ones?

#honestly. horrible horrible flex to set ncuti up across from the most beloved doctor from the start?#like i (and im guessing a lot of other people!) will /always/ be drawn to 10 and feel like he's our doctor#don't set ncuti up like that!! deny us dt and MAKE US LOOK AT HIM. this is so SO weird rtd wtf did you do

because yeah. it actually makes me a bit furious because leaving a spare doctor hanging around and sending Ncuti off as a double is just handing the perfect excuse to every bigot who wants to claim that Ncuti isn't the real doctor, the real doctor is back on earth in Donna Noble's garden. Why do that? Why make it easy for fans who want to drop the show now and pretend it's always the old way, forever?

i can think of reasons for doing it this way—like i'm 95% certain this was just a convoluted way to give Donna her happy ending—but none of the possible reasons i can think of justify going about it like this. I love Ten, and Tennant, I could watch him go on adventures forever, but the point should be I DON'T GET TO because because here's A WHOLE NEW WONDERFUL DOCTOR to go on adventures with! The whole constant point in Who is that change and death DO happen, and one of the joys is grieving the old while embracing the new!

But this episode doing this weird little pivot where you can die but still live, where a separate form of you can rest* so you can go on adventures....idk what moral RTD was aiming for here but it feels like he just shot his own next era in the foot for no particular reason beyond "we love Ten" (and we do but. come on)

*(what does that even mean?? canonically we know the doctor is restless and always running into trouble so what was the point of that?? it's confirmed he's going to mars on fun little trips!! this is the same man and you gave him a tardis and apparently there's no sacrifice at all?? what is this!! why!!)

#the giggle #dw spoilers #part of me is like. it's the epilogue! it's putting a button on the old universe and nuwho. but like— #NCUTI IS IN THE SAME UNIVERSE. it's still his universe! what are we even putting a button on here? are you going to tell me that every time #london gets invaded for the rest of the show (and lets be honest its going to happen within like 2 episodes anyway) we're all going to sit #and not wonder where The Other Doctor With His Own Goddamn Tardis is? why he is not helping here? #also. side note. it is not as egregious as *waves hands* everything else about this #but it felt like a very very big disservice to have ncuti's first moments still be david's #because i'll be honest. when david is onscreen i will watch him first. i will watch him and pay attention to him because he's my favorite! #putting ncuti across from ten (THE fave) is making him do TOO MUCH in his first twenty minutes of screentime #felt like setting him up to fail from the get go because of COURSE i was distracted by david tennant it's david tennant. OF COURSE. #just feel like rtd should have known better. PEOPLE DIE. make 10/14 die!! i will hate it but make me deal with it!! #then make me see 15 and fall fully in love with him #can you imagine if nine had been around during ten's first ep? skinny dt wouldn't have stood a chance. thats why we DO it this way russell #you HAVE TO MAKE US DEAL WITH LOSS. ugh im done fuming but yeah not happy w that #i mean. monkey brain me who loves ten and wants him to live forever was delighted. #the rest of me who has a brain and thought processes thought it was dirt and made 0 sense in any way.

[rosencrypt]

I saw Doctor Who! Semi-liveblog under the cut:

- Ah, here are the descendants of that expedition upship they mentioned last episode. How did the Cyber patients get here?

- OK, so why don't the farm people chain up the Cyber patients further from the house? Or lock them in a vault, or chuck them underwater or smth

- you can't have a cyberman story without a good ol' base under siege

- John Simm is SO MUCH BETTER when he's not having to shout about drums and be Wacky or Manic every 5 minutes. Just shows what a wasted opportunity those RTD Master episodes were :/

- Oh huh, I didn't think we were going to get an explanation for Simm being around. Raises a few more questions about just why Gallifrey's reappearance was so badly handled, tho

- does the Conscience of Marinus REALLY count as an instance of the Cybermen, Moffat? Actually, I just did some research into this - apparently there are some comics and novels that suggest two or more out of Mondas, Planet 14, and Marinus are actually the same place. The Doctor lists them separately here, though, so presumably that’s not what Moffat’s talking about. He’s probably just making something up. Which, to be fair, is what they did with Planet 14 in The Invasion

- Burning? Is that a Planet of Fire reference? I don't remember the Master being drowned or stabbed tho

- oh no, call back to Last of the Time Lords. Why would you do that :(

- I'm loving Missy's chaotic nature here. She’s so Red

- being rescued from Cybermen via rope ladder from a tall building? Yay, Invasion reference! :)

- noo, why is Bill back now. I have nothing against her, but does cyber conversion mean ANYTHING these days? Also,if she’s grabbed the ladder, shouldn’t that just have torn it off rather than holding back the whole shuttle

- Awww, Nardole did a cute thing

- 2-week time skip? why??? Stop doing that Moffat. I know you love randomly skipping over things, but in this case would there be any difference at all if you didn’t? as far as I can see the only thing this accomplishes is that you don’t have to show the Doctor explaining anything to the locals and you can have Nardole ordering people around with no explanation, at the cost of killing any sense of urgency. I don’t think that’s a fair trade, tbh, and I’d have enjoyed seeing the Masters maybe try to take command of the farms or smth

- Right, so Bill is still perfectly cogent and cyber conversion actually DOES mean less than nothing. great. way to completely defang the Cybermen, Moffat

- It’s been 2 weeks and the Doctor STILL hasn’t been to see Bill? she's just spent 10 years waiting for you, the least you could do is say hi

- oh right, so Cyberbill HASN'T actually been de-cybertised. That’s something at least. Nice callback to Dalek Clara there too

- oh, jelly babies again. Where did he get them? What purpose does this bit serve? It’s just a reference for reference’s sake, and it’s not even a clever subtle reference, since 4′s taste for jelly babies is so extremely well-known

- I feel this scene would be a lot more effective if we were actually seeing Cyberbill. Also, why hasn't the conversion brainwashing thing worked on her, anyway? If she hasn’t been de-cybertised, why is she being all independent and emotion-feeling?

- "You are..so strong" well even more so now, Doctor

- srsly?? she's just resisting through force of will? that's...disappointing. it was bullshit in the monk episodes and it doesn’t make any more senes here

- "You can't be angry any more" - like, you literally are incapable of anger. or should be. how are you doing that? maybe these ones just haven't got around to removing their emotions yet

- yay, Simm is still a horrible misogynist. What a useful and necessary character trait

- "They come after the children" oh, are we going to be seeing Cyberbabies? that's grim

- "less to throw away" - so what, they're putting doing the Davies thing of putting the brains into ready-made cyber bodies? That's very disappointing, and also at odds with the gradual transformation body-horror we saw in the last episode.

- OK, Simm, we know you hate women, you can find some other characteristics now. For a species/civilisation supposedly above petty gender concerns, he seems remarkably not

- how fast does time move on the farm floor relative to the city one? it should take days/weeks/etc. for the Cybermen to travel from the city, which if nothing else gives the defenders plenty of time between waves to prepare

- Right, so the Doctor is defending a settlement from technologically-advanced invaders. This is. A bit similar to Time of the Doctor, tbh

- if the Cybermen have 'evolved', why do they have both old and new Cybermen forms?

- oh the child has a name. Good to know.

- Cybermen with rocket-boots is still a stupid idea, but I'll concede that in this one shot it looks OK

- What do you mean, you don't know what you see in him?? Don’t lie, you've always been just as interested, Simm.

- Eh, are you SURE the Master's going to die, Doctor? For all the times they've done it so far, I wouldn't expect it to stick

- Oh obviously she leaves, so she can come back later and save him

- Urgh, back to 'upgrading' :P what happened to “we will survive”?

- So what, the Doctor doesn't like guns, but he's fine with explosives? Bit of a mixed message there, eh?

- are the Cybermen going to actually do anything here? It’s difficult to be afraid of them when we see them being constantly blown up

- Why is it the Masters so scared of a few Cybermen, anyway? They're smart enough to have taken control of the whole ship in minutes.

- Oh, the other woman has a name too

- "Down to the cellar", you mean, closer to the Cybermen? Somebody didn't think this through. For that matter, why are the Cybermen emerging so far from the house? They can arrive literally wherever, so shouldn’t they be coming up through the floorboards?

- Isn't looking after a load of humans pretty much what you've been doing since, like, forever, Doctor?

- "Oh great, so SHE's allowed to explode!" Nardole continues to be the best, especially since the Masters were sidelined

- Speaking of whom...she's going to force his regeneration, isn't she? Bye bye, Simm. We hardly knew you (in an actual decent story that DIDN'T require you to go ON and ON about those goDdAMN dRUUmMms)

- Oh, they're not going to...GOOD, I was so worried Bill was going to profess her love for the Doctor

- More of this 'oh welcome to being a woman' stuff. You know, the more you harp on about gender, Moffat, the more your insistence that it's no big thing is POINTEDLY BELIED.

- "I will never stand with the Doctor!" -what?? you do that all the time. Hell, you stood with 10 in End of Time

- "Don't try to regenerate!" I'm very much not a fan of the New Series (and esp. Moffat) take on regeneration as a voluntary thing/special attack/etc. I'll concede it's a nice thematic story point, tho - even when the Master isn't just literally shot in the back by themself, they're always sabotaging themself with reckless ambition. Oh, it makes an interesting contrast to the Master's previous obsession with survival (...except when the plot dictated otherwise, as in the fantastically OOC 'regeneration suppression' thing in Last of the Time Lords), tho. A characteristic they share with the Cybermen, in fact. Someone should maybe write a story featuring both of them, with that as one of the themes.

- Actually, come to think of it, that's a central conflict of Doctor Who - most of the villainous/antagonistic factions are fundamentally scared of death and obsessed with their own survival and superiority (the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians/Sea Devils), in contrast with the Doctor, who accepts his mortality and acts in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition

- Why is the Doctor crowing about his previous victories over the Cybermen here? This lot have nothing to do with them. Is he just trying to confuse them by talking about planets they’ve never heard of?

- Shouldn't that helmet blast have bypassed regeneration? Being shot like 3 times should have killed him outright.

- Aww, does that mean Missy is dead too? Eh, they've survived worse

- 10 minutes left. Wonder where they'll go from here

- What even happened to Bill? She's going to come and carry him to the TARDIS, I assume

- Oh, Bill's girlfriend came back! That's nice. Now she gets to go to space lesbian heaven. Sort of like Clara and whatshername. Is that the series' first on-screen wlw kiss?

- This whole tears thing doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but sure, let's go with it. How did Heather and Bill get into the TARDIS, tho

- if Heather is the ur-pilot, she should go and crew that Silence ship from The Lodger. NO I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, MOFFAT

- So how does this tie into the bookends in the snow? If he's already unconscious, is he going to get his second wind?

- ah, so he is.

- What do you mean, you don't want to change again?? Like, sure Capaldi, stick around as long as you can, please, but I do think the Doctor is making a bit much of this. It’s like 10 and 11 all over again :P

- Oh, hello David Bradley! Nice to see you again. No idea how this fits into your timeline, tho. This scene doesn’t match up with any of your stories, especially not The 10th Planet.

#ANDYPOSTS #DOCTOR WHO