new-nu-Who: RTD2 (Doctor Who on telly 2023-?)

Rewatching The Runaway Bride and seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more (this is also why I really liked Dan’s departure; he got to a point where he was just tired of always being in mortal peril and fucked off back home, which is super relatable)

I read this and thought “my vague recollection is that Dan was kidnapped once, met the Doctor for about 15 minutes, then spent several months bouncing around space and time trying to save her, then went back to his life as soon as she could drop him home” before realising there were several episodes after Flux

Flux

or as iirc Chibnall thrillingly hyped it, “the story of a man… a man named Dan.”

I read the original Star Beast comic today, amazed that RTD chose to cut the section where the Wrarth knock the Doctor unconscious, strip him naked, and then perform surgery on him to hide a bomb in his belly!

recorded by surviving 1963-65 Dalek voice actor David Graham

https://i.ibb.co/VY6nYr0/grahamdalek.jpg

link to a reply with one of his lines embedded

seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

ratingswatch for Tracer: 5.08 milli VOSDAL, the highest overnight for a BBC drama launch in 2023**; nearly 2 million on iPlayer Sunday (1.62 recorded by BARB*) and another million Mon/Tues, per Jane Tranter (Grade also asked his scintillating opinion); highest Audience Appreciation Index since the first half of Capaldi's two-part finale in June 2017.

*which puts the 2-day figure above the 7-day final of, eg. Blink

** twenty-four episodes of six dramas have consolidated over 7m in 2023 on seven-day; Happy Valley S3 is the top six of those 24, with 7.9 for ep 1, and 11.08 for ep 6. (Call The Midwife S12e03 is 24th, with 7.01; its highest-ranked episode is the finale at 11 with 7.45)

Always helps to have National Treasure David Tennant back in the Tardis of course but yes they have to be pleased with this

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

Yes! Another fantastic departure, absolutely heartbreaking.

(A Christmas special with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead is likely to air one month from today, but not confirmed yet.)


Russel Tinsel Davies confirms: “From Day One in this job, I wanted Doctor Who back on Christmas Day! And with Ncuti, Millie, Davina and the Goblin King, I hope it’s a feast for all the family!”

OK, got around to watching the new episode today. I don't watch TV by myself, and the person I usually watch TV with was going through some stuff.

I had some trepidation about watching it, honestly. Stuff like TV shows are a really social thing for me. Half the fun of watching something is being able to talk about it. That's just been really hard for me lately. I don't have a lot of trust for communities, particularly fan communities. I've never really known how to talk to other people about Doctor Who, the way I see it, what it means to me.

Anyway. Full spoilers ahead.

I knew nothing about it going in except that RTD was showrunner again and that David Tennant would be involved and the new companion was going to be a trans woman named Rose Tyler (apparently that's not actually her character's name tho) and at some point David Tennant regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa. And that Donna was going to come back and they were going to resolve her arc.

So actually I knew a hell of a lot about it going in, considering I actively avoided reading anything about the episode.

The name of the episode rang a bell and as soon as I saw Pat Mills' credit I was like oh shit, this was based on a comic story. Have I read this? Do I know this one? And then the Meep showed up and I was all "OH SHIT IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKIN' MEEP"

And maybe this is why I have such a hard time talking to other Doctor Who fans

The Meep is such a _perfect_ RTD character, honestly better than any of the other characters RTD previously created in that mold. Kind of an Ewok-ET-Mogwai kind of thing except that it predates all of those characters, hahaha...

I went back to the story after watching it to see what the episode took from it. Surprisingly little, and not the stuff I thought. Aside from the Meep... meepself? (seriously, cute pronoun joke but this is why we say things like "she/her/hers" - in real life pronoun usage is distressingly similar to Douglas Adams' digression on tense conjugation in time travel) and the, uh, Wrarth warriors (big props to the actors for actually finding a way to pronounce "Wrarth"), the biggest influence I see is actually the influence of Sharon and her family on Rose and her family. I was pretty surprised to learn that "Fudge" is a character from the comics. I think I know a non-binary person named "Fudge". (Also a great non-binary name: "Keebler". If I had a child I'd argue with my co-parent that we should name them "Keebler" and my co-parent would very sensibly say "no".)

It's... the show I remember watching when RTD was running things the first time. Not the show I see when I watch it now. I remember the special effects, in 2005, looking genuinely impressive and not janky, the plots being exciting and fresh, the missteps easy to overlook. I remember it being a big action-packed family show with corny jokes and messaging that wasn't always perfect (looking at you "Unquiet Dead") but was...

I mean, Chibnall, right? I hate to mention his name. I don't know what happened, how David Tennant showed up again, any of that. I dropped that show like a hot rock after "Arachnids in the UK". Nothing particularly bad about that episode, I just figured, you know, this show isn't going to get any better from here.

Anyway, the trans thing. I thought it was... it was clearly an example of "cis-writing-trans". RTD gets it better than a lot of cis people. Sometimes, you know, sometimes a person knows just enough to be dangerous.

The idea that Donna and Rose could just "let go" of the, I don't know, magical time lord power (that goes back to Shada, right? What Chronotis does to Claire? God, I don't think I ever thought of that before)... that was good and authentic. Them saying that a "male-presenting" time lord couldn't ever _understand_ that is gender-essentialist bullshit, IMO. Cis guys... they sometimes put themselves down. Judge themselves in ways that I wouldn't dream of judging them.

It's something that I was taught. To hold onto things that I thought were important, but aren't. You don't have to transition to learn to let go of those things.

My girlfriend liked the corny "non-binary" joke/reveal. I liked it too, I mean, RTD is corny in a way I like. I eye-roll but it's all in good fun, for me. My girlfriend genuinely felt seen. And this is an example of... when I say RTD gets more than most people, Rose being both non-binary _and_ trans... that's me, that's my girlfriend, that's a lot of the people I know. I appreciate that a show run by a cis person sees that.

The thing about these stories is that... the stuff that gives me the trans feels isn't always the trans stuff. Rose is a great character, it was great to see her, and I just felt Donna's arc so deeply in my heart.

It's kind of echoes of... I wrote this whole story about how for me, "Human Nature" (the TV story, I never read the book) gave me particular trans feels. Donna's arc gives me that feeling but moreso. And it's not a trans story. This was an arc that was set up when, 2008? A lot of the stuff I've felt, I've experienced, isn't exclusive to trans people.

Donna lost 15 years of her life. The Doctor thought he was helping her. Thought he was _saving_ her from certain death. Thought... he could seal off that part of her and she'd be fine. She'd live a happy, normal life. Plus, she had a lot of money. It was OK that she couldn't think about those things she did, couldn't acknowledge those things she did, or the pain would fucking kill her. It was OK that everybody around her had to lie to her in increasingly obvious ways, stop talking about things that were incredibly important to them. Nothing is wrong. There are no aliens. You don't know this man at our front door. They're acting stupider than those asshole kids who deadname Rose.

Which is, again, a clear sign of cis people writing trans characters. Cis people talk about trans characters and the first thing that happens is you hear our deadnames. I don't want to know anybody's deadname. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter. It's a lot easier to just not fucking say it in the first place than it is to unhear it. Now I'm always going to know this character's deadname, whenever I think about her, and I would fucking prefer not to. A lot of cis people just don't seem to get that.

Anyway, Donna. "The Star Beast" shows, very well, the cost of that. Doesn't pass any judgements because there's no point. It doesn't matter whether the Doctor was right or wrong in doing what he did. It hurt. She spent fifteen years missing some important part of herself, not understanding, not knowing why or what was wrong with her, and whenever she asked about it people lied to her, tried to keep her from knowing the truth. _He_ tried to keep her from knowing the truth. He didn't want to be responsible for killing her. No. He couldn't accept that he was _already_ responsible for killing her. No blame. No guilt. The life he lives... people around him die, sometimes. People he cares about. Sometimes you can change that. Sometimes you can't.

I guess he learned that in "The Waters of Mars", in "The End of Time". By that time he'd already done what he did to Donna. I don't know. Maybe he thought sacrificing himself for Wilf atoned for that. It didn't. Nobody _asked_ him to atone.

Wilf's still alive, the show tells us. It's not... we'll never see him again. Bernard Cribbins died last year. I don't care if Wilf is living on a nice farm upstate with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

So he comes back, 15 years later, after spending a long, long lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time going to ludicrous lengths trying to keep anyone, ever, from dying, and then... we don't like to talk about what happened after that. Atonement? No, he just couldn't keep going on like that, the way she'd been going.

-

It was... nice. It was really nice to see Donna after she demanded, DEMANDED, that the Doctor stop trying to protect her from herself. Donna wasn't... she wasn't _dead_ before, exactly, but she was so much more _alive_ after the Doctor said those words. It was so easy to see and hear, just like it's easy to see the difference in me before and after. And she didn't regret it. Anything. Fifteen years that... for all the joy, still felt empty somehow, and then one minute of being alive in a way she didn't know she could be. Of doing amazing things. the lesson of the moth by archy. I have a friend who talked about... wanting to be that moth. And then doing it, diving straight into the flame and...

RTD always does this thing, right? Moffat pulled all kinds of shenanigans to keep anyone from dying except from old age, and maybe not even then, while RTD would destroy that world and then have Superman fly around the world backwards and everybody's fine now. It was my least favorite thing about Moffat endings. It seemed cheap. Using a time machine to re-edit a serial cliffhanger. Here, though? No, again, he's right. I dived into the flame expecting it to burn me up and I still don't know what the hell happened but I'm still here and everything I wanted from that flame I feel now in every moment of my life. It's such a queer thing.

-

Here's what I love most about this episode. Early in the episode, after Rose gets deadnamed, Donna says something like "I would burn down the world to protect you." And my girlfriend and I looked at the screen and said "Yes! Do it. Do it for us." She doesn't... well, she doesn't need to. But she also doesn't know that. I don't actually want to see the world burned down. Someone like Donna, though... that's what I want in an ally. Someone who would burn the world down to protect us.

I don't know. I'll say it. I'll share it. I've said enough stupid shit on this thread that... well, if I had anywhere else to say this stuff, I'd say it there instead. I guess.

thanks for that kate, that was beautifully said & deeply otm in ways that hadn’t occurred to me til you said it

and i agree re moffat, was the thing i liked least about his run

<3

That is lovely - though I haven't heard anywhere that Rose was the companion (for these three specials - I know Gatwa has his own companion) rather than Donna?

I definitely did see Rose described as a new companion in some of the earlier news stories around the 60th specials, but I think it was just people jumping to conclusions rather than quoting directly from what RTD was announcing, eg here, where they also decide she's a "new version of Rose Tyler".

Not that I think companion needs to be a very specifically defined term anyway, none of the "not a companion unless they travel in the tardis" or "not a companion unless they're in at least X episodes" etc nonsense is helpful. Rose meets the Doctor and helps him with something, that's probably enough to meet the companionhood threshold I reckon, it's arguably as much as Liz Shaw ever did.

haha yep that's the thing i'm just... out of touch in some weird ways, so much of what i "know" about the show is muddled fanlore that's since been corrected, except that i never picked up on the correction.

re: companionhood... see that's the thing, not only is the gender-essentialist take donna and rose give at the end wrong, there's a lovely bit in the episode that directly contradicts their claim

tennant is talking to someone... the current scientific advisor, maybe?... about donna... i can't recall what he says but it's really emotionally vulnerable and caring, and at the end he says "i guess i talk like that now?", and, if i'm wrong on this i'm wrong, shirley anne bingham says "that sounds like a good thing."

on a nerd sense it's very much in who tradition, new doctors who've just regenerated taking on some of the characteristics of their last incarnation (as far back as troughton in "power of the daleks")

it's more than that, though... the whole thing where chibnall declared that the doctor was no longer going to have "companions" but "friends" seemed like a genuinely good idea to me, although i'm sure chibnall managed to fuck it up and get it all backwards somehow. the doctor having been a woman for a few years is more than just the wrong gender on a taxicab license (and christ i feel the doctor's pain on that one... i hope updating the gender on his psychic paper is easier for him than updating my paperwork was for me. it probably isn't. given what i've seen of the doctor's approach to technology, the psychic paper settings UI is probably a fucking nightmare.)

the doctor is _changed_ by his experiences. it's why donna and rose refer to the doctor as "male-presenting". last episode the doctor was female-presenting, so... last episode she could have done it but this episode he can't? like, he can reach items on high shelves and pee standing up but he can no longer process trauma in an emotionally healthy manner?

it makes sense that the doctor doesn't know how to let go, not because he's "male-presenting" but because he's the DOCTOR, he's an alien who... this was the big revolution RTD brought into the show, the thing that made the show so much _better_ than it'd ever been before. companions weren't just people whose job was to scream and have the plot explained to them. she or he (yes, mickey was a companion, nobody gives a fuck about adam) was someone the doctor needed to _listen_ to, someone who undersood things he didn't. i grew up watching the original show, and my role model was mostly the doctor. (i mean, when she was in the show it was lalla ward, but i think that was mostly a me thing.)

the protagonist of the revived show, for me, that was rose, and not in a "i wish i was a girl" sense. it was her _character_. she was the strong one. she was the one i looked up to. the doctor's alien nature didn't make him some kind of unstoppable superhero. (mostly it made him act kind of autistic a lot of the time, down to literally carrying stim toys around with him in his pockets. can't imagine why i found the doctor so relatable as a kid.) when he tried to act like a superhero he hurt other people and he got hurt himself. his first companions, way back in the beginning, were teachers, and maybe that was less of a coincidence than it seemed.

-

some more serious spoilers for the ep in this next para, about shirley anne bingham:

i loved shirley anne bingham from the first second, that "oh she'd better show up again" love. (i looked up her name - i avoid researching writing stuff about doctor who for the same reasons i avoid capitalizing my posts, but i want to get characters' names right at least - and of course she fucking will... you don't create a character that good as a one-off.) this character... i don't have the lived experience of using a wheelchair, and someone who does will probably see things in the portrayal that i don't. i loved the character. i loved the actor, i loved the way the hectic pacing of the show made it a genuine surprise to me when she showed up again at the end. i loved the way the show recognized that hey, it's not just daleks who can't climb stairs. i loved her saying "don't make me the problem". i loved the way it gave a plausible plot reason for her to not be affected by the meep's bisexual lighting. i loved the way her disability affected what she could do in ways that were meaningful in the story but didn't make her a liability or a weaker character. and yes, i loved that she had a pimped out james bond wheelchair that could shoot RPGs.

she had _agency_, in a way that moffat's female characters didn't (i do think that verity ritchie convincingly makes the case that moffat's female characters are nearly all cis-male-fantasy versions of bisexual dominatrices). loved loved loved this character.

so glad you're watching again kate!

Yeah - and yes of course otm that 'companion' is a vague title

I thought some other deeply RTD beats in this were the whole military carnage in suburbia thing and the repeated cuts to the youngest bitparter, in this case Fudge, not really involved but gawping at what they could see of the carnage in a direct nod to younger viewers.

Enjoyable in a totally different way from last week's!

Also enjoyed 'The Star Beast' all the more on rewatch earlier (including good lines missed the first time).

It was fantastic just watching that shift gears through silly history - the two of them in a room - mysterious 2001 / Hitchhiker's guide spaceship - the mounting unease of the changelings - surreal chase - the two of them in a room redux - the four of them in a room. The "they don't handle slow well" could have been better set up, but that feels like the best episode of Doctor Who I've seen in a long time.

Wow that was outstanding

Loved it — feels quite emotional having the show return from a long lull with an episode as good as that. And no cop-out ending either.

really good, and i loved it was still really gripping whilst also me having no fucking idea wtf was going on until almost the end

That was amazing, genuinely creepy, suspenseful and fun

Instant top 10 episodes potentially which after the Chibnall era I didn’t think was still possible.

loved the use of RTD1-looking CGI effects on the not-Doctor and not-Donna to create a horrifically unheimlich sensation, contrasted with an entirely modern-looking CGI set

great ep, but will have to dock a point for acknowledging chibnall era lore - quite apart from the personal disappointment, my family were baffled by this bit and I couldn’t really explain it because i stopped watching chibnall during his first season

AND - I remember this used to be something I saw mentioned a lot online but I found the dialogue was mixed very low under the music - consensus seems to be something to do with surround mix being pushed into 2-ch setup (watching on Disney+, perhaps there is a settings thing somewhere)

it doesn't really need explaining, he exposited everything you need to know (basically it means RTD can treat the last three years of Chibnall's era as a slate-clearing traumatic event, the way the 1989-2005 "wilderness years" were represented as the Time War when RTD/Eccleston started)

also I promise it makes much more sense in two sentences/ten seconds than in ten non-consecutive episodes over five years

cosine on the sound mix when pushed through a prologic setup but we just turned it up a little

TERRIFIC episode

xp i feel as though “there was a big war and i am sad” is more instantly comprehensible than “there was a big flux? and half the universe is gone and i am owning it? and also not from gallifrey anymore?” (albeit it was - as mentioned- tricky to hear exactly what was said over Murray’s expository tootling)

The Doctor's background has been rebooted at least ten times in sixty years on telly alone - this is just telling casual and returning viewers "ah, (his) past is a mystery" the way the Eccleston series did. Fingers crossed that's the last we hear of either Gallifrey or Flux tbh.

I’m waiting for a “oh for Flux sake” joke

AND - I remember this used to be something I saw mentioned a lot online but I found the dialogue was mixed very low under the music - consensus seems to be something to do with surround mix being pushed into 2-ch setup (watching on Disney+, perhaps there is a settings thing somewhere)

― meat and two vdgg (emsworth)

this isn't a doctor who specific thing, happens all the time... i've seem memes about it. boomers complaining about millennials having subtitles on all the time and millennials are like "let's talk about your fucking sound mixing here". so yeah. i just put subtitles on and pretend like i'm watching a US print of _trainspotting_. my girlfriend likes watching her shows with subs so both me and her other girlfriend watched it with her.

-

it doesn't really need explaining, he exposited everything you need to know (basically it means RTD can treat the last three years of Chibnall's era as a slate-clearing traumatic event, the way the 1989-2005 "wilderness years" were represented as the Time War when RTD/Eccleston started)

― bae (sic)

i didn't even know that was a reference to chibnall-era lore... i know a lot of people were really upset about the "timeless child" shit and i have no idea what it was all about. the show was bad under chibnall. i didn't feel like i needed to know. and in fact i don't. if people needed to know what happened in the chibnall episodes in order to watch the show nobody would ever watch it again, because god almighty who on earth wants to watch that crap? i don't.

this is, like... ok, i'm not saying the b&w seasons were crap like the chibnall seasons are, because they're not, i fucking love them, but the #1 reason nobody gets into the old series these days is probably because people keep acting like they have to watch the whole thing from the beginning, and no matter how much i tell them "no seriously if you're new to the show just skip the first six years, you literally do not need to know any of that stuff, you can come back to it later." no, they try to watch it from the beginning and give up in the middle of episode four of "the daleks" if not before, and then they get imposter syndrome about not being "good enough" to be a fan of the classic series or some shit.

rtd basically defined my approach to continuity in the first episode with the farting aliens where unit showed up and the doctor said "oh yeah, unit. i used to work with them in the '70s. or maybe the '80s. i can never remember which."

-

my feelings about the actual episode are complicated and in line with one of the themes of the show i am going to take my time to figure them out. i guess if i'm gonna talk about anything in the episode now it's the tag.

For the past... well, for me, for the past seven years... it's felt to me like Doctor Who is a show from a parallel universe. In 2008 or so RTD did that show "Turn Left" and he depicts the nightmarish descent of Earth into a fascist dystopia without the Doctor and, like. I watch that now and I think "Yeah, but that happened." So when I look at the tag, I basically see the Doctor visiting the world that i _feel like_ we live in. I... I trust RTD to understand that and to tell that story well.

also i suck at tags and i used spoiler tags instead of quote tags for sic's post, that's not actually a spoiler

Typically detailed and insightful review of Star Beast from Darren Mooney here - https://them0vieblog.com/2023/11/25/doctor-who-the-star-beast-review/

I think RTD did a great job of turning the Flux/Timeless stuff into an intriguing actual mystery instead of "oh fuck what's Chibnall going to fuck with next".

People seem obsessed with THE LORE and making shows Accessible for New Viewers but I remember, as a kid, it seemed like we started every show in media res - not just sci-fi stuff but sitcoms and cop shows and whatever - because the first episodes were never repeated, and the mysteries and allusions and unexplained continuity blips became part of the fun. It meant even rubbish like Juliet Bravo could have an intriguing air of mystery. ("Did you know there was a DIFFERENT JULIET BRAVO in the first seasons, but she DIED" being a common playground rumour.)

Echo the above re lore. I also think there’s been a sea change in storytelling expectations in the last couple of decades - where lore and backstory are embraced as exciting things for a new audience to delve into rather than off-putting baggage.

Personally I’m not a fan of the MCU-isation of everything and prefer my stories standalone. But it’s interesting that in 2005 they put so much energy into holding the classic series and its continuity at arms length (two years to MENTION Gallifrey!) whereas a huge part of the 60th has been bringing the whole run under one brand/roof.

I really wish I'd loved this week's episode as much as everyone else did, I'm jealous of everyone else's enjoyment! It was good, I liked it, but Midnight is still possibly my favourite RTD story ever, and this felt like a diminished retread of that.

- The core "out there in an unexplored region lies an unknowable entity which wants to imitate then destroy you" idea was basically the same.

- Something stealing your voice/thoughts was just a much scarier idea than something stealing your appearance/knowledge (not that I can explain why!).

- The extra layer which lifted Midnight from good to amazing was "humans become monsters too if you scare them enough" and that was completely absent here (or at least, it was shifted to an "all sentient beings are monsters" and was described instead of being shown).

- "Identify the doppelganger" is a fun old trope but hard to land, I think? It's never easy to come up with a satisfying answer to "I knew it was the real you because X". And here RTD not only struggles with that, but he includes three (arguable five) runs at that scene in this episode, none of the resolutions quite ring true, and then in the last of them he intentionally has the doctor make the wrong choice before resorting to "when I double checked, I knew it wasn't the real you because your arm was a few milimetres too long" or whatever. Perhaps that was all intentional "Donna and the Doctor don't quite know each other as well as they think" theme? But I couldn't quite tell one way or the other.

- Mrs Bean could've done with a different vegetable name, because when she first got mentioned I got the impression they were just referencing Mr Bean (which felt odd but ok) and then when that came back as a core plot element at the end and wasn't actually about Mr Bean at all that just seemed weird and wonky. "Why is X funny" is just a bad question to base your doppelganger identification on, but even more so when X wasn't that funny anyway, and perhaps that was meant to be a "doctor is fallible under pressure and ends up asking the wrong question" thing? But I just came out of it a bit confused.

also i suck at tags

Me too!

Great critique tho I'm not sure I was feeling more than 'It was good, I liked it' myself, certainly if the trade-off was for greater spectacle than what 'Midnight' offered.

the gusto and delight that tate and tennant take in each other is so great

Me too!

― JimD

nah the spoiler tag only spoils one paragraph, for spoilers longer than one para you have to do a new tag for each para :(

or put a space on the empty lines between paragraphs

oooh i'ma try that and see if it works

OK. I've slept on it. I'm going to try and reflect back what I saw and heard yesterday.

The Doctor and Donna arrive on a spaceship. There's nobody else there. They're in danger. That's all they know. That's all we know.

My favorite parts of classic Who were the first episodes. Classic Who had a tendency to be... glacially paced. Often the Doctor and his companions wouldn't even meet or get involved with any of the other characters in the first episode. In some cases, like "The Edge of Destruction" or "The Ark in Space", there wouldn't be any other characters at all in the episode. Those were my favorites. I didn't really care about whatever drama was happening on some alien planet to some boring humans. I liked _not knowing_ what was going to happen any more than the TARDIS crew did. I liked the sense of uncertainty and unease.

When I was in my 20s I worked for a while in a warehouse. 12 hour shifts, three days in a row. I was the only one there. I was there in case there was an emergency and somebody called and needed something from the warehouse. Nobody ever did. I thought it would be a perfect job for me. I was an introvert and didn't get along with other people.

It was not a perfect job for me. In that empty, silent, cavernous, brightly lit (the lights turned on automatically wherever I went) place with nothing to do - I wasn't allowed to bring in anything from outside because it might be a "security risk" - I started to feel like I wasn't alone. Like there was something else there.

Time and again in Doctor Who, the Doctor would come up against a doppelganger of himself. Maybe it was an evil Time Lord with a goatee who listened to King Crimson. Maybe it was an imperious prosecutor in the ridiculous robes that passed for "gravitas" among his people. Maybe it was a cynical snarker with a ridiculous bowtie who called himself the "Dream Lord".

I can't remember Donna ever coming up against a doppelganger of herself.

One of the things most associated with Doctor Who, next to cheap special effects, is corridors. Endless corridors. Whenever they needed to pad out the episode, they'd just run through some corridors. Well, the same corridor, shot from different angles. Over and over again. In liminal spaces, all corridors are the same. The studios where the show was shot weren't nearly as spacious as the places they depicted. The titular "Ark in Space" seemed to be a vast, empty ship. The set was bigger than the show's usual studio sets, but a lot of it was the brilliant set design of Roger Murray-Leach, who did things like using mirrors to make it look as though the pods full of people in suspended animation extended up hundreds of feet.

I've had a great deal of opportunity to think about body horror and what it means to me. For me, it has a lot to do with mirrors. It's not about who we are. It's how we _see ourselves_. My arms are too long. My hands are too small. I can't get the jaw right. I have the brow ridge of a caveman. Sometimes we look at ourselves and see these distorted, grotesque _monsters_.

When I think of monsters out of shape, out of proportion, I think of "Flatline". The Doctor has become tiny, Clara is normal-size, and they're running through tunnels trying to talk to _communicate_ with these creatures, _talk_ to these creatures, who aren't _like_ us. Who exist only in two dimensions. And they try the best they can to communicate with the creatures, to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the creatures keep trying to hurt them. The creatures never communicate back. Never say why they're doing it. So when the Doctor is back to normal size, when he's come back through the looking-glass, he gives the creatures a monster's name and he destroys them.

The Doctor and Donna's shadow selves tell the Doctor and Donna where they came from and what they're doing. They're traumagenic. The war, the suffering, and the pain made them who they are. The love letters, they say, didn't reach them.

But they know what a love letter is, don't they?

The Doctor and Donna are on one side of a bulkhead. Their shadows are on the other. They shadows are learning. The Doctor (or Donna - the two are more alike than they are different, here) observes that an hour ago, they would have smashed through the bulkhead. They've become more like the Doctor and Donna.

I _know_ these monsters. I've lived with my own version of this monster for decades. There's this creature that knows everything I know, can do everything I can do. My equal in every respect. And it hates me. It wants me dead. The only way I can destroy it is to destroy myself.

I can relate pretty strongly to what the Doctor and Donna are experiencing at this point. Their thoughts are racing. They're spiraling. The faster they think, the stronger the shadows become. Slow down, the Doctor says. Slow down your thinking. Don't think of anything at all. Not even Mister Meringue.

At this point I'm yelling at the screen for them to use their TIPP skills. Literally I'm shouting "PAIRED MUSCLE RELAXATION!" like I'm watching a horror movie and the killer's behind the door. It does seem that sometimes the Doctor forgets things between incarnations. The Third Doctor had lots of practice in Buddhist meditation. He was a lot more able to slow himself down.

The Doctor and Donna's minds are racing so fast that... it doesn't seem like they've had the opportunity to take in the implications of what's happening, in its fullest sense. Their shadows, these creatures shut out, cut off from all light, all warmth, all hope, see what is happening where the Doctor and Donna are and they are filled with hate. They want to destroy it. They want to destroy all of it. Everything the Doctor and Donna love.

At the same time, they are becoming more and more like the Doctor and Donna. And the Doctor and Donna do, in fact, love. It can be easy for them to forget that. Easy for them to define themselves by some of the things they have done. Tennant's Doctor, for instance, showed the Family of Blood the fury of the Time Lord. You know what he did to the girl, right? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror.

She let the girl out later. Most people probably don't know that. The girl didn't apologize. The girl said she had nothing to apologize for. I guess I agree. The girl was a child. She was doing what she'd been taught to do. Guilt or blame have nothing to do with what she did. So the Doctor smashed the mirror and let the girl out. Even though the girl sneered at her, even though the girl told her she would do all sorts of horrible things if the Doctor let her out, and it would all be the Doctor's fault. She let the girl out anyway, and took the girl home, and the girl wanted to eat the Doctor's face but didn't. That didn't happen on TV, but it happened. The Doctor would probably remember it happened, if he gave himself the time. If he gave himself permission.

All over the universe, people are afraid of the Doctor. They say the Doctor brings death and destruction and ruin in her wake. He is a bad omen. And Donna? Well, the Family of Blood did not fear the Doctor. Similarly, humans who are cruel as the Family of Blood is cruel do not fear Donna. Because they are foolish. Donna said it herself. She would burn down the world to protect her child.

The Doctor and Donna's shadows, the traumagenic shadows, they're twisted reflections of those desires. Of that fury, that hatred. The Doctor and Donna look at those shadows and they believe. The shadows would do this, if they were to get free, because they believe this about themselves. The Doctor and Donna believe that they would destroy everything they loved. So the shadows cannot be. They must be destroyed. Slow down? No. They will speed up. They will put themselves at risk, in mortal peril, to destroy these monsters. Before it's too late.

Ah, but what if they had slowed down? What might they have discovered? The shadows know what love letters are. Did they know what love letters are a year ago? Two? These shadows know everything the Doctor and Donna know. Feel everything the Doctor and Donna feel.

The Doctor talks about a paradox within Donna, where she thinks she's stupid but at the same time thinks of herself as being frightfully intelligent. I know this paradox. I've lived this paradox. In me, I don't think it's a paradox at all. The heart of the paradox is believing that I exist in a state of _exception_. If I'm better than everyone else, then I don't deserve the kindness and grace that other people do. I'm better, and therefore what's good enough for others isn't good enough for me. If I'm worse than everyone else, than I don't deserve kindness at all - I am rotten, foul, detestable. Whichever direction the exception is made in, the result is the same.

Donna hates herself. The Doctor hates himself. That's what I saw when I watched the show. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I saw.

The Doctor and Donna love each other. Last episode Doctor said Donna was his best friend in the whole wide universe. He talks like that now. And that's important because the shadows aren't the only mirrors in the episode. The Doctor and Donna are mirrors to each other. So many times people have said to me, "I wish you could see yourself the way I see you." They _could have_. If they'd waited. If they'd slowed down. They fucking _could have_. When the shadows truly became like the Doctor and Donna they _wouldn't_ have destroyed everything the Doctor and Donna loved. They would have _loved_ what the Doctor and Donna love, the _way_ the Doctor and Donna love it. That's what it _means_ to become.

There is no DoctorDonna. Donna let that go. There is the Doctor, and there is Donna, and they see each other, they love each other. With that love, that love and time, they would - not could, _would_ - learn to love themselves.

But instead they sped things up so they could blow up the monsters. It didn't work. Of course it didn't work, though it looked nice on TV. You can't blow up your shadow, any more than you can run from it. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor muses. He lied to them. He lied to them, because it would stop them. It didn't stop them. They _learned_. He wonders if maybe he made a mistake. And when he takes Donna back to earth, he finds a world where we have all become monsters. Where we all destroy each other.

I don't think it's that he lied to them. I don't think it's anything to do with him personally at all, really. The lie that really matters, the lie that causes the most pain, is the one he tells himself.

I don't know if that's what happened or not. That's just what I saw.

ratingswatch for Star Beast: 7-day fourscreen at 7.61m (220k on other devices), making Dr Who 10th-most-watched episode of the week (Bake Off at 11), the third-most-watched programme (after four episodes of I'm A Celebrity My Name Is Nigel Farage, two of Strictly Cumdancing, and three more of I'm A Celebrity) of the week, and the third-most-watched scripted series of 2023. 4th-largest timeshift for Who ever. BBC3 linear repeat not counted, but Doctor Who Confidential Unleashed got 468k on Three and c. 650k on One.

ratingswatch for Wild Blue Yonder: only dropped 250k on overnights from week before, AI of 83, was 11th overall and top scripted show for the week on overnights, had a 34.2% live share (peaked at 41% and 6.3m), was 1.6m more than the BBC slot average, Unleashed had 5x the BBC3 slot average.

I think this could be my favourite console room design of all time. Just breathtaking.

Fun again. NPH excellent.

Felt the Toymaker was dealt with too quickly in the scramble to get to the super feels of the last 15.

I would've maybe had the gold tooth fall off the building and be picked up off the ground by someone we could see as that bit was so knowingly a nod to Last Of The Time Lords as to be groanworthy. Be cool if it was Missy rescuing herself tho.

Amazing, 10/10, peak RTD (that spice girls scene my god!) and I loved it.

https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/part-missing-adventure-the-celestial-toymaker-to-be-completed-with-new-animation

I don’t know whether this is really what’s happened but I love the idea that until now there’s been a sense of “well it’d be nice to do an animated version of this story but, you know, we can’t because it’s just too fkn racist” and that RTD has now come along and said “hold on, I can fix that! Let’s make the toymaker himself racist! And then that’ll explain all the racism in the original story and make it safe to release again!”. It doesn’t quite make sense but it makes enough sense, it’s just an endearingly audacious retcon, and clearly comes from such a place of love that it’d feel super churlish to start picking holes in it.

And in that context, again, the spice girls scene! Because yes OF COURSE this version of the toymaker would be drawn THAT specific spice girls song!

yeah that pretty much ruled

<3