Doctor Who

Alright. Next week, Master bowl!

Get Hype!

I wonder if these episodes coming up will fix the problems I had with Simm!master. Namely, he's a great antagonist but bears little resemblance to the classic series master and might have been better as an original character.

Well, you could say the same thing about Ten. Sure, he kind of has 4's manic tendencies and a few of 5's fashion traits, but when it comes to being a di—{is shot}

..Anyhoo. My point is, the RTD years changed a lot of things, and both how the Doctor and the Master are interpreted are at the top of the list. Moffat's tenure on the other hand, for as many new and great things as it's brought to the series, has also been a return to form in a number of other ways, including Doctors and Masters that hearken back a lot more to their Classic portrayals. Eleven is essentially the second coming of Two, Twelve is the grumpiest and most straightfoward Doctor we've had since the First, and Missy is what happens you put Deldago, Ainley, and Mary Poppins in a blender. Whereas RTD was much more keen to put his own stamp on things, including how the Doctor and Master were portrayed. Or in other words, "I can't decide whether you should live or die..."

edited 18th Jun '17 9:47:03 AM by kkhohoho

I mean, I suspect the answer to this can be found in what you thought of "Day of the Doctor"'s treatment of Ten. Some folks found it more revisionist than others, but I expect whatever Moffat was aiming for there is roughly what he'll be aiming for with Simmaster.

edited 18th Jun '17 7:52:35 AM by Wackd

You mean revealing his last words in The End of Time might have been inspired by vague memories of being told about his death at Trenzalore?

I thought Ten was ok in the Day of the Doctor. We can rarely seem to mention him any more without getting mad, so a portrayal where he's not a dick is always nice.

All of the Doctors could be dicks, with Matt Smith possibly having the fewest incidents of dickishness in recent memory.

I enjoyed the Romans and the Picts taking the story away from the Doctor, there at the end. It's interesting that the Doctor's heroic impulses read as genuinely heroic, the result of a savior complex, and the sense that he thinks everything's about him all at the same time (at least thats how they read to me).

Even Five? Because if it weren't for Five's outright ineffectiveness, he might as well have been a Purity Sue. (Maybe that's part of why I don't like him so much...)

edited 18th Jun '17 1:33:21 PM by kkhohoho

I actually found it a little odd that Bill would have even heard of the lost Ninth Legion and yet did not know enough about Roman culture to know that their army was drawn from their entire empire and that homosexuality and bi-sexuality wouldn't have been unusual to them. One of the things I enjoyed about Doctor Who under Russell Davies was how it presented homosexuality and didn't call attention to it as anything out of the ordinary. But then, I suppose Bill's reaction might say something about her, specifically.

Well they talked about whitewashing, I'd be nervous as a black lesbian.

Presenting LGBT people and POC as being normal is all well and good, but isn't as meaningful as actually commenting on it and how a white and straight-dominated society treats them. At worst, the RTD era just shut it down with "don't think about it". Compare Ten's reaction to Martha's concern about how she will be treated because of her race in the past to how Twelve reacts to Bill's.

The other thing about RTD's era is that the approach to LGBT people was pretty much just going "oh yeah, this person's gay." Oh, and Captain Jack who is the only pansexual character I've ever heard of in a mainstream TV show. I know that there usually wasn't much time to develop it, and it's superior to assuming that everyone in the universe is straight, but it's kind of strange and blunt. But I will give him credit where it's due.

Moffat tends to be...weirder about it. The main representation during his run (aside from Bill) was Vastra and Jenny, and their relationship was kind of (I don't have a better word for it) fetishy? Like, too many weird double-entendres, and it's kind of imbalanced power-wise. I liked the Paternoster gang, but their overall dynamic was kind of strange.

Even with all the things that were a mite outre about Vastra and Jenny, the only thing that really made we say "eww..." was Jenny's consistently referring to Vastra as "mum." I know that, in British English, while that can mean "mom" it can also mean "ma'am" and, given how their relationship is portrayed, "ma'am" is likely what Jenny is calling Vastra. Even so, in American English, "mum' only means "mom," so if you were unfamiliar with British English, that could seem pretty squicky.

edited 18th Jun '17 3:43:19 PM by Robbery

Jenny's a maid. Vastra isn't the only one she calls "ma'am." Its a respect thing, not a sex thing.

And I would argue that making a lesbian relationship weird and not idealized is a good thing, not a bad thing. Most people in real life, whatever their orientation, do not have relationships as shiny and perfect as the ones on TV and movies.

I think "Thin Ice" makes it fairly explicit that while Bill might know a lot about history, she still has the same socially enforced preconceptions as most anyone else, brought on by a conservative-washed educational system and entertainment industry. No one gets taught this stuff.

Depends on where you're being taught, and, I suppose, by whom.

Slightly unrelated, but I like how this series has gone out of its way to talk about LGBT+ and POC representation, rather than just having it and not talking about it. The historicals have been particularly good in that regard.

I would have been in a happiness induced coma if this season had come out when I was a teen in the closet.

I liked the episode, but a couple of points:

1) The Monster is a direct riff on the one from "Outlander" (Luminosity and all)

2) They used a musical riff from The Witcher 3 during the sequence where the Doctor is speaking to the Picts (I believe it's the Skellige ambient background music - same One-Woman Wail and all)

3) The soldiers referring to each other as "Centurion" - they aren't, unless all the ruddy Sergeant equivalents legged it....

4) Overall good fun, but we didn't get to really know the characters that week as well as normal.

There's big indicators next week that Bill gets converted into a Cyberman, also the pre-credits scene for the episode was taken off preview screenings of the episode. A big source on GB suggests that the surprise is The beginning of Twelve's regeneration, which will be completed at the end of the finale the following week and we will see [but not hear] the new Doctor, and there is still a twist that enables Capaldi to have a send-off at Christmas

edited 20th Jun '17 1:40:38 PM by Zarius

There is no fucking way that if we were seeing the new Doctor we wouldn't know who that is already. It'd be impossible to keep hushed up.

There is one way I could see it... They have been less than truthful about Capaldi leaving, and 12 is going to pull a 10 and regen into himself.

If they do that, we will have to break out the pitchforks and torches. Maybe a barrel of tar and some feathers to go with it.

Honestly the only way I could see them pulling off the "surprise new doctor" thing would be if they didn't film a regeneration scene at all, have the current doctor stay a series regular until the end of the season, and have them costar with the next doctor (from the future) who is billed as an original and new recurring character.

You know. Nardol.

I think Matt Lucas becoming the next Doctor is the only thing that could actually make me quit the series at this point.

...yeah, that doesn't work. While we don't know a ton about Nardole's backstory, we have enough to know for sure that he isn't the Doctor. I mean, in the Husbands of River Song, he gets his head cut off and stuffed in Emperor Hydroflax' armour and then the Doctor gets him a new body later, apparently cobbled together from effectively spare parts. I think him being a Time Lord would have come up somewhere in there.

edited 20th Jun '17 7:49:00 PM by Zendervai

It's all an elaborate ruse. The Nardoctor works in ways beyond our comprehension.