Doctor Who

It's a real genuine shame that whenever I see something about men's mental health or male sexual abuse online that I automatically stop to think about the potential bias of the writer.

Because its just inevitable that I'll see dozens of comments that just barely toe the line of outright sexism below.

It's all part of that old school sexism.

Men can't be weak, we're strong, anything suggesting otherwise is trying to drag men down etc.

That mindset being the reason more men commit suicide is a bitter irony.

As for the problems with "messages" I do occasionally have an issue, but it's technique rather than anything. I prefer the message to be done through the episode, characters and themes like "Can You Hear Me" but there are other episodes like "Orphan 55" which had a great message, but delivered it by grinding everything to a halt and giving a speach out of Captain Planet.

I actually had some Fridge Horror moment about it recently when I realized that there must have been a time line where Rory and Amy raised a child who shown some time lord charitaristic. otherwise the silence would never have gotten the idea of using Melody in the first place.

Edited by nnokwoodeye on Feb 11th 2020 at 8:52:21 AM

I mean, River was conceived on board the TARDIS with two time-travelling parents. If could just be a case of Melody having a bunch of that timestream radiation and the Silence knowing that and)or being able to detect it.

I assume the Silence's timeline more or less follows River's. Their start being "The Time of the Doctor". So Plan A was to make River an assassin to stop the Trenzalore battle, but that didn't work. Plan B was to force her to shoot the Doctor in a fixed point, but that made things worse. Plan C was to just blow up the TARDIS in Season 5, but they gave up because they were causing more damage than they planned

The cracks destroy the universe because since it screws with the events of "The Day of the Doctor" and might even cause the time lock to break

I'm just trying to find an explanation for the Kudzu Plot that Moffat clearly was making season by season. This is why RTD keeps his arcs to a season(Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Harold Saxon, planets disappearing)

Edited by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93 on Feb 12th 2020 at 10:42:33 PM

"Let's kill Hitler" established that it was a well known fact that Melody pond killed the doctor. This means the silence should have already heard about it when they were considering ways to sabotage the doctor's history. why would they go through the effort to create an event that, as far as they knew, happened by itself and failed to stop the doctor? I think it probably because it wasn't part of history until they changed it.

Edited by nnokwoodeye on Feb 12th 2020 at 5:13:06 AM

The Curator from Day of the Doctor is making a comeback in Big Finish's new Eighth Doctor saga 'Stranded'

The Curator is the last incarnation of the Doctor, who has regenerated and gone through so much that he's capable of shapeshifting to look like prior incarnations at will. He's still super-old so they look like old versions

"Getting to see the companion's home lives again"

I'm from Sheffield. Is there anybody else who feels that Yaz, Ryan and Graham sort-a... aren't Sheffield? The writers seemed to have gone for "Yorkshire", thought they were targetting "Sheffield", but landed on Bradford. Yaz is either Bradford or Coronation Street, Ryan is London, Graham is... well I don't know, but he's not Sheffield. (But his backstory is he moved from Essex to Sheffield, so that kinda fits)

Well I cried at the reference to Bill. And the Doctor snapping. I was so worried about that baby.

How many companions(TV-wise) has the Doctor lost, be it through death, not being able to see them again or parting on poor terms? On a lighter note, I wonder what future Doctors think of their prior romantic exploits like 10 and Rose, 12 and Clara, and let's be honest 4 and Romana

Not TV, but after Big Finish's "To the Death" I was utterly broken.

That's a good question.

One abandoned Susan in a post apocylptic Earth that was shunted to a past timeline and can only be visited under special circumstances.

Jaime and Zoe were stripped of their memories of the Second Doctor by the Timelords and dropped back in their respective time periods. Neither has been seen again outside the EU.

Romana and the second K9 left the Doctor to help a group of cat people in another dimension.

Adric got blown the fuck up. Apparantly he shows up again in Big Finish, but it isn't a happy occasion.

Teegan left Five on bad terms after getting fed up with the constant death and trauma.

Khameleon was possessed by the Master before getting burnt to death like a punk.

Peri was either Killed Off for Real or subjected to A Fate Worse Than Death depending on who you ask.

Ace has a number of different fates that again depend on who you ask, ranging anywhere from leaving the Doctor after he got her boyfriend killed, becoming a Timelord, or getting Killed Off for Real. (That last one happened twice.)

Pretty sure everyone knows what happened to Donna. Not touching that one.

Amy and Rory were kinda-sorta killed by the the Weeping Angels and time-wimey shannigans.

Twelve forgot Clara after they both realized they were in a ridicously toxic relationship, though he remembered her upon his regeneration.

Bill got turned into a Cyberman. She later became a magical water alien and regained her free will, though she never told the Doctor that last part.

So a lot.

Edited by kkhohoho on Feb 17th 2020 at 7:56:10 AM

Me,I'm just glad Bill Pot's head did not explode when the cybermen were defeated

Yeah Martha is the only modern companion to stop travelling with the Doctor by choice.

I didn't mind this week's episode. Not too hot on the conclusion, but it was pretty solid. Didn't mind the horror, and I liked the whole angle about the house. Better than Praxeus, not quite as good as Can You Hear Me?. It's basically cemented series 12 as a head above series 11 for me - unless the next two episodes bean everything up something shocking, of course. I'm not that worried, but this Lone Cyberman business wasn't as big as I thought it would be. And it didn't act very Cyberman-y, it hammed it up - I don't know how to feel about that. Hopefully the repercussions of this brings about the end of the Timeless Child storyline, and/or spells out the Ruth connection.

Cold opens might be back to stay! I'm really happy about that. And while the CG was a bit spotty at times, I appreciated the atmosphere. The one thing I wasn't too fussed on was that none of the fam have really talked back to the Doctor. I think they understand the weight of her words and get why she's freaking out, but by keeping things from them and venting about the gravity of her position while they just sort of stand around and feel guilty or awkward, I feel like something's got to give. Everyone's trying to be cool, to respect each other and be open and get along, but I think this is the second time she's gone off about the pressure of her position and where no-one's really been sure how to respond.

Of course, we've had scenes where the fam ask her about things and coax some information out of her. Those have been the heart of the season, the handful of times they appear. They're communicating, they're getting along - it's nice. But I do feel like things are a little one-sided here, where the group are witness to a minor blow-up out of stress and aren't sure how to approach it. I feel like at some point, something's gotta give - even with the moments where they've crossed that gap, the Doctor's pressures and anxieties are building up while none of the gang respond with the trouble they've faced in her wake, even out of frustration.

I don't want it to come to some stupid, dramatic head y'know - one of them finally snaps at her and it's this big moment of hurt and betrayal. Just a bit of a response, please. A sign that things are getting a little strained, or that everyone else has stress to unload. The silent "is she okay" reactions aren't necessarily bad, I just feel like a bit more open venting would be nice all around.

That's ultimately a nitpick though. Truth be told, I thought to myself "if there's going to be another bad episode this season, this would be the time". We're one episode away from the climax, the threat could have been some throwaway monster of the week, the period setting could have been a bit cornball - but the episode was pretty solid, they put in some bigger picture stuff for next week which was appreciated, the roles were all well-acted and distinguished... it was a good episode. Much prefer last episode's weirdness, and wasn't too flash about how the episode ended (except for the part where she showed Shelley his own death), but it's another rock-solid, well-acted historical episode and I liked watching it.

I loved this episode, but I wish it had more, uh, Mary Shelley in it. Like, Mary Shelley's importance, rather than Percy Shelley being the Guardian of the Cyberian. I also wish that the Doctor refused to sacrifice Percy because she won't sacrifice anybody rather than because his poetry is so great, even though I love the line "Words matter." Because, honestly, at this point in time, Percy has already written most of his stuff and will die anyway in six years.

Other than that, this was a great episode. Actually spooky with the house shifting around them — going down the stairs and then finding themselves back at the same floor over and over again, the spookiness of the moving skeleton hand, and even real ghosts which terrify Graham, hee.

Plus, it also was part of the overall season arc with the Lone Cyberman. And boy he was angry and not like any other Cyberman we've seen, which was great. Them being emotionless never really worked for me. The scariest the Cybermen have been was when Bill became one and the horror of it almost broke her. And I love that the Doctor still remembers that happening and doesn't want any of her companions to come with her. Her speech about her being the only one to make these decisions was great and one of the best "Depressed Doctor" moments this season.

By the way, 1816 really was the Year Without a Summer. It was also called "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death." And Dr. Polidori was another poet who wrote "The Vampyre."

Edited by alliterator on Feb 17th 2020 at 2:13:24 AM

Does someone more familiar with British poets want to list all the historical figures and what they're known for?

Okay, there's:

• Lord Byron, best known for his poems Don Juan and Child Harold's Pilgrimage (which he mentions to the Doctor). The poem he reads at the end of the episode is called "Darkness" and it's about the sun going out and the world ending.
• John William Polidori was a doctor and writer whom, again, was best known for the short story "The Vampyre," which was the story he wrote for the scary story contest that also produced Frankenstein.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet who had lots of great, well-known poems, but probably the most famous is "Ozymandias," which is the source of "Look on my works ye mighty and despair." His other most famous work was the play Prometheus Unbound.
• Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, soon to be Shelley was Percy's mistress at the time, although they would marry later on after Percy's first wife committed suicide. (Yeah, bleak.) She wrote the first draft of Frankenstein at the Villa, but put it away until she was finally persuaded to finish it by Percy after the death of their son. (Yeah, the baby in this episode dies of malaria when he's three.) Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus is her most famous work, although she actually wrote more books (including the post-apocalyptic The Last Man). In the episode, she mentions that she's not as good a writer as her parents, who were the philosopher William Godwin and the philosopher feminist Mary Wollstoncraft.
• And finally, Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister. She's not a poet or writer, but she did have an affair with Lord Byron and had a child with him, Allegra Byron. Unfortunately, Byron blocked her from seeing her daughter and then her daughter died at five of a fever.

I love them using Byron's Darkness poem for the Doctor. Admittedly I got tired of all the "oncoming storm" names during RTD/Moffat era, but 13's definitely had a lack of them.

Thank you. I knew some of that, (I love Frankenstein,) but a lot I didn't know, and this is so much nicer than spending a half hour on wikipedia.

I liked that episode. It had what the French call a certain...I don't know what.

A thought: there's at least four Jack Harknesses in 20 January 1941

• The Jack Harkness who took the name from the real Captain Jack
• The Jack Harkness working for Torchwood and waiting for the Doctor
• The Jack Harkness who is sent back in time for a day here
• The Jack who suffered And I Must Scream before being frozen

Just occurred to me that Byron and Ada Lovelace (father and daughter) turned up separately in the same series. Kinda neat.

Speaking of Ada, am I the only one who find it strange that the doctor didn't memory wiped Shelley after she showed him his death?

Edited by nnokwoodeye on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:35:09 AM