inarticulate enthusiasm and complaining

had a surprise 10 hour shift in almost 90 degree weather today and im exhausted, but salad and ice cream have started to make me feel more human already

 

I'm finally watching seasons 7-10 of Doctor Who! and by watching, I mean my sibling has composed a curated list of which episodes I should skip for the maximum amount of delightful shenanigans with the minimum amount of arc plot. because fuck Moffat's arc plots.

I still love Eleven, and Amy and Rory would be on the shortlist for my favorite companions if they didn't have so much Moffat stink in their plotlines. and I do like the part-time companion thing where the Doctor gallivants around alone and then comes back to grab them for anything interesting! and I absolutely fucking adore Rory's dad who apparently spent a while actually traveling with the Doctor!!! though we never got to see any of it onscreen. I want him to meet Wilfred more than anything in the world lol

 

i love watching the Doctor fall in companionship

 

*beats Moffat over the head with a foam bat with the word SUBTLETY carved into it*

 

[drops in to express joy that someone else can hate moffatt's bullshit plot shenanigans without simultaneously shitting on Eleven, Amy and Rory]
[....admits to intense loathing of River Song though]

 

i liked River the first time we saw her, in the vashta nerada episodes, but Moffat did to her character arc what he did to the character arc of every woman on the show :P

Amy and Rory are delightful! i love them!! just as long as i ignore most of the episodes where anything majorly plot-significant happens. i’ve been trying to watch Clara’s era with the same everything-but-the-plot mentality, but i hate the basic conceit of her character (that whole shattered across the Doctor’s timeline thing) too much to get through it so far. i might skip ahead to Bill because she looks awesome!

or i might keep rewatching series one and dreaming of better days

 

with the exception of the fact that I gave up even paying attention to the series before i could hear of anyone called Bill, and also the fact that I found river mildly annoying even in the otherwise tremendously good vashta nerada episodes, hard agree on all of that. clara is... i don't even know what clara is. she's not as annoying as river, but exists to be just as inexplicably vital to the doctor's existence for n o r e a s o n
If you find your sibling's list useful, would you mind passing it on? i keep meaning and meaning to try and watch on from where I gave up watching regularly, but the thought of wading through all the crap has made it a very tiring prospect. but i miss enjoying New Who, as much as i love and still watch Classic.

 

here’s the list they sent me! i can transcribe the image if need be


i started in the middle since i watched 5 and 6 as they came out, and i haven’t gotten too far yet, but it’s a pretty good list! crossed out numbers are optional, omitted numbers you definitely shouldn’t bother with (though you might want to look up a description since they’re all plot-heavy).

the only reason i know about Bill is because i wanted to start watching again for 13, so i watched the episode where 12 regenerates as well as the one right before it. i liked her, from what i saw! and she may be the only Moffat-era companion whose very existence isn’t a cosmic paradox centered around the Doctor, so that’s nice.

 

oh yeah - though i don’t care for Clara, i do recommend the christmas special where the Doctor meets her! though that might just be because i’m a sucker for first companion episodes lol

 

thank you for the list! i will take it Under Advisement. i think i know most of the actual plot, so that's okay. It doesn't actually. interest me much anyway. Overarching, Meaningful Plot has never particularly been Who's strong point, New or Classic.
And I think I watched Clara's intro ep? maybe? New companion episodes are always entertaining.
Have you watched the newest Doctor? I've been in two minds about it and therefore Have Not, because clearly the best way to make a decision on something is to avoid it and all mention of it because it's Scary.

 

yeah, the arc plots have never been the best part of the show, though I did like RTD's - not constantly in your face, just little tidbits dropped throughout the season that come back to punch you in the face at the end. the emotional arc always came before the plot arc, with him.

I've watched all of the latest Doctor except for the christmas special! my review is: the Doctor herself is fantastic, amazing, perfect, 13/10 do recommend!! the episodes are hit or miss in terms of like themes and pacing, but I enjoyed them all. even the questionable ones are 100% worth it for the Doctor, imo!

 

I have a feeling we might slightly differ in opinion on RTD because i was sick of some of his shit by the end of his run too (Ten's run got so??? wangsty??? so wangsty), but I can at least say that Moffat was definitely worse and also yeah RTD was better at arc plots.

Haha that's good, I was... okay I'm not actually against having a female doctor, other than the ol' autie-brain 'change bad tho', what i was always worried about was the idea that if they made the doctor a woman she couldn't just... be the doctor, but a woman, she'd have to BE A WOMAN. LOOK HOW WOMANLY. I'M A WOMAN NOW HEY LOOK HOW WOMANLY because honestly gender essentialism much?
also the weird pressure to Like Woman Doctor Else Thou Art Insufficiently Woke

 

oh yeah, Ten got wangsty as fuck and I can see how you might get sick of it. I enjoyed it because I love Ten and I love to watch my favorite characters get emotionally destroyed! also I was 15 when it aired lol.

and yeah I was worried about that too, especially since the showrunner is a dude, but she is still very much the Doctor! she's just as weird and brilliant and awkward as any of her previous incarnations have been. she feels like the same person - that same continuity of character despite the different face and personality. a couple times she has to deal with situations that are made more difficult by her gender and it's interesting to watch her adjust! but that's the only way her gender gets emphasized as A Whole Big Thing. there's not even a hint of fanservice, unless you consider Jodie Whittaker MacGyvering advanced alien technology out of garage junk while wearing oversized singed formalwear, goggles, and a leather apron to be fanservice, which I absolutely do :D

 

lmao yeah i was... not much older but I've never much liked too much wangst and I was also more familiar with Classic, where the doctor's moments of 'holy shit what have i done' tend to be forgotten about by the next serial because come on we've got aliens made of bubblewrap to outwit, no time for existentialism.
Also I started wishing Rose would stop coming back. You don't actually have a universal claim on the doctor, Rose.
(the doctor is actually one of the few characters I don't really enjoy shipping, so a lot of... uhhh... that in both RTD and Moffatt got on my nerves as well)

That is very reassuring, thank you! One of the best ways to turn me off female characters of any stripe is to have them go on about how Hard being a Woman is so it's nice to know it... doesn't really do that much. I might actually try watching an episode or two. One of my friends inadvertently turned me off watching it by going 'oh it's very good and they keep going back to places like the civil rights movement-' because if there's one thing I don't need in my doctor who it's heavy-handed social justice.
...I've just realised I probably sound like an entitled bro going 'bluh bluh i don't waaaaaant a female doctor or poooooolitics!' lmao

 

I think our difference in opinion re: RTD might be because you watched Old Who first. I still haven't gotten around to it - there's just So Much that the idea of starting is intimidating :P maybe I should do that instead of hacking my way through the Moffat years.

the civil rights movement one was a bit heavy-handed - one of the episodes with weird writing. but it had some good moments! I found the good stuff to be worth the less-good stuff.

let me know what you think if you end up dipping into the new season :D

 

Lmao yeah, probably. And I know what you mean about Classic being a bit intimidating by sheer amount, but the great thing about it is that it is the source of Who's Continuity, I Don't Even Know Her attitude, so you don't actually have to start at the beginning and work through! You can dip in and out as you please. I still haven't seen everything, by a long way. I'd advise just picking a doctor you like the sound of and watching their first ep. One is a grumpy old man who hates everything, two is an old dude running around going 'oh dear' (i love him), three has some serious attitude and is mostly stuck on Earth, Four is weird as fuck, five looks like a sweet thing but can throw a mean tantrum, six has a bad rep as a dick but isn't actually too bad though I haven't watched much of his (i hear the audio adventures give him a much better shot at being a proper guy than the tv eps), seven is a cunning ole fox of a fucker, and eight only exists on tv in one movie that is fun in how daft it is but introduces some weird ideas so you need to pick and choose what you take from it (he also has a lot of audio adventures, i believe, that actually give him a chance to Be A Doctor, but i haven't dipped into the audio adventures at all actually. I should do that).
I can give you some episodes i myself particularly like, if you want. Though honestly I need to get back into watching me some Classic. I will admit it's of highly variable quality, just because it ran for so long, but Douglas Adams of hitchhiker's guide fame wrote for it a few times so it can't be all bad. ;P

Hmm, it definitely appears like it's worth giving the new season a shot. I will absolutely let you know how i find it, lmao. Can't let autie-brain and its fear of change always have its way if there's good stuff to be experienced.

 

@TwoBrokenMirrors sorry for abandoning this conversation, life was suddenly happening too much :P

but anyway yes I will probably end up dipping in and out of Old Who some. I watched One's first couple episodes years ago and they didn't quite grab me (mostly because of the extremely questionable depiction of prehistoric humanity lol) but I did find them charming! maybe I'll watch every regeneration's first ep and then go back to the ones I like. or maybe I'll look up a list of the best serials and go by that. or maybe I'll be a wretched completionist like usual and end up watching the whole thing if you do have episode recs I'd love to hear them! though I can't guarantee I'll get to them anytime soon because I did end up watching the rest of season 7 with Clara and am now on to season 8.

I ended up liking Clara as a companion, though like the Ponds I can't think too much about any arc plot stuff she's involved in. (and the less said about Day of the Doctor the better - that might be my least favorite single episode of Doctor Who. fuuuuuuuck Day of the Doctor) but as a person she's quite good! she got to see 11 become 12 and her struggle to understand that they are the same person was pleasing to me. I liked that episode - though it had a bit of Sherlock stink to it, in the way of "you gotta stay with this guy because he neeeeeeds you, never mind that he's been cruel and manipulative to you!" but it's not as bad as Sherlock, and seems like the show might actually get into those aspects of their relationship instead of pretending they're all healthy and good. though who knows. fucking Moffat.

anyway I'm liking 12 as much as I liked 11! it's a good change to have an old-looking Doctor. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of his seasons.

oh yeah before I forget, a semi-connected observation about 11: I noticed that he never let Clara get as involved in their adventures as he did with Amy and Rory. or rather, he didn't encourage her to take as active a role. there was a lot of him running around sonic-ing things and her following along. this could be taken as some Moffat bullshit, but I think it's because he was still really hurting over the loss of the Ponds and more paranoid about keeping her safe than he was excited about taking risks with her. also, he intentionally involved her more and more throughout the season - letting her in more as he got less afraid. (ALSO also, she totally took stupid risks the whole time regardless of the Doctor's wishes because she is a companion after all :P) 12 doesn't have this attitude at all, and is even a bit careless with Clara's safety sometimes!

 

No worries! I'm not about to regulate your leisure hours. xD

I mean as much as the show's original idea was to provide education about history and science, it did start in the 60s, and nobody knew shit about 'cavemen' in the 60s. ;P If you do want to be completionist and start at the beginning, though, after the prehistory episodes the next serial is the introduction of the daleks! Yes, they did indeed begin that early.
Recs tho.
The Tomb of the Cybermen is Two, and the introduction of, well, the cybermen. Like a lot of the older stuff it's very slow-paced, but I have a real soft spot for it, and for Two in general.
There's a fair bit of Three I'd rec but I watched most of it on an older friend's collection of ancient VHS and can now no longer remember the titles. Of my sadly lacking dvd collection, Spearhead from Space introduces the Autons and is fun, it's also Three's first serial I think. There's also yetis and dinosaurs in Three's run, not to mention it's where UNIT comes in and pays its biggest role since Three is mostly stuck on Earth, and Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is worth his weight in anything you care to name. Three is where Sarah Jane comes in if you liked her when she rolled up again in New, though she has Four as well for a bit.
Four is fun. If you don't mind unfortunate mid-20th-century casual racist tropes The Talons of Weng-Chiang is notable for a bit of delightfully awful special effects (giant rat in a huge sewer pipe = normal size rat in a small pipe but shot very close up, right???) and is a Leela serial and Leela is a delightful little savage. Robot is his first serial, it features robots (gasp). Genesis of the Daleks is about, well, the Daleks' early years as it were, and features my favourite companion who got sadly little companion time in general, Harry Sullivan, who is just. I love him. He's very british and proper and not really cut out for this gallivanting about the universe thing. The Keeper of Traken is a Master serial which I very much enjoy. Four had the longest run of anyone and is a lot of older fans' favourite as a result, it's very easy to find good stuff in his run.
Castrovalva is Five's first serial, though i unfortunately cannot recall if it's really the one with the shot of a bunch of people carrying the TARDIS around in slight fast-motion or not (my memory says it is, but my memory adores that visual so is probably not to be trusted). Earthshock is Oh No A Companion Actually Dies; the companion in question is decidedly not a fan-favourite, but I've got a genuine soft spot for him, so it might be worth watching some of his previous episodes before you watch Earthshock so you can decide if you're going to be mourning or celebrating his untimely demise (his name is Adric). The Caves of Androzani is Five's last serial. Ft. giant poison bugs.
As I said I haven't actually seen much of Six and he doesn't have a good rep, the only dvd of his I have is The Two Doctors which is... okay it's not good writing, it was written by a proto-militant-vegan and it shows, but i at least find it the kind of shitty that's entertaining. It's Six meets Two.
Seven has a serial where everyone turns into cat people. I don't think I've managed to watch it, but it's a thing that happens. He also has vampires, and Remembrance of the Daleks has a nice few callbacks to the first episodes of One. Battlefield has the Brig again and also King Arthur.
Eight, as I said, has one (1) tv role, in a weird as fuck movie which tries to introduce some odd shit into canon, but is fun despite that (in my eyes anyway) and in any case Who has always been a pick-and-choose-your-own-canon show because half the time it contradicts itself.
I'm not sure this is actually of any use to you lmao but there you go. You do have to be tolerant of slow pacing, erratic writing quality and the sort of tropes that Aren't Always Acceptable Nowadays, but there are gems in there.

Ah, Day of the Doctor. I caught that one because I am a gigantic sucker for multi-Doctor episodes (previous ones: The Three Doctors (One (William Hartnell's very last appearance in, like, anything, because he was ancient and ill and died not long afterwards), Two, Three), The Five Doctors (One (played by a diff actor because William Hartnell had died by then), Two, Three, Four, Five, and also a really excellent fun romp) and the Two Doctors (Two, Six)) and I have to admit that the multi-Doctor aspect of it I did love muchly. The bit where Clara was inexplicably vital to everything though? Nah, that didn't happen. That. Didn't. Happen. Did not occur. Completely irrelevant. Everyone must have imagined it [slowly slaps sock full of pennies into palm]

I did catch Twelve's first ep, I remember because my very favourite aspect of it was when Twelve threw a newspaper and it hit Clara in the face. I admit I... uh... didn't care much if he was an asshole to her, because she's usually so self-confident I enjoyed seeing her taken down a peg or two. Probably not great for ongoing relationship though, you're right.
I lost most of my respect for Clara when the kids she nannies were like LOOK WE FOUND YOU IN A PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE PAST and she was like 'you got me, I'm a time-traveller' instead of being like 'haha wow you found my doppelganger! I wonder who she was!'. Or, like, bringing up the existence of photoshop. She didn't even try. You're shit at keeping secrets, Clara. I should probably give her more of a go though. I guess. If nothing else, I wouldn't mind seeing more of Twelve. It was nice going back to an older Doctor and at least everyone wouldn't apparently base their liking of him on how attractive he was cough Tennant cough cough Tennant

I like your thinking, that makes sense! It also makes sense in the way regenerations tend to flip their predecessor's prevailing attitudes sometimes- Eleven being so silly because Ten got so grim, etc.

 

holy shit, just finished Kill the Moon and I legit love Clara now, she's completely proven herself to me as a companion, she just took the Doctor to task in a huge way

no you know what she did, she fucking tore him a new one and dumped his ass. laid him flat out. called him on all his bullshit and it was amazing, this is everything I was hoping for :D I know they're gonna get back together but it was so, so satisfying to see him dumbstruck like that and to see her laying out all her negative feelings, all the hurt the Doctor has caused her, instead of bleeding it off as snark. the unavoidable inequality of the Doctor's relationship with his companions has really been highlighted this season and especially this episode, and the show is portraying her perspective as equally valid to his thousand-plus-year-old superbrain one. it's so! good!!!

worth mentioning that Moffat had no hand in writing this episode. don't trust him not to fuck up this emotional arc in the finale.

 

*takes notes* I probably won't end up getting to it for a good while, maybe not even during this particular run through the DW fandom, but I will definitely check all these out. and then I'll most likely check everything else out too, because as previously mentioned I am a terrible completionist :P thank you!!

I think I'm most looking forward to Three being stuck on Earth, I love the Doctor getting stuck in situations like that lmao. also anything with the Master, and really anything with other Time Lords - since I've only seen New Who, the "last of his kind" thing is integral to my conception of the Doctor, and I'm incredibly curious to see what he was like before the Time War! he's one of my favorite characters but I'm missing so much of his history, I can't possibly have anywhere near a complete picture of who he actually is, and I'm looking forward to filling that in!

oh oh and I can't wait to meet all his previous companions! especially Sarah Jane but really everyone. :D

I don't even remember the Clara stuff - I stopped watching the show partway through series 7 and came back for the special because I too am a sucker for multi-Doctor content. I had no idea who she was at the time and didn't pay enough attention to her bits to remember them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the multi-Doctor stuff actually ended up disappointing me for the most part. more than anything, I hate the whole idea of the War Doctor from start to finish. the whole point was that the Doctor could make that choice that he made because that capability has always been inside him, he didn't need to artificially change himself to become a warrior because that's always been part of who he is, even if he hates it! and I loved the fact that it was the ruffly velvet-wearing weirdo hippie Eight who had to do all those horrible things in the War, up to and including the double genocide. and that all just got plucked out and replaced with Moffat's ego. it would have been better if it was at least a natural regeneration, but no, there had to be a bunch of nuns ready with a dose of phlebotinum to let him hand-pick his new personality! he should have had to drag that genocide out of his soul the hard way. not that there is an easy way, of course, but the War Doctor still feels like a complete cop-out.

also Moffat took "I don't want to go" and retroactively made it into a stupid reference to one of his own plotlines. I am eternally salty about that.

I haven't watched it in years, just seen a couple clip compilations on youtube, so there's probably a lot of good and bad stuff I'm not remembering. I do remember some of the interactions between Eleven and Ten being pretty delightful! but to me DotD is mediocre fanfiction, and I will continue ignoring it as vigorously as possible, which is a damn shame considering the potential it had.

I'm enjoying the hell out of the current trainwreck that is their ongoing relationship tbh :D I like the way Clara's written more in this season - her level of confidence always felt kind of unnatural, and that isn't so much there anymore. she feels much more real.

and yeah, she could have done way better keeping secrets from the kids. I like to think it was partly the surprise of being caught out, and partly she kind of wanted to take them to space. she loves kids, and she's a teacher, and it would be hard to think of a more educational experience than that! one of her students tags along for the episode on at least one other occasion. kind of makes me want a full-time kid companion, just for the novelty!

I am completely fascinated by regeneration. that's part of why I want to watch Old Who! I want to get a better understanding of what factors play into the way the Doctor changes. regeneration is a healing process, psychologically as well as physically - it gives a little distance from the most immediate emotional hurts (something that seems necessary for the sanity of a race as long-lived as the Time Lords). I think that's part of why he did it twice in the space of just a few years after the Time War. and really Ten should not have held on as long as he did - he was falling the fuck apart at the end. it's a good thing he got stuck in that radiation vent chamber because otherwise he would have just kept going madder and madder. from what I've gathered the Time Lords weren't the sort to be big on mental healthcare but if they had been, whatever the fuck was going on with Ten would have been in their DSM for sure.

with each regeneration in New Who, you can see the Doctor take another step in processing his grief from the Time War. Nine was fresh out of it and a suicidal mess when we first met him. Ten put on a lighthearted persona to pretend that he was okay, that he could be the same person he had been before the war. by the end of his run that persona fractured and broke down completely because it was something he'd built entirely on his relationships with other people (particularly with Rose), not something that came from himself. Eleven kind of did the same thing as Ten but he had a more stable kind of self-loathing instead of Ten's blatant desperation for things to somehow be okay. Twelve confronts that self-loathing - he's finally openly asking the question, am I a good person? am I a monster like I always say? the parts of himself he's always been afraid of have been brought out in front, he's confirmed them as part of who he is, whether he likes it or not. I don't know yet how he'll end up but I think Thirteen is the answer to the question. she's the aspect of the Doctor who's come out of the other side of it - over a thousand years later, she's finally recovered to the point where the scars have stopped splitting open, and she can finally be who she is again.

anyway I want to see who he was before all that happened to him! where he was coming from when he got launched into that. how the process normally works when you only have a normal, sane amount of baggage to deal with.