doctor who

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 I say FORGET IT!

From the good ol’ days when a Doctor Who Christmas special really MEANT something.

I shall properly preface this post by noting that when the franchise has gotten so bad that Disney+ has washed their hands free of it, you know things are dire and not apt to get better anytime soon.

The BBC announced today that Doctor Who is still viable somehow and that there will be a Christmas special next year.  But according to the article, Russell T. Davies is still in charge of the show.

Like I said, forget THAT!!

As long as Davies is calling the shots, this show is dead and it’s not regenerating.  Although I will confess that the twisted little “id” creature within me is harboring morbid fascination about what the ’26 Christmas special will entail.  Because the last time we saw anything of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa’s ...

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I know: this pic is from “The Name Of The Doctor” from the Steven Moffat era.  Its bleakness is plenty fitting for this post though.

There might well be volumes written, many years from now, about what happened to Doctor Who: the much-beloved British science-fiction television series that had delighted generations of viewers around the world.  Maybe those to come will take to heart the lesson of why the show defied so much, only to die at the hands of liberal ideology.
To Russell T. Davies and Chris Chibnall before him: the Doctor is dead… and you killed him!
Oh sure, Davies had his moments when he initially ran the show between 2005 and 2009, but there was still a good measure of respect for the saga, for the writing and for the audience.  Chibnall was the one who first pulled the trigger in earnest though, when he
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It was fifty years ago today, on March 8th 1975, that the BBC transmitted part one of the Doctor Who story “Genesis of the Daleks”.

It has since gone on to be regarded as one of the very best Doctor Who tales in the history of the franchise and one of the greatest science-fiction stories ever committed to the visual medium.  “Genesis of the Daleks”, written by Terry Nation, packed a lot!  The part that I most often think about is when The Doctor (the Fourth, played by Tom Baker) is agonizing over the choice that is his to make: to either destroy the Daleks before they can become the universal menace he knows them to be, or to save them and let history run its course.  It was pretty strong stuff for a show still considered at the time to be made primarily for young audiences.

So it ...

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“Doctor… I let you go.”

~ final words of the Twelfth Doctor

 

 Oh dear Lord.  It was so much worse than I was ready for.

I keep hearing Peter Capaldi’s last words as The Doctor, now several minutes after watching “The Star Beast”: the first of the three hour-long specials “celebrating” the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who.  

Because that is what I’m feeling now.

This GIF that I made a few years ago, taken from the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie, somehow expresses the disgust and sense of being let down that I’m experiencing at this hour:

 

I had been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was six years old, and sneaking in watching it WAY past my bedtime when WFMY in Greensboro aired episodes of it after the 11 o’clock news on Sunday nights.  Those were mostly from the Tom Baker ...

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The Doctor – the titular hero of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who – has had many, many enemies in his sixty years of saving the universe.  Everyone from Cybermen to The Master to the Weeping Angels to… well just about anything you can come up with has been a potential threat.

But there is one foe who is above and beyond the rest: Davros.  The insane creator of The Doctor’s oldest nemesis, the Daleks.

From his first appearance in the 1975 Tom Baker-era story “Genesis Of The Daleks”, Davros has gripped viewers as few Who characters did.  Bound to a life-support vehicle, only one usable arm, his natural eyes blinded necessitating a cybernetic replacement… Davros is someone who sought to perpetuate himself through his creations.  And he never cared who got in the way.  That one mechanical hand of his is stained with the blood of trillions of ...

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Dear Mr. Davies,

Greetings good sir!  I know this is a very exciting time for you, so I thank you for taking the time (I hope) to read this proposal.  Please know that I have been a fan of your helming of Doctor Who since that very first episode with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.  I am looking forward to where you are taking the series next, especially with the return of The Toymaker and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa as the next Doctor.

However, Mr, Davies, I am somewhat dismayed that you are apparently not turning some attention toward addressing the matter of “the Timeless Child”: by far THE most controversial thing that has happened to the franchise in its entire history.

Kindest sir, I am not alone in the belief that the Timeless Child subtracted from and even destroyed the mystique that The Doctor has had since ...

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Doctor Who needs a hard and fresh return to the franchise that that we know and love, above and away from the mess of the Thirteenth Doctor era (which if we’re going to be honest really can’t be pinned on Jodie Whittaker, she was just working with some really bad material).

I don’t know if that’s what is coming in the next few months with the specials commemorating the show’s sixtieth anniversary (seems like just yesterday we were celebrating its fiftieth) but the pics and the new trailer that dropped over the weekend have me warefully optimistic.

The last time we saw The Doctor, she (ugh!) had regenerated – clothes and all – into a perfect facscimile of the Tenth Doctor, once again played by David Tennant.  However the showrunners seem to insist that Tennant is playing the Fourteenth Doctor.  Which means this is really Tennant’s fourth or fifth ...

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The announcement already came a year ago, that the Fifteenth Doctor on the British television series Doctor Who is going to be portrayed by Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa.  Now as things begin really ramping up for the show’s sixtieth anniversary in November, the BBC is showing its cards a bit.

Here is Gatwa giving us a glimpse of what’s to come:

Number Fifteen’s attire reminds me a bit of Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor.  The way he’s got his hand gesturing brings to mind the early photos of the Twelfth Doctor played by Peter Capaldi, or maybe Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor.  Gatwa’s Doctor looks like he means business, as if he’s saying “Okay, fun and games are over, let’s get down to brass tacks.”

Be mad at me if you will, but I’m very glad the Doctor is a man again.  No offense to Jodie Whittaker, but there is a ...

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…Doctor Who returned.

“Run.”

The first episode since 1989 was titled “Rose”. London shop associate Rose Tyler stumbled across murderous store mannequins and then came to be rescued by The Doctor. Christopher Eccleston was the first actor of the revived series to portray the legendary Time Lord.

In those early days before Doctor Who became a true global phenomenon, its loyal base of die-hard fans were doing anything to watch the new episodes immediately, instead of waiting a year or so before they aired outside of England.  A lot of us learned how to download via torrent because of that first new season of the show, I’m telling ya.  We would not be denied our Doctor!

Ten years.  Wow.  Who would have thought that a full decade later, the Doctor Who mythos would be as world-renowned as it has become?  Being a fan since watching the Tom Baker episodes ...

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We will soon have a TARDIS officially rendered in LEGO…

That pic is just the proof of concept from two guys who submitted their design through the LEGO Ideas page and have had it approved.  The actual sets will probably look somewhat different.  But even so… we’re getting BBC-approved Doctor Who LEGO sets y’all!!

Nerd Approved has a lot more about this awesome news.

I wonder if the little Weeping Angels minifig moves when you’re not looking at it…

“Everything is Awesome!” ...

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