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Confession #160: I Miss the Holiday Specials

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Doctor Who holiday specials have never been particularly high on my list of “must see TV.” Aside from them being Doctor Who, which gives them inherent watchability in my eyes, having something over-the-top fluffy (or even silly) that doesn’t necessarily fit within continuity (that is, if you eliminated one entirely, the arcs of the stories surrounding it wouldn’t really be affected) doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

As an American, I’ve not had the cultural tradition of Christmas specials designed for the whole family to sit down and watch together on Christmas Day (presumably at least in part to keep the peace for a while in the event that one’s family doesn’t even get along). At most, the TV traditions around here were watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer or The Year Without a Santa Claus, but those were always aired well before the holiday itself.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself feeling a bit distraught at the idea that there would be no “festive” Doctor Who episode airing this year (on either Christmas or New Year’s).

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Confession #159: I Am Excite

It’s been a heckuva week! First, and relevant to the usual content here, Gallifrey One announced last Friday that their headline guest for the 2023 convention would be none other than Jodie Whittaker herself!

That’s quite the feather in Gally’s cap! Not only will it be Whittaker’s first-ever dedicated Doctor Who convention (we’re going to set her standards high), but it’s amazingly fast turn-around between final on-screen appearance and first convention appearance—less than four months! She’s also only the second modern-era Doctor to appear at Gally.

I had thought three years ago that I was getting spoiled by Gallifrey One’s excellent connections in the Doctor Who scene when they brought Christopher Eccleston to LA. (And, indeed, I was.) He had been notoriously hesitant to take part in the convention circuit at all, so when Gally brought not only its first modern-era Doctor, but a somewhat reluctant one at that, I didn’t think that feat could be topped.

But here we are.

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Confession #158: I Already Miss Jodie

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Although the exact date hasn’t yet been confirmed (to the best of my knowledge), we know that Jodie Whittaker’s final episode as the Doctor, one billed as a “centenary special” as part of the celebrations to honor a hundred years of the BBC, will air some time in October. Presumably she will regenerate at the end, or at least begin the process (maybe we’ll get that long-since-filmed sequence next year instead, at the official beginning of Ncuti Gatwa’s tenure), but we don’t even know that for sure.

What we do know is that in a matter of weeks, Whittaker will be gone, and fandom will be awaiting the reign of a new Doctor. (Although it’s probably both a bit on-the-nose and Too Soon™, saying “The Queen is dead; long live the King” here does seem to fit…) And I already miss her.

It’s strange the way human brains work. We have this amazing capacity to anticipate the future, which can be a fantastic advantage. But it can be problematic, too, because sometimes we spend far too much time either looking forward to or dreading things to come. And that’s exactly where I’m at in my current Doctor Who mindset.

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Confession #157: I Like a Silver Lining

My family recently had an experience that I think can safely be classified as a Major Bummer. Both of my kids had qualified for a state-level activity that involved a week-long summer camp where they would have the opportunity to train with top-level instructors and spend a lot of time making new friends and honing their skills. Unfortunately, when it was time to go, one of them had minor symptoms of illness.

While fortunately all home COVID testing has remained negative in our household, the organizers nevertheless made the difficult (but correct, in my opinion) decision per their policy, and erred on the side of caution. The symptomatic kid wasn’t allowed to attend camp; the asymptomatic one was.

I’m sure you can imagine how fraught such a situation could be, especially when there are twins involved. The non-participant kid had an especially hard time of it at the end, when families were invited in to watch the end-of-week performance, and she had to witness exactly what she’d missed. I don’t think it had really hit her fully until then.

However, there was still a bit of a silver lining.

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Confession #156: I’ve Become a Neophile

Unlike some points in my life, it’s pretty rare when Doctor Who actually crosses my mind these days. I think about it when it’s time to make a blog post here, and when I listen to the weekly Verity! podcast episodes, but if I didn’t have those already-scheduled, regular reminders, I would hardly ever give it a thought right now.

There are so many other things vying for my attention: the state of the world weighs on me, I’m smack in the middle of that “sandwich generation” place between taking care of my kids and my parents, and I’m trying to get my fiction writing career off the ground. When I want to escape my cares and indulge in a story, more often than not it takes the form of either a recently released book I’ve been looking forward to or of an Asian drama I can binge over a matter of a week or more.

Frankly, Doctor Who has become familiar enough that I no longer naturally turn to it to unwind.

I didn’t used to think of myself as a neophile, always looking for something fresh and unexplored to amuse me, unsatisfied with revisiting old favorites. I can’t tell whether this current tendency is due to one of the particular stressors mentioned above (and Prime knows there are enough even just within the category of “state of the world” to choke a horse) or to some combination thereof, but the fact remains that this is where I’m at.

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Confession #155: I Am Behind on Casting News

I had hardly finished posting the last casting news when more casting news hit the streets. I’m basically a month behind on the news of David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s return, and Yasmin Finney’s debut in Doctor Who, but since Tennant’s rumored return was a hot topic a few months ago, I figured I go ahead and add my 2¢ anyway.

For the most part, my feelings are the same as they were before we knew Ncuti Gatwa would be the new Doctor: I’ll be excited to see Tennant back for the 60th anniversary, but I don’t want him for more. RTD has been very cagey about the whole thing, as he is wont to do, so I don’t believe we’ve had any solid indications of whether Gatwa will actually be portraying the Whittaker Doctor’s immediate successor (rumors to the contrary are rife). Although I will be extremely disappointed if he’s not, I will wait to see what RTD has up his sleeve with Tennant and Tate before making any final judgements.

The fact that they’ve also announced Finney, a Black trans woman who shot to popularity for her role as Elle in the Netflix adaptation of Alice Oseman’s webcomic Heartstopper, and told us her character’s name is Rose, means that (a) RTD is committed to continuing the trend toward more inclusive casting (which I applaud heartily) and (b) he’s totally trolling us. I am over-the-moon excited to see Finney in Doctor Who, and utterly suspicious about how her character will fit into the overall Whoniverse, because there’s no way we’re going to have any real idea until the show actually airs.

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Confession #154: I’m Psyched for Fourteen

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This past weekend, the BBC announced that Ncuti Gatwa will be the next actor to play the role of the Doctor, breaking the color barrier for the lead actor in the same way that Jodie Whittaker broke the gender barrier. While I was personally hoping for a woman of color (like Jo Martin, who was technically the first on-screen actor of color in the role, though not the lead of the show), I am simply thrilled to have a not-white-dude headlining.

Ncuti is best known for his role in Sex Education, a comedy show about which I’ve heard good things, but have never watched myself. I imagine that I’ll give it a go some time before November 2023, though perhaps I’ll wait until the frenzy dies down a bit, as thousands of Doctor Who fans check it out in the wake of this announcement. Given how glowing Russell T. Davies’s comments about Ncuti and his audition were, I’m excited to see some of his work.

After the announcement, and before ever hearing the man speak, I read somewhere that Ncuti is a Scottish actor, originally from Rwanda. (I believe this makes him the fourth of fourteen lead actors to be from Scotland…) That really made me wonder what his natural accent would sound like. To my mild disappointment, there was no burr to it; it strikes me as a fairly standard British accent easily enough understood by us poor Yanks. At least there shouldn’t be complaints on that front.

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Confession #153: I Need More Content

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These long breaks between new episodes are killing me. I know everyone has been having a rough time of it these last few years, and I’ve talked about it more than once here myself, but the way my brain has been coping with the pressures of the global COVID pandemic has made me less and less interested in Western visual media. There are very few properties made outside of Asia that can still garner my attention.

While Doctor Who is admittedly one such property, I’m not finding much comfort lately in retreading old ground. That is, I’d rather read or watch something brand new, something I don’t know at all, than go back and watch something I’ve seen multiple times, even if it’s been ages since I last watched it. There are plenty of Classic—or even modern—Doctor Who adventures that I haven’t seen in years, but right now I’ve got absolutely zero interest in revisiting them some evening when there are so many other items on my to-watch list that I’ve never seen before.

That’s why the long breaks between new episodes these last few years have taken such a toll on my personal fandom. I’m no longer “fanatical” about the show in the sense that I love to think about it all the time. If there’s no new content to latch onto, I’m just not going to think about Doctor Who unless something external forces the issue (like, for instance a posting deadline…).

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Confession #152: I’m Experiencing the Cycle Differently This Time

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Even though her successor hasn’t yet been announced, with the second of Jodie Whitaker’s final three specials confirmed to air at Easter time, it’s finally starting to hit home that the Thirteenth Doctor is on her way out. That inevitable cycle of grief, denial, and acceptance of each Doctor’s incarnations is having its way with me again.

I remember the last time we were here. Capaldi’s Doctor was one of my favorites, and I was extremely sad to see him go. In particular, I really wanted to see what he could do under the pen of a different showrunner. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be something I will ever get with a modern Doctor.

I actually discussed that with friends at Gally this year: although in modern Who we’ve occasionally seen Companions stay with the Doctor into another regeneration (Rose, Clara), there has never been either a Doctor or a Companion who has bridged showrunners. That strikes me as a real failing of this era. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see multiple captains’ hands on the tiller for any given Doctor? Alas, it’s long been clear that Jodie and Chibnall were a package deal. Despite my wish to see Doctors transcend their showrunners, now is most certainly not the time.

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Confession #151: I’m Going for It

It’s February again, which means it’s the season for Gallifrey One. When I last blogged about the possibility of going to Gally this year, I don’t think anyone had even heard of the omicron variant yet, but I was still nervous and dubious about the advisability of going to an in-person con by February. I think I was equal parts hoping that things would be vastly better by now and that force majeure would kick in and the con would get canceled again.

But here we are beginning the downward slope of the omicron surge, no force majeure in sight, and just about as much uncertainty about the further spread (and mutation) of COVID as ever. The decision about how to proceed has plagued me for weeks, with some of my best friends deciding definitely to go, and others deciding definitely to stay home. In the end, I’ve decided to go for it.

I think one of the turning points was reading something about how one end of the American political spectrum tends to underestimate the risks involved in the COVID pandemic, and the other tends to overestimate them. As I’m clearly in the latter political camp, that statement made me sit back and think, “Am I being overcautious?”

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