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Confession #134: I Can’t Think About the Show Right Now

As the world continues to struggle in the grip of COVID-19, and the US—the country with by far the highest incidence of the virus, and perhaps the poorest response—starts to decide just because it’s tired of this whole stay-at-home thing that surely it must be over now, I sit in front of my computer asking myself to think about Doctor Who. What’s wrong with this picture?

Actually, nothing. Because what the world really needs right now is a little bit of hope. Anything and everything we can find to give us a spark of joy, to keep us from buckling under the intense pressure of our collective trauma, to inspire us to do good for each other and ourselves is important. So if watching, thinking about, even arguing about Doctor Who with friends near and far can do that for any one of us, then so much the better.

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Tranquil Rewatch

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Review of Revelation of the Daleks (#142)
DVD Release Date: 06 Jun 06
Original Air Date: 23 – 30 Mar 1985
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Timelash (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: The Mysterious Planet (Six, Peri)

Circumstances conspired against me again, and I was in no mood to appreciate even a Hidden Gem like Revelation of the Daleks when I sat down to rewatch it. Although I’ve come to appreciate Ol’ Sixie, he’s still among my least favorite Doctors to watch; I’ve gotten pretty tired of Daleks over the years; and to top it all off, I was fighting off a fever and sore throat.

Nevertheless, as the fog of obligation retreats, and I can reflect on it from the other side of that viewing, I find there are plenty of things to recommend Revelation. On a purely superficial level, for example, we have the Doctor’s coat-of-many-colors covered for most of the first 45-minute episode by a lovely blue cloak.

I’d also forgotten that this was Peri’s introduction to the Daleks. When she sees one roll past, then, she doesn’t immediately warn the Doctor of the danger; she merely calls out with startlement about “some sort of machinery.” To his credit, the Doctor doesn’t chastise her; he merely goes to investigate.

That point, in fact, is probably one of the best parts of the entire adventure, and one that didn’t even register as I was watching (a sure sign that I was not giving it my full attention—or at least not what would’ve been my full attention pre-pandemic). One of the most difficult things about the early parts of Colin Baker’s run is the way the writers had the Doctor and Peri at each other’s throats all the time. One of the reasons I love Mark of the Rani so much (aside from the Rani herself) is that the TARDIS team acts like they actually have affection for each other.

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Confession #133: I Lost Track of Time

Funny thing about being in self-isolation under a stay-at-home order from one’s state during a global pandemic: all the days kind of blend together.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Because otherwise I get really irritated with myself for having lost track of my blog schedule, and the fact that I should’ve posted last week. So here I am, checking in with anyone who still stops by the blog to read.

I was going to say that I have not been thinking about Doctor Who much at all, but as I began to write that, I realized that’s not quite true. The brand management team has been doing a good job keeping it on the radar across social media, and I’ve really appreciated that. Because sometimes we all just need a few encouraging words from the Doctor.

Here’s the first transmission, from 25 Mar 2020:

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A View Through Interesting Times

Review of Planet of the Daleks (#68)
DVD Release Date: 02 Mar 10
Original Air Date: 07 Apr – 12 May 1973
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: Frontier in Space (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: The Green Death (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

A whole lot has changed around the world in the three weeks since my last post went up. Locally, my kids’ school had a teachers’ strike just before COVID-19 really hit our state. By the time classes were ready to resume, the governor had ordered schools closed for two weeks, which leads up to our scheduled spring break. I kind of doubt in-person classes will resume until the fall.

Meanwhile, my family has been self-isolating. Though our introverted tendencies make the change less awkward for us than for some, the added stress of a global pandemic has wreaked havoc on my concentration and my sense of chill. Maybe that’s why a slow-starting story failed to grab me.

I had hoped that I’d enjoy Planet of the Daleks more. After all, it’s meant to be one of the Hidden Treasures, and I know from past experience that I don’t dislike it. But the rewatch primarily felt like a chore.

As I try to separate my general malaise from feelings about the adventure itself, and look at the story as objectively as I possibly can, I believe that the somewhat expository opening episode is the weakest part. It serves primarily as set-up for the following sections, and as such felt like a bit of a slog.

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Everything Changes

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Review of The Timeless Children
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

For better or worse, showrunner Chris Chibnall has left an indelible mark on Doctor Who. Series 12 finale The Timeless Children was packed with canon-expanding details that fans will be arguing about for decades to come.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Whether you loved it or hated it (there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of in-between in the chatter I’ve seen), there was a lot to wrap our minds around. Did the Doctor see truth or elaborate lies in the Matrix? What is truth? Does it matter?

I choose to believe the Doctor saw the truth. Among other things, it might explain how she really could be the Other of Time Lord mythology. But mostly, I just think it’s a fantastic twist that simultaneously upends everything we thought we knew about the Doctor and ties in a bunch of things that previously made little or no sense.

The quintessential example of canonical inconsistency, of course, is all those faces that showed up when Morbius challenged the Fourth Doctor to look back on his previous lives, and they went back past the Hartnell incarnation. Add to that the question of how many regenerations a Time Lord has, and you get a recipe for confusion.

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Step Into the Mystery

Review of Warriors’ Gate (#113)
DVD Release Date: 05 May 09
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1981
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, Matthew Waterhouse
Preceding Story: State of Decay (Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric)
Succeeding Story: The Keeper of Traken (Four, Adric, Nyssa)

One of the things about Classic Who that’s become more obvious in retrospect is how the multi-part serial format allowed for extensive story set-up, leading to a slow build. So begins the final installment in The E-Space Trilogy, the spacetime-bending Warriors’ Gate.

Effectively all of Part One is background, laying the scene for what comes after in the manner that a modern audience expects more to see in a novel than in a TV show. We meet the human crew of a cargo ship stranded in some strange void, reminiscent of The Mind Robber (which I’m set to review in October); the Doctor and his friends soon find themselves there, too. The humans’ navigator is a leonine being, apparently enslaved, who breaks free, enters the TARDIS out of phase with their timeline, and then retreats via a door in a stone arch through an ancient, cobwebby great hall. The Doctor follows.

One could be forgiven for thinking, at this stage, that there’s not much to this story, and that one’s time could be better spent elsewhere. But there are several mysterious situations established here that develop in interesting ways through the rest of the serial. What’s the relationship between the Tharils—those leonine beings valued for being “time sensitive”—and the humans? What’s up with the microcosmic void? Is it really near the boundary of E-Space and N-Space, and why does it seem unstable? And is that ancient hall really as abandoned as it looks?

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The Sum of Its Parts

Review of Ascension of the Cybermen
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The Cybermen (well, one, anyway) crashed unexpectedly onto our screens last week, beating the series finale to the punch. Even so, Ascension had some quality Cybermen content, making them legitimately chilling again.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Perhaps tellingly, though, what I found most alarming about this version of a Cyber-invasion was how Dalek-y they were. Viewing that pre-credit voiceover through the lens of current events and the rise of neo-Nazism set an alarming tone for me, making the Lone Cyberman’s final declaration of war on all life particularly unnerving.

As far as advancing the series-long story arc, though, it was difficult to get any purchase on events before the final scene (on which, more in a moment). Until then, the plot, though filled with tension for the safety of the fam, didn’t move beyond a typical Cybermen story. Yes, the Doctor’s enemies were (still) out to take over the entirety of the human race. Yes, there’s shitload of them (roughly a thousand per bay, ten bays per level, a few hundred levels works out to a few million Cyber-soldiers on this ship alone). Yes, there’s one particularly off-his-rocker Cyberman who “makes other Cybermen scream.” But it’s still just a story about the Cyberman threat.

Then those final moments arrive, and something plot-y starts to coalesce. There’s Gallifrey on the other side of the Boundary, and suddenly it’s not all about the Cybermen anymore.

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Haunting Choices

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Review of The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

It’s my usual practice not only to watch an episode twice before reviewing it, but also to avoid reading anyone else’s reviews or discussing the episode in detail with anyone else before I write, so my reactions are as free from outside influence as possible. This time, that went out the window before the opening credits even rolled.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

As you may have seen in my Day Three roundup, I had the great fortune to be able to watch the episode at Gallifrey One, in a ballroom packed full of fans. Everyone was so keyed up that I don’t think any of us could help but love the episode. There were simultaneous gasps, raucous bursts of laughter, and immediate cessation of said laughter the moment dialog started back up (a room full of Doctor Who fans know it’s important not to talk over the lines). And it was exceedingly gratifying to have the whole room share my emotions as the story unfolded, confirming again that at this con, I’m completely surrounded by people who get it.

With all that coloring my initial experience, I knew I’d need a second viewing to gain any sense of objectivity whatsoever. Besides, I hadn’t been able to hear a large portion of the dialog and thus to keep track of everything that was going on. So with great anticipation, I dived back in.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to watch this one entirely objectively, simply because I’ll hear my Gally family’s reactions in my head every time I watch it. But even in broad daylight, with a critical eye out, and a clear understanding of every line of dialog, I came out of the episode with the warm glow of a great episode sitting snugly inside my chest.

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The 31 Flavours of Gallifrey One – Day Three

Contrary to the mellow vibe of most of the rest of my con schedule, Sunday started out more stressful than I’d have liked. Having briefly woken an hour before I was ready to get up, I then woke up an hour later than usual, which left me feeling pressed for time.(I had plenty, but try telling my brain that.) I got my morning blogging and language practice routine out of the way and had sufficient time to get nervous before I gave moderating a panel at Gally a go for the first time.

The panel, “A Doctor for Divided Times,” was about how the show, and the Doctor, have addressed “political” issues over the entire run. (Suffice to say that yes, Doctor Who has always been political.) I’m not really the best one to judge how it went, but a couple people told me it was a good panel and I did a good job as a moderator, so I’ll choose to believe the positive feedback. I might even volunteer to mod more in the future!

With the nerve-wracking part of my day out of the way, all I had left on my schedule was a long day in Program A. After an early lunch on the patio with my roommates before one of them had to leave to catch his flight, the other roommate and I spent some time in the Dealers Room. Since I’d decided on Saturday that I wasn’t going to sacrifice that many hours of my con to standing in line for an Eccleston autograph (which makes me sad, but Chris has told other attendees here that he plans to return to Gally, so I’ll cross my fingers for next time!), I had a little extra cash, and splurged on something I’d had my eye on.

Then we moved into Program A, where “Doctor Who Blu-Ray: Behind the Scenes” was just ending. We saw maybe five minutes of the panel before it was time for the next one (a screening of “The Daleks’ Master Plan, Episode 2: Color Edition”), and we took advantage of the break to move to better seats. They were well enough placed that we stayed there the rest of the day.

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The 31 Flavours of Gallifrey One – Day Two

I should’ve expected the first time a modern Doctor showed up at Gally to result in some ridonkulous logistics, but somehow I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was.

After my usual morning of breakfast and blogging (including starting to leave my Human Kits around the Lobby to be found), I headed down to the Dealers Room for a few minutes before it was time to get in line for my photo op with Eccleston. Heading off to line, I got the first inklings of exactly how bonkers having him here was going to make the con.

There was a green-screen photo op session scheduled for a half an hour at 10:30, and my ticket was for the hour-long regular photo op at 11:00. Usually one can line up five minutes before the scheduled time, but they didn’t even finish the green-screen folks until 11:10. At that point the Diamond and TARDIS pass holders got to begin their regular photo op, to be followed by other ticket holders, in batches as assigned at the time of purchase.

Because there were so many of us, they had to be sure the hallways stayed clear, so we either had to cram to the side, or keep circulating ourselves. Since I was in Batch 5 (of 7), I tried to circulate for a while first. I found one of my friends in the autograph line waiting for the 12:00 slot, and learned that people had lined up for the half-hour-long 10:00 autograph session starting at 7:30. Since not all of them got through the line, they just stayed there, and the line for the noon session was several hundred people long. I think Eccleston ended up signing pretty much non-stop, save a 15-minute lunch break, from after the photo shoot until 3:30 or 4, just to get through everyone.

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