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Tag: Fourteen

Sheer Glee

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Review of The Giggle
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of a Doctor Who episode feeling simultaneously so shocked and so delighted. I’m not entirely sure how he managed, it but RTD has broken everything we thought we knew about regeneration and made us love it. He has every right to feel smug about doing something unexpected.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

In case it’s not clear, I loved this episode. Probably my biggest point of contention with it is the title (which sounds ridiculous). It makes me feel almost apologetic to my readers, because I don’t think I’m going to be able to be even the slightest bit objective this time.

From the Doctor having a “team” again to the return of a Hartnell-era villain to That Plot Twist, I was an eager rider on this roller coaster. While several things settled into the back of my mind for further inspection, none of it spoiled my enjoyment.

Perhaps foremost in my mind is the presence of the Vlinx, the random alien working with UNIT. Everyone takes the Vlinx in stride—including the Doctor—and doesn’t bother to question the Zeedex that the Vlinx has provided to UNIT to combat the titular threat. Even when Kate Stewart rages against the Doctor’s alienness under the influence of “the spike,” no one bats an eyelash at the presence of the Vlinx. I can’t believe that won’t come back at some point in the upcoming series.

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Divisive Doubles

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Review of Wild Blue Yonder
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Perhaps even more than usual, the second of RTD’s three 60th Anniversary Specials polarized the audience. Fan reactions I’ve seen online seem to be either effusive in their praise or full of vitriol. Little ground appears in between.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

I can certainly see why the detractors didn’t like Wild Blue Yonder—among other things, I suspect it didn’t meet some extremely high expectations in one or another particular way. But I found it to be interesting and entertaining, with no more than the usual flaws that make me grit my teeth and plug my metaphorical ears, singing, “La la la! I can’t heeeeear yooooou!” to drown out the objections my astronomer’s brain raises (which I’ll share later anyway, so you can suffer along with me).

One of the things that I found most intriguing, enjoyable, and downright impressive, really, was the fact that with the exception of an introduction and an epilogue, the entire episode was just Tennant and Tate. Much like Capaldi demonstrated his acting chops in Heaven Sent, when he put in a frankly stunning solo performance, our two leads carry the episode between them with their fantastic chemistry and considerable skill.

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Starting Sweet, But a Bitter Finish

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Review of The Star Beast
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Going into this run of 60th Anniversary Specials, it had been a full thirteen months since the last new episode of Doctor Who aired. Such a gap is enough to whet any fan’s appetite, but add in the return of a hugely popular lead actor to the role of the Doctor, a well-regarded but hard-done-by Companion, and the first modern-era showrunner, and you have a recipe for ratings records.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

But was the episode really that great? As always, it’s a matter of opinion. But for my money (and yes, this time that’s literal, since I had to overcome my four-year resistance to giving The Mouse any of my money for streaming), there was a lot more in the positive column than the negative. I’m calling it a win.

The biggest element of this special is having a Tennant Doctor and Donna Noble back together. On one hand, that’s great—I adore Donna and was really crossing my fingers they’d finally do right by her after the terrible, awful, no good, very bad way they ended her time on the TARDIS. (More on that later.) On the other hand…

Okay. Time for an unscheduled (though not new) Confession: I’m one of those fans who doesn’t care for the idea of Tennant returning as the Doctor outside of a multi-Doctor scenario. To me it smacks of pandering in a way that bringing back former Companions or creatures or what-have-you does not. I suppose my reaction stems in part from the sense that fans from one of those No One Will Ever Be As Good As My Doctor camps are being appeased, such that future objections to some new “not right” Doctor will be all the louder. “They brought Tennant back; why not My Doctor?”

We don’t know yet why the Doctor’s old face has returned—that’s the story-arc mystery that will presumably be revealed before Ncuti Gatwa finally makes his entrance—so I guess we can’t answer that hypothetical future Entitled Fan’s question. And I continue to reserve judgement on Tennant’s lead actor status until I learn the in-universe reason. (I recently learned that the production reason was that Gatwa’s shooting schedule didn’t allow him to begin in time for the 60th, and so this was the stop-gap. Somehow I’m more willing to accept it all, knowing that.)

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Confession #169: I Wonder What It’s Like to Be the Doctor

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Regular readers will know that I’m something of a spoilerphobe. Try as I may, though, a few things always slip through the cracks and make their way to me. Usually these things are along the lines of casting news I’ve had preferred to have been surprised by or similar items, though occasionally a bigger spoiler leaks through.

More often than not, the details that filter down to me are not really a big deal; most people would likely consider them fair game, as they almost invariably originate from official Doctor Who publicity channels. I sigh quietly to myself that I’ve not avoided whatever little fact it is, and go on with my day. But sometimes what I stumble across actively delights me.

Case in point: this recent brief article from SFX Magazine in which once-and-future Doctor David Tennant praises the upcoming performance of Ncuti Gatwa. Reading that both gave me warm fuzzy feelings about the apparent camaraderie in the exclusive club of those cast as the Doctor and increased my own anticipation of Ncuti’s turn in the role even more (something I hadn’t realized was possible).

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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 #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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