assume nothing.

I was talking to my dad last night about Doctor Who and we were saying about new doctors/who should play him etc. Then my dad was like “the way it’s going I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed his sex soon” and I was just kind of thinking “oh man, I wish they would”.

Sigh.

Spending the afternoon with Ten & Rose. My heart hurts already.

So just having a little read here and there on Wikipedia… clicked onto Anthony Head’s page and came across this little gem:

Head had previously auditioned for the role of the Eighth Doctor for the 1996 television film, but lost out to Paul McGann.

CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE IF THAT HAD HAPPENED.

I can’t even…

Well.

Still dead miffed at Doctor Who so I eschewed my Who mug in favour of my Harry Potter one. That’ll show em.

Angels take Manhattan (spoilers)

lileclaire:

My favourite scene to come out of New Who is this one, from Parting of the Ways.

I never fail to tear up. Something about Billie’s acting, the superb contrast between the mundane and the fantastic. She’s in despair… a million years away the Doctor is dying, and all she can do is eat chips. It’s a scene in a suburban cafe. There’s no music, there are maybe two camera angles. It is so gut wrenching because it has beautifully simple concepts. The idea of being separated by distance… anyone can relate to that. It’s painful. There’s the idea that there’s a better world to be had. The idea that a better world is founded on the idea of helping people. There’s familial obligation. Familial love. Status. Frustration. The ‘chips’ motif is turned on its head, having been a symbol of loving the simplest things the universe has to offer. Now it’s a symbol of the repulsively mundane.
In that tiny little scene there is so much and I believe it’s the best New Who has had to offer so far.

Sometimes Moffat comes up with fantastic concepts. The idea of a ‘battery farm’ of humans living their lives over and over for aliens to snack on their energy is deliciously evil. It’s fabulous. And simple- anyone can imagine the horror of being stuck in one room your whole life. Everyone understands eternity. It’s delicious horror, that fear of imprisonment, you can do so much with that basic concept of running from being trapped in time.

Yet somehow he can bugger even this up and I really despair at the man.

I felt nothing. The Ponds ‘dying’ at the end was meant to be a sucker punch to the gut, but the narrative structure didn’t allow for it. You can’t have a second climax bigger than the first. I know exactly what he was aiming for; an echo of the horror of Tennant’s regeneration. After the climax of defeating the Time Lords, his realising he’s about to die in company with simple old man Wilf is a slow steady punch to the gut. No music, no fanfare, just two old men together. It’s simple and it works (until the Ood start singing). You know why it worked? Because it was set up. We were told that four beats would signal the Doctor’s death. We believed in the wrong four beats. The four beats didn’t come from the (expected) enemy, but the (unexpected) best friend, the old man. That is a perfect set up for a nasty shock.

I’ll tell you why Amy’s final scene didn’t work; just too much stuff and it wasn’t heralded properly.

They’ve been aiming for growth for her this season. Their attempts didn’t work; the ‘divorce’ and reunion in Asylum of the Daleks didn’t show a mature woman making an emotionally responsible decision to leave her lover for her emotional wellbeing, but two immature young people in an uncommunicative relationship. Amy and Rory’s relationship has been fucked up since day one, and Amy committing to Rory in eternity didn’t come across as a romantic finale but a hasty decision made out of the blue to the background of two people yelling at her.

If we’re to read a story off Amy, it’s the tale of a girl caught up in fairy tales and raggedy men, running away from reality until she matures and commits to something real that she loves. Unfortunately, Moffat didn’t realise this story until it was far too late; he gave us his own Scottish pixie dream girl without any interests or personality beyond ‘sexy-witty’. What does Amy Pond like!? Modelling? What else?!

…anyway. To resolve this story, the farewell needs to be from Amy to the Doctor. “I’m ready now, Doctor” it needs to say. “I can continue my life without validation from you, your validation of my fantasy world. I know that you will be fine without me, and I will be fine without you. There is something more important to me than time and space; instead of making worlds on other planets I want to make a world here with Rory. I’m not doing this just for him, or just for you; I want it because it secures me in a way I’ve never felt before.”

Rose’s story went something like this in the scene above. “I’m sorry, mum. I need to do this. I need to help people and I need to do it away from you. I still love you. I’m sad about this separation, but the call is too strong for me.”

That’s beautiful. That’s life. It’s simple and it works. Amy’s scene was too full… full of River shouting about love (Amy’s story shouldn’t have been written about love but about commitment) and full of the Doctor refusing to let go. She wasn’t even Amelia Pond anymore, she became Amelia Williams. She didn’t transcend; she became someone else, someone she never was.

Speaking of the Doctor, Moffat appears to have realised the error of his own characterisation in his own script… “a thousand year old god who chooses the face of a nine year old.”

Exactly, Moffat. Why does River Song sexualise this man when she’d be more attracted to Don Draper instead? Why does a thousand year old man pretend he’s an adolescent? More disturbingly, what do you mean, “never let him see you old?”

That’s disgusting. It’s counter to everything the Doctor ever was. He’s seen Jo Grant ‘old’. He’s seen Sarah Jane ‘old’. Seen the Brigadier ‘old’. These magnificent people were ‘old’ and kicking ass, and he celebrated it. HE is old. The Doctor may grow sad, but he doesn’t avoid death. He doesn’t run from it, he doesn’t fear sadness like some hipster scared of relationships. He’s so old as to have met Death itself. He understands life and all of its inherent sadnesses and happinesses. To have River Bloody Song trying to protect his feelings like a mother to some cosmic five year old shows a terrible misunderstanding of the Doctor’s character and role. He’s become a child who eats all the chips off his plate but never the greens. It’s gone too far so as to be comical anymore; why would anyone spend time with him? When the Doctor isn’t educating you anymore and has to be babysat, you know it’s time for a new showrunner.

Please give me this goddamn show, I want to show you how spectacular it could be. :(

Could never have put it better.

(via stfu-moffat)

Facts About Angels

evelynvincible:

Okay, so I’m just going to try to catalog what things are in the canon about the Weeping Angels.

This is interesting to me, because they only have three storylines/ 4 episodes. It’s not like they’ve been developing over decades, or have dozens of hours of on-air history or anything. Discrepancies in the Angels’ behavior/ physiology/ appearance from episode to episode are more damning than variations with Daleks, Cybermen, etc. 

Things established in Blink:

1. It’s an Angel when you see it. All we know is that if you look at it, it turns to stone. Not “It pretends to be stone” or “It appears to be made of stone,” but “It is a hunk of stone in the shape of an Angel.” 
2. An Angel does not choose to turn to stone. It’s a function of the Angel’s biology that when it is seen, it turns to stone. It cannot opt in or out of being stone. “Thinking” you can or can’t see it doesn’t matter (continuity error in The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone)
   Related to this, Angels turn to stone. Not copper, bronze, brass, plastic, etc.  
3. We don’t know what the creature itself looks like. If they turn to stone when seen, they must not be stone when they are unseen. Because you cannot observe an Angel without it being forcibly turned to stone, the Angels cannot be shown moving onscreen. (continuity error in The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone)
4. When stone, the Angels cover their eyes so they do not accidentally see one another. Because the Angels are themselves living things, seeing another Angel (or being seen by another Angel) means one or both of them is turned to stone. This fact of their biology saved Sally Sparrow and Video Store Guy in Blink. When the Angels saw one another in a ring around the TARDIS, they were all turned to stone, and trapped as such because none of them could move. (continuity error in The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone)
5. Angels feed off time energy. The Angels send people back in time the same number of years they would have continued to live, and feed off the energy given off in the transferral (or something). This is why they wanted the TARDIS, and why they feared the Crack in the Universe. Moffat did acknowledge this discrepancy in Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone.

Things established in The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone:

1. The image of an Angel is an Angel. This is particularly problematic in The Angels Take Manhattan, because there are images of the Statue of Liberty everywhere, yet none of them come to life and zap anyone. This also creates questions about all the people with SOL postcards, T-Shirts, photographs, paintings, computer desktops, etc. Shouldn’t all those people be in mortal danger right about now? Why isn’t anyone worried about that?
2. Angels can strip peoples’ neocortexes and use them to psychically communicate? I don’t know, that was a weird one. 

Things that are problematic in The Angels Take Manhattan:

1. Angels are made out of everything. Stone, bronze, copper, etc. 
2. Angels do not look like Angels. Not just “they’re decrepit and damaged” like in Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone. The Angels in Manhattan take all kinds of forms. They’re colonial settlers, children, babies, and Lady Liberty, in addition to traditional Angel forms.
3. Angels do not take the Angel pose. None of the non-Angel-shaped statues cover their eyes when seen. There are some Angel statues whose eyes are covered, but by and large the other statues do not.
4. How the fuck did Lady Liberty get to that hotel? I had assumed from the preview that there was some mass power outage, and so Lady Liberty could not be seen. This was patently not the case in Angels Take Manhattan, so am I seriously meant to believe NO ONE, in a city of millions of people, had Lady Liberty in their line of sight for her ENTIRE WALK to Winter Quay? We heard her walking, so it’s not like she magically flew or disapparated or anything. When Rory and Amy were jumping off the roof, there were cars driving in the street below. But no one saw her?

That’s a whole lot of canon that got either sidestepped, rewritten, or ignored over the course of four episodes. Moffat’s a man with great ideas, but he’s shit with long-term plotlines and continuity.

And anyone going “CONTINUITY IS A HUGE ISSUE IN DOCTOR WHO IT’S NOT JUST MOFFAT GOD YOU’RE SUCH A HATER,” this is continuity over the course of four episodes. If he can’t keep it together for four episodes, there is something wrong. Sorry I’m not sorry.

(via stfu-moffat)

Doctor Who was shit last night.

Moffat, you’ve ruined everything.  Bellend.

How Moffat Ruined Doctor Who For My Little Sister

stfu-moffat:

[DOCTOR WHO SPOILERS AHEAD]

Submitted by holycheeseandcrackers 

Right, so, anyone who follows me knows that I am Not A Moffat Fan.

I have absolutely no expectations or high-hopes for the new season of Doctor Who, (he’s put me right off Sherlock, I probably won’t even watch the new season of that), and to be honest, I am exhausted with pointing out his poor writing, his use of queers as punch-lines or to ‘sex things up a bit’ and his horrendous portrayal of women. Not to mention the fact that he has utterly destroyed a show that was a part of my childhood, hugely important to me, and influenced my further explorations into fantasy and sci-fi. I have made and reblogged countless posts about how disappointed and angry I am, and at this stage I really just feel like ignoring  everything until someone more competent replaces him.

I can remember the exact moment that I realised how bad the writing in Doctor Who had become:

“I don’t get it, one minute she wants to marry you, the next minute she wants to kill you!”

“She’s been brainwashed, it probably makes sense to her. Plus, she’s a woman. Oh, shut up!”

That scene was like two slaps in the face for me. First I am told that the Doctor (my Doctor) now considers my sex to be irrational and over-emotional. Then, after that, I am told that I am not allowed to complain about this. I am not allowed to say anything. I am told “Oh, shut up!” in manner which suggests that if I protest, I clearly just don’t have a sense of humour.

By the Doctor.  The Doctor said that. I can’t even imagine 10 or 9 saying anything like that. It was like the Doctor had become Moffat’s mouth-piece.

After that scene, I literally just sat there, practically in shock, going Oh, wow. That one cut deep. Oh wow that was bad.

So when I watched Asylum of The Daleks, I couldn’t even be bothered. I could not. Even. Be. Bothered. I watched as the pointless, nonsensical plot meandered along, not even able to gather the strength to wonder

• Why the hell there are suddenly shitloads of Daleks,
• Why the Doctor  has a new nickname that is also apparently age-old that we’ve never heard of,
• How Skaro has magically appeared again,
• Why Moffat thinks we all have the attention span of five-year-olds (a continuing theme)which means he has to break up an important couple off-screen and then BOOM reunite them in the same episode before it even sinks in and we can actually Give A Fuck (Again, a continuing theme – Moffat, I am not going to Give A Fuck about Mels if you cram her down my throat in a montage, and then shoot her, and then have her be River Song all in the space of ten minutes),
• Why Amy’s only concern with the whole children thing is ‘oooh poor Rory’ and not ‘actually I was trapped by a freaky cult and forced to give birth against my will so yeah, no, won’t be doing that again’ – Seriously, when she said “I can’t have children” I IMMEDIATELY assumed she meant that it would be mentally too traumatic for her.
• Why the hell Moffat thinks he can smugly claim that he represents queers in the show when he keeps pulling shit like “I went through a phase”  and then has the character say that they only mentioned their girl-on-girl experience because they’re flirting.
• How the fuck Rory thinks that it is healthy, and not at all passive-aggressive to say “I love you more! We both know it!”. Seriously, that is some fucking Mr. Nice Guy TM behaviour right there. I previously liked Rory, though he had his flaws (e.g. his constant inability to trust Amy when it came to the Doctor), but that was a disturbing insight into the way his mind works. He clearly ‘keeps score’ of the things they both do for each other, and that is just wrong. 2,000 years, Rory? You weren’t ASKED to wait. You didn’t HAVE to. But now you’re going to hold that over Amy’s head as Proof I Love You More And You Can Never Top That forever? After everything Amy has been through? Jesus.
• Plus there was the weird implication that if Amy did love Rory less, that means she has less love in her for the Daleks to erase. So if she can’t love Mr. Super Perfect Rory, she can’t love anyone? What about her family, her friends? Get over yourself, Rory.
• So many other things. Too many other things.

And to be honest, I wasn’t even going to bother complaining about it. I am just shit sick of Moffat, and his failure to listen to any criticism whatsoever, and his brushing off of the concerns of the show’s fans.

But then something happened that has made me very angry, and I feel the need to share.

Read More

Oh my god, this just sums it up for me so well.  I’ve never really been into Classic Who, but I was mega excited when they brought it back; I liked Nine (well, kind of), loved Ten (until it went all I AM THE MESSIAH, but save that for another time), and had high hopes for Eleven.  And at first, you know, I really did enjoy it, and I like Amy and Rory grew on me and I thought it would all be okay.  But… it’s not.  It hasn’t been for a while.

The last series (the last half at least) was absolutely shocking.  I know they can’t show everything on screen, but it was completely unbelievable that Amy would somehow just… cope with the fact that she’d been trapped, forced to give birth and had her baby stolen from her.  (I know it’s a sci-fi show, but the human aspects should still seem real, right? They used to.)  And then the whole River thing… I don’t like River Song, didn’t when they first brought her in, didn’t the whole way through the last series.  But at the same time, good grief, there was no need for all of that… bullshit in the last series.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ll still watch it.  I’ll still visit the Doctor Who Experience if Chris & I go to Cardiff in a few weeks.  I’ll still watch old episodes and enjoy them.  I’m still holding out hope that it might miraculously get better.  I’m holding out hope that Moffat might actually write the new companion in a decent way.  I’m holding out hope that when Moffat finally gets the boot, a new writer might turn everything around and make it all good again.  But… well.  You never know.

Get in from work, put Doctor Who on, and the first thing I see is a crying Wilfrid Mott. And now I am a gibbering wreck, brilliant.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Doctor Who episode with Carey Mulligan in is the best one.

My boyfriend is embroidering me a Kindle cover that is a replica of River Song’s diary for one of my Christmas presents. What an absolute babe <3