promethia

Hello, lovely people. I exist! I hope you all still exist as well; I have not read my flist in literal weeks. (December is the most horrid time of the entire year at my job; brain is not brain-ing. Petition to move Christmas to late January when I can enjoy it.) But a happy December to you all.

ANYWAYS. In the meantime, here is Chris Chibnall, out to give me hope for the future of Doctor Who in the form of James Bond tropes, omg:



I have important questions:

1) When did the production crew suddenly realize that being forthcoming with information about upcoming episodes is a strategy that can successfully entice people to watch?

2) Why do I feel so massively hopeful about the exciting James Bond-y-ness of this episode when Time Heist was such an appalling disappointment of a heist episode?

3) Are we actually getting a series after this New Year's special, and if so, when? The next week? Later in January? March? (Dear production crew: being forthcoming with details about the scheduling of upcoming episodes can also be a successful strategy to entice people to watch. Make note.)

I have finished Classic Who.*



It took me five months.

*All complete serials and select incomplete ones. Though I have a feeling I'm going to go watch a lot of Troughton recons now.

I've polished off the Third Doctor era. A weirdly black and white era, for me: so much to love, so much to barely survive watching.

Winners:

1) Earth-based episodes. It's shocking how neatly my list of favorite and least favorite episodes in this era is sorted by the ones set on earth vs. the ones set in space.

2) The UNIT family. Two genres I am super easy for are spy families and campy humor, so this was basically the Doctor Who as workplace sitcom era of my heart. And I've always liked the Brig, but god, the Brig is fabulous, isn't he?

3) The Master. Delgado was the last chance for somebody to make me a fan of the Master and not just Michelle Gomez/Missy, and . . . well, he failed. But I had a great time watching him do it.

4) Liz Shaw. Queen. Though we deserved so much more of Spearhead from Space Liz and not the watered down, be-wigged version they gave us for the rest of the season.

5) Pertwee's costumes, especially the late-stage ones. Surely one of the best-dressed Doctors ever. I want to do obscene things to the plum velvet blazer from Planet of the Daleks. Not to Pertwee in the blazer. Just to the blazer.

6) Sarah Jane. Confession: I do like Sarah more towards the end of her time with the Doctor, which fandom informs me is the wrong opinion. But her sheer tenacity and savvy in season 11 is undeniably great.

7) Spearhead from Space, Ambassadors of Death, Mind of Evil, The Daemons, The Sea Devils, The Green Death, The Time Warrior. And special shout out to both Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Time Monster, omgomgomg for being the best things ever. Just the best. All the hearts.


Losers:

1) Space. Space, why are you so stupid? Why are you so full of boring things I care so little about? Why do you always take the Doctor away from the UNIT family where he belongs and mire him in a really inferior Tom Baker story without Tom Baker and therefore 1000% less interesting to watch? By the last seasons I was hard tuning out as soon as they left earth.

2) Three, kinda. Now, I don't hate Three and I enjoyed watching him quite a lot almost always when he was on earth where he belonged. But . . . are we sure he's actually the Doctor? Because I'm not really convinced. This is a surprising outcome for me because back when I was trying random Classic Who serials as suggested by popular opinion instead of watching whole eras in order like I should have, Three was the only Doctor who really grabbed me. And now he's my least favorite Doctor I've seen. Sorry, Three. You should have just been your own character.

3) Jo, kinda. I want to like Jo far more than I do. I liked her best when they did the best job of playing up the dichotomy between her slightly ditzy, sweet persona and her actually quite impressive spy skillz. I basically just rode a slightly confused rolled coaster with her for her whole three seasons. And her writing was obviously horribly uneven: a story that really knows how to use her followed by one that reduces her to all her most annoying and feeble qualities. Bleah, she goes way down the totem pole of favored companions.

4) Six and seven-parters. No. Just. No.

5) Season seven. I actually made an attempt, several years ago now, at watching the Pertwee era through, and back then I rather liked season seven and got turned off by season eight. This time it was basically the opposite. There are aspects of the season I really like but, man, it is a real concentrated dose of boring people in grey control rooms, isn't it?

6) Doctor Who and the Silurians (though points for the title), Colony in Space, Peladon and Peladon, The Mutants . . . god I can't even be bothered. If it was in space, it was bad.

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And now I only have two Doctors left, eep!

Listened to The Diary of River Song 5x01. I think I would have been happier if they just locked them both in a room for an hour and let them have it out, but look, I'm never gonna say no to some River'n'Missy caper action.

I had to pause for a solid thirty seconds to cackle out loud when ( spoilers, sweetie )

What do I need to do to get a series where the Master and the Rani stage sexy/evil capers throughout time and space? The Doctor can go bugger off somewhere else.

Is Big Finish on this?

I have watched all of the Fourth Doctor.

It took me a little under a month and I didn't even die once.

I think this might be my favorite plot of the whole season so far?

( Spoilers. Ish. )

So, if I've paralleled Clara Oswald with Bill Potts, Missy, River Song, Amy Pond, a sentient doomsday device in the guise of Rose Tyler, actual Rose Tyler, the Doctor's technologically-generated offspring, the Doctor's mother, and a couple of others, do I label is as Whoffaldi or no?

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In other news, I need this for so many reasons and only most of them are Michelle Gomez:

So, literally the best thing to come out of my foray into Big Finish so far is the bonus commentary track for An Earthly Child, the episode where Eight reunites with Susan and meets her son, Alex. So Paul McGann is commentating on the episode, and at this point he's been playing the Doctor on the regular for years and he's like 'Why did I never hear the Doctor has a family before this? Is there a reason nobody told me? Do we not talk about it? Is it because nobody thinks he has sex?'

Oh, my sweet summer child. lmfao

Well, I finally broke down and downloaded a Big Finish thing. If you never hear from me again, you'll know what happened.