Entry tags:
Random DotD links.
Some of these links are from a few weeks ago. Time... flies.
Meta/reviews/stuffs:
Owl's Day of the Doctor Picspam.
Review by The Unaffiliated Critic. (Esp love the use of Marcus Aurelius quotes. Although I think (s)he misunderstands the timey-wimey.)
Review by Den of Geek.
Other things, like vids:
Coming Home by
ibishtar. (Uses footage from S1 - 4 mostly, plus a few key moments from DotD)
I'm Coming Home by Merlinian13 on youtube. (Same song, but longer vid, using footage from DotD only.)
be a doctor by iamyourpathos on youtube. Delicious DotD meta vid drawing on Eleven's era.
Doctor Who: Behind the Lens. The 'Confidential'/Making Of, by the BBC.
And finally, from Tumblr: The Doctor Games (/'Best Parody Ever LOL'). I... have no words. But come talk to me, and I might find some!
ETA: Just one little point, re. the people who are now complaining because the Doctor is no longer the murderer of 2.47 billion children - the Tenth Doctor is no longer the biggest hypocrite in the known universe:

So, basically, Moffat has made RTD Who better! And Sand Shoes and Dickie Bow can be BFFs 4eva. (By the way, finding a cap for this little point took far, far too long, because Ten's FACE! Seriously, you try. Miss M and I have been nearly crying with laughter. According to Miss M his name is now 'Spoonface'. And as I wanted to make a serious point, that wasn't really what I was after... *g*)
Meta/reviews/stuffs:
Owl's Day of the Doctor Picspam.
Review by The Unaffiliated Critic. (Esp love the use of Marcus Aurelius quotes. Although I think (s)he misunderstands the timey-wimey.)
Review by Den of Geek.
Other things, like vids:
Coming Home by
I'm Coming Home by Merlinian13 on youtube. (Same song, but longer vid, using footage from DotD only.)
be a doctor by iamyourpathos on youtube. Delicious DotD meta vid drawing on Eleven's era.
Doctor Who: Behind the Lens. The 'Confidential'/Making Of, by the BBC.
And finally, from Tumblr: The Doctor Games (/'Best Parody Ever LOL'). I... have no words. But come talk to me, and I might find some!
ETA: Just one little point, re. the people who are now complaining because the Doctor is no longer the murderer of 2.47 billion children - the Tenth Doctor is no longer the biggest hypocrite in the known universe:

So, basically, Moffat has made RTD Who better! And Sand Shoes and Dickie Bow can be BFFs 4eva. (By the way, finding a cap for this little point took far, far too long, because Ten's FACE! Seriously, you try. Miss M and I have been nearly crying with laughter. According to Miss M his name is now 'Spoonface'. And as I wanted to make a serious point, that wasn't really what I was after... *g*)

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I enjoyed how in-character (in a twisted way!) the Doctors were in the Hunger Games :D. And, hey, that's Inspector Spacetime as Twelve!
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I've had your vid open in a tab ever since I first watched it, because I wanted to make sure to pimp it. Then I found the other one, and they just complement each other beautifully. Re. yours, then I especially love how every scene now is flipped round - the loss turning to future hope. And it gets me every time.
I enjoyed how in-character (in a twisted way!) the Doctors were in the Hunger Games :D.
It was the Ten/Eleven stuff that did it for me. I could watch them FOREVER. (Eleven wins though. He's a Pond, and they're dangerous.)
And, hey, that's Inspector Spacetime as Twelve!
I really must watch Community one of these days...
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Same thought here. Four's scarf might be a really handy weapon, but the guy whose playing Eleven just gives Four this 'look' towards the end that says he's going to take Four down.
And then there's Five going after Twelve which just leaves me cracking up every time I watch it.
And One and Seven in the background having a sword fight with One's cane, and Seven's umbrella. xD
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This. Remember, Eleven's the oldest (bar Twelve, and he's already down by then) - he knows all of Four's tricks.
And then there's Five going after Twelve which just leaves me cracking up every time I watch it.
Who knew celery could be so dangerous?
And One and Seven in the background having a sword fight with One's cane, and Seven's umbrella. xD
I MISSED THAT! *goes off to rewatch*
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Yeah, same, I liked that Ten and Eleven instinctively paired up pretty much like they did in TDotD and tried to be the good guys (and that Four was such a LITTLE SHIT omg). I have no trouble believing that Eleven's survival instincts are better developed than Ten's either XD
Community is great. Well, sometimes. It's one of those shows that, depending on the episode, will make you go 'wtf am I watching' or 'this is the best ever why can't the rest of TV be this GENIUS'. And I don't know if you know of the Inspector Spacetime crowdfunded webseries on youtube.
Oh, I just saw your ETA. I don't believe Ten was being hypocritical there because back then the Doctor ending the Time War was portrayed as a difficult but the only right decision in order to stop the Universe from getting destroyed, further cemented by TEOT, which is very different from killing out of revenge, or proportional response, which is what had been going on with the war in TDD that he wanted to stop.
Those 2.47 billion children didn't exist until TDotD, where suddenly the last days of the Time War weren't comprised by two powerful races as bad as each other threatening to tear up the whole of creation in their conflict, but by a Dalek invasion of Gallifrey that was seemingly populated by mostly children. It was a retcon in more than one way.
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You don't know what you've got until it's gone...
Yeah, same, I liked that Ten and Eleven instinctively paired up pretty much like they did in TDotD and tried to be the good guys (and that Four was such a LITTLE SHIT omg). I have no trouble believing that Eleven's survival instincts are better developed than Ten's either XD
Ten was essentially the bipolar Doctor.
Community is great. Well, sometimes. It's one of those shows that, depending on the episode, will make you go 'wtf am I watching' or 'this is the best ever why can't the rest of TV be this GENIUS'. And I don't know if you know of the Inspector Spacetime crowdfunded webseries on youtube.
I've absorbed a great deal through fannish osmosis, just never had the time to sit down & watch.
Oh, I just saw your ETA. I don't believe Ten was being hypocritical there because back then the Doctor ending the Time War was portrayed as a difficult but the only right decision in order to stop the Universe from getting destroyed, further cemented by TEOT, which is very different from killing out of revenge, or proportional response, which is what had been going on with the war in TDD that he wanted to stop.
Well... There are several sides to this. One is that you've stumbled into the fringes of a very long and ongoing topic, and seeing it out of context doesn't really work. Re. that specific image - the text especially - I was thinking of this interview with Moffat wherein he uses that very phrase, pretty much: "He's the Doctor - he's the man who doesn't do that. He's defined by the fact that he doesn't do that, whatever the cost, he will find another way." (The flipside is that Ten did EXACTLY that - except worse - to the Family of Blood, so he's not really in the clear. But then Ten was the ultimate ball of man!pain, so I cut him some slack. I like him, in all his broken glory.)
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...I don't know how serious you're being here. If you are, then I disagree. If you aren't, then, to paraphrase David Tennant's character in Takin' Over the Asylum, he doesn't have to conform to vagaries of time and space...he's a loony for god's sake!
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:)
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I always presumed there were children on Gallifrey. After all, why was the Doctor feeling so guilty? Throughout S1-4 Gallifrey came across as collateral damage. From Fires of Pompeii:
DONNA
But your own planet, it burned.
THE DOCTOR
That's just it. Don't you see, Donna? Can't you understand? If I could go back and save them then I would, but I can't. I can never go back! I can't! I just... can't! (softer) I can't.
It was only in EoT that it was 'revealed' that the leaders had gone batshit crazy and decided to turn themselves into gods. And even then, did anyone believe that all the Time Lords were evil bureaucrats? The reason RTD never mentioned the children, is because he knew it'd be a dealbreaker. (Torchwood: Children of Earth is in many ways the dilemma at the heart of the Time War examined in detail. Killing one for the sake of the many. And oh, the politicians are despicable there too...)
Two more points: The Night of the Doctor explicitly acknowledges how dark the Time Lords have become/are now viewed by the rest of the universe - it is the flipside to DotD. And RTD was the one who made the Time Lords 'evil' - and although they were never the cuddliest of races, turning them into universe destroying madmen was an equally great ret-con, if not more so. For more thoughts see my DotD meta. For thoughts on how Moffat has been busy rebooting the show ever since he took over, see this post: The Tragedy and Death of the Lonely God and the Rise of the Trickster. Or: How Moffat re-booted DW - DotD is the last logical step (bar one) to bring the show back to what it was originally. The post should help you see what I was getting at in my - rather flip - little ETA. If you don't have time, then the basic theory is this: Rusty broke the Doctor. Moffat's putting him back together.
Aaaaand that's as much rambling as I shall allow myself tonight! I get chatty, hope you don't mind! :)
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Anyway, even before TEOT I had no trouble accepting that the Doctor killed innocents when he ended the Time War, if the fate of the Universe depended on it. The further developments in TEOT were perfectly congruent with what came before, since in the classic series Time Lords could be real dicks. When the Doctor said in TFoP that if he could save the Time Lords he would, I assume he was not just talking about their lives, but the whole situation of them being turned into monsters.
TEOT served to hammer home that the Doctor did the right thing and so gave him closure from the Time War so that the Eleventh Doctor would be free from that guilt and therefore be a blank slate for Moffat.
That largely worked. The Time War has only been brought up about twice in Eleven's era, clearly he had moved on from it. I had to laugh when Clara said in the special that the Doctor was "always talking about the day he did it". He'd never been shown to tell Clara anything about the Time War! And we'd reached a point where this didn't even strike as odd! There was no need to return to the Time War story only to undo it, it wasn't exactly weighing the series down in any way.
Torchwood: Children of Earth is in many ways the dilemma at the heart of the Time War examined in detail. Killing one for the sake of the many. And oh, the politicians are despicable there too...
That never occurred to me before, how interesting. One thing that strikes me is how the politicians in CoE were willing to sacrifice other people's kids but not their own. Like the Time Lords were willing to destroy the Universe as long as they get to survive as beings of pure conscience. Like the disregard in TDotD of all the other races and planets destroyed in the course of the Time War, as long as the Doctor doesn't have to suffer the personal loss of his own home planet.
Yes! The Night of the Doctor did follow the narrative of Time Lords who had become as bad as Daleks, so why did Moffat choose to ignore that in TDotD? (Then again, this is the showrunner who had the Cyberplanner say in the episode before John Hurt was introduced that the Doctor's mind had gone through ten re-jigs...) You talk of RTD not wanting to focus on the dead children because that would make it difficult for the audience to accept his actions. Well, this is clearly a case of Moffat choosing not to focus on the ugly aspects of rescuing the Time Lords so that the audience will more readily embrace his actions. At least RTD did paint the ending of the Time War as a moral dilemma. Moffat chose to paint the Doctor's actions in TDotD merely as the triumphant correction of a mistake. Pardon me if I don't quite swallow it.
I haven't read your meta yet, but I disagree with that interpretation. I saw the RTD era as the rocky but ultimately successful rehabilitation of a broken Doctor, potentially giving the Moffat era a lighter Doctor to work with, but that's not what Eleven turned out to be.
Erm, I get chatty too, as I suppose you've just seen :)
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I don't know that discussion [of any of the topics raised so far) would be any good... If we differ this much on such a basic level, I think we'll just talk past each other. Not that I wouldn't enjoy arguing every single point, but I've been here before with people from my flist with a completely different reading/view to my own, and we never end up going anywhere.
My only point would be that the first time we saw a Time Lord child was 5 minutes into the very first episode (in 1963) and it was even named after her (An Unearthly Child). And as the mother of a 15 year old girl, I can definitely vouch for the fact that she counts as a child. :) The Second Doctor talks to Vicky about how he's not 'forgotten' his family, they just 'sleep in his mind'.
(If you want to go with New Who, then Nine mentions being a father and grandfather in Empty Child, and Ten talks about understanding children/being a father in Fear Her.)
But again - we're clearly seeing the show through different eyes. I even know someone who came up with an eminently workable theory for the looms. (If you follow the idea of Pythia's Curse, and the matriarchal society that predated the patriarchy... But then the 'verse is so large, anything goes. Esp as it's now established that Time Lords can change gender!)
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Yeah, I didn't want to start an argument, obviously we have different perspectives on the show and that's great, it's just the way that ETA was phrased kinda stung, which motivated me to respond.
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Well, there's a lot of show to remember! (And I've only seen a few snippets of the Classic show... I can't imagine what it'd be like to know ALL of it. Although I'm not sure that's possible, if we also take into account all the books/comics/audios etc.)
Yeah, I didn't want to start an argument, obviously we have different perspectives on the show and that's great, it's just the way that ETA was phrased kinda stung, which motivated me to respond.
And I meant it in the most positive way! Seriously, DotD has gone a long way to redeem poor Ten. (Not that I blame or dislike *him*, he was just saddled with far too many issues - which of course made him the fascinating, multifaceted character he was. Of all the Doctors, he was by far the most 'human', which was both his downfall and his saving grace. Ooooh, I love me a broken hero.)
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Yeah, I love that Ten was such a complex character and, in my eyes, he needed no further redemption beyond stepping into that booth for Wilf and then visiting his companions and saving/helping them where he could. I have a lot of affection for his character arc and as far as I'm concerned it concluded perfectly. I don't mind if people disagree completely.
The thing is, I'm one of those people that's dissatisfied over TDotD. I get into it here (http://ibishtar.livejournal.com/26926.html), but it should suffice to say that it hit a nerve that's quite personal, and I'm still feeling a bit raw about, even if I made a fanvid to help me get past it. So for you to refer to people like me as "people who are now complaining because the Doctor is no longer the murderer of 2.47 billion children"... well. That may be wherein your disagreement with my viewpoint lies, but from my perspective that's so far away from the point, and a misrepresentation of how I feel, and it stung. I know it's your journal and you can say what you want, but it sort of hit me when I wasn't expecting it, as I had just dropped by to thank you for mentioning my vid. That's why I always aim my judgement at the writing, not other fans.
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Also I'm just happy that the Doctor doesn't have to carry that burden anymore (nor should he), he deserves a break. This was my final image in my DotD post:
And that is beautiful. And that is why I'm grateful. (My views on Ten & Eleven are summed up in this little post if you're interested. Loved them both, but for different reasons.
Anyway, thank you for talking to me, and again, I'm sorry I inadvertently upset you. That was never my intention.
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Nobody ever said they were all Time Lords, though. Remember, there's a low-tech "barbarian" civilization living in the wilderness of Gallifrey, as of the end of Leela's arc. (I don't know if was ever explicitly explained why; I think they're descended from Time Lords who walked out on their civilization for whatever reason. Possibly so that their children wouldn't be exposed to the Untempered Schism.) Maybe another Time Lord wouldn't bother to count their children, but the Doctor would. Ten would be upset that he couldn't remember all their individual names.
Personally, I think that the monstrousness of the Time Lords is a deliberately hanging plot hook. The Doctor may believe that Gallifrey is frozen in time, safely stored in some pocket dimension that he can unlock when he has the perfect plan to deal with Rassilon and Co. Any writer who lets it go down that smoothly is a bloody idiot.
Anyhow. I could have just said, "I'm mainly with elisi on this," I suppose. But that would have involved less words, and who wants that? ;)
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I agree that positioning the Time Lords as villains is something that will probably happen, it makes sense to give TDotD a happy ending (although the idea that he's always been heading home is another huge NOPE (http://surfingwavefunctions.tumblr.com/post/68762693828/brilliantfantasticgeronimo-pedanther) for me), and for the fall-out to be dealt with later. Suddenly the Omega symbol on the Cleric's uniforms is interesting...
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We will have to agree to disagree, because I strongly disagree that "The Day of the Doctor" cheapened the series or the arc of New Who in any way. To me, it felt more like a fulfilled promise.
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I preferred the story the way it was, I dislike the concept of time-travel being used to undo past tragedies, as there's real-life resonance in the process of recovery, but none in the act of undoing. Different strokes :)
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Whereas I like the use of time travel to mitigate past tragedies, but I don't see that they're completely undone. And mitigation of tragedies is a part of recovery. Mitigation of future tragedies, in real life, but still.
Perhaps I should explain it like this. I live in a house put up by the Army Corps of Engineers, in a town that used to consist only of such houses. It is the same town my grandfather lived and worked—as a physicist. Although he is slightly too young to have been directly involved, I still have an emotional stake in the notion of wringing everything we can from past tragedies to make future ones never happen. The fact that in Doctor Who, it's more about wringing everything we have from one tragedy to lessen that same tragedy—is, admittedly, pretty weird. But it makes emotional sense to me.
I understand that it doesn't work that way for everyone.
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I actually do get what you mean, but in this case it doesn't work for me at all.
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Suddenly the Omega symbol on the Cleric's uniforms is interesting...
Only now? I've been saying that he could be behind Silence Falling since S5. He's crazy enough, and smart enough. And he has a grudge against the Doctor.
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. . .
I'm not sure what to do with myself if I don't have to hate that episode with every fiber of my being.
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But it's pretty much the exact wording Moffat uses in that interview - the Doctor is the man who never would. I thought it sounded familiar, and this was why.
And you can still hate it, even if it's useful?
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That he does . . .
>>And you can still hate it, even if it's useful?
Oh, Ten is still a sanctimonious jerk in it and every single other thing about it is still appalling and wrong, but it no longer requires every fiber of my being.
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You see? RTD knew it, he just couldn't help going for the angst...
Oh, Ten is still a sanctimonious jerk in it and every single other thing about it is still appalling and wrong, but it no longer requires every fiber of my being.
I love it when you're angry! :)
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The fundamental conflict of Rusty Who.
I love it when you're angry! :)
Lucky for both of us!
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Indeed. But EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL NOW! (Happy crying...)
Lucky for both of us!
*laughs*
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That parody is the actual best thing. Eleven trying to be the voice of reason... unexpectedly!violent Five... he didn't want to go *cries with laughter*
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Miss M now calls him 'Spoonface'. :D
That parody is the actual best thing. Eleven trying to be the voice of reason... unexpectedly!violent Five... he didn't want to go *cries with laughter*
I know... The 10/11 bromance just KILLS me. It's possibly my favourite thing about DotD (apart from all the other things, obviously.)
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It's possibly my favourite thing about DotD (apart from all the other things, obviously.)
I agree with that! :D
(Still watching that parody, so much stuff to laugh at. Eleven flapping his hands everywhere and running like a windmill and casually wearing handcuffs while talking to River. *cries some more*)
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She is still chuckling.
(Still watching that parody, so much stuff to laugh at. Eleven flapping his hands everywhere and running like a windmill and casually wearing handcuffs while talking to River. *cries some more*)
There are handcuffs? I really need to pay better attention...
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ETA: Just one little point, re. the people who are now complaining because the Doctor is no longer the murderer of 2.47 billion children - the Tenth Doctor is no longer the biggest hypocrite in the known universe:
THANK. YOU.
Miss M and I have been nearly crying with laughter. According to Miss M his name is now 'Spoonface'.
LAUGHING TO MY GRAVE.
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SILENCE WILL FALL! (I keep wavering between not being able to wait, and for the day to NEVER come. I can't say goodbye to my Eleventy.)
THANK. YOU.
My pleasure. (He's still a hypocrite, just not quite on the same scale... *g*)
LAUGHING TO MY GRAVE.
HOW DOES HE DO IT?
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