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This is nonfiction. It's an essay in which I sat down and explained, mainly for my own benefit, why I think the show's writers did what they did to Donna's character at the end of "Journey's End." My argument is that the writers were both intrigued by the idea of Donna as a double for the Doctor, and very ambivalent about it. I spend a lot of time talking about how "Midnight" fits into the Series 4 story arc.
I'll just say this now: what they did to Donna really pissed me off. If you thought the way they ended her story arc was pure genius, you probably won't like this.
I also decided to tackle this problem in fiction. You can read Recovery over here.
Series
- Part 1 of Doctor Who Meta
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Nonfiction. In a further attempt to explain why Donna's exit is so much more traumatic than any of DW's other tragic goodbyes, I wrote up this piece about all the companions' exits so far.
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- Part 2 of Doctor Who Meta
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Nonfiction. Post-DOTD review of what happened to the Time War backstory after Nine's season, what DOTD does to it, and why it's a problem that the show seems to be doing its best to forget Nine entirely.
Series
- Part 3 of Doctor Who Meta
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We Came To The End Of The Universe Because Of A Nursery Rhyme?: Series 8, "Listen" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
17 Aug 2015
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I found “Deep Breath” disappointing, so I stopped watching Season 8 after that. But Netflix let me know that it’s now available for no extra charge, and I thought, well, I have heard good things about this, let’s see whether Steven Moffat is capable of learning from experience.
And the answer so far appears to be: yes and no.Series
- Part 4 of Doctor Who Meta
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Series
- Part 5 of Doctor Who Meta
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Death Saves The Whoniverse: Series 8, "Dark Water"/"Death in Heaven" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
20 Aug 2015
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I made a lot of assumptions about what series 8 would be like based on “Deep Breath” and my knowledge of series 5-7. Many of these assumptions turned out not to be true. IMHO, “Deep Breath” is still a comparatively weak episode and really undersells the series that follows. In terms of overall quality, series 8 is all right. I think I like it better than series 5 and 6. Certainly it knocks seven shades of shite out of series 7, although we all know that wouldn’t be hard. The series finale, “Dark Water”/”Death In Heaven,” is unquestionably the best series finale Moffat’s ever done, and I’m throwing in “Day of the Doctor” as well. In series 8, Doctor Who works a lot better as entertainment than it did in 7. This is largely because of two things. Thing one: better character development for the companion. Thing two: At fucking last, in the Doctor Whoniverse, dead is once again dead.
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- Part 6 of Doctor Who Meta
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Get Your Own Stick: Clara, Missy, and Enemy Cooperation ("The Magician's Assistant" and "The Witch's Familiar") by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
29 Sep 2015
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OK, so first of all, there will be spoilers for the first two episodes of Doctor Who series 9, “The Magician’s Apprentice” and “The Witch’s Familiar.” Second, it will mainly be about Clara and Missy and how Moffat handles a plot development that I myself dearly love: forcing two enemies to cooperate.
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- Part 7 of Doctor Who Meta
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Face The Bafflement (Doctor Who, "Face the Raven") by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
24 Nov 2015
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So the last four weeks have been:
1) The Zygon two-parter, which I am still planning to write up when I get the time, but let me just say that although I was at times entertained by both episodes, that doesn’t balance out the massive problems built into the whole premise.
2) Giant dust creatures made of sleepy sand from the corners of a million eyes kill everyone. Or maybe they don’t. It’s hard to say. It’s really hard to say exactly what happened in that episode, except that the Doctor never said a truer thing than “None of this makes any sense.”
3) And now…an episode set in Diagon Alley.
Let me just say, before venturing into the spoilers below, that given that some pretty significant shit goes down in this episode..they sure made some weird choices about how to do it.
Series
- Part 8 of Doctor Who Meta
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As If We Never Said Goodbye: "Hell Bent" and the Undoing of Series 9 by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
08 Dec 2015
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I’ll tell you the short story up front: this episode was a huge disappointment to me, and it really doesn’t make any kind of sense. It doesn’t make logical sense; it doesn’t make emotional sense; it doesn’t make psychological sense; it doesn’t make dramatic sense. I haven’t seen a whole lot of Classic Who. But I still feel safe saying that Twelve’s return to Gallifrey must be the biggest anticlimax in this show’s 50+ year history.
Series
- Part 9 of Doctor Who Meta
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This Is Gonna Be Fun: "The Woman Who Fell To Earth" (s11e1) by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
22 Apr 2020
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“The Woman Who Fell To Earth” isn’t just about introducing the new Doctor. It’s introducing the new showrunner; and it makes some very clear statements about how the storytelling is going to be different this season. Chibnall, who got his Doctor Who sea legs as a writer working for Russell T. Davies, shows us, in “The Woman Who Fell To Earth,” that he’s interested in bringing back some of the basic narrative principles that Moffat set fire to when he took over. Moffat fans may mourn. I personally am dancing. I can now watch Doctor Who again and have it make me happy instead of making me angry. Which is why I started watching the show in the first place.
Series
- Part 10 of Doctor Who Meta
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Goodbye, Cruel World: "The Ghost Monument" (s11ep2) by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
22 Apr 2020
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At a key point in the plot of “The Ghost Monument,” the Doctor asks a holographic projection to clarify the situation because she’s a little confused. This leads to a very funny little pan around the group in which each member of the companion team (Ryan, Yaz, and Graham from “The Woman Who Fell To Earth”) briefly articulates their personal level of confusion. For the viewer, though, this is a very simple and non-confusing plot. Six people are looking for the same object, all for different reasons. The stakes are high, because they’re all on a planet which is extremely hostile to life, and they all need to get the hell off it. To get to the object, they have to negotiate various hazards, traps, and obstacles. It’s all pretty straightforward; but it’s elevated by three important things. One: Chibnall’s character work, not only on the Doctor and the companions but on Angstrom and Epzo, the two aliens who are vying to be the first to reach the object. Two: the Doctor’s gradual unfolding of the backstory of the Most Dangerous Planet Ever. Three: the identity of the object, which alas is a spoiler. Although I’m betting by now even people who haven’t seen the episode yet can guess what it is.
Series
- Part 11 of Doctor Who Meta
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I Don't Want To Be A Part Of This: s11ep3, "Rosa" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
25 Apr 2020
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My hot take on Monday was basically me complaining about the ways in which this episode seemed to me to be endorsing a very common but in my view extremely unhelpful version of the civil rights narrative, in which the power of heroic individuals is magnified while the importance of organization and mass mobilization is erased. On rewatch, it appears to me that the episode is attempting to have it both ways, and that I–still defaulting as I do to paranoid reading, and justifiably suspicious most of all of my own relationship to this history–paid more attention to aspects that confirmed my suspicions. Today I will talk more about the aspects of this episode that I thought were interesting in a good way. There will be spoilers.
Series
- Part 12 of Doctor Who Meta
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 1,900
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Kudos:
- 17
- Hits:
- 162
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“Arachnids in the UK” doesn’t take itself as seriously as “Rosa” did. I mean yes, there is an obvious political allegory here. But “Arachnids in the UK” is basically what it says on the tin. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane. It is an episode that delivers the simpler pleasures of Doctor Who: Monsters, creepiness, tunnels, running, and most of all ordinary people saving the world by confronting something simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying. It’s basically the Doctor Who version of a team-building exercise. And it works!
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- Part 13 of Doctor Who Meta
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Nearly everything I have to say about this episode is a spoiler except: enjoyed the performances; the plot pushed many of my buttons, and not in a good way. Can I rise above my own preconceptions and find something useful in this first of the real Plot Twist episodes? Let’s find out!
Series
- Part 14 of Doctor Who Meta
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Indistinguishable from Magic: "The Witchfinders" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
07 Jul 2020
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Many years ago I figured out that the only real difference between fantasy and science fiction lies in the way each genre explains the miraculous. Fantasy uses magic; science fiction uses technology. Fantasy gives us spirits, elves, and other magical beings; science fiction gives us aliens. And so on. The Doctor nods in this direction by quoting Arthur C. Clarke in her exit line to King James: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Series
- Part 15 of Doctor Who Meta
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I liked this one so much I watched it twice. I have really appreciated the simpler storytelling and the stronger character work in the episodes thus far; but it’s nice to finally have an episode that works more with the speculative aspect of science fiction. “It Takes You Away” proves that you can in fact combine plot twists and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey with character development and have everything enhance everything else. After several episodes ( “Rosa,” “Demons of the Punjab,” to some extent “Witchfinders”) in which the Doctor has to act by not acting or by transferring her authority to someone else, in “It Takes You Away” the Doctor has to use all her experience and ingenuity to solve this problem and to save all the humans for all the other humans who need them.
Series
- Part 16 of Doctor Who Meta
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She Was The Universe: The Haunting of Villa Diodati by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
26 Jul 2020
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Series
- Part 17 of Doctor Who Meta
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Continuity, Change, and Casting: "The Timeless Children" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005)
31 Jul 2020
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It is apparently going to be a rule that every new Doctor Who showrunner does a major reset of the show’s mythology about Gallifrey and the Time Lords. The purpose of it, as far as I can tell, is to create what the new showrunner considers a clear field for the stories he wants to tell. It is to some extent, then, always a utilitarian decision. Chris Chibnall has now done his own reboot, for what seem to me to be very specific reasons.
Series
- Part 18 of Doctor Who Meta
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Some Is Forgiven: "The Star Beast" and "Wild Blue Yonder" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
14 Jun 2024
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There was a lot at stake for me in these episodes. From my POV the most obvious answer to the question, “Why this face?” i.e., why bring David Tennant back to play Fourteen for the blink of an eye before transitioning to the new Doctor? is: Russell T. Davies has finally realized how much he fucked up with “Journey’s End” and wants to use his showrunnerportunity to try to undo some of the damage.
So. How’s that working for me, you ask?
Pretty well so far.
Series
- Part 19 of Doctor Who Meta
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The Devil's Triad: "Space Babies," "The Devil's Chord," and "Boom" by PlaidAdder
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
14 Jun 2024
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Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat are both back on their bullshit. I still have a much higher tolerance for RTD’s bullshit than for Moffat’s. Nevertheless, qua episode, “Boom” is probably the strongest of the three, whereas for cheering up, nothing’s gonna beat “The Devil’s Chord.” At least probably not any time soon.
Series
- Part 20 of Doctor Who Meta
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 1,298
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Kudos:
- 11
- Hits:
- 151