Whowatch Part 10
David: The news that’d normally be covered in an intro merited its own full newsletter this time, so let’s get right to it!
The Vampires of Venice
Amy’s Choice
The Hungry Earth
Cold Blood
Vincent and the Doctor
The Lodger
The Pandorica Opens
The Big Bang
A Christmas Carol
And Sean, I think it falls on you this time to introduce our guest!
Christa: panics, swaps Starfleet uniform for a fez and tweed jacket Who’s that?
Sean: It’s you, Christa! Christa Mactíre a the lovely wolf who does a ton of things outside of the comics spaces David and I circle in, most notably a book series exploring loup’s history with the Eleventh Doctor Who, Back to the Eleventh Hour. And on that front, I have the esteemed role of acting as loup’s editor. Outside of that, Christa’s been working on a Beatles project, a bunch of fan fiction, and, should loup’s patreon reach a certain level, a podcast with me where I introduce Christa to the strange, horrifying world of comics. We begin with Emily Carrol and go down hill for the most part.
David: I appreciate your accurate clarification that compared to the usual discussion here, comics is absolutely the horror story.
Sean: We haven’t reached the horror part of Doctor Who yet, David.
But for those in the audience who haven’t read your book, tell us: How did you get into Doctor Who?
Christa: It all began a very long time ago, when I was still in that dreaded purgatory known as high school. I’d caught the show on TV every now and then, but it wasn’t something I actively attempted to follow until 2010, where there was a new Doctor about to start his journeys. Smith was the first Doctor I watched live, and as my books will make very clear, I fell in love immediately.
Sean: So you were immediately disappointed by one of the potential successors to Moffat, Toby Whithouse, doing Vampires of Venice.
Christa: No, actually! I think it’s a perfectly solid script from him, I’d definitely rate it higher than his other Smith era contributions. Anything with Helen McCrory is worth (several) watches! (Well, almost anything. Bite my fluffy lupine ass, Rowling.)
David: McCrory is the star here for sure, but for some reason my attention was grabbed by Alex Price as her asshole son, who had me constantly thinking ‘This guy’s got real Dane DeHaan vibes’. Otherwise, it was a fine episode with some good bits - the library card, “One day that’ll work”, “You didn’t know her name” - and a nice scenic location I could dig. The location however does result in the most inexcusably missed opportunity in possibly the entire franchise, which is that they literally did an episode called Vampires in Venice but there’s never a gag about crossing running water.
Christa: Maybe in the Target book! They’re doing those now.
Sean: Some of them are quite good. The Rose one in particular shows Davies’ growth as a writer both since The End of Time and his previous Doctor Who novel Damaged Goods, which was written for Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor Who back in the 90s.
And, of course, The Day of the Doctor. But we haven’t gotten to that episode yet.
Christa: Spoilers, sweeties. ;-)
Anyway, what do we think of the Amy love triangle here?
David: Gotta say, by the end of this episode? Loved Rory. Arthur Darvill plays him with this stubborn dignity in the face of one low-key but cutting humiliation after another, like he’s aware that he’s destined to be the next Mickey but simply refuses. You can see both why he’s constantly intimidated by The Doctor and easily pushed around by Amy, and why ultimately they would never leave each other. The cloth all other malewives were cut from, and an inspiration to us all.
Christa: I’m pleased to note that it was this chapter, I think, that changed my girlfriend’s mind about Rory. Love that wonderful dork!
Sean: David might know Darvill from his post-Doctor Who role as Rip Hunter in Legends of Tomorrow, the DC show that got canceled right as they introduced their best idea: Donald Fason as Booster Gold.
David: Everything I’ve seen suggests that show got a lot better over time, but I made my choice time travel adventure series-wise.
Sean: Anyways, Rory is a delightful character. The sort of person who isn’t opposed to fun the way many a stick in the mud boyfriend would be, but still has a preference towards not being stuck in bad situations where people die horrible ways. He is, after all, a nurse.
Christa: I think part of what makes Rory work is that he provides some much needed contrast with the Doctor and Amy. Those two are all about having adventures in space and time, while Rory is a walking Reality Check.
David: For sure: he gets a lot of the standardy-standard ‘hey just remember everybody: The Doctor can really be an asshole sometimes’ dialogue in a Series that tends to frame 11 much more favorably than 10 was ever allowed, but he comes off as a perfectly reasonable guy who’s put some thought into his weird situation instead of the nag trying to ruin the kids show.
Christa: He’s the kind of character I wish Mickey had been.
Sean: On that note, let’s move on to the one where Rory dies!
David: The first time’s always the hardest.
Sean: By this time next series, the fans made a drinking game out of it. Anyways, Amy’s Choice. A rather charming story about dreams, freezing to death, and alien grannies who want to kill you.
Christa: Simon Nye never worked in retail. There’d be more Karens in this one.
Anyway, I utterly adore this episode. <3 Toby Jones is delightful as the Dream Lord, and the conflict is compelling. And god, the character work! This episode, for me, is one of the Pond era’s best, and illustrates why this trio work so well together.
Sean: “Ask me what happens if you die in reality.” “What happens if we die in reality.” “Then you die, stupid. That’s why it’s called reality.” Such a great bit. And Toby was such a wonderful sport to take time off of the other Moffat project he was doing at the time, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, to do this.
David: BIO-FANATIC ARNIM ZOLA himself! Loved Jones here, loved him even more after the transition from ‘oh ok this is some kind of weird The Master thing, well he’s very good at that’ to the reveal of what was actually going on. And both saddened and impressed this was Nye’s only Doctor Who episode, even as I can see how this could be someone’s One Shot At Doing Doctor Who encapsulating everything you’d want there. I was there from the moment of “This is going to be a tricky one.” It’s clever, it’s heartbreaking even in a context where you know the stakes are warped from the usual standards, and it has Rory’s grody little rat tail. The Doctor receiving a crushingly stock villain speech and exhaustedly admitting that yeah, okay, his life is stupid enough that that could be real is an all-timer moment for me.
Christa: You know what I like? The way the Doctor’s bow ties change color depending on which dream he’s in. Blue in Leadworth, red in the ice TARDIS.
David: Completely missed that somehow! Yeah, I don’t know that this is one of my personal all-time episodes - though I’ll hold it near and dear just for the Amy/Rory stuff - but it’s a beauty for sure.
Sean: Sadly, we have to move on to Old Man McChibbers. David, I believe your immediate thoughts upon watching the two parter were “You guys are fucking with me that this is the one who succeeds Moffat.”
Christa: I wish we were.
David: My exact words were:
“I have to join everyone several years late in assuming c'mon, it's some kind of weirdly elaborate gag, they're not REALLY making this Chibnall guy the showrunner, right?”
Sean: Believe it or not, this is one of the better ones. It only gets worse from here. We warned you, David. We all warned you. But you were the one who wanted the complete Doctor Who experience.
Christa: If you want an illustration as to why his era was such a disaster, this one is it.
(Also his s7 stories are better than this one by a mile.)
David: This was…the “Asking nicely” moment. The goddamn clapping. Possibly the most tortuously blunt reference to ‘hey this is a classic Doctor Who thing!’ yet. The most insufferably generic hypocritically evil baddies imaginable. The VERY serious immigration debate. Even the effects were notably worse than usual. This is easily, EASILY down there with Shakespeare Code as the worst the show has had to offer me, a cringing broken failure from tip to toe. “Remember there was a chance” is the only decent enough moment and that rests entirely on Smith’s shoulders.
Christa: At least Chibnall isn’t a TERF. (That we know of.)
Sean: The thing about the Silurians is… they have never worked up to this point. Every Silurian story, to one degree or another, is absolute crap. Specifically, it’s orientalist crap. It’s a story about the indigenous population fighting against the colonialists who took their land and we side with the colonialists because they’re humans and the Silurians are Cave Monsters.
As a result, the best the show can do (for the very sympathetic reason of “Doctor Who can’t afford to have lizard people appear in the backgrounds of every modern set story”) is pause the debate, defer it to a more convenient time. As a result, you get crap like “Oh no, both sides are bad.”
Christa: But Sean, I thought the system wasn’t the problem!
Sean: That’s just a facet of the way that Cold War propaganda is still affecting our perception!
Trixie: SEAN IT’S BEEN THREE HOURS SHUT UP ABOUT KARL MARX
Christa: I want a story where the Doctor sides with the Silurians in this plot line.
David: The only interesting thing about this whole affair is it slightly shocks me that Chibnall is going to go the insufferable superfan route, because for all the world this feels like the it’s-a-gig execution of somebody who, stone cold, does not give a damn. Even pulling an old baddie felt more like a disinterested hire pulling something out of the files so he wouldn’t have to bother to think of something himself rather than a diehard going back to the old well. But my understanding is he loves all this stuff!
Christa: He has a weird way of showing it.
Sean: We’ll get there, young wolf. We’ll get there.
Anyways, Rory’s dead. Again.
Christa: When does he get his free Slurpee at 7-11?
Sean: Only if he does it during the promotional period. Which, as far as I’m aware, he just barely missed.
Christa: “Missed it by that much!”
David: If Doctor Who in fact covers all of fiction except for Noddy, he should get a free sundae from King Yemma next time.
Sean: I think Rory’s lactose intolerant.
Gohan: Nobody’s lactose intolerant in Heaven, Sean. That’s why it’s Heaven.
Christa: If there’s a sensation I wish I could experience again, it’s the feeling of “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK” I experienced as the Doctor pulls out the bit of TARDIS sign from the crack.
Sean: You had no idea how much I was giggling when you said, “The cracks are just reminding us that they’re there.” last time, David.
Christa: Also, while we’re here: I love Neve McIntosh!
Sean: It would be great if she came back to the show at some point.
Christa: Shall we move along to The One With The Detestable Asshole… and James Corden?
David: Actually one more before that in Vincent and the Doctor, the one I didn’t have any notes on because, well, it’s simply a spiffy little episode with a very good ending.
Sean: I can’t watch that episode. I just can’t. So I guess I’ll join you for the finale. Fuck off, second version of The Lodger!
Christa: I love Vincent. <3 Tony Curran is wonderful, and that scene in the museum… heartbreakingly lovely. (Also: Karen Gillan apparently owns the version of Vase with Twelve Sunflowers that appears at the end. She said so on Twitter!)
David: I’m extremely sorry to Tony Curran, a wonderfully talented actor who I saw in the preview for the Series upfront and thought “Is that (the also wonderfully talented) Alasdair Beckett-King??? I feel like I would’ve heard about him being in Who!”
Christa: Doctor Who needs more gingers.
David: The Doctor’s always saying so! The worst I can say about this episode is the monster feels half-cooked, but the shockingly brutal, mature capstone more than makes up for it to put this one solidly in the black.
Sean: Again, can’t watch that episode.
Christa: Counterpoint; A better monster would’ve messed the episode up. Because it’s invisible and a representation of Van Gogh’s depression, it works.
David: Oh it’s for sure thematically on-point, just felt the execution on that aspect of the episode could’ve been a bit tighter.
Christa: Ah! Carry on.
David: And then there’s…the other guy’s one. Honestly it’s the first one he’s done solo I’d say I liked well enough, but I dunno if it’s because he turned in a decent script for once or if it rests fully on Smith and Cordon’s chemistry and the basic amusement of The Doctor having to be A Normal Human Person. Fair, but hardly upper-echelon.
Christa: Smith and Corden really do have excellent chemistry. The writer… damn that bastard to Hell.
David: VERY happy there are only two of his left ahead to deal with.
In the meantime however, we can revel in greener pastures with The Pandorica Opens, and the emergence of what I can only describe as The Doctor Who Legion of Doom.
Christa: The Injustice League?
Sean: The Masters of Evil?
David: The Daleks And Those Other Guys.
Christa: You know what’s great? The very end of Pandorica. There’s a long zoom out on Earth, galaxies are exploding, and… the music cuts off. If only they’d run the credits in silence.
Sean: Yeah, but that gag’s saved only for the death of some white kid who everyone hated despite being really good at maths.
Christa: Wesley Crusher?
Sean: No, I think he went off to be Space Jesus after the Federation decided to do the Space Trail of Tears with literal, actual space Native Americans.
Christa: What an objectionable episode that was.
Sean: So much so, Michael Pillar made an entire movie about why that story was shit.
Anyways, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang! Kinda surprised this is the first time in television Doctor Who has actually done a story with Stonehenge. (The closest being a mention in The Time Meddler and a cameo in The TV Movie.) I love this two parter. An epic beyond the scope of Davies two part finales where all of reality actually does come to a bitter end so as to scale the whole story down to four people talking.
David: What’s fascinating to me is this is probably the LEAST tightly-wound story Moffat’s done mechanically speaking that I’ve seen, which makes it stand out compared to the prior finales being Davies’ most by far. The emotion with Rory (“The boy who waited” SOBBING), Amy, River, and The Doctor fully carries it.
Sean: At the same time, you have the time travel bits in the opening half of The Big Bang where Doctor Who ends up appearing out of order. This offers moments of both comedy and horror.
David: “Least tightly-wound Moffat” is still the cleverest thing most would ever put together, to be clear. “Okay kid…here’s where it gets complicated.”
Christa: He really is an astoundingly good writer.
These episodes, for me, are a HUGE rebuttal against the arguments I’ve seen in some quarters that Smith is a lesser Tennant. He’s really not. Tennant wouldn’t sell that last conversation with Amy before launching off half as well as Smith does.
Sean: Tennant is an open wound crying out to a cosmos that does not care. Smith, meanwhile, is a festering wound that never properly healed.
David: Tennant’s still my favorite thus far but you’re 100% right, he would never allow himself to be as openly exhausted by the end as Smith gets here in the way this demands.
Christa: He’s kind of like The Rock, in a way.
David: Whowatch: where our audience gets insights we can promise you truly never will anywhere else.
Christa: Matt Smith… god. I feel a little bad for not having gushed about him much on this round table, so I’ll make up for it with this statement:
One of the best Doctors ever. Ever. Like, he personified the character in a way that hadn’t been seen since Tom Baker. (Being heavily inspired by Troughton helps, but even so!)
David: His speech by Amy’s bedside is so good that even as my “Wait HE was the crack all along!” realization turned out to be rapidly mistaken, I didn’t care because he got to say that real good Doctor Who stuff.
Sean: And then the move to get Doctor Who back with the old wedding line “Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue!” is just cracking stuff. You can see here why, out of all of the previous versions of Doctor Who, it would be this one that inspired Elizabeth Sandifer to make a whole new form of media criticism. And, subsequently, why we’re here in the first place.
Christa: Too true. All my love to El and the work she did with Eruditorum. I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without her.
David: Like Tom Welling on Smallville not wanting to read any of the Superman stuff friends sent him until after the show was done because he didn’t want it influencing his performance, I’m waiting until after the series has concluded to go through the Eruditorum. Nobody’s gotta tell me though: Sandifer? Very good at what she does.
Sean: You can actually start right after we get through series 11. That’s when the public version of the Eruditorum stops. It’ll be nice to have something good to read.
David: It may well be all that keeps me afloat through the darkest of times.
Also wanna note: I appreciate that she has her parents back, her relationship is 1000000% set in stone on a fairy-tale scale, and her imaginary friend is proven real, but Amy’s still clearly A Mess at the end of this in the best way.
Sean: That’s something we’ll get into another time.
But there’s one last stop to make before leaving this chapter of the WhoWatch, and that’s the reason Christa’s here. For those who haven’t read the book, tell us: Why is A Christmas Carol your favorite Doctor Who story
Christa: So many reasons! It’s an absolute showcase of Smith’s acting ability, the stuff with Kazran and Abigail was already heartbreakingly touching, but even more so when I watch it now, while in a relationship. It’s the best Christmas special the show ever did, ruminating on the holiday’s sadder aspects while also making space for joy, in much the same way A Charlie Brown Christmas does.
What I really love about it though is something it picked up on from the original Dickens story: redemption is always possible. Even a cruel, angry old man like Kazran can become better. The power of redemption is something I touch on all the time in my own fiction writing, and this episode is part of why I like that theme so much.
While there’s life, there’s hope. What a beautiful sentiment.
David: I appreciate that it’s an episode built around that if you use time travel to the absolute limit paired with true love and overriding shame, you can get a rich person to not be a complete monster at the absolute last second, and that this will literally render them incompatible with the systems of power.
Sean: All things considered, one of the more realistic Doctor Who stories.
David: More seriously though: basically perfect episode, and the biggest laugh I’ve ever gotten out of the show - probably my biggest laugh so far of 2023 - that The Doctor calling himself mature and responsible is “Finally a lie too big” for the psychic paper. The Ghost of Christmas Future is the perfect merger of Moffat’s ridiculously intricate structural inclinations and absolute heart-on-sleeve bleeding care and sentimentality. Probably on the ‘if I had one episode to convince someone to love the series’ shortlist.
Sean: It’s just a heartwarming time overall. One of the more underrated Moffat stories. And, if you’d believe it, on the middling end of his Christmas work. Because oh man, the Capaldi Christmas stories go hard. I love that Philip Marlowe himself, Michael Gambon, gets to ham it up as a Scrooge while also revealing the depths and tragedy of such a figure.
David: Revealing those depths, but also visibly creating those depths over the course of the episode as his timeline is being rewritten! Incredible work.
Sean: In some regards, it’s a Christmas themed remake of Moffat’s very first Doctor Who story, Continuity Errors, wherein the manipulative Doctor Who has to fight against his fiercest foe yet: A Librarian who won’t let him check out a book. And so, Doctor Who goes about changing her life for the better just so he can check out a library book. It’s at once extremely silly, terrifying, and brilliant.
Christa: Haven’t we all done that?
Sean: Where Moffat differs here, aside from decades of experience, is in the framing device. The story jumps back and forth between the librarian’s perspective of Doctor Who’s attempts and a lecture entitled: “Doctor Who?: Nice Guy or Utter Bastard” which basically acts as the thesis for the modern interpretation of the character as somewhere in between your best friend and a massive piece of shit. (My favorite bit is the alternative translation to the phrase The Bringer of Darkness the Daleks use for him: “Nice guy – if you’re a biped” Doctor Who never understood when the Daleks were having a lark.)
Christa: On a different note altogether, I believe this was Michael Pickwoad’s debut as set designer, and what an entrance! Steampunk Doctor Who is something that needs to happen more often. (I also like the BBC Budget version of an Abrams Trek bridge, lens flare and all. Bonus points for British Janeway, La Forge, and Barclay.)
David: Okay good I wasn’t being a total dope for thinking that was Abrams Trek.
Sean: It’s 2010. Of course they’d be riffing on Abrams Trek.
David: As we finish the first Moffat Series, while I can’t say the ship’s being run as tightly as RTD managed (if at the expense of a recognizably human sleep schedule) and there’s a certain intangible feeling that’s shifted I can’t fully describe, I’m definitely enjoying the broader direction the show seems to be headed in. At its peaks there’s an almost…Kingdom Hearts-ey feel to it, where the emotional and cosmic stakes are the exact same thing at all times and each lands all the harder for it.
Sean: “It has an almost…Kingdom Hearts-ey feel to it,” says man whose only prior experience of time shenanigans with emotional metaphors and fairytale magic attached is Kingdom Hearts.
David: I can say for certain Kingdom Hearts time shenanigans are WAY more bullshit than this has ever gotten.
Christa: Fairytale magic. <3 That’s what’s here now.
Sean: Anyways, thanks for stopping by, Christa. Is there anything you’d like to promote?
Christa: Mainly my Patreon and my books, if you want more lupine thoughts on this era! Thanks for having me, you two!
David: Happy to, you’re welcome back any time!
Sean: Now get back to work on the Series Seven book!
David: And remember kids: don’t trust that Richard Dawkins.
Christa: Awoo, bitches.
Next Time: The Doctor's gone. Once upon a time, there was an excited, scared… rather lonely man who stole a magic box. You were my second choice for President, Mister Nixon. Come out of there, you mutinous dog! It's like kissing, only there's a winner. Would you like a jelly baby? Why would we need names as well?