Whowatch Part 24
The first Patreon vote is concluded, so a piece on We Only Find Them When They're Dead will be the first thing coming up post-Whowatch.
Given that it’s been made public, please support Elizabeth Sandifer on Patreon so that Sean Dillon might talk with her and Ritesh Babu about the first of the Davies era specials, The Star Beast. Plus she’s a brilliant critic such that Sean has been nicking quotes from her work for years.
Also, buy Neoreaction a Basilisk. It’s really good.
The Mysterious Planet
Mindwarp
Terror of the Vervoids
The Ultimate Foe
The Halloween Apocalypse
War of the Sontarans
Once, Upon Time
Village of the Angels
Survivors of the Flux
The Vanquishers
Eve of the Daleks
Legend of the Sea Devils
The Power of the Doctor
“When compared with the Bakers’ scripts, these comments become even more depressing. The festivals of hackneyed plot twists, cookie cutter characters, and bloviating dialogue that they pen clearly assume a barely sentient audience. The monsters are generic. The human villains’ logic waffles between generic and incoherent. It’s a mystery where no effort has even been made to secure basic facts and character motivations. It feels by and large like dumbed down Pertwee. They’re writing for children and, worse, doing the thing that no good children’s entertainment ever does – talking down to them. This would be one thing if the show were written for children, but the Bakers also clearly think the program is written for people who love classic Doctor Who.”
-Dr. El Sandifer
Sean: Hello Everybody! We’re here at the penultimate Whowatch. Are you excited, David?
David:
Sean: Right, so for those of you joining us, Season 13 of Doctor Who was presented as a standalone miniseries known as Doctor Who: Flux, wherein we’re introduced to the new old white guy companion, Dan. As you might have noticed, David only has to watch one episode from this set.
Normally, I’d spend the time explaining to David what happened in the various episodes of the series that he decided to skip. However… The Halloween Apocalypse was the episode that basically made me quit Doctor Who until we did the Whowatch project. In many ways, this project was what got me back into watching Doctor Who and regained my love for the show. As such, I have no idea what happens in the other episodes of Flux (I did watch Village of the Angels last year because I wanted to watch all the Weeping Angels stories).
As such, I will provide David with the title and HBO Max summaries for the stories he skipped and he will tell me what he thinks happened in at least one paragraph apiece.
David: Gasp! Sean I’m so glad this served its initial purpose of rekindling your love for the show, and I appreciate the opportunity in return for this creative exercise. Before we go in though, I have to note: Flux is not the name of a cosmic threat I can take seriously. Too rubbery-sounding for the end of all things. Maybe Smith could’ve sold it?
Sean: Or Pertwee. There were a lot of rubbery-sounding things in his era. “Unpeople undoing unthings untogether” and so forth.
David: You’re right, he could probably make just about anything sound sufficiently severe.
Sean: But anyways, the first episode is The Halloween Apocalypse.
On Halloween, all across the universe, terrifying forces are stirring. From the Arctic Circle to deep space, an ancient evil is breaking free.
David: Oh, buddy. BUDDY. This’d be rough enough in any circumstance, but raising the prospect of Halloween on other planets in a sci-fi genre context - involving the Arctic Circle, no less! - immediately calls to mind The Ghost in the Fortress of Solitude, and you ain’t coming out well in that comparison. Anyway, given the RTD scab-picking of the era, I’d assume this involves the return of either the ultimate cosmic devil from The Satan Pit or the alien witch coven from The Shakespeare Code, causing The Doctor and Yaz to get tangled up with New Guy, an…I’ll say affable but no-nonsense fellow who struggles to hold onto his old-fashioned dignity in the face of these shenanigans. Probably he has something going on with his family or lack thereof given the inevitable interaction with trick or treaters. Ultimately he proves his old clever guy worth and saves the day from some unthinkable cosmic power by being a smug stick in the mud, getting him a spot on the TARDIS, and The Doctor impresses some kids at some point because if not, what are we even doing here.
Sean: Next, War of the Sontarans
During the Crimean War, the Doctor discovers the British army fighting an army of Sontarans, as Yaz and Dan are thrown into a battle for survival.
David: I’m not a war historian but I’ll assume the consensus is the Crimean War was a 'bummer' and/or 'total drag', so I suppose Sontarans couldn’t really make things much worse. At least until The Doctor asks if anybody’s ever considered peace, the third time resulting in everyone involved slapping their heads and reconsidering all this nonsense. Yaz and New Guy probably hang out to establish their dynamic. Strax isn’t here, both a blessing and a curse. I bet the thing about the backs of their necks comes up, that’s the kinda pull this era would love to make. And we all learn a little something about history!
Sean: After that, Once, Upon Time (Fuck this title)
On a planet that shouldn’t exist, in the aftermath of apocalypse, the Doctor, Dan, Yaz and Vinder face a battle to survive.
David: Oh right, I already forgot there’s supposed to be a season arc over the course of the last couple paragraphs, probably there were some teases of that along the way. "A planet that shouldn’t exist" sounds potentially fun but I imagine it’s a space rock quarry that isn’t on any map for…space reasons? Maybe there’s some space-government embarrassment associated with it, and the trio and ‘Vinder’ have to escape a locked-down world in order to bring space war crimes to light? Perhaps involving THE FLUX? That doesn’t really explain the title though (fuck that title btw), maybe the whole thing could be told retroactively as a fairy tale of how The Doctor exposed the truth and thus ultimately overthrew…nah this is getting too spicy for the Chibs, and doing a ‘a long time ago…’ thing when the universe is nominally in peril doesn’t make much sense. Idk, the title and description just really don’t give me that much to go on! I bet The Doctor gives New Guy, who it turns out is named Dan, a pep talk at some point though after a pre-pep talk from Yaz, this seems about the point where a new TARDIS crewmate starts having doubts.
Sean: And now, Village of the Angels. I’m going to be blunt, this is a bore. Just a rehash of what every other Weeping Angels story had done previously written in such a way as to not amount to anything other than the cliffhanger of the Doctor becoming a Weeping Angel.
David: I know for a fact at the time of this writing I watched that within the last 24 hours. Kevin McNally brought more gravitas to the proceedings than was deserved, so that’s nice. The reveal shot of the border of the ‘world’ was cool until it stretched on way too long. And I forgot this lady was established as a thing so I guess she pops up in one of the previous episodes. Good creepy voice for the angels but not as good as how they ‘spoke’ in their second appearance, obviously. More Timeless Child nonsense which I’d assume is why I’m watching it except I feel like you alluded to a connection to some Classic Who stuff.
Sean: No, you’re watching this solely because you have to have some Flux in ya. Otherwise, I’d have just skipped the whole enterprise and we’d only have to watch the passable time loop one, the unfortunate one, and the last one.
David: YOU DID THIS TO ME FOR NOTHING?????????
Sean: Yes.
David: Fair enough. Also if there’s a time loop episode, that’s the one that should’ve been called Once, Upon Time.
Sean: Or Revolution of the Daleks.
Before I give you the title and summary for the next episode, how do you think they resolved the Doctor being turned into a Weeping Angel?
David: I just kinda assumed she got unWeepified after being taken back to ‘The Division’ and it’d be a nonstarter. If not, given the odd potential conceptual boundaries of the whole ‘living in images’ thing, this feels like prime bait for a WE CAN ONLY SAVE THE UNIVERSE BY BELIEVING…IN THE DOCTOR. Which to be fair doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d been led to believe pre-Whowatch - I’d say only Last of the Time Lords and to a far lesser extent The Wedding of River Song truly went for that - so fine, it’d hardly be the most egregious offense here.
Sean: The penultimate episode is called Survivors of the Flux
As the forces of evil mass, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan face perilous journeys and seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their quest for survival.
David: That feels like a parody Doctor Who description, but sure. I doubt that’s what it was, but personally that feels primed to be an anthology-style episode popping all across the universe to show how various conveniently budget-friendly humanoids such as the separated couple from last episode are grappling with the apocalypse, The Doctor and company popping up occasionally but rarely pulling focus ala The Spirit. This had to follow the frozen Doctor cliffhanger though, so I figure the Survivors in question were the people trapping The Doctor, who want her to make a Bad Moral Choice in order to save the day, while going by the preview I saw Yaz and Dan have some kind of pulp tomb raiding adventure going on.
Sean: Doctor Who: Flux ends with The Vanquishers
In the final epic chapter in the story of the Flux, all hope is lost. The forces of darkness are in control.
David: Well dang! Good one, forces of darkness! After almost 60 years of putting up with The Doctor it sounds like you pulled it off, round of applause everybody!
Sean: I would have assumed that the Kingdom Hearts fan would have more to say about the door to darkness being opened.
David: I’m not going to dignify that with a response, but I AM going to skim the Wikipedia summaries for these episodes, and without going into them at length, give quick determinations as to whether the reality was better, worse, or simply dumber than my spitballing.
The Halloween Apocalypse: This doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Halloween at all, what the hell.
War of the Sontarans: Sounds like I was just about spot-on!
Once, Upon Time: My thing definitely sounded more interesting. Not clear where “a planet that shouldn’t exist” comes in?
Survivors of the Flux: Oh my god this sounds so dumb. Oh my GOD this sounds so dumb.
The Vanquishers: A torrent of goofy proper nouns arranged in a sequence I can recognize as not unlike language. Is it good in practice? Bad? I can certainly guess, but suppose none of us will never know.
Sean: Now before we travel further into Late Stage Chibnall era, we must first take a slide back to the last time we had a season long arc with Trial of a Timelord. David does not want to suffer through the entirety of an era of television so bad, it killed Robert Holmes. As such, I will provide David with the historical context for this grand, epic trial against Doctor Who that lasted eight episodes!
Ah-Hem!
Doctor Who was put on trial by the Time Lords for doing Doctor Who things. The prosecutor is a bloke named the Valeyard who a lot of people really want to be a thing. Shortly before the trial, Doctor Who’s companion was brutally murdered by an alien sex pest, possessed by his aging sex pest boss, and had her corpse finally put out of its misery by samurai BRIAN BLESSED! Doctor Who was unable to save her because the Time Lords kidnapped him to be put on trial.
And now, Terror of the Vervoids.
David: In which Colin Baker - who it turns out I like pretty well - is menaced by a gaggle of penis heads. Did you assign me this because it’s a thematic precursor to the Chibnall-era TARDIS?
Sean: Not just penis heads, but penis heads with vagina collars.
But before I give you my nefarious reasons for having you watch this story, we should first talk about it. It’s crap. It’s crap in absolutely boring ways, which is surprising given the baddies are penis heads with vagina collars and it ends with Doctor Who trying to defend genocide. Mel is boring here, despite Bonnie Langaford’s better efforts later on (though there is a charm of having her scream be the stinger).
David: I certainly noticed ‘hey Doctor Who seems oddly pro-genocide’ but for the life of me I don’t know that I have anything else to say about it. Completely in one ear out the other, a tragic reoccurring pattern for the Whowatch home stretch but one I adamantly regard as not my fault. I know the Valeyard is one of those things a certain stripe of fan perennially expect to come back as a big deal, but obviously that’s not the topic at hand here.
Sean: So the reason why the Valeyard is considered by fans to be a big deal is… you know how in the early 2000s, they tried to set up Kingdom Come as the definitive future for the DC Universe?
David: Against Waid and Ross’s best wishes, yes. And I know Valeyard is some evil possible future Doctor Who, or some amalgamation of their worst aspects, that kinda deal, such that some folks assume it’s inevitable there be a reckoning with it down the line.
Sean: He’s basically Stryfe from the X-Men, yes.
But that’s not the reason I picked this story. No, if I was going to do that, I’d have just shown you The Ultimate Foe and watch you struggle to watch the last Robert Holmes story be followed up by absolute gibberish. Or, for that matter, had you suffer through The Twin Dilemma and reckon with the horror of Doctor Who strangling his companion. Hell, I might have even made you watch Warriors of the Deep to see Doctor Who lament that he had no other choice but to commit genocide.
But the deciding factor for this being the Classic Who story was… Ok, so fandom in the 1980s was a tad bit different than fandom of the modern era. Back then, there was no Twitter or Tumblr to create death cults based around which ship is better. As such, you had to create pen and paper letter campaigns to send your death threats to the powers that be.
But on occasion, there were other methods of expressing displeasure that didn’t involve death threats. This being, of course, On Air television specials, wherein the writers of the show would confront their fans. And while I think this only happened the once, it did happen with Terror of the Vervoids and a group of fans angry at how crap the story was.
It’s that discussion that ultimately pushed this Classic Who story over the edge on what we’d talk about at the end of the Chibnall era. Here’s a link to it.
David: We hate our formulaic Doctor Who, folks. Let’s get some adult sophistication in our entertainment!
Sean: So… Eve of the Daleks then. It’s a bit bland, isn’t it?
David: I’d say that goes for all three of these finale specials, which frankly post-Timeless Children is a relief. Eve of the Daleks regularly threatens to become, but never quite crosses the threshold into, unremarkably functional entertainment. Turns out Chibnall writes enjoyable if rote Dalek dialogue, and I’ll admit, the storage building is a pleasantly simple inescapable trap. The whole thing hinges on bad mechanics that are highlighted - the one guy should only last up until a certain timeloop, then he’s fine anyway - and odd mechanics that could be easily explained but aren’t - The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan always starting by the TARDIS could easily be justified as them being at the ‘heart of the storm’ or something - and of course the whole thing operates on Namek time. Also I refuse to believe this is the second time The Doctor has ever jammed a Dalek with the sonic if that’s something that’s ever worked. I dunno, I’m mostly going for nitpicks this time, this holds together just well enough to not be a disaster aside from the mandatory terrible speech but there’s virtually nothing to compliment. It occupies 58 minutes of our precious lives is what it does, which makes it literally being 10 minutes stretched to the breaking point pretty apropos.
Sean: In many regards, the same could be said for the next episode, bar two elements. (I audibly went “Fuck you” when the Doctor went “No Ship, Sherlock.”) The first is the Sea Devils themselves. Or, rather, their name. For those of you with absolutely no Doctor Who experience whatsoever, you might be thinking to yourselves “Wait, is that seriously their actual name?” And no, no it is not. Because, as the name suggests, Sea Devil is a racial epithet brought up in their first story all the way back in the Pertwee era.
It is also the only name they’ve been known by.
And, credit to the Chibnall era, they do address that it’s kind of fucked up that one of the alien races is literally only called by a racial epithet. It’s just… the era can’t bring itself to do anything with it other than note that it’s messed up in the vaguest way imaginable. By which I mean the Doctor uses the phrase then the creature from the sea responds, “Land Parasite.” The Doctor makes a remark about name calling before asking what she should call the being, to which the aquatic lifeform just scoffs and the subject is never broached again because if given the choice between not having to edit the wiki and being even the least bit progressive, nerds will choose to keep the sacred texts frozen for the rest of time itself.
The second issue is, of course, Thasmin. In many regards, what we have here is the central issue of this incarnation of Doctor Who. Throughout the story, Yaz and the Doctor are dancing around the issue of being in a romantic relationship. Yaz had her feelings explained to her by the old white guy who is here for a paycheck and as such wants to talk about them. The Doctor, meanwhile, can’t for… reasons. Reasons she never explicitly claims beyond vague notes about the lack of time. She can’t express how she’s feeling about anything. In short, this incarnation of the Doctor is repressed.
It's not that having a repressed character is a problem. A lot of interesting fiction involves repressed characters. The problem lies in the fact that there's never a payoff to the repression, either in a manner that involves the character unclenching their sphincter or having their repression result in something happening. As such, we're left with someone who arbitrarily keeps secrets for no real reason other than because they don't want to talk about it with no sense as to why she doesn't want to talk about it. And, to top it all off, it could have easily been resolved if the Doctor just kissed the damn girl rather than once again acting as if they can't date when the Doctor explicitly mentions she has a bloody wife right before saying she can't be with Yaz because of reasons.
Other than that, this is a nothing burger made with less than nothing that looks like absolute crap even by the standards of Doctor Who. What, they couldn’t figure out how to make the sea creature’s mouths move while being loyal to a fault to the original design?
David: For the big finale of this era I again wish I had more to say about these - I’ll at least have more to offer about our actual climax in a minute - but the only notes I had to take on my phone here were “They REALLY didn’t want (the Sea Devils) sharing the screen with anyone” and “Editing is so bad even I can see it”. I would probably have been infuriated about the ending if I had even a molecule of investment in 13 or Yaz, but this is of course impossible, so I’m not even though in principle it’s pretty egregiously bad. These two are the equivalent to Planet of the Dead, ‘specials’ purely by virtue of placement, except these aren’t setting anything up or playing in a momentary status quo or touching on any outstanding threads unless 13/Yaz was set up in episodes I missed, which I frankly doubt. They are here for no other reason than that someone decided the show couldn’t just go from Flux to the finale.
Sean: 13/Yaz was set up in Eve of the Daleks. Certain fans will argue it was always the endgame, but that’s flagrantly horseshit.
But before we get into the finale episode of the era, I hear you’ve just finished my favorite book of all time.
David: Adored This Is How You Lose the Time War. Yes, it’s got some of my go-tos tastewise - mad high concepts scattered generously and on a dizzying scale, soaring and far more than bordering-mythic romance for all its intimacy - but what’ll stay with me is the language. The poetry that’s the only way for Red and Blue to dance between the raindrops in worlds that can peer inside their heads, that’s the only way they can convey themselves in their wholeness across the impossible gulfs of alternate realities and incompatible backgrounds, that’s their foreplay alongside eons of exquisite combat. It is a beautiful, beautiful book.
Sean: I love the poetry of the book. Yes, there’s the structural conceit of a romance between letters that always charms me. But it’s the way they express their worlds, their love, their sadness, their hatred, their nationalism, their violence, their beauty through the written word that struck a chord with me. I love the heartache expressed as Red pleads with Blue to stop reading her final, deadly letter. I love the names they call each other throughout the various letters they write. I love the uncertainty of pop culture, the clever wit of the victor. It’s just a beautiful book about two messed up people trying to bring about futures the other can’t exist within, and rejecting the war entirely.
Many Doctor Who fans before us have noted the degree to which this Time War is kin to other time wars. But where there, the enemies were –at best– unknowable bastards and at worst Daleks, here we see the future being shaped by people. Blinkered, awful people whose idea of a good time is frankly revolting to me, but people nevertheless. Both utopias are doomed by their own monstrosity, hence why our leads do what any sensible person would do: Escape into the unknown. Into the ambiguity of endings where nothing is set in stone.
David: One of my favorite small bits is that Red is heartened to hear Blue, as part of her cover, has taken a local husband. It’s a casual earnestness that speaks in context not to a polyamorous outlook, but to a perspective so unlike ours that a human relationship lasting a lifetime is little more to them than a creature comfort…yet a handful of letters allowing them to be truly open with a being that can understand them for the first time in their seemingly endless lives is enough to light them on fire and tear down time. The elegance, the discomfort, the remove paired with a truly unconditional love…it’s. Good. They did a good book.
Sean: More than anything else though, it’s a book I aspire to write. I would love nothing more than to be a good enough writer to craft a book this good. But I’m not there yet. In the end, many a writer find themselves contemplating ideas they aren’t ready to write. Either by being a newer writer or simply being too young. As a result, you end up with fascinating hot messes like Heroes in Crisis or the Matt Smith years of Doctor Who. There’s wonder and amazing things to find in them, but it’s clear that neither one of them is quite at the point where they can express their ideas fully.
I, ultimately, cannot write this book. But it’s what I would love to write. I do genuinely believe I will be at the point where I could write this book someday, but I’m not there yet. For now, I’m plugging at it, trying to make the best out of interesting messes. And, for what it’s worth, a lot of people seem to like them quite a bit.
And now, the end.
The thing about The Power of the Doctor is that… you really wish it was more than it actually was. Sure, when you’re in the moment, for the first time, it’s extremely infuriating. But when you step away even for literally a second, it dissolves into nothing. There’s nothing here bar fan wank and nit picks. (They are cowards for not using the 6th Doctor’s coat! And what the fuck is a man as old as William Russell doing here making 'The Doctor a Woman!' gags at the end of the era!) It’s bad, no doubt about that. But it’s not horrific. It’s not worthwhile as an ending to pull apart bit by bit to see the sheer magnitude of rot within. It’s just bad.
Also, this contains the single straightest version of the 'Ace gets a one-episode girlfriend' trope and the 7/Ace moment is the most galling middle finger to the 7th Doctor era ever.
David: I will give The Power of the Doctor this: there is the tiniest bit of infectious joy that, for all the early efforts at a clean slate and aesthetic ‘respectability’ of this era’s early days, you can feel in every second that this is the version of the show Chris Chibnall has actually wanted to make all along. A nifty ‘Saturday morning Doctor Who’ opening setpiece leading into a relatively high-budget rollicking adventure packed with returning foes, surprise guest stars, maximum scale, maximum action, maximum lore, maximum signification that this is the biggest coolest one of them all.
Does it suck? Sure! You’ve got the standard ‘The Doctor is cool with genocide now’, the nesting doll gag being pretty shamelessly reused from Doomsday, most of The Master’s plans being pointless (though I suppose ‘because he thought it would be Le Wacky’ is reason enough for The Master in just about any incarnation), the odd dangling thread that the universe presumably thinksing Doctor Who is a genocidal war criminal now, the base level of incompetency. But while there’s very little here in terms of ‘this is a good episode of television’, the liberation of this version of the show at the last finally getting to be the dumbest, most unashamed version of itself gave me an unavoidable sense of relief. It’s as satisfying an ending as I could possibly ask for.
However, a banal monster draped in an ugly mishmash of Doctor Who iconography doing a horrifyingly pointless version of a Classic Doctor Rescue, leering to a hapless onlooker only here because they remember the good times that "I'm fun. Different type of fun. But fun." is such an on-the-nose takedown of the Chibnall era that if someone put it in their smear fanfic people would yell that they were being too mean.
Sean: To add a final epigraph to the Chibnall era, I have been comparing Chibnal quite disparagingly to various comics people these past 24 some-odd entries. Looking back at it all, and having the perspective of other people who actually like the era, I think it might be more apt to say he is a journeyman writer. He’s not the guy whose strong suit lies in being the guy in charge. His strengths lie in works like 42 or Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: Largely fun larks that aren’t the center of the universe. It’s easy to lose sight of these things when having to watch him run the ship.
By all accounts he, and many of the comics writers I’ve compared him to, seems like a decent bloke. At worst, he made some television that I didn’t care for and will probably never watch again because I have better things to do. But so what? I’m sure he had a lot of fun running the zoo.
David: I’d just rather have not been locked in overnight with him is all.
Sean: Now that we’ve reached the end of the Chibnall era (though there’s still one last Whowatch to do), it’s time for the customary Reward portion. For this one, I just have a single question:
David, do you want to watch a Doctor Who story with me?
David: Even after all this…I suppose I do.
Sean: Ok then, let’s watch… The Caves of Androzani!
David: Between this line and the last Sean and I Discord marathoned what was once voted the best Doctor Who story of all time, and I can easily see why. It’s a shame to hear Peter Davison was apparently rarely well-used, because I can see threads here both to Tennant’s love and how he absorbed it into his take and Capaldi’s performance under fellow Davison guy Moffat. The direction is tense, the designs delightful (my GOD those collars), the actors on-point, the dialogue lively. And the core narrative of The Doctor and Peri’s straightforward pulp adventure winding through and helplessly derailed by factions of every flavor of power, betraying and devouring each other for their own ultimate pulp-fantasy prize of eternal youth made product? Who at its brutal best.
Sean: I’d like to note that this episode has a special place in my heart as I actually did a short essay on The Caves of Androzani and its cinematography back in High School. It was an interesting lens to look at the ways the camera can be used to demonstrate power dynamics visually. It was one of my first pieces of media criticism that I felt proud of, even if it was quite basic and straightforward High School crap.
I hadn’t watched the story since that essay (in part because Netflix lost the Classic stories shortly thereafter), so it was a thrill to see how well it held up. I noticed that the initial bits where Morgus turns to the camera are clearly mistakes on the shooting script while it’s deliberate in the third episode when the bit returns to devastating effect. It’s just a fantastic watch that I highly recommend everyone see at some point, even if you’re not a Doctor Who fan.
But now we come to the end of the Whowatch. There’s only one more stop, really. There was only one place where it could have possibly ended.
Next time: The Shin Davies era.