Some random positions officially taken by gigawho

• A female Doctor is sorely overdue.
• Chris Chibnall probably isn’t going to write consistently good Doctor Who.
• The fact it took the show more than 50 years to acquire a single black writer is comically appalling and says absolute fucking reams about the interrelations between British sci-fi and white supremacy; the way exclusion generates antipathy. By which I mean – even factoring in the failures of producers to make a real effort – the question you have to ask yourself is how many prominent BAME writers would even want to participate in a show that is so utterly divorced from their experience of Britain, that positively oozes whiteness even while it casts black actors? This is not a problem that can be solved passively.
• Heaven Sent‘s great but Listen is greater, even if it’s technically worse.
• Talons is steeped in racism, and you should be able to say this without needing to hurriedly add that you still think it’s a great story.
• The Zygon Invasion is better than The Zygon Inversion.
• 9 > 1 > 5 = 8 >>> 3 = 4 > 6 = 10 > 7 > 2
• Jubilee is still the last time anyone really said anything fresh or relevant about the Daleks. Although there are the first glimmers of an insight in The Witch’s Familiar.
• Human Nature (book) shits on Human Nature/The Family of Blood (TV) from a height.
• The Curse of Fenric is focused around 80s-specific paranoias, but is still probably the most jaw-droppingly relevant story of the classic series when watched in 2018. The anachronism of its apocalypse being nuclear-bomb-themed is easily offset by the eerie prescience of it being run on an out-of-control computer program (and its fascination with the colonisation of Allied minds by Hitler, to boot). It sometimes seems like television forged in the crucible of our future, all of our fates enclosed within its burning frames.

Titles for Nonexistent Seasons

Attempt 1 – 26 September 2017

1. Double Lives
2/3. The Sapphire Girl / Dead Metals
4. Cryptomnesia
5. The Doctor’s Face
6/7. Sanction of the Daleks / Welcome to Hell
8. The One Who Looks
9/10. You Aren’t Real / Antimatter

Attempt 2 – 10 October 2017

1. Voice of the Fire
2. The Facemakers
3/4. Speak No Evil/Tell No Lies
5. Witch House
6. Dirt Under Daleks
7/8. Coda / The Exit Mask
9/10. The Flesh That Hates / Purgatorio

Attempt 3 – 31 July 2018

1. Don’t Look Back
2. Code of the Crypt
3. Meet the Hatemerchants
4. Mercury’s Kiss
5. Zero Room
6/7. Vote Dalek / Undead World
8. Two Truths and a Lie
9/10. The Forgetting Box / Heart Disease

Giga Who

Copied from a discussion had on June 24, 2018. A response to the question of what my personal ideal Doctor Who era would look like.

I don’t have enough other TV shows to compare it to (fucking wish they existed though), so here’s an overview instead.

• Collision of earthy mysticism with technology. Futuristic labs and crumbling gothic churches in the same episode. Should feel like sci-fi as written by witches
• More abstract horror than lumbering monsters. Less is more, save money
• More interested in trauma and healing than in death.
• Bizarre and unforgettable images/juxtapositions are more important than sensible ones
• Fenric-style synthesis of the personal, philosophical, mythological and political, as often as possible.
• Presumably it has to stay fairly Anglocentric due to the budget, so make up for it through frequent questioning of the current British establishment (whether metaphorical or literal).
• Humour and camp are used as weapons rather than distractions.
• Monsters usually turn out at least understandable if not always sympathetic; fear and perception are the greater threats
• The Doctor and companion alternate between being mythic forces of nature and driving the plot with their psychological issues
• Stories tend to revolve around broken societies/ideas/processes rather than lone-wolf ranting villains. Emphasis on the working class.
• Resolutions that feel elemental, like updated fables, even while being emotionally nuanced.

NuWho reference point: S9, particularly The Witch’s Familiar and The Girl Who Died