oh to be an ant on phil's foot

I said it in someone's replies earlier, I kind of saw it coming, the signs were there. I think I made my peace with new DW Wilderness Years a while ago, if it makes sense? I've always been a great fan of Big Finish, which are very high-quality audio adventures with former Doctor Who actors, and I love reading novels and comics and stuff, and I love the fanfic obviously, so I think Doctor Who being laid to rest for a while might be the best for the show, and in the mean time expanded universe will keep the franchise alive and fans invested like it always did.

Thing is - the fanbase as a whole has lost a lot of faith and goodwill for the show, and is really very split between people who despise absolutely everything that happened post-Moffat (and sometimes Moffat too, especially Capaldi era) because it's "woke" and are actively sabotaging the show because of that, and the actual normal fans who really want to like it but can't at the moment, so it needs a break, and it needs a reset, so that tensions and fans and internet opinions can go back to zero and remember what they liked about Doctor Who.

A lot of Classic Who opinions are so aided by hindsight and less personal investment and nostalgia, and have become so much more nuanced with the gift of distance. People who hated the sixth Doctor for example, can appreciate him today because we see that era for what it was - the BBC actively trying to sabotage Doctor Who and Colin Baker being a passionate ambassador for the fans who got set up with amazingly horrendous scripts, that still had some really shining moments! At the time, the Doctor felt a bit like an imposter because he had the capacity to be really mean, nowadays I chuckle and think "aw, he's in his midlife crisis years". No one's upset about it, you know, because distance. It turns back into art, and television, instead of this thing I'm really passionate about that I'm scared is being driven into a wall, something to look at and analyse and find good parts in, rather then yell about.

And it also means we can escape the weird clutches of fan service that came from what I assume is over-correction because the bigots hated Jodie's era that much and whined about Doctor Who history not being honored, and a weird attempt to appeal to the mainstream audience we lost a while ago instead, that led to David Tennant and Billie Piper re-appearing as (kinda) different characters? I'm not a huge fan of the whole "the Doctor regenerates into an actor we already had on the show" concepts, and it's sad, because I think Chibnall actually attempting to do something new with the Doctor that wasn't a weird regeneration into a peak era actor was not a bad idea. Sometimes Doctor Who fans are so afraid of change, they will revolt at the mere idea of it, but the show has infinite possibilities of doing cool stuff, and sometimes it's really sad that it never gets to do any of without fanbases imploding over it.

So yeah, I'm not super upset, I know if no one got me, Big Finish has got me!

Plus I'm just glad that Disney doesn't have its claws in it anymore.

And also RTD revealing that he has transphobic friends and that the "gender critical" debate really isn't that big of a deal offline while the UK in particular has become a battlefield and there are horrendous transphobic laws and judgements being implimented under the pressure of the "gender critical" movement led by JKR didn't sit right with me, so I'm glad he's not involved with it anymore either

Even though I was a huge fan of his era back in the day