SO MUCH MADDER AND SO MUCH BETTER

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Donna: WH-???? No?????? Yesterday we drank too many space piña coladas and he spent 2 hours rambling about why Splash is a cinematic masterpiece

Ten in the distance: I still maintain it's Tom Hanks finest work!

She must have known the shitstorm that would come her way, the fact that a British tabloid (that I won’t even name) posted nude pictures of her in earlier works when she was announced as the Doctor is SICKENING. She has been under scrutiny ten times more than any of the actors before her simply because she’s a woman. People have boycotted the show and blame her personally for it.

And what did she do?

She had a great premiere, a stellar first season so far and she’s a great role model for everyone, especially women. She laughed off hate comments and kept on believing in herself and the rest of the cast and crew. Her Doctor is a hopeful, witty and optimistic return to form and a great character for kids (and adults) to look up to.

“You are a very funny little bonus.”

The Ghost Monument not actually a story about a space race. We are dropped right in the middle of someone else’s confusing tale, but as the context of what we are witnessing unfolds in front of our eyes, it is already changing into something more familiar and yet still quite new. The Doctor is on a journey to find the TARDIS. And Doctor Who is on a journey to find Doctor Who.

Because the Doctor simply refuses to play by the rules. For one, she asks way too many questions. No matter her purpose on this planet, she cannot help but to try to solve the unspoken mysteries of the place. She could never be content with a simple trip from A to B, the need to help and to understand always too loud to ignore. But just as importantly, she turns her five travelling companions into a team - her friends from Sheffield and the two racers alike.

Epzo, in particular, is aware of what is happening. But all his attempts to keep a hold of what he came here to do are ultimately unsuccessful. “You’re irrelevant!” and “You’re not part of this!”, he tries to explain to these new characters that have inexpicably found their way in a competition of two. Still, even he gets pulled in by this new story, by themes of friendship and family. Hard-ass cynics rarely share their most significant childhood memory with perfect strangers. But now that he’s a side character in a story, there are many more possibilites. Even on a planet called Desolation.

This is what happens to Ryan too, when he picks up a gun to fight the robots. By any logic, shooting non-sentient robots with a gun is not actually a less moral method than taking them out with a EMP. The problem is that the former is simply the wrong genre. This simply isn’t Call of Duty. It’s Doctor Who and that comes with an entirely different, often idiosyncratic set of rules that he still has to learn. Beating bullets with your brain is just one of them.

“I could build one! I’m good at building things. Probably.”

And then we get the spellbinding scene with the Doctor - not yet the Doctor, not yet sure of who she is, full of subliminal echoes of earlier selves, older stories and sentiments, all propelling her to a place she can trace the outline of but can’t gather into a big, familiar piece - making a sonic screwdriver for herself out of stainless steel spoons in a workshop in Sheffield.

bill potts asks some real questions in 10.01

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