#chibnall hate

remember how amy and rory left the show because they were taken by the weeping angels, and it was established that there was no way the doctor could save them or go to them, ever? and that was the whole reason why the angels are a threat? well. turns out the doctor could have just picked them up in her tardis and taken them back to their present day, like she does with yaz and the rest of the gang. i hate it here.

along with big plot points being resolved way too easily, another thing that really lowered the stakes for me was the sheer amount of death and destruction in this series. like, entire planets/civilisations were wiped out by the flux and loads of people were killed inside the passengers as well, and the show just shrugged and moved on? how am i meant to care about literally anything, if whole planets being destroyed is treated like it’s just inconsequential background noise? is doctor who going to take place exclusively on earth from now on, with the rest of the universe gone?

third: chibnall does that thing again were the good guys leave a bad guy (tooth face man in s11, snake man this time around) to suffer horribly in a place they can’t escape, and it’s treated like a great girlboss moment instead of ”the supposed heroes are torturing someone and causing them unimaginable suffering to a point where killing them would have been the kinder thing to do”. moral complexity would be great but these moments are never presented as anything but The Right Thing To Do. what is this?

finally, now that we’re at the end it’s so clear that like 60% of the plot elements were just unnecessary clutter that should have been edited out after the first rough draft. bel and vinder, dan’s love interest, the whole thing with snake man and unit, and a whole bunch of other stuff just didn’t need to be there at all. and worst of all, it has felt like that from episode one – there was no way all of this was going to be relevant or emotionally meaningful because there simply isn’t time to develop that many storylines and characters in a six-episode series.

In The Timeless Children, Thirteen runs and leaves Sharmus to die in her place.

I had forgotten, oh god I had forgotten. After the bitter disappointments of season 11 and 12 I had forgotten what good Doctor Who was like. How could I have forgotten the glory and the heart and the magic of a truly captivating Doctor Who story? I haven’t watched Day of the Doctor in years, I watched it for the first time on 11/23/13 in a theater wearing 11th Doctor cosplay. I cried then and I’m crying now. 

bf and I were talking last night DotD is such an obvious anniversary special, that it pulls no punches on what it was celebrating and I say, good on that. It encapsulated 50 years of life and love for a silly british sci-fi show that became a cultural icon. Every line, every action has so much love for the show coded in its DNA, all the the loving hints to doctors past and present scattered throughout.

But more importantly, it paid tribute to everything that makes DW so special. At its center, beyond the TARDIS or Gallifrey or wibbly wobbly timey wimey, is love. Its saying no to injustice, to standing on the sidelines, to being cruel or cowardly. There’s joy and triumph and acknowledgement that things are hard and will continue to be so but we must never give up or give in. That is what Doctor Who is and why Day of the Doctor should be recognized as one of the single greatest DW stories told.

And we perfectly know why Chibnall did this: to attract new casual viewers by saying "You don't know who and what the Doctor is? LOL none does!"

I hated when Ten mindwiped Donna. Yeah, he did it to save her life, but still I hated it.

I hated when Twelve mindwiped Kate and Bonnie (fifteen times in a row, apparently) and I appreciated when he did not mindwipe Clara and Bill (credit when it's due).

And I hated very much when Thirteen mindwiped Lovelace and Khan for NO good reason, since there's plenty of historical figures who know about the Doctor, from Shakespeare to Churchill, and this doesn't disrupt History.