And One Greeted Death Like a Old Friend

Below "The Tale of the Three Brothers," there are spoilers for "The Time of the Doctor" -



That was one hell of a regeneration!  But first - there was a story.

There are huge chunks of the Eleventh Doctor's tenure that we don't have accounted for, precisely.  Space between "The Wedding of River Song" and "Asylum of the Daleks" - plus all that time in Series 7 with the Doctor dropping off Amy and Rory and Clara and having adventures on his own.  I expect that Big Finish will have plenty of fun with those empty spaces when the time comes.  I only mention this because - it's almost fitting that we got something similar with "The Time of the Doctor."

I really loved this story.  We were introduced to the concept of Trenzalore back in "The Name of the Doctor," and it's right that Eleven gets to close that storyline out.  Give Twelve a fresh slate to work with and get down to business without having to clean up what was left behind.  But what I enjoyed the most about this is that it was treated like the Time War. Alluded to, mentioned, glimpsed at - but never shown explicitly. Ultimately, this story is about saying goodbye to the Eleventh Doctor - but not in an overpowering and intense way.  The flashbacks and small nods to the past are so perfectly placed within the story, just as fleeting reminders of what's come before.  As with the nods in this 50th Anniversary year, they are simply there to pay tribute and don't take over the actual story that's going on. Those little "kisses" (if you like) were just so perfect and wonderful.

We see the Doctor age and get old - spending centuries defending the town of Christmas. Probably the first time since his first incarnation that the Doctor actually got old and died. Clara pops back in and out (like the TARDIS has gotten used to this whole "Okay, Wednesday is Clara Day, so let's go get her!" Okay, maybe not really like that, but you get my drift).  The Doctor is ready to make his last stand and his last stand is supposed to be on Trenzalore.

But if we learned anything from "The Day of the Doctor" - indeed, if we learned anything from the Eleventh Doctor - it's that time can be rewritten and nothing is set in stone.  Not even the Doctor's gravesite.

This is Matt Smith's moment and all praise and gushing goes to him. So often, the Eleventh Doctor is described as an old man in a young man's body. Well, this time we saw the old man come out for a short time. Matt is going to go far in his acting career, absolutely zero doubt in anyone's mind (well, there better be zero doubt. If you have doubts, I'm coming after you with a stick!) No matter how he looked, he was still the Doctor (even with his head shaved - that was a clever little lampshade-hanging moment). Clara knew it and I knew it and everybody knew it.

And the regeneration - you know, I listened to today's Verity! Extra and something that got brought up was how much kids in particular have latched onto the Eleventh Doctor. When Ten regenerated, I was a sobbing mess - mostly because he was a sobbing mess (kind of).  But Eleven - Eleven was ready to go. And because he was ready to go, his fans (and I'm thinking of kids in particular) can be ready to let him go.  Yes, it's sad - yes, I shed a few tears (just like Clara did). But Eleven's time is up. He's lived a good long life (even if we'll have to wait to see... well, hear it) and he's happy.  His life wasn't a live-fast-die-young sort of thing that's happened so many times in the past. He had so many laughs and joys and heartbreaks and he's done. Even when he thinks he's used up all his regenerations... nope, Gallifrey peeks out through the cracks and says (in essence) - okay, here's some more golden-sparkly-stuff - go do your thing!

 But then - WHAM! And there's Twelve! No prolonged shower of gold sparks, no bonfire, no screaming - just... there he is prattling about the color of his kidneys and how do you fly this thing?

(And poor Clara is there thinking "Oh shit - now what?")

Other things -

- Wow. Gallifrey came back sooner than we expected!  Even before we knew it had come back.  That's what the cracks in Series 5 were about (wonder how much of this is Steven Moffat thinking it out in advance or if he just thinks of cool things at first and then figures out how to use it in later stories).

- On that note - all the explanations for all the strange things throughout Matt's era were there. Explained and gone and done with. And oddly - I'm okay with that.

- Clara Oswald is an English teacher at Coal Hill School. There is nothing I don't love about this.

- The Cyberman's head is named "Handles." And the thing kind of reminded me of K-9. Why does Eleven keep making friends with things he should be scared of? (Because he's the Doctor - that's why).

- The Doctor just happens to have the Seal of Rassilon from "The Five Doctors" in his pocket.  Because of course he does.

- I had a tough time settling on a title for this blog post. But I remembered the line from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows about greeting death like an old friend.  And just now, I was looking through my notes and I said something about the Sontarans having an invisibility cloak on their ship - so there's some serendipity for you.

- "Ten had vanity issues." You know, when I heard that Moffat was counting that as a regeneration, I wondered how he was going to explain that so it didn't sound half-assed. But that line made it all okay.

- The Oswald Family Christmas. Most. Awkward. Christmas. Ever. But I liked the poem in the cracker that Clara read to the Doctor later.

- The clock struck twelve when the Doctor's regeneration blasted all the Daleks. Yeah, yeah - someone's gonna bitch about the nuclear regeneration energy. But the way I look at it - the Time Lords sent it direct, they might have built in the explodey-ness of it all - I'm okay with it.

- He takes off the bow tie and drops it to the floor right before he regenerates. The Feels.

- Though I am glad that he got his young face back before he regenerated. I just wanted to see his face as I knew him best before he had to leave.

It still hasn't quite settled in that Matt's actually gone and Peter Capaldi is actually the Doctor now. I have about eight months to get my head wrapped around that fact. I might even rewatch "The Time of the Doctor" later and still not accept it. Then again, I might watch it later and burst into big, fat, messy tears. I never quite know. I did watch BBC America's "Farewell to Matt Smith" before "The Time of the Doctor" (it's really nice being home for Christmas with my parents' satellite TV) and I was getting all choked up during that. I've said it over and over again (especially on Tumblr) that I'm just not ready for Matt to leave. But I am grateful to him for his part in making Doctor Who a huge success. Not just a commercial success (though that is extremely important) - but a success with individual people. And when I say "individual people," I mean "me." Sure, I started with Eccleston and went onto Tennant and then to Matt Smith when I first started watching Doctor Who - mainlining and all that. I started watching around the time that Series 5 was finishing up it's premiere run. Eleven was still very new to everyone and I wasn't sure he'd unseat Tennant as my favorite (and then I latched onto Davison and we all know how that turned out). But I will say this - if Matt had not been as good and wonderful as he was, I don't know that I would have continued watching the show. Doctor Who would have been just another show that I once watched on DVD because I was bored, but I never followed in real time (I do that a lot).  But between the stories and the characters and Matt's performance as the Doctor, I kept coming back. And Matt kept impressing me and making me fall in love with his Doctor. The same Doctor who has kept me going through some very dark times, even since that initial impression. Words will never adequately express what this show means to me, and that is due in a very large part to how Matt played the role. I may never meet Matt in real life, but I would like to just tell him how thankful I am for what he's done and wish him nothing but the best in future.

Thank you, Raggedy Man. For landing in a little girl's backyard - for not standing back and watching her cry - for making her laugh - for being her friend - for taking her hand and yelling "Run!" - for taking her through all your incarnations and feeding her love of stories and adventure and fairy tales. Because of you, she's going to be just fine. Through all of time and space - things will be okay. And it's all down to you.

You just watch us run.

The Clock is Striking Twelve...

Before I turn in for the night, I just wanted to get my thoughts down on the announcement that Peter Capaldi has been cast as the Twelfth Doctor.  I've been posting, reblogging, tweeting and retweeting my thoughts everywhere today, but I need them somewhere I can be put-together and coherent (somewhat).  First, here's the initial announcement and interview -



You know when you first meet someone and you instantly know you're going to be friends? Or (this I only know from other people telling me about it) how some couples talk about the first time they met and they knew that they'd found The One? Well, that's how I felt about Peter Capaldi. Right when they said his name and he walked out on the stage, I just kept thinking "That's the Doctor." (I didn't even notice his little Hartnell-esque lapel-clutch until later, but that was magic).

Whenever it was that his name first came out (in a loooooong list of potential Twelfth Doctors) - last week or something - I actually had a little nudge in the back of my mind think "He'd be a good Doctor."  Now, I've kept out of the crazed frenzy to fantasy cast the Doctor because (A) I don't know enough about most British actors and actresses (outside of Doctor Who or Harry Potter) and (B) I just don't feel comfortable speculating about this stuff.  I know lots of people had their wishlists - a woman, a person of color, a redhead, a purple wallaby - but I just don't get into wishlists.  I trust Steven Moffat and the top BBC brass to make the right decision and I decided early-on to welcome the new person with open arms because I knew there would be a ton of other people slinging crap about it, no matter who they cast, and I didn't want to contribute to that mess.  But last week, Peter Capaldi's name surfaced out of nowhere and I just couldn't get the idea out of my head.  And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it and the more I got my heart set on him (and this morning, I even thought - "I might be a little upset if it's not him."  Hypocrisy, thy name is me).

Well, I guess The Greater Cosmos was preparing me for change because I couldn't stop shouting my surprise - not that it was Peter Capaldi, but that I was actually right.  And while I was so happy and so excited, the instant that sold me on this man being the Doctor was the part where he talked about how it's the fans that have made Doctor Who what it is and that the show belongs to us all (and he even included himself in that statement - since he's been a fan since age 9) and I remember thinking "This show could not be in better hands."

I said this to some extent over on Tumblr, but I'm going to repeat it here - I love Matt Smith.  I love what he's done with the role and what he's given to this show that I've grown to love so very much.  I'm going to miss him - but I'm already in love with Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor (and we haven't even properly seen him yet!)  It's like at the end of "The End of Time" - the Tenth Doctor has said his goodbyes and I was a sobbing mess and I didn't want him to leave.  And then he regenerates and I have no idea how the universe is going to continue without him.  But then there's Eleven - and he's babbling on about arms, hands, legs, "I'm a girl!" and "still not ginger!" - and I am suddenly laughing through my tears.  So many people say that "The Eleventh Hour" is what cemented Matt Smith for them - but for me, it was those final minutes of "The End of Time" (also, I was mainlining the show and had "The Eleventh Hour" ready to go immediately after the regeneration scene).  And I have no doubt that's how this is going to go down at Christmas - Eleven will be turning into that yellow-regeneration-sparkly-energy stuff, I'll be bawling, Clara will possibly be bawling (though she's probably the most prepared out of any companion to witness a regeneration) and - BOOM - there's Twelve, looking around like he's just gotten up from a bad fall, but ready to go sprinting off into the cosmos and I'm right there with him.

I sometimes don't understand why this show means so much to me - that it's so important that these things succeed and go right.  I try to explain it to other people (and myself) and I'm realizing that it's not meant to be explained.  It's something that I understand, but nobody else has to, so I can't really ever put into words what days like this truly, truly mean.  Watching the announcement, tweeting along, the subsequent response from fans - it was a remarkable moment.  Even more remarkable was that my Twitter feed was full of people saying how happy they were with the decision and how much they were looking forward to seeing the Twelfth Doctor and praise and admiration for Peter Capaldi's work - not one cross word or complaint in those first few hours.  Oh, the malcontents surfaced eventually (they always do), but they had been soundly drowned out by the many many fans who were as excited as I am about it.  Some of us even organized an impromptu Tweet-Along rewatch of "The Fires of Pompeii" - the episode back in Series 4 that Peter Capaldi was in (he was also in "Torchwood: Children of Earth," which is a very well-crafted piece of television, but something I just can't bring myself to rewatch because it disturbed me so much when I saw it).  Definitely adding today to the pile of good things (which is good because so many of my memories of past Augusts have been total trainwrecks - I need something to balance out the crap I've dealt with in the past).

I guess this means we can get Craig Ferguson on Doctor Who as a one-off character.  I didn't know this before today, but he and Peter are good friends and how great would it be to have them on an episode together?  It's been one of my dearest hopes that Craig could be on Doctor Who, but the chances of it are slim-to-none.  Now... well, the chances are still slim-to-none, but it's even more fun to think about (but probably without the acid - this is still a family show, after all).

What else is there left to say?  Only this -



Yes, you are. You are the Doctor. Welcome to the family.

Nothing So Constant As Change

Well, I didn't expect to be writing about this when I got up this morning.

The big news is that Matt Smith will be hanging up the bowtie at Christmas.  This means that he's got the 50th Anniversary Special and the Christmas Special to go and then we've got someone new.  Which means Series 7 was the last full season for Eleven and we didn't even know it at the time! (let that sink in for a bit)  While some have already started speculating about Doctor #12 (I'm not opposed to the idea of a female Doctor - but not Tilda Swinton. Just... no), I don't think this is quite the time for that.  There will be plenty of speculation about who'll be coming on next, but for now - I just want to say thanks.

My experience with Who has been well and truly documented (by me - of course) as a very emotional journey.  And all of the Doctors I've experienced have been hindsight-looking-back-how-cool-where-they-would-love-to-have-seen-it-first-hand sort of thing.  While I love everything that's come before and love and admire all the past Doctors and companions - there's something about the Doctor that's actually on TV when you are watching.  These stories have never been seen before.  You can ask a long-time fan "Hey - what's the deal with the Fifth Doctor's celery?" and you'll get an answer (it detects certain poisons that are lethal to Time Lords and if it turns purple, the Doctor eats the celery and he'll be okay). But speculation and theorizing - ah... that is a luxury for the present and future.  Never knowing what Eleven was going to do next - flailing with joy when all these cool things were brand new and exciting and fun to everyone - not just you.

I felt a sense of pride and ownership when I sat down to watch "The Impossible Astronaut" - it was the first episode of Doctor Who I ever watched brand new with everyone else.  I felt like Matt Smith was my Doctor - even though by then there were others I liked just as well.  I've gone back to the Classic Doctors and revisited the New Series over and over - but I always came back to Matt for the brand-new stuff.  Love him to bits.  Always will.  Just like I'll love whoever that comes next.

Doctor Who appeals to me because of its versatility and storytelling.  I love the change, I love the newness of it all.  But I also love the people and characters who make it wonderful and fun.  And you can't watch something for so long without getting attached to these people and characters.  I'll miss Matt a lot.  I will probably sob like a baby when he regenerates (and then laugh like a nut when the new Doctor does some off-the-wall goofy thing in the first two minutes of screen time).  But I'm grateful for what he brought to the show and how much love he has for it.

I have absolutely zero hope of him ever reading this (and I'm sure that I'm going to be a sentimental mess as I write this, but whatever), but I want to say - Thank You Matt for bringing such a sense of fun and joy to something that has brought me so much fun and joy.  Your era of Doctor Who was a time of growth and celebration and I hope that your last few episodes reflect that.  Thank you for being my Doctor!

(And yes, bow ties are cool!)

Let Zygons Be Zygons

Not the most original subject line, but you try coming up with something on the fly like that.

The BBC has officially announced that Zygons will be featured in the 50th Anniversary Special (filming of which began today).  Also, this announcement has caused my theories regarding the 50th to go crashing unceremoniously out the window (I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS!)

[Speaking of filming, an intrepid set reporter tweeted this photo and it was picked up on Facebook.  While the Facebook page isn't in anyway official, they do make the point that this is Ten's TARDIS and, yes yes there was a deleted scene and Handy!Doctor could possibly have a TARDIS - but that was a deleted scene and it's very unlikely to be acknowledged in an on-screen performance.  So, the Tenth Doctor is the Real Deal - never fear about that.]

First, I thought that there would be more casting announcements involving previous Doctors (Paul McGann being first on my wishlist, but I wouldn't say no to Eccleston or McCoy or anyone else) and they just announced Tennant because his involvement was (almost) a no-brainer.  But photos surfaced yesterday of the readthrough for the special... and, other than David Tennant and Matt Smith, there weren't any other Doctors to be seen.

STILL NOT COMPLAINING!

I kept wondering if this special was just going to feature New Who things, which is fine but felt like a bit of a slight against Classic Who - but then I considered that the Great Intelligence is on tap to play a key role in Series 7 (that's a nod to the Second Doctor's era) and that may very well lead into the 50th. And now we have Zygons (a throwback to the 4th Doctor's era - and if David Tennant requested it, so much the better).

(Before anyone says anything - I know that tweet was a joke. But it's a very good one).

So, here is my theory - which will probably last until lunchtime - rather than getting Classic Doctors for the 50th, they're doing Classic adversaries or companions from each era (I'm throwing companions in there because - why the hell not?).  And since you want to give a nod to more than a handful of Doctors' eras - well, we've got Two, Four, Ten and Eleven covered... so what else can we do?

Going by the type of villains included so far - the Great Intelligence takes over and feeds on people's minds.  Zygons are shapeshifters and can impersonate anyone.  So what else can fit in that vein of psychological thriller-type baddie? (and is a relatively budget-friendly villain to pull off?)

THE MARA!
(as portrayed in this freaky-deaky scene from "Kinda" - more info and spoilers here)

Do it, Moff! Do it for the 50th!

(Will it happen? Probably not.  Can a Fivey-fangirl dream? Heck yes she can!)

Seriously, though - the New Series has done Daleks to death.  They've also already incorporated Cybermen, Sontarans and Silurians. Let's do some more villains that are still in the sole realm of Classic Who. Zygons and the Great Intelligence are brilliant.  And I'm sure there is more excitement to come - so what else can we (possibly) expect to look forward to?

Man, theorizing might just be as much fun as actually watching the actual Special later this year.

(It's like the dam broke and we're finally getting a flood of news to mark this year of celebration. Wonder what the next bit of news will bring...)

Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time

Guess what everyone? It's Christmas!  Which means it's time for the Doctor Who Christmas Special!  You know the drill - Spoilers below the video for "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe"


(Not one of my better efforts, but okay in it's own right)

It is well-known that my Geek Cred was initially born from a deep and abiding love of fantasy, not science fiction.  Something I've noticed in the past (and maybe the divide is shrinking to an extent) is that sci-fi geeks and fantasy geeks don't often mix well because one group gravitates towards things that are just outside the realm of possibility for the current time period and the other group gravitates towards things that are so far out there that serious science just laughs at it (I suppose that's the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate, though I could be tarred and feathered for suggesting Star Wars is light and fluffy fantasy.  Then again, I know comparatively little about Star Trek).

I will be brutally honest - I like to think of places where anything and everything can happen, not just things that are within the realms of real-world science and technology.  Plus, I'm not a big fan of long and involved explanations of how some thingamashootit teleport/light speed/shrink ray device works.  If the story tells me something works, I can accept that it works within the realms of the story and I don't get terribly nit-picky about it.  Besides, the beauty of fantasy stories like Harry Potter is that magic is considered a science - there are rules of what can and cannot be done.  And often in those stories, new things are discovered that make impossible things possible - which is what science (by and large) is really about.

I've come to accept science-fiction, of course.  I'm watching Doctor-freaking-Who, for cripes' sake!  But this Christmas Special embodies something that I've long thought about and accepted for myself - science and fantasy can co-exist in peaceful, lovely, storytelling harmony.  Sometimes, there are talking trees in a fantastical wintertime forest that can only be accessed by a dimensional gateway into Fairyland Androzani Major disguised as a Christmas package.  And sometimes, the fish just like the singing (now shut up!)

I've got to get this out of the way first - Some people got their panties in a wad over Steven Moffat using themes from CS Lewis' Narnia series for this year's special because "OMG - it's a Christian allegory even though Lewis said it wasn't but who cares it's religious and we can't have religion in a SCIENCE fiction show - RAWR! *frothing mouths*" To those ninnies, I raise a dubious eyebrow and snort a derisive "Seriously?"  I wouldn't have brought this up and it actually would take much longer for me to address this to my own satisfaction, but I'll give you the short version - In my own personal beliefs, religion and science mesh quite well together.  There are some things that many mainstream Christians hold to that I don't (the whole deal about the Earth being 6,000 years old is but one of many), but it would take too long for me to delve into it here.  Suffice it to say that science is the way God created the universe and we little humans are learning to figure out even a slice of what He does in His creations. Everything science "discovers" is something God did first.  And that's all that I have to say about that.

Back to Doctor Who -  combining Doctor Who with Narnia is actually quite a genius idea and I'm not just saying that because I am a fan of CS Lewis and the "Narnia" series.  Come on - the TARDIS is basically a sci-fi'd up version of the "Bigger on the Inside" wardrobe in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."  It doesn't take it a genius to figure that one out (though this does NOT take away Moffat's "genius" card).  Add in a mystical snowy forest (which doesn't stay mystical for very long) and the souls of trees with some Halo-esque military people to point the way and you've got a pretty solid Doctor Who story.

There has also been talk of how "alien" Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor is.  I will agree with that from sunup to sunup - but he isn't completely alien.  He understands human emotion, if almost accidentally and by scientific means.  In "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" (I'm just going to abbreviate it as DWW for this post - that's a stinkingly long title), he gets Madge to pilot the pseudo-Epcot globe through the Time Vortex by helping her remember her home and her family.  Much the same as he tried to do with Amy in "Cold Blood" when Rory was being erased from time.  Well, that one didn't quite work the way he hoped, but he eventually got it when he rebooted the universe in "The Big Bang."  Another part of that is understanding kids - one thing Eleven gets is kids - from Amelia Pond to young Kazran Sardick to Cyril and Lily.  He connects with kids'  emotions, even if he hasn't cottoned on to why he's done that.  It often takes him a few minutes to figure out that something is wrong with The Big Picture, but it's usually after he's rambled about fish fingers and custard and girls and crisps and remodeling the house with revolving Christmas trees.

Another thing I liked (and it's likely the "Moffat is a Misogynist Pig" crowd is going to be be ape-nuts over this, but they can all go stick their noses in the air about it) is how the "Strong Mother" trope came into play in this story.  Especially a mother who has only recently found out her husband was killed in war and she hasn't told the kids yet because she doesn't want to ruin Christmas, so she is keeping everything together by the skin of her fingernails.  I don't care who you are or what feminist gospel you subscribe to, THAT is true strength and it makes sense that the trees of Androzani Major would choose Madge to pilot their tree souls to wherever they ended up in the end (and I could even overlook the Green Aesop crap in the end).  Beyond biology and the whole "Mama Bear" thing and what-have-you - that is a pretty solid way to resolve the story line.

Of course, this would not be a review from me without a grand List of Things I Liked -

- The Return to Androzani - Even though this is Androzani Major rather than Androzani Minor where the Fifth Doctor bit the dust *sniffle*
- The Doctor: "There's never anything dangerous here." *beat* "There are sentences I should just stay away from"
- Halo Dude - "There's no crying in baseball military engagements!"
- The fact that the sonic screwdriver doesn't work on wood actually became a major plot development!
- Cyril's giant Christmas present was wrapped in TARDIS Blue wrapping paper.  I'm seriously doing that next year!
- Call back to "The End of Time" with the Forest of Cheem ("One of them fancied me.")

And, of course, The Return of the Ponds! Who both know the Doctor isn't dead! Which means the Doctor was staying away from them for no real reason (though that almost became moot in the first five minutes during the Doctor's swan dive to Earth and recreating - rather badly - his own version of an Impossible Astronaut).  And as if to put the exclamation point on the fact that Eleven is indeed conscious of his own humanity, he gets a little misty-eyed as he walks into La Casa de Pond for Christmas dinner.

Bottom Line: Solid Christmas Special for Doctor Who.  Doesn't beat out "A Christmas Carol" for TEH BEST EVAR, but still pretty good.  I liked the fantasy elements in it and didn't mind that science got thrown in there for good measure.  Hopefully it's good enough to tide us over until next fall (holy shiz - that's a long time!)

Happy Birthday Doctor Eleven!

Hey y'all - it's Matt Smith's birthday!



This calls for some fun video linkage!



Happy, Happy Birthday to our favorite bow-tie-, Stetson- and fez-wearing Doctor!

See, I Told You So!

Remember back when everyone was in a blind panic over vague rumors that Doctor Who Series 7 would not air a full season in 2012?  I pointed out several reasons why this was not the great apocalyptic event that everyone was worried about.  Well the head cheese himself, Steven Moffat, has unconditionally debunked those rumors (and in glorious fashion, I might add).  And if you can't take the Moff's word for it, then I don't know who you can believe.

I love it when I'm right.

(Thanks to Planet Gallifrey for the link.  Full interview can be found here - I didn't see anything spoilery in the interview, in case you're worried about that).