#how to start watching doctor who

[zazrichor]

B A D W O L F

#doctor who #rose tyler #ninth doctor #bad wolf #dw fanart #dw art #procreate #zazrichart #timepetals #ninerose #nuwho #u do not want to know how long that seemingly simple background took me #so i didn’t expect dec 2023 to send me down a nine spiral?? #i thought i was DONE with dw tbf #but after seeing some nine slander i had to rewatch #i originally started watching back when s5 was airing iirc #& stopped during s7 after watching s1-s4 #lmao @ me for getting into a series with eleven and stopping watching with eleven #s1 best season #i want to watch fifteen but #BUT #i have to catch up on a lot and uhh 🫥🫥

[mwagneto]

#WOAGHDHDHHDHDHDH... GO GRANDPA........ #lately I've really been forced to consider JUST how long I've been watching it like holy shittt when i started i was like. 9 #doctor who #dw #david tennant

[aq2003]

ten

#i have series 4 on my computer now. but i have not started it. i am scared of it. #tenth doctor #dr who #ten is so he is soooooo. god. the doctor is so very defined by his loneliness. how he outlived everyone he cared abt #and what i love so much about nine is that you see him growing closer to rose. letting himself be happy #and post-timewar and losing all of his people (and blaming himself/being responsible for it?) that's so important for him to have #ten is like the opposite of this. he was created out of nine's love and sacrifice for rose. his personhood is basically defined by it #so you have his memories of losing his people in the timewar clashing with his inherent need to Be Next To Someone. #so losing people just breaks him. even after nine (ten? does timewar doctor count?) previous lifetimes of seeing death #when i saw ten's wiki blurb w him being described as one of the most human doctors. after watching christmas invasion i was like. 'what' #But Now I Know. they were talking about how he feels grief and pain so acutely. in a way a human might and not a 900y/o near immortal alien #10 era

[shadow-the-crow]

I think i finally understand how the Distortion works. I mean, i don’t think it’s possible to ever fully understand it, and i don’t know the whole picture yet because i don’t know what Helen will be like, but i feel like i’ve just been granted a glimpse at the lovecraftian (as in ineffable) thing that is this being.

It’s not a person and a creature fighting inside one mind. There’s no Michael clawing himself to the surface to express his emotions and get his revenge.

Michael Shelley is dead. The Distortion became Michael. It sounds so simple, yet a least in my opinion it’s hard to fully understand.

I think what provides the best metaphor is a small thing the Distortion says after becoming Helen: "without a proper mind." The Distortion does not have its own mind. It’s only a what, but in order to really exist in this reality, it needs a who. It needs a body, but also a mind.

So if i understand this right, it’s like this: Michael Shelley is dead. His conciousness is not there anymore. And the Distortion got forced into that mind, an empty mind of a dead person. This doesn’t make it human, it’s still able to understand the impossible, it’s still the thing that was created to scare and kill. But in the mind it’s living in… the previous owner’s furniture is still there. It gets the dead person’s memories. It becomes Michael, in the sense that it has to be someone. Its existence got tied to being Michael, although Michael Shelley is dead.

When Michael got "emotional", that wasn’t Michael Shelley coming through. It was the Distortion grappling with the side effects of being someone - of living in a mind with all the memories and the human emotions that a human mind can’t fully turn off, even when the thing inhabiting it isn’t human at all.

The Distortion was Michael in the sense that it was thinking with Michael Shelley’s mind. When it became Helen, its consciousness, its being stayed the same, but it needed to adapt to this new mind. It could see clearer now, realizing that the windows of the previous house had been dirty, realizing that the wirings of the previous mind had driven it to do something that it actually didn’t want to do. The throat of the Spiral itself getting caught in the spiralling of its own, borrowed mind.

#here comes the first michael essay #this is only the start #i've still got so many more thoughts #i hope this makes sense #idk why but i think i get how the distortion feels #being forced to be someone who isn't you at all #like - it doesn't make sense but i get it?? #okay i haven't watched doctor who but maybe it's kinda like being the doctor? #you kinda change personality and become someone else but your true being stays the same? #(as if anyone of us knew what it's like being the doctor any more than we know what it's like being the distortion lol) #tma #michael distortion #tma the distortion #helen distortion #the magnus archives #tma podcast #tma spoilers #tma thoughts #mag 101 #another twist #michael shelley #i just realized i've probably spelled michael wrong in the tags before oops (i know how it's spelled but “micheal” keeps popping up so...) #you know what i'm gonna put the wrong version too for reach #micheal distortion

[i-like-media]

Beware the blorbo rabbit hole

#doctor who #blorbo template #blorbo #fandom #meme #meme template #I haven't felt this with any character more than the doctor. it's insane #like every doctor has SOMETHING 'quirky' I've been doing since the dawn of time before I watched them and it gets me every time #and it kept getting WORSE #oh the 10th doctor wears converse regardless of whether or not it's appropriate. relatable lol. oh he infodumps oh lol same. #oh 11 has hand flops. same king. oh and wears ties. me too. oh he behaves oddly me too. #oh 13 likes wearing rainbows same here. and the doctor never opens up to anyone. me too #and then classic who..... #oh he carries a plushie around. oh he's generally not well put together. his exact movements are like looking in a mirror. #he has insanely random junk in his pockets. he's happily a third wheel in a friend's romantic relationship. he has a favourite marble #he is proudly childish and thrives on acting silly #the list goes on. it's the first time I've ever felt I should get into this whole kin 'list' concept because of how eerie it started to bcm #ramble ramble ramblel

[variousqueerthings]

I think it's also interesting to see how things change depending on the time in which they're being engaged with. so I see things about rose today that point out that she's written to be 19 when she meets the doctor and that's a big age difference (which... I understand the point is it's a big age difference because billie piper was 23 and eccleston was 40, and then dtennant was like 34/35 when he started which isn't so big of a shift but anyway the optics I get what people are getting at, but also I think it does oversimplify a lot of what's actually going on in the written dynamic, anyway-)

and also that the rtd run's Themes start coming together properly around s3 (although they are present from day one), and in some ways at this point, because nu!who has been running for... fuckn. actually quite a few years, which is wild to me as someone who started watching as a kid, and I wonder if classic!who fans felt the same way about their show and anyway -- she shifts from being Literally The First Companion You'd Seen For 17 Years (not counting the movie and fan things and the sketch) Who Was Defining A New Era For A New Generation to... a companion

comparable to other companions, comparable to the rest of the show

we sift through the writing to see what worked and what didn't (in our opinion), and we know how the ten-and-rose storyline Really ends, and how the ten storyline ends (sort, of because now that doctor and donna are Back), and we know what happens afterwards, and we talk about tenrose with a 2020s eye, and rose is "just" one of the people that travels with the doctor, one of several, and notably the one who gets most of the sunshiney doctor that buries a lot of the (wonderfully portrayed) angst of the latter half of the rtd show, and doesn't have as much lore as everything after that, so the story is "just" more simple overall

and to me she's kind of incapable of being just that. doctor who was still a risk that first season, it wasn't a done deal that it would have legs at all, never mind that it would continue for as long as it has. rose was created to be the Face of what nu!who was, moreso than nine/eccleston, because even with the extra angst and the eccleston gravitas, we know the doctor, the doctor is established, it's not actually the doctor that needs to sell what the new show is going to become and what the Feel of that new show is going to be (I mean, partly ofc, but-)

rose was doing so much heavy lifting and she succeeded! she was the face of who before dtennant or any other doctor or companion of his era and subsequent eras. she was created to appeal to a demographic of girls who wanted someone relatable in science fiction, because rtd wanted this to be for the girls, and billie piper came into it off the back of being a popstar and it changed her entire trajectory (for the better I think/hope -- there's a lot of bad shit in billie piper's past and I'm always sending her a fond thought)

nine/ten-and-rose were It! not calling it romantic or platonic or any secret third thing (haunting the narrative), but simply It! that's why it has so much staying power as a ship (which, my opinion on shipping has been somewhat *eh shrug* in later years, but in early-days when that was how you engaged with dynamics that got to you, of course it was going to be massive). it's so hard to properly describe how "for the time in which it was made" that this dynamic was written for, and how successful it was. it was rose that breathed doctor who -- and the doctor's character -- to life, as much as herself

she sets the stage for everything that comes next, both within and without the show proper

and I'm always so pleased that rtd at the time was thinking about what was needed to create this character and he opened with a shot from a girl on the estate with messy hair, clumpy eyeliner, and a minimum wage job, and went "that's the girl who's going to go on the adventure of a lifetime, that's the girl we're seeing the story through and relating to, because that's what girls (and uh... those who were girls at the time - and their parents and the boys) should be seeing."

I know rose isn't the first working class companion including classic!who, but she set the tone for nu!who and her family and background are important to why she is who she is, and is explored

"I've got no A-levels, no job, no future-" said the girl about to see the universe

she was very much for teenagers, and so she reads differently when you're an adult watching it back (much like those "teenager saves the world," novels you loved as a kid), but that's why she's 19 at the beginning. that's why she's billie piper (who does a perfect job). she was there to bring a new generation into this story, and it was perfect. and then she grows up. and we grew up. and she had adventures and it was brilliant and she survived and she made a life for herself. that's her story

#doctor who #dw #rose tyler #of course 2005 who is a simpler story #and of course rose is basically still a kid #because it was (is?) for the kids who were going to be taken along for a much much bigger story over a longer space of time #when i started watching i didnt know what a dalek or a timelord or a tardis was #and i didnt know what sort of adventures dw was known for and ofc nobody watching knew where it would go #it was brand new -- rose in my head is always that brand newness #before you get to the more complex narratives of martha and donna #and the more in-depth lore of s5-onwards #there was a girl on an estate seeing the future stretch on and on -- and then she embraced the future and grew up #and it wasn't all happy all the time of course and the ending may have been quite bittersweet but that's also growing up #it's a growing up story that isn't depressing! crucially! #and yeah it includes falling in love with an incarnation of a near-immortal alien and getting with that alien's other human self #and also inhabiting some element of a godlike being/self that maintains an eternal connection with said alien in some way #it's a bit fanfic-y for good reason #i cannot overstate how much she means to me Because i saw her as a kid and she made the future seem possible #long post

[demigodishniss]

My watch through of classic Doctor Who is going so well (I'm even more attracted to old men now compared to before--)

#my obsession with dilfs/gilfs is really starting to show #also i love four #hes so funny at times and I love how Tom can flip from casual to nearly seething in his performance of him its great #reminds me vaguely of how Matt Smith played Eleven: fun and kind of silly on the surface while harboring actual rage and tension behind it #classic who #i wish i had more thoughtful comments but I just be watching the show and smiling #fourth doctor #doctor who

[whispers-of-gallifrey]

Five: so this android is programmed to kill anyone with human physiology

Five: but my physiology is quite different

Five: the question is, will the android know that?

Five: Let's find out!

Peri: Doctor nO-

#doctor who #fifth doctor #peri brown #i know caves of androzani is very highly rated but i found it boring as a kid #however watching it now it is actually really good #love how peri starts out being “oh look an alien planet! alien glass!” then her joyous whimsy is immediately crushed #meanwhile five's continuing his quest of self destruction

[joycrispy]

One sentence review: the way they handled All That in the last DW special was deeply stupid and I liked it so much.

#doctor who #here's the thing: I haven't kept up with Doctor Who properly in over a decade (I just binge-watch entire seasons years after they air) #and I wasn't particularly planning to get back into it now #but because of how they did this; I AM NOW REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO 15. #I think a little bit of stupidity is a small price to pay for emotional payoff and a FRESH START #so. yeah. I'm gonna be watching again. That's crazy but I'm so happy.

[corallapis]

<3

#d/m quote of all time!!!!!!! #if my pinned wasn't the five watch party & i'd pin this. #silhouetted; limbs interwoven; fighting or dancing. #is it one creature or two? or two trying to become one? #who won? what does winning mean to them? does it matter? #is there such a thing as winning when the goal is this moment of struggle? #and i absolutely LOVE that this is all we see. #like to be clear this & the speaking gallifreyan quote are the only times we see the doctor & the master interact in this book. #lechasseur sees the tiniest glimpse. doesn't know how it started or how it works out. #doesn't know the long history or the long future between them. #and it's a perfect perfect way to have d/m in a story imo. #doctor x master #dw #(from 'the cabinet of light')

[sporadicfrogs]

Just finished my series 4 rewatch (specifically Journey's End) and I genuinely can't believe they Did That to us and just. Left the ending like that. For more than a decade.

For years I have been emotionally damaged by Donna's fate and I'm so fckn happy we got the 60th anniversary specials to fix it, but omfg?? Like. Little kid me had to watch that and just. Live with it. I'm sure that didn't affect my development at all

#doctor who #donna noble #over the years i've always SOBBED at the end of series 4 #but watching it now WITH the 60th specials just?? hits different #not to start orphan posting but. journey's end aired a bit over a year after my mom died lmao #i'm sure that has no bearing on how hard i've imprinted on donna noble tho

[doverstar]

an absolute wave of homesickness for Doctor Who (2005) series 1-2 just about knocks me over at the quietest moments of my little life

#it was such a specific time. I was just a kiddo #still living with my parents with a giant bedroom downstairs all to myself #it used to be a hair studio or something for whoever lived there before us. and I had this massive room with a table to draw and write at #and a tiny twin bed and I used to set up a projector against the opposite wall and hook it up to my laptop and watch DW to fall asleep #enthralled. couldn't believe the show I'd found. couldn't believe how much I loved Rose and loved the Doctor #you could not drag me away from it. I could not stop talking about it or thinking about it. Matt Smith had just become the Doctor and I- #-had so much content left to consume. and everything was simple. I didn't have a job at the time and every day was creativity #I used to write so much I'd forget to eat. and Doctor Who was the background music of my life back then #I miss winter nights swearing I'd only watch one more episode before I went to bed. all by myself. my family hadn't discovered the show yet #in that small single bed with four blankets and Doctor Who on the wall. drooling over timepetals and pausing and rewinding constantly #that time of my life was so safe and so secure and my imagination was so hungry and DW was feeding it and it was my first time seeing it #I miss that. I miss knowing it couldn't be ruined and there was more yet to see on live television with Eleven when I got caught up #and meeting Matt Smith's Doctor on my own while my family had just then started watching it themselves with Nine? magic #nostalgia #dw #doctor who #bbc #timepetals #dr who #rose tyler #doctor who 2005 #tenth doctor #tenrose #elevenrose #ninerose #nine #ninth doctor #ten #eleven #eleventh doctor

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

happy bomb in a tribble tuesday 

#STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9 #BEST LINE FROM BEST EPISODE #I started it and then when I saw what they were doing I GASPED ALOUD was like pointing at the screen and going oooh woahhhh so cool!!!! #and then I immediately went back and watched The Trouble With Tribbles so I would get what was going on lol #I love DS9 but sometimes there is like. pre-work u have to do before viewing certain episodes. and nobody warns u about it #somebody should put together a guide or sth for those of us who don't wanna watch all of TOS and TNG beforehand #Starky's Original Posts #can't imagine how lost I'd be if I hadn't watched a couple hours-long Star Trek video essays before starting the show omfg #DS9 is so fucking funny bc they will catch u up to speed if u forgot sth from last season but if u didn't see TNG ur on ur own #Miles out of nowhere: well Worf that's just because you hardly see your son! #Hapless DS9-only viewer: WORF HAS A SON????? WH-- #also I love how much DS9 hates its companion shows. Picard killed Sisko's son. The doctor from Voyager ruined Julian's life. #STAR TREK ON STAR TREK HOSTILITY #it fucking loves TOS though as seen from this episode #which is just the perfect punchline to it all. perfect no notes. #in conclusion society if Garak got to see Julian in that little TOS uniform getup..............

[tea-earl-grey]

there's something so dismal about how so much of tv fandom's energy nowadays seems to go towards trying to prove to big corporations that their show is good enough to save. like whenever a new episode or series comes out it's "remember to watch it all in 24 hours or it won't get renewed!" "play it on repeat for a month or else it'll become another piece of lost media!" "don't stop talking and posting about it during the hiatus or else this season that's already in production might not air!" "if this tag trends on twitter for long enough we might get eight episodes instead of six!!!" it feels less like we're enjoying a show that so many people worked hard on and more like we're trying to create rituals to please the gods (which replace gods with The Algorithm and you're not far off).

like i haven't even been involved in fandom for that long but even just seven or so years ago if a show did well enough that it was nominated for awards and trending on twitter and having well attended comic con panels then it would be renewed for at least a season or two. and back then being renewed for another season meant "we're for sure going to get a new season next year!" with almost no possibility of cancelation. and even shows that did just okay ratings wise would easily get 5+ seasons.

and it was more fun. when i was watching Doctor Who or Arrowverse or whatever in 2014 i could enjoy and critique the media itself instead of constantly being nervous about whether the next season will be cashed in for nostalgia bait or have its episode count cut or be postponed for three years or just outright canceled because it was slightly less popular than last year. like the fandom would still stress out over potential bad narrative choices or whatever but we would also get excited about the future.

maybe it's just my own perceptions but i just tend to find myself favoring fandoms for shows (or at least eras, i'm looking at you Doctor Who) that have been completed. i like Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death and Strange New Worlds and Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the latest Doctor Who era but i just find it hard to get invested when there's so much anxiety around if there will be a future to those shows and so much of the fandom activity revolves around that anxiety. and then as a result when the show does end for good (whether through cancelation or design) the fandom starts to fade away too because so much of it was based on the temptation of The Future.

and i'm also quick to admit that production in pre-streaming era shows had their own problems (once popular shows running for 15 seasons and jumping the shark just because it's a cash cow, tampered down diversity in the interest of "popular appeal", the whole quantity over quality issue, etc) but at least the fandoms were more optimistic and focused on the story itself instead of just being angry about the eternal potential of cancelation or outright deletion.

(also there are obviously much larger issues to the streaming model re: residuals and everything else brought up during the wga and sag strikes but that's all been said much more coherently so i'm just speaking from my own perspective as a fan. and even then there's still definite overlap between the fandom anxiety over renewal and the real world economic anxiety for people involved with production over "will we have a job/be paid". it's far too early to tell but i really hope the strikes will help to solve this problem.)

#and not even to once again bring up the problems with serializing nearly every show #and how that means what would have been a few minor quibbles and problems are now baked into the formula of a show #and how that contributes to the fandom anxiety around inconsistency between seasons #idk if im saying anything new but ive just been thinking about this with how i feel like the anxiety around prodigy's future #is stopping me from getting more invested in the show/fandom #same with the new doctor who era. i love fifteen so far but i cant stop being So Nervous when fandom is the place i come to relax #anyways im very glad that i watched and got invested in Picard after s3 started airing or else i would have the same problem #idk what to tag this as #fandom stuff #my posts #also not even to talk about how streaming models have made it so much harder to watch things internationally without pirating #like i used to just be able to buy most international stuff on itunes or dvd and have it in perpetuity #but now i drive to canada and cant access things i paid for and fuck you if you dont live in a country where that streaming service works

[cctinsleybaxter]

my personal tragedy is that i don't care for the tropics, which is of course where all my favorite animals (bugs) like to hang out

#sorry for 2005 doctor who jumpscare but it feels like this #would love to watch leafcutter ants all day; do not enjoy being suffocated by green and hot water #(having a favorite/least favorite biome is different from passing moral judgement on a place- it's like ice cream flavors) #(likes: tundra/chaparral + plain/pistachio) #(dislikes: cherry garcia + the jungle) #love to the mountains prairie and sea too of course #eta: wait how did i forget the fave who started me on this train of thought- deserts! #they're like cookies n creme to me; a staple #places

[imnotacreepijustlikeyou]

so was anyone ever going to tell me that watching doctor who would make me cry this much? i just watched the finale of season 9 (the 12th doctor) and i am a crying mess

#doctor who #12th doctor #clara oswald #how can a television show make me this emotional? #i have cried at almost every finale in this show #yes i started watching from christopher eccleston #so i haven't watch the earlier seasons #but every season has been a banger #this show is so good i can't believe it took me this long to finally watch it