#kate lethbridge-stewart | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starleska · 13 days

Text

73 Yards has devastated me and i have some theories

we all agree that 73 Yards was a genre-defying, harrowing episode...and i think there's some really interesting themes and ideas going on here. tw for discussion of trauma, abuse, neglect and abandonment:

i hope we're all on the same page that the Woman seems to represent Ruby's fear of abandonment, brought to life. always present, always out of the corner of her eye, and whose primary mechanic is to drive people to scorn and leave Ruby without explanation. even people who do not know her, or people she's just met, or who are incredibly warm towards her...they speak to the Woman, and they look back as if to confirm their suspicions, and then run away, maddened and horrified. it is an unbelievable stroke of genius to make the Toymaker's breaking down of the boundaries between science and fantasy bring Ruby's abandonment into being...and for Ruby to weaponise her. but that's it - as soon as Roger ap Gwilliam was taken care of, we expected the Woman to disappear, right? but that could never happen, because Ruby's fear of abandonment will never disappear...no matter how purposeful her life is, or how much she distances herself from others. the use of the cruel, distant individuals in the Welsh pub to set up Ruby sympathetically is excellent...and then, we see people approach Ruby at all levels of emotional connection, when time and again she is considered untouchable, as if her very being is contagious. and all this time, we have the fairy circle being broken and hope vanishing...with hope being the Doctor. the one man who potentially holds the key to uncovering Ruby's deepest desires - to find out why she was abandoned, and by who. and at the end of it all...even in death, Ruby doesn't find peace. she is transported into a neverending hell-loop where she is her own abandonment. the two are inseparable, inexplicably the same, because Ruby's very existence as herself is built on the bedrock of abandonment. and i think this resonates heavily with any trauma survivor...the way that our trauma and our very real anxieties brought on by that trauma are inextricable from ourselves. i think the plot with Roger ap Gwilliam shows off a very real symptom in trauma survivors: we often daydream that our hurt and pain will be useful one day - functional. and not only does Ruby get to do that...she gets to be the quiet, unsung saviour of the whole world, protecting us from a world-ending terror in spite of the abuse and neglect she's faced. she endures menial work and constant fear, while only confiding quietly in one other person...Marti, who i believe is coded as another trauma survivor due to her response to Roger (who she describes as a monster). if Ruby can't receive love and affection from anyone else, at least she can feel satisfied that she served her purpose. on a practical level, the presence of Mrs Flood and Susan Twist in this episode AGAIN gives me pause. my theory that someone here is another of the Toymaker's Legions, and is the embodiment of Story, has only deepened. the fact that we had a cold open without the title sequence, we met Susan Twist very quickly, we seem to have flipped genres for the show and Ruby was able to embark on a self-destructive wish-fulfilment saviour fantasy in real life...it all indicates to me that the boundaries between reality and fiction are fully collapsing. when Kate says things are trending towards the supernatural lately, i think we've only hit the tip of the iceberg. on a broader level: my God Russell T Davies, what a brilliant script!!! this is one of my favourite ever episodes of Doctor Who, and is absolutely my highlight for the season. huge kudos to Millie Gibson for giving such a killer performance...i am now terribly endeared to, and protective, of Ruby, and hope against hope she gets the happy ending she so deserves 💖

#i need to lie down. every episode of this fucking season makes my brain require a system restart #doctor who spoilers #doctor who #73 yards #the doctor #fifteenth doctor #15th doctor #ruby sunday #roger ap gwilliam #kate lethbridge-stewart #russell t davies #ncuti gatwa #millie gibson #aneurin barnard #jemma redgrave #mrs flood #susan twist #starleskatalks #long post

358 notes · View notes

squishmittenficfan · 6 months

Text

#jemma redgrave #j-red #Kate Stewart #Kate Lethbridge-Stewart #Doctor Who #The Giggle

178 notes · View notes

linguistwho · 4 months

Text

Phonetic Gallifreyan Weekend - Sentence 58:

"Welcome to the only planet in the universe where we get to say this: he's on the payroll." - Kate Lethbridge-Stewart

#gallifreyan #doctor who #The Linguist #GalliPhon #NuWho #Twelfth Doctor #Kate Lethbridge-Stewart #UNIT

110 notes · View notes

timeagainreviews · 10 days

Text

A Foot in Two Worlds: 73 Yards

My third-grade lunch buddy was a girl named Kendra. We used to love chatting about movies and television. My favourite topic was Batman. Hers was Full House. However, one morning, instead of gushing over Stephanie Tanner, she told me about a movie she and her brother had watched over the weekend. The movie was 1989’s “Clownhouse,” and she was a bit traumatised by it. And because of her vivid description, so was I. Honestly, I don’t remember anything past her saying “It’s about these kids who see clowns watching them through their windows,” because I never stopped thinking about that sentence, for years. While I’ve still never actually seen Clownhouse, nor do I experience coulrophobia, the idea of being watched from a distance still creeps me out. I still close the blinds at night.

Initially, I wanted to compare “73 Yards,” to something like “It Follows,” or even “The Immortal Snail.” Both scenarios entail being tracked by a slow but relentless pursuer who kills you if it ever catches up to you. But “73 Yards,” isn’t so much a story about being pursued. It’s about feeling watched. It’s about feeling judged. It’s about feeling abandoned. It preys on our fear of being the subject of gossip. That people could spread lies about us that scare away our loved ones. The fear that maybe they’re right. Maybe we don’t deserve love. It’s about the ambiguity that sits within our hearts. The liminal threshold between us at our best and us at our worst. But it’s not just about the wicked and the divine, but also body and spirit. A foot in both worlds.

Doctor Who currently has a foot in both worlds. The Doctor steps on a science fictiony land mine one week, and the next week he’s stepping on fairy circles. A recurring theme in this new season is “look before you leap.” Or ‘watch your step.” Ruby steps on a butterfly in the past and changes species. The Doctor steps on a land mine and almost dies. And now, the Doctor steps on a fairy circle and disappears. The Doctor is learning to have a healthy respect for the new supernatural powers coursing through the Whoniverse. At least he would if he remembered anything from this adventure. Not even Ruby will learn a lesson here, so was it worth it?

After last week’s “Boom,” I was game for whatever Russell T Davies had in store for the future. The trailer for “73 Yards,” gave us very little to go on, and in hindsight, it’s pretty easy to see why. This was a Doctor-lite episode and therefore not a lot of footage to share that wouldn’t also spoil this being a Ruby-centric story. But I was ready for it. Ruby has been suffering a bit from underdevelopment as a character. I even saw a Chibnall stan on Twitter saying so, which is quite extreme when you consider how underdeveloped Yaz was. In Ruby’s case, however, it’s hard to pinpoint what it is about her that’s underdeveloped. She’s got a great family dynamic. She’s nurturing. She plays in a band. But who is she? Like River Song before her, her character arc is starting to affect her character development. And my interest is waning.

After the Doctor steps onto the fairy circle and disappears, Ruby unsuccessfully tries the TARDIS doors. She then checks around the other side to see if he’s having a pee. This may be the first time the show has canonically mentioned the Doctor goes to the bathroom. It’s funny to think of the great Time Lord having a slash off the edge of a cliff. The Doctor seems to do a lot of important things on cliff edges these days. Failing to find the Doctor, it’s then that Ruby notices a strange old woman standing under a creepy old tree from 73 yards away making some sort of hand gestures. However, the closer she walks toward the woman, the further she appears away.

The mechanism of how the woman moves is hidden by editing, but it feels like something Ruby would notice quickly. I don’t imagine Ruby walking closer would cause the woman to start backing up physically like that Community episode where Professor Duncan got a restraining order on Chang and used it like he had force powers. Instead, they cut back to the woman and she’s simply further away. Ruby is conveniently looking for footing every time, so she fails to see this. But if you started walking toward someone and they started hovering backwards, wouldn’t you find that weird? It’s not like she doesn’t sense something weird pretty early on. She even asks the woman if the Doctor’s disappearance has anything to do with her. She even asks the hiker (yet another character played by Susan Twist) if she can see the old woman.

Something I found interesting about the Susan Twist scene was that whoever her character is, she’s not immune to the effects of the old woman. Either that, or she’s lying. Either way, it feels important that we were shown her having the same reaction to the woman as everyone else. If she’s a magical trickster, she’s not an invincible one, or maybe she’s not magical at all. We’ve learned very little about Susan Twist’s character(s), but this indicates that she’s not fully in charge of the situation if she can be scared off like that. What’s frustrating is that the first time a character looks at her and says “Hey don’t I know you from somewhere?” it’s in an aborted timeline. I would have expected the Doctor to have made the connection after the ambulance screens in “Boom,” matched the woman from Space Babies, but maybe he’s been distracted by clothes.

By this point in the episode, I’ve been fully drawn in. Ruby finds her way to the small village of Glyngatwg and a pub called “Y Pren Marw,” which translates to “The Dead Wood.” I thought this might have been a reference to the weird tree on the cliff, but the illustration on the pub sign looked more like an oak tree, so I doubt it. Another name they could have used for the pub could have been “The Gaslight Inn,” because man oh man did they gaslight the hell out of Ruby. They keep accusing her of thinking they’re yokels for asking pretty innocuous questions. Asking if you can pay with your phone is perfectly reasonable. There’s a chippy in my village that does the best fish n chips in the area, but I never use them because they haven’t got a card machine and I don’t carry cash. I don’t imagine the owner of the chippy goes home every night in his Fred Flintstone car because of it. Maybe they’re worried they really are yokels. Either way, five quid for a Coke and abusive staff? What’s their Trip Advisor score? Negative six?

The only non-yokel in the pub is Enid and that’s solely because she’s played by Siân Phillips, who could never be mistaken for common. She was easily the highlight of the episode for me, sitting elegantly at the bar in her fashionable hat. Of all of the patrons at the bar, she’s the one I believe would coin the Latin phrase “semper distans,” to describe the way the old woman follows but never approaches. If only she could have taught Isaac Newton the word “gravitas.” Beyond being incredibly rude, I rather enjoyed the patrons of Y Pren Marw. They reminded me of characters you would have found in classic Doctor Who. The pub scenes reminded me a lot of “The Dæmons,” or “Terror of the Zygons.” But more than anything, this episode reminded me of “The Stones of Blood,” wherein things start like folk horror and end in a more mundane setting.

After Ruby’s unwanted follower scares away one of the pub’s most faithful patrons, she’s forced to head back to London, which is about where the episode starts to lose steam. Up until that moment, I was expecting a sort of witch coven or worse to spring up in the sleepy village of Glyngatwg. I was ready to call it RTD’s best ever. But now we’re back in London where the biggest mystery is Mrs Flood, and she’s really only there to remind us she exists. But that’s not to say a piece of Glyngatwg didn’t leave with Ruby, and it’s not to say I disliked the story’s ending. But there was a noticeable drop in excitement the moment Ruby boarded that train.

I found it odd that Carla and Cherry were badmouthing the Doctor in his absence. Cherry was ready to jump his bones the last time they spoke and now he’s good for nothing. I get that they want to support Ruby, but like, what if he’s hurt somewhere? All I’m saying is that if I ever go missing, please don’t send Carla and Cherry to find me. After telling Carla about the old woman, Ruby’s deepest fears are realised. Like Susan Twist and Josh before her, talking to the old woman causes her to abandon Ruby. The look Carla gives Ruby from the cab as it drives away is the last way anyone would want to be looked at by their loved one. It wasn’t a look of fear, it was a look of disgust.

It’s that look of disgust that really started to make me think of another story from the Whoniverse- “The Curse of Clyde Langer,” a Sarah Jane Adventures episode written by Phil Ford. In it, Clyde’s name becomes cursed and anyone who hears or reads it becomes irrationally opposed to Clyde. His friends and family disown him and it’s Clyde against the world, which is wild because Clyde’s one of my favourite characters in all of Doctor Who. Who could hate that precious cinnamon roll? Even further, who could forget that episode? Well, it turns out Davies was kinda hoping the answer would be you. I’m not saying Davies is out of ideas, but he seems to be “remixing,” a lot of what has come before. More on that in a moment.

After losing her family, Ruby gets on with life, but not before being given a spark of hope in the form of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. We even learn some things about the old woman from Kate. We establish that yes, it is always 73 yards away. And no matter how close a person gets to her, she always looks as in focus as a person with 20/20 vision would see her from 73 yards. We also learn that the old woman’s “powers” work via headset, as Kate breaks contact with Ruby, leaving her devastated from losing yet another lifeline.

An interesting factoid about that scene is that Kate and Ruby were sitting across from “The House of Pi,” and Pi Day is the 73rd day of a non-leap year. Why do I know this? Because I went into a bit of a rabbit hole trying to learn about the number 73 yesterday. I looked into its mathematical significance. I learned it’s Sheldon Cooper’s favourite number. I looked it up in terms of numerology. I read the 73rd Psalm. There are 73 books in the Catholic Bible. But none of it felt significant. Then my dumbass googled whether RTD had explained the number, and he claimed it was as simple as going outside and measuring the distance from which people’s faces began to blur. Right. Well, that’s disappointing, albeit creative.

We’re treated to a montage of Ruby getting on with her life throughout the next couple of decades. Like the rest of us, her age starts to show itself with long hair and big glasses. I mentioned earlier that Ruby suffers a bit from a lack of character development and this montage does nothing to help that. She grows up into possibly one of the most boring people they could have made her. Her queer group of friends she has a band with seem to have disappeared. Her dating life is painfully heteronormative. She didn’t date a single woman throughout that time? She would have learned by now not to encourage her friends to talk to the old woman, and due to the perception filter, it’s not like anyone seemed to mind her anyhow. I’m just saying, if someone as normie as her started wearing a political shirt for the nuclear war-hungry Albion Party, I’d look at her and say “Pssh. Figures.”

Speaking of the Albion Party, it’s time we started talking about Harold Saxon. Oh, sorry, I meant Roger ap Gwilliam. The episode implies that Roger is the trickster “Mad Jack" who had escaped the fairy circle after the Doctor stepped on it. But Davies is remixing the classics, or as LCD Soundsystem puts it- “Shut up and play the hits.” He even mistreats women in the same way as the Master. I took this to be Doctor Who’s flimsy attempt at a comment on the MeToo movement. It would work better if ap Gwilliam was more than a moustache-twirling miscreant. Especially because Ruby throws poor Marti to the lions by not warning her away from Roger. If this is a MeToo story, Ruby is an enabler, which is not a great look. But she apologises so I guess it’s ok. Don’t worry Marti, your trauma gets erased anyhow.

While the campaigners prepare for a press conference for Roger ap Gwilliam to announce that Britain has purchased Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Ruby realises she’s out of time and needs to act now. Using her semper distans friend to her advantage, Ruby backs 73 yards away from Roger and sends him cowering and eventually resigning from his position as prime minister. Ruby expects this to be the end of the old woman, but she remains with her until the day she’s on her deathbed, at which point, the old woman changes from her perspective to Ruby’s. As the old woman, Ruby sees her young self and is able to call out to her and warn her about the fairy circle. That’s what happened, right?

Well, maybe? The biggest curveball comes in the form of the old woman herself. Because while Ruby does age to the ripe old age of 80, the actress playing her is Amanda Walker. The actress playing the woman is Hilary Hobson. Set pictures have also revealed Hobson in make-up that appears to be scarring going up the left side of her face. And those hand gestures of hers? Sign language. Eagle-eyed viewers have roughly translated her signing as “Bless you. Thank you so much, that's so kind of you. When you gave me that little thing, it was just so precious. How am I ever going to repay you? But we will think of something.” Perhaps this scarred woman is someone the Doctor and Ruby have yet to meet. Perhaps she repays them by warning them away from the fairy circle and saving both the Doctor and Ruby from a bizarre fate.

People seem divided by this episode in a major way, which is pretty normal for Doctor Who. But one of the more irritating takeaways I’ve seen is that the episode doesn’t make any sense. That’s only sort of true. There are some bootstrap paradox things occurring, which if you haven’t accepted as a reality of Doctor Who at this point, what are you even doing here? But what does the old woman say to Ruby? Where does the Doctor go? How does she travel back in time to the clifftops of Glyngatwg? Forgetting completely that we’re in a Doctor Who era which has introduced magic in a real way. But that’s a bit hand-wavy, can’t we do better? Well, they do mention that the TARDIS’s perception filter parked so close to the fairy circle might affect how people ignore the old woman. I liked this because it implies that the TARDIS and magic are somewhat compatible and therefore opens up new avenues for storytelling. You could also imply that if the TARDIS could affect the fairy circle, perhaps it can affect the TARDIS in turn. Maybe people reject Ruby because the warding spell placed on Mad Jack is affecting Ruby. Maybe Ruby needed to be in a position where she was so friendless that she would join the conservative party.

The episode may not have explicitly explained things, but it gives us enough of a vague framework to form an idea. As a fan of David Lynch, I am rather happy to exist in that liminal space. To straddle the cusp between the known and the unknown. It leaves an air of mystery, or as David Lynch would say “room to dream.” I will however slightly come down on the episode for its rather bland ending compared to its strong start. I don’t agree with the people who said it nosedives toward the end. But I would be lying if I said I lost a lot of interest the moment Ruby left Glyngatwg. Earlier, I compared the story to “The Stones of Blood,” but where the two stories differ is that when “The Stones of Blood,” changes its setting from the occult folk horror of the Cornish countryside, it replaces it with something equally strange.

That isn’t to say the jump to the year 2046 isn’t interesting. I’d be very curious to see how this story plays over the next few years. It acts as speculative fiction and the bizarre reality of speculative fiction is that it occasionally becomes mundane in hindsight. What once sounded unreasonable now feels painfully obvious. HBO’s “The Leftovers” hits different after the pandemic. Richard Kelly’s loony “Southand Tales,” feels tame after the 2016 election. Therein, I fear the day Roger ap Gwilliam becomes something more than a cartoonish depiction of British politicians. Partly because of the implied threat of nuclear devastation, but also because 2046 feels like a rather generous timeframe.

#Doctor Who #73 Yards #Russell T Davies #Millie Gibson #Ruby Sunday #Ncuti Gatwa #Fifteenth Doctor #Roger ap Gwilliam #Aneurin Barnard #Siân Phillips #Susan Twist #Kate Lethbridge-Stewart #Hilary Hobson #Amanda Walker #UNIT #Gemma Redgrave #timeagainreviews

23 notes · View notes

smallblueandloud · 6 months

Link

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Doctor Who (2005) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Yasmin Khan & Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan Characters: Yasmin Khan, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, The Doctor (in spirit), Martha Jones (in telephone) Additional Tags: Companion Support Group (Doctor Who), POV Outsider, yasmin is the outsider. this is causing her a bit of distress, Post-episode: The Star Beast (2023), Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Summary:

Kate wraps up her phone call, putting her phone away. She raises her eyebrows at Yaz. “I’m assuming you can guess what that was about.”

“She’s been spotted,” says Yaz.

“He, it sounds like, once again.” Kate is trying to be gentle. Yaz maybe hates her for it. “We-- it came to us through the grapevine.”

#sb and l writes #doctor who #sb and l watches dw #thirteen x yaz #yasmin khan #kate lethbridge-stewart #me? writing doctor who fic in 2023? that doesn't even mention rose at all? it's more likely than you think!!

15 notes · View notes

jesse-wilder · 6 months

Text

Jenny: You know how I feel about the Master.

Kate: Do I ever. You once threw them out a third-story window.

Jenny: There was an ample pool below!

Kate: I’ll assume you knew that.

#source: babylon 5 #doctor who #the master #jenny (doctor’s daughter)#jenny (doctor's daughter)#kate lethbridge-stewart

12 notes · View notes

typicalbrunette · 6 months

Text

Um, I desperately want Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s outfit from “The Giggle”.

#doctor who #the giggle #Kate lethbridge-Stewart

8 notes · View notes

denimbex1986 · 6 months

Text

'“When I was young, I was so sure of myself,” the Doctor tells Donna Noble early in the third and final Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special. “I made a terrible mistake.” That bit of exposition catches up viewers who never got the chance to watch the lost First Doctor serial “The Celestial Toymaker,” in which Michael Gough played the Toymaker, the bad guy of “The Giggle,” now played by Neil Patrick Harris. However, it also captures the theme of the episode, in which the Toymaker’s control over reality and the weight of constant running finally catches up to the Doctor and forces him to admit how little he knows.

From the COVID-era satire of the world destroying itself in pursuit of individual truth to the weariness with which the Doctor tells Noble that he was “so certain” about his past actions, “The Giggle” stands as a warning against over-relying on one’s own judgment.

And yet, that same episode left viewers with a delicious, irresistible question: whose manicured hand was that?

After the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) and the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) defeat the Toymaker at his own game, thanks to the heretofore mythical Bigeneration, a manicured hand enters the frame and snatches the last remnant of the Toymaker, his golden tooth, while the good guys are distracted.

Why is the tooth so important? Who is the One Who Waits? Whose hand was that? We’re not so certain about the answers to those questions, but we do have a few educated guesses.

Why Is the Gold Tooth Important?

Among the many boasts the Toymaker offers is the story of the Master, the Doctor’s arch-enemy from Gallifrey. The Toymaker recalls a dying Master coming to him and begging him to play one last game in a desperate attempt to survive. “When he lost, I sealed him for all eternity inside my gold tooth,” the Toymaker sneers before an extreme close-up on the tooth accentuates the moment.

It should come as no surprise that the Master would be involved in the recent specials, given his role in causing the regeneration cycle that led to the Fourteenth Doctor. As seen in “The Power of the Doctor,” the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) regenerates after a battle with the Master (Sacha Dhawan). The Master appeared to have died as well in the episode, but that’s happened before — the Master is, after all, another Time Lord and can also regenerate.

However, the gold tooth trap presents a new twist on the Master, another indication of the Toymaker’s power. That said, the fact that someone took the time to steal the tooth after the Toymaker’s death indicates that someone is likely interested in freeing the Master, a weapon against the Doctor that some larger force wishes to use when they are ready…

Who Is the One Who Waits?

And who is that larger force? The Toymaker gives us a small hint while staring down the Doctor before a game, listing his many defeated opponents.

“There’s only player I dared not face,” he says with menace. “The one who waits.” But when the Doctor presses him for more information, the Toymaker only responds, “That’s someone else’s game.” The line seems to echo Beep the Meep’s own sinister warning about the impending arrival of his “boss,” who the Doctor will presumably meet in series 14. Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor will have to deal with the one who waits, the figure so scary that even the Toymaker had to run and hide from it.

Now, this One Who Waits could certainly be a new character designed by returning showrunner Russell T Davies. A number of interesting characters debuted during Davies’s first tenure on the series, including the Ood and the Beast from “The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit,” the invisible creatures from “Midnight,” the Weeping Angels from “Blink,” and… uh, the Slitheen.

However, as demonstrated by his decision to bring back the bad guy from a mostly lost First Doctor (William Hartnell) adventure for “The Giggle,” Davies also loves to revive a forgotten bad guy. One interesting possibility would be the War Chief, a Gallifreyan totalitarian introduced in the second Doctor’s last adventure, “The War Games.” The shrewd leader of the War Lords, the War Chief has appeared in non-canonical books, but has not been back on TV since the late ’60s. And since his introduction, the War Chief has been connected to the Master. In fact, it’s long been debated whether the War Chief is actually a regeneration of the Doctor’s greatest rival, so it would make a bit of sense that he’d be interested in freeing the Master as part of a new plan to take down the Doctor.

The return of Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) could also point to a villain from the Sixth Doctor’s (Colin Baker) time, namely the 1986 serial “The Mysterious Planet.” From his first appearance, the Sixth Doctor struggled with darker, more cowardly instincts. In “The Mysterious Planet,” viewers learn that those instincts manifest in the form of the Valeyard, a devious figure who represents the Doctor’s dark side. According to the Master, the Valeyard springs from “somewhere between [the Doctor’s] twelfth and final incarnation.” Thus, as the Doctor hurled toward his later incarnations in NuWho, the Valeyard’s return was a popular fan theory, with some hoping that Matt Smith, John Hurt, or Timothy Dalton would be playing the character.

Of course, all that has changed now that the Doctor was given a new set of regenerations in “The Time of the Doctor” and even more so with the revelation in “The Timeless Children” that the Doctor does not come from Gallifrey and thus has no limit on her regenerations. Given the emphasis on multiple Doctors since Davies’s return, and several references to Chris Chibnall’s run in the recent specials, it feels like the perfect time to bring back the Valeyard in a new, even more terrifying form. Of course, we Whovians have been saying stuff like that since Christopher Eccleston regenerated at the end of the reboot season.

So, Whose Hand Picked Up the Gold Tooth?

In place of wild speculation, let’s take a look at what we do know. After the two Doctors forced the Toymaker into a box, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) quickly set to giving UNIT orders on disposing of the box. At the same time, the pants-less Fifteenth Doctor and the shoeless Fourteenth Doctor left with Donna to sort out the mysteries of Bigeneration. In short, we saw everyone doing something when the hand reached out to grab the tooth.

Still, that doesn’t rule out any of the people we know were at Avengers TowerUNIT headquarters. At the risk of missing the point at the end of “The Star Beast,” the hand certainly presents female and thus draws attention to the women at the Doctor’s side.

“The Giggle” did show Lethbridge-Stewart succumbing to the Toymaker’s madness, and while she seemed to snap out of it quickly, an element may remain and drive her to take the tooth. Some fans on Twitter have even taken to pointing out her red nail polish, the same kind as the mystery hand, although that seems a bit too obvious, doesn’t it?

Mel did show up in “The Power of the Doctor,” but we still don’t know much about her whereabouts since leaving the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) with Sabalom Glitz (Tony Selby). Mel tells the Doctor that Glitz died after tripping on a whiskey bottle, but given the many lies and tricks we saw him tell when he was alive, there’s no reason to trust that apparent demise. Did Mel pick up a few tricks of her own? What if a Zingo is something far worse than just a thing to get a lift off of?

And how about Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley)? In her few appearances, she’s shown to be much more than she appears. Does she have some interest in the Master?

While any of these might be fun, the more likely culprit is one of the actors cast for series 14. One of the big names added to the cast is Jinkx Monsoon, a star of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Although we don’t yet know who Monsoon will play, we have seen the costume she’ll be wearing, and the black painted nails don’t quite line up with the red nail polish shown in “The Giggle.”

Meanwhile, Obi Wan Kenobi and Game of Thrones alum Indira Varma has been cast as a character called “The Duchess.” We know even less about the Duchess than we do Monsoon’s character, as we haven’t even seen a costume yet. However, with a name as a title, she could very well be another renegade Time Lord like the Master or the War Chief, which would explain her interest in the tooth.

Of course, the most obvious culprit would be Missy, the female incarnation of the Master played by Michelle Gomez, who famously wore red nail polish during her run as the villain. Although she has since regenerated into Sacha Dhawan, the Master has teamed up with past incarnations before, as when Missy joined forces with John Simm’s version.

And then there’s the least likely, but most exciting theory: the hand belongs to the Rani. For readers who have not spent too much time on Doctor Who message boards, the Rani is another renegade Time Lord, introduced in 1985’s “The Mark of the Rani “and played by Kate O’Mara. The Rani went up against the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, and against multiple Doctors in the 1993 Children in Need special “Dimensions in Time,” the villain’s last onscreen appearance. We’ve honestly lost count of all the times fans theorized the Rani was surely about to return in the NuWho era. It’s basically a joke at this point within the fandom: each time Doctor Who teases a new female villain, you have to immediately shout “It’s the Rani!” Up to you whether you want to actually believe that or not.

So, has the Rani’s time finally come? Is the Valeyard back to frighten fans? Or is it just a regular ol’ hand and we’re all reading too much into it?

Honestly, we’re not sure. And that’s a good thing.'

10 notes · View notes