"We're 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 the polarity."

[ID: Header is the Twelfth Doctor with his hand on an orange crystal wall, overlaid with a post reading, “I have been in this gay ass room for ten thousand years.” Profile pic is the Twelfth Doctor with the panromantic and demisexual flags behind him and the words “Polarity Disturbed.” /end ID] Aspiring time traveler powered by tea, sci-fi, and existential dread—mostly found screaming about Doctor Who. Anti AI. Anti TERF. Pro Palestine.

[polarity-disturbed]

layout ids:

Header is the Twelfth Doctor with his hand on an orange crystal wall, overlaid with a post reading, “I have been in this gay ass room for ten thousand years.”

Profile pic is the Twelfth Doctor with the panromantic and demisexual flags behind him and the words “Polarity Disturbed.”

Hi! I’m Polarity (they/them).

🛸 What’s This Blog About?

I originally made it as a Doctor Who blog, and that’s still the gravitational center, but it’s since spiraled out into a wider orbit of British TV, sci-fi in general, and any media that’s narratively weird, emotionally devastating, or aesthetically feral. Sometimes all three.

📎 Some of Favorite Posts by Me:

📄 Useful Doctor Who Links

💡 Lighting Design in Belinda’s Bedroom Scene Analysis

🎙️ Why Conrad Clark Is Hilariously Bad at Podcasting

♻️ Doctor Who Logos Ranked by Logo-ness

📚 Why You Should Support Your Local Library

🎵 Delia Derbyshire is my “Roman Empire”

🃏 Mana Typing of the Doctors From the Magic the Gathering X Doctor Who Collaboration and What They Mean

📺 Doctor Who and PBS

🕳️The Shovel Post

🍪The Carpet Post

🔤Doctor Who Title Analyses:

🔤The Four Most Common Words in Classic Who Titles

🔤The Four Most Common Words in New Who Titles

🔤The Four Most Common Words Across New and Classic Who

🔤Most Common Words Across the Eighth Doctor Adventures (EDA) Titles

I also run 👾 Doctor Who Monster of the Week and 🎡Classic Who Episode of the Week

📍 Find Me Elsewhere:

✍️ AO3: PolarityDisturbed

🚀 TARDIS.guide

🎥 Letterboxd

📺 MyAnimeList

🦋 Bluesky

📷 Instagram

🧵 threads

🤮 twitter

# Tags:

#polarity posts for original posts

#polarity reblogs for reblogs

#doctor who comics

#doctor who books

#doctor who audio dramas

#gallifrey audios

#polarity fics/poetry

"We can always choose to be kind, and that will always matter." (banner is a meme from this post)

[m34tcr33p]

“censorship is a blight” and “tag your posts properly” are two statements that can and do coexist

[polarity-disturbed]

Vic is never actually trying to win Game Changer.

Vic is playing an entirely different game that happens to be taking place on the same set.

The rules are known only to Vic. The victory conditions are known only to Vic. Half the time I'm not convinced Vic knows them until midway through the episode.

Everyone else is trying to figure out the game Sam has designed.

Vic is trying to discover what happens if you introduce a completely different game into the room.

[polarity-disturbed]

and this is why I firmly believe they would kill on taskmaster

You're so fucking right.

[daughterofheartshaven]

I was talking with @measured-robshearfan and @the-worms-in-your-bones and said the following on why River Song can regenerate:

The way I reconcile Good Man Goes To War with, you know, the rest of time lord lore, was just that vortex exposure makes a body able to handle regeneration energy, not making them regenerate or do other Explicitly Time Lord things. River actually being able to regenerate was a result of Kovarian's experiments on her during infancy, not just an inherent result of vortex exposure. Especially since, like, I do not believe that River is The Only Time someone has been conceived in the Time Vortex given the amount of time-active species out there, and regeneration does seem to be a Time Lord thing. My best guess would be that Kovarian got time lord DNA from... somewhere... and was able to graft that into Melody Pond, which only worked because Melody had the instability of vortex exposure while simultaneously being still prenatal, which gave Kovarian a starting point for inducing regeneration.

[the-early-wyrm]

trying to get into big finish. anyone have any starter recs?

[polarity-disturbed]

#my favs are the ninth doctor and the eleventh doctor but I'm not picky #also wanting to get into classic who but that's a whole other thinh #honestly books and comics too #but baby steps #<- i have some friends who can be more helpful than me on the books and comics part. especially in regards to nine. (@measured-robshearfan)

Hello, I am one of those people, I think.

For Nine, Big Finish just started a new Ninth Doctor and Rose series that's incredibly easy to jump into. It feels like listening to brand new episodes from Series 1. It starts with Snare, and I'd say that's one of the easiest entry points, both for Nine specifically and for getting into Big Finish in general.

If you're looking for more Nine stories that aren't with Rose, Back to Earth and Respond to All Calls are both great places to start. My personal favorites from those are Planet of the End, Station to Station, and Auld Lang Syne. You can also start from the beginning with The Ravagers. That one's a little hit or miss depending on who you ask. I thought it was pretty good, but if you're not really vibing with it, I'd just recommend skip ahead and try one of the later box sets. They aren't interconnected so you're not gonna get lost.

For comics and books, still sticking with Nine, I'd actually recommend the Doctor Who Annual 2006. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but It has a good spread of comics and short stories, so you get a feel for different writers and can start figuring out whose style and prose you enjoy. The Cruel Sea collects a number of Ninth Doctor strips from Doctor Who Magazine, is another great starting point. He also has a Titan Comics run that's well worth reading.

Nine honestly doesn't have a huge number of novels, and even fewer that I'd enthusiastically recommend, but The Stealers of Dreams and Winner Takes All are my favorites.

If you're open to novelizations of episodes you've already seen, the Rose and Aliens of London adaptations are both fantastic. They add context and go places the television episodes either didn't have the time for or simply couldn't. The Rose novel in particular spends much more time exploring the aftermath of the Nestene Consciousness and the sheer scale of the destruction that happened during the episode, which gives the story a very different feeling.

As for Eleven, I don't have nearly as many recommendations, but I cannot recommend The Day of the Doctor novel enough. It features both Eleven and Nine, and while it is technically an adaptation of the special, it ends up feeling much more like an alternate retelling and an exploration of ideas the episode simply didn't have the runtime to cover. It's probably one of my favorite pieces of Doctor Who extended universe material. If you already like the Eleventh Doctor, I'd honestly start there. It'll feel familiar because you've already seen the episode, but it'll also show you what Doctor Who prose can do.

I'll also tag @daughterofheartshaven who can also probably help you more with general big finish stuff, as can a few other people I'm thinking of but she likes getting tagged in this stuff. But if someone else sees this and has a rec feel free to jump in.

[polarity-disturbed]

steam you baffle me with your suggestions.....

[heimeldat]

i was in a scribbly mood, no detailed rendering allowed today

id: a digital sketch all in greyscale shows the twelfth doctor and missy sitting on a bench, angled toward each other so their knees touch. The Doctor has his hands in his lap and missy sets a hand on top of his. they look into each other's faces. end id

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[calciumcryptid]

I feel like a lot of people get "All Art is Political" confused with "All Art is made with Political Intentions" which is not the same.

[akajustmerry]

BritBox Australia added most* (*some missing) classic Doctor Who episodes and since it's so rare to have these in one spot I've taken the opportunity to watch them and become an even more powerful fan....and I had to share this image because all I could think was...well, isn't it always?

[Image Description: Photo of a tv screen showing closing credits for classic Doctor Who episode that read, "Next Episode: The Ordeal." Subtitles for music also on screen read: "(DOCTOR WHO THEME)"]

[cleo-fox]

Writing tips:

“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context

“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets

[maple-seed]

Both options convey that he's horny

[cleo-fox]

How dare you be funnier than me on my own post

[shalkapilled]

It's always ''how do you remember all the lines from that doctor who movie wtf'' and never ''Omg you're so cool for remembering all the lines from from the Doctor Who TV movie (1996) can we be friends''

[berrytart]

thank god for women with grey hair the most beautiful women on earth

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Andy Weir's subgenre of science fiction being "what if everything works out despite the odds and caring for others is the thing that saves the world?" makes so much sense when you find out he's a diehard Doctor Who fan

[classic-who-episode-of-the-week]

🎬 Classic Who Episode of the Week: Dragonfire

🎡The Wheel of Classic Who Stories has spoken! This week, we’re watching Dragonfire #147 (7th Doctor, Season 24)

[d3yeeted]

the companions current perception of time lords all having titles is so funny to me. like they've only met "The Doctor" and "The Master" and "The Rani" but can you image one of them just pulling up to a time lord meetup and being like,

"So who's that? The Architect? The Captain?"

"Oh, no, that's Irving. He likes art."

[rachelbethhines]

Do you ever think about the fact that had the Doctor not lied about the fluid links and left Sakro when everyone else wanted to leave, then the Daleks never would have discovered the Tardis or reverse engineer their own time machine.

Meaning had the Doctor not been curious and selfish that one time, then the Time War never would have happened. He never would have lost Susan. He never would be the last of his kind; forever alone and doomed to live forever with the regret of his choices.

Do you think he even knows that it's all his own fault or does he refuse to recognize the connection for otherwise it would break him utterly?

[official-imperatrix]

The danger of being a little hee hoo ha man.