#bow ties are queue

[actual-bill-potts]

I wonder sometimes how truthful Missy was being in "The Magician’s Apprentice" about friendship and romance, and what love means to Time Lords.

Because I can’t help but remember Rose, and Martha, and Amy, and Clara, and now (possibly) Yaz, who all look at this mad glorious alien and fall in love and want the Doctor to love them back. I wonder if they know, at first, how much the Doctor loves them—a love that comes with so much weight because it’s so old, has so much history. I wonder if Bill knew, at first, that the Doctor would give up his sight for her without a second thought. I wonder if Clara looked at a stranger in Victorian London and knew he would burn for four and a half billion years for her.

I wonder—do Graham, Ryan & Yaz know the Doctor has given her body to them already? That she would break her own hand, throw herself into the fire, give her life for any of them?

I just—wonder sometimes, how big the love of this alien is, with the force of two thousand/four billion years of memories behind it, how deep the wellspring must be that can look at a small human and see behind them all those others. All those bright and shining companions.

And, God, Yaz and Ryan and Graham are loved so much already, with all the emotion in two very old hearts. It won’t save them. But it’ll be worth it.

[thegeekcloud]

So, these were in line at the recommended tumblrs...:

This is so perfect, omg...!

[actual-bill-potts]

Have been thinking about "Twice Upon a Time" in preparation for Moffat Appreciation Day and—I love Moffat’s writing so damn much.

The moment in TUAT when the Doctor says, "So that is what it means to be a Doctor of war," exemplifies everything I love about the Moffat era. It’s so beautifully clever, turning a rage-filled accusation into a statement of hope and purpose, and it’s Moffat’s writing at its absolute best. Because Moffat even at the lowest points of the show always insists upon hope and beauty and wonder. Yes, he says, there’s ugliness, and brokenness, and evil, but there’s also so much kindness.

Doctor Who under Moffat looks at the Doctor’s scars, at the fire of the universe at war held in two shaking hands, at a very old alien who once killed two-point-four-seven billion children because that universe demanded it. It shows us a painting called Gallifrey Falls: the destruction of a world.

It asks you to consider this for a moment, to feel the weight of a universe of scars, to reel at the pain of it all. And then Moffat looks at the picture and turns it toward the light, just a little.

Suddenly you notice stars in one corner, and a planet where there was a dark cloud. The fire isn’t fire at all, it’s the glint of red hair, and the huge black raven is just a leaf, and the sheen in a girl’s eyes isn’t tears, it’s stars!

You see Gallifrey Falls No More. You see Melody as River. Clara walking away from her own gravestone, Bill’s cybersuit falling to the ground. The Doctor of War become a doctor of war.

There’s hope, this big damn ridiculous, infuriating, confusing, sometimes-offensive, beautiful show says. There’s beauty. There’s magic, if you look closer. There are whole galaxies in atoms, and universes shining in the eyes of a child.

Just look—and listen.

[actual-bill-potts]

“13 apologizes too much” ok ya know what that criticism might have some merit but 2006-2010 wasn’t THAT long ago

[actual-bill-potts]

hm. Fuller thoughts on the episode to follow but I had one instant thought I had to share: Thirteen reminds me a LOT of Three: the restrained physicality, the Venusian aikido (!!!), the more down-to-earth feel that makes up for a certain lack of whimsy with practical charm, and the DRAMA.

I was a little weirded out at first by the Doctor just...giving up...literally 0.5 seconds after they reach the top of the mountain without any info on when the phase-in would actually occur. But Three absolutely would have done that. The Tardis doesn’t work this second? Time to replace it with a car & NEVER travel from Earth AGAIN, there’s no HOPE, Jo stop smiling your optimism won’t WORK -- oh here we go, bye!! Thirteen for all her resemblance to Ten in mannerisms seems to be shaping up to be very similar to Three in the way Eleven was similar to Two.

I’m really interested to see if they end up going somewhere with her quick capitulation to hopelessness, because that was something I found fascinating about Three: for all his brightness and braggadocio, he was quick to give up when it came to his personal life. The Tardis, for instance. Leaving Jo’s party early. Thirteen’s moment of darkness could have just been a miscalculated one-off to build up to the Tardis reveal (and it was a serviceable moment at that!) but in her haste to bring her companions home as soon as possible, it seems there’s an element of the fatality that Three (and to a lesser extent Nine: “No plan. No way out” after like 2 seconds) both had that’s emerging in her personality. I like that. We haven’t seen that side of the Doctor in awhile.

It’s also interesting that that insecurity tends to arise after massive trauma: Three after losing his companions and his Tardis and being kicked out of the wider universe by the Time Lords, Nine after the Time War, and Thirteen after losing Bill. We haven’t had a companion with an ending this bad in awhile, and I wouldn’t doubt that a great deal of her current attitude toward her companions is rooted in the fact that she thinks Bill died as a Cyberman.

I mean. She was Bill’s guardian, essentially, and Bill to her knowledge was a) shot in the chest b) forced to wait for ten years in a spaceship with the Master c) converted to a Cyberman d) killed by Cybermen. That’s tough for her to brush off with the fam I think, because Grace already died! No wonder she doesn’t want to bring anyone along. No wonder she thinks it’s better to tell Graham, Ryan and Yaz immediately that they’re probably dead. Bill’s story ended so unhappily (to her knowledge) that there’s no point in hoping for a better one.

Idk if this will be explicitly addressed in the next episode (where presumably the decision to travel will be made)(tbh they probably won’t address it but you never know with Chibnall) but it’s changed a bit the lenses I was looking at Thirteen with. I really liked this episode. It really propelled the show off to something great.

[actual-bill-potts]

cinematic by owl city sums up the whole ethos of doctor who in 4 mins & 13 s and y’all should listen to it send tweet

[actual-bill-potts]

listen 13 and 11 would be perfect in a multi-doctor episode and if it doesn’t happen im suing the bbc for emotional damages

[actual-bill-potts]

So, I’m insanely busy right now and am working on a very big post for Moffat Apprecoation Day, but wanted to give my 2 cents on the s11 halfway mark, specifically on the pessimism I’m seeing in a few different quarters.

So, Chibnall is not the best at writing dialogue, or at least he hasn’t shown his best yet. My major complaint with this season so far is too much exposition, not enough showing/letting the audience infer (though that may be the Moffat fan in me speaking, I like a little uncertainty in character motives).

"The Tsuranga Conundrum" is the first episode that really made me miss Moffat though, I really enjoyed the first four but TCC felt disjointed. There were plenty of good scenes but they constantly undercut each other, like Chibnall just threw a bunch of good ideas into a script and didn’t bother to edit.

I especially liked the final scene in the Tardis in "Arachnids in the UK." I know I just said I like a little uncertainty in character motivations but that one scene was pitch-perfect for me.

The majority opinion as of now seems to be that Chibnall has stripped the Doctor of a lot of depth which I don’t think is the case. I may have an unreasonable amount of faith in him as showrunner but looking back to episodes like "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" I don’t think I am.

In fact, I’m genuinely surprised at how many people are uncertain whether Chibnall will go anywhere with the Doctor’s dark side when it’s fairly clear to me that he will. Two reasons: one, in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship," he has Eleven murder a man in cold blood, so his picture of the Doctor is obviously not as someone who’s just sweetness and light (unless that was a required plot point by Moffat)(or it was played as a Good Thing for the Doctor to do, it’s been awhile since I watched the episode). Second, there’s been plenty of little moments throughout the series that seem to be adding up to something more: the Doctor never telling the companions her name onscreen, her ignoring Epzo’s bullet wound (that one might be a bit of a stretch bc frankly TGM wasn’t very well-structured either), her comment on being in the book of celebrants coming only after her companions have left, etc etc. Of course, they’re small enough that they could be adding up to nothing in particular, but I don’t think they are.

Character growth on the part of the companions seems to be very slow, but I think it’s building up to something good as well. It’s taking longer than I’m used to so I’m a little frustrated right now at the lack of big emotional moments (Rory had died at the halfway point of series 5, we got the River reveal halfway through series 6, we had all that Danny-Doctor mirroring and tension around this point in series 8, etc), but I’m waiting to pass judgement till the season’s over because Chibnall (imo) tends to be really good at slow, consistent character building. So hopefully this is leading up to something good.

Overall: there’s been mostly good episodes, and all have been thoroughly enjoyable. Cast is brilliant. Miss some of the character depth I’m used to getting but I do have a lot of hope that Chibnall is going somewhere with all of this. Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor is enough to make me happy even if the whole rest of the season is terrible (also Tosin Cole, while I love Yaz and Graham Ryan has been a real highlight of the show for me).

The new Tardis is great, I love it.