#dw meta

[manhasetardis]

[polarity-disturbed]

One thing that’s become really clear while watching Classic Doctor Who alongside the current era, especially starting with the Fifteenth Doctor, is how well the Ninth through Twelfth Doctor eras nailed the balance of episode length and story structure.

Classic Who usually split its stories into four or five 20 to 25 minute episodes per arc, which roughly equals the runtime of a modern two-parter. But while that format allowed for sprawling narratives, it came with a tradeoff: pacing. Entire episodes sometimes feel like narrative treading water, not because the writing was bad, but because of the constraints of mid-20th century television. (That’s its own fascinating rabbit hole, but we’ll save that for another time.)

To be fair, Classic Who did experiment with its format. Some stories, like The Edge of Destruction, a tight, two-part psychological thriller set entirely inside the TARDIS, used a smaller runtime to great effect. It’s still one of the strongest entries of Season 1, partly because it had no room to meander.

Later, the show dabbled in stories of two 45-minute episodes during Season 22. But those episodes often had the same problem: some stories still didn’t need the extra time. Take The Mark of the Rani, for example. It was padded out to fit that two-part, 45-minute-per-episode format (roughly 90 minutes total), but honestly? It could’ve been a sharper, more effective 40-minute story. There’s a lot of unnecessary fluff that drags the pacing down.

But then you get something like The Keys of Marinus, a six-parter (20 minutes each part) that essentially functions as a sci-fi anthology. Each episode throws the Doctor and co. into a new setting with a self-contained mini-plot. It uses its extended format to experiment and surprise without feeling stale. That’s when the long form works.

Then came the 2005 to 2017 revival era, and to me the show hit its structural gold standard: twelve episodes per season, blending 40-minute standalones with 80-minute two-parters. 

Episodes like Blink and Midnight were tight stories that landed precisely because they didn’t overstay their welcome. Try stretching either one to feature length, and the tension would unravel. Meanwhile, two-parters like The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances had room to build atmosphere and layer in character development. They remain fan favorites for a reason: the format gave them the breathing room they needed, and then stopped.

Which brings us to the Fifteenth Doctor’s era.

Right now, we’re back to a one-size-fits-all approach but in the opposite direction: single 40-minute episodes across the season, with only the finale allowed to be a two-parter. And the result? Some stories just aren’t getting the space they need to land.

Doctor Who thrives on structural flexibility. Some stories need 80 minutes to unfold. Others are perfect little 40-minute excursions. Locking every episode into the same runtime is like asking every alien to fit inside a human suit: it works until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, it’s obvious.

The point is: variety in format has always been one of Doctor Who’s strengths. When the show leans into that, it sings. When it forgets that, you end up with stories that could’ve soared if they were just given a little more space to breathe.

(Also I don’t mean to exclude 13. It’s just that her era experimented with structure so much across her run that it’s kind of its own thing. There’s a whole separate post to be written about what worked and didn’t there.)

(Fun fact for reading this far: The Edge of Destruction was only two 25-minute parts because the production team didn’t know if the show was getting picked up for more episodes. They wrote a short, self-contained story set entirely inside the TARDIS to avoid building new sets. It was meant to be cheap filler, and it ended up being one of the highlights of the First Doctor’s era.)

[mwagneto]

like seriously belinda being forced to lose sight of all her goals and become a mother is a horror movie right???!! literally the entirety of ep7 revolved around the horror of 1950s forced heterosexual suburbia and then ep8 is like yeah belinda has ceased to exist as a person and her only interest now is this random baby that she wants to mother more than anything. the programming of conrad's world fully clinging to her the entire time and then when 15 "resets" the timeline it's extremely uncanny how she rewrites her entire story so it was always about the baby and her motherhood. not to mention whatever 15 did almost definitely full on erased ruby from existence. extremely unsettling episode please please can we please get belinda out i'm shaking

[dandelionjack]

We Invest Things With Significance, or: Why Sutekh Isn’t Sutekh, But Death Itself. alternative title: Fear Is the Mind Killer.

the Doctor Who Series 14/1 thesis statement

i don’t think that sutekh has literally been attached to the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars. i think that the salt at the edge of the universe — the grievous mistake that caused all myths to become a reality — was what made him appear. and he’s not the same character as sutekh the osiran, a powerful alien that delusionally believed himself to be a god. he *is* a god. nuwho-Sutekh is Death Incarnate.

ergo, this version of Sutekh is the literal psychic manifestation of the Doctor’s deep-seated, guilt-motivated fear of the idea that his arrival brings death wherever he treads. this death-anxiety was turned into a physical presence, haunting the TARDIS all through the Doctor’s timestream, because of the salt. that’s the reason why the Doctor didn’t spot any Susan Twists before Wild Blue Yonder…

there are two timelines in Doctor Who — relative time and universal time. universal time is the history of the universe. relative time is how the Doctor experiences it. in universal time, Sutekh has supposedly been hitchhiking through the vortex for millenia. in relative time, he has only been doing so since Fourteen accidentally invited myths back into the world.

the Doctor was insecure and afraid and believed the above quote (from the very first episode!! spoken by the very first named character in nuwho to die on screen, no less!) to be true. but until WBY it had only been true on a symbolic, metaphorical level. myths, legends, concepts and stories becoming real after the salt caused the Doctor’s anxiety about being a death-bringer to take the shape of a black dog — a universally recognised symbol of death — wearing the name and voice of his most formidable enemy, Sutekh.

in a way, this plotline mirrors The Woman from 73 Yards similarly being a manifestation of Ruby’s worst fear — that of being abandoned by everyone she loves for something intrinsic and incorrigible inside her that she cannot change. Ruby fears being left completely alone, so “The Woman” causes everyone in her life to leave her. the Doctor fears that his coming always heralds mass destruction (“maybe i’m the bad luck”), so “Sutekh” makes sure that the TARDIS literally becomes an altar of death.

ever since Wild Blue Yonder, stories in doctor who have become sources of immense power. the worst, most potent stories we tell ourselves are the lies that our sick brains whisper to us — secret anxieties that we’re not good enough, that all our loved ones will inevitably leave, that we carry nothing but bad luck in our wake. what better clay to mould a monster from than the protagonists’ own neuroses?

and if anybody’s still in doubt, here’s the plain text, all laid out below:

we invest things with significance. that’s what the salt at the edge of the universe really meant. that’s what almost every episode this series has been about, thematically — the imaginary kastarions, the cosplaying chuldur, the bogeyman written into life because kids need a scary story. myths become real to us because we believe in them, love and death and monsters too.

[intuitive-revelations]

Ok, but consider...

You can't just give me a bunch of elite sheltered assholes in a domed, transduction shielded city associated with a destroyed 'homeworld' and not expect me to make connections.

(also sorry Rodan, you don't deserve to be giffed next to Lindy in any respect, let alone twice over)

[causalityparadoxes]

Okay but the Rogue throwing the bouquet and the Doctor catching it. The bride's bouquet, superstition signifying the next person who will marry. The Doctor putting on the Rogue's engagement ring.

Its the fantasy era, whats a billion trillion to one when you have coincidence on your side. What story is complete without a marriage.

They are going to find him and they are having that goddamn wedding.

[praetyger]

Thinking about how it would play out if Clara crossed paths with 13. 13 would panic and try to hide who she was but it wouldn’t take longer than a couple of sentences for Miss “I’d know you anywhere” to figure it out. I’m also thinking about how she’d be overjoyed and yet smile that sad, watery smile of hers because “you’re young again”.

The way that would contrast with the beginning of her relationship with 12, being heartbroken seeing old 11 at Trenzalore, relieved and happy when he resets before regenerating, and scared when he regenerates into 12. How she “didn’t know who the doctor was anymore” and couldn’t see him.

Maybe she’d caress her cheek like she used to, maybe she’d let her. “You’ve hidden yourself away again, you stupid old man”.

[ghost-bison]

Most people's first thought when you tell them "scariest Doctor Who episode" is always either Blink (which I do not get, because to me, it is an INCREDIBLE episode, yes, but Cybermen are way scarier than Weeping Angels), or Midnight (this I do get, as it seems to be a metaphor for rape, showcasing the loss of bodily autonomy), or The Empty Child (classic case of body horror, and ON A CHILD, moreover).

But there's one episode a lot of us (me included) often fail to remember in terms of horror as a genre in Doctor Who... and it's The Waters of Mars.

I've recently rewatched Listen, which is SUCH an underrated episode in this genre, and it prompted me to start this Scariest Doctor Who episode poll, in which I've included at most one episode per series, from series 1 to 10, which was a mistake because several of those series contain more than one episode deserving a feature on the list.

Series 4 is one of them: we have Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, obviously. Then Midnight, which goes without saying. Some would say Turn Left as well, and I'm one of them because this episode tells us what would happen were the Doctor not around to save us, and it's pretty horrible, dystopian, and if you think about it... that's the world that we live in: in real life, the Doctor's not here to save us, so I'd say, Turn Left deserves a spot as well.

But then, we have The Waters of Mars, which I've seen a few people talk about as one of Doctor Who's masterpiece episodes, but not nearly enough people talk about just how fucking terrifying this episode is!

It's the third of the specials that take place between series 4 and 5, meaning it is an hour long, and we're delt a hopeless Doctor, who at this point, after what he did to Donna, after almost losing her several times in the series 4 finale, and after Rose and Martha and everyone he's got left nearly died because of his lifestyle, refuses to travel with anyone else.

So he spends the first 30 minutes of that episode trying his hardest not to get attached, not to get involved, because if he does, he knows he won't be able to stop himself from trying to fix things, and he's convinced that his presence always invites even more tragedy.

Unfortunately, the Doctor loves us humans too much, and in The Waters of Mars, those are not just ordinary humans: they're brilliant. They all have a story, a family, a life that is constantly referred to throughout the first half of the episode, something that has always fascinated him and appealed to his emotions.

And there's Adelaide Brooke, and she is challenging. She's a piece of work, even for him, and whether she knows it or not, she's reading him like an open book, and whatever decision he makes (to leave them to die or to save them) she fights him and questions him, like Donna did. She's so smart and down-to-earth, like Martha was.

All this, added to the fact that there's a mystery to solve in the water, makes it impossible for the Doctor to resist seeing things through.

Until he comes to his senses and finally starts to leave. But even then, he knows they are still struggling inside of that base. He's made it very clear to Adelaide that they were supposed to die, that it was a fixed point in time, and yet, he can hear them, still fighting, still hoping, and that's one other thing the Doctor can't resist.

The episode should have stopped at around 40 minutes, as do most Doctor Who episodes: the mystery is solved, the solution is found (in this case, there is none), the Doctor is set to walk back to his TARDIS and go away. Which he doesn't, and the second part of the episode takes place.

His trauma and loneliness turn him into a mad and terrifying thing. He's just lost Donna, the one who'd keep him in line, who, not unlike Adelaide, would fight him when he was wrong, and who would remind him that he should always try, whenever that was possible, to save someone.

In this moment, though, because the Tenth incarnation of the Doctor was born of Rose's humanity and her adoration, Donna's plea gets twisted in his mind and he makes a horrible mistake: he forgets that he can sometimes, like he said, makes things so much worse.

When he's in the booth, about to leave, and Adelaide is begging him to do something, and he says to her "Anything I do, just makes it happen": you're tempted to defend him, in this moment. You are, because you know better. Or you THINK you know better, but then, he does save them, in the end, and you realise his words were a warning, not just to Adelaide, but a warning to himself.

The Doctor breaks the laws of Time and in doing so, realises that they are not enslaved to him, HE is enslaved to them.

When Rose saved her dad in Father's Day, she created a rip in Time, which attracted Reapers, which would have destroyed everything if not for the Doctor and Pete's actions.

Meanwhile, when the DOCTOR went against a fixed point in Time, there was no rip, no Reapers. No panic or chaos: just silence, and the snow that kept falling in total indifference. The knowledge that before anyone could notice, before anyone or anything knew what the Doctor had done, Adelaide Brooke would go back to her house, lock the door and shoot herself in the head. The Doctor's actions would be undone.

Had he chosen to walk away, like he initially had, Adelaide would have been able to keep her dignity, dying with the certainty that it couldn't have been any other way. Mia and Yuri, the ones he did manage to save, probably had to lead a quiet life to avoid any butterfly effect from their prolonged existence on Earth (it is implied that they ended up together, when I don't remember any other part of the episode showing anything more that friendship between them, which tells us a lot).

The Doctor realises, too late, that he's gone too far. There's this eerie bit of dialogue between him and Adelaide, when she realises what he's done, right before she kills herself...

The Doctor: For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious. Adelaide: And there's no one to stop you. The Doctor: No.

...which is disturbingly reminiscent of the last scene between him and Donna in The Runaway Bride, in which it is also snowing:

Donna: Find someone. The Doctor: I don't need anyone. Donna: Yes you do. Because, sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.

Once again, the memory of Donna rots inside of him and twists his character into a monster.

The Doctor and his TARDIS have, until then, been showcased as a source of wonder and comfort, but as the four characters exit the TARDIS, Mia is shown to be terrified and confused, exclaiming "It's bigger on the inside!" and "Who the hell are you?" in abject horror before running away. And the Doctor is unfazed.

He remains unfazed until the gunshot.

So, yes, this episode is horrible, on so many disturbing levels. Wild Blue Yonder scares some of us because it physically turns the Doctor and Donna, both characters we rely on as a source of comfort and security, into monsters. But those twisted versions of them are just a mirage: they're not real.

Whereas The Waters of Mars merely puts the Doctor in a situation that reveals to us a part of him that was always there but that he fooled us, the audience, and his many companions, into thinking that it wasn't there.

It is a lesson, and a question: is there really such a thing as good and evil when someone with intentions as good as the Doctor's is capable of such atrocities in the name of "good"?