Bee, late 20s. appreciator of pretty much anything DW related. expect an awful lot of Gallifrey audios related shenanigans. sometimes I draw and write things. (main blog @thelibrarybee)
For anyone currently watching The Other Bennet Sister (available on BBC Iplayer, or wherever you find your BBC shows) keep an eye out for our own wonderful Seán Carlsen (who plays Jeremy/Jonathan) as Sir William Lucas!
The person who composed the Dr Who theme tune back in 1963, Ron Grainer, didn’t actually arrange it - that was mostly the work of Delia Derbyshire and some other BBC people.
I’m bringing this up because, in 1980, Grainer finally did produce an arrangement of the Dr Who theme, as he had imagined it, and, well, you will not expect what you’re about to hear
Someone with more video editing skill/patience than me please make the 70s cop show opening (with freeze frames on each major actor, you know the type) that this so badly wants to be.
Gold Usher, notably in gold and orange despite the fact that when he takes off the Gold Usher robes later on we find he’s got a Dromeian robe underneath all that gold
Probably Arcalian Cardinal?
Prydonians
Prydonian Cardinal
Really unsure. Patrex Cardinal? Scendles?
The Surgeon-General, who is apparently Prydonian
The Castellan, who IIRC is Arcalian
More mystery yellowish-brown people. That’s a lot of Patrexes Cardinals to have in one place, so maybe they are Scendles after all
Costume Meta: Time Lord Chapter Colours and Everyday Robes
Ahh, day-to-day robes. There’s a colour guide here for those who are feeling confused, but just to recap, here are the standard Chapter colours for members of the Time Lord caste:
Gallifreyan clothing is iconic to this show. However much we make fun of those ugly hats, there’s no denying that the shape of the Time Lord collar is as much a part of the fabric of Whovian consciousness as the blue police box or the Dalek casing.
And we can tell quite a lot about their culture from it! Not just the obvious things, though I will touch on those for the sake of completeness. We can begin to get ideas about things we’ve otherwise never seen, like Gallifreyan home life. Costumes are fantastic tools for ‘reading’ cultures.
…of course, it’s a big subject with tonnes of overlap. This meta is going to have a very, very weird format: it’s going to vary between photosets and text posts and there’ll be a lot of back-and-forth. I really can’t think of a better way to do it, I’m afraid. You might want to just track the charamei’s costume meta tag for this one.
This part contains an index under the readmore cut, to make it easier for everyone (myself included) to keep track.
I’ve been quietly collecting a bunch of useful (and sometimes just fun) Doctor Who links over the months, so here I present my findings.
Useful Doctor Who Links
Independent TARDIS Wiki
https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Doctor_Who_Wiki
Starting with the obvious and most well-known. This is the good Doctor Who wiki — detailed, fan-maintained, and kept up to date. There is a normal FANDOM wiki, but for reasons explained in this video, you shouldn’t use it. The independent one is far more reliable.
TARDIS Guide
https://tardis.guide/
A comprehensive viewing and episode tracking site. It lets you sort stories by season, Doctor, writer, or broadcast order — super helpful for organizing watch-throughs.
History of Doctor Who in Pictures
https://tragicalhistorytour.com/
An incredible visual archive chronicling the show’s history through photos, production stills, and promotional material from every era.
BroaDWcast
https://broadwcast.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
A deep-dive documentation project covering Doctor Who’s overseas broadcasts, lost episodes, and recovery history. Basically the definitive source on how the show spread globally.
Episode Transcripts
http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/
Full transcripts of classic and modern Doctor Who episodes. Perfect for quick quote checks, reference, or research.
Official BBC Doctor Who Script Library
https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/scripts/whoniverse
A collection of official shooting scripts from the BBC Writersroom archive — great for anyone interested in writing, structure, or behind-the-scenes details.
WHOdle (Doctor Who Wordle)
https://whodle.dixonary.co.uk/
A daily guessing game where you identify the episode from a series of gradually easier clues — starting with a single obscure shot and eventually revealing more frames, audio, or even quotes.
Doctor Who Missing Episodes Info
https://missingepisodes.blogspot.com/
Focused on the show’s missing and recovered episodes, restoration projects, and archival discoveries.
BBC Genome Project
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/
A searchable database of old Radio Times listings, preserving the original UK broadcast data for every episode and related program.
Doctor Who Time Travel Game (BBC)
https://archive.org/details/doctor_who_flash/The%20Last%20Dalek/TheLastDalek-files/scanimages/bio-processor.jpg
An archived and emulated version of a mid-2000s BBC DW Flash games.
In fact, Internet Archive is a treasure trove for Doctor Who in general.
It’s one of the few places you can currently watch An Unearthly Child and the combined live-action/animation reconstructions (which most streaming services leave out).
https://archive.org/details/doctor-who_202210
Doctor Who Cuttings Archive
https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Main_Page
A searchable database of newspaper and magazine clippings about Doctor Who from across the decades.
Guide to Doctor Who Hardcover Novelization Books (1964–1988)
https://doctorwhocollectors.com/hardcoverguide/
A detailed guide to the rare hardcover editions of the Target novelizations, for collectors or just people who like book history.
literally so ecstatic to see that Rachel Talalay posted the raw footage of the be kind speech from The Doctor Falls including a full minute that was eventually cut from the episode and the full reaction shots of both Missy and Simm!Master!!! it's my favorite new who scene of all time so i'm gobbling this up as a tasty meal. (also check out Rachel Talalay's other videos because they're all fantastic breakdowns of scenes and more extended footage and whatnot.)
[Transcript: Various characters from The Chimes of Midnight saying variations on “Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without your plum pudding” and “It just wouldn’t be Christmas”. At the end, Charley says “I never much liked plum pudding”. End transcript.]
I believe in complex Gallifreyan tenses and rank based pronouns. Anything in parentheses isn't technically being said, but is my attempt at showing what the Gallifreyan is meant to be saying. This all in service of the Leela Speaking Gallifreyan agenda. On A03.
She would never say it out loud, but Leela was forced to admit, if only to herself, that Andred may have been right when he called Gallifreyan one of the most complicated languages in the universe.
Just managing to wrap her tongue around its most basic syllables had taken her weeks, and longer still to manage actual words, and be understood. Putting all of those together into actual sentences was twice as hard, but even so Leela was not going to allow herself to give up.
“I (offworlder) will (if timelines allow) see you tomorrow (alternative future),” Leela said carefully. Rodan shook her head.
“You’re using certain alternative tense,” Rodan explained, not in Gallifreyan.“What you want is likely personal future.”
Leela huffed, throwing the datapad in her hand onto the table. The tenses, the pronouns, more of them than she could count. Far more than her own language had had.
“That does not make any sense!” Leela said, in her own language. “Is tomorrow not always tomorrow?”
“Not necessarily,” Rodan leaned back in her seat. “What you wanted to say was that you will see someone again tomorrow. What you ended up saying was more like maybe you will see them, in a timeline that hasn’t manifested itself yet.”
“I have no way to know,” Leela said, “what timelines will be manifesting.” That, she had discovered, was part of the problem as well. Much of it required to see the things that Time Lords could, to know if something was supposed to happen, or if it was never going to happen at all. Gallifrey may have slowed her aging, but it had no, so far, given her any ability to see the future the way they could. There were several tenses she had been told to avoid entirely, something that only infuriated her further.
“I did suggest,” Rodan said, gently enough to infuriate her, “that certain alternative is a tense you might not use much.”
“I do not want to avoid half of your language!” Leela said. If she did not speak Gallifreyan the Time Lords looked at her as stupid and savage. And yet she knew that if she did not speak it perfectly, they would still see her as stupid and savage. “I must learn it all. I will not be taught a child’s version.”
“I’m not teaching you a child’s version,” Rodan raised an eyebrow. “I’m teaching you a version you can understand.”
That only made it worse. Leela did not understand. There were too many tenses, far too many ways to talk about something that might happen, and somehow just as many ways to talk about something that already had happened. What was the point of it all, if most Time Lords never left Gallifrey in the first place?
Leela brushed aside the data pad. The table was littered with them, alongside actual paper that Leela had been trying, with marginal success, to write on. Her circles were sloppy and crooked, and how Rodan and everyone else seemed to get them perfect every single time was beyond her.
The Doctor had been teaching her how to write when she had left him, but he had been teaching her in something closer to her native language. That had been difficult enough. The details needed for modern Gallifreyan, let alone circular- she was not going to allow it to beyond her, but it was close.
“My (offworlder) name,” Leela said, in Gallifreyan again, “is (as I am now) Leela of the Sevateem.” Her name sounded wrong, awkward and clunky and toneless against the musical way Gallifreyan flowed. “I (offworlder) am (relative time) married (it has already happened) to Andredocelus of house Deeptree.”
“Good,” Rodan smiled. “Tell me, how did (direct personal past) you (offworlder) end up on Gallifrey?”
“I (offworlder)-” Leela paused. There were plenty of ways to say something as simple as ‘I’, and all of them depended on who you were. “I (non-Time Lord Gallifreyan)-” Rodan raised an eyebrow, but didn’t correct her. “-met (direct personal past) The Doctor. I (non-Time Lord Gallifreyan) traveled (temporal past) with him (shobogan)-”
“You (offworlder) traveled (temporal past) with him (Time Lord),” Rodan corrected. “You just implied that the Doctor is a shobogan.” But she didn’t say anything about Leela’s choice of pronouns for herself. “Leela, perhaps we’ve had enough for the day.”
“No,” Leela stood, running a hand through her hair. “I will master this.”
“No one said you had to master it today.”
“I will learn to speak it.”
“I’m sure you will.” Although something in her tone left Leela knowing she doubted it. “But it’s going to take time, Leela. Very few non-Gallifreyan’s speak it.”
“Because you do not allow them to learn it.”
“There’s simply no need!” Rodan sighed. “We all learn multiple languages at the Academy. And anything else is taken care of via the translation circuits.”
But translations were not the same as speaking it.
“I have need,” Leela said, leaving no room for further argument. “It is short sighted for you to think no one else ever will.”
“Fine,” Rodan settled back into her seat, crossing one leg over the other. “Tell me (Time Lord) what Andred does (current relative time).”“Andred,” Leela forced herself to sit down again, “is (current relative time) a commander in the Chancellery Guard.”
[ID: a collection of memes. The first, in burning text, reads, "Commander Hallan, you're an imbecile!" The next three are all described as video game achievements. They read: "Promotion achieved: Chancellor—not for long", "New achievement! Fell down some steps", and "New achievement! Frozen". The fifth, sixth and seventh are all in the style of vaporwave. They read: "Fell down some steps", "You are still my president, my lady", and "Call me Soggy Boggy like everyone else". /end ID]
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