Another Whoniverse Theory Blog

[whotheory456]

Who do you think will win at the Scribe Awards this year?

Hooklight feels like a shoe-in for audio.

Shutter Speed seems like an obvious winner for short story.

Puzzling over novels and comics though. What do you think?

[whotheory456]

Finally got to read Lungbarrow by Loomlight. I've been beating the Drum for Cwej for a long time now and it's great to see everyone so excited about it. This is it. This is our Virgin New Adventures, our Eighth Doctor Adventures. This is where the future of Doctor Who is being crafted. It's a secret wilderness era that snuck up on us.

The way Tomoko M Banks reframes the other, and all of the Marc Platt lore into the modern era is frankly incredible. With this book, the parts of Doctor Who that have all the creative freedoms are catapulted into the future.

You get so much with this novel. Its jam packed in a good way. There's even a bonus short story after the book by Wylder, and its fucking great. Lungbarrow by Loomlight isn't my favorite part of Cwej, but it's maybe the most essential part. People will be talking about this book years from now. Read it.

Welcome to the wilderness. It's nice here, isn't it?

[whotheory456]

Lots of folks saying that Wilderness Era 2 is being signified by Lungbarrow by Loomlight coming out, but real ones know that Wilderness 2 started when we read the Cwej story Shutter Speed and then had to watch Reality War and reckon with Shutter Speed not being the one on TV.

[whotheory456]

I'll just say it, Cwej Odyssey is what Doctor Who should be now

If you're like me, you were disappointed with the Reality War. You might even have been disgusted. Since then I've been asking like, what is Doctor Who now? What is my favorite show? Is it my favorite show? I really don't know.

There are a lot of weird Doccy Who spinoff things that exist so far to the periphery of your vision you probably don't even see them. When you do see them, you probably think they're just fanwank. Anyway I like these weird offshoots a lot. One of them is Cwej, which follows a dude named Cwej who used to be a Doctor Who companion. He's bi. He's a human disaster. He's mentally ill. No one can pronounce his name. And honestly, I think I love the guy now.

The people who have the rights to do stuff with Cwej, Arcbeetle, decided to do a series of stories to reintroduce readers to him. It's called Cwej Odyssey. Cwej travels around in a shitty orange SUV and meets monsters and sad ghosts and regenerated Time Lords he used to have unhealthy sexual relationships with. Plus, he has a companion, who is a Korean girl from space. Somehow, she is the most relatable down to earth part of it all.

She's screwed up. And I mean that in a good way. We first see her in the psych ward of a hospital, and Cwej offers to take her to see the stars if she can recover and get out of there. Which, like, she does. And Cwej has to cash a check he kind of didn't expect he was going to cash.

The result is a series of short stories that feels like what I wanted from Doctor Who. It's two fucked up people finding out that they can heal together, and grow together. The girl has breakdowns. She has to go through exercises to work through her triggers. She lashes out at Cwej. And Cwej reacts the way I wish people around me did: with compassion and understanding. And he makes mistakes too.

But every month they've come back for more adventures. And I really think more people should be reading it. Because it's what I want Doctor Who to be. It's not just some stories focused on continuity, or getting on the TARDIS wiki, or whatever your first assumption is. It's about people who aren't normally the stars of stories like this.

And I love that.

http://www.arcbeatlepress.com/cwejodyssey

[whotheory456]

I retired the blog, and honestly might double retire it soon, but I'm whotheory456 and I'm here to say that Reality War was the worst piece of shit I've seen on TV in ages.

I'm tired, boss. And we don't even know who the Boss is.

You know what, its Bruce Springsteen. I'm just assuming Springsteen has been fucking with the Doctor since Star Beast or whatever.

Anyway go read Obverse, Arcbeatle, and Cutaway.

Rose Coloured Crosshairs is fun and if you haven't you should check out Faction Paradox.

Shutter Speed is a great introduction to the Cwej series and has big fuck ICE energy.

And I haven't read it but Cutaway is doing Omega Comics. Which is clearly the only recent appearance of Omega no I am not taking questions.

If the Doctor shows up pretty sure I don't want my life rewritten to be a single mom, so you know, fuck that. I'll wait for Cwej or put on a skull mask now. I'm tired, boss. Play me out, Springsteen.

[whotheory456]

Trying to come up with some sort of Lux from Lux and Light from Ghost Light mashup headcanon and not getting anything interesting.

Lux was great though.

[whotheory456]

“Heaven? Heaven is out of reach for someone like me. But if I can’t climb to Heaven I’ll claw at the sky till you crawl on the ground just like me." -Petra, 'Cwej: Shutter Speed'

[whotheory456]

Honestly, I thought I’d have more to say here, but I’ll likely head back to my main blog soon. It’d be awesome if more people shared their theories about the Chibnall Era of Doctor Who or its quirky, obscure third-party publishers. Hopefully, someone more skilled than me can take up the torch in the future.

[whotheory456]

I think Power of the Doctor is great, and I believe the Chibnall era will be more appreciated over time due to it ending on a high note—and let's be honest, people will probably forget about the Sea Devils episode anyway. I mean, I want to.

[whotheory456]

This blog was originally meant just for posting theories, but I hope you're all enjoying the other random junk I've thrown in. Oh, and hi Aristide Twain! Thanks for reading my blog—apologies for the whole BBV thing.

[whotheory456]

Sometimes I still think about the time that Doctor Who put the Brigadier's grandad on screen, and contradicted the Candy Jar novels about the name of his grandad, and so they made it so his grandmother had an affair.

Doctor Who EU can be wild stuff.

[whotheory456]

I decided to check out Academy 27 because of its Doctor Who connections, and I was pleasantly surprised—it's fantastic. Being the obsessive type, I also read the 10,000 Dawns short story that Academy 27 is based on. Turns out, Wylder managed to take a actually-very-bad short story with a great premise and transform it into an amazing series.

Every writer has to start somewhere, but it’s fascinating—and a bit strange—to witness such a public journey of growth. Seeing the same story beats revisited, but vastly improved, is pretty interesting.

Would not recommend reading "Shooting Stars Over Sunrise" though, honestly. Clunky, awkward, melodramatic, and just poorly done. Academy 27 though, yes. Good.

[whotheory456]

In Power of the Doctor UNIT just gets absolutely wrecked. Just obliterated. Just utterly desolated. So, I don't think it's a co-incidence that when UNIT returns it's all entirely new people outside of Kate Stewart. But I also have to ask: where did the new UNIT HQ come from? Because it had to be new.

The building had to already exist, is what I'm getting at. UNIT couldn't have built a new skyscraper between episodes, and it doesn't seem likely to me that they were just... already building one.

But inside the new UNIT HQ is the Vlinx, and I think that might be the key to the whole thing.

What if the new UNIT HQ was built by some alien power in an offscreen adventure, and the Vlinx was already there? UNIT defeated them, maybe by turning the Vlinx to their side in the first place, and acquiring a new, and much needed, headquarters.

[whotheory456]

I have this conspiracy theory that the entire reason that Arcbeatle Press put out "Cwej: Requiem" was so that the first Cwej story in their series wasn't "A Bright White Crack".

No offense to the writer of ABWC honestly. Not like I could have done better reintroducing a character with as much fucking baggage as Cwej does while setting the series up. And they've gotten way better with every story after that.

Now you can say "start with Requiem" though, which is like, better.

[whotheory456]

Remember that time the Cyberon Novelization was ridiculously good and everyone loved it, and people were talking about nutso it was that the Cyberon Novelization was stellar, and the short stories in the back of the book were fire too, and then nothing good with the Cyberon was ever released again?

Pepperidge farm remembers. Sigh.

[whotheory456]

I like to imagine that that time that "The Nari" showed up in that Dionus audio that it wasn't even a rip off of the Rani or a clone or an amnesiac Rani or whatever, it was just a lady named like Kylene or something who was pulling an elaborate prank that went too far, and then ran off after it got too serious.

Just like "sweet going to absolutely prank this Dionus guy"

Then sleeps with him and is like

[whotheory456]

I want to know: Who do you think the Enemy is in the War in Heaven in the EDAs / Faction Paradox?

What is your favorite theory?