All New Who

{{ The special is 5 minutes long and the official synopsis is-

Spoiler:

}}

{{ The Children in Need Special, fun if deliberately cannon breaking, good to see Julian Bleach without the Davros makeup}}

cant wait.

{{ Well pretty much all hope for the future of this show just left for me after this from RTD, 30 years in care and Ive rarely heard something so patronising and insulting to disabled folk as this nonsense. I fear the show i grew up on is gone. }}

What the fuck is he talking about? disabled associated with evil? Is he mad or just so far up his own ass that he doesn't realize how terrible that sounds. The guy has lost it.

{{ I used to look after a lad in a wheelchair from when he was about 11 till he was 14, massive Who fan, went as Davros every Halloween and loved doing it, got so excited, looked forward and prepared for it from start of September every year, and his chair had to be right to the show. And everyone who saw him was only ever full of happiness to see him and to see his outfit. Was nothing but a positive experience for him all round and all the crafting, and painting he did in the making of it was all part of the stuff he did for fun that later led to him going to art college.

I don't even know anyone who associates Davros with being disabled (until RTD put the idea in everyones head), a lot of NUWho viewers assumed he was half-Dalek, as the 'chair' element looks like the lower half of a Dalek.

Older fans know the accident that disfigured him happened quite late in his life, he was already an established scientific genius, and despite losing most of his lower body, the use of one arm, the loss of his sight, have 90% body burns, he still managed to invent a whole new means of transportation that also combined a life support system. Making him a hero of the people among whom the war had damaged many, he made a revolution in disability mobility on Skaro. But like everything on Skaro its military purpose was first in Davros mind and when he creates the first two sets of Daleks, the Mark 2 and the Mark 3 they are not called Daleks, but 'Travel Machines', betraying their routes as an aid to the ill and disabled giving them back their mobility, and disguising their real intended use. Davros is sitting in the Mark 1 Travel Machine. It doesn't look like the lower half of a Dalek because its design is based on a Dalek, it's the other way round, the Dalek design is based on Davros own Travel Machine.
This progression makes perfect narrative sense and gives Davros his inspiration for the Daleks.

At no point in the story of Davros being injured and making his Travel Machine is there 'evil' in the process. There is no association between the chair or his disabilities and evil. He isn't evil because he is disabled, or even out of resentment for it happening (his people have been at war for over a thousand years, it's every day for bombs to fall, death and injury are just a way of life) he never even seems to have seen his accident or injuries as an issue on any personal level so much as just another problem to solve and overcome with science and application. He's a bone fide genius and egomaniac.

So yeah I hate changing him, now he's just another generic old white evil guy we've seen a million of.

And where does it end, the Daleks are also in 'travel machines' that likewise provide life support, are they now problematic? What about Cybermen, surely offensive to amputees and those who have artificial prosthetic limbs? Silurians- you know you can get a medical condition makes your skin go scaly looking, so they're out so as not to offend those people, Sontarans, offensive to dwarves and wide headed bald men, Weeping Angels are blasphemous (Ah sorry forgot someone like RTD doesn't mind offending the 'right' sort of people so the Angels are probably still in, just don't expect a scary Muhammed statue any time soon), and can't ever have Missy or another female Master again or you'll offend all women by associating them with evil.

And go to other scifi and Vader would be out, offensive to anyone with respiratory issues and burns victims in one package! Got to go. Where does this thinking end?}}

{{ Something to remind us of what the show was and can be, and more amazingly every single word written by only one man }}

I am offended by the Slitheen, it makes people who fart a lot seem evil.

I decided not to watch the video, but I am thoroughly annoyed as I was feeling optimistic about the reboot and enjoyed falling for all the obvious nostalgia traps while trying to avoid spoilers and vidoes and such. 

Will still force the family to watch. 

{{ Here's the relevant bits of what he had to say about Davros, Amarie-

"There is a problem with the Davros of old, in that he's a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that and a lot of us on the Production Team had problems with that - associating evil with disability....so we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair, or his support unit which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like. This is 2023, this is our lens, this is our eye, things used to be in black and white they are not in black and white any more, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now. And that we are absolutely standing by."

I'll watch and see, and it might even be good in its own way. But more and more I suspect the show I grew up on and have been watching for the past 50 years is over and gone. A new 'rebooted' version with its name will be on, but I don't think it'll ever feel the same. I hope I'm wrong, but nonsense like this doesn't give me much hope. }}

That sounds very, very weird. Hope it's not as stupid as it sounds.

{{ No it's as stupid as it sounds. We've gone from iconic villain to meh.

Same actor here in both cases, but one is a forgetable generic Dr Evil type old white evil genius we've seen a million versions of, and the other is a unique iconic scifi evil genius with a distinct and instantly recognisable silhouette, suitable to be the creator of a race like the Daleks-



Thing about Davros and the Daleks, something not shared by RTD it seems, is Daleks don't have any concept of exterior beauty or ugliness, in that sense they are into complete equalities, whether something is able-bodied or not, beautiful or not are of zero interest to them. The Daleks don't care what Davros looks like or that he needs a mobile life support, so do they, but even that aside all they care about is that Davros is racially, genetically pure, he's pure Kaled. That's all that matters to a Dalek, you're either one of them or you're different, and if you're different you are inferior and so either should serve the Daleks as their slaves until you're worked to death, or be dismissed as of no use and simply exterminated on the spot with no hope of mercy or compassion ever being given. That's what scary about them, it's not that they are slimy tentacle mutants, or that their creator got injured in the war and was disabled, that has noting to do with it. It's their relentless pursuit and belief in genetic purity that's scary. And that has nothing to do with notions of disability and evil.
Davros being in the chair gives the narrative reason he was inspired to preserve the Kaled race in such devices, and gives him a distinct scary look that visually ties him directly to his creations, making a visual connection with the chair and the lower half of a Dalek cementing the racial connection as well as acting as a reminder both of what the Kaleds once were and of what their endless hate fuelled nuclear and chemical war did to them. Davros is a living embodiment of the horrors of war. His driving motivation, twisted as it became, was to end the war and the suffering of his people.
Taking him out the chair and without any physical effects from the war he is so desperate to end reduces a lot of what makes him interesting as a character.}}

That's just great... Such originality by RTD and crew. We watched Dead Snow this weekend. Norwegian horror comedy with zombie nazis. Great fun. That guy there... No fun.

{{ A reminder of what we had in this scene 12 has just revealed to a dying Davros that the Time Lords were not wiped out in the Time War, that he found a way to save them, I guess this is now the last story in which we will ever see proper Davros again, and I wish now Moffat actually had just had Davros die in it, be better than what's happening to him now it seems -



Of course Davros was instantly iconic from the beginning.



And although when RTD originally brought him back I thought he made him, much as he did the Master, too insane and shouty, he did write one good scene with 10 and Davros-



Making it all the greater shame he has now sunk to shredding the fandom apart once more, rewriting the show (did they learn nothing from the backlash to Chibnal doing that?) over some stupid, poorly thought attempt to do good.   }}

{{ Spoiler free reviews are out for the first of the Specials Star Beast and are generally positive, though more than one mentions 'preachy', and I found it interesting that one of the harshest and most worrying sounding reviews of it comes from the BBC's own tv and film review section, 'Culture'- }}

'it's difficult to imagine even the most fervent fan being anything other than a little underwhelmed by this first special. If you can measure Who episodes on a scale that runs from "whimsical" to "terrifying", this is very much at the whimsical end of the range. There's a twist you can see coming from galaxies away, and the comedy consists mostly of Donna shouting "What the hell…".... if you've been indifferent to Who, this won't be the episode to convert you. And if you're altogether new to the show, you'll probably wonder what all the fuss has been about.
And although the show has always been progressive – look at the number of stories over the decades about, for example, threats to the environment – this special is preachy, and by the end, little more than a delivery system for The Message.'

Oh no.... 

 'preachy'. If the BBC says that, them being the epicenter of revisionist nutjobbery, then it must be very, very, bad. sounds very much like RTD is determined to outdo Chibbers. This after all is RTDs field of expertise. I bet he got offended by all the criticism of 'The Message' and decided to double triple down on the woke. Weak stories, lots of clubbing you over the head with political agendas.

{{ Well not long till we will soon know- from the more positive reviews it seems that the Rose character being trans is 'not shied away from' but many reviews praise RTD for how he handles it and how well written the characters are, so kind of what we expected - that the agenda would remain but be better written. But its still preaching.

I just wish we could go back to when the idea was first to write a good entertaining quality Who tale, full of adventure, excitement and eccentricity, and any political or social agenda came secondary if at all. It seems now the show is merely a useful vessel for the writer to deliver their pet social and political messaging, and that's a shame and to its detriment. }}

That did sound a wee bit more positive. Not much, but a little bit.

{{ I don't expect it to be less than very well written, I just wish we could move away from all the divisive social and political stuff. It's not that Who hasn't had messaging before, but it used to be more subtle and less prominent, and it didn't have a side, sometimes the message was left sometimes right. But most of the time it was neither, it was universal.
I think that's one of the reasons I prefer Moffat era, it's refreshingly lacking in agendas and preaching as the themes of his writing of Who are far broader and universal than politics or passing social fads  - the role of memory in creating a sense of self and how that effects people through dementia or dealing with the pain of loss for example, without ever once directly addressing the subject or having to preach, it just raises the issues, asks questions of the viewer through the narrative and characters and offers it to them for consideration, and I prefer that to being force fed an agenda.

If you take say the Empty Child two parter as an example from when Moffat was writing for RTD- it has the 'progressive' elements; Nancy the underage teenage mum shunned by society and forced through shame to hide that she even is the mother, even from the child,  the question of if the Doctor 'dances' with it being a euphemism for sex, the intro of Captain Jack so sexually liberal it probably needs a new word for it, and excluding Jack it has two other gay characters as side characters- Algie the British soldier and the guy who owns the house they're stealing food from, there are more gay characters outside the main cast than straight, it has all the trappings of agenda. And the interesting thing is its lack of taking sides, thats for the viewer - in the case of Jack we see his omnisexuality and homosexual relationships as with Algie, presented in a positive light, but we see how societal shame against single teenage mothers forces Nancy into hiding the truth, but Nancy herself uses that same societal shame against homosexuality to blackmail the homeowner when he catches her stealing his food. It's realistic, but the narrative doesn't comment on the right or wrong of it in either case.
The story doesn't care, as it isn't about any of that, they are just elements that are present, the story is a great scary Who tale about a spooky kid in a gas mask. The narrative has no social or political message beyond it's good when nice things happen sometimes. It's far more interested in just telling a good Who story first and foremost, and the other elements such as Jack have to fit and function in that story first before their personal agendas. But the story has top billing ever time. The issue is when the agenda gets top billing over the story, and story only serves the delivery of the message. Then its crossed the line from storytelling with a moral, to just lecturing the audience.}}

When they shout, "were here! were queer! we are coming for your kids!"

Believe them.

{{ OK I like this. As part of the 50th celebrations they did the docudrama Adventure In Spae and Time about the shows creation and Hartnell's time as the Doctor, and at the end there is a scene where he looks up from the TARDIS console as he prepares to film his last scene and there is the 11th Doctor smiling back at him.
Matt was superimposed into that shot with the idea whenever it was repeated they could easily replace him with whoever the current Doctor his. And this is the first time its happened. }}

Really enjoyed that. But yeah, the worst thing was the in-your-face preachy gender identity bollox.

Wonderful to see them together again.

So a few random live thoughts as I watch the special (I had already seen most of the plot leaked online):

Spoilers:

So yeah I enjoyed it to certain extent...but not really not sure how I feel...this was very much an episode aimed squarely at RTD fans with all his old tropes and style on full display with more money this time...I may feel differently depends on how the next two specials are, but not really feeling it so far.

huh, no next time trailer?

6/10 i.m.o.

Speaking honestly, as someone who isn't a huge fan of the RTD/Tennant era, if there aren't any other doctors/references to Moffat/Chibnall era who in the next two specials it will kinda ruin the anniversary for me.

I'm not going to judge based on one episode so far, but it really feels like RTD's approach hasn't changed at all this second time round, I'm still not very hyped for the future.

Very intrigued to read what Petty makes of it, I'm guessing you feel similarly to me?