Thoughts on Why I Oppose The Thirteenth Doctor

In approximately 24 hours, Jodie Whittaker will make Her official debut as the Thirteenth Doctor on Doctor Who, becoming the first Woman to play the part.

It might surprise people that I do not oppose a Female Doctor per se.

I oppose the reasons we've been given, and therein lies the issue.

If we had a Female Doctor for genuine story purposes then I do not see an issue. However, let's be honest with each other: 'plot' was not the given reason we had this change.

The reason we got this change was simple: a group of fans of the revived series (herein referred to as 'NuWho'), along with a very activist press, decided that having a male play this role for over 50 years on television, film and audio was a sign of overt sexism. As such, they declared that "it is time" to have a Female Doctor for the sake of equality.

Little girls needed a Female Doctor so they could see Females on television. They, in the minds of these fans and activists, could never enjoy the show with males in the title role, despite having done so for well over half a century (ten years if you count NuWho only).

This change was not done because the series needed to have a Female lead. It was done as a response to those Social Justice Warriors who believe that there was something intrinsically wrong with men playing this particular role.

I genuinely do not know when having a male play a part that was written as male became such a crisis that it required a revamping to where Women needed to take that part. It seems curious to me that females have been dressing as the many incarnations of The Doctor with little to no issue until now. If these same cosplayers now say that they needed a Female Doctor so they could dress up as Her at a convention, I would say that their priorities seem a little askew.

Oh, I've heard all the comments: that somehow I'm afraid of women, that I'm opposed to equality, that I cannot accept a Female being in charge, that Doctor Who has long-established gender swaps, that no one objected when said gender-swaps were done before.

Sorry, but those arguments fall dead thanks to the production team itself.

When Whittaker was announced, she declared that she was excited to take on the role "as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human...". Note that her first thought was 'as a feminist'. Why begin with such a statement, unless the actor in question sees her casting as a political statement?

Whittaker, in the beginning, did offer an olive branch to those who saw her casting as a politically-motivated decision or at least one to keep with the British Broadcasting Corporation's 'Gender Equity Policy'. "I want to tell fans not to be scared by my gender".

I could argue that 'scared' is a curious word to use, just as 'feminist' is a curious word to use if your casting had no ulterior motives, but at least she acknowledged that her casting would not be universally praised.

Sadly, since her initial statements Whittaker now has taken a more antagonistic tone, slightly pompous and as dismissive as when woke male feminist Chris Hardwick from The Nerdist ridiculed those who opposed the gender swaps as essentially pathetic losers "who've never screwed anything".

As a side note, Hardwick is the type to say "Believe All Women" when it comes to accusations of sexual assault/harassment, until he becomes the one accused, then his fans who nod like bobbleheads at every pronouncement he makes can call that particular woman everything from a 'bitter ex' to a total 'psycho bitch'.  Go figure.

Whittaker for example has said that "it's a mistake to think that the only heroes are white men", so therefore we needed her to be cast in the role of The Doctor so 'little girls and boys could see that heroes can be male and female'. 

I'm not that much older than Whittaker, but I grew up watching or went on later to watch such shows as The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, Dark Angel, La Femme Nikita, The X-Files, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Star Trek: Voyager.

Each, from what I remember, had female leads, all of them strong and more than able to stand on her own. One can make the argument that Agent Scully from The X-Files was a costar and not the actual lead, but she was just as important a part of the series as Agent Fox Mulder.

I also know that the same fans whom Hardwick ridicules as ignorant for not agreeing with him also think highly of such females as Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise, Ripley from the Alien series, The Bride from Kill Bill, Katniss from The Hunger Games and both Black Widow and Agent Carter from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Add to that Supergirl, Lara Croft, Jyn Erso and Rey from the recent Star Wars films and despite what Whittaker genuinely believes, the world was not starved for positive female action/science-fiction leads.

Again and again I point out that these same 'sexist' fans who are lectured to about how they cannot accept a female lead on Doctor Who due to misogyny or sexism consistently rank the Doctor's former Companion of Romana as among the Best of All Time.

If Doctor Who was really interested in having a positive female lead/role model, the solution was simplicity itself: bring back the character of Romana for a guest appearance/story arc on Doctor Who, then spin her off for her own adventures. You would have the best of both worlds: a female-led show that kept to Canon AND had a show with a ready-made fan base.

A theoretical Romana: The New Adventures would have had many male fans watching with it having nothing to do with 'eye-candy'. It instead would be due to the respect and admiration many Classic Who fans have for the character, one based on her intelligence, elegance and heart.

However, Romana was never going to be brought back for the main reason that incoming Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall wanted a Female Doctor from the word 'go'.

It is highly amusing to see all those who tell me 'the best actor was cast and it just happened to be a woman' now scramble to make sense of this line of thought when Chibnall has openly said he always wanted a Female Doctor and that it was a condition of him taking the showrunner position. Essentially, the fix was always in, giving more credence to the idea that the casting of a Female Doctor was motivated by purely sociopolitical reasons.

As a side note, there could never be a Romana: The New Adventures for the sole reason that NuWhovians, the main target audience of the show now, have never heard of the character. As such, they would have no point of reference.

Then there's the whole 'gender-swapping regenerations are long-established on Doctor Who'. "Long-established" is a curious term, given that the concept was first introduced in 2011 with The Doctor's Wife. Since then, we've seen two gender-swapping Time Lords: The Master into The Mistress or 'Missy' and The General from an old white man to a not-so-old black woman.

As a side note, it's curious that when The General in Hell Bent regenerated into a woman, she made surprisingly misandry remarks, talking about how 'unnatural' it was when she was a man and complaining about coping with so much ego. 

It is curious that all these gender-swapping regenerations have been, as of this writing, in one direction: male-to-female. We have yet to have a female Time Lord regenerate into a man. Until such a time as we see that, I won't accept that this 'long-established' routine was not the opening steps to have this ultimate move to a Female Doctor.

I have not seen every Doctor Who story, but in the Classic series, I cannot recall a time when gender-swapping was common or even possible, let alone mentioned as de rigueur among Time Lords. In fact, the opposite was believed. A general theory about Time Lord regenerations held that Female Time Lords were better able to control or even manipulate their regenerations because they were exclusively Female.

Romana's transformations in Destiny of the Daleks, along with a comment by the Female Time Lord villain The Rani about how she 'at least could choose her appearance' in Time & The Rani if memory serves correct lent credence to that theory.

Then again, that was Classic Doctor Who, which for many NuWho fans, is irrelevant to the show they watch and sob over. 

Circling back to the main point of this essay, everything about the casting of Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor points to this being motivated by the desire to curry favor with SJWs and to promote an agenda versus actually serving the series.

There's the trailer where The Doctor literally breaks a glass ceiling. There's her first line of dialogue upon seeing Herself for the first time, "Ah, Brilliant", which I misheard as "Oh, Berlin".

That last one is a puzzle: after being a male for thousands of years and eleven regenerations, The Doctor's first reaction to seeing himself as a Woman for the first time ever is "Ah, Brilliant". It isn't genuine shock? It isn't surprise? Instead, it's to remark how 'brilliant' it is?

Again, I'm not buying that.

I've had my say. I am not opposed to a Female Doctor, and I will give Jodie Whittaker and the new production team a chance. This is important given that Chris Chibnall now gets his chance to recreate the show in his image.

I figure few NuWho fans know that when Doctor Who was first on the air, none other than Chris Chibnall appeared on the show Open Air in 1986, where and when at age sixteen years old he questioned then-Doctor Who showrunner John Nathan-Turner and writers Pip & Jane Baker on the abysmal nature of that season/series.

I can imagine Chibnall at that age saying to himself, 'I can do much better than they can'. Now, thirty-plus years later, he has his chance. He can remake Doctor Who in his own image, and I think he is damn well going to try.

He has declared there will be no returning monsters/characters from the series, Classic or NuWho. He has a reworked musical theme. He also gets the historic note of having the First Female Doctor, something never done before and which Chibnall insisted be a condition of him accepting the showrunner position.

He essentially is doing a second soft reboot to the series (the first soft reboot a mere two series/seasons ago with the intentionally-named The Pilot). The show has been struggling creatively and ratings-wise. The YA spin-off Class flopped big-time. Despite the much-vaunted Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese Shanghai Media Group Pictures company, Doctor Who is not guaranteed to be produced for five more seasons/series.

It is barely hanging on, with diminished interest among the general public. The decision to cast a Female Doctor has divided the fanbase, some swearing off the show forever and Chibnall, Whittaker and various media outlets showing contempt for these fans.

Chibnall, Whittaker, these media outlets and those who cheer them on insist that those who left either in disgust or boredom with the show will be replaced with those who think it is all wonderful. Some of the more optimistic insist that ratings will increase.

I do not believe any bump that Series/Season 12 gets from the First Female Doctor will hold. I do not believe that those who celebrate The First Female Doctor will stay longer than three episodes at most. For them, it was never about the show itself. It was about making a statement, and now that that statement has been made, they will move on.

Once the novelty wears off, will Doctor Who Series/Season 12 get more viewers and hold the ones that stayed, let alone win over those who left? Chibnall, Whittaker and Hardwick don't want those who left to return. They've made that clear.

The question now is, 'will the ratings increase?' I believe initially they will, but I hold that the ratings for Episode 6 will be the measure of whether Doctor Who survives beyond an unlucky Series 13. By then, the show will be more than half done, the Female Doctor no longer a newsworthy event. If they remain flat or worse, go down, the show will not survive to let Whittaker regenerate into...a Black Doctor? An Indian Doctor? An Indian Woman Doctor?

If they manage to survive to a 14th Doctor, they cannot go back to a white male lest they be accused of re-instituting the bigotry Whittaker's Doctor was meant to abolish. They then open themselves to accusations that having a black male or a woman of color Doctor is a stunt, something that those who opposed a Female Doctor in the first place said it was.

I expect reviews for The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Whittaker's debut story, to be rhapsodic no matter how good or bad the episode is. Who knows: maybe I will end up liking it. Reviews for this episode will be irrelevant. Ratings will tell the real story, and even then, it is the ratings for Episode 6 which I believe will reveal the state of Doctor Who.

Ultimately, while I wish the show well, I cannot muster much enthusiasm for the way Chris Chibnall wants to live out his teenage fantasies about how he knows better when it comes to Doctor Who.

The Doctor Is Out: Why 'Doctor Who' Is Not My Doctor Who

This is a sad tale, a tale of divorce: my divorce from Doctor Who 2.0 (generally known as NuWho).  It's one I have shared with others, but now I put this out so that everyone know why I have, very sadly and painfully, come to see that the current version of Doctor Who is Doctor Who in name only and has nothing to do with the 1963-1989 series that I so loved.

When Rose premiered in 2005, I was very excited.  At long last, Doctor Who returns!  I know some either didn't want it to return or wanted it to return to its previous format, but I was not concerned about that.  I was just happy that a show I loved as a kid on PBS was coming back.

I cajoled a friend who had BBC America to let me watch it, and at the time, I was not disappointed.  Rose was not the greatest episode, but I enjoyed it, as I did the first season for the most part.

When Christopher Eccleston left and David Tennant took his place, my enjoyment and delight in Doctor Who, along with my firm acceptance of it being Canon to the original series (Classic Who) continued unabated. I had essentially become a fanboy.

EVERY episode was THE GREATEST EPISODE EVER!

Then came Love & Monsters, and Doctor Who died.

The plot was idiotic.
The characters were awful.
The monster was both idiotic and ugly.
The oral sex joke was obscene.

Love & Monsters, simply put, horrified me in a way I had never been horrified before.  It shocked me, not just in its awfulness but in its nastiness, even hatred towards Doctor Who fans.  Far from being a 'love letter' to the fanbase, Love & Monsters delighted in ridiculing them, portraying them as virtual losers.

For the first time in my Doctor Who-watching experience, I was figuratively and literally disgusted.  I'd seen some bad Classic Who episodes such as Timelash and Delta & The Bannermen, but they were more clumsy than downright grotesque as Love & Monsters was.

I was stunned, shocked, and moreover, fiercely jolted from my unquestioning fandom. It was a genuine shock, but in a sense a good one in that from that moment on, I no longer accepted or delighted in everything NuWho.  I began to reevaluate whether my support and enjoyment of what had come between Rose and Love & Monsters was more a result of sensibility than sense.

Love & Monsters, I've often said, was so horrifying that I refused to watch Fear Her because its trailer was part of Love & Monsters, and while I stumbled into Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, essentially I quit watching Doctor Who at that moment.

It didn't help that the fabled meeting of the Daleks and the Cybermen was a letdown, but that's for another day.

When I learned that David Tennant was leaving and being replaced by Matt Smith, I decided to give Doctor Who a second chance.  It has nothing to do with Smith himself.  I just decided that perhaps enough time had passed for me to metaphorically 'heal' from the horror of Love & Monsters to where I could essentially start fresh.

Perhaps it was a case of 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me', but the pattern repeated itself.

I thought Smith was instantly successful as The Doctor in his debut episode and that things were starting to go right.  I was not as enthusiastic and cheering as I had been prior to Love & Monsters, but I thought things were going to get better.

I was sadly and quickly proved mistaken.

Elements of his first series/season didn't shock me, but made me slowly dislike Smith's Doctor, a dislike that grew to downright detesting.

He was billed as 'childlike', but I found him a perpetual idiot, incapable of understanding the most rudimentary things. 

It didn't help that we had the suggestion that one of his Companions, Amy Pond, essentially tried to rape the Doctor and that his other Companion, Rory (Pond) Williams kept dying more often than South Park's Kenny.

Jumping into the series with Smith's Doctor was also my first introduction to River Song, and I instantly hated her.  Perhaps she was wonderful in Silence in The Library/Forest of The Dead, but in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, I found her smug, arrogant, obnoxious, unpleasant.  I also found something that later Doctor Who episodes confirmed.

For all intents and purposes, she was the actual star of the show to where The Doctor was almost a guest character. 

River Song is the worst type of character.  She is a catchphrase machine ("Hello, Sweetie" and "Spoilers" now spouted out like it's Scripture).  She is shown repeatedly as superior to the main character.  Many times was River Song shown as smarter and more capable than The Doctor, which in turn diminished him as a character.

The nadir of all this is in the first story I saw with Song in it: The Time of Angels, where she infamously lands the TARDIS without its iconic 'whooshing' sound.  This character then smugly turns to our lead character and retorts, "It's not supposed to make that noise.  YOU leave the parking brake on".

This genuinely angered me for a few reasons.  One: that 'whooshing' sound was part of Doctor Who, so having this interloper say that somehow it wasn't rubbed me the wrong way.  Two: it showed The Doctor as a total buffoon as well as one who acquiesces to this insignificant person. Three: it elevated Song to a higher level than she merited.  Four: all other Time Lords' TARDIS made that sound, so it was really just stupid.

As Doctor Who continued, I kept watching despite my growing dislike towards it bordering on hatred.  I don't think it was 'hate-watching'. It was a genuine hope that things would get better.

They didn't.

When Smith left the series, I was hopeful that his successor, Peter Capaldi, would bring about an improvement.  Certainly, his casting was a change: gone were the pretty boys that girls (mostly) could 'squee' about.  He was also going to be a 'darker' version of The Doctor, someone who was going to be less the pleasant boyfriend or bumbling schoolteacher we'd had.

Promises, Promises...

It's hard to believe in a 'dark Doctor' when you see him fighting Robin Hood with spoons or worse, see him ride into a cheap version of Medieval Times on a tank while shredding on his electric guitar. Frankly, I cringe at that memory.

I sat watching this in perhaps not disbelief but in utter dismay, wondering where the promise and potential for this show went.

By this time, I would say I was no longer a fan.  I watched in the same way one watches a train wreck: fascinated at how disastrous it all is and more fascinated that so many both viewers and production team genuinely thought this was somehow brilliant.

It wasn't that there weren't good things within the Capaldi Era.  Certain episodes like Flatline and the unfortunately-titled Mummy on the Orient Express were flashes of brilliance and harked back to Classic Who.  However, those were few and far between.

We had to endure such horrors as Kill the Moon (or as I call it, Kill the Egg), The Caretaker, Robot of Sherwood (the one where he meets a fictional character, Robin Hood, as if he were an actual historical figure), In the Forest of the Night and Sleep No More among so many awful moments. 

The last two were so awful that my bete noire Kyle Anderson at The Nerdist, who usually shills for every Doctor Who episode as if each one were on some Citizen Kane-level of brilliance, found pretty appalling.

And now we come to The Thirteenth Doctor.

Ever since Doctor Who decided to swap the gender of the renegade Time Lord known as The Master into The Mistress or 'Missy', it was only a matter of time before we got a Female Doctor. The transition was part 'testing the waters' and part 'establishing possibility'.

'Missy' was a terrible character because She was no different from the previous version of The Master.  Essentially, She was a crazed Mary Poppins who was more annoying than genius.

However, the reason we got 'Missy' apart from some kind of 'shock/twist' with regards to The Master that was anything but a 'shock' or a 'twist' is to show that Time Lords can switch gender.

Let's put some things out here.  There is nothing wrong with a Female Doctor if it were for actual story reasons.  However, in a case of 'The Doctor doth protest too much', the transition is not being done for any other purpose than a cold sociopolitical motivation.

Each of the transitions for Time Lords that have been seen have been in one direction: male-to-female. The Master-Mistress. The General from old white guy to not-so-old black woman. The Doctor.

Even worse, in Capaldi's last episodes, he has to recite this pompous speech about how Time Lords are 'beyond gender'. Virtue-signaling par excellence.

A stronger case for gender-swaps would be made if we saw a female-to-male regeneration.  However, we have yet to see that, and it is unlikely that we will see that.  If we had the Classic Who villain The Rani, a female Time Lord, regenerate to The Rajah, then you could say that it is 'more common'.  If we had the Doctor's former Companion, the Time Lord Romana, return and become 'Roman', then perhaps we could accept the gender-swaps.

However, we didn't, and I don't expect we ever will.  Simply put, Missy and The General were part of a plan to retool the show to be more about 'social justice' than about a time traveler's adventures.

In another post, I will expand on thoughts regarding a Female Doctor, but for now I can say that while I will watch, and while I do wish Jodie Whittaker the best, I find that this show is no longer connected with the Doctor Who that ran from An Unearthly Child to Survival.

It's a whole other show that merely uses the name 'Doctor Who'. 

It has the trappings of the old Doctor Who: two-hearted alien from Gallifrey who travels through time and space in a time machine known as The TARDIS, who has 'Companions' with whom he travels with and can change appearance.

However, it rarely if ever makes reference to what came before Rose.  The BBC is promoting the new Doctor with '13 Days of Doctor Who', but despite its name this marathon will have only NuWho episodes. A true '13 Days of Doctor Who' could have one day devoted to 'the best of' each Doctor before 2005 (The Aztecs, Tomb of the Cybermen, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani, Vengeance on Varos, The Curse of Fenric) along with selected episodes of NuWho.

Instead, under new showrunner Chris Chibnall, this version seems determined to remove all aspects of what came before.

Worse, it seems equally determined to purge fans like me, who stuck with the show during its 'wilderness years' and who kept watching even after I found the quality sinking.

It does this by calling me 'sexist' for objecting to the reasons behind a Female Doctor.  Note I said 'the reasons behind a Female Doctor', not 'a Female Doctor' itself.  If an effort to convince me that this was not only natural but done for non-SJW reasons had been made, I could have come around.

Instead, I along with others was mocked, insulted, trashed, dismissed and harangued.

I had already had problems with Doctor Who: bad stories, unpleasant characters, a lack of quality. The sole Doctor Who spinoff I saw, Class, was not helpful (done in, in part, by again appealing to some social justice agenda rather than focusing on telling good stories). This change did not help in winning me over, not because I think a Female Doctor is a terrible idea, but because the motives behind it are so blatant.
 
I will watch the Whittaker version, but at this point, I do so not as a fan but as a disinterested party.

Doctor Who 2.0 is simply not for me anymore.  I used to love this version.  However, I find that I part in very bittersweet sorrow.  Truth be told, I probably would have quietly left even if they had brought in another male for the part.  The fact that the Doctor was made into a Woman in and of itself is not the killer.

It is that they hold their virtue signalling and 'moral superiority' over everything else.

I'm too disillusioned to work up enthusiasm anymore.

I used to care, but things have changed.

The Curious Case of Orson Pink

Author's Note: Nothing is more disappointing and frustrating than working long and hard on something only to have it erased by a button.  I had a much lengthier post about this situation, but somehow it got erased and I could not recover it.  I'm most frustrated because I put a lot of effort into it.  However, I'm not going to be defeatist.  I'm just going to make it shorter and more direct.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

In Listen, a well-praised Doctor Who episode, we were introduced to Orson Pink, which the episode strongly suggested was the descendant of Danny/Rupert Pink and/or Clara Oswald.

Well, in The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2 (Dark Water/Death in Heaven), Danny was killed off without having children.  Clara, perhaps, might have been pregnant (a curious Post-It reading "Three Months" was seen).  However, SHE was killed off in Face the Raven.  She was not shown to have given birth.

Now, in Listen, Orson Pink had a family heirloom, a toy soldier, ostensibly the same toy soldier Clara had given Rupert/Danny as a child.  He also talks about how his great-grandparents told him stories of time-travel.  Granted, Listen never overtly stated Orson WAS Danny and/or Clara's descendant, but it strongly suggested it.

With both Danny and Clara dead, we are faced with a quandary.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

Kyle Anderson, carrying water for The Moff, came up with some interesting theories via Twitter (before he blocked me): that time can be rewritten, that Danny wasn't dead, or that Orson wasn't Danny and Clara's descendant.

Moffat himself in Doctor Who Magazine offers that Orson may be descended from another branch of the Pink family (one of Anderson's theories).  Clara went to them and gave them the toy soldier, and from them sprung Orson.

I argue that theory makes no sense.  If it was Rupert/Danny's brother, Stanislav Pink, he himself didn't travel through time and space.  Come to think of it, neither did Danny.  He was always waiting for Clara to come back from one of her many journeys, but as far as I remember never travelled in the TARDIS itself.

Furthermore, Rupert/Danny was in a children's home (read, an orphanage).  Where were these phantom Pinks all the time he was away in this lonely place?  Or was he adopted by a family with the same surname, or adopted and allowed to keep his original last name?

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

For me, this is yet another example of a larger issue: Doctor Who's inability to have any sense of continuity.  I found a few examples to back up my idea.

Series Five's The Eleventh Hour: Amelia Pond is left waiting by the Doctor, and she grows angry and resentful regarding her "raggedy man".
Series Seven's The Angels Take Manhattan: Amelia Pond is visited by the Doctor early the next morning after her encounter, with him correctly dressed.

For the sake of an admittedly cute scene, Steven Moffat, who wrote both episodes, contradicted himself.  He also erased two season's worth of character development. What was Amy's motivation, her emotional arc?  Her anger at The Doctor for leaving her waiting as a child.  With The Angels Take Manhattan, she wasn't left waiting.  The Doctor came to her, late but now by mere hours rather than years.  Therefore, why did she have this anger for years, or say he didn't show up when he clearly did, or go on about a 'raggedy man/Doctor' when he wasn't in regeneration rags when she technically saw him last? 

Series Six's The Doctor's Wife: The TARDIS in human form tells the Doctor she picked him.
Series Seven's The Name of The Doctor: Clara is shown telling the First Doctor which TARDIS to pick.

For the sake of showing how important Clara (and by extension, Steven Moffat) is to Doctor Who, Moffat contradicted The Doctor's Wife, which was written by Neil Gaiman.

Series Seven's Asylum of the Daleks: Oswin (a version of Clara that spread through time and space), is able to say "I'm Human, I am NOT A Dalek" clearly, with the Doctor able to hear her exact words.
Series Nine's The Witch's Familiar: Clara, inside a Dalek, says "I'm human" but it ends up coming out as "I am a Dalek".

For the sake of drama, Steven Moffat, who wrote both episodes, contradicted himself.

Series Eight's Listen: a figure named Orson Pink, who looks like Danny/Rupert Pink, has as a 'family heirloom' a toy soldier that originally belonged to Danny Pink.
Series Eight's Dark Water/Death in Heaven: Danny Pink is killed, turned into a Cyberman (albeit one who cries), with no known children.
Series Nine's Face the Raven: Clara Oswald is killed, with no known children.

It cannot be both.  There can be no Orson Pink if he has no ancestors.  Orson Pink cannot exist. 

Yes, I know Moffat said Orson was descended from another branch of the Pink family, but I cannot accept speculation in Doctor Who Magazine as Canon.  As previously stated, Rupert/Danny had no known family, no known children (legitimate/illegitimate), and with him dead he could not father the child who would become Orson's grandfather (assuming Danny would have been Orson's great-grandfather who told him time-travel stories).

With Clara dead and without her having children, she could not have been related to Orson Pink either (which makes her connection to the Pink family that got her sent to the children's home where Rupert/Danny lived in all the more bizarre given she was using the TARDIS' telepathic link that should have been keyed into HER lifestream, not Danny's).

By killing off BOTH Danny Pink AND Clara Oswald, Steven Moffat, writer of two of the three stories (Listen and The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2, with Face the Raven written by Sarah Dollard with Moffat as the showrunner/producer), Steven Moffat has essentially rendered Listen illogical and impossible. 

If Danny and Clara are both dead and without having had children, Orson (assuming he was indeed meant to be the descendant of either one or both of them) cannot exist.
If Orson cannot exist, he cannot be the first human time-traveler.
If Orson cannot be the first human time-traveler, the events of Listen could not have taken place.
If the events of Listen could not have taken place, Clara could not have gone to Gallifrey to inspire the future Doctor on his course to being the Time Lord he grew to be.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

I cannot find a way, a logical way, to reconcile the contradictions and discontinuity between the events of Listen and those of both The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2 and Face the Raven.  At least Back to the Future, which faced a similar situation with the future children perhaps not being born due to changes in the past, made things logical.  Doctor Who can't be bothered to do that.  More on that in a bit.

Going on to the other contradictory episodes, one thing is clear.

It cannot be both. 

IF Oswin could say "I'm not a Dalek.  I'm Human" and have it come out as such (despite being in reality a converted Dalek), how is it possible then for Clara, who is merely inside a Dalek, to have the exact same words come out completely differently?

It cannot be both. 

IF the TARDIS chose the Doctor, why would Clara tell him which TARDIS to take?

It cannot be both. 

IF the Doctor failed to return to Amelia until twelve years later, how was it he was shown returning the very next morning to a waiting Amelia?  Why would she maintain all that anger and keep referring to him as "the raggedy man/Doctor" if technically, the last time she saw him, he was perfectly dressed and not in the disheveled clothes from his regeneration?

And those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.  Therefore, I ask again...

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

No television show gets away with such massive continuity errors as Doctor Who.  Moreover, no television show not only gets away with such massive continuity errors as Doctor Who, but actually gets praised for them as Doctor Who.

It's a curious thing to me that programs of all stripes, even soap operas, strive to maintain continuity, but Doctor Who not only doesn't bother to, but that this lack of continuity is seen as one of its strengths, not weaknesses.  I remember well when after asking about points of logic after The Day of The Doctor theatrical screening, the exasperated NuWhovian replied to me, "It's NOT SUPPOSE to make sense!  It's British!".  I can argue with the fact that it's British being the reason for its lack of logic, but from my vantage point this captures all that is wrong with NuWho and its fans (including professional rimmer Kyle Anderson).

Doctor Who, for them, is not about logic.  It's not about stories tying together as a cohesive whole.

It's about the emotional response.  It's about which Doctor Who episode can make them cry the most, the hardest, the loudest. 

I for the life of me cannot understand why NuWhovians would take the answer about how Orson Pink can be when Danny Pink is no longer with us either seriously or rationally.  I believe plot holes and continuity questions should be answered within the confines of an episode, not a writer's commentary in a magazine. 

Imagine if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, rather than answer the mystery in a Sherlock Holmes story, opted to give readers tidbits and then take to The Strand to give the answers.  Then again, most Sherlockians hold that ACD wasn't as good a writer of Holmes as Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, or even really bother to read Canon (which is thoroughly unimportant to them).

Yes, again and again Doctor Who contradicts itself, sometimes within the same series/season.  And again and again NuWhovians and critics don't seem too bothered with that.  Moffat takes the applause, the praise, the awards, but when it comes down to it he cannot keep things straight (not even his own writing).  However, he didn't have to worry about that then and doesn't have to worry about that now.

I figure we'll never get an answer to my original query, or on how Sherlock Holmes survived The Reichenbach Fall, or how a Dalek can say one thing one day, and NOT say the exact same thing another day, or when exactly the Doctor returned to Amy Pond, or how the "Ponds" could see themselves happily in the future in one episode only to be zapped back in time in another episode, or how Clara could read 'the name of The Doctor' in a book but have this big mystery built around 'the name of The Doctor' when the answer was so easily available (or who actually wrote The History of The Time War and manage to include 'the name of The Doctor' in it).

So long as you cried...

Alas, my question, in a shorter version than my original (but still wordy) essay, remains The Unanswered Question:

 

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK? 

Aragon vs. Anderson: The Time of The Doctor

Now that I have a few minutes free, I thought I'd go back to one of my great passions...bashing The Whorist (or as it's generally known, The Nerdist), in particular their Doctor Who reviews by one Kyle Anderson.

Mr. Anderson (now doesn't that sound sinister) in my view, has rarely if ever met a Doctor Who post-Rose story that he hasn't loved. I don't mean liked. I mean L-O-V-E-D, to where that particular episode is the Best Doctor Who Episode of All Time...until the next episode when THAT becomes the Best Doctor Who Episode of All Time. It's gotten to be almost a point of parody to see how Anderson rarely finds fault with a Doctor Who episode. I don't mean just to nitpick on a few things. I mean give a bona-fide negative review. Even I, someone who has been vociferous in my condemnation for many NuWho episodes, do admit when I see a good one (like Flatline or Mummy on the Orient Express). Anderson, however, will almost always find something to wax rhapsodic about, even on something as atrocious as In the Forest of the Night.

I was intrigued by this, so a little research was required. I went as far back as I could regarding Anderson's Doctor Who reviews, and the earliest one I could find was the Series/Season Six opener, The Impossible Astronaut. What I've done is taken Kyle Anderson's review verbatim, and offered my own 'translation' to the text to see what Anderson is, in my view, really saying. I also throw in my own thoughts as to what is being said.

I hope this will be a fun and informative journey into the strange mind of the Functioning Nerd.

I present Part 30 of The Nerdist as Whore: The Time of The Doctor. My 'translations' are in red.

That’s that, then, is it? The Doctor is gone, long live the Doctor. I’m sure “The Time of the Doctor” isn’t what most people thought it would be,

Most people thinking and hoping it be...good.

and it might leave a percentage of fandom cold,

I put that percentage at 90-95%, or at least that percentage of fandom that has functioning brain cells and isn't satisfied with tripe (which would certainly exclude Kyle Anderson).

but from where I’m sitting, next to my mom’s Christmas tree after a festive and joyful day, I can’t think of a better way for the Eleventh Doctor to end his tenure that began a week shy of four years ago when a 20-something goofball checked in to see if he had all his appendages, if he was a girl, and if he was ginger.

Oh, sorry.  For a moment I thought Anderson was talking about himself, but I forget…he’s in his 30s.

There were lots of loose ends for writer Steven Moffat to tie up, but somehow he did it.
 

Steven Moffat tied up loose ends...into a Gordian knot that no amount of timey-wimey can unravel. 
 

Again, whether or (not) you think he did a good job of it is another matter.

Kyle Anderson knows it was a terrible job and a terrible episode and something that will be looked on in horror and sadness, but Kyle Anderson isn't about to tell you that.  In the end though, anyone else's opinion is irrelevant if that opinion is a negative one.  The (not) is added because it was not part of the original review, but I figure that's what he meant.

Love how Anderson basically says, "Screw you" to all those who can point out why there IS an island called "Easter" and thus making The Doctor's response to why "a town is called Christmas" more idiotic.  Then again, this must have been one of those "loose ends" so well-tied by "The Moff".  

I’ll say this, though: it had no potions or physics-defying not-deaths. Matt Smith got to be the hero he always was and go out with class.

 

As I said before, Moffat had a lot to do, what with us still not knowing how the Doctor ended up on Trenzalore, why the first question was the first question, why “silence will fall,” and how he could get around those pesky regenerations. It’s as though Moff creates problems just so he has to solve them, like he has a split personality when he writes.

Moffat is a psycho.  It's as thought Moff creates problems that he cannot solve logically, so he's forced to make up outlandish resolutions that make no sense, but since when has Anderson ever cared about logic on Doctor Who?  This is the same man who said that the lack of a plot was "not necessarily a bad thing".  Is it me, or did we really ever get an answer about how the Doctor ended up on Trenzalore (or how he and Clara left his own tomb) or why the first question was THE FIRST QUESTION, or why Silence Will Fall? 

Again, never trust a critic who refers to his subject by a cutesy nickname.

Granted, a lot of the problems stemmed from Series 6, which is easily my least favorite, and the least focused.

Anderson keeps insisting that Series 6 is his 'least favorite', yet he gave at least 11 out of the 13 episodes positive reviews to that same series.  You even go on to say that "despite all the griping I just did, I actually quite enjoyed the episode" (Series 6's Let's Kill Hitler).  Oh sure, you were enraged at The Wedding of River Song, but you do go on to say that "I still love the series, I still love the era, and I even generally like this episode (though a second viewing was required).  Hell, I still really like Steven Moffat’s work as a whole. He’s incredibly innovative from a storytelling standpoint and continues to make compelling, thought-provoking television.  I’m glad he’s showrunning my favorite show". Few people talk out of both sides of their mouths as much as you do. 

Honestly, how do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you say "Series 6 is easily my least favorite and least focused" and also say "I even generally like (11 out of 13 episodes) from Series 6"?

It may seem like a hand wave the way things ended up, but it’s actually very clever (if easy), and it cleans the slate rather nicely for the next fellow. More on that later.

It was a hand wave...of dismissing so much of Doctor Who's history, continuity (both Classic AND revived), and if by 'clever' you mean 'thoroughly nonsensical and insulting to the remaining members of the audience who actually THINK about things rather than cry incessantly whenever an actor is replaced, then yes, perhaps it is 'very clever'.  I'll give you this: it WAS easy. 

So, “The Time of the Doctor” is all about inevitability, fate if you will. We know, even if the characters don’t, that Smith is leaving the show and Peter Capaldi is taking over, but the whole of the series has been about changing the future.

I'd say the whole of the series has been about changing the past.

If “The Day of the Doctor” taught us nothing, it’s that not only can time be rewritten, but popular fan wisdom as well.

If "The Day of the Doctor" taught us anything, it's that only can time be rewritten, but Canon (can be) as well.  If I'd had retweeted that, old Kyle would have been enraged and blocked me.  Oh wait, he HAS!  So much for that idea that Kyle's an open-minded liberal tolerant of all views.

If you don’t like the music, change the station; If you don’t like the future, make a new one.

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey strikes again!

How does the Doctor reconcile not wanting to die, but knowing he must? The truth? He doesn’t, but that’s where friends come in, yet again.

 

How does Moffat reconcile the tangled mess he created by making the Eleventh Doctor the Thirteenth Doctor by fiat? The truth?  He doesn't, but that where sycophants and lackeys come in, yet again.

After being tricked into going to Trenzalore by the Church of the Papal Mainframe,

The splinter group of The Church of the Poisoned Mind...

the Doctor finds in the perpetually truthful town of Christmas the crack in the fabric of the universe, the very same crack he faced before and made “The Big Bang” happen, only this time it’s a question being asked by a long-forgotten, and long-destroyed, world: Gallifrey.

Wonder what that question is.  And WHY is there a town called Christmas?

They need to know the Doctor is who he says he is,

because there is no other way to identify the Last Gallifreyan and apparently an imposter can regenerate, though in fairness, if we go by The Impossible Astronaut a robot CAN regenerate.

and so ask the question to which the Doctor cannot lie in order to come back into this reality.

However, for him to bring the Time Lords back will mean the re-igniting of the Time War, with the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping Angels, and even the Terileptils (who get name-checked) all waiting to make it happen. The Doctor knows he can’t abandon these people, and the Papal Mainframe instigate silence to make sure he doesn’t speak the name.

Would that they have instigated silence on the whole series.

He sends Clara back to her home in the TARDIS and spends the next 300 years foiling every plot and attempt to attack the good people of Christmas, Trenzalore.

How BORING!  300 years on THAT planet.  Talk about a living death! 

It’s this action that is the perfect farewell to the Eleventh Doctor.

He’s the Doctor, more than any other, who has run away and not wanted to be tied to any one place or time. Remember how bent out of shape he got in “The Power of Three” after just a couple of days?

What I DO remember about The Power of Three is that it was the first episode of an astounding 13 positive Doctor Who reviews in a row...so far.  Now, I'd like to ask this Doctor Who expert, who knows all things Whovian, didn't the Third Doctor repeatedly try to escape his enforced exile on Earth yet managed to function without turning into a tottering old nutjob who does goofy dances and Punch-and-Judy shows?  HE wasn't particularly fond of being tied to any one place or time either, but then that's Classic Who, of which neither you or the average NuWhovian really give a damn about.     

So here is he, the Doctor who wouldn’t stay still, who lived many hundreds of years more than we’ve ever seen onscreen, compelled to stay put to save each and every life he can. He isn’t pissed off that he has so much more to do in this form; this is his last form,

REALLY?  I thought the Doctor could regenerate twelve times for a total of thirteen incarnations, yet isn't he only the twelfth version?  Oh, now let's see.  There's the "War" Doctor who both COUNTS and DOESN'T count, reasoning being since HE didn't call himself "The Doctor", he can skip the whole numerical order business.  Then The Formerly Tenth Doctor managed to regenerate...into himself, a neat trick the Doctor or any other Time Lord couldn't do until Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat decided they both knew better, thus making himself the Tenth AND Eleventh, or is it Eleventh AND Twelfth Doctor? 

I suppose it DOES take an 'analytical critic' to try and make sense of the disorder Moffat created.

and he’s going to save every single person he possibly can, even if that’s only in one place. He’s always had a scheme or two, but this time it’s just him standing in between innocents and death. Finally, it’s Clara, who finds her way back to him for a third time,

Finally, it's Clara, who clearly can't take a hint about how nobody wants her around...

who is able to save him by beseeching the Time Lords from through the crack.

who is able to save him by essentially begging the Time Lords, "Please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top?"

And it works, because who else can eventually free them?

 

There’s tons of other stuff worth mentioning here before I get to the final scene, so here we go: I love that the Doctor makes friends with a Cyberman’s head. Adorable.

I know when I watch Doctor Who, 'adorable' is the quality I'm looking for.

I love how well Moffat writes Clara,

and how well Jenna Coleman plays her.

She’s the most compelling companion in ages.

Clara is the most erotically gratifying Companion in ages.

I love how everybody in Christmas draws pictures of their hero and celebrates him.

Who needs to celebrate that Jewish kid on Christmas?  It’s not like Jesus Christ has anything to do with Christmas…

I love how they figured out a way around Matt having shaved his head. Genius.

Bloody HELL, Anderson!  The Doctor said he shaved his head because he was bored.  BORED!  How in the name of all that is good and pure does THAT constitute 'genius' on ANY level?  It's obvious that Anderson and I have widely differing views on what constitutes 'genius'.

I didn’t much care for the nudity joke, especially because it didn’t seem to matter beyond the initial joke, but it didn’t spoil things too much. I loved the puppet show with the Monoid puppet. I loved seeing old, senile Eleven, muttering to himself.

How that was different from young, senile Eleven, muttering to himself, Anderson does not say.

And most of all, I loved seeing Matt Smith being Matt Smith.

And most of all, I loved seeing Matt Smith make the Doctor into a total buffoon. 

Now, for the final scene. It was perhaps the most important thing to me that “The Time of the Doctor” did two things: 1) make sense on its own terms without being too complicated (which it did about 80%), and 2) to allow the Eleventh Doctor to go out with dignity and both appreciate the sadness of leaving without casting a pall over the new. The second passed with flying colors.

What about the first thing, Kyle?  What about the first? Oh, 80% of the time.  Methinks someone doth failed math…Now, for the final scene.  It was perhaps the most important thing to me that "The Time of the Doctor" do two things: make sense on its own terms with being nonsensical (which it failed to do) and to allow the Eleventh...or Twelfth...or Thirteenth...Doctor to go out with dignity and both appreciate the sadness of leaving without casting a pall over the new.  As much as I detested the Smith Era of Doctor Who, even he deserved better than the horror he was put through (and that he put us through). 

Smith returned to his young self in order to say goodbye to Clara,

because...the old-age makeup Smith was given was not just thoroughly appalling, but hilarious too.  That and the fact that NuWho fans cannot bother to think about how this up-to-now impossible ability to degenerate to your younger self no other Doctor could do, but oh, why bother...Moffat pays Anderson's bills and he'll call anything "The Moff" comes up with brilliant, logic be damned.

but he also sees the first face his face saw with a surprise appearance by Karen Gillan.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't THIS technically the first face his face saw?

It was a bit hokum, but still really nice.

I cried.

Then, the Eleventh Doctor says his final words, and they aren’t “I don’t want to go;” they’re his (and Smith’s and Moffat’s) way of saying that remembering THIS Doctor shouldn’t mean casting aspersions on any other Doctor and that each incarnation is as important as the last or the next.

I really don't remember The Eleventh...Twelfth...Thirteenth...X...Doctor's final words, just that he removed that damn bow tie and all these morons were in wails of tears about seeing (if they started watching with Rose) their THIRD regeneration.  You'd think that by now, NuWhovians would not be brought to fits of unbridled anguish by a casting change.  The final words, I imagine, were to try to convince NuWhovians, long used to pretty, young, hot guys like David Tennant and Matt Smith (though who exactly has erotic dreams starring Chinny-Chin-Chin I can't imagine), will have to make due with someone old enough to be their grandfather.

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.  Oh, SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY, does he ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS?!

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.  Talk amongst yourselves, I need a few minutes...
 

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.  I'm sorry, I can't breathe...

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was. 

World leaders react to Kyle Anderson's thoughts on the 'classy' nature of the Eleventh Doctor (and his attempts to force logic on the irrational with the "Eleventh Doctor but Thirteenth Form" ass-kissing/covering)...

It was classy, exactly as classy as the Eleventh Doctor (but the Thirteenth Form) always was.  The Arab World reacts to Kyle Anderson's 'analytical criticism'...

Oh, sure.  Gaddafi was bonkers, but somehow his ramblings have more intellectual heft than just about anything in Anderson's typically ebullient Doctor Who propaganda he pretends is dispassionate analysis.  They also have a better beat.

I don’t know about you all, but the Eleventh Doctor

BUT THE THIRTEENTH FORM...

was MY Doctor, and I will of course always remember the time when the Doctor was he.

They don't count.

Now, I'm a bit perplexed by that statement.  Given he's watched ALL Classic Doctor Whos, and given he probably started in the 1980s, wouldn't it be more logical to say that Davison, Colin Baker, or Sylvester McCoy were HIS Doctor?  He can say Smith is his favorite Doctor (and I can see why, given both were, in the words of a Doctor Who Magazine reader, "so dimwitted"), but HIS Doctor, like the first Doctor he encountered...  

BUT! We get our first, very fleeting glimpse of the next Doctor, Peter Capaldi, who is just as intense and strange as we probably expected.

BUT! We get our first, very fleeting glimpse of the next Doctor (because by this point no one really knows what version he is), Peter Capaldi, who is just as old and unattractive as we feared.

He knows the color of his kidneys and doesn’t know how to fly the TARDIS, so we’re definitely going to have a lot to get used to,

He knows the color of his kidneys (for which we feel embarrassed that the Academy Award-winner has to spout off such dreadful dialogue in his very first moments as this formerly-iconic character), so we're definitely going to have a lot to be angered and saddened over.

but we have plenty of time to make peace with our goodbyes to Matt Smith before we officially say hello to Peter Capaldi.

but we have plenty of time to get over the fact that Matt Smith is on his way to ruin another time-travelling franchise before we start feeling truly sorry for Peter Capaldi.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Smith. You were splendid.

THANK HEAVENS YOU ARE FINALLY GONE, MR. SMITH.  YOU WERE HIDEOUS. Oh, if only just about EVERY Matt Smith Doctor Who episode became 'Lost Episodes'... 

Until our paths cross again in the 60th Anniversary Special in 2023, Geronimo!

Somehow, I don't see the show lasting to the 55th Anniversary Special, let along long enough for Smith to actually make things more horrendous by returning to Doctor Who (though to be fair, he did he best to make Whovians cringe in disgust). 



SHOCKED that Kyle Anderson liked a
Doctor Who episode!

I'm more shocked that Anderson didn't say he cried, which is what Doctor Who uses to measure the quality of an episode.  I cry quite a bit while watching Doctor Who too: sometimes in laughter, sometimes in fury, sometimes in utter disgust, and every so often, in sadness that a once-great show has reduced itself to this sorry condition, and that lackeys like Anderson will keep making Pravda look like the Daily Planet.

Was it me, or did he not mention the River Song-like Tasha Lem, or how regeneration now is so big it can wipe out a Dalek fleet (which makes me wonder why the Time Lords didn't just harness all that energy to destroy the Daleks whenever a whole group of them were killed in the Time War?  Oh, well, Kyle Anderson's raison d'etre isn't to really analyze a Doctor Who episode for any flaws.  It's to promote whatever crap Moffat produces.