Less the heroes of our stories than the villains of some other bastard’s

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

122 Comments

  1. Spacewarp
    April 4, 2012 @ 12:35 am

    "Samantha Smith manages the impressive feat of being used as a cheap propaganda tool by both the USSR and the US."

    Is that really what Americans think of her now? And did they think that at the time? I would have thought that by now hindsight would have shown us that the USSR really didn't want nuclear war in the 80s, any more than the US did.

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  2. Jack Graham
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:40 am

    The moment that, for me, sums up both what you've dubbed The Problem of Susan and The Museum is the 'reunion' of the Fifth Doctor with Susan. The Hurndall Doctor introduces them, as though they're strangers. The Davison Doctor says "Yes, I know." And that's it. His only – as far as anyone knows – living family, seen again after (presumably) hundreds of years, all grown up… and he says "Yes, I know." Davison imbues it with as much warmth as he can, but its still breathtakingly casual. As such, it's a key moment in a story that is amazingly smug yet, simultaneously, utterly glib.

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  3. Anton B
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:27 am

    Absolutely spot on. You've precisely detailed why I dislike this story and yet can still watch it with something like pleasure, having to employ a curious mixture of schadenfreude and hand-wavey exculpation. However, I think there's more metatextual mileage to be had from your observation of '…how the two Doctors who are actually brought back return. Both Pertwee and Troughton play their parts as though their characters have retired – as old men coming back for one last adventure.' Isn't there here and in Troughton's next appearance a suggestion that, post regeneration, previous models of the Doctor still exist in some kind of virtual retirement home. Indeed back in The Three Doctors we see Hartnell in his clip pottering round a rose garden like some retired Oxbridge don, seemingly unaware or uncaring of his status as a discarded husk. This, coupled with the odd inference that each incarnation has also lived a seperate life before regeneration with their own foibles and interests (e.g. Five's Cricketing hobby)has always intrigued me. I wonder if this will be addressed in your Two Doctors entry?

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  4. Andrew Morton
    April 4, 2012 @ 3:37 am

    The thing that annoys me most about The Five Doctors is Hurdnell's insistence on referring to Davison as 'young man'. I presume this is the fault of the script writers, not of the actors, but it grates every time I watch it.

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  5. C.
    April 4, 2012 @ 3:48 am

    Well said, Phil. I think one reason the RTD era generally worked for me was Davies' intuitive feel for properly handling the emotional bases–his whole era feels like a corrective to the bloodless feel of this period and esp. this reunion, in which moments that should be joyous and climactic—Davison meeting Susan again, Pertwee and the Brig, even Troughton and fake Jamie—just fall absolutely flat. As you said, it's another box ticked off, like the Yeti appearing, or Mike Yates.

    It's why something like "School Reunion," despite being a flawed episode IMO, has a compelling emotional resonance to it. It's as if the JNT era-Who suffered some personality disorder in which it couldn't process how basic human relationships worked: grandfathers and granddaughters, who haven't seen each other for centuries, suddenly reuniting. Or old friends meeting again at the sunset of their lives. It's a remarkably cold, almost inhuman show at this point.

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  6. Lewis Christian
    April 4, 2012 @ 4:27 am

    Even worse than Davison brushing his granddaughter off – the other Doctors don't even get to say a word to her!

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  7. Scott
    April 4, 2012 @ 4:35 am

    You hit the nail on the head exactly why I dislike this story (and once, in my younger days, felt moved to write a rather pompous review of it and submit it to the Ratings Guide that I've always been meaning to get taken down or edited), but even having mellowed with age unlike your good self I can't find myself warming to it, even on the 'ah it's just a bit of fun for the anniversary, lighten up!' level.

    My problem is that for all it's supposed to be big and fun and a celebratory knees-up bringing back all the key signifiers of the last twenty years of "Doctor Who" — and really, I've got no problem with that at all, it's the twentieth anniversary, why shouldn't there be a big party? — it's all so relentlessly… GREY. Okay, fine, I'm not expecting the greatest plot in "Doctor Who" history with all this, but what little plot there is basically translates to the main characters wandering around a load of boring wet fields, with some occasional switches to some, well, dull Gallifrey sets, really.

    Perhaps the nadir — for me, anyway — is the Raston Warrior Robot sequence where the Cybermen get massacred, and EVERY SINGLE THING ON SCREEN except for Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen is either grey, silver, or silver-grey. It's probably up there as one of the most visually dull action sequences in "Doctor Who" history, and the way it's staged isn't exactly anything to write home about either.

    I mean, the cast do their best and put in some good work — but this is one of the best "Doctor Who" casts ever, you'd kind of expect at least the minimum effort — but no one can really disguise the fact that they're cold, wet, bored and not really having a good time.

    Even given the referential overdosing you refer to in the Davison years I don't mind the "Doctor Who" production team throwing a party for this, but they could have at least made it a fun one. Because if this is supposed to be a party, then for me it's not a fun bash but one of those horrible work-dos where everyone feels compelled to show up and tries to have a good time but no one's heart is really in it, and everyone's munching on stale cake looking at the clock wondering when enough time's going to have passed to allow them to convincingly make their excuses. And the way everyone drills in that we're supposed to be having SO MUCH FUN FOR THE ANNIVERSARY is even worse, like that irritating guy from a few cubicles down who puts on "Agadoo" and insists that everyone dance because "we're supposed to be having fun!"

    (… sorry, I may be suffering from whatever the Awful Work Party equivalent of PTSD is. But you see what "The Five Doctors" does to me?!)

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  8. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:05 am

    Nothing to add except that I wish there was a "like" button for comments.

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  9. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:08 am

    I know what you mean, but it depends on what regeneration (/rejuvenation) means to a Time Lord — how much it's continuity and how much it's wiping away of the old. You can argue that Hurndall's Doctor is at least 400 and Davison's is only two.

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  10. Mike Russell
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:22 am

    And yet David Tennant very happily applauded this story in his commentary for the Five Doctors DVD. Probably because he's not a gloomy professor making rules for What Doctor Who Is Supposed To Be.

    Phil, you're brilliant, but I'm failing to understand your sustained grumpiness about the era you claim ties with Pat's as your second favorite. If this is how you write about an era you like, Colin's is going to make you suicidal.

    And your JNT-deserves-no-credit-for-anything approach is a very Ian Levine attitude to take. The crack about the waxwork Tom is especially unfair. Your greatest condescension in your blog so far has been toward Richard Franklin, Matthew Waterhouse and now JNT. I don't like that pattern at all. Will John Barrowman get it in the neck, too?

    All of that said, I wish Susan and Sarah had been brought back more deftly, too, or else not returned at all.

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  11. Spacewarp
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:28 am

    I don't know whether it's the benefit of hindsight and the intervening 29 years between then and now, or the fact that we've been somewhat spoiled for characterisation in the new series, but rewatching this now there's so much more you feel could have been done with it. Perhaps it is simply that today's series is made by fans who in a sense are trying to make the kind of Doctor Who they would like to see themselves, as opposed to the kind of Doctor Who that they think we would like to see. The reaction of the First Doctor to his later selves does seems to be simply based on the premise of an old man meeting a young one. A fault that was first seen in The Three Doctors where two older (and supposedly more experienced) Doctors deferred to an older-looking but actually youngest Doctor.

    If the writers were attempting to address how Time Lords relate to the concept of Regeneration, then they missed a trick in not showing the First Doctor's reaction at meeting the consequences of a process that he has not yet experienced in this his first life. To know that you're going to go through so much trauma in the future that you'll be forced to change your body and entire personality, no matter how much you resist…and then meeting one of the men who will effectively be replacing you…it's almost the Time Lord equivalent of arriving at your own future tombstone.

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  12. Spacewarp
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:34 am

    We always have a love-hate relationship with the season we grew up with. We love it because it reminds us of how fantastic it was watching it when we were a child, but we hate it because now we can see the flaws and we blame it for not being as good as we remember. Unfortunately we should be blaming ourselves, because we've changed, it hasn't.

    Except Pertwee, who is as fantastic now to me as he ever was…but I suspect that might be down to the occasional sight of Jo Grant's underwear…

    I'll get my coat…

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  13. Scott
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:40 am

    I think that's a bit unfair; it's possible to appreciate, even love something while acknowledging that it's ultimately flawed. I mean, I love the Davison era as well — the McGann movie made me notice "Doctor Who", but the Fifth Doctor was arguably what turned me into a fan — but even I find it hard to argue that there weren't plenty of bad-habits, flawed priorities and missteps that led to what happened in the mid-eighties and ultimately the 1989 cancellation. And it's also hard to argue that JN-T doesn't deserve a fair dose of the blame for that either, or that he at least made himself a fairly noticeable target for it — he was the one putting himself front and centre on all the talk shows and fanzines as the Face of "Doctor Who" Behind The Scenes, after all.

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  14. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:41 am

    Richard Franklin is gay?

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  15. Mike Russell
    April 4, 2012 @ 5:55 am

    I don't know for sure about Richard, but he's been widely perceived as gay since that story circulated abuot him and a young male fan. More intriguing for me is that since that story emerged, fans interpret Mike Yates as being more camp than they did before. That's happened to me in my own life. I'm on the more boyish end of the gay male spectrum and am sometimes mistaken for straight. But after people find out I'm gay, they often see me as more feminine than they did before.

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  16. occono
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:00 am

    Urgh, thanks for leading me to read this
    http://www.matthewman.org/david/diary/87summer.htm

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  17. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:01 am

    Regardless, I had no idea. Actually, I think Waterhouse, Nathan-Turner, and Waris Hussein are the only three major creative staff on the classic series that I knew were gay prior to someone mentioning that Grimwade was.

    So I'll admit, I'm pretty upset at the accusation of homophobia.

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  18. occono
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:01 am

    ^I didn't see that before I posted, it was in reply to Sandifer.

    Yates is gay in some of the Virgin Novels.

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  19. Mike Russell
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:02 am

    To answer Scott's point, I don't get the concept of blaming anyone for a show ending after 26 seasons, of which 9 were his own. Yes, every era of Doctor Who has some serious flaws, from racism to failed character development to the studio crew turning the lights out before a scene could be finished. But I think the fan hive mind has stacked the deck against JNT for decades. I'm curious to see how he will get no credit for Sylv's era, either.

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  20. occono
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:03 am

    I don't suspect any trace of homophobia, for what it's worth. I certainly haven't seen any towards RTD anyway.

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  21. SK
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:05 am

    Be more suited to the entry on Timewyrm: Revelation, I'd have thought.

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  22. Mike Russell
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:08 am

    Then I apologize, Phil.

    I would like to know if you think JNT deserves any credit for how well, say, Enlightenment turned out, or were any triumphs during his era some kind of virgin birth? True, his decade was very inconsistent, but so was every other era. Caves to Twin doesn't seem much different than Genesis to Revenge to me.

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  23. SK
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:15 am

    Is that not quite a good reminder, though, of how the Doctor & Susan are not human? For a start, for a Time Lord, perhaps catching up after centuries is like us seeing a family member at Easter that we last met at Christmas. Also, maybe Time Lords simply don't express emotion the way we do — their upper lips are cosmically stiff?

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  24. Sean Daugherty
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:23 am

    Part of why I really enjoyed the early entries here, during the Hartnell and Troughton tenures, was that Phil really was taking a relatively fresh look at the show during that period. His insight on the show's alchemical roots were brilliant, and he hit the nail on the head with the Problem of Susan in a way that I don't think any other critic ever managed to do.

    But it's been a while since I've gotten that vibe of new insight or fresh perspective. The Davison entries, so far, have been rather depressingly predictable. Phil still writes as well as ever, but we're basically seeing the received wisdom of the JNT era, albeit summarized much more capably than usual.

    That may not be Phil's fault, of course. I suspect it's easier to find a fresh and original take on 1960s Doctor Who because so few people have actually bothered to try. When I got interested in the show in 1980s, it was treated as a historical artifact: only Peter Haining and his ilk bothered to make much of a critical evaluation of the stories themselves, and everyone else treated, say, his evisceration of "The Gunfighters" as gospel. But the 1980s were different, and were debated and fought over at the time of transmission. Doctor Who Monthly may not have even put its neck out with a negative review of a recently-broadcast story, but others were certainly willing to debate a serial on its merits. The critical consensus on this period has, I think, but much more thoroughly hashed out than earlier periods in the show's history, so there may be less insight to be had here.

    That said, I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the show started on a slide of terminal decline starting in 1980. I think Nathan-Turner gets a lot of blame for things that weren't really his doing: he may have flirted with the fan-industrial complex more enthusiastically than any previous producer, but the content of that flirtation wasn't substantially different than it had been since about 1970, when it became common to hawk out the show's star for publicity. The initial negative fan reaction to "The Deadly Assassin" and the appearance of "professional fans" like Ian Levine during the Tom Baker years similarly suggests that this process was well under way, and, I suspect, would have continued apace more or less regardless of the producer.

    Similarly, I take some issue with the idea that JNT's active pursuit of worldwide markets was especially problematic. Doctor Who was not, I think, cancelled because it was a cult success in America. On the other hand, I still think there's a strong case to be made that the show could not have survived, post-cancellation, without that foot in the world of cult sci-fi. Though it comes with some problems, it was the fact that such a base existed that ensured that a generation of fans remained committed to the idea of the show even though it was off the air for almost a decade and a half, and led to the creation of the novel ranges, the comics, and the audio dramas that allowed the show to, in effect, slide back onto the airwaves in 2005 almost as if it had never been away.

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  25. Spacewarp
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:24 am

    There was a discussion on Gallifrey Base a year or so ago, about how Harrison Chase (from "Seeds of Doom") was obviously gay. Someone commented that what people were mistaking for "gay" was actually "posh", and I've always thought that about Yates.

    You used to encounter upper-class accents far more in the 70s and 80s on UK TV, but if you see someone who speaks like that now, it's often lazy shorthand for homosexual.

    I wonder if the equivalent in the US would be the Bostonian accent(cf Higgins from Magnum PI?

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  26. The Lord of Ábrocen Landmearca
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:26 am

    You dislike a pattern that holds that some of the most disliked persons in Doctor Who history were disliked for a reason? Personally, I rejoice at the concept that a fandom might hold an opinion rooted in fact, it is a novel experience.

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  27. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:33 am

    To you, perhaps. On the other hand, I think it's genuinely interesting that the top and bottom stories in the Mighty 200 were consecutive stories. I think that's a fact that it's nearly impossible not to make something out of.

    I've also noted that Nathan-Turner's getting the series cancelled in 1985 (and let's be honest, that's when it died, It just twitched around on the ground for four years after) was only possible because he saved it in 1980-81.

    I think what makes McCoy's era good is the addition of Andrew Cartmel, admittedly. But, of course, Nathan-Turner hired him. And other than Silver Nemesis, Nathan-Turner's instincts were good again in that era. Even when he made what sounded like dodgier decisions. Adding the Master to Survival was actually perfect and made that a great story.

    Nathan-Turner needs a good writer opposite him. He had one in Bidmead, and again with Cartmel. With Saward he was out to sea and his failings became all too visible. And so this is the period where they can be talked about.

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  28. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:55 am

    I think the 80s are a very, very picked over period of Doctor Who. Or, at least, the Davison/Baker period. I like to think I was being novel as recently as Bidmead. 🙂

    You're right, of course, that the 80s stories were debated at broadcast. But even then I think the window is kind of narrow. Hence the Longleat entry last time, and the note that a countertrend within fandom was being born. I think the transition really starts to happen over the next two seasons, with The Two Doctors being roughly tagged as the point where the transition really happens.

    But equally, yes – the period leading up to the hiatus, due to its status as "what killed Doctor Who," has been poured over more intensively than really any other. There's less room to find new things to say. Although even there, I'd like to think that the Norse Marxism take on Terminus was fairly novel, as was the extended treatment of Turlough and gay culture.

    And I liked Time-Flight. That's got to be novel.

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  29. Seeing_I
    April 4, 2012 @ 7:02 am

    First and foremost what needs to be said about this is that I don't remember Hartnell's Doctor ever wearing those fingerless gloves, and yet because of this story in my mind he always has. This is the fandom equivalent of Amy Pond remembering different versions of her life.

    I, too, am always annoyed by the missed opportunities this story displays time and time again. Dicks is a magnificent hack, but in this case his commercial instincts fail him, as he only considers what fans might want to see and utterly neglects to consider what any particular character might think or feel about anything that's happening (Sarah's gripe notwithstanding). This is the show's worst tendency, that of treating characters as little bundles of traits and affectations to be moved around like pieces on the story's all-too-apt gameboard.

    Any one of the juxtapositions and confrontations in this story could have justified stories in and of themselves. Leaving aside the Susan thing, none of the Doctors give any sense of seeing their own futures or pasts, and the question of just how it is none of them remember anything of it is skipped entirely. It might be asking too much of the show to structure a Rashomon-style multiple perspective thing, or even to have later Doctors start to fill in pieces of the puzzle as they slowly "remember" what's happening to their younger selves in other scenes. But none of them gets so much as a sense of deja vu, and neither of the "youngest" Doctors have the slightest qualm about finding themselves home again. Pertwee's Doctor meeting two people he might have seen earlier in the day and finding them years older and talking about him in the past tense – well surely he'd have said something like "Egads, I'm in my own future!" But he doesn't, because both the script and Pertwee play it like they know they are in a reunion episode.

    It's frustrating, annoying, saddening, and not anything I'd ever show to any new fan. And yet I have the VHS and both DVDs, and somewhere in my house there is a 1988 cassette tape of my friend and I reading the entire script in Rich Little style celebrity voices. This is what it means to be a Doctor Who fan.

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  30. Exploding Eye
    April 4, 2012 @ 7:07 am

    The script basically treats the different Doctors as if they're four separate individuals, like old golfing buddies. Susan is only the First Doctor's grand-daughter; the other Doctors are simply aware of each other's companions, they have no real fondness for them or gladness to see them again, only the ones who actually met them in the show's history react in this way; Davison deferring to Hurndall, despite technically being the more experienced Doctor (and he is more experienced – the Doctor is forever telling of past encounters, so he doesn't get reset.) Dicks never quite gets his head around what it means to be four different aspects of the same person.

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  31. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 7:09 am

    I've honestly never had a problem with this, simply because it's wholly consistent with audience expectations. As I noted, the past Doctors are all portrayed as retired veterans who have given up the job to the new guy, but are now dragged back for one more adventure.

    Yes, it's odd if you actually treat Doctor Who as a lengthy biopic of a functionally immortal man, but I think that's really just evidence that that's not what Doctor Who is. Of course the First Doctor is the voice of experience and Davison is the young whippersnapper. That configuration is just fundamentally and intuitively right when taken as a piece of television and metatext.

    That said, it is perhaps an opportunity missed. The gap between Hurndall and the real First Doctor is just wide enough that they could have gotten away with haranguing Hurndall's inexperience. But imagine a scene where Davison treats William Hartnell as a young amateur without his experience. It would be unwatchable.

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  32. C.
    April 4, 2012 @ 7:47 am

    you could say that. But what about a modicum of curiosity at least? Like Davison: "hey, Susan, what's been going on since I left you on 21st Century Earth 300 yrs ago?"

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  33. C.
    April 4, 2012 @ 8:05 am

    to add to this, the botch is worsened by the fact that they show the bloody Hartnell "one day I will come back" farewell to Susan clip at the start of the episode! It's like going out of its way to raise expectations and then just fumble them.

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  34. Anton B
    April 4, 2012 @ 8:08 am

    William thanks.

    SK. Yes I'm reasonably sure the novels deal with the concept but A). Never read 'em. and B). I'm more interested in Phillip's potential meta-textual reading than in any quasi-official 'canonical' explanation.

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  35. vitaminbillwebb
    April 4, 2012 @ 9:46 am

    Phil,

    I'll just ask the obvious question: With the fiftieth anniversary fast approaching, DW will be gearing up for something big. Could Moffat do a multi-Doctor story that would satisfy your desire for big myth-building? What would that look like?

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  36. Mike Russell
    April 4, 2012 @ 9:56 am

    The top and bottom stories in that poll are an intriguing juxtaposition, true. But it also reminds me of something else about fandom. For a long time, Ian Levine, Gary Leigh and others have insisted that JNT had no involvement in Caves and was intensely involved in Twin. But on the Caves DVD rerelease, Graeme Harper is on the screen talking about how heavily and intensely JNT was involved with that story.

    Doctor Who did culturally die in 1985, but I'd take the Sylv era's twitching around over the much more successful but infinitely duller Star Trek: The Next Generation anyday. And while Colin's era is uneven, I still like its bravery. Not many people would take a risk like that with such a long-running franchise.

    True, Bidmead and Cartmel deserve a great deal of credit for their eras. I have mixed feelings about Saward, and if JNT had spent less time on fandom and conventions during the mid-80s, he might have reigned in Saward's worst failings. And yes, he probably should have pulled the next story coming up when Thatcher did her election thing.

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  37. SK
    April 4, 2012 @ 11:35 am

    I am more than faintly offended at the idea that I might be engaging in any debate about canon. My point is that the theme youention is addressed more strongly in the Cornell than the Holmes.

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  38. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 11:41 am

    I think the odds of my attempting to guess what Steven Moffat will write are fairly slim. He's a better television writer than almost anyone else to have worked in the medium. I'm not a television writer at all.

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  39. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 11:46 am

    Star Trek: The Next Generation is dull…? The McCoy era is a twitching husk…?

    I'm getting out of here before I do something I'm going to regret 🙂

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  40. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 11:49 am

    To be clear, my suggestion that the McCoy era was a dead series still twitching was not in any way intended as a comment on its quality so much as its future prospects. It was a dead series walking and eventual cancellation was inevitable.

    Quality-wise, it was, as I've noted before, the best the classic series ever got.

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  41. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 11:50 am

    If I may be so bold with the announcement that season 7 will feature a showdown with EVERY DALEK EVER, I kind of doubt the trend of treating anniversary specials as museum checklists to appease fans is going away anytime soon

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  42. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 12:04 pm

    I mean, my objection to The Five Doctors isn't the amount of stuff it shoves in, it's the way in which it handles it. Having every Dalek ever appear is, to me, a neutral idea. What's interesting is purely what one does with every Dalek ever.

    What matters, to me, is whether the story is about every Dalek ever or whether there's an actual idea for which every Dalek ever is a central set piece. Is it, in other words, a story about Dalek tourism, or is it a story about, for instance, the way in which the Doctor has, in his own way, shaped the development of the Daleks. One is museum checklist. The other isn't.

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  43. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 12:23 pm

    I agree of course, but the difference between you and me is that you remain admirably open-minded and optimistic, while I am a lonely, bitter angry cynic of Robert Holmes' caliber (though one who is perhaps a bit more cognizant about issues of representation). I tend to feel if one never gets one's hopes up, one will never be disappointed, and since I have zero confidence in either Steven Moffat or Doctor Who's ability to meaningfully interact with its own past at this point I am fully expecting "Ark of Infinity 2" here and will continue to do so until I am proven wrong by the episode itself.

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  44. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 12:47 pm

    Although, as you and others have mentioned, one of the fascinating things about early Doctor Who is just how amateurish the Doctor actually is, so haranguing him would actually be appropriate in the context of the series as broadcast even if it wouldn't be appropriate in the context of the series as remembered.

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  45. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 12:57 pm

    And, of course, this means they blow the opportunity to have a "but you didn't return" scene like the one that gave the emotional heart to School Reunion. (Although it lost impact when they basically reran it in Death of the Doctor (which makes me wonder, Phil — when you get to the modern era, are you doing an entry for each Torchwood / Sarah Jane story, or one for each season, or just one for each show? One for each show seems too little)).

    That speech has always seemed to me to be very odd. The Doctor doesn't return and never seems to show any inclination to. The "go forward in all your beliefs / and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine" line is pretty much the only time that (a) he shows any faith in Susan and (b) there is any reference to Susan having any beliefs at all. It comes over as the Doctor trying to remove himself from a potential source of fuss rather than a sincere statement (like his gloriously self-centered "apology" to Barbara in Edge of Destruction).

    There's a great follow-up conversation to be had about that speech, but The Five Doctors obviously wasn't the place to have it.

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  46. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:01 pm

    You didn't like Time-Flight! You just shouted at people who disliked it and gave reasons why a similar but different story might have turned out well. If you really liked it you'd have been convincing.

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  47. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:03 pm

    And FWIW I didn't read it as an accusation of conscious homophobia, just an observation of a pattern that perhaps would be merit further thinking.

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  48. William Whyte
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:05 pm

    Cartmel also speaks highly of JNT's sharpness and sense of what would and wouldn't work, FWIW. (Phil, have you read his book?)

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  49. Exploding Eye
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:23 pm

    "He's a better television writer than almost anyone else to have worked in the medium."

    Um. No. He does what he does, but he has some very glaring faults as a writer. I know many critics who accuse him of superficiality – he's good at tricks, but not depth. He's also pretty formulaic. And all his characters talk like Stephen Moffatt.

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  50. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:39 pm

    Can I just point out an observation I find somewhat amusing?

    We are now applying Doctor Who fandom logic to Phil's blog itself, and, even better, on the entry critiquing one of the arguable high water marks for JNT-era fanwankery and lack of respect for his predecessors.

    "Well yes, of course. I've never been able to visit it before now, but I've got all sorts of souvenirs. Copies of all the advertising satellites that have ever been sent out. All the posters. I had a long correspondence with one of the founder members too, soon after it started. Although I never got to see the early days, I know it's not as good as it used to be but I'm still terribly interested."

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  51. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:48 pm

    I have to agree with Exploding Eye here, I'm afraid. Moffat's got some talents, but he's by no means one of the greatest television writers of all time, nor is he even the best one to have handled the New Series so far IMO. I find his writing exceptionally problematic and his running of the series to be almost as out-of-touch with his own cast as Innes Lloyd and Barry Letts and defined by almost as much of an egotistical, standoffish and defensive attitude as John Nathan-Turner.

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  52. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 1:50 pm

    Putting the axe on "Lungbarrow" is still one of the best decisions Nathan-Turner ever made IMO and something he'll never get the credit he deserves for,

    Reply

  53. SK
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:05 pm

    I mean, we’re including, like, Troy Kennedy Martin here, right?

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  54. SK
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:09 pm

    (I definitely prefer him to Davies, though. Both are superficial, but Moffat revels in his superficiality in clever-clever ways rather than pretending to depth but instead only managing pseudoemotional set pieces)

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  55. Exploding Eye
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:23 pm

    In terms of all his characters having the same voice – writing 101, surely – the line which sums it up for me is, "Is that a sort of threaty thing?" It's Michael Gambon's line as Scrooge in the 2010 Christmas special, but you could just as easily imagine it coming from the Doctor or Amy, or a number of other characters. That weird almost-baby-talk ("wibbly wobbly timey wimey") that SM has going, and which mostly works fine for the Doctor – though I find it to be like nails-on-the-blackboard – but when you start putting it in the mouth of a jaded, elderly industrialist too, you know you've got problems.

    Moff's strength is an eye for magic; he loves bending minds and making you think about the nature of time and reality. But in the end, it's all trickery, it's all a parlour game, which often doesn't add up in any logical fashion when you stop and think about it. His characters are often cookie-cutter ciphers, he has a limited range of personal fascinations; he's not great at balancing humour and drama, often wrecking tension by making the characters glib in moments of danger. He knows how to do spooky, he has a good sense of the unsettling and the ghoulish, he does texture in a way that RTD rarely achieved (RTD's stuff often felt like daytime soap with sci-fi trappings; Moff's material on the other hand oozes 'feel'); I think Moff has the genre sensitivity that RTD lacked. Didn't RTD once say that he didn't really like science fiction? If he did, it showed. SM likes fairy tales, which is always going to be more magical and dreamlike than RTD's love of soap. But it's by and large superficial. He doesn't understand story, he doesn't understand character, he only knows how to construct fiendish puzzle-box plots. And that's a pretty major flaw in a writer.

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  56. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:26 pm

    I don't find characters all having the same voice to be that fundamental a problem. Then again, I also think Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon are brilliant TV writers and Warren Ellis is a brilliant comics writer. It strikes me as a problem if you're interested in realism. I'm pointedly not. I'm OK with consistency of speech patterns being one of the things that is used to set an overall tone. Certainly Moffat's characters don't all act the same, and that, to my mind, is altogether more important.

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  57. WGPJosh
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:45 pm

    I don't think Exploding Eye is criticizing Moffat's stories for not being realistic, but because they're empty, shallow and full of sleight-of-hand plot trickery that doesn't amount to anything, pseudo-drama and Buffy speak. That's a very different argument. EE even praises Moffat's flair for mood, atmosphere and his love of fairy tales, which is more than even I was going to grant him. I'm really not getting a sense that EE is bemoaning a lack of realism in New Series DW at all as much as he is bringing up some perfectly valid and difficult-to-refute criticisms of Moffat's writing style.

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  58. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:47 pm

    Oh, sure. I wasn't mounting the general defense of Moffat. I have, what, something like 20-30 blog entries to do that with eventually? I was just noting that I don't think making your characters sound different is Writing 101. I think it's a fairly optional element of television writing, particularly if you've got a good grasp of an engaging cadence for dialogue.

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  59. Spacewarp
    April 4, 2012 @ 2:56 pm

    Although I guess this does resonate with the 10th Doctor's "a new man walking away" speech, asserting that each Doctor is a completely separate individual, with no emotional ties to a previous life, and therefore to previous compatriots. Then again if this were followed to the letter it would have made the transition between the 9th and 10th Doctors rather awkward for Rose. As it is, the Doctor's affection for Rose has obviously carried over from the "old" man to the "new".

    As Phil points out re: the 5th Doctor mocking the 1st Doctor's inexperience, sometimes what might seem logical in the show's internal context would be dramatically very unsatisfying.

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  60. Zapruder 313
    April 4, 2012 @ 4:39 pm

    Apropos of nothing except people here might enjoy the story: when Philip said "I never liked the Third Doctor era that much, and by the time I got my license was largely out of love with Doctor Who as well. I still named my first car, a rusting Chevy S-10 pickup truck, Bessie", it reminded me that my wife, a non-fan growing up who had never seen a Jon Pertwee episode at the time this happened, called our first car "Bessie".

    When I expressed astonishment at her choice, she claimed that she "just liked the name" and had no idea it was significant.

    True story (and possible fuel for the "quasi-sentient metafiction" theory)!

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  61. Alan
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:32 pm

    Good points all around. I do wonder how the new show will treat this issue if/when they eventually have a "multiple Doctors" episode, since (a) Matt Smith, the youngest actor to play Doctor, is actively trying to portray himself as an old man in a young man's body and (b) Tennant, in "The End of Time," expressed open hostility towards the very idea of a successor, not to mention a mixture of condescension and gooey nostalgia when he met Davison's Doctor in "Time Crash."

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  62. Alan
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:38 pm

    IIRC, the Children in Need special indicated that the Tenth Doctor had somehow "imprinted" on Rose due to the circumstances of the regeneration. This explains his accent and (arguably) why he had a romantic fixation on her quite unlike anything he'd ever demonstrated on the show before. Eccleston spent more time flirting with Jack than with Rose, but Tennant spent most of three seasons mooning over her.

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  63. Alan
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:51 pm

    I disliked Adric/Waterhouse and I disliked JNT, but it's not because of homophobia. Rather, I disliked Adric (a potentially interesting and different character played by an inexperienced actor) because of what JNT deliberately and consciously did to the character: direct that he be written as unlikeable as possible before killing him off in an overrated story. JNT may have been executive producer for nine seasons, but he spent five of those seasons aggressively pushing disagreeable and polarizing characters on us in a bizarrely misguided attempt to create "drama."

    I will give him credit for this, though. I agree that his efforts to build DW into a cult show appreciated by an American audience played a big role in why it's come back so strong. Just compare the success of New Who with high-profile bombs like the Avengers movie (the Uma Thurman one) and the Prisoner remake.

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  64. Alan
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:55 pm

    I should add that my only thoughts one way or the other about Mike Yates is that (a) he's the UNIT guy who was much less interesting than either the Brigadier or Benton and (b) I always irrationally blamed him for there never having been any romance between Jo and Benton.

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  65. Alan
    April 4, 2012 @ 6:58 pm

    Really?!? I'm sure we'll discuss this more in depth in a few weeks, but I think Twin Dilemma must go down as one of the greatest disasters in DW history. An aggressively stupid and ill-conceived story is bad enough. A bizarre new interpretation of the Doctor deliberately calculated to make him unlikeable and even frightening is worse. But to end the season with it so that it will be the viewers sole experience with a controversial new Doctor for months? What the heck were they thinking?!?

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  66. Anton B
    April 5, 2012 @ 1:08 am

    'He's a better television writer than almost anyone else to have worked in the medium.'

    Phillip grips the cat firmly by the tail swings it round his head and hurls it dead centre into a passing flock of pigeons.

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  67. Adam Riggio
    April 5, 2012 @ 3:40 am

    About Steven Moffatt. I feel like the phrase "Nobody's perfect" doesn't go nearly far enough for what I want to say. Perfection is an entirely silly thing to consider in any arena of life at all.

    When I first got back into Doctor Who with the tools to do some research about it (ie. the internet), I discovered that there was one era of the show that was absolutely perfect and without flaw: the Hinchcliffe-Holmes years, particularly season 14. By the time I joined Phil's regular readers (just at the start of your Pertwee years), I knew there were flaws with individual stories of that era. But he showed the systemic flaws of Robert Holmes as a writer and a personality. He was sometimes too cynical for his own good, thought that when he lost sympathy and respect for his characters that his cleverness made up for it, and sometimes just couldn't be bothered to give enough of a shit to fix a problematic story. He was one of the most brilliant writers of Doctor Who.

    In the same way, people talked about Steven Moffatt as a perfect genius during the Davies era. Contrasted with Davies' flaws (over-sentimentality, writing himself into a plot corner and pulling out deus ex screwdrivers), Moffatt could do no wrong. That he kept winning Hugos for the show three years in a row only cemented his reputation. When it was announced he was taking over the show, I got the sense that the fan community expected every episode to be as good as The Empty Child or Blink.

    Of course, writing one or two episodes per season, a writer's flaws won't be as evident, because there physically aren't as many opportunities for them to appear. Many of his stories are plot puzzles, but we all loved the puzzles of Girl in the Fireplace and Blink. His characters do tend toward snappy dialogue, even in terrifying situations, but we all loved that kind of interplay among River and her crew in Silence in the Library. Controlling the whole season gives him opportunities to build puzzles that last for a year, sometimes even longer. So yes, having the larger canvas means the show uses his main devices more often.

    I don't see how that's different in kind from Holmes' cynicism or parallelisms in plot structures (The Ribos Operation being the best example). If you're used to the devices in small doses, like one or who Hugo winning episodes each year in the midst of a sea of Davies' soap plotting and sentiment, then you might OD when you see them across a whole season. Would you critique Agatha Christie for all her works being about murders and crimes in claustrophobic environments? Or Thomas Pynchon for always riffing on paranoia and failed utopian dreams? It's their thing, and generally they do it well.

    Not every Moffatt story is going to be Blink. But the baseline of quality is much higher than what Doctor Who has been, and what it could have been. Thanks to Phil, I can even defend Let's Kill Hitler. But I'll leave that to him, in about a year and a half.

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  68. Jesse Smith
    April 5, 2012 @ 4:03 am

    I've had a vague similar theory about a sort of post-regeneration afterlife for a long time, probably based in large part on the scene of Hartnell in his rose garden in The Three Doctors, but also to explain why the Doctors look older than they did when they regenerated, and have memories they couldn't possibly have.

    It's possible that regeneration is less about biological cellular reconstruction and more about some sort of quantum reality mingling of parallel worlds. I think the series has come close to hinting at that approach a few times (framing regeneration as death in The End of Time, for example), but never made it explicit, typically preferring to stick with the rather dry materialist viewpoint.

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  69. Iain Coleman
    April 5, 2012 @ 6:32 am

    The almost total lack of emotional connection or acknowledgement of character development is the most striking thing about this story, particularly in a context where the current Who series puts these matters at the centre of the drama.

    It's not just a 21st century perspective that sees this as a problem, though. Watching The Five Doctors, you can see the actors straining every thespian sinew to wring some sort of emotional depth out of a script that has none. The real star here, unsurprisingly, is Lis Sladen. At the end, when the adventure is done and everyone is being packed off again she does a great job of portraying a woman who is trying hard not to show how overwhelmed and traumatised she has been by being abruptly whisked off to spend a few hours being shot at by aliens.

    The biggest let-down, as others have said, is Susan. If the reunion between Susan and her grandfather had been at the core of the story, it could have been immense. It seems such a missed opportunity.

    In partial defence of Dicks, though, there is a reasonable argument for not taking this approach. Which actors would be available – and hence, which characters would be in the story – chopped and changed right up till the last minute. In that context, writing a set of action set-pieces linked together with bits of exposition is a smart move, as characters can be moved in and out of story roles as the production demands. If he had written a more character-centred drama, it might have been scuppered at any moment in such a way as to demand rewriting from scratch. Imagine if The Five Doctors had been all about the Doctor(s) meeting up again with Susan, and then two days before filming Dicks is told "Sorry love, we're replacing Susan with Benton". Disaster.

    So the results are unsatisfying, but under the circumstances it's hard to see how they could be otherwise. One happy accident (if it wasn't clever contrivance) is that all the companion characters who aren't phantasms are people who have witnessed, or would plausibly know about, regeneration, thus saving a lot of tedious explanations.

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  70. Iain Coleman
    April 5, 2012 @ 6:40 am

    For me, the big unforced error of this story is the characterisation of the First Doctor (or Doctor Who, as he should more properly be known). Everything about him is just wrong. Partly that's down to Richard Hurndall, who does a decent job of the role as written but has none of Hartnell's spirit, but mostly it's the writing.

    Dicks was experienced at writing for the Third and Fourth Doctors of course, as does fine with the Fifth, but his First Doctor never acts or sounds like the real thing. Hartnell's Doctor Who was impish, imperious, aggressive, charming, childish and wise all at once. The character written here goes from Nice Old Man to Tetchy Old Man without ever capturing the spikiness and unpredictability of the real Doctor Who.

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  71. Iain Coleman
    April 5, 2012 @ 6:47 am

    The design is mostly pretty impressive in this story. OK, Gallifrey isn't great (though better than in Arc of Infinity), but the Tower is a splendid blend of Dungeons and Dragons fantasy with sci-fi chic. Just look at those torches! There's also a remarkable similarity with a contemporary boardgame called The Dark Tower – I wonder if that's a coincidence.

    But if the sets are good, the costumes are… it's not just that they're bad, though they most certainly are. It's that they fail in storytelling and characterisation terms. It's fair enough, if unfortunate, that Sarah Jane Smith should be wearing some hideous early 80s fashion – she has been picked up from 1983 and presumably can't help it. But why is Susan, from a future Earth recovering from the devastation of a Dalek conquest, dressed in the same sort of hideous 80s gear? No thought has been given to differentiating these two women visually. The message the clothes send is that one companion is interchangeable with another. Cynics might argue this is true, and Dicks certainly provides ammunition for that argument, but it would be nice if the costume designer at least had thought a bit more deeply about this.

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  72. The Lord of Ábrocen Landmearca
    April 5, 2012 @ 6:50 am

    Hey! I LIKE Lungbarrow, at least conceptually. I like people trying to push the idea that TimeLords are more alien than "they sometimes wear really big headdresses." It makes them nothing more than a Planet of Hats. The doctor never acts like an alien, he just occasionally doesn't act like the standard Western archetype of what a leading man should be. Lying, being manipulative, and being somewhat callous as to eventual fate of his companions doesn't make him alien, just a bit of a dick.

    Lungbarrow said 'hey, what if instead of birth we have genetic looms." That's different. That's non-human. That is legitimately an alien concept. Instead, we've remained with "TimeLords look like humans, they live a very long time, and sometimes they change themselves to look like other humans." Which, as concepts go, is hardly alien. Shapeshifting, gender-shifting, these sort of things have been in human mythology for ages.

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  73. The Lord of Ábrocen Landmearca
    April 5, 2012 @ 6:53 am

    " empty, shallow"

    Are you sure we're not talking about RTD finales here? Moffat is a flawed writer (Let's Kill Hitler has more nonsense plotholes every time I see it, it just gets worse), but I stand up for him as one of the best writers on television today. His work on Sherlock alone should prove that.

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  74. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 7:28 am

    This is another quality TE post with quality comments, so it is perhaps appropriate that every time I try to make a comment, something goes wrong with the computer (or with me).

    So, in precis of everything I'd previously typed and lost:

    1. Nostalgia value: good enough for me to watch and enjoy on first transmission. Not compelling enough – especially not the 5th Doctor's storyline – to persuade me to try and watch the next season. And the new companions can't compete with Elizabeth Sladen.

    2. Richard Hurndall. He was my sister's friend's mother's uncle, or something, so that made it a bit more interesting.

    3. Hartnell vs Davison. Could have worked. Davison's portrayal of DW channelled the post-nervous-breakdown vibe which Hartnell had in real life.

    4. TE, homophobic? It's probably the only DW blog around which would seriously investigate a complaint like that. Having said that, I thought Phil was a tad mean on Matthew Waterhouse. But what else could he say?

    5. TE is the Moby Dick of DW blogs. You expected a chapter of seafaring adventure? Sorry, it's time for a dissertation on flensing.

    6. The twist in the tale – immortality equalling petrified sterility – surely that's Terrance Dicks / Robert Holmes making a joke about anniversary stories and the over-celebration of the past?

    7. Steven Moffatt vs The World. Flawed genius.

    8. We simply don't see the resolution to the Problem of Susan. Every week she cooks fish fingers for David and Doctor Who, and oils River Song's gun for her.

    I seem to remember that I did have a point 9, but I'm sure someone else will think of a better one.

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  75. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 7:35 am

    Ah, Point 9.

    The "go forward in your beliefs" clip is highlighted (as the pre-credits sequence) in such a way to make it prima facie the most important 30 seconds of 63/83, the programme's mission statement. Unfortunately, it has nothing at all to do with the rest of the story.

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  76. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 7:38 am

    Damn it, Point 10.

    Time Looms always seemed to me a bit of a cop-out for adolescent Doctor Who fans who couldn't bear to think of their hero having sex. (cf Immaculate Conception).

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  77. SK
    April 5, 2012 @ 9:05 am

    (1) What has the Immaculate Conception got to do with not having sex

    (2) Surely the point of the Looms (not 'Time Looms', unless my memory has been holed beneath the waterline) was primarily not to exclude sex from Gallifrey, but to enable the quasi-reincarnation of the Other as the Doctor — indeed, sex-wise, Lungbarrow makes it clear that the Other (though the Other, remember, if not the Doctor (but that may not be symmetric)) has had sex, and even introduces the character he had it with.

    In fact, isn't Lungbarrow explicitly the book which reintroduces sexual reproduction to Gallifrey, after it was banished in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible?

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  78. Alan
    April 5, 2012 @ 10:02 am

    The most maddening thing about "The End of Time" was the identity of the old woman who I was sure was Susan because when Wilf asked who she was, the Doctor looked over his shoulder to Donna, Wilf's grand-daughter. I thought it was brilliant that Tennant would only find the strength to send the Timelords back into hell after Susan looked at him and gave him silent encouragement. Then RTD had to go and ruin it by indicating that the old woman was actually the Doctor's mother, who we've never heard from before and never will again. So much for emotional resonance.

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  79. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 5, 2012 @ 10:04 am

    Russell T Davies is welcome to think that the mysterious woman in The End of Time is the Doctor's mother. Much as Matthew Jacobs is welcome to think the Doctor is half-human on his mother's side.

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  80. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 10:09 am

    1) Nothing, of course. CF doesn't mean "this is the same as". But that's a cop out. I got my terminology wrong. I was contemplating the Perpetual Virginity of our Blessed Lady, as I should do every Thursday afternoon.

    2) The [Time] Looms were, I understand, devised as a means of producing "test tube" time tots. Sexual reproduction, perhaps, but without physical intercourse. However, my limited (and, I am sure, inaccurate) knowledge of [Time] Looms was gained from conversations with other DW fans in 1992/3, and perhaps my viewpoint is biased by my negative opinion of those particular individuals. Perhaps I should read "Lungbarrow".

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  81. Alan
    April 5, 2012 @ 10:15 am

    Overall, I'm a huge Moffatt fan and prefer him to RTD by a wide margin. That said, he has two serious deficiencies that are becoming troubling. One is the well-documented tendency towards sexism. ("Mrs. Amy Williams" is the most famous example.)

    The other, I think, arises from the fact that he grew up a fan of the show, and as such, the story arcs from his tenure have an almost fan-fictiony feel to them. Not the specific stories themselves (although reintroducing the Silurians in a story that basically rehashed their original debut but with better production values was a let down) but things like River Song's whole life being an ontological paradox. Or the fact that the Doctor could save himself from the Pandorica but only if he remembers to go back and save himself in the future after he's free. That's the sort of story that a young, overly bright fan of DW would write up. And while I like that Moffatt appreciates what you can do with time travel better than most writers, he does some to be overly impressed with "timey-wimey" plots over more conventional narratives.

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  82. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 10:47 am

    I like the idea of people pushing The DOCTOR to be more alien and mysterious. "Lungbarrow" had its heart in the right place but revealed far too much information IMO, to the point where all the mystery it was trying to restore to the series' mythology was wasted because it wound up explaining everything anyway.

    There's no point in adding new mysteries and questions if you're just going to explain them all anyway. That just brings us back to square one: The Time Lords are still a Planet of Hats, just with looms this time instead of funny headdresses. We still know all about them and there's no mystique and wonder to them anymore. "Lungabrrow" reads like a dull history textbook to me, and trying to tie it into "The Invasion of Time" and the 1996 TV movie was just a dumb idea to begin with.

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  83. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 11:06 am

    RTD's finales had a tendency to the overly fanwanky, faux-emotionality and unsatisfying hollow yes, but so does Moffat. I could go on at length about Davies' propensity for fannish pandering and cheap manipulation of the audience's emotions, but I'm not talking about him. A critique of Davies is not a free pass for Moffat from getting a similar critique- They're both very problematic writers to my mind who nevertheless manage to get all their skills together to put out an intriguing script every once in awhile.

    I liked Steven Moffat's work on Coupling. I've not seen Sherlock so I can't judge that. On Doctor Who, however, I feel he's mostly style over substance (and not in a good way) and relies on slick, rapid-fire puzzle box plots instead of genuine emotion and intellectualism. I look at his work over the past year and see the complex, tangled mystery plots of LOST and Battlestar Galactica except without the drama, fascinating characters, superb acting, social commentary or gripping, thought-provoking plot and concepts that made those shows worth watching and deservedly the most popular and groundbreaking shows of their time.

    To me, Doctor Who right now is flashy, populist entertainment with a whiff of darkness (but nothing too challenging or out of the audience's comfort zone, of course) which wouldn't necessarily be so bad except it very clearly isn't striving to be anything else in addition to that. Moffat's Doctor Who is great water cooler discussion, but poor alchemy.

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  84. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 11:10 am

    I can get behind this. Robert Holmes is a good comparison, because while he's one of my favourite writers ever to have worked on the show, the era for which he was script editor is one of the most problematic and difficult for me to enjoy. I think Holmes was a far, far better writer than he was a script editor in much the same way I think Moffat is a better writer than a showrunner. I have many more problems with Moffat as a writer than Holmes as writer, but the analogy still fits.

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  85. SK
    April 5, 2012 @ 11:46 am

    Um… if you can point me to the bit in Lungbarrow that 'explain[s] everything' about the Other, please do let me know (give me the page number and I'll look it up in my copy).

    The thinking behind Lungbarrow was that so much had been revealed by then about the Time Lords that they were basically unsalvageable as a source of mystery (that much is undoubtedly true), so the plan (and I think it was a pretty imaginative and audacious plan — and I think it actually worked very well) was to reveal absolutely everything about Gallifrey, make it just another planet — but then re-establish the mystery of the Doctor's past via the Other, about whose origins we know, by the end of Lungbarrow, absolutely nothing. Nothing. No more than we knew of the Doctor's origins in the junkyard, perhaps even less.

    So yes: Lungbarrow reduces the Time Lords to a planet of hats; but by that point that's all it could ever be. But so what? Why should the Time Lords be mysterious? It re-established the mystery of the Doctor, and the series, remember, is called Doctor Who not Time Lords Who.

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  86. SK
    April 5, 2012 @ 11:49 am

    (On the other hand, saying it reads like a dull history textbook is a valid criticism, I think: while the re-establishing of the Doctor's mystery was a great idea, and the way it was done was brilliantly imaginative, as a novel Lungbarrow suffers because its actual plot buckles under the weight of all the mythology that it has to get across. It doesn't suffer quite as badly s 'Let's Kill Hitler' from 'too much exposition to have a plot as well' disease, but it does have a pretty bad case.)

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  87. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:05 pm

    I think that's pretty much what I said…

    As I said, I like the ideas behind "Lungbarrow", it's just that it reveals too much. I liked the glimpses we got during the televised Cartmel era, and then the increasing mystery of the later Big Finish serials. Where I think I'm differing from you is that I feel even revealing the existence of the Other, how he reincarnated into The Doctor and the relationship with Rassilon and Omega was a bit much.

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  88. Exploding Eye
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:09 pm

    I haven't read Lungbarrow either, but I have encountered semi-hysterical fans yelling, "No! Time Lords don't have sex! They have looms!" So, even if it wasn't intended as a prude device, it's certainly become one.

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  89. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:13 pm

    Which always struck me as hilarious. Because everybody knows the only reason people have sex is to procreate, and nobody ever has sex for pleasure ever anywhere in the universe.

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  90. Exploding Eye
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:14 pm

    For me, RTD is a gossip and Moffatt is a magician, but neither are storytellers.

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  91. Alan
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:19 pm

    No offense, but that seems to be an argument that DW would be better if it appealed to a narrower fan base which is not a recipe for long term success. I thought Flashforward was much better than Lost, but apparently the time jump plot was impenetrable to most people and I was left with a one-season show that ended on a cliffhanger. JNT strove mightily to get DW out of the audience's comfort zone, and we all know how that worked out.

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  92. Alan
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:26 pm

    I should like to know very much how Tennant's Doctor too the virginity of Queen Elizabeth I armed only with a loom.

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  93. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:56 pm

    Haven't you ever used a loom? Very, very sensual. I'm going to stop posting now, and go and warp my distaff's weft.

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  94. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 12:59 pm

    Not really.

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  95. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 1:02 pm

    @ EE If we add the qualifier "stage" to Moffat's title of magician, I'm with you. Moffat's no Alan Moore or David Whitaker.

    @Alan Not at all: Doctor Who is and always has been populist entertanment. My argument is that traditionally it's been its strongest when it's that AND MORE; When it's pushed the boundaries of what populist entertainment can be. Moffat's Doctor Who makes no effort to be any more than what t self-evidently is: Comfortable, thrilling, action-packed water cooler television with the hollow simulacrum of emotion and drama.

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  96. BerserkRL
    April 5, 2012 @ 1:03 pm

    when you get to the modern era, are you doing an entry for each Torchwood / Sarah Jane story, or one for each season, or just one for each show?

    Philip answered this question a few posts ago. He said he was probably going to do a couple or so for each season.

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  97. BerserkRL
    April 5, 2012 @ 1:20 pm

    WGPJosh,

    I've not seen Sherlock

    Then DROP EVERYTHING and see it RIGHT NOW. Seriously.

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  98. Alan
    April 5, 2012 @ 4:26 pm

    Nothing about Dinah Sheridan’s performance or the role as written begins to account for her status within fandom.

    I disagree. I thought Dinah Sheridan did an astonishing job of presenting Flavia as a red herring before the revelation of Borusa as the bad guy. And it was entirely through her acting because there were no lines or anything that set her up as a red herring so I can't believe it was in the script. But watch her during the first 45 minutes — she constantly makes facial expressions and subtly interacts with the Castellan in a manner that looks suspicious. I was actually disappointed when Borusa was revealed as the bad guy because that was less interesting than this creepy old woman being the secret mastermind.

    Reply

  99. WGPJosh
    April 5, 2012 @ 4:54 pm

    I have a feeling my obsessed super-fan sister will see to it that's rectified. I must admit I'm not particularly looking forward to it given how nonplussed I was with the last year or so of Doctor Who, but perhaps Moffat is more in his element here.

    I'll take your word for it on good confidence, though!

    Reply

  100. Zapruder 313
    April 5, 2012 @ 5:50 pm

    WGPJosh,

    Much as I love Matt Smith's portrayal of the Doctor, and much as I definitely prefer Moffat's Fairy Tale Doctor Who to RTD's Eastenders in Space Doctor Who, I share your feelings about many aspects of the last two seasons of our show. We've got a really great Doctor and some beautiful sets and set pieces, but there are still fundamental problems with pacing and narrative that often leave me, as you so rightly say, nonplussed.

    Ignore all these concerns about Moffat's Doctor Who, and just buy the Sherlock DVDs. BeserkRL is absolutely right. Sherlock is an utter triumph, and the production most faithful to the spirit of the original stories since Granada TV's early Jeremy Brett episodes.

    Reply

  101. Wm Keith
    April 5, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

    I agree. You must catch Sherlock.

    Reply

  102. Dr. Happypants
    April 6, 2012 @ 4:21 am

    Spoiler alert: the Time Lords' lack of sex is presented as a Very Bad Thing. There's a running theme through the New Adventures of the Doctor coming to regret his own asexuality (not just in "Human Nature"!), and "Lungbarrow" basically ends with the Doctor becoming Sex's Champion and bringing humpery back to Gallifrey, huzzah!

    Oh, and it does actually reveal who The Other was and where he came from. Which is good: "Lungbarrow" was the capstone of the New Adventures, and if it hadn't made a mighty stab at wrapping up the New Adventures mythology, the range would've felt unfinished.

    Seriously, anyone who thinks the New Adventures have an anti-sex theme…uh…I don't even know what to say. Words cannot encompass their wrongness.

    Reply

  103. Dr. Happypants
    April 6, 2012 @ 4:35 am

    As a regular reader of the New Adventures line, I would've felt cheated if "Lungbarrow" hadn't spilled all those beans. It was the end of the NA Doctor's story, wrapping up all his angst and baggage and mythology, and giving it all a definite conclusion. It would never have worked as just one story in an ongoing series (which is why I'm glad it didn't get made for television), but as the last one…? And that's what it was. "Lungbarrow" wasn't a part of the ongoing story of Doctor Who across different publishers and media; it was an ending to the Virgin line as a self-contained entity with its own identity and history.

    Oh, and SK: we do know where the Other came from.

    Reply

  104. Seeing_I
    April 6, 2012 @ 6:35 am

    But man, those awesome fingerless gloves!

    Reply

  105. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 6, 2012 @ 8:23 am

    I confess, I'm not sure how to think more about that pattern simply because the points of similarity between Waterhouse and Nathan-Turner beyond their sexual orientation. I mean, one's an actor and the other's an executive producer. There's not a long list of criticisms that can possibly apply to both.

    (I also don't think I've been that hard on Franklin. I've suggested he's poor at playing a dashing action hero, but, I mean, I've accused Gerry Davis of being a racist and accused Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts of functional sociopathy. I think Franklin comes out fairly well. I mean, I tend to think of him as the acting equivalent of green bubblewrap. His faults are downright lovable.)

    Reply

  106. Elizabeth Sandifer
    April 6, 2012 @ 8:28 am

    All I can really say regarding Moffat is that this is the first time in my life I have gotten to be an obsessed Doctor Who fan about what's currently airing. The show was off the air when I got into it, and while I liked the RTD stuff and it rekindled my fandom, I'd never have started this blog in the RTD era. Whereas it was the inability to get the series out of my head between seasons 5 and 6 that made me start the blog just to give the large chunk of my brain that was being obsessed with Doctor Who full time something to do.

    It's obviously grown considerably from that, but the fact remains that I've never gotten to avidly and passionately follow Doctor Who as it's been coming out before. I may be an adult now, but this is the first time Doctor Who has been my show, and I think Matt Smith will probably forever jointly share the title of "my Doctor" with McCoy, the nearest thing I'd had to this previously.

    And, I mean, we'll see when we get there if I can argue the case for the era. But I think there's massive, massive depth to Moffat's scripts and real magic underneath his stories. And I don't think anyone will ever convince me that the wedding scene of "The Big Bang" is not the single finest moment of Doctor Who ever written.

    Reply

  107. Iain Coleman
    April 6, 2012 @ 3:09 pm

    Your fetishes are your own affair.

    Reply

  108. Henry R. Kujawa
    April 7, 2012 @ 12:46 pm

    Iain Coleman, loved your comments. At the time, I thought this should jhave been a 6-parter instead of a 4 (never mind that it was RUN as a "1"). Too much and no time to deal with ANY of it.

    Susan deserved HER OWN STORY. Maybe she still does.

    As for "Doctor Who"… looking back, I dearly wish JNT hadn't been so stupid as to NOT hire Geoffrey Bayldon because HE thought audiences would connect him with Pertwee. NOT IN AMERICA, they wouldn't!! (Unless of course they happened to be huge fans of "THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD"– "I'm afraid I do not freqeunt the kinema." –pronouncing it in such a way as to emphasize he's so completely unfgamiliar with it.) Over the years he slowly became one of my favorite character actors, and it blew my mind when I read he turned down the part in 1963 because he was tired of playing "older" roles. See him in HORROR OF DRACULA, opposite Peter Cushing, for a perfect example. Cushing WAS older; but Bayldon LOOKED much older. So many parts he's exhibited traits that tell me he would have made a better "Hartnell" than Hurndall did. (And one "alternate universe" audio story doesn't count. Especially when at this point, I may never get to hear them… just as I have no plans to read any more of the books.)

    While it may seem the companions were with the "wrong" Doctors, the way it worked out, both The Brig and Sarah wound up with their FIRST Doctors. Accident or clever idea, I thought it worked.

    It's sad that the imcumbant looks so irrelevant in his own show, doesn't it? I'm pondering whether when I reach Davison in my current viewing of the series I may just skip his episodes completely and just dig out CAMPION instead. (He's just SO– DAMNED– GOOD– in that. something he NEVER was– even in his very best moments– on WHO.)

    Reply

  109. SK
    April 8, 2012 @ 10:54 am

    Do we? Was it in Lungbarrow?

    Reply

  110. Dr. Happypants
    April 9, 2012 @ 3:57 am

    Not stated outright, but there's what seems to me a very strong implication in Lungbarrow that the Other is Leela and Andred's child.

    Reply

  111. nostalgia
    April 9, 2012 @ 5:36 pm

    It's just so empty, emotionally. There's no depth to it. I know it's a runaround, but I can't work myself up to care about characters who have no feelings.

    Reply

  112. Henry R. Kujawa
    April 9, 2012 @ 6:41 pm

    I really liked Cardinal Borusa on his first 2 appearances so much, it's a crime they made him the baddie in this one.

    Reply

  113. SK
    April 12, 2012 @ 1:20 am

    Oh right, yes, now I remember that. I ignored that implication (treating it as a throwaway joke with no real significance like Davies's joke of Jack being the Face of Boe, which he clearly isn't) due to it indeed denying the very mystery the story was supposed to set up. And because I ignored it, I forgot it.

    Until you reminded me.

    Tsh.

    Reply

  114. Edward Azad
    June 1, 2012 @ 3:59 pm

    This is such a pedantic approach to the episode and, frankly, I doubt any caliber of writing would have satisfied because the author has it in his head (and seems to take delight in it) that every actor, every set piece, every bit of nostalgia is "past its prime." On the one hand, Phillip freely admits that Doctor Who is not a show about continuity, or a biography of an immortal man. So why does the inherently nonsensical nature of these multi-Doctor crossover vex him so much? You can't have it both ways.

    Reply

  115. Daibhid C
    November 7, 2012 @ 2:08 pm

    Did we read the same entry? When Phil says "Both Pertwee and Troughton play their parts as though their characters have retired – as old men coming back for one last adventure. Indeed, the entire past of the program is shown implicitly as 'past its prime'", he's not criticising the Second and Third Doctors for being past it. He's criticising the episode for treating them as if they are.

    Reply

  116. Nickdoctorwho
    November 23, 2012 @ 6:42 pm

    RE: "Exhibit 4.3: Leela (This item on loan to another museum)"

    If it helps, Leela and Rodan were making their own fun the whole time, and we didn't see it because this is family TV.

    I agree with most of the other commenters that the story needed some unifying "element" to it. One of the reviews on the Ratings Guide stated that TFD is a ghost story, and a lot could have been made of this.

    Here's a brilliant idea for what it should have been: Five 45-minute episodes in which each Doctor/companion arrive separately, meet, and make their own way toward the center, like the chapters of a book and a "Rashomon"-style tale. Each era gets its own segment, and there'd be plenty of room to breathe.

    Reply

  117. James LaBarre
    August 20, 2013 @ 6:36 pm

    I was more concerned about how Susan was almost leering at Davidson's Doctor (or at least that's how it looked). Perhaps the intention was that she was admiring what he had become, but no, it looked like a leer.

    Reply

  118. James LaBarre
    August 20, 2013 @ 7:13 pm

    The problem with Flavia as a "red herring" was that the commercials on our local PBS station for the upcoming "Five Doctors" episode included a clip of Borusa saying "I shall be President eternal – and rule forever". So much for a surprise element; before even seeing the show I kind of knew what would happen

    Reply

  119. James LaBarre
    August 20, 2013 @ 7:20 pm

    I think the odds of my attempting to guess what
    > Steven Moffat will write are fairly slim. He's a
    > better television writer than almost anyone else
    > to have worked in the medium.

    Well, I know this is a DrWho blog, but I'd think J Michael Straczynski fits that title better.

    Reply

  120. GeneralNerd
    December 4, 2013 @ 5:28 pm

    Look up "The Ten Doctors." It's a webcomic that does the multi-Doctor story in an incredible way, giving each Doctor a big part and pairing up companions (and most of them appear) in unique and interesting ways.

    Reply

  121. Jubal
    June 12, 2016 @ 2:01 am

    Late to the party as ever. But there is a pretty hefty suggestion as to the origins of The Other in Human Nature (the book, obviously). Of course, it could just be the incoherent rantings of a disturbed mind. Or both.

    Reply

  122. T. Hartwell
    April 18, 2017 @ 7:35 am

    Man, five years and I only now just got the joke implicit in the choice of quote for the post title…

    Reply

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