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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.

19 Comments

  1. Rei Maruwa
    July 1, 2024 @ 6:28 pm

    I wonder if this constant result comes from people overcompensating too hard trying to avoid letting her gender affect their writing of the Doctor in any way, thus accidentally resulting in unconscious biases instead of conscious ones. Like, trying so hard to just write “the Doctor”, pretending very hard not to think about the gender thing, when they could be writing an impressive and cool woman instead.

    Reply

  2. Gareth Wilson
    July 1, 2024 @ 11:10 pm

    “But she was elsewhere stymied in quite fundamental ways, including not knowing how actively Muslim Yaz was going to be and so being unable to write her engaging with the discussions of religious fundamentalism and sticking up for faith.”

    If I remember correctly there’s only one line in the entire show that indicates that Yaz is a practising Muslim herself, as opposed to just having a Muslim family. It’s when she talks about coming home from the mosque in “Rosa”. It doesn’t even come up when she’s in the middle of the actual Indian Partition.

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    • Camaveron
      July 2, 2024 @ 7:56 am

      My own interpretation at the time was that Yaz goes to the Mosque because that’s what she does with her family. But she wouldn’t by herself. This isn’t because it’s deep or clever characterisation, just because it was the only way to make her make sense.

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    • Ross
      July 2, 2024 @ 8:56 am

      I recall it seeming weird in Demons of the Punjab that Yaz seemed a little uncertain, even. Her grandmother mentions a hindu tradition and Yaz’s response is along the lines of “Hey wait, I thought we were muslim?” the same way my own children might ask me to confirm whether judaism and christianity are different religions.

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      • Gareth Wilson
        July 3, 2024 @ 12:28 am

        I’ll have to get around to watching Ms Marvel and see how they handled it. They even had a Partition episode too. I did notice there is absolutely no mention of Kamala herself being Muslim in the The Marvels movie, not even in the animated backstory explanation.

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        • Sofia
          July 9, 2024 @ 6:03 pm

          You would not be able to miss Kamala being Muslim in the show. It’s a pretty integral part of how it’s for the most part very rooted in her specific community.

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      • Nick
        July 7, 2024 @ 4:05 am

        My understanding is that before partition Northern India was incredibly culturally mixed, which was largely wiped out by partition, and is of course part of why it was such a disastrous policy. So it’s actually quite normal for that historical moment that her grandmother would know about a Hindu tradition.

        Reply

  3. Ryne Murray
    July 2, 2024 @ 7:05 am

    As clumsy as it would be, I wonder if it would have helped if 13 had a “kid/teen mode” the way that 11 and 12 would have blatant moments of the Doctor being immature and the companion wondering what in god’s name the Doctor is doing. That would at least have drawn a line that could have kept the childishness from becoming a sort of background radiation.

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    • weronika mamuna
      July 2, 2024 @ 8:37 am

      i think it would help if she was allowed to be grown-up, dark, menacing – all the other stuff the Doctors are allowed to be. as it is, the only darkness is a sort of “toxic positivity uwu bean”

      Reply

  4. Christopher Brown
    July 2, 2024 @ 2:18 pm

    I’d forgotten this essay was before Spyfall in the line-up, so I really was expecting someone else!

    Reply

  5. Aristide Twain
    July 3, 2024 @ 12:23 am

    “Of course, they exited the Moffat era in dire shape. Big Finish’s failures scarcely neet further elaboration, while the novel line spent a decade in gradual decline under the stewardship of the same guy who’d been editor for The Ancestor Cell. This meant that we were never going to see some Whittaker Era in Exile that offered a credible double to the main era.”

    If I might, I find the comics conspicuous by their absence in that roll-call! The Titan Comics in the Moffat era were not only very lively, and often great, but perhaps the branch of the EU most wont to doing mock-seasons in twelve issues, complete with their own finales and in many cases their own companions. I think, in 2017, it seemed very plausible that the Thirteenth Doctor comics would be the secret, good Whittaker Era. That the line nosedived as hard as it did after the first couple of Thirteenth Doctor storylines is one of those weird, dispiriting historical accidents, partially caused by COVID — not, to my mind, something which could have been predicted before the fact with any surety.

    Reply

    • Einarr
      July 4, 2024 @ 5:33 am

      I don’t know if this will happen, but I’d certainly be interested in an extra book essay on the Jody Houser/Titan comics from 2018-19 for the Thirteenth Doctor which were largely written without much knowledge of how S11 would pan out – I think you have described them before as “Series 10B”, as they exist in that liminal space of knowing all about 13 and the companions and their costumes and so on, maybe having seen a few trailers, but not yet knowing exactly how the main show would tell their stories (and fail them).

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      • Daibhid C
        August 6, 2024 @ 3:33 pm

        This will almost certainly not happen, but I’d quite like to see what El makes of Where’s the Doctor? in the 2019 Annual; a comic strip that is not good or even exactly interesting by any normal measurement, but is firmly in the category of “completely batcrap”, revealing as it does that in the Whoniverse 1) David Icke was right and Queen Elizabeth II is a reptillian monster; 2) But she’s a nice one who’s friends with the Doctor; 3) Because she only eats Bad People. It has been nearly five years since I read this, I have absolutely no idea what to make it, and I just had to check TARDIS Wiki and make sure I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.

        Reply

  6. Jay
    July 3, 2024 @ 5:09 am

    I’ve only read Molten Heart, which was a very self consciously childish notion of a fantasy underworld, like the doctor visiting Fraggle Rock. The characters paddle around a lava river in a giant stone canoe.

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  7. Przemek
    July 3, 2024 @ 6:19 am

    I wonder how much this Doctor’s relative childishness had influenced the decision to keep 13 away from romance subplots. And the clusterfuck that was the 13/Yaz relationship.

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    • Camaveron
      July 3, 2024 @ 6:32 am

      I think it’s all part of the set of requests Whittaker had to not cry and not be doing more of her upset Broadchurch character work. Making the Doctor feel youthful works to avoid most of what Whittaker wanted to avoid.

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    • weronika mamuna
      July 3, 2024 @ 8:25 am

      i expect it was a desire to avoid stereotypically “feminine” storylines

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      • Przemek
        July 3, 2024 @ 8:35 am

        “Avoiding storylines” seems to be this era’s general approach.

        Reply

  8. Daibhid C
    August 6, 2024 @ 3:24 pm

    The one thing I remember about the book is the Doctor telling Graham that the stained glass window is “either you or the bloke from that game show.” That was quite funny.

    Reply

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