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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.

5 Comments

  1. .
    February 3, 2011 @ 1:59 pm

    I'm glad I'm not the only one to find the Doctor-Susan relationship tiresome. You have to admit that many the problems you bring up wouldn't be so apparent if the Doctor wasn't such a jerk. I'm sure she would be an okay companion for say, Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee.

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  2. Elizabeth Sandifer
    February 3, 2011 @ 2:05 pm

    I actually doubt that, because I think she'd still have fundamental problems. Because there's still a fundamental tension – the Doctor can't bring companions into endless adventures of massive danger out of a desire to protect the companion. Certainly not out of a familial desire. Susan, as a concept, forces the Doctor to protect his past instead of running from it.

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  3. David Bateman
    February 5, 2012 @ 12:38 am

    I'm not sure what you mean by the penultimate sentence:

    "The result of this, hopefully, will be that endings like the ending of The Sensorites, in which the Doctor, for no visible reason, flips out at Ian and vows to throw him off the TARDIS, seemingly ignoring episodes of characterization."

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  4. Mark Pompeo
    March 12, 2018 @ 2:54 pm

    I finally got around to watching this, and wow! This was a really good story. “The Daleks,” “The Aztecs,” and part 1 of “An Unearthly Child” get all the hype from the first season, but for my money, this was better than all of those and the true gem of the season!

    Reply

  5. Nathan
    October 3, 2020 @ 2:43 am

    The Sensorites’ suits appear to be neither spandex nor their skin. in fact the color photo that you show clearly shows that the clothing is both a different color and texture than the skin. It’s also definitely not spandex, having a sort of fuzzy texture to it. Agreed that it isn’t a great costume, but I found those to be strange assertions when there’s no evidence for either.
    I do find your dissection of the “problem of Susan” interesting. I’m not sure that she’s unworkable as a character, but she’s unworkable as a character if modern Doctor Who is your endpoint. Getting rid of her was an important evolution of the series into its modern form.

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