01 Snow
12 Tree up!
13 E3 down.
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: November.
01 The Whoniverse launches. It does not include the first four episodes
26 'Bring back Bob!": Angry villagers 'boycotting' Waitrose after Popular Car Park Attendant suspended
27 1985
Exit Strategy (The War Doctor Begins: Enemy Mine)
Enemy Mine
Eighth appears in the final episode of the three, Exit Strategy. War's tried everything he can to get through to Case but the Dalek hold on her is too strong. His former incarnation first appears in a flashback as he considers the person he used to be, helping a medic in the middle of warzone who himself has been injured. It's from the period when Eighth was travelling with Bliss which is interesting considering in Previously, Next Time (from the Cass box), he'd forgotten who she was and now he's able to recall her existence enough for her to appear silently, bringing help from the TARDIS. On hearing that I feared I'd bought this whole boxset for little more than a cameo. No.
Later in the story, Eighth appears again and this is where it becomes complicated and I give away the twist. When he first appears its with his catchphrase, "I'm the Doctor just not the one ..." but is interrupted when he realises he's stepped into the middle of a horrific situation with Case on edge and the medic he treated earlier also in the Dalek's thrall. He doesn't know how he got there but immediately steps into action, the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism to use the Dalek's own strategies against them, saving Case in the process. He interacts with the War Doctor on occasion but as expected, apparently for continuity sake, doesn't really know who he is.
But it's only in the final moments we discover the gift and curse at the heart of this adventure. The Eighth Doctor is effectively an AI, injected by the War Doctor into Case's matrices to dislodge the Dalek influence but unlike the simulation in which she survives and becomes the Eighth Doctor's new companion, in the "real world" it's caused her to tumble towards death and War has her on unending life support with the digital version of his earlier self giving her a tour of the universe in her dreams. In a final poignant exchange, we discover this Eighth is self-aware, knows why he exists and agrees to take care of Case for the time she has left.
Here's the clever bit. The reason Eighth began with his catchphrase is because he's been snatched from War's memories at the moment when he was still at his purest, in the opening moments of Night of the Doctor before Cass took against him and events conspired to turn him into the warrior. It's an acknowledgement of how much he's changed or had to change in order to fight in the war and to present him with the goal of ending the war so that he can get back to being the person he once was, something which as we've already seen won't happen until this incarnation is much older or without the help of some future selves.
Placement: The flashback should perhaps go between The Time War boxes, the first and second but because the virtual Eighth Doctor's at the forefront, "Alternative Eighth Doctors" it is.
Predictions 2023.
That Day We reach the time when I assess how well I predicted the ups and downs of the year and look forward to the next. Here we go again:
The Sugababes release an album of new material.
No, no they didn't. But they did release a brand new single in September which was launch on The Graham Norton Show (see above) and reached a pretty respectable 14 in the pop charts. No marks on the technicality that the LP isn't out yet.
More Doctor Who episodes found.
No. Although some episodes went missing again instead. No marks.
General election called, Tories lose power.
Ack, no. Please for the love of Hera, next year. No marks.
Spider-Man film starring Andrew Garfield announced.
Not at all and nothing on the horizon. We're getting Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter films instead. No marks.
New old Shakespeare play canonised.
What does this really mean in the context of anything? Perhaps its that a play is added to the menagerie by the main academic publishers, which looked like it could be Arden of Faversham but then in 2022, Arden hedged their bets and added it to their "Early Modern Drama" line rather than Shakespeare despite some persuasive arguments in the introduction. No marks.
0/5. So let's do the fifty year old version of me a favour and choose some items which can't fail. Surely, this time?
The Sugababes release an whole album of brand new material.
General election called, Tories lose power.
Overhaul of Disney "content" for better or worse.
Trump jailed.
X (formerly known as Twitter) sold again.
A couple of repeats, some open enough to any kind of change, one which is pure wishful thinking (you can guess which).
Happy New Year!
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: July
08 The photo. I'm not going to link to it. If you know, you know.
12 Huw Edwards
14 I visited London, saw the Dulwich Shakespeare Folio, took a boat ride up the Thames to Battersea Power Station and saw the refit and rehang of the National Portrait Gallery (which is splendid).
23 X
25 Barbie has the largest opening weekend by a female director of all time. Here's an interview with Greta Gerwig about how it happened.
31 Ex-X
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: June.
01 Pride Month Begins.
09 Multiple resignations from government triggering inopportune by-elections
15 Johnson lied.
18 Father's Day
30 Barbenheimmer begins
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: May.
19 It's widely reported New York is sinking. Here's the original paper.
24 The new Drama Actors Roundtable from The Hollywood Reporter is published. A couple of days later Twitter notices this perfectly timed and ignored line from Jeff Bridges
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: April
01 The Guardian forgets April Fool's Day, does this instead.
02 "This account is verified because it's subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account."
03 Artemis II crew announced. Includes first female and African American astronauts on a lunar mission
19 There is no news.
21 Star Trek: Picard's superb finale broadcasts in the UK. God, what a great series.
The Crowd (Doom's Day)
It's immense fun. It takes time to get a handle on Doom's character because the first quarter of her story is told through shorter comic strips in DWM and a couple of Titan Comics which use Missy as the focus. But once the longer form storytelling kicks in through the novel, the audiobook and then the Big Finish plays and Sooz Kempner's vibrant performance in the title role, we're more clearly able to understand the irony of her chasing after a figure who would completely repudiate her chosen profession.
Which is exactly what happens when Doom runs into the Doctor and Charley in the penultimate hour. She stumbles into their mission to preserve causality from The Crowd, a race of intergalactic tourists who, rather like the miscreants in Gary Kilworth's Let's Go to Golgotha, visit scenes of death and destruction for kicks and having exhausted the usual venues are now creating disasters and have it in for Thomas Becket and Canterbury. What follows in Lizzy Hopley's script are the usual hijinks intermixed with heated discussions concerning the time traveller's morality and methods.
The Crowd is the most Doctor-centric story of the whole series and Paul's clearly in his element with all of this, bringing out the Doctor's darker side from later in the Big Finish timeline especially when Charley's not around for various reasons. But India is also loving playing up to the Edwardian's similar dismissal; over the years Charley's offered a diplomatically light touch even against the darkest of foes, but Doom really rubs her up the wrong way and the feeling's mutual, the assassin referring to her a Pollard throughout.
The Eighth |Doctor at his most hard line, even authoritarian. He hates Doom and everything she stands for and says so to her face, slowly remembering the occasions when they've met before from his point of view in his first, second and sixth incarnations (Doom's met him in later versions and not really gotten along with them either presumably because they remember this meeting with greater clarity). He's life's champion and at every turn he tries to distance himself from her and even when they have to ally with one another, he's less keen than if she'd been the Master.
The effect of this is for us to re-assess how we've reacted to Doom's adventures. As consumers of various franchise content, our suspension of disbelief changes depending on what we're watching, reading or listening to. Having a hired assassin as the protagonist allows us to bend out morality to accept that for her missions to be a success she has to outright murder people and we might even cheer her on as she does so. On occasion she does find a way of dodging the murder of innocents, but bumping off crime bosses is fair game.
Except now we have the hero of the franchise, usually our hero, pointing out the moral implications of that lifestyle. Some of the hours are structured like Doctor Who stories but with someone who has a different moral compass at the centre and now we're beginning to question our own enjoyment of events and its the first occasion when Doom herself takes a good long look at her lifestyle. That makes this one of the richest of the various hours and makes the whole trip worthwhile - well that and the hilarious twist in the final hour, but you'll have to read that yourself.
Placement: Charley says she and the Doctor have been travelling for a while so let's put it just before Time of the Daleks to help that make sense.
Review 2023: A Review of 2023: March
01 Twitter pretended everyone was a new user
15 BBC journalists went on strike for a different reason.
18 Red Nose Day
20 Doctor Who's multi-platform event Doom's Day announced. Stars Sooz Kempner. Fandom has a meltdown.
21 My Dad tested positive for COVID. I had a meltdown.
22 Boris Johnson gave evidence to the parliamentary standards committee. It did not go well.
24 Got COVID
25 COVID
26 COVID
27 Felt a bit better but still COVID
28 COVID. Reached infinity in Marvel Snap
30 Donald Trump indicted. Gwyneth Paltrow won. It was a busy day.
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