Spoilers Rogue grade and discussion thread

[FredH]

A tentative prediction: About three years from now, the Doctor finds and saves Rogue — and in the process of doing so, is forced to regenerate. Rogue spends some time with the Sixteenth Doctor, but ultimately, alas, they agree that it just isn’t the same.

EDIT: And though it won’t happen, somewhere in there I wouldn’t mind if Yaz reencountered the Doctor, learned of the Rogue business, and is all, “Oh, now you can risk it, is that it?!” (SLAP!)

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Something I forgot to mention in my review: As much as I've loved Ncuti's performance as The Doctor, for whatever reason, he didn't click as The Doctor for me...until the final scene when he was trying to be blasé about losing Rogue and Ruby forced him into that awkward hug. Suddenly he was The Doctor for me.

A tentative prediction: About three years from now, the Doctor finds and saves Rogue — and in the process of doing so, is forced to regenerate. Rogue spends some time with the Sixteenth Doctor, but ultimately, alas, they agree that it just isn’t the same.

Damn, heartbreakingly brutal.

EDIT: And though it won’t happen, somewhere in there I wouldn’t mind if Yaz reencountered the Doctor, learned of the Rogue business, and is all, “Oh, now you can risk it, is that it?!” (SLAP!)

Also brutal but fair.

 

[Seven of Five]

What a lovely episode. The chemistry between the Doctor and Rogue was flowing throughout. Ncuti Gatwa and Johnathan Groff were so much fun together. I hope we see Rogue gain.

I also loved seeing the Doctor unable to give up on Ruby.

The trailer for nexxt week looks intriguing!

 

[Snaploud]

I enjoyed the episode. It was a lot of fun.

There were a lot of moments that only make sense if you're willing to fill in the blanks yourself, though. My rationalizations were in overdrive on this one.

How did the extra hologram faces change Rogue's mind about the Doctor? He already identified the monsters as shapeshifters. The extra faces shouldn't make a difference unless Rogue was familiar with at least one of them (which didn't seem the case because he didn't get the reference to "the Doctor").

Rationalization: he saw something else on the scan that indicated the Doctor was a timelord or he really had heard of the Doctor and recognized one of the faces (but didn't make the connection because he only knew one of the faces).

How was Ruby able to use the device to cosplay as one of the monsters? We only established that the device could switch from dance mode to battle mode, not that it could mimic a creature's scent and noises.

Rationalization: it had extra functionality with voice control and an AI assistant that could talk Ruby through the options.

How did Rogue get out of the trap? I get that it could only send a maximum of 6 through the portal, but that doesn't automatically translate into somebody being able to escape if there are 7 in the cage. Also, wouldn't the Doctor have traded places with Ruby if that were an option?

Rationalization: Rogue has more experienced with the traps and understood the loophole. The Doctor just didn't know about that loophole.

Why was it presented as if there was no other option to save the planet? They could have just saved the other humans and regrouped with a new plan.

Rationalization: the shapeshifters could have used their abilities to escape, and the Doctor and Rogue recognized that this was their one shot to prevent havoc on the timeline.

Also, they seemed to skip over the fact that Rogue was clearly already a time traveler. He had future music, for instance. Who was he bounty-hunting for...? That doesn't necessarily require a rationalization, but it was a bit weird to leave out of the conversation. I could have missed a line about it, though.

 

[kirk55555]

All of the big changes, no matter how controversial at the time, that were already in place when I started watching the show are the one true status quo, and all the changes after I started watching are a betrayal of everything that show about the cranky old human man and his granddaughter in the time machine she named the Tardis ever stood for.

The "true status quo", of The Doctor being a timelord (of no particular fame or renown) who stole a TARDIS and left his home planet to journey through time and space has been the status quo for much longer then I've been alive, and it had additions but they didn't undermine the character, and the few that did were quickly forgotten or ignored. On the other hand, the BS of making The Doctor an infinite other dimensional alien, basically God to the timelords, and fucking over the entire concept of the character while also making them literally the most important person in the entire universe and basically invalidating all of Doctor Who pre-Chibnall era (if you accept it) is only a few years old. Hope the clarification helps.

As for me, as far as I'm concerned William Hartnell played the 1st Doctor, there was no incarnation before that one, and anything contradicting that is just crap that I doubt will still be around/canon if Doctor Who lasts past RTD's current run.

The Shalka Master is an android, or at the very least exists in an android body.

I've only seen it once, so I didn't remember that. But in that case its place on the timeline wouldn't matter, I guess.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Am I the only one that didn't recognize REG? Then again, all the Shalka stuff has generally escaped my notice.

On a different note, did anyone think of Cat from Red Dwarf with Ncuti in this one?

How did the extra hologram faces change Rogue's mind about the Doctor? He already identified the monsters as shapeshifters. The extra faces shouldn't make a difference unless Rogue was familiar with at least one of them (which didn't seem the case because he didn't get the reference to "the Doctor").

Rationalization: he saw something else on the scan that indicated the Doctor was a timelord or he really had heard of the Doctor and recognized one of the faces (but didn't make the connection because he only knew one of the faces).

Personally, I think the scene would've made more sense if the initial scan showed the Doctor as Tennant thus proving he was a shapeshifter. The subsequent activation showing more faces would show that the Doctor had more than one true face and was not merely shapeshifting from one singular form and was thus something more.

 

[FredH]

The "true status quo", of The Doctor being a timelord (of no particular fame or renown) who stole a TARDIS and left his home planet to journey through time and space has been the status quo for much longer then I've been alive, and it had additions but they didn't undermine the character, and the few that did were quickly forgotten or ignored. On the other hand, the BS of making The Doctor an infinite other dimensional alien, basically God to the timelords, and fucking over the entire concept of the character while also making them literally the most important person in the entire universe and basically invalidating all of Doctor Who pre-Chibnall era (if you accept it) is only a few years old. Hope the clarification helps.

As for me, as far as I'm concerned William Hartnell played the 1st Doctor, there was no incarnation before that one, and anything contradicting that is just crap that I doubt will still be around/canon if Doctor Who lasts past RTD's current run.




I've only seen it once, so I didn't remember that. But in that case its place on the timeline wouldn't matter, I guess.

Yes, we get it: the changes before you were alive “did not undermine or fuck over the character”, and the changes once you were here “undermined and fucked over the character”. Thank you for the clarification…

 

[Starkers]

@Snaploud I need to watch it again but I thought Rogue looked a little shocked when he saw Tennant's face. It would predispose that he'd interacted with the Doctor without knowing him as the Doctor though, as you say, though that isn't completely preposterous I guess.

Re Ruby I'd initially actually wondered if she defeated the alien by virtue of whatever it is that makes her special/unique (I was 99% sure it was the real Ruby) but even though that wasn't the case whatever makes her special could have masked her true identity to the other aliens?

Oh one other thing, is this another example of characters stepping where they shouldn't? IE into the trap?

 

[matthunter]

Definitely a "watch where you step" theme this series.

Rogue having played D&D yet being unable to roleplay with the Doctor's "you cad!" bit until the idea to go down on one knee was a nice touch. And of course a Rogue knows how to circumvent a trap and use sleight of hand...

The bit where the Doctor kept turning the music back on was hilarious - I don't think I can even imagine Ten doing that.

People are saying Ten/Rose as a shoo-in here but I could even buy the Nine/Rose pairing, since this very much went back to Nine's flirting with Jack (yes, Rogue is basically a cut and paste since Barrowman can't keep his willy tucked in - though also Barrowman is getting a little old for the role).

I had a feeling "battle mode" was going to be used as soon as it was mentioned, but expected Ruby to come to the rescue when the Chuldar were hunting the Doctor and Rogue in the gardens.

 

[JoeZhang]

What is funny about bring REG into this series is that RTD hated his performance in Shalka.

 

[Steve Roby]

EDIT: And though it won’t happen, somewhere in there I wouldn’t mind if Yaz reencountered the Doctor, learned of the Rogue business, and is all, “Oh, now you can risk it, is that it?!” (SLAP!)

Yep. With the exception of Flux, which we saw in a Pandemic-shortened and changed form and can't really judge, Chibnall took a pretty conservative approach to Doctor Who after Davies and Moffat. A fair amount of Moffat's final series seemed like Moffat was cutting back on the silly arcs about dying at Lake Silencio or dying at Trenzalore or am I a good man or the mpossible girl or the hybrid. Chibnall took that approach a bit farther, making his first season something that could work as an introduction for new viewers, and hewing a bit closer in many ways to the older series, including not letting the Doctor have a romance.

The "true status quo", of The Doctor being a timelord (of no particular fame or renown) who stole a TARDIS and left his home planet to journey through time and space has been the status quo for much longer then I've been alive, and it had additions but they didn't undermine the character, and the few that did were quickly forgotten or ignored.

Not disproving my point so far. Of course, Hartnell's Doctor never once uttered the term Time Lord because that was a later change to his character. As I recall, he implied or outright stated occasionally that he was human.

On the other hand, the BS of making The Doctor an infinite other dimensional alien, basically God to the timelords, and fucking over the entire concept of the character while also making them literally the most important person in the entire universe

Yeah, all that "I'm the Doctor. You know who I am. Basically, run." stuff, and all of the big baddies in the universe having to team up to try to capture the Doctor in the Pandorica because he's way too powerful for any one enemy to take him on, and all that stuff, making the Doctor literally the most important person in the entire universe... yeah, that was pretty annoying. It wasn't Chibnall, though, was it?

and basically invalidating all of Doctor Who pre-Chibnall era (if you accept it) is only a few years old. Hope the clarification helps.

Except that very little was invalidated. More information was provided, just as the Troughton era establishing the Doctor as a Time Lord didn't invalidate the Hartnell era. And anyway, the universe has been rewritten by both the Time War and the explosion of the Tardis. The most recent Doctors are effectively in a different universe from the one the earlier TV Doctors existed in.

As for me, as far as I'm concerned William Hartnell played the 1st Doctor, there was no incarnation before that one, and anything contradicting that is just crap that I doubt will still be around/canon if Doctor Who lasts past RTD's current run.

You're still not contradicting my point. Only the changes made after you started watching are bad. Some of the changes that happened before you were born actually did generate controversy. Every few years there were people screaming about how this new development or that one ruined Doctor Who. But you missed all that, not having been born yet, so for you it's just something that was an easy, unchallenged evolution rather than a series of greater and lesser controversial changes. But there were fans who were as pissed off about things that happened between 1963-1989 and in 1996 as you are now. You just don't have that context so you think things are uniquely different now. They aren't. All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

 

[matthunter]

"Basically God to the Time Lords"

Yeah - helpless infant found, raised, experimented on (by being tortured to death repeatedly) once they found they were medically useful then mindwiped, recruited as an agent and then mindwiped AGAIN.

Screams "deity" to me.

Being nailed to a cross seems like an afternoon with the comfy chair and the Spanish Inquisition now.

 

[Starkers]

I don't know why people are comparing Rogue to Jack, if anything The Doctor was acting more like Jack and Rogue was more like Nine!

 

[jaime]

Well, for anecdotal reportage, I can now confirm that as the Whovian Union Rep of the family, that the few not-we family members who were still watching the show are now refusing to do so ever again.

So that went well.

I really hope that international audience thing works, because I am not sure there’s any general audience left, and because at the moment Bonnie Langford is going to get a reputation as the harbinger of doom for more than one incarnation of the show.

 

[jaime]

Yep. With the exception of Flux, which we saw in a Pandemic-shortened and changed form and can't really judge, Chibnall took a pretty conservative approach to Doctor Who after Davies and Moffat. A fair amount of Moffat's final series seemed like Moffat was cutting back on the silly arcs about dying at Lake Silencio or dying at Trenzalore or am I a good man or the mpossible girl or the hybrid. Chibnall took that approach a bit farther, making his first season something that could work as an introduction for new viewers, and hewing a bit closer in many ways to the older series, including not letting the Doctor have a romance.



Not disproving my point so far. Of course, Hartnell's Doctor never once uttered the term Time Lord because that was a later change to his character. As I recall, he implied or outright stated occasionally that he was human.



Yeah, all that "I'm the Doctor. You know who I am. Basically, run." stuff, and all of the big baddies in the universe having to team up to try to capture the Doctor in the Pandorica because he's way too powerful for any one enemy to take him on, and all that stuff, making the Doctor literally the most important person in the entire universe... yeah, that was pretty annoying. It wasn't Chibnall, though, was it?



Except that very little was invalidated. More information was provided, just as the Troughton era establishing the Doctor as a Time Lord didn't invalidate the Hartnell era. And anyway, the universe has been rewritten by both the Time War and the explosion of the Tardis. The most recent Doctors are effectively in a different universe from the one the earlier TV Doctors existed in.



You're still not contradicting my point. Only the changes made after you started watching are bad. Some of the changes that happened before you were born actually did generate controversy. Every few years there were people screaming about how this new development or that one ruined Doctor Who. But you missed all that, not having been born yet, so for you it's just something that was an easy, unchallenged evolution rather than a series of greater and lesser controversial changes. But there were fans who were as pissed off about things that happened between 1963-1989 and in 1996 as you are now. You just don't have that context so you think things are uniquely different now. They aren't. All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

Additive narrative change versus subtractive. The only time you can really argue that a big-ish character change retroactively messed up something else was when Mawdryn Undead wiped out the possibility of The Morbius Doctors. But as it was never stated, it didn’t have lasting ramifications. Especially with the 20th looming.

 

[matthunter]

Well, for anecdotal reportage, I can now confirm that as the Whovian Union Rep of the family, that the few not-we family members who were still watching the show are now refusing to do so ever again.

So that went well.

I really hope that international audience thing works, because I am not sure there’s any general audience left, and because at the moment Bonnie Langford is going to get a reputation as the harbinger of doom for more than one incarnation of the show.

Bye!

Door, arse, etc.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Well, for anecdotal reportage, I can now confirm that as the Whovian Union Rep of the family, that the few not-we family members who were still watching the show are now refusing to do so ever again.

So that went well.

I really hope that international audience thing works, because I am not sure there’s any general audience left, and because at the moment Bonnie Langford is going to get a reputation as the harbinger of doom for more than one incarnation of the show.

Godd riddance, then.

 

[Steve Roby]

Doctor Who is in an odd place right now, being part of the broadcast world and the streaming world. It's probably hard to provide anything like an objective answer as to whether it's doing well in the ratings, because it's half apple, half orange. But the amount of online buzz and mainstream media coverage is still significant. It's still a globally well known brand getting a lot of attention. I'm not worried just yet.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Well, for anecdotal reportage, I can now confirm that as the Whovian Union Rep of the family, that the few not-we family members who were still watching the show are now refusing to do so ever again.

So that went well.

I really hope that international audience thing works, because I am not sure there’s any general audience left, and because at the moment Bonnie Langford is going to get a reputation as the harbinger of doom for more than one incarnation of the show.

Melodrama says hi.

Also: I, for one, welcome our new Bonnie Langford overlady.

 

[jaime]

Doctor Who is in an odd place right now, being part of the broadcast world and the streaming world. It's probably hard to provide anything like an objective answer as to whether it's doing well in the ratings, because it's half apple, half orange. But the amount of online buzz and mainstream media coverage is still significant. It's still a globally well known brand getting a lot of attention. I'm not worried just yet.

I’m surprised and… sort of pleased, that it didn’t go when I expected it to. (Basically, that it went on past Whittaker — I thought in many ways that Capaldi was in Colin Baker territory on a bunch of levels. Right down to coming on an anniversary from a younger Doctor, who had followed the ‘popular’ one.)
On the other hand, I do not think this RTD2 era is going very well at all tbh.They’ve lost sight of something, several things, whilst trying to find a new identity in the face of falling public interest. It’s somewhat Terra Incognita at this point — I’m quietly hopeful it picks up with the finale, but I suspect shooting so far ahead and unable to course correct is going to be an act of hubris that loses more and more of the general UK audience.