Spoilers Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

[jaime]

Shorthand: you were lazy, borderline glib, and arguably even guilty of the same kind of misrepresentation you keep accusing RTD of. And clearly only selectively listening.

You're basically just arguing yourself in circles, at this point. Maybe take a break?

I wasn’t borderline glib, I was outright glib for the sake of satirising the writing these last two seasons. And I can’t be guilty of that same misrepresentation I am describing in RTD’s writing, by simple virtue of the fact I was writing a jibing short post on a board sending it up, not a multimillion pound BBC TV drama with a history and fandom. If I was, I would not be being glib and would put more thought into it.

Imagine, if you would, a scene where Donna confronts the Doctor, much like she did over giving away the lottery money, only it’s about Rose being Trans because of what the Doctor did. And the Doctor explaining that no, Rose is who she is because she’s *human* and no more no less. That the artron energy may have been shared with her, given her the memories to make her stuffed toys, maybe even given her her choice of name — which Donna would no doubt point out — but it didn’t change who she was, who she was always going to be. And that’s he sorry for the pain and difficulties that she went through, and wishes that could all be blamed on something else, on him, etc — which Donna would be strongly insinuating was the case — but that it’s really just to do with us, as humans. Everyone different, everyone special, everyone going through their journey.

Wouldn’t something like that have maybe been a bit more representative, a bit more powerful than ‘oh yeah, she flipped gender identity because of Time Lord juju in your head’.

Granted, I’d probably want to also fix the silly ‘let it go’ business too. Sexism is still sexism, even to a male presenting Time Lord. And I suspect I would have at least found a way to at least hang a lampshade on the fact that this is all happening in an episode where the main villain reveal hinges on (a) don’t be taken in by a cute appearance and (b) solar radiation changing the identity of entire races. The optics on that subtext just looks a bit icky. Would definitely want to find a way around that whilst still doing the Starbeast I guess. Not that I was ever big on that comic strip anyway.

Anyway, my point is, I do care about the way these things are handled in fiction, and think they have been handled badly. That’s not because I just want to criticise RTD, but because I genuinely think he made mistake after mistake after mistake. And some of those were more than a little bit offensive.
At least he did manage to circle back around to Conrad’s childhood in the end in the finale, even if it wasn’t exactly great either.

 

[The Wormhole]

I still enjoyed his first season and Gatwa and Ruby Rose

I'm not sure if you're missing a comma or screwed up the character name, but this sentence as written comes off as very confusing. Ruby Rose has never been on Doctor Who. Ever.

The only really mind bending thing I don't get is why he took Davros out of his chair because he seems to think society thinks most people in wheel chairs are bad people or something? Not sure where he got that idea from.

I find it's best to ignore RTD's comments and simply assume what we saw in that minisode was Davros pre-injury. And really, that was the only practical option in this case, as I doubt that minisode had the budget to do Davros's makeup job. And as it turns out, RTD did talk in The Writer's Tale about wanting to do a flashback showing Davros before he was injured, which I had initially assumed was finally being realized when I first watched the minisode before seeing RTD's comments about not wanting to villify the disabled.

Also Belinda having a Incel boyfriend really made no sense for the character and feels like it was done just to make a very weak plot, happen.

She made a bad judgment call when she was a teenager. What's so hard to believe about that?

 

[Turtletrekker]

Yeah, this is not wanting to vilify the disabled thing sounds good, and it is a good thing to be aware of, but this came down to budget and nothing else.

 

[Jayson1]

I'm not sure if you're missing a comma or screwed up the character name, but this sentence as written comes off as very confusing. Ruby Rose has never been on Doctor Who. Ever.

I find it's best to ignore RTD's comments and simply assume what we saw in that minisode was Davros pre-injury. And really, that was the only practical option in this case, as I doubt that minisode had the budget to do Davros's makeup job. And as it turns out, RTD did talk in The Writer's Tale about wanting to do a flashback showing Davros before he was injured, which I had initially assumed was finally being realized when I first watched the minisode before seeing RTD's comments about not wanting to villify the disabled.

She made a bad judgment call when she was a teenager. What's so hard to believe about that?

I had a mental fart. Not sure why I said Ruby Rose when I meant Ruby Sunday.