Doctor Who

Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road
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Doctor Who - The Church on Ruby Road

The last of the four holiday specials, “The Church on Ruby Road” marks the first adventure of the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and the introduction of his next companion in Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and her adopted mother (Michelle Greenidge). Ignoring for now the rather obvious comparisons between Ruby and Rose, Gibson’s story also comes with a mysterious heritage whose foreshadowing looms large over the episode. While I think it’s possible the identity of her parents won’t play a major role in her arc, I don’t think it’s all that likely. While that provides one mystery, another is raised in the identity of the Sunday’s neighbor (Anita Dobson) who knows more than your average person about time travel and the TARDIS.

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Doctor Who – The Giggle

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Giggle
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Doctor Who - The Giggle

Apparently there are no rules left in the Whoverse worth following. To introduce our next Doctor, Russell T. Davies pulls out all the stops (some of which work, some of which don’t). Dusting off a classic Who villain in the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), a powerful adversary from one of the lost Doctor Who serials, we get David Tennant‘s final (again… but not really) adventure as The Doctor. Sporting a pretty awful accent, Harris’ Toymaker is presented as a being of immeasurable power from somewhere outside the known universe who returns to toy with humanity for fun by driving them mad hijacking the first ever television signal with a creepy puppet. While the character has been referenced over the years in comics and novels, this is the first on-screen interaction with The Doctor the Toymaker has had since “The Celestial Toymaker.”

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Doctor Who – The Star Beast

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Star Beast
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Doctor Who - The Star Beast

The first of three holiday specials designed to wash the unpleasant taste of recent Who history out of mouths of fans by returning to a simpler time gives us The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) together once again when another alien experience coincidentally close to Donna brings about their reunion. “The Star Beast” is forced to deal with the problem of putting the pair together (which should kill Donna), but awkwardly gets around the fact by not having any of the alien space events, characters, or the actions of The Doctor himself trigger Donna in any way (a pretty strong contradiction to events in “The End of Time“) until the script is ready to deal with the ramifications (in a way that makes the previous Doctor look incredibly stupid for not suggesting somethin similar years ago).

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What If… Clara Oswald’s Death Led to the Valeyard?

“The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day, and he will have other names before the end.”

What If Uncle Ben Had Lived? What If Spider-Man Had Rescued Gwen Stacy? Honoring the Marvel Comics series which over the years has taken a look at how a small change can create ripples across the Marvel Universe, we will examine the same idea across movies, television, and more.

In Doctor Who‘s “Face the RavenClara Oswald bravely faces death and becomes the first companion in decades to die on-screen. Through struggle and trickery, her fate would be altered after only a couple of episodes and she would return to travel time and space, stuck in the moment prior to her death. But, was that the best option? We’d seen with the death of Adric decades before such a moment could have a profound affect on the next incarnation of The Doctor. Here we ask, what if Clara Oswald had stayed dead and that death led The Doctor down a dark road to become The Valeyard?

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Doctor Who – The Timeless Children

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Timeless Children
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Doctor Who - The Timeless Children television review

As has been the tendency of writer and producer Chris Chibnall over the course of this season, the finale of “The Timeless Children” thumbs its nose at Doctor Who canon. Pulling on the thread from the classic Doctor Who serial “The Brain of Morbius,” “The Timeless Children” confirms that William Hartnell was not the first incarnation of The Doctor. Although this contradicts several episodes of Who canon, it’s an idea that has been suggested before. If that was the only change Chibnall had made in “The Timeless Children” it would have been groundbreaking enough. Instead, that’s just one piece of the story. And while that can be, somewhat grudgingly, accepted… the rest… Well, it plays like fan fiction. And not even good fan fiction.

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