Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Spoiler alert...









But the group of Whovian fans seemed kind of unreal because they
were, in fact, not real. Though there's a bit at the end that shows
that the manipulation that defeated Lux rendered the fans real,
after all. Which was a bit of a stretch, I'll admit, but fell in
with the sense of wonder-fulness.
  

    
The Whovian fans did seem to exist in a state of almost
Heisenbergian uncertainty!

I'm not sure the script of `Lux made an awful lot of logical sense
at any point, which to be honest is why I struggle with it. I like
logical stories, not wild wacky surreal ones in which anything can
happen at any time for any reason. It makes my teeth itch.

Doctor Who used to be firmly science based - no magic, no gods,
nothing like that. But RTD has shifted that with the introduction of
the gods of discord (I think that's what they are called? Please do
feel free to connect me if I'm wrong) to give him more latitude to
be inventive and creative on the perfectly understandable grounds
that after nearly 70 years the show needs new, fertile ground to
inspire brand new stories. But inevitably it means that some fans
won't feel quite as at home in the new context as they did, and for
me at the moment I'm one of those.

Which is not to say that I don't appreciate how well the episodes
are done - the performances are wonderful (I'm particularly enjoying
Belinda, she's so much more engaging than Ruby so far) and the show
looks fantastic. Although I did think that Lux has some borrowed
aesthetics - the robots looked like the ones from The Husbands of
River Song (2015?) and their emoticon facial expressions were like
the bots from "Smile". Little things like that distracted me this
week.
  

    
Apparently the concept of the Gods of Chaos (or Pantheon of Discord)
originated with the Trickster, which first appeared in "Whatever
Happened to Sarah Jane" (2007).
<https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Trickster#Early_life>
  

    
There's a lot of retrofitting going on here! I don't think there was
any intention to link The Trickster to a wider array of
pan-dimensional beings originally, but it's become an effective way
of sweeping up a whole class of alien adversaries into one "all you
can eat" buffet.

There's no question that in terms of the show, The Toymaker (hen
known as the Celestial Toymaker, played by Michael Gough in 1966)
came first when he popped up and was thwarted by William Hartnell's
first incarnation.

Then there was Sutekh who was in one of the best loved Tom Baker
stories, Pyramids of Mars, in 1975. There was no suggestion at the
time that he was a "god", just an advanced alien entity, but Russell
T Davies decided he worked well alongside the Toymaker and so
promoted him to godhood to be the season 1 Big Bad. They also seem
to have swept up the Mara (from Peter Davidson stories Kinda and
Snakedance) as members of the pantheon. 

But the idea of unifying all this mythology didn't really kick in
until Wild Blue Yonder (the second of the 2023 David Tennant
specials) and the moment that the Doctor failed to cast salt along
the threshold at the edge of the universe, allowing the banished
gods access to our universe.

I think this is all very untidy, as is inevitably the case trying to
make sense of 60+ years of television continuity created by dozens
of different writers, producers and script editors down the decades.
Other elemental beings in the Whoniverse include The Eternals (from
Enlightenment) and the Guardians of Time (White and Black varieties)
and I confess that I'm not remotely sure what links and comparisons
there are between then all.

The Whoniverse is a big and complicated place sometimes.
  

    
So we're half way through the new season of Doctor Who, and we're
happily chatting all about it inside the WELL (check out the
<whovians.> conference and <sftv.> if you're a member and you
haven't already.)

There's not been a lot of conversation here in the public-facing
Inkwell but I'd love to hear what people are thinking about the new
run. If you're not a WELL member then you can still send
contributions by emailing inkwell[@]well.com.

To recap: I think there were mixed feelings about the first episode,
"The Robot Revolution", which introduced the new companion of
Belinda, who is great. I had to watch it twice before I warmed up to
it. It was a bit too frenetic for me but I think that was
intentional as it conveyed the sense of disorientation and confusion
that Belinda was feeling, being swept up in all of this.

The second episode was "Lux" which was a very meta episode in which
the Doctor confronts a cartoon come to life and even encounters a
group of Who fans watching the show on TV. Everyone seemed to love
this, but - while I admired the inventiveness and fresh energy of
the episode - I didn't warm to it as much as others did. Am I a
grouch?

The first two episodes had a very vibrant, day-glo sense to them -
like watching the Batman movies made by Joel Schumacher. I much
prefer the darker Burton Batman movies and so I was pleased when the
new Who season returned to that sort of serious fare with the third
episode, called ... "The Well". Naturally all of us here were rather
invested in this one being a top episode!

And for me it was, the best of the season so far. Very much like
classic episodes of old like "Earthshock" or "The Satan Pit". It
actually turned out to be an unexpected sequel to a past episode
(but not one of the ones just cited) and I really enjoyed that sort
of thing. As was the most recent outing, "Lucky Day", which was
Doctor-lite and concentrated on last year's companion Ruby as she
attempts to reassimilate back into normal life. The only problem was
that it felt a bit too similar to least year's "73 Yards" to me and
as a whole came across more like older vintage Who than the rest of
the stories so far this season.

Overall, the thing we're all waiting for is the Season Arc to
emerge. So far it seems that the Earth has ceased to exist, which is
inconvenient, but where is Russell T Davies doing with that idea?

Anyway, that's enough from me. What does anyone else think? Get in
touch if you've been following this series or have thoughts about
any Who-related aspects.
  

    
I liked "Lucky Day" quite a bit, though, because it made an
important political statement about fascists using social media to
disrupt real and valuable government operations. 

Meanwhile I'm bummed at reports that Ncuti Gatwa is leaving Dr. Who.
But I've already thought of a replacement, Chiwetel Ejiofor...!
  

    
I liked "Lucky Day" too but there were definite echoes of past
Dctor-lite stories going on there as well. No bad thing, those
stories have generally been pretty good and some of the best Who
episodes of the last two decades.

The important political statement felt to many that it was an
uncredited script insertion by showrunner Russell T Davies. I can
certainly see why people would say that. In addition it was a little
too obvious and on-the-nose for many which has put some people off
it. But like you, I thought it was much-needed and clearly something
the author (whether RTD or not) felt strongly about, and gave a
proper depth to the episode.

> I'm bummed at reports that Ncuti Gatwa is leaving Dr. Who.

I'm even more bummed by rumours that Disney is pulling the plug on
its co-production deal and this would mean that the show as a whole
gets mothballed. 

Given that these episodes were filmed at the start of 2024 before
the last season aired, and there has been no news of new filming
since then, it does feel rather like something should be happening
for 2026 but isn't.
  

    
Though after 62 years of stops and starts, I wouldn't count 'em out.
  

    
It feels strange to talk about a show that stops and starts when the
first run lasted 26 years and the second has been going for 20 which
by almost every other show's standards is a model of longevity!

But you're right, it has been stop-start, and always seemingly on
the edge of being cancelled. When the show began in 1963 it was
given a 13 week deal. Then the Daleks came along and it became a
cultural phenomenon and suddenly it was running year round (with a
brief hiatus for Christmas). 

By the end of the 60s it seemed that the show had run it course. It
was touch and go whether they carried on after Patrick Troughton
stood down. Then bizarrely a format revamp and the casting of Jon
Pertwee made it a huge hit again, and it only got bettr when Tom
Baker took over. The BBC couldn't cancel if if they wanted to. And
they did want to, behind the scenes...

TV changed in the 1970s and the series was gradually pruned down to
26 weeks per year which was standard for the period (most hour-long
shows only ran to 13 episodes per season in the UK). It jogged along
pretty well until the infamous 'cancellation' shock where BBC
controller Michael Grade put it on an 18 month hiatus in 1985 and
only grudgingly brought it back due to petitions and protests. Even
so, the break rather killed the show's fan base and when it was
'rested' again in 1989, this time it didn't come back.

Well, it did - with a TV movie starring Paul McGann in 1996 which
did well but not well enough to get a series order from Fox in the
US. Then it was rested again until Russell T Davies came along: the
BBC wanted to hire him away from independent networks and the only
thing they had to lure him that no one else had was Doctor Who, so
they offered him that. And it worked.

The show was pretty regular from then through the
Eccleston/Tennant/Smith years but then the cost of making it had
meant it's had a year off every now and then. Slowly it got tired
and ratings went down: by the end of Jodie Whitaker's tenure the BBC
plan was to 'rest' the show (translation: another 16 years of
hibernation) but then RTD declared an interest in returning and the
Disney co-production deal came along, and suddenly it was hot
property again.

But I don't think the first Disney Who season delivered the ratings
that the Mouse House was looking for. There's been something
luke-warm about the way that the new series has been promoted making
me wonder if Disney hasn't lost interest and is seeking a back door
exit. If that happened I'm not sure whether there would be a way
back for Doctor Who in future, or at least not for some time. 
  

    
So we have only two episodes of this run of "Doctor Who" to go. They
grow up so fast!

The final episodes are a big two-part finale, just as they were last
year. But whereas the Big Bad of the season was only unveiled at the
end of the penultimate episode last year, this time the big reveal
came at the end of episode 2.6, "The Interstellar Song Contest".

The development could do with come context for newcomers. You may
want to look away now if you don't want any spoilers, because these
are some big ones.






<spoiler space>





Original 1963 cast member Carole Ann Ford, who left in 1964,
returned to the show for the first time since a brief cameo in 1983.
I'd heard nothing about this in advance and was really quite
stunned. For those who don't know her significance to the show, I'll
explain.

When the show started in 1963, it began with two London school
teachers called Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright doing what we
would call today a welfare check on one of their teenage pupils,
Susan Foreman. It's because of some odd behaviour in the classroom
which these days would probably be put down as a neurodiversity
trait.

It turned out that Susan liveed in junk yard with her grandfather
who is known only as the Doctor. When Ian and Barbara follow them
into a blue police box in the junk yard they find themselves in a
space/time machine which promptly dematerialises and whisks them
away: they spend the next two years trying to get home again, as the
Tardis is not very reliable at this point.

Carole Ann Ford played Susan, the "An Unearthly Child" of the title
of th first episode. She was the Doctor's granddaughter. This
technically makes her the first companion, as Ian and Barbara only
join here. There's been some debate over the years as to whether
she's truly the Doctor's biological descendent or whether she was a
'stray' that the Doctor had picked up on his travel and dubbed
'grand daughter' as a mark of affection. But recent stories such as
"The Name of the Doctor" in 2013 suggest she really was with the
Doctor when he stole the Tardis and fled his home world of
Gallifrey, so these days it's taken as a matter of series lore that
Susan is indeed truly family. You'll notice she's still calling him
grandfather in this week's episode.

Susan left the show in 1964 (to settle down with her boyfriend in a
future London) as Ford felt underused and typecast as a juvenile
which was holding her back. She returned as a guest star on the 20th
anniversary episode "The Five Doctors", and ten years later also
reprised her role for the 1993 charity special "Dimensions in Time"
during the period when "Doctor Who" itself was no longer in
production.

Since then she's been involved in some of the audio plays produced
by Big Finish Media but surprisingly she's never been back in the
show. Then she ran into Russell T Davies at a launch party for Ncuti
Gatwa's time as the Doctor and they got on like a house on fire. He
said "come back and do a guest appearance" and she said yes straight
away, leading to her cameo in this story.

Is that the end of Susan's story? Maybe. But her holographic avatar
in this week's show tells the Doctor to "find me" so maybe there is
more still to come...
  

    
This is a continuation post to <185> about events in the latest May
2025 episode, "The Interstellar Song Contest" which sets up the two
part series finale to come. You may want to look away now if you
don't want any spoilers, because these are some big ones.






<spoiler space>





But Susan's appearance isn't the biggest reveal. We also find out
who this year's Big Bad is. Midway through the closing credits, we
get a bit of a bombshell where Mrs Flood shows up again ... and
promptly bigenerates (in the way that David Tennant's Doctor begat
Ncuti Gatwa) and is revealed as The Rani.

Hands up those who remembers The Rani? (Not including John!)

To be honest, The Rani was somewhat after my time. She was created
as a female counterpart to another popular renegade Time Lord, The
Master, who had been somewhat overused. Also, the showmakers wanted
a strong recurring female adversary for the Doctor as there hadn't
been one up to this time.

Her first story was "The Mark of the Rani" in 1985 and she returned
two years later for "Time and the Rani" which was Seventh Doctor
Sylvester McCoy's first story. And that was all, unfortunately, as
the show went off air in 1989. The character did make do a guest
appearance in the 30th anniversary charity sketch "Dimensions in
Time" in 1993, along with Susan as mentioned above.

Ever since Doctor Who returned to the screen in 2005, long time fans
have been clamouring for The Rani to be among the classic characters
to be revived. When Missy appeared, many fans were sure that this
was the Rani but it turned out to be a gender-swapped Master nstead
which worked so much better.

The real coup was the show getting Kate O'Mara to play the role. She
had been a BIG star of British film ("The Horror of Frankenstein",
"The Tamarind Seed") and television ("The Brothers", "Triangle" and
dozens of guest appearances in every show around) for getting on for
two decades by this point.

Unfortunately her fame was also the reason that she made only those
two appearances in "Doctor Who": after the first serial she got cast
to play Joan Collin's sister Caress in "Dynasty" so she relocated to
the US for a time. When she returned to the UK it was too late to do
more "Who", so she basically did her own take on the Alexis role for
popular sailing soap "Howards' Way".

She pretty much semi-retired in the 1990s although continued to find
frequent roles in stage and television productions and wrote four
books until her death on 30 March 2014 in a Sussex nursing home,
aged 74, from ovarian cancer.

It takes pretty big feet to fill Kate O'Mara's shoes. And I would
suggest that with "Good Wife" star Archie Panjabi they have found
the perfect person to don the high heels and walk in her footsteps.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with her in this
weekend's episode "Wish World".

We'll doubtless be talking about it in <whovians.> for anyone who
wants to sign up and check the place out.
  

    
So we've had the final episode of season 2 of Doctor Who. There is
certainly plenty to talk about!

I'm avoiding posting spoilers today for those yet to catch up with
it, but I'd love to know what the general reaction is to Wish
World/Reality War and indeed to the whole of season 2, if not the
complete Ncuti Gatwa era as the Doctor.

Let us know what you thought by mailing your comments to 
inkwell[@]well.com so that they can appear here even if you're not a
WELL member. Or alternatively you can sign up for a WELL membership
and post directly, both here and in the exclusive <whovians.>
conference.

Hope to read your thoughts soon!
  

    
I watched that last, very busy episode last night, and I still don't
understand the significance or origin of the baby Ruby was holding. 
But it was hard to keep track...

I thought Ncuti was an excellent Doctor, sad to see his run end
after only two seasons. But his star is rising, I'm sure he's
getting compelling offers every day. 

Hearing rumors that Doctor Who might not return, or at least might
not return to Disney... but I think that's just uncertainty because
neither BBC nor Disney has committed so far to a season 3/16. 
  

    
Okay, I think I can held you on the subject of the baby.

The baby was another of the pantheon of gods introduced in the Gatwa
era that also included the Trickster, the Toymaker, Maestro and
Sutekh. In this case it was the the god of wishes, Desiderium, who
found physical form after being born on earth as the seventh son of
a seventh son and hence as lucky as it was possible to get. The Rani
abducted him at the start of Wish World.

Desiderium's power was that he could grant wishes to anyone who
asked him for them. Or in this case, by kissing his head and then
blowing out the wish energy into the air. It was this power that
allowed the Rani to remake the Earth as Wish World. But it was all a
bit patchwork and uneven (a bit like the script if we're honest...)
and was falling apart by the time the Doctor showed up. To put it
another way, the baby was the ultimate deus ex machina and the way
to reset the world to how it should be.

I'm sad to see Ncuti move on so soon, too. I wonder if he was always
short-term and fitting in the production in between other
commitments? He finished shooting this a year ago after all. But I
do think it was always in the plans, for whatever reason.

There's certainly a lot of debate about what happens next. Hard to
imagine that Disney can back out a year early; and if they did, what
would the BBC do with the show? It's still their intellectual
property. A lot of the rumours arose because it was reported that we
wouldn't get to see who the Doctor regenerated into at the end of
the most recent episode, but that rumour could started because any
preview copies had that moment removed. Now we know it's ...

Wait. *Do* we know anything? That surprise guest appearance didn't
say it was the Doctor. 
  

    
Don't we know that it's Rose Tyler (Billie Piper)?
  

    
Ahh, but what part is Billie Piper playing?

Normally when an actor takes over as the Doctor, the end credits
include the line "and XXX as the Doctor". They did that in
Interstellar Song Contest for The Rani, too, when Archie Panjabi
made her bow. But this time? Not a word about who Billie Piper will
be playing.

Piper has returned in the past in a different role called The Moment
in 50th anniversary special "Day of the Doctor". She was an imagined
incarnation of the artificial intelligence behind the device that
wiped out the Time Lord. So who knows if that has any bearing on
matters?
  

    
I assumed she was the new Doctor because it appeared Ncuti was
making the transition, and everything he was saying suggested that
was what was happening. Good point that we don't know.

(Meanwhile I still have to watch the rest of the Jodie Whittaker
episodes.)
  

    
Can't take a lot of credit for pointing it out, all the Who feeds
are buzzing about whether what we saw is what we think we saw or
whether Russell T Davies is lining up another shock reveal if and
when the series returns.

It's ironic that Saturday's episode saw some of the best writing for
Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, given it was from a showrunner who never
got to work on any of her three seasons in the role.
  

    
So we've reached the end of this season f Doctor Who, and it looks
like there might be quite a long wait to say the least before the
next ne. Nothing is in production at this point which makes a 2026
run feel rather unlikely; and rumours cay the series could be rested
for rather  longer than that, even.

In all likelihood that means this Inkwell topic will also gracefully
fade away from this point on. It's actually been one of the longest
Inkwell topics of recent times (although that did include several
months of inactivity between seasons, so we cheated a bit) and it's
been great to have the opportunity to write about the show, bot here
and in the <whovians.> conference itself.

But before we do bow out, we should probably take one last 'State of
Whovinerse' stock check about the last two seasons and where we
stand looking forward. Generally speaking I've enjoyed the two Ncuti
Gatwa seasons although I do get the feeling that I'm on the cusp of
ageing out of the audience for the show and getting increasingly
cranky about certain aspects of the show.

Perhaps the biggest thing on my mind right now is: is there still a
place for Doctor Who? The last couple of seasons have felt like the
show is casting around for what it wants to do in future,
reinventing itself for the 2030s and beyond, and I'm not sure that
it's found an answer to that question. It's dipped into myths and
magic, and the influence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been
particularly noticeable, but at the same time it's taken a
sledgehammer to reinventing its own mythos in a way that seems to
satisfying neither new or old fans. I'm not sure that the mega
budget stemming from the Disney deal which allowed the MCU touches
has actually been all that healthy for the show and I worry it's
taken it in a direction that isn't going to work.

It'll be interesting to see what the spin off mini series "The War
Between the Land and the Sea". Despite its hi-concept (prehistoric
Sea Devils from below the surface of the ocean want their planet
back from the primates that stole it while they were hibernating).
It looks a lot more serious, darker, more dramatic than the show
we've just finished watching. How will that influence what happens
with the Who franchise moving forward?

If you have any thoughts on this - where would you like to see the
show go from here? - then get in touch. We'll also be talking wbout
the most recent series of Who and what comes next in the <whovians.>
conference for WELL members and you're very welcome to join us there
if you would like to. Look around the site for details for details
of how to get an introductory WELL membership if that interests you.
  

    
It could be that Dr. Who's mission of saving lives and liberating
the oppressed is out of style as we turn to leaders who want to do
the opposite. 
  

    
Given where the show started (with the Daleks as a thin allegory for
the Nazis and the threat of fascism) that would at least be a neat
and tidy bookend for 62 years of the show, I suppose. While also
showing how little things seem to change...
  

    
Maybe we'll get a version where the Daleks are presented as heroes,
and Dr. Who is the villain trying to stop them.
  

    
I'm so sorry, I totally missed this post at the time and never
replied. Very rude and remiss of me.

I'm pretty sure that the show has indeed played with the idea of how
the Daleks see morality quite differently. Memorably, the plot of
"The Pandorica Opens" is about the Daleks, Cybermen and other arch
enemies band together to dispose of the Doctor in order to save the
universe, as they blame him for the end of everything. To him, he's
the enemy who destroys worlds, kills millions of Daleks and and is
without conscience and morals.

The Daleks even have a name for the Doctor, "The Oncoming Storm", as
a mark of how feared he is. In (I think) The Army of Ghosts", a
Dalek meeting the Doctor for the first time visibly recoils in
horror, and then they panic and attempt to kill him before he can
kill them first.

You can see their point. It's all a matter of perspective at the end
of the day. Just look at the US/Iran face-off going on this week...
  

    
It's taken four months, but this week we finally got official
confirmation about what is happening with Doctor Who.

As feared, there will be no news season in 2026, although there will
be a Christmas special at the end of the year written by Russell T
Davies. So hurrah for that, it's more than I was thinking there
would be at one point.

But there was also this week's less-welcome announcement from the
BBC that Disney had ended their co-production deal with the BBC.
That is without doubt a blow although I suppose that some some might
take issue with the description of it was "less-welcome". All those
high hopes then it was announced in 2022 have sadly come to a
premature end.

I can't say I'm hugely shocked, if I'm totally frank. Even right at
the start the pairing of the straight-laced Corporation and the
House of Mouse seemed a mismatched one. I never really saw the
cultures gelling to be honest, although if anyone could pull it off
then RTD was the man to do it. But in the end it seems that the gulf
between the two entertainment heavyweights was just too wide to
bridge even for him.

It'll be interesting to think about what went wrong. And where does
that leave the two Ncuti Gatwa seasons in retrospect - were they hit
or miss? Or both, or neither? And what will happen to Doctor Who
now? Will it be rested again (as it was for 16 years at the end of
the 20th century/start of the 21st)? Or is the moment prepared for
and plans already afoot for a triumphant return in 2027?

I hope to revive this topic, for a limited run at least, to discuss
some of these questions, and have invited my old comrade-in-arms
(johnhood) back to the fray. So if anyone out there has any
thoughts, suggestions or questions about the show's future and
recent past then please do get in touch - you can email me at
draml[@]well.com.

And keep your eyes on this space for updates and new posts in the
near future - although in a topic dealing with a two thousand year
old time traveller, "near" future is a very relative term indeed!
  

    
> there will be a Christmas special at the end of the year

My understanding is that, since the Disney deal's off, the Christmas
special will only be available in the UK? Izzat so?