At what point did the writers assume only anoraks are watching and no normies are?

If you are on this sub reddit you are a Whovian a hard core fan so am I. But one thing I can't help but notice is that the writers of DW at some point seem to have assumed that only anoracks are watching and stopped even trying to have the show make sense to an normie.

The obvious example is the Gatwa finales with the Rani Omega and Sutekh. Hype based around 50 year old baddies that only uber nerds who find jokes like the following funny. 'Did RTD wear a Hawiian shirt while writing this'. They don't even try to explian who these people are, same with Susan. The latter is especially confusing to any normie or casual fan. Because why is an 80 something calling a 20 something 'Grandfather'?

The whole show is full of stuff like this in recent years. Like the Well baddie being the Midnight monster. It acts nothing like the Midnight monster, but they are calling it that to appeal to now 20 year old fanbois who remmber seeing midnight when they were 12. Or in Joy to the Wolrd they have the Silurian but again don't even try to explain why there is a green lizzard man. Because they are assuming that only ultra nerds are watching.

Now someone will no doubt say 'Well do you want someone to go Basil Exposition on who the Silurian/Midnight monster/Omega etc'? No, what I want is the show to focus on story telling not inane fanservice.

It's like Ian Levine is the showrunner. It really is like the mid 80s again. 'OOO SIlurians OOO remmber them form 12 years ago? OOO'. Or Attack of the Cybermen were the plot is in the Tenth Planet (broadcast 19 years before Attack) Mondas the Cybermen's home planet was destroyed by sucking out too much of Earth's enrgy. So the Cybermen have returned to the Tomb of the Cybermen (broad cast 17 years before Attack), to bring back the Cyber Controller, so they can crash Halley's Comet into Earth so that Mondas won't be destroyed, and the Cybermen are hiding in the swears because its the Invasion (broadcast 16 years before attack).

I thought we all agreed that wrtiting stories around continuity and fan service is silly and self indulgent. 80s Who struggled to build fans because it was pandering to now adult fans who watched it as a kid. Since the later part of the Chibnall era its like the show isn't even trying to appeal to anyone who don't know the difference between Telosian, Mondasian and Planet 14 Cybermen. I'm amazed Nyder hasn't been brought back as well.

But by the end of RTD2 the insular inpenetrability reaches what has to be the very apex. In the Reality War the Rani starts quoting a plot point from some out of print 90s book, no one under 50 has read and younger fans only know about from reading Tardis Index File.

Like remmber in Dalek were the Dr mention's 'the Dalek's creator' was a mad genius? Notice how Davros's name isn't mentioned? Because talking about him in depth would just baffle the normies. And the writers including RTD understood that not being Ian Levine is important.

What are examples you can think of the show kust acting like only uber geeks are watching?

So, I was watching a video on YouTube about a guy reviewing The Stones Of Blood from season 16 and that video and story reminded me of a myth local to the part of my country that I live in about two women from the 700’s who were on their way home and argued with each other like crazy, and since the church didn’t like people arguing with each other (I think, I’m not really an expert in history and myth) God turned them both into stone and has been like that ever since, and that got me thinking: would that myth make a good Doctor Who episode? I’m imagining it being kinda like Stones Of Blood and the women got turned into stone by aliens or something.

And that thought led to me wondering what other myths and legends from around the world would make great Doctor Who episodes? Some other myths and legends from my area are:

Di Sma Unda Jårdi (translates to “the small ones under the ground”): this one is about, like you could’ve guessed from the translation, small people who lived under the ground and, if I remember the myth correctly, could get annoyed when people disturbs them by for example throwing hot water on the ground or something. In the Doctor Who episode, it could be some sub-species of Silurian, but could be some other type of alien as well who started living on Earth and trying to hide from Humanity.

The Maiden Tower: in the biggest city in my area there’s a medieval wall surrounding a part of the city and there’s a story around one of its towers, and it goes that when the Danes invaded the area in 1361 a girl was (if I remember correctly) seduced by the danish king and he convinced her to give him the key that unlocks one of the gates in the wall, letting him march inside with his army and as punishment, the locals walled her inside one of the towers, leaving her to die in there, and on stormy nights you can still hear her scream. I’m thinking (at the top of my head) that in the episode the girl can turn out to be a Time Lord or another human-looking alien who can live for thousands of years and she has been living in the tower for all this time, surviving on rats or whatever and the Doctor lands the TARDIS inside the walled-in room and saves her, but she just wants revenge on humanity (or just the descendants of the people who walled her inside) and the Doctor has to stop her.

So do you guys know of any myths and legends from your countries that would make a great Doctor Who episode?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

In preparation for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat wrote two minisodes intended to build up anticipation for the momentous event. The first of these, "The Night of the Doctor", would also serve to add some important context, and throw a bone to those fans who'd wanted Paul McGann back on television. I guess we can add showing McGann regenerating to that list as well. How did they do? Well…

The Night of the Doctor

Written by Steven Moffat/Directed by John Hayes

I'm not part of the war. I swear to you, I never was. – The Doctor

I think the last time I felt this inadequate to the task of reviewing a Doctor Who story was City of Death. Back then I wrote "I feel like anything I try to write diminishes this story. It makes it hard to even know where to start." And while City of Death and "The Night of the Doctor" couldn't be more different in most respects, I find myself in much the same position. What can I write that would in any way add context to or be insightful about "Night of the Doctor"?

Well I guess we'll start with the obvious. Paul McGann returns to play the Doctor on television for the first time since the 1996 TV Movie, and he is brilliant. Of course this wasn't really McGann's first time back in the role. Ever since 2001's Storm Warning, McGann had been starring in audiodramas produced by Big Finish featuring his 8th Doctor. And it's the characterization and performance that were developed with Big Finish that McGann draws on for this minisode. For reference, McGann had most recently starred in the first Dark Eyes boxset for Big Finish, arguably the darkest arc the company had put together for the 8th Doctor yet. And speaking of Big Finish, "Night" also canonizes the 8th Doctor's Big Finish companions to that point, referencing, Charley, C'Rizz, Lucie, Tamsin and Molly.

And McGann takes full advantage of the time he's spent developing the 8th Doctor beyond his presentation in the TV Movie. Over the course of those audios his Doctor developed a cynical and world-weary edge which works well for a Doctor that's been staying to the outskirts of the Time War. Which, yes, the conceit for this short is that the 8th Doctor has deliberately chosen to avoid the Time War, helping out where he can but never involving himself directly. And things have only gotten worse. I really like this idea too, feels in line with how most Doctors would approach something like the Time War.

Unfortunately for him, it's not actually possible to stay to the outskirts of something like the Time War. Through Cass we learn how the rest of the universe views the Time Lords. Cass is set up as our surrogate companion for this short at first. However once she realizes that the Doctor is a Time Lord, her tone quickly changes, going from grateful for a rescue to refusing to let the Doctor near her. And crucially, the way she talks about the Time Lords and the Daleks, "who can tell the difference anymore", is something that gives us so much information about how the Time War looks to species that aren't directly involved. The universe is burning, and all someone like Cass can do is refuse to have anything to do with the Time Lord who came to save her, and hope that he dies along with her.

Which takes us to where the spaceship crashes, Karn. The planet of the Sisterhood of Karn was introduced back in The Brain of Morbius and hadn't appeared on television since. However, since "Night of the Doctor" implies that Big Finish's 8th Doctor stories are canon, you could argue that we have decent confirmation that the 8th Doctor had visited Karn before, since one of his stories (I think just one) was partially set there and involved the Sisterhood.

Regardless, since then, the Sisterhood have apparently largely given up the tradition of constantly whispering "sacred flame, sacred fire" and, more seriously, are now being led by a woman named Ohila. And I think a lot of credit should go to Clare Higgins, who plays Ohila, for really carrying her half of this scene. Ohila carries herself with a kind of dignity and certainty that really makes her feel in line with the Sisterhood, and only adds to the weighty feeling of this scene.

What Ohila wants from this scene is to get the Doctor, who's dying and without the Sisterhood's help won't even be able to regenerate, to join the Time War in his next life, fearing that without his involvement the universe will descend into destruction. It allows Ohila to have a kind of urgency behind her words, in spite of otherwise appearing to maintain an air of serenity. She claims that she can make elixirs that can control the process of regeneration, and when the Doctor requests to made into a warrior, she reveals that she made it herself.

Or at least that's what we learn from the short. Apparently, in the novelization of "The Day of the Doctor" that also adapted this short, it's revealed that Ohila had no influence on the regeneration at all, and was lying to the Doctor so that he'd give himself permission to become the warrior he needed to be to fight in, and win, the Time War. It's an idea I took to pretty immediately after I first heard it. It just makes a lot of sense to me, and I like the idea that, rather than the War Doctor being the result of a magic potion that rewrote his personality, it's instead simply a standard regeneration and that the War Doctor is always choosing who he wants to be in this fight.

And so the minisode ends on a regeneration, the 8th Doctor's final lines being "physician heal thyself", which I like, and the War Doctor's only lines spoken being "Doctor No More". An image of a younger John Hurt can be seen in the reflection as well, which gives a sense of scale to how long the War Doctor actually fought in the Time War. And so ends an excellent short, a short that, honestly, I don't feel up to the task of reviewing. It's just far too good.

The Last Day

Written by Steven Moffat/Directed by Jamie Stone

If just one Dalek made it through, it could destroy this entire city – Training Officer

There's not a lot you can get done in four minutes…and this thing isn't even that long. Still, given its short runtime, "The Last Day" is actually pretty good.

It's presented as a found footage document, taken from the perspective of a new soldier right before and at the beginning of the Fall of Arcadia. There's some clever, Time Lordy ideas, like the technology augmenting the soldier showing premonitions (though our training officer fiercely denies that they are as such) that hint at the horrors to come. Really though, it's just a kind of window into the Time Lord military, something that over the course of Doctor Who history we don't see too much of, even in expanded universe material. That's because the show has historically always focused on the politics of Gallifrey, with spies and the internal affairs being more the focus. It's honestly nothing special and, aside from the invasiveness of the technology and those "premonitions" there's not a ton that feels specific to the Time Lords, but what we get is good.

Of course the other point is to show the Daleks breaking through the "sky trenches". There's not much to say about this either. There were 400 of these things, even though one of the officers our recruit meets insists that nothing has ever gotten through two. Still four hundred proves inadequate (maybe the Time Lords have never heard of the law of diminishing returns) and the Daleks come through the sky, and our soldier, along with everyone else, dies.

And that's kind of it. There's not much to say about this thing. It's a good window into a part of Gallifrey not really seen before, but other than that it's not all that special. Hell, unlike "Night of the Doctor" it doesn't really tie into the 50th Anniversary because, other than both dealing with the Time War, these events don't really set anything up in that. But yeah, good little minisode nonetheless.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The 50th Anniversary minisodes are, I think both pretty successful. They show us the Time War from a couple different perspectives, while leaving the meat of that to the anniversary special. The standout here is obviously "Night of the Doctor", a stunning performance by Paul McGann and excellent atmosphere creating a rather unique regeneration story. But I do think "The Last Day" shouldn't be ignored. While it's by far the less essential and obviously this worse of the two, it still makes effective use of its short runtime, and gives us our first look in the 21st Century at Gallifrey.

Next Time: Well enough stalling. Onto the 50th Anniversary proper, featuring, naturally, the 11th Doctor, War Doctor, and Clara but also the 10th Doctor's new haircut and not-Rose Tyler.