Maius Intra Qua Extra

Ah, the season is almost over! I can't believe it's going so fast! I do wish Doctor Who would go back to twelve or more episodes per season, but on the other hand, I much prefer yearly seasons rather than the longer seasons every two or three years, so if this is what they need to do to return every year, that's fine by me.

Spoilers, of course...


I'm really starting to wonder if RTD is reading my blog and creating this season just to my taste. A Regency episode? Finally, after the scads of Victorian episodes DW has done over sixty years! I am there! (Yes, yes, the Victorian era was more than twice as long as the Regency [the historical era, not just the Regency itself] and more familiar to the audience. I know, go with what sells.) No, I have never seen Bridgerton so I didn't get all the nods there. Since it is the only time the Doctor has been to the Regency on-screen, I would have liked the story to be more focused on the time period and its history/culture, but this story would have worked in pretty much any setting. Ah well, I'm still good with it.

I very much enjoyed the idea of the villains being a bunch of amoral cosplayers out to have fun, rather than the usual bad guys out for power, money, or destruction. But then, they turned to that direction, seeking to infiltrate the government not to play people's roles but to start wars and destroy the planet, which was disappointing. I feel like Doctor Who really feels that their plots aren't interesting enough, aren't dire enough, unless the entire planet is at stake. Unfortunately, blowing the danger up to that scale actually cheapens it. We're already invested knowing that the Chuldurs have killed at least seven people so far at this ball and are planning to continue. Threatening the destruction of the human race just elicits eyerolls.

Otherwise, the adventure was fun, encouraging speculation on who was a shapeshifter and who wasn't, though unfortunately you could tell by speaking roles: if a character spoke, they were either a Chuldur or they were going to die. I mean, we even called Emily - she didn't seem to be in any particular danger, so she must be a Chuldur, right? (And it makes sense in context - they were cosplaying scandals, so of course it was two Chuldurs acting out a scene between an young ingenue and the lover spurning her.) Someday, we'll get that subtle, spooky, you-have-no-idea-who's-who DW story that I'd hoped the Zygon two-parter was going to be.

There actually was quite a bit of telegraphing in the story. The moment the Doctor told Ruby not to turn "battle mode" on, my husband said, "Oo, we gonna see her fight!" The portal had a number/weight limit on it, so we knew that the Doctor would need to figure a way around that. When the Doctor ran off after seeing Chuldur!Ruby but never saw her body (or Emily recovering from her encounter with "battle mode"), it was obvious that the Ruby in the ballroom was the real Ruby. (And my husband immediately said, "Oo, battle mode!") And, following one of DW's most sacred rules, the Doctor asked Rogue to travel with him in the middle of the episode, which meant that Rogue was going to die or otherwise be lost by the end.

(No, really, it's true. Successful companions only get asked at the end of an episode. If you're asked in the middle of the adventure, start writing your will because you won't make it to the end.)

But this brings us to the main point of the episode: the Doctor and Rogue. Woo, now that was excellent. They worked. The Doctor saw in Rogue a good man led astray by grief; possibly even saw himself in that mirror. Rogue saw in the Doctor someone who understood because they'd been there before. This drew them together.

Now, I know that everyone's saying that Rogue is basically just RTD bringing back Jack Harkness without actually bringing back Jack Harkness, and that Rogue/Jonathan Groff doesn't have the raw magnetism that Jack/John Barrowman has. I disagree. They're two entirely different characters. Jack, from the outset, was passionate, about everything - getting revenge on the Time Agency, the Doctor, consentual sex, fighting aliens, defending Earth, Ianto, etc. That's what made him interesting, the passion he has for everyone and everything he cares for. Rogue is, in this episode, rather broken by the loss of his partner and compensating by pursuing bounty hunting with single-minded zeal. He opens up a bit because the Doctor recognizes his pain and helps him with it, but even so, we can see he's subdued and more thoughtful than emotional. What makes Rogue interesting is that though he is obviously attracted to the Doctor, he approaches him with a level head, serves as the pillar when the Doctor starts to collapse, and sacrifices himself for a man he's only known for a few minutes. Not that Jack wouldn't do the same thing, but this Rogue person is so obviously not meant to be anything like a Jack substitute. I think the only reason why we think he's supposed to be Jack is because he's male. If the character had been female, no one would have thought of Jack Harkness at all.

So, back to Rogue, I really liked the development of the relationship, though I wish they'd had more time, maybe a two-parter, so that there had been more time and interaction between "I'm going to portal you into an empty dimension" and "I'm going to kiss you passionately and sacrifice myself for you". It felt too abrupt to me, but the writers did a good job with the time they had.

I'll admit, I really preferred the Doctor being ace/aro and never really liked the Ten/Rose and Thirteen/Yaz story arcs, or the implied Twelve/Clara (IMO, they were in love with each other but also so dysfunctional, they couldn't express it except by being abusive). So why did this romance work for me? I've been thinking about it, and I've come to the conclusion that this is another instance of RTD doubling down on the Timeless Child.

Think about it. The Doctor is a Time Lord, one of the most repressed peoples in the universe, and so we expect that they wouldn't deign to dally with the lesser races. However, we've seen that the Doctor harbors some romantic love for their companions - Rose and Yaz on-screen - though they won't admit it.

However, while the Doctor is a Time Lord - which is a title, not a race - they're not Gallifreyan. They're the Timeless Child, something else entirely. This version of them has been brought up and educated as a Gallifreyan, so they've been conditioned to be just as repressed. So, the Doctor loves Rose but can't admit it. Same with Yaz. Then they find out that they're not Gallifreyan. Thirteen spends the rest of her life trying to deal with that and doesn't change much from who she's always been, and thus continues to spurn Yaz and honestly, treat her pretty poorly. (That final scene. If Yaz had been a strong person in any way, she should have slapped her.)

Then Fourteen comes along and says that he loves Donna and states that Newton is hot. Is that who he is now? Yes: as a new incarnation, he's starting to shed the Gallifreyan restrictions that were trained into him, and experience the love that's apparently natural for the Timeless Child's race. But he gets a total of fifteen hours before his successor arrives, so he doesn't get to see where this goes (at least, not onscreen).

Fifteen, though, is even more free and is almost ready to accept Rogue. (Did he run from the proposal because it was too quick, because he didn't want to commit to forever, or because he's still holding onto those Gallifreyan ideals? Time will tell, I suppose.) That's where I think this all comes from. The Doctor is changing because of the Timeless Child revelation, and not just in that there are incarnations and history that we don't know. I think that RTD is trying to show us that there's a ton of things about the Doctor themself that they are still discovering and adapting to. And that's pretty damn cool.