Recently I made a post on how I would have altered season 2 to be more narratively satisfying with season 1 because it was much weaker and I feel like it soured people on Ncuti Gatwa's run as a whole. But personally I don't enjoy engaging in negative conversions about entertainment, if I didn't enjoy an episode I just don't bother engaging in discussions about it online.

So in my apparent quest to earn the reputation of the biggest Fifteenth Doctor apologist I would like to offer a challenge. Post what you think to be the best episode of season 2 was and why. I would nominate episode 3, The Well because it was the only horror style episode during Gatwa's run and the contrast between Gatwa's emotionally demonstrative Doctor and the return of one of the Tenth Doctor's most popular enemies in the Midnight Entity made for an interesting change from the more adventure and fantasy genre episodes in the rest of his run.

Another episode I would nominate would be Joy to the World for the complete opposite reason, it is just pure fun nothing more nothing less, which is exactly what I want from a Christmas special should be

It's a short hop from Black Orchid to this either in terms of years or in terms of alphabet—the random picker hasn't got very creative yet.

This begins one of my least favourite seasons of the show—but surely anything with Douglas Adams and Terry Nation's names attached to it must have plenty of qualities.

I heard a podcast recently that went over their top 5 most nostalgic stories of Doctor who. Not necessarily ones that are very good, but ones that have special meaning to them and give them a feeling of nostalgia, and it made me curious about what are some other folks most nostalgic stories.

For example mine are

1. Rise of the Cybermen/age of steel. This was the first episode I remember properly loving as a kid. I fell in love with the Cybermen immediately and loved how creepy they were. Really a gateway into body horror for me,

2. Deep breath. This episode is nostalgic for me because it was the first story I watched on air. Prior to this I binged series 1-7 on Netflix so I had to properly wait to see Capaldi’s and it still sticks in my head as a mind-blowing experience.

3. Destiny of the daleks. I think I’ve said in here before that this (and the next one) were my first ever classic who DVD’s that I found at Barnes and nobles and I was so excited as a 13-year old kid buying these DVDs to see some of the older doctors and loved it so much.

4. Time and the Rani. The other one of my first classic who DVD’s (yeah it’s a miracle that I kept watching😂) and I immediately fell in love with Sylvester McCoy and he’s now my favorite doctor.

5. An unearthly child. I remember I sought out this dvd so that I could watch this story for the first time and see what it was like when it first started, and it became one of my favorite episodes of television that I watch many many times.

A couple HM would go to Rose (the first episode I ever watched), Bad wolf/the parting of ways (Daleks and regeneration), genesis of the daleks, the mind robber, the three doctors, world enough and time/the Doctor falls/twice upon a time, and of course Day of the Doctor

Nostalgia doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be old either. Capaldi’s era is relatively recent in my lifetime but because it made such an impact I feel a lot of nostalgia for it.

I’d love to hear other fans nostalgia episodes and meaning behind them!

Well I'm enjoying this random order hugely. But I am happy to switch to a chronology if that's what the people want.

Peter Capaldi, interviewed on the Half the Picture podcast, suggests that Doctor Who has become "very, very big"; that it has grown from the relatively small British TV show he watched in his youth into a global "Whoniverse" brand—a process which he suggests has shifted the expectations of everyone involved with the show.

"I think the show is a little bit of a victim of its success. You know, the show that I loved was a tiny thing, a little small thing that survived. It just survived, but nobody knew that it was worming its way into the culture in such a deep way. And I think that’s what I have an affinity with.”

I can understand his sentiment, but I'm not so beholden to nostalgia to want Doctor Who once again being the tiny, underfunded show no one in the BBC (apart from the people making it) likes. I still have to pinch myself in slight disbelief when Doctor Who appears on the cover of the BBC's Annual Report, or is described as one of the Corporation's "Crown Jewels". A part of me is giddy with the joy of that.

But equally, Peter Capaldi does have a point: with such attention comes responsibilities and a far greater risk. And perhaps, in the end, it was not the show to jump from broadcast to streaming with Disney...

Any thoughts?

It begins! I apologise for such an appalling start, but it's good to get it out of the way.

I'm intending to do the rest of these in a randomly generated order, so people who love the McCoy years for example don't necessarily have to wait a hundred years until their favourite story pops up. I'll try and continue to do these every day. If I forget somebody poke me.

Out of 10, how would you rank this ep in terms of:

1. Plot

2. Characters

3. Entertainment

4. Legacy

5. Fan Consensus

Well, at least when it comes to the comic strip running in Doctor Who Magazine, which I can’t help but view as the really “official” comic run and one which goes all the way back to the first TV Comic strips in 1964.

So, I’m assuming the DWM strips will stick with Gatwa’s Doctor until Christmas 2026?

Of course, this isn’t the first time the publisher of the officially licensed Doctor Who comic strip has kept with a Doctor after their on-screen departure: TV Comic kept with Troughton’s Doctor for almost six months back in 1969 (in the process giving us the foundations of “Season 6B”) and it continued to feature Pertwee’s incarnation for pretty much the same length of time until the broadcast of Robot cemented his successor in the role.

Interestingly, DWM writer Alan Barnes hasn’t opted to keep the Doctor on his own, but has teamed him up with Mel, at least for this story—hate to think where he considers this “fits” into Series 14/15, though I’ve never particularly bothered with that idea, ever.

First of all I would like to apologise for the length of this post. This is a small essay on Season 2.

As someone who really enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor and will go to bat to defend season 1, I agree that season 2 is much weaker and pulls his run down as a whole. However I think there is one small fix that would make Gatwa's run feel much tighter. Ruby should have remained the main companion.

Belinda's story arc about being stuck with the Doctor and trying to get back to 2025 was hardly a plot for season 2 and more like a bookend for each episode in a much more episodic season. Let's assume for a second that the finale played out mostly as intended, the Poppy storyline would have made much more sense with Ruby in Bel's place. We first met Poppy in season 1 as Captain Poppy in Space Babies and the babies refer to them as "Mummy and Daddy" which was foreshadowing Wish World, and if we take the original ending as potentially still canon Poppy will grow up to be Susan Foreman's mother. If so, it would be much more satisfying for Ruby, who knew about the Doctor's granddaughter from both Maestro and Empire of Death to be the grandmother as opposed to Bel who never learnt about Susan.

Next thing we fix, or at least make a bit more sense is in The Interstellar Song Contest, when the Doctor goes Scorched Earth on Kid and Bel says how "If the Doctor is angry, the world will burn". Even though I contend that this is still out of character for Fifteen, Bel hasn't been with him for nearly enough time to make this claim. Ruby would be near the end of her second year travelling with him and she has already seen him defeat Sutekh, the God of Death at this point.

Another reason why this makes the finale works better with Ruby in Bel's place is that Conrad, the villain actually responsible for the Wish World, was introduced and set up in Lucky Day as Ruby's antagonist. He didn't ever meet Bel in either that episode or The Reality War, thus making her share the Doctor's punishment feel random whereas if it was Ruby, we would two villains; the Rani and Conrad who are personal enemies of the Doctor and Ruby. The only other thing this would need to change is who helps Shirley in Wish World, the two options I would get are either Mel or Anita from the Time Hotel.

So with this change what would it do to the structure of the season? Not much really. Joy to the World still takes place with the Doctor having let Ruby live her life for a year. Then we lose The Robot Revolution since its story is to set up Belinda's "Get me home!' arc and I've taken her out of the season. Instead we move Lucky Day from episode 4 to episode 1 so we see the aftermath of season 1 from the Doctor and Ruby's perspective back-to-back. Then episodes 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 can take place in the order they do currently. Since we dropped one episode I would place the audio story Sting of the Sasquatch in episode 4's place. I chose this audio original over On Ghost Beach because the plot feels too similar to the Doctor and Bel's arc in Wish World to put it in the same season.

So here is my newly proposed season 2.

1. Joy to the World

2. Lucky Day

3. Lux

4. The Well

5. Sting of the Sasquatch

6. The Story and the Engine

7. The Interstellar Song Contest

8. Wish World

9. The Reality War

I'm confused. I thought it was in January. Now everyone's telling me it's in 2026.

Davros first appeared in Genesis of the Daleks. But where was he in the Dalek serials before he first appeared? The first Dalek serial took place years after GOTD. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks & Death to the Daleks they have a Dalek leader. So where's Davros? Is he deceased?

It's been a little while, so I'm going to post one of these just once a week until @SonicTsils comes back to take over. We're so close to the end, guys! 😀

Out of 10, how would you rank this ep in terms of:

1. Plot

2. Characters

3. Entertainment

4. Legacy

5. Fan Consensus

When Doctor Who premiered in 1963, it's first serial An Unearthly Child was first viewed by 4.4 million people. But the series's premiere was overshadowed by American president John F. Kennedy's assassination. Because of this, it was repeated next week immediately before the 2nd part. Why was 4.4 million views seen as bad at the time? It looks good. Also was the premiere "overshadowed" by the assassination? In An Adventure in Space & Time, producer Verity Lambert says "No one was watching because of the assassination". Why did the writers add that? People did watch it. They didn't forget. Why did they have to repeat it? 4.4 million views was good. Why was it seen as bad at the time?