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If that isn't a mood (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by Stamets to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What other changes did 13 bring to the show?

In particular - a female Doctor, a black Doctor, a more concerted effort to bring in non-white actors (though still not amazing), etc. The kind of stuff Internet edgelords latch onto and make an issue out of. Again, not wanting to imply that's what you're doing. It's just impossible to ignore for me regarding the overwhelming criticism of that run, which I generally enjoyed.

Back to the writing, though. I don't think any of what you brought up makes it awful or terrible. With the "it's just x from y" critique, all kinds of stories re-use ideas or slap a different name on them. I just see that as how storytelling works. There's not an infinite amount of ways to illustrate everything, so there's pretty much always going to be apparent connections to prior media we've seen. I don't think that makes it bad, just not amazingly innovative.

And in regards to the backstory reveals, I don't really see the character as an "immortal god" anymore than I did before. Immortal ≠ all-powerful, and for all we know, they're just part of some other alien race that's no more (or maybe even less) powerful than Timelords at the height of their power. We just don't know, so it seems a bit premature to jump to "immortal god" when nothing has substantially changed other than some lore. At least in nuWho, The Doctor has always been just-shy of infallible already. Unless they start giving the character comic-book style super powers, I don't really mind it.

[–] Gamoc 0 points 9 months ago

Oh I see, no I'm happy with that.

I mention the comparisons to other media because that media did it well and Flux didn't. You see the flux a handful of times but in the end it's just something happening on the background whilst these immensely unoriginal and boring supervillains wander around being similarly uninteresting. Even on a more basic level, it's yet another antagonist destroying the entire universe. Doctor gets between universes again, just gets jerked around constantly and only ever reacting to things because even she doesn't know what is happening. And people get teleported around constantly, often as the means it escape from danger which is unspeakably cheap, a man who has barely seen a lightbulb steps inside the TARDIS and is only mildly surprised by how completely impossible everything he's seeing is. Episode ending cliffhangers not resolved but subverted within a minute of the beginning of the next episode.

In what world is it too early to "jump" to immortal god, considering that's basically what they said in the show? Thousands of lives, she doesn't die she regenerates indefinitely forever. She IS immortal and that's the power of a god. Previously there have been references to the doctor appearing godlike due to the basically magic-seeming TARDIS, her tech, being benevolent, helping out everywhere and then disappearing. Well now it's not a naive, yet charming notion from a lifeform that's not advanced enough to understand. She IS one. She is no longer the roguish timelord objector going on adventures, which is the dynamic I liked.

Future huge story reveals will be about her past, and it'll just be unknowable, impossible to empathise with things like "oh it turns out I'm an ancient god" or "it turns out I'm the last of a different and even more powerful race now" which I think would actually be worse, imagine wading through all this shite just for it to basically be the same as before.

I like the traveller encountering problems and fixing them setup, I don't really like the "person showing up to a random problem happens to be the most important person that's related to that problem and also in the universe" really, especially when she's a god. You say you won't mind unless the doctor gets superpowers, but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar turned up. I bet there's a thing the doctor will have to do because they're a powerful ancient race, the only that race could withstand it.

On the other hand I didn't hate the Christmas special, so we will see. At least the butcher that wrote the flux is gone.