Renegade Rob

[Renegade Rob]

This is probably just me but no matter how good a spin-off is in the Doctor Who universe, its inherent fluctuating timeline means that the spin-offs feel essentially unmoored and irrelevant (and I say that as someone who loved the Sarah Jane Adventures and possibly teared up during that lovely funeral epilogue they made during the lockdown). Time is a wibbly-wobbly ball where Captain Jack can spin-off and deal with Miracle Day (which gets zero acknowledgement in the parent series) and then casually pop in way later to hang out with the Thirteenth Doctor. Contrast that with Star Wars or the MCU, which have “hard” timelines meaning even the worst spin-offs feel more relevant since they have to be reconciled with other stories in that universe. Doctor Who’s inconsistent enough with how much the rest of the Doctor’s adventures have lingered in the “present” timeline, to the point where things only feel canon/relevant if the Doctor himself experienced them, since the timeline is constantly changing anyway, and as a result spin-off characters feel less vital the second they split off into the fluctuating abyss. 

[Renegade Rob]

The Doomsday-to-Runaway Bride lighting differential wasn’t a continuity error, just the Doppler effect, since the TARDIS was in mid-flight when Donna warped in and was in the process of fluctuating time vectors at that moment. So when it was going to the past it had a greenish light from a blue shift and the warmer whiter light was the red shift when it was phasing into the future.  

[Renegade Rob]

[Renegade Rob]

They show the end of Parting of the Ways with Rose and then after the titles they cut back and she’s in the same clothes but her face is made up like it was in S2 and her hair is noticeably much closer to S2 hair. They did their best to extend it to make it look closer to her S1 hair, but it’s noticeable. It’s supposed to be the exact scene seconds after we see her at the end of S1. It’s not as bad as Kochanski with a new hairstyle in the start of VIII when they fly into Red Dwarf, but it’s not great (I guess the Nanobots messed with her hair as well?). 

[Renegade Rob]

Almost as if their lead abruptly quit innit?

Touché. 

[Renegade Rob]

It’s interesting how Tennant basically just inherited everything from Eccleston and just got on with it. The companion, the ancillary characters, the shared universe of the era, the console room, the screwdriver, the story style. There almost wasn’t a transition, he just hit the ground running since everything else was already established. The only awkward piece of transition is seeing what’s clearly Series 2 Billie Piper dressed like Series 1 Rose. I know it’s a production order thing, but S1 and S2 Rose/Billie are very different, and that “Born Again” Children in Need special has S2 Billie playing S1 Rose, it’s weird once you notice it. 

[Renegade Rob]

I’m endlessly fascinated by the way in which particular eras coalesce into a solid identity, and also how they transition to and from each other (such as Troughton doing a Hartnell-style historical with the Highlanders before abandoning the historicals, and then basically doing an early Pertwee story in The Invasion). Capaldi’s era sort of felt like all transition until Series 10, when his era was almost over, and that’s a shame. (I will say, as much as I’m not big on Series 7 as a whole, it’s fascinating academically as an example of a transitional season in the way it starts with 11 and the Ponds in the clockwork TARDIS and ends with Capaldi and Clara in the teal proto-12 TARDIS.)

[Renegade Rob]

Yeah. And the 12th Doctor rules but he definitely got short shrift, with basically a hand-me-down Sonic Screwdriver and TARDIS Console Room and even the “Doctor Who” logo and it took him a full season to become “himself.” It felt like they couldn’t decide if his era was gonna be just an extension of Matt Smith’s (like how Eccleston and Tennant basically shared an era) or if his era would be completely distinct despite having the same showrunner. In the end, it’s sort of a mix, when I think committing to either option the whole time would’ve been better. 

[Renegade Rob]

I love the original Paradigm Daleks, the whole branding of Doctor Who in 2010 was great. I actually think the metallic paint jobs in 2012 made them look a bit dull.

[Renegade Rob]

I just saw a comment suggesting that if they were to place this incarnation between Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy then he could be the 6-7 Doctor.

What if he’s one of the kid incarnations of the Timeless Child? I can actually get behind that. That’s why the Division is after him, because he still has to clean his room. 

[Renegade Rob]

I feel like I’m the only person who liked the ridiculously toyetic looking New Paradigm Daleks. I’m surprised they didn’t go with something bold and primary-coloured like that for the CBeebies version.

You’re not alone. I too liked the New Paradigm Daleks, but I’m a sucker for color coded roles like Power Rangers or the different Lantern colors in DC. I think it’s neat and it makes my brain smile. People kept calling them Power Ranger Daleks and I’m like, stop saying that like it’s a bad thing. The Daleks got so humiliated in Journey’s End that I was open to any kind of reinvention to let them get their groove back. They’ll never be as terrifying as they were during Eccleston’s era but they needed more respect than they got in Tennant’s era. Honestly, I think Moffat should have doubled down on them. And I’m still waiting to find out what the Eternal Dalek’s deal is. 

[Renegade Rob]

Maybe it’ll push boundaries for preschoolers by featuring Daleks that still actually exterminate people. I mean look at these guys. They don’t look like they fuck around. 

[Renegade Rob]

Please let the first scene of the whole show start with live-action Billie Piper shifting faces before the regeneration settles on Teal-Haired Tiny Rick as the genuine Sixteenth Doctor, and it transitions into 3D-animated format, sort of like how Twice Upon a Time transitioned from 60’s-who to Modern Who in the intro scene.  

[Renegade Rob]

Equally, I’m not a fan of the way the New Series does the big regeneration speeches, makes each Doctor feel too much like literally different people.

That’s why the best regeneration speech is the Sixth Doctor’s. 

[Renegade Rob]

Early on they made it seem like Series 7B Clara’s whole thing would be that she isn’t brave or particularly well-suited for danger and monsters, which I respected (she seemed understandably freaked out during Cold War) but that got abandoned and she quickly became a little too competent and slick by the time Nightmare in Silver and Name of the Doctor rolled around. Which is a shame, since the reason the 9th Doctor is my favorite is because he always made it seem like random people getting killed off actually ruined his day, like it would for any sane person, and it gave a sense of scale and stakes to his adventures. 

[Renegade Rob]

On the subject of both Series 7B Clara AND Seeds of Death, officially retconning Gia Kelly to be a Clara Time Splinter is an insanely ballsy thing to do. 

[Renegade Rob]

Also, if someone’s hopping on board Doctor Who just to watch Jenna Coleman, I’d actually just have them start with Series 8. Deep Breath is a clunky-ass opener, but it’s when Moffat finally realized he needed to start consciously fleshing out modern Clara as an actual character with a consistent personality. Jenna Coleman was fun as Oswin and Victorian Clara but Series 7B is trash and deliberately underutilized her since her whole arc there was the Doctor being suspicious of her with the punchline being that she really was just a perfectly nice ordinary person. I get that she could never replace the Ponds so he had to figure out a new companion dynamic with the Eleventh Doctor, but as a result, it’s just not a good showcase for Jenna Coleman or Clara. Series 8 is when she “starts” for real and  comes into her own (I’ve always loved how rightfully pissed she was at the end of Kill the Moon), and she later becomes actively great in Series 9. 

[Renegade Rob]

I’m a massive Doctor Who fan, and my first experience of it was Dimensions in Time. You can start anywhere.

[Renegade Rob]

I have a real soft spot for Marco Polo (and all the Hartnell historicals really). Maybe it’s the swashbuckling tone or just a setting you don’t see often enough in Doctor Who, but I really dug it. 

[Renegade Rob]

Congrats, dude!

[Renegade Rob]

I’m wondering now, has anyone ever figured out a coherent future timeline of humanity and Earth based on what we see in future set episodes? 

I always thought it was either implied or outright stated that due to the infinite temporal flux, all points in time except for major historical events were being acted upon in real time as a living present and were subject to constant change, so I don’t think the future timeline of humanity as depicted in the show was a linear set of points. Are future-set stories canon? Sure, whatever that means for Doctor Who. But are they all canon to each other? That’s a different story. I’m not sure the Moon of “The Moonbase” exists on the same timeline as “Smith and Jones” or “Kill the Moon.” It might, or it might not. And whether those timelines are split or overriding each other, and whether or not the earlier timelines are still accessible by time travel, those are up for interpretation, though I tend to think they are, if you think of time not as a single linear “vortex” tube but the “web” or “ball” as it’s sometime’s been described. 

[Renegade Rob]

I love Peri, but man oh man is that accent diabolical. It’s worse than I remember!

[Renegade Rob]

Your mileage may very on the canonicity of the new Incoming Message video, but as if by destiny, just as we were debating the specifics of the drive plate, they actually decide to depict a diagram of it! Nice of them. 

[Renegade Rob]

Lemons has at least two of my favorite Doug Dwarf moments. The first being the entire exchange where Rimmer explains the Church of Judas, which is just a lovely lovely classic Dwarf-style scene, and the other being Jesus’ expression of increasing bewilderment as Kryten breaks down the specifics of how the lemon battery works. (The “what’s a lemon?” punchline is okay enough but the scene didn’t even need that. Jesus’ face as his mind was being blown was already enough.) 

[Renegade Rob]

[Renegade Rob]

Funny you would say “I’m probably alone on this hill”, when in the Mundane observation dome thread multiple other people have said they agree with you in the past 1 day.

Smeg, I didn’t even see those at all! Glad to not be alone! I assumed I had a steaming hot take when instead I had an ice cold gazpacho take. 

[Renegade Rob]

I know I’m probably alone on this hill, but I’ll maintain to my dying breath that they should’ve just stayed at the Legion station indefinitely. There was nothing left for them on Red Dwarf really (I guess Holly is a friend, fine…). That station had everything they could ever want and then some, and Legion was a cool enough guy. Legion probably could’ve even invented like a souped-up guidance beam to bring Red Dwarf to them, all from the comfort of the station. (Hell, that Star Drive could have probably propelled the station itself!) That place was the best and they royally smegged up by leaving. Thank you for listening to my TED talk. 

[Renegade Rob]

I remember in the run up to series x there was speculation that the accident would be revealed as JMC sabotage to cover something up or get rid of a liability. And that The Beginning would deal with the crew travelling back to stop the leak. 

There’s actually very strong evidence for that dating back to the very first episode if you look close enough. 

You just have to zoom in close enough to read the captain’s message on the microdot. 

[Renegade Rob]

While I do want a less Earth-centric cosmic galactic-oriented Who, if they do go to Earth, I want me some more of those good old-fashioned Hartnell historicals with no alien intruders and they literally just have to survive the Aztecs and the French Revolution and the OK Corral. 

(Oh and also, anything less than 13 episodes per series is utter utter bullshit. That “premiere/two one-offs/two-parter/two more one-offs/an awesome prestige two-parter/two more one-offs with the second maybe teeing up the finale/two-parter finale” model wasn’t broken and they shouldn’t have ever deviated from that. I like consistency damn it. 3 or 8-episode Red Dwarf is balls. 6 episodes = fuck yeah.)

[Renegade Rob]

I was too optimistic in assuming everyone with sense would bypass AI search modes.

You’re right, of course, although admittedly I was less looking for actual info and more fishing more for screenshottable blurbs to tee up super-dumb follow-up jokes. 

[Renegade Rob]

I know it fell through because of budget and logistical reasons, but I always liked the original idea of the Doctor going to the Shadow Proclamation and dealing with a whole bunch of alien species at once, like a shared community. There’s a little of this in that scene in the space cantina with Captain Jack in The End of Time, but I’d love an era of Doctor Who that minimized Earth. It’s frankly weird that the Doctor is ALWAYS hanging out on Earth, like a college kid who can’t hack it socially in college so keeps retreating back to hang with his friends who are still in high school. It would be cool to see an era that goes full Mass Effect and just has like a consistent community/government of different alien species and deals with the politics of that. Like Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels, where there’s a home hub setting that isn’t modern day London. 

[Renegade Rob]

I am now far more optimistic about Doctor Who’s future and I’m quite embarrassed about how I reacted to the news on here this week. I acted like a prick and said some very resentful things about the Doctor Who fanbase, none of which I meant. Again, I was just bitter.

[Renegade Rob]

Since Rimmer worked in food service, I feel like there’s a non-zero (but admittedly still infinitesimal) chance that a drive plate is simply the plate that the navigators eat off of while driving the ship, and by failing to seal it properly, Rimmer caused the navigators’ food and/or beverage to be improperly secured, thus resulting in a spill and subsequent malfunction, leading ultimately to a radioactive crisis (not unlike when Donna Noble spilled coffee on the TARDIS console). Change my mind. 

[Renegade Rob]

This seems a little closer to what Grant/Naylor probably had in mind (assuming Google Overview isn’t full of baloney which is a distinct possibility), and it would also explain how and why Rimmer was so comfortable casually handling the SS Trojan’s quantum rod. 

[Renegade Rob]

So this can’t be what they were thinking of, although it wouldn’t be the first time they equated spaceship mechanics with car mechanics for a gag. 

[Renegade Rob]

No one thing should’ve caused a radiation leak. Of course, this debate means smeg all without some kind of indication of what a drive plate actually is. All I know for certain is that it was invented by Drive Plato. (I’ll see myself out…) 

[Renegade Rob]

There admittedly might be some retcons involved here, but I always found it interesting that Series I depicts Rimmer as having been affirmatively assigned the drive plate task, whereas in Justice, Kryten makes the very valid point that it’s a pretty major task to give to a low-ranking vending machine repairman. Which always made me think, did Hollister flamingo-up by giving that task to Rimmer, probably to save money or cut a corner by not having a qualified mechanic or engineer handle it? I also think it’s interesting how easily Red Dwarf blew up after the engine core was over-exposed in Demons & Angels, which leads me to also wonder if a shoddily-sealed drive plate SHOULD cause a radiation leak, or if mismanagement meant that a pretty minor error (maybe the drive plate is right next to the tubes for the chicken soup machine so it’s a minor thing theoretically in Rimmer’s purview) that shouldn’t matter in the scheme of things was just the first push in a cascading wave of errors and breakdowns? They wouldn’t send Rimmer to deal with the engine core, that’s way above his pay grade. So I always thought it was a minor thing that shouldn’t matter most of the time. 

[Renegade Rob]

OMG thank you for asking/answering this, as it’s always bugged me as well! From the font I was thinking, did someone create a custom Red Dwarf mod in Banjo-Kazooie (and if not, why not)?

[Renegade Rob]

I hope that link isn’t a Rick Roll to a video of Doctor in Distress. Although… maybe if Gal Gadot and other celebrity friends get together and record a rendition of that, it might just save the show!

[Renegade Rob]

Admittedly, the softening of the 12-regeneration limit and the existence of each new doctor beyond the 13th make the Master’s explanation that the Valeyard is an “aspect of the Doctor between his 12th and final incarnation” increasingly and amusingly unhelpful. 

[Renegade Rob]

I didn’t actually mind the bigeneration because I appreciate that the Doctor as a character needed a detox. I know it didn’t work out in hindsight, but in theory it would help with the reboot because of all the collected trauma from the Time War and the Confession Dial and the Flux, etc. Not just as a jumping on point, but just from a character point of view, you can’t have a show with stakes that high for 13+ years and have it not take a collective toll, so the idea that an incarnation could just stop for a while felt like a decent character choice, and the main way to do that was to not have the character die in conflict. So I respect that choice. I also don’t actually mind Chibnall or whoever really finally clarifying that 12 regenerations was an arbitrarily imposed limit, since it was sort of implied already by past stories (the Time Lords can give or take regenerations on a whim). As much as I liked that Moffat gave the Doctor a new cycle to conclude the 50th anniversary year, it would be kind of silly to keep hoping that the Doctor would find another cycle of regenerations under the couch at the 100th anniversary mark and so on without eventually admitting that yeah, 12 is a soft number. 

[Renegade Rob]

Rule One: The Davies lies. (He mentions in the Writers’ Tale that as a publicly funded entity, the BBC is technically not allowed to lie. So it could be an interesting project to see which tidbits were released just by RTD’s side and which were actually released officially by the BBC.)

[Renegade Rob]

If you’re looking to get into more Star Wars, I highly recommend the Thrawn Trilogy books (or corresponding audiobooks of them). Some of my favorite Star Wars full stop. 

[Renegade Rob]

Hopefully the hiatus isn’t too long, but if this is the end of this “modern” run of Doctor Who, it’s interesting to think of the parallels between Modern Who and Classic Who:

– Both had 7 numbered doctors (1-7 vs. 9-15). 

– Both had their final Doctor have bonkers adventures with Mel and the Rani.

– The classic run was about 27 years and the modern run has been about 21 years on-and-off. Maybe in 8 years we’ll get another TV movie and then 8 years after that another 20+ year run of a new era. 

RTD isn’t perfect and has his flaws as a writer and showrunner but as time has passed I started to gain a new appreciation for him and his creative vision. That said, I’m reminded of that moment in The Writers Tale where he meets with Michael Grade who cancelled the classic series and who wondered if Russell was one of those nerds back in the day who sent him letters to complain about cancelling it and Russell replied, “No, you were right to cancel it. It was shit.”

[Renegade Rob]

The news is disappointing but not surprising. The show needs a bit of a rest to work itself out (not unlike the Fourteenth Doctor). I’m not as down on the Chibnall Era as some people (it’s not misunderstood genius or anything but I found it largely inoffensive despite numerous missed opportunities), but it was around then that the show should’ve done a break like this earlier on. The 60th specials were pretty great but once 15’s era started with hit-or-miss overproduced episodes with 8-episode seasons, it started to be like… okay, I think it’s time to step back and take a breath and really think things through. I don’t mind waiting a bit (unless Carole Ann Ford passes away in the meantime in which case I’ll be very cross indeed). Sometimes the most creatively sound thing you can do for an ongoing creative enterprise is to pause. I keep thinking back to that Abed quote in the Community finale where he says that TV is meant to be comfort, it defeats its own purpose when it keeps existing just to keep existing. Doctor Who needs to be effortless weekly comfort again. 

[Renegade Rob]

I always thought it was funny in Series III when Kryten was Holly’s mode of transport via the chest monitor, instead of the TV cart in earlier series. There’s a synergy to that which doesn’t quite result in redundancy, but they’re co-occupying that expositional administrative role in the crew. Then again, that series was when Kryten started to step on Holly’s turf by being the catalyst who popped up on screen to move the plot along after a Rimmer-Lister exchange, and that was probably the beginning of the end for Holly.   

[Renegade Rob]

the Master isn’t British, he’s from space

“Lots of planets have a Britain!”

[Renegade Rob]

[Renegade Rob]

I watched Ambassadors of Death for the first time recently and it was bugging me that the crazy general guy looked familiar, and sure enough, it was Rimmer’s dad himself, John Abineri, who was just as obsessed with aliens as Rimmer but in the Doctor Who universe wasn’t an inch too short to become an officer. (A pretty interesting serial actually with some neat villains, I’m surprised I don’t hear it talked about more. Abineri did a nice job with the role.)

[Renegade Rob]

My mundane observation(/theory): since Tongue Tied shows up throughout Series II as an instrumental leitmotif that seems to be potentially diegetic (ambient music in the BTL restaurant and the Ganymede Holiday Inn in Stasis Leak that the characters can hear), I reckon there’s a non-zero chance that those encounters subconsciously influenced the choice of song for Cat’s Tongue Tied musical dream in Parallel Universe. It’s not an airtight theory admittedly but it has me wondering about in-universe, is Cat “covering” the already known song Tongue Tied? How well-known is it to the denizens of pre-accident humanity?

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