Favorite Thirteenth Doctor Moment On Eve Of The Daleks

my girllll

I'm watching the edited version of the War Games (it's on BBC4 right now and my parents wanted to see it), so, have some thoughts.

I'm normally a bit iffy on colourisation but this is genuinely very well done. The titles are gorgeous.

Squishing it into 90 mins makes the opening very zippy. The pace feels a shade too quick if anything.

It also gets a bit weird when the cliffhanger is turned into continuous action.

This is despite the fact that they only cut about 10 mins of episode one.

They drink a lot of tea in the War Games but it comes across as even more when you cut out of the non-tea-drinking bits.

OK, there's some very fun editing around the redcoat and Buckingham remembering the mist coming down. (Dare I say possibly an improvement on the original?)

But then it goes back to feeling too zippy, but least because episode 3 is brutally cut. Very little of it left.

Gah, I'm trying to like this, because it's clearly been lovingly made and the colourisation is genuinely superb, but the grinding relentlessness of the War Games has been replaced by rattling through the plot at a frenzied pace and it's not really working for me.

Ooh, Murray Gold's Master theme has been added over the War Chief's appearance. Not sure how I feel about that, but it's certainly an interesting choice.

They've dealt with the cliffhanger issue at the end of episode 4 by taking it out entirely.

The little added CGI bits are not hugely successful - they look oddly plasticky. Which is a bit disappointing, because have I mentioned how good the colourisation is?

It's taken my dad until the episode six cliffhanger to note the place where the original cliffhanger was.

(My mum has given up because she doesn't like how much fighting there is. Not sure if the original edit would have been any better on that score.)

Episodes 6 and 7 are so thoroughly chopped up that it's tricky to trace the original storyline. It's neatly done but it's not really the War Games any more.

More of the Master's theme when the War Chief admits to knowing the Doctor.

My dad comments that this bit seems like it was inspired by the Prisoner (which he also watched when it first aired).

It feels a bit weird when it switches from Murray Gold to 1960s incidental music.

This really centres the War Chief et al over the rest of the storyline.

"Complete loyalty and devotion" - oh, Jamie. This loses a lot of character beats in favour of the Time Lord-centric storyline, but not all of them.

Oof, their last desperate attempt to escape is still just as grim and desperate in the edit. Like there's still part of me wondering if they might somehow get away this time.

There are new Who-style images of Gallifrey on the view screen.

"Is the next episode The Trial of a Time Lord?" asks my dad, who has seen all of Doctor Who, but mostly not very recently.

The middle bit of episode 10 is cut, which means that I can watch the ending without crying for once.

Lots of establishing shots of Gallifrey.

The too old/too young/too thin shows a series of New Who Doctors. Not entirely sure how I feel about that choice either.

And it ends with the Doctor regenerating in the TARDIS - again, New Who style - before the date ticks back and forth erratically between 1970 and 1980, a joke that will appeal to a small number of people that includes me, and finally the very opening scene of Spearhead from Space.

I think if you accept the premise that a 90-min version of the War Games could be done, it's about as good as it could be. A few of the choices make it pretty clear that this is primarily for a New Who audience - particularly that it becomes a very Time Lord-centric story - not really for existing fans of the War Games.

Still, I wasn't expecting to love the colourisation as much as I did, and it made me wish I could watch a colourised version of all 10 episodes.

i’m like if a court jester had a fat ass and a sickening sense of melancholy

is donna properly aware that the doctor doesn't always regenerate into david tennant or

love this emerging genre of doctor who episode where you think it’s a surface level commentary on one topic (social media; ai), but then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and it’s actually a more severe social commentary (racism; misogyny/incel culture), BUT THEN it’s actually a pretty adept illustration of how the first and second topics are part of the same problem (social media allows people to create echo chambers which reinforce racism and fear mongering to the point of denying their own lived reality; ai masks human biases as technological progress and exacerbates regressive movements like incel culture)

Whenever I mention that Romanadvoratrelundar is from House Dvora, someone inevitably mentions the House of Heartshaven, and up until now I’ve explained the relationship between Heartshaven and Dvora as being analogous to that between Lungbarrow and Prydon or Meddhoran and Xianthellipse: in other words, Heartshaven is a sub-bloodline of Dvora. I’ve recently come up with an alternate solution, though, and I think it’s far more satisfying.

I am Romanadvoratrelundar, mortal heir to the House of Heartshaven, inheritor of the House of Dvora, and custodian of the House of Everston.

— Romana, Panacea

I was an only child. I didn’t have many friends.

— Romana, Neverland

When Romana visits the House of Heartshaven at the beginning of Panacea, she finds it completely deserted, laying in ruins and infested with pig-rats. Nothing could be more dissimilar to the House of Lungbarrow from Lungbarrow, which belongs to an active bloodline with many living members. Heartshaven isn’t some modern experiment with new biodata; it’s a fallen House, like Catherion or Ixion from The Book of the War.

And Romana acknowledges that Heartshaven is dead: there were no other children in the House; she’s not just a member, she’s the bloodline’s “mortal heir”. The last person with any claim to Heartshaven’s property and legacy.

[Eighth Man Bound] is never played by Time Lords of those ‘newblood’ Houses for whom a change of body is as trivial as a change of fashion, and who come straight from the loom with a secondary heart.

— Christmas on a Rational Planet

The Imperator crisis was the moment of catastrophe for the Houses. … From that point on Dvora was known as a Newblood House, the first House to have bred such an obvious mutation despite its reasonably long lineage.

— The Book of the War

When Christmas on a Rational Planet introduced the idea of a Newblood House, it specifically did so by contrasting Romana and the Doctor: the First Doctor had only one heart, per The Edge of Destruction and The Man in the Velvet Mask, whereas Romana I had two hearts and also seemed to casually regenerate in Destiny of the Daleks. (The novelisation of City of Death goes so far as to suggest that she regenerated “for the fun of it”.)

The Book of the War then introduced Dvora as the first and oldest Newblood House, being deemed as such after the Morbius crisis. Assuming that Romana is a member of Dvora, this means that Romana was from the generation right after Morbius’ rise to power, which does match the timeline: she’s about one generation younger than the Doctor, who himself was loomed around the same as Morbius.

The Faction Paradox series actually introduces us to one of Romana’s cousins, another child of Dvora from the generation after the Imperator: Larissa. Larissa graduated from the Academy and was recruited into the Order of the Weal when the “worldquake” and the “goblin infestation” were still recent events, which matches perfectly with the freshly-graduated Romana we see in The Ribos Operation. Their timelines are perfectly aligned, and by peeking into Larissa’s childhood, we can get a hint of Romana’s.

They had separated her from her playmates and marched her over the mountains. This was punishment, but not for her. There was madness in the family, a taint in the blood, so the children were scattered to the nine corners of the world for their own protection. She was still too young to understand the reasons, the scandal and disgrace her elders had left behind. She had been carried everywhere all her life, and hated walking. Her new and temporary home was a small house in the mountains, so tiny it was forgotten and flew no sovereign banner.

— Larissa’s childhood, Newtons Sleep

The bloodline of Ixion had already vanished in the Diaspora, leaving only a line of caretakers to manage the affairs of the House. … Following the death of Thessalia and the decline of the Order of the Weal, Ixion became an empty, desolate House.

— The Book of the War

After the Imperator crisis, the children of House Dvora were scattered around Gallifrey, and just as Larissa went to live in the long-empty House of Ixion, Romana was sent to the House of Heartshaven. Just like with Ixion, the death of the caretaker would later prompt the chapterhouse’s collapse, as we hear in Panacea; but, just as Larissa returned to the House of Ixion as an agent for the Order of the Weal, Romana gained a sense of belonging with Heartshaven during her time there that lasted long after she left for the Academy.

with how often the bbc tried to cancel doctor who in the 80s, one might very well accuse them of being serial killers

brax being rejected by romana in his own daydreams whilst romana writes self-insert fanfiction about her and the doctor, his cringe younger brother, at the academy is peak comedy