The first post is up!

Okay, rewatch complete.

I do think that anyone who genuinely believes that something like “Space Babies” (which, to be clear, I did not particularly enjoy) was somehow out of line needs to pop back to 2025 and really look at what RTD was doing in his original run. A garbage bin belching after eating Mickey The Idiot kind of says it all.

This episode does a very, very good job of introducing the Doctor, and the basics of what he’s all about (no Time Lords or Gallifrey to be mentioned just yet) to a new audience. Rose really was the best idea RTD had, allowing her to serve as the audience proxy moving forward. The focus on Rose’s “domestics” was also a very good move, one not really replicated in the following seasons (though RTD certainly tried, and came pretty close with Donna’s family).

The Nestene are a bizarre villain to open with - it’s like RTD has a thing for smacking new viewers in the face with the goofiest things he can think of, just to set the expectations. Armies of department store mannequins in the streets of London are truly a sight to behold.

The episode isn’t shot particularly dynamically, but it gets the job done.

One thing that I absolutely hate is Murray Gold’s scoring for this era. The opening music over the montage of Rose’s daily routine encapsulates it nicely - that driving percussion over the orchestral stuff just doesn’t work for me at all. I’m going to try not to harp on it through the Tennant era, but I think Gold’s work improves a lot once Matt Smith takes over. “The Doctor’s Theme” is fantastic, though.

Don’t get too excited - this is just the individual episodes of “Unleashed” for the season, stitched together.

Welcome to the regenerated Retrospective Discussions! The idea is simple: we discuss each episode as normal, but there’s no need to pretend the subesequent years of stories never happened - feel free to reference later continuity, compare it to future episodes, etc.

As long as the threads are minimally active, I’ll post one every Sunday until The War Between the Land and the Sea comes out, at which point we’ll shift are attention to that for a few weeks.

As for myself…I haven’t rewatched “Rose” yet, and haven’t seen it in a few years, so I’ll be back after I’ve rectified that situation.

I think New Who has definitely danced on the razor’s edge, getting by with narrative shortcuts as long as the emotional resonance lands. And when a story doesn’t land with you, those shortcuts are very visible.

I actually do like the small bits of exploration of the a Timeless Child that RTD has done using it to inform the Doctor’s personality in new ways. It would be great to see a Jo Martin story or something like that, though.

Trying another “Flux”-type season could be interesting too - sort of a hybrid between the old serials and more modern episodes. Hell, the eight-episode seasons are practically begging for it.

All good - I love the Mastodon engagement, even though it’s kind of awkward.

The TARDIS materializes in 1990s San Francisco.

Billie Piper stumbles out, is shot almost immediately, regenerates into Paul McCann.

Personally, I’m quite certain that the answer is some version of Option 2. There will be a break - maybe a long one - but the show ultimately isn’t going anywhere.

That’s definitely the case when they use a “volume” AR wall, which I know they used during Season 1. Since the CGI environment is projected live behind the actors, it all has to be prepped in advance of filming.

From what I’ve seen of “Unleashed,” though, they’ve also been using a lot of old-fashioned green screen.

I think this season - finale aside - was the best season in years, but I still think you made some good points.

it feels like the Doctor kind of just stands around listening to exposition a lot more in recent seasons

This was certainly a problem in the last couple of episodes, and Jodie’s Doctor did her fair share of that, too. Ncuti’s Doctor was also absent a lot in season one (“Dot and Bubble” and “73 Yards” constitute 1/4 of the season!).

It’s probably safe to assume that Gugu’s character is unique in some way - a human hybrid or somesuch.

I do really like the redesign of the “traditional” Sea Devils. They look great.

Radio Times: Doctor Who’s Christopher Eccleston said Billie Piper should be the Doctor years ago

Yeah, my brain definitely made a connection that wasn’t supported by the story.

I’m terrible at gauging whether an opinion is popular, but I’m chock-full of correct opinions, so here goes.

• The Timeless Child is basically fine, and served its function of injecting some new mystery and story hooks into the Doctor. RTD in particular has used it pretty effectively (read: sparingly), toying with the idea of the Doctor being a Foundling and embracing the Fugitive Doctor.

• The worst thing the show can do is bore me, so I can’t get too mad at episodes like “Love and Monsters” and “Kill the Moon”, because for all their flaws, they are not boring.

• I have no idea where the fandom eventually landed on Clara Oswald, but after her “recalibration” for “The Day of the Doctor”, she was an all-time great companion. Danny Pink was good, too.

• This is broad, but internet culture seems to insist that everything has to be either the best thing ever, or the worst. Most things are actually pretty average - that’s why it’s called an average.

Now, on to yours, OP…

I LOVED the first series of both 12

“Listen”! “Time Heist”! “Mummy On the Orient Express”! “Flatline”! Great stuff.

and 13

Look, “Demons of the Punjab” is a Hall of Fame-level episode, as far as I’m concerned. “It Takes You Away” deserves recognition for its delightful weirdness. “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”, “Rosa”, and “The Witchfinders” are all good outings. I’m probably more willing to defend “Kerblam!” than many are.

Sunday was a bit of a spoiler minefield

A lot of it was driven by the BBC, too - normally, I would consider spoilers like that to be fair game to share, because if the production itself doesn’t care, why should we? But this offended even my lenient sensibilities.

There were more emotional payoffs here than actually narrative ones

This is one of my favourite things about Doctor Who, really - the show often operates on emotional logic far more than, you know, logic-logic. Of course, that’s a dangerous game to play, and there’s a higher risk of a story doesn’t quite land right with everyone, and…the more I think about it, the more that was probably the case for me with “The Reality War.”

It was lovely seeing Anita again

I think it was intentional, but it was interesting that Anita was constantly sidelined by the narrative, kind of ignored by the other characters. A little heartbreaking, and I’m not sure what, exactly, the message is, but it did seem intentional to me. Also, I assume RTD had to write around Steph de Whalley’s actual pregnancy?

And finally, a sitdown with Belinda in a new timeline where she’s now (and somehow always was) happily Poppy’s mum and the Doctor can wash his hands of paternity.

My initial reaction was that maybe this had been the case all season, and we had just been seeing the Doctor’s altered memories, but…that doesn’t really work at all, so never mind. It’s a shame, too, because that could have been interesting.

The kid’s manifesting - let’s check back in 20 years.

I personally liked “Lucky Day”, though neither of his Chibnall-era efforts are particuarly inspiring (it’s also sometimes very difficult to separate the episodic writer from the showrunner). I’m really not familiar with his other work.

I’d never heard of this channel, and I’m very wary of strange YouTubers…but this was pretty good.

It lays out a compelling narrative for how this may have been an unplanned exit for Ncuti, with a very plausible-sounding explanation of “he wasn’t willing to wait around while they sort out when season 3 will happen.” I do hope the truth comes out in short order - I’d rather not put up with the equivalent of two decades of speculation over what went down with Christopher Eccleston.

I do think there’s a third option amongst the narratives, too - it may have been “always the plan” in the sense that Ncuti had a 2-season contract, but that he had planned on renewing until all the waiting started to interfere with him picking up new projects.

I kind of expected Omega to be a big ol’ nothingburger, kind of like Rassilon in “The End of Time”, so I wasn’t disappointed on that front.

There’s a lot of potential in Omega, though, and to be honest I don’t think any of the stories in which he appears have come anywhere close to taking advantage of it. He’s always just a generic madman.

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about the Poppy stuff - you make some very good points. I do think the Doctor and Belinda were planning on being…non-romantic parents toward the end there, which seemed to make sense to me. But I’m really not sure what to make of the whole thing, on a logical or thematic level. Like I said in my first comment, they did manage to take it from something I had no investment in to something I was actually kind of sad about, so they get some credit there, but…I won’t be surprised at all if we learn that there was an earlier version of this story that went in a different direction.

Nope - at the end of this video, RTD says “quite soon” twice, which could mean…a lot of things.

But I’m pretty sure we’ll see it before 2025 is out, so there’s that.