Doctor Who end of season...
SPOILERS BELOW, DO NOT READ IF NOT SCENE FINAL EPISODE YET
(also trigger warnings for frank and honest mentions of being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence and cancer)
Reactions and thoughts:
I am broken
First, I tried to reason with myself, to salvage something that has meant so much for me for so long. Like in my head, somewhere as he was visiting everyone Ten slipped into the Land of Fiction where Moffatt was the Master of the Land of Fiction and as he was regenerating he did not realise so became fiction and it was not until Clara was gone that Twelve began to work it out, and escaped as he regenerated into thirteen - whether she fell out into our universe or someone else is another thing, I explained the last season of Ten of him sliding through the multiverse anyway…
So, it’s salvageable, right?
1/ the Doctor never escaped from the Land of Fiction in my head canon - nope, can’t buy it,
2/ the Doctor slipped from the Land of Fiction somehow, somewhere, into the Matrix
3/ the Master pulled the Doctor and her companions into the Matrix in the first episode of this season and is using it to play mind games with her.
4/ the redacted stuff in the Matrix is the fact that the Division is both not interfering with the universe and is by running multiple stimulations of possible outcomes of different permutations of influence and interference in the universe. Problem with this is it does not stop the Doctor being the timeless child and having multiple regenerations before the First Doctor.
Note: We literally watch the First Doctor go from a bored Time Lord who ran away learn to be the Doctor, a massive character development by experience and influence of humans around him, and the TARDIS gets stuck in the first adventure. To make Ruth pre One undoes too much - you can’t redact an entire character’s life after 56 years just for a big finale! There are many fans who articulate this better than I. But it hurts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacHuYyiqT8&feature=youtu.be
Salvage theories 2-4 rely on the entire fact of the first two episodes have not been explained - what were those things, what was that space in-between, what were those roots/trees/giant wires and why did someone like Ava Lovelace go there so much? Is the entire multiverse just a succession of computer programs playing various simulations? Had the Master figured that out and is using it to his own advance?
5/ some weird shit to do with the Eighth Doctor story act in the books with the Faction Paradox?! But that is a head fuck I have always ignored so does not work for me.
So, I can just ignore it and still watch what I like, read and listen to what I want in the extended universe, carry on writing my fan fiction, especially re writing my first stuff from my pre-teens, which in my very chronically ill, coming to terms (again) with childhood abuse, possibly not many years left, shit quality if life has been really comforting and therapy, especially as the brain fog of my illness makes the complex crime and SF writing both fan and original no longer possible, right?
Um, no, everything canon, extended universe para canon, and my own head canons I’ve had for 40+ years which helped me through the years of abuse, no longer exist, no longer have an internal story logic. The first Doctor is no longer the first Doctor, all that character development is an illusion, even the TARDIS was a police box before, so he didn’t steal it when he thought he did, he wasn’t loomed/born when he thinks, everything that happens is meaningless, another cycle of 13 lives of adventures and righting wrongs and fighting evil and injustice until their mind is wiped and the whole thing starts again, on another ending wheel, like a Hindu god stuck on the eternal cycle of samsara. Rebirth, regeneration x 12, mind wipe, illusion of rebirth, regeneration x infinity… The Doctor needs liberating from this eternal infinity of suffering… You can’t just watch the Doctor and Susan travel with Barbara and Ian and see him grow into the Doctor of all previous regenerations, as it has already happened, it is pre-ordained, it is meaningless…
So, after nearly 50 years, just like that, I am no longer a Doctor Who fan. Before my own personal, profound spiritual, experience at 9 which saw me become a Christian at 16 and then a Muslim at 23 over the years, and I would now call myself a Deist and a Submitter, I guess - but any way, from 9 I had a deep personally faith and before that, from 4, there was the Doctor, strong, fighting evil, keeping me feel safe in a world which was never safe (we now know that trauma rewrites the brain, and C-PTSD is very difficult to treat if there is no before the trauma time, and the sexual abuse started at around 2, if not before - before I was old enough to know how old I was, and as my Mum says I used to count up to 100 and back down in my cot at 3 that is a long time ago!).
No longer.
So, thank you for past Doctor Who. You kept me safe when watching every Saturday and thinking about it, and writing little stories from ages 7, in my childhood in the 70s, and thank you for being there too once that abuse had stopped but the new other abuse was happening, as was school bullying, and all the physical and mental health issues and struggles with gender and sexuality though out my teens and twenties in the 80s.
Thank you, Virgin New Adventures and writing for fan zines and new internet fan sites in the 90s, that you for getting me through my abusive relationship.
Thank you, Big Finish, born the same month as my daughter, thank you for a brief me time with my ADHD/autistic child who never slept and I was raising her unsupported.
Thank you RTD for bringing it back and letting me share DW with my daughter, although we watched Classic before that.
Thank you, fandom for friends and support. Thank you, Sylvester for that little bit of support to realised I was brave enough to leave my abusive marriage with my baby, even if I was chronically ill and disabled. You were so sweet and kind at every convention we met back in 1999 and early 2000 and dropped so many lovely hints on how I was strong and worth more. Your scowls alone you gave my ex were worth of Seven.
The SM era sometimes left me feeling suicidal in a neurodiverse meltdown way at times, but the next episode, or next season, was okayish, and there was always Classic and the Extended Universe to play in.
Unlike now.
So, I am no longer a Doctor Who fan, as nothing can be seen or enjoyed as stand-alone stories again, nothing matters, everything is different and wrong. I’m 53, I watched Doctor Who with my parents every Saturday from when we moved into the flat and got a TV, when I was less than two, and I consciously remember being a fan and loving the show from aged 4. It kept me safe, and the Doctor showed me how to be brave through sexual abuse, school bullying, health issues including cancer, homelessness several times, 9 years of an abusive husband, and raising my special needs daughter unsupported for 20 years with deteriorating neurological ill health, through exhaustion, and pain, through being in a wheelchair and experiencing disabled hatred in the streets, and Islamophobia before that when I was still a hijabi; all this I always I faced this with humour and bravery, like the Doctor. But they are now some preordained super being and not the alien who learnt to be strong, so all that is now meaningless, isn’t it?
Well, nearly the entire VNA first editions, as well as Target novels, VHS and DVD stories, Big Finish CDs and BBC books - they ought to keep me going financially if my recent transfer from DLA for life to PIP means a mandatory reconsideration or even an appeal, they must all be worth quite a bit.
I am hollow.
I am done.
(also trigger warnings for frank and honest mentions of being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence and cancer)
Reactions and thoughts:
I am broken
First, I tried to reason with myself, to salvage something that has meant so much for me for so long. Like in my head, somewhere as he was visiting everyone Ten slipped into the Land of Fiction where Moffatt was the Master of the Land of Fiction and as he was regenerating he did not realise so became fiction and it was not until Clara was gone that Twelve began to work it out, and escaped as he regenerated into thirteen - whether she fell out into our universe or someone else is another thing, I explained the last season of Ten of him sliding through the multiverse anyway…
So, it’s salvageable, right?
1/ the Doctor never escaped from the Land of Fiction in my head canon - nope, can’t buy it,
2/ the Doctor slipped from the Land of Fiction somehow, somewhere, into the Matrix
3/ the Master pulled the Doctor and her companions into the Matrix in the first episode of this season and is using it to play mind games with her.
4/ the redacted stuff in the Matrix is the fact that the Division is both not interfering with the universe and is by running multiple stimulations of possible outcomes of different permutations of influence and interference in the universe. Problem with this is it does not stop the Doctor being the timeless child and having multiple regenerations before the First Doctor.
Note: We literally watch the First Doctor go from a bored Time Lord who ran away learn to be the Doctor, a massive character development by experience and influence of humans around him, and the TARDIS gets stuck in the first adventure. To make Ruth pre One undoes too much - you can’t redact an entire character’s life after 56 years just for a big finale! There are many fans who articulate this better than I. But it hurts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacHuYyiqT8&feature=youtu.be
Salvage theories 2-4 rely on the entire fact of the first two episodes have not been explained - what were those things, what was that space in-between, what were those roots/trees/giant wires and why did someone like Ava Lovelace go there so much? Is the entire multiverse just a succession of computer programs playing various simulations? Had the Master figured that out and is using it to his own advance?
5/ some weird shit to do with the Eighth Doctor story act in the books with the Faction Paradox?! But that is a head fuck I have always ignored so does not work for me.
So, I can just ignore it and still watch what I like, read and listen to what I want in the extended universe, carry on writing my fan fiction, especially re writing my first stuff from my pre-teens, which in my very chronically ill, coming to terms (again) with childhood abuse, possibly not many years left, shit quality if life has been really comforting and therapy, especially as the brain fog of my illness makes the complex crime and SF writing both fan and original no longer possible, right?
Um, no, everything canon, extended universe para canon, and my own head canons I’ve had for 40+ years which helped me through the years of abuse, no longer exist, no longer have an internal story logic. The first Doctor is no longer the first Doctor, all that character development is an illusion, even the TARDIS was a police box before, so he didn’t steal it when he thought he did, he wasn’t loomed/born when he thinks, everything that happens is meaningless, another cycle of 13 lives of adventures and righting wrongs and fighting evil and injustice until their mind is wiped and the whole thing starts again, on another ending wheel, like a Hindu god stuck on the eternal cycle of samsara. Rebirth, regeneration x 12, mind wipe, illusion of rebirth, regeneration x infinity… The Doctor needs liberating from this eternal infinity of suffering… You can’t just watch the Doctor and Susan travel with Barbara and Ian and see him grow into the Doctor of all previous regenerations, as it has already happened, it is pre-ordained, it is meaningless…
So, after nearly 50 years, just like that, I am no longer a Doctor Who fan. Before my own personal, profound spiritual, experience at 9 which saw me become a Christian at 16 and then a Muslim at 23 over the years, and I would now call myself a Deist and a Submitter, I guess - but any way, from 9 I had a deep personally faith and before that, from 4, there was the Doctor, strong, fighting evil, keeping me feel safe in a world which was never safe (we now know that trauma rewrites the brain, and C-PTSD is very difficult to treat if there is no before the trauma time, and the sexual abuse started at around 2, if not before - before I was old enough to know how old I was, and as my Mum says I used to count up to 100 and back down in my cot at 3 that is a long time ago!).
No longer.
So, thank you for past Doctor Who. You kept me safe when watching every Saturday and thinking about it, and writing little stories from ages 7, in my childhood in the 70s, and thank you for being there too once that abuse had stopped but the new other abuse was happening, as was school bullying, and all the physical and mental health issues and struggles with gender and sexuality though out my teens and twenties in the 80s.
Thank you, Virgin New Adventures and writing for fan zines and new internet fan sites in the 90s, that you for getting me through my abusive relationship.
Thank you, Big Finish, born the same month as my daughter, thank you for a brief me time with my ADHD/autistic child who never slept and I was raising her unsupported.
Thank you RTD for bringing it back and letting me share DW with my daughter, although we watched Classic before that.
Thank you, fandom for friends and support. Thank you, Sylvester for that little bit of support to realised I was brave enough to leave my abusive marriage with my baby, even if I was chronically ill and disabled. You were so sweet and kind at every convention we met back in 1999 and early 2000 and dropped so many lovely hints on how I was strong and worth more. Your scowls alone you gave my ex were worth of Seven.
The SM era sometimes left me feeling suicidal in a neurodiverse meltdown way at times, but the next episode, or next season, was okayish, and there was always Classic and the Extended Universe to play in.
Unlike now.
So, I am no longer a Doctor Who fan, as nothing can be seen or enjoyed as stand-alone stories again, nothing matters, everything is different and wrong. I’m 53, I watched Doctor Who with my parents every Saturday from when we moved into the flat and got a TV, when I was less than two, and I consciously remember being a fan and loving the show from aged 4. It kept me safe, and the Doctor showed me how to be brave through sexual abuse, school bullying, health issues including cancer, homelessness several times, 9 years of an abusive husband, and raising my special needs daughter unsupported for 20 years with deteriorating neurological ill health, through exhaustion, and pain, through being in a wheelchair and experiencing disabled hatred in the streets, and Islamophobia before that when I was still a hijabi; all this I always I faced this with humour and bravery, like the Doctor. But they are now some preordained super being and not the alien who learnt to be strong, so all that is now meaningless, isn’t it?
Well, nearly the entire VNA first editions, as well as Target novels, VHS and DVD stories, Big Finish CDs and BBC books - they ought to keep me going financially if my recent transfer from DLA for life to PIP means a mandatory reconsideration or even an appeal, they must all be worth quite a bit.
I am hollow.
I am done.