Implausipod E0023 - The Giggles

Join us for the final of our three episodes on the 2023 Season of Specials for Dr Who, with the return of familiar nemesis (both within the show and to yours truly as well) and the introduction of the 15th Doctor through an unique turn of events.  We're joined by our guest Dr. Aiden Buckland to discuss this momentous episode.

Dr. Buckland can be contacted at doctoraidenwho@gmail.com  

Transcript

DRI: So how do you go from one doctor to the next? How do you pass the reins on a franchise? I got no idea, I've never seen it, but is it something momentous, you know, worthy of a special, or is it just like a regular episode, something silly named The Giggles? I guess we'll find out here on this episode of the ImplausiPod.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast at the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I'm your host, Dr. Implausible, and in this episode we'll take a look at the third of three Dr. Who, 2023 specials, and I'll be joined shortly by my guest, Dr. Aiden Buckland, where we'll discuss the details. But I'll start with a quick recap of my initial impressions as someone who's been a lifelong sci-fi fan, but never really seen any Doctor Who, aside from the previous two. So with that in mind, let's get right to it with my initial impressions of The Giggles.

And I'm going to call an audible here right off the top and bring on our guest right away. Originally I had recorded about 20 minutes of my first impression, and that's almost enough time for a full episode itself. But there would have been a lot of duplication with the discussion that we would have had after.

So in the interest of expedience, let's just get right to it. And without further ado we'll be joined by our guest, Dr. Aiden Buckland. All right. And we're back with the giggles or a mild case, at least I think I've mostly recovered and joining me here is Dr. Aidan Bucklend to once again talk about doctor Who, our third special of 2023 with some substantial changes happening with our doctors. So I really want to get into it, but welcome Aiden, thank you for joining us. Good to have you back. 

AB: Yeah. Thanks for having me again. This was an interesting and eventful end to our run of specials.

DRI: Yeah, for sure. I even as a non fan, I could kind of sense some of what was going on there. The escalation of the threat, so to speak, that humanity was at stake and we were seeing a lot of the goings on. I appreciated the episode, even though it started off with something rare for me. I mean, we're in Soho and for me it was a "Hey, I recognize that guy!", which hasn't really happened too much in the three specials we've seen so much, but Neil Patrick Harris is, I'm sure you're aware, I've mentioned to you before, but maybe the viewers aren't aware, he's a bit of my nemesis here. A long time ago, we were giving a talk, actually, at the Calgary Comic Expo, and we were talking about paratext in video games giving an academic talk, and the next, next hall over was Neil Patrick Harris doing magic tricks, and talking about what was the, what was the show he did with Wedin.

The sing a long blog one? 

AB: Oh yes, that would be Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog. 

DRI: Right, so here he's not a doctor, but he's definitely causing some trouble. So, our nemesis, who, because we had like, maybe six or ten people at our talk, and Neil Patrick Harris out of, flowing out to the hall. Rightfully so, I am not harsh on him.

NPH here at all. If I was a fan, I, I would have gone seen NPH too, but thank you to the people that did come see our talk. I'm much appreciated. But it definitely is coming off with some very creepy vibes here. And then we mentioned the second person that I recognize, or at least the name, I recognize John Baird, who is the inventor of television and, as a communications scholar, it was like, I've mentioned that name in many classes before. So it was kind of a, as a cold open, it was a big shock to me. And I just wanted to kind of get your perspective on say either or both of those appearances early on. 

AB: Always nice to see your next fair use target for those updated lecture notes moving forward.

And always nice to see these kinds of milestones. A doctor who tends to do this from time to time. So in the past, they used the moon landing, for example. And, you know, while positioning it in the narrative, also mention that it is the most watched thing ever to have been on television. So, embedded signals abound.

DRI: Oh, okay, so this is kind of a repeat, like, a thread that they've used as a threat before. Okay. 

AB: It feels very in keeping, for sure. They're very consistent with with coming back to certain mechanisms. 

DRI: All right. So we'll, I guess, maybe talk about those mechanisms that they come back to throughout this episode here, but there was one line, I think, I think it was Baird, he was talking about the puppet.

They said, "imagine if he could talk, what could he say?", which I guess is the setup for the rest of the episode here. And from there we move right into the credits. And again, it's a Russell T Davies solo joint and we're taken right into the chaos at the end of the last episode and it links directly to it.

And there was a guy there in the wheelchair that we didn't really talk about, I guess, in wild blue yonder when we were discussing it, but this idea of the. Well, I'll get to it. But yeah, we, we see this person here. Do you, can you give me a little bit of detail there? 

AB: Yeah, that's a Bernard Cribben's character, Wilford Mott.

And it was one of the things I think in this episode, I liked the most. It was one of the great surprises for, for longtime fans. In wild blue yonder that we ended with that scene and got to see him again because of course as many people know He passed on unfortunately in 2022, I believe so You know they the idea that they even had that and have been holding on to it for this long is great Maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant about this being a part of the thing, but you notice, I think in this episode that we don't ever clearly see him on camera again.

So I think that that first scene must have been shot quite early in the game. 

DRI: Yeah, so this is maybe a body double or some way to kind of bring that continuity and okay, well, that's really cool. And there's still like having those links for older fans that they're bringing in that we saw in the 1st of the specials, like, Bringing everybody together and having that continuity throughout.

And that, I think it popped up later on in the episode. There's a bunch of names I didn't recognize, but I'm going to ask you some questions about. Now, from there, we went straight to this. It basically, it was like a man in the street. And seeing as we're talking about TV, they get this guy who's facing down a car, explaining things to Dr. Who. And it was like typical of, to me, at least TV opinions. He, the guy says a few days ago. It changed where they get mad if you try and explain otherwise to them. And so they're, they're talking about basically polarization online, but the idea that it was a man in the inter... in street interview where we typically see that polarization and the online agenda setting that takes place by the, you know, the decisions that get made about who to show, you know, what stuff gets included in a news broadcast and what stuff gets excluded, maybe that was missed by the audience.

I don't know, but it was really striking to me that. This is how they choose to portray what was going on. 

AB: It's really one of those things that I think is, you know, magical about sci-fi storytelling in particular is to take those very contemporary issues and dissolve them into an absurd, surreal background and really allow things to play out.

I liked that connection this week in particular. 

DRI: Yeah. And so Neil Patrick Harris shows up as a mime in the street while all this chaos is going on. And there's that moment of recognition felt between the doctor and NPH there. So is there like a lot of history that's connected between these two? Like would the doctor who have recognized him or in this incarnation, or is there that sense that Did you sign of recognition or was that something else or just he was noticing that this is possibly a threat?

AB: Yeah, it's recognition. I think might not be the most accurate term in in this case He is a villain that's existed in the original run of the show Of course, we saw the footage in this episode of william hartnell. That's the the very first doctor And it would have been, it looked like the, the footage was either in color or colorized, so that seems to me that it would be late in his run in particular.

So it's, it's interesting when they do this sort of thing, where they do kind of deep callbacks, reinvent a character. Oftentimes he won't recognize them at first, but then the big reveal and of course there is this deep relationship they've encountered each other in an episode or two. 

DRI: Okay, so then from there we have that bit with UNIT coming in and keeping the family safe as kind of the admonition.

But we come into this massive overhead shot, I thought, of the Chinooks carrying the Tardis towards this tower. And I don't know if, like, the Chinooks were CGI, like, or if all of it was CGI and then there was just some compositing, or if they actually did an overhead shot of London like that, but it was, it felt movie scale to me.

Like, like, you don't normally see overhead exterior shots in any kind of TV show, even like outside of like an HBO kind of premium TV kind of thing. Was there a sense of that scale there? Or 

AB: no, it's definitely something that I think has been noticeable in this return. There's definitely some money in the budget.

And like I say, continuity wise and, and. Aesthetic wise, I think you could make that argument from the Chibnall era as well. So this is the person who was running the show previously. The show has looked more polished in a lot of ways for a while now. It's just with these specials, this is the 60th anniversary.

So with the milestone, they're putting a bit more money in there, but they tend to do this from time to time. Like the season of specials. Which is what leads up to the transition from Tenet, from 10 to 11. Is one where, instead of doing a run of episodes, what they did was just two or three two parters packaged as like a TV 

movie.

DRI: All right. And so they bring into this and then we meet Kate Lethbridge Stewart at what I had in my notes is called Avengers HQ, because I can't think of any other way of describing that, that they're on this platform at the top of a tower, which again, in London, I don't know if you've ever been, but London is kind of a city devoid of of like skyscrapers, at least my, the little bit of it that I saw.

So it, it really kind of stuck out that they had this thing, but she comes up with this line how do we fight the human race? And I guess we have, again, our, our stakes have been raised that we know what the scope of this is here. Is Kate Lethbridge Stewart, is she a returning character or is this somebody new again?

AB: Yeah, she's a kind of a deep cut reference. So she, in canon, is the daughter of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, who was a character from the original run when they first introduced UNIT. So he was like the liaison with the Doctor and UNIT. And he was actually someone who got mentioned often times, again, for the show that's been running this long.

They will make reference to or pay homage to those who have passed on and when the actor who played Lethbridge Stewart originally did pass, they use that as part of one of the plots of really nice scene with Matt Smith, basically calling him up to go for a drink and finding out. Unfortunately, he's passed, which is those neat callbacks that they tend to do and knew who 

DRI: I'm glad to see that they're at least aware of it.

Like some shows feel like they. I mean, there's always a tension, right? Between, like, fan service, like, how deep are you catering to the fans and those that are really paying attention to it? Or, you know, how much is that, like, a burden to the story writing and the creativity that kind of has to flow, like?

It feels like who, through the way they do the regenerations, and it's set up narratively that they can Do that homage. They can have those deep cuts where some other shows would start feeling like really, really weird if they kept going on or kept coming back to the same. Well, probably something like a supernatural or anything else.

It's run forever. Starts to feel that way after a little while, but here it feels organic and natural, even if it's like a bit of a, the gangs all back together kind of thing. And there's this deep history that I'm not aware of, but it's, it's continuing on. We also meet Melanie here, and I think Donna remarks that what, another redhead or something like that, and I, you had mentioned last episode that the Doctor wanted to return as a ginger, so this seems to be a, an ongoing theme here as well, but Melanie, I don't, who is, who is Melanie here?

AB: Yeah, so this is a companion who's from the original run. She was with both the 5th and the 6th incarnation of the Doctor, and this is something that tends to happen in the run of the characters. You'll usually have a companion that carries over from one Doctor to the next. This sounds like it might not be the case for us this Christmas, but we'll see.

It's, it, the Doctor's companion is always something that is something they're always juggling. So who we get at Christmas could be the ongoing companion or could be just a one off. 

DRI: So there's a lot more companions than doctors, right? 

AB: Yeah. He usually has two or three people with them. 

DRI: Okay. So there's, there's a much bigger cast of characters than necessarily I've seen in this, you know, just the limited range of these these few specials here. So, the discussion that's taking place at Avengers HQ here is about this virus that's spreading around and the virality of it. And in the main line of the podcast, I talked a few weeks ago about spreadable media, Henry Jenkins's and others idea of, you know, and not necessarily virality, but the way that media gets shared and goes around.

And we have this kind of this underlying theme of this show, but the question I had was, they talk about how it's spreading everywhere at the same rate, but I guess this felt. This rang a little false to me in that if we have television, adoption is not like it's a lot of places, but it isn't worldwide, right?

And there's places that have large adoption pages, places that have less even though cell phone adoption, smartphone adoption is kind of. bridge the gap in countries that maybe didn't have a traditional landlines or you know, even a strong television presence. That one was just really a big kind of hole to me.

Why would this be everywhere all at once? I don't know what your thought is there, but I imagine it's similar. 

AB: It's one of those cheats. So I believe in the episode he mentions that it's embedded in all screens. And even that is, you know, nonsensical when you know anything about the history of the development of these technologies, like computer screens and televisions, you know, develop drastically differently.

That's a bit of one of those leaps that you sometimes have to take in a Doctor Who episode. I found in Starbeast the same thing, when they shut off the dagger drive, and all of the crevices in the earth start to repair themselves, and all those streets start to, you know, knit themselves back together.

DRI: Yeah we get a little bit of sense of the consequence, I think, here later in the episode, but again, I mean, there was also like a plane crash and, and mass chaos and, and obviously violence has been taking place even with two days. I mean, I'll, I'll tell just as an aside to the audience, I think within any sci fi show, there's like one big lie and it might be, Oh, we have time travel or we have faster than light or, you know, aliens are real or whatever.

And then you have your willing suspension of disbelief that will carry you so far through, okay, I can believe in faster than light travel or time travel or whatever. And if the rest of the story makes sense based on that premise, you're like, okay, I'm with it. But if they break that willing suspension of disbelief, then you're out, right?

So I was challenged a little bit on some of these points here, but I was still able to buy in, but it's like why I've kind of. tuned out of the MCU to a large extent, cause I can't still wrap my head around The Snap and I'm like, I'm figuring that would be a, like a society event ending event if 50 percent of the people kind of just disappeared, like, and for five years, I'm like, there, there is not a society to come back to if that happens.

So I kind of, whenever that gets mentioned in newer MCU properties, I kind of just gone, but for the show here, back on topic yeah, I was able to still continue on and we had this idea. We meet Vlynx and the description of the Zdex, which is used to block it. And again, I don't know, is Vlynx been around for a while or is that a new guy?

AB: Nope. New to me, at least. This is my first time seeing the Vlynx, so. And this is something that they have done quite a bit in the New Who era. So, Unit is the old organization from the original run of the show. For a little while in the New Era, there was an organization called Torchwood. And both organizations essentially served the same purpose.

To, you know, be like Sword in the Marvel Universe. Okay. Protect us from all of those out there that want to do harm. 

DRI: Okay. Gotcha. So they're offensive rather than defensive sword versus than shield. So unit versus or units kind of both. , it's double-edged, 

AB: Torch Wood is probably a whole nother rabbit hole to dive down.

There's a character that they spin off of the first season for Russell T. Davis, who in a lot of ways is kinda like the opposite of the doctor. So he ends up being the central part of that. So it's kind of like their first successful spinoff. 

DRI: Oh, oh, cool. In the new era. Okay. We'll, we'll have to check that out at some point.

So, through all this discussion at Avengers HQ, or sorry, Unit HQ, they, they talk about the satellite, they figure out the arpeggio that's behind all the screens, they have this idea. Now, for the Canadian connection, I guess, there's a Canadian movie by the name of Pontypool, which was done by one of the kids in the hall, and that was that idea of like a, you know, as well it turned everybody in that movie into like zombies, but it was spread by voice. And so here we have the giggling, which is going through the screens, which again, willing suspension of disbelief, but they get to the idea that they're looking for a puppeteer. There was a point there after Kate did the thing where she took off the Zdex where they're having this discussion.

She was very kind of angry and hostile with the people. in unit and made some comments and then she was apologetic about it after. And then we have the doctor kind of being hostile to all the humans in the area. He's going, you're using your intelligence to be stupid. And did you get the sense that the doctor was being affected by the madness as well, or is he just always sometimes kind of rude?

Like I can't tell. 

AB: It is one of the things I think that's pretty enduring through most of the actors that play him. He's, at the same time, fascinated with us as a planet and as a species, as he is often disappointed. I mean, most of, you know, quite a lot of the villains end up being human from some era.

So, he's often disappointed with what we can end up doing, but for the most part, yeah, this kind of scolding tone tends to come from fairly often. 

DRI: Okay, so he's, I guess it's done to set apart that he is an alien. I mean, he may be in human form, but he is not. you know, human at all. So yeah, we, we get that sense that he is other from, you know, the rest of the the companions or unit or the rest of humanity, even though he does care for them.

So from there, we, again, we have a little bit more of the banter going around, but their discussion about Baird's invention, I was wondering when I saw it, because they mentioned it was like on The 25th or in 2025, and it had been 98 years and I think it was actually in 2026. I went and checked some of the history texts after, so we're close to history, even if we're not exactly on, but that's just kind of a fun fact for anybody who might be listening that we're not quite exactly there, but it's, it's pretty close.

So they go back to Soho 1925 and they, I mean, the doctor and Donna. And we get another one of those brief interludes where they're actually able to have a conversation, but she says that they're never able to have a conversation. That she, he is busy every second of every day, staggering along. And I guess it, it strikes me of something that would be in, not, not Doctor Who, I guess, because I'm new to that, but where you have a time traveler who's continually going out.

time and time and time again, whether it's in a novel like forever war or something even like time copper bill intense or, or what have you, is this sense that, or even back to the future, like the sense that the entirety of Marty's adventures basically took place within. You know, a couple hours of elapsed time back on earth.

And again, this ties back to the Rick and Morty equation, like how many adventures do they have between them appearing and disappearing, where sometimes weeks happen for them and then they come back to it. But so the doctor is sensing is, is having the sense that the entirety of the Doctor's run, whether it's New Who or from whatever given point back in, in time there, he's never stopped.

It's, you can, you can binge watch the entire Doctor Who run and you're seeing it in like real time for the Doctor, right? And it's been constant. There's never been that moment's breadth. So I just wanted to kind of get your sense on that one a little bit. And what that means for Doctor Who, the character, and as portrayed by David Tennant here as the 14th Doctor.

AB: Yeah, I think this is one of my biggest question marks coming out of these three episodes in particular is what does this mean for the new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa? Is he, is doctor number 15 somehow, you know, rehabilitated and, and he's rehabbed these problems and he's not going to carry this weight because this is definitely something that's been common characteristic of all the new who doctors for the most part, they carry this burden.

So it starts with Eccleston in the very first season. He is very much fresh out of the Time War, which is this narrative device they use for several of the first few seasons in the background as kind of a meta plot. So this is the original, original Sin of the New Who era for the Doctor. It's this horrible event that affected so many different species and this is the weight he carries.

But then, as the show unfolds, of course, you know, it's the, the old adage, you know, for television, you write characters that people really love and then do mean things to them. So, you get season after season, one tragedy piled on top of another tragedy. Which always seems to leave, and especially Tennant in particular, always seems to leave him in kind of sad doctor phase where he's not really sure if he wants to hang out with people anymore, and he's not sure if he's really fit to be around people, because a lot of people around him tend to die or sacrifice themselves to save him.

DRI: Yeah. Okay. We, we get that played up here a little bit further along. We don't have to necessarily go chronologically. I think with the 15th doctor Ncuti Gatwa, he kind of mentioned that near the end of the episode that, you know, he was the doctor who had had time to recoup and recover a little bit.

And, and that's kind of what brought him out. And then the 15th doctor is the doctor that's recovered. I thought that was mentioned explicitly in the text. And we get into that idea of the loss that he's felt just a few moments later, as after they go through the hall of doors and the doctor has to challenge with "all the laws I cling to gone" and the fact that he's facing the rather quick consequences of his actions with the superstition at the edge of the universe when he did salt in the previous episode there in the wild blue yonder as what has allowed the Toymaker to actually come in. 

They have that scene at the puppet show where these previous companions are being shown as being played for puppets and they each meet a kind of end, a purgatory or some, some other thing.

And the doctor tries to explain all of them away and he says, "well, that's all right then!", you know, while there's an explanation, but I don't know, like, I don't have any connection to it, but it sounds like the fates of some of the companions were kind of horrible here, if we stop to think about it. And is the doctor continually running away from his actions in this?

Or is he, and this is where he's being forced to confront them? Or like, what's, what's kind of going on with it? 

AB: It's one of the things I think is, is interesting about the character is that you're absolutely right. He is running away constantly. It's kind of what drives him to keep moving forward and you know everywhere he lands he's right in the middle of one of these adventures So he's too busy to ever really deal with himself like oftentimes In several iterations actually in the new era, you know when a character is asking him to reflect on the kinds of things He's been through he'll immediately turn it to whatever the puzzle of the week is to solve or you know Spit out a new theory about how they're going to solve this week's monster. Always deflecting, never wanting to reflect. Which is an interesting way to, I guess, bifurcate the characters. So, I guess David Tennant gets to hang out with the family and have all the sadness and Ncuti Gatwa gets to fly around all of time and space. 

DRI: Hmm, sorry, for the listeners, you wouldn't have seen that, but the lightbulb just came on over the top of my head.

So, are we, could we be in a sense where, I mean, I know you've mentioned how things get all timey wimey, so could Tennant's Doctor Who, the moment that he's having with the family, could that be him recouping and then, you know, Ncuti Gatwa is you know, that doctor, like the bifurcation that they have or the bi regeneration is kind of dissociated in time.

So the 14th doctor gets that time to kind of recover and then it'll, it'll tie up again at some point in the future. that we'll, we'll, we'll see that change kind of come about and it turns into the 15th Doctor at a future date. It's, it's kind of like they, they did a time loop there and it'll link back at some point in the future.

Maybe, maybe near the end of Ncuti Gatwa's run. I'm assuming, you know, he'll have a, a season or a three like all the doctors do, but yeah. Anywho, I just, just a thought. I'll throw that out there. 

AB: Yeah. It'd be nice to see I believe Russell T Davies has done an interview or two talking about kind of how this was a choice that he had made very early on in the creative process that this was always kind of the end goal to have two doctors at the end of it.

And we've had other incidents. The meta crisis, which came up in the first episode. Starbeast is another one of those where. A sort of part of him or whatever was causing an issue because of the duplicate being there. So, it's an interesting choice, I think moving forward. And it'll be interesting to see how much they lean into it.

Like, we've already seen in the 50th the Day of the Doctor, probably the, the most robust attempt to get all of the doctors in the same place at the same time, in one episode. So, and this is kind of the tradition. So this is the first time we've seen the doctor meet a future incarnation. Well, that's not true, but spoilers, but in terms of working with a future incarnations, the first time we've seen that happen, which is questionable, I guess, given their game of ball.

DRI: Yeah. Speaking of the game of ball and, and well, I guess The games that are going to come up here. There's one other event that kind of happens in the Hall of Mirrors. I just want to touch on and we'll, then we can kind of fast forward to that game. Donna had a bit that she said was from her grandpa, I think.

And she says, "dice don't know what the dice did last time. Games don't have a memory. Every game starts from scratch". And it was like, I had to pause and make sure I got that correctly. But I mean, from, you know, we talked a little bit, our impressions about television from like a, you know, comms perspective, but we're also, if we talk about it from like a game studies perspective or that one also kind of really jumped out at me because from like a statistical rationale, it's true.

Dice don't know what the dice did last time, but games are more than just dice. And so I think saying that games don't have a memory is like a stats 101 kind of thing. If you're shuffling cards or rolling dice or saying, okay, we're looking at repeated roles, there's no history there. But if we're looking at anything more complex than that, then that's not the case because you have that meta knowledge, that meta awareness that that can influence the decisions of the players.

And even for a statistical game like cards or poker or what have you. There are skilled players that are better able to play the odds and the likelihood, even though there's a highly random element to it. There's still skill involved, right? So there there's history there and there's even if it's unstated So what's your thought about this from like a games perspective?

AB: I was really interested in this idea of play as a an elemental force that was neat to me. It's, it's, one of the things when you read this literature and you go all the way back to the 30s with Huizinga, who basically positioned play as that thing that is, you know, transcendental. It, it transcends the human species.

It's something you don't have to teach a kitten or a puppy how to play. They come hardwired with that ability and this is kind of the way I read the dice line, that idea that when you're in a game, you are essentially in your own little magic circle, which is again another concept from the text in the 30s, is this idea that, you know, the magic circle gives everything inside of it, you know, new meaning, so their game of ball, It was very much you know, a life and death struggle because of the way they had agreed to set up the rules.

DRI: One of those rules was best of three, which, you know, I guess again ties back into some of those elemental rules. And they said it was like order, chaos and play. And they had they kind of elevated the toy maker as an avatar of play, though I will say he kind of felt like is that an avatar of chaos as well to like this elemental force.

If I was going to use like a marvel analogy. It would be like a Beyonder or a Galactus or, you know, some something or one of the Celestials. He was, he was kind of brought up to that level to, and I don't know if that felt true to me. I mean, obviously he was able to cause worldwide havoc, but again, I don't, I'm not entirely sold on a play as an elemental force.

I think it's maybe universal, but not elemental. Again, I can't. quite say, but this tied directly into our Spice Girls moment. And speaking of rules of play, I love the Spice World thing as a whole, or sorry, Spice Girls thing as a whole. We had like so many cute little bits within it. We, he turned the two guards into balls and then, or balloons, and then.

Doctor who said, "no, I'm sorry. They're dead." You know, there, there'll be a call back there to a little bit, but we had the American beauty moment in the middle of the floor while he's kind of doing the thing with his, he's making an angel in all the pedals that we're shooting out of the guns because he's able to "Manipulate atoms with the power of thought", I think was how the doctor described it.

Then he instantly negated that as being his power that, you know, his power is greater than that. But that again ties into that Marvel Molecule Man kind of a level of power that we kind of see. But within that constant concept of play, it struck me that the only ones that are playing are the doctor and the toy maker.

And if we're thinking of play, especially our rules of play, is something that requires consent for everybody to participate. You know, we talk about how games would have like a gaming rule zero or You know, rules of play that might set up beforehand, especially like a tabletop or live action scenario, like we're seeing here where everybody agrees the rules for a lot of the members of unit or the, you know, ancillary characters, it doesn't seem like they consented to the same rules that the Toymaker and the Doctor are playing at.

And I guess maybe that again, that's that clash of elemental forces, but it, you know, as everybody else. Subject to the Toymaker, but not able to, you know, say whether they want to play or not. I don't, I don't know. That kinda struck me as odd, but I'd, I'd like to get your thoughts about the whole basically Spice Girls montage and and going forward there.

AB: Solid montage. I, I think generally the Toymaker is one of these characters. I think I had mentioned one in the previous episode there where he's essentially a god from a different bubble universe. Which the Doctor accidentally tripped into one day when he was in the first incarnation that we've seen on TV.

So, that's for me, kind of what explains his power level in general. And I thought it was interesting and telling as well of the character, especially, again, the tenant character. That his solution to the problem is to offer him, you know, infinite play. You know, let's, let's take off. I've got a time machine.

Let's Just go play across the universe and be celestial, which was, you know, something that we've seen him offer before again, because his his solutions are rarely to try to eliminate the antagonist. It's usually to try to contain or to satisfy or to. 

DRI: Yeah. So this, this idea that the solution was, I think, infinite games, he go, he, he critiques him.

He goes, why are you so small? Why are you just dealing with this one planet where we can play across the universe? And I think the toy maker said something to the fact that, you know, humans are fascinating. They make games out of. putting bricks on other bricks, which I guess was like a Tetris or Candy Crush kind of reference.

But yeah, I guess there's, there's always that anthropic conceit in any sci fi show about like, why does humanity matter? And it ties into the MCU and, you know, so many other shows as well. But yeah, they're able to bring that out. And then we have the battle on the the deck here. With the galvanic beam and the rest going on.

And from there we see the doctor struck and then something odd happens and we get this bi generation and I'll just pause right there from myself. Okay. I want your full take about the bi generation because this is the first regeneration I've ever seen on screen. So take it away. Let me know what you think.

AB: Definitely a unique one. And it is, this is something that we've become accustomed to. And I guess from the original run, you would be as well for the most part that when the doctor is, you know, mortally wounded, he will turn into a brand new person in general. So we've seen this before. We've seen this particular doctor the 14th, when he was the 10th go through a similar issue where essentially, you know, He has to make a choice and that leads to his ultimate demise, which is interesting.

I think there's two things that are happening here, which are fascinating. The first is, this seems to be, in a lot of ways, a kind of safety lever or pressure valve I think. So, when the show made the choice in the previous iteration to make the Doctor a female character, something that had been established in the canon long before that Time Lords can present as male or female, there was, you know, a section of the fanbase who, you know, were engaged in kind of dumping on the show, because of Jodie Whittaker inhabiting the role. 

So, in some sense, this seems to be a way for that section of the fanbase, so those ones that came back just for Tenant, and who decide for reasons that they don't want to continue on with the new Doctor, that they have their Doctor. Which troubles me, I think, in particular.

I think that that's one of the interesting things about this property and this character. Is that they change and as a fan, you just have to kind of accept that. So it's one of the things that I think, you know, for me as a fan, I really came on board when Matt Smith became the Doctor. So for me, you know, he's my Doctor.

He's the one that, you know, I got into the show for or at the same time that he was the main character. So it is. You know, a little bit irksome, I guess. Like, why is it that this Doctor gets to come back and then split off and get his own, I don't know, spin off? Are we going to see a David Tennant / Catherine Tate, Doctor Who special again sometime, you know, next year around this time?

Or, you know, is this something that, you know, Davies has a plan for and will be resolved? So You know, maybe by generation eventually results in them popping back together at some point in some, you know, dramatic event. 

DRI: Yeah. Okay. And what was the second? You said there was a couple things. 

AB: Well, this one was, I think, interesting in that his final line, "Allons-y", was better in terms of the one he had from the last one, but in both of these regenerations, there is a kind of critique I have of the 10th slash 14th doctor to not so much overstay his welcome, but as he's leaving the stage, he does so in such a way that it makes it difficult.

For some of his fans to, you know, accept this next doctor. So in the episodes where he is leaving the show for the first time as the 10th doctor, you know, he, he has a conversation with, you know, Wilford Mott about how regeneration works and how it's essentially like him dying and you never get to see him again.

So really ramps up the stakes so that when regeneration happens in those, those specials, you know, it's a really devastating moment and you're really sad and kind of angry that this new guy shows up. Similarly, you know, for me as a Matt Smith fan, when Matt Smith leaves the show after his few seasons and you know, Peter Capaldi comes in as his replacement, it took me a while to get used to Capaldi as the doctor and the choices that he was making as an actor in that role.

DRI: And it's interesting to know, just, I don't know if you would have seen this, but in the subtitles, because again, I had to throw those on, basically for every moment after the bi-generation, when Tennant is on screen, he's subtitled the 10th doctor. And Ncuti Gatwa is the 15th. So again, I don't know how much oversight Disney would have or even the showrunners would have on the titling of the subtitle text, but this is how it was labeled.

So maybe that's just an artifact of the, whoever was doing the subtitles, but it came across as, you know, that maybe there was something more behind the scenes, or maybe that's just who the subtitle recognized. That's again, maybe a meta comment. 

AB: It is one of those things that has some potential to it, right?

Like if, if that change happened, it would have had to been approved by numerous people. So I think, you know, definitely an explicit choice. And I think that makes sense that this is not the 14th doctor. This is now, you know, this bi generated doctor who is actually the 10th. So maybe Ncuti's going to spit one out every season that he's in the show.

That would be kind of cool. Like have a Tom Baker show back up and all aged up. 

DRI: Well That would be amazing to see. Yeah, for sure. There was a comment about the Toymaker said about his legion is coming, or his legions are coming. So, so maybe we need a legions of doctor to to deal with the threat at some unspecified point in time.

So then we do have the, the game of ball here, in which the combined doctors are able to Defeat the toy maker and as he falls, there was a couple of events that happened. One, the gold tooth. Was there any significance to that? I didn't quite catch who was captured in the gold tooth. 

AB: Yeah, it came across in a line of dialogue.

It is also one of the things that I, you know, has my radar going in terms of, you know, what is going on with this bi, bi-generation, because earlier in the episode the Toymaker references all of the other people that he's defeated since he's gotten to our universe, and one of them was the Master, who is an Evil Time Lord who the Doctor has been. 

Basically, the Master is to the Doctor what Moriarty is to Sherlock, or what the Joker is to Batman. They are, you know, mortal enemies, who are also kind of friendish. It's a long complicated relationship. 

DRI: Okay. We don't have to untangle that here, but there, there is a definite association with the gold tooth then.

And then as that was happening and he's getting put into the toy box Kate comes back and asks for the names of the staff, like anybody who was affected or was tossed off the edge. So that, I guess, Care that she shows towards and compassion towards the members of unit that are, you know, she's in responsible for kind of came through there.

And that kind of struck me as well that they didn't have to and often we don't see that recognition of the human events in a lot of the sci fi shows that we talked about. So that kind of came through. I kind of want to get them to the finish that we get this compassion between the 15th Doctor and the 14th and or 10th.

There's a, there's a very compassionate hug that Ncuti Gatwa gives Tenant there as he's recognizing like the, the weight and the struggle that Tenant's been going through the never stopping that's kind of led up to this point on that idea of rest. Then that Ncuti Gatwa says that "we're time lords, we can rehab out of order".

So again, I get that sense that the 15th Doctor is rested and perhaps in better shape or better suited to handle some of the challenges that are coming. But a lot of the Denouement was about Donna. Telling the doctor, the 14th doctor, how to keep on going now that this event has happened, you know, and the live, the live day after day to keep on going to, you know, that's just, you gotta do what you gotta do.

And did this lead into them figuring out why he had changed his face like, or why the face came back, I guess, was there was, I think it was mentioned, but did you catch that? 

AB: Yeah, so narratively, they haven't really explained it yet, but the production reason is, is this idea that generally multiverses are, are now understood by most audiences.

So this is now Russell T. Davies way of kind of introducing that kind of concept into the Doctor Who universe. Kind of weird part for me as a Doctor Who fan, again, You know, you can go back to most of the anniversaries and they have, you know, a multi doctor event where whoever is the doctor plus everybody that came before them usually shows up and that seemed to be easy enough to do, you know, it, it, to split off an older David Tenant now to go be an older version of the 10th doctor to kind of live out his retirement.

Seems a little strange for the character just because, you know, in terms of a narrative device, it's not really necessary. The doctor can show up in his own time stream or there are moments in time that multiple versions of himself are attracted to that, you know, that's enough of an explanation to have more than one of them on screen.

Like, you know, David Tennant was on screen during Matt Smith's era at one point. 

DRI: All right was there anything else about, like, the recuperation that you kind of stuck out for you there? I think it'll be 

AB: interesting to see where this goes again for what we get out of it as a fanbase, because it does seem, you know, just from the conversation around the table that, you know, even though he's taking it a little easy, clearly they're still going places, and they're still popping off here and there in his Tardis, so

we'll see if we don't have another, you know, special or two in the future with the 10th doctor. 

DRI: Yeah, and then that thing you just mentioned there, that his TARDIS so we get the doubling of the TARDISes, TARDISes, let's just say TARDISes at the end there, and one of them is, is wheelchair accessible, so now we have That option that there should be this duplication of them, that each doctor has a TARDIS for whatever they get up to.

The 10th doctor there, or sorry, the 14th doctor said he doesn't get to see it often, so as Chudigotwa is, is leaving with it, you know, that. Dematerialization that takes place as the TARDIS leaves, but any thoughts on the duplication of the TARDIS there? 

AB: Yeah, my one disappointment there was I was kind of hoping that when he opened the door we got to see his TARDIS.

So the TARDIS, like the doctor, will regenerate from time to time. It's not as rigid as, you know, every time there's a new doctor there's a new TARDIS. Some doctors have had multiple insides. Tenant though, for his entire run had the same one. So it would have been nice to see that. I understand. I mean, you know, it'd be expensive to rebuild that thing.

DRI: Yeah. Set design being what it is and the complexity of that one or the size of it. I mean, I'm sure it takes up a fair chunk of a soundstage to put that all in one place. Yeah. So, okay. That's fantastic. We've been talking a little bit longer than normal here, but I'm sure we'll be able to. Get it all together and out for people.

Did you have any closing thoughts here? And we'll just kind of wrap things up here. 

AB: Well, I guess I'll end on a question. Did you think that this is enough to entice you now to be tuning into the Christmas special? This will be Ncuti Gatwa's first outing as the doctor. 

DRI: Okay, Christmas special? Yes. I'll, I'll be happy to, you know, shortly after Festivus, I will bust out the screen and we'll the screen has been thoroughly removed, you know, the Toymaker is no longer in the screen, so I think it'll be safe to watch the Christmas special and we can check that out.

I'm not going to commit to, maybe we can touch base at one point during the next season or something, but let's meet for the Christmas special for sure. And then we'll see how it goes. There's other threads that are taking place on the, on the podcast here. So again, we're not necessarily Doctor Who focused, but let's have that discussion and we can come back and check in with the 15th doctor, maybe intermittently throughout the season, if time permits.

That sounds good by me anyways. Does that work for your schedule coming up here? 

AB: For sure. 

DRI: Awesome. All right. Well, once again, Dr. Aiden Buckland, thank you for joining us. We will wrap up our introduction and or long exposure to Dr. Who with the third of the three 2023 specials. Again, Dr. Aiden Buckland can be reached at draidenwho at gmail dot com. 

I'll put the link up in the show notes and you can reach me at drimplausible at implausipod dot com or out on Mastodon or whatever socials I might be floating around on. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to seeing you shortly around Christmas time. Take care everybody. Have fun.