BFA owns my soul right now

Still listening to ALL THE PAUL MCGANN AUDIO DRAMAS. I'm up through Neverland now and, okay, the first mini-season is uneven and full of elements that just fall flat, although even in the most cringe-inducing parts there's still Eight being awesome. (I have come to the conclusion that Eight is a heartbreakingly good man, thinly disguised as a snarky manipulative bastard, who in turn is thinly disguised as a batty Victorian eccentric. In other words, love.) But the second season is incredible. It is full of the best crack ever: aliens invading Manhattan during the War of the Worlds broadcast! Daleks quoting Shakespeare left right and center! It is also full of paradoxes and impossibly tangled time loops that would do Steven Moffat's head in, as well as a good amount of high-octane nightmare fuel. And not just the "oh god they broke time" heebie-jeebies; it figures that my first proper episode with the Time Lords had to be the one where they're not just insufferable but also a bit horrifying. Viz: if the Celestial Intervention Agency gets sick of you meddling in their affairs and decides to make you an unperson, they can erase your existence so thoroughly that even your executioners won't remember you and will have no idea that sort of thing even happens anymore.

Speaking of, these audios are fascinating from a continuity standpoint. I know they were released before the new series was anywhere near happening, but Time of the Daleks and Neverland give me chills when I think of them as leadup to the Time War--the Daleks almost managing to rewrite all of history to get the upper hand, the Doctor leaving them in a time loop with full knowledge that the Time Lords will eventually let them out to preserve continuity, a possible future where they don't get let out, Time Lords mucking about with increasingly arcane and dangerous temporal forces at the risk of unleashing unholy horrors upon the universe. And the whole "Eight almost broke all of time by rescuing one person from one historical catastrophe" season arc--the numerous and creative side effects of which give a rough idea of what eldritch travesties might've crawled out of the Time War, and fuck, it puts a whole new perspective on Ten's saving-people-from-fixed-points angst in season 4 and the specials. I know that Who has no real continuity, just a big ball of wibbly-wobbly canony-fanony stuff, but in this case I think looking at the new series in the light of the audio dramas (and vice versa) would be rewarding enough to make up for all the fanwank required to get them in the same timeline.

...also, unrelatedly, I have this burning urge to write a Doctor Who celebrity historical starring Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. There could be an anachronistic, fully-constructed analytical engine, an alien threat menacing the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, and a zeppelin chase where hydrogen airships get blown up by a giant Tesla coil. And the best part is that everything except the Tesla coil would be reasonably historically accurate: Lovelace didn't die until 1852, the analytical engine was never built but detailed plans existed from the 1830s and 40s, a partial prototype was displayed at the Great Exhibition, and the first feasible plans for a dirigible airship were also part of the Great Exhibition. Assuming aliens funded the construction of the engine, the government secretly constructed a zeppelin based on those plans before they were displayed, and both were destroyed in the course of the episode and lost to history, it could totally happen. And, you know, the Doctor could whip up the Tesla coil out of spare parts or something, IDGAF, rule of cool.

BFA owns my soul right now

Still listening to ALL THE PAUL MCGANN AUDIO DRAMAS. I'm up through Neverland now and, okay, the first mini-season is uneven and full of elements that just fall flat, although even in the most cringe-inducing parts there's still Eight being awesome. (I have come to the conclusion that Eight is a heartbreakingly good man, thinly disguised as a snarky manipulative bastard, who in turn is thinly disguised as a batty Victorian eccentric. In other words, love.) But the second season is incredible. It is full of the best crack ever: aliens invading Manhattan during the War of the Worlds broadcast! Daleks quoting Shakespeare left right and center! It is also full of paradoxes and impossibly tangled time loops that would do Steven Moffat's head in, as well as a good amount of high-octane nightmare fuel. And not just the "oh god they broke time" heebie-jeebies; it figures that my first proper episode with the Time Lords had to be the one where they're not just insufferable but also a bit horrifying. Viz: if the Celestial Intervention Agency gets sick of you meddling in their affairs and decides to make you an unperson, they can erase your existence so thoroughly that even your executioners won't remember you and will have no idea that sort of thing even happens anymore.

Speaking of, these audios are fascinating from a continuity standpoint. I know they were released before the new series was anywhere near happening, but Time of the Daleks and Neverland give me chills when I think of them as leadup to the Time War--the Daleks almost managing to rewrite all of history to get the upper hand, the Doctor leaving them in a time loop with full knowledge that the Time Lords will eventually let them out to preserve continuity, a possible future where they don't get let out, Time Lords mucking about with increasingly arcane and dangerous temporal forces at the risk of unleashing unholy horrors upon the universe. And the whole "Eight almost broke all of time by rescuing one person from one historical catastrophe" season arc--the numerous and creative side effects of which give a rough idea of what eldritch travesties might've crawled out of the Time War, and fuck, it puts a whole new perspective on Ten's saving-people-from-fixed-points angst in season 4 and the specials. I know that Who has no real continuity, just a big ball of wibbly-wobbly canony-fanony stuff, but in this case I think looking at the new series in the light of the audio dramas (and vice versa) would be rewarding enough to make up for all the fanwank required to get them in the same timeline.

...also, unrelatedly, I have this burning urge to write a Doctor Who celebrity historical starring Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. There could be an anachronistic, fully-constructed analytical engine, an alien threat menacing the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, and a zeppelin chase where hydrogen airships get blown up by a giant Tesla coil. And the best part is that everything except the Tesla coil would be reasonably historically accurate: Lovelace didn't die until 1852, the analytical engine was never built but detailed plans existed from the 1830s and 40s, a partial prototype was displayed at the Great Exhibition, and the first feasible plans for a dirigible airship were also part of the Great Exhibition. Assuming aliens funded the construction of the engine, the government secretly constructed a zeppelin based on those plans before they were displayed, and both were destroyed in the course of the episode and lost to history, it could totally happen. And, you know, the Doctor could whip up the Tesla coil out of spare parts or something, IDGAF, rule of cool.