Written 7/24/2018
The big nerd fest San Diego Comic Con is officially over, and it is one day before my 30th birthday. But I feel I’m getting impatient to see how the new season of Doctor Who is going to turn out, specifically on what the critics think.
I became absolutely thrilled at the sight of Peter Capaldi giving a tremendous and fantastic speech as he regenerated, making him instantly one of my favorite Doctors I will have a place in my heart for. Matt Smith, number 11, will always be my number one, and the Twelfth Doctor will be a close second for I loved him like a grouchy, grumpy, guitar playing, and silly but cool grandpa I never had. And remember when the producers of the show actually let him keep his Scottish accent for the role? That was truly groundbreaking as well.
I recently read an article in Entertainment Weekly magazine where one of their journalists went to the set of Doctor Who to interview the new four member cast of the show. And at the head of the group is a woman.
Why? Just, why?
In 2011, I was just getting back into the show and starting to like the series more and more. I had my doubts about Matt Smith until he fooled me and flirted at me with his wit, charm, and hilarity. I was head over heels for him. Then Peter Capaldi came alone and I fell in love with his Doctor the first time I saw him in the episode “Deep Breath” with a lot to live up to: a dinosaur in the Thames River, in the middle of Victorian England, another run in with the Paternoster Gang, and flesh eating robots that used human anatomy for spare parts.
Now I’m scared that the new season 11 of Doctor Who will be a disaster. Chris Chibnall is the new exec producer and main writer of the new show, now that the genius Steven Moffat has left, and this new writer/ showrunner has a resume that could be bad or could be promising. He once was one of the people behind Torchwood, helping Russell Davies create the show, which had a lot of people enjoying that show. Even Peter Capaldi was in that show before he was casted as the Twelfth Doctor.
But if you remember all those posts ago when I watched the entire series of Torchwood straight through, I think you already know I couldn’t get through all five seasons. I started to like it in the first season, and then with how grotesque it was starting to get, borderline pornography and severe violence, I immediately turned it off.
I guess you could say I’m kind of scared with the way Doctor Who might be going if Chibnall has a sick twisted mind for grotesque things happening on the show, comparing it to the darkness of Torchwood. Then I realized there are three companions, an Indian girl, a black guy, and an old man. Since the First Doctor, there really haven’t been more than one or two companions, and now we’re doing it again with a small troupe traveling with the Thirteenth Doctor.
When I first saw the new costume for Jodie Whittaker, I thought, man, how dorky and cheesy this costume is going to be. Imagine the fangirls’ reactions. I guess she’s wearing a rainbow on her chest because the Doctor just had a sex change and she’s now synonymous with transgender females. This sounds pretty cool, but I’m still not sure about all of this. Missy, the female version of the Master, wore a very elegant purple and black dress similar to that of Mary Poppins and the public loved her.
The costume, according to the EW article, was based on an old black and white photo, possibly from the 1960s, but no one understood what decade or era it was from. Whittaker loved the cropped pants, the t shirt, and the suspenders and boots that the woman wore in the image, so she sent it to the costume designer. She was also kind of attached to the hoodie she wore in the video clip of the BBC’s announcement about the show, which aired during the 2017 Wimbledon game, so the designer gave her a gray rain coat that had a hood on it. I thought my periwinkle suit jacket (that was attached to a dress in the same color when I bought it at a thrift store) would do fine for a cosplay, until I looked at the exclusive pictures from EW and BBC again and saw the hood to it.
The first time I saw the new Doctor’s new outfit following Capaldi was on Facebook while perusing a Doctor Who fan club page. The second time I glanced at it was the cover spread for EW. The first time I saw it, I thought it was kind of tacky. Personally, I’ve loved most of the costume decisions for the Doctors: the classiness of William Hartnell, the cute little trampy hobo of Patrick Troughton (it reminded me of Charlie Chaplin), Tom Baker’s rainbow scarf, the cricket uniform of Peter Davison with the little celery sprig, and all of the outfits of Doctors 9-12: Chris Eccleston looked like a rock and roll bad boy meets biker dude (like Alex Turner of the band Arctic Monkeys), David Tennant’s pinstripe suit and Converses were sexy, Matt Smith had me at “bow ties are cool” and the damn red fez, and Peter Capaldi looked very slim and sleek, a very cool Doctor with homages to the First and Third Doctors.
And I used to love those outfits more than the Thirteenth Doctor’s.
But then I looked at the cover spread and the exclusive pictures for the article, and I then started thinking like a costume designer, especially since I did an awesome take on the Doctor Strange costume and became a journeyman class, also winning a free badge to next year’s Costume Con, in one night. I started thinking I could make different projects in completing the entire costume in close to exact detail. I recently found a pattern in Crochet! magazine that I could easily make the hooded vest and then work on the sleeves by improvising. I originally wanted to use the periwinkle suit jacket, but I saw that it wasn’t long enough and it wasn’t the right shade. The coat in the photos was between gray and white, and it had a navy blue interior with rainbow lining on the inside. I wasn’t sure how I was going to complete the coat.
Wait, what am I getting into? I thought I hated the Thirteenth Doctor and the BBC writers made a bad decision!
Didn’t I say that now bullies in high school and in schools around the world would say that Doctor Who is now ‘gay’? They probably have already done it. What are we saying to our kids? What are we really saying about the LGBT community in America and the rest of the world? What are we getting into when it comes to new ideas and concepts about a widely popular international show?
Are the people at BBC going to do some very racist or discriminatory things about Doctor Who, catching families off guard and causing people to react in protests leading up to BBC canceling the show a second time?
In the article, it doesn’t look that way. Whittaker is taking matters into her own hands and adding a little playfulness in her character, using words like ‘brilliant’ and her favorite word ‘ace’. She’s going to bring back a playfulness similar to that of my favorite Doctor regeneration, and the writers are most likely going to either do a decent job doing as well as Steven Moffat’s run on the show. Torchwood started off fine, and for some reason the image of the crew chasing after a blowfish driving a sports car and then being surprised by Captain Jack Harkness comes back to my mind as my favorite Torchwood moment.
That, and the moment where Ianto and Jack Harkness are playing “Hide the zucchini”. That still makes me laugh, the moment the girls find out what they’re doing.
So, this season looks promising. It might be good, it might go beyond my expectations one of two directions. And I’m sort of warming to the idea of having a female Time Lord protagonist. It might not be such a bad idea.
I’ve kind of always wanted to go to a convention as a time traveler. I’ve wanted to use my black and white polka dot dress and periwinkle jacket with a 1950s “suicide roll” hairstyle as a costume, but I’m sure no one would have gotten the costume concept. So this might give me another chance, another excuse, to get creative and make another costume for the upcoming Halloween holiday three months from now.
With that in mind, I better get back to work on my novel before I go to bed. Then again, I still need a break from writing, especially since I treat my birthday like a holiday and I give myself the day off. Some people on Camp NaNo are enjoying what I wrote so far.
Hope I can keep it up until July 30.
Ace.
-Lady in the Blue Box
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