Doctor Who Cares Anymore?

As regular readers of my blog (all six of you) know, I used to be a HUGE Doctor Who fan. I dutifully watched both the old and new series, and bought tons of merch from the show. 

That all ended in 2017, when the BBC made the boneheaded decision to cast actress Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. It was a stupid idea (in my opinion of course) and a blatant case of shameless pandering. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, it was also the point where the show ditched creative storytelling in favor of identity politics. How fun!

I wasn't the only one who felt this way, as the show's ratings plummeted after Whittaker entered the TARDIS (as I predicted they would). Audiences want to be entertained, not lectured!

Things got so dire that it honestly looked like the show might be canceled. In a desperate attempt to avoid that, the BBC announced it was bringing back David Tennant (arguably the most popular actor of the new era) as the Doctor, along with showrunner Russell T. Davies. 

Davies was the one who revived the show back in 2005, updating it for modern audiences. The show hit new heights of popularity with him at the helm, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. 

The news of his return actually gave me a small glimmer of hope, as I looked forward to him course-correcting the show and restoring it to its former glory.

Sadly, it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. In the years since he left, Davies has apparently hopped aboard the SJW train and is doubling down on the identity politics & pandering.

Case in point: Recently the BBC aired its annual Children In Need special (sort of the British equivalent to the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon). Each year the special features a Doctor Who mini episode, to lure in viewers and donors.

This year's mini-episode featured David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor encountering his archenemies the Daleks, as well as a familiar old foe. Well, kind of familiar.

This is Davros— a deranged Kaled scientist who created the Daleks. Clearly something bad happened to poor Davros at some point, as he's blind, missing his left arm and has a bionic hand. He may also be legless as well, and rides around in a Dalek-like mobility unit.

Davros has sported this look since he first appeared during Tom Baker's run back in 1975's Genesis Of The Daleks. He instantly became one of the show's most popular villains, and has returned numerous times over the years.

Oddly enough, this new mini episode features an all-new Davros, played by actor Julian Bleach— who's played the character for a couple decades now. For some reason, this updated Davros now looks like a hawk-faced Nazi and has four perfectly functioning limbs. What the hell?

At first I thought maybe this was a prequel, set sometime before Davros' accident. Makes sense, right?

Nope! According to Russell T. Davies, this is how our boy Davros is gonna look from now on.

Said Davies:

"We had long conversations about bringing Davros back because he’s a fantastic character. Time and society and culture and taste has moved on, and there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil, and trust me, there’s a very long tradition of this. I’m not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well."

"So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring, and without the wheelchair, or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they’re not in black and white anymore. And Davros used to look like that, and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by."

"I thought it was absolutely vital to do this, and I’m very, very, very proud of the fact that we have."

Jesus wept. Nearly FIFTY YEARS' worth of continuity flushed right down the shitter, all because Davies feels Davros "associates disabilities with evil." Are you fucking kidding me? 

So now one of the best villains in the history of the show is ruined, because... we can't have evil people in wheelchairs due to representation or some crap like that. I assure you, at no time in the history of the show did ANYONE ever take a look at Davros and think "wheelchair user." And they certainly never thought, "Say, that disabled chap is evil. That means ALL such people are monsters as well!"

Here's a thought— if Davros is truly that problematic now in our miserable society, then... DON'T USE HIM! There are a crap-ton of other villains Davies could have dredged up that wouldn't have given him icky bad feelings.

I wasn't the only one who hated this pointless change. Many disabled fans actually loved the old Davros, and were offended that Davies apparently thought they were too frail and sensitive to handle seeing a handicapped villain, and complained about it online. His response to them? "Tough" and "Oh poor baby." 

Wow. What an asshole. Attacking the fans of your work for its shortcomings is always a classy move.

This is without a doubt the absolute stupidest thing the show's ever done. Davies has proudly come up with a solution to a problem that never existed, and patted himself on the back for doing so.

I should also point out that the Doctor Who episodes Rise Of The Cybermen and The Age Of Steel featured a villain named John Lumic. Similarly to Davros, he was the creator of the Cyberman, and... was confined to a wheelchair!

Note that these episodes aired in 2006, when the showrunner was (checks notes)... one Russell T. Davies. Hmm...

If that wasn't strange enough, in 2008 The Stolen Earth and Journey's End aired, and both episodes featured Davros as the antagonist. A quick check of those episodes reveals they were written by... Russell T. Davies!

Apparently disabled villains were OK in the 2000s, but problematic here in the hellscape of 2023.

If villains are that upsetting for today's fragile audience, why bother having one on the show at all then? Why not just show the Doctor sipping tea with his companion for the entire season?

If Davros' physical appearance triggers Davies, wait'll he gets a load of the Cybermen. They're from a future where humans gradually replaced their limbs and organs with mechanical versions, until they were more machine than man. How long until Davies retcons all of them into less provocative Ryan Gosling clones?

I tell you, the day's coming when EVERY franchise devolves into the Porch Pals. 

So I'm out! When I heard the news that Davies was returning to run the show, I was cautiously optimistic that he might be able to save it. It's clear now that that isn't going to happen, and it's just gonna be more of the same crap we've gotten for the past five or six years. He's actually saving me a lot of time here, as I won't be bothering to check out the show again now.

I'll end here with a drawing I did of Davros, as a big "Screw You" to Russell T. Davies and his cockamamie ideas. 

Doctor Who Season 9, Episode 2: The Witch's Familiar

This week we got the second half of the two part season opener. Since Part 1 seemed like it was all setup, how'd Part 2 do? Eh, pretty good, and better than I expected.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Clara and Missy weren't actually killed by the Daleks last week. Nor was the TARDIS destroyed. And despite how it looked at the end of the episode, the Doctor did not go back in time and kill young Davros on the battlefield, which would have prevented the creation of the Daleks and wiped out fifty years of continuity.

We did get a lot of good character moments. The stuff between the Doctor and Davros was great as always, even if it was reminiscent of Genesis Of The Daleks and The Return Of The Jedi. The Clara/Missy pairing was fun too. And we also got a bit of new insight into what makes the Daleks tick, which is tough to do for characters that have been around for fifty years.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

Clara and Missy are still alive after being "exterminated" last week by the Daleks. When Clara asks what the hell happened, Missy says she used the Dalek death ray energy to power their vortex manipulators and teleport them outside the city. Or something. Does it even matter at this point? The two then head back toward the city (Dalekopolis?) to rescue the Doctor.

Meanwhile the Doctor confronts Davros and rips him out of his life-support chair. He then rides into the Dalek chamber, protected by the chair's force field. He demands the Daleks find and return Clara, but they insist she's dead. Colony Sarff then appears and strangles the Doctor into unconsciousness.

Clara and Missy sneak into the Dalek sewers. Missy says Daleks can truly never die, so the sewers are filled with the rotting and decayed remnants of millions their discarded bodies. I guess when one "dies" they flush it down the toilet, like a pet alligator? Missy "kills" a passing Dalek and forces Clara to get into its casing and hook herself up to its interface. Once inside, Clara finds that if she speaks her name, the interface translates it as "I am a Dalek." If she expresses any positive emotion, it comes out as "Exterminate!" The two then head for the upper levels of the city.

The Doctor comes to in Davros' chamber. Davros reveals that the nest of life support cables surrounding him are connected to every Dalek on Skaro, and their life forces are sustaining him. Davros actually sheds a tear when the Doctor tells him Gallifrey still exists. Davros says he wishes that just once in their long lives they'd been on the same side, and they even share a joke. The Doctor then transfers a small amount of regeneration energy into Davros' life support cables to give him a little more time.

Suddenly Colony Sarff grips the Doctor's hands, and the life support cables begin draining the regeneration energy from him at an alarming rate. This was Davros' plan all along— get the Doctor to lower his defenses and steal his life force. The regeneration energy is transferred into every Dalek on Skaro, creating Dalek/Time Lord hybrids. Just then Missy appears and kills Colony Sarff, saving the Doctor.

The Doctor then reveals that he saw through Davros' plan, and allowed himself to be drained. The regeneration energy also leaked into the sewers, where it rejuvenated the "dead" Daleks. They bubble up to the surface and kill the still-mobile Daleks.

As they flee the disintegrating city, the Doctor and Missy encounter Clara, still in the Dalek casing. Missy tries to get the Doctor to kill it. Clara desperately tries to tell the Doctor it's her, but her words translate into "I am a Dalek." She eventually manages to get it to say "Mercy," which the Doctor says is impossible for a Dalek (sending ripples of outrage through fandom). He releases her from the casing. He recalls the TARDIS, which was not destroyed last episode, and they depart Skaro. Missy is surrounded by a group of Daleks, and says, "I've just had a very clever idea."

The Doctor then goes back in time and saves young Davros from the hand mines, thereby instilling the concept of mercy into him.

Thoughts:

• At the beginning of the episode, Missy has Clara tied to a tree and hanging upside down for some reason. So where'd she find a rope in the middle of the desolate Skaro landscape? Secret pocket under her skirt? Or did she find it in the same place the Doctor got his cup of tea?

• Please, please, pleeeeeease tell me the Doctor didn't permanently dump his sonic screwdriver for a pair of sonic sunglasses. What the hell is wrong with Steven Moffat? That's like trading in the TARDIS for a scooter.

• Last week I said I wasn't clear who the episode's title (The Magician's Apprentice)  was referring to. Same goes for this week. A familiar is the magical pet of a witch. Was Clara supposed to be Missy's familiar?

• As a graphic designer, I have to point out one of my (many) pet peeves. That isn't an apostrophe in the title. It's a so-called "dumb quote," a holdover from the days of typewriters. A true quotation mark is curved.

Pedantic? Overly critical? Borderline insane? Possibly. But there's a right way to do things, and there's this way. Professionals use proper typography. If you want to look like a professional, learn to use the proper symbols and marks.

• I really liked the design of the Dalek city. It had a cool, retro sci-fi look to it, and of course echoed the design of the Daleks themselves.

• Missy's slowly starting to grow on me, but I still prefer the "Suave And Mannered Bond Villian" version of the Master, as originated by Roger Delgado.

• We've seen the actual organic Daleks that live inside the mechanical shells before, and they're not much bigger than a basketball. So how in the name of sanity was there enough room for Clara to get inside one and sit comfortably? There must be a lot of empty space inside those things.

• I did like the Dalek demonstration, in which any slightly positive phrase uttered by Clara was translated into "EXTERMINATE!" It must be really frustrating to be a Dalek. No wonder they're insane.

• Once again they're doing their best to soften this Doctor. There's no way in hell the Twelfth Doctor from the beginning of last season would have ridden around in Davos' chair and asked the Daleks if they wanted to play "bumpers."

• Davros once again tells the Doctor that he's dying. The Doctor says what was on the audiences' mind: "You keep saying that, and you keep not dying." Haw!

• So apparently the Doctor just ripped Davros out of his life support chair and tossed him on the floor so he could steal his ride.

That's pretty harsh on the Doctor's part. Davros doesn't even have a lower body, which is kind of unsettling. Shouldn't removing him from the chair have killed him? Yet shortly after this wanton act of violence, the Doctor tells Davros he came to see him because "he's sick and he asked," and even offers him some regeneration energy. Um... make up your mind, Doctor. Are you trying to kill Davros or save him? Because you can't do both.

Also, what exactly is the Doctor sitting on when he's riding in Davros' chair? Wouldn't there be all kinds of tubes and pumps and life support equipment in there? I doubt there's a seat, since Davros apparently doesn't have an ass.

• Davros offers the Doctor the only other chair on all of Skaro! Haw!

• Davros tells the Doctor that he wishes he could see the sun rise over Skaro one last time, with his own eyes. He then turns off his blue cybernetic ocular device, and... simply opens his opens his own eyes. What the hell?

For decades now it's been implied, if not outright stated as fact, that Davros is blind. Hence the need for the Dalek-like bionic eye. Is Moffat telling us that all these years Davros has just been sitting there with his eyes closed? 

Besides being an incredibly stupid idea, this also makes Davros considerably less horrifying. A blind alien troll with an unblinking, glowing mechanical eye in the middle of his forehead is creepy and unsettling. A guy who can see but just refuses to open his eyes is baffling and ridiculous. Besides that, if all this time he's been able to open his eyes, why the hell did he go to all the trouble of having a bionic one implanted in the center of his goddamned forehead?

One last thing— Davros yearning to see the sunrise sounded a LOT like Darth Vader wanting to "look upon Luke with his own eyes" at the end of The Return Of The Jedi.

• Ever since Davros was introduced back in 1975, the show's writers have reveled in pitting him and the Doctor together in meaty, dialogue-heavy scenes. The same goes here, as Davros and the Doctor each try to out-speech the other. 

There's some good stuff here, especially when it appears that these two ancient enemies actually have a strange sort of bond and affection for one another. Davros says he wishes just once they'd been on the same side, and actually sheds a tear of joy when he hears that Gallifrey survived. Unfortunately all that's negated when it's revealed that everything they've said has all been part of some intricate deception on both their parts.

Davros reveals his master plan to the Doctor, cackling with glee at how easy it was to manipulate him. The Doctor counters this by saying he knew he was being tricked, and went along with it so he could spring his devious trap.

This all sounds very much like the 1999 Comic Relief Doctor Who episode The Curse Of The Fatal Death. In that parody sketch, the Doctor (played by Rowan Atkinson!) and the Master take one upsmanship to an absurd comedic level. They both face off against one another, saying things like, "I saw through your trap, Master!" and "I knew you'd see through my trap, Doctor, which is why I constructed an even more lethal trap," and "I knew you'd know I knew about your trap, so I..." and on and on.

Would it surprise you to find out that our old friend Steven Moffat wrote The Curse Of The Fatal Death? At times he comes dangerously close to channeling his own parody in this episode.

• The Doctor and Davros even share a laugh near the end of their exchange. That scene seemed very reminiscent  to the 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. In that story, Batman and his arch enemy the Joker both chuckled over a shared joke.

Personally I'm not a fan of such scenes. Davros is responsible for the slaughter of millions throughout the galaxy. Would the Doctor really be laughing it up with him? Imagine it this way— if you could somehow meet Hitler, would you put your arm around him and guffaw at one of his jokes?

• Apparently the Doctor's regeneration energy somehow (briefly) created Dalek/Time Lord hybrids. You know, for a race that prides itself on its genetic purity and hates all other life forms, the Dalek bloodline sure gets polluted a lot. There was a hybrid Dalek/Human back in Daleks in Manhattan, Davros himself replenished the race with cells from his own body in Journey's End, and now they've got Time Lord regeneration energy coursing through their veins.

• So the Doctor can take a little bit of his regeneration energy and inject it into non Time Lords, extending their lives a bit. Interesting. I wonder why he's never offered to do that before for any of the many people who've died in his care?

I also wonder how much regeneration energy was leeched from him by Davros and the Daleks? Several lives' worth? He just got a brand new set of twelve regenerations a couple years ago. Did he just blow two or three of them already?

• At first glance, Missy's statement that Daleks can never die seems patently ridiculous. But it actually makes a lot of sense. Their entire race has been wiped out numerous times over the years, and they always manage to come back somehow. It's because they can never truly die!

I wonder how this Dalek/Time Lord hybrid business will affect them? Or will it be conveniently swept under the rug like so many other past events and revalations?

• The Doctor's about to shoot the Dalek that Clara's hiding in, until she manages to get it to say, "Mercy." The Doctor freezes and says no real Dalek would be capable of saying such a thing, and realizes it's Clara.

Whoops! Back in the Season 5 episode The Pandorica Opens, River Song pointed her gun at a Dalek and it shrieked, "Have mercy!" before she shot it. Maybe Moffat ought to watch some of his predecessor's episodes before he sits down at the writing desk. This wasn't some obscure event that happened forty years ago or in some lost episode, it happened in 2010.

Some fans have tried to explain this discrepancy by saying the Doctor wasn't present for the River Song confrontation, and so didn't know about the whole mercy thing. Nice try. That's a pretty weak explanation.

I suppose you could invoke some time travel bullsh*t here and say Daleks weren't capable of the concept of mercy until the Doctor went back in time to Young Davros and introduced the concept to him. I suppose you could say that, but again, it's pretty weak.

• At the end of the episode the Doctor reveals the TARDIS wasn't destroyed, but rendered invisible with the Hostile Action Displacement System. We first saw the HADS function used in Cold War, but then it was called the Hostile Action Dispersal System.

Speaking of Cold War, which took place on a submarine, next week the Doctor faces watery ghosts in another sub (or possibly an underwater base).

Doctor Who Enemies Lineup

Now that I finished my Doctor Who Enemies Infographic, I thought I'd combine all the characters into one image. One incredibly wide image.

They're shown here in scale to one another, more or less. I had to fudge their heights a bit to get them all to fit.

For the uninitiated, the lineup from left to right is:
Omega: The first Time Lord, who turned evil and tried to destroy his home planet
An Auton: A life form made of living plastic that often takes the form of mannequins
Robot K-1: A giant robot that wreaked havoc on Earth
A Sontaran: A race of small statured and ruthless cloned alien soldiers
A Dalek: The Doctor's most famous foe; a race of evil mutants encased in mobile battle suits whose favorite saying is "EX-TER-MI-NATE!"
The Master: Another evil Time Lord and the Doctor's archenemy
Davros: An insane alien scientist and creator of the Dalek race
A Cyberman: Alien cyborgs that are more machine than flesh
An Ice Warrior: Martians who thrive in cold environments
A Sea Devil: A reptilian race that flourished on Earth eons before man
A Yeti: Fur covered robots controlled by an alien called the Great Intelligence
A Zygon: An aquatic race that controls a robotic sea serpent

There's a similar lineup featuring the Eleven Doctors here.

The whole gang was drawn all in InDesign.

Doctor Who Enemies Infographic

My previous Doctor Who Infographic (which you can see here or here) seemed to be a hit with folks on the interweb, so I thought I'd do another one, this time featuring classic enemies and monsters from the 1960s and 1970s.

When I first started drawing vector illustrations of the Doctors I established a specific cartoony style for them and utilized it here as well. The formula is basically a giant nose, big elongated head, a tiny body about half the height of the noggin, then very long skinny legs. This style lends itself well to human and most humanoid characters, but for robots and other monsters, not so much.

The Dalek was particularly troublesome. How do you apply that "head-body-legs" formula to something that has none of those? If I didn't make it cartoony enough then it would look like a normal drawing of a Dalek; but if I distorted it too far then it would look like I don't know how to draw (I've noticed that people who attempt cute versions of Star Wars characters have the same problem when they try to draw R2-D2). I went through many versions of the Dalek before I found the right proportions. I made its head as big as possible, then enlarged the eye stalk to comical proportions and then shrunk the middle "body" portion (containing the plunger and gun). I originally elongated the "skirt" or leg portion, but that didn't look right, so I compressed it, and finally came up with a version I could live with.

The Yeti was the last monster I drew, and it absolutely kicked my ass; more so than even the Dalek. The Yeti on the show had a ridiculous pear shaped body that didn't lend itself well to my cartoony style. I had a lot of trouble with its head. I scoured the internet and reference books for photos of it, but couldn't find any with a good view of it's face. After much searching I came to the conclusion that the reason I couldn't find a good photo of its face is because it didn't have one! There's just an area of black fur where its features out to be (Note: I am aware that there was a second version of the Yeti with a more defined mouth and glowing eyes, but few people-- including myself-- have seen that version. I wanted to go with the more iconic and recognizable faceless version).

I drew at least six versions of the Yeti, spending way too much time on it. Naturally the one that looked best is the last one I did, that I literally spent all of ten minutes drawing. Isn't that always the way? I'm still not 100% satisfied with the way it turned out. I'm blaming the source material.

I thought the Robot K-1 would be tough, but it turned out to be one of the easier ones. I think the easiest and quickest to draw of them all was probably the Sea Devil.

The actual layout evolved over time, ending up looking quite different from the initial version as I rearranged the characters to best fit the space. The text went through a lot of changes as well. There's always way more info than space, so you have to decide how best to describe a character in as few words as possible.

Special thanks to my pal across the pond, Ian Ledger, for providing reference photos and text corrections.

Drawn and laid out entirely in InDesign.

I usually post my sketches here on my blog, but there weren't really any to speak of this time. I sort of drew all the characters right on the screen.

Davros

I'm working on another Doctor Who Infographic, this time featuring the Doctor's enemies. It's slow going, so in the meantime I thought I'd post a sneak peek at one of the characters.

Davros is a member of the Kaled race from the planet Skaro. The Kaleds fought a thousand year war with their enemies the Thals (also from Skaro). Centuries of radioactive warfare mutated and weakened the Kaleds to the point where they couldn't survive on their own.

Davros decided that in order to save the Kaleds he must mutate them even further, to their ultimate evolutionary state. He built special mobile life support units for them, thus creating the Dalek race. As a final touch, he stripped them of all emotion, save for a hatred of all things not Dalek.

At some point in the past Davros was injured and crippled in an unexplained accident. Like his Dalek creations, he can't survive outside his special life support chair. Blind, he sees through a single cybernetic eye and has only one functioning hand. He is a megalomaniac and tends to give frequent overwrought and over-the-top speeches, usually about how he plans to destroy the Doctor.

Davros has seemingly died or been killed on several occasions, but like all good villains, somehow always manages to come back to plague the Doctor and the universe at large.

Michael Wisher originated the role in the 1975 episode Genesis of the Daleks. Like most Doctor Who characters, Davros has been portrayed by multiple actors, most recently by Julian Bleach in 2008.

Davros is a vector drawing, done all in InDesign. At first I was going to leave off the coiled red wires around his head, because I thought it would be too tough to draw them in a vector program. But I thought I'd give it a go and after a few tries I came up with some curly wires I could live with.

Want to see more? Check out my new blog! All the cool kids are doing it!
I'm also on Twitter for some reason.