{"id":20846,"date":"2022-12-09T08:22:25","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T13:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20846"},"modified":"2022-12-09T08:22:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T13:22:25","slug":"doctor-wossname-you-know-that-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2022\/12\/09\/doctor-wossname-you-know-that-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor wossname, you know, that one"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>So, the Chibnall\/Whitaker era of <cite>Doctor Who<\/cite> has come to an ignominious close, and none too soon. I blame Chris Chibnall, or perhaps I blame the BBC\u2014at any rate, I certainly don\u2019t blame Jodie Whitaker, who was fantastic in the part, and whose Doctor I suspect I will miss more than several recent incarnations. The writing of individual episodes has been bad, though, and the writing of seasons has been worse, and the general running of the show (31 episodes in five years!) has been awful.\r\n<p>Anyway, I am not really inclined to write an entire review of the final episode of that era (with the instantly forgettable because utterly meaningless title \u201cThe Power of the Doctor\u201d) but I do want to complain about a specific aspect of the way the show deals with its history. Six former companions appeared in the episode, and four former doctors. Well, five. Ish. Sort-of.\r\n<p>What\u2019s the rule about which characters make an appearance and which do not? Here\u2019s the rule, as far as I can tell: characters (including incarnations of the Doctor) can make an appearance in the show only if the actor who played that character is still alive (and agrees to make the appearance). If the actor has died, then the character may not appear. It would be disrespectful to the deceased actor and unacceptable to the fans to simply hire someone new to play an old character.\r\n<p>Except for William Hartnell.\r\n<p>We can\u2019t hire someone to play Liz Shaw and make them up to look like Caroline John, no. And we certainly can\u2019t hire Sean Pertwee or Michael Troughton to do cameos in their fathers\u2019 roles. Nope. Out of the question. If the actor is dead, we can maybe repurpose some archive footage, but absolutely not recast.\r\n<p>Except for William Hartnell.\r\n<p>Because, evidently, screw that guy. We can hire a succession of random actors to play that incarnation. Richard Hurndall! David Bradley! Peter Cushing! Just put some rando in a wig, it\u2019ll be fine!\r\n<p>And, I mean, it\u2019s not like I <i>want<\/i> someone other than Elisabeth Sladen to play Sarah Jane Smith. But it\u2019s incredibly awkward, in the world of the show, to have no in-universe explanation for why, as the Guardians of the Edge wear the faces of the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors\u2014they honestly didn\u2019t even bother trying to explain why those particular faces appeared and the others did not. And in the absence of an in-world explanation, the real-world explanation appears to be that it\u2019s only OK to re-cast the First Doctor, because screw William Hartnell.\r\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I><br>-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger is a total crank.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,208],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hatchet-job","category-specfic"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20849,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20846\/revisions\/20849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}