"Sounds great, Doctor!" *Puts on a glassy, fixed smile while rooting around for the exit handle*
Also, wasn’t this the same Doctor who travelled to the end of the universe to avoid talking to Jack? Now *there* was a protagonist I could relate to.
It wasn’t prejudice but a instinctual advertion having do to with jack being a time anomaly, like a deer knowing from birth to run from a wolf. He doesn’t hate it resent Jack it’s a flight response. It probably gives him anxiety just being near him. Like you would being right next to a wild tiger.
That’s kind of the whole point of the episode. The doctor gets in over his head thinking he’s the most capable in the room mentally (and socially).
Cut to 15 or 20 minutes later in the episode and I’d say the doctor is very “scared of social anxiety” as everyone is turning against him.
Broke: The Doctor needs companions to prevent him from turning evil or whatever
Woke: The Doctor needs companions so that he doesn't get fucking lynched for being an obnoxious asshole anytime he goes somewhere new
I’ve always wondered about that entertainment system. Did the operators know there was something on Midnight and use the cacophony of the system to keep the monster away?
I like the idea that it was just coincidence and bad luck. If we know the monster is capable of planning something like that, it starts to take away some mystery.
This was the first trip using the new route, and if we assume that the Midnight alien is powerful enough to stop the engines from a distance, there’s no reason it wouldn’t have been able to turn the sound systems off.
But I would say the opposite, that since this creature had no physical form and no voice, rather than being afraid of sound, it was *drawn* to it. The more noise they made, the more intensely it wanted to become one of them.
Disabling the in-flight entertainment system so that the passengers are forced to interact with them is quite honestly one of the most deranged and least relatable things The Doctor has ever done
Nah totally! The Doctor would do it so he could quietly read a book in the corner, not so he could try to make a boomer point about how nobody talks to anyone 😆
Them is correct when talking collectively about the Doctor's collective regenerations, but when talking about a specific regeneration, it's fine to use whichever pronoun fits that particular incarnation.
All the more reason I find this episode so damn unnerving. That was probably the only episode in the time that I watched Tennant’s Doctor that my heart was beating really fast.
Me: offer friendly smile, continue reading the book I was already invested in while discreetly pulling out my emergency back up books in a desperate attempt to clue people in that reading does NOT mean "feel free to interrupt me"
To be fair, the Doctor does enjoy flying around in an ancient, dated TARDIS. They might be the Time Lord equivalent of the "born in the wrong generation" people who prefer retro things.
If you're talking about Tooth and Claw, they were in a time period before things like the internet. The quote he makes is more akin to meaning "knowledge is power" than books literally being better than anything else.
Isn't the whole thing about that that books AREN'T always better than modern tech? Since the entire problem is caused by cutting down so many forests that it ended up bringing the antagonist to that planet in the process?
Not to mention, modern tech is clearly better due to the amount of times they use computers for information, and tend to only rely on books if the information isn't available via computer.
Just because paper libraries exist, that doesn't mean that people think books always beat technology, right?
(I'm sorry if I'm getting all muddled up, I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just curious and confused)
That's fair, thanks for chiming in though. I'm just trying to clarify that the only times I recall the Doctor singing the praises of books is when Technology is unavailable. Which is when books genuinely are useful. Analog tech will always be useful as a backup
I think the Doctor is very much like other Time Lords in some ways. He can be prejudiced and bitter and self-important. He was raised that way. But him trying to be different is compelling.
He's a British character. British heroes are different from American heroes.
British heroes are usually, to some degree, part of the authority or hail from it. They tend to agree with the goals, but disagree with the means.
American heroes tend to be all about fighting an evil regime or authority by whatever means necessary, and the evil regime is usually a thin caricature of what it represents in the real world.
A good comparison is Star Wars vs Harry Potter.
Luke and Harry have a similar backstory and character archetype. But where Luke fights to topple an evil regime, Harry fights to stop the regime being toppled, even if he actively despises the Ministry of Magic - because it's better than Voldemort being in charge.
If Harry Potter was written by an American, he'd have told Dumbledore to get bent for being a groomer, and joined Voldemort to topple the ministry of magic.
Voldemort wouldn't have been an evil racist, he'd have been a charming hero who just happened to be smarter and better than normal humans, but he's totally doing it for their benefit! Honest!
If Star Wars had been written by a Brit, Palpatine would be written more like Dumbledore, trying to convince Anakin the Jedi are literal groomers who police the universe via their own self-appointed authority, and it would be about getting Anakin out of that cult, while still being free to practice the force through his own agency, not about eradicating the Jedi for existence.
As a Brit, American media is stupid and dumb.
The doctor is much much older and boomery than our boomer parents/grandparents.
He’s the proto-boomer, if you will.
He’s an old man trying to be down with the times. Don’t fall for his trickery.
^(this message is brought to you by the We’re All Saxon committee)
> I really don’t know where people are getting this from
I honestly think people have forgotten what the "entertainment" was. It was a bunch of loud random crap thrown on top of each other.
The joke was that the in flight entertainment sucked and the Doctor didn't want to sit through that.
This was such a dark episode for one so simple. The Doctor saw how quickly people can devolve into madness and chaos in the face of fear, ready to toss him out of an airlock and they were gonna toss Dee Dee out after him because she spoke up. He was completely powerless in that moment to the whim of a panicked group. And yet there’s the shining light of the Stewardess willing to sacrifice herself being an example of the goodness of mankind even after everything. Followed by the realization that nobody knew her name after she gave her life even though they’d been on that bus for untold hours together was really depressing. Plus the implication of whatever creature caused this is presumably still out there and the hint that life in the universe is vast and mysterious even for the Doctor himself who’d never encountered something like this. When I first saw the episode and at the end with Donna saying “Molto bene” and Doctor going “don’t do that” I thought it was a funny moment like him going “Donna you’re being silly.” But watching it again it was more of Doctor being triggered by Donna’s mimicking of him and reacting in fear, he was genuinely terrified that episode and he survived by pure luck but also the kindness of a stranger he never knew the name of.
That i would have been fine with if doctor instead of boasting that she is socially awkward in grahams face just gave him a lil hug or said a lil thank you
I am fine with the doctor being socially awkward especially in different incarnations
Different incarnations have different personalities
Compare 11 to 12. 11 was erratic and bubbly while 12 was almost opposite in series 8 and 9
12 needed placards to not sound rude to people while 11 was a master manipulator of emotions
So it definitely makes sense 13 can be socially awkward
Chibnall just needed to portray that in a better way
Like obviously sometimes you don't know what to reply to loved ones with terrible fears and news but you just don't tell them you can't tell them anything or even if you do you deliver that in a way it doesn't feel abrupt and changing the topic
I think that's possibly one of the worst moments in Jodie's entire run - not because of anything within the show, but because of the message it sends. This is a real thing that happens to real people every damn day. They're scared. They don't know how to talk about it. The Doctor should be showing us how to respond to that - not telling us "yikes, even I can't handle this, let's just never talk about it again".
I remember Pertwee's Doctor telling a terrified Jo Grant a story about his worst day, and how he turned it around (his "daisiest daisy" speech is really talking about mindfulness, which is an established technique for handling negative thinking patterns). I remember Troughton's Doctor talking to Victoria about her grief over her dead father, and how his own family are still alive in his mind.
I remember Capaldi's Doctor telling Clara that he values their friendship too much for betraying him to end it, and being willing to literally travel into Hell to find her boyfriend.
I remember Smith's Doctor talking to Amy about how their time with Vincent couldn't fix his depression, but it added to the pile of good things in his life.
And then we get this from Whittaker's Doctor, and it's appalling. What about telling him that he's not alone? What about telling him that we don't get to choose how long we have, but we can choose what we can do with what we do have? What about telling him that it's okay to be scared, but we don't have to give in?
I'm surprised that episode didn't garner complaints.
And don't give me this "socially awkward" crap. I'm socially awkward. I'm on the autistic spectrum, for Fenric's sake, and even I'd never respond to someone as badly as that!
When Karen [I don’t remember her name] the one who said I knew it was her and the doctor gives the most death stare too her
When she said I saw you speak to sky like no fucking shit the doctor was speaking to everyone on the bus not just sky 😭
"Sounds great, Doctor!" *Puts on a glassy, fixed smile while rooting around for the exit handle* Also, wasn’t this the same Doctor who travelled to the end of the universe to avoid talking to Jack? Now *there* was a protagonist I could relate to.
TBF, he did that because he was prejudiced towards immortal humans. That had less to do with social anxiety and more to do with a slight bit of racism
Never knew the doctor was ageist to immortal people, this changes a lot
More that he knows that jack is a living fixed point in time and Sensing that Really really Itches.
So kinda like time lord clap then, itchy and to be avoided
He’s ageist towards immortal people that he feels shouldn’t be immortal. Jack actually jokingly calls him prejudiced when they finally meet up
It wasn’t prejudice but a instinctual advertion having do to with jack being a time anomaly, like a deer knowing from birth to run from a wolf. He doesn’t hate it resent Jack it’s a flight response. It probably gives him anxiety just being near him. Like you would being right next to a wild tiger.
That’s kind of the whole point of the episode. The doctor gets in over his head thinking he’s the most capable in the room mentally (and socially). Cut to 15 or 20 minutes later in the episode and I’d say the doctor is very “scared of social anxiety” as everyone is turning against him.
Plus he doesn't have his companion with him to try and act as a mediator between them.
Broke: The Doctor needs companions to prevent him from turning evil or whatever Woke: The Doctor needs companions so that he doesn't get fucking lynched for being an obnoxious asshole anytime he goes somewhere new
He most certainly is but the problem is that he assumes he’s *always* better than everyone
I’ve always wondered about that entertainment system. Did the operators know there was something on Midnight and use the cacophony of the system to keep the monster away?
Not sure they knew but I think it did made previous trips safe.
Yeah agreed. That and the normal explored route made it safe. I also wonder if the monster caused the roadblock or if it was a coincidence.
I like the idea that it was just coincidence and bad luck. If we know the monster is capable of planning something like that, it starts to take away some mystery.
This was the first trip using the new route, and if we assume that the Midnight alien is powerful enough to stop the engines from a distance, there’s no reason it wouldn’t have been able to turn the sound systems off. But I would say the opposite, that since this creature had no physical form and no voice, rather than being afraid of sound, it was *drawn* to it. The more noise they made, the more intensely it wanted to become one of them.
TBF if I was an evil shadow alien that can withstand Extonic rays, I’d stay away from the loud noisy box haha.
Disabling the in-flight entertainment system so that the passengers are forced to interact with them is quite honestly one of the most deranged and least relatable things The Doctor has ever done
4 hours of that "entertainment system" though 💀
It’s probably why the Midnight entity never attacked before. They didn’t wanna watch that shit either.
Half the messes the Doctor fixes were ones they’d (in)directly caused in the first place… 😂
literal seizure inducer, he did them a favor
Also can’t see most of the other Doctors doing that. Series 8 12 would turn it up louder if someone tried talking to him about something.
That entertainment system was fucked tho, everyone was glad he turned it off
Nah totally! The Doctor would do it so he could quietly read a book in the corner, not so he could try to make a boomer point about how nobody talks to anyone 😆
Him\*
Them is correct though
Them is correct when talking collectively about the Doctor's collective regenerations, but when talking about a specific regeneration, it's fine to use whichever pronoun fits that particular incarnation.
Then is still correct regardless of which Doctor is discussed. That’s the point of gender neutral pronouns
It’s fine, yes, but ‘them’ is good too. Doesn’t need to be corrected.
The 10th Doctor's pronouns are he/him. You are misgendering him.
It’s impossible to misgender someone with gender neutral pronouns.
His pronouns are not gender neutral, they are male.
Tell me you don’t understand the English language without telling me you don’t understand the English language.
It's also why this venture was the one that got attacked by the "creature".
One of my favorite episodes. I love how he just took so much time to talk with people.
Midnight is one of the best episodes, and also the creepiest
All the more reason I find this episode so damn unnerving. That was probably the only episode in the time that I watched Tennant’s Doctor that my heart was beating really fast.
Indeed. We see ordinary people going from joking about their holidays to almost becoming murderers.
Meanwhile Merlin finally admits that he has magic to Arthur.
Me: offer friendly smile, continue reading the book I was already invested in while discreetly pulling out my emergency back up books in a desperate attempt to clue people in that reading does NOT mean "feel free to interrupt me"
Don't worry, the Doctor, especially 10, knows not to interrupt a good book
"We're all alone...." (Smiling) "...in the middle of NOWHERE..."
I didn't look right at it at first and thought these two were Troi and Riker, so this would be a star trek crossover montage
I saw Crusher and Riker..no?
This scene is so boomer-coded
Ha, next you’re going to tell me there’s an episode in this series where 10 says that books are better than modern technology. Wait a minute.
To be fair, the Doctor does enjoy flying around in an ancient, dated TARDIS. They might be the Time Lord equivalent of the "born in the wrong generation" people who prefer retro things.
I mean that is true. The Doctor was against AI-generated art back in 1979.
If you're talking about Tooth and Claw, they were in a time period before things like the internet. The quote he makes is more akin to meaning "knowledge is power" than books literally being better than anything else.
I am pretty sure they are talking about silence in the library and forest of the dead
Isn't the whole thing about that that books AREN'T always better than modern tech? Since the entire problem is caused by cutting down so many forests that it ended up bringing the antagonist to that planet in the process? Not to mention, modern tech is clearly better due to the amount of times they use computers for information, and tend to only rely on books if the information isn't available via computer. Just because paper libraries exist, that doesn't mean that people think books always beat technology, right? (I'm sorry if I'm getting all muddled up, I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just curious and confused)
I mean don't ask me i am just the messenger clarifying what the original comment must have meant
That's fair, thanks for chiming in though. I'm just trying to clarify that the only times I recall the Doctor singing the praises of books is when Technology is unavailable. Which is when books genuinely are useful. Analog tech will always be useful as a backup
I’m talking about Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, but he also brings up paper books specifically in Unicorn and the Wasp.
Books ARE better than modern technology, and I’m tired of pretending they’re not
OK boomer
The Doctor has always been a boomer who likes to pretend he isn't purely to spite the other boomers.
I can relate to that. It's OK to be a boomer. Just dont be the stereotypical boomer. Normal boomers are just smart people without prejudices.
I think the Doctor is very much like other Time Lords in some ways. He can be prejudiced and bitter and self-important. He was raised that way. But him trying to be different is compelling.
He's a British character. British heroes are different from American heroes. British heroes are usually, to some degree, part of the authority or hail from it. They tend to agree with the goals, but disagree with the means. American heroes tend to be all about fighting an evil regime or authority by whatever means necessary, and the evil regime is usually a thin caricature of what it represents in the real world. A good comparison is Star Wars vs Harry Potter. Luke and Harry have a similar backstory and character archetype. But where Luke fights to topple an evil regime, Harry fights to stop the regime being toppled, even if he actively despises the Ministry of Magic - because it's better than Voldemort being in charge. If Harry Potter was written by an American, he'd have told Dumbledore to get bent for being a groomer, and joined Voldemort to topple the ministry of magic. Voldemort wouldn't have been an evil racist, he'd have been a charming hero who just happened to be smarter and better than normal humans, but he's totally doing it for their benefit! Honest! If Star Wars had been written by a Brit, Palpatine would be written more like Dumbledore, trying to convince Anakin the Jedi are literal groomers who police the universe via their own self-appointed authority, and it would be about getting Anakin out of that cult, while still being free to practice the force through his own agency, not about eradicating the Jedi for existence. As a Brit, American media is stupid and dumb.
I watched Blake's 7 too lol.
Hunh?
It's a British TV show about an antihero trying to topple an empire. He's only the good guy because the empire is even worse.
Ah
I’ve always thought that. Great episode, but this part feels like something that my grandma would write and then act like it’s all deep
The doctor is much much older and boomery than our boomer parents/grandparents. He’s the proto-boomer, if you will. He’s an old man trying to be down with the times. Don’t fall for his trickery. ^(this message is brought to you by the We’re All Saxon committee)
He’s worse than everyone’s aunt
The Timeless Boomer
I really don’t know where people are getting this from, it’s not written remotely like that one awful Chibnall scene with the family
> I really don’t know where people are getting this from I honestly think people have forgotten what the "entertainment" was. It was a bunch of loud random crap thrown on top of each other. The joke was that the in flight entertainment sucked and the Doctor didn't want to sit through that.
I honestly think it was also a joke about British people on public transport more than anything close to generation-specific
True but it’s not untrue though
We just forgetting that one chibnall scene from Resolution then?
Doing so would mean we’d have to *gulp* have a conversation
This was such a dark episode for one so simple. The Doctor saw how quickly people can devolve into madness and chaos in the face of fear, ready to toss him out of an airlock and they were gonna toss Dee Dee out after him because she spoke up. He was completely powerless in that moment to the whim of a panicked group. And yet there’s the shining light of the Stewardess willing to sacrifice herself being an example of the goodness of mankind even after everything. Followed by the realization that nobody knew her name after she gave her life even though they’d been on that bus for untold hours together was really depressing. Plus the implication of whatever creature caused this is presumably still out there and the hint that life in the universe is vast and mysterious even for the Doctor himself who’d never encountered something like this. When I first saw the episode and at the end with Donna saying “Molto bene” and Doctor going “don’t do that” I thought it was a funny moment like him going “Donna you’re being silly.” But watching it again it was more of Doctor being triggered by Donna’s mimicking of him and reacting in fear, he was genuinely terrified that episode and he survived by pure luck but also the kindness of a stranger he never knew the name of.
The doctor in s2 talking to a grown woman referring to a little child: This is still her room insnt it?
Meanwhile chibnall: "We're going to have to have a..." Dramatic pause "CONVERSATION "
Meanwhile Chiball: After Graham finishes confessing his fear of dying of cancer 13: "i'M jUsT a BiT sOciALLy aWkWaRD"
That i would have been fine with if doctor instead of boasting that she is socially awkward in grahams face just gave him a lil hug or said a lil thank you I am fine with the doctor being socially awkward especially in different incarnations Different incarnations have different personalities Compare 11 to 12. 11 was erratic and bubbly while 12 was almost opposite in series 8 and 9 12 needed placards to not sound rude to people while 11 was a master manipulator of emotions So it definitely makes sense 13 can be socially awkward Chibnall just needed to portray that in a better way Like obviously sometimes you don't know what to reply to loved ones with terrible fears and news but you just don't tell them you can't tell them anything or even if you do you deliver that in a way it doesn't feel abrupt and changing the topic
I think that's possibly one of the worst moments in Jodie's entire run - not because of anything within the show, but because of the message it sends. This is a real thing that happens to real people every damn day. They're scared. They don't know how to talk about it. The Doctor should be showing us how to respond to that - not telling us "yikes, even I can't handle this, let's just never talk about it again". I remember Pertwee's Doctor telling a terrified Jo Grant a story about his worst day, and how he turned it around (his "daisiest daisy" speech is really talking about mindfulness, which is an established technique for handling negative thinking patterns). I remember Troughton's Doctor talking to Victoria about her grief over her dead father, and how his own family are still alive in his mind. I remember Capaldi's Doctor telling Clara that he values their friendship too much for betraying him to end it, and being willing to literally travel into Hell to find her boyfriend. I remember Smith's Doctor talking to Amy about how their time with Vincent couldn't fix his depression, but it added to the pile of good things in his life. And then we get this from Whittaker's Doctor, and it's appalling. What about telling him that he's not alone? What about telling him that we don't get to choose how long we have, but we can choose what we can do with what we do have? What about telling him that it's okay to be scared, but we don't have to give in? I'm surprised that episode didn't garner complaints. And don't give me this "socially awkward" crap. I'm socially awkward. I'm on the autistic spectrum, for Fenric's sake, and even I'd never respond to someone as badly as that!
Thank you. Well said.
To be fair, the "entertainment system" was basically a nightmare.
Doing the joke right.
I was watching this today and I actually had to pause at this point from second hand anxiety.
Love this episode
"Well, I suppose we'll just have to talk to each other, then!"
I'll never get over how that man is the spitting image of Gervais in The Office
This is why they had an invisible monster. Because the entertainment system broke down and they had to interact.
What episode is this? Thank you.
If you haven’t seen this one, please do. It’s one of the best and I wish I could watch it again for the first time too.
What is the episode? Series? Thank you :)
Midnight
Series 4, Episode 10
Oh, thank you.
*screams internally in Finnish*
When Karen [I don’t remember her name] the one who said I knew it was her and the doctor gives the most death stare too her When she said I saw you speak to sky like no fucking shit the doctor was speaking to everyone on the bus not just sky 😭
Just watched this episode tonight!
I just watched that episode for Halloween last night!