Sami on The Husbands of River Song - The 2015 Doctor Who Christmas Special

The Doctor Who Christmas Special airs every year on Christmas, even on BBCAm!

I'm...not sure how to take this year's special.

It sort of made me miss the specials of old, where they were tethered to the Earth and there was actual Christmas involved, and they'd set up some crazy hook at the end of the last episode of the season and it somehow turns out to be fine when the special comes around.

This year, the Doctor gets mistaken for a regular doctor, and finds himself in the middle of one of River's plots, and it all goes pear shaped, repeatedly. Like, all of it. She's married to a dictator who is dying and needs healing, but she really just wants the diamond that's trapped inside his head, but maybe she actually wants to liberate the jewel for the people? And she's also married to her partner in crime. And she also is still married to the Doctor, but here at almost the end of her life--the journal he gave her is almost full--she seems to honestly think that even though she's actually in love with him, she has no hope that he's in love with her, and she knows she can't actually count on him?

Like.

There were some awesome moments. River is always fun when she's talking, and Alex Kingston handles the whiplashing switches between fast-talking plan-making and deep emotional truth well, as always. The Doctor gets to be the one who "does it right" when he supposedly first sees the inside of the Tardis. We finally get the Singing Towers and River finally gets her own sonic. And that outfit-changing spray was pretty neat. The brief reversal of who's the Doctor and who's the Companion was fun. And the Tardis trying to cheer up the Doctor with holographic antlers was probably my favorite part of the whole episode*!

But...

I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this episode? That River is a terrible person when the Doctor isn't around? That the Doctor is a terrible person for neglecting his wife? That they'll never work together but they always keep trying? That River's life started out crazy and ends sad no matter how many directions we come at it?

I don't buy that River Song, created to know everything about the Doctor, wouldn't have figured out who Twelve is when he was specifically telling her who he was. If she doesn't, she's an idiot, and she's never been an idiot. I also don't buy that late-life River is only good when the Doctor is looking at her, and his very presence changes her from a sociopathic thief to an actual archaeologist. Those were sort of important plot points, so the whole episode gets a little squishy when I can't believe those two parts.

I like that River was never really husband-shamed, and mostly they didn't seem to care that they were all her husbands so much as they were upset that she was keeping things from them. And I liked that the Doctor and River were together again for another adventure. It's nice that she got a life with him for a while before that trip to the Library when we know she dies before he knows who she is, and we know she comes back as the Doctor Who equivalent of a Force Ghost in that one Eleven episode, but knowing that sort of saddens the happiness of her last days. And it leaves the whole story sort of emotionally up in the air. Usually, River Song stories are ambiguous but cool; this one was ambiguous and a little unsettling, and did a lot of work to bring what we know of her personality and her purpose into doubt without being all that concerned with pinning anything down. If this is her last story, which it feels like it's meant to be, and especially coming after the previous drawing-out with Eleven of her story, it just feels...emotionally un-closed.

And so I keep turning it around in my head. Trying to make it fit. The airing I saw came on right after the rerun of the 50th anniversary special, which was so good and hit so many right notes, and I think that made the weird notes The Husband of River Song hit feel even weirder. What was the purpose of this story? What was the point it was trying to make?

If I figure it out, I'll write up another post on it.

What did you guys think of it? Did I miss some vital chord that made it all make sense? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

*Shame it was in the first three minutes of screen time.

Geeky TV commentary - Doctor Who 9.2

Doctor Who airs at 9pm on BBCAm Saturday nights.

That was so much fun! What a twisty, existential, yet somehow peppy and fun episode! It's basically Missy that saved it from being dreary, what with it being about how Davros is dying and wants the Doctor's help. Everything she says is quotable, and even when it's a totally ordinary line, she delivers it as if it's quotable anyway. I wasn't sure about her when she first showed up, but she's basically a gift.

So! The Doctor is trapped in the little room with Davros the whole episode while Davros goes on about how compassion is a weakness and how it'll kill the Doctor in the end, and how happy he is that Gallifrey is back because everyone needs to belong and he's happy the Doctor can live out his days with his own people. It was creepy, to be honest, and super red-flag-inducing, and it lasted for ages and made us sort of question our instincts.

Because Doctor Who likes to do that, and then assure you that you're actually fine. This case is no different. Once it's been a full night of talking to this dying, sad, weepy Davros who actually does still have actual human eyes in there, when he's almost dead and too weak to see his last sunrise, the Doctor is all "here, have some regeneration energy" like a doofus. Which, of course, is the trap. As soon as he touches the wires plugged into Davros, he starts sucking out all that sweet sweet regen*, and he transmits it to all the Daleks on the planet. It's unclear whether there's other cities than the one they're in, but even if they're all there is, that's A LOT of Daleks who will be regenerated and possibly get the ability to keep regenerating?

And this is where the B-plot with Missy and Clara comes in.

See, they were only seemingly destroyed because Missy had a teleportation device that she used to save them at the second that the extermination bolt should have hit, using the bolt's own energy to do it. They land out in the desert outside the city, and Missy threatens to eat Clara if they're not saved soon, but they wind up saving themselves by going back to the city to rescue the Doctor. 

And climbing through the sewers.

Which happen to be less sewers, since the suits are self-contained and don't produce much waste, and more a sort of icky squishy slime-mold graveyard because the Daleks can't actually really die, but they can break down until they can't run a suit anymore and they have to send them somewhere. The Doctor has already made it super clear that he wants Clara back in a declaration that kept reminding of Nine's demand for Rose from some of these same Daleks (probably), so Missy uses her as bait to capture a suit. 

Which she then sticks Clara in.

And which turns out to be the most disturbing scene in the episode. Because whenever Clara tries to say her name, the suit says "I am a Dalek" and whenever she tries to say anything positive or frightened or anything other than angry, it says "Exterminate" and now there's that begged question of whether the Daleks inside there sometimes have names, and whether they actually do have emotions and independent thoughts, and the suits just force them to conform? A person could write a whole paper on the ethical implications of that scene. Also, probably, on the absolute glee Missy takes in it all.

Anyway, there's this whole enormous slime-mold living under the city all Dalek-angry about everything ever because they're Daleks that can't be Dalek-y, and when Davros sends them all the regeneration energy, he sends it to all of them. Davros is so classist, he never thought about the slime-molds. 

So Missy rushes in and blows of the machine, and the slime was the Doctor's backup plan because he knew about all this red-flag plan the whole time, and he possibly just wanted to be the better man for a minute? They're running through the halls like a good Doctor does, when one of the Daleks that wasn't rebooted by all that regen-juice corners them. Missy is trying to convince the Doctor to kill it, and he almost does, but he notices that it's not angry, it's frantic, and eventually Clara manages to say she'd never kill him, and the suit translates it as "Mercy".

But now the Doctor knows that Missy has designs against his current favorite companion, and he tells her to run and gets Clara out, and they escape. Missy seems to be trapped in the city as it collapses, but she also seems to have a plan, and now she's on the loose again. But when the Doctor and Clara are watching the city collapse, it occurs to him that there shouldn't be any way for the Dalek suit programming to know about mercy--

--and that's when he goes back in time and saves Kid Davros instead of leaving him there to die, and makes a point to tell him that there always has to be mercy, and it apparently sank into Davros's DNA and got into the Daleks and / or their programming. 

And it was so much fun!

More stuff we learned this ep:

• Missy's brooch is made of dark-star material; it's also the gift that the Doctor gave her / him when her / his daughter did...something. Daleks got in the way of that story.
• Missy considers switching to lady-form to be an expensive upgrade that the Doctor can't afford.
• It's possible that the Doctor didn't leave Gallifrey because he was bored; Davros thinks he left so that he wouldn't get involved in the war that could only end in the Daleks assimilating Time Lords and stealing their regenerations. This might just be Davros being a megalomaniac again, but it's something.
• Daleks have respect; they never attacked Davros because they respect him. This doesn't mean that he didn't have his chair made with a force field that cannot be breached by Dalek weapons.
• The Tardis's defense protocol of the moment is to disperse as dust.
• The Doctor no longer has a sonic screwdriver, but he does have sonic sunglasses.
• Daleks take everything at face value and apparently don't have any sensors in their city to keep track of whether anyone is teleporting, which seems like a security flaw to be exploited like woah.
• "The only other chair on Skaro!"
• Clara needs a lot more practice before she becomes a Dalek sharpshooter; this is after Souffle Girl for the Doctor, but earlier in history for Clara, so maybe that's something.

There was some of that by-now-standard Moffat hand-waving that I love but that seems to annoy a lot of people when the Doctor stole Davros's shielded chair and waltzes out into the middle of all the Daleks with it with a cup of tea and says "The real question is where did I get tea? The answer is: I'm the Doctor, deal with it." I assume that the Doctor has a lined pocked that he can hold even a cup of hot tea in, since we've already established that his pockets are bigger on the inside anyway, so why not. There will be people who will probably give this episode points off because of that, but by now everyone should just know that there's going to be a certain amount of it in a Moff production.**

Last week, I said it's hard to talk about an unfinished story; this week, I can honestly say that it was a good story, and a weird and wonderful way to start the new season! If we're gonna get a whole season of quirk and strangeness, and Missy running around saying outrageous things, and Twelve being bizarre, we're in for a good season.

What did you guys think about this week? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

Previous Doctor Who commentary posts:

• Episode 9.1

NOTES:

*If that doesn't make it really risky and scary when he goes from 12 to 13 because he used up a big chunk of that proper energy, I'mma be really annoyed.

**Also, I'm going to assume that if it's not a pocket, any of these hand-wave dismissals are just storylines we haven't gotten to yet until such time as Moff's time ends and they haven't been closed up. He likes the big-frame story, and I like that, too.

Tweets about #doctorwho from:pirategirljack include:retweets

Geeky TV commentary - Doctor Who 9.1

Doctor Who airs on BBCAm at 9pm on Saturdays.

Yay, Doctor Who is back! You can practically hear it from across the world, the internet of geeks all talking at once! It's been flipping ages since this show was on the air, and we're greeted with an episode that isn't finished because it's a two parter, so it's going to be a little hard to talk about definitively; if it wasn't the first ep back, I might have let it go until the story was finished. But it is, so here we are!

So! Here's what happened, and if you didn't see it, why are you reading this yet? Come back when you have!

The Doctor's missing. A slimy dude on casters is going all over the place trying to find him, including the the Shadow Proclamation (yay!). Turns out the dude is being employed by Davros, who is dying and has a message for the Doctor.

See, the Doctor messed with his timeline (which still hasn't shaken out yet whether that'll change everything, but we're thinking not), and he remembers, and he has some things to say.

Missy shows up with almost no explanation about how she's there at all--sort of an offhanded mention of other people?--and stops all the planes in the air to get the Doctor's or Clara's attention, which does get Clara's. Clara leaves her class in the middle of a lesson about Jane Austin to go check it out, and Missy tells her that she's got the Doctor's will. If it's there, it has to be delivered to his closest friend (unclear whether that's Missy of Clara), and it won't say what's in it until he's dead. Which, of course, Clara is not having.

Blah blah blah "fast and ugly time travel" by way of a bracelet I really hope Missy got from Captain Jack, and they find the Doctor in Medieval times with a tank and a guitar making an entrance as part of a long party he's been throwing himself. A pity party, because he knows that messing with Kid Davros is gonna get him in trouble one way or another. He even hugs Clara, which is terrifying because he's not a hugger.

Slimy-henchman turns out to be a stack of snakes pretending to be a man, which was actually kind of cool but has no reason behind it so far, and the Doctor agrees to go with him and face Davros, but of course Clara and Missy aren't letting him go alone. They travel through space in a neat shuttle I could live in, to a station that Missy immediately notices has some gravity weirdness that leads her, once they're alone, to just walk out the door.

Dun dun DUN--it's not a station, it's a single building and the rest of the planet has been hidden because DUN DUN DUN--it's Skaro! The Doctor sees it happening at the same time that Missy and Clara are being really adorable spinning in circles as the world reappears* and flips out because how could they bring him to Skaro? Wasn't it bad enough that he was talking to Davros?

Right when it because obvious that there was a "to be continued" coming up, every Dalek from the BBC warehouse shows up with the Tardis, and while the Doctor watches, Missy stops them from destroying the Tardis by offering herself as a guide to destroying the universe by way of the Tardis, and they exterminate her. The Doctor begs for Clara's life, and they kill her, too. Then they kill the Tardis. Then they kill every fangirl watching because WTF guys.

The last scene is the Doctor back with Kid Davros, trying to exterminate him, and THAT is where they leave us until next week!

It was probably an amazing episode, but it's hard to tell before the end has aired and the plot has shaken out, but it was definitely alarming and exciting and they crammed so much stuff into the hour. Including, in addition to all the stuff above:

• UNIT--who has a dedicated Doctor channel on the comms that he never uses, but Missy knows about.
• Brigg Daughter! And a new scientist with awesome hair so that basically that whole scene had one guy in it and he had almost no lines.
• Clara knows her way around UNIT and they listen to her when she Doctor-ly orders them around, and now she's earned a new entry on the list of Doctor Who Spinoffs That Probably Won't Ever Happen.
• "Since he was a little girl!"
• A strong whif of timey-wimey, because how else can this happen?
• At least one hint that there's already more going on than anyone in the show is realizing yet.
• Another Doctor-Clara heart-melting moment, since he knows immediately when she's in the crowd because he always sees her and he didn't realize there were other people there as soon as she showed up.**

It's so great to have the Doctor back on our screens, and there's so much story here that's barely started, and it's already shaping up to be an exciting and complicated season! What's still to be determined is whether it'll be so complicated that it ticks everyone off, or whether it'll actually make sense in the end? Right now, that's impossible to judge. But what's not impossible to judge is how exciting it is to have more new episodes ahead of us once again!

NOTES:
*and seems to be that same beach outside where the Byzantium crashed and maybe where Bad Wolf Bay is.
**It's very hard not to ship them when he keeps doing that.

Did you guys see my latest geeky nailpolishes?

This update, we have:

- Polyjuice Potion, Veritaserum, and Levi-O-sa, the start of a Harry Potter line! Finally!

- Werewolf in the Streets, Vampire in the Sheets, and Fey By Neonlight, the Urban Fantasy Tropes.

- Garnet, Aquarius, and Wolf Moon, the January colors.

- And the 2014 Best Sellers!

So get thee to the shop and see these and everything else I have there! 

Www.etsy.com/shop/incidentaltwin

Liveblog roundup masterpost!

So two things happened. I got behind on posting the roundups, as I knew I would, and I had a rough week where I felt like crap. And coming up, we've got premiers happening, which will keep me behind the way I've been doing it, so I'm going to instead link you to the right place to see everything! Much quicker, and all in one post! That way, I can keep up easier AND I can have a blog that isn't 90% reposts from somewhere else!

The Emmys:

The biggest criticism I hear about the Emmys is that it's famous people patting each other on the back, but I like it because it's famous people hanging out with each other and proving they're all still the dorks they probably were in high school.

You can find my hopes and exclamations here!

The Quest:

This show is so ridiculous, borderline cheesy, and so totally earnest that I can't help it. I love it. Even if they CONTINUE to get really stupid when it comes to the weekly eliminations. Even if they keep booting the ones I like best.

You can find my cheering and such here! Note, though, I did miss an episode somewhere along the line because it was preempted by stupid local football, and I don't know when it actually aired.

Hell on Wheels:

I was seriously not happy with this show for the first, like, three episodes, but it won me back over as soon as it got back into the town--where it belongs. Though I do wish people would stop being assholes just to be assholes, and I do miss the central story element of the train. Oh well. This last week's episode about Elam in the Comanche camp was soo cool.

You can find my commentary here!

Outlander:

This show. You guys. If Hell On Wheels and Game of Thrones are masculine juvenile fantasies, this one is a feminine adult fantasy. I mean, last night had all sorts of dick jokes and dudes being assholes, but it also had people being educated, people caring about what happens to their people, and Claire finally reaching that place in all time-travel stories where you stop blindly reacting and you start trying to change the tragedies you happen to know will happen.

And there's still Jamie being amazing.

You can find my squeeing here!

Doctor Who:

I think this right here is the theme of the season. So far, anyway. I'm loving 12. I love that he's grouchy, that he doesn't like hugs, that he doesn't know what to do with people kissing him or laughing at things, that he's confused and strange and sort of like a really awkward mad scientist--but that he's also trying to be good and to fix things, because through it all, he knows that he's caused a lot of trouble, too.

It's great.

You can see my constant commentary here!

That's it for this week (and last week and a bit that I didn't do here), and you can see what I'll be watching this week and whether any new shows will be included in the next post!

Doctor Who s8e1 "Deep Breath" liveblog roundup

 Yes you are. And I love it.

You guys? Every time there's a new Doctor, I get a little wibbly. Because I love this show in all its incarnations and I have loved every Doctor eventually, but I always get caught up in  missing the old one. I took it hard when Nine left, but I already knew Ten was coming because I caught on late. I took it really hard when Ten left, and I was sad when Eleven left, but you know what? There was that gap between seasons, and it let the pain scab over, and by the time we got here, I was mostly just happy to have Who back on my TV. And it was so good.

Here's my thoughts. First, the pre-show, because Chris Hardwick:

• Minutes away now!
• I love that metal chair!
• That one outfit Clara had looked like something from the 70s? Do we get a historical?
• Iffn you don’t want spoilers, I’m tagging doctor who and spoilers!
• I think the hardest part of being the Doctor would be not screaming in glee long enough to remember your lines.

And the show!

• Shush!
• You had me at dinosaur in London.
• Who invented this room?
• New opening sequence! New orchestration!
• You all sound all…English!*
• People are apes. Men are monkeys.
• Strax and his inability to tell what is even going on with people is still classic! And now, apparently, he has a lot more in common with the Doctor than usual!
• Poetic dinosaurs who may or may not have thought the weird new Doctor was flirting. Who knew?
• Ugh, commercials. Bad enough in our tv, a flat out crime in British shows!
• You might as well flirt with a mountain range.**
• No! Poetic big sexy dinosaur!
• How did she burn up so quickly?
• Don’t get it scratched or you and all your bloodlines will be eradicated from all of time and space!
• Clara is so lost!
• Enviable spleen, well done!
• And a big long scarf. No, I’ve moved on from that.
• He’s too weird for the drunk guy. I’m going to pretend that guy sobers up after that.
• These are attack eyebrows! You could take bottle caps off with these eyebrows!
• I’m Scottish now! I can complain about things!
• Thingie. The not-me one. The asking-questions one!
• Some more Seven in here?
• Nothing is more important than my egomania!
• It was the only one out of place! I was sure you’d want it killed!
• He just actually put and actual face on her face.
• Doctor Whovian London has so much random stuff under it, no matter what timeframe they’re in.
• Did he just say Sweeny Todd would be proud?
• Droids harvesting organs. That rings a bell…
• Sure or not sure. One or the other.
• Doctor no! What’re you even???
• Yay! Clara in context! Being tough and smart!
• What you can do is offer me my life. What you cannot do is threaten me. You can negotiate!
• Is this The Girl In The Fireplace after all?
• He grabbed her hand! That is a trope of visual media that I love.
• She called the police? We never do that! We should start!
• If Vastra is Sherlock, is this poor dude Lestrade?
• EW.
• Doctor just had a minor Ship of Theseus moment with himself.
• So, did he jump or was he pushed?
• There should be more round things on the walls. I used to have a lot of round things, I wonder where I put them.
• What the what the what phone call what??
• I’m not sure I’m a hugging person.
• I’m hoping she’s a crazy fan and not an actual new River-type…
• Overall? Yay!

And the aftershow***!

• Chris Hardwick and Wil Wheaton nerding at each other about nerd cred is one of my favorite things in the world.
• Wil Wheaton hitting it on the nose: “for the first time, the doctor feels out of time.”
• Hardwick Hears A Who. If #afterwho is a thing, this is what I’m calling it.
• Did Gatiss just get chocked up all these years later about Three’s regen? I want to hug him!
• Talking point: Missy as Tardis, Master, Rani, or New River Song? #afterwho
• Alton Brown just mentioned Davros and my cat woke up yowling. I think this about sums up the general reaction to Genesis of the Daleks. #afterwho
• Gatiss just said Missy is a crazy Mary Poppins, and that jives so HEADCANNON ACCEPTED!
• Wil: I think (Danny Pink) works for UNIT! -- This is a great idea!
• I adore the idea of UNIT using this school the Doctor keeps going back to to harvest sharp young minds for the cause…
• Did anyone see Gatiss twitching just a little? Which do you guess are “they’re too close must call Steven” and which are “that’s a fantastic idea why didn’t we think of that and where can we put it”?

You guys, I feel like I've waited a million years for this episode, and it was so great. The Doctor was clever and weird and out of place and not making sense. He was unreliable but also totally reliable, you just don't know how to read his cues yet. Clara got some context, if not actual backstory yet****, and got to stand up on her own and be brave and smart and clever. Vastra was there, Jenny got more story, and it looks like maybe there's something going on there between them? Something like Jenny becoming a proto-suffragette? The dinosaur was random and wonderful and tragic, and I hope they can find a way to go back and save her in a later episode. The main plot was pretty straight forward, which is exactly what we needed for a new Doctor ep, while at the same time it called back an old creepy story and possibly brought that into a proper storyline? I hope so!

Overall, it was amazing, and I'm sold on Twelve. Well, technically I was sold on him when they announced him and Capaldi just seemed so charmed to be him, but now I've seen him in motion, and I love him. My favorite thing the Doctor does is not be human, and Twelve is all sorts of awkward, strange, not-dumbed-down, and it's fabulous. I hope he stays a little bonkers as he settles into his new body.

This is me, waiting for next week:

NOTES:
*You've all developed a flaw!
**Unless you're a massively oversized t-rex.
***I really really hope the involvement with this special convinces BBCAm to make AfterWho a thing, because this is one of those shows you need to geek about when it's over, and Chris Hardwick wants to make it, and even if I worry about his stress-levels, I really do want to see it.
***Which she needs, because so much of her life happens away from the Doctor, with her habit of going home between adventures.

This week on Professional Fangirl

We gots us some NEW DOCTOR WHO!!! You guys, I don't even care that because it's going to be a two-hour premier it's going to be tricky to record Hell on Wheels and / or Outlander, because it's NEW DOCTOR WHO! With a new Doctor! And Clara! Who I'm still hoping gets to come into her own! And another new companion! And Madam Vastra and Jenny!

Ahem.

It's the first of the come-backs for shows I watch, and I'm sort of excited.

We'll also have the usual roundups of The Quest, Hell on Wheels and Outlander, and some fun posts on other stuff that are actual real posts! Stay tuned!

Ten things I love about Doctor Who

I basically love Doctor Who, as a whole, in about any incarnation that the Doctor or the show gives me (even angry, over-acting Six with his very small budget and HORRIBLE special effects), but here's ten things that I love most about the show, and if they're there, it basically ensures that I'll have no problem at all adapting to the changes. Cuz, you know, there'll be changes.

1. When the Doctor looks proud at his Companion being brave or saucy or otherwise not what the villains expect. Especially if it's someone who gets underestimated, even by him.
2. When the Doctor forgets to act human--like when he's not sleeping or eating, and everyone else is. Or like in Midnight, when he's not trying to blend in.
3. When the Companions get to do something so beyond the call that they get to steal the show--and the Doctor loves it.
4. When the story is positive in the end--hopeful and joyful, and convinced that people are basically good and strong and able to overcome anything.
5. When the Doctor acts the wrong age for how he looks--like when he's a childish old man, or a cranky old young man.
6. When Companions collect each other, and more than just two go off on adventures.
7. When the Tardis has opinions and makes them known.
8. When the setting is truly alien, or is a specific moment in actual human history.
9. When there isn't really a villain because everyone has understandable motivations and the conflict is a misunderstanding that can be solved through something other than blowing things up and killing everyone.
10. When everyone lives.

What ten things would be on your list? What do you like most about the series?

I'mm'a just leave this full-length DW trailer right here

Doctor Who News!

This is literally almost nothing, but it's Doctor Who, so it's inducing heart attacks and hyperventilation all over the place! Is he a good man? Does Clara even know? Do we???

And there's more!

• The premier will be "feature length"!
• It comes back on Saturday, August 23 at 8pm on BBC1--and it seems to be the same date for the US, too! Yay no delay!
• There's a new character who looks like she's Victorian (though, really, who even knows since everyone sort of looks Victorian lately) called The Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere, among other guest stars
• There's still apparently no lady writers!
• The Paternoster Gang will come back!

Personally, I'm still scrabbling for the show. I miss it like a missing limb. A limb that just turned into someone else's limb, and might not be a nice limb anymore. Which I hope is just worry-mongering, because Eleven was dark enough, and there was that lovely lightening of the mood in the 50th, and I really want a Doctor that's not like slamming face first into misery, don't you? 

Here's my hopes:

• He's cranky, but not dark
• Clara really gets to shine, the way Sarah Jane was great with Three, but shone with Four
• The new characters are ongoing--not just one-and-done, and that there's LOTS of companions--I always want there to be lots of Companions, like the Doctor is leading a school field trip
• The core story is Finding Gallifrey, not some other thing that isn't Finding Gallifrey, unless that other thing is super cool and then leads to the right one
• Twelve^ solves things differently--like, instead of going on the warpath, be comes at it sideways and negates the need for confrontation at all, or something
• Clara stays in the Tardis instead of always going home in between
• The return of more Classic Villains!

What do you want to see?

More wild and unbased speculation about the next season of Doctor Who!

This is apparently the newest recurring character / companion on the show! And best of all, he's apparently a teacher at the same school Clara works at. 

The school Ian and Barbara came from in the very first episode of Doctor Who, 50 years ago last November, when One stole away his first companions.

I'm just all O_o about the whole thing because it looks an awful lot like The Moff is shaping the show into a big loop. We've diverged a lot from those first episodes so long ago, and what with the general trend of bringing in threads from Three and before over this past season, it seems we're getting something along the lines of a return to the show's roots--or a sort of in-show reboot, back to the beginning, without having to actually go back to the beginning.

So here's where my speculative brain is going on this: First, this dapper man's first official picture:

• He looks stern; can this mean the Doctor is going to be loopy and needs a firm hand to keep him in line? Or that they'll be butting heads because they're both stern and disapproving?
• He's a good-looking MALE companion! Not another pretty girl! And one that's not already attached to a pretty girl, specifically, the way Rory was. Unless he's Clara's stay-at-home boyfriend who follows her. But that would be a redo of Amy and Rory and each companion is supposed to be different, so...
• He looks no-nonsense, which might be wonderful, what with all the actual nonsense the Doctor tends to get into.
• He also looks like he's capable, probably smart, and not easily intimidated. It's been ages since the Doctor had a companion he could count on to do stuff for him like Ian or Harry or Jamie, and I would SO LOVE if that's how he was!
• A strong male presence on the Tardis is something we haven't seen in a long time, and it will make for a different dynamic--especially if he actually is unattached and not so easily bowled over as poor lovely Rory was.

And as to what he could imply about the show:

• More companions! I really want the show to max out on companions again, which it hasn't done in the new series. 
• If we're echoing the early episodes with two teachers from the same school, all we're missing is the granddaughter--and that's the perfect opportunity for Jenny to come back! Jenny who didn't die at the end of that episode she was in because Moff asked RTD not to kill her, and who we've been waiting for a return of since then!
• Also, if we're wandering around the Doctor's old stomping grounds, think about how old companions could have settled there, and how maybe we could meet one, or their child or grandchild! It was fantastic when Sarah Jane came back, and when Jo came back on the Sarah Jane Adventures, that was fantastic, too, and it would be SO NICE to have just a little bit more of that.
• Also, I have a head cannon that ex-companions eventually find each other and support each other through the rough transition back to everyday human life, and it would be beyond awesome if that turned out to be true--that they hang out and raise their kids together and keep track of the Doctor's appearances and actually know who he is and what he does.
• Also, if we're getting back to roots, maybe we'll also get back to historicals! Almost every other episode of the original seasons was literal time travel, if not most of them, and we haven't had almost any episodes that hinge on past human history at all in Eleven except maybe that one ghost episode which was deliciously 70s. And in Nine and Ten, we got, like, one a season--Dickens, Shakespeare, not a whole lot else. And there's SO MUCH HISTORY to explore! Plus, it'd be way cheaper than always jaunting off to some alien planet or spaceship.

I just get more and more of an impression that we're really going to bring back the Classic Series this season, and I really, really like the idea. Which also makes me scared that it's actually going to be something else entirely, and then I'll feel like they missed a big opportunity. And then I'll be sad.

But it's always like this before a season, isn't it? Lots of speculation, lots of awesome theories, and then lots of other stuff happening during the actual season.

What do you think this new dude brings to the show? Share in the comments!

Guesses about Doctor 12* based on what we've seen of his official outfit

So here's the official announced look of the 12th* Doctor! I'm not going to describe it, since you can see it right there, but here's what I like, and what I can infer from it:

• It's basically 11's outfit, but less obviously outdated, and, as the comments circulating with the picture said "with all the frills stripped off". Frills, in this case, seem to mean texture and color (other than red), but also pants that are too short or too formal, and the poor bowtie.
• There's a sweater! I love that there's a sweater, because that could have just been another vest or waistcoat, and instead we have something that is specifically warming and of a softer texture than tailored clothes--to me, that indicates some sort of lingering softness of character, and since I'm under constant fear of the Doctor getting so dark and fatalistic that I don't want to watch it anymore, this is a good thing.
• He looks a bit like a wizard. The Moff generally gets more and more fantastical the longer he gets to play with something, so I guess this follows--Ten was brilliant, but was someone else's creation and was very much like a man; Eleven was a fairytale creature who was sometimes sort of godly; it follows that Twelve* could very easily be a sort of wizardly character, who doesn't have that much in common with ordinary people at all. That could be either charming or terrible, depending how the stories go.

And it looked sort of familiar when I first saw it, but I couldn't figure it out until my bestie sent me this picture, and it all clicked:

He looks like Three! Less fussy, more angry, but the same sort of basic color-blocking as THREE! Who very rarely gets referenced, but who has been more and more referenced as the series closed out last year (the Ice Warriors, the Great Intelligence, etc), and so it makes sense.

See, I have this idea that the Doctor, despite changing all the time, is actually just showing different aspects of whatever underlying personality links all the Regenerations together, and when you're getting up to Twelve (or Fourteen) incarnations, you're going to start showing different interpretations of previous interpretations. So Twelve* could very easily be a reprise of Three the way Ten was similar to Five and sometimes Four, the way Nine had a lot of Seven, the way Eleven had a lot of Two and a lot of Four. Because despite being written by dozens of different people over the course of decades, there has to be a unified intelligence and basic personality underneath, or he's not really the same person each time.

So! Now we can get to the meat of this extrapolation: What do we know about Three that we can hopefully see applied to Twelve*?

• Three was the one who was trapped on earth because of ticking off the Time Lords.
• This, I think, could be key. We have the potential return of the Time Lords during Capaldi's run, and therefore a return of their Laws and their enforcement of the Laws, and the Doctor has never, ever done well with meddling from the home world. Just because he wants to free them and bring them back, it doesn't mean he wants to put up with their crap, and that could be an awesome storyline--especially when we think about how the Council is supposedly insane, and the Doctor is a different man now.
• Three was pompous and pushy and impatient, but also charming and occasionally sweet.
• All of which I can see Capaldi being. And it would be awesome to have a Doctor who isn't the least bit worried about people liking him, who just does what needs to be done because he's the only one who can do it, and doesn't put up with people being jackasses about it.
• It might also lead to my personal wish of a return of a professorial sort of Doctor who is actively teaching people to be better or to be more futuristic than they are--rather than just accidentally teaching them by dragging them with him everywhere.
• Three had silly but adorable Jo, and then had the early and wonderful Sarah Jane.
• I can easily see Clara being a less-useless Jo: the helper, the one who patches things up when he ticks people off, the one who is always there when he needs her. But Clara is already sort of an heir of Sarah Jane by being smart and snappy and able to keep up with the Doctor, and she hasn't yet become the damsel in distress either companion eventually became, so maybe she can sort of make up for that.
• Three had a support staff, of sorts, in the Brigadier, Benton and Yates.
• We've already met the Brig's daughter and seen how much power she has, and I would absolutely adore if she stuck around more. And we could have the science-girl with the asthma as one of the other regulars that comes with her--she's not particularly brave, she's physically unsuited for adventure, but she's smart and she can hold her own, and she already knows about aliens and has dealt with them face-to-face. We'd just need, like, a perfect UNIT soldier to even out the team, and there you go!
• This also could be the return of something else that I've been wanting: more companions. There's no reason it has to be one, or very rarely, two. The Doctor in the past had as many as four or five, on occasion, and it's great story-fodder, having that many people from different places and with different goals, all in one problem together. Plus, it helps alleviate the problem of the Companion repeatedly falling in love with the Doctor--there's other people around, so stress-bonding is more complicated.
• Three was an action-Doctor, with gadgets and fast cars and Venusian Karate.
• Eleven, Ten, Nine, were no strangers to action, but they were all sort of...accidentally action heroes. They tried to avoid it and wound up in the middle of it. Eleven was more of a warrior, specifically, and less of a person who's first thought was to drive quickly to where the problem was and then chop it into submission. While I would more enjoy a Doctor that stays in his lab tinkering with widgets, a Doctor who specifically goes out to right wrongs as opposed to waiting until he lands on them accidentally, might be fun. It would clean up a lot of the moral ambiguity that has collected up on the show--he'd be actively seeking out specific injustices with an eye toward putting them right.
• Three had a lot of quarries and caves.
• And wouldn't it be nice to have a good quarry, or a good monsters-in-a-cave story?
• Three also had some awesome alien planets and a few memorable alien creatures.
• I would love to have a reunion with Alpha Centauri, mostly because I would like to see how they'd redesign a seven-foor-tall green penis with one eye, horse-hooves, and a cape. 
• And there's always Peladon, and the monster that can be sung to sleep, and the Princess who wanted to marry him.

And then, of course, there are my own personal wants and wishes:

• My bestie and I decided that we'd love if the Doctor frequently forgot that Clara wasn't his pet, and occasionally just petted her on her head and offered her, like, a sugar cube or something. We also decided that Strax would love the sugar cubes and would constantly be trying to get them when Clara turned them down.
• I'd love if the Doctor had some silly quirk that Clara had to keep track of--like he was always stealing little things, or he went into people's spaces and rearranged all their things all the time.
• I'd love if he was bumbling and lovable, like Seven, but also had that deep layer of outright manipulation--though it would have to be toward a purpose, not just vague manipulation without an end-game; we get enough of long-term stories that never quite end up anywhere specific.
• I'd love if the Doctor finally started wondering what happened to his old Companions--or if Clara sought them out and brought them back to his attention--so that we could get the occasional update the way we did with Sarah Jane in "School Reunion". There's piles of grown-up Companions still around who didn't die when they left, and it would be amazing to see how their lives turned out. (also, I feel like at least a few of them would have formed some sort of support group to help the new ones adapt after they left)

What do you guys think? What can you infer from these first glimpses of the new Doctor, and what do you hope the new series will be like? Share in the comments, and be sure to sign up for email updates or RSS to keep track of the conversation!

Notes:
* This one is an actual *, but in general, I'm going to refer to him as the 12th* or 12* because he's actually, apparently, number 14, but wibbly wobbly and so on.

This is actually what happened after we watched the second-to-last ep of Doctor Who.

This is also the raw sketch-- my scanner isn't working and I haven't had time to photoshop it, so there you go. I'll fix it for next week as well as bringing on a new one.