Doctor Who: April Fools!! (I Wish)

It’s April Fools Day! (Actually, when this posts it will actually be April 2 here in Australia, but I’m writing it on April Fools Day). Here are some April fools that I would wish into existence if I could:

(Daily Doctor Who #129)

Warning—excessive and somewhat immature ranting ahead. In fact, if you are fan of Season Twelve and the Timeless Child concept you might want to just skip post this all together.

Hey, have you heard that Doctor Who is going to bring back the Master, even though we just had a strong and memorable version of the character just a season ago, and so for long term fans it will feel like a pale, creatively bereft retread of something better that we wish we still had; and they’re going to lean heavily into the “prancing lunatic” version of the character, having him randomly break into existing plotlines whenever we feel like it, giving no solid rationale for his actions other than that he’s crazy?

April Fool!! (I wish)

Hey, have you heard that Doctor Who is going to destroy the Time Lords again, even though they only just came back from being destroyed the last time a few years ago and not much has been done with them, thus making it feel like a colossal waste of storytelling potential as well as a lazy twist just we can having something dramatic at the start of the new season, and that they are going to do it off-screen via an expository speech with little to no explanation for how was done, and an extremely weak explanation for why?

April Fool!! (I wish)

Hey, have you heard that Doctor Who is going to grab a throwaway moment from nearly forty years ago where it implied rather than stated that the Doctor had multiple earlier incarnations before William Hartnell, and turn it into established canon, supposedly clearing up a “plot hole” even the show itself has explicitly contradicted this many times both before and after the throwaway moment, and that this is going to ultimately enrich the series rather than just confuse it?

April Fool!! (I wish)

Hey, have you heard that Doctor Who is going to build its season toward an “everything-you-know-is-a-lie”-style plot twist (even though these are almost always steeped in short-term thinking and are frequently annoying) that totally rewrites all our understanding of everything was ever established in the show about the Doctor’s character, supposedly to add more mystery to the series but in reality stealing away most of the mystery that we already had, with the benefit of dealing with a plot problem about what happens when the Doctor runs out of regenerations that is such a huge storytelling obstacle that it took literally fifty years before the show even had to confront it once (and even then only because the writer accelerated the issue by adding extra regenerations into the count), and even better, it’s going to do all this in the least exciting narrative way possible where for no reason intrinsic to the plot or the character a villain is going to jump through a portal, hi-jack an existing story, and then literally talk the twist at the Doctor with a handy futuristic powerpoint presentation in an adventure that will ultimately have the Doctor contributing little of value to the outcome, all while pretending that it’s dramatic, heart-wrenching and compelling drama?