Philip Purser-Hallard
@purserhallard.com
Philip Purser-Hallard writes stuff -- most recently Sherlock Holmes: The Monster of the Mere. Posting about writing, TV, SF, Doctor Who, politics, language, crosswords, things I like, things I'm interested in, things.
OK, they've erratumed it now.
November 25, 2025 at 9:28 AM
OK, they've erratumed it now.
Got it. No erratum though, which is a bit naughty.
(Also, it no longer makes sense. "Plus ça change"? When did you last see a TV presenter in a trilby?)
(Also, it no longer makes sense. "Plus ça change"? When did you last see a TV presenter in a trilby?)
November 25, 2025 at 8:16 AM
Got it. No erratum though, which is a bit naughty.
(Also, it no longer makes sense. "Plus ça change"? When did you last see a TV presenter in a trilby?)
(Also, it no longer makes sense. "Plus ça change"? When did you last see a TV presenter in a trilby?)
A movie that takes place where you're from.
November 23, 2025 at 8:35 PM
A movie that takes place where you're from.
In The Story & the Engine, the Doctor refutes the Barber's claim to be Anansi, Dionysus, Sága, Bastet and Loki with personal memories of the first four. He leaves out Loki: a hybrid trickster, liar and shapeshifter, normally male but sometimes female, who lives among gods but isn't one of them. Hmm.
November 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM
In The Story & the Engine, the Doctor refutes the Barber's claim to be Anansi, Dionysus, Sága, Bastet and Loki with personal memories of the first four. He leaves out Loki: a hybrid trickster, liar and shapeshifter, normally male but sometimes female, who lives among gods but isn't one of them. Hmm.
Good God. How can this not be a parody?
November 17, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Good God. How can this not be a parody?
Based solely on what they say and do onscreen, Ruby and Belinda seem to be the first long-term female companions to be exclusively opposite-sex-oriented since Amy.
(And even Amy wasn't impervious to her time-travelling self in "Space" / "Time". So possibly the first since the first RTD era.)
(And even Amy wasn't impervious to her time-travelling self in "Space" / "Time". So possibly the first since the first RTD era.)
November 14, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Based solely on what they say and do onscreen, Ruby and Belinda seem to be the first long-term female companions to be exclusively opposite-sex-oriented since Amy.
(And even Amy wasn't impervious to her time-travelling self in "Space" / "Time". So possibly the first since the first RTD era.)
(And even Amy wasn't impervious to her time-travelling self in "Space" / "Time". So possibly the first since the first RTD era.)
Repost with an iconic fictional band (if you feel like it)
![Text from the BBC TV series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, reading:
NOISE LEVELS
DISASTER AREA
DISASTER AREA, A PLUTONIUM ROCK GAND FROM THE GAGRALACKA MIND ZONES ARE GENERALLY
[Nothing beside remains.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3dxhm5kyfttpsxahprd67u7m/bafkreiftyocflrczjbri5jtbcxihxml5d6lxgog2gvcktsmggcu3uzy74q@jpeg)
November 12, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Repost with an iconic fictional band (if you feel like it)
November 9, 2025 at 6:25 PM
I guess it could just be that both the other attempts to revive the Sea Devils since their original story have been terrible.
November 5, 2025 at 11:18 AM
I guess it could just be that both the other attempts to revive the Sea Devils since their original story have been terrible.
I'm not seeing much interest on here in The War Between the Land and the Sea. Is this because Doctor Who fandom has turned on RTD like a scurry of rabid chipmunks, or because Doctor Who spinoffs are never very popular and are probably a bit of a bad idea? Or both?
November 5, 2025 at 11:15 AM
I'm not seeing much interest on here in The War Between the Land and the Sea. Is this because Doctor Who fandom has turned on RTD like a scurry of rabid chipmunks, or because Doctor Who spinoffs are never very popular and are probably a bit of a bad idea? Or both?
From December next year we should start to see the commissions from this year's open subs process coming through, covering the whole range of Doctor Who from Season 1 to Season 1.
November 4, 2025 at 1:07 PM
From December next year we should start to see the commissions from this year's open subs process coming through, covering the whole range of Doctor Who from Season 1 to Season 1.
The teen is now watching early X-Files. Which is a massive nostalgia blast for me, but crucially they seem to be really enjoying it as well.
October 31, 2025 at 9:39 PM
The teen is now watching early X-Files. Which is a massive nostalgia blast for me, but crucially they seem to be really enjoying it as well.
It always amuses me seeing Dan O'Bannon credited for creating the Xenomorph in Alien, because it reminds me he also wrote Dark Star and that we could have had a long-running sci-fi / horror franchise based around this alien instead.
October 25, 2025 at 9:19 AM
It always amuses me seeing Dan O'Bannon credited for creating the Xenomorph in Alien, because it reminds me he also wrote Dark Star and that we could have had a long-running sci-fi / horror franchise based around this alien instead.
If you see this, post a Frankenstein! *
* A specific point in the cultural web of more or less explicit reinterpretations of the archetypal figure Mary Shelley created, as someone writing a book on this Doctor Who story might have put it.
* A specific point in the cultural web of more or less explicit reinterpretations of the archetypal figure Mary Shelley created, as someone writing a book on this Doctor Who story might have put it.
October 25, 2025 at 8:57 AM
If you see this, post a Frankenstein! *
* A specific point in the cultural web of more or less explicit reinterpretations of the archetypal figure Mary Shelley created, as someone writing a book on this Doctor Who story might have put it.
* A specific point in the cultural web of more or less explicit reinterpretations of the archetypal figure Mary Shelley created, as someone writing a book on this Doctor Who story might have put it.
[Watching Doctor Who season 12, the teenager asks where they've seen Matt Lucas before.]
ME: Er, I dont know. You've never seen Casanova, have you?
TEEN: Is that the one with the Nazis? And they fly off at the end?
ME: Er, I dont know. You've never seen Casanova, have you?
TEEN: Is that the one with the Nazis? And they fly off at the end?
October 15, 2025 at 7:39 PM
[Watching Doctor Who season 12, the teenager asks where they've seen Matt Lucas before.]
ME: Er, I dont know. You've never seen Casanova, have you?
TEEN: Is that the one with the Nazis? And they fly off at the end?
ME: Er, I dont know. You've never seen Casanova, have you?
TEEN: Is that the one with the Nazis? And they fly off at the end?
A combination of activities last night has left me thinking it would be really cool to make a board game based on @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social's Southern Reach books. A bit like Wingspan, but with sanity checks.
October 15, 2025 at 8:40 AM
A combination of activities last night has left me thinking it would be really cool to make a board game based on @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social's Southern Reach books. A bit like Wingspan, but with sanity checks.
Speaking of colonialism in Doctor Who: "The planet that took me in, they were kind of posh. They'd use titles like the Doctor, or the Bishop, or the Rani, or the Conquistador." This line has to have been written to reflect Gatwa's experience as a refugee in Britain, surely?
October 11, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Speaking of colonialism in Doctor Who: "The planet that took me in, they were kind of posh. They'd use titles like the Doctor, or the Bishop, or the Rani, or the Conquistador." This line has to have been written to reflect Gatwa's experience as a refugee in Britain, surely?
I'm not going anywhere else with this particularly, but it's worth bearing in mind when rewatching these stories.
(I refuse to tie this in with the Master, the Doctor's opposite, greying-up as an Orientalist stereotype in Time-Flight, because it would just make the above sound silly.)
(I refuse to tie this in with the Master, the Doctor's opposite, greying-up as an Orientalist stereotype in Time-Flight, because it would just make the above sound silly.)
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
I'm not going anywhere else with this particularly, but it's worth bearing in mind when rewatching these stories.
(I refuse to tie this in with the Master, the Doctor's opposite, greying-up as an Orientalist stereotype in Time-Flight, because it would just make the above sound silly.)
(I refuse to tie this in with the Master, the Doctor's opposite, greying-up as an Orientalist stereotype in Time-Flight, because it would just make the above sound silly.)
To some extent this is a retrospectively imposed reading, of course -- the producer, directors and scriptwriters were all assuming Davison was a default white man, and making the programme accordingly -- but the actor knew. That puts a degree of self-awareness in the overall creative collaboration.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
To some extent this is a retrospectively imposed reading, of course -- the producer, directors and scriptwriters were all assuming Davison was a default white man, and making the programme accordingly -- but the actor knew. That puts a degree of self-awareness in the overall creative collaboration.
The characters around him often make assumptions about the Doctor's sympathies in stories like this. These expectations are usually confounded (the stories are broadly against colonialism, though they're not always very good at it), but this context could give those moments extra resonance.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
The characters around him often make assumptions about the Doctor's sympathies in stories like this. These expectations are usually confounded (the stories are broadly against colonialism, though they're not always very good at it), but this context could give those moments extra resonance.
In Black Orchid particularly, far from being in his element with the 1920s aristocrats, the Doctor would be just as much an outsider as the Native American, Latoni, if only they knew. In a story about the corruption of empire, where everyone's hiding something behind a facade, the hero is too.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
In Black Orchid particularly, far from being in his element with the 1920s aristocrats, the Doctor would be just as much an outsider as the Native American, Latoni, if only they knew. In a story about the corruption of empire, where everyone's hiding something behind a facade, the hero is too.
There's a shedload of colonialism in Davison's early stories. Aliens who've captured humans from historical cultures and make them eternally reenact their cultural rituals. Human colonists try to civilise a tribal culture that long ago outgrew its vastly sophisticated technologies.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
There's a shedload of colonialism in Davison's early stories. Aliens who've captured humans from historical cultures and make them eternally reenact their cultural rituals. Human colonists try to civilise a tribal culture that long ago outgrew its vastly sophisticated technologies.
But now that the Doctor has been Black, we can read his incarnation with this knowledge as a mixed-race (or, in some sense, partially Black) man passing as white, which potentially gives the cricket obsession and the Edwardian costume a very different significance.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
But now that the Doctor has been Black, we can read his incarnation with this knowledge as a mixed-race (or, in some sense, partially Black) man passing as white, which potentially gives the cricket obsession and the Edwardian costume a very different significance.
In 1981, Davison was a mixed-race actor who had the necessary looks to pass as white. His heritage was never a notable factor in his casting as the Doctor, as it undoubtedly would have been if he'd inherited a darker skin.
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
In 1981, Davison was a mixed-race actor who had the necessary looks to pass as white. His heritage was never a notable factor in his casting as the Doctor, as it undoubtedly would have been if he'd inherited a darker skin.
It occurs to me that the Doctor's polyethnic identity in recent times recontextualises Peter Davison's casting in quite an interesting way.
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
It occurs to me that the Doctor's polyethnic identity in recent times recontextualises Peter Davison's casting in quite an interesting way.
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)