 |
From left to right: Degenerate space horrors, Alien Policemen, Space Nazis (in Exterminating brown and Assimilating Silver), Rational Octopus People, Self-Replicating Miscalculation, the One Good Dalek and the man from Gallifrey himself, courtesy of SlightlyTwisted. |
This is not a Nerd Rant Or Yes, it fucking Is!
UrbanDictionary.com
defines nerd rage as:
Oh thank God
I suck at video games, then. I don’t play well with other people and when I do
play on my own, I cheat up the ass
 |
| Because I didn’t pay 700 euros for a pc only so I could fucking lose to games I bought. |
2) When someone who is especially well-versed in a certain area of academia sees someone who is not as well-versed exhibiting a rather large amount of brain-farting and idiocy in regards to said area of academia.
Also
excluded, since I am hardly versed in as much areas of academic knowledge as
I’d wish I were and am therefore unable to make someone cry over virtue of my
higher knowledge quotient
 |
|
i.e. saying lots of stuff in rapid succession + yelling= intelligence (more
on that in another article) |
3) When a nerd sees a popular science-fiction movie, comic book, or other media source improperly quoted, misrepresented, or otherwise flamed.
Well shit, Urban Dictionary, you fucking got me square in the balls. I’m
guilty of this a thousand times over.
But first, a chance for rebuttal via confessing, blog-style!
 |
| “A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.” Albert Camus, putting it like a boss. |
I had never experienced this
deep, emotionally troubling state of nerd fixation in my life, until recently.
Sure I like Star Wars (and was saddened by how its own creator fucked it up the
ass) and I’m a fan of a number of comic book and fantasy series that have
caught my eye and set my imagination on fire, but for the most part I always
had some control and could approach them with at least the minimum of
objectivity.
 |
| Except for that one time when my brother trolled me by saying that Arya Stark had been killed and I almost punched him in the face. |
Sure, some series like Game of Thrones did push me into the fringes of Nerd
Rage, but I had never once felt honestly devastated or saddened by the turn a
series might take both in terms of quality and in content.
And then, a friend of mine told me I should watch Doctor Who and I made the
joyous mistake of heeding his advice for the very first time in my life.
And it…was…GLORIOUS!
 |
| Soulja Boy can’t dance like me-Actual David Tennant quote. |
Doctor Who is a BBC TV series that’s been running for 46 years and is
television and fictional history in the making. It’s the tale of the Doctor, an
alien from the planet Gallifrey, home of the Time Lords, who traverses time and
space and saves the day every single day of his life.
Now, Doctor Who wasn’t exactly an unknown, nerd-specific character here in
Greece, no sir. It might have taken us 10 years to pick up exactly what the
heck were those Transformer thingamajigies those ‘Mericans kept talking ‘bout
and we might have only have stumbled upon Spiderman in the 80’s, but we knew
our Doctor, yes sir!
 |
| This face and that music made me shit my pants when I was a kid. |
I remember watching my very first Doctor Who episode, The Genesis of the
Daleks and hiding under the living room couch whenever I heard the Dalek’s
screaming accusations against everything with a pulse and uncontained inside an
armor that looked like a peperpot armed with a mixer and an all-purpose
plunger.
 |
| You know, for 5 pounds and two shepherd’s pies between the entire production crew, the guys who came up with the Daleks did a marvelous job! |
I watched Dr Who again this
very year, after having sporadically watched a couple episodes now and then,
always scoffing at the low production value of the new series and pitting the
snazziness of a 46-year old scifi series that put the “FUCK YEAH” in time
travel against the cool, sleek, CGI exterior of Star Wars.
Yes, I was an idiot.
When I saw Dr Who this time, I
did it by taking two things into account:
1) The series’
budget was shit and so were the effects:
BBC special effects being
horrible or sub-par has always been a staple of every series it’s ever made.
Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a video that the BBC might have blocked for a
short while by the time of publication, because they’re kind silly that way:
As a result of point Number
one, though…
2) The series
compensates for its terrible effects by far superior writing, performances and
stories
Because when you’re a cult-hit
TV show that’s been out of it for nearly a decade and you know you don’t look
as pretty as those sluts over at Lucas’ studios and you need to regain your
lost audience and their grandchildren
 |
| Because if you knew Dr Who in 2005 before there was an Internet, you’re pretty old by now. |
Would be to present well
crafted and interesting stories.
3) Remember
what I said about performances? Well here’s two clips of the first two new
Doctors in the series, kicking your ass with acting:
Here’s Richard Eccleston, soothing an old woman while breaking your heart:
And here’s David Tennant, in an acting battle with Patrick Stewart, dressed
stupidly for the occassion:
BBC took a huge bet upon
resetting Doctor Who and went through the procedure that made the original run
of the series great. It had excellent leads, impossible stories and some
fantastic direction that really set my brain on fire.
And then, Matt Smith came.
 |
| I name thee Antichrist. |
Well, not Matt Smith. In and
of himself, Matt Smith couldn’t have done so much damage to this show. But Matt
Smith became the ‘Facebook Doctor’, the vanilla, handsome bastard that can’t
act half as well as his predecessors (Shakespearean actors both), working with
dumbed down storylines written by a man who neither gets nor wants to get Time
Travelling and how awesome works.
The current Doctor, though no
fault of his own, stars in a series that is a watered-down, dumbed-down version
of the previous one that I fell in love with.
Where on one hand there were
beings that only existed when you did not look at them, alien empires, the
incarnation of evil, the abduction of Earth, an army of all-assimilating and
all-encompassing man-machines and the best horror 10 pounds sterling can buy,
the new Doctor Who has this:
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you try to dumb down a
series so you can draw ‘the youngsters’. You do stupid shit, in the name of
becoming trendy or trippy or to make fun of the old tropes, but end up fucking
everything up.
I was originally going to play the devil’s advocate and try to defend the
Doctor Who series that has been built around Matt Smith, citing the influx of
new people that now watch the series, but you know what? I won’t. Wanna know
why?
BECAUSE I COULDN’T FUCKING WATCH MATT SMITH’S RUN FOR EVEN A SINGLE FUCKING
SEASON.
When I realized that the one scifi series I had loved had been tonally
ruined, I jumped the hate-wagon and I will not climb down until Matt Smith has
either been replaced by David Tennant
 |
| Yes, it is stupid of me to even think that would happen or that would have even been rational. |
Or that the series stops being so goddamn stupid and starts doing its best
to respect its audience by giving them the excellently written and brilliantly
presented stories it used to.
But until that happens, here’s me doing something about it: I recently read
that David Tennant is rumored to return to Doctor Who on account of the series’
50th anniversary. Now I know that if this is true then Russel T.
Davies has already creamed his pants twice over
 |
| Being the man who single-handedly made Dr Who awesome again and all that |
Which means that he’s way too tired to come up with a good segway to
restore the previous Doctor back in his place, without seriously violating the
continuity the series set up.
So, Mr Davies, this is my pitch on
MY AWESOME IDEA ABOUT THE SPECIAL THAT RESTORES THE TENTH DOCTOR IN THE
BEST NON-PLOT HOLE-Y WAY POSSIBLE
(Or it’s not
a fanfic, but goddamn you’re trying)
First, to explain the basic premise of returning to the 10th Doctor: it is a trope of the show that, while you can go back in Time through the use of the relative technology, you cannot go back in your personal timeline, which means that while you can, for example, visit the fall of Troy and punch Adolf Hitler in the ‘nads, you cannot tell yourself that investing in HD ready DVD players is going to be a terrible idea.
 |
| Hey fuck you, man! It’s a cheaper, more viable alternative to full HD, which will not be affordable for at least a decade! |
Another important trope of the Doctor Who series concerning time travel is
that certain instances or events in time are ‘time-locked’ which means that if
the circumstances that allow these events to come to pass are met, then these
events are unavoidable and inalterable.
For example: ridin’ your sparkling new time machine, you go back to the
Rattskeller, so you can kick Hitler in the balls halfway through his first
speech, aiming to defame him so he will lose his chance to rise to power (yes,
your plan kind of sucks).
But World War II is an event that is not only major, but has also served to
change mankind’s history forever by giving us access to atomic power. Which
means that any and all attempts on your behalf to kick Hitler in the balls will
fail or even if they succeed, they turn out not to have made any difference
whatsoever.
Lastly, back to the point of personal timelines, you can never even talk to
yourself or even return to your former self, since that would constitute a
paradox that would cause a titanic backlash that would envelop the entire
Universe in an attempt for Time to compensate for your bullshit paradoxical
behavior.
So, from the get-go, it is impossible for the series to return to a
previous Doctor. Even if it could (say, if the Doctor decided to restore to a
previous save state and keep playing the game with his current xp and items)
 |
| So he could unlock a sexier outfit for Rose, for example… |
It would be an inconceivably selfish and terrible thing for him to do,
completely contradicting his character. However, in the course of the series,
the Doctor has been known to get swept up in Time Vortices, trapped in temporal
anomalies
 |
| And in one case, teaming up with his past selves to save the Universe on his 20th anniversary. |
Which means that backsies, though unusual, are canonical in the Doctor Who continuum. This is good, because it
gives me that inch that I will use to stretch my credibility into the following
scenario, but then there’s the very next point:
The Tenth Doctor’s death.
The Tenth Doctor’s death was built as this great, monumental thing that
signified not only the wrapping up of every loose end set up by the Bad Wolf
and the Master story arcs, but also ended the universe that the original series
had set up.
In layman’s terms, the Tenth Doctor’s death was sad. If you want to bring
him back, you risk ruining that wonderful sadness and also alienating the
multitudes of new people into the current Doctor Who.
The scenario I will be describing deals with the merging of both Doctors’
timelines into one cohesive whole, brought about both by the Eleventh Doctor’s
timeline abuse (like when the bastard talks to himself and creates a series of
paradoxes as a result) in order to avoid alienating fans on both sides.
WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A SPOILER-HEAVY SECTOR. PLEASE COVER YOUR EARS MAKE ALARM NOISES WITH YOUR MOUTH UNTIL THE END OF THIS ARTICLE.
That said, I give you…THE CRUCIBLE
 |
| Bwooo-oooo weeee-ooo wididly wididly wididly woom! |
The Crucible is a three-part special with a threefold purpose:
1) Restore the tone of the series to its original form
2) Allow both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor to merge their timelines into one
cohesive whole
3) Do away with the silly, trippy crap that was added mostly because the
writers equate younger audiences with stupidity or something.
In order for it to work, the specials needs to reference the most
important, iconic parts of each Doctor’s run. That means that we need the
Eleventh Doctor’s Weeping Angels, Professor River Song and the Tenth Doctor’s
Master and the Time War. Primarily, these need to be done to appease both sides
of the fans, but also to allow for the epic disaster-cluster that will allow this
special to come about in the first place. Also, Daleks.
In the interest of avoiding a gigantic article and a fanscript (which I
have sworn myself to never do ever again)
 |
| Why yes, I have written a fanfic starring 30 different characters with a length of 100,000 words. No, you may never see it. |
I will outline the setup instead: according to Dr Who cannon, the Time War
(the war between Time Lord and Dalek that exists in its own time loop in
constant repetition that is to end with the annihilation of Gallifrey) has
already once broken into the current continuum, but stopped. Also, the Master
(Doctor Who’s archenemy, also a Time Lord) has been trapped within it.
Now, the Eleventh Doctor’s Weeping Angels (a considerably powerful foe,
creatures that feed off temporal energy) have already faced extinction once
already at the hands of the Doctor but have escaped by the granite of their
teeth. An event as monumental as the Time War spilling out into the universe
would allow them to restore themselves to their original strength.
The event of the Time War spilling out in all its destructive glory is a
temporal anomaly of such significance it should send out ripples across Time
and Space. An epic foreshadowing is in order. The death-cry of planets, the
swan song of quasars, history twisting and turning, becoming askew.
 |
| And a strange hour, set between 5pm and teatime, when nothing is quite the way it seems… |
The Doctor keeps finding himself in strange situations, familiarly
conversing with beings that he has not met yet, trapped inside the Odd Hour,
where he receives warning of a coming disaster. Caught up as he is in the
process of saving the Universe, he misses all the great clues until he receives
a warning from River Song, who has been trapped inside the Time War herself by
the end of this story arc.
This serves as a means to show that Time is not only breaking up, but as a
harbinger of doom for the Eleventh Doctor, who seeks to avoid this event but
finds himself drawn nearer to it every minute instead.
Meanwhile, the Weeping Angels (in reference to the episode Blink) have
commenced the invasion of Earth since ancient times. By the time the disaster
draws near, they have infiltrated human society by disguising themselves as
statues
 |
Counting down the days at the rate of a thousand sunsets a second… |
By the time the Doctor catches wind of what is going on, the Weeping Angels
are already on the move, picking off mankind. Amy Pond is one of the first
victims of the invasion, sent to a future time by a fluke of the coming
anomaly, where she meets professor River Song (now a survivor of the Time War
disaster) and attempt to contact the Doctor.
But how will the Time War spill out, exactly? The series has told us that
it exists in itself and cannot be unleashed. But what happens if one of them,
fearing for his life, decides to take the entire Universe with him in a vain
attempt to save his life?
 |
| Doom! Du-du-doom! Doom! Du-du-doom! |
Last time we saw the Master, he had voluntarily fought the President of
Gallifrey and flung himself inside the Time War. We also knew that he was not
an actual veteran of the War and that he was unprepared for the horrors that
the Daleks and Time Lords had unleashed upon each other during their centuries
of conflict.
This scenario assumes that the Master failed to kill the President, but escaped
capture. He has been stuck inside Hell, looking for a way to escape the
timelock and avoid certain death. Thus, the Master decides to take drastic
measures.
So the Master wants to escape because he’s scared shitless. He hopes that
the anomaly will draw the Doctor’s attention and perhaps he can steal his ship
so he can get away, no longer caring about the consequences. He’s seen terrible
things in that place, nightmares looping on and on and on.
So at this point in the story, the Weeping Angels, having fed off their
victims on Earth, are converging on the anomaly that, due to budget
constraints, takes place over London.
 |
| Worst. Place. Ever. |
Feeding off the coming disaster, the creatures grow in number and power, perpetuating
the disaster that has been engineered by the Master. River song and Amy try to
warn the Doctor, but by that time, it is already too late.
The first taste of the Time War begins to leak out into the Universe.
 |
| What this? This is just hor d’oeuvres. |
The weapons of the Daleks leak out first. The Nightmare Child, a sentient
black hole that screams with the voice of drowning infants. The Skarro
Degradations, gigantic Dalek dreadnoughts that eat planets and babble
blasphemous incantations, spitting nuclear fire from their mouths.
The Dalek fleet proper slips through, overtaking Earth in instants, locking
themselves in battle with the Weeping Angels. The Solar System is set ablaze,
then holds it breath as the Time Lords begin their exodus.
The Could-Have-Been King and the army of Neverwheres, a legion of beings
comprised of moments in time that could have been. Continuum-vores, Time Lord
weapons that eat history and excrete paradoxes, enter the fray.
The Doctor finds himself trapped in the war between the greatest forces of
the Universe once again. Clashing with the Master (who attempts to steal his TARDIS),
the Doctor decides to end this.
He directs River Song and Amy from their point in the future, leading them
to devastated Gallifrey that is being evacuated by the Time Lords. The women
try to warn him that the future is ending, but the Doctor will have none of it.
They try to explain that this was the bold move that finally killed him, but
the Doctor isn’t exactly known for his caution.
Now, if Doctor Who and Michio Kaku have taught me anything, if you want to
fix a hole in space time, you need a really big explosion.
 |
| Arigato, Professor Kaku. |
But this is an anomaly that threatens to annihilate Time. This means that
it needs power and to be specific, power far greater than anything the Time
Lords could have to offer. So how did the Master do it?
By tapping into the Nightmare Child. Using the power of a black hole
without the Dalek’s knowledge, he allowed the time loop that kept the War
trapped to be undone. So now, the Doctor needs to cross the fleet of the Dalek,
avoid fire by his own kind and fly inside the ultimate Dalek Weapon so he can
make thing right.
The Master overpowers the Doctor and is about to fly off with the TARDIS,
when he hears the message by Amy Pond:
“The future is disappearing! Doctor, can you hear me? There’s nothing here!
Doctor?”
The Master realizes that this action has been his greatest folly. He will
not survive this. In fact, he will take the entire universe with him. It’s what
leads him to help the Doctor and team up with him to save, well…everything.
Now imagine, if you will: a War that will end all Wars, spilling out across
Time and Space. Lasers blasting the living crap out of everything in sight.
Weapons that tear into reality herself and use her guts as makeshift weapons
and among it all…
 |
| A tiny blue box, our last and only hope. |
The TARDIS heads toward the nightmare Child, battered and bloodied,
trailing fire. The warring factions, having realized exactly what is going on,
turn their attention against it in an attempt to stop it.
The Master looks up at the Doctor, as Amy screams from her point in the
future, reality unraveling around her:
“Doctor, what is going on? What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry.”
The Master goes pale as he realizes how close to death he is. In a moment
of cowardice, he reaches out to wrest the controls from the Doctor, screaming:
“I don’t want to die! Not like this, not with you!”
The Doctor flies into the Nightmare Child and crashes into the Paradox
matrix inside it, smashing it. Both he and the Master are thrown out into the
Child’s event horizon and struggle to reach the interior of the TARDIS. The
Doctor tries to save the Master, but his enemy swats his hand away, letting
himself get dragged down into the gravity well instead.
Around them, the Time War anomaly collapses. The forces of Time Lord and
Dalek cease to be. The timeline begins to unravel, history folding like origami
and the Eleventh Doctor’s life passes before his eyes. His life becomes
blurred, changing.
Amy Pond and River Song are restored to their original positions, since the
future they had been sent to by the Angels no longer exists. The present
becomes re arranged and the Doctor stares with horror as the TARDIS is trapped
inside this flux, its own field the only thing keeping the change at bay.
This is a chance to show the Doctor truly and utterly scared. He does not
know what will happen. He knows that he isn’t going to die, but how much of him
is there going to be left? For better or worse, he likes his identity but to be
lost, to be swept under the rug like this disaster is more than he can bear.
It’s only when Amy and River Song restore communications with him that the
Doctor realizes that, even if he is lost, at least life will go on. He flings
open the doors of the TARDIS and lets Time do its work.
 |
| “I’m ready. Do your worst.” |
The Tenth and Eleventh Doctor’s timelines merge, change, flow back to the
point of regeneration and at the very last moment, as the Tenth Doctor begins
his transformation, the effect is turned back. He stands there, awash with
light and sees his future self dissipating, as he falls to his knees and collapses
on the floor, exhausted and very, very scared.
On the screen, we see a flicker of Amy and River Song. Outside, the Doctor
has landed on Earth, in Antarctica. He looks at the world around him and knows
that everything has changed. He can taste the historical distortions settling
and he feels scared to step outside his ship.
It’s during that moment of silence and terror that the reborn Tenth Doctor
hears the mad cackle of the Master coming from the screens. He barely has
enough time to react, as this happens:
 |
| Roll credits |
ATTENTION: YOU MAY NOW UNPLUG YOUR EARS AND CEASE MAKING ALARM NOISES WITH YOUR MOUTH. THANK YOU.
So, this is my pitch. If anyone reading this has any comments, suggestions
or simply needs to point out my gigantic plot holes, feel free to point so out
in the comments. I enjoyed this little ride and I am really looking forward to
doing so again, to be honest.
Addendum:
To ask for a series to undo its work is irrational. I do not like the Matt
Smith run of Doctor Who and this is an idea of mine intended to restore a great
actor who made the Doctor awesome, but it would be against my personal
responsibility as a writer to, say, undo three years’ worth of adventures for
the sake of my raging fanboy butthurt.
It has been proven, time and time again, that series or franchises that
cave in to popular demand and do their damnedest to soothe the cries of the
zealot multitudes end up turning into a jumble of fanservice and incoherency.
So, from me to you, BBC people who might be reading this: please do not
bring David Tennant back. It hurts me to thinkt hat the best Doctor won’t be
returning to the show, but that would violate both your continuity as well as
your credibility. Instead, focus on making the show as deep and inspired as
before and I promise I’ll do my damnedest to stop being such a bitch.
A man who only recently saw the light but loved it just as much,
Konstantine Paradias
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