The Doctor Who 2023 episodes (spoilers from the start)

So in anticipation for tomorrow’s first of the 2023 episodes, I tracked down and read the original Doctor Who three-part comic featuring the Meep (originally three parts in the UK, reprinted in issues 1 and 2 of the 1984 Marvel Doctor Who comic). The writing of the comic is…less than stellar. But it features the Meep, who says “meep meep” a lot, which jammed the song Beep Beep into my head, and if I have to suffer you should, too.

Here is a preview clip from the episode.

Are these episodes only available on Disney+ as part of the new agreement? Prior series were available in the US on BBC America, but that channel has devolved to the point that it has very little original content.

Yes, I think so. The first one comes out tomorrow morning.

Don’t feed it after midnight.

Stranger

Not a bad start with the first of the three 2023 episodes. It is remake of the comic and not a sequel with the comic concidered off-screen canon. I’d like to think that even if I hadn’t read the comic yesterday I would have realized that you can’t trust an alien that is too cute. I do think the binary vs non-binary thing at the end was a little precious, just a play on “no man can kill me” / “I am no man”.

I liked it – but quite a bit of that was because I have not seen a DW episode in years. It was pretty obvious that Donna would spill coffee on the control column (Chekov’s spill?).
If the hunters were really after Meep fur, wouldn’t be better to breed/clone Meeps rather than kill them?

Brian

The Meep’s cover story was that his species was being bred for their fur, but use of fur went out of fashion, so they were going to slaughter all of their stock. No explanation was offered on why they would go so aggressively against one escapee.

Russell T Davies is very good at big ideas, but not very good at having any of it make a lick of sense.

I’ll probably watch the trio of specials, reluctantly, but I’m not hopeful of enjoying them. They just seem too slick and charmless.

I found it to be a fun romp, which is really what Doctor Who should be. It was fun seeing Tennant and Tate in action again.

I read the Meep comic way back in 1980, when it first came out. Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons are legends in their own lunchtime, veterans of Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, and the story was a pretty faithful adaption of their 1980 comic.

The additions with Jason/Rose and Donna (BinaryBinaryBinaryBinary) were very clever, and resonate with me, since I have a nonbinary child.

So many stories that I first read on cheap pulp paper in comics many decades ago (The Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-man, Shazam, Loki, Thanos, Dark Phoenix) have been realised in modern times on TV and in movies, and it is nice to see UK comics getting the same treatment.

I thought those were the names I saw in the credits! Well, that explains everything.

Well, that was certainly a path to take. Do you think they are trying to keep the door open for guest appearances, possibly a spin-off series?

Okay, I wasn’t thinking big enough.

I liked all three David Tennant episodes and this one was the best of the three.

I’m not sure I get how bigeneration would mean that all previous Doctors are alive and active out there. Certainly just #10 is out there living with his new family.

The new Doctor made minimal impression on me. I think I will have to wait to see him entirely on his own to see what I think. I just hope he does a good job.

It does explain how Tom Baker can be a museum caretaker though.

It is interesting that he is 31 (and recently played a teenager) and therefore 5 years older than Matt Smith was when he started. Without googling I would have thought he was the youngest. And seeing the trailer for the Christmas episode with the new 19-year-old companion it made me think of this:

Is the Christmas companion his permanent first series companion?

I mean, maybe it hasn’t been explicitly stated, but it doesn’t seem like they are setting up a one-and-done character.

There have been a number of bad-ass reality warpers both on-screen and in comics/manga, but the Tiymaker’s dance battle scene has been bugging me for reminding me of a specific other scene. I finally realized that it was something vaguely remembered from Legion, and just now pinpointed it in episode 2x02.

(And I of course can’t correct the Toymaker typo because of the video embedding, but you get the point without wondering who this “Tiymaker” guy is.)