I'm actually low key excited for this, and I'm not the biggest fan of the Big Finish audios. But any Susan material after last season's letdown is welcome!

Also, I find it amusing that Eccleston stars in a semiofficial holiday offering after the sacking of Russell T Davies, Jane Tranter, Phil Collinson, and Julie Gardner ✊😅

The episode never ended, Eccleston was secretly incumbent Doctor all these years. Good job, Jagrafess!

Geez, who'd've imagined thinking before you speak could have saved you all of that backpedaling.

Oh! Oh! It gets better!

[After failing at running comic shops as well,] Wilhite started attending Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Humble in 1989 and wrote a Christian memoir looking back over his involvement in comics and gaming. In it, he warns readers about the dangers of occult activities like playing Dungeons & Dragons or watching horror movies.

Apparently all his failures were not due to his own shortcomings, but signs from god to stay away from all of that occult scifi stuff or whatever.

There's also a bit of info in this Houston Press article from 2014:

In 1982 there was supposed to be a con to end all cons here in Houston. And there was, but not in a good way. It was billed as the Ultimate Fantasy, a product paired with the respected name of Houstoncon, which had been providing a quality and successful con experience in the city since 1967.

Thereafter it would be known as the Con of Wrath, or the Ultimate Fiasco, and its failure is the stuff of geek song and legend.

[…]

Ultimate Fantasy was ambitious even by today’s standards. It was to be a huge stage show hosted in the Summit and featuring a rotating stage and a laser light display. The guests would be most of the stars of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, who would re-enact parts of the film. Nothing like it had ever been done before, and Wilhite was convinced he could pull it off.

So convinced, actually, that he got several investors to mortgage their houses. Billboards went up all over the city. Ads appeared in TV Guide and Starlog. Wilhite believed that Ultimate Fantasy and the associated Houstoncon at the Shamrock Hotel would draw 10,000 people, including Trekkies, from as far away as Japan and Europe.

Organizers needed 5,000 people just to break even. Two months before the event, barely 400 presale tickets had been sold.

[…]

When the stars of the convention appeared, they found out that their hotel rooms hadn’t been paid for. They were forced to pay out of their own pockets.

As the con progressed, it became apparent that the thousands of attendees needed would not appear. Vendors and venue realized that they were not going to be paid. Shamrock management contacted all the dealers in the hotel and told them that unless the remaining balance was collected by that evening, they would all be thrown out. They passed the hat to keep the doors open and hoped to sell enough to recoup their losses.

And Jerry Wilhite had disappeared. No one could find him. Or any of the money that was supposed to materialize. With him he took Houston’s reputation as a place for comics and science fiction pop-culture acceptance and celebration. Word went out from guests and dealers alike to avoid the city. The people in Houston didn’t know what they were doing.

[Edited to add source link]

They all sound interesting, I think. A Dalek four-parter, too, at least in theory. The maddening part is, this shows that Davies and Bad Wolf had season 3 planned out, far enough to commission scripts — without any season order from the BBC or its partner.

I do hope these can be retooled for a future series, I'm always up for an abstract space horror (yes, even "Sleep no more"). And I've seen many fans wishing for Jack Thorne as show runner, so it would be interesting to see his take on the Doctor.

What I get from the memoir excerpts so far is that Davies does a very rosy revision of the story, and dangling these could've-beens to distract from that. Elsewhere he's pretending "The reality war" didn't need a rewrite and extensive reshoots to accommodate Gatwa's exit — "oh, we knew Ncuti was leaving".

Really? Because as of October 2024 Gatwa thought he was going to shoot s3 the following year. He said as much on the Graham Norton show. I'm not buying much of RTD's version to be honest.

Not that it matters of course, there will be a new production soon enough. But the season that never materialised will probably haunt the fandom — perhaps the general viewership — for a while.

What? Oh, yes. Sure, "never" 🤔😅

Pinning this for when the BBC picks their choice to lead the next Who production, so we can kvetch over which of the also-rans would have been better, akshually 😂

I guess you don't, though I did repeatedly explain how it relates 🤷

Have a nice day.

It's really fairly straightforward within the show's established mechanics, as I explained. The Doctor is chameleon arched into Timelord physiology, so can only regenerate as far as the latest "extra" cycle allows. "John Smith" would have died of old age, too, if he hadn't opened the fob watch and become the Doctor again.

But you're right that it will ultimately be determined by the whim and/or requirements of any future writer who'll dust that plotline off down the line.

As before, "Human nature"/"Family of blood", yes.

I can't help but wonder if J. Michael Straczynski has thrown his hat in the ring

AFAIK he did, to the extent that he as an individual can: he posted on social media that he was interested. [Edit: here's a source]

If he is (or has since become) associated with a UK production company eligible for the tender, I haven't heard about it. But then, we wouldn't know unless somebody at that company or at the BBC let it slip.

Do comics do ghost writers?

I mean, there is the Marvel Method where Stan Lee would brainstorm with artists, let them go off and do the brunt of the work, and take a writing credit for filling in dialogue.

More to the point, I guess nobody has as much head canon about Dr Crusher as McFadden. She's spent decades creating back story for character motivation where it may not have existed on the scripted page. As I understand it that's pretty much par for the course.

I'm pretty sure IDW have "support writers" in staff to make those ideas conform to industrial narrative standards and formatting...

Yeah, and as long as the timeless child's "essence" is under wraps in a fob watch, deep in the TARDIS, the Doctor remains Timelord and the regeneration limit stands ... ostensibly, but nobody cared to define it this time around, so it might as well not, until it's needed for one story or other.

Does it, though? In "Heaven sent" Rassilon isn't even sure how many regenerations they'd given the Doctor.

The timeless child might have indefinite regenerations, but if they were chameleon arched into a Timelord, that would be down to a genetic level, so regeneration cycles still count. In "Human nature"/"Family of Blood" John Smith is human through and through.

True. And can she transform all of that to an arresting comics story? We don't know.

Yeah, and that infrastructure is required in the invitation to tender, right? On the plus side, that could mean he might focus on the writing and have an existing entity do all the business stuff. I dunno.

That was explained during Moffat's run, though. Specifically Matt Smiths last episode.

If nobody choose to do anything with that plot again, or they do and it still doesn't stick — I hope this will become the standard response.

I thought it would be an advantage for the show to have a Director General who's a Doctor Who fan... but I guess I willingly overlooked that he's also a tech bro 🙄

All of that utopian nonsense about "enabling diverse voices" and "allowing more creative risk" is so clearly the exact opposite of what's happening with "AI". Instead, 200,000 American creatives have lost their jobs in the four year period since the first ”generative AI" models were released.

Actual creativity, craft, and imagination is being eliminated from the equation of media production as that trend continues to develop worldwide. Of course, that would sound A-okay to a former Google exec, but it paints a very bloody dire picture for future productions.