kindkit | "Night of the Doctor" (Reply)

I've so completely lost interest in New Who that I wasn't even going to watch this, but then I looked at someone's reaction post and saw that Paul McGann was in it.

It was wonderful to see him again as the Doctor, even just for six minutes.

But . . . all the Big Finish audio companions get a mention, so they're now at least kinda sorta TV canon too, I guess? But no EDA companions? No Anji, no Compassion, no Sam, NO FITZ????? This is wrong, people. Wrong. And it kind of irks me, as someone who is a huge EDA fan and doesn't really care about the Big Finish audios. It feels commercial, in the sense that the audios are still being made, and I assume the BBC gets a cut or a licensing fee or something, whereas there's no money in an out of print book series, so those companions aren't worth a mention.

*sigh*

As for the content of the mini-ep, it was a bit weird for me because, again, I come from a context of having read all the EDAs, in which the Doctor has already destroyed Gallifrey once in one terrible time war. The EDA version of Eight doesn't, for the most part, try to run away or avoid interfering/taking responsibility, and I can't quite make NotD Eight match up with that. But I am very interested to see both what John Hurt will do as the Doctor/Warrior, and where Moffat's going to take things (though with a lot more trepidation about the latter, because I no longer trust Moffat's writing, than the former).

The casting of John Hurt, like the casting of Peter Capaldi, does raise my hopes that Moffat's going to try to do something serious and interesting, and hopefully give us a rest from Flirty Heterosexual Doctor and the whole tedious "tee hee, every woman companion kisses the Doctor, tee hee" crap from the last several seasons. Peter Capaldi is old enough that no one's going to think it's cute to have teenage girls kissing him. I hope.