{"id":104,"date":"2005-06-03T21:53:50","date_gmt":"2005-06-03T21:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blah\/?p=104"},"modified":"2018-07-15T12:05:46","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T19:05:46","slug":"woof_bloody_woo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/2005\/06\/woof_bloody_woo\/","title":{"rendered":"Woof bloody woof"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that it seems Bad Wolf<\/a> spoilers are creeping out of the BBC, it might be time to stick my neck out a bit before all is revealed.<\/p>\n

But first, a bit of appreciation, because the whole affair is a wonderful exercise in viral something-or-other. Not marketing, exactly. Just viral fun<\/em>, I think. Most viewers couldn’t care less, I’m sure, but for the geeks both sides of the camera it’s been a lovely game of observation, detection, and some fantastically extrapolated guesswork. It’s three-dimensional story-telling.<\/p>\n

That the Bad Wolf might be The Doctor himself \u2014 that the person we’ve been watching all through the series might have been somehow substituted or taken over, only for the true Doctor to prevail in the end \u2014 is an idea dazzling in its mind-fuckness, but way too daring for the programme’s remit. Likewise for Rose. And both of those despite the playful little red herrings that have been seeded: Rose as Red Riding-Hood and such.<\/p>\n

Nah, Captain Jack now seems obviously to be the key. His two years of missing memories were insufficiently motivated by the last story, and promise further utilisation. He’s a time traveller, which provides endless possibility. He lured The Doctor and Rose to his time and place on Earth, for reasons which might end up being even more complicated than the gothic gas-mask plot. He’s now with them, and would serve very nicely as a Trojan horse.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s him, though, otherwise his innocent soliloquising at the end of the last episode would have to have been implausibly meta. So he’s either carrying something, in the manner of Twin Peaks’ Bob; or he’s being controlled, quite possibly without his knowledge, by some other bad-guy.<\/p>\n

It’s the Bad Wolf because “Who<\/em>‘s afraid of the big bad wolf”, of course, not because it’s going to be particularly lupine. It’s something The Doctor is afraid of, probably connected with the Time War that’s been bubbling under as a bit of fertile back-story. Some foe from that war, who is using Captain Jack as a Trojan horse in order to get to The Doctor to kill him. That’s my guess, anyhow.<\/p>\n

I somehow doubt it’ll be an enemy that we’ve seen before. I actually hope it isn’t, because one thing this series has conspicuously missed is a threat with the weight and character to carry a prolonged narrative. Something notably humanoid, because that just makes for a better conflict. The Master would do, I suppose, but I have a hankering for a new Nemesis, and I have a feeling that Russell would too.<\/p>\n

If it is Jack, it might be nice to see him do some mean things to that ‘excellent bottom’ of Rose’s first. Hey, if bisexual characters are okay in kids’ programmes, a little bit of meanness to an excellent bottom would seem harmless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that it seems Bad Wolf spoilers are creeping out of the BBC, it might be time to stick my neck out a bit before all is revealed. But first, a bit of appreciation, because the whole affair is a wonderful exercise in viral something-or-other. Not marketing, exactly. Just viral fun, I think. Most viewers … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narrative","tag-doctor-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}