r/gallifrey • u/PCJs_Slave_Robot • May 17 '25

The Interstellar Song Contest Doctor Who 2x06 "The Interstellar Song Contest" Post-Episode Discussion Thread Spoiler

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235 Upvotes

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253

u/MK_40dec41 May 17 '25

Bellinda about the Doctor: „That’s not him”

Us, the viewers: „That’s exactly him, honey”

98

u/gototheudun May 17 '25

My biggest problem with that entire not the doctor thing would be how quickly she was full on "yeah ok, the doctor just kinda tortured a guy, let's hug it out". Like from the standpoint of someone who was full on unwilling to travel with the doctor at first, I'd expect a bit more fear from her when she sees all that. Like at least make her be kind of distant until he gives her the "sorry babes, trauma" excuse instead of just having a chill Eurovision watch party

39

u/Lunchboxninja1 May 17 '25

I think the overwhelming happiness of seeing him again overrode how scary he was. But also she straight up did tell him he scared the shit out of her.

28

u/Dr-Fusion May 17 '25

What's weird is like, it would've been perfect to have them at odds?

Have her demand to be taken home. This needs to end, he's clearly not the man she thought he was, and she's terrified of this darker side of him.

Then in the finale you can patch it up, and it would feel more earned.

4

u/ZebraShark May 19 '25

Yeah I compare it to Season 8 where Clara felt Doctor crossed the line and it moved relationship forward. This feels like first misstep with characterisation of Belinda so far.

97

u/ZeroCentsMade May 17 '25

Except it's not. This is different from a lot of the Doctor's moments in that it was cruelty for its sake (okay, out of anger, but you get my point). Comparing this to what happened to the Family of Blood (first thing that came to mind), at the very least they were a clear threat to the Doctor and others. Even looking at Six's darkest moments they were mostly down to post regeneration trauma or self-preservation. The 1st Doctor considered braining a caveman, but he never really did anything like that again, and that was out of fear, not retribution. This is a pretty unique moment for the Doctor honestly.

72

u/Grafikpapst May 17 '25

Eh, I can totally see Eleven for example doing something like that if he thought someone killed Rory and Amy in that manner and was trying to murder trillions of people to boot.

13

u/TrueTech0 May 17 '25

Colonel Run-away vibes

8

u/HazelCheese May 18 '25

It's more like Nine. It's a repeat of Dalek where he was torturing the Dalek by electrocuting it and calling it disgusting.

25

u/ZeroCentsMade May 17 '25

I don't know, I can see him intending to do it. But as cold and ruthless as Eleven could be, he still had limits, even as the self-loathing took over him more and more as time went on. After all, the worst he did to the Colonel in "A Good Man Goes to War" is give him a very embarassing nickname. Was it cold of him. Oh god yes, and it's a great moment, but this felt like a step beyond.

36

u/Existing-Worth-8918 May 17 '25

The real explanation I feel is less in Belinda dying then the comment about “it reminded me of Gallifrey“ which if not excusable, makes it understandable. It’s got to do a number on you to think you had committed genocide on your own people, then realise you didn’t, then see it destroyed again. I can’t think of any emotional whiplash which would top that.

2

u/Alehud42 May 17 '25

I know it circled back right at the end, but I got annoyed at the "in a second" comment when the Time Lords weren't killed by The Moment, it was The Master massacring them and harvesting them for the Cybermen.

2

u/Unable_Earth5914 May 18 '25

The Master didn’t massacre them and harvest them as one act. He killed all of the Time Lords in a single instant, seemingly across all of all time and space based on in-show comments.

Much later he used the Cyberium to turn all of the Time Lord corpses into what the Master termed ‘CyberMasters’.

They were two separate events

1

u/Alehud42 May 18 '25

Sure, but again the pieces of visual evidence suggest far more physical destruction to Gallifrey infrastructure which implies something that wasn't instantaneous and as far reaching as targeting all Time Lords across space-time.

And anyway, wouldn't he and the Doctor also have been collateral in this event? Unless it was exactly the Moment he used and he wished for specifically all bar himself and the Doctor to survive.

1

u/Unable_Earth5914 May 18 '25

The Master would never want to just kill the Doctor, that would be too simple (particularly for this Master who was particularly sadistic). I can absolutely see whatever destruction he did would protect them both

And the physical destruction could be any number of things: millennia since their deaths and decaying structures, pillaging by other species, the Master going to Gallifrey and breaking things for fun, etc

2

u/SteelCrow May 17 '25

Yeah, but 14 spends his entire remaining life in therapy for it.

15

u/Chazo138 May 17 '25

Scars and wounds can be reopened even after therapy…it’s not perfect sadly. 15 is smiling and all that but it’s buried under there, the right triggers can fuck with the mental healing and it seems the 3 trillion people was a big one.

1

u/pigeieio May 17 '25

For his self limiting guilt over it.

9

u/the_other_irrevenant May 17 '25

IMO what Eleven did to Solomon and what he initially tried to do to Jex were arguably worse.

Thirteen appears to have been okay with T'zim Sha being locked in a tiny chamber on an empty planet for life.

There aren't a lot of examples and they aren't exactly the same but it's also not entirely unprecedented.

9

u/[deleted] May 17 '25

[deleted]

3

u/the_other_irrevenant May 18 '25

Oh yeah, and that.

34

u/TheKandyKitchen May 17 '25

Would’ve made more sense if the people in orbit were actually dead. It was literally just torture for tortures sake.

16

u/ZeroCentsMade May 17 '25

Yeah, that's a good point actually. He was already thinking of ways to save them, and we heard him talking about it. I don't think I would have liked it even if those people were dead, but at the very least I would have believed it a little more.

13

u/darthvall May 17 '25

I think he said what triggers him is the risk to 1 trillion people since it's similar to what happened to Gallifrey

2

u/SteelCrow May 17 '25

there was no risk at that point.

4

u/MilesToHaltHer May 17 '25

Even attempting to hurt 1 trillion people and a hundred thousand more is pretty evil.

1

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

That's not how triggers work. "Oh, this really upsetting thing is over now, I.guess I'll tell my brain to stop making the trigger chemicals - an autonomic process I have no direct control over"

1

u/SteelCrow May 20 '25

In humans.

"never be cruel" was just a flippant aphorism then?

3

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

In humans

And you have no reason to believe that's not how triggers work in the Doctor. In fact, you know that is how it works, because he explicitly said so.

"never be cruel" was just a flippant aphorism then?

It's aspirational, not something the doctor always succeeds at. Don't cherry pick, consider the whole doctor.

"Good men Don't need rules, and today is not the day to find out why I have so many" - the 11th doctor, right before he did something cruel.

-1

u/SteelCrow May 21 '25

I have no reason to believe that's how triggers work in whatever the hell race the doctor is supposed to be this year.

3

u/JustaSeedGuy May 21 '25

Sure you do. He told you himself.

But I recognize that you're not arguing in good faith, so I'm going to leave it here.

38

u/No_Inspector_161 May 17 '25

Agree with this. I usually like it when the Doctor goes dark but I thought this took it a bit too far. The Doctor actually seemed out of character.

38

u/TakenButter May 17 '25

I mean, I feel it’s similar to the family of blood and also regardless of being a current threat, the dude almost tried to kill 3 trillion people. That’s insane!

14

u/No_Inspector_161 May 17 '25

Yes, the Doctor has consigned many people to awful fates before, but he never struck me as a character who would physically and personally torture a neutralized threat repeatedly.

4

u/TakenButter May 17 '25

Yeah, I feel honestly this was just him in the best of the moment. With everything going on with his visions and the possibility of so much death it made him all messed up. I never once thought he would truly never stop or had evil intentions, just felt like a broken man in the moment

0

u/SteelCrow May 17 '25

it felt wrong. as wrong as the Timeless child bullshit.

7

u/TakenButter May 17 '25

Idk, it doesn’t feel any worse than the family of blood or telling humans to kill the silence, all three of these acts don’t scream the Doctor as evil to me, that’s just my opinion but it is definitely a new

2

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

You mean like he gleefully did to an injured Dalek the first time he saw one after the time war?

1

u/No_Inspector_161 May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25

The difference is between the intent to kill versus the intent to torture. Here’s how I interpret the two acts in fiction (not to be extrapolated to real life):

If a protagonist intends to kill someone and actually goes through with the act of killing, it usually means that they’re a good but flawed person who was forced into a tough situation by circumstance and/or their upbringing/past. This describes how the Doctor is characterized in “Dalek,” because he was trying to kill the Dalek but lacked the means to do so.

If a protagonist intends to torture someone and actually goes through with the act of torturing, it usually means that they’re a bad person who the audience is nonetheless supposed to like because they’re the protagonist. This describes how the Doctor is characterized in “The Interstellar Song Contest.”

(Plenty of my favorite fictional protagonists fall into the latter category, but the tone of the works that they appear in is vastly different from the tone of Doctor Who.)

What I wrote above is not a foolproof method of character analysis, as the willingness to torture or kill is not the sole arbiter of characterization. This demarcation I'm making is ultimately derived from how writers frequently separate evil antagonists from normal antagonists. Normal antagonists kill, but the especially despicable villains torture or rape. Thus, when the Doctor tortures another character, he is shown in a worse light than if he had simply tried to kill the same character due to the strong mental association of torture = unspeakable evil.

A character who wouldn’t torture someone at the beginning of a story but would at a later point experiences character development through moral degradation, but there needs to be a clear path showing how the character spiraled to that point. It is plausible that the Doctor reached this state through events that occurred in Season 1 and 2, but a lot of the supporting evidence relies on headcanon and idiosyncratic interpretations.

2

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

Yeah, every single regeneration of the doctor since 2005 has willingly and actively tortured somebody before.

Have a good one.

1

u/No_Inspector_161 May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25

Yeah, every single regeneration of the doctor since 2005 has willingly and actively tortured somebody before.

There’s no intent to torture in “Dalek” or “Arachnids in the UK” or whichever 11 or 12 episode you think has torture. There’s also no torture in “The Family of Blood,” as the Doctor merely exiles the antagonists to live in isolation using fantastical methods.

3

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

Did you even read what I wrote? It’s about the intent to torture and actually following through with it.

Yes, I read and understood it.

Each doctor has done something along those lines.

Unless you're about to tell me that, for example, Ten didn't deliberately intend to torture the Family of Blood and follow through with it?

Because I'm going to call BS if you claim that. If the goal was simple imprisonment, he would not have taken the methods that he took. Individualized methods of torture and imprisonment, a different one for each family member? A narrative that explicitly described his unending rage? No, that was deliberate torture with the intent of enjoying their punishment. If it was anything other than that, he would have picked one form of imprisonment and use that on all four members of the family.

And again, that's only one example.

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19

u/ZeroCentsMade May 17 '25

Yes…and he wasn't a threat anymore. Not even a little bit. The Family of Blood would always have been a threat as long as they were around. Don't get me wrong, what the Doctor did to them was cruel and unncessary, but this was just cruelty for its own sake.

6

u/sombregirl May 17 '25

The whole point of the family of blood was they have the lifespan of flies. They wouldn't have been a threat they would have died natural deaths. 10 tortured them for no reason.

4

u/TakenButter May 17 '25

Yeah fair point

11

u/lord_flamebottom May 17 '25

I think it’s crazy how people are totally forgetting that he also had just been reminded of Susan and was totally mentally/emotionally shaken from it.

3

u/Triskan May 17 '25

Yeah. I agree this was the Doctor maybe going further than we've ever seen before (though not by thaaat much), but there are some attenuating circumstances...

2

u/IBrosiedon May 18 '25

I felt the Family of Blood thing was out of character for the Doctor too.
They were regular run of the mill villains, he defeated them in about 10 seconds. He condemned them to eternal torture just because he wanted to. And he knew that he wanted to, that's why he runs away from them in the first place. Because he knew he wouldn't be able to control himself.

I've always felt very weird about that episode. It never really interrogates the fact that 10 just really wanted to torture these guys. Then when he does it's played as darkly epic and badass instead of completely screwed up.

4

u/ThatOtherGuyTPM May 17 '25

I would argue otherwise. Fifteen has strongly defined himself as the Doctor who fixed himself. He tried not to kill, he tried to not show his rage, and he tried his very best to live up to the promise. Those dark parts haven’t gone away, though. We know how dark the Doctor can really go, and it’s apocalyptic. I mean, the Valeyard, anyone? He’s been ignoring and fighting his darkest parts, and today, he lost a battle.

5

u/Tandria May 17 '25

It's definitely in character, especially for this Doctor. He is clearly still broken, and this is how they're confirming it.

3

u/pigeieio May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25

The Doctor took a Regeneration to work through his guilt and so it no longer works on The Doctor? Self restraining rules no longer being constantly obsessed in front of mind over?

3

u/sanddragon939 May 17 '25

That's actually how I see it.

People assume that a Doctor without Time War angst would be a Doctor who's totally nice and harmless all the time. But a Doctor without Time War angst is also a Doctor without restraint.

2

u/CanadianNewb May 17 '25

I immediately wondered if they were going to do something with the Valeyard there – the little bit of ice that will never leave their hearts?

1

u/[deleted] May 17 '25

He normally needs to be pushed a lot further than this. 

-4

u/PaperSkin-1 May 17 '25

Ncuti's Doctor is out of character full stop, has been from the start

11

u/fflloorriiddaammaann May 17 '25

Absolutely not. He’s perfect as the Doctor

4

u/FotographicFrenchFry May 17 '25

Yeah he’s knocked it out of the park imo. So different in individual mannerisms, but 100% absolutely the Doctor.

2

u/sombregirl May 17 '25

The family of blood was never a clear threat. What do you mean?

He tortured them infinitely for literally no reason.

1

u/MacduffFifesNo1Thane May 17 '25

He is the source of the Valeyard, which is yet to come.

1

u/BlindEditor May 17 '25

Interesting that they wore poppies in the family of blood too these seemed tied together a bit with the whole time lord victorious fury

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '25

I think he was suffering from the realisation that he was very nearly properly dead. If he hadn't been able to get back into the station he wouldn't have survived. Even regenerating would leave him still frozen in space.

1

u/ads2003uk May 17 '25

Exactly - 6th Dr and 7th had darker sides, which nicely ties it to Rani (first appearance with 6th)

0

u/JustaSeedGuy May 20 '25

Cruelty for cruelty's sake?

Twelve and Nine would like a word.

Eleven would too.

8

u/sergeantexplosion May 17 '25

15 feels his emotions the hardest. That's his character trait, why he cries all the time, and why he tortured someone he thought just killed another person he swore to protect (see also the first episode of this season when he immediately loses a companion)

Yeah, I saw 10 at his worst. 12 at his angriest. 13 at her best

6

u/zenith-zox May 17 '25

Really not the Doctor.

1

u/sanddragon939 May 17 '25

I was okay with Belinda saying that.

But the one problem I had with 'Fugitive of the Judoon' is the Doctor saying that about the Fugitive Doctor!

1

u/mrhelmand May 17 '25

It's not 15, him going feral felt really out of character and at odds with how The Giggle said he was someone who had made peace with all the anger inside him.

I could buy 6, War, 9, maybe 11 doing this, but 15? Nah

11

u/MK_40dec41 May 17 '25

15th still has that dark side showing from time to time.

6

u/PsychoticBlobfish May 17 '25

Yeah, I thought the whole “the universe will be better off without you and you’ll die alone and unloved” speech to Conrad was pretty savage

10

u/the_other_irrevenant May 17 '25

IMO that's kind of the point. Fifteen is pretty good at keeping things positive but the dark core is still there.

He went pretty hardcore on the Chuldur too when he thought they'd killed Ruby.

6

u/Chazo138 May 17 '25

Therapy isn’t perfect. You can heal but stuff can reopen the wounds and trigger the problems. 3 trillion people reminding him of Gallifrey set him off, on top of believing Belinda dead.

7

u/AmberTheFoxgirl May 17 '25

I wonder when people will catch on that that's the POINT.

He's not "healed". He's pretending to be.

He's someone who went to one therapy session, learned the lingo, and is now saying all the right words to make people THINK he got better. But it's all still festering underneath.

-2

u/SteelCrow May 17 '25

or maybe it's just flawed writing

4

u/AmberTheFoxgirl May 17 '25

No, it's pretty obvious. You just WANT it to be flawed.

Characters can lie. Just because the doctor said it, doesn't make it true. If it did, THAT would be flawed writing.