![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
January 14, 2024
January 14th, 2024 11:58It's snowing! First snow of the year! 🎉
This past week was mundanely busy. The semester started, so I spent syllabus week trying to get ahead; my annual performance review at work went alright and I got a satisfactory, which is better than I thought I was doing tbh!
Most importantly, I watched The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which is Susan's last episode except for specials, and god! What a brilliant serial. Compelling story, believable and sympathetic characters. I hated the end, but in the way I always hate the Doctor when he leaves his companions. His penchant for abandoning first before he can be abandoned is a core character trait across all his regenerations. I hope Ms. Flood from the new series turns out to be Susan, having found herself a TARDIS; whoever she is will be interesting, of course, but I think Susan was very ill-used and would love to see how she turned out. She was left on Earth unprepared for a life lived in order, abandoned by her grandfather on a war-torn planet because he thought her finding romantic love was and should be more important than her relationship with him. It took fourteen and a half regenerations for the Doctor to be remotely prepared to try living his life in one place in order; his thrusting that on Susan when she's a teenager who doesn't want it yet but eventually seems almost cruel in retrospect, with the subsequent 60 years of canon weighing on that 1964 episode. The Church on Ruby Road seems to promise that we'll get the Doctor thinking and learning about what family is this series. Obviously this is because of the Timeless Child stuff, but I hope that it also means he thinks about Susan, his granddaughter and his first companion.
This past week was mundanely busy. The semester started, so I spent syllabus week trying to get ahead; my annual performance review at work went alright and I got a satisfactory, which is better than I thought I was doing tbh!
Most importantly, I watched The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which is Susan's last episode except for specials, and god! What a brilliant serial. Compelling story, believable and sympathetic characters. I hated the end, but in the way I always hate the Doctor when he leaves his companions. His penchant for abandoning first before he can be abandoned is a core character trait across all his regenerations. I hope Ms. Flood from the new series turns out to be Susan, having found herself a TARDIS; whoever she is will be interesting, of course, but I think Susan was very ill-used and would love to see how she turned out. She was left on Earth unprepared for a life lived in order, abandoned by her grandfather on a war-torn planet because he thought her finding romantic love was and should be more important than her relationship with him. It took fourteen and a half regenerations for the Doctor to be remotely prepared to try living his life in one place in order; his thrusting that on Susan when she's a teenager who doesn't want it yet but eventually seems almost cruel in retrospect, with the subsequent 60 years of canon weighing on that 1964 episode. The Church on Ruby Road seems to promise that we'll get the Doctor thinking and learning about what family is this series. Obviously this is because of the Timeless Child stuff, but I hope that it also means he thinks about Susan, his granddaughter and his first companion.
