Sorry, it must be dusty in here..

December 10, 2013 3:36 PM

Two Turkish girls react to seeing [SPOILER REDACTED] in "Day Of The Doctor"
posted by mediocre (49 comments total)

I am not one to give much of my time to so-called "reaction videos", they generally seem self indulgent to me. And often seem straight up staged, as the whole concept hinges on the idea that people are filming themselves (or others) as they watch something. But something about this one, the unbridled enthusiasm, the squeals, the way they reach out for each other to hold hands in this intensely emotional moment for them.. it just gets to me.
posted by mediocre at 3:36 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Spoilers, damn your eyes!
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:37 PM on December 10, 2013

Oh come on, this was transmitted weeks ago. And was spoiled by Baker himself before that, I think the grace period for spoiler warnings has come and gone.
posted by mediocre at 3:39 PM on December 10, 2013 [6 favorites]

I love when they curse Steven Moffat when they think Tom Baker isn't going to make an appearance.
posted by the jam at 3:50 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yeah, spoiler. Thanks for that. No jelly babies for you.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 3:54 PM on December 10, 2013

Christ.. okay Mods. If you could please edit the line to read "Two Turkish girls reach to seeing [SPOILER REDACTED] in "Day Of The Doctor" I would appreciate it. Thank you, and sorry for spoiling it for others.
posted by mediocre at 4:00 PM on December 10, 2013

I absolutely lost my shit when I heard Tom Baker's voice. These girls are my people.
posted by vibrotronica at 4:01 PM on December 10, 2013 [6 favorites]

Loved that they brought Baker back for that scene.

He was the longest running and, for many, quintessential Doctor. He's sharing the scene and the character with Matt Smith, who was born one year after he left the role. That's some pretty fucking cool time travel right there.
posted by justkevin at 4:02 PM on December 10, 2013 [11 favorites]

I went to see this in a packed theater with other Whovians and I've never had as much fun in a movie theater... when Baker appeared (and come on, who hadn't heard that he was making a cameo?), I found myself getting a little emotional. Christ, I'm 42 years old, and have only recently started watching the modern Who episodes, but once that show captures your heart, you're ALL IN...
posted by newfers at 4:04 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

come on, who hadn't heard that he was making a cameo?

Uh....me? I resolutely avoided spoilers.

I also wasn't even really a Whovian until the re-launch and all I remembered of the Baker era was that the opening credits freaked me out and I never watched. But still, when that voice rang out, and you saw Matt Smith looking at him, that was still enough to get my heart rate speeding up just a bit and made me nudge my friend and sputter, "wait, that's....is that....it's...."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:10 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Tom Baker is the only Doctor for some of us.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:12 PM on December 10, 2013 [13 favorites]

I love that these girls are far to young for the fourth Doctor to have been the current Doctor when they were growing up (in fact, they are probably young enough that they could be my kids), and yet they instinctively recognize that Tom Baker is the best Doctor. Were the Tom Baker episodes shown on Turkish television for a much longer period than in other countries? Did a parent make them watch those episodes? It doesn't matter. They get it. My hearts have grown three sizes today.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:21 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

This is just fab.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:23 PM on December 10, 2013

"What the fuck is wrong with Fourth's face?"

It was the wax dummy from "The Five Doctors"
posted by the_artificer at 4:29 PM on December 10, 2013

I can't say my reaction was any different. Watching this made me tear up a little.

Are you happy, inner eight year old? You own me.
posted by bwerdmuller at 4:35 PM on December 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

To be fair, I do understand the importance of not casually spoiling things. When "Night Of The Doctor" was released online, io9 linked to it with a spoiler in the headline. It was changed before I ever saw it, but the pileon that happened in the comments section was massive. And I am VERY glad that I saw NOTD without having anything about it spoiled because I had a serious hyperventilating, holyshitholyshitholyshit reaction that I could not have possibly enjoyed had I know anything about it.

I think some sort of braintrust of mods, admins, and other such types from some of the more popular entertainment blogs should conclave and devise an official spoiler timeline. When it is okay to spoil completely and without warning, when is is okay to spoil with warning, when it is not at all okay to spoil anything, etc.
posted by mediocre at 4:36 PM on December 10, 2013

I also caught the 50th Anniversary program in the theater. I loved that they kept Baker offscreen for his first couple of lines. I'd heard he was doing a cameo too, but when that voice sounded over the speakers, the reaction was electric (mine, and everyone else in the theater -- even my daughters, who are huge fans of the new series, have seen enough of the old episodes to recognize him).
posted by Gelatin at 4:46 PM on December 10, 2013

Tom Baker really needs to be in more things.

Maybe they can cast him as Obi Wan's long lost and slightly batty brother in the new Star Wars sequels?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:47 PM on December 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

"My, what wonderful stormtroopers you have! They're so violent!"

I'd pay to see that multiple times in the theater.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:50 PM on December 10, 2013 [14 favorites]

Mod note: Things rendered redacty-wacty, per request. Carry on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:54 PM on December 10, 2013 [11 favorites]

I saw this slogan on a T-shirt once: "You never forget your first Doctor."
posted by Gelatin at 4:54 PM on December 10, 2013 [6 favorites]

If you're concerned about what happened to the other missing doctors, you might want to spend a half hour with The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:57 PM on December 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

After watching the scene again, I think if Tom Baker isn't cast as the new trilogy's sage mentor type character, the Star Wars sequels will be dead to me.

Apparently he was offered a role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and turned it down because he didn't want to travel to New Zealand. With Episode VII filming at Pinewood there's no excuse for him not to be in it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:52 PM on December 10, 2013

Those girls are adorable nerds, and I hope they quickly learn to kick ass and take over the universe.
posted by angrycat at 6:03 PM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I saw this slogan on a T-shirt once: "You never forget your first Doctor."

This may explain my obsession with David Tennant
posted by angrycat at 6:04 PM on December 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

See, I don't like the "you never forget your first Doctor" because technically mine was Eccleston....but I soooooo prefer Tennant. And Smith. And this feature showing them together made me incredibly pleased and geeked out to no end.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:53 PM on December 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, mine was Eccleston too, and I definitely have a soft spot for him (also for his non-sci-fi work, too) over Tennant and Smith -- fine doctors, both of them, but ... Chris was and is awesome.
posted by northtwilight at 7:29 PM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

The Ninth Doctor is fantastic. It's a shame that that bridge has been burned.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:52 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Fourth was technically my first, although I wasn't really a regular Who watcher until NuWho. So, maybe the Ninth was "really" my first.

That said, I do remember seeing the Seventh's Remembrance of the Daleks as a very little kid, and it scared the living shit out of me. However, at the time, I had no idea what it was, so I just ran away from the room. I remember asking my dad what that...thing...was, and he told me that it was Doctor Who. I said it was creepy, and he said I was right.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:55 PM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

My first doctor was the first doctor - all I remember about him was being very upset (I was 4) over the transformation.

But David Tennant is my favorite...

Someone described Doctor Who as being watched by a generation of British schoolkids from behind the sofa. That was literally accurate for me. :-D
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:37 PM on December 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

I hope there's also video of later, when they watched it for the second or third time, and realized that when Sciencey was cornered and telling herself "the Doctor will save me, the Doctor will save me", she might not have meant 11, she might have meant The Curator...the one who gave her that scarf.
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:01 PM on December 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Spoiler RETRACTED not "redacted." To "redact" is to revise, as for publication.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:00 PM on December 10, 2013

My first Doctor was Peter Davison, and yes, he's my personal favorite. But I can't dispute the primacy of Tom Baker in terms of influence in shaping the character and the show, and not just because of his long tenure. Only Hartnell even comes close, I think.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:32 PM on December 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

TOM FUCKING BAKER, MAN.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:14 AM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor. I restrained myself from knitting a 10' scarf.
posted by Cranberry at 12:54 AM on December 11, 2013

My first Doctor was Peter Davison, and yes, he's my personal favorite.

Me too! Me too! I wasn't so fussed about Tom Baker turning up in TDOTD, but I went into squee meltdown over Peter Davison showing up in the 'Who is the Doctor? documentary the night before, in a not dissimilar fashion to the ladies in the OP video.
posted by freya_lamb at 2:23 AM on December 11, 2013

Yes!

Tom Baker was, is, and always will be my Doctor. I even met him when I was little, at a village fete in leafy Buckinghamshire. I was wearing a sherrif's badge, which he generously admired before signing my copy of Doctor Who Discovers Strange and Mysterious Creatures. I hope I still have that somewhere.

That was my favourite bit of TV all year. As the end of the show approached, I was getting more and more pre-emptively disappointed that he hadn't appeared — or worse, that he had already shown up and I'd somehow managed to miss it... and then there he was. I just burst into tears. Jesus, it's happening again now! A magical, magical moment for me.
posted by ZipRibbons at 3:21 AM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is as good a place as any to talk about the tremendous change in premise that Day of the Doctor brings about -- and this of course is spoilers:

So now the Doctors have found a way to change things so Gallifrey didn't get destroyed. But even if he does manage to find the pocket dimension that the planet has been stored in, it's not quite over yet.

Granting that the Dalek war fleet may have destroyed itself (it did too shutupshutupshutup), the following things are also true:

- As we've seen, as has the Doctor himself, some Daleks have survived.
- When (yeah, it's going to be when) the Daleks discover that the Time Lords are still around, nothing has changed concerning the two races. The Daleks might have forgotten about the Doctor, but they will presumably renew war against the Time Lords. I think they're supposed to be weaker now than they were pre-war, but they can get themselves up to speed again fairly quickly -- quickly indeed, if they still have time travel.
- And the high council of the Time Lords, the ones who unleashed the horrors of the Time War, who've sealed themselves away on their mad quest to end the universe and ascend to beings of pure consciousness (according to the Tardis Data File wiki), these are still the same people.

It seems what the Doctor has achieved, now, is a postponement. If he brings Gallifrey out and around with the Daleks still at large, it's only a matter of time until the war starts up again. And as we saw in the minisode, the Time Lords' reputation has been somewhat tarnished among the universe at large.

So I think the next Doctor's task is: find out some thing to do about the Daleks, to avert a reprise of the Time War, because until that's done, he really can't go home even if he finds it.
posted by JHarris at 4:40 AM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is straight up adorable. I think one of the things I love the most about this show is how it can pull absolute childlike wonder out of the heart of an adult in ways that few other things can. It's like Sesame Street in that regard.
posted by jbickers at 5:23 AM on December 11, 2013

Tom Baker really needs to be in more things.

The only Doctor to do full frontal*, he had a pretty big part** in Passolini's Canterbury Tales.

My first Doctor was Peter Davison, and yes, he's my personal favorite.

Baker was a tough act to follow. At the time, Davidson was regarded as a let-down; the Dick Sargent / Roger Davis of Doctors.


*  As of c.1985 or so, anyway.
**So to speak.
posted by Herodios at 6:57 AM on December 11, 2013

I think some sort of braintrust of mods, admins, and other such types from some of the more popular entertainment blogs should conclave and devise an official spoiler timeline. When it is okay to spoil completely and without warning, when is is okay to spoil with warning, when it is not at all okay to spoil anything, etc.

Many thanks for requesting the change in the FPP. That will prevent anyone scanning the front page from accidentally getting surprise information.

As for spoilers, while the mods tend not to draw hard bright lines in terms of MeFi policies, as long as there's an open thread on a newly aired/released topic—as there is here—it's probably not advisable to take it as given that everyone will be aware of it (or want to be). A simple "more inside" would take care of this situation if a post doesn't belong in the original thread.

Anyroad, after all this, I went ahead and watched the video, and it's definitely cute. Thanks,
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:29 AM on December 11, 2013

I didn't get emotional at the sight (and sound) of Tom Baker when I watched Day of the Doctor at home, but when I saw it in the theater, surrounded by lots of other joyful geeks, I cried. The Fourth Doctor was my first, and is still my favorite.
posted by sarcasticah at 7:49 AM on December 11, 2013

I just don't find this video realistic.
Maybe the girsl are the McDonald's eating Tom Baker fans we want to believe in, but I doubte they are.
posted by Mezentian at 8:13 AM on December 11, 2013

I saw this in the movie theater, sitting next to a couple tweenage girls who squealed with delight every time Tennant appeared on camera.

When this scene happened, one of the girls got super quietly intense and whispered with great import, "IT'S TOM BAKER." It was a really cool moment to see the new generation of fans have that level of appreciation, was not expecting that.
posted by budmelvin at 8:25 AM on December 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

Still the gold standard
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:32 AM on December 11, 2013

I saw this slogan on a T-shirt once: "You never forget your first Doctor."

It's still available, though I'm a little ambivalent about purchasing one. Technically, Jon Pertwee was my starting Doctor, though I came in late on his run and was still getting used to his dashingly imposing yet strangely reassuring presence when suddenly he was gone and the new Doctor was "all teeth and curls" (as the Third later put it). The atmosphere of Doctor Who, however, was recognizably the same—the eeriness of the Exxilons in "Death to the Daleks" perfectly complementing the bleakness of "Genesis of the Daleks", for instance—so, even if the Fourth was rather manic, Tom Baker became the new Doctor for me.

When I think of Doctor Who, I think of the Blue Howl-around Era, when the Third could travel in time and space again (with Sarah Jane Smith, the best companion ever) and the Fourth hadn't been mucked up by Mary Whitehouse and Jonathan Nathan-Turner. However much I've grown to like the First and Second and to make certain allowances for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh, "My Doctor" is the one who changes.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:05 AM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Tom Baker was really my first doctor, but they chopped and changed a lot here in Australia on the ABC. It was on at, I think, 4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon, just before or after The Goodies, 5 days a week - just after I got home from school, and before Dad got home and wanted to watch the news.

They repeated it over and over for years, all through the Baker years. So you'd see some "new" episodes (we were probably at least a year behind the UK), then it would cycle back to some Pertwee episodes for a few months, then start all over with Tom Baker again until there were more new episodes. They never (as far as I recall), went back to the black & white episodes.

So ... all the chopping and changing the ABC did confused my 8 year old brain a bit, but as a result, I ended up watching most of the Tom Baker years several times.

Yes, he's still my favourite.

And now I've got The Goodies theme in my head.

"It's whatever turns you on. GOODIES!"
posted by Diag at 2:34 AM on December 12, 2013

Tom Baker was really my first doctor, but they chopped and changed a lot here in Australia on the ABC. It was on at, I think, 4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon, just before or after The Goodies, 5 days a week - just after I got home from school, and before Dad got home and wanted to watch the news.

I can't say for sure you are wrong, but I think I am correct in saying that Dr Who occupied the 6pm or 6.30pm slot pretty much religiously in the '80s. The block was a mix of Who, Goodies and Peter Russel-Clarke (and Bananaman! at other times).
My memory is that they would show the new series, and when that ran out they picked up the old Pertwee and Baker episodes.

I think that lasted until the hiatus, and I get a bit confused, and at the time I was either seeing the episodes via VHS from the UK or I had lot interest.

They never (as far as I recall), went back to the black & white episodes.

They did from late 2000 into 2005/06 or something (I forget). Four or five nights a week, all the extant episodes from An Unearthly Child to Survival (well, any episode that featured the Daleks not written by Terry Nation, which included The War Games for Who The Fuck Knows legal reasons) . I think it overlapped a little with the New Series.
posted by Mezentian at 4:51 AM on December 12, 2013

Herodios - if you allow for theater, then Tom Baker is not the only Doctor to have done full frontal; apparently David Tennant was in a rather, er, experimental work in the early Glasgow phase of his career.

....A picture or two from that have been posted here and there in dark corners of the Internet, and yes I've seen one and no stop it I'm not blushing right now shut up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:56 AM on December 12, 2013