Monday, July 16, 2018

ECCE PROMO! BEANO ON THE MONDAY MENU



Usually we shunt the videos off to the weekend in order to give me a break from writing, but today we have something special - the teaser for the new season of 'Doctor Who'!

This debuted on the BBC right after the World Cup on Sunday and I've already shared a nice breakdown of the teaser yesterday evening from a 'Doctor Who' YouTuber who calls himself Ace Creeper.  (You should check him out; perhaps even subscribe as I did.  He always has some interesting stuff to vlog about.)




I'm not going to get any deeper into it than to say that at first I was underwhelmed.  And I wasn't sure what was going on - it was moving at 'Flash'-like speed.

But I didn't go boogatz about it; it was supposed to be a teaser.  I'm assuming there will be something more to share once Comic-Con is over next weekend.

But there is something televisiological about the teaser which I totally missed - my thanks to Ace Creeper for pointing out.

Near the end, Bradley Walsh's character has his newspaper switched by the Doctor to an issue of Beano magazine.

For the benefit of many of my American readers....

From Wikipedia:
The Beano is the longest running British children's comic magazine, published by DC Thomson. The comic first appeared on 30 July 1938, and was published weekly. In September 2009, The Beano's 3,500th issue was published. One of the best selling comics in British popular culture, along with The Dandy, the weekly circulation of The Beano in April 1950 was 1,974,072. The Beano is currently edited by John Anderson. Each issue is published on a Wednesday, with the issue date being that of the following Saturday. This means Beano will strike 4000 in the summer of 2019.

It wasn't just a random choice to use that magazine, certainly not that issue.  It's shown up in the Whoniverse before.

As the Radio Times pointed out today:
BBC journalist Lizo Mzimba pointed out on Twitter, that issue of the Beano cropped up in 2013 episode "The Rings of Akhaten", when Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor went back in time to the 1980s to spy on the parents of then-companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) and used the comic to hide behind.

Last summer, when we got the teaser announcing that Jodie Whittaker would be the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor, people wondered if it could be considered canon.

Here it is again:



Since then, we've seen what costume she'll be wearing on a regular basis and it sure isn't this outfit!  In fact, I'm not the only one who was hoping that this would be the new costume for the Doctor.

But I think this still can be considered canon.  

At the end of the Christmas special, the new incarnation of the Doctor was ejected from the TARDIS and was last seen plummeting to the Earth.  We don't know how long they'll be separated - indeed, we don't even know how she'll survive that fall!  And we don't know where she's going to get her new duds - from the TARDIS wardrobe room, or from scrounging like she seems to have done in making a new sonic screwdriver.

But one thing I always wondered with the series - why does the Doctor wear the same outfit all the time?  Sure, eventually one of the incarnations will change the basics - Fourth, Sixth, (apparently) Eighth, Eleventh, and Twelfth.  And others clearly had variations in their regular outfit - like the Third and the Tenth.  Let's face it, surely they all had to change their shirts, socks, and underwear. 

But for the most part, they stayed in the same outer garments day in, day out.  I think there must be days unseen by us when they wear something totally different.

So at some point in the run of Jodie's tenure as the Thirteenth Incarnation, she could be wearing this hooded cloak in the woods. 

(As for the key materializing in her hand?  Perhaps that's a new trick she's picked up, like when he learned how to snap his fingers to get the TARDIS door open.)

Anyway, let's get back to Beano and making sure it's canon.

So we know the Eleventh Incarnation had that magazine; it was probably still inside the TARDIS.

But when is this teaser taking place?  Has she already met her three new companions and was just punking them by taking their food (newspaper) and/or replacing it?  Or was this before she met any of them?  And is she wearing that new outfit?

It looks like she is in the new outfit based on the quick flashes.  And that's why we have to assume she is reunited with the TARDIS and this is after she has met the new Companions.  Otherwise she is zipping around under her own power as if she was Barry Allen or the other speedsters in the various TV dimensions.

But if that issue of Beano was still in the TARDIS, it had to be deeper inside than just in the console.  Because when the TARDIS disgorged her, a lot of papers got sucked out as well.  (There's a televisiological topic - what was on those papers?  Maybe the cure for cancer brought by aliens in that episode of 'The Twilight Zone', "The Gift".)  If that Beano was in the console room, kiss it goodbye unless it was in the jacket of the Twelfth Incarnation.  The TARDIS-like properties of the Doctor's pockets has already been chronicled; a magazine could easily fit in there.

Ha!  Usually I want the Monday blog post to be short & sweet - I usually call it "Minutiae Monday".  So I went on too long with this.  To make this short story long, let me wrap this up by saying the Beano magazine we see in the teaser is the exact same issue we see in the "Rings Of Akhaten" episode.

Just a programming note - make sure you visit this blog on New Year's Day, 2019 for at least 48 blog posts about 'Doctor Who' in my annual "Who's On First?" blogathon.

BCnU!


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