Yes yes, I know the title isn't a direct accurate quote of some certain song lyrics. Tough beans. Here's a bunch of random thoughts that I've had since whenever-it-was I last updated this thingy.
First off: though it's been raised a few times (mostly in jest or as a sort of "long-shot" guessing), turns out that if Sydney Newman had his way, the Seventh Doctor would have been a woman. Not only that, but they would have brought Patrick Troughton back to ease the transition...? Uh, okay, but bear in mind that a) the big complaint about mid-80s Doctor Who was the endless continuity references, and b) by the time Time and the Rani aired, Troughton was, er, dead. He was alive when it was made, though, but still, that would be a little... odd.
Okay, dude, can you say "ratings stunt?" Look, on the one hand, yes, if there was a time to make the Doctor a woman, 1986 was it. We were coming up on the halfway point of the Doctor's lifespan, and it wouldn't have seemed so absurdly out of place as it would have either in the 60s, when Women Simply Didn't Do That Sort of Thing, or now, when yes, the Doctor is unambiguously male and capable of "dancing." Furthermore, this was exactly the sort of bold all-or-nothing push that might have saved the show (see also what Mutant Enemy did with Season 2 of Dollhouse).
On the other hand... dude, can you say "ratings stunt?" (And Dollhouse was cancelled anyway.) Weren't we, the viewing public, sick of the ratings stunts by 1986?
...anyway, talking about 1986 and the end of the Sixth Doctor brings me directly back to Trial of a Time Lord, which, as you might remember, was done in a Christmas Carol style format wherein the Doctor is cast as Scrooge and must re-live an adventure from his past, present and future. So, yeah Doctor Who's already done A Christmas Carol before.
But that doesn't mean that this year's Christmas Special doesn't look awesome. And yes, it's only going to be 60 minutes long whereas the last special was some 75 minutes. This is okay. We don't really need overblown productions and spectacles. Remember, Classic Who could never fill out six episodes without some padding. The best New Who episode - "Blink," like you needed to be told - was the cheapie of Season 3. Still, yeah, Christmas, big overblown story with a big kabloom at the end. Traditional, you know.
...on a completely unrelated note, I don't know where I read it, but I saw something on the internet today suggesting that if Jane Espenson was writing the new Buffy movie, there would be a lot less whining. Well, yes. Jane Espenson wrote for the show. Again, not getting into that whole give-the-fangirl-the-key-to-the-asylum argument...
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