This one is a bit easier than the last! Since I already named my OTP and Favorite Friendship, that helps narrow it down. So time for another tie! And it’s a family affair!
The Ponds, or rather, the Williams, and their daughter and no-good son-in-law.
River and the Doctor
How characters are introduced is one of the best things about Doctor Who, especially in New Who where an introduction can be built up over time (see: Missy). We first meet River Song with the 10th Doctor and Donna in series 4 in Silence in the Library. River knows very well who the Doctor is but he has no idea who she is. Even though they are married (Ah, the timey wimey!).
We don’t catch up with her again until the following series with the 11th Doctor with Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. And the wonderful The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.
Now, normally I don’t like the Doctor being romantically involved with his companions (in fact, I don’t care for romantic stories in general because they are usually cliché ), but River was a different case. And it was an interesting because she appears older than her parents (the River Song version, that is, not Mels), and she’s part Time Lord/Lady due to the Time Vortex, and she’s really handy with a gun (a little too much to the Doctor’s liking) and a .archeologist (a little too much to the Doctor’s liking XD ).
And how she was with the 12th Doctor was adorable. Most of The Husbnads of River Song, she doesn’t know who he really is. And it was so sweet when she does realize it.
Amy and Rory
And now to River’s parents, Amy and Rory. From the time they were kids, and then teens, and Rory going into the medical field because he wanted to impress Amy because she talked about how amazing the Doctor was. They were adorable together, and I loved how committed they were to each other, even the alternate Rory as the plastic Roman solider waiting 2,000 years to keep Amy safe in the Pandorica. Amy’s face when she realizes that with River and the Doctor married, that makes her his mother-in-law. And how, when the weeping angel took him away, she went with him, knowing that she won’t see the Doctor again (*sniff*). And we see their names on the tombstone (*sob*).
On a up note, some of the best episodes were where the 4 of them are together (The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Wedding of River Song, The Angels Take Manhattan). They make a great Tardis team :).
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Soundtrack
The Christmas episodes have become a annual even since the show returned in 2005. And there are 2….3? Great episodes of them
First is A Christmas Carol, a sci fi spin on Charles Dickens’ classic story (which is, sort of sci fi in itself with the time traveling with the ghosts and Scrooge)
(And let’s not forget a earlier episode that took place on Christmas, with Dickens, and ghosts, although it did not air on Christmas: The Unquiet Dead.)
Another favorite Christmas episode is The Husbands of River Song.
This one was a lot of fun, Madcap-y, slapstick-y, with some dark overtones, and an introduction to a new character (Nardole).
One of the best scenes is below, when River doesn’t know that she is with the Doctor (she knew all the previous incarnations of the Doctor, except the current one). So the Doctor sort of plays along with it, but constantly drops hints. Which brings about the below:
I ma not one for romantic movies or romance novels, but even I was kind of hoping they would kiss at the end. It was so sweet!
And the other great Christmas episode was the 2016 Return of Doctor Mysterio (this followed exactly a year of no Who. that was a difficult year, in more ways than one). If you have seen the 1979 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, the setting and certain scenes will look very familiar. While I am not really into the current super hero movies, I loved the 1979 Superman movie when I was a kid. So seeing this was a pure delight.
Below is shortly after we meet young Grant, who loves comic books
And the ending was a call back to Husbands of River Song and 12’s short speech about things ending was very touching.
A couple weeks after this episode aired, Peter Capaldi announced that the following series would be his last. And a bunch of us cried over that, and referred back to this speech.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Cybermen Story
For this, I’ll list the spinoffs for Doctor Who. And I’m going to just pick from the TV based spin offs, not the Big Finish (mainly because I have not listened to very many).
There is K9 and Company, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures. The one I liked the most was/is the Sarah Jane Adventures. Torchwood had very adult stories set in the Doctor Who universe with Captain Jack and his crew at the Torchwood Institute. Doctor Who is aimed at both kids and adults. SJA was aimed at the young crowd. Still smart and fun, just a young demographic. Premise is she and a group of teens investigate and face aliens tying to take over.
Starring the lovely and much loved (and missed) Elizabeth Sladen in her most famous role she had during the 1970s with Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor and Tom Baker’s 4th. She came back to Doctor Who in the Series 2 episode “School Reunion”. There was such a love for her, that she got her own show (again…She did have K9 and Company in the 1980s).
Fun episodes to watch if you don’t know where to start are the two that have the Doctor in it. One is The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (series 3, episode 5&6) with the 10th Doctor. Below is the ending of that story (no spoilers). From what I read, this was filmed after David Tennant’s last Doctor Who episode. And he’s wearing a nice version of his blue suit (the brown one got ruined in his last Who story)
And the other is Death of the Doctor (series 4, episode 5&6) with the 11th Doctor. One of the cool things about this was it also brought back Jo Grant( played by the spunky Katy Manning, who was Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor companion/assistant. It was fun to see two companions who had been with the same Doctor at different times, now working together to save the (new) Doctor. I love Jo’s reaction to seeing the Doctor appear because she had never seen him regenerate from or to another person.
As of the time of this blog post: if you have Amazon Prime, they have the whole show available for members (in the United States that is. Not sure if it works the same outside the US :/ ). You can also buy the show as well :).
Next in the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Dalek Story
It’s time to grab the tissues, because in this installment of the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, we have the Saddest Moment. Or Moments since I’m so good at having ties. There’s a couple different types of answers I’ll give for this. One is the Real World answer. And three others would be within the show itself.
Real World
December 6, 1989, was when the last part of Survival aired. It would be the last episode of (what is now called) Classic Who since Michael Grade and others at the BBC cancelled it. And there were no new tv stories until 1996 with the single TV movie. And then not again until 2005 with the successful reboot. While there were the books, comics, official magazine, not having Doctor Who on TV was very sad for us old time fans.
Within the Doctor Who Universe
There are several sad moments, both from Classic and New Who. The saddest Classic moment to me is the death of Adric, as he sacrifices himself to save Earth in the story Earthshock. Companions deaths rarely happened in Classic Who, so this was a shock (sorry, bad pun) to me as a young fan.
New Who has three that top it for me.
While not a death, the wiping of Donna’s memories of her adventures with the Doctor in Journey’s End was breathtakingly sad. Even though he did it to save her due to the meta-crisis, it still…. just…couldn’t he have wiped out just enough for her to be safe but not everything? Ugh. They did address this a couple times during Capaldi’s era.
The other New Who saddest moment is the death of Amy and Rory in Angels Take Manhattan. Or rather the time adjusted death of them due to the Weeping Angel. I saw this with a large group of fans and we were all balling our eyes out.
The below video takes place shortly after the above scenes (kind of shortly after? Time travel messes with ya). Arthur Darvill who played Rory, did a voiceover for his letter to Rory’s dad. Interesting to point out that P.S. is written by the new showrunner, Chris Chibnall. It was released by teh BBC 3 years after the episode, and nicely concludes the story. Shame they didn’t shoot it!
…. Oh, yeah, The Doctor Falls. Just the whole freaking episode. I was still so emotionally worn out after that episode that when Twice upon a Time aired, it didn’t affect me near as much when he actually regenerated.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge- Favorite Spinoff
How characters are introduced is one of the best things about Doctor Who, especially in New Who where an introduction can be built up over time (see: Missy). We first meet River Song with the 10th Doctor and Donna in series 4 in Silence in the Library. River knows very well who the Doctor is but he has no idea who she is. Even though they are married (Ah, the timey wimey!).
Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. And the wonderful The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.
Starring the lovely and much loved (and missed) Elizabeth Sladen in her most famous role she had during the 1970s with Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor and Tom Baker’s 4th. She came back to Doctor Who in the Series 2 episode “School Reunion”. There was such a love for her, that she got her own show (again…She did have 
was it also brought back Jo Grant( played by the spunky 
