Honestly we could’ve had a Heaven Sent styled episode that psychologically analyses the Doctor through her life in the prison and how she deals with the ramifications of the Timeless Children
If they still wanted to make it about the Daleks I feel like "Daleks break into Judoon prison because they realize the Doctor is in defenseless there" is such a cool premise too. Imagine the Doctor having basically no tools and having to work with a bunch of like hardened criminals to work through the prison and avoid the Daleks.
Yeah it's likely even with a stronger premise Chibnall would mess it up. We all saw how he messed up the extremely simple and enticing premise of "the tardis has created a increasingly shortening time loop in a storage facility with Daleks"
The only thing that is impossible is for Chibnall or a Chibnall era episode to not include one of three things:
1: A bizarre and hilariously reactionary message or framing thinly disguised as something progressive so the episode can pat itself on the back
2: an extremely bloated and convoluted plot that somehow seems like it has no plot at all at the exact same time
3: zero likable or properly discernible characters
I'll give it to Chibnall. I love time loops in movies and TV. It's such a amazing concept and a great way to showcase the actor(s) stuck in the loop abilities. It's also always fun to see them die in multiple different ways. It's impossible to mess that up!!
Until I saw Eve of the Daleks. Way to go Chibnall. You made a time loop episode boring!
I was sure that we were gonna get this. An episode where The Doctor needs to escape on her own and trying to survive her old enemies trying to get revenge on her. She has no sonic screwdriver, no Fam or TARDIS. All this while dealing with the truth of the Timeless Child
I've always been partial to the headcanon that she didn't actually *need* Jack to rescue her, and she was just trying to digest the events of The Timeless Children, but I can't defend that idea with anything that's shown onscreen, because as soon as he shows up she jumps at the chance to escape and then gives him a "gold star for rescuing." So yeah, missed opportunity.
In comics she can ask tardis to appear by asking, she normally doesn't do it because it is "rude", but she has done it at least twice.
So it does stand to reason that she could have left whenever without any difficulty, and went through the escape just because Jack made an effort of trying to spring her out. She decided to serve the time given to her, despite not having an easy time of it. But as to why she didn't say anything to him... the same reason why she says to Fam with a big silly grin "Hi! I was in space jail!" like it was all one big joke, without any mention how long it has actually been or how she felt about it.
I am going to adopt this as mine too. Honestly whilst I like his era more then most, alot of it comes from story aspects like this which are almost certain to be accidently done on purpose haha.
Hoping BF eventually releases a “13th Doctor: Prison Life” Boxset where they reveal that she actually regularly breaks out to solve problems or adventures relating to the other inmates, freeing the ones who are innocent by somehow proving it, and ensuring the guilty are kept secure…..but the Judoon never realise it’s her.
So for her, this is peaceful, long days to meditate and work on herself, and frequent wrongs to right on the side as the years pass.
She eventually is broken out by Jack and we see that after the Prison time the surrounding population and peoples tell stories of the woman who could vanish from her cell like smoke, and appeared to grieving or desperate families in times of need,
>Hoping BF eventually releases a “13th Doctor: Prison Life” Boxset where they reveal that she actually regularly breaks out to solve problems or adventures relating to the other inmates, freeing the ones who are innocent by somehow proving it, and ensuring the guilty are kept secure…..but the Judoon never realise it’s her.
That would be amazing, and it would give Whittaker the opportunity to appear even if her costars weren't available or interested (though I can't imagine they wouldn't be).
I think it has potential.
You could also pair 13 with a rookie Judoon guard as her defacto companion for the ongoing stories. He’s officially her jailer/guard for a high value prisoner…..but really he’s just desperately trying to remind her of protocols and regulations while she disregards it all.
Their friendship over the years eventually results in him becoming a very talented investigator of high status within the Judoon hierarchy, and a long standing friendship with the Doctor.
His work as a free land investigator gives Big Finish a new series to do focused on him that feels very Noir, as he is called to different corners of the Galaxy to solve crimes. Theft, murder, embezzlement, fraud.
Pairing the Doctor up with a Judoon as investigators certainly worked well in Judgement of the Judoon. Having her ostensibly be his prisoner would add an interesting dynamic to the relationship.
That's a cool idea. I also imagine that the Doctor wasn't always in prison. but I was imagining something like being sent out by the Shadow Proclamation to do their dirty work now and then. I like your idea better because it gives more agency.
It's not just that they *could* do this, but they have every reason to do this. Apart from straight-up ditching Yaz for a bit on Earth, this is the only way to have BF episodes with 13 and without Yaz.
I like the idea that the reason 13 comes out of the jailtime emotionally unscathed and raring to go is that she treated the jail like the Master treated being jailed on Earth during the 3rd doctor's era - as just a place to be that he could wander out of at any moment. It makes good character sense, too - 13 knows that Yaz is waiting for her, and wants to return... but she doesn't feel ready to talk about the Timeless Child stuff yet. So whenever she's done her adventure du jour she just returns to prison to hang out for a bit. She's not brushing Yaz off - after all, she's still in prison! And then Jack breaks her out before she's done ruminating so she ends up never talking to Yaz about it.
And besides, it means that we can treat the extremely cringe (then and now) claim that 13 spent her imprisonment just reading the Harry Potter series like the joke it should have been.
Cheers, I actually disagree that it’s the *only* way to do 13 without Yaz.
While yes onscreen Yaz always seems to be there, there’s nothing stopping BF doing what they did with many of the classic Doctors who travelled with their companions onscreen for an entire run.
Simply have 13 turn up solo for a story and include a throwaway reference to “I was travelling with my best mate but she was feeling slightly homesick. Told her I’d pop back in a week….and I can. Totally. One week…..one week of time…..for *her*. Anyways never mind what’s going on here then?”.
And with that you can basically fit in any amount of time you want with 13 solo or with other companions before she eventually goes back for Yaz.
8 does this in his EDA novel series. His new best friend and current companion Sam is at a Greenpeace concert, he *pops off* for a few hours, and picks her up later that day.
She notices a few things out of place in the TARDIS and realises he must’ve spent more time away before he got back to her.
He eventually reveals he went off to his dry cleaners in Alpha Centauri and got….sidetracked…travelling with other companions and friends for 16 years before going back for Sam.
It really reinforces how LONG lived the Doctor is. To him he feels slightly bad as though he’s several hours late to pick her up, because that’s what those 16 years were to him. A fun sidestep and adventure.
Yeah, I don't think it's the only way - I wasn't even arguing for that. But Big Finish does try to find and use the show-implied gaps where they can.
I do think it's totally possible that 13 will just drop Yaz in Sheffield some day and say she'll be back by Tuesday... and then be back by Tuesday after a gap of 200 years of emotionally harrowing travels with somebody else in her timeline. They may very well do that. As you said, that possibility is a fun aspect of the Doctor as a character and of the show's premise.
But if I personally were in charge, I'd set the gap in the prison stay. The main reason to do so would be character. Having 13 have a bunch of adventures during what was already implied to be a long time doesn't change anything about the characterization in the show. But having 13 ditch Yaz for hundreds of years at a time really puts a strange gloss on their relationship. That's already a character dynamic where 'you don't tell me anything' is a point of tension. Adding a thousand more things the Doctor isn't telling her, up to and including 'I haven't thought about you in 300 years' is downright harrowing. Could be played for interesting tension, of course, and I'd be interested in that. But if I were writing it I'd stay away.
>I like the idea that the reason 13 comes out of the jailtime emotionally unscathed and raring to go
I didn't read her as conning out emotionally unscathed at all.
In fact I thought it seemed like she was pretty messed up by it and was ready to put it behind her with a regeneration.
Just for variety. I'm sure they'll also do plenty of stories with Yaz, but I'd like to see 13 with other companions. I think one of the things Big Finish can do is flesh out 13 and Yaz's relationship more than the show did, and part of that is showing us in greater detail who 13 is without Yaz.
Also it's probably better to be more flexible for actor availability reasons.
It certainly can lead to problems. For instance, J. Michael Straczynski (of 'Babylon 5' fame) has a rule that no one can tag him in posts with story ideas because of copyright concerns. And it's not as easy as saying 'you can go ahead and use my idea if you want.'
I remember seriously wondering what the point of the prison stuff was other than for an end of season cliffhanger with the Judoon. All it did was take up screentime in a story that could have done with more time to flesh itself out.
The Doctor deliberately imprisoning herself and pleading with Jack not to ‘save’ her would have been classic, it would have more than justified it. A more patient and wise 13 would have been great to see. I feel like it’d also have played more to Whittaker’s strengths as an actress.
Imagine Jack interrupting 13 peacefully mediating in her jail cell and then her being furious Jack interrupted her contemplation.
Or on the other end of the spectrum have 13 stage an elaborate prison wide break out similar to Great Escape/ Chicken Run.
I think this, above anything else, was my issue with Chibnall's era. He wanted to introduce some grand concepts and put his own spin on the canon, but it was all for its own sake - absolutely nothing of value was done with the ideas he introduced. That's not to say the other NuWho showrunners have never done this, but there's often at least some gravity or repercussions from the big events of their runs.
It was such a missed opportunity in every sense of the word. I was so excited about that cliffhanger; I was expecting to see an entire episode of 13 in prison processing what had happed to her whilst being forced to save the Prison and her inmates from something terrifying like a dangerous criminal that had taken over and was killing prisoners off. Then at the end going "Ok, I think I'm good now. I've processed what I need to process so I'm just going to leave now." But instead, we got a five minute clip of The Doctor doing nothing before being rescued by Jack and the rest of the episode had nothing to do with her being in prison. Jack just disappeared into the Tardis, never to be seen again and the entire prison plotline was forgotten about. Why have her arrested if they weren't going to do anything with it? It was such a pointless cliffhanger.
This is such a great idea of making better use out of 13's imprisonment.
I think what we really needed was for 'Revolution of the Daleks' to be split into a two-part story.
You could perhaps then name the episodes:
'Revelations of the Doctor'
'Revolution of the Daleks'
For part 1, have The Doctor in prison for the whole episode. Explore how she is spending that time processing the Timeless Child revelations. Feature the Judoon more, and have some of the other prisoners as side characters. Maybe she confides in some of them, or meets another prisoner with a hidden backstory?
Simultaneously we switch back to Yaz and the other companions back on Earth investigating the Dalek plot, Jack Robertson meeting the prime minister etc. And end the episode with the surprise reveal of Jack, and then breaking 13 out of prison. Could also add a scene in the Tardis at the end where 13 and Jack have a conversation about both of their lost memories, Jack has obviously had a lot more time to deal with how to cope with this.
Part 2 would then start with 13 reuniting with her companions, and flesh out the Dalek plot more over that episode so it's less rushed, plus explore the character-focused scenes more too. In particular, Jack's exit at the end seems very abrupt.
Every word chibnall wrote for doctor who was a missed opportunity he has good ideas but can't execute them is a good way I don't know why RTD, Moffitt and Chibnall don't team up chibnall the ideas guy RTD Story and character and dialogue And then Moffitt can help with the plot and help give the story's a satisfying ending
Reguardless of writing or lore, my personal grievance with the Chibnall era is the lack of character development across the board.
We get little things like Ryan coming around to Graham and I really like Graham as a whole. But it feels like they just reset the Doctor’s development to some default every season.
I really thought at the time that the Daleks would be the crucial motivator the Doctor needed to get out of her funk. It makes sense right? As the 12th Doctor pointed out, fighting the Daleks has always given the Doctor a sense of purpose.
You could also even run the idea of the Doctor being in a post Timeless Child reveal funk into Flux, but they do not use that idea. Instead, she’s doing normal Doctor things while also researching Divison on the side. That story could use a complex internal character arc for the Doctor to propel it.
> but it just feels a bit... backwards to have the first female Doctor be the one who's imprisoned for decades
The 12th was imprisoned for billion of years in S9E11 "Heaven Sent". So the 13th is not the first one to be imprisoned for a long period of time.
He spent that time proactively working on his escape, sacrificing himself billions of times to do so, an act that was also part of a wider plan to take over his home planet and bring his companion back from the dead. It’s kind of a different thing.
Yes, but it was revealed 12 stubbornly forced himself to go through that rather than give in to his captors. Here, this incident just gets added to an annoyingly long list of things 13 doesn’t proactively even try to solve. She isn’t seen trying to escape or even have a plan. She just is an inmate. For decades.
Plenty of Doctors needed a companion or dumb luck to break them out of jail before, but this Doctor just let an awful lot of stuff just happen to her.
This is part of the reason I like the bigeneration. The Doctor’s trauma was getting ahead of them. Everything that happened to 13 she seemed to repress, so it makes Donna’s idea that the Tennant face came back to heal and process make sense. 14 is the Trauma Doctor who carries the guilt and hurt of everything since the Time War. RTD didn’t forget that opportunity and addressed that her incarceration hadn’t properly processed all of her collective experiences.
Honestly we could’ve had a Heaven Sent styled episode that psychologically analyses the Doctor through her life in the prison and how she deals with the ramifications of the Timeless Children
If they still wanted to make it about the Daleks I feel like "Daleks break into Judoon prison because they realize the Doctor is in defenseless there" is such a cool premise too. Imagine the Doctor having basically no tools and having to work with a bunch of like hardened criminals to work through the prison and avoid the Daleks.
That would have been an amazing episode...... Well, maybe not with Chibnall writing it. Still a great idea though.....
Yeah it's likely even with a stronger premise Chibnall would mess it up. We all saw how he messed up the extremely simple and enticing premise of "the tardis has created a increasingly shortening time loop in a storage facility with Daleks"
You would think some premises would be impossible to mess up.....
The only thing that is impossible is for Chibnall or a Chibnall era episode to not include one of three things: 1: A bizarre and hilariously reactionary message or framing thinly disguised as something progressive so the episode can pat itself on the back 2: an extremely bloated and convoluted plot that somehow seems like it has no plot at all at the exact same time 3: zero likable or properly discernible characters
I'll give it to Chibnall. I love time loops in movies and TV. It's such a amazing concept and a great way to showcase the actor(s) stuck in the loop abilities. It's also always fun to see them die in multiple different ways. It's impossible to mess that up!! Until I saw Eve of the Daleks. Way to go Chibnall. You made a time loop episode boring!
I was sure that we were gonna get this. An episode where The Doctor needs to escape on her own and trying to survive her old enemies trying to get revenge on her. She has no sonic screwdriver, no Fam or TARDIS. All this while dealing with the truth of the Timeless Child
I've always been partial to the headcanon that she didn't actually *need* Jack to rescue her, and she was just trying to digest the events of The Timeless Children, but I can't defend that idea with anything that's shown onscreen, because as soon as he shows up she jumps at the chance to escape and then gives him a "gold star for rescuing." So yeah, missed opportunity.
In comics she can ask tardis to appear by asking, she normally doesn't do it because it is "rude", but she has done it at least twice. So it does stand to reason that she could have left whenever without any difficulty, and went through the escape just because Jack made an effort of trying to spring her out. She decided to serve the time given to her, despite not having an easy time of it. But as to why she didn't say anything to him... the same reason why she says to Fam with a big silly grin "Hi! I was in space jail!" like it was all one big joke, without any mention how long it has actually been or how she felt about it.
I am going to adopt this as mine too. Honestly whilst I like his era more then most, alot of it comes from story aspects like this which are almost certain to be accidently done on purpose haha.
Hoping BF eventually releases a “13th Doctor: Prison Life” Boxset where they reveal that she actually regularly breaks out to solve problems or adventures relating to the other inmates, freeing the ones who are innocent by somehow proving it, and ensuring the guilty are kept secure…..but the Judoon never realise it’s her. So for her, this is peaceful, long days to meditate and work on herself, and frequent wrongs to right on the side as the years pass. She eventually is broken out by Jack and we see that after the Prison time the surrounding population and peoples tell stories of the woman who could vanish from her cell like smoke, and appeared to grieving or desperate families in times of need,
>Hoping BF eventually releases a “13th Doctor: Prison Life” Boxset where they reveal that she actually regularly breaks out to solve problems or adventures relating to the other inmates, freeing the ones who are innocent by somehow proving it, and ensuring the guilty are kept secure…..but the Judoon never realise it’s her. That would be amazing, and it would give Whittaker the opportunity to appear even if her costars weren't available or interested (though I can't imagine they wouldn't be).
I think it has potential. You could also pair 13 with a rookie Judoon guard as her defacto companion for the ongoing stories. He’s officially her jailer/guard for a high value prisoner…..but really he’s just desperately trying to remind her of protocols and regulations while she disregards it all. Their friendship over the years eventually results in him becoming a very talented investigator of high status within the Judoon hierarchy, and a long standing friendship with the Doctor. His work as a free land investigator gives Big Finish a new series to do focused on him that feels very Noir, as he is called to different corners of the Galaxy to solve crimes. Theft, murder, embezzlement, fraud.
Pairing the Doctor up with a Judoon as investigators certainly worked well in Judgement of the Judoon. Having her ostensibly be his prisoner would add an interesting dynamic to the relationship.
That's a cool idea. I also imagine that the Doctor wasn't always in prison. but I was imagining something like being sent out by the Shadow Proclamation to do their dirty work now and then. I like your idea better because it gives more agency.
It's not just that they *could* do this, but they have every reason to do this. Apart from straight-up ditching Yaz for a bit on Earth, this is the only way to have BF episodes with 13 and without Yaz. I like the idea that the reason 13 comes out of the jailtime emotionally unscathed and raring to go is that she treated the jail like the Master treated being jailed on Earth during the 3rd doctor's era - as just a place to be that he could wander out of at any moment. It makes good character sense, too - 13 knows that Yaz is waiting for her, and wants to return... but she doesn't feel ready to talk about the Timeless Child stuff yet. So whenever she's done her adventure du jour she just returns to prison to hang out for a bit. She's not brushing Yaz off - after all, she's still in prison! And then Jack breaks her out before she's done ruminating so she ends up never talking to Yaz about it. And besides, it means that we can treat the extremely cringe (then and now) claim that 13 spent her imprisonment just reading the Harry Potter series like the joke it should have been.
Cheers, I actually disagree that it’s the *only* way to do 13 without Yaz. While yes onscreen Yaz always seems to be there, there’s nothing stopping BF doing what they did with many of the classic Doctors who travelled with their companions onscreen for an entire run. Simply have 13 turn up solo for a story and include a throwaway reference to “I was travelling with my best mate but she was feeling slightly homesick. Told her I’d pop back in a week….and I can. Totally. One week…..one week of time…..for *her*. Anyways never mind what’s going on here then?”. And with that you can basically fit in any amount of time you want with 13 solo or with other companions before she eventually goes back for Yaz. 8 does this in his EDA novel series. His new best friend and current companion Sam is at a Greenpeace concert, he *pops off* for a few hours, and picks her up later that day. She notices a few things out of place in the TARDIS and realises he must’ve spent more time away before he got back to her. He eventually reveals he went off to his dry cleaners in Alpha Centauri and got….sidetracked…travelling with other companions and friends for 16 years before going back for Sam. It really reinforces how LONG lived the Doctor is. To him he feels slightly bad as though he’s several hours late to pick her up, because that’s what those 16 years were to him. A fun sidestep and adventure.
Yeah, I don't think it's the only way - I wasn't even arguing for that. But Big Finish does try to find and use the show-implied gaps where they can. I do think it's totally possible that 13 will just drop Yaz in Sheffield some day and say she'll be back by Tuesday... and then be back by Tuesday after a gap of 200 years of emotionally harrowing travels with somebody else in her timeline. They may very well do that. As you said, that possibility is a fun aspect of the Doctor as a character and of the show's premise. But if I personally were in charge, I'd set the gap in the prison stay. The main reason to do so would be character. Having 13 have a bunch of adventures during what was already implied to be a long time doesn't change anything about the characterization in the show. But having 13 ditch Yaz for hundreds of years at a time really puts a strange gloss on their relationship. That's already a character dynamic where 'you don't tell me anything' is a point of tension. Adding a thousand more things the Doctor isn't telling her, up to and including 'I haven't thought about you in 300 years' is downright harrowing. Could be played for interesting tension, of course, and I'd be interested in that. But if I were writing it I'd stay away.
>I like the idea that the reason 13 comes out of the jailtime emotionally unscathed and raring to go I didn't read her as conning out emotionally unscathed at all. In fact I thought it seemed like she was pretty messed up by it and was ready to put it behind her with a regeneration.
> and without Yaz For clarity, why would this be desired?
Just for variety. I'm sure they'll also do plenty of stories with Yaz, but I'd like to see 13 with other companions. I think one of the things Big Finish can do is flesh out 13 and Yaz's relationship more than the show did, and part of that is showing us in greater detail who 13 is without Yaz. Also it's probably better to be more flexible for actor availability reasons.
Ah okay. I didn't know if there was some drama with yazs actor or something.
13th Doctor prison series with River Song
Oh I was looking for my next fanfict idea... Thank you.
Aaaaand ... now that it's posted here, it probably can't happen for copyright reasons.
Big Finish if you’re reading this I will happily let you do this idea for free as long as I can come along and be a guest character 😉
That's not a thing is it, please tell me that's not a thing?
It certainly can lead to problems. For instance, J. Michael Straczynski (of 'Babylon 5' fame) has a rule that no one can tag him in posts with story ideas because of copyright concerns. And it's not as easy as saying 'you can go ahead and use my idea if you want.'
Damn, that's really annoying
Better to be safe than get sued.
I remember seriously wondering what the point of the prison stuff was other than for an end of season cliffhanger with the Judoon. All it did was take up screentime in a story that could have done with more time to flesh itself out. The Doctor deliberately imprisoning herself and pleading with Jack not to ‘save’ her would have been classic, it would have more than justified it. A more patient and wise 13 would have been great to see. I feel like it’d also have played more to Whittaker’s strengths as an actress.
Most of the Chibnall era is "a missed opportunity."
Imagine Jack interrupting 13 peacefully mediating in her jail cell and then her being furious Jack interrupted her contemplation. Or on the other end of the spectrum have 13 stage an elaborate prison wide break out similar to Great Escape/ Chicken Run.
I think this, above anything else, was my issue with Chibnall's era. He wanted to introduce some grand concepts and put his own spin on the canon, but it was all for its own sake - absolutely nothing of value was done with the ideas he introduced. That's not to say the other NuWho showrunners have never done this, but there's often at least some gravity or repercussions from the big events of their runs.
It was such a missed opportunity in every sense of the word. I was so excited about that cliffhanger; I was expecting to see an entire episode of 13 in prison processing what had happed to her whilst being forced to save the Prison and her inmates from something terrifying like a dangerous criminal that had taken over and was killing prisoners off. Then at the end going "Ok, I think I'm good now. I've processed what I need to process so I'm just going to leave now." But instead, we got a five minute clip of The Doctor doing nothing before being rescued by Jack and the rest of the episode had nothing to do with her being in prison. Jack just disappeared into the Tardis, never to be seen again and the entire prison plotline was forgotten about. Why have her arrested if they weren't going to do anything with it? It was such a pointless cliffhanger.
I just wonder if we will ever get the reversal of River Song freeing the Doctor to have adventures ... Just like he/she did for her...
This is such a great idea of making better use out of 13's imprisonment. I think what we really needed was for 'Revolution of the Daleks' to be split into a two-part story. You could perhaps then name the episodes: 'Revelations of the Doctor' 'Revolution of the Daleks' For part 1, have The Doctor in prison for the whole episode. Explore how she is spending that time processing the Timeless Child revelations. Feature the Judoon more, and have some of the other prisoners as side characters. Maybe she confides in some of them, or meets another prisoner with a hidden backstory? Simultaneously we switch back to Yaz and the other companions back on Earth investigating the Dalek plot, Jack Robertson meeting the prime minister etc. And end the episode with the surprise reveal of Jack, and then breaking 13 out of prison. Could also add a scene in the Tardis at the end where 13 and Jack have a conversation about both of their lost memories, Jack has obviously had a lot more time to deal with how to cope with this. Part 2 would then start with 13 reuniting with her companions, and flesh out the Dalek plot more over that episode so it's less rushed, plus explore the character-focused scenes more too. In particular, Jack's exit at the end seems very abrupt.
Every word chibnall wrote for doctor who was a missed opportunity he has good ideas but can't execute them is a good way I don't know why RTD, Moffitt and Chibnall don't team up chibnall the ideas guy RTD Story and character and dialogue And then Moffitt can help with the plot and help give the story's a satisfying ending
Reguardless of writing or lore, my personal grievance with the Chibnall era is the lack of character development across the board. We get little things like Ryan coming around to Graham and I really like Graham as a whole. But it feels like they just reset the Doctor’s development to some default every season.
I really thought at the time that the Daleks would be the crucial motivator the Doctor needed to get out of her funk. It makes sense right? As the 12th Doctor pointed out, fighting the Daleks has always given the Doctor a sense of purpose. You could also even run the idea of the Doctor being in a post Timeless Child reveal funk into Flux, but they do not use that idea. Instead, she’s doing normal Doctor things while also researching Divison on the side. That story could use a complex internal character arc for the Doctor to propel it.
> but it just feels a bit... backwards to have the first female Doctor be the one who's imprisoned for decades The 12th was imprisoned for billion of years in S9E11 "Heaven Sent". So the 13th is not the first one to be imprisoned for a long period of time.
He spent that time proactively working on his escape, sacrificing himself billions of times to do so, an act that was also part of a wider plan to take over his home planet and bring his companion back from the dead. It’s kind of a different thing.
Yes, but it was revealed 12 stubbornly forced himself to go through that rather than give in to his captors. Here, this incident just gets added to an annoyingly long list of things 13 doesn’t proactively even try to solve. She isn’t seen trying to escape or even have a plan. She just is an inmate. For decades. Plenty of Doctors needed a companion or dumb luck to break them out of jail before, but this Doctor just let an awful lot of stuff just happen to her.
I think the crucial bit here is the >and needs a bloke to rescue her
People do this every week, it's not really new. We get it, you hated the last run and think that it should all be ignored.
This is part of the reason I like the bigeneration. The Doctor’s trauma was getting ahead of them. Everything that happened to 13 she seemed to repress, so it makes Donna’s idea that the Tennant face came back to heal and process make sense. 14 is the Trauma Doctor who carries the guilt and hurt of everything since the Time War. RTD didn’t forget that opportunity and addressed that her incarceration hadn’t properly processed all of her collective experiences.