Tiny little circles, individual conversations with people about it. My sibling (who casually enjoyed it but also said it wasn’t ace). I’m not on Gallifrey Base though, first time I’m hearing of that one 
Honestly, I’m not online that much, so I miss out on a lot of the feedback people give it and I don’t exactly go looking for it either. Used to have a Twitter, but don’t anymore, so … as I said, I’m VERY out of the loop
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Love how ‘shipping’ has been mentioned in short succession with both meanings of the word 
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I don’t do Twitter. Tried it, left it, went back and stuck with it till Musk took over and then bailed over to Mastodon. Best thing I ever did as it’s where I met @shauny which lead to being a part of this place. I’m posting less and less on GB simply because everything is so combative over there. I got very low over ‘discussions’ I was having there that I had to take a serious step back and TARDIS Guide helped me do that.
I bloody love this place (which I’m hoping isn’t a controversial opinion).
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hear hear!!! i hope this forum lasts forever <3
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I’ll third that! <3
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A friend and I came up with a bit of a S12 onwards rewrite when it broadcast, where Ryan’s dad dies in Resolution, and so he leaves the TARDIS not on good terms (my nan and my dad are dead because of you!), and Graham leaves with him as he’s the only family Ryan has left. Graham shows up every now and again in S12 sort of how Martha did in S4, but for that series it’s just 13 and Yaz for the main, which lets them develop as characters and shows more of Yaz’s feelings for 13 develop.
We didn’t plan anything for Flux, but I would leave it roughly how it was with Dan coming in, but he would leave after Eve of the Daleks innstead of Power (insulting exit imo), 13 and Yaz have a fun seaside holiday gone wrong for Legend, and then Power happens.
But in my Power, I wouldn’t bother with the Qurunx lasering the Doctor, I’d have the forced regeneration be what makes her regenerate into 14 (e.g. It’s started now, I might not have regenerated into the Master anymore but it’s coming and I can’t stop it)
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Lovely to hear people say this. And it’s mostly thanks to @deltaandthebannermen because it was his idea to have a forum in the first place, and he has been instrumental in making it such a great place. I just did the coding stuff 
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Well as long as we finally recognise who has made the biggest contribution…
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The leaderboard says otherwise, however 
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Not for today it doesn’t
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Thank you! Everyone loves her, but I don’t get the appeal.
Luckily for you two, this is far from an controversial opinion especially on the Classic Who side of things. I’ve seen a ton of people dislike Doctor/companion shipping (I’d actually argue it’s the majority stance in the CW fandom), which came as a shock to me as, in my previous fandoms, fans shipped everything with everyone.
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I think it’s probably this ‘shipping everyone with everyone’ thing which seems bizarre to me. It is possible to just be friends - I don’t get the desire to make everything a romantic connection.
(That said, Ian and Barbara were totally a couple… 
)
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I’m a romantic haha. And I know for a lot of shippers, it isn’t that we don’t think two (or more) characters can be friends, but that we want these characters to stay with each other forever and shipping fits the bill by adding proximity and intimacy. Friends are great and they can last as long or longer than any romantic relationship, but there isn’t the same amount of intimacy with that.
I know, being a Six/Peri fan, I get jealous on Six’s behalf once Peri starts talking about other guys she likes, and I get a little sad when she talks about wanting to settle down (with other people). Obviously, no matter who she decides to start a family with, she can still be friends with the Doctor, but her deciding to make that choice (with other people…) means she has to leave him. They have to go their separate ways and lead their separate lives. And that, as a shipper, is something I want to avoid. I want them to stay as two peas stuck in the same pod.
(And there’s a lot of underlying romantic tension between Six and Peri, so of course I’m going to take that and run )
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As someone who really values platonic relationships in fiction, and who can get annoyed at everything being made romantic, especially in online spaces, I’m with you to some extent. That being said, I do enjoy romantic interpretations of relationships—not all the time, but I do!
For me, I think it’s more do with enjoying the relationship itself, and being interested in the different interpretations and forms it could take under different circumstances. How would the dynamic change between x and y if they were romantically involved? How would that change the way I read their interactions? It’s closer to playing around in the fictional space of the story rather than actively wishing two characters to get together—which I almost never do.
There’s also an additional layer for me, which is that I, as a queer person, simply enjoy interpreting fictional relationships and characters as having queer undertones. That definitely influences things for me too.
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The issue here though is believing that Chibnall, a fan of a similar age to me, has the same experience of how characters are perceived in fandom.
I had never seen anything coding Tegan as lesbian prior to the hint in SJA about her and Nyssa being a couple. For what it’s worth I can 100% see Tegan as having two ex-husbands.
Ace has a level of subtext in Survival but it would be a stretch to say she is ‘coded’ as LGBTQ+ across her whole run of stories.
I think this sort of thing all depends on the circles of fandom you run in and the places online you hang out. I think if you had done a poll here - a very small community - I still don’t think you would have ended up with any sort of consensus about Ace or Tegan’s sexuality. I always feel it’s shaky ground to suggest anything in fandom is ‘widely perceived’ because even things which we apparently all agree on can crumble at the first contradiction on screen (the Timeless Child anyone…). Elsewhere in this thread, elicienwalker thought he was out of kilter with fandom because everyone was raving about Once & Future but a bunch of us came along and said, nah - we agree with you. Despite initial appearances, there are very few absolutes of agreed opinion or perception in Doctor Who fandom.
We all bring our own lived experience to what we watch. I, for example, find myself reacting far more emotionally to stories which involve parents and children, especially the loss of either, since having my own kids.
I think it’s a little unfair to critique Chibnall - or any writer - for not including something that was never really explicit on screen and what is present can clearly be interpreted in different ways. Yes, absolutely, writers should be widening their horizons but I think with things moving so quickly socially, we are in danger of forgetting that adjusting groupthink, social attitudes and what have you doesn’t happen overnight.
By the reaction online RTD has fumbled both trans and disability representation but clearly not from want of trying to make things better. I’ve said before, though, that as the parent of a non-binary child, I keep getting it ‘wrong’ as I learn to navigate how to refer to them after 15 years of naturally using words and phrases which they would rather I now not use. As such, I really appreciated the scene between Donna and Sylvia in The Star Beast.
And then I see a character like Ian in the Quantum Leap reboot and whilst I admire seeing a non-binary character and it certainly got the nod of approval from my 15 year old, I then look at how feminine they present and look at my 15 year old and see two very different ‘versions’ of non-binariness. (Probably not a word, but you get my drift). No one representation is ever going to be perfect of ANY group.
I always hope I give people the benefit of the doubt if they don’t quite get something right in terms of representation being as, outside of my own personal experience, I don’t think I’d get it all right either. I don’t think any of us can claim that we would.
(Hoping that what I’ve written doesn’t come across as trying to shut down this sort of conversation or devalue any of your points @felix ).
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100% this, I like to ship stuff as thought experiments more than anything - for instance I’m a big Leela/Romana shipper because I find their whole thing fascinating but I would never want them to ‘go canon’ bc it would ruin the eternal and undying relationship they already have. I like to play in the sandbox but I can’t understand the desire for every ship to ‘go canon’ when that would inevitably be worse for the story
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Agreed. As much as a shipper as I am, (and I’ve said this before) I’d rather my non-canon DW ships stay non-canon in preference that the Doctor stay aromantic and asexual. Especially as DW is a family friendly show and the Doctor, despite their canonical relatives, has a very hands-off approach to how they approach those relationships. Changing that part of their personality to put them in a coupling where they’re sucking face every five minutes and then some would go against the nature of the show.
I do wonder if anyone likes Houdini/Doctor, though, since, for whatever reason, the Doctor is always referencing spending time with him.
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Pretty much completely agree with this with the exception that I headcanon the doctor as either demi or grey ace
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Houdini/Doctor is much funnier to me if I imagine The Doctor as the Iris Wildthyme in that relationship. Constantly turning up in Houdini’s life and misinterpreting signals into a lifelong unrequited romance.
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honestly though my problem is that for someone trying so hard to “represent” lesbians, it’s painfully obvious that chibnall is not actually aware of what lesbians say about the show. you may say you didn’t see much coding of tegan or ace but there are tons of people who take it for granted. again i haven’t seen tegan’s run but with ace it is stunningly obvious to me that she is gender nonconforming and not at all straight. we do bring our lived experience to what we watch but when it comes to lgbtq+ stuff there is a long history of writers having to drop in hints to avoid censorship and lgbtq+ fans are pretty good at picking up on those hints. if i notice and another person doesn’t, that means the writer has done their job of adding enough plausible deniability to avoid negative backlash. but that doesn’t mean the coding isn’t there. i don’t expect you or anyone to pick up on it, but whether or not chibnall picked up on the coding was aware of how WLW fandom perceives those characters, i think it was a massive blunder from someone who seems generally very concerned with “representation.”
(i honestly am also not a fan of the concept of “representation” as it currently exists anyway because the conversation then becomes about whether something was “good representation” and not about whether it was good full stop. but that’s a different post.)
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