Isabel

Noah saving HG Tanhauss's family would have been a stronger ending both in terms of theme and character development.

First of all, in the version of the show I'm picturing, it's made explicit that everyone who ceases to exist when the Knot is destroyed gets reincarnated in the Origin universe, and that Charlotte Doppler is Charlotte Tanhauss. Noah isn't Marek though. There can actually be a beat where Noah hopes that he's Marek but then he looks at him and somehow knows that he isn't, but also that he has to do this anyway.


So, from a thematic standpoint, Dark is a story about parental love. The problem is that we never get the impression that Jonas and Martha love their son. Now, this is fine if the point is that by the time Jonas and Martha become Adam and Eve the Knot has stripped away at their humanity, but I just don't buy that Eve was generally motivated to save her son (who she never even names!). If there's ever any sign of affection between them, I certainly don't remember it.

Noah, on the other hand, is motivated entirely by his love for Charlotte (and also Elizabeth). He's devastated when she disappears, and is willing to commit atrocities just for a chance to be able to find her. Martha may understand intellectually that Marek's father would do anything for him, but Noah would understand exactly what the means on a fundamental level. (He'd also be sub-textually saying that line to Charlotte, which if played right could be utterly heartbreaking.)

There's also the matter of the number three as a motif in Dark. In this version, there are three principal parent-child relationships that motivate the big picture events of the story: HG Tanhauss to Marek: the one that got us all into this mess, Claudia to Regina: the one that finds the way out of this mess, and Noah to Charlotte: the one that puts the plan to get us all out of this mess into action. Have the Noah who saves the day be from the Eve timeline and there's even some nice symmetry with the three worlds in the show.


Now, the characterization standpoint. The character arcs of both Jonas and Martha are, depending on the specific version, lose their humanity and become Adam and Eve, die, or sacrifice their existence to save the world. The problem with Jonas especially is that he's already willing to be erased from existence by the end of season 2, and then Martha spends season 3 mostly being a demonstration of the Schrodinger paradox, but then ultimately coming to the same conclusion.

In this version of the story, the central arc is Noah's redemption, as his love for Charlotte goes from a selfish love to a selfless love. In the first season, he's able to kill children remorselessly, even though it causes their parents the same grief that Noah felt when Charlotte was kidnapped, all in the hopes of creating a world where he and his daughter can be together again. By the end of season 3, however, he gives up Charlotte willingly, with the knowledge that this is the only way that she can have a happy life. While there may be a Noah in the final timeline, he's still giving up the thing that matters to him the most: his relationship to the people he loves. At the same time however, the only thing that remains of Knot!Noah is his most redeeming quality, the fact that Charlotte is able to live happily.

A lot of people have wondered what would happen if someone made a version of We Didn't Start The Fire for the modern day. Since the original took place over 40 years (aka the amount of time Billy Joel had been alive) it only makes sense that we'd start where the original left off. So, let's start in 1990:

so I have to repost it here. This time it's all-time.


10. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. Probably the scariest Doctor Who episode out there, with a bunch of creative ideas. Both "shadows that kill you" and "Your entire world is a simulation" would make great episodes on their own (and the second one did about a decade later), and this managed to pull off both at the same time and make them work together

9. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. It's scary! It's moving! It has tons of really great lines!

8. Paradise Towers. Unpopular opinion, I know. I just really love it when Doctor Who goes for weird satire, I love how the Doctor gets all the warring factions to work together for a common goal, I love how Pex gets over his toxic masculinity, I love how you can make a bunch of Pokemon Go jokes, I love the camp aesthetic. It's just a really good story.

7. Dark Water/Death in Heaven. I don't know what else to say besides that I find this story absolutely sublime.

6. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. Also absolutely sublime, plus I can mention how well it pulled off the disintegration of the universe, how I cried when 11 said goodbye to little Amelia, and how satisfying it was to see Amy and Rory get their happy ending that had the added bonus of being a prelude to even more adventures.

5. In The Forest of the Night. Another unpopular opinion! Here it's because I really love the fantastical atmosphere, plus all the really great interactions between 12 and Clara. Also the kids singing about being Coal Hill's gifted and talented class while the grownups are talking about the world being doomed is one of my all-time favorite moments in the show.

4. Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. I talked about all the reasons this story is so good here.

3. The Curse of Fenric. Pure perfection. After watching this my immediate response was just to watch all the other 7 stories just to see what else this era of the show could do. The answer was "lots of great things" but this is still the best.

2. The Sun Makers. My impression is that this story is well-liked but not particularly well-loved. The reason I put it all the way up here is that it just really pumps me up, and the basic arc of "The Doctor and Leela talk a guy down from suicide and then help him overthrow the system that brought him to that point" is deeply, deeply satisfying. Cordo, incidentally, is ridiculously likable, and it's super great to see his character development. I don't know how much of that is the writing and how much of it is the acting, but either way it works really well. It's also really amusing to me how a story about how great it is to throw your oppressors off of a rooftop aired when the show was getting shit about possibly being inappropriate for children, and how obvious it is that Robert Holmes was really mad about taxes when he wrote this. You can just picture Dennis Healy's kids watching this and wondering why their dad was the bad guy on Doctor Who.

Genesis of the Daleks. This is a story that Does Things to me. The first time I watched it was after a year of feeling basically dead inside and unable to care about anything, and afterward I just couldn't stop thinking or talking about it. It's amazing how well it holds up as a piece of commentary on the dangers of fascism and xenophobia and how they can completely destroy a society from within. Davros and Nyder are both incredible bad guys. The way they're able to get away with everything just by taking advantage of the fact that everyone else has limits of how far they're willing to go is absolutely chilling. I also really like how this explicitly shows how the Daleks came from people who happened to have a really broken society. Other stories treat the Daleks like some Fenrician ancient evil, and it's really cool to see their actual origins as a result of politics. In a weird way, I find this story more depressing than any regeneration or companion exit. This story changes the Daleks from Cyborg Space Nazis to a horrifying tragedy of a society that went wrong in a way it can never come back from. It's truly haunting.

Also, giant clams are good actually. We needed a breather of some sort in all of that

I read Childhood's end for school way back in 2015. These are my thoughts that I didn't get to say back then because my professor wanted to focus on other things, and that I've posted in shorter forms on Tumblr in various ways but no one really cared there, and I also tried to talk about on amirite.com but everyone there is an asshole especially Loraine, a joyless and judgmental prick of a woman who deserves to be accosted by a gang of flying monkeys.

1. Childhood's End is way more cosmically horrifying than the more traditional idea of cosmic horror, in which humanity is a meaningless speck in a vast universe that doesn't give a shit about us. That's not really horrifying to me. In Childhood's End, someone does care about humanity, and we do have a destiny, but it's not something most people want, and while there are plenty of people who think they want it, they'd quickly change their minds if it actually happened. The idea that the universe is full of indescribable beings far beyond our understanding that don't give a shit about us is scary, but it's also awe-inspiring. The idea that there's one power who wants to bend every species in the universe to its own ends is fucked up.

2. The Overmind are, in fact, genocidal bastards. As much as they're presented as blue and orangely moral and above good and evil and all that, they really aren't any better than any other given space genocidal bastards, they're just kinda pretentious about it, and well, genocidal bastards in real life often come up with bullshit to justify their genocidal bastardry so the only real difference is their godlike powers. See also Tumblr User Prokopetz's views on the matter.

3. Ok, it's been a few years, but there might in fact be a way to beat the Overmind, or at least defiantly shout into the void regarding them. Jan did the first step right in the book, although he didn't know that his position would be useful and he didn't take advantage of it. You need to not be on earth when the end comes, for rather obvious reasons. The next thing you need to do, is find a way to access the Overlords' broadcasting technology, possibly by asking. They did let Jan be sentimental after all. The list of things that should be included in the message you broadcast to the stars as loudly as you possibly can:

• As much human created information as possible. This isn't just important because you want humanity to be remembered, although that's a nice benefit. This is so anyone who receives it can understand human languages*. (You probably are multilingual if you've grown up in Overlord controlled earth). This step probably has at least partially been accomplished if anyone's close enough to us to hear our radio broadcasts, but the Overlords probably have something better.
• An explanation of what the Overmind is, what happened to earth, and a reason to believe you. 
• As much information about DNA and genetic engineering as you can muster.
• As much information about ESP as you can muster, this would be harder since it's something the Overlords have been suppressing. 
• Tell them explicitly that they need to genetic engineer out any ESP related abilities. This is why you really need to give them a reason to trust you; ESP sounds like a really useful thing.

Humanity in this situation is still absolutely doomed, and it's possible that doing this wouldn't accomplish anything for a variety of reasons, but it's also possible that it might not, at least to the extent that someone finds it and improves slightly on your message's instructions. It might mean millennia of alien species that couldn't be more different from each other (the aliens in Childhood's End are alien) united in common purpose, screaming into the void as their civilization dies before someone manages to win, but that's all it takes, initially. Once a society independent from the Overmind makes it to space this all gets much easier. 

Or I could be getting something wrong. It's been several years after all.

*This video goes into why a sufficiently large amount of data might be enough for an alien civilization to decode our languages, although not all of it applies to this situation. Also it's long.

“Fighting with us is a terrible horrible idea, and if you have any sense of self-preservation in regards to mere survival you should absolutely not be here, but here you are and here we are so let’s get to work.”
“If we fail, that’s it for humanity as we know it, and not in a good way. Everything we are, everything we could have been, forever reduced to an eternity of nothing but endless praise for a being that tortures billions”
Schisms! Like the people who are actually really into the whole attempting something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and failing spectacularly thing (mostly as a coping mechanism/ possible low level mind control) vs people who are actually looking for ways of beating the system. People who really romanticize the pre-Appearing world vs people who would be radicals in this world too. Exactly 5 people who think Lucifer isn’t actually just God’s pawn and that doing anything he says is a good idea
TOL spirituality! Some of it’s based on real world religions, some of it’s the result of them having to deal with the inevitability-of-fate-worse-than-death, some of it was mundane stuff that over time took on mythological significance
(you, a former Superwholock who was somehow brought into the future see that blue square symbol they use and have a horrible realization)
wereallgonnadiewereallgonnadiewereallgonnadie but better that than to accept this world
Of course they win. They can’t fucking believe they actually wound up winning. In the end they’re alive and they’re free and there’s just so much joy
2 weeks ago with

One good thing about my posts not showing up in searches is that I can post stupid fanwanky bullshit like “The Detective Inspector from Logopolis and that Kaled scientist who looked kinda twinkish are in fact the same person. Any discrepancies in personality/knowledge can be explained by the fact that at the time he was still dealing with the trauma that comes from having his species be genocided and also turned into mutant cyborg squids that feel nothing but hatred. He later wound up quitting that job as he became increasingly involved in activism related to nuclear disarmament. Fast forward a few decades and he definitely somehow wound up finding out about the true nature of the Toclafane (I don’t know the details of this since I haven’t watched those episodes in years), and definitely had A Reaction, although I’m not sure what. Also, I think he’d be a cat person,” and anyone who reads it has no one to blame but themselves for following either me or the kind of person who’d reblog this post.