it’s occurred to me that i’ve been out of classic who fandom so long that some of you doubtless have not seen it. if that is the case, here are some honest-to-god, hand-over-heart true facts about classic doctor who:
an entire fake season of the show had to be made up to make a single companion’s timeline possible
the last story of the entire run involves the master turning into a cat furry
a companion nearly gets eaten by a giant clam
there is an entire season where every villain is the master but in different ludicrous disguises. one time he summons satan
tom baker’s scarf was supposed to be normal scarf-length, but the person who bought the yarn had no idea how much yarn you need to make a scarf and bought way too much, and the person who was hired to make the scarf wasn’t told to stop. so she just. didn’t
the fifth doctor had a robot companion who had to be abruptly written off the show after the only person who knew how to operate the robot died
there is a serial where people are eaten by inflatable furniture and people complained to the bbc that it was too violent
an alien exiled to a boys’ boarding school on earth was convinced to kill the doctor by a man with a bird shellacked to his scalp. he failed so badly at killing the doctor that he became a companion instead
There was an entire six part story that was basically the miners strike but In Space. Everything was part of a plot by the Ice Warriors who wanted to start a space war and apparently pissing off miners with ridiculous hair was a crucial part of that plan. Probably still less evil than Margaret Thatcher though
The Master once dressed up as a Scarecrow and stood in a field. The Doctor and his companion walked by by PURE CHANCE and the Master took that as an excuse to drop the disguise and throw together a plan that involved causing a minor inconvenience to established history. There was no logical way he could have known the Doctor would be in that place at that time. He just felt like being a scarecrow and freaking out birds I guess
That same story has someone turned into a sentient tree
The Seventh Doctor once distracted three Lovecraftian beings from before the dawn of time with a magic show who were running a Murderous Circus staffed by homicidal clowns until his pyromaniac lesbian companion could throw him a hippies magic pendant which shot lasers at the gods and killed them.
That same story had a Space Werewolf and a British Explorer From Space
The Sixth Doctor’s companion Peri had a timeline so effing convoluted that an entire audio drama was made about how time travel had genuinely created MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF HER because it was the only way to explain all the contradictions
The Fourth Doctor painted the words “This is a Fake” behind the Mona Lisa as part of a plan to stop an alien art thief from wiping humanity from existence
The Seventh Doctor once fought a Homicidal Bertie Basset who worked for Margaret Thatcher in Space and killed people with deadly sweets. He defeated him with lemonade.
Ace literally has a girlfriend in almost every story she’s in. It’s not even subtle. In one story they literally had her and her Girl of the Week dressed in tuxes together.
The Riddler hijacks the local TV airwaves and appears onscreen holding a comically long roll of paper. After dramatically clearing his throat, he proceeds to read from it.
“The following is a list of people who can suck it. Number One: The Joker. I don’t think I need to explain that one. Number Two: Cluemaster. Fuck you, you stole my bit, and I will be like a plague unto your house. Number Three: King Tut. You also stole my bit, but did it while killing people and got me arrested for murder. Also, I’m, like, 93% sure you’re a white guy and your costume is racist.
“Number Four: The Scarecrow. I know you ate my leftover Chinese, Jon, even though I wrote my name on it. I was saving that for lunch. I had to eat a goddamn peanut butter and jelly sandwich like a five-year-old. It was all you had in the hideout. For fuck’s sake, go shopping, not all of us can live like a bridge troll.
“Number Five: The Penguin. You- No, no, wait, wait… That one should be crossed out. He replaced that and apologized. Never mind, Oswald, you’re fine. Drinks at 7:00 tomorrow, right?
“Anyway, where was…? Ah, yes. Number Six: The Mad Hatter. You carded me and left me like that for six hours because I, and I quote, ‘would not stop talking about Mythbusters.’ Well, excuse me for trying to make intellectually stimulating conversation on a level you could understand. I suppose every time you prattle on about mome raths and borogoves it’s goddamn Shakespeare? Well… Well, it’s Carroll, but… Oh, you know what I mean!
“Number Seven: Catwoman. You left me hanging by one hand from a ledge five stories up and holding a twenty-pound bag of jewels and very pointy
objets d'art while you ‘distracted’ the Dark Knight. I know you were making out with him, Selina. You were gone for fifteen minutes. My shoulder almost dislocated. Very unprofessional.
“Number Eight: Kite Man.”
Here the Riddler pauses, lifting his narrowed gaze to glare at the camera, voice dropping to an ominous tone.
“You know what you did…”
His demeanor shifts quickly, and he’s back to reading from his list almost cheerfully.
“Number Nine! Th-”
He’s interrupted by a crashing noise in the background and looks over his shoulder just an instant before a deep voice angrily growls, “Riddler!”
“Oh, for the love of-” He turns to glare at the camera, speaking quickly. “Number Nine: Batman! Interrupting me while I’m on television making very important- Hm-mmph!”
He’s reduced to muffled curses as a black gloved hand covers his mouth and pulls him out of frame. The camera tilts, a cracking noise is heard, and the broadcast turns to static.
KITE MAN’S CRIMES WERE NUMEROUS AND TERRIBLE
If I were batman I’d give him like a five minute warning, because this actually sounds theraputic.
Batman: Riddler, you’ve hijacked the TV airwaves and you know that’s wrong but I think this is actually theraputic. So I’m giving you five minutes, and then I’m taking you to Arkham
Robin: Geez get a facebook account for this crap, hell if you wanna vent to millions of strangers just get youtube.
“RIDDLER YOU CAN’T JUST GO ON TV AND SCREAM AT PEOPLE
THAT’S WHAT YOUTUBE IS FOR”
Riddler takes this advice. He gets his own youtube channel called RiddleMe_Th15. It starts out as being purely therapeutic, a platform for publically calling out those who have annoyed him. Then someone leaves him a pathetically easy riddle to solve in the comments, and he spends his next segment ranting about it, and then posing a better one.
This starts a dialogue with a number of other youtube users who both attempt to answer his riddles and pose their own riddles in return.
Riddler has found his people, and his hit count is climbing.
Seriously, Riddler would KILL IT (metaphorically speaking) on YouTube. He just does those weird animated puzzle videos where he poses lengthy, overly complicated puzzles, game theories, and riddles, then gives away…fuck I don’t know…Amazon or iTunes cards to whoever gets them right.
“Riddle me this: How can I ensure there are more videos like this one? The answer, my little quest solvers, is simple: Like and subscribe, and consider donating to my Patreon! Which isn’t much of a Riddle, but seriously I’m down to eating crackers and ramen right now and YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain.”
Bringing this back because “YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain” has to be shared and because I have some followers who have not experienced The Riddler Post.
Seriously, if you ever need a good time, just read all the responses in the notes. This post still ranks as one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Batman sees all of this and donates a substantial amount. He still can’t believe YouTube was the answer all along.
This is especially true with BTAS Riddler.
“Riddle me this… who’s the biggest asshole in games development this side of Ubisoft? It’s Daniel Mockridge who screwed the dev team, myself included, out of our royalties for Riddle of the Minotaur-”
Two days later Jim Sterling is calling Mockridge out, there’s a gofundme for the other people on the dev team, and Nigma’s halfway to funding the spiritual sequel on Kickstarter.
“Okay, more backer questions… Puzzlemaster323 sent says “Riddle Me This, will there be VR support.”, and I say of course there is! Ten years ago I trapped Batman and Robin a VR version of the first game and I threw that rig together in two months. We’ve worked out the motion sickness problems for 90% of users and the game will not kill you for real if you die in the game, but hardcore players can set it to give them a harmless jolt if they’re into that kind of thing.”
The Scarecrow: “I *did* eat his leftover Chinese. It’s messed up that he knows.”
Seeing John Mulaney do his ‘Robot Test’ bit has given me a strong desire to see him play a live action Riddler.
But not like, as any character other than John Mulaney? Like, let’s make a John Mulaney version of Edward Nigma. Just this socially awkward disaster man who somehow becomes a supervillain because of a misunderstanding he couldn’t correct without ‘seeming rude’. And now supposedly he’s committed to killing Batman but he doesn’t actually want to be the cause of a man’s death so he just obfuscates things with ‘clues’ and ‘riddles’ and ‘battles of wits’ until Batman inevitably defeats him and he’s just like ‘oh thank god please don’t hit me’.
Batman’s like ‘you need help Nigma’ and he’s just like ‘yeah that’s fair, I should probably look into seeing somebody at this point, I became a supervillain because of social anxiety and that might just be a red flag you know?’
“Hey, Batman, think you’ve seen everything, huh? Well, figure out how to deal with this! You know Gotham General Hospital? Yeah? Well you’ll never guess what I let loose in there!”
“Riddle me this, what has four hooves and presents a massive health and safety violation?”
“I see you there, Batman. And I also don’t want me to be doing what I’m doing.”
i’m pretty sure this is just the premise of family ties
“man it’s weird how many of my followers know what family ties i–oh right they’re all like twenty years older than me and it’s actually weird that i know what family ties is”
