Welcome one, welcome all. And by that, I mean “welcome listeners and maybe some people who follow us on Facebook or Twitter.” Because let’s be real: who else is going to read this inaugural blog post of ours?
Yes, that’s right. We’ve started a blog. If you’re reading this right now, you’re on it. Ideas for how to get ourselves more invested in this site of ours (which we created for our podcasts) and make it feel less like it was created in 2008 (it wasn’t) have been brewing in the sewage pipeline of my mind for a while now, and this was the foremost of them, so it’s great to see that it’s all… completely backfired.
Cause we just started a blog.
In 2020.
Anyway, enough rambling. Blog posts have topics after all, and this one’s, in case you missed it, is “Revolution of the Daleks Predictions.”
Without further ado, let’s dive in to six extremely-likely-to-actually-happen predictions for the upcoming special.
Jack’s Back Comes Back
(Kiyan)
I’ll admit I don’t have much to back this one up, but sometimes you just gotta go with your gut: Jack’s back is coming back.
A Doctor Who staple since 2005, Jack’s bare back has made appearances in such episodes as:
- Bad Wolf
With such an illustrious track record, there’s no way they’d bring back Jack without bringing back Jack’s back.
Graham Dies
(Dylan)
This is probably the only legitimate prediction in this blog post. Uh, I mean, all of these predictions are totally and 100% legitimate, right? But we all know that Chris Chibnall is a sucker for causing great emotional pain to all the characters we know and love. I mean, the first thing he did when he became showrunner was kill off the wife of one of the companions. I mean, ballsy move, but fair play Chris. And let’s not forget the at least 3 times that he was involved in Torchwood when they killed off loved ones of everyone’s favourite characters.
And let’s be totally honest here, Ryan just enjoys traveling with the Doctor way too much to leave of his own volition right? We’ve seen him grow closer to Graham over the past two seasons but to what end? I suppose it is entirely possible that he’s now so close to Graham that if Graham decides “screw this I’m too old for this nonsense” and buggers off that he’ll decide to follow, even though as far as we’ve seen he actually has absolutely no life outside of traveling with the Doc. What’s he gonna do? Play basketball all day?
Which brings me to the obvious conclusion: Graham is gonna die, Ryan is going to be so pissed off/annoyed/frustrated/just generally mildly perturbed that the Doctor let this happen and won’t go back to change it with that time machine of her that he’ll leave. He’ll storm off Tegan Jovanka style, never to be seen or mentioned again. Yaz will be unaffected and will be fine with this course of events. You heard it here first.
Ryan and Graham Become Conspiracy Theorists
(Kiyan)
This one isn’t so much a prediction as it is sheer fact standing on common sense’s shoulders and wearing a trenchcoat.
In the trailer for Revolution, we see what looks like a TARDIS interior sheeted in a rainbow of sticky notes. Doctor Who is no stranger to conspiracy theorists (think Clive from Rose) and their infamous walls of interconnected figures and findings, so this is obviously an iteration of that.
That doesn’t mean much on its own. But remember: Ryan and Graham are leaving. What I’m guessing happens is that Ryan and Graham, having now accepted one another as stepgrandfather and stepgrandson, open a business brokering conspiracy theories out of Jo Martin’s TARDIS. Heck, maybe they even come up with their own every once in a while. This would be an excellent way to reaffirm Ryan and Graham’s relationship and really hammer home the heartwarming developments from It Takes You Away, an episode that touched so many people so intimately that I once mistook it for a Catholic priest.
Jack has Less than Five Minutes of Screentime
(Dylan)
John Barrowman is expensive. Doctor Who, in true Doctor Who fashion, is broke. I would like to posit a theory: that we’ve already seen the entirety (or bulk majority) of Jack’s screen time in the trailer. We were all (by which I mean, Kiyan and I were) excited to hear that he was back in Fugitive of the Judoon and then he was on screen for all of ten seconds.
Chris Chibnall is no stranger to running Doctor Who, of course, so I trust that he has this well in hand. Besides, Jack has no space in his timeline for any of this, we know his timeline through the end of Torchwood, and then we know that he goes on to die as the Face of Boe. A more respectable person might predict that somehow this Jack appearance ties into his Face of Boe appearances, but I would rather predict that Jack will show up, help Yaz for like five minutes, and then leave. To go back to Torchwood. As far as I know he’s supposed to still be leading that, right? Torchwood Three doesn’t get destroyed at the end of season 4 right? Right?!
Jack Dies
(Kiyan)
Yes, you read that right. Think I’m crazy? Get with the program, folks. The writing’s on the wall, and it all adds up. That’s English and math on this prediction’s side.
All that’s to say the idea that Jack is going to die in Revolution makes sense if you think about it. There’s no point in bringing a fan-fave like Jack back if you’re not going to do something spectacular with him, and death has been the spectacle since antiquity.
Need more irrefutable proof? The trailer for Revolution may appear to perplex at first, but pay closer attention and you’ll notice that it shows its hand thrice. Each time it does is one of three final nails in Jack’s coffin.
First, the opening: Jack’s narration cements his role as personnage principal in Revolution. Then, the opining: Jack claims that when you’re a companion of the Doctor, “you don’t get to choose when” your adventures end. (I guess he never met Tegan Jovanka. What gives, Big Finish?) Last but most definitely not least, the trailer tops it all off by reminding us that Jack Harkness is “Jack Harkness, and [he’s] immortal.”
To sum up, we’ve got (1) Jack playing a major role, (2) Jack talking about never knowing when your adventures might end, and (3) Jack heavily playing up his immortality. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say all that doesn’t foreshadow Jack somehow losing his immortality and dying. But I do, so I won’t.
GCHQ Comes Back
(Dylan)
Doctor Who is about acronyms. Wouldn’t be Doctor Who without the TARDIS GCHQ. And as we all know, at the end of Resolution the Doctor just… kind of left the shell of a Dalek hanging out in a government building. That’s gotta be a problem right?
We also know that Jack Robertson, everyone’s favourite character from Arachnids in the UK, is returning as part of this year’s special. We also also know, or at least it’s heavily implied from the trailer, that he’s part of this whole “Dalek as a government drone” scheme (ignoring the slightly uncomfortable Trump parallel that’s never really gone away). I don’t really think Robertson is ambitious enough to come up with the Dalek design alone, but I do think that he’s intrepid enough to find a way into the GCHQ to steal rusty. I know I for one am looking forward to once again seeing Doctor Who’s greatest government agency, UNIT the so aptly named Government Communications Headquarters.
And there you have it: our predictions for Revolution of the Daleks. What are yours? And are you excited for the special? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter. Or email. Or snail mail. Heck, fold your message into a paper airplane and glide it over our way. We’ll read it out on the podcast.
Anyway, we’re planning on doing one blog post per week, so we’ll see you here a week from now.
But until then, the end.