The Classic Doctor Who Twitter Blog

The journey of a New Whovian through Classic territory, 140 steps at a time...

A mission log Doctor Who archive with a Twitter twist.

In January 2010, recent fandom inductee TV Troper Hannahchan was inspired by the Twitter commentary posted by a friend during "The End of Time, Part 2" and wound up adopting the practice in her impending epic venture into the vast world of Classic Who. The rest is history.

Begun on her personal LiveJournal and Twitter accounts in late January 2010 and earning their own a few months later in April, Hannah formats the Classic Who Twitter Blog as a raw account of her grand adventure through the history of her beloved fandom. She limits her comments to Twitter's 140 characters-per-tweet and does no further HTML editing once she transfers the Tweets to the main Blog so as to preserve the original fangasmia.

The Blog can be found here.

The Twitter Live Feed can be found here.

As of May 2020, this remains an ongoing project with fairly regular updates to the blog, while the Twitter feed has not been updated since 2018.

Tropes used in The Classic Doctor Who Twitter Blog include:

• Always Male: Just for Pun. Hannah usually addresses her followers (and the show's creators) as "Guys".
• Berserk Button: Don't let her see companions in heels...
• Big No: Used with surprising rarity, though it does happen in the commentaries for "The Pirate Planet" and "The Robots of Death" when Mr. Fibuli and D84, respectively, die.
• Big "What?":
• Catch Phrase:
  • "Guys. This show."
  • "Why do I have a funny feeling that..."
  • "CALLED IT."
  • "*checks Wikipedia*"
  • "And then there was a s'plosion!"
• Cluster F-Bomb: Happened a lot in earlier commentaries, but less so after Hannah decided to opt for a less foulmouthed mode of expressing herself in times of crazy things happening. Nowadays, Curse Cut Short and Precision F-Strike act as substitutes.
• Curse Cut Short: "WHAT THE FU" is used occasionally.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: If anything seems to have rape-related subtext, most notably Count Grendel's treatment of Romana in "The Androids of Tara", it will be pointed out.
• Fan Disservice: From the "Spearhead From Space" commentary:

"Woah. Wait. Three in shower. What. No. We do not need to see this."

• Flat What: In the case of some serials, this is the commentary's lifeblood. You would probably be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't use this repeatedly.
• Freudian Slip: Seaman-Master!
• Genre Savvy: See several of the Catch Phrases above.
• Happy Fun Ball:
  • The Fan Nickname for the sphere in "Shada".
  • And the surveillance spheres in "Four to Doomsday."
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Happens from time to time. She noted actively trying to think of one for Jon Pertwee's tattoo in the commentary for "The Silurians."
• Lampshade Hanging: Naturally.
• Late Arrival Spoiler:
  • In spades.
  • Also, nearly everything about "Kinda."
• Nostalgia Filter: There are some serials that Hannah remembers more favorably after some time has passed.
• Phrase Catcher: Most explosions are noted with "And then there was a s'plosion!" Recent commentaries have started incorporating variants related to the size of the explosion or the exploding thing in question.
• Precision F-Strike: Used to replace the Cluster F-Bomb, usually in the context of noting a character "freaking the fuck out", but also as a bizarre form of Squee when she finally made it to her first Dalek serial:

FUCK YEAH DALEKS. WE HAVE DALEKS UP IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER. DALEKS. DA. LEKS. DAAAAAAAAAAAALEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS.

• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • "FOUR. IS. HANGING. OUT OF A WINDOW."
  • "YOU. FUCKING. LIAR."
  • "Most. Convenient. Thunderstorm. Ever."
• Reality Subtext: Part of Hannah's reason for initially keeping up the commentaries is her Asperger's Syndrome-related OCD. It officially became a habit, and she decided to just roll with it.
• Rule of Three: The "COME ON, FOUR! DON'T LET..." lines near the end of the "Logopolis" commentary. The third turns into "COME ON, FIVE! DON'T LET..."
• Running Gag:
  • Hannah was keeping a scorecard for the Doctor, UNIT, and the Silurians during the first two viewing sessions of "The Silurians". It was dropped accidentally because the weekend-long wait for the second disk to arrive caused her to forget about it.
  • The Counter of Rassilon in "The Five Doctors" commentary (tallying every time someone says "the _______ of Rassilon." 16, to be precise).
• Screaming Woman: In "The Power of Kroll" commentary, Hannah states that she will only be okay with companion-screaming in the event that they are actually in immediate and potentially fatal danger.
• Shout-Out: Usually to New Who, but also some to our own lovely TV Tropes.
• Squee: Hannah permits herself a good deal of "completely shameless fangirling" during all of the running-through-Paris scenes in "City of Death".
• Take That: Some earlier commentaries attack accusations made by Mightyotaking in his "Doctor Who: Old vs. New" video.
• X Meets Y: Hannah speculates that "Midnight" was derived from a mixture of "The Edge of Destruction" (people trapped together in a confined space where an unidentified entity is possessing passengers) and "The Leisure Hive" (set in an isolated resort on a beautiful but dead planet).
• What the Hell, Hero?: The commentary for "The Twin Dilemma". Oh, boy.