Doctor Who

[kensei]

The peril was real. It wasn't about saving the world either. Plus the dreamlord was great, I hoped they'd bring him back.

[Nick R]

I'm not a fan at all of Amy's choice. I don't like any episodes of anything that are obviously set in a fake version of reality that doesn't matter.

I don't get this criticism of stories set in dream worlds, saying they don't matter. Even if the threat against the characters isn't real (which IIRC it was in the case of Amy's Choice), they can still be worthwhile stories to tell if they lead to the characters changing, or the audience learning something new about the characters.

[Meh]

I should've hated the Christmas special. I'm fucking trying to hate it. I'm reading back over the pages of this thread, and I know that, really, it was utter dogshit.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEEEEEE

On a different note, I rewatched "day of" the other day, and I enjoyed it a lot more. Hurt's Doctor was easier to appreciate, without the expectation of him being a bit of a mad bugger. I still don't like the odd absence of Timothy Dalton, and all the crazy fucking shit 10 said was going on in the final days, though.

Moffat's version of the Time Lords is rather boring as fuck, really.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

It was the last day of the war, all the other mental weapons had been used, and failed so it was just murder at almost its most basic level. I had no problem with it, better that than blow a load of cash on vague, abstract concepts that were never defined in the first place.

[NEG]

http://claudiaboleyn.tumblr.com/post/64674670117/the-casting-of-martha-jones-and-amy-pond-rtd-vs-steven

[Eighthours]

http://claudiaboleyn.tumblr.com/post/64674670117/the-casting-of-martha-jones-and-amy-pond-rtd-vs-steven

That piece fails immediately because Martha was an abysmal companion, and RTD and co obviously realised this pretty quickly because they got rid of her after one season. She was a simpering hero worshipper who fell in love with the Doctor pretty much instantly, which the feminist writer here seems to have conveniently overlooked. It's a shame, because the sexism point does have some traction.

[NEG]

I think the comparisons to how RTD and Moffat speak is more in play there, but sure, writing-wise Martha wasn't all that great.

Still, she became a savior of the world like all RTD companions, unlike Amy the model.

[sprite]

Martha did manage to do something that none of the other recent companions have - she basically went off on her own for an entire year and was instrumental in saving the world. She had a definite strength about her, so it's a shame they went the lovey dovey route as well.

[HarMGM]

Perhaps that's the reason I liked Amy so much more than any RTD companion save for Wilfred: she didn't become the latest SAVIOUR-OF-THE-WORLD or some such other nonsense. Come to think of it, the important things Amy did were always done for Rory. So rather than going from ordinary girl to OUR LAST SAVIOUR, Amy grew by way of actually choosing Rory over the Doctor in the end. I daresay like an actual human being.

[Space Gibbon]

Never had a problem with Martha, and since the quality of the writing overall improved after Billie Piper left then even if her character wasn't as well-developed I still prefer watching most of her episodes to those of season 1 and 2, particularly the majority of season 2 which is rubbish.

[kensei]

Some people become models. Why can't Doctor Who have both. Amy also kinda did save the world - she had the universe in her head.

Plus Amy had quite a few strong EPs where her character was developed - Amy's Choice, the Girl Who Waited, the God Complex. The show hinted several times the Doctor was more interested in Amy than vice versa, and it made clear she wore the trousers with regards Rory.

Plus Martha was a bit shit, helped only by the fact she is in probably the strongest series.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I think her general idea is OK, insofar as how the writers and that describe the character of Martha is vastly less sexist than moffat. It's just that Martha was unspeakably bland in her execution, which rather let the side down.

[Made of Ghosts]

"And I thought, well shes really good. Its just a shame shes so wee and dumpy. When she was about to come through to the auditions I nipped out for a moment and I saw Karen walking on the corridor towards me and I realised she was 511, slim and gorgeous, and I thought, Oh, oh thatll probably work." - Steven Moffat

If this actually happened in the way described, FUCKING HELL.

[Harsin]

Best not to go down the Moffat's views of women rabbit hole.

"There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands."

[Lorfarius]

How does he explain Teens hunting through bushes for porn mags? Granted its Google Images more these days... but still.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Surely it's fairly obvious that moffat has some at best strange ideas about women. I mean look at his Irene Adler for goodness sake. Can't think of a more embarrassing 14 year old wank fantasy.

[mrsnrub]

He's not the first producer to be like that though. The guy who produced Flashdance apparently walked into a meeting of studio execs and held up a photo of Jennifer Grey and another of Demi Moore and asked "Which one would you rather fuck?"

That was how they cast Jennifer Grey.

Actually, it is pretty lurid isnt it?

[Creamstick]

How did Jennifer Beals get cast then?

[Sprite Machine]

I have nothing much to add, but the Christmas special was pants. A mess of ideas jumbled together without space to breathe or reflect on anything. A wasted opportunity to do anything interesting with the regeneration limit (oh surprise, here's more regenerations literally pulled out of our crack). A few heartfelt moments (the cracker poem! ), goodbyes and general Christmas spirit spared it from being a total write-off, but it's just another in a long-line of disappointing Christmas specials, and pretty much the nadir of Moffat's writing so far.

Judging from the ten seconds of Capaldi, Twelve is going to have just as much verbal diarrhoea as Eleven, too. I'm still hoping he spends most of episodes just silently glaring at people. We'll see.

I'll probably make use of this long break by re-watching from the 2005 reboot and updating that blog o' mine.

[Glasgowchivas]

I liked the Xmas special but can recognise that for long time fans it would have been a dissapointing send off for Eleven and a generally messy episode for everyone else.

One thing though; having Sky+'d it, the whole sequence from when Smith starts to talk about "If you think about it, we're all different people, all through our lives..." right up to Capladi's "Do you have any idea how to fly this thing?" is a masterclass in tugging the heatstrings and stirring emotion via the most basic manipulations of music and performance; so much so that my two year old will literally stop what he's doing and stand, enthralled until the credits roll.

I must have shown in to him about twenty times already, to the point where my wife is "fucking sick of that prick dying, over and over" which was a mini-review of the show as well as a rebuke for my hogging of the remote.

[Plissken]

He's not the first producer to be like that though. The guy who produced Flashdance apparently walked into a meeting of studio execs and held up a photo of Jennifer Grey and another of Demi Moore and asked "Which one would you rather fuck?"

That was how they cast Jennifer Grey.

Actually, it is pretty lurid isnt it?

Right movie, wrong cast member. It was Kevin Bacon.

Grey got the Dirty Dancing gig after Ferris Bueller.

[superfunk]

I saw my 16 year old niece at the weekend and had the whole 'I'm not watching it any more because the new Doctor is too old' nonsense. I rolled my eyes at her as hard as I could.

[Nick R]

On the subject of Moffat's approach to companions compared to RTD's, the Mindless Ones blog, on their "fifty stories for fifty years" run-through, recently had a good post about that:
http://mindlessones.com/2013/10/29/doctor-who-fifty-stories-for-fifty-years-2010/

Davies’ version of the show was criticised, sometimes rightly, for focussing on the companions at the expense of the Doctor or the science fictional element of the story, but what Davies’ series did, for the most part, was to use the companion as a means to draw both the Doctor and the viewer into the story. The companion was an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, and the story was about how she reacted to those circumstances, and how that reaction changed her relationships with family, friends, and the Doctor. Whether or not he was always successful, that was the basic idea behind all Davies’ stories.
Moffat, on the other hand, before becoming the head writer and executive producer, had repeatedly told a rather different story. Elements of it can be seen in almost all his Doctor Who work from the short story Continuity Errors on, but the platonic ideal of it, perhaps, is in The Girl In The Fireplace. In the Moffat story, the Doctor appears in the life of a young girl, and changes her life forever, before disappearing, and then reappearing in her adult life to change it again in a very different manner. This is usually combined with some sort of temporal confusion or other — either their meetings happening in a different order for each person, or the Doctor arriving too late for a promised meeting.

The time travel aspect is fairly obviously there to provide an excuse for the plot, but what’s interesting here is that the rest of this is designed to mimic the experience of being a Doctor Who fan — the Doctor enters your life as a child, changing it forever, then disappears from it until you reconnect as an adult.

...

While Davies was accused of making the programme about the companion (and there’s certainly a slight Mary Sue aspect to Rose, for example), Moffat actually does this. While all previous versions of the programme have paid lip service to the idea that the companion is “the audience identification figure” (not really true, at least not since about 1964, but something that’s been a consistent part of the show’s mythology), now the story becomes about the Doctor, the familiar figure, investigating the unfamiliar and strange companion. What is the crack in Amy’s room and why does she have no family? And, later, who is River Song and why is she so important? Why does Clara keep appearing?

These investigations give Moffat another chance to write in his preferred mode. As we’ve discussed before, Moffat is fundamentally a farce writer, and much farce is based on two characters each having information that is withheld from the other, with presumably-hilarious results. Moffat’s characters are all concealing information, sometimes inadvertantly, whether that be the Doctor’s “real” name, Rory’s being wiped from existence, or River’s “spoilers”.

This is, of course, an unsustainable direction for the programme to go in over the medium term. There can be only so many most important people in the universe with hidden secrets relating to the Doctor’s future before the show tips over into absurdity (and some would argue that that has already passed) especially when one considers that they also have to be what is generally considered “good companion material” — female, physically attractive, capable of tossing out bons mots whenever the situation calls for it.

Amusing comment below that post:

True, there are some notorious and widely-quoted examples of Moffat in “women, go figure” mode, but his sexism is more often of the “How can you possibly say I objectify women when I’m constantly telling you how potent and magical they are because of motherhood and protecting their babies and kicking ass and being fiercely devoted to the men who prove themselves worthy of such amazing creatures and being willing to sacrifice themselves, what could possibly be sexist about that?” variety. It’s an especially pernicious form of sexism in that it keeps on insisting how enlightened and empowering and feminist it is, and you’re not supposed to notice that it mainly applies to females who are girly and flirtatious and childlike, if not actual children.

(Did someone say something in the back? It sounded like “Joss Whedon” but that can’t be right. He’s the number one feminist creator in television, other than Moffat.)

That blog's post on Blink is also well worth a read, for its take on why Steven Moffat and Lawrence Miles really don't see eye to eye on what Doctor Who should be. Later, although probably not in response, Miles posted his own, somewhat different summary of why he doesn't like it now...

[Nick R]

Not that I want to derail this thread into just a series of links to the Mindless Ones, but I also can't resist quoting this comment on their post about the episode "Dalek":

The good and the bad of “Dalek” is summed up in one scene:

The Doctor has been told that an alien has been captured and is imprisoned in this wealthy man’s dungeon, and then he is thrown in as well. The room is dark. The Doctor’s compassion dominates any fear he may have, and he resolves to save this creature when he inevitably escapes. He calls into the gloom, assuring the poor alien that he knows it has suffered, but he is going to set things right. He’s called the Doctor.

And from the darkness…the two ear-like, dimly strobing lights flash as it rasps out, “The…DOC-TORRRRRR????” in that voice that has scared little children since 1963. It’s a DALEK, and we weren’t sure if we’d even see one in the new series because they’d all been destroyed, and all the chatter was about how this Doctor Who was going to be new and different and not using the old monsters. The Doctor has been thrown into a locked room, weaponless, with his deadliest enemy.

As reveals go, it is simply stunning in the way it is filmed and acted. The highlight of that episode and thus of the whole show up to that point…

…which would have been infinitely more effective if they HADN’T CALLED THE EPISODE “DALEK”!

[kensei]

On the subject of Moffat's approach to companions compared to RTD's, the Mindless Ones blog, on their "fifty stories for fifty years" run-through, recently had a good post about that:

http://mindlessones.com/2013/10/29/doctor-who-fifty-stories-for-fifty-years-2010/

Amusing comment below that post:

That blog's post on Blink is also well worth a read, for its take on why Steven Moffat and Lawrence Miles really don't see eye to eye on what Doctor Who should be. Later, although probably not in response, Miles posted his own, somewhat different summary of why he doesn't like it now...

I think you are unfairly missing the conclusion there - essentially while its unsustainable, its a new twist that'll get pulled put from time to time like others. I'll be surprised if we see a super special assistant with Capaldi.

[Harsin]

Sorry Nick R, I just went to pos you (great series of articles that) and may have negged you by mistake.

[Delargey]

I think you are unfairly missing the conclusion there - essentially while its unsustainable, its a new twist that'll get pulled put from time to time like others. I'll be surprised if we see a super special assistant with Capaldi.

I could be wrong here, but did they have Billie as Bad Wolf, Catherine Tate as the most important person in Wrong Turn, Amy with the universe in her head and Clara as the impossible girl. Basically, the only one who wasn't special was Martha.

[kensei]

Rose and Donna became briefly special but there was no inherent mystery to their characters. Amy and Clara were the story for a bit.

And woo, just read a bit !ore of that site. They really need to get out more. And stop watching Doctor Who of they don't like it.

[Harsin]

Man posting on Doctor Who thread on video games forum at half past twelve at night tells others to "get out more".

It's really sad that an attempt at thoughtful criticism of the show is straight away met with a dismissive NEEEEEERDS response and if you don't like it don't watch it (which I always see as the bedfellow of "Just turn your brain off!" as a reductive attempt to stop critical discussion). Reading those articles it's pretty clear that they do like Doctor Who, they just don't like some elements of it, which is inevitable with a show that has been running for 50 years.

[Sprite Machine]

I'll probably make use of this long break by re-watching from the 2005 reboot and updating that blog o' mine.

Here we go:

Rose

A lot has happened since I reached the end of my classic Doctor Who marathon. The fiftieth anniversary special filled in some blanks in the dark pages of the Doctor's history (and the Time War), while the recent Christmas special reset Steven Moffat's garbled universe into a (hopefully) simpler one. But that's nothing compared to the nine years that have passed since I first tuned in to watch 'Rose', as a curious non-Doctor Who fan.

[Picture: "I used to be John Hurt. Run!"]

I have to admit, at the time, I wasn't entirely impressed. I was ready for a new sci-fi TV show, and what I got was a briskly-paced run around London with some annoying characters and 'comedy' burping bins. Perhaps it's the legacy I was missing, but coming at it again now, I do appreciate it a lot more (burping bins aside). It's no easy task to reboot a series like this, having to tick boxes and squeeze a legible plot into 45 minutes. It's easy to draw parallels with 1970's 'Spearhead from Space', another "sort of reboot" (not least of which because this also features the return of the Nestene and Autons), but that had twice the running time to fit everything in. As a result, 'Rose' seems a little bit rushed, with the world-ending calamity defeated by a lucky throw of a McGuffin. Yet, despite this, the plot is reasonably sensible and easy to follow, and nicely merges Rose's story with the Doctor's, serving as our portal into this strange new world. Generally, I prefer Steven Moffat's writing to Russell T. Davies', but compared to some of his recent convoluted plots, this is refreshingly simple.

[Picture: The Doctor confronts the Nestene consciousness underneath the London Eye.]

Following on the from fantastic production values of the TV movie ten years earlier, and despite this being the first Doctor Who production made in widescreen, this does unfortunately look a little bit "BBC kids show" at times, but on the whole it's a nice-looking production with some decent (if unremarkable) visual effects. The Tardis interior is a bit more coherent than its messy movie incarnation and looks suitably alien, and the new Doctor himself is alien in his own way too, casually disregarding human life, despite his obvious fascination with it. It's a far cry from the romantic charmer that 'graced' the Earth ten years prior, even bluntly deflecting the (frankly, farcical) flirting from Rose's mum.

[Picture: This is unfortunately the start of "the sonic screwdriver can do anything the plot requires of it", used here to disable the Auton's arm.]

So, this new Doctor is pretty upbeat, cheerfully explaining to Rose how the human race is to be wiped out. There's a hint of guilt within him, although more on that later. He's also northern, but lots of planets have a north. His dialogue is necessarily shorter and quippier, the beginning of a trend for the modern era, as the pace of the plot is so brisk now. Those old serials are glacial by comparison.

[Picture: The mannequins coming to life are just as effective as they were in 1970, albeit somewhat less plausible here (they weren't manufactured as Autons this time).]

Although we get the impression that this Doctor is recently regenerated (see him checking himself out in the mirror), we also learn that he's been travelling through time and appears in pictures from history. It is possible, although implausible, that he simply hasn't looked in a mirror until now, but a funner theory is that he zips off through time between disappearing and reappearing at the end of this episode, perhaps as a way to plant evidence of his time-travelling for Rose to discover!

[Picture: Given the adventures the Doctor has had on Earth with UNIT and Cybermen and Daleks, you'd think Clive would have had a bit more to go on than a handful of dodgy pictures of number Nine.]

I wasn't much a of a fan of Christopher Eccleston's portrayal in 2005, but I'm quite prepared to give him another chance now that I have a broader understanding of the character. As for this episode, it had to appeal to new audiences and old alike, freshen the franchise up, inject a bit of (admittedly silly) humour and squeeze an exciting plot into 45 minutes. It's not perfect, but I can't honestly think of a better way to kick things off. It's just a shame consistency isn't Doctor Who's strong suit.