Doctor Who

[Earth]

Just recieved the 2005 series dvd set this morning, lovely looking box. Could have been better and more traditional (and it seems series 2 is going to be that way) but this really looks lovely on a shelve. A TARDIS!

I still love that series more then the second so far. It's just a combination of the old Doctor being more serious, more focused, and not doing the crazy talk routine for the hell of it, but for plot purposes. I may dislike the "mummy" episodes, but Dalek, End Of The World, Boom Town and pre-stupid Rose? Yes please.

Not that I dislike Tennent too much, but its as if the show changed focus within a single season. Fireplace and last weeks prove that he can mix comedy with drama much better then Eccelston, but for me the devil two-parter was just ruined for me by Tennent simply talking in insane maniac mode again. The Cybermen episodes, they were infact better then some would believe, what spoilt it? The ending. Did we have quick silly fixes in 2005? Even the mummy episodes made sense there. Also enjoyed The Wire episode more then the opinions on here.

Its still better then alot of TV of course, and its perhaps due to a change of Doctor that focus changed. Three more to go, we'll see what happens.

[Davros sock drawer]

Again, you're missing the point.

It's not the fact that it was unusual - I get that. The video-diary thing, I like it. But you're overlooking the fact that it was really, really poorly written. That's got nothing to do with the episode's context or the fact you consider it different.

My point is, the actual script, plot and dialogue of the last 25 minutes were just really poor.

I'm not overlooking anything, or missing any points, whatsoever. I just don't agree with you. It was superbly written.

[Boyatsea]

I'm not overlooking anything, or missing any points, whatsoever. I just don't agree with you. It was superbly written.

If that's the case, you really need to pay attention to what Jumble Jumble said earlier.

[JPickford (retired mod)]

I'm with Davros. It was ace.

[jonathanhoey]

In that case I'd rather be "wrong" but have enjoyed myself.

I certainly feel like the winner here.

Oh, I absolutely agree. I didn't want to dislike it! That's why it's such a huge disappointment, really. I'd be far happier if I'd found it as enjoyable as you did...

[Popo]

Just recieved the 2005 series dvd set this morning, lovely looking box. Could have been better and more traditional (and it seems series 2 is going to be that way) but this really looks lovely on a shelve. A TARDIS!

The season 2 box set isn't going to be the same kind of packaging?

Glad I held off buying the first one now

[cassidy]

I'm well aware of what 6 million means - indeed, that's up on the two previous episodes. But if all the episodes in this series were written to the same lacklustre standard, that would be it. People would not watch a series written as badly as Love & Monsters was.

You obviously arent aware of what it means or what the AI shows. It shows that 76 people out of 100 enjoyed it and would watch it again? So how does that equate to "People would not watch a series written as badly as Love and monsters" when the AI clearly shows they would

[Boyatsea]

You obviously arent aware of what it means or what the AI shows. It shows that 76 people out of 100 enjoyed it and would watch it again? So how does that equate to "People would not watch a series written as badly as Love and monsters" when the AI clearly shows they would

AI is a group of people sat in a room with dials, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes - I'm not really bothered by that. My point is, it was shit, and if the entire series was as shit as that, they'd be up the shitter.

More Girl in the Fireplace, please.

[Earth]

The season 2 box set isn't going to be the same kind of packaging?

Glad I held off buying the first one now

Its much much smaller, like a normal series of dvd series cases you see around.

http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/bbcdvd2122&tem...up&layout=empty

Pic-oh!

[Bluejam]

Isnt there a special Season 2 boxset coming out?

Think it was mentioned on the DVD forums

Its in the shape of a Cybermans head (bit like the Battlestar Galactica one)

Personally, i think they should have it in the shape of Peter Kay just to piss off the "Love and Monsters is shit" brigade

[Davros sock drawer]

If that's the case, you really need to pay attention to what Jumble Jumble said earlier.

I don't understand. Do you actually want me to not like it? That's lovely that is.

You seem to be saying that because you think it was shit, it might lead to other episodes which you think are shit, which might in turn lead to it being cancelled.

But I, and many others, thought it was great.

So who decides if it's shit or not? And who decides if it gets cancelled? And what makes you think that every episode from now on will be like LoM anyway?

In other words, you're worrying unnecessarily. You need to stop obsessing about viewing figures, and the possibility of a series two on from this one. All this is, is one episode of Doctor Who, which you happened not to like. That's all. Same as me and RotC/AoS, which I thought was far more sloppily written and unfocussed than this. My dislike of those episodes is as irrelevant to the popularity of Dr Who as yours is of LoM.

By the way, to the people who hated it, what do you think of Peter Kay generally?

[PyramidFace]

Isnt there a special Season 2 boxset coming out?

Think it was mentioned on the DVD forums

Its in the shape of a Cybermans head (bit like the Battlestar Galactica one)

This:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000GB5...glance&n=283926

[Alex W.]

AI is a group of people sat in a room with dials, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.

IIRC it's a nationally representative sample of something like 20,000 people with specially adapted digiboxes for the viewing figures, and a post-show survey (online?) for the AI (possibly of the same group).

[Boyatsea]

IIRC it's a nationally representative sample of something like 20,000 people with specially adapted digiboxes for the viewing figures, and a post-show survey (online?) for the AI (possibly of the same group).

Ahh. I stand corrected. Not that it matters to me especially.

Still, it must say something to those that it does matter to that it was the poorest AI for the series, eh?

[Davros sock drawer]

What were the previous Audience Appreciation figures?

[biglime]

AI is a group of people sat in a room with dials, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes - I'm not really bothered by that. My point is, it was shit, and if the entire series was as shit as that, they'd be up the shitter.

More Girl in the Fireplace, please.

I'll say again.

If Doctor Who becomes "More Girl In The Fireplace" again, then Doctor Who will die.

Some of us suffered the death the first time. We embrace the diversity, the fun, and the risks.

It was a great episode - a necessary one.

[Moose]

AI is a group of people sat in a room with dials, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, it's a random sampling. So it's as relevant (or as irrelevant) a guide to audience appreciation as ratings are to how many people in the UK actually sat down and watched the episode. It's a bit off to spend every week worrying about the correlation between the show's popularity and its ratings, speculating whether or not the summer weather is making a difference, or if scheduling variations are causing half-million fluctuations etc, and then to just completely dismiss AI as "a group of people sat in a room with dials".

You can debate the size of the random samplings, as you can with BARB ratings, but you can't argue with the indication.

76 is seen as "average" by the BBC, incidentally. Personally, I think that sounds about right for L&M, and I know you don't, but, well, pfoo. There we go, eh?

Yes - I'm not really bothered by that. My point is, it was shit, and if the entire series was as shit as that, they'd be up the shitter.

More Girl in the Fireplace, please.

Again, without wanting to overstate the blindingly obvious: your opinion (and a lot of others that have replied in this thread) is that it was shit. This does not mean that it didn't receive a generally positive reaction from the viewing public. Frankly, unless we ask every single person who watched it what they thought, and then divide by 7 million, we'll never get a proper answer.

The only way we can get a more accurate indication than the one we currently have is to ask a random sampling of over, say, 20,000 people who watched it whether they liked it or not, and see what they say. Until then, we're just going to have to go by the BBC's stats, which say: L&M was pretty good, thanks.

(I thought it did some things I thought it was going to do quite badly, quite well. And I think that RTD should learn the beauty of understatement and the importance of not turning the dial up to 10 every time. I thought it was, overall, a nice diversion with some crap bits. And I don't think it's going to damage the series in any way, shape or form. Far from it.)

Finally, the one thing I do agree completely with you on is that if the whole series was like Love & Monsters, I wouldn't be tuning in for S3. But that's the beauty of Who: it never will all be like that, in the same way it'll never all be like Destiny of the Daleks, or TimeLash, or even The Girl in the Fireplace. It's both a blessing and a curse, but it seems to have served the old girl quite decently so far.

[JohnC]

Just 2 more days and we will have made it a whole week of "it was shit" and "no it wasn't" posts.

[Davros sock drawer]

Moose and Biglime get it.

Thought I was going mad for a bit there.

[Boyatsea]

What were the previous Audience Appreciation figures?

I think the highest A.Is were for the Cybermen episodes, funnily enough. Bad Ambassador should know.

[Alex W.]

I think the best were up near 90%, weren't they?

It was always going to be a very divicive episode, I imagine it won't be more often than once or twice a series that they experiment like that (what's the point in experimental episodes if they're all experimental?).

[Boyatsea]

Some of us suffered the death the first time. We embrace the diversity, the fun, and the risks.

It was a great episode - a necessary one.

Hey - no one wants Doctor Who to be a success more than me. I was genuinely hoping this episode would be better than the trailers suggested it would. It just wasn't.

There's nothing wrong with diversity - as I've said before, the premise of the episode was good, it was just really badly written with some awful casting. As for The Girl in the Fireplace - if we're going to come down to statistics, it got higher ratings and a higher A.I. How you make the leap to such episodes killing the series, I don't know.

It was frigging superb.

[JohnC]

Moose and Biglime get it.

Thought I was going mad for a bit there.

I get it too. I like when shows do an episode which is outside the normal run of things. I mean with TV shows in general, not just with this.

[Boyatsea]

Finally, the one thing I do agree completely with you on is that if the whole series was like Love & Monsters, I wouldn't be tuning in for S3.

Again, I'm not talking about the premise. As you say, the beauty of a lot of Who is how diverse the setting allows it to be.

My point was, if all the episodes were written as poorly as that (scripts, dialogue, etc) then the series would be in trouble. I think it was by far the weakest episode since Doctor Who came thundering back, and we can't afford too many like that.

I have no problem with the setting or the style - indeed, the one thing that series two has done better than one is the diversity. It's quite hard to imagine another TV show where you could have episodes such as Tooth & Claw, Age of Steel, The Impossible Planet and, indeed, Love & Monsters in the same series; that is to BBC Wales' credit.

I just wish Love & Monsters had been better written.

Still. On to Fear Her.

[biglime]

New Earth was miles weaker than L&M, I thought. L&M succeeded in being a quirky and different little bit of fun. New Earth was supposed to be PROPER Doctor Who, and felt very weak in places. Some really bad comedy moments too.

That "I'm a chav!" moment is the worst bit of dialogue of the year.

[Davros sock drawer]

Hey - no one wants Doctor Who to be a success more than me. I was genuinely hoping this episode would be better than the trailers suggested it would. It just wasn't.

There's nothing wrong with diversity - as I've said before, the premise of the episode was good, it was just really badly written with some awful casting. As for The Girl in the Fireplace - if we're going to come down to statistics, it got higher ratings and a higher A.I. How you make the leap to such episodes killing the series, I don't know.

It was frigging superb.

Until you stop presenting your opinions as fact (and you really are here, rather than leaving that as taken for read), what's the point in talking to you about it?

How do you reconcile the fact that I liked both GitF and LoM? Biglime's point is that diversity keeps the series fresh. Whether you liked it or not is irrelevant. He's right - repeating one type of story would kill it. You can't just say it was shit over and over again to prove your point. I thought RotC was shite. I'm not the absolute arbiter of taste on that, any more than you are on LoM.

What's the point of being on a discusion forum, and then being so stubborn? Why can't you acknowledge our enjoyment of it, like beenabadbunny has? He didn't like it, but wishes he did. You seem to have hated it, and you want us all to hate it as well.

That's fucked up mate.

[Alex W.]

I still don't see how it was badly written. Folk spoke in a very ordinary manner compared to, say, last week's monologue with the Space Devil, but that's kind of necessary for the characters. And they did speak in a very natural way.

[Boyatsea]

That "I'm a chav!" moment is the worst bit of dialogue of the year.

Nah.

[biglime]

I still don't see how it was badly written.

It wasn't.

[Boyatsea]

Until you stop presenting your opinions as fact (and you really are here, rather than leaving that as taken for read), what's the point in talking to you about it?

I think we've got beyond the stage of us all having to clarify everything we state in our posts as opinions. At least I hoped we had.

Of course what I'm saying isn't fact. Don't be daft.

What's the point of being on a discusion forum, and then being so stubborn? Why can't you acknowledge our enjoyment of it, like beenabadbunny has?

What?

I'm sure you did enjoy it. I'm not challenging the fact that you enjoyed it. I'm sure you did, and good for you. I actually thought before the episode aired that I'd be one of the few that would enjoy it, as was the case with Boom Town last year. As a fan, and I've been a fan for as long as I've been able to speak, I sat down wanting to enjoy Love & Monsters - just as I do every episode of Who. So, naturally, I'm quite disappointed that I didn't.

I really didn't think I'd have to spell all this out.

My bone of contention with you (and some others), if you like, is that you seem to be under the misguided impression that the reason a lot of us didn't like the episode is because it was 'different'. I'm just trying to point out to you that that is not the case. My view is that it was a nice idea, badly implimented.

So, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm sorry I didn't.