A quick summary of my plight: my 19yo son is a Dr Who obsessive. We have a part-completed life-sized TARDIS in the garden, we have a headless life-sized Dalek under the house, his 3D models of sonic screwdrivers are renowned the world over for their a curacy amongst fellow Who tragics.
I remember the day I bought home a Dr Who DVD that I’d found cheap in a thrift store. It was the good stuff, Tom Baker, and my son was about 4. He became instantly obsessed, and I’ve followed his Who journey now for 15 years through occasional and modest peaks and the endless, crushing disappointments. There were the Ecclestone years (great), Tennant (good), Smith (OK), Capaldi (his favourite) and Whittaker (dire). I recall his breathless excitement from a couple of years ago when he announced that Russell T Davies was returning to the helm to lead the Doctor back to the promised land. Finally, the show was going to hit form again.
Well, here we are two years later after enduring Ncuti Gatwa, undoubtedly the worst Doctor ever (Jodie Whittaker must be breathing a deep sigh of relief), and my son’s just told me that Billie Piper will be the next Doctor. I mean, surely this is a ‘break glass in emergency’ type of option that indicates how desperate the future of this show has become. But it is ignoring the huge, glaring problem with modern Who: the awful, toe-curling writing.
I started the current season in a show of solidarity with my son, but even that couldn’t keep me going more than half way through. I’m sure I’ve ranted on this before, but just think of the effort spent from plot conception to finished episode, think about how many focus meetings, writing sessions, script readthroughs etc have occurred in that time, yet the stories, those things at the heart of Dr Who, feel like they have been written by first year interns or work-experience kids. Did nobody stop and say ‘This is a bit shit, isn’t it?’.
So my son, like the pilot of a Lancaster that’s just had it’s wing shot off, is once again showing amazing optimism in the face of reality in thinking that maybe next season will be the one that pulls the show out of the death spiral, back into level flight and clear skies. I really hope he’s right, but I’d still have at least one arm in the parachute and a foot out the cockpit door.
“Ecclestone years (great), Tennant (good), Smith (OK), Capaldi (his favourite) and Whittaker (dire)”
I thoroughly disagree with you and your son’s ranking. My own ranking: Ecclestone good, Tennant great, Smith great, everyone else (including Tom Baker) not worth watching. I must confess I have only watched one or two episodes with “everyone else (including Tom Baker)” and my enthusiasm level for further exploration was zero. I haven’t seen any of the Ncuti Gatwa episodes and you’ve convinced me not to, a discouragement for which I’m grateful.
So, out of 15 periods with different actors, you’ve decided you can comment on the show’s overall development arc by writing off the first 8.
That puts your contribution to this thread into some sort of perspective.
Don’t you dare criticise my Gary for being whimsical and (almost) funny. Take it back right now!
I thought it was a lovely thing to say. All that about me providing perspective and everything.
Forest Gumpesque , that’s you….
Ncuti Gatwa has been great! I watched the Capaldi and Whittaker episodes if I was in at the time, but out of habit. With Gatwa’s joy and charisma the series has been fun to watch and something to look forward to for the first time since River Song showed up (honourable expection to that rule was Michelle Gomez’s turn as Missy). As always the stories have been a mixed bag but it was a definite upturn from the garbled Jodie Whittaker episodes. Not her fault that she was lumbered with too many companions and dull stories.
Davies/Gatwa certainly much much better (and an enjoyable watch) than the Chibnall/Whittaker mess which was really a grind to watch at times. I suppose Chibnall was going for a more child-friendly Doctor and story lines and maybe that worked if you are actually younger, but the franchise moved beyond being just that a long time ago, surely?
I actually liked the Capaldi Doctor as well
I haven’t seen most of the newer ones following Tennant’s brief reappearance. I’m waiting for my son and I to have a few hours to devote to it. However I did see “73 Yards” and thought it was an excellent standalone episode.
You’ve convinced me to watch Ncuti Gatwa in 73 Yards , an ecouragement for which I’m grateful.
Yes, it was good and notably it was the ‘Doctor-lite’ episode for the season.
Blink was an outstanding piece of drama, even without the Who connection.
I agree. Though out of all the ones I’ve watched plus those I haven’t, this is my favourite scene from any Doctor Who ever:
I’m with you almost entirely @Podicle. We’ve just stopped bothering altogether now. It’s taken a few years for our last remaining optimism to fade to avoidance, but its been a crushingly inevitable decline of patience. There have been times when the rate of disinclination to care one way or the other has notably increased (Whittaker mostly), but it has been sadly apparent, gradual and continuous from Smith onwards, with a little bubble of fun around Capaldi. But its not about the actor (Ncuti Gatwa is probably as good as any one else could be with the material he’s given) – it’s about the writing, which is what has lost us altogether.
Ridiculous plotting, completely unnecessary secondary characters, slavish sopping to current cultural memes, increasingly over-the-top reliance upon CGI, dramatic attention deficit disorder of the highest degree, and so many dei ex machina from that bloody ‘screwdriver’ that I’d like to ram it up, er, somewhere.
Great TARDIS interior redesign, but that doesn’t really carry the rest of the thing very far on its own.
All the old ones are on iPlayer and I’ve been thinking about watching a series. I never bothered BITD – I went from terrified of it to not interested without passing through enthusiasm. Which is a great classic to watch? A dalek one?
@Twang
Pour a single malt and sit down to splurge on the 5 episode story within Series 8 – titled ‘The Daemons’.
British sci-fi at its best – echoes of Hammer, Quatermass and the Wyndham novels. Pretty sure you’ll enjoy that!
I’m going in. Wickerman flavours too!
That was fun. Onto the next one!
The Talons of Weng Chiang, Tom Baker.
This ⬆️
Pyramids Of Mars. Another Tom Baker classic.
Of the Jon Pertwee ones, I’d agree about “the Daemons”, also “Invasion of the dinosaurs” – provided you can ignore how bad the model dinosaurs are.
“Spearhead from Space” was the first Pertwee story & does a very good job of establishing his character. The scene where the Autons crash through the shop window in Ealing Broadway traumatised local kids for years (once again, the monster at the end is a bit rubbish)
If you do go exploring the old episodes, have a read of the blog entries from “Adventures with the wife in Space” where a Who geek has introduced his wife to the series, along with her reactions, as they watch them
http://wifeinspace.com/
I’d suggest a couple of Tom Baker ones, all set on Earth – the Victorian-era one (someone else will recall the title), the one with the Loch Ness monster (ditto) and ‘The Horror of Fang Rock’, the one set on a lighthouse because the series had run out of money and they had to do something with minimal set and running about – yet created a great play-like drama.
Excellent thanks all. I remember one with with British army soldiers in it. What was that?
There was a running storyline involving UNIT, a British army division led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart who worked alongside the Doctor to save the world from alien invasion. UNIT appeared in lots of earth-based stories.
That sounds familiar. Was he The Brigadier?
That’s him, played Nicolas Courtney in ‘classic’ and new Doctor Who episodes pretty much until Courtney’s death. Jemma Redgrave plays his daughter Kate in more recent series.
Courtney was in an episode of Yes Minister, playing a senior Met policeman at a diplomatic ‘do’, though very much in Brigadier-mode. After being introduced to a guest from abroad he said ‘Ah, yes, UNESCO; plucky little country’.
Thanks team. I’m home alone next weekend so that’s Saturday night sorted.
I enjoyed reading about your son and his many years as a Who fan, Podicle.
And I agree with you about the scripts. I also think that the show started to take itself far too seriously.
There was some wonderful tongue-in-cheek humour in those early Russell T Davies episodes.
For example, that scene where Rose rang home from the distant future and the doctor commented on his phone bills.
Incidentally, is your son interested in any other sci fi shows or indeed movies?
Old favourites Firefly and Futurama spring to mind.
And the wonderful Galaxy Quest,..
Watching something else might help diminish his disappointment with the Tardis going off the rails.
Thanks KFD. Futurama has been a fixture in our house. He watches occasional other series (Andor, I think?) but he’s a quirky kid and I think the quirkiness of Dr Who is what appeals to him.
Largely through circumstances, we haven’t watched the latest series and I haven’t felt much like catching up. I was a big fan right from the beginning, and still remember watching the first series from 1963, but the Jodie Whittaker period pretty much killed it for me. As others have said, the writing and story telling is just awful – I really don’t get the praise heaped upon Russell T. Davies at all. The whole thing seems to have become a vehicle for him to crowbar whatever current obsession he has into the script in the most clumsy and obvious way possible.
The other issue I have always had with New Who is the abandonment of the 4-6 episode story arc in favour of one episode stories – this was fundamental to Doctor Who back in the day, and allowed for an ebb and flow and stories were able to breathe. These days episodes seem to be breathless races to get the whole thing into an hour.
Totally agree about the episode format. First episode used to always be setting things up with the baddie reveal at the end of the episode. There was room for an actual story arc.
“breathless races to get the whole thing into an hour”
Spot on. Even Flash Gordon understood the art of the weekly/episodic cliffhanger, now there needs to be far too much sonic tomfoolery to get us to the end in time. It’s story-telling for the attention-defective. They’ve had to resort to ex-Eastender guest spots to create an arc lasting longer than an hour.
I’m presuming Gatwa is a great actor, but it’s as if for character direction he was given a post-it note that said ‘Flamboyantly gay BFF. Cries every episode to show how empathetic he is.’
The show is so desperately inclusive that it’s like one of those corporate promotional photos where you can tell the team is working to a checklist. This sort of thing can be done well, but here it’s just insulting.
I am sure there are many types of sexuality in aliens, but they likely are not stereotypes of the approved ciphers we currently have. This social conformity to current expressions of LGBTQ+ identity is as bad as regular stereotypes.
You know why Billie came back?
Because she wants to, because she wants to!
The main issue I have with much of the ‘new’ Who, in whatever iteration, is the OVERWHELMING FOREGROUND MUSIC. It makes whatever decent script they might have come up with almost unintelligible.
Couldn’t agree more. Watching old episodes reminds you of this – you can actually hear what they are saying. It’s so annoying – like the special effects, they have to spend all that money somewhere.
I’ve been watching TV with subtitles for years I find I can ‘hear’ better when they’re on.
They do seem to be losing doctors quite rapidly in the last few years. Not having seen last night’s episode I’ll give it a whirl later today, I’d already seen the news of the surprise ending elsewhere.
Well I watched it, not as bad as I thought but the bit in the garden towards the end was turning into a Hallmark romance film.
I agree. There was one series during, I think, the Tennant or Capaldi era that I stopped watching simply because of the constant sound bombast.
@podicle You might mention to your son that Billie Piper isn’t definitely the next Doctor. The credits didn’t use the usual “Introducing Billie Piper as The Doctor” and press releases talk of her returning to the show, not necessarily playing the lead. It’s probably a one off that will be explained. Miss Piper herself was recently saying in an interview that she is moving behind the camera to direct and write more.
Interesting! I’ll mention that to him.
Just saw this on the Facebook Carry On page.
Brilliant @hubert-rawlinson. Now that’s what I call a regeneration.
It makes me think….With all the wonders of modern technology currently available, the Doctor could now be played by a thespian who has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Dr WHO-trey!
I got hooked on the Tom Baker incarnation at the age of 6 and he’s still The Doctor to me*. Like any actor who plays James Bond should look like he can kill a man with his bare hands (Connery, Craig and Dalton yes, everyone else no) Doctor Who actors should look like they don’t quite have human DNA. So, to me, Baker, Smith and possibly Capaldi, Troughton and the other Baker. Everyone else is just tetchy/emoting/running down and corridor, coming to a stop and gawping (hello Jodie!)
Another problem is this “Whoniverse” bollocks where everything has to reference another era, or foreshadow something coming up or, at its worst, both at the same time. The writers are pandering to the middle aged keyboard warriors instead of the ten-year-olds now. It’s supposed to be a kid’s show which might also be enjoyed by parents, not the other way round.
I totally understand that people of every background should be able to see themselves. The only people of colour Tom Baker met were painted green or wearing the ‘yellowface’ of the regrettable Weng-Chiang. You’d get disabled actors like David Rappaport but they’d always be villains. And camp was allowed and frequently encouraged, but not anyone gay, like everything else on TV in the 70s and 80s. It’s great that things have moved on and people of every stripe can see themselves in a positive light. Every story crowbarring in the fact that racism is a bad thing, or it’s ok to be different, or some families are non-traditional, comes across like a particularly earnest Guardian think piece. Sometimes the kids (and their parents or guardians) just want a trip to a planet where there’s some peril and the Doctor saves the day by using his or her wits. The recent ‘populist right wing politician must be stopped’ story is a prime case in point.
Having said all this, I am a 53-year-old middle class white bloke. Doctor Who is not for me, and hasn’t been since about 1983.
* Best episodes ‘Robots of Death’, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ and ‘City of Death’.
Therefore you gave up on the Doc at the age of 11. Have you always been old before your time?
I still watched it with Peter Davison, but it felt like a real let down after TB and I moved to the more cynical Blake’s 7. After that I didn’t get to watch it as much thanks to being at boarding school, sparing me from Sylvester McCoy vs Bertie Bassett. I have watched much of the new era, usually only with half an eye while cooking as my wife is a fan.
To be fair, I pretty much dropped out when Tristan took over the TARDIS flying. And I don’t believe I’ve seen a single episode of the McCoy years either. But when I went off to waste my grant for three years, the TV room in my student hall of residence was packed to the gunnels every Saturday night for the latest Who episode. Pin-drop for 45 mins or whatever. Anyone talking mid-episode got a proper hissing fit. So a full audience of 18-23 years olds, hooked, line and sinker.
Agree about tiresome references back and forth. The best Dr Who episodes were always where the Doc landed on some random planet, helped the 8 natives overcome some sinister villain, and then buggered off, never to think of them again. Now, it’s like the MCU where every previous character, no matter how minor, has to return or be referenced in some way.
There is also the problem that would be referred to in some gaming circles as ‘power creep’, where plots have shifted from predominantly small-scale baddies with modest goals (like taking over a planet for its mineral wealth) into vast, galactic/universal outcomes masterminded by evil deities. If every single season dangles the threat of universal annihilation as its cliffhanger then there’s really nowhere to go from there.
Dr Who started as a programme with a very large fanbase among young people.
Is the latest episode still the subject of lively playground discussion on Monday mornings?
Has the programme lost its young fanbase?
The change to one-episode stories has probably contributed to this. nothing like a good cliffhanger to make you turn on again next week.
There is certainly a lot more competition today- Stockholm’s enormous SCI FI BOOKSHOP is one of the most popular bookshops in town. Young sci fi readers are really up to speed with the latest in manga and anime, not to mention other genres I’ve never heard of.
Interesting. On the train to work last week I was marvelling that almost every book I saw being read was some brick-sized sci-fi/fantasy tome. It warmed my heart, until I realised that this is pretty much a self-selected group whose Venn diagram overlaps strongly with ‘people who want to be seen reading physical books on trains in this age of devices’.
Then again, a week or two ago an exceedingly attractive young lady wearing hi-vis overalls smeared with grease sat opposite me on the train and whipped out a copy of 100 Years of Solitude which she read intently for the next half hour.
An exceedingly attractive young lady wearing hi-vis overalls smeared with grease…
Gosh @Podicle. Train journeys to work in your neck of the woods sound a lot more exciting than commuting in Stockholm.
Good point about choosing physical books. Most youngish people on the Metro here have earbuds or headphones. i wonder how many are listening to novels.
I watched most of the ‘new era’ out of nostalgic interest but there were certainly some Whittaker episodes I couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm to bother watching, even out of habit, and there was the guts of a previous series that I stopped watching because of the constant bombast of sound / inability to hear the (mostly gobbledegook) dialogue.
I watched one Ncuti episode – the first one – and it was unutterable bilge. So I haven’t watched any others.
“unutterable bilge”
Spot on. Fodder for the Tik-Tok generation. Disengage brain, zone out, drop soma.
Oh God, have we got to the “young kids today…” stage?
The kids are alright.
Always have been. Always will be.
And old fogeys (I’m 63 you know) will keep on saying that they aren’t.
Ok, its not for us. That’s enough
Preach
Pappa don’t.
To return to the OP, Star Trek must be running a close second, and for similar reasons. Discovery was a mess, Picard only saved itself in the 3rd season by bringing back the Next Generation cast and actually, you know, doing exciting stuff in space. I didn’t even bother with the last thing (Section something or other) which got such a kicking from the fan base that I couldn’t be arsed. It has had similar accusations of wokery with the same heavy handed messaging that has afflicted DW – the irony being that the original series and Enterprise et al dealt with those issues subtly and deftly. Strange New Worlds has been OK – does lean heavily into the original series’ tropes and characters, and it has gone back to weekly adventures rather than the season story arc, which seems to work for it.
I could bang on about Star Wars too, where the TV stuff is desperately uneven, with the exception of the Mandolorian and the superb Andor, but I’m in danger of a coronary unless I calm down.
I think ‘Lost’ probably pissed off every fan it had, once they gradually came to realise that all its intriguing enigmas were never really going anywhere.
This Andor of which you speak, is it a profound reflection on the intergalactic philosophy of choice between selfless selection and rampant greed, or have they just tried to think of a name that sounds vaguely Lord-of-the-Rings-ish?
Or is it Boolean logic And (and) Or gates?
If you have seen Rogue One (the best Star Wars film imho), this is the build up to that. Excellent writing and plotting, it is Star Wars for grown ups. None of that ‘use the force’ bollocks (although there is a passing slight reference in season 2), it is the story of the rebellion coming together, the attempted repression by the fascistic Empire, and the individual stories of people on both sides examining their personal conflicts trying to work their way through what is happening around them and because of them.
Anyway….I enjoyed it!
That is the new focus of Farage’s manifesto
Andor is indeed marvellous: I think it is the missing link between Star Wars and Blake’s Seven although this is not a popular view.
Yes, Scooby Doo.
Scrappy Doo can go shag himself.
Yes, The Pink Panther Show.
The ones with the Peter Sellers/French middle section for sure, all day long, fantastic. The ones with the crane… are you George?
Yes, Magic Roundabout… the Blue Cat at the cinema, really?
Yes, Top of the Pops… anything after the Beatles split up.
Non Fred Quimby Tom and Jerry.
The characters of the Doctor steadily became this messianic figure who could wreck/redeem entire timelines, rather than a mysterious loner who just visited places and tried to help strangers. It was a form of fan service from Moffatt onwards to big up the mythos (and I accept the entire franchise is geared to viewers younger than me, hence the fast pace) but we have parted ways. And too many bloody Daleks.
Good insight.
My son informed me that Gatwa will be the first Dr not to have encountered Daleks and Cybermen.
HUH. What a disappointment. How dare he use the Tardis?
A Dr who has not encountered Daleks and Cybermen is about as credible as a medical doctor who has never met any patients.
Where have all the scary monsters gone? If you are not cowering behind the sofa in abject terror, It’s not the real Who.
Bearing this in mind, I’m surprised that IKEA have not issued a special sofa or screwdriver as a tribute to our favourite Time Lord.
Here we go. Some Whovian interior decorating suggestions.
This season, RTD has come across as someone who likes to sniff his own farts. He’s doing things for the sake of doing them, not for the sake of moving the story or characters along.
Too short a season means some of the things that go into relationship building were just forced down the audience’s throat and we were told to swallow.
Gatwa is full of charisma, but his character isn’t exactly multi dimensional – you couldn’t see him delivering the broad arc of what Matt Smith did. And I don’t think that’s his fault, I think it’s RTD.
People are more than their sexual identity and associations to that. Gatwa was sold as a few key stereotypes, rather than a talented person who happens to have those features as well.
Joyless twat that I am, my favourite Doctor is William Hartnell, because he’s the only one I’ve ever seen. I was quite surprised to discover it’s not in black and white any more.
William Hartnell. Remember when the Doctor was a grumpy old git? Subsequent Doctors should be measured on a grumpiness scale – the more “empathetic” they strive to be, the less alien they seem…
What a magnificent fogey you are, @mikethep.
I’m impressed- A Whoist who accepts only William Hartnell as the real thing.
An interesting piece of trivia. The very first episode was broadcast on Saturday 23 November, the day after JFK was assassinated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unearthly_Child
I remember it well. Heard the news in the chippie on Friday evening on my way home from scouts. Then watched the Doc next day. Quite the weekend. I suppose I watched more than one episode, but it’s the only one I remember watching.
I only accept Peter Cushing:
(Jesting, it was Jon Pertwee for me.)
@kaisfatdad
Aldous Huxley and IIRC, CS Lewis, also died the same day. As did the tramp whose identity the assassin stole in Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal
Thanks @Jaygee. that is fascinating. A lot happened on Friday 22 November 1963.
The doors of perception closed. The doors of the Tardis were about to open.
And the Beeb were caught with their pants down and their dinner jackets on.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/how-the-kennedy-assassination-caught-the-bbc-on-the-hop-78973.html
It’s all a Post-Modern Dr Who episode just waiting to be written.
Being discussed on R4 Today program, even as I type…
I enjoyed all the first RTD then Moffat eras, but quickly lost interest after a few of the Chris Chibnall episodes. Was delighted when RTD came back, but it’s been inconsistent since then; a handful of excellent episodes, some a bit ‘Meh!’ and some real disasters (ie that incoherent nonsense set in Lagos).
Things I don’t like about the past two series. Some very poor writing in some episodes, trying to cram in a mountain of detail through minutes of exposition. Ridiculously overblown soundtracks that are shouting at the viewers to get excited. And Ncuti Gatwa overacting.
I wonder how much of this has been down to the influence of Disney, which seems to want a series of sci-fi blockbusters, which has never been the strength of Dr Who. Reportedly it hasn’t yet decided whether to put up the money for another series and I hope it doesn’t. It might be possible for the BBC to save it by going back to smaller budgets and tight writing that doesn’t get mangled by trying to fit into a long, complex story arc. And maybe it needs RTD to step back and someone else to come in as showrunner. Or else it’s time to kill it off.
While never a massive fan, watched most of the Tennant, Smith and Capaldi ones.
Felt it all started to go wrong when JW came in and the showrunners began placing more emphasis on showing how inclusive they wore over gripping stories.
Watched the first two NG episodes and have not bothered since.
It’s often said that everyone has their own doctor – usually one from their childhood years.
Given the awfulness of the scripts the current Dr has had, and the fact that many of those still tuning in seem to be adults of a certain age, it’s hard to see NG being many youngser viewers’ go-to Time Lord.
Not sure about killing it off but a hiatus of a few years might do the show a power of good
I would expect any show or film that has obsessive fans is always going to piss off its fanbase at some point. Either it gets stale and doesn’t change or it tries something new and pisses of the obsessives.
Just wait until the Harry Potter series starts….
Jonathan Pertwee was the Doctor for me. The yellow car. UNIT. The Green Death, with those huge over-sized maggots. At tea-time too! Put me right off my banana sandwiches.
I took it almost personally when he re-generated into Tom Baker. The scarf and K bloody 9 grated so I jumped ship.
Returned, but partially, when my then little daughter became fascinated by the Matt Smith incarnation. He became ‘our’ doctor and emotionally he now shares the same plinth as Pertwee. She is very much a Whovian while I have become tired of the multi coloured bombast of it since. Always a bit of a pedantic cynic I become peeved at the macguffins and deus ex machina that pervade sci fi for the kidz. ‘We’re doomed! But wait! If we just plarsifarge the stromleywiffle on the diagonal it might just work! How? By pushing this lever!’
Unfair carping, I know, but I’ve noticed more of that, as has my daughter, recently.
That’s my problem in a nutshell with sci-fi. The sheer nonsensical made up nature of it.
It’s beyond me why people question the gender, colour and sexuality of a timelord because it isn’t in keeping with an entirely and far fetchedly fictional world. Dr Who has two hearts, a sonic screw driver and can regenerate regulalry but he (for it is a he) will only only into a 30 to 70 year old white man who doesn’t give much of a clue about his sexuality but prefers to travel with young ladies.
I gave up on Pertwee if I wanted to see Adam Adamant I’d watch Adam Adamant. Returned for Tom Baker and then gave up watched the reboot and gradually less of them. Jodie Whittaker annoyed with her shouts of ‘Fam’to her companions.
Gerald Harper still with us in his 90s. Worked with him on some radio ads in the mid 80s and he was a pleased as punch when I told him I loved AA. Given Austin Powers homages AA’s plot, seems Mike Myers was also something of a fan
Loved that show. I was deeply envious of his sword stick.
(ooo-er missus)
The fab Kathy Kirby singing the theme song too!
Can’t agree about the Pertwee reference though – he’s prob my fave Who overall. Loved Tom, but, please, that bloody robot dog? No. No. No.
@vulpes-vulpes and I wouldn’t expect you to agree, it’s just how I felt at the time. I kept expecting him to lapse into Navy Lark gobbledegook. I also didn’t like it being set on Earth and that car.
Fancy a jelly-baby?
I can understand all the criticism of the recent Dr Who series, but at the end of the day, I have still watched most of the episodes and enjoyed most. After all, it is just entertainment that is aimed at a younger audience and reality shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Whilst the latest series may not have the best writing, there’s still some very very good episodes – the one with the mining planet and the invisible force behind the woman that moves to another person springs to mind. I also think that Gatwa has been pretty good as the doctor (although I still rate Tennant as the best post reboot and Tom Baker is the best overall)
I thought Gatwas was good – but havent seen the last half dozen yet (been away a bit, then watching the Wheel of Time – which starts poorly then gets better).
Thought Whittaker let down by the writing most of the time.
Loved the last series of Capaldi, and most of Tennant, Smith and Ecclestone
Used iplayer to watch all the Cybermen episodes… Colin Baker is unwatchable. Slyvester McCoy surprisingly good in appallingly written and shot series which clearly was just using things from the BBC costume and prop rooms.
Troughton was my first Doctor and Tomb of the Cybermen gave me nightmares for years.
Its a bit of escapism, and that’s fine.
Back in the first post-reboot series, we got ‘Love and Monsters’, where Russell had got himself into a trap by allowing Blue Peter viewers to send in suggestions for a villain. The episode had a bunch of well known actors basically being the Why Don’t You Cardiff Gang. They were actually playing fucking ELO songs as a band in the episode. Peter Kay was in it. I can’t remember if there was a sped up Benny Hill chase in it, but it would have fitted.
I think someone at the BBC should have taken stock right there and then. This remains the most woeful, amateurish piece of self-indulgent nonsense I’ve ever seen. It was ‘a love letter to fandom’ apparently. I think it was more of a love letter to himself.
I did enjoy some of that first series, and bits and pieces of subsequent ones. It was throwaway entertainment, at the end of the day. But things went weird; there was a storyline where one of his companions had been kidnapped, had a baby but had forgotten everything about it. I think her partner was killed more than once… there was just no empathy in it. The lost baby thing was horrendous; and I don’t think the writers realised how it might affect some people.
there was indeed a Benny Hill chase in Love and Monsters….
what a load of absolute fucking rubbish. I remember Russell shoehorning Doctor Who into the otherwise excellent Queer as Folk. It’s all about him, isn’t it?
ugh, sorry, I lost control a bit there. It’s probably not as bad as I remember it. I just hated it at the time.
The one with the small kid with a gas mask face was brilliant though, and that was probably where all the real effort went.
In answer to the OP, I think Coronation Street has.
Lost would be another one
And Top of the Pops
Facebook has decided (!) that I want to see lots of Doctor Who threads.
The view of the obsessives seems to be:
If you don’t like it, you’re not a “true” fan.
If you don’t understand it, you need to watch it again.
It doesn’t need to make sense – it’s fantasy!
They like all the references to past events & “Easter eggs” (even if there are more of them than a branch of Thornton’s on Good Friday)
Lots of theories about Billie Piper – which the writers can harvest to make up a sensible explanation.
The show isn’t really aimed at casual viewers anymore, which is a shame, but it’s just “telly”
That is a grim picture you paint there @Timbar.
By alienating casual viewers with their suffocating enthusiasm, the uber-fans could well kill the show off.
@Kaisfatdad
There was a piece in Monday’s Times saying that the most recent research shows that the average age of those watching Dr. Who is 45.5.
Having barely watched the JW iteration and baled from Ncuti after the first two eps (the stupid one with the babies and the incomprehensible Beatles one) I’d count myself at the casual end of the Whoniverse
If I was working at the BBC @Jaygee, I’d be worried by those figures.
It’s not healthy that adults have become the core audience for a kids show…
But this balancing act of trying to keep everyone happy is nothing new.
This article by Johann Holzel from Quora is interesting—
Last I checked (which was a few years ago…), the biggest demographic group was 18–35. But it’s also popular with kids. This is pretty hard to pull off, but, since 2005, they’ve tried hard to make it work, and mostly been successful. Russell T Davies (who revived the show in 2005) describes some of how he made this work in his memoir The Writer’s Tale. But here’s a short version.
Doctor Who was originally targeted as a “family show”, a show that kids and parents alike were supposed to enjoy. Which made perfect sense in 1963, when every family only had one TV, and there were only two things to watch anyway.
It was already starting to make less sense by the late 70s. Some script editors (especially Douglas Adams, Christopher Bidmead, and Andrew Cartmel—although in pretty different ways) deliberately tried to make the show appealing to adults, or at least uni students, without losing the kids. And producers (especially John Nathan-Turner, who ran the classic show for its last decade) tried to find ways to keep the parents’ attention (hence Peri running around in her bikini “for the dads”). But it’s something the show never entirely figured out how to carry into the 80s. By the last few years, they really weren’t drawing in anyone but people who’d been watching since they were kids in the 70s.
After the show was canceled in 1989, it carried on in the form of a series of novels, starting with Virgin’s New Adventures, that were deliberately aimed at a (geeky) adult audience. A few years later, Big Finish’s audio plays did a pretty good job fusing the kid-friendly style of the classic show with the adult-focused stories of the novels. And when RTD brought the show back, that was all fodder for him to study to figure out how to make the show appeal to a wide age range again. (And also to women.)
But RTD had plenty of other influences, from the rise of “young adult” media—and especially Buffy—to his own experience writing everything from kids’ shows to post-watershed soap operas. He wanted to come up with a new definition of “family show” for the 21st century, and to make Doctor Who exemplify that definition.
They did have to sacrifice the younger kids a bit to make this work. Most series go out with 12, PG, or similar certificates in most countries. But still, kids well under 12 were playing Daleks in the schoolyards again, just as they were in RTD’s youth, and that was more important than being officially all-ages. Especially since, at the same time, American college students were gathering to watch the show every week, 20-somethings were having Doctor Who-themed weddings, crusty old 60s fans were turning their TVs on again to see this new version of their childhood fave…
@podicle There’s a Tardis-esque garden shed in Stiffkey, Norfolk. We had a couple of nice holidays in one of those cottages. The Red Lion in Stiffkey is only a few metres west.
Is the pub named after the disgraced local vicar, the Rev.. Harold Davidson, who was reduced to touring the UK as part of a circus side show and ended up being mauled to death by a lion in Skegness after he was laicized?
As detailed here (’tis a top read indeed)…
http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2011/02/the-prostitutes-padre-harold-davidson-and-the-lyons-corner-house-in-coventry-street/
That was quite a tale!
Not sure, but think The Rev’s story may have provided the basis for the movie The Missionary
If you like this sort of stuff, strongly recommend you get your hands on a copy of Brewers Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics