Dr. Who

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JMR

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I just got done watching Day of the Daleks... From 1972. Way way behind everyone else. But this four part set had some really great moments. One the lesson in it was kind of cool... But one part that was so funny is there these cavemen people that are working for this human. Two of cavemen go to report.. One speaks in big loud voice talking slow dragging out his words and trying to sound like a caveman. The other one gives sort answer in proper voice...sounds really smart...You think stairs or lose gravel would beat Daleks... Next one for us is The curse of Peladon 1972
 

Gerald

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In the UK, the Sunday 8.30-10.00 pm slot has always been one of the more popular ones, and has long been the traditional home of the 'Murder, Mystery, Suspense' strand. Earlier in the evening, not so much (you definitely want Saturday, between around 5 and 7, for that - going back years, that's where you'd find things like The A-Team, Baywatch, etc). Early Sunday evenings were always given over to 'The God Slot' (e.g. Songs of Praise, Highway) followed by things the network controllers weren't bothered about (historically, the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and an alt-reality/SF-ish show called The Knights of God were scheduled there, and moved around or removed on any given week accordingly).
That kind of historical precedent is why I'm a bit jumpy over DW's future. The last time the BBC punted it around the schedule was during the Sylvester McCoy years, and we all know what happened there. (And again, in a climate of fairly strong anti-SF sentiment within the corporation.)

Whittaker's debut was the most watched episode since 2008:

Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who debut is most watched launch for 10 years

On the contrary Capaldi's last season was the least watched since the 2005 return:

Doctor Who ratings for last series lowest since it returned to TV in 2005

If they had continued with Capaldi, it most likely would have gone the same way as McCoy. They totally renewed and refreshed it however, which seems to me more a sign that they want it to succeed.
 

AnnaMarie

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Of course people stopped watching Capaldi. The writers gave up.

I am enjoying this season. I agree the scripts are not written for “the woman doctor”. They are written for “the doctor”, as they should be. I’m having a bit of trouble with her accent, but I am getting used to it.

I'm absolutely blown away by it. It's totally Doctor Who and yet it feels totally different. This must be one of the major complete overhauls in the history of the show. Certainly since it came back in 2005. It's hard to say though how much difference it makes that Doctor is now female, since everything else is different too. Basically I would say it doesn't make much of a difference if the Doctor is a male or female, since he/she has the same characteristics in both cases. What strikes me most about Whitaker, is that the lines are way funnier than the way she delivers them - it's as if someone delivers comedic lines as if they were straight lines. It's possible I have to still get used to her, some Doctors were funnier than others - it's also not a full comedy show of course, it alternates constantly between funny and straight.

But the whole look of the show is fantastic. Much darker, feels more grounded in reality than I can remember Doctor Who ever was, just an overall realistic tone I would say. The opener The Woman Who Fell To Earth was the best opener of a season since Deep Breath (actually that title appears as a line towards the end, and I got the feeling that was an intentional reference). The show feels more like a movie than before - it has to do with new cameras/lenses they're using which give it a much bigger scope.
Only three episodes in, so it's hard to say if it will keep this up, but so far I'm very happy with it. Although I expect it can be a case of love or hate as with most major revisions of something that's beloved.

She does seem a bit like a straight-man giving a comedic line, and it works.

She has been making comments like Deep Breath all along I think. Comments about her previous selves.
 

Gerald

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She does seem a bit like a straight-man giving a comedic line, and it works.

She has been making comments like Deep Breath all along I think. Comments about her previous selves.

I didn't notice the other comments besides Deep Breath. What were they?

It's a matter of getting used to her I think. I definetely laugh at her sometimes (like the Ed Sheeran comment in yesterday's episode), but at other times I'm not sure if something is meant entirely funny - but I think that has always been the case with Dr. Who, it switches so much between comedy and straight. I think the overall most funny Doctor (of the Doctors I know) was Matt Smith - he was funny mostly all the time it seemed.

It's strange though that just because she has a Yorkshire accent it's set in and around Sheffield. Its not like when Tennant or Capaldi were the Doctor it was suddenly set in Scotland. Not sure why they've done that.
 

AnnaMarie

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Okay...so I think it wasn't so much things she said. I just feel like...I see previous doctors in what she says and does.

And when she said There's this moment when you're sure you're about to die and then... you're born. It's terrifying. Right now, I'm a stranger to myself. There's echoes of who I was, and a sort of call towards who I am, and I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts. Shape myself towards them. I'll be fine, in the end. Hopefully

I felt like I was seeing that, before she said it. Does that make any sense?

~~~

There had also been a line she said about sunglasses that I thought was a throwback to either Capaldi or Smith. But, when I read it, apparently I had not understood what she said. Lol
 

Mr Nobody

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Whittaker's debut was the most watched episode since 2008:

Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who debut is most watched launch for 10 years

On the contrary Capaldi's last season was the least watched since the 2005 return:

Doctor Who ratings for last series lowest since it returned to TV in 2005

If they had continued with Capaldi, it most likely would have gone the same way as McCoy. They totally renewed and refreshed it however, which seems to me more a sign that they want it to succeed.


I think it's fair to say Capaldi was wasted in the role. The scripts he was given left too many people cold, especially in his first season, and not least because of the decision Moffat, et al, made re: making Capaldi's Doctor a bit of a grumpy so-and-so.
There were eps later on in which he showed what might have been, but by then it was too late; too many people had given up. A lot of that was also down to how Moffat and the BBC treated DW, though. It went from being an annual thing to a series every 18-24 months, Christmas specials aside, because of Moff's work on Sherlock (which also suffered badly, to the point where it, too, became not merely disappointing but occasionally painful to watch, certainly when compared to the first 6 eps/2 seasons). The Beeb really shouldn't have allowed him to run both. I mean, there were times where the Doctor and Sherlock were effectively the same character. And then Capaldi, and Matt Smith to some extent, suffered from Moff being in love with Clara, to the point where the series could have been retitled The Clara Oswald Adventures (with "also featuring The Doctor" written in small letters underneath).
Would Capaldi carrying on under a new show runner have worked? I don't know. Possibly not. But I do think/believe that had the new series launched in the 6.30-7.00 slot on a Saturday night, the audience would have been even larger (a newly-expanded Strictly Come Dancing has been shifted to a slightly earlier time slot, starting at 6.50. It's getting 10-11m viewers on average per week). The fact DW was moved to a Sunday shows a lack of confidence on the part of the BBC at the very least.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not doing surprisingly well given the slot (6.4m viewers on average over the series shows it is, and even last night's ep rated higher than The Little Drummer Girl's first ep in the more prestigious 9.00 slot...though The Bodyguard gained an audience of 16-17m on broadcast, and that despite airing during a period of fine, light nights). It'll be interesting to see what happens if or when viewing figures drop back to around 5m or lower - which, from comments I'm seeing, could happen pretty soon because, quite frankly, some of the scripts have been...well, I'll be kind and say below average. JW's performance has started to come in for a little bit of stick, too. The Doctor has always been eccentric (never more so than during Tom Baker's run, IMO), but knowledgeable. Now, eccentricity has been replaced by ditziness and the breadth of knowledge seems to have got lost too, because now she "doesn't get it" an awful lot - even though the problems wouldn't overly tax a moderately intelligent 10 year old. I have to say I didn't much like the know-it-all, speak-at-a-thousand-words-a-minute Doctors of the past (particularly of the Moffat era), but come on, there's plenty of ground in the middle.

Ep 1 = Predator-lite. I still don't know what the kebab-throwing was about.
Ep 2 = A bit like Pitch Black, though apparently the Doctor needed reminding that acetylene is flammable. And the talking tea-towels had more than a hint of Harry Potter about them.
Ep 3 = I didn't like this ep at all, I'm afraid. It took too many liberties with history, and in the end amounted to Rosa Parks doing what she did because she was enabled by the Doctor, so a case of 'Mighty Whitey' being the driving force after all. It also made the act look like a spur of the moment thing, when it wasn't/wouldn't have been. I was less than impressed to find the Doc now has her own version of the Evil Leaper to contend with. And tbh that was the impression I was left with at the end of the ep: that it had tried to be Quantum Leap and failed. Badly. I was expecting more given the reputation of the writer involved, but I also got the impression that Chris Chibnall had extensively re-written the ep post-submission.
Ep 4 = 'No guns. It's inhumane.' Not as inhumane, I would argue, as leaving a living thing to suffocate under its own weight no matter how much empathy you show it as it dies, or confining several other living things in a relatively small space with no food save each other, thereby also condemning the last survivor to slowly die of starvation (assuming they don't all die of suffocation first). Put me in that kind of position and I'd much rather be shot, but hey ho.
I also found the castigation of the billionaire hotelier and obvious hyper-capitalist a bit hard to swallow (and I'm basically a socialist!). I mean, what was he supposed to do? Look at every scrap of waste, etc, that got dumped for himself? Literally not how anything works. Meanwhile, the scientist whose actions helped create the situation in the first place gets off scot-free.

JW is still fine but, like Capaldi, risks being wasted by duff scripts.
 

Gerald

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I’ll see if I can find a few. I just remember noticing when things were said that they were subtle references.

When she found out she was a woman she said: Am I? Does it suit me? Half an hour ago I was a white-haired Scotsman.
I’ll see if I can find a few. I just remember noticing when things were said that they were subtle references.

When she found out she was a woman she said: Am I? Does it suit me? Half an hour ago I was a white-haired Scotsman.

Yeah, that one is hard to miss obviously.
 

Gerald

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There had also been a line she said about sunglasses that I thought was a throwback to either Capaldi or Smith. But, when I read it, apparently I had not understood what she said. Lol

I can't remember that. Tenth, eleventh and twelfth Doctors all wore sunglasses at some point, but the twelfth was the only one that had them as replacement for the screwdriver.
I can't see so much things of previous Doctors in her. With Capaldi there were mostly references to Tom Baker that I got.
 

Gerald

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I think it's fair to say Capaldi was wasted in the role. The scripts he was given left too many people cold, especially in his first season, and not least because of the decision Moffat, et al, made re: making Capaldi's Doctor a bit of a grumpy so-and-so.
There were eps later on in which he showed what might have been, but by then it was too late; too many people had given up. A lot of that was also down to how Moffat and the BBC treated DW, though. It went from being an annual thing to a series every 18-24 months, Christmas specials aside, because of Moff's work on Sherlock (which also suffered badly, to the point where it, too, became not merely disappointing but occasionally painful to watch, certainly when compared to the first 6 eps/2 seasons). The Beeb really shouldn't have allowed him to run both. I mean, there were times where the Doctor and Sherlock were effectively the same character. And then Capaldi, and Matt Smith to some extent, suffered from Moff being in love with Clara, to the point where the series could have been retitled The Clara Oswald Adventures (with "also featuring The Doctor" written in small letters underneath).
Would Capaldi carrying on under a new show runner have worked? I don't know. Possibly not. But I do think/believe that had the new series launched in the 6.30-7.00 slot on a Saturday night, the audience would have been even larger (a newly-expanded Strictly Come Dancing has been shifted to a slightly earlier time slot, starting at 6.50. It's getting 10-11m viewers on average per week). The fact DW was moved to a Sunday shows a lack of confidence on the part of the BBC at the very least.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not doing surprisingly well given the slot (6.4m viewers on average over the series shows it is, and even last night's ep rated higher than The Little Drummer Girl's first ep in the more prestigious 9.00 slot...though The Bodyguard gained an audience of 16-17m on broadcast, and that despite airing during a period of fine, light nights). It'll be interesting to see what happens if or when viewing figures drop back to around 5m or lower - which, from comments I'm seeing, could happen pretty soon because, quite frankly, some of the scripts have been...well, I'll be kind and say below average. JW's performance has started to come in for a little bit of stick, too. The Doctor has always been eccentric (never more so than during Tom Baker's run, IMO), but knowledgeable. Now, eccentricity has been replaced by ditziness and the breadth of knowledge seems to have got lost too, because now she "doesn't get it" an awful lot - even though the problems wouldn't overly tax a moderately intelligent 10 year old. I have to say I didn't much like the know-it-all, speak-at-a-thousand-words-a-minute Doctors of the past (particularly of the Moffat era), but come on, there's plenty of ground in the middle.

Ep 1 = Predator-lite. I still don't know what the kebab-throwing was about.
Ep 2 = A bit like Pitch Black, though apparently the Doctor needed reminding that acetylene is flammable. And the talking tea-towels had more than a hint of Harry Potter about them.
Ep 3 = I didn't like this ep at all, I'm afraid. It took too many liberties with history, and in the end amounted to Rosa Parks doing what she did because she was enabled by the Doctor, so a case of 'Mighty Whitey' being the driving force after all. It also made the act look like a spur of the moment thing, when it wasn't/wouldn't have been. I was less than impressed to find the Doc now has her own version of the Evil Leaper to contend with. And tbh that was the impression I was left with at the end of the ep: that it had tried to be Quantum Leap and failed. Badly. I was expecting more given the reputation of the writer involved, but I also got the impression that Chris Chibnall had extensively re-written the ep post-submission.
Ep 4 = 'No guns. It's inhumane.' Not as inhumane, I would argue, as leaving a living thing to suffocate under its own weight no matter how much empathy you show it as it dies, or confining several other living things in a relatively small space with no food save each other, thereby also condemning the last survivor to slowly die of starvation (assuming they don't all die of suffocation first). Put me in that kind of position and I'd much rather be shot, but hey ho.
I also found the castigation of the billionaire hotelier and obvious hyper-capitalist a bit hard to swallow (and I'm basically a socialist!). I mean, what was he supposed to do? Look at every scrap of waste, etc, that got dumped for himself? Literally not how anything works. Meanwhile, the scientist whose actions helped create the situation in the first place gets off scot-free.

JW is still fine but, like Capaldi, risks being wasted by duff scripts.

I thought Capaldi deserved better. Deep Breath is one of the top season opening episodes of the modern era and Flatline was fantastic too. Last Christmas is one of my more favourite Christmas specials, and the Zygon episodes I loved too. Only his third season wasn't so great, although it still ended well.

I thought the first three episodes were great so far, but the fourth starts having that feeling again of Capaldi's weaker scripts, rushed somehow. I hope it picks up again.
It's true that she doesn't get things a lot. But it's also possible she's just more honest than the other Doctors in showing her insecurities. The others seemed to have so much bravura, it's almost as if they had to hide some sort of insecurity. With a Doctor like Tom Baker I never had the feeling he knew it all, he was just trying to figure out things as they went along and sometimes needed the help of his companions. And Matt Smith said he was just 'a madman in a box'.
 

AnnaMarie

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I thought Capaldi deserved better. Deep Breath is one of the top season opening episodes of the modern era and Flatline was fantastic too. Last Christmas is one of my more favourite Christmas specials, and the Zygon episodes I loved too. Only his third season wasn't so great, although it still ended well.

I thought the first three episodes were great so far, but the fourth starts having that feeling again of Capaldi's weaker scripts, rushed somehow. I hope it picks up again.
It's true that she doesn't get things a lot. But it's also possible she's just more honest than the other Doctors in showing her insecurities. The others seemed to have so much bravura, it's almost as if they had to hide some sort of insecurity. With a Doctor like Tom Baker I never had the feeling he knew it all, he was just trying to figure out things as they went along and sometimes needed the help of his companions. And Matt Smith said he was just 'a madman in a box'.

I am still hating how they ended Capaldi. The show would have been fabulous....if not for dissing the first doctor. But, I think I have been able to judge Whittaker’s doctor without blaming her for that.

When the doctor regenerates there is always confusion. I’ve been assuming that’s what’s going on with her, but I don’t think it’s ever gone beyond the second show before, has it?
 

Mr Nobody

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I thought Capaldi deserved better. Deep Breath is one of the top season opening episodes of the modern era and Flatline was fantastic too. Last Christmas is one of my more favourite Christmas specials, and the Zygon episodes I loved too. Only his third season wasn't so great, although it still ended well.

I thought the first three episodes were great so far, but the fourth starts having that feeling again of Capaldi's weaker scripts, rushed somehow. I hope it picks up again.
It's true that she doesn't get things a lot. But it's also possible she's just more honest than the other Doctors in showing her insecurities. The others seemed to have so much bravura, it's almost as if they had to hide some sort of insecurity. With a Doctor like Tom Baker I never had the feeling he knew it all, he was just trying to figure out things as they went along and sometimes needed the help of his companions. And Matt Smith said he was just 'a madman in a box'.

Yes, that element of 'What's going on, Doctor?'/'I haven't a clue, but let's find out' has been missing for a long time now, possibly since it came back and certainly since Tennant's run, yet it was one of the things that drew me in as a kid (and the first eps I can remember date from around 1978 or 1979). To that extent it's good to have it back. I just think it's being a little overdone, and possibly a mistake to reintroduce it (and self-doubt) as a characteristic of the first female doctor. (Re: the self-doubt, it's been there before - the questioning of the right to destroy an entire race in Genesis of the Daleks being a prime example, and the 5th wrestled with his conscience a fair bit - but in the new era it was replaced with certainty).
As ever, though, things like that always come down to the writing, even though it's often the actor who gets the blame. And for what it's worth Jodie Whittaker couldn't be doing better with what she's being given (IMO), just as Capaldi and Smith couldn't with much of what they got.

AnnaMarie: Yes, the ret-conning of William Hartnell's Doctor really grated on me, too. I've seen most of the surviving stories from that era, and while some of the attitudes expressed (and some that are not/inherent) don't bear too much scrutiny today, DW was still a progressive show for the time...and from some of the things I've heard and others I've read, Hartnell was either front and centre or otherwise very supportive of that. The choices made for the Christmas special/handover ep did Hartnell and the roots of the show a great disservice, in my view.
And re: the confusion, as far as I can remember it's always been a feature of the first episode (understandably), appears less prominently in the second, and then there might be a slight reference to it early in the third - but not always and only if it suits the plot of ep 3, which, in this Doctor's case, it didn't. If we get the Doctor still going on about post-regen confusion in ep 5 (the mid-point of JW's first season, given the cut in the number of eps), well...
 

Mr Nobody

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Have to say the latest ep was pretty weak, and IMO certainly the worst one so far. I was actually bored by it, and kept checking the clock to see how long was left before it was halfway through. I couldn't even find any redeeming factors in the performances. JW didn't mention any confusion, mercifully, but she made up for it by doing her very best Su Pollard (Hi-De-Hi, You Rang M'Lord) impression. Even her accent seemed thicker than usual, which is the opposite of what it needs, and she seemed tense and awkward.
With that said, I've been told that the ep was actually the first shot, so if that's true it would explain a lot.
The biggest surprise to me this season though is Bradley Walsh (Graham). I think I've said before how sceptical I was about his casting, but he's been a revelation. Easily the best of the new companions (though Yaz hasn't been given anywhere near enough to do, and Ryan...well, the character is likeable enough, but Tosin Cole struggles to act, and when he does you can see it. That's not the case with Mandip Gill).
 

Gerald

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It's disappointing that the new series that started so promising takes a tumble so quickly. The next three episodes have some different writers than Chibnall, who seems to have put his best episodes at the beginning, so hopefully that makes a difference.
I hope the one in India is good, and The Witchfinders at least sounds promising.
 

Mr Nobody

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Yes, unfortunately Chibnall seems to be the weak link, at least in terms of writing. Then again I'm not entirely surprised. Looking back over his past work, his previous scripts for DW included some of the weakest. In fact his reputation only really seems to have taken off because of Broadchurch (particularly S1; S2 was utter bilge, so bad I didn't bother with S3 even though I'm told it was something of a return to form) - which of course is a completely different genre and one that seems to be rather more his forte.

I'm hoping that this week's ep is a good one, too. Again, the writer comes with a good reputation and the historical background is vast. With luck there won't have been any interference but this is the modern BBC, so even if Chibnall doesn't do anything...
The Witchfinders has a very old-school DW kind of title and as you say, sounds promising.
 

Gerald

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Yes, unfortunately Chibnall seems to be the weak link, at least in terms of writing. Then again I'm not entirely surprised. Looking back over his past work, his previous scripts for DW included some of the weakest.

I didn't realise he had written for it before, I thought he was totally new to it. I remember liking The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood quite a bit. And Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was at least good in terms of spectacle and action. 42, The Power of Three and The Magician's Apprentice were weak to me too, from what I remember. So it's that same mix of hit and miss for me he has shown so far on this new series. Broadchurch I've never seen.
 

Mr Nobody

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From what I can remember, I thought The Hungry Earth was a little bit slow to begin with, while Cold Blood ended up feeling a little too rushed. There was no problem with the story as such, but the pacing felt off. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is one I don't remember at all, though I must have seen it so it obviously made no impression either way. I suppose that can be taken as a kind of positive. :)
So for me his scripts have been interesting, but a slightly wasted opportunity at best to horrible at worst, with various shades of Meh in between. I'd even say his best DW ep has come this season (but definitely wasn't the most recent one, and since I can't stand spiders I'm never likely to say Arachnids in the UK).
 

Gerald

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From what I can remember, I thought The Hungry Earth was a little bit slow to begin with, while Cold Blood ended up feeling a little too rushed. There was no problem with the story as such, but the pacing felt off. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is one I don't remember at all, though I must have seen it so it obviously made no impression either way. I suppose that can be taken as a kind of positive. :)
So for me his scripts have been interesting, but a slightly wasted opportunity at best to horrible at worst, with various shades of Meh in between. I'd even say his best DW ep has come this season (but definitely wasn't the most recent one, and since I can't stand spiders I'm never likely to say Arachnids in the UK).

Based on his scripts you kind of wonder why he got the job as showrunner. Was there no one better suited?