Dr. Who

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AnnaMarie

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I agree. He should've had another season at least.

I really did like Eccleston a lot and I loved his traveling companion, Rose.

It was the quality of the visuals I struggled with.

I would've liked to have seen him in the slicker looking Dr. Who productions instead of the bad H.R. Pufnstuf episodes.
He chose to leave. And he is polite to fans, but does no publicity for Dr. Who. Even the 50th anniversary he refused to participate, though I heard what they wanted him to do was pretty crappy anyway.
 

Gerald

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I liked the last episode, but compared to season finales in the past it was rather average. The season seemed off to a good start with the first three episodes, but went into mediocrity soon. Still it did well enough for the same team to stay on, but a new series won't air until early 2020. Until then we only have the New Year's special.

Jodie Whittaker to Return as ‘Doctor Who’ in 2020 Amid Strong U.S. Ratings
 

Dana Jean

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I think Jodie did a great job. While I appreciate branching out story-wise, I do think she should have interacted with some of the established Who characters like the cybermen or daleks. I would have loved to have seen Jodie with The Weeping Angels. My personal favorites.
 

AnnaMarie

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I liked the last episode, but compared to season finales in the past it was rather average. The season seemed off to a good start with the first three episodes, but went into mediocrity soon. Still it did well enough for the same team to stay on, but a new series won't air until early 2020. Until then we only have the New Year's special.

Jodie Whittaker to Return as ‘Doctor Who’ in 2020 Amid Strong U.S. Ratings

I liked this week much more than most. Although we did have to turn on CC because we could not understand the creature talking. I actually think part of why I liked it was because the creature was familiar.


I think Jodie did a great job. While I appreciate branching out story-wise, I do think she should have interacted with some of the established Who characters like the cybermen or daleks. I would have loved to have seen Jodie with The Weeping Angels. My personal favorites.

I’m hoping their decision to have all new aliens/monsters will be revisited. Introducing new ones is good, but don’t ignore all the others.
 

Gerald

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I think Jodie did a great job. While I appreciate branching out story-wise, I do think she should have interacted with some of the established Who characters like the cybermen or daleks. I would have loved to have seen Jodie with The Weeping Angels. My personal favorites.

I still wonder why she brough so little new to the personality of the Doctor. You'd think when you embark on a role like that you would put more thought in how you play it. Maybe she did put thought in it, but it doesn't show. Apart from the fact that she doesn't get a lot of things often (which is hardly an attribute to the main character of a series), or at least doesn't get them right away, there seems not to be any sort of angle to her portrayal of the Doctor. It really feels almost completely blank.
I also feel she just isn't good with the comedy. A lot of lines are very funny and would have me laugh if spoken by another Doctor, but she delivers them so dryly it strips them of all their humor in a lot of cases.

The well-known Who-monsters come with a lot of history and that was what they wanted to avoid. They wanted it to be completely new and original in that sense, so anyone could feel they would be able to join and follow everything, not just the fans. I think in time they will return though.
 

Gerald

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I liked this week much more than most. Although we did have to turn on CC because we could not understand the creature talking. I actually think part of why I liked it was because the creature was familiar.

I liked this episode more than some of the others too somehow. Until I realised for a series finale it wasn't all that spectacular.
 

Gerald

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I also wonder if overall the budget hasn't gone down, at least somewhat. There are fewer episodes than before and some look like they couldn't have cost a lot (mostly the Tsuranga Conundrum). It's somewhat hidden by the fact the camera system they're using makes the overall image look actually bigger and more cinematic, but when you look purely at the sets, locations, extras and things like that, it regularly seems less than it used to be. Only a couple of episodes had the scale it used to have (Ghost Monument, Kerblam), the rest often felt smaller in scale, although since overall the look is so different than before that it's quite hard to compare.
 

Rrty

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Just jumping into the thread here after reading just a few posts (one warning: I probably am repeating myself here, as I think I posted something similar in the past; please forgive!).

I just wanted to mention that I watched a couple episodes this season. I enjoy the new Doctor, and I appreciated that she seemed to play the role, at least when I watched, in a bit more of a serious, restrained manner.

Doctor Who, in my opinion, has become a disappointment. It's no longer about storytelling driven by strong concepts (perhaps it never was and I just think it was, I admit). It's about the characters and how emotional they can get. It's about silliness. There is no danger in the stories. No one dies, there's never any tension, etc. I would love to see a season where, every week, a companion either dies or is stuck in a time loop or marooned somewhere or, simply, leaves. That might be a good way to shake things up...have a new companion every episode, with maybe some guest stars along the way. Literally off the top of my head, imagine Penn and Teller as companion guests, playing themselves, with the Doctor landing in Vegas and needing their help; she needs them to perform a magic trick on a planet halfway around the galaxy...they need to make a black hole disappear, or appear to do so, to the inhabitants for whatever reason! And Teller talks, until he starts to perform the trick. I'm sure you get what I mean...shake things up. Not having the Daleks in a season really doesn't do anything. I appreciate the new actress and think she is a great Doctor, again, because from what I have seen so far, she isn't like the last guy, who just overacted and became insulting to me. It all became like a bad recitation of Shakespeare.

I wonder if we should have a serious version of Who at some point. What would crossing the tone of The Walking Dead with Who be like?

I just realized I could search within the thread for author posts, and I have in fact repeated myself, in some spots almost verbatim essentially! Talk about being consistent. I decided to still post this since some stuff is different, and perhaps some here will find it of some message-board value. I will repeat this as well: being disappointed in Who is not a life-shattering event, certainly... I will try to watch the rest of the season...and hopefully the show on New Year's Day is a quality one...
 

Gerald

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Just jumping into the thread here after reading just a few posts (one warning: I probably am repeating myself here, as I think I posted something similar in the past; please forgive!).

I just wanted to mention that I watched a couple episodes this season. I enjoy the new Doctor, and I appreciated that she seemed to play the role, at least when I watched, in a bit more of a serious, restrained manner.

Doctor Who, in my opinion, has become a disappointment. It's no longer about storytelling driven by strong concepts (perhaps it never was and I just think it was, I admit). It's about the characters and how emotional they can get. It's about silliness. There is no danger in the stories. No one dies, there's never any tension, etc. I would love to see a season where, every week, a companion either dies or is stuck in a time loop or marooned somewhere or, simply, leaves. That might be a good way to shake things up...have a new companion every episode, with maybe some guest stars along the way.

Amy Pond and Rory Williams die in Angels take Manhattan. I think certainly in the Steven Moffat era there is plenty of danger with the monsters often being quite dark. But it's seen as a family show, so it never gets too dark. I also think the concepts are often quite strong, Flatline from Capaldi being a particularly good one. It's true that this last season wasn't so great in that respect unfortunately. And on occasion it can be silly (Slitheens for example), but for the most part it's stronger in its concepts than a lot of other scifi/timetravel shows.
But next to that indeed there is also a tendency to try to get as emotional as possible, which is something that was toned down more this last season I felt: the characters had emotional moments, but it was not handled in such an over-the-top fashion.

I don't think having a new companion each week is a good thing, because you would never get to know them well. There are however new faces and guest stars every week in the sense that the Doctor and his companions (who are more seen as friends this last season) go to new planets/eras/situations each episode.
 

Gerald

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Another thing that I felt was very different last season was the use of the Tardis. It looked a little too strange for me, and I didn't get a good feel or idea of how its layout actually was beyond the central console - it just felt much smaller, where it's supposed to be quite big, to contrast with the police box exterior.
But mostly there seemed far less scenes taking place in it, where it used to be quite central as a set.
 

Gerald

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Another thing in regard to the concepts: I think in the modern series they are much more varied than in the classic series. There is still a lot from the classic series I haven't seen, but in the eras I have seen (mostly Tom Baker and a few of the others), the same main plot device is used over and over again: the Doctor lands on a planet where there are two factions in either a war or a standoff. The Doctor, being neutral, functions as a go-between, and then ultimately, solver of this conflict. They do this over and over again, I have no idea why they used it so often. The execution is often quite different, but it's the same basic principle each time. It goes back to the first Daleks story of course with the conflict of the Thals and Daleks (orignally Kaleds) on Skaro. Maybe because the Daleks became so popular, they felt this concept would work as well for the popularity of other species and aliens, or maybe it was just seen as the major storytelling device for the series (like The A-Team is always hired to help a group of people that's being pressured by others). In all the extras I watched on the dvd's (and they are very extensive and indepth) it's never explained why this plot structure was used so often.
 

Gerald

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And I think it will never have the tone of something like The Walking Dead, because essentially it's a family show and humor has always been a big part of it. It got quite a bit darker when Moffat came on and I feel essentially the tone has gotten more serious this season, just look at an episode like Rosa.
But as soon as they get too dark they get many complaints from families watching, feeling it's too much for children.
With this last series it has an overall darker look and it deals with serious real world issues too (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab).

(Sorry for all the separate posts, but there is always such a short time to edit.)
 

Gerald

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It would be great if Mark Gatiss would become showrunner. He was in the series as recent as the last Christmas special and wrote Empress of Mars (admittedly not his best episode as a writer) for Capaldi's last season, but hasn't been in the new series or has written an episode for it. He wrote some of the better episodes, I hope he didn't disappear along with Moffat. I hope it's only because he's busy with a new Dracula and will return for the next season.
 

Gerald

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Rewatched last year's Christmas Special. As mentioned earlier it does indeed have some condescending lines from the First Doctor towards women, although they didn't make him overly unsympathetic in general. A strange choice, since its not really his character. What could have been Moffat's reasoning behind that? You can have theories, but it's really hard to say. Is it even related to the Doctor becoming a woman for the first time, or not?

Apart from that, while not one of my favourite Specials, I like a lot how it looks overall. One thing I don't really get, is why there was so much energy from this regeneration that it actually caused the Tardis to completely malfunction and thus having the 13th Doctor drop from it. The Doctor has regenerated inside the Tardis before and there wasn't a problem then, so why now?
 

Gerald

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Looks like Doctor Who will return early next year! Here is the announcement of the new writers:


Just rewatched all of the 11th season and it holds up surprisingly well. The season was quite hit-and-miss, but still I like a lot of it. Like the whole new look they given it.
My only problem with it, is that the humor doesn't work nearly as well as before. It can be funny at times, but it's never as manically over-the-top funny as with Tennant, Smith and Capaldi.
I wonder if it would have worked better if Whittaker had taken another approach to it, maybe more in line with Eccleston. I wonder if they are gonna take another approach to it this next season or keep it more or less the same. They've already established the new Doctor this way, so it might be hard to change it a lot. Some of the humorous lines in season 11 are funny, but also very weak at times, so the problem is also partly with the writing. But then an actor is either funny or not, and a very funny actor can get away with some weak lines here and there. The thing is that this Doctor and her companions are not so funny themselves, and are better in the serious moments.
 

Gerald

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It seems they have been aware of the problem with the humor I mentioned. The new series doesn't try nearly as much to be overly funny all the time, I feel.

The season got off to a great start again like last season, with an excellent two-parter that at the end promises to go back to Gallifrey story matter in a big way. But while the third episode had plenty of action and an often very filmic, big feeling scope, the storyline itself was rather simplistic.
I fear unless a showrunner of the quality of Russell T. Davies or Steven Moffat steps up again, we might slowly see the end of Doctor Who (or the end until a new revival further in the future). It just starts to get that feeling, especially when you see how the ratings go down.
Still, there is new Master and hopefully the Gallifrey storyline turns out nice. And the scope still is overall big and episode matter looks promising.
 

Dana Jean

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It seems they have been aware of the problem with the humor I mentioned. The new series doesn't try nearly as much to be overly funny all the time, I feel.

The season got off to a great start again like last season, with an excellent two-parter that at the end promises to go back to Gallifrey story matter in a big way. But while the third episode had plenty of action and an often very filmic, big feeling scope, the storyline itself was rather simplistic.
I fear unless a showrunner of the quality of Russell T. Davies or Steven Moffat steps up again, we might slowly see the end of Doctor Who (or the end until a new revival further in the future). It just starts to get that feeling, especially when you see how the ratings go down.
Still, there is new Master and hopefully the Gallifrey storyline turns out nice. And the scope still is overall big and episode matter looks promising.
I have all of these recorded. Can't wait to see what they do with this season.