Doctor Who TV Show • Page 45

Honestly kind of baffled by the reaction to the season finale. It's a Frankensteined mish mash of an episode, but like... there have been WAY WAY WAY WAY worse episodes. And worse finales! The vitriol just seems disproportionate, especially after a generally well received season.

As for Billie Piper, I think there's a real opportunity to do something very interesting here. I understand the feeling that we're relying too much on nostalgia here, but it's obviously not JUST a Rose return. An actor returning like this is a novel idea, so I'm open to seeing how it plays out. Billie Piper has grown a lot as an actress since her time in Who.

 

it'd be a lot more novel if the exact same gimmick hadn't happened, from the exact same era that's already incredibly oversaturated in the culture, literally 3 years ago

 

While I get your point, I think the Doctor regenerating into an old companion’s face is a pretty different concept and has a lot of potential.

 

I'm not saying there's no potential there but I just don't trust RTD to deliver on any of it at this stage. after all the teases in this era that were absolute wastes of time (why could Mrs Flood break the fourth wall? why could Ruby make it snow? why did Belinda's kid look like a space baby? none of us know because Russell certainly does not) it's clear to me he's just making shit up as he goes and hoping something sticks. the difference in quality from his first era is astonishing

the other thing I think is that if this was ever gonna happen, a) Jenna Coleman should be the one who comes back as the Doctor and b) it should not be happening right now. having the first queer Doctor of colour bookended by two nostalgia stunt casts, after he was already absent from 1/4th of his era, just looks wildly bad and desperate

 

I actually started thinking about how much more I would be excited if a new showrunner took over at this moment. RTD left it in a bit of a mess, that I think it would be entertaining to see how someone might write the show out of this mess and potentially tie up some loose ends in the process.

 

I just don’t really care about getting resolutions on that stuff tbh. There’s enough wiggle room with the fantasy elements of this era that it all mostly works for me. It’s been messy as hell but I’m having fun watching it again after being bored to tears in the Chibnall era.

Clara is my favorite companion ever, so of course I’d love her as the Doctor. But I imagine it would be pretty much the same performance because Clara pretty much was the Doctor by the end of her run. With Billie, I think she can do something exciting and new. But we’ll see!

 

just depressing as hell

 

The current going theory - which I happen to believe since it fits quite well - is that Ruby was meant to be Desiderium, and most likely remain companion for the second season before things changed for unknown reasons.

There's a line in Church on Ruby Road that goblins "feed off coincidence", and Zufall, the surname of the family from whom the Rani takes Desiderium, is "coincidence" in German. It explains why Mrs Flood is Ruby's neighbour before she's met the Doctor (and why she becomes Belinda's neighbour at the start of season 2) - she's keeping an eye on Desiderium as part of the plan.

There's some bonus speculative bits like at one point Alan Budd and Conrad might have been one character, but it makes so much more sense I think it has to be at least partly true.

 

I’m pressing play on the Reality War. Wish me luck.

 

The finale was a mess plot-wise. But the emotional core still kinda worked for me. Ncuti obviously did a lot of that heavy lifting. So I won’t really complain.

That said, I really dislike that David and now Billie have been brought back. It just feels so cheap to me.

Ultimately, I just want a fresh voice at the helm of Doctor Who.

 

Pretty much exactly how I feel (and have always felt) about Doctor Who. I just let the crazy plot stuff wash over me and keep coming back for the characters and emotional stuff. Davies was always great at that, even when the show was at its campiest.

 

Honestly hope the talk about the show divorcing from Disney is true.

 

it almost certainly is, Disney have barely promoted it and been super quiet about renewing it for more than a year now

I'd prefer a lower budget for sure, it's just a shame them dragging their heels on the renewal is almost certainly what made Ncuti quit. him and Varada really deserved better

 

I am fine with a return to the old system. It airs on the BBC, I pre-order from iTunes and download it at midnight. The VFX are dodgy at best and everything is filmed in factories in Cardiff.

 

Streaming on D+ has been super convenient and saved me a few bucks, but I'm fine going back to the old BBC arrangement too.

I think I'm also just numb to my beloved sci-fi franchises being mismanaged by Disney at this point. I'll be super excited when cool stuff gets made, but I'm kind of resolved to that not being the norm anymore.

 

I think more than anything I want to go back to 13 episodes a season, there's just no time to do anything meaningful or build character connections with 8

 

That's a fair point. I've been doing a re-watch of NuWho and the first five series really do shine with their length. You get so much time with the Doctor and the companion each season.

When Moffat did the whole "part 1 and part 2" thing with series 6, it started to get a little wonky.

 

The part 1 / part 2 thing for 6 and 7 was not deliberate, or at least wasn't the original plan. I believe, although I haven't watched it in a while, that series 6 makes a lot of references to the originally planned finale date, which they couldn't reshoot once it got split up. (Night Terrors was meant to be in the first half of the season but got swapped with Curse of the Black Spot, and a few other things got changed)

The whole thing was - stop me if you've heard this one before due to production difficulties that were never fully explained. A source with an axe to grind said it was Moffat's fault. More likely was just getting increasingly difficult to produce 13 episodes inside a calendar year with more and more VFX.

 

I think 8 episodes is more than enough to do meaningful character work. The show is stuck in a weird limbo right now between adapting to a new format and being beholden to what used to work, and I think not fully committing is really hurting it.

 

Might cop some hate for this, and obviously everyone has their own way of fixing Who, but I think if we're going to get 8 episode series it should be like Flux. Each episode has an individual storyline but it's all part of one arc.

 

No, I'm with you on that. For modern shorter seasons, I think you need to go fully serialized like Flux (but better?) or lean into really strong standalone ideas like 73 Yards or Dot & Bubble.

 

one thing I will say about this pretty disastrous era is it really got my appetite going for like, good Doctor Who lmao. been listening to so much Big Finish while I study and burning through the books again

 

Yeah, if we really do have a year or two without Who I’m definitely going to jump into Big Finish and pick back up reading the VNA’s. What Big Finish have you been enjoying?

 

I've been getting into the Bernice Summerfield audios this month, I just finished reading her novel series that follows the VNAs and leads straight into her Big Finish stuff. really entertaining stories but her chronology is so insane and confusing, there's almost no easy way to get into them unless you have a couple months spare to do the homework lmao

also heard really good things from everywhere about the most recent 5th Doctor Adventure Hooklight, I'm thinking about catching up on that series so I can hear that one. pretty much haven't heard anything from the last half decade of Big Finish except for McGann's stuff, so there's heaps for me to catch up on