Doctor Who - Series 8 (Part 3)

[Gurke and Hare]

Clara's great, you idiots. We waited nearly 50 years for a companion whose hero is Bryan Robson, and we shouldn't let go of that too soon. The only problem is Moffat not making more of this aspect of her character.

[biggytitbo]

What episode was that revealed? I feel this may be a gamechanger for all those Clara skeptics...

[Replies From View]

Clara's great, you idiots. We waited nearly 50 years for a companion whose hero is Bryan Robson, and we shouldn't let go of that too soon. The only problem is Moffat not making more of this aspect of her character.

And the fact that the actress playing her is far too shit.  So many people keep overlooking this.

[Replies From View]

What episode was that revealed? I feel this may be a gamechanger for all those Clara skeptics...

What about the Jenna Coleman sceptics?

[Mister Six]

"Doctor Who thrives on good original ideas.  They don't have to be our own good original ideas though you see, you know."

Terrance Dicks talking about the Master being an unashamed rip-off of Moriarty.

"I'd like to remind everyone that while talent borrows and genius steals, [Doctor Who's] New Adventure writers get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked." Ben Aaronovitch

Also, in those examples...

So the ending of Doomsday is lifted from The Amber Spyglass, River Song is the Time-Traveller's Wife, Into the Dalek is The Fantastic Voyage and now in the Dream Crabs we have so patent a rip-off of the Facehuggers from Alien (not just in general concept but in design too) that there's a self-conscious lampshade-hanging joke in the script about their amazing similarity.

The only similarity that's even slightly compelling here is the Time Traveller's Wife, and in execution it was still very distinct from Nifferneger's book.

Other than the 'parallel universes' aspect, the endings of Amber Spyglass and Doomsday are different in motivation (intentional separation to heal a damaged universe vs unintended consequence of defeating the baddies), tone (wisftul longing vs anguished heartstring-plucking) and, obviously, execution.

'Shrinking down tiny to go inside a living creature' is such a standard sci-fi trope that you might as well accuse the whole of Doctor Who of just being a rip-off of The Time Machine.

And other than their appearance, there's no similarity between the dream crabs and the facehuggers at all. Certainly not in their 'general concept' - there's a marked difference between a creature that lays its eggs in a victim and then dies and a creature that puts people into a psychically linked dream state while it drinks their brains.

[Blumf]

What about the Jenna Coleman sceptics?

What about people who believe in the historical existence of Jenna Coleman, but think she's stinking Doctor Who up a bit and really needs changing now.

[Replies From View]

What about people who believe in the historical existence of Jenna Coleman, but think she's stinking Doctor Who up a bit and really needs changing now.

Into a Jenna Coleman who can act but lacks historical existence?

Could be tricky.  May as well just ditch Clara atogether.

[Gurke and Hare]

The only similarity that's even slightly compelling here is the Time Traveller's Wife, and in execution it was still very distinct from Nifferneger's book.

The Girl in the Fireplace was the Time Traveller's Wife anyway, wasn't it?

'Shrinking down tiny to go inside a living creature' is such a standard sci-fi trope that you might as well accuse the whole of Doctor Who of just being a rip-off of The Time Machine.

Into the Dalek was just The Invisible Enemy re-done anyway.

[Gurke and Hare]

What episode was that revealed? I feel this may be a gamechanger for all those Clara skeptics...

Not sure exactly - possibly The Bells of Saint John. One of the early Clara 'proper' episodes anyway - there was some flashback stuff.

[biggytitbo]

What and she's having sex with Brian Robson? I don't remember this!

[Alternative Carpark]

It was Rings of Akhaten, one of her parents tells the Doctor she aspires to play like him.

[Replies From View]

What and she's having sex with Brian Robson?

Rory's Dad?

[Replies From View]

Doctor Who's 2014 ratings:

Deep Breath 6.8m (overnight) 9.17m (final) 10.76m (L+7) AI 82
Into the Dalek 5.2m (overnight) 7.29m (final) 8.26m (L+7) AI 84
Robot of Sherwood 5.2m (overnight) 7.28m (final) 8.25m (L+7) AI 82
Listen 4.8m (overnight) 7.01m (final) 7.80m (L+7) AI 82
Time Heist 4.93m (overnight) 6.99m (final) 7.96m (L+7) AI 84
The Caretaker 4.89m (overnight) 6.82m (final) 7.76m (L+7) AI 83
Kill the Moon 4.81m (overnight) 6.91m (final) 7.83m (L+7) AI 82
Mummy on the Orient Express 5.08m (overnight) 7.11m (final) 8.09m (L+7) AI 85
Flatline 4.6m (overnight) 6.71m (final) 7.85m (L+7) AI 85
In the Forest of the Night 5.03m (overnight) 6.92m (final) 7.79m (L+7) AI 83
Dark Water 5.27m (overnight) 7.34m (final) 8.52m (L+7) AI 85
Death in Heaven 5.45m (overnight) 7.60m (final) 8.81m (L+7) AI 83
Last Christmas 6.34m (overnight) 8.28m (final) TBCm (L+7) AI 82

Overnight figures are only early estimates and we can expect a sizeable increase when the final BARB figures are released next week. The overnight figures only include those who watched it live and those who recorded and watched it later that night, however the final figures includes those who recorded and watched within a week, making them a more accurate measure of how many were watching.

(iPlayer figures are not included in the 'final' figure)
(Live Plus 7 (L+7) counts those who watched live and all repeats, including iPlayer, within seven days following broadcast.)
(The Audience Appreciation Index (AI) is a score out of 100 which is used as an indicator of the public's appreciation for a show.)

[The Region Legion]

Cor, I've managed to miss that one entirely. A new Matt Smith Doctor Who episode will be welcome, even if it is a bad one.

I finally watched this today (the 2nd Matt Smith Christmas Special). It's brilliant, and everything that is wrong with the current setup is just made even more obvious.

The episode relies on what is probably a constant in Doctor Who that I hadn't quite realised until watching it this time. It's a distressing concept for children and adults alike (the death of a father) wrapped up in a child friendly adventure. The mother has this heavy burden on her which is justified in the script (she doesn't want to tell the children until after Christmas), Smith's "best ever babysitter" version of the Doctor that he opened his tenure with takes that burden off her hands for a bit, she goes looking for them and heroically saves the day at the end. Despite the heavy use of child actors, both of them can do what their roles require, and there are no lines or moments where their shit child acting detracts from the overall experience. The girl is genuinely brilliant throughout. The boy is a bit annoying with his comedy glasses and "obviously not Alexander Armstrong's son", in a very Prince Harry way, but it STILL didn't put me off the whole production.

By the end, Mummy saves the day in quite an unbelievable fashion but something that works in the story, and can be appreciated no matter what your age - the kids get a "Mummy will always save you" story, the parents get a "what would I do for my children" story, and both parties get a "what if your partner/parent died suddenly" story. It's a real story, a genuinely dark concept without needing to either handwave it away or dwell on it.


Contrast that to "Danny's a Cyberman and he's crying". I honestly can't believe that got into the final edit, and written by the same guy too. What happened to Moffat between the end of Series 7 and the beginning of Capaldi's run? He's lost all ability to write a script.

[Mister Six]

Contrast that to "Danny's a Cyberman and he's crying". I honestly can't believe that got into the final edit, and written by the same guy too. What happened to Moffat between the end of Series 7 and the beginning of Capaldi's run? He's lost all ability to write a script.

I hope you're not including the 50th Anniversary Special in that summation! That one was a bit knockabout, but it was really funny and worked on various levels.

I do wonder what's happened with Moffat since then, though. RTD was focused on, and laboured on, the emotional arcs and beats, and didn't give a fig about the actual story; Moffat was the other way around; he had a clever concept and structure, and built the characters up around that.

So while RTD's lazy episodes worked emotionally and ended with The Doctor pressing a button, Moffat's wonky scripts - I'm thinking Time of The Doctor and Angels Take Manhattan - came across as unfinished automatons created in too short a time. They lacked soul or feeling, save for the odd heart-tugging scene, and the gears and cogs of the plot were all too visible. But they did at least function, and you could see how the various elements were supposed to go together.

But most of his scripts this season[nb]All of them except Listen, which I thought was superb.[/nb] have lacked even the meticulous plotting and construction (and, frequently, clever dialogue, which always enlivened even the weakest Moffat episode) that you could usually expect. Especially the closing two-parter, which ended up a jumble of ideas and setpieces that didn't hang together as a clever story or an emotionally compelling one.

The explanations I can think of are:

1- He's too stretched out, but the BBC won't let him pull the 'half season gap' shit to compensate any more. There's another Sherlock coming, of course, and he seems to have been doing a lot more writing on other people's scripts than usual this year, and there was all the 50th anniversary coverage and promotion, which may have eaten into long-term plotting and development time. It would explain why even his basic plotting - something that I always assumed came naturally to him - isn't up to snuff.

2- Editorial interference from Auntie. Doesn't seem terribly likely, but with the first older Doctor in close to 10 years starting, and a poor reception for the split seasons, they might have wanted to exercise a bit more control over the content of the show, and caused something of a problem in the process.

3- They took too long choosing a Doctor and/or working out his characterisation, and it lead to a domino effect on all the scripts in development. The episodes that Moffat co-wrote (most of the first part of the season) have his credit because he had to rewrite all of the Doctor's parts to accommodate the character that he and Capaldi constructed. That means the writers were flying blind, so to speak, at the start; the later writers at least had the benefit of the edited scripts to read through in order to get some idea of how the Doctor should sound and act. But because it was all being worked out on the fly, Moffat's arc story and themes kept twisting and turning to accommodate the developing Doctor, and the final arc is inconsistent as a result.

4. Moffat's way, way out of his comfort zone. His writing - in Coupling, in Sherlock, in Jekyll and in Doctor Who - shows a love of fast movement, farce, complex (or at least convoluted) plotting, and density of ideas. That fit Matt Smith's energy, and worked as a continuation of the tone developed during Tennant's era, so he was able to gallop right into things. That style reached its apex with the likes of Let's Kill Hitler and The Time of The Doctor, which are fidgety and restless and crammed with ideas, whipcrack dialogue and gags. Now there's a conscious effort to have a more sombre and 'darker' tone, with longer scenes and a more reflective atmosphere, and it doesn't gel with Moffat's instincts as a writer. His most successful story, Listen, was still basically a return to the all-over-the-place tales of earlier years, and fell back on the 'disastrous date' sitcom crutch.

Personally, I'd say it's most likely to be a combination of 1 and 4, and a dash of 3. I don't think he's suddenly forgotten how to write, and these seem at least vaguely plausible. What do you guys think?

[biggytitbo]

5 He's run out of steam and needs to move on for the sake of the show and himself
5 years is long enough for any showrunner, especially on Doctor Who which eats ideas like an idea eating monster (which no doubt Moffat has planned for S9). The problem with the show now is its running on empty, everything is so stale and flat, with endless recycling of ideas and far too many failed hacks lingering on the writing team at Moffats insistence. It desperately needs some new blood, a new direction and a kick up the arse.

[Mister Six]

No, I don't buy the run out of steam thing. The drop in quality in his scripts is so precipitous from S7 to S8[nb]Moffat's individual scripts for S7 weren't that bad; it was the lack of a decent story arc or any character traits for Clara that were the biggest problems there[/nb] that there must be something else going on. As for recycling himself, he's been doing that since S5, possibly earlier. It only seems worse now because we've seen some of this stuff three or four times before rather than just one or twice, as it was then.[nb]Moffat has it especially hard on this count because he was writing stuff for RTD's tenure too, so he'd already got half a season under his belt by the time he took the reins.[/nb]

Can't fault the complaint about the hacks, though that's been the case throughout all his run, and happened in RTD's day, too.

[BritishHobo]

It's a possibility that he's just exhausted everything he had planned. All that stuff about the Doctor's name and what it comes to mean, and him stepping out of the spotlight, that was stuff he'd been thinking over for decades as a Who fan. He got the job, and was able to put together a massive self-contained four series arc that made use of all of his ideas for taking the show in new directions. He explored some interesting questions about the character, did his own take on the companion dynamic by threading the Doctor through Amy and River's lives and vice versa, pushed the use of time travel to its limits with relation to the narrative, and wrapped it all up in the Silence story-arc.

With that all out of the way, he stick around for another series but he doesn't particularly have any burning ideas left, so we just get the Doctor being a bit grumpy and the companion being a bit chilly, and then at the end the Master brings Cybermen to contemporary Britain to do some evil stuff in a really generic, linear fashion.

[Replies From View]

It's a possibility that he's just exhausted everything he had planned. All that stuff about the Doctor's name and what it comes to mean, and him stepping out of the spotlight, that was stuff he'd been thinking over for decades as a Who fan. He got the job, and was able to put together a massive self-contained four series arc that made use of all of his ideas for taking the show in new directions. He explored some interesting questions about the character, did his own take on the companion dynamic by threading the Doctor through Amy and River's lives and vice versa, pushed the use of time travel to its limits with relation to the narrative, and wrapped it all up in the Silence story-arc.

With that all out of the way, he stick around for another series but he doesn't particularly have any burning ideas left, so we just get the Doctor being a bit grumpy and the companion being a bit chilly, and then at the end the Master brings Cybermen to contemporary Britain to do some evil stuff in a really generic, linear fashion.

Series 5-7 were three series, not four.  And series 7 was already thinner in terms of the series arc, which I still suspect hints at the BBC insisting on more accessible stories since there were complaints that people couldn't tune into only a few episodes of series 6 and still understand what was going on.

Anyway I really don't get the feeling that less chaotic plotting and a less frantic pace amounts to the showrunner running out of steam.  It's been a different approach for series 8, with the older Doctor and so on, yet people seem to be saying on the one hand that they want more in the series 5 and 6 styles, and on the other hand a new showrunner to bring a different approach.  Seems a bit fickle and restless to me; people both like and don't like change depending on the weather.

This doesn't mean a new showrunner wouldn't be nice when the time comes, as long as the showrunner is good, just that the "running out of steam" argument is arse.  The only tangible sense of the show lacking momentum now comes from the episodes being too entirely standalone.  Stick in some decent cliffhangers between episodes, even if all the stories remain more or less standalone, and that problem will be fixed.

[BritishHobo]

But it's not about change itself, it's about the change being shit. I see people talk a lot about it being slower and darker, but I just don't think that's true. I felt series 5 had a much darker tone and atmosphere to it than what had come before, and I don't see that Moffat's attempt at less chaos has made it any more consistent with Capaldi's older Doctor. Somebody could do that and have it be a positive change, but in this specific instance, I don't think Moffat has.

[Mango Chimes]

I don't think it seems lazy.  He's still rushing through plot ideas, rather than slowing down.

They whizzed through Danny in snippets - they've met, and now they're in love, and it's the best relationship ever, but it's in trouble, and now he's dead, but their amazing love has saved him, now he's dead again.  Clara's splitting up with the Doctor but now they're back together again but now it's all gone horrible wrong but now its fine.  Both those strands fell on their arse a bit because he was rushing through them.  The finale clattered with ideas rather than just settling on one and exploring it.

I don't see the "slower, darker" thing, either.  The tone of episodes and the character of the Doctor has been all over the place.  The one structural thing that seems notable is this odd business of the previous episode's plot echoing in the next, but that never really came to anything.  Yet.  Maybe he's doing the same thing again - a trilogy of series where the unsatisfying stuff will get an "ahh, do you not see?" explanation in a line in a 2017 special.

[Replies From View]

But it's not about change itself, it's about the change being shit. I see people talk a lot about it being slower and darker, but I just don't think that's true. I felt series 5 had a much darker tone and atmosphere to it than what had come before, and I don't see that Moffat's attempt at less chaos has made it any more consistent with Capaldi's older Doctor. Somebody could do that and have it be a positive change, but in this specific instance, I don't think Moffat has.

Thing is we're never going to agree if you're going to insist that the changes between series 7 and 8 have been shit.  Series 7b was far weaker, to me, than series 8, and any of the problems that have carried over into Capaldi's time rest on the lack of momentum between standalone episodes (easily fixed with cliffhangers) and the fact that Jenna Coleman sucks the life out of any scene that doesn't require her to be cross at a man (easily fixed by getting rid of her).

[Mister Six]

I really, really hope Capaldi's around for another three series. It might seem like a pie in the sky wish, but I'd really like to see him outlast both Moffat and bloody Clara, and have a couple of seasons with an excited showrunner who's full of vigour and fresh ideas before moving on.

[BritishHobo]

Thing is we're never going to agree if you're going to insist that the changes between series 7 and 8 have been shit.  Series 7b was far weaker, to me, than series 8, and any of the problems that have carried over into Capaldi's time rest on the lack of momentum between standalone episodes (easily fixed with cliffhangers) and the fact that Jenna Coleman sucks the life out of any scene that doesn't require her to be cross at a man (easily fixed by getting rid of her).

I keep accidentally including series 7 in the 'good' pile because Day/Time of the Doctor retroactively made me feel a lot of warmth. But aye, a lot of the problems with series 8 are definitely present in 7, primarily the disconnected feel of uninteresting and mediocre standalone episodes.

[Canted_Angle]

I really can't understand the lack of appreciation for series 8, I think it's the best series of the show ever. The arc is well done if in a somewhat subtler way than before, they whole show feels more 'grown up' but not in a way that's going to leave younger viewers behind. It's an almost perfect series packed with diversity. Not to mention the fact Capaldi completly pisses on Matts shoes.

[biggytitbo]

I personally still feel Moffat was near the top of his game in S7, as a writer at least, but it is true the cracks are beginning to show if you pardon the pun. Asylum and Angels were both great and the usual complaints about both of them don't bother me. The point the show started to lose its way was 7b as mentioned above. Matts change in costume doesn't quite work, the new tardis doesn't quite work, Clara and the season arc doesn't quite work. None of it is a mile off but when taken as a whole the feeling that something was kind of empty and lacking took hold.


Of course the 50th was so great that we shook that off as a blip. But it wasn't a blip because the exact same pall has dragged on into S8, only worse. All the different elements of the show are falling short. It's like Moffat, famous for his puzzle box plots, has lots of pieces he can no longer fit together. Matt's star quality saved a lot of those 7b episodes, but as great as Capaldi is he I can't say the same here. It's not his fault that they've made his doctor just a bit too grumpy and dickish to actually be fun. But the overriding feeling for me was the show was no longer much fun to watch, and certainly not exciting or surprising. That's why I cite Kill the Moon, because for me its one of the only episodes where 12 has a sense of wonder and enthusiasm about him, rather than just being a snarky prick. And it's pretty much the only episode that's remotely surprisng or exciting in the whole season.


Let's lighten it up for S9 too, lighten the Doctor up, stop every episode been about everyone acting like dicks to each other all the time.

[HappyTree]

Danny crying in a Cyberman nappy. Haha, still makes me laugh.

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All the different elements of the show are falling short. It's like Moffat, famous for his puzzle box plots, has lots of pieces he can no longer fit together. Matt's star quality saved a lot of those 7b episodes, but as great as Capaldi is he I can't say the same here. It's not his fault that they've made his doctor just a bit too grumpy and dickish to actually be fun. But the overriding feeling for me was the show was no longer much fun to watch, and certainly not exciting or surprising. That's why I cite Kill the Moon, because for me its one of the only episodes where 12 has a sense of wonder and enthusiasm about him, rather than just being a snarky prick. And it's pretty much the only episode that's remotely surprisng or exciting in the whole season.


Let's lighten it up for S9 too, lighten the Doctor up, stop every episode been about everyone acting like dicks to each other all the time.

Your opinions are just inarguably wrong sometimes and there's no point engaging with them when they are.

"Lightening the Doctor up" - bloody hell in the 11th Doctor we had enough wacky cartoon Doctor antics to last until the 100th anniversary.  It wasn't that long ago, and yet you're complaining about slight departures from the previous norms in the same breath as you say everything's stagnating.  If you don't like this particular Doctor you can wait a few years until the next one.  I really hope they don't dumb the 12th Doctor down just to appease the people who don't like his grumpiness and can't understand his accent.  They should be confident to continue what they've started, not get anxious about how far the show has moved on from series 6.

I'm sure he will soften a bit, since it's obvious that they're kind of doing something like the 6th Doctor arc properly, but this should come organically and not as a u-turn response to people who can't handle a bit of ambiguity and self-contradiction in their characters.

[BritishHobo]

I've got to say that the grumpiness is one of the few things I do like about the character of the Twelfth Doctor (Capaldi's performance aside). I really loved his unsentimental goodbye in the Christmas episode; he'd solved the mystery and saved everyone[nb]or he thought he had[/nb], and that was that, he was off. There didn't need to be any more.

[Blumf]

I still don't feel like we've properly seen 12. It's odd, and I can't put my finger on it, he's there on screen, doing stuff, but something's not there. Something hasn't clicked.