Doctor Who Series 12B: The Timeless Chibnall (Xmas special & pre-Series 13 chat)

[Mister Six]

Can you imagine this cunt doing improv?

[Replies From View]

Can you imagine this cunt doing improv?

"The whole point of Cybermen is to remove emotion and difference; regardless of gender you become identical."
"Anyway here is a Cyberwoman wearing high heels and an aesthetically pleasing midriff."

[Thomas]

How hard is it to design the Cybermen properly? I don't think they've looked particularly frightening since the days of the Second Doctor.

Those baggy foil outfits and shiny plastic heads introduced in the '70s - Christ. And the 2006 Iron Man edition is very 2006. Their metal trousers are bootcut. But at least they looked metal enough; the Moffat era lads were undeniably plastic. Chibnall has harked back with his new 'warrior' class, but only to the '80s, with a return to those boxy heads.

The proper throwbacks, the Mondasian Cybermen of World Enough and Time, put all the modern attempts to shame. The barely cloaked corpse, the horrible bandages of surgery gone wrong, the defiled but still-human shape. The Cybermen are best when they're creepy, weirdly lithe and slim. Sing-song.

Despite Death in Heaven's inspired imagery, clunky motorbike-helmet Cybermen don't look scary climbing out of graves - but the ones from The Tenth Planet or The Moonbase? Actual nightmare imagery.

[Kelvin]

They thing is, they want them to be cool robots that shoot lasers and make good toys, they don't really want to make them scary nowadays. The real issue is that they've never thought of imaginative ways to play up the "cool robots" angle, either, and when they do want to try a more scary story, they're lumbered with a design that doesn't suit that kind of atmosphere. If they were going to make them chunky robots, they should have leaned into that more, and just given them lots of memorable tech and OTT weaponry. We're stuck permanently in this weird hinterland between the two styles - neither one really working.   

[Replies From View]

They tried to overpower them with Neil Gaiman's 2013 effort didn't they - making them capable of bullet time stuff and flying without somehow giving them any action figure potential at the same time.

And his brief was apparently "to make the Cybermen scary again".


Always annoyed me that we were then stuck with his design for the completely unrelated series 8 finale, when it would have benefited from a more corpse-like redesign at that point.  Gaiman could have used RTD's versions for what he wanted to do, and saved the budget of radically redesigning them until 2014.

[Thomas]

Doctor Who has only committed two continuity sins since its return. The Timeless Child, and the CyberBrig. Also The Moonbase is set on an egg.

[Replies From View]

You can easily ignore the CyberBrig really though.  Yes there's a narrative in the Doctor's head that he's saluting the Brig, but you can put it down to anything else:  he's imagining it, for example, just because he misses him.

It's hard to imagine how we'll be able to similarly brush aside Chibnall's hubris once he has left.  Even if at this present moment you can believe the Master is wrong or inventing things for a lark, we'd be naive to think Chibnall isn't planning to build on the Timeless Child content over the next few years.  By the time of the next showrunner, it'll be locked in and irrefutable.

[Thomas]

That's true. For all his big decisions, Moffat was always keen to emphasise wiggle-room and ambiguity, and the space for personal 'head canon'.

[Replies From View]

That's true. For all his big decisions, Moffat was always keen to emphasise wiggle-room and ambiguity, and the space for personal 'head canon'.

Exactly.  Even Kill The Moon could be taken as some kind of absurd global hallucination that the Doctor and Clara were strung along by.  Moffat was always very careful to never actually break anything in that regard.

[H-O-W-L]

I think the Tenth Planet style Mondasian cybermen are scarier nowadays because of the relative failure of their original costume design, if you get me? The gummy, weird human hands, the visible glints of furious-looking, probably-inhuman eyes inside those impossibly black sockets. The whole look of them as these dangling, walking ventilator monstrosities was truly ghastly. That shot of them stalking about in the snow in The Tenth Planet is horrific even to this day.

[notjosh]

Apologies if this has been shared before, but I found it amusing to read this contemporary review of The Deadly Assassin from a fanzine. Especially as I would likely acknowledge a lot of the points as being very reasonable if written about a modern episode.

https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/a51sg7/what_has_happened_to_the_magic_of_doctor_who_1976/

[mjwilson]

Doctor Who has only committed two continuity sins since its return. The Timeless Child, and the CyberBrig. Also The Moonbase is set on an egg.

The eggbase

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The eggbase

Egg eggegg




Popeye doing a Lee and Herring joke, there.

[Thomas]

Since critics have tended to be rather kind/gentle/generous towards Chibnall's era, it's interesting to agree with just about everything on this wordcount-meeting Screen Rant list, 10 Things Doctor Who Needs To Do To Get Back On Track. Refreshingly and specifically critical, for a listicle.

[Replies From View]

Since critics have tended to be rather kind/gentle/generous towards Chibnall's era, it's interesting to agree with just about everything on this wordcount-meeting Screen Rant list, 10 Things Doctor Who Needs To Do To Get Back On Track. Refreshingly and specifically critical, for a listicle.

10.  Less Companions

Fell at the first grammatical hurdle.

[Spoon of Ploff]

Is it ironic that while the show needs fewer companions it also suffers from having less companions?

[Mango Chimes]

I disagree with the "too many companions" thing. Four regular characters is not a lot for a drama series, definitely not "too many". The problem is that Yaz, Ryan and Graham are treated as a single character with three heads that only exists to ask questions, and that Chibnall keeps making the baffling decision of adding supporting characters to do jobs that could be given to one of the companions instead. What did the Syrian girl add to the Eternal Baldy episode? Why not have the Dalek parasite attach itself to Yaz?

[Mister Six]

Right. RTD could pull off three companions because they would all be unique characters with their own story arcs, motivations and internal conflicts. Moffat managed it towards the end of season 10 for the same reason. Legends of Tomorrow had something like nine main characters (plus recurring allies) in its third season, and never struggled to find things for people to do, nor was it afraid to background a character or two for a bit to focus on others.

[Ambient Sheep]

Since critics have tended to be rather kind/gentle/generous towards Chibnall's era, it's interesting to agree with just about everything on this wordcount-meeting Screen Rant list, 10 Things Doctor Who Needs To Do To Get Back On Track. Refreshingly and specifically critical, for a listicle.

Mostly good article (grammatical howler aside) but I was intrigued by this:

There are rumors floating around as to why the writing for series and twelve haven't exactly been up to par, but that's neither here nor there.

Oooooh, the tease!  Anybody know what these rumours might be, apart from simply "Chibnall can't write for toffee" and maybe some gammons whinging about some of the other writers being BAME?

Anything specific (because I can't think what), or is that it?

[olliebean]

Is it ironic that while the show needs fewer companions it also suffers from having lesser companions?

FTFY.

[Replies From View]

Right. RTD could pull off three companions because they would all be unique characters with their own story arcs, motivations and internal conflicts. Moffat managed it towards the end of season 10 for the same reason. Legends of Tomorrow had something like nine main characters (plus recurring allies) in its third season, and never struggled to find things for people to do, nor was it afraid to background a character or two for a bit to focus on others.

There's another important factor here:  RTD and Moffat made sure their "gangs" were not full time - they were groups that could coalesce at different times for different story needs.

Rose was full time, but when RTD needed additional characters for certain adventures he could bring in her mum, her boyfriend and Jack.  Later in RTD's time when gangs were needed, he pulled in Sarah Jane Smith's crew and the Torchwood crew, as well as bringing back Martha and Rose.

Moffat had a more interesting set of configurations.  During Amy's time we had Rory and River Song to allow certain stories to expand.  During Clara's time we had the Paternoster Gang, and during Bill's time Nardole and Missy.

Chibnall's error has been to keep all his three companions onboard full time.  It means we don't have the focus of a singular character's journey to keep pinning everything to, and there's a continuous sense of crowding that cannot be escaped.

[daf]

RTD could pull off three companions

Aye Aye!

[Mister Six]

Fnarr fnarr!

There%u2019s another important factor here:  RTD and Moffat made sure their %u201Cgangs%u201D were not full time - they were groups that could coalesce at different times for different story needs.

Rose was full time, but when RTD needed additional characters for certain adventures he could bring in her mum, her boyfriend and Jack.  Later in RTD%u2019s time when gangs were needed, he pulled in Sarah Jane Smith%u2019s crew and the Torchwood crew, as well as bringing back Martha and Rose.

Moffat had a more interesting set of configurations.  During Amy%u2019s time we had Rory and River Song to allow certain stories to expand.  During Clara%u2019s time we had the Paternoster Gang, and during Bill%u2019s time Nardole and Missy.

Chibnall%u2019s error has been to keep all his three companions onboard full time.  It means we don%u2019t have the focus of a singular character%u2019s journey to keep pinning everything to, and there%u2019s a continuous sense of crowding that cannot be escaped.

Again, though, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. We could easily (well okay, with some effort) have four characters' journeys - including the Doctor's - and have some of the companions (or even The Doctor) step into the background in the way we saw with Fear Her, Blink, Midnight, Turn Left etc. It's only a problem because all of the companions are essentially the same in terms of personality and plot function[nb]Surface stuff like Graham doing dad jokes and Ryan having dead eyes and a monotone aside.[/nb], and none of them have proper character arcs for us to invest in.

[Replies From View]

It's a problem because Chibnall is stuck with all of them all the time and has to constantly contrive reasons to background one or more of them just to give one of them space.  It's exactly the issue Davison's era had.  Contriving reasons to have groupings of optional additional companions is a lot less of an issue, because you can have your regular TARDIS crew run into someone like River Song or Captain Jack whenever you like, or bring in boyfriends/girlfriends/family for a two-parter without fundamentally breaking anything.

The feeling is that Chibnall grew high on the idea of gaining credit for bringing back multiple companions and never really appreciated how RTD and Moffat had already been doing this, but with temporary configurations that were a lot more intelligent in their flexibility.

It's basically that Chibnall isn't very clever.

[Mister Six]

Do we agree that this is primarily an issue of execution rather than the whole concept of three companions being a bad idea?

[Replies From View]

Barbara, Susan and Ian worked so three full-time companions needn't fundamentally be a bad idea.

[Mango Chimes]

I think it's a fundamentally good idea. The first episode set it up nicely, with that brilliant cliffhanger. Imagine if they'd been stuck out there, far from home, four people who are either strangers, estranged or in tense relationships with each other, arguing and developing, put under pressure by the things they encounter.

Yaz loving this new adventure and responsibility but recklessly trying to lead. Ryan anxious and trying to cope, struggling with being stuck with Graham. Graham grieving and feeling guilty for otherwise enjoying being given a new lease of life. The Doctor trying to keep everyone alive but enjoying having that challenge.

Crowding them together, rather than a weakness, could actually be a rich strength. It's the editorial rule of "no conflict" that's fucked it.

[Replies From View]

Yeah but that could have worked for a couple of episodes with a more temporary gang set-up as well.

It's not that it's a fundamentally bad idea, but it needs a meticulous and thoughtful writer to make it always work (this is the point - not that it couldn't work for an epic two or three parter), and it's risky within the Doctor Who set-up where individual writers take on different stories and there isn't much consistency across a series.  As always Chibnall has jumped into an area that RTD and Moffat were both smart enough to avoid.

[Alberon]

In the past in New Who when you've had more than one companion the others have been secondary. Mickey and Rory were the companion's companion rather than level billing with Rose or Amy.

Three companions could be made to work, if you returned to having the show from the companion's point of view as it was back when New Who got going and as it was right back at the start in 1963. This current show is not from anyone's point of view. But it is quite a juggling act. Two companions would probably be both enough and easier.

The first episode of Chibnall's era does set things up well, but it was an example of how he pushed himself for the first episode and then slumped back to a 'that'll do' approach. There were possibilities to centre episodes around individual companions, like Arachnids in the UK, but that first series seemed to have no idea of what to do with Yaz and an episode that should have revolved around her was wasted. Back before the start of Series 12 I half planned to do a reveal along the lines of the Fifth Housemate in The Young Ones that I'd discovered a third companion lurking in every episode. If the rumours are true and she's the only companion going beyond the New Year's special she still has no character. Ultimately, even if it's just her and the Doctor in the TARDIS they won't be better written or more fleshed out.

[pigamus]

Barbara, Susan and Ian worked so three full-time companions needn't fundamentally be a bad idea.

Well Ian and Barbara did, but they had to write Susan out because they couldn't give her enough to do.