Doctor Who 2005-2017 : The RTD & Moffat Years

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Again, I would have been happier without the Time War, and just having the Time Lords as a bunch of stuffy old people we rarely see because The Doctor doesn't want to have anything to do with them. The Last of the Time Lords stuff immediately makes The Doctor a significant, tragic hero of a character, rather than an anti-authoritarian traveller who fixes problems as he stumbles across them. I know the former fits a 21st century TV landscape better than the latter, but it's never sat right with me.

I think the Time War served a particular narrative function in 2005 and gave the Doctor a dark and mysterious history that probably meant more viewers stayed with the show than if he'd been fresh from the events of Survival or the TV Movie.  Plus it reinvented the Doctor's people with a terrifying mythology that took away their farty, boring natures in the imagination.  In turn, Moffat was right to identify that the Time War had done its job by 2013, the Doctor was no longer defined by the same angst (and nor should he have been) and to draw a line under it all in the 50th anniversary.

What RTD and Moffat should have reined in though were the excesses of the Doctor's universe-sweeping reputation.  It was often thrilling in the classic era whenever anyone recognised the Doctor before he'd introduced himself.  It signified great foreboding for someone to turn to him and say "Doctor" or "Time Lord".  You couldn't get that after about 2006 because the Doctor was constantly a celebrity wherever he went, and the show has never recovered from it.

That, and the increasingly over-powered gadgets like the sonic screwdriver / sunglasses or gimmicks like being able to open the TARDIS doors with a click of the fingers, that took away too many barriers and lowered the stakes too far.  I remember there was a story in RTD's time where the Doctor teleported the TARDIS to himself so he wouldn't have to seek it out.  Ok, so you didn't want to tell that story of searching for the TARDIS for a whole episode, but don't introduce that problem in the first place then.  All it does is give the Doctor yet another thing you expect him/her to pull out to save the day.

[purlieu]

Absolutely. It was reined in a bit in series 5, but then the whole bit at Stonehenge in The Pandorica Opens was peak Legend Doctor. You've got to keep the thing low stakes to make the high stakes bits stand out. The "Time Lord" line in The Curse of Fenric is chilling, because at that point you really don't expect it.

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I thought Moffat was on our wavelength with this when the end of series 6 promised the Doctor laying low, keeping his head down and then series 7 saw him starting to erase himself from various databases.  Taken as dead and then his record scrubbed out; great, I thought.  Then his name wasn't to be spoken, so again it seemed Moffat was entrenching this idea he had to stay invisible.  It was the perfect opportunity to reset the Time Lord Victorious, Celebrity Doctor baggage, but it inexplicably lasted for all of five minutes.

I suppose any future showrunner could just ignore it all, and pretend that nobody has ever heard of the Doctor, but it wouldn't really make any sense without retreading something like the series 6-7 conceit and following through with it properly.  Or the series 5 cracks in time.  But that repetition would be annoying in itself.

[Mister Six]

Chibnall was very stupid

Trimmed your post down.

[mjwilson]

I think it's fine for these kind of things to go in waves, you can have a spell where the Doctor is just someone who wanders around and deals with whatever situation they find themselves in, and then you can have a period where the Doctor is an Important Figure in the Universe who Must Right All the Wrongs. It's a question of fashion and taste, and over 50+ years you're bound to get both approaches (and those in between). It's all to someone's taste [nb]except for the Timeless Children stuff which everyone rightly hates[/nb].

[Jerzy Bondov]

I'd make a bit of a running joke out of it, have the Doctor trying to throw her reputation about and people just being like fuck you on about never heard of you mate. She'd be annoyed but not enough to try to work out why she's not famous any more

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Trimmed your post down.

It doesn't need to be past tense if you're going to do that.

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They could have a special parallel universe episode where Chibnall is able to write ok dialogue for all the characters in it and the story somehow isn't shite

[Mister Six]

It doesn't need to be past tense if you're going to do that.

I live in hope.

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I think it's fine for these kind of things to go in waves, you can have a spell where the Doctor is just someone who wanders around and deals with whatever situation they find themselves in, and then you can have a period where the Doctor is an Important Figure in the Universe who Must Right All the Wrongs. It's a question of fashion and taste, and over 50+ years you're bound to get both approaches (and those in between). It's all to someone's taste [nb]except for the Timeless Children stuff which everyone rightly hates[/nb].

Hmm, I'm not sure whether something like this has swung back and forth before.  In the classic era the Doctor wasn't known by everyone on earth, and feared by every alien species in the wider universe, and after taking it so far now it must be a very difficult thing to just decide isn't the case anymore or pretend hasn't ever been the case.

Even when the third Doctor was exiled on Earth for several years, he was known by UNIT but he was never treated with reverence or any full level of trust, and nobody else knew who he was - they just thought he was a nuisance or a crank coming to disrupt their corporate project or whatever.  By 2009 you've got Lee Evans being a shrieking fan of the Legendary Doctor, and by series 9 the Doctor is the President of Earth.  Can this stuff just be brushed off?

[Kelvin]

Hmm, I'm not sure whether something like this has swung back and forth before.  In the classic era the Doctor wasn't known by everyone on earth, and feared by every alien species in the wider universe, and after taking it so far now it must be a very difficult thing to just decide isn't the case anymore or pretend hasn't ever been the case.

It's easy to do in stories not set on earth. If The Doctor lands on a planet/ship, the writer simply has to decide whether they have heard of The Doctor or not. It requires no in-universe fix whatsoever. Alien invasions on earth are much harder to explain away, but even the stuff with Unit is relatively easy to write out with a new leadership.

[Mister Six]

Can this stuff just be brushed off?

Pretty much, yeah. It's Doctor Who.

[Chiefgango]

My sense is that the legendary doctor stuff was often a crutch Moffat used to paper over his weaknesses in writing. The eleventh doctor and the as angel two parter in series 5 use it fairly well, but the number of times "I am the Doctor" solves something is baffling when you think about it.

Off the top of my head:

Eleventh Hour — stops the atraxi coming back
Angels two parter — papers over the quite weak idea that a ship's artificial gravity would be strong enough to pull every good character in from the outside, but not any of the angels (or surrounding terrain?)
Victory of the Daleks — weak excuse to have the daleks pretending to be servile robots. Definitely has the vibe of working backwards from a striking visual
The Pandorica Opens — I get that it's a subversion, because all the galaxy's nasties actually just want proof it is him before they lure him there, but that's kind of the problem. The doctor is now so famous and scary that aliens we've seen fight one another rather than cooperate before can make devious plans together? Why? Can they all time travel now too? All of this is papered over by the the bombastic speech

Then series 6 is full of hand wavy conclusions disguised by I am the Doctor Speeches

Silence two parter — the resolution is kinda silly, but sold through swagger and riffing on the doctor's reputation. Surely someone wasn't watching the broadcast, and the silence could tell them to destroy it or play a new one? If it's possible to use their powers over the tv, rather than in person, why don't they take over the BBC and insert orders in episodes of antiques roadshow?
The doctor's wife: if house was powerful enough to rip the tardis's soul out of the box on the first place, why isn't he powerful enough to stop it coming back?
A good man goes to war: the doctor dies in this episode. There is no way he walks into a room of people who want him dead making jokes without getting shot repeatedly
Let's Kill Hitler: not only is he famous, but the person who kills him his famous. That saves the day. What
The wedding of river song — I think the consensus is this ending is shit. If you watch it back though, you tend to ignore that, because of the swagger and the "I am the doctor" speeches

Series 7 has less of this I think, but the Time of the Doctor is really silly. Those daleks would have killed him while he made that speech "you're too scared of me because I am the doctor" is nonsense


Come to think of it "I am the Doctor" might be one of the most manipulative pieces of music used on tv. It can make any stupid idea sound profound and brilliant

[mjwilson]

Hmm, I'm not sure whether something like this has swung back and forth before.  In the classic era the Doctor wasn't known by everyone on earth, and feared by every alien species in the wider universe

True, but you get the seventh Doctor being all "it is my job to seek out and right wrongs", which is quite different to Hartnell stories for example.

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True, but you get the seventh Doctor being all "it is my job to seek out and right wrongs", which is quite different to Hartnell stories for example.

That's the matter of any incarnation of the Doctor having their own take on who they are, and is what routinely changing your lead character allows.  But everyone in the universe knowing them and loving/fearing them isn't part of what's in the head of a single incarnation.  It's an irrevocable change in the universe itself.

It's a bit like the universe of Red Dwarf getting increasingly populated, until the point where the characters are meeting actual other humans some weeks and it being no big deal.  Yet Doug Naylor still writes the situation as an infinitely large, lonely and empty universe apart from this "last human" and his assortment of misfit companions.  But I think the journey is one-way; once you repopulate the universe you've lost its emptiness for good.

Same goes for the Doctor being a legend everywhere he or she goes.  The only thing a showrunner can really do is have something like the cracks in time resetting everything, but you can't do that endlessly.

[Mister Six]

You can just ignore it. Remember that the target audience is kids who either won't have seen episodes written 15+ years ago, or won't care. This is the series that sank Atlantis three times, after all. Just assume that time got rewritten somewhere, or this is a segment of time where The Doctor isn't that well known and roll with it.

[Norton Canes]

Absolutely. Worst thing an incoming showrunner could do is waste time identifying and undoing the mistakes of their predecessor.

[purlieu]

I dunno, I thought Moffat's one-shot removal of every RTD Dalek story was pretty great.

[olliebean]

Wasn't there something at one point about him erasing every mention of himself from every database in the universe, or something? I don't think it lasted long, though. Presumably they all restored from backups not long after.

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Wasn't there something at one point about him erasing every mention of himself from every database in the universe, or something? I don't think it lasted long, though. Presumably they all restored from backups not long after.

Yes.  That's what I was referring to when I wrote this:

I thought Moffat was on our wavelength with this when the end of series 6 promised the Doctor laying low, keeping his head down and then series 7 saw him starting to erase himself from various databases.  Taken as dead and then his record scrubbed out; great, I thought.  Then his name wasn't to be spoken, so again it seemed Moffat was entrenching this idea he had to stay invisible.  It was the perfect opportunity to reset the Time Lord Victorious, Celebrity Doctor baggage, but it inexplicably lasted for all of five minutes.

I suppose any future showrunner could just ignore it all, and pretend that nobody has ever heard of the Doctor, but it wouldn't really make any sense without retreading something like the series 6-7 conceit and following through with it properly.  Or the series 5 cracks in time.  But that repetition would be annoying in itself.

[olliebean]

Damn, caught out skim-reading the thread! Apologies to RFV for missing his post the first time round.

[purlieu]

I'm sure Jodie's final episode will have Chibbers make her go back through time to erase her own Timeless Child past and in the process wipe out every previous incarnation of The Doctor, making her the first one ever or something.

[Mister Six]

Still hoping Jo Martin is actually the 14th Doctor and this is Chibnall's idea of a clever twist.

[Ambient Sheep]

Yup, that's my hope too.

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Has she been good in things?  Apart from her Matrix Reloaded stand-and-blankly-deliver scenes from the last series I haven't seen her in anything.

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My gut feeling is that Chibnall came up with Jo Martin's Doctor to answer the criticism that the Doctor had always been a man up until Whittaker.  Even though it makes no sense for to have a police box and predate Hartnell, a woman past-Doctor gives a deeper precedent for changing gender now.  I still feel that's more likely than her being the 14th Doctor.

[Attila]

Has she been good in things?  Apart from her Matrix Reloaded stand-and-blankly-deliver scenes from the last series I haven't seen her in anything.

She's been on Holby City as the hospital CEO since 2019. She's been pretty good given the silly plotlines and general goofiness of Holby City in general.

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Only the best actors get to be CEOs of Holly City.  The rest can only be bog-standard nurses and things.


Serious question:  what's her acting range like?  Is she engaging?  She came across as aloof and unmoving in her series 12 episodes, but that can't be all of it.

[Mister Six]

I think the only other thing I've seen her in is Attack the Block and she's a bit of a blank in my memory, although it's a bit of a bland role, especially compared with the antics of the kids and Nick Frost.

A mate of mine liked her as a shut-in weirdo in the film Adult Life Skills, so much so that he was quite confident about her then-upcoming portrayal of The Doctor. Obviously he hadn't anticipated the power of Chibnall to fuck everything up.

Not seen it myself, but here's a post-Who trailer: https://youtu.be/Bk6OxjwL5Ho

And here's another one with even more irritating late-2000s inspirational indie acoustic guitar/choral music: https://youtu.be/RW0B0HvVW4Q

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We're talking about Jo Martin right?  I've already seen what Jodie Whittaker could be like as the full-time Doctor.