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March 28, 2024, 05:35:35 PM

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Doctor Who 2005-2017 : The RTD & Moffat Years

Started by daf, May 03, 2021, 09:09:11 AM

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Thomas

If you watch eps from the RTD era, you can see the cast flinching in a similar way whenever John Barrowman is around.

mjwilson

Quote from: BritishHobo on June 22, 2021, 12:18:04 AM
I still think it's amazing that Moffat so nailed the Cybermen at the end of series 10, in my opinion the first time they were genuinely scary in all of New Who, even though he had intended to leave after series 9. The fact that he'd thoroughly explored all he wanted to with the show, and felt it right to step away, yet he was still able to deliver such an original and terrifying take on such an overused villain. Bonus brilliance for doing exactly the same with the Master, in the very same episode. To me, neither of those villains have ever had a better showing in New Who, never been more scary, or more believable, or more haunting and tragic, after years of being quite broadly evil just because; and it's a real talent that he was able to pull that out of the bag even after five series and 8 specials.

That moment with the volume control...

I don't like Bill's eventual fate - but that last two parter is brilliant in how it steps everything up, like a ratchet.

Replies From View

Imagine if you had only ever seen series 9 and 10 of Doctor Who.  You would assume it was a show about the different ways of pairing up lesbians and making them immortal.

Mister Six

Quote from: A Hat Like That on June 24, 2021, 06:56:53 PM
I don't like Bill's eventual fate - but that last two parter is brilliant in how it steps everything up, like a ratchet.

What don't you like about it?

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: Replies From View on June 25, 2021, 07:51:56 AM
Imagine if you had only ever seen series 9 and 10 of Doctor Who.  You would assume it was a show about the different ways of pairing up lesbians and making them immortal.

solid premise for a show

Replies From View

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on June 25, 2021, 07:43:47 PM
solid premise for a show

Well exactly - it would be yet another reason to be disappointed by series 11.

JamesTC

Continuing on from here. I guess I just forgotten this thread was also for discussing Doctor Who and not just for talking about sex pests.

Rewatching the Moffat era through the episodes I've seen (Series 5/6 and some of 7/8) and into the episodes I never bothered with.

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone came with a big hype if I remember correctly, though I never bought into it. I like the Weeping Angels even if they are a little one note, but I didn't think Blink was as good as people say. I think it never matched the hype probably because it changed what the Weeping Angels line of attack was? I seem to remember the snapping necks being controversial.

As a villain, I guess they just can't work every time sending people into the past. If anything I thought the slower starving angels were far more frightening than the normal angels. It is the old fast zombies v slow zombies debate.

I had never noticed before, but actually this isn't too dissimilar to The Tomb of the Cybermen. It isn't as good as that (no other Dr Who story is) but it is an interesting way of bringing back a powerful enemy and making them work effectively. Put the enemy in a more desperate and weak position but then ramp up the tension as they slowly return to life.

The cliffhanger is one of the weakest the show has ever seen. The Doctor fires a gun at the ceiling... and that is it? Definitely feels bodged late on to cover some sort of re-edit or deleted scene.

The story is better than I remember it. The first episode is really effective, in typical Moffat scary episode fashion. The second part can't live up to it and gets a little bogged down by the overall series arc but enjoyable all the same.

There is one small element I don't like of Moffat's writing in general. The occasional sex jokes. They vary from being immature to just lazy filler gag. I'm as far from being prudish as one can be, but it just feels like we are veering too much into Torchwood territory with that sort of humour.

Mister Six

Quote from: JamesTC on September 04, 2021, 10:41:24 PM
The cliffhanger is one of the weakest the show has ever seen. The Doctor fires a gun at the ceiling... and that is it? Definitely feels bodged late on to cover some sort of re-edit or deleted scene

Yeah, I was baffled by that at the time. Definitely a big gap between what's on the page and what ended up on the screen. I'm assuming the glowing orb exploding was envisioned as some kind of giant bloom of light, so it looks like The Doctor might have blown them all up or something, instead of a balloon full or water exploding or what we ended up with.

Replies From View

They used it in a trailer immediately after the Tenth Doctor had made a big thing of never using guns.  I always assumed it was devised entirely to wrong-foot audiences in that way, and was reverse-engineered, somewhat rubbishly, into a cliffhanger.


Still though, I would argue the only bad things of series 5 are the Dalek redesign and Chris "make Rory stand around in a grave until the story is ready to have him back in" Chibnall.

Midas

Yup, I was also nonplussed by that cliffhanger - the cartoon Graham Norton that ran across the screen in the middle of the scene didn't do it any favours either... :)

I remember being a bit bewildered by the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode of the Chibnall two-parter in the latter half of the series, where the unconvincing shot of (what I now understand to be) the Silurian city was so oddly-rendered and brief I couldn't really decipher what I was supposed to be looking at.

JamesTC

Vampires of Venice isn't a well-loved story, is it? Not hated as I remember, but certainly not remembered in any fashion.

I don't like the more adult elements of Moffat humour and it does definitely become a sticking point in later episodes as it verges on uncomfortable. That being said, I couldn't help but like The Doctor popping out of the cake and asking them to get a jumper for the bikini clad woman outside. It shouldn't work but Matt Smith makes sure it does despite being at odds for the type of programme it is.

Looking back at Matt Smith the foreknowledge that Moffat would (smartly) retcon him as the "last" incarnation before being granted more by the Time Lords makes his personality rather effective. A Doctor in the last throws of life trying so exuberantly to recapture his youth with his last chance. A nice contrast with what The Master became in his "last" incarnation.

Initially I was thinking that Amy is adapting to proceedings far too well. She is acting like a second series companion whilst only a few episodes into her first series. Then I remembered that she spent her whole childhood dreaming about travelling in time and space with the Doctor and even had a couple of years to ruminate on her first adventure with him in The Eleventh Hour.

I am pondering how much of the non-Moffat episodes have been re-written by him. I did hear that Chibnall had a thing in his contract which meant he didn't get re-written which makes complete sense as his episodes are still complete shit. It feels harsh on Toby Whithouse to insinuate but this does feel very heavily influenced by Moffat, although this may just be that his only other episode that comes to mind is School Reunion which would have been re-written by RTD. On the subject of Toby Whithouse, I wonder if he is a frontrunner for the job of showrunner.

In another era this episode might have been poor, but this series has a way of pulling up the lesser episodes. Almost certainly the worst of the 11 episodes this series but still an enjoyable entry. The ending is a bit naff with the Doctor climbing the CSO tower.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: JamesTC on September 05, 2021, 07:22:30 PMOn the subject of Toby Whithouse, I wonder if he is a frontrunner for the job of showrunner.

Allegedly he was the first pick to replace Moffat, but he didn't want the job.

JamesTC

I go into Amy's Choice with a little hesitancy. I remember loving it at the time and I am worried about it not living up to my memory of it.

It doesn't quite live up to my memory but it is still the best episode this series up to now. It suffers a little from the Star Trek TNG Season 1 thing of the audience knowing the solution from the beginning and just waiting for how the characters resolve it. Still it subverts it in the end by revealing it was two dreams instead of one.

On the subject of TNG, The Dream Lord is reminiscent of Q. Shame there isn't really any scope for him to come back since he just a manifestation from The Doctor's mind.

I'm watching on BBC iPlayer as they retain the Next Time trailers. Oddly they are presenting a trailer for an unmade episode at the end of this, I think. Did something happen like Shada and they had to abandon a story? Anyway, onto the next Series 5 episode that actually exists, Vincent and the Doctor.



Quote from: Ambient Sheep on September 05, 2021, 08:10:36 PM
Allegedly he was the first pick to replace Moffat, but he didn't want the job.

The horrors we could have been rescued from if he'd took the job. If he turned it down then, he certainly wouldn't take it up now.

purlieu

Although it has its weaknesses, I'm fond of the Silurian two-parter. Part of that was just seeing the TARDIS land in some remote part of the British landscape where some scientific thing is going on, which felt so at odds with RTD's London-centric stuff.

olliebean

Quote from: JamesTC on September 05, 2021, 07:22:30 PMOn the subject of Toby Whithouse, I wonder if he is a frontrunner for the job of showrunner.

Ambient Sheep has already said Whithouse wasn't interested, but in general it feels to me like picking someone who was involved with the show pre-Chibnall, but completely uninvolved during Chibnall's tenure, would make a bit of a statement re:Chibnall. So from that point of view, I'm all for it.

Replies From View

Quote from: purlieu on September 05, 2021, 09:01:38 PM
Although it has its weaknesses, I'm fond of the Silurian two-parter. Part of that was just seeing the TARDIS land in some remote part of the British landscape where some scientific thing is going on, which felt so at odds with RTD's London-centric stuff.

It feels like Moffat said "I'm after a mash-up of Doctor Who and the Silurians and Inferno," and Chibnall did paint-by-numbers for all the details.

JamesTC

According to Wikipedia, Rory was swallowed up by a crack and has been erased from history off-screen.

Vincent and the Doctor is of course a very special episode. I still wonder whether it is right to do an episode on mental health whilst throwing in an invisible monster rampaging around killing people but somehow they manage to do it as compassionately as they can.

It is perhaps that it is taboo to deal with a subject such as this. Should it be Doctor Who that breaks this taboo? I'm glad such a skilled team of people were there to be sensitive enough to break it here. Doctor Who is now pigeonholed as "a kids show" in a defence of the mediocrity the show is reduced to now.  Vincent and the Doctor changes the face of television in a small but significant way whilst Doctor Who now is vociferously defended with the excuse that it is a CBBC show with a big budget.

The episode is so affecting that it makes me think of the people who didn't know yet just how much they would be appreciated. A few years ago I read the book about Robert Holmes and it is so sad to think that when he died the show was approaching the peak of its criticism and he was just still plying away as a jobbing writer and still failing to get his own ideas for shows off the ground. In 2009 one of his stories was voted the greatest ever and they are still watched by new audiences today. There are more people than ever discovering his work and appreciating it. He'll never get the acclaim he deserves, but it is so sad to think he passed on before he could see the era we are in now for Classic Who. I'm glad Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks lived to see the love.

Doctor Who can be more than just a sci-fi show about time travel and aliens. And I guess this episode proves that sometimes it should be more.

It is a shame that Richard Curtis would follow up his first foray into sci-fi with two complete garbage heaps with About Time and Yesterday. Maybe it is the Moffat influence but he clearly isn't terrible at sci-fi even if that was secondary to the main theme of the episode.

JamesTC

The Lodger is a weird story in that it doesn't actually have a writer.

I remembered this as being my favourite of the series. And it lives up to that too. Up to now the Moffat era seems to excel when it tells smaller scale stories. I think after the shit show that the previous era left in, a smaller scale run was right up my alley. 

It isn't as much of a comedy as I remember. The comedy elements run through the entire series so this isn't out of place as the novelty entry in the way something like Love and Monsters was.

Obviously when James Corden is himself he is incredibly obnoxious, but in this I think he is perfectly fine. Daisy Haggard is great in everything I've seen her in too.

Mister Six

Quote from: JamesTC on September 05, 2021, 10:08:21 PM
Vincent and the Doctor is of course a very special episode. I still wonder whether it is right to do an episode on mental health whilst throwing in an invisible monster rampaging around killing people

The invisible monster is a metaphor for mental illness - something that cannot be seen by outsiders, yet is very real and very dangerous to the sufferer.

JamesTC

Quote from: Mister Six on September 06, 2021, 10:21:34 AM
The invisible monster is a metaphor for mental illness - something that cannot be seen by outsiders, yet is very real and very dangerous to the sufferer.

I did get the metaphor but I just wasn't sure if it sat right to mix mental illness with sci-fi in this way. Though I have only just realised that Vincent killing the monster violently is analogous to his suicide.

Funny thing just happened. I got a refund on the Twice Upon a Time 4K as it was OOS and that was the whole reason I started this run through of the Moffat era. I'll see if I can get it cheap elsewhere or just watch it on iPlayer.

Replies From View

It's called Twice Upon A Time because of how many attempts you need to buy it.

JamesTC


JamesTC

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang is kind of the opposite of the Angels two parter. A huge opener followed by a lower key finale.

Usually the big bombastic finales leave me cold. I detested Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords and The End of Time. I actually didn't mind Journey's End for its many many faults, fucking idiot that I am.

While the first part leaves me somewhat cold the second part makes up for it. Not enough of a fun around as I would have liked.

All in all though it is somewhat disappointing comparing to my memory of it. Likewise the entire series as a whole. Don't get me wrong, Series 5 is a good run of 11 episodes but I can't help but feel the issues that turned me off the later series are creeping in a little here in hindsight. Hopefully I have the opposite opinion of Series 6 when I rewatch it.

purlieu

As ever, I will always love Moffat for managing to do a RTD-scale threat - the end of the universe - with the Doctor, his companions and a rusty Dalek. It's the polar opposite of Journey's End and it works so well as a result because it doesn't involve a load of returning companions, a million Daleks, two Doctors, characters brought over from spin-off shows and the TARDIS towing the Earth across the universe.

Replies From View

RTD had trapped himself in a corner by having to increase the scale of the threat with every series finale, to the point where the magnitude was already so huge that the next one couldn't meaningfully overshadow it.  If I'm not mistaken the stakes of series 1 were everyone on earth being wiped out - that's already a massive enough threat.  You can scale it up to the solar system, the entire universe and then all of reality all you want - after a while you mentally block out that scale of threat and the difference is hyperbolic.

It's why the perspective of a new showrunner is so important, just to shake things up.  RTD couldn't keep getting bigger and bigger, and Moffat was able to offer a new slant on series finales so there was no need to.

Mister Six

Yeah, let's think... 5 does the whole universe under threat, but focuses on the characters and their relationships. 6 does the same thing again, basically. 7 nominally has the universe under threat, but the real drama comes from The Doctor facing death. 8 is more of an RTD "Earth under threat" deal, with the character stuff secondary to the high-stakes drama. 9 focuses almost exclusively on The Doctor's relationship with the companion (the prophecy being basically backgrounded throughout the season) and 10 focuses on The Doctor fighting a losing battle with effectively a single planet at stake, and how that reflects on his companions and The Master.

Thinking about it, mortality is the big theme throughout Capaldi's three seasons, isn't it? The false afterlife in 8, the death and resurrection of Clara (and the prophecy gubbins of standing over the ruins of Gallifrey) in 9, and the doomed tone in the final Cyberman two-parter.

And, because he's a sap, he can't resist coming up with immortal get-outs over and over,[nb]With the artificial-afterlife-but-this-time-it's-nice of Twice Upon a Time.[/nb] because fuck it, this is fundamentally a warm-spirited fantasy, not a Ken Loach film.

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: Mister Six on September 06, 2021, 09:39:00 PM
and the doomed tone in the final Cyberman two-parter.

And, because he's a sap, he can't resist coming up with immortal get-outs over and over,

this reminded me that my own silly headcanon revolves around this being the actual death of the doctor and bill and whatever's happened since is some sort of jacob's ladder-esque fuckery


purlieu

Quote from: Mister Six on September 06, 2021, 09:39:00 PM
And, because he's a sap, he can't resist coming up with immortal get-outs over and over, because fuck it, this is fundamentally a warm-spirited fantasy, not a Ken Loach film.
The "oh she can have near immortality" epilogue to Clara's death actually really bugged me. Possibly the biggest cop-out in the history of the show, you have the first proper companion death for decades and then go "yeah but she can fly around in a diner for a billion years before she eventually decides she has to die". It basically removes any tension from rewatches. Give me Adric any day.
Mind you, I find the two Twelve and Clara series unpleasantly dull for the most part anyway. Episode after episode of grey walls and a smug, shallow companion and a Doctor who's still deciding what his character is.

olliebean

Quote from: Mister Six on September 06, 2021, 09:39:00 PM
Yeah, let's think... 5 does the whole universe under threat, but focuses on the characters and their relationships. 6 does the same thing again, basically. 7 nominally has the universe under threat, but the real drama comes from The Doctor facing death. 8 is more of an RTD "Earth under threat" deal, with the character stuff secondary to the high-stakes drama. 9 focuses almost exclusively on The Doctor's relationship with the companion (the prophecy being basically backgrounded throughout the season) and 10 focuses on The Doctor fighting a losing battle with effectively a single planet at stake, and how that reflects on his companions and The Master.

11, I don't know, they saved some planets I think, but everyone on them was already dead so it doesn't really matter? Really hazy about exactly what was at stake in Rango vs Colas, or whatever it was called. 12, the Doctor not only fails to save the Earth but arguably facilitates its destruction because she likes a bit of poetry, also fails to save Gallifrey or the Time Lords, and then the Master tells her something supposedly important but functionally meaningless.