Doctor Who 2005-2017 : The RTD & Moffat Years

[purlieu]

Yeah, the butterfly room in the EDAs is absolutely wonderful, just a really great visual idea that's also pretty simple. Same as the library in the NAs, where you always manage to find what you're looking for (even if you don't know you're looking for it) straight away. Both add a sense of wonder and mystery without, as Replies says, ruining the welcoming atmosphere of the TARDIS.

[Replies From View]

I don't know whether it's my neurodiversity, but I feel really stressed whenever something threatening can casually break into the console room.  Like Chibnall was doing in series 12.  Monsters popping up left right and centre and saying "you're under arrest".  I always feel it should be a haven, a space completely free of outside pressures.  Nothing can "get" you but the Doctor's own ethics keeps him or her engaging with the outside world and taking responsibility when at fault.


I know there are exceptions, like now and then things go wrong and the TARDIS becomes menacing or possessed, but by and large it should be a space that brings calm and safety.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

I don't know whether it's my neurodiversity, but I feel really stressed whenever something threatening can casually break into the console room.

i remember a particular feeling of horror from season 3 finale when john simm pinches the tardis. something about the phrase "he's cannibalised the tardis". nasty

[lipsink]

Series 8 I enjoyed a lot more on rewatch. It feels quite fresh and it's such a surprise that it's largely the same production team as the Smith era. Sure, it has all the problems mentioned above but it's quite fun. Series 9 is an absolute dog's dinner and when I sat down to rewatch it recently I could only be bothered watching 'Heaven Sent'. The rest is a mess and just sooo dull too with all the needless 2 parters. Series 10 is great though (they finally got Capaldi's Doctor right, gave him 2 great companions and it contains the best NuWho Cyberman story). Definitely Moffat's best since Series 5.

[Replies From View]

i remember a particular feeling of horror from season 3 finale when john simm pinches the tardis. something about the phrase "he's cannibalised the tardis". nasty

There is scope for some horror by enemies invading and exploiting the TARDIS like this, but it entirely works because it is otherwise a safe space.  If it feels like rented accommodation that any fucker can step into and say "out" then it's going to lose that.

[Replies From View]

Do you reckon Chibnall is someone you'd find to be wrong about everything if you ended up chatting with him in a pub?


Brexit?  "Yeah mostly good for the UK I'd say."

Loud screeching noises during the night?  "Wonderful things."

Say something that rhymes with "onion".  "Chief Wiggum."

What colour is this apple?  "Meringue"

[Endicott]

Does he have some Jidoon teleport right into the Tardis or something? (I haven't watched it.) I mean, that breaks everything said about the Tardis in 50 years of Who. Is Chibbo so shit that I can comfortably think of anything he's done as not canon? (The answer is yes)

[frajer]

Do you reckon Chibnall is someone you'd find to be wrong about everything if you ended up chatting with him in a pub?


Brexit?  "Yeah mostly good for the UK I'd say."

Loud screeching noises during the night?  "Wonderful things."

Say something that rhymes with "onion".  "Chief Wiggum."

What colour is this apple?  "Meringue"

I reckon he'd probably lack any opinion on most things. His writing certainly does scream mutter of a man utterly uninterested in how and why human beings interact with each other and the world. #BennehRIP

[Ambient Sheep]

I don't know whether it's my neurodiversity, but I feel really stressed whenever something threatening can casually break into the console room.  Like Chibnall was doing in series 12.  Monsters popping up left right and centre and saying "you're under arrest".  I always feel it should be a haven, a space completely free of outside pressures.  Nothing can "get" you but the Doctor's own ethics keeps him or her engaging with the outside world and taking responsibility when at fault.

Yeah, we've discussed this before.  It's really really horrible.  As a little kid I always had the feeling that as long as you could get back to the TARDIS, you'd be safe.  Obviously there would be plot-driven reasons this wasn't usually possible, but IF you could do it, you'd be SAFE.

Not any more... the monsters can come and get you ANYWHERE.  As I said at the time(s) (edited):

By the way, I'm getting increasingly disturbed by how goddam porous Jodie's TARDIS is.  First Kerblam!, then the whatever-it-was's in Skyfall that I've forgotten about already, and now some alien teleport advertising cards (sudden thought: a little lift from HHGTTG's "body debit cards" there).

At this rate the massed hordes of Genghis Khan would be through the doors with barely a nod of his pointy-horned furry hat.

One more thing I forgot to mention: the Judoon bit at the end REALLY pissed me off.  Yet again a super-porous TARDIS... this really really upsets me... the TARDIS should pretty much always be a safe haven for the terrified kid hiding behind the sofa: once you and The Doctor are back inside the blue box, you should always feel safe.  I can honestly say of all the things Chibnall has done to the show, this upsets me the most.  Which is psychologically interesting, I guess.

If you click through to the first one, there's a fair bit of discussion on it.

[Ambient Sheep]

Does he have some Jidoon teleport right into the Tardis or something? (I haven't watched it.) I mean, that breaks everything said about the Tardis in 50 years of Who.

Yup, as you can see above.  Easily the worst of the break-ins.

[Catalogue Trousers]

I mean, that breaks everything said about the Tardis in 50 years of Who.

When a bloody junk mail satellite can breach the Tardis defences (Greatest Show In The Galaxy), then bets on that are off.

[Ambient Sheep]

Yeah, that was mentioned back in January last year.

Not great, and certainly no reason to carry on with it, especially after Eccleston declared very early on in the new series: "Trust me, the massed hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through those doors, and believe me they've tried."  (Quote approx.)

[olliebean]

Also, in Spyfall:

YASMIN: I didn't know things could get into the Tardis like that.
DOCTOR: Neither did I.

Not even consistent within Chibnall's tenure.

[Mister Six]

Inspired by JamesTC's posts, I've decided to go back and rewatch Who from 2005 onwards - most of which I haven't seen since transmission - although I won't be able to keep up the same pace that he's managing.

Anyway, Rose!

When it aired, I think I was mostly quite hopeful about the series, but with the gnawing concern that the burping bin was shit, the focus on inner city London life was a myopic given all of time and space etc, and that it was a tad frenetic. In retrospect, my concerns were stupid. Well, except for the bin - that is a bit naff.

First off, I love the frantic pacing in this. Maybe it's just that Chibnall's series - for all his occasional attempts at humour and despite the best efforts of Sacha Dhawan - mostly has the defeated, listless air of a drizzly Monday morning, but I was absolutely delighted by that opening montage, not least for how well it tells the viewer pretty much everything they need to know about Rose, her world and the thrust of the show in just two and a half minutes. Look (gonna put this in a quote box for easy skipping)...

First shot: Ooh, it's the moon! This is is a show about space, I guess. Ah, and there's Earth. And - wheeee! - London. So this is a show about space and London.

Second shot: A digital clock? So this is a show about space and time and London, then?

Then: Rose gets out of bed. Her hair and her room are a mess, but brightly coloured - she's clearly young and busy. She rushes out of her bedroom, kisses Jackie on the cheek and rushes out to work. Jackie waits till she's gone and grabs her phone. Instantly, we understand the relationship here: Rose the put-upon provider, taking on responsibility beyond her years - and her mother, the overgrown child.

Then: Fast-motion footage of London (that time symbolism again!) as Rose goes to work (apparently not in any kind of uniform, but still), then gets lunch with
Mickey, who dances around like an overgrown child and puts food on Rose's nose twice (she laughs both times but I think we're supposed to recognise he's a bit of an annoying tit).

Then: As Rose tries to leave work with her female colleagues she its stopped by the security guard and told she has to take lottery money down to a bloke in the basement - a handy visual metaphor for Rose being buried by obligation and mundanity.

I even quite like Murray Gold's cacophonous clamouring of bassline, beats, brass, sci-fi noises and a bloody choir. Maybe they've altered the mix for the HBO version, because I can even hear the dialogue! Granted, it might grate after a bit. But there are some lovely moments of playfulness with the soundtrack, like Gold's score temporarily turning diegetic and being piped through the speakers in Henrik's department store for a single shot, and the sounds of the Kennedy assassination as Clive shows Rose the photos of the Doctor in Dallas. This is pretty basic stuff, I know, but it hints at a flamboyance and love of drama that's just lost in the series right now.

Poor Clive, by the way - a glimpse of the darker side of Davies's writing comes when he dies, and the direction emphasises that his wife and kid just watched him get shot in the fucking face.

Speaking of which, the direction isn't as bad as I was expecting, given Boak's rep, and while bits of it are very broadly acted (especially TV's Sex Pest Noel Clarke's capering around as Mickey) and the Doctor's climactic struggle against the Autons feels a bit stretched out, given what's in the script (and the lack of any recent precursors for tone), I can't blame him for going a bit "big". Remember that he shot this in the same block as the farting Slitheen...

Not that I want to do down RTD, mind you - while the push-button resolution (though less obnoxious here than in some other episodes) is a bit pat, his character work and dialogue is brilliant. Everyone, even Mickey, even Clive's baffled wife ("Someone saw your website... and it's a woman?"), is a plausible, rounded character as written, and even the long stretch of exposition - shot as one long take, as Rose and The Doctor leave the Powell Estate - about the Autons and The Doctor's identity is a joy to watch, as Rose gives as good as she gets, turning The Doctor's mocking criticisms back on him, refusing to be fobbed off or insulted. Christ, she gets more characterisation in that two-minute sequence than Yaz has had to date.

7/10 - would probably be 6/10 if the last Who I'd seen hadn't been The Timeless Children.

[JamesTC]

I feel like certain excesses such as the poor mixes putting Murray Gold's music on top of everything didn't come in until a little later.

Eccleston strikes me as too cheery to have just come out of the Time War. I've not listened to the Big Finish audios with him but some form of post-War Doctor stories with Eccleston to bridge The Day of the Doctor and Rose would work well. This is bearing in mind that The War Doctor doesn't remember the altered resolution to the Time War and still believes he killed all Time Lords and Daleks.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Eccleston strikes me as too cheery to have just come out of the Time War.

always saw it as a tears obscured by laughter type thing

[Malcy]

Missed a trick killing off Mark Benton i reckon. He's such good value in everything he's in. Could have had him recurring as a Doctor expert for UNIT or something.

Fairly certain I watched Rose 10+ times before it aired. I sat up till 4am downloading the screener and watched it 3 times in that 24 hour period at least.

[JamesTC]

It was lovely one day to wake up and suddenly there was another 10% or so of McGann on TV. The Night of the Doctor is more proof, if any were needed, of just how wonderful Paul McGann is. He lights up dialogue like no other. The TV Movie might not be popular yet it is still one of the most quoted Doctor Who story amongst fans. Feel really dumb that I never previously made the connection that "The Night of the Doctor" directly refers to him dropping the name The Doctor.

The Day of the Doctor had the task of pleasing so many different audiences in a seemingly impossible way, but it somehow pulls it off. Even a person like me who is more a fan of Classic Doctor Who has a level of appear here. It feels to me that the different audiences are represented by the three different Doctors. The War Doctor represents the fans of the Classic Series as he provides scathing put downs reminiscent of previous multi-Doctor stories. The Tenth Doctor is for fans of the New Series as they see their most memorable Doctor return. The Eleventh Doctor represents the current and general audience.

I'd never realised before that the reason The Moment pushes The Doctor to band together with the others in order to have the sonics work for the solution over 400 years because it is analogous to her pushing The Doctor to work for 400 years through the incarnations on another solution to save Gallifrey.

The Zygon element of the story feels rushed and maybe a waste of an iconic villain finally returning after their previous one and only Classic Series outing. Yet somehow it doesn't even matter. It is like The Five Doctors in that you are in for a nostalgic ride, so you overlook many of the flaws whilst watching and just enjoy.

All being said, I wouldn't compare it too favourably to The Five Doctors. The Day of the Doctor is breathless in order to get through the complex story whereas The Five Doctors is only hectic in the sense of throwing more old friends and enemies on screen but has an incredibly simple story which better necessitates all the old faces. The Five Doctors might not work as an exciting adventure for a general audience in the way The Day of the Doctor does but fuck the general audience.

Even so, it is to the stories great credit that it can stand alongside The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors as a classic and iconic anniversary story.

The Curator is mad. I initially thought it was logically silly but actually if you consider that only the latest incarnation remembers multi-Doctor encounters, which is basically stated at in the same scene when The War Doctor departs, it does work as a fun little vision of a distant Doctor that is never to be seen. Unless they use CGI at some distant point to "bring back" Tom Baker as The Doctor. Bound to happen now that I think about it.

Why is there a big tractor tyre in a random shack in a desert?

The bit with the rabbit was the best bit. I liked that rabbit. It was cute.

Steven Moffat knew they were called roundels. He referred to them as "the round things" but he knew. He knew.

It is so hilarious to think that Chibnall has murdered all of the Time Lords after this. Completely undermines the whole story and in particular the Tom Baker cameo which is all about Gallifrey being saved. He is so shit!

[purlieu]

The War Doctor represents the fans of the Classic Series as he provides scathing put downs reminiscent of previous multi-Doctor stories.

Not just that, he feels like a disgruntled classic-era fan in being utterly dismayed at the new series Doctors and their, shall we say, broader characteristics, and I love how Moffat's clearly written him so in a fond way. It really feels like he understands that mindset, even if he doesn't agree with it himself. My initial response to the existence of the War Doctor was that of dismay - not dissimilar to the general reaction to the Timeless Child thing - but him being written like that was great, and his character brought so much pathos to the story.

That said, part of me is still sad Moffat didn't give it to McGann. I get him not especially being the most suitable Doctor for the role, but fuck, imagine a full-length TV episode with him in. It'll never happen now. Unless Chibnall gives it a go, and then it'll be a missed opportunity.

[Jerzy Bondov]

The Curator scene is one of my very favourite scenes in all of Doctor Who. Baker obviously spoiled the surprise, but it was still thrilling to hear his voice. He and Smith are both brilliant. If push comes to shove, these are my two favourite Doctors. Smith can barely contain his glee at standing in front of Tom fucking Baker while he improvises a load of mad rubbish (I think some of it is improvised), who also is obviously having a great time. Yeah it's nonsense but it's also absolute magic.

[mjwilson]

All being said, I wouldn't compare it too favourably to The Five Doctors. The Day of the Doctor is breathless in order to get through the complex story whereas The Five Doctors is only hectic in the sense of throwing more old friends and enemies on screen but has an incredibly simple story which better necessitates all the old faces.

I don't know if I am failing to follow you here but are you saying that The Five Doctors is better than Day of the Doctor?

I mean fair play if that's how you feel, it's just that I didn't realise that there were people who thought that.

[Replies From View]

always saw it as a tears obscured by laughter type thing

Yes; it's the best way to excuse the fact that Eccleston was as clumsy with the comical stuff as McCoy was with anything approximating rage.

[JamesTC]

I don't know if I am failing to follow you here but are you saying that The Five Doctors is better than Day of the Doctor?

I mean fair play if that's how you feel, it's just that I didn't realise that there were people who thought that.

Definitely! The Five Doctors is just a wonderfully simple story which enables the laundry list of characters that were needed to be included at short notice and pepper with some classic Terrance Dicks dialogue. It is the most quotable Doctor Who story ever made, one of the most iconic and one of the most important.

As I say, Day is up there. But for me it isn't quite as good as The Three Doctors or The Five Doctors.

[mjwilson]

Fair enough! I regard Day as one of the great Doctor Who stories, and the only multi-Doctor story that actually bothers to have a decent story.

[Replies From View]

I think Day of the Doctor is the best multi-Doctor story.  It just manages to tick every box in a way that The Five Doctors neither does nor had to do, and does more than anybody reasonable expected would be possible.

The Five Doctors is a fine pantomime romp, absolutely charming but there's no getting away from its failure to fit in all its assembled characters, the feebleness of some of the execution (oh!  Doctor I have tumbled down this molehill and must be rescued with a winch) and the disappointment that The Five Doctors really equals the functioning core of The Three Doctors plus Peter Davison and an imposter in a wig.  It's delightful, it's a nostalgic dive, I love watching it as part of an escalating celebration of the show (along with DVD extras like the Nationwide interviews and Blue Peter clips), and I do adore it.  But it's not better than Day of the Doctor.


If you haven't seen The Five Doctors with the David Tennant and co. commentary, seek it out.  It's a hidden extra on the DVD and is an absolute barrage of fondness and nostalgia.

[purlieu]

The Five Doctors is a lot of fun, but it got the issue of a lot of '80s Who in just feeling very slightly off in places.
The Day of the Doctor would probably be a candidate for my all-time top 10 Who stories, though.

[Malcy]

I'd rate all other multi-doctor episodes above DOTD. A few great scenes and moments but nowhere near as good as the rest in my opinion.

[purlieu]

Just want to double check that you're aware you're rating The Two Doctors above Day of the Doctor there.

[Malcy]

Just want to double check that you're aware you're rating The Two Doctors above Day of the Doctor there.

Absolutely.

[JamesTC]

Absolutely.

Second.