Doctor Who 2005-2017 : The RTD & Moffat Years

[JamesTC]

Okay I'll get out the way the one element I detest here. This is going to be rambling and tedious. I've no issue with Time Lords changing gender. The first time we see a Time Lord change gender and it is The Master. That is interesting. And it is wonderful casting with Michelle Gomez (she was great on Green Wing). What is the first thing The Master now as a woman does when she meets The Doctor? Snog him. Yes, I know it isn't a romantic kiss but it just feels... creepy. I think of the times I have defended Moffat in the past for a bit of leering or a bit of an off colour joke. Hate to use the word here, but it is just bad optics as much as anything and in light of some of Moffat's troublesome moments, it doesn't paint a good picture. Sorry if I'm being melodramatic or oversensitive. Probably made worse that I have mulled over it since shortly after it aired when I first saw it. A mixture of sexism and hetero normalcy (or rather the idea that asexuality can't be a thing). I still think he is a wonderful writer, one of the best.

Dark Water is a Cybermen story in the new series so it starts at a disadvantage.

Clara went too far throwing out the TARDIS keys even if The Doctor was in control the whole time but even in his more abrasive Capaldi incarnation, it is nice to see him forgive her even if he doesn't like to say it straight. Not sure about The Doctor being so brazen about breaking the laws of time, particularly since there has already been a whole episode about rescuing somebody from a car crash and it fucks everything up.

So Danny murdered some child? That's not nice. This guy showing Clara and The Doctor the dark water is a pervert. That's not nice.

It is unfortunate that I really dislike this episode as there are some ideas in here that have great potential. The idea of people still being conscious after death and begging not to be cremated is creepy even if it was basically done with the rubbish fourth series of Torchwood (arguably done better). The Cybermen being hidden by the eponymous water is a wonderful new twist to hark back to the greatest Doctor Who story ever (The Tomb of the Cybermen). The cliffhanger should have been the reveal of the Cybermen. But then that would have meant them not being included in the Next Time trailer from the previous week.

I want to be positive but I just struggle. I know I should overlook the one minor moment, but I just feel a bit down on Moffat from it. Doesn't then help that Moffat pats himself on the back with the meta line about somebody coming up with the cyberspace idea before (I bet a book, comic or audio has done it before).

Right, try to cast the negativity out of my mind for the second part.

I'm guessing there that the Dalek Invasion Of Earth speech is the 'One day, I will come back...' one, the Trial Of A Time Lord speech the 'Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt!' one...but which one are you thinking of from Survival?

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Ah, of course! Thanks.

Doesn't then help that Moffat pats himself on the back with the meta line about somebody coming up with the cyberspace idea before (I bet a book, comic or audio has done it before).

Never mind The Simpsons (which is the plot of the episode), The Flood did it!

This DWM 8th Doctor comic strip features Cybermen who initially appear as 'ghosts' a la Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday, and their plot involves a very similar water/cyberspace-type dramatic device.

[JamesTC]

Moffat knows how to win me back quickly when I'm trying to be positive. Have a silly jokey opening and change the opening titles to match it and then reference The Invasion.

Death in Heaven, despite being full of shit new series Cybermen stomping around, is an improvement. I might be clutching at straws, but I think there are just about enough to declare this as not terrible.

The Doctor accidentally becoming president is great. First Gallifrey and now Earth.

I can't help but feel I'd love this as an idea if it wasn't the Cybermen. Cyber-pollen just sounds so hacky, but the core idea of an enemy being able to resurrect the dead as their own could have worked really well with a new villain. I can't believe how graphic the Danny Cyberman is. Graphic in a good way, mind. Everything with him was the real strong point of the episode. Of course Chibnall can point out that he did this first! That is before somebody points out Attack of the Cybermen also did it first. And The Tomb of the Cybermen kind of did it too.

I don't like the Simm Master. Two of my least favourite Doctor Who stories involve him. Gomez is still being written like him so much as I like the actress, I find it hard to look past the characterisation. That being said, I loved how she brazenly murdered Osgood. And thank fuck she murdered Chris Addison.

Speaking of good speeches, I liked the "I'm not a good man, I'm an idiot" spiel. Hopefully we never get any of that self-reflection nonsense again which Doctor Who has been infested with for far too long. An unfortunate modern trend rather than anything Who specific.

Okay, I tried not to be negative and isn't terrible but it isn't good either, I'm afraid. I do hear how Missy is popular, so I'm keeping an open mind beyond this story.

Maybe it is that I only actually like one incarnation of The Master. I've been thinking about how in the Classic Series, The Master is broadly always to the same template except when near death and desperate for more life. My thinking is that Delgado is the final incarnation of The Master and then he reaches the end of his life with The Deadly Assassin/The Keeper of Traken and then takes over Tremas' body but still embodies the same incarnation and then the Gordon Tipple is meant to look like the classic Master. Essentially it means all the way through to Eric Roberts, it is still no explicit regeneration.

[Endicott]

These are great JamesTC, great fun to revisit episodes I've mostly only watched once. I've realised that when something dumb happens I mentally edit it out and forget it ever happened, for example, Gomez snogging Capaldi, which was as you say, awful. She's good though, I hope she wins you over.

I watched Claws of Axos last week for some Delgago fun, he really was the definitive one. I would have been Ok with Jacobi, I think, so the regen into Simm was a disappointment. I like Simm, but didn't like his master at all. His hyperactivity was just so wearing.

[JamesTC]

Jacobi was good in his one scene as The Master. Imagine if RTD brought him back fully as The Master for the 60th.

[purlieu]

The only Gareth Roberts TV story I really like is The Lodger, which is great. Some of his books are fantastic, though. The Plotters and his Four/Romana/K9 trilogy (particularly The Well-Mannered War) are up there with the best Missing Adventures. Shame he turned out to be so fucking horrible.

The forest episode is absolutely one of those that has a great core idea but is executed in a really bad way. I recall really enjoying the series up to the moon one and the forest one, both of which really felt like good ideas but at least a couple of drafts away from completion. The Cybermen two-parter is ok, some great creepy imagery in the first part, but also thousands of Cybermen stomping all over the world in RTD-style for the second, and of course the fucking Cyber-Brigadier. Oh the whole, the second half of the series really felt like dregs after a pretty strong opening run. I recall it not really picking up again until Heaven Sent.

I'm not a huge fan of Simm's Master, but I do appreciate that he was written as a counterpart to Tennant's hyperactive Doctor, in the way that Delgado and Pertwee were similarly matched. I enjoy Gomez's performance more as she goes on, but her and Dhawan are still largely written in the same crazy manner, and it's a shame the character has become that, when they should be as varied as the different incarnations of the Doctor.
That said, I did like Simm's Delgado impression in series 12.

[A Hat Like That]

I really liked Dark Water. There's a lot going on but the way it builds on all the little bits in previous episodes, its full of hints and demi-reveals throughout. The twist can't be 'oh, it's the cybermen', it has to be 'this character we've seen bits of all season is actually the ... '. And the way she does murder Osgood (who was in her second? appearance) and Chris Addison's character is great.

Cyber-Brig is the biggest nope of the whole thing.

[Replies From View]

Oh, I thought that was one of the best received episodes of the series?

Surely.  It stood out to me at the time, and I believe I was fairly vocal about it.

[Replies From View]

Initially Flatline felt a bit Fear Her but from the reveal that the mural was real people trapped in the walls, it picked up the threat. It isn't amazing or standout, but it is basically fine. Some good visuals with the transformations into 2D.

They manage limited Capaldi time well. Love and Monsters is so fucking shit that it taints all future Doctor-lite stories but actually the episodes I can think of off the top of my head (Blink, Turn Left, The Girl Who Waited, that episode of The Time Meddler when Hartnell was on holiday) are all rather good.

Clara runs around with a toy TARDIS for a bit. Silly but fun idea. Worthy of being done once and doesn't feel like a retread of Planet of Giants.

Must just be me misrembering.

I remember loving Flatline up to a certain point, and I can't remember what the turnaround was.  Was it a deus ex machina ending?  Or was the whole premise with the TARDIS running low on oxygen as a safety mechanism just a bit silly?

[Replies From View]

I do like the fact that they accidentally included an advert for Series 8 on the side of a bus:

I'm baffled by it.  How can you accidentally film a bus with a Doctor Who advert on it?  You either film a bus or you don't, and then you actively include it in your episode or you don't.

The producers of the episode would have known that fans would freeze-frame the footage to see what the advert was, because we have the same level of obsession as those first people to play that Red Dwarf episode backwards to find out what the speech was.  Producers of shows like Doctor Who expect this to happen and deliberately include Easter Eggs for those fans.

So it can't possibly have been a mistake.  They must have included it as an active creative decision.  And it's barmy and shit.


Rubbish episode as well, for reasons I can't even remember because I have only seen it once.  Wasn't the Missy comment at the end really confusing?

[lipsink]

I remember the school girl waving her hands about at things that she could only see as she ran and thinking it was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. What a bad episode.

[Replies From View]

I can't believe how graphic the Danny Cyberman is. Graphic in a good way, mind. Everything with him was the real strong point of the episode. Of course Chibnall can point out that he did this first!

What's the thing that Chibnall did first?

[JamesTC]

What's the thing that Chibnall did first?

[Replies From View]

Oh, that's a different use of the term graphic.

[JamesTC]

Oh, that's a different use of the term graphic.

Oh Cyberwomen wasn't graphic. Chibnall can just claim to have done the half Cybered person first. But of course Tomb and Attack both also did it too.

[Replies From View]

It's an argument I've never heard before and it doesn't make any sense.


When Chibnall did Cyberwoman, he was missing the point of Cybermen which is that men, women and everyone get absorbed into becoming the same self-stripped thing.  What Moffat did with Danny was nothing along those lines, and if Chibnall's only understanding of the latter is 'NNNNGGG BUT I DID ARMOURLESS CYBERS FIRST" then he really does have a screw loose.  What an idiot.

[JamesTC]

Silly admission regarding Cyber-brig. When it originally aired, I saw a comedy video on Twitter of somebody superimposing a moustache onto the Cyber-brig and I thought it was in the actual episode.

[H-O-W-L]

I still think they need to stop ripping off the Borg for the Cybermen and start ripping off some more newer cyberpunk tropes. The theory of Cybermen being convergent evolution in WE&T and The Doctor Falls is fucking cool and makes a lot of sense, really -- humans adapting to their environment and all. It's wot HG Wells was banging on about when he basically fired the genre into overdrive with War of the Worlds. "Wot if phones, but too much?" but done actually seriously.

Also the new series making all Cybermen a hivemind is pants bollocks -- they were never that in the original series. They even had fucking names in the Tenth Planet and throughout the supplemental stuff!

[H-O-W-L]

I don't know what they've done with that new cyber bloke in the newest series -- It's just bollocks about him being half-converted but still having all his faceless chummy robotic cyber-mates to be stompy stompy WSH WSH BOM BOM BOM BAMBA BADAM threats that all get zapped isn't it? No exploration of the idea of cybermen or anything -- just metal zombies, as always.  Give us a Kroton style character in the show! (Not the shit crystal blokes)

[purlieu]

Earthshock and World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls are the only good post-'60s TV Cybermen stories. They work best when there's a real horror in their portrayal, the horrible inhuman appearance of previously human creatures. Earthshock gets through because it's an incredibly well written action story, but it's the only worthwhile Cybermen story where they're just generic villains. Attack of the Cybermen has some redeeming features in the second part, but suffers from the continuity-overload that comes from the worst parts of the JNT era.

The big problem with the Cybus Cybermen is the way people were forced into it. Yes, there's the horror of the conversion, but once it's gone they're just drones. The idea of the originals, that they actually intentionally butchered their bodies in that way, that's far, far scarier. The Tomb of the Cybermen is effective entirely on the mouth slots sliding open and the digital sounding voice speaking. It's so utterly inimical to human expression that it's almost repulsive, and when tied to the fact that this race willingly did this to themselves, they become a far scarier prospect than the Daleks because they're incomprehensible.

Also the fact that all the new series ones are wearing The Wrong Trousers does them no favours at all. The '80s ones talking like Mr. Blobby similarly so.

[Gurke and Hare]

The Cybermen are, generally, not very good and the series could have done a lot better for a second string big bad.

[Replies From View]

Was Martha the only black character in New Who and its spin-offs to not be converted into a Cyberman?

[H-O-W-L]

Something I really disliked in WE&T was that the Cybermen were shown to be shambling zombiemen pre-conversion, whereas in Spare Parts you had the Cyber Police and people who had like, cybernetic add-ons that were not necessarily Cybermen, and could function in daily life, but were clearly losing their connection to humanity (not the same thing as "losing your humanity" like the newer Cybusmen have) and were coming to see other humans as inferior.

The thing is that the new Cybusmen are all just programming, you know? There's no actual conscious transition of "Fuck, I need to do this to survive, fuck." into "Yes, I am superior Man. I am evolutionary. I am the future." it's just YOU WILL BE UPGRADED because wot if yer ipod but in your head?

The idea of Cybermen being this sort of like, evolutionofascist group that not only thinks that it's doing the best thing possible by upgrading humans, but also seeing unaugmented humans as lesser beings that either need a leedle helpin' hand or a boot to the neck is way more chilling than zombie robots that convert you cos' it's all they know. The idea that they consciously look at you like we would a dog? That's fucking great. Scary as shit. It's why I love the Super Mutants in Fallout 1, but not in any other instalment -- they're not just horrid posthumans, they're thinking posthumans that want to make more humans like them, consciously.

I reread the Kroton stories from the DW comic (I can link in PMs if anyone wants) last night and they were truly effective because it was clear that even before he woke up from the Cyberman dream, Kroton was an individual, he just didn't give much of a shit about being one over furthering his cause.

[A Hat Like That]

Was Martha the only black character in New Who and its spin-offs to not be converted into a Cyberman?

Mickey/Rickey

[A Hat Like That]

Rickey's Nan.

[Mister Six]

It's why I love the Super Mutants in Fallout 1, but not in any other instalment -- they're not just horrid posthumans, they're thinking posthumans that want to make more humans like them, consciously.

Well, they're still doing that in Fallout 3, but Fallout 3 is shit.

I reread the Kroton stories from the DW comic (I can link in PMs if anyone wants)

Yes, please! Sending you a PM.

[JamesTC]

A nice palate cleanser is Last Christmas. Manages to have fun Christmas ideas that will appeal to a general audience whilst having a traditional Doctor Who story. A mild criticism would be that it all went a big generic at the end but I felt that it was a rather inventive and new way of telling the within a dream story.

The line that really chimed with me was "it's a long story". The story understood dreams on a deep level in a way that shows up the shallow nature of other stories set in dreams from other shows/films. Dreams have a magical way of excusing logical fallacies. When people I've known have passed away, I always without fail have a dream that they are alive. I ask them how it is possible and the excuse is always a hilariously hand-waving "the doctors were wrong".

Didn't like the twist at the end with old Clara. Waste of time in light of the fact that The Doctor already knew that Clara lied to him about Danny. He didn't need that extra motivation to go back to visit her and invite her back onto the TARDIS.

Doctor Who referencing a film franchise which stars two previous incarnations in some of the films seems odd.

[Mr Trumpet]

This seems to be where they'd planned to write Clara out, and it works well for me as an end to the character. But I guess Jenna Coleman changed her mind or something?

[purlieu]

Yes, I believe she was unsure herself so the episode was written to allow for both possibilities. Obviously we wouldn't have got Bill if Clara had left then, but at the same time, she really should have left.

[Mister Six]

The woman who wakes up alone in her flat - forget her name - would have been the season nine companion.

As it turned out, I quite liked Clara's arc. But I'd much rather have (somehow) had two seasons of Bill instead.