RTD back for Doctor Who

[Mister Six]

Kicked off a new thread to hold the series 14 talk over here.

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No man with a full head of hair could have written Power of the Doctor.

I personally think it's the kind of script that a man with flexi-hair writes when they are doing what they think someone with hair would write

It's not that having hair is better, it's that he's not happy with his inner bald self and therefore can't write scripts that feel true

Loads of men with heads of actual hair fall the other way - they become complacent and think anything they touch will transform into gold without them ouncing an inch of work, like the proverbial Samson Midas.

[grainger]

I think there was even some fan uncertainty as to whether or not he counted when the show came back in 2005 - until he appeared amongst the drawings in Human Nature.

ISTR there was uncertainty about whether any of the classic doctors were canon until they appeared in Hunan Nature. I remember the delight from fans every time something from the show's past was namechecked or hinted at in a new series episode. Initially, it wasn't clear whether the show was essentially a reboot or not (or whether that was a good or bad thing).

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Didn't series 2 stop some previous incarnations of the Doctor in there?  I can't remember how, if it did.

[grainger]

the 50th was a let down in that the time war was represented as BIG BATTLE IN SPACE.

And one, to boot, where the Dalek ships all accidentally and simultaneously shot each other because they were in a circle firing inwards, and their target dissapeared. This conveniently destroyed exactly 100% of their ships. Not as in indviduals at a firing squad scale - spaceships at a planetary scale. That bit was very cringe - the only real mis-step in a great story.

Edit: the land battle on Gallifrey was dissapointingly pedestrian too. I don't know what I would do differently, but that's why I'm not a TV writer.

[Alberon]

It always looked to me as if there was a massive release of energy from Gallifrey being locked away that destroyed all (bar one) of the Daleks.

[BritishHobo]

And one, to boot, where the Dalek ships all accidentally and simultaneously shot each other because they were in a circle firing inwards, and their target dissapeared. This conveniently destroyed exactly 100% of their ships. Not as in indviduals at a firing squad scale - spaceships at a planetary scale. That bit was very cringe - the only real mis-step in a great story.

Edit: the land battle on Gallifrey was dissapointingly pedestrian too. I don't know what I would do differently, but that's why I'm not a TV writer.

The exact same resolution as the ending to the planned Red Dwarf movie that ended up used in one of the new series finales.

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Or the ending of Blink.

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But these details never bothered me.  Maybe those Dalek ships had all of the surface of Gallifrey covered with their weaponry, no gaps at all, so when Gallifrey disappeared they were inevitably going to be hit instead.  I never imagined it as feeble little laser jets that happened to hit each one by chance, but wide things with massive coverage.

[BritishHobo]

I think it's also just another example of something Moffat is great at - selling the mechanics of plot resolution by delivering it in great dialogue that zips by with fun and emotion. He delivered some absurd plot resolutions in his time (Amy just remembers everything the cracks erased, for example) but wrote them with such talent that it didn't really matter. You were having enough fun that you bought it. As much as I love RTD, I'm not sure he was quite as good as that, and his daft resolutions always felt quite strained.

[Mister Six]

It always looked to me as if there was a massive release of energy from Gallifrey being locked away that destroyed all (bar one) of the Daleks.

Yeah, that's what happens.

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I think it's also just another example of something Moffat is great at - selling the mechanics of plot resolution by delivering it in great dialogue that zips by with fun and emotion. He delivered some absurd plot resolutions in his time (Amy just remembers everything the cracks erased, for example) but wrote them with such talent that it didn't really matter. You were having enough fun that you bought it. As much as I love RTD, I'm not sure he was quite as good as that, and his daft resolutions always felt quite strained.

Agreed.  My spine tingled as Amy realised that the 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue' referred to the TARDIS.  She remembered the Doctor back, but it was in a moment of heightened sensitivity on her wedding day, and it all connected because the Doctor had ensured it would work that way.

[Thomas]

The Day of the Doctor is so good, and so well told, that I am willing to draft some 'headcanon' in to mend those patches. What we see is a human-friendly depiction of war - lots of guns and bricks and a barn - but I'm happy to imagine that this is almost some simplified visual translation of the real Time War mess, with its unimaginable Nightmare Child et al.

The scene in the barn is perhaps a metaphor for what's really happening (a la RTD's wonderful short story about the end of the Time War), translated into a simple setting so that Clara's human brain doesn't go insane.

Likewise, the Dalek 'crossfire' might in fact be all timey-wimey and quantumy and messy compared to the simple exchange of bullets we imagine.

This light dusting of imaginative headcanon thing only works if the source is itself brilliant enough. If you're having to justify actively bad fiction with reams of 'ah but maybe's, you might as well rewrite the whole thing.

EDIT: Also, the fantastic Day of the Doctor novelisation adds a lot of colour and detail to the war.

[Mister Six]

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[Ambient Sheep]

That's not necessarily RTD, just the BBC's prompo department. I suppose he might sign off on it.

Oh I'm absolutely sure he does.

Pointedly implying that his immediate predecessor's other Doctor - his immediate predecessor's black, female Doctor - isn't a real Doctor - isn't going to achieve that.

Yes, very good point!

Don't get me wrong, I think she *should* be there, I just thought it was an interesting choice that she was... but as you point out, it's really no choice at all!

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At least put her on a shelf with a price tag on

[Midas]

Hurt and Martin aren't proper Doctors though

They were just there to aid the character development of Smith and Whittaker

[Midas]

Admit it, they were pretty one dimensional, weren't they

Go onnn

[Mister Six]

Don't get me wrong, I think she *should* be there, I just thought it was an interesting choice that she was... but as you point out, it's really no choice at all!

Yeah, RTD's been railroaded a bit. I hope some time from now we get a full disclosure, behind-the-scenes look at the whole of Who, and some idea of what RTD and Moffat were thinking as they watched Chibnall's episodes go out. Although they're probably too decent to really lay into him, if they do feel that way.

Anyway, we should probably shift over to the proper series 14 thread. (And if you wouldn't mind doing your Who thread list magic in there, @Ambient Sheep...!)

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Hurt and Martin aren't proper Doctors though

They were just there to aid the character development of Smith and Whittaker

I don't necessarily think the two are directly comparable like that.

First of all there's no character development for Whittaker's Doctor however you cut it.

Second the Hurt Doctor filled an existing gap in television Doctor Who terms, where there were no new episodes between 1996 and 2005.  Hurt's Doctor sits in that space where Eccleston looks back, and exists as a traumatic event that Doctors 9, 10 and 11 are running away from.

We see his beginning and his end moments, and we have a sense of what formed his journey.  He is a proper incarnation, albeit a gratuitously famous actor because he was going to be a mayfly (to use Moffat's description).

Martin's Doctor is a bunch of empty cameos though, yeah.  And seeing her within the multi-Doctor montages feels wrong.

[Ambient Sheep]

(And if you wouldn't mind doing your Who thread list magic in there, @Ambient Sheep...!)

Working on it but am being kept very busy.

[Mister Six]

It'll be much appreciated whenever you get the time, @Ambient Sheep, no rush at all.