RTD back for Doctor Who

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

This is completely incidental but please enjoy this wonderful Pierce Brosnan moment from his dvd commentary for this scene if you haven't already:

https://twitter.com/JimJarmuschHair/status/1017130711973687296?s=20&t=eoUT5CfrsP3KZRbBe2oapQ

classic bronholm

[Deanjam]

Never got the massive dislike for Gatiss Who episodes. They all had a certain creepiness about them (except the Robin Hood one), which is what I like in my Who. Crimson Horror and Night Terrors were especially good.

[Mister Six]

Oh, I forgot he did Night Terrors. That one was just sort of okayish I suppose. And The Unquiet Dead is all right, but a bit straightforward compared to what followed.

I just find his stories mostly a bit naff and dull, particularly the "humour", which is usually as a sub-Cbeebies level. Like, what the fuck is up with the TomTom joke in Crimson Horror, or the bloke shaking his fist at the end of Victory of the Daleks. Matt looks like he's taking the piss out of the "everyone laughing at a joke" ending of Cold War, but I can't be entirely certain Gatiss wrote that into the script with the intention of subverting it (and even if he did, much like the TomTom joke it just seems random and unconnected to anything else occurring in the episode).

Crimson Horror was probably the best because he shelved The Doctor for much of it, and so had to approach it from an unusual angle rather than make it yet another "Doctor runs around a base under siege" romp.

[Malcy]

Night Terrors is one of several eps I have only seen once from Matt's era. Can't stand Amy & Rory so rewatching doesn't hold much appeal but I've always enjoyed Gatiss episodes and think The Crimson Horror is great.

[M-CORP]

Gatiss and Chibnall always struck me as the kind of writers who would turn up every series and reliably deliver a script on time for a simple story that does all it needs to do to satisfy viewers for one week before a big arc-heavy episode or profound statement.

Let's try and rank all the Gatiss TV eps with brief word association:
The Uniquiet Dead - nice subdued historical
The Idiot's Lantern - tonal whiplash
Victory of the Daleks - used to be obsessed with this, back in the days when Daleks just being on screen was enough to satisfy me. Now I just think it's a rushed wasted opportunity, but the biggest crime was abandoning that design rather than refining it.
Night Terrors - yeah it's ok
Cold War - rerun of Dalek but it works alright
The Crimson Horror - standout of S7?
Robot Of Sherwood - Arrrrrgh. Humour over characterisation. When S8 tried to be more deliberately humorous for one episode it rarely worked
Sleep No More - I actually like this one, nice atmosphere and makes good use of the found footage gimmick.
Empress Of Mars - found it bland at the time, then after series 11 I watched it and it was like comparing night and day.

So Gatiss' episodes aren't too bad overall. You could argue they're not classics, but they do the job of tiding you over in between less contained, larger-stake openers and finales and mid-series climaxes and so on.

This is also true of Chibnall pre-2017, particularly in series 7. Power Of Three is flawed but was for the most part a nice subdued character exploration before a big companion departure, which felt new and unusual then. And Moffat praised him for taking up the slack of Series 7 Part 1 while Moffat was tearing his hair out over Sherlock and the 50th. I liked how Chibnall's stories felt like palette cleansers in contrast to the rest of series 7 and the Moffat era. In the confines of someone else, he's passable.

But Gatiss definitely has a better passion and understanding of the show, as evidenced in how his episodes are often cited as feeling like traditional Who stories. He also writes the character of the Doctor pretty well, they get some good moments here and there. And they, y'know, don't gloss over acts of genocide or sacrifice or anything like that.

[canted_angle_again]

I'm not sure why but Gatiss episodes always remind me of the Pertwee era, which isn't a bad thing.

[Replies From View]

There's something quite charming about Gatiss' episodes, and old-fashioned in a nice way.  Perhaps they have naivety to them; not sure.

[bobloblaw]

I generally find myself liking his ideas but then they fizzle out a bit. He's not the best on structure.

Victory of the Daleks had a great opening but couldn't stick the landing. The Unquiet Dead and Crimson Horror are his best I think.

[canted_angle_again]

I get the feeling that if Gatiss has taken the reigns, he would have got a lot of shit. But at least he would have had a direction that he had formulated for Who. It would have been more macabre and horror oriented, probably more gothic (and Moffatt was pretty goth). He would be predominantly stand alones, but also with a cohesive season arch. It would still be a thousand times better than Chibnall.

[purlieu]

I like all of his ideas for his episodes, but very few of them land properly. It's quite possible that he would have been a fairly good showrunner in that regard, setting a tone and ideas for better writers to fill in. It would probably have been more Pertwee, folk-horror-ish, which would suit me down to the ground, but could have lost some viewers. He might even have got desperate and adapted Nightshade and Last of the Gaderene, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

[Replies From View]

I get the feeling that if Gatiss has taken the reigns, he would have got a lot of shit. But at least he would have had a direction that he had formulated for Who. It would have been more macabre and horror oriented, probably more gothic (and Moffatt was pretty goth). He would be predominantly stand alones, but also with a cohesive season arch. It would still be a thousand times better than Chibnall.

Yes, exactly.  And there was a time when we knew somebody would need to take over from Moffat, and I remember thinking it's going to be either Chibnall or Gatiss.  Gatiss just because he was such a great ambassador for the show, he was doing Adventure in Space and Time and therefore more than the average Who writer for the sheer love of it, and Chibnall because he'd done Torchwood, and the 'Pond Life' stuff (along with writing 2 episodes out of the 5 in series 7a) felt like training material - like "can he handle a small character arc within a Doctor Who context".

For all his flaws, you could feel the love behind Gatiss' work.  His interviews have always oozed love for the scope and history of the show as a whole, adoration for the characters, a delight in everything silly, scary and beautiful about it.  And his episodes covered a fairly decent range of genres, again with recognised flaws.  This absolutely cannot be said of Chibnall.  Chibnall has one mode:  on or off, it's always the same kind of episode and there's no love spilling out.  The vibe is that it's a chore.

Gatiss being a showrunner was never really on the table but for a while it felt like it, and when Chibnall was announced my heart sank, to be honest.  Gatiss would have brought a specifically 'grotesque' framework for the show, I think. 

[Thomas]

I always felt Gatiss' first and last contributions were his best. Unquiet Dead is a nice de facto Christmas special, a memorable reintroduction to the historical celebrity guest, with a Time War-linked ethical question at its denouement. I haven't rewatched Empress of Mars but I remember enjoying it far more than most people here. Crimson Horror, too, I'll have to revisit that (I recall that, for all its good elements, that episode was guilty of a particularly bad Doctor-gets-a-hard-on joke).

Despite how Sherlock ended up, and for all the weak moments in his Who canon, I like the spirit and atmosphere Gatiss obviously loves to nurture. I share a passion for the spooky, Hammer Horror, Peter Cushing, MR James, ladies-in-nightdresses, flickering-candlestick-on-the-stairs, hall-of-dusty-taxidermy moodboard of his mind.

And An Adventure in Space and Time was a lovely addition to the 50th year, a fantastic way to assist Moffat in engendering a celebratory mood despite everything else on his plate.

[Mister Six]

Ah yeah, an Adventure in Time and Space was lovely. Fair fucks, I think most of the stuff he's been involved in outside of Who I've enjoyed, there's just something about his episodes, and a good chunk of it is...

(I recall that, for all its good elements, that episode was guilty of a particularly bad Doctor-gets-a-hard-on joke).

...this sort of thing. That naffness I mentioned - shit, obvious, lame, broad humour. RTD and Moffat both enjoy a bit of campness and innuendo (more than a bit of campness in RTD's case, and more than a bit of innuendo in Moffat's), but at least they offer genuine wit, imagination and a sense of the bizarre-but-plausible at the same time.

Gatiss, on the other hand, imbues his Doctor Who stories with the weary vibe of a low-rent panto, and it makes me groan every time. Unquiet Dead is all right, IIRC, but from The Idiot's Lantern on, the writing (particularly with regard to the comedy and supporting characters) seemed to get broader and more stupid each time, which is a shame, because often the core ideas are great.

[Norton Canes]

Yeah Gatiss always seemed to have a real understanding of what made a good Doctor Who story but infuriatingly his own efforts always seemed to hover around the 7/10 mark, and what was more annoying, not always for the same reason. Sometimes he couldn't stick the landing, sometimes the story was good but the tone was off, sometimes it was down to production issues. Didn't he have quite an advanced outline for bringing the show back in the late 90's? Seem to remember DWM covering in it depth a few years ago, and it being a very trad approach in the vein of The Avengers - almost a pastiche of cult TV and probably not the sort of thing that would have fared well on prime-time Saturday evenings. Still, while I don't really have the time for a full re-watch of RTD's four seasons I'd quite like to watch Gatiss's nine episodes again and see if any had improved with time. In fact nine stories is pretty much a full season's worth, isn't it.

From memory (it's ages since I watched any of these) :

• The Uniquiet Dead - riding high on the crest of the show's return, can't think of much to fault this. For my money that shot of Mrs Peace walking towards the camera at the end of the pre-credits sequence is scarier than anything from The Empty Child
• The Idiot's Lantern - proof that having the right ingredients don't always result in a well-prepared meal
• Victory of the Daleks - hamstrung from the start by the story requirements
• Night Terrors - not bad but it takes ages for the action to shift to the doll's house, when really that's the story's big selling point
• Cold War - just about my favourite (the excellent David Warner is underused in a rushed storyline) but the Ice Warrior creature is poorly realised and the sets aren't great either
• The Crimson Horror - sort of okay while there's an element of mystery about it but the final reel doesn't deliver and the animatronic parasite thing looks awful
• Robot Of Sherwood - gives Capaldi a chance to show off his comedy chops at the start but again it absolutely falls apart by the denouement. That shot where the villagers use gold pates to reflect the robots' laser beams sticks in my mind as one of the show's absolute low points
• Sleep No More - probably need to re-watch this one. This idea that the monsters were actually physically made of 'sleep dust' seemed pretty risible
• Empress of Mars - Remember reading the plot teasers for this and thinking how brilliant it would be to have an alternate future where a steampunk Victorian space empire was locked in a war against the Martian hordes. Shame then it all turned out to be a bit small-scale. Plus, reptile breasts? You have some strange fantasies, Gatiss

[jamiefairlie]

Ah yeah, an Adventure in Time and Space was lovely. Fair fucks, I think most of the stuff he's been involved in outside of Who I've enjoyed, there's just something about his episodes, and a good chunk of it is...

...this sort of thing. That naffness I mentioned - shit, obvious, lame, broad humour. RTD and Moffat both enjoy a bit of campness and innuendo (more than a bit of campness in RTD's case, and more than a bit of innuendo in Moffat's), but at least they offer genuine wit, imagination and a sense of the bizarre-but-plausible at the same time.

Gatiss, on the other hand, imbues his Doctor Who stories with the weary vibe of a low-rent panto, and it makes me groan every time. Unquiet Dead is all right, IIRC, but from The Idiot's Lantern on, the writing (particularly with regard to the comedy and supporting characters) seemed to get broader and more stupid each time, which is a shame, because often the core ideas are great.

Yes. It's this knowing, wink wink feel that bothers me. The show has to take itself seriously or why should we bother to. You can have humour but it needs to arise naturally from the characters and can't be at the expense of the integrity of the in-show reality.

[Malcy]

AISAT is fantastic, I rate that & The Five Doctors Reboot more than DOTD.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

The strange thing about Gatiss' clunky deployment of comedy in Doctor Who is that quite a lot of the stuff he wrote for The League of Gentlemen - admittedly in conjunction with Jeremy Dyson - was relatively subtle and nuanced.

Yeah, they did broad, gross-out things such as the Dr Chinnery sketches, but Les McQueen and the Stump Hole Cavern guide are great examples of layered character comedy. So why do so many of his jokes in Doctor Who fall flat?

[Mister Six]

pastiche

I think this is it. A lot of his stories feel to a greater or lesser extent like pastiches of television rather than television itself. Like you're watching someone's mildly ironic recreation of nu-Who rather than just sitting down to a rollicking good episode. The comedy so often feels like the worst kind of CBBC fluff - hoary old revivals of tacky old gags, safe in the knowledge that the core audience has never seen them before, and broad, cartoonish gestures all round. The characters act like characters rather than people. Robot of Sherwood is probably the most egregious example, with Clara showing absolutely no fear of a king who could very easily have her executed. He won't have her killed, of course, because she's one of the main characters - but she shouldn't know that!

Moffat did a lot of meta stuff, either in the scripts themselves or as a jumping-off point for an episode (Silence in the Library's girl hiding behind the sofa while watching The Doctor on TV, or Let's Kill Hitler as an exercise in explaining exactly why you don't let the show get tangled up in Auschwitz - something Chibnall resolutely failed to learn from) but he still imbued the episodes themselves with their own diegetic emotional reality, whereas Gatiss seems slightly removed from it all, like he can't quite disengage from the fact that he's writing fiction.

Thinking about it, most of the other stuff he's done (that I'm aware of) has been some form of knowing genre pastiche (League of Gentlemen, Lucifer Box) or an alternative take on a famous text (Sherlock, Dracula). I suppose this is just what he does. And it works fine in those instances, because the postmodernism is the whole point. But those instincts don't work with Doctor Who, because you need to engage with the purity of the concept without any filters - just make an actual episode of Doctor Who, not an episode of an episode of Doctor Who, if you get what I mean.

Maybe that's why An Adventure in Time and Space was so great - there were no genre tropes to filter the story through, so Gatiss was forced to just create a lovely thing, rather than a thing in the shape of a lovely thing.

[jamiefairlie]

Perfectly put.

[superthunderstingcar]

Maybe that's why An Adventure in Time and Space was so great - there were no genre tropes to filter the story through, so Gatiss was forced to just create a lovely thing, rather than a thing in the shape of a lovely thing.

A really good summary of Gatiss's weaknesses and strengths there. I think, if RTD really does want a 'Whoniverse' of spinoffs, he could do worse than get Gatiss to work on more Adventure in Time and Space style docudramas about the show's real world history. Several periods come immediately to my mind - the strike that caused Shada to get canned, the hiatus during Colin Baker's tenure, the cancellation in 1989 maybe, and, of course, the triumphant return in 2005.

[daf]

AISAT is fantastic, I rate that & The Five Doctors Reboot more than DOTD.

Doctors Who and the Giant Reboot

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Absolutely bang-on, Mister Six.

Post-modern pastiches of things he sincerely loves are Gatiss' stock-in-trade. As you say, that's not a problem when he's writing for The League of Gentlemen or, to a lesser extent, Sherlock and Dracula, but you have to write Doctor Who as a fundamentally serious television drama - which isn't aware that it's a television drama - and let everything grow organically from there.

[purlieu]

Didn't he have quite an advanced outline for bringing the show back in the late 90's? Seem to remember DWM covering in it depth a few years ago, and it being a very trad approach in the vein of The Avengers - almost a pastiche of cult TV and probably not the sort of thing that would have fared well on prime-time Saturday evenings.

I recall it being set in an English village and the Doctor being a mysterious man running an antique shop. Would definitely have leaned into the more gothic end of the show and probably been very 'English'. It's a version of the show I'd love to see myself - we had hints of it in Moffat's era, with some of the atmosphere of series five, and Capaldi's last series with him as a bit of a mysterious university professor - but it wouldn't have been successful enough to carry on for more than two or three series. Much as I dislike the bulk of RTD's original run, I can't deny it was the perfect version of the show to capture the huge audience it got.
I think Gatiss's version was also done in collaboration with Gareth Roberts, which makes it another lucky escape.

[Thomas]

Lovely bit of creative criticism, Mister Six.

[Mister Six]

Thanks all, I was worried that I wasn't making any sense for some of that. :)

[thr0b]

Tennant and Tate have been filming again for the last couple of nights. Rachel Talalay on directing duties. Lots of UNIT vehicles. And this fella.

https://twitter.com/tor_chwood/status/1533914935033577474?s=21&t=GdypLDTpUYxEAxK0vKjldA

[BritishHobo]

Fuck, I forgot they were filming there. Me running round yesterday snapping filming locations from 2005 like a dickhead while they literally film the new series streets away.

Fair play to the dedication of fans going up there and hanging around for a night shoot. Apparently security were trying to prevent them filming, but they got some good pictures in. I like the look of

Spoiler alert

that new alien. Looks like a right hardarse.

[close]

[Replies From View]

Looks like if you flicked his underpants with your finger it would make a satisfying hollow fibreglass 'thud' sound.  Exactly as you'd expect from a good underpant.

[BritishHobo]

I hope RTD is smart enough to ensure Tennant's Doctor does that at least once during the episode.

[Norton Canes]

While saying "Oh, fibreglass! I love a bit of fibreglass!"