Doctor Who: now discussing The War Between the Land and the Sea (spoilers!)

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[Dave]

Discuss your favourite Timelord here.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Dave.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by lorcan_nagle.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by paul f.

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Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have started a podcast together – called Pondcast – where they rewatch their run of Dr Who and invite guests on to  reminisce about working on it, with the first being Steven Moffat. Incredibly, this is somehow not a joke.

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Dave, Ben

Ben wrote:

Interesting. Not the first time Big Finish have done that and they do similar for Twelve. Do have an uncanny skill for casting too.

Wasn’t it John Culshaw playing Twelve? He had it down pretty well as I recall.

Culshaw’s been doing a fair bit of BF work. He’s done some audio novels, played The Brigadier and has very recently done Twelve.

Both Eleven and Twelve in their Chronicles ranges were voiced by Jacob Dudman.

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight; it feels weird that Who is in the big Sunday night slot on BBC One.

paul f wrote:

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight

I thought that too. There was even a Guardian TV preview yesterday that indicated as much.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/06/tv-tonight-a-mega-new-doctor-who-spin-off-from-russell-t-davies

Good start to it.

Did love Kate’s line:

“I’m in the mood for a bollocking.”

I watched the first episode and thought it was alright – a lot more coherent than recent Who, with a reasonably interesting setup and a fun hook at the end of episode 1.

I am cautiously hopeful that it might not be the shitshow that Gatwa’s run ended up as.

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lorcan_nagle, Dan

Nice to see the plastic bag from American Beauty make a cameo in episode 2. I’ve always wondered what they were up to.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

I’m up to date on TWBTLATS The Sea Devils Show now – four episodes down and one to go (this Sunday).

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

It’s still not amazing top-tier TV, but it’s telling an engaging story in an entertaining way, with good performances and makeup/effects and some interesting ideas at the heart of it.

It also manages to incorporate progressive aspects (particularly when it comes to environmental stuff) without beating you over the head with it or being overly blunt.

Even Russell Tovey is likeable in it!

I wish Doctor Who had been more like this for the past couple of years.

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Ben

Yeah, I’m liking this.  It just now needs to nail the landing.

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Dave

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

He only writes episode one, which is the weakest so far – the other three episodes so far are written by Pete McTighe.

There are more details on how the writing worked here, but in essence RTD came up with an initial episode and then basically turned the idea over to McTighe to actually write the rest of the series, with RTD only contributing basic plot ideas. Maybe he should move more in this direction with Doctor Who if he sticks around as showrunner.

However RTD is returning to write the finale of this miniseries. But he’s good at finales, right?

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Uncle Retrospective

How did writing the series as a co-writer with Russell T Davies work?

Russell and I have known each other for ages, so it’s always a joy working with him. He had written episode one before he wrote any of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials. So, quite a long time ago he’d written it and it kind of sat on the shelf. And then when I had delivered my first draft of my Doctor Who episode, Lucky Day, he said, there’s something else that I’d like you to have a look at. Do you know, do you want to be involved? And I read this script and thought it was extraordinary. And of course I was involved. Absolutely. From reading page three or four, I was in!

We were filming Doctor Who at the time, so we didn’t have a lot of time to plot stuff. Russell had broad ideas about where he wanted the show to go. So for every episode, we would just sit down and snatch time here and there, an hour here, an hour there, and talk about what we think might happen. And then I’d go away and write, and then we’d come back together and, you know, move certain things around. So, for instance, some characters that I established in episode two, we would then go back into episode one and seed them there, so they’re established in there. I knew that he would be writing the finale, so I had to write episode four, leading towards certain plot points and knowing what was coming. But it was just a really lovely, close working relationship, and we just laughed a lot. It was never a drama. And yeah, it was great fun writing.

But yeah, sure, keep minimising RTD’s involvement to suit your own narrative.

All I’m saying is that RTD didn’t do the majority of the actual writing of the series, as credited – three out of four episodes broadcast so far have been by McTighe – and it has turned out better than recent RTD-scripted Doctor Who stories.

RTD is still showrunner and very much in charge of this era of Doctor Who, and is obviously still driving the ideas, but this series shows how much better things can be when he steps back and lets other writers take charge of the actual scripts.

The standout episodes of the two Gatwa seasons were also ones not written by RTD, so although I’m not trying to construct a “narrative” it also feels like there’s a definite trend.

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

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Uncle Retrospective, Dave

Ben wrote:

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

Yep, it was terrible. Felt like a different show entirely and threw away all the potential of the preceding episodes. What a shame.

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Uncle Retrospective

Humanity has destroyed 90% of a sentient species, to the point that their corpses are clogging up the Thames.

But that’s ok, let’s have some underwater frolicking. 🤷🏻

I mean, it was better than Doctor Who, but that’s a very low bar these days.

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Ben, Dave

Yeah it was just such a tonal mismatch. Very clunky and weird and left a ton of stuff up in the air and unaddressed.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben

Doctor Who: Short Trips: The Wednesday That Wasn’t
This brilliant 13th Doctor short story was also the winner of Big Finish’s annual Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity competition, and it quickly becomes very clear as to why.

What’s particularly smart is the various mix of ideas, from the high impact notion of granting war money conscience to everyone, everywhere and when counting, no matter what they do.But you don’t have to take my word for it. All you need do is gamble 40 minutes on this free story.

https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-short-trips-the-wednesday-that-wasn-t-3335

Third Doctor: The Annihilators

Listening to the interviews for this relaunch of Big Finish’s Third Doctor stories, I noticed something rather interesting. They talked of how they wanted to invoke the style of Pertwee’s first series as the Doctor, including the stucture. Thus, a seven-part story.

Thing is, I don’t know that series, there’s load of Doc Who I haven’t seen. So does that impair the story for me? No. If you know what it is drawing on then it probably gets a boost but it works just fine without it. Noticed it too on the earlier Vols 7-8 collections too.

It sees another fun team-up with Treloar’s Doctor and Culshaw’s Brigadier. Along with tapping into Who’s British nature, where alien invasions and infiltrations happen in quiet, seaside towns or experimental bases in Devon.

There’s also a clever weaving in as, depending on the order you encounter them in, either a link to or preview of the then new Second Doctor stories.

As ever with stories involving time and timelines and other temporal mechanics, go along for the ride and don’t think about it too much.

I love that first series of Pertwee stories.

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Dan

This is the cover to this year’s Doctor Who annual.

They can’t put the current Doctor on the cover because for the first time ever nobody has a clue who the current Doctor is.

What a shitshow.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Showrunner describes original ending for The War Between the Land and the Sea

RTD: “I totally changed the ending to some new tossed-off rubbish, and then gave a big scene meant for one character to a completely different character instead, in a way that didn’t make any sense any more. Isn’t it wonderful?”

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Ben, Uncle Retrospective

Lost episodes found:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g7kwq1k11o

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

Great news!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Great news!

Apparently not though if you prefer AI slop.

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

Massive pile of shit in fan of AI shock

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Dave, Martin Smith, Todd

Not like Levine to try and make it all about him.

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

Careful, he might hear us and make another charity single

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Todd, Dave, Martin Smith

Tennant’s returning to Big Finish for a 4th series, of 12 stories, plus a trio box set.

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/david-tennant-returns-as-the-tenth-doctor

The other three episodes comprise a brand-new box set (release date to be confirmed) in which the Tenth Doctor teams up with some of his other incarnations.

I wonder if one will be the 14th Doctor.

It’s not impossible for the trio box set, as that one is titled Out of Time 4. A series that sees 10 teaming up with other Doctors.

Tennant is returning to Doctor Who? Must be time to buy a new loaf of bread.

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Todd

I am getting increasingly hyped to see those “new” episodes of Dalek’s Masterplan at Easter (when even is Easter?!). I hope they haven’t screwed them up “restoring” them with AI though. The season 21 Collection blu-ray came out this weekend and that is apparently as badly afflicted as season 13, even though they said they’d “taken on feedback from the reception to 13” and adjusted it accordingly. I’m still vainly hoping it’ll be corrected before the standard edition releases (with replacement discs for everyone who bought the LE – sounds crazy I know, but they’ve just done that for season 20, which had some issue with juddering on certain players. Anyone with the LE can get replacements of pretty much every disc in the set, which are just the ones in the SE release).

The 4K restoration of the TVM came out yesterday, which I completely forgot about. The Beeb’s put the restored titles on YT and man, that ominous last line of the voice over and that version of the theme tune still gets me, like I’m 9 years old again.

And they got McGann to do the subscription beg for the end of the YT upload too.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

The Sun are reporting that they can’t find an actor to play The Doctor for the Christmas special, so might cancel it and do something starring Billie Piper next Easter instead: http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-who-christmas-scrapped-107004.htm

paul f wrote:

The Sun are reporting that they can’t find an actor to play The Doctor for the Christmas special, so might cancel it and do something starring Billie Piper next Easter instead:

The Scum lie. All the time.

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Ben, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

The 4K restoration of the TVM came out yesterday, which I completely forgot about. The Beeb’s put the restored titles on YT and man, that ominous last line of the voice over and that version of the theme tune still gets me, like I’m 9 years old again.

And they got McGann to do the subscription beg for the end of the YT upload too.

I still remember watching this when it first aired.

I will always have a special place in my heart for the Eighth Doctor.

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Martin Smith

Sounds like bullshit. We’ve always assumed the special would be a Billie Piper heavy episode so this isnt news. And I don’t see why they’d even need an actor to play the 16th yet anyway.

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Todd, Ben

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/update-doctor-who-future

Christmas special cancelled, RTD out, and the show put out to tender. Disastrous news.

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Martin Smith, Todd

Dave wrote:

Christmas special cancelled, RTD out, and the show put out to tender. Disastrous news.

Dead as a door nail. Bringing RTD back was always a terrible idea but this is just a mess.

Leave it alone for a few years and lets get that Blake’s 7 reboot going.

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Dave, Todd

What a sad, messy affair.

I’m sticking with Big Finish, they’ve the license to 2030 and it seems almost everyone wants to work with them.

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Martin Smith, Todd

Kind of feels like they just announced the special to shut people up for a while. It really does feel like we’ve seen the last of the show for a couple years at least now. And its going to be even harder to bring it back due to the ridiculous way RTD left it off…Absoulute shambles🙄.

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Martin Smith, Dave, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

Kind of feels like they just announced the special to shut people up for a while

RTD said as much: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZZqSzANqIK/

As a result, there won’t be a Christmas Special – we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it! For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor.

His attempts to spin this as a positive are… not convincing.

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Martin Smith, Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Ian Smith

Wow, crazy to see him actually admit it was all bollocks. Wonder if waiting till Tip Toes finished on Channel 4 before announcing it was part of the deal.

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Martin Smith, Dave, Todd

Ian Smith wrote:

And its going to be even harder to bring it back due to the ridiculous way RTD left it off…Absoulute shambles🙄.

They can do what they did in the DW movie that introduced the Eighth Doctor: Gun down the previous one and regenerate into the new one.

Ian Smith wrote:

Wow, crazy to see him actually admit it was all bollocks

Reddit are taking this well.

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Christian, Todd

Ian Smith wrote:

Wow, crazy to see him actually admit it was all bollocks.

He’s always been a bullshitter but crowing about this as though he’s somehow got one over on the fandom is insane stuff. I think he’s become quite unhinged, perhaps because he knows how badly he’s shat the bed.

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Todd, Martin Smith

It’s a mess in so many ways.

The three 60th specials? Those were good.

Ruby was a good addition, the eps worked until the big mess of a finale.

Cue good Xmas special then what was done with Ruby was repeated with Belinda. Its baffling.

And then there was the spin-off, four good eps and a total disaster of a conclusion.

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Todd

[Martin Smith]

Yep, I think Ian summed it up nicely with “absolute shambles”. If he’d just ended with an unfinished regeneration, it would be far less of an issue, but he had to amuse himself by throwing Billie Piper in there without seemingly even thinking about what it could possibly be. Now, not only is it someone else’s problem, but it’ll quite possibly never get resolved, especially if whoever the show gets farmed out to decides they want a completely clean break (which would be understandable).

His attempts to spin this as a positive are… not convincing.

This bit especially reads like the show’s been taken away from him against his will:

Will they keep the theme tune? Will they lose the blue box?

It’s unlikely, but I would like it if whoever takes over convinces Gatwa to come back for a bit. Give him a clearly defined shooting schedule that allows him time to do other stuff on the side (and some knee pads I guess), handwave away the Piper stuff and that regeneration and let him have another season or two to do better.

 

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by Martin Smith. Reason: tiding pasted quote

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Todd, Ben

JMS has once again expressed interest.

https://x.com/straczynski/status/2064763579207741573?s=20

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Todd

RTD2 has me hesitant to put anyone on a pedestal and JMS has been responsible for some notable stinkers himself (not just the tail end of his Spider-Man run but that Superman arc where he just walked for some reason), but yeah, I’d take him running the show. Better than the other mooted alternatives (McTighe). But he needs to bring a production company and money with him, presumably.

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Dave, Todd

I maintain if JMS was to take over a beloved UK SF classic it should be Blake’s 7 or Quatermass rather than Dr. Who.  I wouldn’t say no to him being given the reins, just there are others that suit him better.

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Ben, Dave, Todd

‘Doctor Who’ Set To Be Off Air For Years Amid A Creative Regeneration That’s Failing To Spark Early Enthusiasm Among Producers

Two insiders said it was a mutual parting of the ways after all sides realized that Doctor Who required a level of surgery that could not be masked by the sticking plaster of a festive episode. This creative surgery is expected to take years, potentially keeping the show off TV until 2028 at the earliest, sources said.

…

The BBC recently completed a tender process for long-running medical drama Casualty, during which BBC Studios retained the contract. Doctor Who is the highest-profile series yet to undergo the process, but the prospect is failing to inspire early enthusiasm.

Deadline contacted four respected UK drama producers to test their appetite for making Doctor Who. All had serious reservations about becoming a gun-for-hire.

The producers said they worried about not owning the rights to a series that would likely become a significant drain on resources and creative energy. They also harbored concerns about funding for Doctor Who after the Disney deal, while some expressed more fundamental fears about whether the Time Lord remains relevant to young audiences.

One top producer exclaimed that “you would have to be mad” to take on the show. “[It’s a] bit of a nightmare for any producer in this market with the shadow of the Disney fallout,” was the verdict of another highly-regarded producer.

This person added: “It’s hard to see another major U.S. studio replacing Disney. So the budget would be hard to get above £3M ($4M) [per episode] without significant co-pro or insane investment from the distribution arm [BBC Studios], which they will struggle to recoup on sales.”

lorcan_nagle wrote:

I maintain if JMS was to take over a beloved UK SF classic it should be Blake’s 7 or Quatermass rather than Dr. Who.  I wouldn’t say no to him being given the reins, just there are others that suit him better.

Give JMS Quatermass and put Tony Gilroy on Blake’s 7.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben, lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

some expressed more fundamental fears about whether the Time Lord remains relevant to young audiences.

I think a well-produced show would attract all generations.

I am not a huge DW fan. I never followed it regularly. I would watch it here and there. But outsider looking in, it might be for the best to let the franchise rest for a few years. BBC should take their time in finding a production partner. Find someone who is passionate about the Doctor with ideas to move the franchise forward.

https://pixelframe.design/doctor-who-font-logo-generator/

Potentially dangerous.

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Uncle Retrospective

Dave wrote:

https://pixelframe.design/doctor-who-font-logo-generator/

Potentially dangerous.

Isn’t DeForest Kelly dead, or is this a call for Karl Urban?