Doctor Who – What The Flux?

Topic

I remember when 2020 seemed a long way away!

Hope we get some news soon on exactly when this is coming.

Replies

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Has anyone claimed that Ruth is the Valeyard yet?

No, she’s clearly the Rani.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Has anyone claimed that Ruth is the Valeyard yet?

The Metacrisis Doctor seems to be the best fit for being the Valeyard.

That, or he becomes the Peter Cushing Doctor after he gets old and Rose dies.

Imagine being the poor sod who gets this for their birthday.

Jason wrote:

That, or he becomes the Peter Cushing Doctor after he gets old and Rose dies.

Oh and misses Bernard Cribbins so builds a time machine to go back and hang out when he was young! YES!

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/jo-martin-first-black-doctor-21373790

Jo Martin, who will play the second female Time Lord, is the real thing, according to Doctor Who show-runner Chris Chibnall.

Fans were astounded last night when a new Doctor arrived to compete with Jodie Whittaker’s version, even bringing her own Tardis.

Chibnall said that Martin, who becomes the first black actor in the iconic role, is not playing a fake or phoney version.

“The important thing to say is – she is definitively the Doctor,” he explained. “There’s not a sort of parallel universe going on, there’s no tricks.

“Jo Martin is the Doctor, that’s why we gave her the credit at the end which all new Doctors have the first time you see them. John Hurt got that credit.”

It is not clear where Martin’s version, whose human name in the plot is Ruth Clayton, fits into the history of the 13 Doctors.

But fans are guessing that she could possibly sit between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, because she did not recognise the sonic screwdriver but did have a police box TARDIS, which was invented by William Hartnell’s first Doctor.

I’m not really a fan of inserting a Doctor between Troughton and Pertwee. Seems like too much of a cheat. It also screws up the regeneration count unless they’re going to backtrack and say that the Metacrisis Doctor wasn’t an actual regeneration. And, besides, Moffatt already pulled that trick with the War Doctor. They could sort of get away with it because of the gap between series and the unresolved Eighth Doctor of the tv movie.

Putting Ruth between Troughton and Pertwee would explain a few things, like the old Tardis interior, the lack of familiarity with the sonic screwdriver, and the Police Box Tardis. But I’d rather they not go there.

So it looks like we’re down to three options:

1. A Doctor between Troughton and Pertwee.

2. A Doctor before Hartnell. Possibly based off of “The Other” and the Cartmel Masterplan?

3. A future Doctor who, for whatever reason, doesn’t remember her past.

I would think the two Doctors would have wanted to interrogate each other about past companions, past adventures, past incarnations, so they could get to the bottom of the mystery. (But that would give away too much to the audience.)

 

Or it’s a parallel universe version and Chibnall is lying.

Jason wrote:

I’m not really a fan of inserting a Doctor between Troughton and Pertwee. Seems like too much of a cheat. It also screws up the regeneration count unless they’re going to backtrack and say that the Metacrisis Doctor wasn’t an actual regeneration. And, besides, Moffatt already pulled that trick with the War Doctor. They could sort of get away with it because of the gap between series and the unresolved Eighth Doctor of the tv movie

you don’t think this is the perfect gap for a doctor working in secret for the timelords but also trying to go on the run and hide?

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Season_6B

Jason wrote:

2. A Doctor before Hartnell.

Flaws in this hypothesis: Clara “helped” Hartnell steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey, but why if the Doctor already had the TARDIS and had been adventuring around the universe for an entire extra regeneration?

Dave wrote:

Imagine being the poor sod who gets this for their birthday.

Coming to a bargain bin near you.

If this had been written by anyone other than Chibnall, I’d point to the fact that the new Doctor’s dialogue is pretty much identical in style to Whittaker’s as being significant, but Chibnall writes all the Doctors like that.

If it is the series 6b Doctor, the question that springs to mind for me is “why?”. I mean, why now. For a show that was so determined to be new and fresh last series (to, despite my grumblings, general success) why now go dig up a random bit of 50 year old continuity to do a half-arsed redux of the War Doctor when it’s not even an anniversary year? That’s a hell of a change in gears.

(also, the 2nd Doctor had a sonic screwdriver, from Fury From The Deep onwards. It’s used significantly in The War Games).

 

Martin Smith wrote:

(also, the 2nd Doctor had a sonic screwdriver, from Fury From The Deep onwards. It’s used significantly in The War Games).

Did it do much more than undo screws and open locks?

The bio scanner / tri-corder that the 13th doctor has seems rather far removed from a screwdriver. it doesn’t even make the noise!

 

DavidM wrote:

Jason wrote:

2. A Doctor before Hartnell.

Flaws in this hypothesis: Clara “helped” Hartnell steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey, but why if the Doctor already had the TARDIS and had been adventuring around the universe for an entire extra regeneration?

It’s a bit more complicated than that.

In the last couple of Sylvester McCoy seasons the producers were toying with the idea of making the Doctor more mysterious, and devised a backstory for the character.

In a nutshell, Time Lord society was created by Rassilon, Omega, and a mysterious third player known only as “The Other.” It was to be hinted, if not revealed, that The Doctor might be a reincarnation of The Other. At one point, Susan was actually to have been the granddaughter of The Other and not The Doctor.  I think the idea at the time was that The Other died and fell into the looms that the Time Lords used to grow new Time Lords (who were sterile and unable to reproduce and replenish the old fashioned way), and his essence was put into the loom growing the Time Lord who would become The Doctor.

In “The Brain of Morbius,” it was strongly implied that there were incarnations of The Doctor before William Hartnell, though that plot point was ignored when they introduced the “twelve regenerations” limit a couple of years later.

 

It has often been speculated that the faces Morbius sees after William Hartnell are actually incarnations of The Other. The dialog makes it pretty clear that Morbius is pushing deep into The Doctor’s past, and the faces shown are those of pre-Hartnell Doctors and not Morbius.

Dan wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

(also, the 2nd Doctor had a sonic screwdriver, from Fury From The Deep onwards. It’s used significantly in The War Games).

Did it do much more than undo screws and open locks?

The bio scanner / tri-corder that the 13th doctor has seems rather far removed from a screwdriver. it doesn’t even make the noise!

 

It undid a bolt on a Luger. It didn’t become a magic wand for a while after.

M-O-O-N spells the Judoon flew over the moon by the lagoon and the TARDIS ran away with the Ruth-spoon.

Sounds like the ravings of a loon.

 

There is no spoon.

Anonymous wrote:

There is no spoon.

True, but there are five lights.

Will Six lights do?

Dave wrote:

The whole episode felt like it was full of people looking out of a window saying “ooh, there’s some really nasty stuff happening outside”.

Ah. Teichoscopia. Well, there was a room for it in theatre plays when there wasn’t a lot you could actually show.

Christian wrote:

Ah. Teichoscopia

Is that the planet where the Cybermen come from?

(More seriously, thanks Christian – I learned something new today.)

Just read some speculation that all the Captain Jack stuff from the last episode (learning the Doctor is a woman but not meeting her) is laying the ground for him returning later in the series and meeting the Ruth Doctor but assuming it’s our Doctor. That could be fun.

That would be great.

I thought that one was fine. The environmental aspects were much better handled here than earlier in the series, the globe-spanning aspects worked and the dramatic moments landed for me. It also made use of the larger TARDIS team quite well.

Horribly effective makeup/effects for the alien disease too.

Also, we were shouting at the screen for her to rescue him with the TARDIS at the end so we were pleasantly surprised when she did.

Yeah, that one was pretty good.  I think it worked well for the Doctor to be sending Ryan, Yaz and Graham off to check other stuff out, and they they actually seem to have learned a bit about alien technology in their time with her. Fun episode with good performances from the guest cast.

But… did they lift that establishing shot of Hong Kong from Ghost in the Shell? With the plane flying over the buildings?

It was a bit Ghost In The Shell I guess, although I’ve seen that same sort of composition used in a lot of different places as a classic image of Hong Kong.

Dave wrote:

It was a bit Ghost In The Shell I guess, although I’ve seen that same sort of composition used in a lot of different places as a classic image of Hong Kong.

Yeah it’s a little unavoidable. Having been to HK many times that’s the view from the park next to the main ferry terminal that crosses to the island. It’s the clearest view of the skyline and the best place to take it. I have a lot of very similar (but a lot less professional) pics in my camera. The view to the left is inaccessible as it’s a working dockyard and to the right is in the sea.

Saying that since they clearly didn’t go to Hong Kong for 2 minutes of the show the stock pick they used could have had the plane in there with inspiration from GITS.

To be clear, I mean the shot right at the start of this video:

The shot in Doctor Who is a bit tighter and the plane is moving faster, but it’s the camera pointed straight up, plane moving through the frame element I’m talking about.

It’s entirely possible that someone, probably many people in fact, on the show are fans of anime, but that shot in the anime is inspired by real views of planes over Hong Kong.

Although I gather it’s a slightly less common sight in recent years since the new airport opened.

That’s irrelevant if you’re a time traveller.

BBC Rejected Joe Hill, Saying No American Has Written Doctor Who – And If One Did, It Wouldn’t Be Him

HILL: “So…I’m a huge Doctor Who geek. Watching Doctor Who…watching the David Tennant Doctor Who with my boys was a really happy part of their childhood, and of me being a dad. And I had some ideas for Doctor Who, and I really wanted to write for that show. And my screen agent got me a chance to pitch on it. So, i spent a month and a half working on three pitches, and man, I have never imagined harder in my whole life. I mean, I just worked so hard on these things. And by chance, I actually wound up spending a weekend with Neil Gaiman. We were in the same place at the same time, and hanging out a lot, and he actually edited my pitches. He actually went through the pitches and was like, ‘Yes do this. Don’t do that. This is a good idea. Hate this idea.’ You know? And I’m like, you couldn’t ask for a better editor!”

GOLDEN: “Of course!”

HILL: “And so I, you know, with trepidation and my heart in my mouth, I sent in my pitches, and a couple weeks passed, and I got…the email I got back said, ‘We have never let an American write Doctor Who, and if we were going to, we wouldn’t start with you.”

I will listen to that podcast;
http://thehorrorshowbk.projectentertainment.libsynpro.com/joe-hill-and-christopher-golden-the-horror-show-with-brian-keene-ep-250
Honestly, I hope he’s exagerating, because if someone said that then they’re not a professional.

paul f wrote:

‘We have never let an American write Doctor Who, and if we were going to, we wouldn’t start with you.”

Maybe they could start letting some Americans write it and stop certain Brits from doing so while they’re at it.

SteveUK wrote:

Honestly, I hope he’s exagerating, because if someone said that then they’re not a professional.

I’d suspect it’s a very loose paraphrasing of the impression he got.

The rudeness of the response sounds quite unlikely, if it is true that person should be reprimanded.

I wonder if this is a case of separated by a common language – or Joe has a book out and needs to generate some press.

It seems so unlikely that this would be the response.

The stereotypical misunderstanding would be;

HILL: Hey BBC! Here’s my pitches for some Dr Who episodes! What do you think?

BBC: Thank you Mr. Hill. These are very interesting pitches. We’ll bear them in mind for a future season.

HILL (to friends): They’ll be calling my agent with a contract soon.

BBC (to trainee): File these please.

TRAINEE (who is British): Certainly. (then puts them in the bin)

Hill Script Blues?

Dan wrote:

I wonder if this is a case of separated by a common language – or Joe has a book out and needs to generate some press.

It seems so unlikely that this would be the response.

His book came out almost half a year ago, he’s not going to try to stir up controversy to promote it now. He’s also very experienced in the world of pitching and getting turned down so I doubt it was as simple as a misunderstanding. They probably said what he claimed, just not in as harsh a manner.

I enjoyed “Praxeus” more than I thought I would. Good use of the multiple companions. Nice change-up of not having a monster of latex or ropy CGI.

Did it remind anyone else of Global Frequency? I got a strong Warren Ellis vibe off of this.

I can see that actually, yes.

I enjoyed the episode quite a lot, liked the twist with the researcher being in on it. The microplastics idea was quite clever and nowhere near as heavy-handed as the previous environmental message.

If I have to be critical though, Ryan really is a bit of a non-entity as a companion. I’ve always liked Graham, the idea of him being a widower and partly doing this to distract from his grief. Walsh also has a lot of inherent charm and as a comedian can deliver the lines well. Yas was well written this time with her rather wild abandon to explore in a parallel with the way the vlogger was.

Once his plotline of last series of accepting Graham is done though there seems little point in Ryan other than hanging around acting a bit dense.

 

Still, good that his dyspraxia seems to have cleared up this series.

Dave wrote:

Still, good that his dyspraxia seems to have cleared up this series.

Appreciate you’re playing here with the quip but, on a serious note, it’s kind of shame they haven’t been able to build on what that first ep did in this respect.

That said, it’s difficult to write for – it doesn’t necessarily stop you doing things, but it can make it a damn sight harder but probably won’t manifest in a consistent or coherent fashion.  The first ep kind of nailed how it operates to a degree that not much was left to do.

Yeah, I’m obviously not taking the piss about the condition but the inconsistency of the writing. It was brought up multiple times in the first series but (unless I missed something) has been dropped entirely and utterly ignored this series.

Yeah, it’s a shame as, quite seriously, it could end up giving that impression.  That dyspraxia can just ‘clear up’, which isn’t the case.

Even so, I’ll still take the win of that first series.  A programme with the profile of Doctor Who mentioning dyspraxia is a big deal.

Dave wrote:

It was brought up multiple times in the first series but (unless I missed something) has been dropped entirely and utterly ignored this series.

I remember there was a brief inference towards it when he had to jump between train carriages in the Tesla episode. More a reminder they hadn’t forgotten than anything though.

I wouldn’t miss Ryan if he was dropped, but he did get the best line of the episode this week:

(In answer to “Do you work out?”) “I do a lot of running.”

This was another good episode, but I have the same complaint as I have for all the last few: too much, too rushed. This season’s stories would all have benefitted from being two-parters. The opening story had so much room to vary the pace and develop the characters without feeling like it was dragged out. Since then, it’s all been like the punk rock Doctor Who: forget the dynamics, just speed through everything before you lose the kids’ attention.

garjones wrote:

More a reminder they hadn’t forgotten than anything though.

That’s like saying that a character is blind while showing him reading a newspaper.

garjones wrote:

Ryan really is a bit of a non-entity as a companion

Has anyone else noticed how Ryan gets paired up with the pretty young lady every episode, at least at the beginning. In last ep, Yaz ended up teaming with her at the end.

Did it remind anyone else of Global Frequency? I got a strong Warren Ellis vibe off of this.

You genius! I agree.

Also, can we get Warren Ellis to write an episode of Doctor Who?

Hey, remember when Grant Morrison wanted to write one?

KandorLives wrote:

Hey, remember when Grant Morrison wanted to write one?

Would it involve the Doctor learning she was a charatcer in a television series?

KandorLives wrote:

Hey, remember when Grant Morrison wanted to write one?

Would it involve the Doctor learning she was a charatcer in a television series?

KandorLives wrote:

Hey, remember when Grant Morrison wanted to write one?

Would it involve the Doctor learning she was a charatcer in a television series?

That might look like an accidental double post, but the second post is actually a meta-commentary on the first post

 

 

What about the third post then?

It’s a sequel to Evangelion

Grant Morrison has already written Doctor Who in the comics, if you want to see what a Morrison-written Doctor looks like.

Be serious, Dave; no one reads comics anymore!!

njerry wrote:

Be serious, Dave; no one reads comics anymore!!

I’m reading you right now, Jerry!

Dave wrote:

Grant Morrison has already written Doctor Who in the comics, if you want to see what a Morrison-written Doctor looks like.

I seem to recall it was a bit meh.

I’d be far more interested in a Brian K Vaughan Doctor Who

Dan wrote:

I seem to recall it was a bit meh.

I think I might have read them a while back. It was the Sixth Doctor and that talking penguin companion, wasn’t it?

 

 

He did three stories in total, The World Shapers and Changes with the Sixth Doctor and Culture Shock with the Seventh.

IDW reprinted them a while back.

That last episode needed a post credits scene where they all look around and one of them asks “Wait, why did she drop us off in Madagascar?”

Well that was a load of old guff I thought. I can see what some of the ideas were aiming at, but as a whole it was pretty incoherent.

I thought it was proper scary.

I was distracted by the fact that I own the polo shirts Ryan and his mate were wearing.

I was about to head to bed but yous have me intrigued to see the scary old guff polos.

Finger-Man.

They like to see you struggle.

Most of them look like they’d rather be anywhere else than timey-wiming. Next week’s should be fun.

So, one of the weird pillar things in the tardis looks like a penis…

When you see it it won’t be unseen.

So, either the Doctor knows that Graham’s worst fear is going to come true and she doesn’t want to give false hope to her friend, or she’s just being a dick. Can’t think of any other way to explain their scene at the end of the episode.

It was an unusually cold scene for this Doctor (maybe any of them), wasn’t it. There’s social awkwardness and then there’s being an arsehole.

I’ve heard worse.

No colder than leaving 2 eternals condemned to infinite torture.

Anonymous wrote:

So, one of the weird pillar things in the tardis looks like a penis…

When you see it it won’t be unseen.

I feel the need to confess it’s the first thing I noticed.

And it was moving up and down! What is this! A Disney cartoon?

What happened in the end? I fell asleep after the imm9rtals came to earth

In the end there was a backfire of mutant fingers and Zod One and Zod Two were dropkicked into eternal madness and there was some super awkward it’s good to talk that will make everyone feel worser and want to stick their actual fingers in their ears and I think the writers are in dire need of a cuddle.

saga wrote:

So, either the Doctor knows that Graham’s worst fear is going to come true and she doesn’t want to give false hope to her friend, or she’s just being a dick. Can’t think of any other way to explain their scene at the end of the episode.

Intentionally or unintentionally, Chibnall seems to be introducing the “Reed Richards Problem” into Doctor Who.

Earlier this season, the Doctor scolded her companions (and the audience) about anthropogenic climate change when she could easily gift the human race the technology to create free energy.

And now, it is implied that the Doctor is unwilling to cure Graham should the need arise.

I would really rather they not “go there.” It starts to break down the fantasy aspects and suspension of disbelief that the series needs.

In some rather surprising news Michael Palin is in an upcoming Torchwood release for Big Finish.

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/sir-michael-palin-joins-torchwood

Andrew Ellard’s done tweet notes for last weekend’s episode, as usual, but included this extra bit from an anonymous dyspraxia sufferer about the show’s use of the condition with Ryan, which I thought was interesting.

What I quite like about that quote you’ve posted Martin is it recognises the complexity of this. And I agree some way of indicating that variance would be very welcome.  I’m just not sure how to accomplish it in dramatic or narrative terms.

You can put two dyspraxics next to each other and the individual effect for each will likely vary.  I can tell you that for myself? Yes, playing FIFA would be easier than riding a bike!  On the other hand, I have asked colleagues to give me a hand opening something and they’ve obliged, even though, were they inclined to, they could have made fun that I couldn’t open it.

Those medical caps are a pain in the arse to open.

And I’ve walked into a good few cabinets in the office – my colleagues may not know why and I’m working on a way to educate them on that – but they certainly know I don’t have 360-degree spatial awareness.

I do wonder about the messages dyspraxics get told by others.  For instance, for a long time I believed I wasn’t good with people because that’s what I got told because I hadn’t picked up some social subtlety or read a situation right.  Yet, in each example neither was there any indication of how I could have picked up on it, the assumption is you’re supposed to just know, just pick up this knowledge out of the air.  I was at a dyslexia presentation last year and one of the points made was that there is no link between dyslexia, dyspraxia and intelligence – it doesn’t impact that, it does impact on execution and use of.  One way I’ve come to think is a means of rendering a complex area more understandable is that the exception is the reason.  People who know how I work would see it as a puzzling inconsistency – that I’m this good at A, B, C yet this anomaly stands out, how?  Which is the answer – the anomaly is the dyspraxia, is the difficulty, is that one area where this is more visibly active whereas on the others I’ve defanged and misdirected it away.

Which gets me to the last bit and is an ongoing constructive challenge from a colleague: Why should I have to misdirect anyway?  In response to that I’ve been more open than I have been on the disability front than I was before.  Some of it is really obvious stuff like:

• No, we’re not having that conversation with you being behind a computer screen, I need to see you. 
• No, conversation at distance isn’t going to work.

Before I would have likely seen doing either as being too aggressive, but I’m not presenting it that way either – it’s more: I need this and you know enough as to why I do.  I’m quite aware this is probably far from the norm.

Ben wrote:

I’m just not sure how to accomplish it in dramatic or narrative terms.

The more I learn about dyspraxia, the more it seems that, as well-intentioned an idea as it is, even trying to depict it properly with one of the main characters on a high energy action-adventure sci-fi show is a bit of a folly. It’s an invisible disability in many ways, so you can’t really just establish it and leave it to carry on with itself like you could someone with a prosthetic limb or blindness. To avoid the current situation, where it seems like the writer’s forgotten about it most of the time, you’d have to mention it frequently, even if you’re not going out of the way to address it in the plotting of the story, at which point it’d become the dominant point of the character, which isn’t good for anyone, really, as it’d edge out anything else about them. For a one-off guest character, you could get away with that, I think, but there’s a difficult balance they don’t seem to be achieving with Ryan.

Or maybe they should have cast someone with dyspraxia?

Martin Smith wrote:

The more I learn about dyspraxia, the more it seems that, as well-intentioned an idea as it is, even trying to depict it properly with one of the main characters on a high energy action-adventure sci-fi show is a bit of a folly. It’s an invisible disability in many ways, so you can’t really just establish it and leave it to carry on with itself like you could someone with a prosthetic limb or blindness.

This is a tricky one.  Is it better to mention it, albeit with an imperfect portrait and the risk of some viewers thinking it to be the portrait of dyspraxia when it is a portrait only?  For myself, while I can see the flaws others have objected to, I still see value in having that mention.  It still gets the door open as it were for better, improved portrayals in the future.

Martin Smith wrote:

Or maybe they should have cast someone with dyspraxia?

It could be a solution, if combined with a script to fit to how it impacts on the individual casted.  Still runs the representational danger of viewers drawing too big a conclusion as to what dyspraxia is and isn’t.

There’s a whole lot of work to be done on invisible disability, especially after the toxic political rhetoric of the last decade or two from politicians that should have known better.  Some of those having been rebuked for their abuse of statistics by the head of the UK Statistics Authority no less.

Very enjoyable this week, I thought. Good and scary in places (my kids had to look away from the screen during some moments) and I liked the way the Cyberman was tied to Frankenstein. Plus it makes for good setup for the two-part series finale.

I also thought Whittaker was better than usual this week, possibly because the material gave her more to work with. It feels like the outburst at the end of the episode about the team has been a while coming.

Best of the season so far, I think. I liked everything about it. Perfect balance of humour and scares, a good puzzle (that didn’t rely on meaningless technobabble for a solution), and some good speeches from the Doctor. And even made the women the strongest characters without making it into a heavy-handed “message” for the audience, it just happened as a natural part of the plot and characters.

I’m not even going to make my usual complaint that it was too rushed, because the pacing felt fine and they didn’t have to skimp on character development due to lack of time for a change (though I’m not sure how much I filled in character development myself from historical knowledge).

I did very much enjoy the episode but again the Doctor’s rationale at the end seemed off. Allowing Percy to die would have changed history, sure, but going from there to “Ryan is never born” was a stretch. If Ryan is never born, they’re never at the house that night to even have the debate in the first place. And showing Percy how and when he really will die, as well as exposing all of them to alien life and future tech, surely falls into the category of changing history anyway. If she had agreed to give into the Cyberman’s demands to save the baby that would have been quite different. Or she tries to hide the Cyberium elsewhere but the Cyberman finds it and runs, so she has to then give chase.

Also not at all clear how the skeleton hands played into this. Was that the real ghosts too?

Ah, well, sets things up for an exciting conclusion in any case.

I thought the skeleton hands were part of the perception filter aspects of the haunted house. But then I thought that about the ghosts too.

I thought the ghosts were there to bring Graham his supper.

That was a fun episode, aided by the fact Sunday was stormday so I had a dark and stormy night in stereo.

 

This article in The Guardian sums up something I’ve been saying for a long time about Doctor Who.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/19/the-diehards-of-doom-why-doctor-who-is-the-show-fans-love-to-hate

In a nice way too that it’s maybe a consequence of how malleable the format is. The lack of house style being one of the things that has always attracted me, despite it always missing the mark on some episodes.

If Doctor Who seems like a show that has been disappointing its devotees for 56 years and counting, perhaps that is to be expected. After all, no other TV series in history has shown such a wilful disregard for anything approaching a house style, happily pressing the re-set button every week and leaping between planets and time zones, comedy and tragedy, psychodrama and space opera.

 

The “show fans love to hate” could also apply to Star Trek and Star Wars.

The simple fact behind this is that all three franchises have hit such high highs that it’s not possible to keep momentum going and fans are going to be disappointed and frustrated that they don’t constantly deliver things like “Blink” or “Empire Strikes Back” or “Wrath of Khan.”

And you also start hitting roadblocks with a lot of fans because the universes these franchises have built is so immersive and open-ended that the stories that do get made are bound to disappoint a sizeable chunk of the fanbase.

[Dan]

The one thing I want  from Doctor who is to be surprised and delighted, and hopefully be told a good story on the way.

This is why I dislike continuity porn and 9/10s of big finish. And why I continue to watch the show.

To watch how the TARDIS arrival can distort a genre, to watch it do something out of character, to watch it be fabulous.

…and why I get disappointed when it churns out something turgid.

Stories like Deep breath, Dalek, Remembrance, Ghostlight, Spearhead, Silence in the Library, Midnight, Heaven Sent, Carnival of Monsters, Horror of Fang Rock, The Pirate Planet…. even Dinosaurs on a spaceship

Are worth waiting for…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Dan.

Jason wrote:

The “show fans love to hate” could also apply to Star Trek and Star Wars.

Maybe but I think, like the author, as someone who’s watched the show since the later Tom Baker episodes there has essentially been a constant level of complaint which often later gets revised.

Looking closely since 2005 we’ve had both Davies and Moffat often described as ruining the show and then nostalgia for them appears pretty soon afterwards.

I think with Star Trek you get more unanimity and consistency with stuff like DS9=good, Enterprise=bad.

It probably is due to the nature of the show that each episode can be so different and I think as we do in many aspects of life as time moves on we tend to forget the duff ones and not revisit them. They don’t remember the rubbish pirates one but remember Heaven Sent as representative.

A Star Trek series tends to keep a team and keep a tone and even if fan reaction is variable to different offerings I don’t think it exists with the same mumble behind it of ‘not being as good as it used to be’ for 40 years.

I actually think that article misses the point a little bit by conflating the variation in story type, style, setting etc. with the variation in quality that has been just as much a feature of the show over the years.

Yes, it’s easy to point to over-the-top reactions from fans who are negative about every episode, and I do find it a drag that even the fairly decent episodes of this series have received a fiercely negative reaction from some corners.

But it would be equally silly and unreasonable to say that every episode of Doctor Who is great – we all know that it’s had some stinkers in amongst the gold. With that in mind, some of the complaints about low points and bad episodes are actually going to be justified rather than just overblown rants.

(That kind of nuance doesn’t make for a nice quick glib newspaper article though.)

I also think a big part of the problem these days is the amplification of the extreme views of a relatively small part of the fanbase through social media and the news cycle, which has been a problem for other genre franchises too.

From what I can gather, the extreme complaints about Doctor Who listed in that article don’t really reflect the mainstream consensus on the show (whether in the 1970s or 2020s) – so the article starts from a bit of a false premise in the first place.

If it’s just a loud minority of constantly-whining fans, why bother worrying about what they think?

I disagree really. I don’t think the point is ever that there are the odd duff episodes, I think even the most positive fans admit to that.

I think it’s more that since I’ve been conscious enough of it there’s a constant hum that the show is in decline and being done wrongly, which then strangely gets revised as time passes. The era rather than individual episodes.

That’s not quite the same as there are always a minority of whingers, which I agree there always are for everything. There’s probably a Countryfile haters scene.

Doctor Who: it can always be worse than you think.

garjones wrote:

There’s probably a Countryfile haters scene.

Standards slipped when they changed the name from the gramatically correct “Country File” to the neologism “Countryfile”, presumably dreamed up by some marketing focus group to appeal to the ill-educated youth demographic in the new Sunday night timeslot.

Also, there are far too many presenters now. John Craven was good enough to front it by himself.

garjones wrote:

I think it’s more that since I’ve been conscious enough of it there’s a constant hum that the show is in decline and being done wrongly, which then strangely gets revised as time passes. The era rather than individual episodes.

Again though I think that’s probably not representative of the general feeling from the overall audience, it’s just a minority grumble that’s amplified disproportionately because people are more interested in reading about extreme views than moderate ones.

Like you say, in every era you can find the same complaints, so I don’t think it has any bearing on the changing style of the show or the varying quality of the stories. It’s just a fact of life for a large fandom like this one.

Doctor Who isn’t alone in this, Lorcan has pointed to examples from Star Trek and Star Wars fandom over different eras that demonstrate exactly the same dynamic, celebrating the old stuff that at the time was decried as much worse than the even older stuff.

People also have their ‘favourite doctor’ which inherently means they will have a problem with su sequent iterations.

Id think it rare for a new doctor to become a long term fans ‘favourite’.

Dave wrote:

Doctor Who isn’t alone in this, Lorcan has pointed to examples from Star Trek and Star Wars fandom over different eras that demonstrate exactly the same dynamic, celebrating the old stuff that at the time was decried as much worse than the even older stuff.

It was Jason and I already gave my reasons I don’t agree with that.

I sense we won’t get agreement on this because I think the article really encapsulated well thoughts I’ve had for a long time and to me it’s very different to every fandom has a set of moaners (which is also true).

Yeah, that’s fair enough and I don’t feel hugely strongly about it, I just feel as though the focus on a disparity between the perceived/actual quality of the show is a red herring, as I think even the happiest Doctor Who fans would admit that the quality of the show is changeable, while the Guardian article suggests that all the complaints come from an unreasonable standpoint, rather than just some of them.

(I know it became a running joke here to simply say “I like Doctor Who/Star Wars/Star Trek, really looking forward to the new series/movie” as an antidote to that complaining mindset, but really mindless positivity is just as inaccurate as mindless negativity, especially for a show as uneven as Doctor Who.)

I also think the change in quality and things that upset this small subset of fans are not really linked to the malleable concept of the show and ever-changing settings/stories, even though it’s tempting to draw that connection. It’s not like all of the most universally-loved or universally-disliked Doctor Who stories all conform to the same story types and settings, they run all across the board in both cases.

Anyway, I think it’s interesting that these long-running fandoms like DW, Star Trek and Star Wars are falling into the same patterns of reaction. It suggests to me that the issue is as much a generational/era one as anything else, with people tending to love the era that they came on board and push back against anything that doesn’t match that. A bit like the “music you listened to when you were 14” thing.

garjones wrote:

It was Jason

Sorry, should have been clearer I was talking about previous threads where the subject has come up before, not just this one.

Anonymous wrote:

People also have their ‘favourite doctor’ which inherently means they will have a problem with su sequent iterations.

Id think it rare for a new doctor to become a long term fans ‘favourite’.

I’m rare?

I knew I was special.

garjones wrote:

I think it’s interesting that these long-running fandoms like DW, Star Trek and Star Wars are falling into the same patterns of reaction.

Whereas I don’t agree they do.