New Doctor Who

[Keith Houchen]

24 minutes ago, Just Some Guy said:

I'm not saying that the intention is solely to cast diverse actors in roles to simply annoy conservative people.

It's just that in making the show more representative you have had keyboard warriors on the right banging on about what a great show it used to be but now it's gone "woke".

Oh I’m not suggesting they’re deliberately winding up people who probably never watched it anyway, I’m saying I see more laughing at people being annoyed than actual people being annoyed. 
 

Saying that though, I haven’t been round to the in-laws for a while so I haven’t seen any of Gbeebies since. 
 

24 minutes ago, Just Some Guy said:

Dr Who just for the record was critiquing fascism from it's 2nd serial.

Thanks to my aforementioned friends mentioning it, wasn’t the second incarnation the one where Patrick Troughtons Doctor had four options for his new body and one of them was a black man, thus showing a shapeshifting alien with two hearts can have black skin without changing its history. 

[Just Some Guy]

Ashamed to say that as a big Dr Who fan I've never seen The War Games but assume your friend is right.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

17 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Oh I’m not suggesting they’re deliberately winding up people who probably never watched it anyway, I’m saying I see more laughing at people being annoyed than actual people being annoyed. 

Lucky you. The Doctor Who pages had a load of people complaining about 'pandering or 'woke'. It was bad enough when they cast Whittaker, but once they moved on and added a trans character and then dared have a person of colour in the lead... yeah, dickheads came out of the woodwork.

The BBC had 114 complaints for daring to actually have a trans woman on screen.

[Keith Houchen]

28 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

The BBC had 114 complaints for daring to actually have a trans woman on screen.

That simply isn’t true. 

Spoiler

It was 144!!

 

 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Well, shit. Also, well shit.

[CharlesTuckerTheThird]

Apologies for the Thread Necromancy but there's my thoughts on Space Babies and The Devil's Chord. Spoilers, of course.

Space Babies:

 

Spoiler

+Ncuti and Millie work well together, enjoying the pairing so far!
+Interesting set design
+Interesting enough plot
+Ruby Sunday is growing on me

-Kids.
-Computer makes literal snot monster.
-Literal snot monster.
-Moving the spaceship with farts.
-Nan-E suddenly flipping to "Fuck it, it's murder time!"

All in all, a fair enough episode, but lets have less fart humour, hmm? I give it 3.1 Confused Polarities out of 5.

The Devil's Chord:

 

Spoiler

+Mention of Susan and Trotter's Lane AND a plausible reason why they couldn't go and visit either. 
+The costume design, audio equipment and cars being era-accurate, loved it.
+Ncuti finally had his "YES! This is The Doctor!" moment! His rage at not being in control of the situation against Maestro then suddenly switching back to being kind and asking the T.A.R.D.I.S for forgiveness has sold me on him.
+The guys playing The Beatles were good.
+Maestro is an interesting idea as a villain.
+The Dog Song lives in my head rent-free.

-Susan is basically confirmed as having died in The Time War, which means she had to leave David and her kids behind and they'd have had no idea what happened to her or where she went and I AM NOT CRYING YOU ARE!
-The musical number at the end went on too long and wasn't really needed.
-Mentioning diegetic songs and the cheeky wink to camera. They might as well have said "Hello people watching this on D+ and TV, this is an TV show what you are watching right now."
-Maestro was a bit over-the-top for my tastes and seemed to be trying too hard to recapture the magic of the NPH Toymaker.

An improvement on Space Babies but I'm hoping for better in the coming weeks. A 3.4 Sharon Davies' out of 5 from me.  

 

[d-d-d-dAz]

Ncuti was very good.

Everything else? Big no from me.

Jinkx Monsoon's whole act felt like the actor walking all over the Director, doing 'their' thing irrespective of how it impacted the show.

I know that's not what happened, but absolutely mad no one thought it might have been a bit much at any point.

The babies were stupid.

I'll end up liking the Moffat episode more than anything else this season. History just repeats itself.

Edited May 11 by d-d-d-dAz

[ReturnOfTheMack]

The babies... no. Just no. The talking cgi was horrible, it made me feel unpleasant.

The musical episode was better, but the final sequence felt out of place.

 

Still, it's showing promise.

[Jazzy G]

Those CGI talking baby effects were offputting. The episode was a decent idea, but those babies were a little odd. The little nod to Alien was cute.

The second epispde felt better, and had some great moments, but then that random musical number about there always being a twist at the end while they were literally dancing the twist was a little too self referential, and I wonder how much of this is Disney/Sony/Bad Wolf trying to suggest things to make the show more appealing to Americans.

Moffatt's writing next week's episode, I think. It has potential to get everything right back on track.

Ncuti is a great Doctor. I love the energy he brings, and also that he has such a wide emotional range. I mean he's not going to replace Matt Smith as my Doctor, but he's up there in my top 15. Millie is good as well. The mystery of who she is does feel a little hackneyed and overdone, but I guess it's all going to come down to when and how they pay the mystery off. I'm cautiously optimistic. I also wonder whether they'll take feedback on board and change things up for the next series as a reaction.

[DavidB6937]

Aren't they already filming the next series? Won't be able to take much feedback on board if that's the case.

[d-d-d-dAz]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

Aren't they already filming the next series? Won't be able to take much feedback on board if that's the case.

Already filmed, I think. They filmed most of it alongside this one, owing to Ncuti's schedule. RTD has already started writing the third season.

Edited May 12 by d-d-d-dAz

[Ulf ist Gut]

Echo the dislike for the space babies - it was Beyond Thunderdome bad and was so toe curling at points I had to leave the room. The musical number at the end of the second episode was just bizarre and seemed to go on forever. It was up there with that weird ending to the Rosa Parks episode where it suddenly turned into the end of a school's education programme wrapping up the the historical side, just felt completely out of place,

There were definitely bits from both episodes that were alright, the Doctor and Ruby certainly weren't at fault and there's an interesting underlying story ark there once you get all the cringe and fourth wall breaking out of the way. Hopefully the Moffat episode is a bit, I don't know if darker is the right word, but a bit less twee as at the minute the style of it all feels very jarring. I get why they went with the external partnership model but at the minute it feels like the difference between old Top Gear and The Grand Tour if you'll excuse the Clarkson comparison (I really did try to think of a better one I promise!) - it all just feels a bit exaggerated and try hard and makes it difficult to actually focus on and enjoy the story.

Of course, I'll still watch it even if it doesn't mind, out of hope and loyaly than anything else.

[Vamp]

5 hours ago, Ulf ist Gut said:

 

There were definitely bits from both episodes that were alright, the Doctor and Ruby certainly weren't at fault and there's an interesting underlying story ark there once you get all the cringe and fourth wall breaking out of the way. Hopefully the Moffat episode is a bit, I don't know if darker is the right word, but a bit less twee as at the minute the style of it all feels very jarring. I get why they went with the external partnership model but at the minute it feels like the difference between old Top Gear and The Grand Tour if you'll excuse the Clarkson comparison (I really did try to think of a better one I promise!) - it all just feels a bit exaggerated and try hard and makes it difficult to actually focus on and enjoy the story.

RTD's first series involved farting aliens and burping wheelie bins. He's also the man that wrote probably the darkest episode in Doctor Who in Waters of Mars. He's pretty much all the place in terms of tone.

Talking babies was too disconcerting for me. RTD throwing not so subtle digs at politics on both sides of the ponds felt very nostalgic.

Second episode was much better. Loved Maestro's scenery chewing performance which felt very JNT Doctor Who. The Pantheon stuff is very interesting and Ncuti sold the threat well. The Strictly cameo was fun. The twist felt like an attempt to get something trending. 

 

[Chris B]

On 5/12/2024 at 9:21 AM, Ulf ist Gut said:

there's an interesting underlying story ark there once you get all the cringe and fourth wall breaking out of the way.

I suspect the fourth-wall-breaking is a big part of the underlying story arc.

Russell T Davies is, at times, an astonishing writer. I doubt he's casually breaking the fourth wall for some quick lols. With, effectively, gods of play and music doing the rounds, it'd be a fun idea to play around with the nature of stories - in a similar way that Grant Morrison has in Animal Man and Final Crisis. 

I doubt it'll happen, but I'd love it if the big story-arc is on some level about The Doctor being attacked and turned into 'just a story', and meeting Ncuti Gatwa and others - but underestimating the power of stories and belief. The Doctor is real because we all believe. Not played for meta laughs - played with the idea that stories and icons are powerful. 

Separately, I think Space Babies did a lot in a short amount of time, especially for a new audience. It's a family show that kids can absolutely watch, that will be a bit scary at times, but will also be funny and somewhat smart, and affirming. And that kids aren't going to be killed. It's relaunching for a massive new audience, and even if the first episode isn't the best, it needs the variety, and to show fairly quickly what the show can be.

And it had got a bit bogged down between Moffat and Chibnall. If Davies can pull the whole thing back up to being something wide and full of possibility, then it's exciting. We're already seeing stuff I can't imagine another show-runner doing.

[BomberPat]

I'm not a fan of Russell T Davies, and the episodes so far I haven't really enjoyed because of a combination of the tropes he brings to the show and the Disney sheen on everything making it a feel bit unreal for my liking. Even Ncuti Gatwa, who I think is incredible, leaves me feel like I'm watching and admiring his performance more than I'm watching "The Doctor", but I'm sure that will change as the series develops.

In wrestling terms, CHIKARA used to have a reputation for these incredibly complex and long-running storylines, where something that seemed minor would in hindsight, sometimes years later, turn out to have been the first clue to a massive event, where incidental details turned out to be so much more. But in a seminar with Mike Quackenbush, he explained that - at least in part - the way you create that illusion is just by leaving enough threads open and dropping enough ideas and phrases that could be meaningful, so that later down the line you can pick up any of those threads and it looks like everything was planned out from the beginning. Doctor Who often puts me in mind of that - just saying "Bad Wolf" every episode isn't actually a connecting thread, it's a treasure hunt. And I already found myself groaning when Maestro mentioned "The One Who Waits", because that's an element of RTD's writing that I've always found quite clunky and laboured, and that it's happening alongside the recurring Nu Who trope of the Earthly companion actually being something super-important and special and unique and not what she seems rather than just the audience surrogate rings some alarm bells for me too.

Basically, for every mad new idea and risk taken, there's something that feels right out of the first years of Nu Who, and Space Babies could easily have been a dodgy David Tennant episode, with added lengthy exposition for the Disney crowd. There's nothing unusual about the majority of Doctor Who episodes being quite naff, though. When the indoor snowfall started happening, I had guessed that it was some sort of mental projection from Ruby's memory, and that the Bogeyman was going to be the same thing, but it turning out to still be a physical creature was a bit odd - the Doctor doing the old "oh no, I can't kill it, it's the last of its kind" routine doesn't ring that true when it was a manufactured monster that never had any others of its kind, but I get why they'd try and showcase that side of his character early.

I didn't think the Beatles episode was much cop either, and was only saved by Jinx Monsoon's sheer force of personality. I thought the way they showed Maestro using the power of music by having literal musical notes manifest physically was awful - the sort of thing that works in a comic book but not in live action - and "without music, the world falls into ruin and war" was the best and worst of RTD in one idea, but it really fell apart when, in building an episode about the power of music around The Beatles, they couldn't afford to actually play any Beatles music! The gag about a "twist at the end" felt like the original script called for Twist & Shout and even the massive pile of Disney money wasn't enough to pay for it, so they had to cobble something else together.

There was also a bit early on where Ruby shouted at the Doctor "you never hide!" - despite having only had one real adventure together so far, during which the Doctor repeatedly expressed that he was afraid, which reminded me of early Terry Pratchett, where there would be a line like "Rincewind had never actually seen somebody killed by magic before" five pages after he had just seen exactly that. That this was followed by another RTD (and Nu Who in general) speciality of getting out of a situation by just inventing a new power for the Doctor/Sonic Screwdriver by having it light up and cancel out all sound didn't help.

Another wrestling analogy - while Bray Wyatt was still with us, every time a female wrestler put on slightly more dark eyeshadow than usual, fans started speculating that she would be repackaged as Sister Abigail, despite it not making any sense. Likewise, whenever a new female character shows up in Doctor Who and isn't immediately explained, fans start screaming about Susan and the Rani. whether it makes any sense or not. Except in this series we have two or maybe even three mysterious women to contend with, and the Doctor has actually acknowledged the existence of Susan for what I think is the first time in Nu Who, or at least a very rare mention of her - so I'm going to actually put my neck out and suggest that we might see Susan this time after all.

 

I'm banging on even more for me, but back to showrunners. Someone said that the problem with a lot of pop culture today is that George Lucas grew up reading boys' own adventure books, watching westerns and Flash Gordon serials, graduated to reading Dune and watching Kurosawa movies as he got older, and then synthesised all of those influences together to make Star Wars, whereas today kids grow up watching Star Wars, keep watching Star Wars as they get older, and then become directors and make more Star Wars. When you have these really long-running franchises, it's inevitable that the people running them end up being the nerds who watched them their whole lives, and I think that generally ends badly.

In the case of Moffat (and RTD at his most self-indulgent first time around), he was effectively allowing decades of his fan theories and obsessing around the lore and the hows and the whys of Doctor Who, which makes for better thought experiments than it makes for TV, and can end up with some convoluted and too-smart-by-half ideas getting into what is essentially a family TV show. Chibnall then tried to do a Last Jedi, and turn the whole thing on its head, subvert expectations and ask, "well does Doctor Who have to be one thing and not another?", and that's a really valuable thing to do to a work of fiction but, again, doesn't always translate to good TV.

Where I think Davies is doing a good job this time is that he largely seems to be dispensing with all of that, and doing what a good remaster of a video game does - it doesn't capture the feeling of how it played the first time around, it captured your memory of how it played, which is always that much better, by making subtle tweaks and changes and quality of life improvements. He's effectively making a new Doctor Who designed to impress a new audience with all the stuff that those of us who have been watching for decades have got used to, and you don't do that by sticking to the same ideas and format points - if that means drag queens and song and dance numbers, so be it.