New Doctor Who

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Well. I'd heard rumours, but seeing them be mostly true was a surprise. Im looking forward to seeing where it's going.

[Retro Red]

Wherever it’s going, I’m here for it. Thoroughly enjoyed this season and the finale was fantastic. Sadly I think we won’t see any more Who until 2027 at the earliest and whether Disney remain on board is still to be seen, it’ll be back at some point though and I’ll impatiently wait until then.

[Fog Dude]

It'll probably be lost among the noise about how the series ended, but when Anita (the woman from the hotel, not Dobson) was looking for The Doctor near the start, they chose to play clips of three former stories from the hundreds of televised adventures the Doc's had.

Among those three was one of only two written by Neil Gaiman. Strange decision to say the least, given everything we now know about him. And also an especially bad choice not to edit a different clip in if the rumour is true that tonight's episode underwent rewrites and reshoots prior to airing, because there might not even be a next season so Gatwa understandably isn't sticking around to find out.

[DavidB6937]

I really enjoyed it. Admittedly it was wrapped up a little too easily but I'll cope with that. Some nice surprises and the emotional touches and an intriguing ending, especially considering the uncertainty of the shows future. Solid series overall.

[Jazzy G]

Yeah, it felt like they'd wrapped everything up about halfway through and the rest of it felt a bit like just trying to say their goodbyes and get everything wrapped up. The cameo towards the end was great. I'm fascinated to see where the show goes once the whole Disney debacle is over and done with. It's probably going to be late 2026 if not 2027 before we get anything else. 

[BomberPat]

It was a big daft romp, that was fun enough to cover up a myriad plot holes - RTD has never been able to write a second part of a two-parter, and if this was hastily rewritten because of changes outside of their control, I don't know how you'd tell the difference anyway. 

Spoiler-y chat:

Spoiler

I had the two biggest twists spoiled for me; the BBC put up a headline on their website saying that Ncuti Gatwa had "shockingly" regenerated, before the episode had even aired on linear TV. Fucking fuming when I saw that - it's one thing to have things spoiled by social media (and that's much harder to avoid now that most social media is all algorithms rather than just the stuff you follow), but to have a headline on the BBC website spoil a big twist ending was fucking irritating. They then had the audacity for the first line in the article to be "WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS" - no fucking shit! My partner got spoiled later on, by a news notification pop-up on her phone. Ridiculous.

Anyway, that aside...

RTD loves setting up a big threat in part one - usually with almost zero build; we were all but thrown in media res into Wish World - and then just writing it off early and coming up with a new story for part two. It's like the old Batman serials, where every one ends on a cliffhanger with Batman and Robin facing certain death, and then the very start of the next one writes them out of it in the first minute. We had a triple-header of that here, with the Rani introduced, then used to set up Omega, then Omega being a damp squib for all of a couple of minutes, to set up a reality-bending story about Poppy.

One of the things I've really enjoyed this series is that RTD has basically said fuck lore and canon, what works? I'm sure people will be fuming about the reveal that Time Lords are sterile, as they hate any introduction of a new bit of lore that wasn't written in stone forty years ago, especially after they just brought Susan back into the mix. 

I laughed out loud at them putting Belinda and Poppy in a magic cube, with the risk that they would be locked in time there for eternity, and they didn't even bother giving her a chair, let alone a book to read or any toys for the kid.

One of the only big bits I didn't have spoiled for me was Jodie Whittaker making an appearance, and while I wasn't a huge fan of some of the writing during her series, it reminded me how good she really was, just the perfect energy for the Doctor. I can't imagine why her and Ncuti Gatwa have had so much more criticism than any other Doctor!

I'll miss Ncuti Gatwa, it was very Capaldi-esque in that it felt like he left right as the series started to really be built around his strengths and feel like he was hitting his stride. One odd thing about him as the Doctor is that, presumably by design, he never had his iconic "Doctor" outfit - his Tennant suit, or Tom Baker scarf. As a result, the moment of him showing his shift from John Smith to the Doctor by putting on a skirt-suit didn't feel like the moment it would have done had he changed into an outfit that was already strongly associated with him. 

 

I felt this episode did Belinda dirty. Whatever character traits she had were completely shaved off in favour of "doting mother", which felt unearned because we as the audience haven't seen her in that role for long enough, and we know that Poppy isn't "real". But then when Poppy disappeared, she was all excited about going travelling with the Doctor, even though her entire character arc before that had been about wanting to get home, not wanting to go travelling, and despite having fixed things, she hasn't actually even been home yet. The reality "fix" then rewrote everything to be that she wanted to go home because of Poppy, but we know that wasn't her motivation beforehand. So was the point that her wanting to go home was a "glitch" from the reality that has Poppy in it, or was it just shonky writing? It's an RTD finale, so "mistake", "just winging it", or "weird by design" are all equally likely. 

I don't really have any thoughts on the Rose reveal. She was companion during one of my least favourite periods of Doctor Who, and I just don't really have any emotional connection to her as a result. As plenty of people have said, the credits reading "Introducing Billie Piper" but leaving off "as the Doctor" makes it clear this is some weird nonsense, not Billie Piper actually being the new Doctor. It's going to be some timey-wimey "reality fixing itself" stuff, presumably resulting in a Rose/David Tennant reunion, and fine, whatever. 

 

[DavidB6937]

I definitely enjoyed it on a surface level experience and refuse to think about it too much because my brain will explode.

[Onyx2]

Doctor Who on the shelf again. Probably needs a good rest. Maybe 16 years?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621ln7vx7qo

[DavidB6937]

It's really annoying because it's a show with infinite possibilities, so it shouldn't be that difficult to write a successful series.

They've just not been very good at balancing a good show with the diversity and inclusion etc that they've wanted it to be for.

There are plenty of dramas that manage to be really good while containing those sorts of messages so it is absolutely possible.

I still think there's a place for it. They just need to know what they want to be.

[Daaaaaad!]

It's bizarre to see how Russell T Davies has seemingly never had more success as a writer than just recently, with It's A Sin and Tip Toe garnering consistent praise, yet he also seemed completely incapable of making Doctor Who work a second time around.

Assessing things as someone with no real insight other than an base interest in the overall setup, it feels like he came back to the role because he was concerned the BBC were going to cancel it again, so he stepped in with the idea that he could revive it and save it. However, he's been on record as saying that it could be like the MCU or Star Wars and, in doing so, looks to me like he's completely missed the mark with where it should be. We're in an age now where things like Andor and Loki exist, sure, but there's also plenty of total crap within those previously mentioned franchises. Getting into bed with Disney themselves further opened the show up to the idea that it's just a second rate sci-fi show compared to the ones which the mouse actually owns the rights to. Then there's the writing which has been, for the most part, generally quite average.

The result has been a show which doesn't really know what it is, isn't being prioritised by the companies producing it and doesn't seem to have an audience of its own. Which is bonkers to me, frankly. I saw suggestions that Ncuti Gatwa was a bad choice to play the Doctor because he didn't want to commit to the show, and that very few actors would be interested in taking the role anyway - but surely there must be young actors who grew up watching Eccleston and Tennant who would now want to step into the role?

In short, RTD's insistence on coming in to 'save' the show seems like it may have done more harm than good. I honestly believe he thought all for the best, but after a shaky time under Chibnall before him, it might have been better to just leave it alone for a while. You can't sell a comeback if you haven't been away.