Idiocy. Rose was the token trans representation, a safe bland background character less edgy than the Vlinx. Davies didn't even have the courage to put David Tennant in 13's gender neutral t-shirt, pants and jacket for five seconds for fear of triggering the TERFs. But suddenly he's bending over backwards and writing entire scripts just for the sake of including one line to "please the trans crowd?" Idiocy.
He did it to avoid mocking drag Queen culture, he said so in an interview. Yeah I turned that episode off at “you’re assuming he as a pronoun” in the middle of a crisis too.
I started watching Doctor Who in 1982, and I don't even recognize this show anymore. I don't know what it is, but it's not Doctor Who. I suffered through RTD's first era because I was like, "OK, if this is what it takes to bring it back then I'll compromise." And even then we occasionally got an episode I thought was good and seemed like it was more than just a Doctor Who episode in name only. Steven Moffat's era was all over the place but I still thought it was a huge swing upwards. I think Matt Smith's first season was probably the height of NuWho's quality. And I don't even think Jodi Whittaker's time as the Doctor was that bad. I'm actually a defender of the Fugitive Doctor storyline because I think it fixes canon issues like in the Brain of Morbius. It's sad that she got stuck with some of the worst production choices in the show's history, including a kind of daft costume, a sonic screwdriver that looked like a sex toy, the weird crystal motif, and the worst designed Console Room since the Peter Cushing films. But all that pales in comparison to RTD's return. Choices so bad that you have to wonder if he's intentionally nose diving the franchise into the ground. I've said it before, RTD is not a good writer and his production choices are all over the map. He has this strange vision of what he thinks Who should be and for the longest time people just went along with it. I still refute the "it's a fairytale" thesis. But as his vision became more and more bizarre, I think people started looking at his era's more critically and realizing "yeah, this ain't that good." I heard someone say that RTD was using his Doctor Who return as an audition for potential Marvel movies, and oh boy does it sure feel like it. But because RTD just isn't that talented, it feels like the worst Marvel knockoff you've ever seen. It's like Temu Marvel. It's embarrassing. And that's what Doctor Who has become. Not bad. It's worse than that. It's embarrassing. And I don't want to get too much into politics or social issues, but I'm pretty sure somebody at Disney got fired over this shit... Maybe not full fired, but that was it for their future with the company. Can you imagine being the executive at Disney who championed the BBC/Disney deal and then this episode comes back? That guy must have been screaming "fuckkkkk!!!" and throwing around office furniture like Christian Bale on a coke binge. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if RTD permanently damaged any future BBC/Disney co-productions. I can only imagine what Disney was thinking as every single episode they got back just kept getting worse and worse. At some point they must have sent a memo that said something like, "yeah... from now on, we need to control all areas of production for the shows we're paying for." And the truly crazy part is this was supposed to be RTD's attempt to break out to an American audience? Like, WTF was he thinking? Surely he knew in his soul that this wasn't going to play to a mass middle-American audience? But his ego just wouldn't let him correct course. No, we had to get Temu Avengers vs Drag Queens. America threw him a bunch of money and he was like, "let me double down on everything that might scare an American audience off." WTF did he think was going to happen? Maybe he just wasn't use to caring about ratings, but I think it's more likely that he was so stuck inside his own bubble that he truly thought he was doing great and no one else knew what the fuck they were talking about. I truly think his ego killed any chance of him working in the mainstream outside of the UK. Disney's probably making plans to bury him underneath Epcot if he returns to the US. I'm sure he'll do fine with small niche shows in the UK. But his chance of breaking out beyond that just went down to like 1%.
And how many of those seasons were on ABC in prime time? That's the kind of hit they were looking for. Disney wasn't exactly spending basic cable reality show money here. They spent a fortune hoping to catch a mass audience for their new hit franchise. They weren't looking for basic cable ratings. At the end of the day, RuPaul is a niche show. They have a specific targeted audience and that's enough to sustain them. You want a mass audience? Then you need to appeal to the masses. That seems like something RTD is incapable of doing. But am I bias in my opinion of him? Probably. I've hated this guy's writing since day one. I thought Mickey getting eat by a trash can was dumb and farting space aliens were embarrassingly stupid. I've never liked this guy's take on Doctor Who and it is a bit nice that everyone else seems to have grown tired of the bullshit too.
Orphan 55 and The Robot Revolution are the most egregious that come to mind, I've little doubt I could fish out others were I so masochistically inclined. As for the story focussed ones, throw a dart at a pre-2020 episode list, you'll likely as not hit one. I don't for a moment think the writers room for Logopolis started with furrowed brows over the rise in attacks in mathematicians, on the hand, I can easily visualise the staff on The Robot Revolution huddled in the corner of the room, staring in terror at a particularly objectionable tweet from I8Wimmin2010, as it faded to black on someone's phone that had been hastily cast into the opposite corner, as though someone had Daleked up Godzilla. I'm not saying don't have a theme, or something socially relevant, but make it a tale not a lecture. Additionally, lectures are less likely to drill home concepts to the public. Aesop had likely been fed up saying "slow and steady wins the race", and so came in one morning waving some vellum and venting "right ye tin-eared cunts, read this Hare and Tortoise every day for a week"
RTD's actually an excellent writer, I would just say that maybe sci-fi/fantasy shouldn't be part of oeuvre, where he's more than capable of resolving dramatic twists in a many a TV drama, the moment he has to resolve one in Dr Who it generally involves a load of magical arse-drippings. And I don't buy a Drag Queen playing a God as alienating audiences, perhaps it feeding into the view that it's become overly-woke, sure, but as an isolated example? Nah. It's no worse than bringing in Bonnie Langford as a companion, or Ken Dodd playing someone.
So's Doctor Who. Hate to tell you. Remember all those billion dollar Doctor Who theatrical features? Yeah, me neither. "Wizard of Oz" is the most broadway thing ever, and it rotated on TV as an annual tradition my whole goddamned life. And spawned goddamned "Wicked". America and Americans made that shit happen. Meanwhile, even Shawn Michaels cancelled on Trump's redneck hee-haw party. So....yeah.
Being a Brit, I wouldn't claim to - but having visited many times, from the top of Mauna Kea, to the base of the Grand Canyon, from a shanty town in the Texas panhandle to a photoshoot on Broadway, from craft ales in Denver to knocking back bourbon in the Rainbow, from a sandwich shop Joiliet to hotel food Oklahoma City, and half the IHOPs in flyover country, I'm comfortable in saying there is no One America, no Standard American. America is a disparate lot wrapped in a flag, tied in a pretty bow with ribbons of myth.
Looks like we're due an announcement according to RTD. I'm expecting a few (6?) specials to be announced covering 2027 and 2028, the new Doctor being a known "safe pair of hands", and someone wanting it on their CV but without getting tied down so they can film all six in one block, along with a regeneration sequence, so it doesn't impact their schedule much. They get a few Who tales to tell on Graham Norton when pushing their latest series/movies over the next few years, Who gets some buzz, BBC gets an actor with the clout to shut RTD down and maybe get the series back on track. Thinking Olivia Colman/Stephen Graham level, but probably not actually either of them.
Orphan 55 was middling base under siege/monster of the week story with an environment lecture tacked on at the end, but they've been doing environmental messaging since at least the Pertwee era. I distinctly remember 4 ranting at the Brigadier about the foolishness of fossil fuels. Robot Revolution does reduce its villain to an incel getting infantalized to the point of death, but it fits the pattern of the Racnoss being reduced to a spider getting flushed down the drain to the point of death and Sutekh being reduced to a dog getting dragged behind the family car to the point of death. Even the Rani gets reduced to an woman trying to have kids too late in life resorting to artificial methods and getting devoured by a giant baby. It's weirdly cruel and kind of cheap, but RTD does it to more than just incels.
One of the few videos that the audio and visual align so completely it's difficult to see one without thinking of the other. Someone did an excellent job with this one too. and I'm not a Dr. Who fan.
You're trying to counter an argument I'm not making, you can probably find me earlier in the thread pointing out that about 4 in the Loch Ness Monster, along with themes in Inferno and Green Death. It's very much the how I'm arguing has been detrimental to the show, I'm not averse to messaging so long as it's not coming across as a lecture or impacting the quality of the writing. Having the Doctor bark at someone is one thing, having the Doctor bark at you the viewer, quite another, and I don't think I'm an outlier in thinking the writing over the last few years has frequently stunk up the airwaves. In terms of writing, there's very much a difference between having a spec of "write about X" and "write about X with defined outcome Y", in many cases you'll get that outcome in 99% of the time - no one is seriously going to be suggesting Birth of a Nation II: KKK Saves the Day Again - but without the constraints. And thats where the starting off with a message vs having the message naturally getting teased out comes in. The former leans towards bad writing as imagination is constrained from the get-go, the latter gives you all kinds of latitude, and lends itself to twists, turns, and shocking resolutions. Again, I'm not defending incels, I'm attacking the writing, and you've just added other examples. If I have a bad vegan sandwich from somewhere, and complain, that's not me wanting to crack open a tin of Zyklon-B over some vegans, that's me having a bad sandwich.
Well the Christmas special isn't happening (I'm shocked I tells ya) and the BBC have put it out for 3rd party buyers. 10 years too late.
I think if I wanted to reset I'd publish a comic series (or animation or big finish or something) that wrapped up all the messy shit since Capaldi left. It would take a clever story but if you could retcon the Timeless Child AND the "gods" stuff and the god-forsaken "bi-generation" bullshit and whatever the hell it means that Billie Piper showed up....give some canon explanation why we can ignore all that shit ...and then whenever you start over do it clean without all that baggage.
Ideally, Capaldi's Doctor looks at the 1st Doctor and says "nah, fook it. I'm bloody tired. It's over."... and walked off into the sunset to die.
Just have a webisode with Black and White Guardians rebooting the whole universe and start afresh. There's just been too much bullshit spread to simply hand wave it all away
RTD leaving is bittersweet, he did bring the series back, but his return just accelerated the exodus. Hopefully whoever picks it up fishes out the next Steven Knight or something to get on the scripts.
Eh, I think it's easy enough to follow the RTD1 path and start fresh with a whole new Doctor and companion, only referencing or reintroducing stuff from the past if it's needed for a specific story. But if they really want to clean up the past, the line from the Toymaker about turning the Doctors history into a jigsaw puzzle is the key to doing it. Throw in a casual line of backstory like "I defeated the Gods themselves and forced them out of this reality, but I paid a heavy price. I remember so many different versions of my own past, I don't know which one is real anymore. Maybe they all are." or something like that. And then when they've got the money show us a flashback that's literally just Gandalf fighting the Balrog from Fellowship of the Rings, but with Billie Piper instead of Ian McKellan.
I've been screaming this at the walls... Chibnall gave us the perfect out. It's pretty much canon now that the Doctor is some "other" type being from possibly outside the universe. The Gallifreyans caught him and built their society around him. Just write it that at the end of one universe, the Doctor passes on to the next. Each new universe is similar to the old. There's an Earth, etc. The universe itself is constantly dying and being reborn in a never ending cycle. Each universe needs a Doctor to mend the cracks. At final end of this universe, the Guardians and the Doctor pass through to the new one. You could have a Christmas Special that's a goodbye to the former canon. Spend the first 5 mins of the episode having Piper and Tennant recombining into Eccleston or McGann (give the people what they want for fucks sake), let him go on one last adventure where he moves on to the new universe at the end. The Doctor's energy travels to the new universe but his body dies one last time. Thereby fulfilling River's belief that the universe would die if the Doctor ever permanently died.
No, just no. The Timeless Child stuff is part of the bullshit, the Cartmel Masterplan writ anew. Stories should avoid being about the Doctor, leave that stuff to Big Finish and the novels, that's their niche. Personally, I'd do: Scene: A chessboard stretches, width-wise, to infinity. But it is broken. Parts are rotated along all axes, squares fade in and out, pieces in disarray, some morphing, some mutated, one looks to be melting, it's matter dissolving as it drips from the board. Facing each other across it sit the Black and White Guardians. Black Guardian (making a glum face): We appear to have broken it beyond our capacity to repair. White Guardian: We have indeed. Perhaps you should be less eager to break the rules? Black Guardian: You bend them. White Guardian: Yes, and maybe I should stop being so eager to do that. We play to better understand one another, but perhaps we have both been too busy playing to win to learn. Let us call Father. Father: You have broken your toys again? I will repair the universe, but break it again, and there may be punishment. I want harmony, not eternal bickering. The chessboard dissolves and reforms, back to normal. The White Guardian pulls a small police box out of a bag. Black Guardian: Oh, not fair, you get the Doctor again, and he's such a fun piece to play with! White Guardian: You've certainly had your fun with him when we're playing. Black Guardian: I thought the changes may please you, making hm special. White Guardian: Ah, but I take pleasure from their extraordinariness coming from such a mundane source, a mere pawn refusing to know their place, to not only challenge power, but develop the wits to beat them. Now, let us begin... The screen dissolves into a junkyard, and familiar vworp, vworp can be heard as the TARDIS solidifies into view. And there we go. Rebooted, all the retconned crap hoofed into the nether.
