It shouldn't be IMO too hard to not get so wrapped up in canon and just tell the simple story of a madman in a box, bopping around space and time, occasionally meeting figures from Earth history, occasionally going to weird planets, and just being goofy yet brilliant and dangerous. Haven't really watched much of the last 2 Doctors. Doesn't sound like I missed much.
The issue with modern Who, as I've said repeatedly in this thread, isn't the actors. They have had top-notch talent since the reboot (despite all the gnashing of teeth from the bigots who didn't like a female or a black Doctor). The problem has been the writing and the show-runners. Capaldi, Whitaker, Gatwa are amazingly talented actors who were basically handed a bag of shit to work with.
I'll thank the bad writers for this; they made it look easy. I could do it. I'm not arrogant enough to dare imagine I could write the best Doctor Who ever, but I could sure as shit do better than "Kill The Moon".
I could write something better than "Kill The Moon" with a Ouija Board while black out drunk. Hands down the dumbest DW story ever.
KtM at least had ambition and left me feeling "if this epsiode could only be fixed like this and this and . . ." Smith's dollhouse episode was a big warmed-over pile of nothing.
I enjoyed all of Whittaker's run, no *bad* episodes (bad decisions is another kettle of fish), but the Spyfall two-parter was probably the only story I'd give a 4-star rating.
Did any of you guys watch tv in the 60s? Dr. Who was written SPECIFICALLY to not have to be tied to ‘canon’ The entire plot device of him regenerating is to allow for the show to grow and change. Canon is the antithesis of Dr. Who.
That is a fantastically dense comment... so dense light bends around it rendering it almost invisible. Regeneration (called "a renewal") was introduced to save the show because Hartnell was walking. They popped in the concept to introduce Troughton and continue a popular show. The show was NOT "written SPECIFICALLY to not have to be tied to ‘canon’" That's just stupid.
Any adult who chooses to call themselves something childish like 'coyote ugly', needs to sit down, shut up, and grow the fuck up. no one cares what you think.
It annoys the piss out of me how Chibnall went through the trouble of creating the 13th Doctor, then got bored with her almost immediately and put most of his energy into writing for Graham and Ryan and their emotional journey, then the Master and his new motivations, then the cool mysterious Fugitive Doctor, then all the Flux guest stars, then Five and Seven and their companions... It's like he resented having to write for his own creation. Which is a shame, as his 11 scripts managed to give Smith some solid moments.
They're not necessarily bad writers, when scripts go through several layers, what may start off as a great, exciting, thoughtful script, may turn out to be a load of rubbish after making it's way through the sausage machine of opinions and rewrites.
That plot device was shoehorned to allow Hartnell to leave, it was never part of the original plan. And in the 60s, few shows concerned themselves with canon, especially one targeting children. It was only as those children grew up and kept watching that consistency started to be demanded.
It's not for nothing that Troughton fought the Daleks in his first story, and that they explicitly recognized him as the Doctor.
In sound of drums they make a big deal out of how the doctor recognise the master after his regeneration, later Capaldi doesn’t recognise missy.
https://spectator.com/article/twent...gwg2upX_aem_LoawOAPH4Zk80TFfoQQLSw&edition=us A former Doctor Who writer gives his 20 keys to a better Doctor Who, which TLDR: keep it whimsical and light, avoid politics, and being consumed with lore, being meta and attempts at being hip. I tend to agree with the first point, don't know if it's as easy as the writer thinks to be apolitical, and the last parts. Part of what made me not watch much of the last two Doctors wasn't so much about the quality...what I saw wasn't significantly worse IMO than the episodes of most of 9-12 that I watched. It was more just like it felt like everything was setting up arcs and playing off of arcs that were way too intricate. I definitely prefer it if they just allowed more to just watch a fun episode where I can not worry about the real world for an hour at a time. The BBC has binned its planned Doctor Who Christmas special and put the show ‘out to tender’. This is a face-saving TV industry term for saying you’ve kicked an ailing show into the longest of grass, but don’t want to enrage its most rabid fans. Good luck with that, chaps. Essentially it translates as ‘Somebody please, please take this nightmare off our hands’. It’s like one of those Facebook ads you see for a dog that needs rehousing because it barks all night, gnaws on toddlers, and has no control of its bowels, but is a total sweetie, honestly. I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade If by some bizarre quirk of circumstance I found myself the unwilling owner of the tender, I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade. Much has been written in the past few days about what happened to poor old Doctor Who, how the thing was revived in glory and then retoxified in shame. As a former writer on Doctor Who, I was actually in the room when some of the mistakes were made. I offer the following suggestions – in a reflective but constructive spirit – for anybody barmy enough to take the thing on. (And yes, I broke many of these ‘rules’ myself, but I know better now.) 1. The character is called Dr Who, but nobody in the fiction knows that, probably not even him, so within it he’s referred to as ‘the Doctor’. But his name is Dr Who. The public know this, and the public is always right. Correcting the public on this obvious point – and billing him as ‘The Doctor’ on the end credits – makes a production look quite mad. Similarly, those who travel with Dr Who are his friends, or his assistants. Not ‘companions’, which is positively Victorian and cringe-inducing. Most popular Alexander Larman Is the Armie Hammer comeback going to happen? Blake Neff The coming storm against MAGA Francis Pike The President is winning the geopolitical battle with China 2. Doctor Who is a British show aimed squarely at a British audience. Everybody else prefers it that way. 3. This is always, primarily, a children’s show for ages five to 12. Everybody else is there on sufferance. Adults may well enjoy the innovation, playfulness and whimsy, but teenagers must never be appealed to. That way lies disaster. 4. Similarly, ‘sci-fi’ fans in general must be totally ignored. It is not for them. 5. There should be no mention of any previous Dr Who or assistant. This episode – the one people are watching right now – is what’s important. 6. Doctor Who must be fun, but there must be no breaking of the fourth wall or self-referential humour. 7. The tone of the stories should be as varied as possible. The variety should clash, each new situation should be fresh and different. 8. A story should never begin in media res. The stepping out from the Tardis and exploring and finding out is a major part of the thing. That should never feel ordinary, casual or routine. 9. Nobody should ever be revived from the dead. There must be no parallel universes or alternative realities, or time trickery. Everything counts – and the normal laws of drama, cause and effect, life and death, always apply. 10. There is no magic. Dr Who is a scientist, and the fictional world is solid and explicable in scientific terms, even if far in advance of ours. 11. As in the 1960s, it should be the case that Dr Who cannot steer the Tardis. At all. Ever. This immediately solves nearly all of a writer’s narrative problems, and raises the stakes of every story and situation. Being able to pop home or zoom about where you fancy on a whim makes the scenario mundane. 12. Stories about Dr Who himself, the Tardis and the Time Lords, the series mythos etc, and overarching narratives in general, are boring and a turn-off. Every story must be excellent in itself. 13. Dr Who is a character part, not an acting part (Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Matt Smith knew this in their souls). He is loveable and elusive and naughty and fascinating, and most of all fun. Any attempt to make him brooding and dark – or worse, maudlin – is embarrassing and adolescent, except in the tiniest, rarest doses. 14. Dr Who does not have a moral mission and he does not make plans. He is an improviser. His motivation comes from just being a kind and civilised man who helps out because he feels that … well, anybody would help out, wouldn’t they? 15. He is never funky, with-it or down wiv da kids. Equally, he is not a stuffy fossil. He is beyond either of those things, as he is beyond sex, money, religion, politics and most other things that children are not interested in. He never ever peacocks or grandstands and is never pious or self-pitying. 16. There should be one (female) assistant only, and she should always be someone the audience can identify with i.e. someone from planet Earth. The assistant’s purpose is to keep everyone’s feet on the ground. She should not be ‘special’ or significant in herself, as every kid watching needs to feel they could be the assistant. She should usually be the only person under thirty around. Children are absolutely forbidden. 17. Spectacle is nice but totally unnecessary. Invention, fun, scares, and loveable main actors are worth far more. 18. Monster concepts and designs are, however, incredibly important. This is where money should be spent. Children don’t care about pretty views or beautiful direction. The only production value they do care about is being convincingly spooked. Everything else must bow to that. A spooky tunnel is worth a hundred CGI panoramas. 19. Attempts at profundity and social commentary should be resisted as strongly as attempts at sentimentality. 20. The big emotion should be joy: the joy of adventure, excitement, frights and laughs. The viewer must feel elated. Doctor Who should be a delicious helping of trifle that anybody and everybody can enjoy. The BBC has binned its planned Doctor Who Christmas special and put the show ‘out to tender’. This is a face-saving TV industry term for saying you’ve kicked an ailing show into the longest of grass, but don’t want to enrage its most rabid fans. Good luck with that, chaps. Essentially it translates as ‘Somebody please, please take this nightmare off our hands’. It’s like one of those Facebook ads you see for a dog that needs rehousing because it barks all night, gnaws on toddlers, and has no control of its bowels, but is a total sweetie, honestly. I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade If by some bizarre quirk of circumstance I found myself the unwilling owner of the tender, I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade. Much has been written in the past few days about what happened to poor old Doctor Who, how the thing was revived in glory and then retoxified in shame. As a former writer on Doctor Who, I was actually in the room when some of the mistakes were made. I offer the following suggestions – in a reflective but constructive spirit – for anybody barmy enough to take the thing on. (And yes, I broke many of these ‘rules’ myself, but I know better now.) 1. The character is called Dr Who, but nobody in the fiction knows that, probably not even him, so within it he’s referred to as ‘the Doctor’. But his name is Dr Who. The public know this, and the public is always right. Correcting the public on this obvious point – and billing him as ‘The Doctor’ on the end credits – makes a production look quite mad. Similarly, those who travel with Dr Who are his friends, or his assistants. Not ‘companions’, which is positively Victorian and cringe-inducing. Most popular Alexander Larman Is the Armie Hammer comeback going to happen? Blake Neff The coming storm against MAGA Francis Pike The President is winning the geopolitical battle with China 2. Doctor Who is a British show aimed squarely at a British audience. Everybody else prefers it that way. 3. This is always, primarily, a children’s show for ages five to 12. Everybody else is there on sufferance. Adults may well enjoy the innovation, playfulness and whimsy, but teenagers must never be appealed to. That way lies disaster. 4. Similarly, ‘sci-fi’ fans in general must be totally ignored. It is not for them. 5. There should be no mention of any previous Dr Who or assistant. This episode – the one people are watching right now – is what’s important. 6. Doctor Who must be fun, but there must be no breaking of the fourth wall or self-referential humour. 7. The tone of the stories should be as varied as possible. The variety should clash, each new situation should be fresh and different. 8. A story should never begin in media res. The stepping out from the Tardis and exploring and finding out is a major part of the thing. That should never feel ordinary, casual or routine. 9. Nobody should ever be revived from the dead. There must be no parallel universes or alternative realities, or time trickery. Everything counts – and the normal laws of drama, cause and effect, life and death, always apply. 10. There is no magic. Dr Who is a scientist, and the fictional world is solid and explicable in scientific terms, even if far in advance of ours. 11. As in the 1960s, it should be the case that Dr Who cannot steer the Tardis. At all. Ever. This immediately solves nearly all of a writer’s narrative problems, and raises the stakes of every story and situation. Being able to pop home or zoom about where you fancy on a whim makes the scenario mundane. 12. Stories about Dr Who himself, the Tardis and the Time Lords, the series mythos etc, and overarching narratives in general, are boring and a turn-off. Every story must be excellent in itself. 13. Dr Who is a character part, not an acting part (Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Matt Smith knew this in their souls). He is loveable and elusive and naughty and fascinating, and most of all fun. Any attempt to make him brooding and dark – or worse, maudlin – is embarrassing and adolescent, except in the tiniest, rarest doses. 14. Dr Who does not have a moral mission and he does not make plans. He is an improviser. His motivation comes from just being a kind and civilised man who helps out because he feels that … well, anybody would help out, wouldn’t they? 15. He is never funky, with-it or down wiv da kids. Equally, he is not a stuffy fossil. He is beyond either of those things, as he is beyond sex, money, religion, politics and most other things that children are not interested in. He never ever peacocks or grandstands and is never pious or self-pitying. 16. There should be one (female) assistant only, and she should always be someone the audience can identify with i.e. someone from planet Earth. The assistant’s purpose is to keep everyone’s feet on the ground. She should not be ‘special’ or significant in herself, as every kid watching needs to feel they could be the assistant. She should usually be the only person under thirty around. Children are absolutely forbidden. 17. Spectacle is nice but totally unnecessary. Invention, fun, scares, and loveable main actors are worth far more. 18. Monster concepts and designs are, however, incredibly important. This is where money should be spent. Children don’t care about pretty views or beautiful direction. The only production value they do care about is being convincingly spooked. Everything else must bow to that. A spooky tunnel is worth a hundred CGI panoramas. 19. Attempts at profundity and social commentary should be resisted as strongly as attempts at sentimentality. 20. The big emotion should be joy: the joy of adventure, excitement, frights and laughs. The viewer must feel elated. Doctor Who should be a delicious helping of trifle that anybody and everybody can enjoy. The BBC has binned its planned Doctor Who Christmas special and put the show ‘out to tender’. This is a face-saving TV industry term for saying you’ve kicked an ailing show into the longest of grass, but don’t want to enrage its most rabid fans. Good luck with that, chaps. Essentially it translates as ‘Somebody please, please take this nightmare off our hands’. It’s like one of those Facebook ads you see for a dog that needs rehousing because it barks all night, gnaws on toddlers, and has no control of its bowels, but is a total sweetie, honestly. I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade If by some bizarre quirk of circumstance I found myself the unwilling owner of the tender, I’d put Doctor Who on ice for at least a decade. Much has been written in the past few days about what happened to poor old Doctor Who, how the thing was revived in glory and then retoxified in shame. As a former writer on Doctor Who, I was actually in the room when some of the mistakes were made. I offer the following suggestions – in a reflective but constructive spirit – for anybody barmy enough to take the thing on. (And yes, I broke many of these ‘rules’ myself, but I know better now.) 1. The character is called Dr Who, but nobody in the fiction knows that, probably not even him, so within it he’s referred to as ‘the Doctor’. But his name is Dr Who. The public know this, and the public is always right. Correcting the public on this obvious point – and billing him as ‘The Doctor’ on the end credits – makes a production look quite mad. Similarly, those who travel with Dr Who are his friends, or his assistants. Not ‘companions’, which is positively Victorian and cringe-inducing. Most popular Alexander Larman Is the Armie Hammer comeback going to happen? Blake Neff The coming storm against MAGA Francis Pike The President is winning the geopolitical battle with China 2. Doctor Who is a British show aimed squarely at a British audience. Everybody else prefers it that way. 3. This is always, primarily, a children’s show for ages five to 12. Everybody else is there on sufferance. Adults may well enjoy the innovation, playfulness and whimsy, but teenagers must never be appealed to. That way lies disaster. 4. Similarly, ‘sci-fi’ fans in general must be totally ignored. It is not for them. 5. There should be no mention of any previous Dr Who or assistant. This episode – the one people are watching right now – is what’s important. 6. Doctor Who must be fun, but there must be no breaking of the fourth wall or self-referential humour. 7. The tone of the stories should be as varied as possible. The variety should clash, each new situation should be fresh and different. 8. A story should never begin in media res. The stepping out from the Tardis and exploring and finding out is a major part of the thing. That should never feel ordinary, casual or routine. 9. Nobody should ever be revived from the dead. There must be no parallel universes or alternative realities, or time trickery. Everything counts – and the normal laws of drama, cause and effect, life and death, always apply. 10. There is no magic. Dr Who is a scientist, and the fictional world is solid and explicable in scientific terms, even if far in advance of ours. 11. As in the 1960s, it should be the case that Dr Who cannot steer the Tardis. At all. Ever. This immediately solves nearly all of a writer’s narrative problems, and raises the stakes of every story and situation. Being able to pop home or zoom about where you fancy on a whim makes the scenario mundane. 12. Stories about Dr Who himself, the Tardis and the Time Lords, the series mythos etc, and overarching narratives in general, are boring and a turn-off. Every story must be excellent in itself. 13. Dr Who is a character part, not an acting part (Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Matt Smith knew this in their souls). He is loveable and elusive and naughty and fascinating, and most of all fun. Any attempt to make him brooding and dark – or worse, maudlin – is embarrassing and adolescent, except in the tiniest, rarest doses. 14. Dr Who does not have a moral mission and he does not make plans. He is an improviser. His motivation comes from just being a kind and civilised man who helps out because he feels that … well, anybody would help out, wouldn’t they? 15. He is never funky, with-it or down wiv da kids. Equally, he is not a stuffy fossil. He is beyond either of those things, as he is beyond sex, money, religion, politics and most other things that children are not interested in. He never ever peacocks or grandstands and is never pious or self-pitying. 16. There should be one (female) assistant only, and she should always be someone the audience can identify with i.e. someone from planet Earth. The assistant’s purpose is to keep everyone’s feet on the ground. She should not be ‘special’ or significant in herself, as every kid watching needs to feel they could be the assistant. She should usually be the only person under thirty around. Children are absolutely forbidden. 17. Spectacle is nice but totally unnecessary. Invention, fun, scares, and loveable main actors are worth far more. 18. Monster concepts and designs are, however, incredibly important. This is where money should be spent. Children don’t care about pretty views or beautiful direction. The only production value they do care about is being convincingly spooked. Everything else must bow to that. A spooky tunnel is worth a hundred CGI panoramas. 19. Attempts at profundity and social commentary should be resisted as strongly as attempts at sentimentality. 20. The big emotion should be joy: the joy of adventure, excitement, frights and laughs. The viewer must feel elated. Doctor Who should be a delicious helping of trifle that anybody and everybody can enjoy.
It's Gareth Roberts, writer of: The Shakespeare Code The Unicorn and the Wasp Planet of the Dead (with Russell T Davies) The Lodger Closing Time The Caretaker (with Steven Moffat) The Sarah Jane Adventures Invasion of the Bane (with Russell T Davies) Revenge of the Slitheen Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? Secrets of the Stars The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith The Empty Planet Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith (with Clayton Hickman) The Man Who Never Was The guy that wrote the Trickster episodes of SJA talking about "science" is a bit rich. On the Doctor Who side, his episodes range from stuff I skip on rewatches to stuff I wish I could skip on rewatches if they didn't feel so essential to the larger story.
I never knew of a Doctor other than Tom Baker until I was an adult because that's what was on PBS. By the time Baker left I was getting started on adulthood and no longer paying attention. At the time, for me, Baker was THE Doctor and if it didn't happen to him I didn't even know about it.
I didn't know there was anyone but Baker until an anniversary book came out with Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, Baker, and Davison's' heads in a row. And even then, I thought somehow they were playing the same guy at different linear ages.
I thought Baker was the only one until our PBS station started advertising "The Five Doctors" 20th anniversary special and mentioned the five men who have played the role. When it aired, I was shocked by Peter Davision.
I was 3 when my next older brother began kindergarten. Shortly after that (3 months? … six?) anyway, at some point my mother became pregnant with my younger brother. I spent most of two years watching UHF - mostly Canadian television. Lots of black and white British shows. The Untouchables. Man from U.N.C.L.E. And Dr. Who.
Yes. To allow the show to grow into new seasons and change the actor so it could keep going. You're all three not wrong. Disagree, bill him as The Doctor. Doctor Who is a way to refer to him and convey his sense of mystery but not his "name" once you're actually watching the show. Companions is an out-of-show term and should not be used consistently in the show though. Yep. I was going to disagree until the point about never appealing directly to teenagers. Pretty much agree. Disagree, I'm no oldhead but I appreciate the occasional off-hand remark to "when I had curls" or the like. Disagree with the hard ban, but no this isn't a fourth-wall show and it shouldn't be. Yes. We can't be running down corridors every single episode. Again, you need variation. Sometimes you begin in media res to break up the rhythm. But I like the sentiment. Fine, but could we wait a while longer to say "no it isn't actually ghosts/vampires/whatever"? Well we see who this guy likes best But part of what I liked about Whittaker was she broke the streak that the reboot was on of every Doctor being Angsty, and the result was refreshing . . . until they made that decision. Correct. This is where we point out that the old series could touch on commentary and profundity and do just fine. But no, it's not the show's primary mission.
Yeah, half of them are sensible and pretty hard to disagree with. It's just funny how his own work fails to live up to his idea if what the show should be.
If you write Harry Hembock fanfiction, I don't want to see any fecal matter, cocaine snorting, prostitution, vomiting winos, guys yelling at their talking car like a wifebeater, "accidental" necrophilia, incest with a female dimensional opposite, or eating money with ants all over it for no discernable reason. Harry Hembock is a serious franchise for serious adults. No shenanigans. Goddammit.
The premise that the Doctor can't pilot the TARDIS at all worked in the 60's when he was basically kidnapping schoolteachers and orphans and no one really minded, but that sort of thing isn't as socially acceptable today. The Doctor as a sort of imaginary friend that can pick you up and drop you off each week is a lot healthier mentally and emotionally. I didn't like Clara setting that boundary with 11 at the beginning, but I've come to see it was for the best.
But if the Doctor can largely control where and when he goes with no-problems-whatsoever, it's hard to argue why he doesn't just set himself up for success a la Bill and Ted every week. Minus the occasional fixed-point, he should be able to outmaneuver just about anyone and anything.
9 told Rose that once the TARDIS lands somewhere they become part of those events, and he generally can't cross his own timeline without destroying the universe, which he actually did in Father's Day. Later 12 hops back a few minutes in Before the Flood, but he has to avoid interfering with the events that already unfolded from his perspective lest things explode again. All he can do is sneak around and gather intel until the first version of him leaves to go back.
