[TV] Doctor Who

[Kragragh]

I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and I wanted to like this season but something was just off about it. I can see how they thought it would all work on paper...it had all the elements but it just didn't come together for me. 13 needs way more personality than "let's all be friends yeah?" and the companions need to be more three dimensional.

[Immitis]

So its about being British that gets you the role of being an outerspace alien?

Seriously i would much prefer to see Whoopie Goldberg being Guinan as the 13th Doctor than Jodie Whittaker portrayal in the last season.

Whoopie actually loves the show and wouldve gave her all but Jodie just doesnt either care or doesnt seem to want to give it her all like the gravitas that it deserves.

Just my opinion but casting an american as the doctor to me as a be it would be like casting a white man as black panther. Its part of our heritage and culture. It should always go to someone who's from the UK

[DemoBytom]

Just my opinion but casting an american as the doctor to me as a be it would be like casting a white man as black panther. Its part of our heritage and culture. It should always go to someone who's from the UK

If Hugh Laurie could fake being American for House...
But I understand your point, Doctor Who has always been British TV series, it'd feel weird if it become American(ised?)..

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I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and I wanted to like this season but something was just off about it. I can see how they thought it would all work on paper...it had all the elements but it just didn't come together for me. 13 needs way more personality than "let's all be friends yeah?" and the companions need to be more three dimensional.

For me introducing new Doctor along with 3 new companions, at once, led to problems of very bland/rushed characters and plot. What should've been 1-st episode introduction turned out to be 4-5 first episodes main focus.
There's a reason why Rose was introduced alone, and Micky was added later.
Same with Amy being 11th only companion, till they added Rory and River later, down the seasons.
There's simply not enough time to build all the characters, show them off, show their chemistry with the Doc, show off what Doctor Who is about, as well as have actual plot going on. They should've gone with new Doctor + one companion.. Maybe just have Ryan, build his character more, and then start focusing on his realationship with Graham, his dad, etc - stretch this as 2ndary plot over the whole season/season.. Maybe have Graham join Tardis in 12th season.. I'm not sure, but I believe not trying to cram so much into so little time, would've worked much better.

[Deficineiron]

If Hugh Laurie could fake being American for House...
But I understand your point, Doctor Who has always been British TV series, it'd feel weird if it become American(ised?)..

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For me introducing new Doctor along with 3 new companions, at once, led to problems of very bland/rushed characters and plot. What should've been 1-st episode introduction turned out to be 4-5 first episodes main focus.
There's a reason why Rose was introduced alone, and Micky was added later.
Same with Amy being 11th only companion, till they added Rory and River later, down the seasons.
There's simply not enough time to build all the characters, show them off, show their chemistry with the Doc, show off what Doctor Who is about, as well as have actual plot going on. They should've gone with new Doctor + one companion.. Maybe just have Ryan, build his character more, and then start focusing on his realationship with Graham, his dad, etc - stretch this as 2ndary plot over the whole season/season.. Maybe have Graham join Tardis in 12th season.. I'm not sure, but I believe not trying to cram so much into so little time, would've worked much better.

for the most part classic did this as well (not sure on companions in hartnell-troughton transition, and troughton-pertwee jamie/zoe were mindwiped, of course).

sara jane stayed 2 years into baker.

adric was added early in tom's last year. to his credit, JNT did try to get Leela to come back at end of tom for the transition to peter davison and stay a year minimum (she only was willing to stay a few episodes). Of course, from what I can tell Nyssa was brought to fill that role, and tegan was coming no matter what.

Peri stayed davison-baker (colin).

not even sure on baker-mccoy transition.

3 is a lot of companions. I think it worked ok with the original trio + hartnell, but the only other time I saw 3 was tegan/nyssa/adric and I still joke about how bad and annoying it was.

[Budong]

For me the biggest problem was the disconnect from this Doctor to all the others. The thing I've always loved about Doctor Who was the fact that each Doctor has their own personality but are all connected and share history. This season it seemed they went out of their way to cut the Doctor off from her past, which made it impossible for me to ever accept her as the Doctor. She had some of the right characteristics but lacked that connection to what came before.

Also the stories were kind of meh, the companions lacked depth and the villains were as weak as I can ever remember. I felt like something could be wrong when they decided to have three companions instead of one or two. It took that many to have any kind of actual screen presence. Plus I guess they had a lot of boxes to check off...

[imabanana]

So could Whoopie Goldberg have made a great Doctor?

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47128578

Apparently according to that article she actually asked to be the first female doctor and she absolutely loves the show.

Considering how butthurt people were (and still are) about the Doctor being a woman, I can't even imagine the shit show it would have been if they changed to woman, black and american at the same time. Not sure I'd kept on watching the show with her though, but not for any of those reasons, I've just never been a fan of her as an actress.

[Kokolums]

Big Finish productions in partnership with the BBC has produced a 4 episode AUDIO series starring the Master.
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v...series-01-1884

Michelle Gomez reprises her role as the evil Time Lord. The episodes are not free and you can get them either by downloading or on CD.

[mvaliz]

not even sure on baker-mccoy transition.

Melanie (Bonnie Langford) stayed for that Transition. Left at the end of Sylvester's first season, to be handed off to Ace (Sophie Aldred).

Obviously no companion transition happened between Sylv and McGann >_<

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Just my opinion but casting an american as the doctor to me as a be it would be like casting a white man as black panther. Its part of our heritage and culture. It should always go to someone who's from the UK

Well, much like Tennant and such - I feel you could have an american play him, so long as he does a British accent.

Kinda the point of regeneration really... no matter what the outside looks like, we know where the spirit is meant to be. ;P

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Heh the youtuber who did the audience score for Doctor Who found its polar opposite. While Doctor Who gets over 90% critic score and a 20%ish audience score, The Orville season 1 gets a 20%ish critic score and over a 90% audience score.

[video=youtube;EEpTSNyRgig]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEpTSNyRgig[video]

Do keep in mind that's for the first two episodes of S2... of which I'm actually in agreement with the professionals on that one. First two episodes were total weaksauce.

Those reviews totally rebalanced now per-episode with both Pro and Audience reviews being in the upper 90s, as they should be as the next episodes were pretty damn impressive.

[Deficineiron]

and this thread just sort-of died.

I have recently watched for the first times a number of Anthony Ainley's Master renditions, and candidly find Roger Delgado's master far more effective dramatically, particularly when he wasn't shoehorned into a script he had no business in (claw of axos anyone?). all this evil chuckling and overt glee in Ainley just seems to diminish the effectiveness of the character. I do think Delgado's first appearance was his most effective by far.

I have watched almost all of colin baker's episodes (last one tonight, timelash) and enjoy them overall quite a bit. Why is this actor's character unpopular? He reminds me some of Tom Baker with some elements of other versions thrown in.

[MrLachyG]

Melanie (Bonnie Langford) stayed for that Transition. Left at the end of Sylvester's first season, to be handed off to Ace (Sophie Aldred).

Obviously no companion transition happened between Sylv and McGann >_<

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Well, much like Tennant and such - I feel you could have an american play him, so long as he does a British accent.

Kinda the point of regeneration really... no matter what the outside looks like, we know where the spirit is meant to be. ;P

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Do keep in mind that's for the first two episodes of S2... of which I'm actually in agreement with the professionals on that one. First two episodes were total weaksauce.

Those reviews totally rebalanced now per-episode with both Pro and Audience reviews being in the upper 90s, as they should be as the next episodes were pretty damn impressive.

yeah but we can't really trust audience scores, especially with this season of Doctor Who, because some people who have not seen it at all will automatically downvote it.

[Kokolums]

and this thread just sort-of died.

I have recently watched for the first times a number of Anthony Ainley's Master renditions, and candidly find Roger Delgado's master far more effective dramatically, particularly when he wasn't shoehorned into a script he had no business in (claw of axos anyone?). all this evil chuckling and overt glee in Ainley just seems to diminish the effectiveness of the character. I do think Delgado's first appearance was his most effective by far.

I have watched almost all of colin baker's episodes (last one tonight, timelash) and enjoy them overall quite a bit. Why is this actor's character unpopular? He reminds me some of Tom Baker with some elements of other versions thrown in.

Yes Ainley was not considered in Delgado's class even during Ainley's run.

6 was an attempt to both

1. Subvert expectations because 5 was such a nice guy.
2. Recapture the magic of William Hartnell.

So 6 was played to be rude, mean, and gruff. His costume looked like a clown and immediately turned people off. Also, his lines were often terrible. The dialogue after 5 left got REALLY bad in a consistent way. I believe 5 almost had a change of heart about leaving after 3 seasons when he got the script for Caves of Andoranzi because it was really well-written and he thought the show might be taking it to another level. As it turns out, he was right to leave when he did because the writing immediately went into the crapper.

[Deficineiron]

Yes Ainley was not considered in Delgado's class even during Ainley's run.

6 was an attempt to both

1. Subvert expectations because 5 was such a nice guy.
2. Recapture the magic of William Hartnell.

So 6 was played to be rude, mean, and gruff. His costume looked like a clown and immediately turned people off. Also, his lines were often terrible. The dialogue after 5 left got REALLY bad in a consistent way. I believe 5 almost had a change of heart about leaving after 3 seasons when he got the script for Caves of Andoranzi because it was really well-written and he thought the show might be taking it to another level. As it turns out, he was right to leave when he did because the writing immediately went into the crapper.

I only watched Androzani recently and was shocked at how well done written it was. That said, I try to imagine that same story with 'you made me miss my fliight' Tegan and scheming Turlough and don't like what I come up with. I do think a lot of my issues with 5th doctor episodes is that almost all were written with one or more unhappy and/or scheming companions, a type of drama/character conflict I really do not care for in my sci-fi typically. I am well aware of a couple of large reasons why I find Peri a much better companion, but also it is important to note she fit the mold of all? prior companions to JNT of being loyal. Davison really had the deck stacked against him with the companion sets he had - it sucks energy out of the rest of the plot when your own companions are either bitchy or your enemies.

JNT really sabotaged all 3 doctors right out of the gate with those costumes, but particularly Colin. Mentally change him into clothing typical of 1, 3 or 4 and it is a very different impact.

k9 was apparently very popular, but rather than bring back the dog, why on earth did he think Kamelion was a good idea?

I have watched the first few minutes of 7's first episode, as well as part of Battlefield, and a lot of the action just feels fake (i have read that this is likely called Pantomime). Do you have an opinion on overall story quality for 7?

[Kokolums]

I have watched the first few minutes of 7's first episode, as well as part of Battlefield, and a lot of the action just feels fake (i have read that this is likely called Pantomime). Do you have an opinion on overall story quality for 7?

A lot of 7s stories were poor although the best stories were in his 3rd and final season. Then the TV show was shuttered and Doctor Who became a series of books. That's when I kinda got involved in Doctor Who myself because back in the early 1990s, a lot of the current writers and even Moffatt himself congregated on a Doctor Who newsgroup I was a regular on and I got to chat with a lot of them and share ideas which was really really cool.

At the time, A lot of writers were hyped up on this thing called the "Cartmel Masterplan" which was a story arc developed in McCoy's second season about the Doctor actually being this secret ancient timelord of lore called "the Other". A lot of the book writers were onto that as well but I was always staunchly against it, arguing the show should really be about people more than going for comic book shock value stories. I would always say they should go in the complete opposite direction and de-power the Doctor and make him struggle, maybe even make him human and see how he reacts. Eventually one of the writers on the newsgroup, Paul Cornell, wrote a book called "Human Nature" where the Doctor becomes human which was what I was talking about. Eventually that got made into a story for David Tennant which was incredible lol.

[Deficineiron]

A lot of 7s stories were poor although the best stories were in his 3rd and final season. Then the TV show was shuttered and Doctor Who became a series of books. That's when I kinda got involved in Doctor Who myself because back in the early 1990s, a lot of the current writers and even Moffatt himself congregated on a Doctor Who newsgroup I was a regular on and I got to chat with a lot of them and share ideas which was really really cool.

At the time, A lot of writers were hyped up on this thing called the "Cartmel Masterplan" which was a story arc developed in McCoy's second season about the Doctor actually being this secret ancient timelord of lore called "the Other". A lot of the book writers were onto that as well but I was always staunchly against it, arguing the show should really be about people more than going for comic book shock value stories. I would always say they should go in the complete opposite direction and de-power the Doctor and make him struggle, maybe even make him human and see how he reacts. Eventually one of the writers on the newsgroup, Paul Cornell, wrote a book called "Human Nature" where the Doctor becomes human which was what I was talking about. Eventually that got made into a story for David Tennant which was incredible lol.

that is a great story! (your involvement story, I haven't seen the episode in question)!

[Kokolums]

that is a great story! (your involvement story, I haven't seen the episode in question)!

The other idea I had on forum back then was to re-do the Key to Time series. I thought the idea was great but the stories were all too silly. I said they should re-use it to explore the Doctor's personality more than just tell strange tales. So I'd have the white guardian re-send him on the quest to build the key. The 6th and final piece should be Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. And then the dynamics of it get REAL personal with questions like

1. Should the Doctor tell the Brigadier that he is actually just a piece of an artifact and not a real person?
2. Should the Doctor allow the Brigadier make the decision to merge with the key, ending his life, when failing to build the key destroys the universe?
3. How does this affect the relationship between them?

And there was a whole lot of very emotional and personal scenes with this last piece being the Brigadier. And you really took a deep dive into their entire relationship.

And then, I'd throw a twist into it. Whatever final decision was made, I'd have the White Guardian appear and say the Key actually did absolutely nothing, and that the Brigadier was NOT the 6th piece but just a man. The White Guardian just wanted to test the Doctor and see who he is morally as a person so he set this as a final test. And then of course the Doctor and Brigadier fly into a rage at being manipulated and the Doctor realizing the White Guardian really is evil after all. And then the Doctor may make it a mission to stop the White Guardian in future stories.

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What's interesting is Steven Spielberg bought the rights to make a series of films around this time and he was going to re-do the Key to Time series with Alan Rickman as the Doctor. I don't know if my plot influenced him at all as he wound up never making it. It was fascinating hearing the rumors though.

[Deficineiron]

The other idea I had on forum back then was to re-do the Key to Time series. I thought the idea was great but the stories were all too silly. I said they should re-use it to explore the Doctor's personality more than just tell strange tales. So I'd have the white guardian re-send him on the quest to build the key. The 6th and final piece should be Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. And then the dynamics of it get REAL personal with questions like

1. Should the Doctor tell the Brigadier that he is actually just a piece of an artifact and not a real person?
2. Should the Doctor allow the Brigadier make the decision to merge with the key, ending his life, when failing to build the key destroys the universe?
3. How does this affect the relationship between them?

And there was a whole lot of very emotional and personal scenes with this last piece being the Brigadier. And you really took a deep dive into their entire relationship.

And then, I'd throw a twist into it. Whatever final decision was made, I'd have the White Guardian appear and say the Key actually did absolutely nothing, and that the Brigadier was NOT the 6th piece but just a man. The White Guardian just wanted to test the Doctor and see who he is morally as a person so he set this as a final test. And then of course the Doctor and Brigadier fly into a rage at being manipulated and the Doctor realizing the White Guardian really is evil after all. And then the Doctor may make it a mission to stop the White Guardian in future stories.

----------

What's interesting is Steven Spielberg bought the rights to make a series of films around this time and he was going to re-do the Key to Time series with Alan Rickman as the Doctor. I don't know if my plot influenced him at all as he wound up never making it. It was fascinating hearing the rumors though.

I remember JMS had a very explicit and specific prohibition from posters posting any story ideas in the compuserve and aol babylon 5 forums, presumably due to potential legal issues. He had stated that he had had to abandon an idea once he read something very similar on a forum. Obv. he was in US legal jurisdiction, and I don't know if he was simply very cautious or had an informed basis for his concern (and he was actually making the show at that time).

I learned today what the mechanical yeti in wow likely references, as I am watching The Web of Fear for the first time.

[Kokolums]

I remember JMS had a very explicit and specific prohibition from posters posting any story ideas in the compuserve and aol babylon 5 forums, presumably due to potential legal issues. He had stated that he had had to abandon an idea once he read something very similar on a forum. Obv. he was in US legal jurisdiction, and I don't know if he was simply very cautious or had an informed basis for his concern (and he was actually making the show at that time).

Oh I'm sure there was. I never expected them to actually follow my script ideas to the letter. Just the fact that that Spielberg wanted to revisit the Key to Time storyline made me wonder if there was some inspiration there. Even with Human Nature, I mostly just said in a general sense "instead of the Cartmel Masterplan, I'd be much more interesting to strip away all of the Doctor's powers, make him human, and explore that." Which is such a general and broad idea. But interesting Paul Cornell wrote it shortly after I started campaigning for it lol.

[Deficineiron]

I finally watched Enemy of the World today, and was very, very impressed, particularly with Patrick Troughton's portrayal of Salamander. I haven't seen Troughton in any role besides DH, but apparently this guy could actually act!

[Kokolums]

I finally watched Enemy of the World today, and was very, very impressed, particularly with Patrick Troughton's portrayal of Salamander. I haven't seen Troughton in any role besides DH, but apparently this guy could actually act!

Troughton's typically considered the best "actor" of the guys who played the role.

[Deficineiron]

Troughton's typically considered the best "actor" of the guys who played the role.

One can easily forget that Salamander is the same actor.

now watching shada for the first time. what a treat, baker/romana II again.