Dr. Who

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
If anybody is in the mood to give me a brief history lesson i would love to hear. The only thing i know about dr who is the final season with david tenant and the first with matt smith, i watched these because my roomates at the time were watching them ever night so I kind of get the idea of the show and what it's about.

Asking as somebody who knows nothing outside of those seasons, did it really go tard woke or was it just a female doctor? Did they really fuck with the core of the theme like they did with star wars, trek, witcher, etc?
 
JayseeDenton said:
Asking as somebody who knows nothing outside of those seasons, did it really go tard woke or was it just a female doctor? Did they really fuck with the core of the theme like they did with star wars, trek, witcher, etc?
Click to expand...

The beginning of the show's current problems isn't with Whittaker/Chibnall.

Yes, they made it exponentially worse, but it didn't begin there because the show's true issues commenced with the War Doctor.

While I love how he was written, and portrayed, the only reason this character was created was to resolve a casting issue due to Eccleston refusing to return.

Once you literally invent an incarnation of the Doctor to accommodate off-camera politics, anything is possible: gender, origins, and the overall makeup of the character.

We're now at such a point where William Hartnell is no longer the first Doctor.
 
JayseeDenton said:
Asking as somebody who knows nothing outside of those seasons, did it really go tard woke or was it just a female doctor? Did they really fuck with the core of the theme like they did with star wars, trek, witcher, etc?
Click to expand...
Yes. It's really hard to explain to someone who isn't a fan in detail. But a large issue was the introduction of the first woman Doctor Who in 2018 was part of a "decolonization" effort where in addition to the new white female incarnation of the Doctor, a new black woman incarnation of the Doctor was invented as well for no other reason than so that when the BBC sells merchandise of "all" the Doctors or licenses a comic book of "all" the Doctors or there's an audio drama produced with "all" the Doctors, it includes a white woman and a black woman so that these things aren't just a bunch of white guys. The BBC is a government body which controls Doctor Who and has government mandated diversity programs, so Doctor Who has to go so far as to portray historical figures who were white men with non-white actors in order to meet certain quotas. Like to show how far this lunacy has come, historically the first Doctor Who has always been this guy, William Hartnell.

1746858461834.webp

But as part of their "decolonization" efforts, not only has a new black woman incarnation been invented out of thin air, but also it's been retconned that William Hartnell is not the original Doctor Who, but actually the Doctor was originally a little black girl that the evil white Time Lords stole regeneration from. Simultaneously removing all mystery from the character of the Doctor but also the Time Lords themselves.

1746858550941.webp

As for the show today, it's a total shitshow because the current showrunner (ironically the guy who brought it back in 2005) is a 100% true believer in wokeism and is also trying to safeguard his legacy as truly woke because he's said/produced problematic things in the past, so he doesn't want to get cancelled in the future. And he's basically sacrificing Doctor Who, a British institution, a sci-fi icon, on this altar in order to prove how virtuous he is, and also as part of a larger ego trip to prove that he's so great he can bring the show back from the dead not just once, but twice!
 
blackface enthusiast said:
So yeah I think Wilderness Years 2 is on the table which I'm really interested in given we have AI and stuff, but also because it's ending on such a sour note. I would not be surprised if the majority of the WY2 crowd decides to go back to the Capaldi years and pretend that everything after never happened.
Click to expand...
Heck, like I said previously, I would be fine with pretending "The End of Time parts 1 and 2" were the end... and in some of my moods I'd like to go back to the 1996 TV movie and just start from there.

blackface enthusiast said:
But as part of their "decolonization" efforts, not only has a new black woman incarnation been invented out of thin air, but also it's been retconned that William Hartnell is not the original Doctor Who, but actually the Doctor was originally a little black girl that the evil white Time Lords stole regeneration from. Simultaneously removing all mystery from the character of the Doctor but also the Time Lords themselves.
Click to expand...
My mom (who was on the Doctor Who wagon much longer than I was) was explaining all this stuff to me earlier about how the Doctor has been retconned as having been the original Time Lord and all the others are just kinda lame clones and the Master was apparently the one who worked out the closest.

For me its not even the wokeness that sucks... its how much this idea sounds so fanfic, and validates a criticism I remember Yahtzee making back in the day, about fans who are too in love with their heroes: "that's why the new Doctor Who, every moment is everybody either sucking the Doctor's balls or asking for more."

The Doctor is essentially just MacGyver with a time machine who fights aliens, but even from the beginning, revival-Who has insisted on making him out to be this godlike figure. It's similar to what you sometimes see with Batman, but at least with Batman its kinda credible since he's already a rich dude with access to tech, the Doctor tends to just make use of things that happen to be lying around, so when he's scaring dark predators by saying "I'm the Doctor, look me up!" it comes off as kinda silly.
 
blackface enthusiast said:
But as part of their "decolonization" efforts, not only has a new black woman incarnation been invented out of thin air, but also it's been retconned that William Hartnell is not the original Doctor Who, but actually the Doctor was originally a little black girl that the evil white Time Lords stole regeneration from. Simultaneously removing all mystery from the character of the Doctor but also the Time Lords themselves.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the write up, but in hindsight i wish i hadn't asked. I'm just sad now.
 
Interesting episode this week, not my favourite but the writer had a solid idea even if the execution was a bit messy. It's funny that they were able to make the Doctor being black matter more than them being a woman (if anyone remembers, there was an episode where 13 was tried as a witch. It was crap, surprise surprise).

Not looking forward to next week's offering given it's a Eurovision send-up.
 
So another question for Whovian Kiwis.

Two, actually... first, who actually decided "Whovian" was the name for being a Doctor Who fan? I would have gone with "Wholigan" personally.

But a more serious question....

How are those classic series blurays, IE "Tom Baker's 1st Season" et al? I've been mainly collecting the show through the DVDs, and kept it up because for awhile that was cheaper and also I had read on Amazon that some of those blurays apparently have issues of some sort? I think I recall reading something-something video issue and maybe something-something missing special features? (To be honest I might keep collecting on DVD just for consistency. since they still release stuff like the reconstructions on a one-serial-at-a-time basis, but the blurays would save me some shelf space....)
 
I don't know about the blurays but there are DVDs that have a ton of bonus features, interviews with actors and writers and whatnot that I think are worth it if you can find them. You get a lot of insight into the production of the stories, it's an honest to god miracle some of these episodes were even finished given the conditions they were working in. Also nice getting to hear stories about the actors that have passed like Troughton and Pertwee. There used to be a Twitch channel that played the contents of these DVDs, so the episodes and then the interviews/bonus features and it was really great, unfortunately Amazon ruined everyone's fun.

I'd say if the blurays have these features then they're definitely worth it.
 
Seems about right for the writing now to say that all the nordic/greek/roman/white gods had just been some random dude behind them and slaves had London/UK stop and search(they didn't, life was cotton field to bunkhouse why would anyone stop and search someone who can't leave the plantation), along with Dr Who only ever feeling welcome in some barber shop despite living life after life in England. Do they just write out a list of preachy points they want to make and then structure what is left around it?
 
Le b0wski said:
Seems about right for the writing now to say that all the nordic/greek/roman/white gods had just been some random dude behind them and slaves had London/UK stop and search(they didn't, life was cotton field to bunkhouse why would anyone stop and search someone who can't leave the plantation), along with Dr Who only ever feeling welcome in some barber shop despite living life after life in England. Do they just write out a list of preachy points they want to make and then structure what is left around it?
Click to expand...
Do I even want to know? I haven't watched any of this season yet, but I told my friend (who has no way of watching them without me) I'd consider pirating the season after it's over. If only because we already binged all of nu who and a good chunk of the classics too and I'm hoping this shit goes down in flames.
 
UnKillFill said:
Do I even want to know? I haven't watched any of this season yet, but I told my friend (who has no way of watching them without me) I'd consider pirating the season after it's over. If only because we already binged all of nu who and a good chunk of the classics too and I'm hoping this shit goes down in flames.
Click to expand...
It's set in africa with characters who wouldn't have been descendants of slaves and then one of them helps with "a trick the slaves used to escape that's been passed down". It's just painfully obvious the writers wanted to hit some moral target or appeal to a black audience who preach about them all being slaves and wanting reparations payments but they actually just immigrated from africa.

Still watch it if you want, like many watching it's now just completionism but if it was a new series without the link to the old ones it would flop even harder.
 
Episode thoughts. This is the first stinker of the season. Now admittedly, I find niggers visually off putting and I feel a mixture of disgust and rage whenever I see them (although I'm at a point where I don't mind Ncuti and can see him as The Doctor), so I was never going to like this, but honestly I have no clue what was going on here. The spider twist was cool, but between the accents and the sound mixing, I could barely parse what anybody was saying and what they were saying, made no sense to me.

The stuff about how now that the Doctor's a nigger he's treated differently everywhere but Africa was cringe and stupid because we straight up have to treat niggers like fucking royalty in the West. The show was so damn insistent on racism being prevalent in the UK which is dumb as shit because you can get arrested for not treating every last nig like a god. As for the slavery thing, I think that was about US slavery since I've heard that story before, but like with most slavery related things, I think it's safe to say it was overplayed since blacks objectively had a higher standard of living during slavery than after. I also don't like how they shoehorned in the fat black chick Doctor for no real reason. I've always felt some of the fun of Doctor Who is wondering which Doctor partook in various events from the Doctor's past that get brought up. I also generally don't like being reminded of the Chibnall years.

Now some things I enjoyed and found funny were that the sets were designed to make this place look like an absolute shithole. Rather than pretending that Africans are some kind of higher race, they did accurately show that they live in shitty rusted out huts that are devoid of comfort or culture which is funny. I also like that they had a running gag about how niggers are always late and making appointments with them is useless (although I was expecting it to play into the plot, but it didn't) because even RTD admits they're a bunch of lazy fucks (and I assume that's probably inspired by having to deal with Ncuti Gatwa).

Now there is one plot beat I really dug, which is that even after sixty years, we can still get new and innovative spider stories in this show. The twist showing that the spider from the trailer was actually the spaceship was kind of brilliant and felt wasted on this story.

All in all, it's far from the worst Doctor Who story and not even the cringiest nig love fest Who story so I'd probably give it a 4/10. I might go back and rewatch it with subtitles to see if understanding the dialogue changes how I feel about it. Hopefully this is just a small slip up and the rest of the season remains higher quality like the previous episodes.
 
skykiii said:
Two, actually... first, who actually decided "Whovian" was the name for being a Doctor Who fan? I would have gone with "Wholigan" personally.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, but the Doctor Who Fan Club of America zine was called the Whovian Times in the early '80s. Apparently it existed before then, though.
 
I would be shocked if that ever go back to the Fugitive Doctor/Timeless Child arc in full again. Oh, they'll allude to it. They'll dance around it. Ultimately, 14 addressed the fallout in the 2nd special and now there's no need to go back to it ever again.
 
starborn427614 said:
I would be shocked if that ever go back to the Fugitive Doctor/Timeless Child arc in full again. Oh, they'll allude to it. They'll dance around it. Ultimately, 14 addressed the fallout in the 2nd special and now there's no need to go back to it ever again.
Click to expand...
Give me the cliff notes, how did they "address" it?

The only thing I was able to find searching was something something Celestial Toymaker?
 
skykiii said:
Give me the cliff notes, how did they "address" it?

The only thing I was able to find searching was something something Celestial Toymaker?
Click to expand...
It's mentioned in one episode where the Doctor says something like he's not a Time Lord and doesn't know who he is. And then later the Toymaker says something like "I turned your past into a jigsaw puzzle" - RTD talked about wanting to make the Doctor's backstory ambiguous again, so you can pick or choose whatever answer you like about the Doctor's past. As long as he's not William Hartnell or a Time Lord because he has to protect Chibnall's feelings so we'll never retcon Timeless Child or the chuds would win.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom