Dr. Who

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Bros I hate Chibnall so much is unreal, He is the literal definition of a smug fan that bitches in the comment section and brags he can do better in YouTube comments, but in reality has zero talent, and can only write self indulging crap.

Still I gotta say Tom Baker is charismatic as hell. I was shocked to learn he was so fond to Elizabeth Sladen yet the two never socialised outside the show. There’s this weird thing people do of being super close when forced to, like in school or a job, but they never talk outside of that place.

He truly is a complex man. There’s a reason he is the best classic doctor,
 
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Still I gotta say Tom Baker is charismatic as hell. I was shocked to learn he was so fond to Elizabeth Sladen yet the two never socialised outside the show. There’s this weird thing people do of being super close when forced to, like in school or a job, but they never talk outside of that place.
 
Welp, speaking of Tom Baker, another blu-ray collection is happening for Classic Who, Series 15 this time:
I love they're getting the old actors back but I was not ready for Time Lord Leela. (Edit to add: yes I know she's been in Big Finish for ages now doing this, but it's always different when there's vidya.)
 
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Welp, speaking of Tom Baker, another blu-ray collection is happening for Classic Who, Series 15 this time:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HIBfUAF9otgI love they're getting the old actors back but I was not ready for Time Lord Leela.
Its funny how Louise Jameson out of all the classic companions had the best career of the lot with Sladen retiring to raise her daughter and Aldred voicing adverts
 
Point taken. Still I think the fandom menance doesn’t understand why Ecleston and RTD are fighting.

Eccleston sees him as an oppressor, and an hypocrite that abused, or had abused his workers without doing anything. Perhaps sexually if the Barrowman stuff is to be beloved. Meanwhile the fandom menace thinks he is somehow against wokeshit. Which I sincerely doubt he cares.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if RTD got Yewtree'd in a few years. He creeps me out, and so far every middle aged man who supports troons as loudly as he does has been some kind of sex pest.
Unlike most I am not even mad that the 13 is a woman. What pisses me off is that Chibnall and Jodie were the ones to do it.

Moffat has been hyping a female doctor since that parody he did. Before BNew Who was even a thing.

Jodie’s is basically playing granny. She even dresses like a grandma, because God forbid men being attracted to women (never mind that 5, 9,10, and 11 were pretty boys. And Since 9 they had lots of tumblr fangirls ). She is playing a grandma doing a very very poor Tennat impression.

At least Moffat gave Missy some kind of Mary Poppins deal to his female master. The first female doctor deal is literally a granny that just wants to hang out with her “fam“. No clever jokes or the doctor having to cope with such a big change. Nothing.

What a waste. I won’t ever forgive Chibnall for wasting the idea of a female Doctor with the blandest doctor ever just so he could virtue signal his shit politics.
A granny type character could have worked, I could see the Doctor as a mama bear protecting her companions or a fairy godmother whisking them off on adventures. Miriam Margolyes or Angela Lansbury would've been great at that. Or a sort of icy schoolmarm or headmistress type, like Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie or McGonagall, and like William Hartnell's Doctor. And that's just sticking to very basic clichéd female authority figure stereotypes, a good writer could've done so much with those as a starting point or done something different and interesting while sticking with the Doctor's character. Missy was a great version of the Master that brought something new to the role but was still the Master. 13 wasn't like the Doctor at all or even an interesting character.
 
SFDebris has restored his version of his review of the original start of Dr Who.

(I do personally like the idea that humans are the Doctor's morality pets to keep him on the straight and narrow.)
 
How did they (nearly) lose the time war

The Leela I knew, if placed in any position of knowledge and power, would have been carrying out reverse-causal genocides against Kaled ancestor species.
That's kind of been my annoyance with the franchise revisiting the Time War more and more. They just keep depicting it as a regular war. When in reality a true Time War would be near impossible for us to imagine. Where you're not just shooting a soldier, you're going back a few decades to shoot that soldier's parents. And they're then going back to shoot your grandparents. Etc.

This is what ultimately bugged me about the Day of the Doctor. It acted like the Doctor just detonated a big nuke. By implication, setting off the Moment was more like shoving the Time Lords and Daleks into a room and locking it shut - sealing them off so they couldn't screw with the whole of reality any more. Asking the Doctor "how many did you kill?" is kind of silly. Did he really kill children on Gallifrey? Every Time Lord was a child once (let's set aside the Timeless Child) so does it count as 100%?

Then the ultimately solution of the TARDIS of the Doctor is sealing up Gallifrey? Well just because it's happening today, how does that save them from the Daleks yesterday? Or a week ago? You can't just lock up the planet at a moment in time - you've got to lock it up at every moment in time.
 
Point taken. Still I think the fandom menance doesn’t understand why Ecleston and RTD are fighting.

Eccleston sees him as an oppressor, and an hypocrite that abused, or had abused his workers without doing anything. Perhaps sexually if the Barrowman stuff is to be beloved. Meanwhile the fandom menace thinks he is somehow against wokeshit. Which I sincerely doubt he cares.
The Fandom Menace have very short memories. This was just a year ago:


Unrelated, I wish we'd got Paterson Joseph to be the first black Doctor. He has a far better presence and acting range than what I've seen of Ncuti Gatwa, and in things like Peep Show he really came across as aloof and alien and a bit scary, but also funny as hell. Jodie and Ncuti's Doctors so far seem like they're trying to be down with the kids in a very specific culture and time period, rather than aliens who've seen all sorts of times and places and have that greater context.
The thing I most liked about Matt Smith was how damned old he comes across. He's both the youngest and oldest Doctor, and just a little weird looking to boot (very Odo vibe about his face, for me). I think his final season was a mess and there's a lot of episodes I didn't care for, but he did a great job acting as an immortal alien being who could be deathly serious one moment and cracking jokes the next, and always a bit disconnected from everything. He wasn't just trying to be a bad parody of Tennant, but wasn't a totally different character either. He threaded that needle of being just different enough to be his own take, but still instantly recognizable as the Doctor.

What little I've seen of the new guy, I can't even see him as the Doctor. His accent is wrong, his body language is wrong, he just seems like a totally unrelated side-character. It's not even the race or gayness, really, but just how he acts. He doesn't feel like the Doctor, he feels like a new character entirely that is clearly going to retread a lot of early Nu-Who territory, but a worse version of it.

Whitaker's take had similar problems, she was more Ms. Frizzle mixed with very forced retreading of Tennant's mannerisms and a lot of annoying preachiness; she was not the Doctor. There's no sense of authority or like she really knows what she's doing, and her whole "fam" thing was pure cringe. An older actress probably would've worked better, someone less wide-eyed and rambling. Maggie Smith from the early 2000's would've been best. I'm not sure how much of Jodie's issue was the flat writing and how much was her just not knowing anything about the character.
 
I'm not sure how much of Jodie's issue was the flat writing and how much was her just not knowing anything about the character.
With a lot of the stuff I've seen of chibnall's writing, I think it's the writing. There's footage and writings where Jodie admits that she never watched the show and then was discouraged from watching it by Chib. That and given that so much of his stuff shows cargo-cult like styles of where he gets the form of plot and characters without ever understanding the function, convinces me that it doesn't matter what actress was going to be Doctor 13, she was going to end up doing a bad job because of the material. (Saw the meme that her era is the "Visual Big Finish" one and it's hard to argue with that.)
 
The thing I most liked about Matt Smith was how damned old he comes across. He's both the youngest and oldest Doctor, and just a little weird looking to boot (very Odo vibe about his face, for me).
He's a great physical actor. Under stress, he hunches over a bit and does this old man scowl:
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His whole demeanor and movements become older, but without any obvious changes. The costuming, which was old-fashioned but not ridiculously so (at first), helped sell the illusion.
 
He's a great physical actor. Under stress, he hunches over a bit and does this old man scowl:
View attachment 5635367
His whole demeanor and movements become older, but without any obvious changes. The costuming, which was old-fashioned but not ridiculously so (at first), helped sell the illusion.
It's funny that the 4 doctors in a row all went on to play comic book villains. Tennet and Smith definitely proved themselves capable IMO, and of course Capaldi is a standard setter it goes without saying. I'd really like to see Matt Smith get some more work in better quality things rather that meme films.
 
I am not watching Ncuti. At least not until people confirm its watchable.

Nothing personal. I couldn’t care less that he is black or gay. Its just that I gave Russell a chance and he doubled down on Wokeshit, and, worst of all, the timeless children Retcon.

Rose, and I don’t mean Billie Piper, might be the most insufferable companion of the doctor. And that’s saying a lot. The whole “male presenting time lord would never understand what is to give up power,” and respecting the pronouns of the evil alien that literally tried to kill millions are incredibly infuriating.

Even the giggle which was a good episode, had the whole “THE unIvERSe is Not BiNARy” crap which is obviously more gender propaganda in disguise.

Unlike Chibnall, RTD does have talent so I do think he will improve the show. But I refuse to support all the crap Chibnall did. Seriously he is the worst thing that has ever happened to Doctor Who.
 
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That's kind of been my annoyance with the franchise revisiting the Time War more and more. They just keep depicting it as a regular war. When in reality a true Time War would be near impossible for us to imagine. Where you're not just shooting a soldier, you're going back a few decades to shoot that soldier's parents. And they're then going back to shoot your grandparents. Etc.

This is what ultimately bugged me about the Day of the Doctor. It acted like the Doctor just detonated a big nuke. By implication, setting off the Moment was more like shoving the Time Lords and Daleks into a room and locking it shut - sealing them off so they couldn't screw with the whole of reality any more. Asking the Doctor "how many did you kill?" is kind of silly. Did he really kill children on Gallifrey? Every Time Lord was a child once (let's set aside the Timeless Child) so does it count as 100%?

Then the ultimately solution of the TARDIS of the Doctor is sealing up Gallifrey? Well just because it's happening today, how does that save them from the Daleks yesterday? Or a week ago? You can't just lock up the planet at a moment in time - you've got to lock it up at every moment in time.
I liked Day of the Doctor for the most part but i thought the end was a total cop out. Having the doctor save Gallifrey but making them forget it was so fucking lame. Ending should have been what they were originally going for by having 10 and 11 equally bare the responsiblity of killing the timelords and fully acknowledging the war doctor as part of who they are instead of a secret they had to hide. but nope, we got the asspull good ending that absolves the doctor of any wrong doing.

And ditto to the Time War. they could at least explain what the time lords did to make them dalek-tier evil. Maybe have it so that the time lords were directly interfering with species to create armies to throw at the daleks.
 
That's kind of been my annoyance with the franchise revisiting the Time War more and more. They just keep depicting it as a regular war. When in reality a true Time War would be near impossible for us to imagine. Where you're not just shooting a soldier, you're going back a few decades to shoot that soldier's parents. And they're then going back to shoot your grandparents. Etc.

This is what ultimately bugged me about the Day of the Doctor. It acted like the Doctor just detonated a big nuke. By implication, setting off the Moment was more like shoving the Time Lords and Daleks into a room and locking it shut - sealing them off so they couldn't screw with the whole of reality any more. Asking the Doctor "how many did you kill?" is kind of silly. Did he really kill children on Gallifrey? Every Time Lord was a child once (let's set aside the Timeless Child) so does it count as 100%?

Then the ultimately solution of the TARDIS of the Doctor is sealing up Gallifrey? Well just because it's happening today, how does that save them from the Daleks yesterday? Or a week ago? You can't just lock up the planet at a moment in time - you've got to lock it up at every moment in time.
The author Lawrence Miles attempted to do justice to the Time War. It was filled with bizarre concepts and the fact that it wasn't even clear who the enemy was. It wasn't the Daleks. It was something altogether more sinister.
 
Time War as a concept sounds very cool but from the very first time it started to get explained, it didn't make sense. A "time war" shouldn't be something you can win anyways and even if you can, it can't be through normal means like your enemy dying because there is a time where they weren't dead. Episodes like Mawdryn Undead or The Curse of Fenric did a better job showing what a "time war" should look like, plans that were put in place before the other was born, time loops, using time as a concept to torture others, weaponized paradoxes etc.

Seventh's run showed this better than any other. Despite me disagreeing with and disliking a lot about those seasons, they did the scifi justice.
 
The author Lawrence Miles attempted to do justice to the Time War. It was filled with bizarre concepts and the fact that it wasn't even clear who the enemy was. It wasn't the Daleks. It was something altogether more sinister.
Would you be willing to expand on this and give some reading / listening recommendations? A cursory look at the man's output shows more than a few stories, split between official and fan work.
 
Would you be willing to expand on this and give some reading / listening recommendations? A cursory look at the man's output shows more than a few stories, split between official and fan work.
Well he's written more than I have read. The first book of his I read was This Town Will Never Let Us Go which is sheer brilliance. Frankly, it's even better if you don't know that it's about the Time War because it's all written from the perspective of a time local. Consequently if you don't know what the novel is a part of and just read it as a standalone novel it becomes one of the most brilliantly weird books I've ever read.

But it's probably not a fit for the question you ask. The thing with Lawrence Miles is that he understands the implications of Time Lord technology. He understands that they can not merely travel the galaxy but the universe. He takes the glib Classic Who elements like the Eye of Harmony being a captured star by Omega and says "great - so they can probably also do {this}". Like there's a city inside a TARDIS in one novel. And if a TARDIS can reshape matter at will and can manipulate time then it can create organic life, obviously, and take as long as it wants to work something out. Obvious consequences. He also has different generations of TARDIS, so there are later iterations that are War TARDISes and TARDISes that take on sentient form. It gets pretty nuts. He also has a third faction which deliberately generate paradoxes for some reason and are kind of a Time Lord cult that is growing.

I honestly couldn't say where to start as there's a bunch of his novels I haven't read and I believe at some point he was no longer allowed to write Who but he was allowed to continue using the stuff he created so some of his later stuff is all kind of weirdly described and anonymised. Like I think the Master becomes the War Master. Or maybe it's the War Lord from the early days. Or maybe the War Master is really the Doctor. I can't tell. I would pick "The Book of the War". It's weird and it's basically an encyclopedia of the Time War. In fact, that's almost definitely where I would suggest you start, unless you want to grab This Town Will Never Let Us Go which is brilliant but wont be the sort of direct time war story you imagine.

Also, The Book of the War has sentient architecture. Which is... not pleasant.
 
I recently heard another reason Chibnall did the timeless children shit was because he was adopted, so he made the doctor adopted.

I mean it's cool if a companion or whatever turns out to be adopted. Another matter is to retcon the main character to be adopted just to self indulge yourself.

So not only this was a horrible retcon, but he is using the doctor to self insert himself. Now that explains why Jodie was written like an a selfish asshole. Remember the "I am too socially awkward to comfort a terminal cancer patient ?" Now that makes sense.

The worst part is that Retconing this will be nigh impossible because he is using "muh minorities as a shield." I am not even white and I despise Chibnall inclusive shit because let's not kid ourselves he did it out pure selfish reasons.
 
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