Dr. Who

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Oilspill Battery said:
I'm not saying chinball's seasons would have been salvaged with capaladi and gomez, but capaldi and gomez would have elevated them.
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Just like on the RWBY thread I am once again the difficult position to defend the saving graces of something bad.

Gomez and Capaldi are indeed talented and they made Moffat's twilight era worth watching. But even talented actors like them needed someone to write their lines. They had to read scripts. And credit were credit is due, Moffat did deliver. The Two master episodes? Fantastic for both Capaldi and Gomez. Almost all Missy's lines are memorable, and he wrote them.

That's not to say they didn't have stinkers. Moffat did start to decline hard specially on his last season in charge. Him portraying the first doctor as a conservative caricature was unforgivable.

But the man has written some of the best episodes on the entire show history like the 50th anniversary, and Heaven sent. And when he was in charge Doctor who was at its peak of international fame.

He is nowhere near as bad as Chibnall who is a talentless hack and whose most "important" contribution is pissing of the fans with his timeless child retcon. Or Davies who only returned to "own the chuds" and has only delivered gimmicks and doubled down on proselytizing.
 
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WitchOfDarkness said:
That's not to say they didn't have stinkers. Moffat did start to decline hard specially on his last season in charge. Him portraying the first doctor as a conservative caricature was unforgivable.
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I did not watch past Clara's exit, so I didn't see the last of Capaldi's run, but I wonder just how much of the scripts were 'influenced' by outside parties. Not saying it can't be Moffat wholly missing the mark and believing what he wrote, but one wonders.
 
GlupShitto said:
Turns out I was right in hating Matt Lucas. Unsurprisingly, the homosexual groomed raped a child while doing the show. Total homo death.
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It's very interesting how you keep claiming that various actors molested children without any evidence. Then, when you're asked to elaborate or point to a source, you just run away and don't say anything.

I've searched up Lucas' name and I'm seeing absolutely nothing on this matter. No tweets, no news articles, nothing. Given that you made an extremely similar claim with David Tennant less than a month ago, crying that he'd abused his child with little to no prompting, I am not tempted to believe you whatsoever.

Are you gleaning this shit from the recent articles claiming that he regrets not becoming a father? If so, I seriously have to question how fucked up your train of logic is for you to see an article titled "man wishes he had children instead of being a giant flaming fag" and immediately assume "man groomed and raped a small child on set."
 
it's incredibly funny how this channel has like half a dozen videos defending how shitty modern doctor who is, calling everyone who doesnt unhinge their jaw for the serving of slop by hollywood pedophiles about contemporary social issues reactionaries, tourists and not thinking about media... then has to with this last video outright admit that the show did some stupid, retardidly shitty writing that broke the show
 
Anonitolia said:
It's very interesting how you keep claiming that various actors molested children without any evidence. Then, when you're asked to elaborate or point to a source, you just run away and don't say anything.

I've searched up Lucas' name and I'm seeing absolutely nothing on this matter. No tweets, no news articles, nothing. Given that you made an extremely similar claim with David Tennant less than a month ago, crying that he'd abused his child with little to no prompting, I am not tempted to believe you whatsoever.

Are you gleaning this shit from the recent articles claiming that he regrets not becoming a father? If so, I seriously have to question how fucked up your train of logic is for you to see an article titled "man wishes he had children instead of being a giant flaming fag" and immediately assume "man groomed and raped a small child on set."
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Overly Serious said:
Which gives you some idea of what I mean when I say that River Song was less likeable than Bill Pots.

Anecdotally, I knew someone who wasn't really into Who that much though her partner was. When the new companion was announced she knew before I did because I was starting to stop watching by that point. So I asked her so who is it? Her reply: "It's great. She's a lesbian and a Person of Colour". But what is she like, I asked? "She's a lesbian and a person of colour". That's all this individual knew about her and she was clapping and squeeing about it. Because that's the way her mind works: just identity politics and labels.
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Ugh, there's a webcomic/meme I love to post here that quotes that almost word for word but I can never find it when I need it.

Anybody help a robot out?
 
GlupShitto said:
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>unarchived tweet
>of a tiktok video
>that consists exclusively of an insufferable, unkempt guy holding up a phone and playing otherwise-innocuous voice messages of Lucas talking about traveling, the weather, and watching football (all in an odd monotone)
>whose only known presence before was also accusing another British actor of the same thing
>the only other source for these allegations is complete hearsay from the tweet itself
>and the guy posting this tweet has a profile that looks like this:
1749342188631.webp1749342210307.webp

It's a damn shame you lost your pink triangle. Now people will have to point out your retardation manually, and that wastes everybody's time for no good reason.

EDIT: the guy in the video isn't even related to any of this and doesn't claim to have any association with the BBC, Matt Lucas, or Dr Who. I'm pretty sure he's using this to shill himself and his website. Did you bother to take two seconds to verify the utter idiocy you're posting as fact?
1749342508670.webp
 
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blackface enthusiast said:
but they resent that it's still viewed as entertainment or something meant for children.
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The problem is as always the first sequel conundrum.

The first sequel always is the most important aspect because it sets a line of ideas that can happen. If you stick too much to the original any idea that deviates from it is seen as strange and weird, even more when more things are added in an expanded universe stories.

I think Gundam has made the perfect sequel with Zeta Gundam in 1986, where the good guys faction of the first series are bow the bad guys who uses gas to kill people in the colonies and repress them with violence. So now in Gundam, we have works that shows that there are good and bad people at both sides and each story can have their own hero. This level of maturity never happened in Star Wars for example, so it is always jedi vs sith and when they tried to explore a little more (Acolyte), the structure of the conflict is already too tough to experiment and mold like it was a creative clay.

In Gundam we know from the first series that War is Hell, and in this episode, the protagonist's mother is being held by the enemy faction, after trying to rescue her mid battle, the other battleship is launched and accidentally crushes his mother as we see her decapited head being launched in the air. Of course, the protagonist goes fucking mad and try to stop the entire battleship by himself but second later, both factions are in peace negotiations and raise the white flag. He is stopped by his allies and went to get his mother head back, he delivers his mother's head to an adult and just sits down crying with the other children.

But here is the thing about this series: this was made for children and broadcasted in 1993 in the 17:00 slot, the protagonist is a 13 year old boy. All of this because the first sequel and other subsequent series were allowed to experiment and go to alternate routes instead of being so close go the original. And you can watch here if you think this is bullshit.


One example of how the first sequel can alienate the public is the Alien film franchise. We first got Alien then Aliens and after that everything that came out was similar to that until Prometheus. Prometheus was created by the original author, if we take the same movie and transport it back for it to be the "sequel", probably the Aliens film series would be totally different. Another even more cursed first sequel conundrum is the Terminator, even more because T2 is the best one and everything that cames later (not counting the batman actor one) tries to ape the T2 formula.
 
Registration said:
This level of maturity never happened in Star Wars for example, so it is always jedi vs sith and when they tried to explore a little more (Acolyte), the structure of the conflict is already too tough to experiment and mold like it was a creative clay.
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Oh there's a bunch of EU stuff that can really disprove that claim.

The problem with Acolyte is that Leslie Headland is absolutely not a good fit for Star Wars and doesn't believe in things like "management" or "leadership" and so tries to run a show by committee when in massive creative endeavors like that you need someone to make the choices and take the responsibilities.

Other than that your point is 100% spot on and I could do a whole separate rant about first sequels myself.

To keep it somewhat on topic we could point out Star Trek ended up pulling this off with TNG.

SF Debris did have a whole video on the effort of Troughton to keep Dr Who alive when he replaced the main star, so DW would be another good example.
 
Flexo said:
Oh there's a bunch of EU stuff that can really disprove that claim.

The problem with Acolyte is that Leslie Headland is absolutely not a good fit for Star Wars and doesn't believe in things like "management" or "leadership" and so tries to run a show by committee when in massive creative endeavors like that you need someone to make the choices and take the responsibilities.

Other than that your point is 100% spot on and I could do a whole separate rant about first sequels myself.

To keep it somewhat on topic we could point out Star Trek ended up pulling this off with TNG.

SF Debris did have a whole video on the effort of Troughton to keep Dr Who alive when he replaced the main star, so DW would be another good example.
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I know, but most people won't access those media and stick to the easily consumable stuff. My favorite Star Wars of all time is a comic based on a game that is based on the Star Wars films. In series that get bigger as the years went by, even stuff like TV series get swept by.

Which Terminator fan watcheed Sara Connor Chronicles? Which Indiana Jones read a single novel in the dozen published? The same goes for any big franchise. You can create as many adjacent works possible, but the first sequel is the most important one. Another example of a bad sequel that kinda ruins the possibilities of other stories: Jurassic Park films, the second is so fucking ass.

I think even Star Trek TNG kinda fumbled with it at the start, but back then you could have two or three seasons of a middling series and get even more seasons. You had so much more episodes, nowadays you get less and less that you can't afford to fuck up.
 
Registration said:
One example of how the first sequel can alienate the public is the Alien film franchise. We first got Alien then Aliens and after that everything that came out was similar to that until Prometheus. Prometheus was created by the original author, if we take the same movie and transport it back for it to be the "sequel", probably the Aliens film series would be totally different. Another even more cursed first sequel conundrum is the Terminator, even more because T2 is the best one and everything that cames later (not counting the batman actor one) tries to ape the T2 formula.
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Caveat - Termainator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles did something different. That was neither a deconstruction like the later movies nor simply aping T2. It followed on from the end of T2 and had a lot of interesting ideas. As well as some great casting and better-than-most writing. There's a Skynet scene in season 2 which is way more creepy than anything in any of the movies. And the terminators grow more sophisticated. I recall an episode in which a person talks about the death of his father to one unknowingly, only for that same terminator near the end of the episode repeat the same story to someone else as if it were their own experience. The way they learn, repeat and simulate in the show is not over-done nor common to every model, but we see how they too are progressing.

Registration said:
Which Terminator fan watcheed Sara Connor Chronicles?
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Me! I did! :D
 
Shocked and Horrified said:
We did. It wasn't very good. I felt that characterization of Sarah wasn't true to the movie Sarah.
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I thought Lena Headey did an excellent job and she also managed to be convincingly tough in the fight scenes which isn't easy for most actresses. Her motivations seem unchanged from the movie: Protect and raise John to be what the world needs him to be; find and destroy Skynet before it starts. She has a calmer manner than the Linda Hamilton version but then the first movie's Sarah was a young woman with no experience of such events suddenly thrust into a life or death situation. And the second movie takes place where she's been imprisoned in an asylum for some time. The TV show Sarah is older and also in better life situation (kind of). She's also not a modern Girl Boss deus ex-machina type. Quite flawed and with limitations.
 
Shocked and Horrified said:
She also let John go off into the future with Summer Glau. I felt that was out of character. She would have gone with him.
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You should probably spoiler that in case anybody wants to watch the show - it's basically the finale. And one of the big themes of the show is John growing up and becoming more independent of her. And conversely, how protective is too protective. And another big theme which relates to what you just said is the tension between Cameron who knows him in the future and Sarah who knows him today. It's disturbing to Sarah that something she hates in some ways knows her son better than she does. And that dynamic tension runs through the whole show until the finale which you reference.

Couldn't find the clip I wanted where Sarah is forced to ask Cameron what she thinks John would do because Sarah doesn't know. But did find this funny exchange which is related.


Shocked and Horrified said:
I wanted to like the show. The end of T2 still makes me cry. The show felt unfocused to me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It failed to meet my expectations.
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I'm the opposite. If I'd seen T2 after watching that series I'd have considered it a decent action movie but I'd have been disappointed at the lack of exploring ideas and character.
 
Lone Star said:
I'll bite the bullet and ask the question. In real sincerity, is the series really worth watching from the start? Obviously not the recent stuff, but does the really old stuff, the very earliest stuff, actually hold up?
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In all honesty, it depends. Doctor Who is a show that had a lot of cast and crew changes, thanks to its most important plot device - the "regeneration" powers that
allowed the show to switch actors for the Doctor. Sometimes, this switch has been accompanied by a switch in the show's tone and format. It's hard to judge how good the early episodes were, because it was a show that was trying to find its footing for several years. It also had an extremely low budget by modern standards; so low that a lot of the early episodes were lost, thanks to the tapes they were filmed on being wiped and reused. Doctor Who in the olden days was treated like throwaway children's educational entertainment, because it largely was.

If you want to watch the beginning of the show and you don't have a high tolerance for black and white cinematography, slow pacing, and sets so cheap you can see the hinges on the back, then you will not enjoy the first seasons of Doctor Who. You may get more value by watching SFdebris' reviews of the series, which contain a lot of in-depth, behind the scenes info as well as summaries of the show's episodes, including some of the missing ones. I would say that the Third Doctor's seasons are where the show starts hitting its stride, and that's a good time to jump in. Some people like to start at the Fourth Doctor's introduction. Tom Baker had the longest run as the doctor, and his quirky mannerisms, iconic look and comic timing endeared him with many fans, not to mention he had some of the most memorable companions of the Classic Doctor years.
 
It should also be noted that depending on how far back you want to go you might not be able to; back in the good old days they didn't preserve films and then the ones they did some of them were destroyed from I want to say water damage from a fire? Either way there are some lost episodes. Just warning you now if you are a completinist.
 
@Lone Star I'll add my own take and say this as someone who was a big Classic Who fan, has probably seen all the surviving episodes and even the odd partially animated episode where the audio survived but the picture was lost: Probably not.

There's a mix of good and bad and there's a lot of good stuff to glean from watching the old episodes. But you will enjoy them best if you are already a fan of old media. For example, my avatar is from a British Sci-Fi TV show called UFO. It's good and I enjoyed watching it. But for a modern audience the pacing is incredibly slow, the ideas which were new to many people in the day are now immediately predictable to modern audiences. Classic Doctor Who is similar. It was family entertainment with a pace that seems genteel by today's frenetic standards and done with quite little budget even back then. Fans back at the time were sometimes vaguely embarrassed when it was held up against flashy bigger budget American shows. Hard to see it this way now but at the time it was almost the cheap knock off of American Sci-Fi shows, making up for shaky sets and shaky costumes with just writing and British theatre tradition acting. You can see how they were still finding their feet with television and treating it much like a filmed stage play. And a lot of the old stories were satires on issues of the day. You can only appreciate something like The Sunmakers from the mindset of someone concerned about corporate power and unrestrained capitalism. So in addition to everything else you have to be able to translate your mind back into that of people of the time. Easier if you were once such a person.

Now, is it enjoyable to watch old episodes? I think so. Are there good storylines and good characters? Yes. Is it interesting from a historical point of view as a Sci-Fi buff, watching the progression of TV serials and the genre on its journey from Professor Quatermass to The Stone Tapes to The Expanse? Absolutely!

But were someone to say to me "I have a gap and want to pick up a nice long-running TV show to entertain me. What do you recommend?", I likely would not say Doctor Who. It would be very conditional on who that person was. You might love it but good chance you'd feel more engaged by something modern.

Of course there's nothing wrong with dipping in and out and watching a few stories that are fan favourites. And if you're foolish enough to ask here for recommendations, you'll be awash with them before you know it.
 
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