I REALLY wanted to like 12. I was prepared to rank him up there with 2 as a fave.
They just... never utilized what they had save maybe once or twice.
Same. His first episode however left an incredibly sour note in my mouth due to how cringy it was watching him try to be funny and goofy n sheeit, which became all the worse once the "theme of the series" was revealed by the end of him trying to discover "who he really is" which actually made me roll my eyes.
Come the subsequent dalek episode with him stumbling and mumbling around while being a massive cunt to anyone who he decided was "a soldier" and any ember of optimism I had was quickly snuffed out.
Then came the next two forgettable beige mush-fest episodes aside from robot of sherwood and that shitty school episode which i never even bothered to watch, in which clara began grating on me exponentially more while the doctor continued to do precisely fucking nothing to impress me in acting or characterisation.
Then came the fucking moon episode......and my interest in doctor who as a franchise died screaming
forever.
Even 7 years later I am still not over just how jawdroppingly bad this episode was and how *utterly* these 45 minutes of television destroyed my interest in the series. Even after the shit we have seen pulled with star wars and star trek and a dozen other sci fi/fantasy franchises, this shit still sticks out in my mind as some of the most godawful media I have ever been exposed to. Not only did it destroy my interest in the series, but my fathers as well, and indeed his father too.
Three generations of life long doctor who fans wiped out in less than a fucking hour.
After that.....yeah i did not even bother coming back to the series until the finale two parter and it was as absolute fucking trash as I expected it to be. Capaldi still vacillated between tedious beige mumbling and cringy ass hyperactive over acting.
The next series opened with the davros two parter and it was even worse, combining the utter trash seen thus far with some of the most obnoxious wastes of opportunity ever seen on the show up until that point along with what may have been the shittest worldbuilding to date that continued the ongoing trend of retroactively tainting the franchise by just how fucking stupid the shit being added was(i.e. the daleks charge their weapons by feeling angry and the big end reveal is that the doctor inspires davros to add a fucking dictionary to the daleks design) and thats before the moffat patented "super serious end of season crisis that despite being of lifelong importance to all characters has never been mentioned before and will never be mentioned again once resolved" storyline was introduced with that hybrid bullshit.
After this I did not even bother watching again until the finale, and even then i only was able to watch fragments of that godawful melodramatic overblown trainwreck which despite being shilled to hell and back as "capaldi at his best" just had him continue to overact/underact like some shitty uncle trying to be one of the cool kids and clara continued to be insufferable right up to the moment she finally fucking left, and that fucking gargoyle maisie williams was just the tumorous cherry on top of the cancer sundae of this whole meaningless season.
The next season I never even started and will never watch. However one thing I will say is that i saw a clip on youtube a few months after its finale of capaldi having a scene with the old master in the last episode where his acting seems to have actually slightly improved and matured to the point of being watchable, and for just a few moments during his earnest but somewhat meandering speechifying he actually came across as a halfway decent doctor...
Then the "lol the first doctor was so pwobwematic and shit unlike our superior currentyear doctor" christmas special happened and that final possible spark of goodwill was blown away forever.
