Doctor Who — Page 75

Some more information about the Shada releases…

The blu-ray seems to be top notch, however, the DVD is a 4:3 image pillarboxed to 16:9, and encoded as progressive. So, 25p and a bit juddery compared to the other video/vidfired releases of the range.

Sounds like I should just get the Blu-ray.

Was the Christmas special good or bad? How were the Capaldi’s last moments and Whitaker’s first?

I enjoyed it overall. Don’t like how the First Doctor was treated as a character but Bradley knocked it out of the park with what he was given. Capaldi was excellent, and really given a chance to showcase his Doctor as it was more of a character piece.

I really enjoyed the way the regeneration sequence was shot - we don’t see Whittaker’s face until the newly-regenerated Doctor sees it herself for the first time. The scene from there on out was very similar to Matt Smith’s first scene and the opening of The Eleventh Hour.

She did just fine. I like the vibe she seems to be going for, but it’s like 25-30 seconds tops, so there’s still a lot of ways they can go with her. You really can’t judge based on the outgoing Doctor’s regeneration scene, you have to wait for their first full appearance to get any kind of handle on the performance.

I was really happy that she seemed to have a sense of wonder about her in the scene that has been in short supply during the Capaldi years (though it wasn’t entirely absent).

Can’t say anything about Whittaker, but I wish we had just one more year of Capaldi with new writers.

^Same Handman. He’s a really stellar performer, and I’m afraid that the writing has never matched the calibre of his talents.

Personally, I didn’t like this year’s Christmas special at all.

spoilers ahead

It was full of the types of bizarre, convoluted choices that Moffat seems to indulge in… (1) What was the purpose of having “fake” versions of the companions come back through Testimony? It just seemed dramatically unsatisfying, especially considering Bill didn’t actually die! (2) Furthermore, the First Doctor was more or less just used for jokes about how the show has progressed but not much more… (3) Returning to Rusty, that Dalek from that all right episode at the beginning of Capaldi’s run seems like a weird detour. (4) What was the purpose of connecting The Captain to the Brigadier? I understand fan service, but really, this comes out of nowhere… and the character hasn’t been regularly on-air since the 70s. (5) Lastly, the ending for the WW1 soldier seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere; I don’t recall them even acknowledging that it was Christmastime beforehand.

That being said, I really liked the first two seasons of Moffat’s run (Series 5 and 6). They felt fresh with a whimsy, fairy tale aspect that the previous seasons lacked. They were also grounded with a set of characters: Rory, Amy, and River that we actually gave a damn about.

But it seems like after that, he dabbled far too much into fan service and convoluted time travel shenanigans. Doctor Who seems to have gotten so muddled in its own continuity that I don’t dare think what it might be like for a first time viewer to try the series out now. What, for example, would a new viewer think about the Brigadier reference in this episode? It’s just a weird, unnecessary callback. More crucially, ll the fake-out regenerations in the past few seasons just undermine dramatic tension; we don’t want to be hyper-aware of the fact that the Doctor can always regenerate himself out of trouble. This, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t occasional gems… Heaven Sent is extraordinary, but, for every one of those, you have a Robin Hood episode.

Overall, these problems would have been more acceptable if you had better characters to latch onto. Bill was great, but Clara certainly was not. Say what you want (I think Jenna Coleman is a fine performer), but her character has a different personality each season! It’s hard to get emotionally involved, and, indeed I didn’t when she showed up (ala Amy Pond) in Capaldi’s swansong.

I think The End of Time, The Time of the Doctor, and, certainly, The Parting of the Ways were all superior to this.

Agreed about them getting the First Doctor all wrong.

‘So why did you leave Gallifrey, Doctor?’

Well, you see my dear, really I’ve been Roger fucking Sterling the whole time. I left to drink Brandy and chase broads, of course!

That said, even the first Doctor had a few okay moments.

Everything with Mark Gatiss and the war was great. Enjoyed that it was a slower piece. Capaldi was great, and his lines well written (from someone that doesn’t buy into the ‘they don’t write well for Capaldi’ notion). Jodie’s first scene was a tease that left me definitely looking forward to her performance. Capaldi’s last moments were nice. He clearly contributed to that himself. The thing about children is from his own head canon for the Doctor’s name. that was a nice touch.

But something was lacking in general. Bringing Rusty back didn’t make much sense. His whole realm was not very interesting. Partly, perhaps, because all of the sets seemed uninspired. Rachel is easily one of, if not the, best director the show has ever had. And this was easily her weakest contribution.

I finally saw the new episode. Other than the First Doctor being used a bit too much for comic relief, it’s one of the best of Capaldi’s era. I agree with the weaknesses described above, but my expectations were low after the nonsensical mess that was “The Doctor Falls”.

Spoiler

I’m surprised the Doctor chose to the soldier. That could alter history. What if his death is what inspired the Brigadier to join the military? Also Ben and Polly’s absence was glaring, especially in the scene in the first Doctor’s Tardis. I had a difficult time understanding the new Doctor’s first words. I had to replay that scene with captions. Users probably understood her easily.

I had a harder time hearing 12’s last words. 13’s first were clear (and well delivered) for me.

I had a hard understanding Capaldi throughout his run. Again I am sure it was a lot easier for UKers to understand him.

I had a tough time with Thirteen’s first words, too. She seems to be using a different (her native?) accent than I’m used to hearing from Whittaker.

I’ve loved the Capaldi era, especially Moffat’s stories. As ever, there are some episodes that don’t work as well. No era has ever been flawless. But I also pretty much always walk away from a new episode having enjoyed it. And that’s true for most of the classic series, barring a few from the late 70s and 80s.

I was nervous about series 10, because the final Sherlock series was a train wreck, suggesting that Moffat really was out of steam. but he pulled S10 off brilliantly, IMO.

This was probably the first time I was left thinking, “wow, I really wish they did something aside from this. anything, really.” This is what I expected from Sherlock S4 Moffat. Oh well. It had a few moments, and I loved it from the return to WW1 through to the cliffhanger. Gattis had a rare wonderful contribution to the show. That hasn’t happened since Series 1 or, arguably, Nightshade. And the brief glimpse we’ve had of the next era has me excited for the show to move on.

towne32 said:

series 10

Ok, I have always wondered this and I have to ask, why do you UKers refer to a season as a series? In America, each year of series is a season, and all of the seasons put together are called a series. Just do you guys use to refer to the whole thing, if you are using series for year?

Warbler said:

towne32 said:

series 10

Ok, I have always wondered this and I have to ask, why do you UKers refer to a season as a series? In America, each year of series is a season, and all of the seasons put together are called a series. Just do you guys use to refer to the whole thing, if you are using series for year?

I don’t know the answer, as I’m from the US.

For many shows I use the terms interchangeably. For Who, they called the old show Seasons and the new one Series. So being consistent/accurate removes ambiguity as to whether you’re talking about Pertwee’s first year or Smith’s third, for example.

I’m not sure why. In the US, a show is a series, and one year of episodes is a season, whereas in the UK, a show is a programme, and one year of episodes is a series.

Oddly, for Classic Who, they used season instead of series - perhaps “series” is a more recent thing over there? I dunno.

Tantive3+1 said:

After four years, I decided to watch Doctor Who again for the Christmas special just to see the regeneration at the end letting the whole “breaking the 12 regeneration limit rule” slide and giving it a chance to see if the show had gotten better seeing the First Doctor would be in it and had considered watching Peter Capaldi’s run as the Doctor now that it was over.

It only reaffirmed my belief that Stephen Moffat had ruined the show and that a majority of it, including Jodie Whittaker’s casting (I’m sincerely not trying to come off as misogynist), was done by the BBC for their own selfish agenda’s.

Well, you could probably try even harder. It’s not an unreasonable casting decision.

Anyway, they dealt with the regeneration limit last time. They decided to count Tennant’s fakeout regeneration. The suspected reason for that is that Moffat did not plan on staying through all of Capaldi’s run. His creation of the War Doctor would therefore throw his successor into needing to deal with the limit very early in their tenure. Potentially unfair to them and only because Moffat invented an incarnation. So he got it out of the way.