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Doctor Who — Page 3

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Bingowings said:

I'm just hoping that Moffat isn't going to be Gordon Brown to RTD's Tony Blair.

 

 

Moffat: "My turn! My turn! My turn!"

 

:P

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

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Maybe he won't use it for EVERYTHING like they've had him doing up to this point. :P

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

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Nanner Split said:

Maybe he won't use it for EVERYTHING like they've had him doing up to this point. :P

 

Hell, I don't mind that so much as I'm sick and tired of seeing the Daleks in practically every other episode, to be perfectly honest.  NewWho is threatening to do to the Daleks (and, to a lesser extent, the Cybermen) what Star Trek did to the Borg: turn them from a genuinely scary threat into yet another "ho-hum villain."  They're tying themselves into knots coming up with ways to resurrect them after their latest "ultimate defeat," and IMHO it's getting monotonous.  David Moffett needs to give them a rest; let "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" be the end of it for a while, please!

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who do not.
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Bingowings said:
Nanner Split said:
skyjedi2005 said:

The newer doctor whos are some of the best new science fiction that has been on television.  Amazingly well written and casted, well most of the time anyway.

 

Well, pretty much all the ones that Russell T. Davies DIDN'T write were awesome. :P

I have to agree with you there Tooth And Claw, Turn Left and Midnight were great and the recent Torchwood thing was good too even if it was largely pinched off The Space Traders and The Quatermass Conclusion.

He does write nice little character moments but give him anything that requires Science Fiction ideas or an epic finale and he gets lost, most of those stories seem to based on playing early platform games, only Russell can take a joke from Galaxy Quest and take it seriously.

I've seen comments exactly the same as this over on the Doctor Who boards, constantly slating RTD's writing, saying anything he writes is crap and how great Tooth and claw, Midnight and Torchwood:children of earth was and that he should take note of how to write good episodes like that. Well he was the one that wrote them. No one ever seems to mention the crappy episodes that were written by someone else though like Fear Her, The lazarus experiment &The idiots lantern for example which were some of the worse episodes of the new era.

Lets not forget this is the guy who brought Doctor Who back to what it once was: one of the vary rare programs that the whole family enjoys, just like it was in the 60's & 70's. That is unheard of nowadays. Just look back at the original Doctor who episodes. many were complete crap and then Doctor who became a joke amongst all but the hardened fans. It became complete garbage and thankfully died.  I grew up with Doctor who and loved the Pertwee/ Baker era. New Who is as good now as it was at its height originally.

RTD is a good writer. Just take a look at Second Coming. That was a great drama and had a great ending. One of the best and completely different dramas that had been on TV in a very long time

Can you imagine if the BBC had gone down a different route and hired one of its usual in house writers to bring back DW? One of the writers of eastenders? Just how crap would that have been? And the acting is miles better than it has ever been in Doctor Who (not counting most of the Doctors of course)

Now that rant is over. lol

Another little titbit thats popped up form the on set photos is that Alex Kingston has now been confirmed to be back as River Song with Matt Smiths Doctor and that Karen Gillan's character, Amy Pond, is to have a scottish accent.

 

 

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He also wrote "Love and Monsters" and all the shit with the Slitheens.

Just sayin'. :P

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

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 (Edited)

As I said before we don't know which episodes that aren't recorded as written by RTD but were completely rewritten by him, something he freely admits to doing but for contractual reasons (probably) he can't disclose which ones he did.

Large chunks of RTD dialogue were dropped into stories by other writers to feed the build up to his finales which have got progressively worse with each season.

When people credit RTD for bringing back Doctor Who they tend to forget that Rose (a really awful episode only made watchable by Ecclestone's performance and the novelty of having the show back) did just as well (in terms of viewers and audience response) as the Paul McGann movie and the show at it's lowest point (budget slashed to next to nothing, stuck against Constipation Street with a BBC Director General desperate to kill the show ) was still pulling in the sort of audience figures that Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures get now.

The person who really brought the show back was Julie Gardner who cut through the red tape holding back the nonsense of not bringing back a show that should never have gone away in the first place.

The British public always had a love affair with the character and the show, the viewing figures only went down when it was poorly served by the BBC (red lights should have been flashing when Michael Grade started his antiWho campaign when going out with the lead actor's estranged wife).

Somewhere there is an alternate universe where the show came back without RTD and I dare say it would be just as successful.

Somewhere there is a better alternate universe where in the mid eighties the production team wrote stories that could be made with the budget they had without the look and feel of panto and it never went off air.

I don't loath RTD as a producer (he has been great at maintaining a high profile for the show and securing funding) or even as a script editor but for someone who went out of his way to write the bulk of the stories during his tenure he just isn't that good a writer of stories, especially when fantasy/science fiction gives him an excuse to drop the ball in terms of story logic ( he is sometimes great at dialogue though).

Pointing to the Classic Who Hall Of Shame doesn't let him off the hook, I'd rather watch Timelash for all it's silliness than something as teeth grindingly awful as Journey's End or Last Of The Time Lords.

Other news :

http://www.seenit.co.uk/tom-baker-discusses-return-to-doctor-who/073872/

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Nanner Split said:
skyjedi2005 said:

The newer doctor whos are some of the best new science fiction that has been on television.  Amazingly well written and casted, well most of the time anyway.

 

Well, pretty much all the ones that Russell T. Davies DIDN'T write were awesome. :P

Agreed!  Thank God, I thought I was the only one who thinks Russell T Davies is a hack writer.  Glad I'm not alone.

 

War does not make one great.

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 (Edited)

I dropped the show after season 3 proved to be a load of shit and they were getting rid of Martha (the main good thing in season 3) and bringing in bloody Donna for season 4. Whereas Torchwood I dropped after season 1 because it was crappy from the start and three of the main five characters drove me up the wall.

Crygor64 said:
 


Thank you adywan. That's great news. I've really grown attatched to David. I wasn't ready to let him go yet. Losing a Doctor was always so traumatic for me when I was growing up. *chuckle*

So David is playing The Prince of the Danes. I would enjoy seeing that. His performance in Human Nature/Family of Blood really blew me away. I always liked Christopher but David has truly earned my respect.

David is going. They've got the next Doctor picked. I found David's Doctor to be one of the least convincing Doctors ever, up there with number five. Doctor Ten came off like a giddy immature fanboy playing at being a Timelord, rather than the real thing. None of the stature needed for a Doctor. Eccleston was so much better.

Nanner Split said:I'm pretty much the same way regarding the TV movie: it felt a bit too much like Doctor Who meets The X-Files, but Paul McGann was a good enough Doctor to bring it up a few notches (he was plenty better than Colin Baker.....blech!). 

Colin Baker is underrated. As opposed to say Troughton, who's severely overrated. The tv movie was plain dreadful and McGann was odd as the Doctor.

 

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Nanner Split said:

He also wrote "Love and Monsters" and all the shit with the Slitheens.

Just sayin'. :P

 

Love and Monsters was the best ep in season 2. Real depth. But I wish they hadn't put in the bit in the end about the paving stone girlfriend.

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Does anyone like the look of the new doctor who?

Does anyone actually think the new companion actress is as attractive as Billie Piper was in 2005?

Replacing Tennent is stupidity knowing how popular he is.  Its like Replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig to be James Bond

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Tennant wanted to leave last year but the promise of the specials changed his mind.

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 (Edited)

  Tom Baker will always be doctor who to some fans, in the same way that Sean Connery will always be remembered as  James Bond to old school bond fans.

When i think of dr who i think of the chessyness of the special effects, the cool theme song and that colorful scarf Tom wore, and watching it on an old tv set on pbs before we had cable.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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skyjedi2005 said:

Does anyone like the look of the new doctor who?

Does anyone actually think the new companion actress is as attractive as Billie Piper was in 2005?

Replacing Tennent is stupidity knowing how popular he is.  Its like Replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig to be James Bond

Replacing Tennant makes sense because he did a lousy job as Doctor. But I don't think they're getting anybody better. And the James Bond franchise should have been closed down ages ago. Neither Brosnan nor Craig have been much use in the role. Brosnan's version just wasn't plausible and Craig's version is like a block of stone, not much fun to watch. The last reasonable Bond was the underrated Dalton. But the franchise is way too stone-age in its mentality and no amount of attempts to modernize it can hide that. It was only at all acceptable back decades ago when attitudes were different and even then it came out with extreme stuff (such as Bond raping Pussy Galore). The only Bond really worth looking up the films for is Connery, ten times the actor the other Bonds have been, but the films were damn prmitive back in his time. 

I never found Billie Piper especially attractive (Freema Agyeman is a different matter), but she was very good in the role and added much to the show.

 

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skyjedi2005 said:

  Tom Baker will always be doctor who to some fans, in the same way that Sean Connery will always be remembered as  James Bond to old school bond fans.

When i think of dr who i think of the chessyness of the special effects, the cool theme song and that colorful scarf Tom wore, and watching it on an old tv set on pbs before we had cable.

Tom Baker is a spectacular actor wiith a unique talent and mentality. The old show was mostly crap but he shone through in it nonetheless. Really special performance. The Doctor has never been so much the eccentric alien as when Tom played him. Second best I'd say is Eccleston, who did a marvellous job. After that I'd put Pertwee, who was a perfect archetypical Doctor. I often found Doctor Who (the old show) damn near unwatchable but I watched it anyway because I was fascinated by the different takes different actors had on the same character and because some of the actors did a great job. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are both underrated and turned in their own unique takes with panache. Whereas I think Troughton is overrated. I think there's a lot of pretension involved in Troughton fandom -I think a lot of people think it's clever and intellectual to make a fuss about Troughton. Hartnell's peformance I found unrelatable and basically a hopless caricature. Except for some bits in Castrovalva, Davison's performances were usually bland as hell. I thought the guy had no personality and couldn't act until I saw him elswhere. It's just that his Doctor is probably his worst work. It's like Samuel L Jackson as Mace Windu. Is there any chance George Lucas secretly directed Davison's tenure?

 

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I love all the actors who have played the character, it the writers and the production teams that have been the cause of any hiccups.

Thanks to Big Finish the least popular Doctors and their companions have been given their chance to shine (who would think Bonnie Langford could act?).

The Kingmaker and Spare Parts really give Peter the chance to stretch himself.

Colin (possibly the best audio Doctor) and Sylvester have really grown and we can see (or rather hear) how good Paul could have been.

I love Tom (he was my Doctor) but he could go too far sometimes (it was the role he was born to play).

Pertwee injected dramatic heroism into the role and it's hard to remember how associated he was before with zany comedy until he got the part.

The problem with Troughton is that most of his best stories are lost.

Hartnell is great when he was allowed to go to extremes of lightness (The Romans is a real hoot) or darkness (he is really creepy in The Pilot, something they should have kept up).

Tennant has been asked to do some really stupid scenes and the whole Rose love angle was a big mistake but in something like Midnight or Human Nature he has shown he could really pull out the stops without resorting to the usual push button mockney exuberance.

It would have been nice to see more of Eccleston but he did seem to be hitting one note most of the time (once again down to the often silly material he has to work with).

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Bingowings said:

It would have been nice to see more of Eccleston but he did seem to be hitting one note most of the time (once again down to the often silly material he has to work with).

Hitting one note? I don't see that at all.

 

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Maybe two then.

Survivor guilt fuelled vengeful wraith and excitedly overjoyed to be proved wrong.

Not really Chris's fault (three Slitheen episodes and three Dalek episodes in a short tenure limited his exposure to a variety of situations) but if he had stayed longer I could see a lot of the same things Tennant has been accused of being thrown at him (when it's the fault of neither of them).

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No, there was a lot more to his Doctor than that. Generally, he was hitting multiple different notes simultaneously. And in no way did his performances share the faults of Tennant's performances. His Doctor was utterly different from Tennant's unconvincing lightweight Doctor. Eccleston is definitely the best Doctor after Tom Baker. And overall Eccleston's season was the best Doctor Who stuff ever made. High quality showmaking combined with a great Doctor and a good companion. Things dropped a good ways when they switched to Tennant.

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New Doctor Who special - "The Waters of Mars" - to be aired in the UK on 15th November. Interestingly, the Doctor's companion in this one is the same woman who voiced TC-14 in The Phantom Menace!

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So what did everybody think of David Tennant's last episode?  Personally, I thought it was the usual Russell T David overblown rip-off-every-other-sci-fi-film rubbish, but Tennat was good as ever and the last ten minutes or so leading up to his regeneration were touching. 

I'm glad to see Russell T Davis go and Stephen Moffat take over, as he wrote some of the better tennant episodes.  I'm also glad to see Karen Gillan come in as the doctor's assistant because she's hot :)

War does not make one great.

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I thought the "End of Time" specials were brilliant.  I did expect the Doctor to say "don't get cocky, Wilf" during the gun turret scenes though. lol. Bernard Cribbins was as great as ever. It was definitely the best TV show on over Christmas and a great ending to the Tennant years.

I see we are getting some new style Daleks in the new show and the weeping angels are back too and an old style Tardis. The new interior though looks amazing and big (it's built on the old Torchwood hub set so plenty of layers and space)

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