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Spatula City posted:I think the complaints about Moffat are overblown, and that fans are looking back on the RTD era with either rose tinted glasses, or glasses tinted so far as to let in no light. RTD's run was largely crap and made me embarrassed to be a fan of the show at times. Moffat's run turned me off of the show completely and (50th anniversary special aside) I no longer watch it. Also as Jakiri pointed out, Moffat doesn't get a pass on the behind the scenes stuff because it was largely his fault to begin with. Spatula City posted:So, I see people want to go back to the time when everything was colossally dumb all the time, and Rose was the Center of the World. Jolly good. I respect your bad taste. How about those of us who want to go back to the time when the show was actually consistently good (aka "The Holmes/Hinchcliffe Era")? 
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Nov 22, 2014 08:46
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Sydney Bottocks posted:How about those of us who want to go back to the time when the show was actually consistently good (aka "The Cartmel Era")? FTFY I'm still a fan of both RTD and Moffat, in broad strokes
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Nov 22, 2014 08:48
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DoctorWhat posted:FTFY As long as Cartmel can tone down his Ace/Sophie Aldred fixation, I'd be OK with that, too.
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Nov 22, 2014 08:51
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Vanderdeath posted:Speaking as a light Who fan (I'm a filthy American peasant who grew up catching the same smattering of Fourth and Fifth Doctor episodes on my local PBS before the internet was a thing), I would love to see a new showrunner come along and revert the show back to a lovable old goof and his companions hopping around time and space and getting into all sorts of predicaments. There's so many universe or world-ending threats during Moffat's run that I'm sick of him trying to one up himself every season since. Someone needs to rein the show back in, dial back the Doctor worship and revert the show back to dudes visiting Earth-like quarry worlds filled with human-looking aliens instead of London or Cardiff for the umpteenth time.
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Nov 22, 2014 12:20
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Sydney Bottocks posted:How about those of us who want to go back to the time when the show was actually consistently good (aka "The Holmes/Hinchcliffe Era")? Bullshit, it's never been consistently good. It's been 80% garbage for 50 years and you're a liar or a fool to say otherwise.
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Nov 22, 2014 13:51
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Sentinel Red posted:Bullshit, it's never been consistently good. 1970 called, it says you're talking poo poo
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Nov 22, 2014 14:08
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A non-fan would likely do a better job than Moffat. I feel like one of the biggest issues with the show right now is that it's gone "too sci-fi" and painted itself into a corner where every story has to be moon dragons or Cyberman legions. It watches like a fanboy's fan fiction, and I've given Moffat too many second chances. So I'm done. And lol at the false dichotomy that Moffat abd RTD are the only people in the world.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:09
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Back when I did a quick thumps up/down on the whole of Doctor Who (I don't have archives, so can't find my exact numbers) I found out that each Doctor's time was roughly 40-60% poo poo. There are, however, individual sections of that which are excellent (eg Macra Terror through Fury from the Deep*, the aforementioned series 7, the Ace trilogy) *Excluding the two missing episodes of the Ice Warriors, which are both complete poo poo
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Nov 22, 2014 14:11
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I should run it, I have strong feelings that Doctor Who should be all sorts of crazy crap. Pure historical? Why not! High concept sci fi episode? Go right ahead. Script for Dracula with Dracula crossed out and SPACE DRACULA written over the top? Darn tooting
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Nov 22, 2014 14:12
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moths posted:A non-fan would likely do a better job than Moffat. I feel like one of the biggest issues with the show right now is that it's gone "too sci-fi" and painted itself into a corner where every story has to be moon dragons or Cyberman legions. It watches like a fanboy's fan fiction, and I've given Moffat too many second chances. So I'm done. See, I don't think it's 'sci-fi' enough. I mean, yeah, it has all the sci-fi props and trappings of moon dragons and cyberman legions (both of which are crap), but there are very few actually interesting ideas going on. There's nothing really meaty, there are few moral or philosophical problems (despite this season's ham-handed 'is the Doctor good?!' thing, or aforementioned moon dragon bollocks), and there're few more high-concept 'what if?' scenarios (bar Flatline, which was an awesome idea that still could've been pushed further). I want my Doctor Who to be more challenging, basically. I want more stuff like The Girl Who Waited or the Flesh Two-Parter or Midnight or Vincent and The Doctor. The 'darker and more mature tone' of this last series wasn't really anything of the sort, it was just the same old stuff except this time done pretty joylessly.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:42
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Yeah, there are a lot of valid criticisms of recent Doctor Who but I don't think 'too sci fi' is one of them. 'Bombastic, overwrought space fantasy' would be a more apt description.
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Nov 22, 2014 15:07
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Sydney Bottocks posted:How about those of us who want to go back to the time when the show was actually consistently good (aka "The Holmes/Hinchcliffe Era")? "Waah, Russell T Davies, gay agenda, chav companions, blowjob concrete slab, etc. Things were so much better in the John Nathan-Turner era!" "Waah, John Nathan-Turner, stunt casting, pantomime, garish costumes, etc. Things were so much better in the Graham Williams era!" "Waah, Graham Williams, dumbing down, too much humor, robot dog, Douglas Adams is poo poo, etc. Things were so much better in the Philip Hinchcliffe era!" "Waah, Philip Hinchcliffe, too gothic, Hammer Horror fixation, etc. Things were so much better in the Barry Letts era!" "Waah, Barry Letts, too James Bond, stuck on Earth, no sci-fi or time traveling, UNIT are poo poo, etc. Things were so much better in the Derrick Sherwin era!" "Waah, Derrick Sherwin, The War Games was too long, what's all this Time Lord bollocks, etc. Things were so much better in the Peter Bryant era!" "Waah, Peter Bryant, more "base under siege" bollocks, Zoe's too loving annoying, etc. Things were so much better in the Innes Lloyd era!" "Waah, Innes Lloyd, the new Doctor's a loving clown, no more historical stories, too many monsters, "base under siege", etc. Things were so much better in the John Wiles era!" "Waah, John Wiles, an episode without the Doctor?!, a 12-episode Dalek bore-fest? Things were so much better in the Verity Lambert era!" "An educational children's science-fiction show featuring some old man who travels around in a police box? Produced by a woman?! Good luck with that poo poo."
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Nov 22, 2014 16:08
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I mean more that if you remove the sci-fi props and stage-dressing, there's nothing substantial left. Really good sci-fi tells a story through the lens of the fantastic, but it just feels like they're paying more attention to the lens than the story. Instead of "How can we use the Master* to tell a great story?" they're asking "What do we have to write to have the Master onscreen?" (*Or Cybermen, or Clara, or whatever else.) moths fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 16:18
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moths posted:I mean more that if you remove the sci-fi props and stage-dressing, there's nothing substantial left. In that case, we agree entirely. It's such a shame, too, because the format allows literally infinite story-telling potential. Yes, Doctor Who is about as far from 'hard' sci-fi as it's possible to get, but that doesn't preclude telling good sci-fi stories.
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Nov 22, 2014 16:50
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The stories have definitely taken on a very formulaic approach of: 1. Doctor/Clara arrive 2. Mysterious monster killing people 3. Doctor figures out twist behind monster 4. Doctor/Clara saves day It's getting really predictable.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:02
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Mokinokaro posted:The stories have definitely taken on a very formulaic approach of:
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Nov 22, 2014 17:10
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Talking of Steven Moffat's time as showrunner reminds me of that scene in The End Of Time where the Doctor tells the Master that he's amazing and if he put his mind to it he could be a beautiful genius, but his downfall is that he's greedy and power hungry and doesn't pay attention to small details and he gets too excited about his great plots and forgets about the human element which is actually the part of a story that really counts, I forget how much of that specifically is in the episode but that's basically the gist of it.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:11
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Sentinel Red posted:Bullshit, it's never been consistently good. It's been 80% garbage for 50 years and you're a liar or a fool to say otherwise. Third Doctor's first season. Checkmate.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:12
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Hopefully Moffat won't come up with anything as dreadful as "The End of Time" for his last story, but he's already written a couple of episodes that are that bad, so I shan't hold my breath.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:16
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Mokinokaro posted:The stories have definitely taken on a very formulaic approach of: .
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Nov 22, 2014 17:30
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Mokinokaro posted:The stories have definitely taken on a very formulaic approach of: ... you have watched Doctor Who before this season, right?
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Nov 22, 2014 17:49
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Mokinokaro posted:The stories have definitely taken on a very formulaic approach of: This is every Doctor Who episode ever.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:28
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There have been a lot of episodes this series where the episode is about What the hell is going on?, normally Doctor Who plots are not so, well, hidden.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:46
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2house2fly posted:Talking of Steven Moffat's time as showrunner reminds me of that scene in The End Of Time where the Doctor tells the Master that he's amazing and if he put his mind to it he could be a beautiful genius, but his downfall is that he's greedy and power hungry and doesn't pay attention to small details and he gets too excited about his great plots and forgets about the human element which is actually the part of a story that really counts, I forget how much of that specifically is in the episode but that's basically the gist of it. See also, Moffat would get "dizzy if he tried to walk a straight line."
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Nov 23, 2014 03:21
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I should run it, I have strong feelings that Doctor Who should be all sorts of crazy crap. Pure historical? Why not! High concept sci fi episode? Go right ahead. Script for Dracula with Dracula crossed out and SPACE DRACULA written over the top? Darn tooting Yeah, that's the show's greatest strength! Because the setting is "all of time and space, including made up places outside of time and space" and the characters for each episode are "the Doctor, his companion(s) and literally anybody else," and because the tone has differed so much over the years, it can be anything it wants to be. It can be an homage to Hitchcock set in a space station, a zany, screwball 30s comedy set during the French Revolution, or a dystopian satire. I think that's why it's good to shake the show up every couple of years, particularly when you have writers like RTD and Moffat who have very definitely stylized writing. I actually feel the same way about Douglas Adams, whose quirks, which I love, are very recognizable and would have gotten a little tired if we'd had ten years of them. New blood just regenerates the show!
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Nov 24, 2014 07:08
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It can be madcap and zany or dark and depressing as long as the stories are good. We'll probably survive this change of show runner too, most of us 
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Nov 24, 2014 07:35
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Bicyclops posted:I think that's why it's good to shake the show up every couple of years, particularly when you have writers like RTD and Moffat who have very definitely stylized writing. I actually feel the same way about Douglas Adams, whose quirks, which I love, are very recognizable and would have gotten a little tired if we'd had ten years of them. This makes me wonder what kind of stories Douglas Adams would've written for the reboot  I've always been a fan of his work, even long before I got into Who.
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Nov 24, 2014 10:02
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Wall-to-wall farting aliens.
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Nov 24, 2014 14:20
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Kazy posted:This makes me wonder what kind of stories Douglas Adams would've written for the reboot I'm sure they would have hired him to pen one or two for old times sake, assuming he could actually meet any of his deadlines
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Nov 24, 2014 15:23
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Bicyclops posted:I'm sure they would have hired him to pen one or two for old times sake, assuming he could actually meet any of his deadlines Right about now he'd be finishing his first Eccleston story.
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Nov 24, 2014 16:12
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I really don't think Adams' writing would suit any of the revival Doctors, except maybe 9. You would really need either a completely alien Doc (4) or a slightly dull everyman (5) for it to work.
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Nov 24, 2014 17:28
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...11 doesn't count as being a completely alien doc?
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Nov 24, 2014 17:33
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It's actually a little impressive that in this day and age, we technically do not know whether or not Jenna Coleman is leaving after the Christmas special or who her replacement is. Normally, casting spoilers really are just unavoidable.
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Nov 24, 2014 17:36
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Acne Rain posted:...11 doesn't count as being a completely alien doc? Season 5 Eleven, sure. Season 6 on? Too grandfatherly for it to really work.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:18
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I really don't think Adams' writing would suit any of the revival Doctors, except maybe 9. You would really need either a completely alien Doc (4) or a slightly dull everyman (5) for it to work. What about 8?
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Nov 24, 2014 19:08
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My only exposure to 8 is the tv movie, night of the doctor, and whatever his first audio is, so I couldn't tell ya.
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Nov 24, 2014 19:18
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Big Mean Jerk posted:My only exposure to 8 is the tv movie, night of the doctor, and whatever his first audio is, so I couldn't tell ya. You should find the audio of Shada!
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Nov 24, 2014 19:20
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Eight does have a little bit of Four's mannerisms in him usually, too. He's more approachable and excited about things, definitely, but you can definitely see Tom Baker saying things like "You should never turn down tea, Charley. It's terribly rude and that's how wars are started." I don't think it's easy to speculate what Douglas Adams would be like if he were still writing today. He might have adjusted his style a bit to suit the times (I like to think he would have), or he could have, like a certain friend of his, turned into a grumpy old man angrily yelling that people are stealing his honey. I only reached for him as an example because his writing has an easily recognizable "personality," like the two showrunners for the revival.
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Nov 24, 2014 19:28
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Kazy posted:This makes me wonder what kind of stories Douglas Adams would've written for the reboot In a doc about Adams, Moffat said (and this was during series one or two) that Adams definitely would have been asked to write for the new series. And they would still be waiting for his script. Also, before he died, apparently Adams was putting together his own proposal to bring Doctor Who back.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:41
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Davros1 posted:In a doc about Adams, Moffat said (and this was during series one or two) that Adams definitely would have been asked to write for the new series. Douglas Adams was a good writer for who but a bad script editor.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:50
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