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Warthur posted:The Weeping Angels come back early on in Amy's stint as a companion. They break people's necks and eat critical bits of their faculties to speak with their voices and whatnot, because shunting people back in time stops being threatening when the Doctor has the TARDIS available to just go collect them. (Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda, fixed points in time, can't go back on your own timestream - whatever, even if you find an obituary for someone you can just rescue them anyway then plant the fake obituary.) Then Weeping Angels show up who are shunting people back in time again and Amy and Rory get themselves shunted and don't simply put a classified ad in the paper wherever they end up so the Doctor can come collect them. Weird. Just have anyone temporally displaced by an Angel age rapidly if moved artificially through time again. If Mawdryn Undead could manage the effect, the new series can. It’d actually be an interesting way to anchor the Doctor to a particular point in time for a few episodes before he leaves the displaced companion or companions behind. Of course, the original Blink saw the Doctor and Martha displaced in time, and they time-traveled again, so maybe not? I don’t think the Angels as originally written actually work as recurring enemies, and I kind of liked that they weren’t even so much monsters as beings forever isolated from other people. There’s a lot that could have been done with them that we didn’t get with the hard turn into “they are cruel monsters.”
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Dec 18, 2023 16:19
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Amy as a character is literally saved by the fact that Karen Gillan is so charming, the first time watching it you paper over the MANY faults that Moffat had writing the character. The third series with The Doctor, Amy, and Rory works because they moved passed Amy being in love with the Doctor and its up probably being the best series of the that trio because of it (I think anyways). I think Moffat trying to recreate the Rose dynamic (twice) works against him and in a way that hurt the characters. Rose worked because yah, she was in love with this guy but she's fairly independent a character, able to be on her own without needing the Doctor. Martha kinda has elements of this too being a literal Doctor but doesn't work because they never knew if they wanted to keep the romance plot a thing. Donna meanwhile and Bill work amazingly because they are both independent, call the Doctor on his bullshit, and are played full people. Thirteen's companions also I think work better (for the most part) than Moffat's companions for similar reasons.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:19
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Vinylshadow posted:Wonder what the Year of Matt Smith Specials would've been like had he stayed around Maybe a mid-season two-parter where the Cybermen offer everyone on Trenzalore immortality and the Doctor has to argue against it whilst being an immortal God figure himself? This of course introduces Handles for the rest of the season too. Mooseontheloose posted:Thirteen's companions also I think work better (for the most part) than Moffat's companions for similar reasons. I'm not sure I can agree with this. Thirteen's companions where universally underwritten, unmemorable messes. That they tried to make a romance with Yaz a thing was ridiculous. PriorMarcus fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 16:24
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Was it Moffat who originated the “the sonic screwdriver doesn’t work against wood” running gag/bit of lore? It felt like the Wooden Cybermen bit of Time Of The Doctor was was a gesture towards what might have been a really fun full episode.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:31
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Narsham posted:Just have anyone temporally displaced by an Angel age rapidly if moved artificially through time again. If Mawdryn Undead could manage the effect, the new series can. The conceit of the Amy/Rory exit is that that era of New York is so temporally hosed due to the Angels colonizing it that the Doctor can't get back there a second time. If it wasn't for that, presumably they could keep traveling with the Doctor as long as they got dropped off in 1930s New York again at some point. Narsham posted:I don’t think the Angels as originally written actually work as recurring enemies, and I kind of liked that they weren’t even so much monsters as beings forever isolated from other people. There’s a lot that could have been done with them that we didn’t get with the hard turn into “they are cruel monsters.” Blink is a perfect episode of television but I don't necessarily need the "can't move if you're looking at it" and "displaces you in time" monsters to be the same monster. My favorite incarnation of them is from that two-parter just because of how uncanny they are, especially the implication that they were essentially imagined into existence in the first place.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:51
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Rochallor posted:The conceit of the Amy/Rory exit is that that era of New York is so temporally hosed due to the Angels colonizing it that the Doctor can't get back there a second time. If it wasn't for that, presumably they could keep traveling with the Doctor as long as they got dropped off in 1930s New York again at some point. But why can't they just travel to anywhere else other than New York and get in the Tardis? It's kind of a nonsense conceit, though I'm aware all of this show is a nonsense conceit.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:55
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Matinee posted:Was it Moffat who originated the “the sonic screwdriver doesn’t work against wood” running gag/bit of lore? It felt like the Wooden Cybermen bit of Time Of The Doctor was was a gesture towards what might have been a really fun full episode. I think it was in Silence in the Library where it first came up, yeah.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:56
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PriorMarcus posted:But why can't they just travel to anywhere else other than New York and get in the Tardis? It's kind of a nonsense conceit, though I'm aware all of this show is a nonsense conceit. To be fair, this isn't just a Moffatism. Of the three major RTD-era companions, two of them leave the Doctor due to bullshit nonsense conceits, not because their character arc and emotional development got them to a place where they made a reasoned decision to leave. Which, when you think about it, is absolutely hosed, because the best thing about both Rose and Donna is that they are well-realised characters and we're persuaded that they are full people their own perspective and inner emotional world and whatnot. Doing the emotional stuff right was RTD's schtick - the big, smart idea from the last classic season (with the developments there around Ace) he picked up and carried forward because he realised that making the companions three-dimensional was how you updated Doctor Who for the tastes of modern audiences. It's just bizarre that he'd be so good at that but not once but twice prove incapable of cooking up an exit strategy which wasn't rooted in that emotional arc but just boiled down to "a big bullshit metaphysical thing just happened which means that the Doctor must throw the companion in the bin for their own good". How do you come up with these characters and not come up with a good, compelling exit strategy for them? Warthur fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 17:04
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To be fair it's a problem the show has always had. Modern companions have awful stuff happen to them to keep them away from the Doctor, while classic ones generally just left basically at random (with the exception of what, Tegan?). Sarah Jane gets ditched because the Doctor can't take her to Gallifrey, but he can't swing by and pick her up again after?
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Dec 18, 2023 17:14
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I kinda wish they’d let the outgrowing-the-Doctor arc with Amy and Rory come to its natural conclusion. Instead of nonsensical Angel time travel, just have the adventure end with them going “yeah no that seals it, we love you but we just want a quiet life - come by for tea sometime, but no more”. Then again I also wish Moffat stuck to his guns and just let Clara die via her own overconfidence with no take-backs.
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Dec 18, 2023 17:21
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Rochallor posted:To be fair it's a problem the show has always had. Modern companions have awful stuff happen to them to keep them away from the Doctor, while classic ones generally just left basically at random (with the exception of what, Tegan?). Sarah Jane gets ditched because the Doctor can't take her to Gallifrey, but he can't swing by and pick her up again after? The problem comes when you have writers who are too big of fans of the show to understand why someone might not want to simply travel with the Doctor forever.
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Dec 18, 2023 17:23
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Season 6 had a perfect ending for Amy and Rory, finding out the Doctor survived and the punchline of Amy realising she's his mother in law. In fairness when it did come time for Karen Gillan to properly exit the show I recall hearing that she specifically asked for her exit to be really sad
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Dec 18, 2023 17:26
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It was hilarious in classic Who that most companions basically just leave whenever their actor decides that they're done, so it varies between "I think I found my home here in this bold space future" to "I think I'll just stay in ancient Greece and get married for some reason" to "Dodo says she's not coming back because we forgot to write her an ending after she fainted."
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Dec 18, 2023 17:28
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Bicyclops posted:It was hilarious in classic Who that most companions basically just leave whenever their actor decides that they're done, so it varies between "I think I found my home here in this bold space future" to "I think I'll just stay in ancient Greece and get married for some reason" to "Dodo says she's not coming back because we forgot to write her an ending after she fainted." I like Romana's departure where she decides she's going to be the guardian Time Lord for E-Space for a bit. Means she started out thinking that the Doctor was a silly little bullshit guy and couldn't wait to get this Key To Time job done, then regenerated into a personality more happy with picaresque random adventure, then over seasons 17-18 got so good at Doctoring that she didn't need the Doctor any more.
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Dec 18, 2023 17:37
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The better answer for why you can't rescue Angel victims should be "once you've been fed on, your original future is annihilated as anti-time by the feeding process."
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Dec 18, 2023 17:49
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Warthur posted:The problem comes when you have writers who are too big of fans of the show Been saying this 
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Dec 18, 2023 17:52
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HD DAD posted:
The reason this doesn't happen is because there's no good reason why the Doctor deserves to cheat death and save planets but Clara doesn't. If you set up an episode like Face the Raven as a regeneration story, the Doctor would sacrifice themselves like 10 did for Wilf, and then probably regenerate and go back to travelling. But because of an accident of birth (or lack thereof), Clara doesn't get to have that privilege. Why not? Because she's the wrong literal race? Not the vibe I think.
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Dec 18, 2023 17:53
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That's sort of the point, I think. Clara had been acting as a Doctor-lite and her hubris got her into a bad situation. She doesn't get to live/escape because she's not the genuine article and it serves as a tragic story that the recklessness of the Doctor shouldn't be emulated.
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Dec 18, 2023 17:59
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It's probably a good idea to keep the companion deaths to a minimum because otherwise when the monologuing villains start talking about the trail of corpses the Doctor leaves behind, you start to sort of agree with them. "Oh, hier ist poor Adric, a nice little kiddie who just wanted to be good at the maths, and he sploded himself in a dimension strange to him to take out some of the wimpy 'excellent!' Cybermenschen." "He was an irritating little brat and you know it." "WELL THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN!"
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Dec 18, 2023 18:03
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Adric screwed Adric and he foiled multiple people's attempts to save his life, that one really isn't on the Doctor.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:07
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Harlock posted:That's sort of the point, I think. Clara had been acting as a Doctor-lite and her hubris got her into a bad situation. She doesn't get to live/escape because she's not the genuine article and it serves as a tragic story that the recklessness of the Doctor shouldn't be emulated. Why not? Why does the (historically, male upper-class) hero get to be reckless and have fun but the women and hangers-on get punished for the same decisions? There's a reason Clara's face is in the opening for Dark Water. She's legitimate. The whole premise of her character is that she's so much like the Doctor, so legitimate in her claim to the position and legacy, that they can't be around each other because she can no longer check him the way his more human companions would. 
DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 18:07
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It's particularly weird to think that Clara should be punished for hubris during that era because of how much it's emphasized that the Doctor is just like... a guy who stole a time machine. What makes him different and "better" than other Time Lords (well, before the Timeless Child stuff, I guess) is that he went out into the Universe and got enough perspective to always try to make sure that empathy and curiosity win out over tyranny and suppression. "Anyone can be the Doctor" is a better message than "leave the big stuff to the space wizards or you'll die" IMO.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:18
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Bicyclops posted:It's particularly weird to think that Clara should be punished for hubris during that era because of how much it's emphasized that the Doctor is just like... a guy who stole a time machine. What makes him different and "better" than other Time Lords (well, before the Timeless Child stuff, I guess) is that he went out into the Universe and got enough perspective to always try to make sure that empathy and curiosity win out over tyranny and suppression. "Anyone can be the Doctor" is a better message than "leave the big stuff to the space wizards or you'll die" IMO. The 12th Doctor was really kind of weird coming off the whole thing with the 11th getting more regenerations and a renewed lease on life by using it to basically investigate the fundamental question of, "Am I / Is the Doctor a good person?" to the point where he just becomes sick of everything by the end that he's on the verge of refusing to regenerate. Moffat gets dinged often for giving his companions tragic endings, but I think it at least served the story they were trying to tell with 12 and his companions at least. Why does the Doctor always get to be the one to walk away? Well, they're the titular plot armor character and the revival era at least has been about carrying that trauma and weight. That is the conceit and drama behind the show. The message can still be anyone can be the Doctor, but we/the companions are still just human. There's a risk to doing these things, I don't think it has anything to do with gender politics. RTD seemed focused on fixing some of these problems by saving Donna, giving her a Doctor-level type escape from her fate, and giving the Doctor a new new lease on life without all of this baggage.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:47
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Bicyclops posted:It's particularly weird to think that Clara should be punished for hubris during that era because of how much it's emphasized that the Doctor is just like... a guy who stole a time machine. What makes him different and "better" than other Time Lords (well, before the Timeless Child stuff, I guess) is that he went out into the Universe and got enough perspective to always try to make sure that empathy and curiosity win out over tyranny and suppression. "Anyone can be the Doctor" is a better message than "leave the big stuff to the space wizards or you'll die" IMO. Agreed. It's better when the Doctor isn't a demigod. You can't aspire to be a demigod. But you can aspire to be a hero in many fashions and it's more inspirational to see an "alien" who is literally just a human with technology and a thoughtful empathetic head on their shoulders. Solutions that involve altruism and community and people just doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do always affect me emotionally much more than the Doctor just doing it more or less alone or with light assist. When possible Doctor should push people into saving themselves.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:50
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Davros finally offering the Doctor the ultimate deal with the Devil when he invents a teleporter that sucks any companion about to die into the TARDIS and replaces them with a Harry Sullivan clone.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:52
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A funny way to resolve the Donna thing would have been the Doctor saying "wait, if I'm not actually a Time Lord then that wasn't a human/Time Lord metacrisis, let's give her her memories back and just roll the dice here"
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Dec 18, 2023 18:55
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2house2fly posted:A funny way to resolve the Donna thing would have been the Doctor saying "wait, if I'm not actually a Time Lord then that wasn't a human/Time Lord metacrisis, let's give her her memories back and just roll the dice here" And then a TARDIS pops up and a Ten runs out shouting not to do it since it went horribly wrong for him "Well that was your role, not mine, so here goes-" And then six more TARDIS pop up...
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Dec 18, 2023 19:00
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HD DAD posted:I kinda wish they’d let the outgrowing-the-Doctor arc with Amy and Rory come to its natural conclusion. Instead of nonsensical Angel time travel, just have the adventure end with them going “yeah no that seals it, we love you but we just want a quiet life - come by for tea sometime, but no more”. This would've been my preferred conclusion and it also would've pre-dated the recent 'Doctor finds a permanent home and family to rest, recuperate and heal' thing with Donna. Which necessitated a whole new regeneration and a lot of sci fi rigmarole to make happen. Which, to be fair, is just how has Doctor Who worked for the entirety of its existence
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Dec 18, 2023 19:07
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DoctorWhat posted:[...] There's a reason Clara's face is in the opening for Dark Water. She's legitimate. The whole premise of her character is that she's so much like the Doctor, so legitimate in her claim to the position and legacy, that they can't be around each other because she can no longer check him the way his more human companions would. The title card order thing never read to me as "Clara is legit on the same level as The Doctor", but more an expansion of a stinger gag that probably flew over the head of 90%+ of the folks watching at home. It's not a bad idea though, and it might have worked better if it had some proper build-up and wasn't just thrown aside five minutes in to the episode. Moffat definitely drew from the same well with Missy stepping out of the Tardis and declaring "my name is Doctor Who" in World Enough And Time.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:10
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Bicyclops posted:It's particularly weird to think that Clara should be punished for hubris during that era because of how much it's emphasized that the Doctor is just like... a guy who stole a time machine. What makes him different and "better" than other Time Lords (well, before the Timeless Child stuff, I guess) is that he went out into the Universe and got enough perspective to always try to make sure that empathy and curiosity win out over tyranny and suppression. "Anyone can be the Doctor" is a better message than "leave the big stuff to the space wizards or you'll die" IMO. The theme of that final chunk of Series 9, I think, is that the Doctor realizes he's been a good friend but a poor teacher to Clara, leading her to try and do Doctor-y things without the years of accumulated knowledge of what not to do. If anybody's being punished in that story it's the Doctor; Clara gets her own not-TARDIS at the end, after all.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:13
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They should have some more companions exit by not dying so they can have an opportunity to return for a cameo in a couple decades.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:17
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I do really wish Clara bowed out in Last Christmas. Definitely enough leeway to bring her back if script and casting demanded it, and a lot of that episode felt like "rounding the corners" of her character to set off.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:20
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Matinee posted:The title card order thing never read to me as "Clara is legit on the same level as The Doctor", but more an expansion of a stinger gag that probably flew over the head of 90%+ of the folks watching at home. It's not a bad idea though, and it might have worked better if it had some proper build-up and wasn't just thrown aside five minutes in to the episode. It isn't thrown aside! All of Series 9 is about it!
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Dec 18, 2023 19:24
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It even sets her up for it by giving her a personal tragedy that makes her cast aside the world of men for adventure or whatever.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:29
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DoctorWhat posted:It isn't thrown aside! All of Series 9 is about it! Sure, it's an ongoing theme on and off in S9, but I meant more about the Dark Water pre-title stinger of Clara claiming to be The Doctor, and then the titles having Jenna Coleman's name before Capaldi's, her eyes in the vortex, etc. But then once you get into Dark Water proper, it very quickly settles down into Coleman is Clara and Capaldi is The Doctor. Feels like an interesting concept that kinda got thrown away.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:34
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Detective No. 27 posted:They should have some more companions exit by not dying so they can have an opportunity to return for a cameo in a couple decades. They should bring Adric back to kill him a second time
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Dec 18, 2023 19:49
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2house2fly posted:A funny way to resolve the Donna thing would have been the Doctor saying "wait, if I'm not actually a Time Lord then that wasn't a human/Time Lord metacrisis, let's give her her memories back and just roll the dice here"
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Dec 18, 2023 20:19
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Infinitum posted:They should bring Adric back to kill him a second time Special Tales of the TARDIS episode revealing that Adric has returned to life in his own memory TARDIS, which then crashes and explodes messily because he messes up the puzzle that locks one of the control panels.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:21
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Matinee posted:Sure, it's an ongoing theme on and off in S9, but I meant more about the Dark Water pre-title stinger of Clara claiming to be The Doctor, and then the titles having Jenna Coleman's name before Capaldi's, her eyes in the vortex, etc. But then once you get into Dark Water proper, it very quickly settles down into Coleman is Clara and Capaldi is The Doctor. Feels like an interesting concept that kinda got thrown away. When I watched that seson I was kinda not feeling 12 and legitamately hoped they were serious that Clara had been the doctor too the whole time lol. Like a much later version that came to help themselves out.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:29
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Warthur posted:To be fair, the Doctor is a Time Lord - the Gallifreyans become Time Lords because they culturally appropriate entire chunks of the Timeless Child's life cycle in order to do the regeneration thing. (It's one of the reasons why I think the Timeless Child enigma can't be answered satisfyingly - either you reveal it was all a big loving waste of time red herring or you posit a Time Lordier set of Time Lords that the Doctor actually came from.) That second thing can be fun. Not that anyone paid attention to the lore behind Myst, but the D'Ni (the people who created Linking Books) turn out to be just some offshoot of a much eviler group of people. If the Doctor discovers a tier of Above Time Lords or w/e it can reconfirm the whole "I want nothing to do with it and I'm going to just travel looking for the weird people who get me and want to help do my thing" vibe.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:37
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