The Doctor Who Thread

Oh, I didn't know about this thread :)

Except for one old serial of a few episodes, I only saw the reboot. My girlfriend introduced me to it.
I quit watching after the first Capaldi season. Not Capaldis fault, but then"overbakedness" of the Moffat seasons, as someone called it.

The first episode with Capaldi was also the first episode of a season. And it started as one big oversentimental episode over the stuff happening in the previous episodes. Wtf? You don't start a season being sentimental. If you insist, you can make the last episode sentimental, but the first is supposed to be exciting, give thre adventorous vibe of doctor who and be looking forward. Hardcore fans will suck it up, but the series will not get new fans when the story is so busy being full of it self in stead of focusing on good storytelling.

To me the wibbly wobbly story of the Doctor and the Tardis is a good setting for exploring fun and scary universes with cool plots for each episode or serial, but in the last few seasons the Doctor and the Tardis has been the entire universe and plot.
Everything that goes on in any world they explore seems to be only because of the Doctor and an overbaked wibbly wobbly central plot.

I hope the new seasons will bring back focus to the individual worlds they explore.
 
Torchwood is turning into Dr. Who now. Dang, I liked Torchwood, but if it is going to be just another Dr. Who, I'm going to have to move on. I just can't stay awake for a show when the main plot is all the kids in the world going into a trance and chanting "we are coming".
 
I've seen perhaps 6 episodes of Dr Who since 1981. Capaldi is the best I've seen since Baker, but things like his electric guitar playing spoil it.

You didn't expect Torchwood to be like Dr Who? I've never seen Torchwood, but since it's an anagram of Doctor Who, I'd have had my suspicions that there were going to be similarities!
 
As a lifelong fan of Doctor Who I regard the current series as poorly scripted. Jodie Whittaker is OK but with 2 of the episodes set in Sheffield I would not have expected The (female) Doctor to have so easily been able to take charge of events. There could also be humour in that approach. As for villains from 'way out there' their motivation for coming to Earth has never really been substantially explained. Someone came from the future to attempt to prevent the Rosa Parks situation because its very long term effects were not wanted? Why would that be? There was no explanation.

Maybe there is a series ark such as when the person who became known as Missy was seen at the end of a few episodes welcoming a dead person to her domain. We did not know what this was about until the substantial 2 part end of the series.
 
The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is an alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels through all of time and space in his TARDIS with his companion. Instead of dying, the Doctor is able to "regenerate" into a new body, taking on a new personality with each regeneration.
 
I quite liked the first season and this is a major reboot, so give it a couple of seasons to get into shape. From my rough memory all first seasons of various incarnations were rough.
 
I’ve been a fan of the series since the very first episode in 1963 (yes...I *AM* that bloody old - don’t keep reminding me! lol) and I’ve always loved it; warts and all.
During all that time, there have been both good and bad doctors, and good and bad episodes, but I’ve stuck with it and have generally enjoyed the series for over 50 years. (D’oh! There I go again reminding myself of my age...)
But I do feel that the series is about fantasy. Taking us away from reality. Just for 40 minutes each time helping us forget about our own troubles and those of the world around us. So I am not a big fan of the current episode trend of political correctness and showing us where the human race has gone wrong in the past - there are many other excellent TV programmes that remind us of that and I hope that one day we learn from our mistakes and all live together in harmony.

In the old classic series, a story line also ran over a few weeks of episodes with a cliff-hanger at the end of each. We couldn’t WAIT for next week’s episode to see what happened. I’ve always hoped they’d bring that back. Today’s episodes seem to spend 30 minutes building up the story and then the solution and ‘making it right’ seems to all happen far too quickly for my taste.
Still a great show though, and long may it live.
 
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My first Doctor was also Tom Baker, and also viewed on the local PBS station. I remember seeing a young Sara Jane, then watched her return on BBC America. For some reason, BBCA stopped carrying The Sara Jane Adventures after Season 2. It was sad to hear of Elisabeth's passing.

I’ve enjoyed the series ever since the reboot. Some episodes have been hokey, but others have been excellent. I’ve had some time off this week, so have been dipping into the Doctor Who Christmas Takeover a bit. Capaldi’s “Face the Raven”, “Hell Bent” and “Heaven Sent” were some of the best, as was “The Time of the Doctor”. “The Husbands of River Song” was somewhat silly, but the last ten minutes made the episode. The Tennant two-part “Family of Blood” episodes were good, and “Blink” is one of my all-time favorites. I enjoyed the long story arc with Smith, Rory, Amy, and River, and River’s appearance at Trensalore. I'm warming up to the new cast - we'll see where that leads.

I wish the seasons were longer, though. After the NYD special, there's about a 10 month gap. Makes it hard to keep continuity.
 
I admit to becoming a fan after the 2005 reboot, and have enjoyed most of it since then. I’ve been able to bond with my daughter a bit as we both enjoy Doctor Who. I took her to the theater showing of last Christmas’s Special and we enjoyed doing something with just the two of us.
I like the new Doctor fine. It’s the new writers/producers who are making it hard to get through this season.
 
Ok, we've tried it, a female Doctor, that runs around waving a sonic screwdiver around like its her(his) removed penis, and it does more magic than a Harry Potter wand. Poor scripts have dragged this down to the point we need another regeneration...
 
I can't say that I was a fan of changing the Doctor to a woman for no real reason other than, "It's about time." It was a total PC move that had nothing to do with continuing or advancing the Doctor's story. The PC cancer has been spreading in Doctor Who for some time now so it wasn't too surprising. (Though I was somewhat surprised that some faction wasn't clamoring over the choice of a white woman! :p) I enjoyed Michelle Gomez as the Master so since no one was going to stop this runaway PC train, I thought I'd give the new run a chance but with skeptical caution.

After the first two episodes I had to admit that I didn't hate Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. I didn't even dislike her in the role and the companions were OK. There was a glimmer of hope that maybe this experiment would work out. I think things really started going south from there. The shows became a stage for PC/social justice issues. What was I going to be preached to or lectured about this week? I thought I was watching the show to be entertained and not to have the various show runners try to massage my opinion to conform to theirs. What made it worse was the clumsy, hammer to the head blatancy of their doing so, there was no art or finesse to it.

With the Doctor and three companions, things started to get a bit crowded and it was sometimes awkward finding something for everyone to do. Having seen the entire latest season to date, I'm not really buying in to Jodie W. as the Doctor. She and/or her portrayal seems to lack a certain presence or command. A large part of that may have to do with the writing (which is certainly lacking) but I can't discount that it might have something to do with changing the Doctor to a woman or that it may be due in part to her acting. I've seen her in other roles and enjoyed her acting there but I'm not convinced she is right for this role.

With the New Who, things really started slipping and the cracks were really showing starting with the Capaldi era. (In my opinion.) I grew less and less interested and more disappointed in general during his tenure and much more so now with Jodie W's tenure. I agree that a reboot is needed. I think new show runners are needed, one's who love, understand and respect the longstanding traditions of Doctor Who. The show needs sci-fi writers and need to ditch all of the PC/social justice agendas. And sorry Jodie but I'd like to see a new Doctor as well.
 
After Chibnall has finished his tenure the next show runner should give us a 'Bobby Ewing' type re-boot. The series should begin with Clara waking up in the Tardis and saying to the (Peter Capaldi) Doctor "I've just had a terrible dream" and then tell us all about it, beginning her summary with the events of 'Face The Raven' and ending with the events of the last episode of the Chibnall era.

For me Peter Capaldi was the best of all the actors who have ever played the Doctor. Although in his era some scripts were of decent quality there were not enough in this category and thus the Capaldi era will not be regarded as the best.

Missy was great but I doubt that we will ever see her again because Moffat wrote her and I doubt that anyone else could write her as well as him. Of course Moffat's overall show runner tenure was much criticised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vvHprobZs
 
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I think that Capaldi got kind of screwed with his tenure on the show. During his whole first season it seemed like he took a back seat to the whole Clara/Pink debacle. They had no chemistry and I never bought into their relationship. Capaldi seemed to be an afterthought and I honestly don't think they knew what to do with him. Then the show saddled him with the ridiculous sonic sunglasses and the stupid electric guitar gimmicks, both little more than lame cliché’s for an older Doctor. The blatant PC/diversity/inclusivity agenda gave us new companion Bill, a lesbian woman of color who went by a man’s name. She seemed to be announcing that she was gay every other episode. She was OK as a companion but she would be at or near the bottom of my list for New Who companions. Capaldi did have some good episodes but in general, I don’t think the writers knew how to write for him entirely. I always had the feeling that he had unrealized potential that the writers never tapped. I think that Capaldi was better overall than what we saw on the show. I would like to have seen what R.T. Davies or early Steven Moffat would have done with him.
 
I would like the Doctor to visit his / her grand-daughter Susan in Scotland. In the Big Finish BBC Radio stories she was married to a crofter in Scotland who got killed in seeing off the Daleks (in the Big Finish [Paul McGann Doctor] production), the original actress from the television series, Carol Ann Ford again playing her. These radio stories are recognised as canon with the television series. Let's see a television version of the Doctor visiting Susan.

The Big Finish stories are all new and use the surviving Doctors up to and recently including David Tennant (with their original surviving companions) and are done randomly, i.e. a Tennant story followed by a Davison then a Colin Baker then a Tom Baker etc. They go on sale to the general public and after a year or so they are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra, which can also be heard live on the internet.
 
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