Doctor Who

Obviously YMMV but I was pretty sick of Moffat as a show runner after his first series where it became clear his plots weren't going any where.

Hopefully he'll be back to his strength doing single episodes.

Though I hope there's at least some new blood on the show?

Off topic, but something I've wondered; with Big Finish making Malloy their definitive Davros, and given the prosthetics mitigate the issue of the actor aging, why didn't RTD try to get him to reprise his role in the Revival series?

Yeah, I haven't known how to take the news. Like I'm one of the biggest Moffat haters you'll ever meet, but he made some fantastic standalone episodes when he wasn't steering the entire ship y'know. You'd hope that a return to the initial revival paradigm would indicate a similar return to how the odd Moffat one-off or two-parter would spice up an already solid RTD series - like adding a healthy serving of chicken salt to a plate of chips.

I'm cautious as hell, but we'll see how it turns out.

We talked about this before, there could be any number of reasons, up to and including Molloy not wanting to do the prosthetics.

There's basically two rumours about this and both could be true. Molloy was offered the role and turned it down because he didn't want to wear the prosthetics (since the prosthetics for him in the original show were basically just a mask and sitting in a thing that covered almost everything up and the ones for the new show are way more involved), or that he didn't like the story and wasn't interested in acting in it. And if either or both of those are the reason, fair enough, more power to him.

And then after Julian Bleach was cast, he just kinda became the standard one for the revived series.

I've seen people who are still really salty about it and it's like...we had three Davroses in the original series. The first and third were really good and the second was really bad. Julian Bleach is also really good and we get a lot more of Molloy at the same time without subjecting Molloy to a process he reportedly seriously doesn't like. We've kind of stumbled into a "best of both worlds" scenario with the Davroses, honestly.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 21st 2024 at 8:06:14 AM

I liked the Moffat Era. Twelve was my Favorite doctor (especially with Clara in her andrenaline junkie phase) and the hipster trio (Eleven, Amy Rory) were my favorite tardis team. I loved that Rivers timeline is completely scattered and that we have multi season spanning arcs.

I do reckognize that Moffat had his weaknesses, but so did every showrunner.

Edited by ZheToralf on Mar 21st 2024 at 1:08:45 PM

Moffat was really good at build-up but then fumbled the actual climax a lot.

very few people could delivor on the conclusion to a massive build up like Heaven sent

I feel like Moffat is good at The Doctor as a figure, hence all of Eleven's posturing and Trenzalore and A Good Man Goes To War and The Girl Who Waited and The Impossible Girl etc. - Twelve was a lot more down to earth, but even he became President of Earth at one point.

While Davies's Doctors have always had more of a "human" appeal to them - yeah, almighty time travelling janitor with dizzying highs and crushing lows, but he hangs out in modern day England with Rose and Jackie Tyler, and Martha Jones, and Donna and Wilf Noble because he likes people. He doesn't always like humanity, but he likes people. Fifteen's pleasant moment with that young rookie cop in the Christmas special kinda brought back that magic for me.

And of course there's overlap between The Doctor as a figure and as a person regardless of who's running the show, but I think RTD and Moffat lean into one side a bit more than the other. Davies has Gridlock, and he has The Waters of Mars. Moffat has Twice Upon A Time, and he has A Good Man Goes To War. I just feel like Davies leans more into The Doctor as a person and Moffat leans more into The Doctor as a figure, and I prefer the former over the latter - "I need a mate" over the Guardian of Christmas for A Thousand Years. There's a time for both, but I prefer when the show emphasises the former between moments of the latter.

I prefer the Doctor to feel alien and not human because he shouldn't feel human. He should feel like he is alien. The companions are there to be the human. That is why I liked Moffat's era and Twelve is my favorite Doctor. I love Davis but I often feel like he is to focused on making the Doctor feel human.

One thing Moffat said that I really agree with him explaining that The Doctor is sort of a role played in-universe by the character. The Doctor is who they want to be, and sometimes even they fall short of that lofty ideal.

What I like the most about Moffats writing is that he really takes advantage of the time travel aspect. Time loops, self fulfilling prophecies, you name it.

Personally, I initially liked Moffat's run, but towards the end of Eleven's tenure, the novelty had worn off and I just never warmed up to it again. Twelve was a good doctor, but most of his stories didn't leave much of an impression on me.

Edited by Trooper924 on Mar 21st 2024 at 7:32:29 AM

I liked Moffat too, but after Series 8 he'd petered out a bit. You could say the same with RTD the more it went on.

But if you only read TV Tropes you'd get the impression Doctor Who was only good under RTD and there hasn't been any other good DW in it's 60+ year existence.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 21st 2024 at 7:24:22 AM

Probably a good idea not to solely form your opinions based on one niche wiki, then.

hey that hurt we're not a niche wiki

I mean I was talking less about the wiki and more about the forum.

Maybe it's me but every other post in this thread does nothing but praise RTD and condemn Moffat. Even the classic series is written off. There is so much Doctor Who but here in this forum only four years out of sixty seem to matter.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 21st 2024 at 8:36:03 AM

My point still stands. The forum community is even smaller than the editors (which is also pretty small).

Not anything you should be factoring into your own opinions at all.

That would be like if I decided to start bashing the Tenth Doctor just because you, personally, don't like him.

Edited by ArthurEld on Mar 21st 2024 at 6:41:10 AM

Unfortunately, that's not an opinion isolated to this website. A few weeks ago, I saw some people on Twitter seriously arguing that RTD was responsible for "saving" the franchise from the total garbage that was the classic series.

If anything, "I saw it on Twitter" is more of an indictment of any opinion presented, really.

Funny, because I got active in this forum around series 5 and I remember people being excited about Moffat taking the helm after four years of RTD. Not that they were sick of him, but more like they wanted a breath of fresh air.

I kinda got the impression that whenever an era comes to an end, there are a lot of people who claim it was the worst era of new who, while looking forward to the new showrunner.

They Changed It, Now It Sucks! and It's the Same, Now It Sucks! in one, if you will.

That does seem to be the cycle. Also, people seem to hate on the current showrunner while they're in charge, but then reappraise them after the next showrunner takes over. I expect once we get deeper into the new RTD era, we'll see people saying that Chibnall's run wasn't so bad after all.

"Chibnall never did fart jokes", probably.

RTD's first run gave us some real stinkers, and some awful moments in otherwise good episodes.

I get the impression that the time and budget pressures mean that we never get a consistently outstanding season, because the clock never stops ticking snd delivering the show has to be a series of compromises.

Just caught the trailer of the new guy.

He looks good. Got an energy to him that's different from the past doctors from what I've seen.

Getting some Rose vibes from his companion Ruby, but I suppose it's far too early to judge.

Man, I still need to catch up on so much though. I don't know when I'll even find the time.

Edit: Also, he's still not ginger.

But hey. We have a black Doctor, and we've had a Female Doctor, so I suppose anything is on the table now.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 22nd 2024 at 12:43:09 PM

And here's the trailer.

Looks very good. I love how it seems very close to the nine and ten eras (very vanilla opinion, but those, along with eleven, are my favourites) while also experimenting and having its own unique tone.

It makes sense, I suppose, that RTD's first season had an episode about the last day of earth and the first season of his second run will have an episode about the (relative) early days of Earth (I'm honestly shocked Nu Who hasn't done an episode in that period yet). Love the butterfly gag.

Edited by king15 on Mar 22nd 2024 at 11:31:38 AM