Doctor Who 2008: Sontarans cometh, RTD Ood 'ave 'im etc.

That's right, a TV show would hire a biologist as an astronomy expert. Because he's a "scientist".

The sad thing is, they probably would.

Should've got Guy Goma, tbh (was that his name? taxi driver / accidental computer expert)

^ note to Rusty, this is my idea and it is terrible, please do not steal for any of your upcoming specials, OK?

i believe RTD consulted Gok Wan for the scene where the sub-Doctor appears in the buff

I don't think RTD even thinks about some of the stuff he writes. Turn Left showed us what a parlous state the world/universe would be in without the Doctor, and he knows it, yet as soon as Donna looks like dying in the oxide-and-neutrino whirligig or whatever it was, he basically says "Kill me instead!" as if that would be a sensible sacrifice. But there's no time to question that bit of idiocy because there's something even stupider around the corner. The Earth towing! So the Earth's been traumatised by Dalek occupation, then subjected to the equivalent of a moderate planet-wide earthquake with all the damage that would inflict, but basically everything's OK now.

The most annoying thing about RTD is that he dismisses all his critics as nerds who can't handle the emotional stuff when the truth is that Moffat's stories are far more moving than this soap opera bullshit. And if you're going to constantly break the implied contract that all sci-fi/fantasy makes with the viewer - accept this one implausible central premise and everything else will make sense - you can't turn around and call anyone who is bothered by this a geek. I don't even like sci-fi as a rule - I'd just like to be able to suspend my disbelief for longer than a few minutes without some ridiculous contradiction or deus ex machina making me feel like I'm wasting my time on a show written by someone who can't be arsed to resolve basic plot difficulties and just chucks everything into the blender. Good riddance to the guy.

Presumably the events of Dalek don't actually happen any more, because the whole thing has been rewritten by an older Doctor (rather that what happened to a younger one even further in the real past). Considering that Dalek committed suicide its impact on anything is pretty minimal.

(Xpost - OTM about Moffatt and the emotional stuff. Paul Cornell is possibly even better at doing it, I want him back in 2010 please).

The problem with this cliffhanger - like most Who cliffhangers - is that it hinges on OMG they are in immediate peril of death when you know full well it's not going to happen. The best cliffhangers are when the viewer is left on the verge of some big reveal, which this two-parter hinted at and then copped out of.

aldo aldo aldo

see, if you read all that you'll see one of Rusty's problems. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE HUGE.

This nails it.

Every year they raise the stakes, again again and again. It got silly, and now that we've just had END OF TEH UNIVERSE there really is nowhere to go, apart from killing the Doctor or summat.

It's not even the only inconsistency in his OWN CONTINUITY, "remember when we met, I was so angry and you changed that" NO NO NO do you seriously think we've forgotten how angry the Doctor was in PotW? REGENERATION made him not angry, not Rose.

I thought he was referring to Ecclesdoc coming into being during the Time War. Possible?

I might even have enjoyed the Donna stuff were it not all a Cartmel Nasterplan pt2 rip-off. For those who are not aware in Series 27 if it got made, and specifically in a serial called Ice Time written by Marc Platt, Ace was going to become a Time Lord in order to try and 'humanise' Gallifrey and lead to the creation of a new race of Time Lords; and it was going to be revealed that The Doctor had deliberately picked Ace and subjected her to the events of Series 25 and 26 just to shape her the right way. SIMILAR, MUCH?

It was never used, so why not now? And yes, I know Ace got all ballsy in the books a la Rose this year, but Father's Day was recycled last year to good effect so meh, basically.

which at the very minimum put the "present" in NuWho in late 2010, or at worst sets up conflicting dates with things which happened after other things being rembered by characters during events which happened before. HE HASN'T EVEN GOT DECADES OF CONTUNUITY TO BLAME, HE'S DONE THIS COMPLETELY TO HIMSELF. And THAT is why he's a bad writer, more than anything else.

Very, very few people care about this.

I think the entire planet Earth will be retconned in one of next year's specials, making the events/circumstances of 'Dalek' work again.

altho that kind of already happened in last year's finale (but we know RTD likes to recycle his shittest ideas).

OK, RTD "continuity"

Rose is in real time (April 2005)
by Aliens of London she has been missing a year (May 2006)
In Boom Town, Margaret Blaine has left London and become Lord Mayor of Cardiff and started construction on a nuclear power station (let's be generous and say she can achieve all this in a year June 2007)
Christmas Invasion therefore cannot occur before December 2007 (also a year seems reasonable for everryone to accept Harriet Jones is actually Prime Minister)
School Reunion takes place after this, as Mickey and Jackie are not surprised by Doctor 10 (April 2008)
Love & Monsters takes place during Rose's time with Doctor 10. (I will place a side note to Vote Saxon poster)
Army Of Ghosts takes place some time after this, as the ghosts have been appearing for "months". This episode takes place in the summer (Donna is on holiday in Spain, she later tells us) so must be in summer 2009.
The Runaway Bride explicitly takes place after this, because The Doctor asks Donna about Doomsday so Christmas 2009. (Again, optimistic, as HC Clements has undergone a total reconstruction of Canary Wharf but let's be generous)
Smith & Jones takes place after this ("my cousin died at Canary Wharf") so April 2010.
The Lazarus Experiment is later this year, and must be into winter because it is dark outside by 6pm and Saxon is not PM
Saxon becomes PM in the late spring (2011)
A year passes but is RESETTED therefore LotTL takes place therefore June 2011 makes it real time
Voyage Of the Damned must take place therefore in December 2011 (although technically I suppose there's nothing stopping it happening in 2010, except Martha having not noticed it happening despite it only having been a couple of weeks beforehand)
Martha qualifies as a Doctor after LotTL which must be a year afterwards since she's missed the year through travelling, made explicit at the end of that story, which means the Sontaran eps can't take place before AT LEAST summer 2012 (assuming she qualifies in the May-ish of that year and is promoted within UNIT and trusted to the point where she can get farmed out to Torchwood after only weeks of working there). Wilf remembers the Doctor from VotD so it must happen after that.
If Stolen Earth therefore happens at the 'right time' of year (ignoring the nights drawing in) it can't possibly happen before July 2012.

Two months after Dalek.

FUCK'S SAKE, THIS ISN'T HARD. RUSTY AND HIS CUNTY MATES GET PAID VAST SWATHES OF MONEY TO ENSURE SHIT LIKE THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN.

And if you're going to constantly break the implied contract that all sci-fi/fantasy makes with the viewer - accept this one implausible central premise and everything else will make sense - you can't turn around and call anyone who is bothered by this a geek. I don't even like sci-fi as a rule - I'd just like to be able to suspend my disbelief for longer than a few minutes without some ridiculous contradiction or deus ex machina making me feel like I'm wasting my time on a show written by someone who can't be arsed to resolve basic plot difficulties and just chucks everything into the blender.

Bang on. However, we do tend to forget that Davies brought back the show in its current, moderately incredible form. Yes he bollocksed up a few basic tenets of storytelling, especially in these stake-raising finales, but without him we probably wouldn't have a show as good as this.

I cannot wait for Moffat to hit his straps.

Matt DC: Excellent point. Right through this episode I wasn't sure if Donna was going to live, but I more-or-less knew she wouldn't be going on, so even that was a foregone conclusion to some extent. Other than that, we all knew the Doctor would live, Earth would be fine, the Daleks would be defeated etc etc.

xp also, of the 9.4 million Britons who watch, approx. 12 people sit down and work out the show's relative timeline.

also aldo

still really want to punch RTD for the "ONE WILL DIE...ONE WILL STILL DIE..." garbage

I agree that the solutions everyone found to the scrapes they got into (i.e. the pendant, i.e. Donna pushing a few buttons) were unbelievably uninteresting. The whole point to putting your heroes in scrapes is to see how they get out of them, but this finale just sort of forgot to show the cleverness of its heroes - it didn't let us get involved in their solutions.

On the other hand, the Daleks are just the sort of overconfident assholes who would have a control panel in the corner whose only function appear to be to blow them, up one by one.

them up, one

i liked Jackie using her teleport to escape the group who then got de-atomised but the way Sarah Jane managed to sneak away from the pack in front of Daleks everywhere and into a conveniently placed stationery closet was F-

AA you're missing my point. It would have been piss easy not to have fallen into this problem. It only exists because he's trying to be a smart arsed twat.

Frankly, I don't care how many other people noticed this although almost all of fandom did, oh no, wait, Rusty's done a real life handwave and decided they're not fans. So do fans count or not? If so, why bollocks up something simple? If not, why throw in references to the First Doctor's descriptions of Gallifrey? Or SPACE CRABS? You can't have it both ways. Plus way to insult the viewing populace.

I thought Doctor Who episodes all just took place in a sort of "now-ish" time. I didn't realize there was supposed to be a logical sequence.

next you'll be telling me that James Bond is always the same guy in all the films

ARGH DON'T START IT WITH THE JAMES BOND THING AGAIN!

Aldo that entire timeline hinges on dating Rose as April 2005 which is never actually stated as far as I can tell.

Actually what am I talking about none of this even remotely matters.

(Also The Stolen Earth happening after Dalek is considerably less of a continuity blooper than the Stolen Earth happening several years before Dalek as originally assumed).

There's obviously supposed to be a logical sequence because Rusty put it there. All the links I have made above are from transmitted bits of dialogue i.e. purposefully written. Interestingly, all by Rusty (except Lazarus Experiment) so he can't even blame other people getting it wrong.

yes it is. but they have strived for continuity in Who what with all the flashbacks and tying things together, so clarification would be handy. xp

I agree with Hand, about scrapes, solutions, time, etc.

I still don't agree with others about the romantic finale. I think this is mildly interesting as an example of difference between fan and floating viewer, who in this case has only seen this episode of the entire series (but did see previous series with these characters). Possibly fan is a better viewer and has more right to opinion, etc? I'm not sure, though. I don't think my not being a fan makes me susceptible to romantic twaddle. I didn't really think it was twaddle, or that all romance = Mills & Boon. I just thought it was quite nice to see that potential story resolved.

Claim upthread that Doc will not have human genitalia because he is not human seems bonkers - he has human eyes, hair, body in general after all, so why not those? Especially as this version of him is half-human.

No, The End Of The World explicitly states Rose is in 2005, as do the 'Missing Girl' posters in Aliens Of London (which, similarly, firmly date that in 2006).

Possibly fan is a better viewer and has more right to opinion, etc?

Not like you to disingenuously claim something which no-one has said, eh?

Okay but why is The Stolen Earth taking place two months after Dalek a problem again?

because of the events of Doomsday too?

Pinefox, there's a far too long explanation that involves Gallifreyans not actually having sex but it's too fannish for here. The simple answer is there's no reason to assume they have genitals is because they don't need them, and if they did have them then after millennia of lack of use it's difficult to consider this set actually becoming functional again. Also, if he got his idea of what it was to be human from Donna, just as likely to have a vagina.

Matt, it's a problem for the reverse reason you said it was earlier. UNIT, with their all-knowing secret powers, at no point think "Hang on, this is just like that thing in that top secret museum base thing, where's that BIG FUCK OFF GUN that The Doctor built in there to kill it?"

i guess this was the point tho. the timelines were all screwed up after Caan pulled Davros and co out ot the Time War. their presence on pre-2012 Earth meant all future events we've seen were not going to happen (but the memories still exist). this is not particularly relevant given that total universal/reality destruction is imminent (the Daleks presumably now suicide reality bombers). but the Doctor and Donna flicked a few switches, the Daleks destructed and this put all the timelines back in order (OBVIOUSLY...cough...).

i thought the Doctor was already half human anyway so his half human copy would be all human.

The levels of loathing being expressed towards Russell T Davies on this thread are surprising. I am of the view that he has made Dr Who better and more exciting. I don't much like some of his plot devices (his overuse of what Aldo calls BIG RED BUTTONS upthread, the continued threat to the whole universe), but overall I think these past three series have actually been really good.

So my reaction to problems with timelines tends to me "oh look they've made a bit of a mistake there".

3/4 human surely? Assuming his timelordiness is reasonably divisible.

(xpost)

So my reaction to problems with timelines tends to me "oh look they've made a bit of a mistake there"

yeh but when the mistakes are so glaring yet so avoidable (or at least that's how the complainers see them), you can expect this kind of gnashing

I guess so, Steve, but the personal hatred seems way out of proportion to the rather good job Davies has done in making Dr Who exciting and fun and stuff.

No, he's all Time Lord. Initially he was the half-human from the TV Movie but that formally changed midway through the last series. In an interview Phil Collinson gave to somebody, he said Rusty told him to change it.

who'd have thought scifi nerds would be so upset about continuity issues?

the rather good job Davies has done in making Dr Who exciting and fun and stuff.

He's gone so over the top, though, that it ends up taking away all the excitement. Huge dramatic cliffhangers... that are resolved within seconds in the next episode. Making something Permanent And Forever Throughout All The Dimensions - until he changes his mind in the series-after-next.

I was really, really hoping that something good and exciting would happen with the cliffhanger "regeneration", but at the back of my mind I knew that there would somehow be an easy way out of it, because that's what's nearly always happened before. And, look, it happened again.

Surprised we didn't hear about naked new-half-Doctor's anatomy from Donna, whether it was unexpected or not. (Wasn't original Tennant regeneration fully clothed? Why not now?)

I seem to have forgotten large chunks of the previous two episodes, as I'm not quite sure whether Donna was still Donna-who-hadn't-been-travelling-with-the-Doctor or instantly transformed back into this-universe-Donna as soon as the timeline was fixed by turning left, or if something else happened in the penultimate episode to explain.

Norwegian location of Bad Wolf Bay goes some way to explaining the ultimate Geirism of Grainer getting all the credits for writing the melody and sod the woman who actually made it, y'know, iconic recognisable Who theme. But anyway.

Surprised we didn't hear about naked new-half-Doctor's anatomy from Donna, whether it was unexpected or not. (Wasn't original Tennant regeneration fully clothed? Why not now?)

Doc normally regenerates in his clothes. this time he grew from a hand.

When Eccleston regenerated into Tennant, he was already dressed to start with; the body changed inside the clothes. When new-half-Doctor appeared, he appeared fresh and from scratch; there weren't any clothes because there hadn't been anybody there beforehand. Makes sense if you ask me.

xpost: what Ed said.

The thing is, it's personalised because Rusty's made it that way. There actually is a memo he wrote which states it must be referred to in print as "Russell T Davies' Doctor Who" - he even inserted "Award winning" to the clause at one point. Think about that. "Russell T Davies' Award Winning Doctor Who".

'exciting and fun and stuff' has come at the expense of being less special, less thoughtful and irrelevant. For every minute that might make it stronger, there's fifteen that makes it weaker.

my young cousins etc who are ALL obsessed with who, walls covered in posters, yr archetypal 8yr old boy, are all equally vexed about the time continuity stuff.

NO THEY ARE NOT. I LIED.

He's gone so over the top, though, that it ends up taking away all the excitement.

Not for me, or (by the look of the viewing figures) for most, or even (by the look of some of the excitement on here leading up to Saturday, or by the number of people shouting "NO SPOILERS!" at me at Poptimism on Saturday night) for most on here. I mean, plenty of excitement generated. I understand the fan's frustration at non-perfection as well as the next fan, but the vitriol seems out of all proportion to the actual problem(s).

I don't agree that these series have been less special, thoughtful or relevant than McCoy-era Dr Who, but I am entirely prepared to accept that that may be a function of my own personal circumstances.

Is it actually less thoughtful though? Most of the old-Who I've watched (mostly Hartnoll and T. Baker) does not strike me as being especially thoughtful, unless 'thoughtful' means 'the Doctor looks more professorial and it's all a bit slower'.

Norwegian location of Bad Wolf Bay goes some way to explaining the ultimate Geirism of Grainer getting all the credits for writing the melody and sod the woman who actually made it

^^^^
Beacon of sanity amid the waves of mentalism!

'personal circumstances'

you fearful Jesuit

The Appreciation Index for the programme was once more 91. It is virtually unprecedented that the most-watched programme of the week should also score one of the highest appreciation figures, for mainstream television, in broadcasting history.

How do the deeply, deeply wierd passionate caps-lock-shouty fanboys like to spin the growing ratings and undeniable cultural success of the show now that Rusty has ruined it for ever and ever?

Stevie, I am not totally sure how to take that beacon, though I liked the Geirism reference too. It just struck me, do you think TFW & JC argue about these time-continuity issues? I have never noticed them doing so, only talking about the relative excellence of different series.