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

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.

"Now ITV is showing Midsomer Murders at 4pm, with wives getting their head stoved in, what hope is there for children's programmes on the BBC?" he wonders. "It is terrifying."

RTD OTM (from that guardian article/interview)

I was in the Ideal Who Age Bracket during the McCoy years, back when the production team was trying to make the whole thing darker and more mysterious, and when it seems to have been actively fan-driven. And, I have to say, either the plots made no sense to me at all or went completely over my head. "Remembrance Of The Daleks", as far as I was concerned at the time, was about the Daleks having a civil war.

The big thing I remember, though, about Remembrance of the Daleks was that I realised the villain unmasked at the end was apparently important. I had absolutely no idea, though, how or why he was supposed to be important.

Ideal Who Age Bracket seems to be about 30-45?

just like pop music eh

Actually I feel like I'm piling on Aldo a bit which I feel bad about but I don't really accept that any of this has made it 'worse' just 'different' and that's mostly because the kids want different things now. I'd also argue there's a degree of old-skool caricatured fans having huge emotional investment in Doctor Who and therefore magnifying every flaw in a way you wouldn't with something like Torchwood.

Also it helps that I had mentally prepared myself for this episode being enormous bombastic cobblers of the highest order and therefore I was able to overlook or forgive all of this and focus on the cool bits.

how satisfying is that really tho?

All right, I'll bite at being a weird shouty fanboy.

What I'll give Rusty credit for is that he has created an Event Television series, and events always get ratings. Not least part of this is his use of extant cultural signifiers (which is why I can't credit him with 'cultural success') to bring a slice of their childhood back to a viewing audience who wouldn't normally have watched such a thing. And that's why it's popular.

I just wish he hadn't done it with Doctor Who. Yes, because I'm a fanboy. Because NuWho is something totally different. It's FLASH BANG WOW LOOK AT THAT OOH THAT WAS GOOD WHAT'S NEXT compared to telling a story. I often tell the kids off for living their lives vicariously, always looking forward to what's coming next and never enjoying what's actually happening, and Rusty's Who is very much of this spirit - you have to spend the whole time wondering where it's going because if you stop for a minute and think where it actually is then it all falls apart. "The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he existed."

I'd be lying if I said there hadn't been some quite brilliant parts to his era - the stuff adapted from NAs particularly - but there's been a hell of a lot of shite. I've even come round to the Slitheen, you know.

i mean almost everyone is saying that the best bit of the episode is some Daleks talking German, which was amusing but surely only in a quite facile kneejerk way? i do often pick out some funny isolated moment as a highlight but on this occasion it just seems to indicate how lacking the story was for such an over-hyped epic finale.

Matt, I didn't think you were piling on, I'm just choosing my words badly. I agree totally with "different" but the "different" to me is "worse".

I genuinely think that SJA and Torchwood have been better than NuWho - maybe that's because they understand better what their audience is? - and SJA is probably the best of the three.

maybe that's because they understand better what their audience is?

SJA: kids (who like sci-fi)
Torchwood: 'dults (who like sci-fi)

Doctor Who: EVERYONE (who like sci-fi)...so you can see the bind they're in