Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

;_;

WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT WHEN I AM STANDING IN A CAGE HOLDING A CHAIR AND A LADDER

sorry. shouting a lot today. I had too much soda.

The thing that annoys me most about this year is that I had expected more inventiveness from Moffat. He's an intelligent and witty writer with real courage and excellent ideas, but it really feels like he was railroaded into protecting the property by playing it safe.

I like to think that now there's a RTD clause added to his contract like "ABSOLUTELY NO TARDIS CAR CHASES".

okay I'm ripping out the caps lock for the rest of the day

Amy is the Dom Passantino of Doctor Who, a barely fleshed out zing monster. Even Moffatt said as much, but maintains there is a reason for it and it's linked to the mid-season cliffhanger.

The fake TARDIS from The Lodger reminded me most of a Jagaroth spaceship, but then somebody who wasn't me did say Omega upthread...

hooray Schlafsack holds all my same opinions about S5 so i don't have to type them out.

tbh the new series started losing me in the second episode, when Matt Smith had to get all shouty and rageful about everyone choosing to use the forget-things machine. it felt too soon and too sudden to go full-on blamey rage guy, and to me it was the first sign that maybe moffat didn't have as firm a grip on the reins as i anticipated. and then there was amy miniskirting around saying lines clearly meant for donna in the dalek episode, and the bullshit about "o the weeping angels THINK you are watching them so they froze anyway, lol." i still watched the whole season, but i felt detached from it in a way i never did in even the worst pit of RTD hell ("planet of the dead" ugh).

hooray Schlafsack holds all my same opinions about S5 so i don't have to type them out.

<3

'Detached' is a brilliant way to describe this series btw. I really tried to get into this year but I just couldn't, and that overwhelming feeling of detachment hits me every time I entertain the thought of trying again.

Amy is the Dom Passantino of Doctor Who, a barely fleshed out zing monster.

also, eye candy

i know you have a thing for dom but c'mon now

ay what's wrong with ridiculous miniskirts

S5 was a marked improvement on just about every level. That one episode of Sarah Jane that Rusty wrote was an instant reminder of how unbearably clunking his scripts had become. I honestly don't think I could have stuck another DW series if he'd stuck around.

the season did suffer from the 2nd and 3rd eps being clunky in extremis but if you like Smith you MUST watch The Lodger adam!

the rules of the Angels being rewritten would annoy me enormously if the episodes weren't totally fantastic on their own terms

the rules of the Angels being rewritten

still not sure they were really, apart from the major thing about them all being Angels

tbh now i'm confused about how the whole "angels freeze because they THINK they are being observed" thing works. the old idea was that when you looked at the angels, YOU were the active force stopping them. you, resisting the urge to blink, were the force keeping them motionless. but now it's suggesting there's an element of choice involved? or something? "i think we should quantum lock now because we're being looked at...oh shit we're totally not being looked at, never mind."

sometimes my brain remembers the awesome first 5 minutes of the second ep and is still genuinely baffled to remember that it turned into Her Majesty vs the Space Dolphins

that should've been the title (space whale tho yeah?)

I enjoyed The Beast Below, largely cos I think Liz 10 is a great character, and Sophie Okenado is always terrific. It was a bit of mess, but at least a mess based on interesting ideas rather than here are some monsters which the Doctor must run away from.

Amy is the Dom Passantino of Doctor Who, a barely fleshed out zing monster.

That is just RONG, I love her. Maybe because I myself am a zing monster, I don't know.

Fans of Karen Gillan should check out this week's Shortlist magazine, available free from their nearest (UK) train station.
http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/gallery/615/karen-gillan-wants-a-word

she is as "fleshed out" as she need be for now and i really liked her interplay with the Doctor (inc the sex not love thing) and if she ends up saving the universe without his direct help at any point i will be pissed off. still don't think rory and her work as a couple but i like him too.

Oh FFS Amy isn't "barely fleshed out" (compared to who exactly? Rose? Martha? Any companion pre-1988?) her personality has been actually reset two or three times in the space of one series.

The one thing Tennant couldn't do was "gravitas". Smith is a bit better at it by virtue of having a deeper voice and being a bit uglier.

All the Moffat-penned ones were good, all the ones written by others were a bit balls.

This is it really. Don't think he played it remotely safe actually, if anything the last ep would have been too confusing for some viewers.

Moffat didn't write "Amy's Choice" or "The Lodger" and both of those are as good as Moffat's stories; actually both are better than Moffat's "The Beast Below".

The one thing Tennant couldn't do was "gravitas". Smith is a bit better at it by virtue of having a deeper voice and being a bit uglier.

disagree based largely on Human Nature/FOB and TGITF - i think only Rusty-written Tennant is where it didn't come off well

if anything the last ep would have been too confusing for some viewers

it was for me also i can never forgive the 'Doctor rescues himself' paradox - pretty good apart from that tho

That isn't gravitas, that's "sad because my girlfriend has died", which he's pretty good at. Gravitas is standing in front of invading aliens and telling them to turn back or face the consequences.

Gravitas is a quality of substance or depth of personality.

how the hell does this not apply to Moffat and Cornell's handling of Tennant's relationship issues in the aforementioned eps?!

i mean gravitas isn't just how convincingly angry you can be

Okay he's good at doing convincingly sad and less good at doing convincingly angry, then.

I was going to list some counter-examples but, even though I can visualize them clearly, I'll be fucked if I can remember which episodes they were in.

xp but his suppressed anger at the end of FOB when punishing them was good too and its too bad RTD didn't do that more himself

tbh i think part of the problem is that Tennant had to adopt extreme emotional responses while also doing the chirpy Southern UK accent and that probably affected his ragey moments. Matt Smith playing the Doctor with more or less his normal irl voice probably gives him the edge as his own repressed emotional responses are just naturally more convincing. This is also why Eccleston worked so well in angry mode.

if you like Smith you MUST watch The Lodger adam!

I'll give it another go but tbh I'm not running all the way.

Wait what is The Lodger? (Too lazy to google)

the episode from last season with the Doctor sharing a flat with "popular" comic actor James Corden

it's certainly worth seeing from the background season-spanning arc pov

Oh lol I thought it was like a separate TV series. YES. The Lodge is great. Especially Matt-Smith-plays-pub-football scenes...I heard him say in an interview when he was in college he was actually going to be a footballer until he injured his knee or something. :D

Not :D for injuring his knee. But :D for him playing football.

xp but his suppressed anger at the end of FOB when punishing them was good too and its too bad RTD didn't do that more himself

ugh HATED this bcz he just stands there with a cob on and GROWING SUPER POWERS OUT OF THIN AIR

^That's just Tennant giving his 'good Carrie' impression.

what super powers?

"trapping people in a mirror dimension like the Richard Donner Phantom Zone" powers

"transforming people into scarecrows" powers

"magicing up unbreakable chains and wrapping them around people with his mind" powers

ha, the mirror and scarecrow ones were great, didn't put any of this down to 'super powers' more like some practically magic devices he had lying around the TARDIS...but it doesn't matter how!

didn't like the chains one and the one where he "tricks" the woman into a black hole or something tho

I felt "detached" about Matt Smith at first, but by the end of the season (starting from that daft vampire story) he was knocking 'em out the park.

Also, COME ON, that last episode was probably one of the best ever, I think.

Fez!

I *cried* during the part where he is giving his speech to young Amelia, I am pathetic.

Orrite, fez moment was a genuine flash of genius, I'll give you that.

xpost Nicole, I did too. Blubbering idiot, me

Ugh. Awful. I actually said out loud how bad it was more than once when it was on.

Ah c'mon. Climbing into the film, and "I am. I'm showing you now" - brilliant.