WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

Reading the novelisation of Day Of The Doctor, and enjoyed a new joke in (the completely rewritten version of) this scene so much I looked it up to compare & contrast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUjH-ksc2Z4

and god, the amount of visual & audio storytelling in this two minutes outdoes the average Chibnall episode in total. It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience

The novelisation of Day of The Doctor (and audiobook of same) is one of my very favourite Doctor Who things.

Despite having watched DOTD several times I only just noticed the totally intentional and acceptable joke of how they got from the Tower of London to Trafalgar Square so quickly in that clip.

He’d guessed what had happened the moment the TARDIS had been lifted off the ground, and he’d dashed straight for the phone when itstarted to ring. As he threw himself out of the door hundreds of feet above London, he’d reflected, not for the first time, that wiring your principal communications device to the outside of your spaceship was not always practical. He managed to grab the phone, and Clara his ankles.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the head of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. ‘We had no idea you were still in there!’
‘You phoned me!’ screamed the Doctor, hoping Clara would manage to keep hold.
‘You’ve listed this number as your mobile.’
‘It’s the TARDIS — how much more mobile do you get?’

btw

Just to be perfectly clear, there's no breed of Irish woman who, when her husband returns from town with a baby that he didn't leave for town with, will rush towards him with silent wonder.

(I thought the character moments were better than usual, though the plot script was much much worse)

Why did partial cyberman start molesting the cybermen in storage for no apparent reason?

That would be the ascension, the exact import of which is yet to become clear.

How did spaceship that was missing foo many parts to fly get going with about 30 seconds of work?

Very poorly!

But they only molested two or three of them. Very odd.

Only three of the Lone Cybermens, and one drill. Guess they don't have time to do the thousands of tinned Cyberpeople in one episode.

A friend has pointed out that this is the first sight of Ireland in Doctor Who - obviously if we're a race that can turn the last Timelord into the last Cyberman, some buildup was required!

turn the last Timelord into the last Cyberman

Did I miss something?

Just speculation - the puzzle of the episode is "who is Brendan?" - he could be the Da out of Derry Girls, but he might also be Ashad.

Ah okay - even if he's a Time Lord, there are two others in this episode, another one in this series, and an entire planet of them onscreen in this ep though, which rather threw me

That Matt Smith clip feels v bittersweet

I mean, even the throwaway ravens line is better than 99-100% of the past two seasons

Otm re the novel by the way. It’s like all good Moffat and very little bad Moffat (ok, Osgood chapters notwithstanding)

yeah that clip mercilessly drove home the diminished circs of the current show

man jenna coleman was so so so good

novelisation of Day of The Doctor is one of my very favourite Doctor Who things.

Just read “Chapter 10” (the fourth chapter) and yeah, this is definitely the best Who novelisation ever, probably the best Who novel ever, and maybe the best piece of Dr Who ever

Sooooooo...

Ehh.

Pretty impressive that they got JJ Abrams to write, and Barry Letts to direct, an episode in 2020 though

just thought i'd check. y'all get back to hatin', i'm out again

ngrrgh

Interesting: the Doctor being special because of how they choose to act
Dull: the Doctor being special because they're some sort of chosen one

Who is Ashad? they implied that he's the timeless child due to the same flashback events in a different setting, but then he's not, so idk
Who is the Timeless Child? the cartmel masterplan
Why where the Cybermen torturing other Cybermen? no explanation
What was the lie of the Timeless Child? the timelords never mentioned the child, so this lie didn't exist
How did the Doctor save humanity from the destruction she herself created? she didn't

The purpose of the Cartmel plan was to add more mystery to the series. That's not going to happen when all of the details are dumped out in expositional speeches that don't affect the current story. Impressive that Chibnall's been at it so long and he's still writing for radio.

Chibnall still doesn't understand the nonviolence idea. It's OK to make a genocide button, just as long as you hand it over to someone else to push it. I got A.E. van Vogt vibes from that weapon. Next stop, NRA.

It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience

This week Chinballs got 70 minutes - just seven minutes less than global event & massive multi-platform profit centre Day Of The Doctor - and filled 87% of it with one character standing still against non-existent backgrounds, being told exposition that doesn't actually affect the story in any way whatsoever.

--

((oh lol xpost, I had the tab open from abanana's previous post))

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-timeless-child-review/

that ranking!

Enjoyed this mostly but Catweasel coming in to take the Doc's place while the Master just stood there was pretty poor. Maybe I'll rewatch to understand the point of the Irish popo thing because still don't.

My biggest grian was reserved for the reveal of the title of the next episode.

What happened to all the humans catweazle had already put through the portal?

They fell into a plothole

They just go to random places in the universe, possibly dying in the process iirc

So after a while, the portal was like, "fuck it, i'm only sending people to galifrey from now on?"

Yeah I was thinking the portal wasn't always linked to the same place.
But the Master had lined it up to go along with his plans. Seemed to be that the old guy who was left as the last person watching it had been there alone for decades or something like that.

Catweazle didn't go "whoa, that's a new planet, it's never looked like that before through the mystic portal" so the 'normal' destination is clearly Gallifrey.

The biggest takeaway for me is that flying towels are cleverer than the entirety of Time Lord society.

obvs this episode was bollocks but this

How did the Doctor save humanity from the destruction she herself created? she didn't

was especially stupid

the timeless child retcon didn't really bother me, it's an idea that seems tailor-made for ignoring or retconning. nu-who has done so many "surprise doctor!" stories now, i'm not sure how this works as a long-term story generating tool (outside of comics - would be great for comics)

i did wince every time sacha dhawan said "tecteun". and it was a *lot* of times

Catweazle didn't go "whoa, that's a new planet, it's never looked like that before through the mystic portal" so the 'normal' destination is clearly Gallifrey.

That his last line in the first part, isn't it?

Was it? It was lost for me multiple times in all the exposition then.

Might also have been handy for him to say something like "every time it opens up it looks different" (which I concede he may well have done).

just checked and his line is "I've never seen it look like that before" but it's p buried under electronic drums and cyber-clonking marching noises

DW-TTC: (One of may fave bad lines this season was in last week’s episode, where a portal is described as *always* opening on a new and random location ever time. And when its guardian sees it open he looks and says “It’s never looked like that before!”) #tweetnotes

— Andrew Ellard (@ellardent) March 2, 2020

god this sounds so bad

it's definitely much worse than you're imagining.

It's difficult to get across Sacha Dhawan's performance in text, for a start.

Thought the concesnsus was that he was one of the few good things about it?

I don't even know where I'd find the consensus, I just come here. But yeah, even with a dead script to work with, he was terrible.

Stupid to even begin looking for logic in this mess, but WHY DID PRE-HARTNELL MARTIN DOCTOR'S TARDIS LOOK LIKE A POLICE BOX?

Also, WHEN did the Doctor have these Irish metaphor-memories? Never saw that happen.

Chibnall's awful fucking writing, argh, fuck.

oh, i didn't even get that brendan was never the cyberman. way to mask that story -- changing the setting to earth but leaving in the immortality. couldn't possibly leave the setting as a place where people actually regenerate.

When Brendan/Doctor fell, exactly as The Timeless Child/Doctor did, wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form, also exactly as...? Just one quibble out of so many. So much exposition, like watching cutscenes instead of being in the game. At least expectations are lowered for next season.

snap poll -at this point would it be kinder if it was cancelled?

also, is there a good reference for whatever weird and wrong considerations/negotiations saw Chibnall given the top job? i've seen it implied that he wasn't actually that keen. was moffatt involved in the "succession planining"? the lack of vision of installing Chibnall is matched only by the lack of vision he is bringing to the show.

feels like all this is karmic blowback for dissing pip and jane baker, now Chibnall is suffering under the curse of JN-T. the time was clearly right for a genuinely new voice/vision from outside the gene pool - not someone who occasionally wrote the occasional 11th-best episode in any given season.

When Brendan/Doctor fell, exactly as The Timeless Child/Doctor did, wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form, also exactly as...?

Maybe, but he wasn't real and never happened anyway - "these Irish metaphor-memories"

snap poll -at this point would it be kinder if it was cancelled?

nah. it's still fine if it's bad for a while as long as it then gets good again. the biggest problem is that Chibnall's so slow that his three seasons are probably going to take us through 2022, and they then might want to re-sign him to keep the 60th anniversary in a "safe pair of hands."

(reminder/update that at the end of five years into the Chibnall era, with Spyfall being a Parts 1&2 and Regurgitation Of The Daleks likely airing in 2021, we'll now only be at 20 Chibnall-run stories broadcast, and 14 by Moffat.)

also, is there a good reference for whatever weird and wrong considerations/negotiations saw Chibnall given the top job? i've seen it implied that he wasn't actually that keen. was moffatt involved in the "succession planining"?

We don't know anything much, no. BBC powerbods planned to cancel it after Davies & Gardner, assuming that nobody else could run it, and just do one-offs if they ever felt like it. RTD was very involved in making sure the series continued instead.

Apparently both Davies and Moffat were consulted re Chibnall being offered the gig, but we dunno if they both said "HE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO IT" or "sure, our friend whom we have both hired and who has over 15 years showrunning experience seems employable." It absolutely shows a desperate paucity of imagination, and a failure to understand the show, but it's a good bet it was Broadchurch being a big hit that made him look like the candidate, not anyone actually watching his episodes.

(For mine, Mathieson looked like the best bet to take over and make a series with a varied tone, lots of fun ideas, and exciting new writers. It's a bummer that he hasn't had anything at all produced since, let alone had any showrunner experience, that could put him in the frame for next time.)

wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form

if you want to go down the regeneration lane: how did the Master make a living cyber-army out of Time Lords who were all definitely properly and absolutely dead? and how did they then start regenerating again after they were shot dead, again, with cyber-guns? (and why do the Cybermen build themselves so flimsy that they die from one zap of their own weapons, if they're meant to be a conquering army?)

obv any single 15-second chunk of this episode falls apart to this degree after 3 seconds of consideration

wow I sat this season out because I got sorta busy but it sounds like it really went off the rails