new-nu-Who: RTD2 (Doctor Who on telly 2023-?)

Yeah was watching unicorn and the wasp last week. Very generic but lots of fun. It has a certain ease with just existing on simple terms, which Moffat’s period struggled with

when he goes for emotional or god forbid comical it's unbearable

I counted at least three scenes where I essentially thought "There's some really good acting here with stakes. Sure wish I could pay attention to it because of all the fucking sonic glop over it."

(Fun episode, I'll add.)

Also, a massive bravo for choosing his first episode back to send an unequivocal message to young trans fans.

And enjoyed how Rose's identity was actually used in the plot resolution rather than just being a thing her character was (Admittedly in a slightly hokey way, but hey it's Dr Who)

a LOT of oof in the resolution, but the Doctor's "oh, I do that!" re pronouns earlier was such a beast line that it outweighs anything else.

agree w those last three posts

I had a disparaging comment about RTD’s usual mode of subtlety that read as mean to unintended targets when I started typing it but suffice to say it could have been about a billion times more awful, so I’m relieved that I only ended up rolling my eyes a bit

xxpost yeah i liked that line !

Tennant is extremely comfortable in this role, it’s a joy to watch him just dominate the screen even when taking the sonic screwdriver to new levels of wtf

on dr who confidential there's a great bit where the writers of the original comic are visiting and DT basically interrupts to tell them how much of a fan he is

(Dave Gibbons was the artist - equally important as an author, just noting ftr.)

(and wagner wasn't there. yeah, was using shorthand)

I am seeing some absolutely DERANGED ranting about this harmless, charming episode, mostly centered around the “men can’t let things go” line which honestly I didn’t even register when I watched it, possibly because I was also wrangling my kids

I liked this: https://open.substack.com/pub/philipchristman/p/a-show-for-dorks

Now Russell T. Davies, who revived the show in 2005, is in effect reviving it again. A prickly, opinionated Gen X gay man of a distinct sort, Davies has been responsible for some of the best episodes the show has ever done. Who knows if he’ll pull it off again, but I at least feel safe in assuming that if he fails, he’ll do it in an interesting way.

and wagner wasn't there

(as noted in the opening post, Wagner did not contribute to the comic strip — where Mills was credited first on DWM, he was the sole writer)

Men unable to let go of the idea that men can't let things go

Dave Gibbons meets the Meep:

Me and the Meep! pic.twitter.com/LCO0WUnKTe

— Dave Gibbons (@davegibbons90) November 27, 2023

Pat Mills meets the Meep:

https://iconoblast.substack.com/p/all-hail-the-meep

So far 03: apparently RTD wrote some snippets of bridging Dalek VO for the 23/11/23-TXed colourised 75-minute edit of the 7-part first Dalek serial, recorded by surviving 1963-65 Dalek voice actor David Graham.

Nice little BTS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWnPxke0row

my issue with the “let things go” line was not the implication that men can’t let things go, but more the classic RTD lack of constraint resolving deadly problems in favour of feels.

i don’t think that matters in general, especially if people enjoy it - it’s a show! but personally prefer a sense of the magical and wonderful and slightly terrifying being taken seriously (i think this can create problems in another direction - i’m just talking personal taste here) rather than HOOT!!!

Rewatching The Runaway Bride and seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more (this is also why I really liked Dan’s departure; he got to a point where he was just tired of always being in mortal peril and fucked off back home, which is super relatable)

I read this and thought “my vague recollection is that Dan was kidnapped once, met the Doctor for about 15 minutes, then spent several months bouncing around space and time trying to save her, then went back to his life as soon as she could drop him home” before realising there were several episodes after Flux

Flux

or as iirc Chibnall thrillingly hyped it, “the story of a man… a man named Dan.”

I read the original Star Beast comic today, amazed that RTD chose to cut the section where the Wrarth knock the Doctor unconscious, strip him naked, and then perform surgery on him to hide a bomb in his belly!

recorded by surviving 1963-65 Dalek voice actor David Graham

https://i.ibb.co/VY6nYr0/grahamdalek.jpg

link to a reply with one of his lines embedded

seeing Donna turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor because he’s absolutely terrifying is a fantastic choice, one I wish would be played up a bit more

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

ratingswatch for Tracer: 5.08 milli VOSDAL, the highest overnight for a BBC drama launch in 2023**; nearly 2 million on iPlayer Sunday (1.62 recorded by BARB*) and another million Mon/Tues, per Jane Tranter (Grade also asked his scintillating opinion); highest Audience Appreciation Index since the first half of Capaldi's two-part finale in June 2017.

*which puts the 2-day figure above the 7-day final of, eg. Blink

** twenty-four episodes of six dramas have consolidated over 7m in 2023 on seven-day; Happy Valley S3 is the top six of those 24, with 7.9 for ep 1, and 11.08 for ep 6. (Call The Midwife S12e03 is 24th, with 7.01; its highest-ranked episode is the finale at 11 with 7.45)

Always helps to have National Treasure David Tennant back in the Tardis of course but yes they have to be pleased with this

Isn't that why Tegan eventually decides to bail from the TARDIS life?

Yes! Another fantastic departure, absolutely heartbreaking.

(A Christmas special with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead is likely to air one month from today, but not confirmed yet.)


Russel Tinsel Davies confirms: “From Day One in this job, I wanted Doctor Who back on Christmas Day! And with Ncuti, Millie, Davina and the Goblin King, I hope it’s a feast for all the family!”

OK, got around to watching the new episode today. I don't watch TV by myself, and the person I usually watch TV with was going through some stuff.

I had some trepidation about watching it, honestly. Stuff like TV shows are a really social thing for me. Half the fun of watching something is being able to talk about it. That's just been really hard for me lately. I don't have a lot of trust for communities, particularly fan communities. I've never really known how to talk to other people about Doctor Who, the way I see it, what it means to me.

Anyway. Full spoilers ahead.

I knew nothing about it going in except that RTD was showrunner again and that David Tennant would be involved and the new companion was going to be a trans woman named Rose Tyler (apparently that's not actually her character's name tho) and at some point David Tennant regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa. And that Donna was going to come back and they were going to resolve her arc.

So actually I knew a hell of a lot about it going in, considering I actively avoided reading anything about the episode.

The name of the episode rang a bell and as soon as I saw Pat Mills' credit I was like oh shit, this was based on a comic story. Have I read this? Do I know this one? And then the Meep showed up and I was all "OH SHIT IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKIN' MEEP"

And maybe this is why I have such a hard time talking to other Doctor Who fans

The Meep is such a _perfect_ RTD character, honestly better than any of the other characters RTD previously created in that mold. Kind of an Ewok-ET-Mogwai kind of thing except that it predates all of those characters, hahaha...

I went back to the story after watching it to see what the episode took from it. Surprisingly little, and not the stuff I thought. Aside from the Meep... meepself? (seriously, cute pronoun joke but this is why we say things like "she/her/hers" - in real life pronoun usage is distressingly similar to Douglas Adams' digression on tense conjugation in time travel) and the, uh, Wrarth warriors (big props to the actors for actually finding a way to pronounce "Wrarth"), the biggest influence I see is actually the influence of Sharon and her family on Rose and her family. I was pretty surprised to learn that "Fudge" is a character from the comics. I think I know a non-binary person named "Fudge". (Also a great non-binary name: "Keebler". If I had a child I'd argue with my co-parent that we should name them "Keebler" and my co-parent would very sensibly say "no".)

It's... the show I remember watching when RTD was running things the first time. Not the show I see when I watch it now. I remember the special effects, in 2005, looking genuinely impressive and not janky, the plots being exciting and fresh, the missteps easy to overlook. I remember it being a big action-packed family show with corny jokes and messaging that wasn't always perfect (looking at you "Unquiet Dead") but was...

I mean, Chibnall, right? I hate to mention his name. I don't know what happened, how David Tennant showed up again, any of that. I dropped that show like a hot rock after "Arachnids in the UK". Nothing particularly bad about that episode, I just figured, you know, this show isn't going to get any better from here.

Anyway, the trans thing. I thought it was... it was clearly an example of "cis-writing-trans". RTD gets it better than a lot of cis people. Sometimes, you know, sometimes a person knows just enough to be dangerous.

The idea that Donna and Rose could just "let go" of the, I don't know, magical time lord power (that goes back to Shada, right? What Chronotis does to Claire? God, I don't think I ever thought of that before)... that was good and authentic. Them saying that a "male-presenting" time lord couldn't ever _understand_ that is gender-essentialist bullshit, IMO. Cis guys... they sometimes put themselves down. Judge themselves in ways that I wouldn't dream of judging them.

It's something that I was taught. To hold onto things that I thought were important, but aren't. You don't have to transition to learn to let go of those things.

My girlfriend liked the corny "non-binary" joke/reveal. I liked it too, I mean, RTD is corny in a way I like. I eye-roll but it's all in good fun, for me. My girlfriend genuinely felt seen. And this is an example of... when I say RTD gets more than most people, Rose being both non-binary _and_ trans... that's me, that's my girlfriend, that's a lot of the people I know. I appreciate that a show run by a cis person sees that.

The thing about these stories is that... the stuff that gives me the trans feels isn't always the trans stuff. Rose is a great character, it was great to see her, and I just felt Donna's arc so deeply in my heart.

It's kind of echoes of... I wrote this whole story about how for me, "Human Nature" (the TV story, I never read the book) gave me particular trans feels. Donna's arc gives me that feeling but moreso. And it's not a trans story. This was an arc that was set up when, 2008? A lot of the stuff I've felt, I've experienced, isn't exclusive to trans people.

Donna lost 15 years of her life. The Doctor thought he was helping her. Thought he was _saving_ her from certain death. Thought... he could seal off that part of her and she'd be fine. She'd live a happy, normal life. Plus, she had a lot of money. It was OK that she couldn't think about those things she did, couldn't acknowledge those things she did, or the pain would fucking kill her. It was OK that everybody around her had to lie to her in increasingly obvious ways, stop talking about things that were incredibly important to them. Nothing is wrong. There are no aliens. You don't know this man at our front door. They're acting stupider than those asshole kids who deadname Rose.

Which is, again, a clear sign of cis people writing trans characters. Cis people talk about trans characters and the first thing that happens is you hear our deadnames. I don't want to know anybody's deadname. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter. It's a lot easier to just not fucking say it in the first place than it is to unhear it. Now I'm always going to know this character's deadname, whenever I think about her, and I would fucking prefer not to. A lot of cis people just don't seem to get that.

Anyway, Donna. "The Star Beast" shows, very well, the cost of that. Doesn't pass any judgements because there's no point. It doesn't matter whether the Doctor was right or wrong in doing what he did. It hurt. She spent fifteen years missing some important part of herself, not understanding, not knowing why or what was wrong with her, and whenever she asked about it people lied to her, tried to keep her from knowing the truth. _He_ tried to keep her from knowing the truth. He didn't want to be responsible for killing her. No. He couldn't accept that he was _already_ responsible for killing her. No blame. No guilt. The life he lives... people around him die, sometimes. People he cares about. Sometimes you can change that. Sometimes you can't.

I guess he learned that in "The Waters of Mars", in "The End of Time". By that time he'd already done what he did to Donna. I don't know. Maybe he thought sacrificing himself for Wilf atoned for that. It didn't. Nobody _asked_ him to atone.

Wilf's still alive, the show tells us. It's not... we'll never see him again. Bernard Cribbins died last year. I don't care if Wilf is living on a nice farm upstate with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

So he comes back, 15 years later, after spending a long, long lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time going to ludicrous lengths trying to keep anyone, ever, from dying, and then... we don't like to talk about what happened after that. Atonement? No, he just couldn't keep going on like that, the way she'd been going.

-

It was... nice. It was really nice to see Donna after she demanded, DEMANDED, that the Doctor stop trying to protect her from herself. Donna wasn't... she wasn't _dead_ before, exactly, but she was so much more _alive_ after the Doctor said those words. It was so easy to see and hear, just like it's easy to see the difference in me before and after. And she didn't regret it. Anything. Fifteen years that... for all the joy, still felt empty somehow, and then one minute of being alive in a way she didn't know she could be. Of doing amazing things. the lesson of the moth by archy. I have a friend who talked about... wanting to be that moth. And then doing it, diving straight into the flame and...

RTD always does this thing, right? Moffat pulled all kinds of shenanigans to keep anyone from dying except from old age, and maybe not even then, while RTD would destroy that world and then have Superman fly around the world backwards and everybody's fine now. It was my least favorite thing about Moffat endings. It seemed cheap. Using a time machine to re-edit a serial cliffhanger. Here, though? No, again, he's right. I dived into the flame expecting it to burn me up and I still don't know what the hell happened but I'm still here and everything I wanted from that flame I feel now in every moment of my life. It's such a queer thing.

-

Here's what I love most about this episode. Early in the episode, after Rose gets deadnamed, Donna says something like "I would burn down the world to protect you." And my girlfriend and I looked at the screen and said "Yes! Do it. Do it for us." She doesn't... well, she doesn't need to. But she also doesn't know that. I don't actually want to see the world burned down. Someone like Donna, though... that's what I want in an ally. Someone who would burn the world down to protect us.

I don't know. I'll say it. I'll share it. I've said enough stupid shit on this thread that... well, if I had anywhere else to say this stuff, I'd say it there instead. I guess.

thanks for that kate, that was beautifully said & deeply otm in ways that hadn’t occurred to me til you said it

and i agree re moffat, was the thing i liked least about his run

<3

That is lovely - though I haven't heard anywhere that Rose was the companion (for these three specials - I know Gatwa has his own companion) rather than Donna?

I definitely did see Rose described as a new companion in some of the earlier news stories around the 60th specials, but I think it was just people jumping to conclusions rather than quoting directly from what RTD was announcing, eg here, where they also decide she's a "new version of Rose Tyler".

Not that I think companion needs to be a very specifically defined term anyway, none of the "not a companion unless they travel in the tardis" or "not a companion unless they're in at least X episodes" etc nonsense is helpful. Rose meets the Doctor and helps him with something, that's probably enough to meet the companionhood threshold I reckon, it's arguably as much as Liz Shaw ever did.

haha yep that's the thing i'm just... out of touch in some weird ways, so much of what i "know" about the show is muddled fanlore that's since been corrected, except that i never picked up on the correction.

re: companionhood... see that's the thing, not only is the gender-essentialist take donna and rose give at the end wrong, there's a lovely bit in the episode that directly contradicts their claim

tennant is talking to someone... the current scientific advisor, maybe?... about donna... i can't recall what he says but it's really emotionally vulnerable and caring, and at the end he says "i guess i talk like that now?", and, if i'm wrong on this i'm wrong, shirley anne bingham says "that sounds like a good thing."

on a nerd sense it's very much in who tradition, new doctors who've just regenerated taking on some of the characteristics of their last incarnation (as far back as troughton in "power of the daleks")

it's more than that, though... the whole thing where chibnall declared that the doctor was no longer going to have "companions" but "friends" seemed like a genuinely good idea to me, although i'm sure chibnall managed to fuck it up and get it all backwards somehow. the doctor having been a woman for a few years is more than just the wrong gender on a taxicab license (and christ i feel the doctor's pain on that one... i hope updating the gender on his psychic paper is easier for him than updating my paperwork was for me. it probably isn't. given what i've seen of the doctor's approach to technology, the psychic paper settings UI is probably a fucking nightmare.)

the doctor is _changed_ by his experiences. it's why donna and rose refer to the doctor as "male-presenting". last episode the doctor was female-presenting, so... last episode she could have done it but this episode he can't? like, he can reach items on high shelves and pee standing up but he can no longer process trauma in an emotionally healthy manner?

it makes sense that the doctor doesn't know how to let go, not because he's "male-presenting" but because he's the DOCTOR, he's an alien who... this was the big revolution RTD brought into the show, the thing that made the show so much _better_ than it'd ever been before. companions weren't just people whose job was to scream and have the plot explained to them. she or he (yes, mickey was a companion, nobody gives a fuck about adam) was someone the doctor needed to _listen_ to, someone who undersood things he didn't. i grew up watching the original show, and my role model was mostly the doctor. (i mean, when she was in the show it was lalla ward, but i think that was mostly a me thing.)

the protagonist of the revived show, for me, that was rose, and not in a "i wish i was a girl" sense. it was her _character_. she was the strong one. she was the one i looked up to. the doctor's alien nature didn't make him some kind of unstoppable superhero. (mostly it made him act kind of autistic a lot of the time, down to literally carrying stim toys around with him in his pockets. can't imagine why i found the doctor so relatable as a kid.) when he tried to act like a superhero he hurt other people and he got hurt himself. his first companions, way back in the beginning, were teachers, and maybe that was less of a coincidence than it seemed.

-

some more serious spoilers for the ep in this next para, about shirley anne bingham:

i loved shirley anne bingham from the first second, that "oh she'd better show up again" love. (i looked up her name - i avoid researching writing stuff about doctor who for the same reasons i avoid capitalizing my posts, but i want to get characters' names right at least - and of course she fucking will... you don't create a character that good as a one-off.) this character... i don't have the lived experience of using a wheelchair, and someone who does will probably see things in the portrayal that i don't. i loved the character. i loved the actor, i loved the way the hectic pacing of the show made it a genuine surprise to me when she showed up again at the end. i loved the way the show recognized that hey, it's not just daleks who can't climb stairs. i loved her saying "don't make me the problem". i loved the way it gave a plausible plot reason for her to not be affected by the meep's bisexual lighting. i loved the way her disability affected what she could do in ways that were meaningful in the story but didn't make her a liability or a weaker character. and yes, i loved that she had a pimped out james bond wheelchair that could shoot RPGs.

she had _agency_, in a way that moffat's female characters didn't (i do think that verity ritchie convincingly makes the case that moffat's female characters are nearly all cis-male-fantasy versions of bisexual dominatrices). loved loved loved this character.

so glad you're watching again kate!

Yeah - and yes of course otm that 'companion' is a vague title

I thought some other deeply RTD beats in this were the whole military carnage in suburbia thing and the repeated cuts to the youngest bitparter, in this case Fudge, not really involved but gawping at what they could see of the carnage in a direct nod to younger viewers.

Enjoyable in a totally different way from last week's!

Also enjoyed 'The Star Beast' all the more on rewatch earlier (including good lines missed the first time).

It was fantastic just watching that shift gears through silly history - the two of them in a room - mysterious 2001 / Hitchhiker's guide spaceship - the mounting unease of the changelings - surreal chase - the two of them in a room redux - the four of them in a room. The "they don't handle slow well" could have been better set up, but that feels like the best episode of Doctor Who I've seen in a long time.

Wow that was outstanding

Loved it — feels quite emotional having the show return from a long lull with an episode as good as that. And no cop-out ending either.

really good, and i loved it was still really gripping whilst also me having no fucking idea wtf was going on until almost the end

That was amazing, genuinely creepy, suspenseful and fun

Instant top 10 episodes potentially which after the Chibnall era I didn’t think was still possible.

loved the use of RTD1-looking CGI effects on the not-Doctor and not-Donna to create a horrifically unheimlich sensation, contrasted with an entirely modern-looking CGI set

great ep, but will have to dock a point for acknowledging chibnall era lore - quite apart from the personal disappointment, my family were baffled by this bit and I couldn’t really explain it because i stopped watching chibnall during his first season

AND - I remember this used to be something I saw mentioned a lot online but I found the dialogue was mixed very low under the music - consensus seems to be something to do with surround mix being pushed into 2-ch setup (watching on Disney+, perhaps there is a settings thing somewhere)

it doesn't really need explaining, he exposited everything you need to know (basically it means RTD can treat the last three years of Chibnall's era as a slate-clearing traumatic event, the way the 1989-2005 "wilderness years" were represented as the Time War when RTD/Eccleston started)

also I promise it makes much more sense in two sentences/ten seconds than in ten non-consecutive episodes over five years

feel the franchise needs a proper new broom

could be worth bringing in someone from outside completely, rather than someone with history as a writer on the show. Though Gattis has never been showrunner, right? Is Gattis still good? Was he ever?

No and no.

xp yes totally that’s what i was getting at - RTD2 was blighted by all this Sutekh/Rani shit that nobody wanted not even the rusted ons - throw all that in the bin

needs a top down rethink unburdened by any sense of responsibility to the past - other than core concept “this show can pretty much do anything”

we need a broccoli-headed hipster with a wonky scarf

https://variety.com/2025/tv/global/doctor-who-disney-exits-bbc-partnership-2026-christmas-special-1236563403/

I feel like they never recovered from starting with that awful Space Babies episode. They got better! I've only watched 2 of Season 2 though. The first season was fun, Space Babies aside.

Space Babies! Bloody hell. A real WWHT moment.

could be worth bringing in someone from outside completely, rather than someone with history as a writer on the show.

Ever more obvious that it should have been Mathieson in 2018, with Dollard also staying as regular. (RTD only doing the 60th anniversary specials would have also played very differently in that regard, mere gleeful nostalgia in conversation with whatever the show had been since, instead of a flop-sweat reaction to Chibnall.)

I would also like to point out that I have been OTM fifteen years ago saying that Paul Hartnoll should have replaced Murray Gold. But maybe handing over during The Eleventh Hour, so he could have still done variations on the I Am The Doctor hero theme.

i don’t really understand why RTD didn’t take the disney deal as an opportunity to fully reconfigure the show for a new audience, maybe he tried and was thwarted somehow? but yeah as the ostensible first salvo in a Who As Global Brand effort, space babies should have been a Rose-style “meet the companion then meet the Doctor” number, not a nightmare bad concept poorly executed, you could just feel millions of people thinking “ok, not for me” and never returning

xxp

he old iirc

(most of his writing post-RTD1 vastly >>>> RTD2. but he made a just-too-late judgment call on how dumb / family / shiny-floor nu-nu-RTD ² could go at all, and bounced off the cusp)

I don't have a problem referencing the past, just depends how it's done, i.e. needs to be a compelling story rather than fan service. But some new ideas would be welcome. I know they need to have experienced TV writers in rather than novelists or comics creators (not that they're mutually exclusive - plenty of Who writers have done both) but some familiarity with more recent SF, comics and weird fiction beyond the MCU or Netflix would inject some new life into the show, just as the 2000AD and Love & Rockets influence did in the Cartmell era. DW has never been hard SF and things like the Bridgerton episode were fun, but I don't think they need to be scared of being nerdy.
Tbf, there was a clear Saga nod in the Juno Dawson penned episode with the horn-headed character - again a promising episode that just felt rushed. It's an issue with the format rather than any single writer - too little time to build a backstory to the baddies - but there are surely better resolutions than the expository dump.
One thing I'm fairly confident in is RTD doubling down on the woeness. The more bigoted Daily Mail readers and reactionary centrist he pisses off the better.

WOKENESS!

some juicy quotes in here

https://deadline.com/2025/10/why-disney-ditched-doctor-bbc-1236601181/