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

Well, he was wearing British pants!

i love that it went unaddressed the whole time

they each had half the clothes, nothing to address!

Pleasing that he kept his Scottish accent.

they each had half the clothes, nothing to address

Wait so Tennant was commando?

cmon we were all thinking it

Fifteenth got the raw deal there.

lmao

The weird thing is Neil Patrick Harris has already played the Emcee in Cabaret (because of course he has), so I didn't understand why we got an audition-roll for it.

Actually the weird thing is that at no point during this story setting up a spare Tennant Who free to live their life, does anyone mention that they already already have one? Particularly Donna! she was there, it'll be the last thing she remembers.

I agree Ncuti Gatwa started off strong, established himself well - from "I have bigenerated - there's no such thing" onwards I thought he's got the stuff - more direct than Tennent, who would have stuck in "uh, the thing is" in there.

Hard not to view the new-series companion and the old-series companion literally pulling Doctor Who apart as some kind of metaphor, but - for what?

The "He's present in every screen" reminded me of the position about Doctor Who being fantasy in sci-fi clothes - the sonic screwdriver never not a magic wand.

Noticed that rtd is following the first season in episode order: present day britain, then far future, then haunted house. Although this one also borrowed the s2 gatiss episode with the killer tvs.

Wonder where they're going with mavity and the cab replacement word.

Nitpicks: the "everyone thinks they're right nowadays!" virus and the Doctor's speech about how us humans are always doing a cancel culture, the eyes they rolled. Thankfully this subtext was quickly ignored for the rest of the ep.

At one point I did double-take on whether Logie-Baird was actually Gatiss again in his beloved prosthetics.

I loved the 'Spice Up Your Life' bit but curious that RTD went with such a golden oldie given previous forays into this kind of thing used something more contemporary (Rogue Traders, Scissor Sisters). Not that I could proffer a worthy equivalent from recent years myself.

bit on the nose but Dua Lipa’s Hallucinate obvs (bonus points if it’s the BBC remix)

can i be the voice of opposition about the musical number shoe-horned into the episode? thanks. the lip sync wasn't even good (plus he was singing all the parts himself...)

(he said in the after show thing that he wasn't familiar with it, being American and all)

I enjoyed the song! I enjoy all the classic "RTD annoys Ian Levine" moves.

Note: If you're going to build a really big gun, don't build it to TURN BACK ON YOUR OWN BUILDING

lol let's say The Toymaker just manipulated it so it could

was it an in joke for fans that Mel the computer programmer was there and they needed a computer program... and so Donna coded it up?

Donna was the hyper-typer so that made sense in the moment.

I also laughed every time Tennant said "the vlinx" with total sincerity, it was very cute

In general I like this pivot (finally!) away from Watchmen-style "how would this be if it really happened, it would probably be DARK" to "fuck it let's have fun with it"

Chibnall and Nathan-Turner were probably the worst offenders with this approach, although I guess Nathan-Turner did a lot of "fuck it let's have fun", just very badly

RTD1 and Moffat tend to be better measured episode-by-episode because they're so gleefully all over the map

One thing about The Toymaster in this is that he seemed wholly uninterested in playing games unless someone forced him to; I thought his whole thing was about putting people into games that could/would kill them nit, not goofily torturing people until they forced him into a game.

That said, the goofy torture was very fun to watch

lol that was a bit myxlplytkian, like he’s this all powerful reality shifter with one extremely well known method of just forcing him into a situation where he holds no advantage

presumably he's off the leash in this new universe, compared to his own realm (and he cites mind games as a particularly human thing)

(plus he was singing all the parts himself...)

note that they carefully excluded one particular line, even though this version of the Toymaker was extensively calibrated to contextualise the racist elements of the first serial

so the first black doctor gets relegated to being only half of the current drs

tbf the previous black doctor was also only half of the current doctors (and the very first white-passing one was so relegated that they brought in an extra fake white one to reduce him to only one quarter of them in the anniversary special). also in both the first and second regeneration stories ever, future incarnations of regenerating timelords ran around interacting with their current selves. and this is the third time that there has been a bonus David Tennant doctor sharing the timeline with a current doctor.

ratingswatch: dropped less than 250k from WBY on overnights, tied for highest AI in the last decade*, this run of specials has the highest average AI since Series 7B.

*with Mummy, Flatline, Dark Water and WEAT.

7-day for Wild Blue Yonder projected to be 7.1M on TVs, again around 200k on devices.

Yeah but he isn’t playing mind games, he’s just killing people like a superpowered version of The Joker

in order to FUCK PPL UP MAN (including you, pwned by the NPHmaker)

Star Beast ratingswatch: two days RTD said it was up to 8.7 million, and today on instagram said 9.0. That puts it, on 19 days, higher than the +28 for anything since Rosa (Chibnall's third episode, October 2018).

(Chibnall's debut, on 11.46, was the highest consolidated since +28 started being recorded with Last Christmas.)

7-day for Wild Blue Yonder projected to be 7.1M on TVs, again around 200k on devices.

7.142M - beaten by I'm A Celebrity stripped and Saturday Strictly; beat the Sunday Strictly and the Bake Off final. 9th most watched episode, 3rd most watched programme for the week. TV-only details: 2.752M live, 2.118 catchup same night, 1.992 same week and a 41% share.

Star Beast is the 9th (behind all of Happy Valley, and two of Death In Paradise), and WBY the 22nd, most watched episode of drama on +7 for 2023, and Star Beast's 28 only expires at the Christmas weekend, so we might see timeshift on the other two leap up after Xmas special tx.

Is +28 the ratings in the first 4 weeks?

maybe i should have paid more attention since i didn't understand half of this episode. i guess it's using the crack in time to do its version of it's a wonderful life? but the character never regretted their life so it just seems odd.

Yeah the goblin storyline seemed very poorly thought through - RTD spent all his narrative logic on the specials.

Ncuti is top though.

I liked all three of the Tennant episodes, but found something off about this one, the goblin song was really bad, just sounded very generic and unimaginative. Ncuti was great throughout, yes.

Christmas specials have always been so-so? The first ever Tennant one is the only I can remember liking that much.

Most of Moffat’s were great, a few were big flops. (Chibnall of course didn’t do any.) Rusty’s were usually an excuse to make even less joined-up sense than usual.

I had seen so much Goblin Song in previews that it made a fab opportunity to grab a cup of tea and check the status of items cooking.

Other than that, with a fair amount of Xmas Zubrowka in me, really enjoyed that and love Ncuti Gatwa. He’s already nailed it.

As a Doctor Intro this lacked something imo, certainly compared to The Eleventh Hour which also had to introduce companion(s) and may be unparalleled in that but not sure what exactly - some more meta-commentary from the Doc maybe just to flesh him out more (we didn't see him picking out trousers)...glad he mentioned being adopted at least. Liked everything else more or less. Completely failed to recognise Anita Dobson.

She's got to be The Rani, right?

Probably although feels a bit off to cast someone in that role who also could've played them in the late 80s! But you could say the same of Jacobi...

i think rtd is following up on the mystery woman subplot in "the end of time". although the name mrs. flood suggests she could be related to the pond/river clan.

hate the Rani but a new version might be better I suppose

Rani...rain...flood...RTD you dunnit agane.

Apart from the Christmas Carol and maybe The Husbands of River Song (and that's just for seeing Alex Kingston and Capaldi together) I think they've generally been a bit naff, but they're Christmas fare - singing Goblins and "The Doctor's first chart hit" are about par for the course.

I did like the quick mention of "rent controlled" as a reason how you can afford a flat like that in Notting Hill on one-ish salaries (did they mention what Ruby does?)

I'm looking forward to finding out more about Ruby, she seems just a reset of Clara right at the minute.

Also notable in actual use of science-fiction (ish) as a plot resolver!

Last Christmas was absolutely the best Christmas one and also actually good. I generally enjoyed Moffat’s except for the superhero one which I found unwatchable.

Agree with those who said this was lacking something, but watchable enough. Eleventh Hour still the masterclass for new-era Doctor intros but unencumbered by need to be Seasonal I guess.

Still trying to work out their strategy for new viewers but thinking maybe there isn’t one? I figured this might be the jumping-on point but it didn’t really feel like it - partly the Xmasness and partly the fact that it was billed as “Doctor Who Special 4”. Although I read somewhere (perhaps here?) that the actual new season will be referred to as “Season 1” so perhaps now everyone is introduced the can get on with having some good solid adventures.

As a Doctor Intro this lacked something imo,

pfft, what more could a viewer want to wrap up an intro episode where Ncuti Gatwa has said "I am the Doctor" five to twelve times already, than him replying to a final question "explain your premise quickly to new viewers please?" with "...I ...am The Doctor!!!!!"

Moffxmas: A Christmas Carol, Last Christmas and Husbands Of River Song are all megabangers, superhero one and Woman/Wardrobe are disasters, The Snowmen is a really fun way of threading the casuals/n00bs/fans needle in multiple directions and leaning into the hegemonic Christmas imagery via time travel...
and for all their respective awkwardnesses:
Time Of The Doctor does an astounding job of cramming an entire planned Season 8 narrative arc into one hard time limit of 60 minutes*, letting Smith play an entire emotional arc largely solo, and turning The Doctor into a sun god at the pagan holiday;
Twice Upon A Time falls back on comedy runarounds and normie-fanservice in a way that Moffat usually tried harder than -- but he had to rush this one out as his THIRD return to the series since resigning less than 18 months earlier, so making it two old men feeling exhausted with Dr Who and preparing to FINALLY give it up, really has resonance.


* when Chibnall was given 50-65 mins for his regular series episodes, and up to EIGHTY-SEVEN for his specials in which nothing happens, imagine how much more of a year's plot Moffat could have worked in at that length.

This was not very good and I’m extremely annoyed

Nobody posted this! Felt a small number of genuine human emotions, probably due to the music as much as anything - but it looks kinda fun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoyV65HoRFA

He's back! and it's.. season 1.

I give that until mid-April

now that Ned’s gone should we re-poll whether to include spoilers in these threads

(checks watch) okay it’s been a decade and there’s probably only nine of us still reading / watching so it probably wouldn’t be conclusive

I haven't seen it mentioned here but they've announced that Moffat has written an episode for the new series
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/doctor-who-steven-moffat-julie-anne-robinson-new-season/

now that Ned’s gone should we re-poll whether to include spoilers in these threads

...just use the 'hide' tags as per?