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

Disney do not have a license for C20th Who, and dozens of other companies do, so “find a way” would likely take far more effort and expense than would justify it

especially as Disney probably don’t want their partner in a global license to actively train audiences to seek content elsewhere, nor the Beeb want to devalue it by giving it away before they have the chance to license it to Disney

heh how did I know I was about to be Who-splained in this thread

<3

you asked a question tbf

(which I took as genuine!)

hmmmm

hmmmmmmmmmmm

yeah

i liked parts of the finale but i also felt like it did ~too~ much? which i mean yes thats RTD. but it felt like it was maybe too much even for him idk

also sutekh thought ruby’s mum was special because …ruby thought she was special?? FOH
no the SHOW told US she was special and then you couldnt think of a good reason why so we got that naff answer instead

Another plus for Chibnall here lol, didn't bother so much with these big season-long mysteries that tend to disappoint or just be too nonsensical. Actually did find the reunion pretty touching though.

halfway through the final episode and a) crt ipads should be a (slightly impractical) thing and b) I'm guessing Mel is the mother

Hiding this quote for the very spoiler averse:
Showrunner Russell T Davies also later confirmed: "We’re heading into season 2, and my God, Ruby Sunday is important to that. There’s good stuff to come."

I didn't get much out of this season tbh, though I'm still immensely thankful that it was never a hate watch.

When UNIT were first trying to shoot Sutekh, I had a mild chuckle because Rose looked like she was scrolling Instagram or tiktok.
The whole death thing was a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for HIV, right?

i have enjoyed new woke doctor who more than i thought i would tbh.

yeah i love him. he has a very infectious enthusiasm but can also bring the gravitas, he’s great!

thing that annoys me most about new doctor / new tardis interior is HE NEVER PLAYS THE FUCKING JUKEBOX. don’t have it, or license some bloody music ffs.

I have loved both the new Doctor and the companion. Tremendous performances by both actors.
The individual episodes varied so much in quality but it was never less than fun to watch in the moment.
Which was not something I could have said for Chibnall's run
Cautiously looking forward to the next season

otm

yeah i have gone thru an accelerated version of RTD1 feelings over the specials and the Ncuti eps - from Rose-style “gosh wow YEAH Dr Who is back!” to Stolen Earth-level “I am pretty sick of this kind of shit” - like, Empire of Death was pretty preposterous, albeit often in interesting (but unsuccessful!) ways

but it does feel like Doctor Who again, is still trying new things, has a good heart and isn’t squandering the premise - i felt like it would have been a mercy to cancel it during Chibnall but I am glad this season happened

would be interested to see what it looked like with someone younger at the helm tho (and someone who wasn’t steeped in classic who)

anyone else been watching The Responder the entire last week and get mildly confused at the end of this Doctor Who finale? no?

usual RTD utter bollocks but enjoyable enough.

ie what Veg said in her spoiler.
also anyone else half expecting Ruby to rickroll Sutekh on that ipad

omg yes i thought it would be a spice girls video lol

thought Millie Gibson was particularly good in this

this & the ruby christmas episode were ghe weakest episodes of the season. not actively bad, just kinda (shrug).

I think both Gatwa and Gibson were tremendous this season and in the finale, but the writing let them both down.

I like the idea of Ruby and her mother being just ordinary people (and I appreciated RTD saying this was his response to Rey’s arc in The Rise of Skywalker - I too much preferred the ending in TLJ), but the way we got there felt like the audience was being played and not with the usual dumb misdirects/red herrings like S Triad.

Like what was the deal with the snow? What was Ruby’s “hidden song” that scared the Maestro? Why did the Doctor’s memory of the night changed? And who the hell turns to point at a sign to choose a name like THAT when there’s no one else around? chalking it all up to everyone including sutekh just being curious and nosy about a mystery was so goofy (also lol at the thought of 15yo girls going around wearing oversized black hooded capes in 2004)

I said it upthread but please, enough characters/companions who are also riddles- especially if these are the kind of answers we’re going to get. I don’t give a fuck at all about who Mrs Flood is and the thought of her being the mystery next season is already tiring me out

good season overall though. As others mentioned, it’s nice that it feels like Doctor Who again and is trying to do different things even if not all of it works

would be interested to see what it looked like with someone younger at the helm tho (and someone who wasn’t steeped in classic who)

I would love for them to pick Kate Herron (co-writer of “Rogue” this season, former Loki showrunner, also directed several episodes of Sex Education)

“Rogue” was silly but very enjoyable, which is true of everything I’ve seen of her work - she’s good at balancing sci-fi and comedy, and knows when to let episodes breathe with quieter character moments

Still wish it had been Mathieson-with-Dollard-as-regular-star-writer from 2012, presumably-Dollard from 2015 or ‘17, and an unknown-in-2011 female writer now. but mainly it’s insane to think that the show has been in both a post-Moffat holding pattern slash retrenchment AND a consistent ratings success in that mode for t h i r t e e n years now! longer than nearly every programme in the history of television human communication

Roz otm about the mother resolution being a total cop out, while the general RTD “ordinary people” principle being sound. but he’s never been bothered by constraints (unlike moffat who perhaps loves building up constraints too much)

for some reason the cape and the pointing bothered me more than any of the other factors.

also, killing everyone then bringing them all back to life is a bore.

other than that i enjoyed it! gatwa is incredible.

Moffat's writing science fiction, RTD fantasy IHIBIDTAE

I get the comparison to The Last Jedi, but that was an act of criticism - RTD is both Abrams and Johnson here.

As an adoptee who met their mother in later life, my hair was standing on end for the last bit - there's a long process, for a reason, why you don't walk up to someone and say "Hi, I'm your kid!"

There's a few people on Threads giving it "aha the cause of your heightened expectations is yourself and the modern internet" - this would be a stronger argument if the previous episode wasn't titled "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"

I do agree with the point I saw over there that this would be a better season if it was 12 episodes or so - and if RTD (or other writers) took the time to do more with Ruby that isn't about the Mystery. People liked Clara, but they liked her a lot more after she stopped being the mysterious girl. I uh understand that this lesson doesn't seem to have been learned for the next season.

xp at me: 2016 for Mathieson, nine years of holding

I enjoyed this but for most of the episode I kept imagining my younger self making a Disney Who drinking game where one of the rules is “drink every time the Doctor cries”

It was strange to hear Ruby saying she was from Tameside. I’m from Tameside and I’ve literally never heard anyone else on tv say they were from Tameside…but I’ve also literally never heard anyone in real life say they were from Tameside either, because it was only invented in 1974 and nobody really believes in it, everyone just describes themselves as being from Ashton or Stalybridge or whichever county their town was in before it got amalgamated into a Metropolitan Borough. Millie Gibson is from Broadbottom though, maybe that’s why she didn’t want to be more specific.

Anyway yeah I’m usually fine with RTD doing vibes over plot logic, I still think 73 Yards was a great example of that…but it means if the vibes are shit (as they were for both parts of the finale, everything turned up to MAX OVERWROUGHT without feeling earned) then the whole thing collapses. There have been worse RTD season endings though! I’d argue the only one that wasn’t fundamentally bad was Eccleston’s.

So I have never in my life watched a single episode of Dr. Who. I have a general awareness of its premise, and the level of fandom it sparks, but I've just never watched it.

My 11yo son for some reason got excited about it a few weeks ago so we decided to watch. At first we tried the first episode of the Christopher Eccleston season (someone rec'd that we start there). It was OK - a little goofy, bad special effects, and just generally... dumber than I expected it to be. My son liked it fine but he decided he just wanted to watch the new season, so we started with the Church on Ruby Road. It was better - better effects, Gatwa is magnetic, and Ruby was very good too. But it was still kinda dumb with the cheeky goblins and the musical number? But my son liked it so we kept going and went to Space Babies -- still dumb! And the Beatles episode... getting better but at this point I am really scratching my head at the level of fandom this show inspires, as it really felt to me like a kids show. I even told my son that I'd keep watching with him, but he could just start watching it on his own too if he wanted to really devour it. (It is summer vacation after all - he has time on his hands!). He wanted to watch with me so we settled in to watch BOOM and I was NOT ready for that episode. The tension! And the doctor's visceral anger at the soldiers for believing in god! So now I'm thrown. Next night we watch 78 yards and we both were on the edge of our seats. He has definitely never watched a show that was that creepy. I thought he was going to have nightmares that night.

So, we just kept going and watched the rest over the last few days and we both got very sucked in. I agree with a lot of what's said upthread - namely that you REALLY can't spend much time trying to suss out the plot logic or how some of these harrowing situations suddenly resolve themselves. I think I'm actually glad not to know all the back story this first time around, nor to be weighed down by comparing to past seasons or being distracted by continuity holes. It's just a fun ride while you're on it and especially fun to watch through my son's eyes as he feels like he's really discovered something (which had not already been discovered by his older brother).

My son now wants to go back all the way to the first episode from 1963. So wish me luck on this journey, however long it might last....

My 15 yo has lost all interest in this show but I did manage to snag him at the right moment for 73 Yards and he liked it a lot.. but I think he's starting to define himself against it, as something he used to watch when he was younger. Which is a shame because this season is so much better than the Chibz era

That story is the essence of Doctor Who and one of the reasons why it has endured for so long. The framework supports every type of story you can imagine from the goofy to the terrifying.

I will warn you that the pacing of the classic series is GLACIAL compared to the new series, where the typical story length is half to a third as long, but if you allow the stories to unfold at their own pace rather than being impatient with them, you end up with some absolutely fantastic stories, and the standalone “An Unearthly Child” episode IMO stands up as the pilot that introduces you into the world of the Doctor.

great post pgwp - really captures something good about the series. and as you say gatwa is magnetic. will revisit BOOM on your post alone as first time round i didn’t like how it looked and didn’t really enjoy it as much as some others, but yeah yr post has encouraged me to go back.

and DJP otm about An Unearthly Child.

DJP OTM of course. I will say that one of the most memorable of the classic series is "Wargames" which is in TEN parts. I don't think it dragged, but the final episode is just so weird and memorable, even by modern standards.

pgwp, my 9yo has recently been watching the old series (Tom Baker) but his dad found a list of sort of 'must-see' type episodes and is running through those. Kid LOVES them, loves the arch wit and the little clues and baddies and the basic effects. You may well find it dull for a lot of the time. He's also concurrently watched a couple of the recent Tennant/Donna ones from this year and all the Gatwa ones.

When they're good, they're really good but the dumbness pisses me off too much sometimes - like the Toymaker one, had almost psychopathic levels of disregard for any satisfying aspects to the resolution, with BOMBASTIC to compensate for it.

first Doctor is a bit unpleasant as he’s very grumpy - it’s hard to square with any enthusiastic seeming Dr’s you have already encountered

mr veg has never seen old Who. I rewatched Pyramids of Mars the other weekend & he sat through it and I was like “wasn’t it great?” and he was like “the story is good but it’s 2/3 just them running around or hiding”

and i was like how dare

great post pgwp - really captures something good about the series. and as you say gatwa is magnetic. will revisit BOOM on your post alone as first time round i didn’t like how it looked and didn’t really enjoy it as much as some others, but yeah yr post has encouraged me to go back.

― Fizzles, Thursday, June 27, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Well just to reiterate, you have to go into the episode feeling confident that you are watching a show for children. That's why it riled me so much - the tension caught me off guard big time because I'd never experienced another episode that tried for that tone.

But I do think the thing that will stick with me the most from this season is how mad the Doctor got at people for being religious. I don't think I've ever seen such an unapologetic pro-atheist stance on TV before.

pgwp, my 9yo has recently been watching the old series (Tom Baker) but his dad found a list of sort of 'must-see' type episodes and is running through those. Kid LOVES them, loves the arch wit and the little clues and baddies and the basic effects. You may well find it dull for a lot of the time. He's also concurrently watched a couple of the recent Tennant/Donna ones from this year and all the Gatwa ones.

Perhaps such a list would be helpful, as those early series seem dauntingly long. 40+ episodes in a season. I don't think my kid will have the stamina for something like 700 episodes of Dr. Who.

pgwp be extra-warned that the three-part Tribe Of Gum story that’s bundled with An Unearthly Child is one of the slowest in all of Who history. Plenty of “sampler platter” recommendation lists in other DW threads if your kid is up for jumping around to get a flavour of how the style and Doctors change over the years though!

(Especially as it’s literally impossible to watch all of it — 97 eps from the 60s are missing, and most of the 1963-73 episodes only exist in poor copies)

xp hah

or if you want to jump back to a part of the revival series that feels more "current" than the Eccleston season, Matt Smith's first episode (The Eleventh Hour / Series 5) is a great place for kids + older co-viewers to start...

I feel like I've heard so much about the David Tennant era...

xxp think we started with City of Death but then he decided he wanted to watch all the Tom Baker ones so is doing that. so the list got forgotten!

opinions will vary, but a lot of folks here will agree that nearly every episode in Tennant's first series is kinda bad*, while even the couple of duds in Smith's first are pretty okay.

but for you two specifically, the things you didn't like about the style of Eccleston's first ep are in most of Tennant's, and his run is not written to work as a jumping-on point (that also rewards existing viewers), which Smith's first year is. if you and the son dig that one, I'd suggest a highlights run through Eccleston and Tennant before going on through Smith and Capaldi. (you personally will like Capaldi a lot, I'm guessing.)

*has one GREAT standalone, and one great one that only works if you've seen a bit of older Who before.

watching the very first episode from 1963 next is still a tops idea btw! that one is great, and will feel like time-travel in and of itself to the kid - basically taped as live in one studio, with voice-over scene transitions done by the actors simply standing off-camera... and still works as showing the origin point of where the premise of the modern show came from. but if he doesn't vibe with that one, it's probably a lost cause to try any other six-part B&W stories :)

Thank you for the advice!

Which one is the great standalone from Tennat’s first season? The Girl In The Fireplace?

Yeah, I think so. By a fairly clear margin actually, looking at the others.