WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

have at it, folx

So are we looking forward to this? I'm liking the new-broom approach to the casting/costume, and much as I enjoyed the last series (a lot), the fact that it ended with two incarnations of the Master in a Cybermen origins story that culminated in a surprise appearance from the Hartnell Doctor indicates a freshen up might be in order.

But jesus, Chibnall's previous Doctor Who sits on a spectrum of bland to poor - some of the most unmemorable episodes in recent memory. Or am I being pessimistic?

(cheeky plug: we review Chibnall's Silurian two-parter on the most recent edition of my Doctor Who podcast - http://www.illexplainlater.com/post/166422653503/episode-27-land-of-make-believe - where we discussed some of this stuff...)

v much looking forward to seeing how jodie whittaker plays it, v much apprehensive about everything else

The whole show has been feeling very tired and in need of a new injection of ideas for quite some time now. On the other hand I've never seen Broadchurch and most of the episodes Chibnall had written have felt like mid-series filler so I dunno if he's the guy to provide them.

The incredibly shoddy photoshopped TARDIS behind Whitaker's Mork cosplay in the promo photo sets the tone for exactly the level of quality I expect from ol' Chinballs.

Boring writer doesn't neccessariy mean boring showrunner, I'm hoping.

I am excited the same way I am excited for any new actor who takes on the role of the Doctor. I'm also looking forward to the Doctor-companion interaction and which parts will change and which parts will stay the same. I also enjoyed most of Chibnall's Who stories and think his worst work appeared in the first season of Torchwood.

I did read somewhere that he was planning to have more season-long storylines, which is the opposite direction things should be going in imo. A series of only very loosely connected, straighforward one and two parters each written by a different good writer would do the job fine.

I get that on the one hand, but on the other hand the current Golden Age of Television is really strong on bingeable serialized stories that last the whole season, plus his biggest critical praise came from doing that with Broadchurch.

I think the problem with recent Doctor Who arcs is that they're neither fish nor fowl - an awkward mix of 'arc episodes' and deliberately less important standalones that fails to really build to any sort of dramatic crescendo or are rushed at the final stages. I'd be fine with either 10 completely discrete episodes or a single 10-part story (an updated spin on The Daleks' Masterplan would suit me very nicely).

I think RTD's first season was the only to really pull off its "arc" - unless you count the Riversong episodes as a single story (and why not - at least "Wedding..." finally gave it a satisfying ending).

S1 barely had an arc, just some flash frames of graffiti shot later on and inserted into episodes months after they'd been written

S5 had a fantastic, coherent, satisfyingly complicated plot arc (only undermined by Rory's prop badge), and the first two Capaldi years together pulled off successful parallel character arcs

TBH I'd be happy to settle for the show being fun again and it hasn't felt like that for ages.

^ x1000000
i may try again now

Maybe I read too many Virgin/BBC novels but I can't point at a single season of the reboot that I would say is anti-fun, including Tennant's first season (which is the only one I haven't seen every episode of despite owning multiple copies of it)

lost me with matt smith, tried again with capaldi and still found it a slog

Can we count the 2008-2010 specials?

xp ulysses you crazy, Matt Smith's first season was the best yet.

i agree, first matt smith season is one of the most classic

I demand much less from Who then all of you. I'm happy if it's marginally entertaining which it consistently is. I don't care for her suspenders, but I like her coat, and I think she'll be an interesting doctor. I'm more concerned with three full time companions; that pushes this too far into an ensemble which makes me wonder if they will let her carry the show or not.

the ONE thing I did grow tired of under Moffatt was the manic pace of every episode though. LIke, 1000 things would happen in some of those smith episodes and they just got impossible to follow. Broadchurch, like it or hate it, has a much more staid pace that I hope he brings to the show.

I look at it as back to basics with the caveat that the show has often struggled to juggle story arcs for the Doctor and three full-time companions (the most notorious example I can remember being "Kinda", where Nyssa spends the entire story napping in the TARDIS and pops up at the end asking "hey, did I miss anything?")

If they do it with Bradley Walsh every week I'm all in.

Hot take: Bradley Walsh will be good in this.

Whooch.

I 100% know Bradley from The Chase (not the Doctor Who story) - what is he like when not being really annoyingly anti-intellectual all the time?

in cases like this (like with james corden, when he appeared on Who) I'm glad I'm not english and don't have the full context of how annoying this person is supposed to be (I liked corden's turn on who a lot. now that he's inflicted on the US with his own show, I see why people are tired of him though)

CHURCHWOOD

"an updated spin on The Daleks' Masterplan"

The Master's Dalek Plan

^irl giggle

CHURCHWOOD

it was early in the day and i have... no idea what i meant by this

re chibnall: i'm excited that it's essentially a minor ~reboot~ (god knows this show needs it) but chibnall's writing has never done anything for me. cyberwoman was one of the worst things that has ever happened, although to be fair it was a really long time ago.

Bradley Walsh is a decent actor. He'll be fine.

I worry that being Bradley Walsh gameshow host who's never off the telly might overshadow his acting ability.

re chibnall: i'm excited that it's essentially a minor ~reboot~ (god knows this show needs it) but chibnall's writing has never done anything for me. cyberwoman was one of the worst things that has ever happened, although to be fair it was a really long time ago.

"Cyberwoman" was terrible but "Exit Wounds", "Countrycide" and, to a lesser degree, "Fragments" were great. I also think his weakest Who story is "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" which I still enjoyed a lot because of how silly it was.

He was chirpy never-off-the-telly gameshow host while he was doing Law & Order UK and it didn't seem to have much of an impact on him then.

xpost

dan otm, chibnall's writing didn't stay at "cyberwoman" level thank god. also yeah, it feels wrong bagging "dinosaurs" because it was only ever meant to be the thing that it was. moffat/the bbc clearly wanted silly escapist quasi-blockbusters and that's what the writers delivered.

How much Gatiss are we expecting this time round?

i have seen a lot of lols about the new Doctor’s outfit on FB & elsewhere & it is making me annoyed

her look is on point & awesome
the short trousers with tall boots is such a great look esp with her height & propotions etc, and stripes are great & suspenders are cool wtf is wrong with ppl arg

don’t you get it veg she’s feeeeeeemale

grrr

suspenders are a 'little' costumey and it felt a bit like we were past costumey with capaldi, but I like her coat alot and I'm not sure what people have against culottes, I think they are cute on women.

suspenders are great on those who are shaped to accomodate them and horrific for everyone else, any suspender backlash is just indicative of the 90% of the population who can't wear them or who tried and failed
if you can pull them off (and Jodi Whittaker definitely can) I say put the pedal to the metal and go for it

otfm

(to whittaker pulling off the look)

Otfm

(to me wearing suspenders)

The coast is very Took Baker but with some Davison styling, especially around the lapels. The striped shirt also goes with the retro give.

*coat

*Tom Baker

*retro vibe

lol

“Took Baker Coast”, the new contribution from Mark Gatiss

Chibnell really is the worst choice they could've made on an artistic level. I would've thought Gatiss would've been a much more obvious successor, and for all his flaws at least would've injected more vision and personality into his seasons? Quite baffled they didn't go with him.

OTOH rating are still decent, right?

Ratings are decent, not "good" but perfectly fine. Appreciation Index scores have slipped, though, and the show's mainly ranking in the top thirty programmes rather than the top ten.

Gatiss didn't really want to do it by the time the job came up, having by then seen what a massive ballache the executive part of the job is, what it requires in terms of being a public figure, and how mentally and physically exhausting the creative side of the role is, after one of his best mates and closest collaborator had been doing it for seven years. Plus it would have gotten in the way of him taking stage acting jobs and painting lessons. (Dare say he would have said yes if asked tho, the big old nerd.)

Even when he'd pitched for the gig in 2001 or w/e it was as part of a team of three - he's never had the hubris to imagine that he's an endless font of loads of different Dr Who stories that aren't basically "old-timey horror classics but with a different monster in"

he's never had the hubris to imagine that he's an endless font of loads of different Dr Who stories that aren't basically "old-timey horror classics but with a different monster in"

This would be a good trait for a showrunner! He'd be open to fostering and incorporating other writers' ideas. And as an overall direction I wouldn't mind the show leaning more towards horror.

Can't believe the state of things has led me to stan for an imaginary version of Mark Gattis.

This is fun - DWM in 1999 asking Davies, Moffat, Cornell, Gatiss, Roberts (and Lance Parkin) what they'd do if bringing Dr Who back to TV for a modern audience

emsworth, thank you for new dn

must say, i’m super glad i stepped away from this show

emsworth, thank you for new dn

haha, madness

iirc the back blast backlash will bounce back and destroy everything

I haven’t watched the last two stories yet but I am willing to admit that a) the show is kind of bad now, and b) it is nowhere near bad enough to damage my decades-long fandom

I point people toward the Myrka fight scene from Warriors of the Deep as an example of what I love about the show so my level of nonsense appreciation is pretty high

I am genuinely not sure what it would take for me to actually stop watching this show, but that doesn't mean I am currently enjoying it.

I got my Doctor Who thrills recently by watching Jethro Tull's 1980 video Slipstream which (as I mentioned in another thread) has powerful Doctor Who energy.

I am genuinely not sure what it would take for me to actually stop watching this show

Same here, but I do feel like I’m closer to it right now than I’ve been since Trial of a Timelord. It just seems hard to see how it can be not bad now, until a future show runner comes in and decides to either fully retcon or else just fully ignore this week’s awful bullshit.

(I did actually stop watching some time during the Baker/McCoy period but that was because the BBC started scheduling it against Coronation Street which meant mum wouldn’t let me have it on any more, and we didn’t have a video recorder so I couldn’t tape it).

honestly it feels good to do something else with the time

My thing is that if I can religiously watch the convoluted, poorly-edited 7th Doctor stories where 75% of them are solved by deus ex machina pulled out of the Doctor's ass at the 11th hour, I can watch this

I don't watch any other terrible TV, so I guess can cope with 9 hours of this every 2 years.

if I can religiously watch the convoluted, poorly-edited 7th Doctor stories

ah yes well you see, i am also unable to bear watching those stories

the difference is that those stories are great

mm this is not the first time that i have encountered that point of view! i have made repeated attempts to scale that mountain and am now settled into a very comfortable position re that era, viz. "it's just not for me"

how about Colin

the last two mccoy seasons felt like they were going somewhere interesting, even if that didn't happen with the show, unlike this cliffhanger. i'd say at least 3 of them were good stories too -- remembrance, the circus one, fenric. unlike the latest seasons which only had one -- demons of the punjab. maybe partial credit for graham's dilemma in rosa.

in terms of rewatching the old show for pleasure i get off the bus after caves of androzani

for reference i was 10 in 1984 and while i watched most of the c.baker episodes on broadcast, it was with a sense of utter confusion as to the show was like this now

when i watch the old show - rarely ATM - it's 90% about sitting in a nostalgic fug, and i probably spend more time appreciating the background details and music than i do the plotting/dialogue

Vengeance on Varos is great IMO

I was about to rank all the 1980s stories but maybe we should finally fill the 18 months until the next season with a series of runoff polls, as mooted through ILX history

i’ve finally seen the last two episodes, and the only unique comment i can add is that every doctor/master scene is a jackpot for bisexuals

Chibnall Who undecolourised:

This is Series 12 and I approve this message #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/efJ9SWZWfZ

— Kieran Highman (@The66Ramblers) March 6, 2020

What does that mean?

You can see the people and sets.

that lens flare though

God that was a boring episode!

Lowest-rated episode (on 7-day figures) in nu-Who history, placed 30th for the week.

On BBC America, S11 averaged 880k with 0.28 in 18-49 demographic. S12 opened with 790k and 0.19 in the demo, dropped to 370k and 0.12 by the finale.

what about catchup?

(on 7-day figures)

it only aired seven days ago tbf

(those BBCA figures are ON though)

VOSDAL was up over the week before, but only enough to make up the difference, and eps 1-9 had Call The Midwife as lead-in: so that's a statistical 3,000 viewers whose families sat through Who with them if they'd been watching already.

cheers sic

Apparently DWM, for the first time in its forty-year history, didn't review the episodes of this seasom.

Seasom: a meditative season.

Did they explain why?

Seems not. Also apparently in the last issue, they said there would be a full season review in the next issue, but then there wasn't.

Obviously the only conclusion to draw is that every single review was filed but contained hidden messages spelling out "CHIBNALL IS A CUNT" and had to be spiked, one by one

I am still a huge fan of this show and I will continue watching it but WOW was that a gigantic load of wank

Apparently only 33 stories have rated lower in the whole history of the show since 1963, for what that's worth.

(That's probably episodes, not stories btw - the old series had 155 stories in 695 episodes, nu-Who has 130 stories in 165 full-length televised eps so far.)


([I don't know that anyone's averaged out each story's ratings across 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12 or 14 episodes, interesting as that would be, but comparing 1960s and 2020 ratings is apples and kumquats anyway: the sort of numbers that have the show plummeting into the 30s on the chart now would have it falling out of its regular place in the 50s-90s in 1968, and did have it falling off the chart altogether in 1989.])

I am by no means the most qualified Who viewer to weigh in, but I do love the show... after finally catching up with the last few eps, this season was the worst of any I can think of, the finale was garbage, and Chibnall should be canned.

on Day Of The Doctor comparisons: Who twitter is doing a quarantine watchalong of the special rn (Moffatt has rejoined twitter for the occasion and is commenting along at #savetheday), and every 2-minute chunk has at LEAST as much character, plot, visual play and verbal jokes as the clip upthread

As does this:

Yes! Here it is, courtesy of @StevenWMoffat and with the help of @McIntoshNeve, my esteemed colleague Strax entreats you to #SaveTheDay and join us in our viewing of The Day of The Doctor. Today at 7pm GMT, 3pm EST and all around the world! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/ljqFWM6QRE

— Dan Starkey (@StanDarkley) March 21, 2020

Love that early 2000s DWM article posted upthread that basically rips on all the ideas Chibnall had in the finale.

Rewatching the special was fun. I didn’t find Clara especially interesting at the time but she might as well be a Karmazov brother next to Yaz.

Osgood also fun. Not sure why they messed around with that character.

- across 17 Chib-era stories with new aliens in, we've had

Tzim-Sha, of the warlike Stenza
space racist Krasko
pilot's brother Durkas *
alien tree monsters the Morax
amnesiac pilot Paltraki vs the religious Ux in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
interdimensional Kasaavins
spider monsters the Skithra
plastic virus Praxeus
nightmare werewolf monsters the Chagaska
and what is Ko Sharmus?

the planetary surface of Fintleborxtug

sounds like they at bare minimum need help coming up with alien species names

they at bare

Only two of those don't have Chinballs as credited scriptwriter, and it seems hugely unlikely that the other two didn't have his thumb on hte naming scale